CECIL, James (1646-83)

Viscount Cranborne and 3rd earl of Salisbury, 1660-75

Salisbury’s grandfather sat as a Member in the Commons in the Rump and Protectorate Parliaments despite being a peer. His father did not take part in the Interregnum governments and throughout the 1650s found himself embarrassed by debt. By 1658 his debts stood at £15,200 and to avoid his creditors he fled to France, where he died at Montpellier on 14 Sept. 1659, his deathbed wish to his own father being that he would settle his debts. Stone, 153; HMC 15th Rep. VII, 161; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 434-6. At his death his teenage son James became the heir apparent to the earldom and was styled Viscount Cranborne. HMC Hatfield, xxii. 434-6. In 1661 his grandfather and guardian settled the terms for Cranborne’s marriage to Lady Margaret Manners. It is not clear when the marriage actually took place. A licence was taken out in September 1661, but the ceremony was probably delayed for a number of years, perhaps to 1665, owing to the youth of the couple. Certainly the families were united by around this time and over the following years the parents of the couple developed a close friendly relationship and the earls of Salisbury and Rutland corresponded frequently, mostly about hounds and hawks. Estate pprs. Box T, 57; Box V, 69-74; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 451-7. The marriage also tied Cranborne further into a large kinship network of peers, as Rutland’s many daughters married into some of the most prominent, or at least politically active, noble families of the realm. His eldest daughter, Frances, had long been married to John Cecil, 4th earl of Exeter, Cranborne’s cousin through their common ancestor William Cecil^†, Baron Burghley. At about the same time as Cranborne’s marriage, his sister-in-law Grace was joined to Patrick Chaworth, 3rd Viscount Chaworth of Armagh [I]; she became a frequent correspondent on political news with her brother, Cranborne’s brother-in-law John Manners, styled Lord Roos and later duke of Rutland. The year 1669 saw the marriages of Rutland’s daughters Elizabeth and Dorothy to, respectively, James Annesley, styled Lord Annesley (later 2nd earl of Anglesey) and the weak-minded Anthony Ashley Cooper, (later 2nd earl of Shaftesbury). These marriages connected Cranborne, later 3rd earl of Salisbury, to the leading statesmen Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey, and Anthony Ashley Cooper, Baron Ashley (later earl of Shaftesbury).

Cranborne was returned as a knight of the shire for Hertfordshire, where his family owned the majority of its landholdings, including the grand Jacobean residence of Hatfield House, at a by-election on 4 Apr. 1668. Throughout his career he maintained a prominent role and influence in Hertfordshire government and politics. He was, however, never entrusted with major offices such as the lord lieutenancy or custos rotulorum of the county, which were exercised instead by Arthur Capel, earl of Essex. Salisbury did inherit from his father the high stewardship of the county town of Hertford, which he held until his death. Salisbury himself added regularly to his landholdings in the county and its surrounding areas. In 1675 he purchased the manor of Le Mote in Cheshunt and in 1680-82 the Hertfordshire manor of Bygrave and other estates at a cost of £15,614. Stone, 154; VCH Herts. iii. 215. The Salisbury estate also included the London town house of Salisbury House on the Strand in Westminster, which gave him an interest in that area as well. However, the family’s fortunes were under severe strain throughout the 1660s and 1670s, if not later. The 3rd earl had racked up debts of £18,840 by the time of his death, and this was further compounded by the generous annuities and portions provided for in his will and the need to provide for the jointures of both the dowager countess of Salisbury and the dowager Lady Cranborne. Stone, 154.

Cranborne kept his seat in the Commons for barely over a month as the session was adjourned on 9 May 1668, and he succeeded to the earldom of Salisbury, at the age of 22, upon his grandfather’s death on 3 Dec. 1668. He first took his seat in the House a week into the following session, on 25 Oct. 1669. On that first day he was added to the committee on the bill to prevent frauds in the export of wool and to the large committee to consider the decay of trade and fall of rents. He was also placed on the committee established on 6 Nov. 1669 to examine the report and papers submitted by the commissioners of accounts. He attended four-fifths of the sittings of the session but was named to only one further committee, on the estate bill of John Bill, before the prorogation of 11 Dec. 1669. For the following long session of 1670-1, he arrived at the House one week into parliamentary business on 21 Feb. 1670. He attended only 16 per cent of sittings as he was almost entirely absent, coming to only eight sittings after the session resumed on 24 Oct. 1670 following the summer recess. Throughout he was named to seven select committees, including that established on 19 Mar. 1670 for the bill to allow his brother-in-law, Lord Roos, to remarry after his divorce. Doubtless Salisbury would have supported this bill, which sought to give Roos an opportunity to have a legitimate male heir to his estates and honours, but there is no definite evidence of his activities, apart from his absence from the protests against its passage. During this period he was also placed on the committees on the bills for: establishing and clarifying the jurisdiction of the lord high admiral, James Stuart, duke of York (established on 14 Mar. 1670); preventing the malicious burning of houses and killing of cattle (24 Mar.); nominating and authorizing commissioners to negotiate a treaty of union between England and Scotland (25 Mar.); making the Rivers Boston and Trent navigable (26 Nov.); as well as two private bills. He attended the session for the last time on 2 Dec. 1670, missing the last four months of business, and at a call of the House on 10 Feb. 1671 he was formally excused attendance.

Parliament remained prorogued from April 1671 to February 1673 and in those months Charles II issued his Declaration of Indulgence and began a renewed war against the United Provinces. In 1672 Baron Ashley was also raised to an earldom as Shaftesbury and became lord chancellor. Shaftesbury was to have a notable influence on Salisbury’s career in the succeeding years. Salisbury attended the House when Parliament resumed on 4 Feb. 1673 for the first day of the new parliamentary session and proceeded to sit in every sitting of this turbulent session. He was named to seven select committees on legislation – those on the bills for: preventing frauds in the export of wool (established on 14 Feb.); for taking duties of alien merchants (22 Mar.); to confirm the marriage articles of Sir William Rich^‡, a distant kinsman by marriage (12 Mar.); as well as four other private bills. He was also nominated to the committee of the House assigned on 5 Mar. to draw up a ‘bill of advice’ to the king regarding his dispute with the Commons over the use of the royal prerogative and suspending power in the Declaration of Indulgence. In addition he was placed on two further committees of investigation, those to consider the multitude of attorneys in Westminster Hall (established on 14 Feb.) and to mediate the dispute between the Hamburg Company and its creditors (22 March).

On a far more personal matter, on 10 Feb., Salisbury’s own bill to allow him to lease his property on the Salisbury estate in upper St Martin’s Lane received its first reading in the House. It was committed three days later, without him being named to the committee; a petition against the bill from Sir Thomas Leigh, read before the House on 18 Feb., complaining that the bill claimed title to tenements which he insisted were rightfully his, was referred to the committee. Over the following week counsel for both sides hammered out an agreement, by which Salisbury had to buy out Sir Thomas’s claim for £32,000. On 27 Feb. the bill was reported with amendments by Charles Howard, 2nd earl of Berkshire, and passed by the House on 1 March. Steered through the Commons’ committee by William Monson^‡, a Member for Lincoln and deputy lieutenant of Hertfordshire, the bill was returned to the House, with some amendments, and agreed to by the House on 15 Mar. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/3, pp. 6, 10; Survey of London, xxxiv. 339-41. Salisbury also tried to improve, and profit from, his estate in Westminster when he submitted, on 19 Mar., a proviso to the bill to prohibit the construction of new buildings in London which would allow him to build on the grounds of Great and Little Salisbury House in the Strand. He had already knocked down Little Salisbury House and created a new street, Salisbury Street, with tenements in its place and had also carved up the large Great Salisbury House into 12 self-contained houses. PA, HL/PO/JO/10/1/351/97b; Stone, 92-95. The bill did not receive the royal assent in this session, but his own bill did, on 29 Mar. 1673, on which day Parliament was adjourned until 20 Oct. 1673. In the intervening months, Salisbury’s prominent place among the nobility was suggested by his position as an official mourner at the funeral of Charles Stuart, 3rd duke of Richmond, on 20 September. Add. 12514, f. 291. Salisbury dutifully attended when Parliament resumed on 20 Oct., only for the session to be prorogued until the following week. He came to all four days of the abortive session that began on 27 Oct. 1673, during which he was named to only one committee on legislation, that for the bill to encourage English manufactures, on 30 Oct.

After this tumultuous and short-lived session, Shaftesbury was dismissed as lord chancellor and became a leading spirit of the band of ‘malcontent’ peers concerned by the growth of French and Catholic influence at court, which was represented most tellingly by the public conversion of the heir, James Stuart, duke of York. Salisbury soon became a leading member of this group which sought to impose limitations on the future Catholic monarch. He was present on 7 Jan. 1674 for the first day of the next session and attended all of its 38 sittings. On 12 Jan. a report had it that Salisbury was named as one of a committee of six members of the House, to join with six representatives from the Commons, to inspect the treaty with France. Verney ms mic. M636/27, Sir R. to E. Verney, 12 Jan. 1674. The following day, 13 Jan., Salisbury registered for the remainder of the session the proxy of Edward Montagu, 2nd Baron Montagu of Boughton, brother of his mother-in-law, Lady Rutland. On that same day, Salisbury, in the company of many other peers, took the Jacobean oath of allegiance. According to the Venetian ambassador, Salisbury himself had an important role in this new procedure, as he had moved in the first days of the session that, according to the spirit of the Test Act of 1673, all peers should have to take the oath of allegiance before entering the House, ‘a proceeding at variance with the privilege which their lordships thought to enjoy of never being bound to take any oath’. Yet a precedent for this requirement was discovered and the motion to impose the oaths duly carried on 13 January. CSP Ven. 1673-75, p. 201. He was named to five committees on legislation in this session, including those on the bills for: preserving wood and timber (established on 7 Feb.); preventing illegal imprisonment (17 Feb.); and preventing frauds and perjuries (20 February). He was also named on 16 Feb. to the committee for the bill for governing servants and apprentices which was also authorized to prepare a clause that would deal with slaves.

He most clearly distinguished himself in this session as one of the prime movers of measures against the duke of York and the succession of a Catholic monarch. On 24 Jan. 1674 Salisbury, supported by Charles Howard, earl of Carlisle, moved for the introduction of a bill for the Protestant upbringing of York’s children. This was one of the ‘heads’ discussed in a series of committees of the whole between 10 and 21 February. Salisbury, Shaftesbury, and George Savile, Viscount (later marquess of) Halifax, made up the core of a subcommittee appointed by the committee on 14 Feb. to draw up these proposals into two bills, one confined to the heads concerning the royal family and another dealing with the heads touching Catholics in the general population. This bill was introduced by Shaftesbury and received its first reading on 21 Feb., but was lost at the prorogation three days later. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/3, pp. 70-73; HMC 9th Rep. pt. 2, 42-43; CSP Dom. 1674, pp. 151, 155; Stowe 204, f. 114; Macpherson, Orig. Pprs. i. 71. York may have had something to do with the session’s peremptory prorogation for, according to the French ambassador, the duke was increasingly angry at the ‘pernicious designs’ of Salisbury, Shaftesbury, Carlisle, and Thomas Belasyse, 2nd Viscount Fauconberg, who all met frequently at the home of Denzil Holles, Baron Holles, to organize Commons’ business and promote anti-Catholic legislation, and the duke was thus ‘of a mind to break up Parliament in good time’. TNA, PRO 31/3/130, ff. 44-48. After the session’s prorogation, Sir Gilbert Talbot^‡ observed to Sir Joseph Williamson^‡ that both Houses of Parliament had ‘pressed fiercely and avowedly’ against York and that a group of ‘hotspurs’ in the upper House (Salisbury, Shaftesbury, Halifax and Gilbert Holles, 3rd earl of Clare) were ‘the most forward’ and had worked in alliance with a number of ‘discontented and turbulent Commons’ to place limitations on the duke of York and to prevent ‘the growth of popery’ in the realm. Williamson Letters ii. (Cam. Soc. n.s. ix), 156-8.

Country peer, 1675-9

Salisbury was prominent enough in Shaftesbury’s circle to be mentioned in his open letter to Carlisle, written and widely distributed in the months before the session of spring 1675. In this letter Shaftesbury affected an unwillingness to involve himself in the king’s government as long as Parliament was infrequently summoned, kept in perpetuity without fresh elections, and largely ignored. Nevertheless, he stated that he would deign to come up to Westminster to resume business if he were explicitly summoned by Salisbury, Carlisle, Fauconberg and Holles. Bodl. Carte 81, f. 607; Carte 228, f. 125; Carte 38, f. 286. Salisbury and his allies at this time were piqued that the king was heeding the counsel of the bishops and of the lord treasurer Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds). Danby’s Anglican policies were also alienating York. Following the February 1675 order in council to enforce the penal laws against Catholics in advance of the parliamentary session, Salisbury was one of the peers targeted in York’s attempt to bargain with the country opposition. York hoped that toleration for Catholics could be part of a general toleration for nonconformists which he would help to promote – as long as country peers such as Salisbury did not question his right of succession. Essex Pprs. (Cam. Soc. n.s. xlvii), 285; W. Yorks. AS (Leeds), Mexborough mss (WYL156), 8/5. Salisbury was known to be sympathetic to nonconformists, even Quakers. He spent more than two hours visiting George Fox in prison in 1674, taking notes on the errors in the indictment of the Quaker leader. Family Pprs. viii. 234; Journal of George Fox ed. J.L. Nickalls, 698. Salisbury also formed a firm friendship with John Tillotson, the future archbishop of Canterbury, who was later to be named in Salisbury’s will as a trustee of his estate. Both Tillotson and Edward Stillingfleet, later bishop of Worcester, were heavily involved with Richard Baxter in 1675 in drafting bills for the comprehension of nonconformists and were supported in their endeavours by Salisbury’s country colleagues, Carlisle and Halifax. Reliquiae Baxterianae, iii. 157.

Salisbury maintained an almost perfect attendance record in the parliamentary session that began on 13 Apr. 1675, when he missed only one sitting. Even on that first day he showed himself adverse to the court and to Danby’s ‘Church party’ by signing the protest – one of only ten peers to do so – against the House’s rejection of the opposition’s counter-proposal to thank the king only for some ‘gracious expressions’ in his speech, rather than for the speech itself. Throughout the session he was named to seven select committees, those on the bills for: preventing frauds and perjuries (established on 15 Apr.); preventing the ruin of highways by four-wheeled carts (8 May); enforcing the payment of church rates and small tithes (8 May); augmenting the income of small vicarages (18 May); and three private bills. He was most heavily involved in opposition to Danby’s bill to prevent dangers to the government by ‘disaffected persons’, which sought to impose an oath on all members of Parliament not to seek to make any alterations in church or state, which Salisbury and his fellow country peers thought entrenched on the birthright of the peerage to sit in the House and freely debate. He was one of the ten peers who signed each of the four protests of late April and early May – on 21, 26, 29 Apr. and 4 May – against the progress of Danby’s bill in the House and the measures the court sought to take against those opposed to it. According to Richard Baxter, Salisbury, with Shaftesbury, Holles, and George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, were the ‘chief speakers’ against the bill, and they spoke so well that ‘the debating of this test did more weaken the interest and reputation of the bishops with the nobles than anything that ever befell them since the king came in’, while Shaftesbury in the Letter from a Person of Quality described how Salisbury ‘stood like a rock of nobility and English principles’ in answering the arguments of the lord keeper Heneage Finch, Baron Finch (later earl of Nottingham) in debate. Timberland, i. 146-7; Reliquiae Baxterianae, iii. 167. The Houses soon descended into a dispute over their respective privileges in the cause of Sherley v. Fagg and Salisbury attended the last day of the session on 9 June 1675 when the king peremptorily prorogued Parliament.

He was in the House again on 13 Oct. 1675 and proceeded to attend all the sittings of this short session, during which he was named to seven select committees, those on the bills for: explaining the previous bill against Popish recusants (established on 14 Oct.); augmenting the income for small vicarages (12 Nov.); preventing frauds and perjuries (12 Nov.); discouraging the import of foreign manufactures (13 Nov.); prohibiting the erection of new buildings in London (17 Nov.); and two private bills. On 20 Nov. 1675 he received the proxy of his political ally Holles, and he quickly used it on that same day to vote in favour of the address to the king to dissolve Parliament. HEHL, EL 8418. He subsequently joined 21 other peers in signing the protest against the rejection of the motion. Parliament was now in disarray once again, and was prorogued two days after this abortive motion for dissolution.

The king kept the unco-operative Parliament under prorogation for over a year. As the new session scheduled to start on 15 Feb. 1677 approached it was clear that Salisbury’s role as one of Shaftesbury’s lieutenants and a leading member of the country opposition had not changed. The perennially invalid Horatio Townshend, Baron (later Viscount) Townshend, wrote to Shaftesbury two weeks before the session was scheduled to start, begging him to accept his proxy rather than compel his presence at Westminster, and specifying that if Shaftesbury already had his complement of proxies, his was to go to Salisbury. Add. 41654, f. 30. There were also rumours that Salisbury and Halifax would be placed in the Treasury commission as a way of bringing them closer to the court and blunting their opposition. Add. 29556, f. 116. When the session did assemble on 15 Feb. 1677, Salisbury was there, but his actions quickly resulted in his committal to the Tower for several months and he attended only six sittings of the entire session. On that first day Buckingham delivered a long speech asserting that the Parliament had in fact been legally dissolved because statutes passed in the reign of Edward III purportedly prohibited prorogations of more than twelve months. When John Frescheville, Baron Frescheville, moved that Buckingham be called to the bar to be punished for his suggestion, Salisbury retorted that such actions and threats effectively took away the freedom of debate in the House and that the ancient laws were intended to preserve the rights of Parliament. Robert Bruce, earl of Ailesbury, tried to take a moderate course by censuring both Buckingham and Salisbury, but Richard Arundell, Baron Arundell of Trerice, seconded Frescheville in his attempt to punish Buckingham. Other country peers such as Halifax and Holles strongly defended Buckingham’s right to argue his point without fear of punishment or censure, but only Salisbury, Shaftesbury and Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, both defended Buckingham’s freedom of speech and his central contention about the dissolution. A motion that the four peers insisting on the dissolution withdraw so that their treatment could be decided was passed by a majority of 23 and while these peers were in the lobby, Buckingham made his escape. Salisbury, on the other hand, according to a contemporary newsletter writer, stayed and ‘had a behaviour, look and discourse becoming a resolute person’, in contrast to his two colleagues Shaftesbury and Wharton, who ‘seemed more apprehensive of their condition’. Beinecke Lib. OSB MSS 6, Box 1, folder 23. Burnet, too, described Salisbury in this debate as ‘a high-spirited man, who had a very ill opinion of the court’. Nevertheless, the House saw Buckingham and Shaftesbury as the ringleaders of this attempt to have Parliament dissolved and devised a lesser punishment for Salisbury, who was only meant to stand in his place in the House (as opposed to kneeling before the bar) and admit his offence.

The following day, 16 Feb., Salisbury was the first to be asked to submit, as Buckingham was still absenting himself. Despite the moderate punishment intended, Salisbury instead ‘resolutely asserted all he had said’. Shaftesbury and Wharton did likewise and all three were, by a unanimous decision of the House, committed to the Tower, which decision Salisbury ‘made but a jest of’. He also further offended the king, by requesting, perhaps at the prompting of Shaftesbury who made the same demand, that his own personal cook attend him during his confinement, ‘which the king resented highly, as carrying with it an insinuation of the worst sort’. The House further ordered on 17 Feb. that the four peers were to be, ‘kept severally and apart and ... not suffered to meet together, unless it be at church and … no person … suffered to visit them without the leave of the House’. Salisbury’s sister-in-law, Lady Chaworth, recounted that the four peers spent most of their first church service in the Tower talking instead of attending to the ceremony, after which it was decided to remove even that privilege from them. In a contemporary lampoon, Salisbury appeared as ‘soft Cecil’ who allowed Buckingham to lead him ‘by the nose’. The House may well have agreed. Salisbury, like Wharton, was held not to have asserted that Parliament was dissolved but to have maintained that the prorogation was illegal. Accounts of these proceedings of 15-17 Feb. 1677, any record of which was expunged from the formal Journal of the House by a subsequent order of 13 Nov. 1680, fortunately survive in a number of manuscript collections and they were also later published by John Hatsell as an appendix to his collection of parliamentary precedents. J. Hatsell, Precedents of Proceedings in the House of Commons (1796), ii. 396-415; HMC Le Fleming, 143.

Growing unease over the imprisonment was perhaps evident as the House increasingly was pressed to grant licence to members of the House who wished to visit the lords in the Tower. A particularly assiduous visitor was George Booth, Baron Delamer, who requested, and was granted, permission to visit the imprisoned peers on both 7 and 15 Mar. 1677. He became their principal spokesman and on 20 Mar. moved the House, seconded by Halifax and Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, that the four were confined ‘upon a punctilio only’ and pressed for their release. Verney ms mic. M636/30, W. Fall to Sir R. Verney, 23 Mar. 1677. In April 1677 Salisbury, Shaftesbury and Buckingham (Wharton at that point being under ‘house arrest’ owing to his illness) jointly petitioned for their release; the king having indicated that a joint petition was unsatisfactory, they then petitioned individually. Ibid. Lady A. Hobart to Sir R. Verney, 26 Apr. [1677]; Marvell ed. Margoliouth, ii. 194. Early in June Salisbury’s ill health and his wife’s advanced pregnancy secured his parole, although only for a month. The success of his application was attributed to the support of his wife’s distant kinsman, the impoverished Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, who ‘solicited and finished that affair’. Lady Salisbury then wrote to Lady Danby in an attempt to influence the earl of Danby, referring tantalizingly to ‘the obligation we have received from his Lordship’s favour in this business’ and sent a letter of support from her doctor who stated that her ‘vapours and faintings’ were such that returning Salisbury to the Tower before her delivery was likely to endanger her life. Salisbury was then further paroled on condition that he remained at Hatfield. CSP Dom. 1677-8, pp. 166, 214; Savile Corresp. 58; Eg. 3338, ff. 96-97; Estate pprs. Box T, 59. He was in no doubt that he owed his freedom to Danby and approached him again on 19 July, asking him to present yet another petition to the king. Eg. 3330, ff. 107, 115; TNA, PRO 30/24/6A/307. He was released a few days later after begging the king’s pardon and expressing ‘his extreme trouble for having offended the king and the House of Peers by what he owns to have unadvisedly said concerning the late prorogation’. A private recantation was not enough; the king insisted that he must also submit to any requirements of the House. HEHL, HM 30314 (61); CSP Dom. 1677-8, p. 261. By the end of July only the recalcitrant Shaftesbury, of the four peers originally imprisoned, remained in the Tower, where he compiled his lists of the political attitudes of members of both houses of Parliament. Not surprisingly, he listed his fellow prisoner Salisbury as ‘triply worthy’.

Parliament was resumed on 28 Jan. 1678. Salisbury arrived at the House on 4 Feb. 1678 to make his formal apology. After waiting at the doorway, he was called to his place and informed that the House would accept his submission from his seat without his being called to the bar. CSP Dom. 1677-8, p. 624. He left the House for the remainder of the session, which was prorogued on 13 May 1678, on 7 February, having been nominated to only committee, on 5 Feb., on a private bill. He had not altered his political perspective and on 23 Feb. 1678 was writing to Shaftesbury for advice on how to dispose of his proxy. Never having registered one before, he carefully followed Shaftesbury’s instructions and prepared his proxy to be received by their colleague Halifax, who could be relied upon to support Shaftesbury’s own petition for release. Evidently Shaftesbury was able to organize proxy distribution even from the Tower and Salisbury’s proxy with Halifax was duly registered on the same day as his letter, 23 Feb, 1678. TNA, PRO 30/24/6A/323. Salisbury did not attend the following session of May-July 1678 either, nor did he register a proxy for this session. He may have removed himself from Parliament for most of 1678 because of a continuing disgruntlement at his previous treatment by the House. He was also preoccupied with concerns in Hertfordshire where he was heavily involved in a local dispute with the inhabitants of Baldock. A verdict against him at the Hertford assizes in early March 1678 angered him and caused him to look for other counsel to represent him. He again pressed his wife into service; she wrote on his behalf to the wife of the judge, Timothy Littleton^‡. Estate pprs. General 21/30, 22/25.

An ‘enthusiastic’ believer in the Popish Plot in the autumn of 1678, Salisbury had been involved with the magistrate Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey for at least two years previous to his murder, as Salisbury’s accounts for 1676 reveal payments to Godfrey of £93 6s. and a bond of £105 17s. 6d. HHM, Accounts 127/11a, 147/8. The Plot certainly contributed to Salisbury’s renewed commitment to Parliament. He arrived at the House on 8 Nov. 1678, two weeks after the start of business. He attended a little less than two-thirds of the sittings of this session and was named to four committees on legislation, principally on bills against Catholic recusants, such as that for disabling them from exercising trades (established on 7 Dec. 1678) or for hindering the Catholic education of their children (12 December). In general, he was closely involved in the anti-Catholic agenda of this session. On 11 Nov. 1678 he was one of a group of peers ordered to inspect ammunition found in a residence in the Savoy and to report back to the House. Four days later he was present at the debate in the committee of the whole on the Test bill and voted in favour of the motion that the declaration against transubstantiation should be under the same penalty as the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. On 26 Nov. he was also placed on the committee for the bill to raise the militia for 42 days by parliamentary authority, seen in many quarters as a breach of royal prerogative. However, with such activities, he almost certainly would have surprised contemporaries by his votes on the last days of the session – if indeed they were recorded correctly by Wharton, who quite surprisingly included Salisbury among the ‘court lords’ who voted on 26 Dec. in favour of the amendment to the supply bill which would place the money raised in the coffers of the Exchequer and on 27 Dec. against the commitment of Danby, then under impeachment by the Commons. There is no alternative evidence either to corroborate or to dismiss these uncharacteristic votes, but Salisbury was appointed a manager for two conferences held on 28 Dec. on the disputed amendment to the supply bill and very few of his eight fellow managers could be considered convinced members of the country opposition.

These votes may have been cast in the context of Salisbury either seeking or being offered royal favour, for on 3 Jan. 1679, only four days after the troublesome session had been prorogued, Salisbury was sworn of the Privy Council, ‘which marks of great kindness towards him’ as one contemporary saw it, and probably represented an attempt to bind him closer to the court. TNA, PC 2/67, p. 2. There were also rumours that Salisbury would be honoured with the garter and that either he or Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington, would replace the dismissed and disgraced Danby as lord treasurer. One contemporary thought Salisbury would be the popular choice, ‘he being a man of a great estate and a good husband, one who knows how to manage his own estate and consequently fit to be employed in the Treasury’. Ibid. 2; CSP Dom. 1679-80, p. 15; HMC 12th Rep. vii. 153. On 8 Jan. he was placed on the committee of the council charged with examining William Howard, Viscount Stafford, about this alleged involvement in the Popish Plot. CSP Dom. 1679-80, p. 13.

Charles II dissolved the Cavalier Parliament on 24 Jan. 1679 and called fresh elections for a new Parliament meeting in March. Salisbury’s interest played some role in the elections in Hertfordshire, but the principal electoral patron was the lord lieutenant, the country peer and regional magnate Arthur Capell, earl of Essex. Nevertheless, Salisbury could not have been disappointed in the result of the county election which saw the return to two country candidates, Silius Titus^‡ and William Hale^‡. Salisbury’s interest was more pronounced in the borough of Hertford, where he had acted as high steward, almost a hereditary office within his family, since his succession to the title, but even here his role is uncertain in the election of the moderate country members Sir Thomas Byde^‡ and Sir Charles Caesar^‡. HP Commons, 1660-90, i. 268-71.

Exclusion Parliaments, 1679-83

The indications of Salisbury’s growing closeness to the court may account for Danby initially considering Salisbury a potential supporter in the impeachment proceedings he would undergo in the forthcoming Parliament. Yet shortly after the compilation of this first list, Danby reconsidered and placed Salisbury on two similar lists of his probable opponents, a forecast which turned out in the event to be more accurate. Salisbury attended every sitting of the one-week session of the first Exclusion Parliament in March 1679, and on 11 Mar. he was placed on the committee to receive information on the Popish Plot. When Parliament met again for business on 15 Mar., a scant two days after the prorogation, rumours were again rife that the disgraced Danby would be replaced by a treasury commission that included Salisbury and Essex. Verney, ms mic. M636/32, Sir R. to E. Verney, 17 Mar. 1679; Bodl. Tanner 39, f. 213. Salisbury attended the House for its first day and attended 93 per cent of sitting days. He was again placed on the committee to receive information concerning the Plot and was named to six committees on legislation (the bill for members of Convocation to take the oaths, established on 20 Mar., and five estate bills) and to the committee set up on 24 Apr. to consider the Commons’ objections to the answers of the five impeached lords. On 22 Mar., despite attending the House, Salisbury was not, unlike his political allies Shaftesbury, Essex, Holles and Fauconberg, named to the committee to prepare legislation to disqualify Danby from holding office again or attending the king. Nevertheless, during the first fortnight of April he voted repeatedly for all forms of the bill which threatened Danby with punishment if he did not surrender himself to face impeachment proceedings – both the House’s amended bill for his banishment and the harsher Commons’ bill which envisaged the lord treasurer’s attainder, the version which eventually passed on 14 April.

Salisbury retained his place on the Privy Council at the time of its remodelling on 22 Apr. 1679; he and John Egerton, 2nd earl of Bridgwater remained as the representative earls on the council. He was also placed on the subcommittee dealing with the affairs of Ireland. HMC Ormonde, n.s. iv. 305; n.s. v. 55. During May 1679, he remained heavily involved in the House with the proceedings surrounding the trials of the impeached lords. He supported the Commons’ suggestion for a joint committee of both houses assigned to determine the procedure of the trials. On 8 May he registered his dissent against the first rejection of this request, and two days later was a reporter for the conference at which the House explained their objections. Salisbury himself reported on 10 May the effects of this conference, including the Commons’ repeated insistence on a joint committee, and he again voted in the motion’s favour and signed the dissent against its rejection. The following day he was a manager for a further two free conferences on this dispute, at the end of which the House relented and appointed a committee of six members, of which Salisbury was one, to confer with the Commons on trial procedure. Bodl. Carte 81, f. 625. This committee reported to the House on 13 May with the request from the Commons’ committee that the bishops not be allowed to attend the trials in Westminster Hall because they could involve capital punishment. Salisbury supported this motion and subscribed to the protest when the House rejected it. On 22 May 1679 Salisbury, Bridgwater and James Compton, 3rd earl of Northampton attended the king to know when the two Houses should wait on him to present an address on the militia of Middlesex and London. Salisbury was named as a reporter for the conference requested by the Commons on 26 May ‘to preserve good correspondence’ between the Houses, and the following day, upon the report of this conference, he again registered his dissent from the House’s resolution to insist on its earlier vote in favour of the bishops’ presence at capital trials. With the chambers again in deadlock, Parliament was prorogued the following day and dissolved weeks later on 12 July.

In the elections of autumn 1679 Salisbury appeared more active for exclusionist candidates. As high steward of Hertford he already had in that borough a reliable ally in Sir William Cowper^‡, who rented Hertford Castle from Salisbury on a long lease, was a trustee, and perhaps even a kinsman, of their colleague Shaftesbury, and was also a member of the Green Ribbon Club. Salisbury undoubtedly helped to ensure the return of Cowper in the election for the borough, although Cowper was also greatly aided by the Dissenting vote in the strongly nonconformist town; he even had a Quaker as his political agent. Cowper was joined by the sitting Member Sir Thomas Byde, who returned to stand for the borough at the last minute after attempting an unsuccessful bid for the county. The earl was less successful at the county level. Admittedly an exclusionist Sir Jonathan Keate^‡ was returned, but he was partnered by the incumbent Sir Charles Caesar^‡, elected by ‘the gentlemen of the country’ in opposition to the recommendation of ‘the Earls of Essex and Salisbury and Master of the Rolls [Sir Harbottle Grimstone^‡]’. HP Commons, 1660-90, i. 268-71; ii. 165-6; East Anglian Studies ed. L. Munby, 119. 123-4. Salisbury could not have displayed more overt political sentiments than when he snubbed the duke of York on 27 Oct. by vacating Hatfield as the duke and duchess arrived en route to Scotland. Since Salisbury had left ‘not a bottle of wine or anything but beds, not so much as a candle’, York obtained supplies in the village and, declaring his ‘unwillingness to be burdensome to so poor a lord’, left Salisbury eight shillings for their lodgings. Verney, ms mic. M636/33, J. Stewkeley to Sir R. Verney, 3 Nov. 1679; Add. 70259, R. Strettell to R. Harley, 1 Nov. 1679; Family pprs. ix. 23. However, during the long period of prorogations in 1679-80 by which the new Parliament was successively postponed, Salisbury does not appear to have been personally involved in some of the more radical and theatrical activities of the Green Ribbon Club and the conclave of Whig peers who met with Shaftesbury at the Swan Tavern. He himself was not one of the signatories to the petition of December 1679 calling for a speedy summoning of the long-delayed Parliament, but the two Members for Hertford, Cowper and Byde, did in the first days of January 1680 present a petition from Hertfordshire protesting the delay, which must have been submitted with Salisbury’s knowledge. HP Commons, 1660-90, ii. 165; The Domestick Intelligence, 52, 2 Jan. 1680. Similarly, Salisbury himself was not part of the group which on 26 June 1680 sought to indict York for recusancy, but his Hertford client Cowper joined Shaftesbury in this attempt. Herts. ALS, D/EP F.27. The king, perhaps seeing an opening in Salisbury’s relative passivity, made what was probably another bid to bring the previously fiery opposition peer closer to the court and on the last day of August 1680 Salisbury reached the pinnacle of status when he was elected a knight of the Garter. At that time there were further rumours that he would also be made lord treasurer. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 54; Bodl. Carte 39, f. 198.

When the second Exclusion Parliament assembled on 21 Oct. 1680, Salisbury attended for the first day of business and, with Essex, introduced Halifax, under his new title as earl of Halifax, to the House. Salisbury attended every sitting but one. He was named to only two committees on legislation, those for the additional bill for burying in woollen (established on 21 Dec.) and the estate bill of Sir Charles Hoghton (3 Jan. 1681). He was involved in the continuing investigations into the Plot and was placed, on 23 Oct. 1680, on the large committee to investigate information about the Plot. He probably joined with Shaftesbury in encouraging evidence and testimony in this committee regarding a putative plot in Ireland and when on 8 Nov. the House held a conference with the Commons to deliver to them the transcripts of the proceedings of this committee, Salisbury was appointed a manager. About this time a ‘noble lord’ argued in the House that the imprisonment of Salisbury and his three fellow prisoners in the Tower in 1677 had been a serious breach of privilege, and that the record of these proceedings ‘may prove fatal to the dignity and privileges of this House ... [and] cast a great blemish upon the honour and justice of this House’. Bodl. Carte 228, ff. 235-6. Consequently, on 11 Nov. 1680 the House ordered the record of these proceedings to be examined by the committee for the Journal and two days later, following the report from the committee, ordered that all record of these actions against the four lords be expurgated from the official record.

In the debate on the Exclusion bill on 15 Nov. Salisbury made his views very clear. He first argued, according to the brief notes made by Theophilus Hastings, 7th earl of Huntingdon, that ‘The happiness of [the] king and kingdom depends on it. It is the only way left to secure the Protestant religion and the king. No security without it to [the] king and kingdom. He [York] is but a subject and his right may be concluded’, and then replied to objections to both the morality and practicality of the bill with the assertions that, ‘It is not doing evil that good may come of it if it secure the king’s life and government. No summons is necessary it being notorious he [York] is a papist and besides in legislative capacity it may be done’. Unsurprisingly, Salisbury voted against the rejection of the bill and subsequently signed the dissent against this vote. BIHR, xx. 33-34. Two days after the defeat of the bill, he seconded the motion put by Shaftesbury that the king should divorce and marry a Protestant in order to leave the crown to his legitimate and protestant issue. Family Pprs. ix. 48. On 19 Nov. he moved for a prorogation to allow the Exclusion bill to be reintroduced in a new session, part of a scheme then underfoot to offer the king supply of £600,000 in exchange for acquiescence to the bill. Knights, Pols. and Opinion, 85. On 23 Nov. Salisbury voted to appoint a committee to consider, in conjunction with the Commons, the perilous state of the kingdom and registered his protest when this motion was rejected. Later that same day he was added to the committee for the bill to form a Protestant Association and his colleague Essex presented to a committee of the whole House the heads he had drawn up for the bill for securing the Protestant religion. On 27 Nov. he was chosen as one of five members of the House delegated to meet with a similar committee of the Commons to discuss the procedure for the trial of Viscount Stafford, and Salisbury reported two days later from this joint committee that the Commons wanted sight of the House’s commission for appointing the lord high steward. The perceived Catholic threat continued to dominate parliamentary business, and on 2 Dec. Shaftesbury informed the House that a ‘considerable prelate and three other persons of the Church of Rome’ would make further statements regarding the Popish Plot as long as they had the king’s pardon. Up to that point, so he claimed, he was the only one who knew the names of these important witnesses, but he asked permission of the House to communicate their identities to Salisbury and Essex. Five days later Shaftesbury further informed the House that he had information that Catholics had concealed arms in their houses and that he would reveal to Salisbury the name of the person in whose house they were stored. As a consequence, the Lords ordered Salisbury and Shaftesbury to organize a search for enemy arms and to report back to the House. The House then adjourned to Westminster Hall for the trial of Stafford, where Salisbury voted the viscount guilty of treason. On 18 Dec. Salisbury was appointed by the House (with Anglesey, and William Russell, 5th earl of Bedford) to address the king for leave to bring Stafford before the Lords, so that he could provide more information on the Plot. Bodl. Carte 72, f. 511. On that same day Salisbury subscribed to the dissent against the decision to reject a proviso added by the Commons to the bill for regulating the trial of peers, which would exempt from the provisions of the bill all trials of peers upon impeachment.

On 21 Dec., Salisbury, Shaftesbury and Essex launched a political attack on two of York’s prominent supporters: Laurence Hyde, later earl of Rochester, first commissioner of the Treasury and the duke’s brother-in-law, and Colonel George Legge, later Baron Dartmouth, governor of the strategically important Portsmouth garrison. In the Lords, Salisbury moved that Legge be dismissed as lieutenant general of the ordnance because of his ‘too great addiction to the duke’. Haley, Shaftesbury, 612; HP Commons, 1660-90, ii. 725. Salisbury further signed the two dissents of 7 Jan. 1681 on the refusal of the House to put the questions whether the lord chief justice, Sir William Scroggs, should be committed or even suspended pending the impeachment proceedings against him. Unsurprisingly, Salisbury’s bill from the bookseller that year included a vindication of Shaftesbury’s political behaviour and a copy of the Papists’ Bloody Aftergame. HHM, Bills 472.

Salisbury’s career in central government came to an end when on 18 Jan. he argued strenuously in council against the king’s decision to dissolve Parliament. The king silenced him, saying arguments would be of no avail, and in protest Salisbury begged leave to resign from the council. The king readily agreed and Salisbury’s name was removed from the council register that same day. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 64; HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 555, 560-3; TNA, PC 2/69, p. 181. One week after the dissolution, Salisbury was one of 16 peers to present a petition to the king against holding the next Parliament in Oxford. Vox Patriae (1681), 6-7. In the elections for the Parliament of March 1681 Salisbury was again able to see the return for Hertford of the exclusionist incumbent Members Cowper and Byde. He was less effective in the county where Silius Titus^‡, the candidate preferred by him and the lord lieutenant of Essex, was rejected by the gentry in favour of the court candidate, the sitting Member Charles Caesar^‡. HP Commons, 1660-90, i. 268-71; East Anglian Studies, 119. In the weeks before Parliament met, he was on the receiving end of Danby’s blandishments in the latter’s attempt to secure bail. Danby forecast that Salisbury would be opposed to his petition for bail to be presented at the Parliament and correspondingly entrusted Edward Griffin, later Baron Griffin, with letters to be given to a number of the ‘enemy lords’, as he dubbed them – Salisbury, Clare, Bridgwater, and Huntingdon – in which they would be solicited to give him assistance in his application for release. Add. 28042, f. 83; Add. 28043, f. 27; Beinecke Lib. OSB mss 6, Box 2, folder 27, endorsed ‘Private Instructions 17th March: 1680.’

Danby’s blandishments were to no avail, for Salisbury clearly showed that he was still well-integrated among the Whigs opposed to Danby, York and the king. He travelled to Oxford for the Parliament in the company of Shaftesbury and a company of 200 horsemen. When they stayed overnight at Wycombe they were so suspicious of a royal attack that they were guarded by 60 cavalrymen. Castle Ashby, Castle Ashby mss, 1092, W. Howard to Northampton, 20 Mar. 1681. He was present in the Lords’ chamber at Oxford from the first day, 21 Mar. 1681, and on 24 Mar. when Danby’s petition was presented before the House he, with Shaftesbury, Halifax, Essex and Bridgwater, among others, made their opposition clear, arguing that it was submitted at the wrong time, when there was so much other business to transact. In addition, they argued that Danby should have petitioned for a speedy trial rather than for bail itself. They managed to get consideration of the petition postponed for another four days. HMC 14th Rep. IX, 426. Danby made clear his disgust at this development, and particularly that Halifax, who had split with the Whigs over the Exclusion bill, was now siding with them again: ‘I am sorry to find my Lord Halifax joined with Lord Essex, Shaftesbury, Salisbury, etc. as men who he thinks now ready to promote the king’s business’. Add. 28049, ff. 134-5; Add. 28042, f. 83. The following day marked Salisbury’s final attendance in the Lords. He was named as one of the managers of the conference concerning the method of passing bills and registered his protest against the resolution to proceed against the conspirator Edward Fitzharris by common law rather than upon the impeachment of the Commons. Parliament was suddenly and unexpectedly dissolved when it met again two days later, on 28 Mar., but Salisbury, perhaps having advance notice, was not present for the dissolution.

In May 1681, Salisbury was one of many signatories to a petition to the king which successfully requested a pardon for Philip Herbert, 7th earl of Pembroke, once again accused of murder after a drunken binge and this time facing the death penalty even if convicted on a lesser charge of manslaughter. TNA, SP 29/415/192; HMC Ormonde, n.s. vi. 67. Meanwhile, he continued to act as a senior member of the opposition. In April he and Bedford had pressed for a summons of the London common council so that they could present an address opposing the points in the printed royal declaration justifying the dissolution. HMC Ormonde, n.s. vi. 27. In the first two weeks of May he was part of ‘a very numerous auditory’ of peers, largely Whigs, who diligently attended the court of King’s Bench to hear the preliminary proceedings in the trial of the conspirator Edward Fitzharris. Upon Fitzharris’s request, Salisbury and Essex asked the king for permission to see the prisoner in the Tower, so that they could hear his long-promised information about the Plot, but this request was denied and the attorney general was sent to the prisoner instead. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 79-82; Add. 75356, Sir B. Gascoigne to Lady Burlington, 7 May 1681; CSP Dom. 1680-81, pp. 263-4. On 8 June, the day before Fitzharris’s scheduled trial, Salisbury, Shaftesbury, Essex and Anthony Grey, 11th earl of Kent, attempted to speak with the king in council at Whitehall, in order to try for another delay so that Fitzharris could give his testimony, but the king again refused them, and told them they should attend him instead at Windsor at nine the following day, ‘a time he knew they would not be with him because of hearing Fitzharris’s trial. So this is a slight to their whole party’. Salisbury was certainly part of the ‘great concourse of persons of quality’ attending Fitzharris’s trial the next day, where the hapless informer was found guilty and sentenced to death. Verney, ms mic. M636/35, C. Gardiner to Sir R. Verney, J. Stewkeley to Sir R. Verney, both 9 June 1681; Castle Ashby, Castle Ashby mss, 1092, H. Legge to Northampton, 9 June 1681; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk. ii. 279; Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 94-6. He also attended the grand jury hearing at the Old Bailey when charges against Stephen College were thrown out. HMC Ormonde, n.s. vi. 95-96. Within hours of Fitzharris’s execution on 1 July, Shaftesbury too was arrested and in the Tower, and it was rumoured that Salisbury and Essex would soon be following him there. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 105-6; HMC Ormonde, n.s. vi. 91. Salisbury appears to have lain low for the next year or so, and was perhaps preoccupied by his wife’s increasing ill health. In August 1682 the two travelled to France, in a splendid equipage of three coaches, six horses, and 30 horsemen, so she could take the waters at Bourbon. Barely had they arrived at Paris that month when she was taken seriously ill and died, prompting his quick and grieving return to England. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 211, 215-16; Family pprs. ix. 91.

Salisbury was later implicated in the Rye House Plot. William Howard, 3rd Baron Howard of Escrick, claimed in his statement at the Privy Council that the conspirators had sent Essex and James Scott, duke of Monmouth, to Hatfield to engage Salisbury. Essex confirmed that Salisbury had indeed been involved. CSP Dom. 1682, p. 608; July-Dec. 1683, pp. 80, 90, 99, 100. James Butler, duke of Ormond, later maintained that it was unthinkable that Salisbury would have been involved in an assassination plot, but if he, Essex and the others accused had ‘no inkling of that impious reason, they were very negligent or ill befriended in their own party’. HMC Ormonde, n.s. vii. 169; Bodl. Carte, 243, f. 158. Salisbury could not have been actively involved in the arrangements, if at all, for by 23 Apr. 1683 he was dangerously ill ‘if not dead’. CSP Dom. Jan.-June 1683, p. 145; Verney ms mic. M636/37, J. Stewkeley to Sir R. Verney, 23 Apr. 1683. He deteriorated after a relapse in May supposedly brought on by a surfeit of buttermilk. Verney ms mic. M636/37, J. Verney to Sir R. Verney, 17 May 1683. At the age of only 37, Salisbury died on 24 May at Hatfield. He had revised his will no less than four times since its original drafting in July 1675, most recently in the weeks prior to his death. Its generous terms to his ten surviving children – five sons and five daughters – caused serious difficulties for his trustees as they tried to provide for all of the children out of an already encumbered estate. In its last recension he provided for legacies of £10,000 to each of the five daughters, as well as annuities of £150 p.a. before their marriages, and of £6,500 to each of the five sons. He also granted miscellaneous life annuities totalling £350 p.a. and others of £200 p.a. to each of his three trustees including John Tillotson. The cash legacies to the children amounted to £78,600, and the annuities totalled £2,600 p.a., while he also had outstanding personal debts of £33,918. At his death it was estimated that the estate enjoyed a gross annual income of £12,200 p.a., while Salisbury’s personal estate was worth £11,093, hardly sufficient to cover the specified legacies. Stone, 155, 162; Estate pprs. Legal, 200/5. Tillotson and the other trustees were forced to sell parts of the Cecil estate to fulfil the bequests. They also had to deal not only with extensive litigation between the eldest son, and principal heir, James Cecil, 4th earl of Salisbury, and his brother Robert Cecil^‡ over the will, but also with the great complications, legal and familial, caused by the 4th earl’s conversion to Catholicism. Estate pprs. General 27/2; TNA, C10/147/23; HP Commons 1690-1715, iii. 501; HMC Portland, iii. 423. Salisbury, having left the family fortunes in disarray, was buried with his ancestors at Hatfield, in a ceremony costing an economical £236 (‘which must have been one of the meanest funerals ever accorded to a seventeenth-century earl’ according to one historian). He was eulogized by the Dissenter and Whig Roger Morrice, who commented that ‘his death makes a great breach’, while another contemporary thought his death was ‘a great loss to the nation’. Stone, 155; Morrice, Ent’ring Bk, ii. 370; HMC Portland, iii. 375.