Meinhard Schomberg followed in the family tradition of taking up a career as a professional military officer. He fought in Portugal in 1663-8 and then, having been naturalized as a French subject, served in the French army throughout the war of 1672-8, where he fought largely in the Netherlands under marshal Crequi and earned the praises of the Prince of Condé and the duc d’Enghien, among others, for his bravery.
In 1689 when his father had been made a duke, Meinhard was still an officer in the Brandenburg army and had not yet been naturalized as an English subject. A special remainder in the patent of creation specified that Meinhard’s younger (and naturalized) brother, Charles Schomberg, was to become 2nd duke of Schomberg upon their father’s death. Nevertheless, Meinhard was rewarded on 3 Mar. 1691 for his services in the Irish wars by being created duke of Leinster in the Irish peerage. Less than a year later, in February 1692, he too became a naturalized English subject.
In October 1693, after the death of his brother Charles in battle at Marsaglia, Leinster inherited the English dukedom as well, according to the terms of the patent of creation. Thus he is sometimes referred to, both by contemporaries and by himself, as the duke of Schomberg and Leinster. He also inherited his brother’s pension of £4,000 a year, representing four per cent interest on the £100,000 granted, but not paid, to his father in April 1689. He was sworn to the privy council on 5 May 1695, where he was often consulted on military matters. His military reputation continued to earn him favour in the early years of Anne’s reign. In 1703 he was granted an additional annuity of £1,000, was made a knight of the garter and was appointed commander-in-chief of the allied forces fighting in Portugal. He soon alienated all his military colleagues and political masters and in 1704 was recalled from his post and replaced by Henri Massue de Ruvigny, earl of Galway [I]. As Gilbert Burnet, bishop of Salisbury, commented, ‘The duke of Schomberg was a better officer in the field than in the cabinet; he did not enough know how to prepare for a campaign; he was both too unactive and too haughty’.
Schomberg did not attend the House often, usually only attending between a third and one half of the sittings in a parliamentary session. Nor was he active in committees; although consistently named to the committee for privileges at the beginning of each session, he was appointed to almost no other sessional committees established by the House. He was a court Whig – a Whig in political outlook, but dependent on the court and its ministries for the maintenance of his pension. On 23 Dec. 1696 he voted for the bill to attaint Sir John Fenwick‡, and in 1700 it was forecast that he would vote against the bill, opposed by the Whig Junto, to continue the East India Company as a corporation (Schomberg was not present at the division of this bill on 23 Feb. 1700). Five years later in early June 1701 he was a manager in conferences concerning the impeachments of the Junto ministers, John Somers, Baron Somers, and Edward Russell, earl of Orford. He later voted with the majority of the House for their acquittal. Along with the rest of the House then sitting, he was also one of the managers of a conference on 8 Mar. 1702 to discuss the arrangements to be made after the death of William III and the accession of Anne.
Schomberg’s mission in Portugal kept him away from most of the meetings of Anne’s first Parliament. After his return in 1704 he sat in most of the remaining sessions of Anne’s reign, although he attended even less assiduously than he had under William. He continued to act as a court Whig, with the emphasis increasingly on his dependence on the court. He followed the directions of the government and supported the first two occasional conformity bills in 1702-3. On 16 Jan. 1703, when the Whigs were trying to ensure the House’s adherence to wrecking amendments to the bill, Schomberg registered a proxy to George, prince of Denmark (also duke of Cumberland). As the proxy was recorded after prayers, John Thompson, Baron Haversham, objected that it could not be used for any divisions that were to take place that day. Schomberg, whose house lay nearby on Pall Mall, was sent for and voted against the Whig amendments (as did his intended proxy Prince George). Haversham’s objection to the late registration of proxies for divisions on the same day stood and was incorporated into the standing orders of the House.
Schomberg was marked as a Hanoverian in a 1705 list detailing the peerage’s attitudes to the succession, and in a list of party allegiances from 1708 he was considered a Whig. Nevertheless, Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, in a working list of October 1710, estimated that Schomberg could be expected to support his new ministry because of the duke’s reliance on his pension. In December 1711 Schomberg was again listed as a supporter of the ministry in another list drawn up by Oxford (as Harley had by this time become). Oxford’s calculations proved inaccurate. From the time of the new Tory-led ministry of 1710, if not before (as in his vote of March 1710 finding Dr Henry Sacheverell guilty), Schomberg voted with the Whigs, regardless of his dependence on the court.
Schomberg did attend meetings in the new Parliament which first met in February 1714. Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, calculated that Schomberg would vote against the ministry in the division on the schism bill in June 1714. The old general not only voted against the bill on 22 June 1714 but even registered in the Journal his formal dissent against its passage. He stopped attending Parliament the day after this division and registered his proxy with William Cavendish, 2nd duke of Devonshire, a keen opponent of the ministry.
George I confirmed and continued Schomberg’s pension, reduced again to £4,000, through an Act of Parliament which received the royal assent on 7 May 1716. Schomberg retired from parliamentary and public life under the Hanoverian king. He attended 24 meetings of George I’s first Parliament, but stopped coming entirely after 9 July 1715. He registered his proxy in March 1716 and again in February 1718 to his son-in-law, the Whig Robert Darcy, 3rd earl of Holdernesse, who had married his daughter, Frederica, in May 1715. For the session of Parliament which began on 11 Nov. 1718 he transferred his proxy to Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, thus revealing where his own sympathies lay in the Whig schism.
Schomberg had only one son, Charles, styled marquess of Harwich, who survived until adulthood but died of fever in a military camp in Ireland in 1713. Thus when Schomberg died in July 1719 the English titles became extinct. His surviving children, and the administrators of his estate, were two daughters: Frederica, countess of Holdernesse, and Mary, whose husband, the Prussian Christoph Martin, Count Degenfeld, adopted his father-in-law’s arms and name and styled himself Count von Degenfeld-Schomberg.