TOWNSHEND, Sir Horatio, 3rd bt. (1630-87), of Stiffkey and later Raynham, Norf.

The claim that the Townshends came over with the Conqueror and that he had granted them their lands at Raynham was unfounded. The family had nevertheless lived at Raynham since the late fourteenth century and had held the manor there since 1543.36W. Rye, ‘Doubtful Norf. pedigrees’, The Gen. iii. 78-9; Blomefield, Norf. vii. 129-30. They had long played a prominent part in county affairs.37C.E. Moreton, The Townshends and their World (Oxford, 1992). Since 1563, when Roger Townshend† had represented the county, the head of the family in each generation had at some stage sat in Parliament.38HP Commons 1558-1603. Horatio Townshend’s father, Sir Roger†, who had been created a baronet in 1617, sat for Orford in 1621 and Norfolk in 1628.39HP Commons 1604-1629. He was widely respected in his lifetime for his piety and godliness.

Sir Roger’s second son, Horatio, named after his grandfather, 1st Baron Vere of Tilbury, was born in December 1630 at Stiffkey, the seat his father had inherited from the Bacons in 1622, and it was there, rather than at the unfinished house at Raynham, that he spent his childhood.40Rosenheim, Townshends, 14. His father died seven years later, on 1 January 1637, whereupon his elder brother, Roger, inherited the baronetcy.41PROB11/174/299. Horatio went up to St John’s College, Cambridge in 1644.42Al. Cant.; Sloane 587, ff. 13-14. Even although he was not, as a mere undergraduate, permitted to vote in the election, he was accorded the honour of being allowed to sign the indenture returning Nathaniel Bacon* as the recruiter MP for the university in November 1645.43C219/43, pt. 1, f. 141. Having completed his MA degree, Horatio and his elder brother obtained permission in December 1646 to travel abroad for three years.44CJ v. 14b. The pair spent 1647 touring France and Switzerland and they would have gone on to Italy had not Sir Roger died at Geneva in the spring of 1648.45Rosenheim, Townshends, 15-16. As the new baronet, Horatio then returned to England to take up the inheritance which he would have assumed was to have been his brother’s.

On his marriage in 1649 to the heiress of the late Edward Lewknor, Townshend took possession of the bulk of the Lewknor estates in Suffolk. Mary Lewknor’s inheritance was worth £1,200 a year, and as part of the marriage settlement Townshend was able to promise her a jointure worth the same amount.46St Andrew Holborn, London par. reg.; Add. 41655, ff. 116, 118; Rosenheim, Townshends, 16, 67; Soc. Antiq. MS 667, p. 203. Her stepfather was John Gauden, the future bishop of Exeter and Worcester. The following year Townshend’s sister Mary married Thomas Crew*, son of the former leading Independent MP, John Crewe I*. In 1652 Townshend and his wife sat for the miniaturist Samuel Cooper.47Foskett, Samuel Cooper, 112.

Townshend was probably appointed to his first local office, as a Norfolk militia commissioner, within days of his eighteenth birthday. A year later he was included on the local assessment commission and he had been added to the commission of the peace by 1652.48A. and O. As head of one of the major county families, Townshend probably regarded these as no more than his due and, as he had been too young to have taken part in the civil war, no objection could be made to him on political grounds. Although acceptance of these positions after January 1649 could be interpreted as tacit approval of the regicide and more immediately of the new republican regime, Townshend was probably still reluctant to make a firm stand either way. He looks to have been an inactive local official. The quarter sessions meeting he attended at Fakenham in July 1653 seems to have been his sole appearance in his first five years as a justice of the peace.49Norf. QSOB 61. In 1656 Townshend moved from Stiffkey to Raynham, where he set about completing the house his father had started.50J. Harris, ‘Raynham Hall, Norf.’, Arch. Jnl. cxviii. 180-7; R.T. Gunther, The Architecture of Sir Roger Pratt (Oxford, 1928), 132-4; Rosenheim, Townshends, 168-73. One contemporary later told him that Sir Roger Townshend had left Raynham ‘only decent and handsome as Augustus found Cleopatra after Mark Anthony’s death in her native beauty, which since your lordship hath finished and furnished with all possible ornaments’.51Gunther, Sir Roger Pratt, 133. In 1657 William Dillingham, master of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, dedicated his edition of the works of Townshend’s great-uncle, Sir Francis Vere†, to him.52FSL, L.d.259; The Commentaries of S[i]r Francis Vere ed. W. Dillingham (Cambridge, 1657), sig. A3.

The distance Townshend maintained between himself and the government worked to his advantage in the 1656 elections, when he benefitted from the widespread discontent in Norfolk against the rule of the major-generals. Their opponents were out in force at Norwich for the poll to fill the ten county seats and with ease they secured the top eight places. Townshend (with 2,194 votes) came sixth, a respectable showing for a novice candidate, especially as the five places above him were taken by men who had sat for Norfolk in the previous Parliament.53Norf. RO, MS 197, unfol.; ‘Poll for Norf. Members, 1656’, Norf. Arch. i. 67; TSP v. 328, 370. In Townshend’s case one motivation is likely to have been a desire to reassert the family interest, and for that purpose, this outcome was adequate. The secretary of state, John Thurloe*, soon after received a letter from an unnamed source giving reasons why six of the Norfolk MPs should be excluded from the new Parliament: Townshend was among them, being described as a ‘common swearer’.54TSP v. 371. Although he made no recorded impact on the proceedings of this Parliament, he does not seem to have been prevented from taking his seat. By early 1657 he was probably linked to some of the leading Presbyterians. It was reported to the exiled court in February 1657 that Townshend had received an anonymous letter apparently prejudicial to Charles Stuart’s interests and that he had shown it to Robert Harley* and ‘many Presbyterians’.55CCSP iii. 242, 245. Other evidence confirms that he was on friendly terms with the Harleys.56Rosenheim, Townshends, 17; Add. 41654, f. 27.

The strength of the Townshend interest in Norfolk was confirmed in January 1659 when Sir Horatio was elected to the senior county seat for the forthcoming Parliament. Townshend appears less visible in the records of this Parliament than the comments of some contemporary observers might suggest. He was named to only four committees, including those for elections and privileges (28 Jan.), the estates of John Lambert* (31 Mar.) and Irish affairs (1 Apr.).57CJ vii. 594b, 609a, 622b, 623a. His only recorded verbal intervention could hardly have been briefer. On 4 March he and Sir Richard Temple* shouted ‘No, no’ when Henry Wroth, who had been called before the House to answer charges of breach of privilege against William Packer*, knelt before the Speaker’s chair.58Burton’s Diary, iv. 4.

The most significant part he played in the proceedings came on 8 March when he acted as a teller during the debate on whether the Commons should transact business with the Other House. The particular point at issue was a complicated one, being whether there should be an immediate vote on whether the main motion should include an amendment stating that it did not infringe any rights the pro-parliamentarian peers might have to sit in the second chamber. This came down to a matter of tactics which cut across opinion on the substantive issue, which was why Townshend found himself serving as teller in the unlikely company of Sir Arthur Hesilrige. Townshend and Hesilrige were acting for those opposed to an immediate vote, who lost the division. Townshend may have thought that the matter was best left unspecified.59CJ vii. 611b-612a; Burton’s Diary, iv. 86. Some royalist onlookers did think that Townshend was of some consequence in this Parliament. That same day the leader of the royalist underground in London, John Mordaunt, told (Sir) Edward Hyde* that Townshend and one of the Howes (probably John Grobham Howe*) were ‘very careful of his Majesty’s concern’ and he hoped that this would be ‘taken notice of’.60Clarendon SP iii. 433. A week later Mordaunt reported that Townshend and Howe were being wooed by the king’s enemies, but was confident that they would both resist these overtures. Another of the royalist agents, Allen Brodrick†, also got the impression that Townshend was seeking to uphold the interests of the king’s party in this Parliament, although he included him among those of the king’s supporters who were ‘forward but not so able’.61CCSP iv. 161, 167, 177.

Even before this Parliament was dissolved on 22 April the royalist conspirators had cautious expectations that Townshend would support their plans. He was probably a recent recruit, given that Roger Whitley† had omitted him from his list of Norfolk conspirators.62Bodl. Eng. hist. e. 309, p. 43. On 1 April Hyde instructed Mordaunt to encourage the leading Cambridgeshire royalists Sir William Compton†, Sir Richard Willys and Thomas Chicheley* to work with Townshend and the Lincolnshire MP Edward Rosseter*.63Clarendon SP iii. 455. This suggests that Hyde was already thinking in terms of a co-ordinated uprising in Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Lincolnshire. Three weeks later Hyde expressed the hope that ‘how weary soever he hitherto hath been and is in [things of] this nature [apt] to be’, Townshend would nevertheless support any future uprising. Hyde implies that the one thing which stood in the way of Townshend’s involvement was his fear that the conspirators would turn to the Catholics for assistance as well.64HMC 10th Rep. vi. 196. Townshend’s support was certainly seen as crucial. His standing in northern parts of Norfolk meant that he was ideally placed to capture King’s Lynn, the port which would thus become the preferred landing place should Charles II decide to return to lead the uprising.65HMC 10th Rep. vi. 196; CCSP iv. 195, 201. This calculation remained central throughout the planning for that summer’s rebellion. By early May Townshend was one of the leading Presbyterians to whom Mordaunt had issued commissions authorising them to act in the king’s name.66Clarendon SP iii. 460; HMC 10th Rep. vi. 198-9; CCSP iv. 202.

There were fears in the days leading up to the reassembling of the Rump that Harley and John Wildman* had persuaded Townshend to withdraw from these schemes. The decision by Parliament on 13 May to nominate Townshend to one of the ten places on the council of state reserved for men who were not MPs seemed to confirm this assumption.67CJ vii. 652b; A. and O.; Wariston Diary, iii. 111. It was probably for that reason that on that same day Harley and Townshend moved to reassure the royalist agents in London that this was not the case.68CCSP iv. 195, 203. In fact, Henry Neville* may well have nominated Townshend to the council precisely because his loyalties were suspect, in the hope that he would thereby be committed to supporting the republic. The motions nominating Townshend and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper* were slipped in towards the end of the debate on 13 May to prevent full discussion of their suitability.69Ludlow, Mems. ii. 83; CJ vii. 652b. Commenting on this result, Arthur Annesley* thought Townshend ‘a gentleman of too good an estate to be hazarded with such a crew’.70Englands Confusion (1659), 16 (E.985.1). Townshend’s nomination placed him in a quandary. Having turned to him for advice, Mordaunt wrote to Hyde on 16 May saying that this appointment ‘so much afflicts him [Townshend] that he knows not what to do, but humbly desires the king’s commands, and he will either accept or refuse as he shall direct’.71Clarendon SP iii. 471. The advice from Brussels was that Townshend should accept.72HMC 10th Rep. vi. 203. Unable to wait for this reply, Townshend decided that he should after all accept his place on the council of state, while nevertheless indicating to Mordaunt his continuing willingness to organise any uprising in Norfolk.73CCSP iv. 205.

The opening meetings of the new council were not easy. The suspicions that Townshend and Cooper were royalist spies who would report any of their secret discussions to the exiled court soured its deliberations from the outset. When Charles Fleetwood* accused him to his face of being a royalist, Townshend was reported to have indignantly denied it, adding for good measure that ‘he would never consent to pull down Whitehall to set up Wallingford House’ (in other words, he would never allow the council to be subordinated to Fleetwood and the army).74Ludlow, Mems. ii. 84-5; CCSP iv. 208, 210. However, even before he had heard that the king wanted him to stay in London and serve on the council, Townshend had decided he could be of more use to him in Norfolk. By late May 1659 he had withdrawn to Raynham.75CCSP iv. 208; Clarendon SP iii. 477; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 85.

Townshend’s presence in Norfolk enabled him to oversee the preparations for the uprising planned for 1 August. The intention was still that he would take King’s Lynn and he was now joined in this as co-leader by Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham.76Clarendon SP iii. 477, 490, 510-11, 540; CCSP iv. 227, 243; Mordaunt Letter-Bk. 29-30; Clarendon, Hist. vi. 111-12. Hyde later wrote of Townshend’s contribution to this undertaking that he was ‘a gentleman of the greatest interest and credit in that large county of Norfolk’ and that, having played no part in the civil war, he was ‘liable to no reproach or jealousy, yet [was] of very worthy principles’. According to him, Townshend used his ‘noble fortune’ to borrow money to buy the weapons necessary for the plan.77Clarendon, Hist. vi. 111-12. All this careful planning came to naught. Like every other part of the country (with the exception of Cheshire), Norfolk failed to rise on the appointed day. Hyde was probably being too generous to Townshend when he claimed that he and Willoughby had been unable to rebel, having been arrested several days before.78Clarendon, Hist. vi. 118-19. In the absence of any other evidence that Townshend was taken into custody, it seems more likely that he had waited for news of successful uprisings elsewhere which never arrived.

This did not cause the exiled court to lose faith in him. Townshend could not be singled out for blame for what had been a country-wide fiasco. By September 1659 the king’s advisers were taking comfort from the news that Townshend, together with Rosseter, Alexander Popham* and Francis Mansel, were still willing to organise a rebellion, although only if an invasion force of 5,000 men was sent over first.79CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 206-7. In November Townshend told one of the royalist agents, William Rumbold, that he had heard rumours of a planned coup by the Presbyterians and the commonwealthmen which would result in the recall of the council of state. He indicated to Rumbold that he would decline any attempt to involve him, unless it was felt that it would be in the king’s interests for him to play a double game.80CCSP iv. 454-5.

Townshend’s kinship with Lord Fairfax (Sir Thomas Fairfax*), who was his uncle by marriage, was one reason why Robert Harley turned to him in late 1659 when he and some of the army officers hoped to persuade Fairfax to back the recall of the Long Parliament, including the secluded MPs, and the summoning of a new Parliament. In November 1659 Harley and Townshend made their way to York, where they discovered that Fairfax was sympathetic. Fairfax responded to this overture by seizing control of York on 1 January 1660. Townshend had in the meantime travelled back to London, via East Anglia, meeting up with Harley in the capital on 26 December.81HMC Portland, viii. 11-12; Clarendon, Hist. vi. 165. Townshend now assisted Fairfax by organising a petition from the Norfolk gentry to the Rump making these same demands. Townshend, Lord Cramond (Thomas Richardson†) and Sir John Hobart, 3rd bt.* presented it in person on 28 January 1660.82The Declaration of the Co. of Norf. (1660, 669.f.23.21); HMC 11th Rep. iv. 24; Whitelocke, Diary, 564. One of the other leading Norfolk gentlemen, Sir William Doyly*, had already been in touch with Townshend suggesting that the two of them should get together to work for a peaceful political settlement.83HMC 11th Rep. iv. 23.

By the time the Rump dissolved itself on 16 March 1660 Townshend had fully committed himself to the king’s return.84CCSP iv. 592-3, 606. He was probably not one of those Presbyterians who still held out hopes of a conditional restoration. Earlier that month Charles had sent him a blank warrant appointing him as the governor of an unnamed town, presumably with instructions to declare himself governor of King’s Lynn as soon as he could.85HMC 11th Rep. iv. 23. Within weeks George Monck* had appointed him to that position, occasioning comment in some quarters that the general had promised to preserve the republic and yet was handing over important towns ‘into the hands of those that are not much enamoured of that government’.86Clarendon SP iii. 702. On 25 March the king wrote to Townshend thanking him for the assurances he had given him of his support.87CCSP iv. 618-19. The election of Townshend and Cramond as knights of the shire on 2 April, defeating Doyly and Hobart, confirmed the county’s support for the return of the king. Lady Mordaunt later told Hyde that in the elections for the Convention, Townshend had had ‘the nomination of all who were chosen in his county’.88CCSP iv. 640, 682. In early April he was appointed to command the mounted troops of the Norfolk militia and, in the wake of the escape of John Lambert* from the Tower of London, he ordered them to march to King’s Lynn to secure the town.89Norf. RO, BL/T 2/1; CCSP iv. 640; HMC 3rd Rep. 247.

All in all, Townshend had played a distinguished part in the events which made the Restoration possible. Fairfax’s decision to declare for a free Parliament had eased the way for Monck’s march southwards and throughout the following months Townshend had made sure that there was solid support for the king’s cause in Norfolk. Recognition for his contribution soon followed. Two days after the Convention voted to restore the king, Mordaunt, who had himself been a key player in these events, was able to write to Charles’s two closest advisers, Hyde and James Butler, 12th earl of Ormond, recommending Townshend and Cooper to them.90CCSP v. 18. Nine days later Townshend was one of the 12 MPs in the delegation who waited on the king at The Hague to inform him that his subjects wanted him back.91Clarendon, Hist. vi. 229. He was also one of the 12 men whose instrumental contributions to the Restoration were rewarded by the king in April 1661 when they were granted peerages three days before the coronation.92HMC 11th Rep. iv. 38-40.

The grant of the peerage and his appointment as lord lieutenant in August 1661 placed Townshend at the head of Norfolk society.93Rosenheim, Townshends, 24-46; Norf. Lieut. Jnl. When he died, he would leave instructions that his epitaph should specifically mention that he had been a loyal servant to Charles II during his time as lord lieutenant.94PROB11/389/270. His dismissal in 1676 in favour of Viscount Yarmouth (Robert Paston†), head of the rival Paston family, was a political and personal setback which he always resented. During the Exclusion crisis, he was a lukewarm whig (in contrast to the tory Pastons), but by 1682 he was distancing himself from his whig allies and was thus rewarded with a viscountcy later that year.95Rosenheim, Townshends, 46-63. Even before 1660, Townshend had acquired the habit of living beyond his considerable means and the lifestyle he felt obliged to adopt as a peer placed immense strains on his finances. His debts peaked at a prodigious £33,000 in the early 1670s. However, he mended his ways in the years following his second marriage (to a niece of John*, Edward* and Samuel Ashe*) and was able to reduce his indebtedness to almost nothing by his death in 1687.96Rosenheim, Townshends, 64-104.

It had probably been during Townshend’s period as lord lieutenant that another former Norfolk MP, (Sir) Philip Wodehouse*, paid tribute to him in verse. He did not stint on the sycophancy. Having praised the quality of Townshend’s ancestors, Wodehouse observed that:

Thus by both sides ennobled, and a soul

As noble as his birth, he beareth rule

First o’er himself: next in his country, by

His sov’reign’s grace, deserv’d by loyalty.

Nor does this soul of his ignobly dwell,

But in a body which mounts parallel,

A goodly personage, which as far excels

Most others, as his palace petty cells:

A gallant mein, where lovely fierceness and

A pleasing horror gracefully contend.

Long may he live to serve his God and king

Debel the proud, protect the underling.97R.W. Ketton-Cremer, ‘The rhyming Wodehouses’, Norf. Arch. xxxiii. 39-40.

Townshend’s eldest son, Charles, was aged only 12 when he succeeded as the second viscount in 1687. As secretary of state to George I and George II (1714-16, 1721-30), as brother-in-law of Sir Robert Walpole† and as an agricultural pioneer (‘Turnip’ Townshend), he would raise the family to the highest point of their fame.98‘Charles Townshend’, Oxford DNB