STAWELL, William (c. 1680-1742)

Stawell inherited very little from his father, as his heavily encumbered estate was the subject of an act of Parliament to pay his debts in 1694. However, he was probably the beneficiary of his mother’s settlement of Hartley in 1690. G.D. Stawell, A Quantock Family, 424. He was at school and university during most of William III’s reign. In 1698 one of his sisters, Elizabeth (b. 1673), married William Bromley^‡. Another, Catherine (b. 1674), married a clergyman in August 1699, with a portion of £4,000. Verney ms mic. M636/51, E. Adams to Sir J. Verney, 4 Aug. 1699.

Stawell took his seat in the Lords at the beginning of the 1701–2 session on 30 Dec. 1701, which was shortly after he attained his majority. On 20 Feb. 1702 he protested against the resolution to pass the bill to attaint Queen Mary, the widow of James II, and on 24 Feb. he protested against the passage of the abjuration bill. He last sat in that session on 4 May 1702, having attended on 52 days altogether, 52 per cent of the total.

Stawell first attended the 1702–3 session on 20 Oct. 1702, and was present for 61 days of the session (some 70 per cent of the total). On 12 Nov. he took part in the procession to St Paul’s for the thanksgiving service. Post Boy, 12–14 Nov. 1702. In about January 1703 Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, thought him likely to support the bill against occasional conformity. On 16 Jan. he voted against adhering to the Lords’ wrecking amendment to the penalties clause of the bill. On 22 Feb. he protested against the failure to commit the land qualification bill for membership of the Commons.

Stawell first attended the 1703–4 session on 9 Nov. 1703, and was present in total for 50 days (51 per cent of the total). In about November 1703 Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, thought him likely to support a renewed bill against occasional conformity, an assessment that he did not alter when he drew up another forecast in November. In this Sunderland proved correct for on 14 Dec. Stawell voted in favour of the bill, and entered his dissent when it failed. Stawell wrote a letter to Weymouth at this time to inform him that Nottingham was under attack and that there was an ‘endeavour to pass a scandalous vote on him as to his proceedings in examining the Plot and to tell your Lordship if you can come it may be of service to him’. Bath mss at Longleat, Thynne pprs. 12, f. 140.

On 4 Jan. 1704 Stawell was one of the peers to whom a letter requesting his attendance on the 12th was sent in order to consider a matter relating to the privileges of the Lords; he duly attended on that day. On 3 Mar. he entered his dissent to the resolution that the key to the ‘gibberish’ letters relating to the Scottish Plot be made known only to the investigating committee. On 21 Mar. he entered his dissent to three votes over the recruitment bill and on the 25th to two resolutions appertaining to the failure to prosecute Robert Ferguson.

The death of Henry Yelverton, Viscount Longueville, on 24 Mar. 1704 saw Stawell in line to replace him in the bedchamber of Prince George. However, the duchess of Marlborough had severe reservations on account of Stawell’s relationship to Bromley. Sidney Godolphin, Baron (later earl of) Godolphin, protested that he did not know that Stawell was Bromley’s brother-in-law, but professed confidence that he could ‘govern him in every vote’. Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 271. On 8 Apr. 1704 Weymouth told James Grahme^‡ that Stawell had been ‘put off’ until Lord Treasurer Godolphin returned from Newmarket on the 13th. Bagot mss, Levens Hall, Weymouth to Grahme, 8 Apr. 1704.

Stawell first attended the 1704–5 session on 6 November. In about November 1704 his name appears on what was possibly a list of supporters of the Tack, but he failed to attend the House between 29 Nov. and 26 Jan. 1705, registering his proxy on 1 Dec. 1704 with Robert Leke, 3rd earl of Scarsdale. He last attended on 14 Feb. 1705, having sat on 24 days of the session, 24 per cent of the total. In the 1705 Parliament he sat on the opening day, 26 Oct., but on 12 Nov. he was excused attendance on the House, and on the 15th he registered his proxy with Scarsdale. He returned to the House on the first day after the Christmas recess, 8 Jan. 1706. On 31 Jan. he entered his dissent on three occasions relating to the place clauses of the regency bill. On 9 Mar. he entered his dissent to the resolution to agree with the Commons that Sir Rowland Gwynne’s^‡ Letter to the Earl of Stamford was a ‘scandalous, false and malicious libel’. He last sat on 19 Mar. 1706, having been present on 36 days of the session, 38 per cent of the total.

Stawell first sat in the 1706–7 session on 12 Dec. and was present for 53 days in all (nearly 62 per cent of the total). On 15 Jan. 1707 he registered his proxy with Nottingham. On 3 Feb. he protested against the rejection of an instruction to the committee of the whole on the bill for securing the Church of England to insert provision for making perpetual the Test Act of 1673. On 7 Feb. he dined at The George in Pall Mall with Charles Bennet, 2nd Baron Ossulston (later earl of Tankerville), Charles Finch, 4th earl of Winchilsea, Scarsdale and Charles Goring^‡, possibly in relation to the Union. On 15 Feb. 1707 it was Stawell who ‘demanded a division’ in the committee of the whole on whether to postpone the first article of the Union, a motion which was heavily defeated. Nicolson, London Diaries, 394. On 27 Feb. he entered his dissent to all 25 of the articles of Union. On 4 Mar. he supported adding a rider to the Union bill, that nothing in it should be construed as an approbation of Presbyterianism, entering his protest against the rejection of the clause and then against the passage of the bill. Bodl. Ballard 31, f. 61. On 13 Mar. he acted as a teller in opposition to Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, on whether to agree with the amendment made by the committee to the Fornhill and Stony-Stratford highways bill. He last sat in that session on 2 Apr. 1707 and did not attend the short session of April 1707.

Stawell took his seat for the 1707–8 session on 6 Nov. 1707, and quit the House on 8 Mar. 1708, having sat on 31 days of the session, 29 per cent of the total. On 16 Mar., at Aldermaston, he married Elizabeth Forster, by whom he eventually acquired the estate at Aldermaston which had belonged to her maternal uncle, Sir Humphrey Forster^‡.

In or about May 1708 Stawell was unsurprisingly listed as a Tory. He first attended the 1708–9 session on 1 Feb. 1709. On 1 Mar. it was reported to the House that one of Stawell’s menial servants, Richard Butler, had been arrested contrary to privilege. Butler was released and the offenders were ordered into custody. They were reprimanded and released on 7 March. Stawell quit the House that session on 11 Apr. 1709, having attended on 24 days, just over 26 per cent of the total. He arrived for the 1709–10 session on 8 Feb. 1710 and was thus on hand to support Dr. Henry Sacheverell. On 14, 16, 17 and 18 Mar. he entered a series of protests against the proceedings, then on 20 Mar. he voted Sacheverell not guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours. He last sat in that session on 21 Mar. but did not sign the protest against the sentence passed against Sacheverell. He had attended on 19 days of the session, just over 20 per cent of the total.

Following the change of ministry in 1710, on 3 Oct. Robert Harley, the future earl of Oxford, expected Stawell to support the new ministry. Stawell was present for just eight days (just over 7 per cent) of the 1710–11 session, concentrating his attendances between 11 and 25 Jan. 1711. That he appeared at all seems to have been in response to a summons from Weymouth, as he wrote from Hartley on 2 Jan. 1711 that he was recovering from ‘a most violent fever which has reduced me to extreme weakness that I can scarce get cross a room’, and that he needed his physician’s ‘leave to venture the journey’, which he hoped to obtain in a week or ten days. Bath mss at Longleat, Thynne pprs. 26, f. 93. On 27 Jan. he registered his proxy with Weymouth. During his sojourn in London, Stawell had obviously been agitating for an office, for, as he wrote to Weymouth on about 13 Mar. 1711, his gout had left him ‘in greater need of a white staff than ever to support me’, although in future he would never ‘wage a war at my own expense’, nor would he depart from his resolution of ‘not taking the post I formerly had’, so that, if he could not get a better place, ‘I will ask for none’. In the 1710–11 session he was listed as a Tory patriot.

During Harley’s confinement after Guiscard’s assassination attempt, Stawell waited for his recovery expecting ‘alterations’ to be made, although ‘everybody expects something’. Ibid. f. 124. In May 1711 he wrote from Hartley to Weymouth that with the death of Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester, ‘all my pretensions to the queen’s favour died with him’. In consequence, since his fortune ‘will not indulge me in unnecessary expense’, he would ‘set myself to farming affairs’. Ibid. f. 203. In reality, Stawell’s efforts seemed to have switched to providing for his brother, Edward Stawell, later 4th Baron Stawell, through the influence of his brother-in-law, Speaker Bromley. On 18 July Bromley suggested to Oxford (as Harley had since become) that Edward Stawell should be named as a commissioner to investigate the army’s accounts in Spain and Portugal. Add. 70214, Bromley to Oxford, 18 July 1711. Stawell attended at Windsor on several Sundays in August, reporting on the 25th that his brother had been duly appointed. Another trip to Windsor, early in September, yielded political gossip and the comment that A Letter to a Friend in the Country, in relation to the naval debt, was likely to see ‘our people … suffer very much in the opinion of their friends’ and ‘we shall gain but little credit by our remonstrance’. Bath mss at Longleat, Thynne pprs. 26, ff. 162, 167–8, 180.

By 24 Oct. 1711 Stawell was writing to Weymouth from Overton that he would not be in town that winter, for, although he wished well to the peace, he was ‘resolved to spend no money about it’. He would visit Weymouth when he heard he was ‘in this side of the country’. Ibid. f. 196. With the Oxford ministry facing a challenge in the Lords to its peace policy, Stawell’s name appears on a list compiled by Oxford around the beginning of December 1711. On 3 Dec. William Bromley told Oxford that Stawell would be in town before the opening day of the session on 7 Dec. and he duly attended on that day. Add. 70214, Bromley to Oxford, 3 Dec. 1711. He entered his protest on 8 Dec. against presenting the address to the queen because it contained the ‘No Peace without Spain’ amendment. Following this setback, on Oxford’s list of 10 Dec. 1711 Stawell was noted as a loyal peer. On 19 Dec. he was forecast as likely to support the case of James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], for a British peerage, but on the following day voted against the motion.

Stawell’s straitened circumstances made him a target for the Whigs. On 15 Jan. 1712 he was listed as a ‘poor Lord’, for whom a pension of £600 would be sufficient to secure his support for the Hanoverian cause. On 4 Mar. he registered his proxy with Arthur Annesley, 5th earl of Anglesey, and did not attend again until 12–13 June. However, he was listed as voting on 28 May 1712 against an opposition motion for an address negating the ‘restraining orders’ sent to James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond. PH, xxvi. 178. In all he attended on 31 days, 29 per cent of the total. In June or July his name appeared on another list of Oxford’s, perhaps of doubtful supporters of the ministry.

On 19 July 1712 Stawell was a party to the post-marriage settlement of the Catholic Robert Petre, 7th Baron Petre, and his wife, Catherine. Add. 28251, ff. 307–43. He attended the prorogation of 25 September. In late October he accompanied Sir Richard Hoare^‡ to the feast celebrating his installation as mayor of London. Post Boy, 28–30 Oct. 1712. On 19 Nov. 1712 a warrant was issued to pay Stawell a royal bounty of £1,000. CTB, 1712, p. 517.

He attended the prorogations on 3 and 17 Feb. and 3, 10 and 17 Mar. 1713. On 18 Feb. he dined with Harley’s propagandist, Jonathan Swift, as the guest of Montagu Venables Bertie, 2nd earl of Abingdon. Jnl. to Stella, ed. Williams, 622–3. Before the session began Stawell was thought likely to support the government on a list compiled by Swift and amended by Oxford. He was present on the opening day of the 1713 session, 9 April. He was then absent from 21 May to 5 June, which may account for his presence on a list towards the end of May, probably of Lords to be contacted over the bill confirming the French commercial treaty. On 13 June Oxford expected him to support the bill. He last attended on 26 June, having sat for 31 days in all (47 per cent of the total).

Stawell did not attend the 1714 session, nor the short session following the demise of Queen Anne. Details of his later career will be covered in the next part of this work. He died at Hartley Wespall on 23 Jan. 1742. His only son, William, predeceased him, dying in Marseille in 1740, and he was therefore succeeded by his brother, Edward.