William, earl of Strafford, lived constantly in the shadow of the reputation, both good and ill, of his father, who had been attainted and executed in May 1641 for his role as Charles I’s most ‘thorough’ minister. The younger Strafford was able to benefit from the sympathies of many of those who saw his father as the first martyr of the royalist cause. In the first few years of the Restoration he was made a knight of the Garter and his father’s attainder was reversed. At the same time the disruptions of the 1640s had left the family estate in ruins, and the 2nd earl spent most of his time and energy trying to reclaim and consolidate his father’s possessions and to relieve himself of the large debt charged on them. Despite his father’s reputation, both as a highly competent administrator and councillor and as a royalist martyr, he was never appointed to an office of responsibility, except for a brief period as a Privy Councillor. Besides, his frequent attacks of gout and other debilitating illnesses frequently kept him away from the House. There was some truth to a contemporary’s comment that the 2nd earl was ‘so little’ the son of his father.
Charles I had tried to rectify his acquiescence in Strafford’s execution by almost immediately after his death in May 1641 granting the 1st earl’s trustees access to his attainted estates to raise money for his substantial debts, calculated at £107,000, and to provide for his children.
Not surprisingly, in the weeks before the first meeting of the Convention both the presbyterian Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, and the royalist John Mordaunt, Viscount Mordaunt, saw Strafford as a potential royalist peer in the re-established House of Lords. Mordaunt reported to Sir Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon, that
I have made it my business with the earls of Oxford [Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford] and Strafford to put them to asserting their privileges, who have equal right, without exceptions, with the other [peers], … I hope at least so far to defeat the old lords as they shall not sit, unless they admit the others.Bodl. Clarendon 71, ff. 305-6; CCSP, iv. 665-66.
Mordaunt’s persuasions succeeded, as Strafford and Oxford appear to have held discussions with George Monck, later duke of Albemarle, as representatives of the ‘young lords’, those who had come of age or succeeded to their title during the Interregnum and who had not fought in the conflict. They came to an agreement with the general that they would be able to take their seats in the House with his permission. In the wake of the unexpected entry of a number of these young lords into the House, done without Monck’s knowledge and to his annoyance, on 26 Apr. Strafford dashed off a brief note to the general asking for clarification:
My Lord, I understood we had been all clearly absolved of any engagement and free to go into the House though however I confess it had been fit to have understood it directly from your Lordship and must desire your pardon for my haste in my other letter. I shall not offer to go into the House till I know certainly from your Lordship I am free in respect of what was promised and I doubt not but your Lordship will find the same from us all besides that could meet together, namely my Lord of Oxford, my Lord of [Bridgwater John Egerton, 2nd earl of Bridgwater] and my Lord of Bolingbroke [Oliver St John, 2nd earl of Bolingbroke].
The next day, Strafford and 18 other peers were able to take their seats in the House for the first time in the wake of Oxford’s formal request, initially opposed by many of those lords already sitting in the House, to be escorted into the House by two earls, in recognition of his status as the premier earl of England.
Despite his apparent eagerness to assert his rights and attend the House in the first days of the Convention, Strafford did not spend a great deal of time in the House, coming to only 55 per cent of the Convention’s sittings. On his first day he was named to the committee for privileges and the committee to draw up heads for a conference on ways to settle the ‘distractions’ of the nation. On 1-2 May he was placed, first, on the drafting committee for an answer to the Declaration of Breda and then on the committee for petitions. On 9 May he was one of those chosen to decide which recently-passed votes of the Convention were to be shown to the king by the delegates about to visit him in Breda. From that point to the dissolution of 29 Dec. he was named only to a further five committees. On 14 June in a meeting of the committee for privileges about the requirement of peers to take the oath of allegiance, he objected that the oath’s constraints on conscience was a breach of privilege of peerage, and moved instead ‘that an oath may be framed not touching upon doctrine but subjection, to be administered as the oath of allegiance was accustomed to be done’.
At the time of the coronation it seemed fitting that Strafford, son of the first royalist martyr, should be made a knight of the garter. He was granted the dignity on 1 Apr. 1661 and installed a fortnight later, the first such installation at Windsor since the Restoration. He was present on 8 May, the first day of the Cavalier Parliament, and within a week (13 May) a bill was introduced into the House to reverse his father’s attainder. It may have been introduced by Richard Sackville, 5th earl of Dorset, who in the early committee meetings on the bill heavily amended its wording. By this the intent of the bill changed from merely reversing an existing and valid act to ‘making void’ a measure which was supposedly rendered invalid owing to the intimidation under which it had originally been passed. It was an argument that opened up the possibility that most of the legislation of 1641 could be disposed of in the same way. Most in the House could not acquiesce to such a sweeping move. On Dorset’s report on 21 May the House voted that the words ‘null and void’ should be left out of the bill, which was then recommitted three days later.
Even before his father’s title was formally restored to him, Strafford was relying on the mood of royalist reaction in Parliament to regain prestige and privilege. On 31 May 1661 he brought a case of breach of privilege to the attention of his peers.
Strafford only attended a little less than three-fifths of the meetings of this first session of Parliament (1661-2) and in the subsequent session of 1663 he came to just less than half of the sittings. He was attending the House at the time George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, submitted his charges against Clarendon, and Wharton placed Strafford among those opposed to this attempted impeachment of the lord chancellor. By March 1664 it was being suggested that ‘he is of an unactive spirit and therefore unfit for employment’. Strafford himself attributed this reputation to ‘an ill custom of being often late in a morning’ by which ‘I may have given colour for some to doubt I would not be so active upon occasion’. To disprove these allegations he planned to join James, duke of York, at sea in 1664, ‘but it has been so little approved and I have been so hardly dealt with that … I neither intend again to desire employments nor anything else’. He dropped out of parliamentary life throughout 1664-6, not attending a single session. He only registered his proxy once during these years, on 29 Mar. 1664 in favour of his kinsman Thomas Wentworth, Baron Wentworth, who held it until the prorogation on 17 May. However, in preparation for the abortive session of July 1667 he did write to Gervase Holles‡, urging him to press forward both in the Commons and in committee the estate bill of their mutual kinsman Gilbert Holles, 3rd earl of Clare.
Strafford reappeared in the House two weeks into the session of autumn 1667. He attended half of its sittings, and was present consistently during the hearings on the impeachment of Clarendon. Strafford signed the protest of 12 Dec. against the bill banishing and disenabling the lord chancellor. Probably the attack on Clarendon, and the weak evidence of treason produced to try him, reminded him too much of his own father’s trial. He entered in the Journal his own personal protest against the bill, consisting of seven detailed points. He was undoubtedly alluding to his father’s trial in the last point, where he stated, ‘The commitment upon a general impeachment hath been heretofore, and may be again, of most evil and dangerous consequence’.
On 16 Dec. he chaired the committee on the bill against atheism, and over the following years he began to express an interest in religious issues and provide advice on them, even when not present in the House.
As to matters of religion especially, I am much against violence, but none wish the securing of the Protestant religion more, which besides other discreet and moderate ways, I think as to the Papists might be best done by allowing them a set number of priests for every country ... and for the nonconformists … I should wish their ministers were dispensed for using the cross in baptism, ring in marriage, surplice, and some other lesser matters … hoping they might in a little time be wiser and in the mean that we might all live like good subjects together in Christian charity.HMC Bath, ii. 152, 155.
Later in the decade, in the wake of the Popish Plot, and with the situation in Ireland firmly in mind, he took an increasingly hard line against Catholics. His advocacy of comprehension did not extend to James II’s policies of toleration and dispensation.
He did not attend the session of autumn 1669, nor the first few months of the following one of 1670-71. His uncle Denzil Holles, Baron Holles, held his proxy for the periods of 8 Nov.-11 Dec. 1669 and then again from 16 Feb. to 2 Dec. 1670, on which day Strafford returned to the House. It was Holles who apparently introduced to the House on 29 Mar. 1670 the absent Strafford’s petition for a reversal of a chancery decree of 8 June 1669 ordering Strafford to pay £1,500 to the London draper William Wandesford as a composition for debts incurred by both the first and second earls from 1638. Wandesford submitted his answer on 4 Apr., but the matter was not taken up again until 7 Nov. 1670, after the summer recess, and on 15 Nov. the House ordered that a bill of review would be admitted to Strafford.
He continued to sit regularly for the remainder of the session, and even chaired a meeting on the Haslington church bill on 13 Jan. 1671. After the session was prorogued on 22 Apr. Strafford was left without the help of his peers, and in July chancery issued out a commission for part of Strafford’s estate to be sequestered for payment of the debt.
Strafford came to all but three of the sittings of the session of spring 1675, the first he had attended since April 1671. Danby expected him to support his non-resisting test bill and certainly Strafford’s name does not appear in any of the protests against the bill of that spring. On 5 May 1675 Strafford complained to the House formally that a short pamphlet had been published, ‘The Case of William Eyres, esq’, which impugned both him and his father. Eyres claimed that the first earl had illegally cozened the barony of Shelalagh, with its valuable forest, and castle of Carnow (both in county Wicklow) out of Eyre’s father-in-law, Calcot Chambres, and that the second earl was still in illegal possession of the land. On 11 May the matter was referred to the committee for privileges and on 3 June Richard Boyle, earl of Burlington, supplied evidence to the committee in favour of Strafford and John Crew, Baron Crew, one of the trustees of the estate, who was also attacked in the pamphlet. It was decided that Holles, Robert Bruce, earl of Ailesbury, and Edward Watson, 2nd Baron Rockingham, would talk to Strafford about the case to effect some sort of conciliation, but the session was prorogued before the matter could be taken further.
Strafford took his seat again on 15 Feb. 1677, the first day of the long session of 1677-78. He was then absent for just over a month but on 24 Feb. registered his proxy with John Maitland, duke of Lauderdale [S] (who sat in the Lords as earl of Guilford). The proxy was vacated when Strafford returned to the House on 19 March. He continued to sit intermittently until the first adjournment of 16 Apr., and then during all of the sittings in the brief meeting of May. Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, at the time of his imprisonment in the spring of 1677, regarded Strafford as ‘worthy’ in his political views. In August, as he was making plans for a trip to his estates in Ireland, Strafford was able to get both the king and Ormond to provide him with a warrant for a place on the Irish privy council, although it is not clear when, if ever, he was formally sworn to the board.
Strafford was back in England to attend assiduously the final session of the Cavalier Parliament. On 15 Nov. 1678 he voted against the motion to include the declaration against transubstantiation under the same penalty as the other oaths in the Test Act. He took an increasingly hard line against Catholics and constantly warned the House and the committee examining the Popish Plot of the danger of popery in Ireland and Ormond’s ineffective measures against it. After the session’s end Strafford felt the need to apologize to Ormond for what he felt were exaggerated rumours of what he was saying in the House that may have come to Ormond’s ears: ‘it was reported all over Dublin I had said in the Parliament your Grace minded nothing in Ireland but playing at cards, dancing and revelling’. Strafford’s only excuse was ‘though I cannot discourse so wisely as others can, yet I have not been used to make such foolish speeches in Parliament as these’ and
but that I might have expressed what I did many respects much better I do not at all doubt. Your Grace may easily call to mind that few of us are so clearly masters of our language in Parliament as not to make greater suspicions that those you have conceived of me.
Despite these excuses, Strafford received in early March 1679 a cold and formal letter from Ormond, expressing disappointment in his comments, but still professing his service out of due reverence for his father’s memory.
The king, observing that the earl of Strafford was violent against my Lord of Danby in the House (which indeed was from a personal pique he had to him for obstructing a pension which he had from the crown) told me he wondered at it, since his father came to that unfortunate end by the same method of proceeding.Reresby Mems, 167.
Danby fully expected Strafford to continue his opposition to him in the new Parliament called for spring 1679. Yet when it came to the issue of the Commons’ bill threatening the former lord treasurer with attainder, Strafford did, as the king had suggested, remember the fate of his own father. He opposed the bill and appears to have voted against it, even when it passed the House in an amended form, which mitigated the threatened penalty to banishment, on 4 April. Ten days later, after the Commons had had the better of a free conference on the Houses’ continuing dispute over this bill, Strafford was granted leave to withdraw before the question on the bill’s passage was put, ostensibly because of illness.
He missed the following two Parliaments entirely, but gave his first cousin once removed George Savile, earl (later marquess) of Halifax, his political views in this tumultuous period. Just before the Parliament in Oxford in March 1681 Strafford was concerned that ‘I see no use yet made of this interval, which … were to be wished twice as long and yet too little to let one week slip’. He nevertheless expressed confidence in Halifax’s ability to manage the Parliament and sent him his best wishes. Strafford excused himself from attending through another attack of the gout. After Parliament’s abrupt dissolution Strafford continued to hope throughout the autumn of 1681 that another Parliament would be imminently convened and that ‘our great concerns to bring back the duke [York] to our Church … ought now to be the farthest pressed that is possible. … I am very sorry our churchmen have done so little’. At the same period he was writing to John Tillotson, then dean of Canterbury and later archbishop, to assure him that at the next meeting of Parliament ‘we shall use the most vigorous means we can imagine to bring him [York] perfectly back to our Church … by these means our clergy will at least right themselves’. He continued to press for a new Parliament throughout the first half of the 1680s, assuring Halifax in July 1682, ‘I do not see of what service I can be to the public at present anywhere but in Parliament, and I am not so vain as to think I signify much there neither’. His letters to Halifax in the 1680s also clearly show his continuing hostility towards Ormond and his desire for his office, or indeed any office or royal employment, in which he could serve the king and gain some income.
During the 1680s Strafford continued to be plagued with ill health, which prevented him from travelling outside Yorkshire, as he often complained to Halifax.
He came to only 30 per cent of sittings of the session of 1691-2, but on 8 Jan. 1692 he formally ‘opened’ proceedings on the bill for the divorce of Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk, a matter which was to preoccupy the House for the next several weeks. So concerned was he with the progress of this bill that on the same day on which he introduced the bill to the House he registered his proxy with his kinsman John Holles, 4th earl of Clare (later duke of Newcastle), to ensure that his voice was not absent from proceedings. The proxy was vacated a mere three days later when Strafford returned to the House, but he left it for good on 19 January. He maintained a similar attendance of 35 per cent in the following session of 1692-3. He once again supported Norfolk’s divorce bill and on 2 Jan. 1693 voted that it be read a second time. The following day he voted against the place bill. He took his place in the following session of 1693-4 on 20 Nov. 1693 (three weeks after the opening). He attended around 38 per cent of the total and on 10 Jan. 1694 subscribed a protest against the resolution exonerating the Tory admirals from blame over the Smyrna fleet disaster of the previous summer. On 17 Feb. he voted against the reversal of chancery’s dismissal in the cause of Montagu v. Bath.
Strafford had made serious attempts to remarry from the time of his wife’s death in 1685. In spring 1687, through the medium of Halifax, he engaged in protracted negotiations with William Russell, 5th earl (later duke) of Bedford, for his daughter’s hand, but Bedford baulked at Strafford’s request of a portion of £15,000.
Despite his constant complaints of poverty Strafford left in his will bequests amounting to just under £15,000 and annuities of £460. He also laid out over £2,000 for the restoration of York Minster and the erection of a monument there to his family. He also bequeathed as heirlooms with Wentworth Woodhouse a remarkable collection of over 50 portraits, including all of Van Dyck’s paintings of the first earl of Strafford and William Laud†, archbishop of Canterbury, as well as many portraits by Mytens, Honthorst, Van Dyck, Lely, Kneller and others of members of the Stanley, de la Trémouille and Holles families. With no children of his own, Strafford made his nephew Thomas Watson‡ (later Watson Wentworth), third son of his sister Anne and Edward Watson, 2nd Baron Rockingham, heir to the residue of his estate (his trustees having first settled all debts). The barony of Raby was inherited by Strafford’s first cousin once removed, Thomas Wentworth, as a special remainder at its original creation had ensured the title could pass to the heirs of the first earl of Strafford’s younger brothers. Raby did not receive the earldom of Strafford, as that was to descend only through the earl’s male heirs. The second earl had long been on acrimonious terms with Raby’s father, Sir William Wentworth‡, whom he accused of cheating him out of money due to him while serving as his agent in Ireland. He thus refused to bequeath his estate to a family he distrusted so much.