Early Life
Spencer’s expectations were transformed by the death of his older brother, Robert, who died in Paris in 1688 as a result of injuries sustained in a duel. As heir to the earldom, Spencer followed his father into exile in 1689 but he was fortunate in being too young to be much associated with the 2nd earl’s policies as James II’s premier minister. A student of the Calvinist Pierre Flournois and heavily influenced by the low churchman, Charles Trimnell, later bishop of Norwich, Spencer did not share his father’s erastian attitude to religion, though he proved to be both a genuinely committed Anglican and a friend to dissent.
After his return to England, Spencer was initially associated with the country Whigs but by the end of the 1690s he had come to be identified with the Junto. Although he was undoubtedly a spirited party man, described by one commentator as ‘a violent Whig, very violent in the House of Commons during his father’s life time, and continued so in the House of Lords after his death’, claims of Spencer’s republicanism have been overstated, probably the result of a combination of deliberate malicious misinformation on the part of Tory propagandists (especially Jonathan Swift) and of a failure on the part of foreign observers to distinguish between Whiggery and the Dutch Commonwealth party.
His father Sunderland’s return to favour in the early 1690s was no doubt behind the rumour put about in the spring of 1694 that Spencer was to marry a daughter of William III’s favourite, Hans Willem Bentinck, earl of Portland, but, shortly after, the Bentinck match was laid aside in favour of a more lucrative alliance with Lady Arabella Cavendish. Unlike his older brother, who had been rash and given to excess, Spencer commended himself to Lady Arabella’s mother, the duchess of Newcastle, as ‘having the character of sobriety and good humour, which is rare to find’.
The Churchill match reinforced Spencer’s claims to a high-profile political career. Set up for election in Northamptonshire by his father in 1695, he had been forced to withdraw when the opposition proved too vigorous, but having carried both Hedon and Tiverton, he opted to sit for the latter, which he continued to represent until his accession to the peerage. By the beginning of the new century the relationship between Spencer and his father had cooled.
House of Lords
Sunderland took his seat in the House three days into the new Parliament on 23 Oct. 1702 after which he was present on 84 per cent of all sittings. On 11 Nov. he was added to the sub-committee for the Journal and he was added to the same committee again two days later, probably a clerical error. On 19 Nov. he was named to the committee for drawing up an address and on 9 Dec. he was prominent in the debate that erupted after the House had sent the amended occasional conformity bill back down to the Commons, his warning that the lower House intended to tack the measure onto a money bill spurring the House into drawing up an order against tacking. His interest in the measure was reflected in his subsequent nomination as one of the managers of the conference for the occasional conformity bill and the same day (17 Dec.) he acted as one of the tellers for the division over whether to proceed with the conference report, which was carried by 52 votes to 47. The following day Sunderland was named to the committee to draw up reasons for the Lords’ insistence on their amendments to the bill and on 23 Dec. he was one of six lords present at a committee convened at the Parliament office to discover precedents for bills with penalties that had originated in the upper chamber. When William Cavendish, duke of Devonshire, made his report to the House on 8 Jan. 1703 of the reasons for the Lords insisting on their amendments, Sunderland moved that they should be entered into the Journal.
At the beginning of the year Sunderland had been estimated by Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, as being opposed to the occasional conformity bill and on 16 Jan. Sunderland indeed voted in favour of adhering to the Lords’ amendment to the penalty clause. A few days prior to this, on 11 Jan., he acted as one of the tellers in the division on whether to adjourn the debate on the rights of peers under the act of settlement, which was lost on a tied vote. On a related matter, on 19 Jan. he was one of a number of peers to subscribe a protest at the decision to include a clause in the bill settling a revenue on Prince George, duke of Cumberland, which specifically confirmed his capacity to serve as a member of the Privy Council and to sit in the Lords if the queen should pre-decease him. Sunderland’s position on the bill incurred the queen’s displeasure. It also contrasted starkly with his father-in-law Marlborough’s support for the measure and precipitated increasingly fractious relations with his mother-in-law.
Present during a session of the committee for the bill for appointing commissioners for examining the public accounts on 2 Feb. 1703, Sunderland moved for a clause to be added to the bill stating that the commissioners should be barred from holding office under the crown for the duration of the commission. His motion was adopted accordingly.
The summer of 1703 found Sunderland active in attempting to employ his interest on behalf of several supplicants. His efforts to procure a prebend’s stall in Westminster for his former chaplain, Trimnell, were thwarted when he was unable to secure the support of John Sharp, archbishop of York, whose interest was already pre-assigned to Dr George Stanhope, although in the event neither cleric landed that desirable place.
One of several prominent Whig peers to mark the late king’s birthday with bonfires and public celebrations on 4 Nov., Sunderland took his seat in the new session on 9 Nov. 1703 and the following day he was named to the committee to draw an address on the queen’s speech.
Sunderland returned to the House following the Christmas recess on 4 Jan. 1704 and ten days later he served as one of the tellers on the question whether to adjourn the debates over the dispute Ashby v. White. On 26 Jan. he was named to the committee to consider the allegations in the preamble to the bill for enabling the mayor of London and other trustees to pay charities stipulated in Sir Thomas Gresham’s will and on 5 and 6 Feb. he was active in the sub-committee for the Journal. On the evening of 13 Feb. he hosted another extensive gathering of Whig peers, where ‘tea [was] drunk’ and the Scotch Plot discussed. On the 17th he attended a somewhat smaller dinner in Parliament, again to discuss the Plot.
The close of the session coincided with rumours that the duumvirs, Marlborough and Sidney Godolphin, Baron, later earl of, Godolphin, had fallen out with their Tory allies and towards the end of April 1704 it was speculated that, as part of their anticipated rapprochement with the Junto, Sunderland was to replace Nottingham as secretary of state.
Sunderland suffered from poor health during the early weeks of the summer (another recurrent theme in his career), but he was said to be ‘much mended’ by the close of May 1704.
Present for the prorogation of 19 Oct. 1704, Sunderland took his place in the House on 24 October. Two days later, he received the proxy of John Holles, duke of Newcastle, which was vacated on 6 Dec., as well as that of the prominent Junto lieutenant, Charles Powlett, 2nd duke of Bolton. Bolton’s proxy was vacated when the duke returned to his place on 16 November. On the same day that Newcastle resumed his seat Sunderland was entrusted with the proxy of his kinsman, Philip Sydney, 5th earl of Leicester. Two days later (8 Dec.) he also received that of Paulet St John, 3rd earl of Bolingbroke, with whose heir presumptive, Sir St Andrew St John‡, Sunderland was said to be ‘very great friends’.
Sunderland’s prominence in the House’s debates at the close of 1704 no doubt gave renewed impetus to rumours that he was soon to be appointed secretary of state, though William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, was unconvinced, noting in this diary merely, ‘time will show.’
Towards the end of March 1705 fresh rumours emerged of expected alterations in the ministry. Wharton, it was thought, was to be lord lieutenant of Ireland and James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond, master of the horse, while Sunderland was again expected to succeed as secretary of state.
The Parliament of 1705
Sunderland was excused at a call of the House on 12 Nov. 1705. The following month he secured permission to leave Vienna.
Sunderland took his place in the House two days after the dinner on 8 Jan. 1706 and he was thereafter present on 51 days in the session (53 per cent of the whole). On 26 Jan. a number of private bills were considered by the Lords and, according to Bishop Nicolson, Sunderland ‘took notice of the suspicious contents of one of these.’
Sunderland’s increasing stature in the leadership of the Junto was reflected in his appointment as one of the commissioners nominated to undertake the Union negotiations in April 1706, but Junto efforts to secure him the secretaryship were forestalled again towards the close of that month when Newcastle chose to continue his support for Harley.
Despite such successes and a steady campaign by the Junto and the Marlboroughs to wear down the queen’s objections, Sunderland’s own pretensions continued to be denied. The queen remained insistent on her reluctance to install ‘a party man’ like Sunderland as secretary ‘when there are so many of their friends in employment of all kinds already.’ In addition, she feared his personality and explained that her reluctance to give way ‘proceeds from what I have heard of his temper. I am afraid he and I would not agree long together’.
Secretary of State
Sunderland resumed his seat in the House for the new session on 3 Dec. 1706, after which he was present on 71 per cent of all sittings. He attended cabinet for the first time in his new capacity later the same day.
Efforts to settle management of church affairs, potentially no less hazardous, led to a meeting hosted by Sunderland on 29 Jan. 1707 attended by the duumvirs, Wharton, Halifax, Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend, William Wake, bishop of Lincoln and John Moore, bishop of Norwich, at which a draft of the ‘act for the security of the Church of England’ was approved, to accompany the legislation on the Union.
The week-long prorogation in the second week of April irritated Sunderland, who saw the hand of Harley behind the manoeuvre, as he complained to Marlborough:
I believe you will be surprised at this short prorogation. It is entirely occasioned by him who is the author of all the tricks played here. I need not name him, having done it in my last letter to you. I will only say no man in the service of a government did act such a part. I wish those to whom he has acted it were ever capable of thinking him in the wrong, for I fear it may be some time or other too late.
Add. 61126, ff. 37-38.
Sunderland returned to his place on 14 Apr. after which he attended eight days of the brief session that sat for the remainder of the month. Annoyance at Harley’s ‘tricks’ was exacerbated by infighting once more within the Junto and in particular concern at the behaviour of Halifax, who was still to secure a suitable post in the administration. News of the allied defeat at Almanza no doubt added to Sunderland’s sense of ‘uneasiness’.
I can assure you nothing has given me so much uneasiness a great while as that whole matter, but, I am sure, the only reason that hindered him (Halifax) from writing was that he thought the best way to have all that was past forgotten was to say no more of it, and he is now as easy with lord treasurer, and all this, and your friends, as he ever was.
Add. 61126, ff. 68-69.
Both Sunderland and his countess appear to have suffered from poor health over the following few months. Lady Sunderland was said to be suffering from a ‘kind of quinzy’ at the close of April, while Sunderland himself was sick for much of May, towards the close of which he retreated to the country to recover. By 3 June he was at Hampton Court, convalescing having been ‘very ill, with a fever upon my spirits, which has hung upon me, more or less, above three weeks, but thank God I am much better now.’ Five days later Sunderland was again present at cabinet, though on 10 June he was still complaining of discomfort caused by an eye infection.
Meanwhile, vacancies in the episcopate were raising the tension between the Junto and the duumvirs, as the queen stubbornly refused to break her promise to two Tory divines, Offspring Blackall, the future bishop of Exeter, and William Dawes, bishop of Chester, to appoint them to those sees, rather than the Whig clerics favoured by the Junto. While this struggle continued, the promotion of Bishop Moore from Norwich to Ely raised the prospect of Sunderland’s client, Charles Trimnell, being appointed as his replacement at Norwich. The final compromise that was reached did indeed see all three, Trimnell, Blackall and Dawes, raised to the episcopal bench. But as the impasse continued Sunderland’s friends voiced their deep disquiet, wondering ‘a little at so sudden a nomination of two on the other side, and that his [Trimnell’s] cause runs so heavy, against whom we see no objection but his principle.’
Sunderland was more successful in obtaining a vacant prebend’s stall at Gloucester for one Robert Cooke, the uncle of the local Member, William Cooke‡. He had originally slated Cooke to be dean the previous year, only to come up against Marlborough’s previous commitments. Early in August 1707 Sunderland approached William Cowper, Baron (later Earl) Cowper, claiming the support of both the borough’s Members and the ‘honest gentlemen’ in the area. With Marlborough also on board, the appointment went through in November.
It was with a general sense of foreboding that Sunderland retreated to Althorp at the beginning of August 1707. At the close of the month he hosted a Junto conclave there attended by Somers, Halifax and Orford, ‘to fix measures for the approaching Parliament.’
Sunderland waited on the queen at Newmarket at the beginning of October 1707.
The Junto’s campaign against Harley was no doubt the cause of their renewed efforts to woo other members of the House and is presumably the explanation for Sunderland, Somers and Halifax offering Bishop Nicolson ‘special encouragements’ in his cause with Hugh Todd, a canon at Carlisle whom Nicolson had excommunicated.
On 25 Feb. 1708 Sunderland introduced a bill into the House for reversing the attainder of Sir Henry Bond, bt. and the same day he presented the petition of William Ferdinand Carey, 8th Baron Hunsdon, to be summoned under that title. Three days later he received the directors of the Royal African Company at his office.
Sunderland remained in London following the dissolution at the beginning of April, among other things apparently acquiring a new town residence: advertisements in the Post Man for the sale or letting of his house in St James’s Square followed the news that he had purchased Sir Walter Clarges’s‡ house in Piccadilly.
Newcastle wrote to Sunderland at the end of May inviting him and a number of northern peers to join him at Welbeck over the summer of 1708 for a meeting preparatory to the new session. ‘Though at all times that company is extremely pleasing to me’, he wrote, he thought that it might be especially valuable before the meeting of the new Parliament.
For all his endeavours, Sunderland’s efforts to secure the return of Scots members sympathetic to the Junto met with mixed success, though he assured one of those for whose return he had canvassed, William Johnston, marquess of Annandale [S], that ‘though your lordship is not returned one of the 16, I don’t doubt but upon the protestations we shall do you right by bringing you into the House.’ He encouraged Annandale and others of his ilk to hasten to town so that they could set about investigating ‘the irregularities committed by the subaltern ministry there and their dependents.’
Sunderland’s interest remained strong. During the summer of 1708 he received petitions from various Scots notables seeking preferment, and Marlborough’s latest victory that summer appeared to promise a continuance of Sunderland’s authority.
Sunderland returned to town briefly in mid-August 1708 in time to attend the celebrations for Marlborough’s victory at the battle of Oudenarde and on 5 Sept. he was at Windsor for a meeting of the cabinet.
The Parliament of 1708
Conciliatory moves by the queen went some way towards healing these latest divisions.
A meeting of Junto peers and several of their Scots allies convened on 14 Dec. to discuss the mismanagement of the affairs of Scotland, but some of the Scots attending believed that Junto interest was beginning to wane.
Sunderland resumed his seat after the Christmas recess on 10 Jan. 1709. In advance of the session he was approached by Charles Knollys, self-styled 4th earl of Banbury, who sought Sunderland’s interest with the duke and duchess of Marlborough both to further his claim to a writ of summons to Parliament as earl and to secure him a position in the army.
The death of Ralph Montagu, duke of Montagu, in 1709 resulted in Sunderland becoming involved in settling the affairs both of the lunatic dowager duchess (sister to Sunderland’s first wife), in right of his daughter, Lady Frances Spencer, and of Montagu’s heir, John Montagu, 2nd duke of Montagu, the husband of Lady Mary Churchill, another of Marlborough’s daughters.
The Junto’s determination to secure more places in the administration for its members continued unabated over the prorogation. Maurice Wheeler, writing to Bishop Wake at the end of April of the pretensions of Dean Chetwood of Gloucester for a bishopric, noted that his promotion might be obtained by Sunderland’s means, ‘if the present interest (which is too violently pursued long to hold) should continue’.
Present at cabinet meetings at Windsor and in Whitehall throughout June and July 1709, at the close of the month Sunderland retreated once more to Althorp, where he remained for the whole of August and early September.
Sunderland had returned to town from Althorp by 9 September.
News that Marlborough was soon to return to England towards the end of October encouraged Sunderland, confident that with the duke on the scene ‘it will not be in the power of the most malicious to give any uneasiness.’
It was with this far from satisfactory state of affairs that Sunderland took his seat in the new session on 15 November. Present on over 70 per cent of all sittings, Sunderland again juggled his attendance in the House with responsibilities as secretary. By the end of the year it was plain that he was tired out with the continual struggles between his Junto allies and the court. When Maynwaring on 15 Dec. reported Sunderland’s reaction to a conference between Marlborough, Godolphin and Halifax, he noted that ‘nothing he said was near so bad as it used to be. But to be jealous and distrustful is the first principle of all great politicians.’
Suffering from a cold at the close of the first week of February 1710, Sunderland’s attention was taken up again with attendance at cabinet over the ensuing few days.
Sunderland had expressed concern about the inflammatory sermon preached by Dr Henry Sacheverell soon after the address was delivered in November 1709. He and Wharton united to drive through Sacheverell’s impeachment, overruling the doubts of some of their colleagues and casting the Greenshields case firmly into the shade. Sacheverell’s trial before the Lords, which opened on 27 Feb. 1710, created pandemonium in London, coming to a head on the night of 1 Mar. with widespread rioting in the streets, when, for once, Sunderland dithered before being cajoled into action by the queen, who issued the order for her personal bodyguard to be mobilized in spite of Sunderland’s reluctance for them to be deployed. When the senior duty officer, an infantry captain, objected to acting without written orders, Sunderland was forced to satisfy him with his word of honour that written orders would be forthcoming.
Having kept their rivals at court at bay for the previous two years, in April 1710 the Junto leaders found themselves outmanoeuvred with the imposition of Shrewsbury on the ministry as lord chamberlain in place of the ineffectual ‘Bug’, Henry Grey, marquess of Kent, who was compensated with promotion to a dukedom. Although Sunderland expressed himself to be satisfied that Godolphin had had no hand in the alteration he admitted to the duchess of Marlborough that he ‘should have been much better pleased if he had known of it, for as it is, it seems striking at everything’. Nevertheless, he agreed with the lord treasurer’s appraisal of the situation that ‘we must endeavour to weather it as well as we can.’
Sunderland was quite correct to be fearful for his own position: had Harley had his way Sunderland would have been put out as early as May 1710. As it was, over the course of the next few weeks Harley worked hard to ingratiate himself with Halifax and Newcastle in order to drive a wedge between them and the other members of the Junto. Although Shrewsbury appears to have suggested that he could ‘live much better’ with Sunderland than with some of his other colleagues and Godolphin attributed Sunderland’s continuance in office to Shrewsbury’s intervention, by the second half of the month talk was rife of Sunderland’s imminent dismissal.
Opposition and the Parliament of 1710
Sunderland’s dismissal prompted a series of protests. Predictions of the ‘dismal consequences’ that would ensue had been communicated to Devonshire and Newcastle prior to Sunderland’s dismissal by a city deputation headed by Sir Gilbert Heathcote‡ who, after it had happened, waited on the queen to request her not to change her ministry further.
Although it was rumoured in mid-July 1710 that Harley had arrived at an accommodation with the remaining Whig ministers, the following month the ministry received a further blow with Godolphin’s removal, an event which, as Sunderland reported to his father-in-law, ‘has perfectly stunned everybody’. He anticipated that in spite of Whig efforts to prevent it, a dissolution would soon follow. By the end of August, though, Sunderland had recovered his nerve and assured Marlborough that ‘if Godolphin and the Whigs do act cordially and vigorously together, without suspicion of one another, which I am sure there is no reason for, it is impossible but everything must come right again.’
In spite of all Sunderland’s preparations, the elections proved a lamentable disappointment for the Whigs. Early optimism for Breton and Norwich rapidly dissipated and in the event the county was carried once more by the sitting members without a contest. In Northampton one newsletter reported how a rich shoemaker had been bound over to appear at the next assizes at the end of September for speaking treasonable language against the queen, among his utterances being an insistence that she should be called to account for turning Sunderland out of office.
All these reverses notwithstanding, in advance of the meeting of the new Parliament the duchess of Marlborough passed on a message from Sunderland to Godolphin insisting that everyone turn out for what he still hoped would be a ‘tolerable’ session. Both the duchess and Lady Sunderland thought that he was being overly optimistic, but in the weeks leading up to the opening of Parliament Sunderland was active in attempting to shore up the Whigs’ support base.
Sunderland took his seat in the new Parliament on 25 Nov. 1710, after which he was present on 88 per cent of all sittings. The session did not prove ‘tolerable’ as he had hoped but was dominated by the new ministry’s investigations into the conduct of the war in the Iberian Peninsula, or, as one commentator put it, ‘the Spanish Inquisition’.
Sunderland’s discomfiture continued over the ensuing weeks as Nottingham encouraged Dartmouth to search through the records of the secretary’s office in the hopes of finding evidence with which to prosecute the former incumbent. On 3 Feb. Sunderland subscribed two further protests, first at the resolution to agree with the committee that the ministers’ failure to supply the deficiencies of men voted by Parliament for the war amounted to a neglect of the service and second at the resolution that the two regiments on the Spanish establishment at the time of Almanza were not properly supplied.
The virulence of the criticism he faced may help to explain Sunderland’s decision to speak in favour of the House giving a second reading to the place bill at the beginning of February. The bill proposed to bar all but about 50 crown officials from sitting in the Commons and it must have afforded Sunderland some amusement to tease Harley with the prospect of losing a significant cadre of his followers:
The Commons have of late years sent up this bill for form-sake, and only to throw the odium of its being lost on the House of Peers; and therefore your lordships ought at least to give it a second reading, to let the Commons know that if they should send it up once more, the Lords will take them at their word, and pass it.
Holmes, Pol. Relig. and Soc. 50; Boyer, Anne Hist. 488.
In spite of his intervention, the bill was once again thrown out of the Lords without further consideration. At the beginning of March it was rumoured that the Commons were on the point of drawing up impeachment proceedings against Sunderland, Godolphin and Wharton.
The political pressure they were under may explain why, towards the end of March 1711, Sunderland, Wharton and Somers were overheard discussing an imminent journey to Scotland, but if this was indeed mooted nothing more was done about it.
Alongside his activities in the House, towards the end of May 1711 Sunderland was also drawn into a dispute provoked by the efforts of John Robinson, bishop of Bristol (later of London), to transfer the presentation of the living of Cleasby in Yorkshire (Robinson’s birthplace) away from its patron and into the hands of the dean and chapter of Ripon. John Gellibrand, who brought the matter to Sunderland’s attention, asked him to get the patron a hearing with Devonshire, lord of the manor and principal landowner in the town, to head off the bishop’s manoeuvrings.
The prospect of rejecting the ministry’s peace proposals and inflicting a defeat on Oxford (as Harley had since become) led to fevered preparation for the opening of the new session in December 1711. With every vote at stake, Sunderland ensured that he was in possession of the proxies of Lewis Watson, 3rd Baron (later earl of) Rockingham, and Thomas Fane, 6th earl of Westmorland, though in the event Rockingham’s was vacated when he took his seat at the opening on 7 Dec. and Westmorland’s was voided when he resumed his seat three days later. Sunderland also took his seat in the House at the opening of the new session (after which he was present on half of all sittings) and the same day he acted as one of the tellers in a division on whether to put the question on amending the address to include advice that no peace was safe or honourable while Spain remained in Bourbon hands. The division was carried by a single vote. The following day, Sunderland was, predictably enough, assessed as likely to oppose the court in the abortive division initiated by supporters of the ministry in an attempt to overturn the ‘No Peace without Spain’ resolution of the day before. When Arthur Annesley, 5th earl of Anglesey, refused to act as one of the tellers in the proposed division, Sunderland told him that if Anglesey ‘did not do his duty he would do his, and tell without him.’ Proceedings degenerated into farce when, after Abingdon had agreed to tell with Sunderland, ‘they that would not be told hopped and skipped about’ in an effort to confuse the vote. The division was eventually abandoned amid general chaos.
The remainder of the session proved less comical, but equally passionate and Sunderland continued to take a prominent role as one of the Junto managers. On 13 Dec. he received the proxy of John Colepeper, 3rd Baron Colepeper (which was vacated by the close), and on 19 Dec. he was forecast as being likely to oppose Hamilton’s admission to the House by virtue of his British dukedom of Brandon. Speaking in the House the following day in the debate concerning Hamilton’s patent, he objected to Abingdon’s contention that Queensberry had effectively set a precedent by sitting as duke of Dover, replying that that ‘was a case never decided only connived at for a time.’ He then joined with Wharton in opposing the ministry’s calls for the judges’ opinions to be sought and insisted that the case was a matter of privilege.
After a brief recess, the House met again on 2 Jan. 1712 for the introduction of 12 new ministerial peers; the ministry then sought to adjourn the House for another week, until the date to which the House of Commons was adjourned. Peter Wentworth recorded the furious reaction of the Whig peers, including Somers, and Sunderland, who:
rise up in a passion and said he was amazed lords should so call out for the question and not give themselves time to look into their books; nobody likewise had more respect for the queen than he, but anything that was done irregular could never be imputed to the crown but the ministry, and it was of dangerous consequence to let such advice pass without any examination; for who kn[e]w what designs a ministry had to carry on; If this was suffered to pass into a precedent, whenever they found a majority in one house but not in t’other, ’twas but for them to advise to have a command to have that house adjourn’d for a week, a month or for the time that would serve their turn.Wentworth Pprs. 237-41.
Sunderland’s efforts failed to sway the House. At the close of January 1712 his wife resigned her place as one of the ladies of the queen’s bedchamber.
Sunderland registered his own proxy with Montagu on 1 Apr. 1712 after which he was absent from the House for the whole month, according to Townshend, on account of his growing frustration at the futility of the Whigs’ opposition to Oxford. He resumed his seat (thereby vacating the proxy) on 5 May, but attended for just four days before registering his proxy again on 13 May, this time with Bridgwater. Two days later he hosted a meeting attended by several bishops as well as Somers, Townshend and Halifax.
Following the death of Godolphin in August 1712, Sunderland defended Marlborough’s decision to quit the country, but seems to have decided that the best policy for the Whigs for the present was one of studied resignation. Writing to Nottingham in September, he opined that:
as to the present posture of our affairs, they seem to be such that the quieter we are at present the better, for these people have by corruption and one way or other got such a majority in both Houses that till the nation open their eyes, which will never be till the peace is actually made, and proclaimed, and then they will see the villainy and ruin of it though they are at present intoxicated with the expectation of it, till that is, it seems to be running our heads against a wall.
By November, though, he was more hopeful and believed that there were again signs of ‘a great alteration in the minds of the people.’
After a period of enforced inactivity, Sunderland appears to have decided once more to confront Oxford. At the forefront of those intent on ensuring the security of the Hanoverian succession, he aimed to test the ministry with his proposition that Prince George, duke of Cambridge (the future George II) should come over to England even without a parliamentary writ or royal invitation. In the event, the suggestion was rejected by the elector himself, who was unwilling to risk offending the queen.
Sunderland’s apparent willingness to co-operate with the disgruntled Scots peers seeking the dissolution of the Union may simply have been in order to harass the Oxford ministry. The catalyst for the attempt was the Scots’ opposition to the extension of the malt tax, which they considered an unfair imposition on their country and a technical breach of the terms of the treaty. Although Sunderland disappointed some of his Scots allies by joining with Nottingham and Halifax in calling for an adjournment in the debates of 1 June so that the matter of dissolving the Union could be more fully considered, rather than calling immediately for a motion on dissolution, he was hailed by Balmerinoch, with whom he co-operated closely on the issue, as ‘the only honest Whig which I know’, the only one of the Whigs to show clear support for overturning the treaty.
A general unhappiness in the House at the terms of the peace treaty negotiated by Oxford’s administration offered Sunderland and the Junto their best opportunity for inflicting a series of reverses on the government. Consequently, in June 1713, an alliance of Whigs and Tories in the Commons voted down the bill confirming the eighth and ninth articles of the French commercial treaty and on 30 June Sunderland seconded a motion put forward by Wharton for an address to be presented to the queen requesting that she petition the duke of Lorraine to bar the Pretender from his territories. On 3 July Sunderland moved a subsequent address, expressing surprise that the queen had not been able to do more to limit his freedom of movement.
The Parliament of 1713 and the Hanoverian succession
Sunderland seems to have taken charge of the 2nd earl of Godolphin’s proxy after both men had taken the oaths on the opening day of the new Parliament on 16 Feb. 1714 (the proxy was vacated 4 March). Sunderland was thereafter present on 78 per cent of all sittings. A few days later, he also received the proxy of Richard Lumley, earl of Scarbrough, which was vacated a little under a month later on 17 March. The proxy of John Sydney, 6th earl of Leicester, which was registered with Sunderland on 8 Mar., was vacated by the close. Sunderland subscribed the dissent at the resolution not to amend the address requesting a proclamation for the discovery of the author of The Public Spirit of the Whigs on 11 March. Six days later he joined with Wharton, Nottingham, Cowper and Halifax in moving that the Protestant succession remained in danger should the Pretender be permitted to remain in Lorraine and on 2 Apr. he again united with Wharton, Cowper and Halifax in demanding that British assurances to the Catalans ought to be honoured.
Sunderland’s activity in the House was interrupted at the close of May 1714 when his wife, who had previously complained that the Lords kept Sunderland too busy, fell dangerously sick with smallpox.
Sunderland was absent again on 24 June but he ensured once more that his proxy was registered, this time with Talbot Yelverton, 2nd Viscount Longueville (later earl of Sussex). He resumed his seat the following day, thereby vacating the proxy. Questioning of the administration over the Spanish commercial treaty led to the queen communicating a message to the House shielding Bolingbroke, a move that provoked Sunderland to remark, ‘if the House was to receive such answers from the crown they were of no use and might walk out and never come in again.’
Eager to shore up his relations with the regime-in-waiting, Sunderland was at Baron Bothmer’s house on 30 July 1714 while the queen lay dying. From there he wrote to Nottingham urging him to come up and to persuade all their friends to do likewise.
Despite his careful cultivation of the new king and his advisers, Sunderland’s unquestioned zeal for the Hanoverian succession proved initially something of a hindrance to his preferment. George was uneasy at Sunderland’s uncompromising attitude but he recognized the need to reward those who had laboured to secure his succession. In September he appointed Sunderland to the lieutenancy of Ireland, though both Oxford and Berkeley of Stratton surmised that Sunderland would have preferred to have been restored to his former office as secretary.
Sunderland died of pleurisy at his house in Piccadilly on 19 Apr. 1722. His final months had been marked with sorrow. Once more out of office, he had lost first a daughter and then, a few days before his own death, his youngest son, Hon. William Spencer. All three were conveyed to Althorp together for burial. Sunderland was succeeded as 4th earl of Sunderland by his second son by his second marriage, Robert Spencer†, Lord Spencer, who at the time of his succession was on tour in Italy.