Overview and assessment
Throughout his career Henry Booth, 2nd Baron Delamer and earl of Warrington, showed a strong puritanical streak both in his personal life and his politics, where he distinguished himself as an uncompromising (and self-righteous) Presbyterian of entrenched country views unfalteringly opposed to the catholicizing and absolutist policies of Charles II and James II. He has strong claims to be considered the most intransigent opponent of James II among the peerage. Suspected throughout the 1680s of conspiracy against the crown, he was the first to declare openly for William of Orange as the country’s new ruler (as opposed to calling merely for a free Parliament or condemning James II’s ‘evil counsellors’) and to raise a substantial number of troops in his support. His statements in the campaign to place William on the throne in the turbulent weeks of late 1688 and early 1689 were blunt and harsh against the deposed king, and he hardly bothered to consider the legal complexities of the situation which exercised the minds of Tory loyalists. When William III turned increasingly towards the Tories in the early days of his reign and discarded many of his Whig adherents, Delamer turned violently against the new king as well, almost to the point of considering a Jacobite restoration. He divided contemporary opinion fiercely. Roger Morrice, writing of his exploits at the Revolution, praised his ‘prudence, courage and forwardness in this design together with his exemplary carriage’, which gained him ‘such a great interest about Derbyshire’ (not even his principal county) that ‘every sixth man round about would follow him’. He thought him among the three people in England who were ‘the most serious in religion, and give most countenance to it, and are most entire to the prince for the promoting of the reformed religion universally’, and wrote that in the Convention he ‘always spoke with great vigour and strength in all debates in the Lords’ House, on the Protestants’ side’.
Exclusionist Member for Cheshire, 1678-85
Maynwaring, despite his obvious hyperbole, was right to emphasize that Delamer (the title by which he was best known) was a ‘zealot’, for he was born into a strongly and sternly Presbyterian, if not Puritan, family. In 1659, when he raised the abortive royalist rising which is still known by his name, his father George Booth, Baron Delamer, had been ‘a person of the best fortune and interest in Cheshire, and … of absolute power with the Presbyterians’ there.
Henry Booth started his political career young. In 1672-3, when barely of age, he was made a justice of the peace and commissioner of assessment for both Cheshire and Lancashire, and in May 1673 his father resigned his local office of custos rotulorum of Cheshire in favour of his heir. Booth was appointed a commissioner to examine the activities of recusants in Cheshire in 1675, and in a by-election of March 1678 the young man was returned to Parliament as a knight of the shire for the county. He sat for Cheshire in the following three Parliaments as well and the journal he kept of his own activity in the Commons between March 1678 until 28 March 1681 shows that he was a vocal partisan for the impeachment of Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds), for the exclusion of James Stuart, duke of York, from the succession, and for the disbandment of the standing army.
Such views expressed in Parliament did not endear him to the court. Booth had been removed from the commission of the peace in both Lancashire and Cheshire and as custos rotulorum for the latter county by November 1680, although he was briefly reinstated in all these about the time of the election of March 1681.
Trial, acquittal and opposition to James II, 1685-9
On 8 Aug. 1684 Booth became the 2nd Baron Delamer upon the death of his father, and this Whig and exclusionist firebrand first sat in the House at the opening of James II’s Parliament. He only sat for 13 meetings in May and June 1685 before he was committed to the Tower again under suspicion of involvement in Monmouth’s Rebellion.
Delamer was bailed on 28 Nov. but when the indictment against him was finally returned from Chester on 14 Dec. he was taken from his house early in the morning and again committed to the Tower.
Despite these careful preparations, the trial went badly for the government. Charged with high treason ‘for levying war against the king this last summer’ – various conspiratorial activities in Chester in April and June 1685 – Delamer delayed the proceedings by raising several questions concerning his privilege as a peer. Then the attorney general was able to produce only one positive witness, ‘a person of a very infamous life’, whose testimony Delamer was easily able to refute. The other witnesses against him, the Whig turncoats William Howard, 3rd Baron Howard of Escrick, and Ford Grey, 3rd Baron Grey of Warke, could only give general evidence about the Whig conspiracies against Charles II in late 1682. Howard even ended his testimony by stating that he had nothing at all to say about either Delamer or a rising in Cheshire. Even hostile commentators had to admit that Delamer was ‘well skilled in our laws and withal a good spokesman [who] gave all the advantage to his cause and good entertainment to his auditors’. In the end the peers in attendance unanimously acquitted Delamer of the charges against him. Ailesbury, who in his memoirs presented the trial and Delamer’s escape from judgment as an example of James II’s mercy and observance of the rule of law, was convinced of his cousin’s guilt and ‘the whole number of lords was of the same sentiment … [but] men of honour and conscience could proceed no otherwise by the strict rules of the law’. The trial and its surprising outcome captured the attention of the nation and was seen as a victory for the Whigs while the embarrassed court investigated ‘who advised the trial of this peer when the evidence was so incompetent’. Much of the blame was placed at the door of Jeffreys, especially as he had annoyed the peers by his manner and had had to be pulled up short by Nottingham on a point of law and privilege.
A few days after his acquittal Delamer was permitted to kiss the king’s hand and the king ‘was pleased to give him warning as to his future behaviour’, advice which the baron ignored. Over the next two and a half years he was consistently included in lists of the king’s enemies and showed his solidarity with his beleaguered colleagues Stamford and Devonshire by posting bail for them in their own confrontations with James’s courts.
Williamite leader in Cheshire, 1688-9
On 15 Nov., having exacted a promise from the lord lieutenant of Cheshire, William George Richard Stanley, 9th earl of Derby, that he would not interfere, Delamer mustered his tenants and followers on Bowden Down in support of William of Orange, assuring them in a printed address that ‘I see all lies at stake, I am to choose whether I am to be a slave and a Papist, or a Protestant and a freeman, and therefore the case being thus, I shall think myself false to my country, if I sit still at this time’.
Delamer and his forces, numbering 300-400 men, joined Devonshire at Nottingham on 21 Nov., but he quickly became dissatisfied with Devonshire’s caution and left Nottingham on 24 Nov. with Stamford to engage on a long march south to join William, the course of which was closely monitored by contemporaries.
of all the men that have appeared in arms and declared for the Prince none have done more zealously than those who began the dance in Cheshire who gather weight like a snow ball, and as many affirm, do plunder as they go … The chief officers of the body are affirmed to be old Oliverians that have long lain lurking about Chester and Cheshire, in expectation of a day of plunder.Original Letters ed. Ellis (ser. 2), 163.
Morrice at first heard that they numbered ‘several thousands’ (later corrected to 300). Arthur Maynwaring described Delamer’s men as ‘a shirtless band of Northern rabble’, while Halifax was later regaled with stories of the ‘multitudes’ who had followed Delamer and how in their leisure they would amuse themselves by taking target practice at pictures of the Pope, Father Petre, and of two of James II’s appointees to the episcopate, Thomas Cartwright, bishop of Chester, and Thomas Watson, bishop of St Davids.
At Hungerford and then during the march on London, Delamer openly argued for the overthrow of James II. At the meeting held at Windsor on 17 Dec. 1688 to determine what action to take after James’s return from Faversham he opened the debate by moving that the king be incarcerated in the Tower, arguing that his abortive attempt at flight amounted to a dissolution of his government. When this decision was challenged by Clarendon, Delamer angrily (‘a little thing puts him into a passion’ Clarendon observed) remonstrated that ‘he did not look upon him as his king, and would never more pay him obedience; and that he ought not to be like a king in one of his own houses, and earnestly pressed that he might be directed to go to Ham’. William more diplomatically wanted James to be ‘advised’ to go to Ham, but still chose Delamer, with Halifax and Charles Talbot, 12th earl (later duke) of Shrewsbury, as the delegates to attend James II at Whitehall with this message. Delamer later gloated that, without ‘the least grain of courage’, the defeated king ‘meanly’ accepted this order to vacate the capital, which action led to his permanent exile.
Halifax recorded, in his sketchy notes of the meeting held on 24 Dec. 1688 to discuss methods to summon a new Parliament, that Delamer said that ‘nothing can be done but by the body of the people in their representatives’, by which he was probably arguing that sovereignty resided in ‘the people’ and that a Convention could be summoned in their name without the formality of issuing royal writs, a view he was to repeat later in 1690.
Delamer’s principal concern during these first days and weeks after the Revolution was to ensure the transfer of the crown to William and Mary. When the House first took up the debate on the vote of the Commons that James had ‘abdicated’ and that the throne was ‘vacant’ on 29 Jan. 1689, Delamer, according to Danby’s notes, was the foremost speaker against James’s claims and responded to Clarendon’s doubts with the blunt dismissal that the king had fled ‘because he dared not to stay the justice of the nation’ and asserted that the king was merely a ‘trustee’ of the people’ and may therefore be ‘called to an account’.
He remained involved in the Convention’s busy schedule during the spring of 1689. He registered his protest against the passage of the treason trials bill on 6 Mar. (legislation which must have had a personal relevance to him), on the grounds that it infringed the privilege of peers and ‘nothing ever was, or may be, put into an act of Parliament, that can reflect so much upon the honour of the peerage as this will’. The previous day he had been a reporter for the conference on the Convention’s address to the king pledging their lives and fortunes to his cause, while on 8 Mar. he was made part of the delegation to present the king with the thanks of the House for his reply to this loyal address. From March to early May he was named to 14 select committees on legislation, and on 9 Mar. he reported from the committee on the bill for reversing the attainder of William Russell‡, Lord Russell. He had already made clear his view that the bill should pass by publishing at about this time a brief examination of the case, with an exoneration of Lord Russell.
Office under William III, 1689-94
On 9 Apr. 1689 Delamer was made chancellor and under-treasurer of the exchequer and a commissioner of the treasury board.
Delamer returned to the House on 20 July and immediately threw himself into the business of the House, attending conferences with the Commons and lending his support to the bill for reversing the punitive judgments against Titus Oates. On 30 July he voted and protested against the decision to adhere to the House’s amendments to the bill which deprived Oates of certain rights and liberties and which cast doubt, according to Delamer and the other protesters, on the veracity of the Popish Plot. He, Stamford and Charles North, Baron North and Grey, were the self-appointed tribunes for the disgruntled weavers who marched on Parliament on 14 Aug. 1689 to petition against the bill for wearing woollens. The sight of these peers, especially the rebels Stamford and Delamer, acting as populist and demagogic leaders of ‘the mobile’ provided endless material for Tory satirists such as Maynwaring.
Delamer was present for all but five sittings of the second session of the Convention, during which he was named to 11 select committees, acted as a teller on 15 Nov. and reported from the committee of the whole House five days later. In a debate on the Bill of Rights on 23 Nov. 1689 he told, presumably for the contents, in a division whether to include a proviso that would invalidate all royal pardons upon impeachments which did not have the concurrence of both Houses of Parliament, and joined with 11 other peers to sign the protest when this amendment was rejected. He was named to the committee for inspections, established on 2 Nov. 1689 to search into the misdeeds of the Tory reaction. He was also personally concerned in the proceedings of the subcommittee (to which he was not named) established on 7 Dec. to hear the evidence of Robert Cragg, one of Monmouth’s agents in the spring of 1685, about the attempts of James II’s government to suborn him after his arrest into testifying against Delamer, Stamford, Devonshire and other associates of Monmouth.
Neglect and disillusionment, 1690-4
By the time of William III’s first Parliament in the spring of 1690 Delamer’s extreme and unyielding Whig views, so important in helping to effect the Revolution and the transfer of the crown, were looking less attractive to a government increasingly bent on bringing moderate Tories into the ministry. Delamer’s ineffectiveness as a military leader and at the exchequer and treasury board (where his attendance stood at only 48 per cent), and his constant bickering with the first lord of the treasury, Charles Mordaunt, earl of Monmouth (later 3rd earl of Peterborough), all further harmed his reputation at court.
Warrington was angered by the neglect shown him and expressed his resentment to the lord president of the council, Carmarthen, of ‘the small regard which the king has given to my advice and opinion’ when he had ventured so much for the king, especially when ‘preference is shown to those who justly rendered themselves suspected as the king’s opponents’.
I was and am of opinion that the king made a very wrong step when he employed so many of that party [Tories], because it would unavoidably abate the zeal of many of his friends, and I fear it has had this further bad effect, to make those people believe that either he is afraid of them, or that they are necessary to him.
He further argued that country Whigs such as himself, who had the Protestant religion and the interests of the nation at heart, were the king’s true friends, as opposed to the Tories and to the growing band of court Whigs, whom he also distrusted.
King William does now so much endeavour to depress the reputation of all men that are of that principle [the Whigs], and to baffle the doctrine that kings hold their crowns upon condition, that it looks more like a fault than merit to have been a sufferer in the late times, whilst at the same time he chiefly employs men of a contrary opinion.
Here he even put forth the previously unthinkable position that a reconciliation between the Whigs and James II might be possible, and even preferable, in the light of William III’s unwarranted betrayal of his most fervent and active supporters.
In the session of spring 1690, where he came to all but two meetings and was named to 11 select committees, Warrington was still primarily concerned with the stability of the new regime in the face of the perceived Jacobite threat, regardless of what he may personally have thought of William’s actions. On 5 Apr. 1690 he entered his protest against the rejection of an amendment confirming the acts of the Convention in the bill for recognizing William and Mary as sovereigns. Throughout the first two weeks of May he was closely involved in the proceedings surrounding the bill for the oath of abjuration, which he saw as a means ‘that it might be known who [is] for King James and who not’. On 5 May he told in the division on the motion that there should be no penalty in the bill disabling any person refusing to take the oaths from sitting or voting in Parliament, and a week later he was named to a committee assigned to draw up a clause for the bill which would set out the terms by which the requirement that all civil and military officers take the oaths would be enforced.
Warrington came to just over two-thirds of the meetings in 1690-1, when he was named to 24 select committees and continued to be involved in legislation designed to distinguish the Revolution’s friends from its enemies. On 6 Oct. 1690 he voted again against the discharge of Peterborough and James Cecil, 4th earl of Salisbury, from their imprisonment in the Tower, with Carmarthen adding the comment ‘he would not lose his lieutenancy which supports his popularity’.
He was in the House for just over two-thirds of the sittings in the following session of 1692-3, where he was named to 22 select committees and 30 Nov. 1692 was appointed to a subcommittee appointed to draw up a clause for the Bill of Indemnity. He subscribed to the protest of 23 Dec. against the decision to reverse the decree in Leach v. Thompson and throughout December chaired committees on a number of private estate bills and on the bill to confirm the charters of Oxford University.
Initially, Warrington showed the same enthusiasm and diligence in the House during the 1693-4 session. On 14 Dec. 1693 he chaired a long committee meeting which heard counsel for both sides debating the Gardiner estate bill, but he last sat in the House four days later, on 18 Dec. 1693, after only 24 days of attendance.