TUFTON, Nicholas (1631-79)

Nicholas Tufton, Lord Tufton, was, unlike his father John Tufton, 2nd earl of Thanet, an active royalist and was preparing to raise his family’s county of Kent, and the rest of the south, for Penruddock’s Rising when he was apprehended and imprisoned in the Tower from March to December 1655 and again, still under suspicion, from September 1656 to June 1658. Clifford Diaries, 125, 130, 137, 142; Hatton Corresp. i. 14. He maintained some local office in Kent after the Restoration, frequently being placed on commissions for sewers for the many waterways in the south-eastern counties. TNA, C 181/7, pp. 60, 62, 71, 72, 354, 489, 541, 552, 561, 578, 605. But he became more involved in an ancient family squabble involving substantial landholdings and influence in the northern counties of England as a result of his marriage on 11 April 1664 to Elizabeth Boyle, whose mother, Elizabeth Clifford, was suo jure Baroness Clifford (by virtue of a writ of summons in 1628 to her father Henry Clifford^†, 5th earl of Cumberland). Elizabeth Clifford was also the cousin of Tufton’s maternal grandmother, Lady Anne Clifford, dowager countess of Dorset and Pembroke, who also claimed to be suo jure Baroness Clifford by the transmission through the heirs general of an earlier barony by a writ of 1299. Chatsworth, Cork mss, misc box 1, Burlington Diary, 11 Apr. and 15 May 1664. Despite the legal wrangling over the Clifford barony and its estates in Westmorland and West Yorkshire that had been going on since 1650, the two baronesses Clifford tried to remain on sociable terms. Lady Anne had even been made godmother of the younger Elizabeth Boyle. The marriage of Elizabeth to Lord Tufton was seen by all parties as a means of uniting the divided estates and the warring branches of the Clifford family, especially after Lord Tufton became the 3rd earl of Thanet by the unexpected death of his father shortly after the marriage. Clifford Diaries, 160–1, 171, 172; Richard T. Spence, Lady Anne Clifford, 235–40. It was his father-in-law, the earl of Cork (and Baron Clifford of Lanesborough in the English peerage), who presented the new earl of Thanet to Charles II and James Stuart, duke of York, to kiss their hands on 14 May 1664, the first day that Thanet attended the House, three days before the session was prorogued. Chatsworth, Cork mss, misc box 1, Burlington Diary, 14 May 1664.

Thanet came to three-quarters of the sitting days of the next session, of 1664–5, but this level of regular attendance, only to be exceeded at the very end of his parliamentary career, was probably because of his need to guide through a potentially controversial private act. His marriage to Elizabeth Boyle had been conducted privately, without the knowledge of his parents, and the dowager countess of Thanet appears to have extracted from him, as a condition of her consent, his agreement to provide maintenance for his five younger brothers. The ‘Act for confirming a deed of settlement between the earl of Thanet and his younger brethren’ was given its first reading on 28 Jan. 1665, was committed three days later and was passed by the House on 13 February. The proceedings on the bill were to show that, despite the marriage, all was not well between the two branches of the Clifford family, as the dowager countess of Thanet complained that Cork was referred to as ‘Lord Clifford’ throughout the bill, without the addition of ‘of Lanesborough’ to distinguish between the various Clifford baronies. She saw this as a derogation of the claims of her mother, Lady Anne Clifford, who herself on 30 May 1663 had petitioned Parliament on this same point, claiming to be the sole heir general of the original Baron Clifford and insisting that Cork distinguish his title from hers by the addition ‘of Lanesborough’.

Cork appears to have agreed to be referred to by his Irish title, but when he discovered that Thanet had told a committee of the Commons considering the bill that Cork had agreed to remove the offending term ‘Lord Clifford’ from the bill he flew into a rage against his son-in-law. Telling him he ‘would rather suffer the act to miscarry than to suffer such an injury’, Cork insisted that he continue to be referred to as ‘Lord Clifford’ in the bill, but agreed to have the distinguishing addition ‘of Lanesborough’. He consented to this on condition that Thanet formally sign an engagement before the attorney general that Cork’s styling himself ‘Clifford of Lanesborough’ would not prejudice him in case he ever chose to claim the ancient honour. Cork’s fellow peers in the House agreed to this alteration when the bill was returned from the lower chamber on 27 Feb. and the lord privy seal, John Robartes, Baron Robartes (later earl of Radnor), led the committee which set out reasons to justify this change to the Commons. In the free conference on 1 Mar., Robartes and the House’s managers were able to convince the Commons to accept the amended wording, just in time to allow the bill to receive the royal assent at the prorogation of Parliament the following day. Ibid. 1, 16, 18, 20 and 23 Feb. 1665.

After that burst of activity Thanet completely dropped out of significant parliamentary business for over a decade, probably impeded by illness, or at least suspected illness, as John Aubrey, whose antiquarian researches Thanet began to patronize from around 1670, considered him ‘much hypochondriac’. Boyle Corresp. ed. Hunter, iv. 319–20; Eg. 2231, ff. 260–9; A. Powell, John Aubrey and His Friends, 132, 138, 144–5. Certainly illness was the excuse that Thanet used when explaining to his kinsman Richard Sackville, 5th earl of Dorset, his absence from the session which met at Oxford in October 1665. Kent HLC (CKS), U269/C25/2. He was well enough, however, to attend the court of the lord high steward convened on 30 Apr. 1666 to try Thomas Parker, 15th Baron Morley. Here he was one of only three peers who did not concur with the majority verdict of ‘not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter’, but further refined this by finding Morley ‘not guilty of murder but of manslaughter in his own defence’. Stowe 396, ff. 178–90; HEHL, EL 8398, 8399. He was also considered healthy enough to be appointed a captain of horse to defend the south-eastern coast against Dutch invasion in July 1666. CSP Dom. 1665–6, p. 557.

But these activities in 1666 were Thanet’s last interventions in public life until January 1674. He registered his proxy with his father-in-law, by this time earl of Burlington in the English peerage, on 9 Nov. 1667, three days before the articles of impeachment against Burlington’s friend and ally Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, were brought up from the Commons. Burlington had his proxy again in the session of late 1669, though the exact date of registration is not recorded. Over the next few years there was a serious falling out between Burlington and the eccentric Thanet, probably owing to Thanet’s maltreatment of Burlington’s daughter. There had been charges within the Boyle family as early as June 1667 that he was failing to supply her with an allowance adequate for her position and birth, ‘and him in very wine for his house when strangers come’. Add. 75354, ff. 44–45, 74–77. More serious accusations were to follow. The sources are oblique, but it appears that in 1671–2 Thanet was suspected of having tried to poison Burlington’s daughter, and perhaps even Burlington himself, through the agency of a servant. Burlington agreed to preserve Thanet from public ignominy only because his daughter insisted on continuing to live with him. Hatton Corresp. i. 73; Chatsworth, Cork mss, misc box 1, Burlington Diary, 23 Oct. 1671, 11 Mar., 13, 17 Nov. 1672.

No longer enjoying Burlington’s favour, on 3 Mar. 1673 Thanet switched his proxy to his cousin Dorset, and in July found it prudent to procure a pass to travel abroad ‘for the recovery of his health’ (and perhaps his reputation). CSP Dom. 1673, p. 449. He had returned by January 1674, for he sat again in the House on two occasions in the session of early 1674, on 27 and 29 January. He returned to the House for three sittings in the first week of March 1677 during the frequently adjourned session of 1677–8. Perhaps surprised by the reappearance of this long-absent member, the House named him to three committees on his first day of sitting, 3 Mar. 1677. Around this time Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of Shaftesbury, considered Thanet ‘worthy’, but this view may have been influenced by the negotiations that Shaftesbury was undertaking with Thanet in the spring of 1677 for the lease of the Tuftons’ London residence, Thanet House, located on Aldersgate Street and conveniently close to the radical Whigs in London. Haley, Shaftesbury, 410–11; HMC 7th Rep. 468. Whether this transaction reveals any sympathy on Thanet’s part with Shaftesbury’s political aims cannot be known with any certainty, but it is probably significant that on 2 Mar. 1678 Thanet registered his proxy for the remainder of the session with Denzil Holles, Baron Holles, a leading member of the presbyterian group in Parliament, although a crossed-out marginal annotation in the manuscript minutes for 7 Mar. 1678 indicates that at one point there was a query of some sort surrounding this proxy. PH, xxviii. 440.

By the terms of the will of Lady Anne Clifford the Clifford lands in Westmorland, and the county’s hereditary shrievalty, were to go immediately to Lady Anne’s daughter Margaret, dowager countess of Thanet, and the lands in Craven in Yorkshire to Alathea Compton, the last heir of Lady Anne’s other daughter, Isabella, late wife of James Compton, 3rd earl of Northampton. The reversion of both these estates was bequeathed to Thanet’s younger brothers in turn, starting with his next brother, John Tufton, later 4th earl of Thanet, who was also Lady Anne’s favourite grandchild. Shortly after the death of Lady Anne in March 1676, Thanet’s own mother died. She had confirmed the terms of her mother’s will in her own testament, and John Tufton consequently inherited the Clifford estates in Westmorland.

In mid-October 1678 Thanet’s cousin Alathea Compton died underage and unmarried. With her death the Clifford estates in Craven also in turn reverted, according to the will of Lady Anne Clifford, to Thanet’s younger brother John. Despite Lady Anne’s explanation in her will that she had excluded Thanet from the reversion of the northern estates because he already had sufficient property in the south, he did not accept the terms of his grandmother’s and mother’s wills and successfully sued John in the courts to reclaim possession of the Westmorland lands and shrievalty, albeit briefly. On Alathea’s death Thanet inherited the title of Lord Clifford (1299), which had been held in abeyance between the two daughters of Lady Anne Clifford and their heirs since her death in 1676. Upon the young woman’s death without children, the title of Lord Clifford reverted solely to Thanet, heir male of the older daughter. As this contentious point on the Clifford title, and indeed on the doctrine of the heritability of baronies by writ through the female line, was only decided and declared by the House on 12 Dec. 1691, it is not surprising that Thanet himself was not aware of this inheritance and never used the title during his lifetime. Spence, Lady Anne Clifford, 245.

Perhaps because of his wish to stake his claim to the Clifford lands, for which he might need the sympathy of his fellow peers, Thanet from this point began to attend the House quite frequently. In so doing he belied Shaftesbury’s judgment of him as ‘worthy’, as he consistently voted with the court and the ministry of Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later duke of Leeds). He attended 32 per cent of the sittings of the last session of the Cavalier Parliament in the winter of 1678 and was named to no committees, but on 26 Dec. he voted in favour of the amendment in the Disbandment bill that would place the money raised in the exchequer. The following day he voted against the motion to commit the impeached Danby. In the weeks preceding the Exclusion Parliament, Danby saw Thanet as one who would support him in his impeachment hearings. Thanet was present at 89 per cent of the sitting days in the session which began on 15 Mar. 1679 – the highest attendance rate of his parliamentary career – and was named to two committees, one of them for the bill to prevent Danby ‘taking undue advantage’ from his office by pleading a royal pardon at his impeachment hearings. Throughout April 1679 Thanet voted against the bill to attaint Danby if he did not surrender himself and later opposed the proposal to establish a joint committee to consider the method of trying the impeached lords. On 3 May he brought a complaint of breach of privilege before the House. This arose from the dispute between him and his brother John over the inheritance of the Clifford lands. He successfully convinced his fellow peers that Tufton’s stewards in Westmorland had infringed his privilege by evicting a tenant from land and housing which, so Thanet claimed, rightfully belonged to him. HMC Lords, i. 141. On 27 May he probably voted for the right of the bishops to stay in the House during capital cases.

Thanet did not have long to enjoy his victory over his brother’s pretensions, as he died childless only a few months later, on 24 Nov. 1679, during the prorogation of the Parliament elected earlier that summer. In his brief will he left his personal estate to his wife and executrix, Elizabeth, Lady Thanet (who ironically, considering the accusations of 1671–2, survived him by almost 50 years) and left his fee simple lands to be divided equally among his three younger brothers, Richard, Thomas and Sackville Tufton, leaving out his heir, John. This was probably because John was already amply provided for, inheriting by the third earl’s death the Thanet title, the entailed Tufton estates in Kent and Sussex and the Clifford lands in Westmorland and Craven specifically bequeathed to him by his grandmother.