‘The most dissolute man in London’, 1661-88
One of the ‘Immortal Seven’ of Whig hagiography, Devonshire cut quite a figure in late Stuart England. John Macky informed his Hanoverian contacts in 1702-3 that he:
Was always a firm assertor of the liberties of his country, and the protestant religion, for which he met with several hardships in King James’s reign. … He hath been the finest and handsomest gentleman of his time; loves the ladies and plays; keeps a noble house and equipage; is tall, well made, and of a princely behaviour. Of nice honour in everything but the paying of his tradesmen.
Macky, Mems. 18.
In most aspects of his life he was as flamboyant, ‘princely’ and indeed as baroque as the great palace of Chatsworth whose rebuilding he oversaw in the wilds of the Peak District. A renowned duellist, womanizer, gambler, and leader of society in London, Derbyshire and Newmarket, he was also an active politician. As one of the key figures in the opposition to James Stuart, both as duke of York and as James II, and a principal follower of William of Orange, he founded one of the great Whig aristocratic dynasties of Britain. He has been venerated by subsequent Whig historians but to many of his contemporaries, at least to the scurrilous poets of Grub Street, Devonshire was seen primarily as a courtier, a sycophantic lord steward to both William III and Anne, and a willing participant, if not a leader, in the ostentatious sexual debauchery of court life. Even one of his more recent biographers sees him, in the period after the Revolution, as primarily an idle courtier, arguing that the lord stewardship was ‘a ministerial position of no great administrative importance but one which provided good opportunities for profit and political patronage’. He concludes that ‘the trappings of power and position aside, Devonshire does not emerge as a major player in the politics of the later Stuart era’.
As the eldest son and heir of the 3rd earl of Devonshire, he was styled Lord Cavendish from the time of his birth in 1641. His father took advice from his own former tutor and retainer Thomas Hobbes on his son’s education. Cavendish was well educated and enjoyed an extended continental tour 1657-60, during which he developed tastes in art and architecture which were later expressed in his rebuilding of the family seat of Chatsworth. After his return Cavendish was married to Lady Mary Butler, who brought with her a portion of £6,000. His father ensured the young man’s return, while still underage, to the Cavalier Parliament as knight of the shire for Derbyshire. Cavendish did exercise some local influence despite his increasing time spent in the capital. Throughout his career in the Commons he was consistently placed on the commissions established by Parliament to collect the assessment in Derbyshire and in 1662 he was also put on the commission to relieve the royalist ‘loyal and indigent officers’ in the county.
Behind this superficial reconciliation, Cavendish never did fully submit to any of his paternal figures – father, father-in-law or king – before the death of the 3rd earl in 1684. Now earl of Devonshire, he inherited the entailed estates which the 3rd earl had protected, consolidated and expanded so effectively during his life.
When the House reconvened on 9 Nov. 1685, Devonshire laid before the House the petition of Henry Booth, 2nd Baron Delamer for his release from the Tower. In the ‘considerable’ debate that followed, Devonshire, aided by Arthur Annesley* [114], earl of Anglesey, argued that the Lords themselves should answer the petition without consulting the king, and was ‘very hot’ against George Savile, marquess of Halifax, who thought that the king should be informed.
During the long prorogation Devonshire remained a highly visible and flamboyant figure, involved in some notable, if not notorious, events of James II’s reign. In early January 1686 he held a sumptuous ball at Montagu House, which he was then renting from Ralph Montagu, 3rd Baron Montagu. A few days later Montagu House was burned to the ground. Montagu launched a legal action against Devonshire in an attempt to recoup £30,000 in compensation but voluntarily withdrew his suit on 21 Apr. 1687 when Devonshire’s witnesses established that Montagu’s own servants had been responsible for the fire.
More serious problems arose for Devonshire from his dispute with Thomas Colepeper, an army officer and engineer who had eloped in 1662 with a daughter and co-heir of Devonshire’s neighbour John Frescheville, Baron Frescheville. Colepeper always maintained that the Derbyshire estate of Staveley, which Frescheville had sold to Devonshire in 1680, should have gone to his wife as Frescheville’s heir.
Devonshire refused to pay his fine or even to remain incarcerated and in a show of defiance managed to leave the prison to return to Derbyshire for the summer. In a provocative letter sent to the secretary of state Charles Middleton‡, 2nd earl of Middleton [S], he insisted that he was not ‘escaping’ prison, as he was still paying for his lodging there, and insisted strongly on the right of the peerage not to be imprisoned for debt.
Revolutionary leader, 1688-9
Both Morrice and Bonrepaus were wrong, for the heavy bond of £30,000 hanging over him only strengthened Devonshire’s opposition to the king and increased his communications with William of Orange’s agent Dijkvelt and eventually with the prince himself.
Devonshire spent much of the autumn in Derbyshire consulting and preparing for the intended invasion. Under the encouragement of one of his co-signers of the invitation, Henry Compton, bishop of London, Devonshire had a series of meetings with his old adversary Danby (another signatory) in October 1688. Together they plotted to co-ordinate risings for William in the north. After William’s landing in Devon on 5 Nov., Devonshire entered Derby with a troop of about 200 horse, then moved on to Nottingham on 20 Nov., where he met the Leicestershire peer Thomas Grey, 2nd earl of Stamford, and two days later was joined by Delamer. A split between Delamer and Devonshire quickly appeared, as the firebrand Cheshire peer was dissatisfied with Devonshire’s caution and secrecy, ‘for the earl minded his pleasures too much, and had kept his purposes for the prince within himself, and had not communicated them to such noblemen and gentlemen before he came thither… nor did he suddenly publish them after he came thither’. Delamer and Stamford quickly marched with their troops to join William’s army, leaving Devonshire in control of Nottingham. Over the following days Devonshire’s ‘army’ swelled to about a thousand as other local peers and gentry brought into Nottingham their own followers, but the most significant, and unexpected, arrival in the town was James II’s daughter, Princess Anne. Devonshire now had to turn his attention to protecting the princess. The situation was complicated by the arrival of the prickly loyalist Philip Stanhope, 2nd earl of Chesterfield, who came with the express purpose of protecting Anne, but showed little enthusiasm for the larger project of rebellion. All the peers present in the town agreed to accompany Anne to the safe haven of Oxford but tensions quickly erupted between Chesterfield and Devonshire. After reaching Oxford, Devonshire and his entourage almost immediately turned to march to London, upon learning of William’s arrival on the outskirts of the capital.
Devonshire arrived in London with the princess on or about 19 Dec. 1689 and immediately joined William’s coterie in the delicate negotiations of that period.
During the long debate on 24 Dec. 1688 on whether the assembly of peers could be allowed to see the letter James had written to his secretary of state Middleton before his flight, Devonshire cast doubt on its usefulness, as it was intended as a private letter. He suggested instead that the peers ask James’s gentleman of the bedchamber (and Devonshire’s second cousin) Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, what he knew of the king’s departure. In the discussions on how to summon a Parliament or convention in the absence of the king, Devonshire frequently repeated the central question of the Williamites’ argument: ‘whether the king’s withdrawing and absenting himself from the government, and leaving all things in this confusion, be a demise in law?’ Clarendon, in his account of these deliberations, placed Devonshire at the head of ‘those who were most bitter and fierce’ against James, along with Montagu, Delamer and Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis. When it was finally decided that the Prince of Orange would be addressed to summon a convention by means of circular letters to be directed to the counties and boroughs and to take on the ‘administration’ of the realm in the interim, Devonshire further moved that only Protestant peers should be admitted to the proposed convention and that the king be requested to take over the administration of both England and Ireland, as well as of the public revenue. The address was accepted by William the following day.
Devonshire was present on the first day of the Convention, on 22 Jan. 1689, when he was appointed to a committee of 14 assigned to draw up an address of thanks to William for his message of that day. He became a key figure and manager in the protracted debates which led to the passage of the resolution of the crisis and the crowning of William and Mary. It was Devonshire who on 25 Jan. skilfully engineered a delay in the debate on the state of the nation and the disposition of the crown, arguing that the House should wait until the Commons had first deliberated. It was he who devised the resolution of 28 Jan. that ensured the House would not take up the matter until the following day. In this he was supported by Halifax and Charles Powlett, 6th marquess of Winchester, but opposed ‘with great warmth’ by Clarendon, Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester and others ‘with great reflections upon Devonshire’s motion, as if the Lords were only to take aim from the gentlemen below’.
The delay allowed the Williamites to take the initiative. In the four crucial divisions in the committee of the whole House over 29-31 Jan. 1689, Devonshire told on behalf of William’s supporters in opposition to Clarendon. Thus, on the 29th he voted and told against the regency; on the 30th he told for the majority in favour of retaining the words ‘that the throne is thereby vacant’ in the motion; on the following day he voted and told for the losing side in favour of inserting the words declaring William and Mary to be king and queen, and told in favour of agreeing with the Commons’ words declaring the throne ‘vacant’. Devonshire additionally signed the protest against the defeat of the latter motion. On 4 Feb. he told for the minority in favour of agreeing with the Commons’ use of the word ‘abdicated’ and he later subscribed to the protest against the rejection of the word ‘vacant’ as well. Ironically, he was subsequently added to the committee assigned to draw up reasons for the House’s rejection of the Commons’ wording to be presented at a conference on 6 February. On that day he voted with the majority that James had abdicated and that the throne was vacant. He was one of those who seconded Winchester’s motion that the prince and princess of Orange be declared king and queen of England.
While involved in ensuring William and Mary’s accession to the throne Devonshire was involved in another project to discredit the rule of the Stuart brothers. On 23 Jan. 1689, the second day of the Convention’s business, he was named to a committee of ten to examine and report on the alleged murder of Arthur Capell, earl of Essex, in 1683. He quickly became its leading member and between 23 Jan. and 4 Feb. he chaired three meetings of this committee in which extensive evidence was heard implicating Sunderland in Essex’s death. On 5 Feb. Devonshire moved that a smaller group of the original committee be appointed to continue examining the case. Devonshire, not surprisingly, was one of this ‘close committee’, along with his fellow Williamites Delamer, Charles Mordaunt, 2nd Viscount Mordaunt and William Russell, 5th earl of Bedford, his son’s father-in-law. This committee continued to meet and gather evidence throughout the first weeks of the Convention.
Courtier and parliamentary manager, 1689
Devonshire was quickly rewarded for his exertions to secure the throne for the new monarchs. On 14 Feb. 1689 he was sworn to William’s Privy Council, where he quickly took a place in the council’s sub-committees on Ireland and on trade and plantations.
Devonshire also used the House for his own advantage. In April the committee for privileges took into consideration ‘the great injury done to the privileges of the peers’ by the judgment for £30,000 levelled against him in the previous reign. On 22 Apr. the committee’s resolution that the proceedings against Devonshire had been ‘a violation of the privileges of peers’ was reported to the House. The judges of king’s bench involved in the case came before the House on 6 May, when the House further resolved that the court, in overruling Devonshire’s initial plea of privilege, ‘did thereby commit a manifest breach of the privilege of Parliament’, and that the fine of £30,000 was ‘excessive and exorbitant, against Magna Charta, the common right of the subject, and the law of the land, and that no peer of this realm at any time ought to be committed for the non-payment of a fine to the king’.
Devonshire was soon further rewarded with posts of responsibility. He was, perhaps belatedly, made lord lieutenant of Derbyshire, in the place of James’s man, Scarsdale. He was also appointed one of the commissioners assigned to inspect the state of the army in their quarters before the campaigns that summer.
Devonshire returned to the House on 9 July 1689. On 15 July he added to Delamer’s proxy (vacated on 20 July) that of William Richard George Stanley* [1370], 9th earl of Derby, which was vacated on 2 August. On 12 July he was first appointed a reporter for a conference on the Bill of Rights, as it came to be known, and consequently took part in two more, on 20 and 31 July. In the first week of the following month he was a manager for two conferences on the bill for attainting people deemed to be in rebellion. The bill for the reversal of the judgments against Titus Oates took up much of his attention. On 11 July he was placed on a sub-committee to devise the controversial amendment to the bill which aimed to ensure that Oates could never testify in court again.
Devonshire missed the first few days of the session which began on 23 Oct. 1689, first attending on the last day of October. He sat for just under three-quarters of it and was named to eight select committees. Carmarthen (as Danby had become) classed him as among the supporters of the court in a list of October 1689 to February 1690. In late November Devonshire was instrumental in introducing a rider, ultimately defeated, to the Bill of Rights which would have prevented the monarch granting pardons to those under impeachment.
On the Council of Nine, 1690
In the elections following the dissolution of 6 Feb. 1690, Devonshire does not appear to have been very active, possibly because his sons were as yet too young to participate. He was present on the first day of the new Parliament on 20 Mar 1690 and proceeded to sit in all but five of the first session’s 54 sittings, during which he was named to eight select committees. On 26 Mar. he joined other ministers, such as Halifax, Nottingham, Carmarthen and Charles Talbot, 12th earl of Shrewsbury, in arguing against the bill brought in by the duke of Bolton (as Winchester had become) that recognized William and Mary as ‘rightful and lawful’ king and queen. Such a formulation was bound to upset the delicate alliance with the Tories that William had been at pains to establish.
Following the adjournment of 23 May 1690, Devonshire was appointed one of the council of nine who were to assist the queen in governing the realm during the king’s absence on campaign.
The rule of the council of nine became notorious for its disunity and in-fighting, particularly between the Whigs and Tories. Mary did not think a great deal of any of her councillors, as she made clear in her own memoirs, where she described Devonshire as one whom ‘the king had … recommended as … might be trusted and must be complimented, but … I found weak and obstinate, made a mere tool by a party’.
The council was then confronted with the question of who was to command the fleet in Torrington’s absence. It was decided that the command should be put in commission, led by a peer with the assistance of two experienced seamen. Fearful that in the continuing uncertainty Devonshire would put himself forward for the command, Mary decided to nominate the two seamen first, Sir Richard Haddock‡ and Sir John Ashby. In this matter, Devonshire showed that he was not shy of directly opposing the queen to support the partisan goals of the Whigs, which may have been what led her to brand him a ‘tool’ of that party. On 22 July the commissioners of the admiralty, led by the Whig Sir Thomas Lee‡, took the initiative and in a meeting with the queen insisted that they would not sign a commission that included the Tory admiral Haddock. The queen’s anger was made worse when the next day Devonshire came to her to excuse and justify Lee, arguing that the selection of Haddock was ‘a concerted thing’ done by the Tories who had ‘imposed’ him upon the king against the wishes of the Whigs. ‘I was very angry’ wrote Mary, ‘at what Sir Thomas Lee said yesterday; but this is to make me more so, since I see ‘tis not reason, but passion, makes [him] speak thus’. Devonshire still did not give up and ‘complained that people were too much believed that ought not to be so, and we could not agree’.
On another occasion Devonshire angered the queen when he and Monmouth remonstrated with her after she had decided that it was not necessary for her to attend a meeting of the full Privy Council.
They were very pressing; and lord steward told me, there were many there who absolutely told him they would not speak but before me; that they were privy councillors, established by law; and did not know why they should be refused my presence. I answered them at first as civilly as I could, and as calmly, but being much pressed, I grew a little peevish, and told them, that between us I must own I thought it a humour in some there, which I did not think myself bound to please. … But all I could say would not satisfy them; and had not Lord Nottingham come in, I believe they would not have left me so soon.
Again, in early August, Devonshire and Monmouth, surprisingly confident of the certainty of Whig electoral success, urged on Mary the dissolution of Parliament: ‘for this one he is sure will do no good … I see it is a thing they’ (undoubtedly meaning the Whigs) ‘are mightily set upon’, Mary commented to William.
Court Whig, 1690-93
Devonshire’s pleas were to no avail and the Parliament was not dissolved. During the 1690-1 session he came to 58 per cent of the sittings and was nominated to six select committees, including that on 20 Oct. 1690 to draft a resolution confirming that Torrington’s commitment, like Devonshire’s before the Revolution, was a breach of privilege.
Devonshire returned with the king to England in April 1691 and on 1 May he helped to interrogate Matthew Crone and Richard Grahme‡, Viscount Preston [S], and other recently-apprehended Jacobites. Embarrassingly Preston claimed in his wide-ranging confession that his colleague William Penn had told him that Devonshire, Dorset, Shrewsbury and other leading Whig adherents of William III were also in contact with St Germain and ‘well affected’ to James II. Carmarthen tried to use these allegations to damage his enemies, including Devonshire, but there is no evidence beyond Preston’s hearsay account to suggest that Devonshire had made approaches to the Jacobite court and William did not countenance this line of attack. When the king left shortly afterwards in mid-May to return to the continent for that summer’s campaigning, Devonshire was once again named to the small cabinet council entrusted to assist and advise the queen in the government of the realm. He also had thoughts of promotion in the peerage. The death of his kinsman Henry Cavendish, 2nd duke of Newcastle, without male heirs in late July spurred talk that the loyal Devonshire would be further rewarded with the now extinct dukedom of Newcastle.
Devonshire appears to have remained in the capital on cabinet business until about 9 September.
Devonshire was again placed on the regency council to advise the queen during the king’s absence on campaign that summer. In early May 1692 he was also appointed lord lieutenant of Nottinghamshire, a position that had been vacant since the early death of William Pierrepont, 4th earl of Kingston in September 1690. The summer saw another invasion scare which led to the apprehension and commitment of suspected Jacobite sympathizers such as Theophilus Hastings, 7th earl of Huntingdon, and John Churchill, earl of Marlborough. Devonshire was among those councillors who refused to sign the arrest warrant for Marlborough and, after the crisis had been dissipated by the allied naval victories at Barfleur and La Hogue, Marlborough looked to him for help in procuring his bail.
Devonshire was present in the House on the opening day of the next session, 4 Nov. 1692, and attended over three-quarters of the total sittings. He held the proxy of Derby from 10 Nov. for the remainder of the session. He was placed on the drafting committee for the address of thanks on 17 November. That day also saw him appeal, together with John Cecil, 5th earl of Exeter, against a chancery decree in a suit with the executrix and creditors of Philip Warwick (son of Sir Philip Warwick‡), which appeal was rejected on 12 December.
In the partisan conflict between Russell and Nottingham over the failed descent on France that summer, Devonshire at first opposed the latter. On 7 Dec. 1692 the House divided on a motion to form a joint committee of both Houses to examine the papers submitted by Nottingham in his defence. This motion was rejected by a majority of 12 but Devonshire sided with Nottingham’s opponents Shrewsbury, Monmouth and John Sheffield, 3rd earl Mulgrave in voting for it.
Devonshire’s role as a court Whig entrusted to espouse the king’s interest in the House came into stark relief over the debate on the place bill in late 1692 and early 1693. The measure had long been strenuously opposed by William and the ministry. On the last day of 1692 Devonshire voted against the motion to commit the bill, and on 3 Jan. 1693 he voted against its passage. Bonet, the ambassador for the Brandenburg Court, gave his masters a detailed account of the debates surrounding the bill and singled out Carmarthen, Nottingham and Hans Willem Bentinck, earl of Portland, as the ‘principals’ among the bill’s enemies, ‘to whom were joined three considerable Whigs, but all three of the cabinet council, and very well informed of the intentions of his majesty’ – these were Devonshire, Dorset and Sidney Godolphin, Baron Godolphin – ‘to whom must be added Lord Sunderland as a good courtier’.
Not all of Devonshire’s involvement in the House involved his promotion of the court’s interest. On 2 Jan. 1693 he voted against the reading of the divorce bill of Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk. Perhaps, as Burnet suggested, the infamous womanizer Devonshire, with many illegitimate children already to his name, opposed the bill in solidarity with the adulterous duchess of Norfolk.
Devonshire was again part of Queen Mary’s council to help govern the realm after the king departed in April 1693. He was a member of the delegation of six sent to Portsmouth in May which made the disastrous decision to assign the main allied fleet to accompany the Turkey merchant ships which resulted in the loss of the Smyrna fleet.
‘The turn to the Whigs’ and a dukedom, 1693-5
Devonshire came to the House for the 1693-4 session on its first day, 7 Nov. 1693, and a week later was entrusted with the proxy of Derby which he held until that earl’s return to the House on 13 Mar. 1694. Devonshire sat in just over two-thirds of its meetings, where he continued to obstruct the country measures the king disliked so much. William having vetoed the triennial bill at the end of the previous session, Monmouth brought in an identical bill in early December 1693. Devonshire proposed a rider, most likely as a wrecking amendment, which stated that a session might be considered to have been held even if no act or legal judgment were passed. The bill, with Devonshire’s rider, passed the House and even made headway through the Commons before being defeated in late December.
The matter which took up most of Devonshire’s, and the House’s, attention during the winter of 1693-4 was the investigation into the loss of the Smyrna fleet. The king’s failure to respond to a request for papers meant that on 29 Dec. 1693 the House ‘intimated’ to the lord steward specifically that they expected the king’s answer immediately. Devonshire reported on 2 Jan. 1694 the king’s answer that the papers were then being considered by the Commons, but would be laid before the House after the lower chamber was finished with them. On 8 Jan. he also reported the king’s positive response to the address requesting the further papers. Two days later, after hearing copious evidence from the admirals, the House resolved that ‘the admirals who commanded the fleet the last summer have done well in the execution of the orders they received’. Devonshire joined in the protest against this resolution. Both the vote and the protest had a strongly partisan edge for the two admirals thus exonerated – Sir Ralph Delaval‡ and Henry Killigrew‡ -- were associated with the Tories, whilst most of the protesters were Whigs. On 15 Jan. Devonshire was a manager for a conference about the Privy Council’s proceedings with the admirals; he was also named to a committee assigned to draft heads of the arguments to be offered at another conference on the lack of intelligence on the Brest fleet, but was not then named as a manager for this second conference. As late as 15 Feb. he was still involved in this matter, as he served as a teller, against Marlborough on the other side, on a division over whether to put the question on a motion that Nottingham and the Privy Council should have sent intelligence on the Brest fleet to the admirals. On 22 Feb. Devonshire introduced a private estate bill to allow him to sell or mortgage part of his entailed estate so that a higher maintenance could be provided for his middle son Lord Henry Cavendish‡. Devonshire’s old friend Cornwallis reported the bill fit to pass with some amendments on 28 February. The bill was rejected at a third reading in the Commons on 9 Apr. by 100-85 votes.
Devonshire was also heavily involved in the mutiny bill. On 2 Mar. he reported from the committee assigned to draw up a clause for the bill that they had ‘found difficulty in the case’ and had ‘not come to any conclusion’, whereupon the committee of the whole House took over. The bill passed the Lords on the following day, and when it was returned by the Commons on 6 Mar. Devonshire was named a manager for a conference on the bill. On the 7th he was appointed to a committee to draw up the reasons for the Lords’ insistence on their amendments. This committee was revived on 22 Mar. although this was not formally noted in the Journal, and then again on 27 March. After a further conference on 29 March, for which Devonshire was also named as a manager, the Commons receded from its objections to the amendments.
Shortly before William’s departure for the continent in early May 1694 he signed warrants for creations and elevations of various of his most faithful ministers and courtiers.
Devonshire was present on the first day of the following session, 12 Nov. 1694, when he was introduced as duke of Devonshire between his nephew, Ormond and Meinhard Schomberg, 3rd duke of Schomberg. The following day he and Charles Lennox, duke of Richmond, introduced the new duke of Newcastle to the House and on 8 Dec. he performed the same function for his kinsman Bedford, also created a duke, this time assisted by Bolton. With this new honour Devonshire was more than usually active and came to three-quarters of the sittings of this session. He signed a protest on 10 Dec. 1694 against the resolution to reverse the judgment given in king’s bench in favour of Arthur Bury against Robert Phillips and two days later he received the proxy, for the third time in as many years, of Derby, which was eventually vacated by Derby’s return on 26 Feb. 1695. On 18 Dec. 1694 he joined three other normally Tory peers – Halifax, Ailesbury, and Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth – in signing a protest against the passage of the Triennial Act. It is almost certain that his protest derived more from his general opposition to this bill itself, as seen in previous sessions, than to the specific reason given in the protest – the failure to move the terminal date of the current Parliament from 1696 back to 1695. At the death of the queen on 28 Dec. 1694, he was named to the committee to draft the address of condolence to the king and to the delegation to ask William when he would be ready to receive the address. It was Devonshire himself who the following day told the House that the king would receive the House and its address in two days’ time, on the last day of the year.
On 11 Jan. 1695 Devonshire was placed on the committee of ten members to draw up an address to the king on the claim of Sir Richard Verney, later 11th Baron Willoughby de Broke, to that barony. On 19 Jan. he joined seven other peers in protesting against the decision not to engross the bill to make perjury a felony in some cases. On 26 Feb. the House presented an address to the king calling for the papers concerning the naval expedition of the previous summer to be laid before the House; Devonshire and Dorset appear to have been the court officials deputed both to deliver the address and to report the king’s answer.
Devonshire was involved in the investigations of bribery and corruption of April and May 1695 which brought William’s second Parliament to a close. On 13 Apr. he was named as a reporter for the conference on the bill to compel Sir Thomas Cooke‡ to account for money disbursed out of the treasury of the East India Company, and four days later he was placed on the committee of seven members to draw up heads for this bill to be offered to the Commons at a further conference, which he helped to manage. When the Commons brought up its articles of impeachment against the duke of Leeds (as Carmarthen had become) on 29 Apr., Devonshire was named to the committee entrusted to inspect the Journal for precedents. On the penultimate day of the session, 2 May, he was named as a manager for the conference on the House’s objections to the Commons’ amendments to the bill to imprison Cooke for malfeasance.
Devonshire was appointed one of the seven lords justices entrusted with the government of the realm during the king’s absence on the continent but he appears most prominently in the letters of that summer (as in so many previous years) not as a minister but as a courtier and social figure at the races at Newmarket or in the social life of the capital and Derbyshire.
The Parliament of 1695-8
Devonshire himself was present on the first day of the new Parliament, 22 Nov. 1695, and went on to attend just under two-thirds of the session. From that first day he also held the proxy of Bedford, which was not vacated until Bedford’s arrived in the House on 2 Jan. 1696. On 30 Dec. he was named to a committee charged with amending clauses to the bill for reforming the coinage. After the bill was passed by the House on 3 Jan. 1696 the same members were deputed to manage the conference at which the bill was returned to the Commons. Devonshire was similarly named a reporter for the conference on 7 Jan. where the Commons stated their objections to the Lords’ amendments; two days later he was placed on committee to draft the reasons for the House’s insistence on its amendments, which were presented at a conference on 11 January. Devonshire subscribed to the protest of 17 Jan. against the resolution to hear the petition of Sir Richard Verney on his claim to the barony of Willoughby de Broke, because ‘the petitioner’s case has been already heard and adjudged in this House upon his former petition’. On 27 Jan. he reported the king’s answer to the address concerning the East India Company’s petition which he had been deputized to deliver four days previously. He was appointed to the large sub-committee established on 7 Feb. to draft new clauses relating to the encouragement of privateers to be added to the bill to continue the act prohibiting trade with France.
Devonshire was placed on the committee assigned on 24 Feb. 1696 to draw up an address expressing the House’s relief for the king’s escape from the assassination plot and was named as a manager of two conferences at which the address was agreed upon with the Commons. He signed the Association on the first day subscription was possible, 27 February. A contemporary newsletter writer claimed that it was Devonshire himself who brought in the finished text of the Association and presented it to the House, while L’Hermitage wrote to his masters in the States-General that in the ensuing debate over the wording of the Association, Devonshire supported some compromise wording put forward by Leeds about whether William III was ‘rightful king’.
Devonshire, once again a lord justice during William’s absence in 1696, was involved in the interrogation of one of the chief Jacobites involved in the plot, Sir John Fenwick‡, 3rd bt, who was apprehended and sent to the Tower on 19 June 1696. Fenwick specifically asked to see the lord steward, who first visited him in the Tower on 7 July and found him willing to make a confession of Jacobite conspiracy – for William’s knowledge only – in exchange for a pardon and the promise that he would not be forced to appear as a witness in future trials. Upon orders from the king, Devonshire interviewed Fenwick on 10 Aug. when the prisoner accused some of the king’s leading ministers and courtiers – Shrewsbury, Godolphin, Marlborough and Edward Russell in particular – of negotiating, or ‘compounding’, with St Germain. Throughout this long affair of many months Devonshire showed a good deal of solicitude in his dealings with Fenwick and his wife, Lady Mary (a distant kinswoman through their mutual connection to the Howards), in contrast to the vituperation directed towards Fenwick by the king and his other ministers. Devonshire was himself shaken by Fenwick’s revelations and he sent a copy of his evidence to William, without showing it to any of those who had been implicated.
Despite Devonshire’s assurances of secrecy, news of Fenwick’s confession quickly leaked out and wild speculation gripped the capital in the late summer about who exactly had been named. Fenwick and his supporters blamed Devonshire himself for this. Thomas White, the former bishop of Peterborough, felt that Fenwick had ‘hearkened too much to the charms of Lord Devonshire’s honour’, only to be deceived by him. Yet Devonshire himself strenuously denied that he had let the information slip out.
In what Vernon considered ‘another unaccountable step’, Devonshire left the capital at the end of September 1696 and he had not returned by the time Parliament reassembled on 20 Oct. 1696. His continued absence further complicated matters as it was thought proper that he should be present at any interview between Fenwick and the king, but Wharton, Somers, and Russell were able to persuade William to interview the suspect himself. This he did in Council on 2 Nov., the day before the lord steward’s intended return. The king turned a deaf ear to Fenwick’s pleas that he be allowed to consult with Devonshire, who had promised him that his testimony was only for William’s ears. As Fenwick refused to say anything more before the full council, William in turn refused to delay his trial any further and dismissed him. Devonshire appears to have cut a chastened and derided figure when he finally arrived in the capital, being snubbed by the king and having his apology and explanation rebuffed by Russell.
Devonshire took his seat for the 1696-7 session on 6 Nov. but even with this late start he still managed to attend 69 per cent of the sittings. Despite his close involvement in the proceedings against Fenwick, the immediate reason for his return to the House on that day was personal, a petition to the House by Normanby against Devonshire’s claim to privilege in a Chancery case depending between them concerning the sale of Berkeley House in Piccadilly. Hearings in this cause were constantly postponed in the House until 10 Dec. when Devonshire declared that he would not insist on his privilege.
In the first weeks of November 1696 Devonshire presented to the House the excuses of John Manners, 9th earl of Rutland.
According to Vernon’s later comments, it seems clear that Devonshire voted for the second reading of the attainder bill on 18 Dec. 1696. When Fenwick appeared before the House on 22 Dec. he refused to testify further without a guarantee of a general pardon for his own actions and a binding assurance that his evidence could not be used against him in other courts and claimed that Devonshire had agreed to this. Devonshire denied it and, demanding that Fenwick be interrogated on his behalf, eventually extracted from the prisoner the admission that no explicit promises had been made; Devonshire had merely not raised objections to Fenwick’s request and assured him he would acquaint the king of his conditions. Fenwick wrote to his wife suggesting that Devonshire and Normanby were taking their dispute about Berkeley House into this other matter, for he implied that Normanby was trying to persuade him to testify that Devonshire explicitly promised him a royal pardon, ‘and they two were like to quarrel about it’. However, Devonshire seems to have become uneasy about the controversial nature of the proceedings. When it became clear that Fenwick would not confess further without guarantees, Devonshire at first moved to change the penalty in the bill from loss of life to perpetual imprisonment, which was seconded by Rochester, an unusual collaboration. That motion having been defeated, on 23 Dec. 1696 Devonshire surprised many contemporaries by voting against the Fenwick attainder bill at its third reading, although he did not subscribe to the subsequent large protest against its passage. In this rejection of the bill he joined, as Vernon put it, ‘all the lords justices who had voices’.
In the last days before his execution on 28 Jan. 1697, Fenwick became increasingly convinced that Devonshire had acted in bad faith and had deserted him, and he put in a last damaging dig against the lord steward in a paper he delivered before his death to the sheriffs of London and Middlesex. He mentions in this account that when he delivered to Devonshire (‘a great man who visited me in the Tower’ as he obliquely refers to him) his first confession against Shrewsbury and the others, Devonshire had assured him that William ‘had been acquainted with most of those things before’ – which was tantamount to claiming that the allegations were true and that Devonshire was involved in a ‘cover-up’.
Devonshire was also involved in the proceedings against Monmouth, who had interfered in the Fenwick affair by delivering to him, via Lady Fenwick and the duchess of Norfolk, papers advising what Fenwick should say, and lines of defence to take, when questioned before the House. According to Vernon, Devonshire, on 15 Jan. 1697, was the first to propose the Tower as a suitable punishment for the wayward earl, ‘but he would have assigned some indiscretion for the cause, which the duke of Leeds and others did not think a reason for sending peers there’.
Following the prorogation on 16 Apr. 1697 Devonshire was one of the nine lords justices appointed to govern the realm while the negotiations for the treaty of Ryswick were being hammered out on the continent. Rumours soon abounded that Devonshire and Montagu were to be sent joint ambassadors to France following the peace, but nothing came of these.
Court or Country peer, 1698-1702
In the summer of 1698 Devonshire was again named as a lord justice. During the election his sons Hartington and Lord Henry Cavendish were again returned.
In the event, Devonshire continued in office and remained active in Parliament. On 21 Apr. 1699 he reported from a conference the Commons’ disagreement with the House’s amendments to the bill for Billingsgate Market. Four days later he was placed on the committee to draft reasons for the House’s adherence to the amendment, and consequently managed the ensuing conference on 27 Apr., after which the Commons withdrew their opposition to the House’s clause. In one of the last acts of the session, Devonshire was placed on the committee of 13 on 4 May that decided that an entry noting the Commons’ refusal to respond to a request for a conference that day should be placed in the Journal. Following the end of the session, Devonshire was again appointed a lord justice of the realm during William’s time on the continent but, as in previous summers, he spent much of it at Chatsworth, where he also had to work to maintain his position, both as ranger of Needwood Forest against the competing claims of Stamford, the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, (an acrimonious dispute which had its origins back in 1698), and as chief justice in eyre north of Trent in face of the rivalry of the duke of Newcastle, the warden of Sherwood Forest.
Devonshire was back in the capital for the opening of the next session of Parliament, on 16 Nov. 1699, and in total came to 58 per cent of that session’s sittings. He was absent for all of January 1700. On 23 Feb. 1700 he voted and protested against the bill to continue the old East India Company as a corporation. At the time of the bill, Devonshire was highly involved in the East Indian trade, being one of only three peers with stock in both companies. He had holdings of more than £2,000 in the old company and an even higher commitment to the new one, having subscribed £6,000, the third largest subscription among the peerage. Shortly afterward he was confronted with a petition from one of his disgruntled workmen on the building works at Chatsworth, Benjamin Jackson, who complained that Devonshire refused to pay him and his workmen and then tried to block legal measures for payment by claiming privilege. Devonshire asked the House on the day the petition was submitted, 11 Mar., that he be allowed to maintain his privilege and the matter was referred to the committee for privileges, in which no further proceedings are recorded.
Vernon noted that Devonshire was opposed to the provisions for the resumption of the Irish land grants ‘tacked’ on to the land tax bill, when the bill’s second reading was debated on 4 Apr. 1700.
When the king left for the continent in late June 1700 Devonshire was again appointed as one of the lords justices.
Devonshire attended 71 per cent of the sittings of this brief Parliament from its second day, 10 Feb, to the prorogation of 24 June 1701. On 17 Feb. he was named as a manager for a conference on the address of thanks and on 20 Mar. he joined the protest against the resolution not to communicate the House’s address on the partition treaty to the Commons. Devonshire was, however, most involved in the attempt to halt the Commons’ impeachment proceedings against Portland and the Junto lords. Whatever his personal relations with individual members of the Junto may have been, these impeachments from the Tory-led Commons were an attack both on the king’s right to choose his own ministers and on fellow members of the peerage. On 16 Apr. Devonshire reported from the committee on the address requesting the king to refrain from punishing or removing the accused peers from office until they had been suitably tried, and, with Henry Sydney, earl of Romney (the two of them ‘greatly in the king’s interest’ as one commentator noted), he was delegated to attend the king with it. Romney reported to the House the following day that the king had received the address without making an answer to it, an unprecedented act ‘at which the House of Lords were somewhat piqued, and thereupon appointed a committee to enquire, if there was any precedent of the king’s silence upon the like occasions’, to which committee Devonshire was appointed.
The impeachments came to a head in early June 1701, with Devonshire to the fore in the campaign against them. On 6 June he reported to the House from the conference at which the Commons’ representative Simon Harcourt, the future Viscount Harcourt, suggested that the differences between the Houses on the conduct of the trials could be resolved by a joint committee of both houses. The already-established committee to consider the method of proceeding with impeachments, to which Devonshire was added on 7 June, was assigned to draw up reasons against the establishment of a joint committee. Stamford reported to the House the reasons on 10 June, but it was Devonshire who managed and reported from the conferences on that day and three days later. This latter was the most tumultuous to date, as Devonshire himself reported to the House, for as Harcourt and Sir Bartholomew Shower‡ were explaining why the Commons could not agree to the House’s arguments, the mercurial Haversham ‘used some expressions, at which the Commons, taking exceptions, abruptly broke up the conference’. Attempts were made to placate the Commons, but they for their part sent their own account of what Haversham had said and insisted he be charged before the House. The House assigned the managers of the conference to draw up a statement of what had happened and to search for precedents of how similar incidents had been settled. Devonshire, as principal manager and reporter of the conference, chaired the committee and reported from it on 14 June, although he and the committee perhaps disingenuously claimed not to remember the offensive words Haversham had allegedly used. At the same time the House continued to insist on its resolution not to allow a committee of both houses and charged ahead in its determination to try Somers and Orford – with or without the cooperation of the Commons. Devonshire was, not surprisingly, one of those who acquitted them at their ‘trials’ on 17 and 23 June respectively.
By this time relations between the two houses had deteriorated so badly and in such acrimony that the king had no choice but to prorogue Parliament on 24 June. Only four days after the prorogation William convened a meeting of the Privy Council, where he once again commissioned Devonshire as one of the lord justices.
In the second general election within a year, held in November, the Cavendish interest had its most severe test yet. The election at Derby was described as ‘the nearest poll was ever seen’ in the borough, and Lord James Cavendish squeaked in by one vote. The county election was similarly close-run but did not end well for Devonshire and his heir. Elements of the Derbyshire gentry had shown a resentment at being represented by two young noblemen and this was exploited by Coke and his new partner, John Curzon‡. Although the Cavendish and Manners interest lavished money on the election, Roos suffered a comprehensive defeat and took Hartington down with him. Following Hartington’s defeat, Devonshire was heard to say that his son having lost in his county he should not stoop so low as to pick up a seat in a borough. He took steps to rectify this humiliation to the family, ordering his agents to take copies of the poll books and search for fraudulent voters in view to a petition. Hartington, ignoring his father’s strictures, managed to return to the Commons through ‘picking up’ the borough seat of Castle Rising in Norfolk.
Devonshire himself was present for the first day of the Parliament, on 30 Dec. 1701 and on the last day of the year he was placed on the committee to draw up an address on that part of the king’s speech which took note of Louis XIV’s recognition of the Pretender as king of England. Early in the new year of 1702 he signed the House’s address condemning this and pledging continued loyalty and support to William. On 6 Feb. 1702 he reported from the conference on the bill for the Pretender’s attainder the objections of the Commons to the inclusion of Mary of Modena in the bill. Devonshire and the other conference managers were assigned to search for precedents to amendments to bills of attainder and to draw up reasons in their defence to be presented in subsequent conferences, which Devonshire helped to manage on 10 and 12 February. On 2 and 7 Mar. 1702 Devonshire was one of the officers of state commissioned by the dying king to give the royal assent to that and other bills passed by both houses.
Reign of Queen Anne, 1702-7
On the day of the king’s death, 8 Mar. 1702, Devonshire appears to have chaired the committee appointed to draft the statement to be offered to the Commons at a conference, as he reported the committee’s order for an immediate proclamation of Queen Anne and later reported the conference itself. On 9 and 13 Mar. he reported the new queen’s responses to addresses and requests sent to her from the House. In a debate on 11 Mar. the Whig Charles Howard, 3rd earl of Carlisle, was ‘smartly replied’ to by Francis North, 2nd Baron Guilford, John Jeffreys, 2nd Baron Jeffreys and Edward Montagu, 3rd earl of Sandwich, among others, for some comments he made about the queen. Devonshire made a sufficiently ‘mollifying speech’ on Carlisle’s behalf to calm tempers and to avoid the earl being censured.
As a faithful servant and officer of William III, Devonshire was prominent at the late king’s funeral in early April, he and Charles Seymour, 6th duke of Somerset ‘supporting’ the chief mourner Prince George, duke of Cumberland. The burial of William in Westminster Abbey formally ended Devonshire’s tenure as lord steward of the household. He ceremoniously broke his white staff but Anne almost immediately reappointed him. She gave further indications of her continued favour towards the Cavendish family when she retained Hartington as captain of the yeomen of the guard and made his wife one of her ladies of the bedchamber. Devonshire served as lord high steward for her coronation on 23 Apr. 1702.
On 4 May 1702 Devonshire first reported from the drafting committee for the address of thanks for the declaration of war against France and then together with other officers of the late king assigned to search through his papers he reported that they had not found anything that prejudiced the queen or her accession to the throne. The House thereupon declared the many rumours about the existence of such papers, ‘groundless, false, villainous and scandalous’.
Devonshire was more than usually assiduous in his attendance of the first session of the new queen’s first Parliament, attending on its first day, 20 Oct. 1702, and continuing to sit in 82 per cent of the meetings. On the second day, 21 Oct. he was placed on the drafting committee for the address in response to the queen’s speech; he chaired and reported from the committee with the completed address on the following day and was one of those deputed to enquire when she would be ready to receive the House and its address.
From mid-December 1702 Devonshire became one of the principal actors in the House in the campaign against the occasional conformity bill. On 17 Dec. he was the principal manager for the conference in which, as he later reported to the House, the Commons disagreed to some of the Lords’ amendments. The following day the House charged the conference managers with drafting reasons for the House’s insistence on their amendments and to search for precedents to refute the Commons’ principal complaint, that the House could not initiate bills with pecuniary penalties in them and could not alter such penalties in bills from the Commons. Devonshire, according to William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, subsequently moved that all the lords present in the House when the committee was established be added to it. He himself chaired this busy committee on six occasions over the course of the winter; he presented the committee’s very long report to the House on 8 Jan. 1703 and was a manager for the consequent conference the following day.
Devonshire was the principal manager and reporter for the Lords at the turbulent and pivotal conference of 16 Jan. 1703 on the occasional conformity bill, where the Commons continued in their disagreement to the House’s amendments. After a long debate, Devonshire was one of those who voted to adhere to the amendments, which motion squeaked through by two votes.
Apart from preparing this report, Devonshire was also in the first week of February 1703 involved in drafting an address thanking the queen for the small number of licences granted to people to come from France and calling for a proclamation for the apprehension of all unlicensed persons arriving from thence.
The lord steward was back in the House for the next session on its first day, 9 Nov. 1703, and went on to attend just over two-thirds of the sittings. As usual he was named on the session’s second day to the drafting committee for the address of thanks and the following day he was appointed to a small committee of seven members to consult with the surveyor-general Sir Christopher Wren‡ ‘to propose remedies for keeping off the crowd when the queen is present’. He spoke against the occasional conformity bill when it came before the House again and voted to reject it at its second reading on 14 Dec. 1703. That day also saw his first involvement in what was to become his main preoccupation for the next few months, the House’s investigation into the ‘Scotch Plot’. The principal target of the investigation, the Tory secretary of state Nottingham, identified Devonshire and Somerset as the leaders of the attack against him and as his principal enemies in the Cabinet, even insisting at one point on their dismissal as a condition of his continued service.
On 13 Jan. 1704, shortly after Parliament had reconvened after the Christmas recess, the House passed two resolutions asserting its ‘undoubted right’ to order people into custody and to commit them by its own authority, a response to a Commons’ address of 21 Dec. 1703 which had complained that the House was contravening the queen’s prerogative by conducting its own examination of the Jacobite suspects. After Somerset reported the long address stating the House’s rights on 17 Jan. 1704, Devonshire was paired with him to attend the queen to ask when she would receive the address. At the end of January Devonshire also reported the queen’s irritated answer to a hectoring address from the House urging her government to hasten the prosecution of Boucher.
Devonshire was late in arriving at the next session of Parliament; he first sat on 4 Nov. 1704, over two weeks after the commencement of the session. He probably arrived specifically to supervise his complaint of a breach of privilege, as the House heard that day that one of his menial servants had been arrested during the time of Parliament.
It was only in late February and early March 1705 that Devonshire became closely involved in some of the more controversial matters between the Houses. Between 28 Feb. and 9 Mar. he was named as a manager for three conferences on the dispute with the Commons on the Aylesbury men. He was placed on a committee to draft a statement of this case as it stood between the Houses and to request the queen to allow two of the petitioners to bring in their writs of error before the House. On 7 Mar. he was also a manager for a conference on the Lords’ amendments to the bill to prevent traitorous correspondence, while on 12 Mar. he was again a manager for a conference on the amendments to the militia bill. That same day he registered his proxy with Charles Townshend, 2nd Viscount Townshend and left the House for the final two days of the session.
With the general swing to the Whigs in the election of that summer the Cavendish interest saw victory in Derby, where Lord James Cavendish and the town’s recorder, the Whig Thomas Parker†, the future earl of Macclesfield, defeated the sitting Tory members.
The first session of the 1705 Parliament saw one of Devonshire’s lowest attendances for many years, as he came to only 36 per cent of the sittings. He first sat on 31 Oct. 1705. On 20 Nov. on behalf of the queen, he laid before the House five letters and papers regarding the forthcoming negotiations for a union with Scotland. Devonshire was at the forefront of those opposed to the Tory-led motion of 15 Nov. 1705 to invite Sophia, dowager electress of Hanover, to England during the life of the queen.
In April 1706 he was one of the prominent Whigs appointed as commissioners to negotiate the union with Scotland, along with his son Hartington.
Devonshire reverted to his usual attendance levels for the 1706-7 session, coming to 62 per cent of its sittings. On its first day, 3 Dec. 1706, he was placed on the drafting committee for the address of thanks, while 11 days later he was assigned to a drafting committee for an address requesting the queen to allow a bill to be introduced to settle and continue the titles and honours of the duke of Marlborough through the female line. He was present in the House as the treaty of Union was being debated, and he played a prominent part in chairing the drafting committee for the address of thanks to the queen for her royal assent to the Act of Union and her speech in its praise on 6 Mar. 1707, which was reported to the House on the following day.
Devonshire was still able to attend a meeting of the cabinet council on 13 July 1707 but on 16 Aug. it was reported that he was ‘dangerously ill of the stone and strangury, and has made his will, and received the sacrament’. He died in the morning of 18 Aug. of ‘suppression of urine’.
Within a few months of Devonshire’s death, White Kennett, at that point a royal chaplain at Windsor, had laid down the first marker in the battle over the late duke’s posthumous reputation when he delivered a laudatory funeral sermon, and accompanied this with a ‘memoir’ of the family of Cavendish in its printed version. He was rewarded with the deanery of Peterborough, largely through the patronage of the new duke. But Kennett’s flattery did not go unanswered and his claims about the late duke’s piety and religion were quickly countered by The Hazard of a Death-bed Repentance Fairly Argued which, while reserving judgment on Devonshire’s political activities, took great delight in refuting Kennett’s praise of Devonshire’s probity by going into detail about his many mistresses and illegitimate children and generally impugning his moral character. Enemies, particularly Tories, quickly picked up on these aspects of Devonshire’s character. Thomas Hearne likewise condemned Kennett’s book ‘in praise of that notorious debauchee and rebel the late duke of Devonshire; such is the spirit of these prickeared, starch, sanctified fellows that … they will cry up the greatest villains for saints’.