The Thynne Inheritance
The Thynnes claimed descent from a Poitevin family, the Boteviles, who were granted land in Stretton, Shropshire during the reign of King John. According to family mythology the surname Thynne derived from John Botevile (fl. 1460), known on account of his principal property holding as John of th’inn. By the 16th century the family had prospered and was established in several counties with the most celebrated estate at Longleat being acquired in 1540.
Initially attached to the court, the then Sir Thomas Thynne had served as groom of the bedchamber to the duke of York and as a diplomat in Sweden before a falling out with his former patron encouraged him to stand in the country interest for Oxford University in 1674 and for Tamworth in 1679. He was able to bring his own interest to bear at Lichfield in 1679 on behalf of his cousin Daniel Finch, later 2nd earl of Nottingham.
Thynne’s marriage had added substantially to his estates. Already possessed of lands in Gloucestershire and Shropshire, Thynne acquired the manor of Drayton Bassett in Staffordshire, estates in Herefordshire and an estimated 22,000 acres in Ireland by the will of his wife’s grandmother, Frances, duchess of Somerset.
Despite his reputation as a staunch upholder of the Anglican Church (prior to the Restoration he had been an habitué of the Oxford congregation presided over by John Fell, afterwards bishop of Oxford), in the 1670s Thynne was a determined opponent of Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby, later marquess of Carmarthen and duke of Leeds.
Viscount Weymouth and the Tory Reaction
His cousin was murdered in February 1682. Thynne’s inheritance of Longleat presented the court with a valuable counterbalance to the whiggism then prevalent in Wiltshire.
Weymouth’s activities during the summer brought him into conflict with the other dominant peer in the county, the notoriously unstable Philip Herbert, 7th earl of Pembroke. In August 1683 Weymouth visited him at Wilton House in an effort to arrive at some sort of accommodation noting that, ‘he was very ceremonious, but when the wine is in, his jealousy breaks out.’ He predicted that should Pembroke be removed from his joint offices of lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum one of the Hyde brothers, Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester, or Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Clarendon, would expect to replace him.
Weymouth’s appointment as custos in Wiltshire was almost certainly the result of Halifax’s patronage. In October 1683 amid heightened speculation that a new Parliament would shortly be called Weymouth assured Halifax that he would do nothing without his directions.
The Reign of James II and the Revolution, 1685-90
Weymouth served in the modest office of assistant to the cupbearer to the queen at the coronation in April 1685.
The outbreak of Monmouth’s rebellion during the summer threatened to engulf Weymouth’s estates at Longleat. One of Monmouth’s principal followers, John Kidd, had been gamekeeper on the estate under Weymouth’s predecessor. Monmouth’s base at Frome was on the peripheries of Weymouth’s land. At one point during the rising a handful of Monmouth’s soldiers presented themselves at the house. Monmouth’s defeat at Sedgemoor saved Weymouth from further inconvenience and he demonstrated his antipathy to the rebels by ignoring an appeal by William Penn to petition the king for clemency on Kidd’s behalf.
By the beginning of 1686 Weymouth, his wife and son all appear to have been troubled by poor health. With his family sickening and convinced that his influence was declining, Weymouth resolved to leave the country. In considering possible places of refuge he ruled out France initially as ‘inhospitable’ and soon after expressed a desire to travel to Portugal.
The death of Weymouth’s uncle, Sir William Coventry, that summer gave him further cause for discontent as he received only a modest legacy of £50 to buy a mourning ring. Weymouth struggled to disguise his disappointment, commenting to Halifax that ‘though he [Sir William] has not expressed it to either of us in legacies at the rate he has to others; yet I suppose he thought we wanted not such evidences of kindness nor expected them from him’.
Poor health was clearly not the only reason that Weymouth had earlier considered quitting the country. By 1687 he found himself increasingly at odds with the king’s religious policies. In January he was noted among those opposed to repeal of the Test. In May he was included in a list of those opposed to the king’s policies and in November he was again assessed as an opponent of repeal. Weymouth was not just opposed to indulgence for Catholics. In March he reported to Halifax the meetings of nonconformists in Wiltshire, swelled by ‘having daily new teachers from London of what complexion I know not.’
Weymouth’s difficulties were not confined to uncertain health and worries about his influence. Despite his lucrative inheritance and an estimated income of £12,000, he was also plagued by debt and by protracted legal disputes. In April 1688 he complained to Halifax, ‘your lordship knows my condition too well to think I pay debts by good husbandry… like the most insolvent debtors I borrow in one place to pay in another.’
Weymouth was noted once more as an opponent of repeal of the Test in an assessment drawn up early in 1688. The Revolution, however, placed him in a quandary. Although no friend to most of those engaged in the invasion, he refused to sign a declaration abhorring the prince’s actions or to undertake to assist the king to repel the invaders.
Weymouth took his seat in the House at the opening of the Convention on 22 Jan. 1689, after which he was present on approximately 73 per cent of all sitting days. He opposed declaring William and Mary king and queen and on 29 Jan. he joined those voting in favour of the establishment of a regency instead. Two days later he voted against the motion for replacing the clause in the Commons’ vote that said the throne was vacant with another declaring the Prince and Princess of Orange king and queen. On 4 Feb. he voted against agreeing with the Commons’ employment of the term abdicated. He was nominated one of the reporters of the conference to draw up reasons why the Lords did not agree with the Commons on the subject of King James’s abdication. He was then noticeable by his absence from the subsequent division of 6 Feb. when the Lords resolved at last to concur with the Commons and declare the throne vacant.
Although reluctant to accept the new regime, Weymouth was equally unwilling to rouse himself on behalf of the exiled king. When he was named a regent by James, along with Nottingham, Philip Stanhope, 2nd earl of Chesterfield, and William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury, he declined to act.
Weymouth returned to the House at the opening of the second session on 19 Oct. 1689 and on 5 Nov. he was entrusted with the proxy of Henry Somerset, duke of Beaufort, the duke ‘not being able by reason of my indisposition to attend the House’. The proxy was vacated by the close of the session.
The Parliament of 1690
News of the dissolution early in 1690 prompted Weymouth to write to his neighbour, James Bertie, earl of Abingdon, to remind him ‘how absolutely the welfare of the church, nay possibly of the monarchy, are concerned at this time’ and to assure Abingdon of his ‘ready concurrence’ in the forthcoming elections in Wiltshire.
Weymouth took his seat in the new Parliament on 20 Mar. 1690, after which he was present on approximately 96 per cent of all sitting days. On 8 Apr. he registered his protest at the resolution to pass the bill recognising William and Mary as king and queen and two days later he entered a further protest at the resolution to expunge the reasons given by the protestors from the Journal.
Early in June Weymouth predicted a speedy end to the war following the defeat of the Toulon squadron and the collapse of the former king’s campaign in Ireland.
Weymouth had appeared disinclined to attend the following session, anticipating that with so many members posted to their militia companies little business could be done.
Weymouth’s loyalty to the new regime came under greater scrutiny when in 1691 he was named by William Fuller and Richard Grahme, Viscount Preston [S], as one of those peers in correspondence with the exiled king. Weymouth had already drawn attention to himself by offering an annuity and lodgings at Longleat to the nonjuror Thomas Ken, formerly bishop of Bath and Wells, and Henry Sydney, Viscount Sydney (later earl of Romney), certainly seems to have believed the intelligence.
Weymouth took his seat in the House shortly after the opening of the session of October 1691 after which he was present on approximately 84 per cent of sitting days. On 13 Nov. he acted as one of the tellers for the division whether to dismiss the appeal from Dashwood v. Champante and on 9 Dec. he reported from the committees considering the bill to secure the debts of the 4th earl of Salisbury. The same day he reported from the committee considering a bill to allow the sale of the manor of Manworthy in Devon as well as introducing a bill to permit his nephew, Winchilsea, to settle a jointure on any future wife. On 31 Dec. Weymouth reported the bill for the more effectual discovery and punishment of deer-stealers as being fit to pass without amendment. Towards the end of the year he was included in a list compiled by William George Richard Stanley, 9th earl of Derby, of those Derby thought likely to support his efforts to recover lands alienated prior to the Restoration.
On 2 Jan. 1692 Weymouth entered his protest at the resolution not to send for the original record of a precedent cited during the debate on the Commons’ vote of the previous December concerning the East India Company. On 12 Jan. he entered a further protest at the decision to receive the bill allowing Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk, to divorce. On 25 Jan. Weymouth’s neighbour, Robert Shirley, 8th Baron (later Earl) Ferrers, registered his proxy in Weymouth’s favour, which was vacated by the close of the session. On 2 Feb. Weymouth protested at the resolution not to agree with the Commons objections to the Lords’ amendments on the appointment of commissioners of accounts. The same month Weymouth was shaken by the death of his grandson, Thynne Worsley, but he continued to sit until the adjournment on 24 Feb. and on 22 Feb. he reported from the conference considering the small tithes bill.
Weymouth appears to have indulged in further Jacobite intrigue during the year: his name appeared on a list of those peers said to have assured King James that they would receive him willingly upon terms.
The whole neighbourhood cry out of this. They indeed do all tell me that the earl of Nottingham is his great friend who will still maintain him custos rotulorum and master of the Justices of this county though it be the jest of every one in it.HMC Finch, iv. 442.
Weymouth was once again initially disinclined to rouse himself from his Wiltshire retirement to take his seat in Parliament for the session of November 1692, commenting dismissively that ‘my private affairs sufficiently require my stay here, and the slender consideration is had of the House of Lords, or that they have indeed for themselves, makes home and quiet very desirable.’
The summer found Weymouth back on his Wiltshire estates, though by the middle of September he was complaining to Abingdon how ‘melancholy’ the county appeared in Abingdon’s absence.
In March Weymouth received money (to be distributed to ‘such persons as he in his discretion shall think proper objects of his kindness’) in the will of the Tory Sir John Matthewes‡, whose wife had previously been married to John Mews, brother to Peter Mews, bishop of Winchester.
The Parliament of 1695
Weymouth appears to have been in serious financial difficulty by the summer of 1695, though he reassured himself that ‘it is now so commendable a thing to break, that a bankrupt scarce hides his head and therefore I will not pretend to modesty.’
Smarting from the Tories’ poor showing in the elections, Weymouth avoided Parliament for the entirety of the session of November 1695 to April 1696. Explaining his resolution to James Grahme‡, he insisted that the Lords now had:
no share in the government of this world and what the Commons will do no man can guess before they have a little fermented. For that reason I stay here, that if no good can be done I may not have the disquiet of being a spectator.Bagot mss, Levens Hall, Weymouth to James Grahme, 24 Nov. 1695.
Weymouth nevertheless kept an eye on business in the Lords. In January 1696 he wrote to William Savile, 2nd marquess of Halifax (whose father had died in April 1695), to congratulate him for
the heroic vote you have left upon your books, as well as the noble lament upon it, in receding from your amendments, and that for the necessity of saving a bill, which neither the Commons, nor those they represent, will give a clipped sixpence for.Add. 75368, Weymouth to Halifax, 14 Jan. 1696.
Weymouth dismissed efforts to encourage him to attend the second half of the session, insisting that his health would not allow it, and even the revelation of the Assassination Plot and his inclusion in a new list of peers said to have been in contact with the exiled court failed to make him change his mind.
Weymouth was still missing at the opening of the new session in October 1696 and on 14 Nov. the House ordered that he should appear on 23 November. In the event he resumed his seat six days earlier than required. He took the oaths and then sat until the beginning of March 1697, being present on approximately 55 per cent of all sitting days. On 28 Nov. he entered his dissent at the resolution to pass the bill for further remedying the ill state of the coinage and on 2 Dec. he entered a further protest on the same issue. On 23 Dec. he voted against the attainder of Sir John Fenwick‡ and entered his protest when the bill was passed.
Weymouth absented himself from the House after 6 Mar. 1697 and two days later he registered his proxy with Francis North, 2nd Baron Guilford. When Guilford quit the session on 25 Mar. he attempted to register it afresh with Louis de Duras, 2nd earl of Feversham. Although Feversham wrote on 1 Apr. acknowledging receipt of the proxy, there is no record of its having been entered in the proxy book.
The summer of 1697 appears to have been taken up with Weymouth’s preparations for moving his establishment from Longleat to Drayton.
With his proxy settled for the time being, Weymouth remained immoveable from his determination to avoid travelling to London even when he was appealed to by his old Wiltshire ally Abingdon in February 1698 to appear on behalf of Abingdon’s son, James Bertie‡, one of the principals in the case Bertie v. Falkland which was anticipated in the lords ‘with as much opposition as a party interest can give it’.
From the 1698 Elections to the Accession of Anne
The summer of 1698 found Weymouth ‘so harassed with preparations for elections that I have had very few moments of rest.’
Weymouth was prostrated with severe gout in the early summer of 1699, which was said to have gone to his head.
Preparations for the general election anticipated the formal dissolution of Parliament by several months but Weymouth was distracted by the loss that August of ‘the excellent’ William Savile, 2nd marquess of Halifax. He regarded the coming sessions with a decidedly jaundiced eye believing that ‘nothing is plainer than that their utmost prudence is necessary to give us some consistency, which God grant, to support a sinking trade not to say nation.’
Weymouth took his seat in the new Parliament on 6 Feb. 1701, after which he was present on approximately 74 per cent of sitting days. Throughout March he entered a series of protests on the subject of the Partition Treaty and on 20 Mar. he dissented from the resolution not to send the address concerning the treaty to the Commons for their concurrence. On 16 Apr. Weymouth protested at the resolution to appoint a committee to compose an address asking the king not to punish the four impeached lords until they had been tried. Throughout June he continued to enter protests on the same subject. On 28 May he reported from the committee considering the Minehead harbour bill and on 2 June from that for Jasper Cardoso’s naturalization, which was passed with amendments. On 17 June Weymouth voted against acquitting John Somers, Baron Somers, of the articles of impeachment and entered his protest when the resolution to acquit was carried.
In the second general election of 1701 Weymouth was much more cautious in his dealings with Weobley, which he now limited to giving his interest to Robert Price‡. Weymouth corresponded with Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, during the summer and early autumn, thanking him for ‘keeping so equal a correspondence with one who makes you so unequal returns’ and encouraging him to stand for Herefordshire provided he could ‘secure Radnor to a good man.’
Weymouth took his seat at the opening of the new Parliament on 30 Dec. 1701. He was present on 62 per cent of all sitting days. He opposed the attainder of James II’s widow, Queen Mary Beatrice, registering his protest on 20 Feb. 1702 at the passage of the bill. Four days later, he subscribed a further protest against the bill for the further security of the king’s person. The death of William III the following month may have encouraged Weymouth and the Tories to hope for greater preferment. The requirement to take the abjuration oath, which had been approved by the Lords on 24 Feb., proved an obstacle some were reluctant to negotiate. Weymouth and Nottingham absented themselves from London during the celebrations for Queen Anne’s succession to consider their response and a newsletter of 19 Mar. noted Weymouth as one of three peers who had been present in the House during the session but had still not taken the oath.
Although Weymouth was overlooked for senior office, he was soon after appointed one of the commissioners for trade, in spite of the opposition of Sarah, duchess of Marlborough, who considered him ‘a man of faction’, and predicted that ‘he is one that will make an noise and give dissatisfaction to many that I believe wish well and could be useful to the government.’
The Parliament of 1702
Weymouth excused himself from remaining in London during the summer months, pleading the July elections: ‘if ever diligence were necessary it is now that all hands and heads are at work to make the new elections suit the interests of the several parties.’ In August he was able to pronounce that ‘we could not wish better elections than those in the north, which shows that the power of some great men sprang from the influence of the government, and that nothing can hurt us if we are not over politic.’ Despite his enthusiasm for the state of the nation, Weymouth’s own financial problems continued to trouble him. The condition of Ireland was particularly sobering and the same month he was forced to concede that he had ‘no prospect of rents’ from his estates there that year.
Weymouth took his seat in the House for the opening of the new Parliament on 20 Oct. 1702, after which he was present on 65 per cent of all sitting days. He failed to attend the House at all in November and that month he found himself uncharacteristically in disagreement with Nottingham over the latter’s proposal for union with Scotland as a surer way of maintaining the Protestant succession. Weymouth was concerned at the implications that union with a Presbyterian country would have on the Church of England.
Weymouth, predictably, was estimated to be in full support of Nottingham’s bill for the prevention of occasional conformity and on 16 Jan. 1703 he voted against adhering to the Lords’ amendment to the penalty clause. Party loyalty may reasonably be assumed to have been the reason why Weymouth entered a protest on 22 Jan. at the dismissal of the appeal of Robert Squire‡ and John Thompson against Thomas Wharton, 5th Baron (later marquess of) Wharton, over the dispute concerning lead mines in the Honour of Richmond. Weymouth, a local landowner, took a leading interest in the promotion of a bill to allow Andrew Hacket to settle lands in Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Lichfield, which he reported to the House on 1 February.
News of a clutch of new promotions in the peerage in the spring of 1703 coincided with reports that Weymouth was to be advanced either to a marquessate or an earldom (it was speculated that he would be earl of Bristol) and his heir called to the House by a writ of acceleration. In the event, neither honour was forthcoming.
Weymouth was present at the opening of the new session on 9 Nov. 1703. He attended on over 45 per cent of all sitting days. The following month he received a letter from Price Devereux, 9th Viscount Hereford, who enclosed a completed proxy form, not knowing ‘any person fitter than yourself to entrust my vote with,’ but no record of the proxy appears in the Proxy Book. When revelations of the Scotch Plot brought Nottingham under threat, Stawell appealed to Weymouth to return from one of his rare absences ‘to be of service to him.’
Rumours circulated following the close of the session that April that Weymouth was to lay down his office as first lord of trade, presumably as a demonstration of solidarity on Nottingham’s dismissal, but it was not until the autumn that he gave up his post.
Weymouth responded enthusiastically to the news of the victory at Blenheim in August: he wrote to the captain-general John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, that ‘He is a very scurvy Englishman that does not heartily rejoice at the honour your grace has done the arms of the nation.’ The same month Weymouth exhibited a complaint in Chancery against one William Gore for encroaching upon his manor of Cheddar in Somerset. Weymouth accused Gore of intimidating his tenants, and of boasting that the superannuated witnesses Weymouth relied upon to substantiate his arguments were not likely to live long.
The Parliaments of 1705 and 1708
Weymouth was assessed as a Jacobite in an analysis of the peerage of 1705. During the general election of that year he engaged his interest in Herefordshire on behalf of James Scudamore‡, 3rd Viscount Scudamore [I], in spite of not having ‘the good fortune to be known personally’ to him.
Weymouth was removed as custos rotulorum for Wiltshire in May, one of several Tories put out at that time, and replaced by Evelyn Pierrepont, 5th earl (later duke) of Kingston.
Weymouth took his seat shortly after the opening of the new session on 5 Dec. 1706, and was present on 44 per cent of all sitting days. A consistent opponent of the union of England and Scotland, on 4 Mar. 1707 he entered his protest at the resolution to pass the Union Bill. On 17 Mar. he voted in favour of the rider to the bill which insisted that it was in no way to be interpreted as an acknowledgement of the validity of Presbyterian worship.
Weymouth was omitted from the new Privy Council of Great Britain in May. He took his seat in the new Parliament on 20 Dec. and was present on approximately 53 per cent of all the sitting days in the session. On 2 Mar. 1708 he reported from the committee considering the Watchet Harbour bill. Following the dissolution, Weymouth was again active in the elections. In the middle of May he reported confidently how ‘we do not lose ground though all arts are employed’ and soon afterwards predicted a similar Parliament to the one that had preceded it, ‘unless the North Britons make a change’.
Weymouth was again afflicted by poor health over the summer, plagued by an ‘itchy disease’ that proved hard to shake off and robbed him of sleep. He wondered whether it originated from Scotland ‘as a reward for being against the Union.’
By March 1709 Weymouth was said to have been ‘upon his last legs’ suffering from a variety of conditions and only kept alive by being dosed with cordials.
The following month, Weymouth unsurprisingly rallied to the cause of Henry Sacheverell, a man with whom he had long been on friendly terms, and on 14 Mar. he entered the first of a series of protests over the impeachment.
The 1710 Elections and after
In July 1710 Weymouth found himself ‘as busy as if the writs were sealed’ and, eager not to ‘thwart anything that may be designed by ignorance or inadvertence,’ appealed to Robert Harley for ‘directions how to govern’ himself in the coming elections.
Perhaps in response to his offers of service to Harley’s new administration, Weymouth seems to have been offered an earldom during 1710, which he declined.
Weymouth was present in the House at the opening of the new session on 7 Dec. 1711, but sat for just two days before absenting himself for the remainder of the month. On 11 Dec. he registered his proxy in favour of his grandson-in-law Carteret, which was vacated by his return to the House on 2 Jan. 1712. Weymouth’s support for the earl of Oxford (as Harley had since become) was thought to be in doubt during the session, as he and a number of other peers manoeuvred themselves back towards Nottingham. It was certainly noticeable that he divided with Nottingham against the motion to adjourn the House of 2 January. Weymouth’s desire to see Episcopalianism secured in Scotland remained constant and was perhaps one of the factors that led him to support the grants resumption bill.
Weymouth was appealed to by North and Grey during the summer of 1712 to employ his interest with Oxford to secure for him the governorship of Dunkirk but Weymouth’s support for the ministry seems gradually to have petered out over the next few months.
Weymouth’s gout returned to trouble him in the winter of 1713 but he recovered sufficiently to take his seat a fortnight into the new Parliament on 2 Mar. 1714.
Weymouth sat for the last time on 9 July, the final day of the session. On 24 July he was said to be ‘very ill’ and three days later thought likely to be dead before the night was out.