BELASYSE, Thomas (1628-1700)

Cromwellian to royalist, 1653-60

The Belasyse family’s rise to wealth and prominence in the north-eastern counties of England was cemented in the sixteenth century when they acquired their principal property of Newburgh Priory near Thirsk in the North Riding of Yorkshire. HMC Ormonde, n.s. ii. 376; HMC Var. ii. 111-13. Both the 2nd Viscount Fauconberg’s grandfather, Thomas Belasyse^†, Baron Fauconberg (as he was created in 1627), and his father, Henry Belasyse^‡, were active in Yorkshire politics. Henry Belasyse was a Member for Yorkshire in both the Short and Long Parliaments of 1640, where initially he was prominent among the northern Members who complained of the burdens imposed on the region by the maintenance of the king’s forces. Despite their opposition to royal policy in the north, both Henry and his father Fauconberg joined the king during the Civil War. CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 344. Baron Fauconberg was promoted to a viscountcy in January 1643 for his military service, while Henry was less active and does not appear to have been involved in any of the fighting but instead worked throughout these years on various peace initiatives between the king and Parliament. Ibid. 1640, pp. 130, 154-6, 166, 523-4; 1645-7, pp. 278-9. Henry Belasyse died intestate in May 1647 and his eldest son, Thomas, inherited the viscountcy on 18 Apr. 1653 at the death of his grandfather.

The Belasyse family had strong Catholic connections; many of the 2nd Viscount’s closest kin – his grandfather, uncle and brother – were of that religion. Fauconberg was only able to reclaim possession of his grandfather’s sequestered estate in 1653 once he was able to prove before the committee for compounding that he himself was a practising Protestant. CCC, 967; HMC Var. ii. 115. In 1657, though, he needed to assure Oliver Cromwell^‡ and the council of state that he was not a Catholic. Noble, Mems. of the Protectoral-House of Cromwell, ii. 389-90. Later, Fauconberg was to support much of the anti-Catholic legislation of the 1670s, but he does appear to have remained on friendly terms with his numerous Catholic kin throughout his life, especially his uncle John Belasyse, Baron Belasyse. Accusations of being a Catholic, or at least a fellow traveller, dogged Fauconberg throughout his career. Cam. Soc. ix. 16-17.

As he had been out of the country during the Civil War, Fauconberg remained untainted during the Interregnum by the rest of his family’s adherence to the royalist cause, and was even regarded as ‘a neuter’ politically. Second Narrative of the late Parliament (1658), 19. A young widower from 1656, he was seen, by John Thurloe^‡ and Sir William Lockhart^‡ among others, as a suitable and advantageous match for Cromwell’s third daughter Mary. He was ambitious enough not to refuse the opportunity of marrying into the ruling family and he and Mary were wed on 18 Nov. 1657 in a lavish ceremony at Hampton Court. TNA, PRO 30/53/7/65. Gilbert Burnet, the future bishop of Salisbury, later described Lady Fauconberg as ‘a wise and worthy woman, more likely to have maintained the post [of Protector], than either of her brothers’. Burnet, i. 152. At the time the Venetian ambassador was surprised at the match, for he considered Fauconberg a royalist who corresponded with the exiled court. CSP Ven. 1657, p. 134. Nevertheless, after the marriage Fauconberg became a favourite of his father-in-law and prominent in the increasingly dynastic Protectorate regime. Although he failed in being appointed to the council, he was in July 1657 commissioned colonel of the regiment of horse previously commanded by John Lambert^‡. Firth and Davies, i. 259. He was on 9 Dec. summoned to Cromwell’s ‘Other House’ and he and his fellow Yorkshireman George Eure, 6th Baron Eure, were the only two of the old hereditary peerage predating the Protectorate who sat regularly in this ersatz House of Lords from the time it convened on 20 Jan. 1658. After the second Protectorate Parliament’s dissolution on 4 Feb. he served for a brief two-week period from 25 May as an extraordinary ambassador to France, greeting Louis XIV at Calais in the name of the Protector. HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 504-23; Second Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 19; CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 255, 259, 268, 273. In the months before Cromwell’s death Fauconberg opposed the interests and influence of the Army officers Charles Fleetwood^‡ and John Desborough^‡. After September 1658 he was a loyal supporter of Richard Cromwell^‡ as Protector and a frequent correspondent with Richard’s brother Henry Cromwell^‡, lord lieutenant of Ireland, in which he expressed his continuing distrust of the army officers and his wish to clip their wings. The feeling was mutual, as Desborough made clear his resentment of Fauconberg’s prominence. Fauconberg again sat, albeit intermittently, in the ‘Other House’ when Richard Cromwell summoned his new Parliament in late January 1659, but as the Protectorate crumbled Fauconberg protected his own interests and began to communicate with royalist agents at home and eventually the exiled court abroad. For the first half of April he absented himself both from his regiment and from the capital, ‘leaving nobody capable or loyal around the Protector’, although he had returned to attend the ‘Other House’ by 18 Apr. for the last few days of the third Protectorate Parliament, as Richard’s final confrontation with the army leaders took place. TNA, PRO 31/3/104, ff. 29, 68; HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 528, 534, 540-46, 551, 555, 561-5.

When the Rump Parliament returned briefly to power in May Fauconberg was, not unsurprisingly, divested of his colonel’s commission. He was quickly recruited to join the royalist insurrection planned for August 1659 and after its failure he was confined and examined by the council of state in September. CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 191, 222; TNA, PRO 31/3/105, ff. 18, 135, 141. He was free by 10 Feb. 1660 when he signed a petition of Yorkshire notables to his former Cromwellian colleague George Monck, later duke of Albemarle, calling for the return of the ‘secluded’ Members and the summoning of a free Parliament. CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 356. At the dissolution of the Long Parliament Fauconberg threw in his commission of Lambert’s old regiment, but shortly after, on 23 Apr. 1660, Monck appointed him colonel of the regiment of horse formerly commanded by the prominent republican Sir Arthur Hesilrige^‡, which Monck considered ‘one of the best regiments of horse in the army’. HMC Var. ii. 115-16; HMC Portland, iii. 256-7; Bodl. Clarendon 72, f. 64; 31/3/107, ff. 15-16.

Convention and Cavalier Parliament, 1660-6

Fauconberg first sat in the Convention House of Lords on 1 June 1660, in the company of the large group of royalists returned from exile. On 27 June he was granted a general pardon by the king for his brief complicity in the Cromwellian regime. HMC Var. ii. 2; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 34. Soon he was able to re-establish his position as one of the leading magnates in the North Riding of Yorkshire and the neighbouring county palatine of Durham. He was made lord lieutenant and custos rotulorum of county Durham on 27 July and maintained that role until the installation of John Cosin, as bishop of Durham in September 1661. Also on 27 July 1660, Fauconberg was also appointed lord lieutenant of the North Riding of Yorkshire and he served in this post actively until 4 Apr. 1692, except for a brief period in 1687-9. TNA, SP 29/8/183-4; 29/42/62; Add. 41254; HMC Var. ii. 118-27; TNA, C181/7/248. His tenure as custos rotulorum of the North Riding was even longer lasting, from July 1660 to his death in 1700. TNA, C231/7, p. 17. The day following these appointments Fauconberg was granted leave of the House to go into the country to take up these posts and on 30 July he registered his proxy with George Monck, now duke of Albemarle. Fauconberg also had a smaller part in the governance of Lancashire, as he had an interest in the estate of Smithells in that county, which came to the Belasyse family through his mother Grace Barton at her death in 1660. It was Fauconberg’s younger brother Sir Rowland Belasyse who settled at Smithells while Fauconberg concentrated his activity in the paternal estates of the North Riding and Durham, but Fauconberg still appears to have been placed on successive commissions of peace for the duchy of Lancaster from 1660 to his death. Glassey, JPs, 275, 278n5.

He was present in the House on the first day of the Cavalier Parliament and on 13 May was one of the seven peers placed on the drafting committee for an address thanking the king for communicating his intention to marry. His local responsibilities in the far north probably summoned him again, for on 5 June 1661 he received leave of the House to go into the country and he last sat before the summer adjournment on 8 June; two days following he registered his proxy with John Granville, earl of Bath. PH, xxxii. 249. In his absence the petition of the nobility and gentry of the far northern counties calling for the re-establishment of the court of York, was presented to the House on 1 July. Fauconberg himself had subscribed, his signature appearing prominently among the first names of the petitioners. PA, HL/PO/JO/10/1/306, for 1 July 1661. Fauconberg returned to the House on 5 Dec., but on 24 Mar. 1662 he once again received leave of the House to be absent ‘for some time’, presumably once again on northern lieutenancy affairs. He left the following day but does not appear to have registered a proxy. In the 50 sitting days on which Fauconberg was in the House in the 1661-2 session he was nominated to only 12 committees on legislation and on 6 Feb. 1662 signed the protest against the passage of the bill to restore to Charles Stanley, 8th earl of Derby, the lands in north Wales he had conveyed to agents of the Interregnum regime by legal instruments during the 1650s.

He came to just under a quarter of the sittings of the session of 1663 and absented himself for several months after a week into the proceedings, on 27 February. After his return on 23 June he was named to only four committees on legislation. Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton predicted that Fauconberg would support George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, in his attempt to impeach Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, when the matter was expected to come to a vote on 13 July. As lord lieutenant of the North Riding he was closely involved in the apprehension of the Farnley Wood plotters in the autumn of 1663, although he appears to have remained in the capital at the time and to have delegated duties to his deputy lieutenants in the north. CSP Dom. 1663, pp. 295, 305; TNA, SP 29/81/62, 132. Fauconberg first sat in the following session on 23 Mar. 1664, and only attended a further eight sittings, during which he was not named to a single committee on legislation, until on 22 Apr. 1664 he was given leave of the House to go ‘beyond the seas, for his health’. He was back in the House on 16 Jan. 1665, and attended a further 13 sittings before leaving the House for the rest of the session on 13 February.

By August 1665 he was back in the North Riding and he and his militia were prominent in the reception of James Stuart, duke of York, and his duchess on their visit to north Yorkshire, although Fauconberg’s Cromwellian past still had enough of an effect that the duke and duchess had to obtain the king’s permission before Lady Fauconberg, the Protector’s daughter, was allowed to wait on them publicly. CSP Dom. 1664-5, pp. 503-4; Add. 75354, ff. 38-39; Add. 75355, Lady H. Boyle to Burlington, 30 Aug. 1665. His duties in the north apparently prevented him from attending any of the sittings of the session held in Oxford in October 1665, and thus he could not be the ‘Mr ff’ who contributed to the debate on the ‘Five-Mile’ Bill on 30 October, as is sometimes alleged. Add. 75371, Fauconberg to Sir W. Coventry 25 Sept. and 17 Dec. 1665, 13 Jan. 1666; BIHR, xxi. 223; Jones, Party and Management, 14.

War and diplomacy, 1666-73

He was back in the capital in April 1666 for he attended the prorogation of 23 Apr. 1666 and a week later sat in the specially convened court of the lord high steward to try Thomas Parker, 15th Baron Morley, whom he, like the majority of the peers, found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter. HEHL, EL 8398, 8399; Stowe 396, ff. 178-90. That summer George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, already lord lieutenant of the neighbouring West Riding of Yorkshire, was also commissioned colonel of a troop of horse to be stationed in the north. At a dinner held at York sometime in July insults were traded between Buckingham and Fauconberg and the duke challenged the viscount to a duel. According to Sir John Reresby^‡, when the two opponents met, Buckingham, having ‘more mind to parley than to fight’ took ‘some verbal and superficial satisfaction of my Lord Fauconberg’ and the duel was called off, much to Reresby’s mortification for his patron Buckingham’s cowardice (and Buckingham’s enduring shame, as the incident was recalled many years later by his enemies). Reresby Mems. 57-61, 66, 332. This did not satisfy Fauconberg who in October of that year challenged and duelled with Buckingham’s ally (and his own half-cousin) Sir Thomas Osborne, better known by his later title as earl of Danby, who seriously wounded Fauconberg in the thigh. Browning, Danby, i. 41.

It was most likely that wound which kept Fauconberg away from the House for the early part of the session of 1666-7, but he was sufficiently recovered to take his seat on 8 Nov. 1666. Despite his late arrival he was able to sit in just under half of all the sittings of the session, and was named to five committees on legislation, including those for the bills for the lead mines in county Durham and for the bill to continue the act to prevent theft and rapine on the borders, in both of which he would have had a keen interest. From 13 Nov. to 3 Dec. he also held the proxy of Lionel Cranfield, 3rd earl of Middlesex. His first involvement in the session was as a witness. The north Yorkshire peer Conyers Darcy, 5th Baron Darcy (later earl of Holdernesse) had made complaint that the Irish peer (and Fauconberg’s kinsman) George Saunders^‡, 5th Viscount Castleton [I], and the Scottish peer Henry Ingram, Viscount Irvine [S], had insisted on taking precedence over Darcy and other English peers during the visit of the duke of York to his namesake city in 1665. This matter was considered by the committee for privileges on 12 Nov. 1666, where Fauconberg, named by Darcy as a witness to these events at York, gave evidence corroborating Darcy’s account. PA, HL/PO/DC/CP/1/1, pp. 16-19. Two days later, upon the report from the committee, Fauconberg was once again called upon to testify before the House supporting Darcy’s claims, after which the House determined to address the king about this derogation of the honour of the English peerage.

It was proceedings on the Irish cattle bill which principally occupied Fauconberg during the winter of 1666-7. On 17 Nov. 1666 he was placed on the committee assigned to draft a proviso to the bill which would allow the Irish to send slaughtered and barrelled cattle to London as a charitable gesture after the devastation of the Fire. He chaired the committee that day, but it was principally Buckingham and Anthony Ashley Cooper, Baron Ashley (later earl of Shaftesbury), two of the fiercest supporters of the bill and opponents of the Irish, who framed the proviso which, in effect, ‘aspersed the intention of the givers, and called the contribution a contrivance to mischief England’. Fauconberg reported this malicious proviso to the House on 19 Nov., but two days later the House appointed Fauconberg’s fellow northerner and former Cromwellian colleague Charles Howard, earl of Carlisle, as well as Ashley and Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesey, to amend the proviso further according to the House’s wishes. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2, 111; Trans. Am. Phil. Soc. n.s. lx. 30. On 20 Dec. Fauconberg was added to the committee that had been established three days earlier to draft reasons why the House insisted on the omission of the word ‘nuisance’ from the bill. On 29 Dec. these reasons were read before the House and he was named a manager for the ensuing conference, as well as for those on the poll bill and the bill for taking public accounts. On 2 Jan. 1667 he attended conferences on all three of these matters, while he managed others on the Irish cattle bill and public accounts bill on 9 Jan., and was at two more on the poll bill on 12 and 14 January. The proxy of Robert Bertie, 3rd earl of Lindsey was registered with Fauconberg on 12 Jan. 1692, albeit only for the space of five days. On 18 Jan. he was placed on a committee to draw up reasons to be presented to the Commons in answer to their complaints that the House had acted in an ‘unparliamentary’ way in addressing the king directly regarding the commission of accounts. On 24 Jan., when a committee of the whole considered the Commons’ bill for a commission of public accounts, Fauconberg’s name was inserted in the draft as one of the 24 peers who were to act as representatives of the House in the commission and later that day he managed the conference at which these reasons were presented.

By early March Fauconberg was back in Yorkshire, where he continued in his military duties and on 13 June was commissioned a captain of a troop of horse in the regiment commanded by Prince Rupert, duke of Cumberland, for the defence of England against Dutch or French invasion. CSP Dom. 1667, pp. 182. After peace was declared, he came to the House a week into the proceedings of autumn 1667, on 17 Oct. 1667, and proceeded to sit in 57 per cent of the sittings before the adjournment of 19 December. His stance on the impeachment and banishment of Clarendon cannot be exactly determined, as his name does not appear in connection with any of the protests or conferences on this matter. His principal involvement appears to have been a continuing concern with the import of Irish cattle, for on 9 Nov. 1667 he was named to the committee to consider reports of infractions of the Act passed in the 1666-7 session, and on 15 Nov. he chaired a meeting of this committee where evidence was heard of Welsh colliers evading the restrictions on Irish cattle. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2. p. 208.

On the last two days before the adjournment, 18-19 Dec. 1667, Fauconberg would have watched the rapid passage through Parliament of the bill to establish free trade between England and Scotland. He had a stake in this as well, for from mid January 1668 he was a reasonably assiduous member of the English commission to put this act into execution and soon struck up a friendship and a long correspondence with some of the Scots commissioners, particularly John Hay* earl (later marquess) of Tweeddale, which lasted well into the 1690s. CSP Dom. 1667-8, p. 156; NLS, Yester Pprs. ms 14492, ff. 10-28; ms 7023, letter no. 142; NLS, mss 7008-30. He resumed his seat when the session resumed on 6 Feb. 1668, on which day he helped to introduce his fellow Yorkshireman George Savile, Viscount (later marquess of) Halifax. On 29 Feb. 1668 Philip Stanhope, 2nd earl of Chesterfield, registered his proxy with Fauconberg, who came to only 29 sittings of this part of the session, during which he was named to three committees on legislation, before he was given leave of the House on 6 Apr. ‘to go into the country for his health for some time’. He left the House that day, without apparently registering a proxy of his own, and Chesterfield’s vote was left untended until he himself returned to the House on 7 May. Fauconberg was back in the House after his long absence on 1 Mar. 1669, when he acted as one of the commissioners, sitting on a ‘form’ between the throne and the woolsack, who prorogued the long-adjourned Parliament until 19 Oct. He was present on that day as well and attended a little over three-quarters of the sittings of the short session of autumn 1669, where he was named to one committee on legislation and on 25 Nov. subscribed to the dissent from the resolution that the cause of Grenville v. Elwes was properly before the House even though, as the dissenters argued, chancery had not yet come to a final decree in this matter.

By August 1669 the common knowledge was that Fauconberg was ‘designed’ to be an ambassador extraordinary for Venice and other Italian city-states. The appointment was confirmed in November, but he did not set off until early January 1670. Verney ms mic. M636/23, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 10 Aug. 1669; Add. 36916, ff. 142, 159; TNA, PRO 31/3/123, p. 32. He had his audiences at Florence and Genoa in May and arrived at his destination, Venice, in June. British Dip. Reps. 1509-1688, pp. 167, 293; CSP Dom. 1668-9, p. 604; 1670, pp. 33, 188, 196, 242, 264, 286, 420, 466, 514, 525. During his embassy he successfully settled many outstanding trade disputes and returned to England in the autumn and had his audience with the king on 14 November. HMC Var. ii. 128-63, 205-26. Because of this embassy he missed the first part of the long session of 1670-1 entirely, but was back in the House on 7 Nov., shortly after the session had reconvened after the summer adjournment, and he proceeded to attend 82 per cent of the sittings in this part of the session. He was nominated to 22 select committees on legislation, including that for the bill to prevent the growth of popery. He appears to have been prominent on this committee for on 13 Apr. 1671 he was placed on a subcommittee of 15 members assigned to draw up an oath which could mitigate the penalties for those recusants willing to swear it. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2, p. 451; HL/PO/CO/1/3, p. 31. On 9 Mar. he dissented from the two resolutions which in effect rejected the bill which aimed to restrict privilege of Parliament. In the last days of the session he acted as a delegate on 18 and 20 Apr. for two conferences on the House’s amendments to the bill to prevent abuses in selling cattle at Smithfield.

Country peer? 1672-9

On 10 Mar. 1672 Fauconberg replaced his uncle Belasyse as captain of the gentlemen pensioners and a month later, on 17 Apr. 1672, Fauconberg was also sworn of the Privy Council. CSP Dom. 1671-2, p. 190; Verney ms mic. M636/25, Dr W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 14 Mar. 1672. Both these moves may have been an attempt by Charles II to co-opt potential opponents to his recent policies and actions. Significantly Halifax, Arthur Capell, earl of Essex and John Egerton, 2nd earl of Bridgwater were also sworn of the council on the same day as Fauconberg. Add, 28052, f. 77; Bodl. Tanner 43, f. 6. His new prominence may account for his regular attendance in the House throughout 1673. He came to 82 per cent of the sittings in the session of February-March 1673, when he was appointed to seven committees, and on 24 Mar. he chaired a meeting of the committee on the bill to enable Henry Elwes to sell his entailed land in Yorkshire. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/3, p. 36. On 5 Mar. 1673 he was also appointed to the committee to draft an address to the king confirming that his recent referral to Parliament of the controverted Declaration of Indulgence was ‘good and gracious’, regardless of the complaints of the Commons. After the adjournment of 29 Mar. 1673 Fauconberg was present at the next sitting, the prorogation of 20 Oct. 1673, when he introduced to the House his former duelling opponent, Sir Thomas Osborne, as Viscount Latimer. Bodl. Carte 77, f. 638. Fauconberg attended all but three of the sittings of the tempestuous session of January-February 1674, in which he was named to four committees on legislation. Within two weeks of the session’s opening York was complaining to the French envoy de Ruvigny that Fauconberg, Carlisle, Shaftesbury (as Ashley had become), James Cecil, 3rd earl of Salisbury, ‘and several others’ were regularly meeting at the house of Denzil Holles, Baron Holles ‘where they concerted together the matters which were to be proposed in the lower House, where those lords had great influence’. TNA, PRO 31/3/130, ff. 44-48. However, Fauconberg is not explicitly named as a mover of seconder of any of the motions of late January and early February 1674 restricting the right of a Catholic to rule as a sovereign which York found so offensive and memorable. Macpherson, Orig. Pprs. i. 70-72; Lauderdale Pprs. iii (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxxviii), 32-33; Williamson Letters, ii (Cam. Soc. n.s. ix), 158.

Fauconberg’s attitude towards popery during this period of heightened anti-Catholicism, especially considering his own Catholic upbringing and the adherence of so many of his close kinsmen to the old faith, cannot be precisely determined. He was apparently opposed to the projects of the lord treasurer Danby (as Viscount Latimer had become in 1674), in consultation with the bishops, to press from January 1675 for the full enforcement of the penal statutes against Protestant Dissenters and Catholics alike. York was equally concerned at the potential effect on his co-religionists and even approached Fauconberg and other of his foes from the 1674 session to work together on a policy that would give relief to both religious groups. Essex Pprs. i (Cam. Soc. n.s. xlvii), 285. Fauconberg got himself into some trouble with the king for his opposition to Danby’s policy. Sometime in mid March 1675 Danby learned that Fauconberg was spreading the story that at a recent dinner Seth Ward, bishop of Salisbury, had laid the responsibility for the harsh measures against Dissenters in the order-in-council of 3 Feb. solely on the lord treasurer and had disavowed any involvement of the bishops. When at Danby’s request both Ward and Fauconberg appeared before the king to explain themselves the viscount could only make ‘a lame story of some discourse at the bishop’s table that imported nothing of that value’. The king ‘made bold to speak his mind freely to this lord’s disadvantage’. Reliquiae Baxterianae, iii. 156; Bodl. Carte 38, f. 282. Clearly at this time Fauconberg was seen as a prominent member of the country opposition. On 3 Feb. 1675 Shaftesbury, then in a brief retirement in Dorset, addressed a letter to Carlisle – with explicit instructions to convey its contents to Fauconberg, Holles and Salisbury – to reassure his colleagues that he was not about to abandon their campaign for the dissolution of Parliament in favour of the rumoured offer of high office under the Crown. This letter, quickly copied, printed and published, became notorious in its time, and contemporaries took it to be a public expression of Shaftesbury’s defiant attitude towards the court in the weeks before the next session of Parliament. CSP Dom. 1675-6, 87; HMC Ormonde, n.s. iii. 363.

The king’s rebuke and Fauconberg’s own position at court as captain of the gentlemen pensioners may have cooled his country ardour for, despite this apparently high position in Shaftesbury’s confidence, Fauconberg did not subscribe to any of the protests against Danby’s non-resisting test bill in the session of spring 1675. His only recorded involvement in that session, of which he attended 81 per cent of the sittings, was his nomination to eight committees on legislation and his introduction of Francis Newport, 2nd Baron Newport, as the recently promoted Viscount Newport (later earl of Bradford) on the first day of the session on 13 Apr. 1675. He also held the proxy of William Fiennes, 3rd Viscount Saye and Sele, from 21 May until the prorogation on 9 June 1675. He came to two of the three weeks of the short and bad-tempered session of autumn 1675, and on 20 Nov. 1675 he did join most of the other country peers in voting that an address should be made to the Crown requesting a dissolution of Parliament, and signing the protest against its rejection.

The vote of 20 Nov. 1675 may have been too much for the king after the events of earlier that year and in May 1676, during the long prorogation, Fauconberg was encouraged to surrender his commission as captain of the gentlemen pensioners, with a payment of £3,000 to make it more palatable. CSP Dom. 1676-7, p. 104; Verney ms mic. M636/29, Sir R. to E. Verney, 17 May 1676. He was very active in the first part of the long session of 1677-8, and came to 81 per cent of the sittings in 1677. He chaired the committee appointed on 12 Mar. 1677 to draw up heads for a conference on the Commons’ address requesting the king to preserve the Spanish Netherlands from French attack. The following day he reported the results, and managed the ensuing conference that day in which these reasons were presented to the Commons. He was again a manager for another conference on this address two days later, after which the House resolved to agree with the Commons and present the address. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/3, p. 158. Later on 13 Apr. he was placed on the committee to draw up reasons explaining the House’s adherence to their amendments to the supply bill for building warships. In this period of spring 1677 Shafesbury classified Fauconberg as ‘worthy’, despite his passivity during the debates of 1675.

When the session eventually resumed on 28 Jan. 1678 Fauconberg was present in the House, but only attended for a further 32 sittings, just over half of the sittings until the prorogation of 13 May. From 21 Feb. he briefly held the proxy of his uncle Belasyse until that baron returned to the House on 1 March. He was named to 11 committees on legislation and on 23 Feb. 1678 chaired one meeting of the committee on the bill for Deeping Fen. Ibid. 233. In March he objected to the use of the word ‘immediately’ in an address to the king requesting a declaration of war against France. In this he supported Danby, who used Fauconberg’s interjection to convene a committee of the whole to discuss the war, and argued against those lords who supported an ‘immediate’ war, such as Shaftesbury, Buckingham and Halifax. Browning, i. 268-9. At about the same time, on 21 Mar., he was named to the commission, consisting of Danby, Bridgwater, Essex and the two secretaries of state, to treat with representatives of the Emperor, the Spanish king and the United Provinces with the aim of forging a military alliance. CSP Dom. 1678, p. 61; HEHL, EL 8464.

He attended a little over half of the sittings of the following session of May-July 1678. On 20 June he managed a conference to acquaint the Commons with the recent dispatches from the peace conference in Nijmegen that both the Dutch and Imperial negotiators were anxious to learn from Parliament the state of the English army, and whether Parliament intended to disband it or not. On 8 July the House debated the appeal of Louis de Duras, 2nd earl of Feversham against a chancery decree rejecting his claim to the promised portion of his wife, who had predeceased him before he had been able to fulfil the conditions placed on him by his marriage settlement. Fauconberg took Feversham’s side, arguing that the original articles of marriage had been ‘shuffled up in haste’ and thus should not bind Feversham. Lord Nottingham’s Chancery Cases, ii. (Selden Soc. lxxix), 646. In the last days of the session, on 11-12 July, he managed two conferences at which the House disputed the Commons’ amendments to the bill for burying in woollen, before agreeing to the bill on 13 July so that it could be passed at the prorogation two days later.

Fauconberg attended 55 per cent of the meetings of the autumn 1678 session. On 23 Nov. 1678 he was a manager for a conference to prepare an address to the king concerning the number of days the local militias could legally be mustered in peacetime. He was added to the House’s committee for examining the Popish Plot on 7 December and five days later he was similarly placed on the Privy Council’s own committee investigating this matter, in which he appears to have been reasonably active. Bodl. Rawlinson A136, pp. 1, 11-12. Fauconberg’s last major act in the Cavalier Parliament was to vote on 27 Dec. in favour of the commitment of Danby. The motion was ultimately defeated, but Fauconberg did not sign the dissent from its rejection.

Exclusion Parliaments, 1679-81

At the dissolution of the Cavalier Parliament on 24 Jan. 1679, Fauconberg sought to influence the elections for Yorkshire and Thirsk. Fauconberg promoted his brother-in-law Sir William Frankland^‡, and their mutual nephew Nicholas Saunderson^‡ for Thirsk, and Charles Boyle, Baron Clifford of Lanesborough and Henry Fairfax^‡, 4th Baron Fairfax of Cameron [S], for Yorkshire. All four were favoured for their country stance against government policies and their support for limitations on York’s succession. At the county level, Fauconberg and Frankland worked to convince a reluctant Lord Fairfax to declare himself a candidate with Lord Clifford and to circumvent the aspirations of Sir John Kaye^‡, and Edward Osborne^‡, styled Viscount Latimer (Danby’s eldest son), to stand for the county. On 14 Feb. 1679 Frankland was able to report to Fauconberg that Fairfax had finally agreed to join with Clifford to stand for the shire and that they had been able to convince Kaye to step aside. Fauconberg was also able to reassure Clifford that he would be attended at York by a sufficient number of the viscount’s clients and followers ‘to make the name of Clifford sound as loud as formerly it has done in Yorkshire’. HMC Astley, 38-40; HMC Var. ii. 166-7. Clifford and Fairfax were duly selected knights of the shire without opposition on 3 Mar. and were re-elected for the following three Parliaments. At Thirsk Fauconberg shared his electoral interest with William Richard George Stanley, 9th earl of Derby, in whose manorial court the bailiff of Thirsk, who also acted as returning officer, was chosen. In late January Derby enquired whether Fauconberg still intended to share the nomination of Thirsk’s burgesses and Fauconberg wrote to persuade him to put his support behind both Frankland and Saunderson:

Sir William Frankland, who lives within two miles of and served for the town of Thirsk this last parliament, has so great an interest there as would prevail though your lordship and myself should both oppose him. So as in truth it remains only who shall be his partner … though I should be very glad (if your lordship be not engaged) to recommend my nephew Saunderson, son to Lord Castleton, who, I am confident, would carry himself very honestly.

Derby agreed to ‘send to whom I have at Thirsk that are at my disposal that they be for Mr Saunderson’. Frankland and Saunderson were selected without opposition for both this and the following Parliament, though Frankland edged Saunderson out in favour of a more enthusiastic country Member to partner him, Sir William Ayscough, for the 1681 Parliament. HMC Var. ii. 164-6; HMC Astley, 41.

Fauconberg attended 50 per cent of sitting days in the abandoned 6-13 Mar. session of the first Exclusion Parliament of spring 1679. On his first day, 11 Mar., he was placed on the committee to receive informations regarding the Plot. He was appointed to the equivalent committee in the more enduring second session, on 17 Mar., and on 21 Mar. he made two reports from this committee. He attended 85 per cent of sitting days in this session. He chaired the committee examining the ruinous state of the streets on 17 Apr. and that same day he and Bridgwater reported to the House with an address to the king. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/3, p. 346. Fauconberg was particularly active in the proceedings surrounding the impeachment of Danby. The former lord treasurer himself could not be sure how much he could rely on Fauconberg’s support, and the viscount did seem to take an ambivalent stance. On the one hand, on 21 Mar., when the House debated the demand of the Commons for the immediate commitment of the former lord treasurer, Fauconberg argued that as the House had previously made an order giving Danby a set time within which to submit his answers to the impeachment, it could not legitimately change its conditions without new specific charges being laid against the former lord treasurer: ‘without new matter assigned you cannot without derogation to your own honour make an alteration’. Add. 28046, f. 51. On the other hand, the House deemed it appropriate on 22 Mar. to place Fauconberg on the committee of 13 members, including such prominent country members and enemies of the former lord treasurer as Shaftesbury, Halifax, Holles, Essex, Bridgwater, Wharton, Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper, and James Scott, duke of Monmouth, assigned to draft a bill to disqualify Danby from again ever holding office or attending the king. This group, including Fauconberg, were also managers for a conference held that day at which this bill was presented to the Commons. The Commons instead presented a bill that threatened Danby with attainder if he did not surrender himself and answer the articles of impeachment. On 4 Apr. Fauconberg voted for the amended version of the bill, which in effect changed it to a bill for Danby’s banishment rather than attainder. After it had passed the House it was decided to present it and its amendments to the Commons in conference instead of by message. Fauconberg was one of the four peers assigned to draft what was to be said to the lower House, and it appears he and Colepeper were last-minute substitutions for Halifax and Shaftesbury who were originally appointed to the committee. Fauconberg was also one of the eight peers assigned to manage the ensuing conference that day. HMC Lords, i. 111. He was again a manager for a further two conferences on 8 Apr. where the Commons made clear their disagreement with the amended bill which they thought did ‘wholly alter the nature of it’. The lower House eventually had the better of the argument and on 14 Apr. Fauconberg joined with the majority of the House in voting through the attainder bill, largely in the form in which the Commons had originally intended it.

Fauconberg was involved in the four conferences from 8 to 11 May 1679 which discussed the proper methods and order of the trials of Danby and the five Catholic lords impeached for involvement in the Popish Plot. On 10 May he voted in favour of appointing a joint committee of both Houses, and signed the protest when that motion was defeated in division. Fauconberg had a family interest in the trial of the Catholic peers as one of these was his own uncle Baron Belasyse. On 8 Apr. he informed the House that Belasyse was too lame of the gout to attend the House himself to answer to the articles of impeachment laid against him and on 24 May Fauconberg was granted leave of the House to visit Belasyse, for only one time, in the Tower. Ibid. 25, 40. Not surprisingly perhaps, Fauconberg signed the dissent against the resolution of 23 May to proceed to the trial of Belasyse and the other lords before that of Danby and on 26 May was appointed a manager for the conference ‘to preserve a good correspondence’ between the Houses where the Commons made clear their vehement disagreement with this decision. Fauconberg ended the session by voting on 27 May, the day of prorogation, against the motion to insist on the right of the bishops to remain in the House during the hearing of capital cases, and he was one of the signatories to the protest when that decision was upheld.

A privy councillor since 1672, Fauconberg was re-appointed to that body at the remodelling of the council in April 1679, probably to serve both as a representative of the viscounts and as a ‘moderate’ member of the country interest. At this point he appears to have been close to the duke of Monmouth, who on 22 Sept. 1679 appointed Fauconberg to be his deputy in the office of chief justice in eyre south of the Trent after he had been ordered to leave the country. His closeness to Monmouth was also evident when he was later used as an envoy between Monmouth and his father. It was through him that Charles II ordered Monmouth to leave the kingdom, once again, upon the young man’s unexpected and sudden return in late November 1679. CSP Dom. 1679-80, pp. 247, 295; HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 245. In the long months of prorogation Fauconberg took a remarkably sanguine view of the political situation and the forthcoming Parliament. Writing to his brother-in-law Frankland in the north on 13 Apr. 1680, Fauconberg thought that ‘as to public concerns, so great a serenity and quiet in the minds of men has not been seen this many years. Fair measures are taken at home, advantageous alliances pursued, which is hoped may produce a good effect in Parliament next winter’. HMC Astley, 44-45.

Fauconberg was one of the seven privy councillors who advocated the duke of York’s departure to Brussels before Parliament finally did meet in the autumn of 1680. Chatsworth, Devonshire Collection 1/G, Sir J. Gell to Devonshire, 21 Oct. [1680]. He was present on the first day of the session, 21 Oct. 1680, and proceeded to sit in a little over two-thirds of its sittings. On 3 Nov. he was part of a committee consisting of Shaftesbury, Essex and Richard Boyle, earl of Burlington, that heard evidence against the Catholic primate of all Ireland, Oliver Plunkett, and Richard Power, earl of Tyrone [I], which Shaftesbury reported to the House over the following days. HMC Lords, i. 168, 219. Fauconberg made an early contribution to the debate on the exclusion bill on 15 Nov., but took an ambiguous position on the matter. On the one hand he found the bill insufficient: ‘I desire a security for the king, lords and the Church, but how to find that in this bill I do not know’. On the other he did not subscribe to the Church’s rejection of exclusion on the basis of divine right and non-resistance: ‘I am not of the bishops’ opinion that by the laws of God it cannot be proved’. In the end he voted to reject the bill, and for him perhaps the clinching argument was the threat of war if the bill passed, for ‘it will draw the French and Irish’. BIHR, xx. 32. He also voted against the proposed joint committee of both Houses to consider the state of the nation on 23 Nov. and that same day he was placed on a committee to draft a bill for a Protestant Association. He appears to have been involved in this since 16 Nov. at least, when following after the defeat of the exclusion bill, he was appointed by the committee of the whole House considering ways of securing the Protestant religion to a subcommittee of seven members (including Shaftesbury, Anglesey, Essex and Bridgwater) assigned to develop heads for bills. Fauconberg appears to have been engaged in this group, for the manuscript of the heads for a bill to protect the Protestant religion is endorsed ‘L. Fauconberg’s Paper’. He also chaired a meeting of this committee on 25 Nov., although admittedly it was only to adjourn it to the following day. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/3, p. 371; HMC Lords, i. 210-11. Later in the session, on 7 Dec. Fauconberg found the Catholic William Howard, Viscount Stafford, guilty of treason.

After the dissolution of the 1680 Parliament, and in the weeks preceding the Parliament summoned for March 1681 in Oxford, Danby predicted that Fauconberg would be among those peers standing neutral regarding his petition for release from the Tower. On 22 Mar. 1681, though, Fauconberg was still at his country house of Sutton Court in Middlesex, from where he wrote to Carlisle, who was trying to make his way to Oxford from Cumberland, with despondent views of the prospects for the forthcoming Parliament. Four lords in one coach, ‘with a great train after them’, had called in on Fauconberg on their way to Oxford and showed him a printed version of the king’s speech, ‘which is very brisk, and forbids meddling with the title of succession, but allows that another may be appointed for the administration’. He expressed the fear that if the Commons proceeded as they had done last Parliament, he and Carlisle would find their intended journeys to Oxford fruitless. Add. 2724, f. 110. Fauconberg’s prediction was realized, as the Oxford Parliament was dissolved after a week. Carlisle was only able to attend one sitting and Fauconberg none at all.

Tory reaction, 1681-6

In the weeks following the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament the ‘report was warm’ that Fauconberg was about to be dismissed from his lieutenancy and from the Privy Council, to the extent that Fauconberg had to send an envoy to be assured by the king that the report was false, and was later reportedly ‘not a little delighted’ when the king conferred on him the honour of dining with him. Castle Ashby mss 1092, for 20 Apr. 1681; Add. 75355, Lord Clifford to countess of Burlington, 3 May 1681. He professed a renewed loyalty to the crown and anxiously expressed to Sir William Frankland the hope that ‘our county [Yorkshire], will imitate the rest in their loyalty’, both through sending loyal addresses to the king and through choosing suitable Members for Parliament, which Fauconberg thought would be convened in the winter of 1681. HMC Astley, 45. However, Fauconberg was reportedly one of only three members of the Privy Council who refused to countenance the arrest of Shaftesbury in early July 1681 and declined to sign the warrant for his committal. Morrice, Entring Bk. ii. 281. This may have been more out of a fear of public disorder than through any sympathy for Shaftesbury, for he wrote to Frankland in November that Shaftesbury’s acquittal ‘was accompanied with unparalleled disorder, of shouts, ringing of bells, bonfires and such extravagances as I fear at long run produce ill effects, parties being more exasperated than ever, even to such a degree as discourages all hopes of an accommodation at our next meeting’. He was evidently still under the misapprehension that another Parliament would be summoned imminently. HMC Astley, 47-48.

In these years of Tory reaction Fauconberg maintained an appearance of loyalty to the court and its causes. Family obligation also led him to stand as one of the sureties, for £5,000, for his uncle Belasyse when he was finally bailed from the Tower in February 1684. Luttrell, Brief Relation, i. 300-1. At the accession of James II in February 1685 Fauconberg continued to show himself an obedient subject of the new king, procuring a somewhat reluctant loyal address to James from the North Riding and successfully persuading Frankland, who had offended the new king by his advocacy of exclusion in the previous parliaments, to give over his seat for Thirsk to his son Thomas Frankland^‡, partnered by the Tory Sir Hugh Cholmley^‡. HMC Astley, 59-62. Fauconberg himself was present at the first day of James’s Parliament 19 May 1685, when he helped to introduce to the House a number of new viscounts who had been created or elevated during the four years since the preceding Parliament: Horatio Townshend, Viscount Townshend; Thomas Thynne, Viscount Weymouth; and Christopher Hatton, Viscount Hatton. He sat in three-quarters of the sittings and was named to seven committees. He appears to have been among those peers opposed to the king’s planned dispensation of Catholic military officers from the provisions of the Test Acts, for in early November, his friend Chesterfield was once again considering assigning his proxy to Fauconberg, as he had done back in 1668, to represent their mutual opposition to these measures. Add. 19253, ff. 142-3; Add. 75361, Chesterfield to Halifax, 6 Nov. 1685. Nevertheless, shortly after the adjournment of 20 Nov. 1685 Fauconberg was summoned to the specially convened court of the lord high steward, consisting largely of courtiers and followers of the new king, to hear the crown’s case against Henry Booth, 2nd Baron Delamer (later earl of Warrington) for treason in the recent insurrection of Monmouth. At the end of the presentation of evidence on 14 Jan. 1686, the lord high steward allowed the judges attending to withdraw to consider of the matters of law in the case, upon which Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham similarly moved that the lords themselves be permitted to withdraw. Fauconberg seconded this motion which was accepted. Upon their return, Fauconberg and the rest of the peers attending found that there was insufficient evidence on which to convict Delamer. State Trials, xi. 515; UNL, Pw1 661; Add. 72522, ff. 99-100.

Revolution and Convention, 1687-90

By May 1687 Fauconberg was in touch with William of Orange’s agent in England Dijkvelt, through whom he sent a fulsomely admiring letter to William. Throughout 1687-8 he was consistently listed as one of the lords opposed to James’s policies and to the repeal of the Test Act. CSP Dom. 1686-7, p. 440. He was one of those lord lieutenants who refused to put the Three Questions to his deputy lieutenants or justices of the peace, for which he was in November 1687 deprived of his responsibility in the North Riding, replaced in turn by the Catholic Charles Fairfax, 5th Viscount Fairfax of Emley [I], and then Henry Cavendish, 2nd duke of Newcastle. UNL, PwA 2099/1-2; Verney ms mic. M636/42, J. to Sir R. Verney, 17 Nov. 1687. At the trial of the Seven Bishops he, with Danby, stood as a surety for the bail of William Sancroft, archbishop of Canterbury. Bodl. Tanner 28, f. 76; Carte 76, f. 28. He also supported Danby in his plans for the seizure and occupation of York during the projected invasion by William of Orange, donating £500 to the project. Browning, i. 404. He was in or around the capital during the last months of 1688 and was one of those peers who followed Halifax and Nottingham in not signing the petition of 16 Nov. calling for a Parliament. He did not take part in the provisional government which met at Guildhall during the brief period of the king’s first flight but did appear with the rest of the peers summoned by William of Orange to give him advice on 21 December. At that meeting he disagreed with Halifax’s suggestion that the assembled peers should meet again in a number of days’ time in the chamber of the House of Lords, stressing instead the urgency of the situation, and moving that the next meeting take place the following day and not in the Lords’ chamber, as they were not assembling as a House of Lords. He was present at the meeting the following day held, against his advice, in the House of Lords, in order to discuss means of summoning a Parliament, and again at the meeting of 24 Dec. during which James’s second flight was revealed. Here Fauconberg was one of those peers, joining Williamites such as Colepeper and Charles Mordaunt, 2nd Viscount Mordaunt (later 3rd earl of Peterborough), who spoke against spending the meeting’s time reading the letter, presumed to be of a private nature, which James II had left before his departure addressed to his secretary of state Charles Middleton^‡, 2nd earl of Middleton [S]. Kingdom without a King, 124, 150, 153, 158, 165, 168; Add. 75366, Halifax’s notes on the debate of 24 Dec. 1688.

Fauconberg was active from the first day of the Convention, 22 Jan. 1689. On that day he seconded the motion proposed by Mordaunt for Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, to be admitted to bail. Morrice, Entring Bk. iv. 498. He took an active part in the debates and votes on the disposition of the crown, in which he acted as one of the small group of Danby’s followers, with whom he voted, and even abstained, consistently. The discovery of the division lists of these days compiled by Thomas Bruce, 2nd earl of Ailesbury, has indicated that ‘Danby’s group’ consisted only of Fauconberg, his former proxy donor Lindsey and Henry Compton, bishop of London. Fauconberg took part in the debate of 29 Jan. when the vote of the Commons declaring that James had ‘abdicated’ and that ‘the throne is vacant’ was brought up to the House. Danby was in the chair of the committee of the whole that debated the terms of the vote, and Fauconberg took a typically non-committal stance on this, arguing on one side that there was an ‘impracticability’ of James II’s continuing to govern, especially as hurried disposal of the great seal on his first flight, made his ‘dereliction’ clear. On the other hand, he felt the House was not ready for a question on the Commons’ vote until there had been more debate on whether there had been an abdication. The debate soon moved on to the question whether there should be a regency under Mary in James II’s name, and Danby’s group were instrumental in defeating this motion. The following day, the votes of Danby’s followers helped gain the majority for the substitution of the word ‘deserted’ for ‘abdicated’ in the Commons’ resolution. On 31 Jan. in another debate in a committee of the whole, Fauconberg voted with Danby in favour of inserting words in the Commons’ vote declaring the prince and princess of Orange king and queen of England and he did so again in the second division of the day, against declaring the throne ‘vacant’. Upon the report of the conference of 4 Feb. at which the Commons made clear their objections to the House’s changes, two more divisions were held, on whether to agree with the Commons in the use of the words ‘abdicated’ and ‘that the throne is vacant’. Both Fauconberg and Danby abstained from the first of these votes and Ailesbury later recounted in his memoirs, written years after the events and thus confused in many of the details of these days, the curious story that at this division Fauconberg and Nathaniel Crew, bishop of Durham (who was not even present according to the attendance register for that day) ‘retired between the hanging [presumably one of the Armada tapestries, and the door next to the bishops’ room’ in order to abstain. He may have voted with Danby against the motion to agree with the Commons that ‘the throne is vacant’ and he was certainly in the House to be nominated to a committee to draw up reasons defending the House’s amendments which he helped to present to the Commons in a conference the following day. By the time another long and inconclusive free conference, for which Fauconberg was not appointed a manager, was held on 6 Feb., the mood had changed in the House owing largely to William’s forthright statement to a group of prominent peers, including Danby, that he would not settle for less than the throne in his name. Danby and his group deserted their former loyalist position by voting in favour of the motion of that day to agree with the Commons in the use of the words ‘abdicated’ and ‘that the throne is thereby vacated’. From there it was a short step for the House to pass a resolution declaring William and Mary king and queen. BIHR, xlvii. 45, 51; liii. 59-65, 77, 83; Ailesbury Mems. 230. Following this crucial vote Fauconberg was on 8 Feb. appointed a manager for a conference on the Declaration of Rights and, after the report the following day, was placed on the committee to draw up heads defending the House’s amendments. He chaired this committee on 11 Feb. 1689 and reported its reasons to the House that day, but these were rejected so Fauconberg and his committee had to withdraw to rework them. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/4, p. 23. The reasons once being settled, Fauconberg then helped to manage the three conferences on 11-12 Feb. that thrashed out the final text of the Declaration of Rights which was presented to the new monarchs at their proclamation in the Banqueting House the following day, 13 Feb. 1689.

Fauconberg’s activities in the House in support of William’s claim to the throne led to his re-appointment to the Privy Council on 14 Feb. 1689 and to the lieutenancy of the North Riding at the end of March. At the time of the coronation he was elevated in the peerage, as earl of Fauconberg. His patent of creation was dated 9 Apr. and he was introduced in the House under this title on 13 Apr., supported by other prominent adherents of the new regime Charles Talbot, 12th earl (later duke) of Shrewsbury and Charles Gerard, earl of Macclesfield. William III also used him as his representative to try to convince Fauconberg’s friend Chesterfield, whom William of Orange had known since his childhood, to support the new regime and to take office; Chesterfield consistently refused. Add. 19253, f. 191v. Yet there is other evidence that in private William did not think very highly of Fauconberg. When in his role as a member of the subcommittee of the Privy Council dealing with the affairs of Ireland Fauconberg recommended that John Skeffington, 2nd Viscount Massereene [I], take part in the expedition to Ireland, William could only comment that Massereene was a fool, ‘and was recommended by a greater fool, viz. the earl of Fauconberg’. Halifax Letters ii, 224; HMC Lords, ii. 167, 173-4, 179.

Fauconberg, both as viscount and later earl, kept busy in the Convention in the months immediately following the proclamation of the new monarchs, and proceeded to sit in 69 per cent of the sittings before the prorogation of 21 Oct. 1689. On 14 Mar. he was appointed to the committees on the major pieces of ecclesiastical legislation of the Convention, the abortive comprehension bill and the more successful toleration bill. He chaired short meetings of the committee on the comprehension bill on 16 and 20 Mar., only to adjourn them to future dates, because during this time he was heavily involved, indeed perhaps the principal actor, in the proceedings on the bill for the abrogation of oaths. On 15 Mar. he was placed on the subcommittee formed by a committee of the whole to draw up a clause to remove the sacramental test from the bill and he chaired a meeting of this subcommittee the following day. With the House requesting the committee to ‘expedite’ consideration of this bill, he chaired another committee meeting on 18 Mar., though only to adjourn it to the following day. In the meantime the House ordered that consideration of the matter be resumed in committee of the whole House. Fauconberg took the chair of that meeting too on 19 March. He reported that the committee had, once again, committed the matter to a select committee, the same one as had been appointed on 15 March. Not surprisingly, he chaired the select committee on 20 Mar. as well and reported its conclusions to the House. The House rejected one clause produced by the committee and assigned the legal assistants to draw up the clause on the sacramental test. Over the following days the House continued to debate various amendments to the bill, and its final rejection of the clause for removing the sacramental test from the new oaths prompted a protest from a small number of Whig peers, in which Fauconberg did not join. PA, HL/PO/CO/1/4, pp. 46-48; HMC Lords, ii. 53. The bill was sent down to the Commons on 23 Mar. and in the meantime Fauconberg on 28 Mar. helped to draft and to present in conference the reasons why the House could not agree with the provisions against the queen dowager and her household in the Commons’ bill for the removal of papists from London.

On 16 Apr. the Commons sent back its amended bill for the abrogation of oaths, and the House in turn sent its changes to the amendments back to the lower House two days later. Thus began a long dispute and series of conferences between the Houses on the key point of the dispensation, favoured by the House, of members of the clergy from the abrogation of their old oaths. He did not take part in the first conference on 20 Apr., but was appointed a manager for the free conference two days later. Upon the report of this conference the House agreed to accept the Commons’ amendment enforcing the oaths on the clergy as long as it were left to the discretion of the king to allow no more than twelve nonjuring clergymen to enjoy the income from the ecclesiastical benefices. Fauconberg was assigned to manage the free conference of 24 Apr. in which this concession was made, and the Commons in turn agreed to these terms, allowing the king to give the bill for abrogating oaths his royal assent when he visited Parliament that afternoon.

Fauconberg continued busy in the House throughout May 1689. On 8 May he was a reporter for a conference on the bill for the disarming of papists, after which the House accepted the Commons’ objections to its amendment. The following day he was placed on a subcommittee established by the committee of the whole House to consider the Commons’ amendments to the bill for establishing commissioners of the great seal. On 22 May he was appointed a manager for a conference on the Commons’ amendments to the toleration bill, after which the lower House agreed to the Lords’ objections. On that day he also chaired and reported from a committee of the whole considering the Bill of Rights, which established a subcommittee to draw clauses for settling the succession in the House of Hanover and for forbidding any king from marrying a papist. He chaired the committee of the whole House again on 24 May when these clauses drawn up by the subcommittee were reported and approved. HMC Lords, ii. 346. That same day he was named to the committee to draft reasons why the House did not agree with the Commons in removing the clause in the additional poll bill which allowed for the peerage’s self-assessment, but he was not assigned to manage the conference on 27 May when these reasons were presented.

On 15 June he was assigned to the drafting committee for an address requesting the king to repair the derelict garrisons, to discourage papists and, potentially most embarrassing for Fauconberg and other members of the council on Irish affairs, to investigate the reasons for the miscarriages in Ireland. Fauconberg was also involved in the impeachments of Sir Adam Blair and Captain Henry Vaughan, and on 26 June Fauconberg was placed on a committee to examine the Journal for precedents of similar impeachments. The precedents were reported on 2 July and the House resolved to proceed with the impeachments, prompting a dissent from 21 peers. Fauconberg evidently wished to be among that group for the following day he explained to the House that he had been present at the previous day’s debate and had even spoken on the matter, but had been absent when the division on the question was put. He wished, nevertheless, to put his name to the dissent, but the House ruled against him, as he had missed the division itself, which ‘was against the rules and orders of the House’.

Fauconberg was placed on 24 July on the committee to devise an explanation why the House insisted on its controversial amendments to the bill to reverse the two judgments against Titus Oates and he helped to present these reasons to the Commons in conference two days later. He also, on 25 July, helped to draw up reasons for insisting on amendments to the bill for duties on tea and coffee. He was prominent in the committee on the bill for prohibiting trade with France and chaired its meetings on four occasions between 12 and 16 August. On 17 Aug. the House ordered him to report from the committee, which he duly did two days later, although the House did not accept all of the amendments suggested by the committee. Ibid. 250. The following day, 20 Aug., the session was adjourned for over a month, and it did not meet again for serious or extended business until the prorogation of 21 October. When the Convention resumed in its second session two days later, Fauconberg was there, but only attended 44 per cent of the sittings and left the House on 14 Dec. 1689, well over a month before the session was prorogued on 27 Jan. 1690. The Convention was dissolved on 6 Feb. 1690.

William III’s Parliaments, 1690-1700

Fauconberg attended just over three-quarters of the sittings of the first session, in spring 1690, of William III’s first Parliament. Late in the session, in the debate of 2 May 1690 on the bill to enforce an oath of abjuration, Fauconberg spoke against the immediate rejection of the bill, as was argued for by many because of the bill’s potential divisiveness, and called for its commitment. Eg. 3347, ff. 4-5. Eleven days later he signed the dissent against the resolution not to allow counsel for the City of London more time to be heard in their petition to have the City’s charter restored. He was present for the first day, 2 Oct. 1690, of the following session of 1690-91 and proceeded to attend two-thirds of the sittings. On his second day there, 6 Oct., he was named to the drafting committee for an address of thanks to the queen for her government of the kingdom in the king’s absence and also voted for the discharge of Peterborough and James Cecil, 4th earl of Salisbury from the Tower. Browning, iii. 180. On 29 Oct. he chaired the committee of the whole considering the bill to clarify the power of the admiralty commissioners and reported it as fit to pass without amendment. He then chaired, over the course of the period 17-29 Nov. 1690, six meetings of the committee of the whole considering the bill to reform abuses in chancery, in which the judges themselves were consulted as to their views on parts of the bill. HMC Lords, iii. 136-8. He was appointed to the drafting committee for an order to vacate written protections and reported the draft on 9 Dec., but the House recommitted the matter to a committee of the whole the following day. Later, on 27 Dec., Fauconberg subscribed to the dissent from the resolution to allow written protections to be given to the menial servants of peers. In the last days of December he continued to be active, particularly in committee of the whole House. He chaired three meetings of the committee of the whole on the bill for examining public accounts in 29-31 Dec., and on 30 Dec. he also chaired a committee on the bill for attainting those in rebellion against William and Mary. Ibid. 230.

He was present for about two-thirds of the sittings of the 1691-2 session. On 17 Nov. 1691 he acted as a reporter for the conference on ‘matters relating to the safety of the kingdom’, at which the Commons announced their determination to proceed with the investigation of the letters found on the person of Richard Grahme^‡, Viscount Preston [S], when his ship was boarded en route to France. On that same day he also reported from the committee assigned to consider the petition of George Hitchcock against Obadiah Sedgewick, in which he recommended the rejection of the petition. This advice was again ignored and instead the House ordered that counsel for both sides would be heard in four days’ time. A month later, on 18 Dec., he chaired the committee of the whole House when it determined that the book of ‘observations’ submitted to the House by the commissioners of public accounts would be considered each day at noon, no other business intervening. Between 18 and 29 Dec. 1691, Fauconberg chaired the committee of the whole House five times for its consideration of the observations. The committee formulated a set of questions to be posed to the commissioners, which he reported to the House on 30 Dec. 1691. The commissioners of accounts delivered their written answers to the House on 12 Jan. 1692 and four days later Fauconberg chaired the committee of the whole House again to consider these answers. The observations and the answers of the commissioners fell by the wayside in the busy weeks following, especially as the Commons shifted their focus of attention by bringing up a bill for another commission of accounts. Ibid. 402-3. At the beginning of the new year, on 12 Jan. 1692, Fauconberg signed the protest against the decision to receive the bill for the divorce of Henry Howard, 7th duke of Norfolk.

From the time of the 1692-3 session Fauconberg’s attendance steadily declined in the House and he never again came to more than half of the meetings of any session. In this session he came to only 38 (35 per cent) of its sittings, but he was present for the trial of Charles Mohun, 4th Baron Mohun, on 4 Feb. 1693, whom he, with the majority of the House, found not guilty of murder. But, having cast his verdict in Westminster Hall, he was found not to have returned with the other peers to the Lords’ chamber after the trial – one of only four such miscreants – and was consequently fined £100 which was to go to the poor of Westminster. Add. 70081, newsletter, 4 Feb. 1693. He was present at 37 per cent of the sittings of the 1693-4 session and on 15 Jan. 1694 was placed on the committee to draw up heads for a conference concerning the details of the timing when intelligence of the sailing of the French fleet from Brest was transmitted to the admirals the previous summer. However, he was not named a manager for the ensuing conference when these heads were to be presented. Nothing was heard from the Commons on this point for several weeks until on 7 Feb. 1694, in response to a request from the House, the clerks reported their findings of precedents of messages sent between the Houses to remind them of papers previously delivered. Fauconberg was then placed on a new committee of ten members to prepare further heads for a conference on the intelligence of the sailing of the Brest fleet, including a reprimand to the lower House for ignoring the Lords’ previous message to them on this point in the previous conference. This time he was appointed a manager for the conferences held on 8 and 12 Feb. when the House delivered its stern message to the Commons. He barely attended the last session of William III’s first Parliament, in 1694-5, at all.

He managed to come to 30, just under a quarter, of the sittings in the first session, of 1695-6, in the ensuing Parliament, where he contributed to debate in a committee of the whole on 4 Dec. 1695 on the state of the coinage and expressed concern for the health of trade if the coin were called in. HMC Hastings, iv. 310-12. On another controversial topic, he was a manager for a conference on 14 Dec. on the address against the establishment of the Scottish East India Company. He signed the Association pledging loyalty to William III on the first possible occasion, 27 Feb. 1696. By this time age was clearly taking its toll on Fauconberg and he effectively retired from the House in late 1696. He attended only 13 sittings of the session of 1696-7, all in late November and December 1696. In one of his last interventions in the House, on 15 Dec., he signed the protest against the resolution to read Cardell Goodman’s information in the proceedings for the bill to attaint Sir John Fenwick^‡, and he was given permission to leave the House when that suspect testimony was read. HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 277. He was marked as present in the House on 23 Dec. when the final division on the bill for Fenwick’s attainder took place. His name does not occur in the division list for this controversial vote, either for or against, and once more he may have chosen to abstain.

That day was his very last in the House and by July 1697 he revealed his determination to withdraw from public life in a letter to his brother-in-law Sir William Frankland, himself dying: ‘for my own particular, that have seen all the vanities and acted an unhappy part upon all the scenes and stages of human life, it is more than time I should endeavour to get the taste and relish of this world out of my mouth by withdrawing from the noise and bustle of it to a more heavenly conversation’. HMC Astley, 89. Fauconberg died at his house of Sutton Court in Chiswick on 31 Dec. 1700. He did not have any surviving children by either of his wives, and in his will of 14 Nov. 1699 he stipulated bequests and annuities totalling approximately £7,500 and divided his extensive estate in Yorkshire and Lancashire and his houses in Chiswick and King’s (i.e. Soho) Square between his wife, his sister, his nephew Sir Thomas Frankland^‡ and another nephew, the son of his younger brother Sir Rowland Belasyse. TNA, PROB 11/460. This nephew, Thomas Belasyse, unlike him in religion and politics, succeeded him as 3rd Viscount Fauconberg. The earldom became extinct due to Fauconberg’s lack of direct male offspring, until it was created once again for another Belasyse later in the eighteenth century.