WILLOUGHBY, Charles (1681-1715)

Charles Willoughby was the last surviving son of Francis Willoughby, younger brother of Hugh Willoughby, 11th (CP 12th) Baron Willoughby of Parham. For the numbering of the Barons Willoughby of Parham, see vol. 1, appendix. This biography is based on P.J.W. Higson, ‘The 13th and 14th Lords Willoughby of Parham: Typical and Untypical Members of a Dissenting Family’, Trans. Hist. Soc. of Lancs. and Cheshire, cli. 151–61, and P.J.W. Higson, ‘A Dissenting Northern Family: The Lancashire Branch of the Willoughbys of Parham, 1640–1765’, NH vii. 31–53. His activities before his elevation to the title upon the death of his elder brother Edward, in April 1713, are obscure. Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, in his analysis of the ‘poor lords’ needing financial assistance in 1713, and Sunderland’s mother-in-law, the duchess of Marlborough, both described Willoughby as a carpenter. Add. 61463, ff. 101–4. On the other hand, the Dutch and Brandenburg envoys l’Hermitage and Bonet both stated that he had worked as a weaver, ‘in a far-away province’ (i.e. Lancashire). Sunderland asserted that Willoughby was only worth £150 p.a., while l’Hermitage put the figure lower, at £100 p.a., and further explained that that income only came from the interest on the pensions given to the two previous barons. Add. 17677 GGG, f. 229; DZA, Merseburg, Bonet’s despatches, f. 160.

Willoughby’s education was apparently minimal, and one condescending description claimed that ‘he cannot read himself’. Add. 70206, J. Sumner to Sir R. Bradshaigh, 3 May 1713. If true, this lack of basic learning is surprising considering his father’s close involvement in numerous Dissenting academies in Lancashire, such as the Rivington Free Grammar School and Blackrod School. Willoughby himself appears to have been a local worthy among the nonconformists of Horwich and Rivington and ‘enjoyed a great reputation among the Presbyterians’. Chetham Soc. xxii. 396n. In early May 1713 John Sumner, an agent of the Member for Wigan Sir Roger Bradshaigh^‡, himself a client of Robert Harley earl of Oxford, held a meeting with the new Baron Willoughby of Parham in which he tried to convince him to travel immediately to Westminster to take his seat in the House. He reported to Bradshaigh that Willoughby:

complained as before of his state of health as unfit for a London journey, that he must have a special regard to it before any temporal consideration, not without a canting glance, in his way, at his spiritual concern. I urged the favourableness of the season, and the necessity of his showing a towardly disposition to appear in Parliament to qualify him to appoint a proxy and then he might retire as soon as he pleased into the country. I suggested that without such a compliance no favours could be hoped from above … and that no private concern here, could bear any proportion to the encouragement of showing himself above. Upon which he recounted his want of education, how unfit to appear in an assembly of lords, and what disorder such a presence would put him into. I assured him such a countenance would be given him above, that he would take his place in the House without the least confusion, or being gazed at, that all parties would be in hopes of him, and therefore everybody would show him respect. I thought it best not to determine him to any party, that being best done there, though the hints were broad enough to a man of the least capacity. I hope at length his own interest, and the honour of his family, will prevail with [him] over the senseless cant of those that would delude him, though he really is of an odd kind of temper … sullen and surly at parting. Add. 70206, J. Sumner to Sir R. Bradshaigh, 3 May 1713.

Willoughby of Parham eventually gave in to these persuasions and sat in the House for the first time (and the only time in that session) on 18 June 1713.

Regardless of Sumner’s assurances, the appearance of this most unusual peer in the House did attract attention and the Dutch envoy l’Hermitage devoted much of his dispatch to the States-General to describing the strange history of this title, ‘one of the oldest of the kingdom … fallen for several recent years to very obscure collateral lines’. Add. 17677 GGG, f. 229. Sumner’s earlier solicitations for Willoughby to align himself with the Oxford ministry, done through ‘hints … broad enough to a man of the least capacity’, were backed up by the lord treasurer himself, who, according to Sunderland in his 1713 memorandum submitted to the Hanoverian agent Schütz, had offered the peer, ‘under his own hand’, a pension of £1,000. Willoughby, however, had refused this offer and ‘came up to town and voted right, and always will do so’. The Hanoverian resident, Kreienberg, had earlier promised to supply the peer with £300 a year and the expenses of his journey to London, but this had not been paid and thus Sunderland urged Schütz to pay the impoverished peer what had been promised him to ensure Willoughby’s adherence to the Whigs. Bradshaigh in a letter to his patron and paymaster, Oxford, written during the time of the expensive elections for his seat of Wigan in September 1713, asserted that it was Sunderland himself and his Junto colleague Thomas Wharton, earl (later marquess) of Wharton, who subsidized Willoughby’s brief period in London:

That sad wretch my Lord Willoughby was to make me a visit last week. He has been very impertinent to his power at our elections, but he looks so ill that I believe he will scarce venture on another London journey this winter. He has at this time a governor to take care of him, appointed by my Lord Wharton and Lord Sunderland with an allowance of 30 lib. per annum, and his lordship was supplied with all necessaries at London by them with large promises of future favours. Add 70213, Bradshaigh to Oxford, 20 Sept. 1713.

Sarah, duchess of Marlborough, gave the Whig interpretation of Willoughby’s situation when she wrote in a letter of about this time that

I have often thought how much a better figure an honest carpenter makes, who declares, like my Lord Willoughby of Parham, that he will never be but in the interest of his country, than those lords (who, though they have had the advantage of a better education) have betrayed it, for trifles, ribbons, and money, which instead of being an honour to them is only a bag of infamy. Add. 61463, ff. 101–2.

As Bradshaigh predicted, Willoughby did not come up to London for the opening of the new Parliament on 16 Feb. 1714. He first appeared in the House on 16 Apr. and proceeded to sit only a further nine times before he left on 1 May. On 24 May he registered his proxy for the remainder of the session with his patron Wharton, who already held that of Sunderland as well. He may have been relying on Wharton to use his vote to oppose the schism bill, as Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, forecast he would. That measure aimed precisely at the type of Dissenting schools and academies with which Willoughby and his family had long been associated and, during the second half of 1714, when he was away from the House, Willoughby was closely involved in the defence of the nonconformists in his native Lancashire and particularly in a struggle with the diocese of Chester over control of Dissenting chapels.

George I, unwilling to subsidize Willoughby openly during Anne’s reign, sought after his accession to reward him for his loyalty to the Hanoverian succession and as early as 13 Oct. 1714 it was decided that Willoughby and a number of other poor lords should have something given to them to tide them over ‘till his majesty was ready to make some competent provision for their maintenance’. CTP, 1714–19, p. 14. Willoughby first sat in George I’s new Parliament on 11 Apr. 1715. He registered his proxy with another prominent Whig, Thomas Pelham Holles, earl of Clare (later duke of Newcastle), on 30 May 1715, and stopped attending the House on 9 June. A week previously the king had made ‘competent provision’ for Willoughby and had signed a warrant directing that £200 be paid to him as royal bounty. CTB, xxix. 535. He did not have much time to enjoy this royal largesse, as he died on 12 June at his home in Lancashire and was buried at Horwich chapel. Willoughby’s will appointed his widow, Esther, and a local Dissenting minister John Walker as executors for the care of his sole surviving infant son, Hugh Willoughby^†, 14th (CP 15th) /5th Baron Willoughby of Parham.

Willoughby of Parham’s legacy was insufficient to support his widow and three young children, including one who needed to be appropriately educated for the peerage. In the petitions submitted in the early years of George I asking for a subsidy for the family, the late baron’s reputation as a Whig hero, if not martyr, was constantly invoked. The dowager baroness reminded the king that her husband’s integrity had made him refuse

the temptations that were made to him from those who knew how unequal the estate of the family is to their ancient honour. … But he took the first opportunity of going up to Parliament, though his little appearance in public, the length of the journey and the visible decay of his health made it very uneasy to him,

while the nonconformist minister Thomas Bradbury emphasized to the secretary of state, Sunderland, that ‘Your lordship knows with what zeal and toil’ the late baron ‘came up to serve his country and his majesty’s interest, and how steadily he resisted the temptations of the court’. Herts. ALS, DE/P/F123; Add. 61603, f. 149. These efforts for the maintenance of the young heir were not to be in vain, for the 14th Baron Willoughby of Parham became, like his father, a staunch Dissenter and Whig, and, unlike him and almost all other Willoughbys of Parham before him, well educated (at Dissenting academies), long-lived and energetic in both his parliamentary duties and his intellectual interests.