The Convention and the Hyde marriage, 1660-1
Educated on the battlefields of The Civil War, the subject of a daring escape from captivity and with a distinguished record of bravery as a soldier in the French and Spanish service, the young James, duke of York was on the verge of accepting a prestigious though probably powerless post as High Admiral of Spain or ‘Prince of the Sea’ when the English Republic suddenly imploded.
It is possible that York was in the first months after the Restoration diverging from his brother the king and his as future father-in-law, Edward Hyde, later Baron Hyde and earl of Clarendon, Charles’s lord chancellor and most powerful minister. Charles II under the influence of Hyde and James Butler, earl of Brecknock and duke of Ormond [I], took the continued presence in England of the French ambassador Antoine de Bordeaux-Neufville (who had been ambassador to the English republic and Cromwellian protectorate) as a calculated insult by Cardinal Mazarin, with whom they had crossed swords often in the past. York, however, went out of his way to maintain cordial relations with the ambassador and to assure him of his gratitude to France. Bourdeaux would become closely involved in plans closely related to the circle around the queen and the French court to topple the chancellor.
On 1 Sept. the House of Commons voted York an annual income of £10,000 and asked the king not to dispose of the estates of those excepted from the act of oblivion until provision had been made for him. York was in the Lords chamber on the 3rd, when the House passed similar votes to the Commons; on the same day he was named to the committee on the drainage of the Lincolnshire fens and on the 7th was nominated as one of the commissioners for disbanding the army. On the same day as the Lords’ vote providing him with an annual income, York formalized his marriage contract with Anne Hyde, the daughter of the lord chancellor, in a furtive ceremony at Hyde’s Worcester House conducted by York’s chaplain Joseph Crowther, witnessed by Thomas Butler, earl of Ossory [I] and later Baron Butler, and Eleanor Strode, Anne’s servant. The wedding followed an engagement of 24 Nov. 1659 at Breda, and the evidence of Anne’s pregnancy.
The marriage—apparently a genuine commitment on the part of York, and according to Clarendon having sought the consent of the king—created a political crisis. Apart from the mésalliance, felt deeply by the queen mother and her circle, it wrecked her plans to cement relations with France through a diplomatic marriage for her second son. Hyde himself claimed to have been initially convinced that the affair was part of a plot to discredit him; the king seems to have quickly accepted that the marriage was legally binding, genuinely the product of his brother’s affection for Anne Hyde, and there was nothing to be done.
Anne Hyde’s firm insistence when she gave birth on 22 Oct. that York was the father, the marriage was valid, and that she had not slept with anyone else were convincing enough to dispel the whispering campaign, although the queen mother’s arrival in London on 2 Nov., bringing new tales of Anne’s alleged promiscuity, gave fresh impetus to the attempts to overturn the marriage, particularly as York seemed unable to admit to her that he was, indeed, married.
York and the Restoration regime
York was provided with estates and income by the crown that perhaps made him the richest individual in the country. It is difficult to be precise about York’s finances: estimates of his income range from £40,000 a year to £150,000, and it changed over time, as a result of a long drawn-out process of sorting out a complex portfolio of land and other investments.
Apart from the £10,000 voted by Parliament in 1660 and a further £120,000 in 1665 following the early victories of the Second Dutch War, York was granted in 1661 the profits from the post office and wine licences, a grant that was confirmed in 1663 by Act of Parliament.
Apart from his enormous property portfolio, York built up substantial investments in trading companies. By 1662 he was the largest single shareholder in the Company of Royal Adventurers trading into Africa (later rechartered as the Royal African Company).
York’s circle had formed in exile, largely around military figures with whom he had served in the armies of France. John Berkeley, Baron Berkeley of Stratton, had been appointed his governor in 1648: now his steward, he was an old rival of the earl of Clarendon, and had been closely involved in attempts to discredit Hyde in the 1650s as well as the Hyde marriage (and Clarendon) in late 1660. So had Charles Berkeley, the future earl of Falmouth, a groom of York’s bedchamber since 1656, and nephew of Lord Berkeley, who was also closely involved in the efforts to discredit Anne Hyde. Many other of York’s closest associates would have military backgrounds, such as George Legge, the future Baron Dartmouth, or Louis Dufort de Duras, earl of Feversham, or John Churchill, Baron Churchill, (ultimately duke of Marlborough). York’s land holdings, his generosity to his followers, the size of his household, his trading interests and his offices, particularly the patronage at the disposal of the admiralty, gave him the potential for considerable parliamentary influence. A total of 47 members of the Commons (including Speaker Edward Turnor‡, and York’s successive secretaries, Sir William Coventry‡ and Matthew Wren‡, and his treasurer, Sir Allen Apsley) were members of, or closely related to members of, York’s household; a further 15 held commissions either in his regiment or in the navy. His three brothers-in-law, Edward‡, Henry Hyde, later 2nd earl of Clarendon, and Laurence Hyde, later earl of Rochester, had experience of both Houses, as did his close friends Thomas Butler, earl of Ossory [I], who sat in the Lords as Baron Butler of Moore Park, Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough and Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford. Among others personally associated with York who were in the House of Commons at some point were Sir Allen Apsley, Francis Hawley‡, Baron Hawley [I], Henry Brouncker‡, William Legge‡, Thomas Dalmahoy‡, Richard Graham‡, Christopher Hatton, later Viscount Hatton.
Numerous Members are known to have sought, and obtained a recommendation or other form of direct support from the duke of York in order to secure election, many of them in the Cinque Ports where his interest was strongest, or in one or other of the ports where the navy was a major source of weath. Some were officers or officials of the navy, such as Sir George Carteret‡ (at Portsmouth), Samuel Pepys‡ (at Castle Rising), Sir Richard Haddock‡ (at Aldeburgh), William Penn‡ (at Weymouth), John Robinson‡ (at Rye).
York, though he had strong political views, was only episodically a powerful figure in English politics. He was, however, constantly involved in the inner counsels of his brother’s government, almost always present at significant discussions of policy and a routine attender in the Privy Council.
Clarendon, 1661-8
York attended the opening of the Cavalier Parliament on 8 May and was then present on over 77 per cent of sitting days. On 28 June he was named to the committee to consider the sanguinary laws concerning religion and on 1 July he was named to the committee to consider former proceedings relating to the court of York. Later, in August John Parker, bishop of Elphin [I], who was in London trying to influence Parliament over the question of impropriations in the Church of Ireland reported that in the process of his lobbying activities he had made contact with York ‘who is a zealous and active friend to the Church.’
On 19 Dec. 1661 York was named to the committee to meet with the Commons to consider rumours of a plot. Closely associated now with his father-in-law (now earl of Clarendon), in early February 1662 he helped the chancellor to oppose the Commons’ amendments to the Convention’s Act for Confirming Ministers, which would have ensured the early removal of many more ministers than had the original act.
During the late summer, York was closely involved in negotiations surrounding the controversial sale of Dunkirk to the French. He claimed credit for persuading his brother to accept the French offer, though it was the duchess who received Louis XIV’s ‘deepest appreciation’ for her help in arranging the sale, though it is not quite clear what for.
York attended just over 72 per cent of the sitting days during the 1663 session. At the opening of the session he was again named to the committees for privileges and for petitions. Shortly after the beginning of the session, in the debates in the Lords on the Declaration of Indulgence, he was said to have acted as his brother’s mouthpiece, suggesting new laws against Catholics—presumably he was laying before the House some of the proposals to prevent the growth of popery that the king had offered when opening the session.
Bristol’s obvious determination to hit back may have been the reason for an increase in York’s attendance at the House—he was present on all but two of the sitting days in July. The day before Bristol was expected to accuse Clarendon of high treason on 10 July, York was lobbying his friends to oppose him, and on the 10th itself, following Bristol’s delivery of his charges, he counter-attacked with a speech in which he accused Bristol of being a ‘sower of sedition.’
Tensions between the king and his brother were, though, said to exist. There was a rumour in December 1663 that York was to replace Ormond as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, and another in February 1664 that he was to be given the government of the low countries by the king of Spain. Neither was true, though they may be indicative of moves to take him away from the court.
York was present on every day of this session. As usual, he was named to the committee for privileges. On 21 Mar. he presented the petition of Robert Robartes, then heir apparent to his father John Robartes, 2nd Baron Robartes (later earl of Radnor) in an appeal against a chancery decree.
In the early autumn of 1664 York was preoccupied with preparations for war: naval duties would ensure his absence from the opening of Parliament.
Two days after the end of the 1664-5 session war was declared and York joined the fleet. York was, according to Clarendon, a strong supporter of the war.
The war put strains on York’s relationship with his father-in-law, who had been opposed to it.
York was present for the opening of Parliament in Oxford on 10 Oct. 1665. Thereafter he attended on nine of the fourteen days of the session and again held Carnarvon’s proxy. In his speech to both Houses at the beginning of the October 1665 session of Parliament, the chancellor told how the king had refused to allow York to return to command the fleet, and both Houses voted thanks on 10 and 11 Oct. to the king for his care of the duke’s person. On 24 Oct., the Commons voted an additional sum of £120,000 on top of the main supply bill, designed to be given to the duke. York was present in the Lords on 30 Oct. when, in alliance with the bishops, he ensured that the bill to prevent nonconformists from living in corporations (which would become the Five Mile Act) was passed without being re-committed.
York’s reputation had been considerably enhanced by his success at sea; now frustrated at being barred from further military service, rumours now suggested his ambition and greater assertiveness towards his brother. Towards the end of October 1665 Albemarle was reported to be resentful at a story that York was to be given command of an army in the north.
York did gain some credit from his intervention in fighting the Fire of London.
The difficulties in which the government found itself after an exceptionally unsuccessful session, with supply agreed far too late to make it possible to raise credit for setting out the navy, no doubt contributed to growing tensions in the court. A week after the end of the session it was reported that York was openly quarrelling with Albemarle in council.
Clarendon’s removal from the lord chancellorship at the end of August was the result of a confused and farcical process initiated by York’s secretary Sir William Coventry, and supported by York, who seems mistakenly to have believed that it was Clarendon’s wish, following the death of his wife in June, to retire from public life. Coventry told Pepys ‘that he did first speak of it to the duke of York, before he spoke to any mortal creature besides, which was fair dealing; and that the duke of York was then of the same mind with him and did speak of it to the king, though since, for reasons best known to himself, he was afterward altered’.
York was present at the opening of the 1667-9 session of Parliament on 10 Oct. and was named to the committees for privileges and petitions. Overall he was present on some 63 per cent of sitting days. He was at the House every sitting day in October. The king extracted from him a promise not to oppose the proposal for votes of thanks by both Houses for Clarendon’s removal, although he was said to have insisted that he would defend Clarendon ‘if the enemies of the chancellor pushed him too far.’
After attending the House on 6 Nov., however, York was taken ill with small pox. Although it proved in the end to be relatively minor illness, it took him out of the acrimonious debates over the impeachment of Clarendon over the next month.
After Clarendon: Conversion and the Dutch War, 1668-72
In the aftermath of Clarendon’s departure, a purge of his supporters was expected. The French ambassadors were convinced that Arlington, working in the Spanish interest, was stoking up Charles’s hostility to his brother, ensuring that he was excluded from negotiations with the Spanish and Dutch and that York faced a concerted campaign to remove him from office. The rumours that either the duke of Monmouth or the king would be persuaded to divorce and remarry became more insistent in January and February, and the idea of cool relations between the king and York persisted, the king being said to be afraid of York ‘yet neglects and incenses him’.
York returned to the House on 10 Feb. 1668 to hear his brother’s announcement of the new treaty. Said to be concerned over the continuing Commons’ investigations into the war and the navy, York was present on all but two of the remaining days of the session and contrary to expectation found himself, unlike Buckingham, relatively popular and respected: ‘the duke of York’ reported Ruvigny at the beginning of March, ‘sits well.’
The crisis in the relationship between York and his brother seems to have passed by early April, perhaps as it became clear that Buckingham’s offer to manage Parliament was unreliable; York’s assiduous performance of his naval functions seems also to have attracted some admiration, and perhaps won support. Even Arlington ‘who until now had insolently crossed him in all things’, was said to have come to see him to ask his pardon; and Lady Castlemaine went out of her way to make friends with the duchess. The French ambassador Ruvigny reported that ‘the duke is reassuming his rightful place’.
Despite the apparent recovery in York’s position over the first half of 1668, he seems to have been acutely aware of the threats to his position, particularly as the duke of Buckingham recovered some of his favour with the king in the second half of the year. He was keen over the summer of 1668 to ‘do something’ about miscarriages in the navy office, in order, Pepys thought, to secure his position, because ‘the world is labouring to eclipse him’.
The attempt at a reconciliation probably coincided with the beginnings of discussions between the duke and his brother over the Catholic religion, recorded by James himself in the surviving part of his memoir: it suggests that James had determined on becoming a Catholic through a series of discussions with the Jesuit, Joseph Simons; that he had been told that it was not possible for him to be received into the Catholic Church but still attend Anglican communion (even with the pope’s dispensation); that he had established that Charles was also interested in conversion; and that at an extraordinary meeting on 25 January 1669 with Arlington, Henry Arundell, 3rd Baron Arundell of Wardour, and Sir Thomas Clifford, later Baron Clifford, at York’s apartments, Charles discussed how it might be possible for him to declare his own conversion, and concluded that it would only be done in alliance with France.
The issues around which the competition was immediately focused were Parliament and religious policy. While Buckingham argued for a dissolution of the existing Parliament and the calling of a new one, York took the contrary view.
Milord Arlington, with whom he is not on the best of terms at the moment, is doing all he can to outdo him and get in with the duke of York; and while this prince protests that he would rather lay down his life than make use of the power he has in Parliament to ruin those who have the greatest part in the running of affairs, nevertheless, as it appears that the credit he has among those who compose the assembly is growing every day, these ministers can well see that his friendship is not to be neglected in view of the decision the king seems to have taken not to dissolve Parliament.
The king’s decision to retain the existing Parliament and to issue a proclamation against conventicles both represented victories for York and his allies over Buckingham.
Over the late summer, the improvement in the relationship between the royal brothers was consolidated. They spent some time together hunting in Epping Forest.
we could conclude nothing until the assembly of Parliament was finished because, he said, the people of England, who do not care for novelty in religion, would not fail to declaim against this alliance, and Parliament would be of the same sentiment, and would refuse the king the means of paying his debts, and of executing the treaty he would have made; instead of which, if one were to wait until it were finished, one would have plenty of time before it reassembled to give them a taste of this alliance, and even let them appreciate its advantages.
PRO 31/3/122, ff. 102-3; Add. 32499, f. 25.
The death of the queen mother in France at the end of August may have had some effect in cementing the new relationship between the king and his brother. In September York told his sister that the king was ‘much kinder’ to him than he used to be and in October Colbert reported that Arlington had begun to work closely with York, and that York ‘sits better than ever with the king, and still promises to bring about a close union between France and England.’
When Parliament met in October, the strategy that York outlined to Colbert over the summer appears to have been followed closely. York was present at the opening of Parliament on 19 Oct. 1669 when he was named to the committee for privileges, and he was present on all but the final day of the session. On 25 Oct. his name was added to all committees including those not yet formed. He held Darcy’s proxy from 20 Oct. as well as that of Leicester Devereux, 6th Viscount Hereford (from 22 Nov.) for the remainder of the session.
York was again present at the opening of the 1670-1 session (which was adjourned between April and October 1670) on 14 Feb. 1670, and attended for every sitting day until the adjournment on 11 Apr. 1670. He again held Darcy’s proxy for the whole of the session as well as that of Thomas Windsor, 7th Baron Windsor (later earl of Plymouth), from 15 Mar. to 9 Nov. 1670 and again from 19 Dec. 1670 to the end of the session. He was named to the committees for privileges and petitions, and to the committee for the bill to prevent frauds in the exportation of wool and then on 8 Mar. 1670 was added to all committees; once again the term ‘all committees’ included those yet to be formed. Despite this rubric he was specifically named to the committee considering the bill initiated by the king on the sale of fee farm rents on 18 March. On the same day he reported from the committee considering the bill to remove benefit of clergy from those convicted of stealing cloth from the rack or stealing from the king’s stores. The success of the session in damping down the jurisdictional disputes of the previous two owed something to a firm assertion of his authority by the king and his decision to allow the conventicle bill to proceed. During March the two major political issues confronting the House of Lords were the divorce bill for Lord (Roos John Manners, later duke of Rutland) and the conventicle bill. Although the king insisted that he supported Roos’s bill only because ‘he is happy to oblige all persons of quality who are his kinsmen or in his interests’ the duke of Buckingham in particular was keen to promote the idea that it had implications for the king’s own marriage. York and the queen were said to be working together to oppose the bill.
Immediately after the adjournment of 11 Apr. 1670 York went with his brother and most of the court to Newmarket. In May they went to Dover to meet their sister, the duchess of Orleans at Dover, where the Secret Treaty of Dover, committing Charles to making his conversion to Catholicism and allying with the French in war against the Dutch republic, was signed on 22 May.
James had recovered sufficiently to attend Parliament when it reconvened on 24 Oct. and he was then present on some 85 per cent of sitting days up to the end of the session in April 1671. On 23 Jan. 1671 he invoked privilege of Parliament to secure the arrest of George Thompson and his accomplices for arresting William Foakes in a dispute over oyster beds in which York claimed ownership. In the spring of 1671 he was present for all three readings of the bill to explain a proviso in the act that had settled the profits of the post office on him; he appears to have taken no part in the activities of the committee considering the bill other than to signify his consent to its provisions.
Despite the relative success of the 1671 session, early in July York told the French ambassador that the king should be ‘very wary’ of calling Parliament together again, adding ‘that affairs are at present here in such a situation as to make one believe that a king and a Parliament can no longer live together’.
The major preoccupation of 1671, however, were the negotiations with France about their joint assault on the Dutch republic. Over the year, York had to recognize that Charles II’s enthusiasm for the secret Treaty of Dover ‘Catholicity’ project had cooled considerably since January 1669 and was considerably less than his own: the project had become much more focused on an aggressive war against the Dutch. Diplomatic and military planning for it continued throughout 1671 and into early 1672, naturally involving York as lord admiral; and his naval role dominated once the war began in March 1672.
The Second Dutch War, 1672-4
York participated in the discussions in the foreign affairs committee on the Declaration of Indulgence: at a meeting at Lord Arlington’s lodgings on 7 Mar. which discussed how best to give effect to the Declaration, he spoke (with Arlington) in favour of a cautious approach to the question of ‘regulation’ of the religious groupings freed by the Indulgence.
The naval campaign of 1672 was indecisive, with a bloody engagement at Sole Bay in late May leading to recriminations between the allies, and failing to enhance York’s reputation. York’s marriage was a preoccupation over the winter of 1672-3, as it was becoming clear that negotiations for York’s Austrian marriage were getting nowhere (the archduchess would in the end be married to the Emperor Leopold I).
Even at this stage the question of York’s religion was a matter of rumour rather than open knowledge: his reaction to the passage of the Test Act was uncertain, and since a considerable period was allowed for taking the oaths and making the declaration required to hold office under the act, it remained uncertain for some time. Nevertheless, the French ambassador, at least, was in no doubt of the popular fury that was brewing against York, and the determination among a number of senior politicians, including Shaftesbury, to persuade the king to find some way to remarry and father legitimate children in order to exclude James from the throne.
With it deemed essential for York’s marriage to a Catholic to be concluded before Parliament met, he and the king settled in late July on Maria Beatrice d’Este, daughter of the duke of Modena, within the sphere of influence of the king of France.
York was still present for the opening of the new session on 20 October, when the king imposed a further prorogation for a week, with the intention that the new duchess should have arrived in England and the marriage consummated before Parliament sat. The Commons, nevertheless, succeeded in using the time taken in the Lords for the introduction of new peers at the beginning of the session, to pass an address requesting that the marriage should not be consummated and that York should only marry a Protestant. Lord Chancellor Shaftesbury was generally assumed to have ensured sufficient time was taken up with routine business in the Lords for the Commons to pass their vote.
Over the interim, the court’s policy showed the influence of Viscount Latimer (as Osborne had since become), the protégé of Buckingham, whose appointment as Lord Treasurer on Clifford’s resignation in June York had supported.
The new session opened on 7 Jan. 1674. York, who was present on every sitting day, held Dorchester’s proxy from 16 Feb. for the remainder of the session. He was again added to the committees for privileges and petitions. On 8 Jan. he, Northampton and Arthur Anglesey, earl of Anglesey were the only peers to vote against a motion initiated by Shaftesbury for an address to the crown for a fresh proclamation against papists: even the Catholic peers recognized the need to assuage anti-catholic opinion and voted in favour of the address. York seems to have been taken aback by the continued hostility to him in Parliament, having (he told the French ambassador, Ruvigny) relied on assurances from Arlington and Ormond that it had declined.
Between Danby and the Country Party, 1674-8
The Treaty opened the possibility of the marriage of York’s eldest daughter and heir, Mary, to Prince William of Orange, something mooted by the lord treasurer and the lord keeper in April, but York resisted, discussing with the French ambassador a match with the dauphin instead.
Plans to forge an alliance with some of his enemies in the previous session, based around religious liberty, may have been the point behind Mordaunt’s visit (who was now expecting the reversion to a place as gentleman of the bedchamber to the duke) to Shaftesbury at his home in Dorset in January 1675, in advance of the expected meeting of Parliament: contemporaries were confused as to whether Mordaunt was acting for the king, for York or on behalf of an independent grouping of peers, and the origins of it certainly seem to have been complex, but did involve York.
York was present on 13 Apr. 1675, when Parliament opened, and on every day of the session thereafter. He was, as usual, nominated to the committees for privileges and petitions. He again held Darcy’s proxy from 1 Apr. 1675 to the end of the session. Despite his opposition to Danby’s scheme, he intervened in the debate over the king’s speech on the first day to oppose Shaftesbury’s efforts to appeal for allies among the Catholics in the House. Shaftesbury had said that there were elements of the speech on religion which many in the House had no reason to like; York argued sophistically that what the king had said did not imply persecution, and was said to have thereby ensured that all but one of the Catholic peers supported the vote of thanks. It was said in a newsletter that the duke could have courted popularity and become the patron of nonconformists, but chose instead duty to the king his brother, and effectively lost his opportunity to forge an alliance with the Presbyterian opposition against Danby.
During the course of the session, York’s hostility to Danby had intensified, particularly as, as the French ambassador reported about a week after its end, the king was relying much more on the treasurer, and consulted his own brother much less frequently than before.
to govern what way they list, which we have reason to suspect will be to the prejudice of France and the Catholics, because their late declarations and actions have demonstrated to us, that they take that for the most popular way for themselves, and the likeliest to keep them in absolute power; whereas should the duke get above them after the tricks they have served him, they are not sure he will totally forgive the usage he has had at their hands.Treby, 109-116.
But if Parliament could be persuaded or bribed into following York’s policies, it would provide a more solid foundation for York to consolidate his power with a dissolution rather later: ‘for everybody will then come over to us, and worship the rising sun.’
Parliament reconvened on 13 October. York once again attended every day and was added to the committees for privileges and petitions. He again held Darcy’s proxy for the whole session. Between 8 Oct. and 25 Oct. he also held the proxy of James duke of Monmouth and from 16 Oct. to 20 Nov. he held that of Lord Windsor.
The ensuing long prorogation may have made York feel less constrained. He ceased to attend Anglican services, publicly declaring at the end of March 1676 that ‘he would never more come under the roof of Whitehall Chapel’.
Despite his preference for a dissolution, York seems to have been reasonably confident before Parliament finally met on 15 Feb., having been courted by the key opposition leaders. He had had at least some contact with Holles about the proposed motion about the dissolution and with Shaftesbury, from whom he sought assurances that no impeachment of him was planned. A few days beforehand, he had an interview with Henry O’Brien‡, Lord Ibrackan, in which he discussed the forthcoming business in the Commons and prospects for supply and for the Catholics.
In the end, York seems to have baulked at joining in with the pressure for a dissolution. Despite his earlier interest in the subject, not only did he not support Buckingham’s motion that Parliament had been dissolved by the long prorogation, but he may also have seconded motion proposed by his own associate, the earl of Peterborough, on the subsequent day, 16 Feb., that he be sent to the Tower for making it.
Parliament was adjourned at the end of May 1677, in the midst of a row about the unwillingness of the Commons to commit to a grant before the king committed himself to an alliance with the Dutch: the Commons’ action seems to have produced the usual reaction from York, furious at its temerity and deeply antipathetic to breaking the link with France.
York’s propensity to intervene in decisions relating to the Church was in evidence during the competition for the replacement of Sheldon of Canterbury, who died in early November. His attempt to promote the candidacy of Michael Boyle, archbishop of Dublin, fell flat as Boyle realized what a ‘great disadvantage’ it was to have York’s recommendation.
Intensive diplomatic negotiations (including Danby’s notorious letter to the English ambassador in Paris, Ralph Montagu, later 3rd Baron Montagu of Boughton (future duke of Montagu), soliciting a subsidy failed to produce a peace, and Danby’s efforts to bolster his support in the Commons were also unsuccessful (his efforts included an attempt to ensure that Sir John Reresby‡, elected at a by-election at Aldborough, survived an attempt to unseat him in the committee of elections on 21 Apr.: Reresby was defeated, by two votes, much to the irritation of York, who explained to Reresby how he had spoken to several of his servants to ensure that they were present, and told him ‘who had promised, who had failed, who had attended, who had not; and knew all particulars of the trial as if he had been upon the place’).
When Parliament met again on 23 May 1678 York was again added to the committee for privileges. He was present every day except for 29 May when the House attended the Abbey Church in celebration of the king’s birthday. On 5 July he entered a protest at the decision of the House in Darrell v Whitchcot. That he was still able to command considerable support in the House seems to have been demonstrated by the verdict delivered on 8 July in favour of Feversham’s appeal. Sir Ralph Verney‡ was convinced that Feversham was in the wrong ‘but the duke hath a great interest, and he is for Feversham.’
The Crisis, 1678-80
Before Parliament met again rumours of a Popish Plot were already spreading. During the investigation by the Privy Council on 28 and 29 Sept. one of those named as involved in the Plot was Edward Colman, whose person and letters were seized (Colman had failed to take the duke’s advice to destroy his papers and to leave).
The new session opened just over three weeks later, on 21 Oct. 1678. York was present on every sitting day of the session except 5 and 13 Nov. when the House attended the abbey church. He was as usual named to the committees for privileges and petitions, and again held Widdrington’s proxy. On 23 Oct. he was also named (with every member present that day) to the committee to examine papers and witness about the plot and the death of Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey. Sir Robert Southwell‡ reported that
His Royal Highness is at present surrounded with infinite perplexities, which all good men must lament. He has been always present at the Committee of the Lords while the papers of Coleman and Sir William Throgmorton have been read. Each of them have dared to name and interest His Highness in their dangerous contrivances, which he hears with indignation and appeals to the improbability of his confiding either to the folly of the one or the madness of the other. And yet this does not satisfy the warm spirits of that House, and much less is it likely to do that of the Commons.HMC Ormonde, n.s. iv. 463-4.
Southwell also reported that York had been approached secretly by all sorts of groups who claimed to be able to secure his ‘deliverance, but that he knows not whom to trust or what to choose.’
On 9 Nov. the king made his appearance in the Lords to promise that he would accept a bill or bills for the security of the Protestant religion under a Catholic successor, so long as it did not ‘impeach the right of succession, nor the descent of the crown in the true line, and so as they restrain not my power, nor the just rights of any Protestant successor’: though the statement was widely and enthusiastically but inaccurately hailed as presaging a change in the succession, its actual effect was limited. York successfully opposed the Commons’ address to the king to allow the publication of the Colman letters on 11 November.
New threats to York came with the attempts to implicate the queen in the Plot in late November (which promised to open a new route to change the succession by allowing the king to marry again), and by Bedloe’s equivocal evidence about whether York had been present at some of the meetings at which the Plot had been discussed.
The prorogation provided an opportunity for a series of negotiations: Presbyterians, represented by Holles and various associates in the Commons seem to have agreed not to proceed with the prosecution of Danby; Shaftesbury was said to have approached York probably in order to ensure that the prosecution of Danby succeeded.
York settled in Brussels, with his duchess, keeping a low profile, refusing to allow any of those named in connection with the plot to attend him and performing his own devotions ‘as privately as I can.’
for the true catholic religion, as well as banishment; what I have done was not hastily but upon mature consideration and foreseeing all and more than has yet happened to me; and did others enquire into the religion as I have done, without prejudice, proposition, or partial affection, they would be of the same mind in point of religion as I am.HMC Dartmouth, , i, 36-7.
When the king fell seriously ill at the end of August 1679, sparking fears of an attempt to seize the throne by Monmouth, York, summoned by the secretary of state, Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, raced back to England, arriving in London on 2 September. He was warmly received by the king, to some extent effacing the impression that York had obtained from his silence during the exile, and also by many others for whom he represented continued stability. Once the king had recovered, however, his presence was still seen as politically inconvenient, particularly as Shaftesbury had begun thinking about an attempt to impeach him at the forthcoming meeting of Parliament.
Scottish Exile, 1680-2
On his trip northwards York received a mixed reception, though in some places supporters made significant demonstrations in his favour.
The king’s reaction to the petitioning movement was the further prorogation of Parliament on 26 Jan. to April; by then there was already an expectation of York’s recall from Scotland. Shaftesbury reacted to it by attempting to persuade all of his allies on the council to resign en masse, though with limited success.
The possibility of a resolution to the crisis was probably illusory, given the determined efforts at least of Shaftesbury to undermine it. The bold move of Shaftesbury and his supporters to present York as a recusant at the Middlesex assizes on 26 June had been prevented by the action of the judges, and further attempts to do so, though rumoured, were not carried out: but the action was a blow to York’s prestige, and dramatically publicized the case against him, especially as Shaftesbury, as usual, ensured its publication as The Reasons for the Indictment of the Duke of York presented to the Grand Jury of Middlesex.
York’s continued presence in London was thought to be obstructive to any success in achieving a resolution of the crisis as it became difficult to postpone a meeting of Parliament any longer, especially by Sunderland, Godolphin, Essex and Halifax. Halifax claimed that ‘there is now as much anger against him at Whitehall as there can be at the other end of the town [i.e., in the City], so industrious his highness hath been to spoil his own business; the waves beat so high against him that a great part of the world will not hear of any thing less than exclusion’.
James’s second period of exile in Scotland would last almost 18 months, until April 1682. As commissioner, he summoned the Scottish Parliament in 1681, securing from it taxation to strengthen the forces at his disposal, a confirmation of his right of succession, and a Test Act, based on the 1675 English Act, requiring all office holders to uphold the Protestant religion, defend royal prerogatives and not to alter the government of Church or state. The act became a means of crushing the power of Archibald Campbell, earl of Argyll [S], charged in November 1681 with treason for entering a verbal reservation when required to swear the Scots test. Argyll’s conviction and subsequent flight into Holland removed an economically and politically powerful presence from Parliament and council.
Within two weeks of York’s departure from London in October 1680, and the opening of Parliament in England, the exclusion bill had been introduced into the Commons. It passed the Commons on 11 Nov. and arrived in the Lords on the 15th. The duchess of Portsmouth and Sunderland were said to have attempted to kindle some expectations that it would be passed, 55 votes having been promised ‘and his majesty being contrived into a passive neutrality.’
as bad as a stab with a dagger to hear, after Lord Halifax had spoke so handsomely for me, and managed the whole debate, he should make such a proposition as he did the next day… I would willingly not be thought of of not being very sensible of kindnesses done me, and I am as sensisble as possible of his doing his part so very well at the rejecting of my bill, but can I or any body think him really my friend, that would have me banished from his Majesty’s presence, for he moved it… and to say the truth what I hear they are agoing on with in the House of Lords, will be of as bad consequence if not worse to me, and much worse for the monarchy, then the bill that was thrown out.HMC Dartmouth, 53-4.
He was bitter about Sunderland and others who not only voted in favour of exclusion but then entered a dissent at its rejection.
James himself, who had continually urged the king to allow him to return to England, arguing that his presence helped to discourage the exclusionists and other enemies of the monarchy, in his correspondence with Legge continued to reflect on the danger posed to the monarchy (and himself) by Parliament, warning that ‘honest gentlemen’ would not stand at the forthcoming elections and insisting that ‘I shall be ruined’ if the new Parliament were to be allowed to meet. Talk of ‘an expedient’ to be presented to the Oxford Parliament as a way of taking the heat out of anxieties about York was interpreted by York and his opponents as a proposal for his banishment; and indeed, something along these lines was laid out by the king to the Privy Council on 23 Feb., although other ideas, including Halifax’s regency proposal were still current. At the same time, Hyde was becoming a much more influential figure, while a series of appointments to the Privy Council in late January and early March of associates of York—the earls of Chesterfield, Oxford, Ailesbury and Craven—seemed to suggest a resurgence in the duke’s interest.
When Parliament opened in Oxford on 21 Mar. the king’s offer to put the administration into ‘Protestant hands’, and vague mention of expedients, encouraged discussion of a wide variety of proposals: Shaftesbury’s open suggestion that Monmouth be designated successor, regency, exclusion, and limitations. The rejection of regency and probably provoked the Parliament’s dissolution on 28 Mar., just as the exclusion bill was being introduced. On 2 Apr. York wrote to Legge jubilant at the dissolution, and again urging his return to England: ‘unless I be sent for, the generality of the world still apprehend a want of steadiness and not believe there will be any ... till Godolphin, and all the rotten sheep are turned out ... fearful ministers and irresolute counsels have contributed more than any thing else to bring things into the condition they are’. It was a ‘great mortification’ to discover, within a few days, that he would still not be summoned home’.
In the months following the end of the Oxford Parliament, as the Tory reaction gathered pace, the apparent violence of Whig efforts to remove him and their association with the opponents of the Church of England made York seem a more plausible object of loyalty for dedicated churchmen than had once been the case. James’s Anglican chaplain, Francis Turner, later bishop of Rochester and Ely, who had had numerous opportunities to study and talk to him during the long Scottish exile, was one of those who not only believed York’s assurances but also campaigned on his behalf, assuring William Sancroft, the archbishop of Canterbury, that
upon all occasions, I find he places his hopes altogether upon that interest we call the Church of England, upon the episcopal party, and mainly upon the bishops themselves, your Grace especially, wishing and desiring that your Grace will take all opportunities of encouraging the king (that was the duke’s own word) to be steady in well-chosen resolutions, and laying before his Majesty how fatal a thing it would be now to trace back again the ground he has gained and how mighty safe to stick to his old friends.Bodl. Tanner 36, ff. 31-2.
In a further sign of the increased prestige of York’s associates, Hyde was made Viscount Hyde in April. In June Henry Sydney, later earl Romney penned a long description of affairs at court, where ‘nobody hath any credit but the duke’s creatures, and they study what is good for the duke and themselves’.
Return and Retribution, 1682-5
Whether or not a Parliament would be held was the determinant of the king’s response to the duke’s plea to be allowed to return home, though (in his own account at least) it was pure pique on Halifax’s part that thwarted a proposal that he return simply in order to report to the king on the proceedings of the Scottish Parliament, and despatched Hyde to Scotland in September with orders to have another doomed go at persuading York to abandon his religion.
a sort of hungry servants about him that were still pressing his return, and would never let him alone til, out of interest to themselves, they put him upon that which would turn to the prejudice of their master by the ill timing of it. The truth was, whilst the duke was near the king everybody believed him led most by his advice, and consequently that popish councils were most prevalent; and he did a great deal of good in Scotland by his influence and watchfulness in that mutinous kingdom.Reresby Mems. 239.
York seems initially to have secured permission from the king in late February to return for a ‘visit’: landing at Great Yarmouth, he met Charles in Newmarket on 11 March. Received warmly by the king, it was soon expected that his return would become permanent; the crowds coming to see him at Newmarket suggested some new level of popularity, and shortly after he returned to London on 8 Apr., he was again the guest at the annual feast of the Artillery Company, where the throng of well-wishers was so great that he was unable to leave for an hour and ‘was never better pleased ... in his life.’
York’s return to London and to a role in government meant a process of establishing, or not establishing, relationships with those who had either opposed him, or failed to defend him. York’s former ally in the 1670s, turned exclusionist, Annesley was received coldly in April, and would be turned out of office in early August.
York was now seen by a significant segment of Tory opinion—albeit one with existing strong connections to himself—as a powerful asset and potential defender of the Church, despite his religion. Alexander Burnet, archbishop of St Andrews, referred in February 1683 in correspondence with Turner, who had perhaps initiated the idea, to his determination ‘to cast himself, and all his concerns upon the old royal party, and the true sons of the Church of England’.
From the summer of 1682 York began to hit back at his political opponents through the courts. A combination of criminal prosecutions and actions for scandalum magnatum was used to neutralize them with heavy damages or requirements to find sureties wealthy enough to guarantee high levels of bail for their future good behaviour. Some were forced into exile; some to make their peace with York and the court; a few unfortunates, like John Culliford, suffered long and gruelling periods of imprisonment. The first of York’s actions for scandalum magnatum was against Thomas Pilkington‡ in the summer of 1682. He procured damages of £100,000 and ‘another mortification to the Whigs’.
York’s growing influence within the court in 1682 and 1683 was closely connected to the increasing significance of the earl of Rochester (as Viscount Hyde became in late 1682) in royal counsels, and to York’s rather complicated prestige among Tories. The commission for ecclesiastical promotions, originally established in early 1681 to advise the king on clerical appointments, had become an ‘instrument of Tory reaction’, particularly given the addition to it in July 1681 of lay commissioners, Halifax, Hyde and Edward Seymour, and although Halifax’s presence and Sancroft’s use of it to maintain his own influence tempered its character as a simply Yorkist body, the triangular relationship between Hyde, York and Sancroft was a powerful driver of its activities.
York’s restoration to a (nearly) complete role in politics and administration was largely the result of the revelation of the Rye House Plot in June 1683. Shortly afterwards, the king brought him back into the informal meetings of the committee of foreign affairs; by the end of the year he was once more closely involved with the king in decisions on foreign policy, particularly the crisis resulting from Louis XIV’s attack on Luxembourg.
By Charles’s final year James was clearly exercising a much greater influence on royal business than perhaps ever before, despite the formal disabilities that he still laboured under. Burnet declared that all ‘application and dependence was visibly on the Duke’ and Sir John Reresby agreed that ‘The duke of York did now chiefly manage affairs’.
York’s rehabilitation did not mask the continuing struggle for power between Rochester and Halifax, in which Halifax, despite his virtually open efforts to frustrate James, was proving the more effective, diluting Rochester’s command at the treasury by placing two of his political allies there in June, to York’s annoyance: Rochester, increasingly irritable and difficult, was manoeuvred into the post of lord president as one of a series of changes among senior ministers in late August, and then shifted to replace Ormond as lord lieutenant of Ireland in October.
With York’s voice in government more powerful in the second half of 1684, certain aspects of its policy appeared to take on a more authoritarian, Catholic line. Ormond’s replacement was intended to make it easier to remodel the Irish army, eliminating Protestant radicals, and transferring military control from the lord lieutenant to a general answerable directly to the English government, a project that was masterminded by Richard Talbot, earl of Tyrconnell [I], who would become the cornerstone of James II’s scheme to restore the Catholic position in Ireland. part of an attempt to assert a much greater degree of royal control In November James also began to prepare to summon and preside over another Scottish Parliament in which he would complete his destruction of Argyll and others.
The king’s short illness and death on 6 Feb. put an end to James’s plans for Scotland, and brought him to the throne after 36 years as his brother’s heir and at least 12 as the biggest problem in English and Scottish politics. Along the way, he had garnered greater experience of Parliament in England than perhaps any other reigning monarch ever had done, and some experience of how it worked in Scotland as well. It had made him well-informed about it, displaying his knowledge about how proceedings on an election petition worked in 1678 to the surprise of Reresby; but it had given him very little patience for it, complaining in his memoir of Parliament as ‘refractory and insolent’ or ‘impertinent’.