D'AUVERQUERQUE, Henry (1672-1754)

D’Auverquerque was well connected to the upper echelons of English, Irish and Dutch society. His father was a second cousin of William III, being the offspring of an illegitimate son of Prince Maurice, whose sisters married Thomas Butler, earl of Ossory [I], and Henry Bennet, earl of Arlington. Redefining William III ed. E. Mijers and D. Onnekink, 244. A long-term servant of William of Orange, D’Auverquerque’s father accompanied the Dutch forces to England in 1688, and was soon rewarded with the prestigious post of master of the horse. He eschewed involvement in English politics so successfully that, according to Defoe, despite the unpopularity of Dutch courtiers, ‘no man ever had a bad word for Monsr. Overkirk’. Horwitz, Parl. Pol. 19; D. Defoe, Letters ed. G.H. Healey, 31. However, his father remained located close to the centre of power, buying the house which is now 10 Downing Street from the Lichfields in 1690. It remained in the family until the Crown reclaimed it after the death of Grantham’s mother in 1720. Survey of London, xiv. 116.

Initially it was through his sister, Isabella, that D’Auverquerque’s links with the English peerage became closer. On 10 Mar. 1691 she married Charles Granville, styled Viscount Lansdown, the heir of John Granville, earl of Bath. Although Isabella died on 30 Jan. 1692, while giving birth to William Henry Granville, later 3rd earl of Bath, D’Auverquerque’s mother was to play an important part in the upbringing of the child. Significantly, it was Isabella’s marriage which led Queen Mary to promise many favours to Bath, including the right to nominate a person to be a baron. Surr. Hist. Cent. 371/14/A/4, 6.

Although D’Auverquerque’s father had been naturalized by act of Parliament in 1689, his wife and children had not. On 1 May 1695 a warrant was issued for making D’Auverquerque, his mother, his three brothers – Cornelius, William Maurice (aged 16) and Francis (aged 13) – and his sister Lucy de Nassau (aged 11) free denizens of England. CSP Dom. 1694–5, p. 451. The letters of denization were issued on 29 May. Huguenot Soc. 4to ser. xviii. 238–9. On 28 Dec. leave was given to bring in a bill into the Commons for the naturalization of Henry de Nassau and his siblings (although Cornelius appears to have been omitted). On 5 Feb. 1696 Henry took the oaths in the Commons in order to receive his naturalization, and his brother-in-law, John Granville, the future Baron Granville, presented a naturalization bill to the House, which the Lords agreed to without amendment, and which received the royal assent on 24 February. In January 1697, D’Auverquerque married his cousin, Lady Henrietta Butler, sister of James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond, and Charles Butler, Baron Butler of Weston and earl of Arran [I]. Rumours immediately circulated that he would be made a Scottish marquess and an English earl. Add. 29566, f. 352. A son, Henry, was born at the end of October 1697. Add. 72486, ff. 202–3.

It was decided to raise D’Auverquerque to the peerage in the summer of 1698, a warrant being issued on 19 July for him to be made earl of Grantham, with a special remainder to his three brothers. The timing does not appear significant; at the same time Frederick Charles De Roye was made earl of Lifford [I] and Christopher Vane became Baron Barnard of Barnard Castle. CSP Dom. 1698, pp. 362, 365. Following his creation in late December 1698, Grantham was introduced into the Lords on 4 Jan. 1699 by Algernon Capell, 2nd earl of Essex, and Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester. Having missed the first seven days of the session, Grantham then attended on 47 days of the remainder, 55 per cent of the total. He was named to 12 committees, 4 of them second reading committees on naturalization bills.

Grantham attended the prorogation on 24 Aug. 1699. On 6 Sept. he hosted a dinner in his house in St. James’s Park for Ormond, Rochester, Charles Beauclerk, duke of St. Albans, Louis de Duras, earl of Feversham, Richard Lumley, earl of Scarbrough, and ‘several other persons of quality’. Bodl. Carte 228, f. 325. Grantham attended the House on 16 Nov., the opening day of the session of 1699–1700. He was present on 46 days of the session, just over half of the total, being named to four committees.

Grantham was used as a courtier in ceremonial, hence his reception of the ambassador from Savoy before he entered Greenwich in January 1700, and his accompaniment on 3 Feb. 1701 of the French ambassador when he went to take his farewell audience with the king. HMC Buccleuch, ii. 634; Bodl. Carte 228, f. 365. It was even reported in the press on 29 June 1700 and by Narcissus Luttrell^‡ that Grantham had taken possession of the keepership of the privy purse. Post Boy, 29 June 1700; Luttrell, Brief Relation, iv. 663. However, this does not seem to have been the case, for in mid-July 1700 there were more reports that Grantham would obtain the post of privy purse. CSP Dom. 1700–2, p. 90. In spite of all these rumours, the keepership was undertaken by Caspar Henning, a Dutch courtier from Holstein, although there remains the possibility that he was acting for Grantham, as he may have performed the same function as a deputy in the reign of George I. Sainty and Bucholz, Royal Household, i. 119; Redefining William III, 246; J.M. Beattie, Court of George I, 36.

Grantham attended the prorogations on 1 Aug. and 12 Sept. 1700. He was present on 48 days of the 1701 session, 44 per cent of the total, and was named to 12 committees. He attended the opening day of the 1701–2 session, 30 Dec., sat on 37 days of the session (37 per cent of the total) and was named to 13 committees. On 1 Jan. 1702 he signed the address against the Pretender. Following the demise of William III, Grantham, as one of the Lords present, was named on 8 Mar. to a conference on the death of the king and the accession of Queen Anne. He last sat on 30 April.

The accession of Queen Anne changed Grantham’s position. His father was no longer a royal servant and confidant of the monarch, but a loyal subordinate of John Churchill, duke of Marlborough, and played an important part as a Dutch commander of the allied forces. As a consequence, Grantham lost his ‘lodgings below stairs at Hampton Court’ to John Sheffield, marquess of Normanby. Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 133. When Macky noted his salient points early in Anne’s reign he recorded Grantham simply as ‘son to Monsieur Auverquerque’, married to Ormond’s sister, and ‘a very pretty gentleman’. Macky Mems. 99.

Grantham attended on the opening day of the 1702–3 session, on 20 Oct. 1702. However he was only present on six days of the session, last sitting on 13 Nov. 1702. His attendance included the thanksgiving service on 12 Nov. for the military victories earlier in the year. Post Boy, 12 Nov. 1702. His absence may account for his classification as doubtful on the issue of occasional conformity, according to the estimate of Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham. In early July 1703 Grantham was reported to be on ‘the point of death’ from smallpox, although by the 13th he was past danger. Add. 70075, newsletter, 8 & 13 July 1703. On 20 Oct. he and Arran were at Rochester’s house in New Park, drinking Ormond’s health. HMC Ormonde, n.s. viii. 48. He remained close to Ormond, being described in November 1704 by Richard Jones^‡, earl of Ranelagh [I], along with Arran and James Kendal^‡, as Ormond’s ‘counsel learned’, who intended to meet weekly in Whitehall to carry out Ormond’s instructions in relation to his building work at Richmond. HMC 7th Rep. 774.

Grantham attended on the opening day of the 1703–4 session, 9 Nov., but only sat on one other day of the session, 30 November. His absence was widely known, for when Charles Spencer, 3rd earl of Sunderland, made a forecast of the division on the bill to prevent occasional conformity, Grantham was placed among the opponents of the bill, but with the comment ‘probably absent as he was’. On 20 Jan. 1704, Grantham and his wife, together with his father, petitioned the Commons for a saving clause in the resumption bill for the rents granted to his father by William III in Wales and the duchy of Cornwall. These had been settled in trustees for the maintenance of Grantham and his wife, and were ‘the only support of them and their family, whose constant residence is in England’. Although the bill was never reported to the House from committee, according to a newsletter report of 5 Feb. Grantham’s petition had secured him relief from the bill’s provisions. Add. 70075, newsletter, 5 Feb. 1704.

Grantham missed the beginning of the 1704–5 session, first attending on 17 November. In all he attended on 17 days of the session, 17 per cent of the total. He was named to one committee during the session, and last attended on 26 Jan. 1705. His attendance improved for the 1705–6 session: he was present on the opening day (25 Oct.) and attended on 37 days, 38.5 per cent of the total. On 6 Dec. 1705 he voted that the Church was not in danger under the current administration. In mid-September 1706 he was at Bath but he was back in London to attend the prorogation on 22 Oct. 1706. HMC Portland, iv. 329. He was then present on the opening day of the session of 1706–7, 3 Dec., attending on 31 days of the session, just over a third of the total.

Grantham did not attend the short session of April 1707. In that month he moved house from Pall Mall, where he was recorded as residing in the 1705–6 session, to Albemarle Street, where he remained until his death. He was, however, present on 23 Oct. 1707, the opening day of the 1707–8 session, attended on 74 days of the session (69 per cent of the total) and was named to 10 committees. In early May 1708 he was unsurprisingly classed as a Whig.

On 7 May 1708, the lord treasurer, Sidney Godolphin, earl of Godolphin, referred a memorial from Grantham to the lord lieutenant of Ireland, Thomas Herbert, 8th earl of Pembroke. The import of this memorial became clear when a warrant was issued on 14 July to Pembroke to pay £1,000 to Grantham as royal bounty, in regard of his many faithful services. He had applied for a pension of £1,000 p.a. out of the Irish revenue, but the queen did not think it proper to burden the revenue. CTB, 1708, pp. 228, 323. On 21 Sept. Erasmus Lewis^‡ reported that Grantham would get a pension of £1,000 a year out of the Post Office, but added a week later that it had not yet been passed although ‘it is supposed they will before the sessions open’. HMC Portland, iv. 505; Add. 70025, f. 113.

Grantham’s father died on campaign on 7 Oct. 1708. Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 1126–7. It seems likely that the pension of £2,000 p.a. out of the duchy of Cornwall granted to him, his heirs and assignees in 1695 devolved onto Grantham. CTP, 1556–1696, p. 482. Marlborough was under the mistaken impression that Grantham had been granted a pension by the queen, but, as Godolphin pointed out, although he had asked for £1,000 p.a. during his father’s life, ‘the queen chose rather to give him one of £1,000 believing, as it proved, that poor Monsieur d’Auverquerk [sic], would not live to occasion a second payment’. Marlborough–Godolphin Corresp. 1126–7, 1130.

Grantham attended on the opening day of the 1708–9 session, 16 Nov. 1708. He was present on 58 days of the session, a little over 60 per cent of the total, and was appointed to eight committees. On 21 Jan. 1709 he voted in favour of the resolution that a Scots peer who possessed a British title had the right to vote in the election of Scottish representative peers. Grantham made another attempt to secure a pension of £1,000 p.a. in 1709, but on 29 Dec. a warrant was issued to Thomas Wharton, 5th Baron Wharton, the lord lieutenant of Ireland, for the payment of £1,000 to Grantham, only as the queen’s free gift and royal bounty in consideration of the great merit and services of his father in the reduction of Ireland, as also of the said earl’s steady and unshaken loyalty. Although the queen had intended to bestow a pension of £1,000 p.a. on him, she had been influenced against doing so by representations from the lord lieutenant. CTB, 1709, p. 480.

Grantham attended the House on 15 Nov. 1709, the opening day of the 1709–10 session and was present for 66 days of the session. On 20 Mar. 1710 he voted Dr. Sacheverell guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours. On 5 Apr. William Wake, bishop of Lincoln, recorded that, at the House, Grantham was one of those peers pressing him to print the sermon he had preached at St. James’s on 2 Apr. on the theme of ‘the danger and mischief of misguided zeal’. LPL, ms 1770, f. 94; W. Wake, The Danger and Mischief of a Mis-guided Zeal (1710). Grantham attended the prorogation on 5 June. His status among the Anglo-Irish, as Ormond’s brother-in-law, was demonstrated on 6 Aug. when he attended the funeral of the dowager duchess of Devonshire (Ossory’s sister) in Westminster Abbey, carrying the pall with her nephews Ormond and Arran, alongside John Annesley, 4th earl of Anglesey, Charles Fitzroy, 2nd duke of Grafton, and Henry Bentinck, 2nd earl of Portland. Post Boy, 5 Aug. 1710.

On 3 Oct. 1710 Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, classed Grantham among the Court Whigs and other doubtfuls in his attitude to the new ministry, rather than as an outright opponent. Grantham attended on the opening day of the 1710–11 session, 25 November. He sat on 43 days of the session, 38 per cent of the total, although he was only present for two days in November, one in December, one in March and two in April 1711. He was named to three committees during the session, two of them inquiring into the Spanish theatre of the war, a matter perhaps of some personal interest as his brother Francis had perished at Almenara in July 1710 (Cornelius was to be killed at Denain in July 1712).

On 5 Mar. 1711, a warrant was issued to Ormond, as lord lieutenant, to place a yearly pension of £1,000 on the civil list of Ireland for Grantham, mention again being made of the great merit and services of his father in the reduction of Ireland and of his own steady and unshaken loyalty. CTB, 1711, p. 203. There followed a petition to the treasury in early June 1711 praying for a royal warrant for an arrear of £1,325 on a pension of £1,000 p.a. CTP, 1708–1714, pp. 277–8. In July 1711 Edward Southwell^‡ referred to ‘a warrant for some bounty as the earl of Grantham formerly had’, and on 7 Aug. a warrant was sent to Ormond to pay the £1,325 to Grantham. Add. 70257, Southwell to Oxford, 8 June 1711; CTB, xxv. 399–400. All this was no doubt sanctioned by Oxford to keep Grantham at least quiescent, if not positively supportive of the ministry. Ormond remained an important link between Oxford and Grantham, writing on 21 Aug. to thank the lord treasurer ‘for the dispatch of what lay in the treasury relating to this kingdom, and particularly for my Lord Grantham’s letter’. Add. 70028, ff. 139–41.

Oxford remained unsure of Grantham and, although he was recorded as receiving £2,000 in both 1710 and 1711 (probably from the duchy of Cornwall), he received nothing after December 1711. Jones, Party and Management, 164; Pols. in Age of Anne, 388. At the beginning of that month Oxford listed him as a query, and on 2 Dec. he placed Grantham among those lords to be canvassed before the ‘No Peace Without Spain’ motion. Grantham’s name does not appear on either of the lists actually covering the votes on 7 and 8 Dec. 1711, but he was present on the opening two days of the session. However, he only attended on eight days of the session and five of these occurred before the recess on 2 Jan. 1712. On 19 Dec. 1711 Grantham was forecast (albeit with a query) as likely to support the cause of James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton, in the division of the following day on his peerage case, and on the 20th he voted with Oxford against Scots peers to sit by post-Union British titles. He was listed on 29 Dec. as one of the lords whom Oxford designed to contact during the Christmas recess, possibly through the medium of Ormond, who was certainly at work in endeavouring to ‘bring over some lords against next Wednesday’, when Parliament reconvened. Holmes, ‘Great Ministry’, 174. After the Christmas recess, Grantham only attended on 17–20 May 1712, and so was absent for the vote on the restraining orders on 28 May.

On 26 Feb. 1713, Oxford had Grantham on his canvassing list for the 1713 session; any approach may have been successful as Grantham did not attend at all. Clearly, Oxford felt that Grantham was a prospective opponent for on his forecast compiled about 13 June he classed Grantham as expected to vote against the bill confirming the eighth and ninth articles of the French commercial treaty. Again, Oxford’s success in keeping Grantham away can be gleaned from the Whig side, by his appearance on a list prepared for the elector of Hanover as one of those peers deemed ‘right out of principle’, but in the ‘lowest condition’, a pension of £1,000 being suggested.

Grantham was present on the opening day of the 1714 session, on 16 February. However, after attending on the 18th, he was absent until 4 June. In all he attended on eight days of the session, just over 10 per cent of the total. He was forecast by Nottingham as likely to oppose the schism bill at the end of May or the beginning of June 1714. He last sat in that session on 15 June 1714. Following the death of the queen, Grantham attended the opening of the short session of 1714, on 1 August. He also signed the proclamation of George I. London Gazette, 31 July 1714. Thereafter he attended on just one other day, 5 Aug.

In December 1714 Grantham petitioned about William III’s grant to his father, his heirs and assigns of an annuity or yearly rent of £2,000. As the heir of his father Grantham claimed that he was entitled to the annuity, and in February 1715 it was agreed that this would be paid out of the excise. After March 1715 he also seems to have had a pension on the Irish establishment of £1,500 p.a. CTB, 1714-15, p. 196-7, 251, 585.

Thereafter Grantham had a long career as a courtier, serving the Prince and Princess of Wales, later George II and Queen Caroline. He died on 5 Dec. 1754, whereupon his titles became extinct. Both his sons and all his brothers predeceased him (without heirs). His sister Lucy, who eventually married Nanfan Coote, 2nd earl of Bellomont [I] (d. 1708), on 17 Feb. 1706, also predeceased him, dying in 1744.