In search of a career
Henry Compton, born into the English aristocracy, was urbane, cosmopolitan, royalist and fiercely anti-Catholic. He slid from the military into the Church in the 1660s and, with equal ease, took up arms in support of the Revolution of 1688. As one of the ‘immortal seven’ who signed the invasion petition to William of Orange, Compton became the heroic defender of the Protestant cause in both post-revolutionary propaganda and Whig historiography. His earliest biography appeared in the year of his death followed by a panegyric in 1715. Both set the tone for subsequent evaluations of his character and career.
Compton’s father and older brothers fought for the royalist cause during the Civil Wars and he himself had travelled in Europe, and may have fought in Flanders, during the Interregnum. He returned to England at the Restoration. He was sent to Tangiers on military service in 1662, but by 1664 he was in France, considering the possibility of journeying on to Rome. He left France in 1666 to return to Oxford and an academic career under John Fell, the future bishop of Oxford.
Even before he entered the episcopate Compton used his clerical and aristocratic standing to make strategic recommendations to the higher clergy. In 1670 Compton and Nicholas helped to place Herbert Astley in the deanery of Norwich, where he could counter any lingering Presbyterian sympathies fostered by Edward Reynolds, the bishop there. Compton recommended Astley to Archbishop Gilbert Sheldon, but Sheldon was out of favour and readily admitted his difficulty in being heard at court; Nicholas then advised Astley to approach Compton’s brother, Northampton, for a recommendation to Henry Bennet, then Baron, later earl of, Arlington.
Allied to Danby 1674-9
By March 1674 Compton, still in his early 40s, was tipped for elevation to the see of Oxford, probably through the influence of Thomas Osborne, earl of Danby (later marquess of Carmarthen and duke of Leeds). Gilbert Burnet, the future bishop of Salisbury would later describe him ‘as a property to Lord Danby … [who] was turned by him as he pleased’.
On 13 Apr. 1675, the first day of a new session, Compton took his seat in the Lords, joining his brother, the earl of Northampton. Compton’s parliamentary career spanned 39 years. Of the 36 parliamentary sessions held during his episcopate, he attended every session, was in his seat on the first day for all but one session and took a wide-ranging role in the business of the House, contributing to debates, managing numerous conferences and being named to both select and sessional committees. The frequency with which he reported back to the House from select committees suggests that he not only served on committees but also chaired them. For 17 sessions he attended for more than three-quarters of all sittings and, as a member of the sessional committee, also examined the Journal.
In his first parliamentary session Compton attended 67 per cent of all sittings and was named to 15 select committees including the committee to uncover the publisher of A Letter from a Person of Quality. In the spring of 1675 he attended throughout the abortive attempt by Danby to secure a bill against the politically ‘disaffected’ and impose a ‘no alteration’ test. In July 1675 he was appointed as dean of the chapel royal, a post that placed him in charge of the religious education of Princesses Mary and Anne. The choice was resented deeply by their father, James Stuart, duke of York.
During the brief autumn session of 1675, Compton attended 95 per cent of all sittings and was named only to the sessional committees. On 18 Oct. 1675 he received the proxy of Nathaniel Crew, bishop of Durham (another aristocratic bishop, whom he had succeeded at Oxford), which was cancelled 8 November. By that time it was already anticipated that he would be appointed to the newly vacant see of London. He was translated in December.
Compton’s relationship with York was damaged in December 1675 when he sought permission to confirm the Princesses Mary and Anne. York refused but the king commanded that the confirmation go ahead.
On 21 July 1676 Compton was present at the Privy Council when the bookseller Anthony Lawrence was brought before it for printing a translation of the mass entitled The Great Sacrifice of the New Law, and it was to Compton that the wardens of the Stationer’s company were directed to deliver copies seized for destruction. A similar order for ‘popish books’ to be seized and delivered to Compton for destruction was made on 9 August.
Compton may have been acting as an intermediary between Danby and Sheldon, as in early January 1677 Compton informed Sheldon that a royal proclamation ‘puts some stress upon a full Parliament at the first meeting, so it is thought very requisite that you give my lords the bishops timely notice of sending their proxies up in good time’.
On 4 Nov. 1677, during the adjournment, Compton conducted the wedding of Princess Mary and William of Orange, a cause of further irritation for York. Even before Sheldon’s death on 9 Nov. the archbishop’s ailing condition had prompted much speculation about his successor. Most commentators expected Compton to succeed but as early as 16 Oct. Sir Robert Southwell‡ indicated that Compton was ‘greatly in want’ of favour and that his friendship with Danby would prove insufficient to secure the post. According to Southwell Compton ‘bends all his energies’ in favour of the candidacy of Richard Sterne, archbishop of York, ‘not only for having been his quondam tutor, but for being a man very positive and intractable in his way, and even older than my lord of Canterbury that is dying’.
On 15 Jan. 1678 the House resumed. On 29 Jan. Compton joined a group of nine, including York, the new archbishop, Sancroft, and Sterne, to dissent to the decision to release of Philip Herbert, 7th earl of Pembroke. Compton was acutely aware that Danby’s political power was already on the wane. In February he described Danby as ‘a lost man’. He, nevertheless, did his best to help Danby by wrapping up a warning against the influence of George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, in a sermon that was delivered that same month at court. Compton ‘did so particularly explain the dangers of ill-conversation, or the showing any degree of countenance or delight in those who were under marks and blemishes of evil life, that the meaning was very visible to all’.
In the House Compton immersed himself in business. He chaired the select committee on the bill to appropriate two rectories for the maintenance of St Asaph cathedral, reporting back to the House on 7 Mar. 1678 and the bill passed uneventfully to the royal assent.
Compton resumed his seat on 21 Oct. 1678 and attended 91 per cent of all sittings during that session. He was named to 14 select committees, including that to consider the answers of the five impeached Catholic lords and the objections of the Commons. On 26 Oct. the Lords named Compton and Danby, amongst others, to examine Colman and other prisoners in Newgate.
The Exclusion Crisis 1679-80
Compton’s anti-Catholic vendetta, carried on in council as well as in the Lords, helped earn the king’s displeasure. The fall of Danby removed his closest ally at court and his precarious position may not have been helped by a quarrel with Arlington over the right to appoint Lent preachers, though the precise date of this dispute is unknown.
to let me know whether you have yet acquainted his majesty, that I did not fail at my first coming to town to present my most humble duty and respects by your grace’s mediation. For if it be not done … I find I shall lie under great reflections if I do not immediately take care to have it done some other way.CSP Dom. 1679-80, p. 278; CSP Dom. 1680-1, pp. 187, 228, 393; Tanner 39, f. 155.
In November 1678 Compton had been rumoured to be in ‘close counsels’ with Shaftesbury, but if true, the flirtation did not last long, for on 31 Dec. Compton was said to have ‘forsaken’ Shaftesbury.
Compton attended every sitting of the first week of the new Parliament in early March, when virtually no business other than the taking of the new oaths was transacted. On 3 Mar. 1679 Compton was one of the witnesses to the king’s declaration in council that he had never been married to anyone other than the queen.
our votes are a sufficient reason to the House of Commons; ... I am much confirmed in my opinion, since that lord who is so very able could make nothing but such trivial and slight arguments ... the Commons are so reasonable that when you are satisfied they will be so too.Add. 28046, f. 49ff.
Like others present he interpreted the Commons’ request as posing a potential breach of the Lords’ privileges. Danby’s opponents and supporters alike then called for the debate to be adjourned. In April Compton voted against the passage of the bill of attainder and on 24 Apr. was named as one of the managers of a conference with the Commons on the subject of the five impeached Catholic peers. At the end of April he issued to his clergy an official broadsheet following up conferences he had held with them the previous year on baptism, the communion and catechizing, and urging them to compliance with the canons and rubrics in the Prayer Book.
Despite his anti-Catholicism and difficult relationship with York, Compton retained his place on the Privy Council when the king dissolved it in April and created a new one. During May 1679, when the House debated the contentious issue of the right of the bishops to vote in ‘blood cases’, Compton intervened to insist that ‘we shall not do anything which our ancestors have not done’.
The prorogation of 27 May 1679 was followed by the dissolution and parliamentary elections. In July 1679 Compton was approached by the justices of Middlesex to support the candidature of former royalist officer and property developer, William Smith‡, who had acquired a reputation for severity against both Catholic and Protestant nonconformists when chairing the Middlesex quarter sessions. Smith ran a lacklustre campaign and withdrew after polling only three votes.
On 16 July 1680 he was contacted by Secretary Sir Leoline Jenkins‡ with an urgent request from the recorder of London, George Jeffreys, later Baron Jeffreys, who wanted Compton to intervene in the City elections and engage the clergy so that ‘the good men be chosen and that the ill ones have not so clear a view of their own strength’.
With both anti-clericalist and anti-Catholic feelings running high, Compton took steps to promote and consolidate Protestant unity. In the late summer of 1680 he wrote to three prominent European Protestant leaders asking for their opinions about English nonconformity. All three replied that there was no justification for Protestants to separate from the Anglican Church. The following year these responses were included as an appendix to The Unreasonableness of Separation, a pamphlet published by Compton’s ally and dean of St Paul’s, Edward Stillingfleet, later bishop of Worcester.
The new Parliament opened on 21 Oct. 1680. Compton resumed his seat, attended 86 per cent of all sittings and was named to six select committees, two on the penal laws against Catholics and further investigations into the Popish Plot. In an unminuted Privy Council discussion (the clerks were asked to withdraw) early in October 1680, Compton was one of a small majority who voted that York should not be required to leave England; the king, nevertheless, instructed him to leave for Scotland.
Parliament was prorogued on 10 Jan. 1681. On 27 Feb. the king ordered that no preferment in the Church or favour in the universities should be granted without the approbation of Compton and Sancroft. Nevertheless in June, against their express wishes, he appointed Nottingham’s chaplain, John Sharp, later archbishop of York, to the deanery of Norwich. In July and August he somewhat insultingly added ‘as referees’ four prominent laymen: Halifax, Laurence Hyde, Viscount Hyde (later earl of Rochester), Sir Edward Seymour‡ and John Robartes, earl of Radnor.
The Tory reaction 1681-5
When the new Parliament assembled in Oxford on 21 Mar. 1681, Compton attended every sitting of the week-long session and was again named to the select committee on the Plot. The ensuing four years without a Parliament were nevertheless full of political activity for the bishop. Throughout the Tory reaction Compton was a visible and repressive presence, hounding nonconformists and Catholics alike. Compton retaliated to attacks on his authority from the perpetually controversial cleric Edmund Hickeringill (1631-1708) by pursuing him through the courts, eventually suing him for scandalum magnatum and securing an award of £2,000, which he put towards the fund for rebuilding St Paul’s.
In June 1682 Compton was using his ‘very great’ interest to secure the election of a complaisant alderman in the City, though the kudos he received for this from the government was offset by annoyance at his inability to control Dr Wells (probably John Wells, prebendary of St Paul’s) who had gone into the country ‘when he knew that all the nonconformist preachers were doing their utmost by way of solicitation against us in this matter’.
we are to consider our selves in the state of church-discipline, as watchmen and shepherds to guard and secure our flocks ... we must drive away all erroneous doctrines, and avoid disorderly walkers. We must drive away the bold wolves, the little foxes, and all beasts of prey.H. Compton, Churchwardens of our Diocese Having been Generally Very Remiss in Making Due Presentments (1683); Lord bishop of London’s Fourth Letter to the Clergy of his Diocese (1683).
Over the period he helped to monitor county benches and corporations for their political stance and sought to have Whigs replaced with reliable Tories.
The reign of James II, 1685-8
Within a week of the accession of James II, Compton and Sancroft were summoned to a private audience, at which they were discouraged from all anti-Catholic activism.
You will likewise now have an opportunity to give a real evidence of your professed fidelity by using your utmost interest among the gentry and other freeholders ... to give their voices for such sober and prudent men as will seek the peace of the Church and the State by promoting the king’s and the kingdom’s service. I need not warn you of the great diligence used by the enemies of both, to make choice of factious and turbulent spirits; and I hope the truth and justice of your cause will make you no less industrious to prevent such wicked and pernicious designs, which bear so fatal an aspect upon all honest men.Ibid. 80.
On 2 May 1685, as the new Parliament approached, Compton discussed tactics with Lloyd of Peterborough (formerly bishop of Llandaff), apparently unaware that Lloyd had already had a similar discussion with Sancroft. Lloyd and Compton ‘agreed that it was the interest, as well as the credit and safety of the bishops, to be unanimous in their votes and that it was not expedient, or perhaps safe, to propose or desire any new laws at the ensuing Parliament, how plausible soever they might seem to be’. Compton initially proposed that Sancroft summon a meeting of the bishops but was persuaded that this might be provocative and that it would be more expedient for them to receive Sancroft’s instructions individually.
Compton resumed his seat at the opening of the new Parliament on 19 May 1685 and attended 88 per cent of all sittings. He was named to 12 select committees. Despite his recent discussion with Lloyd on the desirability of avoiding new measures, he introduced a bill on small tithes, but on 1 June he was given leave to withdraw it because counsel had made some errors in the draft. On 25 and 26 June he reported from the committee on the Bangor cathedral bill. Although still a member of the council, Compton’s attendance was now infrequent. He did not attend even during the period of the rebellion of James Scott duke of Monmouth. Whether this was by choice or because he was not regularly summoned is unknown. His record of harassing Catholics was an obvious factor in his alienation from the court. On 16 Oct. he received a warrant for stay of process against 13 recusants.
Compton ordered the reading throughout his diocese of the act to keep the anti-Catholic anniversary of 5 November.
courageously moved, in the name of himself and all his brethren, that the House would particularly debate the king’s speech, and the 23rd of this month was accordingly appointed; which as it was extraordinary and unusual in the House, so it was not less surprising to the king and court, who soon showed a particular jealousy at these proceedings.Timberland, i. 316.
Another account identifies Compton as seconding the motion. Whether he proposed or seconded, it is clear that he made a long speech in opposition to the king in which he spoke ‘with great respect and deference to his majesty, yet very full and home; and when he ended, he said he spoke the sense of the whole bench, at which they all rose up’.
Compton’s support for Huguenots fleeing from French persecution led to his removal from the Privy Council and other offices in December 1685. The presence of large numbers of such refugees in England and particularly in London was a cause of alarm to the king, who regarded them as fundamentally anti-monarchical. In July 1685 he had tried to have a clause concerning the liturgy inserted into a general naturalization bill presented to the Commons which would effectively have annihilated the French church.
In March 1686 the brief for the Huguenots was finally issued. Unlike a similar brief issued by Charles II, it included a clause requiring recipients of the charity to take communion according to Anglican rites. Compton found himself blamed for a reluctance to distribute the money thus collected, when in reality he was constrained by the terms of the brief. It was said that only some 4,000 of the 20,000 plus refugees were able to benefit; many of the rest did, as James probably hoped, leave the country.
Compton’s final breach with the king came on 14 June 1686 when James II instructed him to suspend John Sharp, then rector of St Giles and dean of Norwich (and later archbishop of York), for preaching an anti-Catholic sermon likely ‘to beget in the minds of his hearers an evil opinion of us and our government ... and to lead them into disobedience and rebellion’. Compton refused, insisting that he must ‘proceed according to law and … no judge condemns any man before he has knowledge of the cause, and has cited the party’.
Roger Morrice feared that Compton might be susceptible to any plan that secured his preferments: ‘whether he has a true principle of moral severity and integrity and honesty to bear him up under such great trials God only knoweth his life has not been free from notorious blemishes’.
On 6 Sept. 1686 Compton was suspended from office although he was allowed to keep his episcopal income, a decision that suggests concerns at court that deprivation would spark an action at common law. Despite his suspension, in December 1686 Compton issued another of his annual circulars to his clergy, following a diocesan conference. It amounted to a summons to resistance, albeit to passive resistance.
we are forbid to declare, limit or bound the constitutive laws of the realm between prince and people ... because our business is to teach a Christian behaviour upon all occasions, without entering into the merits of any cause betwixt prince and people … But if we exalt the king’s prerogative above the law, we do as good tell the people, that notwithstanding their rights, the king may ravish their wives, spoil their goods, and cut their throats at pleasure ... I look upon it as a rule, that we ought in common prudence to set our selves in this affair; to be as cautious of flattering our prince into tyranny, as of stirring up the people to sedition and tumult … we have a prince of another religion ... and what the mercies of that religion are ... we all very well know. … If we be a lessening, hindrance or discredit to our own religion by disorderly walking, supine negligence, or any other fault ... he will then think it just to abandon us ... the least we can expect from one so wedded to that religion is that he should promote it all he could ... my daily prayer shall be ... that we may be courageous in this day of trial, and behave ourselves like men.
In March 1687 Compton petitioned the king for reinstatement; yet ‘he made no proper submission in it. He does not think that this will put a stop to his deprivation, but he thinks it will make it a little more difficult, and gain him some time’.
The Revolution of 1688
On 30 June, the day the Seven Bishops were acquitted, Compton became one of the ‘immortal seven’ who invited William of Orange to invade.
On the night of 25/26 Nov. Compton engineered Princess Anne’s escape from London, escorting her to Nottingham where they met up with other Orangist sympathizers, including Prince George.
Back in London, Compton met his clergy and agreed an address of thanks to William, which they presented together on 21 December.
Thwarted ambition 1689-91
In the immediate aftermath of the Revolution, Compton must have believed that his prospects for advancement were good, although Halifax’s notes of conversations with William suggest that even at this early stage it had probably already been decided that should the archbishopric become vacant, it would go to John Tillotson, dean of Canterbury.
Compton resumed his seat in the House at the start of the Convention on 22 Jan. 1689 when he and several other bishops were asked by the House to compose a prayer for a day of thanksgiving. He attended the session for 85 per cent of all sittings. It was reported that Compton told the king in January that it was only illness that kept Sancroft from the Convention and that he was holding the archbishop’s proxy, but no such proxy was entered in the proxy books.
Compton seems to have been supportive of the new regime’s ecclesiastical policy. In an undated letter that appears to belong to spring 1689, he informed Sancroft that Parliament would consider comprehension and toleration bills: ‘two great works in which the being of our church is concerned … for though we are under a conquest God has given [us] favour in the eyes of our rulers’.
On 2 Mar. 1689 Compton was punctual in taking the oaths to the new monarchs. During debates on the oaths he spoke at length against multiplying oaths and forcing the bishops to take them but when he tried to make it clear that he did not speak for himself and said that there ‘was not nor could be made an oath to the present government that he could not take’ the House descended into laughter.
Closely associated with William Lloyd, then bishop of St Asaph, later successively bishop of Lichfield and Coventry and Worcester, it seems likely that Compton was involved with him in negotiations to prevent a nonjuring schism after 1 Aug. 1689, the date set by the Act for Abrogating the Oaths (by which bishops and other office holders were required to take the oaths to the new monarchs).
unworthy compliances under all sorts of government ... not contenting yourself to have renounced your faith and allegiance, and the personal homage done the king at his coronation, you ... justify the taking the new oaths, and thereby endeavouring as much as in you lies, to involve the whole nation in the guilt of perjury.Tanner 27, f. 132.
When Archbishop Sancroft was formally suspended on 1 Aug. 1689 as a result of his failure to take the oaths, Compton was upset to discover that the archi-episcopal jurisdiction was to be entrusted to Tillotson as dean of Canterbury. This was in accordance with precedent during a vacancy, but Compton, clearly anxious that Tillotson enjoyed a favoured position at court, argued unsuccessfully that Sancroft’s suspension did not amount to a vacancy in the ordinary sense.
In September 1689 William and Mary issued a commission to Thomas Lamplugh, archbishop of York, Compton and others empowering them to review the liturgy for approval by Convocation and presentation to Parliament.
Events in Convocation impinged directly on Parliament’s own legislative programme. On 26 Nov. Compton was authorized by the crown to preside over Convocation and to lead discussions over alterations to the liturgy.
Shortly before or just after the dissolution, the king sought a change in the London lieutenancy, asking Compton, Carmarthen, Charles Talbot, 12th earl (later duke) of Shrewsbury, and Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, to review both the lieutenancy and the commission of the peace. According to Burnet the king wanted them to name some moderate churchmen to the commission ‘so the two parties in the City might be kept in balance’; instead, Compton gave him a list of ‘the most violent Tories in the city, who had been engaged in some of the worst things that passed in the end of king Charles’ reign’.
The new Parliament opened on 20 Mar. 1690. Compton, resuming his seat at the start of business, attended 95 per cent of all sittings, still acting as a quasi-archbishop by collating and presenting the excuses of those bishops who wished to be excused attendance.
In the summer of 1690 Compton intervened in Irish church affairs, sending a long list of candidates for preferment to senior posts to Sir Robert Southwell, secretary of state for Ireland. He justified his intervention on the grounds that the primate, Michael Boyle of Armagh, was so partial in promoting his relations that he was in ‘no way fit to advise the king’.
The 1690-1 session opened on 2 Oct. 1690; Compton attended 88 per cent of all sittings and on 7 Oct. again received Ironside’s proxy (vacated at the end of the session). On 6 Oct. he voted for the discharge of the earl of Salisbury and of Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, from their imprisonment in the Tower. He spent much of the session engaged in Irish affairs, providing forms of prayer to be used for the Irish day of thanksgiving on 16 Nov. and working with senior clerics on the royal commission to settle the church in Ireland.
Following revelations of the possible involvement of Turner of Ely in the Preston Plot, news circulated that Compton, together with Lloyd of St Asaph, Nottingham and Carmarthen, had ‘vehemently pressed’ the king to fill the vacant bishoprics before leaving for Holland.
Living with disappointment 1691-1702
Compton appears to have been responsible for ensuring that the popular Robert Frampton, bishop of Gloucester, remained at his Standish rectory after deprivation—a favour that Sancroft contemptuously regarded as an attempt to persuade the remaining nonjurors that ‘we too might at last have had a feather of our own goose, restored, to stick in our caps’.
He maintained his vigour as a parliamentarian, resuming his seat at the start of business on 22 Oct. 1691 and attending the session for 70 per cent of all sittings. From 24 Nov. until the end of the session, he held Gilbert Ironside’s proxy. On 27 Dec. he signed the bishops’ petition to the king to implement the penal laws against impiety and vice.
The most controversial legislation during the 1692 session was the divorce bill for Henry Howard, duke of Norfolk. Compton was present on 12 Jan. for the initial debate, when counsel for the duchess argued that the case should not be heard until it had come before the ecclesiastical courts.
During spring 1692 Compton seemed resigned to his situation. His circular letter to his clergy that year, dated 29 Mar., concentrated at length on problems arising from toleration and a strategy to combat immorality and irreligion through vigorous pastoral activity and by engaging Dissenters in respectful conversation.
He resumed his seat in the Lords at the start of the new session on 4 Nov. 1692 and attended 82 per cent of all sittings. On 2 Jan. 1693 Compton again voted to throw out Norfolk’s divorce bill. The following day he voted with the majority of bishops in accordance with the wishes of the court against the passage of the place bill. Meanwhile, in the the Essex by-election held on 10 Jan. 1693 Compton canvassed on behalf of the Tory Sir Eliab Harvey‡. Harvey lost amidst accusations of electoral malpractice.
During the summer of 1693 an energetic Compton conducted a demanding visitation of his diocese during which he again rehearsed his visceral hostility to catholicism.
Compton was back in the House at the start of business in the following session on 12 Nov. 1694 and attended for three-quarters of all sittings. At the death of Tillotson on 22 Nov. 1694 the king again overlooked Compton and translated Thomas Tenison, bishop of Lincoln, to Canterbury.
The dispute over Compton’s right of presentation to St James came before the House in January 1695. Compton had lost the case in king’s bench and sought to appeal the decision by means of a writ of error. On 11 Jan. the Lords heard counsel for Compton; the verdict in king’s bench was upheld the following day by a majority of ten votes.
After the dissolution in October 1695, Compton was again involved in electioneering, supporting Tory candidates in opposition to the court. He and Sprat supported Sir William Trumbull‡ at Oxford; he was also actively involved, with varying degrees of success, in the campaigns in Westminster, Essex and Cambridge University.
Parliament was prorogued on 27 Apr. 1696. Compton had meanwhile fallen out with the king over the arrest and imprisonment of the deprived bishop Robert Frampton on suspicion of Jacobite plotting. The arrest warrant was issued on 18 Mar. and according to Frampton’s biographer, he surrendered himself shortly afterwards.
The king answered, I have heard his character and know him to be ill affected to my government and I am very sorry that you will protect any of my enemies. If you will keep any of my enemies in your house in private you may. But I desire not in public.Add. 35107, f. 20.
Compton attended the 1696-7 parliamentary session for 84 per cent of sittings. The session was dominated by the controversial bill of attainder brought against Sir John Fenwick‡. There was insufficient evidence to convict Fenwick in the ordinary way and this turned the parliamentary proceedings into both a travesty of justice and a party political issue.
On 23 Jan. 1697 Compton dissented from the rejection of the bill to further regulate parliamentary elections. In early February a bill to allow Compton and Nottingham to exchange a number of advowsons passed rapidly through the House, receiving its third reading on 8 February. It passed equally rapidly through the Commons and received the royal assent on 8 March. On 5 Mar. 1697 Compton helped to manage the conference on the bill to prohibit the import of Indian silks and on 17 Mar. reported back from the committee on the bill to complete St Paul’s and to repair Westminster Abbey. He received Ironside’s proxy on 18 Mar. (vacated nine days later when Ironside resumed his seat). On 25 Mar. he reported from the committee of the whole on the bill to pave and regulate the Haymarket and on 13 Apr. the bill to enable easier land partition held in coparcenary, joint tenancy, and tenancy in common.
On 2 Dec. 1697 Compton conducted the thanksgiving service for the peace of Rijswijk at St Paul’s.
Following the dissolution of Parliament on 7 July 1698, Compton was again involved in elections. In a heated campaign for Middlesex, Compton proved ‘a great stickler’ for the Tory Warwick Lake‡ who ousted one of the sitting Members. In Essex, Compton endorsed the choice of the gentry, supporting Barrington and Edward Bullock‡. At Cambridge University, Compton sent ‘his chaplain and forty letters’ in support of Nottingham’s favoured candidate the high churchman Anthony Hammond‡.
Compton took his seat in the new Parliament on 6 Dec. 1698, attending the session for 60 per cent of all sittings. On 8 Feb. 1699 he voted against the committee resolution to assist the king in retaining the Dutch guards and registered his dissent when it passed. On 29 Mar. he also dissented from the address to the king requesting that the bishop of Derry and others be sent for in custody in relation to the case of the London Ulster Society v. Bishop of Derry. On 25 Apr. he was named to the committee to draw up reasons for their insistence on retaining the Lords proviso on the Billingsgate market bill. Whether he participated in the committee’s deliberations is unknown, but he was not in the House on 26 Apr., the day the committee met.
Over the course of the summer he was one of the bishops appointed to assist Tenison in the hearing of the politically motivated case against the Tory, and probable Jacobite sympathizer, Watson of St Davids. When Watson was convicted on 3 Aug. Compton was a dissenting voice. He agreed that Watson was guilty on various lesser charges but found that the most serious accusation, that of simony, was unproven. As a result of the proceedings, Watson was nevertheless deprived of his bishopric. During the next (1699-1700) session (which Compton attended for 72 per cent of sittings) Watson tried to bring his case before the House as a matter of privilege. Compton argued Watson’s case in a lengthy debate on 6 Dec. 1699, but the House ruled that bishops had no privilege against the jurisdiction of the archbishop.
On 8 Feb. 1700, Compton protested against putting the question of whether the Scottish colony of Darien was inconsistent with the good of the English plantation trade. It had been forecast that Compton would support the bill to continue the East India Company as a corporation and, on 23 Feb. 1700, he duly voted for an adjournment during pleasure to allow the House to go into a committee of the whole to discuss amendments to the bill. On 8 Mar. he protested against the second reading of the new divorce bill for the duke of Norfolk. Four days later, Compton dissented to the passage of the bill.
During the recess, Compton was engaged in his usual combination of political and ecclesiastical affairs. Parliament was dissolved on 19 Dec. 1700 and Compton was involved in the elections the following spring. On 7 Jan. 1701, he once again backed the Essex gentry’s choice of Barrington and Bullock, informing his clergy that ‘they cannot do better than to use their interest for them’. Barrington was returned, but Compton’s backing could not help Bullock, who was defeated due to rival East India interests and his own political ambivalence.
The new Parliament opened on 6 Feb. 1701 and Compton attended 70 per cent of all sittings. On 17 Feb., he helped to manage the conference on the Lords’ address to the king; on 20 Mar., he protested against the refusal to send the address on the second Partition Treaty to the Commons. Throughout April and June, he registered protests against resolutions concerning the impeachment of the Whig lords. On 17 June he voted against the acquittal of John Somers, Baron Somers and protested twice about procedural resolutions relating to the trial.
Following the prorogation on 24 June, Compton attended a meeting at Lambeth where he was chosen as a founder member of the corporation to propagate religion in foreign plantations.
In December 1701 Compton took his seat in the new Parliament but sat for only 36 per cent of all sittings. The parliamentary session was accompanied by a session of Convocation, where party rivalries were being acted out with increasing ferocity. Compton and his protégé Francis Atterbury, the future bishop of Rochester, were deeply involved in the controversies that encouraged the lower clergy to believe that they had rights independent of the upper House, setting in train a decade of controversy which fed into Parliament.
Reign of Anne 1702-13
The accession of Anne changed Compton’s public and political profile. His first biographer attributed this to the queen’s sense that she ‘knew his heart as well as her own to be entirely English, and that no consideration whatsoever should ever be able to divert him from the true interest of the Church and the crown’.
Over the summer, Compton persuaded the queen not to renew the commission for ecclesiastical affairs which had played so prominent a role in the preferment of whiggishly inclined clergymen. He may have hoped to increase his own influence thereby, but by the end of the year ecclesiastical management had passed to Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford.
In or about January 1703, Compton was unsurprisingly forecast as a supporter of the legislation against occasional conformity and on 16 Jan. he voted against retaining the Lords’ wrecking amendment on penalties. Five days earlier Compton had voted with the minority in the division for an adjournment during the debate on a declaratory bill to explain the Act of Succession. On 19 Jan. his name appears in the attendance list, although William Nicolson, bishop of Carlisle, indicates that he arrived late and came into the chamber during the debate in a committee of the whole on the prince of Denmark’s bill. Nicolson’s account of the voting, which may be unreliable, indicates that Compton voted in favour of resuming the House.
During January and February 1703 Compton reported back to the House on a wide range of bills on ecclesiastical and economic matters: to improve ground in the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields for the use of the poor; the Gloucester poor bill; the St Paul’s Cathedral bill; to continue acts concerning leather exports and vagrancy; to encourage the consumption of malted corn; and to prevent illegal imports of French and foreign brandy. On 4 Feb. 1703, Compton again revealed his ecclesiastical Toryism when he moved the House that clergymen already instituted into vacant livings should not be deprived if they refused the oath of abjuration. On 8 Feb. he brought a petition into the House from the lord mayor of London and aldermen concerning the appeal brought by Thomas Wharton, 5th Baron Wharton.
In the recess following the prorogation of 27 Feb. 1703, Compton was authorized to seek out in Essex persons suspected of ‘unlawful correspondence’.
In advance of the 1704-5 session he received the proxy of William Beaw (vacated at the end of the session). He took his seat on 24 Oct. 1704. Now over 70 years of age, his attendance was beginning to decline; he was present for just 47 per cent of sittings. On 9 Nov. he again received Trelawny’s proxy (vacated at the end of the session). He attended the House on 15 Dec. when the queen was present and the Commons brought up the latest occasional conformity bill; Compton spoke for the bill in a lengthy debate and voted for a second reading, using Trelawny’s proxy. When the House voted to throw out the bill, he registered his dissent. As usual he joined the St Stephen’s dinner at Lambeth, showing solidarity with the Whig bishops only in their shared Protestant evangelism.
After the dissolution on 5 Apr. 1705 Compton campaigned vigorously for the Tories, having used his influence to create freemen where possible to affect the franchise. On 10 May, Charles Montagu, Baron (later earl of) Halifax, complained to the duchess of Marlborough that at Maldon no one could stand for election, ‘or can pretend to stand till the humour is much altered in Essex, for they have made all the persons and creatures of the bishop of London free of the town’. Two tackers won the Maldon poll with Compton’s backing.
Compton attended the opening of the new Parliament on 25 Oct. 1705 but he attended the session for only 19 per cent of sittings. On 20 Nov. in the debate on a regency in the event of the queen’s death, he was one of six Tory bishops who voted against the attempt of Rochester and Nottingham to exclude Sidney Godolphin, Earl Godolphin, from being an ex officio regent. Compton and George Hooper, bishop of Bath and Wells alone voted that the lord mayor of London be one of the regents.
Loyal to his own Tory principles but determined to protect the queen from the criticism implied in the ‘Church in danger’ campaign, Compton spoke at length in the House on 6 Dec. 1705, venting his anger indiscriminately on a range of issues:
[He] prefaced his discourse with professing his entire confidence in the queen and in the present great ministry at court ... but complained that the minds of the inferior subjects were debauched by atheistical and lewd pamphlets. He lamented his own fruitless struggle with Hickeringill ... he then took notice (in an odd manner) of reports that had passed in relation to briberies in election of members of the other House.
He also raged against Toland’s Memorial of the State of England, the Calves-head club and the Scots, and disparaged the sermons of Benjamin Hoadly†, later bishop of Bangor, especially one on civil government preached recently in the City.
He resumed his seat in the Lords at the start of business on 3 Dec. 1706, but attended for only 22 per cent of all sittings. Compton may have been involved in the negotiations relating to the crisis caused by the queen’s desire to elevate the Tories William Dawes, to Chester, and Offspring Blackall, to Exeter. The sermon preached at his funeral referred obscurely to Compton’s claim to have given the queen ‘such reasonable (and to her own pious inclinations, such agreeable) advice, upon the vacancy of two dioceses, as occasion’d their being well fill’d, when ’twas little expected’.
Back in the House on 13 Jan. 1707 for the debate on union with Scotland, Compton voted against the ‘Scotch Acts’, which were perceived as a threat to the Church of England.
Compton attended the short April 1707 parliamentary session for 30 per cent of sittings. He took his seat for the next session at the start of business on 23 Oct., attending for 32 per cent of all sittings. Nevertheless, he was increasingly withdrawn from public life, professing an aversion both to London and to business.
Nevertheless, over the summer of 1708 Compton commuted between Colchester and Fulham, preparing for the general election.
Compton resumed his seat on the first day of the November 1709 session and attended 40 per cent of all sittings. On 25 Feb. 1710 the Lords received an appeal from the court of exchequer concerning Compton’s right to present to the chapel at Hammersmith. The appeal was delayed pending the trial of Henry Sacheverell. Compton, an ardent supporter of Sacheverell, was determined, despite ‘a fit of the gravel’, to attend the trial and to use Trelawny’s proxy in Sacheverell’s favour. The trial began in Westminster Hall on 27 Feb., with Compton attending throughout. On 14 Mar. he voted unsuccessfully to secure an adjournment and entered his protest. He also protested against the resolution that it was not necessary to include in an impeachment the particular words supposed to be criminal. At the start of the debate on 16 Mar. into the impeachment articles, Compton spoke against the first article, blaming Sacheverell for his ‘heat and indiscretion, yet thought he was far from deserving an impeachment of high crimes and misdemeanours’.
With the Sacheverell case out of the way there was time for the House to settle the Hammersmith case. The dispute clearly reflected a division within what was then the hamlet of Hammersmith. The case against Compton had been dismissed in exchequer, apparently because it was the wrong venue, but sympathetic remarks by the judges encouraged his opponents (said to be ‘the meaner sort of inhabitants’) to take possession of the chapel, and prevent its use until their appeal was determined. An order from the House, issued on 25 Mar., failed to dislodge them so an order for their attachment was issued on 27 March. Compton finally won his case on 1 April. Compton’s chaplain, Ralph Bridges, who thought Compton’s right ‘was as clear as day’ but who nevertheless found it desirable to lobby at least one peer for support, reported that ‘My Lord Wh[arto]n & some other Whig lords did all they could to make a party cause of this private matter, which was carried for my lord [Compton], but by one vote.’
Later in April 1710 Bridges wrote that Compton had tried to advise Sacheverell on his conduct, but that his guidance had been spurned. Just what the advice was remains a matter for speculation, but Bridges thought that ‘it will be best for us to be silent about it, till the wind turns, which may be very quickly with him as it has been with much greater men before him’ which seems to imply that Compton wanted Sacheverell to keep a low profile. After the prorogation, Compton returned to Fulham and, on 30 Apr. 1710, confirmed three ‘Indian kings’ (converted native Americans).
With Godolphin out of the treasury and Harley restored to the ministry, Compton began a series of visits to the clergy. On 21 Aug. 1710, he assembled them at St Paul’s to subscribe an address to the queen, designed particularly as counter propaganda to The Good Old Cause, a ‘very pernicious book’ by Charles Leslie. The address was given greater currency and increased circulation by being published, in a prominent position, in the London Gazette of 22-24 Aug., inserted there at the specific request of the secretary of state, William Legge, 2nd Baron (later earl of) Dartmouth.
With a general election in the offing, Compton wrote to Harley on 31 Aug. 1710 warning him that many of their Tory supporters were worried about Whig domination of local government so that ‘unless the most obnoxious of the justices of peace and deputy lieutenants be left out, and new commissions with some of the queen’s best friends put in, it will not be in their power to choose whom they like best for fear of ill usage from tyrants’.
Compton also sustained his interest in overseas issues. He wrote to Dartmouth about appointing a chaplain to the English trading factory in Leghorn: ‘so many public transactions are now on foot in the City ... the persons concerned in sending this chaplain over to Leghorn are many of the most considerable merchants in London’.
Compton attended the opening of Parliament on 25 Nov. 1710 but, riddled with gout, attended only 17 per cent of all sittings. He was confined at home from 18 Dec. to mid-March 1711, thus missing the queen’s attempts to placate the Tory lower clergy in Convocation and the issue of a licence empowering him and other Tory bishops to ‘expedite’ matters and which was clearly calculated to undermine Tenison. He also missed the Lords’ debates on the Spanish war and the conduct of the previous ministry.
Compton planned his summer visitation with half an eye on Tenison’s poor health, apparently sure the queen would translate him to Lambeth in the event of his death.
Compton took his seat at the start of the new session on 7 Dec. 1711. He attended one third of all sittings, receiving Hooper’s proxy on the first day of business and holding it for the whole session. Compton missed the December vote on the Hamilton peerage case and did not return to the House until 14 Jan. 1712. He was again absent on 31 Jan. when the House received his petition complaining that the inhabitants of Hammersmith had failed to pay the costs in their appeal of the previous year. The House ordered the offending litigants to be attached; costs were then paid and the order discharged on 8 February.
In February 1712 Alexander Rose, the nonjuring bishop of Edinburgh, wrote to Compton and others about the Scottish toleration bill, ‘begging them for God’s sake to stop the passing of that bill for it would ruin their interest here’.
Compton was now entering his final decline. On 8 Oct. 1712 he wrote to Oxford that although ‘the world believes me to be on the mending hand’ the reality was that his case was dangerous ‘and I must change my address from desiring a pension to beg a charity’. He had hitherto kept his financial embarrassments secret but now revealed them to Oxford. He needed £3,000 ‘immediately to prevent the utmost shame’ and asked for the money ‘as secret service by bank bills’.
Compton was still seen as one of the leaders of the Tory bishops. On 9 Feb. 1713 Hooper asked him to act as an intermediary in obtaining leave of absence from the House and court duties; he had already tried and failed to contact Sharp of York for the same purpose and he seems to have made no attempt to secure Tenison’s support.
The glowing sermons that were printed after his death testify to the high regard in which Compton was held by his clergy.