GRANVILLE, George (1666-1735)

Despite being a member of a prominent and powerful West Country family, George Granville’s early fame was as a literary rather than a political figure, and it is as a minor poet, playwright and early patron of Pope that he is now chiefly remembered. His literary achievements are well described elsewhere. E. Handasyde, Granville the Polite. His first foray into the political world took place in 1702. As a result of the death of his uncle and cousin, the 1st and 2nd earls of Bath, the previous year, the powerful Granville clan had fallen under the care of the 1st earl’s younger son and namesake, and it was through the influence of the younger John Granville (created Baron Granville of Potheridge in 1703) that George Granville was returned for the Cornish borough of Fowey.

He was heir to a somewhat mixed political inheritance. The 1st earl of Bath had deserted James II at the Revolution; he and his two sons subsequently engaged in a brief flirtation with the Whigs. Differences with William III meant that they soon moved back towards the Tories. Another uncle, the 1st earl of Bath’s brother Denis Grenville, erstwhile dean of Durham, went into exile with the toppled king and was nominated by him as archbishop of York in 1691. Granville himself also had Jacobite leanings. In 1688 he offered to fight for James II, a somewhat quixotic gesture given that he had no military experience, but was forbidden to do so by his father. His poem The Progress of Beauty written in or about 1700 includes complimentary references to the exiled king and queen; Mary of Modena was said to be his muse. The prospect of office inculcated a certain respect for Queen Anne, reflected in the 1707 production of his play The British Enchanters in which the final scene depicted the queen as Oriana (i.e. Elizabeth I). Nevertheless, in or about 1705, Elizabeth Burnet reported that she had been told that,

when he had principles was a Jacobite, and fancied himself in love with the Q[ueen] at St Germains. That they believed his strait circumstances forced him to take the oaths against his conscience, and that since that he had given up himself to follow some of his friends right or wrong.

She also reported that he was said to be ‘of no judgment more than a child, that he was affected and conceited’.Add. 61458, ff. 57-58.

Granville’s own assessment of his abilities and of what was owed to his family was very different. Despite his known Tory sympathies he abstained over the Tack and fell out with the Tory leader Daniel Finch, 2nd earl of Nottingham, who led the attack against Granville’s brother, Bevill, over his record as governor of Barbados. Granville attached himself to Henry St John, the future Viscount Bolingbroke, and Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, but the advancement he so confidently expected did not materialize. In August 1705 he wrote to Harley complaining that: ‘It is so well known to everybody how much I have devoted myself personally to your service, that I flatter myself you will confound my interest a little with your own, since the injuries that are offered to our friends are so many affronts to ourselves’.HMC Portland, iv. 216.

In 1707 the death of Granville of Potheridge and the continuing minority of his nephew, William Henry Granville, 3rd earl of Bath, left Granville as the senior adult male in the family with a claim (contested by the young earl’s grandparents) to take charge of its west country interests. It is a measure of the discrepancy between his aspirations and his actual status that he remained the representative for Fowey rather than stepping up to the more prestigious county seat, which was held from 1705-10 by his rival, Hugh Boscawen^‡. Granville took an active role in the 1708 elections, incurring further enmity from Boscawen who threatened, publicly, to have him turned out of the governorship of Pendennis. As Granville pointed out Boscawen’s threat amounted to a serious miscalculation, since Granville’s ability to retain that office served to bolster Harley’s reputation and ‘will contribute as much as anything to the keeping the gentlemen of this county in temper, for as inconsiderable as I may seem at London, I find myself not without consequence here.’ Ibid. 495.

Granville increasingly acted both as an intermediary between St John and Harley and as a conduit for patronage requests from west country allies to the court. He also acted as Harley’s go-between in an attempt to win the support of the young Henry Somerset, 2nd duke of Beaufort. Ibid. 527. Still best known as a literary figure, Granville’s political prospects were transformed by the collapse of the administration of Sidney Godolphin, earl of Godolphin and John Churchill, duke of Marlborough. The change of ministry and associated appointment of Laurence Hyde, earl of Rochester, as lord lieutenant of Cornwall during the minority of the earl of Bath helped to revive the Tory interest there. According to his own account Granville also played an important role as mediator between Harley and St. John. Handasyde, 107. His close association with St John reflected his own commitment to the virulently anti-Whig section of the party and his opposition to Harley’s attempts at compromise. Granville’s continuing support was extremely important to Harley, and his name appears on Harley’s September list of ‘Members of the House of Commons which are immediately necessary should be provided for before their elections’. Add. 70333, Memorandum, 12 Sept. 1710. Granville’s ensuing appointment as recorder of Launcestown and as secretary at war, against the express wishes of Marlborough, confirmed his new status as a major figure in both local and national politics. Marlborough-Godolphin Corresp. 1645. Armed with such signal marks of royal favour, at the ensuing elections he dislodged Hugh Boscawen as knight of the shire for Cornwall. Add. 70026, ff. 250, 303-4, Add. 70027, ff. 171-2, 188-9, 194-5; HMC Portland, iv. 646, 690, 693, 696. He also managed to secure the return of his brother Bernard Granville for Camelford and that of his close associate John Manley^‡ for Tintagel. It soon became apparent that he wanted still more. Anticipating difficulties in dealing with Marlborough, he asked to be made a privy councillor,

a favour that will cost the queen nothing, and ’twill give me a great deal of ease in my correspondence with the general when he comes home, by putting me above the servile attendance which he may expect by having been used to it by my predecessors in the same post. It will likewise be a public approbation of my endeavours for her majesty’s service upon the late occasion, which will be very acceptable to my countrymen and add to my credit among them. HMC Portland, iv. 627.

The sudden death of Rochester, caretaker lord lieutenant of Cornwall, on 2 May 1711 left Granville touting himself as successor. When he learned that objections had been made to this he suggested instead James Butler, 2nd duke of Ormond, as Bath’s nearest maternal relative. Add. 70288, [G. Granville to R.], Harley, n.d. [c. 6 May 1711]. Bath himself died only two weeks later leaving Granville at the head of a family connection that was no longer distinguished by a peerage. On 18 May, just a day after his nephew’s death, Granville began his campaign for a peerage. The queen, he argued, should ‘not suffer a name and family always so devoted to the service of her ancestors to be buried in the same grave with my Lord Bath.’ Furthermore, her service required some distinguishing mark to be conferred on Granville lest the interest he had carefully built up in the west country ‘return into the hands of her enemies ... If I am thought unworthy to be continued upon the level with those who have gone before me, I shall think myself unworthy to live, or at least to show my face again in my own country.’ HMC Portland, iv. 690. He was equally concerned about the fate of the vacant lord lieutenancy, decrying the possibility of appointing Charles Robartes, 2nd earl of Radnor, about whom ‘there is that general aversion … that they will give everything for lost if such a step be taken’ and also opposing his kinsman, John Carteret, 2nd Baron Carteret (later Earl Granville). Carteret was not only whiggishly inclined, he was also Granville’s opponent in litigation over the family estates. Granville still wanted the lord lieutenancy for himself, but he was happy to support the candidacy of yet another kinsman, Henry Hyde, 2nd earl of Rochester (later also 4th earl of Clarendon), whose appointment was widely expected, and welcomed, by the gentlemen of the county. Ibid. 693.

Meanwhile Granville continued to press his claim to a peerage. His countrymen expected it (or so he said) and ‘a declaration of her Majesty’s pleasure in this case without any delay would be of public service in the county, as well as fix my own private affairs.’ Mention of his private affairs amounted to an oblique reference to the unsettled litigation over the Albemarle and Bath estates and the advantages that membership of the House of Lords could confer on litigants. Granville had taken possession of the family seat at Stowe with an income reputed to be between £6,000 and £8,000 each year, but his hold on the property was uncertain and he claimed that ‘this favour … will settle me in the quiet enjoyment of it.’ Ibid. 696. Although he was well aware of the need to counter objections that a peerage might be considered incompatible with his office as secretary at war, he may not have realized that the vacant lord lieutenancy was also a bar to his ambitions. Lord Keeper Simon Harcourt, later Viscount Harcourt, seems to have believed that were he to be ennobled it would be necessary to confer the lord lieutenancy with it, and that was something that the ministry was extremely reluctant to do. Add. 70027, ff. 194-5; HMC Portland, iv. 693-4. At the same time as Granville was seeking an English peerage he was also petitioning the queen for permission to use the title, equivalent to an earldom that had been conferred on his cousin the 2nd earl of Bath by the Emperor Leopold. Add. 70312, Petition of G. Granville, n.d. [probably 30 June 1711]; Add. 70229, G. Granville to Oxford, 30 June 1711.

Over the next year Granville continued to act as a conduit for patronage requests and continued to seek advancement for himself and family. He also implemented something of a political purge in Cornwall in order to reduce the influence of the Godolphin and Boscawen families on local corporations. Add. 70288, G. Granville to Oxford, n.d. [c. July 1711]; HMC Portland, v. 69, 84, 97. In June 1711, along with St John and Dean Swift, he became a founding member of the Tory ‘Brother’s Club’. Jnl. to Stella ed. Williams, 345, 361, 481.

By December 1711 it had been settled that Granville was at last to get the peerage he craved, although at least one observer thought he was to get the revived earldom of Bath rather than a mere barony. HMC 7th Rep. 507. The details of the new creation seem still to have been undecided on 29 Dec. when Granville wrote to William Legge, earl of Dartmouth, in an unsuccessful attempt to secure a special remainder that would bring his younger brother Bernard into the succession ‘as he suffers himself so very heavily from a former omission of that kind that he is sufficiently warn’d not to repeat the like neglect.’ HMC Dartmouth, i. 309. The peerage also brought other problems to the fore, specifically the question of just how he was to support his new dignity. He claimed to have spent some £4,000 in the last elections, a sum ‘too great for a private man with a private fortune’ and was still owed some £1,500 on that score. He now overcame his previous reluctance about asking for recompense,

being in a very few days to change my condition, though very much to my advantage, yet a new expense and a considerable one is created at the first entrance, and being thrown so far back for the present by my expenses in the queen’s service, I find myself pressed to apply to you to be reimbursed at least some part of that charge. Your Lordship may judge how unwillingly I make this application, by my never doing it before, nor could anything have brought me to it, unless you had first mentioned it yourself, but an absolute necessity. HMC Portland, v. 134.

His financial exigencies were almost certainly a factor in his decision to marry. Mary Thynne was some 20 years his junior but was otherwise an eminently suitable choice since her parents were prominent Tories (with pronounced Jacobite tendencies) and she was also an heiress. Created Baron Lansdown of Biddiford, a title that acted as a reminder of his family’s Civil War service, he was introduced in the Lords on 2 Jan. 1712 by Charles Butler, Baron Butler of Weston, and Charles Boyle, Baron Boyle (also 4th earl of Orrery [I]) in a ceremony that both reflected his Tory credentials and his family association with the Butler earls of Ormond. Despite Oxford’s need for support in the House, Lansdown then attended for only 16 per cent of the remaining sitting days of the 1711-12 session. His poor attendance rate did not prevent him from continuing to press the demands of his west country allies in terms that sometimes seem to amount to virtual blackmail. One list of requests made to Oxford ended with an application for a land surveyorship in Bideford, suggesting that ‘you will not let my credit appear so little in a town entirely my own as not to be able to obtain this preference for my friend.’ Add. 70288, Lansdown to Oxford, 14 March 1712. On 19 May 1712 he registered a proxy in favour of Lord Harcourt, probably for use during the crucial June divisions on the French peace. It was vacated at the end of the session. During the recess he demonstrated his usefulness to the ministry in a new way – acting as go-between to secure the vote of his kinsman Lucius Henry Cary, 6th Viscount of Falkland [S], in the by-election for a Scots representative peer to replace the late William Keith, 8th Earl Marischal [S]. Add. 70229, Lansdown to Oxford, 28 June 1712; Add. 70029, ff. 206-7. Oxford continued to confer marks of favour upon him. Lansdown was appointed to the prestigious post of privy councillor and perhaps more importantly to the extremely lucrative one of comptroller of the household. His appetite for rewards was by no means sated; by the end of the year he was putting forward requests on behalf of his brother in law, William Villiers, 2nd earl of Jersey, in addition to his normal clutch of demands for lesser individuals. Add. 70288, Lansdown to Oxford, 12, 18 and 26 Dec. 1712; Add. 70201, John Leask to Oxford, 3 Nov. [?1712].

The short 1713 session saw Lansdown present on 36 per cent of sitting days. Oxford again counted on Lansdown’s support for his various measures including the French commercial treaty and Lansdown in return was active in support of ministerial candidates during the ensuing general election. Add. 70236, E. Harley to Oxford, 9 May 1713; HMC Cowper, iii. 107; WSHC, Charlton mss 88/10/93; Handasyde, 129-31.

The first session of the next Parliament opened on 16 Feb. 1714. Lansdown attended for just 29 per cent of sittings. He may have been distracted by ongoing family litigation, including an action that he himself had brought in chancery in January 1713, as well as by the substantial losses he was said to have suffered as a result of the failure of a London goldsmith. TNA, C10/398/48; Wentworth Pprs. 282. In March 1714 he had to relinquish his claim to the estates of his uncle John Granville, 1st earl of Bath, to the earl’s daughters: Catharine (wife of Craven Peyton^‡), Grace (wife of George Carteret, Baron Carteret) and the heirs of Jane (wife of Sir William Leveson-Gower^‡). Although Lansdown’s attendance was low, he still managed to be present for all the crucial divisions on the queen’s speech, the protestant succession, the peace treaty and also for the schism bill, for which Nottingham anticipated Landown’s support. Proxies were widely used for these divisions. It was probably for this purpose that Lansdown held that of Gilbert Coventry, 4th earl of Coventry from 12 Mar. until 28 May. On that day Lansdown entered a proxy in favour of Jersey, which was in turn vacated when he returned to the House on 4 June. Lansdown’s last attendance of the session was on 11 June; two days later he registered a second proxy in favour of Jersey.

Shortly after the death of Queen Anne early in the morning of 1 Aug. 1714 Lansdown was one of the signatories to the proclamation of the accession of George I. Then, like the other Tories, he was swept from office by the new king. He attended 27 per cent of sittings during the brief second session of 1714 but seems to have taken no active part in proceedings. The strength of Lansdown’s Jacobite connections coupled with his association with Bolingbroke and Oxford meant that the new regime was bound to be wary of him whilst his surviving correspondence with the exiled court suggests that there was good reason for such suspicion. For the time being, however, Lansdown seems to have had no inkling of what was in store for him and his erstwhile ministerial colleagues. In November 1714 when he celebrated the final settlement of the long-running family litigation over the disposition of the Bath and Albemarle estates, he appears to have been convinced that the new king would happily recreate the various Granville titles in order to distribute them amongst the heirs:

My Lady Carteret having the Cornish estate, should be created countess of Bath, and as I am entitled by virtue of King Charles’ warrant to assume the earldom of Corbeil, as the direct male descendant from Sir Bevil, I cannot think a patent would be refused me for it, if it was represented to the king, as an article that would give peace to the family.’ HMC 5th Rep. 188-9.

In January 1715 Lady Carteret became Countess Granville; Lansdown remained a baron.

The 1715-16 session saw something of a witch hunt against suspected Jacobites, in part of course because the activities of the Jacobite conspirators were well known to the government. According to the Jacobite agent Allen Cameron ‘the government was going on with such violence, he thought every suspected person that stayed in London, especially lords that did not sit in the House, was in hazard of being taken up every day’. HMC Stuart, iii. 557-9. Between the beginning of the 1715-16 session and his arrest on 21 Sept., Lansdown was present on nearly 34 per cent of sitting days. The thrust of his parliamentary activities was to protect his former colleagues, Oxford, Ormond and Bolingbroke, from attempted impeachment. To this end he held several proxies from fellow Tories: on three occasions (21 May to 21 June, 27 June to 12 July and 16 July to 15 Aug.) he held that of William Stawell, 3rd Baron Stawell, and between 15 July and 8 Aug. he also held Harcourt’s proxy. On 8 and 9 July he entered dissents to the proceedings against Oxford; on 18 Aug. he protested against the passage of Ormond’s attainder. He then dissented to a resolution concerning proceedings against Bolingbroke and entered a protest at the passage of Bolingbroke’s attainder.

Lansdown was deeply involved in the Jacobite conspiracy, maintaining a correspondence with supporters in England as well as with the exiled king’s illegitimate brother, James FitzJames, duke of Berwick, in France. Ibid. i. 362, 391-2, 413, 525, 557-9. Just four days before his arrest he wrote a coded letter to fellow conspirator Sir William Wyndham^‡ encouraging him to believe that a rising was imminent:

I can’t help communicating to you an intrigue of a certain lady, whom you have wished a great while to be better acquainted with, being this moment let into the secret that she is with child, and in daily expectation of the happy hour: you will wish her I am sure as well as I, an easy labour, a safe delivery, and a brave boy for the honour of the fathers, for there are more than one who must have had a finger in this pie. You will be very dull if you miss guessing at my lady, I shall not name her you may be sure, the affair not being yet public, but it can’t be long a secret ... Stowe 750, ff. 123-4.

After a brief period of house arrest Lansdown was committed to the Tower. Rumours that he would be the first of the conspirators to be tried proved inaccurate, probably because the government had failed to persuade any of the conspirators to give evidence against him. Verney ms mic. M636/56, J. Baker to Fermanagh, 7 Jan 1715. The letter quoted above was produced as evidence against him and was used to secure an indictment against him at the Middlesex sessions in May 1716. In order to proceed further the indictment had to be removed to the House of Lords by writ of certiorari so that Lansdown could be tried there, but there seems to have been no attempt to do so. The prosecution case was flimsy and made all the more difficult because the letter in question was unsigned and the handwriting, although said to be Lansdown’s, was difficult to identify with any certainty as one of the clerks in the war office was known to have been in the habit of imitating Lansdown’s hand. HMC Stuart, ii. 204-205; Add. 72493, ff. 83-84. Lansdown was eventually pardoned and released on 8 Feb. 1717, probably as part of an attempt to widen the gulf between supporters of Bolingbroke and Oxford in advance of the trial of the Jacobite lords. Notwithstanding the pardon, Lansdown’s Jacobite contacts remained convinced of his loyalty to the exiled court. HMC Stuart, iv. 273, 315-17.

The next parliamentary session began on 20 Feb. 1717. Lansdown did not attend until 6 May. He was then present on 23 days before the session ended on 15 July. All but three of his attendances were concentrated on the period from 22 May when the major issue of the day was the impeachment of Oxford. Lansdown was named, along with all others present in the House, to the committee to consider precedents and was present on 25 May when, as a result of the committee’s report, the House decided that the proceedings against Oxford were still valid. Given his previous relationship with Oxford it is difficult to believe that he agreed with this decision, but he did not sign the resultant dissent. Lansdown may also have been interested in the possibility of fomenting a constitutional clash over the rights of the English and Irish parliaments as he was present on 31 May and 12 June when the day’s business included a consideration of the precedents in the controversial case of Annesley v. Sherlock, which pitted the rights of the English House of Lords against those of its Irish counterpart.

Lansdown did not attend at all during the following (1717-18) session. On 18 Nov. he registered a proxy in favour of John Leveson-Gower, 2nd Baron Gower, though technically it was invalid as he had not attended to take the oaths. He came to the opening of the 1718-19 session and was thus named to the committee for privileges. Between 5 Dec. 1718 and 7 Jan. 1719 and then again between 11 Feb. and 16 Mar. 1719 he held Gower’s proxy but had little opportunity to use it as after the opening of the session he attended only twice, on 18 and 19 Dec. when the House debated the bill to strengthen the protestant interest, which despite its innocuous title was intended to repeal the occasional conformity Act. On the one hand it strengthened the powers of the Anglican church to refuse communion to occasional conformists; on the other it subverted the intent of the Test Acts by allowing those who had been refused communion to take office. This was an issue on which Lansdown purported to have strong views and, according to the opening lines of his speech on 19 Dec., it prompted his first and only contribution to a debate in the House. The speech attracted much attention with its vitriolic condemnation of dissenters, ‘those followers of Judas who came to the Lord’s supper only to sell and betray him’, who made ‘the god of truth subservient … to acts of hypocrisy’ and who profaned the eucharist in order ‘to seek … preferment in this world by eating and drinking to … damnation in the next.’ Although strangers had been excluded from the House during the debate, the speech was quickly published. It was issued twice in 1718 and again in 1719. Ld. L----’s Speech against the Occasional Conformity Bill (issued twice in slightly different formats, 1718); The Genuine Speech of the Lord L----e, against Repealing the Occasional and Schism Acts, (1719). Lansdown was sufficiently proud of it to include it amongst his collected works published in 1732. His commitment to the cause was, however, not quite as great as he had made out. He was not listed in the presence list on 20 Dec. when the bill was considered in detail by a committee of the whole and when his contribution would have had practical rather than purely propaganda value.

During the 1719-20 session Lansdown attended on just 12 days. His first appearance was on 14 Jan. 1720 when the major item of business was whether a writ of summons could be issued to Charles Douglas, 3rd duke of Queensberry [S], in right of his post-Union (British) title as 2nd duke of Dover. His personal attendance may have been necessary because of problems over his proxy, which had been registered on 7 Dec. 1719 to Rochester but, because he had not yet attended the House, was technically invalid. It was cancelled on 11 Jan. 1720. Lansdown was then present on a further ten days in February and March when on all but one of the days in question the main business before the House related to appeals from Scotland concerning the forfeited estates of convicted or attainted Jacobites, including those of John Erskine, 22rd earl of Mar [S]. His last attendance of the session was on 7 May. Having left for France in July 1720, he did not attend the 1720-21 session although he registered a proxy to Allen Bathurst, Baron (later Earl) Bathurst, on 12 Feb. 1721, the validity of which was questionable.

Although Lansdown returned briefly to England in the autumn to assess the damage (reputedly £10,000) to his finances caused by the bursting of the South Sea Bubble and although his wife continued to maintain friendly relations with members of the court of the Prince and Princess of Wales, Lansdown spent the next four to five years amongst the coterie of Jacobite sympathizers who had gathered in Paris. Handasysde, 176. In the summer of 1721 he was appointed secretary of state in any provisional government to be formed after a successful Jacobite insurrection. The failure of the projected insurrection to materialize left him in an embarrassing position since the titular James III expected him to join him in Rome. Lansdown, who was effectively being paid £1,000 a year via a pension to his wife to stay away from England and keep out of Jacobite conspiracies, was desperate to avoid an open declaration of his Jacobite sympathies and had to throw himself on the Pretender’s goodwill to extricate himself from the situation. Ibid. 180-4. Nevertheless, his allegiance to the Jacobites was sufficiently important for the Pretender first (in October 1721) to create him earl of Bath and then (in November 1721) to confer on him the peerage so long coveted by the Granvilles, the dukedom of Albemarle. In 1722 he was the author of one of the most stirring pieces of Jacobite propaganda of the day, A Letter from a Noble-Man Abroad, to his Friend in England On the approaching General Election.

Over the next few years Lansdown was deeply involved in the factional in-fighting of the Jacobite exiles. By the mid-1720s his friendship with Mar, his continuing receipt of a British pension and the intensity of conspiratorial Jacobite politics had created a belief, not entirely unjustified, that Lansdown was a double agent. Out of favour with the Pretender and deeply in debt, he threw his lot in with the Hanoverians instead. His rehabilitation was in part signalled by the marriage of his stepson, Thomas Thynne, 2nd Viscount Weymouth, to the daughter of the leading Whig peer, Lionel Sackville, duke of Dorset, in December 1726. The accession of George II and the Walpole ministry’s policy of leniency towards former Jacobites smoothed the path still further. By spring 1729 Lansdown was back in London. He attended the House just once more, on 19 Jan. 1730. He had no son to succeed him and when he died in January 1735 his honours were extinguished with him.