Sources

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1690-1715, ed. D. Hayton, E. Cruickshanks, S. Handley, 2002
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Elections

The date of every election, and the names of the Member or Members returned, in the order in which they were placed by the returning officer,1 can be found in the ‘Blue Books’ for 1878-9, commonly referred to as the Original Returns.2 These were compiled from the evidence in the Crown Office docquet books in the Public Record Office, rather than from the returns themselves (which are to be found at C 219/75-114). For the most part, reliance has been placed on the printed record. The original returns have been consulted only in cases where error was suspected, or further information required (relating to a Member’s name and designation, for example, or to the number of electors subscribing the return). Occasionally, the information on the return is contradicted by other contemporary evidence, from participants or observers, newspapers and newsletters, or polling documents. Where this occurs, the entry in the constituency article has been amended accordingly.

Polling figures have been derived from a variety of sources: pollbooks, petitions to Parliament and reports from the committee of privileges and elections, contemporary correspondence, and notices in the press or in newsletters. In addition, we have been able to use the notebooks of W.W. Bean, some of whose information, regarding the names of defeated candidates, and totals of votes cast, seems to have been derived from materials no longer extant. For English and Welsh constituencies, the most important and reliable evidence comes from pollbooks, especially after the passage of the Act of 1696 (7 & 8 Gul. III, c. 25), which required sheriffs to preserve a copy of the polling list after each county election, though not all surviving examples are complete, and where there is more than one pollbook for an election, the figures do not always agree. A Handlist of British Parliamentary Poll Books ed. Sims (Leicester Univ. Hist. Dept., Occasional Publn. no. 4, 1984), gives bibliographical details of printed pollbooks (the first of which arose from the Essex election of 1694), many of them held in the library of the University of London Institute of Historical Research. J. Gibson and C. Rogers, Poll Books c. 1696-1872: A Directory of Holdings in Great Britain (1994), includes manuscript pollbooks as well, and is more up-to-date, but still not comprehensive. It is unclear whether, in the aftermath of the Union, the Act of 1696 was taken to apply to Scotland. At any rate, there are no published pollbooks for Scottish constituencies until 1790, and in this period the only surviving lists of voters are to be found in the private papers of candidates and their principal supporters, evidently compiled to help with canvassing, as in Peeblesshire in 1712 and Edinburghshire in 1713. Compensation can be found, however, in the relative abundance of electoral court minutes, concentrated in the class of sheriff court records in the National Archives of Scotland (formerly the Scottish Record Office), and scattered in some family muniments. As far as county elections are concerned, the minutes often list the ‘barons’ present, and the votes cast. Even where they do not, it is sometimes possible to reconstruct the dimensions of the poll from the evidence of objections laid against individual voters.

 

Genealogy

Of the 1,982 Members for whom biographical articles have been supplied in these volumes of the History, no less than 1,017 are already served by published biographies in the 1660-90 and 1715-54 sections. Many of the remainder have also been identified (not always correctly) in the large number of works on local parliamentary representation published in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, by scholars like Rev. A.B. Beaven, W.W. Bean, W.D. Pink, and W.R. Williams. The most wide-ranging are Bean’s Parliamentary History of the Six Northern Counties of England (1890), and Williams’s Parliamentary History of Wales (1895). In addition, Williams compiled parliamentary histories for Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Oxfordshire, and Worcestershire, and Pink and Beaven for Lancashire.3 Other counties covered in similar fashion, though in varying depth, include Cumberland and Westmorland, Devon, Shropshire, Somerset, and Yorkshire;4 and, among the boroughs Barnstaple, Exeter and Honiton; Cricklade; Rochester; Coventry and Warwick; and all the constituencies in Shropshire.5 For members of the parliament of Scotland, the pioneering work begun by Joseph Foster a century ago has been completed, and entirely superseded, by the appearance of the two-volume biographical dictionary of burgh and shire commissioners published under the auspices of the Scottish Committee on the History of Parliament.6

In most cases, further research into the family background of Members has taken as its starting point the standard genealogical sources: The Complete Peerage and Complete Baronetage, Burke’s History of the Commoners, and the various editions of the Landed Gentry and Landed Gentry of Ireland, Douglas’s Scots Peerage, and Lodge’s Peerage of Ireland. To lead us to the appropriate entries in heraldic visitations, and to relevant materials in family and local histories, and periodicals devoted to genealogy, we have followed the indications given in G.W. Marshall, The Genealogist’s Guide ... (1903); A Genealogical Guide ... comp. J.B. Whitmore (1953); and their more recent supplement, G.B. Barrow and A.J. Camp, The Genealogist’s Guide ... (1977).

As far as practicable, efforts have been made to take account of such primary genealogical sources as funerary monuments, wills, parish registers, and allegations for marriage licences. Many monumental inscriptions are already transcribed by local and family historians; where possible, others have been scrutinized in situ. In general, we have confined our examination of unpublished wills to those proved in the prerogative court of Canterbury (PCC), which are available at the Public Record Office, though other church court records have also been used, notably those of the archdiocese of York (at the Borthwick Institute of Historical Research), and the dioceses of London (at the Essex RO), and Norwich (at the Norfolk and Norwich RO). Many Irish wills, together with other classes of public records, were destroyed in the fire at the Four Courts in Dublin in 1922, but those deposited in the registry of deeds (after 1708), have been calendared in P.B. Eustace, Registry of Deeds Dublin, Abstracts of Wills (Irish mss Comm. 1954-6). Parish registers have been consulted as and where appropriate: we have made use of published registers for London and Middlesex, and for such English counties as Lancashire and Shropshire;7 the manuscript indexes in the Guildhall Library and the Society of Genealogists; and, more generally, the International Genealogical Index (covering the whole of the British Isles), compiled by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon Church), now available on CD-Rom at the Public Record Office. In the case of marriage licences, we have been restricted to published editions, in particular those issued by the Harleian Society, and the British Record Society (Index Library), and occasional separate volumes such as J. Foster, London Marriage Licenses, 1521-1869 (1887). For Scottish families, particular use has been made of records of inheritance of property: the published indexes to ‘services of heirs’, and to the proceedings of inquests into the Scottish court of chancery.8


Education

Editions of admissions registers have been published for most of the great English public schools, and for some grammar schools. Particular use has been made of the following: for Charterhouse, Alumni Carthusiani ed. B. Marsh and F.A. Crisp (1913); for Eton, the Eton College Register, the volume covering 1441-1698 edited by Sir W. Sterry (1943), and for 1698-1753 edited by R.A. Austen-Leigh (1927); for Merchant Taylors’, Mrs E.P. Hart’s edition of the Merchant Taylors’ School Register 1561-1934 (1936); for Rugby, the first volume of the Rugby School Register, revised by G.A. Solly (1933); for St. Paul’s, Sir M. McDonnell, Registers of St. Paul’s School, 1509-1748 (1977); for Westminster, J. Welch, Alumni Westmonasterienses (1852), and G.F. Russell Barker and A.H. Stenning, The Record of Old Westminsters (1928); for Shrewsbury the school’s unpublished records; and for the grammar school at Bury St. Edmunds, the Bury St. Edmunds Grammar School List 1550-1900 (Suffolk Green Bks. xiii. 1908). In most cases, attendance at a Dissenting academy can be documented only from private papers, or from other biographical sources relating to particular individuals. An exception to this rule is the school run by Thomas Triplett at Hayes in Middlesex, a number of whose pupils were listed in Triplett’s will (PCC 105 Penn). The locations of the academies themselves have been identified in I. Parker, Dissenting Academies in England ... (1914), pp. 137-42. In Ireland, the only school with an accessible register of admissions is Kilkenny: an edition was published by T.U. Sadleir, in Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, liv. (1924), pp. 55-67, 152-69, with a supplement by W.E.J. Dobbs in ibid. lxxvi. (1946), pp. 133-42.

Details of education at Cambridge and Oxford universities has been taken from J.A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses, Part 1, to 1751 (1922-7), and J. Foster, Alumni Oxonienses 1500-1714 (1892), supplemented, where possible, by the published records of individual colleges. For Trinity, Dublin, we have relied on G.D. Burtchaell and T.U. Sadleir, Alumni Dublinenses (1935); for Aberdeen, Fasti Aberdonenses (Spalding Club, 1854), and P.J. Anderson’s later editions of the registers of King’s and Marischal Colleges, Officers and Graduates of ... King’s College (New Spalding Club, 1893), and Fasti Academiae Mariscallanae Aberdonensis (New Spalding Club, 1889); and for Glasgow, Records of Glasgow University 1450-1727 ed. C. Innes (Maitland Club, lxxii. 1854). The many Scots, and less numerous Englishmen, who spent time at Dutch universities have been identified from the following published lists: for Franeker, the first volume of Album Studiorum Academiae Franekerensis (1585-1811, 1816-44) ed. S.J. Fockema Andreae and Th.J. Meijer, ‘Naamlijst der Studenten’ (1968); for Leiden, Album Studiosorum Academiae Lugduno-Batavae MDLXXV-MDCCLXXV (n.d.), supplemented by E. Pearce, Index to English Speaking Students ... at Leyden University (1883), and R.W. Innes Smith, English-Speaking Students of Medicine at the University of Leyden (1932); and for Utrecht, Album Studiosorum Academiae Rheno-Trajectinae 1636-1886 (1886). The presence of English and Scottish students at the University of Padua is recorded in H.F. Brown, ‘Inglesi e Scozzesi all’ Universita di Padova, 1618-1765’, in Monografie Storiche sullo Studio di Padova (1922), pp. 137-213.

With the exception of the Inner Temple (from whose unpublished records we have been furnished with dates of admission), each of the inns of court has published its registers: J. Foster, Register of Admissions to Gray’s Inn (1889); Records of Lincoln’s Inn: Admissions (1896); and H.A.C. Sturgess, Register of Admissions to the ... Middle Temple (1949). The further progress of a Member’s legal education, including the date of any call to the bar, and details of office-holding within an inn, can be traced in Records of Lincoln’s Inn: The Black Books ... ed. W.P. Baildon (1894-1968); F. A. Inderwick, A Calendar of the Inner Temple Records (1896-1936); and C.H. Hopwood, Middle Temple Records (1903-5). Of the several inns of chancery only the register of Barnard’s Inn has been published: The Admissions Registers of Barnard’s Inn 1620-1869 ed. C.W. Brooks (Selden Soc., 1995). Calls to the Irish bar, as represented by entry to King’s Inns in Dublin, are recorded in E. Keane and P.B. Eustace, Kings’ Inns Admission Papers 1607-1867 (Irish Manuscripts Commission, 1982), while admissions to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh have been taken from Sir F.J. Grant, The Faculty of Advocates in Scotland 1532-1943 (Scottish Rec. Soc. lxxvi. 1944). Details of medical education, which would be relevant to only a handful of Members, are conveniently gathered in P.J. and R.V. Wallis, Eighteenth Century Medics (1988).

Finally, evidence for foreign travel has been derived from a variety of sources, often from the personal or family archives. In a minority of cases, of whom William Brockman,9 John Clerk,10 and Grey Neville11 would be three particularly good examples, there is an additional luxury in that the Member concerned left a full and detailed account of his travels.

 

Office-Holding

Two contemporary reference-works, ancestors of the almanacs more familiar from the later 18th century, provide handy lists of the office-holders in central government, some of the more important places in local government, and the governing personnel of major charitable corporations and chartered companies: Guy Miège’s The New State of England ... (edns. in 1691, 1701, and 1702), continued as The Present State of Great Britain ... (1707); and Edward Chamberlayne’s Angliae Notitia: or, the Present State of England ... (edns. in 1692, 1694, 1700), continued after his death by his son John (edns. in 1704 and 1707), and, following the Anglo-Scottish Union, with a change of name to Magnae Britanniae Notitia: or the Present State of Great-Britain ... (edns. in 1708 and 1710). ‘Black lists’ of ‘placemen’ and pensioners were also an important feature of political propaganda in this period. Two such printed lists have survived, from 1698 and 1705, and several manuscript lists from the years 1692-4. In addition, Richard Chandler’s edition of parliamentary debates, published in 1742-4, includes lists of placemen from 1713 and 1715.12

There are general listings of office-holders under the crown in standard reference works such as Beatson’s Political Index (1806) and Haydn’s Book of Dignities (1894). Far more detailed and reliable, however, are the volumes in the series Office-Holders in Modern Britain, compiled for the Institute of Historical Research by Sir J. Sainty and others (12 vols. so far, 1972-), which cover the Treasury (Volume 1), Board of Trade (2), the office of the Secretaries of State (3), Admiralty (4), Navy Board (7) and Royal Household (11-12). Sainty has also listed Exchequer officials in Officers of the Exchequer (List and Index Soc. sp. ser. xviii. 1983), judges in The Judges of England 1272-1990 (Selden Soc., supp. ser. x. 1993), and other law officers in A List of English Law Officers and King’s Counsel … (Selden Soc. supp. ser. vii. 1987). In addition, we have taken information on accredited diplomatic representatives from Gary M. Bell, A Handlist of British Diplomatic Representatives 1509-1688 (R. Hist. Soc. 1990), and D.B. Horn (ed.), British Diplomatic Representatives (Camden 3rd ser. xlvi. 1932); on army commissions from the compilations of Sir Charles Dalton;13 details of naval careers from the multi-volume index to commissions produced by the National Maritime Museum, and, for the higher ranks, John Charnock’s 18th-century biographical dictionary of admirals;14 appointments to the staff of the Ordnance from H.R. Tomlinson’s Guns and Government (1979); to the Welsh judiciary from W.R. Williams, The History of the Great Sessions in Wales ... (1899); and to places under the Duchy of Lancaster from Sir R. Somerville, Office-Holders in the Duchy and County Palatine of Lancaster from 1703 (1972). Where possible, information has been checked against the evidence preserved in the published Calendars of State Papers (to 1704), Treasury Books and Treasury Papers.

Commissions under the great seal of Scotland are conveniently listed in a typescript index available in the National Archives of Scotland, and biographical information on the lords of session in particular is given in G. Brunton and D. Haig, An Historical Account of the Senators of the College of Justice ... (1832). Irish patents were recorded in R. Lascelles, Liber Munerum Publicorum Hiberniae ... (1824), an index to which was published in 1960.15 For admissions to the Irish Privy Council we were fortunate enough to have access to the unpublished notes of Rev. A.B. Beaven. F.E. Ball, The Judges in Ireland 1221-1921 (1927) provides biographical entries for all members of the Irish bench.

Offices in local government have been recorded only sparingly. For county sheriffs for England and Wales we have relied on the list originally published by the Public Record Office in 1898 (Lists and Indexes, ix). Service on the commission of the peace and other instruments of county government has been omitted from the preliminary paragraphs of the biographies, though particular appointments and dismissals that have a political significance are discussed in the text. For English and Welsh j.p.s we have drawn heavily on the published work of Dr L.K.J. Glassey, notably his Politics and the Appointment of Justices of the Peace 1675-1720 (1979). In addition, Dr Glassey deposited with the History detailed manuscript notes on Members of Parliament added to or removed from the commission in 1696-7, 1700-1, and 1710-14, and Professor Norma J. Landau provided lists of j.p.s for Kent.16 We were also able to make use of the computerized index of names of j.p.s for the period 1660-1700, extracted from the Crown Office docquet books17 and prepared for the preceding section of the History by Miss Barbara Crook, under the direction of the late Professor B.D. Henning. Some local commissions in Scotland may be found in the published Acts of the Scottish Privy Council and Parliament. Aldermen of London have been identified from A.B. Beaven, The Aldermen of the City of London ... (2 vols. 1908-13), with additional information on the City fathers of the Restoration period drawn from J.R. Woodhead, The Rulers of London 1660-1689 ... (London and Middlesex Archaeological Society, 1965). For appointments to civic office elsewhere, including admissions to freedom, reference has been made wherever possible to municipal records: a list of English and Scottish borough (or burgh) muniments can be found in Appendix 27, below. In a number of cases, including Chester, Colchester, Newcastle, Norwich, Portsmouth, Preston, York, Edinburgh, and Glasgow, freeman lists have been published. Printed editions of some Irish borough records are also available, the most useful for our purposes being those for Cork, Drogheda, Dublin, and Kinsale;18 and reference has also been made to unpublished papers from the archives of the cities of Galway and Kilkenny.19

Among other public corporations, the commissioners for the Royal Hospital at Greenwich are listed in J. Cooke and J. Maule, An Historical Account of the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich (1789); elder brethren of Trinity House in The Corporation of Trinity House ... comp. W.R. Chaplin ([1951]); the commissioners for Queen Anne’s bounty in A. Savidge, The Foundation and Early Years of Queen Anne’s Bounty ... (1955); the commissioners for the 50 new churches in London, established in 1711, in the catalogue of commissioners’ papers made by E.G.W. Bill and the calendar of minute-books from 1711 to 1727 edited by M.H. Port;20 the governors of the corporation of the Sons of the Clergy in E.H. Pearce, The Sons of the Clergy 1655-1904 (1928); and the officers of the New England Company (an evangelical rather than a commercial enterprise) in C.W. Kellaway, The New England Company 1649-1776 (1961). The members of the London corporation for the poor are listed in S.M. Macfarlane, ‘Studies in Poverty and Poor Relief in London at the End of the 17th Century’ (Oxford Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1983); their Bristolian counterparts in The Bristol Corporation of the Poor ed. E.F. Butcher (Bristol Record Society, iii. 1932). For fellows of the Royal Society we have used the basic listing in The Record of the Royal Society of London ... (1940), corrected where necessary by reference to the much more informative work of M.C.W. Hunter, which unfortunately does not stretch to the entire period covered by these volumes.21

In identifying the members of chartered trading companies we have benefited enormously from the generosity of various scholars, who have communicated information drawn from their own researches, in company and other records. For the East India trade, we have also made use of various manuscript lists of governors and committee-men of the Old Company, directors of the New, and managers for the united trade,22 and the information on officers of the United Company contained in C.C. Prinsep, Record of Services of the Honourable East India Company’s Civil Servants in the Madras Presidency (1885) (pp. ix-xviii). For the Royal African Company the standard account in K.G. Davies, The Royal African Company (1957), has been filled out by consultation of the records of the company itself in the Public Record Office (at T 70/88). We have also used, for the Hudson Bay Company, P.C. Newman, The Company of Adventurers (4 vols. 1985-91); for the Russia Company, J.M. Price, ‘The Tobacco Adventure to Russia’, (Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, li. pt. 1 (1961), pp. 105-10); and for the Company of Mine Adventurers the minutes preserved in the Bodleian Library,23 and further references in the MA thesis of S. Evans, ‘Sir Humphrey Mackworth’s Industrial Activities ...’ (Univ. of Wales 1953). Among local trading companies, the most important are the Societies of Merchant Venturers in Bristol and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, and the records of both are in print.24 Finally, information on directors of the Bank of England has been taken from W. Marston Acres, ‘Directors of the Bank of England’ (Notes and Queries, clxxix. 38-39, 57-62, 80-82); and various contemporary lists of subscribers, in print and in manuscript.

 

Parliamentary Career

The Commons Journals (volumes x-xvii of which cover this period) have settled by 1690 into their common 18th-century form; that is to say, they no longer include speeches, or the proceedings in committee, preserving only the order of business, votes taken and decisions made by the House, and papers presented. As far as the individual Member is concerned, the Journals record, inter alia, involvement in the presentation of petitions and the making of reports; tellerships (except for divisions in committee); and appointments to committees. This evidence should not be assumed to be utterly reliable. Occasional discrepancies can be found between the Journals and accounts set down by contemporary observers, in such matters as timetabling, or the total numbers voting on either side in divisions.25 More seriously, there are fragments of evidence which would suggest that entitlement to participate in the work of a committee may not always have been determined by nomination in the House, at least as recorded: one or two lists of 2nd-reading committees, found in private papers, are substantially more extensive than the lists printed in the Journals.26 However, in the absence of a comparable alternative source (and the printed Votes of the House are no more than a truncated version of the entries in the Journals, without the naming of individual Members), we have had little alternative but to make extensive use of the Journals. The approach adopted, involving the construction of a computerised database of parliamentary activity, has already been described.27 It should be noted, however, that the Journals include other information relevant to the biographies, which would not fall under the description of ‘parliamentary activity’: the granting of leave of absence; claims by or against MPs involving breach of parliamentary privilege; references in official documents communicated to the House, or in reports from committees; and, especially, the proceedings on contested elections, most of which were heard in the committee of privileges and elections, with the evidence subsequently reported to the House.

Other records of the ‘business’ of the House are to be found in private archives, in particular those belonging to Members of an active disposition, like William Brockman (MP Hythe 1690-5), the former Speaker Sir William Williams, 1st Bt. (MP Beaumaris 1695-8), and especially Robert Harley (MP New Radnor 1690-1711), whose parliamentary papers include notes, drafts of bills and speeches, copies of official documents laid before the House, and even committee lists.28 Sometimes an MP might keep a record of the proceedings of a parliamentary committee or commission on which he served. The fact that we know so much of the early proceedings of the commission of accounts in 1692-4 is due to the diary maintained by one of the commissioners, Sir Peter Colleton, 2nd Bt.29 More generally, a keen student of parliamentary procedure, like the young Salwey Winnington (MP Droitwich 1694-1708, 1710-15) might decide to take notes of any precedents established or other curious incidents, for future reference.30 In addition, the under-clerk James Courthope kept a detailed record of the committees he attended between 1697 and 1699: the surviving minute-book (published by O.C. Williams in 1953) constitutes a unique source.31

There are only eight full division-lists for this period, that is to say lists which purport to give a comprehensive list of both sides of a division: those on fixing the price of guineas, and on the attainder of Sir John Fenwick+, in 1696; the Abjuration in 1703; the ‘Tack’ of the conformity bill to the land tax bill in 1704; the choice of a Speaker in 1705; the impeachment of Dr Sacheverell in 1710; the commerce bill in 1713; and the expulsion of Richard Steele* in 1714.32 All except the lists on the Fenwick attainder and the division on the Speakership derive from contemporary printed copies, published in order to influence the electorate. The most notorious example of this genre was the so-called ‘black list’, not even a division-list as such, circulated prior to the second general election of 1701, which purported to name all those Tory Members who had been opposed to making preparations for war with France. In all probability this was (loosely) based on the vote in the Commons on the previous 14 Feb., on a cunningly-worded motion to support the King, and take measures for the safety of the kingdom, the preservation of Protestantism and the peace of Europe. So successful was this ‘black list’ that in the next Parliament the Whigs set another, similar trap. On this occasion their efforts to lure the Tories into dividing against an instruction to the committee investigating the proceedings over the impeachments to ‘consider of the rights and liberties of the commons of England’ were only forestalled by the alertness of a Tory back-bencher.33 As tools of propaganda, published division-lists were obviously subject to distortion, the compilers succumbing to the temptation to lump their political enemies together, irrespective of the realities of the vote. Thus outgoing Members might find themselves ‘black listed’ for voting against a popular cause when they had not even been in the House at the time. The Letter to a Friend published by the Whig Anthony Rowe* before the 1690 election, which included a ‘list of all those that were against making the Prince and Princess of Orange king and queen’, was shamelessly manipulated to the detriment of Tory candidates in Cornwall, where Rowe himself was standing for election. Equally notorious were the various lists circulated in 1710 of those who had supported or opposed the impeachment of Dr Sacheverell. These were probably composite lists, merging the evidence from several divisions, but even so several innocent Members found themselves caught up in the net. One of them, William Blathwayt, was furious at his inclusion, which put at risk his re-election for Bath, protesting that ‘by reason of illness he never once attended any of the debates, much less was in any division on the subject’.34

A further ten lists give only one side of a division, or the voting record of one element among the Commons Membership, placemen for example, or Scottish Members: the lists on the disbanding bill in 1699; the motion in 1702 to vindicate the proceedings of the Commons on the impeachments; the ‘place clause’ of the regency bill, and two votes in committee on the Bewdley election in 1706; the general naturalization bill of 1709; the ‘No Peace without Spain’ amendment to the Address in 1711; the Scottish toleration bill of 1712; the French wines duty bill of 1713, and the schism bill in 1714. Of these, only the lists on the disbanding bill, the impeachments, and the regency bill, were circulated as ‘black lists’. In addition, a manuscript list dating from February 1701 has tentatively been identified as a division list on the motion to agree with the committee of supply in continuing the ‘Great Mortgage’.

Except for those specific instances (admittedly few and far between) in which the evidence of a list is directly contradicted by other sources, the accuracy of division-lists is impossible to gauge. As a rule published lists are less reliable than those prepared for private consumption, because of the temptation implicit in the very motives of their compilers. But in fact we know little of the processes involved in drawing up lists, and cannot easily estimate the risk of error. Members themselves should have been the only persons involved in noting names, since the rules of the House insisted that the chamber and lobby be cleared before telling began. (An exception here would be divisions in the committee of privileges, which seem to have been attended by large numbers of ‘strangers’.35) Notes may have been taken at the time of the division despite an order prohibiting the bringing of pen and paper into the House, which was frequently honoured in the breach. The printed lists of Members routinely issued during a Parliament formed a convenient template. On the other hand, conditions inside the House were not always conducive to accurate observation. ‘I cannot be positive’, wrote the Scottish MP Mungo Graham*, in reporting a division late one evening in February 1711, ‘for it was dark, and [John] Cockburn* [one of the tellers] could hardly well discern them.’36 Even if several hands were employed in the construction of a list, accuracy could not be guaranteed. As Defoe wrote, in the Review in 1705,

We all know it is impossible for any man, though a Member of the House, to be able to give an exact list. This or that Member, or several together, concerting and recollecting, may have a great many, but I appeal to the world, whether any man in England, nay, though he were one of them appointed for telling noses, could charge his memory with 134 names at one view, and be able to be positive of his men.

Fortunately, there are other kinds of parliamentary lists, a majority indeed of those surviving from this period, for whose reliability a stronger case may be made: the so-called ‘management lists’, comprising forecasts, ‘lobbying lists’, calculations of support made by or for parliamentary managers, and assessments of the political complexion of the House, often constructed in the aftermath of a general election. Specific divisions for which we have forecasts include the council of trade in 1696, the disbanding bill in 1698/9, the ‘Scotch Plot’ in 1703, and the ‘Tack’ in 1704. The advantage of these ‘management ’lists is that they usually reflect the general disposition of Members, as perceived by their parliamentary colleagues, rather than a vote on a specific issue. Some may have been compiled by a single hand; others, as has been shown conclusively in the forecasts of the voting intentions over the council of trade and the ‘Tack’, represent the work of a team of observers (and possibly lobbyists), guided in both instances by Robert Harley.37 A further point in their favour is that most occur in the private archives of prominent politicians, who may not necessarily have been more perceptive or less gullible than other observers, but at least had a vested interest in the accuracy of their judgments. These included, besides Harley, the Marquess of Carmarthen (Sir Thomas Osborne†), Lord Nottingham (Daniel Finch†), the 3rd Earl of Sunderland (Charles, Lord Spencer*), and Henry Guy*.

In contrast to the abundance of parliamentary lists (55 in all, excluding lists of office-holders and pensioners), the period 1690-1715 is poorly served with sources for parliamentary debates.38 There are only three continuous parliamentary diaries of any substance, covering the first five sessions of the 1690 Parliament, the concluding session of the 1698 Parliament, and the two short Parliaments of 1701. Otherwise we have to make do with briefer accounts, or ‘separates’, usually preserved in note form, and often concentrating on specific issues; and single speeches from individual Members, some of which were published at the time, or at least circulated in manuscript. These tend to cluster chronologically at moments of high political tension—in the Parliaments of 1697-9, in 1701, and in the session of February-June 1714.

The outstanding parliamentary diarist after the Revolution was the inveterate annalist and compiler Narcissus Luttrell (MP Saltash 1691-5), whose `abstracts’ of the parliamentary sessions of 1691-3 may originally have been part of a much longer project, the remaining volumes of which are now lost.39 Luttrell’s diary covers more debates, and is much fuller, than that of the veteran parliamentary reporter Anchitell Grey (MP Derby 1665-95), whose personal attendance at the House was hampered by deteriorating health, and who in any case concluded his work in 1694.40 Both Luttrell and Grey wrote out speeches in connected prose, and for the most part as oratio recta, a form also used in a much briefer, and anonymous, relation of debates in April 1690 on the Abjuration and the suspension of habeas corpus.41 By contrast, the third major diarist of the period, Sir Richard Cocks, 2nd Bt. (MP Gloucestershire 1698-1702),42 interwove reported speeches into a narrative of the proceedings of the sessions of 1699-1702, giving the gist of what was said rather than claiming to have recorded the actual words used, a technique also employed by the young Whig William Cowper (MP Hertford 1695-1700, Bere Alston 1701-5) in an unfinished account of the 1698-9 session,43 and the apprentice reporter (Sir) Edward Knatchbull (4th Bt., MP Rochester 1702-5, Kent 1713-15) in the session of 1714.44

Whatever the manner of presentation, each of these diarists clearly based his work on notes taken in the House (in Grey’s case, at least, on notes he had not always taken himself45), supplemented by other available documents: bills, official papers, correspondence, and publicly available copies of individual speeches. The survival of several sets of first-hand notes, obviously taken by Members in the chamber, reveals differences in method: we have the jottings of William Brockman from 1691, Salwey Winnington from 1696-1701, William Cowper from 1698-9, Edward Clarke I from 1700, Grey Neville from 1705-6, Oley Douglas from 1714;46 and a sheaf of documents, some of them from the 1690s and others undated, in the papers of Robert Harley.47 In addition, there are one or two examples which may come from ‘strangers’ in the gallery, such as the list sent to Lord Fermanagh (John Verney*) of speakers in the succession debate in April 1714.48 Most notes are in ink, though Harley frequently wrote in pencil. Three Members (Brockman, Cowper, and Winnington49) made use of large, unfolded sheets of paper, while Clarke and Harley folded their paper into narrower strips (in Harley’s case more often than not some official document, on the back of which he would scribble notes for himself), which could be rested on the knee. Neville and Douglas each brought along a small notebook. Cowper was unusual in that he made notes on proceedings while occupying the chair of the committees of supply and ways and means; Harley, by contrast, seems not to have taken any notes during his tenure of the Speakership. With the obvious exception of Harley, and Clarke, who was probably making a record of the debate on crown grants in 1700 for his mentor Lord Somers (Sir John*), the various reporters share one common feature, in that they were all new Members, or relatively new Members, for whom the great set-piece parliamentary debates were an exciting novelty. Some were ambitious to make their mark in politics, and may have regarded note-taking as a means of educating themselves in the ways of the House. To Harley, on the other hand, who was always almost obsessively well-briefed, what mattered was probably a love of information for its own sake.

Individual speeches were preserved by the authors themselves, and sometimes by their listeners. Cocks and the Yorkshire baronet Sir Arthur Kaye, 3rd Bt. (again both new Members) were two parliamentary diarists who began by simply recording their own speeches (including, in Cocks’s case, speeches which the House had been prevented, by ill fortune or the malice of his enemies, from actually hearing), Cocks eventually showed rather more interest than Kaye in extending the benefit of immortality to his parliamentary colleagues. Harley’s papers also contain copies of many of his own contributions, though these were probably drafts. A number of individual speeches appeared in print, or circulated in manuscript. Versions of (Sir) Simon Harcourt’s I* oration in his own defence at the bar of the House in 1709, over the Abingdon election, may be found in various archives; and the same is true of Sir John Pakington’s (4th Bt.*) tirade in 1703 against occasional conformists. Pakington, a man keenly aware of the effect of printed propaganda (which he employed in his local electoral feud with Bishop Lloyd of Worcester) may well have been responsible for securing the publication of the more important or inflammatory of his own speeches;50 as did the very different figure of Sir Charles Sedley, 5th Bt., the former Restoration rake whose parliamentary oratory was in some respects an extension of his literary career. But the recording and disseminating of speeches was not always an act of self-promotion. Lady Cowper, William’s mother, proudly entered into her commonplace book a copy of her son’s ‘superfine’ contribution to the debate on Captain Kidd in March 1701, which had been ‘taken in shorthand in the House’ and sent to her;51 and sometimes the printing of single speeches, like Harcourt’s on the Abingdon case, may have been the work of commercial entrepreneurs rather than parliamentary egoists.

In a few cases contemporary pamphlets gave lengthy accounts of parliamentary proceedings, including speeches by individual Members. The most substantial were the debates on the inquiries into corruption in 1694-5;52 on the Fenwick attainder in 1696 (later to be reprinted by contemporary historians like John Oldmixon)53; and on the occasional conformity bills and the ‘Tack’ in 1703-4.54 [James Drake,] The History of the Last Parliament ... (1702), provided a detailed narrative of the first Parliament of 1701; [William Pittis,] The History of the Present Parliament (1711), the session of 1710-11; and the anonymous An Impartial View of the Two Late Parliaments ... (1711), a comparison of the Whiggish Parliament of 1708 with its Tory successor. In addition, a number of other reports, presumably originating in contemporary publications (pamphlets or broadsides), the originals of which have since been lost (or at least have not been located), were republished by 18th-century historians and parliamentary anthologists like Chandler, from whose compilations they found their way into Cobbett’s Parliamentary History.55

Unlike pamphleteers, who could publish their work anonymously, and thus afford themselves some protection from the wrath of the Commons, newspaper journalists and proprietors were effectively deterred from committing any breach of parliamentary privilege. The writers of newsletters were a little bolder—though not everyone was as brave as the irrepressible Tory John Dyer—and did make some mention of Commons proceedings.56 There was also a type of newsletter whose content was strictly parliamentary in scope, in essence an enriched version of the Commons’ Votes, which did refer to the contributions of individual Members.57 How it was prepared, and by whom, remains a mystery.

Finally, we can turn to individual letter-writers. The various diplomatic representatives present in England during this period naturally returned parliamentary information in their reports. The most consistently valuable are those of the Prussian residents, Friedrich and Louis-Frederic Bonet,58 and the Dutch envoy, René de Sauniers, sieur de L’Hermitage;59 though also useful are the observations of the Imperial resident, Johann Hoffman, and ambassador, Count Wratislaw;60 the French ambassadors, the Comte de Tallard and Duc d’Aumont, and the chargés d’affaires, Poussin, de Vaudoncourt, and d’Iberville.61 Interestingly, the one scholar to scrutinize and compare diplomatic despatches, concentrating on the Parliament of 1701, detected such strong similarities in the selection and presentation of material as to suggest, for some information at least, a common source.62 Among other observers of parliamentary debates, the most attentive and perceptive were often MPs themselves, in particular the secretary of state, James Vernon I;63 the under-secretary Robert Yard; the young Cumberland Whig James Lowther,64 the Welsh Tory lawyer Robert Price,65 and the Scotsmen Mungo Graham66 and Thomas Smith II.67 Lowther’s letters were sent to his father, and to his steward, William Gilpin; Vernon’s, Price’s and Graham’s to their political patrons, the Dukes of Shrewsbury, Beaufort, and Montrose respectively; Smith’s copied for circulation among the Scottish Presbyterian ministers who formed the circle of that noted political ‘intelligencer’ Robert Wodrow. Some Members, usually from trading boroughs, dutifully sent home reports of parliamentary debates: Samuel Ogle to the corporation of Berwick-upon-Tweed;68 Peter Shakerley to Chester;69 George England and Samuel Fuller to Great Yarmouth;70 John Thurbarne to Sandwich;71 and especially the Liverpudlians Thomas Johnson and William Clayton, whose letters form one of the most important commentaries on parliamentary events in the period.72

 

Secondary Works

The historiography of late 17th- and early-18th-century Britain was transformed in 1967 by the publication of three books: J.H. Plumb’s Ford Lectures, The Growth of Political Stability in England 1675-1725; P.G.M. Dickson’s magisterial account of The Financial Revolution in England: A Study of the Development of Public Credit, 1688-1756; and above all Geoffrey Holmes’s monumental study, British Politics in the Age of Anne, rightly described by the late J.P. Kenyon ‘an instant classic’ and ‘one of the most significant products of post-war historical scholarship’.73 It would not be unfair to say that everything published on the period in the intervening 30 years lies under their shadow.

Plumb’s lectures not only popularized a concept—the subsiding of the violence and instability which had marked 17th-century politics and the rise of the ‘adamantine’ oligarchy commonly associated with Walpolean management—which continues to stimulate debate among historians;74 but also provided a framework for understanding the processes through which ‘stability’ was achieved: the extension of executive power, and the gradual absorption of the propertied classes into the machinery of government by the operation of patronage; the bitter rivalry of the two great parties, Whigs and Tories, culminating in the victory of the former; and an increasing popular involvement in parliamentary politics, through the expansion of the electorate and more frequent contests, until ever-rising costs produced a reaction in the political nation and the establishment, or re-establishment, of oligarchy. While more recent writing has called into question the usefulness of ‘political stability’ as a concept in historical explanation, other elements in Plumb’s analysis remain undeniably important, especially his affirmation of the reality of party divisions, in Parliament and the constituencies, and his emphasis on the political role of the electorate, in which his earliest research had been conducted,75 and to which he was subsequently to contribute a seminal article.76

It was necessary in 1967 to re-affirm the significance in early 18th-century English politics of the Whig and Tory parties because of the publication 11 years previously of Professor R.R. Walcott’s ultra-revisionist English Politics in the Early 18th Century, which had attempted to apply to the Parliaments of 1701-14 not only the prosopographical techniques employed, but also the conclusions reached, by Sir Lewis Namier in his studies of the House of Commons in the 1760s. Hitherto, historians like G.M. Trevelyan and Sir Keith Feiling had followed their sources in writing of a political system dominated by a great conflict of parties.77 Walcott carefully assembled genealogical and biographical data relating to every Member, correlating this where possible against the few parliamentary lists available to him,78 and argued that ‘the more one studies the party structure under William and Anne the less it resembles the two-party system described by Trevelyan ... and the more it seems to have in common with the structure of politics in the age of Newcastle, as explained to us by Namier’.79 However, Walcott’s conclusions were premature: his reconstruction of such political groupings as ‘the Newcastle-Pelham-Townshend-Walpole connexion’, ‘the Hyde-Granville-Gower-Seymour connexion’, and ‘the Nottingham-Finch connexion’, depended on assumptions from familial and matrimonial linkages which dissolved on closer inspection. The discovery and exploitation of large quantities of new manuscript material enabled historians to investigate the ways in which these putative political relationships worked out in practice.80 In particular, the study of new parliamentary lists for the period undermined Walcott’s interpretation by confirming the consistency of party loyalties.81

Criticisms of Walcott’s thesis had already appeared before 1967, but had been restricted to articles and unpublished theses.82 Plumb’s lectures embodied an unprecedentedly sweeping denunciation. Walcott had ‘superimposed the mid-18th century pattern ... on the quite different political structure of the period from 1689 to 1715’.83 Immediately there followed Geoffrey Holmes’s massive monograph, which restored the concept of ‘party’ to the political history of Queen Anne’s reign. British Politics in the Age of Anne destroyed Walcott’s work, though the demolition was conducted with painful courtesy. In a thorough examination of political behaviour in both Houses of Parliament (whereas Walcott had concentrated on the Commons), and of the relationship between the monarch and the parties, Holmes established beyond question the firmness of Whig and Tory allegiances, the depth of antagonism subsisting between the two parties over substantive issues of principle, and the centrality of ‘party’ to the functioning of government. Yet this sophisticated analysis also allowed some force to the traditional polarity of ‘Court’ and ‘Country’ (which had formed an important element in Walcott’s analysis), delineating the ‘Country tradition’ with subtlety; conceded the importance of factions and pressure-groups within each of the two parties (though rather more among the Tories than the Whigs); and was sensitive to the priorities of the Queen’s ‘undertakers’ (or political managers), Lord Godolphin (Sidney†) and Robert Harley*, both of whom struggled to prevent government from falling into the hands of the parties.

Holmes’s work continues to occupy pride of place as the standard account of the English (and Welsh) political system in the reign of Queen Anne. Some scholars have attempted to modify elements of his analysis, in relation to the composition and influence of Country ideology,84 the significance of Jacobitism within the Tory party,85 and the balance of power between ‘undertakers’ and party leaders in the making and unmaking of ministries,86 but the basic structure of interpretation remains largely intact.87 On the other hand, his comments on Scottish politics and the Union of 1707,88 must be set against the rather more cynical reading of Scottish (and English) political motivation developed by the late P.W.J. Riley in a trilogy of works on the government of Scotland between 1689 and 1725;89 and the vigorously nationalist interpretation of the events of 1707 offered by William Ferguson.90

In contrast to the virtual consensus which has prevailed among historians as to the working of the party system after 1701, the politics of the preceding reign have been the subject of vigorous debate. 91 An attempt by Dennis Rubini to explain parliamentary history under King William solely in terms of a struggle between Court and Country parties92 has been subjected to sustained criticism,93 culminating in the publication in 1977 of Henry Horwitz, Parliament, Policy and Politics in the Reign of William III, which interspersed a detailed narrative of the period 1689-1702 with analytical chapters developing an interpretation of the political history of the period as dominated by a continuing struggle between Whigs and Tories, albeit complicated by the changing political trajectory of a minority of Country Whigs. Although different in form and structure to British Politics in the Age of Anne, this is a work of comparable importance, based upon a near-definitive range of sources, and providing a chronological framework which supersedes Macaulay’s History. It may be complemented by the rather brisker account of political history across the entire period provided by B.W. Hill,94 to form a continuous narrative for the years 1690-1715.

All the above are, of course, works of political history, treating Parliament first and foremost as an arena of political combination and conflict. Much less has been written on the House of Commons as an institution. O.C. Williams, The Clerical Organization of the House of Commons 1661-1850 (1954) still offers the only extensive treatment of the administrative history of the House, and the only detailed study of procedural changes, by Kathryn Ellis, remains unpublished.95 In their attempts to understand the process of law-making, historians of this period have been slow to follow up the pioneering work of Sheila Lambert,96 though signposts have been provided in two articles by Stuart Handley, on legislative initiatives in Lancashire, and in a volume of essays edited by various hands, devoted to explaining the provision of statutory solutions to social and economic problems.97 The recent publication of a computerised index to ‘failed bills’ 1660-1800 will presumably generate greater interest.98

In British Politics in the Age of Anne Holmes deliberately allotted less of his time to parliamentary elections, and indeed to local politics in general, than to events at the centre, referring his readers instead to ‘the invaluable work of W.A. Speck on the constituencies in Anne’s reign’.99 This was duly published in 1970 as Tory and Whig: The Struggle in the Constituencies 1701-1715, a close examination of the electoral system and its operation, which like Holmes’s work stressed the primacy of party divisions, describing Whig and Tory electoral organization, and analysing electoral results in terms familiar to modern psephologists, of ‘safe seats’ and a ‘floating vote’.100 Subsequently Speck also led the way in the systematic analysis of parliamentary pollbooks for this period, making use of computer technology, an approach which has since been followed by other historians, with differing results,101 though its most recent manifestation, combining the scrutiny of pollbooks with an examination of tenurial relations through estate papers and other private archives, seems to promise a clearer picture.102 Local studies have also advanced apace in the last three decades. In Tory and Whig Speck could only make use of Eric Forrester’s work on Northamptonshire, papers by Marjorie Cox and Philip Styles on Wigan and Bewdley respectively, and a clutch of articles by P.D.G. Thomas on individual Welsh counties.103 Now there are full-scale studies of politics and elections in a large number of constituencies. The English counties examined include Buckinghamshire, Cheshire, Cumberland and Westmorland, Kent, Lancashire, Monmouthshire, Northamptonshire (again), Suffolk, Worcestershire, and Yorkshire.104 The political history of London in this period has been carefully reconstructed by G.S. De Krey,105 and there has also been detailed research into electoral politics in Coventry, Great Yarmouth, and Norwich, and of a handful of smaller west-country towns.106 In Wales the political elite in Glamorgan has been anatomized by Philip Jenkins, elections in Radnorshire covered in an unpublished thesis, and the various articles published in local journals by P.D.G. Thomas gathered together to form an integrated account of 18th-century Welsh politics.107 Elections in Scotland, however, must still count as an under-developed area of research. Effectively there is only William Ferguson’s 1957 Ph.D. thesis, which contains a pioneering study of Cromartyshire; and the work of R.M. Sunter on Stirlingshire.108

Understanding of the evolution of political ideology after 1689 has also advanced considerably in the past three decades, largely (though not exclusively) because of the efforts of three scholars: J.G.A. Pocock, in tracing the changes in ‘civic humanist’ discourse, as ‘old Whiggism’ came to terms with the new world of commerce ushered in by the Glorious Revolution;109 J.P. Kenyon, in exploring the complexities of Whig and Tory writings in relation to the actual events of 1688/9;110 and H.T. Dickinson, in following the threads of English radical, or at least popular, politics.111 Generally speaking, Whig writers have received greater attention than Tories (perhaps because the most distinguished study of Tory political thought in this period is still not published112), though Jacobitism continues to attract a disproportionate share of scholarly attention.113 A significant recent trend has been a greater emphasis on the religious and moralistic content of late 17th- and early 18th-century political commentary, particularly (though not exclusively) in the criticisms of the Country opposition,114 and a renewed interest in the ecclesiastical basis of party animosities.115 Many pages have also been devoted to the development of the political press. Most important, for the purposes of the History, is the work of W.A. Speck, J.A. Downie, and J.O. Richards on the production and impact of political, often specifically electoral, ‘propaganda’;116 while the single most important episode in the history of ‘popular’ politics in this period, raising powerful issues which were exploited by means of print and organized public demonstrations, is narrated in Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Doctor Sacheverell (1973).

The wider social and economic context of politics is dominated by the consequences of the great continental wars of 1689-97 and 1702-13, which imposed intolerable strains on the economies of the British Isles, and spawned new interest-groups—in public finance and public administration—whose obvious prosperity and power brought them into conflict with the traditional landed élite. Nothing has surpassed P.G.M. Dickson’s account of the ‘revolution’ in public credit that followed the foundation of the Bank of England in 1694, and the adoption of a system of deficit financing,117 although D.W. Jones, in War and Economy in the Age of William III and Marlborough (1988), has explained in greater depth both the working of government financial policy and the practical consequences for the domestic economy.118 In an unpublished thesis Colin Brooks has discussed the development of war taxation and its political repercussions, while Brooks and J.V. Beckett have both investigated the particular application of the land tax.119 A more daring attempt to connect administrative and financial developments with political history is made in John Brewer, The Sinews of Power: War, Money and the English State, 1688-1783 (1989), which set out to locate the origins of the British ‘fiscal-military state’, and found them in the innovations of the 1690s and early 1700s. Brewer also offers a perceptive analysis of the constitutional significance of the participation of ‘Country party’ oppositionists in the evolution of fiscal policy, and a detailed account of the administration of the excise. Aside from H.C. Tomlinson’s account of the Ordnance Office,120 and Henry Roseveare’s studies of the Treasury,121 Brewer’s is the most recent exercise in administrative history for the period. Otherwise, for descriptions of the machinery of government available to the later Stuarts and their ministers, we have been obliged to rely on standard sources of a somewhat older vintage: M.A. Thomson on the Secretaries of State (1932), Edward Hughes on the salt tax (1934), E.E. Hoon on the customs (1938), W.R. Ward on the land tax (1953), S.B. Baxter on the Treasury (1957), Jennifer Carter on the Privy Council (1958), and I.F. Burton on the secretaries at war (1960).122 For the Navy J.P.W. Ehrman, The Navy in the War of William III (1955) has yet to be superseded,123 but for the land forces we must count ourselves fortunate in being able to make use of the works of John Childs, in particular his monograph, The British Army of William III 1688-1702 (1987). The institutions of local government are also comparatively well served, with two major monographs on the commission of the peace, by LK.J. Glassey and Norma Landau.124 More generally, the social implications of the growth in administrative institutions and the expansion of their personnel have been explored in Geoffrey Holmes, Augustan England: Professions, State and Society, 1680-1730 (1982).

Full biographies are available of many of the major personalities of the period, though these vary in quality. The most comprehensive life of King William III is by S.B. Baxter, while Edward Gregg’s Queen Anne is unlikely to be bettered.125 Marlborough still awaits his biographer, though there are good short accounts by I.F. Burton and J.R. Jones, both concentrating on the Duke’s military career. The personality and achievements of the Duchess are well caught by Frances Harris.126 Among the politicians, J.P. Kenyon’s life of the second Earl of Sunderland towers over its rivals,127 but also impressive are the biographies of the Marquess of Carmarthen (and Duke of Leeds), by Andrew Browning; the Earl of Nottingham, by H.G. Horwitz; and Lord Bolingbroke (Henry St. John II*) by H.T. Dickinson.128 There is a serviceable modern study of Godolphin, by R.A. Sundstrom,129 while Robert Harley has been tackled by three biographers in the last 30 years, in greatest detail by B.W. Hill (1988), though with an emphasis on Harley’s career as a government minister under Queen Anne.130 The only general study of the Junto remains the doctoral thesis of E.L. Ellis (1961),131 but Somers and Wharton have each been the subject of a published biography and there are unpublished theses on the careers of Lord Halifax and the 3rd Earl of Sunderland.132

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Author: D. W. Hayton

End Notes

  • 1. See Constituencies and Elections.
  • 2. Bull. IHR, lviii. 189-209.
  • 3. W.R. Williams, Parlty. Hist. of Co. of Gloucester ... (1898); idem, Parlty. Hist. of Co. of Hereford ... (1896); idem, Parlty. Hist. of Co. of Oxford... (1899); idem, Parlty. Hist. of Co. of Worcester (1897); W.D. Pink and A.B. Beaven, Parlty. Rep. of Lancs (1889).
  • 4. R.S. Ferguson, Cumb. and Westmld. M.P.s ... (1871); J.J. Alexander, ‘Devon Co. MPs: Pt. VI ...’, Trans. Devon Assoc. xlix. 363-75; H.T. Weyman, ‘Shropshire M.P.s’, Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 4, xii. (1929-30), pp. 2-12; S.W. Bates Harbin, M.P.s for Co. of Som. (Som. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. 1939); Parlty.Rep. of Co. of York ... Vol. II ed. A. Gooder (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. xcvi. 1938).
  • 5. D. Drake, 'MPs for Barnstable 1689-1832', Trans. Devon Assoc. lxxiii. 181-93; J.J. Alexander, 'Exeter MPs', ibid. lxii. 195-223; W.H. Wilkin, 'Notes on Members for Honiton 1640-1808', ibid. lxvi. 253-78; W.b. Crouch, Some Materials for a Hist. of Cricklade (1961), ch. 6; F.F. Smith, Rochester in Parl. ... (1933); T.W. Whitley, Parlty. Rep. ... Coventry ... (1894); Alderman Kemp and A.B. Beaven, MPs for Warwick (1912); H.T. Weeyman, 'MPs for Ludlow', Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 2, vii (1895), 35-39; idem, 'MPs for Bishop's Castle', ibid. x (1898), 51-56; idem, 'MPs for Wenlock', ibid. ser. 3, ii (1902), 333-7; idem, 'MPs for Bridgnorth', ibid. ser. 4, v (1915), 62-66.
  • 6. J. Foster, M.P.s, Scotland (1882); Parls. of Scotland: Burgh and Shire Commrs. ed. M. D. Young (2 vols. 1992-3).
  • 7. Many registers of London and Middlesex parishes have been published by the Harleian Society. For other counties we have used the publications of the Parish Register Society (1896-), and, more specifically, the Lancashire Parish Register Society (1899-), and the Shropshire Parish Register Society (1900-). As a guide, G.W. Marshall, Par. Regs. ... (1908), is now seriously outdated. See instead, The Phillimore Atlas and Index of Par. Regs. (1995), and the volumes of the Nat. Index of Par. Regs. published by the Society of Genealogists (1968-).
  • 8. Decennial Indexes to Services of Heirs in Scotland ... (4 vols. 1863-9); Inquisitionum ad Capellam Domini Regis Retornatum ... (3 vols. 1811-16).
  • 9. Add. 45218.
  • 10. SRO, Clerk of Penicuik mss GD 18/2092/2, Clerk’s ‘moral jnls.’
  • 11. Berks. RO, Braybrooke mss D/EN/F/18/1.
  • 12. See below.
  • 13. C. Dalton, Eng. Army Lists and Commn. Regs. 1661-1714 (6 vols. 1892-1904); idem, George Ist’s Army 1714-27 (2 vols. 1910-12).
  • 14. Commissioned Sea Officers of RN 1660-1815 (1959); J. Charnock, Biog. Navalis . .. (4 vols. 1794-6).
  • 15. Patentee Officers in Ireland 1173-1826 ... ed. J.L.J. Hughes (Irish mss Comm. 1960).
  • 16. Evidence taken from C 213, 231, 234; PC 2/76, 78; CJ, xi. 470-4; Browning, Danby, iii. 194-213; Lancs. RO, QSC/118-34; HLRO, Main Pprs.; NLW, ms 17071E.
  • 17. Ind. 4213-15.
  • 18. R. Caulfield, Council Bk. of Corp. of ... Cork ... (1876); Council Bk. of Corp. of Drogheda, Vol. I ... ed. T. Gogarty (1915); J.T. Gilbert, Cal. of Ancient Recs. of Dublin ... (18 vols. 1899-1922); and R. Caulfield, Council Bk. of Corp. of Kinsale ... (1879).
  • 19. In the Hardiman Library, National University of Ireland, Galway, and the Kilkenny borough archives, respectively.
  • 20. E.G.W. Bill, Q. Anne Churches ... (1979); Commns. for Building 50 New Churches ed. M.H. Port (London Rec. Soc. xxiii. 1986).
  • 21. R. Soc. and Its Fellows 1660-1700 (Brit. Soc. for Hist. of Science Monographs 4, 1982).
  • 22. Add. 28947, 38871.
  • 23. Rawl. C. 449.
  • 24. Recs. Relating to Soc. of Merchant Venturers of Bristol in 17th Cent. ed. P. McGrath (Bristol Rec. Soc. xvii. 1952); Extracts from Recs. of Merchant Adventurers of Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Volume I ed. F.W. Dendy (Surtees Soc. xliii. 1894).
  • 25. See for example, Cocks Diary, 71, 83, 92-93, 96, 101.
  • 26. Add. 42592, ff. 101, 171; Add. 70332, list of cttee. to manage impeachments of John Goudet et al., 4 June 1698; Wilts. RO, Ailesbury mss 1300/856, A2, A4.
  • 27. See above.
  • 28. Add. 42952-3, 42650; NLW, Canon Trevor Owen mss; BL, Add. 70001-51, 70150-371, passim.
  • 29. Harl. 6837, ff. 134-206. See EHR, xci. 33-51.
  • 30. HLRO, HC Lib. ms 12, ff. 56-58, 61-62, 65, 81, 86, 114-15. Cam. Misc. xxix. 348-9.
  • 31. See The Organization of the House.
  • 32. See Brit. Parlty. Lists: A Reg., eds. Ditchfield, Hayton and Jones (1995), pp. 99-124.
  • 33. Cocks Diary, 223.
  • 34. Speck, thesis, p. 73; HMC Dartmouth, i. 297.
  • 35. See The Organization of the House.
  • 36. SRO, Montrose mss GD220/5/808/18, Graham to Montrose, 13 Feb. 1711.
  • 37. Parlty. Lists of Early 18th Cent.: Their Compilation and Use ed. Newman (1973), pp. 23-25.
  • 38. For a useful survey (by J.P. Ferris), see Archives, xx. 198-207.
  • 39. All Souls’, Oxf. Codrington Lib. ms 152, published as Parlty. Diary of Narcissus Luttrell 1691-3 ed. Horwitz (1972).
  • 40. They were eventually published in 1769, as Debates of H. of Commons from the Year 1667 to the Year 1694 (10 vols.).
  • 41. Bodl. Rawl. A. 279, ff. 70-90.
  • 42. Bodl. Eng. hist. b. 209-10, published as Parlty. Diary of Sir Richard Cocks, 1698-1702 ed. Hayton (1996).
  • 43. Herts. RO, Panshanger mss D/EP F98, ff. 3-18, printed in Cam. Misc. xxix. 361-79.
  • 44. Printed in Bull. IHR, xxiv. 211-17.
  • 45. Certainly by Robert Wilmot (MP Derby 1690-5), if not others.
  • 46. Add. 42592, ff. 136-8, 175; HC Lib. mss 12, ff. 56, 63; Cam. Misc. xxix. 356-401; xxiii. 39-81; Som. RO, Sanford mss DD/SF 4107 (a); Hist. of Parl. Douglas diary trans.
  • 47. Add. 70331-3, notes 31 Jan. 1695/6, 14 Apr. 1696, ‘Breviat to the Lugg’, notes 7/8, 11 Jan. 1697/8; 70305, ‘East Grinstead election ...’, ‘East Grinstead’, case of Weobley election; 70306-9, notes, Dec. 1697 and n.d. notes, 1699; 70035, f. 328; 70036, ff. 10, 21, 29; 70044, ff. 137, 203, 357; 70150, notes, n.d.; 70154, notes, 20 Oct. 1696; 70160, notes, 16 Dec. 1698; 70161, notes, 1699; 70167, notes, n.d.
  • 48. BL, Verney mss mic. M11/55, William Vickers to Lord Fermanagh (John Verney*), 17 Apr. 1714.
  • 49. Though in taking notes in the Upper House, Cowper used the paper-folding technique described below: see Parlty. Hist. xviii. 65-79.
  • 50. See, e.g. Wentworth Pprs. 69, 167.
  • 51. Panshanger mss D/EP F36; Cocks Diary, 75-76.
  • 52. A Collection of Debates and Procs. in Parl., in 1694, and 1695. Upon the Inquiry into the Late Briberies and Corrupt Practices (1695).
  • 53. J. Oldmixon, Hist. Eng. (1735), pp. 152-60.
  • 54. Procs. of Both Houses of Parl. ... upon the Bill to Prevent Occasional Conformity ... (1710).
  • 55. R. Chandler, Hist. and Procs. of H. of Commons from Restoration to Present Time (14 vols. 1742-4); W. Cobbett, Parlty. Hist. of Eng. ... (36 vols. 1806-20).
  • 56. The best available collections of newsletters for this period are to be found at Add. 70070, 70073-4 (Dyer); Folger Shakespeare Lib. Newdigate newsletters; and in the Strathmore mss at Glamis Castle. On newsletters in general, see Newsletters to Newspapers: 18th-Century Journalism eds. Bond and McLeod (1977), pp. 6-7.
  • 57. BL, Trumbull Add. mss 130.
  • 58. Geheimes Staatsarchiv Preussische Kulturbesitz Abteilung Merseburg, Rep. XI (Eng.). Transcripts (up to 1702) available at Add. 30000.
  • 59. Transcripts available at Add. 17677.
  • 60. Some transcripts printed in L. von Ranke, Hist. of Eng. ... (6 vols. 1875); and O. Klopp, Der Fall des Hauses Stuart ... ( 14 vols. 1875-88).
  • 61. Transcripts available at PRO 31/3/180-203.
  • 62. J.F.G. Lowe, ‘Parlty. Debates in 1701, from Reports of Foreign Observers’ (Liverpool Univ. MA thesis, 1960), pp. 26-29.
  • 63. Northants. RO, Montagu (Boughton) mss 46-48, partly printed in Vernon-Shrewsbury Letters.
  • 64. Cumbria RO (Carlisle), Lonsdale mss D/Lons/W2/1-2.
  • 65. Bodl. Carte 130, ff. 324-61.
  • 66. SRO, Montrose mss GD220/5//802-8.
  • 67. NLS, Advocates’ mss Wodrow pprs. Letters Quarto vols. ii-viii. The History was unable to obtain access to the letters of George Baillie*, preserved in the Haddington family archive at Mellerstain in Berwickshire, which reputedly contain one of the finest runs of parliamentary news to be found in any set of correspondence for this period. Some idea of their value can be gained from G. Holmes and C. Jones, ‘Trade, the Scots and the Parlty. Crisis of 1713’, Parlty. Hist. i. 47-77, an article largely based on the papers at Mellerstain.
  • 68. Berwick RO, guild letter bk. 69/1.
  • 69. Chester RO, Chester bor. recs. mayor’s letters M/L/4.
  • 70. Norf. RO, Gt. Yarmouth corp. mss.
  • 71. Add. 33512.
  • 72. Liverpool RO, Norris mss 920 NOR 1, 2, a few of which are printed in Norris Pprs. ed. Heywood (Chetham Soc. ix, 1846).
  • 73. Reviewing the appearance of the revised edition (1987), in Times Lit. Supp. 4-10 Mar. 1988, p. 252. See also Britain in 1st Age of Party 1680-1750 ed. C. Jones (1987), xii.; Parlty. Hist. viii. 132-41; and Proc. Brit. Acad. lxxxvii. 329-30.
  • 74. See, for example, Hist. Jnl. xvii. 281-300; The Whig Ascendancy: Colloquies on Hanoverian Eng. ed. Cannon (1981), pp. 1-22; L. Colley, In Defiance of Oligarchy: The Tory Party 1714-60 (1982), ch. 1; Britain in the Age of Walpole ed. Black (1984), pp. 1-22; Britain in 1st Age of Party 1680-1750 ed. C. Jones, 1-18; C. Roberts, S.B. Baxter and N. Landau, ‘Sir John Plumb’s “Growth of Political Stability”: Does it Stand?’, Albion, xxv. 237-77.
  • 75. Camb. Hist. Jnl. v. 235-54.
  • 76. Past and Present, No. 45, pp. 90-116.
  • 77. G.M. Trevelyan, Eng. under Q. Anne (3 vols. 1930-4); K. Feiling, Tory Party 1640-1714 (1924).
  • 78. Which he listed in Bull. IHR, xiv. 25-36. Professor Walcott deposited a microfilm of his notes at the History. We have made use of printouts of this material.
  • 79. Eng. Pols. in Early 18th Cent. 160.
  • 80. Compare the bibliography of manuscript sources in ibid. 236, with Holmes Pols. in Age of Anne, 443-8; and ibid. (rev. edn.), pp. lxiii-lxvi.
  • 81. Bull. IHR, xxxiii. 223-34; xxxiv. 92-97; xxxvii. 20-46; Hist. Jnl. iv.191-202; Speck thesis, 82-3; Jnl. Brit. Studies, vi, no. 1, pp. 45-69.
  • 82. E.L. Ellis, ‘Whig Junto, in Relation to the Development of Party Pols. and Party Organization from Its Inception to 1714’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1961); Speck thesis.
  • 83. Plumb, Growth of Political Stability, 55-57, 84, 131, 134, 139-41.
  • 84. See Parls., Estates and Rep. iv. 135-46; Party and Management in Parl., 1660-1780 ed. C. Jones (1984), 37-85; Past and Present, no. 128, pp. 48-91.
  • 85. D. Szechi, Jacobitism and Tory Pols. (1984).
  • 86. C. Roberts, Schemes and Undertakings: A Study of Eng. Pols. in 17th Cent. (1985), chs. 5-8.
  • 87. See Holmes’s own commentary in the introduction to the revised edition of Pols. in Age of Anne (1987), ix-lxii.
  • 88. EHR, lxxvii. 257-82; Parlty. Hist. i. 47-77.
  • 89. P.W.J. Riley, K. Wm. and Scot. Politicians (1979); idem, Union of Eng. and Scotland: A Study of Anglo-Scot. Pols. of 18th Cent. (1978); and idem, Eng. Ministers and Scotland 1707-1727 (1964). See also EHR, lxxxiv. 498-527.
  • 90. Scot. Hist. Rev. xlii. 89-110; W. Ferguson, Scotland’s Rels. with Eng.: A Survey to 1707 (1977).
  • 91. Professor Henry Horwitz offers an authoritative survey of recent historical writing on developments in politics and political thought in William’s reign in Parlty. Hist. xv. 361-77.
  • 92. D. Rubini, Court and Country 1688-1702 (1967). See also Albion, x. 193-205.
  • 93. For example by Britain after the Glorious Rev. 1689-1714 ed. Holmes (1969), 96-114; and Party and Management in Parl. ed. Jones, 37-85.
  • 94. B.W. Hill, Growth of Parlty. Parties 1689-1742 (1976).
  • 95. K. M. Ellis, ‘Practice and Procedure of H. of Commons, 1660-1714’ (Univ. of Wales Ph.D. thesis, 1993).
  • 96. S. Lambert, Bills and Acts: Legislative Procedure in 18th-Cent. Eng. (1971).
  • 97. Parlty. Hist. ix. 14-37; xvi. 171-84 ; Stilling the Grumbling Hive: Response to Soc. and Econ. Problems in Eng. 1689-1750 eds. Davison, Hitchcock, Keirn and Shoemaker (1992). See also Hist. Jnl. xxxvi. 137-59.
  • 98. Failed Legislation 1660-1800 ... ed. Hoppit (1997); See also Parlty. Hist. xiii. 312-21.
  • 99. Holmes, Pols. in Age of Anne, p. lxvii.
  • 100. In fairness it should be pointed out that Tory and Whig built upon the foundations established by earlier scholars, in unpublished theses, most notably Holmes himself (‘Influence of the Peerage in Eng. Parlty. Elections, 1702-1713’, Oxf. Univ. B. Litt thesis, 1951), Elizabeth Cunnington (‘Gen. Election of 1705’, London Univ. MA thesis, 1938), and Mary Ransome (‘Gen. Election of 1710’, London Univ. MA thesis, 1938).
  • 101. See Constituencies and Elections. Speck himself surveyed the burgeoning literature on electoral history in Britain in Ist Age of Party ed. C. Jones, 45-62.
  • 102. Parlty. Hist. xii. 126-42; xvii. 48-57.
  • 103. E.G. Forrester, Northants. Elections and Electioneering 1695-1832 (1941); Bull. J. Rylands Lib. xxxvii. 120-64; Univ. of Birmingham Hist. Jnl. i. 92-133; P.D.G. Thomas, ‘Parlty Rep. of Caern. in 18th Cent.: Pt. I: 1708-1749’, Trans. Caern. Hist. Soc. xix; idem, ‘Parlty. Elections in Brecknockshire 1689-1832’, Brycheiniog, vi; Trans. Anglesey Antiq. Soc. (1962), pp. 35-47.
  • 104. Bull. IHR, lvi. 195-204; P.J. Challinor, 'Structure of Pols. in Cheshire, 1660-1715' (CNAA, Ph.D. thesis, 1983); R. Hopkinson, 'Elections in Cumb. and Westmld. 1695-1723' (Univ. of Newcastle-upon-Tyne Ph.D. thesis 1973); Northern Hist. xvi. 96-116; Hist. Jnl. xxii. 561-83; xxix. 557-75; R. Harrison, 'Electoral Pols. in Lancs. 1702-61' (Lancaster Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1996); E.E. Havill, 'Parlty. Rep. of Mon. and Monmouth Bors. 1536-1832' (Univ. of Wales MA thesis, 1949); P.R. Brindle, 'Pols. and Soc. in Northants. 1649-1714' (Leicester Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1983); P.E. Murrell, 'Suff.: Pol. Behaviour of Co. and its Parlty. Boroughs from Exclusion Crisis to Accession of House of Hanover' (Univ. of Newcastle-upon-Tyne Ph.D. thesis, 1982); Diane C. Barré, 'Worcs. Pols. and Elections 1679-1715' (Birmingham Univ. M.Litt. thesis, 1971); J.F. Quinn, 'Parlty. Constituencies of Yorks. from Accession of Anne to Fall of Walpole' (Lancaster Univ. M.Litt. thesis, 1979); R. Hall, 'Whigs and Yorks. Elections 1695-1715' (Leeds Univ. MA thesis, 1994).
  • 105. G. S. De Krey, Fractured Soc.: Pols. of London in 1st Age of Party (1985). See also F.T. Melton, ‘London and Parl.: Analysis of a Constituency 1661-1702’ (Univ. of Wisconsin Ph.D. thesis, 1969); Britain in 1st Age of Party ed. C. Jones, 173-94.
  • 106. Midland Hist. iv. 15-47; P. Gauci, Pols. and Soc. in Gt. Yarmouth 1660-1722 (1996); D.S. O’Sullivan, ‘Pols. in Norwich, 1701-1835’ (Univ. of East Anglia MA thesis, 1975); J. Triffitt, ‘Pols. and Urban Community: Parlty. Bors. in S.W. of Eng. 1710-1730’ (Oxf. Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1985).
  • 107. P. Jenkins, Making of a Ruling Class: Glam. Gentry 1640-1790 (1983); D.R.L. Adams, ‘Parlty. Rep. of Rad. 1536-1832’ (Univ. of Wales MA thesis, 1969); P.D.G. Thomas, Pols. in 18th-Cent. Wales (1998).
  • 108. W. Ferguson, ‘Electoral Law and Procedure in 18th- and Early 19th-Cent. Scotland’ (Glasgow Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1957); R.M. Sunter, ‘Stirlings. Pols. 1707-1832’ (Edinburgh Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1971). See also Parlty. Hist. xvii. 74-99.
  • 109. J.G.A. Pocock, Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Pol. Thought and Atlantic Republican Tradition (1975); Jnl. Mod. Hist. liii. 49-72; J.G.A. Pocock, Virtue, Commerce and Hist. (1985).
  • 110. J.P. Kenyon, Rev. Principles: Pols. of Party 1689-1720 (1977).
  • 111. H.T. Dickinson, Liberty and Property: Pol. Ideology in 18th-Cent. Britain (1977); Britain in 1st Age of Party ed. C. Jones, 63-84.
  • 112. M.A. Goldie, ‘Tory Pol. Thought, 1689-1714’ (Camb. Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1977).
  • 113. P.A. Hopkins, ‘Aspects of Jacobite Conspiracy in Eng. in Reign of Wm. III’ (Camb. Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1981); Ideology and Conspiracy: Aspects of Jacobitism 1689-1759 ed. Cruickshanks (1982); Jacobite Challenge eds. Cruickshanks and Black (1988); Hist. Jnl. xxx. 289-310; P.K. Monod, Jacobitism and Eng. People, 1688-1788 (1989).
  • 114. M.M. Goldsmith, Public Vices and Private Virtues (1985); S. Burtt, Virtue Transformed: Pol. Argument in Eng. 1688-1740 (1991); T. Claydon, Wm. III and Godly Rev. (1996).
  • 115. Britain after the Glorious Revolution ed. Holmes, 155-75; Past and Present, no. 128, pp. 48-91; J.A.I. Champion, Pillars of Priestcraft Shaken: Church of Eng. and Its Enemies, 1660-1730 (1992); Political Discourse in Early Modern Britain eds. Phillipson and Skinner (1993), 209-31; T. Harris, Pols. under Later Stuarts: Party Conflict in a Divided Soc. 1660-1715 (1993).
  • 116. Trans. R. Hist. Soc. (ser. 5), xxii. 17-32; J.A. Downie, Robert Harley and the Press: Propaganda and Public Opinion in the Age of Swift and Defoe (1979); Britain in 1st Age of Party ed. C. Jones, 111-27; J.A. Downie, To Settle the Succession of the State: Lit. and Pols. 1678-1750 (1994); J.O. Richards, Party Propaganda under Q. Anne: Gen. Elections of 1702-1713 (1972).
  • 117. In turn Dickson had built upon J.K. Horsefield, Brit. Monetary Experiments 1650-1710 (1960).
  • 118. See also Anglo-Dutch Moment: Essays on Glorious Rev. and Its World Impact ed. Israel (1991), pp. 389-406.
  • 119. C. Brooks, ‘Taxation, Finance, and Public Opinion, 1688-1714’ (Camb. Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1971); Hist. Jnl. xvii. 281-300; Southern Hist. ix. 51-70; Bull. IHR, lx. 64-79; EHR, c. 287-95.
  • 120. H.C. Tomlinson Guns and Govt.: Ordnance Office under Later Stuarts (1979).
  • 121. H. Roseveare, The Treasury: Evolution of a Brit. Institution (1969); idem, The Treasury 1660-1870: Foundations of Control (1973).
  • 122. M.A. Thomson, Secs. of State 1681-1782 (1932); E. Hughes, Studies in Admin. and Finance 1558-1825 ... (1934); E. E. Hoon, Organization of Eng. Customs System, 1696-1786 (1938); W.R. Ward, Eng. Land Tax in 18th Cent. (1953); S.B. Baxter, Development of the Treasury 1660-1702 (1957); J. Carter, ‘Administrative Work of English P.C. 1679-1714’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis 1958); I.F. Burton, ‘Sec. at War and Admin. of Army during War of Spanish Succession’ (London Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1960).
  • 123. But see J.A. Johnston, ‘Parl. and the Navy 1688-1714’ (Sheffield Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1968).
  • 124. L.K.J. Glassey, Pols. and Appointment of JPs 1675-1720 (1979); N. Landau, The J.P.s 1679-1760 (1981).
  • 125. S. Baxter, Wm. III (1966); E. Gregg, Q. Anne (1980).
  • 126. I.F. Burton, The Capt.-Gen.: Career of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, from 1702 to 1711 (1968); J.R. Jones, Marlborough (1993); F. Harris, A Passion for Govt.: Life of Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough (1991).
  • 127. J.P. Kenyon, Robert Spencer Earl of Sunderland 1641-1702 (1958).
  • 128. A. Browning, Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby and Duke of Leeds, 1632-1712 (1944-51); H. Horwitz, Rev. Politicks: Career of Daniel Finch, 2nd Earl of Nottingham 1647-1730 (1968); H.T. Dickinson, Bolingbroke (1970).
  • 129. R. A. Sundstrom, Sidney Godolphin: Servant of the State (1992).
  • 130. E. Hamilton, The Backstairs Dragon: A Life of Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford (1969); A. McInnes, Robert Harley, Puritan Politician (1970); B.W. Hill, Robert Harley: Speaker, Sec. of State and Premier Minister (1988). See also S. Biddle, Bolingbroke and Harley (1975).
  • 131. See above, n. 82.
  • 132. W.L. Sachse, Lord Somers, A Political Portrait (1975); C.J. Robbins, Earl of Wharton and Whig Party Pols. (1992); M.J.H. Henderson, ‘Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, 1661-1715: A Study of Patronage’ (Bristol Univ. M.Litt. thesis, 1971); H.L. Snyder, ‘Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland, as Sec. of State, 1706-10 ...’ (Univ. of California, Berkeley, Ph.D. thesis, 1963); G.M. Townend, ‘Pol. Career of Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland, 1695-1722’ (Edinburgh Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1985).