831 



SUNDERLAND, EARL OF. 



SUNDERLAND, EARL OF. 



832 



were a very good Protestant ; but she is as much one as the other ; 

 for it is certain that her lord does nothing without her." And again, 

 under date of the 20th: "I can't end my letter without telling you 

 that Rogers's wife (i.e. Lady Sunderland) plays the hypocrite more 

 than ever : for she goes to St. Martin's morning and afternoon, 

 because there are not people enough to see her at Whitehall chapel, 

 and is half an hour before other people come, and half an hour after 

 everybody is gone, at her private devotions. She runs from church to 

 church after the famousest preachers, and keeps such a clatter with 

 her devotions that it really turns one's stomach. Sure there never 

 was a couple BO well matched as she and her good husband ; for as 

 she is throughout in all her actions the greatest jade that ever was, 

 BO he is the subtilest working villain that is on the face of the earth." 

 (Dalrymple's ' Memoirs,' Append., part, i., pp. 299-301.) Against all 

 this indeed, Lady Sunderland, who was undoubtedly a woman of 

 remarkable talents, ought to have the benefit of the high character 

 given of her by Evelyn, who, after telling us that she is one whom, 

 for her distinguished esteem of him, he must ever honour and cele- 

 brate, adds, " I wish from my soul the lord her husband, whose parts 

 and abilities are otherwise conspicuous, was as worthy of her as, by a 

 fatal apostacy and court ambition, he has made himself unworthy. 

 This is what she deplores, and it renders her as much affliction as a 

 lady of great soul and much prudence is capable of." (' Diary,' 

 18 July 1688.) It is known now however that if Lady Sunderland 

 professed to Evelyn to be opposed to the courses her husband pur- 

 sued, she must have been imposing upon him ; for she was certainly 

 his confidant and associate iu the darkest of his political intrigues and 

 duplicities. As for Sunderland, one excuse that has been made on 

 probable grounds for the worst things he did during his administration 

 of affairs under James is, that he was all the while in secret league with 

 the Prince of Orange and doing his best to drive matters to a revolu- 

 tion. " After the revolution," says Lord Dartmouth, " he and his friends 

 for him pleaded that he turned Papist for the good of the Protestant 

 religion ; " and Burnet, in the passage to which this note is appended, 

 admits that his change of religion had since been imputed to his desire 

 " to gain the more credit, that so he might the more effectually ruin 

 the king." James however at last either came to suspect him or 

 thought to lighten the crazy vessel of the state by throwing the 

 unpopular minister overboard. He was dismissed on the 28th of 

 October 1688. "This change," says the ' History of the Desertion,' 

 " pleased all men, but it came too late." 



On the arrival of the Prince of Orange, Sunderland went over to 

 Amsterdam, whence however he and his wife wrote to the prince, 

 claiming his protection on the ground that they had all along been iu 

 his interest. (See their Letters, in Dalrymple, Append., part ii. pp. 

 3-5.) On the 23rd of March 1689, also, Sunderland published at 

 Lonrion a defence of his conduct in the form of a letter to a friend, 

 which is printed in the ' History of the Desertion,' pp. 28-33, and in 

 Cogan's ' Tracts,' vol. iii. Here he professes, but does not support 

 his assertions by any evidence, to have all along done his utmost, 

 though unsuccessfully, to check James's illegal and headlong course, 

 only taking blame to himself for consenting to remain in office when 

 his advice was so entirely disregarded. The statement contains also 

 some very thickly laid on flattery of King William. "Sometime 

 after," he says in one place, " came the first news of the prince's 

 designs, which were not then looked on as they have proved, nobody 

 foreseeing the miracles he has done by his wonderful prudence, con- 

 duct, and courage ; for the greatest thing which has been undertaken 

 these thousand years, or perhaps ever, could not be effected without 

 virtues hardly to be imagined till seen nearer hand." The conclusion 

 of this precious effusion is rich : " I lie," says his lordship, " under 

 many other misfortunes and afflictions extreme heavy, but I hope 

 they have brought me to reflect on the occasion of them, the loose, 

 negligent, unthinking life I have hitherto led, having been perpetually 

 hurried away from all good thoughts by pleasure, idleness, the vanity of 

 the court, or by business; I hope, I say, that I shall overcome all th<^ 

 di-orders my former life had brought upon me, and that I shall spend 

 the remaining part of it in begging of Almighty God that he will please 

 either to put an end to my sufferings or to give me strength to bear 

 them ; one of which he will certainly grant to euch as rely on him, 

 which I hope I do, with the submission that becomes a good Christian." 

 Sunderland, who had of course been excepted out of the act of 

 indemnity, remained abroad about two years, and then, not a little to 

 the surprise of the general public, returned to be taken into favour by 

 the new king. Under date of the 24th of April 1691, Evelyn writes : 

 " I visited the Earl and Countess of Sunderland, now come to kiss the 

 king's hand, after his (the Earl's) return from Holland. This is a 

 mystery." For some years ho did not take any public office, but it 

 was well understood that he was nevertheless William's principal 

 adviser. The admission of the Whigs to a share in the government, 

 which took place in 1693, when Trenchard was made secretary of state 

 and Somers keeper of the great seal, was well known to be his doing. 



In the course of a progress through the northern counties, in 

 November 1695, his majesty spent seven or eight days at Sundcrlaiid's 

 magnificent house at Althorpe, " which," says Burnet, " was the first 

 public mark of the high favour he was in." On the 1st of December 

 following, Evelyn records, " I dined at Lord Sunderland's (in London), 

 now the great favourite and underhand politician, but not adventuring 



on any character, being obnoxious to the people for having twice 

 changed bis religion." Immediately after this he was made lord 

 chamberlain : Lord Dartmouth asserts that the king gave the Earl of 

 Dorset 10,000. to resign in his favour; "upon which," he adds, 

 " Lord Norris fell very violently upon him in the House of Commons, 

 as a man whose actions had been so scandalous during his whole life, 

 that he never had any way to excuse one crime but by accusing him- 

 self of another ; therefore hoped they would address his majesty to 

 remove him from his presence and councils, which, though not 

 seconded, was universally well received." In a note on the same 

 passage of Burnet's ' History,' Lord Hardwicke says, " I have always 

 been persuaded, from the signal confidence which King William re- 

 posed in this lord through the whole course of his reign, that he had 

 received some particular services from him at the tune of the Revolu- 

 tion which no one else could have performed." According to the 

 usage of that day, Sunderland, as lord chamberlain, took his seat at 

 the council-table ; and he continued to direct affairs as the acknow- 

 ledged head of the government for about two years longer. At last, 

 in the end of the year 1697, he thought proper suddenly to resign his 

 office, and to retire into private life. " He was often named," says 

 Burnet, " in the House of Commons with many severe reflections, for 

 which there had been but too much occasion given during the two 

 former reigns. The Tories pressed hard upon him, and the Whigs 

 were so jealous of him, that he, apprehending that, while the former 

 would attack him, the others would defend him faintly, resolved to 

 prevent a public affront, and to retire from the court and from busi- 

 ness ; not only against the entreaties of his friends, but even the king's 

 earnest desire that he would continue about him : indeed, upon this 

 occasion his majesty expressed such a concern and value for him, that 

 the jealousies were increased by the confidence the court saw the" king 

 had in him. During the time of his credit things had been carried on 

 with more spirit and better success than before ; he had gained such 

 an ascendant over the king, that he brought him to agree to some 

 things that few expected he would have yielded to; he managed the 

 public affairs, in both Houses, with so much steadiness and so good a 

 conduct, that he had procured to himself a greater measure of esteem 

 than he had iu any of the former parts of his life ; and the feebleness 

 and disjointed state we fell into after he withdrew contributed not a 

 little to establish the character which his administration h;>.d gained 

 him." A note of Speaker Onslow's upon this passage, which is too 

 long to be extracted, records some curious particulars which show the 

 panic precipitation with which Suuderland fled from what his fears 

 represented to him as impending destruction. He never returned to 

 court, but spent the remainder of his life at Althorpe, where he died 

 on the 28th of September 1702. 



It is said that when Edmund Smith was applied to by Addison, at 

 the instance of the Whig ministry of Queen Anne's time, to write the 

 history of the Revolution, he started an objection to which no reply 

 could be made, by asking " what shall I do with the character of Lord 

 Sunderland 1" The best thing perhaps that can be done in the case, is 

 to allow the facts of his history to speak for themselves which they 

 do plainly enough. 



Lord Sunderland's wife was Anne, daughter of George Digby, second 

 earl of Bristol. Of the children of Lord and Lady Sunderland, the 

 eldest son, Robert, died unmarried, in France, before his father, so 

 that the title fell to the second son, Charles. Evelyn, who knew all 

 the family well, speaks very unfavourably of the elder brother. Of 

 several daughters, one, Elizabeth, was married to the Earl of Clan- 

 carty, in Ireland ; another, the Lady Anne, described by Evelyn as " a 

 young lady of admirable accomplishments and virtue," to James Lord 

 Arran, the eldest son of the Duke of Hamilton, but she died in 1690, 

 before her husband succeeded to the title. 



SUNDERLAND, CHARLES SPENCER, THIRD EARL OF, the 

 second son of Robert, second earl, was born in 1674. Evelyn men- 

 tions him in 1688 as 'a youth of extraordinary hopes, very learned 

 for his age, and ingenious, and under a governor of great worth.' From 

 Swift's ' History of the Last Four Years of Queen Anne,' this governor 

 or tutor appears to have been Dr. Trimnell, afterwards bishop of 

 Winchester. He was returned to the House of Commons for Tivertoii 

 at the general election in 1695 ; and he sat for the same place in three 

 succeeding parliaments, which met in December 1698, in February 

 1701, and in December 1701. The death of his father made him a 

 peer about six months after the accession of Anne, and before her first 

 parliament met. He had become Lord Spencer, by the death of hie 

 elder brother, before 1690; " but in his father's lifetime," says Swift, 

 " while he was a member of the House of Commons, he would often, 

 among his familiar friends, refuse the title of Lord (as he had done to 

 myself), swear he would never be called otherwise than Charles 

 Spencer, and hoped to see the day when there should not be a peer 

 in England." It is remarkable that in the lists of members given in 

 the ' Parliamentary History ' he is always called ' Charles Spencer,' 

 without any title. Afterwards however it was noted that he had 

 " much fallen from the height of those republican principles with 

 which he had begun." 



His first public employment was his appointment as envoy extra- 

 ordinary and plenipotentiary to the court of Vienna in 1705, on the 

 accession of the Emperor Joseph. Some years before this he had 

 married (for his second wife) a daughter of the Duke of Marlborough; 



