Family and Education

bap. 25 Mar. 1676, 1st s. of Robert Benson of Wrenthorpe, Yorks. by Dorothy, da. of Tobias Jenkins of Grimston, sis. of Tobias Jenkins*.  educ. ?London; Christ’s, Camb. 1691; Padua 1694; travelled abroad (Italy).  m. 21 Dec. 1703 (with £8,000), Elizabeth (d. 1757), da. of Hon. Heneage Finch I*, 1s. d.v.p. 1da.; 1da. illegit.  suc. fa. 1676; cr. Baron Bingley 21 July 1713.1

Offices Held

? Capt. Sir Henry Belasyse* ft. reg. 1691.2

Freeman, York Apr. 1705, alderman May 1705–Sept. 1715.3

Ld. of Treasury Aug. 1710–May 1711; chancellor of Exchequer 14 June 1711–Aug. 1713; PC 14 June 1711–Sept. 1714, 11 June 1730–d.; ambassador to Spain 1713–14; treasurer of Household 1730–d.

Dir. S. Sea Co. July 1711–Feb. 1715.4

Trustee, West Riding Registry 1711; commr. building 50 new churches 1711–15, survey Westminster and St. James’s manors 1712.5

? FRS 1699.6

Biography

Benson has long suffered from the dismissive verdict of historians unable to discern any merit in him beyond a moderate Toryism. Archdeacon Coxe predictably purveyed the Whig view that he was a mere ‘cipher in office, and a dependant on his principal [i.e. Robert Harley*]’. Others have added little, describing him as ‘a genial Tory nonentity’, or as ‘a watery Tory’. However, such comments fail to account for Benson’s rise from relatively humble origins to the peerage in the course of his career. Admittedly, the foundations of his rise were laid by his father, who was, according to his rival for the Aldborough seat in 1673, Sir John Reresby, 2nd Bt.†,

the most notable and formidable man for business of his time, one of no birth, and that had raised himself from being clerk to a country attorney to be clerk of the peace at the Old Bailiff, to clerk of assize of the northern circuit, and to an estate of £2,500 p.a., but not without suspicion of great frauds and oppressions. Besides, he was the great favourite of my Lord Dunblain [Sir Thomas Osborne†], then lord high treasurer.

Benson’s father served as clerk of the peace for the West Riding 1637–46, when he was deprived of his office and later in the year compounded for £2,000. Undeterred by this setback Benson snr. entered the Inner Temple in 1654. As Reresby indicated, he rose through hard work, even transferring to Gray’s Inn in 1664 where he kept chambers. After the Restoration he became clerk of the assizes in Yorkshire, his 11-year tenure ending in 1672 when he seems to have been employed by Danby as a Treasury official. Benson snr. seems to have laid plans to discover ways of improving the King’s revenue and certainly cultivated Danby to whom ‘he never failed once a day to make his court’. At his death in July 1676 he was said to have amassed an estate of ‘£3,000 p.a. in land and £120,000 in money’. Apart from Robert, he left a daughter, Elizabeth, and presumably both children were left in the care of his wife, who remarried in 1680, to Sir Henry Belasyse.7

Nothing is known of Benson’s early life, but his connexion with Belasyse suggests that he may have been the ‘Robert Benson’ commissioned in 1691 a captain in Belasyse’s foot regiment. It seems likely that he was the ‘Robert Benson esq.’ granted a pass to travel to Harwich and Holland in April 1693, although in August he petitioned successfully for four fairs and a weekly market to be held in Bingley, where he was lord of the manor. He was certainly abroad by September 1694 when he was in Italy. He was probably an accomplished young man for in December 1699 William Bridgeman proposed his election to the Royal Society, although there is a doubt as to whether his election was approved. Locally, too, he was beginning to make his mark because by April 1700, as ‘Mr Benson of Stanley’ (near Wrenthorpe), he was made a deputy-lieutenant of the West Riding and city of York. Parliamentary ambition was fulfilled through another family connexion. In 1700 his sister, Elizabeth, had married Sir John Wodehouse, 4th Bt.*, who was MP and recorder of Thetford. Although she died in January 1701, the link explains Benson’s election at Thetford in 1702, especially as Wodehouse was originally thought of as a candidate for the county and did not stand for the borough on that occasion.8

In the Commons, Benson at first made little impression. He is not recorded as voting in the division on 18 Feb. 1703 on extending the time for taking the abjuration oath. Politically, however, he made a very astute marriage in December 1703 to the daughter of Lord Guernsey (Hon. Heneage Finch I*), younger brother of the Earl of Nottingham (Daniel Finch†). His first significant Commons activity occurred on 25 Jan. 1704 when he reported from the committee inquiring into the Lords’ proceedings of the case of the Bathursts against Lord Wharton (Hon. Thomas*) over mining rights in Yorkshire. By April he was back in Yorkshire, where he reportedly came to blows in a quarrel with a son of Sir William Lowther*, a Yorkshire Whig. The only other indication of activity concerns a number of recommendations which he signed in company with other (mainly Yorkshire) Members for military commissions. In the following 1704–5 session he was forecast as likely to oppose the Tack and duly voted against it or was absent on 28 Nov. 1704. On 11 Jan. 1705 he was teller in favour of a motion that the House agree with a resolution that Protestants in the north of England be allowed to arm in order to secure themselves against the Scots.9

With Wodehouse again coming in for Thetford, Benson shifted his attention to York for the 1705 election. Again a family connexion paved the way, his uncle Tobias Jenkins standing down in his favour. Benson was admitted an alderman in the month preceding the election and was duly returned after a contest in May. Although absent from the crucial division on the Speakership on 25 Oct. 1705, he was listed as a ‘Churchman’ in one list and the Earl of Sunderland (Charles, Lord Spencer*) accounted his election a ‘loss’ for the Whigs. Benson adopted a higher profile in this Parliament, not least over the manoeuvres during the session to safeguard the Protestant succession. On 4 Dec. he seconded the Tory-inspired motion ‘to bring over the Princess Sophia’, a ploy to embarrass the ministry on account of the Queen’s known opposition to it. The Whigs responded with the regency bill, which also engaged Benson’s attention: he spoke in the committee of the whole on 15 Jan. 1706 to point out, apropos the summoning of Parliament, that he himself served for a constituency 150 miles from London and that the ‘the Lords take upon ’em what House of Commons never allowed’. On 24 Jan. he told in favour of an amendment to the regency bill to ameliorate the penalties on those sitting in the House without taking the oaths. He was then named on 4 Feb. to the conference committee with the Lords over their amendments to the bill and during the subsequent disputes with the Lords he told on 18 Feb. against the bill becoming operative from the end of the Parliament, preferring the end of the session. Consequently, he was listed as opposing the Court over the place clause. He told twice concerning election petitions: on 17 Jan. for the motion on the Ludgershall election that Thomas Powell was not duly elected, thereby espousing the cause of the more moderate Tory candidate, John Richmond Webb, and on 8 Feb. against the motion that James Winstanley, another Tory, was not duly elected for Leicester.10

By contrast the 1706–7 session saw Benson’s known involvement in the Commons limited to appointment in first place to the second-reading committee on the bill for establishing a land registry for the West Riding. In the next session he was a teller on 23 Mar. 1708 against an amendment to the bill establishing a registry for the East Riding that sought to limit the registry in the West Riding to transactions over £50. Benson’s main activity in this session, however, was the procedural matter concerning the manner in which the Commons dealt with contested elections. On 18 Feb. he was added to the committee inquiring into this matter, and was sufficiently interested to make the report from it on the 21st. As James Vernon I* wrote:

Mr Benson reported to-day the manner of balloting, which was received with laughter, but yet was agreed to. It consisted of several articles: first, that a balloting-box and balls should be provided; that it be carried about by the two clerks, one having the box, the other the balls; that the Speaker appoint two Members to attend the box; that the Member voting take a ball in his bare hand, and hold it up between his finger and thumb before he put it into the box; that the Members keep their places till the box be brought back to the table and the balls there told over.

Following his report Benson told in favour of accepting the committee’s proposals and the remaining resolutions were agreed without a division. He acted as a teller on two further occasions: on 24 Feb. against an amendment to an Irish forfeitures bill and on 18 Mar. against instructing a drafting committee for a bill preserving public credit to explain a clause in an act from William III’s reign that during the continuance of the Bank no other bank be set up by Act of Parliament. A list dating from early 1708 classed him as a Tory.11

Returned again in 1708, Benson was teller twice on the same day on 31 Mar. 1709: first, against receiving the report on the estate bill of the Marquess of Lindsey (Robert Bertie*), and then against the motion to commit the bill improving the Union. In 1709 Benson combined business acumen with philanthropy when he donated £250, ‘being the moiety of a stock he has upon the profits of the locks made upon the rivers Aire and Calder’, towards the boys’ charity school in York, an action which could not but increase his local political influence. In the 1709–10 session Cunningham noted that Benson and Edward Wortley Montagu ‘thought fit that one of them should move for a bill to restrain the military power in Parliament and the other for voting by ballot’. No mention is made in the Journals of a bill relating to balloting, but on 25 Jan. 1710 Benson was named to the drafting committee of the place bill. Other drafting committees included bills for the better security of rents and to prevent tenant fraud (16 Feb.) and for the relief of the Royal African Company’s creditors (20th), which he presented on 13 Mar. Not surprisingly, he voted against the impeachment of Dr Sacheverell. His most important legislative work concerned the debts incurred by the Mine Adventurers’ Company. He was first-named to the committee on the petition of the Company’s creditors and proprietors (13 Feb.), reporting on the 25th and 13 Mar., and being charged on the latter date with drafting a bill for the relief of those concerned. Having presented this bill on 18 Mar. he became concerned to ensure that the end of the session was not used by Sir Humphrey Mackworth* as an opportunity to evade his responsibilities. Thus, on 31 Mar. he was first-named to draft a bill preventing Mackworth and his partners from leaving the kingdom before the end of the next session. He presented the bill on the following day and managed its rapid passage through the House, carrying it to the Lords on 5 Apr. By the 9th he was writing from Harwich en route for Holland to ‘see how the peace goes on’, which rather belies Cunningham’s remark that following the failure of the place bill he went into Holland ‘in great discontent’. He stayed in the Low Countries for some time, Lord Orrery (Lionel Boyle*) reporting on 10 June that Benson had been there for six weeks. Hon. James Brydges* informed John Drummond† in July that Benson was ‘a very considerable gentleman’, and his political stock was certainly rising as in mid-June his brother-in-law Dartmouth had been appointed secretary of state.12

Benson was clearly seen as a man likely to be employed by the new Tory regime. In early August 1710 Drummond felt him an ideal replacement for the recently deceased envoy to Brunswick (Lionel Cresset) because he ‘speaks all languages fit for that court and knows the world very well’, but added perceptively, ‘I believe he may be useful at home’. On 10 Aug. Benson was named to the new Treasury commission and began to attend the Board almost immediately. He may not have been the first choice for the post, but his appointment had the merit of helping to ensure the loyalty of the Finch clan, given Harley’s aversion to employing the Earl of Nottingham, and L’Hermitage noted the significance of the appointment when he wrote that Benson was ‘gendre de my Lord Guernsey’. He was also a moderate, so much so that Joseph Addison* called him a ‘reputed Whig’, who could not ‘withstand the same temptation’ as Richard Hampden II whom Harley had originally hoped to appoint. Others attributed Benson’s promotion to the Duke of Argyll.13

Shortly after 10 Oct. 1710 Benson made a journey into Yorkshire, prompting his friend John Aislabie* to chide Harley that ‘Benson may not be suffered to grow fat at Bramham’, a reference to the new house which he was building some 13 miles or so from York. While he was absent rumours circulated that Lord Rochester (Laurence Hyde†) would serve as Lord Treasurer with Benson as chancellor of the Exchequer. He had returned to the Treasury by 25 Nov., the opening day of the parliamentary session. Henceforward, his attendance at the Treasury was very regular during the first five months of 1711. He was also the recipient of many requests for places, being adjudged by Sir Arthur Kaye, 3rd Bt.*, ‘very civil and frank’ in comparison to Harley. Classed as a Tory in the ‘Hanover list’, his name appeared among both the ‘Tory patriots’ who voted for the peace in April 1711 and the ‘worthy patriots’ who in this first session detected the mismanagements of the previous administration. Possibly owing to his administrative burden, Benson’s activity in the House was limited. He was named on 15 Dec. to draft a bill enforcing quarantine regulations for ships. On 29 Jan. 1711 he voted for the place bill at its third reading, Kaye recording that ‘all who have had, or now have, or are in hopes to have places, dividing against it, except Sir William Drake, Mr Benson and Mr Aislabie’. As if to confirm his stature within the administration in February he was named a justice for Westminster and Middlesex. On 27 Mar. he seconded Lowndes’s ill-fated proposal for a leather tax.14

Following Harley’s elevation to the lord treasurership, as Lord Oxford, Benson was named as chancellor of the Exchequer, attending the Board in that capacity until 19 June 1711, when he departed for the country, returning on 10 Aug. Meanwhile, in July he became a director of the South Sea Company, having subscribed £3,000. The decision to appoint Benson as chancellor was not universally applauded, George Lockhart* commenting that the post

requires a man of great understanding, experience and activity, with an established character and reputation, as he is reckoned the first man of the House of Commons, when a member of it; whereas Mr Benson was one of the most confused speakers ever opened a mouth and was rather, or at least affected more to appear, a man of wit and pleasure than of parts and capacity of business. But the truth on it is, the Lord Oxford did not seem fond of employing men of great sense and eminent characters in the world.

Others were more circumspect, Swift contenting himself with the view that the chancellor ‘eats the most elegantly of any man I know in town’.15

Whatever his abilities, Benson was more heavily engaged in parliamentary duties as a manager for the Court in the 1711–12 session. On 15 Dec. he proffered information to the Commons on the estimates for the army in the Low Countries, and the same day was named to prepare the land tax bill. On 23 Jan. 1712 he was named to draft another supply bill – this time for the malt duty. At least two commentators mentioned Benson’s leading role on the 24th in the attack upon the Duke of Marlborough (John Churchill†) with Kreienberg noting ‘mais tout n’étoit rien en comparison de la chaleur de Mr Benson’. On 18 Feb. he was among the appointees ordered to draw up a representation on the state of the war and in the days following attended several meetings with Swift, (Sir) Thomas Hanmer II and others to work on it, before it was reported by Hanmer on 1 Mar. On the 13th he informed the House of the Queen’s agreement to represent to the king of Spain that only a reduced subsidy would be granted for the war in Spain. It was his presence at an October Club dinner, along with Henry St. John II*, which precipitated a group of more independently minded Members to split off and form the March Club. On 29 Mar. he was named to draft the lottery bill: unfortunately when the October Club successfully tacked the resumption bill to it at the committee stage, Benson ‘ne se trouvant pas dans la chambre, on ne pouvoit pas bien juger de l’affaire’. However, he redeemed himself when the House separated the bills again on 6 May. On 13 May he was appointed to draft a bill continuing the South Sea Company and on the 22nd to draft a further supply bill. Earlier on the 22nd the House had attended the Queen in the Lords in expectation of hearing some news of the peace negotiations: when no news was forthcoming it was Benson who moved that the call of the House be delayed until 4 June and thereby initiated a warm debate in which ‘notice was taken how long they had already waited in hopes of having the peace laid before them’.16

Benson remained at the Treasury Board until August, when he embarked on an extended sojourn in Yorkshire. On 20 Sept. he wrote to inform Oxford that he had ‘a little of the new fever’, and would be delaying his return to London. However, he was back at the Board on 14 Oct. With the political atmosphere tense in the run-up to the delayed 1713 session, denials appeared in the press in December 1712 refuting a rumour which saw Benson being made auditor of the imprest to make way for a Whig chancellor. With the prospect of a serious Whig assault on the peace when Parliament re-assembled, there were rumours in March 1713 of a new creation of peers, including Benson. However, with St. John now in the Upper House as Lord Bolingbroke, Benson presumably had to shoulder more of the management of the Commons. In one letter, probably dating from the eve of session, he advised Oxford to write to his father-in-law Lord Guernsey, ‘for though he should not come to the meeting tomorrow yet the invitation will take away a pretence for complaint which his brother [Nottingham] would make use of’. Furthermore, he seems to have been the main conduit through which the Court passed information to the Commons. Thus, he presented information from the crown on 28 occasions, mostly concerning the peace and associated questions of trade. He was one of the Court spokesmen on the commercial questions which dominated much of the session: on 6 May he spoke in support of the bill suspending for two months the duties on French wines. Likewise, on 14 May he spoke for the Court in the debate on bringing in a bill to confirm the 8th and 9th articles of the French commercial treaty, being duly named to the drafting committee. May also saw him named to other drafting committees: to enable disbanded troops to resume work (2nd), and to continue the duties on malt, mum, cider and perry (12th). On 10 June, when the Commons received evidence hostile to the French commercial treaty, Benson objected to comments of Nathaniel Torriano which questioned the government’s competence, calling for him ‘to be turned out of their doors for talking [in] such a vilifying disrespectful manner of a treaty which her Majesty and her ministry had thought fit to make’. On the 18th, with the 8th and 9th articles under severe attack, he remained silent, though he did vote for the bill’s passage. Also in June he was named to draft four other bills, but did not manage any of them.17

Following the end of the session Benson was raised to the peerage as Lord Bingley. This promotion was one that ‘both sides are angry at’. Bolingbroke wished that Benson had stayed in the Commons and swapped jobs with Secretary Bromley (William II*). Dr Stratford at Oxford opined ‘it was justly alleged in the late creation [January 1712] that all of them were of ancient families; no one I have met with is much acquainted with the new Lord’s pedigree, nor are his merits in the House from whence he is removed sufficiently known’. Others, like Lord Berkeley of Stratton, felt that it was an affront to the dignity of the Upper House and told a story that Benson

sent to the herald’s office for supporters and they should send him word they could find no arms to be supported. He sent them word that Lord Somers [Sir John*] had no arms or supporters, till he was made a lord. They sent him word that was a mistake, for he [Somers] wisely foresaw what honour was coming to him, and a little before he had a privy seal from the King for the heralds to give him arms and after that he might have supporters.

Benson does not seem to have been bothered by such criticism, John Aislabie* reporting ‘Lord Bingley looks with great glory, and the 12 peers die with envy’, a reference to the mass creation at the beginning of the year. With Benson now forced to relinquish the chancellorship, thoughts ran to employing him in an ambassadorial role. Bolingbroke favoured France as ‘his estate will bear it, and his obligations to the Queen will, if she requests it, I suppose make him willing’, and Bingley sought advice from Dartmouth as to whether he should accept the post. In the event Bolingbroke opted to persuade both Bingley and Oxford that Spain was the ideal employment. However, as the negotiations over his equipage drew on, Bingley was still in England when Parliament re-assembled in February 1714 and was able to take his seat in the Lords. Soon after the Hanoverian succession he was mistaken for Lord Oxford and assaulted in a London street.18

Although shortly after being raised to the peerage Bingley was reported to be discontented with Oxford, it seems that he remained loyal to his former leader. Indeed, the same source has Bingley as involved in the negotiations in late August 1714 in which Oxford sought to persuade Lord Peterborough to join in an accusation against Bolingbroke. In November Bingley was again used as an intermediary by Oxford, this time to Bolingbroke. He continued to be allied to Oxford, voting against his impeachment in 1717 and opposing the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts in 1718. He was heavily involved in promoting the shares of the South Sea Company, but after making considerable sums of money he may have sustained serious losses, having purchased stock when the price was falling, in the mistaken belief that the price would soon rise again. Consequently, he was still dealing in below par stocks in 1723–4. Whatever, the financial result he evidently enjoyed operating in the financial markets, having spent ‘so much time among the brokers of Exchange Alley’. Bingley joined Lord Cowper’s (William*) opposition to the Whig ministry in 1720–3, being the whip in 1721 for Lord Dartmouth and Lord Kinnoull (George Hay*), the latter being Oxford’s son-in-law. Indeed, he continued in opposition until 1730, when he spoke for the Court on 27 Jan. in the debate on the Treaty of Seville. His reward for coming over to the Court was appointment as treasurer of the Household which he held until his death, ‘of a pleurisy and a fever’, on 9 Apr. 1731. He was buried on the 14th in Westminster Abbey. In his will he left his house in Queen’s Street, ‘where I formerly lived’, to his wife. His executors, the Duke of Argyll, William Hamilton of Lincoln’s Inn and Benjamin Hoare, ‘goldsmith and banker’, were to pay £7,000 to his natural daughter, Mary Johnson, who should take the name Benson after his death. To Anna Maria Burgoyne he gave £400 p.a. for life and the ‘Nunnery’ and estate in Hertfordshire, together with the lease of the house in Prospect Street where she lived. Further, the debts of her husband John Burgoyne were to be cancelled. The remainder of his estate went to his daughter, Harriet, who married in the following July George Fox†, in his turn created Baron Bingley in 1762.19 Boyer offered encomiums to Benson as chancellor,

which office he executed with remarkable exactness and dexterity, being a man of very great natural abilities and thoroughly versed in business as well as all kinds of useful knowledge and polite literature and always remarkable for a firm adherence to the true interest and fundamental constitution of his country.

His most enduring monument was Bramham Park, a house he probably designed himself, albeit with the advice of professionals, which was universally admired.20

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Authors: Eveline Cruickshanks / Stuart Handley

Notes

• 1. IGI, Yorks.; Wentworth Pprs. 133; C107/89, m. settlement.
• 2. CSP Dom. 1690–1, p. 323.
• 3. J. Torr, Antiq. York, 142, 147.
• 4. J. Carswell, S. Sea Bubble (1993), 274.
• 5. York Diaries II (Surtees Soc. lxxvii.) 127–8; E. G. W. Bill, Q. Anne Churches, p. xxiii; Cal. Treas. Bks. xxvi. 137.
• 6. Thoresby Letters (Thoresby Soc. xxi.), 82; M. Hunter, Royal Soc. and its Fellows, 58, 60.
• 7. Coxe, Marlborough, vi. 36; E. Gregg, Q. Anne, 338; K. Feiling, Hist. Tory Party, 419; Reresby Mems. ed. Speck and Geiter, 90, 106; Cal. Comm. Comp. 1643–60, pp. 949–50; J. B. Walker, Wakefield Its History and People, 665–6; info. from Dr D. F. Lemmings; J. S. Cockburn, Hist. English Assizes, 76.
• 8. CSP Dom. 1690–1, p. 323; 1693, pp. 111, 253, 272; 1700–2, p. 31; Wentworth Pprs. 133; Thoresby Letters 82; Hunter, 58, 60; HMC Var. vii. 148.
• 9. Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 416; Add. 61291, f. 44; 61294, f. 69; 61297, f. 64.
• 10. Cam. Misc. xxiii. 40, 67.
• 11. Vernon–Shrewsbury Letters, iii. 353–4.
• 12. York City Archs. Corpn. House Bk. 1706–19, f. 53; Cunningham, Hist. GB, ii. 284–5; Staffs. RO, Dartmouth mss D1778/V/811, Benson to Dartmouth, 9 Apr. [1710]; HMC Portland, iv. 544; Huntington Lib. Stowe mss 57(4), p. 60.
• 13. HMC Portland, iv. 560; Cal. Treas. Bks. xxiv. 34; Surr. RO (Guildford), Midleton mss 1248/3, f. 9; B. W. Hill, Robert Harley, 129; Add. 17677 DDD, f. 573; Addison Letters, 233; Bagot mss at Levens Hall, William Bromley II to James Grahme*, 1 Sept. 1710.
• 14. Cal. Treas. Bks. xxiv. 90, 102; xv. 1–65; HMC Portland, iv. 617; Wentworth Pprs. 133, 154, 189; Yorks. Arch. Jnl. xlvi. 107; Cam. Misc. xxxi. 329; Post Boy, 10[20]–22 Feb. 1711.
• 15. Cal. Treas. Bks. xxv. 66, 87; P. G. M. Dickson, Financial Revol. 450; Lockhart Pprs. 411–12; Swift Stella, 461.
• 16. BL, Trumbull Add. mss 136, bdle. 1, Ralph Bridges to Sir William Trumbull*, 25 Jan. 1711–12; NSA, Kreienberg despatches 25 Jan., 28 Mar., 25 Apr., 9, 23 May 1712 (Szechi trans.); Swift Stella, 494, 496; Swift Works ed. Davis, viii. 125–6; Add. 17677 FFF, f. 209; 61451, f. 151.
• 17. Cal. Treas. Bks. xxvi. 65, 77; Add. 70282, Benson to Oxford, 20 Sept. [1712], ‘Sunday morning’; 17677 GGG, ff. 220, 230; Post Boy, 7–9 Aug., 29 Nov.–2 Dec. 1712; Kreienberg despatches 3 Mar., 8 May, 12 June 1713; Letters of Burnet to Duckett ed. Nichol Smith, 40; G. Holmes, Pol. Relig. and Soc. 128.
• 18. Cumbria RO (Carlisle), Lonsdale mss D/Lons/W2/3/13, Jane to James Lowther*, 25 July 1713; HMC Portland, v. 312, 324, 342, 360, 485; vii. 160; Wentworth Pprs. 347–8; Bagot mss, Aislabie to Grahme, n.d.; Dartmouth mss D1778/Iii/417, Bingley to Dartmouth, 5 Sept. [1713]; HMC Lords, n.s. x. 223; Bolingbroke Corresp. iv. 556; Swift Corresp. ed. Williams, ii. 103.
• 19. PRO 31/3/201, f. 77; 31/3/203, f. 69; L. Colley, In Defiance of Oligarchy, 64, 185, 209; Bull. IHR, lv. 80; Parlty. Hist. vii. 37; HMC Dartmouth, i. 325; HMC Portland, v. 613; C107/90; Add. 47127, f. 73; Hist. Jnl. xxxvi. 314, 329; Ld. Ilchester, Ld. Hervey and His Friends, 46; HMC Egmont Diary, ii. 11; HMC Carlisle, 67; Westminster Abbey Regs. (Harl. Soc. xliv) 331; PCC 86 Isham; IGI, London.
• 20. Boyer, Pol. State, xli. 411–12; Pevsner, W. Riding, 141, 622; HMC Portland, vi. 139.