¹ There are now lists extant for fourteen divisions in the period 1688–1715. Twelve of these are discussed in R. R. Walcott's article in the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, xiv, 25. Another is discussed by E. S. de Beer in the same journal, xix, 65. In addition, there is a listing of the 1705 Parliament according to the member's attitudes toward the Church in B.M. Stowe MS. 354, fols. 151–2, and another for the 1710 Parliament which gives designations of Tory, Whig and Doubtful in B.M. Stowe MS. 223, fol. 453. These last two lists are discussed in two unpublished M.A. theses at the University of London, the first in Elizabeth Cunnington, ‘The General *** 1705’, Appendix II, and the second in Mary Ransome, ‘The General Election of 1710 ***

² British Museum, Portland Loan, Harley Papers, 29/45 A–45, hereafter cited as B.M. Portland Loan.

³ All dates are old style with the year beginning 1 January.

⁴ C.J. xvi.

⁵ Historical Manuscripts Commission, Portland Papers, v, 652.

⁶ Letters in B.M. Portland Loan, 29/45 A–45, show conclusively that the original idea for the South Sea Company was a project formed by a group of City men who rallied around Harley in the dark days at the beginning of his administration. A specific proposal came from John Blunt and another from Sir Ambrose Crawley and George Caswall.

⁷ Op. cit. Portland Papers, v, 653.

⁸ Parliamentary History, vi, 1021–3.

⁹ Boyer, Able, The Political State of Great Britain, 1, 303.

¹⁰ Robert Harley had been created Earl of Oxford and Mortimer on 23 May.

¹¹ (1) The first board of directors to be appointed by the Queen—passed 112 to 31; (2) the Company should employ a stock to carry on the Fishery—passed; (3) the Company to be given the liberty to export unwrought iron to Spain—passed; (4) no person to be Governor, Deputy Governor or a director during the time he sat as a Governor, Deputy Governor or director of the Bank of England or the East India Company—passed; (5) the Company to borrow money only for trade and not to discount bills—passed; (6) persons in possession of the government securities not to be obliged to subscribe them into the Company—negatived.

¹² C.J. xvi, 678.

¹³ The thirty-four names in alphabetical order are as follows: William Bromley, Owen Buckingham, Sir Francis Child, Hugh Cholmley, John Cholmley, William Coventry, James Craggs, George Doddington, Richard Edgecombe, Sir Thomas Frankland, Nathaniel Gould, Richard Harnage, Anthony Heneley, Henry Henley, Frederick Herne, Nathaniel Herne, John Hopkins, John Hungerford, Nicholas Letchmere, James Lowther, Sir Robert Marsham, Sir James Montague, Thomas Onslow, Lord William Powlett, John Plumbtre, William Pulteney, Sir William Robinson, Bt., John Rudge, Sir William St Quintin, Bt., John Smith, William Strickland, George Treby, Sir Charles Turner, Robert Walpole.

¹⁴ Crossed through in the original.

¹⁵ Both George and Samuel entered Parliament for the first time in 1710, George sat in only one Parliament and Samuel in two. Sir William sat in eleven Parliaments and accumulated thirty years of Parliamentary service. That this is more typical of the group can be seen by the chart given below on p. 198. Both George and Samuel were politically obscure; George was a Brevet-Major in the army and Samuel a country gentleman. Each of them appears on only one division list, the division on the Treaty of Commerce with France. George, as a whimsical Tory, voted against the Treaty and Samuel voted for it. In Stowe MS. 223, fol. 453 (see note no. 9 for the chart below, p. 200), Samuel is listed as ‘Doubtful’. Sir William was politically more active (again see chart), he was married into the politically important Aislabie family. His wife was the sister of John Aislabie a Whig M.P. and later Chancellor of the Exchequer.

¹⁶ Clapham, , Sir John, , The Bank of England, A History (2 vols. 1944), 1, 81. The directors advised the General Court not to petition against the South Sea Bill. Instead they worked privately for alterations.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Plumb, J. H., Sir Robert Walpole (1956), 172.Google Scholar

¹⁸ McHattie, Marjorie, ‘Mercantile interests in the House of Commons, 1710–13’, M.A. Thesis (Manchester, 1950), 164, Courts held 11, 15 and 17 May.

¹⁹ Ibid. 164, Courts of 21 and 24 May.

²⁰ Boyer, op. cit. Boyer notes the presentation of the petition and its referral to the Committee of the Whole. Then, ‘The Committee having inserted a clause in their Favour in that Bill, the East India Company made no further application about it’.

²¹ McHattie, op. cit. 166, General Court of 26 May.

²² For example, Sir James Bateman, Samuel Shepheard, Sr., and Alderman John Ward.

²³ Boyer, op. cit. 1, 263–4, 9 April 1711.

²⁴ Daily Courant, 4–15 April 1711.

²⁵ Harley named himself as Governor and there were, in addition to the three governors, twenty-nine directorships. Ten of these went to the unsuccessful candidates, ten to other Tory merchants, five to Tory politicians and four to Harley's own hommes d’affaires for City business.

²⁶ Sir James Bateman, Sir Francis Child, Robert Child, Thomas Coulson, James Craggs, Sir Francis Dashwood, George Doddington, Sir Henry Furnese, Nathaniel Gould, Richard Harnage, Frederick and Nathaniel Herne, Sir Henry and William Johnson, Joseph Martin, Sir George Matthews, Arthur Moore, Gregory Page, John Rudge, John Ward and William Withers.

²⁷ The Hernes had been listed only on the Whig list in the April East India election which might indicate radical political realignments in City politics during Harley's first months in office.

²⁸ Sir Francis Child, although sometimes referred to as a Whig, would probably be most accurately labelled a Tory. He was of doubtful political complexion shading into toryism.

²⁹ Sir James Bateman, Robert Bristow, Sir John Cope, Sir Henry Furnese, William Gore, Peter Gott, Nathaniel Gould, John Rudge, William Thompson and John Ward.

³⁰ Sir James Bateman who became Sub-Governor of the South Sea Company, Sir Henry Furnese who was on Harley's short list of possible Directors of the South Sea Company (B.M. Portland Loan, 29/45 A–45), and William Gore and John Ward who assured Harley of their support in September 1710(ibid. 1715 D, ‘G’ and ‘W’).

³¹ B.M. Harl. MS. 7497, ‘List of Subscriptions of £3000 or over to South Sea Stock dated 10 July 1711 and 8 August 1711’.

³² Sir James Bateman, Robert Benson, Edward Harley, Sir Richard Hoare, Joseph Martin, Arthur Moore, Henry St. John, Thomas Vernon and Sir James Wisheart.

³³ James Brydges, Edward Foley, Sir Henry Furnese, John Mead and Edward Southwell.

³⁴ B.M. Portland Loan, 29/45 A–45.

³⁵ The merchants and financiers in the group would presumably be most concerned financially, they were: Owen Buckingham, Sir Francis Child, John Cholmley, Nathaniel Gould, Richard Harnage, Frederick and Nathaniel Herne, John Hopkins and John Rudge. In addition, James Craggs, George Doddington and John Hungerford had close City connexions.

³⁶ The largest part of the material on the political composition of the group was drawn from that storehouse of information, Robert Walcott's English Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1956), passim. It is a fundamental work on the political system during the reign of Anne. The rest of the material was drawn from such a wide variety of sources that listing them would be of little value. I am, of course, aware that there is a vast collection of information on all of these men which has been gathered by the History of Parliament Trust. What is given here is intended to do no more than point to well known facts of the political system of the period.

³⁷ Craggs, Doddington, Gould, the two Hernes, Lowther, Marsham, Montague, Onslow, Powlett, Rudge, St Quintin, Turner and Walpole.

³⁸ Letchmere and Strickland on Wharton's interest and Smith on the Duke of Bolton’s.

³⁹ Bromley on the Doudeswell-Somer's interest, Edgecombe by George Treby and Plumbtre by the Duke of Newcastle.

⁴⁰ The merchants, Child, Harnage and Hopkins, the East India attorney Hungerford, and the politicians Hugh Chomley and Pulteney.

⁴¹ Buckingham who had a large sailcloth manufactory at Reading, John Cholmley a Southwark ‘beer Baron’, Coventry at Bridport and Robinson at York City.

⁴² Frankland was the son of the Joint-Post Master General Sir Thomas Frankland, Bt., who returned his son on the Post Office interest at Harwich. The father had a record of solid Whig votes stretching back through William III's reign. The family controlled the borough of Thirsk which sent father or son to Parliament for sixty-two years from 1685 to 1747. The son later became a Walpolian placeman.

⁴³ Buckingham, Child, J. Cholmley, Doddington, Frankland, Gould, Harnage, F. Herne, Hungerford, Lowther, Plumbtre, Powlett, St Quintin, Smith, Strickland and Turner.

⁴⁴ Coventry, Edgecombe, Letchmere, Marsham, Onslow, Pulteney and Walpole.

⁴⁵ Montague—by a resolution of 1605, the Commons made a seat in that House incompatible with a judgeship of King's Bench, Common Pleas or Exchequer.

¹ The information on periods of service was obtained from the Official Returns of Members of Parliament, the lists given in Cobbett, entries in the D.N.B., the complete Peerage and Baronetage, etc. There are many discrepancies between one source and another so the possibility of inaccuracy is high.

² ‘A list of the Members of the House of Commens who voted for and against the Lords’ amendments to the bill for the Farther Security of the Protestant Succession, in the year 1702,’ notes 118 for the amendments (Whigs) and 116 against (Tories). This lists the members for the division of 13 February 1702/3 for which the figures were 118 to 117. This vote gives attitudes toward the oath to abjure the Pretender and making it high treason to endeavour to prevent the prospective Hanoverian heir from ascending the English throne. It was, in effect, a vote for or against the Revolution settlement.

³ There are various lists for the Tack, which are mostly accurate for the Tackers but inaccurate for those who opposed it. The lists are for the division of 28 November 1704 when the Tack was voted down 251 to 134. The lists give 335 and 342 against (Whigs) and 132 and 134 for (Tories). This vote gives an indication of denominational attitudes. The Tackers were mainly High Churchmen.

⁴ The list is printed in the Bull, of the Inst. of Hist. Res. xiv, 30–3, which gives the 205 members who voted on one of the divisions of 18 February 1705/6 concerning certain of the Lords’ amendments to the Regency Bill which rejected a Commons’ amendment disabling certain placemen from sitting in the House. The division gives the court and disciplined Whig groups who supported the Lords.

⁵ Probably a list of those known to have supported or suspected of favouring the Naturalization of Foreign Protestants bill. The list, which gives 249 names, does not correspond to any division on the Bill which passed on 7 March 1708/9. This list reflects pro-war, Low-church and dissenting opinion.

⁶ There are numerous lists on Sacheverell's trial, none of which correspond to any particular division and all of which list more members either for or against the Doctor than were actually recorded on any one division occurring during February-March, 1709/10. Votes against the Doctor represented pro-revolutionary, moderate church Whig opinions.

⁷A letter from a Member of the House of Commons relating to the Bill of Commerce,..., corresponds exactly with the division of 18 June 1713 on the motion that the Bill with amendments be engrossed, 187 Administration supporters (Tory) for and 196 (Whig and dissident Tory) against. The Noes are divided into T. for Tory, W. for Whig, and Wh. for whimsical.

⁸A list of those who voted against the Expulsion of Mr Steele gives the 153 men who voted against the motion against Steele on 19 March 1713/14. This vote would reflect Whig party solidarity.

⁹ B.M. Stowe MS. 223, fol. 453, gives 145 Whigs, 304 Tories and 38 Doubtful in the Parliament of 1710. Although the labels are occasionally incorrect, it is, on the whole, reliable.

¹⁰ B.M. Stowe MS. 354, fols. 161–2, gives an analysis of the 1705 Parliament according to church attitude as reflected in the various divisions on the Tack. True church, with six exceptions were all Tackers, Sneakers were almost all moderate Tories who abstained, churchmen were the moderates on the issue, low church were mainly Whigs and no church were pronounced Whigs. The attributions are rather vague and there are some inaccuracies but, taken with other evidence, it is an aid in determining party alignment.

¹¹ Winchelsea, 1705–8 and 1713–15.

¹² Cornwall, 1701–5; and Lostwithiel, 1734–41.

¹³ Thirsk, a family borough, 1713–47.

¹⁴ Appleby, 1708–10; and Tewkesbury, 1717–21.

¹⁵ Carlisle, 1694–1702; and Appleby, 1722–7.

¹⁶ Tregoney, 1695–8; Beeralston, 1698–1701; and Chippenham, 1702–5.

¹⁷ Gatton, 1702–5; Chichester, 1708–10; and Surrey, 1715–17.

¹⁸ Winchester, 1689–1710; and 1715–29.

¹⁹ Bishop's Castle, 1727–34; and St Ives, 1747–51.

²⁰ Middlesex, 1734–42.

²¹ Northallerton, 1689–95.

²² Ludgershall, 1679, 1681, 1689; Beeralston, 1690–5; and East Looe, 1715–23.

²³ Carlisle, 1715–22; and Scarborough, 1722–34.

²⁴ Castle Rising, 1701–2.

⁴⁶ Plumb, op. cit. 172.

⁴⁷ For three of the divisions given on the chart, only those who cast Whig votes are listed. They were the votes on the Lord's amendments to the Regency Bill, 1705/6, the Bill to bring over the Palatines, 1708/9, and Steele's expulsion, 1713/14. Of the twenty-seven Whigs who were sitting in the House at the time of these votes, seven are not listed on the Regency Bill division, six on the Palatines division and seven on the Steele division. Thus, the twenty-seven men could have cast twenty Tory votes. The probability that they cast more than a few unrecorded Tory votes on these three divisions is not very high.

⁴⁸ On the importance of consistency of political principles, even in adversity, one can read with value Dr Plumb's story of the early parliamentary career of the young Walpole. Plumb, op. cit. especially p. 110.