BULKELEY, Hon. Robert (c.1662-1702).

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

Constituency

Dates

Dec. 1701 - 23 Dec. 1702

Family and Education

b. c.1662, 3rd s. of Robert Bulkeley†, 2nd Visct. Bulkeley of Cashel [I]; bro. of Richard Bulkeley*, 3rd Visct.  educ. Christ Church, Oxf. matric. 12 May 1679, aged 17, DCL 1683; I. Temple 1679.  unm.1

Offices Held

Cornet, Queen Dowager’s regt. of horse Dec. 1688–?1689; purveyor of hay and straw for royal stables 1696–d.; equerry to Queen Anne, May 1702–d.2

Biography

Bulkeley, whose uncle Henry† was master of the Household to both Charles II and James II before going into exile after the Glorious Revolution, received his doctorate at Oxford in 1683 as a member of ‘the retinue of the Duke of York’ but gained no further material advantage from his royal connexions until the last days of James’s reign, when, having approached the Duke of Ormond to intercede for him, he was given a commission in a cavalry regiment. This lapsed at, or soon after, the Revolution, and in the early 1690s he appears to have harboured Jacobite sympathies as in March 1691 he was included upon a list sent to James II of those ‘well inclined to his Majesty’s interest’. It was a further five years before Bulkeley could share in the fruits of his elder brother’s deft accommodation to the Williamite regime, acquiring a minor Household post in 1696. The family nominee at Beaumaris in the general elections of December 1701 and 1702, he was classed with the Tories in Robert Harley’s* list of the former Parliament, and was listed as having favoured the motion of 26 Feb. 1702 vindicating the Commons’ proceedings in the impeachments of William III’s Whig ministers. Appointed an equerry to the new Queen in June 1702, he died in London on 23 Dec. following.3

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Author: D. W. Hayton

Notes

  • 1. J. E. Griffith, Peds. Anglesey and Caern. Fams. 42; W. R. Williams, Parl. Rep. Wales, 11.
  • 2. CSP Dom. 1687–9, p. 379; info. from Prof. R. O. Bucholz.
  • 3. Wood, Life and Times, iii. 46; Lodge, Peerage of Ire. rev. Archdall, v. 27; HMC Ormonde, n.s. viii. 6; Westminster Diocesan Archs. Old Brotherhood mss iii/3/232, memo. by Capt. Lloyd, 23 Mar. 1691; Luttrell, Brief Relation, v. 180; Griffith, 42.