DOLBEN, Gilbert (c.1659-1722), of Finedon, Northants.

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

1685 - 1687
1689 - 1698
Feb. 1701 - 1710
1710 - 1715

Family and Education

b. c.1659, 1st s. of John Dolben, abp. of York 1683–6, by Catherine, da. of Ralph Sheldon of Stanton, Derbys.; bro. of John Dolben*.  educ. Westminster 1671; Christ Church, Oxf. matric. 18 July 1674, aged 15; I. Temple 1674, called 1680, bencher 1706, reader 1708–9, treasurer 1720–1.  m. by 1683, Anne, da. and coh. of Tanfield Mulso of Finedon, 1s.  suc. fa. 1686; cr. Bt. 1 Apr. 1704.

Offices Held

?Gent. privy chamber 1689–1702; j.c.p. [I] 1701–20.1

Chairman, cttee. of privileges and elections 2 Mar.–27 May 1714.

Biography

The offspring of a clerical family, Dolben proved to be a true son of the Church. Unlike his brother John, he was of a priggishly conservative cast of mind, described while in only his late twenties as ‘the fustiest old gentleman you ever saw’. He was much exercised by the threats posed to orthodox Protestantism and was responsible for the erection and maintenance of a charity school for girls on his Northamptonshire property. His Anglicanism also made him a staunch Tory, again unlike his brother, though his political partisanship was primarily a product of devotion to the interests of the Church of England rather than any attachment to principles of hereditary right and non-resistance, and he was a tactful enough politician to be able to retain office under ministries of different colours.2

Dolben was returned on his own interest at Peterborough in 1690, despite being opposed by some ‘whose malice and hatred of my principles much outweighed their strength’. Classed as a Tory and as a Court supporter by Lord Carmarthen (Sir Thomas Osborne†) in an analysis of the new House, Dolben spoke in defence of Carmarthen on 14 May 1690, saying ‘I think him as well affected to the government, as any of the Council board’. With other Tories, he supported the bill to ‘reverse’ the quo warranto against the city of London: named on 8 Apr. to the committee to prepare the bill, he spoke on 22 Apr. in favour of its commitment. On 10 Apr. he told against a motion to bring in a bill for a general naturalization. Throughout his career, Dolben’s legal background facilitated a strong interest in legislative projects of many kinds. Apart from bills which he himself steered through the House, he often featured among the groups of MPs formally ordered to prepare and introduce pieces of legislation, a sign of his interest in or involvement at the initiation of various measures. There were, too, many areas of committee business in which he almost certainly played an active part. During the first session of the 1690 Parliament he featured on 2 Apr. among the appointees to draft a bill to confirm the East India Company’s charter. Later he was to be one of the counsel retained by the interloping syndicate aiming to overthrow the charter. In the next session he reported and carried to the Lords in December 1690 a private estate bill; acted as teller on 26 Dec. against a motion to hear counsel on a private bill; and reported on 5 Jan. 1691 from a conference with the Lords. In December 1690 Carmarthen listed him as a likely supporter in the event of a Commons attack upon his ministerial position. The lord president also included Dolben upon a further list of Court supporters dating from the same month, and Robert Harley* came to the same conclusion in his own analysis of the House in April 1691. On 31 Oct. Dolben was among those ordered to prepare a bill to secure the rights of corporations. His first recorded speech came in the committee of supply on 6 Nov., and on the 19th he spoke in favour of putting the question generally for a vote of 65,000 for the army. On 12 Dec. he told against passing the bill to prevent false and double election returns. During the debate three days later on the motion vindicating the Earl of Nottingham’s (Daniel Finch†) conduct of naval affairs, Dolben made a speech against adding to the motion some notice of the admission of error by the Earl of Danby (Peregrine Osborne†) in his statement that a letter from Lord Nottingham had been found in a captured French vessel. His other reported speech occurred on 31 Dec., when he opposed a Lords’ amendment to the treason trials bill. In January 1692 he reported and carried to the Lords an estate bill, and on 2 Jan. told against an opposition motion for reducing the number of regiments from 15 to eight. Although he had loyally supported the administration during this session, approving of its Tory complexion, and was in fact rumoured in September 1691 to be a candidate for a commissionership of the great seal, he was well aware that serious criticisms could be made. ‘We extremely want your helping hand in the settling of our disjointed government’, he wrote to Sir William Trumbull*, one of his patrons,

for though we are in the hands of ingenious men, yet upon the whole our ministry seems to be so unfortunately constructed and in places so oddly distributed that few act in their natural sphere or have the employment for which their genius or education have intended them . . . my great hopes rely upon the King’s personal abilities and applications, whose zeal for the depression of the power of France actuates him beyond the strength of his constitution, and the ordinary faculties of a man; to the effecting of which great work the Parliament seems resolved to contribute their utmost assistance, though some particulars of mismanagement which have been laid before them and which justify my observation upon the ministers, have in some measure retarded the supplies and occasioned delay in those proceedings. But this storm seems to be overblown, and the reflections of the Parliament upon some branches of the administration will, I hope, have a good effect in . . . the future . . . I know it will be a welcome assurance to you that the interest of the Church of England daily gets ground not only in Parliament but in the Cabinet, the King seeming convinced that the present establishment in the Church is the only support of the monarchy.

Despite his connexion with the East Indian interlopers, when the motion to establish a new East India Company was debated on 17 Nov. 1692 he spoke in favour of first hearing the old company before taking action. In the inquiry into the naval miscarriages he refused to defend the largely Whig-dominated Admiralty Board, saying (during a debate on 21 Nov. on a proposal for an address to the King to put the Admiralty into other hands), ‘I will not oppose your question, but wish when we change, we may change for the better.’ As the attack turned on Lord Nottingham, another of his patrons, he spoke on 20 Dec. against putting the question either for an address for the Earl’s removal or for a vote of thanks to Admiral Edward Russell*. On 2 Feb. 1693 he opposed the triennial bill, largely on the grounds that it had emanated from the House of Lords, who

never did anything that showed any regard to this House; they have frequently rejected or dogged our bills sent to them . . . They are for the increase of their own powers and diminishing of ours . . . The bill doth certainly entrench upon the prerogative, and every true Englishman ought to keep the true balance.

On 23 Feb. he spoke in favour of a bill for repealing the Act which required those pardoned of a felony to find surety for their good behaviour. When the bill failed to complete all its stages by the end of the session, he reintroduced it on 9 Dec. 1693 and managed it through the Commons before being ordered, on 23 Jan. 1694, to carry it to the Lords. Dolben made little further impact upon the records of this session, though on 21 Feb. he complained to the House that the estate of his deceased uncle, to which he was heir, had been intruded upon. The offender was ordered into custody and was not released until he apologized to the Commons on 10 Mar. In the last session Dolben was included in Henry Guy’s* list of ‘friends’, in connexion with the Commons’ attack upon Guy, but of his recorded activity this session, his most noteworthy work was done in connexion with the drafting of a bill for regulating prisons and prisoners (4 Dec.).3

Despite the Whig dominance over the administration, Dolben seems to have remained faithful to it for some time. He may even have been spoken of as a likely candidate to be made solicitor-general in 1693, and was listed among the Court party by Grascome. In the new Parliament, however, he joined the opposition. In the forecast for the divisions of 31 Jan. 1696 on the proposed council of trade, he was marked first as ‘doubtful’ and then as likely to vote against the Court. He refused the Association, for which he was deprived of his place on the commission of the peace, and in late March 1696 voted against fixing the price of guineas at 22s. In the same month he reported a private bill (23rd), and also carried to the Lords the bill for better prevention of escapes and the relief of creditors (28th). An opponent of the bill of attainder against Sir John Fenwick†, he made a long speech on 25 Nov. 1696, at the third reading, arguing that the case ought more properly be tried in the inferior courts, and that in any case Parliament should insist on two witnesses, as required by the recently passed Treason Trials Act, even though that Act was not to come into force for four years. He naturally voted against the third reading of the attainder bill. On 20 Feb. 1697 Dolben carried to the Lords a bill allowing the bishop of London and Lord Nottingham to exchange advowsons, and during the following month chaired committees of the whole on two bills: to continue additional duties on several goods (1, 3 Mar.), and for completing St. Paul’s cathedral (10, 12 Mar). In the last session he took a prominent part in the Country campaign over royal grants, being ordered on 7 Feb. 1698 to bring in a bill to vacate all grants of estates in England and Ireland during the reign of Charles II. He also presented on 22 May a bill to repeal the Act for the relief of creditors and chaired the ensuing committee. But the issue which agitated him the most at this time was the challenge offered to the Church by heterodox and sceptical writings, and he was an enthusiastic supporter of the blasphemy bill. He berated Trumbull for failing to attend the House while the bill was under discussion: ‘I wonder extremely that your love to [sic] the country could get so much the better of your zeal for religion as to keep you there while the cause of the Trinity wanted your assistance.’ In a similar vein, he was ordered on 9 Apr. to prepare a bill to regulate the proceedings of the ecclesiastical courts. After the 1698 general election, at which he failed to secure his continuance in the House, he was classed by the compiler of one list as a supporter of the Country party ‘left out’.4

Returned once more in January 1701, Dolben was forecast the following month as likely to support the Court in agreeing with the supply committee’s resolution to continue the ‘Great Mortgage’. Active on the ministerial and Tory side of the House, he was named to the committees of 21 Mar. to draft the address against the Partition Treaty, and 1 Apr. to prepare the impeachment of the Earl of Portland. His legal expertise and concern for the interests of the established church were both evident in his appointment on 8 Mar. to prepare a bill to preserve the rights of Derbyshire’s Anglican clergy to tithes from certain lead mines, and he presented this measure on 3 Apr. After the Parliament was dissolved he was blacklisted as one who had opposed the preparations for war against France. Meanwhile, on 13 May 1701, he had received his dividend from revived Tory fortunes when appointed a judge of the common pleas in Ireland. He took up the post in Dublin by July, but in future years generally did not allow his official responsibilities to interfere with parliamentary duties, being frequently excused from going on circuit in order to attend the Commons. At about this time he was also restored to the commission of the peace. Prominent again during the 1701–2 Parliament, he was involved in the production of a bill to prevent bribery at elections (17 Jan. 1702), an area in which he had a longstanding interest. He also made reports from five committees on bills seeking relief from the provisions of the resumption of Irish forfeited estates. As a Tory he supported the motion of 26 Feb. vindicating the Commons’ proceedings the previous session in the impeachments of William III’s ministers.5

Dolben retained his Irish judgeship on Anne’s accession, and may even have been considered a possible lord chancellor for Ireland. He also continued to represent Peterborough in the House. In the 1702–3 session he was appointed, on 10 Dec., to prepare amendments to the occasional conformity bill, and in the new year he reported and carried to the Lords a bill relating to the revenues of the Savoy hospital (9, 13 Feb. 1703). An association with the more extreme wing of his party is suggested by his important role, together with Lord Nottingham, in tacking the so-called ‘Test clause’ onto the Irish popery bill of 1703–4, and thereby imposing a sacramental test on all crown and municipal office-holders in Ireland. Such a conclusion is confirmed by his management during the 1703–4 session of the bill for examining and stating the public accounts, which he guided through all its Commons stages. He also managed the bill enlarging the time for purchasers of forfeited Irish estates to make payment, a matter of Irish, and thus quasi-official, interest, and assumed a managerial role in the passage of bills relating to a specific Irish forfeiture and a private estate. On 24 Jan. 1704 he spoke in the debate on the case of Ashby v. White (see AYLESBURY, Bucks.), strongly defending the right of the Commons to sole jurisdiction over elections and condemning the intervention of the Lords. Appropriately for a staunch Churchman, he chaired the committee of the whole on 19 Feb. on the bill to restrain the licentiousness of the press. The following month Nottingham listed Dolben as a likely supporter during the proceedings upon the Scotch Plot, but despite his connexions with Nottingham, and with other High Tory leaders like Lord Rochester (Laurence Hyde†), with whom he corresponded regularly, Dolben did not leave office when the ministry was reconstructed in the spring of 1704. By the autumn he had become a moderate. Forecast as a probable opponent of the Tack, he was lobbied by the Court, and did not vote for it on 28 Nov. Irish matters figured large in his parliamentary activity in this session. On 8 Dec. Dolben presented a private bill concerning the Ulster Society’s estate in Ireland, and on 13 Jan. 1705 he presented, in his capacity as a member of the Irish administration, a bill to permit the export of Irish linen to the plantations. He subsequently managed this bill through the Commons. During this session he also reported from the committee investigating a letter to William Lowndes* in which bribes were offered to secure the passage of a clause to the calico bill (13 Jan.), and reported a bill to divide a chapel from a parish church (9, 14 Feb.).6

In the summer of 1705 Dolben was included in a list of placemen, and a list of the new Parliament neatly summed up his political position, describing him as a ‘High Church courtier’. Although he had kept his place, and had so far diluted his zeal for the Church as to oppose the Tack, he was far from having abandoned his principles, and seems to have entertained considerable reservations about the direction of ministerial policy. In the division on the Speaker, 25 Oct. 1705, he was one of only five placemen to vote against the Court candidate, John Smith I. The fact that he had done so, coupled with his ‘moderation’ a year earlier, accounts for his being adopted by the Tories as their candidate in the subsequent contest for the chairmanship of the committee of privileges and elections: he was clearly no extremist, yet neither did he appear a mere time-server. Hearne wrote that he was ‘well known to be a man of singular probity, and of an unblemished character in all respects, and of rare abilities for that place’. But after ‘several debates’ he was narrowly defeated by his Whig opponent, Hon. Spencer Compton. Perhaps chastened by this experience, or its aftermath, Dolben returned to his Court allegiance in the following February, when he voted for government in the proceedings on the ‘place clause’ of the regency bill. In the same session he reported from three committees managing conferences with the Lords, and assisted in the management of three private bills. His letters in 1707 show him succeeding in keeping on good terms with such varied characters as the arch-placeman Hon. James Brydges*, from whom he was able to obtain a favour for a friend, and the former Tory lord lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Ormond. To Ormond’s successor in the viceroyalty, the Earl of Pembroke (Thomas Herbert†), Dolben expressed himself in revealing terms in April 1707. Writing from Dublin to give the new lord lieutenant an account of the state of parties in Ireland, in which ‘almost every person of condition appears to be engaged’, he claimed that because of his ‘circumstances’ (presumably his judicial station) he was ‘not obliged’ to join with either faction, Tory or Whig, but was able to converse with both. None the less, whenever a question arose which seemed to imperil the established Church, he appeared in his true partisan colours. The failure of an attempt in the Irish parliament to repeal the Test there sent him joyfully to his desk to transmit the good tidings to Lord Rochester. A similar reaction had been visible in the English Parliament too, during the session of 1706–7. When the bill of union with Scotland was under discussion, Dolben made a powerful plea that the Test Act, ‘the strongest fortress of the Church’, be ‘particularly mentioned’ in the bill. It was, he pointed out, designed to counter the threat from Catholics,

and a rock and happy prevention it proved, for when the Church was attacked by a papist that sat on the throne, his first and great endeavour was to get that Act repealed. All his closetings and solicitations were to this sole purpose – give up the Test Act – well knowing that when once the enemies of the Church should be let into office and power by the repeal of the Test, [they might] rid themselves of the Act of Uniformity or any that should stand in their way. So sensible were the nobility and gentry of England of the nature and support of that Test Act that to their eternal honour they chose to be turned out of their commissions, to be disgraced and persecuted rather than part with it. And shall we now show so little regard to a law that has been the chief preservative of our religion and for the sake of which so many of us have suffered, as not to mention it in a bill that is intended for the preservation and security of our religion?

At the same time, he could not resist a dig at the Dissenters: ‘I should have been glad if the papists had been the only enemies of the Church who then struck at the Test Act and that some men of another denomination had not concurred with them in that design.’ Indeed, as the speech developed, the Scottish Presbyterians inevitably became his principal target: ‘They have been very careful in enumerating such Acts as may any way conduce to the security of their Church establishment.’ He concluded with a warning ‘that if it be not mentioned ’tis very probable we shall in a little time be told that this law is not included in the general words’, so that in consequence the Test would be ‘exposed to be repealed at any time when a majority of the Parliament shall become better affected to the Kirk of Scotland than to the Church of England’.7

In 1708 Dolben was classed as a Tory in two analyses of the Commons, and his predicament, as a Tory office-holder in an increasingly Whiggish administration, was made even more awkward by the ministerial changes of 1708, culminating in the replacement of Pembroke as Irish lord lieutenant by the Junto Whig Lord Wharton (Hon. Thomas*), a situation which was to tax Dolben’s powers of diplomacy. In the first session of the 1708 Parliament Dolben managed through the House a bill relating to the estates of Sir Roger Bradshaigh, 3rd Bt.*, and also reported, on 30 Mar. 1709, a bill to preserve the rights of patrons of advowsons. To begin with, his relations with Wharton were surprisingly civil. On arriving in Dublin in April 1709 the new viceroy had been at pains to conciliate potential opponents, including the chief justice, but as that summer’s Irish parliamentary session wore on, animosities came to the surface. Dolben, who at first had been ‘not so full of complaints’ against Wharton ‘as other Tories are’, began to be critical of the lord lieutenant in his letters to England, circumspectly at first because of the danger that the mail might be tampered with by the Irish postmaster-general, a violent Whig. Nor does he seem yet to have aired his true feelings in conversation with his Irish friends, continuing to urge moderation on the leading Tories in the Irish house of commons. Finally he was driven to exasperation during a debate in the Irish privy council over a factional dispute in a borough corporation. Able to send a letter to England soon afterwards by a trusted hand, he fulminated that Wharton ‘sets no bounds to his vileness. His behaviour at the last council was beyond example.’ Wharton in his turn denounced Dolben in public, at least according to Swift’s satirical Character of the viceroy, for having in this matter ‘laid down as law, a thing for which a man ought to have his gown stripped off, and be whipped at the cart’s a[rs]e’. The quarrel was made up ‘some days after’ when Wharton ‘sent . . . to assure his lordship [Dolben] he said no such thing’. However, on returning to England during the winter of 1709–10, the Earl sought unsuccessfully to have Dolben removed from office, even though Wharton denied subsequently having entertained any such intention. For the remainder of the viceroyalty he and Dolben maintained mutual civilities underneath which resentment and suspicion were barely concealed, while at Westminster Dolben continued to oppose the Court, voting in early 1710 against the impeachment of Dr Sacheverell.8

In the 1710 general election Dolben transferred from Peterborough to the Isle of Wight borough of Yarmouth, where he was returned on the interest of the new Tory governor of the island, John Richmond Webb*, and the lieutenant-governor, Henry Holmes*. Classed as a Tory in the ‘Hanover list’ of the new Parliament, he assisted in the management of four bills, the most important of which were for the better qualification of j.p.s, and to qualify the Earl of Anglesey (Hon. Arthur Annesley†) and the Earl of Rochester (Laurence Hyde) for Irish offices. Dolben’s name appeared on the list of those ‘worthy patriots’ who in this first session exposed the mismanagements of the previous administration. As an Irish judge he was ex officio a member of the ‘Irish lobby’ in the Commons, and on 19 May 1711 spoke against a Scottish MP’s bill to regulate the linen industry in Scotland, which would have expressly prohibited the importation of linen yarn from Ireland. His Tory sympathies were clearly evident in the 1711–12 session during the debates on the report from the commission of accounts on the Duke of Marlborough (John Churchill†). On 24 Jan. 1712 he spoke in favour of the motion of censure against Marlborough, and on 29 Feb. supported Henry Campion’s motion that the Duke repay the 2.5 per cent he had retained on the army’s pay. During this session Dolben continued to make a significant contribution to the business of the House. On 18 Jan. he reported from the committee charged with drawing up an address of thanks for the Queen’s message relating to the peace negotiations. He took the chair of the committee of the whole of 3 Mar. on the bill to give further time for enrolling leases from the crown, a measure he carried to the Lords on the 14th. When, on 12 Apr., the Commons set up a committee of the whole to consider ‘the great license taken in publishing false and scandalous libels’, moved by annoyance at the publication in a newspaper of the Dutch memorial, Dolben acted as chairman, and on 7 June he presented a bill embodying the committee’s recommendations. He chaired another committee of the whole on the bill for regulating trade to the South Seas (1, 27 May), and also helped manage three private bills through the Commons. In the final session of the 1710 Parliament Dolben was appointed to draft, and subsequently presented, bills concerned with the estates of the Earls of Thomond and Ranelagh (Richard Jones*) (16, 18 Apr., 6, 11 May). Of greater note, however, was his support for the bill confirming the French commercial treaty. On 14 May he chaired the committee of the whole on the treaty, and later the same day was named to prepare the bill putting the treaty into effect. During the proceedings he wrote on behalf of the ministry to the Northamptonshire Member, Sir Justinian Isham, 4th Bt., to urge him to come up to town ‘on account of the trade [with France], which has many enemies’. However, Dolben was himself absent from the crucial vote on the bill on 18 June. In May a correspondent of Trumbull had reported that Dolben was ‘a-soliciting’ a place on the English bench, and at the beginning of June the same writer noted that it was now thought unlikely that Dolben’s hopes would be satisfied. This observer speculated whether such a disappointment would lead Dolben to abandon the ministry over the French commerce bill, but Dolben’s absence had in fact been occasioned by the need to leave London for Ireland.9

Dolben continued to represent Yarmouth in the 1713–14 Parliament, when he was classed as a Tory in the Worsley list. In September 1713 his name was mentioned as a possible Speaker of the new Parliament, but nothing appears to have come of such suggestions and soon after the general election was over he had begun canvassing for support in what proved to be a successful bid to be chosen as chairman of the committee of privileges and elections, the honour he had narrowly missed eight years previously. Among other tactics, he used his friend Jonathan Swift to secure the backing of the new Speaker, (Sir) Thomas Hanmer II (2nd Bt.). He subsequently reported to the House on ten election cases and two breaches of privilege, but was otherwise inactive and on 22 May 1714 was granted a month’s leave of absence. Hoping for promotion, he had earlier presented Robert Harley, now Lord Treasurer Oxford, with a set of ten volumes of papers concerning the Treaty of Nijmegen, and in due course wrote to the treasurer to ask to be made a baron of the Exchequer in England, remarking,

I am the more emboldened to make this request by your promise to moderate the resentments of the great man who is at the head of our profession [(Sir) Simon Harcourt I*, the lord chancellor] and whose displeasure I have not been able to remove.

In fact, the office did not become available. Dolben did not sit in Parliament after 1715, but through his customary political skill he retained his Irish judgeship until 1720, when he retired after considerably augmenting his wealth by speculation in South Sea stock. ‘Labouring under bodily infirmities’ when he drew up his will in March 1722, he died, at Finedon, on 22 Oct. Among the various bequests was the sum of £500 to ‘the president and governors of the charity for relief of poor widows and children of clergymen’. His only son took holy orders, but a grandson sat for Northamptonshire and Oxford University 1768–1806.10

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Authors: Paula Watson / D. W. Hayton

Notes

  • 1. N. Carlisle, Privy Chamber, 205; CSP Dom. 1700–2, p. 323.
  • 2. HMC Downshire, i. 151, 389; VCH Northants. iii. 196; Northants. Past and Present, vii. 332–3.
  • 3. Northants. RO, Isham mss IC 4704, Dolben to Sir Justinian Isham, 25 Feb. [1690]; Grey, x. 59, 220, 305; Cobbett, Parlty. Hist. v. 646, 686, 764–5; Bodl. Rawl. C.449, 10 Oct. 1691; Luttrell Diary, 3, 33, 79, 99, 234, 241, 245, 332, 398, 443; BL, Trumbull Add. mss 101, newsletter 11 Sept. 1691; HMC Downshire, i. 388–9; BL, Althorp mss box 7, Nottingham to Ld. Halifax (William Savile*), 25 Apr. 1698.
  • 4. Nottingham Univ. Lib. Mellish mss Me 150–89/4, Henry Saunderson to Edward Mellish, 1 Apr. 1693; L. K. J. Glassey, Appt. JPs, 123; Cobbett, v. 1123; J. Oldmixon, Hist. Eng. (1735), p. 152; BL, Trumbull Misc. mss 57, Dolben to Trumbull, 19 Feb. 1697[–8], 31 Mar. 1698.
  • 5. Add. 29569, f. 156; Isham mss IC 2191, John to Sir Justinian Isham, 8 July 1701; CSP Dom. 1702–3, p. 399; 1703–4, p. 286; F. E. Ball, Judges in Ireland (1927), ii. 27; Northants. Past and Present, vi. 258.
  • 6. Surr. RO (Guildford), Midleton mss 1248/4, ff. 63–64; Irish Hist. Stud. xii. 115.
  • 7. Speck thesis, 45–46, 149; Add. 17677 AAA, f. 510; Folger Shakespeare Lib. Newdigate newsletter 8 Nov. 1705; Hearne Colls. i. 69–70; Bull. IHR, xxxvii. 24–25, 29–30; Huntington Lib. Stowe mss 57(1), p. 106; Bodl. Eng. lett. e.6, ff. 8–12, 20, 22.
  • 8. Bodl. Eng. lett. e.6, ff. 25–28, 37, 39; Swift Works, iii. 236–7; HMC Downshire, i. 878.
  • 9. Lockhart Pprs. i. 536; Trumbull Add. mss 136, Ralph Bridges to Trumbull, 25 Jan. 1711–12, 22 May 1713, [1 June 1713]; NSA, Kreienberg despatch 29 Feb. 1712; Isham mss IC 2791, Dolben to Isham, 2 June 1713; Parlty. Hist. i. 64, 76.
  • 10. Trumbull Add. mss 136, Bridges to Trumbull, 4, 11 Sept. 1713; HMC Portland, v. 146, 474; Swift Corresp. ed. Ball, ii. 65–66, 93; The Gen. n.s. iv. 166; PCC 47 Richmond.