brother, Lord John Talbot, was killed in a duel with Henry, first duke of Grafton, on 2 Feb. 1686, when within a few days of the completion of his twenty-first year (Collins), were not ineptly supposed to have contributed to the ‘unaccountable faintheartedness’ which characterised much of Shrewsbury’s ordinary conduct (see Dartmouth’s note to Burnet’s Own Time, v. 453). The later career of his mother, who is said to have been a pensioner of France, and who certainly took an active part in the jacobite intrigues in which he was himself believed to have been involved, indisputably exercised an influence upon his own course of action.
Although brought up as a member of the church of Rome, Shrewsbury was induced by the ‘popish plot’ agitation to reconsider his position, if not his opinions. On 4 May 1679 he signified his adherence to the church of England by attending the service at Lincoln’s Inn chapel conducted by Tillotson, then dean of Canterbury. Burnet (iii. 275) declares that his conversion was the result of ‘a very critical and anxious inquiry into matters of controversy;’ and Shrewsbury’s anonymous biographer adds an elaborate statement as to the prolonged and circuitous conduct of this inquiry by means of arguments collected by Shrewsbury’s grandfather, the Earl of Cardigan, from Roman catholic priests, and answers furnished by Tillotson. It is certain that the latter took a warm interest in the young nobleman, to whom he shortly afterwards addressed a wise warning against an immoral connection in which he had become entangled (see Birch, Life of Archbishop Tillotson, 2nd edit. 1753, pp. 56–58; cf. Macaulay, chap. viii.).
Already under Charles II Shrewsbury, who held the hereditary dignity of lord steward of Ireland, was appointed to the earliest of the numerous lord-lieutenancies of English counties conferred upon him in the course of his career, that of Staffordshire, and also became one of the king’s gentlemen of the bedchamber extraordinary (Doyle). At the coronation of James II he bore the sword curtana before the sovereign, and soon afterwards was appointed to a captaincy, and thence promoted to a colonelcy, of horse, which he appears to have retained till July 1687. But in the earlier months of that year he had been in communication with Dykvelt during his confidential mission to England, and his house had been a frequent place of meeting between the agent and the friends of the Prince of Orange (Burnet, iii. 181), to whom Shrewsbury wrote in May with professions of devotion. He was one of the seven who in June 1688 attached their ciphers to the letter of invitation to the prince, and is said to have proposed the incognito shooting of Nottingham, who had declined to join in the design (Dartmouth’s note ad eund. p. 279). His whole-hearted co-operation in it was more surely attested by his crossing towards the end of August with Edward Russell (afterwards Earl of Orford) [q. v.] to Holland, where he lodged 12,000l. for the support of the prince in the bank at Amsterdam, having mortgaged his estates at home for 40,000l. (Macaulay, from Memoirs, 1718). Shrewsbury is said to have taken a leading part in resisting the proposal, made in the nonconformist interest, that the prince’s forthcoming declaration should uphold the dispensing power (Burnet, iii. 309). In November he landed with the Prince of Orange in England.
Shrewsbury took an active part in the operations by which the Revolution was accomplished. He was one of those principally concerned in the formation of the association for the protection of the prince’s person, and in December entered Bristol as representing his cause. Later in the same month he was one of the three noblemen appointed by the prince to convey to James II the message drawn up by the peers at Windsor. After waiting on him in his bedchamber at St. James’s early in the morning of 18 Dec., they accompanied him on his departure as far as the waterside, where Shrewsbury is said to have done all in his power to soothe the unhappy king (Macaulay). In the debates of the Convention parliament he steadily supported the ‘simple and consistent’ proposals of the whigs, thereby more and more establishing himself in the confidence of both William and Mary (Burnet, iii. 395, and cf. ib. iv. 71). It was accordingly natural that on the formation of the first administration of the new reign, after having been sworn of the privy council (14 Feb. 1689), he should have received the seals as secretary of state for the northern province (9 March). He was then not more than twenty-eight years of age; but while his youth appears to have elicited no unfavourable comment, except from the Spanish ambassador, Don Pedro de Ronquillo, Shrewsbury soon betrayed the uncertainty and self-distrust which, except when he was able to overcome it on one or two critical occasions, so fatally hampered his political influence. In the debates on the bill of rights he seconded Burnet’s proposal to add a clause absolving from their allegiance the subjects of a popish prince or of one who should marry a papist (Burnet, iii. 28); but some weeks before this (early
