Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/444

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dar of Committee for Compounding, pp. 1447, 1462). Compounding enabled Warwick to stay in England instead of following Charles II into exile, and he urged Sir Edward Nicholas [q. v.] to follow his example, promising his own good offices to effect it (Nicholas Papers, i. 131). He took no overt part in the plots against the Protector's government, though in 1655 he was arrested and was some weeks in custody (Memoirs, p. 248). In spite of this inactivity he was trusted by the royalist leaders. Bishop Cosin relied upon his aid in the business of appointing new bishops for vacant English sees in 1655 (Clarendon State Papers, iii. Appendix ci.) In January 1660 Hyde wrote to a royalist agent on the king's behalf, saying that he was told a considerable sum of money had been collected for the promotion of the royalist cause and placed in Warwick's hands. ‘The king,’ he added, ‘knows very well Mr. Warwick's affection and zeal to his service and his abilities to promote it, and that you do upon all occasions communicate with him and transmit his advice to your other friends;’ he was therefore to inquire as to the fund in question. In March it was reported that Warwick was being used as a tool by the presbyterian peers, but he finally helped to defeat their design for keeping the young royalist lords out of the house (ib. iii. 649, 705, 729; Memoirs, p. 428). The king showed his satisfaction with Warwick by creating him a knight and granting his wife precedence in right of her first husband (Egerton MS. 2542, f. 365).

Warwick was returned to the parliament of 1661 as member for Westminster; but, though taking occasional part in the debates, never obtained much influence in the house. His most important work was outside it. Charles made the Earl of Southampton lord high treasurer, who left the business of the office entirely to his secretary Warwick [see Wriothesley, Thomas, fourth Earl of Southampton]. In defending this arrangement afterwards to the king, Clarendon told Charles that all men expected to have seen Warwick preferred to some good place rather than his old post; nor would he have accepted it but for his confidence in Southampton (Continuation of the Life of Clarendon, pp. 777, 811–17). Burnet, who is less favourable, describes Warwick as ‘an honest but a weak man,’ who ‘understood the common road of the treasury,’ but had no political capacity. On the other hand, ‘he was an incorrupt man, and during seven years' management of the treasury he made but an ordinary fortune out of it’ (Own Time, i. 96). Pepys, whose official intercourse with Warwick makes his opinion of weight, praises him highly. He congratulated himself on beginning an acquaintance with him ‘who is as great a man, and a man of as much business as any man in England’ (12 Feb. 1663). He found him ‘a most exact and methodical man, and of great industry,’ and was delighted when Warwick took the trouble to explain to him the state of the revenue and the taxes (29 Feb. 1664). He contracted with Warwick ‘a kind of friendship and freedom of communication,’ and was taught by him to understand ‘the whole business of the treasurer of the navy’ (27 Feb. 1665). ‘I honour the man,’ he concludes, ‘with all my heart, and think him to be a very able, right honest man’ (24 Nov. 1666).

Southampton died on 16 May 1667, and the treasury was immediately put in commission. Warwick was not one of the commissioners, and Sir George Downing, who had before intrigued against him, became secretary. There is no suggestion that Warwick was in any way disgraced, though he was not subsequently employed. A grant of land at St. James's on which to build a house, and the reversion of the office of customer and collector of customs on woollen cloth in the port of London (worth about 277l. per annum), appear to have been the only pecuniary rewards he obtained for his long service (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1663–1664 p. 358, ib. 1668–9 p. 657, 1670 p. 678). Except on two questions, he steadily supported the government of the day in the House of Commons. His zeal for the church led him to oppose indulgence to the nonconformists in 1672, and his fear of the growth of French power to urge war with France in 1668 (Grey, Debates, ii. 40, 89, 96, iv. 346, v. 300; cf. Memoirs, p. 42). A few letters written during this last period of his life are in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 4296; Egerton MSS. 2539, 2540).

Warwick died on 15 Jan. 1682–3, in the seventy-fourth year of his age, and was buried in Chiselhurst church. His epitaph and an abstract of his will are given in the memoir in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ 1790, p. 781.

An engraved portrait of Warwick, from a painting by Lely, is prefixed to his memoirs, and an engraving representing him at an earlier period of his life is given in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine’ for September 1790.

Warwick was the author of two books, both posthumously published. 1. ‘Memoires of the Reigne of King Charles I, with a continuation to the happy Restauration of King Charles II,’ London, 1701, 8vo, said in the pre-