Halifax and the Commons in declaring the prince and princess joint sovereigns.
Danby had rendered extremely important services to William’s cause. On the 20th of April 1689 he was created marquess of Carmarthen and was made lord-lieutenant of the three ridings of Yorkshire. He was, however, still greatly disliked by the Whigs, and William, instead of reinstating him in the lord treasurership, only appointed him president of the council in February 1689. He did not conceal his vexation and disappointment, which were increased by the appointment of Halifax to the office of lord privy seal. The antagonism between the “black” and the “white marquess” (the latter being the nickname given to Carmarthen in allusion to his sickly appearance), which had been forgotten in their common hatred to the French policy and to Rome, revived in all its bitterness. He retired to the country and was seldom present at the council. In June and July new motions were made in parliament for his removal; but notwithstanding his great unpopularity, on the retirement of Halifax in 1690 he again acquired the chief power in the state, which he retained till 1695 by bribery in parliament and by the support of the king and queen. In 1690, during William’s absence in Ireland, he was appointed Mary’s chief adviser. In 1691, desiring to compromise Halifax, he discredited himself by the patronage of an informer named Fuller, soon proved an impostor. He was absent in 1692 when the Place Bill was thrown out. In 1693 he presided in great state as lord high steward at the trial of Lord Mohun; and on the 4th of May 1694 he was created duke of Leeds.[1] The same year he supported the Triennial Bill, but opposed the new treason bill as weakening the hands of the executive. Meanwhile fresh attacks had been made upon him. He was accused unjustly of Jacobitism. In April 1695 he was impeached once more by the Commons for having received a bribe of 5000 guineas to procure the new charter for the East India Company. In his defence, whilst denying that he had received the money and appealing to his past services, he did not attempt to conceal the fact that according to his experience bribery was an acknowledged and universal custom in public business, and that he himself had been instrumental in obtaining money for others. Meanwhile his servant, who was said to have been the intermediary between the duke and the Company in the transaction, fled the country; and no evidence being obtainable to convict, the proceedings fell to the ground. In May 1695 he had been ordered to discontinue his attendance at the council. He returned in October, but was not included among the lords justices appointed regents during William’s absence in this year. In November he was created D.C.L. by the university of Oxford; in December he became a commissioner of trade, and in December 1696 governor of the Royal Fishery Company. He opposed the prosecution of Sir John Fenwick, but supported the action taken by members of both Houses in defence of William’s rights in the same year. On the 23rd of April 1698 he entertained the tsar, Peter the Great, at Wimbledon. He had for some time lost the real direction of affairs, and in May 1699 he was compelled to retire from office and from the lord-lieutenancy of Yorkshire.
In Queen Anne’s reign, in his old age, he is described as “a gentleman of admirable natural parts, great knowledge and experience in the affairs of his own country, but of no reputation with any party. He hath not been regarded, although he took his place at the council board.”[2] The veteran statesman, however, by no means acquiesced in his enforced retirement, and continued to take an active part in politics. As a zealous churchman and Protestant he still possessed a following. In 1705 he supported a motion that the church was in danger, and in 1710 in Sacheverell’s case spoke in defence of hereditary right.[3] In November of this year he obtained a renewal of his pension of £3500 a year from the post office which he was holding in 1694,[4] and in 1711 at the age of eighty was a competitor for the office of lord privy seal.[5] His long and eventful career, however, terminated soon afterwards by his death on the 26th of July 1712.
In 1710 the duke had published Copies and Extracts of some letters written to and from the Earl of Danby . . . in the years 1676, 1677 and 1678, in defence of his conduct, and this was accompanied by Memoirs relating to the Impeachment of Thomas, Earl of Danby. The original letters, however, of Danby to Montagu have now been published (by the Historical MSS. Commission from the MSS. of J. Eliot Hodgkin), and are seen to have been considerably garbled by Danby for the purposes of publication, several passages being obliterated and others altered by his own hand.
See the lives, by Sidney Lee in the Dict. Nat. Biography (1895); by T. P. Courtenay in Lardner’s Encyclopaedia, “Eminent British Statesmen,” vol. v. (1850); in Lodge’s Portraits, vii.; and Lives and Characters of . . . Illustrious Persons, by J. le Neve (1714). Further material for his biography exists in Add. MSS., 26040-95 (56 vols., containing his papers); in the Duke of Leeds MSS. at Hornby Castle, calendered in Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. pt. vii. pp. 1-43; MSS. of Earl of Lindsay and J. Eliot Hodgkin; and Calendars of State Papers Dom. See also Add. MSS. 1894–1899, Index and Calendar; Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. pt. ii., House of Lords MSS.; Gen. Cat. British Museum for various pamphlets. (P. C. Y.)
Later Dukes of Leeds.
The duke’s only surviving son, Peregrine (1659–1729), who became 2nd duke of Leeds on his father’s death, had been a member of the House of Lords as Baron Osborne since 1690, but he is better known as a naval officer; in this service he attained the rank of a vice-admiral. He died on the 25th of June 1729, when his son Peregrine Hyde (1691–1731) became 3rd duke. The 4th duke was the latter’s son Thomas (1713–1789), who was succeeded by his son Francis.
Francis Osborne, 5th duke of Leeds (1751–1799), was born on the 29th of January 1751 and was educated at Westminster school and at Christ Church, Oxford. He was a member of parliament in 1774 and 1775; in 1776 he became a peer as Baron Osborne, and in 1777 lord chamberlain of the queen’s household. In the House of Lords he was prominent as a determined foe of the prime minister, Lord North, who, after he had resigned his position as chamberlain, deprived him of the office of lord-lieutenant of the East Riding of Yorkshire in 1780. He regained this, however, two years later. Early in 1783 the marquess of Carmarthen, as he was called, was selected as ambassador to France, but he did not take up this appointment, becoming instead secretary for foreign affairs under William Pitt in December of the same year. As secretary he was little more than a cipher, and he left office in April 1791. Subsequently he took some slight part in politics, and he died in London on the 31st of January 1799. His Political Memoranda were edited by Oscar Browning for the Camden Society in 1884, and there are eight volumes of his official correspondence in the British Museum. His first wife was Amelia (1754–1784), daughter of Robert Darcy, 4th earl of Holdernesse, who became Baroness Conyers in her own right in 1778. Their elder son, George William Frederick (1775–1838), succeeded his father as duke of Leeds and his mother as Baron Conyers. These titles were, however, separated when his son, Francis Godolphin Darcy, the 7th Duke (1798–1859), died without sons in May 1859. The barony passed to his nephew, Sackville George Lane-Fox (1827–1888), falling into abeyance on his death in August 1888, and the dukedom passed to his cousin, George Godolphin Osborne (1802–1872), a son of Francis Godolphin Osborne (1777–1850), who was created Baron Godolphin in 1832. In 1895 George’s grandson George Godolphin Osborne (b. 1862) became 10th duke of Leeds. The name of Godolphin, which is borne by many of the Osbornes, was introduced into the family through the marriage of the 4th duke with Mary (d. 1764), daughter and co-heiress of Francis Godolphin, 2nd earl of Godolphin, and grand-daughter of the great duke of Marlborough.
LEEDS, a city and municipal county and parliamentary borough in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, 185 m.
- ↑ The title was taken, not from Leeds in Yorkshire, but from Leeds in Kent, 412 m. from Maidstone, which in the 17th century was a more important place than its Yorkshire namesake.
- ↑ Memoirs of Sir John Macky (Roxburghe Club, 1895), 46.
- ↑ Boyer’s Annals, 219, 433.
- ↑ Harleian MSS. 2264, No. 239.
- ↑ Boyer’s Annals, 515.
