ODNB ENTRY  Wriothesley, Thomas, Fourth Earl of Southampton (1608-1667) By David L. Smith

Wriothesley, Thomas, Fourth Earl of Southampton (1608–1667), politician, was born at Little Shelford in Cambridgeshire on 10 March 1608, the second but only surviving son of Henry Wriothesley, third earl of Southampton (1573–1624), and Elizabeth Vernon (b. 1573, d. in or after 1655). He was educated at Eton College (1613–19) and St John's College, Cambridge (1625–6). Southampton spent most of the later 1620s and early 1630s in France and the Low Countries. On 18 August 1634 he married his first wife, Rachel de Beaujeu (1603–1640), eldest daughter of Daniel de Massüe, seigneur de Ruvigny, and widow of Elysée de Beaujeu, at Charenton in France. They moved to England shortly afterwards and, before Rachel's death in childbirth on 16 February 1640, they had two sons (Charles and Henry, who died young), and three daughters (Magdalen, who died an infant, Elizabeth, and Rachel [see Russell, Rachel, Lady Russell]).

Relations with Charles I

Following his return to England, Southampton found himself in debt after an unwise bet at Newmarket and began selling timber on his main estates at Titchfield in Hampshire. Charles I took advantage of this to buy 1000 of Southampton's best oak trees for shipbuilding at a reduced price of £2294 10s. Southampton then became one of the most notable victims of Charles's attempts to revive ancient claims to royal forest. In October 1635 a forest court chaired by the earl of Holland at Winchester challenged Southampton's title to the greater part of his estate at Beaulieu in the New Forest. Charles claimed that the lands were royal forest, which would have had the effect of reducing the rents paid to Southampton from £2500 to £500 per annum. By exploiting this legal technicality Charles forced him to beg for the restitution of lands that were rightfully his, but Southampton petitioned for relief and Charles relented in July 1636.

Southampton's bitterness against the king may well help to explain why he insisted in the Short Parliament that discussion of grievances should precede supply. Hyde later wrote that by 1640 Southampton ‘had never had any conversation in the Court, nor obligation to it; on the contrary he had undergone some hardness from it’. He had ‘a particular prejudice’ against Strafford, but became alarmed ‘as he saw the ways of reverence and duty towards the King declined’ (Clarendon, Hist. rebellion, 2.530). These attitudes were closely associated with ‘a perfect detestation of all the Presbyterian principles’. Southampton was ‘a man of great and exemplary virtue and piety’ who ‘strictly observed the devotions prescribed by the Church of England’ and was ‘averse and irreconcileable to the sedition and rebellion of the Scots’ (Life of … Clarendon, 3.238).

It seems that this attachment to the crown and the church ultimately overcame Southampton's bitterness at the way that Charles I had treated him: on 3 May 1641 he was one of only two peers (the other was Lord Robartes) who refused to assent to John Pym's protestation following the revelation of the first army plot; Southampton voted against Strafford's attainder, and on 3 June was appointed lord lieutenant of Hampshire; at the beginning of November, Charles asked Nicholas ‘to thanke Southampton in my name, for stopping the Bill against the Bishops’ (Diary of John Evelyn, 4.114); and by the middle of that month Henrietta Maria regarded Southampton's proxy as vitally important in the mobilization of the king's supporters within the upper house. Southampton was sworn a gentleman of the bedchamber on 30 December, and was appointed a privy councillor on 3 January 1642. He was given leave by both the king and the Lords to leave Westminster in February, but initially chose to remain there, on 5 March entering his protest against the militia ordinance. He obtained leave to go to York on 17 March and had arrived there by the twenty-seventh. It is possible that he was back in London about 24 April when he married his second wife, Elizabeth Leigh (1620?–1658), eldest daughter of Francis Leigh, Lord Dunsmore (created earl of Chichester in 1644), and his second wife, Audrey Boteler. They had four daughters, only one of whom, Elizabeth, survived youth.

Promoting peace

Although Southampton was among those who in June 1642 engaged to provide the king with forces, throughout the civil wars he remained deeply committed to seeking an accommodation with the houses. Immediately after the king raised his standard Southampton advised him that a message to parliament ‘might do good, and could do no harm’ (Clarendon, Hist. rebellion, 2.300). Charles eventually agreed to send Southampton—together with Edward Sackville, earl of Dorset, Sir John Colepeper, and Sir William Uvedale—to inform the houses of his ‘constant and earnest care to preserve the public peace’ (ibid., 2.304). However, when he entered the Lords, Southampton was ordered to withdraw from the house, to pass the message to the gentleman usher, and then to leave London immediately.

Southampton nevertheless persisted in promoting peace talks. He was one of the king's commissioners at the treaty of Oxford (February–April 1643). Then, in December 1644, he and the duke of Richmond acted as the king's messengers to the houses, requesting the appointment of commissioners which led to the treaty of Uxbridge (January–February 1645), although the talks again proved abortive. Later that year, when the prince of Wales was sent to the west country with his own council, Southampton expressed a particular wish to remain with the king and continued to urge him to bring the war to an end. In April 1646 he was involved in a further attempt to reach agreement with the parliamentarian army at Woodstock, and on 20 June he was one of the privy councillors who signed the Oxford articles of capitulation; the city formally surrendered four days later.

Before Southampton left Oxford he received a rebuke from Prince Rupert which led to a quarrel in which the prince sent him a challenge. However, friends of both parties intervened and the threatened duel never took place. In October 1647, Southampton was one of a small circle of royalist peers whom the king summoned to Hampton Court to advise him. The following month, during his flight from Hampton Court, the king visited Southampton at Titchfield, and the earl briefly followed him to the Isle of Wight. Towards the end of March 1648, Viscount Saye and Sele and several Commons allies—including Sir John Evelyn, William Pierrepont, and possibly Oliver Cromwell—attempted a personal approach to Charles I. They tried to enlist Southampton's help, but he refused to become implicated in such a contravention of the vote of no addresses. In the end he informed them bluntly:

my lords, I must tell you that I shall as a sworne privy councillor to his Ma[jes]tie give him such advise as is best and safest for him, but my lords you shall not heare nor be privy to what I say. (Bodl. Oxf., MS Clarendon 31, fol. 54v)

Southampton was among the peers permitted to attend the king on the Isle of Wight during the treaty of Newport, and he was also one of those who were with Charles during his trial. Following the king's execution, he obtained leave to stay in the palace of Whitehall, where it is said that he witnessed Cromwell approach Charles's corpse, consider ‘it attentively for some time’, and then mutter the words ‘cruel necessity’ (J. Spence, Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters of Books and Men, ed. J. M. Osborn, 1, 1966, 244). Finally, Southampton attended the king's funeral at Windsor on 8 February.

Parliament's treatment of Southampton's estates was relatively lenient. In November 1645 the committee for the advance of money had assessed him at £6000, although there is no evidence that this sum was ever paid. In the autumn of 1646 he begged to compound under the Oxford articles and was assessed at the rate of one-tenth, or the value of two years' income from his estates, and on 26 November his fine was set at £6466. In the autumn of 1648 the Commons confirmed his composition fine and ordered him to be pardoned for his delinquency and the sequestration to be taken off his estates. There is, however, no evidence that this fine was ever paid, and thereafter the committee for compounding apparently ceased to pursue him.

After Charles I's execution

After the king's execution Southampton lived in retirement in Hampshire. Although the council of state kept an eye on him, his political activities were extremely limited throughout the 1650s. He was deeply loyal to Charles II and in October 1651, during the king's flight after the battle of Worcester, he sent word from Titchfield that he had a ship ready for Charles. The king had already secured a boat to take him to France but he ‘ever acknowledged the obligation with great kindness, he being the only person of that condition who had the courage to solicit such a danger’ (Clarendon, Hist. rebellion, 5.211). After the king's escape Southampton ‘had still a confidence of His Majesty's restoration’ (Life of … Clarendon, 3.237). Yet Clarendon thought the earl ‘of a nature very much inclined to melancholic’ (Clarendon, Hist. rebellion, 2.529) and Southampton apparently believed that there was little chance of overthrowing the republic in the immediate future. His advice to Charles was always ‘to sit still, and expect a reasonable revolution, without making any unadvised attempt’, and he ‘industriously declined any conversation or commerce with any who were known to correspond with the King’ (Life of … Clarendon, 1.338–9).

Southampton declined to recognize the republican regime, and was not among those royalists known to have taken the engagement. According to Clarendon, Cromwell ‘courted’ the earl, but Southampton: 

could never be persuaded so much as to see him; and when Cromwell was in the New Forest, and resolved one day to visit him, he being informed of it or suspecting it, removed to another house he had at such a distance as exempted him from that visitation. (Life of … Clarendon, 1.338)

There were occasional exceptions to Southampton's general quietism, most notably in November 1655 when he refused to give Major-General Kelsey particulars of his estate to permit assessment for the decimation tax, and as a consequence was briefly imprisoned in the Tower. He claimed that the decimation tax violated the Oxford articles, under which he had surrendered and compounded for his estates, and also the Rump Parliament's Act of General Pardon and Oblivion (February 1652). As under Charles I, he strongly defended legal propriety and challenged any policies that he perceived as breaches of the rule of law.

Southampton was released from the Tower by the end of 1655, and from then until the Restoration he lived very quietly, avoiding any involvement in royalist conspiracies. Southampton's second wife died late in 1658, and the following year, on 7 May, he married his third wife, Frances, née Seymour (c.1620–1680/81), widow of Richard Molyneux, second Viscount Molyneux of Maryborough (d. 1654), and daughter of the marquess of Hertford. He remained on very friendly terms with Hyde, and corresponded regularly with him throughout the interregnum. In June 1659 Hyde assured John, Viscount Mordaunt, that he would find Southampton ‘one of the most excellent persons living. Of great affection to the King; of great honor; and of an understanding superior to most men’ (Abergavenny MSS, 204). Hyde greatly valued Southampton's advice and regularly asked for his opinions; their close friendship, together with the king's favour, explains Southampton's appointment to high office at the Restoration.

Service to Charles II

On his arrival at Canterbury on 27 May 1660 Charles II appointed Southampton to the privy council and created him a knight of the Garter. On 8 September he was appointed lord treasurer, an office which he held until his death. Throughout these years Southampton was keen to strike a balance between avoiding a vindictive settlement while at the same time ensuring that the restored monarchy was financially secure and not dependent upon parliament. Ludlow praised his magnanimity for insisting in August 1661 that those exempted from the general pardon be given fourteen days to save themselves. Six months later Southampton opposed the excessive use of force to suppress Venner's rising in terms which were wholly consistent with the attitudes he had evinced earlier in his career:

They had [he said] felt the effects of a military government, though sober and religious, in Cromwell's army: he believed vicious and dissolute troops would be much worse: the King would grow fond of them, and they would quickly become insolent and ungovernable: and then such men as he was must be only instruments to serve their ends. (Burnet's History, 1.280)

He begged Clarendon to avoid anything that smacked of arbitrary rule and to preserve lawful, constitutional government; Clarendon, whose own commitment to the rule of law was deep, was won over by these arguments. Southampton consistently opposed the creation of a standing army, partly on grounds of cost, but also because he disliked any hint of authoritarian government.

A similar magnanimity characterized Southampton's attitudes towards the church. Burnet praised his commitment to ‘moderating matters both with relation to the government of the Church and the worship and ceremonies’ (Burnet's History, 1.316). Southampton sought to make the church as comprehensive as possible, and hoped that at least the more moderate presbyterians could be encompassed within it. He was one of the peers who tried to soften the terms of the Act of Uniformity, although their efforts were only partially successful. There is some evidence that his stance did not endear him to some members of the Restoration episcopate. Equally, he wanted such comprehension to be established by statutory means and, like Clarendon, he strongly resisted the king's attempts in 1662–3 to introduce a bill that would have enabled him to issue dispensations from the Act of Uniformity. Both Southampton and Clarendon ‘were very warm against it, and used many arguments to dissuade the King from prosecuting it’ (Life of … Clarendon, 2.344); both actively opposed the bill when it came before the Lords and helped to ensure that it was dropped. According to Clarendon, Southampton even expressed the view that the Indulgence Bill was ‘unfit to be received … being a design against the Protestant religion, and in favour of the papists’ (ibid., 2.345). Southampton regarded such use of royal prerogative powers as unacceptable, and clearly remained profoundly attached to a vision of royal powers tempered by the rule of law. Indeed, Burnet later claimed that Southampton blamed ‘all the errors’ of Charles II's reign on his ‘coming in without conditions’ (Burnet's History, 1.162), and even criticized his friend Clarendon for giving so favourable an impression of the king in 1660 that such conditions were not deemed necessary.

The hallmarks of Southampton's conduct as lord treasurer were caution, conscientiousness, and incorruptibility. Burnet wrote that ‘he was an incorrupt man, and during seven years management of the Treasury he made but an ordinary fortune out of it’ (Burnet's History, 1.171). Southampton refused to derive personal benefit from the office, and reached an agreement with the king whereby he received a fixed annual salary of £8000. He lamented that his own example of restraint was not followed by the king and many of his other courtiers: he made a number of urgent representations to Charles, especially in 1663–5, warning him that ‘the revenue is the centre of all your business’ (BL, Harleian MS 1223, fol. 202), but his calls for a policy of retrenchment were of only limited effect. According to Clarendon, in 1662 Southampton suggested the sale of Dunkirk as a way of boosting income, and in 1665 he strongly resisted the approaching war against the Dutch republic, conscious that this would only disrupt trade, diminish customs revenues, and drain the exchequer.

Disillusionment and final years

By the mid-1660s Southampton's disillusionment with the spendthrift king, together with deteriorating health, led him to withdraw more and more from active public work. In 1664 Lord Arlington, Baron Ashley, and Sir William Coventry asked the king to remove Southampton, complaining that he was delegating all his work to his secretary, Sir Philip Warwick. Although Clarendon successfully headed off this appeal, during the autumn of 1665 there was a further proposal, this time backed by James, duke of York, to replace Southampton with a commission. From then until his death rumours of the lord treasurer's replacement continued to circulate regularly.

These attacks took place against a background of worsening illness, and towards the end of 1666 Southampton fell gravely ill. After his death a large stone was discovered in his bladder, and one kidney was also found to be much enlarged. Southampton had never been robust—Sir Edward Walker wrote of his ‘infirm body’ (Bodl. Oxf., MS Ashmole 1110, fol. 170)—and after bearing the very painful illness with great bravery he died at his London home, Southampton House, on 16 May 1667 and was buried at Titchfield on 18 June. Clarendon mourned his friend and colleague, and summed him up as ‘a person of extraordinary parts, of faculties very discerning and a judgment very profound’; and ‘a man of great and exemplary virtue and piety’ (Life of … Clarendon, 3.229, 238).

DAVID L. SMITH

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