Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 19.djvu/10

Finch was given to Bishop Robinson, and from that moment it is no want of charity to conclude that Nottingham felt his cup was full. When it was known that the new government were bent on putting an end to the war, the whig opposition became furious. But in the House of Commons the tones had a large majority, and in the House of Lords the whigs required some help from the other side. Nottingham was in a similar predicament with regard to the Occasional Conformity Bill. He was sure of the commons, but in the upper house he had hitherto been unsuccessful, and was likely to be so unless the opposition could be disarmed. The bargain was soon struck. The whigs agreed to withdraw their resistance to the Church Bill on condition that Nottingham in turn would support them in an attack upon the government. He readily accepted an offer which enabled him to gratify his love of the church and his hatred of the ministry at the same moment. On 7 Dec. 1711 he moved an amendment to the address, declaring that no peace would be acceptable to this country which left Spain and the Indies in the possession of the house of Bourbon. It was carried by a majority of twelve, and Harley and St. John replied by the creation of twelve new peers.

Nottingham, however, claimed his reward. A week after the division the Occasional Conformity Bill was reintroduced into the House of Lords, and on 22 Dec. received the royal assent. It provided that 'if any officer, civil or military, or any magistrate of a corporation obliged by the acts of Charles the Second to receive the sacrament, should during his continuance in office attend any conventicle or religious meeting of dissenters such person should forfeit 40l., be disabled from holding his office, and incapable of being appointed to another till he could prove that he had not been to chapel for twelve months.' In this unprincipled transaction Nottingham, though sincere enough in his zeal for the church, was actuated quite as much by jealousy of the Earl of Oxford as by disapproval of the policy of Bolingbroke. Nottingham can have had no concern in a tract published in 1713 bearing his name. The tract, entitled 'Observations on the State of the Nation,' maintains the ultra low-church view of church government and doctrine. It was reissued in the 'Somers Tracts' in 1751 as 'The Memorial of the State of England in Vindication of the Church, the Queen, and the Administration.'

Nottingham, who probably expected that the vote of the House of Lords would bring the ministry to the ground and pave the way for his own return to office, was mistaken. It is to his credit that having gained all that he thought necessary for the church in 1711 he opposed the Schism Bill, which was carried in June 1714 to please the still more ultra section of the high church tories. Yet by so doing he again served his own interests for it helped to cement his good understanding with the whigs and to insure his being recommended for high office on the accession of George I. The new king landed at Greenwich on 18 Sept. 1714, and in the first Hanoverian ministry Nottingham was made president of the council, with a seat in the cabinet, then consisting of nine peers. But he only held office for about a year and a half. In February 1716 it was moved in the House of Lords that an address should be presented to the king in favour of showing mercy to the Jacobite peers, then lying under sentence of death for their share in the rebellion of 1715. The government opposed the motion, but Nottingham supported the address, which was carried by a majority of five. It produced no effect, except on the unlucky intercessor, who was immediately deprived of his appointment, and never again employed in the service of the crown. His only parliamentary appearances of any importance after this date were in opposition to the Septennial Bill in 1716, and the repeal of the Occasional Conformity Bill in 1719. His name appears in the protest against the first; but the second passed with less difficulty, and no protest appears on the minutes.

After his retirement from office Nottingham lived principally at Burley-on-the-Hill, near Oakham, Rutlandshire, a very fine country seat which had been purchased by his father from the second Duke of Buckingham, and which is still in possession of a branch of the Finch family. It was here that he wrote 'The Answer of the Earl of Nottingham to Mr. Whiston's Letter to him concerning the eternity of the Son of God,' 1721, which restored all his popularity with the clergy, rather damaged by his acceptance of office with the whigs. The pamphlet rapidly reached an eighth edition. Nottingham died 1 Jan. 1729-30, shortly after he had succeeded to the earldom of Winchilsea on the decease of John, fifth earl, 9 Sept. 1729, the last heir in the elder branch of Sir Moyle Finch, whose heir Thomas was first earl of Winchllsea [see under Finch, Thomas (DNB00) ] Nottingham married, first Lady Essex Rich, second daughter and coheiress of Robert, earl of Warwick, and secondly Anne, daughter of Christopher, viscount Hatton. By his first wife he had a daughter, Mary; by his second five sons and seven daughters. Edward Finch-Hatton, the youngest son, is separately noticed.