Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 28.djvu/404

 Rh of attainder against Fenwick, and signed the protest against it (ib. iv. 351 n.;, v. 218). On the reconstitution of the ministry towards the close of William's reign he was (12 Dec. 1700) named lord-lieutenant of Ireland, and virtually placed at the head of affairs, with Harley as manager of the commons (, iv. 470; cf., iii. 155). But William seems soon to have found that Rochester's imperious temper and manner were unredeemed by any commanding political ability; instead of controlling his party he could only stimulate it to factiousness, so that the year in which he was at the head of affairs seemed to the king `one of the uneasiest of his whole life.' Expostulations followed; and, after the king had gone to Holland in June, Rochester, who had (partly, perhaps, on account of indisposition) delayed his departure as long as possible, at last started for Ireland in September (, iv. 536; cf. Diary and Correspondence, ii. 381 ; and see ib. pp. 357 seqq., 431 seqq.) His stay in Ireland was too brief to exercise much influence upon the relations between the two kingdoms. According to Burnet, the unalterable confidence reposed in him by the establishment enabled him to oblige ' people of all sorts, dissenters as well as papists;' in one instance in his treatment of the halfway officers his measures were so harsh as to be disavowed by the king (Diary and Correspondence, ii. 348-9, 403).

Early in 1702 William III informed Rochester of the termination of his lord-lieutenancy; but at the king's death (8 March) Queen Anne retained her uncle in office. She seemed resolved to trust him as of old, and in token of her goodwill named one of his daughters a lady of her bedchamber (Conduct of the Duchess of Marlborough, pp. 123, 133). He had, however, returned to England, and when urged by the queen to go back to his post delayed his departure (see ib. p. 141). In truth, he was intent upon recovering supreme ministerial authority at home with the aid of the interest of the church, to which Queen Anne was so warmly attached. He seized an early opportunity of showing his care for convocation (, v. 17); and as the spirits of the high church clergy rose, so did their expectations from his leadership,more especially as they resented the apathy of Godolphin towards the bill against Occasional Conformity. Rochester was, however, unable to maintain himself in office against the Marlborough influence, and resigned his lord-lieutenancy on 4 Feb. 1703. The same influence continued to depress his fortunes during the greater part of the reign. Towards the succession question he bore himself cautiously, not involving himself with the Jacobites, and remaining on good terms with Hanover (Diary and Correspondence, ii. 459; cf., iv. 497); in 1705 he even, from factious motives, suggested an establishment for the Electress Sophia in England (ib. v. 190, 231). He continued to put himself forward as the champion of the church, opposing both the Regency Bill in 1705 and the Scottish union in 1707 on ecclesiastical grounds (ib. v. 237-8, 294). The goodwill of his clients is shown by his election in 1709 to the high-stewardship of the university of Oxford, of which in 1700 he had been made a D.C.L.. In 1707 he also took part in those complaints against the admiralty which wounded the queen by reflecting on her husband. But at the crisis of 1710 he shared the good fortune of the tory party, and 21 Sept. was once more made lord president of the council (, vi. 12). He died suddenly in the night of 1-2 May 1711 at his house near the Cockpit, having written a letter on cabinet business to Dartmouth only a few hours before (see Dartmouth MSS. 305; cf., Journal to Stella, 3 May 1711).

In 1702-4 Rochester published his father's great historical work. Clarendon's will had left all his papers and writings at the disposal of both his eldest and his second son, but Rochester was chiefly responsible for the publication. He composed the dignified, though towards the close rather unctuous, preface to the first volume (1702), and the dedications to the queen of the second (1703) and third (1704), written with a more direct partisan purpose of extolling the principles of the high church party. (For the evidence showing Rochester to have been the author of these introductions, sometimes ascribed to Dean Aldrich, cf., Letters, ed. Cunningham, iii. 159; preface to History of the Rebellion, ed. W. D. Macray, 1888, i. p. ix; , i. 67*-87*; and for Rochester's interest in a French translation of the 'History' by de la Conseillère de Meherène, vol. i. 1705, see Diary and Correspondence, ii. 458.) Rochester had indisputably inherited from his father certain literary gifts as well as tastes, and was both an effective and a facile writer. He posed too as a patron of letters. Dryden and Lee dedicated to him their 'Duke of Guise' (1683), and the former his 'Cleomenes' (1692). He proved himself for the most part an assiduous and adroit man of business. As a courtier he showed more suppleness in his relations with a varied succession of rulers than might have seemed natural to him; and Burnet declares him to have been `the smoothest man in