Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 42.djvu/307

 and James had fled to France, Danby argued that the crown was vacant and had devolved on the Princess of Orange. He offered to form a party in her favour; but she gave little support to his view, and his whig co-adjutors rejected it. Finally he joined his fellow-actors in the Revolution in urging the House of Lords to agree with the Commons in declaring the throne vacant and the prince and princess king and queen.

Danby did not under-estimate his services to William, and he demanded a rich reward. On 20 April 1689 he was made Marquis of Carmarthen in accordance with a promise which Charles II had made him, and in commemoration of property in South Wales granted him by that king in 1674 (Harl. MS. 1220, f. 21). He became lord lieutenant of the West Riding (10 May), of the East Riding (21 March 1690), and of the three Ridings (29 Feb. 1691-2). But his chief ambition was to resume that office of treasurer from which he had ignominiously withdrawn in 1679. William, on this point, declined to meet his wishes, and deemed it convenient to appoint him president of the council (February 1689). Danby did not conceal his discontent, which was greatly increased when Lord Halifax, with whom he had quarrelled, was made lord privy seal. Although accepting office, he positively refused for the present to work with Halifax. He seldom presided at the council; he stayed in the country grumbling and sneering, and thus allowed the power to fall into Halifax's hands. With the whigs, Danby, despite his conciliatory attitude in 1688, was still unpopular, and his introduction into William's cabinet excited a fierce opposition. In June 1689 Howe moved that an address he presented to the king requesting that all persons who had ever been impeached by the commons might be dismissed; and in July the house was asked, without result, to request the king to remove both Danby and Halifax from his council.

Nevertheless, William's confidence in Carmarthen increased; and in 1690 his position was greatly improved by Halifax's retirement, He continued lord president, but he now became virtually prime minister, and took possession of apartments in St. James's Palace. The whigs were exasperated by his triumph, and he was exposed anew to a fire of the bitterest sarcasm. He was denounced as 'King Thomas,' as 'Tom the Tyrant,' and as 'a thin, ill-natured ghost that haunts the king.' His delicate appearance secured for him the sobriquet or the 'White Marquis' (Hatton Corresp. ii. 149). All members of his family were assailed with invective. In December 1693, when he was recruiting his health at Bath, he was exposed to almost personal violence from a mob of his political enemies. He was declared to be 'anti-English' and a 'Williamite,' and doggerel lampoons were sung under his window at night. But his influence with the king and queen remained unshaken, and by free resort to his earlier practice of bribery he was able to keep parliament in dependence on him. When William left for Ireland in June 1690, Mary was entrusted with the government. Carmarthen and eight others were chosen by the king to advise her, and he was nominated her chief guide. But William was not wholly dependent on his advice. In August, Carmarthen opposed Marlborough's suggestion that a fleet should be sent to Ireland, but the king overruled his decision. In the spring of 1691 his position was strengthened by his activity in proceeding against Lord Preston for participation in a Jacobite plot. In January 1692-3 he acted as lord high steward at the trial of Lord Mohun, and he spent an extravagant sum on the coach and servants' liveries which he deemed suitable to the office (ib. ii. 188). But his position was easily assailable, and power was slipping from his hands. Suspicion spread abroad that he was a secret friend of James II. As early as 1689, according to Reresby, he privately asserted that if King James would but give the country some satisfaction, which he might easily do, it would be very hard to make way against him. Carmarthen's name was mentioned as a sympathiser with the exiled king in a paper written by Melfort on 16 Oct. 1693 (now among the Nairne manuscripts) ; but the truth seems that, although an attempt was made to win him over, it met with no success. In January 1693, when the place bill, excluding placemen from parliament, was thrown out by the lords, Carmarthen was not in the house. In 1694, however, he supported the triennial bill against the wish of the king, and strongly opposed a bill for regulating trials for treason in the interests of the accused. As some compensation for his anxieties he desired to be made duke of Pontefract, and, although on 4 May 1694 he was created Duke of Leeds, the whigs had then nearly compassed his ruin for a second time.

In April 1695 an inquiry took place into the accounts of the East India Company. It appeared that the Duke of Leeds had received, in 1694, five thousand guineas as the price of securing a new charter for the company. Wharton moved his impeachment, which was carried without a division (27 April). On