Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 63.djvu/180

 gesting the sale of Dunkirk to meet the pressing needs of the exchequer; but his resentment of the king's behaviour, and his personal sufferings from the gout and stone, gradually withdrew him from active work in his office. He left the whole conduct of treasury business to his secretary, Sir Philip Warwick [q. v.] In 1664 Lord Arlington, Ashley, and Sir William Coventry appealed to the king to displace Southampton, on the ground that he had delegated all his functions to Warwick. Clarendon, who constantly sought his advice, and was proud of the long intimacy, urged him to remain at his post and persuaded the king to retain his services. According to Burnet the king stood ‘in some awe of him, and saw how popular he would grow if put out of his service, and therefore he chose rather to bear with his ill humour and contradiction than to dismiss him.’

In church matters Southampton powerfully supported the principles of the establishment. In 1663 he opposed in council and parliament the bill for liberty of conscience, by which Charles proposed to allow a universal toleration of catholics. When the bill was presented to the House of Lords for the first time, Southampton declared that it was a ‘design against the protestant religion and in favour of the papists.’ On the second reading he denounced it as ‘a project to get money at the price of religion.’ Finally the bill was dropped.

When some troops of guards were raised on the occasion of the outbreak of the Fifth-monarchy men under Thomas Venner, Southampton strongly pronounced against a standing army. He declared ‘they had 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 must be only instruments to serve their ends’.

Towards the close of 1666 Southampton fell desperately ill. A French doctor gave him no relief. ‘The pain of the stone grew upon him to such a degree that he resolved to have it cut; but a woman came to him who pretended she had an infallible secret of dissolving the stone, and brought such vouchers to him that he put himself into her hands. The medicine had a great operation, though it ended fatally.’ He bore the tedious pain with astonishing patience, and died at his house in London on 16 May 1667. He was buried at Titchfield.

Southampton's delicacy of constitution was a main obstacle in his career, and prevented his moderating influence from affecting the course of affairs to the extent that his abilities, honesty, and courage deserved. ‘Having an infirm body, he was never active in armes,’ wrote Sir Edward Walker (Ashmole MS. 1110, f. 170). Burnet described him as ‘a man of great virtue and of very good parts; he had a lively apprehension and a good judgment.’ According to his admiring friend Clarendon, ‘he was in his nature melancholick, and reserved in his conversation. … His person was of a small stature; his courage, as all his other faculties, very great’ (, Life, iii. 785). ‘There is a good man gone,’ wrote Pepys, who called at the lord treasurer's house just after his death; but, despite his integrity, Pepys was inclined to attribute to his slowness and remissness a large share in the disasters which fell on the nation during Charles II's reign. ‘And yet,’ Pepys added, ‘if I knew all the difficulties that he hath lain under, and his instrument Sir Philip Warwick, I might be brought to another mind’ (, Diary, ed. Wheatley, vi. 321–2). Pepys always found him, officially, ‘a very ready man, and certainly a brave servant of the king;’ the only thing that displeased the diarist in him personally was the length to which he let his nails grow (ib. iii. 351).

He married three times. His first wife was ‘la belle et vertueuse Huguenotte,’ Rachel, eldest daughter of Daniel de Massue, seigneur de Ruvigny, whom he married in France in August 1634; she died on 16 Feb. 1640. By her Southampton had two sons, Charles and Henry, who died young, and three daughters—Magdalen, who died an infant; Elizabeth, wife of Edward Noel, first earl of Gainsborough; and Rachel, wife first of Francis, lord Vaughan, and secondly of William, lord Russell, ‘the patriot.’ Southampton's second wife was Elizabeth, eldest daughter and heiress of Francis Leigh, lord Dunsmore (afterwards earl of Chichester), by whom he had four daughters; only one survived youth, namely Elizabeth, who married, first (23 Dec. 1662), Josceline Percy, eleventh earl of Northumberland; and secondly (24 Aug. 1673), Ralph Montagu, duke of Montagu [q. v.] Southampton's third wife was Frances, second daughter of William Seymour, second duke of Somerset [q. v.], and widow of Richard, second viscount Molyneux of Maryborough in Ireland. His widow married, as her third husband, Conyers D'Arcy, second earl of Holdernesse; she was buried in Westminster Abbey on 5 Jan. 1680–1.