Page:VCH Rutland 1.djvu/264

 A HISTORY OF RUTLAND Rutland was but little affected by the Revolution. In 1689 James II offered the Earl of Rutland (afterwards first Duke of Rutland), in a letter of 30 July from the Earl of Carmarthen, to continue to him the Lord Lieuten- ancy of Leicestershire, and to add to it the offices of Lord Lieutenant and Custos Rotulorum of Rutland.'*^ The earl, however, though he bore the queen's sceptre and the cross at the king's coronation, followed his father's politics and declined the offer ; and being shortly afterwards deprived of his lieutenancy for political reasons, joined the Earl of Stamford and Devon in raising troops for William. ^'^ In 1688 the Lord Lieutenancy of Rutland was given to Lord Peterborough, whose political leanings are shown by a letter to the Hon. Baptist Noel, inquiring whether he will, if elected knight of the shire or burgess in the next Parliament, support the abolition of penal laws and tests, aid in securing the election of members disposed to do this, and support the Declaration of April 1687 for Liberty of Conscience,^"" the king having ordered these inquiries to be made of deputy lieutenants, justices of the peace, and other officers of the Crown.*" Public opinion in the county must have been greatly influenced by the adhesion to William's cause of Daniel Finch, second Earl of Nottingham and sixth Earl of Winchilsea, the owner of Burley, who, though one of the last men in England to accept the Revolution Settlement, appears to have been one of the few who, having accepted it, never intrigued against it, and though a consistent anti-Jacobite, remained always a staunch Tory. From 1689 to 1690 he was one of the Secretaries of State, and, in the last-named year, was one of the council of nine left behind by William when he went to Ireland, In 1702, six weeks after the king's death, hs was again Secretary of State under Anne, but resigned office in 1704, and resided after his retirement principally at Burley, where he died in 1730."^ The family of Finch, and more especially the Winchilsea branch, has ever since continued to play a leading part in the political history of Rutland, the control of the representation of which until the Reform Act it shared with the houses of Exeter, Gainsborough, and Rutland.'^'' Thus during the elections for the fourth Parliament of George II in 1747, which resulted in the return of Brownlow Cecil Lord Burghley and James Noel, the Earl of Win- chilsea wrote to ask the Duke of Rutland to support his brother John Finch, the sitting member, against a combination of the Earls of Exeter and Gains- borough,"* but in a later letter he said that as he could not expect success he would not desire that the duke should quarrel unnecessarily with the two earls.*''' In 1761 the Marquis of Granby, who was with the army in Germany, directed his tenants ' to give either single votes to Lord Winchilsea, or the first to him and the second to Mr. Noel, as Lord Winchilsea may "" Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xii, App. v, 126. "^ Did. Nat. Biog. xxxvi, 52. "» Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xv, App. ii, 328-9. "» See Reresby, Mem. 387-9. "' Diet. Nat. Biog. The earl's state papers, which fill five MSS. books, are preserved at Burley on the Hill. Several of these are orders from William III and bear his signature, while others are letters written by him both when fighting in Ireland and in the Netherlands. Others again are from Sidney, Russell, Cloudcsley Shovel, and Portland (ancestor of the present duke) ; while others relate to the plots of the notorious informers Young and Fuller, and other Jacobite plots; Pearl Finch, in Rut. Mag. ii, 150; iii, 121-7, 1 40-8 ; see also Hist. Burley on the Hill. "" The Dukes of Rutland had considerable influence, but members of the family seldom appeared as candidates for Parliament. "* Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. xii, App. v, 200. "' Ibid. 204