We are so used to continuous coverage of Parliament that it is easy to forget that during most of the 18th century debates in Parliament could not be made public. So how did those interested, and even engaged, in proceedings in the 18th-century Parliament know what was actually happening there? Many relied on newsletter-writers and agents, but in this latest post for the Georgian Lords, Dr Charles Littleton considers another of those responsible for passing on information to a client unable to attend Parliament.

One recipient of manuscript accounts of parliamentary proceedings was William Cowper, 2nd Earl Cowper, son and heir of Queen Anne’s lord chancellor, William Cowper, Earl Cowper. The 2nd earl began his parliamentary career in 1731 and at first attended diligently, until about 1737 when he was afflicted with chronic gout. He remained engaged in politics, though, and based at one of his family houses, either Cole Green in Hertfordshire or The Moat in Kent, the invalid Cowper received his news on events in Westminster from a clergyman, Rev. Dr John Savage. Cowper probably knew Savage from Hertfordshire, as Savage had been rector of Clothall, near Baldock, from 1708. Described as a ‘very jolly convivial priest’, and ‘a lively, pleasant, facetious old man’, in 1732 Savage embarked on a more metropolitan life when he was made lecturer at St George’s, Hanover Square.

From his base in Mayfair, Savage proved an ideal agent. His surviving letters to Cowper cover the period 1739-46, and touch on a number of matters, such as commissions from Cowper for purchases in London, and the latest trends in prints, poems, books, and opera. The letters primarily concern parliamentary news, though, and the 24 letters between 8 February 1739 and 16 February 1742 are of especial interest, as they detail events in a fraught period in British politics, as the parliamentary opposition mounted a concerted attack against the prime minister Sir Robert Walpole.

Between 8 and 24 February 1739 Cowper and Savage maintained an almost daily correspondence as they monitored the fate of the Convention of Pardo, a draft treaty between Britain and Spain, which Walpole hoped would halt what appeared to be an almost irreversible slide into war. On 19 February Savage informed Cowper

you have this day lost an agreeable entertainment in the House of Lords, by a debate which lasted till after four.

Savage started with a bare account of the motions made, and the numbers in the divisions held, but continued, ‘And now that I have given you the plan of the day’s work, I must remark upon it that it began with all the seeming calmness imaginable, but as it lengthened, it grew warm’. He named the principal individuals who spoke and voted on each side, even down to two lords who changed sides between divisions; he also noted the surprising role of four bishops who voted against the ministry. The letters also discussed Savage’s preparations to receive Cowper at his house in Grosvenor Street, which served as the earl’s base when he was in London to attend the Lords. Savage’s last letter in this series was dated 24 February, as Cowper returned to town to take his seat three days later. On 1 March, he voted with the government in favour of the Convention. It was all to no avail, as the treaty soon became a dead letter with the outbreak of the ‘War of Jenkins’ Ear’.

Perhaps the most significant run of letters were the 12 from 17 December 1741 to 16 February 1742, a period which saw the final opposition attacks on Walpole in a series of controversial election cases, his resignation from office, and the subsequent attempts to reconstruct the ministry. Savage’s three long letters of 4, 9 and 11 February are vital eye-witness accounts of the events surrounding Walpole’s resignation, following his defeat in the Chippenham election petition on 2 February. They are invaluable in tracking the jostling of his adversaries for places in the new administration, and the swirl of rumours concerning promotions to office and peerage creations during the adjournment between 3 and 18 February. Amidst all the gossip, Savage frequently had to correct himself, as when he predicted on 4 February that Charles Lennox, 2nd duke of Richmond, would be removed as master of horse, only to admit in his next letter five days later that, even during the adjournment:

the world is full of noise and hustle, and stories fly about, some true, some false, as thick as ever I knew them.

He conceded that the rumour concerning ‘the duke of Richmond may be among the false ones, for his chariot comes within the Court as usual’.

Though the number of his surviving letters to Cowper decreased after the change of ministry in 1742, Savage continued to serve Cowper as an informant. His last surviving letter was dated 11 February 1746, and again covered turbulence in the ministry. Savage reported on the previous day’s mass resignation of the government, or, as he put it, ‘the resolution of the ministry, one and all, to fling up’, in order to force the king to halt his informal consultations with John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville. Henry Pelham resigned, Savage noted, ‘with tears in his eyes’, and he concluded that ‘all things are in confusion at Court, and no less in the City’. This was a recurring theme in his letters of this period.

Savage died on 24 March 1747 from a fall from the scaffolding erected in Westminster Hall for the trial of the Jacobite Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat. He may have died in the service of news gathering for Cowper. With his death ended one of the liveliest series of manuscript accounts we have of proceedings in the 18th-century Parliament, before newspaper reporting of Parliament was conceded in the 1770s.

CGDL

Sources:

Hertfordshire Archives and Library Services, Hertford, DE/P/F250

F. Harris and C. Jones, ‘”A Question… carried by Bishops, Pensioners, Place-Men, Idiots”: Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough and the Lords; Division over the Spanish Convention, 1 March 1739’, Parliamentary History, xi. 254-77.

C. Jones, ‘The House of Lords and the Fall of Walpole’, in C. Jones, S. Taylor, and R. Connors, eds., Hanoverian Britain and Empire: Essays in Memory of Philip Lawson (1998), 102-36.