Thomas Hanmer

Lc name authority rec. n85217703

LC Heading: Hanmer, Thomas, Sir, 1677-1746

Biography:

Hanmer, Sir Thomas, fourth baronet (1677–1746), speaker of the House of Commons, was born on 24 September 1677 at Bettisfield Park, Hanmer, Flintshire, the only son of William Hanmer (d. 1695) and his wife, Peregrina North, and the grandson of Sir Thomas Hanmer, second baronet, of Bettisfield Park. He was also heir through his mother to the estates of the North family of Mildenhall in Suffolk. He was educated at Bury St Edmunds grammar school, at Westminster School, and, from 1693, at Christ Church, Oxford, where his tutors were Robert Freind and George Smalridge. Christ Church enjoyed a reputation for nurturing tory principles and polishing a veneer of polite learning. Hanmer was no exception to this rule: although possessed of a less incisive intellect than some of his contemporaries, he was an elegant orator and literary dilettante and, to the end of his days, a committed high-church tory. Having succeeded his maternal grandfather to the Suffolk estates he left Oxford without taking his degree, and in October 1698 married Isabella, suo jure countess of Arlington and dowager duchess of Grafton (1667/8–1723). Not only was Isabella ten years his senior, but temperamentally they were grossly mismatched: the somewhat vulgar duchess had been one of the ‘Windsor beauties’, and the refined Hanmer, though ‘tall and handsome’, was reputedly impotent. This disparity in age, intellectual attainments, and sexual experience provoked ridicule. It was said that the marriage remained unconsummated, Hanmer preserving his legendary fastidiousness (manifested in a fetish for wearing white gloves) even in the marital bed.

Hanmer's natural progression to a seat in the House of Commons came in the first parliament in 1701. Although he might have contemplated standing for a county, he put up instead at the venal borough of Thetford, on the Grafton interest. Soon afterwards he succeeded an uncle to the Hanmer baronetcy and estates in Flintshire. Elections in that county were the preserve of a cartel of greater gentry, who rotated among themselves the representation in county and borough constituencies. As one of the principals, Hanmer could be sure of a seat in every other election, and, with a considerable proprietorial interest in Suffolk, was left with an embarrassment of possibilities whenever a new parliament was summoned. He sat for Flintshire from 1702 to 1705, for Thetford again from 1705 to 1708, and for Suffolk from 1708 until leaving parliament for good at the accession of George II in 1727.

Early in his political career Hanmer gravitated to the veteran tory Lord Nottingham, whose emphatically protestant churchmanship and stern devotion to principle he emulated. In the parliamentary session of 1703–4 he defended Nottingham over the ‘Scotch plot’. He soon became one of the leading spokesmen for the tories in the lower house, and in November 1704 he took part in the campaign to ‘tack’ the Occasional Conformity Bill to supply. His reversion to the rotten borough of Thetford in the 1705 election did not represent a retreat from the political storm over the tack; it was his turn to step down in Flintshire, and he did not wish to intrude on the tory candidates for Suffolk. In any case, there was something about his character and deportment that earned him respect even from political enemies and kept him immune from partisan reprisals. The ministry may have entertained hopes of him, for he was the only tory upon whom an honorary degree was conferred during the queen's visit to Cambridge University in 1705, in a public blessing of the whig candidates in the university constituency.

Such a tentative advance had no effect on Hanmer's intransigence. When parliament met he seconded the nomination of the tory William Bromley as speaker, against the court nominee, and then brought forward the so-called Hanover motion, to invite over to England the heir presumptive to the throne—a blatantly opportunist manoeuvre designed to embarrass the ministry. Nevertheless, the secretary of state, Robert Harley, canvassed his support for successive schemes of ministerial reconstruction, designed to free the queen from dependence on the parties by creating a coalition of moderates and ambitious politicians of the second rank. Hanmer's parliamentary conduct betrayed little evidence of moderation, but his self-regard was enough to afford hope that he might be detached from the tory party chieftains by flattery. This hope survived several disappointments: on one occasion, although ‘engaged’ by a ‘great manager’ to make a motion for a generous public settlement on the duke of Marlborough, Hanmer developed cold feet, excused himself, and sat silent during the debate (Joseph Addison to George Stepney, 7 Jan 1707, MS sold at Sothebys, 21 July 1980). Matters came to a head during the winter of 1707–8, when Hanmer and other angry tories joined with discontented whigs to keep up a murderous cross-fire on the court. In January 1708 he seems to have accepted a secret offer from Harley to become chancellor of the exchequer in a new administration, although he did not abandon opposition, and indeed made one of the most important speeches of his career in the debate on the war in Spain, on the discrepancy between the number of troops paid for by parliament and the number present at the battle of Almanza. For once his measured style was suited to the occasion, and he was credited with convincing the house to accept a motion of censure. The collapse of Harley's intrigues induced feelings of intense disappointment. Hanmer was initially reluctant to continue in parliament in 1708, but eventually rallied and was able to recover his position as a key figure in the tory opposition.

Hanmer's response to the ministerial changes of 1710 was unenthusiastic. Beyond taking pleasure in the removal of the whig ministry he affected indifference, and spurned offers of a Treasury place. His name was again mentioned in connection with the speaker's chair, but instead he successfully proposed his old friend Bromley. He then made the motion for the loyal address, and was said to have undertaken the drafting entirely by himself, a responsibility that implied a close association with the court. His sentiments at this point are hard to fathom. He shared many of the prejudices of the hotter tories and joined the October Club, but was also inspired by a sincere desire to see the end of the war, which he hoped the ministry would bring about. Thus he consorted openly with ministers, and in May 1711 he found himself expelled from the October Club. Soon afterwards Harley pressed him again to ‘consider ... coming into her Majesty's service’ (Correspondence, 128–9). The response, that ‘his private affairs lie so distorted and dispersed that he cannot at present undertake anything else without very great inconvenience to them’ (William Bromley to Lord Oxford, June 1711, BL, Add. MS 70214), was little more than an excuse to cover concern with safeguarding his virtue, or at least his reputation. At the same time he was happy to recommend several dependants to Harley (now Lord Treasurer Oxford), including his amanuensis, the Irish soldier and playwright William Philips, who was given a secret pension on the Irish establishment.

During the next session Hanmer inched even nearer the court, expressing a willingness ‘to come into the Queen's service’ when the session was over, in an employment which should be ‘useful’ if not necessarily ‘profitable’ (Portland MSS, 5.133). But at the same time he indulged in flourishes of self-assertion. Interpreted cynically, this recovery of reputation with tory extremists may appear as a prerequisite for the work he was to undertake for the ministry in this session, preparing the way for the announcement of the peace preliminaries by his chairmanship of the committee to draft the Commons' ‘representation’ on the war (in which he enjoyed the unofficial assistance of Jonathan Swift). His parliamentary activity was curtailed in April 1712, when he accompanied the duke of Ormond (his wife's cousin) to Flanders. Speculation was rife that Hanmer had a secret commission on behalf of the ministry. More likely, he was anxious to be out of the way when the peace terms came before parliament. In September he made a private visit to Paris, where the French, believing him destined for high office, gave him a splendid reception. An intriguing aspect of his stay was the tentative contact established with Jacobite agents, not by Hanmer himself but through Captain Philips, who proclaimed his own allegiance to the Pretender and repeatedly hinted that something might be hoped from ‘the knight’.

Even though he was disinclined to return to England, Hanmer yielded to entreaties to give his assistance to the government in the next parliamentary session. His political career was now approaching a crisis, and in the summer of 1713 he broke with the ministry in a very public fashion, though, as things turned out, not finally. Concern for the succession and resentment at Oxford's continuing ‘moderation’ are among the reasons that have been adduced by historians. Some contemporaries alleged disappointed ambition, which does not square with Hanmer's repeated refusal of office. A more likely explanation is concern for the maintenance of his political virtue. Whatever the cause, he made his decisive move on 18 June, in speaking against at the third reading of the bill to implement the French commercial treaty. Hanmer's motives for selecting this issue are equally problematic: he may have been alarmed at the general unpopularity of the treaty or feared for the particular consequences for his constituents. The loss of the bill prompted Oxford to swift action, with the result that five days later Hanmer was to be found proposing an address of thanks over the peace and requesting the renegotiation of the commercial treaty. Whigs accused him of having been bought off. Certainly, before he left for Suffolk he waited on Oxford to receive his ‘commands’ (Hanmer to Oxford, 1 Aug 1713, BL, Add. MS 70230), and in the ministerial reorganization of the summer he was offered the speakership, the only place he could accept while claiming he had preserved his liberty.

In the 1714 parliament, in which he was elected unopposed as speaker, Hanmer stood at the head of a group of Hanoverian tories, variously estimated at between thirty and eighty, some his personal followers, and others looking to him as the ablest spokesman for their point of view. His own devotion to the protestant succession is unquestionable, reinforced as it was by an attachment to the Church of England and to notions of political liberty. At first he was prepared to trust Oxford, even after his own proposal to revive the Hanover motion had been rejected out of hand at a presessional management meeting. But in April his position changed, possibly because of the shift in the centre of gravity of the ministry, where Lord Bolingbroke was becoming more assertive. Hanmer attended a meeting with Nottingham and other Hanoverian tories at which it was decided ‘to live in friendship with the Whigs and concert with them measures to secure the Protestant succession’ (Macpherson, 2.586–9), and on 15 April, in a debate in committee of the whole on the state of the nation, he nailed his colours to the mast in proclaiming that the protestant succession was indeed in danger under the present administration.

When Queen Anne died Hanmer had to be recalled from Flintshire to preside over the Commons. The arrival of King George was the occasion for more expressions of maidenly modesty in refusing office. Along with other Hanoverian tories he was urged to take his part in a mixed ministry, albeit in a subordinate position to the whigs. Once he was observed talking to the prince of Wales, who ‘seemed to argue very closely, and had a world of action, and Sir Thomas's answers were obliging smiles’ (Wentworth Papers, 423). Privately he confided that:

he could not in prudence accept places which did not admit him into his Majesty's scheme of government, but when conferred on him would lose him the dependence of his friends, and then leave him at the mercy of his enemies. (BL, Add. MS 47027, fol. 179)

In 1715 Hanmer resumed his position as one of the leaders of the tory party in the Commons, making a notable speech, for example, against the Septennial Bill in 1716. At the same time he remained a committed Hanoverian, and in 1717 he attached himself to the Leicester House faction, clustered around the reversionary interest of the prince of Wales. By 1719 he had supposedly become ‘the greatest man in England with the Prince’ and ‘the mouth of that interest’ (John Menzies to the Old Pretender, 7 April 1721, Royal Archives, Stuart MS 53/13). But with the reconciliation in the royal family came the demise of Leicester House. Hanmer's political importance rapidly declined, though he was tipped for office in a putative ministerial reconstruction in 1725. He seems to have become estranged from the prince, whose decision to continue with Robert Walpole as prime minister in 1727 effectively ended any prospects of advancement.

During Hanmer's lengthy retirement from political life he combined the cultivation of his estate with some insipid literary efforts. Two anonymous works have been ascribed to him, A Review of the Text of ... ‘Paradise Lost’ (1733) and Some Remarks on the Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark (1736), and in 1743–4 he published an utterly unremarkable edition of Shakespeare. He also devoted considerable time to the weeding of his private papers, to preserve for posterity only the letters which showed his character in a favourable light, and in particular those beseeching him in vain to honour government with his talents. This tranquil rustication was marred by an unhappy second marriage in 1725 (the duchess of Grafton having died two years earlier), this time to a much younger woman, Elizabeth Folkes (d. 1741), who ran off with the son of one of his friends and again made him appear ridiculous. He died at Mildenhall on 7 May 1746 and was buried at Hanmer. He had no children: the baronetcy became extinct, and the estates were divided between his sister's family, who received the Suffolk property, and a cousin, who inherited in Wales. ‘A sensible, impracticable, honest, formal, disagreeable man’, according to Lord Hervey (Hervey, 1.78), he passed away ‘without having much obliged or disobliged any person or party, and rather pitied than either hated or beloved’ (Coxe, 2.48–9).

D. W. Hayton

(D. W. Hayton, ‘Hanmer, Sir Thomas, fourth baronet (1677–1746)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2005 [http://proxy.bostonathenaeum.org:2055/view/article/12205, accessed 14 April 2016])