Thomas Osborne, First Duke of Leeds

English politician and statesman

• Born: February 20, 1632
• Birthplace: Kiveton, Yorkshire, England
• Died: July 26, 1712
• Place of death: Easton Neston, Northamptonshire, England

Under King Charles II, Osborne was instrumental in bringing about the British two-party system by creating a court party in Parliament, which developed into the Tory Party. Later, he was the subject of two impeachment proceedings and played a pivotal role in the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Early Life

Thomas Osborne’s father, the first Baronet Osborne, was a staunch Royalist from Yorkshire, where his son was born. The younger Osborne spent much of his formative years in Paris. After his father’s death in 1647 and his succession to the estates and to the title of second Baronet Osborne, however, he spent more time in Yorkshire. In 1653, Osborne married Lady Bridget Bertie, daughter of the earl of Lindsay.

While in Yorkshire, Osborne became a protégé of George Villiers, second duke of Buckingham, and as the duke’s star rose, so in turn did Osborne’s. As an openly acknowledged monarchist, Osborne’s political career did not, of course, begin until after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. Moreover, his family’s experiences during the English Civil War and the Cromwellian Protectorate had left him with a firmly Anglican viewpoint and a lifelong aversion to Protestant Dissent, which he associated with the anti-Royalist radicalism of the 1640’s and 1650’s and, hence, with treasonous beliefs and actions.

Life’s Work

In 1661, Osborne was named to his first public office, high sheriff of Yorkshire. In 1665, he was elected member of Parliament for York. An ardent Cavalier parliamentarian, he allied himself to the high Anglican faction and was among those who persistently assailed the comparatively moderate positions of Edward Hyde, first earl of Clarendon , and James Butler, first duke of Ormond, who were, respectively, the lord chancellor of England and the lord lieutenant of Ireland. Osborne’s first significant government position was joint treasurer to the Royal Navy.

Osborne’s attacks on Clarendon became progressively more strident, and in 1667, he joined with Buckingham and others to press for the lord chancellor’s impeachment. Following Clarendon’s flight and exile to France, Buckingham formed the famous ruling committee known as the Cabal with Henry Bennet, first earl of Arlington; Anthony Ashley Cooper (later first earl of Shaftesbury); John Maitland, second earl (later first duke) of Lauderdale; and Thomas Clifford (later first Baron Clifford of Chudleigh). Ormond was dismissed as lord lieutenant of Ireland in 1669, by which time the Cabal’s grip on British political life had tightened. Throughout the Cabal’s years of dominance, Osborne was never far from the seat of power, though he was not yet within the inner circle. The king granted him the titles of Baron Osborne of Kiveton, Viscount Osborne of Dunblane, and Viscount Latimer of Danby.

In 1673, Osborne became lord treasurer, and the next year, he was created earl of Danby. When the Cabal fell apart in 1674, Osborne was well-positioned, with the support of King Charles, effectively to function as the nation’s chief political power broker. He became a sort of proto-prime minister. During the time he was in the ascendant (1674-1678), Osborne developed a basic political party structure that was anchored around his supporters in Parliament and at court, who adhered to a high Anglican and anti-French ideology.

It was not long before Osborne’s pro-Anglican and anti-Dissenter policies provided the impetus for the formation of an organized opposition. Those who, loosely speaking, followed Osborne’s orientation would eventually solidify into the Tory Party. Those, on the other hand, who favored constitutional limits on royal power enforced by Parliament, and who subscribed to pro-Dissenter policies or favored religious toleration, formed the kernel of what became the Whig (or “Country”) Party. The Whigs would be led by the first earl of Shaftesbury, a former member of the Cabal.

The most controversial measure in the early years of these parties’ evolution was the Test Act of 1673, which excluded all non-Anglicans from public office. The act was aimed in the first instance at Catholics, but Protestant Dissenters who refused to take Anglican Communion and affirm that the British monarch was the head of the Church of England were also disenfranchised by the law.

Osborne was equally anti-Catholic and anti-French; his primary ally was Sir William Temple, British ambassador to the United Provinces of the Netherlands. It was at this time that, through Temple, Osborne began to cultivate a close working relationship with William III, stadtholder of the Netherlands. In 1678, he was in large part responsible for bringing about William’s marriage to Princess Mary, daughter of King Charles II’s brother, James, duke of York, the heir to the English throne.

The strength of Osborne’s commitment to the Protestant alliance with the Dutch was demonstrated during the Franco-Dutch Wars, when he persuaded the king to mobilize an army to be sent to the aid of the Netherlands. These troops were to be dispatched to protect Dutch territory from further attacks by King Louis XIV of France. The troops were not used, however, and a large number of them remained in England. It was considered necessary to avoid disbanding the units, in case the peace negotiations then under way (which ultimately resulted in the Treaty of Nijmegan) broke down. However, the continued presence of a mobilized army on English soil aroused suspicions that a Royalist, Pro-Catholic coup was in the making. Osborne was a major object of these suspicions.

The hysteria engendered by the Popish Plot of 1678 and the full disclosure of Osborne’s role in the Crown’s secret negotiations with France proved to be his downfall: He was impeached, attainted for treason, and held in the Tower of London. Only the king’s intervention prevented his execution, and he remained incarcerated until 1685, when the duke of York acceded to the throne as King James II and issued an amnesty.

Osborne was never able to regain favor with the new monarch and became increasingly disgruntled over James II’s pro-Catholic, anti-Anglican tendencies. By 1687, Osborne was in contact with agents of the king’s Protestant son-in-law, William III, stadtholder of the Netherlands. By this time, too, he had rekindled his influence in Parliament, especially in the House of Lords, and had once again become a principal Tory leader. During the crisis of 1688, Osborne was among seven significant parliamentary leaders to sign an invitation to William III to invade England, an event that precipitated the Glorious Revolution and paved the way for the accession of William and Mary to the throne.

Receiving some measure of favor from the new joint monarchs, Osborne was made marquis of Carmarthen (1689), first duke of Leeds (1694), and lord president of the Privy Council. However, he would never approach the prestige and power that he had enjoyed in the 1670’s as Charles II’s chief minister.

In 1695, Daniel Finch, second earl of Nottingham, launched a determined campaign in Parliament against the government’s foreign and domestic policies. As allegations of incompetence and corruption became ever more widespread, Osborne was included in the net. He was again impeached, this time on charges of bribery in collusion with officials of the British East India Company. As Charles II had done earlier, King William rescued Osborne (and others) by ordering the adjournment of Parliament in 1696. Though Osborne remained for a while as president of the Privy Council, relations between him and the king became increasingly strained. In 1699, after voting in favor of dismissing William’s Dutch Guards, Osborne was dismissed from office. Although he continued to be sporadically active in politics and even reestablished some small measure of influence upon the succession to the throne of Queen Anne (1702), he proved to be a spent force, and his death in 1712 attracted little notice.

Significance

Though in the end he was tarnished by scandal and politically marginalized, at the height of his power, Thomas Osborne, first duke of Leeds, played the pivotal, pioneering role in bringing together the dual-partisan political system of England. His actions, at the very time when Parliament decisively assumed a dominant role in the British government and put an end to the threat of absolutist monarchy, shaped the form that Parliament was to take and the means by which political power would function in Britain from then on. Moreover, Osborne’s presence as a supporter of William III and Mary II contributed significantly to the legitimacy and success of the Glorious Revolution.

Bibliography

Coward, Barry. The Stuart Age: England, 1603-1714. Harlow, England: Pearson Education, 2003. Considering that this is mainly intended as a general work on the Stuart era, it contains an astonishingly thorough depiction of Danby’s political career.

Miller, John. The Restoration and the England of Charles II. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, 1997. Views Danby’s overall policy as nostalgic and extremely divisive and stresses his role as a champion of high church Anglicanism.

Prall, Stuart. The Bloodless Revolution: England, 1688. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972. A study that actually goes beyond the narrow scope of the title and includes a good analysis of Danby’s virtues and shortcomings as a government minister political manager, plus his pivotal role in the events of 1688-1689.

Seaward, Paul. The Restoration, 1660-1688. London: Macmillan Education, 1991. Holds a fairly negative few of Danby’s methods of parliamentary management and concludes that these methods were, in the end, more counter-productive than effective.