Robert Harley was the eldest son of Sir Edward Harley, of Brampton Bryan, in Herefordshire, by his second wife, Abigail, daughter of Nathaniel Stephens, of Essington, in Gloucestershire. He was born at his father’s town-house in Bow Street, Covent Garden, in the year 1661.
The Harley Family.
The Harleys had been a family of considerable note in Herefordshire during several centuries. Many generations of them had sat in the House of Commons, sometimes for boroughs, but not infrequently for their county. Sir Edward sided with the Parliamentarians during the Civil Wars. He was, however, one of those moderate statesmen who, in the words of a once-celebrated clerical adherent and martyr of their party, Christopher Love, judged it ‘an ill way to cure the body politic, by cutting off the political head.’ In due time he also became one of those ‘secluded members’ of the Long Parliament who published the ‘Remonstrance’ of 1656, and who were then as strenuous—though far less successful—in opposing what they deemed to be the tyranny of the Protector, as they had formerly been in opposing the tyranny of the King. Sir Edward Harley promoted the restoration of Charles the Second, and sat in all the Parliaments of that reign. He distinguished himself as a defender of liberty of conscience in unpropitious times; and he won, in a high degree, the respect of men who sat beside him in the House of Commons, but were rarely counted with him upon a division.
The first public act of Robert Harley of which a record has been kept is his appearance with his father, in 1688, at the head of an armed band of tenantry and retainers, assembled in Herefordshire to support the cause of the Prince of Orange, when the news had come of the Prince’s arrival in Torbay.
Harley’s Parliamentary career.
In the first Parliament of William and Mary Robert Harley sat for Tregony. To the second he was returned by the burgesses of New Radnor. The first reported words of his which appear in the debates were spoken in the course of a discussion upon the heads of a ‘Bill of Indemnity.’ ‘I think,’ said he on this occasion, ‘that the King in his message has led us. He shews us how to proceed for satisfaction of justice. There is a crime [of which] God says, He will not pardon it. |Grey’s Debates, vol. ix, p. 247.| ’Tis the shedding of innocent blood. A gentleman said that the West was “a shambles.” What made that shambles? It began in law. It was a common discourse among the Ministers that “the King cannot have justice.”’ The debate on the Bill of Indemnity of 1690 may be looked upon as, in some sort, the foreshadowing of a long spell of political conflict, in which Robert Harley was to take a conspicuous share. Twenty seven years afterwards the strife of parties was to enter on a new stage. Some of the men who acted as the political Mentors of the new member of 1689–90 were to live long enough to clamour for his execution as a traitor, and, on their failure to produce any adequate proof that he was guilty, were to console themselves by insisting on his exclusion from the ‘Act of Grace’ of 1717.
Harley won his earliest distinctions in political life by assiduous, patient, and even drudging labour on questions of finance. |MS. Harl. 7524, f. 139, seqq.| During six years, at least, he worked zealously as one of the ‘Commissioners for stating the Public Accounts of the Kingdom.’ In parliamentary debates on the public establishments and expenditure he took a considerable share. As a speaker he had no brilliancy. His usual tone and manner, we are told, were somewhat listless and drawling. But occasionally he would speak with a certain pith and incisiveness. |Grey’s Debates, vol. x, p. 268.| Thus, in November, 1692, in a discussion on naval affairs, he said—‘We have had a glorious victory at sea. But although we have had the honour, the enemy has had the profit. They take our merchant ships.’ Again, in the following year, when supporting the Bill for more frequent Parliaments, he spoke thus:—‘A standing Parliament can never be a true representative. Men are much altered after they have been here some time. They are no longer the same men that were sent up to us.’
Of the truth of that saying, in one of its senses, Harley became himself a salient instance. Bred a Whig, and during his early years acting commonly with the Whigs, his party ties were gradually relaxed. By temper and mental constitution he was always inclined to moderate measures. As the party waxed fiercer and fiercer, and as its policy came to be more and more obviously the weapon of its hatreds, Harley soon lay open to the reproach of being a trimmer. The growing breach became evident enough in the course of the debates on the treason of Sir John Fenwick, in November, 1696. |His Speech on the attainder of Fenwick.| He then argued, with force and earnestness, that atrocity in a crime is no justification or excuse for violence and unscrupulousness in a prosecutor. Some of his applications of that sound doctrine are very questionable. But it is to his honour that he preached moderation with consistency. He did not bend it to the exigencies of the party he was approaching, any more than to those of the party from which he was gradually withdrawing himself.
Meanwhile he had signalised his powers in another way. By long study he had acquired a considerable knowledge of parliamentary law and precedent. He had taken his full share in the work of committees. In February, 1701, he was proposed for the Speakership, in opposition to Sir Thomas Littleton. He had a large body of supporters, nor were they found exclusively in the Tory ranks. The King sent for Littleton, and told him that he thought it would be for the public service that he should give way to the choice of Mr. Harley in his stead. But the election was carried by a majority of only four votes. ‘It is a great encouragement to his party,’ wrote Townshend to Walpole, who was then in the country, ‘and no small mortification to the Whigs.’ Harley retained the Speakership until the third session of the first Parliament of Queen Anne.
Whatever may have been the ‘mortification of the Whigs’ at his elevation, it is certain that at this time Harley laboured zealously for the establishment of the Protestant succession to the throne. |Harley and the Act of Succession.| |1701. March.| In the preparation, facilitating, and passing of that measure he took so influential a part that, afterwards, he was able to say, in the face of his opponents, when they were most numerous and most embittered, ‘I had the largest hand in settling the succession of the House of Hanover.’ The assertion met with no denial.