[354b] Daniel Finch, second Earl of Nottingham, a staunch Tory, had quarrelled with the Government and the Court. On Dec. 7, 1711, he carried, by six votes, an amendment to the Address, to the effect that no peace would be acceptable which left Spain in the possession of the House of Bourbon. Harley’s counter-stroke was the creation of twelve new peers. The Whigs rewarded Nottingham by withdrawing their opposition to the Occasional Conformity Bill:
[354c] This “Song” begins:
“An orator dismal of Nottinghamshire,
Who had forty years let out his conscience for hire.”
[355] The Conduct of the Allies.
[356] Robert Bertie, Lord Willoughby de Eresby, and fourth Earl of Lindsey, was created Marquis of Lindsay in 1706, and Duke of Ancaster and Kesteven in 1715. He died in 1723.
[357a] Lady Sunderland (see p. [267]) and Lady Rialton, ladies of the bed-chamber to the Queen.
[357b] Hugh Cholmondeley (died 1724), the second Viscount, was created Viscount Malpas and Earl of Cholmondeley in 1706, and in 1708 was appointed Treasurer of Her Majesty’s Household, an office which he held until 1713, in spite of his Whig sympathies. “Good for nothing, so far as ever I knew,” Swift wrote of him.
[357c] Prov. xxv. 3.
[360b] Thomas Parker, afterwards created Earl of Macclesfield, was appointed Lord Chief-Justice in March 1710. In September 1711 he declined Harley’s offer of the Lord Chancellorship, a post which he accepted under a Whig Government in the next reign.