The Earls of Derby and the Opposition to their Estate Bills in Parliament, 1660–92: Some New Manuscript Sources

Abstract

The bills introduced in 1660–2 by Charles Stanley, 8th earl of Derby, to reclaim property legally conveyed during the interregnum are well known to students of the Restoration, as their ultimate defeat is seen as evidence of the government's wish to enforce ‘indemnity and oblivion’ after the civil war. The leading members of the house of lords opposed to the bill of 1661–2 can be gauged by the protest against its passage on 6 February 1662, which has been readily available to students to consult since the 18th‐century publication of the Lords journals. A number of manuscript lists of the protesters against the bill's passage reveal that the opposition to the bill was even more extensive and politically varied than the protest in the journal suggests, which raises questions of why the printed protest is so incomplete. A voting forecast drawn up by William Stanley, 9th earl of Derby, in 1691, further reminds us of the often‐neglected point that the Stanleys continued to submit bills for the resumption of their hereditary lands well after the disappointment of 1662. Derby's manuscript calculations, though ultimately highly inaccurate, reveal much about how this particular peer envisaged the forces ranged for and against the claims of an old civil war royalist family, a good 40 years after the loss of their land.