page_title: John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale
section_title: The Cabal Ministry
hierarchical_section_title: John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale / The Cabal Ministry
caption_attribution_description: English: The Maitland tomb, St Mary's Church, Haddington
context_page_description: John Maitland, 1st Duke and 2nd Earl of Lauderdale, 3rd Lord Thirlestane KG PC, was a Scottish politician, and leader within the Cabal Ministry.
context_section_description: His own power was now at its height, and his position as the favourite of Charles II, controlled by no considerations of patriotism or statesmanship, and completely independent of the English parliament, recalled the worst scandals and abuses of the Stuart administration before the English Civil War.
  He was a member of the Cabal Ministry, but took little part in English affairs, and being a Presbyterian was not entrusted with the first secret Treaty of Dover, but gave personal support to Charles in his degrading demands for pensions from Louis XIV. On 2 May 1672 he was created Duke of Lauderdale and Earl of March, and on 3 June Knight of the Garter.
  In 1673, on the resignation of James, Duke of York in consequence of the Test Act, he was appointed a Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty. In October he visited Scotland to suppress the dissenters and obtain money for the Third Anglo-Dutch War. The intrigues organised by Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, against his power in his absence, and the attacks made upon him in the House of Commons in January 1674 and April 1675, were alike rendered futile by the steady support of Charles and James.
  On 25 June 1674 he was created Earl of Guilford and Baron Petersham in the Peerage of England. His ferocious measures having failed to suppress the conventicles in Scotland, he summoned to his aid in 1677 a band of Highlanders, who were sent into the western country. In consequence, a large party of Scottish nobles went to London, made common cause with the English Country Faction, and compelled Charles to order the disbandment of the marauders. In May 1678 another demand made in the Commons for Lauderdale's removal was defeated due to court influence, by a margin of only a single vote.
  He maintained his triumphs almost to the end. In Scotland, which he visited immediately after this victory in the Parliament of England, he overbore all opposition to the king's demands for money. Another address for his removal from the Commons in England was suppressed by the dissolution of parliament on 26 May 1679, and a renewed attack upon him, by the Scottish party and Shaftesbury's faction combined, also failed. Later that summer on 22 June 1679 the last attempt of the Covenanters was suppressed at the Battle of Bothwell Brig.
caption: The Maitland tomb, St Mary's Church, Haddington
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