page_title: Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland
section_title: Career under William III
hierarchical_section_title: Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland / Life / Career under William III
caption_attribution_description: English: The second Earl, Robert Spencer.
context_page_description: Robert Spencer, 2nd Earl of Sunderland, KG, PC was an English nobleman and politician of the Spencer family. An able and gifted statesman, his caustic temper and belief in absolute monarchy nevertheless made him numerous enemies. He was forced to flee England in 1688, but later established himself with the new regime after the Revolution of that year. Subsequently, he took on a more disinterested role as an adviser to the Crown, seeking neither office nor favour. He evinced no party loyalty, but was devoted to his country's interests, as he saw them. By the notoriously lax standards of the Restoration Court, his private life was remarkably free from scandal, which won him favour in the more sober post-Revolution state.
context_section_description: Sunderland escaped in disguise to Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where he lay low for some time, before being officially arrested, and immediately released, by the Dutch authorities. Offering his service to the Prince of Orange, he moved on to Utrecht, where he remained quietly for the duration of the upheavals in England, when William III and Mary II took the throne. Afterwards he wrote to Sir John Churchill, a prominent English statesman, asking him to "make things easy for a man in my condition". Despite his notorious rudeness and bad temper, Sunderland had a surprising ability to make lasting friendships, and some of his friends, including John Evelyn and Thomas Tenison, had influence with the new régime. His sister Dorothy had married George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax, a key adviser to William III in the early years of his reign, and though he and Sunderland had never been close, Halifax felt obliged from  family solidarity to make a plea on Sunderland's behalf. At first, William III excepted Sunderland from the Indemnity Act of 23 May 1690, but he was allowed to return to the country early the next year. At the same time, he had been excepted from James’ 1692 Instrument of Pardon.
  On his return, Sunderland formally reverted to Anglicanism, taking the oaths in April 1691 and quietly recommenced sitting in the House of Lords. In May William paid a visit to him at his home in Althorp, Northamptonshire, to discuss public affairs. Over the next years the King frequently visited him and gave him confidence, but Sunderland did not dare to fully enter public life until September 1693, when he took a house in the city. He repeatedly advised the King to select all of his ministers from one political party, and eventually effected a reconciliation between William and his sister-in-law, the later Queen Anne. He was an influential adviser, inducing William to accept only Whigs in his government. William, never vindictive, was untroubled by Sunderland's past services to James, who had made it very clear that Sunderland was the one man he would never forgive, though he had made tentative advances towards the fallen King. Most of William's servants had at sometime betrayed him, and he valued Sunderland for his frankness and ability to voice unwelcome truths. It has been suggested that Sunderland's notorious rudeness actually appealed to the King, who detested flattery and could himself be distinctly rude. Once when William said that, while the Whigs personally liked him better than the Tories, the Tories were better friends to Monarchy, Sunderland shrewdly replied: "but you must consider that you are not their Monarch". He even wrote a letter telling the King that if his Ministers were not fit for his service, it was his own fault for not choosing better men.
  This notable lack of ordinary good manners made Sunderland countless enemies: Bishop Burnet wrote that "he had too much heat, both of imagination and of passion, was apt to speak freely both of persons and things, and raised himself many enemies from a contemptuous treatment of those who differed from him". His remarkable ability to adapt to the wishes of three different monarchs was considered a fault rather than a virtue: as Burnet observed "he came by this to lose so much that even those who esteemed his parts depended little on his probity".
  While his own private life was blameless, Sunderland in the winter of 1697–98 became involved in scandal when his daughter Elizabeth's husband, Lord Clancarty, a leading Jacobite, escaped from the Tower of London. The marriage had been arranged between Sunderland and Clancarty's uncle Justin McCarthy, Viscount Mountcashel, when the young bride was but thirteen and her husband only three years older; it had proved a disaster which greatly damaged Sunderland's reputation. Clancarty escaped and found Elizabeth, whom he had not seen since 1684, persuading her to consummate the marriage at long last. Unfortunately, the servants alerted her brother Charles, who had Clancarty arrested. The resulting furore gravely embarrassed Sunderland,
caption: Sunderland in Classical Dress, by Carlo Maratta
exif: {}