| Description | Henry Bennet, 1st Earl of Arlington KG, PC (1618 – 28 July 1685)
He was the son of Sir John Bennet of Dawley, Middlesex, by Dorothy, daughter of Sir John Crofts of Little Saxham, Suffolk. He was the younger brother of John Bennet, 1st Baron Ossulston; his sister was Elizabeth Bennet who married Sir Robert Carr (or Kerr). He was baptized at Little Saxham, Suffolk, in 1618, and was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. He gained some distinction as a scholar and a poet, and was originally destined for holy orders. In 1643, he was secretary to Lord Digby at Oxford, and was employed as a messenger between the queen and Ormonde in Ireland.
Subsequently he took up arms for the king, and received a wound on the bridge of his nose in the skirmish at Andover in 1644. The scar resulting from this wound was prominent because Arlington took to covering it with black plaster. After the defeat of the royal cause he travelled in France and Italy, joined the exiled royal family in 1650, and in 1654 became official secretary to James on the recommendation of Charles, who had already been attracted by his "pleasant and agreeable humour."He was said by some to have been the father of an illegitimate child by Lucy Walter
In March 1657, he was knighted, and the same year was sent as Charles's agent to Madrid, where he remained, endeavouring to obtain assistance for the royal cause, till after the Restoration. On his return to England in 1661 he was made keeper of the privy purse, and became the prime favourite. One of his duties was the procuring and management of the royal mistresses, in which his success gained him great credit. Allying himself with Lady Castlemaine, he encouraged Charles's increasing dislike of Clarendon; and he was made secretary of state in October 1662 in spite of the opposition of Clarendon, who had to find him a seat in parliament. He represented Callington from 1661 till 1665, but appears never to have taken part in debate.
He served subsequently on the committees for explaining the Irish Act of Settlement and for Tangier. In 1665 he obtained a peerage as Baron Arlington,[3] (properly Harlington, in Middlesex) and in 1667 was appointed one of the postmasters-general. The control of foreign affairs was entrusted to him, and he was chiefly responsible for the attack on the Smyrna fleet and for the Second Anglo-Dutch War, during which he married the beautiful (and, ironically, Dutch) Elisabeth van Nassau-Beverweert (28 December 1633 – 18 January 1718) in March 1665. Elisabeth was the daughter of Louis of Nassau, Lord of De Lek and Beverweerd, the natural son of stadtholder Maurice of Orange. In 1665 he advised Charles to grant liberty of conscience, but this was merely a concession to gain money during the war; and he showed great activity later in oppressing the nonconformists.
On the death of Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton, whose administration he had attacked, his great ambition, the treasurership, was not satisfied; and on the fall of Clarendon, against whom he had intrigued, he did not, though becoming a member of the Cabal Ministry, obtain the supreme influence which he had expected; for Buckingham first equalled, and soon surpassed him, in the royal favour. With Buckingham a sharp rivalry sprang up, and they only combined forces when endeavouring to bring about some evil measure, such as the ruin of the great Ormonde, who was an opponent of their policy and their schemes. Another object of jealousy to Arlington was Sir William Temple, who achieved a great popular success in 1668 by the conclusion of the Triple Alliance; Arlington endeavoured to procure his removal to Madrid, and entered with alacrity into Charles's plans for destroying the whole policy embodied in the treaty, and for making terms with France. He refused a bribe from Louis XIV, but allowed his wife to accept a gift of 10,000 crowns; in 1670 he was the only minister besides the Roman Catholic Clifford to whom the first secret treaty of Dover (May 1670), one clause of which provided for Charles's declaration of his conversion to Romanism, was confided; and he was the chief actor in the deception practised upon the rest of the council. |