Thomas Osborne, 1st Duke of Leeds, (20 February 1632 – 26 July 1712) was an English Tory statesman. During the reign of Charles II of England, he was the leading figure in the English government for roughly five years in the mid-1670s. Osborne fell out of favour due to corruption and other scandals. He was impeached and eventually imprisoned in the Tower of London for five years until James II of England acceded in 1685. In 1688, he was one of the Immortal Seven who invited William of Orange to depose James II during the Glorious Revolution. Osborne was again the leading figure in England's government for a few years in the early 1690s before dying in 1712.
Osborne was the son of Sir Edward Osborne, Baronet of Kiveton, Yorkshire, and his second wife Anne Walmesley, widow of Thomas Middleton; she was a niece of Henry Danvers, 1st Earl of Danby. Thomas Osborne was born in 1632. He was the grandson of Sir Hewett Osborne and great-grandson of Sir Edward Osborne, Lord Mayor of London, who, according to the accepted account, while an apprentice to Sir William Hewett, clothworker and lord mayor in 1559, made the fortunes of the family by leaping from London Bridge into the river and rescuing Anne (d. 1585), the daughter of his employer, whom he afterwards married.
Osborne's father was a staunch Royalist who served as Vice President of the Council of the North. Thomas's elder half-brother Edward was killed in an accident in 1638, when the family home roof collapsed on him; according to a family legend, Thomas survived because he had been searching for his cat under a table at the time of the disaster. Their father, a loving parent, is said never to have fully recovered from the loss.
Osborne, the future Lord Treasurer, succeeded to the baronetcy and estates in Yorkshire on his father Edward's death in 1647, and, after unsuccessfully courting his cousin Dorothy Osborne, married Lady Bridget, daughter of Montagu Bertie, 2nd Earl of Lindsey, in 1651.
Introduction to public life, 1665–1674
Osborne was introduced to public life and court by his neighbour in Yorkshire, George Villiers, 2nd Duke of Buckingham. In 1661 he was appointed High Sheriff of Yorkshire and was then elected MP for York in 1665. He made the "first step in his future rise" by joining Buckingham in his attack on the Earl of Clarendon in 1667. In 1668 he was appointed joint Treasurer of the Navy with Sir Thomas Lyttelton, and subsequently sole treasurer. He succeeded Sir William Coventry as commissioner for the state treasury in 1669, and in 1673 was appointed a commissioner for the admiralty. He was created Viscount Osborne in the Scottish peerage on 2 February 1673, and a privy councillor on 3 May. On 19 June, on the resignation of Lord Clifford, he was appointed lord treasurer and made Baron Osborne of Kiveton and Viscount Latimer in the peerage of England, while on 27 June 1674 he was created Earl of Danby, by Charles II when he surrendered his Scottish peerage of Osborne to his third son Peregrine Osborne; (he was on his mother's side a great-nephew of the previous Earl of Danby). He was appointed the same year lord-lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and in 1677 received the Garter.
Leading the King's government, 1674–1678
Danby was a statesman of very different calibre from the leaders of the Cabal Ministry, Buckingham and Arlington. His principal aim was no doubt the maintenance and increase of his own influence and party, but his ambition corresponded with definite political views. A member of the old Cavalier party, a confidential friend and correspondent of Lauderdale, he desired to strengthen the executive and the royal authority. At the same time, he was a keen partisan of the established church, an enemy of both Roman Catholics and dissenters, and an opponent of all toleration. He is often credited with inventing "Parliamentary management", the first conscious effort to convert a mass of country backbenchers into an organised Government lobby. While he made full use of patronage for this purpose, he undoubtedly regarded patronage as an essential tool of Royal policy; as he wrote in 1677 "nothing is more necessary than for the world to see that he (the King) will reward and punish".
In 1673 Osborne opposed Charles II's Royal Declaration of Indulgence, supported the Test Act, and spoke against the proposal for giving relief to the dissenters. In June 1675 he signed the paper of advice drawn up by the bishops for the king, urging the rigid enforcement of the laws against the Roman Catholics, their complete banishment from the court, and the suppression of conventicles. A bill introduced by him imposing special taxes on recusants and subjecting Roman Catholic priests to imprisonment for life was only thrown out as too lenient because it secured offenders from the charge of treason. The same year he introduced a Test Oath by which all holding office or seats in either House of Parliament were to declare resistance to the royal power a crime, and promise to abstain from all attempts to alter the government of either church or state; but this extreme measure of retrograde toryism was rejected. The king opposed and also doubted the wisdom and practicability of this "thorough" policy of repression. Danby, therefore, ordered a return from every diocese of the numbers of dissenters, both Catholic and Protestant, in order to prove their insignificance, in order to remove the royal scruples (this became known as the Compton Census). In December 1676 he issued a proclamation for the suppression of coffee-houses because of the "defamation of His Majesty's Government" which took place in them, but this was soon withdrawn. In 1677, to secure Protestantism in case of a Roman Catholic succession, he introduced a bill by which ecclesiastical patronage and the care of the royal children were entrusted to the bishops; but this measure, like the other, was thrown out.
In foreign affairs, Danby showed a stronger grasp of essentials. He desired to increase English trade, credit and power abroad. He was a determined enemy both to Roman influence and to French ascendancy. As he wrote in a memorandum in the summer of 1677, an English Minister must consider only how England's interests stand, and all considerations including trade, religion, and public opinion pointed to the Dutch Republic, not France, as the desired ally. He terminated the war with the Dutch Republic in 1674, and from that time maintained a friendly correspondence with William of Orange. In 1677, after two years of tedious negotiations, he overcame all obstacles, and in spite of James's opposition, and without the knowledge of Louis XIV, effected the marriage between William and Mary that was the germ of the Revolution and the Act of Settlement.
This national policy, however, could only be pursued, and the minister could only maintain himself in power, by acquiescence in the king's personal relations with the king of France settled by the Treaty of Dover in 1670, which included Charles's acceptance of a pension, and bound him to a policy exactly opposite to Danby's, one furthering French and Roman ascendancy. Though not a member of the Cabal ministry, and in spite of his own denial, Danby must, it would seem, have known of the relations between King Charles and King Louis after becoming Lord Treasurer. In any case, in 1676, together with Lauderdale alone, he consented to a treaty between Charles and Louis according to which the foreign policy of both kings was to be conducted in union, and Charles received an annual subsidy of £100,000. In 1678 Charles, taking advantage of the growing hostility to France in the nation and parliament, raised his price, and Danby by his directions demanded through Ralph Montagu (afterwards Duke of Montagu) six million livres a year (£300,000) for three years.
Simultaneously with negotiating the royal policy of an Anglo-French alliance, Danby guided through parliament a bill for raising money for a war against France; a league was concluded with the Dutch Republic, and troops were actually sent there. That Danby, in spite of his compromising transactions on the King's behalf, remained in intention faithful to the national interests, appears clear from the hostility with which he was still regarded by France. In 1676, Ruvigny described Danby to Louis XIV as intensely antagonistic to France and French interests, and as doing his utmost to prevent the treaty of that year. In 1678, on the rupture of relations between Charles and Louis, a splendid opportunity of paying off old scores was afforded Louis by disclosing Danby's participation in Charles's demands for French gold.