Family and Education

b. c.1680, 2nd s. of Joseph Micklethwait of Swine by Constantine, da. of Sir Thomas Middleton, M.P., of Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex; bro. of Thomas Micklethwait. unm. suc. bro. 28 Mar. 1718; cr. Baron Micklethwaite [I] 14 Aug. 1724; Visct. Micklethwaite [I] 6 June 1727.

Offices Held

Sec. Barbados 1715-18; sec. to Stanhope as chancellor of the Exchequer 1717-18.

Biography

Joseph Micklethwait, like his brother, Thomas, was taken up by the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury and Sir John Cropley. On 16 June 1709, Cropley gave him a letter of recommendation to Stanhope in Spain, stating that

he was placed in Holland by my Lord Shaftesbury and indeed was little from [him] when he was there. My Lord answers for his capacity and good graces ... He has served a full time with great credit to a considerable merchant in Holland, and speaks Dutch as well as English, ... and I am confident will Spanish ere he waits on you with this. He also understands the theory of navigation extremely well. His own fortune is £1,500, and the time being come to choose a place to settle in, my Lord Shaftesbury and I have thought Spain under your protection the best settlement for him, especially now we think a peace must be near at hand, and let me assure you that if you have yourself any thoughts of meddling in trade either whilst you are in Spain or afterwards you will never meet any person more capable to give you satisfaction in any such concern ... His aim and design is to follow trade and be a merchant in whatever part you can best countenance him in.1

He served in Spain as secretary to Stanhope, on whose return to England he became his principal man of business. Succeeding to his brother’s fortune and seat at Arundel in 1718, he voted with the Government. Created an Irish peer in 1724, he was raised to an Irish viscountcy at George II’s accession, when he transferred from Arundel to Hull, five miles from his family estate, continuing to vote with the Government. He died 16 January 1734, leaving his estate to his mistress, Anne Ewer, sister to the wife of the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury. She died in 1738, desiring ‘to be buried in the same private manner Lord Micklethwaite was buried and to lay me in the same vault with him in Hadley churchyard’. She left her property to her own family, whence it eventually passed to the Shaftesbury family.2

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: A. N. Newman

Notes

• 1. Chevening mss by permission of the 7th Earl Stanhope.
• 2. Poulson, Holderness, ii. 2012; 201; PCC 148 Ockham, 233 Henchman.