ABSTRACT
This chapter will seek to take the history of the Bennet family forward beyond Arlington’s own life. It will do this through first looking at the career and connections of his brother John Bennet (1616–95), created Baron Ossulston in 1682 and his descendants. Bennet’s own heir was Charles Bennet (1674–1722), who succeeded him as 2nd Baron of Ossulston, became a fairly steady Whig under William III and Queen Anne and was further raised in the peerage by George I as earl of Tankerville in October 1714. Before this promotion, the 2nd Baron Ossulston had assiduously maintained a diary throughout the first decade of the eighteenth century recording his social activities and his occasional participation in Parliament. An examination of this diary will trace the social circles this young man travelled in and his political concerns, and will consider whether we can determine a continuing influence of his uncle Arlington. A theme throughout the chapter – as in many other chapters in this volume – will be the importance of family connections and alliances to the continuing influence of the Bennets. John Bennet married into two well-connected families, and had a prestigious stepson in John Sheffield, later duke of Buckingham and Normanby, while Charles Bennet seems to have been influenced more by the legacy of his father-in-law, the notorious Whig rake Ford Grey, earl of Tankerville, than by that of his more courtly and formal uncle. The chapter will consider how this branch of the Bennets became an established Whig dynasty in the eighteenth century.
