pay, and petitioned the Protector. The major-general remonstrated against any leniency being shown to him, saying: ‘He is in this county termed the devil of Newark; he exercised more cruelty than any, nay, than all of that garrison, to the parliament soldiers when they fell into his power’ (Thurloe Papers, iv. 345, 354, 364). At the Restoration Lexington made several unsuccessful attempts to get compensation for his losses out of the estate of Colonel Hutchinson, and after many petitions succeeded in obtaining the repayment of the Newark loan (Life of Col. Hutchinson, ii. 260, 268, 273; Brown, Annals of Newark, p. 187).
Lexington died on 13 Oct. 1668, and was buried at Aram. He married three times: first, on 14 April 1616, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir George Manners of Haddon Hall, and sister of John, eighth earl of Rutland; secondly, Anne, daughter of Sir Guy Palmes of Lindley, and widow of Sir Thomas Browne, bart., of Walcott, Northamptonshire; and thirdly, on 21 Feb. 1661, Mary, daughter of Sir Anthony St. Leger, warden of the king's mint; she died in 1669, leaving a son Robert, second baron Lexington [q. v.]
[G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage, vol. v.]
SUTTON, ROBERT, second Baron Lexington (1661–1723), born at Averham Park, Nottinghamshire, in 1661, was the only son of Robert, first baron Lexington [q. v.], by his third wife, Mary, daughter of Sir Anthony St. Leger, knt. He succeeded his father as second Baron Lexington in October 1668, and his mother died in the following year. He entered the army when young, and took his seat in the House of Lords for the first time on 9 May 1685 (Journals of the House of Lords, xiv. 4). He appears to have resigned his commission in June 1686, as a protest against the illegal conduct of James II (Luttrell, Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs, 1857, i. 381). He attended the meetings of the Convention parliament in 1689, and gave his vote in favour of the joint sovereignty of the Prince and Princess of Orange. In June 1689 he was sent by William on a mission to the elector of Brandenburg, and on 17 March 1692 was sworn a member of the privy council. Lexington had been appointed gentleman of the horse to Princess Anne; but ‘when the difference happened between her and King William’ he left her service, and shortly afterwards became a lord of the king's bedchamber (Memoirs of the Secret Services of John Macky, 1733, p. 101). In 1693 Lexington served as a volunteer in Flanders (Luttrell, iii. 92, 99), and later on in the same year was selected with Hop, the pensionary of Amsterdam, to mediate between the rival claims of the house of Lunenburg and the princes of Anhalt with respect to the succession to the estates of the Duke of Saxe-Lunenburg. In January 1694 Lexington was nominated colonel of a horse regiment (ib. iii. 250), and in June following he went as envoy-extraordinary to Vienna, where he remained in that capacity until the conclusion of the peace of Ryswick in 1697. Though appointed one of the joint plenipotentiaries, Lexington remained at Vienna while his colleagues were at Ryswick (Calendar of Treasury Papers, 1697–1701–2, p. 528; Lexington Papers, p. 235). He was nominated a member of the council of trade and plantations on 9 June 1699, and continued to serve on that board until his dismissal in May 1702. As one of the lords of the bedchamber he was in frequent attendance upon the king, and was present when William died, on 8 March 1702 (see Rapin and Tindal, History of England, 1732–47, iii. 507).
Lexington appears to have lived in retirement during the greater part of Queen Anne's reign. After the opening of the congress of Utrecht he was sent as ambassador to Madrid to conduct the negotiations with Spain. He arrived there in August 1712, and obtained from Philip V the renunciation of his claims to the crown of France, returning to England, on account of his health, towards the close of 1713. Tindal states that, on Oxford's removal from the post of lord high treasurer, Lexington was named as one of those who were likely to hold high office in Bolingbroke's ministry (ib. vol. iv. pt. i. p. 368; see also Swift's Works, 1814, xvi. 196). Whatever may have been Bolingbroke's intentions, which were frustrated by Anne's sudden death, it is certain that Lexington was by no means disposed to promote the cause of the Pretender (Lexington Papers, pp. 8–9). Though he was severely censured in the report of Walpole's secret committee for his share in the peace negotiations, no proceedings were taken against him (Parl. Hist. vol. vii. app. pp. ii–ccxxii). From an undated letter in the British Museum, it appears that Lexington declined a post of honour offered him by the king through the Duke of Newcastle, thinking that it would not ‘look well in the eye of the world to be seeking new honours’ when he was ‘incapacited to injoy even those that’ he had (Addit. MS. 32686, f. 217). Lexington died at Averham Park on 19 Sept. 1723, aged 62, and was buried in
