The unfavourable character drawn of him by Burnet is certainly unjust and not supported by any evidence.  Pepys, a far more trustworthy judge, speaks of him invariably in terms of respect and approval as a “grave, serious man,” and commends his appointment as treasurer of the navy as that of “a very notable man and understanding and will do things regular and understand them himself."[6] He was a learned and cultivated man and collected a celebrated library, which was dispersed at his death.  Besides the pamphlets already mentioned, he wrote:—­A True Account of the Whole Proceedings betwixt ... the Duke of Ormond and ... the Earl of Anglesey (1682); A Letter of Remarks upon Jovian (1683); other works ascribed to him being The King’s Right of Indulgence in Matters Spiritual ... asserted (1688); Truth Unveiled, to which is added a short Treatise on ...  Transubstantiation (1676); The Obligation resulting from the Oath of Supremacy (1688); and England’s Confusion (1659). Memoirs of Lord Anglesey were published by Sir P. Pett in 1693, but contain little biographical information and were repudiated as a mere imposture by Sir John Thompson (Lord Haversham), his son-in-law, in his preface to Lord Anglesey’s State of the Government in 1694.  The author however of the preface to The Rights of the Lords asserted (1702), while blaming their publication as “scattered and unfinished papers,” admits their genuineness.

Lord Anglesey married Elizabeth, daughter and co-heiress of Sir James Altham of Oxey, Hertfordshire, by whom, besides other children, he had James, who succeeded him, Altham, created Baron Altham, and Richard, afterwards 3rd Baron Altham.  His descendant Richard, the 6th earl (d. 1761), left a son Arthur, whose legitimacy was doubted, and the peerage became extinct.  He was summoned to the Irish House of Peers as Viscount Valentia, but was denied his writ to the parliament of Great Britain by a majority of one vote.  He was created in 1793 earl of Mountnorris in the peerage of Ireland.  All the male descendants of the 1st earl of Anglesey became extinct in the person of George, 2nd earl of Mountnorris, in 1844, when the titles of Viscount Valentia and Baron Mountnorris passed to his cousin Arthur Annesley (1785-1863), who thus became 10th Viscount Valentia, being descended from the 1st Viscount Valentia the father of the 1st earl of Anglesey in the Annesley family.  The 1st viscount was also the ancestor of the Earls Annesley in the Irish peerage.

[Footnote 1:  Protests of the Lords, by J.E.  Thorold Rogers (1875), i. 27:  Carti’s Life of Ormonde (1851), iv. 234; Parl.  Hist. iv. 284.]

[Footnote 2:  Carti’s Ormonde, iv. 330, 340.]

[Footnote 3:  Cal. of State Pap.  Dom. (1673-1675), p. 152.]

[Footnote 4:  Memoirs, 8, 9.]

[Footnote 5:  By Sir J. Thompson, his son-in-law.  Reprinted in Somers Tracts (Scott, 1812), viii. 344, and in Parl.  Hist. iv. app. xvi.]