Robert HARLEY was the eldest son of Sir Edward HARLEY, of Brampton Bryan, in Herefordshire, by his second wife, Abigail, daughter of Nathaniel STEPHENS, of Essington, in Gloucestershire. He was born at his father’s town-house in Bow Street, Covent Garden, in the year 1661. [Sidenote: THE HARLEY FAMILY.] The HARLEYS had been a family of considerable note in Herefordshire during several centuries. Many generations of them had sat in the House of Commons, sometimes for boroughs, but not infrequently for their county. Sir Edward sided with the Parliamentarians during the Civil Wars. He was, however, one of those moderate statesmen who, in the words of a once-celebrated clerical adherent and martyr of their party, Christopher LOVE, judged it ‘an ill way to cure the body politic, by cutting off the political head.’ In due time he also became one of those ‘secluded members’ of the Long Parliament who published the ‘Remonstrance’ of 1656, and who were then as strenuous—though far less successful—in opposing what they deemed to be the tyranny of the Protector, as they had formerly been in opposing the tyranny of the King. Sir Edward HARLEY promoted the restoration of CHARLES THE SECOND, and sat in all the Parliaments of that reign. He distinguished himself as a defender of liberty of conscience in unpropitious times; and he won, in a high degree, the respect of men who sat beside him in the House of Commons, but were rarely counted with him upon a division. The first public act of Robert HARLEY of which a record has been kept is his appearance with his father, in 1688, at the head of an armed band of tenantry and retainers, assembled in Herefordshire to support the cause of the Prince of ORANGE, when the news had come of the Prince’s arrival in Torbay. [Sidenote: HARLEY’S PARLIAMENTARY CAREER.]