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Sir Simonds D'Ewes and the levying of ship money, 1635–1640*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

S. P. Salt
S. P. Salt
Affiliation:
Faculty of History, University of Cambridge
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Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between constitutional ideas and political action during the 1630s by comparing the privately expressed ideas of Sir Simonds D'Ewes regarding ship money with his conduct regarding the levy, especially while he was sheriff of Suffolk in 1639–40. The first section investigates the constitutionalist views expressed in D'Ewes's ‘autobiography’, unpublished during his lifetime, and their relationship to D'Ewes's attitude to the political role of the levy. The second section studies D'Ewes's conduct as sheriff, in which he gave almost no expression to constitutionalist ideas, and suggests that he struck a middle course between neglect and zeal, while finding means to oppose the levy through his connections at court. The third section seeks to establish the reasons for the inconsistencies between D'Ewes's privately expressed ideas and his public conduct, which may have lain in a belief that, in the prevailing political situation, criticism of the levy had, in order to be effective, to be expressed in terms acceptable to potentially sympathetic courtiers; D'Ewes adapted the tone of his comments on ship money to his audience in order to achieve political ends, but had also to act in ways which would make that tone convincing. Participation in the collection of ship money was therefore not inconsistent with opposition to it.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , June 1994 , pp. 253 - 287
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

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8 Fincham, , ‘Judges' decision’, pp. 232, 234, 236Google Scholar, printing parts of Kent Archives Office (K.A.O.), U. 47/47, Z. 1–2. Reference is made below to sections of the MS not included in Fincham's edition.

9 Sharpe, , ‘Personal rule’, p. 76.Google Scholar

10 For accounts of D'Ewes, see Dictionary of national biography, ed. Leslie, Stephen and Sidney, Lee (63 vols., London, 1885–1900), XIV, 450b–453bGoogle Scholar; Watson, Andrew G., The library of Sir Simonds D'Ewes (London, 1966), pp. 1–15.Google Scholar Robert Ryece had, in his heraldic decorative scheme for Preston church, placed the D'Ewes arms in the belfry with those of Suffolk's lawyers; at D'Ewes's request, they were removed and re-erected next to those of his first wife's family, the Cloptons: Ipswich and East Suffolk Record Office, Blois MSS, GC17: 755, III, 293. Some of the other points made in this paragraph are substantiated in more detail below.

11 D'Ewes's religious convictions and practices are discussed by Cliffe, J. T., The puritan gentry (London, 1984), pp. 5, 19–20, 26, 32, 43, 45–6, 120.Google Scholar Harl. 189 is D'Ewes's account of the indications leading to his ‘certainty in the matter of salvation’.

12 On the range of D'Ewes's scholarly correspondence see Watson, Library, pp. 8–9. Cf. Robertson, J. C., ‘Caroline culture: bridging court and country?’, History, LXXV, 245 (1990), 392.Google Scholar

13 Harl. 646, fos. 1–173, printed, not wholly accurately, in The autobiography and correspondence of Sir Simonds D'Ewes, ed. Halliwell, James Orchard (2 vols., London, 1845) (hereafter Auto.)Google Scholar; cf. Watson, Library, p. 79 n. 3. Reference is here made to the MS, but references are also given in parentheses to the printed edition for the convenience of those with easy access to it. Further notes on ship money are to be found at Harl. 593, fo. 183; they probably relate to D'Ewes's petitions to the Council or to his letter to a councillor in 1640: see below. In addition, Harl. 593, fos. 199–202 also deal with ship money; although these pages are undated, their location in the volume (which seems generally to be chronologically organized) and a comparison with D'Ewes's proposed speech to the Long Parliament on the subject of ship money (Harl. 166, fos. 279'80v) together suggest that they date from the time of the Long Parliament.

14 D'Ewes's ship money papers are largely gathered as Harl. 365 and as three volumes of constables' returns: Harl. 7540–2, printed (not always accurately) by Redstone, Vincent B., The ship-money returns for the county of Suffolk, 1639–40 (Ipswich, 1904)Google Scholar; further returns are in Harl. 7657, fos. 188–218. Material preserved by the sheriff has enabled the intensive study of ship money collection elsewhere: see Marcotte, Elaine, ‘Shrieval administration of ship money in Cheshire, 1637’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, LVIII (1975–6), 138–69.Google Scholar Suggestive comments on D'Ewes's collection of ship money have been made by recent historians, but apparently without making use of the full range of available material: Holmes, , ‘County community’, pp. 65–6Google Scholar; Cope, , Politics without parliaments, p. 192Google Scholar; Russell, Fall, p. 132.

15 Harl. 383, fo. 105; cf. Watson, Library, p. 347.

16 Ibid. p. 346; P.R.O., Household subsidy assessments, especially: E. 179/70/131, 146; E. 407/1/43–9; Harl. 383, fo. 207.

17 Harl. 646, fo. 171v (Auto., II, 141); P.R.O., Lord chamberlain's warrant books, L.C. 5/132, p. 173.

18 For the use of similar material from a figure of different social status to explore rather similar problems see Fielding, ‘Woodford’, especially p. 783.

19 See the reference to Croke's argument in Exchequer Chamber on 14 Apr. 1638: Harl. 646, fo. 168r (Auto., II, 130). That the year is inserted as an afterthought suggests that this part of the text was written in 1638; there are no references to any later date than 1638 in the body of the text of the ‘autobiography’. Elisabeth, Bourcier's statement (Les joumaux privés en Angleterre de 1600 à 1660 (Paris, 1976), p. 442)Google Scholar that D'Ewes ‘rédigea’ the ‘autobiography’ in 1637 underestimates the period which D'Ewes spent on its composition.

20 Harl. 646, fo. 167v (Auto., II, 129–30).

21 Ibid.; Conrad, Russell, ‘The ship money judgements of Bramston and Davenport’, English Historical Review, LXXVII, 303 (1962), 313.Google Scholar

22 Harl. 646, fo. 168r (Auto., II, 131); Jones, W. J., Politics and the bench (London, 1971), p. 51.Google Scholar D'Ewes also mentioned Sir John Denham's judgement in favour of ‘the libertie of the subject’, but interestingly had nothing to say in favour of the judgements of Bramston and Davenport, who found for Hampden because the writ was for the payment of money to the king, rather than towards the alleged purpose of the levy: cf. Russell, ‘Judgements’, pp. 312–18.

23 Had. 646, fo. 169r (Auto., II, 134).

24 Ibid. fo. 169r–v (Auto., II, 134–5).

25 The Short Parliament (1640) diary of Sir Thomas Aston, ed. Maltby, Judith D., Camden Society, 4th ser., XXXV (1988), 10.Google Scholar

26 Harl. 166, fos. 279r, 280r. A similar argument – that arbitrary exactions might bring men into the ‘Condition of slaves’ and thus into ‘a slavish disposition’ – appears in a version of Pym's Short Parliament speech published later: Kupperman, Karen Ordahl, ‘Definitions of liberty on the eve of the Civil War’, The Historical Journal, XXXII, 1 (1989), 31Google Scholar; cf. Proceedings of the Short Parliament of 1640, ed. Cope, Esther S. and Coates, Willson H., Camden Society, 4th ser., XIX (1977), 299–302.Google Scholar

27 Harl. 646, fo. 168v (Auto., II, 133).

28 Harl. 377, fo. 245.

29 Harl. 646, fo. 118v (Auto., I, 402).

30 Ibid. fo. 162v (Auto., II, 113).

31 Harl. 593, fo. 167 (fragment of an undated letter, presumably addressed to D'Ewes, probably in the hand of Robert Ryece); Harl. 646, fo. 172v (Auto., II, 145); Harl. 377, fo. 275. Harl. 646, fos. 171v–2r (Auto., II, 141–3) for D'Ewes's reaction to Wren's first general visitation as bishop of Norwich; on Wren's impact in the diocese, see also King, Peter, ‘Bishop Wren and the suppression of the Norwich lectures’, The Historical Journal, XI, 2 (1968), 238–40.Google Scholar

32 Harl. 377, fo. 135.

33 Harl. 383, fo. 93; Harl. 646, fos. 124r–5r, 128r, 143r (Auto.: 1, 421–7, 434–5; II, 46–7); Harl. 377, fos. 251, 255, 256.

34 Harl. 377, fos. 257, 258, 260.

35 Harl. 377, fos. 264, 279.

36 Harl. 377, fo. 258; cf. D'Ewes's comments in his ‘autobiography’, compiled in the 1630s, on the way in which the dissolutions of parliaments in 1621 and in 1626 ended prospects for English intervention on the continent: Harl. 646, fos. 64v, 89r'v (Auto., I, 212, 301).

37 Simon, Adams, ‘Spain or the Netherlands? The dilemmas of early Stuart foreign policy’, in Before the Civil War, ed. Tomlinson, , p. 84Google Scholar; Conrad Russell, ‘The nature of a parliament in early Stuart England’, ibid. p. 144; idem, Fall, pp. 7, 13–14; Thrush, Andrew, ‘Naval finance and the origins and development of ship money’, in War and government in Britain, 1598–1650, ed. Fissel, Mark Charles (Manchester, 1991), pp. 135–7, 155–6Google Scholar; Andrews, Kenneth R., Ships, money and politics: seafaring and naval enterprise in the reign of Charles I (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 137, 143, 146–7, 148–50, 158.Google Scholar The crown had approached the parliament of 1628 for finance for the building of ‘20 ships yearly for the increase of the Navy’; when the propositions were discussed, William Coryton insisted that ‘if we may set the King's Council and other things right, I think no poverty will be pretended’: Proceedings in parliament, 1628, ed. Johnson, Robert C., Keeler, Mary Frear, Cole, Maija J. and Bidwell, William B. (6 vols., New Haven, 1977–83), 11, 121, 246–7.Google Scholar

38 The journal of Sir Simonds D'Ewes from the beginning of the Long Parliament…, ed. Wallace, Notestein (New Haven, 1923), pp. 499–501, 506.Google Scholar Cf. D'Ewes's observation, in his notes for his letter to the queen of Bohemia, that any fleet set out on behalf of the prince elector would have to be sustained by ‘a continuall supplie’: Harl. 377, fo. 134; cf. Hibbard, Caroline M., Charles I and the popish plot (Chapel Hill, 1983), p. 74.Google Scholar That D'Ewes was not as blind as the ‘autobiography’ implies to the fiscal repercussions of early seventeenth-century naval warfare may also be suggested by his readiness to see a parliament grant ship money to the crown as an annual tax: see above.

39 Harl. 377, fo. 275; State papers collected by Edward, earl of Clarendon, ed. Scrope, R. and Monkhouse, T. (3 vols., Oxford, 1767–86), 1, 75–6, 83Google Scholar; Sharpe, , ‘Personal rule’, p. 69Google Scholar; Adams, , ‘Spain or the Netherlands?’, p. 84Google Scholar; Thrush, , ‘Naval finance’, pp. 137–40Google Scholar; Andrews, , ‘Ships, money and polities’, pp. 132–5Google Scholar, persuasively argues that the policy aims mentioned by Hopton, and quoted above, represent only one strand in the thinking behind royal policy, but also shows that concern about Dutch treatment of English merchants was shared even by a councillor as unsympathetic to Spain as Secretary Coke. D'Ewes, who believed himself to be descended from a Netherlandish aristocratic family, was also conscious of Dutch affronts to the English and of the damage which they might do to Anglo-Dutch relations, but he remained anxious to preserve those relations as a check on Spanish power, as his correspondence with the ambassador, Joachimi, shows: Harl. 377, fos. 258, 275, 276, 283, 287, 296.

40 Harl. 646, fo. 46r (Auto., I, 135–6); cf. The diary of Sir Simonds D'Ewes (1622–1624), ed. Elisabeth, Bourcier, Publications de la Sorbonne, Littératures, V (Paris, n.d.), 38.Google Scholar

41 Harl. 646, fos. 2r, 29v–30r, 156r (Auto.: 1, 5, 100; ii, 92 [omitting some material]). Cf. Bourcier, , Journaux privés, p. 444Google Scholar: D'Ewes ‘songe davantage à ceux qui lui survivront qu'à lui même’. For de Thou's Historia as an argument for religious peace see Kevin, Sharpe, Sir Robert Cotton, 1586–1631 (Oxford, 1979), pp. 86–7.Google Scholar

42 Harl. 377, fo. 268v. Cf. Harl. 646, fos. 120r, 168v (Auto.: I, 407; II, 133).

43 Smith, A. Hassell, County and court: government and politics in Norfolk, 1558–1603 (Oxford, 1974), pp. 281–2Google Scholar; Wentworth papers, 1597–1628, ed. Cooper, J. P., Camden Society, 4th ser., XII (1973), 256–7Google Scholar; Swales, Robin J. W., ‘The ship money levy of 1628’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, L, 122 (1977), 166Google Scholar; Richard Cust, ‘A list of commissioners for the forced loan of 1626–7’, ibid, LI, 124 (1978), 199–200; Leonard, H. H., ‘Distraint of knighthood: the last phase, 1625–41’, History, LXIII, 207 (1978), 25.Google Scholar

44 Sharpe, , ‘Personal rule’, p. 71Google Scholar; Morrill, Provinces, p. 27; P.C.R., VII (P.R.O., P.C. 2/50), pp. 682–3; cf. Marcotte, , ‘Shrieval administration’, pp. 162–9.Google Scholar

45 A tendency among ecclesiastics to see a link between criticism of religious policies and a lack of respect for other kinds of authority is suggested by Heylyn's denunciation of the Feoffees for Impropriations as aiming ‘to drawe the greatest ministers of state, I will not saie the king himselfe, into discredit with the people’, and by Wren's denunciation of Buckingham's murderer as the ‘Head’ of the puritans on the ground that they held the doctrine ‘that it is lawful to kill any man, that is opposite to their partie’: Gorman, G. E., ‘A Laudian attempt to “tune the pulpit”: Peter Heylyn and his sermon against the Feoffees for the Purchase of Impropriations’, Journal of Religious History, VIII, 4 (1975), 344Google Scholar; Foster, Stephen, Notes from the Caroline underground (Hamden, Conn., 1978), p. 32.Google Scholar Cf. Cliffe, , Puritan gentry, p. 212.Google Scholar

46 Cliffe, J. T., The Yorkshire gentry from the Reformation to the Civil War (London, 1969), pp. 313, 315.Google Scholar Wentworth had himself been placed on the commission for the forced loan of 1626–7 although in disgrace: Salt, S. P., ‘Sir Thomas Wentworth and the parliamentary representation of Yorkshire, 1614–1628’, Northern History, XVI (1980), 165.Google Scholar Neither manoeuvre was effective in promoting the levy in question.

47 The sheriffs' roll for 1639, P.R.O., C. 227/29, is the earliest with a complete surviving entry for Suffolk. The consideration given to D'Ewes in Feb. 1636 and Nov. 1638 is, however, evident from Harl. 386, fo. 148 and Harl. 383, fo. 156. A payment in D'Ewes's accounts relating to the shrievalty ‘busines’ may relate to efforts to keep D'Ewes out of the office in the autumn of 1636 as well: Harl. 7657, fo. 170r.

48 Harl. 386, fo. 148; K.A.O., U. 47/47, Z. 2, p. 192.

49 Harl. 388, fo. 176; Cockburn, J. S., A history of English assizes, 1558–1714 (Cambridge, 1972), p. 272CrossRefGoogle Scholar; The autobiography of Sir John Bramston, K.B., Camden Society, XXXII (1845), 68, 78–9Google Scholar; Russell, ‘Judgements’, pp. 316, 317. Cf. Cliffe, , Yorkshire gentry, pp. 234–5Google Scholar; Historical MSS Commission, 12th report, appendix, The MSSoflhe Earl Cowper (3 vols., London, 1888–9), II, 107Google Scholar; Essex Record Office, Bramston MSS, TB211/1, 12.

50 Williams, Penry, ‘The attack on the Council in the Marches, 1603–1642’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1961 session), part 1, p. 15.Google Scholar

51 Those active on D'Ewes's behalf included: the lord chamberlain and his secretary, Michael Oldsworth; the earl of Arundel; and the earl of Suffolk's secretary: Harl. 386, fo. 148; Harl. 383, fos. 155, 156; Harl. 384, fo. 219; for Oldsworth, see Rowe, Violet A., ‘The influence of the earls of Pembroke on parliamentary elections, 1625–41’, English Historical Review, L, 198 (1935), 242–3.CrossRefGoogle ScholarCf. Barnes, Somerset, pp. 131–5. Harl. 98, fos. 151v–151*.

52 Harl. 374, fo. 124; K.A.O., Sackville MSS (Bath correspondence), U. 269, C. 267, undated.

53 Harl. 376, fo. 41.

54 Harl. 383, fo. 182. This judgement may partly have reflected D'Ewes's handling of the Short Parliament election: see below.

55 P.C.R., XI (P.R.O., P.C. 2/52), p. 627; order to initiate proceedings against a first group of sheriffs had been given in May: ibid, X (P.C. 2/51), pp. 474–5.

56 Harl. 98, fos. 150v–151*; Had. 160, fo. 186; Harl. 593, fo. 183.

57 For an implication of frequent rating disputes in Suffolk in earlier years see Harl. 385, fo. 146; complaints of over-rating of Hasketon and Kelsale: Harl. 7541, fos. 171–2; Harl. 365, fo. 109; complaints of over-rating of individuals: Harl. 365, fos. 69, 139, 142, 146, 148, 153, 158; Harl. 7541, fo. 112; Harl. 7657, fo. 206; cf. Barnes, Somerset, ch. VIII; K.A.O., U. 47/47, Z. 1, pp. 194–5; Hughes, , Politics, society and Civil War, pp. 105–7.Google Scholar

58 Gordon, M. D., ‘The collection of ship money in the reign of Charles I’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 3rd ser., IV (1910), 143–4.Google Scholar

59 See above and cf. Hughes, , Politics, society and Civil War, p. 115.Google Scholar

60 Gordon, ‘Collection’, p. 160; P.C.R., VIII (P.R.O., P.C. 2/51), p. 102. The figure at the end of September 1639 has been chosen for comparison since it excludes sums collected in the period following the sheriff's term of office – a period not available to D'Ewes. For the Council's censure of the sheriff for 1638–9 see P.C.R.: VII (P.R.O., P.C. 2/50), pp. 682–3; IX (pC 2/51), pp. 314–15.

61 Holmes, Clive, The Eastern Association in the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1974), p. 20.Google Scholar

62 D'Ewes was not amongst the group of sheriffs – which did include the sheriffs of Lincolnshire, Somerset and Northamptonshire – who were summoned before the Council in November 1639 and given ‘a strict charge to have a Care’ over ship money: P.C.R., VII (P.R.O., P.C. 2/51), p. 38.

63 Lake, , ‘Ship money in Cheshire’, pp. 49–50, 63–4.Google Scholar

64 Harl. 377, fo. 284; Harl. 379, fo. 58; Harl. 378, fo. 49.

65 Gordon, ‘Collection’, pp. 143–4; Harl. 377, fo. 297. The use of the fleet ‘upon the coast of Scotland’, had in fact been mentioned to sheriffs by the Council injuly 1639: P.C.R., VII (P.R.O., P.C. 2/50), pp. 532–3.

66 Harl. 377, fo. 209v; Harl. 98, fos. 151v–151*.

67 Harl. 377, fo. 299.

68 Ibid. fo. 279.

69 British Library (B.L.), Stowe MS 743, fo. 95.

70 Harl. 377, fo. 248; Bodleian Library, Bankes MSS, 62/34; B.L., Additional MS 11056, fo. 64.

71 Harl. 377, fos. 289, 295; Harl. 382, fo. 221; Harl. 166, fo. 248.

72 John Brograve of Albury in Hertfordshire claimed to have declined being placed in the commission of the peace during Coventry's lord keepership (1625–40) and on a second occasion while the king was at York: Harl. 387, fo. 19. In rejecting nomination as a ‘Commissioner in the [militia?] Bill’, in March 1642 Sir William Poley claimed that ‘I neuer was Ambitious of those Imployments’, (Harl. 382, fo. 226); although his father, another Sir William, had been a commissioner of the peace and died in 1629 (P.R.O., Exchequer Miscellanea, E. 163/18/12; Harl. 646, fo. 135v [Auto., II, 21]), the younger Sir William does not feature in any surviving liber pacts for the reign of Charles I (for a list of these, see Barnes, T. G. and Smith, A. Hassell, ‘Justices of the Peace from 1558 to 1688: a revised list of sources’, Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, XXXII (1959), 221–42)Google Scholar, nor is any appointment of him included in the crown office docket books (P.R.O., C. 231/4–5).

73 Based on a study of libri pacis, crown office docket books (see previous note), crown office entry books of commissions (P.R.O., C. 181/3–5) and the entry book of commissions for charitable uses, 1629–42 (ibid. C. 192/1).

74 Hughes, , Politics, society and Civil War, p. 118Google Scholar; even Sir Christopher Yelverton, the sheriff of Northamptonshire regarded as so recalcitrant by the Council, begrudgingly admitted that he might have to rate most townships himself: P.R.O., S.P. 16/445/54.1. On tne slow progress of rating in Suffolk, see below.

75 Harl. 97, fo. II; Harl. 160, fos. 151*v–152r (the bracketed words are deleted in the MS).

76 P.R.O., S.P. 16/457/104; The Suffolk committee for scandalous ministers, 1644–1646, ed. Clive, Holmes, Suffolk Records Society, XIII (1970), 79–80Google Scholar; both cited by Holmes, , Eastern Association, p. 22.Google Scholar

77 Harl. 377, fo. 299.

78 P.C.R., VIII (P.R.O., P.C. 2/51), p. 256. Since the sum requested was the same as in 1637–8, this explanation for the variation may not seem very plausible, although the reduction in the sum levied in 1638–9 has been taken to suggest that there was a genuine relationship between the amount of ship money requested and naval requirements: Gordon, ‘Collection of ship money’, p. 143.

79 Harl. 365, fo. 47; P.C.R., VIII (P.R.O., P.C. 2/51), pp. 226–7, 257–8; K.A.O., Skeet, Tilden and Blackmore MSS, U. 1575, O. 1/4; Fletcher, , County community, p. 208Google Scholar. In Northamptonshire the sheriff claimed to have successfully overridden the discontent of some corporations regarding this question: P.R.O., S.P. 16/445/54.I.

80 Harl. 365, fo. 43; B.L., Additional MS 33512, fo. 34r.

81 P.C.R., IX (P.R.O., P.C. 2/51), pp. 296–7; Harl. 365, fo. 47.

82 B.L., Additional MS 33512, fo. 38r.

83 Harl. 365, fo. 43; Harl. 385, fo. 146.

84 The double warrants did, however, generate some grievances: K.A.O., U.47/47, O. 1, p. 14.

85 Gardiner, S. R., History of England… 1603–1642 (10 vols., London, 1883–1884), IX, 75–7Google Scholar; Handbook of British Chronology, ed. Fryde, E. B., Greenway, D. E., Porter, S. and Roy, I. (3rd edn, London, 1986), p. 574Google Scholar; Harl. 379, fo. 61; Harl. 378, fo. 47. The letter to D'Ewes from Poley, reporting the decision to summon a parliament and expressing the wish that ‘this proposicon might allay the further proceeding of shipp moneys’, is unfortunately undated, but its reference to the loans made by councillors suggests a date in December 1639: Harl. 383, fo. 144; cf. Ashton, Robert, The Crown and the money market, 1603–1640 (Oxford, 1960), pp. 45, 176–7.Google Scholar Cf. Sharpe, , ‘Personal rule’, p. 78.Google Scholar

86 Harl. 160, fo. 86; Harl. 365, fos. 43, 53, 55–8, 65, 66, 68, 71, 81, 89, 92, 97, 102, 104, 109–10, 115, 130–1, 135, 137, 162, 167, 172; Harl. 7540, fos. 64V, 101; see above.

87 Harl. 365, fo. 168v.

88 Ibid. fos. 168v, 169–70; P.R.O., S.P. 16/466/52.

89 Attention has lately been drawn to the possibility that problems in implementing some governmental measures in the early seventeenth century – and in the later 1630s in particular – may have lain less with the attitude and conduct of local justices and sheriffs than with the response of those lower in the social scale: Sharpe, , ‘Personal rule’, pp. 72, 77Google Scholar. Barnes sees the disaffection of the constables – deriving partly from ‘fear of their neighbours’, – as important in the growing difficulties which confronted ship money collection in Somerset from 1638: Somerset, pp. 228–30. Cf. Holmes, , ‘County community’, pp. 72–3Google Scholar; Hughes, Ann, The causes of the English Civil War (London, 1991), pp. 69–72.Google Scholar

90 Harl. 98, fos. 151v–151*.

91 Harl. 99, fo. 8; Harl. 7657, fo. 218.

92 P.R.O.:S.P. 16/445/49, 52, 75; S.P. 16/447/8. P.C.R., IX (P.R.O., P.C. 2/51), p. 412. Lake, , ‘Ship money in Cheshire’, p. 64.Google Scholar

93 Harl. 365, fo. 168r.

94 Ibid.

95 Cf. above.

96 Harl. 365, fos. 51, 150–2, 40; P.C.R., VIII (P.R.O., P.C. 2/51), p. 124.

97 Harl. 386, fo. 74. On Johnson, see below.

98 P.C.R., IX (P.R.O., P.C. 2/51), pp. 388–9, 412; Rowe, V. A., ‘Robert, second earl of Warwick and the payment of ship-money in Essex’, Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, 3rd ser., 1 (1961–5), 161Google Scholar; Eales, Jacqueline, Puritans and roundheads: the Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1990), p. 98Google Scholar; Hunt, William, The puritan moment: the coming of revolution in an English county (Harvard, 1983), p. 272.Google Scholar

99 Harl. 365, fo. 157.

100 Harl. 365, fo. 97. According to Twysden, ‘many troubled themselues to guesse why so important a clause should bee left out of the writ; some held… the King hymselfe in regard of hys Justice would not haue it inserted because he could not take away any mans goods nisi per legem terrae’: K.A.O., U. 47/47, Z. 2, pp. 190–1; cf. Morrill, Provinces, pp. 27–8; Hughes, , Politics, society and Civil War, p. 107Google Scholar; Ship money papers and Richard Grenville's note-book, ed. Bonsey, Carol G. and Jenkins, J. G., Buckinghamshire Record Society, XIII (1965), 9.Google Scholar

101 Harl. 365, fo. 168v. Cf. the sheriff of Kent who, according to Twysden, avoided giving ‘an expresse warrant to distreyn any man’, albeit in 1636–7, when distraint was less frequently called for: K.A.O., U. 47/47, Z. 2, p. 197.

102 Harl. 98, fos. 151v–151*.

103 Harl. 160, fos. 151*v–152; Harl. 165, fo. 3. The roots of sheriffs', difficulties in controlling their subordinates in the shrieval ‘establishment’, are discussed by Barnes: Somerset, pp. 135–6, 141.

104 Harl. 386, fos. 69, 74. On Parker and Barnardiston, see Holmes, , Eastern Association, pp. 22–3Google Scholar; Cliffe, , Puritan gentry, pp. 175–7.Google Scholar In the first of the letters here cited, Johnson also reported that ‘I haue made Mistress Ann a peticoat’. Johnson, although styled a gentleman, was evidently a tailor with whom the D'Eweses sometimes lodged in London; the way in which D'Ewes and Johnson exchanged political and religious views is testimony to the ability of shared godliness to build a community crossing social and geographical divides. See Harl. 383, fo. 184; Harl. 365, fo. 141; Harl. 382, fo. 224; Harl. 7660, fo. 24v; cf. Hunt, , Puritan moment, pp. 231–3Google Scholar; Eales, , Puritans and roundheads, pp. 10–11, 59, 64.Google Scholar

105 Harl. 7540, fo. 54v; Harl. 7657, fo. 196.

106 Harl. 7542, fos. 1–3.

107 Harl. 7657, fo. 194. Two of the parishes referred to in the previous note were, strikingly, adjacent, and the third was in the same division of Wangford Hundred. This may suggest either further collusion between parishes in answering, or that answers were influenced by the hundred constables. The concentrations of parishes which had failed to rate by July in the north-east of the county, in parts of Wangford Hundred and in Blything Hundred, may also be significant. However, it can be said provisionally that there was no correlation between late rating and strong puritan influences; the parish which contained the seat of Sir John Wentworth (who ‘brought good preachers into the Island of Lovingland and there was the cheife patron of Religion and honesty’) produced a rate on 7 April, while the parish in which Sir William Playters was seated had not rated itself by August. Harl. 99, fo. 8; Harl. 7657, fo. 218; Harl. 365, fos. 62–3, 77, 114, 118 (datable to after 16 July: cf. ibid. fo. 168); Redstone, Returns, p. 125. For Wentworth, see Cliffe, , Puritan gentry, pp. 174–5Google Scholar; for Playters, see above.

108 Harl. 7541, fo. 95; Harl. 7657, fo. 196.

109 Harl. 365, fo. 97; cf. Harl. 365, fo. 128; Sharpe, , ‘Personal rule’, p. 78Google Scholar; Russell, Fall, pp. 93–4.

110 Harl. 365, fo. 125, my italics.

111 Harl. 365, fos. 59, 98, 116, 125, 134; Harl. 7540, fo. 85; Harl. 7637, fo. 205.

112 Harl. 365, fo. 86.

113 Ibid. fo. 153.

114 Ibid. fo. 97.

115 Ibid. fo. 157.

116 Ibid. fo. 125.

117 P.R.O., S.P. 16/451/18 & I.

118 Harl. 98, fos. 151v–151*, my italics.

119 Harl. 365, fo. 172. Subsequent quotations in this paragraph are from this letter, unless other references are given. This letter is not addressed, but its reference to ‘Your Lorpps former goodnes to mee’, fits the identification of the addressee as Pembroke: Harl. 382, fo. 221; Harl. 383, fo. 156; Harl. 384, fo. 219. A letter to a councillor of 1 October 1640, which refers to ‘former letters’, can be confidently identified on internal evidence as being addressed to Pembroke (even though Halliwell deemed it to have been addressed to the earl of Worcester): Harl. 374, fo. 157; Auto., II, 243–6. This identification of the addressee is not crucial to my argument, but will be assumed in what follows for the sake of verbal economy and of clarity.

120 My italics.

121 Cf. Harl. 166, fo. 279r.

122 Gardiner, , History …1603–42, VII, 133Google Scholar; cf. ibid, VIII, 121; Michael, Brennan, Literary patronage in the English renaissance: the Pembroke family (London, 1988), p. 186Google Scholar; Margot, Heinemann, Puritanism and theatre (Cambridge, 1980), p. 231.Google Scholar

123 Martin, Butler, Theatre and crisis, 1632–42 (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 62–76Google Scholar, quotation at p. 75. The specific parallel with D'Ewes's ideas drawn at p. 67 seems somewhat forced, however. Cf. the more speculative links drawn between Pembroke and the production of a play which ‘had reference to… the King's journey into the North’: Heinemann, , Puritanism and theatre, pp. 232–4.Google Scholar

124 Edward [Hyde], earl of Clarendon, , The history of the rebellion and civil wars in England, ed. Macray, W. Dunn (6 vols., Oxford, 1888), 1, 161Google Scholar; Hibbard, Plot, p. 165.

125 Harl. 365, fo. 167. Cf. D'Ewes's notes: ‘Ther is iust feare of violence in most places in case distresses be taken’: Harl. 593, fo. 183.

126 Harl. 377, fo. 196.

127 Harl. 646, fo. 141 (Auto., II, 38); Sharpe, Cotton, especially ch. IV; cf. Peck, Linda Levy, Northampton: patronage and policy at the court of James I (London, 1982), ch. VIGoogle Scholar; Jardine, Lisa and Grafton, Anthony, ‘“Studied for action”: how Gabriel Harvey read his Livy’, Past and Present, CXXIX (1990), 35, 48–9, 52, 73–4Google Scholar; Ferguson, Arthur B., The articulate citizen and the English Renaissance (Durham, N.C., 1965), pp. xii, xiv, xv.Google Scholar

128 Harl. 646, fo. IIIr (Auto., 1, 374).

129 SirD'Ewes, Simonds, The journals of all the parliaments during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, revised by Paul Bowes, Esq. (London, 1682Google Scholar; reprinted Shannon, 1973), preface, unpaginated; Harl. 339, fo. 103r.

130 Watson, Library, p. 13.

131 Harl. 385, fo. 225; for Tanfield, see Had. 646, fo. 71r (Auto., 1, 240). On the Forest affair in Essex see Hunt, , Puritan moment, pp. 267–8.Google Scholar

132 London, 1645. Quotation from 2nd impression (London, n.d.), sig. A3r.

133 Harl. 165, fo. 4; Gardiner, , History… 1603–42, ix, 129.Google Scholar

134 Harl. 386, fo. 75. On the oath, and the reaction to it, see Cliffe, , Puritan gentry, pp. 217–18Google Scholar; Cope, , Politics without parliaments, pp. 191, 193.Google Scholar

135 For D'Ewes's concern at this time with an Anglo-Saxon lexicon, see e.g. Harl. 376, fo. 41; Hetherington, M. S., ‘Sir Simonds D'Ewes and method in Old English lexicography’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, XVII, 1 (1975), 88–90.Google Scholar

136 Archbishop Parker had used Anglo-Saxon manuscripts to this end, and the practice was continued by, amongst others, D'Ewes's friend, Abraham Wheeloc: Wright, C. E., ‘The dispersal of the monastic libraries and the beginnings of Anglo-Saxon studies’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 1, 3 (1951), 226–8Google Scholar; Murphy, Michael, ‘Abraham Wheloc's edition of Bede's History in Old English’, Studia Neophilologica, XXXIX, 1 (1967), 46–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

137 Harl. 374, fo. 133.

138 Harl. 378, fo. 53. On Ussher's standing see Abbott, William M., ‘James Ussher and “Ussherian” episcopacy, 1640–1656: the primate and his Reduction manuscript’, Albion, XXII, 2 (1990), 240–1.Google Scholar For the tension which sometimes underlay Ussher's relations with Laud during the 1630s see The earl of Strafforde's letters and dispatches, ed. William, Knowler (2 vols., London, 1739), 1, 298, 329Google Scholar; The works of …William Laud, ed. William, Scott and James, Bliss (7 vols., Oxford, 1847–60), VII, 132, 213, 280–1, 287, 369.Google Scholar

139 See above.

140 Harl. 593, fo. 28.

141 Harl. 383, fo. 219. A reference to D'Ewes's wife's cousin dates this letter to shortly before 24 July 1640: cf. Harl. 383, fo. 180v. For D'Ewes's acquaintance with Seton, see below; on the crown's consideration of debasement during July, see Gardiner, , History … 1603–42, IX, 171, 174.Google Scholar The debasement of the coinage was, interestingly, something which D'Ewes's mentor, Sir Robert Cotton, had condemned earlier in Charles's reign: Sharpe, Cotton, p. 141.

142 Harl. 386, fos. 72, 73; cf. Harl. 383, fo. 184.

143 In addition to connections discussed below, D'Ewes made the acquaintance of the Elector Palatine during his visit to England in 1636 and later wrote to the queen of Bohemia; he also corresponded with George Rudolph Weckherlin, secretary to secretary of state Sir John Coke, and an inveterate supporter of the Palatine cause: Harl. 646, fos. 170r–71r (Auto., II, 137–40); Harl. 377, fo. 271r–v; see above; Harl. 383, fo. 140; Forster, Leonard, ‘G. R. Weckherlin in England’, German life and letters, III (1938–9), 108–10.Google Scholar On the other hand, D'Ewes did enjoy, in his efforts to avoid the shrievalty, the help of the earl of Arundel, who could still be called ‘a known papist, and the head of the Spanish and popish faction in England’in 1639 – but even he, after the failure of his mission to Vienna, was trusted for his advice by the Elector Palatine: Harl. 383, fos. 155, 156; Hibbard, Plot, p. 100; B.L., Microfilm 325, Northumberland (Alnwick) MS 506 (royal letters), no. 39.

144 See above, and Harl. 382, fo. 224 for Poley's desire for ‘an happy parliament’, in April 1639.

145 Harl. 646, fos. 85v–6r (Auto., 1, 289–91); B.L., Cotton Charter XVI. 13, fo. 14v.

146 Harl. 383, fos. 163, 174v; Harl. 375, fos. 113, 115; P.R.O.: L.C. 5/132, p. 336; L.C. 5/134, p. 348; L.C. 3/1 (Household establishment, 1641), fo. 24V (cf. Harl. 383, fo. 166 for D'Ewes's correspondent as one of ‘his ma[jest]ies servands’). SirSeton, Bruce Gordon, The house of Seton: a study in lost causes (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1939), i, 282–4Google Scholar; SirMaitland, Richard, The history of the house of Seyloun to the year MDLIX…with the continuation by Alexander Viscount Kingston to MDCLXXXVII (Glasgow, 1829), pp. 62–3.Google Scholar I am grateful to Dr Keith Brown of the University of St Andrews for additional guidance on Seton.

147 Harl. 383, fos. 174r, 176v, 178; The letters and journals of Robert Baillie, ed. David, Laing (3 vols., Edinburgh, 1841–1842), I, 72.Google Scholar Some caution may be necessary in identifying D'Ewes's correspondent with the Seton referred to by Baillie, since two Sir Johns were flourishing in the mid-seventeenth century: Seton, Bruce Gordon, House of Seton, I, 284Google Scholar; Seton, George, A history of the family of Seton during eight centuries (privately printed: Edinburgh, 1896), pp. 625–7.Google Scholar The Sir John Seton who was active as a parliamentarian commander in Lancashire in 1642–3, and the Sir John Seton who was referred to as making good Windsor Castle in February 1643 can scarcely be one and the same: Heywood, Thomas, ‘Letter from Sir John Seton, Manchester ye 25 M'ch, 1643’, Miscellanies, III (Chetham Society, LVII) (1862)Google Scholar; Letters and journals of Baillie, II, 57.

148 Harl. 383, fos. 172, 182.

149 Harl. 386, fo. 75.

150 On the reduced status under the early Stuarts of the privy chamber, to which both Poley and Seton belonged, see Neil Cuddy, ‘The revival of the entourage: the bedchamber ofjames I, 1603–1625’, in Starkey, David et al. , The English court: from the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War (London, 1987), pp. 183–4Google Scholar; but cf. Brown, Keith M., ‘Courtiers and cavaliers’, in The Scottish national covenant in its British context, ed. Morrill, J. S. (Edinburgh, 1990), pp. 167–8.Google Scholar Cuddy's dismissive comments on the place of gentleman extraordinary may be tempered by the extent to which Poley could secure Pembroke's assistance on D'Ewes's behalf: see above.

151 Harl. 383, fo. 178; P.R.O., S.P. 16/460/62.

152 Journal of…D'Ewes, ed. Notestein, , p. 539Google Scholar; G. E. Aylmer, ‘List of government officials, 1625–42’, typescript deposited in the Institute of Historical Research, London.

153 Harl. 383, fo. 166.

154 Ibid. fo. 178.

156 Harl. 375, fos. 117, 119; cf. ibid. fo. 129.

156 Harl. 365, fo. 156v.

157 Harl. 377, fo. 302; see above.

158 In January 1640 he had written to Joachimi that ‘we marvel that the Scots do not comply with the king's wishes as much as may be, provided religion is safe’, since ‘the king being very powerful at sea, will, by taking away all fishing and commerce from them, rouse up domestic strife among them, even if the matter is not settled by battle’: Harl. 377, fo. 297.

159 Fielding, ‘Woodford’, p. 784.

160 Harl. 365, fo. 172r. For the course of the proceedings, see Harl. 385, fos. 29, 27; Harl. 379, fo. 71.

161 Harl. 378, fo. 55. For further correspondence between D'Ewes and Traill, apparently tutor to a member of the Hamilton family and a friend of the royal librarian, Patrick Young, see Harl. 376, fo. 168; Harl. 378, fo. 55v.

162 Gardiner, , History… 1603–42, IX, 197–202.Google Scholar

163 Harl. 377, fos. 210r, 211r.

164 Harl. 384, fo. 66. This situation was more widely recognized: see Russell, Fall, pp. 164–5.

165 Harl. 377, fo. 210v.

166 Harl. 374, fo. 157.

167 Harl. 646, fo. 108r (Auto., I, 363); Harl. 378, fo. 41.

168 Harl. 377, fo. 196.

169 Harl. 646, fos. 171v, 162v, 105r (Auto.: II, 141, 113; 1, 354). My italics.

170 Harl. 377, fo. 196. D'Ewes's statement to Joachimi that Buckingham's murderer, Felton, was ‘condemnable by no law (nulla lege condemnabilis)’, may also be germane here, but perhaps rests on a legal technicality, rather than on a moral argument: ibid. fo. 239.

171 Harl. 374, fo. 157. On the pedigree of the idea of ‘moderation’, and ‘the mean’, in early modern England, and its idealization in and around the Caroline court, see Collinson, Patrick, Godly people (London, 1983), pp. 135–41, 511Google Scholar; Sharpe, Kevin, Criticism and compliment (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 248, 285–6, 299.Google Scholar

172 In his first letter to Ussher, D'Ewes wrote that he found in Ussher ‘the highest erudition joined with innermost piety, in which, alas, you are almost alone’: Harl. 378, fo. 46; Barrington family letters, 1628–1632, ed. Arthur, Searle, Camden Society, 4th ser., XXVIII (1983), 12, 138Google Scholar; for the Barringtons see Hunt, , Puritan moment, pp. 219–33Google Scholar; for Ussher's sharing of D'Ewes's scholarly interests see Harl. 374, fo. 151. On the other hand, for evidence that D'Ewes could play the ‘moderate’, in the religious sphere when it seemed appropriate, see his emphasis on his avoidance of private fasts attended by more than one household, although these were ‘onlie forbidden by a canon’, (my italics; the canons of the Church lacked, of course, parliamentary confirmation; although the latter quotation is from a marginal note dating to 1641 or after, it seems unlikely that D'Ewes needed the parliamentary debates on the 1640 canons to tell him this): Harl. 646, fos. 105r, 126v (Auto., 1, 354, 429). I hope to pursue D'Ewes's handling of religious issues more thoroughly elsewhere.

173 Clarendon's comment that Pembroke ‘pretended to no other qualifications than to understand horses and dogs very well… and to be believed honest and generous’, clearly reflects its author's political and even cultural bias: it neglects Pembroke's patronage of the stage and of innovatory architects in the 1630s and 1640s, and his collection of paintings. Nonetheless, it presumably reflects something of Pembroke's contemporary image; his second wife called him ‘no scholar at all to speak of; cf. Aubrey's more sympathetic comment that the earl ‘did not delight in books, or poetry: but exceedingly loved painting and building’. Clarendon, , History, 1, 74Google Scholar; Williamson, George C., Lady Anne Clifford (Kendal, 1922; reprinted East Ardsley, 1967), p. 183Google Scholar; Brennan, , Literary patronage, pp. 186, 189–97, 200–201.Google Scholar See ibid. p. 205 and Dictionary of National Biography, XXVI, 21 ib for hostile comment on Pembroke's personal morality – although he could be described in 1643 as ‘much affected with honest, godly preachers’: Godwin, G. N., The Civil War in Hampshire… (new edition, Southampton, 1904; reprinted Alresford, 1973), pp. 76–7Google Scholar (I am grateful to Dr David Smith for this reference). Thomas Lawrence – one of whose sermons D'Ewes regarded as a warning ‘to all orthodox and godlie Protestants to prepare for secession or suffring’ – had been presented to a living by Pembroke in 1633, although D'Ewes was presumably unaware of this: Harl. 377, fo. 134r; P.R.O., Institution books, E. 331, A. 5, Wiltshire, p. 41; cf. Matthews, A. G., Walker revised (Oxford, 1948), p. 376.Google Scholar

174 Equally, the way in which D'Ewes approached Bath can be compared with Bath's political stance. Bath resisted the king's attempts to gain the support of the Lords against the Commons in the Short Parliament and openly opposed the canons of 1640; he was apparently approached about signing the peers', petition for a parliament in September. However, he did not sign in the event, and his comments on the Scots in November 1639 do not suggest sympathy for their cause; he was capable of showing a polite interest, at least, in Roman Catholic devotion – clues, perhaps, to the roots of his eventual royalism. Russell, Fall, pp. 112, 138–9, 155n. 33, 470–1, 479n. 117; K.A.O., U. 269, C. 267, 10 and 14 Nov. 1639; Albion, Gordon, Charles I and the court of Rome (London, 1935), p. 203Google Scholar, cited by Hibbard, Plot, p. 57.

175 Had. 378, fo. 48; Had. 377, fo. 287; Burke, Peter, ‘Tacitism’, in Tacitus, ed. Dorey, T. A. (London, 1969), quotation from pp. 168–9Google Scholar; cf. Worden, Blair, ‘Classical republicanism and the puritan revolution’, in History and imagination, ed. Hugh, Lloyd-Jones et al. (London, 1981), pp. 182–3Google Scholar; Bradford, Alan T., ‘Stuart absolutism and the “utility” of Tacitus’, Huntington Library Quarterly, XLVI, 2 (1983), 127–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On Muret see Oestreich, Gerhard, Meostoicism and the early modern state (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 16, 61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar D'Ewes owned the De constantia of Lipsius, one of the leading early modern mediators of Tacitean ideas, but condemned Lipsius for surrendering ‘to the will of the papists and Jesuits’: Watson, Library, item M. 10; Corbett, Theodore G., ‘The cult of Lipsius’, Journal of the History of Ideas, XXXVI, 1 (1975), 142–3Google Scholar; Had. 377, fo. 21 IV.

176 I reached these conclusions before reading Stephen Greenblatt's account of Sir Thomas More's ‘self-fashioning’, which in some ways resembles the picture of D'Ewes proposed here: see Greenblatt, Stephen, Renaissance self-fashioning from More to Shakespeare (Chicago, 1980), ch. 1, esp. pp. 31–2, 35.Google Scholar Cf. also Hexter, J. H., ‘The apology’, in For Veronica Wedgwood these, ed. Richard, Ollard and Pamela, Tudor-Craig (London, 1986), p. 31Google Scholar and n. 39.

177 Russell, Causes, p. 139.

178 See Barnes, Somerset, p. 224.

179 Fielding, ‘Woodford’, pp. 778, 780–81, 783, 784. Not all ‘prudent’, remarks regarding ship money entailed concealing the extent of opposition, however: Sir Roger Twysden told the privy councillor, Sir Henry Vane, that he believed that ship money would not be paid on the writ of 1636, ‘though’, he confessed in his notebook, ‘my opynion was otherwise’: K.A.O., U. 47/47, Z. 2, p. 192.

180 See above, introduction; Correspondence of John Morris with Johannes de Laet, 1634–49, ed. Frederik Bekkers, Johannes Antonius (s.l., 1970), p. 49.Google Scholar

181 Kelley, Donald R., The beginning of ideology: consciousness and society in the French Reformation (Cambridge, 1981), p. 9.Google Scholar

182 Sharpe, , Criticism and compliment, p. 293.Google Scholar

183 Harl. 374, fo. 157. D'Ewes sat in the Long Parliament for the Suffolk borough of Sudbury, well outside any of Pembroke's spheres of influence; cf. Rowe, , ‘Influence of earls of Pembroke’, pp. 242–56.Google Scholar It is probably no more than coincidental that another of D'Ewes's proposals in his second letter, that the king should by proclamation abolish the ‘new oath the Prelates haue sett forth’, was in a manner implemented when Laud conveyed to the bishops of his province on 6 October the king's command that the oath be ‘totally forborne… till the next ensuing Convocation’: Works of Laud, VI, 584.

184 Russell, , ‘Nature of a parliament’, pp. 146–7Google Scholar; idem, Causes, pp. 189–90; Hibbard, , Plot, pp. 165–6.Google Scholar The truth of such rumours, and the ability of the councillors to whom they related to influence decisions, may be questioned, but are not germane to the argument here.

185 K.A.O., Sackville MSS (Cranfield papers), U. 269/1, C.P. 40, 1 Oct. 1636. I am very grateful to Mr Donald Gibson, of K.A.O., for helping me to see this document prior to cataloguing.