LUCAS, John (1606-71) | History of Parliament

LUCAS, John (1606–71)

cr. 3 Jan. 1645 Bar. LUCAS OF SHENFIELD

First sat 1 June 1660; last sat 22 Apr. 1671

b. 23 Oct. 1606, 2nd but 1st legit. s. of Thomas Lucas and Elizabeth, da. and coh. of John Leighton of London. educ. unknown. m. lic. 17 Dec. 1628, Anne (c. 1611–60), da. of Christopher Nevill, KB; 1s. (d.v.p.), 1da. suc. fa. Sept. 1625; kntd. 1638. d. 2 July 1671; will 22 Mar. 1668, pr. 20 Jan. 1672.1

Associated with: Colchester and Shenstone, Essex; Crudwell, Wilts.

John Lucas’ main territorial base was in and near Colchester and Shenfield, Essex, where his great-grandfather (also named John Lucas^‡) had acquired St. John’s Abbey and its lands; he also owned an estate in the order of 4,000 acres in Crudwell, Wiltshire, Greenham Manor, lands in Stratfield Mortimer in Berkshire, and other unspecified lands in Surrey.2 The main family residence was an imposing mansion built to the south of the old abbey church of St. John, Colchester. Lucas’ father, Thomas Lucas, had been outlawed as a young man after killing an opponent in a duel. As a result, he spent several years in exile and he was unable to marry Elizabeth Leighton, to whom he was betrothed, before the birth of his first child, also named Thomas (later Sir Thomas) Lucas. John Lucas, although the second son, was therefore the legal heir to the family estates, except for the manor of Lexden, said to be worth £600 a year, which was settled for life on his older brother, Thomas; Horsey, which went to his younger brother, Charles; and £10,000 reserved for the marriage portions of his sisters.3 At the death of his father, John Lucas was a minor and the Lucas estate became subject to wardship proceedings. Speedy action and a payment of £1,700 ensured that Lucas became the ward of Peter (later Sir Peter) Killigrew^‡, who was about to marry his sister Mary.4

According to Margaret Cavendish, his youngest sister, the Lucas family was prosperous, happy, and close-knit. They managed their estates efficiently and were able, as a result, to indulge themselves in all the trappings of wealth, including costly clothes ‘for we were so far from being in debt, before these wars, as we were rather beforehand with the world; buying all with ready money’. Conspicuous consumption of this kind, she pointed out, was no mere flaunting of wealth: it promoted generosity of spirit and prevented the development of ‘sharking qualities, mean thoughts and base actions’. As a result of their upbringing, the Lucas brothers,

loved virtue, endeavoured merit, practised justice and spoke truth; they were constantly loyal, and truly valiant; two of my three brothers were excellent soldiers … My other brother, the Lord Lucas, who was heir to my father’s estate and as it were the father to take care of us all, is not less valiant than they were, although his skill in the discipline of war was not so much, being not bred therein, yet he had more skill in the use of the sword, and is more learned in other arts and sciences than they were, he being a great scholar, by reason he is given much to studious contemplation.5

Many of their contemporaries viewed the Lucas family in a rather different light. John Lucas was an unpopular and grasping landlord who became embroiled, despite his sister’s insistence that the family never had ‘any law suits, but what an attorney dispatched in a term with small cost’, in a number of disputes with the burgesses of Colchester and other local residents in the decade before the civil wars. His enclosure of common lands, his high-handed action in cutting off the town’s water supply in 1633 because of the damage allegedly caused by the town’s water pipes to Lucas property, and the activities of Colchester saltpetre-men digging at the abbey all fuelled animosities.

There was probably also a religious element both to their unpopularity and to their aloofness from their neighbours. John Lucas’ parents had been on close terms with the high Anglican divine Samuel Harsnett, and Lucas himself was probably suspected of Catholic tendencies. He was sympathetic to William Laud^†, the controversial archbishop of Canterbury, and his entertainment of Marie de Medici, mother to the queen, on her way from Harwich to London in 1638, did nothing to dispel suspicions of his religious loyalties.6 Catholic sympathies are also suggested by his sister-in-law’s possession of the Walmsley estate at Dunkenhalgh, Lancashire.7 As high sheriff of Essex in 1637, his wholehearted commitment to the efficient collection of ship money rendered him still more obnoxious to his neighbours.8 In 1641, Lucas cemented his unpopularity yet further by prosecuting those involved in an enclosure riot at Rovers Tye in the House of Lords, even though the borough court had jurisdiction.9

Lucas’ political sympathies were well known and the following year rumours that he was stockpiling ammunition for the royalist cause precipitated a confrontation; his house was attacked and rifled, the fences in his park pulled down. He himself was arrested and imprisoned. He secured his release with bail of £40,000 and fled to the king at Oxford.10 The siege of Colchester in 1648 saw the house once again under attack; the damage was never fully repaired and it was sold soon after 1671.11 Thereafter Lucas’ main residence was probably in nearby Lexden, which is likely to have been reunited with the main Lucas lands after the death of his older brother, Sir Thomas. Lucas was fined just over £2,000 by the committee for compounding in 1647 but in 1650 a fresh investigation was ordered into his ‘much obscured’ estate, resulting in a further fine of £590. In 1652 the Act of Pardon discharged further undervaluations.12 His manor at Greenham seems to have escaped sequestration, possibly because it was part of his mother’s jointure.13

Hated by parliamentarians, Lucas was a hero to the royalists. He fought at Newbury and was one of those imprisoned for plotting against Cromwell’s regime in 1655. At the Restoration his reputation stood high, not only because of his own record of support for the exiled court but also because of the reflected glory of his dead brothers and wider family. Both were killed in the service of their king, but the circumstances of Sir Charles Lucas’ death – executed after surrendering Colchester in 1648 on Fairfax’s orders – had raised him to the status of a royalist martyr. The civil war service of one brother-in-law, Sir Edmund Pye^‡, was equally impeccable, if not quite as distinguished. Another brother-in-law, Peter Killigrew, did hold local office under Cromwell but a convincing display of loyalty after the Restoration, including consecrating a newly built church in Falmouth to the cult of King Charles the Martyr, ensured that this was soon forgotten.14 Lucas’ remaining brother-in-law was the royalist soldier (and playwright) William Cavendish, marquess (later duke) of Newcastle.

Lucas’ service to the crown was presumably a major factor in his ennoblement in 1645 but an equally important factor was his willingness to pay for the distinction: it was said to have cost him £6,000.15 Initially barred from the House as one of the Oxford creations, he took his seat at the earliest opportunity on 1 June 1660. Thereafter he played an active and very full role in the life of the House. Once he had taken his seat, his attendance for the remainder of the Convention was just over 74 per cent, and would have been still higher but for a long absence beginning on 22 Aug., which was almost certainly related to his wife’s death on that date. His prolonged absence on this occasion proved to be exceptional. From the first meeting of the newly elected Cavalier Parliament to his death in 1671, Lucas’ attendance was exemplary; he missed only ten days in the whole of those ten years. He became one the workhorses of the House, taking a leading role in the work of committees and conferences, often working alongside a fellow Anglican, his sister’s stepson-in-law, John Egerton, 2nd earl of Bridgwater. He was regularly named to the sessional committees and his signature as one of the examiners shows that he was an active member of the committee for the Journal.

The pattern of Lucas’ parliamentary activity indicates an involvement in a wide range of social, religious, and economic concerns. Although he professed to have no legal knowledge, he was also interested in the constitutional role of the law and legal process.16 He rarely reported back to the House from committees but entries in the minute books suggest that he often chaired individual committee meetings. Much of his work in the House related to the passing of private bills. In the case of some of these bills, including those of Sir Anthony Browne in 1661 and of John Paulet, 5th marquess of Winchester, and his son Charles Powlett, then styled Lord St John (later duke of Bolton), in 1663, the committee minutes make it clear that Lucas was acting as a mediator.17 The sheer volume of committees to which he was named makes it difficult to identify those in which he took a close personal interest except in the most obvious of cases, such as the passage of the bill for restoring the lands of his brother-in-law, Newcastle, which he himself reported on 20 Aug. 1660. He was not, however, named to the committee on the bill to confirm his own daughter’s marriage settlement on 6 Apr. 1663.

Within a month of taking his seat in the Convention Lucas had become deeply involved in negotiations with the Commons over the Bill of Indemnity. The first (1661–2) session of the Cavalier Parliament saw him present on all but five days. On 14 Dec. 1661 he was named as one of the managers of the conference on confirmation of private acts, during which the Lords insisted that amendments to bills must be made on parchment rather than paper. On 19 Dec. he was named to the joint committee of both houses which was to meet during the recess to discuss threats to the new regime and the augmentation of the army, later acting as one of the managers of the conference that dissolved the committee on 7 Jan. 1662. On 24 Jan. the House resolved to repeal all the acts of the Long Parliament since 3 Nov. 1640 but that such acts that ‘were for the good of the nation should be made anew’.18 Lucas chaired all but three of the eight meetings of the Lords’ committee that took the subject into consideration.19 On 8 Feb., in a report that probably reflected his own views (the committee minutes show that its decisions were passed by eight votes to three), he recommended that ‘a court of like nature to the late court called the star-chamber’ should be created. The committee specifically asked the House for advice about the character of the proposed court, including the appointment of judges, its jurisdiction, and the nature of proceedings there. The House, presumably worried about potential controversy, gave no directions and so the matter lapsed.

In February 1662 Lucas was involved in the dispute over the precedence of Irish peers that erupted after an incident at the funeral of the queen of Bohemia. In the course of discussions in the committee for privileges, he declared that the Irish ‘were a conquered nation’. The committee resolved ‘that all the peers of England were to take place of all foreign ones either Scotch or Irish’ and their view was endorsed by an address from the House to the king on 4 March.20 On 13 Feb. Lucas reported from the committee for the bill of John Scudamore, Viscount Scudamore [I]. On 8 Apr. he was named to the committee to draw up a clause to enable the king to make provision for those deprived of their livings by the act of uniformity. On 16 May he was named as one of the managers of the conference on the militia bill and then as one of the committee to draw up a proviso to be included in it.

During the 1663 session Lucas was again present nearly every day. On 20 Feb. he was nominated as one of four peers to draw up an order restricting the use of protections except to Members’ ‘menial servants, or persons necessarily and properly employed about their estates’. On 23 Mar. he was named to the committee to draw up a petition to the king concerning Jesuits and priests and was one of the managers of the three subsequent conferences on 26, 28, and 30 Mar. at which the Lords tried to moderate the Commons’ demand for their expulsion. The committee minutes also show that during April he was active in the committees considering the repeal of the acts of the Long Parliament, at which the revival of star chamber was again discussed, and that in July he was active in the committee on the subsidy bill.21 Meanwhile, on 18 June 1663 he was named as one of the referees to settle the dispute between George Nevill, 11th Baron Abergavenny, and the dowager Lady Abergavenny. On 25 July he entered his protest against the lords’ proviso concerning subscriptions to the Act of Uniformity.

At this point in his life Lucas appears to have been well regarded by the court, so much so that in July 1662 he had been awarded £1,000 from the estate of the recently executed Sir Henry Vane^‡ in repayment of a debt, ‘the king being willing to gratify the petitioner for his good services, although the estate, as forfeit for treason, is not liable to any debt’.22 Early in 1663 his only surviving child, Mary, married Anthony Grey, 11th earl of Kent. It was yet another sign of royal favour that he was able to obtain the promise of a new barony (Lucas of Crudwell) for her ‘in reward for the services of her father, John Lord Lucas, and his brother, Sir Charles Lucas’.23 The creation was a remarkable one in that it specified, against all custom and precedent, that the new honour was to descend by common law inheritance rules, thus maximizing the chances that the peerage would survive. Lucas probably already knew or suspected that his own peerage would become extinct within a generation. A special remainder in the original creation meant that it would pass to his nephews, but neither had a male heir and it may have already seemed unlikely that there would be one. An alternative and perhaps more convincing explanation, given that Lucas’ nephew fathered a daughter in or about 1664, is the existence of tensions within the family. The special remainder that accompanied Lucas’ creation specified descent first to descendants of his legitimate younger brother, Sir Charles, and only then to those of his illegitimate older brother, Sir Thomas. The execution of Sir Charles Lucas, without heirs, in 1648 meant that the peerage would descend via the illegitimate line, and this may well have been something that Lucas found unacceptable. He may also have been at odds politically with his successor, his nephew, also named Charles Lucas, later 2nd Baron Lucas, son of Sir Thomas.

Such marks of royal favour might seem to indicate that Lucas’ services were appreciated and rewarded; Lucas himself was, however, dissatisfied and disillusioned. Whether his discontent was based in ideology, failure to win high office, or because he was under economic pressure is unclear; it may well have been a mixture of all three. Lucas’ finances are difficult to piece together accurately. His sister Margaret implied that, despite sequestration, the family was quite well off during the civil wars. They were able to maintain her, during her time as a maid of honour at the exiled court, so well ‘that I was in a condition rather to lend than to borrow, which courtiers usually are not’. Lucas’ own estimate of the value of his Essex lands in 1662–3 put them at £1,300 a year and it seems likely that he received a similar income from lands elsewhere.24 The debt due to him from Sir Henry Vane suggests that before the civil wars he had been able to act as something of a moneylender. In the years immediately after the Restoration he continued to lend money: in 1663 he lent £3,000 to the countess dowager of Derby, in return for an assignment of her life pension of £1,000 a year.25 It proved to be a bad investment: the countess died a year later, leaving Lucas to beg the crown for payment of the single year’s pension that was due to him, a payment which he did not receive until late in 1668.26 This may not have been his only bad investment for, as noted below, in 1667 he was responsible for the proceedings that resulted in the outlawry of the notoriously indebted Sir Henry Vaughan^‡.27 A detailed inventory of his personal property at his death does not survive, but a summary indicates that he had a mere £1,000 in ready money, goods, and debts due, together with books and clothing worth £300. He was owed a further £5,000, in what were described as ‘desperate debts’.28

By 1663, Lucas was already sufficiently antagonistic to court policies to have become involved in the attempt by George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon. Wharton’s somewhat unreliable prediction of voting included Lucas as one of Clarendon’s supporters – perhaps because Lucas’ political sympathies chimed with those of James, duke of York, Clarendon’s son-in-law – but subsequent events demonstrated otherwise. Despite the king’s threats and imprecations, Lucas was one of the few individuals who continued to support Bristol.29 He again revealed his political credentials when on 25 July he joined with York and other royalist zealots to protest at the resolution to agree that the declaration required under the Act of Uniformity related solely to practice and obedience to the act.

Despite the failure of Bristol’s attempt to dislodge Clarendon, Lucas remained one of the most active members of the House, regularly involved in committees and conferences. He was again present on almost every day of the 1664–5 and brief 1665 sessions. In March 1664 he demonstrated his continuing loyalty to Bristol by speaking in favour of the House receiving Bristol’s letter.30 He chaired sessions of the committees discussing the conventicle bill in May 1664 and the bill for Deeping Fen in February 1665, and was an active member of the committee discussing the Yarmouth bill promoted by Sir Robert Paston, later Viscount Yarmouth.31 He also invoked privilege of Parliament to protect his own interests: in January 1665 he complained about incursions on the copyhold estate of one of his manorial tenants by Giles Earle, ‘whereby the inheritance of his lordship is concerned’. The House ordered that Earle be imprisoned; there is no indication that it was informed that Earle was nearly 80 years of age and too infirm to travel to London.32

At the opening of the 1665 session, in a somewhat petty attack on Clarendon, Lucas unsuccessfully opposed the customary vote of thanks to the king and lord chancellor for their speeches, arguing that only the king should be thanked, for Clarendon’s speech ‘was but an enlargement upon the king’s speech and by the king’s command’.33 On 30 Oct., in company with Thomas Wriothesley, 4th earl of Southampton, Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester, and Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, he mounted an attack on the passage of the five mile bill, but the strength of the proponents of the bill, led by York and the bishops, proved impossible to overcome.34 On 31 Oct. he was named as a manager of the conference on the bill for distress of rent and for the free conference on the plague bill. In April 1666, when Parliament was not sitting, he was one of the lords summoned for the trial of Thomas Parker, Baron Morley; Lucas found him guilty of manslaughter rather than murder.

He was present every day of the 1666–7 session. On 12 Oct. 1666 he was named as one of the committee to draw up heads for a conference to explain the Lords’ objections to the Commons’ vote to prohibit the importation of French commodities; then on 17, 23, and 30 Oct. he went on to become one of the managers of the ensuing conferences and presumably assisted in arriving at the compromise that resolved the dispute. In the meantime an even more contentious dispute had broken out over the proposed Irish cattle bill. Together with George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, and Anthony Ashley Cooper, Baron Ashley (later earl of Shaftesbury), Lucas opposed the controversial proviso, subsequently abandoned, for the importation of 20,000 head of cattle as charity for the City of London.35 Again in company with Buckingham and in direct opposition to York and Clarendon, on 29 Nov. and 1 Dec. he intervened in the dispute over the Canary Company, insisting that the patent be brought in and read.36 On 17 Dec. in a committee of the whole House, Lucas, Buckingham, and Ashley argued strongly against Clarendon’s objections to the use of the word ‘nuisance’ in the Irish cattle bill.37 He was nevertheless named to the committee to draw up reasons for the objections of the House for use at a free conference.

On 19 Dec. he was named to the committee to assist in drawing up the petition to the king to create a commission for public accounts; at Clarendon’s suggestion he was then appointed to the commission itself.38 On 29 Dec. 1666 he was appointed one of the managers of the several conferences (Irish cattle, the poll bill, and public accounts) that were to be held on 2 Jan. 1667, although there is no record that the conference on the Irish cattle bill actually took place that day. He was involved in further conferences on the same subjects on 9, 12, and 14 Jan. 1667. On 23 Jan. he entered two dissents to the bill for resolving disputes concerning houses burned in the fire of London: one was to the resolution not to add a clause granting a right of appeal to the king and House of Lords; the other was to the passage of the bill itself. On 24 Jan. he was named to the conference on public accounts although there is no record that the conference actually took place. The following month he was one of the managers of the conferences on the plague bill (1 Feb.) and on 4 and 7 Feb. was one of the managers of the conferences that wrangled over the procedural issues of the proposed impeachment of John Mordaunt, Viscount Mordaunt.

When Parliament reassembled in October 1667, Lucas was again present almost every day over a long session that lasted, with long intervals of adjournment, until March 1669. If his appointment to the commission for accounts had been intended to lure him into support for the government, it had failed. He was more than ready for the renewal of the attack on Clarendon. In October he seconded Ashley’s failed motion that care might be taken to prevent enlarging chancery’s jurisdiction. Then on 24 Oct. he presented a petition from Robert Selvin and others appealing against an ‘unjust’ decree made by Clarendon in chancery.39 He was one of the managers of the conferences on Clarendon’s impeachment on 15, 19, 21, and 28 Nov. 1667 and made his sympathies even more obvious when, on 20 Nov., he entered a protest at the failure of the House to commit Clarendon without a specific charge. In December, as business appeared to be settling back into its normal channels, he chaired meetings of the committee on the Fen bill.40 On 16 Mar. 1668 he parted company with erstwhile critics of Clarendon when he entered a dissent to the decision of the House to reverse the chancery decree in Morley v Elwes, a case in which the original decree was tainted by suspicions of Clarendon’s corruption. The following day, together with Manchester, he offered a new clause for the bill for Sir John Weld^‡.

Meanwhile, Lucas’ financial difficulties had led him into a suit against Sir Henry Vaughan^‡ whom he pursued to outlawry. In April 1668 the publication of a pamphlet criticizing his actions led him to invoke privilege and to secure the opinion of the House ‘that his lordship hath proceeded as any person legally ought to do’.41 Later that month, on 24 Apr., he was one of the managers of the conference concerning the impeachment of William Penn, as well as an active member of the Lords committee considering the case of the creditors of the Hamburg company.42 He was also one of the managers of the conferences of May 1668 sparked by the case of Skinner v East India Company. Not surprisingly, in view of his own earlier use of the House of Lords as a court of first resort, he spoke in favour of the right of the Lords to hear cases in original jurisdiction. At the conference on 8 May he argued that ‘there is no country in the world where the highest court may not take all things into their own consideration’ and that ‘their Lordships suffer justice sometimes to be administered by inferior courts, yet may administer justice themselves when they please’. Lucas&rsquo involvement in Skinner’s case was symptomatic of his uncompromising view of the importance of the House of Lords, which he declared to be ‘necessary and essential to the being of this kingdom’.43

In July 1669 Lucas was deputed to act as one of the arbitrators in the dispute between Richard Sterne, archbishop of York, and Edward Rainbowe, bishop of Carlisle, over dilapidations at the bishop’s palace, Rose Castle.44 Parliament reassembled in Oct. 1669 for what proved to be an extremely brief session; Lucas was once more present nearly every day. He again reached for privilege to protect himself and his tenants in a land dispute. The incident in question had occurred just over a year earlier in September 1668; he brought it to the attention of the House on 25 Oct. 1669 when he also complained that the same individuals had uttered scandalous words against him, ‘contrary to the honour due to the peerage of this kingdom’, as long ago as Nov. 1664. He had been called a ‘land lob’ – a phrase whose meaning is obscure but which was certainly meant to be highly derogatory.45 In a show of false magnanimity on 6 Nov. Lucas agreed to the offenders being released after they had paid their fees and received the reprehension of the House on their knees. On 25 Nov. when the case of Morley v Elwes was again under consideration by the House he entered a protest at the resolution that the case was properly before the House and the following day was named as one of the small group of leading peers who were to seek expert advice on the reasons for the decay of trade and on ways of reducing interest rates. A week later, on 8 Dec., he raised another privilege issue, this time relating to an individual who had dug a ditch across his land.

During the 1670–1 session Lucas was yet again present almost every day. Early in the session he was involved in the privilege dispute brought by the dowager Lady Gerrard of Gerrards Bromley against William Spencer, apparently being deputed to move the House on her behalf.46 He was also active in defending the privileges of his family: a petition from George Berkeley, 9th Baron (later earl of) Berkeley, claiming higher precedence was presented to the House on 19 December. Lucas countered by arguing that his son-in-law, Kent, possessed a more ancient barony as Baron Hastings.47

The spring of 1670 was dominated by the Roos divorce and a new bill against conventicles. Lucas, in company with the duke of York and his followers, opposed the divorce. On 17 Mar. he protested against the decision to give the bill a second reading; during the debate on the third reading on 28 Mar. he argued that such a bill opened the way to a more general facility of divorce and that it would encourage adultery and aristocratic feuds. He entered another protest when the bill passed.48 On 26 Mar. he was one of four peers to vote against the bill for a union with Scotland.49 That same day, in company with a number of Presbyterian peers, he entered a dissent to the passage of the bill against conventicles. No reasons for the dissent were given but it seems likely that it was sparked by the inclusion of a controversial clause saving the king’s supremacy in matters ecclesiastical; he went on to act as one of the managers of the ensuing conferences with the Commons on 4 April.

Lucas entered a dissent to the passage of the supply bill on 8 Apr. 1670 and was active during May and June in the committee considering the regulation of bills of Middlesex.50 On 2 Dec. he entered a dissent to the passage of the general naturalization bill. He continued to be active in committee work, chairing sessions of the committee on the bills for Worcester gaol and one of three sessions of the committee considering the bill for preventing arrests of judgments.51 Towards the end of the session, on 4, 6, 9, and 11 Feb. 1671, he acted as one of the managers of the four conferences on the bill to prevent maiming which had been drafted in response to the attack on Sir John Coventry^‡. On 8 Feb., during the debate over the dispute between Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, and his mother, the dowager countess, the House was forced to intervene after ‘words of provocation’ passed between Lucas and Peterborough. What caused the quarrel remains obscure but the next item of business concerned the need to establish a convention ‘concerning the manner how and when peers shall withdraw themselves when any matter wherein they are concerned is to be debated in this House’, which suggests that Lucas may have objected to Peterborough’s presence during the debate.

On 22 Feb. Lucas made the speech on the supply bill for which he is now most remembered. The speech encapsulated cavalier frustration at the failure of the new regime to deliver a society in which every man could ‘sit under his own vine enjoying the fruit of peace and plenty’ and which had so signally failed to reward those who had suffered in the royalist cause:

How many at the time of his majesty’s happy restoration were worth little or nothing and now the same can purchase land and keep their coach and six horses, their pages and lackeys and live in all the affluence and plenty of the world whilst in the mean time those that have faithfully served the king are exposed to penury and want and have scarce sufficient left to buy them bread, and is this (my lords) the rewards of our services? Have we for this bore the heat of the day and been imprisoned, sequestered and ventured our lives, estates and families? And must we after all this, sacrifice so much of our poor remainder to the will of a few particular men and to the maintenance of their vanities …52

Lucas’s speech, delivered in the presence of the king, and accusing him of being cozened by his courtiers and warning that granting so liberal a supply would simply encourage it to be ‘vainly and prodigally’ misspent, provided a rallying call for the discontented. Copies were circulated far beyond the House, in printed form as well as in manuscript; many still survive to this day, scattered in record offices throughout the British Isles. The king soon signalled his displeasure. Andrew Marvell reported that when a copy of the speech was brought into the House, ‘Lord Lucas was asked whether it was his. He said part was, and part was not. Thereupon they took advantage, and said it a libel, and to be burned by the hangman. Which was done; but the sport was, the hangman burned the Lords’ order with it.’53 Marvell was one of the few to see the joke. Others clearly found the investigation into the printing and distribution of the speech to be an extremely uncomfortable experience.54 Lucas himself disowned the copy that was circulating and ‘to vindicate his own honour he tendered them a true copy desiring that if they burnt the false one that might be entered in the journals of the house’.55 The Venetian ambassador declared that the whole episode illustrated the way in which ‘the royal authority gains ground daily’ and reported that the king had thereby ‘stopped the mouths of those who even covertly attempt to play the part of agitators, so that at the moment there is no one left in Parliament who dares to speak disrespectfully of his majesty’.56 Others agreed: ‘You cannot imagine what strange effects that unlucky paper called my Lord Lucas’s speech hath wrought in most men’s brains, who took too much boldness from the warrant thereof to prate unbecomingly; but since the news of how the House of Lords resented it, their tongues are tied.’57

Despite the outcry, Lucas was named as one of the managers of the conference on the subsidy bill on 2 Mar., as well as to that on the bill for an additional excise on beer on 6 March. Despite his own use of privilege, he entered dissents on 9 Mar. 1671 to the failure of a bill that appears to have been intended to restrict the use of privilege of Parliament in private suits. Meanwhile he appears to have been closely involved in negotiations over the implementation of the Commons’ petition to the crown to prevent the growth of popery. The version of the petition agreed by the House on 10 Mar. 1671 included a request ‘that no office or employment of public authority, trust, or command, in civil or military affairs, be committed to, or continued in, the hands of any person being a popish recusant, or justly suspected to be so’. On 24 Mar. he was named (along with almost everyone present in the House) to the committee to consider the resultant bill. When the committee met on 13 Apr. Lucas was named to a subcommittee to draw up ‘the test or oath’ that would prevent Catholics from holding office.58

Lucas died unexpectedly in July 1671, after suffering for six days from ‘an extraordinary vomiting’ and ‘a great burning in his stomach’.59 His honours descended to his nephew Charles, son of his illegitimate elder brother, Sir Thomas Lucas, thus parting company from the estate, which passed to his daughter, the countess of Kent. In his will, made in 1668, Lucas left careful instructions for his daughter’s trustee (his sister Ann) to ensure that his son-in-law could not gain control of the property. In default of direct heirs, his lands were to be divided between the heirs of each of his three married sisters; he made no provision for them to pass to either of his nephews. Although Lucas clearly had some interest in the welfare of the poor – he had founded a free school at Crudwell either before or during the civil wars – his will contained no bequests to his servants or to the poor.

R.P.

1 TNA, PROB 11/338.
2 VCH Essex, ix. 303–4, 385; VCH Wilts. xiv. 55; VCH Berks. iii. 319–20; CCC, 95, 96.
3 CCAM, 821.
4 CSP Dom. 1625–6, pp. 102, 111.
5 Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader, ed. S. Bowerbank and S. Mendelson, 42.
6 W.D. Grant, Margaret the First: A Biography of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, 48; VCH, Essex, ix. 71–72; Jnl. Peasant Studies, ii. 1975, 152.
7 CCC, 2880, 2881.
8 CSP Dom. 1637, p. 132.
9 LJ, iv. 272, 285, 293, 307, 313.
10 HMC 10th Rep. 146–7; B. Ryves, Mercurius Rusticus (1646), 1–6.
11 VCH Essex, ix. 303–4.
12 CCC, 315, 1439.
13 VCH Berks. iii. 319–20.
14 HP Commons, 1660–90, ii. 679–80.
15 M.P. Schoenfeld, The Restored House of Lords, 23.
16 PA, Braye mss 10, iii. 209.
17 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, 9 July 1661; HL/PO/CO/1/2, 2 and 9 July 1663.
18 Chatsworth, Cork mss, Misc Box 1, Burlington Diary, 25 Jan. 1662.
19 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, 27 Jan., 1, 6, 15 Feb., 1 Mar. 1662.
20 Chatsworth, Cork mss, Misc Box 1, Burlington Diary, 25 Feb. 1662.
21 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, 8, 13 Apr. and 18 July 1663.
22 CSP Dom. 1661–2, p. 437.
23 CSP Dom. 1663–4, p. 58.
24 HMC 14th Rep. IX, 281.
25 CSP Dom. 1667–8, p. 109.
26 CTB, v. 639.
27 HP Commons, 1660–90, iii. 627; PA, HL/PO/JO/10/1/331/170.
28 TNA, PROB 4/15087.
29 Bodl. Carte 76, f. 7; HMC Ormonde, n.s. iii. 154.
30 Bodl. Rawl. A130, 21 Mar. 1664.
31 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, 6 May 1664, 17 and 18 Feb. 1665; Add. 27,447, f. 338.
32 HMC 7th Rep. 180.
33 Bodl. Rawl. A130, 12 Oct. 1665.
34 Ibid. 30 Oct. 1665.
35 Bodl. Carte 217, ff. 354–5.
36 Bodl. Rawl. A130, 29 Nov. and 1 Dec. 1666.
37 Ibid. 17 Dec. 1666.
38 CSP Dom. 1666–7, pp. 365–6; Bodl. Carte 222, ff. 138–9.
39 Bodl. Rawl. A130, 17 and 22 Oct. 1667.
40 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, 16 Dec. 1667.
41 PA, HL/PO/JO/10/1/331/170.
42 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, 29 and 30 Apr. 1668.
43 PA, Braye mss, 10, iii. 209; Leics. RO, DG 7, Box 4956 P.P. 18 (i), pp. 27–28.
44 CSP Dom. 1668–9, p. 414.
45 HMC 8th Rep. pt. 1, p. 127a.
46 NAS, GD 406/1/10, 298; LJ, xii. 393.
47 HMC 8th Rep. pt. 1, p. 153b.
48 Harris, Sandwich, ii. 324–33.
49 NLS, Yester pprs. ms 7023, letter 239.
50 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/1, 12 May and 2 June 1670.
51 Ibid. 12 Dec. 1670 and 31 Jan. 1671.
52 TNA, PRO 30/24/7/531. Other copies may be found at CSP Dom. 1671, pp. 93–94; NLW, Wynnstay, L453; Bodl. Tanner 44, ff. 245–6; Surr. Hist. Cent. LM/1331/58; HMC Laing, i. 382; HMC Hodgkin, 17; My Lord Lucas His Speech in the House of Peers, Feb 22, 1670/1.
53 Marvell, ed. Margoliouth, ii. 308.
54 CSP Dom. 1671, pp. 428, 362.
55 Add. 36916, f. 216.
56 CSP Ven. 1671–2, pp. 32, 34.
57 CSP Dom. 1671, p. 166.
58 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2, p. 451.
59 Add. 36916, f. 226.