PEYTO, Edward (1626-58), of Chesterton, Warws.

The Peyto family was established at Drayton, near Stratford-upon-Avon by 1278: its head at that time being Richard Peyto, according to the antiquary William Dugdale ‘of the superior rank amongst the gentry of the time’. The family had moved to Chesterton, south east of Warwick, by the end of the fourteenth century, and the first of the name there, John Peyto†, served as MP for Warwickshire in five Parliaments between 1368 and 1386. His grandson, William Peyto†, commanded two separate expeditionary forces of 150 and 210 archers in the English occupation of northern France, and had to mortgage Chesterton in order to fund his military adventures.15Dugdale, Warws. i. 471, 472-3, 476; HP Commons 1386-1421. William’s son, John, rebuilt Chesterton Hall, and incorporated into its windows an extensive heraldic account, in glass, of the family’s descent, in over 53 shields.16Dugdale, Warws. i. 476. After 1500, the Peytos settled into life at Chesterton as county gentry, with no further exotic forays, but the family ties they enjoyed with the Feildings of Newnham Paddox ensured that they were closely associated with the noble families of Warwickshire.17Dugdale, Warws. i. 472. Sir Edward Peyto, this Member’s father, was evidently an enterprising landowner, who was among the first in the area to grow woad as a commercial crop in the 1630s. He built watermills and a windmill on his estate, hiring a pupil of Inigo Jones to construct the windmill of stone.18‘Woad accounts for the manor of Chesterton 1638-1641’, ed. B.M. Baggs in Miscellany I (Dugdale Soc. xxxi), 1-2; A. Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warws. 1620-60 (Cambridge, 1987), 138. In a draft of his will, made in May 1641, Sir Edward Peyto acknowledged ‘many noble favours’ from James Hamilton, 2nd earl of Cambridge and 3rd marquess of Hamilton [S], his ‘ever honoured lord’, and singled out the help Hamilton had given his son, Edward.19Shakespeare Birthplace Trust RO, DR 98/1088. Hamilton was the brother-in-law of Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh, which must account for the link between Hamilton and the Peyto family.20HP Lords 1604-1629, ‘James Hamilton, 2nd earl of Cambridge’.

In the build-up to the first civil war in England, Sir Edward Peyto, an associate of Robert Greville†, 2nd Lord Brooke, was left to command Warwick Castle when Brooke returned to discussions in Parliament in the summer of 1642. As early as February 1642, the fortifications at the castle had been strengthened, and on 9 August a force led by Spencer Compton†, 2nd earl of Northampton, bombarded the castle. The artillery response from the ramparts wounded Northampton’s son, James Compton*, Lord Compton, and William Dugdale’s declaration of Sir Edward Peyto as a traitor was met with Peyto’s dangling a Bible and a winding-sheet from the walls as a defiant expression of faith and readiness to sacrifice himself for the cause.21Dugdale, Diary and Corresp. 17; ‘The Genealogie, Life and Death of the Right Honourable Robert Lord Brooke’ ed. P. Styles in Miscellany I (Dugdale Soc. xxxi), 175, 179, 180; Joyfull Newes from Warwick (1642), 3 (BL 1508.919). Edward Peyto was only 16 years old during these events, but accompanied his father when he handed Warwick Castle over to John Bridges* and left for London with the force of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, early in 1643. Sir Edward Peyto was lieutenant-general of Essex’s ordnance by mid-October 1642, receiving payments by that time for the artillery train.22SP28/2b, ff. 430, 457. Edward Peyto may not have been officially a commissioned officer at this time, but in July 1643 was with Sir Edward and the artillery train in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, before they returned to Warwickshire.23Shakespeare Birthplace Trust RO, DR 98/1704.

After the death of Lord Brooke in March 1643, the Peytos had no difficulty in transferring their loyalty to the command of Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh, and in August 1643 Sir Edward headed the list of contributors of plate in Warwickshire.24SP28/136/10; LJ vi. 197a. On 21 September, however, Sir Edward Peyto died, with Edward, his heir, not of majority age. Six months later, Edward was commissioned in the Association army of Lord Denbigh. He was given command of a troop of horse in Denbigh’s own regiment. His duties were that of a captain; his rank of lieutenant-colonel suggests more about his close links with Denbigh than about his military prowess. Indeed, there is evidence that Peyto’s experiences as a young officer were not happy; some men deserted his troop when they were in London, and he had to sell a spare horse to his former colleagues in the artillery train because he could not work out how to get the animal back to Warwickshire.25SP28/136/34. In April 1645, he left the army, and was in Warwickshire at the time of the recruiter election, signing the indenture for John Burgoyne* and Thomas Boughton* in October 1645.26C219/43/pt. 3/58.

Still only 20 years old, in 1646 Edward Peyto resumed his studies, and was admitted to the Middle Temple, leaving his widowed mother in charge of Chesterton. By this time, relations between the committee of Warwickshire, meeting at Coventry and dominated by radicals such as William Purefoy I*, and the older gentry families were strained. There was a bitter division between the committee and the sub-committee of accounts, staffed by the gentry loyal to the earl of Denbigh; and the Peyto family, associated by kinship and military service with Denbigh, was subject to the unwelcome attentions of the Coventry-based committee. Before Sir Edward Peyto died, his estate had been plundered by Worcestershire royalists.27Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 180. In 1645 or 1646, Elizabeth Peyto, Edward’s mother, sought the financial help of Sir Simon Archer*, head of another long-established gentry family. She was made to attend the committee at Coventry to plead for relief from the arrears of contributions to the Warwick garrison under John Bridges*. Her debts were such that she feared having to draw upon her jointure to meet them, and Chesterton House was so decayed that it had ‘mushrooms growing in the top of the chambers for want of tiling’. She sought to borrow at least £100 Archer until Edward Peyto came of age; until then, ‘these continual payments for the state take so much away from me that I cannot stock or let my ground’, she told Archer.28Shakespeare Birthplace Trust RO, DR 37/box 88/65.

The fortunes of the family undoubtedly improved when Edward Peyto came of age and in January 1648 married Elizabeth Verney of Compton Verney. The Verneys had built up their estates at Compton since 1442, when Richard Verney† had become owner, and from him had descended Sir Greville Verney†, Peyto’s father-in-law, whom Dugdale considered ‘a gentleman accomplished with singular endowments’.29Shakespeare Birthplace Trust RO, DR 98/1088a. Although the Chesterton estate, which had been in trust for Edward Peyto since 1640, was now subject to an even more extensive range of restrictive covenants, this marriage transformed the prospects of the hard-pressed Peyto family.30Shakespeare Birthplace Trust RO, DR 98/1086a, 1091a, 1092, 1093, 1094, 1095, 1096, 1097, 1098, 1099, 1100. Even so, Chesterton House itself had become uninhabitable, and Peyto’s children were born at Compton Verney and elsewhere.31Chesterton par. reg.

From 1646, Peyto appeared in the commission of the peace for Warwickshire, but only from December 1648 did he appear in the militia and tax commissions. Like Denbigh, Peyto accepted the government of the commonwealth, and as a militia colonel and commissioner he was willing to work with William Purefoy I and other more radical figures. Peyto attended quarter sessions 12 times between 1 October 1649, when he first appeared, and 10 July 1650.32Warwick County Records, ii. p. xxi. Perhaps the date of his first attendance suggests some caution in embracing the new government. His work as a militia commissioner survived the transition to the protectorate, and in 1654 he was signing warrants with men like Purefoy, Robert Beake* and Joseph Hawkesworth*, radicals who had given his mother so much cause for anxiety in the mid-1640s.33SP28/248. He attended sessions frequently until the time, in 1654, that he was appointed sheriff, and he supervised the assizes at Warwick in 1655: further evidence that he had no principled objection to the protectorate.34Shakespeare Birthplace Trust RO, DR 98/1712; Warwick County Records, iii. p. xxi. Despite his association with radicals as a militia commissioner, however, his social milieu was that of his parents. He was paying Lady Hatton, wife of a patron of William Dugdale, sums of money in 1650 that were likely to have been debt repayments.35Shakespeare Birthplace Trust RO, DR 98/1654/12, 13. He inherited some of his ancestors’ interests in antiquities, and was willing to help finance Dugdale’s Warwickshire and provide material from the Verneys. His late father’s confrontation with Dugdale at Warwick castle in 1642 had not been allowed to prevent the revival of antiquarian pursuits.36Dugdale, Diary and Corresp. 269, 279.

While Peyto was by his record of public service not wholly hostile to the government of the mid-1650s, his election to the second protectorate Parliament caused some anxiety to managers at Westminster. He was numbered with those denied access to the assembly, but he had entered the House by 22 November, two months after it first met, so his blacklisting (if that is what it was) was temporary.37Bodl. Tanner 52, f. 156. It was likely that his correspondence with former royalists like Dugdale, or even his associations with royalists and republicans at the same time, made him an object of suspicion to the government. Peyto’s contribution to this Parliament, after he was eventually admitted, was modest. He was named to two committees, one to consider a petition, another to supervise the reorganization of churches in Exeter.38CJ vii. 457b, 488a. On 31 December 1656, a call of the House was taken, noting absences through ill-health or leave. When the call, conducted on a county-by-county basis, reached Warwickshire, Sir Roger Burgoyne was excused, just as he came into the House. Peyto’s was the next name, and it was resolved not to excuse him. Major-general Charles Howard, unsatisfied with the procedure, called for a division. Howard and Col. John Bingham were tellers for the motion that Peyto should be excused, while Christopher Packe and Anthony Rous were tellers against. The noes won the division by six votes. The issue may partly have been over the casual procedure that allowed Burgoyne to be excused as absent even when he was in the palace of Westminster.39CJ vii. 477b; Burton’s Diary, i, 287.

On 7 February 1657, a committee of the whole House voted to consider inserting a clause in a bill on the liberties of the people that no taxation should be levied without consent in Parliament, and on 10 February there was a division on a motion that Members should be allowed to discuss the matter again. This motion was won by 29 votes, and the serjeant-at-arms was ordered to bring into the chamber all Members in Westminster hall. The full House then debated whether a clause that the consent of Parliament was required for taxes should not be inserted in a bill raising money for the war with Spain, but in a bill for ordinary revenue. Peyto was a teller with Edmund Thomas, later that year to be elevated to Cromwell’s Other House, for the noes. The opposing tellers were Major-general William Boteler and Captain Robert Beake, suggesting a division between military and civilian interests. On this occasion, the yeas were resoundingly successful, with a majority of 86 votes. The resolution was that the bill for financing the Spanish war would proceed without delay, while an expression of concern for parliamentary liberties was postponed. The minority view, espoused by Peyto, was that the particular issue of war taxation should have been dependent on an assertion that no taxes could be levied without parliamentary approval. As the outcome was that a grand committee should insert the sensitive clause in a bill on general taxation, it may have been that the nub of the argument was over timing and the need for speedy supply for the war, rather than on constitutional or political principle.40CJ vii, 489a, 489b.

This was to be Peyto’s last intervention in this or any other Parliament, and he left no mark at all on the second session of January and February 1658. On 23 August, he made his will and was thus probably unexpectedly ill, being only 32 years old. He died, according to his tomb in Chesterton church, on 24 September 1658, although the parish register records his burial on 3 September. His plans for rebuilding Chesterton House, in hand at the time of his death, became the subject of a lawsuit in 1662, by which time his widow had spent over £800 on the project, including payments to the royalist sculptor and mason, John Stone, youngest son of Nicholas Stone.41Shakespeare Birthplace Trust RO, DR 98/1540/1-5. Edward Peyto’s grandson, William Peyto, sat for Warwickshire from 1715 until his death in 1734. He was a tory and a Jacobite sympathiser.42HP Commons 1715-1754.