SUCKLING, Sir John (1609-42), of Whitton, Twickenham, Mdx.

The short life of Sir John Suckling, the most cavalier of royalists, was filled with controversy, infamy, and scandal. In favour at court, particularly with the queen, his extravagant and decadent lifestyle made him antithetical to the godly, who stigmatized both Suckling and the ‘Sucklington faction’. To many more, he was an upstart, without breeding or lineage. This was mistaken: the Sucklings were long-established in Norfolk. Suckling’s great-grandfather, Richard Suckling, was sheriff of Norwich, while his grandfather Robert Suckling† twice represented the city at Westminster.18Suckling, Suff. i. 39-40; Add. 19150, ff. 287-300; HP Commons 1558-1603. Robert’s son Sir John Suckling† entered Parliament in 1601, and shortly after became secretary to the lord treasurer, Sir Robert Cecil†. He rose at the court of James I, who knighted him in 1616, becoming master of requests (1620), comptroller of the royal household (1622), and secretary of state (March 1622). Under Charles I he became a privy councillor.19HP Commons 1558-1603; HP Commons 1604-1629; E101/435/17; E101/437/11; E101/437/2; E101/438/2.

His status was reflected in his marriage to Martha, sister of Lionel Cranfield†, 1st earl of Middlesex.20HP Commons 1604-1629; CP; Blomefield, Norf. iv. 308–10. After Suckling’s death in 1627, Middlesex, although disabled from holding office, became the patron of Suckling’s son, the future MP, who spent time at Wiston, Middlesex’s seat; the link with the Cranfields was to persist.21Suckling, Works, i. 131-3; Add. 71131N; Letters and Pprs. of the Verney Family ed. J. Bruce (Cam. Soc. lvi), 275. The young John Suckling was reputedly precocious, mastering Latin by the age of five, and quickly acquiring ‘tongues enough to renew that good understanding among men that was lost at Babel’.22D. Lloyd, Memoires (1668), 157-8. There were accusations that his father’s executors delayed paying legacies, ‘upon some dilatory pretences’, but shortly after entering Gray’s Inn his son inherited substantial estates in Suffolk, Lincolnshire, and Middlesex.23C2/Chas 1/S120/25; PROB11/151/688 (Sir John Suckling); Muskett, Suff. Manorial Fams. ii. 187-9; G. Inn Admiss. 180.

Possibly intended for the Ile de Ré expedition in May 1627, Suckling was at court in March 1628, assisting with the performance before the king of Thomas Vincent’s comedy, Paria.24CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 182; Emmanuel Coll. Lib., Camb. MS 68, f. 49. In October 1629 he set out for the continent with a licence to pass to Utrecht, to serve as a volunteer under Edward Cecil†, Viscount Wimbledon, nephew of his father’s former employer.25E157/14, f. 40v. It has been suggested that Suckling fought under Wimbledon and Horace Vere, 1st Baron Vere, at the siege of Bois-le-Duc, but he had reached Leiden by 18 November and in February 1630 he was admitted to the university.26H. Hexham, A Historicall Relation of the Famous Siege of the Busse (Delft, 1630), sig. C6; Index to English Speaking Students at Leyden, 96; Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/1/CP132; Suckling, Works, i. 107, 112-14. He soon left for Brussels and Frankfurt, before returning to England, where on 19 September he was knighted at Theobalds.27HMC 4th Rep. 290, 300; Suckling, Works, i. 114-18; CKS, U269/1/CP108, 159; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 198.

In 1631 Suckling went on the embassy to Gustavus Adolphus led by Sir Henry Vane I*, travelling to Hamburg, Witzburg and Frankfurt.28Suckling, Works, i. 118-25; Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/1/CP108; HMC 4th Rep. 290. As a messenger from Vane he returned to London in April 1632 to an initially cool reception from the king. He found Whitehall was ‘extremely changed, looking asquint upon Sir Henry in Germany, and upon all who were sent from thence’.29CSP Dom. 1631-3, pp. 322-3; Suckling, Works, i. 126-9.

Thereafter, Suckling adopted the playboy lifestyle which made him famous, his ‘ready sparkling wit’ making him a favourite at court.30Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. O. L. Dick (1962), 343. In November 1632 he was living illegally in the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields.31Bodl. Bankes 62, ff. 51-2. His lifestyle was underwritten in part through the sale of large parts of his inheritance; many of his deals were surrounded by controversy and his finances remained precarious.32C54/2988; C54/3031; Suckling, Suff. i. 39; Muskett, Suff. Manorial Fams. ii. 192-3; CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 414-15, 424, 432, 452, 456, 488. In a dispute with Sir John Morley, another extravagant courtier, Suckling was represented by the queen’s attorney, Sir Edward Herbert I*, but lost the case.33C2/Chas 1/S93/60; C33/172, ff. 192v, 226v. He gained a reputation as ‘the greatest gallant of his time, and the greatest gamester, both for bowling and cards’.34Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. Dick, 343. While in 1635 he won £2,000 at ninepins from Randall MacDonnell, Lord Dunluce (later 3rd earl of Antrim), his luck did not always hold.35CSP Dom. 1635, p. 385. According to John Aubrey,

no shopkeeper would trust him for 6d, as today, for instance, he might, by winning, be worth £200, and the next day he might not be worth half so much, or perhaps sometimes be minus nihilo [minus zero].

Aubrey also alleged that his sisters would try and stop him gambling on bowls at Piccadilly, ‘crying for fear he should lose all their portions’; and that Suckling won £20,000 by using marked playing cards.36Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. Dick, 343.

His scandalous courtship of Anne, daughter of Sir Henry Willoughby, illustrates both his unruly behaviour and the immunity he enjoyed because of the king’s favour.37Suckling, Works, i. 129; Strafforde Letters, i. 336-7. A suit which had the king’s blessing initially prospered, but when Anne declined the match, Willoughby claimed that Suckling had used ‘some secret practices’ to detain his daughter and induce her to supply a written statement agreeing to the marriage.38Suckling, Works, i. 195-9. Led to believe that Anne was now a willing party, in October 1634 Charles I reiterated his support, threatening to ‘insist upon our former recommendation’.39HMC Var. vii. 405; The Letters, Speeches, and Proclamations of King Charles I ed. C. Petrie (1968), 82. When Anne made clear her preference for a brother of Sir Kenelm Digby, Suckling and Digby came to blows, attracting widespread critical comment.40HMC Var. vii. 406-8; Strafforde Letters, i. 336-7; C115/M36/8439. On 18 November Suckling and ‘half a score’ of associates attacked Digby as he was leaving a theatre in Blackfriars.41Suckling, Works, i. 195-9; HMC Gawdy, 150; C115/M36/8440, 8442. Both Suckling and Digby were committed to the king’s bench prison, but while Digby was indicted for the murder of one of Suckling’s men, Suckling was soon free; Digby planned to take the matter to star chamber, but the case never came to court.42HMC Var. vii. 408; C115/M36/8442. Although Suckling boasted to Sir Kenelm Digby ‘that I have switcht [whipped] your brother, and he hath run away upon it’, the popular impression was that it was Suckling (‘but a slight timbered man, and of middling stature’) who had been ‘switched’; a ‘blemish of cowardice’ remained with Suckling until his death.43HMC Hastings, ii. 76; Suckling, Works, i. 130; Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. Dick, 344. On the other hand, his standing at court does not appear to have sustained lasting damage, unlike that of Sir Henry Willoughby.44  Suckling, Works, i. 195-9; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 126.

Armed with a licence from the lord chamberlain, Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, enabling him to live in London over the winter of 1637-8, Suckling concentrated on the writing – mostly unpublished in his lifetime – on which his subsequent reputation has been largely based. He spent the enormous sum of nearly £400 on costumes for his play Aglaura (1637), in which the heroine was rumoured to represent his cousin, Frances, Lady Buckhurst (wife of Richard Sackville*, Lord Buckhurst) to whom he was supposedly romantically attached.45Strafforde Letters, ii. 150; Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. Dick, 346; Bodl. Bankes 38, f. 49v. He dedicated to Buckhurst’s father, Edward Sackville†, 4th earl of Dorset, his ‘Religion by Reason’, an early defence of Socinian unitarianism which, although it was theoretically heretical, expressed views entertained by members of the Great Tew circle, among whom Suckling may be counted.46Suckling, Works, i. 169-80. While in 1636 he presented an uncontroversial figure to the living of Barsham, his letters from the early 1630s contain hints of Catholicism.47Suckling, Suff. i. 44; Al. Cant.; Suckling, Works, i. 116-18; Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/1/CP159.

In November 1638 Suckling was appointed a gentleman of the privy chamber extraordinary and returned to prominence at Whitehall.48LC5/134, p. 286. Here, as the bishops’ wars unfolded, he became an outspoken opponent of the Scots. In an ‘Exchange of purported letters between a London Alderman and a Scottish Lord’, he mocked the Scots’ ‘pretending religion’, while in ‘An answer to a gentleman in Norfolk’, he claimed that the issue was ‘rather a king or no king, than a bishop or no bishop’; in

insurrections of this nature, pretences speciously conscionable were never wanting, and indeed are necessary; for rebellion itself is so ugly, that did it not put on the vizard of religion, it would fright rather than draw people to it.

Liberty of conscience, he argued, would be disastrously divisive, and Alexander Leslie, 1st earl of Leven, was identified as one ‘who because he could not live well, took up a trade of killing men abroad, and is now returned for Christ’s sake to kill men at home’.49Suckling, Works, i. 140-4.

In January 1639 Suckling offered to provide the king with 100 horse for the campaign against the Scots.50CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 378. At a cost of £12,000, his ‘coxcomb troop’ was extravagantly decked in white doublets, with scarlet coats, breeches, feathers and hats; he ‘danced, and pranced, and pranked about, with piebald apparel’.51  Mems. of Prince Rupert ed. Warburton, i. 167; Lloyd, Memoires, 159; Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. Dick, 344; Suckling, Works, i. 207-8. Reaching the Tweed by 6 June, he expressed his fear that an early peace treaty might ‘destroy a handsome opportunity ... of producing glorious matter for future chronicle’.52HMC 4th Rep. 293-4; Suckling, Works, i. 144-6; Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/1/CP108. ‘A calm greater than the storm’ might prove worse in its effects; the mere presence of an army which did not fight might serve to ‘make allegiance stubborn’ and, though ‘there was not one man lost’, still imprison the king in a hopeless situation; the necessity which produced the Pacification of Berwick would also lead to further war.53Suckling, Works, i. 146-8. Suckling was still gloomy in September, after his return to court, telling Middlesex that ‘the Scotch business is in ill terms, and that which they have now sent the king to confirm, is worse than their former unreasonableness’.54Suckling, Works, i. 148-9; Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/1/CP108.

Suckling approached the forthcoming Parliament as a prominent courtier and friend of the queen. On 10 December the earl of Dorset recommended him to the corporation of Great Yarmouth as ‘a very noble gentleman and of able parts’. The bailiffs would only agree to promote Suckling’s candidature ‘amongst such others as are to stand for it to the general vote of the assembly, leaving the success to divine providence’.55HMC 9th Rep. pt. 1, 311. On 27 February 1640 Dorset reminded the town of his recommendation, but on 23 March the town announced Suckling’s defeat.56HMC 9th Rep. pt. 1, 312.

Instead, he was elected on 30 April for Bramber in Sussex.57HMC 4th Rep. 25. Initially the borough had returned James Cranfield, Lord Cranfield* (Suckling’s cousin) and Sir Thomas Bowyer*, but Cranfield opted to sit elsewhere. Sir Edward Bishoppe*, who claimed that he had been promised the place, alleged that Suckling ‘by undue means obtained the ... writ into his hands and with some powerful letters obtained in his support for election’ presented himself at Bramber, ‘and of his own authority, without the sheriff’ convened the burgesses. When the electorate declared their intention to elect Bishoppe, ‘Suckling used threatening speeches to the better sort, and offered moneys and rewards to the meaner sort’. When this failed, Suckling left for London, leaving ‘one Mr Cranfield’ and ‘one Mr Davenant, minister’ to bribe the ‘poorer sort’ with £20 to return him, while ‘the better sort of the ... burgesses being terrified with ... threatenings, and fearing to be undone ... did depart without giving any voice at all’.58Add. 64121, ff. 1-5; HMC 4th Rep. 25. Bishoppe’s petition to this effect was read in the Commons on 2 May, when John Pym* moved that ‘one that comes in so corruptly should not sit so long’, and that a special committee should examine the business.59PA, MP 2 May 1640; Procs. Short Parl. 288-9; Aston’s Diary, 120.

That same day Suckling made his only recorded speech at Westminster, arguing for granting supply to the king before grievances were settled, on the grounds that ‘there is not so inevitable necessity to repair breaches in our house as to quench a fire’. In any case, ‘what need we distrust more if the Ship Money be once acquit, the king hath given too great an earnest to go back with the bargain?’ In reply, Nathaniel Fiennes I* argued that Parliament could not finance a new Scottish expedition until satisfied of the grounds of that war.60Aston’s Diary, 124.

It was to that Scottish expedition that Suckling’s attention turned at the dissolution of the Short Parliament. On 22 February he had received a commission as captain of a troop of carabineers, but in preparation for the second bishops’ war he sought to sell arms to the king, rather than provide them himself.61CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 481, 549, 552, 573. Initially, the council of war chose not to purchase Suckling’s arms, since his pistols were of the wrong bore, but a second inspection, and Suckling’s offer to make alterations, led them to reverse their decision.62CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 586, 596, 605, 606; 1640, p. 17.

In spite of illness, Suckling travelled north in May.63Suckling, Works, i. 151. Rumours arose that he had been killed at Newburn on 28 August but were soon dispelled. Some claimed that Suckling was nowhere near Newburn at the time, but the loss of his horses and the capture by Leslie of his coach, proudly paraded at Newcastle, suggests otherwise.64CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 6, 177, 178; HMC De L'Isle and Dudley, vi. 323; Trevelyan Pprs. ed. W.C. Trevelyan and C.E. Trevelyan (Cam. Soc. cv), 192; J. Spalding, Mems. of the Troubles in Scotland (1850), i. 335-6; HMC 10th Rep. IV, 393; HMC Var. ii. 256.

Suckling’s political views sent from the royal army in the north reveal him as one of the least astute of the king’s ‘evil’ advisers. Early in 1641 he told Henry Jermyn*, in vague and high-blown language, that Charles should ‘do something extraordinary at this present’ in order to draw men’s attention. ‘The great interest of the king’ was ‘union with his people’. It was a mistake to attempt to divide and rule; if he could eliminate the power of majority faction, ‘the lesser would govern, and do the same thing still’. The people were ‘naturally not valiant, and not much cavalier’; since it was ‘the nature of cowardice to hurt, when they can receive none’, once they had ‘the upper hand’ they would not be content, in their fear, ‘to fetter only royalty’. Misreading totally public perceptions of Henrietta Maria, Suckling concluded that, ‘In this great work ... it is necessary the queen really join, for if she stand aloof, there will still be suspicions’.65CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 521-2; Suckling, Works, i. 163-7; Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/1/CP119.

It soon became apparent that Suckling himself was contemplating ‘something extraordinary’. A scheme may have been percolating in January 1641, when he wrote to William Cavendish†, 1st earl of Newcastle, seeking help with some unspecified matter.66Add. 70499, f. 244; HMC Portland, ii. 133; Suckling, Works, i. 152. With others including the queen’s favourites, Jermyn and George Goring*, Suckling planned to bring the army south under Newcastle’s command, and to secure the release from the Tower of the king’s minister Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford. Learning of the plot, the king ordered its abandonment, not least because early in April Parliament also heard of it.67CJ ii. 116a-b. It is possible, however, that Suckling deliberately leaked the story, via Goring, to threaten Parliament, and that Charles approved of the intention to free Strafford.

Allegations that Suckling was making mischief began to circulate in May. Isaac Penington* claimed that Suckling, with more than 60 men, had held meetings at the White Horse tavern in Bread Street. Summoned to the Commons, on 3 May Suckling confessed to having raised three regiments of foot and one of horse, but insisted that they were for the Portuguese ambassador.68CJ ii. 132a-b; Procs. LP iv. 169, 175, 179, 181-2. He was recalled for examination on the afternoon of 5 May, but earlier that day the earl of Middlesex learnt of ‘whispers concerning Sir John [which] I by no means like’, and Suckling failed to appear before the committee.69Procs. LP iv. 190, 210-12, 218-19; CJ ii. 134a; HMC 4th Rep. 62, 295. He had left for Portsmouth, where his friend Goring commanded the garrison. On 6 May Suckling, Jermyn and Robert Dormer, 1st earl of Carnarvon, sailed to Dieppe on board the Roebuck, just as the Commons realized they had gone, pre-empting Sir Robert Harley’s* motion for stopping the ports.70Procs. LP iv. 228-9, 231-3; CJ ii. 135a-136b; HMC 5th Rep. 413.

Suckling’s flight, which attracted great interest from the news writers, took many people by surprise, since the nature of the conspirators’ crime was still badly formulated in the minds of men at Westminster.71HMC 10th Rep. I, 78. His old friend, Sir Henry Vane I*, who on the 3rd seemed to corroborate the detail about Portugal, commented that ‘it is strangely thought on ... and they are esteemed much more culpable than I hope they are ... The truth is the design has been ill carried, whatsoever it hath been’.72CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 571; Procs. LP iv. 179. Sir William Uvedale*, another of Suckling’s friends, did not know why he had fled: ‘what the occasion is, it does not yet clearly appear, but it is thought for some practices with the army and some other design’.73CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 574. Confusion was evident even among men as well informed as Sir John Coke†, who detected only a ‘petty plot’, although others felt it constituted ‘the greatest treason ... that was in England since the [Gun]powder plot’.74HMC Cowper, ii. 281-3; HMC Egmont, i. 134.

The Commons issued a proclamation on 8 May ordering Suckling and the others to appear within ten days, but by 13 May it was clear that Suckling was in France.75Procs. LP iv. 273, 276, 279, 283; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 261-2; Verney, Notes, 74; CSP Ven. 1640-2, p. 149. Within the month he arrived in Paris, from where another exile, Robert Reade*, related that, ‘the cause of their coming is whispered somewhat louder than ordinary, but not spoken out’.76CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 578, 585. Dorothy Sidney, countess of Leicester, told her husband Robert Sidney, 2nd earl of Leicester, the temporarily absent ambassador, of ‘many visits’ from Suckling, ‘who is good company but much abated in his mirth’.77HMC De L'Isle and Dudley, vi. 403.

Not until the first week of June did the true nature of the army plot emerge.78LJ iv. 236-8. On 8 June Nathaniel Fiennes I reported from the close committee various aspects of the case, including the examination of Billingsly, who claimed to have held many meetings with Suckling in the two years since being introduced by the earl of Middlesex. Fiennes revealed that Suckling had been instigator of the plot and that he had lied about raising troops for the Portuguese, whose ambassador knew nothing of the plans.79Procs. LP v. 26, 30-4, 36-7, 39, 42-4, 46, 48, 51; CJ ii. 171a; Verney, Notes, 86-8; An Exact Collection (1643), 220-2, 233, 234. It also became apparent that the plot hatched by those around the queen was distinct from another plot hatched at the instigation of the king. The organizers of the latter, seeking to distance themselves from the reckless Suckling, claimed they had never wanted to work with him. Captain Pollard (14 June) disclaimed any desire to ‘meddle’ with ‘ill propositions’; ‘we did not very well like the men, for Suckling, Jermyn, and Davenant were in it’.80HMC Portland, i. 15-18; Bodl. Rawl. D.1099, f. 65v; Harl. 478, ff. 61v, 63v, 68, 72; Verney, Notes, 95; CJ ii. 175b. The famous letter sent by on 14 June by Henry Percy* to his brother, Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, claimed that he had refused to deal with Suckling and Davenant.81HMC Cowper, ii. 284-5; An Exact Collection (1643), 217-20. It convinced some that Suckling, Goring and Jermyn were ‘greater delinquents in a plot of a higher nature than he with them in his’, and it was widely expected that they would be found guilty of high treason, and sentenced to death.82CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 18, 29.

The most important testimony was that given by Goring, examined on 16 and 21 June. He confirmed Suckling as the prime mover of the plot: it was Suckling who had told him ‘that there were purposes of putting the army in a posture of serving the king’; ‘that the army should march towards London’; ‘that my Lord Newcastle was to be general and that I might be lieutenant-general if I would accept of it’. When, on going to Whitehall, Goring could discover no further details of the plan, he informed Francis Russell†, 4th earl of Bedford and William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele.83HMC Portland, i. 20-3; Procs. LP v. 186, 188-90, 193, 195-6; Verney, Notes, 99; CJ ii. 177b. He placed responsibility for hatching the plot on the queen’s men. When, at the king’s command, he joined with Percy, all that group emphatically rejected the suggestion that Suckling should join them.84CJ ii. 182a; Procs. LP v. 254, 256, 258-9, 261; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 356-8; An Exact Collection (1643), 215-17.

In the first week of July information surfaced that one of Suckling’s men had been made turnkey of Ludgate prison, doubtless with a view to seizing control.85HMC 4th Rep. 83. On the 7th the Commons moved to stop the court pensions of Suckling and the other plotters.86CJ ii. 201a; Procs. LP, 528, 534; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 58. On 22 July the full story, amplified but confirmed by ongoing examinations, was related to the Commons by John Glynne*, one of the most zealous hunters of papists and delinquents.87Procs. LP, vi. 52-3, 55-7; Verney, Notes, 110-11; CJ ii. 220b. Four days later the Commons declared Suckling guilty of attempting to disaffect the army by convincing them that the king and Parliament would be unable to reach agreement and persuading them that, once in London, they would be joined by all the Frenchmen there, and by a thousand horse under the command of the earl of Newcastle.88CJ ii. 223a, 224b-25a; Procs. LP, vi. 91-2, 96. Although statements from witnesses were still being taken, on 12 August the Commons resolved that Suckling should be charged with treason.89CJ ii. 253a, 255b; Procs. LP, vi. 369-71, 380, 387.

Suckling became a favourite target for the press in London, who played on his connection to the queen, his ungodly reputation for gambling, his alleged cowardice in battle, and his fights with Digby in the 1630s.90Vox Borealis (1641, E.177.5); T. B. Newes from Rome (1641), 4 (E.158.18); J. Vicars, God in the Mount (1642), 59 (E.112.25); A Mappe of Mischiefe (1641), 5 (E.169.5); The Copy of a letter of Father Philips (1641), 5 (E.160.28); Old Newes Newly Revived (1641), sig. A3 (E.160.22); The Country-mans Care (1641), 6 (E.179.8). The parliamentary report made by Nathaniel Fiennes I quickly appeared in print, as did Percy’s letter and Goring’s evidence.91A Conspiracy Discovered (1641, E.160.17); Master Henry Percies Letter (1641, E.160.18); The Declaration of Colonel Goring (1641, E.160.14). Other works were simply fictitious, such as the letter supposedly sent from Suckling in France, deploring his sad condition, and the account of his conversion to Catholicism.92A Letter sent by Sir John Suckling (1641, E.160.19); Newes from Sir John Sucklin (1641, E.179.3). Most commentary was hostile, but John Taylor, the ‘water poet’, attempted to salvage his reputation.93[J. Taylor], The Liar (1641), sig. A2[v] (E.169.8).

Suckling’s life in exile is shrouded in myth. Family tradition maintains that he died in early May 1642. One account claimed that Suckling’s manservant ran off with his money, having placed a blade in Suckling’s boot to hinder the chase. Pulling on the boot in haste to catch the thief, Suckling severed an artery and died of a fever days later. Another account, originating with John Aubrey, claimed that Suckling poisoned himself, after ‘reflecting on the miserable and despicable condition he should be reduced to, having nothing left to maintain him’.94‘Sir John Suckling’, Oxford DNB; Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. Dick, 346. Suckling appears to have died intestate. Since he was unmarried and childless, his property passed to his uncle, Charles Suckling.95Oxford DNB.

Suckling’s zeal for the king’s cause was not matched by an ability to see clearly what was in the king’s interest, and his impolitic, over-ambitious schemes only encouraged the belief, essential to Parliament’s case, that Charles was surrounded by evil advisers. Ultimately, he found death rather than glory. Recklessness was characteristic of Suckling’s personal as well as his public life, making him one of the most colourful, if uncomplicated, characters of his age.