PURY, Thomas II (1619-93), of Gloucester and The Grove, Taynton, Glos.

Of a Gloucester merchant clothier family established in the city since the early Tudor period, Pury embarked on his public career under the aegis of his father, a clothier, alderman and attorney who was elected to the Long Parliament. At that time the son was said to have been ‘servant to Mr Townshend, an attorney of Staples Inn’; early in 1641 he was entered at Gray’s Inn, and in 1642 he was ‘keeping terms at the Temple’.18J. Washbourn, Bibliotheca Gloucestrensis (Gloucester, 1825), p. clxv; The Mystery of the Good Old Cause (1660), 27 (E.1923.2). The civil war intervened, and found him standing by his father in resisting the king’s attempt to browbeat Gloucester into submission. Volunteering in the regiment of Colonel Henry Stephens, he skirmished with the besieging royalists (6 and 7 Aug. 1643) outside the city, subscribed to the parliamentary garrison’s defiant rejoinder to the king’s order to surrender (10 Aug.) and was subsequently responsible for lighting up the cathedral tower ‘to give notice abroad of our holding out’.19Dorney, Brief and Exact Relation, 1, 2, 9, 15; Rudder, New Hist. Glos. 724-5. He gave extensively of his own silver plate to help finance the garrison in late 1643.20Glos. RO, GBR/G3/SO2, f. 177, reverse. As ‘Captain Pury’ he was one of the garrison officers who delivered a letter from Governor Edward Massie* to the House, and was called upon for advice about holding the city for Parliament (19 Sept. 1643). They were thanked for their services, and Pury’s father, one of the committee named to consider their proposals, was at the same time commended for his ‘great service’ at Gloucester.21CJ iii. 247a. Soon afterwards, as a reward for his fidelity to the parliamentary cause, Pury was appointed receiver-general of crown revenues in Gloucestershire and Wiltshire, a post he retained until 1652.

Pury was recruited as MP for Monmouth Boroughs, somewhat outside his family’s usual sphere of influence, at the end of 1646. He owed his election to the interest of his father. Thomas Pury I was a leading figure in the Gloucester, Hereford and south Wales committee, had become second in importance at the Army Committee only to Robert Scawen*, and thus exercised powerful influence with the New Model army. In January 1646, either Thomas Pury I or his son, this MP, had attended meetings of the committee of Monmouthshire and Glamorgan men in Cardiff, and by November the election was being seen by Sir Trevor Williams† as a contest between Presbyterian and Independent interests. Pury junior must also have been able to secure the support of Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, who controlled Monmouth, worked with Pury senior on the Army Committee, and later nominated Pury I as one of his executors.22Bodl. Nalson V, f. 231; E. Sussex RO, GLY/554: Williams to Sir John Trevor, 10 Nov. 1646; Sheffield City Archives, Elmhirst 1360. Pury II took the Covenant on 30 December 1646.23CJ v. 33b. He quickly obtained leave of absence from the Commons (5 Jan. 1647), being involved at that time in the rebuilding of the war-damaged parish church of Taynton, which was now positioned north-south, with a communion table as the centre piece.24CJ v. 42a; Notes on the Diocese of Gloucester by Chancellor Richard Parsons ed. J. Fendley (Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. xix), 189; VCH Glos. xii. 320, 343. It is likely that references to ‘Mr Pury’ in the Journals are to his father, and that he was usually distinguished as ‘junior’ or by his military rank. He was excused, sick, on the call of the House, on 9 October 1647, given leave of absence on 29 November and on 23 December sent to Gloucestershire to supervise the disbandment of supernumeraries. The following day he was required to go to Monmouthshire to collect arrears of the assessment.25CJ v. 329b, 371a, 400b, 403a. Two letters of his dated 19 and 22 January 1648, from Gloucester, were read in the House (24 Jan.), and were referred to the Derby House Committee. On 23 September he was again despatched to expedite the Monmouthshire assessment.26CJ v. 441b; vi. 30b, 223a; LJ ix. 665a.

Pury stayed away from Parliament after Pride’s Purge, but was readmitted to the House on 2 June 1649.27CJ vi. 223a; Mercurius Pragmaticus Pt 2, no. 8 (5-12 June 1649), 62 (E.559.13). He was in 1650 alleged to have ‘blessed God that his father and he had no hand in that – action of killing the king’.28A Modest Check to Part of a Scandalous Libell (1650), 6. In 1648, he received £279 from the Gloucester committee to build a public library in Gloucester cathedral, and he devoted much time to this project for over a decade.29E113/8. The origins of this venture had lain in an initiative by Gloucester corporation in 1646. The money given to Pury in 1648 must have been spent on refurbishing the Chapter House as the new library, and in 1656, an act was passed, thanks to Pury, to settle the cathedral on the corporation.30A Catalogue of Gloucester Cathedral Lib. ed. S.M. Eward (Gloucester, 1972), vii; Glos. RO, GBR/B3/3, p. 12 In 1658, Pury was given more money, this time to buy books, notably the twelve volumes on zoology by Ulysses Aldrovandus, already in the cathedral library, and now purchased from trustees.31Glos. RO, GBR/B3/3, pp. 65, 66; Catalogue of Gloucester Cathedral Lib. 11. Among the donors of books were Pury’s father, the town clerk, John Dorney, the Presbyterian minister John Trapp and Judge Robert Nicholas*.32Gloucester Cathedral Lib. MS 71. Even when at bay before the court of exchequer in 1663, Pury was able defiantly to point out to his interrogators that the library ‘is still there and is of great use and ornament to the said cathedral’.33E113/8. His motivation for this work on Gloucester’s library seems to have lain in a genuinely deep interest in the humanities.34Notes on the Diocese of Gloucester ed. Fendley, 470.

On 19 December 1650. the council of state was informed that, with his brother-in-law Colonel Roger Kyrle, Pury was one of the chief destroyers of trees in the Forest of Dean, and that he and his cronies had defied inquiry and intimidated potential witnesses. Pury’s denouncers were Isaac Bromwich and George Bishop, the former a candidate against Pury’s interests in the Cirencester by-election of 1647. This was by no means a simple case of private profiteering from the important naval resource of the Forest. The iron-works which were bound up with the allegations of wasteful consumption of timber, were those once granted Edward Massie. The parties in the dispute included figures from the Bristol garrison, the Gloucester committee, the local militia and the New Model. Pury was able to exploit his standing with Parliament to petition the council of state, but his detractors alleged that he wanted the wood to finance a marriage portion, and hinted darkly at malpractice in Pury’s purchase of the Gloucester deanery. The outcome ordered by the council was the destruction of the iron-works, which could hardly have worked in Pury’s favour, but the squabble had contained a potpourri of local vested interests.35CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 443, 467, 514; 1650, pp. 7, 37, 39, 45, 529; 1651, p. 136; Modest Check to Part of a Scandallous Libell, 2, 3, 7, 8; The Spoiles of the Forrest of Deane Asserted (1650), 2-3, 6, 9; Certaine Reasons (by way of reply to some objections ...) (1650).

Pury was named with his father (9 Feb. 1650), to examine the case against the leading Presbyterian Sir John Clotworthy*. On 10 April 1651 he was added to the committee for removing obstructions. His own company at Gloucester had just been obstructive, mutinying at the prospect of Irish service. He was a signatory, with his father, to a defiant letter from Gloucester in which the city fathers rejected the royalist cause and asked the council of state to approve their defence plans and obtain a parliamentary subsidy for them, on 23 August 1651.36Glos. RO, GBR/H2/3, pp. 73-6. As ‘Colonel’ Pury he was named to a committee reviewing some cases of delinquency on 27 July 1652; to another (4 Nov.), to promote the fitting out of ships of war by merchants for the public advantage; and for the committee on the bill to discover recusants on 6 January 1653.37CJ vii. 158b, 210a, 244a; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 100, 136.

Unlike his father, Pury did not sit in the first protectorate Parliament in 1654. In the aftermath of Penruddock’s western rebellion, he was one of the county commissioners summoned to Gloucester by Major-general John Disbrowe* (18 Dec. 1655), to learn of the ‘inveterate and implacable malice of the late king’s party’, and they thanked the protector with expressions of loyalty.38TSP iv. 354; HMC 5th Rep. 361; CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 100, 273. In 1656, returned with Disbrowe, he followed his father as Member for Gloucester, and was appointed a commissioner for the security of the protector. This time he was more often a committee nominee: on timber increase (27 Sept.), on the bills to secure sequestered parsonages and against customary oaths (4 and 7 Oct.), on wine price abuses (9 Oct.), on prize office arrears (17 Oct.), on Henry Markham’s* estate bill (by addition 25 Oct.), on the laws about wrecks (28 Oct.) on the bill to take away purveyance (3 Nov.) and on the Rodneys’ petition (22 Nov). On 26 November, he reported from the committee to whom, four days before, the bill on Gloucester cathedral had been referred. He was absent on the call of the House on 31 December.39CJ vii. 429b, 434a, 435b, 436b, 440b, 445a, 446b, 457b, 459b.

Pury had returned to the Commons by 27 January 1657, when he was named to the committee on the Levant Company petition, as well as being added, in last place, to the committee on the Oxford University petition. He was a committeeman on two further petitions (31 Jan. and 2 Feb.), the latter from Samuel Vassall*. After being nominated for a revived committee regarding a wreck (4 Feb.), his name disappears from committee lists for that Parliament, and he was probably absent for the constitutional wrangling that took up much parliamentary time during the spring. Pury was again in the chamber on 9 June, when he spoke in favour of tagging on an Irish widow’s pension to the estate bill of Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*), but to no avail; and that afternoon he moved the resumption of the debate on a proposal to reduce the Scottish assessment to £6,000 a month. When it was proposed on 13 June that the Irish assessment should also be reduced, by £1,000 a month, he moved that Scotland’s be abated by a further £500; he found a seconder, but the House was ‘weary’ and rejected the debate.40CJ vii. 482b, 483a, 484a, 485a, 485b; Burton’s Diary, i. 284; ii. 204, 213, 247. The reasons for Pury’s desire to favour the Scots are unclear; his father had had dealings with that nation in the 1640s but he was never sympathetic to their cause.

Pury and his father, who had petitioned against the 1659 election returns for Gloucester, were restored to Westminster with the recall of the Rump in May that year. In March there had been reports that Pury had commandeered the corporation, taken sectaries into the garrison and declared for the Parliament.41Reasons Inducing the Equity and Justice of Mr Pury’s Petition in Parliament (1659) (BL 190.g.12 (164)). Both father and son were named for the committee to arrange the sale of Whitehall on 16 May, and added to the drafting committee for the oblivion bill on 21 May. Both were named to the committee of 23 May to decide which of the contents of state buildings were commonwealth property. On 25 May Pury junior was added to committees on the Southwark militia and customs bills, and on 11 June to the public revenue inspection committee. Both Purys were invited to join the wounded soldiers and soldiers’ widows’ claims committee (13 June), and two committees on petitions (6 July), the younger man having been specified for the committee of 22 June regarding office-holders’ contributions towards public supply.42CJ vii. 656a, 661b, 663a, 664a, 665b, 681b, 682a, 691a, 706a.

Later in July the council of state appointed Pury captain of a company of foot to be enlisted in Gloucester, one of four being raised there to combat the royalist threat, and following a letter of 27 July signed by his father and himself at Gloucester, reported in the House on 30 July, this arrangement was confirmed, with the House’s thanks for its speedy accomplishment. On 11 August, Pury was appointed colonel of the Gloucestershire militia. He and his father were named for the committee on the customs and excise bill (26 Sept.), but he was not named again until 23 January 1660, when he was added, with Pury senior, to the Members’ qualification committee. There had recently been a ‘stir’ at Gloucester when soldiers returned from Dunkirk called for a free Parliament, expecting gentry support: Pury within 24 hours brought orders for the disaffected troops to march to London, and was subsequently credited with the dispersal of the ‘fanatical party’ among the men. On 9 February, with another Member, he was the House’s messenger to George Monck* when the House voted that the gates of the City of London should be destroyed. He was a committeeman to expunge the votes of 1648 from the Journals (21 Feb.), when the secluded Members were restored, and he was sitting at the dissolution on 16 March.43CJ vii. 743a, 755b, 838a.

Pury smoothed his way to indulgent treatment at the Restoration by reducing Red Castle (Powis castle) in April 1660 when it was occupied by fugitive soldiers from John Lambert’s* last stand. As soon as Lambert had escaped from the Tower, Monck had alerted Pury at Hereford of the danger, and instructed him to make an example of such troopers as declared for Lambert.44HMC 5th Rep. 361. On 14 May Edward Harley*, with whose brother Robert Harley* Pury was acting, was informed of the amiable proceedings at Hereford to greet the Restoration

Sir, the same day, the gentry of the county did invite Colonel Pury and the rest of the officers to drink a cup of wine, where they did in a very civil and kind manner express their joy, and did promise much to us, so that now I trust the Lord will in mercy heal all our breaches.45HMC Portland, iii. 221.

The writer, John Greene, was not well pleased to be replaced as governor of Hereford later that year, and Captain Henry Leicester, his successor, alleged that Greene had to be stopped from distributing arms, in which he was being abetted by such disbanded officers as Pury and Robert Harley.46CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 409.

Pury was required to assist in the disbandment in October 1660, after just four months’ command of his own regiment of foot. A long retirement lay ahead of him, made easier by his unexceptionable conduct, which obtained him his security in the duchy of Lancaster’s ‘fee farm and other rents’ which he had purchased during the interregnum, and succession to the manors of Taynton and Minsterworth purchased by his father, on the latter's death in 1666.47CCSP v. 225. Edmund Ludlowe II* later described Pury, with his father, as having been ‘always with, I dare not say for, the Parliament’.48Ludlow, Voyce, 116. It is possible that, at least in 1670, Pury practised as an attorney in common pleas.49CSP Dom. 1670, p. 303. He died on 26 August 1693, aged 74, and was buried at Taynton. According to Samuel Rudder, the county historian, ‘Piety, learning, great abilities, and extensive charity, gained him the love and respect of his contemporaries, and preserved his memory from that obloquy which few eminent persons of his time had the good fortune to escape’.50Rudder, New Hist. Glos. 725. His own epitaph in Taynton church pronounced it (in Latin) remarkable that ‘piety and religion appealed very strongly to one involved with the rebels, and arts and sciences to one involved with soldiers’.51Notes on the Diocese of Gloucester ed. Fendley, 470.