CRADOCK, Matthew (c.1590-1641), of St Swithin’s Lane, London.

Cradock’s ancestors had been in Stafford since the eleventh century and made a fortune in the wool trade. By the sixteenth century the Cradocks had become one of the town’s leading families and owned several ‘handsome estates’.19Staffs. Hist. Collns. (1933), 62-3; VCH Staffs. ii. 216n; vi. 216; Erdeswick, Surv. of Staffs. (1844), p. lviii. Several members of the family were returned to Parliament for Stafford Borough, the first of whom was Cradock’s grandfather, Matthew Cradock†, in 1554. Cradock’s father entered the church and by the early seventeenth century had taken up an appointment as rector in Hasguard, near Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire.20Al. Cant. In 1606 Cradock was apprenticed in the Skinners’ Company under William Cokayne, one of the City’s foremost merchants and financiers, lord mayor of London and the greatest projector of the Jacobean age.21Skinners’ Co., appr. and freedoms 1601-94, f. 8v.. Cradock probably owed this appointment to the good offices of an uncle who had been the Cokayne’s factor in Hamburg for several years.22R.P. Brenner, ‘Commercial Change and Political Conflict: the merchant community in Civil War London’ (Princeton Univ. PhD thesis, 1970), 132. Cradock took the opportunities such an apprenticeship offered, entered into business partnerships with Cokayne and others, and soon became an eminent City merchant himself with shares in most of the large trading companies.23E214/506. In the early 1620s he had trading interests in the Virginia and Levant Companies and by the end of the decade he was an investor in the East India Company, where he sided with Viscount Saye, Lord Brooke and the 2nd earl of Warwick in the dispute over the allocation of stocks.24Recs. Virginia Co. of London, ed. Kingsbury, iii. 63; Hinton, Eastland Trade, 219; Pearl, London, 170, 185-7. He was involved in the establishment of the abortive Dorchester Company and in the spring of 1629 became a founder member of the Massachusetts Bay Company, alongside other London merchants such as Samuel Vassall* and John Venn*, and was made the first governor of the colony in May of that year.25Pearl, London, 169, 185; Recs. Gov. and Co. of Mass. Bay, ed. Shurtleff i. 11, 40.

It seems to have been at Cradock’s suggestion that the government of the company was transferred to New England in 1630, prompting the migration of many settlers, including John Winthrop, who succeeded Cradock as governor in October of the same year.26Gardiner, Hist. of Eng. vii. 156; H.L. Osgood, The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century (3 vols. New York, 1904-7) i. 131-2; R.C. Winthrop, Life and Letters of John Winthrop (2 vols. Boston Mass., 1869) i. 342; ii. 9. This secession brought Cradock into conflict with Archbishop William Laud in the case concerning Sir Ferdinand Gorges in 1633.27Osgood, American Colonies iii. 63-6 Unable to secure a ruling in a trade dispute against the Company in star chamber, Gorges accused the colony of being ‘wholly separate from the church and laws of England’, and Cradock, with several others, was called before a council committee to answer the charges. They were later dismissed, ‘being assured by some of the council that his majesty did not intend to impose the ceremonies of the Church of England ... for it was the freedom from such things that made people come over’. Laud, however, had other ideas about uniformity in the colonies. Cradock, in answer to a writ of quo warranto, made default and it was adjudged

that he should be convicted of the usurpation charged in the information, and that the said liberties, privileges and franchises should be taken into the king’s hands, the said Matthew to be taken to answer to the king for the said usurpation.28T. Hutchinson, The Hutchinson Pprs (Boston, Mass. 1865) i. 117.

The controversy did not affect Cradock’s career, however. His knowledge of the plantations brought him into contact with Sir Henry Vane II* for whom he arranged a passage to Massachusetts in July 1635.29CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 60-1. He built up an extensive estate in Massachusetts with his brother, Samuel (who eventually migrated there), and he was a regular correspondent with Winthrop during the late 1630s.30Bailyn, New England Merchants, 107; Pearl, London, 190-1; Mass. Hist. Soc. Collns. ser. 4, vi. 118-30. Cradock’s relations with the authorities in England were further dented by the demands of the navy. In 1637, he was one of the merchants who petitioned the admiralty for the release their ships from the king’s service, as requisitioning was having an adverse effect on business.31CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 376-7, 415. In the same period, Cradock was in close contact with a number of radical merchants who were opposed to the Caroline regime, including Thomas Andrews, Maurice Thomson, Isaac Penington* and William Pennoyer.32Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 139-40.

Cradock was first chosen MP for London on 5 March 1640 in the elections to the Short Parliament. His candidacy presumably reflected his mercantile wealth and prestige and his involvement in the City of London, where he had been a common councillor since 1637 and would soon became first warden of the Skinners’ Company, although it has been suggested that he also benefited from the patronage of the 3rd earl of Essex.33V.F. Snow, Essex the Rebel (1970), 77-8; J.E. Farnell, ‘The Social and Intellectual basis of London’s role in the English Civil Wars’, Jnl. Modern Hist. xlix., 644, 653. Five days before the election, Cradock wrote to John Winthrop in Massachusetts of his hopes that ‘God in mercy direct them and the whole kingdom in their choice that this Parliament may produce good to the realm, approaching evils being much feared’, but he did not mention that he was a candidate.34Massachusetts Hist. Soc. Collns. ser. 4, vi. 129. Cradock was named to only two committees during the Short Parliament. On 29 April he was added to the committee appointed to receive the accounts of the treasurers of the three subsidies and fifteenths granted in 1617.35CJ ii. 15b-16a. On 1 May he was named, with other citizens of London sitting in the House, to a committee to consider the bill concerning needlemakers and steel wire drawers.36CJ ii. 17b.

In the elections held on 20 October 1640, Cradock was once again chosen to represent London. During the first six months of the Long Parliament he was appointed to 20 committees, many of which concerned London, including trade and finance and religion. On 9 November he was appointed to a committee to consider the disarming of papists in and around the capital.37CJ ii. 24b. Two days later he ‘read certain informations’ to the House concerning the garrison in the Tower. He said that ‘there was no good meant towards the City’, and described the mounting of guns and building of defences. He also reported that Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford had boasted that ‘he hoped the City would be subdued in a short time’ and a solicitor in the bishops’ court had ‘said he heard that the City should shortly be about the citizens’ ears’.38D’Ewes (N), 24, 28. A few days later Cradock warned that unless the ordnance in the Tower was dismounted ‘such jealousies and fears would possess the City that it would be a mighty hindrance to the business and supply’.39D’Ewes (N), 37. On 16 November he was appointed to a committee to examine a charge of monopoly against William Watkins*, and on 19 November he was added to the committee on monopolists.40CJ ii. 30a, 31a. On 19 November Cradock was added to the committee on the supply bill, and in debate warned that the City would not lend more money for the payment of the armies in the north unless the Londonderry plantation were restored and the troops and cannon in the Tower removed.41CJ ii. 31b; Gardiner, Hist. of Eng. ix. 236-7. Over the winter Cradock continued to be concerned with financial and commercial affairs, being named to committees on concerning petitions from London merchants (2 and 10 Dec.) and the plight of captives in North Africa (10 Dec.).42CJ ii. 43a, 48a, 48b. He was appointed to the committee for petitions on 12 December, and added to a committee for sorting petitions on 1 January 1641.43CJ ii. 49b-50a, 61b. The petition of the London merchants concerning the gunpowder monopoly was read on 29 January 1641 and ‘Mr Cradock spoke first, and showed the great grievance of the subject in this particular’.44D’Ewes (N), 299. Cradock was appointed to a committee to consider a bill for the transport of wool on 3 February; he was included in the committee to consider imposts on wine on 11 February, and named to the committee to consider customs and the customs farmers on 24 February.45CJ ii. 77b, 83a, 92a.

Cradock’s concern for religion was apparent in early November 1640, when he presented a petition to the House on behalf of Mr Walker, a London minister who had been imprisoned for preaching a controversial sermon.46D'Ewes (N), 534. A committee was set up to consider Walker’s case, to which Cradock was appointed on 30 November.47CJ ii. 40a. When the London petition against the bishops was presented by Isaac Penington* on 11 December, Cradock spoke against the disorders and oppressions occasioned by bishops suppressing preaching.48Northcote Note Bk. 52. He was added to the committee on preaching ministers on 19 December.49CJ ii. 54b. In the new year his appointments suggest that he shared the anti-Catholic, puritanical, views of many other MPs. He was named to the committee on the charges against the earl of Strafford, when it considered the royal commission to raise troops granted to the Catholic 5th earl of Worcester on 29 January 1641.50CJ ii. 75a-b. On 2 March he was added to the committee on the notoriously ‘godly’ Emmanuel College, Cambridge.51CJ ii. 45a. On 12 April he was named to the committee to consider the bill for ‘free passage’ of the gospel.52CJ ii. 119a. On 4 May Cradock and his fellow London MP, Samuel Vassall*, presented the petition of Londoners to express their ‘great joy and gladness’ at the Protestation, and requesting that the oath might be taken in the City.53Fletcher, Outbreak of Eng. Civil War, 78. Cradock took the Protestation the next day, and his last committee appointment, on 14 May, was to consider intelligence of ‘dangerous words’ spoken by recusants, and to examine those who remained in London against royal orders.54CJ ii. 135a, 147a.

Cradock died on 27 May 1641 and was buried at St Swithin on 3 June. In his will, his estate, which included houses in London and Romford and land in New England, was divided between his wife and his daughter from his first marriage, Damaris, who would marry the son of Alderman Thomas Andrewes a year later.55Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc. xiii. 165. Cradock also left £800 to his brother, Samuel Cradock and his family, £40 to the poor of St Peter’s, Bread Street, where he had served his apprenticeship, and £100 to the poor of St Swithin’s, London Stone.56PROB11/186/245.