JERVOISE, Sir Thomas (1587-1654), of Herriard, Hants

Jervoise was descended from a Worcestershire family, although his grandfather, a London mercer, purchased the manor of Britford in Wiltshire, further properties in Worcestershire and Shropshire, and a house in Bow Lane, London.1Trans. Salop. Arch. Soc. (ser. 3), ii. 313-14; The Ancestor, iii. 1-3. At the death in December 1587 of his father, a lawyer who married a Shropshire heiress, Jervoise was less than one year old. The wardship was granted to Rowland Lacon† and Francis Newport, but they quickly sold it for £300 to Jervoise’s step-father, Sir George Wrottesley, who then sold it to Sir Richard Paulet† in 1601 for £1,100, following an acrimonious legal case. Jervoise may have come into contact with Paulet through his private tutor, the puritan divine James Samborne, and by a licence of 17 July 1601, Jervoise married Paulet’s daughter and coheir, at the age of only 14.2WARD7/22/9; The Ancestor, iii. 3, 10; G. Wrottesley, Hist. Fam. of Wrottesley, 393-4.

Following the deaths in succession of Paulet (July 1614), his widow (1618) and their other daughter, through his wife Jervoise acquired their entire estate in Hampshire including Herriard and Freefolk, which provided an electoral interest at Whitchurch.3‘Sir Richard Paulet’, HP Commons 1604-1629; VCH Hants, iv. 283; PROB11/127/523 (Sir Richard Paulet); PROB11/131/750 (Dame Anne Powlett). He had already emerged as a major figure in the county. Knighted in 1607, he began to receive nominations to local commissions in the following year, although in 1612-13 he served as sheriff of Shropshire (1612). Thereafter, however, he concentrated his public service in Hampshire, where he was a leading member of the county militia from at least 1615, a justice of the peace from 1616, and a deputy lieutenant by 1625. His wealth is evident from his having been assessed at £30 for the purposes of the subsidy in 1624 and 1625.4Hants RO, 44M69/G4/1/27, 34. Jervoise was MP for Whitchurch in all five Parliaments of the 1620s, and his papers testify to the close interest he took in proceedings.5HP Commons 1604-1629. A commissioner for the 1626 loan, he displayed a zeal for implementing government policy in such matters as billeting troops, poor relief and knighthood compositions for which he was commended by the privy council.6Hants RO, 44M69/G4/1/44-5; 44M69/G4/1/54, 105; CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 64; 1628-9, pp. 111, 233; 1629-31, p. 403; APC 1629-30, p. 341; Cornw. RO, ME 2880.

In the 1630s, however, circumstances rendered Jervoise less accepting of Charles I’s fiscal policies. As a trustee of Henry Sherfield (d. 1634), the Hampshire puritan and iconoclast, he was responsible for the latter’s debts and dependent on repeated grants of protection from Sherfield’s creditors to relieve financial embarrassment.7SO3/10; PC2/43, f. 52; PC2/44, f. 191; CSP Dom. 1635-6, pp. 258, 311. Towards the end of the decade, while he was zealous to ensure the security of the county, Jervoise was obstructive over purveyance of timber and then excused himself from contributing to the bishops’ wars.8CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 287; 1639, p. 406; Nalson, Impartial Colln. i. 204; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 912. Nevertheless, he was far from the most prominent of the king’s opponents. Elected to Parliament for Whitchurch in the spring of 1640, he made no recorded impression on the proceedings, although as previously he kept copies of numerous Commons speeches.9Hants RO, 44M69/G2/513.

Jervoise also secured a seat at Whitchurch that autumn, and exercised his influence to obtain the second seat for his son, Richard Jervoise*, not least in order to prevent a friend of the court, Francis Read, from being returned.10CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 179. Before the outbreak of civil war Jervoise again made little impression on the House, his first appearance in the record being when he subscribed the Protestation on 3 May 1641.11CJ ii. 133b. Later that month he was added to a committee addressing the security of Portsmouth, a pressing question locally and nationally in the aftermath of the alleged ‘army plot’ (13 May), and also nominated to a committee considering London’s water supply (29 May).12CJ ii. 146a, 161a. Those were his only appointments that year, however. A partial explanation for this may be supplied by the death in August of Jervoise’s much-loved wife of 40 years; a funeral sermon celebrating her piety was published with his encouragement.13Brokett, Gods Statute, sig. A2. In December Jervoise displayed his own religious zeal by delivering a petition against Arthur Price, a justice of the peace from Montgomeryshire, who was accused of protecting recusants.14D’Ewes (C), 241. Perhaps more engaged by local issues, in January 1642 he was among those who sent instructions to the county regarding the implementation of Parliament’s orders, and on 26 April he presented a petition from the sheriff of the county, John Feilder.15I.o.W. RO, OG/AA/30; PJ ii. 243. Meanwhile he received his third nomination, to the committee for gunpowder (12 Mar.), indicating that he was at least a trusted Member.16CJ ii. 476a.

As war approached in the early summer, Jervoise signalled his support for the parliamentarian cause by pledging 2 horses (13 June).17PJ iii. 476. On 21 June he was one of the Hampshire deputy lieutenants who reported to the House of Lords from Rooksdown, near Basingstoke, on their mustering of troops, including Jervoise’s own regiment, in response to Parliament’s Militia Ordinance.18PJ ii. 394; LJ v. 156b. Thereafter he participated in the military preparations in the county, not least in preventing supplies from reaching George Goring* at Portsmouth (Aug.), and in reporting news to, and lobbying for assistance from, Parliament.19I.o.W. RO, OG/BB/463; HMC Portland, i. 51. In September Jervoise was involved in negotiating the surrender of Portsmouth by the royalists.20A True Relation of the Passages (1642), 7 (E.118.22); Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 683. Briefly at Westminster around 20 October, when he was named to a parliamentary delegation to the City, a week later he was instructed to return to Hampshire, from where he continued to keep Parliament abreast of local matters.21CJ ii. 817b, 824a; HMC Portland, i. 78.

Jervoise was back at Westminster in January and February 1643 to present petitions from Chichester, and to oversee the ordinance for raising men and money for the forces under his command in Hampshire.22Harl. 164, f. 281; Add. 18777, ff. 132, 143v, 149; CJ ii. 940b, 945b, 962b. However, on 8 April the name of Richard Norton* was inserted in the ordinance in his stead.23CJ iii. 36a, 48a. This may be an early sign of factionalism emerging in the county, with Norton already identified as more militant, and more likely to prosecute the war to a decisive conclusion, than Jervoise.

Having resurfaced to take the Covenant on 6 June, Jervoise did not reappear in the Journal until late October 1643.24CJ iii. 118a, 293a. Once again the defence of Portsmouth was a major concern, but on 4 November he was among those nominated to consider the establishment of the Committee for Taking the Accounts of the Kingdom*, possibly an indication that he was indeed aligned with those distrustful of out-and-out war-mongers.25CJ iii. 293a, 294a, 302a. None the less, Jervoise remained active in the parliamentarian cause locally and at Westminster for the remainder of the first civil war, organising supplies and provisions for Hampshire’s garrisons and forces, supporting the army of Sir William Waller*, and in raising money for the associated counties, some of it from assessments and the sale of delinquents’ estates, some from his own pocket.26CJ iii. 383b, 393b, 403b, 409b, 412b, 486a, 515a; Add. 24860, f. 53. His particular concern with Hampshire led him to raise objections to the removal of forces from the county in June 1644.27CSP Dom. 1644, p. 280.

Jervoise was not commissioned as an officer in the New Model army in 1645, but remained active in the county. He supported the interest of Oliver Cromwell* in the region that year, lobbied Parliament on specific matters relating to military organisation in Hampshire, and sent news to Speaker William Lenthall*.28TSP i. 75; Add. 24860, f. 139; HMC Portland, i. 292, 315, 317, 413; CJ iv. 314b, 352b. Jervoise pursued a harsh punishment for the ‘late pretended’ royalist sheriff of the county, Sir Humphrey Bennett, allegedly a cruel agent of the king, responsible for ‘the undoing of many a godly and honest man’, and he questioned the decision of Sir Thomas Fairfax* to grant Bennett a pass (Nov. 1645).29HMC Portland, i. 316-17; CJ iv. 367b. His strict policy towards royalists was matched by his determination to free the county from the oppressions of the army after the end of hostilities in the region, and in December he signed a letter of complaint to Parliament regarding the outrages, pressures and plunders of those troops waiting to be sent to Ireland.30HMC Portland, i. 319. Perhaps by this time Jervoise opposed the emergence of the army interest, as he did religious radicalism. His stance as a committed Presbyterian was revealed when he was a teller in favour of recommending to the House of Lords resolutions granting powers to ruling elders regarding scandalous behaviour and exclusion from the sacrament (8 May 1645).31CJ iv. 134b.

Yet Jervoise’s subsequent activity appears to tell a somewhat different story. For more than four years from 3 June 1645, when he was granted the weekly allowance, he made little impression on the records of the House of Commons.32CJ iv. 161a. There is no sign of him at all in the Journal until 1 April 1647, when he was granted leave.33CJ v. 131b. Nevertheless, that summer he joined the Independents who fled to the safety of the army in the wake of the ‘forcing of the Houses’ by London Presbyterians, and who signed the fugitive Members’ declaration of 4 August.34Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 755. He returned to Westminster after the army’s march to London, and was present in the chamber on 3 September, when he was named to a committee regarding the governorship of the Isle of Wight.35CJ v. 291a. However, he was absent at the call of the House in early October (excused), and although he was named to a committee regarding the prince elector on 30 October, his absence was excused again on 3 November; on 4 December he was granted further leave of absence for six weeks.36CJ v. 330a, 330b, 346a, 348b, 375b. Early in 1648 he appears to have been concerned primarily with local affairs, especially as a member of the commission for oyer and terminer which tried the local cavalier insurgent John Burley.37CJ v. 400b, 429a, 441b. His only other likely appearance in the Commons before Pride’s Purge was on 17 May, when he was (probably) nominated to a committee to investigate a riot outside the chamber.38CJ v. 562b. Nevertheless, he retained the favour of the Independents in the Derby House Committee sufficiently to retain the position as steward of Richmond, and keeper of the Little Park, which had been granted to him in the spring of 1644.39CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 169; Hants RO, 44M69/E6/107-8; 44M69/F4/16/1-13. Indeed, it seems plausible that Jervoise was in near constant residence at Richmond, a not insignificant location during the political machinations of May 1646 to August 1649.40Hants RO, 44M69/E6/168.

That Jervoise had some common ground with the Independent grandees at Westminster is evident from the fact that, despite his inactivity in the Commons and his religious Presbyterianism, he was not secluded at Pride’s purge. He took the dissent to the vote of 5 December on 1 February 1649, after the trial and execution of Charles I, but was not visible in the Journal until 19 July, when he was a teller with Sir John Danvers* against leading republicans in favour of an unsuccessful motion to pay a pension to the countess of Nottingham.41PA, Ms CJ xxxiii, p. 625; [W. Prynne], A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case (1660), 23 (E.1013.22); CJ vi. 264b. In the weeks which followed, Jervoise was added to several standing committees – the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs and the Committee for Plundered Ministers and, albeit only on specific issues, those for Revenue and for Advance of Money.42CJ vi. 265b, 266a, 266b, 290a.

It is hard to know how much Jervoise was motivated to return to the Commons by his desire to secure financial compensation for his personal losses (of £15,000) during the wars. A petition to the House within a week of resuming his place resulted in an act for the payment of £9,000 out of the forfeited estate of John Paulet, 5th marquess of Winchester, passed on 14 September, although the matter appears to have remained under discussion until at least August 1651.43Hants RO, 44M69/G2/39; 44M69/E6/161-2; CJ vi. 269b, 288a, 290b, 294a, 295a, 296a; vii. 4b; CCC 2372, 2533, 2631. Jervoise’s personal interest may have prompted the enthusiasm for a hardline policy regarding the sale of delinquents’ estates evident from his tellerships and committee nominations in 1650 and 1651, as well as his engagement with the private petitions of other individuals.44CJ vi. 393b, 457b, 528a, 542a, 565b, 567a; vii. 5a. But he displayed wider concerns including opening up the excise commission to all MPs (18 July 1650), encouraging volunteers for military service, regulating the universities, and preventing ambassadors from receiving pensions from foreign powers.45CJ vi. 443a, 463b, 577b, 618b.

The settlement of Jervoise’s claims probably contributed to his withdrawal from the Commons after the autumn of 1651. In March 1652 he was named to committees regarding the sale of fee farm rents and the appropriation of property from Whitehall for the state, while in June he was named to a committee regarding conforming Catholics.46CJ vii. 104a, 147a. Thereafter, however, his name is absent from the Journal until 23 March 1653, when he was a teller during the debates on the new representative, narrowly losing a motion to enfranchise Kingston-upon-Thames, in an area where Jervoise had acquired a personal interest.47CJ vii. 270b.

There is no evidence of Jervoise’s attitude towards the dissolution of the Rump or the constitutional and political experiments which followed. Neither is there evidence that he sought a seat in the first protectorate Parliament, and it is possible that he was too old and infirm to volunteer his services once again, although he was still sitting as a justice of the peace in July 1654.48SP46/97, f. 116. Jervoise drew up his will on 19 October 1654, and died the following day. He asked to be buried next to his first wife, Lucy, and mentioned her surviving sons Thomas†, Henry and Daniel; his second wife, Frances and her sons (another) Thomas and Barnard; and his two daughters; his son Richard Jervoise* had died ten years earlier. His bequests included a portrait of himself, while his cousin Robert Wallop* was among the overseers.49PROB11/241/599. His widow married Benjamin Rudyerd (d. 1675), and died in 1679, while his heir, Thomas, sat in Parliament for the county in the 1680s.50VCH Hants, iv. 112, 122; HP Commons 1660-1690.