DEWY, James I (c.1606-76), of Bloxworth and Okeford Fitzpaine, Dorset.

James Dewy (who signed himself thus) came from a rising Dorset family, which held lands in the parishes of Spetisbury and Bloxworth.25SP23/152, f. 503 (20 Sept. 1650). His father had been involved in various chancery suits concerning other members of the family, including an accusation in 1626 that he had connived with George Skutt* and others to wrest some Spetisbury lands from his insolvent brother, John Dewy.26C2/CHASI/D45/20; C2/CHASI/D58/24. In 1629 Dewy senior also attempted to enforce a £200 bond from one Dr William Dewy of Oxford.27C2/CHASI/D27/30. In 1632 James Dewy added to his family’s local prestige by marrying the fifth daughter of Thomas Strangways, scion of one of the most influential families in the county.28Hutchins, Dorset, i. 182. By October 1641 he had acquired a fairly substantial land-holding, being assessed at £3 (£1 4s. paid) for Tarrant Crawford and Spetisbury, and in 1642 he was resident in Crawford Parva.29E179/105/335, m. 5; Dorset Protestation Returns, 122. The first civil war gave Dewy a chance to improve his position further. In September 1642 he joined Sir Walter Erle as a trooper of horse, serving with him until the fall of Dorset to the royalists in July 1643.30SP28/128/30. By June 1644 he had been promoted to captain of a troop of horse in Col. John Brune’s regiment, which was involved in the defence of Wareham.31Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 240-1, 485. Dewy appears to have left Brune’s regiment in the new year of 1645, but he was retained as captain of a troop by the Dorset county committee, which paid money towards it during 1646, and in March 1647 he was granted the lease of a farm owned by a recusant, William Arundell, for which he paid £300 per annum in rent.32Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, ff. 22, 30v, 53v; Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 63, 100, 220, 229. In the later 1640s Dewy became involved in the administration of the county: in 1647-8 he was collector of the assessment in the Shaftesbury division; in July 1648 he was on hand to enforce the desires of the local sequestration committee; and by October had been stationed with his troop on the strategically important Isle of Portland.33E113/13, unfol.; Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 417, 446. The county committee had reduced and paid off the troop by the end of the year.34Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, ff. 51v-56v.

Dewy’s proven service in the 1640s no doubt encouraged the government to promote him further during the commonwealth. He was appointed to the Dorset assessment commission for the first time in April 1649.35A. and O. In January 1650, Dewy, James Baker* and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper* were appointed commissioners for administering the Engagement for the county,36Bayley, Dorset, 359. and in the following month Dewy joined Edward Cheeke* and the new county treasurer, Samuel Bull, on the sequestrations commission for Dorset: the body which, until 1654, effectively replaced the county committee in local government.37Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, pp. xxii-iv; E113/13, unfol. Dewy was the most active member of this committee, and was in regular contact with London, concerning local prosecutions, from January 1650 until October 1654.38SP23/152, ff. 503-697. He was also commissioned as captain of horse in the Dorset militia from March 1650.39CSP Dom. 1650, p. 505. After the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653, Dewy became increasingly involved in the punishment of disaffected elements in Dorset through the sequestrations committee and the county magistracy. In September 1653 he was appointed a commissioner to examine malignant royalists, and was eager to confiscate estates before they could be privately sold or concealed.40CCC 650. In August and September 1654 he joined James Baker* in examining those involved in Major Fry’s plot,41CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 102, 127. and he was ordered to organise the dismantling of the defences around Poole in the same year.42CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 111. In November 1654 Dewy was appointed to the oyer and terminer commission against piracy in Dorset in November 1654 and for the western circuit in March 1655.43C181/6, p. 98.

Dewy came to particular prominence in the suppression of Colonel John Penruddock’s abortive rising in the spring of 1655. In March the local commander, John Disbrowe*, sent Dewy to attend Oliver Cromwell* to effect a settlement of the Dorset militia in the light of expected plots.44TSP iii. 308-9. Dewy was included in the new militia commission for Dorset of 14 March, and may have joined the commission of the peace at this time.45SP25/76A, f. 14. After the failure of the rebellion, Dewy was active in suppressing local royalists and in seizing their estates.46CCC 722, 732. His zeal in punishing disaffection provoked widespread hostility. He was accused of various acts of vengeance, which included the torture of Roger Clark, royalist rector of Todbere, after his son had escaped capture. He also imprisoned the rector of Holy Trinity Wareham, William Wake, for using the Book of Common Prayer.47Bayley, Dorset, 451, 457. Dewy’s powers were extended in December, when he was appointed alongside James Baker* and others to the commission for securing the peace of the commonwealth, working under Disbrowe as the regional major-general.48TSP iv. 305. In the same month, Dewy supported Baker’s condemnation of the postmaster of Shaftesbury, who was suspected of royalist sympathies.49TSP iv. 316-7. The commissioners received detailed instructions from Disbrowe in January 1656, and from February until May Dewy signed passes for royalists to travel to London, as Disbrowe’s deputy.50CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 102; Add. 34014, ff. 8v-75v. He was involved in investigations into the extent of Penruddock’s lands in the spring of 1656, and was later accused of malpractice by the colonel’s widow.51E178/6065; HMC 7th Rep., 110; CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 27, 213. His behavior attracted the disapproval of his fellow justices. In February 1656 the commission of the peace, meeting at Sherborne, took the opportunity of Dewy’s absence to grant a licence to one alehouse keeper, ‘and did not take notice at all of his being suppressed by Capt. Dewy’, as a gleeful John Fitzjames* noted.52Alnwick Castle, Northumberland 551, f. 54. A month later Fitzjames wrote to Dewy urging him to be lenient in his treatment of the schoolmaster at Sherborne, for ‘times have been, and are still, where favours may be shown without clashing with justice’, but his advice had little apparent effect.53Alnwick Castle, Northumberland 551, f. 64v.

Dewy’s zeal in pursuing the defeated royalists was due, at least in part, to the vehemence of his religious convictions. In the 1640s, he had apparently attracted religious radicals to his side, including John Wesley, later vicar of Winterborne Whitchurch in Dorset, whose extreme views were linked to his early experiences as a soldier under Dewy.54CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 504. Dewy was appointed to the local commission to investigate scandalous ministers in August 1654, and his antipathy towards the Anglican clergy and their Prayer Book was apparent during the Penruddock rebellion.55A. and O.; Bayley, Dorset, 451, 457. There were limits to Dewy’s radicalism, however. He was no friend of the Quakers. As a JP in 1656, he imprisoned a Quaker for ‘speaking the word of the Lord’ in a Blandford street; and in early 1657 he was condemned as ‘an enemy to truth and a persecutor [of Quakers] and an enemy to all appearances of good and a lover of none but the priests and that party’, labelled ‘a very bad man and a persecutor’.56SP18/130, f.46. When Dewy was in London later in the decade, John Fitzjames told John Strode of the general sense of relief in Dorset: ‘the parsons … are setting up for themselves, everybody does as if there no king in Israel’.57Alnwick Castle, Northumberland 552, f. 44.

Dewy no doubt owed his election for Dorset in the second protectorate Parliament in August 1656 to his own position within the county, and in addition he presumably enjoyed the support of Disbrowe as major-general. He was named to the committee of privileges on 18 September and to the committee to consider legislation concerning wages on 7 October.58CJ vii. 424a, 435a. Yet even during the parliamentary session Dewy’s focus of attention remained Dorset, and he was excused absence for three weeks from 7 October, in order that he might return to the county.59CJ vii. 435b. In his absence, Dewy was included in the commission for the security of the protector in England and Wales, established on 27 November.60A. and O. He was back in the Commons on 1 January 1657, when he was added to the committee for stating the public faith, and he was named to the committee to prepare a bill to preserve commoners’ rights when forest lands were sold off on 29 April.61CJ vii. 477b, 528a. Dewy was at Bloxworth, officiating at civil weddings in the parish church, in March and early April and again during May, suggesting that his visits to Westminster were very brief.62Dorset RO, Bloxworth par. regs. After the adjournment of Parliament in June 1657, Dewy again devoted his time to Dorset, although he returned to Westminster to attend the second sitting of Parliament, being named to the committee on a bill for repairing highways on 4 February 1658.63CJ vii. 592a. He was again active in the sequestration of estates, being rewarded for his services by the exchequer on various occasions during 1658-9.64Add. 32471, ff. 6, 8v, 18. He also became involved in two legal cases. The first, which came to a head in December 1657, concerned the wife of the Thomas Fitzjames, the royalist brother of John Fitzjames. Thomas Fitzjames had taken part in Penruddock’s rising, and his wife now begged for a small allowance from the confiscated estate. Dewy was called to certify the value of the estate.65CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 211. The second case was of more personal concern. George Strangways, Dewy’s brother-in-law, murdered his sister’s husband over an inheritance quarrel. Despite his protestations to the authorities and to Dewy himself, Strangways was found guilty, and was pressed to death (for refusing to plead) in Newgate.66Hutchins, Dorset, i. 150; Bayley, Dorset, 383.

In December 1658, when the writs were issued for the elections for the third protectorate Parliament, Dewy once again sought a seat at Westminster. At first he showed an interest in Shaftesbury; but pre-election negotiations between his former ally, James Baker, and John Fitzjames seem to have blocked his chances of success. He was eventually returned for Wareham instead.67Alnwick Castle, Northumberland 552, f. 54; TSP vii. 601. Dewy had taken his seat by the end of March 1659, but was appointed to only three committees: to consider petitions concerning the enfranchisement of Co. Durham (31 Mar.), the debts of the Scottish financier, Sir William Dick (13 Apr.) and the disbanded forces of Lancashire (13 Apr.).68CJ vii. 622b, 637b, 638a.

Dewy continued to be active in the local government after the collapse of the protectorate. He was named to the militia commission in July, acted as an examiner in the case of Ashley Cooper in August, and was once again appointed as an officer in the Dorset militia at the beginning of September.69A. and O.; CJ vii. 768b, 772a. His local activities had made him extremely unpopular by this time. In October 1659 William Okeden, an associate of Sir Ralph Bankes*, asked for Ashley Cooper’s protection against Dewy and his fellow sequestrators: ‘with an assurance from you that my innocency for the future shall be protected from Dewy and Trottle’s incivility’. He went on to condemn their methods, for ‘their behaviour in their late authority has been such that all good people believe it was their endeavour to create enemies to the commonwealth, with their brutish usage of well-affected gentlemen’.70PRO30/24/2, f. 70. Such resentment made Dewy vulnerable to royalist revenge after the Restoration, and he wisely took flight. In November 1662 a warrant was issued for the detention of Dewy and Edmund Ludlowe II*,71CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 551. and Dewy was investigated for his part in the interregnum government in December of that year.72E113/13, unfol. In September 1662 it was reported that both Dewy and Ludlowe had escaped to Holland, where Disbrowe was also in hiding.73CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 279. There were continuing concerns that such men would act as incendiaries in support of the Dutch, and in April 1664 William Constantine* reported to Ashley Cooper (now Lord Ashley) his fears that Dewy had returned to Dorset in disguise.74CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 545. Dewy was eventually apprehended and imprisoned in the Tower by November 1666, where he joined Disbrowe and others.75CSP Dom. 1666-7, p. 235. He did not, however, suffer financially after the Restoration. When he made his will in 1674 he was able to provide a life interest for his second son, Christopher, while the bulk of the estate was to be inherited by his son and heir, James.76PROB11/350/513. Dewy died on 28 February 1676, and was buried at St Andrew’s, Bloxworth.77Mayo, Dorset, p. xxiv; Hutchins, Dorset, i. 182.