ERISEY, Richard (1590-1667/8), of Erisey, Grade, Cornw.

Richard Erisey was born in 1590. His father died in 1601, leaving Richard as the ward of his uncle, Richard Carew of Antony.22Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 155; C142/622/107; HMC Salisbury, xvii. 37. Carew took his duties seriously, and in 1605 Erisey was sent abroad with Carew’s younger son George to Leiden University, ‘where I hear they may profit in learning the arts of languages, and other fit qualities’; Erisey alone was admitted there, in July 1606.23HMC Salisbury, xvii. 37; Index to English-Speaking Students at Leyden, 33. It is uncertain how long he was abroad, but he was back in England in May 1610, when he was admitted to the Middle Temple on the same day as George Carew, and the cousins stood surety to one another.24MTR ii. 522. Erisey was studying at the Middle Temple in June 1613, when he was admitted to chambers, and he was resident there until July 1614.25MTR ii. 565, 582. It may have been at this time that Erisey attended the royal court, and there is a story that his dexterity while dancing (kicking his hat back on to his head without stopping) attracted the favourable notice of James I, who, discovering the young man’s name, quipped, ‘I like the gentleman very well, but not his name of Heresy’.26Parochial Hist. Cornw. ii. 110-111.

In April 1615 Erisey married one of the Carews’ cousins, Elizabeth, daughter of Peter Carew of Bickleigh in Devon.27Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 155. Her death, perhaps in childbirth, and Erisey’s remarriage into a Wiltshire family in or around 1620, seems not to have weakened his bonds with the Carews; and he remained an influential figure in Cornwall in the 1620s, rebuilding his seat at Erisey, and becoming involved in the local administration.28Parochial Hist. Cornw. ii. 110-111. He had been added to the Cornwall bench by the autumn of 1626, when he was one of only five magistrates in the county who tried to collect the unpopular benevolence that preceded the Forced Loan.29SP16/37/50, f. 77; A. Duffin, Faction and Faith (Exeter, 1996), 146. By the end of the 1620s, however, there are signs that Erisey had become involved in the opposition of Charles I, and when the knighthood composition fines were imposed in 1630 he refused to pay, arguing that the process had been illegal.30Duffin, Faction and Faith, 155. Erisey was an active magistrate during the 1630s and into the early 1640s, and he was on the committee for the ‘county stock’ for the poor, in July 1640, but this activity did not reconcile him with the regime.31Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 83, 190; CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 221, 476; 1634-5, p. 130; Antony House, Carew-Pole HD/13/1. In 1639 he did not reply to the king’s request for him to join the royal army in the north or make a financial contribution to the war against the Scots; and he may have been encouraged in his intransigence by his cousin, Alexander Carew*, who at this stage was opposed to the Caroline government.32Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 913; Duffin, Faction and Faith, 167; Keeler, Long Parliament, 165.

Erisey was elected, presumably on his own interest, to the local borough of St Mawes, in October 1640. His activity in Parliament was sporadic. He was probably the ‘Mr Erskin’ listed by Sir Simonds D’Ewes* as having promised the substantial sum of £1,000 to pay off the king’s army, on 21 November 1640.33D’Ewes (N), 52; Keeler, Long Parliament, 165. Nothing is known of his involvement in Parliament during the key debates of the spring and summer of 1641 – although he took the Protestation on 7 July 1641 – and he made no impression in the closing months of 1641 or the first half of 1642.34CJ ii. 201a. It is characteristic that his next mention in the records, on 30 June 1642, was to excuse his absence at the call of the House two weeks earlier.35PJ iii. 153, 482; CJ ii. 644b.

In the early stages of the first civil war, Erisey became more active, but in Cornwall, not Westminster. On 27 July he was one of the Cornish MPs sent west to implement the Militia Ordinance, and the next day he was nominated as a deputy lieutenant of the county.36CJ ii. 694a-b. On his arrival, at the beginning of August, he met Sir Richard Buller* and other leading Cornish parliamentarians at Launceston, where they attempted to proclaim the Militia Ordinance in the teeth of royalist opposition.37LJ v. 275. Thereafter, he was named to numerous local commissions in absentia, including those for the assessments (from Feb. 1643), and the sequestration of delinquents (Mar. 1643), and was added to the committee for Plymouth, Lyme Regis and Poole on 12 December 1643, and named to the county committee in July 1644.38A. and O.; CJ iii. 339a. In the meantime, the royalist authorities made sure that Erisey was removed from the commission of the peace when it was renewed in October 1643, and the family estates were sequestered on the direct orders of the king on 20 March 1644.39Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 78; Cornw. RO, B/35/26. Erisey’s movements at this time are uncertain. He had taken the Solemn League and Covenant at Westminster on 2 November 1643, and in December he was named to the committee to visit his cousin, now Sir Alexander Carew, in the Tower of London; his appointment to the Plymouth committee was presumably in connection with the same case.40CJ iii. 299a, 339a, 341b; The Misdemeanors of a Traytor and Treasurer Discovered (1644), sig. A2 (E.258.10). He was again in London in May 1644, when he was named to the committee on the behaviour of Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford, as Parliament’s general in the west, and this again suggests that Erisey may have journeyed to Plymouth in the interim.41CJ iii. 498b. By July 1644 he had been appointed to the Committee of the West, and in June 1645 he was granted an allowance of £4 per week by Parliament, in compensation for his lost estates.42Belvoir Castle, PZ.2, ff. 34, 66; CJ iv. 161a; SC6/ChasI/1662, m. 10; SC6/ChasI/1663, m. 8; SC6/ChasI/1664, mm. 14, 15d.

On 14 February 1646, as the New Model advanced into Cornwall, Erisey was named to the committee to follow on, to take on the government of Devon and Cornwall, to execute ordinances, survey the garrisons and arrange supplies.43CJ iv. 440a. Administrative duties were to take Erisey away from Westminster for much of the next 18 months, and he was listed as absent from the Commons in October 1647, April and September 1648.44CJ v. 330a, 543b; vi. 34a. Local appointments continued. He was reappointed to the assessment commission in June 1647 and again in February 1648, and in April he was one of the ‘Cornish commissioners’ involved with paying off the Pendennis garrison.45A. and O.; FSL, X.d.483 (12). A month later he was one of Parliament’s western commissioners, conducting the mopping up operation after the defeat of the royalist insurgents at Penzance.46Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/2/168. During this period he was also busy reconstructing his estate, for example pursuing George Mudford, who had leased lands in Bickleigh, Devon, for rent arrears in October 1647.47C10/1/81. In the late autumn of 1648, Erisey was given charge of bringing in the assessments for the army, and he was named to the militia commission appointed at the beginning of December.48CJ vi. 87b; A. and O.

Erisey was probably not at Westminster during Pride’s Purge, and although he has been listed as an ‘abstainer’ and there is no evidence that he returned to his seat after the regicide, it is doubtful that he was formally expelled from the Commons.49Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 372. He certainly did not retire from local politics, being named to Cornish assessment commissions from April 1649, and he was nominated as a captain in the militia in February 1650, but excused (perhaps on the grounds of age).50A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 521. He was added to the Cornish commission of the peace in May 1650, was chosen as one of the justices to administer the oath in February 1651, and remained on the commission until September 1653.51C231/6, pp. 186, 205, 266. He may have been encouraged in this by his eldest son, James, who was active in the local administration of Devon from 1649, and sat for the same county in the Nominated Assembly of 1653 (perhaps on the interest of his cousin, John Carew*), and it is perhaps telling that in November 1653 Erisey was added to the Cornish assessment commission on the specific request of Parliament.52CJ vii. 356a; vide supra, ‘Erisey, James’.

During the protectorate, Richard Erisey was appointed to the western circuit of the oyer and terminer, and he was a regular on this commission from February 1654 until July 1658, disappearing only in the new commission named in July 1659.53C181/6, pp. 8-308, 377-8. He was also rumoured to be a candidate as sheriff in October 1656, alongside John Buller*, James Launce* and other reluctant gentlemen.54Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/1/72. After the collapse of the protectorate, Erisey remained on reasonably good terms with the restored Rump, and despite his absence from the new oyer and terminer commission he was included in other local bodies, such as the Cornish militia commission appointed in July 1659 and the assessment commission of January 1660.55A. and O.; CJ vii. 725a. Over that winter he joined the moderate Cornish gentry who met at Truro to voice their support of a ‘free Parliament’, and he signed their declaration on 27 December.56Publick Intelligencer no. 210 (2-9 Jan. 1660), 998 (E.773.41). He was named to the militia commission of March 1660.57A. and O.

Little is known of Erisey’s career after the Restoration, and it is probable that, aged 70, he had retired to his estates, leaving local politics to his younger son, Richard, who was a client of the Killigrews. Erisey paid £10 in the poll tax of October 1660, but he refused to contribute to the ‘free and voluntary present’ of November 1661, and this may suggest that he remained critical of the Stuarts.58Cornw. Hearth Tax, 200, 256. He made his will in October 1667, and had died by the following July. He was succeeded by his eldest son, James.59Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 155.