COLEPEPER, John (1600-60)

Sir John Colepeper was of a prominent family of Sussex and west Kent, in which latter county he served as a local magistrate from at least 1638. Elected for Rye in April 1640, he was returned again for the Kent in the Long Parliament, in whose first few days he presented a long statement of the ‘grievances of the Church and Commonwealth’ against the king’s policies. However, concerned by the growing radicalization of the populace, Colepeper had become by late 1641 one of Charles I’s leading supporters. From May 1642 he was constantly with the king as a principal adviser and in January 1643 was made master of the rolls, resigning the chancellorship of the exchequer to Sir Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon, the following month. Colepeper was disabled from the Commons and his estates in Kent and Sussex sequestered in early 1644. Charles I on 21 Oct. 1644 created him a baron, granting him estates in Thoresway in Lincolnshire and Kavenlice in Radnor. In March 1645 he was placed on the council of the prince of Wales, and accompanied the prince in his travels over the following years to the west of England, Jersey and finally to France. D. Smith, Constitutional Royalism and the Search for Settlement, 56-57, 62-106, 123-4.

For the next few years he was involved in the factional divisions at the court in exile, where he was often regarded as part of the Francophile ‘Louvre’ group opposed to the king’s chief adviser, Hyde. There are many suggestions in contemporary correspondence of conflict between the two councillors. Nicholas Pprs. ii. 101. When writing his autobiography after 1668 Clarendon (as Hyde had become) described Colepeper as a man of ‘a rough nature, a hot head, and of great courage … of sharpness of parts, and volubility of language’ who in matters of religion was ‘very indifferent; but more inclined to what was established, to avoid the accidents which commonly attend a change’. Clarendon, Life, i. 106, 107. Clarendon elsewhere singled him out as one of the four loyal councillors who attended the king whatever his movements and as ‘a man of great parts, a very sharp and present wit, and an universal understanding; so that few men filled a place in council with more sufficiency, or expressed themselves upon any subject that occurred with more weight and vigour’. Ibid. 316, 319. In these later writings Clarendon took pains to emphasize that although he and Colepeper were ‘not thought to have the greatest kindness for each other, yet he [Clarendon] knew he could agree with no other man so well in business, and was very unwilling he [Colepeper] should be from the person of the king’. Clarendon, Rebellion, v. 37. It does appear that there was a reconciliation of the two men after the fall of the Protectorate, when both agreed that it was unwise to foment any premature royalist uprisings. Colepeper even showed himself remarkably prescient by predicting in the days immediately following Oliver Cromwell’s death the role that George Monck, later duke of Albemarle, would play in the restoration of the king. Add. 35838, ff. 186-7; Bodl. Clarendon 58, ff. 345v-346v.

Colepeper also advised Hyde on the best management of legislation for the Restoration in May and June 1660. Bodl. Clarendon 92, ff. 159-60. He returned to England with Charles II and was formally reinstated as master of the rolls, as his original patent of 1643 was for life, although it is doubtful he ever effectively exercised the office. Eg. 3353, ff. 1-2; Clarendon 72, f. 198. He was no doubt poised to have a major influence on the shape of Restoration England, but the possibilities of this intriguing scenario were cut short by Colepeper’s death after a lingering illness on 11 July 1660. He had first sat in the House on 7 June 1660, but only attended a total of six times until 16 June, after which illness probably kept him away. His most noticeable intervention occurred on 11 July when in his absence his petition requesting the restitution of his property, which had been sold by ‘that assembly of persons who usurped the name and authority of Parliament’, was granted. The following day the House was informed that Baron Colepeper had died on the very day it had granted his petition, and it was then resolved that the benefit of the preceding order would accrue to Colepeper’s eldest son Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper. By a codicil to his will of 3 July 1660 Colepeper had formally named Thomas heir to his title and estate in Kent and his executor. He further made mention in his will of a petition of 27 June 1660 as a result of which the king granted him £12,000, probably for arrears of pay, ‘for the clearing of my paternal estate’ and to provide portions for his six younger children. The will was proved on 6 Aug., with Thomas Colepeper, 2nd Baron Colepeper, named executor and three days later, in order to put his inheritance on a more solid basis, the new Baron Colepeper was granted leave to bring into the House a private bill for the restoration of his estate. The bill sailed through both Houses and received the royal assent on 13 Sept. 1660.