OWNER, Edward (1575-1650), of Great Yarmouth, Norf.

The son of a Great Yarmouth merchant, Owner grew up to become one of the port’s leading citizens, serving as a member of the corporation for 44 years and sitting four times as its MP. It has sometimes been assumed on the basis of surviving trade tokens that he was a grocer, but those were more probably issued by Edward Owner (1622-80), his nephew.23C.J. Palmer, Hist. of Gt. Yarmouth (Gt. Yarmouth, 1856), 101; Cal. Freemen Gt. Yarmouth, 58, 59, 71, 74; W. Boyne and G.C. Williamson, Trade Tokens issued in the Seventeenth Cent. (1889-91), ii. 880; A. Marsden, ‘Edward Owner of Yarmouth’, Token Corresponding Soc. Bulletin, xii. 164-9. After joining the town’s corporation in 1606, the future MP worked his way up through the usual series of junior offices, rising to become an alderman in 1614 and one of the bailiffs (the equivalent of mayor) for the first time in 1616. During these early years he was particularly identified with schemes to improve the paving and drainage of the quays.24Manship, Gt. Yarmouth, 132. As MP for the town in the Parliaments of 1621 and 1625 he concentrated on matters of immediate concern to the town, which was no doubt what his colleagues had expected when they elected him.

In all, Owner served as bailiff four times, and it was probably due as much to his vexatious disposition as to bad luck that several of those years were marred by major altercations involving the corporation. His second term as bailiff in 1625 began controversially, when he and his business partner, Robert Norgate (the other bailiff) disputed the attempt by Sir John Corbet† (who had served, along with Owner, as the town’s MP earlier that year) to persuade them to contribute to the Forced Loan. Nevertheless, Owner was appointed a commissioner for collection of the Loan.25HMC 9th Rep. i. 309; Norf. RO, Y/C 19/6, f. 55. By the time Owner and Norgate had completed their year in office they had managed to split the corporation. In what may well have been a plot to oust them from office, proposals were mooted in July 1626 for the offices of bailiff to be abolished and replaced by a single mayor. Owner and Norgate first secured the defeat of this move and then persuaded the majority of the corporation to expel the minority who had supported it. One of those expelled, Jeffrey Neve, petitioned the king, and in July 1627 the commission appointed to investigate reported that Owner

did by a factious and undue course of proceeding so dismiss the said Neve, and unorderly in the instant elect another in his room; as that upon the balancing of all commissioners, it stands apparent, that the dismission of Neve was plotted by Owner and his associates without cause or offence.26Swinden, Hist. Gt. Yarmouth, 478n; APC 1625-6, p. 376; J.K. Gruenfelder, ‘Jeffrey Neve, Charles I and Gt. Yarmouth’, Norf. Arch. xl. 155-63; R. Cust, ‘Anti-puritanism and urban politics’, HJ xxxv. 10-11.

The corporation, citing a technicality, refused to obey the king’s command that Neve be reinstated, and, after a further investigation, the privy council agreed not to insist on it.27Swinden, Hist. Gt. Yarmouth, 478n-484n; Gruenfelder, ‘Neve’, 157-60; Cust, ‘Anti-puritanism’, 11. Neve’s supporters refused to accept defeat and, as a result of their lobbying, the crown instigated quo warranto proceedings against the corporation in 1629. After a long struggle, however, Owner and his allies outmanoeuvred the pro-Neve minority, for, by appointing the 4th earl of Dorset (Sir Edward Sackville†) as their high steward, the corporation gained a patron with the necessary clout at court to block these moves to alter the town’s charter.28Cust, ‘Anti-puritanism’, 11-17.

The other major cause of division in Great Yarmouth during these years followed from the appointment of John Brinsley as the town preacher in 1625. This was immediately challenged by the chapter of Norwich Cathedral, which had already nominated its own candidate and which now took the corporation to court, claiming that it alone had the right of appointment. The town refused to accept the ruling by the court of chancery in February 1627 in favour of the Norwich chapter, and, after a further five years of wrangling, the privy council resorted to imprisoning several members of the corporation (including Miles Corbett*) to end the matter.29Cust, ‘Anti-puritanism’, 4-5, 17-22; ‘John Brinsley (1600-1665)’, Oxford DNB. Owner was among those who publicly supported Brinsley, from that June the husband of his only child, Elizabeth.30Swinden, Hist. Gt. Yarmouth, 845-7; Palmer, Hist. Gt. Yarmouth, 307n; Gt. Yarmouth par. reg.; PROB11/218/644

Whatever the justice of Owner’s position in these earlier incidents, he was obviously in the wrong in the big dispute which marred his third term as bailiff. By a tradition dating back at least to 1576, the bailiffs of the Cinque Ports claimed the right to join with the bailiffs of Great Yarmouth in exercising their powers during the town’s annual fishing fair. These visits had often given rise to squabbles, but that in 1634 ended in unprecedented acrimony. The visitors later made an official complaint claiming that, when they had tried to take their places in the town’s court, Owner, ‘a man of turbulent spirit, minding to affront the said bailiffs of the ports, and disgrace, and provoke them, did uncivilly keep them without the bar, setting his foot cross the entrance and holding his hand on the end of the bar’. He had then, allegedly, ‘with much heat, and scornful language’, told them that the town’s rights had ‘cost men’s life heretofore’, and that the Cinque Ports could exercise their rights ‘but by the sword, or by law’. When the visitors had moved to withdraw, Owner had added ‘in disgraceful manner’ that ‘if some men of spirit, whom he had known, were bailiffs, they would have caused them to be flung down stairs’.31Swinfen, Hist. Gt. Yarmouth, 230-1. Thomas Howard, 21st earl of Arundel, was called upon to adjudicate in this dispute and eventually ruled in favour of the Cinque Ports, although nothing was done to punish Owner for his rudeness.32HMC 9th Rep. i. 311; Swinden, Hist. Gt. Yarmouth, 229; Manship, Gt. Yarmouth, 348-9.

As bailiff in 1634 Owner also had to handle a dispute with the other coastal towns in Norfolk over how the £5,860 needed for the ship demanded by the first of the Ship Money writs should be allocated between them. It was Owner (rather than the other bailiff, Leonard Holmes) who attended the series of meetings held in November and December 1634 to resolve this question. He was therefore among those representatives from the Norfolk towns who agreed on 20 November to petition the privy council for a reduction in its demand. He and Holmes also sent out letters to various peers asking for their support to get Great Yarmouth’s contribution reduced. These efforts were only modestly successful, for Owner eventually agreed that the town should pay £940 towards the slightly reduced county total of £5,500.33HMC 9th Rep. i. 308; Mins. Norwich Ct. of Mayoralty, 1632-1635, 188-90, 194-5, 196-7; Swinden, Hist. Gt. Yarmouth, 525-30, 534n, 535, 537n-538n.

In the spring elections of 1640, the attempts by the earls of Dorset and Northumberland to nominate two outsiders, Sir John Suckling* and Sir Henry Marten*, left the Yarmouth corporation unimpressed.34HMC 9th Rep. i. 311. By instead returning again Owner and their recorder, Miles Corbett*, the corporation were very much electing two of their own. Owner probably contributed little to the Short Parliament, for he left no trace in its records, but that was no bar to his re-election later that year. On 15 October 1640 the Yarmouth corporation again elected Owner and Corbett, although this time their placing on the return was reversed, with Corbett being in the senior place. The pair set out for Westminster with instructions to inform Parliament of the town’s assorted economic grievances and (in an allusion to the Brinsley incident) its inadequate provision for preaching.35Norf. RO, Y/C 19/6, f. 460v.

During his years in the Long Parliament, Owner was not especially active but he did, from time to time, prove useful as a fund-raiser. As early as May 1642 he was able to inform the Commons that £130 had been raised in Great Yarmouth for the assistance of Parliament and the following month he offered to lend Parliament £50.36CJ ii. 552b; PJ iii. 473. Particularly impressive was his tactic to raise money for the Irish Adventurers; by offering to contribute £100 from his own pocket, he persuaded his colleagues on the Yarmouth corporation to invest a total of £600 in the Adventurers’ fund for suppression of the Catholic rebellion in Ireland.37CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-59, p. 14; 1647-60, pp. 418, 437, 459, 510; HMC 9th Rep. i. 323; Swinden, Hist. Gt. Yarmouth, 872; Manship, Gt. Yarmouth, 381; J.P. Prendergast, Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland (1875), 432; Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 195, 213. It therefore seems odd that he was not included on the Norfolk assessment commission until 1645, although he had been named to the Commons committee which investigated the obstructive behaviour of some of the Norfolk revenue officials (23 Aug. 1643).38A. and O.; CJ iii. 216a. Other committees to which he was named, in particular those on the Newcastle-London coal trade (26 May 1643) and restrictions on pro-royalist merchants (5 July 1644), were ones in which his constituents would have had an economic interest.39CJ iii. 104b, 551a. There was undoubtedly a Yarmouth connection in the herring tax which the Committee of Navy and Customs devised in August 1644. The purpose of this was to pay for ships to be used to protect the North Sea fishing fleets from pirate attacks, and, as a substantial proportion of herring catches came ashore at Great Yarmouth, Owner, Corbett and the town’s bailiffs were appointed to collect the levy.40CJ iii. 604b-605a; A. and O. The following year Owner and Corbett appeared before the Committee of Navy and Customs to inform it that, in response to an appeal from the Merchant Adventurers, Great Yarmouth was willing to provide ships to protect the Greenland fishing fleet from incursions by foreign fishermen.41CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 420. Owner’s record as an MP reveals little of his precise political standpoint and he evidently showed a greater interest in local than in national issues.

During these years Brinsley returned to Great Yarmouth as town preacher and established a Presbyterian congregation there. This prompted a rearrangement of St Nicholas’ Church, whereby Brinsley was allowed to hold services in the chancel, the existing minister used the nave, and the Independent minister, the renowned William Bridge, the north aisle.42‘John Brinsley’, Oxford DNB. It might be supposed that Owner would have attended his son-in-law’s services, but later evidence suggests he was instead an elder of Bridge’s congregation. It was probably for that reason that he was nevertheless appointed to the delegation sent by the corporation to dissuade Bridge from seeking recruits.43Swinden, Hist. Gt. Yarmouth, 948; Turner, Sepulchral Reminiscences, 62n; Palmer, Hist. Gt. Yarmouth, 169. The strongest indication that Owner belonged to the Independent congregation was that he was later buried in the north aisle of St Nicholas’ at a time when it was still being used for Bridge’s services.44Turner, Sepulchral Reminiscences, 62n. Owner may have been one reason why relations between Bridge and Brinsley were notable for their cordiality.45J. Browne, Hist. of Congregationalism (1877), 111-12; G.F. Nuttall, Visible Saints (Oxford, 1957), 12.

In September 1645 Owner was given leave for a month by the Commons and, thereafter, he seems to have been absent from the Commons for prolonged periods of time.46CJ iv. 269b; v. 330a, 543b; vi. 34a. This may have been due to ill-health: after all, Owner became a septuagenarian in October 1645. It was at about this time that he was asked by the Yarmouth corporation to serve as bailiff for a fourth time. Owner refused on the grounds that he was already their MP, but these scruples were soon overcome and the following year (1646) he again accepted the town’s highest civic office.47Palmer, Hist. Gt. Yarmouth, 307n; Swinden, Hist. Gt. Yarmouth, 948; Le Strange, Norf. Official Lists, 161. In July 1648 Owner, along with most of the corporation, agreed to the creation of a standing committee at Great Yarmouth to preserve the peace and ‘protect’ the Solemn League and Covenant.48Swinden, Hist. Gt. Yarmouth, 566n. This move was made against a background of the royalist uprisings in Essex and elsewhere, and of the imminent invasion of England by the Scottish Engagers. At that stage, the corporation probably still had hopes that a deal establishing the sort of religious settlement promised by the Covenant could be reached with the king. It is difficult to say whether Owner took the same view in private. During the autumn of 1648 he probably spent little time at Westminster and so his absence from the Commons after the purge in December 1648 may not be significant.49Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 210n. That said, there is no evidence that he subsequently sought re-admission, although the Commons continued to name him as an assessment commissioner for Norfolk.50A. and O.

By the late 1640s, Owner was preoccupied with local matters. His final years were spent dispensing his wealth in charitable works to perpetuate his good name in Great Yarmouth. As early as 1634 he had persuaded the town to convert part of St Mary’s Hospital into a children’s hospital, and in 1646 he proposed that the town should have a library.51Manship, Gt. Yarmouth, 232; Palmer, Hist. Gt. Yarmouth, 307n. A donation of £1,500 in 1649 allowed a workhouse to be established on the same site as the hospital. He made further donations to secure the future of the children’s hospital by endowing it with properties in the town. In 1650 Owner donated £800 for immediate purchases, plus £180 to establish a fund into which the corporation agreed to pay £60 a year until there was enough money to purchase land worth £500 a year with which to endow the hospital. These purchases were eventually made in 1676, by which time £9,000 had accumulated in the fund. It was claimed that, over the course of his life, Owner had given a total of £1,500 to the children’s hospital alone.52Manship, Gt. Yarmouth, 229, 232-3; Swinden, Hist. Gt. Yarmouth, 873.

Owner died on 13 August 1650 and was buried in St Nicholas’ two days later.53Gt. Yarmouth par. reg.; Swinden, Hist. Gt. Yarmouth, 948; Turner, Sepulchral Reminiscences, 61, 62n. As his charitable bequests had already been taken care of, his will concerned itself with legacies for his family. As he probably had no surviving children, the main beneficiaries were his wife, John Brinsley, and his nephews, Ralph, Edward and Michael Owner. Apart from a house in Norwich, all the lands he left were located in and around Great Yarmouth.54PROB11/218/644. Through his nephews, the Owner family survived but none of those lines produced any MPs, making Owner the only member of his family to sit in the Commons.