LONG, Robert I (1601-73), of Draycot, Wilts., Westminster and Worcester Park, Surr.

Robert Long, the scion of one of the most prominent and wealthy gentry families in Wiltshire, entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1619 with prominent patrons, Robert Mason† and Edward Sherfield.1LI, Admiss. Bk. 5, f. 34v. Before being called to the bar, he became secretary to his kinsman, James Ley†, 1st earl of Marlborough, who was then lord treasurer.2CB. Through Marlborough, in 1626 and 1628 Long was elected to Parliament as Member for Devizes, and in the meantime acquired reversions to lucrative financial positions.3CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 567; 1627-8, pp. 293, 299, 302, 314; 1628-9, p. 181; HP Commons 1604-1629; PSO5/5, unfol.; C66/2390/3; C66/2427/19; T56/8, p. 196.

Long remained at court after the death of Marlborough in 1629. In 1630 he received a royal patent as an undertaker of drainage of Lincolnshire fens, with Robert Bertie, 1st earl of Lindsey (lord great chamberlain), Sir William Killigrew† (vice-chamberlain to the queen) and Francis Russell†, 4th earl of Bedford.4C181/4, ff. 31, 41; CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 426; 1631-3, pp. 405, 534; 1635, p. 78; 1635-6, p. 26; 1636-7, p. 258; 1637, pp. 184, 380, 435, 477; 1637-8, pp. 56, 151, 522; 1638-9, p. 67; 1639-40, pp. 49, 198, 451; 1640, pp. 60, 87; 1640-1, p. 284. Long was among a group of courtiers that was closely involved in this and similar fen drainage projects during the 1630s.5Lindley, Fenland Riots, 46-7, 48, 50, 54, 55. He became a gentleman of the privy chamber in 1632, by 1633 he was being styled as a ‘servant’ of Charles I, and in 1638 he was appointed surveyor and woodward general to Queen Henrietta Maria.6LC5/132, p. 308; LC3/1, unfol.; Strafforde Letters, ii. 149, 152; CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 35; 1638-9, pp. 273, 419. As a prominent courtier, in February 1639 Long was summoned to attend the king at York with arms, ‘after the fashion of a cuirassier’, and was appointed joint commissary for the army, although he was quickly replaced because of his commitments to fen drainage.7CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 419, 556, 572, 617. In particular, Long was involved in defending Lindsey’s project from critics in matters of law.8CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 637; SP16/416.

Long was returned to Parliament in spring 1640 as burgess for Midhurst in Sussex, a constituency to which he had no prior attachment. On the face of it, his office as a collector of recusancy fines should have rendered him unacceptable to the Catholic Browne family, Viscounts Montagu of Cowdray, whose influence had been strong earlier in the century, so either he had been unusually sympathetic to them or his candidacy was promoted by an alternative court interest.9HP Commons 1604-1629. Long was nominated to the committee for privileges on 16 April, but otherwise made no recorded impression on the House.10CJ ii. 4a. His main aim may have been to protect the interest of the fen drainage projectors from criticism he was informed would surface in the Commons.11CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 34, 41, 76.

This threat did not materialise until the early weeks of the Long Parliament, when Long was among those specifically mentioned by petitioners from the Fens to the Commons.12CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 308-10, 316, 451. But Long was not a Member of this Parliament, although it is unclear whether he had sought re-election. His position at court enabled him to remain influential, not least during the discussions over new political appointments in the early months of 1641. In particular, he lobbied for Robert Sidney†, 2nd earl of Leicester, to become lord lieutenant of Ireland. Sir John Temple opined that Henry Jermyn*, the most influential member of the queen’s circle, took counsel ‘only with Long’.13HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 360, 362, 366-7, 369-70, 375-6, 378-9, 382-4, 386-7, 391, 396.

Long remained a close adviser of the queen during the civil wars.14Bodl. Nalson XIII, ff. 56-9; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 187. In 1643 he was appointed to office in the exchequer at Oxford but he spent much of his time as an administrator with the prince of Wales in the royalist army.15CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 494, 498; Bodl. Clarendon 26, ff. 72, 190; CCSP i. 289, 297; Add. 37047, f. 189v; CCC 950. With a pass issued on 1 March 1646, Long followed the prince of Wales into exile, and by May, when they were in Paris, he had become his secretary.16Stowe 184, f. 213; CCSP i. 315, 324; Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 641; Carte 130, f. 246; Add. 18982, ff. 119, 126; Clarendon, Hist. iv. 226. As an ally of Lords Jermyn and Colepeper (Sir John Culpeper*), Long attracted criticism from rival royalist figures, particularly Edward Hyde*, who saw him as one of the most enthusiastic supporters of a policy of alliance with the Scots.17Clarendon, Hist. iv. 341; HMC Pepys, 224, 228, 231-41, 246-7, 250-61, 272-8, 282, 284, 286-93. Long and Culpeper were suspected by some of corruption, although even Hyde, who noted that Long was ‘thought to love money too well’, suspected that they were not as guilty as was claimed.18Clarendon, Hist. iv. 372-3, 415.

By February or March 1649 Long was Charles’s secretary of state at The Hague and he became a member of the privy council.19Add. 18982, ff. 200-1; CCSP ii. 9; HMC Pepys, 255; Add. 37047, ff. 1-2.; Bodl. Carte 130, ff. 81-2, 91-3, 126-34, 144; Nicholas Pprs. i. 128, 130-1; Clarendon, Hist. v. 2. Travelling with the exiled court in 1649 and 1650, he was a leading figure in the ‘Louvre’ group, who surrounded the queen.20CCSP ii. 14; Nicholas Pprs. i. 261; Add. 30305, f. 146; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 88; PC2/54, ff. 5-13. Dominant in 1649, they were prepared to make alliances with the Scots and their English Presbyterian allies, rather than rely on English cavalier uprisings.21Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 10, 32; Nicholas Pprs. i. 135, 151-2; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 476. Frequently disparaged by Hyde and Sir Edward Nicholas, Long was styled Jermyn’s ‘spy’.22Nicholas Pprs. i. 149; CCSP ii. 46, 55. Nicholas even accused Long of being an atheist, because he was reported to have said that ‘honour and conscience are bugbears’.23Nicholas Pprs. i. 156, 172.

Long accompanied Charles to Scotland in June 1650.24CCSP ii. 32, 30; Add. 15858, ff. 58, 60; Clarendon, Hist., v. 134. Opposed to making substantial concessions to the Covenanters, Long was among the king’s counsellors responsible for ‘the Start’, the plan to break the influence of Archibald Campbell, 1st marquess of Argyll, and the kirk.25Bodl. Carte 130, ff. 126-34, 179-80. As a result, in the autumn the Scots ordered him to leave.26CCSP ii. 69, 77, 85; Clarendon, Hist. v. 134; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 321. By June 1651 he was living in Rouen, from where he moved to Amsterdam.27Nicholas Pprs. i. 206-8, 255; Add. 4162, f. 208. Before the end of the year he was back in Paris.28Nicholas Pprs. i. 263; Clarendon, Hist. v. 212; Harl. 6852, f. 351; Bodl. Carte 130, f. 210; CCSP ii. 113. Fears of a resurgence in the influence of the Louvre group may have prompted the orchestration of accusations levelled against him in January 1652 by Colonel Edward Wogan, a former parliamentarian who claimed that in 1646 Long had been in treasonable correspondence with Parliament which had encouraged General Sir Thomas Fairfax* to attack Torrington.29CCSP ii. 115; Bodl. Clarendon 42, f. 280; Nicholas Pprs. i. 285. Long wrote a detailed defence and may have fought Wogan in a duel, but although found not guilty, in February 1652 he was removed as secretary of state.30CCSP ii. 12, 115-6, 118-23, 125; Bodl. Clarendon 42, ff. 281, 283, 287-304, 307-13v, 335, 357-61, 379-81, 398;400-2, 404r-v; 43, f. 23; Carte 130, ff. 175v, 181, 189-95, 244-56v; Add. 37047, f. 185-91, 193, 195-203v. That spring he was compromised further by the discovery that a trunk of papers which he had left at Jersey had fallen into the hands of the Rump regime.31CCSP ii. 124-7; Bodl. Clarendon 43, ff. 15, 17, 18r-v, 31; HMC Pepys, 294-307; Nicholas Pprs. i. 288, 290; Add. 37047, ff. 204-5, 207; Stowe 184, ff. 189-223v. Long removed to Holland, from where he sought to regain his position as secretary, viewing Hyde and ‘his cabal’ as his chief obstacle.32CCSP ii. 214; Clarendon, Hist. v. 323-4; Add. 37047, ff. 216, 231-2, 235-6v. In 1653 he schemed with Sir Richard Grenville and Henry Jermyn to undermine Hyde by circulating rumours of treacherous correspondence, but in January 1654 the case against Hyde was dismissed and Long failed to regain the king’s favour.33CCSP ii. 231, 248, 259, 286, 288-9, 299; Bodl. Carte 130, ff. 175-6, 182, 184, 187, 197, 200, 202-4; CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 359, 365; Nicholas Pprs. ii. 35, 39, 45, 47, 49-51, 53-5, 58-9; Clarendon, Hist. v. 323-6, 329; Add. 37047, ff. 224-32; Eg. 2534, ff. 155-59, 162-63v; Add. 37047, ff. 221-2v.

Long’s estates in Wiltshire and Yorkshire had been sold by the treason trustees, but his enforced exile from the court of Charles II may have prompted his return to England in or before June 1654.34CCC 3293; CCSP ii. 379. Shortly afterwards rumours emerged that he had provided information which foiled a royalist plot.35TSP, ii. 395. Probably unwittingly, he revealed to Colonel Joseph Bampfield, a spy employed by John Thurloe*, intelligence valuable to the protectorate. Following Long’s return to France in 1655, Bampfield informed Thurloe that he could make Long ‘useful to your service’.36Nicholas Pprs. ii. 315; TSP iv. 43, 51, 194-6. Thereafter, however, Long appears in the record only in May 1659, when at Paris, and the following December, at Rouen.37Nicholas Pprs. iv. 145; Bodl. Carte 130, f. 217.

Long returned to England permanently at the Restoration. Resuming his offices in the exchequer and the queen’s court, he lived at Whitehall.38CCSP iv. 676; Bodl. Clarendon 72, ff. 25-6; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 478; CTB i. 183; iii. 867, 882. He was returned for Boroughbridge to the Cavalier Parliament.39HP Commons 1660-1690. At his death on 13 July 1673 he left an estate worth over £2,600 per annum. Being unmarried, his chief heir was his nephew, Sir James Long†, elected to Parliament four times for Malmesbury from 1679.40C33/246, f. 714; PROB11/341/54; CB; HP Commons 1660-1690.