STOUGHTON, Nicholas (1592-1648), of Stoughton, Surr.

The Stoughtons had lived for centuries on the manor of that name in the parish of Stoke next Guildford and beginning with John Stoughton in 1419 had represented Guildford in many Parliaments.33HP Commons 1386-1421; Hist. Guildford, 269. This MP’s father, who was among four Stoughtons to be elected to Westminster in the reign of Elizabeth, sat four times for the borough. A prosperous lawyer, he finally acquired the manor of Stoke.34HP Commons 1588-1603.

Stoughton, described by his nephew and eventual heir as ‘a man of great parts, a good scholar and a very just and upright man’, had entered New College, Oxford, from Winchester and as was customary for its scholars had subsequently been elected to a probationary ‘fellowship’, but he resigned this in 1613 on entering the Middle Temple and was well advanced in legal studies when he inherited the family estates from his elder brother Sir George Stoughton†.35New Coll. Archive, Ms 9750; Add. 6174, ff. 138-41. A day later he was returned for the first time to Parliament, but perhaps distracted by his new responsibilities, he made little visible contribution to proceedings.36HP Commons 1604-1629. Although he was soon playing a significant part in local affairs, especially as a captain of militia horse immediately subordinate to county grandee Sir Richard Onslow*, he was not elected again to Parliament in the 1620s.37C193/12/2, f. 58; C212/22/23; C231/4, f. 168; ASSI 35/88/8; SR; HMC Laing i. 172. Archbishop George Abbot recommended him in 1628 to the corporation of Guildford as an advisor for a scheme of poor relief, but according to his nephew, there was a period of frosty relations between Stoughton and the borough when both considered the other had neglected customary courtesies.38Hist. Guildford, 19; Add. 6174, f. 144v.

In 1631, having evidently concluded he did not require to follow his father and brother in acquiring a knighthood, Stoughton compounded for it at £20.39E401/2450. That year his first wife, whom he had married when she was only 15, died, leaving an only daughter; he altered the parish church at Stoke in order to accommodate a memorial.40Manning and Bray, Surr. i. ped. facing p. 171; Surr. Arch. Colls. xxxii. 104-8. He married again in 1635 to the daughter of a London merchant, but had no more surviving children.41Manning and Bray, Surr. i. ped. facing p. 171. Sheriff of Surrey in 1637-8, he reported the usual difficulties in collecting Ship Money. In May 1638 he had received only £1,450 of £3,500 due and found confiscation of goods in lieu impossible to enforce: ‘very many in divers parts of the county deny payment, and threaten the collectors with actions [at law] if they distrain them, whereupon the collectors forbear distraining’.42SP16/389, f. 265. Although in 1639 he failed to contribute to the expedition against the Scots, he apparently remained a conscientious member of forest commissions, being appointed again on 14 April 1640 to inspect deer in the king’s park at Bagshot.43Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 914; SP16/243, f. 83; SP16/384, f. 38.

It is not known whether Stoughton considered standing for Parliament at either election in 1640 but the solidity of the Abbott and Parkhurst interest at Guildford may have been a sufficient deterrent. He did not lack engagement with public affairs, however. At some point before May 1641 he made the acquaintance of the reformer Samuel Hartlib, who sent him ‘several books’ detailing the ecumenical and educational projects (respectively) of his associates John Dury and Johannes Amos Comenius. These Stoughton ‘not only perused myself, but recommended to the perusal of others’, finding ‘a very good concurrent both of the one and the other’; the ‘feasibleness’ of Dury’s plans might be questioned because of ‘so much divided, nay opposed interests’, but, in the tradition of ‘our late learned and judicious bishop Dr [John] Davenant’ (of Salisbury), Dury’s ‘end is good, his endeavours glorious’.44Hartlib Pprs. Online, 46/12/1A. Prevented from meeting Hartlib in London by his own and his wife’s ill-health, he continued to receive, copy and disperse material from Hartlib, assisted by his wife and her brother, John Evans.45Hartlib Pprs. Online, 46/12/3A, 46/12/5A, 46/12/21A. Otherwise distracting employment on ‘commissions, partly for the poll money and subsidies, partly for the bounds of our forest of Windsor’ was turned to advantage (18 Oct. 1641)

this yet I have gained thereby ... that I have imparted your ... petition to the Parliament not only to divers gentlemen of my acquaintance (whereof some are Parliament men), but to some chief ministers hereabouts.46Hartlib Pprs. Online, 46/12/7A.

The ‘present unfitness of the condition of our church and state’ in ‘these fearful times’ meant the moment was ‘scarce ripe’ to press the reforming agenda (2 Nov., 20 Dec. 1641; 17 Jan. 1642) and there were soon ‘new emergent troubles’ in London (24 Jan.), but for the time being Stoughton persevered.47Hartlib Pprs. Online, 46/12/9A, 46/12/13A, 46/12/15A, 46/12/17A, 46/12/21A.

Between April and July 1642 Stoughton and unnamed friends invested £600 in the Irish Adventure.48SP63/293, ff. 277, 282. Perhaps because of his position in the militia, before 12 August he was appointed a deputy lieutenant of Surrey. Summoned to a meeting that day by Parliament’s lord lieutenant, Charles Howard, 2nd earl of Nottingham, to confer about ‘settling the country in a posture of arms’, like Sir Robert Parkhurst*, he responded.49Surr. Hist. Centre, 6729/4/133. When Sir Richard Onslow* and (Sir) Poynings More* did not attend and the meeting was therefore postponed, Stoughton wrote to summon the reluctant More (14 Aug.).50Surr. Hist. Centre, LM/COR/5/15. This argues willing commitment on his part, but in returning to Hartlib on 23 August a manuscript of Comenius’s Via Lucis (the way of light) which he had had copied, he commented that he ‘would to God I could hear of Via Pacis [the way of peace], that might second the Via Lucis and establish it’; ‘hereabouts I am sure we can hardly receive any rents nor vend any commodities ... so that we can hardly supply ourselves with necessaries for present and emergent occasions’.51Hartlib Pprs. Online, 46/12/19A.

As war came to Surrey in the autumn, Stoughton was associated with Onslow’s relatively conciliatory policies, which sought to keep the moderate and undecided loyal to Parliament by protecting their lives and property as far as possible. This stance ensured that, once a brief royalist incursion into parts of the county in November had been repulsed, Onslow emerged with enhanced authority in the area, but fissures opened up between his supporters and more militant local parliamentarians over the circumstances of the surrender of Farnham Castle by its governor, George Wither (previously under the orders of Onslow and Stoughton to secure it).52J. Gurney, ‘George Wither and Surrey politics’, Southern Hist., xix. 75-6. In February 1643 Stoughton was named – almost certainly at the instigation of Onslow – as commander of 500 dragoons to be raised for the defence of the county.53CJ ii. 964b; Add. 18777, f. 154. When the county committee was remodelled that summer, he joined it, but so too did the militants.54LJ vi. 151b. Led by Sir John Maynard*, with Wither as their propagandist, they attempted to wrest control of local military affairs from the deputy-lieutenants. In March 1644 Wither published a defence of his conduct at Farnham which, although it did not directly accuse Onslow and Stoughton of treachery, nonetheless left little doubt as to where he laid responsibility for the reverse.55Gurney, ‘George Wither and Surrey politics’, 77-8. Before 9 May, when Sir Henry Vane II* was ordered to report investigations to the Commons, allegations against Stoughton and Onslow were laid before the Committee of Both Kingdoms.56CSP Dom. 1644, p. 155. Maynard’s specific charges against Stoughton surfaced at the CBK on numerous occasions from 6 January 1645 until on 17 February the former cleared the latter of having betrayed the castle.57CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 231, 240, 253, 272, 285, 297, 303, 309; SP21/8, f. 111.

As the internal power struggle among Surrey parliamentarians ebbed and flowed, Stoughton had retained a military role.58Gurney, ‘George Wither and Surrey politics’, 79-84. In September 1644, for example, he was involved in securing a powder magazine at Weybridge.59Harl. 166, f. 135b. He also continued to sit on local commissions.60A. and O.; C181/5, ff. 239, 239v. According to his nephew, ‘he was a very able and judicious person at drawing or penning anything, but had no faculty in speaking his mind in public’; on the county committee he ‘was reckoned the head for penning, and Sir Richard Onslow the mouth for speaking’.61Add. 4176, ff. 141v-2. On 12 November 1645 a writ for a by-election at Guildford, following the death of George Abbott I, gave him another opportunity to enter Parliament, this time almost certainly with full support from Onslow and as a Presbyterian.62CJ iv. 340a; Gurney, ‘George Wither and Surrey politics’, 85. Initially he was opposed by Wither, but finding himself likely to lose, Wither withdrew from the contest late in November, leaving Stoughton’s election sure.63Supra, ‘Guildford’; Surr. Hist. Centre, BR/OC/5, f. 21.

Stoughton entered the Commons before 8 December, when he was named to a committee to investigate difficulties surrounding the supply of money and provisions for the campaign in Ireland.64CJ iv. 368b. It was a cause towards which he had contributed further sums in 1643.65SP63/293, ff. 279, 280. His addition on 13 December to a committee receiving certificates returned from the committee of accounts probably arose from this, while his appointment on 11 March 1646 to the committee considering the accounts of the auditors of excise suggests a continuing interest in money matters.66CJ iv. 376a, 472b. Meanwhile, he had his own chance to influence religious reform, although possibly in a more Presbyterian direction than Dury would have advocated, being placed on the committees to reorganise and supply the pulpits of the churches in Gloucester (22 Dec.), to encourage better observation of the sabbath (20 Jan. 1646), to review the revenues of the former cathedral church of (St) Paul’s (7 May) and to exclude malignant ministers (22 Mar. 1647).67CJ iv. 381b, 411b, 538b; v. 119b.

Having taken the Covenant on 31 December 1645, Stoughton was briefly thrust into the thick of Westminster politics.68CJ iv. 393a. This perhaps stemmed from a reputation as a draughtsman or from his military experience but it was perhaps also the result of factional manoeuvrings connected to the stand-off with Sir John Maynard. On 1 January 1646, in the aftermath of Parliament’s rejection of the king’s proposal to send peace negotiators to Westminster, he was named to the committee preparing the ordinance for martial law and on the 7th, in company with Onslow, to the much smaller committee which prepared an answer to the Scottish commissioners explaining why Parliament had voted to limit the number of Scottish troops remaining in England.69CJ iv. 394b, 399b. Later in the month he was added to the committee investigating intercepted royalist correspondence, while in mid-March he was placed on the committee chaired by fellow Surrey Member Thomas Sands* which addressed the sensitive question of which MPs might be affected by the Self-Denying Ordinance.70CJ iv. 416b, 477a.

In April 1646 George Wither launched a fresh onslaught on Sir Richard Onslow and his allies, provoking petitions and counter-petitions from Surrey attacking or defending their record in the defence of the county.71G. Wither, Justiarius justificatus (1646, E.506.30); Add. 31116, p. 528; HMC Var. iv. 174; Gurney, ‘George Wither and Surrey politics’, 86-7. Somewhat less in the firing line this time, Stoughton was nominated on 18 May to the committee which considered Wither’s petition to the House.72CJ iv. 550a. He appeared thrice more in the Journal before the Commons delivered their verdict against Wither in August, on 18 May as a nominee to the committee preparing a grant of the Kentish lands of the royalist commander Sir Jacob Astley to John Stephens*, on 13 June when he was placed on the committee considering a Presbyterian-inspired national militia, and on 30 June, when he was instructed with Onslow, Robert Goodwin* and the rest of the Surrey committee to submit to the Speaker a list of those accompanying the Princes Rupert and Maurice to their exile abroad.73CJ iv. 550b, 592b, 576a.

Not until 22 March 1647 did he reappear, among committee nominees.74CJ v. 119b. It is not clear whether or not he had been absent, but it is possible he may have been afflicted by the illness that had often confined him to his home during his correspondence with Hartlib. However, it looks plausible that his return to more visible activity had at least something to do with the cementing of his alliance with Sir Richard Onslow, which solidified on 22 April with the marriage of his only daughter (just short of her twentieth birthday) to Onslow’s eldest son and a fellow MP, Arthur Onslow*. To this end he barred the entail on his main estate to allow her to inherit before his male heirs – reluctantly persuaded into this radical step and even the match, according to his hardly disinterested nephew, by Sir Richard.75HMC 14th Rep. IX, 487; Add. 6174, f. 140v-1; Manning and Bray, Surr. i. 171. Over the spring Stoughton received four further committee nominations: it seems likely that he was expected to uphold the Presbyterian interest, especially in relation to instructions for commissioners negotiating with the king at Newcastle (14 Apr.), and to the ordinances indemnifying those who had acted for Parliament (7 May) and relieving those maimed or bereaved (28 May), intended as the reassuring preliminaries to peace and the disbandment of the army.76CJ v. 125b, 142b, 166a, 190b.

It is not known what part, if any, Stoughton took in the political upheavals of the summer. On 21 August he was among several Members given leave to go into the country, which could be interpreted as a desire to escape the tense aftermath of the failed Presbyterian coup.77CJ v. 281a. The next mention of him in the Journal was on 24 December, when, a day after the rest of the Surrey Members, he was ordered to go to his county and expedite the collection of assessments.78CJ v. 403b. This seems to imply that he was at least sometimes in London, where he still had a house, and in attendance at the Commons, but perhaps he was already troubled by his final illness. His active service at Westminster was over. On 28 February 1648, ‘sick and weak of body’, he made his will, leaving a rent charge and two tenements in Guildford to its corporation for the benefit of the library and school, on condition the borough surrender to his heirs the advowson of Stoke, should they request it.79PROB11/203/360. His daughter Rose survived his death on 4 March by only a week, dying in childbed following the birth of her daughter Bridget, who in turn died in June 1649. The entirety of the estate thus reverted after all to the nephew.80Manning and Bray, Surr. i. 171. The MP’s scholarly interests had been acknowledged by Comenius’s assistant Georg Ritschel, who dedicated to him his Contemplationes Metaphysicae (Oxford, 1648), but although Stoughton expressly left his books to his nephew to encourage him in learning, the heir did not distinguish himself in this sphere.81C. Webster, Samuel Hartlib and the Advancement of Learning (1970), 26. Nor did he or succeeding Stoughtons sit in Parliament.