ORME, Humphrey (1620-1671), of Peterborough, Northants.

The Ormes had been established in the Peterborough area since 1538, when one Humphrey Orme, a groom of the king’s wardrobe, had leased the manor house of West Deeping, about ten miles from the city.16Fenland N. and Q. iv. 98. Orme’s grandfather, who had been knighted in 1604, acquired the lease of church property in Peterborough cathedral close during James I’s reign and became a leading figure in civic government.17Elizabethan Peterborough (Northants. Rec. Soc. xviii), xxii; Northants. RO, parlty. survey of Peterborough, 1650, p. 389. It was probably Sir Humphrey who secured a lease from the bishop of Peterborough of the family’s most valuable property: the manor of Boroughbury, which was worth £500 a year by the 1650s.18C6/132/148; C7/251/1. In 1643, parliamentarian troops defaced the elaborate family monument that Sir Humphrey had had erected in Peterborough cathedral.19Northants. N. and Q. ii. 135; Fenland N. and Q. iv. 98; Bridges, Northants. ii. 569. Nevertheless, he was named to several parliamentarian commissions for Northamptonshire during the civil war and was regarded by the royalists as a ‘delinquent’.20CJ iii. 440a; LJ v. 493a; vi. 137b, 249a, 496b; vii. 21b, 226b; TSP i. 33.

Orme’s father seems to have remained neutral during the civil war, although it is perhaps revealing that in 1641 he had married the widow of a former bishop of Peterborough, Francis Dee, ‘the Laudian prelate par excellence’.21Fenland N. and Q. iv. 98; Oxford DNB, ‘Francis Dee’. Orme himself would later be denounced as a royalist sympathiser, whose disaffection to Parliament had supposedly been confirmed by (among other things) his marriage to widow of a prominent Huntingdonshire recusant (for whose estate Orme was obliged to compound in 1647).22CCC 1778; Fenland N. and Q. iv. 98, 99; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Robert Apreece’. Assuming that Orme had indeed favoured the king’s cause it did not lose him the trust and affection of his grandfather, Sir Humphrey, who in his will of 1650 made his ‘dearly beloved’ grandson his executor, passing over Orme’s father, who had run into debt and gone to live with his second wife’s family in Sussex.23PROB11/212, ff. 191v-192; C6/117/114. In about 1650, Orme took over his grandfather’s lease of certain Peterborough city lands, but it is unclear whether he also assumed his prominent role in civic government – at least, that is, before the late 1650s.24Peterborough Local Admin. 145, 161, 234, 241. He was thought sufficiently well-affected by the Rump to secure appointment to the Northamptonshire assessment commissions of 1650 and 1652.

Orme was re-appointed to the liberty of Peterborough bench in June 1654 (having been omitted in 1650), and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament the following month, he and Alexander Blake* contested the single seat allotted to the borough under the Instrument of Government.25C181/6, p. 36; Fenland N. and Q. iv. 99. Orme’s victory on a poll, and the indenture (signed by many of the townsmen) returning him, were disputed by Blake’s supporters, however, and his omission from the liberty of Peterborough bench a few weeks later suggests that Whitehall, too, regarded his election as highly questionable.26C219/44, unfol.; C181/6, p. 37 In mid-August, the Peterborough ‘well-affected’ drew up a petition to the council of state in which they accused Orme of having royalist sympathies and friends, of disrespecting the sabbath and of being a tavern brawler, hard drinker and ‘a profane swearer’. They further alleged that Orme had prevailed on election day by polling royalists and former cavaliers and by assembling a ‘great number of disaffected persons, strangers’ who were not qualified to vote under the Instrument. Blake, they insisted, was ‘a person of known integrity, fearing God and of good conversation’.27SP18/74/87-90, ff. 184, 186, 188-9; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 313; Fenland N. and Q. iv. 99-100. The case was referred to the council’s committee for elections, but whether it was resolved during the life of this Parliament is not known.28CSP Dom. 1654, p. 313. It had been Blake, not Orme, who had been named for Peterborough on a list of Members purportedly approved by the council before Parliament had assembled.29Severall Procs. of State Affaires no. 258 (31 Aug.-7 Sept. 1654), 4093 (E.233.22). But there is no evidence that either Blake or Orme attended the House.

Orme was restored to the liberty of Peterborough bench in January 1657 and added to the Northamptonshire magistracy in March 1660.30C181/6, p. 203. As bailiff of Peterborough in 1658-9, he was a party to and signed the indenture returning Francis St John and Blake as MPs for the city in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659.31C219/47, unfol. He was also among the signatories to Northamptonshire’s loyal address to Charles II in the spring of 1660.32SP29/1/41, f. 80; May it Please Your Most Excellent Maiesty (1660, 669 f.25.49). Soon after the Restoration he was nominated to the proposed order of the Royal Oak, when his estate was reckoned to be worth approximately £1,000 a year.33Burke, Commoners, i. 690. He was involved in a double return for Peterborough in the elections to the 1660 Convention, but having ‘without doubt the greater number of votes’ he was allowed to take his seat.34HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Humphrey Orme’. In August 1660, he was described by Northamptonshire’s lord lieutenant as ‘a very honest person’ and ‘very forward’ in settling the county’s militia, in which he was commissioned as a captain of foot.35SP29/11/52, f. 57; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 309. He was returned for Peterborough again in the elections to the Cavalier Parliament.

Orme died on 2 March 1671 and was buried the next day (3 Mar.) in Peterborough cathedral.36Bridges, Northants. ii. 569; Fenland N. and Q. iv. 137. No will is recorded. His eldest son Charles represented Peterborough in October 1679 and in 1685 and his step-son, Robert Apreece, was returned for Huntingdonshire in 1673, March 1679 and 1698.37HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Robert Apreece’; ‘Charles Orme’.