PELHAM, John (1624-1703), of Halland, Laughton, Suss.

John Pelham was the heir to one of the wealthiest and most powerful of the Sussex puritan gentry families, but his lengthy parliamentary career was uneventful and sandwiched between more prominent forebears and descendants. From an early age he seems to have inclined towards the life of a country squire. From 1635, when he was 11, his father’s accounts record payments for board and tuition by one Mr Hampden in London, at £11 a year.30Add. 33145, ff. 83v, 89, 96, 105, 108v, 113v, 118v, 123v, 129v. In Easter term 1640 Pelham went to Cambridge as a fellow commoner of the strongly puritan Emmanuel College, where he was taught by John Sadler*, one of the fellows and a member of the household of Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke.

Leaving Cambridge without a degree in 1642, John Pelham travelled to France and the United Provinces with his cousin Thomas Wilbraham†.31Add. 33145, f. 152v. They stayed at Utrecht with Sir Robert Honywood, father of John’s stepmother and a servant of Charles Louis, elector palatine. In 1644 Honeywood reassured Sir Thomas Pelham that he did ‘not think it possible to debauch’ John, and recommended that he stay at The Hague, ‘where he will have so many friends to give him address at all the courts, I think it will be much to his advantage’. Honywood sought a horse for the young man, ‘to hunt sometimes with the young prince of Orange’.32Add. 33084, ff. 49-50. That July Lady Honywood reaffirmed that John was ‘staid and discreet’, although Sir Thomas Pelham had done ‘him wrong to say his no courtier, for I assure you I think him a great one’. Nonetheless, ‘both he and I like better a country life than to be courtiers’ and ‘we comfort ourselves often in discovering of the happiness of those which enjoy that life’; John knew ‘how to value the contentment of a country gentleman’.33Add. 33084, f. 53. Another of Sir Thomas Pelham’s correspondents considered that John ‘has made so good use of his travels, that he is fit for any court’, and that this was the opinion of ‘all our princely progeny’34Add. 33084, f. 59. Most of John Pelham’s own letters to his father concerned his need for money, despite the fact that he was sent well over £1,000 during his European tour.35Add. 33084, ff. 48, 55, 62; Add. 33145, ff. 152v, 157v, 166v, 170v. On his return to England, in late 1644 or early 1645, he received an annual allowance of £600, but this too required frequent supplements.36Add. 33145, ff. 203v, 207v, 212v, 223v; Add. 33148, ff. 7v, 25v.

Pelham first entered Parliament as a recruiter MP for Hastings in the autumn of 1645. A writ had been issued after the disabling of the borough’s two MPs, Thomas Eversfield* and John Ashburnham*, for their royalism.37C231/6, p. 18. No mention of Pelham’s election was made in the corporation minute book, but the poll must have taken place by 7 October, when Sir Robert Honywood reported Pelham’s return to Sir Henry Vane I* (father of Sir Thomas Pelham’s third wife).38Hastings Museum, C/A(c) 2; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 181. Sir Thomas expended £93 to secure his son’s election, apparently motivated not just by a desire to advance his heir’s career, but also to counter the influence of the more radical elements on the Sussex committee – including his former ward Harbert Morley* – who challenged traditional grandees like himself.

The impression that the election was above all an exercise in excluding alternative interests is reinforced by John Pelham’s very slender parliamentary record. Having subscribed the Solemn League and Covenant on 29 October, Pelham did not appear again in the Journal until 21 October 1646, when he was named to a committee to regulate proceedings in the court of chancery.39CJ iv. 326a, 701a. His next appointment, on 1 July 1647, suggests that he supported the Presbyterians, since he was named to the committee set up to try and prevent the New Model army from moving closer to London.40CJ v. 229a. But during the turbulent events in the capital which ensued Pelham appears to have been entirely absent from the House. Following the failure of the Presbyterian coup, he was not present at a call of the House on 9 October, although he had presumably returned by 26 November, when he was granted leave to go to the country.41CJ v. 330b, 370b.

The wealth and social pre-eminence of the Pelhams, as well as their political allegiances, were revealed in John’s marriage in January 1648 to Lady Lucy Sidney, a daughter of Robert Sidney, 2nd earl of Leicester, and a niece of the lord lieutenant of Sussex, Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland. The bride brought a portion of £4,000; parties to the marriage settlement, apart from Sir Thomas and Leicester, comprised the latter’s sons Philip Sidney*, Viscount Lisle, and Algernon Sydney*, as well as Sir John Monson†, Sir John Temple*, and Sir Thomas Pelham’s old friend, Anthony Stapley I*.42Add. 32683, f. 62; E. Suss. RO, SAS/P/50. While these included men more radical than the Pelhams, one of the trustees to the complementary settlement of estates on John himself was Henry Goring*, who had been fined £500 in 1645 for royalist delinquency.43Add. 33137, f. 65; CB.

Pelham was next mentioned in the Commons Journal on 20 March 1648, when he was named to a committee to consider the jurisdiction of the court of admiralty, a matter of particular importance to his county.44CJ v. 505b. He then disappeared from records of proceedings. Like his father, he was secluded at Pride’s Purge on 6 December.45OPH xviii. 469-70.

Unlike Sir Thomas, John did not hold local office under the commonwealth. Both father and son were returned to the first protectorate Parliament in elections where opponents of the regime were dominant in Sussex, whether Rumpers like Harbert Morley, or representatives of more conservative opinion like the Pelhams. Sir Thomas died before the beginning of the session on 3 September 1654, and perhaps partly because of his duties as an executor, John played no visible part in proceedings before the dissolution in January 1655.

Pelham, now 3rd baronet, inherited extensive estates and expensive tastes.46Add. 33147. He made frequent journeys to London and indulged in conspicuous consumption. In 1656, for example, he purchased £120 of silverware engraved with his arms, and in the following year commissioned a portrait of himself by Sir Peter Lely, which he presented to his sister.47Add. 33148, ff. 74v, 83v. His kitchen account book reveals that he purchased grapes from Harbert Morley, apricots from Sir Henry Vane II*, fruit from the earl of Leicester, figs from Lord Dacre (Francis Lennard*), and partridge from Sir Denny Ashburnham†.48Add. 33150, ff. 4v, 11, 11v, 18v, 24v-26v, 33. To compensate for his father’s meanness, he had to increase his wife’s jointure to £1,000 a year, but his marriage appears to have been happy, and he lavished gifts on his wife.49HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 441-3; Suss. Arch. Coll. xxxvii. 50. In 1655 he bought her a ring and locket for £160, a diamond for £300, and a necklace from the countess of Sunderland for £800, while in 1660 he spent another £180 on jewellery and in 1661 gave her silver plate worth £269.50Add. 33148, ff. 63v, 70, 105, 113v. Her allowance seems to have been over £300 per year.51Add. 33148, f. 98v.

Pelham’s ecclesiastical patronage in this period proclaimed him a religious Presbyterian. In 1657 he instituted John Stone to Hellingley, while at Burwash he appointed William Lancaster and a contemporary at Emmanuel College who had been ordained by the fourth London classis in 1649, Thomas Goldham; both Stone and Goldham were ejected in 1662.52Suss. Arch. Coll. xxxiii. 216; xxxvi. 159; li. 8; Calamy Revised, 226, 465. In the 1650s he made frequent tithe payments to Lancaster, and to the Presbyterian, Josiah Ricraft.53Add. 33148, ff. 61, 67v, 72, 80, 88, 93, 96, 99v, 103, 107, 108v, 123.

Perhaps in recognition of his social standing, perhaps in recognition of a temporary rapprochement with the government, in July 1656, shortly before the elections for the second protectorate Parliament, Pelham was appointed to the commission of the peace.54C231/6, p. 343. Major-general William Goffe* told Secretary John Thurloe* that he had heard Pelham was ‘a very honest man’, but despite this imputation of loyalty, the latter remained an obvious choice for those who wished to register a protest vote at the polls.55TSP v. 172. Pelham was returned as the second knight of the shire behind Harbert Morley, the prime mover among local opponents of the protectorate, and ahead of John Fagge*, Morley’s loyal side-kick.56C219/45i. Unlike them, however, Pelham was not excluded once Parliament had assembled, probably because he was regarded as being unlikely to be active.57OPH xxi. 16. The only reference to him in its records was to his absence without excuse on 31 December 1656.58Burton’s Diary, i. 287.

In 1658 Pelham was solicited to support John Stapley’s planned royalist uprising. Many of those examined in connection with the abortive plot mentioned his name, but a quarrel between Pelham and Stapley seems to have saved the former from involvement.59TSP vii. 79, 81, 110, 165, 166. In the late 1650s Pelham’s name was not included on the list of Sussex gentry willing to assist the royalists, although he clearly socialised with some of the most prominent among them.60Bodl. Eng. hist. e. 309, p. 40; CCSP iv. 606.

Pelham returned to the Long Parliament in late February 1660, when the excluded members were readmitted. He received one committee nomination before the dissolution on 16 March – to consider a bill for the approbation of ministers.61CJ vii. 858a. In April he stood alongside his old friend, Henry Goring, in elections for the Convention, sharing expenses for lavish entertainment of the voters. Both were returned as knights of the shire and in May both signed the humble address of the county gentry welcoming the Restoration of the king.62SP29/1, f. 89. Pelham’s only known speech in the Convention attacked Pride’s Purge, although Edmund Ludlowe II* affirmed that he ‘did it with civility’, and that he had told the regicide (also an election candidate) that, showing unusual tolerance, ‘he had solicited his friends of the House for the giving of their approval of my return ... and had procured forty voices for me’.63Ludlow, Voyce, 123.

Pelham sat in Parliament throughout the 1660s.64HP Commons 1660-1690. He also assumed a prominent position on the county bench, work for which he prepared himself by purchasing copies of Poulton’s Statutes, Dalton’s Justice of the Peace, and the Complete Justice.65E.Suss. RO, QO/EW3, f. 80; Add. 33148, f. 108. In July 1661 he recorded having given Charles II £100 and in the late 1660s he was listed as a court supporter.66Add. 33148, f. 113; A. Browning, Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby (1951), iii. 42. He continued to display Presbyterian preferences, however. His domestic chaplain in the 1660s was the Presbyterian Edmund Thorpe, while at Laughton he instituted Henry Montague (1662) and John North (1685); at East Hoathly, Timothy Parker (1662); at Hellingley, John Smith (1663); and at Burwash, John Webb (1662).67Add. 33148, ff. 121, 123, 125, 130, 142; Calamy Revised, 485; Suss. Arch. Coll. lv. 252, 254, 256, 265, 273. It would later be claimed that Pelham was a friend of the ‘sober clergy’.68Suss. Arch. Coll. cvi. 145.

Pelham was a Member of both Parliaments of 1679,69HMC 7th Rep., 474b. but of neither the last assembly called by Charles II nor the Parliament of James II. Although involved in searching for ‘disaffected persons’ after the Rye House Plot in July 1683, he supported the revolution of 1688 and was named on a list of ‘extreme’ anti-Jacobites.70CSP Dom. 1683, p. 50; Browning, Danby, iii. 171. He was re-elected to Parliament in January 1689; ‘reputed moderate’, he opposed the repeal of the Test Act and other penal statutes, but believed in a degree of toleration.71Suss. Arch. Coll. xxxi. 10-11, 184, 440-1. In the early 1690s he lent large sums of money to the new king, sold hundreds of tons of iron shot to the government and was reliable in raising troops and money in Sussex.72Cal. Treas. Bks. ix. 608, 616, 743, 809, 811, 833, 882, 1137, 1472, 1553; x. 46, 488, 902, 910, 1290. By this time an elder statesman, in the Sussex elections of 1695 he aligned himself with the leading opponents of the exiled James II.73Add. 33144, f. 205; Suss. Arch. Coll. cvi. 145.

Pelham died after a fall from his horse in January 1703, and was buried in Laughton church.74Suss. Arch. Coll. lxx. 155. He left cash and bonds worth £3,000 in addition to his substantial estate, which he had expended by property deals, although a precise calculation of his wealth is compromised by inefficient account-keeping.75PROB11/469/27; Add. 33146, f. 129; Add. 33154, ff. 28v-30v; 33155; E. Suss. RO, AMS 5735/44; Suss. Arch. Coll. xxxvii. 62, 64, 65; Abstract Suss. Deeds and Docs., 43, 175. His son and heir, Thomas Pelham†, 4th baronet, was elected 12 times to Parliament, where he had a more visible presence than his father, while another son, sat three times for Sussex seats between 1690 and 1702. The 4th baronet was created Baron Pelham in 1706, and his son inherited the title of the duke of Newcastle.76CB; Add. MS 33137, ff. 81-90, 152-6, 168; HP Commons 1660–1690; HP Commons 1690-1715 .