STRANGWAYS, Giles (1615-75), of Stinsford and Melbury Sampford, Dorset.

Giles Strangways was the son and heir of a wealthy Dorset gentleman, Sir John Strangways*.27Sig. Dorset RO, D/FSI, box 233 (ii), bundle: `Giles Strangways, 1646-1673', unfol. From his father, Strangways inherited a wide range of connections with noble and gentry families, including the earls of Bristol and Hertford, and the influential Trenchards of Dorset. He was educated at Wadham College, Oxford, with which the family had a long-standing connection, from 1629-32, travelled abroad in 1632-3, and on his return married a wealthy mercer’s daughter, who was said to enjoy a marriage portion of £10,000.28Al. Ox.; Dorset RO, FSI 233, bundle ‘Letters and Pprs., 1603-44’, unfol. As part of the marriage settlement, Strangways was granted an estate independent of his father, at Stinsford near Dorchester.29Add. 8845, f. 23. Strangways soon took his place in the local judicial hierarchy. In 1640, aged 25, he joined his father in the Dorset commission of the peace, and before the civil war he served briefly on the western circuit of the oyer and terminer commission.30C181/5, ff. 189-221v.

In April 1640, Strangways was elected as MP for Weymouth, where his father had considerable influence. He apparently played no part in the short-lived proceedings at Westminster. In the following November he was again elected on his father’s interest, this time for the borough of Bridport. His role in the ensuing Parliament was as his father’s lieutenant in the Commons. Giles was named to 13 committees in the first six months of the Long Parliament, and his father was also named to all but two of these. Strangways was appointed to the committee of privileges on 6 November 1640, and thereafter was named to committees to consider grievances such as Ship Money (5 Dec.), overbearing bishops (12 Dec.), the new Laudian Canons (16 Dec,) and irregular elections (30 Mar. 1641).31CJ ii. 45b, 50a, 52a, 114a. He was included in the committee on a bill to ensure annual Parliaments on 30 December 1640 and in the following February was involved in moves to reward the queen for her help in passing the triennial bill.32CJ ii. 60a, 87b. Strangways was also named to committees which were of personal interest to his family: on 17 December 1640 the Commons committee appointed to investigate Emmanuel College, Cambridge, was also instructed to examine a petition from Wadham, and Strangways was added to it; and on 31 December he was also involved in the committee to examine a petition from his brother-in-law, Sir Lewis Dyve†.33CJ ii. 53a, 60b. There are also indications that Strangways involved himself in matters of local concern. On 21 December 1640 he was named to a committee to consider a complaint from Weymouth against the king’s customs officers, and on 3 February 1641 he was named to a committee on a bill against the export of wool: a matter of great importance to the Dorset economy.34CJ ii. 55a, 77b.

In the spring of 1641 there were already signs that Strangways, like his father, was losing his enthusiasm for reform. On 1 March both men objected to an implicit attack on another of their close associates, George Lord Digby*, over methods of raising money.35D’Ewes (N), 421. The Strafford trial also caused concerns. Sir John Strangways refused to take part in the attainder proceedings and Giles followed suit, absenting himself from the crucial vote on 21 April. Despite this, he was still cast, along with his father, as a man ‘whose goodwill was known for my Lord Strafford’.36Procs. LP iv. 51. During the summer, Giles Strangways’ opposition to the more extreme religious and political objectives of Pym and his allies became more pronounced, and he acted as teller against the ‘junto’ in a series of controversial votes. He successfully opposed Sir Thomas Barrington and Arthur Goodwin in a vote to introduce provisos on excluding bishops from voting in Parliament on 4 June.37CJ ii. 167b. He resisted amendments to the Scottish treaty on 19 June, and, on the same day, he joined Viscount Falkland (Lucius Cary*) as a teller in favour of an implictly anti-Scots proposal for making Parliament the judge of whether to send Scottish ‘incendiaries’ home for trial.38CJ ii. 181a; Procs. LP v. 238-41; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 335 and fn. 16. As yet, the division between Strangways and the opposition was not irreparable. On 1 July Strangways was prepared to act as teller with Sir John Clotworthy in a division concerning the wording of the bill to abolish the court of star chamber and on 26 July he joined Barrington as teller in favour of leaving the word ‘enticement’ in the articles against the army plot.39CJ ii. 195b, 224b.

By the autumn of 1641 this semblance of cooperation between the opponents of the king and the Strangways family had dissipated. Giles Strangways was named to a committee on a bill to raise soldiers for the defence of Ireland on 4 November, and on 11 November he was teller with Sir William Lewis in favour of considering supplies to Ireland in a committee of the whole House; but his enthusiasm for intervention was undermined by his suspicion of the Scots, and on 12 November he acted as teller with the Somerset MP, Sir Ralph Hopton*, in support of limiting the number of Scottish soldiers sent to Ireland.40CJ ii. 305b, 311b, 314a. It is also interesting that Strangways consistently sided with future royalists in parliamentary votes. On 22 November, he twice joined Sir Frederick Cornwallis in opposing motions concerning the Grand Remonstrance, and three days later he supported Viscount Falkland in opposing the incarceration of Geoffrey Palmer* for criticising the Remonstrance. In these votes Strangways told against such prominent opponents of the crown such as Sir Walter Erle, Sir John Clotworthy, Sir Thomas Barrington and Arthur Goodwin.41CJ ii. 322b, 324b. Strangways did not withdraw from the House at this stage, but his attendance seems to have tailed off at the end of November. On 14 December he was named to a committee to meet with the Lords to consider disturbances in Westminster, and on 9 February 1642 he was sent as messenger to the king with the Commons’ latest answer concerning the crisis in Ireland.42CJ ii. 343b, 423b.

Parliament’s condemnation of the Digbys and Sir John Strangways’ activities in opposing Parliament at every turn no doubt influenced Giles Strangways’ own defection to the king. The Rubicon was crossed by 19 May 1642, when he was teller with Edward Hyde against a declaration stating that the king should be bound by oath to pass all bills presented to him by Parliament.43CJ ii. 580a. Strangways played no further role in the Commons but, like his father, he may not have left for the west country until the summer. On 22 July, the Commons ordered that father and son should be summoned to attend the House, and repeated the demand on 20 August, before ordering their suspension on 2 September.44CJ ii. 685b, 728b, 750a. On his arrival in Dorset, Strangways immediately became involved in defending royalist interests in the county. He was appointed commissioner of array in June 1642, and sat in the Oxford Parliament at the beginning of 1644, leaving the royalist Commons by April 1644 to raise a regiment which may have served under Prince Maurice at the siege of Lyme Regis.45Northants RO, FH133, unfol.; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573, 678; Newman, Royalist Officers, 361; Bayley, Dorset, 136, 153. Thereafter, he joined the garrison at Sherborne Castle in North Dorset, which was commanded by his brother-in-law, Sir Lewis Dyve, and he was involved in collecting the weekly contribution from the locality in July 1645.46Bayley, Dorset, 136. The arrival of Sir Thomas Fairfax* and his heavy artillery sealed the fate of Sherborne, which fell on 15 August 1645, and Strangways and Dyve were taken captive and sent to London.47Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 64; BL, Add. 31116, p. 456.

Strangways’s military support of the king had aroused considerable anger at Westminster. Following his suspension from the House, he was disabled as an MP on 22 January 1644.48CJ iii. 374a. On 28 July 1644 he was assessed at £1,000 by the Committee for Advance of Money, a large sum considering the bulk of the family estate remained in his father’s hands.49CCAM, 436. Strangways’ own property at Stinsford was sequestered, and in November 1645 was let for a year at half of its 1641 rental of £200.50Add. 8845, f. 23. Parliament made the most of the spectacle when Strangways and Dyve appeared at the bar of the House on 29 August 1645. The Commons ordered that both men should be immediately sent to the Tower of London, and reprimanded Strangways for ‘the greatness of his crime in betraying his trust, and in being the occasion of shedding of so much blood, and in applying his endeavours to the destroying of religion, the public liberty and the English nation’.51CJ iv. 256b-7a; Harl. 166, f. 258.

Strangways remained in the Tower until April 1648.52CCC 1828. During this period, various friends and relatives on the parliamentary side attempted to help ease the penalties imposed on the Strangways family for their royalism. In February 1647, the Dorset Presbyterian John Fitzjames* lobbied for their right to compound.53Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 82-3. Meanwhile, the Trenchards were working to ease the plight of the Strangways family locally. Giles Strangways’ wife, Susan, wrote to Thomas Trenchard* begging him ‘to use all your power to procure our children the fifth of their father’s estate’, and also asked the county committee (dominated by the Trenchards and their friends) for protection from George Starre*, who was trying to evict her from Stinsford.54Dorset RO, D/FSI, box 233 (ii), bundle ‘Giles Strangways, 1646-73’, unfol. It was no doubt through the efforts of the Trenchards that Susan Strangways eventually received her fifth-share by the beginning of 1648.55Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 327. Fitzjames’s efforts also seem to have paid off. Strangways’ composition was allowed by Parliament on 9 March 1648, and he was discharged on payment of the first instalment of a £10,000 fine on 6 May.56CCC 1828. This was implemented locally at the beginning of June.57Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 394. In the meantime, Strangways was making friends with a range of zealous royalists who were also incarcerated in the Tower. While his father composed poems and translated religious tracts, Giles Strangways took to mathematics with a dedication which impressed Sir Francis Wortley, who wrote a doggerel poem in his honour

Giles Strangways has a gallant soul,
A brain infatigable;
What study he ere undertakes
To master it he’s able.
His studies on his theorems
And logarithms for number
He loves to speak of Lewis Dyve
And they are ne’er asunder.58Dyve Letter Bk. 83.

The prisoners were not totally isolated from their friends elsewhere, and on 13 September 1647 Sir Edward Forde supplied Lord Hopton with news from the Tower, adding that ‘Mr Giles Strangways presents his service’.59Bodl. Clarendon 30, f. 55. In 1648 Parliament allowed him to compound and released him from the Tower, but only on condition that he stayed in London until the second instalment was paid.60CCC 1828.

Parliament’s lingering doubts about Strangways’ loyalties were well founded, as after the execution of the Charles I in 1649 he became involved in royalist intrigue. In May 1650, Colonel Keane sent intelligence to Charles Stuart about the activities of a group led by the marquess of Hertford’s son, Lord Beauchamp, commenting that Edward Kyrton* and Strangways were at the heart of a group ‘who all correspond therein, and act each very zealously to advance the king’s business’.61CSP Dom. 1650, p. 153. This account was confirmed a year later, when another royalist agent, Thomas Coke, confessed to the council of state that he had attended a meeting at Salisbury ‘by two gentlemen of each of the six [western] counties, concerning an association in the king’s business’, at which Strangways represented the Dorset royalists.62HMC Portland i. 577. Although he took no part in the Worcester debacle in the summer of 1651, it was later claimed that Strangways had assisted Charles II’s subsequent flight from England.63Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 664. While hiding at Trent in Somerset (four miles west of Sherborne), Charles contacted Strangways for help in securing a safe-passage from his friends in one of the Dorset ports, but, in his own words, ‘Giles Strangways proved not to have any, as having been long absent from all those places, and not daring to stir abroad... but withal he sent me 300 broad pieces, which he knew were necessary for me in the condition I was now in’.64Charles II's Escape from Worcester ed. W. Matthews (Univ. of California, 1966), 60. It was perhaps in connection with this incident that Strangways was arrested and held in the Weymouth garrison until February 1652, when he was released on orders of the council of state.65Dorset RO, D/FSI 233(ii), bundle ‘Giles Strangways, 1646-1673’, unfol.

After his release, Strangways seems to have kept a low profile during the rest of the 1650s, although a complimentary letter from John Fitzjames in late 1655 suggests that, like so many other former royalists, he was on good terms with the moderate party in Dorset.66Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 46. Strangways may have been restored to the oyer and terminer circuit in the summer of 1659, although a more likely candidate is his distant cousin, Giles Strangways of Charlton Adam in Somerset.67C181/6, p. 377. In April 1660 Strangways joined his father in signing the declaration of Dorset royalists ‘submitting all to the resolve of the Parliament’.68Declaration of the Knights and Gentry of the County of Dorset (1660, 669.f.24.66). The restoration of Charles II brought Strangways immediate rewards. He was shortlisted as one of the knights of the projected order of the Royal Oak, and made a deputy lieutenant of Dorset and restored to the western oyer and terminer commission in July 1660.69Burke’s Commoners, i. 688; SP29/8, f. 67; C181/9, p. 10. He sat for the borough of Bridport in Charles II’s Parliaments from 1661 until his death, and was made a doctor of civil law by Oxford University in 1665.70Al. Ox. His political career, which began to flourish fully only after the death of his father in 1666, was marked by his fierce loyalty to the crown and the Church of England and his stormy relationship with powerful men such as the 1st earl of Shaftesbury (Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*). Strangways’s craving for office was satisfied only in 1675, when, shortly before his death, he was appointed a privy councillor.71HP Commons 1660-1690.

Despite his reputation as a staunch cavalier, after the Restoration Strangways was able to repay old debts to those parliamentarians who had helped his family in the previous decades. William Sydenham*, John Trenchard’s* son-in-law, had helped to prevent a massacre when the Strangways’ house at Abbotsbury was taken by storm in November 1644.72Christie, Shaftesbury i. 63. In 1661, shortly before his death, he begged Strangways to protect him from prosecution at the assizes

Sir, I will not dispute your commands and must get bail if you will have it so, but I should think myself most happy if I could think on any argument to prevail with you at this time to favour my request.73Dorset RO, D/FSI, box 233 (ii), bundle: ‘Giles Strangways, corresp. 1666-78’, unfol.

Other former parliamentarians also courted Strangways. John (now Sir John) Fitzjames approached him in 1666, asking if he would intervene at the privy council on behalf of the inhabitants of Sherborne.74Alnwick, Northumberland MS 550, f. 75r-v. John Bingham* appointed Strangways as a trustee for raising money for the use of his younger daughters (in line with the wishes of his father-in-law, John Trenchard) in his will, dated 1675.75PROB11/349/77. This reversal of roles suggests that Strangways was a more subtle political operator than is usually thought. Strangways died on 20 July 1675 and was buried at Melbury Sampford two days later.76Som. and Dorset N. and Q. xii. 27. He was succeeded by his eldest son, John*.77HP Commons 1660-1690.