YONGE, Sir John (1603-63), of Colyton, Devon.

John Yonge was the eldest son of Walter Yonge I, diarist of the Long Parliament. Walter was keeping diaries before his election to a parliamentary seat, and in one of them recorded the honour to him of a knighthood bestowed on John. The king visited Ford House, near Newton Abbot, in September 1625, in the company of George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham. Three knights were created during his stay, two of the host Reynell family and John Yonge. The Yonges and Reynells were cousins.21Diary of Walter Yonge ed. G. Roberts (Cam. Soc. 1848), 86-7. John Yonge followed his father in investing in the Dorchester Company, a colonial venture which was active between 1623 and 1626. The Yonges shared this interest in colonial settlement with William Fry*.22F. Rose-Troup, John White, the Patriarch of Dorchester (1930), 458-9. Yonge was one of those gentry whose names were cited in the project by John White, minister of Dorchester, to secure a new patent for settlement in New England, but it is doubtful whether Yonge was anything more than a sleeping partner.23F. Rose-Troup, The Massachusetts Bay Company and its Predecessors (New York, 1930), 16. Between 1627 and 1635, Yonge was named with his father in a number of land transactions by which the family seemed to be divesting themselves of small parcels of lands around their home territory in east Devon, perhaps in connection with the purchase by the Dorchester Company group of the living of Seaton and Beer, a Devon parallel to the activities of the feoffees for impropriations.24Rose-Troup, John White, 263; Coventry Docquets, 558, 636, 681, 683.

Yonge married Elizabeth Strode, sister of the firebrand William Strode I*, who had helped restrain the Speaker in his chair during the tumultuous end of the 1629 Parliament. In January 1642 William Strode acquired a new fame or notoriety as one of the Five Members of the Commons whom the king sought to arrest. In the fevered atmosphere at Westminster following that episode, Robert Trelawny*, one of the burgesses of Plymouth, offended the House with sceptical remarks about Parliament’s right to set its own guard. His disablement from sitting any longer in that Parliament (9 Mar. 1642) left the Plymouth mayor and burgesses seeking a replacement for his seat. They settled on Sir John Yonge. It was probably the relationship between Yonge and Strode, whose family lived at Newnham, in Plympton St Mary, near Plymouth, which secured his election, rather than any connections through Walter Yonge, who by that time had come in for Honiton. The mayor of Plymouth was expressing his determination to back Parliament in the ‘just ... quarrel’ months later, and to have returned the brother-in-law of an uncompromising local gentleman would have suited the mood.25Bodl. Nalson II, f. 213. No record of Yonge’s election survives, but he had taken his seat by 2 May, when he was appointed to his first committee.26CJ ii. 553b.

During his early months in the House, Yonge joined his colleagues in professing dedication for the cause of Parliament as sides were taken on the eve of civil war. In June he promised a free loan of £200, and evidently spent time in the company of his cousin, Roger Hill II*.27PJ ii. 473, 492. Yonge seems not to have been notably industrious, however. His second committee appointment was apparently on 19 August 1642, when he was probably the ‘Sir Richard Young’ added to the Committee of Navy and Customs’.28CJ ii. 728a. His third, and last, committee appointment that year came on 9 November, when he was included in a group of additions to the committee for despatches.29CJ ii. 840b. The mayor of Plymouth and his fellow burgess, John Waddon, wrote to him on 2 December with a list of grievances against Trelawny, his predecessor, adding that they were ready ‘to spend the last drops of our blood in this so just a quarrel’.30Bodl. Nalson II, f. 213. On the 13th, Yonge joined a group including Sir John Northcote*, Edmund Prideaux I* and (Sir) John Bampfylde* and a number of peers, who went to the City to recommend Denzil Holles* as commander-in-chief in the west.31CJ ii. 886b. Holles declined the position when it was offered him. While John Waddon returned to Plymouth to play an active part in the defence of the town and port, Yonge remained at Westminster.

Yonge’s activity in the House during 1643 seems mainly to have been in connection with the defence of Devon and its important urban centres. In February 1643 he was required to draft a letter of thanks for the Speaker’s signature after the House heard reports from the mayor, which were followed soon after (27 Feb.) by another letter from Waddon.32Harl. 163, ff. 298v, 307v. On 6 June, Yonge took the new oath and covenant, in the wake of the plot associated with Edmund Waller*.33CJ iii. 118a. He received a further report from Waddon on the depredations in Devon of the royalists under Sir Ralph Hopton* soon afterwards, but it was the peril facing Exeter, poised to fall to the royalists, which elicited a new committee, of which Yonge was a member, with his father and Edmund Prideaux I (3 Aug.).34Bodl. Nalson XI, f. 276; CJ iii. 192b. He was called to work on implementing a parliamentary order against Members who neglected their duties, a euphemism to describe royalists and fellow-travellers, and when the betrayal of Plymouth by Sir Alexander Carew* was uncovered, Yonge took a prominent part in drafting both an order for the indemnity of the mayor and a letter of thanks to him for his loyalty and initiative (4-5 Sept.).35CJ iii. 227a; Harl. 165, f. 166v.

Yonge took the Covenant on 30 September, after a week’s leave granted him and his cousin, Hill.36CJ iii. 239a, 259a. In November, he was given greater responsibilities for the parliamentary cause in the west, first when he was included a committee was formed at Westminster for managing the defence of Plymouth, Poole and Lyme Regis (3 Nov.), and then five days later when he was added to the Committee for Scottish Affairs, which would evolve in 1644 into the Committee for Compounding.37CJ iii. 300b, 305a. Whether he attended meetings of this body is unclear; he was certainly not attending them when the records begin to denote members’ appearances, in July 1644.38SP23/2. Yonge was required to write another letter of thanks on 18 November, in response to a further letter of news from the Plymouth governor, and was included in the committee for the ordinance on raising money in the west for Sir William Waller’s* army (30 Jan. 1644), as inevitably he would be as a member for that region. The clerk’s mistake in rendering his forename ‘Richard’ is probably an indication of how modest Yonge’s profile was in the House.39CJ iii. 314a, 383b. Not until September was he mentioned by the clerks again, when he and Waddon were asked to write encouragingly to the mayor of Plymouth. The town was by this time suffering the effects of the long siege and had rebuffed calls to surrender. A subvention from the receipts of customs and/or excise was considered now that the parliamentarian navy was in control of Plymouth Sound.40CJ iii. 628b.

During 1645, as the conflict between Presbyterians and Independents deepened, Yonge became associated with the former group on the few occasions his activities troubled the Journal clerks. With Sir Robert Harley, but also with Edmund Prideaux I and Sir Arthur Hesilrige, he was named to a committee on the Directory of Worship under the chairmanship of the Presbyterian Zouche Tate (3 Jan.). He was added to the committee to settle the debts of John Pym*, probably because of Pym’s west country origins and parliamentary service, and with a number of other west country Presbyterians, like John Maynard and Sir Edmund Fowell, was asked on 26 April to consider methods of ‘taking the accounts of the kingdom’, by which was meant an audit of the activities of the army and the county committees.41CJ iv. 9b, 69a, 123b. On 3 June, both Yonge and his father were awarded the £4 a week available to those Members whose estates had been damaged or destroyed during the civil war; in March 1644 the Committee for Advance of Money had granted them the London house of Thomas Leake, the dismissed cursitor baron of the exchequer.42CJ iv. 161a; CCAM 354; Sainty, Judges, 139. More personally, on 10 September he was one of a group of west country men given charge of the funeral arrangements in Westminster Abbey for Yonge’s brother-in-law, William Strode I.43CJ iv. 268b.

Unusually for Yonge, he was added to committees in 1645 that exercised authority beyond Devon. He was included in the large committee which determined which of the huge number of petitions before the House was appropriate for consideration (2 Aug.) and was included among those considering how to fill vacancies in fellowships and scholarships at Cambridge (2 Dec.).44CJ iv. 228b, 312a. Thereafter, Yonge’s commitment to the parliamentary cause was harnessed in the west country rather than in London. On 14 February 1646 he and other leading Devon and Cornwall Members were required to settle the south west in the wake of advances by Sir Thomas Fairfax’s* army.45CJ iv. 440a. As a consequence, Yonge was away from the House for most of 1646. Not until 2 December was he named again to a committee at Westminster, on the legal instruments used to bring prisoners to the king’s bench court. On 6 February 1647 Yonge was named for the second time to the Goldsmiths’ Hall committee, by this time a powerful executive body. This time he did attend, but only on three recorded occasions, in March.46SP23/4 p. 33, 34, 40. This half-hearted performance seems typical of Yonge’s public career as a whole. In April he was added to a committee which went to the City for a loan of £200,000 towards the reduction of Ireland, but this proved the last mention of him before another long absence, probably ratified rather than initiated in an order of 9 October which excused him.47CJ v. 148a, 329b; Juxon Jnl. 152.

Yonge had returned to Devon to play a part in the committee for that county, which faced a mutiny in September from the soldiery at Exeter. He was at the committee meeting which the soldiers tried to intimidate, and signed the letter to the Speaker on 4 September reporting the ‘sad condition of this county and the infinite sufferings thereof’. The committeemen complained of what they considered an unfair burden of taxation on their county relative to that of others.48Bodl. Tanner 58, f. 507. Two weeks later Yonge and his father were back in Colyton, reporting to Lenthall on the plunder, fire and plague blighting east Devon. Not only had plunder by royalists almost ruined Colyton, but it had been suffering under the plague and reduced by a third by fire. The condition of nearby Axminster and Honiton was scarcely any better, and none of these places was any longer able to relieve their own poor. The Yonges’ letter was a plea for particular help for their own district. They sought the suspension of collections of taxes, the appointment of a minister to address the absence of religious provision since the start of the civil war. Against the background of sales of church lands, Walter and Sir John requested that the Commons should assume control of the leases of the manor and parsonage of Colyton, which had belonged to the dean and chapter of Exeter, so that a new minister could be maintained from them.49Bodl. Tanner 58, f. 524. By 1649, Yonge had acquired a lease of Colyton church property himself.50E113/6, unfol. In January 1648 Yonge was appointed to a committee to determine a more equitable distribution of the rating burden on the counties, a preoccupation of the Devon county committeemen. Soon afterwards he was given leave to return to Devon.51CJ v. 434a, 467a.

Although Yonge was made a freeman of Lyme Regis and a justice of the peace in Devon during 1647, he played only a modest part in the traditional local government of his own county. He seems to have attended quarter sessions sporadically during 1648, but he was more active in the county committee. Armed with a Commons order to join with other Devon Members to settle the militia, in June 1648 he signed a commission for Christopher Savery to be a colonel of the county militia in the western division. This was an indication that he was in favour of strengthening the local force as an alternative to the centrally organized New Model army.52CJ v. 606b; Add. 44058, f. 35. On 15 July he joined with other committeemen to complain again to the Speaker, this time on defects they detected in the ordinance governing the formation of the militia and their lack of weapons, throwing in again their perennial complaint of unfairness in the rating system. They asked for a new ordinance for the militia which would relieve the friends of Parliament in Devon from oppression.53Bodl. Nalson VII, f. 163. The following month Yonge signed instructions to the colonels of the county militia foot as one of their commissioners, and was named prominently in the first committee following the reorganization of the Devon county committee into regional divisions.54Add. 44058 ff. 26v-7, 36v-38. He supported William Morice at his election on 15 August as knight of the shire.55C219/43/2. On 26 September he was excused at a call of the House.56CJ vi. 34b.

Although he later joined those who in 1660 identified themselves with the secluded Members of December 1648, he himself was not in London during the crisis of 1648-9.57A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members (1660), 55 (E.1013.22). Yonge was at the Devon quarter sessions meeting in January 1649, on the eve of the king’s execution, but this was no show of support for the king’s trial.58Devon RO, Devon QS order bk. 1/8. Rather, he made his disapproval of the army coup and regicide apparent by withdrawing from public life during the life of the commonwealth government. He was more willing to collaborate with the Cromwellian protectorate, being named to the commission of oyer and terminer for a number of years after 1654, but his name was removed from that body and the Devon commission of the peace in 1657, probably because of his reluctance to attend meetings. He was elected to the Parliaments of 1654 and 1656, but there seems no evidence that he made any impression on the first and was excluded from the second assembly, doubtless because of his Presbyterian sympathies.59CJ vii. 425b. Like many others, he was allowed eventually into the second sitting of Parliament as knight of the shire, to judge from a letter to him from John Elford*, who in February 1658 congratulated Yonge on his safe return to Devon from London.60Devon RO, 530 M/add/E 13. His attendances at Westminster must have been very limited, as there are no references to his being appointed to any committees or contributing any speeches. In the spring of 1658 he bought the estate of Coplestone, in mid Devon from relations of Elford’s and Sir Coplestone Bampfylde*.61Devon RO, 530 M/add/E 1, E 13.

The Restoration of the monarchy may have caused the Yonge family some temporary discomfort, as both Yonge and his son, Walter Yonge II*, had to cover their civil war records by suing out pardons at £11 10s each.62Som. RO, DD/WO/55/2/50. Sir John Yonge had to wait to be restored to the commission of the peace, but was returned to the Convention of 1660 for Honiton, where his profile was no higher than it had been in earlier assemblies he had attended. He drew up his will in 1661, bestowing bequests on the poor of six parishes or settlements in east Devon. He endowed a school in Colyton, remembered his physician and favoured three local ministers he considered his chaplains. One of these, named Serle, may have signed the Presbyterian Joint-Testimonie of the Ministers of Devon (1648), but none was ejected in 1662, suggesting that Yonge was more conformable to the Anglican church settlement than his Presbyterian sympathies during the 1640s and 50s might have suggested.63PROB11/312/166; Calamy Revised, 554. He died in 1663 and was buried at Colyton on 26 August.64Al. Ox.; Vivian, Vis. Devon, 840.