YONGE, Walter II (1627-70), of Colyton, Devon.

Walter Yonge II was educated in the Calvinist atmosphere of Leiden and the civil war straitened Inner Temple, in the tradition of his family, and only reached majority age in 1648. By that time his native county was under the somewhat insecure control of Parliament. His father and grandfather played a part in Devon local government, but neither was sympathetic to the pretensions of the army to a say in national politics, and the later 1640s saw the family driven to the margins of politics. In 1649, Yonge married Isabella Davie, daughter of Sir John Davie of Sandford, whose civil war record had been distinctly ambivalent. Initially a supporter of Parliament, he switched allegiance in 1644, and provided the royalist cause with money and the king’s mint at Exeter with £44 in plate, although he was able to recover his standing with the parliamentarians sufficiently to be named to the Devon commission of the peace in 1647.1HP Commons 1604-1629; Cornw. RO, 22M/BO/33/20.

Yonge entered local government only in 1657, when the second protectorate Parliament increased the number of tax commissioners to include the sons of gentry families who had previously been held at arm’s length. His election at Honiton in 1659 seems to have preceded his inclusion in the commission of the peace, and would have been on his family’s own interest there. Yonge played only a very small part in his first Parliament. It is difficult to attribute the few references in the Commons Journal to either Walter Yonge II, on the one hand, and Philip Yonge of Shropshire, on the other. Either of them could have been the man who sat on the committee to investigate the finances of the Welsh church (5 Feb.) although the closeness of Shropshire to Wales might suggest this was Philip.2CJ vii. 600b. The subject of transacting with the Other House was a topic on which Philip Yonge had much to say, so that it seems unlikely to have been Walter who sat on that committee (6 Apr.).3CJ vii. 627a. Thomas Burton* recorded unambiguously in his diary on 7 February an intervention by Walter Yonge, when it was noted that an order was required to summon Members from Westminster Hall for a debate on the bill of recognition of lord protector and Other House, because judges and commissioners of the great seal were now in the second chamber.4Burton’s Diary, iii. 86. This was not very helpful to the government, and Yonge’s co-adjutors on this occasion were Henry Neville and John Weaver, both dyed-in-the-wool republicans. It is most unlikely that Yonge shared their political principles, but both commonwealthsmen and Presbyterians could make common cause against the protectorate. On 9 April, Thomas Reynell moved for a month’s leave of absence for ‘Mr Young’, and this is most likely to have been Walter Yonge, whose kinsman Reynell was.5Burton’s Diary, iv. 380; M. Wolffe, Gentry Leaders in Peace and War (Exeter, 1997), 180.

No member of the Yonge family lent his name to the petition taken by Thomas Bampfylde* to Westminster in January 1660, which called for the return of the secluded Members of 1648, and in effect fresh elections.6Som. RO, DD Baker/9/3/3. This hesitation seems to have been no deterrent to the restored monarchy, which on the advice of George Monck* included Walter Yonge among the Devon deputy lieutenants from around August 1660.7Mercurius Publicus no. 35 (23-30 Aug. 1660), 546 (E.195.73); Devon RO, 3799 Add. 3, commission of 2 Aug. 1662. Honiton returned his father and the townsman Samuel Serle* to the Convention of 1660, but Yonge found a seat at nearby Lyme Regis. He was named to 49 committees in the Convention, but was defeated when he stood again at Honiton in April 1661, losing to Sir Courtenay Pole and Sir Peter Prideaux, who were representative Cavalier figures and who were able to mobilize the Courtenay interest there. Yonge stood successfully in the Dartmouth by-election of 1667, and held the seat until his death in 1670. He was a busy Member of the Cavalier Parliament, serving on 80 committees. He spoke in favour of the dissenting interest. In the mid-1660s the bishop of Exeter feared him and Sir Edmund Fowell* as among the ‘great favourers’ of Presbyterians.8J. Simmons, ‘Some Letters from Bishop Ward of Exeter, 1663-67’, Devon and Cornw. N. and Q. xxi. 284. Yonge enjoyed favourable leases from the episcopal estate, and the bishop eventually conceded that Yonge could do the church good service if he was minded to it.9Simmons, ‘Letters from Bishop Ward’, 365. The Yonge family enjoyed the favour of Sir William Morice* and his heir, helping them to advantageous terms in property leases and protecting the Yonges politically during the 1660s and 70s.10Simmons, ‘Letters from Bishop Ward’, 366; Cornw. RO, Prideaux Place letters, William Morice junior to Edmund Prideaux, 24 Jan. [1678]. Yonge was buried at Colyton on 3 December 1670.11Vivian, Vis. Devon, 840.