For someone who seems to have been a Quaker and who sat in the Nominated Parliament, Edward Plumsted probably had an ancient and rather distinguished ancestry. The surname derived from the manor of Plumstead in north-east Norfolk, which had entered the family’s possession as early as the twelfth century. The John de Plompstede who sat for Norwich in the 1346 Parliament may have been one of Edward’s ancestors. By the mid-sixteenth century the family also owned estates at King’s Walden in Hertfordshire.8Blomefield, Norf. viii. 146-7. Armorial bearings were granted in 1576 to Bartholomew Plumsted, who was then the head of the family.9Grantees of Arms (Harl. Soc. lxvi), 202; J. Corder, A Dictionary of Suff. Arms (Suff. Rec. Soc. vii), cols. 229-30. Bartholomew Plumsted died in about 1614 and the descendants of his eldest son, William, remained in Norfolk.10Vis. Norf. 1563, 1589 and 1613, 223; Vis. Norf. 1664, 168; Norfolk Peds. III, ed. P. Palgrave-Moore (Norf. Geneal. xiii), 131. The Suffolk Plumsteds descended from Bartholomew’s second son, Thomas, and it was into this cadet branch that this MP was probably born.
Plumsted as a surname was rare in Suffolk in this period so it can be assumed with only a small possibility of error that the MP was Thomas Plumsted’s younger son. The alternative suggestion that he was Thomas’s grandson, the second son of his eldest son, Francis, does not quite fit with the known facts.11Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 424-5n; Vis. Norf. 1563, 1589 and 1613, 224. The grandson would have to have been very young when he was nominated as an MP in 1653 and he may in fact not have existed at all: his father did not mention him when listing his own children for the 1664 heraldic visitation of Suffolk.12Vis. Suff. 1664-8 (Harl. Soc. lxi.), 173.
Thomas Plumsted had trained as a lawyer, aided by his connection with the attorney-general, Sir Henry Hobart†, who had also been born at Plumstead.13LI Admiss. Probably with a view to pursuing a legal career, he had settled just outside London at Edmonton and had married into a fenland family, the Gardiners of Walsoken. By this wife, Jane, he sired two sons, Francis and Edward, and a daughter, Anne, but Jane Plumsted died young and Thomas himself died in April 1620, leaving his three children as orphans.14Vis. Norf. 1563, 1589 and 1613, 223-4; PROB11/135/382; C142/415, no. 116. Properties in the City (in Wood St. and Staining Lane) and at Enfield Chase were left to the eldest son, Francis. The legacies left by him to Edward comprised £500, items of plate, half of his book collection and his share of household possessions.15PROB11/135/382. Edward was admitted to Cambridge in 1628 (suggesting that he had probably been born some time in the early 1610s).16Al. Cant. Any problems he had encountered because he lacked an inheritance were ended by his marriage to Jane Gonby who, as her father’s only child, inherited estates at Raydon, on the North Sea coast in the north-east corner of Suffolk.17Vis. Norf. 1563, 1589 and 1613, 224.
Further comments about Plumsted must be largely guesswork. In view of his later election to the Nominated Parliament, it would be unsurprising if he had been sympathetic towards Parliament and to radical religious ideas in 1640s, and what evidence there is about him points in that direction. The claim that he was a Quaker principally rests on the assumption that he was the Edward Plumsted senior who acted as the preacher in the Quaker group organised by Robert Dunkon at Mendlesham in Suffolk.18G. Whitehead, The Christian Progress of…George Whitehead (1725), 31-3; W.C. Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism (1912, rev. edn. Cambridge, 1955), 163-4. This group was in existence by 1654 and, according to George Whitehead,
the Lord for many years prospered them, altho’ when that meeting was reduced to know a state of silence, some of their former preachers left it for a time, yet afterwards returned thereunto, especially one that was most noted, namely Edward Plumpsted, senior, who not only came to be a loving Friend in our society, (as his wife and family were) but also a preacher of truth among Friends, some years before he died.19Whitehead, Christian Progress, 32-3.
Whitehead here is probably referring to the MP. Dunkon was the nephew of Robert Dunkon*, the Ipswich tanner who was chosen along with Plumsted as one of the Suffolk MPs in 1653. Moreover, Mendlesham was only five miles from Old Newton, the parish where Plumsted later owned land and was not that far from Brettenham and Cockfield, where Plumsted’s brother lived.20Suff. RO (Bury), IC500/1/144/129; Suff. in 1674 (Suff. Green Bks. xi. 13), 77, 222; Vis. Norf. 1563, 1589 and 1613, 224; Suff. Ship-Money Returns, 202. Later evidence confirms that the Edward Plumsted of Old Newton was a Quaker. The Anglican parish register describes him as such when it recorded the deaths of his daughter, Anne, in 1664 and his wife in 1676. Both these funerals were held at Dunkon’s Quaker burial ground at Mendlesham and, in the case of Anne, the incumbent at Old Newton disapprovingly noted that she was ‘put into her grave with her head east, her feet west’.21Old Newton par. reg. Plumsted’s will in 1689 lacked a religious preamble and combined the Quaker system of dating with the conventional method.22Suff. RO (Bury), IC500/1/144/129.
At Raydon, Plumsted was a neighbour of the Brewsters of Wrentham, the Independent family who enthusiastically backed the cause of Parliament in Suffolk during the 1640s. One of them, Francis Brewster I*, was another of the MPs returned by Suffolk to the Nominated Parliament. It was probably through the influence of the Brewsters that Plumsted’s first cousin, Augustine Plumsted of Wrentham, became clerk of the peace of Suffolk during those years.23PROB11/242/649. Augustine Plumsted had got into trouble with the court of high commission in 1636 over what he claimed was accidental attendance at a local conventicle and in 1639 he refused to pay coat and conduct money.24CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 530; HMC 4th Rep. 29. Together with Francis Brewster I, Augustine Plumsted founded the important Congregational church at Wrentham in 1650, and his son, Augustine junior (a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, during the 1650s), took over the leadership of that group later in the century.25J. Browne, The Congregational Church at Wrentham (1854), 11, 23-5; Calamy Revised, 393. Edward Plumsted’s elder brother, Francis, may have served in the parliamentarian army, which would help explain why he was appointed an infantry captain in the Suffolk militia under John Fothergill* in August 1650.26CSP Dom. 1650, p. 509; SP25/119, p. 66. Plumsted himself may be the person of that name appointed by Parliament as one of the commissioners for the defence of Middlesex in October 1644.27A. and O. He does not seem to have been active in county administration in Suffolk during the war years, perhaps suggesting that he was resident elsewhere or was serving in the army.
Suffolk was one of the counties where it is known that the nominations to the 1653 Parliament were submitted by the local churches. A letter was sent to London from the Suffolk churches on 29 May 1653 proposing six individuals as suitable persons to sit in the forthcoming assembly at Westminster. That Plumsted was the sixth name on the list might mean that he was thought the weakest of the six and he did not appear as one of the three names later submitted by the Bury St. Edmunds churches. In the event, Plumsted was one of the five men on the list who received a summons to sit.28Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 94, 126. Like the other MPs, he was provided with official accommodation at Whitehall when he arrived in London, and, in his case, he probably shared it with another of the Suffolk MPs, John Clarke.29CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 455. Plumsted’s known activity in Parliament is almost negligible. The interest which a Quaker could be expected to have on the question of tithes might be reflected in his appointment to the committee on that subject on 19 July.30CJ vii. 286a. The Suffolk delegation may also have turned up in force the following day. The first item of business concerned the appointment of a new sheriff for the county (the old one having died), and, in Plumsted’s case, there was a particular interest, in that the replacement appointed was his brother-in-law, Edward Wenieve*. It is certainly striking that Plumsted, Robert Dunkon and Clarke were, one after the other, named to the committee appointed later that day to consider trade.31CJ vii. 286b-287a. The claim that he was not one of those who supported the maintenance of a godly ministry would be consistent with his being a Quaker.32Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 424.
His service as an MP did not increase his local standing in any way that can now be discerned. Apart from his appointment as one of the commissioners in Suffolk to collect the assessment for the second quarter of 1657, he held no local offices during the 1650s.33A. and O. That decade was usually the best opportunity for lesser gentlemen to rise to local office and the return of the king in 1660 must have ruled out any ambitions of that sort which Plumsted may have had. By the time his daughter died in 1664, he was living at Old Newton, in a house which was assessed for four hearths in 1674.34Suff. in 1674, 222. Some of his lands there were freehold and were probably passed on to his sons by an arrangement made some time before his death. One consequence of this was that the will he drew up in 1689 largely confined itself to bequests for his son, Thomas, who was still a minor, and his unmarried daughter, Jane. Other legacies were left to grandchildren, Edward and Anne Plumsted, implying that there was at least one other son.35Suff. RO (Bury), IC500/1/144/129; IC500/2/71, ff. 426v-427.
The Quaker tradition seems to have been passed down to later generations of Plumsteds. Edward Plumsted, who was accused in 1674 and 1677 of running an unlicensed school in Hertford, may well have been his eldest son, given that the lands he owned at Old Newton in 1700 were probably those which had previously been held by the MP.36Urwick, Nonconformity in Herts. 536; Herts. County Recs. i. 278, vi. 299; The Testimony of the Hartford Quakers (1676), 10; PROB11/425/364. If so, another son, Francis, is likely to have been the person whom George Fox visited at Hertford in 1690.37PROB11/425/364; The Short Journal and Itinerary Journals of George Fox ed. N. Penney (Cambridge, 1925), 216. Other members of the family, several of whom were drapers, invested in Pennsylvania in the 1680s and were known to William Penn the younger.38Drapers’ Co. ed. Boyd, 146; The Pprs. of William Penn ed. M.M. Dunn and R.S. Dunn (Pennsylvania, 1981-7), ii. 651, 662; iii. 265, 388, 389n, 721, 276; iv. 277n. Perhaps because of their nonconformity, none of the later members of the family sat in Parliament.