SUCKLEY, Ralph (c.1616-1693), of Canonbury, Islington, Mdx.

Nothing is known about Suckley’s background and parentage, or about his early life and education, beyond his admission as a sizar to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1634.10Al. Cant. At some point in the late 1630s or early 1640s he became a civil lawyer, practising in the prerogative court of Canterbury; and – according to an affidavit sworn in 1659 by a fellow lawyer – he went to the king’s headquarters at Oxford during the civil war, where he may have continued to practise as a proctor.11Information from Groome. His royalist sympathies and likely absence from London during the mid-1640s may help to explain the six year gap between his marriage in St Andrew, Holborn, in 1642 and the baptism of his son Ralph in St Gregory by St Paul in 1648.12St Andrew, Holborn par. reg.; St Gregory by St Paul par. reg. His activities during the 1650s remain largely obscure. In 1654 he purchased Chepsted House, in Chevening, Kent, which was apparently the basis for his addition to the Kent bench and to the commissions for assessment and for ejecting scandalous ministers in 1657-8.13Hasted, Kent, iii. 119; C231/6, p. 362; SP25/78, p. 500; A. and O.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659, Suckley was elected with one James Nutley for Higham Ferrers.14C219/47, unfol. There is no known link between Suckley and Higham Ferrers, and it is very likely that he was a carpet-bagger. The identity of his electoral patron is likewise a mystery, although one possibility is John Cecil, 4th earl of Exeter, whose first wife was a member of the Montagu of Boughton family, which had enjoyed a strong electoral interest at Higham Ferrers since the early Stuart period.15HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Higham Ferrers’; CP v. 219. By 1667 until at least 1669, Suckley would be described as ‘of Exeter House’ – one of the Cecils’ London residences, which would be occupied from the spring of 1667 by Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*, who had married a daughter of David Cecil*, 3rd earl of Exeter.16Mar. Lics. (Harl. Soc. xxiii), 132; Mar. Lics. (Harl. Soc. xxxiii), 203, 220; Mar. Lics. (Harl. Soc. xxxiv), 7, 13; Oxford DNB, ‘Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st earl of Shaftesbury’.

Higham Ferrers had the right to send only one Member to Parliament, and thus on 31 January 1659, having noted that two Members had been returned for the borough, the Commons deemed it a double return, whereupon Suckley, ‘being in the House...did voluntarily withdraw’ and a new writ was issued.17Supra, ‘Higham Ferrers’; CJ vii. 595b, 602a; Burton’s Diary, iv. 108. On 4 March, Major-general William Boteler* wrote to one of his militia captains concerning ‘one Mr Suckley, who is now at Higham labouring the corporation there to be their burgess in this present Parliament’.18TSP vii. 627, 633. He enclosed an affidavit that had been sworn in chancery on 3 March by one of Suckley’s professional colleagues, alleging knowledge of Suckley’s residence in Oxford during the civil war, which, if true, would disqualify Suckley from serving as an MP.19Information from Groome. Boteler urged the captain to acquaint the mayor and electors with this affidavit, but the document did not reach the borough before the by-election, held some time in early March, at which Suckley was re-elected.20TSP vii. 627, 633. He received no appointments in this Parliament, however, and made no recorded contribution to debate. In February 1660, Suckley and ‘other gentlemen relating to the court of admiralty and to the court for probate of wills and granting of administrations’ offered to advance £3,000 for the service of the commonwealth’ on the implicit understanding the Parliament would pass a commission for settling the courts’ jurisdiction.21CJ vii. 834a, 844b.

By the mid-1660s, Suckley was residing in Canonbury, Islington, as well as at Exeter House, and practising as a proctor in the restored court of arches.22Mar. Lics. (Harl. Soc. xxxiii), 203, 219. In 1665, he secured a match between one of his daughters and the future attorney-general and Speaker of the Commons, Robert Sawyer†.23HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Robert Sawyer’. In the late 1670s, or possibly in 1685 on the accession of James II, Suckley petitioned the king, referring to ‘his education for these 40 years last past in your Majesty’s high court of admiralty and your Majesty’s ecclesiastical courts at the Doctors Commons’, which, he humbly conceived, rendered him capable of serving as a customs and excise or a navy commissioner. He further claimed that he had always been loyal to the king ‘and to your late royal father [Charles I] of ever blessed memory’.24SP29/442/156, f. 275; CSP Dom. 1660-85, p. 497. In 1691, he was described as a proctor in the court of chivalry and the court of arches.25Miege, New State of England, pt. 3, pp. 216, 229.

Suckley died in the autumn of 1693 and was buried in the Temple Church, London, on 25 October of that year.26Burials at the Temple Church, 28. No will is recorded. He was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.