CAVE, Sir Richard (1596-1645), of ?Westminster.

Although Cave has been linked with the Northamptonshire gentry family the Caves of Stanford, he came, in fact, from a line of Worcestershire yeomen.17Vis. Worcs. ed. Metcalfe, 29; Vis. Worcs. (Harl. Soc. xc), 20; Keeler, Long Parl. 128-9. His father, having married an Oxfordshire woman, settled at Witney; and although he himself was an Oxford graduate, there is no record that his eldest son was admitted to either university or attended the inns of court.18St Mary, Witney par. reg.; C2/JASI/H18/58. Cave’s younger brother Walter was apprenticed to an Oxford mercer and rose to become the city’s mayor in 1650.19Toynbee, Young, Strangers in Oxford, 150. But there is no firm evidence concerning Cave’s own career before the mid-1620s. He may well have been the ‘R. Cave’ who was a junior member of Prince Charles’s household in the early 1620s.20HMC Cowper, i. 135. And he was almost certainly the ‘Lieutenant Cave’ listed in 1624-5 in the regiment of the future parliamentarian general Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, in the English expeditionary force fighting the Spanish in Holland.21SP84/121, ff. 255, 277. By 1630, Cave had joined the gentlemen volunteers of Horace Vere, 1st Baron Vere’s company in Holland, and at some point during the early 1630s he seems to have been commissioned as a captain in the Dutch army under the prince of Orange.22Hexam, Siege of the Busse; Corresp. of the Queen of Bohemia ed. Akkerman, i. 840; ii. 422, 947. As a veteran of the wars in the Low Countries, he would likely have made the acquaintance of a number of future MPs, including Lionel Copley, (Sir) Thomas Fairfax, John Hotham and Philip Skippon.

Cave had entered the service of the elector palatine and his mother Elizabeth, queen of Bohemia by 1636, when he was created a Cambridge MA by royal letters on the occasion of the elector’s visit to the university.23Corresp. of the Queen of Bohemia ed. Akkerman, ii. 382; Al. Cant.; Toynbee, Young, Strangers in Oxford, 153. Cave’s military service in the Low Countries would have brought him into close proximity to the elector and his mother, whose court was based at The Hague. But the introduction to their circle was probably effected by his kinsman, the English diplomat Sir Thomas Rowe*, who had married into the Caves of Stanford and had been closely associated with the cause and court of the exiled electoral family since the 1620s.24Infra, ‘Sir Thomas Rowe’; Corresp. of the Queen of Bohemia ed. Akkerman, i. 840. Cave is mentioned in Rowe’s and the queen of Bohemia’s correspondence in the summer of that year as ‘Captain Cave’ and then, by late July, as ‘Sir Richard Cave’, which gives an approximate date for his knighthood.25CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 312, 336, 361; Corresp. of the Queen of Bohemia ed. Akkerman, ii. 453, 619.

During the late 1630s and early 1640s, Cave was employed by the elector and his mother as an homme d’affaires and envoy to the British, Dutch and French courts and, as such, was a familiar supplicant to Charles I, Archbishop William Laud and the ‘lords of the junto’ (privy council) at Whitehall.26CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 312, 361, 473, 486, 489, 492; 1639-40, pp. 320-1, 435-6, 494-5, 589; 1640, pp. 138, 168-9, 208-9, 242, 270, 349; 1640-1, pp. 121, 248; HMC Cowper, ii. 184, 189, 195, 238; Corresp. of the Queen of Bohemia ed. Akkerman, ii. passim. Like Rowe, he favoured counsels at the Caroline court that put Protestant unity and the cause of restoring the Palatinate before Charles’s imperial designs within the three kingdoms. He attended the king and the royal army during the first bishops’ war in 1639, possibly serving as a gentleman volunteer.27Corresp. of the Queen of Bohemia ed. Akkerman, ii. 784, 787, 789, 793. But in January 1640, with the king preparing to renew hostilities against the Scottish Covenanters, Cave confided to Rowe his unhappiness at the prospect of conflict with fellow British Protestants.

Thus you see that we are ready to scratch one another’s faces. For my part, I push not very hard after any employment in these occasions. I shall be glad to live to do my master [the elector] service in the wars out of Great Britain; I care not much for fighting in this island.28CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 321.

In the spring of 1640, while crossing the Channel en route to Paris, he suffered the indignity of being captured and plundered by Dunkirk privateers, who took from him the regalia of the order of the Garter that the king had awarded to the elector.29HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 267.

With the calling of the Long Parliament in September 1640, Cave set his sights on a seat at Westminster and was encouraged in his pretensions by the elector and his mother.30Bodl. Nalson I, f. 107; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 121; CUL, Mm.1.46 (Baker Ms 35), pp. 35-6. In early November, the queen of Bohemia wrote to Henry Rich, 1st earl of Holland – one of the leaders of the anti-Spanish faction at court – to secure Cave’s election at Windsor, but her letter went astray.31CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 248; Corresp. of the Queen of Bohemia ed. Akkerman, ii. 941-2, 945. In the event, Cave was returned for the Staffordshire borough of Lichfield in a by-election on 12 August 1641 to replace the recently deceased Sir Walter Devereux. It has been suggested that Cave was elected through the influence of the elector’s younger brother Prince Rupert.32Wedgwood, Staffs. Parlty Hist. ii. 85. But given that the prince was incarcerated in Austria at the time and had no appreciable impact on Staffordshire politics before the autumn of 1642, this is clearly out of the question. In fact, it is almost certain that he was returned on the interest of the same man who had secured Devereux’s election – Cave’s former regimental commander, the earl of Essex.33Infra, ‘Sir Walter Devereux’. Besides being Staffordshire’s most prominent peer, Essex was lessee for life of Lichfield manor.34VCH Staffs. xiv. 78. Moreover, Cave’s correspondence for August 1641 suggests that he was on reasonably familiar terms with Essex.35CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 98.

Essex had very probably been solicited on Cave’s behalf by the elector or his mother, but he may also have had his own reasons for wanting Cave in the House. By the late summer of 1641, the Westminster ‘junto’ – of which Essex was a leading member – was keen to use the Palatinate cause as a way of binding the king to an Anglo-Scottish treaty and an aggressively anti-Habsburg foreign policy. Central to this projected settlement was the deployment of a British army on the continent for restoring the elector to his patrimony.36Corresp. of the Queen of Bohemia ed. Akkerman, ii. 972; Adamson, Noble Revolt, 361-8. Writing to Rowe from London on 20 August, Cave informed his friend that the two Houses ‘continue resolute to part with no troops to anybody till they understand from you how the prince elector’s affairs go at Ratisbon [where an imperial diet had convened], for they study to manage all things here to his advantage’.37CSP Dom. 1641, p. 98. As a result of his first recorded speech to the House, on 28 August, Cave (to whom the parliamentary diarist Sir Simonds D’Ewes referred as ‘agent here for the queen of Bohemia’) secured a Commons’ resolution countermanding a licence the king had granted to the Spanish ambassador to recruit four thousand Irish troops for Habsburg service, on the grounds that if Spain (with the help of Irish troops) succeeded in crushing the Portuguese revolt it would discourage support for the elector at the Diet of Ratisbon.38Procs. LP vi. 594, 627, 681; CJ ii. 275a. Two days later (30 August), he moved in favour of accepting French assurances regarding the use of troops levied within the king’s dominions ‘in respect we might shortly perhaps have use of the king of France his friendship’.39Procs. LP vi. 612. That same day, he was named to a committee to consider a petition from a group of London merchants willing to invest in a naval campaign targeted against Spanish possessions in the Caribbean.40CJ ii. 276a. It was in connection with this venture that Cave moved on 31 August for the establishment of a West India Company, informing the House that the elector ‘had acquainted his Majesty with his resolution to go thither in person ... that by this means he might make some reparation of his losses upon the king of Spain’s dominions there’.41Procs. LP vi. 627; Adamson, Noble Revolt, 363. Cave was confident that ‘not only many merchants but divers of the nobility and gentry also would join in that service’. With a parliamentary recess looming, Cave (8 Sept.) again raised the issue of preventing the Spanish recruiting troops in Ireland.42Procs. LP vi. 681. The next day (9 Sept.) the two Houses went into recess, with Cave securing appointment to the Commons’ Recess Committee*, of which he was an active member.43CJ ii. 288b; The True Coppy of a Letter Sent from Thomas, Earle of Arundell (1641), 5 (E.172.17).

The main focus of Cave’s energies after Parliament reconvened in mid-October was on measures for suppressing the Irish Revolt. Between early November and the king’s attempted arrest of the Five Members on 4 January 1642, he received a series of appointments relating to the raising of troops for Ireland; and his only recorded contribution to debate on the floor of the House in these months was a motion on 3 November that the Commons inform the Scottish Parliament of its progress on Irish affairs.44CJ ii. 302a, 305b, 309a, 357b, 361a; D’Ewes (C), 77. He was particularly associated with initiatives for boosting the war-effort in Munster, where his ‘ancient’ friend William Jephson* had a substantial estate.45Infra, ‘William Jephson’. On 29 December, he and Jephson helped to manage a conference with the Lords on the raising and supply of troops in Munster.46CJ ii. 361b; D’Ewes (C), 363. This military theme to his appointments continued on 31 December, when he was named second to a committee for furnishing the kingdom with powder and arms.47CJ ii. 364b.

Cave seems to have disapproved of the king’s attempted arrest of the Five Members, for he was named to the 5 and 17 January 1642 committees to sit as the Guildhall and Grocers’ Hall respectively (which were deemed safer locations than the Palace of Westminster) to consider ‘all things that may concern the good and safety of the City and kingdom’.48CJ ii. 368b, 369a, 385a. Appointed on 14 January to a high-powered committee for putting the kingdom in a posture of defence, he was added the next day (15 Jan.) to a new committee for naval affairs, which evolve in August into the Committee of Navy and Customs.49Supra, ‘Committee of Navy and Customs’; CJ ii. 379b, 381b. However, once the furore over the king’s actions on 4 January had subsided, Cave resumed his role as one of the Commons’ men-of-business for Irish affairs. All of his appointments between late January and mid-May concerned the advancement of the war effort in Ireland, while in debate he helped to focus the House’s attention on raising troops for Munster (to be commanded by Jephson and his allies) and for supplying the Protestant forces with arms and provisions.50CJ ii. 391b, 521b, 536a, 542a, 571b, 572b; PJ i. 68; ii. 318. His importance in this regard is reflected in his appointment – with John Pym, Oliver Cromwell and other Commons’ grandees – as a commissioner of both Houses for Irish affairs on 4 April 1642.51CJ ii. 453b, 536b; LJ iv. 644b; v. 15b.

By the time of his last appointment in the House, in mid-May 1642, Cave was evidently growing disillusioned with Parliament’s policy for suppressing the Irish rebellion and its reliance upon Scottish intervention. As he informed Rowe on 13 May:

For my part I am so far from believing in the truth of nations in matters of interest that I could wish ... that we had not trusted so much to some as we have done already. I name none. But after a treaty of five or six months’ standing with the Scots ... not to hear of a Scottish man landed in Ireland is an invincible argument to me that we ought to give much more credit to [the] English, to ourselves, than to any others, though our dearest brethren ... I think the rebellion in Ireland might by this time have been allayed if we had merely trusted to Englishmen.52CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 320.

At some point during the next month, Cave departed Westminster, and on 16 June he was declared absent without leave at the call of the House.53CJ ii. 626. By mid-August, he was at Oxford, advising the royalist party there on the town’s defences and leading a failed attempt to hold the city against parliamentarian forces under William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele.54HMC Portland, i. 57; Exceeding Happy Newes from Oxford (1642), 3 (E.118.1). It was probably in response to his activities at Oxford that he was disabled from sitting by the Commons on 30 August.55CJ ii. 744a. His reasons for siding with the king in the civil war are far from obvious, especially given his declared distaste for fighting fellow British Protestants. His brother Walter seems to have harboured parliamentarian sympathies.56Toynbee, Young, Strangers in Oxford, 10, 150. His ‘master’ the elector palatine maintained a more or less neutral stance during the early years of the war, and presumably Cave could have remained loyal to his service by following suit rather than attaching himself, as he did, to the elector’s younger brother Prince Maurice.

Although regarded at the time, and since, as a senior royalist officer, Cave was never formally commissioned, and he referred to himself as a gentleman volunteer.57Add. 18980, f. 142v; LJ vi. 671b; Toynbee, Young, Strangers in Oxford, 9. In April 1643, he was dispatched by the king personally to assist Maurice in his expedition against Sir William Waller* in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire.58Duncumb, Collections, i. 245; R. Hutton, Royalist War Effort, 56. Having completed his mission, he fell in, by a series of accidents, with a group of leaderless and badly-organised royalists trying to defend Hereford against Waller’s entire force.59Hutton, Royalist War Effort, 56-7. When Waller took the town on 25 April, Cave was confined to quarters, but almost immediately escaped to Oxford, where he was arrested and summoned before a court martial on a charge of betraying Hereford to Waller.60Duncumb, Collections, i. 257-8. He mounted a plausible defence, arguing that he had made the best of a bad job (for which he had received neither commission nor orders), and was honourably acquitted on 26 June.61Duncumb, Collections, i. 245-58; The Iudjement of the Court of Warre upon the Charge Laid against Sir Richard Cave (1643, 669 f.7.26). He seems to have accompanied Maurice as a military adviser for much of the next two years and was present at the taking of Bristol and Exeter in 1643.62Add. 18980, f. 142; Add. 18981, f. 246; Bodl. Firth c.6, f. 206; Longleat House, Portland pprs. 2, f. 73; Mems. of Prince Rupert, ii. 258, 307-8; iii. 54, 59-60; Col. Joseph Bampfield’s Apology ed. J. Loftis, P. H. Hardacre, 41; Toynbee, Young, Strangers in Oxford, 153. He attended the Oxford Parliament in 1644, signing its letter to the earl of Essex of 27 January urging him to compose a peace.63Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. In August, he signed another letter to Essex, this time from the principal officers of the king’s army in the west, again requesting his assistance in securing a ‘bloodless peace’.64LJ vi. 671b. Writing to Prince Rupert on 13 August, Cave expressed the view that Essex had wilfully refused ‘as gracious offers from the king as ever were presented to a subject’.65Cornwall RO, Rashleigh of Stoketon mss, RS/1/1053.

Cave was killed fighting for the king at the battle of Naseby on 14 June 1645.66Vis. Worcs. ed. Metcalfe, 29. His place of burial is not recorded, and he seems to have died intestate. He was the only member of his family to sit in Parliament.