GEWEN, Thomas (bef.1586-1660), of Bradridge, Boyton, Cornw.

Early Career

The Gewen family had become established in the borough of Launceston by the mid-sixteenth century, and began to lease land in Werrington parish, across the Devon border, at about the same time. Legal disputes and financial mismanagement landed the family in debt by the early seventeenth century, and although Thomas Gewen was given a gentleman’s education at Exeter College, Oxford, and the Inner Temple, his early career was built on his practice as a barrister in London rather than his increasingly compromised position as a west country landowner. In 1622 he was made joint auditor of the duchy of Cornwall, and it was this connection with the court that ensured his entry to Parliament in 1624 as MP for Bossiney, and perhaps influenced his return for Newport in 1626. During this period Gewen also re-acquired the barton of Bradridge, in the parish of Boyton, which had originally been held from the duchy by his mother’s family, and re-established himself as a man of influence in eastern Cornwall, becoming a justice of the peace in 1628, holding the duchy auditorship until 1632, and enjoying the offices of duchy havenor, feodary and escheator thereafter. Despite his continuing closeness to the court, during the later 1620s and early 1630s Gewen was associated with Sir John Eliot† and other critics of the Caroline regime, probably through his brother-in-law, Benjamin Valentine*.27HP Commons 1604-29.

It may have been Valentine and his friends who influenced Gewen’s decision to oppose the king in 1642. In April of that year Gewen signed the Cornish petition to Parliament, supporting the abolition of bishops and demanding further reform in church and state, including action against papists and the removal of evil royal councillors.28Bodl. Rawl. C.789, f. 56; Coate, Cornw. 29. Gewen’s activity immediately after the outbreak of civil war in the late summer is unclear, but by March 1643 he was among those parliamentarians holed up in Exeter who wrote to the west country MPs at Westminster protesting that the recent attempt to broker a local cessation was against their wishes, and, they insisted, had provoked the ‘general dislike’ of ordinary Devonians.29HMC Portland, i. 101-2. Gewen was appointed to the local commissions during the same period – including the committee to raise money for the army in Cornwall, in February 1643, the sequestrations commission for Cornwall in March, and that for Devon a month later – and he proved an active administrator.30Northants RO, FH133; A. and O. In the spring of 1643 he was paid as a ‘commissioner’ by the treasurer for Devon, his brother-in-law, Charles Vaughan*; in the summer he was active in raising money for Parliament in the same county; and by November he was in Plymouth, serving as deputy treasurer for the county under Vaughan.31SP28/128 (Devon), pt. 1, accts. of Charles Vaughan; SP28/153, ‘unfit parts’; Add. 44058, f. 19. Gewen’s friendship with Vaughan drew him into the corruption allegations levelled against the treasurer in 1644, and a subsequent pamphlet attacked Gewen as ‘much indebted to the state, as is believed, not only for the money he received in Plymouth for assessments and sequestrations, but also for the prizage of wines, for which he hath given no accounts at all’; it was also said that Gewen, ‘having money in his hands and the soldiers wanting pay, refused to issue it out according to order’, and boasted that ‘he would pay what he list, and when he list, and what he list’, and it was insinuated that Gewen was untrustworthy because of his close links with the duchy hierarchy in Cornwall.32The Misdemeanors of a Traytor and Treasurer Discovered (1645), sigs. A2v-B3 (E.258.10); The Answer of Philip Francis (1645), sigs. B2-B3 (E.258.13).

Despite such allegations, there is no sign that Parliament’s trust in Gewen diminished during this period, and he was appointed to the Cornish county committee on 1 July 1644 and, from the following October, to the assessment commission for the county.33A. and O. With Cornwall and most of Devon firmly under royalist control, many of these posts remained purely theoretical, but with the fall of Cornwall to Sir Thomas Fairfax* and the New Model army in the spring of 1646, Gewen was able to play a full role in the local administration. He soon returned to Launceston, when he and others ‘were sworn committees’ in the town, and then, in April and May, he was among those given presents of wine and sugar by the corporation.34Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/180. His importance to the borough was confirmed in September 1646, when he replaced the royalist Ambrose Manaton* as recorder.35Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/181, 350. In the same period, Gewen became one of the most active members of the county committee, and in later months took a hard line against Dr William Peterson, dean of Exeter, who was ejected from his living as rector of St Breock despite his moderate religious and political views.36Coate, Cornw. 224-5, 267, 335. Gewen was also active as a sequestrations commissioner, and in December 1646 it was reported that ‘Mr Gewen is now coming from London, and will bring with him the resolutions of the committee of Goldsmiths’ Hall’, relating in particular to one prominent royalist, Sir Richard Vyvyan*.37Cornw. RO, V/EC/2/6.

Presbyterian hard-liner, 1647-8

On 4 January 1647 Gewen was elected as the recruiter MP for Launceston, presumably on his own interest as recorder of the borough. He had taken his seat by 27 February, when he was named to the committee on the ordinance for the sale of bishops’ lands, and during March he became one of the more active Members of the Commons.38CJ v. 99b. He joined Francis Rous in giving thanks to Richard Vines and Thomas Hodges for sermons on 11 March, and thereafter he was named to five committees, including, on 27 March, that to consider the New Model army’s petition to Parliament, delivered to the Commons by two leading Presbyterians, Sir John Clotworthy and Sir William Waller.39CJ v. 109b, 117b, 119b, 121a, 122b, 127b. On 2 April Gewen was appointed to the committee on the London militia, which was the only effective force that might defend the capital if the New Model mutinied, but his continuing involvement in opposition to the army was cut short by a further order of the same date, which allowed him and Nicholas Trefusis* leave to go back to Cornwall.40CJ v. 132a-b. Gewen did not return to the Commons until mid-June, when tensions between the Presbyterian majority at Westminster and the army, backed by the Independents, were becoming worse, culminating in the flight of Eleven Members, anxious to avoid impeachment proceedings, on 27 June. Gewen may have favoured conciliation at this time, as on 18 June he was appointed to a small committee (also including Bulstrode Whitelocke, Zouche Tate and Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire) charged with sending letters to Fairfax and his men, assuring that a month’s pay would soon be sent.41CJ v. 216b.

In early July Gewen stiffened his line and became a prominent figure among those preparing to defend the capital against the New Model. On 1, 8 and 9 July he was named to committees on an ordinance to force all unnecessary officers and soldiers to leave London and to recruit new men to the local units.42CJ v. 229a, 237b, 238a. A degree of moderation remained: for example, on 22 July he was teller against putting the question to the House that the militia should be restored to Presbyterian control, perhaps considering this to be too provocative a measure.43CJ v. 254b. But Gewen did not withdraw from Parliament when the Houses were ‘forced’ by a pro-Presbyterian mob on 26 July, and he was among the four MPs sent to ask the Speaker to reconvene the sitting on 30 July, also being chosen to prepare a letter to Fairfax warning that the New Model must not come within thirty miles of London.44CJ v. 259b. As it became clear that the army was preparing to march on the capital regardless, Gewen was involved in a series of committees, to legitimise the seizure of horses, to encourage assistance from Kent, to prepare draft letters justifying the election of a new Speaker, and, most provocatively of all, to invite the king to return to London.45CJ v. 261b, 263a, 263b. On 2 August Gewen was added to the ‘committee of safety’: a select group of leading Presbyterian MPs ‘that are to join with the militia of the City of London for the defence of the king, Parliament and City’.46CJ v. 265a. On 3 August he was appointed to a committee to give instructions to those going to the army to broker a last minute deal; and on the same day he was among those sent to the common council of London to coordinate the defence of the capital.47CJ v. 266a-b. It was a forlorn hope. On 4 August the New Model occupied Southwark, and London capitulated.

The lukewarm Presbyterians had disappeared from Westminster long before the end of July, and the hardliners had generally fled when the New Model entered the City in early August; but Gewen chose to remain in the Commons. On 9 August he was teller against the declaration that all votes against the ‘forcing of the Houses’ of 26 July (including those concerning the London militia and the return of the king) were null and void; he was named to the committee on the resulting ordinance on 18 August; and a day later was again teller against further amendments to the measure.48CJ v. 270a, 278a, 279a. He was also named to the committee to prepare a further ordinance, supporting the original legislation, on 20 August, but it was clear that his activities in trying to obstruct the Independents were attracting hostile attention, and on the same day it was reported that ‘Sir Raphe Assheton, Lieutenant-general [Oliver] Cromwell [and] Sir Arthur Hesilrige had charged Gewen who vindicated himself’.49CJ v. 279b; Harington’s Diary, p. On 27 August Gewen was allowed leave to go into the country, and he took up the offer with alacrity, as he must have known that renewed charges were already being prepared against him.50CJ v. 285b. He was away from Westminster on 8 September, when the Commons included him among Presbyterians like Edward Stephens*, Edward Harley* and Lionel Copley* summoned to attend ‘to answer such matters as shall be objected against them’.51CJ v. 296b. He was also absent at the call of the House on 9 October.52CJ v. 330a.

Gewen’s movements in the autumn of 1647 are uncertain. He had returned to London in November 1647, when the Launceston corporation sent him letters to him there, but he was still an unwelcome figure in the Commons, which, on 23 November, resolved that information against Gewen should be sent to the committee on the ‘forcing of the Houses’.53Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/182; CJ v. 366b. In mid-December Gewen made a brief appearance at Westminster, when he was teller against amendments to the ordinance for the militia of the Tower hamlets, but it was not until May 1648 that he returned to the Commons for any length of time, apparently spurred on by the outbreak of the second civil war.54CJ v. 386a, 574a. On 26 May Gewen was named to a committee to meet the City authorities and discuss how to secure London from the royalists; on 8 June Gewen, Trefusis and Francis Buller I were instructed to go to Cornwall to put the militia ordinance into operation there; but he was still present in the House on 10 June, when he was among those appointed to prepare a declaration concerning Parliament’s efforts to bring peace.55CJ v. 574a, 589b, 593b. Gewen remained a controversial figure, and his mission to Cornwall may have been motivated, at least in part, by the need to keep him out of the way of his enemies. According to Clement Walker*, in June 1648, when the fate of four aldermen who had supported the Eleven Members was debated, Gewen ‘spoke modestly in their behalf, saying that what they did was done by virtue of an ordinance of Parliament made this very session of Parliament, and without any intent to raise a new war, but only to defend the City against the menaces of the army marching up against them and the Parliament’. Unsurprisingly, this speech led to Independent allegations that Gewen had himself ‘encouraged’ the City to resist the New Model, and Walker intervened in his defence, ‘perceiving Mr Gewen to be causelessly reflected upon’.56Walker, History of Independency, i. 98.

Gewen was in Cornwall for much of the late summer and autumn of 1648, and he was excused for his absence at the call of the House on 26 September.57CJ vi. 34b. He was present at a meeting of the Launceston borough court on 20 September, and he remained an influential presence on local committees and commissions.58Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/351; A. and O. On 12 October, for example, he joined Anthony Nicoll* and Anthony Rous* in signing the Cornish committee’s report to the sequestration treasurers, complaining that their ability to send money had been hampered by the renewed civil war, and by the demands of local forces still stationed there.59Add. 5494, f. 88. It was only in mid-November that Gewen returned to Westminster. He was added to the committee on an ordinance on fee farm rents on 17 November, and on the same day was also involved in preparing an ordinance ‘justifying the proceedings of the Parliament in the late war’.60CJ vi. 78b, 79a. On 21 November he was appointed to the committee of both Houses to supervise the sale of bishops’ lands, and in the next few days he was named to a committee to consider the fate of military garrisons and, on a temporary basis, to the Army Committee.61CJ vi. 81b, 83b, 87a. These last appointments suggest that Gewen was once again among those MPs who sought to exert their authority over the army, and the prominence of Presbyterians like Gewen was one factor that prompted the New Model officers to move against Parliament once again in early December. Gewen was arrested at Pride’s Purge on 6 December, and taken to the Queen’s Court, before joining the majority of the secluded MPs before the general council. As a ringleader, he was treated harshly. While lesser figures were released later in December, Gewen was one of the 16 kept in prison, and he remained there until 12 February 1649, when he was finally set free.62Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 152-3, 168n, 195; Clarke Pprs. ii. 68.

The wilderness years, 1649-57

During the commonwealth, Gewen was under constant suspicion. In April 1651 rumours and intelligence about possible plots among the west country gentry included a comment on Gewen as ‘a man much looked upon there by the Presbyterians’, although there is no evidence to suggest that Gewen and his friends were in contact with royalists at this time.63HMC Portland, i. 584. Indeed, when Gewen was under arrest at Truro in the same month, he asked John Disbrowe* to get him transferred to St Michael’s Mount, where Colonel Robert Bennett* was governor, as ‘he is unwilling to be amongst cavaliers, as he pretends’.64FSL, X.d.483 (88). Rather than joining plots, Gewen took great delight in obstructing the new government passively. When the commonwealth authorities conducted their survey of the duchy of Cornwall lands in the summer and autumn of 1650, they came up against Gewen, who as feodary and escheator, refused to produce the necessary documents, including letters patent, and accounts of rents and dues.65Parl. Surv. Duchy Cornw. i. 5-6, 73-4; ii. 222. Similarly, Gewen retained the position of recorder of Launceston until 1651, when he was replaced by another local gentleman, Leonard Treise, and before that time he had been deliberately awkward in his dealings with the new regime. According to one account, after the regicide Gewen was asked ‘in whose name the orders of the [borough] court should pass, answered “in the name of T. Gewen, esquire, recorder of Launceston”’, and when it was pointed out that the correct form was ‘in the name of the keepers of the liberties of England’, he feigned ignorance, and ‘in disdain and scorn asked who they were’.66G. Fox, The West Answering to the North (1657), 67 (E.900.3).

The creation of the protectorate in December 1653, if not welcomed by Gewen, at least allowed him to re-emerge into the political world. The death of Treise in March 1654 was followed by Gewen’s re-election as recorder of Launceston at the end of the month.67Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/355. In the elections for the first protectorate parliament, held under the new franchise in July, Gewen was returned as one of the MPs for Cornwall. He was present in the chamber on 3 September, when the Parliament met briefly, and was recorded by the clerk as ‘standing in his place’ (perhaps intending to speak) when the adjournment was called.68CJ vii. 365a. In a letter to William Morrice* of 10 October, Gewen reported that he and Thomas Bampfylde* had met Cromwell shortly after the Parliament started, ‘to debate the business with him’ and to answer points raised in his speech. Gewen was keen to bring as many Presbyterian MPs into the Commons as possible, and in the face of Morrice’s doubts about subscribing the ‘recognition’ (a prerequisite for sitting), said that he ‘was never fixed in a resolution against subscribing, for it was always my opinion although there were sin in the imposing, yet it will not follow thence that there is sin in the subscribing’.69Archaeologia, xxiv. 139-40. Gewen’s casuistry allowed him to become one of the more active Presbyterians in the House. On 5 September he was named to the committee of privileges, and in late October and early November he was appointed to four committees, including that to consider the petition of Lord Craven. His own petition (perhaps relating to the confirmation of his purchase of Bradridge Barton) was referred to the Craven committee on 3 November.70CJ vii. 366b, 380a-b, 381a-b. The inadequacy of the diaries for this Parliament make it difficult to identify how far Gewen was involved in Presbyterian attempts to refashion the Instrument of Government, but the Journal provides a few clues. On 12 December, for example, Gewen was named to the committee ‘to consider the particular enumeration of damnable heresies’ – an issue that would feature in chapter 43 of the revised ‘government bill’ – and on 1 January 1655 he was teller in favour of modifying the property qualification for electors stipulated in article 18 of the Instrument, although, interestingly, he did not favour the return to the 40 shilling freehold proposed under chapter 32 of the ‘government bill’.71CJ vii. 399b, 411a; Gardiner, Constitutional Documents, 411, 437, 447. Perhaps most telling of all is the reaction of the protectoral government to Gewen’s parliamentary activities. In September 1656, as the newly-returned MP for Launceston, Gewen was excluded from the Commons by the protectoral council, almost certainly because of his opposition to the Instrument of Government in the previous Parliament.72SP18/130/29; Bodl. Tanner 52, f. 156; CJ vii. 425b.

Gewen may have attracted the opprobrium of the authorities at Whitehall, but he was an active, and respected, local administrator during the protectorate, reappearing both on the assessment commission (June 1654) and the commission of the peace (before Sept. 1656).73An Ordinance for an Assessment (1654); C193/13/6, f. 11v. As recorder of the border town of Launceston he was at the forefront of attempts to prevent Quakers and their seditious ideas from entering Cornwall. The church (or ‘steeplehouse’) of Launceston was a favourite target of Quakers, and Gewen reacted with a heavy hand. In 1656 he gaoled Benjamin Maynard, ‘who standing still in Launceston steeplehouse and speaking not a word till violent hands were [laid] on him, was hauled out and committed to gaol by Thomas Gewen called justice, then recorder’; and in 1657 Joan Edwards was also dealt with by Gewen, for ‘coming into the steeplehouse at Launceston and for speaking to Priest Oliver’.74Recs. Quakers Cornw. 1, 8-9; Fox, West Answering to the North, 44, 53. In 1658-9 Gewen continued his campaign by presiding over the trial of Thomas Lower and other Quakers, whose answers ‘enraged’ him.75Recs. Quakers Cornw. 19. Gewen’s most famous adversary was George Fox, and he played a part in the miseries of the Quaker leader and his friends in Launceston gaol (or ‘Doomsdale’) in 1656. According to Fox, Gewen was among those who jeered that ‘Doomsdale was too good for us, and that we were worse than thieves and murderers’, and he screwed up a petition for clemency, ‘put it in his pocket, and said he would make mum of it’. Fox in return denounced Gewen as an enemy of the commonwealth, ‘who in the last Parliament [the Long Parliament?] was very zealous for a king and a House of Lords’, and who had been secluded in 1648 as a traitor.76Fox, West Answering to the North, 56, 58, 67-9, 121-2.

Return to Westminster, 1658

When the second sitting of Parliament met in January 1658, Gewen and the other excluded MPs were allowed to return, under the terms of the Humble Petition and Advice, and were thus given the perfect opportunity to attack the government. Gewen was named to the committee of privileges on 21 January, and soon became involved in debates.77CJ vii. 580b. At first he was busy mostly with peripheral issues, such as the need for an assembly of divines, which he proposed on 21 January, and linked the issue to the decay of church buildings generally: ‘Hedges and houses stand in need of reparation; then surely churches and chapels’. The time was not yet ripe for this, however, and the debate was adjourned, although Gewen went on to join the committee for the maintenance of ministers on 23 January.78Burton’s Diary, ii. 333; CJ vii. 581b. Gewen was also involved in the committee on William, 1st earl of Craven’s business (a case which had piqued his interest in 1654) and it was over this that he and another Presbyterian, Sir Richard Onslow, opposed the exclusion of private business on 28 January.79Burton’s Diary, ii. 345, 376. The next day Gewen became embroiled in the debate on Cromwell’s Other House, which was subject to bitter criticism from the commonwealthsmen. Rather than join the attack on the protectorate, Gewen took issue with Thomas Scot I, and ‘endeavoured to answer some reflections upon some of that victorious [Long] Parliament, which he [Scot] called the corrupt party’.80Burton’s Diary, ii. 392. Gewen was ‘taken down’ for this speech, and Scot was seconded by another prominent Rumper, John Weaver. When Gewen was at last allowed to continue, he made his scorn for the commonwealthsmen very clear.

That gentleman that made the long oration [Scot] did, in substance, say nolumus hunc regnare [We will not have this man to reign over us]. He shows himself a thorough paced republican. There was such a sharp reflection upon that Parliament. He speaks that the greatest part were corrupt. I desire he may explain whom he means; those that were peaceably spirited and would not go that length that some did, who could bring over the army to purge the House of such spirits as inclined to peace, and then called them the corrupt party. I like not such reflections.81Burton’s Diary, ii. 392-3.

Gewen was not only defending the honour of those, like himself, who had served the Long Parliament faithfully only to be secluded in December 1648; he was also attacking the commonwealth regime, and, by implication, arguing that those who valued stable government should now support the protectorate. ‘Republican’ was for Gewen a derogatory term; and even though he had been excluded from Parliament in 1656, in his eyes this could not be compared with the outrage of Pride’s Purge and the regicide.

On 3 February Gewen went far further, concluding his speech on ‘the whole system of government’ with the explosive plea: ‘that now we are a free Parliament, we would draw up a bill to invest his highness in the title and dignity of king, Providence having cast it upon him’.82Burton’s Diary, ii. 424. Gewen was no maverick. In making such arguments, he not only revealed his own individual views, but those of many of the Presbyterians who were now prepared to support the protectorate, even (as the events of the spring of 1657 had shown) to the extent of advocating the crowning of Cromwell. Gewen’s closeness to the Presbyterian leadership can be seen in the debates in early February 1658. On 1 February he moved a petition on behalf of Thomas Bampfylde, who had refused his oath as an MP, objecting that ‘he was not free to take [it], and whatever was not of faith was sin’.83Burton’s Diary, ii. 405. Two days later, Gewen joined Francis Drake, Francis Bacon and Griffith Bodurda in opposing putting the debate on the Other House into a grand committee: a device, according to Anthony Morgan*, devised by the commonwealthsmen ‘to lay it aside by a side wind, rather than to prosecute it with vigour’.84Burton’s Diary, ii. 428, 432, 435-6. The fact that this last move was supported by such Cromwellians as Morgan reinforces the point that Gewen was now prepared to accept the legitimacy of the protectoral regime.

Presbyterian grandee, 1659

Apart from his duties as recorder of Launceston, and in particular his role as the scourge of the local Quakers, little is known of Gewen’s activities between the dissolution of the second protectorate Parliament on 4 February 1658 and the convening of Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament on 17 January 1659. Gewen was returned for Launceston once again in the elections during the winter, and he was present in the Commons by 1 February, when he intervened in the discussions on the disputed election of the commonwealthsman, Henry Neville, demanding that the matter should be taken away from the privileges committee and ‘debated in a full House, when the lawyers are present’.85Burton’s Diary, iii. 18. He also spoke the next day, in the debate on whether Major Lewis Audley* should be dismissed as a justice of the peace, arguing that the ‘punishment must be proportionable to the offence’.86Burton’s Diary, iii. 43. These two cases were of minor importance, perhaps, but they do reveal Gewen’s underlying concern for legal process, and demonstrate that he was a lawyer as well as a Presbyterian, and this would have implications for his political allegiances during this Parliament.

The two strands can be seen in his speech on 9 February, when he restarted his furious dispute with the commonwealthsmen, initiated a year before. This time his target was Sir Henry Vane II, who had attacked the protectoral constitution, but on this occasion Gewen’s response was much more supportive of the protectorate, even if his attack on the commonwealth had lost none of its bitterness: ‘I take it for granted that nothing shall bind this nation that is not done in a full and free Parliament. I am not for the Humble Petition and Advice; yet the carriage in that Parliament [1656-8], compared with the old [Rump] Parliament is very innocent’. ‘Never’, he continued, ‘was such violation of the rights of Parliament as in that [Rump] Parliament’. Vane and his friends ‘would return to a commonwealth again, to former irregularities’, but this could not be achieved ‘unless with an army they take out all the members that are against returning’. Gewen then set out his conservative credentials: ‘My opinion always was, and is, that a well regulated monarchy is best’, and that the nation was at present ‘wading still till we come to the old foundation’.87Burton’s Diary, iii. 180-1; Schilling thesis, 51. This was probably not a call for the restoration of the Stuarts, but rather a reiteration of Gewen’s point, made on 3 February 1658, that a monarchy was the best bulwark against the tyranny of a commonwealth, and that the only suitable monarch was a Cromwell. Gewen’s willingness to back the protectorate can also be seen in his argument, made on 12 February, that the crypto-royalist Robert Danvers alias Villiers* should be sent to the Tower; and also in his willingness to sacrifice ‘those punctilios of the law as to form’ in order to achieve a quick condemnation of the commonwealthsman, Henry Neville, for blasphemy.88Burton’s Diary, iii. 250, 298. On 22 February Gewen again spoke on the Other House, emphasising that ‘if the ancient bounds be right than they are not to be removed’ and that ‘right cannot die though interrupted’ – a speech taken by one MP to indicate that ‘his aim was at king, Lords and Commons’, although as in later debates Gewen made his hostility to the exiled Charles Stuart more than plain, he still seems to have looked favourably on a Cromwellian monarchy.89Schilling thesis, 98; Burton’s Diary, iii. 403, 530.

Despite this, during the debates on the Other House in late February and early March, Gewen generally adopted a more sceptical tone. On 28 February he said that he saw the new upper chamber, packed with senior officers and protectoral cronies, as an artificial body, whose members were not ‘in by the law’. He also conceded that Richard’s protectorate was not on a firm legal footing: ‘the power [to call the Other House] was only given to the late lord protector, and not to his successor; and therefore admitting it to be a law as to other things, to this it is not’. His solution was not to call the protectorate itself into question, but to legitimise it through an immediate return to the ancient constitution: ‘they that sit may come in; but I would have them laid upon the old lords, as their basis and foundation’. He argued that the Commons had the right to restore the old House of Lords, as the Commons had, in 1649, abolished them.90Burton’s Diary, iii. 529-30; Schilling thesis, 134. When he returned to the subject on 5 March, Gewen’s attitude had shifted decisively. Now he thought that the act abolishing the old Lords ‘was never a law … that Parliament died with the king, and so that act is void of itself. Again, one House could not have power to destroy another; and therefore, without doubt, the old peers have a right still in them’. He had also become critical of the constitutional legitimacy of the protectorate: ‘I cannot agree the Petition and Advice to be a law, because made only by two estates. The single person and this House cannot make a law; besides … there was but a piece of a House. We were not kept out by force but by a vote’.91Burton’s Diary, iv. 22-23; Schilling thesis, 165. The reasons for Gewen’s change from supporting further measures to reinforce the power of the Cromwellian regime to questioning its very foundations are unclear. It may be that the immediate threat from the commonwealthsmen had receded as it became apparent that they could not win majorities in the Commons, and that Gewen and his Presbyterian friends could afford to be more bullish in their dealings with the regime. Whereas in earlier debates Gewen had chosen to concentrate his attacks on the illegality of the purged Rump, it is telling that in March 1659 he was willing to question the protectorate, itself based on a constitution passed only by ‘a piece of a House’.

When it came to the right of Scottish and Irish MPs to sit at Westminster, debated from the middle of March, Gewen also adopted the hostile scepticism of a lawyer. On 11 March he argued that while he honoured the Scots as a nation, he could ‘find no law, justice, nor right reason why they should sit here’. The union, formed under the commonwealth, ‘was but an embryo’, and was no longer in force, and the Humble Petition and Advice was far from clear on the matter. Other more pragmatic arguments were also deployed: ‘it is not fit for the honour of the English nation to have foreigners to come and have a power in the legislature’; and he likened the Scots to the Caroline bishops, who provided ‘so many votes for the king, so many votes to comply with the chief magistrate’.92Burton’s Diary, iv. 130; Schilling thesis, 211-2. On 17 March Gewen supported the motion that the Scottish MPs should withdraw while their status was debated, and on 22 March, when attention turned to the Irish Members, he was keen to subject them to the same detailed debate suffered by the Scots.93Burton’s Diary, iv. 167, 231. When the debate was held on 23 March, Gewen joined those who argued that ‘it were better both for England and Ireland that they had Parliaments of their own’ as the nations should make their own laws: ‘Is not this the right of the people to have none but themselves to impose laws upon them?’.94Burton’s Diary, iv. 240-1. Again, he took the opportunity to denigrate the protectorate: ‘for the Petition and Advice was a law of their making, we have experience of the ill consequence of it, to let them have a share in our legislature’.95Derbs. RO, D/258/10/9/2, ff. 4v-5. In many ways, Gewen’s defence of English rights was similar to his insistence that the Other House should give way to a traditional House of Lords, and it seems that such issues had led him to distance himself from the protectorate. What Gewen wanted as an alternative is less than clear. There is no indication that he had softened his opposition to the Stuarts, still less the commonwealthsmen, and in this way he may typify those Presbyterians who hoped by continuing to engage with the regime they might modify it – a policy they were to redeploy, with considerably less success, after 1660.

The major votes on the recognition of the protector, transacting with the Other House, and allowing the Scots and Irish to sit, had been won by the government by the end of March, and Gewen’s interventions in debate became less frequent and less controversial. On 30 March he spoke in favour of discussing the case of Rowland Thomas, whose apparently illegal transportation to Barbados was used to attack Secretary John Thurloe*, but added that ‘if he falsely accuse, let him be punished’.96Burton’s Diary, iv. 304. When it came to the excise bill, debated on 1 April, Gewen joined John Bulkeley, John Trevor, Lambarde Godfrey and other Presbyterians in giving it guarded support but calling for a time limit to be imposed, and emphasising that it was ‘a gift and grant of this House and [did] not imply that it is already done either in the constitution or execution of it’.97Derbs. RO, D258/10/9/2, f. 12v; Burton’s Diary, iv. 321. Gewen may have been aware that his earlier comments had damaged his reputation, for he insisted that ‘I have not the spirit of opposition, but I am sworn to maintain the liberties and privileges of the people’.98Burton’s Diary, iv. 321. He could still be robust in his opposition to radicalism, as on 12 April, when he urged the Commons to ‘assert your liberties’ when condemning Major-general William Boteler*; and on 16 April he was among those who spoke against the Quaker petition to Parliament, as they ‘are petitioning against the ministry’.99Burton’s Diary, iv. 406, 445; CJ vii. 637a.

Later career, 1659-60

Gewen may have greeted the fall of the protectorate without much regret, but he can hardly have welcomed the restoration of the commonwealth that followed it. Indeed, when the Rump Parliament reconvened in May, Gewen was one of the secluded MPs who tried to regain their seats, ‘to prevent future mischief’, but like the others he got no further than the lobby of the House of Commons, where the army officers turned him back.100C. Walker, History of Independency, part 4, p. 41 (E.1052). After this Gewen, who was now around 75 years of age, remained active only in local affairs, being appointed to the assessment commissions of January and June 1660 and the militia commission of March.101A. and O.; An Ordinance… for an Assessment. He returned to Westminster, as MP for Launceston, in May 1660, but was less involved than before, although in July he made a point of supporting the bill for maintaining the true reformed Protestant religion and suppressing disorder and innovation – the same religious settlement that the Presbyterians had sought during the 1650s.102HP Commons 1660-90. After the Restoration Gewen was restored to his offices as escheator and feodary of the duchy of Cornwall, and he continued to hold them until his death in November 1660.103CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 365.

In his will, made in January 1659 (as he prepared to travel to Westminster for the third protectorate Parliament), Gewen left his house and lands at Bradridge to his wife for life, with an annuity for his only surviving son, Thomas, and £300 each for two unmarried daughters.104PROB11/303/157. It is an indication of Gewen’s integrity that, unlike most of his peers, he ended the interregnum in the same financial position as he had enjoyed before the civil wars. He had shown similar steadfastness in his political career, whether remaining in the Commons to face the Independent ascendancy in August 1647, refusing to bow to the army in the winter of 1648-9, or speaking his mind against first the commonwealth and then the protectorate in 1658 and 1659.