NIXON, John (1589-1662), of High Street, St Mary the Virgin, Oxford.

According to Anthony Wood, Nixon, born in Bletchingdon the son of John Nixon, labourer, made a fortune trading with Oxford University and then ungratefully bestowed his riches elsewhere in his will.17Wood, Life and Times, i. 437-8. Wood’s tendency to disparage the social origins and motivation of townsmen whose political and religious stance he despised means that his remarks cannot be accepted uncritically. Nixon was baptized in the village ten miles from Oxford ‘the Wednesday before Shrovetide’ 1589, but as the son of William, who in October 1586 had married Joan Silvester. A handful of Nixons were buried there between 1570 and 1606, when William, described in his will as a husbandman, was interred as ‘Mr’, and one Joan Nixon married William Collins of Glympton in 1607, while a Mr Nixon of Bletchingdon paid two shillings tax in 1641-2.18St Giles, Bletchingdon par. reg.; Oxon. and North Berks. Protestation Returns (Oxon. Rec. Soc. lxix), 111. John mentioned in his will children of his brothers Christopher and Edward, but gave no indication of their location or status.19PROB11/307/600.

The circumstances of Nixon’s arrival in Oxford are similarly obscure. He evidently had kin in the city and one John Nixon had been university bedell of arts and of law in the reign of Henry VIII, but the MP is absent from registers both of privileged persons with university employment and of city apprentices.20PROB11/307/600; Oxon. RO, city archives, L.5.1, f. 101v, L.5.2, f.103v; Reg. Univ. Oxford ii. pt i, 259; Oxford City Docs. 1268-1665, 56. However, he had set up as a mercer by November 1615, when he acquired his first recorded apprentice, and thereafter steadily established his business.21Oxon. RO, city archives, L.5.2, f. 21. On 21 August 1620 he was a beneficiary of a £15 loan for ten years from Sir Thomas White’s charitable fund for encouraging trade, restricted to young freemen.22Oxford Council Acts 1583-1626, 292.

By the end of that decade Nixon was coming to prominence in local government. Chosen of the common council in 1622, the following year he paid £5 for a bailiff’s place; in this period he also served as a collector of fifteenths and tenths.23Oxford Council Acts 1583-1626, 312, 321-2; Oxford City Docs. 1268-1665, 129. As senior bailiff in 1628, he was deputed with his junior, Thomas Cooper I*, another mercer, to confer with one William Savadge, who had arrived in the city with a scheme to provide work for the poor, while in 1631, as well as being a fairmaster selected ‘to make the best benefit that may be made for this city’, he was among councillors made responsible for providing instruments of punishment for use in the house of correction.24Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 17, 34, 37. That he had a particular concern for social regulation is suggested by his eventual acquisition of the tower within of the prison at the north gate of the city; by 1638 the corporation was paying him £6 10s a year in rent.25Oxon. RO, city archives, P.5.2, f. 238v.

Probably before 1630 Nixon married Joan Stevenson, who according to Wood came from Weston on the Green, the neighbouring village to Bletchingdon.26Wood, Life and Times, i. 438. In the absence of children, from their house in High Street directly opposite the university church of St Mary the Virgin (acquired by 1624) the couple created a formidable partnership in the nurturing of godliness.27Oxford City Properties ed. Salter, 120. Key members of their circle were two of Nixon’s onetime apprentices, Thomas Fifield, husband of Joan’s sister Margaret from 1632 and later head butler at Christ Church, and Matthew Marten, later town clerk.28Oxon. RO, city archives, L.5.2, ff. 107v, 200; St Mary the Virgin par. reg.; Oxford Council Acts 1626-65; Wood, Life and Times, i. 459.

Elected to the first of three mayoral terms in September 1636, Nixon was attracting both office and opprobrium.29Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 68. On 22 November Francis Samwell, a knight’s son from Christ Church, was called before city fathers at Nixon’s house for calling the mayor ‘a knave’.30Oxon. RO, city archives, F.5.9, f. 2. In December Nixon initiated taxation for Ship Money which appears to have raised the full amount, and with other leading councillors he consented to the second round the following year.31Oxon. RO, city archives, E.4.5, ff. 9, 13. Placed on the commission of the peace for the city in July 1637, and on the commission for gaol delivery in the county in the same year, in April 1638 he became an alderman.32C181/5, ff. 79v, 89v; C231/5, p. 251; Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 78. Wood claimed that, now grown rich, ‘he was a bitter enemy to scholars’; if he was correct that Nixon ‘put into the stocks Thomas French, a minister, for being drunk’, then his zeal for maintaining order showed scant respect for social and religious status. Deservedly or otherwise, Nixon, to whom Wood attributed like Richard Croke*, ‘a smooth flattering tongue’, had a reputation among scholars of being ‘very hard in his dealings’, attracting the tag, ‘Like Alderman Nixon, hard and smooth like any sleek stone’.33Wood, Life and Times, i. 438.

Simmering discontents over jurisdictional and religious matters between the city and the university, as well as issues of national significance, seem to have lain behind a contested election for the borough seats in March 1640. Nixon and John Whistler*, the recorder and a former Member for Oxford, were probably nominated to assert the city’s independence of its privileged partner, to express opposition to government policy, and to uphold anti-Arminian godliness, but they were defeated by the superior connections of Charles Howard*, Viscount Andover, son of the steward, and Thomas Cooper I, who had links to the university and to chancellor William Laud’s friends.34Oxon. RO, C/FC/1/A2/03, ff. 70v-74; Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 91-2. Trouble continued through the spring. When university proctor Peter Allibond imprisoned a constable of one city parish for setting night-watchmen without his sanction, both he and the vice chancellor, Christopher Potter, were summoned at the city’s request to the privy council. An additional complaint that Allibond had to answer was that he had released from prison ‘an Irish foot-post’ committed by Nixon on the (disputed) ground that the latter had done so without a warrant.35Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford (1796), ii. 421-2; CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 340-1.

Upholding a tradition of nomination by the steward to the senior seat, Howard was returned again to Parliament in October, this time with Whistler, Cooper having died during the summer. However, Nixon was named as a subsidy commissioner that year and seems to have kept his place on the commission of the peace, although in the context of his actions in 1642 it is unlikely that he was other than visibly critical of royal and church government during the intervening period.36SR. At a meeting of councillors of various persuasions on 15 August 1642 he contributed four pounds of gunpowder towards the defence of the city, but as royalist troops under Sir John Byron arrived on 28 August, he was one of those ‘puritanical townsmen’ who ‘out of guilt fled to [Abingdon], fearing they should be ill-used and imprisoned’.37Oxon. RO, city archives, E.4.5, f. 32v; Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ii. 445. It is not clear whether he had returned by the time William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, briefly took control with parliamentarian forces in mid-September: according to Wood, Saye’s promotion of Nixon as prospective mayor failed when fellow councillors baulked at selecting a candidate who had fled.38Wood, Life and Times, ii. 63. His movements over the next few years are indeed obscure. Surprisingly, following the establishment of the royal capital in Oxford, he was listed among those who on 1 November, at the king’s command, left arms at the Guildhall.39Oxon. RO, city archives, E.4.5, f. 36. Unless he had deputed someone to make a donation in his absence, this contradicts Wood’s assertion, in noting the capture of one of Nixon’s servants after Prince Rupert’s victory at Chinnor in June 1643, that the ‘alderman had fled to London upon the king’s coming’ to Oxford.40Wood, Life and Times, ii. 101. Nixon was also first-named among the city ‘key-keepers’ who presented accounts on 25 August 1643, yet he does not appear in the official council minutes between 30 September 1642 and 29 June 1646.41Oxon. RO, city archives, P.5.2, f. 255; Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 108-34. On 14 September 1643 he headed the list of townsmen disenfranchised and deprived of office by the mayor on the king’s instruction because they had ‘left the city many months since, to join the rebellion’; most of them had been absent ‘ever since his Majesty’s stay in Oxon, which makes this house think they are evilly disposed towards the king’.42Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 114-15. In 1644 his rent to the city was listed as uncollected, while the record is silent for 1645.43Oxon. RO, city archives, P.5.2, f. 257v, 259v-60.

In early summer 1644 Nixon was certainly in London, where, as William Prynne* recalled, he made ‘viva voce’ depositions at Laud’s trial.44W. Prynne, Canterburies Doome (1646), 72. On 4 May Nixon recounted his version of the clash between city and university over the night watch, convoked to the council: while Andover had tried to refer it to the king, the archbishop (as chancellor) had blocked this, saying that he would ‘do it out of my own power’ and threatening city fathers that if they did not observe the limits on their powers of action, ‘the proctors are to blame if they do not lay [you] by the heels’. Laud responded by blaming longstanding troublemakers, among whom Nixon was a leader, both for fermenting town-gown divisions and for deciding the particular course of the complaints process.45HMC Lords, n.s. xi, 404; Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ii. 422. Probably more damaging in the impeachment process than a local dispute was Nixon’s testimony to the impact of Laud’s religious innovations. Nixon’s house offered him a clear view of the new porch erected at the medieval university church, with its decorative twisted columns and statue of a regal Virgin Mary holding the infant Christ. He told the Lords that ‘there was a picture of stone of a woman and a child’ towards which he had seen several passers-by doff their hats and bow, and one kneel and raise his hands in an implied attitude of worship.46HMC Lords, n.s. xi, 416; Prynne, Canterburies Doome, 468. This Laud countered by placing the responsibility for the statue with John Owen*, and once again attempting undermine his accuser: there was ‘no proof’ the archbishop had heard about it, ‘or of any bowing and praying to it, which might be a mistake in Alderman Nixon’.47Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ii. 435; Prynne, Canterburies Doome, 469.

Following the surrender of Oxford to Parliament Nixon immediately returned to political life in the city. For at least a decade he was probably its most prominent burgess. Restored to his freedom and his office on 29 June 1646, on 14 September he was chosen mayor.48Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 134, 136-7. Arrears of rent were paid to him for the house of correction, and despite the years of exile, his wealth seems to have been undiminished.49Oxon. RO, city archives, P.5.2, f. 261. When an election was called to fill the borough seats vacated by the disablement of Whistler and Smith for sitting in the Oxford Parliament, Nixon had unimpeachable credentials in a borough now dominated by a parliamentarian garrison. On 14 December he was duly elected with John D’Oyly*, a former sheriff.50Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 141.

While Nixon’s two-year parliamentary career was completely overshadowed by his local responsibilities, these were in themselves important to the government in London. His sole committee nomination, on 13 January 1647, was, with D’Oyly and Oxfordshire notables Nathaniel Fiennes I* and Sir John Danvers*, to that preparing for the visitation of the University.51CJ v. 51b. Later in the month he was in Oxford, organising the election of Bulstrode Whitelocke* as recorder in place of Whistler; he announced the unanimous vote to Whitelocke on 1 February.52Longleat, Whitelocke pprs. ix. f. 123. He was still there on the 5th, hearing a civil dispute.53Oxon. RO, city archives, E.4.5, f. 102. He took the Covenant at Westminster on 24 February, but on 4 March had leave to go into the country.54CJ v. 97a, 106a. The corporation had delegated him on 24 December 1646 to procure £800 to discharge the city’s debts, a sum which he eventually supplied himself, lending £400 by 1650 and a further £800 by 1651; both principals remained outstanding at his death.55Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 142; Oxon. RO, city archives, P.5.2, ff. 279, 282, 291v, 293, 308v, 313, 316. In 1647 he was becoming administratively as well as financially indispensable. After a successful appeal by certain citizens against the election on 20 September of a mayor and bailiffs who had previously taken oaths to the king, Nixon was, as the petitioners requested, continued in mayoral office for a second year.56University Coll. archives, Oxford, MA 30/3/MS/6 and 7. Recorded absent from the Commons on 9 October, he was excused, being ‘in service’.57CJ v. 330a. That included seeking co-operation with the university authorities over water-works at Sandford-on-Thames: on 23 October he and two other councillors wrote to vice-chancellor Samuel Fell signing themselves ‘your very loving friends’.58Bodl. Oxf. Univ. Archives, NEP/supra/Reg. T, f. 1. Nixon was at home on 11 April 1648 to greet the parliamentary visitors when they arrived to inspect the university – one of the ‘town lobsters’ derided by Mercurius Veridicus – and arranged for church bells to be rung in their honour.59Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford, ii. 560, 563; Mercurius Veridicus no. 1 (14-21 Apr. 1648), sig. A2 (E.436.18). When on 24 April he was granted leave to go back again to Oxford, the House presented its thanks ‘for his good service, and good affection justified thereby to the Parliament’.60CJ v. 544a.

This was the last occasion on which he certainly attended. With D’Oyly, Nixon was excused when found absent from Westminster on 26 September, although his mayoral term had finally ended.61CJ vi. 34a. The two men were named on 25 November to take charge of assessments for the army in Oxfordshire, but that was the last appearance of either in the Journal.62CJ vi. 58a. Although it is not clear that he was ever formally excluded, Nixon seems to have become at least temporarily associated with the Presbyterian allegiance which led to D’Oyly being purged, and his habit of non-attendance apparently ossified thereafter.63cf. W. Prynne, The Curtaine Drawne (1648), 3.

Unlike D’Oyly, however, Nixon remained prominent in Oxfordshire, probably because there he was too useful to local and national government to be ignored, and had good relations with some of the university visitors and new college heads. On 12 October 1648 a volume of documents ‘of great concernment for the use of the city’ had been confided to him so that he could consult Recorder Whitelocke on the advisability of its translation into English.64Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 161. He was regularly named as a commissioner for militia and subsidy into and through the 1650s, while in 1650-1 he was master of the Oxford Mercers’ Company.65A. and O.; Oxon. RO, city archives, G.5.4, f. 18v. In June 1653, with John Owen, now dean of Christ Church and vice-chancellor, Nixon was named by Ralph Austen, register to the visitors, as a referee for the land grant he anticipated as a reward for his services.66L. Kreitzer, Seditious Sectaries: the Baptist Conventiclers of Oxford (2006), 211. Elected for a third time as mayor in September 1654, Nixon was still energetic in promoting civic interests: in March 1655 he was intending on his next visit to London to buy a fire engine for the city’s use.67Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 203; Oxon. RO, city archives, E.4.6, f. 11. A year later, with Matthew Marten and Richard Croke*, he was among Oxfordshire commissioners who wrote to Oliver Cromwell* expressing their approbation of ‘the work of reformation’ on which the protector had been ‘deeply engaged’, and assuring him of their ‘unanimous and cheerful obedience’ to his commands.68Bodl. Rawl. A.36, f. 340; TSP iv. 595. Nixon was included in 1654 on the commission of triers and ejectors admitting ministers to livings, and the advancement of godliness clearly remained close to his heart.69A. and O. He held leases in St Mary’s parish from Magdalen College, whose master from 1650 was Thomas Goodwin, who with Owen was at the heart of the religious settlement at this period; in 1656 he was supplying its chapel.70PROB11/307/600; J.R. Bloxam, A Reg. of the Presidents … and other Members of St Mary Magdalen College (1857), 284.

According to Henry Cornish, city preacher and Nixon’s friend, the alderman dispensed much private charity, but his chief benefaction was the very public foundation in 1658 of a free school for sons of poor freemen.71MI St Mary the Virgin, Oxford; Wood, Life and Times, i. 438. The school was situated within the complex of buildings in St Aldate’s parish which included the council chamber and guildhall. Its trustees were drawn from religious and political activists on the council and in the city, including Marten, and Cornish and Ralph Button, both intruded canons at neighbouring Christ Church.72Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 227-8, 230, 242-3, 245; Wood, Life and Times, i. 246-7; Al. Ox.; Calamy Revised, 95, 137-8. According to rules elaborated in articles of agreement and in Nixon’s will of December 1659, the 40 boys were to be instructed ‘in learning and in the principles of true Protestant religion’ in a regime involving daily prayer, scripture reading and church attendance, and teaching of the Westminster Assembly’s greater and lesser catechisms.73Oxon. RO, city archives, Q.5.1, ff. 1–4; PROB11/307/600.

The enthusiasm expressed in the conciliar record for Nixon’s ‘very honourable and worthy gift’ and ‘act of great piety and charity’ reveals him at the apogee of his influence; the grateful corporation commissioned in May 1659 the portraits of Nixon and his wife which still hang in the chamber at Oxford town hall.74Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 227, 243; VCH Oxon. iv. 332. With Richard Croke, by this time recorder, and Marten, in early October 1658 Nixon was a delegate to London to reassure Major-general Charles Fleetwood* that the new mayor was not a delinquent, while at the end of the month he was in a similar party to present congratulations to the newly-installed protector, Richard Cromwell*.75Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 232, 236. A dominant presence at general and petty sessions in the later 1650s, Nixon none the less assured Bulstrode Whitelocke in December 1658 that he had no intention of seeking election to Parliament.76Oxon. RO, city archives, QS/C/A2/02; Whitelocke Diary, 502-3. It may have been a recognition that his talents were best deployed locally, as well as of his advancing age, that when he did stand on 14 January 1659, he was defeated in contests for the first seat by Richard Croke, and then for the second by the sheriff, Richard’s younger brother Unton Croke II*.77Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 237. William Prynne remembered him as a purged member of the Rump still living when it reassembled that year, but there is no extant evidence that he was active in the House, or even resumed his seat.78W. Prynne, Conscientious, serious theological and legal quaeres (1660), 46. He was nominated for the Convention Parliament, but in a context which produced three new candidates of higher social standing, he came fourth out of five in the election on 5 April 1660.79Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 255.

With other city fathers, on 24 May Nixon took the oath of allegiance to Charles II and he was a commissioner under the act for disbanding the army.80Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 260; SR. In September the council acceded to his request that the master of his school be admitted without payment to freedom of the city, but thereafter his influence and his health declined.81Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 266. Present for the last time at sessions just after Michaelmas 1660, by May 1661 he was unable to do the work of a commissioner of river barges ‘owing to weakness of body’.82Oxon. RO, city archives, QS/C/A2/02, f. 35; Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 282. He died on 14 April 1662 and was buried at St Mary the Virgin on 17 April; it is not known whether he was accorded the elaborate civic funeral envisaged in his pre-Restoration will.83St Mary the Virgin, Oxford par. reg. and MI; A. Wood, Life and Times, i. 437-8; PROB11/307/600. His widow Joan, who had been given the right of nomination of prospective pupils, added to the school’s endowment in 1665, carrying through the purchase of land at Bletchingdon.84Oxon. RO, city archives, Q.5.1, f. 22. Although late in 1662 she was presented ‘for not coming to divine service for the space of a month’, Marten reassured the magistrates of her conformity, and the city continued to pay an annuity to cover interest on the Nixons’ loans.85Oxon. RO, city archives, QS/C/A2/02, f. 47v; P.5.2, f. 316; Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 451. Some other trustees suffered ejection or moved away from Oxford, but the school flourished until 1885.86Oxon. RO, city archives, Q.5.1, f. 22; Calamy Revised, 137-8; VCH Oxon. iv. 444. Although the Nixons’ nephew Thomas Fifield the younger was mayor in 1676, none of their near relations sat in Parliament.87Wood, Life and Times, ii. 459.