CLUDD, Edward (1603-78), of Norwood Park, Southwell, Notts.

Cludd was descended from a venerable Shropshire family, a junior branch of which had settled at Arnold, just to the north of Nottingham, in the sixteenth century.31F. C. Herbert, ‘The history of Wrockwardine’, Trans. Shropshire Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. ser. 4, viii. 162; Vis. Notts. ed. G.W. Marshall, 103, 104. A younger son, he was apprenticed to a London draper in 1621 and subsequently attained his freedom of the London Drapers’ Company and set himself up as a mercer. By 1638, he was living on Lombard Street, where he leased a house at the substantial rent of £60 a year.32IHR, ROLLCO; Notts. RO, DD/QBW/10/4; CSP Dom. 1639, p. 88; Hist. Drapers’ Co. ed. Johnson, iv. 134; Inhabs. of London, 1638, 16. At some point during the first 18 months of the civil war, he tied his fortunes firmly to the parliamentarian cause by becoming muster-master general of the London trained bands, which was a key post in the metropolitan – and therefore Parliament’s – military administration.33CJ iii. 383b; CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 710. What prompted him to side with Parliament is not known. In terms of his religious convictions, he was almost certainly a puritan of some description. His membership of the corporation for propagating the gospel in New England, set up in July 1649, is testament to his godly convictions.34A. and O. Equally, his appointment under the protectorate as an ejector for Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire suggests that he favoured a godly, publicly-maintained ministry.35A. and O.

As muster-master general, Cludd was an instrument (unwitting or otherwise) in the Presbyterian grandees’ plans for mustering forces in London in the summer of 1647 as a counterweight to the New Model army.36SP28/124, ff. 334, 337. Having purchased the former church property of Norwood Park, in his native Nottinghamshire, in May 1648, he left London in 1650 for his newly-acquired country estate; and in mid-1653, he was selected to represent Nottinghamshire in the Nominated Parliament after Gervase Pigot* had refused to serve.37Supra, ‘Nottinghamshire’; St. 185, f. 9; Coll. Top. et Gen. i. 8; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 138, 139. Aside from his proven worth as a military administrator, it is not clear what recommended him to the council of officers. He was a newcomer, and therefore relatively insignificant figure, in Nottinghamshire politics. However, his local connections included his fellow MP for the county, John Odingsells, and also one of Nottinghamshire’s political heavyweights, Cludd’s ‘intimate friend’ Gilbert Millington*, whose eldest son had married Cludd’s niece.38Infra, ‘Gilbert Millington’; ‘John Odingsells’; C6/111/35; Notts. RO, DD/QBW/10/4. Moreover, after the Restoration, Cludd claimed that he had served as a captain of horse under Oliver Cromwell* himself.39Vis. Notts. ed. Train, 88. He had certainly been commissioned as a captain of horse in the Nottinghamshire militia by July 1655.40SP25/77, p. 870; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 16, 106. But there is no evidence, besides his own words, that he was closely associated with Cromwell in any capacity.

Cludd was named to only one committee in the Nominated Parliament – to consider public debts and receive accusations of bribery and fraud (20 July 1653).41CJ vii. 287a. A week later (27 July), however, he was appointed to a new Army Committee – almost certainly on the basis of his former career as muster-master general – of which he was an active member.42SP28/98, ff. 61, 363. His re-appointment to the Army Committee on 28 January 1654 makes it clear that he approved of the establishment of the protectorate. In 1655 and 1656, he was a signatory to letters from the Nottinghamshire commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth, defending the decimation tax as a thing ‘absolutely necessary’ and praising Major-general Edward Whalley* for his ‘singular justice, ability and piety’.43TSP iv. 156, 384, 468-9, 484. As a magistrate he was also involved in implementing Whalley’s programme against vagrancy and unlicensed alehouses.44Notts. RO, C/QSM/1/13, unfol. (entry 18 Apr. 1655 and passim); P.R. Seddon, ‘Maj. Gen. Edward Whalley and the government of Notts. 1655-6’, Trans. Thoroton Soc. ciii. 133.

In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Cludd was re-elected for one of the four Nottinghamshire county seats – probably in second place after Whalley.45Supra, ‘Nottinghamshire’. It is likely that he owed his return to his connection with Whalley and to the influence he enjoyed as a magistrate and commissioner for securing the peace of the commonwealth. He was named to seven (minor) committees in this Parliament – all between September 1656 and February 1657 – and made no recorded contribution to debate.46CJ vii. 429a, 433a, 444b, 445b, 472a, 478a, 490b. He and his militia troop helped to defeat and round up the handful of insurgents who appeared in Nottinghamshire in support of George Boothe’s* royalist-Presbyterian rising in the summer of 1659.47CJ vii. 444b, 727a, 772b; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 16, 106; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Firth, ii. 389-90. And Cludd subsequently served on the Nottinghamshire sequestration committee set up to investigate and punish those involved in Boothe’s rebellion.48CCC 746, 747. His support for the commonwealth in 1659 may partly account for the favour he enjoyed that year with the Quakers, who deemed him one of the few Nottinghamshire magistrates ‘faithfull’ and fit to serve.49Extracts from State Pprs. rel. to Friends ed. N. Penney (1910), 112.

Despite his activities hounding the Nottinghamshire royalists in the 1650s, Cludd quickly obtained a ‘special pardon’ from the crown at the Restoration.50Vis. Notts. ed. Train, 88. However, he was removed from all local offices in 1660. He was implicated in the 1663-4 northern rising and evidently imprisoned, before being freed ‘by the king’s order’.51CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 474. He died childless in the autumn of 1678 and was buried at Southwell on 28 September.52Southwell par. reg. In his will he left his entire estate to his nephew and former apprentice Bartholomew Fillingham of Westminster.53Notts. RO, PR/SR/5, p. 486.