NEEDHAM, Sir Robert (d. 1661), of Clapham and Lambeth, Surr.

The Needhams had moved from Derbyshire to Cheshire at the end of Edward III’s reign and had established the family residence just across the county border at Shavington Hall, Shropshire, in the mid-fifteenth century.11Vis. Salop, 371-2; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir Robert Needham’; Oxford DNB, ‘Sir John Needham’. Needham’s father, Thomas Needham, settled at Pool Park in Denbighshire – an estate he acquired by marriage in 1601 – and served as sheriff of that county in 1616-17.12Holy Trinity, Chester par reg.; List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 251; HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘Robert Salesbury’. Thomas’s elder brother Robert Needham†, 1st Viscount Kilmorey [I], had commanded troops in Ireland during the 1590s and had represented Shropshire in the Parliaments of 1593 and 1604.13HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir Robert Needham’. Thomas, by contrast, seems to have led a relatively quiet and uneventful life in north Wales, and his eldest son Robert, the future MP, kept an even lower profile, for there is no evidence that he held public office until 1645, when he was probably in his mid-40s. His first wife was a cousin of the diarist John Evelyn and his second was a Clapham heiress.14Evelyn Diary ed. De Beer, iii. 198; Steinman Steinman, Memoir of Mrs Myddelton, 2-3, 4-5. He appears to have lived unobtrusively in Clapham during the civil war, and although assessed at £500 by the Committee for Advance of Money* (CAM) in the summer of 1644, he was discharged upon payment of £1 and the loan of £100, pending the restoration of his estate – presumably, a reference to the fact that his property in Denbighshire was in the hands of the royalists.15CCAM 399; LJ vii. 286b, 304b, 328a.

Needham was returned as a ‘recruiter’ for the Pembrokeshire borough of Haverfordwest late in 1645. He owed his election to the parliamentarian commander-in-chief of south Wales Major-general Rowland Laugharne†, who had assured the corporation that Needham would serve at Westminster free of charge and would be ‘a faithful minister’ to the town.16Supra, ‘Haverfordwest’; Cal. Recs. Haverfordwest, 75. Needham was related to Laugharne’s Pembrokeshire in-laws the Owens of Orielton through his mother Eleanor Bagenal. His aunt on his mother’s side referred to Hugh Owen* as her nephew; and Needham himself would describe Hugh’s brother Arthur Owen* as his ‘cousin’.17NLW, Harold. T. Elwes Ms 812; Carreglwyd (1), Mss 92, 2313; Pemb. Co. Hist. iii. 222; Cal. Recs. Haverfordwest, 165. But the precise nature of the kinship between Needham and the Owens is obscure, and it may well have been reinforced on this occasion by connections of a more overtly political kind. Laugharne was closely associated with the Presbyterian grandee Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, and it is possible that he supported Needham’s candidacy partly with the aim of bolstering the Essexian interest at Westminster.18Oxford DNB, ‘Rowland Laugharne’. Needham would almost certainly have been well known to the earl. His grandfather on his father’s side had served under the 2nd earl in Ireland in the late 1590s; and both Needham’s own estate in Denbighshire and his family’s in Cheshire and Shropshire lay either within or very close to areas where the Devereux family had traditionally enjoyed a strong proprietorial interest.19HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir Robert Needham’; A. H. Dodd, ‘N. Wales in the Essex revolt of 1601’, EHR lix. 348-51.

Needham made at least two visits to Haverfordwest after his election and seems to have been diligent in addressing the corporation’s concerns regarding the excise (collaborating with Arthur Owen on this matter) and in trying to secure a preaching minister for the town and to augment his stipend.20Cal. Recs. Haverfordwest, 76-7, 80-1. However, he made very little impression upon the proceedings of the House itself. Between 28 January 1646 – when he took the Covenant – and Pride’s Purge in December 1648, he was named to only seven committees and made no recorded contribution to debate.21CJ iv. 420b, 429a, 572a, 634a; v. 14b, 127b, 153a, 278a. His early appointments in the House related to affairs in Wales. Thus he was named to committees for reducing north Wales to parliamentary authority (4 Feb. 1646). to consider a petition from the ‘well-affected’ inhabitants of Caernarfonshire (11 June) and to determine what forces could be spared in south-west Wales for service in Ireland (4 Aug.).22CJ iv. 429a, 572a, 634a. On 2 July the two Houses appointed him a deputy lieutenant for Denbighshire.23CJ iv. 598b; LJ viii. 406a. He was named to two committees in the spring of 1647 for investigating political agitation in the New Model army.24CJ v. 127b, 153a. And his last appointment in the House was on 18 August, when he was nominated to a committee on an ordinance sent from the Lords for making void all legislation passed during the Presbyterian counter-revolution that summer.25CJ v. 278a. An allegation made against him in 1651 that he had collaborated with the royalist insurgents in Surrey during the second civil war was dismissed as groundless by the CAM.26CCAM 1282-3. Nevertheless, his connection with Laugharne – who had commanded rebel forces in south Wales in 1648 – may well have been a factor in his seclusion at Pride’s Purge in December.27[W. Prynne*], A Vindication of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1649), 29 [recte 33] (E.539.5).

Omitted from all local commissions under the Rump and the protectorate, Needham seems to have spent the period 1649-60 living quietly in Lambeth.28Evelyn Diary ed. De Beer, iii. 232, 264; Cal. Recs. Haverfordwest, 165; Steinman Steinman, Memoir of Mrs Myddelton, 9, 13. Having resumed his seat following the re-admission of the secluded Members on 21 February 1660, he was active in representing the interests of Haverfordwest in the House, although he received no committee appointments during these final few weeks of the Long Parliament.29The Grand Memorandum, or a True and Perfect Catalogue of the Secluded Members of the House of Commons sitting 16 March 1659 (1660, 669 f.24.37); Cal. Recs. Haverfordwest, 165-6. He sought to retain his seat at Haverfordwest in the elections to the 1660 Convention, and once again his candidacy was endorsed by Laugharne. Laugharne’s wife assured the mayor that it was only the ‘general sufferings of the kingdom’ that had prevented Needham from achieving as much for his constituents as they had hoped. But the corporation informed Needham that although they were willing to re-elect him, the town’s voters were ‘so extremely averse to a stranger that ... nothing will satisfy them but the choosing of a native of the country [i.e. county] to be their representative’.30Cal. Recs. Haverfordwest, 165, 166-7. In the event, the borough returned a local royalist.31HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Haverfordwest’.

Needham died in the late summer of 1661 and was buried at Lambeth on 8 August.32Steinman Steinman, Memoir of Mrs. Myddelton, 15. No will is recorded. His eldest daughter Jane was a celebrated Restoration beauty who attracted royal patronage.33Oxford DNB, ‘Jane Myddelton [née Needham]’. In 1666, his widow, Lady Jane Needham, left the ejected Presbyterian ministers John Rawlinson of Lambeth and Henry Wilkinson of Clapham £5 apiece in her will and ‘thirty pounds more to such six ejected ministers as they ... shall nominate’.34PROB11/322, f. 230v; Calamy Revised, 404, 530. None of Needham’s immediate descendants sat in Parliament.