FRENCH, Thomas (1592-1662), of St Peter’s, Cambridge, Cambs.

French belonged to the third generation in a family of Cambridge fishmongers. Both his father, Thomas French senior, and his grandfather, Roger French, had prospered in the trade, and Thomas senior went on to serve as mayor of the town five times (1608-11, 1614-15, 1619-20).28Cambs. RO, archdeaconry of Ely original wills: Roger Frenche, 1598; T. Baker, Hist. of the College of St John (Cambridge, 1869), i. 437, 442; Gray, Biog. Notes, 33. There is no evidence that they were related to Oliver Cromwell’s* brother-in-law, Peter French. Thomas senior was evidently unpopular with some of his colleagues. According to one aldermen, he was ‘a proud man who abused the corporation’, while in 1609 another verbally insulted him while he was presiding at a meeting of the town court.29Recs. of Early English Drama: Cambridge ed. A.H. Nelson (Toronto, 1989), i. 533; Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 30. When he died in 1623 he left to his eldest son his lease on the fishponds in the grounds of St John’s College, as well as his boats and nets, to allow him to continue the business, and the reversion of various properties around the town which went, in the first instance, to an uncle.30PROB11/142/365. The following year Thomas was assessed £3 for the subsidy as a resident of the Bridge ward.31Downing Coll. Cambridge, Bowtell MS 18.

The French family were no ordinary fishmongers, however. Thomas’s grandfather, father and younger brother (Roger) had all served as the suppliers of freshwater fish to the royal household. This was a prestigious and very lucrative contract, which was threatened in the early 1630s when French’s half-brother, Gregory, was accused of making seditious comments about the king. As a result, the royal household seems to have turned instead to Thomas to supply its vast requirements for fish.32Barclay, Electing Cromwell, 37-8; SP16/475, f. 203; LS13/169, p. 139. This was formalised in 1637 with his appointment as the yeoman purveyor.33LS13/169, pp. 293-4; E101/440/5, f. 9. One significant perk of the position was the right to use the royal fishponds on Bankside in Southwark.34Barclay, Electing Cromwell, 39. This reinforced French’s existing connections with Southwark, as his first wife, Rebecca Benfield, had brought with her to their marriage seven properties in Cardinal’s Hat Alley, adjacent to the royal fishponds, which she had been left by her late father, wealthy London clothworker William Benfield.35PROB11/134/261; Playhouse wills ed. Honigmann and Brock, 195.

French followed in his father’s footsteps also by becoming a civic leader in Cambridge. Admitted as a freeman in 1624, he seems to have joined the Cambridge corporation soon after and then went on to hold most of its junior offices. In 1632 the corporation did a deal with French whereby some of their lands which had been leased to him were mortgaged to raise money to receive Charles I and Henrietta Maria, on a royal visit.36Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, ff. 209, 228. The following year French was among local inhabitants who opposed the proposal that Jesus Green and Parker’s Piece be enclosed.37CUL, Univ. Archives, CUR 37.3, no. 100. Between 1635 and 1640 his Ship Money assessment increased from 10s to 12s.38CUL, Univ. Archives, CUR 36.1, nos. 21, 25, 27, 28. In August 1639, in an rare move necessitated by exceptional circumstances, French was promoted from being a mere common councilman to the mayoralty within the course of a single council meeting.39Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, pp. 301-2.

As mayor, French nominated Cromwell as a freeman on 7 January 1640.40Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, p. 308. According to an anecdote recounted in the 1665 edition of James Heath’s debunking biography of Cromwell, Flagellum, Richard Timbs* exercised influence on French through the latter’s brother-in-law, Bryan Kitchingman, with the view to getting Cromwell returned for Cambridge at the next election. Flagellum suggests that French later came to believe that Kitchingman had misled him about Cromwell’s intentions, claiming that French was ‘a perfect royalist’, presumably a reference to his position in the royal household, although it was noted that he ‘wheeled from his loyalty during the war’.41J. Heath, Flagellum (1665), 18-22; Barclay, Electing Cromwell, 40-1. Whatever the truth of this, in the meantime Mayor French presided over the election to the Short Parliament.

Once civil war broke out, French indeed proved no royalist. As early as August 1642, he was one of the three Cambridge aldermen who, along with the current mayor and Oliver Cromwell, were ordered by Parliament to ensure that the trained bands at Cambridge were in a state of readiness and that all popish recusants were disarmed. These five were authorised to defend the town from attack by any means necessary.42LJ v. 299a. Thereafter, French was included on all the commissions to collect the assessments within the town and he was almost certainly appointed to the local county committee.43A. and O. What singles him out as one of the more committed was his appointment by the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†) in March 1644 to serve as a commissioner to eject scandalous ministers throughout Cambridgeshire. In that capacity, over the following months French took evidence from at least 16 parishes.44The Cambs. Cttee. for Scandalous Minsters, ed. G. Hart (Cambs. Rec. Soc. xxiv), 30-104, 150; Palmer, Borough Green, 164-5, 169; W.M. Palmer, ‘Articles exhibited against Mr Mapletoft’, East Anglian, n.s. vi. 122-3. He similarly served as one of the commissioners to purge the Cambridge dons. 45Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 372; J.D. Twigg, ‘The parliamentary visitation of the Univ. of Cambridge, 1644-1645’, EHR xcviii. 518. In 1645 he paid £4 as his contribution towards the loan to pay off the Scottish army, a sum equalled by only one other member of the corporation.46W.M. Palmer, ‘The reformation of the corp. of Cambridge, July 1662’, Procs. Camb. Antiq. Soc. xvii. 134. French continued to be appointed to local commissions beyond 1649, and in 1650 he was added to the commission of the peace for Cambridgeshire.47A. and O. It can therefore be assumed that he supported the advent of the republic. (The captain of the Cambridge infantry militia appointed in 1650 was more likely to have been his son, Thomas junior, who had probably fought for Parliament during the civil war, serving under John Birch*.48CSP Dom. 1650, p. 570; 1651, pp. 176, 559, 560; 1652-3, p. 598; 1655, pp. 377-8; SP28/338: receipts of Cambs. co. commrs. 1650-1; CCAM 94, 101; BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database, ‘Thomas French’; M. Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army (2015-16), i. 107; ii. 52, 68, 167, 168. This Captain Thomas French also served as agent for sequestration commissioners in Cambridgeshire until dismissed for misconduct about 1652.49CCC 226, 233, 443, 575, 579, 585, 606, 612.)

As for local matters not directly connected with the war, French, as executor to his sister-in-law Elizabeth Knight, implemented her bequest (worth £440) left in 1647 which resulted in the foundation of alms-houses in Cambridge.50PROB11/201/31; Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 412-14; Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1647-81, ff. 87, 97, 98v; lease bk. B, ff. 38, 91v. In 1650 he and John Lowry* negotiated on behalf of the corporation for the purchase of the fee farm rents formerly held by the crown within the town.51Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archive, common day bk. 1647-81, ff. 21, 30. French was again chosen as mayor in August 1651, but declined the offer. However, in 1652 he agreed to serve a second time.52Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1647-81, ff. 31-32, 38v, 104v; Downing Coll. Cambridge, Bowtell MS 6, unfol.: Cambridge borough treasurers’ acct. 1650-1. He was one of the six aldermen present at the meeting in May 1652 at which Cromwell was appointed as the high steward of the corporation.53Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1647-81, f. 38. During the final months of the Rump in early 1653 he travelled to London to consult with Cromwell and to lobby Parliament with respect to the town’s interests in the revived scheme to drain the fens in north Cambridgeshire.54Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1647-81, f. 45. It was for the latter reason that he probably also represented the Cambridge corporation at the adjudication meeting of the commissioners for the Great Level held at Ely in March 1653.55Downing Coll. Cambridge, Bowtell MS 6, unfol.: Cambridge borough treasurers’ acct. 1652-3. In October 1651 he was a member of the tenth dividend of royal creditors and the following year he received the final payments from the trustees for the sale of the late king’s goods for the arrears due to him from his time as yeoman purveyor.56Bodl. Rawl. D.695, f. 9v; SP28/350/9, ff. 28, 42, 48. He benefitted from the disposal of royal assets in other ways as well. By the early 1650s the trustees for the sale of the royal lands had granted him the lease of the fishing rights on the Great Ouse at Bluntisham and Earith belonging to the former royal manor of Somersham.57Norris Museum, St Ives, UMS/SOMER/70, rot. 11.

In 1653 French sat in the Nominated Parliament, summoned, like all its Members, by the council of state. The fact that he was still mayor of Cambridge may have influenced his selection as one of the four men to represent Cambridgeshire. On his arrival in London he was provided, like his colleagues, with lodgings in one of the former royal palaces, courtesy of the council.58CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 4. His one committee appointment was to the committee on trade and the corporations established on 20 July 1653, and at the end of August he was given permission to return home for a fortnight.59CJ vii. 287a, 311a. It was said that he opposed the principle of public support for a preaching ministry.60Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 418. He seems to have made no subsequent attempt to stand for Parliament.

French remained active in Cambridge civic affairs for the next nine years. He sat on all the commissions of the peace and commissions of gaol delivery issued for the town between 1654 and 1660.61C181/6, pp. 34, 35, 135, 186, 188, 265, 314, 387, 388. He was also a decimation commissioner for the county in 1655 and treasurer for propagating the gospel in New England for Cambridge in 1657.62Bodl. Rawl. C.948, p. 24; GL, MS 8011, p. 42. The deletion of his name from the election indenture may indicate that he objected to the election of Timbs and Lowry as MPs for Cambridge in December 1658.63C219/46: Cambridge indenture, 30 Dec. 1658. In October 1659 he was recommended to the sequestration commissioners in London as someone who would be ‘very serviceable’ in the conduct of their business in Cambridgeshire.64CCC 756, 759, 761, 762. Early the following year the restored Rump appointed him to the commission to oversee the county militia.65A. and O.

The repercussions of the Restoration prompted French to apply for a royal pardon in April 1661.66PSO5/9, unfol. As soon as possible, the government removed him from all the local commissions in its gift. To preclude his reclaiming his old court office, Charles II appointed him as no more than a supernumerary servant and the idea of paying him off with a pension of £40 was considered.67LR2/266, f. 195. For the time being the king could not remove him from the Cambridge corporation, still dominated by French and his allies, so French remained an alderman, and in late 1661 he was appointed to serve a third term as mayor.68Blomefield, Collectanea Cantabrigiensia, 226. This left the government with little option but to restore him to the commission of the peace for the town and the university.69C181/7, p. 49. It is just possible that French was the mayor who, when the religious radical William Simpson took off all his clothes in public at Cambridge, is said by the Quaker leader George Fox to have ‘put his gown about him and took him into his house’.70Jnl. of George Fox, i. 1-2. It is equally possible that French was the Cambridge mayor whose wife attended the Quaker meetings held by Fox in Cambridgeshire, at Littleport and the Isle of Ely, in 1661.71Jnl. of George Fox, i. 9. However, there is no reason to suppose that French had married again since the death of his second wife in 1657.

French did not see out his year in office. When the commissioners appointed to implement the Corporation Act opened their proceedings at Cambridge on 18 July 1662, French was the first member of the corporation summoned to appear before them. According to the notes of (Sir) Thomas Sclater*, one of those sitting in judgement, French agreed to take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance and to renounce the Covenant. This was not enough to satisfy the commissioners. Evidence was presented alleging that French attended the lectures of Thomas Senior at Holy Trinity Church and James Wheeler’s meeting house, in preference to the services in St Mary the Great. The commission ruled that he should be stripped of the mayoralty and dismissed as an alderman. The following day the mace was delivered to his successor, Samuel Spalding.72Palmer, ‘Reformation’, 82-3, 87, 105-6. He immediately ceased to be a justice of the peace.73C231/7, p. 143. Heath in Flagellum adapted these events into a claim that it was his role in the 1640 election which convinced the commissioners that French could not be allowed to continue as mayor.74Heath, Flagellum (1665), 22. One detail which Flagellum did get correct was that French died within days of his dismissal, for he was buried in St Peter’s, Cambridge, on 1 August 1662.75St Peter’s, Cambridge par. reg. p. 65. A widower, French was survived by three sons and four daughters, but none of them attained the prominence he and his father had achieved in the civic life of Cambridge. He was the only member of his family to sit in Parliament.