KING, Richard (1590-1645), of Sherborne, Dorset.

The Kings were a lesser gentry family, holding lands on the Somerset-Dorset border. Richard King was trained as a lawyer at the Inner Temple, and was called to the bar in 1620.12I. Temple database; CITR. ii. 120. Three years later he married the daughter of Sir Robert Seymer of Hanford near Blandford: a match that brought not only a distant connection with the Seymour earls of Hertford, but also close ties with other local gentry families such as the Ryves, Pitts and Squibbs.13Hutchins, Dorset iv. 66-7. This network of greater and lesser local contacts allowed King to establish a lucrative legal practice in Dorset. His first important client was Sir John Strangways*, who seems to have retained King’s services as early as 1625.14Recs. of Dorchester ed. Mayo, 381. This business connection was cemented by personal friendship. In 1638, Sir John Strangways and his son, Giles*, both acted as feoffees for King’s purchase of lands near Yeovil in Somerset.15Som. and Dorset N. and Q. iii. 260. Strangways had no doubt been behind King’s election as recorder of Weymouth in 1629, an appointment secured by David Giear, Strangways’s principal ally in the borough.16Whiteway Diary, 103; see Shaftesbury constituency article. This appointment brought further business during the 1630s and early 1640s, when King was approached by the corporation at Weymouth to advise on cases going through the central courts.17Weymouth Min. Bks. 25-6, 49.

King was not a retainer of the Strangways family, however. The western circuit assize records show that during the 1630s he acted as counsel to a range of individuals and communities across Dorset, dealing with a wide range of business, including disputes over parochial responsibility towards paupers and orphans.18Western Circ. Assize Orders, 18, 47, 59-60, 82, 106, 127, 142, 218, 232. From the mid-1630s, King also handled larger cases. These included the marriage negotiations of the 1st earl of Bristol, who was to marry his daughter to a son of John Freke. King acted as mediator between Bristol and Sir William Pitt (on Freke’s behalf), and made various visits to London as a result.19Add. 29974, ff. 231, 248, 250, 252-3. King also became involved in the on-going dispute about the location of the county gaol, in which he represented Sherborne against Dorchester in 1635, and Shaftesbury against Dorchester in 1637.20Dorset RO, D1/1094, unfol. (front and end-papers of bound vol.); PC Regs. ii. 489. Further trouble came in 1639, when King joined George Freke, Henry Seymer and Arthur Squibb as defendants in chancery against the complaints of the inhabitants of Shaftesbury, Blandford and Sturminster Newton, about charitable bequests in the will of William Williams of Dorchester.21C2/CHAS I/S73/37. The extensiveness of King’s clientage, and his increasing involvement in disputes, suggest that his private practice was burgeoning in the later 1630s.

Local success coincided with his promotion in the Westminster legal hierarchy. In November 1638, King was called to the bench at the Inner Temple, and in January 1639 he was appointed steward for the reader’s dinner. In the following year he twice served as attendant reader, and on 16 May 1641 he was chosen as autumn reader, delivering his lecture on 2 August.22CITR ii. 120, 244, 248, 255, 257, 260; Add. 42117, f. 109. King’s prominence at the centre increased his local standing. His second wife, whom he married in 1639, was the daughter of Robert Harbyn, whose extensive estates lay in northern Dorset and Somerset; and when King’s brother-in-law from his first marriage, Henry Seymer, made his will in 1640, he begged that the wardship of his infant son might be granted to King, who duly petitioned the court of wards after Seymer’s death.23Som. and Dorset N. and Q. iii. 259-60; PROB11/186/300; CSP Dom., 1640-1, p. 236. Besides the earl of Bristol, other aristocratic clients included the 1st earl of Cork, who was friendly with the Digbys and held estates at Stalbridge near Sherborne. In July 1639 Cork was using King as an adviser in his purchase of lands in Stalbridge from Robert Harbyn, and in 1641 he again used King’s services as his ‘learned counsel’.24Chatsworth, Cork Letterbk. II, pp. 320-1; The Lismore Papers, ser. 1, v. 175. In February 1641 King acted as feoffee (with Strangways and others) in a trust drawn up by Bristol to safeguard the inheritances of his three grandsons.25Sherborne Castle, Digby MS I, f. 324. Similarly, the marquess of Hertford’s cousin, Richard Rogers*, seems to have been advised by King when he drew up his will in early 1643, and Sir Ralph Hopton* appointed King as one of his feoffees when settling his Somerset estates in October 1644.26PROB11/194/72; Som. RO, DD/DP33, unfol.: settlement 8 Oct. 1644.

King was elected to Weymouth and Melcombe Regis in both April and October 1640, probably on his own interest as the borough’s recorder, and with the backing of the Strangways family: his fellow-MPs in the double-borough included Sir John and Giles Strangways.27C219/42/92. With his close contacts with the Strangways-Digby-Seymour group in Dorset, King naturally emerged as a critic of the crown during the Short Parliament, using his legal training to good effect. On 25 April 1640 he attacked the new Canons, basing his objections not on religious grounds, but on their conflict with common law.28Aston’s Diary, 61. Again, on 1 May, when he was first-named to a committee to reform the ecclesiastical courts, his principal concern was with the fees they charged, in competition with the secular courts.29CJ ii. 17b; Aston’s Diary, 110. Similarly, his objections to coat and conduct money were those of a lawyer and landowner, fearing the implications for property rights, for ‘if this continue without relief, no man will give anything for land’.30Aston’s Diary, 127. Such views complemented those of Strangways, Digby and Seymour in the Commons.

During the Long Parliament, King was principally involved in two commercial causes: the protection of the seas against Algerian and Turkish pirates, and the regulation of the soap, leather and other trades, formerly under monopoly. He was named to the committee to consider the pirate question on 10 December 1640, and two days later reported the committee’s request that warships be stationed off the western coast to counter this menace.31CJ ii. 48b; D’Ewes (N), 142. King was chairman of the committee and reporter to the Commons on the same issue in March and May 1641, and resumed this role when a bill to destroy north African pirates and relieve their captives was again considered in November and December 1641.32CJ ii. 95a, 96b, 121a, 152b, 302b, 325a, 326a, 329a; D’Ewes (N), 471, 481-2; D’Ewes (C), 203, 221, 227. The committee was resurrected at King’s express motion in January 1642.33CJ ii. 394a; PJ i. 144. King was chairman of committees on salt, soap, leather and coal monopolies from April 1641.34CJ ii. 121a, 161b; Harl. 163, f. 247 (31 May); Procs. LP v. 639. He was especially active in the committee dealing with the leather trade, sitting as its chairman by the end of May, and coming into conflict with the other Members concerning the impounding of skins at Dover in July and August 1641.35CJ ii. 207b, 209b, 260b. The committee on soap monopolies was revived on King’s motion on 26 May 1641 and reported by him in August; and he continued to be involved in its business during the autumn, before being ordered to deliver the bill into the care of another Dorset MP, Giles Grene* in February 1642.36CJ ii. 259b, 298b, 299a, 432b; Harl. 477, f. 100 (26 May); Procs. LP vi. 455; D’Ewes (C), 55-7. In his activities against both piracy and monopolies King was motivated by the concerns of his constituents in the trading port of Weymouth, as the threat of Turkish piracy had been a major concern of the town in the 1630s.37CSP Dom. 1635, p. 389; 1636-7, pp. 111, 115; Add. 1625-49, pp. 546-7; Weymouth Min. Bks., 24. Similarly, the town was afflicted by the customs monopolies, prompting the corporation to petition Parliament against customs abuses in December 1640.38CJ ii. 55a. In February 1641, King was named to a committee to investigate customs misdemeanours, and in July that year it was claimed by Sir Arthur Hesilrige* that King had secured a warrant against the customs officials in Weymouth.39CJ ii. 92a; Procs. LP vi. 127-8.

Politically, King remained sympathetic to the moderate reforms proposed in by the Digbys and their allies in the early months of the Parliament, although his support for their attacks on the Laudian church was qualified. On 9 December 1640 he supported the ‘authority’ of the new Canons, except when they encroached on common law, and ‘he conceived none of these Canons to be void but such as were against the law’.40D’Ewes (N), 127-8. Despite this, King was included in committees designed to assist the dismantling of the current system. On 12 December he was named to the committee to consider a petition from Somerset against the bishop of Bath and Wells.41CJ ii. 50a. On 1 March 1641 he was named to a committee to prepare a conference with the Lords on the removal of the clergy from commissions of the peace, and on 24 June he was added to a committee on the bill against scandalous ministers.42CJ ii. 94b, 184b. But by this time, King’s support for the radical programme had been fatally undermined by the attack on George Lord Digby* that followed his open opposition to the trial of the 1st earl of Strafford. On 10 June King defended the lord’s brother, John Digby, who had been admonished by the Speaker for not taking his proper place in the chamber. According to Sir Simonds D’Ewes*, ‘Mr King, a common lawyer, thought that the Speaker had transgressed his duty in using so disgraceful a speech to so noble a gentleman’, but he was forced to withdraw his comments when opposed by the House.43Procs. LP v. 79. This outburst was the first clear sign that King was turning against Pym’s ‘junto’ in the Commons. Other indications followed. The House insisted (8 July) on his presence in the Commons when he should have been delivering his readings at Lincoln’s Inn.44Procs. LP v. 565. He delayed taking the Protestation until 14 July 1641, and even defended one soap monopolist, Fitzwilliam Coningsby*, in the following October.45CJ ii. 209b; D’Ewes (C), 55-7. Although he was named to the committee to consider the plea of the twelve bishops against their exclusion from the Lords on 13 November, he was no longer a supporter of religious reform.46CJ ii. 314b. In January 1642 he joined a fellow Inner Temple lawyer and future royalist, Orlando Bridgeman, in opposing a vote of thanks to petitioners from Essex because their petition included an attack on the Book of Common Prayer.47PJ i. 123, 126. By the spring of 1642 King’s opposition to the dominant faction in the Commons incurred the hostility of the House, which investigated in April his prolonged absence without leave, his blatant disregard for a fast day later in the same month, and, in May, his right to take notes in the chamber was questioned, as it was feared he would circulate a ‘mistaken’ account outside the House.48CJ ii. 545a, 548a; PJ ii. 318.

The exodus of future royalists to York in the summer of 1642 prompted an easing of Parliament’s severity towards waverers in the Commons. In June, King was brought back into activities at Westminster: he was added to a committee to consider a petition from Gray’s Inn, and was named to a committee to consider the king’s proclamation against levying troops.49CJ ii. 636b, 638b. In mid-July he was appointed manager of a conference for the trial of the lord mayor of London.50CJ ii. 681b. It may be significant that this latter appointment, the last reference to him as a member of the Commons, came shortly after Sir John Strangways’s final appearance in the House. By 25 July King had left Westminster to attend the assizes in Somerset.51Western Circ. Assize Orders, 232. On 2 September he was one of a number of MPs (including the two Strangways), suspended for deserting the House.52CJ ii. 750a. On 12 November orders were issued for the serjeant-at-arms to summon King, William Whitaker* and Sir Gerard Naper* to be ‘brought up in safe custody’ to Westminster.53CJ ii. 845b. King was formally disabled from sitting on 27 February 1643.54CJ ii. 982b.

King joined Charles I at Oxford during the civil war. He witnessed the will of the inveterate royalist, Richard Rogers* in May 1643, sat in the Oxford Parliament in January 1644, and was fined £1,000 as a delinquent by the Committee for Advance of Money in July of that year.55PROB11/194/72; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 571; CCAM, 436. In October 1644 he joined Lords Lumley and Capel, (Sir) Edward Hyde* and Sir Francis Doddington as feoffee for the king’s general in the west, Sir Ralph Hopton.56Som. RO, DD/DP33, unfol.: settlement 8 Oct. 1644. King died in August 1645, thus sparing Weymouth the embarrassment of removing its own recorder.57Weymouth Min. Bks. 55. Parliament sent out a new writ of election on 25 September.58CJ iv. 286b. There is no known will. The family’s connection with prominent Dorset royalists continued after King’s death, and in 1650 his son and heir, John King, married Elizabeth, daughter of Nicholas Strangways.59Som. and Dorset N. and Q. iii. 260; iv. 123.