EDGCUMBE, Richard (1612-55), of Bodrigan, St Goran, Cornw.

Richard Edgcumbe was the younger brother of Piers Edgcumbe*, and was raised in a similar manner. He matriculated as a fellow-commoner from St John’s College, Cambridge, a year after his brother, in 1627; and his father had settled a considerable estate, centred on the barton of Bodrigan in St Goran parish, on him before 1638. In his will, drawn up in the same year, Sir Richard left him a further £50 to repair Bodrigan House.11Al. Cant.; PROB11/180/445.

In the elections for the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, when Piers Edgcumbe was elected for Camelford, Richard was provided with a seat at Newport, adjacent to Launceston, perhaps through the influence of his uncle, Ambrose Manaton*. Richard Edgcumbe’s activity in this Parliament appears to have been minimal. It was probably his elder brother who was the ‘Mr Edgcumbe’ who voted against the attainder of Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford, in April 1641, and the only definite reference to Richard in the Journal came on the following 3 May, when he took the Protestation.12Procs. LP iv. 51; CJ ii. 133b. During the civil war, Richard Edgcumbe served as major in the militia regiment commanded by his brother, which was given the job of defending the family home of Mount Edgcumbe and the nearby town of Milbrook, both of which were in the front line of the defences against incursions into Cornwall from parliamentarian Plymouth. He also attended the Oxford Parliament, signing the letter sent to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, by royalist MPs in January 1644.13Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. He may also have played a minor part in the local administration in Cornwall, as he was granted a precautionary royal pardon for any of his activities in the county in March 1645.14Cornw. RO, ME/3087.

In January 1646, as the New Model army entered Cornwall, Edgcumbe joined his brother in negotiating with Sir Thomas Fairfax* for the surrender the garrisons of Mount Edgcumbe and Milbrook, and was one of those ‘gentlemen of interest in these parts’ who promised to suppress resistance in the east of the county.15CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 367; CJ iv. 495a. The final terms were agreed in early March, and Fairfax wrote to the Commons to ensure that Edgcumbe and his friends would receive lenient terms when they compounded for their estates.16CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 367; CJ iv. 495a; CCC 1082. By this time, Edgcumbe had taken the ‘negative oath’, and he subscribed the Solemn League and Covenant in May 1646.17CCC 1082. In February 1647 Parliament ordered that Edgcumbe compound at two years’ value, and shortly afterwards he petitioned to be allowed to pay his fine and recover his estates.18CCAM 423; CCC 1082. The process proved achingly slow, however, and in the spring of 1648 his estate was still sequestered, prompting Fairfax to intervene, telling Speaker William Lenthall* that Edgcumbe must be released from composition, with the remaining moiety fine remitted, and granted indemnity for his actions during the civil war.19CCC 117, 1082; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 37-8. On 29 August the matter was apparently settled by the Commons, which officially recorded that Edgcumbe had paid a fine of £589 for his delinquency, and ordered that the sequestration of his estate should be lifted.20CJ v. 690a. This did not satisfy either Edgcumbe or Fairfax, however, and in April 1649 the general again wrote to complain that the moiety of the fine had still not been remitted; and, as a result, the Committee for Compounding waived the final instalment on 5 June.21CCC 1083.

On 2 April 1650 Edgcumbe was granted a pass by the council of state, allowing him to travel abroad, but it is doubtful that he took the opportunity, and there is no record that he visited the royal court in exile during this period.22CSP Dom. 1650, p. 534. But Edgcumbe’s troubles at home were not yet at an end, as in August 1650 the local county committee alleged that he and his brother – ‘these high-spirited malignants’ – were refusing to co-operate with the authorities, and were suspected of having undervalued their estates when compounding.23CCC 290, 336. This led to a further fine, of £157, being ordered by the compounding committee on 21 January 1651, which had been paid by the following March.24CCC 1083. With the security scares of the summer of 1651, Edgcumbe was saddled with a punitive assessment of £300, which was discharged only in the following November.25CCAM 424, 1486.

The decline in royalist fortunes after the defeat of Charles Stuart at Worcester in September 1651 seems to have lifted the pressure on Richard Edgcumbe, and thereafter he remained unmolested. He was resident at Bodrigan in December 1652, and in September 1655 he was busy arguing with his brother about money that was owed to him, commenting tetchily that

Seeing there is small or no hopes of making any bargain with you for a further estate in this place, and that the money remaining in your hands for that purpose may be burned to a better advantage and more profit than of late it hath yielded, I shall desire you will give speedy order for the payment of the whole £300 into me here, as soon as conveniently you may.26Cornw. RO, ME/3016.

This row between the two brothers was never resolved, as on 5 November 1655 Richard died.27Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 142. Surviving letters give details of the elaborate funeral arrangements that followed, with ‘eight escutcheons in metal and twelve in colours’ being provided, as well as gloves, scarves and ribbons for the mourners, ‘that the corpse may be interred with that decency and civility as is suitable to his quality’, and Piers Edgcumbe was told that ‘your brother is generally lamented and a solemn funeral I perceive is expected by the country’.28Cornw. RO, ME/3020, 3023, 3033. The executor, his cousin Philip Edgcumbe, was in charge of the funeral plans, as Piers Edgcumbe declined to attend, ostensibly because of illness. Philip, in a letter to Piers on 6 December 1655, described his efforts to ensure that this absence should not be ‘misconstrued’, but the smell of bad blood could not easily be disguised.29Cornw. RO, ME/3036. Richard Edgcumbe never married and had no known offspring; in his will (which, incidentally, did not mention his brother at all) he left the bulk of his estate in Cornwall to his nephew, later Sir Richard Edgcumbe†, with his lands in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight going to another nephew, Francis Edgcumbe.30PROB11/254/294.