COURTNEY, Hugh (b.aft.1620), of Beaumaris, Anglesey.

The only secure fact relating to Courtney’s background is that Nicholas Courtney†, who entered the Inner Temple in April 1653, and was called to the bar in 1660, was his brother, and that he had another brother, William, who sought employment in Dublin in 1653, and who in 1659 John Jones I wished to advance in the army.10NLW, MS 11440D, pp. 111-3; PC2/55/256; Inedited Letters ed. Mayer, 289. Courtney was from a Cornish minor gentry background, but the details of his parentage are hazy. It seems likely that he and his brothers were children born to William and Jane Courtney of Tremeer after the heraldic visitation of Cornwall in 1620 had been completed.11Vis. Cornw. 1620 (Harl. Soc. ix), 5, 52; Vis. Cornw. ed. Vivian, 115. His education, early career and civil war experience are obscure. He was among the military administrators who accompanied Sir Thomas Myddelton* on his expedition to win Shropshire, By June 1646, he was serving as a treasurer in north Wales receiving contributions, voluntary and otherwise, to Myddelton’s army.12E112/565 (loose), answer of John Parry. He became a commissary in north Wales, was in Wrexham by December 1646, and was evidently in regular contact with Myddelton, suggesting that he was an associate therefore of John Jones I, who held a commission as captain.13E121/5/6/51; NLW, Chirk Castle 5 (Group F), 6729. There is no evidence of Courtney’s having served in the field, and until the military rank of captain was bestowed upon him in 1650, he was active in support roles only. The assertion that he played a part in debating the Agreement of the People cannot be substantiated.14L.F. Brown, The Political Activities of the Baptists and Fifth Monarchy Men (1912), 22. His stay in north Wales was cut short in January 1647, when he was ordered back to London to appear before the Army Committee, one of the factional strongholds at Westminster captured by the Independents.15NLW, Carreglwyd (1), 681.

Courtney’s association with Wrexham endured, however, and he became a supporter and friend of the millenarian minister of the town, Morgan Llwyd. He reported back to Llwyd while in London early in April 1649, and while in the metropolis attended the church of Walter Cradock, another preacher of the community of ‘Welsh Saints’. He was by this time probably attached in some way to the regiment of Thomas Harrison I*. Relations between the Welsh religious radicals and the Levellers in the army were stretched beyond breaking point soon after Courtney wrote to Llwyd from London. Harrison was drawn away from service in Parliament to deal with the revolt of the Leveller element among the soldiery, and Courtney may have accompanied him. The mutineers evidently hoped to find succour among the radicals of Harrison’s regiment, but soldiers of Sir Thomas Fairfax’s* regiment, commanded by Oliver Cromwell*, reached them first, and the ringleaders were shot in Burford churchyard after court-martial.16Gardiner, Commonwealth and Protectorate, i., 53-4. Courtney must presumably have played a part in the suppression of the revolt, to account for the honorary MA bestowed on him by Oxford University on 21 May, two days after Harrison received the same award. In his letter to Llwyd the previous month, mis-transcribed in a recent edition, Courtney had written that the Levellers’ ideas had been ‘exploded by all upright men’.17NLW, MS 11439D, f. 22; Gweithiau Morgan Llwyd iii. ed. J.G. Jones, G.W. Owen (Cardiff,1994), 106.

In February 1650 he became quartermaster-general of the army, with the contractual provisioning of the forces in Ireland at the top of his agenda, In August following he was installed in Beaumaris Castle as deputy governor, his associate John Jones I being governor of Anglesey. His deputy governor’s commission was issued by Thomas Mytton*.18CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 13, 312. As the militia was augmented to ward against domestic insurrection or Scots invasion, he was given command of a militia troop of horse in November and with Harrison was added to the militia commissioners for north Wales in March 1651.19CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 423, 512; 1651, p. 102. That his position remained anomalous in military terms is suggested by his apparent lack of either a troop or a company; he was de facto governor of Anglesey after Jones was given a post as civil commissioner in Ireland in July 1650.20CSP Dom. 1651, p. 104. Inevitably, as governor of a district containing a principal embarkation point for Ireland, Courtney was busy recruiting soldiers to be sent across the Irish Sea, and as the campaign against the incursion of the Scots reached a climax, was thanked for his diligence and advised to monitor shipping from the Isle of Man.21CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 171, 210, 221, 272, 303. Even after this emergency had passed, he was never given the full governorship, although in April 1652, the council of state allowed him the full pay of the governor, and his financial dealings with the council focused on his claims for reimbursement and the council’s recovery from him of sums he received on account.22CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 45, 219, 226. He was granted a pass to go to Holland in November 1652, though whether on political business is not known.23CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 576.

Courtney’s religious radicalism and religious associations both in north Wales and London brought him within the circle of the Welsh minister, Vavasor Powell. In February 1650, Courtney had been named a commissioner for propagating the gospel in Wales, and was active in the role. He attended meetings of the commissioners at Caernarvon, Conway and Wrexham, mainly concerned with the provision of education. In November 1650, Courtney and other north Wales commissioners were tasked with enquiring into the condition of schools in Anglesey and Caernarvonshire.24LPL, Comm. VIII/1; An Act for the Propagation of the Gospel in Wales, 1649 (Cymdeithas Llên Cymru [Publications], ser. 2, ii.), 28. Cromwell’s dismissal of the Rump Parliament, with the full co-operation and approval of the millenarians, was followed by planning for a new assembly along godly lines. By mid-May 1653, Harrison and Powell had settled on the nominees they had in mind to represent Wales in the new body. Courtney was one of the three north Walians they selected.25‘Inedited Letters’ed. Mayer, 226-7. He was assigned lodgings in Whitehall in the house formerly occupied by Denis Bond*.26CSP Dom. 1652-3, 412; 1653-4, 14.

On 14 July he was one of those added to the council of state, doubtless on the recommendation of John Jones I and John Carew*, who were among the selectors. He put in 88 attendances between then and November, and was named to over 40 of the council’s committees, usually on domestic topics.27CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. xxxiv, xxxvii, xxxviii, xli; 1653-4, p. 25 and passim. On 23 July he was one of four recommended by the council as inspectors of the treasury, and four days later was added to the council committee on the mint. Improving the customs and discovering estates for sale or sequestration were two other financial council committees to which he was delegated (1, 9 Sept.).28CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 45, 53, 122, 140. Some of these appointments were owed to his experience governing a maritime district, including committees on convoys, on petitions from Ireland and on the supply of arms to assist English rule there; and on prize goods and victualling the fleet.29CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 48, 75, 87, 101, 140. On 29 August he was requested by the council to consult with his two fellow Members for north Wales about the state of fortifications there in case of a royalist uprising.30CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 110. Among the last of his council of state appointments were an enquiry into the salaries of the council’s own staff, and on naval discipline (27 Oct.).31CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 205, 218.

Inevitably, in the light of his election to the council of state, Courtney sat on relatively few committees of the House: six in total. When the House assembled, Courtney was appointed to committees on Ireland, and on Scotland (9 July).32CJ vii. 283b. These nominations, and his inclusion in the committee to direct other committees (14 July), together with his election to the council of state, attest to his high reputation for godliness and administrative competence.33CJ vii. 285a. He was included in the committee on the property in tithes of clerical incumbents of parishes, but his interest in this must have inclined to the iconoclastic. He was a teller on 28 July against the appointment of the former Rumper, Cornelius Holland*, as an inspector of the treasury, and he was in favour of the bill to create a new legal code.34CJ vii. 286a, 292a, 304b. He reported from the council (3 Oct.) on the case of a petitioner requesting a pension from the state, and was named to the committee on establishing a high court of justice (13 Oct.), one of the bones of contention between those Members in favour of swift and ready justice against the enemies of the state, and those who preferred the customary courses of the common law. Courtney was doubtless among the former group.35CJ vii. 312a, 328b, 334b; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 300-1. He opposed the proposed move of the commissioners for public debts to Duchy House (15 Oct.), acting as teller with fellow-radical John James of Herefordshire.36CJ vii. 334b.

In June, Courtney wrote to John Jones I to tell him of naval victories over the Dutch, and in return received a letter deploring divisions among Christians, and arguing for freedom of conscience despite differences. Jones congratulated Courtney on his service among the council of state, ‘a great and understanding council’.37NLW MS 11440D, pp. 111-3. But Courtney’s term on the council expired at the end of October, and he failed to be returned to it when elections were held. The tide had begun to run against the radicals by this time. With Denis Hollister* he was added to the commissioners for regulating customs, who were empowered to assume the authority of the Committee of Navy and Customs (14 Nov.).38CJ vii. 350b. When John Carew, a fellow-millenarian, sought to excuse himself from service as a commissioner for the admiralty, Courtney was a teller on the side of those wishing to accede to his request, but Carew’s refusal to serve was a symptom of the decline of the radicals’ influence.39CJ vii. 362a. After the dissolution in December, Courtney was marked down in the first posthumous analysis of the Parliament as one opposed to creating a state church ministry, another of the key issues that defined the fatal divisions of the membership.40A Catalogue of the Names (1654, 669.f.19.3).

Courtney viewed the dissolution and the installation of Cromwell as lord protector, with dismay. In five intercepted letters of his of December 1653, he wrote to Colonel Thomas Mason (former governor of Caernarvon) in Dublin, ‘My heart is full, and often aches to consider what is come to pass, and what is at the door’; to Morgan Llwyd, ‘The people of God are highly dissatisfied’; to Daniel Lloyd, ‘Wait a little, and be patient unto the end’; to his brother, ‘Some rejoice now, but they will weep shortly’; and to John Jones I in Ireland, ‘I will not insert the solemnities, which were too much after the old fashion, and so grievous to many’. He knew his letters were being ‘opened and kept’, as there were suspicions of military resistance from the ‘saints’.41TSP, i. 639-40. In January 1654, the prophetess Anna Trapnel was visited in Whitehall by Courtney and the Fifth Monarchist preacher Daniel Feake, as the radicals tried to come to terms with their defeat.42The Cry of a Stone (1654), 2 (E.730.7). Courtney was still at Westminster in April 1654, when a letter to him from his co-religionist, William Allen, adjutant-general in Ireland, was intercepted by the protectoral government.43TSP ii. 214. His giving power of attorney in May to Col. Matthew Thomlinson* to buy crown lands in Anglesey with his debentures can be read as an act of liquidation of assets in anticipation of a difficult life ahead.44E121/5/6/51; SP46/128, f. 188.

By February 1655, Allen had arrived in Devon, en route to London, travelling through the county masked. Courtney was there, too, but the movements of the pair were being monitored by Unton Croke II* and John Copleston*. At a meeting in east Devon, a handy location for sympathisers from Somerset and Bristol, Courtney was said to have ‘scarce spoke[n] anything but treason, most bitterly reviling the present government and his highness’, and his intention declared to be a rallying of the ‘anabaptistical interest’ in the capital.45TSP iii. 140, 143. Another associate under close scrutiny by the government was Edward Sexby, like Allen a former agitator of the New Model army, and in Weymouth the device of a (probably fictitious) letter from Courtney to Sexby was deployed in a futile attempt to entrap Sexby.46TSP iii. 194. Shortly after this, Courtney reached Westminster, and with Thomas Harrison I, John Carew and Nathaniel Rich* put on a show of support for the prominent Fifth Monarchist preacher John Rogers, as the minister was led back to prison. A brief audience that Harrison, Courtney, Carew and Rich had with Cromwell ended with a longer meeting promised, but this turned into a confrontation which led to the men’s arrests for actively working against the government.47The Faithfull Narrative (1655), 41, 43 (E.830.20); Clarke Pprs. ii. 242-6. At some point before or during these troubles, and certainly before 4 March, Courtney’s wife, whose name has not been discovered, was reported by a friend of his to be dead.48NLW MS 11439D, f. 16.

By this time, Courtney had become one of the ‘true and faithful patriots’ who represented the hopes of the millenarians.49A Letter from a Christian Friend (1655), 2. By mid-February 1656, the council of state had relented and ordered Courtney, Harrison, Carew and Rich to be released, only to change its collective mind a few weeks later (7 Mar.).50CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 190, 202, 215. Rogers, Courtney and Harrison were incarcerated at Carisbrooke castle on the Isle of Wight, where they supported each other in adversity, reflecting on the recent history of the Saints, and the need to ‘make haste with the main body (as they begun blessedly, in that wing of honourable Wales) to move for the relief of the engaged forlorn!’.51J. Rogers, Jegar Sahadvtha: an Oyled Pillar (1657), 33 (2nd pagination), 139. For Courtney, Vavasor Powell was ‘hearty, high and heavenly’, even if he was not, owing to his detention, among the signatories of Powell’s A Word for God, a ringing denunciation of the protectorate.52TSP i. 640; Richards, Religious Developments, 205, 218. In what was clearly a strategy of cat-and-mouse by the authorities, in October 1656 Courtney was ordered to be freed, and during this period of liberty continued to proselytize on behalf of the millenarian creed. He was among those rounded up after a foiled disturbance at Shoreditch in April 1657, but was released when found not to be implicated.53B. Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men (1972), 117-8. In August 1657, for example, he subscribed a tract in favour of fasting, drawing on the tradition among the ‘good old puritans’ but with a renewed spiritual intensity.54CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 130; An Invitation to a Solemn Day of Humiliation (1657). On 3 February 1658, another order from the lord protector’s council directed that Courtney, Rogers and John Portman should be incarcerated in the Tower for trying to disturb the peace, and he was there until September.55TSP vi. 775; Capp, Fifth Monarchy Men,120-1. He was arrested on the evidence of the books found at his London lodgings.56Public Intelligencer no. 121 (8-15 Feb. 1658), 321 recte 301 (E.748.13). Just before his arrest it was reported in the government newspaper that Courtney, John Carew, and Thomas Harrison I had been re-baptized, though there seems no corroborating evidence from another, less hostile, source.57Public Intelligencer no. 120 (1-8 Feb. 1658), 286 (E.748.11). Although he was apparently released shortly after Cromwell’s death in September 1658, his name became a by-word for perceived victims of the Cromwellian regime.58PRO31/17/33, pp. 74-5; G. Trewman, A Warning to the Court, Parliament and the Army (1659), 2.

With the restoration of the Rump Parliament, Courtney enjoyed a brief period of rehabilitation. He was restored to his militia office in north Wales in July 1659, and was given the same commission in Cornwall, where he was also named to the assessment committee in January 1660. These appointments doubtless owed everything to John Jones I, who on 14 July 1659 asked the committee of safety if Courtney could again be his deputy as governor of Anglesey.59CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 28. This was a step too far for the Rump, however, and there is no record of his re-appointment. Nevertheless, his political influence was not neutralized. In September, his name was among those signing an outspoken denunciation of the protectorate, and insisting on the departure from public office of protectorians.60An Essay towards Settlement (1659, 669.f.21.73). Courtney did not lend his name to the Remonstrance and Protestation of 16 November against rule by the council of army officers, but in December, he joined Sir Henry Vane II, Thomas Scot I, Richard Salwey* and others aboard Bristol at Gravesend, in an attempt to persuade Admiral John Lawson and the fleet to remain loyal to the Rump. In a satirical account of this episode, Courtney was reckoned ‘famous for nothing but that he was a chip of the same block’ as Vane and his colleagues.61A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Fleet (1659), 3; Sir Harry Vane's Last Sigh (1659), 4. The restoration of the monarchy could only be staved off briefly, however, and the return of the king would inevitably bode ill for Courtney.

On 14 Apr. 1660, Courtney and his co-religionist William Allen were ordered to be detained for endeavouring to ‘debauch’ some of the soldiers from their ‘obedience’, and being otherwise suspected of conduct dangerous to the state.62CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 573. On Christmas day that year, he and other former army officers were arrested on only vague grounds; but they expressed ‘joy in their affliction’.63CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 424; Capp, Fifth Monarchy Men, 196. After intercession from Courtney’s respectable surviving brother, Nicholas, they were released from the Gatehouse, 19 June 1661, on security of £1,000 to leave the kingdom within 15 days, and not to return.64PC2/55/256. After this, Courtney’s movements were shadowy, as he moved around to evade arrest. A report to the government in 1666 claimed that he was active in Hertfordshire and Essex, especially in the Epping Forest district, one of a group of intermediaries between the ‘runaway regicides’ and republicans remaining in England. His associate was said to be Walter Thimbleton, one of Morgan Llwyd’s London correspondents in the mid-1650s, and Courtney was thought to be still a leader among the underground nonconformists: ‘always ... looked upon by the whole faction as the chief champion of their cause, for which he considers himself an eminent martyr, as to the loss of his power and places’.65SP29/144/71. After that, he disappeared entirely from the record, with only a possible sighting of him in Gravesend in 1671.66CSP Dom. 1671, p. 52.