ROSE, Richard (c.1605-bef. 1658), of Lyme Regis and Wootton Fitzpaine, Dorset.

The Rose family was well established in Lyme Regis by the end of Elizabeth’s reign. John Rose, the father of Richard, was a merchant who had been mayor of the town in 1591, and his wife was the daughter of another prominent burgess (and MP for the borough in 1571), William Elsdon.18Hutchins, Dorset ii. 78. Richard followed this family tradition: after being educated at Oxford and the Middle Temple, he returned to Lyme, where he served on the corporation, and was elected mayor in 1633.19Dorset RO, DC/LR/D1/1, pp. 73-6. By this time he was married the daughter of Henry Henley of Leigh, who had interests in the town, and whose son, also Henry Henley*, would later serve as MP for the borough.20Hutchins, Dorset ii. 71. By the outbreak of the civil war, Rose had built up a network of contacts which established him as one of the senior members of Lyme’s ruling elite, and his family had risen to minor gentry status, having recently purchased the manor of Wootton Fitzpaine, three miles from Lyme.21Hutchins, Dorset ii. 273-4.

Rose seems to have grown increasingly opposed to the Caroline regime during the 1630s. On 19 October 1637 John Newell gave evidence that Rose, hearing that the fleet was raised to maintain Charles I’s title as ‘king of the narrow seas’, retorted, ‘what a foolery is this, that the country in general shall be thus much taxed with great sums to maintain the king’s titles and honours!’, and claimed to be £10 the poorer for such pretensions.22CSP Dom. 1637, p. 481. Rose’s outspoken criticism of the government, which accorded with the views of Lyme’s puritan burgesses, made him an obvious candidate as the borough’s MP in spring 1640 among those critical of the regime. However, the last-minute candidature of Sir Walter Erle*, who had given up the chance of a county seat in early March, appears to have squeezed Rose out at Lyme on the 21st. Erle and Edmund Prideaux I*, both godly gentlemen, were returned.23C219/42/94; cf. Bayley, Dorset, 22, 29. Rose was more successful in October 1640, however, when he was elected as the junior member with Prideaux as Lyme’s representative in the Long Parliament.24C219/43/165.

Rose’s political career in the first two years of the Long Parliament was chequered. He had travelled to Westminster by 3 May 1641, when he took the Protestation, and on 5 March 1642 he joined Prideaux in returning thanks to Lyme from Parliament for its efforts in raising £80 for relief of the Irish Protestants, but otherwise his activities went unrecorded.25CJ ii. 133a, 467b. He was given leave of absence from the Commons on 1 June 1642, but after his departure his loyalty to Parliament’s cause was questioned: at the call of the House on 16 June he was listed as absent without leave, and he had still not returned on 22 July, when he was formally summoned to attend.26CJ ii. 597b, 626n, 685b; PJ iii. 482. Yet by the end of September the Commons’ fears that he had absconded to the royalist side seem to have subsided, as he was given official authority to remain in Dorset for a further two weeks, and on 24 October he was readmitted to the House without quibble.27CJ ii. 782b, 820b. From the on, Rose’s loyalty to Parliament was unquestioned, and in the following six years he attended the House fairly regularly. As an experienced merchant, he soon became involved in the financial business of the Commons. He was named to committees to consider the accounts of money collected in the counties on 28 October 1642 and 27 January 1643, and on 5 June 1643 he was appointed to a committee to account for all money brought in under ordinances; and in September and October he was named to committees considering aspects of the customs and excise taxes.28CJ ii. 825b, 945b; iii. 115b, 243b, 263b. During this period he was also appointed to committees to consider compounding with delinquents (14 Aug.), the sequestration of royalist MPs (23 and 28 Aug.), and in July 1644 he was appointed to committees for managing the estates of papists and delinquents.29CJ iii. 203b, 216b, 220a, 550b. He was named to the committee for petitions on 3 October.30CJ iii. 649b. Sequestration and confiscation would retain Rose’s (not disinterested) attentions until the end of the decade, when he was involved in legislation for the sale of dean and chapter lands.31CJ iv. 613a; v. 602a.

Despite his involvement in Parliament’s wider financial situation, Rose’s parliamentary career during the early 1640s was dominated by his concern for the defence of Dorset. In February 1643, he and Prideaux were ordered to prepare an ordinance to indemnify Thomas Ceely*, the governor of Lyme; and in August Rose was named to committees to consider the relief of Exeter, and how to respond to the loss of most of Dorset to the royalist forces under Prince Rupert.32CJ ii. 974a; iii. 192b, 196a. Only Lyme Regis and Poole withstood the king’s forces during the autumn and winter of 1643-4, and Rose used his influence in Westminster to raise money for the relief of his home town.33CJ iii. 310b, 313a, 328a; CCAM, 1489; Add. 18779, f. 106. During the hard-fought siege of Lyme in the early months of 1644, Rose was active in raising money for the defenders – again working in conjunction with Prideaux.34CJ iii. 465b, 494a, 508b, 513a. On 30 May, Rose organised the delivery of a letter of encouragement to Ceely and the other defenders, and on 17 June, after Lyme had been relieved by the army of the 3rd earl of Essex, Rose and Prideaux were ordered to draft the letter of thanks from Parliament to the town.35CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 183-4; CJ iii. 532b. The requisitioning of rents and buildings during the siege caused Rose considerable financial hardship. On 16 December 1644 the Commons ordered, on a report of the Committee for the West, that Rose was to receive satisfaction for the rents and profits sequestered by the garrison during the siege; and on 3 June 1645 he was granted a £4 weekly allowance for his maintenance.36CJ iii. 724a; iv. 161a. On 19 August he was granted leave to go into the country, presumably to settle his estates once the New Model had recaptured Dorset.37CJ iv. 247a. His departure was delayed by other regional concerns. On 23 August he reported an ordinance for the relief of merchants in the west country, but nothing was done until 26 September, when a date for a reading of the ordinance was set, and it was another month before the Commons decided to send it to the Committee for the West for further consideration.38CJ iv. 251b, 288a, 320b. He was an ex officio member of that committee by virtue of his representing a constituency in the west of England, and surviving scattered warrants suggest that he attended its meeting from time to time when he was at Westminster. He never occupied anything approaching a leadership role, however.39Belvoir Castle, PZ.2, ‘Original Letters, members of Long Parliament’volume; WO55/460, unfol.; WO47/1, ff. 136v, 137; SP28/251, Part 1; SP28/266/2, ff. 44-5; Add. 22084, f. 9; Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 140.

Rose seems to have been absent from Westminster from the end of October 1645 until the end of April 1646. By then, Parliament had become embroiled in factional conflict, and Rose was put in a difficult position. His attempts to relieve Lyme had inevitably brought him closer to his colleague as MP for the borough, Edmund Prideaux I, and another of Rose’s political allies in the early 1640s was Prideaux’s friend, John Trenchard*, who had considerable influence in Dorset through his family’s virtual control of the county committee. The parliamentary connection between Rose and Trenchard had developed as early as the winter of 1642-3, and may have influenced his appointment to the local accounts committee, and to a committee for St Martin-in-the-Fields, both chaired by Trenchard.40CJ ii. 825b, 889a. This alliance was based on local affairs, and apart from financial dealings, Rose had yet to engage with national politics, still less with factionalism; but during 1645 and 1646 this detachment came to an end, and he was gradually drawn into the Presbyterian interest. An early sign of Rose’s increased interest in politics came during the controversy over the reorganization of the armed forces in March 1645, when he ‘divulged’ to the House a divisive paper passing around the Compter Prison in Southwark which listed those MPs who supported and opposed Essex as lord general.41Add. 31116, p. 392; CJ iv. 65b. In the late spring and summer of 1646 Rose was named to a series of key committees that also suggest he had sympathies with the Presbyterian interest. On 24 April he was appointed to the committee on the ordinance to bring in assessments for Ireland; on 25 June he was named to a committee to hear a report by the marquess of Argyll (Archibald Campbell*) about the king’s defection to the Scots; and in January 1647, after another period of absence in Dorset, he was also added to the cross-bench committee set up to oversee the Committee of Accounts, chaired by the arch-Presbyterian, William Prynne*.42CJ iv. 521a, 587a; v. 63a; Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 33-4.

Rose’s connection with Prynne is suggestive, but during the Presbyterian resurgence in the early months of 1647, his activity in the Commons was slight. On 13 February he was named to the committee on an ordinance for restraining the consumption of meat, and on 28 April he was ordered to invite the Presbyterian divine, Thomas Temple, to preach, but otherwise he took no part in proceedings.43CJ v. 86a, 155b. In early May, however, Rose was involved in two initiatives that again suggest that he was a supporter of the Presbyterian interest in their efforts to defuse tensions with the New Model. On 5 May he was appointed to committee to settle lands on Oliver Cromwell* in an attempt to curry his favour; and on 7 May he was added to the committee to scrutinise the ordinance guaranteeing indemnity to the New Model (although he was not included in the Indemnity Committee appointed to implement this ordinance a fortnight later).44CJ v. 162b, 166a; A. and O. Rose’s decision to attend the Commons during the Presbyterian coup of July-August 1647 left no doubt as to his political affiliations. On 2 August he was named to a committee which sought to absolve the Presbyterian party from blame in the forcing of the Houses, and on the same day he was sent to ask Thomas Case to preach.45CJ v. 265a-b.

On 17 August, after the New Model’s recapture of London, Rose acted as teller with John Bowyer opposing a motion to rescind all legislation during the Presbyterian coup, and he was named to the committee on the same the next day.46CJ v. 275b, 278a Perhaps in response to the upsurge of Independent power in the lower House, Rose withdrew from Westminster on 9 October.47CJ v. 330a. He was not absent for long. By the middle of November he had returned to oppose the influence of the Levellers and other sectaries: he was named to committees to investigate unrest in the army and in London (16 and 18 Nov.), and added to a committee to investigate the information against Edward Stephens* for his part in the ‘forcing of the Houses’.48CJ v. 360a, 363a, 367a. On 10 December he was teller in favour of sending Colonel Thomas Rainborowe* to sea with the fleet; on 21 December he was named to a committee to report on indemnity ordinances; and on 4 January 1648 he joined the committee for grievances.49CJ v. 378b, 396a, 417a. Rose continued to sit for a few weeks after the Vote of No Addresses, but again withdrew after being given leave of absence on 27 January.50CJ v. 445b.

Behind Rose’s political views lay strongly-held religious beliefs. He had been increasingly active in religious affairs at Westminster from May 1646, when he was named to the committee to draft an ordinance to allow Parliament to set out what constituted scandalous religious offences – a move seen as state interference by the Presbyterians.51CJ iv. 553b. It is doubtful that Rose approved of this legislation, however, as in the same month he liaised between Parliament and the prominent Presbyterian divines Edmund Calamy and Stephen Marshall, and thereafter he acted as messenger to a number of Presbyterian ministers, including Thomas Temple, Thomas Case, Andrew Perne and Simeon Ashe.52CJ iv. 556a, 558a; CJ v. 155b, 265b, 272b, 470b. From the beginning of 1648 Rose’s religious interests came to the fore. On 23 February he was named with such unrepentant Presbyterians as Edward Stephens and Sir Gilbert Gerard* to a committee enjoining the strict observance of the Lord’s Day, and on 16 June he was appointed with Sir Walter Erle and others to the committee-stage of the ordinance to abolish deans and chapters.53CJ v. 471a, 602a. In August he was named in the ordinance which stipulated the process for excluding individuals from the sacrament or Lord’s Supper and significantly, in the same month he acted as teller with John Boys against allowing reparations to the former parliamentarian army officer, and notorious Leveller, John Lilburne.54A. and O.; CJ v. 686a. Rose clearly found the increasing importance of the New Model and their sectarian allies difficult to bear. On 26 September he was recorded as absent without leave during the call of the House, and on 25 November he was given official permission to return to Dorset to take charge of collecting the assessment.55CJ vi. 34a, 87b. He was secluded as a supporter of the Treaty of Newport at Pride’s Purge in December 1648.56A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 384.

Rose’s political stance brought immediate financial penalties. His position on the county committee, and his involvement in the administration of sequestrations nationally, had allowed him to gain money and goods from the seizure of delinquents’ estates in Dorset during the 1640s.57Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 125. He had also benefited from confiscations in Westminster, where he worked privately with John Trenchard to their mutual advantage. Yet this collaboration reputedly turned sour when a dispute arose between the two men over the goods of one Mr Bagley, which ‘Mr Rose caused to be sequestered, and got it to himself, for which he and Mr Trenchard fell out’.58G. Bankes, Story of Corfe Castle (1853), 231. This rift may also have been influenced by the diverging political views of Rose and Trenchard. Rose’s connections with the political Presbyterians certainly affected his position in other ways. He was pursued for goods of ‘several delinquents’ by the Committee for Compounding in the early 1650s, and received no protection from his former Independent colleagues.59CCC 523, 581. Rose also lost the support of his fellow-MP for Lyme, Edmund Prideaux I. In September 1650, Rose was fined £200 by the Lyme corporation for refusing to take the oath of Engagement as demanded on his recent election as mayor.60Dorset RO, DC/LR/D1/1, pp. 84-5. Although this order was rescinded by the corporation, in 1655 Prideaux used his authority as the town’s recorder to re-impose the fine.61Dorset RO, DC/LR/D1/1, pp. 90-1. There were also tensions within the family: Rose’s brother-in-law, Henry Henley complained in October 1649 that he had refused to compromise over an inheritance dispute, and ‘takes it unkindly’.62Dorset RO, D/BLX/F3. This disagreement was probably connected with another dispute over an unpaid debt of £2,000 incurred as part of his marriage negotiations some twenty years before, which led to a protracted and expensive case in chancery in the early 1650s.63C3/459/58; C5/19/9; C6/117/142; C6/119/122. The jurors of the civil court of Lyme Regis complained in May 1653 that it was incumbent on Rose and Henley, as freeholders should ‘do suit’ at the local court, perhaps aware of their litigation elsewhere.64Dorset RO, DC/LR/B1/9, p. 111.

The chancery case had still not been resolved in October 1655 when Rose, ‘being weak in body but (I praise God) of strong and perfect memory’, drew up his will. Despite his financial difficulties, he was still able to provide generous settlements to his sons and portions for his daughters, most of whom were under age and all unmarried, and he expressed the hope that they would ‘live in love and amity together’ at Wootton Fitzpaine, under the watchful eye of guardians drawn from his extended family. The overseers of the will included Henry Henley, and the executor was his son and heir, also Richard Rose. Rose died before February 1658, when his will was proved.65PROB11/273/481. In 1662 the mayor and burgesses acquitted Rose’s executors of the £200 fine they had imposed in 1650, possibly on the behest of Henry Henley, now MP for the borough.66Dorset RO, DC/LR/D1/1, p. 101. The family was still living in Wootton Fitzpaine during the nineteenth century.67Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 273-4.