DOWNES, John (1609-aft. 1665), of Manby, Lincs., Pulborough, Suss. and Hampstead, Mdx.

By the time he came to make his will in March 1618, this MP’s father, Richard Downes, was a man of substance, with a ‘mansion house newly built’ in Manby, near Louth, Lincolnshire, and with other property purchased from Hugh Rogers of Nottinghamshire, and from Herbert Pelham† and other members of a family established both in Lincolnshire and Sussex.45PROB11/133/230. Richard’s origins are obscure – in his lives of the regicides, Noble claimed that Downes was of a ‘mean family’ – but Richard’s brother John, an executor of the will and rector of Manby since 1583, had entered St John’s College, Cambridge, in 1568 as a pensioner, indicating gentry status.46Noble, Regicides, 191; Al. Cant. Given the MP’s future office-holding under the crown and commonwealth, it may be that his father was the Richard Downes who was involved in a dispute over customs at Kings Lynn, Norfolk, in the 1570s, or who was a commissioner with Edward Bankes and Cuthbert Stillingfleet to seize prize goods in the 1590s, or even who was a supplier of munitions for Ireland in 1580 (as his younger son was to be of cloth for troops decades later).47SP46/29, ff. 282-7, 292; APC 1591-2, p. 486; 1592-3, p. 41; PC2/13, f. 336. Whatever the truth of this, Richard’s will, which revealed that he was ‘visited by the merciful hand of the Lord in body, but by the mercy of God strong in faith’, suggests godly leanings; his son-in-law and other executor, Samuel Vinter, vicar of Redbourne, had been preaching without a licence.48PROB11/133/230; Al. Cant.; Clergy of the C of E database.

Early career

Nothing is known of John Downes’s childhood and youth. In February 1632, aged about 22, he was admitted to the Inner Temple and around this time may have married.49I. Temple database. In 1633 Maurice Mosley, a Staffordshire-born London merchant, told the heralds that his sister Johanna was the wife of John Downes of the Inner Temple.50Vis. London ii. 114. Yet it was as a bachelor of that inn that in April 1634 Downes was licensed to marry Catherine Townley of Hackney, Middlesex.51London Mar. Lics. ed. Foster, 416.

Having been lodging late in 1632 in the fashionable parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster, where he had opportunity to cultivate powerful patrons, in October 1634 he acquired one of the two potentially lucrative positions as auditor of the duchy of Cornwall, succeeding Thomas Gewen*.52Bodl. Bankes 62, ff. 51-2; Coventry Docquets, 190; C66/2673/1. By this time living in Cripplegate, some three miles from Hackney, he took his oath of office on 28 November, and became responsible for auditing the accounts of the duchy’s receiver-general.53Bodl. Bankes 14, ff. 49-50, 51-2; DCRO, Duchy Index 3, p. 350; box 106, roll 297. His work in the exchequer entailed correspondence with some of the most important political figures of the 1630s.54E306/12, box 2, bdle. 25, nos. 7-9, 16; bdle. 22, nos. 24-5. By the end of the decade Downes seems to have been based some of the time in Sussex. Two sons, apparently his and Catherine’s, were baptised in December 1638 and October 1640 at Billingshurst, some six miles from Pulborough, where he certainly had property in 1642, and nine miles from Petworth, the seat of Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland.55IGI; West Suss. Protestation Returns, 143; LR2/266, f. 19; CRES6/2, p. 610.

Long Parliament 1641-7

Following the death in October 1641 of Henry Garton*, usher of the court of wards, whose father’s family originated in Billingshurst and whose mother was connected to the Pelhams, Downes was elected to replace him as MP for Arundel. Garton had enjoyed the backing of the Catholic Howard family, and Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel, endeavoured to secure the seat for his secretary, Mr Harman. Downes, working under new treasury commissioners since the lord treasurer, Bishop William Juxon, had been removed from office by Parliament that May, potentially had backers critical of the royal government, and was probably supported by local puritan gentry.56E306/12, box 2, bdle. 25, no. 2; C231/5, p. 488. His return to Parliament on 20 December was disputed by Arundel’s supporters, who alleged that the town’s mayor, James Morris, had disregarded the choice of the commonalty of the borough. On the other hand, a number of prominent godly MPs upheld Downes’s case: Sir Gilbert Gerard moved that he should be allowed to sit while the matter was discussed; Sir Robert Harley suggested that the other return should be removed altogether; and Sir Walter Erle successfully proposed that the sheriff of Sussex, Giles Barton, should be summoned for questioning.57C219/43ii/132; PJ i. 80, 87. Gerard’s motion was agreed on 15 January 1642, and Downes duly took his seat, but the dispute was still live in June and was never formally resolved.58West Suss. Protestation Returns, 143; CJ ii. 380b, 628a.

For the next 16 months Downes’s name did not appear in the Journal, and indeed his attendance was apparently rare until after Pride’s Purge. He was belatedly called to the bar (May 1642), and his third (or second) marriage at the very godly church of St Stephen, Coleman Street (Dec. 1642), offers a glimpse of the circles in which he was moving.59I. Temple database; St Stephen, Coleman Street, par. reg. Early in 1643 he emerged at the vanguard of parliamentarians in Sussex, being appointed an assessment and a sequestrations commissioner, and proving one of the ‘most active men’ in the county.60A. and O.; SP46/105, f. 107. He was zealous in seizing plate and in considering the cases of suspected royalists; with William Cawley I* he was alleged to have been one of the ‘principal actors’ in confiscating the property of Henry King, bishop of Chichester.61SP28/264, f. 176; SP19/90, f. 40; M. Hobbs, ‘The Restoration correspondence of Bishop Henry King’, Suss. Arch. Coll. cxxv. 142; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 290. Placed on the county committee, dominated by the militant Harbert Morley* (18 July 1643), Downes subsequently became a commissioner for the southern association (4 Nov.), a deputy lieutenant of Sussex (3 June 1644) and a justice of the peace (bef. 11 July).62CJ iii. 173a, 516a; A. and O.; Suss. QSOB 1642-9, 54. He was equally assiduous in all these roles.63W. Suss. RO, QR/W52, 54-6, 60-62; Add. MS 13303; SP28/246, unfol.; SP28/181, unfol.; CJ iii. 616a; iv. 41a; E.C. Holmes, ‘A levy by the Parliament during the Commonwealth’, Suss. Arch. Coll. xlvii. 159-60.

Duchy of Cornwall duties also kept Downes from the Commons chamber, although not from interaction with it. In his capacity as auditor, he was probably involved in the attempt to prevent (Sir) Edward Hyde* and the royalist receiver-general, Sir Robert Napier, from raising money from duchy lands on behalf of the king. Parliament ultimately (1646) sought to replace Napier with their own receiver-general, Arthur Upton*, and to install Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, as steward, but in the meantime the Committee for Revenue tried to ensure that Downes – still in receipt of his £220 a year salary – could collect the valuable duchy revenues by forcing Napier to submit his accounts for audit.64M. Coate, ‘The Duchy of Cornwall: its history and administration 1640-1660’, TRHS 4th ser. x. 135-69; E306/12, box 1, bdle. 27, items 1, 4-7, 10, 13; DCRO, Z2/17; SC6/Chas. 1/1661 m. 8d; SC6/Chas.1/1662 m. 11d; SC6/Chas. 1/1663 m. 10d; SC6/Chas. 1/1664 m. 18d; SC6/Chas. 1/1664 m. 21r. The committee also attempted to subject stewards, bailiffs and collectors to parliamentary scrutiny, and assess the loyalty of duchy tenants.65E306/12, box 1, bdle. 27, items 2, 3, 11, 12, 14, 16. Overall, Downes took orders from various parliamentary committees and thereby encountered its leading political and financial figures. 66E306/12, box 1, bdle. 27, item 17.

His occasional appearances in the Commons were either to take political oaths or in connection with his external concerns. After a first committee nomination on 24 May 1643, on 6 May he took the new vow and covenant.67CJ iii. 101a, 118a. He was then present to take the Solemn League and Covenant on 1 November 1643, and on 8 January 1644 was dispatched with a message to the parliamentarian commander in the south, Sir William Waller*.68CJ iii. 297b, 360b. On 5 February he was recorded by the clerk as ‘absent in service’.69CJ iii. 389b. Dispatched to Sussex with Anthony Stapley I* to raise money for the latter’s troops (2 Sept.), by 4 February 1645, when he next surfaced and was again sent to the county on a fund-raising mission, he was referred to as ‘Colonel’, having apparently acquired a regiment under his own command and another distraction from the House.70CJ iv. 41a. Named to the committee to receive submissions from war widows seeking arrears (5 July), he then disappeared from the Journal for over two years.71CJ iv. 197a. On 11 August 1647 he re-emerged momentarily to be appointed to the committee for repealing the votes passed during the Presbyterian ‘coup’ of 26 July, but his absence was excused at the call of the House on 9 October.72CJ v. 272a, 330a. Following an order of 23 December, sending him to chivvy the collection of assessments, he was in Sussex, dealing also with army pay and attending quarter sessions.73CJ v. 400b; Add. 33058, f. 75; E179/191/398; Suss. QSOB 1642-9, 149.

Pride’s Purge and Rump, 1648–1653

Downes re-appeared only in November 1648, assuming a more active role in the Commons with an unacceptable peace with the king in prospect. Summoned to the Committee for Revenue to present his certificate of the Duchy revenues, he was then placed on the committee to consider garrisons, presumably by those who expected him to maintain them.74E306/12, box 1, bdle. 27, item 8; bdle. 41, m. 2; CJ vi. 87a. His support for the purge on 6 December was signalled by his inclusion on the committee set up to investigate and suppress the pamphlet response of the secluded Members, and he took the dissent (to the vote of 5 December in support of a negotiated settlement) on 20 December, the day it was introduced.75PA, Ms CJ xxxiii, pp. 473-4; CJ vi. 97b; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 372. Indicatively, on 1 January 1649 he was nominated to the Army Committee (confirmed 6 Jan.). 76CJ vi. 107b, 113b.

Yet Downes’s post-Restoration claim that he was a reluctant participant in the trial of the king was not simply a story fabricated at that point to escape the penalty. Appointed to consider the erection of a high court of justice (3 Jan. 1649), he was included among the judges named in the resulting act, although on his own telling his name was inserted after amendments had been reported and after he had succumbed, ‘through weakness and fear’, to pressure placed upon him.77CJ vi. 110b; Downes, True and Humble Representation. He attended ten of the preparatory meetings held in the Painted Chamber and four days of the trial. 78Muddiman, Trial, 76, 88-9, 96, 103, 195, 199, 201, 208-10, 212, 224-6. But on 27 January he made his objections to proceedings plain to the two men sitting next to him in the court, his Sussex colleague William Cawley I and Valentine Wauton*. His persistent protests, which also attracted the attention of Oliver Cromwell*, overcame attempts to silence him. When the clerk was asked to read the sentence against the king, Downes rose to declare that he could not concur with it, and to seek an adjournment. When the court retired, Downes expressed his opinion that it should hear the king, and that the trial was improper because no witnesses had been produced. Cromwell thereupon called him a ‘peevish man’, and said that ‘he would fain save his old master’, while Francis Allein* said that ‘he had for some time suspected Mr Downes to be for the king’.79State Trials, v. 1005, 1210-13; Downes, True and Humble Representation; HMC 7th Rep. 157-8. When court proceedings resumed, Downes failed to return, and although he subsequently signed the death warrant, he later claimed to have done so only under duress.80Downes, True and Humble Representation; HMC 7th Rep. 157-8; Muddiman, Trial, 227-9; LJ xi. 380b.

As Allein suggested, residual loyalty to the crown under which Downes had received employment might have been at play, but another factor looks to have been fear of religious radicalism. Around the middle of January, and against the backdrop of court proceedings, he had at least two clashes with fellow judge John Fry* in which Downes defended – ‘with passionate language’ – Trinitarian orthodoxy. On his own admission, Fry expressed Unitarian views and defended a minister who had been arrested for ‘denying the personality of Christ’. On 26 January Downes – primed, Fry suspected, by others – framed a charge of blasphemy against him. When Fry tried to nab him in the chamber before the debate, he reported Downes as rising to his feet ‘in a great fit of passion’ and telling the House that he ‘much more fear[ed] your Members within door’ than the secluded Members outside; as someone who did ‘not often trouble you with speeches’, Downes was impelled to ‘discharge my conscience’ against such heterodoxy. 81J. Fry, The Accuser Sham’d (1648), 13-19 (E.554.7). After discussion, Fry was ordered to withdraw and was suspended from the House.82Fry, The Accuser Sham’d, 20; CJ vi. 123b. Although a later allegation that Downes had sought to exploit his quarrel with Fry in order to undermine the trial of the king and ‘destroy all the honest party in the nation’ was probably an exaggeration, it may have contained a kernel of truth: unrepentant about his interruption of the proceedings themselves, he was to claim that he had hoped they would serve to force a settlement rather than result in Charles’s execution.83HMC 7th Rep. 158-9.

For more than six months from early January, there was no visible sign of Downes in the Commons chamber. In February Fry sought to discredit him by publishing his account of their dispute as The Accuser Sham’d, but Downes still put in an appearance at the Army Committee and carried out his duties as auditor of the duchy of Cornwall.84SP28/58, f. 520; E306/12, box 1, bdle. 27, item 9. Over the summer he began to attend the Army Committee regularly, and by the first week of July he had resurfaced in Parliament.85SP28/61, ff. 7, 61, 66, 80, 323, 424, 479, 592, 648, 728-9, 732, 738, 829, 834, 843, 854.

Almost immediately, and for the first time, he assumed a prominent position in the House. He was named to important committees relating to public debt (4 July), the probate of wills (18 July) and seditious news (9 Aug.), as well as those for hospitals (21 July) and the encouragement of trade in the Caribbean (25 July).86CJ vi. 250a, 263b, 267b, 270a, 276a. Added first on 28 July to the committee for removing obstructions in the sale of dean and chapter lands, he was soon buying property seized by Parliament and also acquiring goods from the estate of the late king, although he later denied having done so.87CJ vi. 271b; W. Suss. RO, Add. MS 4280; Hannah, ‘Bishop’s Palace’, 21; C54/3586/30; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 360; Downes, True and Humble Representation. His return to Parliament mirrored that of others who had opposed the execution of the king, but in his case it may have been prompted partly by financial concerns. His post as duchy auditor disappeared, but on 16 July the council of state ordered that Downes should receive £3,000 in compensation; this was paid over the following years.88CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 233; SC6/Chas.1/1667 m. 14d; SC6/Chas.1/1668 m. 11; SC6/Chas.1/1670 m. 18.

His new higher profile was not at first sustained. Over six months from early August 1649 Downes appeared in the Journal only twice, although in a manner which suggested he had maintained a certain standing in a slimmed-down assembly. Named on 9 November 1649 to the committee to consider the implementation of the Engagement to the commonwealth, three weeks later he and Nicholas Lechmere needed to marshal only 20 voices to block a proviso to the bill on assessments which would allow King’s Lynn to escape an increase in its contribution.89CJ vi. 321b, 328a. But from 9 February 1650 Downes appeared much more regularly in the Journal than heretofore, and this pattern was maintained until the dissolution of the Rump.

Some of Downes’s appointments indicate an interest in general social, economic and legal issues. In 1650 he was placed on committees for the poor law (1 Mar.) and for Sackville College, a Sussex almshouse (second after Morley, 31 May).90CJ vi. 374b, 418a. With Morley he was a teller for the minority who tried to have the act on civil marriages engrossed on 10 January 1651.91CJ vi. 522b. Later he was nominated to committees discussing the soap monopoly (29 May 1651) and county registrars (2 Feb. 1653).92CJ vi. 581a; vii. 253b. But this was a modest record.

The same might be said of Downes’s activity with regard to religion. He was among MPs chosen to discuss measures for suppressing Ranters (14 June 1650), was added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers (4 July) and placed on a committee to promote the preaching of the gospel in St Albans (5 Sept. 1651).93CJ vi. 423b, 437a; vii. 12b. However, he seems to have expressed his views largely outside the House through the medium of clerical patronage, and to have been fairly tolerant within the mainstream. John Robotham, who had formerly received support from William Cawley I and Anthony Stapley I, and who was a member of William Greenhill’s Independent congregation, dedicated to Downes his Exposition of the Whole Book of Solomon’s Song in 1651; later a Congregationalist preacher, he was ejected after the Restoration.94‘John Robotham’, Oxford DNB; Calamy Revised, 413-14. Downes made a succession of presentations to benefices in the 1650s, but while some were of men who became Congregationalists and were also ejected, others, like his kinsman George Vinter, kept their posts long after it.95Dunkin, ‘Admissions to Suss. Benefices’, 216, 219, 221; Al. Cant.; Sawyer, ‘Procs. CPM Suss.’, Suss. Arch. Coll. xxxi. 194; N. Caplan, ‘George Vinter: A Sussex Vicar of Bray?’, Suss. N. and Q. xvi. 82-9; Calamy Revised, 134-5, 490. Downes later claimed to have acted on behalf of a group of Presbyterian divines who faced the death penalty for their part in the ‘Love plot’ during the early 1650s. He had presented the petition from Christopher Love’s wife begging that her husband be spared, delivered to the House on 9 July 1651, and had only narrowly failed to secure this end by his management of a division.96Downes, True and Humble Representation; CJ vi. 599b, 603a-b; vii. 1-2, 5. He had also, he said, contributed ‘not a little’ to saving the lives of Arthur Jackson and William Jenkins, who were pardoned on 15 October, although it is impossible to verify any of these claims.97Downes, True and Humble Representation; CJ vi. 28a-b.

Increasingly over the life of the Rump, Downes’s work in and around the House was dominated by the twin concerns of money-raising and the army – eventually almost to the exclusion of other matters. Initially his auditorial background may have been at least partly behind his inclusion on committees investigating claims about the Accounts Committee (9 Feb. 1650), considering ordinances for assessments (with Harbert Morley, 18 Feb.), amalgamating revenue into one treasury (of which he was made joint chairman, 18 Apr.), reviewing manors confiscated from deans and chapters (18 Apr.) and devising ‘the best way of raising money for the public service’ (28 Aug.).98CJ vi. 360a, 368a, 400a, 400b, 459b. Thereafter he was regularly to be found discussing, drafting and reporting on measures for selling confiscated lands, fixing and collecting assessments, and maximising public income.99CJ vi. 476a, 528a, 561a, 561b; vii. 6b, 10a, 115a, 134b, 138b, 154b, 191b, 225b, 262a, 263b; Stowe 184, f. 274.

Much of this activity overlapped visibly with Army Committee business.100CJ vi. 476a-477a, 488b, 500a, 504b, 524a; vii. 3a, 51b, 54a, 128a, 140a, 154a, 226b, 229b. Named in May 1650 to a committee to settle the militia in May, at the same time Downes became more regular in his attendance at the Army Committee, and was made its chairman on 9 July.101CJ vi. 417a, 438b; SP28/67, ff. 392, 394, 428, 470, 472, 476, 478, 629-30; SP28/68, ff. 54, 57, 157, 237, 245, 294; SP28/69, ff. 78, 223, 227, 231, 233. He made numerous and sometimes lengthy reports to the Commons on subjects also including the disposition and cost of forces, army pay and billet money, and the relief of war widows and orphans, as well as on draft legislation to perpetuate the Committee itself and the treasurers-at-war; in March 1652 his reports were scheduled for every Wednesday.102CJ vi. 524a, 562a, 563b, 569b, 572a, 618a; vii. 18b, 47b, 51a, 58a, 58b, 61a, 74b, 77a, 78b, 97b, 103b, 106b, 107a, 108b, 109b, 110a, 115b-117a, 119b-121b, 143b, 164b, 174a, 174b, 178b, 187b, 224a-225a, 230b, 241b-242a, 247b, 248a, 264a. His ‘pains and service’ were rewarded by a gratuity of £300 in January 1651, but he and his family benefited in other ways too.103CCC 408; SP28/70-94; SP46/96, f. 129; E101/67/11b, m. 130v. No doubt thanks to this connection, his brother Richard Downes, a London draper who had been supplying troops with clothing since the mid-1640s, continued to receive contracts, and also (probably in the footsteps of their father) became a commissioner for customs and excise (Sept. 1650; Sept.-Dec. 1659) as well as an assessment and militia commissioner in Surrey and London.104Firth, Cromwell’s Army, 236, 238; CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 682-3; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 511; 1651-2, pp. 579, 588; SP28/58, f. 468; SP28/61, ff. 738, 740; CJ vi. 443a-b, 470b-471a, 562a; vii. 787a, 798a; A. and O.

Beyond his negative reaction to the regicide already discussed, Downes’s political views are hard to determine, but in view of the power and influence he potentially wielded, his later claim that he was ‘never of any junto or cabal’ may be viewed with some scepticism.105Downes, True and Humble Representation. It seems likely that he worked most closely with the civilian republicans, with whom he shared a religious and social conservatism. Amongst this group, Downes may have been closest to Harbert Morley, alongside whom he occasionally acted as teller.106CJ vi. 263b, 321b, 368a, 522b. In February 1650 Downes was a teller with Sir Michael Livesay* for the majority who opposed the election to the council of state of Sir John Danvers*, who was widely suspected of being duplicitious and self-seeking, and as such distrusted by genuine republicans.107CJ vi. 362b. Yet in May 1651 Downes was a teller with Danvers for setting a quorum of five for the trustees for the sale of delinquents’ estates, a measure carried by the Speaker’s casting vote.108CJ vi. 574a.

Occasionally Downes secured nominations hinting at involvement in some more general political and personnel issues around Westminster. Added to the committee for Whitehall on 21 May 1651, he was also named to discuss measures prohibiting ambassadors from receiving pensions from foreign powers (7 Aug.) and for limiting the life of the Long Parliament and calling a successor (25 Sept.).109CJ vi. 576b, 618b; vii. 20b. But it was probably his work on the Army Committee which explains his election that November to the council of state, alongside fellow Sussex MPs Morley, Stapley I and William Hay*.110CJ vii. 42b. Although Downes was never absent for long, he had one of the lowest attendances at council meetings, and his sub-committee membership was limited to those for the ordnance, and for Scottish and Irish affairs.111CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. xxxvi-xlvii, 43, 151, 367, 514. Although he occasionally liaised between the council and the Commons on military matters – as he did also between the commissioners for compounding at Goldsmiths’ Hall and the Commons – the focus of his activity remained the chamber.112CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 45, 47; CJ vii. 33b, 51b, 77a, 78b, 92b, 103b, 106b.

In 1652 tension grew between the army and the Rump, partly as a result of MPs’ failure to make headway with reforms but especially as a result of the controversial policy of war with the Dutch – with which Downes, like Morley, was prominently associated. A key figure in Parliament’s consideration of the army’s grievances (Aug.- Sept.), Downes was then among many pro-war Members impelled to leave Westminster, having been granted liberty to go to the country on 15 October.113CJ vii. 191b. He reappeared in the Journal only after he had been unceremoniously dumped from the council of state in the elections held at the end of November. Nevertheless, on 2 December Downes reported from the Army Committee, and on 10 December 1652 he was also appointed to the standing committee to examine the revenue and treasury.114CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 19, 75; CJ vii. 225b. He continued to attend the excise committee, to report from the Army Committee, and to prepare related legislation until March 1653.115CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 136; CJ vii. 262a, 263b, 264a. His final appearance in the Journal was on 31 March, when with Michael Oldisworth* he was defeated in a division on the sale of episcopal lands; there is then no sign of him before the dissolution of Parliament on 20 April.116CJ vii. 274a.

Protectorate and returned Rump, 1659-60

Although he briefly returned to Sussex for the quarter sessions, Downes otherwise continued to carry out his duties on the Army Committee until 15 July 1653, when it too was dissolved (and reconstituted).117E. Suss. RO, QO/EW2, f. 44v; SP28/91, ff. 556, 558, 564; SP28/92-3; SP28/94, ff. 230, 356. He also remained in contact with the new council of state over the early summer, and was summoned to attend its meetings on at least one occasion in June.118CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 335, 416. With the advent of the Nominated Parliament and the protectorate, however, Downes withdrew from affairs at Westminster, and apparently retired to his estate at Hampstead. In June 1654 he wrote to the corporation of Arundel, waiving his salary as MP for the borough during the previous 12 years.119W. Suss. RO, MP1926, f. 66. On the other hand, although it was later reported that he continued to express his sadness at the fate of Charles I, and at his own treatment at the hands of Cromwell, he was still being nominated to local commissions, suggesting some official recognition of his usefulness and potential loyalty.120HMC 7th Rep. 159; A. and O.; C181/6, pp. 14, 60, 90, 125, 134, 146, 171, 220, 237, 277, 306, 346, 373.

Downes attended the quarter sessions in Sussex in the spring of 1659.121E. Suss. RO, QO/EW3, f. 63. As soon as the Rump was recalled in May, he resumed his former position of influence in the Commons. On 9 May he was made chairman of a new committee of revenue and the next day reported a vote on the excise.122CJ vii. 647b, 648a. Over the following six months he reported regularly to the House from the committee for inspecting the treasury, on matters encompassing army and navy finances, assessments, customs and even the collections for the relief of Piedmontese Protestants.123CJ vii. 659b-661a, 673b, 675a-b, 684b, 739a, 756a, 782a; Add. 4197, f. 229. Complementary to this was his membership of, draftsmanship on, and reporting from, committees addressing individual financial bills, also including excise, sequestrations, and the sale of delinquents’ estates, as well as the nomination of the commissioners who would implement these policies.124CJ vii. 665b, 676b, 684b, 687a-688a, 689a, 692a, 726a, 748b, 762a, 772a, 782a, 791b, 794a. On 20 June he was made one of the five commissioners for revenue, while, as under the Rump, his brother Richard became a customs commissioner.125CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 382; CJ vii. 787a; A. and O.

To a greater degree than heretofore, Downes not only received nominations to committees dealing with a variety of other business, but also appeared in connection with activity that was more directly political. Elected to the council of state (14, 19 May), he presented its seal to the House (24 May), although like some other Members he was then for some weeks conspicuous by his apparent absence from its meetings, until 8 August, after which his attendances were recorded quite regularly.126CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. xxiv, 349, 354; 1659-60, pp. xxiii-xxiv; CJ vii. 654a, 663b. In the meantime, as well as appointments to committees for prisoners of conscience and punishing those who disturbed public worship (10 May, 1 July, the latter probably an indicator of his religious conservatism), he was nominated to discuss the act of indemnity and review entries in the Journal (14, 18 May), to devise a pension for former protector Richard Cromwell* (25 May), and to choose commissioners for oyer and terminer and for the militia (18 May, 21 July).127CJ vii. 648a, 654b, 656b, 665a, 700b, 727a. With Sir John Trevor*, he marshalled votes to block the appointment of a militia commissioner for Yorkshire (19 July).128CJ vii. 724b. The fact that on 6 August he reported to the House from the council of state on prisoners taken during the royalist risings of the summer suggests that through all this he had been working more closely with those at the centre of power than his official conciliar attendances would indicate.129CJ vii. 750a.

In September Downes’s committee work included the attempt to determine the future settlement of the government.130CJ vii. 775b. He was twice a minority teller, once with Bulstrode Whitelocke* for including a proviso in the Irish Adventurers’ bill (7 Sept.) and once with the maverick Henry Marten* over a division on excise commissioners (27 Sept.) – on both occasions against his radical colleague on the treasuries committee Luke Robinson* – but it seems impossible to infer from this exactly where on the spectrum his political sympathies lay.131CJ vii. 775a, 787a. One hostile commentator claimed that he was ‘one that hath thriven well by the times, having raised himself to a considerable estate’, and that he was ‘an inseparable Rumper to the last gasp’.132OPH xxii. 197. In the face of renewed threats from the army, on 8 October Downes obtained leave of absence from the Commons for a fortnight, and thus probably missed the interruption to the sitting on 13 October.133CJ vii. 794b.

After the Rump reassembled on 26 December, Downes did not resurface in the Journal until 13 January 1660, when he was named to the committee for a bill reconstituting the Army Committee.134CJ vii. 811a. He was duly included on the new body, but does not appear to have returned as chairman; his attendances were rare.135SP28/118, f. 129; SP28/119, f. 401; CJ vii. 824a. In the Commons, Downes was appointed to serve on committees concerning the qualifications for Members to sit in Parliament (23 Jan.) and the militia (25 Jan.), in both cases perhaps as part of an attempt to protect the republican interest from the resurgent royalists. 136CJ vii. 818b, 822b. However, after nomination on 9 February to a committee to set up a new common council for London (potentially countering royalist resurgence), Downes disappeared from the Journal and (probably) the House, perhaps prompted by the arrival in the capital of General George Monck*.137CJ vii. 838b.

The price of regicide

As a regicide, Downes faced arrest once Charles II had been restored in May 1660.138LJ xi. 32b, 52b. In an attempt to protect himself and his reputation, he published a broadside narrative in which he explained his opposition to the execution of the king, and his outburst during the trial, as well as his attempts to protect Christopher Love and the other Presbyterian plotters.139Downes, True and Humble Representation. This tactic did not prevent his arrest in June, although it may have helped foster the impression, which appears to have been widespread among contemporaries, that Downes had been ‘a mere cypher’.140Mercurius Publicus no. 25 (14-21 June 1660), 398 (E.186.6); CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 153; The Devil’s Cabinet-Councell (1660), sig. A4v (E.2111.2). Tried with other regicides in October, he pleaded not guilty. Edmund Ludlowe II* recorded that Downes and a few others ‘pleaded ignorance, and acknowledged the guilt, but denied the malice’.141Ludlow, Voyce, 267, 293. At the trial, Downes said that he pleaded not guilty because he had been ‘thrust into this number, but never was in consultation about the thing’. He also related his version of the last day of the king’s trial, and when asked why he had signed the death warrant, answered that he had been threatened with his ‘very life’. The solicitor-general evidently lost patience with Downes, however, and refused to grant him the witnesses whom he requested.142State Trials, v. 1005, 1210-14; An Exact and Most Impartial Accompt (1660), 240, 258-63. Nevertheless, Downes, like George Fleetwood*, was reprieved from execution, although detained in prison.143Ludlow, Voyce, 267, 293.

In February 1662 he was granted liberty from the Tower in order to plead his case before the House of Lords.144CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 245. On that occasion Downes delivered another self-justificatory narrative, and depositions were taken from the witnesses not called earlier, including his brother Richard.145LJ xi. 380b; HMC 7th Rep. 157-9. But this was insufficient to secure his release, and Downes lived out his days in prison, apparently in poverty. In April 1663, he petitioned Sir John Robinson*, mayor of London and lieutenant of the Tower, seeking subsistence, since alms and benevolences had failed him, and his estate (valued at only £193 a year) had been seized by the government.146CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 98; SP29/71, f. 20; LR2/266, ff. 1, 4, 4v, 19; CRES6/2, p. 610. In November 1666 Downes was listed among prisoners in the Tower.147CSP Dom. 1666-7, p. 235. He was probably still there at his death, but the date of that and the place of his burial are unknown.148Noble, Regicides, 191. His brother Richard may have been the man of that name who was a joint holder of wine licences from 1661, and who in 1685 claimed thereby to significantly increased the revenue from the excise until his dismissal was procured by Anthony Ashley Cooper*, 1st earl of Shaftesbury.149CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 132; 1685-9, p. 348. No other members of the family are known to have sat in Parliament.