ACTON, Edward (1600-59), of Aldenham Hall, Morville, Salop.

The heralds traced the Acton family’s connection with Aldenham in the parish of Morville back to 1340. Walter Acton, Edward’s father, represented the tenth generation at Aldenham. Edward Acton’s mother, Frances, was born into another branch of the Actons, which could trace an even longer association with their patrimonial estate. Roger Acton, an immediate ancestor of hers, was lord of half a knight’s fee in the manor of Acton Scott in 1397, and by then the family had been established there for well over a century. Actons held Acton Scott continuously from then until they consolidated their holdings in that district of Shropshire in the late 1580s.10Vis. Salop 1623 i. 7-10; VCH Salop, x. 13. Walter Acton acquired various properties in and around Much Wenlock that made the Actons a gentry family of some substance on the eve of the civil war. Walter Acton was a justice of the peace, and sheriff in 1629-30, but never sat as a commissioner of oyer and terminer.11List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 19. He could nevertheless exercise significant influence in Bridgnorth, as when his wish in 1636 to end a protracted legal suit in the town was entered in the common hall order book.12Salop Archives, BB/C 1/1/1 ff. 20-1.

Little is known about the upbringing of Edward Acton, who is not recorded as having attended either a university or an inn of court. His marriage to Sarah Mytton brought him into a family that enjoyed a standing not only in the county but also in the town of Shrewsbury, where the Myttons had been citizens for four hundred years. Before the civil war, Acton played no part in local government, and was named as a commissioner for the poll tax of 1641 probably only because of the death of his father, which had made him head of the family. Walter Acton was evidently ill for some time before his death. In March 1640, he made a nuncupative will, cast in terms of a rhetorical question: ‘what will should I make? I have but one child, my son shall have all that I have and I will not give any thing from him’.13PROB11/186/211. He must have lived to see his son take his place in both Parliaments of 1640, however, as his will was not proved until June 1641.

Acton was elected to sit for Bridgnorth probably on his family’s own interest. The election for the Short Parliament seems to have been popular in character, while the second, for the Parliament that met in November, was more restricted, but in both cases Acton took the second seat.14Salop Archives, BB/B/6/4/1/1; BB/B/6/4/1/3. His contribution at Westminster was negligible. He made no impression at all in the Short Parliament, and his only involvement in the Long Parliament was to be recorded on 27 May 1641 as having taken the Protestation. On that occasion he was in the company of Thomas Whitmore I, his fellow-burgess.15CJ ii. 159b. Acton may have left London long before the outbreak of the civil war. He is said to have entertained Charles I at Aldenham in September 1642; if that were the case, it alone would account for his siding with the king in the civil war.16Trans. Salop Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. ser. 4, v. 58. Almost as significantly, perhaps, was his association with his kinsman, Sir William Acton, a Merchant Taylor and London alderman, who had been close to the court since the 1620s and who had been imprisoned by Parliament in 1629 during his shrievalty for not granting a writ to free merchants for refusing to pay customs duties. His stand was rewarded with a baronetcy. Sir William became a banker to the king, but his unpopularity was so intense among the citizens that in September 1640 they refused to elect him lord mayor, in defiance of the usual rules of precedency. By October 1642, Sir William had been imprisoned on a writ of Parliament, and for the rest of the civil war faced the sustained attentions of the committees for penal taxation.17PROB11/215/761; V. Pearl, London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, 1959), 291-2; K. Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London (1997), 170-1.

The experiences faced by his eminent relative in London, and in particular Sir William Acton’s notoriety in Parliament, would have dissuaded Edward Acton from staying long in the capital. He returned to Shropshire, where he was a natural supporter of the royalist cause. In December 1642, he subscribed the engagement to raise and support a regiment of dragoons under Sir Vincent Corbett*.18The Ingagement and Resolution of the Principall Gentlemen (1642). This commitment seems not to have led to a military commission. He had not been named to the commission of array when the first appointments to it were announced, and it was probably only in the later stages of the war that he joined the royalist committee at Bridgnorth.19Salop Archives, BB/C 1/1/1 ff. 43v, 45, 46. Even if the treatment accorded Sir William Acton in the City and in the Commons thoroughly coloured Edward Acton’s perceptions of Parliament, his very low profile in the House and in the government of his county does not suggest he was a natural activist. This slowly changed as he was called upon to further the king's cause. In May 1643, by this time a justice of the peace, he promised the Bridgnorth corporation that he would organize labour from the countryside to help with defences.20Salop Archives, BB/C 1/1/1 f. 43v.

Acton joined the king at Oxford, and attended the Parliament there in January 1644. That month he was created a baronet by the king in his headquarters, and signed the letter to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex proposing a peace. This was enough to provoke the Westminster Parliament into disabling Acton from sitting (5 Feb.).21The Names of the Lords and Commons assembled in the Pretended Parliament (1646), 3; A Copy of a Letter (1644), 6 (E.32.3); CJ iii. 389b. He later claimed that he only sat for three days in the assembly at Oxford.22CCC 1541. He returned from Oxford to Bridgnorth to help staff the garrison, and was active on the local committee there in 1645 in support of the governor, Sir Robert Howard*.23Salop Archives, BB/C1/1/1 f. 45. In July 1644 the Committee for Advance of Money levied an £800 assessment on him, but this was purely notional while Shropshire remained under royalist control.24CCAM 419. When the tide eventually turned in Parliament’s favour, the parliamentarian county committee held Howard, Acton and the other commissioners resident in Bridgnorth responsible for the firing of the town before it surrendered.25Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 28. Acton was among the commissioners who on 26 April 1646 assented to the articles of surrender, by which he and the other gentry commissioners of array were allowed to return home and to decide within two months whether they would submit to Parliament or seek exile abroad.26Brereton Letter Bks. iii. 171. Acton elected for the former course, and in February 1647 was fined £5,242, at two-thirds of his estate. This was later reduced to take account of debts charged on his lands.27CCC 1541.

After the civil war, Acton remained close to the other royalist gentry of Shropshire, most of them reduced in wealth and influence by the victory of Parliament. He was party to the marriage settlement of Samuel Baldwyn* in 1648, and in 1650 to that of the daughter of Sir William Acton with (Sir) Thomas Whitmore II. That year, doubtless as a consequence of his daughter’s marriage, Sir William Acton drew up his will; Sir Edward Acton was named as a second choice of executor, and his younger son, William, an apprentice draper in London, was favoured with a bequest of £200.28Salop Archives, 151/62 (a); 2089/4/1/3-5; PROB11/215/761. In the event, Sir Edward was not called upon to administer the estate of his wealthy relative, but his mere nomination underscored the continuing association between branches of the Acton family. Acton drew up his own will in March 1652, witnessed by Samuel Baldwyn; despite the ravages of penal taxation, he was able to leave modest estates to five sons.29PROB11/296/567. It was not until over seven years later that he died. His son, Walter Acton, sat for Bridgnorth in the Convention of 1660.30CB ii. 217.