SMITH, Edward (c.1628-1707), of Edmondthorpe, Leics.

The Smiths of Emondthorpe were a branch of the Smyths of Withcote, Leicestershire – a family headed in 1640 by the future regicide Henry Smyth*.15Nichols, Leics. ii. 180, 182, 184, 387; iii. 521; Vis. Leics. 1619 (Harl. Soc. ii), 66. Edward Smith’s forebears had been seated at Husbands Bosworth in that county since 1565; but in 1620 his grandfather – Roger Smith – had purchased Edmondthorpe, 22 miles from Leicester on the Rutland border, ‘where he lived in great consideration and [was] universally respected’.16Nichols, Leics. ii. 176, 183, 185. Roger Smith was elected for Leicester to the Short Parliament, but had scrupled to take the freeman’s oath and was replaced by Thomas Coke.17Supra, ‘Leicester’. Although knighted in July 1641, he supported Parliament in the civil war and was a member of the Leicestershire county committee.18Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 209; An Examination Examined (1645), 15 (E.303.13). Smith himself was too young to take part in the war. He became heir to the Edmondthorpe property in 1646 following the death of his elder brother.19Nichols, Leics. ii. 185.

Smith appears to have had no experience of public office when he was selected by the council of officers to represent Leicestershire in the Nominated Parliament of 1653. Why the council chose such a political nonentity is a mystery. The fact that he was related to Henry Smyth is unlikely to have constituted a strong recommendation. He received only one appointment in this Parliament – to the committee for Scottish affairs, on 5 August.20CJ vii. 295b. That he was styled ‘Major Smith’ presents another puzzle, for there is no record of his military preferment – whereas Henry Smyth was a major in the Leicestershire militia.21CJ vii. 295b; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 505; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 5. Nevertheless, the extant lists of members of the Nominated Parliament agree in stating that ‘Edward Smith’ was one of the representatives for Leicestershire.22A New List of All the Members of this Present Parliament (1653, 669 f.17.57); A Catalogue of the Names of the Members of the Last Parliament (1654, 669 f.19.3); The Names of the Members of Parliament Called to Take upon Them the Trust of the Government (1654), 4. Moreover, he was the only man of that surname in the House. Another possibility is that the MP was one Edward Smith of Catthorpe, Leicestershire, who was added to the county bench in the mid-1650s – although the identity of this man remains shrouded in obscurity.23C231/6, pp. 309, 354; C193/13/6, f. 48; G.F. Farnham, Leics. Medieval Village Notes (Leicester, 1929-33), vi. 284. One of these two men was appointed to the Leicestershire militia commission in 1655 and assisted Major-general Edward Whalley* in administering the decimation tax.24SP25/76A, f. 16v; TSP iv. 335.

Edward Smith of Edmondthorpe was nominated to the proposed order of the Royal Oak at the Restoration, when his estate was valued at about £800 a year.25Burke, Commoners, i. 690. He refused to take possession of Henry Smyth’s forfeited estate at Withcote when it was offered to him on reasonable terms in the early 1660s, declaring that ‘possession of an estate so forfeited would remind him and his posterity of that disgrace which had occasioned it’.26Nichols, Leics. ii. 392. Despite being made a baronet in 1661, he was deemed unacceptable as a justice of the peace and was removed from the bench in the early 1660s.27C220/9/4, f. 51; C193/12/3, f. 61v.

Smith died, intestate, on 6 September 1707 and was buried at Edmondthorpe on 25 September.28Nichols, Leics. ii. 181. The baronetcy became extinct on the death of his son fourteen years later, when the Edmondthorpe estate was inherited by a distant cousin who represented the county from 1734 to 1762.29CB; HP Commons 1715-54, ‘Edward Smith’.