CATER, Edward (d.1668), of Kempston, Beds.

The Caters were originally from Kirby in Leicestershire and this MP’s grandfather, Richard Cater, had still been living there.23Vis. Beds. 1566, 1582 and 1634, 89-90. Edward Cater’s father, William, was a member of the Salters’ Company of London and had presumably earned his money in that trade.24PROB11/166/255. His acquisition of the Bedfordshire manor of Kempston at some time between 1619 and 1624 was part of his successful attempt to elevate himself to gentry status and was paralleled by similar purchases at Papworth in Cambridgeshire.25VCH Beds. iii. 300-1; PROB11/166/255. By 1630 William Cater was a figure of sufficient stature in the county to serve as sheriff. On the order of the privy council, he was summoned to appear before the attorney general concerning alleged failings in the execution of the Book of Orders regulations relating to the supply of corn, but seems otherwise to have had an uneventful term of office.26List of Sheriffs, 3; APC 1630-1, p. 129; CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 21.

After matriculating as a fellow commoner at King’s College, Cambridge, in 1631, Edward Cater proceeded three years later to the Middle Temple, to which he was admitted in June 1634 as the third son of William Cater, ‘Esquire’, of Kempston. His studies, however, were interrupted by the death of his father that summer.27Beds. Par. Regs. ed. Emmison, ii. xxxix. 73. Under the terms of his will, William Cater divided his estates equally between his four sons (following the customs of the city of London), with Thomas Cater receiving the lands at Papworth, George, some lands in Leicester and Edward, the lands at Kempston.28PROB11/166/255. Edward soon bought other lands at Kempston.29Coventry Docquets, 672.

With the outbreak of war in 1642, Cater threw himself into the service of the parliamentarian cause in the locality. One of the original Bedfordshire commissioners for the midland association, he was a commissioner for assessment in Bedfordshire by June 1643; and was subsequently named as a commissioner for the county to most of the major assessment ordinances of the war, including those for the New Model army (1645) and for the relief of Ireland (20 June 1647).30A. and O. Although not yet one of its members, he also willingly assisted in the work of the local sequestrations committee.31P. Bell, ‘Mins. of the Beds. cttee. for sequestrations 1646-7’, Miscellanea (Beds. Hist. Rec. Soc. xlix), 93, 96, 112, 116, 117. On 2 December 1648 he was among those named as a commissioner in the controversial ordinance for the settlement of the militia (later repealed in response to pressure from the army after the purge of the House four days later).32A. and O. The advent of the republic made no difference to Cater’s willingness to serve as a local officeholder. He was one of the three sequestration commissioners for Bedfordshire approved by the Westminster Committee for Compounding in February 1650.33CCC 171.

Cater seems to have acquired early a reputation for religious radicalism. His house at Kempston was used regularly in 1644 for meetings by what appears to have been an Independent congregation. On 30 Oct. 1644, the governor of Newport Pagnell, Sir Samuel Luke*, sought advice on what to do ‘with those meetings without the town at Mr Cater’s house and other places, for they will be most dangerous, if suffered’.34Luke Letter Bk. 49. Samuel Cater, the Quaker friend of James Naylor and a native of Littleport in the Isle of Ely, may have been a distant relative.

Cater’s selection as the Member for Bedfordshire in the Nominated Parliament of 1653 was almost certainly the reward for his loyal service to the parliamentarian cause over the preceding decade. He seems to have had a minor role in the Parliament, his activities, such as they were, being restricted to service on a small number of committees. Among the Nominated Parliament's attempts to address questions of social policy, he was named to a committee to consider the relief of the poor, and how the commission for the peace might be better regulated to oversee them.35CJ vii. 287a. Another contemporary account lists him as having been named to the committees for almshouses and for printing by 1 August, and it is possible that he in fact sat on these committees even though there is no mention of these appointments in the Journal.36The True Manner of the Sitting of the Parliament of the Commonwealth (1653, 669f.17.37). He was said to have opposed maintenance for a preaching ministry, which is at least consistent with the fact that at the elections for the following Parliament the master of Caius College, Cambridge, William Dell, wanted him to stand for one of the Bedfordshire seats because he opposed tithes.37Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 412; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 334.

Cater had ceased to be a sequestration commissioner for Bedfordshire before 8 Sept. 1654, when he was among the commissioners called to account for a small discrepancy in the county’s accounts presented to the Committee for Compounding in London.38CCC 700. That November he was appointed as one of the ejectors of scandalous ministers charged with ensuring the doctrinal orthodoxy of the Bedfordshire clergy.39A. and O. During the so-called ‘rule of the major-generals’ in 1655, he was once again one of the government’s principal activists in the county. In November, he wrote to Secretary of state John Thurloe* to assure him that the commissioners for securing the safety of the commonwealth had met, and that they would put into execution the instructions which had been communicated to them by their major-general, William Boteler*.40TSP iv. 207. Cater was, along with Boteler and Richard Wagstaffe*, one of the committed supporters of the protectorate who were admitted as burgesses of Bedford by the corporation in August 1656.41Min. Bk. of Bedford Corp. 99-100. In April of the following year he was among those who signed a petition to Oliver Cromwell* urging him not to accept the kingship.42TSP vi. 228-301.

However, this did not prevent him accepting the return of Charles II in 1660. The Bedford corporation did make a point in October 1660 of dismissing him and the other men who had been appointed burgesses in 1656.43Min. Bk. of Bedford Corp. 100. This was their attempt to distance themselves from those they had tried to cultivate under the protectorate. Charles II was more forgiving. Three weeks after Cater had been removed as a burgess, the king knighted him.44Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 232. Four years later he was sufficiently trusted by the restored regime for him to be appointed to serve as sheriff and as an assessment commissioner.45List of Sheriffs, 4; SR. Cater died in early 1668 and was buried at Kempston.46Beds. Par. Regs. ed. Emmison, pp. xxxix. 77. His son Samuel then inherited the Kempston estate.47VCH Beds. iii. 301. Sir Edward’s grandson John Cater† sat for Bedford in the last Parliament of Queen Anne, and as knight of the shire for Bedford in the first Parliament of George I.48HP Commons 1690-1715. The male line of the family died out in 1736.