MANWOOD, Sir John (1593-1653), of Hackington, Kent.

The Manwoods had migrated to Kent from Sussex in the early sixteenth century, and settled initially in Sandwich, which the head of the family represented in the Parliament of 1523. Manwood’s grandfather, Sir Roger Manwood† (d. 1592), a chief baron of the exchequer, established a school in Sandwich but settled in Canterbury, and Manwood himself was baptised at nearby Hackington.17Berry, Pedigrees of Kent, 356; Vis. Kent 1619, 144; J. Cavell and B. Kennett, Hist. of Sir Roger Manwood’s School, Sandwich (1963); ‘Sir Roger Manwood’, Oxford DNB. The family had rapidly established itself among the county gentry, and its members regularly sat in Parliament. Sir Roger Manwood represented Hastings and Sandwich on six occasions between 1555 and 1572.18HP Commons 1558-1603. Manwood’s father, Sir Peter Manwood†, represented Sandwich from 1589 to 1601 as well as Kent in 1614 and New Romney in 1621, and he also served as sheriff of the county in 1602.19HP Commons 1604-1629; ‘Sir Peter Manwood’, Oxford DNB. Meanwhile, the family owned property in the parish of St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, where their neighbours and kin included Veres and Walsinghams.20Recs. of St Bartholomew’s Priory, ii. 248-91; HP Commons 1558-1603.

Details of John Manwood’s early career are fragmentary, partly because he spent periods on the continent. In April 1610 family connections secured for him and his elder brothers Roger Manwood† and Thomas a special admission to the Inner Temple.21I. Temple database. First Roger and then in October 1612 the others obtained a licence from the privy council to travel, but John at least had returned within the specified three years.22Add. 29759, f. 24. On 30 August 1615 the lord warden of the cinque ports ordered his arrest, along with that of Sir Humphrey Tufton, on the grounds that the pair had quarrelled and were thought to be going abroad to fight.23E. Kent RO, NR/CPw/203. By August 1617 John was probably the son of Sir Peter Manwood who was residing with diplomat Sir Dudley Carleton† in the Netherlands, as he certainly did soon afterwards.24SP14/93, ff. 1, 261. Some service there may account for the knighthood bestowed on him at Whitehall in April 1618.25Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 168. By October he was back in the Low Countries with Carleton, but bound for Italy, and some time in 1619 he was admitted to the university of Padua.26SP84/86, f. 205; Studio di Padova, 143 That February his father asked Carleton if he would secure for his son a military position on the continent, and in October a misapprehension that Manwood had departed for unauthorised service prompted a second order for his arrest.27SP14/105, ff. 108, 137; SP84/90, f. 188; CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 88. By February 1620 Manwood was in London, ‘but lately come out of Italy’, from where he expressed his gratitude for Carleton’s kindness and past hospitality.28SP84/94, f. 185.

Manwood appears to have spent much of the next decade and a half abroad. In the early 1620s he was in the Low Countries – to which his father also fled temporarily to escape his creditors – relaying messages from Carleton to his counterpart in the Spanish Netherlands, William Trumbull†, and by June 1624 – when he was still seeking a military commission – in the employ of the exiled Elizabeth Stuart, queen of Bohemia.29Add. 37818, f. 138v; SP84/105, f. 171; CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 278; HP Commons 1604-1629. Manwood probably returned to England for a time following the death of his father in 1625, since the deaths of his elder brothers had rendered him the heir to the heavily indebted family estate and to litigation relating, among other things, to his sister-in-law’s jointure.30CSP Dom. 1623-5, pp. 48, 136; 1628-9, pp. 20, 30, 438; C8/55/252; C8/75/13; C8/42/115; C3/399/109. He was in London in December 1627 to marry Lavinia, daughter of the English governor of Utrecht, Sir John Ogle, and perhaps this connection helped him to a captaincy in the regiment of Horace Vere, 1st Baron Vere, in the Dutch army – unless it was the other way around.31St Bartholomew the Great, London, par. reg.; Add. 70002. In November 1636 ‘this old honest servant of mine Jack Manwood’ was entrusted with messages from the queen of Bohemia to Archbishop William Laud and Sir Thomas Rowe*.32SP16/336, ff. 9, 54.

Manwood probably returned to England permanently. On 26 April 1637 he was appointed lieutenant of Dover Castle, presumably on the basis of his foreign experience.33CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 352. The position involved monitoring passengers embarking and disembarking at Dover, dealing with petitions concerning shipping matters, and overseeing local defences.34CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 151-2, 315; 1637-8, pp. 290-1, 352, 527, 569; 1639-40, p. 369; 1625-41, p. 581; HMC 13th Rep. iv. 203; HMC Cowper, ii. 187. He also presided over meetings of the court of admiralty of the cinque ports, communicated with the governor of Calais, and addressed attacks upon English merchants by French ships.35CSP Dom. 1637, p. 443; HMC Cowper, ii. 181, 183. In all this he was fortunate to be able to draw upon the expertise of his predecessor, Sir Edward Dering*.36Stowe 743, f. 126. In addition to making trips to Hampton Court and Whitehall, Manwood engaged in frequent correspondence with secretaries of state Sir Francis Windebanke* and Sir John Coke†, as well as with the lord warden (by this time Theophilus Howard, 2nd earl of Suffolk), providing them with news.37Kent RO, U951/O9/9; CSP Dom. 1637, p. 475; 1637-8, pp. 291, 493, 558; 1638-9, p. 46; 1639, pp. 328, 491, 510, 513, 522, 523, 537; 1639-40, pp. 13, 33-4; HMC Cowper, ii. 188. This became vital after the outbreak of the Covenanter rebellion, when Manwood monitored Scottish ships and the movement of arms to Scotland from the Low Countries.38CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 603; 1639, p. 14.

Manwood’s position at Dover involved him in the spring elections of 1640. He recommended Windebanke’s secretary and nephew Robert Reade* for a seat at Rye.39HMC 13th Rep. iv. 209; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 175. In the heavily contested cinque port elections, in December 1639 Manwood himself had the benefit of a recommendation from the lord warden to the freemen of Sandwich.40Add. 33512, f. 30; E. Kent RO, Sa/ZB2/90; Sa/C1, pp. 1, 10-11. However, like another ‘court’ candidate, Nathaniel Finch*, Manwood may only have secured the seat with the help of the technicality which disqualified Sir Thomas Palmer, Sir Thomas Peyton* and Edward Partheriche* because they were not made free of the town as he had been on 19 March 1640. Despite the furious reaction of his opponents, Manwood was returned on 24 March.41E. Kent RO, Sa/AC7, ff. 365v-67v; CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 561-2; Add. 33512, ff. 40-1. As he prepared for the opening of Parliament, Manwood learned of a petition to be presented against the election, but nothing appears to have resulted.42Add. 33512, f. 42.

Manwood made no recorded impression on the proceedings of the Short Parliament, although he wrote more than once to the borough during its session and the agents of the cinque ports in London called on his assistance for their petition to the assembly. However, Manwood’s correspondence reveals that he may have attended only the opening ten days at Westminster before returning to Dover, where he arrived on 25 April, and where he appears to have remained until at least 20 May, after the dissolution.43E. Kent RO, Sa/C1, pp. 26, 27, 35; CSP Dom. 1640, p. 70; HMC 13th Rep. iv. 212. His presence there may have been required to oversee attempts to levy soldiers within the cinque ports.44CSP Dom. 1640, p. 68; 1640-1, pp. 52, 123; Add. 33512, f. 44; HMC 13th Rep. iv. 212; HMC 4th Rep. 110.

In the autumn Manwood appears to have recognised that there was little point in seeking to secure re-election at Sandwich, where this time opponents of the court Sir Thomas Peyton and Edward Partheriche were returned. Self-evidently royalist in inclination once civil war broke out, on 16 June 1643 Manwood was nevertheless granted a pass by the Lords to travel to the Low Countries, although this was opposed by the Commons, who on 29 June issued an order forbidding Manwood from leaving the kingdom until he had given a satisfactory account to the committee at Haberdashers’ Hall of payments of his assessments.45LJ vi. 97a; CJ iii. 149a. It was later alleged that Manwood then changed his plans, and that he joined the king in Oxford, took up arms for the royalists, and fought at Marston Moor. Thereafter, he was apparently commanded to leave England and forbidden from returning without permission, although it was claimed that he returned illegally at some unspecified date, and refused to pay his fifth and twentieth parts when summoned to do so by the Committee for Advance of Money*.46SP19/23, p. 61; SP19/149, ff. 103-4. Manwood’s precise movements during the second half of the decade are unclear, but in December 1647 he wrote a letter from Holland (to an address which was probably simply a cover to prevent its interception) in which he stated his royalist beliefs and his reasons for serving the king’s cause. Preeminent among these appears to have been loyalty to ‘so excellent a mother as the Church of England’. Opposing further reformation, he declined to

scandalise and run her through with our swords because she is not yet glorified infallible perfection … for her practices are as nigh the primitive times … that this age in any known part of the habitable world can parallel.

But he also lamented

to see our most gracious and blessed king, with his royal consort and progeny, the very hopes and firm anchor of honour and happiness to our nation, so scandalised and reduced, and deeply wounded

and to see the undermining of ‘so excellent a model for true and just regality, mixed with a most reverend learned clergy, worthy and excellent nobility, faithful loyal commonality’. He trusted, however, that ‘God in his time will look upon his church, his anointed and this his monarchy, to his glory and our comfort.47CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 581; SP16/515, f. 109.

Manwood was still abroad during the early 1650s when the Committee for Advance of Money considered his case, in relation to a debt of £3,000 owed to him by the parliamentarian grandee, Sir John Danvers* (Apr. 1651, Feb. 1652).48CCAM 1330; SP19/22, pp. 179, 182; SP19/23, p.61; SP19/149, ff. 103-4. Manwood may not have returned to England before his death, however. In his notably pious will, written on 3 December 1652, he asked to be buried with ‘the office of the dead of the Church of England … officiated by a lawful priest or minister’. He also left £100 to five ‘orthodox’ ministers.49PROB11/230/38. Although this may be interpreted as indicating loyalty to the Prayer Book and to episcopacy, it may simply have reflected the fact that the will was written on the continent, and that Manwood wanted to be buried by an English minister. Wherever he died, he was interred in the family vault at Hackington on 3 April 1653.50Hackington par. reg. His will was proved by his widow, and third wife, Dorothy, on 30 April.51PROB11/230/38. He seems to have had no surviving children, and his family’s parliamentary involvement ended.