SOUTHBY, John (c.1596-1683), of Carswell, Buckland, Berks.

The Southby family had lived at Buckland in the north of Berkshire, about ten miles west of Abingdon and Oxford, since at least the early sixteenth century.17Burke’s Peerage (107th edn. 2003), iii. 3688. In 1584 this MP’s great-grandfather, John Southby, purchased the manor of Carswell within that parish from the Fettiplace family and ten years later those lands were settled on the MP’s father, Richard, at the time of his marriage to Jane Keate.18VCH Berks. iv. 456. Richard Southby died in 1604, when his eldest son, John, was aged only eight.19C142/315/182. The Carswell estate would pass to John when he came of age.20VCH Berks. iv. 465; Berks. Glebe Terriers 1634, ed. I. Mortimer (Berks. Rec. Soc. ii), 24. In the meantime, John had completed his education by attending Oriel College, Oxford, and the Middle Temple.21Al. Ox.; M. Temple Admiss. i. 105; MTR ii. 611-12. In 1617, during his time at the Middle Temple, he was one of those students admonished for wearing hats rather than caps in hall and in chapel.22MTR ii. 617. He probably abandoned his legal studies on coming into his inheritance.23MTR ii. 673. By the mid-1620s, when his elder son Richard Southby* was born, he had married.24Al. Ox.; HP Commons 1640-1660.

Southby sided with Parliament against the king and, at the outbreak of war in the late summer of 1642, was a founding member of the Berkshire standing committee.25LJ v. 311a. His support for Parliament would prove to be a brave decision once the king had based himself at Oxford and established control over the Vale of the White Horse, where Southby had his estates. That is also probably why he was not appointed to local office by Parliament until after Oxford had fallen and the war was over, when the Houses were quick to make use of him. In December 1646 they appointed him as sheriff and over the course of the next year he was added to the local commission of the peace and the assessment commission.26CJ iv. 733a; LJ viii. 589b; List of Sheriffs, 6; C231/6, p. 73; A and O. Yet, in time, he fell out of favour with the authorities in London and in the summer of 1652 he was removed from the commission of the peace.27C231/6, p. 242. Later he seems never to have really reconciled himself to the advent of the protectorate.

Elected as one of the five MPs for Berkshire on 12 July 1654, Southby proved to be an inactive Member of the first protectorate Parliament. He was included on only four committees, namely those on the bill to eject scandalous ministers (25 Sept. 1654), to consider the army and the navy (26 Sept.), on the bill to regulate chancery (5 Oct.) and on the transportation of corn (6 Oct.).28CJ vii. 370a, 370b, 374a, 374b. He never spoke in the House. He stood again at the next election and was one of those elected by the indenture of 20 August 1656.29CP40/2703, rot. 560 dorse; CJ vii. 599a. In marked contrast to the other candidates, he was said to have been elected unanimously.30A True and Perfect Relation of the Manner and Proceeding, held by the Sheriffe for the County of Berk (1656), 7 (E.891.8). But this time he and William Hyde* were among those MPs prevented by the council of state from taking their seats, which strengthens the assumption that he and the protectoral government viewed each other with mutual suspicion.31CJ vii. 425b. When, in January 1658, those excluded Members were finally allowed to take their seats, Southby left no trace in the records. He seems not to have stood in 1659, but his elder son, Richard*, was elected at Cirencester.

Southby may not have been any more comfortable with the Restoration than he had been with the protectorate. In April 1660 he was probably the ‘Sorbye’ who stood against Sir Robert Pye II* and Richard Powle† as an opponent of the king’s return in the Berkshire election for the Convention.32HP Commons, 1660-1690, ‘Berkshire’. Even so, later that year he was re-appointed to the Berkshire commission of the peace and he was consistently named as an assessment commissioner until the early 1670s, when his heir Richard and his grandson John began to replace him in the Berkshire commissions.33C231/7, p. 33; Vis. Berks. ii. 5; SR. By the final years of Southby’s life, the younger generations of the family had acquired reputations as notorious whigs. One of his grandsons, Strange Southby, was expelled from Oxford University for justifying the execution of Charles I, a view with which his grandfather may well have had some sympathy.34Al. Ox.

Southby died in the autumn of 1683 and was buried at Buckland on 18 September.35Buckland par. reg. In his will, he bequeathed most of his estates to Richard.36PROB11/374/418. A line of the family descended from John’s younger brother, Robert, survives.37Burke’s Peerage, iii. 3688.