LORT, Sampson (c. 1609-67), of East Moor, Manorbier, Pemb.

The Lorts were gentry in Staffordshire and Cheshire until around 1567 when George Lort came to Pembrokeshire as steward of the Welsh estates of the profligate Lady Margaret Stanley, wife of Henry Stanley, 4th earl of Derby.19Dwnn, Vis. Wales, i. 125; Oxford DNB, ‘Henry Stanley, 4th earl of Derby’. Lort bought the Stackpole estate as the demands of the Stanleys’ creditors became irresistible. George Lort was Sampson’s great-grandfather. Sampson’s father, Henry, was sheriff of Pembrokeshire in 1619, but subsequently became enmeshed in a number of controversies in the county. Henry Lort’s claim to rights of prize when ships were wrecked along the coast of his lands was challenged by his gentry neighbours, both on material grounds and moral ones, as they claimed he allowed drowned shipwreck victims to lie unburied on the beaches.20CSP Dom. 1629-31, pp. 422, 483, 487. In 1631 the privy council authorised a commission to investigate Henry Lort’s claims, which had by this time forfeited the sympathy of the vice-admiral of south Wales, Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke. The government evidently agreed that Lort needed to be reined in.21CSP Dom. 1631-3, pp. 19, 21. In May 1634, Henry Lort was again in trouble, this time with the court of high commission, which for the best part of a year subjected his case to successive reviews and postponements, with no concrete outcome.22CSP Dom. 1634-5, pp. 53, 112, 113, 118, 126, 267, 271, 276, 316, 322, 324, 327, 332, 532, 541. Three years later, it was the council in the marches of Wales that took issue with him, accusing Lort of shipping grain to Ireland in times of shortage at home. He seems to have convinced the council’s president, John Egerton†, 1st earl of Bridgewater, that he was only distributing corn to localities where it was required.23CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 153, 291; 1639, p. 328. Much of the animus against Henry Lort must have been rooted in the resentment towards him of his neighbours, as in the last controversy to assail him, a star chamber case of 1639 in which he was accused of converting lands to pasture and consequent depopulation. Lort petitioned to be let off, pleading old age and a wish to be allowed to die in peace.24CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 328.

That Henry Lort was a person of interest to the court of high commission suggests that he was in some way actively at odds with the direction of church government under Archbishop William Laud, though it does not necessarily imply he was a principled doctrinal nonconformist. Nevertheless, it seems likely that Sampson Lort, his second son, was an active puritan separatist sympathizer. As a younger son who had attended Oxford but needed to make a living, Sampson may have been inclined to consider emigration for economic reasons, but his inclusion in the passenger manifest of a ship bound for Bermuda in September 1635, coming as it did soon after his father’s tribulations in high commission, may suggest other motives.25J.C. Hotten, Original Lists (New York, 1874), 133. Bermuda was not a puritan colony, but it attracted some puritan investors, notably John Pym*. However, there is no evidence to confirm that Sampson Lort ever held an estate in Bermuda or even that he ever sailed. And when the civil war in England and Wales broke out, he was certainly living in Pembrokeshire.

The Lort family was fickle in its political allegiances during the civil war. In April 1643 the Commons ordered Roger Lort, Sampson’s elder brother, along with Archdeacon Robert Rudd of St David’s cathedral, to be arrested and brought to London as royalist delinquents, and in October that year, Sampson himself joined Roger and the other Pembrokeshire gentry who signed a declaration to the royalist commander in the region, Richard Vaughan†, 2nd earl of Carbery [I], that he would not contribute to maintaining the parliamentarian garrison in Pembroke castle.26Mercurius Aulicus (22-28 Oct. 1643), 605 (E.75.13). Stackpole, the family home of the Lorts, was garrisoned for the king and was thus a prime target when the parliamentarians organized themselves under Rowland Laugharne†, whose capture of the house was reported by Simon Thelwall* in the despatch of his to the Speaker, read in the House on 11 April 1644.27A True Relation (1644), 4 (E.42.13). But shortly afterwards, the Lorts changed their colour. Sampson was included in the parliamentarian regional committee for south-west Wales (10 June 1644), while in late July, Roger was freed from delinquency and added to the same body.28CJ iii. 570b. Over a year later, Sampson and another brother, John Lort, joined Laugharne in negotiating the surrender of Carmarthen to Parliament (25 Sept. 1645).29Major Generall Laughorn’s Letter (1645), sig. A2(ii) (E.307.15). Sampson Lort was one of the parliamentarian committee for Pembrokeshire to complain to the Committee for Compounding about the continuing regional political vitality of the defeated Carbery and his circle, the giant ‘sons of Anak’ of the Old Testament in the eyes of the parliamentarians, who evidently considered themselves diminished in authority by their enemies’ persistent influence.30The Earle of Carberyes Pedegree (1646), 2-3 (E.355.29); Numbers 13:33.

However uncommitted Lort may have been to Parliament in the early stages of the civil war, he stayed loyal to its cause throughout the convulsions of 1648, and led the way in reporting the outbreak of the second civil war in Pembrokeshire to the Commons.31CJ v. 515b. One of the Lorts, but not Roger or John so possibly Sampson, was imprisoned by John Poyer, the turncoat mayor of Pembroke, while the remaining brothers were at the height of the rebellion in imminent danger of capture by him.32Severall Propositions (1648), 6 (E.435.40); Phillips, Civil War in Wales, ii. 349-50. In the aftermath of the 1648 revolt in Pembrokeshire, Lort was prominent in rebutting publications intended to mitigate the extent of Poyer’s treachery by claiming that he was steadfast in holding Pembroke against Carbery.33A Short Comment upon the Grounds and Reasons (1649), 7. Lort was evidently more than willing to offer his support to the fledgling republic in 1649. He was made a commissioner for sequestrations in south Wales, served as sheriff of his county from the autumn of 1649 and was made a commissioner for the propagation of the gospel in Wales in February 1650. After the restoration of the monarchy it was claimed that Lort, Col. Philip Jones* and the Independent preacher Hugh Peters had devised the propagation scheme between them, when Peters was in quarters in Pembrokeshire during the preparations for shipping the punitive expeditionary force under Oliver Cromwell* to Ireland.34W. Yonge, Englands Shame (1663), 80-2; Mercurius Cambro-Britannicus (1652), 9 (E.674.25). This is certainly an exaggeration of any part Lort may have played, and probably overstates the involvement of Jones: the propagation act was the product of legislative work at Westminster, like any other legislation, and the contributions of John Jones I* and Thomas Harrison I* were demonstrably greater. However, Lort was certainly one of the most frequent attenders of the meetings of the south Wales commissioners, and was thus evidently an enthusiast for the scheme.35LPL, Comm. VIII/1. One of his brothers was a beneficiary of the commissioners’ practice of letting sequestered tithes at low rates, and Sampson himself dabbled in tithe-farming in a small way, as he admitted after 1660. He was one of the commissioners who rebutted allegations of cronyism and financial irresponsibility before the Committee of Plundered Ministers in August 1652.36A. Griffith, A True and Perfect Relation (1654), 26, 37; E113/2, answer of Sampson Lort.

The presence of Cromwell’s army in Pembrokeshire in 1649 led not only to contacts between Lort and Hugh Peters, but also introduced Lort to the officials responsible for the victualling and embarkation of the regiments. He and other leaders of the local county committee undertook to victual the ships at Tenby and Milford, and the admiralty commissioners evidently regarded Lort as dependable and trustworthy.37CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 39, 182. As part of the work that fell to him to undertake, Lort made contact with the civic authorities in Pembrokeshire, including at Haverfordwest. In October 1648, Lort had written to Col. Thomas Horton, commander of the New Model regiment in the region, advising him of the poverty of the town, but four months later he was writing to the mayor and corporation to ask them to compensate those who had been obliged to quarter the commonwealth’s soldiers.38Cal. Recs. Haverfordwest, 83, 85, 87. As a mediator between the borough and the military, Lort was bound to be regarded with some suspicion by the corporation of Haverfordwest, but the government cemented its relationship with him. Late in December 1650 he was entrusted with supervising the local arrangements for shipping to Ireland the retinues of the parliamentary commissioners, including Edmund Ludlowe II*.39CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 426, 599, 601; 1650, p. 454; 1651, p. 551. By the summer of 1651, Lort was among the most dependable of the Rump’s agents in south-west Wales, and was therefore included as a commissioner in the high court of justice convened to mete out justice upon the Cardiganshire rebels sympathetic to the cause of Charles Stuart.40CSP Dom. 1651, p. 267.

Though his name does not appear in the libri pacis, Lort was a magistrate in Haverfordwest by May 1652, perhaps by virtue of having been made an alderman by the corporation. He was active in effort to relieve plague and to ensure the distribution of food in the stricken town. Another of his tasks was regulating the town’s markets, in which he acted as a commissioner of the Westminster committee on that subject, a sub-committee of the council of state.41Cal. Recs. Haverfordwest, 111, 125, 135. His stature in the borough is evident from his good offices in managing the bequest to the town by an Oxford merchant, intended to support two apprenticeships.42Cal. Recs. Haverfordwest, 162. He transferred his political loyalties to Oliver Cromwell after the abrupt dismissal of the Rump Parliament. He was named as a commissioner for poor prisoners (debtors) during the period of the Nominated Assembly in 1653, and was equally willing to serve under the Cromwellian protectorate. In August 1654 he was named by the lord protector’s council as a commissioner for ejecting scandalous ministers, and during the security emergency of 1655 he was appointed a militia commissioner for south Wales and a commissioner under Major-general James Berry* and Colonel Rowland Dawkins*.43SP25/76A, f. 16; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 35; TSP iv. 583. His closeness to the government did not prevent an order by the protector’s council in February 1658 that he and other former propagation commissioners should release funds still in their hands to relieve the widow of the late minister of Haverfordwest.44CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 287.

Lort’s appearance in the 1659 election, not for Haverfordwest but for Pembroke, owed everything to the influence of his brother, John, who was mayor of the latter borough that year. John Lort actively managed the election, and secured a return for Sampson, with 43 electors apparently lending their names to it. However, this was only amid protests against the mayor’s conduct. Another group of electors returned Arthur Owen*.45C219/48. As a petition against his election was attached to Lort’s indenture, it went to the privileges committee for resolution, and seems to have been scheduled for a hearing on 2 April 1659, but the case remained unresolved at the dissolution, and there is no evidence that Lort ever sat in what would have been his only Parliament. His candidature at Pembroke was opposed by James Phillipps*, who sought to push forward Col. John Clerke II*, the electoral beneficiary of Phillipps on earlier occasions.46Truth Manifest (1659). Rejection by such a leading regional Cromwellian may have turned Lort against the protectorate, because by mid-November 1659 he was ready to subscribe to objections against the military interest for expelling the Rump Parliament in 1653.47The Remonstrance and Protestation (1660), 28. He was thus proclaiming himself an adherent of the ‘Good Old Cause’ of republicanism.

In March 1660, when elections were mooted for the Convention, the mayor of Haverfordwest characterised Lort, in a letter to his electoral rival, Arthur Owen, as head of the ‘fanatic’ party in that borough. In what looked like a re-run of the 1659 contest in Pembroke, Phillipps was one of several candidates proposing to stand in Haverfordwest, and in the circumstances of a split electorate, the mayor feared Lort’s campaign would be successful. Lort’s adversaries in Haverfordwest did not scruple against circulating a paper on his anti-monarchical offences, which allegedly included imposing special levies on the townspeople, emblazoning the legend ‘No king, no Lords, we are engaged’ on the colours of the county militia troop he led and telling a local man called Charles Steward that his name was odious. To demonstrate that he was a sectary as well as a republican it was recorded that he summoned and encouraged as preachers ‘cobblers, hatters, weavers, tailors and other orderless mechanics’.48Cal. Recs. Haverfordwest, 167, 169-70. In the event, Lort attracted the greatest number of voices at the poll, but was denied victory by the sheriff. Nothing came of his complaint to the committee of privileges, but it engendered some anxious discussion among the civic authorities of Haverfordwest of how best to present the sheriff’s conduct.49Cal. Recs. Haverfordwest, 172.

The 1660 election was Lort’s last appearance in public life. He lost all local offices at the Restoration, although he was offered and on 8 June 1660 readily accepted the king’s pardon for all possible civil war-related activities, by virtue of the act of indemnity and oblivion.50CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 44. He easily brushed aside enquiries about his handling of interregnum public revenues: his brother John Lort was a commissioner in his case.51E113/2, answer of Sampson Lort. However, like that of his father before him, his reputation among his gentry neighbours was unenviable. A local commentator recorded that Lort had

nothing of his first namesake but the jaws and hath with that [sic] destroyed almost as many ministers as the other of Philistines: both for the same ends, their own. Hates the church, hugs the profit of it. He can pray as long as there is profit, no penny no pater noster; ambitious of public employment but in pure order to enlarge his fortune. Any government, religion or office will suit him so it carries some lucre along with it. If any, it is he that believes man to be sibi soli natus [her, money’s, only son].52E. D. Jones, ‘The Gentry of South West Wales in the Civil War’, NLWJ xi. 144.

Lort made his will in May 1663, and was dead by that month in 1667, when his will was proved. His daughter, Elizabeth, married Charles Lloyd of Dolobran, Meifod, Montgomeryshire, who followed her husband into the Quaker movement and suffered imprisonment for it.53R. Davies, An Account of the Convincement (2nd ed. Philadelphia, 1752), 72; DWB. No descendant of Lort’s appears to have sat in Parliament.