CRYMES, Ellis (1616-90), of Crapstone, Buckland Monachorum, Devon.

As far as the heralds were concerned, the Crymes family was of no great antiquity in Devon. Richard Crymes, a London haberdasher, was ‘the only merchant stranger to buy a Devon manor’ at the dissolution of the monasteries.15Devon Monastic Lands: Cal. of Particulars for Grants 1536-1558 ed. J. Youings (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. n.s. i), p. xxii. He bought the manor, rectory and advowson of Buckland Monachorum, near Tavistock, and built the house at Crapstone which was to be the home of the family throughout the early modern period.16Devon Monastic Lands ed. Youings, 79-81; Risdon, Devon, 211. By 1585, Ellis Crymes, Elizeus Crymes’s grandfather, was established at Crapstone in the ranks of the gentry, but describing himself in his will as ‘gentleman’ rather than ‘esquire’.17PROB11/68/582. In 1581 only two families in Buckland Monachorum paid the subsidy on lands, those of Drake and Crymes.18Devon Taxes, 10. Ellis Crymes died in 1585, and William, his eldest son, consolidated the family’s wealth. In around 1600, William developed interests in the tin mining industry, and established water-driven ‘clash-mills’ on the Tavy as part of the extraction process. In doing so, he provoked a conflict with the corporation of Plymouth, who saw in Crymes’s tin business a threat to the water supply of the town. Their complaint was investigated by Sir Walter Ralegh†, who found in Crymes’s favour, but suits were started in star chamber and in the stannary courts over the affair.19HMC Hatfield, x. 383; Eventually a settlement between Crymes and the corporation was reached after Crymes was served with an injunction not to interfere with the town’s leet.20Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/491/1; Devon RO, 346M/E540; Eliott-Drake, Fam. and Heirs, i. 157-63. William Crymes served as sheriff of the county in 1609-10.21List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 36.

Tin mining remained an interest of the Crymes family at the start of the reign of Charles I. With the families of John Elford* of Sheepstor and William Strode I* of Newnham, William Crymes was a significant stakeholder in the Plympton Stannary.22Plymouth and W. Devon RO, Acc. 72/1034. Doubtless owing to the improvement in the family’s status because of the wealth brought by the exploitation of the tin resources on his family’s land, Ellis Crymes received a better formal education than his forebears. After spending time at Exeter College Oxford and Lincoln’s Inn, he returned to Devon to take up the life of a country squire. He seems to have played no part in county government, either before or after the death of his father in 1627. The most significant aspect of his life before 1640 was his marriage he contracted in 1636 with Mary Drake, sister of Sir Francis Drake*, scion of the most important gentry family in the area of Buckland.23Eliott-Drake, Fam. and Heirs, i. 245. When the Crymes family bought Buckland manor at the dissolution, the demesne of the abbey, and its buildings, were bought by the Grenville family and then were sold on to the Drakes, who quickly became more powerful than their neighbours. The bonds between the houses of Drake and Crymes were reinforced when in 1641 Elizeus’s sister, Susan, married Thomas Drake, brother of Sir Francis. The settlement for this marriage, which gave Thomas and Susan properties in Week St Mary, Cornwall and in Plymouth, was underpinned by a series of transactions that involved trustees, among them Nicholas Trefusis*, William Strode I*, John Bampfylde* and John Pym*.24Devon RO, 346M/F729, 346M/F731. These alliances laid to rest earlier confrontations between Drakes and Crymes over rights to water.25Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/491/1; Eliott-Drake, Fam. and Heirs, i. 245.

With his brother-in-law, Sir Francis Drake*, Crymes voted in the by-election for Bere Alston, held in November 1640, which returned Hugh Pollarde to the Long Parliament.26Buller Pprs. 28-9. Little is known of Crymes’s political views on the eve of the civil war, but as soon as the conflict broke out, he was considered by the king’s supporters to be actively in support of Parliament. In December 1642, his house in Buckland was pillaged, and he and his household servants were taken to Totnes and imprisoned on the orders of Sir Ralph Hopton*.27True Newes from Devonshire and Cornwall (1642), sig. A2i (E.83.43). The house of John Maynard* was treated in the same way during the same sorties by Hopton during the period of royalist retreat in the winter of 1642-3.28Eliott-Drake, Fam. and Heirs, i. 299. Crymes must have been released within weeks or possibly months. By September 1643 he had taken a commission as a captain in the regiment of Sir Edmund Fowell* at Plymouth, the regiment based in the town rather than at the fort and island. By June 1644, Crymes was the lieutenant-colonel of the regiment, in effect the full colonel, since Fowell himself never took command. After the ‘late disaster’ which befell the attempt by Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, to march into Cornwall, in September 1644 Crymes and his fellow officers, among them Christopher Ceely*, wrote to Speaker William Lenthall to put on record their view that the Plymouth regiment was ‘not inferior to any regiment in our whole army’.29Bodl. Nalson III, f. 256. Crymes’s commission as lieutenant-colonel of the trained band of tinners, which was evidently a parliamentarian force, was a recognition of his family’s prominence in the declining industry of tin mining, but was surely less significant than his command at Plymouth.30Add. 35297, f. 30.

Crymes must have left the army before his return as a ‘recruiter’ MP for Tavistock in the summer or autumn of 1646. He probably owed his return for the borough to the strength of his local connections as the owner of nearby Buckland Monachorum and as the brother-in-law of his influential neighbour and serving county sheriff, Sir Francis Drake, who came in for Bere Alston in June 1646. Crymes’s involvement in parliamentary affairs seems to have been negligible. He was in the House to take the Covenant on 9 December 1646, but no more is heard of him until 10 June 1647, when as ‘Mr Crimes’ he was named to a committee charged with implementing the vote that Members who had been in arms against Parliament should no longer be allowed to sit.31CJ v. 205a. Five days later, as ‘Colonel Crimes’ he was given leave of absence. He was noted as still absent on 9 October, and on 30 May 1648 was given another exeat. He was excused at a call of the House on 26 September.32CJ v. 7b, 223a, 330a, 578a, vi. 34b, 87b. With other Devon MPs he was required to bring in assessments from their county on 25 November. He need not have been present to hear this instruction.33CJ vi. 87b. There is nothing to suggest that Crymes was working actively in the public affairs of his county while he was away from Westminster. Although he was included in the commission of the peace from around 1647, he seems never to have attended quarter sessions, and the only reference to him as a county committeeman comes with a note of his inclusion in the third regional committee after it was sub-divided in August 1648.34Add. 44058, ff. 26v-27.

The implication of Crymes’s low profile in public life is that he was never in sympathy with the growing power of the Independents after the first civil war. Crymes’s name (as Grimes) appears on one of the lists of MPs imprisoned or secluded by the army in December 1648, but not on another.35A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); A Vindication (1648, E.539.5). If he was indeed secluded, it could not have been for any particular thing he had done or said in Parliament, so obscure was he, but the antipathy shown towards him by the army was doubtless reciprocated. He was dropped, or resigned, from the commission of the peace in 1649, and played no further part in public life through the interregnum until he was returned for Bere Alston in Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament. He made no mark on this assembly at all, being named to no committees and making no recorded speeches. He was evidently no adherent of the protectorate, nor of the revived Rump. Only when the Rump was foundering did he begin to take an active interest in Parliament. On 13 January 1660, with his brother-in-law Sir Francis Drake* and others, he lent his name to the address taken from Exeter by Thomas Bampfylde* which urged the recall of the Members secluded in 1648 as the best way to a political settlement.36Som. RO, DD Baker 9/3/3. By this time, Crymes was happy to be included himself among those surviving Members of the Long Parliament who came into this category.37A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case (1660), 55 (E.1013.22).

At Buckland Monachorum, Crymes was the patron of Joseph Rowe, who in 1652 preached the funeral sermon at the funeral of Crymes’s first wife. The sermon was later published, with scant reference to Mary Crymes and none to her husband. Nevertheless, the sermon implies that Crymes was content with the ministrations of Rowe, who conformed not only to the various governments of the 1650s but back again to the monarchy after 1660.38J. Rowe, The Blessedness of Departed Saints (1654); Eliott-Drake, Fam. and Heirs, i. 392-5, ii. 24-7. It is clear that Crymes was unsympathetic towards the maverick Independent minister of Tavistock and former chaplain to Sir Hardress Waller*, Thomas Larkham, who committed his thoughts to his diary in doggerel verse. In March 1660, Larkham recorded ‘One Ellis Crymes keeps on enormities/And hath promoted late, slander and lies’.39Diary of the Rev. Thomas Larkham ed. W. Lewis (Bristol, 1888), 95; Bodl. Walker c.2, ff. 294, 295. Once the restoration of the king was inevitable, however, Crymes’s hostility towards Larkham waned. The minister, who resigned his living later in 1660, noted in April that ‘All’s turned to love Crymes, Row and both the Priests/Seem very joyful ...’.40BL, Loan 9, f. 51. Crymes’s apparent cheerfulness in April may have been related to his attempt to win one of the seats for Tavistock in the Convention. He and William Russell were returned by the burgesses and the portreeve, but without the portreeve’s seal. The elections committee determined on 27 April that George Howard, returned on another indenture with Russell and with the town’s common seal, should sit until the case was determined. It never was.41CJ viii. 3b.

Despite Crymes’s failure to win a place on the commission of the peace or until 1679 to be called to any other government commission, he stood once more in the general election of 1661, this time for Bere Alston. Once again, however, there was a double return. The names of (Sir) John Maynard* and Crymes were on the indenture sent by the burgesses and Maynard and George Howard, Crymes’s former adversary in Tavistock, were returned by the mayor. Once again, the House found in favour of Howard (16 May 1661) while the case was being determined.42CJ viii. 251a, b. On 20 January 1662, Crymes’s appeal against the election decision was dismissed because he had not made good his petition.43CJ viii. 348a. This seems to have marked the end of Crymes’s political aspirations. He lived on until 1690. In total, with his successive wives he had seen 25 children born to him, of whom nine are thought to have survived him. His will mentions only five sons, and to two of these he left a shilling each. At the time he drew up his will some of his property was subject to a mortgage. Crymes died in March 1690 and was buried at Buckland Monachorum.44PROB11/432/233; Al. Ox.