READE, Robert (?1609-aft. 1668), of Drury Lane, Westminster, and Paris.

The origins of the Reade family, which settled in Hampshire in the sixteenth century, are obscure. This MP’s grandfather, Andrew Reade of Faccombe, who evidently had links with the Sandys family, disposed of a substantial estate in his will of October 1623, but Robert Reade was a younger son from the second marriage of Andrew’s third son, so although he was mentioned in that will, he was only one among many beneficiaries and his inheritance from that source – if it came to anything – was very modest.7PROB11/142/421. On the other hand, both Reade’s father Robert (in July 1600) and his uncle, Andrew’s second son Henry Reade† (d. 1647), a Middle Temple lawyer, married daughters of Sir Thomas Windebanke, clerk of the signet, from whom they inherited property in St Martin in the Fields, Westminster, and valuable connections.8P. Haskell, ‘Sir Francis Windebanke and the personal rule of Charles I’, (Southampton Univ. PhD thesis, 1978), 11-13, 564; PROB11/142/421; PROB11/111/50; Reg. of St Martin in the Fields ed. T. Mason (1898), 78, 84.

The MP’s early life is as obscure as his family history. It is probable that he shared the early upbringing of his next elder brother Thomas, born in 1606 or 1607, who was educated in Hampshire before going to New College, Oxford, in 1624.9‘Thomas Reade’, Oxford DNB. By his will and an indenture of 10 December 1626, Reade’s father vested his estate at Linkenholt in trustees including Henry Reade and their brother-in-law, Sir Francis Windebanke*, with instructions to raise portions for the children of his second marriage; Robert was to receive £100.10SP16/41, ff. 102, 105–6; Hants RO, 1627A/48/1, 2; VCH Hants, iv. 324. When his mother Mildred made her will in August 1630, he was sufficiently established in life to be named a joint executor, and judging by later correspondence, he may have travelled to learn foreign languages.11SP16/172, ff. 106–8.

His career was becoming hitched to Windebanke’s (belatedly) rising star. While his brother Thomas supervised Windebanke’s son John at Oxford, by August 1631 Robert had become his uncle’s secretary in the signet office; he continued in the role when Sir Francis became secretary of state in 1632.12‘Thomas Reade’, Oxford DNB; Haskell, ‘Windebanke’, 5, 11, 17; SP16/198, f. 71; SP16/469, f. 169; SP63/252, f. 231. In November 1631 he was granted £200, while in September he became a trustee for his cousin, Thomas Windebanke*, a gentleman of the privy chamber to Charles I, holding the latter’s reversion to a clerkship in the signet office.13PSO5/5, unfol.; SO3/10, unfol.; C66/2631; SP16/200, f. 72. The cousins evidently became close friends: nearly 70 letters between them survive for the decade 1633 to 1643.14CSP Dom. 1633-1643 passim. Reade had an office in Whitehall and lived, for the most part, at Sir Francis’s house in Drury Lane, Westminster, but he probably also stayed with Windebanke at Haines Hill, Berkshire, and certainly stayed at Oatlands during his many visits to court to obtain the royal signature on official documents.15CSP Dom. 1637, p. 341; 1638-9, p. 517; 1639-40, pp. 297, 474; 1640-1, p. 548. His personal life remains a mystery, and it is almost impossible to distinguish him from other Westminster residents of the same name.16A.M. Burke, Mems. of St Margaret’s Westminster (1914), 95, 135, 142, 149, 153, 156, 163, 181, 182, 189, 195, 202, 206, 211, 213, 220, 336; London Marr. Licences ed. R.M. Glencross (1937), 100, 127; Regs. of St Katherine by the Tower ed. W.W. Hughes Clarke (1946), 97.

Reade’s work for Windebanke was varied. His mark appears on drafts of the papers of both Windebanke and the king, and on his employers’ accounts, for which he was responsible.17CSP Dom. 1631-33, p. 567; 1633-4, pp. 12, 30-1, 38, 89, 98, 160, 181, 197, 340; 1637, p. 529; 1638-9, p. 295; 1640, p. 367. His proximity to Windebanke, and his ability to gain the secretary’s ear, meant that he was often approached by suitors, including men such as Sir Philip Warwick*, and that he was rewarded financially.18CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 450; 1633-4, pp. 264, 578; 1634-5, pp. 35, 75, 189; 1635-6, p. 413; 1637-8, p. 99; 1638-9, p. 127; 1639-40, p. 150; 1640-1, p. 40; SP16/248, f. 190. Most of his work, however, focused on Windebanke’s responsibilities for national security and for the drafting of official declarations. An early task was the punishment of the producers and sellers of illicit pamphlets. In 1634 Reade he made notes on Attorney-General William Noy’s examination of William Prynne* over Histriomastix, while in 1638 he recorded the rejoinder of Bishop John Williams.19CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 524; 1638-9, p. 219. More importantly, he searched the houses of suspected persons, and reported any finds, such as copies of contraband works.20CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 489, 497, 555; 1639, pp. 89, 517, 523. In May 1639 he was ordered to the house of the reformer Samuel Hartlib, with discretion to ask him whatever questions he thought appropriate.21CSP Dom. 1639, p. 104. In February 1640 he was sent information about one Jones of Lincoln’s Inn, who had spoken against the right of secretaries of state to sit in Parliament.22CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 485-6.

In the late 1630s, as religious disputes emerged and confrontation with the Scots loomed, Reade’s activities became both more important and more controversial. In February 1639, for example, Windebanke himself ‘being sick’, Reade intercepted post from Scotland, discovered in it Covenanter propaganda heading for London, and informed the king’s chief Scottish advisor, James Hamilton, marquess of Hamilton [S]. According to his own detailed account, he was then ordered by the king to search the houses of those to whom such works were directed, and found material including a ‘book of the Scottish liturgy’. At a subsequent conference with Charles, Archbishop Laud and Hamilton, Reade suggested restraining Lord Brooke (Robert Greville†), and when the others baulked at the idea of arresting a peer, Reade replied that ‘the greater his quality was the greater blow it would give the puritan party and the better declare to the world his majesty’s resolution in the business of Scotland’.23SP16/413, f. 239. Reade’s evident hatred of the Scots and their English friends was fuelled by reports sent from the north by his cousin Edward Norgate, and he must have read with pleasure in the summer of the arrest of Brooke and of William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele.24CSP Dom. 1639, pp. 12, 47-8, 59-60, 68, 82, 116, 144-6, 162-4, 180-1, 189-91, 213-14, 269-71, 281-3, 330-2, 341-2, 349-50, 355-6. In 1640 both Reade and Windebanke helped produce an official response to the proceedings of the Scots, probably the Large Declaration concerning the Late Tumults in Scotland, Charles’s belated attempt to counter Scottish propaganda.25Baillie, Journals, ii. 429-30; Stowe 187, f. 9; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 1018-39. This became clear in August 1641, when parliamentary investigations elicited a confession from the king’s printer, Robert Young, that he had approached Reade to settle queries about the manuscript copy from which he was working.26HMC Lords, i. 285.

Divisions among court grandees were mirrored among those who worked for them. Just as the split secretaryship produced tensions between the divergent outlooks of Windebanke and Sir Edward Coke†, the division of administrative tasks between their respective secretariats engendered tension between Reade and Coke’s secretary Rudolf Weckherlin.27CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 332, 365; Aylmer, King’s Servants, 358. The existence among Reade’s papers of items relating to the soap monopoly reflects Windebanke’s connection to the faction around Sir Francis Cottington†.28CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 543. Windebanke, and through him Reade, shared the faction’s Spanish and Catholic tendencies. Their embroilment in assisting English recusants – also documented in Reade’s papers – was to become the centre of the charges against Windebanke in 1640.29Nalson, Impartial Collection, i. 520-1, 571-2; CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 53; 1639-40, p. 18; 1640, p. 272; 1640-1, pp. 30, 353. As late as December 1640 Reade was in correspondence with the keepers of Newgate and the Clink prisons regarding the release of recusants.30CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 274, 291-2, 294. Later, in exile and faced with charges levelled by Parliament, he did not deny his and Windebanke’s joint ‘favour of the Roman party’; he only expressed his hope that the king would avow his own approval of those actions.31CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 314, 427.

The rise of Reade on the back of Windebanke’s influence was symbolised by the nominations he received for various seats in the Parliament called in spring 1640. His candidacy for the borough of Southampton was proposed by the king’s cousin James Stuart, 4th duke of Lennox [S], and the vice-admiral of Hampshire, Jerome Weston, 2nd earl of Portland, while the lord deputy of Ireland, Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford, recommended him to Boroughbridge.32CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 307, 347. As lord warden of the Cinque Ports, Theophilus Howard, 2nd earl of Suffolk, supported his candidacy at Rye, styling him my very good friend’, while Windebanke separately recommended ‘his integrity and good affections to the public’.33E. Suss. RO, Rye MSS 47/131/10, 11, 14. With the lord lieutenant of Sussex, Edward Sackville†, 4th earl of Dorset, the earl of Sussex (Edward Radcliffe†) also nominated Reade for Hastings, alongside John Ashburnham*.34CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 607. Despite such powerful friends, however, Reade did not feel certain of a place, and told Thomas Windebanke that ‘there is such bandying for places that, for aught I see, we who were made sure at first of burgess-ships are as likely to miss them as others’.35CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 474.

The first election meeting at Hastings was called on 13 March 1640, when the names were announced and commendatory letters read, three days before the jurats and freemen were summoned to make their choice.36SP16/450, f. 79. At first the outcome appeared straightforward, and the mayor wrote to Reade (17 Mar.) to confirm his return, alongside Sir John Baker*.37CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 556; Hastings Museum, Suss. C/A(a)2, f. 88. Three days later, however, 23 freemen issued a declaration claiming that John White I*, Dorset’s secretary, had sought to bribe the town to elect Reade. The mayor adjourned the assembly, giving Reade time to procure letters of recommendation from ‘certain noblemen’, but the freemen refused to accept them, and they declined to make a nomination, despite the mayor’s threat to bring in the lord warden and to issue fines. Those that remained returned Reade, as the freemen conceived, ‘contrary to our free election’.38CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 565-6; SP16/448, f. 90; SP16/450, f. 79.

The story of White’s having offered ‘large promises’ was confirmed by John Ashburnham, and probably also by the letter from the mayor of Hastings to Reade, thanking him for his ‘favour and bounty towards this poor township’.39CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 607; 1640, p. 2. The mayor denied all allegations of bribery, but he admitted that Reade’s side had made ‘propositions to us for the general good of the town’, although he claimed that Reade was not elected on that basis, and that they did not intend to hold him ‘to make performance of any thing proposed’. Indeed, the mayor affirmed that the lord warden’s letter alone, which gave ‘so good a testimony of him’, would have been inducement enough to secure the election.40SP16/450, f. 79. Ashburnham also claimed to have assisted Reade, in the face of the opposition of prominent godly gentlemen like Sir Thomas Parker*, by seeking to defend Reade’s character, and counteracting ‘Mr White’s impertinencies and over-busying himself in that place’. However, he also said that if he were not Reade’s friend, he too might have questioned the election.41CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 607.

Reade’s election had obviously become a high-profile conflict between local godly gentlemen like Thomas Eversfield*, Reade’s opponent, and Sir Thomas Parker on the one hand, and an outsider backed by prominent courtiers, at least some of whom were attached to the queen, and to Catholicism. Eversfield was hardly a puritan firebrand in the mould of his father, Nicholas Eversfield†, but he was zealously anti-Catholic, and with the help of the freemen led a vigorous campaign to secure the seat, and to discredit Reade, who was forced to set about vindicating his reputation.42‘Nicholas Eversfield’, HP Commons 1604-1629; CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 17, 28. The disputed election clearly annoyed the mayor and jurats, who asked Reade and White to enlist the aid of the lord warden in dealing with their opponents.43CSP Dom. 1640, p. 68. The mayor confirmed that Eversfield and his friends were ‘vehemently’ opposed to the election, ‘pretending it to be void, and casting scandalous reproaches’; ‘they are grown so violent that we much fear a tumult or other outrageous act except some speedy prevention be had’.44CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 2-3. Determined to help Reade, the mayor provided evidence of Eversfield’s activity, alleging that he had spent £500 on his campaign, which centred upon rallying support ‘house to house’. The freemen were said to have laboured for him strongly in alehouses and private assemblies.45SP16/450, ff. 77-8; CSP Dom. 1640, p. 3.

For all the effort involved in securing Reade’s election, there is no evidence of any activity once he reached Westminster. Nevertheless, he was named, along with Sir Henry Vane I*, Windebanke and others, to take the oaths of MPs, like himself, representing the Cinque Ports.46HMC Lords, i. 230. In the weeks leading up to the autumn election, in which he was a prospective candidate, the mayor (Thomas Barlow) and jurats of Hastings continued to support him, and sought to defend him from the accusation of being a papist.47CSP Dom. 1640, p. 172. Once more the earl of Dorset expressed his support.48CSP Dom. 1640, p. 158. There was also mention of his sitting for Hampshire, where he was promised Cottington’s backing.49CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 121, 179. On 11 October Reade wrote to the mayor of Hastings of his plans to ‘continue my pretences to that town’, although he had yet to receive a letter from the new lord warden, the duke of Lennox. In an attempt to quash allegations that he was a papist, ‘especially coming from men of so mean condition’, he offered letters from the privy council, signed by Archbishop Laud, Bishop William Juxon, the earls of Manchester and Arundel, Lords Goring and Newburgh, Sir Francis Windebanke, and Lord Keeper, John Finch.50CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 160-1; SP16/469, ff. 169-70. However, there was little chance of a repetition of his success in the spring, and his cousin Francis Reade wrote to him on 26 October that he was ‘sorry to hear you not only miss the place which you desired, but are maliciously slandered also’, adding that, ‘the opinion is grown general that whoever is not Scottishly must be popishly affected’.51SP16/470, f. 124.

Reade’s failure to secure re-election made little difference, however, since he fled to France within a month of the opening of the Long Parliament on 3 November. It was soon clear that Windebanke was under attack, and Reade was too closely bound up with him to avoid similar censure. On 10 November Sir Gilbert Pykeringe* presented a petition of a Palatinate scholar whose books had been seized by Reade, and on 20 November John Glynne* reported that he had protected recusants and Catholic priests, and that Windebanke’s house was ‘the place and resort for these priests and Jesuits’. It appeared that those released paid for the services of their friends in high office: a letter from Reade was produced in which he told a reluctant priest to ‘pay the fees you agreed on, for it will be a means to keep you more free from trouble hereafter’.52D’Ewes (N), 22; CJ ii. 33a; W. Prynne, The Popish royall favourite (1643), 18-32, 55; Nalson, Impartial Collection, i. 537, 571-2.

Ordered to appear before the House on 26 November, Reade prepared notes addressed to fellow Members, in which he claimed that ‘part of this charge is merely fantastic, part most maliciously scandalous’ and sought that they should ‘suspend their judgement till they shall have heard my answer’.53SP16/473, f. 35. But his appearance was delayed while further evidence was considered by the Commons (1 Dec.).54CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 291; CJ ii. 41a-42a. On 3 December the House accepted Windebanke’s excuse for non-attendance, but when on the 4th he could not be found at home, Reade was summoned instead, at which point Sir Walter Erle* reported a rumour that they had fled.55CJ ii. 44a, 45a; D’Ewes (N), 103, 125. On the 5th the clerk of the Commons, Henry Elsynge, made several fruitless attempts to see Reade to obtain papers connected with Archbishop Laud, but the rumours had been accurate.56CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 299. By the evening of the 3rd, Reade and Windebanke were becalmed off Queenborough in Kent, and searching desperately for a better ship to cross the Channel; by the 6th they had finally reached the safety of Calais. Letters in which Reade professed his innocence and explained the hazards of staying in London, were quickly intercepted and the news of his flight soon spread.57CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 299-300; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 348.

Part of the reason for Reade’s flight may have been the treatment of Sir William Beecher†, who had been questioned for his role in searching the chambers of Lord Brooke and the earl of Warwick after the dissolution of the Short Parliament, and who had admitted that the order had come from the secretaries of state. Beecher – whom Reade had long hoped to succeed as clerk of the privy council, having resigned his tellership of the exchequer to that end – was committed to the Fleet and only released on grounds of ill-health. Reade appeared painfully aware that a similar fate might await him if he remained in London.58Nalson, Impartial Collection, i. 514-16, 520, 523; CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 6; 1639-40, p. 151; 1640, p. 252; 1640-1, p. 205; C66/2773; C66/2842; Bodl. Tanner 67, ff. 214-215v.

Soon installed in Paris, Reade continued to write to Thomas Windebanke, often relating foreign news.59CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 39-40, 45-6. At first he evidently thought that resolution of his and Windebanke’s cause would be readily effected, and he hoped to employ the good offices of Robert Sidney, 2nd earl of Leicester, ambassador to France.60CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 314, 415, 437-8. Disillusionment set in rapidly, however. He experienced financial hardship, feared that the imprisoned Strafford was attempting to shift the blame for his own actions on to Windebanke, who was increasingly melancholic; and worried that his letters were being intercepted, although he suspected Parliament less than rival courtiers, whom he accused of ‘malicious barbarousness’.61  CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 314-15, 415, 476, 487, 490-1, 505-6, 560; 1641-3, pp. 27, 220. Hearing in February 1641 that Richard Browne, royal agent in Paris, had been appointed clerk of the privy council, he detected duplicity, and by March he had come to realise that he stood little hope of being admitted into the king’s service, and to place all of his hopes upon the queen.62  CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 458, 515. In April he told Thomas Windebanke that he did not desire the

prejudice [i.e. bias] of any person, but if they must be prejudiced, and others advantaged by it, I know no reason why I should not pretend as well [as] another. A living must be had one way or other.63SP16/479, f. 85.

With the onset of illness, he concluded that ‘the world grows every day worse and worse, and is so full of deceit and malice that I think there will be no living shortly for an honest man in it’.64SP16/479, f. 135. This was ‘a time for everyman to look to himself’.65SP16/481, f. 41.

Meanwhile, reports were circulating that Reade had accused the Lords in Parliament of being ‘fools’, but these were false: knowing himself ‘so clear of any unworthiness or corruption’, his enemies, ‘if they will have wherewithal to accuse me, they must invent it’.66SP16/479, ff. 29-29v. Maintaining Windebanke’s innocence of having favoured Catholics, he told his cousin that he would risk everything to come to London to defend his uncle, for if the king did not ‘avow’ him, there would be

a necessity of somebody’s being there to bring to his Majesty’s remembrance the grounds and reasons upon which divers things were done, which must needs be slipped out of his Majesty’s memory.67SP16/480, f. 127v; CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 3, 8-9.

Since Windebanke had been the king’s executive, it was a matter of royal honour that Charles should uphold him.68CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 466. Hearing that Edward Nicholas† had been appointed secretary in Windebanke’s place, Reade told his cousin that he wished ‘the king would think upon a poor man ruined in his service after almost 20 years attendance at court’ (17/27 Dec.).69SP16/486, f. 142. By January 1642 Reade was complaining of his forlorn condition and of frustrating idleness, the danger of the Irish rebellion, and John Pym*.70CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 245, 255, 266.

Although he was in some ways an intelligent commentator on his times, Reade’s letters betray an inflated sense of his and Windebanke’s political importance, including in relations between king and Parliament. When he advised accommodation, it was on self-interested grounds. In the crucial business of the treatment of Catholics, he claimed that Windebanke had done nothing without the king’s warrant; regarding it as amounting to little more than a misunderstanding, he saw little else to cause disagreement with Parliament.71CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 427, 465. Since Parliament was not expected to deal imminently with Windebanke’s case, Reade felt that the king should make a gesture of support – displaying the same political naivety he had in advising the privy council in the previous decade.

Even after Windebanke’s return to England in 1644, Reade remained in exile.72CSP Dom. 1644, p. 171. By 1646, the year Sir Francis died, he had been joined in Paris by his cousin, Thomas Windebanke.73CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 500. After a prolonged period in obscurity, he re-surfaced on 2 October 1660 to press his claim to the clerkship of the signet.74CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 304. But even after the Restoration, his conversion to Catholicism and the fact that he was resident abroad militated against him, and he appears to have been unsuccessful.75CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 445. He was apparently still alive, and resident in Paris, on 7 March 1669, when his brother Thomas drew up his will.76PROB11/330/139. Thereafter, both he and his family slipped into obscurity, without further appearance in Parliament.