PUREFOY, William I (c.1584-1659), of Caldecote, Warws.

Although described in 1643 by a hostile reporter as ‘a man of a mean and desperate fortune’, William Purefoy came of a family settled at Caldecote since 1548, a junior branch of the Purefoys of Drayton, Leicestershire, with links to the Purefoys of Shalstone, Buckinghamshire.44Mercurius Rusticus no. 6 (24 June 1643), 47-8 (E.62.13); Vis. Leics. 1619 (Harl. Soc. ii.), 37; Vis Warws. 1619 (Harl. Soc. xii), 255; The Genealogist, vi. 79. All of these branches were recognised by the heralds, even if his mother’s family, the Baskervilles of Curdworth, were minor gentry of no more than local account. Moreover, two close relatives, George and Michael Purefoy, were Members for constituencies distant from Warwickshire in 1584, 1586 and 1621, and one, Henry Grey*, styled Lord Ruthin, would succeed to the earldom of Kent in 1643.45HP Commons, 1558-1603. After an education at the most openly puritan college in Cambridge, Emmanuel, Purefoy attended an inn of court and presumably returned to north Warwickshire to await his inheritance. He married out of the county, to the widowed mother of George Abbot II*, and around 1612 travelled abroad, quite possibly to Geneva, if William Dugdale’s tendentious story about his later avowal of hatred towards the monarchy has any substance.46APC 1621-3, p. 282; Dugdale, Short View, 19. His education and marriage alliance suggest that Purefoy was a committed puritan before he became an opponent of the government, but by February 1627, he was made to attend the privy council to answer for his refusal to contribute towards the Forced Loan.47APC Jan-Aug. 1627, p. 52.

It was Purefoy’s standing as a loan refuser that attracted him to the freemen of Coventry as a candidate in the election for the 1628 Parliament. He was not a freeman of the city, even though he was related to families prominent there, such as that of Hales, reformers in both the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.48Harl. 1047, f. 46; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 5; A. Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warws. 1620-60 (Cambridge, 1987), 16, 176. The sheriffs would not accept his election, because he was not qualified, but when the case reached the Commons on 9 April 1628, it was decided in Purefoy’s favour.49CD 1628, ii. 374-5; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 93-4. His being pricked as sheriff in 1630 looks like an attempt to harness the loyalty of a man who was emerging as a government opponent, as on the eve of his selection he resisted the imposition of fines for distraint of knighthood. He had conformed by 1631, and to judge from the responses of the magistrates to his directives enforcing the Book of Orders, he was perfectly in sympathy with official intervention on matters of social policy. Indeed, in 1640 he was the promoter of an alehouse to cater for the needs of Nuneaton colliers.50CSP Dom. 1631-3, pp. 133, 144, 154; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 102, 103, 286.

Through the 1630s, Purefoy became a stalwart of the Warwickshire court of quarter sessions, attending all meetings between the autumn of 1636 and the summer of 1642, a clear demonstration of his increasing importance in the county. He served on an important ad hoc committee with the bishop of Lichfield to investigate the respective tax liabilities of Coventry and Warwickshire.51CSP Dom. 1635, p. 437; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 352. It was also during this decade that he began to move in the godly circle centred on the 2nd Baron Brooke (Robert Greville†), and in December 1638 visited the Warwick school of the puritan diarist, Thomas Dugard, in the company of Brooke and Godfrey Bossevile*, Brooke’s half-brother, with whom Purefoy was to enjoy a long political association.52Add. 23146, f. 81. It was through Brooke’s influence that Purefoy was returned for Warwick, a borough where he had no family influence, in the Short Parliament.53Warws. RO, CR 1618/W21/6, p. 144; Add. 23146, f. 88. He made an immediate impression on the assembly, being elected to the important privileges committee on 16 April 1640.54CJ ii. 4a. On 22 April, after Lord Keeper Finch (John Finch†) had reported the king’s willingness to abandon Ship Money in exchange for Parliament’s voting alternative supply, and a number of Members had urged the House to comply with the government’s wishes, Purefoy followed John Pym* in counselling his colleagues to take their own time, ‘to proceed as we see occasion’, to debate the matter.55Aston’s Diary, 30. On 22 April he was an organizer of a conference with the Lords about a public fast, and on 2 May he was named to a committee on the petition of Sir Edward Bishop* about his election at Bramber. That same day, Purefoy himself brought in a bill, which would have inhibited frivolous or unfounded law suits.56Aston’s Diary, 118. Such a measure would have benefited those with limited financial resources, but like all legislation in this Parliament, it fell when the assembly was prematurely dissolved.

Anti-episcopalian in Parliament, 1640-2

It was a foregone conclusion that after such a vigorous contribution in April and May, and with such a powerful backer, Purefoy would find a seat in the second Parliament to meet in 1640, despite his considerable age. Returned again on the Brooke interest at Warwick, but only after an unsuccessful attempt at a seat for the county, he was named to eight committees before the end of the year. The first, on 13 November, was to consider the petition of Alexander Leighton, a sufferer from Laudian public humiliation and punishment, who had written an anti-episcopal book.57CJ ii. 28b. Purefoy took a strong line against bishops and the secular role of the clergy, like his friend and colleague Bossevile. In February 1641, he was on a committee to take into consideration proceedings against Laudian bishops such as Richard Montagu of Norwich and Morgan Owen of Llandaff, another to disable the clergy from temporal office, and another to legislate against pluralities. When on 29 October 1641, a conference was proposed with the Lords to try to prevent the appointment of five new bishops, Purefoy was a teller for those wanting the question to be put, and after their success in the division, Bossevile was named to the committee to draw up the heads of the meeting between the Houses.58CJ ii. 91a, 99a, 101a, 298b; D'Ewes (C), 54. On 30 November, he and Sir Arthur Ingram on their own initiative sought a writ of habeas corpus to secure the release of Henry Darley*, imprisoned for two months in York: evidence of Purefoy’s sympathy with ‘fiery spirits’ of opposition to the government.59Procs. LP i. 372.

A second early interest of Purefoy’s in the Long Parliament was military affairs. He was among those on 21 November 1640 who were charged with examining the condition of the king’s army, and particularly whether there were papists among its commanders. He strongly urged their dismissal 60CJ ii. 34a; Procs. LP i. 229. He was sympathetic to the army of the Scots. On 6 March 1641, there was a debate in the House on the respective demands of the English and Scots armies. It was the sense of the Commons that £25,000 should be paid to the Scots to stop them advancing further, but that first, £10,000 should be allocated to the English army. Purefoy, going against the grain, argued that £20,000 of an allocation already made to the king’s army should be diverted to the Scots: Sir Simonds D’Ewes* noted that his proposal was ‘generally gainsaid’, but saw his point. The outcome was a more equitable promise of finance to both armies.61Procs. LP ii. 650.

Purefoy played no particularly well-defined role in the remedial legislation of 1641, or in the attacks on the ‘evil counsellors’ of the king, beyond his determination to limit episcopacy. He certainly sat on many committees – 20 in that year – on a variety of petitions and legislative topics, but no single theme dominates. Nevertheless, on the floor of the House he was able to intervene decisively on behalf of the radicals. On 15 December 1641, he argued in a speech that Parliament needed a supply of money and that any proposals would be ‘seasonable’. After a silence, he pronounced that ‘there was no readier means to bring in money than to cause our declaration to be printed that so we might satisfy the whole kingdom’. It was noted that many Members seemed already to have heard of this proposal to publish the Grand Remonstrance, presented to the king three days earlier. Also in December, he sat with Bossevile and Sir Arthur Hesilrige* on a committee to enquire into the details of the army being assembled on the king’s behalf, and in January 1642 he was named to the committee of safety that liaised with the City authorities after the king’s attempt on the Five Members. In March 1642 he seems to have been added to a committee planning a conference with the Lords to produce a declaration against the execution of military power without parliamentary authority. 62LJ viii. 150b; D'Ewes (C), 294-5; A. Fletcher, Outbreak of the English Civil War (1981), 169. This was the start of his involvement in military matters in a constructive, rather than a merely critical, way. On 24 May he was a teller with Hesilrige for those calling for the appointment of Stephen Anderson as a deputy lieutenant in Lincolnshire, and although he seems to have played no part in drafting the Militia Ordinance, he was certainly a key figure called to implement it in Warwickshire under Lord Brooke, in May and June 1642.63CJ ii. 595a, 635a; LJ v. 165a; PJ ii. 389. On 9 July, Purefoy and his fellow deputy lieutenants reported on successful musters around the county. He was absent from the Commons between June and November, recruiting the militia force in his own county. Purefoy was responsible for bringing 800 (a figure later revised in his own account to 500) men into Coventry, borrowing £260 from the county receiver in order to pay the troops.64LJ v. 195b; CJ ii. 965b. The royalist perspective on Purefoy’s activities was that among the Warwickshire gentry he and William Combe* were in a minority, politically.65CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 343.

Before his departure for Warwickshire in June 1642, Purefoy was involved in a number of high profile issues debated in the Commons, and he invariably took the side of those hostile to the position of the king. In January, he had helped scupper a government-sponsored temporary measure to maintain tonnage and poundage, by arguing that, despite the urgency and the plea by the solicitor-general that his measure was acceptable to the House when first mooted, it was against precedent to bring in such a bill without special order.66PJ i. 176. On 24 March, Purefoy supported Pym in arguing for incentives to MPs who brought in early the sums they had promised for the war in Ireland. On this occasion, the radicals lost the division, when Purefoy and Hesilrige were tellers in support of Pym’s motion. The following month, he co-ordinated procedure between Commons and Lords in plans for the impeachment of the apostate, Sir Edward Dering*.67PJ ii. 81, 184.

Soldier in the midlands, June 1642-July 1644

When Purefoy left Westminster for Warwickshire, the House temporarily lost one of the most active radicals. During the weeks before the king raised his standard at Nottingham on August, Purefoy’s energies were diverted into military campaigning. While Brooke and others concentrated on defending Warwick castle against those intent on taking control of it in the name of the king, Purefoy ranged with his newly raised troops far beyond Warwickshire, on 18 August as far as Bourton house and Maids Moreton church, near Buckingham. The church was sacked and plundered, and some of the damage was evidently religiously inspired iconoclasm rather than uncontrolled plundering.68Maids Moreton par. reg., quoted in P. Tennant, Edgehill and Beyond (Gloucester, 1992), 39. It was because of this expedition, or through pressing business in Coventry that he was unable to fend off the assault by Prince Rupert on his home at Caldecote on 28 August, having to leave it to his step-son George Abbot II to protect the house and its inhabitants. His enemies later concocted a story of his having hidden in a barley field while the attack was in progress.69LR9/131; Special Passages and Certain Informations no. 4 (30 Aug.-6 Sept. 1642), 30-1 (E.115.21); A True Relation of Prince Robert his Forces (1642), 1-3 (E.116.6); A Continuation of Certain Speciall and Remarkable Passages (30 Aug.-6 Sept. 1642), 5-6 (E.116.8); A List of the Names of the Members of the House of Commons (1648), 7 (E.458.12). Purefoy was certainly back in Warwickshire by 20 September, when he mustered with Brooke and the 3rd earl of Essex (Robert Devereux) near Rugby. In the view of some royalist critics, Purefoy was a significant radicalizing force on Brooke, having ‘had the greatest influence in seducing that unhappy lord to this desperate rebellion’.70Mercurius Rusticus no. 6 (24 June 1643), 47-8 (E.62.13); Tennant, Edgehill and Beyond, 50.

Purefoy had returned to Westminster by mid-November 1642, as a supporter of Essex’s army. He was among the ten Members who were joined with five peers on 26 November to form the Committee for Advance of Money, and this bicameral group was sent to the common council of London that same day to gather support for its proceedings.71‘Supra, ‘Committee for Advance of Money’; CJ ii. 851b, 866a, 866b. In mid-December, he was one of four MPs who were asked to redraft a bill to execute ordinances for the assessments of London and Westminster.72CJ ii. 885b. He was behind the fast sermon preached to MPs at St Margaret’s on 30 November by Richard Vines, the rector of Caldecote, and he was the most important figure in the Commons in promoting the military association of Warwickshire and Staffordshire, taking it to the Lords for approval on 29 December.73CJ ii. 870a, 905a. Brooke, his colleague on the Committee for Advance of Money, was appointed commander-in-chief of the association, under Essex, on 7 January 1643. During January and February 1643, Purefoy was active in the House in controversies where the chain of military command, and especially Essex’s authority, were in dispute; and when the king’s replies to the Oxford peace proposals were debated, he was a teller (9 Feb.) for those opposed to appointing commissioners to oversee disbanding. The following week he led calls for the royalist Sir Ralph Hopton to be disabled from sitting; the Speaker ‘instantly’ put the question, and Hopton was duly expelled.74CJ ii. 960b; Harl.164, f. 299. The failure of the Oxford proposals could hardly have been a disappointment to one so resolved on a victory for Parliament.75Harl. 164, ff. 291, 300v; CJ ii. 923b, 958b, 960b.

On 6 March 1643, four days after the death of Brooke at the siege of Lichfield, Purefoy received a commission from Essex as colonel of horse and dragoons, and this marked the start of a period of absence from the Commons which lasted until mid-July 1644, with a short period of attendance in January 1644.76CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 449. His direct commission from Essex, independent of the Warwickshire Association, strengthened his hand, and on 14 March Purefoy and the other parliamentarians at Coventry wrote to Essex to press for extra resources, and emphasising that they lacked an experienced commander should Coventry be besieged.77HMC 10th Rep. VI. 95. Purefoy was busy as a soldier and in the county committee which notionally oversaw his own military activities; he signed over half its surviving orders between March and November.78Hughes, Politics, War and Society, 360.

Purefoy’s regiment was involved in various actions in Warwickshire, most notoriously when in a repeat of the iconoclasm in Buckinghamshire of the previous year, he descended on Warwick, the borough for which he sat in Parliament. On 14 June 1643, his troops pulled down the market cross there. Memorials in brass and glass to the Beauchamps, lords of Warwick castle in the middle ages, were also destroyed.79Mercurius Rusticus no. 6 (24 June 1643), 47-8 (E.62.13); Mercurius Aulicus, week 24 (11-17 June 1643), 320 (E.56.11). Brooke’s place as commander-in-chief of the Association was taken by the 2nd earl of Denbigh (Basil Feilding), a man with much less sympathy towards the radicals of the Coventry committee, who had been friends and clients of Brooke. In April, Purefoy had been claiming the title of colonel and commander-in-chief.80SP28/247/600. By September, Denbigh’s relations with the committee had become difficult, and although the committee assured the earl that ‘nothing appears to them that doth in any way diminish their opinion of his innocency and faithfulness’, this was the beginning rather than the end of a protracted conflict, which deepened when the committee dismissed Denbigh’s officers.81E. Husband, Ordinances, 9 Mar. 1642-Dec. 1646 (1646), 305 (E.1058); HMC 4th Rep. 263.

The start of the dispute may have been signalled by a report from the Committee of Both Kingdoms at Westminster on 31 August about an intercepted letter to Denbigh from his mother, in which she urged him to join the king. John Pym and the rest of the committee appeared satisfied with his explanation, but they later heard details of a quarrel between Denbigh and Purefoy.82Harl. 165, ff. 161, 161v. Denbigh did not arrive in Coventry to take command until late November 1643, when he organised a ceremony of taking the Solemn League and Covenant before his soldiers at St. Michael’s church. Six days later, on 2 December, a conference was held between Lords and Commons on the dispute which had by now been brought to Parliament by both parties, who were appealing to the Speaker to uphold their positions.83CJ iii. 328a; Harl. 165, f. 231; Bodl. Tanner 62B, ff. 382, 420. Denbigh identified Purefoy as a challenger to his military command, while the committee complained of Denbigh’s unwarranted interference in their affairs. In Parliament, Purefoy’s perspective on the quarrel seems initially to have commanded more sympathy than Denbigh’s, to judge from the orders requiring Denbigh to account for himself and confirming the existing governor of Coventry in office. He had, after all, played a more distinguished and active role in civil and military affairs than Denbigh, and it was to Purefoy that John Bridges* wrote anxiously about a royalist threat in west Warwickshire, asking him to persuade Denbigh of the gravity of the position. Denbigh later asserted that he offered to shore up the military presence there before Purefoy was able to respond, and that his help had been spurned.84HMC Portland, i, 162; Bodl. Tanner 62B, f. 454.

But Purefoy had his detractors, too, notably Sir Thomas Myddelton*, who on 18 December denounced his ‘unworthy and insolent dealing’ towards Denbigh. In his view, Purefoy and his cronies contrived the letter to the Speaker without the consent of others on the committee who were – again the social sneer against the MP – ‘of better quality and as well affected to the Parliament as themselves’. Reports of secret meetings of the Coventry committee had been spread by Denbigh. Moderates like D-Ewes were quick to support Denbigh against Purefoy. D’Ewes had among his papers an anonymous report on the situation in the counties of the Association, which denounced the inferior social standing of its officers, and reserved particular scorn for Purefoy

a man not only of an inconsiderable estate but his height, harshness, partiality and imperious comportment hath been such, besides his dullness and neglect in martial affairs, that the country disaffects him and so have done for above a year past; and therefore in May 1643 petition for the earl of Denbigh.85Harl. 378, f. 4.

The final report of both Houses vindicated Denbigh and left him in command of the Association; the alleged reconciliation reported that month between Purefoy and Denbigh must have been very fragile.86Harl. 165, ff. 246v, 247, 247v, 265; Bodl. Tanner 62B, ff. 405, 407-8; Whitelocke, Mems. i. 232.

By the end of February 1644, Purefoy was co-operating adequately with Denbigh in deploying the troops of Commissary-general Hans Behr. Denbigh’s plan had been that Behr and Purefoy should move eastwards through Northamptonshire into Leicestershire, to recover a parliamentarian presence after the defeat at Newark. Behr preferred to remain in Warwickshire, making heavy and unwarranted demands on the civilian population, and countermanded Purefoy’s regiment in early April. The Committee of Both Kingdoms intervened again, to detain Purefoy in his home county, in order to enable him to march to Gloucester to support Sir Edward Massie* against the besieging royalists, contrary to Denbigh’s wishes.87CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 30, 89, 98, 112, 121, 122, 124, 138, 142; CJ iii. 488a; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 227. Although Massie assured the Committee of Both Kingdoms that he had a high opinion of Purefoy, reports to the committee that Purefoy’s officers were commandeering horses from Parliament’s friends emanated from Massie’s Gloucester committee.88CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 181, 184. The Coventry committee sought Purefoy’s recall to their own service, and in June he was removed from Gloucester, but was despatched instead to join Sir William Waller* at Northampton. The initiative for his redeployment seems to have lain with the earl of Essex.89CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 194, 215, 220-1, 269; CJ iii. 517a, 520a. Postings of the regiment to Aylesbury and then Abingdon followed, but not before Purefoy had successfully taken Compton House, a home of the 3rd earl of Northampton, (James Compton*, Lord Compton), which contained £5,500 seized for Parliament’s use.90Add. 28565, ff. 1v, 7; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 467, 471, 484; Whitelocke, Mems. i. 267; Dugdale, Diary and Corresp. 69.

Military administrator and attaché with the Scots, July 1644-Sept. 1645

Compton House turned out to be Purefoy’s last significant military exploit, and by 15 July 1644 he was back in the Commons. His regiment was commanded by one of his majors, and although Purefoy seems to have been consulted frequently on its movements, he was probably only with it again in November, when he was asked to join the Basing House siege in Hampshire.91CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 112, 130, 133, 145, 252. He was added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers in August, in order to examine four sectaries and to work with the Westminster Assembly on finding ways to suppress antinomian and anabaptist views.92CJ iii. 585a. His own religious orthodoxy was beyond question, and he must have found especially outrageous the allegation by Denbigh’s soldiers that his regiment harboured ‘anabaptists and papists’.93CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 445. He remained interested in army administration. On 21 August, he was named to a committee to review the cost of the army and to find means of raising money for the navy. Appointed on 15 July to be a commissioner for courts martial in and around London, he was required in October to convey to that committee the expectation of the Commons that orders should be made for soldiers returning from the campaigning season.94CJ iii. 601a, 635b. That he was chosen for this suggests he had a particular interest in rationalizing the inherently competitive structure of the armies, and his experiences with Denbigh must have contributed to that perception. The proposals for the New Model were exactly the kind of restructuring that reduced competitive and overlapping jurisdictions, and on 29 January 1645, Purefoy took to the Lords a request that they should prioritize scrutiny of the ordinance for the new army, which had passed the Commons on the 21st, with Oliver Cromwell and Henry Vane II as tellers in favour. On 17 February he was named to the committee considering recruitment for it; five days later, he was required to go to Warwickshire to raise money locally for it, and on 6 March he was one of the committee meeting at Grocers’ Hall to discuss with the City of London common council the prospects for raising £80,000 for the new force.95CJ iv. 36a, 51a, 59b, 71a; Gardiner, Hist. Civil War, ii. 119-120.

Ever on the side of those who sought to maintain the most strict military discipline, on 8 May Purefoy was a teller for those promoting an ordinance to punish deserters from the colours by martial law; his side lost, and the matter was referred instead to the Army Committee.96CJ iv. 135a. By the terms of the Self-Denying ordinance, he surrendered his own regiment to Capt. William Colemore on 14 May.97CJ iv. 142a. It may have been during the preparation of the New Model legislation that Purefoy became friendly with Oliver Cromwell. Richard Baxter, who was in Coventry as chaplain to the garrison, sought to leave the city to join a regiment. His departure, at the same time that John Barker* relinquished command of the Coventry militia to Thomas Willughby*, provoked unrest in the garrison, and the minister was urged to stay. In his response to the committee, Baxter was critical of the army, but Purefoy cut him off:

Let me hear no more of that. If Nol Cromwell should hear any soldier speak but such a word, he would cleave his crown. You do them wrong: it is not so.

Baxter afterwards complained that Cromwell ignored him whenever they were in company together, and attributed this to Purefoy’s poisoning his mind against the minister.98Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696), i. 52.

From July 1645, Purefoy was among the small group of commissioners required by Parliament to assist the Scots army in its military campaign in England, with power to raise provisions and supply from the counties through which it passed.99CJ iv. 204a, 208b, 209a, 210b; CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 3, 23. Through August, the Scots settled down to besiege Hereford. Presumably some measure of sympathy with the Scots was a prerequisite for service. Purefoy was a Presbyterian who is not known ever to have been anti-Scots in his pronouncements; Humphrey Salwey, one of his colleagues, had a son who played a leading role among the clergy of the Westminster Assembly, and was himself a lay member of it. The experience of accompanying that army was not a happy one for the MPs, who by 3 September had to report the frustration of their plans. Their scheme to take Hereford by storm before the royalists could recruit to raise the siege was over-ruled by Alexander Leslie, 1st earl of Leven [S], the Scots lord general. The Scots were losing heart, the countryside exposed to the plunder of the besieging army, and the region consequently ill-disposed to the cause of Parliament and its allies.100Bodl. Nalson IV, 32, 36, 68; XII, 131; Gardiner, Hist. Civil War, ii. 309-10. As a coda to Purefoy’s involvement with the Scots, in August 1646 he and Salwey were on the committee charged with reviewing the estimates submitted by the Scots commissioners, as part of the process of paying them off.101CJ iv. 650b.

Religious Presbyterian, Oct. 1645-Dec. 1648

After this episode, Purefoy spent 1646 as an active but not prominent Member of the Commons. He was named during the year to 16 committees, but these were of a miscellaneous character. It was certainly a mark of the respect accorded him by his colleagues that he was named to the important privileges committee on 7 October 1645; a similar significance attaches to his being asked to invite and thank preachers of fast sermons.102CJ iv. 300a, 420a, 454a. He was firmly associated with the religious Presbyterians, serving on a committee to extend that system of religious discipline throughout London, and was a commissioner for enumerating the scandalous offences which might bar people from the Lord's Supper under the proposed new church dispensation.103CJ iv. 413b, 563a. Purefoy took a firm line on the confiscated lands of the bishops, supporting calls for their sale at no less than ten years’ purchase at 1641 values.104CJ iv. 715b. In April 1646, he was invited to make his accounts for his period of military service, and when seven months later these were declared in the House, he was authorised to receive over £1,500 from Warwickshire fines collected at Goldsmiths’ Hall. In December, he was empowered to nominate delinquents from whom this award might be raised.105CJ iv. 525a, 714a; v. 8a; Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 82, 92. He seems not to have been active in Warwickshire and Coventry during 1646, signing none of the county committee’s surviving warrants, but in February 1647 was given permission to go to the country. A month later, orders relating to the future of the Coventry garrison were resolved upon, doubtless as a result of Purefoy’s involvement in affairs there. The citizens sought the removal of the garrison, supported by conservatives such as Thomas Boughton*, but a compromise was effected whereby 150 soldiers were retained, while the artillery was withdrawn and the small arms reduced. Purefoy’s name was last on the list of Members named to the committee to receive information about the county committeemen’s activities, and his influence must have been greater at this point in Coventry than in Westminster.106Add. 35098, f. 26v; CJ v. 122b; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 363.

Purefoy may have owed his place on the important Committee for Indemnity, formed in May 1647, to the influence of the Presbyterian recruiter Member, John Swynfen, with whom he would have co-operated in the affairs of the Warwickshire and Staffordshire Association; or he may have been recommended as someone with an active interest in the welfare and interests of those who served in the military.107CJ v. 174a. Related to this was his involvement in legislation to remove surplus military personnel out of London and to address alleged abuses in handling army pay. His sympathies with the army ensured that his Presbyterian religious allegiance was never extended to secular politics. Purefoy was among those who fled to the army at the Presbyterians’ attempted coup on 26 July 1647, and was named to the committee for the ordinance to repeal all votes and orders made between 26 July and 6 August - along with another of the old Warwick castle interest, Sir Arthur Hesilrige*- and helped complete the legislation when it returned from the Lords.108LJ ix. 385b; CJ v. 205a, 229a, 253a, 271b, 272a, 278a. He was sufficiently associated with the military interest to be included in a list of serving army members in Parliament, even though he no longer held an army commission.109A List of the Names of the Members of the House of Commons (1648), 7 (E.458.12).

Purefoy evidently believed that negotiations with the king had some value. On 30 September, he was named to the committee charged with putting to Charles I some proposals about religion, which must have been based on a scheme for a Presbyterian church system. This committee became something of a battleground between Presbyterians and Independents, seen in a series of divisions on 13 October. A week earlier, the committee to produce a scheme of religion to put to the king had had its brief widened to include a measure of religious toleration, which must have been at the behest of its Independent members. On a report from the committee, it was proposed that the proposals to go to the king should be in force for three years. Cromwell and Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire supported this, while Godfrey Bossevile was a teller against, preferring no limitation. The Presbyterians having won this vote, the Independents, again led by Cromwell, brought forward another proposal, that the new church structure be temporary, without any specific time stipulated. This time, the Presbyterians, with Purefoy as a teller, lost by 14 votes, and a third division took place, on whether a time limit of seven years be imposed. The Independents were in favour, but were now defeated, so that the outcome was for a time-limited Presbyterian scheme to be put to the king. On the 30th, Purefoy was one of a committee to reconcile another set of differences, between Lords and Commons, on the propositions, and helped organize a conference between the Houses in order to do so; but the whole debate had more significance for relations between the two main political groups in Parliament than for those between the king and Parliament.110CJ v. 332a, 336a, 346b.

Purefoy’s standing and importance in the House rose with that of the military interest. On 23 November he was one of a group of seven Members who withdrew to open an intercepted message from the king to assess whether its contents should be debated; he was added to a committee on printing and licensing on 10 December, and soon afterwards organized another conference with the Lords, on the appointment of sheriffs. On 24 January 1648 he sought the Lords’ approval for orders including an extension of powers to the Derby House committee.111CJ v. 367a, 378b, 404a, 441a,b. Although the Scots commissioners had left London for Edinburgh in January, and were in fact working to form an alliance with the king, a dialogue between themselves and Parliament continued to be conducted. On 26 February, the Commons formulated a case for a measure of toleration in any religious settlement, against the rigidity of the Scots. They cited the examples of Catholic France and the Protestant United Provinces, where people were not forced to conform to the state religion. After a vote to incorporate this wording was lost by the religious Independents, Purefoy was a teller for those wishing to persist with formulating this answer. Two days later, another similarly forthright clause was debated. The Scots had asserted that toleration was the foundation of all heresies. In response, the new clause was designed to reassure the Scots that the degree of toleration sought by the English Parliament extended only to differences among Protestant Christians on matters relating to infant baptism and church government. This was a line that Purefoy felt able to support, but he found himself in the subsequent division telling for this formulation against Hesilrige and Sir Peter Wentworth. The Independents were successful, but the episode showed that Purefoy’s Presbyterianism was not inflexible.112CJ v. 472b, 473a. He was away from the House between late February and early May 1648, and on his return the context of these debates on toleration had changed. Parliament was now aware of the Scots’ military intentions, and Purefoy was named to a number of committees on the militia, an important weapon in quelling the risings of the second civil war. He took to the Lords a number of orders on militia organization, and sat on committees to apportion blame for the renewed outbreak of fighting.113CJ v. 551a, 597b, 617a,b, 620a, 631b, 640b.

In his native county, Purefoy maintained a high profile, consistent with his militaristic line in the House of Commons. He opposed the order of January 1648 that all sequestration revenue should be sent from the counties directly to London, urging the Coventry committee to ensure the continued supply to the garrison at Warwick.114CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 5; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 214. Warwickshire was one of the minority of counties that in August 1648 petitioned Parliament in favour of maintaining the army, and Purefoy must surely have been active in promoting this expression of militancy.115CJ v. 674b; The Warws. Petition to the Parliament (1648) (E.460.8). In July he was ordered to report to Judge Henry Rolle† the refusal of the sheriff of Warwickshire, Grevill Verney, to execute prisoners at the summer assizes, further evidence of his unbending attitude towards those who challenged public order.116CJ v. 629a. On 22 July, he opposed a resumption of debate on reaching an accommodation with the king, and in August worked with the Derby House Committee to investigate and quell further disturbances.117CJ v. 644a; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 233. He was also reported to hold an uncompromising view on the merits of confiscating royalist delinquents’ estates. The journalist Marchamont Nedham reported a meeting in Gray’s Inn between Purefoy, Henry Darley* and either James or John Nelthorpe* on sharing out confiscations. Purefoy – ‘Colonel Guts’ to Nedham – complained that all his service to the state had been rewarded only with £3,000,

though those that knew him well do say he scarce ever spent £5 in the service. For all the time he was out, he usually sent his quartermaster before, to bespeak hasty pudding, with which diet (they say) he undid almost three villages upon free quarter, about Banbury.

According to this account, the others knew Purefoy’s reputation for greed and cut him out of their allocation of lands, and the Warwickshire man, ‘huffing and puffing with great indignation, brake up the meeting’.118Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 16 (11-18 July, 1648), sig. Q2iii (E.453.11).

Over many years sympathetic to the army, long before the New Model was formed, Purefoy’s reaction to the disorder of 1648 propelled him further into the camp of the military radicals. On 14 November, after a debate on disbanding supernumeraries, he was a teller for those who wanted to increase the army establishment by 3,000 foot, and though his motion was defeated by 22 votes, he remained committed to radical solutions, being a member of the conference with the Lords on 21 November on an ordinance to remove obstruction to the sales of bishops’ lands. Four days later, he went down to Warwickshire to raise more money from the assessments, money that was to supply the army.119CJ vi. 76a, 81b, 88a. His record of support for the political Independents and the army ensured that at Pride’s Purge he was untouched, but he was evidently not in favour of it. On 14 December, he was among those leading calls for a delegation to Sir Thomas Fairfax* to demand by what authority the purge had been carried out, and formed part of the committee that visited the commander-in-chief with this message. The same day, however, he was part of the committee that dealt with the ‘obnoxious’ published protestation by those secluded and imprisoned in the purge, and persuaded the Lords to support an ordinance against them. On 16 December, he took to the Lords an order for 7 additions to the Committee for Revenue, and several ordinances countermanding earlier ones on the militia. On the 20th, when Fairfax sent word that he would reply in due course to those who questioned his authority, Purefoy’s ally Geoffrey Bossevile was among those calling for a renewal of the same challenge, and Purefoy himself supported the return of his delegation to the general.120CJ vi. 97a, 97b, 98a, 99a, 101a,b.

Regicide and councillor of state, Dec. 1648-Apr. 1653

Purefoy’s scruples against the military force exercised against Parliament did not extend to the judicial proceedings against the king. On 23 December, he and Bossevile were part of the committee to consider means of trying the king and ‘other capital offenders’, and after the second reading of the ordinance against him on 29 December, he was part of the committee to perfect the legislation. It was thus unsurprising that he and Bossevile were named as commissioners for the king’s trial. Their paths diverged at this point. Bossevile played no part in the proceedings, whereas Purefoy was among the most active of the commissioners. The trial and associated commissioners’ meetings occupied 15 days, and Purefoy attended on every day except 13 January, the day when the commissioners reported to Parliament their plans for the judicial process.121Muddiman, Trial, 76, 89, 96, 195, 197, 202, 203, 205, 206, 207, 209, 210, 212, 222, 224, 225, 227, 228. Meanwhile, he was named to a range of important executive committees of Parliament, including the Army Committee, the Committee for Compounding, the Committee for Advance of Money (which he rejoined, having been replaced by another MP in April 1644), the Derby House Committee and the committee for designing and managing the great seal.122CJ iii. 460b; vi. 107b, 110a, 112b, 113b.

Purefoy was by this time among the most important members of whatever regime would replace that of the monarchy of Charles I. His republicanism is reputed to have been kindled many years previously, and he was reported to have exclaimed

I bless God I have lived to see the ruin of monarchy, and also that I have been instrumental in upsetting it, for I do here acknowledge that such was my design ever since I was at Geneva, 30 years ago.123Dugdale, Short View, 19.

If this is a true reflection of his views – his neighbour but political enemy William Dugdale believed it was – they seem to have derived from his visit to the mecca of Calvinism, and cannot be attributed to any classical republican influences. In any case, Purefoy seems to have persisted in his view of the inviolability of Parliament by arguing for the retention of the Lords. On 9 January 1649, he supported communication with the Lords, and on the 18th was prominent in calls to seek the Lords’ approval of the votes of 4 January. These votes, which included the assertion that ‘the people are, under God, the original of all just power’, had been passed in defiance of the Lords’ refusal to concur. His proposition was defeated by seven votes, but on 6 February he tried again, this time proposing a motion that the Commons should take the advice of the Lords in the exercise of legislative power, and on this occasion his side lost by the greater margin of 15 votes. This crucial division signalled the abolition of the Upper House.124CJ vi. 115a, 121a, 132b; Underdown, Pride's Purge, 201-2.

Purefoy’s own family and social links with the peerage may have played a part in his defence of the Lords. His relationship with Lord Brooke was crucial in shaping his political and religious outlook on the eve of the civil war and during the first year of the conflict; and Brooke helped him to a parliamentary seat. Purefoy’s cousin, Henry Grey*, Lord Ruthin, by this time 10th earl of Kent, shared his religious outlook - both were members of the Committee for Plundered Ministers - and from 6 September 1647 was Speaker of the House of Lords.125CJ ii. 909a. Purefoy was a trustee for Grey’s estate when he married in 1641.126Beds. RO, Wrest Park (Lucas), ms L22/21-22. If personal relations with peers were critical in shaping Purefoy’s views of the House of Lords, however, the feud with Denbigh must also be put in the balance. There is little evidence that this was ever properly resolved until after the abolition of the House of Lords. Purefoy’s relations with Denbigh remained ambiguous, even though Denbigh had sided with the Rump. In May 1649, the two worked as a council committee to consider prisoners; in late August and early September, Purefoy made a report on debts due by the state to Denbigh of over £7,000, and secured £1,774 of this for him from the Revenue Committee. But in December, Purefoy was happy to blow on the embers of the old conflict, and gave evidence that Denbigh had sought his removal, and that of his step-son George Abbot II, from the Coventry committee, as a prerequisite of his own continued service.127CJ vi. 286a, 292a; CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 154, 444-5.

It is noticeable that after the disappearance of the House of Lords, Purefoy intervened to help peers from his own region – 2nd Baron Grey of Groby (Henry Grey*), and even the royalist 3rd earl of Northampton (the former James Compton, Lord Compton*) - suggesting that local loyalties worked powerfully in him.128CJ vi. 458b, 459a, 618b. Perhaps even more important than these relationships in determining Purefoy’s view of the Upper House was his own experience of liaising with the Lords in times of political crisis. He was a member of conferences with the Lords or a messenger to them, on 25 occasions, particularly in the spring of 1642, in February 1643 and in the winter of 1648. There were occasions when Purefoy’s collaborative activities were on matters of considerable state importance: raising taxes to support the army in November 1642 and February 1643, the forming of the Staffordshire and Warwickshire Association, and the creation of the New Model army were products of Purefoy’s work as a go-between.129CJ ii. 866a, 905a, 973a, 984b; iv. 36a, 104a. For him, support for the army and defence of Parliament as an organic whole were not incompatible.

On 14 February 1649, Purefoy was elected to the first council of state of the commonwealth.130CJ vi. 141a. In the first year of the council’s life he was named to at least 49 of its committees. Many were ad hoc bodies dealing with specific issues, notably relations with the enemies of the regime. There were at least 11 of these, not including the re-opening of allegations against Denbigh, which was of course more a dispute among friends.131CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 295, 369, 402, 422, 455, 456, 471; CJ vi. 288b, 289a. For him, enemies were not confined to supporters of the late king. He opposed the granting of state aid to the Leveller leaders while they were in prison, and played a minor part in the trial of John Lilburne in October, having received from Joseph Hawkesworth* a copy of Lilburne’s Impeachment of High Treason against Oliver Cromwell. Lilburne objected to Purefoy’s testimony on the grounds that the MP was ‘one of those that call themselves the keepers of the Liberties of England’ and thus one of those indicting him. Attorney-general Edmund Prideaux I* corrected the Leveller by pointing out that the witness was simply an MP, and Purefoy carried on giving his brief evidence.132CJ vi. 208a; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 334; Howell, State Trials, iv. cols. 1341-2. He reported to the House on recruitment to the army in Ireland, and it was probably an interest in issues of military supply there that fitted him for membership of Parliament’s Committee for Irish Affairs.133CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 295; CJ vi. 266b. In its early months, between February and April, he was virtually an absentee from the council, but by June, he was the second most frequent attender after John Bradshawe*. Between November 1649 and February 1650, he was always among the six most regular in attendance.134CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. xlviii-lxxv. Among the most important of the standing committees of the council on which he sat were those for the admiralty, that to confer with the Army Committee of the House (he sat on both); the committee for Ireland, and that for public finance. He was on several committees dealing with relations with foreign powers, and so there was scarcely an aspect of the government’s activities that escaped his attention.135CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 176, 183, 279, 297, 345, 368, 482, 502.

The one dimension of the council’s work in which Purefoy noticeably played no part was that of religion. He remained firmly in the Presbyterian camp, and this may have kept him out of a politically sensitive policy area when the radicals were in the ascendant. This restriction did not apply in the House, however, where he kept a high profile. In May 1649, he was named to a committee to review laws on probate, marriage and divorce, and argued unsuccessfully that it should extend its scope to include tithes. The same committee, evidently stalled, was revived in July, and the same day, many of its members, including Purefoy and Bossevile, were named to a committee to consider resuming inductions of clergy to benefices: a conservative reversion to the status quo ante. This suggests that Purefoy would have sought to preserve tithes had his committee been empowered to examine the question, an impression reinforced by noting that an opponent of his in these votes was the religious radical, Nathaniel Rich.136CJ vi. 211b, 263b. On 7 August, in a division, Purefoy was a teller supporting a clause to adopt Presbyterian government in a declaration on religion. With tied votes, the Speaker voted with the noes, but Purefoy served on the committee charged with drafting the declaration and introducing into it a promise of toleration. A press commentator ascribed the failure of the Presbyterians to the association by MPs of their preferred model with monarchical government.137Perfect Occurrences (3-10 Aug. 1649), 1213 (E.532.13). The declaration emerged with a vague commitment to altering tithes; a clause enjoining all to pay up until change was effected was voted down.138CJ vi. 275b; Bodl. Nalson XXII, 58.

Purefoy maintained a hard line against unorthodox religious views and their expression, as well as against the morally lax. In November 1649, he sat on a committee to convict those found swearing; and the following year was among those framing a bill against blasphemy: he wanted its scope to extend to verbal outbursts in inns. Perhaps wisely, he was voted down, and the act appeared without reference to social context.139CJ vi. 317b, 430b, 453b; A. and O. ii. 409-12. In January 1651, he wanted the House, rather than the Committee for Plundered Ministers, to consider a book written by John Fry, a Member, which denounced the Westminster Assembly’s catechism. As the Committee had become a place where tolerance had been invoked towards the unorthodox, this must have been in the hope that Presbyterian opinion could be better mobilized in Parliament.140CJ vi. 592b; Oxford DNB, ‘John Fry’. Nevertheless, when there was evidence that religious radicals had recanted, Purefoy was willing to forgive. After Joseph Salmon had been imprisoned in Coventry in March 1650 for preaching an antinomian sermon, he had been persuaded of his errors by Robert Beake.* After examining Salmon on behalf of the council of state, Purefoy had him released on a promise of a written recantation, which duly appeared in 1651.141J. Salmon, Heights in Depths and Depths in Heights (1651), Epistle to the Reader, sig. A4 (iii-v) (E.1361.4); Oxford DNB, ‘Joseph Salmon’.

The recantation of Salmon was evidence of Purefoy’s continuing importance in Warwickshire. He still attended quarter sessions, and was given commissions by the council of state to take to the county, proof of his pivotal status in the relationship between shire and central government. He was not always successful, however, in his attempts to steer local measures through the House. In December 1649, Purefoy opposed the petition by King’s Lynn to hold down its tax burden, and later in the day his own measure to adjust the relative payments of Coventry and Warwickshire in favour of the former was voted down: perhaps a reprisal.142Warwick County Records, iii. p. xxi; CJ vi. 330a. In 1650, he was more successful in promoting a bill for better preaching in Coventry, which came to fruition in March 1651.143CJ vi. 458a, 551b.

Purefoy certainly had enemies, among them it seems Henry Marten*, if voting patterns may be relied upon. Marten and Purefoy had served on committees together as early as December 1642, and they first opposed each other in a division in February 1643, when the issue in dispute was army finance. Subsequently, they served together on the small committee dealing with intercepted letters from the king in November 1647; but after that they led opposing sides in divisions on a regular basis, and on important issues such as the legitimacy of Pride’s Purge, and Purefoy’s attempts to secure the Lords’ concurrence with revolutionary votes. There were 7 of these clashes in 1649, only one each year in 1650 and 1651 but 10 in 1652. In total, Purefoy and Marten took leading positions on opposite sides in divisions on 20 occasions.144CJ ii. 890b, 923b, 967b, 973a; v. 367a; vi. 97a, 115a, 121a, 132b, 208a, 260a, 289b, 500a; vii. 1a, 64a, 78a, 88b, 100a, 140b, 145a, 151b, 157b. It is possible (but no more than that) that Marten had some knowledge of Purefoy through his kin in Berkshire. Furthermore, Marten had taken the bill for Purefoy’s borrowing to raise a regiment to the Lords in 1643, while Purefoy had been on the committee for an award to Marten in 1649; but it is more likely that their political antipathy arose from their divergent personalities and contrasting views on liberties and discipline, in religion and in politics. By 1652, they had come to personify the increasingly acrimonious relations between radicals and conservatives in the Rump.145CJ ii. 967b; vi. 241b; S. Barber, A Revolutionary Rogue. Henry Marten and the English Republic (2000), 4.

Purefoy was returned to the second council of state in February 1650. His attendance fluctuated through the year: he was absent altogether in April, but in January and February 1651, just before the council’s year ended, he shared the notable record of attending all meetings with Bradshawe and four others.146CSP Dom. 1650, pp. xv–xli. He retained membership of the important standing committees, but was named altogether to 22 council committees that year, a considerable reduction on the previous one. It is difficult to assess the breadth and depth of his interests through committee appointments, as where evidence survives, it is apparent that his involvement in committees could be uneven. For example, from October 1650 to February 1651, he attended the council’s admiralty committee frequently enough to have made some impact, but he ceased to attend after that until August 1651, and overall between October 1650 and August 1651 he went to only 16 per cent of the committee’s meetings. His attendance pattern seems to have been similar the following year.147Bodl. Rawl. A.225, A.226.

He was consistently in favour of land sales as a staple of public finance. From 1646, he took an active interest in sales of bishops’ lands. In October 1647, he was named to the committee for removing obstructions to the sales and helped through the Lords the ordinance to speed up the sales. He attended the meetings of the committee for removing obstructions occasionally between December 1648 and September 1650.148CJ iv. 715b; v. 344b; vi. 81b, 238b; LPL, Add. commonwealth recs. MS1, ff. 45, 88v, 89. He himself profited from bishops’ lands, buying rents in Warwickshire, albeit as second purchaser. In 1649, he was named to the committee for sales of dean and chapter lands, and was involved in moves to sell crown lands for the benefit of the soldiers.149CJ vi. 116a, 207b. He was subsequently named to a number of committees making special awards from the capitular estates.150CJ vi. 369b, 441a. In 1652, he was involved in additional legislation on fee farm rents sales, another source from which he had personally profited, acting as a co-purchaser with Abraham Bowne, a Coventry attorney and steward to the corporation there.151CJ vii. 104a; E308/7, pt. 1 f. 253; Coventry RO, BA/H/C/17/1 ff. 233, 245v. In January 1653 he was named to a committee for selling the royal forests.152CJ vii. 245b. The essence of the 1648 story of Marchamont Nedham’s, that Purefoy was keen on selling the estates of individual delinquents, was confirmed by his behaviour towards royalists when their names were proposed for confiscations. He was usually to be found supporting inclusion in the lists for sales when Members voted on difficult cases.153CJ vii. 151b, 157b, 205a, 206b. In 1651, he was one of many Presbyterian MPs identified in allegations by Thomas Coke that there was a conspiracy to nurture the interest of the peers and the exiled Charles Stuart. Purefoy was reported to enjoy an annuity of £200 from the estate of William Cavendish, 3rd earl of Devonshire, granted him as part of the arrears due to him that he was authorized to recover from delinquents. There was reported to be ‘a tacit condition therein, to do him all friendly favours and courtesies that shall lie in his power either in Parliament or council upon all occasions’. The whole of the plot was much less than the sum of its parts, but the details relating to Purefoy seem to capture some of the essence of his relations with the peerage.154Bodl. Nalson XVI, ff. 182, 208v.

From 1649, Purefoy was involved in reviewing issues of indemnity for the army.155CJ vi. 150b, 207b, 217a. His military interests were maintained through the 1650s, when he was confirmed as colonel of the Warwickshire militia.156CSP Dom. 1650, p. 507. He was active in this role, using his position on the council of state to reinforce his authority in stamping out opposition to the regime, particularly in the build-up to the invasion by the Scots, and in the aftermath of the battle of Worcester in September 1651.157CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 99, 102, 103, 229, 417, 431. In this emergency period, he examined various officers taken prisoner throughout the country.158CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 393, 411, 415, 462. On Parliament’s Army Committee, he argued for the importance of that body in decision-making on the size of the military establishment.159Eg. 2618, f. 40. But his reluctance to encourage what Cromwell would call ‘healing and settling’ extended to his line in debate on indemnity and oblivion. He was active in framing the commonwealth’s indemnity legislation. He supported indemnity for tenants against oppressive landlords, but was less enthusiastic about the principle of a general indemnity. He was added to the committee considering the general bill for oblivion, when it was decided that it should take into account the discoveries of delinquents’ estates and how best they could be exploited, which seemed to contradict the spirit and principles of the bill. He managed the voting for MPs wanting an exception from indemnity to be made against payers of penal taxation.160CJ vi. 380a, 544b; vii. 78a, 86a, 88b, 95b. This determination to see divisions between the godly and their opponents sustained by the state ran counter to more eirenic strategies advocated by Cromwell and leading officers such as John Lambert*, John Disbrowe* and Nathaniel Rich*. Rich opposed Purefoy in divisions on five occasions, four of which were on matters relating to indemnity and oblivion. Despite his interest in military matters, there was a gulf between Purefoy, the militia colonel whose commission in a field army had ended in 1645, and the army grandees, all products of the New Model and mostly religious Independents.161CJ vi. 211b, 289b; vii. 95b, 140b; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 27-8.

Purefoy was named to 33 council committees during the period of the third council of state, to which in February 1651 he had been elected in fifteenth place.162CJ vi. 532a; CSP Dom. 1651, passim. In the November 1651 elections to the council, he improved his position, to become thirteenth in the ballot with 81 votes, and in the next and last council elections a year later, he retained his level of esteem among the Rumpers, receiving 85 votes and coming 10th.163CJ vii. 42a, 220a. In 1651-2 he was named to 27 council committees, and in the period of less than six months between November 1652 and the Rump’s expulsion in April 1653, to 15, evidence that he sustained his commitment and authority in the council until the end.164CSP Dom. 1651-2, 1652-3, passim. On 9 August 1652 he was elected president of the council for one month. Four days later, on 13 August, the army officers presented a petition to the House calling for a programme of reform to be implemented, including the abolition of tithes, a commission of non-MPs to examine abuses of office, the bringing of revenues into a single treasury and the recognition of articles of war for royalists.165Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 40-3. Purefoy was an opponent of tithe reform, and when later in 1652 a proposal that the navy commissioners should not be MPs was put to a division, he voted against it. He was a consistent opponent of concessions for royalists, and when he was named to the committee to consolidate revenues in July 1652, army radicals might have been forgiven for assuming that he would oppose them on that as well.166CJ vii. 159a, 188b.

Although Purefoy sat on the committee to consider the army petition, with his opposition at least balanced there by the radical chairman, John Carew, he was certainly not the most sympathetic figure to have as leader of the council of state.167CJ vii. 164b. For the rest of the year, his voting behaviour in the House showed no sign that he was conceding anything to the radicals, but his activity in the House in this Parliament came to an abrupt end at the end of January 1653, after which his name appears no longer in the Journal. In the council, he continued to be active – in January he was the third most frequent attender, and in February the eighth most often present – but in March and April he went to none of the 36 meetings.168CJ vii. 251a; CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. xxix-xxxii. He was probably ill – he was after all around 70 years of age by this time – and it meant that he played no part in the final months before the dismissal of the assembly by Oliver Cromwell.

Cautious supporter of the protectorate, 1653-9

Purefoy was not selected for the Nominated Assembly, doubtless because of his Presbyterian sympathies and antipathy to radical causes. He was double-returned for both Coventry and Warwickshire in elections for the first protectorate Parliament, and chose to sit for the city, where he had built a powerful interest through civic and military activities. He had become recorder of Coventry by 1652.169CJ vii. 374b; Coventry City RO, BA/H/C/17/2, f. 103v. He sat on nine committees in this assembly, a great decline from his earlier ubiquitous presence. Predictably, he supported the more restrictive aspects of the Cromwellian religious settlement. He was on committees to enumerate ‘damnable heresies’ (12 Dec. 1654), to prosecute the Unitarian John Biddle (12 Dec.), and to bring in the ordinance against scandalous ministers (25 Sept.). He was a natural choice to be an ‘ejector’ in Warwickshire under this legislation, and was thus reconciled to the government, doing nothing to associate himself with the embittered doctrinaire republicans.170CJ vii. 370a, 399b, 400a; A. and O. It was a mark of his standing in the eyes of the government that he was invited to serve on the council’s trade committee from January 1656.171CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 100.

In the second Cromwellian Parliament, Purefoy sat again for Coventry. When Members were excluded from this Parliament by the lord protector’s council, he may have been sympathetic towards them. After the council had reported its line on the exclusions, he acted as a teller in favour of an adjournment, against the government’s wishes.172CJ vii. 426b. Generally, however, Purefoy seems to have been more active and more helpful to the government than formality required: perhaps any doubts he may have harboured about the protectorate had dissolved. He became a commissioner for the security of the protector, and helped the government’s business managers (15 Nov.) by supporting the exclusion, for two weeks, of private petitions from the House.173CJ vii. 435b, 454b. In other respects, he was the old Purefoy still. He was on committees for raising more money from sequestered estates (22 Oct.), for preventing the election of delinquents and those of immoral character from civic office (28 Nov.), and when the case of Humphrey Frodsham, a Northamptonshire man convicted of the capital offence of counterfeiting coins, came up in the House (30 Sept.), Purefoy led those who judged him unfit for mercy. On this occasion, there were 107 Members present of more merciful inclinations than Purefoy’s cohort of 78.174CJ vii. 430b, 444a, 461a.

Predictably, Purefoy was hostile to James Naylor, and to Quakers in general. On 6 December 1656, he interrupted Henry Hatsell in a debate on whether to postpone reading the charges against Naylor, and impatiently insisted that the trial proceed. He sought to banish Naylor to the Isles of Scilly – the fate of the Socinian, John Biddle – and claimed to know that the lord protector was opposed to a reprieve.175Burton's Diary, i. 45, 155, 262. Many of his interventions suggest impatience. He spoke against adjourning a debate on continuing the decimation (25 Dec.), wanting an immediate outcome; corrected the Latin of the Exeter city clerk, Thomas Westlake* (5 Jan. 1657); and burst out ‘Give him the bill’ when Stephen Winthrop stood to argue for an adjournment instead of handing the bill to the Speaker to signify a conclusion – earning himself a reprimand from the clerk (20 June 1657).176Burton's Diary, i. 237, 302; ii. 268. He played a minor part in the protracted process by which Cromwell was invited to accept a revised constitution and the crown. Before the presentation of the Humble Petition and Advice, Purefoy was in late November 1656 on a committee attending the protector to discuss the forwarding of parliamentary bills to him. On 12 March 1657, Purefoy was among the Members charged with considering the judicial role of the Other House, and two weeks later he was among those asked to read over the Humble Petition to ensure that it was cohesive before it went to Cromwell.177CJ vii. 458b, 502a, 511b. Purefoy evidently had little patience with those who considered that public business in the House should effectively be suspended while the protector deliberated over the petition. On 5 May, he robustly opposed a government motion to adjourn while the House awaited Cromwell’s pleasure: ‘We were sent here to serve our country and not to sit looking at one another’.178Burton's Diary, ii. 106. He continued to be involved in these liaison committees, and when eventually the offer of the crown was declined, Purefoy was on 27 May among those who had the task of producing a coherent document out of the various final votes and orders.179CJ vii. 535a, 538b, 540b.

In the short, second session of this Parliament, Purefoy was – probably by virtue of his seniority – one of the commissioners who administered the oath of allegiance to MPs (20 Jan. 1658).180CJ vii. 578a. He was not hostile to those Members who continued to represent the interests of the Rumpers. When Sir Arthur Hesilrige sought to take the oath on 25 January, various commissioners declined, since his behaviour was plainly disingenuous. As Hesilrige would not sit until he had taken the oath, and declared ‘I shall heartily take the oath. I will be faithful to my lord protector’s person, I will murder no man’, Purefoy was one of those prepared to end the charade by administering the oath to him.181Burton's Diary, ii. 347. Returned again for Coventry to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament, he played little part in it, although he was named to the important elections or privileges committee (28 Jan. 1659).182CJ vii. 594b. He was by this time in his mid-seventies, and it must suggest a commitment to the ideals of the Commonwealth that he resumed attendance at the House when the Rump was revived in May 1659. He was named to committees of minor importance that month, and began once more to involve himself in matters relating to the standing army, the militia and financial reform.183CJ vii. 672b, 694b, 724b, 726a. He was galvanized into activity by the threat posed by the rising of Sir George Boothe* in the summer. There were persistent rumours that royalist agents were making overtures to the earl of Denbigh, with whom Purefoy enjoyed a complex relationship, to betray Coventry. Purefoy threw himself into securing the city for Parliament, by revitalizing the militia.184CCSP iv. 20, 60, 227, 312. He himself was given a commission for a foot regiment in the city, but had to write to the council on 11 August regretfully declining, assuring them of his loyalty but pleading that his

great age, accompanied with many infirmities (which I can even feel growing upon me and find increased since this last journey from London) ... render me altogether incapable.

He reported that he had settled the militia, sorted out a successor to himself as colonel of foot, had given John Lambert* an account of local affairs, and conveyed military news from Cheshire and Shrewsbury.185CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 84, 565; Bodl. Clarendon 63, ff. 179, 189.

It was the last service he was able to perform for the state. He died on 8 September after making his will on 9 August.186PROB11/304, f. 177. An eighteenth-century commentator published a story that on his deathbed Purefoy expressed remorse for his part in the regicide, but admitted doubts about its authenticity.187M. Noble, The Lives of the English Regicides (2 vols. 1798), ii. 336. At the Restoration, the anti-republican press gave him posthumous attention, and repeated stories of a decade earlier about his alleged cowardice.188The Mystery of the Good Old Cause Unfolded (1660), 28 (E.1923.2); The Devils Cabinet-Councell Discoverd (1660), preface unpag., 14. His estates were exempted from the Act of Indemnity and Oblivion as those of a regicide, but by 1662 they were back in the hands of his Purefoy cousins from Draycott, Leics., before they sold out at the end of the century. His step-son George Abbot II had predeceased him, and he had no children of his own.189Warws. RO, QS 9/3/xiii; CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 140; VCH Warws. iv. 41; Dugdale, Warws. ii. 1097.