KIRKBYE, Roger (c.1601-43), of Kirkby Ireleth, Lancs.

Kirkbye belonged to one of the ‘ancient knightly families’ of Furness, in the far north west of Lancashire.20T. West, The Antiquities of Furness (1774), 235. The Kirkbys had been established at Kirkby Ireleth since the twelfth century, but despite did their prominence in the county they did not represent Lancaster (the nearest borough constituency) or Lancashire until the seventeenth century.21VCH Lancs. viii. 392-3. Kirkbye’s father was clearly one of the county’s leading gentleman, serving as a deputy lieutenant under William Stanley, 6th earl of Derby and his son James Stanley†, Lord Strange, and being named to the Lancashire commission for the Forced Loan.22C193/12/2; B. Coward, ‘The lieutenancy of Lancs. and Cheshire in the 16th and early 17th centuries’, Trans. Historic Soc. Lancs. and Cheshire, cxix. 44.

A year after his father’s death in 1627, Kirkbye was added to the Lancashire bench, and by 1636 he had been commissioned as a captain of foot in the county militia.23SP16/337/81i, f. 168. In 1637, he had the dubious distinction of being appointed high sheriff, charged with the unenviable task of collecting Lancashire’s Ship Money quota. With the help of his deputies, who included the future parliamentarian William West*, he seems to have collected all but £120 of the £4,000 for which the county was assessed.24Lancs. RO, DDP/59; CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 146; 1638-9, p. 439; Gordon, ‘Collection of ship money’, 159. In the elections to the Short Parliament, Kirkbye was returned for Lancaster on 23 March 1640, taking the senior place.25Supra, ‘Lancaster’. That same day, he was one of only seven signatories to the indenture returning Sir Gilbert Hoghton and William Farington as knights of the shire.26C219/42/2/138. Kirkbye does not appear to have had owned a substantial estate in the immediate vicinity of Lancaster, and it is possible that he relied heavily on the backing of the chancellor of the duchy of Lancashire, Lord Newburgh (Sir Edward Barrett†).27Supra, ‘Lancaster’. Kirkbye made no recorded impression upon the proceedings of the Short Parliament.

In the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, Kirkbye was returned for Lancashire and may again have taken the senior place. Although he possessed a competent estate, he was not among Lancashire’s greatest landowners, and it is therefore unlikely that he owed his election to the strength of his proprietorial interest in the county. Unlike many of the county’s leading Protestant gentlemen, however – including the two knights of the shire in the Short Parliament, Sir Gilbert Hoghton and William Farington – he had not been compromised by involvement in Lord Strange’s efforts during the summer and early autumn to raise ‘many and great taxes’ upon Lancashire for the king’s doomed and controversial attempt to mobilise another army against his rebellious Scottish subjects. Allegations made in 1642 that Lord Strange had used intimidation to secure the return of candidates to his liking in the elections to the Long Parliament are probably a serious exaggeration. Nevertheless, it is not implausible that he had backed Kirkbye as an acceptable alternative (for the voters) to the likes of Hoghton and Farington, whose stock had fallen as a result of their tax-raising activities over the summer. Kirkbye’s strongly anti-Catholic views may also have recommended him to the county’s Protestant voters.

In the early months of the Long Parliament, Kirkbye worked closely with his fellow knight of shire Raphe Assheton II and another godly Lancashire MP Alexander Rigby I to implement Commons’ initiatives for the suppression of popery.28Lancs. RO, DDKE/9/23/69; HMC Kenyon, 59, 60; Procs. LP ii. 291. On 27 January 1641, he informed the Commons that in the Lancashire district of Amounderness alone, ‘being not the largest hundred’ in Lancashire, there had been 15,000 people indicted as Catholic recusants at the quarter sessions – ‘with the report of which great number the House itself was much startled’.29Procs. LP ii. 291. His Protestant credentials were recognised by the House on 14 July, when he and other leading Lancashire gentlemen – including his fellow future royalist Sir Gilbert Hoghton* – were nominated to commission for ecclesiastical causes (i.e. removing ‘scandalous’ ministers) for the county, although this draft legislation was never approved by the Lords or the king.30Procs. LP v. 642. In August 1641, Kirkbye and Rigby were appointed Lancashire commissioners for disarming recusants.31LJ iv. 385a.

It is probably these appointments that have prompted a variety of authorities to conclude that Kirkbye ‘inclined toward puritanism’, although there is no firm evidence to indicate that his apparent zeal for suppressing popery was linked with a commitment to godly reformation in the church.32B.G. Blackwood, ‘The Lancs. Gentry, 1625-60: a Social and Economic Study’ (Oxford Univ. DPhil. thesis, 1973), 117; Keeler, Long Parl. 241; Richardson, Puritanism, 176; Gratton, Lancs. 67. Only three of the 18 committees to which he was named in the Long Parliament related directly to religious issues – the committee ‘for the popish hierarchy’ (16 Mar. 1641), to prevent bargemen working on the sabbath (3 June) and for suppressing innovations in religion (17 Feb. 1642).33CJ ii. 105b, 165b, 437b. Only the last of these could plausibly be linked to the cause of further reformation, and although dominated by godly Members it also included another future royalist, Sir Patricius Curwen. Kirkbye probably sympathised with efforts to reform the perceived abuses of the personal rule more generally – hence, perhaps, his inclusion on committees on 17 and 18 December 1640 to assign counsel to the puritan ‘martyr’ John Bastwick and to examine the crown’s perceived breaches of parliamentary privilege in arresting or interrogating MPs following the dissolution of the 1628-9 Parliament and the Short Parliament.34CJ ii. 52b, 53b. He seems to have been absent from the House for much of the spring and early summer of 1641, for he did not take the Protestation until 7 July.35CJ ii. 201a.

Kirkbye was granted leave of absence on 31 July 1641 and does not appear to have resumed his seat until early 1642.36CJ ii. 231b. In one of his rare contributions to debate on the floor of the House, he joined the godly MP Sir Simonds D’Ewes on 10 February in defending Lord Strange – Parliament’s prospective lord lieutenant for Lancashire – from accusations by Alexander Rigby that he ‘was a favourer of papists and very forward against the Scots [in the bishops’ wars]’.37PJ i. 338-9; iii. 350. D’Ewes described Lord Strange (soon to become the 7th earl of Derby and the commander of the king’s army in the north-east) as ‘a great countenancer of religion and a constant practiser of it in his own family’ – a line that Kirkbye probably echoed.38PJ i. 339, 341, 491. Thereafter, he received only three more appointments in the House – to the 17 February committee on innovations in religion and to committees on 21 February concerning the arrest of several Lancashire men accused of harbouring Catholic priests and to interrogate one of these suspects who had been brought in custody to Westminster.39CJ ii. 446b, 447a; PJ i. 428, 431.

At some point during the next five months – probably by 11 June 1642, when he was named to the Lancashire commission of array – Kirkbye abandoned his seat and threw in his lot with Lord Strange and the royalist party in the north-west.40Farington Pprs. ed. Farington, 76. A Lancashire parliamentarian reported on 6 July that he had encountered Kirkbye on the road from Manchester to Preston in the company of a ‘seducing papist’, adding that this was a ‘fit companion for so lukewarm a Protestant’. Kirkbye then spoke scornfully of a parliamentary order for the apprehension of Lord Strange, who, he said, would remain at his family residence at Knowsley in defiance of the Commons’ serjeant-at-arms.41Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 21-2. On 22 July, Kirkbye was summoned to attend the House, and when he failed to observe this order, or perhaps on receipt of evidence that he was active in the royalist cause, the Commons, on 29 August, disabled him from sitting as an MP.42CJ ii. 685b, 742b.

Kirkbye was a member of a committee that Lord Strange (now the earl of Derby) set up late in 1642 to rationalise the royalist war-effort in the region, and this body appointed Kirkbye a collector of royalist contributions for Lonsdale hundred. He was involved in trying to hold Lancaster for the king, but the royalists had to abandon the town to parliamentarian forces early in 1643.43Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 67, 84; Gratton, Lancs. 135.

According to details supplied by his heir Richard Kirkby† in the 1664 Lancashire visitation, Kirkbye died in August 1643, which was embellished by an eighteenth century authority with the claim that he had died after fleeing to Ireland in 1643.44Vis. Lancs. ed. Raines, 169; West, Antiquities of Furness, 244. In fact, Kirkbye died in the Cumberland parish of Lamplugh on 2 November 1643 and was buried there the next day.45Regs. of Lamplugh ed. Haswell, 143. No will is recorded. His eldest son Richard†, who compounded in 1646 for his activities as a royalist officer, went on to represent Lancaster in the Cavalier Parliament and the three Exclusion Parliaments.46Lancs. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. Stanning, 43-4; HP Commons, 1660-90.