YONGE, Philip (1620-76), of Caynton, Edgmond, Salop.

The Yonges had lived at Caynton since at least the fifteenth century, and even before that ancestors of Philip Yonge had been proprietors of Caynton. The Yonges supplied at least four sheriffs to Shropshire during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; in Henry VII’s reign one had been Windsor Herald, and a number of the family had been knighted.12Vis Salop 1623, ii. 517-20. Francis Yonge, who died in 1533, was commemorated by a brass in Edgmond church.13Ancestry of Bridget Yonge, Daughter of William Yonge of Caynton, Co. Salop (n.d., n.p.), 2nd pagination, 5. In more recent times, however, the family had been less prominent. Philip Yonge’s grandfather, an only surviving son, had spent time in London, suggesting that the patrimonial estate was not sufficient to support him, and continued the pattern by siring only one son, Philip’s father, William. Perhaps the most noteworthy of the family in the generation before Philip was Bridget Yonge, Philip’s great-aunt of the half blood, who became first a stepdaughter of Thomas Combe of Stratford-upon-Avon, a minor figure in biographies of William Shakespeare (and father of William Combe*), and then first wife of George Willys of Fenny Compton, Warwickshire. George Willys became governor of Connecticut, but Willys’s emigration and subsequent colonial eminence came after Bridget’s death in 1629.14Ancestry of Bridget Yonge, 1, 4. More importantly for the history of Shropshire in the 1650s, Philip’s grandmother was a Corbett of Stanwardine, which made Philip first cousin to Robert Corbett*.15Vis. Salop 1623, ii. 519.

Philip Yonge was educated at Oxford, and presumably at the Inner Temple, where he was called to the bar in 1648. His legal education is shrouded in some obscurity, however, as no record survives of his having enrolled at the inn. His marriage to Margaret Mackworth was doubtless advantageous. Margaret was the daughter of Sir Henry Mackworth of Normanton, Rutland, and of his wife Mary. Mary was a sister of Sir Ralph Hopton*, a rich Somerset landowner. Margaret Yonge married into a family significantly less wealthy than her own. William Yonge, Philip’s father, appears not even to have won a place on the Shropshire commission of the peace before the civil war. When war came, Margaret Yonge’s uncle, Sir Ralph, who had already acquired military experience in the service of the queen of Bohemia, became one of the king’s most trusted army officers. What the allegiance of the Yonge family was during the conflict remains obscure. Neither Yonge nor his father was named to any committees of Parliament or for the king. Only after the surrender of the whole of Shropshire to Parliament did the father enter the commission of the peace in 1647, and only after the death of the latter that year did Philip attain the same distinction.16C231/6, p. 74.

What finally determined the political orientation of Philip Yonge, and shaped his attitude towards the regimes of the 1650s was the marriage at some point in the mid-1640s of his wife’s brother, Sir Thomas Mackworth of Normanton, to Anne, daughter of Humphrey Mackworth I*.17Blore, Rutland, 128. Sir Thomas Mackworth was a royalist during the civil war before coming of age, but during the war years had also spent time in the Low Countries. In 1647 he was fined for his delinquency.18CCC 1605. His marriage to Anne Mackworth showed how far he was prepared to put behind him his royalist past. Sir Thomas’s new father-in-law was the most powerful member of the Shropshire committee, as well as being a senior figure in the Shrewsbury corporation. The marriage brought together the Rutland and Shropshire branches of the Mackworths, and brought with it repercussions for the wider kinship network. Philip Yonge was a member of the extended Mackworth family, and it must have been the now more immediate link with Humphrey Mackworth I that accounted for Yonge’s advancement politically.

During the early 1650s, Yonge participated actively in the Shropshire commission of the peace, attending regularly and, for example, adjudicating on assessments. He had been called to the bar in 1648, perhaps with the support of Humphrey Mackworth I, also a lawyer, and it was probably his professional standing that recommended him to his Shropshire magisterial colleagues when they needed someone to approach the barons of the exchequer on the county’s behalf.19Salop County Records, i. 7, 8, 14, 19, 20, 21, 23, 26, 50, 57. Yonge was elected for Shropshire to the first protectorate parliament in 1654; of the four Members returned on that occasion, only Thomas Mytton* was not part of the Mackworth interest. Yonge accompanied Humphrey Mackworth I, an active member of the protector’s council, on early committees of this Parliament. He sat on the committees to recognize the form of government and to ratify the ordinance for ejecting scandalous ministers (25 Sept. 1654), which had been brought to the statute book by the council the previous summer. On these and on the committee to consider chancery reform (5 Oct.), he must have supported Mackworth’s pro-government line.20CJ vii. 370a, 374a. With Mackworth, he sat on a committee to consider the petition of the Lincolnshire fen drainers (31 Oct.), but was without his sponsor on a committee the same day to confirm abolition of the court of wards and similarly unaccompanied on 3 November, when was named to a committee to consider a petition of purchasers of lands confiscated from the Somerset royalist, Sir John Stawell)*. This proved to be his last nomination of the Parliament.

It is unclear whether Yonge inherited his office of vice-chamberlain of Chester on the death in December 1654 of Humphrey Mackworth I, or whether he had acquired it at Mackworth’s behest on the latter’s voluntary surrender of it. Either way, the post was the final example of Mackworth’s patronage. Yonge played no part in Shropshire in the regime of the major generals, but was at quarter sessions regularly throughout 1655 and 1656 before being returned to his second Parliament.21Salop County Records, i. 19, 20, 21, 23, 26. He was named to the important committee for Irish Affairs (23 Sept. 1656) and served with other lawyers in the task, resumed from the previous, abortive, Parliament, of regularizing the abolition of wardship – including in Scotland and Ireland.22CJ vii. 427a, 447a. A number of other committees drew on his professional skills as a lawyer. He was first named to the committee to bring in a bill to compel those in prison to pay their debts (25 Sept.), and was named to committees charged with remedying abuses in writs (25 Sept.), abolishing customary oaths (7 Oct.) and reforming the surviving forest laws in the Forest of Dean (6 Dec.).23CJ vii. 428a, 428b, 435b, 465a. He sat with Thomas Mackworth on the committee for the security of the protector (26 Sept.) and on a bill for probate, and worked with Humphrey Mackworth II on an act for better managing the state’s timber stocks.24CJ vii. 429a, 429b, 446a. The Mackworth links, although less obvious after the death of Humphrey Mackworth I, remained a significant element in Yonge’s political behaviour.

On 12 December Yonge was specifically appointed to bring in a bill for preserving the estates of orphans, although nothing on this topic ever seems to have reached fruition.25CJ vii. 467b. On the 23rd he spoke in a debate on whether arrears of the monthly assessment should be recovered from the inns of court. A number of Members argued against visiting this on the inns, which were in the discussion generally viewed as colleges of the unmoneyed young, rather than as institutions of privilege. As an Inner Temple man, Yonge took the view that although the state should not forfeit the revenue, the City of London rather than the inns should bear the burden of any drive on arrears.26Burton’s Diary, i. 214. Early in 1657 he was named to committees to examine petitions from the universities and from the fen drainer Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, but on 21 February he was given leave to go to the country.27CJ vii. 483a, 488b, 494b. He made no further recorded appearance in the House until 19 May, when he was named to the committee entrusted with inserting the title of lord protector into the Humble Petition and Advice after Oliver Cromwell* had rejected the title of king.28CJ vii. 535a.

In the closing weeks of this Parliament, the level of the monthly assessment was debated, and Yonge had things to say on the relative proportions that should be borne by the constituent nations. Yonge was in favour of a heavy burden on Ireland of £10,000 a month, as against the suggestion enshrined in a petition that it should be £7,000. John Disbrowe’s suggestion was that £8,500 would have been fairer, but the proposal for £10,000 made enough headway to be put to a division, where it was defeated. This led to a further debate on the principle of rating, in which some argued for a pound rate. Yonge advocated that the 1642 grant to the king of £400,000 be taken as a model, declaring that his county had experienced a very significant increase in the sum imposed upon it. His suggestion would have left the assessment of individuals to the local commissioners. What was settled upon finally was a burden of £9,000 on Ireland, and the principle of the poundage, incorporated into the mechanism for rating in England, was rejected for Ireland.29Burton’s Diary, ii. 210-3, 227; M. Jurkowski, C.L. Smith, D. Crook, Lay Taxes in England and Wales, 1188-1688 (Kew, 1998), 194-96, 250; A. and O. ii. 1234-49.

Yonge attended Shropshire quarter sessions during the recess of this Parliament in 1657, and was back at Westminster in January 1658 to be named to committees to tidy up the confused laws on marriage. His last contribution in this Parliament was to act as a teller on 22 January in a division. The new upper chamber, the Other House, had sent a message to ask the Members to join them in a request to the protector for a public ‘day of humiliation’. The House divided on the request, and Yonge was a teller for the motion that Members would send messengers of their own back to the ‘Lords’, rather than an immediate reply. Yonge’s side won the division by 75 votes to 51. It was to be an early indication of his attitude towards the Other House.30CJ vii. 581b.

Yonge was returned for a third time for Shropshire to sit in Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in January 1659. The county was on this occasion entitled only to two knights of the shire and, given his very modest social background, it seems surprising that Yonge was one of them. If his success in the election can be read as betokening the survival of the Mackworth interest in Shropshire, Yonge’s behaviour in the 1659 Parliament was a repudiation of those republican principles that had brought him to Westminster in the first place. It seems more likely to have been Philip Yonge rather than Walter Yonge II who was named only to one committee in this assembly, that on establishing the terms for working with the Other House (6 Apr.).31CJ vii. 627a. This appointment came as the culmination of many trenchant remarks from the floor of the House by Yonge on the same topic. On 11 February, he sought to introduce recognition of the liberties of the people into the debate on the constitution (a hint, perhaps, of residual republicanism) and cast doubt on the validity of the adjective ‘undoubted’ as an appropriate suffix to the protector’s title.32Burton’s Diary, iii. 227, 230-1. On the 19th he described the phrase ‘Other House’ as ‘insignificant mincing terms’, and came out with a call for it to be the full-blown House of Lords.33Burton’s Diary, iii. 350; Schilling thesis, 92. On that occasion, Yonge was careful to set his remarks in the context of a call to establish whether the powers of the Other House were determined by the Humble Petition and Advice, but a few days later Yonge made it clear that he would only support the idea of a hereditary House of Lords with a veto over legislation.34Burton’s Diary, iii. 413; iv. 76.

Yonge spoke in effect also to challenge the status of the Scottish and Irish Members, and when on 11 March a Scot spoke heatedly in their defence, Yonge described the atmosphere in the House as like a ‘cockpit’, for which he earned a reprimand from Thomas Clarges* for using unparliamentary language.35Burton’s Diary, iv. 107-8, 138, 218. A further intervention unhelpful to the Cromwellian protectorate came from Yonge on 30 March, when he supported the airing of a petition of a man who claimed he had been sold into slavery in Barbados after imprisonment in the Tower of London.36Burton’s Diary, iv. 308. At the beginning of April Yonge was impatient of concessions being devised to protect ministers of religion in Scotland from being instructed to read the Declaration ordering a public fast; it was feared that they might balk at an order from the ‘chief magistrate’; but Yonge, choosing to overlook the differences between the English and Scottish churches, reminded his colleagues that the late lord protector had required things of ministers.37Burton’s Diary, iv. 329, 331. As for the wording of the call for a public fast, Yonge wanted the traditional formulae, as when there were lords spiritual, and repeated his vehement opposition to the concept of the watered-down Other House.38Burton’s Diary, iv. 340; Derbys. RO, D258/10/9/2, ff. 20v, 22v. While Yonge never mentioned the king in any of these contributions to debate, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that he was working his passage back to monarchism.

On 6 April, Yonge defended William Morice* against an attack launched upon him by Lambard Godfrey*, in which the grounds for Godfrey’s complaint were an allegedly blasphemous reference to Christ.39Burton’s Diary, iv. 371. Yonge was prepared to interpret Scripture in making his defence of Morice, which suggests an approach to religious matters that was unexceptional in Parliaments of this period. The timing of Yonge’s comments seems to make nonsense of an assertion by John Barwick, a correspondent of the exiled Edward Hyde*, that Yonge had in mid-February joined Henry Neville* in facing charges of atheism.40TSP vii. 616. There is no suggestion of this in the Journal or in the diaries, and the newspaper coverage of this Parliament, albeit thin and uncritical, makes no mention of Yonge either. Barwick was only partly right in describing Yonge as a ‘protectorist’; he had certainly been that in the Parliaments of Oliver Cromwell, but his contribution to the Parliament of Oliver’s son suggested an outlook of quite a different stamp. On 8 April, Yonge returned to the subject of the Other House, making suggestions about contacts between the Houses. As it was a west country Member who proposed on 9 April that ‘Mr Yonge’ be given leave for a month, it was probably Walter Yonge II that was the intended recipient of the indulgence of the House, not Philip.41Burton’s Diary, iv. 380.

Yonge’s political career seems to have ended with the life of the 1659 Parliament. He seems never to have overcome the prejudice of the restored monarchy against him, and played no further part in local government in Shropshire. In 1660, he also lost his office in the county palatine of Chester. He probably retired to Caynton, spending some of his time at Market Overton, Rutland. Whether he continued to practise law is unknown, but he invested in iron-working at Caynton and Tibberton.42PROB11/352/412. Yonge drew up his will in April 1676, leaving his eldest daughter a bequest of £1,000 when she reached the age of majority, and £2,400 shared between his other children. He left the Caynton and Tibberton forges and slitting mill to the tenants there, and his books to two of his sons as an encouragement to them to enter one of the professions.43PROB11/352/412. These bequests, with the absence of any references in the will to land, confirm that Yonge never acquired landed property to augment his patrimony at Caynton. He died in May 1676 and was buried at Empingham, Rutland.44Blore, Rutland, 128. None of his descendants is known to have sat in later Parliaments.