DUNKON, Robert (1594-1670), of Ipswich, Suff.

There had been Dunkons living in Mendlesham, a village in the centre of Suffolk, roughly the same distance from both Ipswich and Bury St Edmunds, since the fifteenth century.23HMC 5th Rep. 593, 595. It is possible to identify the MP with the Robert Dunkon born there to Samuel Dunkon in 1594.24Mendlesham par. reg.; Browne, Hist. of Congregationalism, 366n. An elder son, John, had been born in November 1584 and two daughters, Sarah and Bridget, had followed in the meantime. Between 1597 and 1604 a further four children, Samuel, Elizabeth, Ann and Eleazar, were added to the family. It can also be assumed that it was the father who had married Katherine Blomfield at Mendlesham on 8 October 1583.25Mendlesham par. reg. By the time of his death in August 1612, Samuel Dunkon owned several properties at Mendlesham and could claim yeoman status for himself.26PROB11/120/320; ‘A Suff. directory’, E. Anglian, 3rd ser., viii. 292. It is likely that the clerical trio of Duncon brothers, Eleazar (an arch-Laudian who joined Charles Stuart in exile), Edmund and John, the sons of Eleazar Duncon MD of Ipswich, were relatives of this branch of the family.27Mendlesham par. reg.; Oxford DNB, ‘Eleazar Duncon’. Samuel Duncon, the Ipswich haberdasher and pamphleteer, who was born at Mendlesham in 1607, was probably another relative.28Mendlesham par. reg.; Oxford DNB, ‘Samuel Duncon’.

On his father’s death in 1612, Dunkon inherited a house and two and a half acres of land at Mendlesham. He was also to receive £150 when he came of age.29PROB11/120/320. Despite these properties in his home village, he does not seem to have been tempted to remain there, but left instead for Ipswich where he made his career as a tanner. In describing the members of the local committee for scandalous ministers to Sir Simonds D'Ewes* in 1645, George Carter would state that Dunkon ‘now useth the trade of a tanner’ in Ipswich.30Suff. Cttees. for Scandalous Ministers ed. Holmes, 111, 112. This makes it suggestive that it should have been Dunkon who was one of those named in 1624 by the Ipswich tanner, John Parkin, to ensure that his wife perform properly her duties as his executrix.31Wills of the Archdeaconry of Suff. 1620-1624 ed. M.E. Allen (Suff. Rec. Soc., xxi), 386. Five years later, another Ipswich tanner, Samuel Osborne appointed as one of his executors a relative, John Dunkon of Mendlesham, who was almost certainly Dunkon’s elder brother. Less certain, but still probable, is that Dunkon was the Robert Dunkon, a tanner in Ipswich, who was the other executor. This second executor was the main beneficiary of the will and its provisions establish that he had two children, Samuel and Sarah.32Wills from the Archdeaconry of Suff.: 1629-1636 ed. M.E. Allen and N.R. Evans (N. Eng. Hist. Geneal. Soc., Boston, 1986), 31. As his exact marital history remains unclear, it is not possible to be sure who their mother would have been. That Dunkon may have been the widower of St Helen’s parish in Ipswich who was licensed in 1631 to marry Elizabeth Bantofte of Coddenham (a village just off the road between Ipswich and Mendlesham) can only be speculated.33Marriage Licences from the Official Note Bk. of the Archdeaconry of Suff. 1613-1674 ed. F.A. Crisp (1903), 60. If however this was the future MP, it would mean that this Elizabeth, the widow of William Smith of South Elmham, was at least his third wife.34PROB11/335/82.

Since about 1632 Dunkon had been a freeman of the town and in 1635 he had been promoted to be one of the 24 constables of the corporation.35Suff. RO (Ipswich), C5/14/3, ff. 249v, 274v. During the early 1640s he was one of those actively involved in defending the town’s rights. Together with John Brandlinge* and Peter Fisher, he was sent to London in November 1640 on one such mission. Their instructions were to join with the town’s Members, William Cage* and John Gurdon*, to try to impede the moves by George Kirke†, the groom of the bedchamber, and Henry Jermyn*, the queen’s master of the horse, to show that certain lands, which, as the former property of Cardinal Wolsey, should have belonged to the crown, were being unlawfully held by the Ipswich corporation.36Suff. RO (Ipswich), C6/1/5, f. 159v; C1/7A/3; Bacon, Annalls, 525. On 19 December 1640 Dunkon and Fisher presented to the Commons a petition from the inhabitants of Ipswich which raised a separate issue. That petition described at length their grievances against the pro-Laudian policies of Matthew Wren when he had been the bishop of Norwich. They called on the Commons to take action against him. This the Commons duly did, for it was the committee appointed to consider this petition which set about preparing the attempt to impeach him.37CJ ii. 54b, 56a; Bodl. Tanner 220, ff. 7-43. Dunkon was probably also involved in the lobbying at court which produced the decision by the king in January 1641 to reverse earlier orders which had deprived five Ipswich parishes of the right, claimed under a 1571 act, for the parishioners to nominate the local clergymen. The following month two further members of the corporation went to London with additional instructions for Dunkon, Fisher and Brandlinge. Those in London were asked to try to obtain a new act to make doubly sure that this right could not be challenged again.38PC Regs. xii. 76; CSP Dom. 1640-41, pp. 409-10; Bacon, Annalls, 526; Suff. ed. Everitt, 110. It may have been over this same issue that a delegation, including Dunkon, was appointed in March 1642 to persuade the assize judges to respect the privileges of the town.39Bacon, Annalls, 529.

Dunkon’s initial involvement in the parliamentarian war effort established the pattern of much that was to follow. As early as 1642 he and Jacob Caley* acted as the Suffolk receivers for the second contribution.40P. Fisher, For the...Committees for the County of Suffolke (1648), 4-5; SP28/176: acc. of Samuel Moody, 1643-4, f. 9; E113/11: answer of Robert Dunkon, 25 Nov. 1662. In the summer of 1643 Parliament included him on the additional committee for Ipswich and, of rather greater significance, the corporation itself selected him that September to be one of the bailiffs for the coming year from Michaelmas 1643.41A. and O.; Bacon, Annalls, 532. He and the other bailiff, Peter Fisher, were immediately added by the Commons to the Ipswich commission for sequestrations and the assessment.42CJ iii. 257b. In August 1644, as his term as bailiff neared completion, he was rewarded by being elected one of the portmen of the town.43Bacon, Annalls, 538. When Cage, as the local MP, organized the collection for a loan to assist the navy in the autumn of 1643, Dunkon put up £25.44Bodl. Rawl. A.221, f. 146v. From January 1644 at the latest he served as a member of the county committee, a regular attender at its meetings for at least the next three years and probably beyond.45SP28/243, unfol.; SP28/251: order of Suff. co. cttee. 10 Oct. 1646; Suff. ed. Everitt, 59, 69, 72, 74, 75, 76. Among the items of business transacted by the county committee in March 1644 were orders that he be paid 17s. 6d. for his expenses in keeping three lame horses whose sale he had arranged and that Samuel Moody*, the county treasurer, repay him £100 borrowed two months earlier to cover certain military expenses. During 1645, one of the Dunkons supplied Caley with hose and shoes for the New Model army.46SP28/243, unf. Combined with his position on the corporation, this entrepreneurial usefulness made him an obvious choice for inclusion among the Ipswich appointees to the 1645 commission to raise monies under the New Model ordinance and later to successive assessment commissions.47A. and O. He was also one of the 12 local gentlemen in whom the control of Landguard Fort was vested in 1645.48Suff. ed. Everitt, 71. Four years later he became one of the militia commissioners for the county.49A. and O.

There was more to this involvement than a sense of civic duty. Beyond the usual forms of support for the parliamentarian cause had been his appointment by the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†) in March 1644 to the committee for scandalous ministers within Suffolk, a clear sign that he favoured lay intervention to remove those clergymen who failed to match the standards expected by the godly supporters of Parliament.50Suff. Cttees. for Scandalous Ministers ed. Holmes, 25, 111, 112; Suff. ed. Everitt, 63. His concerns about the moral standards of the clergy is no doubt the explanation for why the Ipswich corporation appointed him in July 1646 to accompany the group of ministers sent to question Matthew Lawrence, the proposed town preacher, about the strength of his vocation.51Suff. ed. Everitt, 113. He was duly named as an elder for the Suffolk classis covering Ipswich in 1645.52Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 424. It is however questionable how strong his support for a Presbyterian system of church government actually was. Just how ambivalent his attitude may have been is illustrated by the fact that as the patron of St Helen’s, Ipswich, in 1652, the clergyman whom he nominated to this living was the young Congregationalist, Robert Gouge.53Browne, Hist. of Congregationalism, 366, 400-1; Oxford DNB, ‘Robert Gouge’. On the other hand, that same year, 1652, he again sat on the committee created by the Ipswich corporation to locate a suitable town preacher. The candidate nominated on that occasion was the establishment Presbyterian figure, Stephen Marshall.54E. Anglian, n.s. ii. 80, 99.

Only one direct piece of evidence has come to light as to Dunkon’s attitudes in the aftermath of the creation of the commonwealth, but it is sufficiently strong to establish that he warmly supported it. In December 1650, on account of his position as one of the Ipswich bailiffs, he served on the high court of justice which sat at Norwich to try those who had taken part in the Norfolk rebellion in favour of the king.55A. and O.; E. Anglian, n.s. vii. 77. Over the next few months he was also making his contribution to the work of the Suffolk militia committee. Loss of the committee’s warrants for other periods makes it impossible to say whether this was anything more than his usual practice. In August 1657 it was he, together with Nathaniel and Francis Bacon, who signed the acknowledgment for money paid to Peter Fisher, then serving as bailiff, by Jacob Caley to allow the Ipswich trained bands (in the face of local opposition) to go to Cambridge.56SP28/243, unfol.

Dunkon’s suitability to be summoned to sit in the Nominated Parliament of 1653 had been declared by the address from the Suffolk churches in which he was one of the six suggested names.57Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 94. Although the order refers to ‘Sam. Duncomb, of Ipswich’, doubtless a confusion with the pamphleteer, Dunkon was clearly the person the council of state meant when they allocated lodgings at Whitehall Palace on 30 June to a group of the new Members.58CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 455. The person with whom ‘Duncomb’ was to share these rooms was Jacob Caley, the other nominee who was from Ipswich, and it is known the two of them shared rooms at Whitehall from August onwards, having stayed together in lodgings at Millbank before then.59Suff. RO (Ipswich), HD36/2781/69; HD36/2781/126. Caley was also a member of the Ipswich corporation and the two of them used their time in London to persuade the navy to reimburse the town for the money it had spent on assisting sick and wounded sailors.60Suff. RO (Ipswich), HD36/2781/65-9; HD36/2781/126; HD36/2781/129.

The order by the council of state was not the only occasion they had had difficulties over Dunkon’s name. The summons for him to sit (probably copying the address) had spelt his surname as ‘Duncombe’, a detail which seems to have annoyed him for, within two days of the beginning of the session, he (for it is unlikely to have been anyone else) had got a resolution formally amending it to ‘Dunkon’.61CJ vii. 282a. Once in Parliament, his commercial experience and civic service received acknowledgement when he was named to the committee for the business of trade and corporations (20 July), which was to receive ‘propositions for the advantage of the commonwealth’, but otherwise he made no recorded contribution. In late September he was given permission to leave London but he was back there by late November.62CJ vii. 287a, 323a; Suff. RO (Ipswich), HD36/2781/129. On the question of the state maintenance of a godly ministry, Dunkon was not one of those listed as being in favour but, in his particular case, what was meant by this remains unclear.63A Catalogue of the Names of the Members of the Last Parliament (1654, 669 f. 19.3); Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 197, 416.

Throughout the 1650s Dunkon continued to serve on the Ipswich corporation. In 1650 he had been elected bailiff for a second time and was elected yet again to this office in 1656.64E. Anglian, ii. 15, n.s. iii. 178. John Brandlinge, on being elected as bailiff himself in September 1655, nominated him as one of the four justices of the peace for the town for that year.65E. Anglian, n.s. ii. 365. The usual variety of civic business required his advice and assistance; matters relating to the town’s land transactions seem to have featured with particular frequency.66E. Anglian, ii. 14, 174, 196, 262, 293, 364, n.s. iii. 382-3, v. 263-4, 317, 318, 381, vi. 62, 139. Occasionally he had a personal interest, as in August 1657, when it was agreed that some marshlands belonging to the town should be leased to him, or, again, several weeks later, when he was given permission to divert water for his own use from the pipe which supplied Ipswich.67E. Anglian, n.s. iii. 383, iv. 90. By this time he was living in the parish of St Helen’s.68Soc. Antiq. MS 667, p. 21; Add. 15520, f. 11v.

The most important position Dunkon held during the 1650s was as receiver-general for the assessment within Suffolk, an office he held from June 1654 until the Restoration.69Ive, ‘Local Dimension of Defence’, 191; E360/208, f. 186; SP28/342, unf. In recognition of his capacity and loyalty, he was included on the commission of the peace from 1657 onwards and quickly became an assiduous attender of its meetings.70Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/4, ff. 46v, 47v, 53v, 55, 58, 59v, 67, 70, 76v, 81, 86v, 88, 94v, 101, 102v, 110v, 112; Soc. Antiq. MS 667, p. 21. His nephew, Robert Dunkon (probably a younger son of his brother, John), was the leader of the important Quaker group at Mendlesham.71Suff. RO (Ipswich), FB159/L1/91-5; FB159/L1/98; G. Whitehead, The Christian Progress of…George Whitehead (1725), 31-3, 53, 94; Jnl. of George Fox, i. 187; Original Recs. of Early Nonconformity ed. G.L. Turner (1911-14), i. 103; The Short Jnl. and Itinerary of George Fox ed. N. Penney (Cambridge, 1925), 237. In 1658 he contacted his uncle and another of the justices of the peace, Thomas Edgar*, to obtain the release from prison of the leading Quaker, George Whitehead.72Whitehead, Christian Progress, 135. Dunkon’s position as one of the local justices also helps explain why it was thought suitable for him to be one of the signatories on the Suffolk election return in January 1659.73C219/48. Dunkon was also one of the justices who, in July 1659, visited the father of the recently arrested royalist agent, Thomas Blague, at his house at Bury St Edmunds to question him about his son’s associates.74CCSP, iv. 300. On the appointment of a new Suffolk militia commission that same month, Dunkon was again named to serve. This new commission prompted the Ipswich corporation to raise with Parliament the question of how its own militia should be organized. Dunkon helped draft the petition to Parliament and was then one of two members of the corporation appointed to take it to Westminster. One week after this petition had been approved by the great court of the town and presumably as a result of its lobbying, the council of state asked Parliament to appoint five members of the Ipswich corporation as militia commissioners for the town. Dunkon, predictably, was one of the five.75A. and O.; E. Anglian, n.s. v. 383, vi. 60, 61; Suff. ed. Everitt, 125; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 135. When, the following February, the corporation resumed its attempts to get Parliament to approve a reorganization along the lines it wanted, Dunkon was once more among those given the job of drafting the necessary letters.76E. Anglian, n.s. vi. 106-7.

Once the monarchy had been restored, Dunkon did not wait for the Corporation Act to force him off the Ipswich corporation. He attended his last meeting of the town’s great court on 15 June 1660. Citing his involvement with the high court of justice at Norwich in 1650, he asked on 29 October to be allowed to resign as a portman.77Suff. RO (Ipswich), C5/14/4, f. 130v; E. Anglian, n.s. vii. 77. By now in his mid-sixties, he appears to have spent the final ten years of his life in largely uneventful retirement. He seems to have remained sympathetic to nonconformity, writing a letter in 1666 on behalf of some Quakers who were under arrest at Ipswich.78Browne, Hist. of Congregationalism, 366; G.R. Clarke, Hist. and Description of the Town and Borough of Ipswich (Ipswich, [1830]), 51. A nonconformist congregation probably used his house for meetings.79Heavens, ‘To be Doers’, 262.

Dunkon died on 19 October 1670 and was buried in St Helen’s, Ipswich.80Browne, Hist. of Congregationalism, 366n. In his will he had made arrangements to allow his wife to settle her much-disordered finances and directed that his one-third share in Ipswich properties he had bought in partnership with John Brandlinge and Jacob Caley should be sold to pay his own debts. He made no mention of a surviving son, although he did make bequests to a grandson, Eleazar Dunkon. Other legacies were made to his various grandchildren by his daughters, including those by the eldest of the daughters, Sarah, who had married James Hasell, the brother of Samuel Hasell*.81PROB11/335/82; PROB11/336/290; Suff. RO (Bury), EXY4/W1/189. No member of the family sat in any future Parliament.