WEBB, Thomas (c.1600-49), of Richmond, Surr.

Webb’s ancestry and family background have not yet been established with any certainty. He has been identified as one of the Webbs of Frittenden, Kent – although purely, it seems, on the basis of his later association with that county as MP for New Romney, which was a distinction he owed to the patronage of the lord warden of the Cinque Ports rather than to any local interest of his own.10Hasted, Kent, vii. 114; Vis. Kent (Harl. Soc. xlii), 123-4. Similarly, his association with the king’s party in the civil war has led one authority to suggest that he belonged to the royalist Webbs of Odstock, Wiltshire.11Keeler, Long Parl. 382. But his political career aside, there is no evidence to link him with that family or their county. A more promising derivation suggests he belonged to a Cheshire family and was in fact the ‘Thomas Webbe of Cheshire gent.’ who matriculated from Brasenose in 1617, aged 17.12Al. Ox. This is consistent not only with Webb’s known date of birth – about 1600 – but also with his friendship with the Cheshire gentleman William Morton and his son Peter.13MI, St Mary Magdalene, Cobham; Add. 33936, ff. 32, 102, 123, 159, 176, 181.

Webb’s abilities or connections were sufficient to secure him a place in the service of the Jacobean courtier James Hay, 1st earl of Carlisle. He seems to have accompanied Carlisle on his embassies to France and to Savoy during the 1620s, and it was probably through the earl that he acquired a strong interest in the impost on wines in Ireland, which was worth several thousand pounds a year.14Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P17/211, 250-1; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, i. pp. li-lvi; CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 164; Oxford DNB, ‘James Hay, 1st earl of Carlisle’. By mid-1632, his connections at court were such that he was the ‘principal instrument and agent’ whereby Peter Morton attempted to secure the recently-vacated post of secretary to another leading courtier, James Stuart, 4th duke of Lennox.15Add. 33936, ff. 32, 34. During the winter of 1632-3, Webb quit Carlisle’s service ‘upon some discontent’ and may then have attached himself, briefly, to Thomas Howard, 21st earl of Arundel, on the latter’s mission to The Hague late in 1632.16Add. 33936, f. 45v. With the secretaryship to Lennox still vacant by early 1633, Webb obtained the post for himself – Morton having dropped out of the running through lack of funds.17Add. 33936, ff. 33, 34, 59.

In entering the duke of Lennox’s service, Webb acquired a direct line to the king, for his new master was not only a gentleman of the bedchamber but also one of Charles’s most favoured courtiers.18Oxford DNB, ‘James Stuart, 4th duke of Lennox and 1st duke of Richmond’. Webb’s heightened influence at court was soon worrying even so powerful a figure as Lord Deputy Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†, the future earl of Strafford), who complained late in 1633 that Lennox was likely to prove ‘a great pretender here in Ireland through the agency of Webb’. Wentworth hoped that care would be taken

that Webb do not possess the duke too far, for I take him [Webb] to be a very nimble young gentleman and one ... that will notably work his own ends out of the duke, and that more absolutely and prejudicially here in Ireland, where he will have all the game to himself, than he can do in England, where some of my lord’s other friends and servants may oversee him. I am the rather led to this advice because I find he dealt very cunningly with my lord of Carlisle whilst he was employed by him in this country and no more honestly than became him.19Strafforde Letters, i. 145.

Archbishop William Laud evidently shared Wentworth’s view that Webb enjoyed an unhealthy influence over Lennox.20Works of Laud, vii. 138, 540. Under pressure from Wentworth, Webb was forced to relinquish his interest in the impost on Irish wines, although he did so on the understanding that ‘it will be thought sufficient that I lose my pains and not any part of the expense I have been at in the procuring the absolute interest into myself’.21Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P17/211.

It was not just Irish revenues that attracted Webb’s eye for profit. He petitioned the king on several occasions during the 1630s for the lease of commercial rights relating to trade on the Thames, and he also seems to have been granted the office of registrar of the court of delegates.22CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 473; 1634-5, pp. 85-6; 1635-6, p. 55. His portfolio of court perquisites included at least one monopoly – that on the sealing of bone-lace.23CJ ii. 71a. By May 1635 he had lodgings at Whitehall, but at his marriage in 1638, he was described as a resident of Weybridge, Surrey – the parish in which the royal palace of Oatlands was situated.24Add. 33936, f. 131; St Nicholas, Cole Abbey, London par. reg. And by the time his first child was born in August 1639, he was living in or close to the royal palace of Richmond, where his family would remain until at least January 1642.25St Mary Magdalene, Richmond par. reg.

Webb evidently assisted Lennox in writing to the Cinque Ports (of which the duke was lord warden) and other boroughs recommending loyal candidates for election to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640.26CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 121-2. When one of Lennox’s nominees, Philip Warwick*, was returned for both New Romney and New Radnor and opted to sit for the Welsh borough, the duke succeeded in having Webb elected to the vacant Kent seat in November.27Supra, ‘Philip Warwick’; ‘New Romney’; Add. 24798, ff. 379v-82; E. Kent RO, NR/AC2, p. 287. On 21 January 1641, however, before Webb had received his first committee appointment or even perhaps taken his seat, the House heard a report from the committee for monopolies identifying Webb and several other members as ‘projectors and monopolizers’; and in accordance with a Commons order against monopolists they were disabled from sitting.28CJ ii. 71a; Procs. LP ii. 236-7, 441. When Webb detained the writ that the Commons had ordered on 8 March for a new election at Romney, the House summoned him on 19 April to explain his presumption, but there is no evidence that he obeyed.29CJ ii. 123a.

In August and September 1641, having accompanied Lennox (now duke of Richmond) to Scotland in attendance upon the king, he began corresponding with his friend Secretary of state (Sir) Edward Nicholas†, who had been left to organise the court interest at Westminster. Nicholas valued Webb’s opinion, for ‘being upon the place and daily conversing with those that are nearest the helm ... he who holds intelligence with you cannot be ill informed’. Although Webb viewed the Covenanters’ proceedings with a jaundiced eye, he shared Nicholas’s opinion that ‘what is done here will be a rule to us [in England], and I think it most just that a nation from whom a king enjoys all those benefits which ours afford him should receive from him at least as much as another place [Scotland] which yields him nothing but trouble’.30Add. 33936, f. 265; Add. 78268, f. 27; Surr. Hist. Centre, G85/5/2/6; Nicholas Pprs. i. 11-12, 38-40, 41-3, 46, 48-53.

It is not clear whether Webb’s decision to remain with Richmond and the court at the outbreak of civil war was informed primarily by conviction or by loyalty to the duke and the king. He spent much of the war at Richmond’s side in Oxford and had had enough of the experience by December 1644 to desire a swift, negotiated settlement.31Harl. 166, f. 135; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 376-7. The duke shared his secretary’s pacific leanings, which led to a certain cooling in his relations with the king during the winter of 1644-5 – although Charles professed to see no reason for Richmond’s ‘discontented’ countenance ‘but that his man Webb gave him ill counsel’ (a view evidently shared by others at court).32Add. 29570, f. 89; Clarendon, Life, i. 192, 196-7. Just how discontented Richmond and Webb were by the spring of 1645 is evident from their involvement in secret negotiations with the Westminster Independents to surrender Oxford upon easy terms.33Add. 18780, ff. 76v, 77, 77v; Add. 32093, ff. 215, 217, 219-20; PA, Main Pprs. 12 June 1645, f. 194v; 16 June 1645, ff. 219-20. By the late summer of 1645, Webb was regarded by the royalist grandee George Digby*, Lord Digby and his friends as one of their leading opponents in Oxford.34Add. 72438, f. 4; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 141. Webb (and almost certainly Richmond too) seems to have taken the view that if Charles did not close with the Independents then the English would become ‘vassals to some other people’ – by which he evidently meant the Scots.35Bodl. Tanner 60, f. 409. In February 1646, he wrote from Oxford to his friend from his days as an Irish projector, Sir John Temple* – a leading figure among the Independents’ Anglo-Irish allies at Westminster – urging him to use his influence in support of the king’s overtures for peace.36Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P17/250-1.

Let honest men there [at Westminster] but believe what a labour some [i.e. Richmond and his allies] have been here to bring these fair offers to your hands, and in the name of God let them be made use of, lest never the like opportunity be seen again. If what the king hath offered be not liked, do but you say ... what would content the Parliament and I doubt not but to get it sent, if it entrench not upon conscience, which is worth more than many kingdoms.37Bodl. Tanner 60, f. 409.

Webb remained in Oxford until it surrendered to the New Model army in June 1646. His petition to compound upon the Oxford articles was accepted in November, and the following month he was fined at a tenth of his estate, or a mere £35.38SP23/195, pp. 153, 158; CCC 94. He was living in Westminster in March 1648, when his goods were sequestered – but on what charge is not clear.39CCC 94. He re-entered the political fray on the eve of the king’s execution, when Richmond sent him to sound out ‘some great ones of the army’ about the chances of saving the king’s life.40D. Smith, Constitutional Royalism (Cambridge, 2009), 141. Webb found that most of the officers were resolved upon regicide, and when he explained to them that this would be merely to exchange a king in their power (Charles I) for one outside it (Charles II) he was ‘answered by inspiration, and thereunto no reason must reply’.41Add. 63743, ff. 1v, 4v.

Webb died on 7 October 1649 and was buried at Cobham church – the parish church of Richmond’s Kent residence of Cobham Hall.42MI, St Mary Magdalene, Cobham. No will is recorded. Webb was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.