KEMP, John (1610-52), of Ginns, Beaulieu, and Haywood, Boldre, Hants.

Kemp came from an ancient Kentish family; among his ancestors was John Kemp (1380-1454), archbishop of Canterbury and lord chancellor of England. Kemp’s grandfather, Edward Kemp (d. 1605), a younger son of Sir William Kemp (d. 1539), settled at Ginns in the parish of Beaulieu, on the Solent. Although lacking deep roots in Hampshire, in 1609 Edward Kemp’s son Thomas was still able to make a propitious match, to a daughter of Sir William Oglander of Nunwell in the Isle of Wight, and to consolidate the estate in the New Forest. Their eldest son, John Kemp, was probably born in 1610.25Hitchin-Kemp, Kemp and Kempe Families, iv. 32-3; Berry, Pedigrees of Hants, 89.

John Kemp’s father died soon after 30 December 1622, leaving cash bequests of nearly £3,000; the inventory of his estate in Lymington and Beaulieu revealed a personal estate worth nearly the same amount.26PROB11/141/506; I.o.W. RO, OG/EE/3-4; OG/EE/6. Since John was still a minor, control of the estate passed to his father’s executors, Sir Robert Dillington*, Sir John Oglander† (John’s maternal uncle), and Arthur Bromfield, who soon married Thomas Kemp’s widow.27C. Aspinall-Oglander, Nunwell Symphony (1945), 66. Oglander appears to have taken the lead in collecting rents, effecting provision for the younger children, and managing complex litigation arising from disputed claims on the estate.28I.o.W. RO, OG/AA/26, pp. 85, 97, 103, 113, 303-4; OG/AA/27, ff. 5b-6b, 10a; OG/AA/28, ff. 1b-5, 8-10, 13-14; OG/EE/77; EE/8, 16-18, 33, 39-40, 45, 47; EE/37, 41, 64-5. Although Bromfield became John Kemp’s guardian, Oglander oversaw at least some aspects of his education.29I.o.W. RO, EE/38; AA/28, f. 2b.

By October 1625 Kemp was at Cambridge, where his tutor was one Mr Beeston (possibly William Beeston, fellow of St John’s), although there is no trace of this in university records.30I.o.W. RO, EE/52, 54; Al. Cant. In November 1626 Kemp wrote from Cambridge to acknowledge his uncle’s successful efforts in the law courts.31I.O.W. RO, EE/64-5, 67. But his education was constantly interrupted by estate matters, by new legal problems from 1627, and by disputes arising between Oglander and Bromfield.32I.O.W. RO, EE/69-72, 82, 84, 85-120, 130. During vacations, Kemp spent time with his uncle on the Isle of Wight.33I.O.W. RO, EE/117. In 1630, however, the courts discharged Oglander as an executor and ordered him to make financial payments to Kemp.34I.O.W. RO, EE/133-4, 138, 143-4, 148-50.

Once Kemp came of age in 1631, he took control of the estate and concluded affairs amicably with his uncle.35I.O.W. RO, EE/154-6. The following year Kemp accompanied Oglander on his travels in Europe.36Aspinall-Oglander, Nunwell Symphony, 81. He had returned to England by 1635, but for the remainder of the decade he played no visible part in local administration, although in 1638 he was admitted as a burgess both at Lymington (a few miles from his home) and at Portsmouth (across the Solent), suggesting some ambition towards public service. 37Hants. RO, 5M50/1262; 27M74/DBC2, f. 31v; Portsmouth Recs. ed. East, 352. In spring 1640 he was elected to what became the Short Parliament alongside John Dodington* as the second Member for Lymington; his own interest ensured that he was chosen ahead of one Richard Cooper for the second seat, by unanimous consent.38Hants. RO, 27M74/DBC2, f. 35. However, Kemp made no recorded impression on proceedings at Westminster.

Kemp was not re-elected to Parliament that autumn, but his admission in February 1641 as a burgess at Christchurch (at the other end of the county), his addition to the Hampshire bench in March, and mention of him that year as a ‘treasurer’ in the county suggest that he still sought a place in public life.39C231/5, p. 437; Christchurch Bor. Council, Min. Bk. p. 557; Add. 24861, f. 39. When hostilities broke out in 1642 he proved to be a zealous supporter of the parliamentarian war effort, certainly in terms of civilian administration and (according to his later claims) also in some military capacity, perhaps being the Captain Kemp active in the county in 1643.40Christchurch Bor. Council, Old Letters, no. 46; Min. Bk. p. 87 His motives are obscure. The only possible indication of opposition to the crown during the 1630s was his apparent reluctance to compound for knighthood in October 1631.41Hants. RO, 44M69/G4/1/115. Nevertheless, he appears to have been a close friend of the puritan Norton family of Southwick, and in 1637 had stood bound for the purchase of the wardship of Richard Norton*, who was to become one of the county’s most prominent parliamentarians.42WARD9/163, f. 74v. While he was willing to stand bound also for his uncle Oglander, a royalist effectively under house arrest in 1644, by 1645 Kemp had served on numerous local commissions under Parliament, including the county committee, at a meeting of which that November he was placed on the fourth Presbyterian classis scheduled for January 1646.43Add. 24860, ff. 68, 72, 134, 145; I.o.W. RO, OG/Y/10; OG/BB/484; King, Par. and Bor. Lymington, 262.

As Parliament’s plans to replace deceased and disabled Members became clearer, in June 1645 Kemp wrote to John Hildesley*, the one-time mayor of Christchurch. He admitted uncertainty as to ‘how I shall dispose of myself at present’, but asked that, if he were not in the vicinity of the borough when a poll came to be held, ‘I hope you will not otherwise dispose of [the seat] until my friends have time to send to me, for gentlemen, there can be no man more willing to serve you than I’.44Christchurch Bor. Council, Old Letters, no. 39. By the first week of November Kemp had registered the existence of a rival in John Lisle*, one of the most powerful and controversial parliamentarians in the region. He then told the corporation that, while he was ‘not ambitious of the place’, he would ‘take it for the greatest dishonour that could be put upon me, to be undermined by him who is my professed enemy’. He reminded them that at the beginning of these unhappy times’ Lisle ‘came into the town to procure voices against me even then when I was in arms amongst you and ready to venture my life for you’.45Christchurch Bor. Council, Old Letters, no. 46. In reply, the mayor of Christchurch sought to reassure Kemp that they were resolved to ‘stand firm for you according to our former promises, and no persuasions or threats shall cause any alterations’.46Christchurch Bor. Council, Old Letters, no. 42. Kemp certainly secured the vital support of Hildesley, one of the most influential men on the county committee.47Christchurch Bor. Council, Old Letters, no. 44.

Betraying his keenness, on 12 November 1645, Kemp wrote once again to the mayor and burgesses of ‘an unexpected occasion which forces me (very unwillingly) to go for London’. Assuring them that his time away ‘(God willing) shall be very short’, he requested that if they received an election writ in the interim, they ‘would instantly give my brother Bromfield at Southampton notice of it, who I have desired to be at the election and to give you such entertainment as if I my self were there’.48Christchurch Bor. Council, Old Letters, no. 43. On 25 November Kemp duly secured one of the two available seats.49Christchurch Bor. Council, Old Letters, no. 45; Dorset RO, DC/CC: F1/10; C 219/43/166.

The reference to ‘my brother Bromfield’ establishes that the candidate was this John Kemp rather than a significantly older namesake who was resident in the town. This John Kemp or Kempt (d. 1657) was a linen draper who held leases on town property, including a shop next to the prison, who appears paying for repairs at the priory as early as 1617, and who had been a burgess since 1622, making it implausible that he was the parliamentarian captain of 1643.50Dorset RO, DC/CC: D7/10; Christchurch Bor. Council, Min. Bk. pp. 31, 74; Christchurch Priory, Benefactors, unfol.; Vestry Min. Bk. pp. 9, 13, 20, 25, 28, 34; PROB11/275/565. He served as mayor in 1625, 1633, 1640 and 1653, remaining active in borough administration throughout the 1640s.51Dorset RO, DC/CC: A3/1; C2/18; C5/2/7; D5/6; Christchurch Bor. Council, Min. Bk. p. 10-11, 82, 103.

Kemp never became a visibly active member of the Commons. In the first half of 1646 he was twice granted leave of absence from Westminster, prior to his taking the Covenant (24 June).52CJ iv. 482b, 578b, 586a. Granted further absence on 11 September, he did not surface again until 9 January 1647, when he was appointed to his first committee, to consider the propositions of Andrewes Burrell relating to the navy.53CJ iv. 666b; CJ v. 47a. This nomination probably arose because Kemp sat for a port town, just as an appointment on 2 March, to a committee to consider the funding of Hampshire forts, reflected his local knowledge.54CJ v. 103a. That he sympathised with the army in the crisis of mid-1647 is suggested by his appearance on one of the lists of those Members who took refuge with Sir Thomas Fairfax* and his men following the Presbyterian coup at Westminster of late July.55HMC Egmont, i. 440. Nevertheless, until November of that year, Kemp appeared in the Journal only in connection with his non-attendance, being granted leave to go into the country on 15 March and 21 August, and recorded as absent at the call of the House on 9 October.56CJ v. 112a, 281a, 330a. Although the last incurred a fine of £20, the order on 20 October that this should be returned to him is the first hint of Kemp’s greater standing and significance behind the scenes.57CJ v. 337a. A further indication of this was given on 2 November, when he was appointed to a committee charged with organizing and cataloguing the public records.58CJ v. 348a.

It is clear that by this time Kemp’s activity in Hampshire, and perhaps also in Putney in that eventful autumn, had established him as someone who could discharge vital responsibility, especially one located close to his property interests. On 14 December he was named first, with fellow regional MPs John Bulkeley, John Lisle and Robert Goodwin, to deliver the ‘four bills’ to Charles I on the Isle of Wight.59CJ v. 383b. Three days later he was rewarded with an order that the collection of a debt due to him from Hampshire delinquent Sir John Mill* should be investigated.60CJ v. 391a. On the 20th he, Lisle, Goodwin and William Wheler* were delegated give the propositions a final perusal and obtain the signature of the clerks of Parliament, before presenting them to Charles on the 24th, and they were thanked by the House on 1 January 1648 following their return to Westminster.61CJ v. 393b, 415a; LJ ix. 621a. Later that January, as a commissioner of oyer and terminer in Hampshire, Kemp was involved in the trial and execution of Captain John Burley, who had launched a futile bid to rescue the king from Carisbrooke.62CJ v. 429a, 442a.

Yet as suddenly as he had emerged, Kemp retreated back into obscurity, at least at Westminster. For the next few months the Journal mentioned only the debt due to Kemp from the Mill estate – a matter still unresolved in 1651 – until Kemp was again granted leave to go into the country on 30 June.63CJ v. 391a, 507a, 561b, 617a; vii. 4b; LJ x. 130a, 132b; CCC, 102, 253, 472, 631, 1831-2. He reappeared in the record only in September, when appointed to a minor committee relating to the sequestration of delinquents in order to raise money for troops in Surrey (9 Sept.), and the order that he and his old enemy, John Lisle, should endeavour to ensure the collection of assessments in his own county (23 Sept.).64CJ vi. 10b, 30b. By this stage, Kemp may have become disillusioned with the failure to negotiate a settlement with the king, and although he was neither secluded nor imprisoned at Pride’s Purge, he did not sit in the Commons after December 1648.

Kemp died, unmarried, on 5 October 1652, and was buried at Boldre in Hampshire, where a monument was erected by his step-brother and brother-in-law Henry Bromfield†, celebrating his piety, modesty, humanity and integrity.65Hitchin-Kemp, Kemp and Kempe Families, iv. 33-4. In a will which he began to draft five years earlier, he left £50 to the poor of the each of the parishes of Beaulieu, Boldre and Christchurch; £1,500 between his mother, two sisters and a niece; and smaller legacies to numerous other (mainly female) kin and friends, including Amy, wife of fellow local MP John Button I*. His executor, and perhaps his main eventual heir, was his nephew William Bromfield, whose father, Henry Bromfield, was to substitute should he be under age (as proved to be the case); Kemp’s overseers were Robert Dillington* and William Oglander†, grandsons of the guardians of his youth.66PROB11/223/590; Christchurch Priory, Benefactors, unfol. Henry Bromfield, who had supported Parliament and who held office under the protectorate, was elected for Lymington to the Convention, but no further close family members sat in Parliament.67HP Commons 1660-1690.