CALEY, Jacob (1612-80), of Ipswich, Suff.

During the sixteenth century the Caley family had been resident at Norton, a village about seven miles to the east of Bury St Edmunds. By the early years of the seventeenth century, Thomas Caley, a clothier, had moved south to Little Waldingfield, one of the clothing villages outside Sudbury. He married a local woman, Thomasine, a daughter of Thomas Gosse and Thomasine Nottingham.16Vis. Suff. 1664-1668, 150; Little Waldingfield par. reg. With this wife, Caley had eight children, of whom the youngest son, Jacob, was the future MP.17Little Waldingfield par. reg. The Winthrop seat at Groton was close to Little Waldingfield and one of Jacob’s brothers, Abraham (who later became the rector of Rayleigh in Essex) was a close friend of John Winthrop junior.18PROB11/161/649; Al. Cant.; Calamy Revised, 99; Winthrop Pprs. i. 273, 280, 285, 337, 342, 349, 350. John Gosse, Thomas Caley’s brother-in-law, sailed to Massachusetts in the 1630 Winthrop fleet.19Winthrop Pprs. iii. 4, 41, 90; A Geneal. Dictionary of the First Settlers of N. Eng. ed. J. Savage (Boston, 1860-2), ii. 284; The Planters of the Commonwealth ed. C.E. Banks (Boston, 1930), 70. Thomas Caley died in 1618.20Little Waldingfield par. reg. Most of his property he left to his three elder sons, Thomas, Abraham and Isaac, but to Jacob, who was still only five years old, he bequeathed a dye house which he had purchased from his brother-in-law, Abraham Gosse. As an added provision for Jacob, £40 was to be paid to him on reaching the age of 24.21PROB11/131/545.

By the time he was 21, Caley had been admitted as a freeman in Ipswich.22Suff. RO (Ipswich), C5/14/3, f. 256v. His name appears as a witness to the will of an Ipswich resident, Edward Baldry, in July 1634.23Wills from the Archdeaconry of Suff.: 1629-1636 ed. M.E. Allen and N.R. Evans (N. Eng. Hist. Geneal. Soc., Boston, 1986), 389. When, in October 1636, he married for the first time, his bride was the daughter of another Ipswich man, John Reynolds.24St Stephen, Ipswich par. reg., p. 56; Vis. Suff. 1664-8, 150; Add. 15520, f. 9. During 1638 Caley was a churchwarden of St Mary le Tower, where Samuel Ward had been the minister and which, since Ward’s suspension in 1635, had been the focus of opposition in Ipswich to the Laudian policies of the local bishop, Matthew Wren.25St Mary le Tower, Ipswich, par. reg., f. 37v.

In March 1643 appointment as one of the 24 constables on the Ipswich corporation enhanced Caley’s local standing and it made possible his inclusion that summer on the additional committee for the town.26A. and O.; Suff. RO (Ipswich), C5/14/4, f. 3. Thereafter he occasionally took part in the work of the county committee at Bury St Edmunds.27SP28/243. His efforts in support of Parliament, however, seem to have concentrated on acting as a tax collector on its behalf. He began by acting jointly with his fellow Ipswich citizen, Robert Dunkon*, as the receiver for the second contribution in Suffolk and in 1643 he also acted as a collector for the money to relieve the Irish Protestants and for the weekly assessments. In recognition of his work in Suffolk for the collections on behalf of the Irish Protestants, the Commons committee for Irish affairs granted him a £20 share in the Irish Adventurers. The following year he was treasurer for the levy organized to create a body of soldiers to prevent incursions into the county during harvest time. In 1645 he and Edmund Bence (nephew of Alexander* and Squier Bence*) organized the collection of coat and conduct money in and around Ipswich. Over these years he handled sums of money totaling at least £70,000.28P. Fisher, For the...Committees for the County of Suffolke (1648), 4-5, 14, 20, 30, 32-33, 36-9, E.448.13; E113/11, answer of Christopher Smyth, 14 Jan. 1663; SP28/176: acct of Samuel Moody, 1643-4, ff. 9, 12; SP28/190: assessments for Scottish army, n.d.; Add. 4771, f. 13; SP28/243: certificate, 6 Sept. 1645. He personally put up £15 (an above average contribution) for the money lent by the inhabitants of Ipswich to the navy in 1643.29Bodl. Rawl. A.221, f. 146v. It probably says something about Caley’s religious sympathies that William Dowsing, while on one of his journeys through Suffolk in August 1644 in search of offensive images in churches, spent a night in Caley’s house in Ipswich.30Jnl. of William Dowsing ed. T. Cooper (Woodbridge, 2001), 309, 334-6. Clearer evidence on that subject is provided by his appointment as an elder for the Presbyterian classis in Ipswich the following year.31Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 424. From 1645 Caley was able to support Parliament even more directly when he was appointed captain of the foot company raised in Ipswich.32Suff. RO (Ipswich), HD36/2672/81. In the summer of 1648 those forces were sent to assist in the suppression of the rebellion in Essex. Royalist troops had advanced from Colchester to capture Bradfield Hall, the house of Sir Harbottle Grimston*. The Ipswich companies took up a position on the bridge over the River Stour at Manningtree to prevent the royalists crossing into Suffolk. From there on 23 June Caley and his fellow officers wrote to the rebels at Bradfield Hall warning them to withdraw.33A Diary of the Siege of Colchester (1648, 669.f.13.6); The Earl of Norwich, Lord Capel, & Sir Charls Lucas, their Peremptory Answer, 14.

This was just one indication of Caley’s growing prominence within Ipswich. He soon became, briefly, a leading figure in its civic affairs. Three days after the king’s execution he and John Brandlinge* were the emissaries sent by the town to encourage their MPs, Francis Bacon* and John Gurdon*, and their recorder, Nathaniel Bacon*, to raise in the Commons the problem of piracy along the North Sea coast.34Suff. ed. Everitt, 117. In September 1649 the senior members of the corporation, the portmen, agreed to admit him to their number. When attempted to refuse, giving no reason, the corporation pressed ahead, insisting that he accept, and immediately named him, with John Brandlinge, as bailiff for the following year. Some on the corporation were evidently very keen that he serve.35Suff. RO (Ipswich), C5/14/4, f. 43v; Heavens, ‘To be Doers’, 216-17. Caley was a close ally of Brandlinge, for by now, Mary, his daughter from his first marriage, had married Brandlinge’s son, Samuel.36Vis. Suff. 1664-1668, 145; Add. 15520, ff. 9, 11v. The council of state in October 1650 appointed both Caley and Brandlinge to command the Ipswich militia regiments and two months later Caley was considered sufficiently sound to be appointed by Parliament to the high court of justice convened to try those who had join the attempted royalist uprising in Norfolk.37SP25/119, p. 66; A. and O. He was included, for the first time, on the commission of the peace for Suffolk in July 1652, but was removed from it within a matter of months.38C231/6, p. 240; C193/13/4, f. 95v.

Caley’s selection for one of the Suffolk seats in the 1653 Nominated Parliament was due to his inclusion in the list of suitable persons submitted by a group of Suffolk churches in May 1653. One of the organizers of this submission was Benjamin Stoneham, the radical preacher at St Peter’s, Ipswich (and former chaplain to Sir Anthony Irby*). Given their subsequent close connection, it is suggestive that Caley’s name was the first of the five nominations to be listed while Stoneham’s signature was at the head of the 52 added to the letter.39Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 94; Al. Cant. iv. 169; B.S. Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men (1972), 264. The letter of summons inviting Caley to attend survives.40Museum of London, Tangye MS 46.78/656. On 30 June 1653, four days before the new assembly opened, the council of state assigned lodgings at Whitehall to eight of the nominees, including. Caley and three others from Suffolk. Sharing this apartment with him would be Robert Dunkon, who had also been nominated, although for the first few weeks both were living in a lodging house in Millbank.41CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 455; Suff. RO (Ipswich), HD36/2781/69; HD36/2781/126.

Once the assembly had transformed itself into a Parliament, Caley was named on 12 July to the first of the committees appointed to investigate the public finances and to ensure that spending was reduced. When, the following week, this was superseded by a second committee with that objective, Caley was among the six original members reappointed.42CJ vii. 283b, 287a. Four months later, on 11 November, he laid before the House a recommendation from the excise commissioners that circumvention of the excise duty introduced earlier in the Parliament be addressed by extending the requirement to pay tax to tobacco merchants apparently re-exporting consignments they had imported. Caley was then ordered to prepare a bill to enact this proposal.43CJ vii. 348b. This bill progressed to a second reading on 29 November, but was referred to Andrew Broughton* and Samuel Moyer* to have a proviso added and failed to reappear before the dissolution.44CJ vii. 359b.

In the meantime, Caley had been using his stay at Westminster to pursue business on behalf of the Ipswich corporation. Earlier that year he had been on a delegation from the corporation to London to represent them in a legal case.45E. Anglian, n.s. ii. 137. Now, he again acted as their envoy, working with Dunkon to obtain redress for the town for the expenses incurred in treating sick and wounded sailors. This was probably the reason why Caley had been summoned to appear before the council of state in the weeks before this Parliament was called.46The Cromwellian Collection (1905), 10; CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 423. Now, by repeated lobbying of the admiralty and navy commissions, Caley and Dunkon obtained several payments and promises of more money to follow.47Suff. RO (Ipswich), HD36/2781/65-69; HD36/2781/126; HD36/2781/129.

In the printed list purporting to show which MPs supported a publicly-maintained preaching ministry, Caley was marked as one who did not.48Cat. of the Names of the Members of the Last Parliament (1654, 669.f.19.3). There is some evidence that he had become a Fifth Monarchist. A pamphlet was published in October 1659 as A Serious Proposal by Stoneham, Nicholas Cook and Caley ‘in the name of the Church of Christ in Ipswich’. This had been written some time before but had been delayed at the printers and was now issued along with a companion piece by Christopher Feake, The Serious Proposal Promoted. The purpose of Caley and his colleagues was to reject the various constitutional settlements being proposed, for they were ‘comfortably persuaded, that the hour is coming when the saints; the high ones, who have hitherto been abused by worldly powers, shall have the dominion given into their hands, according to the scriptures’. It was no doubt Caley who included the observation that the 1653 Parliament and Oliver Cromwell’s* speech to it on 4 July had inaugurated this process.49B. Stonham, J. Caley and N. Cook, A Serious Proposal of Some Things (1659), esp. 1-5.

It may be that by the mid-1650s Caley’s Fifth Monarchist views were causing difficulties between him and some other members of the Ipswich corporation. After August 1654 he ceased to attend the meetings of the great court.50Suff. RO (Ipswich), C5/14/4, f. 84. In April 1655 he was added to the feoffees for the copyhold lands of John Sicklemor* by the corporation and he still acted as the receiver for one of the town charities.51Suff. RO (Ipswich), C6/1/6, p. 166; HD36/2781/77. When John Brandlinge, the senior bailiff, nominated him at Michaelmas 1655 as one of four new justices of the peace for the town, the junior bailiff, Peter Fisher, objected to Caley's name.52E. Anglian, ii. 365. It is likely that, thereafter, he played no part in corporation affairs. When in April 1660 he sought to resign as a portman, he explained that it had been several years since he had fulfilled the duties expected of him.53Suff. RO (Ipswich), C5/14/4, f. 128v; E. Anglian, n.s. vi. 140. An assessment demand with which he disagreed occasioned his letter in February 1662 to Robert Clarke, town clerk of Ipswich and an assessment commissioner, in which he stated that he had only visited Ipswich twice during the previous year. He was then living not far away at Falkenham, but cited ill-health as the reason for his inability to make the journey.54Suff. RO (Ipswich), HD36/2781/160.

Caley lived on until 1680. In May of that year he prepared his will, which reveals how far his business interests had developed since inheriting his father’s dye house. By now, he owned several houses, quays and warehouses at Ipswich. Some of these properties were probably among those he had bought before the mid-1660s, in partnership with Dunkon and Brandlinge.55PROB11/326/619; PROB11/335/82. These eventually passed to Benjamin, the second son from his second marriage. He also held a share in three ships, the Trial, the Vanity and the Venture. His youngest son, Samuel, was to receive his stocks of corn to launch his own business. His wife’s jointure lands at Badingham were to go to his eldest son, Jacob, after her death. Caley added a codicil on 8 May 1680 instructing his executors to spend £200 to buy freehold lands to augment Jacob’s bequest. Caley must have died soon after, for on 20 August that year this will was proved.56PROB11/363/525. Several of his descendants were to be prominent members of Ipswich society but none sat in Parliament.