DOVE, John (c.1596-?1665), of Salisbury and Ivy Church, Wilts.

On first acquaintance, and the testimony of hostile contemporaries, it is easy to characterize this MP as a provincial nobody who, on the coat-tails of regional grandees, came to prominence briefly to profit ruthlessly from the extraordinary circumstances of the mid-seventeenth century.41‘John Dove d.1664/5’, Oxford DNB; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 49. On closer examination, Dove proves to have somewhat more elevated origins, and fairly wide horizons and experience. The visitation of Wiltshire in 1677 attributed to John Dove’s nephew Peter arms differing only slightly from those recorded in 1568 and in the 1660s for Robert Dove, Merchant Tailor of London, and his kin the Doves of Gosbeck and of East Bergholt, Suffolk.42Vis. Wilts. 1677 (1854); Vis. London 1568 (Harl. Soc. i.), 58; Vis. Suff. 1664-1668 (Harl. Soc. lxi), 1-2. Longstanding links between these families are suggested by the recurrence of first names and by the movements of individuals between the west, East Anglia and the capital. The Doves settled in Wiltshire and in Salisbury by the mid-sixteenth century maintained connections with other City kin from the upper echelons of the mercantile elite – a factor of probable significance to the political career of this MP, who has sometimes appeared as a mere provincial brewer.43‘John Dove (d.1618)’, Oxford DNB; Vis. Wilts. 1623 (Harl. Soc. cv/cvi), 147; Poverty in Early Stuart Salisbury, ed. P. Slack (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xxi), 49; Holgate, ‘Recovery of an ancient brass’, 180-1; ‘A Calendar of Feet of Fines for Wilts.’, Wilts. N and Q vi. 85. In 1633 the dean of Windsor, Matthew Wren, born into that elite, proffered ‘some affinity’ with ‘one Dove of Sarum’ as explanation for commending the latter’s suit to the dean of the arches – a gesture which, as will appear, was otherwise surprising from a cleric soon to become one of the most controversial of Laudian bishops.44SP16/251, f. 9.

Salisbury puritan

Among family members in Wiltshire, Henry Dove named in 1576 as executor of John Dove of Teffont Evias, yeoman, or Henry Dove of Teffont Evias, yeoman, who leased land from John Nicholas in Winterbourne Earls in 1594, may plausibly be closely connected to the MP’s father of the same name.45Wilts. RO, P2/0/15i; 720/3. This Henry Dove had four of his younger children baptized in the parish of St Edmund, Salisbury, from May 1609, and was included among brewers and maltsters in a list of free citizens of 1612.46St Edmund, Salisbury, par. reg.; Wilts. RO, G23/1/264, f. 3. Appearing as an assistant in the council registers from March 1612, in November he was chosen of the twenty-four, and in 1615 was elected mayor, but he died in office the following August.47Wilts. RO, G23/1/3, ff. 218, 226, 249v, 253.

John Dove and his younger brother Francis, with whom he was to be closely associated, had been apprenticed to their father in September 1613, although it was Francis who inherited the brewing equipment and Salisbury premises, while John, who was old enough to prove Henry’s will in May 1617, received land in Whaddon, four miles to the south east of the city in the parish of Alderbury.48Wilts. RO, G23/1/128, f. 9; PROB11/129/556. Left with their stepmother Anne Henton, whom their father had married in February 1615, and numerous younger siblings, the brothers benefited from connections among the city patriciate.49St Edmund, Salisbury, par. reg. Within a month of Henry Dove’s death his daughter Mary married the son of councillor Henry Pearson, and the following June John, as executor, paid to councillors the £5 the mayor had bequeathed for poor relief.50St Edmund, Salisbury, par. reg.; Wilts. RO, G23/1/3, f. 89v. In January 1619 he married Elizabeth, one of the two daughters of Geoffrey Bigge, master of St Nicholas Hospital in the city, and vicar of Alderbury.51St Edmund, Salisbury, par. reg. Before the end of the decade he was a party to deeds related to hospital interests, and perhaps he also acquired from his father-in-law the loyalty to the Herbert family expressed in Bigge’s 1630 will: ‘the favour and singular bounty’ of Henry Herbert, 2nd earl of Pembroke, and his wife Mary Sidney, and ‘the succeeding branches of that illustrious family’ towards his own was such that he could not ‘pass over in silence’ without incurring guilt.52Wilts. RO, 1672/2; PROB11/161/125.

The aforementioned favour from Wren notwithstanding, Dove certainly shared his father-in-law’s evident godliness. By January 1622 he was closely involved with the vestry of St Edmund’s parish. That year he worked with senior councillors John Ivie, Bartholomew Tookye or Tooker and Henry Sherfield to effect the presentation to the living (realised in January 1623) of the puritan minister Peter Thacher, thereby gaining with them the reputation of ‘such persons as do impugn and oppose episcopal jurisdiction’, while Bigge twice augmented Thacher’s ‘too small stipend’.53Churchwardens’ Accounts Sarum ed. Swayne, 173; P. Slack, ‘Poverty and politics in Salisbury 1597–1666’ in Crisis and Order in English Towns 1500-1700 ed. P. Clark and P. Slack (1972), 184; PROB11/161/125. Dove served as a churchwarden from April 1625 to April 1627.54Churchwardens’ Accounts Sarum ed. Swayne, 182-4, 384.

Admitted with his brother Francis as a free citizen in December 1625, Dove was chosen one of the forty-eight in January 1629 and rapidly became immersed in the council’s core business.55Wilts. RO, G23/1/3, ff. 323, 341v. He presented a petition to the lord chancellor in the context of the renewed city charter of 1630; negotiated leases and other matters with Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, John Davenant, bishop of Salisbury, and the dean and chapter; and reviewed corporation lands. Elected an alderman in September 1631, he was mayor from November 1634 and faced the challenge of Ship Money.56Wilts. RO, G23/1/3, ff. 346, 355, 355v, 357v, 358v, 360, 366, 369, 384v, 392; VCH Wilts. vi. 106. Although associated like Francis (elected to the council in 1630) with John Ivie’s ambitious programme of poor relief, and involved in workhouse matters, as brewers the brothers held aloof from his scheme for a subsidised public brewhouse, until the late 1630s, when it was already in trouble.57Wilts. RO, G23/1/3, ff. 394, 408, 410, 413v; Slack, ‘Poverty and politics’, 181-6, 190-1; Hoare, Hist. Wilts. vi (Old and New Sarum), 356. In the meantime, leaving Francis as a leading parishioner of St Edmund (where he was churchwarden between 1635 and 1637, and where in 1641 he promoted the appointment of John Strickland to succeed Thacher and married the minister’s widow Alice Batt), in the early 1630s John Dove had switched his primary allegiance to St Thomas.58Churchwardens’ Accounts Sarum ed. Swayne, 203–7, 212, 384; St Edmund, Salisbury, par. reg. Here he became a prominent member of the vestry, and with Humphrey Ditton* was instrumental in procuring the eventual succession of John Conant as minister.59Churchwardens’ Accounts Sarum ed. Swayne, 317–22; St Thomas, Salisbury, par. reg.

Parliamentary candidacy 1640 and civil war activist

Such activism placed Dove among those on the council and within the Salisbury élite opposed to the conservative social outlook and pro-court stance of the recorder, and legal adviser to the dean and chapter, Robert Hyde*, who scorned their efforts to alleviate distress. In March 1640 Dove was not among visible dissidents to the controversial election as the city’s MPs of Hyde and – somewhat less contentiously – the earl of Pembroke’s secretary, non-resident Michael Oldisworth*, but when in October the mayor and a majority of the corporation returned them again, in a rival ballot of ‘inhabitants’ Dove was selected to partner the elderly John Ivie. A petition to the Commons in favour of Dove and Ivie was referred to committee, and provoked heated debate in the House in March 1641, but was for the time being unsuccessful.60D’Ewes (N), i. 430-2; P. Slack, ‘An election to the Short Parliament’, BIHR xlvi. 108-14; D. Hirst, The Representative of the People? (1975), 206; VCH Wilts. v. 136.

None the less, Dove clearly considered himself delegated to deal with Parliament on behalf of the city. On 15 August 1642 the council ordered payment to him for his expenses incurred in delivering personally ‘certain instructions and ordinances of Parliament for the more safety of this City’; a payment for similar services was authorised in February 1643.61Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, ff. 8, 11v. Armed with the order against the publication of the king’s proclamations, Dove challenged the efforts of Hyde’s supporter Thomas Lawes to disseminate them.62Bodl. Dep. C.165, no.79. Meanwhile, following the departure from the city of William Waller* with a body of horse raised for Parliament, it was Francis Dove who was given by the lord lieutenant, Pembroke, command of men mustered to defend it.63To the Right Honorable Philip Earle of Pembrook and Mountgomery … the humble resolution of the loyall and well-affected Voluntiers of the City of New Sarum (1642). Both brothers lent money to that cause, but there is no evidence that John did military service at that point; he should not be confused with the namesake(s) who kept the stores and ammunition for the garrison at Portsmouth or who was an officer later killed in Ireland.64Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, 11; LJ viii. 425a; CCC i. 81; Add. 18780, f. 36v.

Political or religious divisions and personality clashes in the Salisbury patriciate were replicated within the Doves’ own family. John and his wife’s brother-in-law, Joseph Bates, had in 1638 laid before justices complaints against each other for ‘abusive and slanderous speeches’.65HMC Var. i. 105 C3/395/109. As vicar of Ilsington, Devon, John and Francis’s younger brother Robert allegedly criticised those who resisted the collection of Ship Money, turned his communion table altarwise, and early in 1641 ‘bestirred himself to get hands to uphold episcopacy and the government of bishops’, soliciting ‘hedgers at the hedge, ploughmen at the plough, threshers in the barns’.66Buller Pprs. 33. He was perceived to have left his subsequent or additional living at Elm with Emneth, Norfolk, in 1642 to join the royalist army, and as a result was sequestered in 1644.67Clergy of the C of E database; Al. Ox.; Walker Revised, 79; Apparently in an evasive move, he leased the rectory, which had long had Dove family connections, to his elder brothers who, despite their own views, took on the Committee for Plundered Ministers* in pursuance of their claims.68Add. 15669, ff. 127, 132, 193, 197v, 199.

Meanwhile in July 1644 John Dove was named to the Wiltshire county committee.69A. and O. The bitter personal rifts which appear to underlie several aspects of his career were probably exacerbated when he was among those plundered by royalist troops passing through the city that autumn. The mayoral year of Francis Dove – who celebrated his election in late October by presenting to the corporation ‘the free gift of a large and fair bible’ – coincided with the sole outbreak of fighting in the city and then a five-week royalist occupation which revealed substantial support for the king within its walls.70Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, f. 13v; VCH Wilts. vi. 118. However, it culminated on 16 October 1645 with the election of John to Parliament to replace the unseated Robert Hyde, at an election presided over by Edmund Ludlowe II* as sheriff.71Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, ff. 17v, 18v; C219/43/3, no. 22. This success may be attributable to the patronage of the earl of Pembroke as well as to the endorsement of local parliamentarian zealots. Three months earlier the House of Lords had authorised the admission to Robert Dove’s vacated Norfolk rectory of the youngest brother, Thomas Dove, at that date the earl’s chaplain.72LJ viii. 401b, 435b, 436b; Al. Ox.; Walker Revised, 79.

Recruiter MP 1645-8

Membership of the Commons gave John Dove the opportunity for profit and for revenge. The extent to which he took ruthless and unreasonable advantage of it is difficult to determine, but he enjoyed a particularly bad reputation among royalists. His profile in the Journal was modest at first, but with his municipal and county committee experience, he had much to offer, especially to the war party. Dove took the Solemn League and Covenant on 29 October, the same day as Ferdinando Fairfax, 2nd Baron Fairfax of Cameron, and Sir John Danvers*, who had recently joined the House as Member for the Wiltshire constituency of Malmesbury.73CJ iv. 326a. Three weeks later he was added to a committee to examine the foundation of hospitals, and in December he was delegated, with Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire*, Member for Ludgershall, and two others, to correspond with the Hampshire and Wiltshire county committees, communicating instructions on army deserters.74CJ iv. 345a, 383b. From November he was as often as not a signatory to letters to Wiltshire from the committee for the safety of the western associated counties – the ‘Committee of the West*’ – and he also testified on behalf of at least one officer from the county seeking arrears.75Add. 22084; SP46/95, f. 24. Such activity involved regular contact with leading MPs, including the Presbyterians Denzil Holles and Clement Walker, and those of varying degrees of engagement with Independency like Danvers, Evelyn and Ludlowe. The following spring and summer he was named to a few key committees which set the tone for his future service: those examining the army’s accounts (11 Mar. 1646); considering the petitions of poor Irish Protestants (20 Apr.); and, most significantly, refining the ordinance for the sale of papists’ and delinquents’ estates (10 July).76CJ iv. 472b, 473a, 516b, 613a. He had already signalled a potential interest in the last: on 22 April he petitioned that bills, bonds and specialties up to the value of £700 belonging to several Wiltshire delinquents be granted to him in recompense for his losses through plunder; the delinquents named included two with whom he had long-lasting sour relations – Sir John Penruddock and Dr Alexander Hyde.77CJ iv. 519a.

Three absences from Westminster authorised in May, August and September 1646, may be accounted for by commitments in his native county, although in any case it is apparent that he did not always leave London immediately.78CJ iv. 532b, 539b, 635a, 671b; Hoare, Hist. Wilts. iii (Cawden), 34; J. Waylen, ‘Notes from the diary of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper’, Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxviii. 24; Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, f. 24. It seems he was back in London on 16 December, when he was among a large group added to the committee of privileges.79CJ v. 14b. Yet it was only from February 1647 that Dove began to appear regularly in the Journal and to garner frequent committee nominations. While the easing of local pressure that drew a good many MPs back to Westminster may partly explain his sudden assiduity, the concentration of activity in the late spring and early summer, and again towards the end of the year, argues some engagement in factional struggles surrounding the treatment of the army. That Dove was delegated on 26 May to invite his local minister, John Strickland, to preach to Parliament and on 30 June to thank Thomas Manton for parallel service proclaims him as a religious Presbyterian, and he was later to be nominated to the committee for the ordinance on tithes (15 Sept.).80CJ v. 184a, 228a, 302a; ‘John Strickland’, ‘Thomas Manton’, Oxford DNB. On the other hand, his inclusion on 14 May on the committee for the regulation of Oxford University – potentially consistent with this – was alternatively a possible pointer to a continuing connection with its chancellor, Pembroke, whose political standpoint wavered.81CJ v. 174a. On balance, it seems probable that Dove’s views at this point were complex, comprehending suspicion of political Presbyterianism, appreciation of the importance of satisfying the demands of the New Model, and a reluctance to yield to its radical elements.

Alongside committee appointments related to his long-standing religious or commercial interests, or to matters conceivably within the purview of the privileges committee, Dove was more often visible in relation to army matters.82CJ v. 84b, 134a, 187a, 196a. Named to prepare ordinances for selling the lands of the recusant earl of Worcester (4 Feb.) and settling them on Lieutenant-general Oliver Cromwell* (5 May), and to investigate the case of Leveller-sympathiser Major Alexander Tulidah (26 Mar.), as agitation continued among the soldiery on 21 May Dove received his most significant nomination to date – to the Committee for Indemnity*.83CJ v. 74a, 125b, 162b; A. and O. Although this standing committee was mixed in composition, it was dominated by the Independents, and inasmuch as Dove became a core member of it, and as a good deal of his activity in the Commons chamber thereafter seems to have arisen from it, he must at least have shared most of their concerns. Named on 28 May to address some of the army’s grievances through preparation of the ordinance for the relief of maimed soldiers and the relatives of those killed, on 19 June – two days after he had chaired the Committee for Indemnity – he was not only added to a committee preparing a declaration concerning the threatening assembly of Presbyterian militia-men around Westminster, and but was given joint charge of it with William Ball, at this point usually an ally of the Independents.84CJ v. 190b, 217a; SP24/1, pp. 7-8. When on 8 July, with debate pending on the army’s charges against the Eleven Members, he finally reported amendments to the ordinance directing soldiers to depart from within the lines, it was in the context of unresolved divisions between those who had drafted it.85CJ v. 229a, 237b. Since the ordinance was then further amended, it is impossible to determine exactly Dove’s own position on it. Although in the first three weeks of July he was a regular attender of the Committee for Indemnity, and chaired it again on the 13th and 22nd, he made no other appearance in the Journal during this time.86SP24/1, pp. 18-55. On 22 July, for reasons not noted, he obtained leave to go into the country.87CJ v. 253b. He was present at the Indemnity Committee the next day, but there was then a four-week break in its records.88SP24/1, p. 57.

Quite probably Dove – like others who abandoned Westminster at this juncture – was alarmed at the turn of events. It is unlikely that he would have endorsed the Presbyterian coup which occurred on the 26th, but he was not among those who were prompted to flee to the protection of the army and voice their protest. Furthermore, there is no evidence that he returned to Parliament before mid-September, some weeks after the coup had been reversed. However, having attended the Wiltshire assizes on 14 August, Dove is found on the 29th acting as assessment commissioner for the army at Devizes, which means that by then he must have accepted the result of the upheavals.89Waylen, ‘Diary of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper’, 26. He reappeared in the Journal on 15 September, when he was appointed to committees addressing recompense for the officials of the abolished court of wards and the question of tithes, and at the Committee for Indemnity on the 16th.90CJ v. 301b, 302a; SP24/1, pp. 68-9.

Two weeks later Dove was among those named to work on an ordinance disabling delinquents from holding office (28 Sept.), but in an autumn of continuing political flux he then vanished from the Journal for some weeks.91CJ v. 320a. Perhaps he found the Committee for Indemnity, where he was again a fairly frequent attender and which he chaired on 21 October, offered more scope for constructive action.92SP46/1, pp. 77-222. His next appearances in Commons’ business – he was named on 11 November to the committee considering a petition from wounded soldiers in the Savoy hospital and on the 20th to consider officers’ salaries and the administrative structure behind them – probably stemmed from it.93CJ v. 356a, 364b. Three further appointments that year – to investigate property transactions by one alleged to be a nun (22 Nov.); to consider the relief and employment of vagrants (23 Nov.); and to counter unrest as Parliament considered the next round of peace propositions to be presented to the king (13 Dec.) – rest on his established interests in religion and in social regulation or indicate that he was still an MP of some standing in the House.94CJ v. 365b, 366b, 380a. He was rewarded on 21 December with an order arising from his petition for compensation of the previous year, promising recompense via the Committee for Advance of Money* from the estate of Wiltshire delinquent James Long.95CJ v. 395a.

On 24 December Dove and Colonel Alexander Popham, a Somerset MP with strong Wiltshire links, were ordered to accompany the rest of the assessment commissioners to the county, probably to oversee the reaction to anticipated popular protest.96CJ v. 403b. Dealing with local dissent is clearly one explanation for Dove’s absence from the record around the time of the Vote of No Addresses to the king, and for his having a much-reduced profile in the Commons in 1648, although attendances at the Committee for Indemnity, where recorded, suggest that he was present at Westminster significantly more often than otherwise appears.97SP24/1, pp. 256-372; SP46/2, pp. 37, 44, 52, 61. Nominated to develop further measures for the sale of episcopal lands (9 Feb. 1648) and for sabbath observance (23 Feb.), on 24 March he was added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers as it considered the settling of suitable clergy in Salisbury and was instructed to prepare an ordinance to assist the Salisbury corporation to suppress and punish disorder in the cathedral close and the city.98CJ v. 460b, 471a, 512b. Included on the committee nominated on 27 April to examine information in the London petition for treating with the king, in the midst of widespread insurgency, on 30 May he was ordered to go with James Herbert, one of Pembroke’s younger sons, and Colonel Ludlowe to settle the peace in Wiltshire; instructions to seize pistols and make arrests were directed to them there on 13 and 17 June.99CJ v. 546a, 579a; CSP Dom. 1648–9, pp. 124, 126, 132, 134-5. It is conceivable that pacification preoccupied him for some weeks, but he was back in London to chair the Indemnity Committee on the afternoon of 27 July, and may thus have been in the House the next day to participate in the vote (carried) on whether to abandon preconditions for negotiating with the king.100SP46/3, ff. 43-6; CJ v. 650a. He was visible in the Commons in early August, including on the 5th as a messenger to the Lords carrying orders related to the army, and on the 11th reporting on amendments to the militia ordinance for Wiltshire and conveying thanks for a fast sermon.101CJ v. 655a, 663a, 667a. But once again he vanished from the record at a critical moment, his chairmanship of the Committee for Indemnity on 23 October being one of the few signs of his presence around Parliament before Pride’s purge on 6 December, and a list of supposed radical Members published afterwards the only indication that he may have been working to undermine the Newport Treaty.102SP46/3, ff. 54v, 95v, 98-9; G. Yule, The Independents in the English Civil War (1958), 131-2.

Rump Parliament

In contrast to his shadowy profile during previous crises, however, Dove’s support for the purge emerges promptly and emphatically. When he reappeared in the Journal only a week later, it was as the carrier of important messages to the Lords (14, 15 and 18 Dec.).103CJ vi. 97a, 97b; 100a; LJ x. 630b. On 20 December he took the dissent to the vote of the 5th for continuing negotiations with the king.104PA, Ms CJ xxxiii, pp. 473-4; [W. Prynne], A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case (1660), 21 (E.1013.22). Although a critical commentator alleged a couple of months later that ‘he is called by some in Parliament Sir John Evelyn’s pigeon’, Dove seems to have taken a more radical and independent line than Evelyn of Wiltshire, keeping company at least as much with Sir John Danvers.105Nicholas Pprs. i. 108. Within a few weeks he was named to or added to a number of important committees proclaiming a commitment to the republic, including the Committee for Compounding (18 Dec.), those for delinquents (16 Dec.), public revenue (21 Dec.), dean and chapter lands (12 Jan. 1649) and the Committee of Navy and Customs (13 Jan. 1649).106CJ vi. 99a, 102a, 116a, 117a; LJ x. 632b.

Although present at three or four sessions of the court trying the king, the last time on 26 January 1649 in response to the specific summons to those absent commissioners still in London, Dove did not sign the death warrant.107Muddiman, Trial, 201, 206, 224; A true copy of the journal of the high court of justice (1684), 3, 11-12, 22, 19, 26. On the other hand, he received two committee nominations on the day after Charles’s execution, 31 January, and two more on 2 February; these included discussing measures to control the City of London, to settle the Westminster militia (of which Dove was joint chair), and to prevent the election to Parliament of disaffected persons.108CJ vi. 127a, 129b, 130a. He was to be a core Member of the Rump, regularly receiving nominations and active on major standing committees, although he was only rarely prominent in Commons’ Journals as an individual, and was a teller only once (acting with Sir Arthur Hesilrige* in support of Sir John Danvers’ claims on his deceased brother’s estate, 17 May 1649).109CJ vi. 211a.

Drawing on his municipal experience, Dove was involved in the social policies of the Rump. Twice named to committees working on legislation to assist imprisoned debtors (31 Jan., 28 Nov. 1649) and on the second occasion designated chairman, he reported the deliberations on 21 December, although it was to be another three years before this was to bear fruit in the commission to which he was duly named.110CJ vi. 127a, 327a, 337a; A. and O. Appointed on 23 March 1649 to consider measures to combat poverty and vagrancy in London, he was later among those nominated to consider a bill for the relief of the widows and orphans of former soldiers, and to look into hospitals (14 May 1651), and eventually to conduct a thoroughgoing revision of all the poor laws (27 Apr. 1652).111CJ vi. 171a, 209b, 418a, 569b; vii. 127b. He had already been included on committees reviewing other aspects of the law (18 July 1649; 25 Oct. 1650;1 Jan. 1652) and to nominate experts to pursue reform (26 Dec. 1651).112CJ vi. 263b, 488a; vii. 58b, 62a. Among other commercial matters like repairs to highways and petitions from trade interests, he was involved in the regulation of corn prices (10 Feb. 1649) and (despite his family business) discussion of the prohibition on brewing beer costing more than 10s. a barrel (5 Sept.).113CJ vi. 137a, 181a, 232a, 275a, 290b, 486b, 522b; vii. 169b, 188a. He also engaged with new projects such as the drainage of the Great Level (8 May, for which with Danvers and Evelyn he became a commissioner under the resulting act) and the opening up of navigation on the Wye in Surrey (26 Feb. 1651).114CJ vi. 204b; A. and O. Alongside the maintenance of his previous interest in poor Irish Protestants, on whom he was due to report in December 1650 and May 1651, he was on committees for the Adventurers and other Irish affairs.115CJ vi. 279a, 322b, 339a, 416b, 418b, 423a, 455b, 512b.

Dove’s long-standing commitment to the promotion of godliness was reflected in occasional, but significant, appointments, including those concerned with the provision of preachers (6 and 26 Apr. 1649; 15 Feb. 1650), regulating the universities of Oxford and Cambridge (29 Mar. 1650) and the petition of ministers proffered by the dean of Christ Church, John Owen* (10 Feb. 1652).116CJ vi. 180b, 196a, 365b, 388b; vii. 86b. He was still on the Committee for Plundered Ministers: its incomplete records indicate that he certainly attended in November 1651, March and October 1652, and January 1653.117Mins. of the Cttee. for the Relief of Plundered Ministers ed. W.A. Shaw (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. xxxiv). Perhaps influenced by, or heralded by, his nomination on 7 August 1649 to the committee reviewing the ordinances settling Presbyterianism in order to accommodate ‘tender consciences’, he was evidently moving towards a position sympathetic to Independency.118CJ vi. 275b. Following his addition to the committee for ecclesiastical promotions (24 May 1649), he joined others in recommending to the commissioners of the great seal candidates for presentations to benefices in Pembrokeshire, Gloucestershire and Essex, his endorsements most notably including John Rogers, a convert to Independency shortly to become a Fifth Monarchist.119Add. 36792, ff. 59, 60v, 63v; Al. Ox.; ‘John Rogers (b. 1627)’, Oxford DNB.

Although never elected to the council of state, Dove belonged to the inner core of MPs who both moulded the regime and kept it functioning. He was named to committees which remodelled commissions of the peace; debated who should be allowed office, the vote and admission to Parliament; and prepared legislation setting up new courts at York (6 July 1649) and to try cases of perjury (1 Jan. 1652).120CJ vi. 134a, 142a, 153a, 251b; vii. 62a, 187b. Continuing on the Committee for Indemnity, where he appeared from time to time in the chair and signing orders, he was also nominated to address issues of bribery, complaint against MPs, parliamentary pensions (joint chairman, 19 Sept. 1649) and – alongside dealing with numerous individual supplications – petitioning to Parliament for relief (27 Aug. 1652).121SP24/4-10; CJ vi. 103a, 151a, 276a, 298a, 469a; vii. 79b, 93a, 171b, 257b. He was one of five MPs delegated on 18 September 1649 ‘to examine the Journal book to see if there be any mistakes’ and thus vet the Commons’ official record.122CJ vi. 297a. Dove was included on committees to work on the bill for pardon and oblivion (5 July 1649, 4 Mar. 1651), to reward Oliver Cromwell* and others for their service to the republic, and to organise the thanksgiving for the victory at Dunbar (19 Sept. 1651).123CJ vi. 237a, 250b, 417b, 516b, 544b, 566a, 618b; vii. 20a, 49b, 158b. Among other consolidating activities, he was among MPs nominated to devise arrangements for subscribing the Engagement to the commonwealth (9 Nov. 1649), facilitating sheriffs’ communications with Parliament and the council of state (28 Nov.), and electing further members to the latter (12 Feb. 1650).124CJ vi. 166b, 321b, 327a, 363b, 562b. In December 1649 he was one of a trio ordered to take subscriptions to the Engagement, and his militia commitments in particular brought him into contact with the council of state.125CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 436; 1651, pp. 209, 211, 370, 459; 1653, p. 169.

Added to the Committee of Navy and Customs on 13 January 1649, and subsequently handed some related tasks by the Commons – at least between then and August, and also in November and December 1651 and in March 1653 – he was a regular attender.126CJ vi. 117a, 140a, 379b, 534a; Bodl. Rawl. A.224; SP18/17; SP18/49; SP46/114. However, given his many other preoccupations and the absence of any indication of a specialist knowledge of the sea, it seems likely that land forces received his greater attention. An early nominee to committees settling the militia, he brought in the act for Tower Hamlets in May 1649, and was commissioned as a colonel in the Wiltshire militia in August 1650.127CJ vi. 129b, 206b, 208a, 212b; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 50. In the meantime he was added to the Army Committee* (4 Feb. 1650), becoming a moderately active member of it in the spring and summer; mostly absent the following autumn and spring – almost certainly on duty in Wiltshire – he returned to play a useful although probably not key role between March and July 1651, and was appointed to peruse a bill for a new committee in December.128CJ vi. 357b; vii. 58a; SP28/66/1-2; SP28/67/1, 3; SP28/68/1; SP28/69/1; SP28/70/1; SP28/73/2; SP28/75/2; SP28/76; SP 28/77; SP28/78/1-3; SP28/79/2. His signature occurs on a number of related warrants and testimonials.129HMC 5th Rep. 298; Eg. 2978, f. 255; Add. 63788B, ff. 81-82v; Recs. Wilts. 338, 343-4, 104a, 112a.

At the heart of Dove’s career under the Rump, however, was his contribution to managing the finances of the state, especially at its intersection with the sequestration and sales of delinquents’ lands, and with the affairs of the excise. Three times among those named to review the public revenue (21 Dec. 1648, 20 July 1649, 2 June 1652), he was also on committees establishing accountability (2 Mar., 25 May 1649) and devising rules for assessment (8 Mar. 1649, 18 Feb. 1650) to pay for the army.130CJ vi. 102a, 154a, 159a, 217a, 265b, 368a; vii. 138b. He was repeatedly nominated to committees preparing legislation on the major money-raising efforts, including the sale of dean and chapter lands and of fee farm rents; the survey and disposal of crown lands and goods; and the sale of estates forfeited for treason.131CJ vi. 116a, 132a, 150b, 160b, 358a, 398b, 400b, 576b; vii. 23a, 46b, 104a, 112a, 189a, 250b. With John Weaver, another stalwart of standing committees, he was instructed to draft provisos to the act for securing soldiers’ arrears out of crown lands (12 July 1649).132CJ vi. 258b. This probably arose from the ‘list’ of arrears he had compiled and reported to the House on 16 June following his addition to the Committee for Advance of Money* with the purpose of ‘examining witnesses’ (22 May).133CJ vi. 214a, 235b; CCAM 75, 1028, 1265-6. Named on 28 May to review the Committee’s powers, Dove was never among its most prominent members, but he did continue to attend in succeeding months.134CJ vi. 218b, 256a; SP19/7. One of the first MPs to be added to the Committee for Compounding* after the purge, he was periodically also on other committees dealing with sequestrations and the affairs of Goldsmiths’ Hall.135CJ vi. 149b, 161b, 218a, 330b, 393b, 499b, 589a; CCC 135, 612. But the standing committee which was possibly Dove’s major focus while at Westminster was that of the excise, to which he was added on 10 February 1649 and which he was still attending with some frequency into 1652.136CJ vi. 137b, 161b, 399a; Bodl. Rawl. C.386.

Beyond a commitment to making the republic work and to achieving certain social and religious objectives – both of which went beyond pure personal interest to an extent which modifies his reputation as a ‘shark’ – Dove’s political views are hard to fathom.137Worden, Rump Parliament, 94. It is difficult to determine whether the colleagues with whom he worked most often at Westminster or in Wiltshire, where he appears in tandem with Edmund Ludlowe from time to time, were companions of choice or convenience.138CCC 372; CJ vi. 509. Although, as judged by entries in the Journal, his attendance in the Commons tailed off somewhat towards the end of the Rump, he did persist almost until the dissolution, his last appearance being on 18 February 1653, when he was nominated to consider a petition from the widow of Wiltshire grandee Sir Edward Hungerford*.139CJ vii. 260b. His reaction to that dissolution is unknown. What is beyond doubt, however, is the degree to which his stature and wealth had grown over the time he had been an MP, thanks to the opportunities he had had to gather appointments to local commissions and to acquire property in Wiltshire and beyond, and to dispense the patronage that went with it.140A. and O.; Stowe 577, f. 58; C193/13/3, f. 69v; C193/13/4, f. 109v; C193/13/5, f. 116; C193/13/6, f. 96v; C231/6, pp. 190, 205, 324; E1238/4, 61. Doubtless encouraged by the fact that Francis Dove was again mayor in 1649–1650, it was to John Dove more than to Michael Oldisworth that the Salisbury council looked to forward their interests at Westminster; letters of thanks for his efforts were despatched in 1651 and 1652.141CJ vi. 375a; Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, ff. 24v. 36, 36v. 37v. 42v. 43, 47, 69, 75. His recommendation in 1651 of a new agent for the Berkshire county committee was accepted, while his militia commission of 1650 thereafter made him known at Westminster as Colonel Dove.142CCC 437.

Landowner and local official under the protectorate

Already in 1646 Dove was in a position to buy 185 acres of land in Whiteparish, but he went on to invest heavily in former ecclesiastical and royalist lands in Wiltshire and surrounding counties.143Hoare, Hist. Wilts. v (Frustfield), 46. To the manor of Fountell, bought in February 1649, and Bereford Farm, bought in September 1653, both in the diocese of Winchester, he added the Salisbury manors of Blewbury, Berkshire, in May 1650 and Winterbourne Earls, Wiltshire, in September.144Bodl. Rawl. B.239, pp. 22, 49, 51, 56. Over 18 months earlier he had approached the erstwhile dean of Salisbury, Matthew Nicholas, whose brother Sir Edward’s possession it was, in an attempt to broker a deal favourable to the king’s secretary, but had been firmly rebuffed. ‘I take Mr Dove to be a most false man, and to do all upon design, whatsoever he pretends’, the dean had observed in passing the correspondence to Sir Edward – a hostile perspective which should be borne in mind when accessing the accuracy of the dean’s disparaging remark about Dove being the ‘pigeon’ of Sir John Evelyn.145Nicholas Pprs. 108; Hoare, Hist. Wilts. v (Alderbury), 88; Nicholas Pprs. i. 108. Chisenbury Priors, granted to Dove on the same date as Winterbourne Earls, was at that time in the possession of the Grove family.146Hoare, Hist. Wilts. iv (Everley), 17. His most substantial purchase, a part of Clarendon Park, was hitherto the preserve of his old adversaries, the Hydes.147Madge, Domesday of Crown Lands, 215n, 393. He had also been successful in his request for compensation for plunder in 1644: Sir William Killigrew and Henry Killigrew were among several royalists whose debts were assigned to him by Parliament in January 1648.148CCAM 422, 624.

In this context the conjunction of Dove’s shrievalty of 1654-5 with the rebellion in Wiltshire of another old opponent, Sir John Penruddock, affected both the course and outcome of events. When Penruddock, Hugh Grove and Sir Joseph Wagstaffe occupied Salisbury in the early hours of 12 March 1655, Dove, together with the judges on circuit, was taken from his bed. On his refusal to proclaim Charles II, he was physically assaulted, and he and the judges were allegedly saved from lynching only because Penruddock countermanded Wagstaffe’s orders. Dove alone remained in the custody of the insurgents when they departed the city, but was released on parole when they reached Yeovil, returning to Salisbury on 14 March. Like Unton Croke II*, who took the rebels’ surrender at South Moulton, Dove was understood to have held out hope of mercy: Penruddock wrote to his wife from gaol in Exeter that ‘Mr Dove the High Sheriff … and I am confident the whole town of Salisbury will petition on our behalf’.149W.W. Ravenhill, ‘Records of the rising in the West’, Wilts. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Mag. xiii. 132. However, subsequently local parliamentary stalwarts informed the government that ‘the sheriff examined divers brought in on high suspicion secretly in his chamber the door being kept shut’, and Dove himself told Secretary of state John Thurloe* that he lacked confidence in his underlings: ‘there is such abominable falsehood among some men now a days, that a man knoweth not whom to trust’.150Ravenhill, ‘Records of the rising’, 173; TSP iii. 318. He would select a jury of ‘the honest well-affected party to his highness and the present government’, and counselled against indulgence towards those ‘chief and principal actors’, ‘implacable spirits’, and ‘such as think to escape by favour, and may remain to nest eggs, to cherish others hereafter’.151TSP iii. 318–9. Following a petition from members of the Salisbury élite Dove did postpone the execution of John Lucas, who had been ‘the instrument of preserving [his] life’, but there was talk in Salisbury that the sheriff’s mission to London in search of a pardon was merely a ruse.152CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 153–4; Ravenhill, ‘Records of the rising’, 182–4. Penruddock implied at his trial that Dove, like Croke, had reneged on promises, and on the scaffold Grove sought God’s forgiveness for ‘Mr Dove and the rest, for swearing so falsely and maliciously against me’.153Ravenhill, ‘Records of the rising’, 265; Hoare, Hist. Wilts. iv (Everley), 17. A letter of 3 April from Protector Oliver instructing Dove to stand down the local militia as no longer needed was accompanied by thanks for his fidelity.154Bodl. Rawl. A.261, f. 40. Dove was appointed late in 1655 to the Wiltshire commission to assist John Disbrowe* as major-general of south-west England.155TSP iv. 295, 300.

While Dove’s shrievalty had barred him from the 1654 Parliament, by 1656 it seems that his loyal record was insufficiently radical for some local electors. According to the outgoing Salisbury recorder William Stephens*, who had represented the city in 1654, he and Dove were edged out in favour of less nationally-experienced candidates (William Stone* and James Hely*) because of the latter’s commitment to thoroughgoing reform of local abuses like alehouses.156Hoare, Hist. Wilts. vi. 438-9. If this was indeed the prevailing climate, then a brewer might well find himself in a difficult position. Dove had undoubtedly lost his former pre-eminence. Absent in the later 1650s from the corporation’s meetings and apparently resident in his new property at Ivy Church, he was pursued in 1656–8 for money he was reckoned to owe the city.157Wilts. RO, G23/1/04, ff. 92, 93, 98, 12v. 104v. Following the death of his wife Elizabeth in March 1657, he remarried, and was probably the ‘John Dove esquire’ who married Anne Aurstin in London in March 1658.158St Thomas, Salisbury, and St Peter, Paul’s Wharf, par. regs. Yet Dove had not fully abandoned public life. Having been reaffirmed on the Wiltshire commission of the peace in February 1656, he turned up at quarter sessions across the county, and he was again named an assessment commissioner.159Wilts. RO, A1/160/2, pp. 73, 107, 113, 129, 135; A. and O.

Returned Rump and Long Parliament 1659-60

Following the fall of the protectorate and the return of the Rump, Dove was soon visible at Westminster, his first appearance in the resumed Commons Journal being on 10 May 1659.160CJ vii. 648a. For more than four months thereafter Colonel Dove was frequently named to committees, largely in familiar areas. Nominations involving the preparation of a declaration on the state of the commonwealth at the dissolution of the Rump (20 May), the review of the public debt and changes in government in the interim (21 May), a new Engagement to the commonwealth (6 Sept.), and a settlement of the government (8 Sept.) potentially placed him among those shaping the republic over this period.161CJ vii. 661a, 662a, 774b, 775b. Appointments relating to prisoners of conscience (10 May) and the drafting of a new act of indemnity (14 May) indicate a resumption of his role in adjudicating sensitive or contentious matters.162CJ vii. 648a, 654b. As previously, he received a few nominations to do with the navy, militia, and Ireland, and more relating to finance, in particular the excise (8 June) and the treasury (11 June, 20 July).163CJ vii. 648b, 656b, 676b, 678b, 681b, 704b, 720b, 726a, 757b, 772a. He was named to discuss measures to preserve and sell forests (13 May, 8 June) and, following the summer’s insurgencies, to prepare fresh legislation for seizing rebels’ estates (24 Aug.).164CJ vii. 650b, 676b, 767b. There are signs that he maintained his earlier commercial and social interests, notably with regard to maimed soldiers and hospitals (30 July, 20 Sept.).165CJ vii. 697b, 698b, 741b, 751a, 757a, 782a.

Apparently too busy at Westminster to attend the Salisbury corporation, where on 11 August he was formally recorded as absent, on the 23rd he was granted a fat buck from Hampton Court by a grateful council of state.166Wilts. RO, G23/1/04, f. 116; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 566. But soon afterwards dissension between Parliament and elements of the army appear to have driven him away, so that it is unlikely that he was in the House to take up the committee appointments he received on 17 and 20 September.167CJ vii. 780a, 782a. On the 13th he reappeared at a meeting of the Salisbury corporation, and on the 30th, following a call of the House, he was fined £20 for absence.168Wilts. RO, G23/1/04, f. 116v; CJ vii. 799a.

When the Commons reconvened at the end of the year after the army take-over had collapsed, Colonel Dove was among those singled out for thanks on account of their contribution to ‘the service of Parliament’ during its ‘late interruption’ (29 Dec.), and it seems likely that he had rallied the Wiltshire militia to the cause.169Wilts. RO, G23/1/04, f. 116; C231/6, 324; A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 566. From 30 December frequent committee appointments resumed, and Dove appears to have picked up the threads of business in which he was previously engaged. Once again he was included among those named to shape the state: through establishing qualifications for being an MP and the basis of future Parliaments (3, 11 Jan. 1660); appointing a judiciary and other public officers (9, 21 Jan.); producing an Engagement (10 Jan.); and reviewing subordinate organs of government including the common council of London and commissions for the navy, the army and of the peace.170CJ vii. 803a, 806a, 806b, 807a, 808b, 811a, 818a, 821a, 838b. He also had a drafting responsibility for the London militia bill (10 Feb.) and was again associated with financial matters.171CJ vii. 800a, 805b, 822b, 833b, 840a. In January 1660 he signed warrants from the Treasury committee.172Add. 4197, ff. 120, 124-5. Dove was also on committees which reacted to public events and created the official narrative by investigating unlawful imprisonments (30 Dec.) and records of the 1653 dissolution (8 Jan.) and the autumn’s committee of safety (13 Feb.), and by justifying and rewarding the actions of General George Monck* (16, 31 Jan.).173CJ vii. 800a, 805b, 813a, 827a, 842a. With Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*, by this time a freeman of Salisbury and recently returned to a Wiltshire seat, he was assigned to identify lands to be settled on George Monck*, to refine the bill justifying the general’s actions, and to examine the papers of the former committee of safety.174CJ vii. 813a, 827a, 842a, 856a.

By this date Dove’s residence in London had led to his being added to the commission of the peace for Westminster or Middlesex or both.175CJ vii. 821a. This time, as the situation continued to evolve and as Monck organised talks about readmitting secluded MPs to Parliament, Dove did not flee, but was instead named to investigate scandalous rumours which were circulating (15 Feb.).176CJ vii. 843b. In the two days after the Long Parliament was restored he was among those nominated to frame new legislation for customs, MPs’ qualifications and the militias.177CJ vii. 848a, 848b, 849a. Among a handful of succeeding appointments were those to his longstanding preoccupations of religion and maimed soldiers.178CJ vii. 851b, 855a, 856a, 858a, 859b. His last was on 3 March, nearly two weeks before the dissolution, as it became evident that civilian republicans had definitively lost the battle for control.179CJ vii. 860b.

Restoration

By the time of the elections to the Convention, Edmund Ludlowe perceived Dove to have abandoned the radical cause, ‘being a flatterer of Sir Anthony Cooper’ and likely to betray him to the government.180Ludlow, Voyce, 102. On 18 May Dove was among nine former MPs omitted from the ordinance listing the next assessment commissioners on account of their attendance at the trial of Charles I, but on 28 May he subscribed his acceptance of the royal pardon contained in the Declaration of Breda in the presence of Speaker Harbottle Grimston*, although he was not immediately out of the wood.181CJ viii. 36b, 60b; Eg. Ch. 423. He remained on Salisbury council until, with his brother, he fell victim to the purge of 18 July 1662, which sealed the return to power of the Hyde family.182Wilts. RO, G23/1/04, f. 134v. Having finally retired to Ivy Church, he made his will there on 22 October 1664, making provision for the wife he had married within the previous few years and leaving his younger children, Mary and John, property and leases in London. He is therefore quite likely to have been the ‘John Dove esquire’ who, having died ‘suddenly’, was buried at St Giles Cripplegate on 9 March 1665; that day his elder son, Thomas, secured probate.183PROB11/316/264; St Giles, Cripplegate, London, par. reg.; P. Fisher, A Catalogue of Most of the Memorable Tombs (1668), 35. Thomas appears to have inherited a depleted estate. Clarendon Park was granted by Charles II to Monck, now duke of Albemarle, in 1665; Winterbourne Earls was conveyed by Bishop Alexander Hyde to Sir John Nicholas in 1667; Thomas Dove sold the Whiteparish farm the same year; and in 1670 as executor he was still at suit in chancery over property once belonging to the Prettyman family.184Hoare, Hist. Wilts. v (Alderbury), 88, 147; (Frustfield), 46; CSP Dom. 1670 and Add. 1660-70, p. 153. Francis Dove’s son Peter served as sheriff of Wiltshire in the 1670s, but no further family member sat in Parliament.185Vis. Wilts. 1677. Robert Dove’s son Henry was eventually chaplain successively to Charles II, James II, and William and Mary.186‘Henry Dove (bap. 1641, d. 1695)’, Oxford DNB.