ALSOP, Timothy (d. 1664), of Plymouth.

Despite the presence of a family by the name of Alsop in Plymouth in the first half of the seventeenth century, Timothy Alsop was not one of its sons.16Sig. Bodl. Tanner 56, f. 72. He was the offspring, probably a younger son, of John Alsop, a clerk in holy orders. The origins of the family are uncertain, but John Alsop lived in or had close links with Kirkby Lonsdale in Westmorland, Giggleswick in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and Crewkerne in Somerset.17Al. Cant.; Giggleswick Sch. Reg. ed. H.L. Mullins (Leeds, 1913), 2. Alsop was the schoolmaster at Crewkerne, Somerset and at least three of his sons were educated at Christ’s College, Cambridge and took up careers in the church.18Al. Cant. John Alsop bought a modest tenement in the manor of Barbon, Kirkby Lonsdale, in Westmorland, which he held at the time of his death, which occurred before 1627. His widow, Elizabeth, still lived at Crewkerne when she conveyed this property to John, her eldest son, that year.19Cumbria RO, Kendal, WD U/Box 1/1/11, 12,13. It is unclear whether John Alsop was a native of Westmorland, but it is likely that Timothy Alsop was a younger son, because he was put to mercantile trade rather than despatched to the university like his brothers. Timothy may have been born and brought up in Crewkerne while his parents lived there, which would explain why he was sent to relatively accessible Plymouth to acquire commercial skills. He was probably the merchant bearing his name who in 1636 was a foreign resident of San Sebastian, Spain, as a period spent overseas was commonly part of a mercantile training.20CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 125.

The family of Alsop in Plymouth, headed by William Alsop (who had been made a freeman in 1618 and was assessed on £3 in goods in the subsidy), may have been related to Timothy and may have provided him with the home and training in trade that he had acquired by 1642, but it is equally likely that he lived and worked in the household of John Waddon*.21Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/46, f. 309v; E179/102/486. In the year that he became a freeman of his adoptive town, Timothy Alsop married Waddon’s daughter, Alice; it was a common enough practice for an apprentice or favoured trainee to marry his employer’s daughter, but the Plymouth records do not permit any certainty on the subject. Alsop remained in Plymouth after becoming a freeman, and was evidently set on becoming a merchant in the town for which his father-in-law sat in both Parliaments of 1640. He was there in 1642 and signed the Protestation when it came down from Parliament for general assent.22Devon Protestation Returns, ii. 389. Plymouth was quickly drawn into the civil war when it broke out in 1642. The royalists made their first attempts to take the town in November and December, drew up their forces under Sir Ralph Hopton* and Sir Bevill Grenvile* to besiege it in January 1643 and turned their attention eastwards in the spring. The lull in hostilities allowed the town to build up its defences in July.23Exceeding Joyfull Newes from Plymouth (1642, E.129.30); R.N. Worth, ‘The Siege of Plymouth’, Trans. Plymouth Institution v. 254-7.

By September 1642, Alsop had found a place in the civil government of the town as one of the common council, and signed a corporation order that month that none should serve a second term as mayor within six years of his first term of office.24Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/48, f. 99. In normal times, Alsop would have expected his public career to consist simply of a progression along the cursus honorum of Plymouth, but with the outbreak of civil war a parallel authority was brought into being to meet the emergency. A committee for the defence of Plymouth was established in 1642 with a town merchant, Richard Evens, as treasurer. John Waddon was active on Parliament’s side in the civil war, and Alsop followed his father-in-law’s lead. His allegiances ran starkly contrary to those of his three clergyman brothers, John, Samuel and Josais. John, the eldest of these, was chaplain to Archbishop William Laud, and fled to France in the aftermath of Laud’s execution; the others were ejected from their livings.25Walker Revised, 145, 308, 326. In August 1643 Alsop was sent by the mayor, Philip Francis, to invite Sir Alexander Carew*, of whose loyalties to Parliament Francis was suspicious, to the town from the offshore fort of St Nicholas Island. Francis intended to arrest Carew, but it took several other emissaries to persuade Carew to co-operate.26The Answer of Philip Francis, Merchant (1644), sig. A2i.

The treachery of Carew forced Plymothians to reassert their loyalties to Parliament, and in October 1643 Alsop took over from Evens as treasurer of the garrison. His commission derived not from Parliament but from the lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, indicating the essentially military character of the post.27SP28/128 (Devon), pt. 19, accts. of Philip Francis, f. 2; E112/566/735. This appointment put Alsop at the heart of the defence of Plymouth against the relentless pressure from the royalists, and significant sums of money contributed by supporters of Parliament and the expenses of maintaining the garrison passed through his hands. Twenty years later, when he stood before interrogators in the exchequer, Alsop claimed to be unable to put a figure on the sums he handled a treasurer, but the Plymouth siege accounts demonstrate the importance of Alsop’s work to the survival of the town as a parliamentarian outpost in the south west.28E112/566/735; Plymouth and W Devon RO, 1/168, 169; Worth, ‘Siege Accounts of Plymouth’, Trans. Devonshire Assoc. xvii. 215-39. Not that this responsibility prevented Alsop from pursuing purely mercantile pursuits: in May 1643 he was trading in a Plymouth ship called Unity, and the following year he paid customs on goods shipped in a 20-ton local vessel, Providence.29E190/1036/18, 23. His own interests and those of the parliamentarian cause happily coincided when he was able to supply the garrison with fabrics for uniforms.30Worth, ‘Siege of Plymouth’, 303.

Alsop left the treasurer’s post in February 1645, ceding responsibility to another merchant, Justinian Peard.31SP28/128 (Devon), pt. 26, accts. of Justinian Peard. He later made up his accounts for Adam Bennett, an Exeter alderman and stalwart of the parliamentarian cause in Exeter, and calculated that he was owed £212 by the state. At some point soon after this, probably in 1647, Alsop petitioned Parliament for his arrears, and secured no money but a testimonial from the Committee of the West*, signed by among others his father-in-law John Waddon, Edmund Fowell*, Sir Samuel Rolle* and Sir John Yonge*, certifying Alsop’s suitability for further employment by the state.32E112/566/735. It was doubtless to Waddon, vice-admiral of the coast by commission from Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick, that Alsop owed his appointment by January 1647 as deputy vice-admiral, a post he may have held only for a few years.33Vice Admirals of the Coast ed. Sainty and Thrush (L. and I. cccxxi), 13; ADM7/673, p. 126; HCA14/49, no. 124. His good service in Plymouth recommended him for duty in the rest of the county once Devon was firmly in the hands of Parliament, and in June 1646 he helped appoint sequestration agents as a member of the Devon standing committee.34E113/6, answer of Philip Musgrave; Devon RO, 123M/E15. Later that year he pledged himself to establish a lectureship at Plymouth, promising £3 a year for the purpose.35Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/360/37 The town was firmly under the spiritual direction of the minister George Hughes, and Alsop was evidently in sympathy with Hughes’s Presbyterian outlook.36Calamy Revised, 281.

Alsop retained his place both on the committee and on Plymouth common council, and in April 1645 with Christopher Ceely* signed an order prohibiting inhabitants of the town from signing any petition without the approval of the council.37Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/48, f. 100. This order must have been a response to unrest among the soldiery in Plymouth, arising from the delays in meeting arrears of pay. Even though the siege of Plymouth was lifted in January 1646, the financial problems in supporting the garrison persisted. In August 1647 Alsop and Christopher Ceely wrote to Speaker Lenthall reporting a mutiny which had broken out there because of the 17 weeks’ arrears due to the soldiers. The petitioners hoped that Parliament would look upon them ‘as on those who can no longer help themselves’, and described Plymouth graphically as a town that had ‘spent itself to skin and bone in the kingdom’s cause’.38Bodl. Tanner 58, f. 448. The following May, Alsop was one of the Devon standing committee which met at Plymouth to address the opposite problem: that of too few soldiers to repel any risings instigated by the renaissance of royalist hopes in the second civil war. Alsop and Ceely were among the committee dominated by Plymothians which warned of the dangers of removing the troops of Sir Hardress Waller* from the county and promoted the idea of a rendezvous of the well-affected in order to form a citizens’ militia as a second line of defence.39Devon RO, Exeter City MSS, DD 42081. When the committees of Devon were re-organized along territorial lines in August, Alsop was on the second body listed.40Add. 44058, ff. 26v-27.

Alsop became mayor of Plymouth in 1648, and he was in office during the trial and execution of the king. There is no evidence of his personal response to the regicide, but he did not resign, and seems to have acted diligently in a range of public business. He supported applications for public maintenance to the county quarter sessions from poor soldiers and widows.41Devon RO, QS rolls, Epiphany 1649-50, petition; Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 434/1. He continued to sit as a member of the Devon standing committee, implementing orders of Parliament’s Indemnity Committee.42SP28/227, Devon, f. 9. In July 1649, he wrote as mayor to the council of state, respectfully pointing out that there was no suitable prison in Plymouth for the high-profile royalist prisoners, including the senior military figure William Legge and Sir Humphrey Wyndham.43Bodl. Tanner 56, f. 72. The circuit judge who visited Plymouth in August reported favourably to the Speaker on the expressions of loyalty by Alsop, Arthur Upton* and other soldiers and citizens there.44Bodl. Tanner 56, f. 89. He was probably able to devote more attention to his commercial activities after his mayoral term was over, and in August 1650 he won a contract to provision the fleet at Lisbon.45CSP Dom. 1650, p. 498. Loyalty to successive interregnum regimes brought further rewards in 1653 and 1656 when Alsop was able to acquire first the rectory of Stratton in Cornwall, formerly belonging to the crown, and then a messuage in Exeter, once dean and chapter property.46E112/566/735.

Alsop continued in his dual public role as Plymouth councillor and Devon committeeman until he was elected to Parliament in 1656. He supported efforts to ensure that Plymouth corporation edicts recorded in the ‘White Book’ were treated as valid despite national political changes, and was involved in appointments and ejections of ministers in the county.47Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/48, f. 106; Bodl. Walker c. 4, f. 173. He also backed a number of civic reforms in Plymouth, such as the re-establishment of the hospital in 1653 and the 1656 decision to levy fines on changes of lives in civic leases.48Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/48, ff. 109, 110. His election to the second protectorate Parliament confirmed his standing as a leading townsman who had contributed significantly to the local stability of various post-civil war regimes. Most of his committee appointments in that assembly related to trade and to west country issues. On 17 October he was included in a review of arrears accruing in pay-outs from the office that dealt with seizures of prize ships, and on the 20th he was first-named in the committee on trade, along with colleagues from the Plymouth district, Edmund Fowell and Henry Hatsell.49CJ vii. 440b, 442a The following day, Alsop was added to the committee for the arrears of excise and with Thomas Bampfylde and John Maynard was included on the committee for improving the revenue from estates confiscated from Roman Catholics.50CJ vii. 443a, 444a.

Along with most, if not all of the Members from Devon, Alsop was named to the committee on the vexed and long-running question of the campaign of Edmund Lister and his wife to secure some personal benefit, as close relatives of the testator, from the funds claimed as the charity of Eliseus Hele (22 Dec).51CJ vii. 472a. As a trustee of the Hele charity, Alsop had a greater interest in the outcome than most.52Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1232. Any views that Alsop may have had on the case of the Quaker, James Naylor, which preoccupied the House at much the same time, are lost to us, as Thomas Burton* recorded no interventions of his in debate. The cases of the Levant Company and its feud with Sir Sackville Crowe (27 Jan. 1657), Samuel Vassall* (2 Feb.) and claims over a maritime wreck (4 Feb.) all came Alsop’s way by virtue of his background and professional interests.53CJ vii. 483a, 485a, 486a. The church, and specifically schemes to augment the financial resources of livings in the localities, claimed some of Alsop’s attention. The bill for municipalizing the ministry in Exeter (9 Feb.) was one such, as was a general bill to enable trustees to buy in impropriations (31 Mar.) which harked back to the pioneer feoffees of the 1630s, anathematized by Archbishop Laud.54CJ vii. 488a, 515b. On 2 June, Alsop was a teller on the wording of a clause in the bill for the better observation of the sabbath, voting in favour of words aimed against ‘the profane and idle sitting openly at gates or doors’.55CJ vii. 567b. In Plymouth at this time, authorised by an act of the Long Parliament rather than that of 1656, collections were taking place for the new Charles Church, of which Alsop was churchwarden in 1659.56Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/359/75; 1/133, f. 4v.

Alsop was returned again to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament, which sat in January 1659, and was named for the first time as a militia commissioner in March, but he was named only to two committees, both of those on petitions, including one from maimed soldiers (7 April).57CJ vii. 627b, 634b. This time, after the forced dismissal of Parliament, Alsop did not go home to Plymouth. The corporation paid him for money he had laid out on the poor as churchwarden but had not had time to collect, and paid his expenses until 7 June.58Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/133, f. 4v. Alsop’s friend the Plymouth merchant Thomas Yeabsley, by whose good offices he had bought the Exeter dean and chapter property, took up to London his remuneration.59Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/133, ff. 4v, 10v; E 112/566/735. A significant motive in Alsop’s stay in London was personal, as he married for the second time on 15 November (Alice, his first wife, had died, probably in 1655), but three weeks later he was probably back in Plymouth for the funeral of Timothy, one of his sons.60Reg. of St Peter Cornhill (Harl. Soc. Registers, i), 262; Plymouth St Andrew, par. reg. The indulgent approach of the corporation towards him indicates he was still in favour, and he made himself useful to the Plymouth citizens by sending back copies of acts of Parliament and other printed material until the early 1660s.61Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/133, ff. 6v, 11v, 14v. Whether he planned a return to the south west, and whether his stay in London was approved by the corporation who intended to employ him as a lobbyist, is unclear.

Whether by design on Alsop’s part or by accident, he was well placed in London to weather the Restoration. When the corporation wanted a present for the new king, Alsop approached the London goldsmith, Thomas Viner, on their behalf. The gift of gold plate worth £400 was presented to Charles by William Morice*, among others, and Alsop was called upon again by the Plymouth council to organize a New Year’s present for Lady Morice in 1661.62Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/133, ff. 6v, 10v. He made himself useful in other ways, such as providing money to Edmund Fowell, Plymouth’s MP in the Convention, and to Robert Atkyns*, the town’s retained counsel.63Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/133, ff. 7v, 11. It was probably the favour of Morice that enabled Alsop not only to avoid the fate of his former colleagues Christopher Ceely* and William Yeo*, who were expelled from Plymouth corporation, but to prosper in the king’s service. In a remarkable transfer of loyalties, Alsop acquired the post of ‘king’s brewer’, which meant he was the contractor for beer for the royal navy. On 21 January 1663, he stood in the exchequer court and provided his interlocutors with, by the standards of others in the same position, a fairly precise and informative account of his activities as a Plymouth committeeman. That same day, described now as a London citizen and brewer and with his past confessed and expunged, he was admitted to the Brewers’ Company on presenting the fraternity with a silver basin and ewer.64GL, MS 5445/19, p. 238. His business brought him into contact with Samuel Pepys†, who enjoyed Alsop’s anecdotes and news from court. The king himself took an interest in Alsop, or rather in Alsop’s horse-dung, which on occasion in 1663 had contained stones, a phenomenon rare enough to interest the College of Physicians. Charles bade Alsop search his horse manure every day for more of the same.65Pepys’s Diary, iv. 156; v. 56-61. Alsop must have regarded this command, and his appearance before the exchequer that January to account for himself as an interregnum committeeman, as a small price to pay for his rehabilitation and apparent security.66E112/566/735.

In July 1664, Alsop and Pepys held discussions about a partnership for victualling the garrison at Tangier. The partners included Thomas Yeabsley, Alsop’s long-standing friend from Plymouth who like him had enjoyed church lands in the 1650s. Alsop and Yeabsley agreed to pay Pepys a sum each year if they won the contract to provision the garrison at a certain rate; more if the per capita rate were higher.67Pepys’s Diary, v. 196, 199, 204. However, no sooner had their proposals been accepted in July by the government’s Tangier committee than Alsop was reported to be seriously ill. On 25 July, he made a deathbed nuncupative will, and on 27 July Pepys heard of his death. His funeral did not take place until 5 August, the registrar noting in pointed contradiction to what the Brewers’ Company believed, that he was ‘no freeman’.68Pepys’s Diary, v. 210, 217-8, 221, 223; PROB11/314/477; Reg. of St Mary Somerset (Harl. Soc. Registers, lx), 104. He left money in his will to two daughters, one of whom married the son of the Independent minister of Exeter, Lewis Stucley, but the will of his brother Josias Alsop, minister of St Clement Eastcheap, drawn up in 1666, makes it clear that at least two sons survived him.69PROB11/322/65. Timothy Alsop’s second wife remarried, to John Whiteway*, of the Dorchester family that had produced a notable diarist of the seventeenth century.70Allegs. for Marr. Lics. ed. Chester and Armytage (1886), 136. None of Alsop’s descendants is known to have sat in Parliament.