LAUNCE, James (c.1621-aft. ?1682), of Penair, St Clement, Cornw.

The Launces were a gentry family which had been settled in St Clement parish in mid-Cornwall since the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century.17Vis. Cornw. 280. Their ambitions were not limited by the county boundary, however. James’s father, John Launce, married in June 1620 a daughter of Lord Darcy of Chiche (the future Earl Rivers).18Isleworth, Mdx. par. reg. He became an outspoken puritan, eventually dying of stab wounds after an argument over episcopacy. His widow took as her second husband the London Independent divine, Sidrach Simpson, and his daughter, Isabella, married the New England minister and magistrate, John Sherman.19‘Sidrach Simpson’, Oxford DNB; C. Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (1702), bk. 3, pp. 164-5.

James Launce shared his family’s radical views. In 1644 he married the daughter of the radical Independent and future regicide, John Blakiston - a match that immediately propelled him into the highest echelons of the parliamentarian administration.20St Andrew Undershaft par. reg.; Vis. Cornw. 280. By 1646 Launce had succeeded his father-in-law as north auditor of the duchy of Lancaster – a post he held until as late as 1662, being re-appointed on 5 May 1659.21Supra ‘John Blakiston’; SC6/ChasI/1662, m.11d. He may also have served as south auditor in the late 1650s.22Somerville, Duchy of Lancaster, 68, 71n. Blakiston died in 1649, but this did not hinder Launce’s administrative career: during the commonwealth he held various other posts, including auditor of the exchequer in 1650-1 and auditor of the fee-farm rents in 1650.23Duchy of Lancaster, 67; CCC 507; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 121; E315/139, ff. 2, 90, 171v. By the summer of 1654 Launce had returned to Cornwall, where he became a zealous justice of the peace, officiating in marriage ceremonies in his home parish, interrogating the mystic, Anna Trapnel, on her visit to the west country, and in later years becoming notorious as an enemy of the Quakers.24Cornw. Par. Regs. ed. Phillimore, xxvi. 9; A. Trapnel, Anna Trapnel’s Report and Plea (1654), 21, 26; G. Fox, The West Answering to the North (1657), 59, 70, 139 (E.900.3).

This combination of godly credentials and national prominence may have recommended Launce as one of the eight MPs returned for the county of Cornwall in 1654, alongside luminaries like Anthony Nicoll* and Anthony Rous*. His activity in Parliament is, however, difficult to assess. He was named to five committees, including those on the bill for the recognition of the government (25 Sept.) and Irish affairs (29 Sept.). The latter, and his inclusion in a further committee to consider disputed Irish elections (5 Oct.) suggests he may have had a personal stake in the Irish adventure scheme, which counted his father-in-law among the original investors.25Bottigheimer, English Money and Irish Land, 177. On 31 October, Launce was named to the committee on the petition of his fellow Cornishman, Sir William Killigrew, and others involved in fen drainage in Lincolnshire. On 18 January 1655 he was included in the committee to consider money owed from the excise, and how to satisfy debts on the public faith, and this was the only appointment that suggests Launce’s financial skills were being utilised by Parliament.26CJ vii. 370a, 371b, 373b, 380a, 419a.

When the protector and council established the major-generals’ scheme in the autumn of 1655, Launce became one of the commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth in Cornwall and served as its treasurer. In January 1656 he and the other commissioners thanked the protector for sending down John Disbrowe* as their major-general, and promised to put any orders into ‘speedy execution’ to prevent any royalist ‘machinations and designs’.27TSP iv. 451. From this time onwards, Launce worked closely with Disbrowe, paying money to the militia forces in the county, providing salaries to the commissioners’ agents and servants, and administering the decimation tax (or ‘additional tax’) on royalists.28SP46/98, ff. 1-110; Cornw. RO, B/WLO/187-8. He received a salary of 3d for every pound that passed through his accounts.29SP46/98, f. 133. The surviving records show that the regime in Cornwall was efficient - with money being paid out within a matter of days during the spring and summer of 1656 - but not particularly harsh in its treatment of royalists. On 2 February 1656, for example, Launce joined the commissioners (supported by Disbrowe) in petitioning that the ‘additional tax’ levied on Warwick Mohun, 2nd Baron Mohun, should be remitted altogether, while the money extracted from John and Lewis Tremayne in March amounted to only £5.30TSP iv. 497; Cornw. RO, T/1646. Although the defeat of the militia bill in Parliament in January 1657 signalled the end of the government of the major generals across England, Launce’s duties did not cease immediately, and he was busy collecting money and paying arrears until June 1657.31SP46/98, ff. 111-133.

In the autumn of 1656 Launce was one of three men considered for the post of sheriff of Cornwall, and although he was not eventually chosen, his candidacy may have prevented him from seeking re-election for the county in the second protectorate Parliament.32Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/1/72. He was returned to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in 1659, this time for the borough of Mitchell. During the parliamentary session, he was again named to a scattering of committees: those for elections and privileges (28 Jan.), for sick and maimed soldiers in London hospitals (7 Apr.) and to consider the petition of the royalist Oliver St John (6th Baron St John of Bletso) against the purchaser of his forfeited estates, including those in Cornwall (11 Apr.).33CJ vii. 594a, 627a, 634b. Launce’s only speech in the Commons came on 5 February 1659, when the discovery of a stranger in the chamber was discussed by the MPs. Launce claimed that the man had given him a copy of an anti-Cromwellian tract, The 25 Queries, and added, darkly, that it was likely that he had been put up to it by others, and ‘it may be, he is but the fool in the play’.34Burton’s Diary, iii. 78.

Launce’s reaction to the collapse of the protectorate and the return of the commonwealth in May 1659 is unknown, but by December 1659 he had distanced himself from his father-in-law’s old friends within the republican party, instead joining the conservative Cornish gentlemen who met at Bodmin to consider the state of the county, and, after discussion, to declare for a ‘free Parliament’, and an end to military rule.35Coate, Cornw. 307. He went on to be named as an assessment commissioner for Cornwall in January 1660, and as militia commissioner in March: appointments that again suggest that he was now in good standing with the local Presbyterian interest.36A. and O. After the Restoration, Launce relinquished his position as auditor of the duchy of Lancaster, and retired to Cornwall, where he was again named as assessment commissioner in June 1660.37An Ordinance…for an Assessment. He took little part in Cornish affairs in later years, although in 1661 he paid £5 in the ‘free and voluntary present’ to Charles II.38Cornw. Hearth Tax, 254. In the 1660s, Launce was involved in a legal dispute concerning the tithes payable from enclosed down land in St Clement parish, and in 1676 he signed a conveyance, possibly of the same lands, by then known as ‘Launce’s Downs’.39E134/14&15Chas2/Hul9; E134/14Chas2/Mich28; Cornw. RO, EN/280. He was probably the man involved in litigation over property in the parish in 1677 and 1679, and may still have been tied up in lawsuits over Cornish land in 1683, but the date of his death is not known.40C10/192/49; C7/551/38; C6/540/120; C6/74/8. He was succeeded by his son and heir, John Launce.41Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 280.