SMYTH, Henry (c.1620-aft. 1667), of Withcote, Leics.

The Smith alias Heriz family, which claimed descent from Henry I, had acquired the manor of Withcote by marriage at the end of the fifteenth century.29Nichols, Leics. ii. 184, 387. Smyth was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in April 1640, and although he was never called to the bar, he kept chambers at the Inn for the next ten years.30LI Admiss.; LI Black Bks. ii. 387. He sided with Parliament during the civil war, serving as a member of the Leicestershire county committee and captaining a troop of horse in 1644-5 under the command of Thomas, Lord Grey of Groby*.31An Examination Examined (1645), 15 (E.303.13); CJ vi. 272b. Like William Stanley* and Peter Temple*, he was aligned with Sir Arthur Hesilrige* and his adherents on the county committee – a group opposed by Grey of Groby, Thomas Beaumont*, Thomas Pochin* and their allies.32Supra, ‘Thomas Beaumont’; ‘Thomas Lord Grey of Groby’; ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; ‘Thomas Pochin’; infra, ‘William Stanley’; ‘Peter Temple’; SP16/501/56, pp. 96-7; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 134; An Examination Examined, 16. In the ‘recruiter’ election for Leicestershire in the autumn of 1645, Smyth was returned with Hesilrige’s backing, defeating Grey of Groby’s preferred candidate, Thomas Beaumont.33Supra, ‘Leicestershire’.

Although it is not easy to distinguish Smyth’s activities in the Commons from those of the Member for Marlborough, Philip Smythe, it is clear that he was not particularly active at Westminster before Pride’s Purge. He took the Covenant on 31 December 1645, but his first committee appointment – to examine the radical pamphlet Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens – was not until 11 July 1646.34CJ iv. 393a, 616a. Granted leave on 17 September, he had returned to the House by 23 October, when he was named to a committee for investigating the charges against Colonel John Birch*.35CJ iv. 671b, 703a. On 16 December, he was added to the committee for privileges.36CJ v. 14b. But there is no further record of his activity until August 1647, when he joined Grey of Groby, Hesilrige and Philip Smythe in signing the 4 August ‘engagement’ of those Members – predominantly Independents or those aligned with them – who had taken refuge with the army following the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster of 26 July.37LJ ix. 385b.

Smythe was probably the ‘Mr Smith’ named to five committees between mid-August and the end of 1647, including those for repealing the votes and legislation passed during the absence of the Speaker and the other fugitive Members (18 Aug.); for drafting one of Parliament’s peace propositions to the king – that is, for settling ‘Presbyterial government and concerning the exemption of such tender consciences as cannot conform to that government’ (6 Oct.); and to investigate the cases of Members who were declared absent without legitimate excuse, at the call of the House on 9 October.38CJ v. 278a. 295b, 327a, 329a, 331b. One of the absentee Members in October was Philip Smythe.39CJ v. 330b, 332b. But given that Smythe had returned to Westminster by mid-January 1648, and that neither he nor Henry took leave of absence in 1648, it is impossible to establish with any certainty which of the six committees to which a ‘Mr Smith’ was named in the year before Pride’s Purge belonged to which Member.40CJ v. 425a, 447b, 643a, 689a; vi. 67a, 87a. Henry is the more likely candidate in the case of the committee set up on 28 August – which was headed by Grey of Groby and dominated by Independent Members from the midland counties – to interrogate James, 1st duke of Hamilton and other captured Scottish Engagers concerning the identity of their English abettors.41CJ v. 689a.

According to the Leveller leader John Lilburne, Smyth had married a daughter of the prominent Independent MP Cornelius Holland by late 1648, which would certainly explain the close connection between the two men under the Rump.42Lilburne, Legall Fundamentall Liberties, 33; Coventry City Archives, PA/101/7/260. Lilburne states that Smyth and his father-in-law were at Windsor late in November of that year, when Holland was involved in the talks between the parliamentary Independents and the Levellers that preceded the re-drafting of the Agreement of the People.43Lilburne, Legall Fundamentall Liberties, 33. Although Philip Smythe was not among those excluded at Pride’s Purge and reportedly attended the fledgling Rump, Henry Smyth seems to have been the more active Member, and it is likely that the majority of the references in the Commons Journal after 6 December to ‘Mr Smith’ or ‘Smyth’ relate to him.44Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 38 (12-19 Dec. 1648), sig. Ddd4v (E.476.35); W. Prynne, A Remonstrance and Declaration of Severall Counties, Cities and Burroughs (1648), 4. On 7 December, he was appointed with John Gurdon to request the godly divines Joseph Caryl, Stephen Marshall and Hugh Peters to officiate at a day of humiliation on 8 December; and to thank them for their after they had done so.45CJ vi. 94b, 95a. The House assigned him the same task with respect to Hugh Peters again on 18 and 20 December.46CJ vi. 100a, 101a. His political alignment at this time is revealed clearly by his minority tellership with his father-in-law’s friend, Henry Marten, on 14 December against sending a delegation to Sir Thomas Fairfax* to find out why the army continued to prevent certain Members attending the House.47CJ vi. 97a; Mercurius Elencticus no. 56 (12-19 Dec. 1648), 539 (E.476.36). More revealing still, perhaps, was his addition on 18 December – with Thomas Scot I and four other MPs – to a committee that had been set up on 13 December, chaired by John Lisle and Holland, and which was now charged with preparing the dissent to the 5 December vote that the king’s answers at Newport were a sufficient grounds for a settlement.48PA, MS CJ xxxiii, p. 462; CJ vi. 96b. He was among those Commons-men who entered their dissent on 20 December: the day on which it was introduced as a test of the Rump’s membership.49[C. Walker], Anarchia Anglicana (1649), 49 (E.570.4). In addition to his possible role in framing the dissent, Smyth was named to committees on 23 December for preparing a charge against the king and other ‘delinquents’ and on 3 January to draft an ordinance for establishing a high court of justice to try Charles.50CJ vi. 103a, 110b; Whitelocke, Diary, 227. Holland, too, was named to both of these committees. Between mid-December 1648 and early January 1649 the House passed first votes and then – having invested its own resolutions with the force of law – orders for adding Smyth to six standing executive committees, including the Committee for the Army* and the Committee for Compounding*.51CJ vi. 99a, 107b, 109a, 110a, 112a, 113b, 120b.

Smyth was one of the most conscientious members of the high court of justice, attending all but one of the 18 meetings of the trial commission – which was a greater number than Holland did – and all four sessions of the trial itself.52Muddiman, Trial, 76, 89, 96, 105, 195, 227; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 728. Unlike Holland, he was among the king’s judges who signed the death warrant on 29 January.53Muddiman, Trial, 228. Facing execution himself in 1661 for his part in the regicide, Smyth claimed that he had acted ‘in ignorance, not knowing the law’, and that ‘there were those about me that were able to call me, who were then in authority, whom I dared not disobey. If so, I had been in danger also’.54State Trials v. 1206. Yet his diligence as a trial commissioner, and the fact that he signed the death warrant when his father-in-law managed to avoid doing so, suggest that he was a rather more willing participant in the king’s trial than his later self-exculpation would imply.

Smyth was named to a minimum of eight and a maximum of 57 ad hoc committees between Pride’s Purge and the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653. The minimum figure can be established from those appointments where the clerk of the House referred to Henry specifically or styled him by his military rank of captain or major (Philip Smythe, a lawyer and one of the six clerks in chancery, was a confirmed civilian).55Infra, ‘Philip Smythe’; CJ vi. 97b, 134a, 284a, 292b, 298a, 528b, 533b; vii. 58a. Smyth’s true tally of committee appointments, although impossible to verify, was probably much nearer the maximum figure, however. Henry and Philip were named to the same committee on only one occasion, which would suggest that one of them was more active than the other.56CJ vi. 292b. And given Smyth’s involvement in the king’s trial and his ties with Holland – a prominent Rumper – it is very likely that he had a larger role in the Rump’s proceedings than did Philip. It is perhaps worth noting that one of the men, presumably Henry, was named to approximately 36 committees in the company of Holland – which was probably a higher figure than that of most Members with roughly the same number of committee appointments as Smyth. Occasionally, the two men’s proximity in the Journal appears to register their close social and political association. Thus on 7 February 1651, Holland, Smyth and two other Members made a late entrance to the council of state elections.57CJ vi. 532a. And four days later (11 Feb.), Holland and ‘Captain Smyth’ were named first and second respectively to a committee that Holland would chair for ensuring that both the army and navy were properly equipped and victualled.58CJ vi. 533b. Moreover, in contrast to Philip Smythe, Henry was an active member of the Committee for the Army and the Committee for Compounding (Holland, too, was active on this committee) under the Rump.59SP28/59, ff. 76, 97, 99, 105, 149; SP23/6, p. 181.

Assuming that the great majority of the 57 committee appointments noted above were indeed Smyth’s, he appears to have been at his most active in the Rump in the year after Pride’s Purge and thereafter attended the House only sporadically. Thus he received a maximum of six committee appointments in 1650; 11 in 1651; seven in 1652; and three in 1653. On the basis of his ties with Holland and several of his committee appointments, Smyth has been identified as a member of the ‘radical party’ of reformist republicans that formed around Henry Marten, Thomas Chaloner and their friends and allies in 1648-9 – a group that included Grey of Groby.60Supra, ‘Thomas, Lord Grey of Groby’; ‘Henry Marten’; Worden, Rump Parl. 218-19. The day after the regicide (31 Jan. 1649), for example, Smyth and Holland were named to a committee that was very probably set up at the instigation of Marten, and certainly chaired by him, to draw up proposals for the release of poor debtors.61CJ vi. 127a. The two men were also named to committees in June and August 1649 for recompensing Marten for his losses and arrears in Parliament’s service; to repeal legislation for enforcing Sunday church attendance (this committee was chaired by Holland and John Weaver); and on a bill for settling certain houses on the London ‘corporation of the poor’. Smyth accompanied his father-in-law again on 2 May 1651 as a member of a committee that Holland chaired to improve hospital revenues for the relief of sick and maimed soldiers.62CJ vi. 241b, 245b, 284a, 569b. It was possibly Philip rather than Henry who was made a joint chairman in September 1650 of a committee for revising legal procedures in relation to the court of exchequer.63CJ vi. 467a.

But it is clear that the majority of Smyth’s appointments were to committees not on matters of legal, social or religious reform, but to manage state revenues and the sequestered estates of crown, church and delinquents to the best advantage of the Commonwealth’s armed forces. On 1 August 1649, his own arrears of army pay for his service as a captain under Grey of Groby in 1644-5 were reported to the House, and he was granted £520 ‘by way of doubling upon dean and chapter lands’.64CJ vi. 272b-273a. With the Rump’s creation of the county militias in the spring of 1650, Smyth was commissioned as a major in the Leicestershire cavalry regiments commanded by Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Grey of Groby.65CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 18, 505, 513. In December 1650, the council of state ordered Smyth to make an inspection of the county’s militia forces ‘and to keep an eye upon the officers and their actings there, and especially to the peace of the county in general, and give an account’.66CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 467-8. He was named to both the January and December 1652 Army Committees, although he rarely, if ever, attended either.

Like Holland, Smyth fell from political prominence with the dissolution of the Rump in 1653. He was active in local government under the protectorate, serving as sheriff of Leicestershire in 1655-6, but he was not, as one authority has stated, commissioned as a colonel of foot in Oxfordshire in 1656 and appointed governor of Hull in 1658.67Oxford DNB, ‘Henry Smith [Smyth]’. This ‘Hen[ry] Smith’, as his signed himself, was an Oxfordshire professional soldier of no known relation to Smyth.68Cf. SP18/200/2, f. 2; CJ vi. 295a, 454a; TSP iii. 521; iv. 608; vi. 870-1.

Both Smyth and Philip Smythe returned to the political stage with the restoration of the Rump in May 1659.69Infra, ‘Philip Smythe’. The clerk of the House occasionally took care to distinguish between the two men, but more often than not, it seems, he referred to both as ‘Mr Smith’. Nevertheless, although Smyth’s first wife – Holland’s daughter – had died before 1654, and he had remarried, he seems to have remained keener to serve in the Rump than did Philip Smythe. He was named to somewhere between five and 23 committees in the restored Rump – his true tally probably being nearer the top end of that range – and on eleven occasions in the company of Holland.70CJ vii. 659b, 663a, 665a, 711a, 722a. His appointments probably included nomination to committees for preparing a declaration justifying the re-establishment of the commonwealth (20 May); for appointing Lieutenant-general Charles Fleetwood* as commander-in-chief (4 June); for punishing Quakers and anyone else disturbing church services (1 July); and for the release of poor debtors (18 July).71CJ vii. 661a, 672b, 700b, 722a. On 20 August, the council assigned him lodgings in Whitehall.72CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 131. He seems to have taken unofficial leave from the House late in August, and on 30 September both he and Philip Smythe were fined £20 for being absent without excuse at the call of the House.73CJ vii. 789b, 790a. One of the two men was appointed to a committee on 4 October, but they made no further impression on the proceedings of the House before the Rump was dissolved again a few weeks later.74CJ vii. 791b. Either Henry or Philip received only one appointment after the Rump was restored again, late in December – to a committee set up on 13 January 1660 for establishing a new Army Committee.75CJ vii. 811a.

At the Restoration, Smyth turned himself in to the authorities in accordance with the royal proclamation for the surrender of the regicides on pain of exemption from pardon or indemnity.76CJ viii. 68a. Exempted from the Bill of Pardon, he was among the group of regicides tried at the Old Bailey on 16 October 1660 for high treason.77CJ viii. 61a. His defence in court for his part in the king’s trial consisted of pleading ignorance of the law and that he had acted under duress. ‘I can speak it seriously’, he declared to the court, ‘that from the first to the last of these unhappy wars I have been a man of trouble and sorrow. I have been, as many wiser men have been, run upon error’.78State Trials v. 1206. The presiding judge accepted that Smyth had been ‘led on, even like one silly sheep that follows another’, but he was convicted of high treason nonetheless.79State Trials v. 1208. Smyth was one of 18 regicides who were brought before the Commons on 25 November 1661 and ‘humbly craved the benefit’ of the 1660 royal proclamation, ‘and the mercy of this House and their mediation to his Majesty’.80CJ viii. 319a. After the Commons had then passed a bill for executing the 18 men, they were brought before the Lords on 7 February 1662 to plead for their lives again. Smyth maintained that he had been ‘under force at that time, by reason of soldiers and [had been] compelled to do what he did’.81LJ xi. 380a. In an accompanying petition to the Lords he claimed that he had been a ‘very young man’ at the time of the regicide – he had been about 30 years old – and that ‘by the threatenings of those that then ruled the army with no less than loss of life and estate, and [the] incessant importunity of such who had relation to him and power over him, [he had been] drawn into that pretended court, whereunto he had a great abhorrency’.82HMC 7th Rep. 156. In the event, the Lords rejected the legislation and thus spared the 18 men’s lives.

Smyth remained in the Tower until the spring of 1664, when he was transported to Gorey Castle on Jersey.83Oxford DNB, ‘Henry Smith [Smyth]’. He was reported among the prisoners in the castle in February 1668, but thereafter he disappears into obscurity.84CSP Dom. 1667-8, p. 229. His date of death and place of burial are not known. He was the only member of his branch of the family to sit in Parliament.