TOLL, Thomas I (1593-1653), of King’s Lynn, Norf.

The earliest documented member of the Toll family was this MP’s grandfather, Henry Toll, who lived at Fakenham in north Norfolk.22Vis. Norf. 1664, ii. 223. The MP’s father, William, was a fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, before marrying and becoming rector of Wells-next-the-Sea. He also held the living at Pudding Norton.23Clergy of the C of E database. In 1591 he succeeded in enforcing his rights as rector to the tithes on all the fish caught by ships operating out of Wells.24P. Millican, ‘Christ’s dole’, Norf. Arch. xxviii., 84-5. A man of modest means, on his death in 1603 he bequeathed £30 to each of his seven children when they reached the age of 23.25PROB11/103/252. Toll himself was apprenticed to a King’s Lynn linen draper, Joshua Grene.26Cal. Lynn Freemen, 140. Having gained his freedom and married well, he prospered as a merchant and in time he progressed up the town’s civic hierarchy, becoming first a common councilman and then an alderman. In 1634 he and his wife were granted a royal licence to sell wine at King’s Lynn and Castle Rising.27Coventry Docquets, 292. That same year he was part of the delegation from the town that lobbied for a reduction in their Ship Money rate. In 1637 he and other members of the corporation travelled to Norwich to assert their rights against the bishop to continue appointing the town preachers.28Keeler, Long Parl. 361. Elected as mayor in 1639, the oaths of the office were administered to him on his sickbed.29W. Richards, Hist. of Lynn (King’s Lynn, 1812), ii. 1198. His year as mayor included the election for the Short Parliament held on 13 March 1640.

Toll was returned at King’s Lynn in the Long Parliament poll on 19 October 1640 with John Percival*, a kinsman by marriage, on the popular vote of the freemen at large. It is just possible that he had an ulterior motive in standing, given that within two months of the start of the Parliament, he invoked his privileges as an MP to block a case which had been brought against him in the court of exchequer. On 22 December 1640 the Commons summoned Francis Ludlow for having tried to serve a writ on Toll.30CJ ii. 56b-57a. He took the Protestation on 3 May 1641.31CJ ii. 133a. His only committee appointment before the recess was on 4 June when he was named to the committee investigating the bishop of Bath and Wells, William Piers.32CJ ii. 166b. He was granted leave of absence on 16 August.33CJ ii. 258b.

On 13 January 1642, during the heightened state of alert following the attempted arrest of the Five Members, Toll was one of the four MPs sent to inspect the ordnance office storehouses in the Minories.34CJ ii. 375b. The next day, in the first hint of his interest in naval administration, he was named to a committee to determine the size of the summer fleet.35CJ ii. 378b. This was the body, chaired by Giles Grene*, that seven months later would be transformed into the Committee of Navy and Customs and of which Toll would become a stalwart member. Also in January 1642, he was added to the committee on the bill for the recruitment of sailors.36CJ ii. 402b. It was more probably the erratic Thomas Tomkins* rather than Toll who was the ‘T.T.’ who startled the Speaker, William Lenthall*, from behind during the vote on the militia bill on 31 January.37PJ i. 229n.

With his colleague Percival, Toll was appointed on 10 March to the committee to prepare accounts of the money already raised for Parliament.38CJ ii. 474a. On 24 May he presented a petition on behalf of wine merchants concerning the king’s prizage of wine, asking that it be referred to the committee on the bill for tonnage and poundage. The Commons did refer it, although Sir Simonds D’Ewes* thought that this was only because he had seconded Toll.39CJ ii. 586a; PJ ii. 366. A week later Toll’s motion that officials in the northern ports should search all ships, because he feared that they might be used to land arms or money from Denmark or the Low Countries, was seconded by Oliver Cromwell*. The Commons agreed to order this.40PJ ii. 399; CJ ii. 598a. On 11 June Toll personally pledged £50 for the defence of Parliament.41PJ iii. 475. The following month he was named to the committee to meet with the Merchant Adventurers to discuss their foreign treaty commitments.42CJ ii. 666b.

By this point both sides in the impending civil war were already busy making military preparations. On 30 July Toll was ordered to thank his constituents for their speedy action in apprehending Captain Moses Treswell who had attempted to raise volunteers under a commission from the 1st earl of Lindsey.43CJ ii. 697a. Five weeks later the Commons ordered that the costs of transporting Treswell to London should be deducted from the money seized from him.44CJ ii. 758a. In the absence of the two Norwich MPs, Toll wrote to the mayor of Norwich on 10 September with this news. Expressing the hope that ‘in the Lord there will be a speedy end of these wars’, he told the mayor that he thought that it was only those ‘delinquents and cavaliers’ around him that was preventing the king returning to London to do a deal with Parliament.45Add. 22619, f. 38. Toll was named on 12 September to the committee to consider all pensions payable out of the king's revenue.46CJ ii. 762b. Three days later Speaker Lenthall informed the Commons that he had received news from the mayor of Norwich of the arrests there of three men who had made insulting remarks about peers and MPs. Again Toll deputised for his absent Norwich counterparts; he spoke up to say that the cases against these men were due to be heard the following Monday and that there was therefore still time for them to write to the mayor instructing him to deal harshly with them. Toll was therefore ordered to write to that effect to the mayor.47PJ iii. 356; CJ ii. 767a.

On 21 October Toll was among 17 MPs who were considered by the Commons for appointment as the commissioners for the conservation of peace with the Scots.48Add. 18777, f. 37v; CJ ii. 818a. But he remained more concerned with events nearer home. Eight days earlier he had been instructed by the Commons to return to Norfolk to encourage the collections of money and plate.49CJ ii. 806b. Toll had reached King’s Lynn by 24 October, when he delivered to the corporation the recent orders by Parliament for the town to be put into a state of military alert.50HMC 11th Rep. iii. 178. He was subsequently able to write to the Commons to inform them that he had collected over £16,000.51CJ ii. 898a. Meanwhile, in early November he and Percival were part of the King’s Lynn delegation to the meeting at Norwich to prepare the county’s trained bands for any royalist incursions into Norfolk.52HMC 11th Rep. iii. 178. In late January 1643 he was also one of the townsmen charged by the Commons with overseeing the completion of the town's fortifications.53CJ ii. 935a. On 10 February he and the mayor were told by the Commons to halt any shipments of corn to Newcastle-upon-Tyne.54Add. 18777, f. 149.

Toll’s continued absence from Westminster is mostly attributable to the uneasy situation prevailing in King's Lynn. His letter of 13 March, reporting on ‘some distractions and some divisions’ there, was read to the Commons on 22 March.55CJ iii. 12a. Seven local men, including Toll, Percival and the mayor, Thomas Gurlyn*, were given powers by the Commons on 11 April to arrest the culprits.56CJ iii. 39a. On 22 May, Gurlyn and Toll wrote to Parliament with a report of plans to supply the garrison at Kingston-upon-Hull from Denmark.57CJ iii. 99b, In late May he was, despite his absence from Westminster, named as one of the 37 MPs appointed as commissioners to negotiate with the Scottish commissioners.58LJ vi. 55b.

Concerns about the threat to King’s Lynn proved to be prescient. On 11 August 1643 Sir Hamon L’Estrange† and other local royalists seized control of the town. They then placed Toll and Percival under arrest. It was later reported that Toll ‘was so roughly dealt with, in the time of the siege, that he was constrained to make an escape out at a window into the arm of the sea, his house being guarded in all parts else by musketeers’.59A briefe and true Relation of the Seige and Surrendering of Kings Lyn [1643], 7 (E.67.28). After retaking the town the following month, the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†) lodged in Toll’s house.60Briefe and true Relation, 7.

The siege prompted a re-organisation of the military defences of the area around King’s Lynn. Toll was one of the five new deputy lieutenants appointed as part of this.61CJ iii. 287a. Moreover, in early December Parliament appointed Toll and Percival, as the town’s two MPs, together with the governor, Valentine Wauton*, to organise compensation for the inhabitants. The three of them were authorised to assess individual claims for damages and to collect the necessary money from the rebels’ sequestered estates.62CJ iii. 331a; HMC 11th Rep. iii. 182. L’Estrange’s wife, Alice, was made to pay £90 to Toll as compensation for the ordeal of his imprisonment.63CJ iii. 550a, 568a; A. Kingston, East Anglia and the Great Civil War (1897), 296.

Toll seems to have remained in Norfolk throughout 1644. Many there felt that Norwich was not paying its fair share of the county’s tax burden. During the early months of 1644 Toll and other parliamentarians at King’s Lynn attempted to persuade the Norwich corporation of the need for Norwich to pay more.64Add. 22619, ff. 43, 51, 54, 175, 179. Meanwhile, in February 1644 the King’s Lynn corporation sent Toll to Cambridge to seek advice from Manchester on how to implement the ordinance of the previous August for the removal of idolatrous images from churches.65King’s Lynn Borough Archives, KL/C7/10, f. 131. At the same time Toll developed a side-line in supplying the parliamentarian armies. During the siege of Newark-upon-Trent he delivered beer to the troops attempting to take the town.66SP28/25, f. 315; SP28/22, f. 290. In May 1644 he sold arms and ammunition, worth over £700, to the King’s Lynn garrison.67SP28/17, f. 366; SP28/22, ff. 221, 224. He was also active as an assessment commissioner.68HMC Laing, i. 215; SP28/14, f. 183; Add. 23006, f. 43. Parliament itself made use of Toll’s presence on the ground. In late November 1644 he and Sir Anthony Irby* were told by the Commons to summon together the sequestration officials for Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely so that they could complete detailed accounts of their receipts and arrears.69CCC 14. In January 1645 the King’s Lynn corporation sent Toll to lobby the county standing committee about the level of free quarter that the town was paying and about the arrears due to the garrison there. He was told that if he had no success with the county committee, he was to raise these matters in Parliament.70King’s Lynn Borough Archives, KL/C7/10, ff. 150v, 152.

This was what probably induced Toll to return to Westminster. He had most likely resumed his seat in the Commons by 11 February 1645, when he was named to the committee on the bill granting the powers of the lord high admiral to the navy commissioners.71CJ iv. 57a. He then spent the next few weeks plotting with Sir John Potts* to make sure that their colleagues in Parliament knew the full extent of Norwich’s assessment arrears.72Add. 22619, f. 161. Toll’s name was one of those considered by the Commons on 28 April for appointment along with the 2nd earl of Warwick (Sir Robert Rich†) and Alexander Bence* to command the fleet, but he probably indicated that he was reluctant to serve and so Peregrine Pelham* was appointed instead.73Harl. 166, f. 205v; CJ iv. 125a. Because of his prolonged absence, Toll did not take the Covenant until 30 April 1645.74CJ iii. 127b.

Toll now probably remained at Westminster for over a year. His committee appointments included those on the bill to pay poor soldiers and their widows (5 May 1645) and to borrow money to pay for the siege of Oxford (5 June).75CJ iii.132a, 164a. On 26 May Potts, Miles Corbett* and Toll were asked to arrange for the committee of the Eastern Association at Westminster to pay £1,000 to Cromwell, after the latter had been ordered to take charge of the defences of the Isle of Ely.76CJ iii. 155a. On 2 August Toll was added to the committee for petitions and, two days later, he was appointed to that to examine the differences between the town and the university of Cambridge.77CJ iii. 228b, 229b. He was also named to the committees to decide which prisoners should be allowed to compound (13 Sept.) and to prepare an order to settle church lands in the hands of trustees (16 Sept.).78CJ iii. 273b, 276a. His most important role in this period may however have been as the intermediary through which money was paid to the Eastern Association. In July 1645 Parliament ordered that the excise commissioners were to pay £13,000 to him as the agent for the association to maintain 500 horses they had raised.79A. and O.; LJ vii. 564a-b. Two months later they ordered that he be paid a further £6,184 as pay for the force of 800 horse that the association had sent into Lincolnshire.80A. and O.; LJ viii. 68b. Toll was also one of the eight MPs tasked by the Commons in late October with borrowing £5,000 so that infantry from the Eastern Association could be sent to assist in the latest siege at Newark.81CJ iii. 327b.

As he had been asked to do so by the corporation, Toll was doubtless the MP who on 1 January 1646 moved the writ for the by-election at King’s Lynn to fill the vacancy created by Percival’s death.82King’s Lynn Borough Archives, KL/C7/10, f. 178v; CJ iii. 394a. Although he was scheduled to make a report from the Admiralty Committee concerning the presence of royalist frigates off the Norfolk coast on 30 March, this never came before the House.83CJ iii. 492a. On 23 May he and Sir Anthony Irby were sent by the Eastern Association committee at Westminster to inform the Committee of Both Kingdoms of their decision to disband the garrisons at King’s Lynn, Cambridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, the Isle of Ely and Newport Pagnell.84LJ viii. 351b. That August, with Irby and Corbett, he was put in charge of despatching the regiment quartered at King’s Lynn and Boston to Ireland.85CJ iii. 633a. Meanwhile, in early July he had been named as one of the commissioners for the conservation of peace with the Scots.86CJ iii. 589b, 606a; LJ viii. 411a.

In August 1646 his colleagues on the King’s Lynn corporation elected him to serve another term as their mayor. This displeased the Commons, as MPs considered that Toll’s primary duty was to serve at Westminster, but, ‘considering the present condition of that town’, they granting him permission on 1 September to take on that position.87CJ iii. 658b. His immediate problem as mayor was the lack of pay for the soldiers still stationed in the town. In December 1646 Toll wrote to his counterpart at Norwich complaining that Norwich had failed to pay £400 due to the garrison. He pointed out that, so long as there was no money to pay the soldiers, ‘the cry of the inhabitants there must needs be great’.88Add. 15903, f. 63. On 6 July 1647 he wrote to Speaker Lenthall that the corporation was sending two aldermen to Westminster with a petition from them concerning the King’s Lynn garrison. As Toll explained,

The misery of our town is grown unto such a height, and our soldiers for want of pay are grown so mutinous, as here will be no living for us, if a timely care be not presently had either in settling the establishment of the garrison, or a present disbanding of them.89Mems. of the Great Civil War, ed. Cary, i. 288-9.

Events over the following weeks worked to the town’s advantage, for, with the march of the army on London and the ascendency of the Independents, the Commons became more receptive on the subject of army pay. On 20 September the Commons ordered that Wauton, as the governor of King’s Lynn, was to be paid £1,500 for his men’s arrears.90CJ v. 309a.

Toll was still absent from Westminster at the call of the House on 9 October 1647, although the reason then given was that he was unwell.91CJ v. 330a. He was however named to a committee to remove obstructions to trade on 6 November.92CJ v. 352a. He was also still receiving large sums of money on behalf of the Eastern Association. On 9 November the Commons agreed that £20,000 which was due to be paid to the Eastern Association via Toll could be transferred by the association to the Army Committee to help quell the demands for pay recently made by the army agitators at Putney. This was on the understanding that Toll, acting on behalf of the association, would be repaid that money by the treasurers-at-war the following March.93CJ v. 353b. During the early months of 1648 Toll was included on the committees to consider the redress of grievances (4 Jan.) and to examine the accounts of the customs commissioners (4 Mar.).94CJ v. 417a, 480a. On 1 April he was granted leave of absence on health grounds and he was still indisposed at the call of the House at the end of the month.95CJ v. 523a, 543b.

Toll was back at Westminster by late September, as he attended a meeting of the Eastern Association committee on 29 September.96SP28/251, unfol. He had an immediate reason for this return, because the next day the Lords considered a bill to confirm his son’s position as the customs comptroller of King’s Lynn.97LJ x. 521a. According to the rival candidate, Toll was, predictably, the MP who had lobbied for this.98HMC 7th Rep. i. 64. Although approved by the peers, this bill stalled when referred to the Committee of Navy and Customs and was never passed by the Commons.99LJ x. 527b, 536b, 542b, 547a, 600b; CJ vi. 54a-b.

Toll took his seat in the Rump on 17 February 1649 when he took the dissent, but his first committee, on the bill empowering the Admiralty court to try crimes committed at sea, was not until 13 April.100Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 387; CJ vi. 185b. On 29 May he was added to the Committee for Indemnity.101CJ vi. 219b. In the much-reduced House, Toll was now more likely to be named to other committees. Over the next three months he was included on the committees on the bills for the sale of royal lands (7 July), for the relief of those in prison for debt (17 July), to encourage the colonisation of the Bahamas (the Eleutheran Adventure) (25 July), to grant lands to John Bradshawe* (27 July), in favour of the governors of the London poor (22 Aug.), concerning prisoners at sea (4 Sept.) and to control the price of ale and beer (5 Sept.).102CJ vi. 254a, 262a, 270a, 271a, 284a, 290a, 290b. He was unsurprisingly named to the committee appointed on 14 July to hear the petition from the Norwich worsted weavers, as well as being named in February 1650 to the committee on the bill to create a corporation to regulate them.103CJ vi. 260a, 358a. He was moreover a regular attender of meetings of the Eastern Association committee at Westminster throughout 1649.104SP28/251, unfol. That summer he was also one of the most active members of the Committee of Navy and Customs.105Bodl. Rawl. A.224; Add. 18986, f. 5. On 4 February 1650 he was added to the Army Committee.106CJ vi. 357b. That same month the Admiralty Committee asked him to investigate how a ship from Dunkirk had managed to escape.107CSP Dom. 1650, p. 6. The last trace of any activity by him in the Rump was that he was added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers on 4 July 1650.108CJ vi. 437a.

In October 1653 the Nominated Parliament agreed to appoint Toll as one of the Norfolk commissioners for the relief of creditors. This was a last-minute substitution, as it was only on 5 October that Parliament voted to insert his name in place of that of ‘John Hubard’ (possibly John Hobart*).109CJ vii, 330b. But as Toll died on 29 October, he never got the chance to perform those duties. He was buried at St Nicholas, King’s Lynn.110Mackerell, Hist. 114. His will, which had no religious preamble, was undated, but as his instructions were that his estate was to be divided between his wife, Alice, and Thomas Toll II, their only son, the will must have been written before Alice’s death the previous year. He also provided a jointure of £100 a year for Thomas’s wife, Eleanor. Other family bequests which were to be paid out of the rents and profits of his property in King’s Lynn formerly belonging to the dean and chapter of Norwich, amounted to £600.111PROB11/238/266.