BROWNE, Richard I (c.1570-1650), of Singleton, Great Chart, Kent and St Anne, Blackfriars, London.

One of the oldest Members of the Long Parliament, Browne belonged to a prominent Surrey family which had risen to prominence in the court of Henry VI, and was closely related to the viscounts Montagu of Cowdray, one of the leading Catholic families in the south of England.22Manning, Bray, Surr. i. 557. Browne’s father was knight of the shire for Surrey from 1559-86, and his elder half-brother, Sir Matthew Browne, represented Gatton in 1601.23HP Commons, 1558-1603; Vis. Surr. 10; C142/253/88. A nephew, Sir Ambrose Browne, sat in both the Short and Long Parliaments for Surrey. Despite his age and connections, relatively little is known of Browne’s life before 1640. He was educated at Lincoln’s Inn, and during the reign of James I acquired his estate in Great Chart, Kent, the county for which he served as sheriff in 1629.24Hasted, Kent, vii. 502. His shrievalty was marked by serious economic difficulties in the area, and his correspondence reveals not merely a concern with the problem of vagrants, but also his anxiety at the signs of unrest among the ‘inferior’ sort over food shortages. On one occasion he reported to the privy council a libel containing ‘menacing passages’ which had been found in Wye church, and which complained of local poverty, and seemed to threaten ‘you that are set in place’.25CSP Dom. 1629-31, pp. 269, 307, 386; SP16/175, ff. 156-7.

Despite Browne’s conservatism, and his Catholic connections, it seems likely that he belonged to the region’s godly community. He was evidently close to his half-sister, Elizabeth (d.1631), who married into the Honywood family of Kent and Essex, and acted as a patron of godly ministers around Earles Colne and Coggeshall.26PROB11/160/2; Vis. Surr. 10. Through the marriage of his son to the daughter of Sir Edward Scott† of Scotts Hall, Browne also forged a connection with a leading member of the Kentish gentry, who would be a stalwart of the parliamentarian administration during the civil wars.27L. Inn Admiss. i. 164; Vis. Surr. 10. Before the civil wars Browne’s own political views were not clear-cut, but it may be significant that he refused to contribute the £16 which was required of him towards the Forced Loan in 1627.28SP16/73, f. 40. Moreover, when Browne stood for election as a knight of the shire in 1640, at around 70 years of age, Sir John Culpeper* wrote of him being set up by ‘the precise party’ (2 Oct.) – probably a euphemism for the godly gentry of Kent.29Stowe 743, f. 149.

The Long Parliament election for the county seat was not, however, a straightforward faction-fight. Browne clearly enjoyed the support of Sir Edward Scott, which brought promises of votes in Ashford and Maidstone, but he was not necessarily opposed to Sir Edward Dering*, and some in the county favoured a Browne-Dering ‘ticket’. However, Sir Roger Twysden*, one of Browne’s great friends and electoral allies, who apparently considered standing in the event of Browne’s withdrawal, was reported to be motivated by animosity towards Dering. In late October, John Sedley explained to Dering that Twysden’s manoeuvring involved ‘setting old Browne in opposition’ and that he ‘solicits many by letters … with a servile importunity which I have met withal in many of my friends and so smothered them in their first endeavours’. Sedley forecast that ‘the canvass will be heartily endeavoured to be put between yourself and Browne’, and even predicted that many of Culpeper’s supporters would select Browne for the second seat.30Stowe 743, f. 157; Procs. in Kent 1640 ed. Larking, 16; Stowe 184, ff. 15-16. In the event, Browne was ‘put by’ at the poll, which was taken on 26 October.31Bodl. Rawl. D.141, p. 6.

Although disappointed in the county election, Browne was able to secure a seat at New Romney in the following spring, in a by-election called following the expulsion of the monopolist Thomas Webb*.32E. Kent RO, NR/Aep/4; C231/5, p. 437. Browne had been in Westminster earlier in the year to assist the lobbying efforts undertaken by the town clerk of another Cinque Port, Sandwich, and his election was secured on 26 April 1641.33E. Kent RO, Sa/C4, unfol.; NR/AC2, p. 293. He took his seat on or before 18 May, when he subscribed the Protestation.34CJ ii. 149a; Harl. 163, f. 194; Harl. 477, f. 75v. Thereafter his parliamentary activity is hard to follow, given the difficulty of distinguishing him in the journals from John Browne I*, Samuel Browne*, and, after September 1645, Richard Browne II*. Nevertheless, he was undoubtedly the Member involved in matters relating to Kent, and proved himself a zealous servant of his borough, by lobbying on their behalf, presenting petitions, and offering advice.35E. Kent RO, NR/AC2, p. 313. The papers of his friend Sir Roger Twysden provide important further evidence regarding his activity and attitudes in the years which followed. Prior to the outbreak of civil war, Browne supported those in the House who sought ‘further reformation’. Writing to Twysden in July 1641, for example, he defended the poll tax from its opponents, saying that, despite its inequalities

he did hope the very good laws already made and endeavoured for more, would cause the kingdom to bear with inequalities considering what was rendered them again, wherein both Houses had been bold with themselves, having paid already, and the City and Westminster go on freely.36‘Sir Roger Twysden’s Journal’ ii. ed. Larking, 175.

More importantly, he supported plans for church reform against ‘some popish and some episcopal men’, who ‘cunningly endeavour to infuse, especially in both the universities, ill opinions, as if all the learning were falling, and the universities failing, if lords, bishops, and deans etc, should be altered’. Browne explained that the reformers planned to ‘commit the episcopal jurisdiction to laymen in every county, and to give orders by learned ministers, upon examination of parties that are to enter into orders, intending to provide for every parish a resident painful preacher and for that preacher a competent maintenance’, and that once such a system was ‘settled for a time’, he expected and hoped that ‘there will be many learned men called together, to confer of one discipline through all the reformed churches’. He nevertheless expressed his concern that ‘when our bill of episcopacy comes to the Lords we doubt it will be buried in a lawn winding sheet’.37‘Sir Roger Twysden’s Journal’ ii. ed. Larking, 175-6.

As tension mounted in both county and country during the spring and summer of 1642, Browne was appointed as a deputy lieutenant, and became involved in undermining the influence of Parliament’s opponents in the region.38CJ ii. 492a, 724a. In late April he was able to reassure the House that the recent quarter sessions had witnessed displays of loyalty to Parliament and of opposition to those who were planning a petition which was ‘endeavoured to be gotten by several of that county, to the disturbance thereof, and trouble of this house, for which some are here questioned’. In June Browne expressed his willingness to go to Kent to implement the Militia Ordinance.39CJ ii. 537b, 641a. At the end of August he was ordered to prepare an answer to the Kentish petition, and was subsequently ordered to help oversee the collection of money, plate, and horse.40CJ ii. 745a, 760b. Such money-raising efforts were supplemented in the months which followed by efforts to raise forces in the region.41CJ ii. 806b, 857b; E. Kent RO, H1257; Add. 33512, f. 82. Activity in Kent did not keep Browne away from Westminster entirely, however, and during the late spring of 1643 he was named to a committee regarding a petition from the Merchant Adventurers (14 Apr.), and signed the parliamentary covenant (6 June).42CJ iii. 44a, 118a. Nevertheless, the threat of a royalist uprising in Kent in the summer forced him to return to the country, from where he reported on armed assemblies in mid-July, in the aftermath of which he was inevitably involved in reorganising the defence of the county, in sequestering the delinquents’ estates, and in considering the dissension which this seems to have caused within the local parliamentarian elite.43Add. 31116, p. 127; CJ iii. 195a, 239a, 275a; HMC Portland, i. 131; Bodl. Nalson III, f. 64; XI, ff. 197-8.

During 1644-5, the bulk of the parliamentary activity with which Browne can be linked with any certainty related to financial, military, and administrative affairs in the associated southern counties. This involved financing garrisons, raising troops, and resolving divisions between commanders such as Sir William Waller* and Anthony Stapley*, and it also meant organising the Kent committees, whether as a committee member at Westminster, or as link-man with the county elite.44CJ iii. 371a, 383b, 393a, 396b, 404a, 459b, 532b, 563b, 669b, 688a, 733a; iv. 170a. As the war was prosecuted with more success in his region, however, Browne was able to devote attention to affairs of greater national import, in terms of extending the scope of the excise, raising money for the reconquest of Ireland, increasing the powers of the navy commissioners, accounting for money expended by Parliament, and organising the London militia.45CJ iii. 531b, 599b, 609a; iv. 57a, 123b, 273b, 365a. At some indeterminate point he was appointed to the Committee for Examinations.46Cent. Kent. Stud. U269/A156/2. He was also nominated to a number of committees regarding details of Parliament’s religious policy, such as plundered ministers and sequestered church estates, the maintenance of a public preaching ministry, and the regulation of academic and religious institutions.47CJ iii. 699b; iv. 97b, 198b, 276a, 350b. Indeed, religious affairs appear to have been an area of particular concern for Browne, who proved particularly active on behalf of New Romney in relation to their complaints concerning local ministers, and in securing the services of a new vicar, Joshua Kerby, in 1645. Browne not only sought the advice of the clerk of the Committee for Plundered Ministers, but lobbied the commissioners for the great seal, in the hope of merging the parishes of New Romney and Hope, in order to enhance the value of the living.48E. Kent RO, NR/AC2, pp. 326, 332-3, 338-9; NR/FVc/2.

Browne was never a central figure on the county committees in Kent, and his religious and political outlook may have been considerably more moderate than those who came to dominate administration in the county in the second half of the 1640s. Browne’s religious views are evident from the fact that the minister whom he recommended to Romney was a Presbyterian who would later be involved in a controversial petition in 1649, ejected from his living for refusing the Engagement, and arrested for his role in Sir George Boothe’s* rising in 1659.49Calamy Revised, 310. Furthermore, while the only evidence of Browne’s attitude to local ‘delinquents’ relates to his cousin and friend Sir Roger Twysden, it nevertheless demonstrates a moderation which might not have found favour with some of his colleagues. Twysden recorded that Browne had defended him in February 1644, when Henry Heyman* had sought to secure his sequestration, by suggesting that Twysden had had ‘very hard measure’.50‘Sir Roger Twysden’s Journal’ iii. ed. Larking, 167. Browne remained involved in Twysden’s case until at least December 1645, when he apparently ‘spoke very well and earnestly’ in the Commons in support of the latter’s petition.51‘Sir Roger Twysden’s Journal’ iii. ed. Larking, 174; iv. 173-4.

It may have been political unease as well as old age which lay behind Browne’s low profile at Westminster after the end of 1645. Although he was named to the committee to determine scandalous offences in June 1646, he was granted leave of absence in both July and October, and the only other committee to which he is known to have been appointed related to the petition from the brigade of Edward Massie* in December 1646.52CJ iv. 562b, 599a, 693b; CJ v. 28b. Thereafter, the only occasions where the Journals certainly refer to him are to record his absence being excused, on the last of which he is known to have been ill (26 Sept. 1648).53CJ v. 330a, 543b; vi. 34b. Browne’s apparent absence from the Commons did not signal complete political withdrawal, however, and he continued to reside at his house in Blackfriars, rather than returning to his country seat.54PROB11/230/230. Indeed, evidence from Twysden’s journal supports the conclusion that Browne had grown disillusioned with parliamentarian rule. Noting the ideas of radical petitioners in 1647, who argued that ‘these men that sit there have neither truth nor honesty; for they have had our persons and estates at their command, and now, instead of the liberty they promised, and we expected, they imprison us … on every slight occasion’, Browne apparently thought that they ‘spoke in a great measure truth’.55‘Sir Roger Twysden’s Journal’ ii. ed. Larking, 213-4.

Browne may have been away from the House at Pride’s Purge, and although the army’s attitude towards him is unclear, he does not seem to have sat after December 1648. Illness may have prompted him to prepare his will in August 1647, when he disposed of his extensive land holdings to his six surviving children. In fact Browne did not die until January 1650, when he was given a modest funeral at St Anne’s, Blackfriars.56GL, MS 4510/1, unfol.; PROB11/230/230.