SMITH, John (1609-57), of Hither Friars, St Aldate’s, Oxford, and Kennington, Berks.

Established in St Aldate’s parish since at least the mid-sixteenth century, by 1601, when the MP’s grandfather died during his mayoral year, the brewing dynasty of Smith was perhaps the most prominent family in the city of Oxford. They counted gentry and clergy among their kin, and doubtless benefited from a distant connection with William Smyth, bishop of Lincoln and founder of Brasenose College. The house constructed in the 1620s nearly opposite Christ Church by the MP’s eldest brother Thomas (d. 1646) was reputed to have cost £1,300.8Wood, City of Oxford, iii. 132; Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne x, ed. Rannie, 224; VCH Oxon. iv. 97, 138. As a third and youngest son, in his youth John may have been destined for something other than trade. He was admitted to Wadham College before the second son, Oliver the younger (d. 1663), and may have moved on to New College to take a degree.9Al. Ox. If so, he received it a few weeks after his marriage, still aged only 18, to the heiress of another wealthy brewer, Henry Bosworth of St Giles parish, a cousin of Henry Marten*.10Wood, Life and Times, i. 230.

Smith entered public life early. At 20 he was presented to the corporation for a free place as a bailiff of the city as the son of a former mayor (and sitting alderman), and a few months later, on 12 March 1630, gained admission.11Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 22, 25. When his father, Oliver the elder, was elected for a second term in September 1631, John was chosen to act with his brother Thomas as an executive bailiff for the year; by September 1632 they had added to the city’s modest treasure.12Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 36, 41. At their father’s death in April 1637 the brewing equipment went to Thomas while John inherited land in Kennington, Berkshire, just outside the city, but he remained active in its affairs.13PROB11/174/124. It is conceivable that he had some business association with his widowed mother-in-law, Alice Bosworth, who according to the records of the university, which exercised close control over local brewers, was still trading.14Reg. Univ. Oxford, ii. pt i, 330; Acct. Rolls of University Coll. Oxford ii, ed. R. Darwall-Smith (Oxf. Hist. Soc. n. s. xl), 583. Elected as an ‘assistant’ to the inner council on 13 November 1638, ten months later he was chosen mayor, entering office at a time of heightened tension between city and university.15Oxon. RO, city archives, C/FC/1/A2/03, f. 63v; Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 82, 87. By virtue of his position in the spring and early summer of 1640 he led the corporation’s complaint to the privy council about the university proctor’s conduct in a dispute over night-watchmen, but it was alderman John Nixon* who was at the sharp end of the conflict.16Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford (1786), ii. 421-2; CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 340-1; 504. Meanwhile, coat and conduct money was raised during his mayoralty.17Oxon. RO, city archives, E.4.5, f. 23v; QS/C/A2/01, f. 192; SR.

Following the death during the summer of 1640 of Thomas Cooper I*, chosen in March as a borough MP with Charles Howard*, Lord Howard, Smith attracted 296 votes in the election to the Long Parliament on 12 October. He still came bottom of a poll in which the recorder, John Whistler*, was returned to represent the city’s interests with Howard, who was the son of the university’s steward, Thomas Howard, 1st earl of Berkshire.18Oxon. RO, city archives, C/FC/1/A2/03, f. 83; Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 97. However, following Charles Howard’s summons to the Lords as Viscount Andover, on 30 November there was an apparently unanimous decision that Smith, and not the older Nixon, should replace him.19Oxon. RO, city archives, C/FC/1/A2/03, f. 86; Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 98. It is not clear whether or not the city had simply, as often in the past, accepted the steward’s nominee.

John Smith’s career at Westminster is difficult to distinguish from those of others sharing his surname who were also MPs in the early years of the Long Parliament: Philip Smythe*, Thomas Smyth I* and William Smyth*. Whistler was very active in the House during this period, and it may be that the pair established a pattern similar to that of their successors from 1646, Nixon and John D’Oyly*, whereby the city father was the chief link with the constituency and the gentleman from the county took the front seat in the Commons: later events demonstrated that Whistler and Smith were capable of partnership. It is clear that some references to Smith in the Journal (as in contemporary diaries) were to a lawyer and/or a more experienced Member, and there is nothing to link many of the committee nominations made from 25 February 1641 to 2 September 1642 – including four relating to religion, three relating to Ireland and others concerning Newark on Trent and London – to John.20CJ ii. 101a, 102b, 107a, 113b, 115a, 258a, 305b, 382b, 447a, 448b, 449a, 713a, 750a; Harl. 477, f. 49v; 479, f. 148; 5047, f. 63v. It is thus possible that he never spoke or prepared legislation. On the other hand, it seems evident that at least until late September 1642 Smith, like Whistler, remained loyal to Parliament.

According to a letter sent by both MPs to Speaker William Lenthall* on 3 September, by a series of actions beginning on 10 August power in Oxford had been seized by the earl of Berkshire and the vice-chancellor, Robert Pinck (a longstanding antagonist of the corporation), acting with certain gentry and scholars.21HMC Portland, i. 56–8; ‘Robert Pinck’, Oxford DNB. Clearly alienated by the disregard for the corporation’s rights and sceptical of the plans of Pinck and ‘expert soldier’ Sir Richard Cave* for defending the city, none the less at first they seem to have co-operated up to a point. When councillors attended a ‘meeting for powder and match’ on 15 August, Smith contributed four pounds of powder and four dozen bullets.22Oxon. RO, city archives, E.4.5, f. 32v, 33v. But violent intimidation of citizens by parties of students and unilateral action by the university in constructing fortifications, followed on 28 August by the arrival of ill-disciplined royalist troops under Sir John Byron to occupy the city, proved too much. Smith and Whistler reported that ‘most of the sober and religious gospellers [had] left the university and most of the gravest citizens [had] done the like’. Oxford and its surrounding area was ‘in great distress and likely to become desolate, unless God’s mercies, with the assistance of Parliament, shall in due time prevent it’. They themselves had been ‘publicly scorned and derided and direfully menaced’, while ‘Mr Smith hath received some blows for no other reason but because he is of the Parliament’. Consequently, both had left Oxford for Abingdon, from where they wrote.23HMC Portland, i. 56-8. A second missive from the same place two days later relayed news of schemes to train students in arms and of further craven behaviour by the mayor, Leonard Bowman, whose ‘weakness we can neither defend or excuse, which is a great part of our present misery’. Their conclusion was that they were better placed to serve Parliament by remaining where they were than coming to the Commons.24HMC Portland, i. 59-60.

Their letters, read on 6 September, encouraged both Houses to declare Byron a traitor five days later, just after his departure from Oxford.25CJ ii. 754a; ‘Sir John Byron’, Oxford DNB. They had enclosed ‘what they described as ‘distracted thoughts’ from ‘the honester man’ of the city’s two bailiffs, George Heron.26HMC Portland, i. 60. On 17 September, during the brief occupation of Oxford by William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, Heron sent to the Lords ‘A short brief of our grievances at Oxford’, which elaborated on the events of the previous weeks. It cites Whistler and Smith as primary witnesses to the illegal publication of several royal proclamations (contrary to Whistler’s legal advice) and to the coup staged by a combination of a faction on the council, the Chillingworth family, the vice-chancellor, certain named scholars and gentlemen, and Smith’s brother Thomas. Among many ‘tyrannous’ acts, late one night in early September a party of soldiers and scholars directed by the mayor and vice-chancellor were alleged to have assaulted ‘Mr Burgess Smith and his wife’ while searching the homes of several brewers. Heron appealed for justice and for the means to counteract ‘malignant rebellious scholars and other despisers of government’; without this, Oxford would be ‘the original destruction’ of ‘the true Protestant religion’, king, Parliament and kingdoms.27HMC Lords, n.s. xi. 322-33; ‘Robert Pinck’, Oxford DNB. Meanwhile, on 15 September Saye and Sele had had Thomas Smith’s house searched for munitions and money.28Wood, Life and Times, i. 62.

The letters of September 1642 are John Smith’s last (if not his only) contribution to Commons’ business. His circumstances were transformed by the establishment of the royalist capital at Oxford at the end of October. On 1 November he responded to the king’s order for the disarming of citizens by leaving a ‘corslet, pike, headpiece and sword’ at the guildhall in St Aldate’s.29Oxon. RO, city archives, E.4.5, f. 36v. His home, Hither Friars, was across the street from the king’s headquarters at Christ Church and provided convenient quarters for visitors connected with the court and garrison. In June 1643 Smith’s lodger was Henry Spencer, created that month 1st earl of Sunderland, while by January 1644 he was housing Anne, Lady Lake, the recusant widow of Sir Arthur Lake†, as well as gentleman of the bedchamber Montagu Bertie, 2nd earl of Lindsey, and their respective servants. Smith’s immediate neighbour, the puritan lawyer Unton Croke I*, who had sat for Wallingford in the Short Parliament, apparently decamped at an early stage in the conflict to his estate at nearby Marston, but the less wealthy Smith appears to have passed up the opportunity to move out to Kennington. Whether this was the result of financial necessity, or of the influence of his brother Thomas (who became lieutenant-colonel of the city regiment and mayor in 1643-4), or of some other factor, is unknown.30Toynbee, Young, Strangers in Oxford, 122, 138-9, 142-4; Wood, Life and Times, i. 107. Smith’s decision to sit (with Lindsey) in the Oxford Parliament thus cannot necessarily be interpreted as wholehearted support for the local regime, although, like Whistler, he did sign the letter of 27 January 1644 from the assembled Members to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, seeking a peace treaty.31Names of the Lords and Commons assembled in the Pretended Parliament assembled at Oxford (1646), A3; A Copy of a Letter from the Members of Both Houses assembled at Oxford (1643), 7-8 (E.32.3).

It is conceivable that Smith was attempting to tread a difficult path of moderation or neutrality. Present at meetings of the inner council of the city in April 1643 and April 1644, he was absent in April 1645 (the month his brother Thomas was named commissioner for administering the oath of allegiance), and did not appear in St Aldate’s parish taxation lists that year.32Oxon. RO, city archives, E.4.5, ff. 45, 74, 89, 90; Toynbee, Young, Strangers in Oxford, 142; Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, ii. 268. Divisions within the corporation during the mayoralty of the enthusiastic royalist William Chillingworth (1644-5) are hinted at by the declaration entered in its records on 12 June 1645, and signed by Smith, that ‘no matter of concernment touching this city shall pass without the major part of us shall be present and consenting thereunto’; if this were not observed, ‘he or they consenting thereunto shall be reputed an ill member of this city’.33Oxon. RO, city archives, E.4.6, f. 43. This may not have taken effect immediately, but in November Smith was signing accounts, and on 16 February 1646 he was among those deputed to give weekly advice to the next mayor, Henry Silvester.34Oxon. RO, city archives, E.4.6, ff. 44v, 48v, 49v; P.4.2. As preparations got underway for the peace negotiations which culminated in the surrender of the city to parliamentary forces, on 18 May Smith was one of two men nominated to assist Geoffrey Palmer*, the commissioner chosen to represent the city’s interests.35Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 133.

The new regime installed over the summer of 1646 was no more congenial. Smith and another councillor arrived on 14 September for the council meeting which elected (the returned) John Nixon as mayor in their cloaks, a recognised signal of disrespect for which they were fined.36Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 135. On 12 November Smith asked to compound on the Oxford Articles for his delinquency in sitting in the Parliament there; his fine, set three weeks later at one tenth, was £220.37CCC 1563. In the meantime, on 18 November, the Commons resolved belatedly on his and Whistler’s disablement, and on a writ for an election to replace them as MPs.38CJ iv. 724b. The choice of Nixon on 14 December must have been at best humiliating, but although Smith was again absent from St Aldate’s taxation assessments in 1647, it seems that it was not until August 1648 that, as a result of the implementation of the parliamentary ordinance disqualifying delinquents from office, he formally lost his place on the council.39Toynbee, Young, Strangers in Oxford, 142; Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 155.

Thereafter it seems likely that Smith retired to Kennington and took no further part in public life. In 1651 he was assessed for the rather low sum of £100.40CCAM 1308. In his will made on 28 October 1657 when he was ‘sick and weak in body’, he ‘assuredly’ hoped and trusted ‘to be saved by the only merits, death and passion of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and not by anything that is in me’. He left most of what he characterised as ‘my small estate’ to his wife and executrix, Elizabeth.41PROB11/270/301. After his death on 4 November, he was buried with the rest of his family in St Aldate’s church.42St Aldate’s, Oxford, par. reg.; Wood, Life and Times, i. 230-1; Wood, City of Oxford, 133. His elder son John was admitted gratis to a bailiff’s place on the council on 13 December 1664 ‘since his father did eminent service to the city in his lifetime’, but he had a rather modest career before his death in 1671.43Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 367; Wood, Life and Times, ii. 236. Ironically, the younger son, Henry, rose to be a university proctor and a canon of Christ Church.44Al. Ox. None of the family is known to have sat in subsequent Parliaments.