LEE, Richard (c.1591-c.1652), of Great Delce in St Margaret’s, Rochester, Kent.

Richard Lee was descended from Sir Richard Lee, lord mayor of London in 1470, and although his family occupied an inconspicuous position within the Kentish gentry during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the estate which his father bequeathed in 1618 was substantial.23PROB11/133/195. Richard Lee junior was educated at the Inner Temple, and although he appears not to have been called to the bar, he nevertheless acted in a legal capacity for the corporation at Hythe in 1621.24I. Temple database; E. Kent RO, H1210, f. 143. He became captain of the Kentish trained bands at the same time, and in 1629 was appointed to the commission of the peace, although he could scarcely claim to be a leading member of the county’s gentry.25HMC Finch, i. 42; CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 543; 1635, p. 246; 1637, p. 572.

Lee was elected to the Long Parliament for Rochester, doubtless on the family interest, although he did little to make his presence felt before the outbreak of civil war. He was named to just three committees before the summer of 1642, the most important of which concerned the reform of the court of wards, but he may have been more active in relation to constituency business, and evidently promoted a petition from local fishermen in March 1641.26CJ ii. 44a, 61b, 87a; Stowe 744, f. 6. Lee took the Protestation, albeit only in late May 1641, and may have been preoccupied during the months which followed with fulfilling his duties as a commissioner for disarming recusants in Kent.27CJ ii. 158b; LJ iv. 385b.

Lee’s support for the parliamentarian cause became evident in the wake of the controversial assize session in Kent in April 1642, when he delivered a report to the Commons on the activities of those future royalists who framed a petition in response to the earlier declaration in support of reform (30 Apr.).28CJ ii. 549b; PJ ii. 249. Having signalled his willingness to provide a horse for Parliament in mid-June, Lee was despatched to Kent in the following month, as part of a delegation which was intended to undermine further manoeuvrings by the king’s supporters.29PJ iii. 474; CJ ii. 686b. In August, after his nomination as a deputy lieutenant, he joined those who sought to disarm the households of known opponents, like James Stuart, 1st duke of Richmond, and to arrest notorious Catholics, like Christopher Roper, 4th Baron Teynham.30CJ ii. 724a; CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 374-5. Lee returned to Westminster in order to declare his support for the lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, and to defend the actions of the leading parliamentarians in the county, but he was immediately despatched to Kent once again, in order to oversee attempts to collect money, plate, and arms in the region, and in order to take up the command of Upnor Castle (9 Sept.), which had been built by his grandfather for Queen Elizabeth, and which he himself had earlier helped to secure for Parliament.31CJ ii. 760a-b; CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 374-5; PJ iii. 338.

During the months that followed, military matters rather than parliamentary affairs dominated Lee’s activity. His position as governor of one of the key defensive sites on the River Medway ensured that he became involved in wider military issues relating to the region.32HMC Portland, i. 88; Add. 33512, f. 78; CJ iii. 430b. He also played an active role in arresting and sequestering local delinquents, like Sir Henry Compton* and Sir Edward Hales*, and the notorious Catholic courtier, Walter Montagu, and his role in the apprehension of the latter earned him the express thanks of the Commons.33HMC Portland, i. 131, 133, 150, 184; Bodl. Nalson III, ff. 80, 139, 258; XI, f. 154; XIII, f. 64; CJ ii. 873a; iii. 264b. Lee became a leading figure on the county committee in 1643, and was an obvious candidate to serve as mayor of Rochester in the same year.34SP28/235, unfol.; ‘Letters of Thomas Stanley’, 363-4; HMC 7th Rep. 554. Such service was not without its frustration. He joined those who complained in early 1643, for example, about the activities of those employed to seize horses for Parliament.35CJ ii. 943a. More importantly, the shortage of money with which to fulfil his duties caused him to detain money from the estates of local delinquents which ought to have been sent to London, provoking a degree of controversy with Parliament, although he was eventually awarded £300 for his forces, and granted control of the lands sequestered from Sir William Brooke†.36CJ iii. 56b, 75b, 139b; LJ vi. 248b. Like others in the region, however, he also complained of the backwardness of some of his fellow parliamentarians, including Norton Knatchbull* and Sir Francis Barnham*.37Bodl. Nalson XI, ff. 192-3, 197-8. In playing an active part in the attempt to suppress the Kentish insurrection in the summer of 1643, meanwhile, Lee was forced to confront the division within his own family, and the active support given by his son and namesake to the royalist cause.38‘Letters of Thomas Stanley’, 363-6; HMC 7th Rep. 554; Bodl. Tanner 62, ff. 186, 275; CJ iii. 345a; CCC 1686; SP23/203, pp. 65, 70, 71.

Military service kept Lee away from Westminster for much of the first civil war, and aside from being present in the Commons in order to subscribe the covenants of 1643, his activity in the House was limited to only a few committee appointments, which predictably concerned matters such as the supply of horses (12 June 1643), complaints regarding members of the trained bands (22 June 1643), the repercussions of the Kentish rising, and accusations regarding the lukewarm nature of support offered to the parliamentarian cause by MPs like Sir Thomas Pelham* and Sir Thomas Parker*.39CJ iii. 118a, 125a, 139b, 195a, 349b, 666b. Although the requirements of the Self-Denying Ordinance forced Lee to resign his commission as governor of Upnor Castle in 1645, he remained active in Kentish affairs, and he probably continued to spend more time in the county than in the Commons. In a rare visit to Westminster in June 1645, he was named to the committee to negotiate the loan of £80,000 for the army of Sir Thomas Fairfax*.40CJ iv. 75a, 164a, 168b; LJ vii. 365a.

After the end of the first civil war, Lee emerged as a Presbyterian member of the Commons, although he was never a leading member of that group. His attendance was almost certainly motivated in part by his determination to secure money owing to him for his military service.41CJ v. 223a, 243a; SP28/252i, ff. 353, 362. Nevertheless, he also appears to have taken a keen interest in the disbandment of parliamentarian forces, including the garrison at Rochester, and he was named to a committee to consider the increasingly politicised matter of the public accounts.42CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 473; CJ iv. 632b; v. 62b. It was only in the summer of 1647 that Lee became prominent. He remained at Westminster after the ‘forcing of the Houses’ of 26 July, playing a role in the installation of Henry Pelham* as Speaker and being named to the Presbyterian-dominated ‘committee of safety’ (set up for mobilisation against the army), and he also joined the delegation from Parliament which joined the London militia committee on 3 August.43CJ v. 259b, 266a, 267b; LJ ix. 370b. The return of the Independent members, in the wake of the army’s march on London in early August, prompted Lee to withdraw from the Commons, and he was absent at the call of the House on 9 October, although his fine was subsequently remitted.44CJ v. 330a-b.

Thereafter, Lee played little further part in the proceedings of the Commons. He continued to pursue his arrears of pay into the spring of 1648.45HMC Portland, i. 446; CJ v. 499a. As political tension rose in Kent on the eve of the second civil war, he monitored the situation in Rochester, on the orders of the Committee of Both Kingdoms, and was involved in preparing the official parliamentary response to the demands of the Kentish petitioners, who included his son. He and Thomas Westrow* also went to Kent in an attempt to prevent bloodshed.46CJ v. 568b, 569a, 573a, 581a; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 68-9; Cent. Kent. Stud. U120/C5/1; A Declaration of the Several Proceedings of Both Houses with those in Kent (1648), 9-10 (E.446.1); The Humble Petition of the Knights, Gentry, Clergy and Commonalty … of Kent (1648), 5 (E.441.25); M. Carter, A Most True and Exact Relation (1650), 18-20. Once order was restored, however, Lee appears to have been largely absent from the Commons, other than on 10 June, when he was named to a committee to prepare for the trial of the royalist commander Sir John Owen.47CJ v. 593a. His absence was excused in late September, on grounds of illness, and he appears to have been granted a pass to travel to France.48CJ vi. 34a; LJ x. 521a. He was probably absent at Pride’s Purge, and did not return to the Commons before his death, which occurred sometime between 13 July 1652, when he prepared a will, and 16 May 1653, when it was proved.49PROB11/227/78. Lee requested to be buried ‘without pomp or any unnecessary solemnity’, and left his estate in Chatham and Rochester to his son, Richard, who continued to lie under suspicion and government surveillance throughout the 1650s, and who also suffered brief periods of imprisonment for his outspoken attacks on Oliver Cromwell*.50PROB11/227/78; CCC 460; Add. 4157, f. 172-v; A. Rhodes, ‘Suspected persons in Kent’, Arch. Cant. xxiii. 75; E113/9, unfol.; Vis. Kent 1663 (Harl. Soc. liv), 102. No other member of his immediate family sat in Parliament.