MARTYN, Gabriel (d. 1694), of Upham, Aldbourne, Wilts.

Martyns (variously spelt) were established as gentry at Aldbourne in north east Wiltshire before the mid sixteenth century.14M. Temple Admiss. i. 54. In 1600 the MP's grandfather, Henry Martyn (d. 1626) added the manor of Eastcott in the parish to his lands at Upham and Snap, and he served as a justice of the peace.15Abstracts Wilts. IPMs Chas I, 395-6; VCH Wilts. ix. 122; The Earl of Hertford's Lieutenancy Papers 1603-1612 (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xxiii), 38-9, 176-7. Perhaps owing to some financial difficulty, Henry's eldest son Edward, the MP's father, sold significant parts of it in 1640-1 to various purchasers, including the demesne farm to John Yorke of Marlborough and William Yorke* of Basset Down.16VCH Wilts. ix. 122.

In May 1632 Gabriel Martyn followed in the footsteps of his father and uncle John to the Middle Temple. Specially admitted, unlike John he did not pursue his studies to the bar.17M. Temple Admiss. i. 57, 108, 126; MTR ii. 794. Named with his father in July 1644 as a commissioner for raising troops in Wiltshire to fight for Parliament and in October for assessment, by the latter month, and perhaps as early as July 1643, he was serving as a lieutenant in the cavalry regiment of the lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex – a unit commanded by Sir Philip Stapilton*.18A. and O.; SP 28/8/33; SP28/19, f. 47; M. Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army (Solihull, 2015-16), i. 150. Martyn later gave evidence when his captain, Lionel Copley, was prosecuted for misappropriation of money.19SP28/29, pt. 2, f. 356. On 18 March 1645 he was listed as a captain under Colonel James Sheffield in the New Model army.20LJ vii. 278b. Thereafter he presumably served with the regiment around Oxford and in the west country. In 1646 he was a signatory to a letter to the Committee for Compounding advancing mitigating circumstances against the sequestration of Wiltshire royalist Charles Seymour, and early in 1647 he was based in his native county.21Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. 175-6; Waylen, 'Falstone Day Bk.' 384; J. Waylen, A Hist. Military and Municipal of…Marlborough (1854), 237. Around that April he adhered to Sheffield and the minority of officers who supported Parliament's plan to disband the army. Although it is not known whether he accompanied his commander to London in early June, he was soon replaced as captain.22Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. 177-8; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 464.

Later in the summer Martyn rejoined his father in discharging the duties of an assessment commissioner: Anthony Ashley Cooper* encountered them both on 26 August at a meeting in Devizes on this business, although only the father was present three weeks later.23J. Waylen, 'Notes from the diary of Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, first earl of Shaftsbury', Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxviii. 25. By early 1648 Edward Martyn had gained some prominence on the standing committee at Marlborough and in June 1649 Gabriel too became a justice of the peace.24Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxvi. 388; C231/6, p. 160. He was immediately active at sessions and although he appeared only once at Salisbury (Jan. 1650) and not at all at Warminster, except when sitting at Westminster he attended each meeting at Devizes and Marlborough between April 1650 and April 1659.25Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxx. 311; xxxviii. 27; Names of the Justices, 62; C193/13/3, f. 70; C193/13/4, f. 110v; C193/13/6, f. 97; C193/13/5, f. 116v; Stowe 577, f. 58v; Wilts. RO, A1/160/1, ff. 151, 157, 169, 180, 191, 200, 208, 222, 233, 243; A1/160/2, pp. 41, 97, 113, 129, 143. He was commissioned in April 1650 as a lieutenant-colonel in the Wiltshire militia under Colonel William Eyre II*.26CSP Dom. 1650, p. 505 It is possible that in summer 1651 he was the Gabriel Martyn who escorted from Dover to London the body of Colonel Edward Popham*, the Wiltshire-born naval hero who had been his contemporary at the Middle Temple, but it is more probable that the escort was his namesake, a London mariner who much later went to Jamaica.27CSP Dom. 1651, p. 585; CSP Col. America and W. Indies 1669-74, p. 268.

In October 1653 Martyn approved the new registrar for the parish of Christ Church, Swindon, and he was to appear in other parish registers conducting marriages.28Christ Church Swindon, Bishopstone, Clyffe Pypard and Latton par. regs. It was doubtless his perceived loyalty and his high profile in local administration that accounted for his being nominated to the commission of triers and ejectors in August 1654; he seems to have been an active member.29A. and O.; W. Bushnell, A Narrative of the Proceedings of the Commissioners appointed by O. Cromwell (1660), 1-2. His election the same year to the first protectorate Parliament among the six men returned for Wiltshire also makes sense in this context. He received only two committee nominations, but these were to deal with two cornerstones of proposed reform – the investigation of the judges at Salters' Hall and their powers in relation to those imprisoned for debt (15 Sept.), and preparation of the ordinance for ejecting scandalous and insufficient ministers and schoolmasters (25 Sept.).30CJ vii. 368a, 370a.

Martyn was closely involved in intelligence gathering for the government at the height of the rising in Wiltshire in 1655.31CSP Dom. 1655, p. 80. In 1656 he was again elected to represent his county at Westminster. As before, his contribution to proceedings was modest, but, in the first session, not negligible. He was placed on the committee dealing with new measures for probate (27 Oct.), as well as those considering private petitions (22 Nov. 1656, 9 Feb. and 17 Mar. 1657).32CJ vii. 446a, 457b, 488a, 505b. He was among those MPs listed as voting for the kingship on 25 March.33The Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 22 (E.935.5). That month he was also nominated to work on the bill to enable the purchase of impropriations to maintain ministers and lecturers.34CJ vii. 515b. However, there is no sign of him in the Commons Journal during the second session.

Meanwhile, continued political prominence in Wiltshire failed to arrest the contraction in the Martyns' landed base. Immediately following enclosure of the manor of Eastcott in 1656-7, Gabriel sold some of his 81 acre allocation.35VCH Wilts. ix. 122, 124-5; Wilts RO, 348/II/16. He was an assessment commissioner again in 1657 and in January and June 1660, and a militia commissioner in March 1660, but his public career evidently ended soon after the Restoration.36A. and O.; An Ordinance for an Assessment (1660). Although in 1661 there was an order for the restitution of arms taken from him, the religious settlement of 1662 probably drove him further outside the county establishment.37Stowe 163, f. 222. When in 1663, after Edward Martyn's death, the manor was settled on Gabriel's eldest son, also Edward, the family holding consisted only of a house, three closes, three cottages and £4 in chief rent, although probably in the interim there had been an acquisition of demesne land at Upham and Snap from the widow of the Wiltshire and London minister Obadiah Sedgwick.38VCH Wilts. ix. 122; xii. 74; Wilts RO, 1461/76. Gabriel lived on to trouble the authorities. In November 1681 the bishop of London learned that, among many conventicles in Wiltshire, there was one at the former Captain Martyn's house at Upham and another at Marlborough, where he was currently living. The most seditious persons locally included an attorney called Foster, formerly his servant.39CSP Dom. 1680-1, p. 563; VCH Wilts. xii. 84. Martyn was buried at Aldbourne in March 1694.40Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxx. 311. No other member of his immediate family sat in Parliament.