SAUNDERS, Thomas (d.1660), of Uggaton, Payhembury, Devon.

The Saunders family was established at Payhembury, on the Devon-Somerset border, by the mid-sixteenth century. Baptisms of a family of that name were recorded there by 1560, but the many defects in the parish register make it impossible to construct a convincing pedigree.17Payhembury par. reg. Thomas Saunders’s family was not recognised by the heralds in 1620, but a contemporary family in Payhembury with the same surname was, albeit grudgingly, and they were doubtless related, if not closely.18Vis. Devon 1620 (Harl. Soc. vi), 252; PROB11/273/655. Lawrence Saunders and his wife Edith, whose maiden name has not been traced, ‘had a good estate’: sufficient, certainly, for them to send two of their sons, Humphrey and Richard, to Oxford.19E. Calamy, A Continuation of the Account of the Ministers (2 vols. 1727), i. 321; Calamy Revised, 426. Humphrey, the eldest, was born around 1605; Richard went up aged 16, but left the university in 1642 without taking a degree, from which we can infer that there was a significant age gap between the brothers. Thomas Saunders (who spelled his name thus) came between them in age, an order that is implied in a basic pedigree of Lawrence Saunders and his three sons.20Som. RO, DD WO53/8/2; Familiae Minorum Gentium, iii. 1054. Thomas appears to have remained unmarried and living with his parents in Payhembury until the civil war. In the rate book for the poll tax of 1641, there were two households of Saunders; one containing Lawrence and Edith, Thomas their son, a married and an unmarried daughter, and five servants.21Som. RO, DD WO53/1/125.

It was either Thomas Saunders or his father who rebuffed John Coventry* when he came into Devon in August 1642 to implement the king’s commission of array. Saunders’s unwillingness, ‘because of his children’, to provide lodgings to Coventry speaks loudly of an excuse that his house was full.22T.M. Certain Information from Devon and Dorset (1642), 4 (E.114.24). There is no doubt that this branch of the Saunders family was strongly opposed to the policies of the king in 1642. Humphrey Saunders was safe in the rectory of Holsworthy, in west Devon, to which he had been admitted in 1632, but Lawrence, Thomas and Richard Saunders were active in promoting in their district a declaration in April 1643 which rejected the peace treaty of the previous February, which had been agreed between the Cornish royalists and the leading Devon parliamentarians. The declaration was forthright in its condemnation of Sir Ralph Hopton* and the ‘subtle devices of pretended [mo]tions of peace’. Fearing that the king’s party were intent on ‘the overthrow of this and with it all Parliaments’ so they could reduce subjects to the ‘slavery which lies on the commons of France’, proponents of the declaration urged reliance on the two Houses of Parliament.23Som. RO, DD WO56/6/59. The Saunders’ neighbour and the leading gentry figure in Payhembury, John Willoughby, was notable in repudiating this declaration; his name appears on the dorse, but is firmly deleted. It must have been some months after this that Saunders’s brother, the clergyman, Richard, was imprisoned in Exeter, after the royalists took control of the city in September.24Calamy Revised, 426.

It was probably in the aftermath of the fall of Exeter that Saunders fled Devon, joining the garrison at Lyme Regis commanded by Thomas Ceely*, where he was given the rank of major. Towards the end of the first civil war he served at Exmouth; by February 1648 he was major at Exeter garrison; and by May of the same year he was providing information about unrest in the city and acting as a messenger for Sir Hardress Waller*, although he does not seem to have held a commission in Waller’s regiment.25Wanklyn, New Model Army, i. 86, 164n; Bodl. Tanner 57, ff. 127-9; LJ x. 271a. From the mid-1640s he has to be distinguished from Thomas Sanders* of Derbyshire, who had a much more distinguished military career: Saunders seems only to have served in west country garrisons.26Wanklyn, New Model Army, i. 164n. He was left in charge of Exeter when Waller withdrew to go further west, but encountered hostility, despite his local credentials. The mayor extracted a promise from Saunders that his soldiers would defend the city, ‘the key of the west’, if any design were launched against it.27Bodl. Tanner 57, ff. 127-9. In May, with his friend Sampson Larke, Saunders put his hand to a deposition in which he detailed the bad blood between the citizenry and the soldiers that had arisen over matters of pay and billeting. He was trusted by Waller as one of the intermediaries who negotiated on behalf of the army with the city fathers, in an atmosphere so tense that all transactions had at the insistence of the latter, to be on paper only.28LJ x. 271a; Devon RO, Exeter City Archives, Act Bk. ix. p. 28.

When Waller finally left the south west, Saunders was left as garrison commander at Exeter. His brother, Humphrey, signed The Joint-Testimonie of the Ministers of Devon of June 1648, a Presbyterian manifesto. Saunders himself remained in his military post, and must have helped the sheriff of Exeter proclaim the act against monarchy, sent to Exeter by Parliament after the execution of the king late in January 1649. He informed Waller of how the printed copy of the act had been subsequently torn down and of how ‘people’s hearts are very sad (I mean malignants’) for the loss of their king’.29Bodl. Tanner 57, ff. 506-8. If the tone of his letter is any guide to his own thinking, Saunders evinced no personal enthusiasm for the regicide, but accepted it as a dutiful army officer would accept any political change. The following year, he was given charge of the Devon militia foot and a troop of dragoons, and was admitted to the Devon bench of magistrates. During the remainder of the Rump Parliament, he attended quarter sessions regularly, apparently a committed supporter of the government.30Devon RO, QS order bks. 1/8, 1/9. His selection as one of the Devon Members of the Nominated Assembly was more a recognition of his reliability than of his radicalism. He played a very small part in the Parliament, his most notable appointment his place on the committee for Scottish affairs in its original form and after it was reorganized (9 July, 20 July 1653).31CJ vii. 283b, 286b. He was added to the committee to consider recompense to Col. Anthony Buller* (4 Aug.), and his only service as a teller came on 19 September when he told successfully for the noes in a division on whether the House should adjourn for a day, when he partnered William Kenwricke.32CJ vii. 295b, 321a.

After the Parliament had wound itself up, Saunders’s name was on the list of those who were said to have been in favour of ‘a godly learned ministry and the universities’: in other words, a state-maintained church.33TSP iii. 132. This conservative approach to religious matters was consistent with his earlier history, and enabled him to transfer his loyalties smoothly to the Cromwellian protectorate after the radical expectations of 1653 had soured. In Payhembury, by virtue of his office as a magistrate, he married couples under the terms of the legislation on marriage passed by the 1653 Parliament.34Payhembury par. reg. He continued to attend quarter sessions until he was elected to the first protectorate Parliament, when he was named eighth on the list of 11 returned as knights of the shire.35C219/44, box 1. Saunders was named to a number of important committees in this assembly. He sat on the committee for Irish affairs (28 Sept.) and the elections and privileges committee (5 Oct.).36CJ vii. 371b, 373b. Two committees to which he was nominated were concerned with reviewing recent legislation: one (15 Sept.) investigated the proceedings of the judges for poor prisoners, an innovation of the Nominated Assembly, while another (5 Oct.) scrutinised the protectoral ordinance on chancery reform.37CJ vii. 368a, 374a. Coming as he did from a county with a strong pastoral economy, Saunders was a natural nominee for the committee reviewing the corn trade and the export laws on butter and cheese (6 Oct), and in November he served on two further committees on petitions from individuals.38CJ vii. 374b, 381a, 387a. Saunders’s personal attitude towards the protectorate is hard to gauge from this committee activity alone, but his appointment as receiver-general of the state’s revenues, first in Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset, and later in Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, demonstrates that the government regarded him as dependable.39Add. 4184, no. 71; C82/2251.

In the security emergency of 1655, Saunders’s profile rose significantly in Devon. In April, he was one of the magistrates who endorsed the government’s effort to reform juries so as to be rid of suspect elements, and he was confirmed in his militia appointment, continuing to be called Major Saunders, even though his actual rank appeared to be that of captain.40Add. 44058, f. 42v; SP25/77 p. 867. When John Disbrowe* became major-general for the south western counties, Saunders served under him as a commissioner for preserving the peace of the commonwealth. He monitored the movements of those suspected of disaffection, and took a bond for good behaviour from his old neighbour and gentry superior, the former royalist, John Willoughby.41Add. 19516, f. 31; Som. RO, DD WO53/8/2. Disbrowe evidently invested much trust in Saunders, relying on him to attend Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell* on business connected with the Devon militia.42TSP iii. 309. He was returned to the 1656 Parliament, therefore, as a supporter of the government. As in previous Parliaments, his profile was modest. He was named to eleven committees all told, and his early nomination to the committees for Scottish and Irish affairs simply recognized his earlier service in those areas of policy.43CJ vii. 427a. His other areas of interest appear to have been practical, in largely politically uncontroversial areas such as bills for managing timber supplies (27 Sept. 1656), abuses in the conduct of attorneys and stewards (13 Oct.), improving revenue from confiscated estates (22 Oct.) and the repairing of highways (2 Jan. 1657).44CJ vii. 429b, 438a, 444a, 478a. As a manager himself of confiscated revenues in Devon, his interest in that topic was practical and informed. Saunders was granted leave to go into the country on 27 January 1657, and he did not reappear at Westminster during the first sitting of this Parliament.45CJ vii. 482b.

With a number of other Devon Members, including Thomas Shapcote and Thomas Bampfylde, in October 1656 Saunders had been named to the committee on the controversial book, Thunder from the Throne of God, by the radical pamphleteer, Samuel Chidley; and to a committee on ministers’ maintenance and tithes.46CJ vii. 442b, 448a. In the area of religious policy, Saunders was undoubtedly typical of the conservative puritanism which marked the majority of Devon Members at this time. Although he is not known to have been involved in the discussions over the fate of James Naylor, he was identified by the Friends as hostile to their cause. At some point in 1655-6, probably before the first protectorate Parliament met, acting with other magistrates including William Morice*, he was reported by the Quakers to have imprisoned 21 of their number to gaol in Exeter. Referring to his part in the confrontations between soldiers and citizens at Exeter in 1648, the Friends accused Saunders of hypocrisy, reminding him of the time when ‘those at Exon rose up against him and his soldiers as heretics and schismatics’.47The West Answering to the North (1657), 85, 107 (E.900.3). The linking of Saunders’s name with that of William Morice is intriguing, because Morice was at this time engaged in a theological controversy with Saunders’s clergyman brother, Humphrey, over the basis of admission to the Lord’s Supper.48Calamy Revised, 426; ‘William Morice’, supra.

Saunders was as disliked as much by adherents of the episcopal church as he was by the Quakers. He was personally involved in a number of confrontational ejections of clergy. The minister of Stockleigh Pomeroy was ejected by him, as was Robert Parsons, the minister of Kentisbeare, a parish near Payhembury, turned out and replaced by Saunders’s own brother, Richard. As a result of Saunders’s appearance at the rectory with a troop of horse, Parsons’s wife miscarried and died soon afterwards.49Bodl. Walker, c.2, ff. 237, 263; J. Walker, Sufferings of the Clergy (1714), ii. 327. A particular ally of Saunders in these ejections was John Serle of Buckerell, a stalwart among the Devon commissioners for sequestrations under the Rump, who was alleged to have been Saunders’s father-in-law.50Bodl. Walker, c.2, f. 311; S.K. Roberts, Recovery and Restoration in an English County (Exeter, 1985), 40-2. Serle and Saunders were said to have worked together to eject the ministers of Awliscombe and Feniton, and Saunders was reputed to be the ‘mortal enemy’ of the rector of the latter parish, Charles Churchill. In order to evict Churchill from his living, Saunders and Serle apparently accused him of being a gamer, bringing evidence that his children played cards for pins.51Bodl. Walker, c.2, ff. 247, 311. Although the evidence of these ejections was harvested many years later by the Anglican apologist, John Walker, Saunders’s name occurs in Walker’s papers too frequently for his involvement to be dismissed. Edmund Calamy, who of course took the opposite view of clergy ejections to that of Walker, and commemorated the sufferings of puritan ministers after 1660, found that Richard Saunders, who left the living of Kentisbeare in 1660, managed to continue with a preaching career in east Devon, finding ‘favour and connivance’ from the gentry who had benefited during the interregnum from the ‘civilities’ of Major Thomas Saunders.52Calamy, Continuation, i. 321.

In January 1658, Saunders was named a commissioner for administering to MPs the oath of loyalty to the protector at the start of the second session of the second protectoral Parliament. He seems not to have been called upon to act in this capacity, however, and played no further part in the assembly.53CJ vii. 578a. He attended quarter sessions regularly until the end of 1658, but then fell ill. He made his will in July 1658, leaving his farm at Uggaton to his wife during her lifetime, and afterwards to his nephew, the son of Humphrey Saunders.54PROB11/302/532. He had bought the crown lands of Bradninch manor, with his army comrade, John Gorges, for over £19,000, and left these to his cousins, the Land family of Silverton, but the lands reverted to the crown at the Restoration of the monarchy. Among the witnesses of his will were Sampson Larke, who went on to suffer death for his part in Monmouth’s Rising, and Joseph Coombe, his clerk when he was a commissioner under Major-general Disbrowe.55The Bloody Assizes ed. J.G. Muddiman (1929), 31, 87, 90, 91; Som. RO, DD WO53/8/2. Saunders was dead by 8 December 1660, when his will was proved. He had no descendants.56PROB11/302/532.