REED, Richard (1615-97), of New Court, Lugwardine, Herefs.

The Reed family was seated until the civil war at Bronsil castle, near Ledbury, where Richard Reed (who routinely spelled his name thus) was born.14Worcs. RO, BA8/705:24/1054; Add. 70123, unbound: Reed to Edward Harley, n.d. This was a stronghold built during the reign of Henry VI by John Beauchamp, 1st Baron Beauchamp, which came to the Reeds by the marriage of William Reed of Lugwardine with the daughter of the second baron. A tale perpetuated by Richard Reed was that his grandfather, Gabriel Reed, troubled by ghosts in the castle, was advised to acquire a bone of the builder. He did so, and thus solved his problem. Richard Reed lost a chair of Beauchamp’s when Bronsil was destroyed by fire in the civil war, but the family still kept one of the baron’s vertebrae as late as 1738.15Duncumb, Collections, v. 72-3; Robinson, Mansions and Manors, 109. Lugwardine manor, once a property of the Brydges family, had been acquired by Richard Reed’s father, and towards the end of his life, Richard Reed regarded James Brydges, 8th Baron Chandos, as a particular friend.16Duncumb, Collections, v. 98; PROB11/441/251; Robinson, Mansions and Manors, 189. In their public aspirations, the Reeds were typical of the middle ranks of the Herefordshire gentry. William Reed, Richard’s father, was sheriff in 1627, and in the commission of the peace until his death in 1634, and Richard went to Brasenose, Oxford, and Lincoln’s Inn, remembering the college in his will over 60 years later. His marriage to a cousin, of the Bredon branch of the Reeds, brought him Worcestershire properties and an interest in the Reed almshouses there.17Lists of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 61; Coventry Docquets, 64; PROB11/441/251. In 1637, Reed was granted chambers at the college of the vicars choral, a property-owning corporation in its own right, in Hereford cathedral.18Duncumb, Collections, v. 98.

Richard Reed was named to no commissions issuing from chancery until 1643, when the royalists claimed his allegiance in a list of justices compiled at the king’s court in Oxford. In 1654, critics who forwarded to the protector’s council evidence of dabbling in royalist activities by Bennet Hoskins*, could find nothing to compromise Reed, elected at the same time. In other words. Reed probably kept his head down during the war, busying himself in property interests. To his cousin, James Scudamore of Ballingham, Reed was ‘full of tricks’, anxious in 1648 lest he be liable for old debts incurred by his father when sheriff.19Hereford City Lib. Webbs collection, ‘County of Hereford civil war’, vols. 82-3, 87-8, 103-5. Reed was favoured by the Hereford sequestration committee in 1646 with a lease of three messuages and farms in Little Cowarne, and it is clear that he was well regarded by Sir Robert Harley*, who nominated him to be sheriff in September 1647 after conferring with William Crowther*.20Add. 16178, f. 73; Add. 70005, f. 75 (4th foliation). Despite this seal of approval by the Harleys, Reed evidently had local enemies. In March 1647 his contribution of £20 to rid the county of the soldiers brought in by John Birch* was listed with those of people of dubious loyalties. A year later Reed was on a list compiled by the Gloucester county committee as having been discharged by the commissioners for sequestration despite their perceived delinquency.21Add. 70061, loose: list of 29 Mar. 1647; CCC 86.

Having lost his place in the commission of peace for Herefordshire when Parliament took control of the county from December 1645, Reed only recovered it after the execution of the king. There is nothing to suggest that he shared the radical outlook of the new county leaders such as Wroth Rogers* or John Herring*. Rather, he represented the traditional gentry interest, standing in, as it were, for men like Sir Robert and Edward Harley*, whose power and influence had been forfeited by their hostility to the army. Reed did not join Rogers and Herring in congratulating Oliver Cromwell* for turning out the Rump and thus inaugurating the commonwealth of Saints. The protectorate was much more to his taste, and he appeared in the summer of 1654 as a commissioner in the council’s ordinance for settling the ordained ministry in the counties. His election on 12 July 1654 to the fourth and last seat for the county under the terms of the Instrument of Government indicated his standing, behind even such a minor gentleman as John Pateshall.22C219/44/1. Reed may have been elected entirely on his own interest, without help from the godly faction that propelled John Flackett into the House. When Benjamin Mason* and others of the radical group complained to the council not only of newly-elected ‘papists, malignants and men actually in arms for the late king’, but also ‘such as have politically continued neuters’, they must have considered Reed a prime example of the latter group.23SP18/74/110. Their complaints bore no fruit, however.

Reed’s profile in his first and only Parliament was modest. He started strongly enough, being named with John Birch to the committee of privileges (5 Sept.), but then was apparently inactive until 25 October, when with Birch, Flackett and Hoskins, other Members from his county, he was added to a committee required to review the legislation on the law an administration of debt.24CJ vii. 366b, 378b. This interest in legal matters was continued in his appearance on a committee on abuses in actions on chancery writs (3 Nov.) with the much more zealous Hoskins. On 27 November, it was probably Reed rather than Thomas Reade* who acted as a teller for the yeas on a motion to bring in candles, when the House was taking a series of divisions on the parliamentary franchise to be included in the Government Bill, although it is difficult to interpret this action as having any political significance.25CJ vii. 381b, 391b. When a committee on allowing towns to tax themselves to supply deficiencies in stipends for the clergy recruited new members, Reed, Hoskins and Flackett were all added, suggesting that Hereford may have been interested in the possibilities this raised. Reed played a leading role in the examination of the blasphemy of the Socinian, John Biddle, reporting the obduracy of the author, his publisher and printer, and conveying to the House the committee’s hostile verdict on Biddle’s blasphemy and heresy.26CJ vii. 400a, 404a, 416a. No fewer than five Members from Herefordshire, including Reed, were named to the committee on public finance (18 Jan. 1655), but this proved to be his last appointment of his parliamentary career.27CJ vii. 419a.

During the emergency of 1655-6, Reed was not trusted with appointment to the county militia commission or to assist Major-general James Berry*. When elections were held for the second Parliament of the protectorate, Reed appeared as a candidate with Edward Harley and John Scudamore*. They formed an unmistakeable bloc against the military interest, and were supported by William Gregory†, involved in land transactions with Reed and who would later become Speaker, in 1679. Harley and Reed were overborne by the tactics of the sheriff, Wroth Rogers, who denied demands for the poll on several occasions.28Add. 70007, f. 80; Herefs. RO, L38/45, 47. Reed was never out of local office completely, but had to wait until the Restoration of the monarchy for a full return to his previous county standing. In elections to the Convention of 1660, Robert Harley mentioned Reed to his brother Edward as a possible running-mate for the Herefordshire seats, suggesting John Scudamore and Bennet Hoskins as alternatives. In the event, only Harley from the moderate royalist camp went forward to the election, but Reed was rehabilitated as a magistrate and militia commissioner.29Add. 70007, f. 76. He took an active interest in Herefordshire politics after 1660, his position in the commission of the peace tied to those of the Harleys. In 1664 he petitioned the 1st earl of Clarendon (Edward Hyde*), to confirm that money raised to pay off the soldiers of John Birch in 1647 should be employed in making the Wye navigable.30Bodl. Clarendon 81, f. 34. Towards the end of his life, Reed approved of justices of the peace that were ‘strongly averse to popery’, and was a diligent magistrate himself, holding court ‘every day almost’ in his own house.31Add. 70123, unbound: Reed to Edward Harley, n.d. He did so even when he considered himself in decline, after the loss of his daughter, ‘cast away by those that were most concerned in her life’.32Add. 70123, unbound: same to same, 16 Oct. 1685. He was a friend of Edward Harley’s until his death, which occurred on 22 March 1697. None of his descendants is known to have sat in Parliament.