ARCHER, John (1598-1682), of Coopersale, Theydon Garnon, Essex and Gt. Ponton, Lincs.

The oft-repeated family tradition, which may even have been true, was that Archer’s great-great-great-grandfather, Simon de Boys, had changed his surname to Archer at the command of Henry V after defeating him in an archery contest.48Morant, Essex, i. 160; Vis. Essex ed. Metcalfe, 632. By then the family had already gained possession of Coopersale Hall at Theydon Garnon, Essex, which served as their principal seat over the next three centuries.49VCH Essex, iv. 268; Vis. Essex ed. Metcalfe, 632; Hunter, Familiae Minorum Gentium, iv. 1257-8. The marriage of Henry Archer to Anne Crouch, daughter of a London merchant, may in the long term have brought social as well as financial benefits to the family, for Anne Crouch was probably a cousin to both Margaret Crouch and (another) Anne Crouch, who in the 1620s married the 1st Baron Montagu (Sir Edward Montagu†) and the 1st earl of Manchester (Sir Henry Montagu†) respectively. There is some evidence that Henry and Anne Archer’s son John was later on friendly terms with various members of the Montagu family.50Benham, ‘Diary’, 193. John Archer inherited the Coopersale estate when he came of age in 1619, his father having died four years before.51Morant, Essex, i. 161. Nonetheless, he continued with his training as a lawyer.52G. Inn Admiss. 150; Foss, Judges of Eng. vii. 51.

Through his first wife, a daughter of Sir George Savile† and a cousin, through her mother, of Sir Edward Ayscough*, Archer could claim kinship with two of the leading families of Lincolnshire. Probably through this marriage he acquired his estate at Great Ponton, to the south of Grantham and only a few miles from the Savile estates at Barrowby. He settled there rather than in Essex. Sometimes he pursued his legal career locally, as when he acted as counsel for the inhabitants of the Kesteven division at the meeting of the Lincolnshire sewer commissioners at Sleaford in 1639. He obtained for them an agreement that the responsibility for cleaning existing dykes lay with the promoter of the new fen-drainage scheme, Robert Bertie, 1st earl of Lindsey.53CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 562.

At the outbreak of the civil war Archer sided with Parliament and aided the cause in Lincolnshire. From 1643 he was named to all the major parliamentarian commissions covering the southern half of the county and he was soon acting as the usual chairman of the county standing committee.54A. and O.; Holmes, Lincs. 187; The Plundered Ministers of Lincs. ed. W.E. Foster (Guildford, n.d.), 83. As such he can be identified among the group of Lincolnshire Presbyterians, including Ayscough, Sir Anthony Irby*, Sir Christopher Wray*, Sir John Wray* and William Ellys*, who by 1644 had allied themselves with the local Independents against their fellow Presbyterian, William King.55J. Lilburne, The Just Man’s Justification (1648), 2, 8 (E.340.12); C. Holmes, ‘Col. King and Lincs. politics, 1642-1646’, HJ xvi. 464-5. In so doing, Archer was in effect aligning himself against his distant kinsman, the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†), for King’s aim was to promote Manchester as a counterweight to Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham. In the autumn of 1644 King pursued this dispute by denouncing the Lincolnshire committee to Parliament. As its chairman, Archer became one of the principal targets for King’s attacks.56Holmes, ‘Col. King’, 467-8. The following January the Commons went out of their way to show their support for Archer, however, sending Ellys and Henry Pelham to inform him that he should return to Lincolnshire with ‘encouragement from this House cheerfully to go on the service of the Parliament’.57CJ iv. 16b. Nevertheless, the vendetta rumbled on. When King set out his complaints against his enemies on the county committee in print in early 1647, he singled out Archer, accusing him of abusing his position by combining his chairmanship of the county committee with work as a counsel taking fees to represent his clients before it.58E. King, A discovery of the arbitrary, tyrannicall and illegal actions of some of the Cttee. of the Co. of Lincoln (1647), 5-6 (E.373.3). To King, Archer was the leading figure among those who had

imprisoned, beaten, and evilly entreated their fellow subjects, disinheriting them of their lands, spoiling them in their goods, and restraining them of their liberties, contrary to the great charter, the law of the land, and the ordinances of Parliament.59King, Discovery, 6.

Archer’s behaviour in the chair was consistently portrayed as being high-handed and impatient.60King, Discovery, 6-11.

In 1647 Archer was acting as counsel for corporation of Grantham, while a notebook in which he recorded between 1648 and 1655 details of the cases he was handling shows that there was then no shortage of clients for his services.61Foss, Judges of Eng. vii. 52; Essex RO, D/DB B1. He was promoted to the bench of Gray’s Inn in late 1648, by which time his public duties in Lincolnshire were providing fewer distractions from work in the courts.62PBG Inn, 369. In the immediate aftermath of the king’s execution he refused to take the Engagement and was removed from all his local offices. In July 1651 he and Thomas Waller* were summoned to serve as counsel for the defence at the trial of the Presbyterian conspirator Christopher Love, but their previous refusal to take the Engagement then led to their replacement by Matthew Hale*.63State Trials, v. 210-11. It was only with his appointment as a commissioner for scandalous ministers for Lincolnshire that Archer was readmitted to local office.64A. and O.

Archer was well enough regarded as a lawyer by 1655 that he was considered as a possible replacement for William Steele* as recorder of London, before losing out to Lislebone Long*.65CLRO, COL/CA/01/01/067, f. 347v. Until then, his service as a local official had been exclusively in Lincolnshire. His relative unimportance in the county of his birth meant that he was only appointed as a justice of the peace for Essex in July 1656, when the writs for the new Parliament were being sent out, and even then he failed to attend any of the meetings of the Essex quarter sessions.66Essex QSOB ed. Allen, p. xxxiii. None of this prevented him standing successfully for one of the Essex seats in those elections: indeed, lack of association with local administration quite possibly worked to his advantage. There may be a more fundamental explanation, however. While retaining his estates in Lincolnshire, Archer now chose to spend his time at Theydon Garnon and it was in Essex and later in Suffolk that he made further purchases of land.67VCH Essex, iv. 14, 289; PROB11/365/381.

Archer did not take his seat in Parliament until 20 January 1658, which probably indicates that he had been among those excluded during the previous session.68Benham, ‘Diary’, 166. Little is known of his activity in the House in the truncated second session of this Parliament. This lack of information is all the more disappointing given that Archer was now keeping two versions of a diary. These mention the session held in January 1658, but only in the most cursory manner. His brief description of the opening ceremony on 20 January adds nothing to what is known from other sources, although he does record that he dined later that day with Ellys, Sir Thomas Widdrington*, the 1st marquess of Dorchester (Henry Pierrepoint†), John Bradshawe* and Thomas Lister*. Subsequent entries do little more than to establish that he was present in the House every day it was in session and that the major issue under discussion was the term to be used to describe the Other House.69Benham, ‘Diary’, 166, 180. Unlike in the previous session, he was included on a number of committees, namely the committee for privileges on 21 January, and those on the bills for the registration of marriages and against the non-residence of the heads of Oxford and Cambridge colleges appointed the following day.70CJ vii. 580b, 581a-b. His reaction to the dissolution of the Parliament on 4 February was to note that Oliver Cromwell* had acted ‘upon supposal that a party was setting up a commonwealth’.71Benham, ‘Diary’, 166. In the weeks following the dissolution his expert advice was sought by the council of state in the matter of the Norwich charter, and he seems to have acted for Cromwell’s daughter, Mary, Lady Fauconberg, on business arising from her jointure.72CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 291; Benham, ‘Diary’, 182. Such work helped boost his earnings, which during 1658 amounted to £1,257 in fees alone.73Benham, ‘Diary’, 188.

Archer seems to have mourned the passing of Cromwell – the account of the lord protector’s death in his diary is restrained but respectful.74Benham, ‘Diary’, 170. The new lord protector and his advisers seem to have regarded him as a suitable candidate for promotion. It may be significant that for some reason he had a meeting with Richard Cromwell* at Whitehall on 18 September 1658.75Benham, ‘Diary’, 187. The first outward indication of his closeness to the new regime came two months later when he was one of those appointed as a serjeant-at-law. (His wife’s uncle John Crew*, and William Pierrepoint* acted as his sponsors at the ceremony of admission in the court of common pleas.)76Baker, Serjeants at Law, 191; Benham, ‘Diary’, 172-3, 187-8, 190; Whitelocke, Diary, 501. The following January John Thurloe* suggested his name to Henry Cromwell* as a possible successor to the late Richard Pepys* in the position of chief justice of the court of upper bench in Ireland.77TSP vii. 593. But instead Archer became one of the justices of common pleas in England. He held this position throughout the dying days of the commonwealth until his appointment was nullified by the king’s return in the spring of 1660.78Sainty, Judges, 77; Whitelocke, Diary, 515, 562.

Archer found himself overlooked in the initial judicial appointments made under the restored monarchy, although he was reappointed as a serjeant-at-law.79Baker, Serjeants at Law, 404-6, 443; Whitelocke, Diary, 608. However, in November 1663 he regained his old judicial office, receiving the customary knighthood when he took it up.80Sainty, Judges, 77. Assessments of Archer’s conduct as judge after the Restoration have usually relied on the unflattering comments by Roger North†, evidently based on the experiences of his brother, Sir Francis North†, although, in fairness, it can be pointed out that Archer is on record as having spoken highly of Sir Francis.81Lives of the Norths, i. 59-60, 63-4; Two E. Anglian Diaries 1641-1729, ed. M. Storey (Suff. Rec. Soc. xxxvi), 134-5. He was less servile than some of his colleagues, for he was dismissed from the bench in late 1672 because he was thought to have doubts about the legality of the king’s Declaration of Indulgence.82A.F. Havighurst, ‘The judiciary and politics in the reign of Charles II’, Law Quarterly Review, lxvi. 72-3. His place was taken by his old friend, (Sir) William Ellys. Archer never accepted that his dismissal was valid and continued to describe himself as a justice of common pleas until his death in 1682.83Foss, Judges of Eng. vii. 52-3; PROB11/365/381.

Archer had already settled his estates. His will confirmed that his lands should eventually pass to his only son, John, but that the estates in Essex and Suffolk should first be used to make generous provision for his wife during her lifetime. He asked his father-in-law and Waller to assist Lady Archer in her duties as his executrix.84PROB11/365/381. His body was laid to rest beneath a large monument to his memory in the chancel of the church at Theydon Garnon.85RCHME Essex, ii. 232. John junior died in 1703 leaving no children, but William Eyre, husband of Archer’s granddaughter, Eleanor (only daughter of his only daughter, Eleanor Wrothesley), changed his surname to inherit the Archer estates, and sat as William Archer† in the 1734 Parliament. Two generations later their granddaughter, Susanna, married a member of the Houblon family, producing a son, John†, who took the surname of Archer Houblon by royal licence in 1801. The combined Archer and Houblon inheritances ensured that they remained one of the major landowning families in Essex into the twentieth century.