DRAKE, William (1606-69), of Shardeloes, nr. Amersham, Bucks.

Drake’s grandfather, Richard Drake†, a younger son of the Drakes of Ashe, Devon, and a cousin of Sir Francis Drake†, the celebrated explorer, had served Elizabeth I as an equerry and as a groom of the privy chamber. He had also sat for Morpeth and Castle Rising in the Parliaments of 1572 and 1584. He had meanwhile acquired lands in Surrey, buying the manor of Esher (Esher Place) in 1583 and acquiring a lease on the rectory manor of Walton-on-Thames the following year.29Blackman, ‘Drake fam.’, 89-92. His only son, Francis†, who had been named after his famous relative and godfather, strengthened that link with Walton by buying the freehold of the rectory manor and by leasing the manor of Walton-on-Thames from the crown for the lifetimes of his two sons.30Blackman, ‘Drake fam.’, 92-3; VCH Surr. iii. 470. He too became an MP, sitting four times between 1624 and 1628. The childhoods of his two sons, William* and Francis*, were troubled. Their mother, Joan Drake, suffered from severe religious mania, arising from her conviction that she was certain to be damned.31[J. Hart], Trodden Down Strength (1647, E.1156.1). She finally died in 1626.32Vis. Bucks. 1634, 136.

William Drake’s inheritance was a substantial one. In 1626, at the age of just 20, he was left a half-share of the Buckinghamshire estates of his maternal grandfather, William Tothill, a wealthy chancery official. Six years later he bought out his aunt, Katherine Tothill, of the other half-share.33VCH Bucks. ii. 357, iii. 149. The house at Shardeloes then became his principal residence. This enabled their father to make provision for William’s younger brother, Francis, by dividing his lands in Surrey between them. While still alive, Francis senior gave William the manor of Walton-on-Thames, but when he died in 1634 he left the other lands to Francis junior. Moreover, William later sold his lands at Walton to his brother.34Blackman, ‘Drake fam.’, 93. The two brothers do not seem to have been close. The sale of the Walton lands may then have made it possible for William to buy the manor of Amersham in Buckinghamshire, which he purchased from the 4th earl of Bedford (Sir Francis Russell†) and Lord Russell (William Russell*) in 1637.35Coventry Docquets, 705; Eland, ‘Shardeloes muniments’, 288.

Drake is now best known for an aspect of his life that would have been largely hidden from his contemporaries. His many volumes of notes on dozens of books survive, albeit in several different archives.36S. Clark, ‘Wisdom literature of the seventeenth century: a guide to the contents of the “Bacon-Tottel” commonplace books’, Trans. Cambridge Bibliographical Soc. vi. (1976), 291-305, vii., 46-73. As a result, as much is known about his reading habits as for anyone else in seventeenth-century Britain and hence, he has attracted significant scholarly attention.37Sharpe, Reading Revolutions. He read most of the major classical historians, as well as many of the modern commentators on them, he had read widely about modern history and he was intimately familiar with most of the major works on political theory. One writer with whom he had a personal connection and in whom he took a particular interest was the late Sir Francis Bacon†, Viscount St Alban, as his grandfather, William Tothill, had been Bacon’s steward. But the writers he most admired were Machiavelli and Guicciardini. From them, Drake adopted a similarly sceptical view of politics.

Concerning his own character, Drake thought it a fault that he tended ‘to fall a censuring the times when a discreet modesty and excusing would do better’. He then added, with more than a touch of cynicism, ‘tis not depth but pertinency and an ingenious simplicity and freedom that takes with men’.38HEHL, MS HM 55603, f. 27. Those comments come from one of his earliest and most interesting commonplace books, which covers the 1630s and early 1640s and which reveals is something of the circles in which he was then moving. Whatever the actual extent of his ‘simplicity and freedom’, plenty of well-connected contemporaries seem to have taken to him. His closest friend, ‘Mr Pots’, was probably Charles Potts, a Middle Temple barrister and the unmarried younger brother of John Potts*.39HEHL, MS HM 55603, ff. *9, *21. John Hampden* lived only a few miles from Shardeloes and occasionally gave Drake friendly advice about the management of his estates and about local affairs.40HEHL, MS HM 55603, ff. 4v, *1, *9v, *19. Drake also seems to have known Oliver St John*.41HEHL, MS HM 55603, ff. 4v, 27, *1, *11. He meanwhile had contact with some of the Cottons, including it would seem Sir Thomas Cotton*.42HEHL, MS HM 55603, ff. *1; UCL, MS Ogden 7/7, ff. 160, 161. Other acquaintances included John White II* and Sir Simonds D’Ewes*, both of whom had acted as his sureties when he had originally been admitted to the Middle Temple.43MT Recs. ii. 703. He probably also knew Edward Hyde*, who had been admitted to the Middle Temple on the same day as himself.44HEHL, MS HM 55603, f. 36; MT Adm. i. 117. In December 1639 he even tried to cultivate the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, by personally presenting him with a copy of the 1517 statutes of Corpus Christi College, Oxford.45HEHL, MS HM 55603, f. *27v.

Some of this networking was undertaken to further his undoubted personal ambitions. The opening pages of his commonplace book notes included an explanation of his intentions.

A man’s youth and single life should be his seedtime to lay the foundations and sow the seeds for the raising and making a future fortune; for then is the time by a man’s invention, frugality and industry to better his estate, and by diversity of able acquaintance and seeing much action and experience enable himself to serve his country.46HEHL, MS HM 55603, f. 1v.

His broad reading should be understood as an extension of this. Studying history and philosophy was not an escape from public life but the essential preparation for it. Thus, elsewhere in this same volume, he wrote that, ‘A man should endeavour to share and divide his time between the sweetness of contemplation and the life there of action and business’.47HEHL, MS HM 55603, f. *1v. In the same spirit, Drake regularly attended the law courts during the 1630s in order to make notes on important legal cases.48HEHL, MS HM 55603, ff. 18-22, 25-6, *1, *2, *11, *17. He also read up on government finance.49HEHL, MS HM 55603, ff. 11-12v. Even more transparently, he took detailed notes from Thomas Powell’s guidebook to personal advancement, Tom of All Trades or the Plaine Pathway to Preferment (1631), as well as compiling a list of how his friends could assist him.50HEHL, MS HM 55603, ff. 13-17, 27.

His time abroad in the 1630s should also be seen as part of these attempts at self-improvement. He received permission from the privy council to travel abroad in the summer of 1630, but may not have undertaken this trip until the spring of 1634.51APC 1630-1, p. 26; HEHL, MS HM 55603, f. 24v; UCL, MS Ogden 7/29, ff. 20-22; Sharpe, Reading Revolutions, 122. In December 1634 he was enrolled as a student at Leiden.52Peacock, Index to English Speaking Students, 30. He was still living in the Low Countries the following year.53UCL, MS Ogden 7/7, ff. 90, 91, 102v, 117v-121v, 122v, 129v; MS Ogden 7/29, f. 130. This stay completed his formal education, polished his skill in foreign languages and broadened his knowledge of European politics.

Drake appears to have had various ambitions. One was participation in some of the many economic projects that the crown was permitting in this period. This was what Drake had in mind when he said of Charles I that, ‘there hath been never a prince since the Conquest that hath pitched so many peculiar ways of improvement as our king’.54UCL, MS Ogden 7/8, f. 1v. Becoming richer through such schemes was something of an obsession for Drake. Some of his contacts with St John were in the hope of achieving participation in the various business ventures being promoted by the earl of Bedford, such as the draining of the Great Level.55HEHL, MS HM 55603, ff. 27, *8v; UCL, MS Ogden 7/7, ff. 160, 161. But nothing came of this.

Another ambition was appointment to public office. His interest in the law was not directed towards practice as a barrister but to prepare for a position in the law courts. In 1636, having returned from the continent, he finally made some progress. That spring he identified the position of chirographer of the court of common pleas as onehe might purchase. The chirographer was the officer responsible for engrossing the feet of fines approved by the court, which, given the huge number of fines, was an arduous but lucrative task usually delegated to a deputy. In June 1636, after a large sum of money had changed hands, he secured the transfer of the reversion to the office from Sir David Cunningham, the Scottish courtier who had recently been granted it.56HEHL, MS HM 55603, ff. *28v-*34v; Coventry Docquets, 198; CCSP, v. 43-4; Aylmer, King’s Servants, 97. A seat in Parliament was another obvious goal. This he achieved easily enough. Yet his parliamentary career would not live up to his own high expectations.

Drake’s purchase of the manor of Amersham gave him the dominant electoral interest in the town. He was elected without much difficulty on 7 March 1640 as one of its MPs for the Short Parliament. Nothing is known of what role he played in it, but he kept some very brief notes on its proceedings. He had previously made notes on recent Parliaments from manuscripts possibly borrowed from the Cotton Library.57PA, WDR/1; Commons Debates 1621, ed. W. Notestein, F.H. Relf and H. Simpson (New Haven, 1935), i. 14-15; Two Diaries of Long Parl. p. xv; Sharpe, Reading Revolutions, 73. His jottings about the Short Parliament consisted chiefly of a summary of the speech by Lord Keeper Finch (John Finch†) at the state opening on 13 April. He also recorded the excuse offered by the 1st earl of Loudoun for signing the letter from the Scottish Covenanters to Louis XIII, which was reported to the Commons on 17 April (via another speech by Finch) and which Drake found unconvincing.58HEHL, MS HM 55603, f. *35. Drake’s reading during that summer included Thomas Fuller’s study of the Crusades, The Historie of the Holy Warre.59UCL, MS Ogden 7/29, f. 147.

That autumn Drake was re-elected at Amersham. His activities in the Long Parliament were not extensive. He was named to at most six committees and perhaps fewer – he was presumably the ‘Mr Duke’ named to the committee for privileges (6 Nov. 1640), but the ‘Mr Drake’ added to the committee on St Paul’s Covent Garden (28 June 1641) could have been his brother, Francis, whom he had recently got elected as the other Amersham MP.60CJ ii. 21a, 99a, 191a, 219b, 288b, 496b. However, he did resume his note-taking. This was not a parliamentary diary in the conventional sense. As before, he made ad hoc jottings, mostly undated, not always in chronological order and divided between at least three different notebooks.61UCL, MS Ogden 7/51; MS Ogden 7/52, ff. 16-21; Two Diaries of Long Parl. 1-80; HEHL, MS HM 55603, ff. 36v-37, *38-*41v.

Drake did speak in debate. On 8 December 1640, the day after the Commons passed its resolution against Ship Money, he testified with John Hampden that the two of them had seen a letter from Lord Keeper Finch to the late Sir John Denham about Hampden’s Ship Money case in 1637. Finch and Denham had both been judges in that case and, according to Hampden and Drake, the letter had shown Finch putting pressure on Denham to find against Hampden, although Drake added that it had been ‘so obscure as he understood it not’.62Procs. LP, i. 513; Northcote Note Bk. 43.

In early March 1641 Drake dined with the Speaker, William Lenthall*. Reflecting later on the conversation, he observed that, ‘if we observe the parliamentary proceeding, how slowly they go on in business of weight and when they make a law they make it in the way of probation as till the next Parliament’.63HEHL, MS HM 55603, f. *36v. The business holding things up in Parliament at this particular moment was the trial of the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†). In the weeks that followed Drake took more extensive notes on the proceedings against the earl.64Two Diaries of Long Parl. 25-39; HEHL, MS HM 55603, f. *37; UCL, MS Ogden 7/8, ff. 39v-40. Drake had a sneaking admiration for Strafford, a man of ‘wit and spirit’ whose policies might have worked without the troubles caused by Archbishop Laud.65UCL, MS Ogden 7/8, ff. 39v. He therefore viewed the trial with some degree of detachment. On 20 March he cynically observed that, despite being hostile to Strafford, Sir Henry Vane I* supported the reading of his petition simply in order to appear to be judicious. With equal cynicism, Drake also suggested that the evidence given by Laud’s vicar general, Sir Nathaniel Brent, was more concerned to save Brent’s own reputation than the archbishop’s.66Two Diaries of Long Parl. 25. But Drake’s notes the criticisms made against Strafford without obvious disapproval and it is likely that he agreed with the broad thrust of the prosecution case.

It has been suggested that some of the anonymous speeches recorded by Drake from about this time may have been those that he himself delivered. These may even have been the notes he used when doing so.67M. Mendle, ‘A Machiavellian in the Long Parl.’, PH, viii. 116-24; Sharpe, Reading Revolutions, 158-9. This possibility needs to be taken seriously. On 8 March 1641 Drake was appointed to the committee on the bill to disable the clergy from exercising any temporal or lay offices.68CJ ii. 99a. This is consistent with his known misgivings about interfering churchmen.69Sharpe, Reading Revolutions, 108-9. The Commons returned to this subject, specifically with regard to the bishops, two days later. One of the anonymous speeches supported restrictions on the role of the bishops on the grounds that the prelates tended to take only a short-term view of policy, had rarely travelled abroad and had tended in the past to give poor policy advice. It also, in passing, argued for regular Parliaments.70Two Diaries of Long Parl. 18-19. Drake may have spoken again on 1 April when the resulting bill to prevent bishops involving themselves in secular affairs was being considered. That speech supported the bill because the principal cause of ‘the present sad distempers’ was ‘some ambitious churchmen’s’ busy meddling’.71Two Diaries of Long Parl. 34. Who exactly the speaker had in mind may have been made clear in another of these speeches made a month later on the subject of the Protestation. Drake took the Protestation on 3 May.72CJ ii. 133b. Before doing so, he seems to have tried to get it amended to make clear that what was being condemned included popish innovations by those who were nominally Protestant.73Two Diaries of Long Parl. 41. Two days later he probably also spoke in support of the printing of the Protestation. That speech specifically identified Archbishop Laud as the man who had done most to ‘corrupt the fountains of the kingdom’.74Two Diaries of Long Parl. 43.

A few other possible speeches by Drake are known. On 15 March he may have opposed the disbandment of the Irish army until the treaty with the Scots had been fully implemented: ‘for consider, Sir, what zealousness and animosity there are between the two religions. They cannot serve together without distracting and disettling affairs.’75Two Diaries of Long Parl. 19. On 7 June, when the Commons reprimanded three lay preachers, Drake may have warned, doubtless with irony, that this would reduce job opportunities for graduates.76Two Diaries of Long Parl. 48. When these cases had first been raised two days earlier, Drake had privately noted (in an entry he misdated) that these men were ‘silly tradesmen transported with an irregular humour and fancy’.77HEHL, MS HM 55603, f. *38v. A third speech is undated, but must have been delivered at some point after February 1641, as it expressed satisfaction that the Triennial Act had been passed. That fits with Drake’s strong support for regular Parliaments. This speaker alluded to the case of Brutus, who executed his sons for supporting the restoration of the Tarquinii. This, and proferred it as an example for MPs to follow now.

You have one of them before you who did what in him lay not only to inflame us to an arbitrary government but with a black, formidable judgement to prefer misery. Even for the children born to show mercy to such will be to show cruelty to ourselves and those that come after us.78Two Diaries of Long Parl. 74.

Most likely this was a reference to Strafford, although the speaker however apologised that it was ‘somewhat improper to produce an ancient but foreign example in this place’.79Two Diaries of Long Parl. 74. The Brutus story is one with which Drake is known to have been familiar.80Sharpe, Reading Revolutions, 250.

During June and July 1641 the king bestowed honours on several MPs in the hope of gaining their support. Drake was dubbed as a knight on 14 July and his letters patent as a baronet passed the great seal three days later.81Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 209; CB. However, this made no discernible difference to his conduct in Parliament. Having attended meetings of the committees on gunpowder and monopolies earlier in the year, on 21 July he was included on the committee to examine the gunpowder monopoly.82Two Diaries of Long Parl. 1-2, 16-17, 22-3; CJ ii. 219b. In early June he also attended a meeting of the committee on the proposed treaty with the Scots.83HEHL, MS HM 55603, f. *39. On 5 August he again offered his security to raise money to pay off the Scots and so was then named to the committee on the bill enacting this.84CJ ii. 238b, 239a. He was named to the Recess Committee on 9 September.85CJ ii. 288b. It is possible that he was unwell in early October, as he was then prescribed medicine by his physician.86HEHL, MS HM 55603, f. 35v.

Drake apparently spoke again in November 1641 in the debates on what became the Grand Remonstrance. The title page of the text as subsequently printed implies that the speech had been delivered on 10 November.87Sir William Drake his Speech in Parl. (1641, E.199.26) . It would have made plain to most MPs just how assiduously the speaker had read Machiavelli. He blamed the crisis they faced at once on ‘the wrath of God for the sins of this nation’ but also on the errors of evil counsellors. The problems they had created might have been avoided had there been more frequent Parliaments. But all was not lost. He assured his listeners

with all humility, yet with some confidence, that I shall never expect to see the quiet settled state of this kingdom till there be some course taken to settle religion to some rule and uniformity and not to be thus suffered in an uncertain condition, between illegal innovations and superstitions on the one side and I know not what lawless and irregular confusion on the other.88Drake, Speech, 3.

He took it for granted that they would also all agree that there should be no more illegal taxes, unlawful imprisonments or monopolies. Steps should be taken to improve the militia. An even more characteristically Machiavellian point was his closing suggestion that of those responsible for recent policy misdeeds, only the most guilty should be punished, so as not to alienate the rest. But had this speech actually been delivered? None of the other diarists mention Drake as having spoken in the debate on 10 November.89D’Ewes (C), 117n. However, there is no doubt that Drake was its author; its arguments match his known intellectual interests perfectly. Furthermore, since it was printed, Drake’s views on the need for further political reform were undoubtedly being circulated.

Drake had by now largely abandoned his note-taking. The entries in the notebook with the most numerous parliamentary notes broke off in late June 1641.90Two Diaries of Long Parl. 50-1. Another contained a handful of entries dating from after MPs had returned from the recess, including notes on the appointment of a lord lieutenant of Ireland on 12 November, on the resolution of 30 December for the strengthening of the guards protecting Parliament and about the order of 12 January 1642 concerning control of the stores in the Tower of London.91HEHL, MS HM 55603, ff. *40-*41. Other notes in that same volume may date from around the same time.92HEHL, MS HM 55603, ff. 36v-37. A stray note in another notebook also mentions the arrest of the 12 bishops in late December 1641, adding that during their imprisonment ‘one Joslin preached with vehemency becoming Bedlam’.93UCL, MS Ogden 7/21, f. 101v. Drake’s last committee appointment was on 25 March 1642 on the bill for the better maintenance of the ministry.94CJ ii. 496b. That April and July he and Gabriel Becke* jointly adventured £600 for reducing the Irish rebels.95CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-59, pp. 300, 310; Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 180. But his private notes seem to show that he was pessimistic about the chances of re-taking Ireland.96HEHL, MS HM 55603, f. 37v.

Drafts in one of his notebooks suggest that he was planning a further speech, warning the Commons about the dangers they faced, but this was probably never delivered. However, these detailed notes do give the best insight into Drake’s views on the eve of the civil war.97HEHL, MS HM 55603, ff. *42-*44. What he feared was that civil conflict would open the kingdom to foreign invasion, that it would impose financial costs that future generations would be burdened with repaying and that the loss of Ireland would be ensured. Their best hope would therefore be to form a national association. But the overriding danger was that they were now embarking on what would be ‘a long and lasting civil war which we may not see an end of in our days’ and which would perpetuate ‘this dark and gloomy cloud that hath lately loured so black upon thy kingdom’.98HEHL, MS HM 55603, f. *44.

Even if Drake was never quite so explicit in his public comments, it would have been clear that he was deeply troubled by the drift towards civil war. When he offered £200 and two horses to the war effort on 10 June, he stressed that this was for the use of the king and Parliament ‘conjunctively’.99PJ iii. 469. Later on 20 September he told the Commons that he had already paid in the £200 but asked that his horses should not be used outside his county.100CJ ii. 774b; Add. 18777, f. 5. He was nevertheless appointed by Parliament as one of the new deputy lieutenants for Buckinghamshire in early July.101LJ v. 178b.

By the end of 1642, with the king entrenched at Oxford, Drake’s Buckinghamshire estates were in a war zone. On 10 January 1643 Drake’s complaint to the Commons about the behaviour of some parliamentarian soldiers towards his tenants led to an order that he should draft a letter on the subject to be sent from Speaker Lenthall to the lord general, the 3rd earl of Essex. This was approved by the House the following day.102CJ ii. 920b, 921a. That same month he received permission to visit one of the members of the Denham family, who had been taken prisoner.103CJ ii. 934a. On 13 January 1643 one of the Drake brothers was among several MPs accused in the Commons of not having contributed anything to the war effort. This was more probably a reference to Sir William.104Add. 18777, f. 124v.

Drake’s Long Parliament career essentially came to an end on 4 February 1643 when he was granted leave to go to the Low Countries on health grounds, but with the Commons specifying that he ‘notwithstanding continue a Member of this House, without any prejudice in regard of this his absence’.105CJ ii. 956b. This is inconsistent with his claim at the Restoration that he had been forced to flee abroad after having refused military office.106CCSP, v. 44. It was presumably while he was abroad that Drake allowed the Great Marlow MP, Bulstrode Whitelocke*, who described him as a ‘friend and client’, to use his coach and horses to travel each day from Highgate to Westminster.107Whitelocke, Diary, 147. By May 1644 Drake was in Amsterdam.108UCL, MS Ogden 7/23, f. 143v.

Drake was readmitted to the Commons on 11 October 1644, having been ‘long absent with the leave of this House in parts beyond the seas’.109CJ iii. 659a. On 15 January 1645 he and Thomas Chaloner* (who had also been abroad) were added to Buckinghamshire county committee.110CJ iv. 21a. A fortnight later he took the Solemn League and Covenant.111CJ iv. 35b. But on 3 February he was granted permission to go abroad, again ‘for the recovery of his health’.112CJ iv. 40a. He was granted three further periods of leave: on 27 June 1646 ‘to go into the country’, on 19 May 1647 ‘to go to the Bath’ and on 6 July ‘to go beyond the seas for recovery of his health’.113CJ iv. 590a, v. 177a, 235b. His destination on the last of those occasions was evidently the United Provinces, as he was staying at Breda by 20 December 1647.114UCL, MS Ogden 7/21, f. 180v. He was therefore listed as absent with permission at the calls of the House on 9 October 1647 and 26 September 1648. Both times he was stated to be living abroad.115CJ v. 329b, vi. 34b. In February 1649 he seems to have been based at Rotterdam.116UCL, MS Ogden 7/10, ff. 175v-176. Nine months later he concluded a lease by which his steward, James Perrott, took over possession of the house and lands at Shardeloes on favourable terms.117Eland, ‘Shardeloes muniments’, 168; Eland, Shardeloes Pprs. 55.

One issue of concern to Drake by then was the status of some lands which had been mortgaged to him for £3,300 by the late 1st Viscount Wilmot (Sir Charles Wilmot†). If Drake had taken possession of those lands before Wilmot’s death in 1644, they would not be covered by the sequestration of Wilmot’s son and heir, the second viscount (Henry Wilmot*).118CCC 2236. In early 1649 Drake was contemplating legal action against the viscount.119UCL, MS Ogden 7/10, f. 175v. In March 1652 the county committee for Hertfordshire advised that Drake should be allowed to retain these lands, a recommendation that was then provisionally accepted by the Committee for Compounding.120CCC 2236.

In 1652 Drake returned to England.121CCSP v. 43. His immediate reason was that the Rump moved to appoint one of its Members, John Goodwyn*, to the office of chirographer of common pleas to which Drake had previously been promised the reversion. In June 1652 Oliver St John, now the lord chief justice, agreed to block Goodwyn’s appointment and confirmed Drake in office.122CCSP v. 43-4; HMC 10th Rep. IV, 217. Doubtless this remained a sinecure. As before, Drake spent much of his time reading, or, perhaps more significantly, re-reading – possibly in the hope that his old favourites might help him understand the political upheavals he was living through.123Sharpe, Reading Revolutions, 174-80. In 1657 he founded almshouses for six poor widows at Amersham.124VCH Bucks. iii. 141-2; Lipscombe, Buckingham, iii. 158-9.

A single undated passage in one of his notebooks may be evidence that Drake resumed his seat in the Long Parliament after the secluded MPs were re-admitted on 21 February 1660.125Sharpe, Reading Revolutions, 249. The following year he was again returned as MP for Amersham in the elections for the Cavalier Parliament, although he was no more active there than he had been in previous Parliaments. He died in London on 28 August 1669. His funeral took place on 9 September in the parish church at Amersham, where a monument to his memory was subsequently erected.126Lipscombe, Buckingham, iii. 154, 167-8; Sharpe, Reading Revolutions, 72.

With no direct heirs, Drake had made special arrangements two years earlier for the disposal of his estates. This may have been motivated in part by a desire to keep them out of the hands of his younger brother, Francis. William had never been keen to see his brother inherit them and that reluctance must have been stronger now that Francis was in serious financial difficulties.127HEHL, MS HM 55603, f. *27. By an indenture of 14 December 1667 and by the will he drew up three days later Drake nominated a group of trustees, headed by the attorney general, (Sir) Geoffrey Palmer*, who now also acted as his executors. Most of his lands passed to his nephew, Francis’s eldest son, Sir William Drake†, but only after he had confirmed the endowments Drake had made for the Amersham almshouses. He was made substantial bequests to his many friends, including the Speaker of the House of Commons, (Sir) Edward Turnor* (£50), (Sir) John Potts (£20), (Sir) Ralph Verney* (£20), Edmund Waller* (£20), Sir John Holland* (£20) and (Sir) Bulstrode Whitelocke, ‘my ancient acquaintance’ (£20). The lord keeper, (Sir) Orlando Bridgeman*, Sir Charles Harbord† and (Sir) Philip Warwick* served as the overseers of the will.128PROB11/330/521. His nephew, Sir William, then succeeded him as MP for Amersham.

Many years earlier, probably before he had first been elected to Parliament, Drake had noted either as his own observation or as a pithy aphorism from someone else that, ‘He that would be a true politician must be a great doer and a great sufferer’.129HEHL, MS HM 55603, f. *2v. Drake did perhaps have the mentality of a ‘true politician’; his utter lack of sentimentality about the process of politics could have served him well among all the wily operators in the Long Parliament. He might also have felt, however absurdly, that he had suffered for his political beliefs. But he had never actually done anything. When difficult choices needed to be made in 1642, he had baulked at them, although he was hardly the only person in 1642 to have done so.