GRIFFYN, Sir Edward (1605-81), of Dingley and Braybrook, Northants.

Griffyn, who adopted this spelling among numerous variations of the name, was descended from a well-established Northamptonshire family, whose members had occasionally married into the peerage and served as sheriffs, leading lawyers and courtiers, but not as MPs.14SP23/195, p. 618. Griffyn’s father, Sir Thomas Griffin, knighted in 1603, married the following year the recently-widowed Elizabeth Stawell, and gained with her the guardianship of her son John (Sir John Stawell*) and access to the revenues of extensive estates in Somerset, Devon and Dorset.15WARD2/18/70/9-15. But Sir Thomas died a decade later, evidently with his complex affairs in some confusion. Sir Thomas’s father, Sir Edward Griffin KB, survived him, but died in 1621, (possibly around the same time as Sir Thomas’s younger brother, Sir Edward Griffin of Wakerley, knighted in 1608 and married to a sister of Sir Guy Palmes*), leaving the 16-year-old Edward Griffyn as heir to the family’s estates.16C2/JasI/A4/55; Derbys. RO, D3155/WH 236, 256, 325, 387, 470, 644; PROB11/147/369; Bodl. Top. Northants. c.27, ff. 533-5; Bridges, Northants. ii. 339; Dingley par. reg.; CP; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 146. Our MP, who in 1616 had accompanied his half-brother to Oxford, came under the guardianship of Sir William Uvedale*, treasurer of the king’s chamber, who in 1622 arranged a marriage between his ward and his 13-year-old daughter.17Al. Ox; London Marr. Licences, ed. Chester, 589. Griffin inherited the family’s estates in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire in December 1626, shortly after he came of age.18Add. Ch. 6022. However, his mother Dame Elizabeth, who had long been embroiled in litigation on several fronts, petitioned the privy council in the mid-1630s claiming that, having brought to her Griffin marriage the substantial sum of £12,000, her son had failed to honour the accompanying undertaking to provide her with a hefty £1,000 a year jointure.19C2/JasI/G2/72; C2/ChasI/D3/24; C3/353/18; C8/31/42; CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 454; 1636-7, pp. 121, 384, 406.

Meanwhile, as part of Uvedale’s household in the parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster, Griffyn was introduced into court circles and knighted at Whitehall in May 1625.20Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 188. Perhaps the court subsequently figured more prominently in his life. Although his daughters Frances and Elizabeth were baptised at Dingley in 1634 and 1647, and although in 1638 he was involved in an enclosure dispute with the rector, which prompted an investigation by the privy council, he does not appear to have been nominated to any local commissions before the summer of 1642.21CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 206; PC2/48, f. 280; PC2/51, f. 12. By January 1640 Griffyn was a gentleman of the privy chamber, and that month was granted the reversion of the office of treasurer of the king’s chamber, in succession to Uvedale.22CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 389; 1639-40, p. 474; HMC 8th Rep. I, 284a; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 228. Sometime before October 1642, Griffyn also appears to have been made keeper of the Gatehouse prison.23CJ ii. 798-9; Add. 18777, f. 24a.

Griffyn’s election at Downton to both the Short and Long Parliaments almost certainly reflected his court connections. The influence may have been indirect, through Uvedale, or direct, through Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, but his return in March 1640 was certainly the subject of court gossip.24CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 604. Griffyn made no recorded impression on the Short Parliament, and little more on the Long Parliament before the outbreak of civil war, and it is possible that his prime motive for seeking a place was to undermine his mother’s attempts to secure control of portions of the family estate, and to oppose the draft bill on her behalf, which was finally rejected by the Lords on 25 June 1641.25LJ iv. 289, 296; HMC 4th Rep. 78b. Other than taking the Protestation, on 3 May 1641, Griffyn’s only known contribution to proceedings during the Long Parliament was to urge that only some parts of the London petition against bishops should be committed (8 Feb. 1641).26CJ ii. 133a; D’Ewes (N), 337. This probably represented a damage limitation exercise on Griffyn’s part, and there is no evidence to suggest that he supported further reformation of the church.

It is unclear when Griffyn withdrew from Parliament, but by August 1642 it was clearly assumed that he would support the king’s attempts to use commissions of array to raise an army. If he joined the king during the summer of 1642, however, the Commons did not take any action against him until he took his seat in the Oxford Parliament in January 1644. Griffyn was expelled from the House on 5 February, and a writ was eventually issued for the election of his replacement in October 1645.27CJ iii. 389b; iv. 295b; C231/6, p. 25.

Griffyn supported the royalist cause as a member of the court, rather than in a military capacity. He later insisted that he had ‘never accepted any command, though many times pressed thereunto’.28CCC 1206; SP23/195, p. 618. He was apparently at Exeter in late 1645 or early 1646, but surrendered himself to General Sir Thomas Fairfax* some months before the king’s flight to the Scots in late April, and the ensuing surrender of the Oxford garrison.29SP23/195, p. 628. Indeed, before Charles I reached Newcastle Griffyn had retired to Ivychurch in Wiltshire, where he took the Solemn League and Covenant, and submitted his bid to compound for his delinquency.30CCC 1206; SP23/195, pp. 605, 606, 618, 623. His case was even recommended to the chairman of the Committee for Compounding, John Ashe*, by a prominent Wiltshire parliamentarian, Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire*.31SP23/195, p. 613. The estate at Dingley and Braybrook was valued at £1,200 a year, although it was said to be heavily encumbered, and in January 1647 his fine was set at £1,700.32CCC 1206; SP23/195, p. 605. Subsequently it emerged that he had ejected some of his tenants for supporting Parliament, and in June 1647 the sequestration of his estate was ordered, although was revoked that October.33CCC 1206; CJ v. 204a; SP23/195, pp. 607, 609, 621, 630-1. As Parliament prepared the ordinance for his pardon early in 1648, complaints from his tenants continued to surface, alongside claims that his estate had been undervalued, but while an investigation was launched, it was soon concluded that such claims were vexatious, and Griffyn’s case was settled by August 1648.34LJ ix. 639a; HMC 7th Rep. 2a; CCC 1206; SP23/195, p. 611.

Thereafter, Griffyn apparently lived in quiet retirement in his native Northamptonshire. In July 1656 he appealed against the ‘decimation’ of his estate. The outcome of this is unknown after its referral to Major-general William Boteler*, but in April 1658, along with other royalists in the county, Griffyn was reported to have been placed under guard – perhaps house arrest, rather than imprisonment.35CCC 1207; Corr. of Bishop Brian Duppa ed. G. Isham (Northants. Rec. Soc. xvii), 150.

At the Restoration in the spring of 1660, Griffyn resumed his position at court, as a gentleman of the privy chamber, and finally took up the post of treasurer of the chamber, Uvedale having died in 1652.36CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 7; HMC 8th Rep. I, 284a. He probably retained both offices until 1679, when he certainly surrendered the treasurership to his son, and namesake, the future Baron Griffin of Braybrook, who would die in the Tower as a Jacobite prisoner in 1710.37CSP Dom. 1661-2, pp. 212, 346, 515; 1667-8, p. 289; 1668-9, p. 204; 1671, pp. 275, 413, 421; 1675-6, pp. 327, 578; 1679-80, p. 157; Chamberlayn, Anglia Notitia (1679), i. 157, 159; Add. 5750, ff. 21-6, 31, 143, 147, 177, 178; Add. 5751, f. 29; Add. 5756, f. 145; Add. 5786, f. 169; CP. Griffyn himself died in London in May 1681, when his body was taken to Dingley for burial.38Dingley par. reg. His grandson, James†, a Catholic, sat in the Commons during the reign of James II.39HP Commons 1660-1690.