D’OYLY, John (1602-?60), of Chiselhampton, Oxon. and Greenland House, Bucks.

Tracing their ancestry back to ninth century Normandy, the D’Oylys or D’Oillys had been feudal barons of Hook Norton, Oxfordshire, and hereditary constables of Oxford Castle between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.25Bayley, House of D’Oyly, 1, 5. D’Oyly’s grandfather John Doyley† (c.1545-1623) and members of his grandmother’s family, the Copes of Hanwell, had served the county as sheriffs and MPs, while his father Sir Cope was sheriff in 1627.26List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 110; HP Commons 1559-1603; HP Commons 1604-1629. A tradition whereby the head of the family settled at Greenland House near Henley and his heir lived at Chiselhampton, about nine miles south east of Oxford, meant that Oxford-educated D’Oyly spent most of his first four decades on the Oxfordshire estates, where he had relative independence. He then opted to remain there in the years after his father’s death in 1633, unsuccessfully attempting to sell Greenland to family friend Bulstrode Whitelocke* for £14,000 in 1638 or 1639.27Bayley, House of D’Oyly, 28-30; Whitelocke Diary, 51, 113.

As sheriff of Oxfordshire in 1638-9 D’Oyly had the support of his uncle, another John D’Oyly, in the difficult business of collecting Ship Money. On 9 April 1639, in the sheriff’s absence, the uncle replied to chivvying letters from the privy council, explaining that his nephew had been distracted by complaints of inequity in former taxes, and assuring clerk of the council Edward Nicholas† that he was seriously applying himself to the task.28CSP Dom. 1639, p. 6. The council was unconvinced, questioning in a letter of 29 May D’Oyly’s handling of the rating and noting that thus far he had not paid in any money.29CSP Dom. 1639, p. 246. It seems likely that he was dragging his feet over the implementation of unpopular policies: on receiving a summons to report his progress before the council he requested (probably as late as June 1640) more time.30CSP Dom. 1640, p. 371. Given the D’Oyly and Cope tendency towards puritanism, probably stiffened by their kinship links through D’Oyly’s mother with the Essex godly, he may have been more assiduous as a commissioner to enforce statutes against recusants.31CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 12.

With the return of Parliaments in 1640, D’Oyly was named as a subsidy commissioner.32SR. In August 1641 he became a justice of the peace for Oxfordshire and was again employed against recusants as well as in the regulation of local forests.33C231/5, p. 474; Northants. RO, FH133, unfol.; C181/5, f. 209v. With Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, and others he was removed from the commission of the peace on 10 June 1642, a clear indication that he was perceived as hostile to royal policies.34C231/5, p. 528. On the 24th his daughter Ann was baptized at Chiselhampton, but some time thereafter – perhaps when it became evident that the king would make Oxford his headquarters – D’Oyly removed to Greenland.35Stadhampton par. reg.; Bayley, House of D’Oyly, 30.

Unlike his younger brother Charles, who in 1643 was an officer in the lifeguard of the parliamentarian commander-in-chief Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, and whose subsequent career as governor of Henley and Newport Pagnell has sometimes been attributed mistakenly to John, D’Oyly did not serve Parliament in the field.36Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 44-7, 431; Whitelocke, Mems. 145; Bayley, House of D’Oyly, 41-2; cf. CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 467-8. However, he did not escape the war. Royalist soldiers on a sortie from Oxford plundered his house on 1 August 1643, while on 10 December another large force descended, first seizing his remaining goods and then establishing a garrison of 300 foot.37Jnl. of Sir Samuel Luke, 127, 210. On 24 January 1644 the king granted D’Oyly, as of Chiselhampton, a special pardon for all treason and other offences committed between 1 December 1640 and 6 January just past, but if this was meant to be compensation, it proved worthless and ineffective.38Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 147-8. After a six-month siege, Greenland, by this time in ruins, was surrendered to Parliament in July 1644, and in the meantime D’Oyly had not been won over to the royalist cause.39Bayley, House of D’Oyly, 30. He was named to the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire county committees on 23 June and was soon active in regional affairs; he was named a commissioner for assessment in both counties on 18 October.40A. and O.; Add. 61682, f. 56.

Awarded a pension of £4 a week by the House of Lords on 2 August 1645 in recognition that he had been ‘ruined for his faithfulness to Parliament’, D’Oyly was also granted temporary accommodation at the house in the Minories occupied by the lieutenant of the ordnance.41PA, Main Pprs. 2 Aug. 1645; CJ v. 532b. By this time D’Oyly was apparently hoping to enter the Commons: on 23 August Whitelocke reported being solicited to help him to a borough seat in Buckinghamshire.42Whitelocke, Diary, 178. In the short term he had to be content with activity on the Oxfordshire county committee. Following the fall of Oxford, he was one of seven of its members who on 23 June 1646 claimed to represent the whole body in petitioning for the appointment as governor of the city of Charles D’Oyly, being a well-qualified local candidate with fewer national distractions than Colonel George Fleetwood*.43Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 359. Following the disablement of the Oxford city MPs John Smith* and John Whistler* for attendance at the Oxford Parliament, a writ was issued on 18 November, and on 14 December D’Oyly was elected along with Alderman John Nixon*; he was admitted freeman and bailiff the same day.44CJ iv. 724b; Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 140-1. From the outset, deliberately or not, D’Oyly and Nixon played complementary roles: while Nixon, who had recently embarked on what was to be a double turn as mayor, largely remained at home to dominate the corporation, D’Oyly was for the next eight months active at Westminster.

Like Nixon, D’Oyly’s first mention in the Journal was his unsurprising nomination on 13 January 1647 to the committee to refine the ordinance for the visitation of the University of Oxford, but unlike Nixon he was still in attendance to take the Covenant on 1 February and rapidly acquired significant further committee work.45CJ v. 51b, 69a. Among a swathe of MPs added on 25 January to the committee to review the public accounts committee (dominated by Presbyterians), he was nominated to prepare measures to suppress publications directed against Parliament (3 Feb.), to investigate William Walwyn’s petition for Leveller-inspired reforms (15 Mar.), and to refine ordinances for the sale of episcopal lands (27 Feb.) and for the exclusion of ‘malignant ministers’ from admission to ecclesiastical or academic posts (22 Mar.), while on 23 March he was confirmed as commissioner for the regulation of Oxford University.46CJ v. 63a, 72b, 99b, 112b, 119b, 121a. Perhaps the reputation of his brother Charles, who had distinguished himself alongside Sir Thomas Fairfax*, brought him to the attention of the House. The fact that Charles had been associated with the section of the military distanced from the New Model might well have recommended John particularly to Presbyterian leaders. Despite his inexperience in the Commons D’Oyly was called on for sensitive business as relations between Parliament and the army deteriorated. He was included on 17 February on the committee to investigate differences between Edward Vaughan* and Sir Thomas Myddelton*, former commander in north Wales. Four days later, following the floating of the Presbyterian scheme for disbanding the army in England, he was a teller with the Independent Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire* in an unsuccessful bid to retain the garrison at Windsor Castle.47CJ v. 90a, 96a. His motives here may have been particular and local; later alignments were more consistent. On 29 March he was a teller with the former ‘fiery spirit’ but by this time Presbyterian Edward Bayntun*, successfully carrying the motion for retaining in England three northern regiments which were not part of the New Model.48CJ v. 128b. Already included, like Bayntun, on the important committee discussing army petitioning (27 Mar.), like him he was also on the committee where a majority sought to keep control of the London militia in Presbyterian hands (2 Apr.).49CJ v. 127b, 132b.

After this initial flurry of activity, D’Oyly was absent from the Journal for nearly three weeks, but on 22 April, he was among a group of MPs delegated to communicate to the parliamentary commissioners visiting Charles I in the army’s custody at Holdenby Hall the House’s desire to prevent subjects gathering there to be touched for the king’s evil.50CJ v. 151b. On the 27th he was a teller (this time against Evelyn) for summoning Robert Lilburne to attend the Commons to answer charges that he was turning New Model soldiers against service in Ireland.51CJ v. 154b. A week later, as the Presbyterians consolidated their control at Westminster, D’Oyly was delegated to thank the sheriff of Oxfordshire for quashing rebellious soldiers, while he was subsequently nominated to the committee for settling lands on Oliver Cromwell* (5 May) and among those added to the Committee at Haberdashers’ Hall for the purpose of compensating those who had supplied horses ‘in times of imminent danger’ (14 May).52CJ v. 161b, 162b, 171b. Nominated to committees for apportioning officers’ pensions (14 June) and the ordinance for the disbanding of the army (1 July), on 15 June he was a teller with the Presbyterian Wiltshire Member Sir Edward Hungerford* in favour of a vote ordering the army to deliver the king to Parliament.53CJ v. 210b, 211a, 229a.

It was possibly a mark of D’Oyly’s perceived importance (although perhaps also a by-product of his brother’s contested appointment as governor of Bristol, promoted by Presbyterian leaders Denzil Holles* and Sir Philip Stapilton*) that, as Independents fought back, he was one of those MPs accused of having had suspiciously close ties with the royal government at Oxford.54Firth and Rait, Regimental Hist. 46. Accusations first surfaced on 28 May, apparently emanating from members of the Oxfordshire commission who had remembered his royal pardon of 1644. Allegations re-emerged with those against others like Bennet Hoskins* on 15 July, just after D’Oyly had led an unsuccessful attempt to limit the effects of the vote ten days earlier to exclude those who had negotiated with the king from the House.55CJ v. 190a, 244b, 245a. His case was still under consideration on the 23rd, when, probably in D’Oyly’s absence, a petition on the matter was received from a Mr Lane [?Thomas Lane*].56CJ v. 255b. He partook in the brief Presbyterian triumph of early August, being named on 2 August with Bayntun and Henry Hungerford* to investigate the army’s attempt to seize control of Parliament, and added to the ‘committee of safety’, which had been set up in June to join with the City militia for mobilising London against the army.57CJ v. 265a. Like Bayntun and Hungerford he was among the Presbyterians who temporarily weathered the reversal of fortune later in the month, being nominated to the committees repealing the business passed between 26 July and 6 August, but his career in the Commons was effectively over.58CJ v. 272a, 278a. When the case against him was revived (21 Aug.) the committee found that ‘his answers were neither clear, nor at all satisfactory’ (27 Aug.).59CJ v. 281a, 286a; Whitelocke, Mems. 269. Following referral, the matter seems to have drifted, although there is no evidence that he sat again before 1660. Recorded absent on 9 October 1647, he was deprived of his accommodation in the house in the Minories on 15 April 1648, excused attendance ‘upon his case’ on 24 April, and, with Nixon, excused again on 26 September.60CJ v. 330a, 532b, 543b; vi. 34a. His final appearance in the Journal came in the context of the last Presbyterian resurgence before Pride’s Purge when on 25 November, again with Nixon, he was charged with overseeing army assessments for Oxfordshire, an appointment confirmed on 2 December.61CJ vi. 88a; A. and O. Unlike Nixon, he was listed among those secluded at the purge on the 6th.62A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669 f. 13.62).

For the next 11 years D’Oyly lived in obscurity, omitted from all local government commissions except the Oxfordshire magistracy.63C231/6, p. 159; C193/13/3, f. 51v; C193/13/4, f. 78. This may have owed something to continuing financial problems. In October 1651 he and his brother Robert (who had established himself in Ireland) concluded the sale of Greenland to Whitelocke, this time for £6,500 – less than half the asking price 14 years previously.64Whitelocke, Diary, 272; Bayley, House of D’Oyly, 29. Three years later he made a settlement on behalf of his younger children, to whom the other parties were, apart from Robert, his kinsman George Quarles of Gray’s Inn, Edward Hanby of Northamptonshire, and his nephews Thomas Overbury of Gloucestershire and Robert Doyley of Lincoln’s Inn. The arrangement was confirmed by a brief will of 15 September 1655, at which date he was in good health.65PROB11/308/248.

When excluded Members were re-admitted to the Long Parliament in February 1660, D’Oyly briefly took his seat again, and on 29 February he was named first to a committee for considering the London militia bill.66CJ vii. 821b, 856a. In the next three days he was added to the committee for repeal of sequestrations legislation, and included on those for providing for war widows, orphans and maimed soldiers, for the approval of clergy admitted to benefices and for the revival of palatine jurisdictions.67CJ vii. 856b, 857a, 858a, 860b.

Appointed a magistrate and militia commissioner for his county in March 1660, D’Oyly was included that summer on the Oxfordshire assessment and poll tax commissions, but these were his last extant appearances in the public record.68A. and O.; SR. The date of his death is unknown, and his burial does not appear in the Stadhampton register; possibly after a delay caused by the inability of the original executors to serve, his wife proved his will on 31 May 1662.69PROB11/308/248. Their eldest surviving son John Doyley†, later 1st baronet, made a fortunate marriage, was an Oxfordshire justice of the peace and commissioner, and although a tory, eventually sat for New Woodstock in the 1689 Parliament.70HP Commons 1660-1690.