ARUNDELL, John I (1614-44), of Trerice, Newlyn, Cornw.

The Arundells claimed descent from the medieval earls of Arundel, and the main branch had been seated at Trerice in Cornwall since the fourteenth century.10Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 11. John’s father, John Arundell senior, sat in the parliaments of the 1620s, when he was a prominent opponent of George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, and the Caroline court, continuing his opposition in the 1630s by refusing a knighthood and resisting Ship Money. John Arundell junior ‘subscribed’ at Oxford University in December 1631, possibly as an undergraduate at Exeter College, where most of his relatives had studied. In November 1633 he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, in company with two of his three younger brothers, Richard and William.11Al. Ox.; LI Admiss. i. 222. Two senior Cornish lawyers, John Polwhele* and Edward Noye, stood as manucaptors, or sureties, on his admission.12LIL, Adm. Bk. vi, f. 82v. After a period at the inns of court, Arundell may have studied abroad, and was perhaps the ‘John Arundell’ granted a three-year licence to travel on 7 August 1637.13CSP Dom. 1637, p. 359.

In the elections for the Short Parliament in April 1640 Arundell was returned for Tregony, but his activities in its brief session are unknown. In November 1640 he was returned for two boroughs: Bodmin in eastern Cornwall, and Mitchell, in the centre of the county, where his cousins, the Arundells of Lanherne, were the lords of the manor and electoral patrons. On 9 November Arundell chose to sit for Bodmin.14CJ ii. 23a. His involvement in the Long Parliament is difficult to disentangle from that of his brother Richard and his uncle, Thomas Arundell*. John I may have been the ‘Mr Arundell’ who challenged the return of Sir Richard Buller* and William Coryton* for the borough of Bossiney on 14 November 1640.15CJ ii. 29a. This seems to have been part of a wider dispute between the two families, as on 31 December Francis Buller I* went on to complain to his brother, Sir Richard Buller, ‘that Mr Arundell goeth against me’, and to beg ‘that the Parliament might have the hearing of it’.16Cornw. RO, BU/1184. Arundell was added to the committee for petitions on 1 January 1641, perhaps in connection with the Buller affair, but he did not play an active role in parliamentary proceedings thereafter.17CJ ii. 61b. It was Richard, not John, who voted against the attainder of the 1t earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) in April.18Cornw. RO, R(S) 1/35. On 3 May John Arundell took the Protestation, and on 10 June he was granted permission to go to the country, at the behest either of Sir Edward Dering or Sir Arthur Hesilrige.19CJ ii. 133b, 172b; Procs. LP v. 79. On 27 January 1642, Arundell was again granted leave, this time on the motion of Sir John Northcote, and he probably did not return to the Commons between then and 16 June, when a call of the House listed him as absent.20PJ i. 187; CJ ii. 398b, 626n.

At the very beginning of the civil war Arundell followed his father’s lead in supporting the king, and both men were appointed commissioners of array in June 1642, and attended the meeting of commissioners at Bodmin in July.21Cornw. RO, T/1767; Northants. RO, FH133, unfol.; Antony House, Carew Pole muniments, BC/24/2/103. Our MP attended the assizes at Launceston in order to execute the commission of array in early August, but was opposed by a parliamentary committee (which included his uncle Thomas Arundell), and the commission was proclaimed instead at the market place on the following day.22HMC 4th Rep. 307. When the committee’s letter was read in Parliament on 8 August, Arundell and other Cornish MPs were sent for as delinquents, with orders to return to Westminster within a fortnight.23CJ ii. 710b, 711a-b, 722b; LJ v. 271b-2a, 275a-b, 293b-4a. On 20 August it was ordered that the serjeant at arms, supported by the local gentry, should arrest Arundell in Cornwall.24CJ ii. 728b. On 22 August a letter was read in the Lords, in which Arundell offered to suspend both the commission of array and the Militia Ordinance for the time being, to secure ‘the quiet of the country’.25LJ v. 315b. But a few weeks later Arundell joined his father and Sir Bevil Grenville* in returning a more aggressive response, saying that they ‘have received a command from the king not to depart out of their country, whom they cannot disobey with safety’.26Add. 18777, f. 3; CJ ii. 772a.

There was no further dissembling. Soon afterwards Arundell signed the humble petition of Cornwall, proclaiming its loyalty to the king, and in the winter of 1642-3 there was a ‘firm conjunction’ between the Arundells and the other leading Cornish royalists, with John and his brother Richard being seen as ‘very active men, and in command’.27Coate, Cornw. 356; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 104n. Arundell raised a regiment in the army of Sir Ralph Hopton* at this time, serving (according to his brother’s later account) at the battle of Stratton and the sieges of Exeter and Bristol.28Cornw. RO, T/1767.

In the new year of 1644 Arundell was present at the Oxford Parliament, and on 22 January he was formally disabled from sitting at Westminster, ‘being in the king’s quarters’.29Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573; CJ iii. 374. He was killed at the siege of Plymouth in November 1644.30Cornw. RO, T/1767. Arundell pre-deceased his father by ten years, and as he was unmarried and had no children, the family estates eventually passed to his younger brother, Richard.