HODGES, Luke (1590-1656), of Christchurch parish, Bristol and Westminster.

Luke Hodges was a younger son of the Shipton Moyne parish gentry family of which Thomas Hodges I* was the heir in the next generation. Luke’s older brother contracted the marriage with the daughter of George Snigge† that raised his branch of the family from its ambiguous county/parish gentry status, but Luke was fortunate to have his career path mapped for him through apprenticeship in Bristol. His master there, the grocer Roger Kelly, was one of a family noted in the city for godly Protestantism which later expressed itself in separatist leanings. Roger’s close relative, Anthony Kelly, married to the redoubtable Dorothy, ‘very famous for piety and reformation’, in the words of the chronicler of the Broadmead separatist church, acknowledged Luke Hodges as a close friend.31Bristol RO, 04421/2, f. 5. Among Anthony Kelly’s apprentices was the arch-separatist, Dennis Hollister*, but Hodges seems not to have taken the decisive step of breaking with the Church of England. His local reputation for godliness and probity is acknowledged by his becoming a feoffee for the property of the city centre parish of Christchurch by 1626, a position he held probably until his death. He duly served as churchwarden in 1632-3, but unlike some other citizens, never held other parish offices or served repeatedly.32Bristol RO, P/XCh/F/1; 26166/254; P/Xch/chw/1(b), p. 145.

Hodges’s marriage into a Somerset minor gentry family did not advance his social standing, and the heralds noted him as a disclaimer when they compiled their visitation pedigrees in 1623.33Brown Abstracts of Som. Wills, ser. 6, 78; Vis. Som. 1623 (Harl. Soc. xi), 145. Hodges never belonged to Bristol’s Society of Merchant Venturers, and thus never penetrated the merchant elite of Bristol. He was also very slow to progress in the civic corporation, that other great engine of social mobility in the city. It took Hodges nearly 19 years after becoming a burgess to be admitted to the common council, a remarkably long interval. There is no evidence that Hodges refused membership of the council outright, but his election in 1635 was marked by a tie of votes, and the council decided that henceforth in similar cases the mayor would deploy a casting vote.34Bristol RO, 04264/3, f. 61; D.H. Sacks, The Widening Gate. Bristol and the Atlantic Economy, 1450-1700 (Berkeley, Calif., 1991), 163. The incident suggests that Hodges was a controversial candidate when eventually he did present himself for admission, and his failure subsequently to be appointed to any of the rotating civic offices concerned with charities, schools and hospitals surely indicates one out of sympathy with the city’s ruling fathers. Nevertheless, Hodges participated to the extent that he served on a 1637 committee investigating watch arrangements and took his turn as sheriff in 1638-9.35Bristol RO, 04264/3, ff. 77, 87. He cast no vote when a new vicar of Temple parish was elected by the council (the appointee, Abel Lovering, became an active royalist in 1642), and when in February 1640 the chamber divided on whether it should bear £140 or £120 of the city’s Ship Money bill, passing the rest on to the citizens, he supported those councillors in favour of the chamber’s bearing the heavier burden, against Humphrey Hooke*.36Bristol RO, 04264/3 ff. 91, 100v; A Declaration from the City of Bristoll (1642), 1 (E.83.13).

Hodges’s prolonged period of political torpor ended at the outbreak of the civil war. In June 1642, he promised to lend the very modest sum of £25 towards supplying an army to quell the rebellion in Ireland (Humphrey Hooke and Richard Longe* each promised £200), and he was appointed to the committee which the corporation set up to co-ordinate Bristol’s defence arrangements. He was active in this last respect, authorising payments for ironwork at the fortifications. In October, Hodges was appointed by the House of Commons to a committee for collecting subscriptions in Bristol for its cause. At the same time, he represented the city in the negotiations over a possible alliance with Somerset, Gloucestershire and Wiltshire in a parliamentarian association, and the following month took over the ward responsibilities of John Taylor when the latter went to Westminster as MP.37Bristol RO, 04264/3, ff. 120v, 123; 04026/22, p. 177; CJ ii. 820b; Northants. RO, FH133, unfol. Hodges was one of the committee of 17 charged by the corporation with drafting a single petition to king and Parliament. In the event, two petitions were drawn up, and the town clerk’s annotations in the order book suggest that Hodges was one of a number of councillors who did not want Humphrey Hooke to present them on their behalf. While discussions with the representatives of the Association, led by Sir John Seymour*, continued, it became obvious that the most pressing issue was whether or not a garrison for Parliament could be admitted to the city. By December it was clear that resistance to this proposal was gathering pace, and that further negotiations with leaders of the Association would be fruitless.38Bristol RO, 04264/4, pp. 5-6, 8, 10, 13, 14, 18; Declaration from City of Bristoll, 2-3. A parliamentarian force under Colonel Thomas Essex did occupy Bristol, but the colonel’s personal conduct, unsympathetic to the godly citizens, did nothing to win support in the city for Parliament.39J. Lynch, For King and Parliament. Bristol and the Civil War (Stroud, 1999), 27-9.

During the first half of 1643, Hodges was named regularly to Bristol committees of Parliament for taxation and sequestration, but the parliamentary cause was undermined by Sir William Waller’s* defeat at Roundway Down. On 26 July, Governor Nathaniel Fiennes I* surrendered the city to Prince Rupert. On the 28th, the council resolved to present the king with £10,000, but Hodges voted for no gift to be made.40Bristol RO, 04264/4, p. 33. It was his last appearance in the council chamber until 20 Sept. 1645. It is unclear where he was during the intervening two years, but it seems likely that he removed with the godly Protestant diaspora of Bristol to London. It is certainly the case that in 1643 Hodges had no public standing outside Bristol. Only when Parliament recovered the city by siege in 1645 did Hodges resume his place, by order of the council on 9 September. On 1 November, Hodges, Richard Aldworth* and two other councillors were restored to their seniority as of 1643, and on 15 Sept. 1646, Hodges was sworn alderman for St James ward. By then, however, he had left Bristol to serve as its MP in the Long Parliament, in January 1646 replacing John Taylor, who had been disabled from sitting as a royalist. The order of these two events, election to Parliament and subsequent inclusion among the aldermancy, was unusual, and shows how Hodges owed his seat to political currents outside Bristol, his isolation in 1643 notwithstanding. The most obvious likely agent in Hodges’s election to Parliament was his nephew, Thomas Hodges I, whose authority in the Army Committee was in the ascendant in 1645-6.

The Bristol council proceedings do not convey an impression that Hodges was particularly active on the corporation’s behalf. He was asked to decide whether a matron at the hospital was fit to continue in post in January 1647, and a year later, he was one of a Bristol ‘select committee’ considering grievances to put to Parliament. In January 1649, the corporation wrote to him and Richard Aldworth over the destruction of forests, a subject which the sea-faring city always monitored for its implications for ship-building.41Bristol RO, 04264/4, pp. 155, 172, 190. In January 1650, Hodges requested reimbursement for ‘service and salary in Parliament’, and his parliamentary colleague Richard Aldworth was to provide him with £300 due to the city on the public faith; the MPs had last been paid an allowance of £40 each in February 1648.42Bristol RO, 04264/5, p. 4; 04026/3, p. 215. Although the Merchant Venturers on one occasion ordered a letter to Hodges on their perennial quest for privileges in the export of calfskins, it is clear that they preferred to deal with Aldworth, who was after all one of their own.43Soc. of Merchant Venturers, merchants’ hall bk. of procs. 1639-70, p. 226.

Hodges achieved little in his first year in Parliament, being named only to two or three committees, and even in those cases there is doubt as to whether he or his nephew was the man concerned. In two of these appointments, on relations with the Scots army, it seems more likely that Thomas Hodges I was the ‘Mr Hodges’ intended by the Commons clerk.44CJ iv. 570b, 613a, 616b, 650b. Luke Hodges was granted leave to go the country in November 1646, and seems to have been in Bristol still the following January.45CJ iv. 718b. Luke Hodges was associated with the New Model army interest in the House, however, and unlike his nephew was unencumbered by former loyalties to the Presbyterian, Sir William Waller*. He may have been the Hodges who worked on the ordinance settling lands worth £5,000 on Sir Thomas Fairfax*, and was probably the Hodges who was added to a committee on 10 June 1647 charged with weeding out Members who had acted against Parliament. This would account for his flight with the Independents to the army following the Presbyterian-orchestrated disorders around the palace of Westminster that summer, although it was Thomas Hodges I who in September was added to the committee of enquiry after those events, and a few weeks later to the Army Committee itself.46CJ v. 167a, 205a, 288a, 289a, 298b; HMC Egmont, i. 440.

Hodges became regular, indeed punctilious, in his attendances at the Army Committee from April 1648. He remained one of its active core members until mid-1651 at least.47SP28/29-33, 36-9, 41, 46, 48-79. He could draw upon his own experiences in the legislative committee he joined in September 1647 to produce an ordinance to exclude delinquents from borough office, and in November he joined another important executive committee, the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs. In all these he was evidently associated with the Independents.48CJ v. 320a, 347b. His comparatively few appointments to ad hoc committees can be explained by his workload on these two executive bodies. There is no evidence that Hodges held a post in the Bristol custom house.49G. Yule, The Independents in the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1958), 103; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 393. In February 1648, the Cardiff customs collector, John Byrd, believed him to be a member of the Committee of Navy and Customs (correctly) and to be attempting to install a client in the customs house at Swansea. As a member of this committee, a leading Independent in the Severnside region and one who had acted on Bristol’s behalf to secure a frigate to protect merchant shipping in the Channel, Hodges would certainly have been well placed to exert influence at Swansea.50The Letter Book of John Byrd ed. S.K. Roberts (S. Wales Rec. Soc. xiv), 1; Recs. of the Soc. of Merchant Venturers of Bristol ed. P. McGrath (Bristol Rec. Soc. xvii), 190-2. Hodges brought intelligence to Fairfax on the threat to Bristol during the second civil war, and with his Bristol colleague Richard Aldworth worked on legislation to abolish cathedral deans and chapters.51CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 56; CJ vi. 602a.

Hodges’s political path diverged from that of his nephew in the crisis of December 1648. He was not troubled by Pride’s purge of the House, although he wavered momentarily on 20 December, when he and a number of others refused to make their dissent to the vote of 5 December to continue treating with the king. The following day he was back in the House, however, and was reported by a hostile commentator as having made his dissent; he was appointed to the committee for viewing the state of the public revenue.52Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 38 (12-19 Dec. 1648), sig. o(i) (E.476.35); no. 39 (19-26 Dec. 1648), sigs E2(ii), E32(iii) (E.477.30). More certainly, his dissent to the vote on 5 December was recorded on 2 February 1649.53CJ vi. 129a. He was sufficiently hardened against the king to be appointed to the committee working on the ordinance for his trial (29 Dec. 1648), but there is no evidence that he was named as a commissioner or declined to act when named.54CJ vi. 106a; Yule, Independents, 103; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 393. He was a reliable member of many executive committees under the Rump, however, being named in 1649 to the committee for excise, the Committee of Navy and Customs and to the Committee for Plundered Ministers. He is known to have attended these bodies.55CJ vi. 137b, 219b; Bodl. Rawl. A.224, ff. 33v-109v. During 1649 he began an association with Westminster school as a governor there which lasted until his death, and betokened the fact that he was now settled in that city.56A. and O. He was still active on the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs, reporting on the financial plight of army officers in Ireland.57CJ vi. 240a.

In religious affairs, Hodges shared the interests of the Independents. He was named to committees considering legislation on placing clergy in posts (24 May 1649), pondering a scheme to extend godly preaching throughout the country along the lines of the propagation scheme in Wales (20 Dec.), and attempting to systematise support for ministers (15 Mar. 1650).58CJ vi. 216a, 336a, 382b, 365b. He was also an active member of the committee for regulating the universities, which was an important agency for settling a godly ministry.59CJ vi. 388b; LPL, Sion L40.2/E16, passim. He was naturally interested in a scheme to propagate the gospel in Bristol. It was partly through his influence that Ralph Farmer, the minister satirised by the radical preacher William Erbury as a ‘black pudding’, received maintenance to preach in Bristol cathedral.60R. Farmer, The Impostor Dethron’d (1658), 52; W. Erbury, Jack Pudding: or a Minister made a Black Pudding (1654). As a former grocer, trade was among Hodges’s other interests. Bills for reducing the price of food and corn and for exporting pepper, to restrict the importing of hats and hatbands (in which he took the lead) and a review of duties on coal and a bill received his attention in 1649.61CJ vi. 179b, 187b, 247b, 275b. Out of the essentially protectionist thrust of these measures and the 1650 bill for regulating trade to which he contributed, emerged the Navigation Act of 1651.62CJ vi. 383b. He was named to no more than a dozen ad hoc committees in 1650 and the same number the following year, so it must be assumed that his executive committee work was taking most of his time. His value in this capacity was recognised by his appointment in January 1652 as an excise commissioner, although the leading radicals Thomas Harrison I and Algernon Sydney had reservations about his posting.63CJ vii. 63b.

Hodges’s appointment as an excise commissioner effectively put paid to his career as an MP, although he was named to one committee in 1652, on the allegations before the House against one of its Members, Gregory Clement.64CJ vii. 93a. After the fall of the Rump, he continued in his excise post for a while, but with a reduction in salary. Again he was confirmed in his place in December 1653, but was finally dropped in March 1654.65CJ vii. 329a; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 307. In August that year he was named as a commissioner for trying and ejecting clergy in Somerset, which suggests that he was still in good odour with the protectorate. This was a nominal appointment, however. As the Bristol corporation had realised, Hodges was now a Londoner. They wrote to him that month to request either his company or his resignation from his place on the council. He resigned.66Bristol RO, 04264/5, pp. 67, 69. It may have been failing health that led to his disappearance from public life. In any event, Hodges was dead by 2 May 1656, when letters of administration were granted to his second wife. It was presumably his son, Luke, born in 1630, or perhaps a grandson, who became a London merchant and died around 1715.67Christchurch, Bristol par. reg.; Somerset RO, DD/BR/py/47; PROB11/546/153.