SERLE, George (?1585-1658), of St Mary Magdalene, Taunton, Som.

In 1677, two decades after this MP had died, his widow, Welthian Serle, appointed her ‘loving cousin’, Samuel Serle of Honiton, Devon, to serve as her executor until her sister’s son, her ‘cousin’, Edward Forward, came of age. This Samuel was almost certainly Samuel Serle*, the former Honiton MP, presumably a kinsman of her late husband, although they cannot have been very closely related. It is also known that George lived at Honiton in later life. These facts taken together make it likely that this George Serle was the eldest son of Honiton linen draper Edward Searle, who died in 1607 and had two younger sons, Philip and William.14PROB11/110/99; PROB11/139/185. By 1615 George was trading at Honiton as a merchant.15Keeler, Long Parl. 336. That year he fathered a son, also called George.16Honiton par. reg. In 1626 he became churchwarden in his local parish. When his first wife died during that year in office, she was buried ‘in the church’ and he paid for a pew ‘for his next wife’.17Devon RO, 1639A/PW 1. However, his re-marriage may well have prompted his decision to move away from Devon. Over the next decade he established himself in Taunton, the county town of Somerset, making it likely that he was the man who married Elizabeth Hurlie there in St Mary Magdalene in 1629, although Elizabeth died the following year and he probably soon married for a third time.18Taunton St Mary par. reg. In the late 1630s he was described as a mercer.19Cust and Hopper, Cases, 33.

By then Serle had already risen to become a leading member of the Taunton corporation. His epitaph would state that he had been ‘thrice mayor’ of the town.20‘Additions to the museum’, 70. His first stint, which must have occurred before 1638, proved to be the most memorable. That autumn another Taunton inhabitant, Robert Browne, brother of John Browne I*, sued Serle in the high court of chivalry. The accusation was that Serle as mayor had said that Browne was ‘an unworthy man’ and that ‘his ancestors were but shepherds’. In the summer of 1639 the court found for Browne, ordering Serle to pay damages of £100 and the costs amounting to £80. Serle was also ordered to make a public apology at the next mayor’s feast.21Cust and Hopper, Cases, 33-4; Add. 61941, f. 275. But Serle did not leave the matter there. The king’s decision to summon a new Parliament in 1640 gave him his chance to retaliate. Rather awkwardly for him, Taunton then chose as one of its MPs, Sir William Portman*, a nephew of Browne’s wife. However, this did not deter Serle from petitioning the House of Lords for the recovery of the money he had been required to pay Browne, although the early dissolution of the Short Parliament meant that this proceeded no further.22HMC 4th Rep. 25.

Serle now sought to gain a voice at Westminster in a more direct manner. His wish to pursue this personal grievance may well have been the main reason why he decided to stand for Parliament when new elections were called later that year. If so, Portman may not have been too pleased to be paired with him as the new Taunton MP. Once elected, Serle then encountered a further hurdle. On attempting to take his seat in the Commons on 6 November, objections were raised that Taunton had recently suffered a outbreak of the plague and that, to be on the safe side, Serle should not be admitted to the House. After some debate, the majority in the Commons disagreed and so allowed him to sit.23CJ ii. 21a-b. Raising the issue of Browne’s case then became his next priority. It helped that the Commons had the high court of chivalry in its sights anyway as part of its more general attack on the prerogative courts. On 6 January 1641 the committee created to investigate the court heard Serle’s complaints. He claimed that his own costs had come to more than £100 even before he had been ordered to pay Browne’s. Despite speculation that he might appear, Browne’s lawyer, Arthur Ducke*, failed to attend to defend the court’s decision, so the committee adjourned the hearing.24Procs. LP ii. 127-8. Apart from taking the Protestation on 8 May 1641, Serle otherwise left no trace in the proceedings of this Parliament during its first 20 months.25CJ ii. 139a; Procs. LP iv. 271, 279.

On 11 June 1642, as the king and Parliament began to plan for civil war, Serle promised to give £50 to Parliament to help fund its military preparations.26PJ iii. 474. As a presumed supporter of Parliament, he was included on the Somerset assessment commission from February 1643 and, more tellingly, as a commissioner for the sequestration of delinquents from March 1643.27A. and O. Yet within months some at Westminster were doubting his loyalties. On 9 May he was one of a number of MPs summoned to attend within ten days.28CJ iii. 77b. He presumably obeyed. That he did not take the covenant introduced following the failure of Edmund Waller’s* plot until 27 June 1643, three weeks after other MPs had first done so, confirms his support for Parliament, while, at the same time, suggesting that he had not been attending the House regularly.29CJ iii. 146a. His recorded activities at Westminster over the following year were just as sparse. On 18 August 1643 he was added to the committee on the excise bill.30CJ iii. 211a. Perhaps more significantly, he and Sir John Driden* were the only two MPs added to the committee for the removal of superstitious images from churches on 25 December.31CJ iii. 353a. The following spring he was also included on the committees to raise money for the army (11 Apr.) and on the additional excise bills (11 May).32CJ iii. 457a, 489a. His only other committee appointment in this period was on the bill to appoint Michael Oldisworth* as registrar of the prerogative court of Canterbury (6 Nov.).33CJ iii. 687b.

Serle’s constituency suffered more than most during the civil war. The royalists held Taunton between June 1643 and July 1644, during which time Serle had been at Westminster. Then, following its recapture for Parliament by Robert Blake* and Sir Robert Pye II*, the town came under repeated attack from the royalist forces who continued to control most of the rest of Somerset. Blake successfully repelled each attack, but only at the cost of substantial damage to the many of the buildings in the town centre, presumably including properties owned by Serle. It was not until the summer of 1645, when the surrounding area was finally secured for Parliament, that this threat was lifted. Unsurprisingly, Serle was one of those MPs to whom an official maintenance allowance of £4 per week was granted by the Commons in early June 1645.34CJ iv. 161a. Parliament also listened sympathetically when later that year Serle petitioned them for reparations for the losses he had suffered. After hearing his petition on 22 December, the Commons ordered that the Committee for Advance of Money should compensate him up to the figure of £2,500.35CJ iv. 382b, 385b. The Lords agreed to this, but only after making several unspecified amendments.36LJ viii. 67b, 82b; CJ iv. 386b, 396b-397a, 474b. After a further delay, the order was finally approved in July 1646.37CJ iv. 612b-613a, 613b; LJ viii. 440a.

Those payments would be dependant on confiscations from royalist delinquents. It therefore may not be a coincidence that the two other pieces of parliamentary business in which Serle took an interest at about this time involved two high-profile west country royalists. On 18 August 1646 Serle was among Somerset MPs instructed to prosecute Sir John Stawell* for treason at the next county assizes.38CJ iv. 648a; Som. RO, DD/HI/B/466: Som. MPs to [Som. standing cttee.], 18 Aug. 1646. Two weeks later he was also appointed to the committee to consider the request for bail from Sir John Glanville*.39CJ iv. 662a. Thereafter his absences from Westminster become easier to document than his activity in the Commons. He was not present when the House was called on 9 October, although he may have returned soon after, for he was added to the committee on maimed soldiers on 11 November, after the petition from the wounded soldiers being treated at the Savoy Hospital was referred to it.40CJ v. 330a, 356a. Moreover, on two subsequent occasions, on 16 December 1647 and 4 September 1648, he received permission to spend time away from Westminster.41CJ v. 387b; vi. 5a, 34b.

Such a pattern of absences and apparent inactivity often indicated passive disquiet about the more hard-line direction in which Parliament seemed to be heading; usually that turned into firm disapproval of the regicide. Yet Serle became a Rumper, entering his dissent to the vote of 5 December as early as 20 December, although he did not rush to resume his seat after the purge of December 1648 or the king’s execution, and he was no more active as an MP than previously.42PA, Ms CJ xxxiii, pp. 473-4; [W. Prynne], A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case (1660, E.1013.22), 21. As early as April 1649 he was added to the Somerset commission of the peace for the first time.43C231/6, p. 149. Then, on 6 September 1649, he reappeared at Westminster. He had quite possibly made the trip to London specially, as the business before the House was of major significance for his constituents. Probably at the prompting of the other Taunton MP, John Palmer*, Parliament agreed to grant £10,000 towards the repair of the war damage to the town. The money was to be raised from the compositions of a several prominent royalists, headed by Portman and Stawell. Serle was then appointed to the committees to arrange this.44CJ vi. 291b. He had other reasons for appearing at Westminster at this time, however. The Taunton corporation had recently re-elected him as mayor and on 11 September he asked for permission from Parliament to accept, which was immediately granted.45CJ vi. 293a. The re-election and the grant for repairs were probably connected. As mayor, Serle would be especially well-placed to oversee the rebuilding work made possible by Parliament’s generosity and in January 1650 he would receive the latest instalment of the Portman fine.46Som. RO, DD/PM/7/4/3. He also used his visit to London to obtain instalments amounting to £240 towards the grant of £2,500 due to him from 1646. Further payments of £543 were made two months later.47CCAM 845, 1504.

Serle’s duties as mayor doubtless detained him in Taunton until the autumn of 1650. Once that term was over, he turned his attentions to obtaining the £145 7s still owed to him as part of the £2,500 grant, compiling a list of those who owed money to the Committee for Advance of Money and whose contributions could therefore be paid to him.48CCAM 845. From the summer of 1651 – and quite possibly earlier – he was active as a justice of the peace.49QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 151. That September he and John Palmer, still nominally the town’s other MP, wrote from Taunton to the Committee for Compounding recommending John Wyatt for appointment as a sequestration official in Somerset.50CCC 481.

It is plausible that he spent these years in Somerset rather than at Westminster. Only in the autumn of 1652 did he briefly reappear in Parliament. The three committees to which he was then named were those on the bill for the repair of Sherborne causeway (30 Sept.), for the supply of merchant ships to the navy (4 Nov.) and on the bill to grant salaries to the judges (12 Nov.).51CJ vii. 188a, 210a, 215a. On balance, it seems unlikely that the MP was the merchant who was granted letters of marque in 1650 after goods had been seized from his ships at St Malo and who then used those letters to prey on French shipping.52CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 300, 302, 324, 340, 410, 431, 564; 1650, p. 360; 1651-2, p. 37; 1655, p. 289. It is clear that Serle was never especially active as an MP and his parliamentary career was probably regularly interrupted by prolonged absences. Like many of his colleagues elected in late 1640, he doubtless found it extremely inconvenient that his tenure as an MP proved to be so lengthy. If so, he presumably had no great desire ever to stand again.

Serle ostensibly accepted the protectorate, as he continued to serve as a justice of the peace.53QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 151-320. In 1654 he was appointed as mayor of Taunton for the third time.54Som. RO, DD/PM/7/4/11. But by then he was no longer being included on the Somerset assessment commissions. In March 1657 he was among those purged from the commission of the peace in the clear-out of the old guard associated with John Pyne*.55C231/6, p. 360.

It is possible, in any case, that he was by now spending more time back in Honiton. He died there on 28 September 1658. His widow, Welthian Searle, was granted the administration of his estates later that year.56PROB8/52, f. 347v. His place of burial is unclear, but his brass memorial slab survives, now in the collections of the Somerset County Museum. It paid tribute to him as a ‘humble and pious Christian’ who had been a ‘faithful and vigilant magistrate’.57‘Additions to the museum’, 70. His widow lived on until at least 1677. Unlike her late husband, she died leaving a will and that provides some tantalising additional deals about the family and their estates. The properties she left included land at Pitminster, just outside Taunton, as well as estates in and around Honiton. The latter included properties which had been leased by her late husband from Sir John Northcote* or by herself from Sir Walter Yonge† (son of Walter Yonge II*). These she left to her two ‘son[s] in law’, George and John Serle, and her ‘daughter in law’, Helen Serle.58PROB11/359/185. It seems likely that these were Serle’s children from his previous marriages.