MOYLE, John II (1592-1662), of Bake, St Germans, Cornw.

The Moyles had been established in Cornwall since the fourteenth century, and acquired the manor of Bake by marriage during the reign of Edward IV.22Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 334. John Moyle II inherited the family estates when he was a minor, and matriculated from Exeter College, Oxford, in June 1608, at the age of 16, before being admitted to the Inner Temple in May 1609. According to the Inner Temple registers, Moyle’s membership was sponsored by his father-in-law (or future father-in-law), Edmund Prideaux of Netherton, Devon, who was treasurer of the inn and a master of the bench; his wife’s half-brother was the future attorney-general, Edmund Prideaux I*.23Al. Ox.; I. Temple database (cf. Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 334). Another important connection was Moyle’s neighbour in St Germans parish, Sir John Eliot†, who was his contemporary at Exeter College. The two fell out dramatically shortly afterwards, but were on good terms again by 1630, when Moyle did his best to help when Eliot was imprisoned in the Tower of London.24Oxford DNB.

In the years before the civil war, Moyle was active in Cornish affairs. He served as sheriff of Cornwall in 1624-5, and was an active justice of the peace in the east of the county by the early 1630s.25List of Sheriffs, 23; Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 25, 34, 53, 92. Like Eliot, he was a critic of the government, and was included in a list of Cornishmen who disputed the amount they were forced to pay for the composition for knighthood fines in the spring of 1633.26CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 60. Among Moyle’s close allies at this time were another prominent Cornish family, the Bullers of St Stephen by Saltash. The two families were connected not only by friendship but also by financial obligations, and they were both involved in overseeing the wardship of the son of the Devon MP, Thomas Wise*, after 1642.27Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/4/23; BC/26/18/44.

Moyle did not stand for the parliamentary elections in November 1640, but he was eager to secure a seat for his eldest son, John Moyle I*, for their local constituency of St Germans. Control of the borough lay in the hands of the Eliot family, and Moyle was also able to call on the support of the Bullers. Such influential backers were made all the more necessary as the result was challenged in the Commons. In December 1640 Moyle sent Sir Richard Buller* and his sons ‘many and infinite thanks for the courtesy which you showed my son’ in the House. In June 1641, shortly after John Moyle I took his seat at Westminster, Moyle again sent his ‘infinite thanks’ to Francis Buller I for his assistance in the matter.28Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/2/60; BC/24/4/23. The St Germans election was not just a matter of family prestige. Moyle seems to have intended his son to represent not only his private interests but also those of the Cornish gentry opposed to the Caroline regime. When in April 1642 Moyle, with Thomas Gewen* and other local gentlemen, signed the Cornish petition demanding the removal of bishops from the House of Lords, the abolition of Laudian ceremonies, the improvement of the ministry, and additional security in the localities, it was presented to the Commons by John Moyle I on 22 April.29Coate, Cornw. 29; PJ ii. 202. The involvement of the Moyle family in such initiatives suggests that they were already committed to the parliamentarian cause before the summer of 1642, and it was hardly surprising that John Moyle II was removed from the commission of the peace in July of that year.30C231/5, p. 529.

During the early years of the civil war, Moyle’s activities are obscure, even though Parliament appointed him to numerous local commissions, including, in July 1644, the county committee.31A. and O.; Northants RO, FH133, unfol. These appointments were purely notional, however, as Cornwall was in royalist hands until the arrival of Sir Thomas Fairfax* in the spring of 1646. Moyle was certainly back in Cornwall by the summer of that year, as in August he was on hand to advise Colonel Robert Bennett* when drawing up a list of the royalists who had surrendered at Pendennis, and there is evidence of his activity as a justice of the peace in 1646-7.32CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 468; Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 240, 257. In the same period he served as chairman of the county committee, and worked with the treasurer, Thomas Bolitho*, in extracting money from local delinquents.33CCC 2810; Bodl. Walker c.10, ff. 123v, 146-7. From July 1648 he was also a member of the sub-committee that effectively controlled the wider county committee.34Coate, Cornw. 225.

Moyle’s importance in the local administration no doubt influenced his election as a recruiter MP for the borough of East Looe after January 1647; it may also explain his poor attendance in the Commons. His presence in the House was not recorded until February 1648 he was added to the committee to prepare the declaration giving reasons for the ‘vote of no addresses’ that prevented further negotiations with the king. Moyle took the Covenant soon afterwards, but in early March he was granted leave of absence, and this was renewed in April and September.35CJ v. 457b, 471a, 489b, 543b; vi. 34b. By mid-April 1648 Moyle was in Cornwall, and he joined other members of the county committee in asking Francis Buller I and other local MPs at Westminster to gain permission for their money levying schemes, ‘our treasury being empty, and we [having] little means left to supply it’.36Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/2/159. The outbreak of the second civil war created further problems locally. In early May Moyle was at Plymouth, discussing the possible threat of a rising with Robert Bennett and the local commander, Sir Hardress Waller*.37Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/2/162. By 25 May Moyle had rushed down to Truro, responding to news of ‘some stirrings about Penzance’, and on 31 May he was at Helston, writing to Francis Buller I of the failure of the rebellion and the subsequent proceedings against the leading insurgents ‘taken in Penzance in the fight’.38Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/2/164, 166, 168.

Although Moyle had been sincere in his condemnation of the royalist rebellion, and was prepared work with men like Bennett and Waller, he was not at all comfortable with the radical agenda of the more extreme Independents and their army allies. As he explained to Buller in June 1648, a month in the company of the New Model officers had turned Moyle against this army of ‘mere mercenaries … some of them unsound and heterodox in points of religion, and some (with my sorrow I speak it) mere infidels and perfect atheists’ – comments that refuted the claims to representation and godliness made by the army itself. He added that a fast day, held at Helston on Parliament’s orders, had been observed by almost all the committee members, ‘but Sir Hardress Waller and Bennett with the rest of our military janissaries (as they termed themselves) absented themselves and would not join with us’. In disgust, Moyle suggested the creation of a local militia to garrison Cornwall, for

if the arms of the county [were] put into the hands of [such] as were faithful and well affected to the Parliament, we should [be] in much more safety than we now are, and our shire freed in the future from the insupportable burden under which it groans by reason of the soldiery that is now with us.39Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/2/170.

Perhaps it was Moyle’s political scruples as much as his local duties that kept him away from the Commons at the call of the House on 26 September 1648.40CJ vi. 34b.

Moyle was not secluded at Pride’s Purge, but it was several months until he took his seat in the Rump on 6 July 1649, and he did not sit regularly until the autumn.41Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 380; CJ vi. 251a. Instead, he seems to have busied himself with local affairs, collaborating with the new council of state over the petition of Captain Francis Langdon* in March, and over the choice of justices of the peace for Cornwall in July.42CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 33, 229. Even after his return to the Commons Moyle’s primary focus remained Cornwall, and this can be seen in a series of letters he wrote in the autumn and winter of 1649. On 1 September he told Bennett and Anthony Rous of his efforts to reduce the assessment burden on Cornwall. He reported that the Speaker had warned that ‘it was now impossible without great trouble to the House, and disturbing of the Act, to have it altered’, and it was also clear that other counties had also been over-charged – and this injustice would niggle away for many months to come. Moyle had better news about the appointment of new militia commissioners, as he had seen the council ‘book’, and could add further names if required. He was also concerned at the need for new justices of the peace, as it was unfair that ‘two or three gentlemen in a shire [should] be made pack horses for all the rest, and to be laughed at for their pains’. Finally, he was keen that pressure be exerted on ‘our two knights of the shire and all their unexcepted against burgesses for their speedy repair to the Parliament’.43FSL, X.d.438 (44).

As these last comments indicate, Moyle was eager to heal the rifts within the old parliamentarian party of the county. His letter to Francis Buller I of 22 September 1649 is particularly illuminating in this respect. In it he urged Buller to support the new commonwealth, reminding him that ‘if the adverse party prevail, you and us shall surely sink into one common ruin, and your estate at best will be no other than Ulysses should have been with Polyphemus (to wit) to be devoured a little later than those that have ever faithfully adhered to the state and Parliament’. He also called upon Buller and other opponents to ‘all join hands and hearts together to preserve ourselves and the commonwealth of which we are all members’. Moyle was open that his aim was to get Buller and his friends to take their seats in the Rump. He asserted that

you were not restrained from sitting in Parliament at the time of the king’s trial for any evil will that the army or Parliament bore unto you and others, but for that … they sufficiently knew and were assured that you had not hearts to that eminent and most high piece of justice which was to be done on the king, and therefore were willing for a season to want the company of such as could not heartily join with them that were acting in that affair.

Buller would have been well aware that Moyle had also absented himself, and that he was not implicated in the regicide, whatever he might say about it nine months’ later. Moyle finished his letter with an invitation: ‘I verily believe that the Parliament would most willingly receive into the House again all such as would cordially own the Parliament in that way which it now engageth in, of a free state’.44Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/2/171-2.

The response to such arguments was decidedly cool, and by his next letter to Buller, of 1 December 1649, Moyle had to report that the window of opportunity had now closed. ‘All those of the secluded members which were excluded and did not appear before the 13th of June last past are ipso facto excluded and are disabled to sit in the House this Parliament’. He was, however, at pains to encourage Buller not to give up on the regime. He could still ‘serve as a justice of peace in the county’ if he would only sign the Engagement.45Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/2/173. This was also something of a forlorn hope, for Moyle had already told Bennett of his fears that the Engagement would prove divisive, and that ‘it is verily believed that many of the rigid Presbyterian party here will refuse to subscribe it’.46HMC Hodgkin, 47.

What was common to all these letters was Moyle’s hope of bringing in the old parliamentarians, perhaps in the hope of fostering moderate influences within the new commonwealth. Underlying this was religious, as well as social, conservatism. Moyle’s religious opinions clearly had not changed since the summer of 1648. At heart, he still felt that a Presbyterian system was the best way to avoid error and heterodoxy, and he remained suspicious of the army as a seat of radical ideas. In November 1649 he expressed his satisfaction that the Leveller, John Lilburne, had been ‘arraigned for his pestilent seditious books’; he also lobbied for ‘a godly painful teacher’ to be given oversight at Padstow; and promised to send ‘an honest men’ to replace the ejected minister of Little Petherick.47HMC Hodgkin, 47-8. (Whether he and Bennett would agree what constituted an ‘honest man’ is another matter.) In November 1650, Moyle asked Bennett to defend James Forbes – the ‘honest’ and ‘orthodox’ minister of Duloe parish – who faced ejection by the local committee. Moyle asked Bennett that he ‘would not bear so heavy a hand over him’, and added that ‘there are and will be differences in opinion amongst men … I know you stand for liberty of conscience, and would not have men persecuted because they are not in all things in every point of your opinion’.48FSL, X.d.438 (71).

The issues that emerged from Moyle’s correspondence with Buller and Bennett can also be seen in his committee appointments during the middle years of the Rump Parliament. His strong views on the dangers of religious and political radicalism may be reflected in his appointment to the committees on a bill ‘for suppressing divers atheistical, blasphemous and execrable opinions’ in June 1650, and in the next month he was added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers.49CJ vi. 430b, 437a. He was also an active member of the committee for regulating the universities, which worked with the Committee for Plundered Ministers in settling a godly, ‘orthodox’ ministry.50CJ vi. 469b; LPL, Sion L40.2/E16, passim. Moyle’s concern about Lilburne is also apparent in June 1650, when he was named to the committee to consider Lilburne’s petition; in December 1651, when he was appointed to the committee to consider the actions of Josiah Primatt, whose petition was encouraged by the Leveller leader; and in January 1652 Moyle was again named to a committee to consider Parliament’s judgement against Lilburne himself.51CJ vi. 433a; vii. 55b, 75b. As befitted a man with reservations about the regime, Moyle had little direct involvement in the national government, although he was a member of the Navy Committee, signing its warrants in September and October 1649, and as late as January 1651.52Add. 5497, f. 167v; Add. 18986, ff. 5, 17. On 22 January 1651 he was also ordered to liaise with the Navy Committee about a petition from the London merchant Maurice Gardiner.53CJ vi. 527a. Moyle’s main concern throughout this period was financial, and specifically the fate of estates forfeited from royalists. On 2 November 1649 he was added to the Committee for Compounding sitting at Goldsmiths’ Hall, and in August 1650 he was named to the committee for the sale of delinquent lands.54CJ vi. 318a, 457b. In the early months of 1651 he was particularly active in the sale of lands, the concealment of estates, and the fate of the goods of the royal family, which may reflect his own vested interests, as on 23 May his petition protesting his innocence of any wrong-doing concerning the sequestration of estates in Cornwall was considered by the Commons, and it was ordered that any claims against him should be ‘absolutely discharged’.55CJ vi. 528a, 544a, 556a, 565b, 578b. He was appointed to the committee to remove obstructions to the ordinance concerning forfeited lands on 16 July 1651, and in September of that year he signed an order of the parliamentary committee to remove obstructions on the sale of dean and chapter lands.56A. and O.; Add. 37682, f. 30. he extent to which Moyle benefited personally from his involvement in the sale of lands is unclear, although he is known to have purchased Trelowia manor – an estate he had previously held as freeholder of the duchy of Cornwall - during this period.57Coate, Cornw. 272; Parl. Surv. Duchy Cornw. ii. 191. Nor is it certain how far Moyle profited from the sequestration of royalists in Cornwall in the 1640s, as, despite Parliament’s order of May 1651, he was closely pursued from late 1652 by those who claimed that he had embezzled their money.58CCC 2809-10.

Unsurprisingly, Moyle’s activity in the Rump also had a local dimension. In March 1650, for example, it was proposed that he should write to the Cornish county committee to procure more evidence about how well the Pendennis articles had been kept.59CJ vi. 388a. Although this order was voted down, Moyle remained eager to prevent the Cornish royalists from getting too easy a ride. As he told Bennett in July 1650, ‘the cursed cavaliers of Pendennis have much laboured at sundry times … to get their pretended articles of Pendennis confirmed’, and they were supported in this by ‘the gentlemen in the House that were of the army’. His own vested interests lay behind his concern that ‘desperate malignants’ would be encouraged, and he was especially worried by those clauses ‘by which they gather that they have immunity from composition and are to have all their estates free without paying anything’.60FSL, Add. 663. In later months, Moyle was named to other committees with local implications, such as that for regulating or removing officials (June 1650), and he was also involved in committees concerning MPs from the south-west, like Carew Raleigh (1 July 1651) and Gregory Clement (19 Feb. 1652).61CJ vi. 432b, 595a; vii. 93a.

In his absences from the House, Moyle was active in local government. As well as his continuing duties as a justice of the peace, he was named to assessment commissions from April 1649 until December 1652, and was a member of the sequestrations committee before February 1649.62A. and O.; Add. 5494, f. 89. Stray references in borough records show that Moyle was ubiquitous in local affairs, as in June 1649 when he worked with Hunt Greenwood* at Liskeard to bring tipplers to justice, and in 1651-2, when he was visited at Bake by the mayor and burgesses of his own constituency, East Looe.63Cornw. RO, B/LIS/290; DC/LOO/125/1/2. His expertise in local matters was also recognised at Whitehall, and in the summer of 1651 he was asked to attend the council of state to advise them on the appointment of a new governor of the recently recaptured Isles of Scilly.64CSP Dom. 1651, p. 277.

Despite Moyle’s standing at Westminster and Whitehall, and his importance as a conduit between the centre and Cornwall, he seems to have stopped attending Parliament altogether in the spring of 1652. Moyle’s withdrawal from the House was not a conscious retirement from politics, however. He remained on good terms with the supporters of the commonwealth in Cornwall, and in October 1652, for example, he was involved in the arbitration of a land dispute involving Robert Bennett.65FSL, X.d.483 (159). Moyle also greeted the forced dissolution of the Rump with concern, rather than jubilation. In June 1653 he told Bennett that

For the shutting of the Parliament doors and denying of the Members any longer sitting I intend not to dispute the cause or lawfulness thereof, not doubting that they that did it had a lawful calling and just reason for doing the same; for my own particular it may be I could wish, and so I presume do many others well affected to the cause, that either it had not been done, or at least not until the businesses of the commonwealth had been somewhat a little better provided for …

He was especially concerned at the size of the military establishment, and the vast cost it incurred, and that the people would refuse to pay taxes that were not agreed by Parliament. The best hope was the ‘speedily sending forth writs for the choosing of new representatives’ and that the new Members could ‘finish the great work so happily, by God’s assistance begun, and though the last Parliament could not by reason of some defects end it, yet that the succeeding Parliament may set up the top stone of the building of both church and state’.66FSL, Add. 662.

Despite his misgivings, Moyle was prepared to collaborate with the new council of state. In August 1653 he attended a meeting of the local justice of the peace at East Looe to arrange for the pressing of sailors for the Dutch War, and, with Bennett, was described as having been ‘very active’ in this cause.67CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 91. It is clear, however, that even this fairly low level of commitment stopped after December 1653. Indeed, Moyle’s lack of enthusiasm for the protectorate is reflected in his omission from most local commissions during the mid-1650s. There were only three exceptions: the oyer and terminer commission for the Western circuit, of which he was a member by early 1654, the June 1654 assessment commission, and the August 1654 commission for ejecting scandalous ministers.68An Ordinance for an Assessment (1654); C181/6, pp. 8, 308; A. and O. This lack of involvement may also indicate that Moyle was treated with suspicion by the new regime, which allowed the claims of embezzlement, made by former royalists, to rumble on during 1654 and 1655.69CCC 2810-1. Official suspicion of Moyle may have contributed to the harsh treatment of his son, Walter*, who was excluded by the protectoral council from the second protectorate Parliament in 1656.70CJ vii. 425b. Moyle himself, however, having been removed from the Cornish bench by the autumn of 1653 had been restored to the magistracy by the autumn of 1656.71C193/13/4, f. 13; C193/13/6, f. 11v.

Moyle was named to the Cornwall militia commission in July 1659 and again the following March, but there is no indication that he was active in local government at this time, and he did not take up his seat in the restored Rump.72A. and O. Moyle died in January 1662 and was buried at St Germans.73Cornw. RO, St Germans par regs. His eldest son, John Moyle I, had died in 1658, and his grandson and heir, Roger, had also died in December 1660, at the age of five. Moyle was succeeded by his fifth son, Walter Moyle, who continued to sit for Cornish boroughs after 1660; his grandsons, Joseph† and Walter†, also represented Cornish seats in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.74Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 335; HP Commons 1660-1690; HP Commons 1690-1715.