REYNOLDS, Robert (1603-78), of the Middle Temple, London, and Elvetham, Hants.

Among Members who, discounting temporary strategic absences, sat throughout the Long Parliament, Reynolds was one of the most visible inside Westminster. Familiar to his colleagues from late 1641 as a periodic occupant of the chair when the Commons became a grand committee, almost from the outset of the Parliament he was also a stalwart of certain key ordinary committees, regularly reporting to the House and participating in conferences with the Lords. An ally of John Pym* in 1642 and 1643, the years of his highest profile in the Journal, he was also an associate of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex. After Pym’s death he emerged as a Presbyterian leader. But in the later 1640s his longstanding links with the army, where his half-brother, John Reynolds*, forged a notable career, eased the way of compromise with those who held the reins of power. Like some other notable and essentially conservative lawyers, Reynolds found a modus vivendi with the Rump and accepted office from it in the hope of influencing events, only to disappear from public life in 1653 as those hopes were dashed. He re-emerged in 1659, a doughty defender, as he had always been, of the rights of Parliament, and then took an equally important part in the restored Rump. While his allegiance to the institution itself is unequivocal, from about 1645 his other loyalties are often hard to pin down, just as his pre-war associations are somewhat conjectural. Evidence of his activity outside the chamber is scanty and, being apparently pre-eminent among ‘second-rank’ politicians, he largely escaped the eye of newsletter-writers. As a result, he has tended to escape concerted attention from historians and he has sometimes been confused with his brother John.

Making of a parliamentarian

The claim that Reynolds’s family ‘could not boast either of its antiquity or splendour’ because ‘it had never been noticed by any of the heralds in their visitations’ now carries less conviction than it did when first made.51Noble, House of Cromwell, i. 418. However, while it is clear that by the early seventeenth century the family had wealth, status and connections, the origins of its prosperity are uncertain, its pedigree has been muddled, and its precise relationship to others of the same name with estates elsewhere in England and in Ireland is opaque.52Peds. of the Knights (Harl. Soc. viii), 60. In 1586 James Reynolds, more likely to have been the MP’s grandfather than his father of that name (who was born about 1570), held land at Olmstead Green, about 17 miles south east of Cambridge on the borders of Cambridgeshire, Essex and Suffolk.53VCH Cambs vi. 41. Perhaps grown ‘rich by agriculture’ (as Noble asserted), one of the two Jameses leased further land in Cambridgeshire and Essex in 1604 from Sir Oliver Williams or Cromwell of Hinchingbrooke (uncle of Oliver Cromwell*), and by 1609 had built a large house at Olmstead Green.54Noble, House of Cromwell, i. 418; LMA, ACC/0617/270; VCH Cambs. vi. 41. Knighted in 1618, the MP’s father moved his main residence from Dunmow hundred in Essex, the home of his first wife, and established himself at Castle Camps.55Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 168; MTR 646; E115/328/97. Here he eventually leased the manor from the London Charterhouse.56VCH Cambs. vi. 40.

Even if this man was not the James Reynolds who in 1606 was deputy auditor of the Irish court of chancery, it is plausible – given the later careers of his younger sons Robert and John – that the East Anglian knight was a close kinsman both to the auditor and to the other Reynoldses who held various offices in courts, militia and local administration in Dublin and Co. Leitrim and who sat in the Irish Parliament of 1634.57CSP Ire. 1601-3, pp. 43, 176-8, 557; 1603-5, pp. 255, 494; 1606-8, pp. 53, 141, 457; 1608-10, pp. 367, 477, 512, 515; 1611-14, p. 114, 304, 360; 1615-25, pp. 261, 448, 564; 1625-32, p. 252; 1633-47, p. 62. It is possible – on parallel grounds – that he was also a connection of Edward Reynolds† (d. 1623) of Dorset and Wiltshire, who was a secretary to Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex, and after the latter’s execution a clerk of the privy seal and registrar in the court of requests.58HP Commons 1558-1603.

Sir James’s three sons from two marriages all entered both Cambridge University and the inns of court – a testimony both to means and aspirations. In 1617 Robert followed his father to Queens’ College, where current members included future minister Samuel Fairclough, son of the minister of Haverhill (five miles from Castle Camps), and future chief justice Oliver St John*, and where the eminent puritan preacher John Preston was a fellow.59Al. Cant.; ‘Samuel Fairclough (1594-1677)’, ‘John Preston’, Oxford DNB. Admitted to the Middle Temple in February 1620 and called to the bar eight years later, Reynolds became well established at his inn.60MTR 656, 662, 666, 705-7, 750, 757, 762, 784, 792. By the late 1630s he may have specialised in court of wards cases.61CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 376; 1640-1, p. 220. According to the licence, his first marriage in October 1636 was to the daughter of an Essex neighbour, but the wedding took place at St Olave, Hart Street, London, and it seems plausible that Reynolds’s father-in-law, Nathaniel Deards, was connected with either or both of the London citizens of that name who died in the 1640s, one a draper and the other a merchant tailor.62St Olave, Hart Street, par. reg.; London Marr. Licences (Harl. Soc. xxvi), 224; PROB11/200/808; PROB11/213/661. If so, it would provide some explanation for the MP’s evident links in the City.

In August 1638 Reynolds was in Paris, taking advantage of the legal vacation to lodge in ‘an advocate’s house of quality in the university, remote from all English, where I rise by five and hear, read and see nothing but French’. But it was not solely a study trip. Writing to gentleman of the privy chamber John Ashburnham*, a ‘beloved person’, he reported delivery of a letter from ‘my dear friend’, presumably the ‘my Lord’ to whom Ashburnham was to forward an enclosure, to John Scudamore†, 1st Viscount Scudamore, the official English ambassador in Paris, ‘who is very noble and [?courteous] to all, as especially to me for his sake’.63SP78/106, f. 94. The identity of the peer to whom both Ashburnham (‘I know you two are but as one’) and Reynolds were close is unclear. Ashburnham and his brother William Ashbournham* were soon to be (if not yet) associates of Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, but the latter is usually regarded as an ally of Scudamore’s rival in Paris, Robert Sidney, 2nd earl of Leicester, so some other candidate is also possible.64‘John Scudamore, 1st viscount Scudamore’, ‘Robert Sidney, 2nd earl of Leicester’, ‘Algernon Percy, 10th earl of Northumberland’, Oxford DNB. What is clear is Reynolds’s reaction to what he saw in France and its potential contribution to the mindset he brought to Parliament. Louis XIII was ‘making a new levy’ of ‘28 hundred thousand pound sterling, a great sum among exhausted people’. Furthermore, he had just issued a declaration (Reynolds’s enclosure) that he had ‘put his person, estate, crown and fortune under the special protection of the Virgin Mary’. This was marked by a procession to Notre Dame cathedral on the feast of the Assumption, but although it had ‘some policy in the institution ... it had impiety in the execution’. Swords were drawn in church as the presidents of the courts of justice jostled for precedence, ‘which did much eclipse the glory of the day’. Despite his linguistic progress Reynolds found ‘nothing here but what will make me more in love with the religion, laws, policy, men and manners of thrice happy England than before’.65SP78/106, f. 94.

Pious Parliament-man and ally of John Pym, 1640-2

The background to Reynolds’s election in autumn 1640 to serve for Hindon is unknown. It is conceivable that, in a constituency open to manipulation from outside, he was a nominee of those critical of royal policy – perhaps the 3rd earl of Essex and his Wiltshire brother-in-law William Seymour, 1st marquess of Hertford, or indeed Northumberland – and promoted by such local opponents of Charles I’s personal rule as Sir Henry Ludlowe*. His career in Parliament got off to a slow start, with only two committee nominations (19 Nov.; 3 Dec.) before on 14 December he received leave of absence for three weeks ‘for very great occasions that concern a ward’.66CJ ii. 31b, 44a, 50b. However, he confidently signalled what was to become a key interest when on 10 December, with fellow East Anglian Sir Simonds D’Ewes*, he recommended the dissolution of a sub-committee on Irish affairs and the resumption of a grand committee on the issue.67Procs. LP i. 556. This does not look like the action of a novice untutored in the ways of Westminster.

It was six weeks before Reynolds reappeared in the Journal, but when he did so his prominence was immediate. Placed on the committee to promote the implementation of laws against priests and Jesuits (26 Jan. 1641), in the next two days he was named with fellow Middle Templar Edward Hyde* and several other lawyers to manage a related conference with the Lords, and with seasoned Members like William Strode I*, John Hampden* and Sir Edward Hungerford* to prepare interrogatories to be put to those suspected of encouraging Roman Catholic recusants to participate in the campaign to drive the Scots army from the north.68CJ ii. 73b, 74a, 74b. He was to play a significant part in the religious business occupying the Commons in the months before the imminence of military conflict turned attention elsewhere.

On 11 February he emerged to report, from committees to which he had not originally been nominated, what amounted to a complex Catholic conspiracy to take control of south Wales and the Marches, and other areas thereafter. In particular, the king, the lord lieutenant of Ireland Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford, and the secretary of state Sir Francis Windebanke* were implicated in instructions issued to the locally pre-eminent grandee Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, in the summer of 1640 to cede power to Henry Somerset, 5th earl of Worcester, and his son Edward, Lord Herbert, ‘both papists’, who were to lead an army sent over from Ireland to Milford Haven. D’Ewes, not usually sanguine about Catholicism, dismissed some of Reynolds’s account as ‘matter of no great moment, the Lord Herbert being much addicted to the contrivement of matters of this nature and that of a long time’, but it was potential dynamite, and the fact that Reynolds was entrusted with it argues not just for personal commitment but also for his having powerful backers with faith in his abilities.69CJ ii. 83a; Procs. LP ii. 415-19. He reiterated ‘the great dangers which were threatened from the earl of Worcester’s design’ at a joint conference with the Lords two days later and moved for measures for disarming recusants.70CJ ii. 85a; Procs. LP ii. 444.

In the following months he remained a key campaigner and draughtsman in conferences and committees for removing Catholics from court, imprisoning those suspected of plotting, implementing all statutory measures against them, and pursuing priests; he also prepared a bill excluding those who would not subscribe oaths of supremacy and allegiance from voting on any matter of religion and church government.71CJ ii. 91b, 230b. Recusancy was one of the issues on which he chaired grand committees and he evidently became indispensable to proceedings: when on 15 December 1641 Hampden successfully moved to have a bill for he securing of papists brought before the House the serjeant was ordered to warn Reynolds ‘tomorrow and not to go out of town’.72CJ ii. 111a, 221a, 268a, 302a, 325a, 327a, 327b, 331a, 341b, 343a, 387a, 415a, 456b; D’Ewes (C), 192, 199, 289; PJ i. 286, 327, 330; ii. 5-6. The vehemence of his views is illustrated by his claim in June 1641 that, ‘those papists are in a praemunire by the statute of 27 of Eliz. that send their children to popish seminaries beyond sea’.73Procs. LP v. 369. Appointed in August as a commissioner in Suffolk under the ordinance he had promoted, he proved locally active in disarming recusants.74CJ ii. 268a. In January 1642 he and Sir Dudley North* informed the Commons that at the Hengrave home of Lady Penelope Gage were ‘so great a resort of papists as the country about it were much troubled at it’ or even ‘put in very great fear’, and obtained an order for the sheriff to act.75PJ i. 62, 68. The previous month he had twice been a teller in favour of the execution of Catholic priests, although without success (11 Dec. 1641).76CJ ii. 339b.

Reynolds’s religious concerns went beyond fear of popery. On 4 February 1641 he was among Members who spoke in support of the motion of Nathaniel Fiennes I*, son of William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, for committing the London petition against episcopacy, and later that month he was added to the committee considering a related remonstrance from ministers (27 Feb.), while in debate on the shortcomings of other higher clergy (26 Mar.) he was ready with tales of the ‘wickedness’ of at least two deans.77CJ ii. 94a; Procs. LP ii. 391; iii. 155, 157. He was nominated with Hampden to committees preparing a case for the removal of clergy from commissions of the peace (1 Mar.) and a broader act for excluding them from any temporal office (1 Apr.), and later sat to refine an act against pluralism in ecclesiastical preferments (14 Feb. 1642).78CJ ii. 94b, 115a, 431b. His involvement in proceedings against the bishops who had spearheaded the controversial ‘innovations’ of Charles I’s reign began early, when he was appointed to the committee for Archbishop William Laud and the extra-parliamentary Canons of 1640 (12 Feb. 1641), and was resumed at critical points thereafter.79CJ ii. 84a. He was on committees discussing proceedings against Richard Mountague, bishop of Norwich, and Roger Maynwaring, bishop of St David’s, promoted in contravention of their censure by 1620s Parliaments for writings and sermons expressing Arminianism and a high view of royal authority (23 Feb.), and managing the impeachment of the bishops most closely associated with the Canons (11 Aug., 13 Nov. 1641; 17 Jan., 14 Feb. 1642).80CJ ii. 91a, 252b, 314b, 385b, 431a. He became involved (June 1641) in the cause of Peter Smart, championed by Hampden, Pym and Sir Robert Harley* after petitioning over his sufferings for objections to creeping ceremonialism in the diocese of Durham.81CJ ii. 169a, 175a; ‘Peter Smart’, Oxford DNB. He was also named to prepare the act for the punishment of John Williams, archbishop of York (22 Feb. 1642), and to assemble the case against Archbishop Laud (26 Mar.).82CJ ii. 448b, 499b. Yet he may have been among the more cautious members of the committee on church government set up in April.83CJ ii. 541b. Nominated second after Hampden, he had already exhibited a different viewpoint. When on 22 January Hampden had moved for a ‘synod of grave and learned divines and such as should be chosen by Parliament’, Reynolds had made the significantly less radical proposal that the choice be ‘by the king with the consent of Parliament’.84PJ i. 139.

Compared with other high profile MPs, Reynolds had also appeared relatively less exercised by many other controversial aspects of Charles’s personal rule, making no reports or recorded speeches on these topics. He was nominated to a handful of fairly significant committees: to suppress printing of Oliver St John’s speech on Ship Money (6 Feb. 1641), consider the fall-out from the dissolution of the 1628/9 Parliament (23 Feb.), prepare the act declaring Ship Money illegal (19 June), confer with the Lords on bills abolishing star chamber and the court of high commission (26 June), and work on the act abolishing the council of the Marches of Wales (13 Aug.).85CJ ii. 80a, 91a, 181b, 189b, 253b. But other matters detained him more.

Like other lawyers, until the spring of 1642 he worked on acts for the settlement of property and private disputes, on investigation of potential miscarriage of justice, and on reform of arcane legal practices and glaring administrative abuses (for example: the abolition of trials by battle, 11 Mar. 1641; excessive fees surrounding the office of sheriff, 6 July).86CJ ii. 62a, 85b, 93b, 100b, 123b, 164b, 182b, 235b, 505b, 685a. He brought in from committee a bill for the abbreviation of the Michaelmas law term (11 Mar.).87Procs. LP ii. 710. His professional expertise was tapped for the preparation of bills to do with tillage, water supply, customs, coinage, manufacture, commerce, the victims of north African pirates and the establishment of charitable and educational trusts.88CJ ii. 92b, 157a, 161a, 162a, 164b, 165a, 196a, 219b, 446a, 461a. He occasionally sat on committees tasked with raising money in London and generally; he was given special care of a bill for security for lenders of money for disbanding the armies in England (28 July 1641: possibly a sign of his known commitment to prioritising resolution of the conflict in Ireland – see below) and once (18 Feb. 1642) chaired a grand committee on a supply bill.89CJ ii. 180a, 182a, 222a, 226b, 228a, 239a, 314a, 440b; D’Ewes (C), 131.

However, the sum of this activity was almost certainly less than the time and skill he devoted to an issue which reflected on the status and rights of Parliament itself, namely the working of the Commons. Involved from an early stage in the reformation of electoral disorders (30 Mar. 1641), he chaired a longstanding committee on protracted and complex disputes at Knaresborough, while he was among the first named to a committee to work on an act for enabling Members to discharge their consciences (i.e. speak freely) in proceedings of Parliament (3 July).90CJ ii. 114a, 198b, 449a, 488a. But his particular project was a bill ‘to restrain the multiplicity of parliament protections’, which he proffered on 25 May 1641 and which occupied him for the next 12 months. Presented as a measure to assist the recovery of debt – impeded by claims of immunity from arrest by those associated with Parliament – and thus to increase the supply of money available for credit and investment, it was supported by London MP Alderman Isaac Penington* as being ‘of great use’ and evidently underpinned or even instigated by a substantial City lobby, but it also came to encompass other issues of parliamentary privilege and to establish a fundamental parliamentary tradition.91Procs. LP iv. 558-9. The bill was committed the same day under Reynolds’s chairmanship.92CJ ii. 156a. When he made an initial report a week later (2 June), Denzil Holles* produced further supportive petitions from the City and there was much debate, but despite Reynolds’s determined efforts in subsequent days it was regularly submerged under other business.93CJ ii. 164b, 117a; Procs. LP iv. 692, 694; v. 131, 162, 183-4. On 21 June he successfully applied pressure by claiming that he wished:

to be delivered from the burden he lay under in having this bill remain with him because many citizens had repaired to him desiring the said bill might pass the House or they would recover none of their debts or lend any money for the good of the public.94Procs. LP v. 251.

The details he then reported provoked lengthy discussion owing to their far-reaching implications. The proposed clause that any Member who extended privileged protection to those who were not his bona fide servants should be ‘utterly debarred [from] having liberty to sue any person hereafter’ raised the bar of acceptable patronage very high.95CJ ii. 182a; Procs. LP v. 251-2, 258-9. It also raised questions which would reverberate over centuries regarding money paid to any, whether regular officers or occasional employees, who performed services for the Commons (2 July).96CJ ii. 196a.

When Reynolds reported again from committee on 27 October, he claimed that ‘the City since the bill had often attended’ and had demonstrated that ‘many hundred protections had been granted’ and that as a result ‘near a million of money’ was owing to it from Members of both Houses and their servants, depriving the economy of specie and stifling trade. The committee had concluded that ‘this grievance was greater to the City of London than all the [monopoly] projects of salt, soap and leather had been, and than the Ship Money itself’. Contentiously, it recommended the suspension not only of protections to servants but also of the privilege of MPs themselves until such time as debts were paid.97D’Ewes (C), 42-3; CJ ii. 296a. It seems to have been easy enough for Reynolds to secure the expulsion (2 Nov.) of Henry Benson*, burgess for Knaresborough, who had blatantly ‘set up an office here in Westminster for selling his protections’: it may have helped that he was also suspected of Catholic sympathies.98D’Ewes (C), 66; CJ ii. 301a. Additionally, Reynolds persuaded MPs to pass interim legislation removing some abuses on 19 November, despite objections from D’Ewes (in principle a supporter) that ‘we were giving away too much and would be liable to suits’.99D’Ewes (C), 171; CJ ii, 320b. But some matters remained unresolved. On 7 December Reynolds reported from a conference with the Lords that peers had attempted, by amendments, to award exemptions to themselves and their servants. The bill, all but ‘destroyed’, was recommitted and presumably still under discussion when a more urgent question of privilege was manifested in the aftermath of the king’s attempt to arrest Members in January 1642.100D’Ewes (C), 243-4; CJ ii. 331b, 334b. Reynolds was included on the committee that then met with the Lords (17 Jan.).101CJ ii. 384a.

Affairs of Ireland, 1641-2

Shaping or shaped by Reynolds’s relation with the City of London was the sustained interest in Irish affairs which has already been apparent in his activity around popery and recusants. Since February 1641 the disbanding the army raised by the lord lieutenant of Ireland, the earl of Strafford, had been on the agenda of conferences with the Lords in which he had participated and from the same time he had been involved in the preparation of Strafford’s impeachment.102CJ ii. 83a, 91b, 93a, 93b, 98a, 111a, 122a, 126a, 139a. On 16 April he was among those visibly pushing that case forward in the Commons, while on 19 May he was selected to press the lord chief justice for proceedings against one O’Connor, alleged to have plotted the assassination of the king.103Procs. LP iii. 582; iv. 458. When news reached London of the rebellion in Ireland, Reynolds was placed on the committee of investigation (2 Nov.).104CJ ii. 302a. At first he played no visible role in a body that had almost daily deliberations, but it seems likely that he was active behind the scenes.105R. Armstrong, ‘Ireland at Westminster’, Parliament at Work ed. C. Kyle and J. Peacey (2002), 80. Already at work on the details of the Anglo-Scottish treaty whereby the Scots to took responsibility for fighting the rebels in Ulster, he was named to the committee drafting a commission delivering to the Scots the town and castle of Carrickfergus (1 Feb. 1642).106CJ ii. 400a, 405b, 407a. Later that day, on the motion of fellow draftsman Nathaniel Fiennes, Reynolds reported the commission, and the money paid to the Scots as part of the ‘brotherly assistance’.107PJ i. 243; CJ ii. 407a. He was also in charge of expanding the commission to ‘enlarge it for more men’ three days later and was at the heart of further proposals for the ‘reduction’ and ‘succour’ of Ireland discussed by Commons and Lords in later February/March, his connections in the City supplying a means to encourage the venturing of necessary money.108CJ ii. 412a, 413a, 435b, 437a, 438a, 439a, 453b, 456a, 467b, 468b, 470b, 474a, 474a, 476a, 476b, 498a, 505a; PJ i. 274, 402, 476, 515; Bodl. Tanner 64, f. 185.

Although named last on the list of the ‘commissioners and council’ for the ‘government and defence of Ireland’ appointed under the great seal on 4 April 1642, Reynolds soon emerged as a leading member of what became known as the Committee for the Affairs of Ireland.109CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 366; ‘Ireland at Westminster’, 81. Only Pym and (a pointer to a continuing association if one existed) Northumberland attended all its recorded meetings between 7 June and 12 October; Reynolds was absent twice.110PJ iii. 363-438. His importance seems to have rested partly on personal contact with adminstrators in Dublin – on 7 April he related to the Commons a conversation with Nicholas Loftus, under-treasurer for Ireland, regarding funds for campaigning there – and partly on his own role in handling those funds.111PJ ii. 138; ‘Ireland at Westminster’, 82; CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-59, p. 121. From then until the autumn he was regularly employed by the Commons as a draughtsman of Irish orders and legislation regarding raising money and men and as a messenger to the Lords on thr matter, acquiring additional responsibilities with regard to the ‘distressed Protestants’ arriving in England from Ireland.112CJ ii. 545a, 546b, 552b, 554a, 555a, 559a, 562a, 563a, 563b, 588a, 588b, 589a, 591b, 595a, 601a, 602b, 603a, 603b, 605b, 607a, 640a, 640b, 643a, 647b, 656a, 658a, 672b, 674b, 675a, 675b, 677a, 709a, 736b; PJ ii. 309; iii. 18, 135, 137. It was he who drummed up support by revealing (3 May) that ‘there were 2,000 volunteers at Minehead ready to pass for Ireland’, together with ships’ and that ‘if the wind served, only there wanted money and victuals, which if it were not speedily sent to them, they would disband’, and he who assured Members (28 May) that ‘we did not intend to press men, but to raise volunteers’.113PJ ii. 269, From midsummer, in a series of reports, motions and sessions in the clerk’s chair (11, 13, 16, 19, 20, 23, 26 July), Reynolds exemplified the importance of the Irish conflict to many in the House and his own dominance of presentation of the issue, even as he also took the lead in drafting powers for the new lord lieutenant, the earl of Leicester, to continue a Parliament there.114PJ iii. 195, 207, 223, 225, 234, 235, 238, 239, 254, 413; CJ ii. 681a, 687a.

Such conspicuous activity manifests Reynolds as a right hand man to Pym and the junto which sought to manage the House and the Irish situation to its own ends of challenging royal policies. Although, as indicated, the genesis of the association is subject to different interpretations, it was by this time well established, attested by a string of significant appointments. As early as 28 January 1641 Reynolds had been added to the committee investigating the supposed treachery of Secretary Windebanke.115CJ ii. 74b. In March 1641 he had twice been one of the select company who conferred with the Lords over the army facing the Scots in the north of England and, as has already been apparent, he was later involved in negotiating with the Scots.116CJ ii. 103a, 111b, 249b. He had demonstrated commitment by returning from leave of absence to attend his sick wife (22 Apr.) to make the Protestation (5 May).117CJ ii. 126a, 135a; Procs. LP iv. 58, 64. All the same, it is possible that for some months his potential influence passed partly unappreciated: numerically speaking his profile in the Journal was unremarkable until, after an unexplained absence between 14 December 1641 and 13 January 1642, references to him doubled, and remained at the roughly the same level for the next two years.

Political crisis and preparation for war, 1642

On his return to the House he was immediately in the thick of the response to the attempted arrest of the Five Members on 4 January 1642 and to the perceived threat to the security of Parliament, with five nominations on the 13th to investigate suspects, draw orders and confer with the Lords.118CJ ii. 340a, 375b, 376b, 377b. Complementary activity soon followed, including previously mentioned committees petitioning the king about parliamentary privileges and pursuing bishops and recusants.119CJ ii. 384a, 385b, 387a, 396a. When on 19 January one of the ‘Five’, William Strode, proposed in retaliation that six peers newly created by the king to ensure his majority in the Lords should be excluded from that chamber, Reynolds rose to quash MPs’ qualms about retrospective punishment. According to one diarist he ‘declared that we might very well pass this vote without a looking back ... this was a punishment for those who have broke the trust their country reposed in them’.120PJ i. 108. In the midst of overseeing the delivery of Carrickfergus to the Scots at the end of January/beginning of February, Reynolds headed the list of lawyers added to a committee responding to the answer of the king (by now absent from London) to the petition of Parliament to ‘put the kingdom in a posture of defence’ and found time to propose a reinforcing vote of thanks from the Speaker to Denzil Holles (another of the ‘Five’) for delivering a message to the Lords on this theme ‘so faithfully and fully according to the sense of the House’.121CJ ii. 406a; PJ i. 242.

Alongside his growing commitments with regard to Ireland, as the political situation deteriorated Reynolds acquired novel responsibilities. In March and April he was among lawyers establishing the legal basis for what eventually became the Militia Ordinance as well as for other aspects of raising soldiers; he was still involved in this in the summer.122CJ ii. 465b, 477a, 478b, 546a, 551a, 555a, 602a, 602b, 663b. As part of the response to local grievances, he had a particular role in dealing with representations from Kent and Lincolnshire.123CJ ii. 479a, 501b, 511a, 550b; PJ ii. 132. In what was perhaps a calculated move to ginger up his colleagues, on 4 April he told them of information received from Major-general Philip Skippon* of the London trained bands ‘and others’ of a score of armed Frenchmen who had left the City the day before evidently bound for the king at York. According to D’Ewes, ‘the House was a little startled at first relation of them’, and he and Holles had sought to explain away such the alarming incident, but doubtless seeds of disquiet were sown which stiffened support for Pym’s preparations for conflict to come.124PJ ii. 128. Alongside longstanding concerns (for example, the revival of the committee of protections, 13 May), Reynolds was fully involved in those preparations at the highest level: communications with the king; impeachment of his supporters, including the lord mayor of London; devising the grounds for Parliament’s independent authority; the defence of the kingdom; the prevention of arms reaching York; the blocking of the commission of array; the encouragement of local supporters; and occasionally the raising of money.125CJ ii. 508b, 539b, 550b, 562a, 565b, 570b, 572b, 587a, 589a, 591a, 594b, 606b, 609b, 609a, 610b, 611a, 620b, 630a, 645b, 652a, 660a, 677b, 681b; PJ iii. 28, 94, 154. His pledge on 10 June of two horses and £100 in plate for the defence revealed that he also brought modest wealth to the cause.126PJ iii. 471.

That summer, after the extraordinarily active quartet of Pym, Holles, Strode and Speaker Lenthall, Reynolds heads the list of the most frequent participants in parliamentary proceedings.127PJ iii. pp. xviii-xix. Irish business accounts for a good deal of this, although its relevance to English affairs should not be underestimated. In any case, Reynolds’s significance is plain. With Pym and Henry Marten* he prepared a declaration commending Parliament’s newly-appointed commander of the fleet, Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick (Essex’s cousin and a grandee in Reynolds’s native area; 4 July); with Pym, Holles and Hampden he managed a conference with the Lords regarding communication from the earl (18 July); he headed the committee drawing an order for Members to vindicate the proceedings of the House at public assizes (14 July); and he devised with Oliver St John an order indemnifying those employed in its service (26 July).128CJ ii. 650b, 671b, 678b, 691a. It is perhaps testament to his confidence and his clout at this juncture that, in the midst of a political and military crisis, he could complain of, and obtain redress from the House for, verbal abuse and threats of violence in Westminster Hall by a man who owed him £200 (26 July).129PJ iii. 266; CJ ii. 691a.

With local MPs Sir Thomas Barrington* and Harbottle Grimston*, on 19 July Reynolds was instructed to devise an order for the deputy lieutenants of Essex to raise horse, money and plate there which might be a precedent for other counties.130CJ ii. 681a. He acted as a liaison officer with his native area, preparing propaganda for local administrators and negotiating for arms for its defence, but unlike his colleagues did not return there.131CJ ii. 724a, 732b, 741b, 745b, 751a, 774a. With a father and older brother to uphold the cause around Castle Camps – both Sir James and his heir, also James, were made deputy lieutenants of Cambridgeshire (6 Sept.) – and with no usable influence in his Wiltshire constituency Reynolds was freed for work at Westminster.132LJ v. 342a.

Over August and September he made about 60 appearances in the Journal, mostly related to the effective declaration of war. He produced orders granting military commissions, setting guards, authorising seizure of arms and ammunition, indemnifying Cromwell and Valentine Wauton* for seizing plate at Cambridge destined for the king, demanding the arrest of those who had implemented the king’s commission of array, appointing the preachers who would deliver appropriate sermons from Paul’s Cross and facilitating the levying of money.133CJ ii. 694a, 701b, 702a, 706b, 719b, 726a, 729b, 736b, 751a, 768b. He sat on financial committees.134CJ ii. 731b, 762b, 772a. He deliberated the fate of absent Members (rather surprisingly seeking to prevent the disabling of former opposition activist Sir John Strangways*, 2 Sept., and of Geoffrey Palmer* for providing horse for the king, 7 Sept.) and (sometimes alone) prepared further impeachments of Charles’s leading supporters.135CJ ii. 725a, 743a, 742b, 745b, 750a, 756a, 767a, 772a, 775b, 785b, 799a, 799b; iii. 336. He could be implacable: with Marten, he told against Holles’s attempt to grant safe conduct to the French lords visiting the royal court (15 Aug.) and on the day he seconded Holles’s motion that ‘we should only pitch upon some particular delinquents ... and pass by the rest’, he refused to countenance bailing Sir John Lucas before impeaching him of high treason (21 Sept.).136CJ ii. 721a; Harl. 163, f. 372v; Add. 18777, ff. 6v, 20. With other lawyers he also considered the workings of the judicial system and the composition of commissions of the peace in this extraordinary situation, and the question of legitimation of documents in the absence of the great seal.137CJ ii. 734b, 737b, 738a, 750a, 759b, 782b. He was involved in some of the most delicate business, managing talks with the Lords over ‘important affairs of the kingdom and its safety’ and formulating answers to declarations by the king and the general assembly of the Church of Scotland.138CJ ii. 722a, 725b, 731a, 731b, 732a, 734b, 748a, 753a, 764a, 768a, 768b.

By this stage, if not earlier, it was apparent that he did so as a supporter of the earl of Essex. With Pym he was on the eight-man committee which prepared a ‘form of covenant’ to adhere to the earl as captain-general of Parliament’s forces and a declaration against Charles’s proclamation condemning the ‘rebellion’ (11 Aug.).139CJ ii. 715b. Reynolds presented the latter document two days later.140CJ ii. 718b. On 17 August he tried unsuccessfully to block the presentation of accounts to the House by army treasurer Sir William Uvedale*, who was well known to have cuckolded the earl, while later that day he was chosen to carry a message to the earl’s quarters.141CJ ii. 724b, 725a.

Mission to Ireland and Irish affairs 1642–1647

Throughout this period Reynolds continued to work on Irish affairs. The commission for Ireland had evolved since the spring as the ‘major political players’ involved had been to greater or lesser extent distracted with other matters and as committees of Adventurers (MPs and Londoners who had advanced the money for the Irish campaign) had emerged.142Armstrong, ‘Ireland at Westminster’, 83. Like the other commissioners, Reynolds was included on a fresh ‘hybrid’ committee set up on 3 September 1642 – the Committee for Irish Affairs – which soon became an organised and regular fixture at Westminster.143CJ ii. 750b; Armstrong, ‘Ireland at Westminster’, 84. In addition to this he was employed by the House to send instructions to Irish justices (5 Sept.) and was added with others to a Commons committee reviewing the condition of Irish judges (8 Sept.).144CJ ii. 753a, 759b. On 10 September MPs accepted Robert Goodwin*’s recommendation from the committee of Adventurers that Sir Henry Mildmay* and Reynolds be sent over to settle their affairs there, together with the latter’s proposal to leave ‘on Thursday sevennight’.145PJ iii. 346; CJ ii. 760b. This was over-optimistic. Instructions from the Adventurers came fairly quickly and allowances for the envoys were agreed, but although Reynolds chivvied the Commons by communicating worrying news from Dublin and the decision was taken to recognise the command in Munster of its Protestant vice-president, Murrough O’Brien, Lord Inchiquin, departure was delayed.146PJ iii. 350; Harl. 163, ff. 383v, 393v; CJ ii. 783a, 787a. Testing the fragile common purpose over Ireland maintained between Parliament and the crown, the king, it was revealed on 12 October, refused to confirm Mildmay and Reynolds in their mission. As a diarist noted, he declared that not only had he already given the earl of Leicester his commission as lord lieutenant, with the result that he was unable to bestow another, but he could not in any case countenance these two because one had ‘done him a disservice’ and could not be trusted (clearly Mildmay, who had been a royal servant) and the other ‘he knew not’. While this could have been an intended slur on Reynolds’s background, it may have been true, and thus a sign that he had thus far managed to appear unobtrusive or inoffensive compared with his opposition colleagues.147Add. 31116, pp. 1-2.

Taking a line of lesser resistance, Parliament sent Reynolds and Goodwin, who had chaired the Irish committee. Arriving in Dublin on 29 October with £20,000 and a supply of powder and match, they were initially welcomed by the justices and council there, headed by James Butler, marquess of Ormond, and his Catholic but loyal friend Ulick Burke, earl of Clanricarde, Essex’s half-brother. The council wrote as much to Leicester a few days later and repeated the message in a letter to the king’s secretary of state on 20 January 1643, but divisions and difficulties soon surfaced. From the outset the Irish council sought additional funds and supplies.148HMC Ormonde, n.s. ii. 219. Reynolds and Goodwin informed Parliament on 2 November 1642 that, having negotiated the quicksands outside the harbour only by ‘a wonderful experience of God’s providence’, they had found things in ‘an ill condition’; the Scottish general, David Leslie, had accomplished little in Ulster, and inefficiency, deceit or even embezzlement by treasurer Loftus and his assistant had deprived the soldiers of some of the English money sent over (letter read 23 Nov.), leaving the commissioners more than a little reluctant to hand over their bounty.149Harl. 164, f. 111v; Add. 31116, pp. 21-2. At the beginning of February they reported that Charles had issued authorisation under the great seal to Ormond and the others to treat with the Irish rebels for peace, ‘which was a thing much resented and distasted by the House’ when their letter was read (14 Feb.), although they added reassuringly ‘that the lord justices of Ireland were much troubled at it and intended to send to his majesty to represent the inconvenience thereof’.150Add. 31116, p. 50; Harl. 164, ff. 296v-297.

But they underestimated the dilemma of the Dublin administration, caught between their hopes of Parliament and their loyalty to the king. When Charles, convinced, according to Edward Hyde*, that the commissioners ‘were no other than spies upon those who should presume to deliver any opinions there not agreeable to the sense of the Houses’, sent what was described by another royal servant as ‘a very sharp letter to the lord justices of Ireland’ not to admit the commissioners to council meetings, they obeyed.151Clarendon, Hist. ii. 494; HMC Ormonde, n.s. ii. 237; Harl. 164, f. 329. Being ‘but servants to the Parliament’, who ‘must give a strict account of our actions to those that sent us thither’, Reynolds and Goodwin sought and received confirmation. Since it was evident that ‘affairs are steered hereby by the court compass’, and that ‘the design be to make peace with the rebels’, they concluded that their further presence was pointless (letter of 15 Feb.; read 28 Feb.). It had not helped that, despite their own missives, no letter had reached them from England. Resolving to return soon to London, they hoped none the less that, despite the ‘dangers and difficulties, which on all sides do attend our imployment here’, ‘the time we have here spent, and the experience gained’ would ‘perhaps be serviceable’ to Parliament. In the meantime, they pointedly countered any rumours that the rebels were in the ascendant: these were fabrications, ‘the better to bring on a most horrid pernicious peace’.152CJ ii. 984a; R. Reynolds, The true state and condition of the kingdom of Ireland (1643, E.246.31). Ostensibly they had not entirely lost this battle – the Irish council assured Lenthall of their gratitude for the commissioners’ great care for their kingdom, and signed a copy of the treaty for Scottish assistance in Ireland which they had brought to Dublin (21 Feb.) – but in reality they had achieved little of substance.153HMC Ormonde ii. 235-8.

Yet the mission did nothing to diminish Reynolds’s and Goodwin’s standing at Westminster or their interest in Ireland. Back in London, they were placed (11 Mar.) on a committee for Irish affairs chaired by Sir Henry Vane I* – prompted by the reading of their letter on 28 February and one of a succession of shortlived bodies created to respond to particular problems – and returned to the main parliamentary Committee for Irish Affairs (CIA), now chaired by Goodwin’s brother, John Goodwyn*.154CJ ii. 999b; Armstrong, ‘Ireland at Westminster’, 86-7. Among its small core of highly active members, Reynolds retained a key role until at least late 1647 and was still visibly concerned with Irish affairs in 1651, when the Rump employed him to write to Lord Deputy Henry Ireton*.155CJ vi. 535b. Although the frequency of Journal references to him in relation to Ireland steadily decreased over that time, this stems partly from the relative profile of such business in the Commons, and it is clear that there was continuing involvement behind the scenes, even as he acquired new and competing responsibilities.

Periodically Reynolds emerged as a chairman or reporter of committees on Ireland with a substantial anterior life (e.g. 18, 25 Nov. 1643; 19, 20 Mar. 1644; 8 Dec. 1645; 8 Apr. 1647; 10 May 1649); he sat on others.156CJ iii. 109b, 191a, 315a, 320a, 404a, 431a, 433a, 440a, 442b, 443a, 443b; iv. 368b; v. 137a; vi. 206b; Add. 31116, p. 256. Alone and with other CIA core members Robert Goodwin and Sir John Clotworthy* he prepared bills for raising money, negotiated with Guildhall for funds, handled the proceeds and investigated when things went wrong (e.g. 21 Mar., 23 June 1643; 27 Aug. 1644; 23 Apr., 14 Dec. 1647).157CJ iii. 11a, 27a, 138b, 236a, 280b, 554b, 609a; iv. 101a, 352b, 521a; v. 153b, 383a; Add. 31116, pp. 310-11. He and Goodwin insisted (25 May 1643) that ‘the former diverting of the money for the relief of Ireland had brought a scandal on the parliament in foreign parts’, while Reynolds demanded (16 Sept.) that the Commons should not be deflected from passing an ordinance to repay suppliers of victuals.158Harl. 164, f. 393; Harl. 165, f. 194. On 21 August that year he called for a committee to investigate ‘how it came to pass that things go so ill in Ireland’ and why ‘houses are burnt within two miles of Dublin and the army never stirred’.159Add. 18778, f. 17. Although not always in accord with the Adventurers, he fought a rearguard action on their behalf when they were threatened with the loss of their stake as the estates of rebels were confiscated by the state (19 Aug. 1645; 14 Aug. 1648).160Harl. 166, f. 255v; CJ iv. 246; v. 670a. Having already noted when in Dublin the plight of Irish Protestants, he was charged (with Clotworthy) with providing accommodation for representatives of those who took refuge in London (June 1644) and (with treasurer William Wheler*) with charitable relief (20 Apr. 1646).161Harl. 164, ff. 296v-297, 309b; CJ iii. 520b, 526a; iv. 516b. He delivered emotive letters from Ireland and received petitions; he investigated suspected correspondence destined there; he drafted letters and commissions; and he pursued the cases of the Irish rebels Macguire and MacMahon imprisoned in England.162Harl. 164, ff. 395v, 396; Harl. 166, f. 109v; CJ iii. 115a, 143a, 368b, 514a, 607b, 647b, 673a, 673b, 675a, 686a, 694b; iv. 27b, 97b, 181a, 582b. He managed conferences with the Lords on Ireland.163e.g. CJ iii. 127b, 475b.

Above all, Reynolds had a hand, often apparently the chief hand and perhaps the most consistent, in devising Parliament’s public pronouncements on the kingdom. Only one of a dozen MPs deputed (under others’ leadership) to prepare a paper stating that the rebellions in Ireland and England ‘spring from one head and are managed with concurrent counsels ... for the utter overthrow and extermination of protestant religion’ (18 May 1643), by July he was in charge; he took the final version for printing.164CJ iii. 91a, 154a, 164b, 166b. He reported the letter to be sent to thank Inchiquin for his services against the rebels in Munster – and dissuade him from signing the cessation promoted by the king in the hope of releasing troops to serve the royalist cause in England.165CJ iii. 227b. Reynolds was too late, and instead found himself presiding over discussion of Parliament’s response to the cessation, and to the increased Catholic threat implicated in it (Sept./Oct. 1643).166CJ iii. 276b, 282b; Add. 18778, f. 49v. In December, as Parliament’s weakness seemed to demand the maximisation of the war effort in England and a reduction of commitments elsewhere, Sir Henry Vane II* argued vigorously that unless General Alexander Leslie, 1st earl of Leven, were appointed commander-in-chief over all the British forces, ‘he verily believed the Scots would return again into Scotland and so Ireland would be quite lost’. Reynolds and Clotworthy, ostensibly because it would be ‘a dishonour to this nation’ not to have an English nobleman at the helm, but more probably because they both feared loss of control and considered, as adherents of Essex, that the situation in England was less urgent, attempted unsuccessfully to galvanise support for a vote to the contrary.167CJ ii. 350a; Harl. 165, f. 254. Two and a half years later, with the royalist cause in general retreat, Reynolds was among five MPs chosen to draft a letter requesting the king to command Ormond to deliver Dublin to Parliament (3 July 1646). He was not, for once, in charge, but with his new friend Sir Arthur Hesilrige* he managed to defeat the more cautious Clotworthy to obtain inclusion of the observation that ‘So it is some refreshing unto us, that your Majesty hath of late expressed yourself in detestation of that wicked and desperate rebellion’ (6 July).168CJ iv. 599b, 603a.

Committee-man 1643–1646?

For some MPs such sustained effort with regard to Ireland might have been sufficient service alongside responsibilities as an assessment commissioner (in East Anglia) and a career at the bar, but Reynolds steadily collected other major committee appointments and regularly fulfilled minor ones. Indeed, notwithstanding his four months in Ireland and about a fortnight’s leave of absence in late October/early November 1643, it has been calculated that he was easily ‘the most prolific attender of the non-political committee-men’ in 1642 and 1643, and while these years represented the apex of his activity in this regard, it was only a little less in 1644 and the first half of 1645, and in 1646 and 1647 still reached the level of the lesser ‘committee-men’ of the early years.169L. Glow, ‘The Committee-Men in the Long Parliament’, HJ viii. 2; CJ iii. 282b seq. In fact, as is evident from his record, he was hardly ‘non-political’, and while it would be unwise to discount the potential contribution of his perceived skills and effectiveness to his repeated nominations, it would be equally misleading to underrate the potential interlinking of his appointments in some areas of business to those in others, or to ignore the potential root of all in party association – in these years around Pym and Essex, later with others. Irish affairs did not take place in a vacuum; neither did Reynolds’s other activities between 1643 and Pride’s Purge in December 1648.170Armstrong, ‘Ireland at Westminster’, 98.

This is not to deny a place to personal preference and competence or to the opportunities offered by events. Like other lawyers, Reynolds is found both reacting to unusual legal circumstances and implementing programmes of reform in the law. The former does not presuppose a political agenda, although it may have helped to hone one: temporary expedients led to the refinement of extraordinary measures. As the war machine cranked into action, Reynolds chaired a committee and managed talks with the Lords about abuses surrounding the taking of horses or other goods without parliamentary authority (May, June 1643); he was specifically called on to ‘make some observations on the letters and commissions of martial law’ to Sir William Brereton* in Lancashire (14 June).171CJ iii. 73a, 81a, 93b, 125a, 129a, 135a. From 1643 to 1648 he took a leading part in dealing with the recurring problem of, and increasingly innovatory solutions to, the absence with the king of the great seal which legitimated all documents, appointments and decisions.172CJ iii. 92b, 129a, 283b, 665a; iv. 703b, 708b; v. 117b, 477a, 528a. He was equally important in addressing the obstruction that war caused to legal proceedings, in punishing the judges like Attorney-general Sir Robert Heath who adhered to the king, in instructing the judges who adhered to Parliament, and in prosecuting particular delinquents.173CJ iii. 113b, 359b, 373a, 470a, 567b; iv. 583a, v. 60a, 61b, 93a, 451b, 453b, 465b. But he was also to the fore in reform. He sat on William Strode I’s committee for the abolition of tenures by knight’s service (a money-raising measure, it must be admitted) and presided over a substantial part of the long-running proceedings attendant on the abolition of the court of wards (in which he had a complex personal interest).174CJ iii. 317a, 526a, 526b, 592a, 663a, 664b; iv. 69b, 201a, 453b, 455a, 538b, 710a. He was involved in the ordinance for tendering the Covenant to all the officers of chancery and pleaders at the bar (12 Jan. 1644) and a manager of measures regulating the courts of chancery, common pleas, and exchequer, as well as of the office of arms.175CJ iii. 364b, 371a, 457a; iv. 351b, 701a, 701b, 710a, 710b Nor had he forgotten MPs and their debts.176CJ iv. 708b. His earliest reward came in the grant of Edward Hyde’s chamber at the Middle Temple (26 Oct. 1644) – a fact which may partly explain the latter’s references to Reynolds’s ‘insolent’ and ‘seditious’ carriage when in Dublin.177CJ iii. 678b; MTR 932-3; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 494.

Reynolds’s record on religious issues indicates a man driven by firm Protestant convictions, but without either the distinctively clericalist or Erastian agendas of some MPs. He was evidently not given to speeches on ecclesiastical matters and lacked the obvious connection of some of his colleagues to the London ministers who preached to the House, so his precise views are hard to pin down. Less often in the chair in committees, he appears to have had less influence on the overall formulation of policy in this area, but on the other hand he was consistently involved across the range of business.

Anti-Catholicism was one clear enduring concern. He remained closely associated with measures to expel priests and to dissuade foreign ambassadors from hosting masses at their residences, and was named first to a committee to ensure statutes against recusants should not be used to ensnare protestants (13 Dec. 1643).178CJ iii. 24b, 125b, 262a, 318a, 340b; iv. 194a. He was in charge of the bill for the extirpation of popery from Ireland (Jan. 1646).179CJ iv. 395a, 411b. Yet while he was on committees for the removal of ‘malignant’ ministers and continued to have a part in proceedings against impeached bishops, he seemed to lack the animus towards Laudians and their programme exhibited by fellow lawyers like Robert Nicholas*, and with John Selden* and two others drew an ordinance allowing Laud’s servants to bury his body after his execution (instead of the usual public display; 8 Jan. 1645).180CJ iii. 68a, 88a, 338b, 357b, 579b; iv. 13b; v. 119b. With Sir Robert Pye I*, Reynolds told against the sequestration of anti-Catholic controversialist Dr Daniel Featley from Lambeth when he was accused of ceremonialism (11 July 1643).181CJ iii. 161a.

On the other hand, he prepared the bill for the sale of dean and chapter lands (6 Feb. 1645), reported on the sale of episcopal lands (12 Nov. 1646), and remained closely connected with the disposal of both.182CJ iv. 43a, 502a, 720b, 721a, 723b, 724a; v. 99b, 400a, 460b, 602a, 608a; vi. 81b. As hostile commentators noted, he was a substantial investor himself, among other purchases spending nearly £8,000 on Bishop’s Waltham manor in Hampshire on 27 September 1647; he was reckoned to have ‘got £20,000’ by such means.183Bodl. Rawl. B.329, p. 1; A more exact and necessary catalogue of pensioners in the Long Parliament (1648). He was indeed among the first to take the plunge, although he claimed in 1659 that this was in response to a plea from the contractors for someone to ‘break the ice’ lest the ordinance should collapse and ‘all should be lost. He had considered that if he paid the full sum of £8,000 ‘in ready money, the [army] officers [seeking their arrears] would have the benefit of it’. However, he gave signs of long-term unease regarding the legality of this and of his purchase of bills ‘to sink the public debt, out of my service to the public’: the latter was ‘an unjust temporary law, made by a Parliament under force’; the former risked contravening common law regarding title to land.184Burton’s Diary, iii. 205.

Added in January 1644 to the lay commissioners for the Westminster Assembly, Reynolds gave some indications of engagement with its debates and respect for its achievement.185CJ iii. 357b, 358b, 359a. He was among MPs who discussed the clause in its proposed Directory for Public Worship pertaining to the administration of the Lord’s Supper (26 Nov. 1644) and who considered the fate of those who showed contempt for it by using the proscribed Book of Common Prayer (8 Apr. 1645).186CJ iii. 705b; iv. 104a. He sat on the committee overseeing the introduction of classical Presbyterianism in London (25 July) and – since he revealed a link to the town in seeking a fresh election there (21 Aug.) – he was probably the Robert Reynolds named to the eleventh division of the Suffolk classis that November.187CJ iv. 218a; Harl. 166, f. 256v; November 5th, 1645. The county of Suffolke divided into fourteene precincts for classicall Presbyteries (1647), 7. Yet if this represented a commitment to full-blown Presbyterianism, it was almost certainly shortlived; on the evidence of the Journal Reynolds spent little time in his native area and within two years had acquired a base elsewhere, so he had minimal opportunity to live under the system there. Indisputably he was more interested than, for instance, Selden, another member of the July committee, in moulding beliefs and behaviour, in supplying and supporting godly, preaching clergy, and in regulation of churches and education: he was on the committee for the ordinance repressing various sins including blasphemy (29 Jan. 1645) and was later a commissioner for exclusion from the sacrament (3 June 1646); he sat on several committees on the ministry (6 Nov. 1643; 3 Apr. 1645, first-named; 7 Apr. 1646) and on Westminster collegiate church (13 Jan. 1644; 7 July 1645), and was twice added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers (9 Aug., 16 Nov. 1644); involved in provision for fugitive scholars from Oxford (5 Dec. 1643), he was then consistently on committees and commissions for both universities (14 June, 22 Nov. 1645; 26 Feb., 23 Mar., 7, 15 Apr. 1647; 17 June 1648).188CJ iii. 302b, 329b, 365a, 585a, 699b; iv. 35b, 97b, 174a, 198b, 350b, 502a, 562b; v. 99b, 121a, 134b, 143a, 603b. He was later on committees to promote the payment of tithes (15 Sept. 1647; 9 Feb. 1648).189CJ v. 302a, 460b.

But none of this defines precisely his theological position. In common with the many fellow MPs who (12 Dec. 1646) reacted to the book Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici, he rejected the assertion of Presbyterianism by divine right.190CJ v. 11a. Speaking in 1659 he claimed that ‘Presbyterian government [had been] set up in great might’ by the House expressly ‘to please’ friends among the clergy, but that the latter had then complained that legislation had not gone far enough: ‘it had not taken notice of their intrinsical power’. Ungratefully they had ‘preached up and down, and said we invaded the civil rights, and suffered heresies and blasphemies to increase. We were blamed for all’.191Burton’s Diary, iii. 206-9. While Reynolds’s indignation may have been heightened in retrospect, it is plausible that by the time he was added (alone) to the revived committee for uniting churches (22 Feb. 1647), he had already rejected Presbyterianism altogether in favour of a loose state-sponsored protestantism.192CJ v. 97b.

A third area in which Reynolds made a major contribution to the business of the Commons before the Purge concerned finance and the economy. Although he did not match the involvement here of other ‘committee-men’ like Pye and Wheler, who had particular responsibilities in handling money on a daily basis, his role was sustained and important – albeit with a significant caveat. From March 1643 he took a regular and sometimes leading part in a range of money-raising expedients. Among much else he had care of improving the ordinance for weekly assessments (May 1643); he occupied the chair when the Commons in grand committee considered tonnage and poundage (25 Jan.–3 Feb. 1645); and he went on deputations to borrow money from the City (13 June 1645; 5 Sept. 1646; 2 Apr. 1647).193CJ iii. 12a, 65b, 68a, 257b; iv. 30a, 37a, 37b, 39b, 173b, 663a; v. 133a, 159a On 28 September 1643 he was named to the Committee for Scottish Affairs, which would evolve in 1644 into the Committee for Compounding.194Supra, ‘Committee for Compounding’; CJ iii. 258a. Apart from several appointments to do with trade (as diverse as selling off Sir Paul Rycaut’s adventure in the East India Company, 1 July 1643; plantations, 20 Oct. 1643; the book of rates, 6 Nov. 1647), he was especially concerned with collections from customs and excise; he joined the committee on the latter in January 1644, chaired grand committees and brought in an ordinance to prevent a conflict of interest between merchants and commissioners (with Sir Thomas Widdrington*) early in 1645.195CJ iii. 90a, 150b, 178b, 217a, 243b, 263b, 283a, 357a, 359b, 360a, 366b, 602b, 668b; iv. 36a, 71b, 83b, 88b, 158b; v. 352a, 383a; Harl. 166, f. 177. As early as 16 May 1643 he reported an ordinance for enforcing payments to Parliament, while in July he had care of a committee reviewing the bestowal of powers for receiving and disposing of money.196CJ iii. 88a, 186a, 186b. He sat on committees reviewing the accounts of the kingdom and discussing the management of its income (first-named 6 June 1644; 21 Aug. 1644; 8 Dec. 1645; 25 Jan. 1647), as well as reviewing the activities of the Committee for Advance of Money at Haberdashers’ Hall (17 Feb. 1646).197CJ iii. 519b, 601a; iv. 368b, 445b; v. 62b. He could be a dogged pursuer of those who attempted to conceal debts to the public coffers.198CJ iii. 100a; iv. 519a, 704b; v. 144b, 145a; CCAM 548-9. However, for all Reynolds’s opportunities for overseeing accounts and his energy in tracking defaulters, there were respects in which his influence was limited. He was not a member either of the Committee for Revenue or of the Committee of Accounts, finally established in February 1644 under the partisan chairmanship of William Prynne*, who was not yet an MP.199J. Peacey, ‘Politics, Accounts and Propaganda in the Long Parliament’, Parliament at Work ed. C. Kyle and J. Peacey (2002), 59-78, esp. p. 61. Thus he could only view from the sidelines much of the day-to-day deployment of funds.

In this area Reynolds was somewhat aloof from clashes between Prynne and his rivals around Saye and Sele. But even in the early years of the war association with raising money entailed entanglement with ‘politics’ and making enemies. In August 1643 Reynolds reported from a meeting with the Lords measures to ensure that the king’s goods, abandoned in his flight from London, would not be embezzled; two years later he was among MPs appointed to view and value the pictures at York House.200CJ iii. 211a; iv. 121a. In parallel with his work on selling ecclesiastical lands, Reynolds became identified with realising income from secular opponents too. He took to the Lords the ‘several ordinances’ which established the authority of the Committee for Advance of Money (16 Oct. 1643).201CJ iii. 276a. He was called to the clerk’s chair in May 1644 to read an ordinance for the sale of delinquents’ estates which he had prepared and although he did not initially have the care of the bill for the same purpose which emerged a year later, he was on the relevant committees and soon acquired control.202Harl. 166, f. 105v; CJ iii. 497b; iv. 146b, 148b, 176a, 186a. In July 1645 he chaired several sessions of grand committee on the issue.203CJ iv. 203a, 204b, 219b, 222b, 223a, 224b, 225a; Add. 31116, pp. 444, 445; Harl. 166, ff. 236v, 239v, 246v, 247, 249v. It is likely that he did not get all his own way here – D’Ewes refers somewhat obscurely to his being ‘a great stickler in it, etc, wiped of his Irish ventures’, in relation to the omission of a clause for the repayment of land purchasers who had adventured for land in Ireland – but he took the ordinance up to the Lords on 19 August.204Harl. 166, f. 255v. He was once again in control when a further ordinance was introduced in July 1646 following the surrender of the royalists at Oxford, as he was of particular measures such as the sale of possessions of the Catholic earl of Worcester and his heir (Feb. 1647).205CJ iv. 608b, 613a, 623b, 625a, 627a, 708a; v. 74a, 92a, 92b. And as the policy reached its climax, it was Reynolds who had care of the ordinance for the reconfiguring of the Committee for Compounding with delinquents at Goldsmiths’ Hall (10 Dec. 1646).206CJ v. 8b, 52b, 55a. He was named one of the commissioners under the act in February 1647.207CJ v. 70a, 78a.

Reynolds was indeed a ‘committee-man’ par excellence, but his accumulation of leadership roles in the few committees that in effect controlled committees gave him more than just bureaucratic power, just as the absence of participation in two of the financial organs limited that power.208Add. 18778, f. 57. The interaction of greater and lesser bodies, and of both with the underlying bonds of patronage, is illustrated by his record on naval matters, where his significance and authority rested partly on his complementary involvement with trade, customs and excise, and partly in his relationship with those at the top. Here a connection with the earl of Warwick, whose appointment as commander he had supported in 1642, appears to have been fundamental. It is plausible that Warwick was among those behind the approval of Reynolds’s addition to the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports on 16 August 1643, in place of the temporarily censured Henry Marten*.209CJ ii. 206b, 207a. Reynolds’s dealings with customers made him a good choice to seek their help in securing money for the navy (13 Sept.).210CJ ii. 239b; Add. 18778, f. 49. Following the withdrawal of Northumberland, from the war, Reynolds worked on the ordinance replacing him as lord admiral by Warwick (5 Dec.).211CJ ii. 329a. Reynolds reported to the Commons on the fleet on 11 December and there is every indication that for the next 18 months he took a keen interest in different aspects of naval affairs.212CJ ii. 356a, 504b, 534a, 722a; iv. 30a, 99b. In mid-February 1645 several days in which he chaired a grand committee on customs and naval affairs culminated in an ordinance empowering the naval commissioners to perform various functions under Warwick, of which he was given charge (21 Feb.).213CJ iv. 42a, 46a, 46b, 49b, 57a. In all likelihood Reynolds hoped that Warwick would not fall victim to the Self-Denying Ordinance (on which he worked but from the provisions of which he tried to have Essex excluded: see below). With Denzil Holles he was among MPs who conferred with the Lords on 10 April about Warwick’s proffered resignation, and it was he who reported from the meeting the earl’s expressions of faithfulness and readiness to serve Parliament (12 Apr.).214CJ iv. 106a, 107b. It is noteworthy that although Reynolds retained an interest in shipping, thereafter that interest was invisible in the Journal.215CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 590. Once Warwick and Essex had been removed from power, however, Reynolds’s allegiances also began to evolve. Another major committee – that for the army – perhaps played a crucial role in this.

Managing the war: 1643

Following his return from Ireland in the spring of 1643 Reynolds was at once involved in high politics, often at the side of Pym.216CJ iii. 12b, 23a, 24b, 29b, 33b, 34a, 35a, 36a, 37b. From April he was among the handful of MPs most consistently involved in discussing proposals from the king and from the Scots, drafting some letters and instructions by himself and speaking up for parliamentary communications to Oxford being signed by the Speaker of the Commons as well as the Speaker of the Lords (7 Apr.).217CJ iii. 58a, 78a, 82b, 146a, 147a, 168a, 188b, 227b, 244a, 258a; Harl. 164, f. 359v. He attended and reported conferences with the Lords on sensitive matters including the safety of the City of London, had a prominent role in maintaining relations with the Dutch and was among MPs who dealt with the difficult question of how far to acknowledge the Prince d’Harcourt as French ambassador.218CJ iii. 100a, 139b, 141a, 187a, 205a, 266b, 280b, 325b, 334b, 352a. Having taken the Covenant promptly on 6 June, he was on the committee preparing an order for subscriptions to be required throughout the kingdom (9 June).219CJ iii. 118b, 122b. In August he was among the lawyers and others who addressed the novel problem of the power to entrusted to an interim committee in case the House should adjourn.220CJ iii. 206b. He supervised interviews with the captured royalist Colonel George Goring* and from his position on the recusancy committee he chaired the examination of Sir Kenelm Digby, the courtier arrested the previous autumn on suspicion of his encouragement of Catholic plotting, and replied to a letter of intercession on his behalf from the queen regent of France, Anne of Austria (29 July, 3 Aug.).221CJ iii. 187b, 189b, 202a.

Reynolds had something of a policing role. With two others he prepared an order preventing any except merchants and mariners from leaving the kingdom without the licence of both Houses (19 May), and later sat to regulate passes (23 Dec.).222CJ iii. 93a, 351a. Following a review of what to do about MPs who had taken but then violated the Covenant (23 Aug.), he had charge of an order for sequestering the estates of those who had ‘neglected their service to the House’ (28 Aug.).223CJ iii. 216b, 220a, 265a; Harl. 165, f. 159. It was to him that Ralph Verney* wrote in September explaining that, although he had ‘a great desire to comply with you, and some other of my friends, and submit myself to your better judgement’, he intended to retire for a time of reflection: Reynolds probably received many such letters, appealing to past association for clemency.224Mems. of the Verney Fam. ii. 164-5. Alongside composing differences between MPs and investigating breaches of security, he was first named in the committee which examined the case of Wiltshire MP Sir Edward Bayntun*, who had compounded a flirtation with the royalist camp by claiming that Pym was responsible for the military disasters in the west experienced by Parliament that summer (9 Sept.).225CJ iii. 107a, 109a, 235b, 344b.

Reynolds himself had been heavily involved in managing the war effort. Among much else, apart from sitting on committees raising money, he was among those managing the surrender of Reading to Lord General Essex (May), he conferred with and reported from the Lords on the reduction of Newcastle and relief of Lord Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*), commander in Yorkshire (May, June), and was in charge of considering propositions for the maintenance of the Bristol garrison.226CJ iii. 74b, 104b, 105a, 110a, 111a, 112b, 113b, 115a, 115b, 116a, 132a, 140a, 178b, 179a. Critically, on 21 June, despite the desperate pleas for reinforcement from the governor, Nathaniel Fiennes, he reported that the Bristol garrison was sufficient for the defence of the city and good of the kingdom.227CJ iii. 139a. This was a grave miscalculation: Fiennes surrendered on the 26th. Although it would have been too late to send help, the verdict remained on the record as an indictment of Fiennes’s action and perhaps drew on Reynolds (or exacerbated) the animosity of Saye and Sele, a leader of the party which considered that the war was not being prosecuted with sufficient determination.

By May 1643 Reynolds was established as a conduit of information passing between Parliament and its lord general.228CJ iii. 81a, 88b, 110b. Despite any misgivings he may have entertained (as Pym certainly did) regarding the earl’s caution in campaigning and his evident inclination to seek peace at the earliest reasonable opportunity, Reynolds was still to the fore in communications in July as Parliament absorbed from the collapse in the west and the loss of the second city in the kingdom and in a review of the state of the army.229CJ iii. 151b, 165a, 178b, 188b. When, to placate the earl, the Commons backed down from an intention to award Sir William Waller* an independent command, Reynolds was one of the quartet who drafted a soothing letter; he successfully got Pym included on the delegation to present it.230CJ iii. 193a. He went with Pym on the next delegation to Essex (19 Aug.) and in the next few months was at the centre of efforts to finance and supply both Essex and Waller and persuade them to co-operate.231CJ iii, 210a, 211b, 238a, 247a, 252b, 256a, 267a, 314b; Add. 18778, f. 38v.

As other divisions within the parliamentarian camp persisted, Reynolds seemed to assist Pym to paper over the cracks. On 20 September, when the latter reported from the Lords on the earl of Warwick, Reynolds related the not entirely convincing protestations of Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh, as he took up his commission as commander-in-chief of the associated counties of the west midlands, that his scruples over the Covenant were only cosmetic.232CJ iii. 249a. In an autumn of recriminations Reynolds sat on a committee to review the petition of Prynne’s friend Clement Walker*, who, having been a participant in the defence of Bristol, had launched a savage attack in print on Fiennes and his father, and been confined to the Tower (12 Oct.): this could be indicative of a readiness to encourage Saye’s enemies, but could equally have aimed to resolve differences.233CJ iii. 274b. In a manner perhaps calculated to resolve suspicions Reynolds reported at great length the explanation given by Warwick’s brother, Henry Rich, 1st earl of Holland, for his short-lived defection to the king at Oxford (11 Nov.).234CJ iii. 304a, 308a, 349b; Harl 165, ff. 226v-228v. On 7 December he was named first to a committee trying to compose differences between Philip, 4th Baron Wharton, and Sir Henry Mildmay*, while a week earlier he was on a deputation to explain to the City why the House needed its militia to stay out ‘yet longer’.235CJ iii. 323a, 333a. As Pym lay dying, Reynolds reported from the Lords Essex’s conclusion, based on letters from his subordinates, that ‘they are in distress for want of recruits; that [there was] never more need of recruiting army than now’ (6 Dec.).236CJ iii. 330b.

War, peace and the power of Parliament 1644

The death of Pym on 8 December 1643 was once seen as signalling a realignment within the Commons, with those who had occupied a middle ground with him, or at least a position characterised by a desire to win the war sufficiently to negotiate a good peace, now gravitating either further in the direction of a treaty, or becoming more warlike.237L. Glow, ‘Political Affiliations in the House of Commons’, BIHR lviii. 48-70. Reynolds, like his friend from the Irish committee Clotworthy, is regarded as having moved closer around this time to Essex and the first position, emerging by the summer of 1644 as a full-blown ‘conservative’ Presbyterian.238M.P. Mahony, ‘The Presbyterian party in the Long Parliament, 2 July 1644-3 June 1647’, (Oxford DPhil. thesis, 1973), 40; see also, Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 231. This analysis must be taken seriously – not least because of the later contention of Presbyterian leader Holles that Reynolds ‘went a long time and a great way with us’ – but it should also be depicted with subtlety, partly because Holles’s comment itself contains an element of ambiguity.239P. Crawford, Denzil Holles (1979), 117n, citing Holles, Mems. 210. It is plausible that Reynolds’s political ‘Presbyterianism’ was never whole-hearted or uncomplicated, just as his position as an elder in Suffolk seems unconvincing. There is evidence from 1644 of his suspicion of what was emerging as ‘Independency’, but there were also circumstances in which he was working with those in Saye’s circle most associated with that tendency; groundwork was being laid for a gradual accommodation.

As has been seen, Reynolds’s connections to Essex were neither new in 1644 nor necessarily uncritical. Far from experiencing a hiatus stemming from the disappearance of his former close associate, he reported a conference with the Lords the day after Pym’s death and was as busy as ever with all manner of business in December and January 1644.240CJ iii. 334b. Some of his activity then and later in the year might be categorised as holding Parliament together against the common enemy and representing it to the outside world. Having been on the committees which addressed the king’s proclamation calling a rival Parliament at Oxford and the ‘design’ of George Goring†, Lord Goring, in concert with the queen to import arms for the royalists, and communicated the latter to the City, he was among lawyers preparing Goring’s impeachment (6, 8, 10 Jan.).241CJ iii. 359b, 360b, 363a; Add. 18779, f. 44. He promoted the ordinance that all adult Englishmen must sign the Covenant and continued to deal with relations with foreign powers (the Dutch and the prince elector), with the discipline of Members and with sundry relatively uncontroversial matters.242CJ iii. 386a, 387b, 388a, 389a, 390b, 446a, 490b, 534a, 535a; Harl. 166, ff. 7, 8, 75v.

Alongside this, however, there is no doubting Reynolds’s association with and leading role in peace overtures. His stance in conferences with the Lords was revealed on 3 February, when he, John Maynard*, Bulstrode Whitelocke* and others resisted strongly an attempt to vest negotiations in the Committee of Both Kingdoms, on the ground that it would have a war-mongering agenda. Significantly, Reynolds represented this as much as an onslaught on parliamentary rights as a sabotaging of an essential peace (to the approbation of a majority, according to D’Ewes).243CJ iii. 382b, 387b; Harl. 166, f. 7; Add. 18779, f. 61. According to another diarist, he avowed ‘that there was a design to take away the power of the whole Parliament and to commit into the hands of 21 persons with a greater power than ever had been granted to any’ and alleged that most of the MPs on the committee, ‘being officers either of the army or otherwise, would continue or end the war, as they should find their offices to be more or less gainful to them’.244Add. 31116, p. 226. Such representations had some effect: on 5 February ‘the committee for Scotland’ was convoked to meet peers; a diarist, although not the Journal, revealed that this included Reynolds, Holles and Whitelocke as well as members of the Committee of Both Kingdoms.245Add. 18779, f. 62; cf. CJ iii. 338a; Harl. 166, f. 7.

None the less, Reynolds evidently found it an uphill struggle to hold his corner. In a speech of 22 March he claimed that his misgivings over the Committee’s pretensions had been well placed: it had achieved in practice power it had not received in the ordinance establishing it.246Harl. 166, f. 38; J. Adamson, ‘The Triumph of Oligarchy’, Parliament at Work ed. Kyle and Peacey, 101-27, esp. 113-15. He and others returned to the same theme in May, when he and Holles tried unsuccessfully to rally support against allowing the Committee to treat with the Scottish commissioners, who had already identified them as opponents.247CJ iii. 503b; Harl. 166, f. 64v; Baillie, Lttrs. and Jnls. ii. 155. In the meantime he worked alongside Whitelocke as a teller, messenger and manager to promote the peace negotiations at Oxford; he continued to work for peace later in the year, especially managing propositions from the City and from the United Provinces (Nov., Dec.).248CJ iii. 449a, 458b, 466a, 467a, 467b, 594a, 677a, 679b, 681a, 687a, 689b, 712b, 713b, 716a, 717a, 717b. However, it would be misleading to depict Reynolds during this period either as an advocate of peace at any price or as excluded from dealings with the Scots: for instance, he signed with Clotworthy and St John an order from the ‘Scottish committee’ paying Edward Bowles, a former chaplain to Edward Montagu, 1st earl of Manchester, now advocating in print a vigorous prosecution of war, for his reports from Scotland (3 May).249CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 660; ‘Edward Bowles’, Oxford DNB.

Throughout this time Reynolds had been in a good position to observe both the course of the war and those most enthusiastic for it. Building on his months of raising and supplying forces and garrisons all over the country, he sat on 24 January 1644 to devise a means of overseeing Parliament’s forces.250CJ iii. 375b. Late in March he was added to the committee for the earl of Essex’s army under the chairmanship, and frequently under the name, of Robert Scawen*.251CJ iii. 439a. While Scawen and his patron, Northumberland, moved towards the war party and its campaign against Essex’s command, Reynolds for the time being remained loyal.252J. Adamson, ‘Of Armies and Architecture’, Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen ed. A. Woolrych et al. (Cambridge, 1998), 45. Alongside his frequent employment on orders for supplying individual commanders and localities, and a particular care of the ordinance for martial law (Aug. 1644), he continued to liaise with and to encourage Essex.253CJ iii. 333a, 334a, 346b, 372b, 380b, 382b, 388a, 464b, 482a, 500b, 532b, 534a, 582a, 582b, 587a, 588a, 602b, 611a, 669b, 673b, 676a, 679b, 692b. As the earl’s situation in the west deteriorated sharply, Reynolds, Clotworthy and Sir Philip Stapilton* wrote urging Holles and Whitelocke to hurry to Westminster: ‘my lord general’s condition requires his friends here’ (9 Aug.).254Longleat, Whitelocke ix. f. 27. Curiously, on 12 August Reynolds himself obtained leave to go into the country.255CJ iii. 588b. Perhaps this had nothing to do with the military crisis, relating instead to family illness or bereavement or to the accusations against him from the Adventurers for Ireland voiced briefly from the Committee of Both Kingdoms, only to be dismissed.256Harl. 166, f. 108v. In fact Reynolds lingered at Westminster until the end of August, departing only after another letter of encouragement to Essex was drafted.257CJ iii. 611a. By the time it reached Cornwall the earl had abandoned his troops and departed.

Reynolds reappeared in the Journal on 1 October, by which time London was reverberating with accusations and counter-accusations against different commanders.258CJ iii. 647b. The interval may have afforded him time to re-evaluate the situation, and even, if some allegations were to be believed, to consider secret negotiations with the king, together with his friends Holles and Sir William Lewis*.259Add. 31116, p. 325. But he returned to pursue peace more overtly, while still keeping faith with Essex. Among Irish and routine army business he sought the Common Council’s propositions for peace and considered the offer of the Dutch ambassadors to mediate, reported to the Commons respectively on 27/8 October and 6 December.260Add. 31116, pp. 339, 356. Heralding measures to come for dividing parliamentary sheep from army goats he chaired a committee to enquire into offices and places conferred by Parliament (14 Nov.).261CJ iii, 695b. He was a teller (20 Nov.) in support of the earl of Denbigh when the latter was accused of disaffection by activists on the Warwickshire county committee; although the accusation was upheld, he had the satisfaction of a resolution that the earl, relieved of his military command, should be employed as a peace commissioner.262CJ iii. 700b. Against a backdrop of committee appointments related to the latest treaty and the charges brought by Holles, on behalf of the earl of Manchester, against Oliver Cromwell, Reynolds was named to prepare a Self-Denying Ordinance, disabling Members of either House (but especially Cromwell) from bearing office (9 Dec.).263CJ iii. 714a, 718b, 720a, 724b, 725b, 733a, Reynolds’s efforts (17 Dec.) to have Essex excepted, so that he could retain his generalship, failed.264Add. 31116, p. 359. Yet he evidently concluded the loss of Essex was a price worth paying: it was he who went to the Lords to chivvy peers into passing the ordinance (6 Jan. 1645).265CJ iv. 11a. He was still on the case in March, when he reported on compensation for those who had lost office (intriguingly citing the financial penalty experienced by Saye and Sele’s elder son James Fiennes*, 18 Mar.) and on amendments (31 Mar.), and also into April.266Harl. 166, ff. 192v, 193, 196; CJ iv. 88a, 93b, 94a, 95a, 100a.

It is possible that at the turn of 1644 Reynolds did what he claimed later to have done in 1649, namely, to have made the best of a battle lost by compromising with the victors. It is also possible that both the interests of Parliament, which he asserted in making that claim in 1659, and his view of the grounds for an acceptable peace, took precedence for him over the interests of Essex.267Burton’s Diary, iii. 209. It is even possible that his concern for Irish affairs persuaded him that chances of effective intervention there could only thrive with the co-operation of those who controlled the means and by winning the war in England as quickly as possible. At any rate, Reynolds certainly shifted his position during 1645. That the door was open to him to do so may owe something to his service under Scawen on the committee for Essex’s army, and on its adjuncts the committees recruiting for Waller’s army (28 June 1644) and preparing regulations for accounts (19 Oct.).268CJ iii. 544b, 670a. It may also be related to his connections in East Anglia. Periodic appointments related to the administration of and forces in what became the Eastern Association – where he had been added to the committee on 15 July 1643 – continued into 1645.269CJ iii. 65b, 167b, 188b, 213b, 260b, 378b, 513b, 692b, 720a; iv. 131b; A. and O. Meanwhile, Sir James Reynolds remained active for Parliament in the area and Robert’s half-brother John, who had entered the Middle Temple under his aegis in 1642, later joined Essex’s army, and by 1645 was serving as a captain under Oliver Cromwell.270A. and O.; Perfect Occurences no. 15 (4-11 Apr. 1645), sig. P2 (E.260.13); MTR 927; s.v. ‘John Reynolds’.

Negotiating an acceptable peace 1645-8

For two weeks in mid-January 1645 Reynolds was absent from the Journal, but he was back by the 23rd to manage a conference on the Irish rebels, to deliver a message encouraging the Lords to prepare their commissioners to go to treat with the king at Uxbridge, and to chair multiple days of grand committees on tonnage and poundage and the navy.271CJ iv. 9a, 9b, 11a, 13b, 27b, 30a, 34b, 36a, 37a, 37b, 39b, 42a, 46a, 46b, 49a, 49b, 57a. This was not a man defeated. On 5 February he joined Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire*, Walter Long* and an array of his former adversaries on a committee to modify the ordinance for what was to become the New Model army under Sir Thomas Fairfax*.272CJ iv. 42b. He and Stapilton were tellers for a convincing majority (against Evelyn and Cromwell) in favour of adding ‘to be approved of by both Houses of Parliament’ to the clause permitting Fairfax to nominate all his officers (7 Feb.) and Reynolds (with John Lisle*) was given charge of further negotiation with the Lords.273CJ iv. 43b. He was subsequently on the deputation to the City to seek funds for the army (6, 10 Mar.) and first-named to devise an ordinance for further provision (25 Mar.), while he also chaired a committee drafting a letter to Prince Rupert regarding the hanging of prisoners (29 Mar.).274CJ iv. 71a, 73b, 89a, 93b. That he was nominated not only as a commissioner under the New Model Ordinance (17 Feb.) but also to the new, and more exclusive, Committee for the Army, still under Scawen (31 Mar.) manifests a man who had rendered himself acceptable or indispensable while defending parliamentary rights.275A. and O.; cf. Adamson, ‘Of Armies and Architecture’, 47-8. He had not necessarily burned all his bridges: he was named (2 Apr.) to express thanks to the earls of Essex, Denbigh and Manchester on their laying down of their commands and to satisfy the arrears of their soldiers.276CJ iv. 96b. Yet it is clear that Reynolds was no token member of the Army Committee. In addition to all his substantial contribution to the war effort through money-raising and his increasing stake in a successful outcome as a result of his role in selling delinquents’ estates, he was named to committees on deserters, garrisons, royalist prisoners, recruitment and the siege of Oxford.277CJ iv. 68a, 78a, 117a, 147a, 177b, 194b, 203a, 240b; Harl. 166, ff. 194v, 222. In time he was employed to relay messages to Fairfax (26 July 1645; 24 Feb. 1646).278CJ iv. 220b, 452b.

On one reading, it seems to have been the series of scandals involving MPs and peers which erupted in the summer of 1645, which revealed to some of Reynolds’s former associates the extent to which he was no longer one of them. Having already sat on committees dealing with allegations made against Henry Grey, 10th earl of Kent, the Speaker of the Lords (4 June), and Evelyn of Wiltshire (11 June), in early July Reynolds was among those appointed to investigate claims that Holles and Whitelocke had engaged in clandestine peace talks with the royalists at Oxford.279CJ iv. 163a, 172a, 172b, 195b; P. Crawford, ‘The Savile affair’ EHR xc. 76-93; M. Mahony, ‘The Savile affair and the politics of the Long Parliament’ PH vii. 212-27. At this point the latter detected a distinct cooling of Reynolds’s previous friendliness.280Whitelocke, Diary, 169, 171. Yet in Whitelocke’s case at least, as his own diary shows, any rift was temporary. Reynolds, who had shown solidarity with Holles and others by testifying before the Committee for Examinations at the end of June in favour of their mutual friend the astrologer William Lilley, was evidently relatively easily persuaded that the charges against Holles and Whitelocke were false.281Crawford, Denzil Holles, 116. On the 11th he was seen trying to deflect the Commons’ attention from an attack on Holles; on the 19th he was named to prepare an acknowledgement of error to be delivered by Whitelocke’s accuser.282Harl. 166, f. 245; CJ iv. 213a. No whisper of suspicion seems to have attached to Reynolds himself, who was in the midst of a busy period chairing grand committees on delinquents’ estates. He obtained leave to go into the country on the 17th – which in another context could have been viewed as a sign of anxiety – but he did not take it for at least two weeks.283CJ iv. 210b. Indeed, he received what appears to have been a reward for services rendered: on the 18th an ordinance making him deputy clerk of the hanaper received assent.284CJ iv. 211b, 212a. It was an office to which he may conceivably have had long-term aspirations, given his occasional role in election matters – the writs involved being the business of the hanaper office in chancery.285CJ ii. 114a, 449b, 750a; Procs. LP vi. 403.

There is no sign of Reynolds in the Journal from 1 August to 12 August, or between 21 August, when he moved for a writ for an election in Bury St Edmund’s, and 22 November, when he was appointed to sit on the committee for regulating Cambridge University, or between 9 December and 2 January 1646.286CJ iv. 225a-240b, 246b-350b, 368b-395a; Add. 31116, p. 453. The cause of these hitherto uncharacteristic gaps, which recurred from time to time during 1646, is most likely to have been illness; discontent or discomfiture is implausible. On 29 November 1645 he was granted a £4 a week allowance ‘as other Members’, while on 2 December he was among MPs delegated to investigate bribery in their midst and he was still on the committee prioritising petitions to the Commons when it was temporarily suspended in February 1646.287CJ iii. 649b; iv. 357b, 362a, 440b.

When prospects of a renewal of peace propositions rejected at Uxbridge opened up in January 1646, Reynolds managed conferences with the Lords and sat on Whitelocke’s committee to prepare papers for the king.288CJ iv. 395a, 397a, 423a. That he had not abandoned his former friends and aspirations altogether was further illustrated when he was a teller with Stapilton and against Sir Arthur Hesilrige* for keeping the time limit of the ordinance for martial law in London to six months (20 Jan.).289CJ iv. 412a. However, Reynolds joined with Hesilrige against Holles and Sir William Lewis to tell for the majority who rejected the Lords’ initiative to invite the prince of Wales to come within Parliament’s quarters (23 Mar.).290CJ iv. 485b. He was then in charge of drafting a new letter which attempted, without success, to detach the prince from his father (who wished him to escape) and his mother (who wished him to join her in France) (28-31 Mar.).291CJ iv. 494a, 494b, 495a.

Reynolds’s stance during this period is hard to pin down. Further absences from the Journal – in mid-May, late May (attributable to a honeymoon), mid-June, between 24 July and 2 September (covered by leave to go into the country), between 5 September and 17 October, and between 17 November and 10 December – give him a profile substantially inferior to those of Holles, Evelyn of Wiltshire or Hesilrige, for example.292CJ iv. 623b. Yet when he was present he appeared to have a similar stature to theirs. A succession of events, including in April Ormond’s signing of a cessation with the Confederates (which raised the spectre of Catholic help for the English royalists) and the king’s flight to the Scots, may have inclined Reynolds to maintain a distance from the Presbyterians. Distrust of the Scots, traceable to some of his Irish experience, may well have surfaced and alienated him from Holles’s efforts to maintain that alliance. But it is not clear that this was consistently the case, or that when it was, it signified sympathy with the Independents.

On 8 May Reynolds was appointed to the committee which discredited the claim of the Scottish commissioners in London to have had no prior knowledge of the king’s intentions.293CJ iv. 540a In company with Vane, Evelyn of Wiltshire, Fiennes and others he discussed with the Lords the flurry of communications from commissioners at Newark and the Commons’ vote that the king should be handed over to Parliament and confined in Warwick Castle (9 May), although he did not prepare the resulting declaration.294CJ iv. 541a, 541b. On 22 May he drafted a letter to Fairfax encouraging him to stand out for stiff terms in articles for the surrender of Oxford.295CJ iv. 552b. The next day, however, he married the daughter of a Dorset royalist at St Mary Aldermanbury, where the Presbyterian minister and parliamentary preacher Edmund Calamy was minister.296St Mary Aldermanbury, London, par. reg. Reynolds’s nomination on 11 June, with Holles, Evelyn and Hesilrige, to prepare a letter remonstrating with the Scots in the wake of further ‘revelations’ of joint plans with the king to launch an onslaught on Parliament, is similarly difficult to interpret.297CJ iv. 570b, 573b. Was he there as an ally of Holles to counterbalance the others, or as an ally of the latter in a situation where the Presbyterians were weak, or as a representative, perhaps with Evelyn, of a more subtle position somewhere in the middle? All seem possible. On 26 June Reynolds told against Holles and Stapilton for the minority who tried to block the readmission to the House of Sir John Fenwick*, a move promoted by Northumberland and Sir Thomas Widdrington, but it may be that this vote had more to do with forgiving (or not) individual defection to the enemy than with party loyalties.298CJ iv. 588a; s.v. ‘Sir John Fenwick’. A few days later, when Oxford had finally surrendered and the Scots had accepted direct peace negotiations between the king and Parliament, Reynolds was working with Widdrington, Fiennes and Hesilrige over propositions to Charles (29 June, 1 July), while it was on 6 July that he sided with Hesilrige against Clotworthy for the more strongly-worded letter to the king regarding the Irish rebellion mentioned earlier.299CJ iv. 591a, 592a, 595b, 603a. His views on the Remonstrance of many thousand citizens and on London Presbyterian disaffection against Parliament, discussed at the committees to which he was nominated on 11 July, are unknown.300CJ iv. 615b, 616a.

Reynolds re-emerged in the Commons in mid-October just after the death of Essex and in time to be included on the committee investigating the alleged attempt by the marquess of Hertford, a delinquent, and his wife, Essex’s sister, to seize the earl’s goods and papers.301CJ iv. 696b. Once again it is easier to establish that his intermittent attendances were important than to determine with whom and in exactly what interest he was aligned, although this may in itself indicate that Reynolds was attempting to steer between two extremes. In a flurry of activity lasting several weeks, and another in mid-December, he appeared at the heart of the reconstruction that followed the end of of the first civil war: legal reforms, the sale of bishops lands, composition with delinquents, and the nomination of approved sheriffs and MPs.302CJ iv. 709b, 710b, 720a, 720b, 721b, 723a, 724a; v. 8b, 9b, 12a, 15b, 17b. Meanwhile, on 27 November the Middle Temple finally acted on the two-year-old parliamentary order to admit him to the chamber which had once belonged to the king’s secretary, Sir Edward Hyde* – a sign, presumably, that it had accepted that Hyde’s career was terminated and Reynolds’s was in the ascendant.303MTR 944; CJ iii. 678b.

In the first few months of 1647, as he returned to more sustained service in the Commons and regular expeditions with messages to the Lords, there is some evidence that Reynolds was acting with the dominant Presbyterians. On 7 January he was a teller in successive divisions against the sending of new MP Sir James Harington* to Newcastle as one of a committee to receive the king, a nomination supported by Evelyn of Wiltshire, Henry Marten*, Cromwell and Hesilrige.304CJ v. 45a. However, in among other business in which he continued to be prominent – legal, diplomatic, delinquent, admiralty, religious – he retained his place at the core of the Army Committee at a point when its raison-d’être was in question.305CJ v. 48b, 77b, 79a, 89a. As Holles sought to reduce the power of the New Model, Reynolds worked with Scawen to extend its life (16, 18 Jan.; 16 Mar.).306CJ v. 53b, 56b, 57a, 114a, 121b. The possibility that he was courted by both sides, as a leading representative of those who saw some merit in both positions, is increased by the fact that – having not ceased to serve on other Irish committees – he was nominated by the Commons to the Derby House Committee of Irish Affairs on 22 February. Although the Lords laid aside his appointment to this committee, he attended it anyway and was appointed by both Houses on 7 April, when Holles appears to have been chief promoter.307CJ v. 95a, 135b; LJ ix. 33a; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 730. He was a leading member of what, until the spring of 1647, was an Independent-dominated body, attending it regularly until at least the end of August and during a period in early March when he was invisible in the Journal.308CJ v. 100a; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 730-9, 746; CSP Dom. 1625-49, pp. 709-12.

It is likely that his agenda remained distinct both from that of Holles and that of Independents like Cromwell, whose disquiet at the turn of events kept them from the House at this juncture. Reynolds was included with Holles and Stapilton in the delegation to acquaint army officers refusing to volunteer for service in Ireland that Parliament would settle their arrears and give them indemnity for past service (22 Mar.).309CJ v. 120a. Perhaps his presence testified to his sense of urgency in settling Ireland; perhaps it was a calculated attempt to reassure the soldiery that wholescale dissolution of the army was not the only outcome contemplated. Reynolds was one of the three chairmen of the committee set up to address the militia as London was threatened by discontented soldiers and was nominated to the Presbyterian committee which went to the City to negotiate a loan for paying off the army and financing the Irish expedition (2 Apr.).310CJ v. 132b, 133a. He also alerted the House to campaigning by Essex ministers in relation to the proposed disbanding of the army gathered in its headquarters at Saffron Walden (6 Apr.).311CJ v. 134a. His motives are again ambiguous. He claimed later that ‘I was for tenderness [to the army] then, and to qualify them with six weeks’ pay’, but in the context of fermenting unrest and threatened violence close to his family home, it is not clear where his greatest sympathies lay.312Burton’s Diary, iv. 451. The proposed supply for Ireland which he reported (8 Apr.) and attempted to persuade the Lords to accept (23 Apr.), must have seemed fragile as volunteers to serve there melted away and army agitation increased, but perhaps this was his priority.313CJ v. 137a, 153b.

Through April and the first half of May Reynolds is found in a variety of company. He was among MPs of different viewpoints nominated to prepare instructions for the commissioners negotiating with the king at Newcastle (14 Apr.), to draft an indemnity ordinance for all who had served Parliament (7 May), and to reward General Fairfax with lands (11 May).314CJ v. 142b, 166a, 167a. He managed with Holles and Stapilton a conference with the Lords for borrowing money (1 May), but pursued the detail of policy in Ireland with less partisan companions (23 Apr.; 14 May).315CJ v. 153b, 172b. He was also on committees pursuing rather more radical policies of suppressing holy days and preventing the resort to Charles at Holdenby Hall of people desiring to be touched for the king’s evil (20, 22 Apr.).316CJ v. 148b, 151b.

Absent from the Journal in the latter half of May at a time when Presbyterians exerted sufficient strength to carry a division for the disbandment of the army, on 1 June, the day fixed for the dissolution of Fairfax’s regiment, Reynolds obtained leave to go into the country.317CJ v. 193a. That he wished to disassociate himself from this policy is suggested by his absence from the Journal between the 3rd and the 24th, the day following the suspension, under army pressure, of the Eleven Members who had spearheaded it.318CJ v. 196a, 222a. Yet his later comments indicate that he was unhappy with all those who sought to impose partisan interests by force. He decried the impeachment of the Eleven Members, ‘brought in by the army’ or rather, as he corrected himself (and was in a position to know), ‘not from the army, but from a spirit in the army’. There had not been ‘so much as a relator allowed on those gentlemen’s behalf that were excluded’ and ‘they were forced to go out of the land’; they remained for him persons of honour’. But he was also troubled by the ‘unhandsomeness’ of the London apprentices and ‘the force upon Parliament’ that was the subsequent Presbyterian coup. While ‘some went to the army, some stayed here[,] I went another way, but to my own house until the force was removed’. His record over the summer and autumn bears out his assertion that ‘I could not in that time come near this house’.319Burton’s Diary, iii. 209. Briefly in evidence (28, 29 June) managing conferences over instructions relating to the king’s detention at Holdenby and added (with Evelyn of Wiltshire and Hesilrige) to a committee devising an ordinance requiring officers and soldiers to depart from the capital (1 July), he was then only twice mentioned in the Journal (a treason case, 24 Aug.; tithes, 15 Sept.) before being noted among absent Members on 9 October.320CJ v. 226a, 226b, 227b, 229a, 283a, 302a, 330b.

In early November Reynolds re-emerged decisively to pursue an uncompromising peace with the king and a firm hand with the army – perhaps convinced of an opportunity which had to be grasped before the political situation deteriorated further. Included on the committee that drafted the vote declaring that Charles was bound to assent to laws tendered to him by Parliament (5 Nov.), he was a teller the next day in favour of adding a clause ‘expecting’ the king to concur.321CJ v. 351b, 352b. At the same time he tried to block the reading of a letter from army secretary William Clarke at Putney.322CJ v. 352a. Although he was in the minority on both occasions, it seems that in these respects he secured much of what he wanted. He took to the Lords additional propositions to the king (9, 10 Nov.) and was chosen with Edmund Prideaux I* to prepare the letter conveying to Fairfax the votes that the Petition of the Free-born People of England and the Agreement of the People, presented by the army, were ‘destructive of the being of Parliaments’ (something Reynolds prized) and of ‘the fundamental government of the kingdom’ (9 Nov.); he was also among reporters of the general’s reply (16 Nov.).323CJ v. 354a, 354b, 360b. Following Charles’s escape from Hampton Court (11 Nov.), Reynolds was appointed to the committees that drafted the Commons’ response and devised instructions for the king’s reception on the Isle of Wight (13, 15 Nov.).324CJ v. 358b, 359a. With Evelyn of Wiltshire, a man with whom he appears to have had much in common at this time, he was one of a quartet of MPs who drew up a robust statement of Parliament’s expectations of compliance from the City (22 Nov.).325CJ v. 366a. On the 25th he took to the Lords an order to press the Scots commissioners to join in presenting peace propositions to the king and on the 26th he was a reporter with the like-minded Nathaniel Fiennes of a conference on the subject with the Lords.326CJ v. 366b, 368b, 370a.

Just as suddenly as he had re-appeared, Reynolds then disappeared from the Journal for two and a half weeks (27 Nov.–13 Dec. inclusive). A pattern of intermittent attendance persisted through 1648. Among potential reasons for absence was his acquisition in September 1647 of an estate in Hampshire and his appointment in October to the county commission of the peace, but he may have had business nearer Westminster.327Bodl. Rawl. B.239, p. 1; C231/6, p. 98. Involved since at least April 1646 with the ordinance for draining the Great Level, by late 1647 he was an active member of the Bedford Level Adventurers.328CJ iv. 525b; Cambs. RO, R.59.31.9.1, pp. xii-xiv. He reported the drainage ordinance in the Commons on 6 March 1648 and chaired a grand committee on it five days later.329CJ v. 481b, 492a. Although in one sense a distraction, the Adventurer meetings were also an opportunity to forge links with other MPs outside the House.

There is no indication that Reynolds had become disenchanted with Parliament itself. In his periods of visibility, he was as prominent as ever in the Commons, and as committed to his previous aims. In the second half of December 1647, while others took the peace propositions to Carisbrooke Castle, he sat with Evelyn and Fiennes on a committee preparing an answer to the latest papers from the Scots (15 Dec.), arranged further assessment for Ireland (14 Dec.) and was involved in securing purchasers’ of church lands (23 Dec.) and increasing the power of the Westminster militia committee (31 Dec.).330CJ v. 383a, 385a, 400a, 413a. When Charles concluded an alliance with the Scots and rejected Parliament’s terms, he was evidently among MPs who concurred in the Vote of No Addresses (4 Jan. 1648). That day he was named (immediately before Evelyn) to the large committee tasked with considering the redress of public grievances; he was later brought in to help refine Parliament’s declaration justifying the Vote (7 Feb.).331CJ v. 417a, 457b. Nominated to the Hampshire commission of oyer and terminer on 12 January, he and colleague Francis Allein*, another purchaser of ecclesiastical land, were thanked twice before the end of the month for their good service (24, 29 Jan.).332CJ v. 429a, 442a, 447b. Both were later added to the committee for Hampshire (27 June), while Reynolds also joined that for Southampton (11 Aug.).333CJ v. 615a, 667a. He was a signatory to the declaration against tumultuous meetings issued by the committee of safety at Winchester on 9 June.334A declaration of the committee of safety for the county of Southampton (1648).

It is possible that in 1648 Reynolds simply alternated central and provincial business. In Parliament his involvement in legal and religious matters was maintained and he acquired new interests, as when he was added to the committee for the Tower of London (13 Apr.), suggesting that he had friends to promote him during his absences, or an acknowledged role in advancing certain policies, or both.335CJ v. 464a, 480a, 529a. Periodically he appeared in the spotlight. In late February he acted as a teller with Hesilrige in favour of rejecting the Scottish commissioners’ desire for the imposition in England of a thorough-going Presbyterian system.336CJ v. 472b. In late April he reported conferences with the Lords over the escape of James, duke of York, while on 17 May - in response to the outbreak of pro-royalist insurgency – he was given joint care of the revived committee to prevent engagements against Parliament.337CJ v. 543b, 545b, 547b, 563a. The juxtaposition in Bulstrode Whitelocke’s diary on 10 January of references to kindness from the earl Northumberland and a dinner invitation from Reynolds hints at continuing links between the two latter, perhaps brokered by Scawen.338Whitelocke, Diary, 204. The association between Reynolds and Whitelocke was certainly strong at this juncture: the latter noted on 8 April that Reynolds was ‘very friendly’ to him and ‘was said first to name him in the House for’ the office of commissioner of the great seal, while on 24 April Whitelocke recorded that he had reciprocated by recommending Reynolds to the earl of Pembroke, ‘to be an officer under his lordship in the custos brevium office’.339Whitelocke, Diary, 211, 214.

Such associations reinforce the impression that Reynolds was thoroughly engaged that summer not just in the suppression of royalist uprising but also in the negotiation of peace, notwithstanding his decreasing profile in the Journal. In a spell between mid-June and early July, apart from more work on ecclesiastical lands, he was named to committees to prepare a declaration on the naval mutiny (22 June), to confer with the Common Council over the intended treaty (5 July, with Whitelocke and Evelyn among others) and to thank the gentlemen of Suffolk for their loyalty (5 July).340CJ v. 602a, 603b, 608a, 610b, 615a, 624a, 624b. After a five-week interval he was again in evidence in mid-August: answering pro-royalist petitioning from the City (with Fiennes and others, 8 Aug.); safeguarding the interests of the Adventurers for Ireland in the light of measures agreed for dealing with rebels (with Maynard only, 14 Aug.); liaising with the City militia (with Evelyn, Clotworthy and others, 15 Aug.); and taking care that the Army Committee enact martial law against those who broke faith with Parliament (alone, 15 Aug.).341CJ v. 664a, 670a, 671b, 672b. That he was occupying the middle ground, rather than associating principally with Independents by this time, is suggested by his co-operation with Hampshire Presbyterian Richard Whithed I* in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent an early calling of the House to review the proceedings of commissioners on the Isle of Wight (14 Aug.).342CJ v. 671a. The background is obscure, but perhaps both wished to leave the commissioners maximum room for manoeuvre.

Reynolds then unaccountably disappeared once more from the Journal. He was noted on 26 September as ‘absent excused’, but there no evidence has emerged to illuminate this further.343CJ vi. 34b. Suddenly visible again from 13 November, perhaps at least partly in reaction to petitioning against the Newport treaty from some regiments in the army, for ten days he was again prominent. He was placed with Selden, Fiennes and Evelyn on a committee chaired by Vane and Sir William Lewis responding to the king’s proposition about his future condition (13 Nov.).344CJ vi. 75b. Evidently still someone who carried weight with the Lords, he was a manager of conferences with peers on persons to be banished as punishment for their part in insurrection (14, 16 Nov.) and prepared the resulting ordinance (with others including Prynne and Selden, 16 Nov.).345CJ vi. 76b, 77b, 78a. He reported deliberations on the treaty (15 Nov.) and further propositions including an assertion of the alliance between England and Scotland for mutual defence (21 Nov.).346CJ vi. 76b, 77a, 82a, 82b. In addition to sitting on another round of legislation on the sale of episcopal lands (21 Nov.), he was nominated (with Fiennes and Selden) to work under Prynne on an act justifying Parliament’s proceedings in the war (a necessary element in any settlement; 17 Nov.) and was reaffirmed, with Scawen, on the Army Committee for the purposes of satisfying arrears (22 Nov.).347CJ vi. 79a, 81b, 83b. But by this time it had was becoming clear – perhaps earlier to Reynolds than to many others in the Commons – that the army intended to negotiate its own settlement with the king. Vanishing again from the Journal – though still at his inn, where in company with John Maynard* he was called to the bench on 24 November – Reynolds seems to have made a last-minute attempt to patch relations between Parliament and the army.348MTR 971. The day after Parliament had voted decisively to reject the army’s justification of its intentions, Reynolds rallied a majority of Members present to reject the inclusion of the inflammatory clause ‘derogatory to the freedom of Parliament’ in a letter of expostulation to Fairfax (1 Dec.).349CJ vi. 92b. However, as Parliament’s hopes of pursuing unilateral negotiations with the king were revealed as hollow, he withdrew, thereby escaping either falling victim to, or being implicated in, the purge effected by the army on 6 December. Although named a commissioner for the trial of the king, he did not sit.350A. and O.

Rump Parliament 1649-1653

Yet in February 1649 Reynolds was back in the House; on the 13th he took the dissent to the vote of 5 December to continue negotiating with the king.351PA, Ms CJ xxxiii, p. 684. Exactly ten years later, when he had somewhat less motivation to engage in spin than he would have had after the Restoration, Reynolds offered to MPs what may have been a relatively candid explanation of his seemingly contradictory or self-seeking behaviour. He said, according to Thomas Burton*, that he had, ‘no hand in, nor heart for, trying the king’, but had ‘scrupled it for divers reasons’. Fearing that ‘the people should not have benefit by it, but that something should step up like it’, he had returned to town. ‘Importuned to come into the House’, he had yielded because ‘I thought I might do some good’. Simply to lighten the burden of sustaining the military was an achievement: ‘to take off free quarter and excise of ale and beer was no ill deed; and, seeing I must sit here, I would keep as much of the people’s rights as I could in this House’.352Burton’s Diary, iii. 209. While the degree of his altruism may be questioned, there is little doubt of his regard for parliamentary over extra-parliamentary rule and, ultimately, of his concern that it be well directed.

More immediately, among the factors motivating Reynolds may well have been the apprehension of a socially conservative lawyer over popular disorder and measures taken to deal with it. His first nomination in the Rump related to investigating the Kent county committee’s response to insurrection (19 Feb.).353CJ vi. 146b. He had only one further nomination – to yet another committee on the abolition of deans and chapters (20 Feb.) – before he was given leave of absence to go on commission of oyer and terminer in Hampshire (21 Feb.).354CJ vi. 147b, 148a. If he needed it, this bought further time for reflection as to the course he should take. It may also have underlined the necessity of mediation on behalf of a people suffering from military occupation. On 19 April Reynolds was a signatory to a robust letter from the committee at Winchester enclosing a petition against recent ‘outrages’ and testifying to the ‘insufferable violences and oppressions this county yet laboureth under’.355Clarke Pprs. ii. 212-13.

Returning to the Commons in late April, Reynolds became one of a group of lawyers, including Whitelocke, who have been described, despite or because of their profound reservations about the commonwealth, as ‘exercising a decisive and moderating influence on government policies’.356Worden, Rump Parliament, 65. His most sustained period of service was in the early summer of 1649, but he had spells of concentrated activity thereafter, notably at the turn of 1651/2, and remained committed to the Parliament’s proceedings until its dissolution, despite the acquisition of external responsibilities.

Reynolds’s contention that a concern to influence for the better the management of the public purse had been a motivation in his decision to attend the Rump is borne out at least to the extent that he was repeatedly on relevant committees and that there are some signs of his desire for probity. Given care with John Corbett* of a committee investigating an alleged loan for the use of the state (30 Apr. 1649), he was subsequently involved in other enquiries into loans and in instructions designed to benefit poorer lenders.357CJ vi. 198a, 205b, 225a. He was named to review the powers of the committee at Haberdashers’ Hall and take their accounts (28 May), and chaired an investigation of abuses in the handling of money from Goldsmiths’ Hall intended for sick and maimed soldiers (17 May, 6 June 1650).358CJ vi. 218b, 413b, 420a; vii. 150a, 150b. He was also among MPs examining abuses of the former committee for taking and receiving the accounts of the kingdom (9 Feb. 1650).359CJ vi. 360a. In January 1652 he reported the recommendation that ‘all the public revenue be brought into one channel’, while the following November he was joint chair of a committee to inspect the revenue which was given a variety of responsibilities.360CJ vii. 76b, 222b. Prominent on committees dealing with the sale of crown property, he seems to have been happy to raise income from these assets: for example, with Henry Marten he tried unsuccessfully to promote the sale of Somerset House ‘for ready money’ (27 Nov. 1652).361CJ vi. 205b, 358b; vii. 104a, 212a, 219a, 222b, 226a, 245b. He prepared further instructions for trustees of dean and chapter lands (5 May 1649) and continued to be closely connected to some of the legislation for sale of delinquents’ estates, although he was prepared to allow exemptions, just as he argued for them before the Committee for Compounding (with Allein, 15 Feb. 1651).362CJ vi. 202a, 571b, 588b; vii. 46b, 148b, 218b; CCC 2723. Similarly, although at least in 1649 he was dealing with army accounts and satisfying soldiers’ arrears and subsequently with assessments for the army, he argued (unsuccessfully) in February 1650 for a suspension of collections in Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Hampshire, presumably in recognition of local representations for relief.363CJ vi. 213a, 246a, 368a; vii. 51b. Although not among those most visibly engaged in the day-to-day work of the committee for excise, to which he was added on 29 May 1649, his later claims to continuing activity on this issue are borne out in his reporting of the act for settling receipt of grand excise on 18 June and the accounts on 28 August, and in his recommendation of the restriction of excise on beer and ale to that brewed by retailers, lifting the burden from primary producers (12 Dec. 1651).364CJ vi. 219b, 229b, 239a, 243b, 244a, 245a, 286a, 325a; vii. 50a; cf. Bodl. Rawl. C.386.

Influence in money matters was complemented by a degree of continuing, and apparently moderating, influence over military and naval affairs. Reynolds had care of an act for settling the Tower Hamlets militia (10 May 1649) and a prominent part in another for the relief of persons sued or molested contrary to articles granted in times of war (25 May, 18 June).365CJ vi. 206b, 217a, 219b, 236a. On 26 May he was one of a trio of MPs ordered to convey the thanks of the House to the general and officers who had suppressed rebellion, and sat on committees making land settlements on Fairfax (6 June) and Cromwell (30 May 1650).366CJ vi. 218a, 225a, 417b. Added once more to the Army Committee (27 July 1649; 4 Feb. 1650) and for specific purposes to the Committee of Navy and Customs (4 Sept. 1649; 6 June 1650; 13 Feb. 1651) – although he had been made a full-time member of this body on 29 May 1649 – he was occasionally in evidence as related matters arose in the Commons.367CJ vi. 271a, 290a, 357b, 420a, 534a; vii. 41b, 67a.

Reynolds also had some hand in the prioritisation of parliamentary business, being first named to a committee for the purpose on 25 June 1649 and the reporter of another (19 Nov., 5 Dec. 1651).368CJ vi. 242b; vii. 37b, 48b. Modest opportunity for patronage came through membership of the committee for lodging Members in Whitehall (14 Feb. 1651), and a possible opportunity for cultivating an old association on another dealing with a petition from Northumberland (25 Apr.), while a rare and ambiguous indicator of tensions is a reference to his ‘difference’ with the brothers Henry Darley* and Richard Darley*, whose politics were not obviously opposed to his own.369CJ vi. 534b, 565a, 567a. Reynolds’s considerable standing in the House, and its limits, are illustrated by his chairmanship (with Thomas Chaloner*) of the committee to consider the best way of electing further members of the council of state for the ensuing year (12 Feb. 1650). His recommendation, that the ballot box be used, was supported by Edmund Ludlowe II*, but roundly defeated in a division in which the opposing tellers were Hesilrige and Sir John Danvers, both arguably more subtle operators in the Commons.370CJ vi. 363b, 365a, 365b. The following February Reynolds was among MPs with the greatest number of votes in the first round of balloting for the council, but he was not finally elected.371CJ vi. 532b, 533a. He did, however, serve as a representative in dealings with foreign powers, reporting on the delivery to the Dutch ambassador of a resolution that the only acceptable address would be ‘to the Parliament of the commonwealth of England’ (28 May 1650) and later taking a lead in delegations to Portuguese and Danish agents.372CJ vi. 416b, 530a; vii. 146a. A significant level of trust (within a small pool of qualified candidates) was implied, moreover, in his appointment as solicitor-general on 6 June 1650.373CJ vi. 420b.

Judging by the breadth of his employments in the Commons, Reynolds maintained diverse interests and some ambitions for the scope of parliamentary business. Alongside a leading role in more schemes for fen drainage he was first-named to an act encouraging adventurers in the Caribbean (23 July 1649) and was among MPs considering a petition from East India Company merchants (27 Feb. 1652).374CJ vi. 204b, 270a, 413b; vii. 73b, 100a. With Francis Allein, he was involved in an act rewarding the City of London with property (June 1649).375CJ vi. 227b, 247a. While his brother Colonel John Reynolds was gaining in reputation as a commander in Ireland, Robert, who reported from the Committee for Irish Affairs on 10 May 1649, was thereafter only occasionally visible in related Commons business, but this may have been because of pressure of activity elsewhere.376CJ vi. 206b, 423a, 512b, 535b; vii. 49a. His contribution to religious business was more substantial. A participant in successive initiatives for an adequately remunerated ministry and for the propagation of the gospel in different regions, he was in charge of an act for presentations to benefices (8 Feb. 1650) and chaired a grand committee on evangelism (29 Oct. 1651).377CJ vi. 196a, 199b, 231a, 359a, 416a, 418a, 420b; vii. 31b. He was also on committees considering articles of Christian religion (26 July 1649) and the treatment of conforming recusants (30 June 1652).378CJ vi. 270a; vii. 147a. Meanwhile, once again, with Whitelocke and other moderates, he defended William Lilley for his unwisely expressed prophecies, this time before the Committee of Plundered Ministers.379Worden, Rump Parliament, 133.

There are no signs Reynolds ever had any radical sympathies, whether religious, political, or social. At the same time that his brother was clamping down firmly on Leveller activity in his regiment, Robert was a teller with Sir John Danvers, and against Ludlowe and Marten, for denying a reading to a petition from Leveller prisoners in the Tower (25 Oct. 1649).380CJ vi. 213b. As solicitor-general he brought in the bill executing judgement against John Lilburne (June 1652).381CJ vii. 74b, 75b, 79a. However, whether through fear of unrest or on account of a pious conscience, the awareness of suffering and injustice evinced in his comments of 1659 manifested itself in action. Placed on a small committee to prepare a bill setting the poor on work (24 May 1650), his last recorded contribution to the main period of the Rump was as a teller for the minority who desired that a bill for poor relief be read (11 Feb. 1653).382CJ vi. 416a; vii. 258a. Added to the committee working on a bill regarding prisoners and debtors (29 May 1649), he soon emerged as a chairman and reporter (5, 23 June); he then promoted a bill to improve creditors’ rights (May 1650).383CJ vi. 219a, 225a, 242a, 412a, 416a; Worden, Rump Parliament, 203. Even before he gained pre-eminent legal office, he was on miscellaneous committees concerning courts and jurisdictions, and had joint charge of reforming abuses in listings of freeholders (for elections and other purposes) and in the selection of juries (7 Nov. 1649).384CJ vi. 206b, 239b, 320a. Thereafter he was inescapably involved in the committees considering law reform (25 Oct. 1650; 19 Mar. 1652) and subsidiary matters like judges’ salaries and the enrolment of deeds, as well as in more routine state prosecutions and commissions; he chaired a grand committee on county registrars (2 Feb. 1653) and looked into ancient penal laws (8 Feb.).385CJ vi. 488a; vii. 37a, 49b, 76b, 79b, 86a, 107b, 145a, 215a, 253b, 256a.

From the perspective of proponents of legal reform like Henry Marten, Reynolds was a key member of that phalanx of lawyers who by their endless prevarication stymied the chances of real progress in the Rump.386Worden, Rump Parliament, 203, 320. It seems only too likely, indeed, that when given the chance to innovate and improve, Reynolds and his colleagues fell victim to their social preconceptions and their legal vested interests. Patchy participation in the House, not solely attributable to professional business outside it, and, in Reynolds’s case as in others, a conspicuous period of absence from the Journal between July and November 1652, as well as from early February 1653 point to a steady disenchantment.387Worden, Rump Parliament, 313 Reynolds himself revealed in 1659 that not only had he been ‘very pressing’ for the end of the Rump – ‘I never desired any earthly thing with more earnestness, to see that Parliament fairly dissolved’ – but that fellow MPs had also given ‘a very loud Yea’ to the proposition. Outsiders were mistaken in labelling them self-perpetuating: ‘this was never known abroad, how near the Parliament that conquered others were to conquering themselves’.388Burton’s Diary, iii. 209-10; Worden, Rump Parliament, 364-6, 375. Yet neither foot-dragging dissatisfaction with a radical agenda nor an eagerness to be gone should be equated with wholly negative aspirations. What Reynolds went on to say immediately, although his remark was cut short in the notes of diarist Thomas Burton, was that he also desired ‘another [Parliament] to build up what–’. His keenness that the bill for the poor should be read, together with the high view of Parliament itself which he expressed in 1659, indicates that he was convinced that the institution should be engaged in moulding the Commonwealth for what he perceived as the public good.

Protectorate and 1659 Parliament

With the end of the Rump and the advent of the Protectorate, Reynolds lost his position as solicitor-general and the lodgings in Whitehall that went with it.389CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 1. Not until 1657, when he was named an assessment commissioner for Hampshire, is there clear evidence of his again being considered for public office. It is likely, given his comments in 1659, that he did not seek it. Of no mind to join the flatterers who surrounded the protector, and without a palatable means of challenging him, he seems to have retreated to his inn, where he exchanged chambers in 1655, and to his country estate.390Burton’s Diary, iii. 212; MTR 1084. From there he contemplated the regime with a somewhat hypocritical disapprobation – ‘what imprisonments, and impositions on men’s persons and estates; monies raised; high courts of justice’ – but acknowledged the dilemma – ‘hard choice: you must either levy money against the law, or make free quarter’. Following Oliver Cromwell’s death, however, he concluded that there were ‘better hopes’ and, having ‘never had confidence to serve you since the Long Parliament’, he gained a seat in 1659.391Burton’s Diary, iii. 210. Taking advantage of the links he had forged with his Hampshire neighbours, he was elected in the borough of Whitchurch, probably with the assistance of Robert Wallop*, the local landowner returned as a knight of the shire.

During the first seven weeks of the 1659 Parliament Reynolds did not appear in the Journal. Thereafter he had only five committee appointments, reported twice (albeit from grand committee) and was a teller once. However, according to Thomas Burton, he spoke on average every other day in that initial period and sometimes at a length which annoyed other MPs. He came rejoicing to ‘see truth come out of corners’ and determined to speak his mind, declaring ‘I must satisfy my conscience, though I offend against your sense’.392Burton’s Diary, iii. 212, 270. Overwhelmingly, that was for tradition, legality, transparency and the rights of Parliament, although his delineation of the last militated against an entirely conservative viewpoint: his criticism of government vested ultimately in one person was as applicable to monarchy as to the Cromwellian regime.

Reynolds’s first recorded interventions, on the fifth day of the session (1 Feb.), were in favour of the preservation of procedural precedent.393Burton’s Diary, iii. 19, 21. Two days later he spoke up for legal redress, in the application of habeas corpus to Major-general Robert Overton, who sought transfer from prison in Jersey for a hearing of his case.394Burton’s Diary, iii. 46-7. As Reynolds later explained, he had ‘never heard anything laid to Overton’s charge, but dissatisfaction that he could not say black was white’(10 Feb.); his imprisonment was ‘illegal as well for that it was done by his Highness singly, and no cause of commitment’ (14 Mar.).395Burton’s Diary, iii. 212; iv. 157. This sets the tone for his subsequent contributions.

As debate turned to the bill for recognition of Richard Cromwell as lord protector, Reynolds wished for decisions made ‘in a full House’ after full and frank discussion: it was ‘against a fundamental order to limit any man as to speaking’ (8 Feb. ); with Richard Knightley* he asserted that ‘any gentleman may speak to the orders of the House as often as he chooses’ (10 Feb.).396Burton’s Diary, iii. 149, 151, 199. Taking full advantage of this, and resisting attempts to take him down, he spoke expansively against the bill (10 Feb.). He could not ‘swallow’ it, rejecting both the concept of ‘recognition’ and the notion of Richard as a ‘lawful successor’ to his father. The Humble Petition and Advice which had inaugurated Oliver’s protectorate had been ‘done by force’, despite a narrow majority in an ill-attended House. A succession thus could not be acknowledged – it must, if anything, be declared or established – and Reynolds refused to be intimidated by assertions that rejecting the recognition bill would undo previous legislation and therefore risk fatally undermining such transactions as land sales. He admitted that some of the financial expedients to which he had himself been party amounted to ‘unjust temporary law, made by a Parliament under force, not well pursued’, but a ‘rightly constituted Parliament’ would ‘confirm’ what was legitimate in the sales, just as it should identify a legal framework for government. After a prolonged survey of the previous 19 years (referred to above) he refocused on the obligations owed by MPs on account of the oath they had all taken when this Parliament began. There had been ‘great wisdom, prudence, and integrity, in framing that oath; to ligament the single person and people together’. Having subscribed, Reynolds intended ‘to express my faithfulness to him [ie. the protector] by giving him the best counsel I can’ and would ‘attempt nothing against his government’, but he would ‘not consent to such exorbitant powers as others should attempt upon’ the protector. The oath ‘awed’ their leader and under it ‘he ought not, he durst not, deny a law’, but if Parliament were to vote affirming him in his place, ‘he is, de facto, in possession, and you are disturbed, and laws and instructions for limitation are postponed till you meet hear again’. It was not that he had an objection to Richard personally. On the contrary, he had ‘particular and personal reasons’ otherwise (an allusion, perhaps, to the favour shown to his brother John) and would ‘venture my life rather than [Richard] should be in danger’; he observed later that ‘a maiden magistrate has not offended’ and ‘is as little obnoxious to parliaments as any man’. Instead, it was that, there having been ‘laid exceeding temptations’ on Oliver, ‘impossible for a mortal man to bear’, it was irrational to believe that the same would not happen again with Richard: ‘it is the clear way to destroy him, to make his power exorbitant’. He feared the flatterers who would surround him and a situation where ‘truth is driven into corners’. His preference, which he trusted God would bring about ‘in due time’, was for a chief magistrate both voted in by and limited by a parliament representing the people. Those limitations, he explained later in the day, should be explored in a committee which would seek a consensus. Finally, when all was properly and carefully enacted, ‘no prince in Christendom would have so undoubted a title as this single person, if founded upon such a unanimous consent, joining his and the people’s liberties together’. But the public good remained paramount: ‘no family to be balanced with an interest of the people’; ‘the liberties of the people ought to be preferred before any family in the world’.397Burton’s Diary, iii. 210-14, 230, 270.

The necessity, for Reynolds, of defining and restricting the role of the head of state remained pressing. As the debate on settling the government became bogged down in the status of the Other or Upper House, he evinced considerable frustration (18 Feb.). ‘Our business is to bound the chief magistrate’; the lords could safely be relegated for ‘we trouble not them, nor do they trouble us’ – or at least, he hoped ‘those gentlemen’ who acted as if it were otherwise ‘will not prophecy’. Whatever else, MPs should not allow the question to ‘be a stumbling block on your way’; they must cease being ‘so loath to come at the point’ and ‘plainly ... debate’ if the magistrate should have a veto on legislation.398Burton’s Diary, iii. 332, 338-9. As he revealed the next day, he actually had a high view of peers: he thought that ‘those that were anciently of that Other House, the old Lords, ought to sit there’.399Burton’s Diary, iii. 367. When on 8 March Hesilrige moved to restrict their power too, Reynolds surprised at least one person who remembered him during the commonwealth by objecting that the Lords should be resurrected with their rights intact: ‘they have been faithful, and it is not just to lay them aside’; he had ‘seen them at the head of their regiments’.400Burton’s Diary, iv. 77. However, he did not mean that their authority should be uncircumscribed either, and indeed he subsequently retreated to a more cautious position. On 28 March he proposed that members of the Other House be made ‘probationers’, with the Commons reserving to itself the power to retract its recognition. He ‘like[d] it very well, what we have already got, and tremble[d] at any other addition’. Since ‘I find them called by old laws, and not upon the Petition and Advice’, he was prepared to advance the resolution that the House would transact with the Other House in the present Parliament, without intention to exclude faithful hereditary peers from being summoned. Yet when it came to a vote, Burton noted, instead of declaring for the yeas, ‘Reynolds withdrew, against his own resolution’.401Burton’s Diary, iv. 289, 292-3.

For Reynolds, decisions should be carefully weighed and conducted according to law. He fretted about days lost arguing over ‘transacting or trafficking’ with the Other House – to the extent, he claimed, that it undermined his health – and he was conscious of an urgent necessity of reaching consensus: ‘if we rise without doing aught, I doubt it will be the last Parliament that ever we shall have’.402Burton’s Diary, iv. 18. But the ground rules needed to be identified, agreed and followed. Faced on 4 March with an attempt to rush through money-raising legislation, in a context where the question of who controlled the revenue remained unresolved, he objected, according to Burton

You cannot bring in a bill to pass a subsidy without an order, and yet, to pass away three nations at once. I am not against a single person, nor this single person, nor against another House. I am for laws having another digesting, but I would have these bounded. I would have the question well understood and stated.403Burton’s Diary, iv. 18.

As he indicated on 17 February, when he moved for an enquiry into civil as well as military accounts with a view to retrenchment, he prized careful parliamentary scrutiny of government departments.404Burton’s Diary, iii. 310, 312-13. The people (by implication as represented in Parliament) had a ‘possession’ of the wealth and military forces of the nation: ‘if we fall a raising of money, and leave it to the single person to spend it as he pleases, it is not reasonable; we did not so with Ireland’ (24 Feb.).405Burton’s Diary, iii. 454.

In contrast, he was content to despatch other, evidently lesser, business briskly; it was a question of priority. He moved to delegate a reply to a petition from London citizens seeking to influence parliamentary decisions (15 Feb.).406Burton’s Diary, iii. 289. He spoke for precise investigation of accusations against Members, and measured punishment if they were guilty, but not at the expense of overturning the timetable for other business – after all ‘there are 500 Members, and every Member might have a charge against him; they would take up one every day’ (16, 23 Feb.).407Burton’s Diary, iii. 301, 304, 437. Different cases of disputed elections should have parallel treatment (4 Mar.), although Reynolds was among those who thought that, if necessary exceptions could be made: ‘you are masters of your own orders, and may dispense with them’ (22 Mar.).408Burton’s Diary, iv. 45, 224. Some sensitive matters, for example in diplomacy, might be left to the council of state. On the other hand, suspecting ‘an engagement to the Swede, that we do not know of’, he demanded that ‘we may know the bottom of it ... If we must be involved in a war, contrary to our reason, it is strange’. He requested clarification (24 Feb.).409Burton’s Diary, iii. 480-1.

When on 17 March the issue was raised of the legitimacy of the Scottish and Irish MPs sitting in the Commons, Reynolds’s immediate reaction was to propose a motion not to read any paper, but to peruse the record.410Burton’s Diary, iv. 170. For him the upshot may have been decided already. On 21 March he was a teller with Henry Neville* against the proposal that the Scottish Members continue to sit.411CJ vii. 616b. In a confused division they were ultimately defeated, but Reynolds returned to the attack the next day. Taking up Sir Henry Vane II*’s contention that it had been a breach of the constitution for Cromwell to invite Scots to sit, in ‘plain English’ he responded to the assertion that ‘the chief magistrate had a prerogative right to send for 300 Members from Scotland and Ireland’ with, ‘I say it is a fundamental right of an English Parliament not to be imposed on’.412Burton’s Diary, iv. 230. Consistently, when there was a division on 23 March over the continuation of Irish MPs, he declared for the minority noes.413Burton’s Diary, iv. 243; cf. CJ vii. 619a. For him, parliamentary representation ought to be decided on consistent fundamental principles. When the Commons considered a petition from the county palatine of Durham for parity in the privilege of elections with other English counties, Reynolds was first named to the committee (31 Mar.).414CJ vii. 622b. He had rejected a motion that it be composed of MPs from four northern counties: ‘he would have it both numerous and equal, because he would have this committee to consider the business in general’.415Burton’s Diary, iv. 311.

Reynolds’s opposition to the inclusion of MPs for Ireland may have rested on a principle, but it was also probably not unconnected with reservations about the government in Dublin of Henry Cromwell*. On 24 March he supported the pursuit of charges laid by Jerome Sankey* against Dr William Petty*, who had Henry’s approval, relating to Petty’s slow progress in surveying confiscated land in Ireland.416Burton’s Diary, iv. 246. Reynolds had perhaps inherited a prejudice from his brother (who died in 1657), along with Sir John’s as yet unsecured estate at Carrick, but it may have been more than that, even betokening an alignment with the ousted previous deputy of Ireland, Charles Fleetwood*.417CJ vii. 725a-726a. Writing to Secretary John Thurloe* on 11 April, Henry Cromwell, who defended his associate, observed that ‘the activeness of Robert Reynolds and others in this business, shows, that Petty is not the only mark aimed at’.418TSP vii. 651. Whatever the truth of this, Petty suffered no serious penalty before the end of the Parliament cut the case short. As a member of the large committee for Irish affairs established on 1 April with a limitation that no-one should have a voice in matters where they were personally concerned, Reynolds may have found he wielded less than his accustomed influence in this area.419CJ vii. 623a. Meanwhile, the same day he was the penultimate in a long list of nominations to the parallel committee for Scottish affairs.420CJ vii. 623b.

On the issue of revenue Reynolds probably got more of a hearing, although there were those who found his arguments unconvincing, or at least ironic coming from one who had had such a role in money-raising under the commonwealth. Doubtless he was not the only MP to endorse Knightley’s ‘dislike’ of the proposal to grant to the executive customs and excise for life; he ‘would have this bill laid aside’ (29 Mar.).421Burton’s Diary, iv. 297. Even though in some way involved in its preparation, he considered that the bill on the customs and excise itself ‘came in disorderly’; ‘it is clearly an imposition on the nation’ and MPs ‘might justly have rejected it’. Looking back, ‘nothing but an unavoidable necessity could have laid excise upon the people; it was not intended to be continual’. He rebuked ‘a gentleman’ who laughed at this (whether in mockery of Reynolds or from more general disbelief): it would ‘be no laughing matter in conclusion’, for (with a glance back to the early days of the Long Parliament), ‘haply when we have passed this, some will say there may be no more occasion for our sitting’ (31 Mar.).422Burton’s Diary, iv. 313. Keen to keep discussion of taxation clearly focussed (1 Apr.), he also supported a committee which would investigate fraud in bills, debentures and bonds for the public faith and the sale of lands. He eschewed membership himself, as one who was ‘a purchaser’, and argued for careful selection. It should not be ‘named promiscuously, but let every man that moves for any, stand up in his place and lay his hand upon his heart, and say in his conscience he thinks such a person fit’.423Burton’s Diary, iv. 319, 371, 385-6. He evinced little sympathy for farmers of excise when they caused a clamour at the door of the House: ‘it appears by their own showing, they are in arrears by their own fault; they are persons of no such great quality as to be farmers’ (11 Apr.).424Burton’s Diary, iv. 398. It was he who reported from grand committee on the accounts presented by Scawen on the revenue and the debts of the commonwealth (19, 20 Apr.).425CJ vii. 643a, 643b.

While in most respects Reynolds revealed himself as a socially conservative parliamentarian, as has been seen in relation to Ireland he sometimes associated with more radical friends, if only as the lesser of two evils. He was far less anxious about religious radicalism than he was about political subversion, which he seems to have thought threatened at this point principally from royalists. He was quick to endorse Thurloe’s request for the committal of a troublemaker to the Tower, pending investigation (30 Mar.). ‘It is fit we should take this alarm’, for ‘our enemies are flocking to town, and take an advantage of a Parliament sitting, to act all their plots’. There should be a declaration ‘to banish all malignants 20 miles out of town’ and an inquiry into aspersions cast on MPs in order ‘that we may vindicate one another, and come together to fast with a spirit of union’.426Burton’s Diary, iv. 302. He was reluctant (11 Apr.) to grant a safe passport to William Craven, 1st Baron Craven, who had sunk his fortune into the royalist war effort, to come to England: ‘be not so hasty to do justice to this man, and to do injustice to three nations’. There was ‘too great a confluence of that party here’ already.427Burton’s Diary, iv. 391. With this in mind, he was perhaps a critical member of the committee appointed (8 Apr.) to address the restitution of inherited lands and liberty to Thomas Howard, 23rd earl of Arundel, putatively converted to protestantism but detained abroad – especially since it was also tasked with considering the alleged electoral misdemeanours of the earl’s brother.428CJ vii. 632a.

When Quakers petitioned, on the other hand, Reynolds was sympathetic (16 Apr.). He approved the activities for which they had been imprisoned – ‘meeting together in the fear of God; not swearing; visiting their friends; and speaking the truth’ – and thought that rejecting their petition without discussion of its contents would simply make people suspect that aspersions cast on MPs were well founded.429Burton’s Diary, iv. 444. To condemn them as ‘tumultuous’ was excessive; ‘numerous’ would serve.430Burton’s Diary, iv. 445. There was, he said two days later, ‘nothing disorderly in their debate, nor against this House’.431Burton’s Diary, iv. 451.

The priority was the standing of Parliament. Transparent debate was required ‘to buoy up our reputation, so as to be a nation again’ (16 Apr.).432Burton’s Diary, iv. 447. As the Commons discussed how to deal with representations from a general council of discontented officers at gathered at Wallingford House and led by Fleetwood, Reynolds sought to assert parliamentary supremacy, but also to put into perspective the different groups which challenged it, as well as to recognise the reality of military might (18 Apr.):

I never had any hand in councils without doors. I never went along with them. I abhor the thought of it. I am also against all other councils and meetings, such as were to constitute a Parliament.433Burton’s Diary, iv. 451.

The legitimacy of the army council had to be questioned, but it was ‘a tender point’ and ‘must be well handled’. Just as he had been indulgent to meetings of the army at Saffron Walden in 1647 and to gatherings of Quakers lately, so he counselled that it was not a time to ‘disoblige’. The Commons should take time to consult with the Other House, ‘persons of integrity’ who had thus far appeared relatively sanguine about the army’s intentions. ‘When the cavaliers swarm’, he asserted, ‘it is not fit either to disperse or discontent your army’, for ‘ten cavaliers do you more harm here than 40 in the country’. Thus he would probably not support a measure which looked ‘too fully on the army, and not at other meetings too’. If the Commons meant to vote for suppression of extra-parliamentary assemblies, then ‘pass it as generally as you can, and let the Other House either begin or follow you’.434Burton’s Diary, iv. 451. Doubtless Reynolds thought that association of the two Houses would strengthen their hand. It was insufficient, however. The immediate outcome was something he also feared – although whether or not even more than royalists is open to question – another dissolution of Parliament under pressure from the army.

Return of the Rump and Long Parliament 1659-1660

It is conceivable that Reynolds already knew from his contacts what was in the wind. On 5 May the general council of the army resolved to recall the Rump, and he soon returned with it, if not to the front rank represented in the interim committee of safety, then to a position of influence. On the fourth day of the session, 10 May, he was nominated to a committee reviewing the cases of those imprisoned for the sake of conscience (including the Quaker, James Naylor, who was eventually released), while on 14 May he gained just enough votes to become a councillor of state (enacted 19 May) and to participate in its investigations of royalist insurrection.435CJ vii. 648a, 654a; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 349. He was also among the small group of MPs entrusted with the sensitive task of examining the Commons Journal and discussing what should be expunged (18 May).436CJ vii. 656b. Appointed (18 May) a commissioner of oyer and terminer and of gaol delivery for London and Middlesex, he reported (23 May) the opinion of the council of state that the militias of the capital and surrounding areas be settled forthwith in order to deal with insurgents.437CJ vii. 657b, 658a, 662b. He was also named to committees devising a retirement settlement for Richard Cromwell (25 May) and a commission for Fleetwood as commander-in-chief of forces in England and Scotland (4 June).438CJ vii. 665a, 672b.

Before 8 June (when he was so accredited in the Journal) Reynolds had also officially resumed his role as solicitor-general, according to his previous appointment by the Rump.439CJ vii. 676b. Accordingly, in addition to liaising with the council of state in this function, he acquired familiar legal business in the Commons: devising an oath to be administered to judges and other officials (20 June); preventing abuses by administrative and legal officers, and exorbitant fees by lawyers (20 June); authorising assizes (6 July); relieving prisoners for debt (18 July); arranging the trial for treason of Lady Mary Howard, sister of Charles Howard*, Viscount Andover (30 July).440CJ vii. 689b, 706b, 709a, 722a, 742a. He also headed the list of nominations to the committee overseeing the appointment of the new clerk of Parliament, Thomas St Nicholas (24 Aug.).441CJ vii. 767a. Reynolds’s privileged position doubtless explains why, alone of the many private petitioners to the Parliament – on whose requests he himself sat – he secured a favourable outcome.442CJ vii. 697b, 698b, 714a, 767a. Having on 6 July proffered a submission on behalf of himself, Trinity College and hospital in Dublin, and sundry creditors, kin, legatees and servants of his late brother John, by 20 July he had the satisfaction of a lengthy report from committee.443CJ vii. 705b, 725a. Following John’s death at sea in May 1657 the will by which he had conveyed the manor of Carrick to Robert, as well as made other provisions in Ireland and elsewhere, had been disputed, principally by their sister Dorothy and her husband James Calthorp, and a two-year legal battle ensued. Robert Reynolds sought, and obtained by resolution of the Commons, confirmation of a legal decree of 22 June upholding the will. A bill settling Carrick definitively on Reynolds was confided to Whitelocke and William Say*, the Cornish Member who had made the report.444CJ vii. 725a-726a.

Once again Irish matters occupied Reynolds in the Commons. On 6 July he was named with fellow-councillor Ludlowe to a committee addressing a petition from the Adventurers for Ireland.445CJ vii. 706a. The next day the Journal records that, with Hesilrige, he was a teller for the majority against putting the question for Ludlowe being a member of the commission for Ireland (set up to replace one-man rule by the deputy), but that the question was nonetheless put, and passed.446CJ vii. 707a. There was evidently a clerical error, but, while they may have had some common ground on religion, for all his previous alignment with those against Henry Cromwell, Reynolds was not a natural supporter of Ludlowe (who was instead made commander-in-chief of the army in Ireland). Reynolds seems to have continued as a supporter of the Adventurers in his capacity as chair (by mid-August) of the committee established on 6 July.447CJ vii. 759a, 761b. He reported on 29 August the clause in the bill for settling Irish lands extending rights beyond Adventurers and soldiers to any (like himself) who as creditors or otherwise had an interest in them.448CJ vii. 770b. Tasked with bringing in an act to continue the commission for managing Irish affairs for a further six months (20 Aug.), on 2 and 3 September he was instructed by the council of state to remind Parliament of the urgency of renewing the commissioners’ powers, given their imminent expiry.449CJ vii. 764a; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 165, 167. Only on 5 September was Reynolds added (with Whitelocke) to the council of state’s sub-committee of Scottish and Irish affairs.450CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 171. The likelihood that, through the summer, conciliar divisions had both inhibited Reynolds’s progress and led him to drag his heels is strong.

Meanwhile, another familiar concern was the revenue. Nominated to two committees preparing acts to bring in arrears (8, 20 June), on 28 June Reynolds reported from the council of state the necessity for borrowing money on the credit of assessments of customs for satisfaction of ‘the extreme wants of the soldiery’, while he also sat to consider how cash might be raised from profits of and vacancies in offices (22 June) and how debts for mourning for General Cromwell might be met without prejudice to the commonwealth (4 July).451CJ vii. 676b, 690a, 691a, 696b, 697a, 704b. He was a teller for the minority supporting the inclusion of a clause in the Act of Indemnity that all who sought pardon for their actions under Parliament should pay 40 shillings for the use of the commonwealth (12 July).452CJ vii. 714b He was first among those added to MPs preparing a bill giving powers to the commissioners for the treasury (25 July) and among those drafting an assessment bill for £120,000 per month for a year (18 Aug.), while he also joined the committee of inspections (of accounts, 29 July).453CJ vii. 731a, 739b, 762a, 772a. Once again he dealt with customs and excise (19, 26 Sept.).454CJ vii. 780b, 786b.

Against this backdrop it is hard to place Reynolds’s political alignments precisely. A royalist intelligence letter of 7 June did not assign him (or Whitelocke) to any of the four clusters it identified on the council – pro-Richard Cromwell; pro-Petition and Advice; republican and pro-army; Fifth Monarchy.455CCSP iii. 483. In the previous few months he had acted with or spoken for men from all of these groups – respectively, for example, Fleetwood, Hesilrige, Neville and Overton. The new lodgings in Whitehall granted on 8 July to various councillors, including Reynolds, presumably facilitated the pursuit of informal contact.456CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 11. His role in countering the royalist insurgency of the summer seems clear. He was a noticeable draftsman of proclamations against leading rebels and orders for sequestrating their estates (29 July; 8, 20, 22, 24 Aug.).457CJ vii. 739a, 751b, 764b, 766a, 767b. Although appointed to the conciliar committee of inquiry into the arrest by Colonel James Dewy I* of councillor Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper* for alleged conspiracy (21 Aug.), and specifically confirmed on it (10 Sept.), Reynolds (like Whitelocke) was absent when the council unanimously acquitted Ashley Cooper on 12 September, hinting at lingering suspicions of the latter’s involvement in plotting.458W.D. Christie, A Life of Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (1871), i. 186; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 184. On the other hand, temporarily at least, Reynolds’s involvement in army and naval affairs perhaps diminished. He was ordered to carry military commissions to Portsmouth and relayed an order from the council of state to army officers over the disposal of seized horses (27, 30 July), while on 20 August he was appointed to a committee to determine whether the committee of army accounts at Worcester House should be wound up.459CJ vii. 735a, 742a, 763b.

It seems likely that he had taken a significant part in promoting the new act of union between England and Scotland, since he delivered to the Commons (30 July) the council’s request that it be read a second time.460CJ vii. 742a. Beyond that, however, his preoccupations are uncertain. It is possible that they were equally opaque to his colleagues and that the success of his Carrick petition owed something to their desire to court his support. As fissures opened up between councillors Vane and Hesilrige in September, Reynolds gathered new conciliar responsibilities.461CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 165, 166, 171, 184, 230. He sat with them on the Commons committees which discussed a new oath of loyalty to the commonwealth and who should subscribe it (6 Sept.) and proposals for a new political settlement (8 Sept.).462CJ vii. 774b, 775b. Given his nominations to do with forests (31 May, 1 June, 15 Aug.) and his general record, he may have been among the promoters of the resolution taken on 4 October that army arrears should be paid from sales of royalist land and of forest, although his motives for satisfying those arrears could have been various.463CJ vii. 670a, 670b, 759b.

By mid-October the most likely rationale for Reynolds’s position was that he was attempting to hold a middle course between councillors and MPs who wished to reach a settlement with army co-operation and those who sought to pay off the officers and have a free hand. He was named first to Commons’ committees answering proposals from the army (10 Oct.) and preparing a bill to void protectorate grants, acts and ordinances (11 Oct.; consonant with his previously-stated views).464CJ vii. 794b, 795a. On the 12th, when Parliament revoked the commissions of John Lambert and other leading officers, Reynolds and Whitelocke were among the eight Members who prepared the bill nominating new army commissioners, including Fleetwood, Ludlowe and Hesilrige; they also sat, with Hesilrige, to consider further proposals from the army.465CJ vii. 796b. When an occupation by regiments under Lambert interrupted the parliamentary session, Reynolds and Thomas Scot I* (unlike Hesilrige and some others) continued to attend meetings of the council of state for a further fortnight (in another instance of Reynolds seeking to influence where he could, perhaps), before bowing out when it was superseded by the army-nominated committee of safety.466Christie, Shaftesbury, i. 191; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 254. Whitelocke (perhaps for similar motives), stayed to join it.

As the committee of safety ruled, Whitelocke noted Reynolds, Scott and Hesilrige among those Rumpers who ‘met often’ privately.467Whitelocke, Diary, 546. Defiant members of the council of state also convened covertly to plan their next move and on 19 November Reynolds was among signatories to a letter from their number to General George Monck*, thanking him for his opposition – expressed through representatives sent from Scotland to negotiate with the council of officers – to the committee of safety and his support for a return of the Rump.468Christie, Shaftesbury, i. 195, 199-200. On 24 December Whitelocke recorded that Reynolds had been with Speaker William Lenthall and Ashley Cooper when, after the dispersal of the council of officers, they went to seek support from the lord mayor of London for a return of the Rump.469Whitelocke, Diary, 554.

Following the re-assembly of the Rump on 26 December, Reynolds was rapidly re-engaged in continuing customs and excise (27 Dec.).470CJ vii. 797b. Encouraged by the Speaker to put in an appearance that day, Whitelocke ‘found many of his old acquaintance, as Reynolds, Neville and others very reserved to him’, doubtless basking in a sense of moral probity.471Whitelocke, Diary, 555. What had perhaps been a tricky calculation as to how far to co-operate in the end served Reynolds well. He was among councillors who on 29 December received the approbation of the House for their conduct during the ‘late interruption’ and on the 31st he was re-elected to the council of state, significantly further up the poll than on the previous occasion.472CJ vii. 798b, 800b. In the New Year he played a noticeable part in the mopping-up operation: on committees reviewing the cases of persons detained during the interruption (30 Dec.), conferring with the London patriciate on the City’s safety (31 Dec.), setting qualifications for MPs (3 Jan. 1660; first-named) and dealing with the awkward legacy of the Rump in the Journal (7 Jan., after the vote for the return of purged MPs); and alone preparing letters of thanks to Vice-admiral Lawson and to those in Ireland who had been loyal to Parliament, and letters of summons to Ludlowe and others who had not (2, 5 Jan.).473CJ vii. 800a, 801a, 802a, 803a, 803b, 804a, 805a. He was among those who resumed debate on an engagement to the state (10 Jan.), and who considered improvements to the defences of the Tower of London and how ‘this Parliament may be made a foundation for future parliaments and the settlement of the nation’ (11 Jan.), on the last of which his views might be inferred from his comments a year earlier.474CJ vii. 806b, 807a. He was also among those preparing bills for the constitution of the army and navy (12, 13 Jan.) and with Lord Chief Justice Oliver St John* and Nicholas Lechmere* drafted Parliament’s letter encouraging Monck to come to London (16 Jan.).475CJ vii. 808b, 811a, 813a.

On 18 January Reynolds was nominated as attorney-general by a committee for legal appointments on which he had himself sat.476CJ vii. 814b; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 314. It was the apogee of his career, and it was brief. On 21 January he sat with St John, Hesilrige, Solicitor-general William Ellys* and Say to bring in a declaration of intent to settle a government without a king or House of Lords, but with a learned ministry maintained by tithes – the peers being apparently a sacrifice he was prepared to make in the interests of an alliance to secure the rest.477CJ vii. 818a. While he could influence much – he had a leading role in the bills approving and justifying Monck (26, 31 Jan; 1 Feb.) and indemnifying all who had acted for Parliament during the interruption (1 Feb.), was duly made a commissioner of the admiralty and navy (28 Jan.), and was involved in further discussions of who might sit in the House (2, 22 Feb.) – he experienced some setbacks.478CJ vii. 823b, 825b, 827a, 829b, 833b, 843b, 848b. As a teller, while he obtained a place for Colonel Thomas Myddleton as an admiralty commissioner (28 Jan.), he failed to prevent Colonel William Eyre II* from including the latter’s radical predecessor in his reorganised regiment (20 Jan.), and (narrowly) to secure the desired outcome on a clause in the bill for the qualification of Members (16 Feb.).479CJ vii. 817a, 825b, 845b.

On 15 February St John was asked by Monck to bring Ashley Cooper, Carew Raleigh* and Reynolds with him to discussions intended to resolve differences between Rumpers and those who had been secluded in 1648.480Clarke Pprs. iv. 264. Whether this is an indication that Reynolds was perceived as a close political ally of St John and not, for example, of Hesilrige, who was invited separately to the same gathering, is difficult to determine, although it would be surprising if, at this late stage, Reynolds had come to share St John’s loyalty to the house of Cromwell. On 24 February Reynolds was a teller with Corbett – more likely John Corbett* than Miles Corbett*, an associate of Ludlowe in Ireland – for the proposition that there should be a time limitation on the newly instituted council of state. This time he had not been elected to it, and he also lost the division.481CJ vii. 852b. He was appointed to the committee reorganising the militia of London (29 Feb.) and the hostile Ludlowe remembered ‘amongst the rest, Mr Robert Reynolds who had learned to swim with the tide’ making ‘long harangue in his own vindication’ around the subject, but this seems to have been confused with the autobiographical narration a year earlier.482CJ vii. 856a; Ludlow, Voyce, 99.

Perhaps, having backed Monck, Reynolds calculated that he must salvage what he could of his previous aspirations and let go of the rest. Thus far his sole engagement in religious business had been when he chaired a grand committee on the maintenance of the ministry (21 June 1659).483CJ vii. 690b. His last fortnight in Parliament saw a flurry of related activity. Placed on a committee to consider not just the ministry but ‘all matters concerning religion and the Confession of Faith’ (29 Feb., 2 Mar. 1660), he was also deputed with Prynne to bring in a proclamation announcing the execution of legislation against recusants, priests and Jesuits (5 Mar.).484CJ vii. 855b, 858a, 862b. Following the revival of the 1648 ordinance that divided England and Wales into Presbyterian classes, he was nominated to prepare legislation confirming all settled ministers in their livings (15 Mar.).485CJ vii. 877a. Otherwise he was named to committees to repeal two acts for sequestrations (1 Mar.) and to consider the position of the House of Lords (13 Mar.) and, in the light of the decision to call elections for a new Parliament, to draft writs for the Cinque Ports (13, 14 Mar.).486CJ vii. 856b, 872b, 873b, 876b. His final act, the day before the 16 March dissolution, was as a teller for the minority who wished the bill settling lands on Monck to pass; his partner was Hesilrige, by turns long-time sparring partner and ally, another who hoped against hope that the general would prove ‘honest’.487CJ vii. 877b.

Restoration: survival and retirement

Reynolds probably attempted to gain a seat in the Convention. However, Okehampton, where he was almost certainly a candidate, must have been a compromise choice, and he was unsuccessful.488‘Okehampton’, HP Commons 1660-1690. Following the proclamation of Charles II, he took steps to secure himself and his property. In early May he wrote to the marquess of Ormond, ‘the danger of holding intelligence by God’s mercy I hope being happily ended by this great revolution’, outlining his pains expended on the property at Carrick (in which Ormond had a claim) and his difficulties getting any return, but, ‘since I had rather lose all than contest with your lordship, hoping’ that he might have a compensatory allocation elsewhere.489Bodl. Carte 30, f. 396. At the same time he wrote to Hyde offering restitution of the proceeds of sale of the latter’s books and chamber at the Middle Temple (12 May); this heralded a general reshuffle at the inn in which Reynolds yielded his current chamber to the incoming attorney-general and eventually received in exchange those of Whitelocke (in a worse case than he, having accepted the refashioned great seal).490CCSP v. 31; Cal. MTR 102; MTR 1146, 1149, 1150; Whitelocke, Diary, 593, 626. He then petitioned Charles for leave to retire with a pardon into the country, offering in his defence explanations of his conduct since 1642 similar to those he had advanced in 1659.491CSP Dom. 1660-61, p. 3.

On balance, the strategy worked. Doubtless because of prevailing perceptions at that point of his role in assisting Monck, Reynolds was among those knighted on 4 June at the king’s entry to London.492Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 227. Ormond approved his management of Carrick and Reynolds obtained his compensation elsewhere.493Bodl. Carte 34, f. 656. He was briefly threatened by attempts in the Convention to extend punishment beyond the regicides to those who had taken the oath for the council of state and he renewed his petitioning.494CSP Dom. 1660-61, p. 106; Whitelocke, Diary, 606; Ludlow, Voyce, 156, 160. But by May 1661, when he resigned his bench chamber, he was safely out of sight in the country, and by June the Middle Temple seem to have interpreted a letter from his wife as indicating that he was dead, a mistake which has been replicated in some accounts of his life.495MTR 1164. He probably lost some of the 3,000 acres of former crown land he had acquired in the barony of Dundalk and Co. Louth, but by 1667 he had enlisted the support of Monck, now duke of Albemarle, and Arthur Annesley*, now earl of Anglesey, in successful petitioning of Ormond for redress of problems with his Irish tenant. Reynolds, Albemarle asserted, had been ‘a great friend to Ireland in the worst of times’.496Bodl. Carte 35, f. 407; 47, f. 150; 145, f. 305.

Reynolds survived to make his will on 14 July 1678 at Elvetham, where he had apparently been undisturbed. He requested burial in the church there, near the five children who had predeceased them. The bulk of his estate went to his daughter Priscilla, wife of Sir Richard Knight, with remainder to James Reynolds of Bury St Edmunds, son of his elder brother of the same name (who had died in 1662). He left £100 to put the poor of Elvetham on work, generous provision for his widow, and cash sums for various relatives, including Robert’s sister Lady Maynard and his wife’s three sisters – Lady Lee, Lady Bassett and Mrs Helyar. The will was proved by Thomas Townsend, described as ‘formerly my servant’, on 29 November.497PROB11/358/376. Reynolds’s widow Priscilla married in 1683 as her second husband Henry Alexander, 4th earl of Stirling, while Priscilla Knight’s second husband was her kinsman Reynolds Calthorpe; the Elvetham estate thus passed to the Calthorpes.498CP; VCH Hants, iv. 75. Their son Reynolds Calthorpe† represented Hindon in several Parliaments.499HP Commons 1690-1715. Meanwhile, although James Reynolds no longer owned Castle Camps, his descendants remained in the area. The last male of this line, Sir James Reynolds (1684-1747), was chief justice of common pleas in Ireland and baron of the English exchequer.500MIs Cambs. 22.

Assessment

Reynolds has been subject to divergent interpretations. He has been seen as a leading apolitical ‘committee-man’, as a Presbyterian or otherwise, and as an opportunist; he has also been overlooked as if of relatively small importance. All these views contain a grain of truth. At certain points in his career Reynolds worked prodigiously hard; throughout, his interests were wide. Religion was evidently important to him; for a period political, and doubtless also religious, Presbyterians thought he had made common cause with them. On the other hand, his ecclesiology was patently not rigid and his allies were never exclusive. He made some associations and some decisions which proved fortunate or beneficial to his professional life and political survival. He was not noticeably regarded as a ‘grandee’, did not lead a definable party and escaped the attention of writers of news.

Yet for all that, Reynolds was an important figure at Westminster over the whole of the Long Parliament and in 1659. While not readily categorisable, he patently had strong opinions, which he deployed in committee and on the floor of the House, which were shared by others, and of which party leaders had to take account. His support was very useful and his opposition inconvenient. His guiding principles were both clear and, as far as circumstances allowed, consistent. He facilitated war, but preferred peace and legitimacy. Like other eminent lawyers, he was a social conservative and a legal stickler. But at the same time, his high view of Parliament, his dispassionate view of the corrupting nature of power, and his sympathy for well-meaning piety led him to utter quite radical statements and to countenance quite radical action.