AVERY, Samuel (1595-1659), of Coleman Street, London, and Enfield, Mdx.

Although Samuel Avery’s family had been established in Somerset for several generations, he was resident in London from an early age, becoming apprenticed in 1610 to a London Merchant Taylor who had trading interests with Spain and Portugal. Having obtained his freedom in 1622, Avery established himself as a merchant and became particularly active in the Merchant Adventurers, a company in which both his father-in-law and elder brother Joseph served as high-ranking officials in Hamburg.25CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 313. To pursue these trading interests, Avery moved to Delft before 1630 and in 1633 was elected deputy governor there.26CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 371, 379; 1633-4, p. 364; Add. 6394, ff. 175-6; SP84/142, f. 113; SP84/148, f. 49. Under Avery’s leadership the Merchant Adventurers in the town were said to have degenerated into ‘a violent faction of malicious men’, known for their religious radicalism, while Avery was himself denounced as ‘a man of factious and rash disposition, of a bold and haughty spirit’, who had ousted his more moderate rival, Edward Misselden.27SP16/257/12; SP16/291/71; SP84/148, f. 49. As ‘a champion for the Presbytery’, Avery strongly resisted Archbishop William Laud’s attempts to impose religious uniformity on English congregations abroad. In 1633 it was noted in the privy council that Avery and his allies ‘stand for Presbytery, which is contrary to his majesty’s government and the Church of England’.28PC2/43, p. 186. In 1635 further complaints were made that Avery gave protection to such noted puritan divines as John Davenport, John Forbes and Hugh Peter.29CSP Dom. 1635, p. 151; SP16/291/71.

Despite his non-conformist views, Avery was happy to serve the king in other ways and had ‘great hopes of favour by Secretary [Sir John] Coke’s† means’.30SP16/291/71. While his brother acted as the king’s diplomatic agent in Sweden, Denmark and Saxony, Avery ‘was an instrument of singular use to the Queen of Bohemia in her domestic affairs’, arranging the safe delivery of her letters to London, and facilitating the raising of money for her household in the Netherlands.31CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 131, 200, 320-1; 1637, pp. 368, 459, 554. Nor was Avery above lobbying Archbishop Laud to secure a place at Eton for his son, Dudley, in 1637.32Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton ii. 367-9; Eton Coll. Reg. 1441-1648, 15. Having returned to England in the same year, Avery was involved in the payment of the Ship Money imposed on his native Somerset on behalf of the sheriff, William Bassett.33CSP Dom. 1637, p. 97. He arranged bills of exchange for those travelling abroad, his customers including John Dury and Samuel Hartlib, and was he acting as his brother’s agent in London by 1640.34CSP Dom. 1640, p. 569; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley vi. 340, 347. On his return to London he settled in the puritan parish of St Stephen’s, Coleman Street, but avoided parochial or civic office before the civil war.35D.A. Kirby, ‘The Radicals of St Stephen’s Coleman St. London, 1624-1642’, Guildhall Misc. iii. 111; GL, MS 4458/1, p. 106.

In 1642 Avery joined forces with Isaac Penington* to lead the political Presbyterians in St Stephen’s parish, and he was soon assisting in the vetting of those to be admitted to communion.36GL, MS 4458/1, p. 125, 147. In the spring of that year he invested £300 in the Irish Adventure scheme.37Bottigheimer, English Money and Irish Land, 175. In his first City appointment, in December 1643, he was elected to represent his ward on the common council.38GL, MS 4458/1, p. 127. Avery was also busy acquiring offices under the Long Parliament. In June 1643 he was appointed treasurer and receiver for the moneys raised by sequestration, which played an important role in funding the army of the 3rd earl of Essex, and a month later he also became treasurer for the Irish Adventurers’ scheme, in which he invested a further £100.39Add. 5497, f. 52; CJ iii. 112a, 146a; A. and O. In October he and Francis Allein* were appointed as the citizens to join the commissioners to Scotland, but Avery was immediately afterwards relieved of the post because of ‘many and public employments’ which required his presence in London.40LJ vi. 273b; CJ iii. 284a, 289a. In February 1644 he was made a commissioner for the sale of ships and goods seized as prizes by the state.41A. and O. In June and July he advised the Committee of Both Kingdoms and arranged for provisions to be sent to Ireland.42CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 119, 256, 269, 275. Despite being actively involved in the war effort, Avery had refused to make a voluntary contribution to Parliament’s coffers and, assessed for £1,000 by the Committee for Advance of Money in July 1644, it was ordered that he would be ‘brought up in custody to pay’ in September.43CCAM 417. The proceedings against him did not affect his standing in the parliamentary bureaucracy, however, and in September he was working closely with the Committee for Compounding and at the end of the month was continued as treasurer for sequestrations by the Committee of Both Kingdoms.44CCC 10; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 544. In October he was appointed one of the treasurers for the general assessment.45A. and O.

After approaches from Giles Grene* and other members of the Navy Committee following difficulties in collecting the customs, Avery formed a merchant syndicate with Christopher Packe*, Charles Lloyd* and others to provide substantial loans for the navy on advantageous terms.46SP18/129/154(1). After lengthy discussion in the Commons, the five merchants involved became customs commissioners on 21 February 1645, and they were given further powers to search for prohibited goods under an ordinance of 14 April.47Add. 31116, pp. 385-6; LJ vii. 221a-b; HMC 6th Rep. 48; A. and O. In the City, Avery’s reputation was further enhanced by his election as alderman for Cripplegate Ward in June 1645 (on the nomination of the lord mayor, Thomas Atkyns*, and his colleague on the customs commission, Christopher Packe) and shortly afterwards he became master of the Merchant Taylors’ Company.48Beaven, Aldermen i. 132; GL, Merchant Taylors’ Co. ct. mins. vol. 9, f. 214v. On 8 July 1645 he was appointed as one of the commissioners to raise money for the redemption of captives.49Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 180-1; A. and O. Avery maintained his connections with the queen of Bohemia, advancing the weekly sum of £250 allowed her by Parliament, and in May 1646 he was paid £10,000 by the Commissioners for Compounding for this purpose.50CCC 793. In November of that year Avery was made a trustee for the sale of bishops’ lands.51A. and O.

Avery’s influential position both in the City and in Parliament’s financial commissions made him a powerful and controversial figure. His sympathies with the Presbyterian clique that dominated the common council became obvious as early as October 1645, when he was appointed to a committee to consult with ministers on the forthcoming church settlement, and on 22 May 1646 he was also on the committee to produce the City Remonstrance.52Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 482-3, 490-1. In June he was a member of the committee to suppress subversive pamphlets; in July he was one of the aldermen selected to attend Parliament with a letter to the king encouraging him to accede to the Newcastle Propositions; in August he was on committee to protect church tithes; and in December he sat on the common council when it gave a favourable reception to the City petition calling for the ‘bringing home’ of the king – a petition described by one Independent as containing ‘many unreasonable and dangerous things’.53Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 482-3; Juxon Jnl. 128-9, 142. In March 1647 Avery again came under attack from the Independent-dominated Committee for Advance of Money, which summoned him to account for a debt of £600 owed to him by a delinquent, Sir William Boswell.54CCAM 794. The rising influence of the Presbyterian faction meant that Avery’s charmed life continued. The House of Lords was happy to retain Avery and his colleagues as customs commissioners at the end of March, and promised that the outstanding portion of their advance would be repaid.55LJ ix. 78b, 100a-b. When the Presbyterians took control of the London militia committee in May, Avery became a member.56A. and O. Although he played no known part in the ‘forcing of the Houses’ in July and early August, Avery nevertheless lost his place in the militia commission when the Independents regained the upper hand in August. He remained an important figure in the City, however, and in September he was elected as sheriff.57Beaven, Aldermen i. 19. In November the Lords ordered that he should be added to all the commissions concerned with the collection of the London assessment arrears.58LJ ix. 544b. By the end of 1647, Avery’s wealth had grown considerably. Despite being owed considerable sums he had advanced to the navy in previous years, he still had sufficient resources to purchase land in Somerset worth £1,200 from his nephew in June 1647 and the episcopal manor of Hewish in Somerset for over £2,000 in January 1648.59LJ ix. 613a-614a; Som. RO, DD/BK/2/6/15; Coll. Top. et Gen. i. 126.

From the winter of 1647-8, Avery became the chief spokesman for the City’s grievances to the House of Lords. On 1 December he delivered a petition from the common council calling for Parliament to relieve the financial burdens of the City.60LJ ix. 613a. On 9 May he led a deputation to the Lords requesting that the City should once again be entrusted with the nomination of the militia commissioners and control of the Tower, following the withdrawal of the New Model soldiers at the beginning of the second civil war.61LJ x. 249a. When the ordinance for the London militia was debated on 17 May, Avery was again included in the list of militia commissioners, and he was formally appointed when the ordinance was passed the following day.62Fairfax Corresp. iv. 28-9. The Presbyterian resurgence provoked one newsbook to condemn the new commission as containing ‘not above nine honest men among them’, before launching a personal attack on ‘Proud Avery’.63Mercurius Elencticus no. 26 (17-24 May 1648), 203 (E443.45). Avery sat on the common council committee which considered sending a demand for new negotiations with the king for a personal treaty on 22 June, and five days later he presented the subsequent petition to the Lords.64Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 485-6; LJ x. 347b. On 22 July he took another petition to the upper chamber, complaining of the inconveniences arising from the parliamentary order permitting Major-General Philip Skippon* to raise forces in the City, independently of the militia committee.65LJ x. 389b-390a. On 31 August, following Parliament’s victory at Preston, he delivered another petition which called on Parliament to reach an understanding with the army as a means of ending the disruption to London trade.66LJ x. 476a. On another visit to the Lords on 1 December he delivered a petition protesting against Sir Thomas Fairfax’s* letter announcing his intention to bring the army into London and demanding £40,000 to prevent free quarter.67LJ x. 617b-618a.

Despite his Presbyterian connections, Avery was prepared to cooperate with the commonwealth authorities after January 1649, and he survived the purge of aldermen later in the year, attending meetings of both the bench and the committees from the very start of the new regime.68J.E. Farnell, ‘The Politics of the City of London, 1640-1646’ (Chicago Univ. PhD thesis, 1953), 70, 401, 403. He advised the council of state on the levying of taxes on Dutch merchants in March; he was appointed as assessment commissioner for London in April and commissioner for poor relief in May; and throughout the year was involved in administering the assessments for Ireland.69CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 30, 144; A. and O.; Add. 5501, f. 41. Avery was, however, deprived of his post as a customs commissioner, along with Lloyd and Packe, in July 1649, and his activities came under hostile scrutiny thereafter.70CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 519; Whitelocke, Mems. iii. 73. He and his colleagues submitted their final accounts to the Navy Committee on 20 February 1650.71CSP Dom. 1650, p. 611. Required to ‘perfect’ his accounts, Avery claimed that his former colleagues had ‘secretly combined together’ to make him solely responsible for any shortfall in the customs receipts.72SP18/129/154(1). Avery’s financial problems were compounded by allegation that he had misappropriated £4,000 due to the state from the confiscated estates of the dean of Lichfield and Sir William Boswell, which led to an investigation by the Committee for Compounding through the spring and summer of 1650.73CCC 237, 2305-6. None of this seems to have bothered the Merchant Adventurers, who elected Avery governor, and he was routinely selected to present petitions defending the company’s privileges to Parliament and the council of state.74Add. 4191, f. 37; TSP i. 217-9; CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 136, 309; SP46/95, ff. 153, 185-6; SP46/96, ff. 44, 56-8; SP18/32/101. Avery’s personal finances were increasingly under strain during the early 1650s, not least because he was unable to recover £5,000 owed to him by Parliament.75CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 84. In September 1653, finding it impossible ‘to continue the charge and part of an alderman of London much more undergo the office and burden of the mayoralty which he could no longer have avoided’, he begged to be discharged, and was released without fine because of his ‘in regard he hath passed the office and charge of shrievalty and performed many acceptable services to this City’.76CLRO, Rep. 62, f. 382v. This resignation did not mark the end of Avery’s public career, however. In February 1654 he was still involved in Irish affairs, and in the following August he was appointed to a committee to determine differences between Irish Adventurers over land claims.77CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 388; A. and O. He also drew nearly 3,000 acres of land in County Limerick in return for his own investment in the Irish Adventure.78CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 524. In the same period he also presented petitions to the protector on behalf of the Merchant Adventurers, concerned to re-establish their trading links with the Netherlands after the Dutch War.79CSP Dom. 1654, p. 345.

In July 1654 Avery was elected one of London’s six representatives to the first Protectorate Parliament, coming fifth in the poll.80Harl. 6810, f. 164v; HMC 6th Rep., 437. On 18 September he carried the declaration for observing a fast day to the protector, and thereafter his activity in this Parliament mostly reflected his trading and financial interests.81CJ vii. 368b. On 26 September he was appointed to a committee to consider the state of the military and naval forces and advise how the numbers might be reduced.82CJ vii. 370b. He was named to committees on Irish affairs (29 Sept.) and the examination of Irish elections (5 Oct.), as was appropriate for a prominent Irish Adventurer.83CJ vii. 371b, 373b. On 5 October he was named to the committee to consider the bill limiting the jurisdiction of the court of chancery, and the next day he was appointed to a committee on the encouragement of trade in corn, butter and cheese.84CJ vii. 374a, 374b. On 31 October he was also named to a committee on a petition from investors in the Lincolnshire fens – one of the few such schemes in which he was not personally involved.85CJ vii. 380a. As Parliament grappled with the state’s financial problems, Avery was appointed to the committee to examine the public accounts with a view to a more complete settlement of the state’s finances on 22 November.86CJ vii. 387b. On 7 December he was added to the committee concerning the merchants of the intercourse.87CJ vii. 397b. Avery does not seem to have played much part in the major political debates on the proposed Government Bill, although he unsuccessfully opposed the motion for bringing in candles to enable the discussion on the constitution to continue on 27 November, and on 18 December he was added to the committee to draft a constitutional bill based on the votes already passed by the House.88CJ vii. 391b, 403b. He was named to two further committees concerned with legal matters - those for abolishing purveyance and encouraging the civil law – on 22 December.89CJ vii. 407b. On 18 January 1655 he was appointed to consider the money charged on the security of the excise and the debts owed by the navy.90CJ vii. 419a.

After the dissolution of Parliament, Avery’s financial problems returned to haunt him. Although the recorder of London, Lislebone Long*, helped him to petition the protector for money due to him from the state, the council did nothing while Avery languished in ‘great extremity’.91SP18/129/154(1). After lengthy investigations into the customs accounts, Avery was accused of contempt of court, his estate seized and he was imprisoned in the Fleet in May 1656.92 HMC 6th Rep. 440; CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 84-5; SP18/129/154(1). Further investigations revealed that Avery’s son, Dudley, whom he had installed as treasurer in his place, had counterfeited navy orders and embezzled more than £10,000.93CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 248-9, 578; HMC 6th Rep. 440. This, Avery lamented, ‘without God's gracious support, had been enough to have broken his heart, to be the father of so ungracious a son’. To compound his troubles, Packe, with Lloyd’s assistance, took advantage of Avery’s misfortune to supplant him as governor of the Merchant Adventurers. Avery petitioned Cromwell, reminding him that

no man of his quality and estate hath been more active in his place and calling by his personal service, and by his purse engaging his credit for the common cause of religious liberty of this commonwealth in the times of greatest difficulty and hazard,

but his pleas fell on deaf ears.94SP18/129/154(1). In January 1657 the council considered the matter further, receiving submissions from the other former customs commissioners and the treasury commissioners.95CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 253-4. On 24 February the council ordered that the other commissioners should be permitted to present their accounts separately, despite an impassioned plea from Avery that he had lost not only his liberty ‘but also his reputation, his health, and livelihood being thereby made uncapable of any employment or means of subsistence whereby he is in danger of utter ruin’.96SP18/153/131(1). Despite this, while three of his former colleagues were given acquittals, in June and September the council ruled that Avery and his associate, Richard Bateman, were responsible for debts of more than £16,000.97CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 8-9, 106-7.

Avery died on 7 October 1659 and was buried in the parish of St Peter, Paul’s Wharf.98Regs. of St Benet and St Peter Paul’s Wharf, London, 230. In his will, drawn up on 6 January 1658 after the ‘foul miscarriage’ of his son had come to light, Avery requested a ‘Christian and decent’ burial without ‘worldly pomp’. He bequeathed land in Somerset and a house in Mortlake, Surrey, to his second son, William. Otherwise the once wealthy merchant, now ‘full of trouble’ was reduced to bequeathing bed linen, furniture and rugs to his other surviving children and his servants.99PROB11/314/15. Because of his failure to sue out a quietus est from the interregnum powers, Avery’s estate remained liable for the customs debt.100CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 363. At the restoration the debts were excepted from the act of indemnity, and government investigations concluded that Avery had left no assets other than his Irish lands to settle it. Lloyd, who had prospered with the return of the king, initiated an inquiry into Avery’s ‘irregular possession’ of lands in Limerick acquired under the Adventurers’ scheme. In 1662 Lloyd succeeded in establishing his claims to the land and in 1665 the remainder was granted to William Godolphin†.101CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 468, 495; 1663-4, pp. 431, 495, 619-21; Bodl. Carte 43, f. 437. With these grants the investigation into Avery’s financial affairs came to an end and his family were not molested further. Nothing is known of Avery’s descendants, but his nephew served as town clerk of London from 1666-71.102Aldermen of Cripplegate Ward, ed. J.J. Baddeley (1900), 63.