KING, Sir Robert (c.1599-1657), of Boyle Abbey, co. Roscommon, Ire. and Cecil House, The Strand, Westminster.

Originally from Northallerton in Yorkshire, the King family had settled in Ireland at the turn of the century, when Sir John King was rewarded for his service in the Nine Years’ War with the lease of Boyle Abbey, co. Roscommon.27Lodge, Peerage, iv. 149. Sir John grew rich under James I, extending his estates in Roscommon, and acquiring lands in Leitrim and other counties in the west of Ireland. He was knighted and made an Irish privy councillor, and, after service as a commissioner in the Irish court of wards, he was made joint receiver of the same in 1621.28Lodge, Peerage, iv. 149-50. As a leading landowner and official in Connaught, Sir John King soon built up a close relationship with the local grandees, notably Sir Charles Coote senior and the 4th earl of Clanricarde (both of whom held land bordering on the King family estates in Roscommon), and he was able to secure marriages for his children with a range of important New English gentry families, including the Caulfields, Lowthers, Moores, Southwells and Folliotts.29Survey and Distribution, i. 130-151; Lodge, Peerage, 152-5.

Robert King, Sir John’s son and heir, was groomed for a career in the Irish administration. After studying at Cambridge, in 1618 he took over his father’s post as muster-master-general and clerk of the cheque in Ireland.30Al. Cant.; CSP Ire. 1615-25, p. 193. He was knighted in 1621, and appointed as j.p. and custos rotulorum for Roscommon in 1624.31Shaw, Knights of Eng.ii. 177; McGrath, Biographical Dict. During the later 1620s, Sir Robert was appointed commissioner to raise money for the army in Roscommon and to sell French prize goods throughout Connaught, and he seems to have shared his father’s connection with the Cootes: in 1630 acting as commissioner in the settlement of a land dispute between the younger Sir Charles Coote* and his mother-in-law, Lady Jephson (mother of William Jephson*).32CSP Ire. 1625-32, pp. 253, 568; 1647-60, p. 131. The statute staple records between 1628 and 1633 suggest he was lending and borrowing considerable sums during this period.33Irish Statute Staple Bks. 115-6, 247. The arrival of Viscount Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) in Ireland as the new lord deputy in 1633, brought this cosy situation to a rapid end. Sir Robert King – as a product of the New English nepotistic system which Wentworth so despised – was treated with great suspicion by the new administration in Dublin. When appointing four agents to view the military establishment of the different provinces in October 1633, Wentworth chose King to report on the situation in Connaught, but doubted he would have carried out the job ‘honestly, ably and impartially’, unless already bound to do so by his oath as muster-master.34Strafforde Letters, i. 132.

Sir Robert King spent much of the 1630s trying to prove his loyalty to the crown, and to the Wentworth regime. In July 1634 he was elected as burgess for the borough of Boyle (on his father’s interest), and therefore sat in the Irish Parliament which voted through Wentworth’s reform programme, including the plantation of Connaught.35CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 65. Soon after his election, King made approaches to Wentworth’s close ally, John Bramhall, bishop of Derry, promising to return the estates ‘impropriated’ from the church by his father. In August Bramhall told Wentworth that ‘Sir Robert King has concluded with Sir George Radcliffe and myself for 11 impropriations more at four years’ purchase’, and that if his father refused this compromise, King would ‘restore them to the church immediately after his father’s death’.36HMC Hastings, iv. 60. On 20 December, Bramhall was still confident that King, like Strafford’s protégé, the young 12th earl of Ormond, was ready to yield his impropriations.37CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 88. His confidence was well placed. Although Sir Robert’s undertaking could not be fulfilled until the death of his father in January 1637, by the following June the lands had indeed been returned to the church.38HMC Hastings, iv. 74-5; CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 161. King had evidently struck a deal with Wentworth and Bramhall, in which he surrendered the impropriated land in return for the confirmation of his post as muster-master-general. In August 1637 the lord deputy sponsored King’s petition to Charles I for a re-grant of his office, as a ‘person well affected’; and the letters patent authorizing the same were issued in October.39CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 172; Strafforde Letters, ii. 97, 113. In a further sign of King’s acceptability with Wentworth’s circle, in 1637 he was engaged in financial dealings with Ormond.40McGrath, Biographical Dict.

In the elections for the Irish Parliament of 1640, Sir Robert King was again chosen to represent Boyle, but he played no part in the growing opposition to Wentworth (now 1st earl of Strafford) in Dublin.41Kearney, Strafford in Ireland, 247-8. Indeed, it was King’s connection with the Irish regime which prompted the House of Commons to summon him to London in November 1640, as a witness against Strafford and his ally, Sir George Radcliffe.42CJ ii. 28a-b; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 44; CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 246. Once in England, King evidently thought it prudent to cooperate with Strafford’s enemies. In his evidence, produced on 28 December 1640, he accused Radcliffe of conspiring with Strafford to bring the Irish army into England, and at the same time asserted his own probity by relating an exchange in which he had countered Strafford’s advocacy of ‘absolute power in the king [as the] best government’, allegedly retorting in the lord lieutenant’s face that ‘that would be tyrannical’.43Northcote Note Bk. 115. King’s evidence, though hardly trustworthy, was crucial in substantiating the charge that Strafford had sought to bring Irish troops into England, which was central to the case brought against the lord lieutenant in March and April 1641. In the early stages of the Strafford trial, King was named as a witness on Strafford’s behalf, but by 5 April he had been summoned to provide evidence for the prosecution.44LJ iv. 191a, 200a, 207a. King reiterated his account of Strafford’s discussions with Radcliffe — that ‘the army in Ireland should be employed against England’ — and he was supported in this by the lord president of Connaught, Roger Jones, Viscount Ranelagh.45Procs. LP, iii. 370-1, 379, 389. Despite Strafford’s denial that he had approved of Radcliffe’s opinions, these charges, reintroduced by Sir Henry Vane II* during the attainder, were the chief evidence used to bring Strafford to the block.

At the outbreak of the Irish Rebellion in October 1641, Sir Robert King was still resident in Westminster. After the initial panic in Parliament, various practical responses to the Irish situation were propounded, and Irish gentlemen resident in England were brought in to advise the government. On 9 November, therefore, King was appointed as an assistant to the committee of both Houses for Irish affairs; the next day the Commons suggested that he be added to the council of war; and on 13 November he presented a letter from the Irish treasurer-at-war, Sir Adam Loftus, which prompted the Commons to recommend that the 1,000 Scots troops bound for Ulster should be increased to 5,000.46LJ iv. 429b; CJ ii. 310b, 314b. From February 1642, King, although remaining in England, continued to act as muster-master as part of the parliamentary effort to relieve Ireland, and was actively involved in raising troops and providing stores.47CJ ii. 416a. He was also able to use his influence at Westminster to aid the beleaguered garrisons which held out against the rebels in Connaught. In July 1642, the 3rd earl of Essex told his half-brother, the 5th earl of Clanricarde, that King had provided him with details of the plight of Galway, and of the earl’s service there.48Memoirs and Letters of Ulick, Marquiss of Clanricarde ed. U. Bourke (Dublin, 1757), 269-70. In October, Clanricarde wrote to King, in reply to a previous letter, thanking him for ‘your affection and respect to me, both by the intelligence you gave me, and the relations you are nobly pleased to make of me in England’, and advising him on the state of Connaught.49Memoirs and Letters of Clanricarde ed. Bourke, 286-7. This exchange is significant, as it shows not only that King was in touch with Essex and his friends at Westminster, but also that his support for the royalist Clanricarde continued after the Galway Cessation with the Irish rebels of May 1642, which had rendered the earl anathema to the Commons. This willingness to deal with Irish royalists, while at the same time backing Parliament’s Irish policies, would be a recurring element in King’s later political career.

King seems to have returned to Dublin in the autumn of 1642, where he and Sir Thomas Wharton courted controversy by drafting a petition of the officers calling for the king and Parliament to make peace; but in January 1643 he was one of the agents sent back to England to secure provisions for the Irish army, and he was in London by March, when he provided detailed lists of troops in Leinster for William Hawkins, the secretary of the select Committee for Irish Affairs.50R. Armstrong, Protestant War (Manchester, 2005), 75-6; HMC Ormonde, n.s. ii. 230-1; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 418. On 22 April King was granted leave by Parliament to travel to Oxford with William Jephson* and Colonel Arthur Hill*, ‘upon matters which concern Irish affairs’.51CJ iii. 57a. They carried with them a supplementary bill for enforcing the payment of subscription money already promised under the adventurers’ act, which was presented to the king for his assent. The king, in a reply sent to Parliament on 5 May, did not refuse outright, but used the occasion to demand information about money previously allocated for Ireland which had been siphoned into the parliamentarian war effort in England.52Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 318; LJ vi. 35b. This response confirmed the worst fears of those who suspected that Charles I was now in the hands of Catholic advisers intent on securing a treaty between the crown and the Irish rebels. King, on his return to Westminster, indicated that he was now prepared to support Parliament. Early in July 1643 he resumed his role as adviser to the Committee for Irish Affairs, and in August he was named to a council of war for Ireland, which included William Jephson*, Sir John Clotworthy* and other interested parties.53CJ iii. 151a, 191b. The cessation of arms between the king and the Catholic Confederates, signed in September 1643, increased the pressure on King, whose sons had been left in charge of Boyle Abbey. The Confederates took the opportunity of the truce to quarter troops on the Boyle estate, and in April and May 1644 the Irish complained that King’s garrisons, along with those of Viscount Ranelagh (Arthur Jones*) and Sir Charles Coote ‘daily commit acts of hostility’, and were on the verge of declaring for Parliament and joining the Ulster Scots.54History of the Irish Confederation ed. J.T. Gilbert (Dublin, 1882-91), iii. 93, 140-1, 164. King was also concerned at the fate of Dublin, now controlled by the marquess of Ormond as the king’s lord lieutenant.55CSP Dom. 1644, p. 501; CJ iii. 628b. It was only a matter of time before Coote and his allies in Connaught followed the lead of Lord Inchiquin in Munster by renouncing the cessation, and joining Parliament. By the end of 1644 King confirmed his own commitment to the parliamentarian cause by taking the Solemn League and Covenant, and in January 1645 the king instructed Ormond to sack King as muster-master-general, as ‘a person disaffected to us, having taken the Covenant and adhering to the [parliamentarian] rebels’.56Bodl. Carte 13, f. 528.

In January 1645, the Committee of Both Kingdoms renewed its commitment to the Irish war.57CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 242. As part of this process, the committee consulted a number of experts on Irish matters, including Sir Robert King, Sir Charles Coote, Sir John Temple* and Sir Arthur Loftus, and in March plans were made to appoint a commission to travel to Ulster.58CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp.306, 325, 361. By the beginning of April the details had been confirmed: King, another Irish landowner, Arthur Annesley*, and the adventurers’ representative, Colonel William Beale, were to be sent as commissioners to Ulster, where they were to act jointly with representatives of the Scots, with whom they were to direct the war effort, control pay and provisions, and treat for surrenders.59CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 383-4, 371. This arrangement was agreed by Parliament on 11 April, and confirmed by ordinance on 3 May 1645.60A. and O.; LJ vii. 350a. But even before his appointment as an Ulster commissioner had been finalized, King was involved in covert operations to persuade the marquess of Ormond to abandon his attempts to make a lasting peace with the Catholic Irish on Charles I’s behalf. King’s approaches to Ormond may have been facilitated by their mutual friend, Sir Philip Percivalle*, who was King’s guest at Cecil House on the Strand in January 1645.61HMC Egmont, i. 245. On 8 February, King wrote to Ormond offering his ‘humble advice’, and warning him that ‘hearing but one side, you are subject to be misled, and may possibly be wrought upon to join with the Irish against the English and the Scots’.62Bodl. Carte 14, f. 46. In March he urged Ormond not to ‘join with the rebels and papists against the British Protestants’, adding that ‘such a course would absolutely undo you, and the contrary course I am sure under God is the only visible means to preserve you’.63Bodl. Carte 14, f. 202. Such approaches prefigured King’s later involvement in peace negotiations with Ormond.

King travelled to Ireland to take up his commission in the early summer of 1645, and in September the power of the Ulster commissioners was augmented, after debate on the matter in both Houses. They were to be styled ‘chief governors of Ulster’, with the same rights (in commission) over the northern province that the presidents of Connaught and Munster enjoyed in their own areas. The new Ulster ‘governors’ were directly responsible to the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs or the Committee of Both Kingdoms, as representatives of the Westminster Parliament.64CJ iv. 261b, 270b, 276b; LJ vii. 596b. During October the Ulster commissioners continued to direct local activities, in liaison with Sir Charles Coote in Connaught, and the Ulster gentlemen resident in London, but at the end of the month a new opportunity arose for peace initiatives towards Ormond.65CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 185, 205. After initial approaches by Ormond, in November the lord lieutenant’s agent, Archdeacon Humphrey Galbraith, attended the Ulster commissioners, and ‘made choice to sound Sir Robert King first, as being my old acquaintance, and as I hoped a faithful servant to you’.66Carte, Life of James Duke of Ormond, vi. 326; Bodl. Carte 16, f. 209. Galbraith noted King’s ‘large expression of regard’, but found him ‘bent wholly to make a party here for the Parliament’, and suspicions of bad faith lingered on both sides.67Bodl. Carte 16, f. 209; Armstrong, Protestant War, 150-1.

In the winter of 1645-6, King and his fellow commissioners seem to have been conducting a dual policy: attempting to win over the remaining Protestant royalists in Connaught, while trying to persuade Ormond to accept a peace deal with Parliament. Both these aims were furthered by the capture of the ‘Irish Cabinet’ – the captured letters of the Catholic archbishop of Tuam – which revealed the terms of a peace brokered by the earl of Glamorgan behind Ormond’s back. King and Annesley selected the most damning letters, and published them in January 1646.68The Irish Cabinet (1646), 3-9 (E.316.29). In the same month, King joined Coote in co. Roscommon, in an effort to bring Viscount Ranelagh into the parliamentarian fold.69Bodl. Carte 16, f. 457. In the next few weeks, King tried to encourage the Protestant garrison of Athlone to mutiny and seize the town.70Bodl. Carte 16, ff. 469, 495. Although the Athlone plot was discovered by Lord Dillon, Ranelagh did eventually defect to Parliament, and by early June Coote could boast to the Star Chamber Committee that ‘I have regained all those holds which the rebels took from us in the county of Roscommon, some three or four excepted’.71Irish Rebellion ed. Hogan, 190-1. King’s local influence was clearly important in securing Roscommon. He was also the prime mover of the new attempts to win over Ormond, still fuming at Glamorgan’s nefarious activities. In February the Ulster commissioners were again in contact with the marquess, and in early April the lord lieutenant signalled his intention to do a deal; a treaty with ‘Sir Robert King and his fellows, if it can be effected, will be of singular advantage to the king’s service’.72Bodl. Carte 16, f. 525; Carte 17, f. 38. But by this stage Ormond was already committed to a peace treaty with the Irish Confederates, and King had to return to England empty-handed.73Bodl. Carte 17, ff. 104, 385.

During the summer and autumn of 1646, Sir Robert King’s career fluctuated with the political changes in all three kingdoms. On his arrival to London on 6 June 1646, King found Irish affairs now in the hands of Parliament’s newly minted lord lieutenant, the Independent peer, Viscount Lisle (Philip Sidney*). Lisle’s factional position was reinforced by the destruction of the Ulster Scots at Benburb in the same month, and the Irish Confederates followed up their victory by retaking lost territory in the north and west of Ireland over the next few weeks. Worse still, Ormond’s peace treaty with the Confederates was now an open secret. In the circumstances, King had little choice but to cooperate with Lisle’s faction in Westminster, which now dominated the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs.74CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 461, 465, 501. From early September King, as commissary-general of the musters, worked with prominent Independents, such as Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*) and Sir John Temple’s* kinsman, Sir John Veel, in equipping the army bound for Ireland under Lisle.75CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 503-4, 506, 509. But the breakdown of Ormond’s peace deal with the Confederates in the autumn brought renewed hopes of peace between Parliament and the former royalists in Ireland. By the end of September, King had again been appointed to an embassy to treat with Ormond — this time as commissioner for Dublin, with Sir Thomas Wharton, Sir John Clotworthy, Sir Robert Meredith and Richard Salwey*.76CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 520, 479.

The commissioners opened discussions with Ormond immediately on their arrival in Dublin on 14 November 1646, but the talks soon ran into difficulties, as Parliament interpreted Ormond’s exceptions to certain articles, and especially his insistence that the king needed to approve any deal, as tantamount to a ‘positive refusal’.77CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 543. As a result, the troops mustered at Chester to reinforce Dublin were diverted to Belfast on 23 November, and King and his colleagues soon followed them north.78CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 543, 547, 548. In Ulster, the commissioners conducted equally fruitless negotiations with the Ulster Scots and the Scottish Parliament for the return of Belfast to English control, and on 28 January 1647, King, bitterly disappointed, petitioned Parliament for leave to return to Westminster.79CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 551-601; CJ v. 68a. He was not in England for long. On 1 March King was appointed to yet another commission to negotiate with Ormond.80CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 734. The new commission was made up of men likely to be more amenable to Ormond (including Arthur Annesley*), and their instructions were much more generous to the marquess – he was allowed over £10,000 compensation, and permitted to maintain his own garrison in Dublin until the end of July. Such changes no doubt reflected the resurgence of the Presbyterian interest in the Irish committees at Westminster from March onwards.81CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 681; 1647-60, p. 738. This time, Ormond agreed to the terms, and ordered his commanders to yield their garrisons to Parliament on 10 June 1647.82Hist. Irish Confederation, ed. Gilbert, vi. 202. The Dublin Articles were signed on 18 June, and on 14 August the commissioners were publicly thanked by the Commons.83Bodl. Carte 176, f. 213; CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 741-2; CJ v. 274b.

King’s activities during the period of the Ormond negotiations between October 1645 and June 1647 demonstrate the ambiguities of the Irish Protestant position vis a vis English factional politics. On the one hand, King worked closely with a number of key Presbyterians in Ireland and at Westminster, such as Sir Philip Percivalle, William Jephson and Sir John Clotworthy, and he even kept in contact with Irish royalists such as the earl of Clanricarde.84HMC Egmont, i. 325, 465-6, 371,379; Letterbk. of the earl of Clanricarde, 1643-7 ed. J. Lowe (Dublin, 1983), 457, 463. But, as we have seen, King was careful to retain links with the Independents, especially when Lisle was in control of Irish affairs in 1646, and he was included in the list of Irish privy councillors proposed by the Independents in January 1647.85SP21/26, p. 5. Something of this ambiguity comes through in King’s letter to Percivalle in the following May, bewailing the divisions in Munster. Although he disliked the way in which the Presbyterians had engineered the dismissal of Lisle as lord lieutenant, King told Percivalle ‘I like as little the accusing of my Lord Inchiquin, to whom I wish the same measure you do’.86Add. MS 46931A, f. 228; HMC Egmont, i. 404. Similarly, although he was a parliamentary commissioner during the Ormond negotiations of 1646-7, King was numbered among those who had ‘both the will and the power’ to serve the lord lieutenant and his family.87HMC Egmont, i. 325. In the spring of 1647, Ormond and King began to exchange private letters, enclosed in official correspondence, and these contained information further to that received by the other commissioners.88Bodl. Carte 21, ff. 38, 109, 141. Thereafter, King assisted Ormond’s agent in London, and his continuing friendship with the Butlers led him to intervene on behalf of the marchioness in later years.89Bodl. Carte 21, f. 294; HMC Ormonde, n.s. i. 266.

Despite the ambiguities of his position, King was able to ride the factional storm in the summer of 1647. He returned to England on 13 August 1647 – conveniently avoiding the Presbyterian coup of late July, and the army’s march on London in early August – and soon resumed his role as an important adviser on Irish affairs. On 27 August he was acting as an agent for Sir Charles Coote, receiving money in London for his forces in Connaught.90CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 763; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 712. By November 1647 the Irish committees at Westminster were arranging the payment of arrears for King and other loyal Protestants, with King’s accounts as clerk of the cheque being audited by his former colleague, Arthur Annesley.91CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 744; 1647-60, p. 766. At the beginning of 1648, King received £125 in arrears for his service as Dublin commissioner the year before, and his claims for personal pay since 1641 were submitted to the Committee of Accounts by the Commons.92CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 770; CJ v. 423a. On 25 January King was appointed a commissioner to raise £50,000 for the Irish service, and in the spring of 1648 he worked with Sir William Parsons, Sir Robert Meredith and others in securing money for the war effort from the sequestered estate of Lord Capel.93CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 771; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 715. At the end of March, King was appointed as commissioner to govern Leinster – a sure sign of his favour at Westminster – and in April he was accused in print of being among the Irish Protestants ‘brought into’ the Independent faction, alongside Broghill, Meredith and the Loftuses.94CJ v. 522b; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 4 (2nd numbering)(18-25 Apr. 1648), sig. D4 (E.437.4). King continued to be trusted at Westminster even after the defection of many Irish Protestants to the king’s cause in the summer of 1648. In early June the ordinance to raise £50,000 for Ireland was enlarged, and King was again named as commissioner.95A. and O. He also began advising the Independent-dominated Derby House Committee of Irish Affairs, and seems to have offered his services as a provision contractor in November 1648.96CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 248; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p.35.

King’s instincts for survival also directed his activities after the regicide. He took no part in the proceedings against Charles I, but he did not hesitate for long before openly siding with the commonwealth regime which now controlled the government at Westminster. A key factor in his decision to support the Rump may have been the new, aggressive policy towards Ireland. On 31 March 1649 a new committee ‘for the civil and military affairs of Ireland’ was set up by the council of state, and this body was permitted to consult with a named group of local experts, including King.97CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 62. In the summer and autumn of 1649 the Rump was eager to win the support of Irish Protestants for its military expedition to the island. A number of Irish Protestants were granted compensation for the loss of their estates, and King was brought in to help distribute this relief.98CJ vi. 226a; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 584. In early November, shortly after Cromwell’s victories at Drogheda and Wexford, King was reappointed to his old post as muster-master-general, with his pay back-dated to the previous June.99Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 176; SP28/64, f. 18. Thereafter, he seems to have been a confirmed supporter of the Rump and its Irish policies. In 1650 he advised the council of state, and was rewarded for his efforts to raise money for the Irish war by a grant of £500.100CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 211, 306, 341, 394; CJ vi. 460b. In the spring of 1651 King returned to Ireland, where he soon became involved in the administration, working with Col. John Hewson* and other English officers to pay and supply the army.101CSP Dom. 1651, p.94; Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 88, 103, 114. In May of that year he was appointed a revenue commissioner for Ireland, in September he was appointed joint commissioner of the stores in Dublin, and later in the year he was allowed to issue warrants under his own authority.102Eg. 1762, f. 202; NLI, MS 758, ff. 112-3. In March 1652 King, William Basill, John Hewson* and Henry Markham* were made assistants to the parliamentary commissioners, with orders to receive petitions on Irish affairs.103Ire. under the Commonwealth, 162; Eg. 1762, f. 202v. On 30 December 1652 King was appointed as a commissioner to the high court of justice in Dublin.104TCD, MS 844, f. 136.

As well fostering ties with the commonwealth’s administration in Ireland, King was careful to maintain his contacts within the ‘Old Protestant’ community. Through the marriages of his siblings, King was already connected to such prominent Irish Protestant families as the Lowthers and Southwells, and in the late 1640s he had secured a match for his daughter with William Basill, who became attorney-general for Ireland in July 1649.105Lodge, Peerage, iv. 152, 155. In the early 1650s King also fostered his existing contacts with the Coote family, and especially with Sir Charles Coote, who, in the absence of magnates such as Clanricarde and Ranelagh, had come to dominate Connaught.106CCSP ii. 161; Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 103. King’s son and heir, John, was major in Richard Coote’s horse regiment until its disbandment in the summer of 1653.107SP28/70, ff. 306, 730; SP28/94, ff. 13-14. Later in the decade King secured two other important marriages: for his daughter to William Meredith*, the son of the chancellor of the Irish exchequer, Sir Robert Meredith; and for his eldest son with the daughter of Sir William Fenton, the uncle of the 2nd earl of Cork (Sir Richard Boyle*) and Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*).108Lodge, Peerage, iv. 156, 158. King shared the overriding Old Protestant desire to bring stability to Ireland. He seems to have been particularly interested in improving education as a means to this end, and he was soon in contact with the ‘Invisible College’ — an informal group of intellectuals and reformers which revolved around Samuel Hartlib.109T.C. Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 199, 225. The marriage of King’s sister to Hartlib’s close friend, John Dury, in 1645, may have afforded an entrée to this circle.110Sheffield Univ. Lib. Hartlib 3/2/118A-119A. In 1649 King discussed schemes for the ‘advancement of learning’ with Hartlib’s friend, Miles Symner, and both men supported Dr William Petty’s* plan to set up an ‘office of intelligence’.111Sheffield Univ. Lib. Hartlib 47/6/1A. In March 1650 King had a chance to put his ideas into practice when he was appointed a trustee both for Trinity College and for establishing a new college of the University of Dublin; although the latter project came to nothing, over the next few years he was involved in schemes to revive the fortunes of Trinity College.112CSP Ire. 1603-6, p. xcvii; Eg. 1762, ff. 11v-12.

King’s proven loyalty to the commonwealth, and his expertise in Irish affairs, made him an easy choice for Oliver Cromwell* and the council of state when appointing representatives for Ireland in the Nominated Assembly. King had taken his seat by 9 July 1653, when he was named to a committee to consider the oath of engagement abjuring the king and the monarchy.113CJ vii. 283b. On the same day he was appointed to the committee for Irish affairs, and his activity in this Parliament seems to have been guided by his general Irish interests.114CJ vii. 283b. These brought him into contact with Oliver Cromwell’s son, Henry Cromwell*, who had already shown himself sympathetic to the Old Protestant cause. King acted as teller with Henry on two important votes in September 1653: in the first (8 Sept.), they supported measures to encourage Irish trade by abolishing customs dues for adventurers for three years; and in the second (22 Sept.), they opposed the allocation of £10,000 to the citizens of Gloucester from sequestered Irish estates, which had caused concern among Old Protestants who feared this case would form a precedent, allowing other claims for compensation from the already dwindling stocks of Irish land.115CJ vii. 315b, 323a. On 1 November 1653 King was elected as a member of the new council of state, with 61 votes from his fellow MPs.116CJ vii. 344a-b. Although King only attended four conciliar meetings between 5 and 8 November, the council proceedings suggest that he was again working closely with Henry Cromwell, who served on all four council committees to which King was appointed.117CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 230, 232, 234, 237. King’s involvement in the council was also welcomed by Irish Protestants such as John Percivalle (son of Sir Philip), who saw the conjunction of King and Henry Cromwell as especially auspicious for their financial security.118HMC Egmont, i. 527.

This connection with the family of Oliver Cromwell (who was installed as lord protector in December 1653) increased King’s influence over Irish affairs during 1654. In January he joined Henry Cromwell, Vincent Gookin* and others on a committee to negotiate the Irish land settlement with the adventurers.119HMC Egmont, i. 534. Indeed, by the summer of 1654 King was second only to Lord Broghill as a focus for lobbying by Old Protestants eager for government posts.120HMC Egmont, i. 540, 542, 557. King’s role as a conduit between the government and the Old Protestants strengthened his political influence in Westminster and Ireland, and no doubt helped to secure his return for the counties of Sligo, Leitrim and Roscommon in the first protectoral Parliament of September 1654.121TSP ii. 446; Mercurius Politicus no. 217 (3-10 Aug. 1654), 3674 (E.808.7). There are hints that King intended to work as part of an Irish Protestant bloc within this Parliament, and the visit of his son, in company with the Fentons and Gookin, to the 2nd earl of Cork in the days before the session was unlikely to be a coincidence.122Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 14-16 Aug. 1654. Yet King’s official duties limited his attendance at Westminster to five days in late September: before and after this period he was busy as a commissioner for taking accounts and settling arrears in Ireland.123Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 447, 463. In Parliament, King was appointed to the Irish and Scottish committees – both dominated by Lord Broghill – and he was also named to committees to eject scandalous ministers and to reduce the army.124CJ vii. 370a, 370b, 371b. These appointments again suggest that King was a key figure in the Irish Protestant interest which was growing up around Broghill and Henry Cromwell in this period.

From the beginning of 1655, King was increasingly involved in administrative committees in Ireland, including the commissions for letting lands in Dublin, Carlow and Kildare (Sept. 1655), for allocating land in Connaught (Feb. 1656), and for approving public preachers (Apr. 1656).125Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 538-9, 565-6, 588. In February and June 1656 he was considered as a suitable addition to the Irish council under Henry Cromwell, although the appointment was never made.126Henry Cromwell Corresp. 108, 135. King used his influence to improve his own financial position during this time: he secured (through the Irish council) the repayment of sums owed him from Sir George Radcliffe’s estate in May 1655; in November 1655 he was granted £1,224 owed from the barony of Clanwilliam; and in the spring of 1656 he used his position as commissioner for Connaught to ensure that his own lands in Sligo were not included in the transplantation scheme.127CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 571-2, 812; Ire. under the Commonwealth, i. 88n; ii. 572-3. In this period King also gained possession of sequestered land at Templeogue in co. Dublin as well as estates in cos. Limerick and Galway.128PROB11/265/400. With his growing wealth and political influence, King seemed destined to play an important role in the Parliament called for September 1656, for which he was again returned for Sligo, Leitrim and Roscommon.129Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 624. As before, in the days before Parliament met Major John King found it expedient to visit the earl of Cork, incidentally passing on to the earl the compliments of that other crucial Connaught politician, Sir Charles Coote.130Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 9-10 Sept. 1656.

Yet Sir Robert King would not live to play his expected part in the proceedings at Westminster. In the early months of 1657 his health was failing. He wrote his will on 13 April 1657, and died in the middle of June.131PROB11/265/400. King’s demise was a severe blow to Lord Broghill and other supporters of the new civilian constitution, the Humble Petition and Advice, who had sought to mobilize Old Protestant desires for stability and land security behind calls for a Cromwellian monarchy. The presence of an elder statesman, such as King, with political influence in England and Ireland, would have lent further credence to the position of the ‘kinglings’ against their opponents in the army. It was characteristic of King that even opponents of reform mourned his death, with Charles Fleetwood* writing of his own regret that ‘it hath pleased the Lord to put a period to that good man’s days’.132Henry Cromwell Corresp. 295. King’s sons, who seem to have inherited their father’s political agility, were shrewd enough to stand aloof from politics in the late 1650s, and were suitably rewarded at the restoration: his eldest son, Sir John, became Lord Kingston in September 1660, and his third son, Sir Robert, was the ancestor of the earls of Kingston.133Lodge, Peerage, iv. 156.