KELING, Edward (1599-1665), of Ratcliffe, Stepney, Mdx.

The Keelings had been prominent in the affairs of Newcastle-under-Lyme since the early sixteenth century. Keling’s elder brother, father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all served as mayor of the town, and another elder brother, John Keeling†, had represented the borough in the 1624 Parliament.21Pape, Newcastle-Under-Lyme, 11-12, 81; HP Commons, 1604-29. Nothing is known about Keling’s upbringing and education. He is not recorded as attending university or the inns of court, and his whereabouts for the first half of his life remain a mystery.

In about 1630, Keling was appointed ‘clerk and agent’ to the recently established ‘foreign’ (i.e. not free of the City) company of shipwrights – based on the south bank of the Thames at Rotherhithe, in Surrey – and in that capacity he was involved in the construction of the largest ship in the Caroline navy, the Sovereign of the Seas, which was launched in 1637.22C6/136/78; CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 336; 1637, p. 229; ‘Phineas Pett’, Oxford DNB. He remained in the employment of the company during the civil war and had regular dealings with Parliament’s lord admiral Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick, and with the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports*.23C6/136/78; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 139. Keling appealed to Warwick and the committee for help in 1645-7 in securing his arrears of pay as company clerk and his rent-money as live-in ‘officer’ at the shipwrights’ ‘common hall’.24C2/CHASI/K26/91; C6/136/78; ADM7/673, pp. 119, 130; Bodl. Rawl. C.416, ff. 34v, 60; PA, Main Pprs. 29 July 1648; LJ viii. 232a.

After 1646, Keling disappears from the records again until his appointment by the Rump in February 1649 as secretary to Trinity House – an office he retained until late 1656 (when he appears to have resigned in favour of his nephew Ralph Keeling) and his appointment to the Trinity House governing body, where he served until he was either removed from office, or resigned, late in 1660.25CJ vi. 150a; GL, MS 30032/1, ff. 98, 102; MS 30045/4, pp. 106, 133, 192. By the early 1650s, he had joined London’s mercantile community trading with the Low Countries and become involved in supplying money and shipping to the navy.26SP84/159, f. 239v; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 582, 585; 1651-2, pp. 578, 603; 1652-3, p. 485; 1653-4, pp. 59, 442. In April 1654, he petitioned the protector for relief, having had £2,251 seized at Rotterdam by the Dutch authorities and being without the means to pay his debts or subsist.27CSP Dom. 1654, p. 78.

It was perhaps to gain immunity from arrest by his creditors that Keling sought a seat at Westminster – and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament he was duly returned for his native Newcastle-under-Lyme. Apart from his ancestral connection with the town, Keling was a carpetbagger and probably owed his election largely to his nephew, Alderman (and soon to be elected mayor) Ralph Keeling, who was among the 54 freemen who turned out to ratify his return.28Supra, ‘Newcastle-under-Lyme’. Keling’s appeal to the town’s voters was probably enhanced by his close association with at least one member of the Cromwellian court – namely, Nathaniel Waterhouse*, the protector’s cousin and steward. Waterhouse had been Keling’s business associate for at least a decade before his marriage in 1645 to Keling’s daughter Elizabeth.29Infra, ‘Nathaniel Waterhouse’; C6/106/175; C8/94/157; Coventry Docquets, 237. One of the protectorate’s republican critics listed Keling among those Parliament-men who had ‘engagements from the protector upon them’ and referred to his ‘relations at court’.30[G. Wharton], A Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 18 (E.935.5). Keling appears to have done very little to justify his election, at least in the House, receiving not a single mention in the proceedings of the 1654-5 Parliament. Nevertheless, he was returned for the borough again in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659.31Supra, ‘Newcastle-under-Lyme’. Once again, he was apparently completely inactive at Westminster.

Keling died at his country residence of Beeches, in Essex, on 14 October 1665 and was buried at the nearby parish church of Rawreth on 18 October.32PROB11/319, f. 82v; Rawreth, Essex par. reg. In his will, he left the bulk of his estate – which consisted of property in Kent, Essex and Middlesex – to his wife and two granddaughters.33PROB11/319, f. 82. His bequests amounted to less than £100. He was the last of his line to sit at Westminster.