EDGAR, Thomas (1603-92), of Gray’s Inn, Mdx., and Ipswich, Suff.

In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries Thomas Edgar’s son, Devereux, devoted much time to collecting information on the history of the family and the notes he accumulated survive. The relationship between the various branches of the family can therefore be plotted with relatively little difficulty.26Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/7/3, handwritten notes; HA247/7/5-7; HA247/7/9. The Edgars were a long-standing Suffolk family, with the senior branch having been resident at Great Glemham since the thirteenth century. The cadet branch to which Thomas Edgar belonged was derived from his great-grandfather. Members of this branch had settled at Framsden during the sixteenth century and it was there on 20 March 1603 that Thomas Edgar was born. His father, Lionel, the only son of John Edgar, had previously been married to Elizabeth, a daughter of William Moise. Before she had died in 1598, Elizabeth had produced a son, Lionel junior.27Add. 19128, ff. 56v-57; Framsden par. reg.; Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/7/7, unfol. On 18 December 1598, Lionel married a second time, his new bride being Katherine, a daughter of Thomas Glascock. The marriage took place in St Clement’s in Ipswich, where Glascock was the chief customs master. Thomas’s birth had been preceded in 1599 by that of his sister, Mary. A brother, another Lionel, followed.28Add. 19128, f. 57; Harl. 6762, f. 25; Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/7/9, unfol.

In November 1607 Lionel Edgar, who must then have been in his early thirties and who had previously attended Barnard’s Inn, was admitted to Gray’s Inn. On that occasion he was described as a gentleman and as being from Framsden.29GI Admiss. At some point, however, (possibly as a consequence of the death of Thomas Glascock in 1604) he and his family moved to Ipswich. It is certainly known that he disposed of a property in St Clement’s Street in 1620.30Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/1/3. His second son was said to have been educated at the local school and in August 1619 Thomas followed in his father’s footsteps to Gray’s Inn.31Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/7/5; GI Admiss.

By the mid-1620s it would seem as if Thomas Edgar was seeking a permanent base in the town, for in March 1624 he purchased some properties just outside of Ipswich.32Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/1/15-16. This, however, is unlikely to mean that he intended taking up permanent residence there. The following year he was called to the bar and thereafter he probably concentrated on building up his legal practice in London.33PBG Inn, 268. A number of possible patrons within the legal profession can be suggested. When one of his brothers, Lionel, was admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1624, it was at the request of Sir Richard Hutton, one of the judges of the court of Common Pleas.34GI Admiss. Edgar himself appears to have cooperated with the serjeant-at-law, Sir Egremond Thynne, in publishing the 1632 textbook on the law as it affected women, The Lawes Resolutions of Womens Rights. Thynne and Edgar are identified as the authors in the Stationers’ Company register but Edgar, in the epistle to the reader which he coyly signed only as ‘T.E.’, claimed that his role had been as editor and improver of an existing anonymous manuscript.35The Lawes Resolution of Womens Rights (1632), esp. sig. a1-[a2]; A Transcript of the Regs. of the Co. of Stationers of London, 1554-1640 ed. E. Arber (1875-94), iv. 242; Baker, Serjeants at Law, 540. On the assumption that Edgar was not trying to mislead, Sir John Doddridge†, the former solicitor-general who had died in 1628, has been suggested as one possible author of the work Edgar used.36A Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous Publications ed. J. Horden (1980), L30.

In 1635 Edgar married Mary, the daughter of a London draper, Philip Powle. His father-in-law is known to have lived in Watling Street in the City and to have died in 1632.37St Andrew, Holborn par. reg., f. 122; Gen. Collections, 24; Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/7/3, handwritten notes; Par. Regs. of St Mary Aldermary, 74, 78, 80, 163, 164, 166. Their first child, Philip, born in July 1636, was baptized at Muswell Hill, but by the time their next child, Thomas, was born in October 1637, they were living in the City parish of St Thomas the Apostle.38Gen. Collections, 24; Par. Regs. of St Thomas the Apostle, London ed. J.L. Chester (Harl. Soc., vi. 1881), 53. The following year Edgar was assessed for £26 for tithes in that parish. In 1640 he was, under the description of a counsellor at law, listed as a resident of the Vintry Ward.39Inhabs. of London, 1638, i. 182; Principal Inhabitants, 1640, 17. When his mother-in-law died in 1639, she left the house and shop in Watling Street to Thomas, her infant grandson. The family may then have moved the short distance to this house, for the young Thomas was buried in St Mary Aldermary in May 1641.40PROB11/181/230; Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/4/1; Par. Regs. of St Mary Aldermary, London, 171. It would seem that soon after this they began to spend more time in Ipswich. Their next child, Mary, was baptized in what became the family church, St Mary-le-Tower, as were all their subsequent children.41Gen. Collections, 24-5; St Mary-le-Tower, Ipswich par. reg., ff. 39a, 39, 40, 40v. At some stage before the mid-1650s Edgar is known to have built a house for himself at Rushmere, just outside the town.42Soc. Antiq. MS 667, p. 347. A move to Ipswich might explain why he bought some land there in November 1641.43Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/1/6-7. The £50 he paid towards the town’s loan to the navy in the autumn of 1643 was exceeded by only one other resident, indicating something of how he saw his status within the town, as well as how willing he was to assist financially the forces fighting for Parliament.44Bodl. Rawl. A.221, f. 146.

It seems doubtful however that Edgar had reduced his legal practice in London by any significant degree. He was called by his inn to its grand company in 1645.45PBG Inn, 354. He was presumably close to John Parker I*, for in October 1648, during Parker’s presentation in common pleas as one of the new serjeants-at-law, Edgar acted as his colt (the distributor of gold rings to those present).46Baker, Serjeants at Law, 441. Moreover, the most public of his new links with Ipswich, his retention by the town’s corporation from November 1646 as their counsel, would have been due to his professional reputation in the capital.47Bacon, Annalls, 546. On the other hand, his service as a magistrate suggests that he was of increasing standing in county affairs. Appointed by Parliament to the Suffolk commission of the peace in May 1646, Edgar thereafter made a point of always attending the Woodbridge and Ipswich quarter sessions.48C231/6, p. 45; Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/1-5; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 423. In 1649 he became an assessment commissioner and probably a sewers commissioner as well.49A. and O.

As a direct consequence of these appointments, we have two important statements by him of his attitude to the new regime in the months following the establishment of the republic in 1649. On 6 April 1649 he delivered the opening speech at the Ipswich quarter session of the Suffolk commission of the peace. He followed this with another speech on 5 September when the commission of sewers for the county met for the first time at Woodbridge.50Two Charges, as they were delivered by T. E. Esquire, Justice of the Peace for the County of Suffolke (1650, E.578.6). In both he used the conventional arguments about the duty of magistrates to serve their communities to dispel any doubts his colleagues may have had about accepting office from a government whose claims to legitimacy were thought by some to be suspect. In the first of these speeches, he argued that disapproval of the specific form of the existing government does not justify support of no government at all, and recommended that ‘though one kind of government be better than another, yet take that [which] is next rather than none’.51Two Charges, 3. Praising the wisdom, beauty and antiquity of those laws, he found it reassuring that the new government had promised to uphold the fundamental laws of the land.52Two Charges, 3-4. In the second speech his defence of the legitimacy of the government concentrated on refuting the particular objection that the great seal authorizing the commission was invalid. He countered by representing it as a symbol of justice and by claiming that it was ‘the great seal of England, and not of any king or particular person’.53Two Charges, 15-16. He viewed those who had brought about the abolition of the monarchy as having justly acted according to their consciences, ‘considering that conscience must be grounded upon these foundations or principles; namely, God’s law or will where it is manifested or expressed, and where God’s word doth not manifest the thing’.54Two Charges, 17. Lest his listeners be tempted to think otherwise, he rejected the idea that conscience, truly obeyed, was independent of reason.55Two Charges, 17-18. Both these speeches found their way into print the following year in a pamphlet which was authorized by Edgar only in so far as, despite his reservation about publication, he checked its text to ensure its accuracy.56Two Charges, sig. A2.

The following year the government was to call upon Edgar’s professed loyalty to them. In December 1650 he and Thomas Weld* were appointed by the council of state to act as the counsels to the high court of justice created to hold the trials at Norwich of those who had joined the uprising in Norfolk the previous month. It was Edgar who asked the court, once the guilty verdicts had been returned, to impose the death sentence.57Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 42-5; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 466; Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 37-8. His appointments to the commission of gaol delivery for Ipswich throughout the 1650s were entirely due to his existing link with the corporation there, while his inclusion on the other local commissions for the county during this decade was confirmation of the fact, already clear from his place on the commission of the peace, that he was now a regular member of the county magistracy.58C181/6, pp. 72, 131, 188, 267, 330; C181/7, pp. 19, 54, 140, 183, 216, 293, 341, 343, 362, 379, 434, 537, 576. When Robert Dunkon of Mendlesham wanted to get his fellow Quaker, George Whitehead, released in 1658, the magistrates he approached were his uncle, Robert Dunkon*, and Edgar.59G. Whitehead, The Christian Progress of…George Whitehead (1725), 135.

In 1657, Edgar’s father died.60Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/7/7, unf. In his will, dating from early 1655, Lionel Edgar had made no mention of his second son. Puzzlingly, all his estates were bequeathed to the youngest son, Lionel, who was also his sole executor.61Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/4/2. Given that in May 1657 Thomas Edgar was able to buy the manor of Demeford Hall from the Freston heiresses for £1,330, it is possible that Lionel Edgar felt that his youngest son had more need of any legacies he could leave.62Copinger, Manors of Suff. v. 182.

It is likely that one person with whom Edgar was closely connected was Leicester Devereux, 6th Viscount Hereford, who, on the death of Sir William Withypoll† in 1645, had inherited the manor of Christchurch in Ipswich. One indication of the extant of the connection between them is Edgar’s decision in 1651 to name his new son, Devereux, after his patron.63St Mary-le-Tower, Ipswich par. reg., f. 40v. Edgar’s connection with Hereford was not a short-term association and as late as 1676 Hereford would appoint him as one of his executors.64PROB11/355/197; PROB11/358/9; C54/5524, mm. 25-32. Hereford was the leading landowner in Orford and in 1659, on the restoration of the franchise to the borough, Hereford secured Edgar’s election there. He may also at some point (when exactly is unclear) have got Edgar appointed as the town’s recorder.65Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/7/5. A further connection Edgar had with the town was that his brother, Lionel, owned property there and later that year Lionel would be admitted as a free burgess by the corporation.66Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE5/5/25; EE5/9/2; EE5/2/2, f. 226.

Edgar’s several contributions in debate in the 1659 Parliament made clear that he favoured a restoration of the House of Lords. When the question of whether or not the Commons could claim the Lords’ former right to request records from the law courts came up on 1 February during discussion about the disputed return of Henry Neville* to the previous Parliament, he advised delay on a decision because ‘I know not yet what the House of Lords is’.67Burton’s Diary, iii. 20. A week later he delivered a speech on the bill to recognize Richard Cromwell* as lord protector. He began by warning that they should not ‘bring the constitutions of the Saxons, Romans, or Normans, to our purpose’. He then indicated that his own preference was for the traditional English constitution, which he felt had proved to be more acceptable than more recent constitutional experiments. Observing that ‘in the country whence I come, the people are much discontented that the ancient nobility should be neglected and set aside’, he asserted that the Lords had a right to exist on the basis of its antiquity and on the principle that social superiors should be honoured. He did not believe that sequestered peers should be permitted to sit and concluded by praising Richard Cromwell.68Burton’s Diary, iii. 123-4.

He returned to this subject during the debates on whether the Commons should acknowledge the Other House. The two themes he stressed in his speech on 19 February were that the abolition of the old House of Lords had been invalid and that the peerage had a useful contribution to make to Parliament. To sustain the first of these (and no doubt mindful of the comments he had made in 1649), he pointed out that the 1650 Engagement, although involving a promise to be faithful to a commonwealth without one, did not oblige the subscriber to oppose the return of a House of Lords. He then sidestepped the awkward fact that the 1657 Humble Petition and Advice might be sufficient to give the Other House a claim to authority.69Burton’s Diary, iii. 349-50; Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, p. 127. His view that ‘honour and reverence is as much a right as any thing else’ explained his admiration for the peerage.70Burton’s Diary, iii. 350. On 1 March he spoke again on this subject but he was forced to abandon his speech when the point he was trying to make, which seems to have been that the Other House should be recognized but should not sit in any future Parliament, met with derision.71Burton’s Diary, iii. 562; Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, p. 157. He presumably voted for recognition in the division at the conclusion of that debate. His one other recorded intervention came on 21 April and may have been essentially procedural. Edgar spoke to agree with the proposal from Robert Goodwin* that the issue of the control of the militia should be handled by a grand committee.72Burton’s Diary, iv. 478.

In January 1660 Edgar signed the petition organized in Ipswich asking George Monck* to support the calling of a free Parliament.73Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA93/7/36; Suff. ed. Everitt, 128. Whether the years following the Restoration were marked by any falling off in Edgar’s public duties is difficult to judge. No doubt as a mark of their disapproval of his actions in 1650, the government initially left him off the Suffolk commission of peace but by early 1664 he had regained his place as a justice.74C193/12/3, f. 96v; C231/7, p. 224. Gray’s Inn appointed him a bencher in 1662.75Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/7/5; Gibbon, Introductio ad Latinam Blasniam, 159. He was growing older, however, and his contribution to the work of the corporation at Ipswich probably by now extended little beyond representing them on business in London and providing occasional legal advice.76E. Anglian, n.s. vi. 316; vii. 188-9. Yet, despite his age, the great court of Ipswich agreed in July 1671 to appoint him to the recordership, vacant since the death of John Sicklemor* the previous year.77E. Anglian, 3rd ser., viii. 302-3. Christopher Milton, brother of the poet, served as the deputy recorder under him.78Oxford DNB, ‘Sir Christopher Milton’. When the earl of Arlington (Sir Henry Bennet†) brought John Evelyn the diarist on a sightseeing trip to the town in 1677, they (and Sir Henry Felton*) probably dined at Edgar’s house.79Evelyn Diary ed. de Beer, iv. 114 and n. In July 1673 he had collected another recordership, when the borough of Eye appointed him as its recorder.80Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE2/I/2, f. 4v. He was still in this office in 1679 but the person then accused of uttering seditious words during the second parliamentary election of that year was not him, but a distant relative, Henry Edgar, one of the principal burgesses of the town.81Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE2/K/5/2-3; PC2/68, pp. 248, 270, 275, 278; PC2/69, ff. 9, 14. By October 1680 Sir Charles Gawdy† (one of the candidates to whom Henry Edgar had been leading the opposition) had succeeded Thomas Edgar as recorder.82Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE2/I/1, unfol. At Ipswich the surrender by the corporation of its charter in April 1684 deprived Edgar of his position there and when the new charter arrived in July 1684 it named Sir Robert Broke instead.83Suff. RO (Ipswich), C5/14/5, f. 26v; C6/1/7, p. 67. The restoration of the original charters in October 1688, however, allowed Edgar (then aged 85) to resume his former place, and at a meeting on 20 October 1688, at which the old corporation reclaimed their powers, he was appointed one of the seven justices of the peace for the town.84Suff. RO (Ipswich), C5/14/5, ff. 37v-38. He remained recorder until his death at the age of 89.85Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/5/2, p. 8; C5/14/5, f. 69.

On 2 December 1690 Edgar prepared his will, which given ‘his great age and infirmity of hand and sight’, he was unable to write out for himself.86Suff. RO (Ipswich), IC/AA1/126/121. Much of the will was devoted to sorting out the affairs of his senior grandchildren, Mileson and Agatha. In 1677 their father, Edgar’s eldest surviving son, Thomas junior, had died. Their mother, Agatha, a daughter of Borrowdale Mileson of Norton, had then married a John Bruce and it was Edgar’s contention that, by the time Agatha died in 1683, Bruce had despoiled the legacies the grandchildren had been left by their father. Among the incidents Edgar held against Bruce was that he had had to spend £200 to buy outright lands at Norton from Sir Henry Felton* to prevent Bruce wasting them. Edgar therefore left to Mileson lands at Dullingham in Cambridgeshire, which his father had intended for him, and provided £1,000 to pay for the siblings’ education.87Suff. RO (Ipswich), IC/AA1/108/164; IC/AA1/126/121; St Mary-le-Tower, Ipswich par. reg., ff. 62, 66; VCH Cambs. vi. 162, 167. By this stage Edgar had accumulated a number of properties in Ipswich.88Suff. in 1674 (Suff. Green Bks., xi. 13, 1905), 164, 171; Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/5/2, pp. 6, 15, 24. Most of these he left to Devereux, the eldest of his two surviving sons. The other son, Francis, was bequeathed the copyhold land in Ipswich and Rushmere which had originally belonged to Edgar’s father and which his brother, on dying in 1686, had asked should pass to his nephew.89Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/4/3. Francis also received the lands at Witnesham while Edgar’s daughter, Katherine, received his properties at Cretingham.

On 11 April 1692, just over three weeks after his eighty-ninth birthday, Edgar died at Grimstone House, in Tower Street, Ipswich. In his will he had directed that he be buried ‘according to the usage and rites of the Church of England’ and was buried in the chancel of St Mary-le-Tower, Ipswich, two days later. His widow died shortly afterwards, and on the last day of that year, according to the wishes expressed in her will, she was buried close to her husband.90Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/7/5; ‘The Edgar fam. of the Red House, Ipswich’, E. Anglian, n.s. x. 118; St Mary-le-Tower, Ipswich par. reg., ff. 119v, 120. Their wills were proved together by their executors on 25 March 1696.91Suff. RO (Ipswich), IC/AA1/126/121-2. An epitaph prepared for a monument which was never installed stated that Edgar was

in the whole of his life very temperate and active and so healthy as not to want the assistance of either physician or surgeon, having never been afflicted with small pox, gout, sciatica, dropsy, stone, colic, strangury or the like. Of person, tall and slender and very comely.92Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA247/7/9, unfol.

In 1700 his son, Devereux, included Edgar’s arms among those he had placed on the roof of St Margaret’s, Ipswich, to disguise the damage which had been done by William Dowsing in 1644.93J. Corder and J. Blatchy, ‘Notes on the series of coats of arms below the roof of St Margaret’s Church, Ipswich’, The Blazon (Suff. Heraldry Soc., xxxvi), [p. 17]; J. Blatchy and P. Northeast, ‘Discoveries in the clerestory and roof structure of St Margaret’s Church, Ipswich’, Procs. Suff. Inst. Arch. xxxviii. 387-408. None of Edgar’s descendants sat in Parliament. A nineteenth-century Ipswich children’s rhyme about the major figures in the town’s history would allude to Thomas Edgar with the line ‘E is an Edgar, clever, of course’.94G. Barker, ‘Alphabet of Ipswich worthies’, E. Anglian Misc. (1911), 55.