BRIGGES, Sir Humphrey (c.1615-91), of Haughton, Shifnal, Salop.

The family of Brigges traced its ancestry to a Norfolk family which had removed to Westmorland. Humphrey Brigges’s great-grandfather, Oliver Brigges of Ernestry, near Ludlow, was the first to settle in Shropshire. Oliver married Ann Coningsby of Nene Sollers, whose family was a cadet branch of the important Herefordshire family of that name. Their son, Humphrey, continued the pattern of advantageous marriages by marrying into the Mortons of Haughton, as did Morton Brigges, our Member’s father. By marrying Chrisogena Grey, heiress of the Buildwas Abbey estate, Morton Brigges had the satisfaction of knowing that his family had advanced from newcomers in Shropshire to being established gentry there in three generations.14Vis Salop 1623, i. 68-9. Buildwas was close to Much Wenlock, a borough where in the seventeenth century many local gentry figures found honour and recognition. Morton Brigges was made a burgess there in 1627.15Salop Archives, WB/B3/1/1 p. 590. Humphrey Brigges, Morton’s father, had acted as sheriff in 1605 and subsidy commissioner in the early 1620s, but only with the appearance of Morton Brigges in the commission of the peace for Shropshire by around 1634 could the family be said to have joined the core of the county gentry.16Salop Archives, WB/B3/1/1 p. 523; C193/13/2.

Humphrey Brigges was educated at Lincoln’s Inn. Even before he was despatched to London, he was apparently married at around the age of 15 to Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Philip Carey of Aldenham in Hertfordshire. He played no further part in the life of the inn that had been chosen for him, and there is no record of his having been involved in local government activity before the 1640s. It can only be assumed that he returned to live on the family estates in Shropshire, which afforded less secure an outlook than might have been supposed. Morton Brigges mortgaged his estates in 1637, and Humphrey was to repeat the process on more than one occasion during the following decades.17Salop Archives, 5735/2/1/2/1; Coventry Docquets, 701. The uncertainties of the family finances did not disqualify Morton Brigges from the honour of a baronetcy, which was bestowed on him in August 1641. He was also named as a commissioner in the acts of 1640 which provided Charles I with grants of parliamentary taxation.18CB ii. 134; SR.

At the outbreak of civil war, Morton Brigges was not among those who formed the core of support for Parliament. He was not named to the Militia Ordinance, nor did he join the group at Shrewsbury, including Humphrey Mackworth I* and Thomas Hunt*, which was to form the nucleus of the county committee later in the war. He was not among the royalist commissioners of array, either. Only in April 1643 did Morton Brigges declare his hand, when he was named as a commissioner for the parliamentarian west midlands association of which Shropshire formed a part.19A. and O. The Brigges family was evidently divided by the civil war. A cousin and namesake of Morton Brigges served the king and was killed in action at Stourton Castle, near Kinver in Staffordshire.20Al. Ox. Of Humphrey’s conduct in the civil war, no trace can be found, and it is likely that he was a neutral. The question of the family’s allegiance during the civil war is thrown into relief by the honours granted its members by the king. Soon after Morton Brigges was awarded his baronetcy, Humphrey received a knighthood. The details seem to have eluded the compiler of the standard reference work on the topic, but he was described as Sir Humphrey Brigges knight in a deed enrolled at common pleas in Michaelmas term, 1641.21Salop Archives, 5735/2/25. It is hard to say why the family was favoured in this way. Its members’ resort to the mortgage from 1637 must have made the prospect of any financial help from them to the monarchy unlikely, and if it was an attempt by the monarchy to harness practical support in any other way it was an unsuccessful ploy. The date of death of Sir Morton Brigges cannot be pinpointed accurately, but his nomination in April 1643 to a committee proved to be his only one. Letters of administration for Sir Morton’s estate were granted to Sir Humphrey on 20 December 1647, but he had probably died around 1643.22Prerogative Ct. of Canterbury Administrations, vi. 1631-1648 ed. Fitch (British Rec. Soc. c), 55.

The writ to replace Thomas Littleton* as burgess for Much Wenlock was moved on 13 May 1646.23CJ iv. 543a. Brigges was elected on 27 June, ‘by all and singular’ at a meeting of the burgesses.24Salop Archives, WB/ B3/1/1 p. 700. He had to wait until September to be made a burgess of the town in his own right.25Salop Archives, WB/ B3/1/1 p. 712. As a local gentleman he was well known to the corporation of Much Wenlock, his father having been a burgess of many years’ standing, so it was likely that the corporation saw itself as fortunate in having successfully returned another of its own acquaintance. There is no suggestion that in this election any outside influence by either the army or by the Presbyterian or Independent political groups was brought to bear. There is, however, the possibility that Brigges was regarded as an associate of Littleton’s. A cousin of the Haughton Brigges family, bearing the forename Morton, who died in 1634, had entrusted Adam Littleton, Thomas Littleton’s father, with the delicate task of making up a quarrel in his family and also appointed him his executor. Brigges described Littleton as his cousin, so it is possible that the Littletons and the wider family of Brigges were regarded in Wenlock as linked by cousinship.26PROB11/165/474.

Brigges was slow to make an appearance in the Commons. He was first noted by the clerk on 17 October 1646, but then only to be excused attendance so that he could leave London.27CJ iv. 697b. He took the Covenant on 30 December, and the following day served on a committee to examine complaints brought into the House. It was a highly politically sensitive committee, with Edward Harley, Zouche Tate and Denzil Holles among the Presbyterians, Oliver Cromwell a prominent Independent. Robert Clive was there to accompany his new Shropshire colleague.28CJ v. 33b, 35a. He sat on no further committees until 2 April 1647, when he was again in the company of Clive. A vote was taken on whether to commit an ordinance for the London militia to the whole House. The topic was one which divided Presbyterians and Independents, the former group supporting attempts by the City of London to beef up its own militia force in order to maintain independence from the New Model army. Independents such as Sir Arthur Hesilrige wanted a whole House committee, but they were voted down by Presbyterians. The committee born of this vote included Shropshire radicals Humphrey Edwardes and Richard Salwey; Brigges and Clive were probably aligned with Edward Harley in maintaining arguments sympathetic to those of the Londoners.29CJ v. 132b. Four days later, Brigges found himself named to another controversial committee, that on the disputed election for Newcastle-upon-Tyne. A number of Shropshire and Herefordshire Parliament-men – Clive, John Birch, Thomas Hunt, Esay Thomas – sat on this committee, whose remit was extended to include the Shropshire recruiter election at which Humphrey Edwardes had been elected in highly irregular circumstances.30CJ v. 134a.

Brigges sat on only two more committees during his parliamentary career. One was on the petition of Sir Martin Lister* (21 May 1647); the other, on a committee with the Lords to hear the Scots commissioners, a task which could by this time only have been of interest to Presbyterians among the delegates.31CJ v. 181b, 200a. By the summer, the political temperature at Westminster was becoming uncomfortably hot for many Members who lacked the heart for determined political struggle. On 19 July, the day before the Eleven Members were given leave to go abroad, and a week before City-inspired disorder forced the leading Independents to seek refuge with the army, Brigges made his excuses and slipped away, probably back to Shropshire.32CJ v. 250a. He may never have returned. In October he was excused at a call of the House as sick; on 23 December he was one of three members from Shropshire constituencies ordered to return to bring in assessments – he did not have to have been present to be allocated this task – and nearly a year later this commission was repeated.33CJ v. 330a, 400b; vi. 88a.

Brigges was named in 1647 as an elder for the 3rd classis in Shropshire under the arrangements for the fledgling Presbyterian church, which affords some insight into his religious inclinations. His name began to appear on commissions for the militia and the assessment from about the same time, and his local government career seems to have been unaffected by the trial and execution of the king. Though his name appears on one of the contemporary lists of victims of Thomas Pride’s* purge of the House, he had probably left Westminster long before the events of December 1648 and January 1649, and is not known to have made any attempt to take his seat again.34A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62). He continued to be named to local office under the Rump, but after the commonwealth gave way to the Cromwellian protectorate he temporarily lost his place. Restored to the bench in 1656, he remained a magistrate for Shropshire until the end of the interregnum. Brigges experienced somewhat strained relations with the local state even when he was regarded as well-affected during the commonwealth. The debt of £1,000 which Brigges owed a royalist was reported by the enterprising William Crowne* to the Committee for Advance of Money. The committee ordered the financially hard-pressed Brigges to repay his debt to its treasurer, on pain of sequestration. In December 1649, Brigges had to attend the Shropshire committee and listen to the witnesses Crowne had produced, and then to Crowne himself as he requested half of Brigges’s money to defray his own costs.35CCAM 69, 843.

Brigges married four times in all, and only his second marriage produced an heir. After inheriting on the death of his father, in 1648 Brigges re-mortgaged, and did so again in 1657 and 1663. His own son married in 1668, when the estates were settled on Humphrey Brigges junior.36Salop Archives, D 3651/B/8/1/52; 5735/2/1/2/3, 5, 6; 5735/2/20/6/7. The practicalities of successive marriage settlements and multiple mortgages must have weighed heavily upon Brigges throughout the 1650s and 60s. His last marriage was to Magdalen Corbet, daughter of Sir John Corbet*. A writer of crude skits on the ladies of the Shropshire county gentry wondered how a Corbet had come to marry ‘the late elder’.37NLW, MS 9064E. Brigges’ reputation as a Presbyterian presumably persisted. Politically, he must have seemed too much like a trimmer to the Shropshire royalists, because he was excluded from office at the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Only in 1665 was he rehabilitated sufficiently to be burdened with the office of sheriff, a prelude to a return to the bench of magistrates in the late 1660s. He became a regular attender at quarter sessions and by July 1686 was primus inter pares in the list of justices.38Orders of Salop Quarter Sessions (1902), i. 106, 108, 110, 112-13, 121, 123, 125, 127, 130. Between January 1687 and July 1689 he was absent from quarter sessions, in what was probably the same response to political crisis that he had exhibited 40 years previously. He attended sessions for the last time in January 1691, and died in May.