HARINGTON, John II (1627-1700), of Corston, Som.

The year 1654 was the most important in John Harington’s life. Within the space of no more than seven months, his father died, he was elected to Parliament for the first time and he married the first of his four wives. In his late teens, and perhaps still a student at Oxford, he had been old enough to have fought in the civil war when it broke out in 1642, but there is no evidence that he played any part in it. Like his father, he was probably an inactive parliamentarian. The document circulating in the nineteenth century purporting to be notes by him on his election at Bath in December 1646 appears to be a forgery.21‘Election expenses’, The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, i. 10. Only in 1649, under the new republic, did he take on any public role. From December 1649 he served as a Somerset assessment commissioner and from August 1651 he was a justice of the peace.22A. and O. His real importance was as his father’s heir.

Harington entered into that considerable inheritance in the spring of 1654. Following his father’s death, he gained control of and was based at their house at Corston, a secondary residence just across the River Avon from the family seat at Kelston. He also received the rest of the many Harington estates scattered across south east England.23PROB11/242/491; PROB11/248/5; Som. RO, DD/BR/cr/5. There was just one exception; his mother retained a life interest in the house at Kelston, which therefore remained in her hands until her death in 1674.24Poynton, ‘Extracts’, 195.

Harington was one of 11 men elected as the Somerset MPs on 12 July 1654 for the first protectoral Parliament. There may have been some voters who saw him as a substitute for his father. Had he not been elected for one of the county seats, he might well have been considered by the Bath corporation as a possible candidate there; he was one of three local gentlemen who, in anticipation of the election, had already been admitted as freemen of that city.25Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1649-84, p. 156. Harington made little impact at Westminster. His sole committee appointment was to the committee on Irish affairs (29 Sept. 1654).26CJ vii. 371b. One week later, on 6 October, he was granted leave to go into the country for six weeks ‘upon his urgent occasions’.27CJ vii. 374a. What those reasons might have been is not known, but it was while still in the country that, on 1 November, he married Mary Speccott in the bride’s home parish of Thornbury in Devon.28Poynton, ‘Genealogical table’, 193.

In May 1655, four months after this Parliament had been dissolved, Harington was appointed by the lord protector, Oliver Cromwell*, as captain of one of the troops of militia horse to be raised in Somerset.29Add. 46373B, f. 3. This would later become a subject of embarrassment for him. In 1660, once Charles II had been restored, a number of prominent Somerset gentlemen, headed by 2nd Baron Poulett (Sir John Poulett*), signed a certificate excusing Harington of complicity in the protectorate by accepting this position. They confidently asserted that

the said John Harington did refuse to act by, and would have returned the said commission, but that we (with divers others) whose names are subscribed did earnestly entreat him to accept of the said charge, thereby to secure us from such spoil and ruin which otherwise we feared and had certainly undergone had not he undertaken the said employment, which he most faithfully and carefully performed for us, even with his own hazard amongst those of other principles joined with him, and to his own very great expense and cost, discharging and relieving with money and necessaries divers who had otherwise lain long in restraint.30Add. 46373B, f. 5.

This was all very convenient for Harington in the circumstances of 1660, but also confirms that at the time he had performed the required duties. Other evidence suggests that he also continued to act as a justice of peace under the protectorate.31QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, p. xxi; Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 45; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 144.

He was re-elected as one of the Somerset MPs when a new Parliament was called in 1656. Having received 1,646 votes, he came eighth in the county poll held on 20 August.32Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 77. As in the previous Parliament, it is Harington’s absences from Westminster that can be documented. On 13 October 1656 he was given permission to go into the country for a fortnight.33CJ vii. 438a. He was also absent when the House was called on 31 December, when it was reported that he was ‘ill himself, and his wife is ill.’34Burton’s Diary, i. 286.

The restoration of the old franchises for the parliamentary elections in 1658-9 required Harington to change his tactics. Getting elected for the county was as difficult as before 1653, so Harington lowered his sights to find a borough seat. He did not have to look far. Bath was only a few miles from Corston and the corporation proved willing to accept him as one of their two MPs. They elected him, with James Ashe*, on 10 January 1659.35Bath and NE Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1649-84, p. 206. Not everyone was impressed by their choice. Several months later the Somerset quarter sessions heard a complaint brought by Joseph Applyn of Somerton against a former Long Sutton resident, Andrew Ball. Applyn accused Ball of having called him, ‘Harington’s rogue’. Applyn responded by defending Harington, which prompted Ball to retort that Harington was ‘an unworthy fellow’ and that

he is a base unworthy gentleman; his father was a good man, but he is a young fool, and puny boy, and yet the city of Bath would choose him a burgess. It is more for fear than love because he wears a sword.36QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 376.

That Harington then appears to have done even less in this Parliament than in 1654 or 1656 might suggest that Ball had a point.

Harington was re-appointed as a militia captain by the council of state in April 1660, two days before the opening of the Convention. His troop was to form part of Alexander Popham’s* regiment.37Add. 46373B, f. 4. This may have been slightly awkward for both men, as Popham had replaced Harington as one of the Bath MPs in the recent elections. Once the Convention had recalled the king, Harington’s role in the Somerset militia under Cromwell began to trouble him. It was at this point that his friends drew up their declaration on his behalf, which they signed on 24 May. That concluded with the all-important assurance that Harington ‘hath since showed himself most ready and affectionate to his Majesty’s present service’. Harington himself believed that it was this document that enabled him to obtain his pardon under the great seal from Charles II later that year.38Add. 46373B, f. 5. It may also have helped get him confirmed as a member of the new Somerset commission of the peace.39QS Recs. Som. Charles II, p. xii. In November 1660, William Prynne*, the other Bath MP, informed him that he had been appointed as one of the commissioners to disband the army regiment stationed at Bath.40Add. 46373B, f. 6.

Harington remained an active member of the Somerset bench throughout the 1660s and the 1670s.41QS Recs. Som. Charles II, 6-222. In May 1680 he made the arrangements for the funeral of his uncle, the 4th earl of Marlborough, at Weston.42Add. 46376B, ff. 13-14. Later that year Marlborough’s widow repaid the favour by contacting the lord keeper (Sir Francis North†) and Sir John Ernle* to make sure that Harington was not named as sheriff of Somerset.43Add. 46376B, f. 19. However, Harington’s tenure of public office was abruptly interrupted in the summer of 1683. Another member of the family, John Harington of Marshfield, was a radical whig closely associated with the 1st earl of Shaftesbury (Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*).44R.L. Greaves, Enemies under his Feet (Stanford, 1990), 233-4; CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, p. 238. In July 1683, when the government was attempting to round up those suspected of involvement in the Rye House plot, John Harington helped in the unsuccessful manhunt in Somerset for his namesake.45CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, p. 133. The government in London then deleted Harington’s name from the Somerset commission of the peace in the mistaken belief that this was the wanted man. Harington asked 3rd Viscount Fitzhardinge (Sir Maurice Berkeley†) to take up his case, although, as Harington acknowledged, there were some who wanted him removed anyway because his ill heath had incapacitated him.46CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, pp. 238-9. Fitzhardinge assured Sidney Godolphin† that, ‘no man in this county has served the king more faithfully or zealously’, and enclosed a copy of the 1660 testimonial.47CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, pp. 238-9. The secretary of state, Sir Leoline Jenkins†, then promised to take it up with Lord Keeper North.48CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, pp. 264-5, 272. Harington was eventually reinstated in December 1685, but was removed again the following year.49March of William of Orange, 50; PC2/71, p. 369. Yet he was not entirely out of favour with James II, for he was subsequently reappointed as a deputy lieutenant in early 1688.50March of William of Orange, 51. He appears to have served again as a justice of the peace in the 1690s.51Add. 46376B, f. 19.

Harington died in 1700; he was buried at Kelston on 16 April.52Poynton, ‘Extracts’, 195; Collinson, Som. i. 129. With his four wives he had fathered 21 children, of whom 17 probably survived him. As F.J. Poynton, the historian of the family, would note, such fecundity is enough ‘to strike terror into the heart of genealogists’.53[F.J. Poynton], ‘A memoir of Capt. John Harington’, Misc. Gen. et Her. n.s. iv. 23. Harington’s heir was Benjamin Harington, the son of his third marriage. Benjamin would have numerous descendants, although no one from this branch of the family seems subsequently to have sat in Parliament.54[F.J. Poynton], ‘Harington of Corston’, Misc. Gen. et Her. n.s. iv. 274-7, 291-6.