NEWPORT, Francis (1620-1708), of High Ercall, Salop.

Sir Richard Newport, Francis Newport’s father, was described by Edward Hyde*, 1st earl of Clarendon, as ‘of very good extraction and of the best estate of any gentleman’ in Shropshire.17Clarendon, Hist. ii. 339-40. The family estates lay at High Ercall, south of Shrewsbury, and Francis Newport and his brother, Andrew, were educated locally, at Donnington. The schoolmaster John Owen lived with the Newports under the patronage of Sir Richard. They were schoolfellows of Richard Baxter and Richard Allestree, who both went on to become ministers of religion, albeit of very different hues. Baxter was in fact asked by Sir Richard Newport to remain at Wroxeter as schoolmaster, but the ambitious scholar declined.18Reliquiae, 3, 5. In the late 1630s, there was nothing to divide the Newports socially from more markedly puritan families like the Harleys of Brampton Bryan. In October 1639, Lady Brilliana Harley wrote to her son, Edward Harley*, that she felt privileged ‘to be in the presence of such a man’ as Sir Richard Newport.19Letters of Brilliana Harley, 68. The two families were in fact related through Sir Robert Harley’s* deceased second wife, and maintained regular contact before the civil war.20Letters of Brilliana Harley, 69, 254.

Francis Newport was only 20 when he was elected to the Short Parliament as burgess for Shrewsbury. He had played no part in public life until that time, and was elected entirely on the interest his father commanded with the corporation. His only recorded involvement in life outside High Ercall had been as an observer of legal cases pursued by his father in London, on which he reported to his uncle Sir Richard Leveson* in 1639.21HMC 5th Rep. 147. Because of his social standing, Newport took the first of the two seats, but the corporation and the dominant drapers’ company of Shrewsbury plainly expected more of its other Member, the experienced town clerk, Thomas Owen. In the event, neither man made any mark on the assembly.

Newport was returned again to the second Parliament of 1640, but the corporation dropped Owen in favour of William Spurstowe, whose contacts and standing in London would have been regarded as advantageous particularly to the drapers. By making this substitution, the corporation had also co-opted a London puritan with a very different outlook on public affairs from that of Newport. The latter was not especially active in Parliament. He was named to his first committee soon enough, on 10 November, but it was merely a conference with the Lords, at the peers’ request, and the tasks given the exceptionally young Newport would have been minimal.22CJ ii. 25b. Not until 19 March 1641 did Newport come to the attention of the Journal clerk, then to be named to a committee on a bill against usury.23CJ ii. 108a. His most notable contribution to the House’s proceedings that year came on 21 April, when he was one of 60 or so MPs to vote against the attainder of the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) – the first indication that Newport was out of sympathy with the hardline reforming group.24Procs. LP iv. 42, 51. However, he apparently had no qualms about taking the Protestation at its introduction on 3 May.25CJ ii. 133b. On 3 July, Newport was one of three Members co-opted to help a group including William Pierrepont, Member for Much Wenlock, and Sir Edward Hyde take the impeachments of the judges to the Lords. Newport was there doubtless to represent some notion of political balance, as the group was divided politically between fierce reformers and the more cautious. The same day Newport sat on a committee for a bill to enable Members to discharge their own consciences in the proceedings of Parliament, another move unhelpful to the king’s most implacable critics.26CJ ii. 198a, 198b.

Newport played no further recorded part in the life of the Parliament until 10 December, when he was involved in turbulent scenes at Westminster. In the face of unrest by the crowds around Westminster, itself provoked by the increasing political tensions, a guard had been set on the House by the sheriff of Middlesex without the Members’ consent. During a Commons debate on what was interpreted by some as a breach of parliamentary privilege, Newport tried to leave the chamber, provoking cries of ‘shut the door, shut the door!’ John Rushworth*, the clerk’s assistant, was sent after Newport to bring him back. To reproofs from the Speaker and a reminder that when the Houses decided that the door was to be shut, no-one was to leave, Newport claimed to know nothing of the order, but other Members remained unconvinced by what they saw as his disingenuous display.27D’Ewes (C), 264. On 11 December he was a teller in two divisions on whether some captured Catholic priests should be executed, successfully orchestrating support for the noes.28CJ ii. 339b; D’Ewes (C), 274. The case in favour of the priests rested on evidence that they had in fact taken the oath of allegiance, and shortly afterwards Newport was again acting in defence of those accused of popery. On 24 January he was a teller against replacing the commander of the St Martin-in-the-Fields trained band, the so-called ‘popish band’, captained by Endymion Porter*. His side lost the division, but Sir Simonds D’Ewes* was persuaded by arguments that the absent Porter should have been allowed to speak in his own defence.29CJ ii. 390b, PJ i. 143. The wider background was the recent attempt by the king to arrest the Five Members and the feverish atmosphere in the capital that resulted. The following day, Newport was named to a committee charged with asking the king to put the country on armed alert.30CJ ii. 394a.

On 21 February 1642, Newport was asked to ride post haste to Dover, where the queen was taking ship for France, to ask the king to pass the militia ordinance. Newport’s qualification for the task must have been his physical fitness rather than his enthusiasm for the legislation; he was given the job after his fellow Salopian, the much older Sir John Corbet*, had declared himself unable to comply.31PJ i. 428. On 3 May, Newport wrote to his uncle, Sir Richard Leveson, evidently optimistic that some kind of accommodation between the factions could be reached, and pleased at news from Ireland of defeats given rebels there.32HMC 5th Rep. 147. His optimism must have been short-lived.

After just one more committee appointment, on 28 May, Newport was given leave of one month. This was his last known appearance in the Commons (18 June).33CJ ii. 591a, 631a. His standing at Shrewsbury seems to have remained unaffected by his political behaviour, as the bells there were rung on 28 April to mark his marriage to Diana, daughter of Francis Russell, 4th earl of Bedford.34Letters of Brilliana Harley, 155. With his uncle, Sir Richard Leveson, Sir Richard Lee* and Sir Robert Howard*, Newport set about organising the king’s commission of array in Shropshire, and on 6 August, in response to reports of other Shropshire Members such as Sir John Corbet, the House summoned Newport and his colleagues to explain themselves.35CJ ii. 706b; PJ iii. 284. The leaders of the king’s party, by contrast, were pleased with Newport’s conduct both in the Commons and out of it. Francis Newport suggested to Hyde that his father would provide the king with considerable financial help in return for a barony. Charles initially resisted, wary of sales of honours after the unpopularity of the ascendancy of George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, but quickly capitulated when he realized how significant Baron Newport’s donation of £6,000 would be in mobilizing his army.36Clarendon, Hist. ii. 339-40.

Newport remained in and around Shropshire, helping the royalist war effort there. He is only once described as a captain, which suggests that any military office he held was merely nominal. He attended the Oxford Parliament in January 1644, although he turned up later than some others, and did not sign the letter to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, calling for peace.37Names of the Lords and Commons (1646), 5; A Copy of a Letter (Oxford, 1644, E.32.3). On 22 January, he was disabled by his former colleagues at Westminster from sitting further in that Parliament, for deserting the House and attending the king’s quarters.38CJ ii. 374a. On 3 July, Newport was captured at Oswestry, apparently serving in arms as a captain, and arrangements were made for him to be brought to London. His estate was assessed by the Committee for Advance of Money at £150, a low figure, but one which reflected his lack of a substantial property of his own while his father lived.39Phillips, Civil War in Wales, ii. 181; HMC 4th Rep. iv. 64; CJ iii. 555b, 582a; CCAM 429. Others were interested in Newport’s estate, including Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh, and his steward, William Crowne*. Newport seems to have remained in Staffordshire, probably at Eccleshall castle, until October 1645, when the Speaker issued a further warrant to remove him to London.40Staffs. Co. Cttee. 172; CCC 926. By the time Newport did arrive in the capital, attitudes towards him among the agencies for penal taxation had hardened, and he was assessed at Goldsmiths’ Hall to be worth £2,000 and was fined £16,687.41CCC 926: CCAM 639. His fine was ordered to be used for Parliament’s forces in Shropshire.42CJ iv. 314a. The Shropshire committee had to be restrained by the Committee of Both Kingdoms* in April 1646 from slighting High Ercall, and in July John Corbett* was asked to bring in an ordinance to enable the Newports to sell their lands in order pay delinquency fines.43CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 402; CJ iv. 614b. Newport’s case dragged on, culminating in a report to the House on 20 May 1647, in which it was recorded that he had taken the Covenant in November 1645 and settled that his fine should be set at £9,436.44CJ iv. 627b, 628a; v. 179a. On appeal, the fine of both Newports, father and son, was set at £10,000.45CJ v. 508b.

Newport was discharged from prison on giving security of £10,000 to live quietly in Hackney, although the governor of Shrewsbury, Humphrey Mackworth I*, was informed of his release. 46CSP Dom. 1650, p. 203. Soon afterwards, he was allowed to return to Shropshire, subject to close monitoring. 47CSP Dom. 1650, p. 306. He succeeded his father as 2nd Baron Newport in 1651. He must have gone abroad at some stage in the early 1650s, to become a member of the queen dowager’s council.48NLW, Wynnstay L463. He was back in England by 1655, when he was arrested then and again in 1657 during the uncovering of royalist plotting.49DNB. He was able to enjoy enough freedom to act as a trustee in a gentry marriage settlement that year.50Derbs. RO, D3155/6455. Newport was ordered to the Tower in June 1655, but was regarded by the royalists abroad as strangely passive.51CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 204, 207, 588; Nicholas Pprs. ii. 243; iii. 5. During 1656 he seems to have regarded some sign of the king’s personal favour as a necessary prerequisite to any further political intervention on his part, and a letter from the king eventually arrived in March 1657.52CCSP iii. 156, 193, 263; v. 735. From then on, Newport became once again ‘zealous’ in the cause of the exiled king.53CCSP iv. 20, 191. During the rebellion led by Sir George Boothe* in 1659, Newport’s brother, Andrew, was confined to the Tower, and Newport himself inevitably came under suspicion from the head of security in Shropshire, Edmund Wareing*, when it was noted that he was away from home, in Wales.54CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 38, 196, 210; CCSP iv. 295.

Newport was of course a reliable supporter of the king’s interest before and during the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. He was able to do little in practical terms to assist the king’s return, however, and in January was the subject of concern among the king’s advisers, who feared that jealousies might develop in his circle of royalist partisans.55CCSP iv. 534. Newport had to explain to Hyde how in 1659 he had been quiet because he had been secretly spending on arms and was subsequently plagued by sequestrators and informers.56CCSP v. 37. His record proved no obstacle to his being given charge of the Shropshire militia, and in June he was spoken of as lord lieutenant, an office for which he received his commission in July.57CCSP iv. 534; HMC 5th Rep. 154. On 29 May, Newport had an interview in Dover castle with Sir Henry Mildmay*, who asked him to move the king for a pardon.58HMC 5th Rep. 150. He petitioned the Lords to have his sequestered movable property returned to him later that year.59PA, Main Pprs. 25 June-2 July 1660, 14-28 Dec. 1660. Inevitably, Newport was an implacable enemy of the Shropshire former parliamentarians such as Richard Salwey* and Edmund Wareing, despatching the former as a prisoner to London in 1662, and urging the same treatment of the latter if there was any doubt of his loyalty.60CSP Dom. 1661-2, pp. 449, 457. In 1680, by which time Newport had been elevated to become Viscount Newport, his disapproval was no longer directed just to parliamentarians; Sir Job Charlton* complained how Newport was ‘steady in his animosity’ to his interests.61CSP Dom. 1679-80, p. 514. Newport was created earl of Bradford in 1694 and died in 1708. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Richard Newport†, as 2nd earl.62HP Lords 1660-1715.