WOOD, Robert II (c.1621-61), of Norbiton Hall, Kingston-upon-Thames, Surr.

Wood’s grandfather Roger Wood, who was described as a ‘serjeant-at-arms’, held land in Islington and received a grant of arms in 1606, four years before his death.19S. Lewis, Hist. and Topog. of St Mary, Islington (1842), 452; PROB11/115/327 (Roger Wood). Wood’s father, a younger son, was established at Norbiton Hall near Kingston when he died in June 1623. Wood, aged two, was left to the guardianship of his uncle, Sir Robert Wood of Clerkenwell, a gentleman pensioner to both James I and Charles I.20Manning and Bray, Surr. i. 349; VCH Surr. iii. 504; Coventry Docquets, 477.

Wood was admitted to Gray’s Inn in February 1642, about the time he came of age, but having followed the military tradition of his family that June by joining the Honourable Artillery Company, he was probably drawn into the civil war at an early stage.21G.I. Admiss. i. 234; Raikes, Ancient Vellum Bk. (1890), 65. By 24 January 1643 he had invested £50 in the Irish Adventure.22CSP Ire. Adv., 176. Both he and his uncle were regularly named to parliamentary commissions in Surrey between 1643 and 1645, and by 1644 the still youthful Wood had acquired sufficient credibility to be appointed with his uncle as a deputy lieutenant for the county.23CJ iii. 49a, 213a, 376a; A. and O. It is possible that he was the Robert Wood approved by Isaac Penington*, Alderman John Towse and others in January 1643 as an additional assessor for Billingsgate ward and that his career prospered as the result of the patronage of leading merchants.24CCAM 9. It is likely that it was soon after the death in May 1645 of Towse, a former sheriff of the City who had been a colonel in the orange regiment of its trained bands, that Wood married his eldest daughter and coheir, acquiring a slice of what was presumably a substantial estate.25PROB11/193/369 (John Towse); Vis. Surr. (Harl. Soc. lx), 124; Beaven, Aldermen, ii. 65. If so, it was timely: Sir Robert released the estate at Norbiton to his nephew that year, but it was said to have been plundered by royalists.26CCAM 282; Manning and Bray, Surr. i. 349.

By February 1648, when he was named with his uncle as an elder in the Kingston Presbyterian classis, Wood himself had attained the rank of colonel.27Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 434. During the summer’s unrest, he and his uncle were among Surrey activists instructed by the Derby House Committee to seize arms and horses abandoned in the county after the failure of the Kentish rising.28SP21/9, f. 137; SP21/24, f. 117. But they were almost certainly lukewarm supporters of the commonwealth. Although he bought land in 1650 from James Compton*, 3rd earl of Northampton, a delinquent, and appeared that year as a justice of the peace, Wood was soon omitted from the commission and for the rest of the decade did not serve in any other capacity in local administration.29VCH Mdx. viii. 60–1; C193/13/3. f. 62v. He was disappointed by the returns on his investment in Ireland, which had totalled £200, and by 1653-4, when like his mother-in-law he nominated James Edwards, citizen and Grocer, first to choose his lot in the apportionment and then to take possession of it, the majority of the receipts had been lost.30CSP Ire. Adv., 176; SP63/283, f. 255; SP63/294, f. 48; SP63/295, f. 15.

Wood’s candidature for a county seat in the first protectorate Parliament may well have been promoted by those moderate Surrey gentlemen with whom he had served in the militia and been nominated as a Presbyterian elder, chief among them Sir Richard Onslow*, a fellow deputy lieutenant. On 20 August 1654 the radicals who now dominated the Kingston corporation lodged a protest against his election claiming that it breached the 17th article of the Instrument of Government, which laid down qualifications to serve as an MP.31SP18/74, f. 196 ; M. Vaughan-Lewis, Scandal on the Corporation (1982). Allegations subscribed by the bailiffs, the young and recently-appointed minister Richard Mayo and ‘divers others of the town’, named and unnamed, were both political and moral.32‘Mayo, Richard’, Oxford DNB. Wood had been ‘illegally chosen ... by many persons interested in the late king’s cause’; he had not responded to the call to raise troops to face the invading Scots at Worcester in 1651 (an accusation levelled elsewhere at others, including Onslow); he was ‘an enemy to his Highness and the proceedings of the army’ and in 1650 had been heard to express the hope that ‘Noll that town bull of Ely’ [Oliver Cromwell*] would come to grief in his Scottish campaign; he had opposed and threatened the assessment commissioners; and, having ‘engaged to the cavaliers’ in the 1648 rising of Henry Rich, 1st earl of Holland, ‘never to act against them, ... ever since he has sided with them in opposition to the well-affected’. He was also ‘a derider of the ways, worship and people of God’; ‘a profane swearer and of bad life and conversation’; and, having ‘refused to pay to the poor of the place where he lives’, had then ‘occasioned unjust and tormenting suits against the officers’ who in response distrained him.33SP18/74, f. 198. However, ‘Colonel Wood’ had his defenders. John Westbrooke*, who had been a militia captain in 1651, sent a certificate that Wood had not been behind-hand at that time via his brother Caleb, who was himself a victim of the Kingston radicals.34SP18/74, f.202; Vaughan-Lewis, Scandal on the Corporation, xv. A clutch of Surrey ministers of various shades of opinion including Richard Byfield, an assistant to the triers and ejectors, and John Platt, a close friend of Sir Robert Wood, testified that Wood was not ‘any persecutor or opposer of godly ministers’ and had not used his power as a local commissioner ‘otherwise than to the protection and countenancing of them’.35SP18/74, f.204; ‘Richard Byfield’, Oxford DNB; PROB11/312/330.

It is unclear at what date and by whose influence the case against Wood was dismissed. In the parliamentary session which began on 3 September there were two other Members named Wood – Sylvanus Wood* of Gloucestershire and Robert Wood I* of Norfolk – and since the latter was also sometimes addressed as Colonel, there is room for confusion, although that man, as a protectorate loyalist, was almost certainly the most active. The Norfolk man was, for instance, more likely the ‘Mr Wood’ appointed on 5 September with ‘Mr Silvanus Wood’ to the committee of privileges and the ‘Colonel Wood’ nominated on 29 September to the committee for Scottish affairs.36CJ vii. 366b, 371b.

The Kingston man’s first definite appearance in the Journal was on 10 October when both ‘Mr Wood of Norfolk’ and ‘Mr Wood of Surrey’ were placed on a committee reviewing the legislation of the 1653 Nominated Parliament.37CJ vii. 375b. That the latter, as both a novice MP and an outsider to the national regime, should be thus nominated suggests that he had powerful backers or acknowledged abilities, or both. However, his visible contribution to proceedings was meagre. On 3 November, perhaps because of his City connections, ‘Mr Wood of Surrey’ was named before ‘Colonel Wood of Norfolk’ and ‘Mr Wood’ to the committee considering the petition of the ruined crown financier William Craven, 1st Baron Craven.38CJ vii. 381a. The following week ‘Colonel Wood of Surrey’ was appointed with Sir Richard Onslow and others to investigate the withholding of funds collected for the establishment of a gaol in the county.39CJ vii. 383b. Thereafter there is no appointment with which he can be confidently linked.

Before May 1655 the court of upper bench referred to Wood and Sir Richard Onslow the adjudication of compensation for some of those who had lost civic office in Kingston, although the award they agreed failed to halt conflict in the borough.40SP18/97, f. 6. Wood apparently took little further part in public life until 1660. That March he was appointed a militia commissioner.41A. and O. He stood in elections to the Convention for a seat at Gatton, 14 miles south of his home, but, despite being returned in one indenture, polled one vote fewer than each of the other three candidates and was not even in contention when the election was reviewed.42HP Commons 1660–1690, s.v. ‘Gatton’.

Wood died intestate before 13 December 1661, when administration of his estate was granted to his widow.43PROB6/37/139. By a will of 26 March 1663 and codicil of 2 November, Sir Robert Wood left much of his estate in St James’s, Clerkenwell, and Surrey to the MP’s four sons and three daughters, apparently all then under age, although the eldest son, Roger, signed the return for the 1662 heralds’ visitation.44PROB11/312/330; Vis. Surr. (Harl. Soc. lx), 124. None sat in Parliament.