SNEYDE, Ralph (c.1612-51), of Keele Hall, Keele, Staffs.

Sneyde’s family had settled in Staffordshire by the late thirteenth century, acquiring the manor of Keele in 1544.11J.W. Blake, ‘The Sneyds of Keele’, N. Staffs. Jnl. of Field Studies, ii. 14, 17. One of his ancestors, Richard Sneyd†, had represented Chester (where the Sneyds had acquired a small estate) on five occasions in the mid-sixteenth century.12HP Commons, 1509-58. But Sneyde would be the first member of his family to represent a constituency in Staffordshire. Returned for Stafford to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, he almost certainly owed his election to the standing and influence of his father, who was a deputy lieutenant for Staffordshire, an active member of the bench and had served as county sheriff in 1621-2.13Supra, ‘Strafford’; Staffs. RO, Q/SO 4, ff. 1-283v; Sneyd, Never Oppressed, 164-5; List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 129. Sneyde received no committee appointments in the Short Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. It appears to have been Sneyd senior – that is, Ralph Sneyd ‘esquire’ – who was named as a subsidy and assessment commissioner for Staffordshire in the early 1640s.14SR. Sneyde himself seems to have cut an insignificant figure before the civil war, holding no major county offices and yet managing to accumulate debts of £2,000.15Keele Univ. Lib. Sneyd Pprs. 71; Sneyd, Never Oppressed, 20.

Sneyde was returned for Stafford again in the elections to the Long Parliament, with similarly unspectacular results.16Supra, ‘Stafford’. He was named to only two committees during his brief parliamentary career, and his only known contribution on the floor of the House was to a debate on 28 April 1641 concerning a bill for settling the rectory of Wolstanton upon himself and his heirs.17CJ ii. 57a, 129b, 164a. As well as speaking in this debate, Sneyde made nominations to the committee for drafting the bill, until it was objected that it was against the orders of the House for a Member to name persons to a committee in his own cause.18Procs. LP iv. 122. Granted leave of absence on 1 March 1642, he seems to have abandoned his seat at some point over the next four months and returned to Staffordshire.19CJ ii. 462a. Again, it seems to have been his father, Ralph Sneyd ‘esquire’, who was named to and active on the Staffordshire commission of array.20Northants. RO, FH133; Staffs. RO, D868/2/37; D948/4/6/2; HMC 5th Rep. 141. But it seems to have been Sneyde junior who was commissioned as a colonel of horse by the king in September 1642.21Sneyd, Never Oppressed, 111.

What prompted Sneyde to take the king’s side in the civil war is not clear, although the fact that his wife’s father was a Lancashire recusant does not suggest any strong inclination on his or his father’s part to reform the Church of England along puritan lines.22Blake, ‘The Sneyds of Keele’, 53. Sneyd senior’s household chaplain was the vicar of Wolstanton, who would be removed from his living by the Staffordshire county committee during the civil war.23PROB11/199, f. 464v; Staffs. Co. Cttee. 8, 291. Sneyde junior seems to have been in the thick of the fighting in the north midlands and was probably the Captain Sneyd who was captured by the parliamentarians at Stafford in May 1643. He was exchanged in August of that year and had returned to active service for the king by December.24CJ iii. 93b, 189b; Mercurius Aulicus no. 3 (14-20 Jan. 1644), 788 (E.30.21); no. 15 (7-13 Apr. 1644), 933 (E.44.6); CSP Dom. 1644, p. 178; HMC Hastings, ii. 117; Civil War in Cheshire, 55; Newman, Royalist Officers, 350; M. Bennett, ‘The Royalist War Effort in the N. Midlands 1642-6’ (Loughborough Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1986), 44, 138, 196, 223, 285-6.

Although Sneyde petitioned to compound in November 1645, the Committee for Compounding* was informed in February 1646 that he was still in arms against Parliament – and indeed, he would be among the royalist defenders of Lichfield Close when the garrison surrendered to Parliament that July.25CCC 1032; Articles for the Delivering up of Lichfield-Close (1646), 9 (E.345.2); Brereton Letter Bks. iii. 125, 257. Sneyde’s composition fine was set at £2,026, of which he had paid £1,500 by 1649 – largely it seems by dint of selling at least half of his estate.26SP23/118, p. 495; CCC 1033; CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 165. In 1649, he received a commission from Charles II to raise money for the royalist cause, and to that end he held meetings in his house with other royalist conspirators.27CCAM 1180, 1331. In January 1650, he approached Sir Richard Leveson* ‘with a proposition of raising some money for supply of the king’s wants’.28Staffs. RO, D593/P/8/1/33; D. A. Johnson and D. G. Vaisey, Staffs. and the Great Rebellion (1964), 58-9. But Leveson ‘utterly refused to meddle in the business’ and instead informed against Sneyde to the council of state.29Staffs. RO, D593/P/8/1/33. On learning that he had been betrayed, Sneyde fled to the Isle of Man – which was still holding out for the king – where he was killed by a stray cannonball in March 1651.30SP23/118, p. 495; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 160; Sneyd, Never Oppressed, 112. Presumably he was buried on the island. No will is recorded. His brother William Sneyd† represented Staffordshire in the 1660 Convention.31HP Commons, 1660-90.