JESSON, William (?1584-1651), of Little Park Street, Coventry and Nuthurst, Warws. and York Street, Covent Garden, London.

The descendants of William Jesson’s paternal grandfather, John Jesson of Daventry, Northamptonshire, dispersed in pursuit of mercantile careers.21Vis. London 1633-4 (Harl. Soc. xvii), 11. William’s uncle, another William Jesson (d. 1609/10) was a tallow chandler of St Botolph, Billingsgate, London, whose son Nathaniel died while engaged in trade at Messina and son John resided at Newport on the Isle of Wight.22PROB11/116/24; PROB11/148/244; PROB11/149/109. The MP’s eldest brother Thomas (bur. 17 Feb. 1636) was a London Grocer with East India stock who bequeathed £2,000 to charities in Coventry, where his father Richard had established himself and possibly married a daughter of draper Thomas Hill.23Vis. London 1633-4 (Harl. Soc. xvii), 11; PROB11/170/112; St Bartholomew-by-the-Exchange par. reg. Jesson himself, a dyer active in Coventry affairs by 1620, deepened the family’s ties to a city to which he was notably loyal, but his much wider trading and kinship connections were also visible in his career in public life.24Coventry Archives, BA/H/C/17/1, ff. 228v, 236, 244, 248, 252, 277, 295v, 299v.

From at least his mayoral year 1631-2 Jesson appears defending his own and the city’s interests to central government. He prepared a case to put before the privy council as to why cloth should be first processed in Gloucestershire in order to meet the requirements of the Coventry textile industry and in July 1632 resisted a summons to the council to answer an accusation that he had refused payment for musters in Leicestershire (where four years earlier he had purchased land for £2,000 from the Temple family) on the grounds that it had never been demanded.25Coventry Archives, PA/100/12/35; CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 374. Around this time he robustly countered accusations of fraud in his dealings in woad in East Anglia, alleging that a subordinate had conveyed much of it to Scotland without his permission, and in September 1635, with his brothers-in-law John Barker* and Simon Norton*, he was part of a delegation representing to the sheriff of Warwickshire that Coventry had been over-rated for Ship Money, although he was spared taking the case to the privy council owing to illness.26SP16/279, ff. 170-1; Coventry Archives, BA/4/K/2/1, ff. 13v, 15. In February 1636 the brothers-in-law were involved in preparing a letter to the council about the rating of the clergy for the same tax.27Coventry Archives, BA/H/K/8/5. Meanwhile, in October 1635 Robert Wright, bishop of Coventry and Lichfield, William Purefoy I* and Sir Thomas Lucy* were among local leaders who met at Jesson’s house in Little Park Street to discuss militia numbers in Coventry and Warwickshire; the bishop was again a guest there in 1638.28Coventry Archives, BA/4/K/2/1, f. 29v; BA/A/A/26/3, p. 50. Over this period, again with his brothers-in-law, Jesson was also a leading member of the Drapers’ Company.29Coventry Archives, BA/4/K/2/1 f. 57v, BA/H/C/17/1 f. 336; PA/100/12/35; PA/101/140/3; PA/1573/57/1; PA/1573/84/1; PA/1573/86/2.

Jesson was elected with Norton to represent Coventry in the Short Parliament, but he left no mark on its records. On 13 July 1640 he wrote to Thomas Howard, 1st earl of Berkshire, seeking his favour (not for the first time) over a summons received the previous day and emanating from Spencer Compton, 2nd earl of Northampton, to attend the privy council to account for failure to pay coat and conduct money. It seems that, some time beforehand, Jesson had sent a statement to Northampton explaining ‘that the reason wherefore I do not pay’ the imposition ‘in Coventry is not that I oppose the paying of the same’ for he had ‘most humbly’ obeyed summonses to pay in ‘six several places’ in Warwickshire and Northamptonshire.

But being a member of the city of Coventry sworn to maintain the customs, liberties, franchises and privileges of the same, and Coventry being a distinct city and county in itself and so held and reputed, and divided by marks and bounds from the county of Warwick, there being no charge from the king’s majesty neither from [the privy council] jointly or distinctly that we yet ever have seen is the cause why myself and brothers do refuse payment.

He had added then that once an explicit request came from the king, he ‘would most willingly pay’, and indeed, he assured Berkshire, he had complied more than a week before the warrant arrived from a displeased Northampton. Since in a few days he was ‘to be in the king’s service’ at the assizes, Jesson begged Berkshire to present his excuses to the council, although if that failed, ‘I will come in person, forthwith, though it be much loss to me’.30SP16/459, ff. 193, 195.

Jesson’s strident civic pride and alienation of his lord lieutenant may provide some explanation for his failure to be re-elected to Parliament in the autumn, Barker being returned with Norton in his stead; perhaps his confrontational approach led to lobbying from some of the local elite. Notwithstanding his close relationship to both successful candidates, Jesson and at least 14 other citizens – allegedly many – petitioned Parliament, apparently rather belatedly, about the result, but on 4 February 1641 the Commons referred the case to the committee for privileges, where it disappeared from view.31CJ ii. 78a. However, following Norton’s death in July and Barker’s prompt request (12 July) for a by-election, a poll a mere eight days after that saw Jesson re-elected to the House.32Procs. LP v. 608; CJ ii. 206b; s.v. ‘Coventry’. He was present on 31 July to take the Protestation and on 4 August took advantage of parliamentary privilege to obtain a stay of prosecution brought against one of his tenants.33CJ ii. 236a; Procs. LP vi. 191-2, 195.

Jesson’s parliamentary career was otherwise slow to take off. His first committee appointment came in towards the end of the year when, as a result of his proposal for providing uniforms for troops to be sent to quell the Irish rebellion, he, the MPs for London and a select few others with suitable expertise were deputed to draw plans for the acquisition and despatch of clothing and food for the expedition (13 Dec.).34CJ ii.340b. His known personal experience also probably lay behind his nomination to the committee to enquire into sums raised for Ship Money and coat and conduct money which remained in the hands of sheriffs (27 Dec.).35CJ ii. 357a. Back in Coventry in early January 1642 – although perhaps briefly – he was engaged on city business and invisible in the Commons records until 9 April, when he promised £300 towards the reduction of the Irish rebels, but he had evidently continued to ponder that problem – and possibly attendant possibilities for profit.36Coventry Archives, BA/A/A/26/3, p. 100; BA/H/C/17/2, f. 26v; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 565. By 11 April, when it was referred to the committee for the Adventurers for Ireland, he had submitted a proposal for ‘the adventuring of £10,000 worth of cloth’, while on 18 April he was nominated to a committee considering the bill on expediting the postage of letters throughout the three kingdoms.37CJ ii. 521b, 533b. His motivation to preserve the interests of himself and other provincial merchants was revealed plainly a month later. On 10 May, in response to Sir Henry Mildmay’s motion that in return for providing the full sum of a loan promised to supply ‘the great want of money at Dublin to pay the army’, the Merchant Adventurers should be rewarded with confirmation of their Company by act of Parliament, Jesson ‘stood up and spake very earnestly against it, saying that by so doing we should destroy the whole trade of a great part of the kingdom’. According to diarist Sir Simonds D’Ewes, Mildmay ‘took exception’ to this, ‘affirming that the said Mr Jesson had looked very fiercely upon him when he spake and that it was done in a[n] unparliamentary way’, but D’Ewes sought ‘to qualify this unnecessary heat’, desiring ‘that we might interpret charitably of one another’s gestures and actions’ and arguing for caution in making promises.38PJ ii. 301. On 12 May, when a further bill aimed at quashing the Irish rebellion was committed to the committee for the Irish adventurers, Jesson was among those added to it, while later that month he agreed that £1,000 owing to him by Scottish merchants should be counted towards payment of the ‘brotherly assistance’ promised by Parliament to the Scots and regarded as a loan by him to the commonwealth for a year, and on 12 July he was included with some parliamentary heavyweights on a committee to consult with the Merchant Adventurers on the advancement of trade.39CJ ii. 569b, 584b, 666b.

When the country descended into civil war in the summer of 1642, Jesson became the voice of Coventry at Westminster while his colleague Barker took charge of the city itself. Although Jesson was entrusted with the tasks of writing to the corporation enjoining publication and implementation of Parliament’s Militia Ordinance (9 July) and of paying in the city’s contribution money (4 Aug.), and received permission to transport to Coventry muskets and pikes he had presumably obtained for its defence (23 July), he had reservations about the way Parliament put itself on a war footing.40CJ ii. 662b, 688b, 703b. When on 11 August MPs were put on the spot and asked to swear individually that they ‘would venture and hazard their lives and fortunes’ with its commander-in-chief, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, Jesson, ‘an ancient man’, was among those who hesitated, desiring ‘a little time to consider’. But ‘compelled’ by more militant elements ‘to answer presently … he not being satisfied in his conscience [he] gave his no’, whereupon, according to the sympathetic account of D’Ewes

those hot spirits taking great distaste, the Speaker unworthy of himself and contrary to the duty of his place, fell upon him with very sharp language for giving his No; and when the poor man, terrified with the displeasure he saw was taken against him, would have given his Aye, they would not permit him to do that neither.

Other MPs were then ‘overawed’ into compliance by that example.41PJ iii. 295.

Jesson apparently made himself scarce over the autumn, being among those suspended on 2 September until such time as they should explain their absence.42CJ ii. 750a. By 26 September he had contributed the rather paltry sum (for a merchant of means) of 100 marks to the parliamentarian cause, and on 17 October, just before Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, took control for Parliament, he had to be coaxed into lending £1,000 for ‘the present necessity of Coventry’ as ‘a testimony of that affection he owes to that town’, on a promise of repayment from ‘plate sent up from that city, so soon as it can be coined’.43CJ ii. 811b. However, by the end of the year, when he was named a commissioner for the association of Staffordshire and Warwickshire, bridges had evidently been repaired, and in the spring he resumed some familiar activities in the House.44A. and O. On 2 March 1643 he was among MPs added to the committee to enquire into funds issued to Essex’s army, on 4 April he was granted supplies from ‘public stores … for the service of Coventry’ and on 14 April he was again included on a committee to consider a petition from the Merchant Adventurers, with an extra remit of investigating the export of wool and fullers’ earth.45CJ iii. 12a, 29b, 44a. But he had no further committee appointments that year, appearing in the Journal only when he took the Covenant (6 June) and the Solemn League and Covenant (19 Oct.) and when he was delegated with two others to communicate to Lord General Essex a letter from Coventry concerning recriminations between its governor, John Barker, and the new regional commander, Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh (2 Dec.).46CJ iii. 118b, 282b, 326b.

Underlying the latter were differences between the radical faction driving the county committee, among whom Barker may be numbered at this stage, and more conservative members of the local parliamentarian elite over Denbigh’s allegedly limp conduct of the war. Initially this may have distracted Jesson, who was regularly named to the committee, but never found signing its warrants and evidently ‘out of sympathy’ with the militants.47Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 174. But later it may have galvanised him, as a promoter of a more moderate position, into adopting the higher profile in the Commons evident from 1644, and eventually it rendered him a notable adherent of the Presbyterian party. On 6 March 1644 he was named with William Wheler and others to prepare the ordinance for enabling Sir William Brereton to maintain parliamentarian forces in Cheshire while on 5 August he headed the list of those nominated to prepare parallel measures for Worcestershire.48CJ iii. 418b, 579b. He was appointed to two committees related to the excise (11 May, 5 July), another reviewing sources of income for the state (21 Aug.), one concerning the payment of arrears for military service from the north Warwickshire and Worcestershire estates of a recusant (2 June) and, as religious sectarianism began to emerge, one upholding the payment of tithers (22 July).49CJ iii. 489a, 515b, 551b, 566a, 601a. Meanwhile, retention of some local influence is indicated by his addition (with Barker) to the Coventry committee for sequestrations (7 May), and notwithstanding some doubts regarding the payment of his own assessment which seem to be revealed around that time, when a subcommittee of accounts for Warwickshire was created in the summer, he was to choose its members in what has been interpreted as ‘probably a concession to opponents of the county committee’.50CJ iii. 482b, 493a; CCAM 34; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 238. In July, in an indication of continuing alignment with the peace party, he sent a message to Denbigh urging him to come to London to seek greater powers.51Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 232n.

The ending of the first civil war led to a temporary curtailment of Jesson’s visible activity at Westminster, where he received only one committee appointment – to deal with a petition from mariners employed to guard the seas (12 Dec.) – between August 1644 and February 1645.52CJ iii. 722a. Thereafter, however, he was as busy as he had ever been. Financial matters of all kinds, sometimes taking advantage of his connections in the City of London, continued to loom large among his commitments in 1645 (22 Feb., 26 Apr., 27, 31 May, 26 June, 30 Sept., 6 Oct.) but he also acquired new business in the shape of appointments to committees on the University of Cambridge (4 Aug., 17 Oct) and on hospitals (17 Nov.), and to the privileges committee (7, 16 Oct.).53CJ iv. 59b, 123b, 155b, 158b, 186a, 229b, 295a, 298b, 300a, 311a, 312a, 345a. Now temporarily in greater harmony with Barker, who was now mayor of Coventry, but had lost his governorship under the Self-Denying Ordinance and had retreated from his militancy, Jesson was confirmed with him as a commissioner for Warwickshire and Coventry (Feb.).54A. and O. On 9 July Jesson was deputed to thank the city of Coventry for the helpful reception it had given to Sir Thomas Fairfax* and the New Model army as they passed through, while having been given six weeks leave to go into the country on 15 August, he returned promptly.55CJ iv. 202b, 243a, 295a. In November he and Jesson were given the task of nominating local committee members, perhaps in an attempt to assert some central control over warring accounts sub-committee and county committee men.56CJ iv. 346a; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 238-43.

This may have signalled a period of closer engagement with affairs in Coventry, as the conflict showed no signs of abating, with only one committee appointment in the Commons between then and late March 1646 – albeit an important one, related to the ordinance for martial law (1 Jan. 1646).57CJ iv. 394a. He returned to Westminster to participate in several key aspects of Presbyterian-led policy. Engaged with Presbyterian leader Denzil Holles* in drafting a letter to the prince of Wales encouraging him to take up residence in Surrey (28 Mar.), he later reported on the prince’s response and subsequent action and was for the first time sent as a messenger to the Lords (25 May).58CJ iv. 494a, 554a; LJ viii. 328b. He probably brought a Presbyterian perspective to bear on committees on such matters as payment to the Hull garrison (30 Apr.), the establishment of commissioners to determine scandalous offences (23 May) and investigating the City Remonstrance (11 July).59CJ iv. 527b, 550a, 553b, 615b, 625b. However, he exposed himself to some as ‘over eager for himself and Coventry’ (4 Aug.) and having obtained leave to go into the country (13 Aug.), disappears from view for the next four months.60Harington’s Diary, 31; CJ iv. 643b; Coventry Archives, BA/H/Q/A79/210a.

Resurfacing in the Commons in mid-December 1646, Jesson can again be identified with the Presbyterians.61Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 250. Among four committee appointments that month he was named to investigate words alleged to have been spoken by Independent Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire (17 Dec.), added to a committee overseeing the production of a jewel to be given to Scottish general Alexander Leslie, earl of Leven (23 Dec.) and included among those reviewing complaints against lay preachers (31 Dec.).62CJ v. 8b, 17b, 26b, 35a. In the early months of 1647 a handful of committee nominations included those relating to Presbyterian-led initiatives like the visitation of the University of Oxford (13 Jan.) and the restraint of ‘malignant ministers’ (22 Mar.).63CJ v. 51b, 60a, 86a, 119b. But the clearest manifestation of his position and probably his major preoccupation was Warwickshire business. On 25 January, with fellow MPs from the county Sir Richard Skeffington, Sir John Burgoyne and Godfrey Bossevile, he was added to the committee set up to scrutinise the Committee of Accounts*, particularly in the context of its consideration of a warrant from county committee activists including Bossevile, Peter Burgoyne, Thomas Basnet and, on this occasion, John Barker, forbidding engagement with the more moderate sub-committee of accounts.64CJ v. 63a. On 3 March Jesson partnered with Presbyterian leader Walter Long for the majority in a division which secured an order to the county committee that Coventry should be disgarrisoned and its walls slighted.65CJ v. 104a. This outcome met with approbation from the mayor and other ‘well-affected’ citizens but, predictably, with obstruction from the county committee, leading to further airing of local conflicts in a Commons committee whose members included Barker, Sir John Burgoyne, Jesson, Bossevile and William Purefoy (24 Mar.).66CJ v. 122a-b. As revealed by a letter from Jesson to the mayor on 29 April in which he reported on discussions in London with Basnet and Purefoy, he himself had laboured hard for civic independence and delayed a purge of the corporation intended by the militants; he warned that Basnet was its main enemy, and that if the ‘suffering city of Coventry’ allowed its ‘slavish fears’ to ‘destroy your own liberties’, then Jesson and his allies would be emasculated and ‘sit in the House upon their good behaviours, so long as they did please Alderman Basnet’.67Coventry Archives, BA/H/Q/A79/212.

As unrest mounted within the New Model army over the Presbyterian programme of disbandment and redeployment, Jesson was again named to a committee to seek an enabling loan from the City (20 Apr.) and also to prepare the ordinance indemnifying all those who had acted for Parliament (7 May).68CJ v. 147b, 166a. He collected a committee appointment to address a petition from the Weavers’ Company (27 May), and in a period of apparently uncharacteristically intense engagement with moral and social matters perhaps prompted by the army debates, he was also named to work on the suppression of incest and drunkenness and other vices (28 May), the relief of invalid soldiers (28 May), and days of recreation for apprentices (24 June).69CJ v. 187a, 189a, 190b, 222a. On 21 July, he was nominated to consider abuses in the payment of arrears to the army.70CJ v. 253a. His presence in the Commons during the Presbyterian coup is confirmed by his membership of the committee set up on 2 August to investigate the alleged breach of privilege committed by pro-Independent demonstrators, but he was among those who stayed after the coup had been reversed by the army to draw an ordinance repealing votes and orders passed during it (11 Aug.).71CJ v. 265a, 272a. Unlike some, he was still attending the House in September, and indeed on 9 October he was named to the committee on absentee MPs, although he and Harbottle Grimston failed to marshal a majority against the Independents in a division over accusations against Colonel John Jones (25 Sept.).72CJ v. 316b, 329a. In an autumn of political fluidity he garnered a handful of committee nominations, including to consider bills to disenfranchise papists and delinquents (28 Sept.), expedite the sale of episcopal lands (28 Oct.), and raise money to equip the troops destined for service in Ireland (1 Nov.), and to investigate the king’s escape from Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight (12 Nov.) and (unusually for him) to work on an ordinance for poor relief and the punishment of vagrancy (23 Nov.).73CJ v. 320a, 344b, 347b, 357a, 366b, 367a. In the rather unlikely company of Henry Marten, he was a teller for the minority emphatically defeated by those marshalled by Independent grandees Hesilrige and Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire in a division over the custody of the great seal (7 Dec.).74CJ v. 376b.

In 1648 Jesson’s profile in the Commons was significantly lower, although he may have been present more often that is suggested by the Journal. On 29 January, having been named to a committee to work on an ordinance to protect ‘well-affected’ tenants disadvantaged by the penalties placed on their Catholic or delinquent landlords, he lost three successive divisions as a teller against Hesilrige on articles of impeachment against James, 3rd earl of Suffolk.75CJ v. 447b, 448a. His next appointment, to settle the jurisdiction of the court of Admiralty was not until 20 March, but on 22 February Barker reported to the mayor of Coventry merely that he had not seen Jesson in the House for two days, and promised that he and Jesson would both do their best to reduce the assessment burden on the city.76CJ v. 505b; Coventry Archives, BA/H/Q/A79/212, 216. As royalist insurgency threatened in the early summer, Jesson was included as a militia commissioner for the City of London, reinforcing the likelihood of his presence in the capital, while on 14 June he was named to the committee investigating the insurrection in Kent.77A. and O.; CJ v. 599b. But the leave to go into the country he obtained on 21 July may indeed have led to a significant period of absence.78CJ v. 642a.

When he resurfaced in the Journal on 3 October it was to marshal support for Coventry being treated separately from Warwickshire in the militia ordinance – a division he lost by two votes.79CJ vi. 42b. On the 9th he was named to the committee to find funds for the guard around Parliament, probably an indication of his fears about the army, and on the 16th, with other Presbyterians, to address the London petition for provision of further maintenance for ministers.80CJ vi. 47a, 53a. The next month he was added to committees preparing ordinances to help supporters of Parliament who had been plundered or otherwise deprived of income (17 Nov.) and to bring in assessments for paying off or reducing the army (22 Nov.).81CJ vi. 78b, 83b. These were to be his last appointments in the House. A patently consistent and determined opponent of both local militants and the army, he was secluded at Pride’s Purge.

Jesson never resumed his seat, and on 20 March 1651, with his long-time opponents now in control locally, the Commons resolved that he should be discharged as an alderman.82CJ vi. 551b. By July he was removed.83Coventry Archives, BA/H/C/17/2, f. 99v; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 274-5. It may be no coincidence that it was on 25 March that he added a short codicil to the will he had made the previous autumn, when he was in good health. The testament catalogues his substantial ‘lands and worldly goods that my God of his free bounty and goodness has in a most plentiful manner conferred and bestowed on me’, revealing purchases from (among others) the 5th viscount Hereford, the 1st earl of Dover and the notable Presbyterian Zouche Tate*. His wife received property including many houses, worth £250 a year, and a further £150, but with the proviso that if she ‘shall have so much frailty in her as to marry another and so forget her children’, the former would be forfeit. He had already given his eldest son William £300 on his marriage and now bequeathed £300 a year in estate. His son Thomas received his Nuthurst estate and other lands in Warwickshire and Leicestershire, while further sums left to family and kin totalled more than £1,800. He provided £10 to be distributed. He provided £10 for distribution to the poor at his funeral and £2 ‘to a godly minister for a sermon’, while £110 was to be invested for the poor of Coventry. Making his sons executors, he did ‘enjoin them as a father and as they will answer at the dreadful day of judgement that they do unite in cordial and brotherly love’.84PROB11/219/206.

Jesson died on 29 August 1651 and was buried, as he had requested, in St Michael’s church, Coventry.85Keeler, Long Parliament, 238. An unsuccessful candidate in the April 1660 elections, his son William† entered the Convention as a Member for Coventry that July following a by-election. But he was defeated in 1661 and no further family member sat in Parliament.86HP Commons 1660-1690.