EYRE, William I (1585-1646), of Lincoln’s Inn, Mdx., and Bonhams, South Newton, Wilts.

Eyre came from a junior branch of a family established in Wiltshire since at least the fourteenth century.9VCH Wilts. x.180; Vis. Wilts. 1623 (Harl. Soc. cv-cvi), 59-61. As a result of mercantile enterprise, borough office and marriage into the London elite, various branches remained notable in county society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Eyre’s grandfather Robert Eyre†, mayor of Salisbury in 1559, had served as its MP under Mary I before shifting the focus of his interests to Southampton, while representatives of the main line seated at Great Chalfield, Sir William Eyre† and Sir John Eyre†, sat in the Parliaments of James I and Charles I.10HP Commons 1509-1558; HP Commons 1559-1603; HP Commons 1604-1629. Sir John’s nephew William Eyre II* of Neston in Corsham, with whom this Eyre has sometimes been confused, was first elected to Parliament in 1648, and another kinsman Thomas Eyre* of Bromham was a Member of the Nominated Assembly.

Eyre’s father Thomas†, mayor of Salisbury in 1587 and one of its MPs in 1597, had land in Wiltshire and Dorset, existing ties with the latter strengthened through his wife, Elizabeth Rogers.11Wilts RO, G23/1/3 and G23/1/264; Abstracts Wilts. IPMs Chas. I, 369-70; Hoare, Hist. Wilts. v (Frustfield), 56, ped. no. 1. The surviving siblings among their 15 children enjoyed successful careers or married well: the eldest, Robert (1569-1638), was a prominent bencher of Lincoln’s Inn, married a daughter of John Still, bishop of Bath and Wells, and became steward to successive bishops; Giles (1572-1655), of Brickworth in Whiteparish, gained prominence in county society; Christopher (1578-1624) of the Leathersellers’ Company was a Merchant Adventurer and a founder of the East India Company; Thomas (1580-1633), a grocer, was mayor of Salisbury in 1610; and their sisters married solid Wiltshire, Dorset or Hampshire gentry.12Hoare, Hist. Wilts. v (Frustfield), 56, ped. nos. 1 and 2; A.S. Hartigan, A Short Acct. of the Fam. of Eyre of Eyrecourt and Eyre of Eyreville (Dublin, 1899); LI Admiss.; LI Black Bks.; Wilts. RO, G23/1/3, 264. This branch of the family shared a committed Protestantism, expressed in parish activity and acts of charity.13Churchwardens’ Accts. Sarum. Inscriptions to their mother, Elizabeth Eyre, in St Thomas’s Church proclaimed her ‘an heir with all the just’ and ‘an enemy to idolatry’, a sentiment echoed on the nearby tomb of her son Christopher, a leading member of St Stephen’s, Coleman Street, London, a benefactor of preaching both in the capital and in Salisbury, and the founder of almshouses in his native city.14MIs Wilts. 1822, 304-5, 314; PROB11/145/28. Despite his long-standing episcopal employment, Robert was one of the feoffees for impropriations, the group which, until their suppression in 1633, sought to place godly ministers in livings and lectureships.15P. Hembry, The Bishops of Bath and Wells, 1540-1640 (1967), 186, 194-5, 210, 221, 233, 236; ‘Sir Samuel Eyre’ and ‘Anne Eyre’, Oxford DNB.

William Eyre, the youngest surviving son, matriculated from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1605 but soon joined Robert at Lincoln’s Inn, where he was called to the bar in 1613. Little is known of his legal career, and his contribution to his inn was overshadowed by that of his brother, but through apparently successful practice, and by inheritance, he became moderately wealthy. In December 1619, if not before, his father conveyed to him a property called Bonhams in South Newton, a few miles north west of Salisbury.16Wilts. IPMs Charles I, 369-70. By his brother Christopher’s will, first drawn up in July 1617, he was to have £1,000 in addition to small legacies, and although a death-bed statement by Christopher in 1625 appears to undermine his bequests to his family, the tone of William’s own will implies that he received his.17PROB11/145/28; PROB11/198/357. A much smaller sum from his brother Thomas in 1633 came William’s way in relation to business undertaken for his siblings, and there are other indications that, as a bencher of his inn in the later 1630s, his professional skill was utilised locally, as by Richard Chaundler at Idmiston and by the vestry of St Thomas, Salisbury.18CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 376; Churchwardens’ Accts. Sarum, 208.

By March 1640, when ‘William Eyre, the lawyer’ was returned to Parliament with Sir Edward Griffin for Downton, a few miles south east of Salisbury, all but one of his elder brothers were dead.19CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 604. Why Giles, who was otherwise politically active, did not seek a seat in the county, and especially one only three miles from Brickworth, is unclear.20Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 189. William’s candidature, on an occasion when the influence of Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, seems not to have been strong, probably rested on the combination of Giles’s interest as a burgage holder and his own contacts among puritan elites in London and south Wiltshire, and a personal reputation for godliness and for reliability.21V.A. Rowe, ‘The Influence of the Earls of Pembroke on Parliamentary Elections, 1625-41’, EHR l. 242-56. Once elected he made no recorded contribution to parliamentary proceedings, and in the autumn election and subsequent by-election, overseen by his brother Giles as sheriff, gave way to the superior claims of William Herbert*, Richard Gorges and Anthony Ashley Cooper*, ward of Eyre’s nephew, but near contemporary at Lincoln’s Inn and close associate, Edward Tooker*.22VCH Wilts. v.137.

On 7 May 1641 Eyre and Tooker were elected to the vestry of St Edmund’s, Salisbury, perhaps as part of the campaign to secure the living for the future Presbyterian and parliamentary preacher John Strickland.23Churchwardens’ Accts. Sarum, 214. In January 1642 Salisbury council resolved to seek Eyre as counsel in their long-running property dispute with the bishop, John Davenant.24Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, f. 6v. It seems likely that later he retained professional links with the city, but that, like Tooker, he was also frequently in London. His will, made during November 1646, suggests, in its references to Tooker’s servants and a nurse, that he may have been taken ill at his nephew’s Salisbury home.25PROB11/198/357. ‘Mr William Eyre, councellor’ was buried at St Thomas church on 16 December 1646.26Wilts. RO, 1900/5. His chief heir and the recipient of his study of law books was Robert Eyre’s son Samuel, the future judge, but Edward Tooker was given the advowson of Amesbury and other close relatives received generous legacies, with bequests totalling about £6000. Looking forward to the ‘crown of righteousness purchased and procured for the elect’ and ‘the second coming of my Saviour, Eyre echoed his brother Christopher in both piety and charity, giving one hundred marks a year and £100 respectively to augment Christopher’s foundations of the Salisbury almshouse and the lecture at St Thomas church; he also left £100 for interest-free loans to poor tradesmen in the city.27PROB11/198/357. His surviving brother Giles lived another nine years, and continued to give regular public service as a justice of the peace into the early 1650s.28Wilts. RO, A1/160/1. Among Giles’s seven sons, Henry* sat for Salisbury in 1656, while Giles† was an MP after the Restoration; William, minister of St Edmund’s, Salisbury, in the 1650s, was a member of the commission of triers and ejectors.29Hoare, Hist. Wilts. v (Frustfield), 56, ped. no. 1; Hartigan, Short Acct. of the Fam. of Eyre; Calamy Revised, 187; A. and O.