GOULD, Nicholas (d. 1663), of Threadneedle St., London.

Nicholas Gould was a younger son from a minor Devon gentry family who had allegedly gone ‘beyond the seas’ - perhaps as an East India trader - and ‘returned very rich’, before establishing himself as a merchant in London by 1633.20Vis. London, 1633-4, 328; Prince, Worthies, 347. By the end of the 1630s he had become reasonably prosperous, and scattered references to him start to appear in the official records. On 2 December 1636 Gould was granted the right to decide the marriage of his young nephew, William Gould (the future parliamentarian colonel), and in March 1638 he was granted a licence to eat flesh in Lent.21Coventry Docquets, 173, 478. In January 1640 Gould was prosecuted by the owners of a ship that he and his partners had chartered for 15 months but then reneged on the deal.22C10/3/2; CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 300. In the same year Gould was admitted as a freeman of the Fishmongers’ Guild, by redemption.23Fishmongers, Apprentices and Freemen ed. W.P. Haskett-Smith (1916), 21. In 1641 he invested £600 in the first general voyage of the East India Company, and in later years he served on the company’s committee and offered his own ships for their voyages.24BL, India Office Recs. H 6, f. 115; Cal. Ct. Mins. E. I. Co. 1644-9, pp. 32, 241, 268, 386. Gould was also trading through the Levant Company from the early 1640s, buying his freedom in the Company in October 1643; he was engaged in trade with Italy and the Middle East; and he retained strong Devon connections.25SP105/159, ff. 42, 50; E190/43/4, ff. 2v, 29, 31v, 37, 77. In May 1642, for example, it was reported that the mayor of Dartmouth had received £1,055 from Gould for the Irish Adventure scheme.26SP105/159, f. 122; CSP Ire. Adventurers 1642-59, p. 254.

In December 1643 Gould was appointed treasurer to receive money for the Plymouth garrison, under the new ordinance raising money for beleaguered towns from the customs revenues.27CJ iii. 327a-b; LJ vi. 319a, 321a. Perhaps as a result of this new office, in 1644 he became embroiled in the dispute between Charles Vaughan* and the former mayor of Plymouth, Philip Francis, which centred on the embezzlement of pearls seized from James Ley, 3rd earl of Marlborough. According to Francis, the governor of the town, Colonel William Gould, had used his uncle to launder the money through bills of exchange in London.28P. Francis, The Answer of Philip Francis (1644), sig. A4v; [P. Francis], The Misdeameanors of a Traytor and Treasurer Discovered (1645), sig. A3v (E.258.10). There is a possibility that Gould used his influence at Whitehall on Vaughan’s behalf in the war of words that followed, as on 22 February 1644 he had been made a member of the non-parliamentary Committee of Accounts, working closely with men like William Prynne*.29A. and O.; CJ iii. 408b. Despite his links with the political Presbyterians through the accounts committee, Gould was to emerge during the later 1640s as a supporter of the Independent interest at Westminster, and an early indication of this can perhaps be seen in April 1645, when he lent £500 for the creation of the New Model army.30SP28/350/5.

In the spring of 1648 – and certainly no later than May – Gould was elected to Parliament for the Cornish seat of Fowey, vacated by the death of Sir Richard Buller* and the disablement Jonathan Rashleigh*, a royalist. Rashleigh, as patron of the borough, was probably behind Gould’s election. He was certainly involved in negotiations to secure the other seat to Gregory Clement*, using his cousin, Jonathan Sparke, as go-between, and it is probable that Gould, as Clement’s business associate, was included in the deal.31Cornw. RO, RS/1/906. Gould did not make much impression on Westminster during the summer and autumn of 1648. He was added to the committee appointed to negotiate with the City of London on 31 July, and his only other mention in the Journal is on 14 November, when both Houses agreed to allow him £4,443, the arrears of pay owed to Colonel William Gould (who had chosen Nicholas Gould as his executor before his death in 1644).32CJ v. 654b; vi. 75b; LJ x. 590b. The latter measure originated with the Committee of Accounts, and this suggests that Gould was benefiting directly from his connections at Whitehall.

Gould was not ejected from the Commons at Pride’s Purge in December 1648, although it was not until 3 February 1649 that he was formally admitted and received into the chamber.33PA, Ms CJ xxxiii, p. 639; CJ vi. 130b. In the meantime, he continued to accrue administrative posts. On 6 January 1649 the Commons ordered that Gould, Clement and their ally, the London merchant Thomas Boone*, were to be added to the Committee for Compounding at Goldsmiths’ Hall.34CCC 137; CJ vi. 107b, 113b. On 12 January Gould and Clement were also named to the committee for the sale of dean and chapter lands.35CJ vi. 116a. Immediately after his readmittance to Parliament, on 10 February, Gould and Boone were added to the excise committee. There were personal benefits from such arrangements. After a parliamentary order, on 30 April 1649 the £4,443 owed to Gould from Colonel Gould’s arrears was transferred from the excise to the newly confiscated dean and chapter lands.36CJ vi. 191a; A. and O. On 9 May Gould was named to the committee on the sale of crown lands, and 20 June he also joined the committee for the sale of bishops’ lands, although he does not seem to have benefited directly from either scheme.37A. and O.; CJ vi. 205b. This impressive array of administrative appointments was not the mark of an absentee pluralist. For example, although initially Gould was only an occasional member of the committee for regulating the excise, his attendance became increasingly frequent from December 1650.38Bodl. Rawl. C.386, unfol. Although his record in attending the Committee for Compounding was less impressive, he was not a total stranger to its meetings from the autumn of 1649.39SP23/6, ff. 104v, 108v; SP23/7, ff. 11, 87.

Gould was also a busy Member of Parliament between the spring of 1649 and the autumn of 1651. He was obviously in demand for his financial expertise, and was named to committees for coinage (10 Feb., 6 July 1649 and 25 Apr. 1650), to consider matters to do with the excise (11 June and 23 Nov. 1649) to consider a bill to manage the public treasury (18 Apr. 1650), and to investigate the massive fraud committed by Edward Howard*, Lord Howard of Escrick (30 July 1650).40CJ vi. 138b, 198a, 228b, 251b, 325a, 400a, 448b. Financial matters inevitably involved the City of London, and Gould was added to the committee to arrange a loan from the citizens in April 1649, and appointed to committees to raise money from the City on the security of the excise (4 July 1649) and to read a petition from London (13 Apr. 1650).41CJ vi. 185a, 250a, 398a. In Parliament, as much as in the executive committees, Gould was apparently working closely with Clement and Boone, and he appears on committee lists with one or both of them on numerous occasions. The three men also worked together on ad hoc committees, such as that appointed on 9 February 1650 to consider if the former Committee of Accounts had acted fraudulently in the case of Sir John Clotworthy* in August 1648, which saw both Gould and Boone on the list.42CJ vi. 360a. On 21 May 1651 Gould and Clement were appointed to a committee to consider those royal goods reserved from sale.43CJ vi. 576b. There is very little indication of Gould’s religious views from his parliamentary activities. He was added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers when it considered the case of one Mr Jenkins of Christchurch in Hampshire in July 1650, and in September 1651 he was on the committee to consider improving the ministry at St Albans in Hertfordshire, but these provide no hint of religious radicalism beneath the prudent, fiscally-minded exterior.44CJ vi. 437a; vii. 12b. It was perhaps appropriate that in the exciting days after the ‘crowning mercy’ of Worcester in September, Gould was appointed to a committee to consider the financial losses suffered by the well-affected within that city.45CJ vii. 15a.

Despite his administrative and parliamentary duties, Gould remained an active merchant during this period, being involved in a dispute over seized Portuguese goods in 1650, and in December of that year arranging bills of exchange for corn sent to the government in Dublin.46CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 274, 363, 373, 377, 429, 433, 604. By the end of 1651 his ships, operating under ‘letters of reprizal’ had captured a number of French prizes.47CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 37. In 1651-2 and 1653-4 he was again elected to the committee of the East India Company.48Cal. Ct. Mins. E. I. Co. 1650-4, pp. 110, 240-1. His business interests were clearly very wide, and the potential gains enormous. During this period he and his kinsman, James Gould, continued to sort out the financial affairs of the late Colonel William Gould.49C10/14/122. They also joined forces in pursuing a claim to the duke of Hamilton’s house at Chelsea, which had been purchased by James earlier in the 1640s. Initially this was considered by the Middlesex county committee in the autumn of 1649, but when this body was dissolved, it was referred to the compounding committee, where Gould himself was one of the members. Even so, the committee was reluctant to allow an exception to Hamilton’s sequestration, and it was not until January 1654 that the Goulds were allowed compensation, with the property being held by them and other creditors on an extended lease.50CCC 2424-5. By this time Gould had also cashed in his stake in the Irish Adventure. The fate of his original investment is not known, but in December 1653 he sold another share in the Adventure, recently acquired from one Elizabeth Blake, to his fellow London merchant John Young.51CSP Ire. Adventurers 1642-59, pp. 254, 294.

Gould’s political career came to an abrupt end in the spring of 1652, when Gregory Clement was forced out of the Commons on charges of adultery. Gould was named to the committee to consider the information against Clement on 19 February, and thereafter he was named to only one more committee, on 27 April, before withdrawing from Parliament altogether.52CJ vii. 93a, 127b. Significantly, he also stopped attending the excise committee, with his last recorded presence at a meeting being on 23 April.53Bodl. Rawl. C.386, unfol. A stray appointment, to a committee to encourage merchants to arm their vessels for the state’s service in the following November, may have been made in Gould’s absence.54CJ vii. 210a. After the humiliation of Clement, it was a long time before Gould had anything to do with politics. He was not involved in the protectorate government, although he continued to be a prominent merchant in the mid-1650s, buying and selling naval stores, leasing ships to the government, and in 1658 putting up £1,000 for the new joint-stock adventure of the East India Company.55CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 558, 576, 578; Cal. Ct. Mins. E. I. Co. 1655-9, p. 206n. He was apparently willing to cooperate with the restored Rump after May 1659, although his activity during this period was minimal – he was named to only two committees, in July and mid-September – and on 30 September he was fined for being absent at the call of the House.56CJ vii. 702a, 780b, 789b. Gould’s activity in the early months of 1660 was also low key. He was attending meetings at the republican ‘Rota Club’ in January, when Samuel Pepys encountered him there with James Harrington, William Petty* and others.57Pepys’s Diary, i. 14. On 23 February it was recorded that Gould was one of only two MPs who ‘put in no papers’ in the elections for the new council of state, but it is not known whether this was a protest or merely neglect.58CJ vii. 849a.

Any suggestion of Gould’s continued republicanism was quickly forgotten in the aftermath of the Restoration, and the new king, desperate for financial backing, and perhaps advised by George Monck* (a distant kinsman) made Gould a baronet in June. In the same year, Gould married the eldest daughter of a Hertfordshire baronet.59CB, iii. 37. In December 1660 the Convention included Gould in its list of creditors under the Long Parliament’s ordinance of 13 May 1647, and stated that he was still owed £1,807.60CJ viii. 239b. Whether or not this money was ever recovered is uncertain, but Gould was clearly taking every opportunity of his new social position and political favour to line his pockets. When he died at the very end of 1663, he left his widow a very wealthy woman. According to Pepys, her future was the talk of the town, and on New Year’s Day 1664 he and his cronies discussed the news of ‘a very rich widow, young and handsome, of one Sir Nicholas Gould, a merchant lately fallen, and of great courtiers that already look after her. Her husband not dead a week yet’.61Pepys’s Diary, v. 1. One of these courtiers, Thomas Neale†, managed to secure the prize by the following summer, and became known thereafter, as ‘Golden Neale’.62Pepys’s Diary, v. 1, 184. Gould left two daughters: Elizabeth, who married Sir John Boteler of Watton Woodhall, Hertfordshire, and Jane, who married Sir Paul Whichcote of Hendon, Middlesex.63Vivian, Vis. Devon, 421; Prince, Worthies, 347. In the absence of male heirs, the baronetcy died with him.