COPLESTON, Sir John (1624-86), of Pynes, Upton Pyne, Devon.

The Copleston or Coplestone family was an ancient one in Devon, although the pedigrees at the College of Arms trace the family back only a few generations before 1620. Copleston Barton, in the village of Copplestone, north west of Crediton, has been identified as the family’s residence as early as the twelfth century.25W.G. Hoskins, Devon (1954), 372. They were related to distinguished families such as the Courteneys of Powderham and the Pauletts of Hinton St George, in Somerset. A branch of the family had migrated to Instow, near Barnstaple, by the sixteenth century, and it was from these Coplestons that John Copleston was descended.26Vis. Devon 1620, 70-1. His father’s arrival at Pynes, an estate at Upton Pyne, just north of Exeter, was rather circuitous. John Copleston senior bought Pynes from his father-in-law, Anthony Copleston, in 1640, technically on a 1,000 year lease. Anthony Copleston had himself only come to Pynes by virtue of his marriage with Margaret Larder of Upton Pyne. Their sixth daughter, Grace, married her cousin, John Copleston senior, whose own estate lay at Nash, in the parish of Marshwood, Dorset. Even after his removal to Pynes, Copleston senior kept an estate at Marshwood.27PROB11/220/396.

The details of the upbringing of John Copleston (as he usually rendered his surname) and his siblings are obscure.28Devon RO, Devon QS rolls, Easter 1656. One of his name is described as having matriculated from Exeter College, Oxford, in 1640. The father of this student is given as Thomas Copleston of Upton Pyne. The new proprietor of that place was John, not Thomas, but the latter was the future Member’s uncle, not known to have had children. It seems quite likely therefore that the matriculating student was John Copleston junior of Pynes. There is some mystery as to the extent of Copleston’s legal education. During the protectorate, Copleston was made recorder of Barnstaple, which rather suggests a greater familiarity with the common law than would be necessary for the office of justice of peace or sheriff. No record of Copleston’s enrolment at one of the four major inns of court in London survives, however. Perhaps he attended one of the lesser inns, or perhaps his credibility as a recorder rested entirely on his career as one of Cromwell’s enforcers in the south west. Not even John Copleston’s attitude towards the events of the civil war can be discerned with clarity. Either he or his father, though not distinguished by any suffix such as gentleman or esquire, was in Upton Pyne to assent to Parliament’s Protestation in 1642.29Devon Protestation Returns, ii. 364. The father, described as of Nash and of Upton Pyne, became a royalist during the civil war, or at least was considered in 1652, four years after his death, to have been one. Upton Pyne appears to have been a parish in which support for the king, if measured by the number of soldiers from there who served under the king’s colours, was strong.30CCC 2948; M. Stoyle, Loyalty and Locality (Exeter, 1994), 82. The extent of the activity by Copleston senior on behalf of the king was sufficient to ensure that his estate was included in the Act of Sale of 1652. The younger son, Larder Copleston, was the first of the family to seek to treat with the commissioners for compounding in order to secure the removal of the Copleston properties from the list for sale.31CJ vii. 198a; A. and O. ii. 624; CCC 2948.

John Copleston junior probably remained at Pynes during the civil war. A licence for his marriage to Mercy Hole was issued on 28 October 1644. On 9 August 1653, Copleston requested that he himself be allowed to compound for his father’s delinquency. Within a week, a fine of £120 had been proposed and paid the same day.32CCC 2948. The speed of this settlement was doubtless dictated by Copleston’s entry into the Devon commission of the peace shortly before. His name was included in the last known Devon commission of the Rump Parliament, and he made his first appearance at quarter sessions in July, at a high point in radical expectations of the Nominated Assembly.33Devon RO, Devon QS order bk. 1/9. In the autumn he was named to the commission for debtors or ‘poor prisoners’, an appointment which suggests that he had some legal knowledge, and to the Devon assessment commission. When the Assembly gave way to the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell* governed by the Instrument of Government, Copleston kept his place as a magistrate. In August 1654 he was included among the Devon commissioners for scandalous ministers, a body which in most counties harnessed the energies of the most pious – or at least those committed to the Cromwellian view of the church.34A. and O.; An Act for an Assessment.

The pricking of Copleston as sheriff for 1654-5 was no more than a recognition by the government that this member of the lower county gentry could be relied upon. In fact, however, his public career was transformed by what turned out to be a three-year period of office. Copleston was evidently willing to act as the ears and eyes of the government in Devon, and with Unton Croke II* reported to Thurloe in January 1655 on their suspicions of William Allen, the former Leveller and agitator in the New Model. They were able to supply Secretary John Thurloe* with information on Allen’s conversations with the Presbyterian Thomas Reynell*, which fed official suspicions of conspiracy between disaffected persons of differing political outlooks.35TSP iii. 140. In March, Croke and Robert Shapcote* put down Penruddock’s rising after a pursuit across southern England to South Molton in Devon.36Mercurius Politicus no. 249 (15-22 Mar. 1655), 5203-4 (E.830.23). The lord protector himself wrote to Copleston and Shapcote on the need for vigilance after the defeat of the rising, and Copleston was as sheriff given charge of the arrangements for the trials of the rebels held by commission of oyer and terminer at Exeter. He assured Major-general John Disbrowe* of his intentions to secure a jury favourable to the state prosecutors (among them Edmund Prideaux I*) and pressed on Henry Hatsell* the need to scotch the predicted ‘great strivings’ by royalists to subvert the legal proceedings: ‘It would be sad for such villains to escape’.37CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 93, 120; Mercurius Politicus no. 251 (29 Mar.-5 Apr. 1655), 5244 (E.831.7).

Copleston evinced a pragmatic understanding of jurors’ reluctance to serve during the preparations for the trials, authorising Hatsell to assure those approached that they would be required to attend only for the trials in hand; future further service would not be demanded of them.38CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 93, 120. The success of the Penruddock trials in Exeter, measured by the convictions of the rebels, was attributed to Copleston both by the government and the families of the guilty. The city was not known for its enthusiasm for republican governments, but the trials there proceeded more smoothly than the lord protector’s council seems to have expected. The government-sponsored London press was muted in its coverage of the proceedings, and there may have been a show of tacit support for Penruddock visible in the provision for him in prison and the large turn-out for his funeral after the execution.39Mercurius Politicus no. 254 (19-26 Apr. 1655), 5292 (E.833.16); no. 255 (26 Apr.-3 May), 5308 (E.835.6); no. 256 (3-10 May), 5224 (E.838.4); The Humble Petition of Arundell Penruddock (1660); J. Heath, A Chronicle of the Late Intestine Wars (1676), 372. Copleston’s reward was immediate: on 1 June he was knighted at Whitehall, and presented with the sword used in the ceremony, for his zeal in suppressing the ‘eruptors’.40Clarke Pprs. iii. 42; H. Fletcher, The Perfect Politician (1660), 357.

As well as the organisation of the trials at Exeter, a further contribution by Copleston towards the defence of the protectorate had been the raising of ten companies of soldiers in Devon. These were reduced to two almost immediately after the emergency was over, and Disbrowe was given the responsibility of ensuring that the county regiment was paid the £3,740 it was owed.41CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 189, 209, 231, 241, 342, 345; 1655-6, pp. 279, 302. It was probably during these months in 1655 that the two men became close colleagues; Copleston named his son ‘Desborough’ as a tribute to his patron.42St James Duke Place par. reg., marriages, 1681. Other perceived enemies of the government were swept up in Copleston’s enthusiasm for surveillance. During the rout of the Penruddock rebels in the spring of 1655, the Quakers Miles Halhead and Thomas Salthouse were brought before him as suspected cavaliers. He quickly dismissed these suspicions as groundless, but nevertheless detained the two evangelists at Exeter for two weeks. After their release and some further travels in the south west, they were re-arrested in June at Plymouth and later confined in the county bridewell at St Thomas, just outside Exeter, on Copleston’s authority.43The Wounds of an Enemie in the House of a Friend (1656), 1-2, 33, 53 (E.870.7); J. Besse, Sufferings (2 vols. 1753), i. 146. He and Disbrowe were active in intercepting Quakers’ letters and perusing their latest books, but was at least credited by some Quaker controversialists with having released from prison two women Friends, Margaret Kellam and Barbara Pattison.44TSP iv. 531; G. Fox, The West Answering to the North (1657), 167, 169 (E.900.3).

In February 1656, Copleston was appointed recorder of Barnstaple. His family’s roots at nearby Instow must have enhanced his credibility as a candidate for the position, but what interest he must have been able to muster on his account was surely less than that brought to bear on his behalf by Disbrowe. The same political forces brought about his election for the borough in the summer of 1656, when he was safely returned at Barnstaple on the interest of the government.45TSP v. 302, 303. In his case, the usual rule that barred sheriffs from sitting was waived. Once at Westminster, he was immediately involved in business that indicated his standing as a dependable government supporter. He was named to the sensitive committee (19 Sept.) on annulling the titles of Charles Stuart – where Presbyterians like his Devon colleague Thomas Bampfylde* might have had reservations – and four days later was named to the important standing committee on Scottish affairs.46CJ vii. 425a, 427a; CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 119. As a recent recipient of an honour from the lord protector, Copleston was an obvious choice for a committee (22 Sept.) to wait on Cromwell’s pleasure about the proposed fast day, and his experience in security matters recommended him to the committee on the personal protection of the chief magistrate. In due course, Copleston would be named as a commissioner under the resulting act.47CJ vii. 429a.

Given a month’s leave on 13 October, presumably so that he could attend to his duties in Devon as sheriff, Copleston was back in the House by 25 November. That day, he was again selected for a committee to present an address to the lord protector, this time on the protocols of presenting bills to him. Other than a nomination to a committee on the estates of Richard Carter*, naturally staffed by west country men (9 Dec.), this was the sum of Copleston’s recorded contribution to the work of the House until May 1657, suggesting further periods of absence on other duties. His views on matters that preoccupied the House in the last months of 1656, notably the case of James Naylor, remain unknown, although his own record in Devon suggests that he was as hostile to Quakers as known hawks like Thomas Bampfylde*.48CJ vii. 438a, 458b, 466a. He was absent for the constitutional upheavals between February and early May, but as the revised Humble Petition and Advice, shorn of its monarchical articles, went through the House, Copleston played an active part in its progress. He was a teller in a division on 19 May on putting the question on how the title of lord protector should be limited, and was subsequently included in the committee which considered ways in which the role of lord protector should be constitutionally bound. On 23 May he was again part of a delegation to Cromwell on the timing of their submission of the Humble Petition.49CJ vii. 535a, 538a. When eventually the Humble Petition was adopted as the constitutional model, Copleston was chosen as a commissioner to administer the oath to other MPs (18 Jan. 1658), and acted in that capacity in the House. Eight days later he went with Hatsell and Shapcote as part of a delegation to request that the protector print his speech of 25 January 1658. This alone is powerful evidence of Copleston’s loyalty to the protectorate, as Cromwell’s address had been an implicit rebuke to the commonwealthsmen who were intent on further scrutiny of the constitution.50CJ vii. 578a-b, 589a.

Other matters which claimed Copleston’s attention during this Parliament were the bill on recusancy, to which he was named with Bampfylde (1 June 1657), and the committee on the marriage bill, where he was in the company of his Devon colleagues Timothy Alsop and John Doddridge. When the case for exempting the London property of the William Russell, 5th earl of Bedford, a Devon magnate, from the penalties in the act for restraining building in the London suburbs was put to the vote, Copleston was an unsympathetic teller in the division. His colleague was John Dunch, a Cromwellian, suggesting that Bedford’s case found no favour with the government.51CJ vii. 543b, 548a, 591a. Copleston was equally unpersuaded by the case of Lady Eleanor Fitzwilliams (sister of Denzil Holles*), who sought relief from sequestration, but the view of those who took a more lenient line prevailed when the House divided.52CJ vii. 562a. In one of his last acts in the House before this Parliament was dissolved, Copleston was a teller in a division on communicating with the Other House. As a government supporter, he was doubtless in favour of integrating the Other House into the constitutional machinery as fully as possible. His contribution to the Parliament was assessed in a critical polemic published after the dissolution. His three-year shrievalty and his county regiment were singled out for criticism, but he was not numbered among the ‘kinglings’ who sought to offer Cromwell the crown. This, however, may owe more to the republican author’s lack of information on the attitude of the Devon Members than to an informed assessment of Copleston’s views.53CJ vii. 589b; A Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 14 (E.935.5). There is no doubt that he had acquired significant wealth by this time; in 1658 jewels worth £800 were stolen from his lodgings at Charing Cross.54Mdx. County Recs. Vol. 3: 1625-67, 269.

Back in his county, Copleston resumed his work as sheriff and agent for the government. In between the sessions of the second protectorate Parliament, he met with the Devon bench of magistrates in discussions on the management of the county house of correction and the complex of government buildings at Exeter castle.55Devon RO, Devon QS order bk. 1/9. He was sympathetic to the religious Independents in Devon. The Exeter congregation of Lewis Stucley petitioned the lord protector’s council in June 1658 for an augmentation of two livings in the city. Copleston had acquired the patronage rights in one, probably a purchase of property once belonging to the dean and chapter of Exeter. Stucley reported that Copleston was willing to present the Independent minister Increase Mather to the living, were its value to be enhanced by a financial award from the government.56CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 77; Bodl. Walker c.4, f. 275. Mather never acquired a living in Exeter, but Copleston seems to have been more active on behalf of Nathaniel Mather, Increase Mather’s brother. In October 1657, apparently using his powers as sheriff, Copleston tried to eject Martin Blake, the moderate episcopalian minister of Barnstaple, in favour of Nathaniel. Copleston’s alleged methods included a physical assault by the county troop on Blake’s house. After a series of intimidating episodes, in which Blake was haled before John Blackmore* at Exeter, the minister was forbidden by Copleston to preach at Barnstaple or within four miles of it.57Chanter, Martin Blake, 140-1, 143, 144, 148.

At the other end of the county, Copleston was active in the spring and summer of 1658 in recruiting soldiers to join the expeditionary force to Dunkirk.58CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 352; 1658-9, pp. 243, 437, 440; TSP vii. 363, 372. He supported the accession of Richard Cromwell*, was present with his county troop when the new lord protector was proclaimed at Honiton, and assisted at the same ceremony in Exeter. Copleston maintained a vigilant watch on republican suspects such as John Carew* on the one hand, and those he described as ‘the old enemy’ (royalists) on the other.59TSP vii. 138-40, 377, 385. He held his seat at Barnstaple in the elections for Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, and at Westminster maintained his support for the Cromwellian government. He opposed the determined republican pairing of Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Henry Neville in a vote on the title of the lord protector (14 Feb. 1659), but voted against settling the extent of the protector’s veto before settling the constitution of the two Houses, in this latter vote representing a large majority of 217 votes to 86.60CJ vii. 603b, 605b. In two other divisions on 1 and 8 March, Copleston again opposed Hesilrige and Neville. He evinced belief in the need to settle the constitution and to invite peers of historic creation (as opposed to those created for the purpose of staffing the Other House) and loyal to the government to join the second chamber.61CJ vii. 609a, 612a. Copleston’s most significant contribution in this Parliament was as a teller in four divisions. He was named to a committee charged with checking the Journal for accuracy (doubtless in the interests of the government rather than antiquarian curiosity) and another on a petition of sick and maimed soldiers (28 Feb., 7 Apr.) but his other activities were aimed against individuals who had offended the House. With a number of fellow Devonians, he was required to consider the case of Thomas Howard, 23rd earl of Arundel, living overseas and thought to be of less than sound mind and religion. A more sensitive affair involved Major-general William Boteler*, impeached on 12 April.62CJ vii. 608b, 627b, 632a, 637a. With his lobby opponent Sir Arthur Hesilrige, Copleston brought Thomas Bampfylde to the Speaker’s chair on 16 March, in what was intended as a show of unanimity. It must have seemed to those present a rather unconvincing gesture.63CJ vii. 613b. On 9 April he called for punishment for those who ignored the parliamentary privilege bestowed on those who ‘discovered’ lands subject to confiscation by the state, and it was he who on 16 April moved that Quaker leaders be brought before the House to hear expressions of dislike of their petition.64Burton’s Diary, iv. 381, 446.

In some of this pugnacity may be detected a strategy of self-defence. Copleston himself was in trouble on 25 March, when he had to fight off allegations that he had helped ship those rounded up in 1655 to Barbados without trial. Copleston admitted that he had transported one of the petitioners to Plymouth following an acquittal in court at Exeter, but restated the evidence that he was an armed plotter and denied any knowledge of what happened to him after he reached Plymouth. The matter, which threatened John Thurloe* as well as Copleston, was debated all day but in the end fell, to the disappointment of royalist observers.65Burton’s Diary, iv. 258; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 489; Bodl. Clarendon 60, f. 262. After the demise of the protectorate, Copleston transferred his allegiance readily enough to the revived Rump Parliament, his clashes in the lobby with Hesilrige notwithstanding. He was confirmed in his place as a Devon justice of the peace, and was reported as at the head of his troop in Cheshire during the rising of (Sir) George Boothe* there, having recently been commissioned in the regiment of Matthew Alured*.66CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 8; Bodl. Clarendon 63, ff. 113-4. This was his first commission to a regiment of the national army, as opposed to a county troop.

In the months before the restoration of the monarchy, Copleston’s position at first looked bleak. In January 1660, he was dropped from his regiment. His conduct at Exeter during the Penruddock trials was now used against him by his political enemies, who recounted how he had ‘maliciously packed’ the jury.67Humble Petition of Arundell Penruddock; HMC 7th Rep. 96-7. Yet in April 1660, George Monck* brought him back into the army, albeit only for a few months.68Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 195. He lost his recordership at Barnstaple, the mayor and aldermen citing irregularities in his official conduct rather than alluding to his Cromwellian past.69J.B. Gribble, Memorials of Barnstaple (Barnstaple, 1830), 298. Although he subsequently disappeared for a decade from commissions in local government, he was able to move to London and reinvent himself as a minor figure on the fringes of court life. He probably left Pynes very soon after 1660. The Cromwellian knighthood would have been no more than an incumbrance in public life during the 1660s, and he was probably the ‘John Copleston gent.’ trying to settle his lands in order to pay his debts, to whom the House of Lords was determined to be disobliging in 1662 and 1663.70LJ xi. 431, 501; HMC 7th Rep. 165, 168. Miles Halhead, the Quaker, later took an understandable delight in telling the world how in the mid-1660s a serving Devon magistrate had informed him that Copleston ‘hath sold his land, and I know not where he may be found’.71A Book of Some of the Sufferings and Passages of Miles Halhead (1690), 21. In November 1662, there was a (probably false) report that Disbrowe and Copleston had both been arrested in Devon, but earlier that year the latter had in fact moved to Clerkenwell, where his daughter was buried in June.72CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 555; Regs. St James Clerkenwell, burials 1551-1665 (Harl. Soc. Regs. xvii), 346.

Copleston lay low during the 1660s, a decade which served for him as a kind of political purgatory, but during the 1670s he emerged as an adviser to the government on revenue matters, and by April 1674 had become a credible bidder for the farm of the hearth tax.73CSP Dom. 1671, p. 259; CTB iii. 738, 832; iv. 236, 237, 246; v. 472. He seems never to have been successful in his bids, however.74C.A.F. Meekings, Analysis of Hearth Tax Accounts 1666-1699 (L. & I. Soc. clxiii). It is likely that a key figure in his rehabilitation had been Monck, who as 1st duke of Albemarle enjoyed very extensive patronage in the west of England. Many years after Monck’s death (in 1670), and within weeks of his own demise, Copleston continued to supply his son, the second duke, with gossip from court.75HMC Montagu, 192. It emerged during legal actions after the second duke’s death that Copleston had been one of his regular advisers.76HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 256, 257, 258; iii. 115. He was sheltered by other powerful patrons. He was a trustee of Elizabeth Clifford, widow of Sir Thomas Clifford†, a Devonian who had risen to become lord treasurer.77CSP Dom. 1675-6, p. 587. It was in this capacity that he was drawn into legal cases over the earldom of Northumberland, which had been bestowed by Charles II on George Fitzroy, his illegitimate son with Barbara Villiers, duchess of Cleveland.78CTB viii. 1635; The Case of James Percy, Claymant to the Earldom of Northumberland (1685), 5; To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty in Parliament: The Humble Petition of James Percy (?1680). His life in Cromwellian Devon must have seemed very remote to Copleston in his old age. He died in May 1686, and was buried at Clerkenwell. None of his posterity seems to have sat in later Parliaments.