DUKE, Edward (1604-71), of Benhall, Suff.

From the fourteenth century onwards members of the Duke family had owned land at Brampton in north-east Suffolk and by the seventeenth century they could consider themselves among the leading families of the county.25Harl. 1560, ff. 105v-106, 314v-315; Add. 5524, ff. 118, 119; Add. 19127, ff. 241v-242, 243v-244, 245v-246, 247-248, 251v-252; Suckling, Suff. ii. 186; Copinger, Manors of Suff. ii. 27. Edward Duke’s grandfather had married one of the Jermyns of Rushbrooke and, as a consequence, his father, Ambrose Duke, was a first cousin of Sir Thomas Jermyn*.26Vis. Suff. 1561, 1577 and 1612, 26. When she died in 1613, his grandmother, Dorothy Duke, left to the nine-year-old Edward a gilt cup bearing the Duke and Jermyn arms.27Benhall par. reg., p. 92; Wayman, ‘Benhall’, 5; PROB11/123/520. In 1610, shortly before his death, Ambrose Duke acquired lands at Benhall, just over ten miles to the south of Brampton, from the earls of Arundel and Suffolk and William Howard†, Lord Howard of Effingham. This estate, which had several times been confiscated from the Howards and which had passed through the hands of the Glemhams and the Hollands, duly became the family seat.28Copinger, Manors of Suff. ii. 104; PROB11/117/92; Bodl. Tanner 226, p. 51; Soc. Antiq. MS 667, p. 399; F. Haslewood, ‘The ancient fams. of Suff.’, Procs. Suff. Inst. Arch., viii. (1894), 156.

Edward Duke was born in late 1604 as the first child and only son of the marriage of Ambrose Duke to Elizabeth Calthorpe. In 1607 and 1609 he was joined by two sisters, Anne and Elizabeth.29Benhall par. reg., pp. 14, 15, 17. By the time he was eight, he and his sisters had been orphaned. His father died first, on 29 November 1610, leaving instructions that Edward should be brought up in the household of his brother, Thomas.30Add. 32490 BBB(22); Wayman, ‘Benhall’, 5, 13-14; Benhall par. reg., p. 91; PROB11/117/92; WARD5/41, nos. 328-9; WARD7/44/48; C142/319/187. Only 13 months later, on 30 December 1611, his mother also died. She used her will to ask that the court of wards grant the wardship of her children to her executors (her brothers-in-law, Thomas Duke and Thomas Goodwin of Stonham Parva).31Add. 32490 BBB(22); Wayman, ‘Benhall’, 5, 13-14; Benhall par. reg., p. 91; PROB11/119/49; Muskett, Suff. Manorial Fams. i. 235. When the commissioners for knighthood fines came calling in 1630 and 1631 to demand why he had not presented himself to be knighted in 1626, Duke was able to excuse himself by informing them that he had then still been a royal ward.32E178/7356, unf.; E178/7198, unf.

By 1631, when he was 26, Duke had married Ellenor, one of the daughters of John Panton, and in April of that year she gave birth to a daughter, Alice, the first of their many children.33Benhall par. reg., p. 28. A much later tradition would claim that Duke had also been married to Catherine Holland, daughter of Sir Thomas Holland†.34Blomefield, Norf. v. 178. If so, that marriage must have come first, but it seems much more likely that it was merely the product of confusion arising from the fact that Sir Thomas’s son, Sir John Holland*, was married to another of John Panton’s daughters. Equally unsubstantiated is the separate tradition that Duke, by however many marriages, was the father of 29 children.35Eng. Baronets (1727), ii. 285.

Under the terms of his father’s will, Duke was not to inherit the lands at Benhall until his twenty-sixth birthday, a date he reached in late 1630. Shortly before then his bachelor uncle, Thomas Duke, recognizing him as his heir, had transferred to his use 80 acres of marsh land on the outskirts of Orford.36Suff. RO (Ipswich), HB83/988/6. Towards the end of July 1631 the death of Thomas Duke brought his nephew additional lands in Suffolk.37Benhall par. reg., p. 98; Wayman, ‘Benhall’, 5; Add. 19127, f. 243v; Wills from the Archdeaconry of Suff. 1629-1636 ed. M.E. Allen and N.R. Evans (N. Eng. Hist. Geneal. Soc., Boston, 1986), 210. Edward Duke’s possession of the estates he had inherited from his father was secured in February 1632 when he successfully sought letters patent from the crown confirming his title.38Coventry Docquets, 326; C66/2583, no. 5. He then transferred those lands into the hands of two trustees, Robert Townsend and Samuel Smith.39Coventry Docquets, 628. The previous year he had disposed of the major part of the family’s estates in Norfolk when he sold the manor of Aslacton to the trustees of Sir William Le Neve.40Blomefield, Norf. v. 178.

From as early as 1626 Duke served as a captain in the Suffolk militia, sharing the command of the foot company raised in Blything hundred with Robert Brewster*.41Add. 39245, f. 103v. His involvement in the administration of the county increased during the mid-1630s, when he was added to the commission of the peace in 1634 and to the commission of sewers the following year.42C193/13/2, f. 64; SP16/405, f. 63; C181/5, f. 24v. Late in 1637 he was appointed to serve as the sheriff for Suffolk for the coming year.43List of Sheriffs, 132. It therefore fell to him to collect the county’s share of the fourth Ship Money demand, a duty in which he was largely successful, managing to gather all but £76 16s 10d of the £8,000 he had been ordered to raise.44Gordon, ‘Collection of ship-money’, 160; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 64; 1639, p. 118; 1640, p. 107. Duke’s own Ship Money assessment at Benhall in 1640 (when he was assessed jointly with Robert Sparham) was set at £3 6s 9d.45Suff. Ship-Money Returns, 52. He did run into difficulty with the arrangements he made to present to the exchequer his accounts for the other revenues accruing during his shrievalty. In 1647 brought an action against the widow and son of Edmund Dove claiming that, years before, he had paid £100 to Dove on the promise that the latter would go to London to complete the paying in for him – a task that Dove had failed to do. Duke also accused Dove of having issued writs for the collection of arrears without his permission.46E134/23CHAS1/MICH4.

It was through the favour of the freemen of Orford, the small parliamentary borough less than ten miles to the south of his seat at Benhall where he owned land, that in March 1640 he was elected for the first and only time to Parliament.47Wills from the Archdeaconry of Suff. 1629-1636 ed. Allen and Evans, 210; Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE5/5/24; EE5/5/25. The senior place was taken by Sir Charles Le Gros* who had sat for the borough in the two previous Parliaments. If Duke made any contribution to the Short Parliament, it was not recorded. But his time in London was not entirely wasted, for he took the opportunity to pay to the treasurers of the navy some £100 which had remained outstanding from his Ship Money collections of two years previously.48CSP Dom. 1640, p. 107.

The paucity of information about Duke’s politics during the 1640s and 1650s may well be indicative of a deliberate effort to avoid making anything more than minimal commitments during a period of uncertainty. In June 1640 he was included in the commissions of oyer and terminer for Suffolk and for piracy off its coast, possibly for no greater reason than his recent membership of the Commons.49C181/5, ff. 171, 175v, 176. At the election in October 1640, Sir William Playters* joined Le Gros as Member for Orford. There is no indication of why the king chose to knight Duke (at Whitehall) in July 1641.50Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 209. Charles also appointed him to the second Suffolk commission of array named in August 1642.51Northants. RO, FH133, unfol. That he was appointed by Parliament in 1643 and 1644 as one of the Suffolk assessment commissioners suggests that he was, at that point, viewed as a supporter of the parliamentarian cause.52A. and O. But he evidently lacked zeal, and was not given a place on the county committee. After 1642 he appears to have abandoned his habit of attending meetings of the quarter sessions whenever they were held at Woodbridge.53Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/1, ff. 6v, 10, 16v, 18, 24, 27v, 36, 39v, 47, 50v.

Thereafter, until the late 1650s, there is little information about him. There was the court case against the Doves, the births of two of his daughters at Benhall in 1648 and 1650 and a flood on his lands at Orford in 1651.54Benhall par. reg., pp. 34, 35; Suff. RO (Ipswich), HB83/988/6. The likelihood is that he was living in retirement at Benhall and it was probably during these years that he built ‘a very fair house’ there.55Soc. Antiq. MS 667, p. 399; Bodl. Tanner 226, p. 51; PROB11/336/278. This had a tulip garden which one visitor, the botanist John Ray, would later recall as having attracted a large number of bees.56Further Corresp. of John Ray ed. R.W.T. Gunther (1928), 56-7. By 1658 Duke appears to have been thought of as a possible source of support in the event of a royalist uprising, because he was included among the many on the list by Roger Whitley† of those who might be willing to aid such an enterprise.57Bodl. Eng. hist. e. 309, p. 42. In the event, Duke, who was a distant relative of Sir George Boothe* (his wife being a first cousin of Sir George’s father), did not have his sympathies tested in the summer of 1659, for Suffolk remained quiet during Boothe’s rebellion in faraway Cheshire. It can be shown that in autumn of 1659 Duke had dealings with John Hobart*, who, as MP for Norwich, had been an independent minded critic of the government in the protectoral Parliaments, although the contact between them arose through the financial affairs of one of Duke’s relatives and their friendship probably did not progress much beyond that basis.58Bodl. Tanner 284, f. 119; Tanner 41, f. 30. It seems likely that Duke welcomed the events of 1660. In March 1660 Parliament restored him to his place as a Suffolk justice of the peace, although not to that as a militia commissioner.59Bodl. Tanner 226, pp. 187-8; A Perfect List (1660), 51. He was created a baronet in July 1661.60CB, iii. 221. At about the same time some of his tenants at Shadingfield (the village next to Brampton) were involved in a tithes dispute with the local rector which resulted in litigation.61E134/13CHAS2/MICH50.

Duke’s final years were marred by a bitter family quarrel. One of the main concerns of his will, made in April 1670, was to prevent Elizabeth, his ‘grand disobedient daughter’, from marrying Nathaniel, the son of Thomas Bacon* of Friston. His legacy to her worth £2,000 was to be paid only when she married with the consent of several members of the family, including his widow, his son and Sir John Holland.62PROB 11/336/278. But the couple disregarded Duke’s objections and went ahead with their marriage the following month. When, after Duke’s death, they sought to have his will overturned, Duke’s heir (his son, Sir John) reached an agreement with Thomas Bacon to make financial provision for the couple.63T.J. Wertenbaker, Torchbearer of the Revolution (Princeton, 1941), 47-9. The younger Bacon subsequently emigrated to America where he led the Virginia rebellion of 1675.

Duke must have died in the early weeks of 1671, for he was buried in the church at Benhall on 30 January of that year. Soon afterwards a new communion cup was presented to the parish in his memory. Within the year his wife had also died.64Benhall par. reg., p. 104; Wayman, ‘Benhall’, 5; E.C. Hopper, ‘Church plate of Suffolk: deanery of Orford’, Procs. Suff. Inst. Arch. ix. 47. Of his many offspring, only his sons John and Robert, and his daughters Alethea and Elizabeth, outlived him.65Add. 19127, f. 255. John succeeded as baronet and inherited the bulk of the estate.66PROB11/336/278. Both Sir John and his son, Sir Edward, the third baronet, would, in their time, sit for Duke’s old constituency.