PLEYDELL, William (1602-?c.1645), of Midgehall, Lydiard Tregoze, Wilts.

Pleydell’s family had held Midgehall in north east Wiltshire, as tenants of Stanley Abbey, since before the Reformation, and his great-grandfather, Gabriel†, had represented the borough of Wootton Bassett, which was less than a mile away, in 1553 and 1563, as well as Marlborough in 1555.8HP Commons 1558-1603. Pleydell’s father, who was made knight of the bath in Surrey in 1618, served as sheriff of the county in 1620, although following his second marriage he resided in Kilburn and Hampstead, Middlesex.9Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 169; List of Sheriffs (List and Index ix), 154; Lysons, Environs, ii. 527-51. He lived until 1642, when the bulk of the estate appears to have been settled on his eldest son, John Pleydell†; in his will he alluded to the brothers and sisters of his son John and daughter Susan, but neither named them nor specified the provision made for them.10PROB11/189/269.

Much about William Pleydell’s life is obscure. In 1618 he was admitted with his elder brother John to Trinity College, Oxford, but while John followed in the footsteps of several in the wider Pleydell family and went on to the Middle Temple, William’s name is not recorded in the surviving admissions registers of any of the inns of court or chancery.11M. Temple Admiss. i. 112. It is possible that he studied civil law abroad: he failed to make any impression on the public record during the 1620s and 1630s, but in March 1641 Sir Simonds D’Ewes*, who ought to have known, described him as ‘a lawyer’, and Pleydell’s utterances imply such a training.12Procs. LP ii. 678. Those who knew him well were evidently impressed by his talents. Doubtless on the combined interest of his family and of that of his stepmother Jane, a St John of Lydiard Tregoze, in October 1640 Pleydell was returned to Parliament as a Member for Wootton Bassett. As early as November Jane’s sister Anne, then wife of Sir Francis Henry Lee and later to be countess of Rochester and a notable parliamentary patroness, enquired of Edward Hyde* whether Pleydell had yet made any learned speeches in the House, adding that he would have made a suitable Speaker.13CCSP i. 211.

Rhetoric was apparently his forte. Pleydell had to wait until 21 June 1641 for his sole committee appointment, which related to a private bill.14Procs. LP v. 250. But in the meantime he had made four significant speeches, all on religion. Among numerous MPs who on 8 February expressed opinions on whether the London ministers’ petition should be committed, Pleydell did not catch the attention of the diarists, but his speech was published in a version containing Latin quotations and an appeal to the Council of Constance. He assured MPs that, as he had sat in the House and heard ‘many grievances presented’, his heart had bled within him, ‘especially [for] those that concern religion’, but now ‘religion itself is become a grievance, nay the very nurse and mother of all grievances, all scandals, all reproaches’. ‘That bark both of church and state hath a long time floated betwixt Scylla and Charybdis, popery on the one side, and I know not what to call it on the other’ and since ‘in many respects’ they were ‘both alike dangerous’, he called on MPs to ‘steer a right course’, ‘keep the channel’ and avoid the extremes of ‘superstition’ and ‘prophaneness’, as seen in libellous pamphlets and subversive sermons.15The Speech of Master Plydell (1641), 1-3 (E.196.29). Casting himself as ‘a faithful lover of truth and peace, and a dutiful son of our distressed mother the Church of England’, he proposed that the ministers’ petition be referred to the consideration of a committee – something which many conservatives rejected – but that matters of doctrine be reserved for discussion by ‘some learned and approved divines’.16Speech of Master Plydell, 3 He also urged the Houses to issue a declaration to ‘satisfy’ the advocates of ‘root and branch’ reform, defending ‘the lawfulness and conveniency’ of apostolic episcopacy, ‘rather than to venture upon any alteration, the consequence whereof the wisest man cannot foresee’. Professing himself ready to set out the arguments for traditional orthodoxy, should he be called upon, he looked forward to the cultivation of unity, in order to ‘not only put an end to all misintelligence betwixt prince and people, but also highly advance the Protestant cause and give a deadly blow to the see of Rome’.17Speech of Master Plydell, 4-5.

However, Pleydell was not nominated to consider the petition, and when on 9 March John Crewe* delivered the ensuing report, he was highly critical, claiming (according to D’Ewes) that ‘the committee had exceeded their power and intermeddled too far with episcopacy’ or (according to John Moore*) that they ‘had strucken at the root of episcopacy’. ‘Exception being taken for charging the committee so injuriously’ (Moore), Pleydell was obliged to ‘explain himself, and made some slender satisfaction saying he meant no hurt’ (D’Ewes).18Procs. LP ii. 678-9, 684. When the bill for the abolition of episcopacy was debated on 27 May, Pleydell duly spoke out strongly against it, that ‘it took away peace and truth and therefore [was] not fitting to be committed, but into the fire, for the like bill was never committed’.19Procs. LP iv. 614. This provoked D’Ewes to respond that it was rather Pleydell’s February speech that should be consigned to the flames, ‘not so much in respect of the matter of it’ – although there was allegedly laughter as he alluded to the length of it – ‘as of the irregularity of printing it without the licence of this House’.20Procs. LP iv. 606-7. Another ‘long’ speech on the ‘superior jurisdiction’ of bishops was given by Pleydell on 11 June as the House sat in grand committee, replete ‘with quotations in Latin out of the Fathers and councils’, and delivered with a copy of the Bible in his hand. According to D’Ewes, Pleydell argued that ‘if Rome would return to its primitive purity we should return to it’. Although interrupted – for example by fellow Wiltshire MP Sir Neville Poole, who requested an English translation – he was permitted to ‘go on’ for some time, before Nathaniel Fiennes I* and other leading reformers proceeded to rival his learning on the other side of the case.21Procs. LP v. 91-2, 96, 98-9. The protagonists reconvened on 10 July, when Pleydell again raised his reservations about over-hasty reform of the church ‘built upon a sandy foundation’ and cited English precedents going back to the Anglo-Saxons against its government by the laity. Although thwarted in his attempt to read and criticise Henry Burton’s tract Protestation Protested, he was allowed to proceed with his speech, apparently at least partly because supporters of the bill like D’Ewes, who thought his speech contained ‘some absurdities’, wished to have his viewpoint aired and refuted.22Procs. LP v. 587-8.

Pleydell had taken the Protestation promptly on 3 May, but perhaps frustrated by the prevailing mood in the Commons, Pleydell was not visible in the House for six months after his July speech.23Procs. LP iv. 171. His re-emergence seems to have been prompted by letters he received from Wiltshire detailing the disturbing activity of Catholics, which he presented on 26 January and which led to him being added to a committee to investigate an influx of Irishmen into England.24PJ i. 176-7; CJ ii. 396b. Objection to Parliament’s determination to assume control of the militia lay behind his next recorded contribution to proceedings. During a debate on 2 March regarding a message from the king he once again aggravated MPs by ‘speaking some speech for the king’s prerogative above the Parliament’. John Pym* evidently led those who ‘took great exceptions’ to Pleydell’s remarks, and the latter was forced to ‘profess his hearty sorrow, that he should let fall any thing that should seem to lay any imputation upon the House, and did seriously profess he had no intention to lay the least imputation upon this House, and did desire the pardon of the House’.25Add. 64807, f. 51v; CJ ii. 464b. Only after some deliberation did MPs declare themselves satisfied with Pleydell’s apology (8 June).26CJ ii. 613a. Two days later Pleydell again drew attention to himself by requesting the suppression of a printed picture of Sir John Hotham*, which he considered scandalous because of its portrayal of the king, although this time his opinion was shared.27PJ iii. 57; CJ ii. 617a. His refusal to provide Parliament with either money or horses, on the grounds that ‘he had given his no to all the propositions’ advanced to justify arming ‘and so desired to be excused’ provoked an incensed Isaac Penington* to speak ‘very rashly’ in response, and to earn censure himself by expressing the wish that Pleydell ‘had been gone out of the House’.28PJ iii. 58.

For a few weeks more Pleydell continued to propound opinions unwelcome to parliamentary leaders. During a debate on religion on 28 June he expatiated in familiar vein and at his usual length, expressing his belief that ‘the king had fully satisfied us’ in his answer to Parliament’s propositions, proclaiming that reform but not alteration was required, and questioning what form any consultation with clergy would take.29PJ iii. 141, 145-7. On 14 July he introduced what was probably an unpopular motion that members of the army should take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance.30PJ iii. 216. On 23 July, he was among those who opposed a fiery declaration penned by Nathaniel Fiennes, opining that ‘there were many curses in this declaration against many persons, but never an one against the king’s enemies’. Denzil Holles* protested against what he regarded as Pleydell’s ‘malicious intention’, although his complaint was rejected by those whom D’Ewes styled ‘more sober men’.31PJ iii. 259.

This was Pleydell’s final appearance in the chamber. His absence from the Commons prompted an order for his arrest that November, and he does not seem to have complied with a demand in October 1643 that he attend the committee for absent Members.32CJ ii. 845b; iii. 256b. Instead, he took his seat in the Oxford Parliament, for which he was expelled by the Commons at Westminster on 5 February 1644.33Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 574; CJ iii. 389b. Two months later Pleydell was created doctor of civil law at Oxford, a common enough honour for the king to dispense, but one which was probably more appropriate in his case than in others.34Al. Ox. No evidence has emerged as to what his wider royalist service may have been. A writ for a by-election to replace him at Wootton Bassett was ordered on 1 November 1645, but by the time an election indenture was returned on 18 June 1646 Pleydell was described not as ‘disabled’ but as ‘defunct’.35CJ iv. 330a; C219/43, pt. iii, no. 27.

It is quite possible that Pleydell had succumbed to the disease which had afflicted Oxford as a beseiged city, and in any case it seems unlikely that the inhabitants of Wootton Bassett would make a mistake as to his death. Yet it is difficult to be certain about this, not least because of the multiple renderings of his surname and branches of his family across Wiltshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Gloucestershire. There was a William Pleydell of Akeley in Buckinghamshire who compounded for his delinquency in February 1651, mentioning that he had been in Oxford at the time of its surrender, but not that he had sat in its Parliament.36CCAM 1233; CCC 2712; SP23/221, pp. 135, 138-9. This man, whose estate seems small for that of the former MP, petitioned in November 1660 as Captain Pleydell for assistance on behalf of maimed soldiers from Lord Cottington’s lifeguard.37CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 398. Named to the Buckinghamshire commission of the peace that month, he simultaneously made his will, mentioning his wife Mary, his three daughters, his brother John, and his ‘brother’ William Smyth* of Akeley, who had been a Member of the Oxford Parliament. He died some time between 24 November and 19 March 1661, when the will was proved.38Bucks. RO, D/A/Wf/40/186. The presence of John is suggestive, as is the fact that Smyth’s father was the principal of New Inn, but the Buckinghamshire man was also brother to Edmund Pleydell, citizen and merchant tailor of London, with whom he was associated in land transactions in the 1650s, and thus far it has proved impossible to link Edmund to the Midgehall Pleydells.39Beds. Archives, X668/41-4; LPL, 27311/3. Meanwhile, our MP’s brother John Pleydell† of Midgehall, represented Wootton Bassett from 1660 to 1685, while of his surviving half-brothers: Oliver (bap. 1621), whose line inherited Midgehall, was an ancestor of the Pleydell-Bouveries, earls of Radnor; St John (bap. 1622) settled at Brinkworth in Wiltshire; and Charles (bap. 1629) settled in Gloucestershire.40HP Commons 1660-1690; Lysons, Environs. ii. 527-51; PROB11/349/275 ‘Sir’ John Pleydell.