WARCUPP, Robert (d. betw. 1683 and 1685), of Lincoln’s Inn, Mdx.

Originally from Yorkshire, the Warcupps had established themselves in Oxfordshire by the early sixteenth century, when Cuthbert Warcoppe, a merchant of the staple, owned an estate there. Cuthbert’s son Ralph Warcoppe† (1545–1605), taken by his parents into exile at Frankfurt during the reign of Mary I, was a traveller, scholar and client of Sir Francis Knollys and Sir William Knollys†. The latter’s patronage, rather than any extensive landed base, probably explains Warcoppe’s election to Parliament as a knight of the shire for Oxfordshire in 1601.15‘Warcoppe, Ralph’, HP Commons 1658-1603; Vis. Oxon (Harl. Soc. v), 100. Warcoppe’s heir was his nephew and namesake (sometimes Radolphe or Rudolphe; usually Warcup), who was the sheriff of the county faced with the difficult task of collecting Ship Money in 1639-40.16CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 370-1; 1640–1641, pp. 70-1.

The sheriff’s younger brother Samuel, father of this MP, appears to have hitched his career to the rising fortunes of another pair of Oxfordshire brothers, Sir John Lenthall and William Lenthall*, whose sister Anne he had married by 1617.17Vis. Oxon. (Harl. Soc. v), 318; Fulbrook, Oxon., par. reg. While Sir John held the office of keeper of the Marshalsea prison in Southwark, Samuel Warcupp was the borough’s bailiff and keeper of its compter prison.18W. Rendle, Old Southwark (1878), 80-1, 88-9; HMC 13th Rep. iv, 385; CJ vi. 5a. Robert Warcupp gained a special admittance to Lincoln’s Inn in January 1638 at the request of William Lenthall, who was Lent reader.19LI Admiss. i. 234; LI Black Books, ii. 344. Two years later he was one of a group of young gentlemen from the inn who were caught up in a brawl at the Three Cranes in Chancery Lane and accused of disorder and seditious words, which he denied.20SP16/460, f. 170.

Called to the bar in November 1645, Warcupp appears initially to have concentrated on building up a law practice.21LI Black Bks. ii. 366. It was his younger brother Edmund who was placed by Speaker Lenthall first in the household of James, duke of York, during the latter’s confinement there and then as an assistant to the parliamentary commissioners negotiating with the king on the Isle of Wight and who was the Speaker’s agent in acquiring the manor of Witney the next year.22CJ vi. 216b; LJ x. 281; Bodl. Rawl. letters 47, ff. 5, 9, 17, 25, 37, 64; VCH Oxon. xiv. 69. Robert profited from their uncle’s position as the most important man in the commonwealth in 1649, when he was named an assessment commissioner for Oxfordshire and, probably more profitably, counsel for the state assisting the attorney general and the barons of the exchequer in hearing appeals against sequestrations.23A. and O.; CJ, vi. 333b. Made a sequestration commissioner for Oxfordshire in 1650, he received reappointments in this field through the decade, although local activists Thomas Appletree of Deddington and Nathaniel Partridge complained that contributed little, being by 1652 ‘much in London’.24CCC 172, 602, 757; CJ vii. 836b. Meanwhile, during the invasion scare of 1650 he commissioned as lieutenant-colonel of foot of the Oxfordshire militia under Colonel James Whitelocke*.25CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 54, 507. In this case, it was claimed after the Restoration, it was he who did the lion’s share: despite being ‘under’ Whitelocke, he ‘was in effect colonel, and much more, for he was the very right hand of the Lord Whitelocke [Bulstrode Whitelocke*] and of his uncle Lenthall surnamed the Speaker, and a man of a vast power and authority in those parts’.26T. Bradley, Appello Caesarem (1661), 23. It may be, however, that the commentator confused Robert with Edmund, who was to have a long and colourful public career.27‘Warcup, Sir Edmund’, Oxford DNB.

None the less it was Robert who alone of his immediate family served in Parliament. On 27 June 1654 he was one of four candidates at the election in Southwark, standing in partnership with lay preacher Samuel Hyland* against John Hardwick and Peter De Lannoy*, who were associated with the interest of the local militia. Seven weeks later – and a few days after Warcupp’s re-appointment as a judge in cases of poor prisoners had been rescinded, for reasons unknown – over 160 people signed petitions alleging that the return of Warcupp and Hyland, both unsuitable for the honour, was the result of violence, bribery and manipulation of adverse weather conditions by the successful parties and Samuel Warcupp, taking advantage of his position as bailiff. Robert Warcupp was accused of ‘atheism’ and of ‘tippling and gaming’.28SP18/74, ff. 50, 124, 130, 132. Protests were of no avail, however, and Warcupp entered the first protectorate Parliament, where his uncle was again chosen Speaker.29SP18/75, f. 71.

Warcupp’s contribution to proceedings was apparently modest, given his elevated connections, although practical assistance to the Speaker of a kind which escaped the record cannot be excluded. His first committee nominations were on 3 November, two months into the session, and included that discussing abuses in the law courts.30CJ, 381a, 381b. Appointment to a much smaller group of MPs charged with investigating money raised for building a new gaol in Surrey (9 Nov.) offered an opportunity to influence a matter possibly even closer to home.31CJ vii. 383b. Two further nominations related to mercantile and excise business (4 Dec.; 18 Jan. 1655).32CJ vii. 395a, 419a.

Warcupp continued to hold local office, but it is unclear whether he was again a candidate for a parliamentary seat. On 2 August 1659, when Oxfordshire was beset by rumours of insurrection connected to the rising of Sir George Boothe*, he wrote to his uncle Speaker Lenthall of the difficulties in implementing the militia ordinance owing to mistakes in the rendering of commissioners’ names.33Bodl. Tanner 51, f. 110. He himself was re-appointed a commissioner in March 1660, having been re-appointed as counsel to the commonwealth in February, but these were his last known appearances in public life.34A. and O.; CJ vii. 836b

When Samuel Warcupp made his will at English near Nettlebed, Oxfordshire, in March 1662 he described his estate as ‘much wasted’ by the costs of bringing up his many children, but he was still able to provide for a £350 annuity for his eldest son, Samuel, evidently a chronic invalid.35PROB11/309/73. Robert, who was named as executor and envisaged as heir, had houses at English and at nearby Heath End when in September 1683 he made his own will, leaving modest sums to various nephews and nieces. His brother Edmund obtained probate in January 1685.36PROB5/6166; 11/379, f. 94v. Although Edmund was an active justice of the peace for many years, flirted with whig politics and was knighted in 1684 after turning against his long-term patron Anthony Ashley Cooper*, 1st earl of Shaftesbury, he lived to 1712 without sitting in Parliament.37‘Edmund Warcup’, Oxford DNB.