UPTON, John II (1616-89), of Hammersmith, Hadley and Stoke Newington, Mdx.

Upton was left an annuity of £100 in his father’s will, which enjoined that his children (15 in all) should receive a puritan upbringing. In the case of John, details of his early years are lacking, but he was apprenticed around 1634 in the Haberdashers’ Company, which has been described as the ‘most successful’ of the livery companies to promote godly preaching.15D.W. Whitney, ‘London Puritanism: The Haberdashers’ Company’, Church Hist. xxxii, 298. His master was a member of the East India Company and the Merchant Adventurers, so Upton was given a training in foreign trade.16Aylmer, State’s Servants, 220. He was made free of the Company in March 1641, six months before the death of his father.17LMA, MS 15857/1, f. 238v. While his elder brother took over the Devon estate, he, like several younger brothers, merchants in London, one in Seville, inherited the entrepreneurial spirit which had impelled his father to join his mother's half-brothers, Francis Rous* and John Pym* in supporting the Providence Island Company. It can be assumed that Upton remained in London during the civil war. In or around 1648 he married Elizabeth, the daughter not of John Bence, as most authorities have it, but of Alexander Bence*, an Aldeburgh merchant and Grocer.18Misc. Gen. et Her., 2nd ser. ii. 113, 162; PROB11/311, f. 290v. Alexander Bence was a significant figure in the naval administration of the Long Parliament, so he was probably at least one of the means by which Upton was introduced to the world of government service. Bence’s influence should not be exaggerated, however, since he was one of those members purged in December 1648, before the public career of his son-in-law began. Upton’s view of the regicide is unknown, but he was made a commissioner for the sale of prize goods in April 1649, suggesting that he was at least comfortable with it. The award of his post, on the margins of naval administration, was in recognition of his credit-worthiness and standing in the City of London, and gave him a responsible role in selling captured shipping and cargoes. As the Rump Parliament developed its mercantilist approach to foreign policy and naval affairs, Upton’s duties were likely to have increased.

In November 1650, with eight others, among them Thomas Pride* and Slingisby Bethell*, Upton was contracted to victual the navy.19CJ vi. 500b; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 500. In April 1653, he was licensed by the Rump to import certain goods. Within a few weeks of this award, the Rump was dismissed by Oliver Cromwell*, whose interim council of state sought out Upton to join a committee on Scottish and Irish affairs (3 May 1653), with a direction in particular to consider the affairs of Shetland and the Isle of Man.20CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 304, 473. He remained in favour during the Nominated Assembly of 1653, and from July was one of seven commissioners who wielded authority over the affairs of what had once been powerful executive committees of the Long Parliament: concerning indemnity, compounding with delinquents, and advance of money.21CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 428; CJ vii. 342a. After the close of the Nominated Assembly in December that year, Cromwell turned to Upton again as one of a group of six who represented continuity in the management of this business.22CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 318. Upton was active in this post, and in February 1654 was appointed to consider how to reduce administrative costs of managing sequestered estates.23CCC, 668, 669. His salary for managing the estates under sequestration was £300 a year, and he and his colleagues held their meetings at Haberdashers’ Hall, seat of his livery company as well as headquarters of the former Committee for Advance of Money.24Add. 32471, f. 9v; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 97; TSP ii. 267.

In February 1651, after the death of his first wife, Upton married Jane Lytcott, sister of Anne Thurloe, the wife of Cromwell’s secretary of state, John Thurloe*.25Upton Fam. Recs. 37. Thurloe’s rise to a position of great influence after December 1653 may well account for Upton’s favoured position among the servants of the state, and may also explain how he came to the attention of the corporation of Haverfordwest. On 10 July 1654 the borough invited him to represent them in the forthcoming Parliament, even though, as he candidly remarked in a letter to the mayor and his colleagues (29 July), he was unknown to them.26Cal. Recs. Haverfordwest, 148. He played no known part in the Parliament of 1654. He remained a significant figure in the credit structure of the protectorate, however: agents of Thurloe’s in Holland and in Hamburg drew on Upton’s bills to fund their activities in the interests of the English government.27TSP i. 571, 644, ii. 78, 260, vii. 53. He was named to the important trade and navigation committee of the lord protector’s council in July 1655, followed by appointments in November as a commissioner for accounts. In March 1656, the apotheosis of his career as a protectorate came with the post of commissioner and collector of customs.28CSP Dom. 1655, p. 240; 1655-6, pp. 1, 14, 16, 48, 189, 238. He was allowed 1d. in every pound sterling of customs money as his salary, and just as importantly was exempted by the retiring commissioners for the liabilities incurred by Henry Langham and Edmund Harvey I*.29SP18/126, f. 269.

The corporation of Haverfordwest once again chose Upton to sit in the second protectorate Parliament, alongside James Philipps, with whom they evidently enjoyed a closer relationship. The townsmen asked Philipps to brief Upton on their concerns, and wrote separately to Upton to admit that they had troubled him little up to the present, but now sought his help in reducing their tax burden during a visitation upon their town of sickness.30Cal. Recs. Haverfordwest, 153-4. Upton was a little more visible in his second Parliament, but he is sometimes hard to distinguish from his brother, Arthur Upton, who sat in this Parliament for Devon. John Upton was named to the committee of privileges, a sign of his standing among his colleagues (18 Sept. 1656), and as an excise commissioner was naturally added to a committee on excise arrears (21 Oct.).31CJ vii. 424a, 443a. He was probably the Upton on a naturalization committee (6 Oct.), one of 15 October (a small committee with his brother-in-law, Thurloe) to allow the sale of estates to pay the debts of two members of the Peyton family (Thurloe’s wife had been a Peyton), and a committee on papists’ estates.32CJ vii. 434b, 439b, 444a.

In 1657, he formed part of a committee to consider a petition from the City (1 Apr.), and on 30 May, one to inspect revenue streams in the three kingdoms to raise £1,300,000 a year.33CJ vii. 516b, 543a. He was said to have been one of the ‘kinglings’ who wanted Cromwell to accept the offer of the crown in May 1657.34Narrative of the late Parliament (1658), 23 (E.935.5). His only other notice in the records of this Parliament comes from 25 June 1657, when he briefly left the House, thereby holding up a division on the Additional Petition and Advice.35Burton’s Diary, ii. 308. After the closure of this Parliament, Upton was included in a catalogue of government officeholders who had sat in it, with speculation that his customs post alone was worth £800 a year.36Narrative of the late Parliament, 16. Haverfordwest corporation remained happy with Upton’s representation of their interests, however, and when writs for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament were announced, the mayor and burgesses wrote to Upton to acknowledge his readiness to help the town and to confirm his re-election. Once again, they presented their grievances through their other Member, Philipps.37Cal. Recs. Haverfordwest, 159. Any contribution Upton may have made to this Parliament has been lost to us. Nevertheless, Philipps wrote to the Haverfordwest corporation on 28 March 1659 on Upton’s behalf, graciously thanking the town fathers for their favours, and expressing his intention to bestow a gift on the town. Upton wished to know whether a scholarship to Oxford or Cambridge, or an annual sum for the benefit of the town almshouse would be the more acceptable. Phillips reported that he had told Upton of the town’s ardent wish for its charter to be renewed, but also that the constitutional settlement had pre-occupied the House, and driven out any likelihood of charter renewal.38Cal. Recs. Haverfordwest, 160.

The Parliament of 1659 marked the end of Upton’s time as a Member. As one so completely associated with the protectorate, not least by contagion through his brother-in-law, Secretary Thurloe, he was passed over by the Rump Parliament when it was revived later in 1659. Nor did the restored monarchy hasten to embrace Upton or his undoubted abilities. If he was the Mr Upton relieved of an arms cache discovered at his house in January 1661, the royalists’ coolness towards him is hardly surprising.39CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 492. Upton returned to his business career, adding membership of the Levant Company, the Merchant Adventurers, the Eastland and East India Companies to his total by October 1675. His stake in the East India Company by 1675 qualified him for service on the Company’s committees.40East India Company, A List of all the Names of All the Adventurers [1691]. One of his apprentices after the Restoration at the Haberdashers’ Company was Thomas Thurloe, son of the former secretary of state.41LMA, haberdashers apprentice bindings, f. 180, p. 14. By 1671, in the eyes of the government he had been purged of whatever taint of the interregnum had clung to him, and in September that year he was again appointed a commissioner of customs, on an annual salary of £2,000.42CSP Dom. 1671, p. 505; CTB 1669-72, pp. 735, 1120. His tenure was briefly suspended in 1677; in April 1679 he was re-appointed until November 1681 but, as in the case of the other commissioners, on a reduced salary of £1,200.43CTB 1676-9, p. 769, 1679-80, p. 12, 1681-5, p. 290; T. De Laune, The Present State of London (1681), 337. In 1679, the Devon Presbyterian minister and religious writer, Christopher Jelinger, dedicated to Upton his ‘12 resolutions and 12 examinations’ on the subject of usury, strongly subjecting that his godly reputation remained untarnished, despite his undoubted wealth.44C. Jelinger, Usury Stated Overthrown (1679), 269. Upton’s later years were spent at Stoke Newington, where he was buried on 10 December 1689. His will of 22 July 1689, broadly indicating wealth and charity, made bequests of over £6,800 and left annuities worth £35. The next member of his family to sit in the House was his brother Arthur’s son, John, who had married another sister of Upton’s second wife, and sat for Dartmouth in 1679 and 1681.45HP Commons 1660-90, ‘John Upton’.