JESSOP, William (1603-75), of St Andrew, Holborn, Mdx.

Jessop was a younger son of an obscure Stafford townsman, and nothing is known about his upbringing or education. His correspondence in later life reveals a man of serious piety after the puritan fashion, but where and when he acquired his godly convictions is not known.48Lancs. RO, DDHU/46/7. By July 1624, at the age of just 20, he had entered the service of the zealously godly Sir Nathaniel Rich†, probably as his law clerk.49PROB11/172, f. 254; Hunts. RO, M32/11. It seems likely that their paths had crossed at Gray’s Inn, for Rich resided in nearby Warwick House and had close connections with the inn, while Jessop may well have been employed by the inn from an early age, although he was not formally admitted there until 1662.50HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Sir Nathaniel Rich’; Newton, Colonising Activities, 62-3; Aylmer, State’s Servants, 234. Jessop’s entry into Rich’s household was the making of his later political career. Rich was man-of-business to his cousins Robert Rich† and Sir Robert Rich† (later 1st and 2nd earls of Warwick), thereby connecting Jessop with England’s premier godly network.51HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Sir Nathaniel Rich’; ‘Sir Nathaniel Rich’, Oxford DNB. It was probably from Rich that Jessop learnt the de Witt system of shorthand, which was a rare accomplishment at that time and may help to explain why he advanced in his master’s service to confidential man-of-business.52Information from Dr Christopher Thompson.

Jessop’s connection with the Rich family secured him appointment as secretary to the Providence Island Company upon its establishment late in 1630, with a salary of £40 a year.53CO124/2, f. 1v; Kupperman, Providence Is. 304. This venture – set up to settle and govern Providence Island, off what is now the Nicaraguan coast – brought together many of the nation’s foremost godly figures, including the earl of Warwick, William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, Jessop’s master Sir Nathaniel Rich and the man Jessop would refer to in 1635 as his ‘most noble and honoured friend’, John Pym*.54Add. 63854B, f. 119. The company’s founders hoped that the island would turn a profit in colonial produce for its investors. But its primary role from the mid-1630s was that of a privateering base against Spanish shipping.55Add. 63854B, f. 209; Kupperman, Providence Is. 105-6; ‘Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick’, Oxford DNB. Jessop was also intimately involved in the most uncompromisingly puritan of the Caroline colonial enterprises – the Saybrook colony at the mouth of the Connecticut River. He was clerk to the Saybrook patentees and was also closely associated with their colonial offshoot the Saybrook company, which included the godly notables Saye and Sele, Brooke, Sir William Boynton*, Sir William Constable*, Sir Arthur Hesilrige* and (Sir) Henry Vane II*.56Winthrop Pprs. (Collns. of the Mass. Hist. Soc. ser. 5, i), 394; Newton, Colonising Activities, 82-3, 177; Kupperman, Providence Is. 325, 330, 333.

It is clear from Jessop’s correspondence as secretary of the Providence Island Company that he shared the intense commitment to the Reformed religion of most of its leading members.57Add. 63854B, ff. 31-3, 37, 46, 72-5, 99, 102, 113, 210. He evidently saw the colony’s establishment in terms of building a Zion in the New World and believed that not the least of its benefits would be to spread ‘the grace of Christ among those poor ignorant souls [the native people] that yet sit in darkness and in the shadow of death’.58Add. 63854B, ff. 46, 99. His correspondence also reveals his interest in the Protestant cause on the continent and an awareness of the increasingly unpropitious climate for adherents of ‘the true religion’ at home. He acknowledged that godly ministers met with many difficulties, ‘but yet we enjoy [a] glorious season. The Lord enables us to walk like children of the light’.59Add. 63854B, f. 113. His marriage in 1634 was to ‘an old friend of his with whom he has a greater portion of mercy than of money’ – suggesting that his choice of wife was determined more by her piety than her father’s prosperity.60Add. 63854B, f. 47. Following Sir Nathaniel Rich’s death in 1636, Jessop became secretary and man-of-business to the 2nd earl of Warwick; and by 1639, he was involved in handling the affairs of the earl’s fellow godly peer Edward Montagu†, Viscount Mandeville – the future earl of Manchester and commander of Parliament’s Eastern Association army.61Hunts. RO, Acc. 2091, no. 489; HMC 8th Rep. ii. 56.

Jessop was closely involved in the design of Warwick and his allies – who included most of the leading members of the Providence Island Company – to invite the Scots into England in 1640 and thus compel the king to summon Parliament.62Adamson, Noble Revolt, 74. With the outbreak of civil war, he moved into military administration, serving from late 1642 as deputy to Sir Gilbert Gerard*, treasurer-at-war to the parliamentary army under Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.63Add. 46190, f. 49v; CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 395, 446, 449, 457, 497; 1644-5, p. 178; 1625-49, p. 644; LJ vi. 397b, 398a. As secretary to Warwick, Parliament’s lord admiral until the passing of the Self-Denying Ordinance, Jessop was also closely involved in colonial and naval administration during the war, serving as secretary to the Committee for Foreign Plantations* and to the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports*, both of which the earl chaired.64Supra, ‘Committee for Foreign Plantations’; ‘Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports’; CJ iv. 117a; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 139, 549; 1644-5, pp. 523, 633. There is no basis for the assertion that Jessop became man-of-business to the earl of Essex during the civil war, or that he was one of the earl’s executors following the latter’s death in 1646.65‘William Jessop’, Oxford DNB. In fact, it was Warwick and several other parliamentarian grandees who were Essex’s executors, with Jessop (as Warwick’s man-of-business) acting as their attorney and paymaster.66Add. 46189, ff. 106, 133; Alnwick, Box XII.7.1-3; HMC 12th Rep. IX, 175-6.

Jessop accompanied Warwick to sea following the earl’s re-appointment as lord admiral in May 1648; and although committed to defeating the royalists he seems to have welcomed Parliament’s renewed efforts that summer to negotiate a settlement with Charles.67LJ x. 300a; HMC 12th Rep. IX, 177. Equally, by the end of the year he apparently shared the apprehension felt by Warwick’s steward Arthur Wilson that God might ‘destroy the kingdom ... by that means by which he preserved it’ – namely, the army.68CUL, Add. 33, f. 76. Warwick’s removal as lord admiral early in 1649 and subsequent retirement from public life obliged Jessop to scale down his own contribution to Parliament’s affairs, and there is no evidence for the claim that he was active in naval administration under the Rump.69Aylmer, State’s Servants, 235, 236; ‘William Jessop’, Oxford DNB.

Jessop seems to have regarded the regicide and the ensuing constitutional changes as less of an obstacle in themselves to serving the Rump than the prospect of taking the Engagement abjuring monarchy and Lords – the commonwealth’s test of political allegiance.70Aylmer, State’s Servants, 235-6. From some of his personal notes that survive among his papers as Warwick’s man-of-business it appears that he took his subscription to the Solemn League and Covenant seriously – as we might expect from a tryer for the twelfth London classis and a friend and admirer of several Presbyterian divines.71Add. 46190, ff. 42, 190-3v; A. and O.; HMC 12th Rep. IX, 176, 177. It was the Engagement’s seeming incompatibility with the Covenant – which required the subscriber to defend the king’s person, the privileges of Parliament and the Reformed religion – that troubled him most. He employed a series of ‘de factoist’ arguments to justify the violation of Parliament’s rights and privileges during the winter of 1648-9, telling himself that this was done against his will and that ‘if the Parliament be in the Members of both Houses, whether admitted to sit or not, what advantages bring I to their privileges by standing out?’72Add. 46190, f. 190. Moreover, ‘if the Members now sitting be the Parliament ... they have not declared their privileges to be broken, and in preserving their privileges (at least as to one of the Houses) I am to pursue [i.e. can uphold] my Covenant’. He seems to have had even less difficulty in justifying the removal of the king

whom God in His infinite wisdom and justice ... hath taken away; who, while he lived, withdrew from his people that protection in lieu whereof they owed him allegiance. Whose son hath, since his [Charles I’s] death, been acted [sic] by counsels pernicious to the good of religion and the ends of the Covenant and is involved in the demerit of his father’s actions and whose establishment on the throne (unless God gives him a new spirit) will hazard the fruit of all the blood and treasure expended in this great cause.73Add. 46190, f. 191.

Nor was Jessop inclined to think that the Covenant obliged him to maintain the House of Lords

especially since the king is removed, whose great council they seem to have been rather than the kingdom’s, whom they do not represent ... Have the House of Lords (though there have been amongst them some faithful patriots) been very serviceable in their generations to the liberties of the nation? ... Was not that one act of theirs in refusing to declare the Scotch army [under the duke of Hamilton] enemies (when they invaded England [in 1648] on a truly malignant principle) sufficient to give a test of their spirits and what might have been further expected from them?74Add. 46190, ff. 191v, 193.

But the argument that seems to have weighed with him most was his conviction that ‘the persons that manage the present power ... will protect and encourage holiness’ and were more likely to uphold what the Covenant termed ‘the true religion and professors thereof’ – or as Jessop put it ‘the great interest of Jesus Christ’ – than ‘any other party ... likely to oppose them’, including the Presbyterians.75Add. 46190, ff. 191v-192, 193, 193v.

Jessop had evidently made his political peace with the Commonwealth by November 1649, when he signed an order as deputy clerk of the duchy of Lancaster council, summoning its officials to appear and subscribe the Engagement.76PRO30/26/21, p. 35. Nevertheless, he was probably less conspicuous in the Rump’s service than as Warwick’s man-of-business and as the accountant to the adventurers for draining the Great Level.77Add. 46190, f. 21; Cambs. RO (Camb.), R.59.31.21.1; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 237, 450; CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 15; CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 159, 245; HMC 12th Rep. IX, 176. The earl certainly retained every confidence in Jessop, bequeathing him £200 in his will of July 1653 and urging his son to ‘make use of him [Jessop] for advice and trust, knowing well by long experience he cannot so fit himself in this kingdom for a knowing, trusty and religious friend’.78PROB11/276, ff. 245, 246v.

The establishment of the protectorate proved more congenial to Jessop’s political sensibilities than the birth of the Rump had been – not least because Warwick, too, found it easier to accommodate himself to the Cromwellian regime than he had to the commonwealth.79‘Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick’, Oxford DNB. In November 1653, a month before Oliver Cromwell* assumed power, Jessop had been appointed assistant secretary to the council of state, at a salary of £1 a day; and by the end of December he was handling large sums of money for the newly-installed protector.80E351/594; CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 229, 458. Appointed clerk of the protectoral council early in 1654, with a salary of £500 a year, Jessop became involved in a ‘multiplicity of business’; and his influence at the Cromwellian court increased in August 1655 with his appointment as treasurer of the protector’s contingencies – ‘an enhanced version of the old keeper of the (royal) privy purse’.81E351/594; Add. 46190, f. 51; LPL, COMM VII/1, passim; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 128; TSP ii. 189, 449; iii. 91, 749; iv. 258-9; v. 314; vi. 194, 256, 441, 483, 484; vii. 480, 547, 556; Clarke Pprs. iii. 113; Aylmer, State’s Servants, 236.

Jessop’s advancement under Cromwell probably owed much to his long-standing connection, and likely friendship, with Cromwell’s secretary of state John Thurloe*.82Cambs. RO (Camb.), R59.31.21.1; HMC 12th Rep. IX, 175-6; ‘John Thurloe’, Oxford DNB. Jessop’s proximity to the seat of power meant that the Newcastle-upon-Tyne merchant adventurers were probably not the only group that sought his good offices when looking to advance their interests at Whitehall.83Tyne and Wear Archives, GU/MA/3/3, f. 112. And when Newcastle’s MP, Walter Strickland, was elevated to the Cromwellian Other House in December 1657, he wrote to the town recommending Jessop as a suitable replacement.84Tyne and Wear Archives, MD/NC/2/2, p. 466. The corporation had little time to consider Strickland’s advice before the Parliament was dissolved. But Jessop did not have to wait too much longer for a seat at Westminster, for in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659 he was returned with Martin Noell for his native Stafford. He probably owed his election to the support of the corporation, although there was apparently a good deal of opposition to him from outside interests.85Supra, ‘Stafford’; Lancs. RO, DDHU/46/4. Jessop, however, did much to help his cause at Stafford by what one of his correspondents described as ‘the manifold favours you have freely conferred upon this place of your nativity’.86Lancs. RO, DDHU/46/22.

Jessop was appointed a commissioner to tender MPs the oath of loyalty to the protector at the opening of Parliament, but thereafter he was named to only two committees – the committee of privileges (28 Jan. 1659) and for supplying the northern counties with a learned and pious ministry (5 Feb.).87CJ vii. 593a, 594b, 600b. He made two recorded speeches – the first, on 3 February, excusing the council’s inability to provide the House with an account of the charge of the navy; and the second, on 26 February, justifying the arrest of a leading Fifth-Monarchy man on the orders of the late protector.88Burton’s Diary, iii. 63, 494. Jessop’s references to the Fifth-Monarchists’ ‘humility’, their ‘seeking of God’, and to Protector Oliver’s tenderness towards them ‘for that appearance of Christ in them’, is revealing of his own sincere piety, especially given that it was in his interest on this occasion to play up the fanatical side of the sect.89Burton’s Diary, iii. 494.

With the fall of the protectorate in April 1659, Jessop lost his offices at Whitehall, leaving him to concentrate, once again, on his work for the Rich family. Having outlived the 2nd earl (who had died in 1658), he was evidently retained by the 3rd earl, the 4th earl and very probably by the 5th earl. He certainly spent a considerable amount of time at the family’s Essex residence of Leez Priory until within a few months of his own death in 1675.90Lancs. RO, DDHU/47/97. Jessop returned to the public stage early in 1660, when the re-restored Rump appointed him one of the under-clerks to the council of state.91CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 310. And it is likely that his aristocratic connections were of help in securing his appointment on 25 April 1660 as clerk of the Commons in the Convention and in obtaining him a royal pardon on 1 May.92CJ viii. 1a; Lancs. RO, DDHU/53/83. In October 1660, he was one of the witnesses in the trial of the regicides.93M. Noble, Lives of the English Regicides (1798), i. p. xli.

Jessop was briefly employed during the early 1660s by the navy commissioners and consequently had dealings with Samuel Pepys†, who referred to him as ‘a man of a great estate and of good report’.94Pepys Diary, ii. 32. Jessop returned to central office again in 1668-9 as secretary to the public accounts committee. These employments aside, he seems to have devoted himself to serving the Rich family, dividing most of his time between Leez, his chambers at Gray’s Inn and his room ‘in the gallery’ at Warwick House.95Lancs. RO, DDHU/46/7-12, 16-17; DDHU/47/1-141; DDHU/53/32; Aylmer, State’s Servants, 238. During his final illness he was nursed by ‘Lady Warwick’ – probably the former Mary Boyle, wife of the 4th earl – dying at some point in February or early March 1675.96Lancs. RO, DDHU/48/7. He was buried at St Andrew, Holborn on 8 March.97Lancs. RO, DDHU/53/31. No will is recorded. He died without a male heir and was therefore the last of his line to sit in Parliament.