PIERREPONT, Francis (d. 1658), of Holbeck Woodhouse, Cuckney, and Bottle Lane, Nottingham, Notts.

Although Pierrepont was the scion of an aristocratic family, almost nothing is known about his upbringing and education. Unusually for the son of a gentleman, he did not attend university or the inns of court. The minister who preached his funeral sermon claimed that he had ‘attained to a good degree of learning above many, yea, most of his rank and quality ... what he had being attained by his own industry, without the advantage of university education. He was no stranger to the tongues and well-read in divinity, law and history’.44W. Reynolds, J. Whitlock, The Vanitie and Excellency of Man in Two Sermons (1658), 38 [39]. Lucy Hutchinson – wife of Nottingham’s parliamentary governor Colonel John Hutchinson* – described Pierrepont as

a man of good natural parts, but not of education according to his quality, who was in the main well-affected to honest men and to righteous liberty; a man of a very excellent good nature and full of love to all men, but that his goodness receiv’d a little allay by a vainglorious pride, which could not well brook any other should outstrip him in virtue and estimation.45Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 72.

His first wife, an heiress reportedly worth £10,000, was dismissed by Lucy Hutchinson as ‘a young maid, beautiful and esteemed to be very rich, but of base parentage and penurious education’. Lucy thought the match beneath Pierrepont and claimed that their marriage was an unhappy one.46Thoroton, Notts. ii. 42; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 26.

Pierrepont’s career during the 1640s suggests that he favoured godly reform of the church and was an adept politician and administrator. But where he acquired these attributes remains a mystery. His father, created 1st earl of Kingston-upon-Hull in 1628, was energetic only in his own interests and was suspected of having recusant sympathies. A close friend of the loyal crown servants William Cavendish†, 1st earl of Newcastle and Sir Gervase Clifton*, Kingston supported the king’s war against the Scottish Covenanters in 1639-40 and emerged, if reluctantly, as a royalist during the civil war – in which he was killed in 1643.47Nottingham Univ. Lib. CL C 684; HMC Var. vii. 419-21; ‘Robert Pierrepont’, Oxford DNB. Yet whatever differences in outlook they may have had, the earl regarded Francis as a man of parts. Following the summoning of a new Parliament late in 1639, Kingston canvassed on Pierrepont’s behalf for one of the places at East Retford, believing him superior in knowledge, ‘honest intentions’ and all that became a good ‘freeholder’ to his eldest son Henry†.48Supra, ‘East Retford’; Nottingham Univ. Lib. CL C 294-5, 684. The earl was also keen to have Francis elected in order to cure him of melancholy: ‘I thought of the place [as MP for East Retford] rather to bring him abroad, as the best means to decrease that humour’.49Nottingham Univ. Lib. CL C 294. Kingston secured the support of Clifton, the steward of East Retford, as part of what appears to have been an electoral agreement with Newcastle, whereby the latter acquiesced in the Pierrepont’s return for the Short Parliament on the understanding that Clifton would back Newcastle’s son Charles Viscount Mansfield* next time round. On 26 March 1640, Clifton and Pierrepont were returned for East Retford ‘with the whole assent and consent’ of the freemen.50Supra, ‘East Retford’. Pierrepont received no committee appointments in this Parliament and made no contribution to debate. His only known involvement in the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn was as a signatory to the indenture returning Sir Thomas Hutchinson and Robert Sutton for Nottinghamshire.51C219/43/2/76.

With the outbreak of civil war in 1642, Pierrepont and his elder brother William sided with Parliament, while the eldest of Kingston’s sons, Henry Viscount Newark, joined the king’s party. Lucy Hutchison and other commentators have seen this division as the result largely of policy rather than principle, the aim being to protect the family estates whichever side won.52Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 61; Wood, Notts. 50. In the case of Pierrepont, however, this explanation for his allegiance overlooks what Lucy herself acknowledged was a genuine commitment on his part to the cause of ‘religious liberty’. Indeed, she identified Pierrepont among the ‘zealous disciples’ of the Nottingham Presbyterian ministry – a faction that also included James Chadwicke* and Charles White*.53Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 178-9, 199. Certainly, Parliament regarded Pierrepont as one of its most trusted adherents in Nottinghamshire, appointing him a deputy lieutenant and a colonel of foot, and he was a leading member of the parliamentary committees for Nottingham and the county.54LJ v. 173b-174a; CJ iii. 563b; SP28/241, unfol.; Bodl. Nalson II, f. 227; Notts. RO, DD/294/1; HMC Portland, i. 79, 82, 105; Nottingham Borough Recs. iv. 212. Among those he commissioned as officers in his regiment was Lucy’s own husband John Hutchinson*.55Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 73-4. He was also a signatory to the warrant appointing Hutchinson governor of Nottingham Castle in July 1643.56Add. 25901, f. 90v; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 83; P.R. Seddon, ‘Col. Hutchinson and the disputes between the Notts. parliamentarians, 1643-5’, Trans. Thoroton Soc. xcviii. 72. Nevertheless, Lucy interpreted Pierrepont’s slowness to recruit and deploy his regiment as ‘coldness’ in the parliamentarian cause and accused him of protecting royalists, trying to usurp her husband’s office and of plotting to betray the castle to the earl of Newcastle’s forces in 1643.57Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 74, 76, 80, 83, 85, 93-4, 105, 121-2; S. Race, ‘The British Museum ms of the life of Col. Hutchinson’, Trans. Thoroton Soc. xviii. 42-3. The truth of these accusations is impossible to establish, although they are contradicted by other sources and even by Lucy herself. Like most of the town’s parliamentarians, he abandoned his house (on Bottle Lane – or Linby Lane, as it was then known) in Nottingham at the approach of Newcastle’s army, but not before he had publicly ‘approved and encouraged’ the strengthening of the castle and other measures for the town’s defence, which is hardly consistent with involvement in a plot to betray it to the royalists.58Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 87-8; Nottingham Borough Recs. iv. 210, 212, 216. And though Lucy claimed that in private he declared against strengthening the castle, she also has him expressing a willingness to die in defence of the town itself.59Race, ‘British Museum ms’, 45. Nor did he pursue whatever interest he may have had in the governorship, although the parliamentary diarist Sir Simonds D’Ewes believed that some of the Independent grandees had a ‘secret intent’ in April 1645 to have Pierrepont replace Hutchinson.60Harl. 166, f. 210v.

In July 1644, Pierrepont was appointed a commissioner to reside with the Scottish army in England.61CJ iii. 563b; LJ vi. 642a. This office – which was probably procured for Pierrepont by his brother William – broadened his sphere of political activity to include the affairs of the northern parliamentarians generally and Westminster’s increasingly fraught relations with its Scottish allies.62CJ iii. 563b; LJ vi. 642a; vii. 119b-120a, 368; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 104-5, 279, 532, 542, 551, 603-4; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 160. In November 1644, he joined the 2d Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*), Sir Thomas Fairfax* (soon to be appointed commander of the New Model army), Sir William Constable* and other leading northern parliamentarians in a letter to the Committee of Both Kingdoms*, denouncing the Scots as a military liability. They accused the Scots of failing to engage against the ‘common enemy’ and of imposing an ‘intolerable burden’ upon Yorkshire, ‘which tends to the destruction of this our army [Lord Fairfax’s northern army], in the increase whereof consists the liveliest hopes of our future advantages’.63CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 104-5. Pierrepont, like the rest of the signatories (and his brother William), was to become closely associated with the war-party faction at Westminster, soon to be dubbed the Independents.

An early indication of Pierrepont’s alignment with the Independents came in February 1645, when he joined Lord Fairfax and Constable in expressing support for Major Thomas Sanders* in his feud with Sir John Gell.64Infra, ‘Thomas Sanders’; Derbys. RO, D1232/O/14. And it was all but confirmed on 10 May 1645, with his appointment to the committee for directing the forces of the newly-formed Northern Association.65CJ iv. 138b; A. and O. i. 711; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 160. This committee was dominated by men sympathetic to the New Model army, including Lord and Sir Thomas Fairfax, Constable and Henry Darley*. In May, Pierrepont and other members of this committee wrote a series of letters to Scottish commander-in-chief Alexander Leslie, 1st earl of Leven, urging him to bring his army south in defence of Yorkshire and the Eastern Association – but their pleas were ignored.66CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 523, 528, 532, 542, 551. The formation of the New Model and Northern Association armies rendered the Scots an even greater liability in the eyes of men like Pierrepont, and from July 1645 he signed numerous letters to Parliament from the committee of the Northern Association at York, complaining about the depredations of the Scottish army and pleading that it be removed from the region.67Bodl. Tanner 59, ff. 216, 428; Nalson IV, ff. 43, 60, 187, 214, 261, 282; Nalson V, ff. 21, 99; HMC Portland, i. 243, 291, 304, 318; LJ vii. 639b-640a; viii. 135b-136a. Such letters were regarded by the Presbyterian leader Denzil Holles* as part of an orchestrated campaign by the Independents to ‘embitter men’s spirits’ against the Scots and their English Presbyterian allies.68Holles, Mems. (1699), 46-7; D. Scott, ‘The ‘northern gentlemen’, HJ xlii. 359-60.

As a senior member – probably chairman – of the Northern Association committee, Pierrepont wielded considerable influence in the region. Hugh Potter*, the earl of Northumberland’s northern steward, thought that ‘Pierrepont, for the present, carries the greatest stroke [in the Northern Association committee] and, by his brother [William], might properly be moved [on the earl’s behalf]’.69Alnwick, P.I.3(q): Potter to Northumberland, 21 June 1645. For his part, Northumberland was confident that Pierrepont ‘will not suffer any injury to be done me that is in his power to prevent’.70Alnwick, O.I.2(f): Northumberland to Potter, 24 June 1645. Pierrepont also used his influence for electoral purposes. In the autumn of 1645, he seconded Lord Fairfax in endorsing James Chaloner* as a ‘recruiter’ MP for Scarborough.71Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. M.Y. Ashcroft (N. Yorks. RO Publns. xlix), 42, 43. And it was probably Pierrepont who was instrumental in securing the election of Fairfax’s Yorkshire ally Sir William Lister for East Retford in March 1646.72Supra, ‘East Retford’; ‘Sir William Lister’. Lister’s election may have been a quid pro quo on Pierrepont’s part, for in December 1645 the Northern Association committee at York had written to Nottingham corporation recommending him as a recruiter for the town.73Notts. RO, CA 3420, p. 19. According to Lucy Hutchinson, the town had intended to elect her husband, but Pierrepont had written to him promising to support his return for Nottinghamshire if Hutchinson would do the same for him at Nottingham.74Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 164. In the event, Pierrepont was returned for the town at some point in late December 1645 or early 1646, and Hutchinson for the county the following March (William Pierrepont being one of the signatories to the indenture).75Supra, ‘Nottingham’; C219/43/2/78; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 164.

Pierrepont continued to serve on the Northern Association committee until at least May 1646 and did not take his seat in the Commons until that autumn.76Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 216. On first entering the House, on 10 September, he received the thanks of the House from the Speaker for his ‘many great services done to the Parliament’.77CJ iv. 665a. His ‘faithful service’ was rewarded in October, when the Houses allowed him to act as executor to his father’s will (Kingston having preferred Francis for this trust before his two older sons), notwithstanding that, as a delinquent, the earl’s estate was forfeit to Parliament.78CJ iv. 683a; LJ viii. 542a. Despite his industry in Parliament’s northern affairs during the mid-1640s, Pierrepont was named to only nine committees before the Pride’s Purge and spent most of the period between the autumn of 1647 and July 1649 away from the House.79CJ iv. 701a, 714a; v. 14b, 21b, 75b, 166a, 167a, 253a, 278a, 330a; vi. 34a. Several of his appointments – to committees on indemnity for the soldiers and for rewarding Sir Thomas Fairfax – are consistent with support for the New Model and its friends.80CJ iv. 166a, 167a. And he and his brother William were among those MPs (mostly Independents) who fled to the protection of the army following the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster on 26 July and who signed their ‘engagement’ of 4 August, in which Fairfax and his men were eulogised for their ‘Christian, noble and public affection to the good, peace and prosperity of this kingdom and ... faithfulness to the true interest of the English nation’.81Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 755. On 18 August, Pierrepont was named to a committee for declaring void all the legislation passed by the Houses during the absence of the Speaker and the other fugitive Members.82CJ v. 278a.

Declared absent at the call of the House on 9 October 1647, Pierrepont seems to have stayed away from the Commons until well into the following year.83CJ v. 330a. He was named to just one committee during 1648 – that set up on 28 August to examine James Hamilton, 1st duke of Hamilton, and other Engagers concerning who had invited them to invade England.84CJ v. 689a. Otherwise, the few mentions he received in the Commons Journal between October 1647 and May 1649 relate to his several appointments as a commissioner for collecting the assessment in Nottinghamshire or to his role in shoring up the parliamentarian interest in the county during the second civil war.85CJ v. 400a, 626b, 650b; vi. 34a, 88a. He was certainly active on the Nottinghamshire county committee for much of 1648.86SP28/241, unfol.; Bodl. Tanner 57, ff. 233, 263, 352. Although he was not among those secluded at Pride’s Purge, he played no part in the trial and execution of the king – both of which he almost certainly opposed. Indeed, it was not until 7 May 1649 that he was admitted to the Rump, presumably after taking the dissent to the 5 December 1648 vote (that the king’s answers at Newport were an acceptable basis for settlement).87CJ vi. 202b.

Pierrepont was named to 26 committees in the Rump – over half of them between May and August 1649 – including the committees for excise and the navy and customs.88CJ vi. 219b. A significant proportion of his appointments were to committees for increasing or managing the commonwealth’s finances and the maintenance of its armed forces – issues that were intimately linked.89CJ vi. 205b, 217a, 250a, 265b, 393b, 403b, 576b, 589a; vii. 159a, 162a. He was also named to committees for settling lands on Sir Thomas (now 3rd Baron) Fairfax, for regulating the universities (which played a leading role in settling a godly parish ministry) and to consider the grounds of the Rump’s religious settlement.90CJ vi. 225b, 270a, 388b, 577b. The only tellership of his parliamentary career – on a minor divisions concerning Ferdinando Hastings, 6th earl of Huntingdon – occurred on 15 September 1652 and marked his last recorded contribution to the proceedings of the Rump.91CJ vii. 182b. He was active at local level during the commonwealth, both as a Nottinghamshire magistrate and as a member of the county committee.92SP28/241; Notts. RO, C/QSM/1/12, p. 183; CSP Dom. 1651, p. 481. However, if Lucy Hutchinson can be credited, he was involved in Presbyterian plotting against the Rump and was only spared punishment by the intercession of Colonel Hutchinson, who ‘privately admonished him and endeavoured to reclaim him; which the man, being good natured, was infinitely overcome with, insomuch that ever after, to his dying day, all his envy ceased, and he professed all imaginable friendship and kindness to the colonel’.93Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 199-200. In the absence of any corroborating evidence, this story must be treated with considerable caution.

Pierrepont was certainly a Presbyterian in religion, helping to establish a Presbyterian ministry at St. Mary’s, Nottingham in the early 1650s, serving as a ruling elder for the parish and becoming a patron of the Presbyterian congregation established on High Pavement, Nottingham in 1656.94St. Mary, Nottingham par. reg.; J. Whitlock, Short Acct. of the life of the Rev. Wm. Reynolds (1698), pp. 25-6, 33, 36; Carpenter, Presbyterianism in Nottingham, 29, 52-3. But his political career had been in the service of the Independent interest, and it is worth noting that he did not withdraw from public life until the dissolution of the Rump (attending his last Nottinghamshire quarter sessions on 30 May 1653), which suggests that he was better reconciled to the commonwealth than he was to its successors.95Notts. RO, C/QSM/1/12, p. 215. When he was pricked for sheriff in 1656, his elder brother William wrote to Lord Chief Justice Oliver St John*, pleading for his discharge on grounds of conscience: ‘My brother and I do very much honour my Lord Protector and are most desirous to do him service, but in this we cannot’.96TSP iv. 469. Pierrepont was accordingly passed over for the shrievalty.

Pierrepont died at Nottingham on 30 January 1658 and was buried in his family’s parish church of Holme Pierrepont on 6 February.97Holme Pierrepont par reg.; Elegies on the Much Lamented Death. In the funeral sermons preached for him in Nottingham and at Holme Pierrepont, the ministers of St Mary’s, Nottingham – William Reynolds and John Whitlock – praised him for the support and encouragement he had given to their ministry and congregation, ‘of which he was not only an useful and honourable member, but was pleased also to act as an officer [elder], humbly condescending herein to join himself with persons far inferior to himself in rank and quality’. They also referred to his ‘great care to present godly and able ministers unto such places as he was lord and patron of... not presenting any but such as were first commended, proved and approved by neighbour godly ministers’.98Reynolds, Whitlock, The Vanitie and Excellency of Man, 3-4, 39 [40], 41, 43. A collection of commemorative elegies on his life and death was published in 1659, featuring contributions from the Nottinghamshire parliamentarians Gervase Pigot* and Charles White, the Presbyterian ministers Samuel Coates, Arthur Squire and John Viner, the episcopalian ministers Zachary Cawdrey and Edward Stillingfleet, and the Huguenot academic and religious controversialist Lewis du Moulin, who was a friend of the eminent godly divines Richard Baxter and John Owen.99Elegies on the Much Lamented Death of … Francis Pierepont (1659); Calamy Revised, 123-4, 457; ‘Zachary Cawdrey’, ‘Lewis du Moulin’, Oxford DNB,.

In his will, Pierrepont left his two daughters £6,000 apiece for their marriage portions.100PROB11/279, f. 41v. His personal estate consisted largely of debts owed to him amounting to £15,000 (his creditors included the Yorkshire royalist Sir Thomas Danbie*).101C5/31/93. He was succeeded by his only surviving son Robert†, who was among the handful of insurgents who appeared in Nottinghamshire in support of George Boothe’s* royalist-Presbyterian rising in the summer of 1659.102CCC 769, 3253; Mercurius Politicus no. 583 (11-18 Aug. 1659), 665 (E.766.34). According to Lucy Hutchinson, the young Pierrepont ran away at the first opportunity; and as a favour to his friends and in memory of his father Colonel Hutchinson sheltered him in his house until the restoration of the Rump late in December 1659.103Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 216, 219; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 238. Robert Pierrepont sat for Nottingham in the 1660 Convention, the Cavalier Parliament and the three Exclusion Parliaments and was generally identified as an opponent of the court interest.104HP Commons 1660-1690.