MEUX (MEWYS), John (c.1612-58), of Kingston, I.o.W.

The Meux family were substantial landowners on the Isle of Wight from at least the late fourteenth century, when they acquired the manor of Kingston, and they were first represented in Parliament in 1584 by Meux’s great-grandfather, William Meux (William Mewes†).16HP Commons 1558-1603. Their public profile on the island fluctuated. Our MP’s grandfather Sir John Meux (d. 1629) was described by Sir John Oglander as ‘the veriest clown of a gentleman that ever the Isle of Wight bred. As he was destitute of learning so of humanity and civility’.17I.o.W. RO, OG/AA/28, f. 11 (in reverse). On the other hand, Meux’s father, Sir William Meux†, who sat at Westminster in 1604, was a prominent member of the county’s godly gentry. He objected to billeting in the late 1620s, and married into the godly Barrington family of Essex and the Isle of Wight, becoming the brother-in-law of prominent puritans like Sir Thomas Barrington*, Sir Gilbert Gerrard*, and Sir William Masham*.18HP Commons 1604-1629.

John Meux spent at least some of his teenage years living with the Barringtons and the Mashams.19Barrington Lttrs. 161. In April 1630 Sir William Meux asked his mother-in-law, Lady Joan Barrington, to ‘give Jack some good counsel, and God of his infinite mercy make him to receive it effectually’, while in October 1631 he expressed the hope that John would stay with Sir Thomas Barrington ‘to be guided and ruled by him’.20Barrington Lttrs. 142, 206; Eg. 2646, ff. 11, 82. On his father’s death in 1638, John, who had already received a portion of £2,000 on his marriage to a sister of Sir Henry Worsley*, inherited manors across the Isle of Wight worth at least £420 per annum and should thus have been able to take his place at the forefront of local society.21C142/786/58; SP23/188, pp. 768-70; Hants RO, 1638B49/1-5. However, Oglander described him as ‘a wild son’, and, if Meux’s placement with his puritan relatives was intended to correct errant behaviour, it proved ineffective: during a 1639 visit to the island by its lieutenant, Jerome Weston, 2nd earl of Portland, in company with George Goring*, Nicholas Weston* and other ‘young blades’, Meux reportedly staged a notable drinking party at his house and at the local gallows.22Royalist’s Notebook, 98, 99, 160.

Meux’s friendships reveal that he inclined more towards courtiers and future royalists than those godly relations by whom he had been educated. In the spring elections of 1640 he was returned for Newtown alongside Nicholas Weston.23I.o.W. RO, JER/BAR/3/9/8, pp. 17-18. Although he left no impression on the records of the Short Parliament, like Weston he was re-elected in the autumn. On that occasion he helped Weston to prevail against his own uncle, Sir Thomas Barrington, who also stood.24I.o.W. RO, JER/BAR/3/9/8, pp. 19-20. Once again, he was very little in evidence at Westminster. He was granted leave on 7 December 1640, ‘to be absent upon some great occasions of his own’ until after Christmas, and did not resurface in the Journal until 7 June 1641, when he took the Protestation.25CJ ii. 46a, 169a.

There was then no sign of him in the record until 15 August 1642, when he was summoned to attend the Commons.26CJ ii. 720a. The bestowal on him of a baronetcy in December 1641, a time of high political tension, had doubtless sent a signal of his likely sympathies, which would have been reinforced by his appointment the following summer as a commissioner of array.27CB; Northants. RO, FH133, unfol. However, it was his signature early in August 1642 to a letter from the Isle of Wight gentry which provoked the summons: the protestation of intention to defend the ‘true Protestant religion established in the Church of England against all papist or other ill-affected persons’ was interpreted by Parliament as a hostile act.28I.o.W. RO, NBC 45/16a, pp. 425-6; OG/BB/426. Meux obeyed the summons. On 27 September he was present to offer two horses for the service of the commonwealth, and declared his willingness to support Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, Parliament’s lord general.29CJ ii. 784a. But this was evidently a ploy to buy time, and it worked to the extent that he was granted leave of absence from Westminster on 15 October.30CJ ii. 810b.

Meux’s promises were clearly hollow. He appears to have spent the early weeks of the war in the Isle of Wight corresponding with local royalists like Sir John Oglander, possibly on behalf of the recently deposed governor, the earl of Portland.31I.o.W. RO, JER/BAR/3/9/8, p. 29; OG/BB/469. In June 1643 he was among several Hampshire MPs called to Westminster to answer accusations that they had been with the king.32CJ iii. 123b. Meux’s fellow Islander John Lisle* observed to the House that he could give ‘no great commendation’ of Meux’s action on behalf of Parliament, although he could not prove that he and others had joined Charles I at Oxford.33Harl. 165, f. 109a. On 28 September the Commons resolved to sequester Meux’s estate ‘for his long and wilful neglecting and deserting the service of the House’.34CJ iii. 256b. Although he was still on the island at the end of October, Meux probably went to Oxford soon afterwards.35I.o.W. RO, JER/BAR/3/9/8, p. 32. In January 1644 Meux apparently signed the eirenic letter of the Members at Oxford to the earl of Essex, calling for peace.36The Names of the Lords and Commons (1646), 3; A Declaration of the Lords and Commons (Oxford, 1644), 22. Once it became apparent that he was sitting in the royalist Parliament there, like many other royalists he was disabled from sitting at Westminster (5 Feb. 1644).37CJ iii. 389b. A writ for the election at Newtown of replacements for both Meux and Weston was issued in October 1645.38C231/6, p. 28; CJ iv. 320b.

The nature of Meux’s service to the royalist cause is obscure, but he was present at Truro when the town surrendered in 1646. Granted a pass by Sir Thomas Fairfax* to travel to London to compound for his delinquency, he petitioned to this end that April.39SP23/188, pp. 762, 765. On 11 July he took the Covenant.40SP23/188, pp. 762, 774. Meux claimed that he had mortgaged his estate in 1641, and that, despite having inherited property worth in excess of £400 a year, he subsisted on an annuity of £100, had debts of over £3,000, and was committed to substantial portions for his two daughters and younger son. That September his claim was endorsed by the county committee, whose members included at least one kinsman, Batholomew Meux, and his uncle, Sir Gilbert Gerrard*, also intervened on his behalf.41SP23/188, pp. 762, 763, 766, 768, 769, 772. It appears that he paid the required fine (£375) before the end of 1646.42SP23/188, p. 777; CCC, 1243.

For the remainder of his life Meux played little part in public life. In evidence submitted by Thomas Coke in April 1651, he was mentioned as having been ‘a friend for the king’s service’, but there is little evidence of his direct involvement in royalist plots.43HMC Portland, i. 589. He was an obvious target for the decimation tax during the protectorate. In May 1656 he claimed to have been ill treated by agents of Oliver Cromwell*. Since he had not received his summons on time, he was ordered to pay according to an arbitrary assessment of the value of his estate, calculated at £50 per annum. As in 1646, he argued that owing to the mortgage, he should be assessed on his annuity of £100. After further petitions, his case was referred to the Committee for Compounding; the outcome is unknown.44CCC 1243-4. The matter may not have been resolved before Meux died, apparently intestate, in February 1658.45Kingston par. reg. His eldest son, Sir William Meux, succeeded as second baronet, but no further member of the family sat in Parliament.