PURY, Thomas I (c.1590-1666), of Gloucester

Thomas Pury was dismissed by a Laudian cleric in 1640 as ‘sometimes a weaver, now an attorney’, but this sneer concealed his eminence as a member of one of Gloucester’s ruling families.42CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 582. Pury’s grandfather, Thomas Pury, had been mayor of Gloucester in 1560, as had that Thomas’s own grandfather, John Cooke.43Vis. Glos. 1682-3, 140; Fosbrooke, Gloucester, 209. Our Thomas Pury, in other words, represented at least the fifth generation of civic service to Gloucester by his family. His father, Walter, was a clothier, who had died before Thomas was apprenticed in July 1606 to Lawrence Wilsheire, to learn the clothier’s trade.44Glos. RO, GBR/C10/1, p. 134. Pury began the inevitable progression along the city’s cursus honorum, and was in receipt of favourable leases from the corporation – a customary fringe benefit for its leading citizens – as early as 1619, only five years after he had become free of his trade.45Glos. RO, GBR/B3/1, f. 463v. In April 1625, Pury was one of two councillors delegated to pursue the case the city was making for improved parliamentary representation, capitalising on Gloucester’s county status. Pury’s work as a solicitor for the city seems to date from this time: the same year, he was asked to prepare the city stewards’ accounts.46Glos. RO, GBR/B3/1, ff. 498, 504. In March 1629, he was formally appointed attorney to the mayor, for an annual fee of 40s.47Glos. RO, GBR/B3/1, ff. 540, 540v. He became Gloucester’s main agent in its legal dealings with parties beyond the city walls, with duties as varied as journeying to other towns to represent the city in legal cases, claiming fines from the exchequer in London, and despatching lamprey pies to dignitaries. In 1638, his expenses on this business amounted to nearly £40.48Glos. RO, GBR/B3/1, f. 558; F4/5 passim, but e.g. ff. 69, 99. Noticeably, however, it was not Pury but either the mayor or Sir Robert Cooke*, the virtual high steward, who dealt with the privy council on purely political matters such as the burden of Ship Money.49Glos. RO, GBR/F4/5, ff. 42v, 99. Pury’s London business was more on technical matters, as in his brief to free the mayor from paying the exchequer for the burdensome office of escheator, the local officer of the court of wards, which brought only benefit to the king.50Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, f. 18. Once he became an alderman, from September 1638, Pury became a civic leader in his own right, and he became embroiled in a long-running dispute with the privy council and the court of high commission over the city’s intention to continue to pay a lecturer in the city, whether or not he preached. He and the other city representatives were under arrest for 15 days, and it was not until September 1642 that Pury was compensated by the corporation for his pains in this affair.51Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, pp. 121-2, 227.

Opposing the king, 1640-2

In March 1640, his reputation doubtless enhanced by his battle in high commission, Pury was reported to be a competitor for a seat in the Short Parliament as burgess for Gloucester.52CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 582. He was unsuccessful, but stood again for the second Parliament that would meet that year, and on this occasion was returned.53D’Ewes (N), 96. He was not among those determined Members who made an immediate impact on the House, and was not appointed to any committee until the end of January 1641.54CJ ii. 73b. Pury’s earliest committees were concerned with limiting the powers and authority of the bishops, prohibiting the clergy from positions in secular government, and punishing recusants. Pury doubtless fed the experience of Gloucester into the proceedings, as he did on 14 June, when he reported that in Gloucester the dean and chapter provided no sermon in the cathedral. He secured a special order to rectify this lapse.55CJ ii. 75a, 84b, 99a, 115b, 136b, 166b; Procs. LP v. 129, 142. The Gloucester chamber sent him £50 later in the year to help him secure a bill for uniting churches in the city, on the back of this victory.56Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 201. On 3 August, he was named to the committee charged with preparing impeachments against the bishops, and on 29 October was appointed to manage a conference with the Lords on preventing the nomination of new bishops.57CJ ii. 233b, 234b, 298b. According to his seniority, Pury was supposed to become mayor of Gloucester in 1641, but on 9 September the chamber there accepted that he would be unable to occupy the office because of his service in Parliament. His civic precedence was not compromised, and he continued to receive beneficial leases of city property.58Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, pp. 188, 191, 193. He continued to promote the more mundane civic concerns, taking to London papers which would help the corporation rid itself of the master of Christ’s school, of which Pury’s grandfather had once been a feoffee.59Glos. RO, GBR/G3/SO2, f. 23; B3/2, p. 219. Pury was instrumental in bringing to the attention of the House the libelous remarks of William Chillingworth, a clergyman who had publicly accused some Members of treason, and who had said he expected them shortly to be prosecuted. On 4 December, Pury demanded that Chillingworth and an associate be brought before the House; they were, and were later sent to the Tower.60D’Ewes (C), 212, 232.

During a committee of the whole House the following day, chaired by Edward Hyde, a clause was debated on the future of deans and chapters. Against the opinion of some lawyers in the House who had argued that deans and chapters should not be considered part of the governmental structure of the Church of England, Pury produced the founding grant of the Gloucester dean and chapter to prove the contrary.61Mr Thomas Pury alderman of Gloucester his speech (1641), 2. He read out the statutes enjoining deans to relieve the poor, preach the gospel, and teach the young, and found it easy to assert that none of these functions was being performed. Their lands were bestowed on them in trust, in order that they might fulfil their obligations, not as private property, according to Pury. The Gloucester capitular estate of 18 manors, 12 rectories and 30 vicarages, the emoluments of the cathedral officials, and property in the city would provide amply for a preaching ministry, repair the cathedral and feed the poor.62Pury his speech, 3-8. Pury was confident that an injection of funds on this scale would produce ‘a rich and flourishing clergy’.63Pury his speech, 9. His speech was printed and published in several editions, and evidently stimulated the movement for the abolition of the entire Church of England hierarchy.

During the crisis of the winter of 1641-2, reaching its apotheosis in the king’s attempt on the Five Members, Pury played a part in a range of committees on the security of the nation. He was named to the committee of safety that liaised with the London common council.64CJ ii. 364b, 368a, 382b, 400a; LJ viii. 150b. With his fellow Gloucester MP, Henry Brett, he received from the lord keeper commissions to take down to the justices of their region to empower them to administer the oaths of supremacy and allegiance to suspects.65CJ ii. 387a. This followed Pury’s warning in the House (20 Jan.) that many Catholic strangers were arriving in Gloucester and Monmouthshire, and Gloucester ‘was the place where in former times they were accustomed to surprise the country’.66PJ i. 120. Later that day, he had to admit that he had searched various government offices in vain in a hunt for royal commissions to raise an army.67PJ i. 127. In April, he was named an additional member of the committee charged with planning the counter-assault of the rebels in Ireland. The committee included representatives of the Adventurers, the London-dominated group which had pledged money in exchange for lands in Ireland when the campaign was over. The following day, a bill to enable corporations to participate in the Irish Adventure was guided through the House by Pury, and on 12 May, the city of Gloucester became an enthusiastic corporate member. 68CJ ii. 521a, 523b; PJ ii. 151, 156; Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 211. Pury himself contributed an additional £50 to the £200 committed by the chamber.69Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 213. He was an important link between the citizens of London and Gloucester. As early as 31 January he had reported that the Fishmongers’ Company of London had advanced wheat supplies and £150 for the relief of Londonderry.70PJ i. 233. In May his name was prominent among the Gloucester citizens who advanced sums on Parliament’s ‘propositions’ for Ireland: he personally lent £50.71Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, pp. 213-4. Also that April, Pury served on the committee to wrest compensation from the Westminster company of soap-boilers, one of the king’s monopolistic expedients during the personal rule, and was charged with the care of the bill arising from their deliberations.72CJ ii. 521a, 523b, 530a. Nevertheless, he did not share the objections raised by Sir Simonds D’Ewes about the threat posed by allowing saltpetre-men, another bête-noire from the 1630s, to dig in grounds and outbuildings; in Pury’s view, to discuss such niceties would slow down legislation on military preparations – viewed, of course, as defensive.73PJ ii. 155.

In April and May, Pury brought in a number of intercepted letters, showing plots afoot against the kingdom from abroad. A number were concerned with Ireland, reporting both military incidents in the continuing rebellion there, and on rebels’ supposed plans to ship arms to England using the navies of foreign powers.74PJ ii. 172, 227, 327; CJ ii. 596a. It was from Pury that D’Ewes heard of the letter from John Wilmot* which proposed confiscating MPs’ estates for their rebellion against the king.75PJ iii. 160. His privileged access to this kind of information qualified him for membership of a committee on the rumoured naval build-up in the Baltic, and led to his involvement in publicising the orders and declarations of the House. On 4 June, Pury and five other Members formed a committee to oversee execution of the orders of the House, and to publish them. Two days later, Pury laid before the House an order for dispersing the orders of the Commons through the kingdom, making use of the structure of local administration from head constables downwards. A few days later, it was Pury who reported from the committee on printing; on his advice, 4,000 copies of the Grand Remonstrance and quantities of other declarations were printed for distribution. He also wrote to sheriffs warning them not to publish anything about Parliament without first informing the House.76CJ ii. 604b, 609b, 616a, 616b, 617a; PJ iii. 32, 90. His work in disseminating parliamentary propaganda continued in the build-up to civil war; in July Pury was given the task of overseeing the distribution of 9,000 copies of a declaration against the king’s commission of array, while in August he was busy sending out copies of a declaration countering a royal proclamation. It was on his motion that an order regarding additional propositions for donations of horse, money and plate was printed. His appointment to the Committee for Informations* was a natural progression.77CJ ii. 650b, 719a; PJ iii. 90.

Defending Gloucester, 1642-4

On 20 August 1642, having been created a deputy lieutenant for the city, Pury was given leave to return to Gloucester, and he remained there for a year. He was probably back in time to participate in the general meeting of gentry in Gloucester on 25 and 26 August, which laid the foundations of a defensive force in the county, on the basis of adherence to the militia ordinance.78CJ ii. 729a; A Relation … likewise sixteen propositions (1642, E.116.15). He reported from Gloucester on further evidence of military preparations by the Catholic Edward Somerset, Lord Herbert, son of the 5th earl of Worcester. Pury had confiscated Herbert’s horses, and now offered to raise a troop in the city for its defence. His offer was accepted, and the order was drawn up by John Wylde, knight of the shire for Worcestershire. D’Ewes thought it odd that Herbert’s horses should be confiscated only because he was a Catholic, but after a savaging in the House earlier that summer by the ‘fiery spirits’, thought it better on this occasion to keep his own counsel.79CJ ii. 763b; PJ iii. 353. A defence committee had been set up in Gloucester as early as 5 August 1642, although Pury, still in London, was not included. But once back in the city, he was in the forefront of every development there. He and the mayor wrote to the Speaker in November to warn of the dangers of mutiny among recently arrived soldiers.80HMC Portland, i. 67. It was reported to Lady Brilliana, wife of Sir Robert Harley*, that Pury and Sir Robert Cooke* were ready to relieve Brampton Bryan, suggesting Pury’s pre-eminence in Gloucester. They were waiting for parliamentary authority to move westwards, but in the event, however, Pury’s troops were hemmed into Gloucester, and forays forth were impossible.81HMC Portland, iii. 98. He and William Singleton* were on a committee to dispose of the city plate to raise cash, and in March 1643 both were among those who scrutinized the accounts of money disbursed for soldiers under the command of the outsiders, Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford and Sir John Meyrick*, a body which extended its brief to audit accounts of loans by citizens.82Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, pp. 240, 250; HMC Portland, i. 78. This was probably in effect the start of Pury’s role as treasurer of the garrison. The civic standing of the city’s forces was an issue for the Gloucester civic leaders. An order of February 1643 confirmed Pury as a captain of militia by the terms of the city’s charter, and in April he took command of a company in the city regiment of Henry Stephens.83Glos. RO, GBR/G3/SO2, f. 27; B3/2, p. 254. The regiment was notionally under the command of Sir William Waller*, but evidently claimed a degree of independence. There developed an uneasy relationship between this city regiment and those of Stamford and Edward Massie*, the latter having taken command of the garrison in June.84Dorney, Brief and Exact Relation, 15. At this point, Pury was among a minority of citizens that Massie thought supported him.85Bodl. Tanner 60, f. 197. Pury was in Bristol on the eve of the siege there, but returned to Gloucester determined to apply lessons learned from that disaster.86W. Prynne and C. Walker, A True and Full Relation (1644), ‘Catalogue of Witnesses’, 5 (E.225.1). On 9 August, the House of Commons received a letter from Pury announcing that Gloucester was besieged, and plans were set in train to relieve it.87Harl. 165, f. 149v. The siege, which lasted until September 1643, saw Pury assume the role of principal contact for the besieging royalists. They called on him to surrender on various occasions, and each time he refused or sent no reply. His militia company was active in firing on the surrounding royalists up to two days before the siege ended.88Dorney, Brief and Exact Relation, 1, 6, 10.

The siege of Gloucester was lifted on 5 September 1643, and by the 19th Pury was back in the Commons. Pury’s return marked the beginnings of the parliamentary committee for Gloucester, which he chaired.89CJ iii. 247a. The continuing problems of funding the garrison were pressing, and he was the leading figure in devising various expedients to supply the troops, and seeing them through the House. In October, receipts of royalists’ estates, both local and as far afield as Kent, were targeted, as were a monopoly by James Stuart, 1st duke of Richmond, on cloth, and hospital lands.90CJ iii. 270a, 272b, 276b; LJ vi. 431b; Add. 31116, p. 174. In January 1644, the importers of currants in the cargo of a ship in London were made to pay an extra 6 per cent above the ordinary customs, and the proceeds were sent to Gloucester via Pury. Within a few months, this opportunistic imposition had been codified as a standing tax on all currants imported, in a first ordinance for the payment of ‘reformadoes’ generally, and then in an ordinance published on 19 March 1644, specifically for the use of Gloucester garrison.91CJ iii. 369b, 416a, 417a, 432b; LJ vi. 383b; vii. 275b; A. and O. i. 393-4, 396-7. Another former commercial royal appointment, to the vintners, was commandeered for the same purpose.92CJ iii. 466b. The garrison served as the headquarters for the parliamentarian war effort in the Marcher counties and south-east Wales, and was surrounded by territory not yet under the control of Parliament. For that reason, the ordinance authorizing raising assessments and sequestration money for its support was regionally important, and on 13 April Pury reported from the committee drafting it, thus indicating his primary role in its progress.93CJ iii. 455b, 458a.

It was probably his ingenuity in proposing expedients to maintain the forces in Gloucester, together with his energy and commitment to military action, that recommended Pury to the House for an enduring involvement in committees to provide financial resources for the army. On 31 October, he was one of a group managing a conference with the Lords on a variety of topics including maintaining the earl of Essex’s army. At around the same time, he was named to committees on supply for the military associations of Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh and Sir Thomas Myddelton*, and on 6 December chaired a committee of the whole House on supply and recruitment for Essex’s army.94CJ iii. 296b, 298b, 321a, 339b. D’Ewes was struck by the slow progress of business, and then discovered how the House was divided into factions: one very sympathetic to the Scots army, one supportive of county military associations, and one wedded to the original structure of Essex’s army. This last group, thought D’Ewes, was the largest, perhaps the size of the other two groups together.95Harl. 165, f. 233. Pury continued to chair this committee of the whole on several days in December, before being summoned to give evidence in the court martial of Nathaniel Fiennes I* for surrendering Bristol.96Harl. 165, ff. 233v, 237v, 242v, 244v; Add. 31116, p. 200; CJ iii. 340b. This was not the only high-profile trial that claimed Pury’s attention. In March 1644, he was required to give evidence at the trial of Archbishop William Laud, specifically on alleged abuses in the court of high commission: a task for which Pury was able to draw on his personal experiences, probably with grim satisfaction.97CJ iii. 422a; LJ vi. 378b; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 4.

While ordinances for the relief of Gloucester garrison were proceeding through the House in April 1644, Pury was still active in measures to provide adequate funding for the parliamentarian war effort. A committee at Grocers’ Hall was formed under Pury’s chairmanship to raise £100,000 from the City of London; it was asked to add to its remit the supply of garrisons at Windsor and Aylesbury.98CJ iii. 457a, 458a; Harl. 166, f. 48. The principal features of this expedient were the sequestration of estates around London, the granting of the ‘public faith’, and the payment of interest on loans from excise receipts. Another unit of the army in urgent need of supply was the artillery train; it was a measure of how desperate the problem had become that on 18 April Pury and others each volunteered £50 to enable the train to move the following day; he had to report dashed hopes of a windfall when a supposedly silver coffin found at St Paul’s turned out to be made of tin.99Harl 165, f. 244v; Add 31116, p. 263; CJ iii. 462b, 464a, 466a; LJ vi. 524b. He remained in the Commons continuously until the summer of 1644, working mainly on questions of army supply. He involved himself with the problems of his own garrison and that of Aylesbury, the forces of the earl of Denbigh and of Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*, 2nd Baron Fairfax [S], and the forces for Shropshire and Oxfordshire. He held discussions with the commissioners for customs and those for excise, and was on a committee that considered the potential contribution that mortgages might make to Parliament’s chronic financial problems.100CJ iii. 478b, 482a, 492a, 508b, 517b, 520b, 521b, 534a, 536a, Add. 31116, p. 291; Harl. 166, f. 75v.

Pury returned to Gloucester in August 1644, and remained there until November. His return coincided with a council order that a parliamentary committee – probably that for Gloucestershire – should attend the breakfast held in the city for the nomination of civic officers.101Glos. RO, GBR/G3/SO2, f. 32. His main purpose in going home, however, was to sort out the confusion in the city’s military accounts. Various committees had been involved in the local war effort, and Pury’s own military career illustrated the jumble. He had been a captain in one of the Gloucester regiments for which he was raising money, and there was an urgent need to audit accounts for the various financial expedients he had hit upon. There was evidently a dispute in Gloucester about the future of the city’s regiment. On 2 September Pury and William Singleton took to Waller a request that the corporation should retain its chartered right to nominate for commissions in his army.102Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 309. Pury was working on accounting matters from various angles. He had £1,000 at his disposal in October to repay those in the city who had made loans, but it was typical that some of this went instead to repair a drawbridge.103Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 317. This visit to his home city marked a deterioration in Pury’s relations with Governor Edward Massie. There may have been friction between the two from earlier in the year: D’Ewes recorded in May how Pury managed in his report of it to suggest that Massie conducted himself ‘strangely’ in his military campaign in Herefordshire.104Harl 166, f. 67v. But after Pury’s stay in Gloucester, Massie complained to the Committee of Both Kingdoms* of the alderman’s inconsistency of approach towards him.105CSP Dom. 1644, p. 525. The root of the problem lay in rivalries between the different military units in Gloucester, and Massie was ever ready to take offence at any perceived slight. By January 1645, Massie was attributing at least some of his local difficulties, including desertion, to Pury’s recent visit, and expressed irritation at what he considered his ill-informed criticisms. Pury’s designation of Massie’s troops as ‘supernumeraries’ rankled, and doubtless Pury was indeed working to promote a locally-managed regiment.106CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 237-8, 266, 268. Things did not run all his way in Gloucester, however, as in April 1645 the council petitioned Speaker Lenthall that Massie might be retained as governor.107Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 327.

Committeeman, 1644-8

Pury was back in the Commons by 14 November 1644, to the relief of Massie, who thought that Gloucester could well do without him.108Luke Letter Bks. 382. He arrived in time to hear a statement by Sir Arthur Hesilrige on the disaster of the second battle of Newbury. He was named that day to a committee on the value of offices held by MPs.109CJ iii. 695b. This was a prelude to the committee which eventually brought in the Self-Denying Ordinance on 9 December. In January Pury was one of four Members instructed to visit the excise commissioners in search of an answer to the need of the two main armies for £10,000.110CJ iv. 14b. His interest in the wider problem of military supply and reorganisation dovetailed with the persistent problems of Gloucester garrison, and he made separate visits to the excise office to press the local case. On 17 February 1645, his experience in this field qualified him for membership of the committee of 30 MPs charged with bringing in an ordinance for what became the New Model army: this body evolved into the Committee for the Army*, one of Parliament’s most important executive bodies.111Supra, ‘Committee for the Army’; CJ iv. 32b, 37b, 51a. In all of these activities, Pury’s single-minded approach to winning the war shines through; in Gloucestershire his similarly robust approach to royalists convinced an observer that he bore ‘no good will to gentlemen’.112HMC Portland, iii. 126. He brought in an ordinance to repay himself £4,000 ‘on the public faith’ from the estates of two Gloucestershire gentry, and with Nathaniel Stephens* and Thomas Hodges I* lent £500 for the garrison to pre-empt payments from the excise.113CJ iv. 346a; LJ vii. 596a. He was a natural member of the group known from this time as the Independents. Pury seems not to have been particularly busy on the floor of the Commons in the spring and summer of 1645, being named only to 12 committees between 1 April and 31 August, but he was occupied fully with Army Committee work, pursuing local committees for their contributions.114Suffolk RO (Ipswich), HD36/A/138; SP28/29-33, 36-9, 41, 46-79. He was also certainly involved in local military operations, Massie having moved on from Gloucester. He had to liaise with the Scottish army, as it moved westward to besiege Hereford, and was the link between the Committee of Both Kingdoms and the Gloucester committee on proposed new garrisons.115CJ iv. 223b. He was no friend of the Scots, however, reporting at a conference with the Lords a letter from the Yorkshire committee complaining of them.116LJ vii. 639b, 640a.

Pury was second in importance only to Robert Scawen* in the Army Committee. From April 1645 he attended nearly as many of its meetings as Scawen, and the patterns of attendance of the two men ran in parallel down to the end of 1648.117SP28/29-33, 36-9, 41, 46-79. In November 1645 Pury went to press on the Lords the ‘absolute necessity’ of passing an ordinance for the sale of delinquents’ lands.118CJ iv. 342b. The following month it was he who took to the Lords the expedient, devised by the Army Committee, of selling off ancient game parks to fund the New Model.119CJ iv. 386a. Pury’s experience as a propagandist proved useful when Parliament wished to counter rumours promoted by the king that lands in south Wales were to be confiscated in the event of a parliamentarian victory.120CJ iv. 242b, Harl. 6852, f. 295; Declarations of Lords and Commons (1645, 669.f.9.45). He was in the winter of 1645-6 the most active MP in the campaign to reduce south east Wales to the will of Parliament, and took to the Lords the orders for military commissions in Glamorgan and taxation in the region as a whole.121CJ iv. 348a. As one of the most senior members of the Gloucester and south Wales committee, Pury ensured he was represented by his son at meetings in Cardiff of the new committee there. In January the Cardiff committee had to endure the rising by disaffected former members of the Glamorgan ‘Peace Army’, who six months earlier had revolted against the tax burdens of the king, and who now jibbed at the possibility of a New Model presence in the region.122Bodl. Nalson V, f. 233.

In September 1645 Pury opposed the award to Massie of an iron-works in the Forest of Dean: his own family had interests in the forest, and by 1649 Thomas Pury II* was embroiled in controversy over his use of prime naval timber for iron-making there.123Harl 166, f. 266v; A Modest Check to Part of a Scandalous Libell (1650), 2-3. As one of the political Independents, Pury came to be distrusted by their opponents and critics. When he became clerk of the petty bag in chancery, his acquisition of central office was seized upon by a prominent scourge of the Independents as evidence of his self-seeking ambition.124C. Walker, History of Independency (1648), 53 (E.445.1). He had already received £1,000 out of the estate of Henry Somerset, 1st marquess of Worcester for the losses he had sustained in the civil war.125CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 704; CJ v. 39a. In 1647, he was able to draw a line under his complex financial relationship with the Gloucester corporation, and he and the council discharged each other of outstanding sums, which included those arising from Pury’s treasurership of the garrison, and from his legal work on the city’s behalf.126Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 410. He received an annuity from the city from November 1647, the fruits of one of his own incentives to lenders to the parliamentarian cause, and continued to be active in promoting civic improvements. He succeeded in bringing to fruition the long-sought ordinance for uniting certain churches in Gloucester, fitted out one church – his own – for a preaching minister, and in July 1648 lent money to create a new ‘tolsey’ or council house in another.127Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, pp. 442, 450, 459, 460; Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. lxvii.79. Despite the jibes of the London-based critics against the Independents, in the local dispute between Walter Powell, the vicar of Standish, and the Gloucestershire committee Pury was exempted from the vicar’s denunciations. Powell commended Pury for having helped procure for him the favour of the Committee for Plundered Ministers*.128W. Powell, Newes for Newters (1648), epistle dedicatory; W. Sheppard, An Answer to the Scandalous Aspersions of Committees (1648). Pury’s own religious outlook, to judge from his many interventions in Gloucester ecclesiastical matters, including the city’s take-over of the cathedral, was thoroughly Erastian.129Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, pp. 583; B3/3, p. 878.

In 1646 and 1647, most of Pury’s parliamentary work was concerned with the perennial problems of supporting the armies. Some of this continued to focus on local financial mechanisms, such as arranging for the proceeds of royalist compositions to recompense lenders to the garrison at Gloucester. By May 1646 the city was having to accommodate prisoners of war and to cope with floods.130CJ iv. 534a, 591a. He was by no means confined to merely local army matters, however. In October 1645, he had taken the chair at least six times in committees of the whole House, on the topic of paying off the Scots.131Add. 31116, pp. 470, 471; Harl. 166, ff. 268, 268v, 269v. In June 1646, he received from Henry Herbert* a deposition from a Herefordshire man that strongly suggested collusion between the king and the Scottish army in 1645, and worked on estimates of how much the Scots had cost Parliament, and how £100,000 might be raised in the City of London to be rid of them.132CJ iv. 569a, 591a, 650b; v. 6a; HMC Portland, i. 362-3. In the summer of 1646, he and Scawen were active in trying to sustain the war effort in Ireland, through joint working with other committees. They worked with the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs, and then approached the parliamentary committee at Weavers’ Hall that supervised secured loans to Parliament. Their plan was to extend the borrowing on the security of the excise, and with Samuel Browne, Pury reported to the House on progress.133CJ iv. 629b, 641b, 674a. Pury’s service on the Derby House Committee of Irish affairs in 1647 (to which he was never formally appointed) sprang from this task of securing finance for the army in Ireland, itself a product of his prominence in the Army Committee.134SP21/26, pp. 78, 95. Pury was still busy in this field in the autumn of 1647, chairing the committee for an ordinance to encourage loans for the Irish campaign.135CJ v. 298a, 306a, 325b, 347b, 354b. Among his other interests were the continuing drive to raise money from sequestrations and sales of lands of royalists and bishops, the support for printing the scriptures, the clamp down on unlicensed preachers and publishers, and the refurbishment of damaged church buildings.136CJ iv. 695a, 708a, 710b, 714b; v. 11a, 35a, 70a, 99b.

Ominously, in October 1646 Pury was named to a committee which reviewed the commissions to the major-generals, those officers who led armies outside the New Model.137CJ v. 689b. This was the start of attempts by Parliament to reduce the strength of the army, by disbandment and by posting to Ireland. A petition of the army was reported to the Commons by Sir John Clotworthy and Sir William Waller (27 Mar. 1647), and Pury was included in the committee that would look (tepidly, as it turned out) into the grievances of soldiers who feared disbandment.138CJ v. 127b; Gardiner, Great Civil War, iii. 227. In May Pury returned to Gloucester to clear his accounts there, but on 7 June he was in the House when it was besieged by ‘reformado’ soldiers of the major-generals’ armies, who demanded their arrears of pay. Pury was appointed to the committee formed that day to appoint auditors of army accounts.139CJ v. 200b; Gardiner, Great Civil War, iii. 285. The political victims of resentment by the army were in the first instance the Presbyterian Eleven Members, among them Pury’s old adversary, Massie. Pury himself suffered army violence. On 8 July, he was attacked in the street by soldiers, on his way to the Commons. Nothing deterred, he was in the seat the following day, to be named to a committee on impressment. Four of his assailants were imprisoned.140CJ v. 237a, 238a, 239a. In the counter-revolutionary turmoil of that summer, on 26 July a mob hostile to the army invaded the Commons chamber. On the 30th, a number of MPs fled to the New Model to seek protection. Pury was not reported to be among them, but there is no record of his attending the House between 21 July and 9 September. His role as an army paymaster and disbander undoubtedly provoked the wrath of the soldiers on 8 July, and he may have fancied his chances better in Gloucester or lying low in London, rather than with the New Model. In May Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke had denounced the army to the City, pronouncing it the best hope of the king because of its unpopularity. Pury was nominated as an overseer of Pembroke’s will in 1649, and so it is possible that Pury had been assaulted as an associate of the earl’s. They had worked together from March 1645 as members of the committee for maintaining the New Model.141Clarke Pprs. i. 24, 26; Sheffield City Archives, Elmhirst 1360; LJ vii. 294a.

Once back in the House, he resumed his work in the area of army finance. He was responsible for seeing through the ordinances for the monthly assessments for the army in Ireland (9 Sept.), and for further borrowing on the security of the proceeds.142CJ v. 298a, 306a, 308b, 325b. He was one of three MPs required to raise a further £50,000 for Ireland by selling land there on the authority of another ordinance.143CJ v. 354b. Like his fellow treasurers of the garrison at Gloucester, Pury was awarded a rather ungenerous allowance of 1d for every pound he had ventured in expenses (17 Feb. 1648).144LJ x. 48a. It was Pury who took to the Lords the ordinance for satisfying the arrears of the soldiers by issuing debentures against confiscated property, and in May 1648 was named to the committee that removed the grant of lands to Major-general Rowland Laugharne†, defeated at the battle of St. Fagans, and bestowed them on the brigade of Colonel Thomas Horton, the New Model victor of that engagement.145CJ v. 541a, 544b, 557a. Between May and December 1648, Pury was inactive in the Commons. He was named only to three committees in that period, but was busy in the Army Committee, at least until October.146CJ v. 562b, 669b; vi. 78b; SP28/29-33,36-9, 41, 46-79. Still numbered among the Independents, Pury’s conduct during September was to attempt to frustrate the progress of the Treaty of Newport with the king. Along with other Gloucestershire radicals, Nathaniel Stephens and Thomas Hodges I, he was a member of a group who met at the house of John Lisle* to plan tactics. According to the hostile polemical journalist, Marchamont Nedham, Pury sought to resume discussion of the legitimacy of the treaty by insisting on points of order, ‘saying the vote was but once read in the House, and ... moved that it might be debated anew or recalled and not sent up to the Lords’.147Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 27 (26 Sept.-3 Oct. 1648), sigs. Nn2(V), Oo (E.465.19). Although at least one pamphleteer included him in a list published on 4 January 1649 of the commissioners to try the king, his name did not in fact appear in the final published ordinance of two days later.148The Manner of the Deposition of Charles Stewart (1649), title page (E.357.4). He was able to accept the trial and execution easily enough, however, as he was in the Commons on 1 February, when he took the dissent to the vote of 5 December to continue treating with the king.149CJ vi. 127b; PA, Ms CJ xxxiii, p. 625; [W. Prynne], A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case (1660), 23 (E.1013.22). Among his first tasks was an enquiry into the elections of Sir Thomas Fairfax* and Nathaniel Rich* for Cirencester, and he concluded that they were valid.150CJ vi. 131a, 136a.

Commonwealth and later career, 1649-66

In the early months of the Rump Parliament, Pury was responsible for the act abolishing deans and chapters, for him doubtless a satisfying outcome to his first denunciation of them in 1641. He was named to the committee to decide the procedures for selling the fee farm rents of the crown – his home city was to profit as a corporate purchaser – and was one of the two organizers of the committee sent to the City to raise £200,000 for the army (18 Apr.).151CJ vi. 147b, 160b, 186b. In May the Army Committee, now under his chairmanship, was asked to consider legislation for additional assessment commissioners. Among the other matters considered in 1649 by the Army Committee, or related legislative committees to which he was named, were the accounts of Daniel Axtell*, the expenses of Thomas Grey*, Lord Grey of Groby, the size of garrisons and the artillery establishment. 152CJ vi. 199b, 239b, 248a, 254a. A year later, Pury recommended to Parliament a package of measures that provided the basis of support for the army. Sequestration revenue controlled by the commissioners at Goldsmiths’ Hall was to be hypothecated for the expeditionary force in Scotland; sales of delinquents’ estates were to provide security for ‘doubled’ loans; further sales of church lands were to be explored as another source of security. The House seemed content with Pury’s arguments.153CJ vi. 452a, b. Beyond his preoccupations with military finance, Pury took an active part in the religious legislation of the Rump. He brought in the bill to secure £20,000 as a fund for a national ministry (2 May 1649), with supplementary legislation, and sat on committees for acts to promote the gospel in Ireland and Wales.154CJ vi. 199b, 327b, 352a, 382b. It was as one of the Rump’s busiest administrators that Pury was asked to lead the committee for the security of Parliament’s records: he recommended their removal to Westminster Abbey.155CJ vi. 333a, 347b.

Pury was appointed as a militia commissioner for Gloucestershire during the Scottish incursion as far as nearby Worcester in 1651, appropriately for a man so committed to the republic. This episode incidentally saw his final victory over Massie, who had supported Charles Stuart at the battle of Worcester, when Pury was named to the committee to set up a high court of justice to try such rebels.156CSP Dom. 1651, p. 394; CJ vii. 62a. It is therefore of note that his activity in Parliament tailed off sharply after February 1651: indeed, he was named only to one committee between 25 February and 11 December, and that on the subject of Charles I’s soap monopoly, in which he had taken a special interest ten years previously.157CJ vi. 581a; ii. 523b, 530a, 584b, 657b, 723b; v. 383a. Pury had been temporarily inconspicuous in the House before, but now his absences were not a result of his preoccupation with Army Committee business. After January 1650, his attendances tailed off there, too, and his last recorded appearance in the committee that he had served so faithfully was in July 1651.158SP28/29-33, 36-9, 41, 46-79. He held office in chancery as a clerk of the petty bag, but his work in that court can hardly account for his low profile. The value of the office was agreed to have been reduced to one eighth of what it had been when lucrative patents of bishops and archbishops were processed: ironically enough, given Pury’s record as a scourge of the Anglican hierarchy.159CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 162. Gloucester saw much more of him. He had never slackened in his efforts on behalf of the city. In March 1650, the corporation began moves to bring to fruition Pury’s vision of 1641: that of poor relief, repairs to the fabric of the city, and education funded from the untapped resource of dean and chapter lands. Pury was special adviser to the project. Under his guidance, many of the cathedral buildings were acquired by the chamber, and he himself bought a prebendary’s house in College Yard. Plans to reorganize the city parishes, including that of the cathedral, continued under his direction.160Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, pp. 545, 547, 583. It must have been with his full approval that Oliver Cromwell* was appointed high steward of the city after the battle of Worcester: Pury had been asked to bring in an act to reward him in 1649.161Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 639; CJ vi. 221b.

By the time that Cromwell dissolved the Rump, Pury had long been a complete absentee from Parliament. He found no place in the Nominated Assembly: he was no religious radical, and identified himself too closely with his home city to offer much to those who selected the Members. He remained the dominant figure in Gloucester, however, and was inevitably returned in the election for the first protectorate Parliament in 1654. His seniority was acknowledged in his being named to the privileges committee, and most of his appointments to other committees can be related to earlier interests of his.162CJ vii. 366b. Thus, he sat on the committee for Irish affairs, and on the committee to regulate chancery, where he had held office. On the committee to recognize the government of the protectorate, he probably supported the government.163CJ vii. 369a, 370a, 371b, 374a. He chaired a committee on the tax liabilities of Dutch merchants in London, and concluded that they had no entitlement to exemption, whether from the United Provinces or the Spanish Netherlands.164CJ vii. 395a, 406a. He did not put himself forward for the 1656 Parliament, passing the baton of representation of Gloucester to his son, Thomas Pury II*. This was not the end of his aspirations to a place in Parliament, however: he stood as a candidate in the elections for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in 1659, but was defeated by the tactics of the city’s two sheriffs at the poll. They polled for all three candidates at once, and the effect was to turn what Pury considered a clear majority for him to take first place, into a defeat. There were two seats, and his opponents benefited from each other’s second-place votes. Each also took enough of Pury’s second place votes to force him into third place. Pury petitioned the Commons, but to no avail. The episode was a clear indication that he had become detached from his political base, or had at least made enemies among younger members of the Gloucester corporation.165Reasons inducing the Equity and Justice of Mr Pury’s Petition (1659, BL 190.g.12 (164)).

Pury was active in the revived Rump Parliament in 1659. He played a leading role in drafting a bill for commissioners of the admiralty and navy, reporting committee recommendations on 26 May that were not all accepted. Proposals for 21 or 11 salaried commissioners were vetoed by the House in favour of 9 unsalaried ones.166CJ vii. 665b. Pury, Thomas Boone and Nicholas Lechmere withdrew on 31 May to draft amendments to the bill; these too were defeated. The act as it appeared was very wide-ranging, and gave extensive powers of command over the navy to the civilian commissioners.167CJ vii. 665b, 669b, 670a; A. and O. ii. 1277-82. Pury’s former interests in army finance were recognized in a series of nominations to committees: for bills on assessments and on bringing in arrears of revenue due to the commonwealth, on maimed soldiers, and on the militia.168CJ vii. 682a, 689a, 690a, 694b. In none of these did he play a discernibly leading role, however, and it appears that he was somewhat reduced in stature from his glory days of ten years previously. Among the range of other committee appointments that came Pury’s way were those on paying the proper expenses of Protector Richard and the bills for Protector Oliver’s funeral, in which he was presumably regarded as someone sympathetic to the Cromwells.169CJ vii. 665a, 704b. His commitment to a republican government as against a Stuart monarchy was unquestionable, and during Sir George Boothe’s* rising in July he and his son, Thomas Pury II, wrote letters to the Speaker reporting their raising of 300 foot there, which earned them the thanks of Parliament and a promise of pay for the new troops.170CJ vii. 743a, 744b, 747a. His good service in Gloucester did not indemnify him against parliamentary criticism, however. At a call of the House on 3 October, Pury was fined £20 for a period of absence that had hardly been egregious, if he was present when named to a committee only a week earlier.171CJ vii. 786b, 789b. This did nothing to deter him from presenting himself again at Westminster when the Rump resumed power after the interval of army rule between October and December 1659.

On 30 December, in the final weeks of the Rump’s existence, Pury resumed his chairmanship of the Army Committee after a bill to authorise its re-establishment was produced by a committee of which he was a member. It reported almost inevitably on 16 February 1660 that there was shortfall of £11,000 needed to pay the army.172CJ vii. 811a, 824a, 844b, 845a. Pury was not among the diehard republicans. He sat on the committee (21 Feb.) charged with bringing in a reversal of the stipulation back in December 1648 that all Members must repudiate the Newport treaty with Charles I: a committee that paved the way for the return of the MPs secluded at Pride’s Purge.173CJ vii. 847a. The following ten days were the last of Pury’s parliamentary career, and saw him, characteristically, occupied in fixing supply of revenue for the army.174CJ vii. 848b, 856a, 860a. Thereafter, he returned to Gloucester, and immediately threw himself into a confrontation with his old enemy, Massie, who arrived at Gloucester on 1 April with the evident intention of raising a royalist force from the city. If this had been attempted five years previously, Pury and the other civil war veterans would have seen Massie off, but the 1659 election had shown how younger councillors in the town were ambivalent about their city’s loyalties. When Massie arrived, there were disturbances in the streets, but he was elected a burgess, doubtless in the teeth of opposition from Pury. Massie’s arrival presaged the elections for the Convention. ‘A certain person’ was reported to have detained the writs and to have obtained an order to arrest Massie: Pury must have been the subject of the report, as only he had the standing in Gloucester to have defied Massie.175Glos. RO, GBR/G3/SO2, ff. 85v, 87; B3/3, p. 131; A Letter from an Eminent Person in Gloucester (1660, E.1019.20). Perhaps surprisingly, Pury survived in his place as alderman, despite the Restoration of the king. On 26 March 1662, he announced his retirement and intention to remove to London, thus denying the commissioners for the regulation of corporations the pleasure of removing him when they visited Gloucester on 21 July.176Glos. RO, GBR/B3/3, pp. 223-4. He may have died in London, as there was a fortnight’s interval between his death and burial, but he retained all his properties and leases in Gloucester and Gloucestershire until the end, and was buried in the Gloucester parish of St Mary Crypt on 27 Aug. 1666.177St Mary de Crypt par. regs.; Fosbrooke, Original Hist. Gloucester, 167.