GORGES, Sir Theobald (c.1594-1648), of Ashley, Wilts.

The Gorges family were thought to have been settled in Somerset since the early twelfth century, and held Wraxall in that county from around 1310. Sir Thomas Gorges, this MP’s father, was the 5th son of Sir Edward Gorges of Wraxall; another of Sir Edward’s younger sons was Sir Ferdinando Gorges, governor of Plymouth, Devon and an enthusiast for New England colonization.12CP, ‘Gorges of Dundalk’; DNB. Thomas Gorges was a groom of the privy chamber in the court of Elizabeth, where he met Helena Snakenborg, who had come to England from Sweden in 1565 with Cecilia, margravine of Baden and daughter of Eric, king of Sweden. Helena won favour with the queen and advanced at court to become first lady of the privy chamber. She married Thomas Gorges after the death of her first husband, William Parr, marquess of Northampton, in 1571.13E179/70/107, 115; CP; Harris, Epitaphs, 34. Their eldest son, Edward, later Baron Gorges of Dundalk [I], was a gentleman of the privy chamber in the household of Charles I.14N. Carlisle, Gentlemen of the Privy Chamber (1829), 126. Thomas Gorges sat for Downton, Wiltshire, in the Parliament of 1586.15HP Commons 1558-1603.

Sir Thomas Gorges built or rebuilt Langford castle, near Salisbury, at the behest of his wife, but died in March 1610, leaving his second son, ‘Tibbolt’, the manor of Ashley after Lady Gorges’s death. Ashley had originally been granted to Helena in her own right. Theobald was admitted the following year to the Middle Temple, and seems to have lived in Westminster after he had been knighted in 1616.16Westminster Archives Centre, Westminster overseers’ accts. He did not succeed to Ashley until 1635, when Helena Gorges died, after stipulating in her will that her body should be ‘shrouded and chested without ripping, embalming or spicery’.17PROB11/167/327. Sir Theobald was probably living at Ashley before his mother’s death, as he was named to Wiltshire local government commissions as early as 1627. His marriage to Anne, daughter of Sir Henry Poole† of Sapperton brought him within the orbit of the Gloucestershire gentry. It was the Poole interest at Cirencester which secured him his seat in the second Parliament of 1640. His father-in-law had sat for the seat in 1597, and Henry Poole, Gorges’s brother-in-law, had represented the town in the Parliaments of 1624, 1625 and April 1640.

Gorges proved to be an unenthusiastic Member. After serving on an unimportant committee for a hospital in Newark (12 Mar.) and taking the Protestation on 3 May 1641, he was given leave of absence on 3 August. He was not named to another committee until 20 January 1642, when he was added to a committee for fortifications.18CJ ii. 102b, 133b, 233b, 387b. This proved to be his last committee appointment, and Gorges offered no assistance to his fellow burgess, John George*, or to Nathaniel Stephens* and other Gloucestershire parliamentarians in their efforts to fortify Cirencester against an attack by the royalists after the outbreak of civil war. He did not appear in lists of either the royalist commissioners of array or the commissioners for the parliamentary militia ordinance in 1642.19Northants. RO, FH133, unfol.

On 28 September 1643, the Commons lost patience with Gorges’s continuing absence, and he was issued with an ultimatum to attend by 10 October to give an account of himself or face sequestration. He did not attend, and by the following January it was clear that he had gone to the king’s quarters at Oxford, and sat in the Oxford Parliament. He signed the letter of Members there calling on Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex to work for peace.20Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. For this offence, on 22 January 1644 he was formally disabled from sitting at Westminster, but at Oxford he received a pardon in March for his involvement with the Westminster Parliament.21CJ iii. 256b, 374a; Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 203. It is not clear by what circumstances Gorges became a prisoner of Parliament, but probably in October and certainly by 17 November he was in custody in London, and was bailed to appear before the Committee for Compounding, at Goldsmiths’ Hall.22CJ iv. 347a. There he pleaded that he went to Oxford only because the king controlled the territory where he was resident, and that he never bore arms or contributed voluntarily to the king. He insisted that he had equipped his ‘son’, probably one of his sons-in-law, for war on the side of Parliament. On 15 January 1646, Gorges was fined £209 at one tenth, then £520 at one third, of his estate. 23CCC 1045.

Two weeks after the fine was imposed in Goldsmiths’ hall, Gorges was married for the second time, to Anne Gage.24London Mar. Lics. ed. Foster, 569. In December 1647, however, Gorges made his will, leaving Ashley to any male heir that his wife might be carrying at the time of his death, but otherwise to his nephew Richard Gorges, son of Edward, Lord Gorges and his heirs male, or in default to Theobald Gorges’s own three daughters. He probably died in March 1648, and his will was proved on 13 April that year.25Glos. RO, D1571/T2; PROB11/204/57. He left no children from his second marriage, and in 1658 the manor house of Ashley was leased to Hugh Havers or Hawes of that parish, who had married Gorges’s widow.26Som. RO, DD/GB/106. None of his descendants are known to have sat in Parliament.