KIRKHAM, Roger (c.1594-1646), of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Mdx. and Richmond, Surr.

Like his elder brother Robert before him, Kirkham owed his seat in Parliament to his aristocratic employer. Their father, for over 30 years master of the revels at the royal court, had used his position to cultivate the Cecil family, but risky investments as a theatre promoter and attendant litigation appear to have soaked up his income.11Chambers, Elizabethan Stage, ii. 45-51, 54-8, 509; E.K. Chambers, Notes on the History of the Revels Office (1906), 69. Robert inherited from a cousin the house at Richmond which eventually came to Roger and, after a period as secretary to his godfather, Robert Cecil†, 1st earl of Salisbury, embarked on a promising career as secretary to the treasury commissioners and then clerk of the signet. He was a justice of the peace in Middlesex and Surrey and held other potentially profitable commissions and monopolies. He also made a solid contribution to the 1628 Parliament, where he sat for St Albans on the recommendation of William Cecil, 2nd earl of Salisbury, and in 1631 he was mooted as a potential ambassador in Paris. Yet he was disappointed in this and other aspirations, and towards the end of his life he too experienced financial difficulties. He died unmarried and intestate in 1638.12HP Commons 1604-1629.

It seems evident that Roger Kirkham, apparently his only surviving brother, inherited little in the way of a portion and was dependent on exploiting his connections to forge a career. Unlike his brother he did not stay long enough at Oxford to graduate; like him, he entered an inn of court but was not called to the bar.13Al. Ox. However, he remained at the Middle Temple, where he was initially bound in January 1613 with William Strode I*, for at least four years.14MTR ii. 558, 575, 613. There then follows a decade for which no trace of him has come to light. About 1627, as he claimed in a letter probably attributable to 1644, he entered the service of the earl of Salisbury.15HMC Hatfield, xxii. 381-2. Two stints as the earl’s steward, beginning in September 1631, overlapped with long-term employment as his receiver-general, starting in 1633.16Early Stuart Household Accts. p. xix. The salary for the latter was a modest £10 a year, but the position allowed him to marry for what appears to have been the first time, also in 1633; very little is known of his wife, but the wedding at Mortlake, where the Cecils had substantial property, suggests that Elizabeth Cronen too was within their orbit.17Early Stuart Household Accts. 199; Mortlake par. reg.; R.C. Gill, Richmond Park in the Seventeenth Century (Barnes and Mortlake History Soc. occ. ppr. iv, 1990), 2. In the 1644 letter Kirkham vehemently dismissed as ‘lies ... wrought out of the spider’s own bowels’ reports that he had profiteered from his place to the extent of buying property worth £500 a year. He sought to convince the earl of ‘the cunning of that malice that would weaken your Lordship’s inclination to your poor servant by suggestion of dirty and excessive advantages of his own making’. He claimed that his sole acquisition had been a house at Cheshunt, near the Cecil estate at Theobald’s. Since there is no trace of this in his will, he may have exaggerated little when he added that: ‘that man ... who shall follow my ways, shall purchase no land but in the churchyard, and his winding sheet (like mine) must be of his wife’s spinning’.18HMC Hatfield, xxii. 381-2.

There are signs that Kirkham had given loyal service. In June 1639, Inigo Jones and others reported to the privy council that their attempts to collect over £100 due from Salisbury for ‘the new great sewer’ were thwarted by his receiver.19CSP Dom. 1639, p. 338. The day Charles I called a Parliament for 3 November 1640 the earl, ‘very desirous to have my sons of it’, wrote to Kirkham instructing him to remind ‘the better sort of Hertford’ and notables in St Albans of their obligations of respect to his family.20HMC Hatfield, xxiv: Add. 1605-68, pp. 276-7. Kirkham enjoyed qualified success: Salisbury’s eldest son Charles Cecil*, Viscount Cranborne, was elected in the former borough, but his second son, Robert Cecil*, had to be content with the pocket borough of Old Sarum on their Wiltshire estates. Kirkham’s duties continued to comprise more than the simply financial: it is clear that he was the conduit through which the earl communicated his wishes to his younger sons travelling abroad.21HMC Hatfield, x. 367.

When Salisbury and his sons took commands in the parliamentarian army at the outbreak of war, Kirkham remained at his post to protect their property. According to one correspondent, following the arrival at Cranborne of a royalist army under William Seymour, 1st marquess of Hertford, and Prince Maurice, the general’s steward ‘did many courtesies for Mr Kirkham’s sake’. Notwithstanding orders from the marquess, however, Maurice’s troops plundered the house.22HMC Hatfield, xxii. 375. It may have been failure to prevent such depredation which stoked the allegations against Kirkham underlying the defensive letter referred to above, although it indicates that even before the conflict he had faced rumours – ‘imaginary spots’ – that he had neglected Salisbury’s interests.23HMC Hatfield, xxii. 381-2.

Kirkham’s self-proclaimed ‘vindication of my integrity’ and ‘justification ... of my discretion and care’ regained the earl’s trust. Following the disablement of Sir William Savile*, on 29 June 1646 Kirkham was returned to occupy the second seat at Old Sarum alongside Robert Cecil.24C219/43/3, no. 18. He had two committee nominations at Westminster. The first on 3 October was to consider a petition from James Herbert*, son of Salisbury’s ally and rival in influence at Sarum, Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke; the second, on 16 October, was to prepare the ordinance for printing bibles and other books and for publishing a Septuagint bible, suggesting that Kirkham either had scholarly interests or that he was notably pious.25CJ v. 682b, 695a. The next month death terminated his career.

On 24 November Kirkham was buried, as he had requested, in Richmond.26St Mary Magdalene, Richmond, par. reg. In his will proved on 30 November he was described as of St Martin-in-the-Fields, so perhaps residing at Cecil House in the Strand when he drafted it in May 1645. His only daughter and heir, Elizabeth, was commended to the care of her mother’s uncle Mr Robert Sweet, who received 40 shillings as overseer. Like his brother, Kirkham entrusted his house and lands at Richmond to John Stokes, the executor and ‘my faithful servant’, to be sold to pay personal debts of £650 and another £150 owed by Robert Kirkham to the financier Philip Burlamachi.27PROB11/198/321. For reasons unknown Stokes, who sold the property in 1650, was sued over the estate by Salisbury before the latter’s death in 1668.28HMC Hatfield, xxii. 458; Cloake, Cottages and Common Fields of Richmond, 163; Surr. Arch. Coll. v. 92-3, 101. No other family members are known to have sat in Parliament.