EURE, George (d. 1672), of Easby, Yorks.

A venerable border family, the Eures had acquired estates in Yorkshire, County Durham and Northumberland by 1400 and were rewarded for their military and administrative services in the region with a peerage in 1544.25HP Commons 1509-58, ‘Sir Ralph Eure (Evers)’; HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Francis Eure (Evers)’. Members of the family had been returned to Parliament regularly from the early thirteenth century, mostly for constituencies in northern England.26Vis. Yorks. ed. Foster, 610; CP; HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Francis Eure (Evers)’. Eure’s grandfather, Sir Francis Eure – a younger son of the 2nd Baron Eure – had represented Scarborough in the 1604 Parliament, but following his elder brother’s appointment in 1607 as president of the council of the Marches, he had made a career for himself as a lawyer and judge in Wales.27HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Francis Eure (Evers)’. Sir Francis had acquired the manor or capital messuage of Easby – situated about ten miles north west of Northallerton in the North Riding – late in Elizabeth’s reign, and it was here that Eure’s father had established the family seat.28C142/558/89. Eure inherited the family estate upon the death of his elder brother Francis in 1643 and succeeded to the Eure baronage on the death of his second cousin William 5th Lord Eure in June 1652.29C142/558/89; VCH N. Riding, ii. 305; CP. Despite his best endeavours, however, he failed to gain title to the baronial estates in and around Malton and was thus one of the poorest peers in England, with lands in Yorkshire probably worth less than £250 a year.30C6/127/42; C10/37/63; C10/41/43; C10/47/51.

The civil war divided Eure’s branch of the family. While his uncle Sir Sampson Eure* of Gatley, Herefordshire, became a royalist and served as Speaker of the Oxford Parliament, George Eure threw in his lot with the Yorkshire parliamentarian gentry, and by the summer of 1643, at the latest, he was serving as an officer in Parliament’s northern army under the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*).31Infra, ‘Sir Sampson Eure’; A Letter from the...Committees of the Commons...at Yorke (1642), 7-9 (E.148.4); Jones, ‘War in north’, 379. Although it is not clear what moved Eure to take up arms against the king, he served the parliamentarian cause loyally and, as he later claimed, at considerable cost to himself, raised both foot and horse for Fairfax’s army at his own charge.32CSP Dom. 1654, p. 163. He also saw military service during the second civil war, serving as a major in Sir Henry Cholmeley’s* regiment of Yorkshire militia from June 1648 until January 1649.33Bodl. Nalson VII, f. 22; SP18/71/55, f. 131. He was active as a Yorkshire militia commissioner and on the North Riding bench under the Rump – attending quarter sessions in a group of justices that included Francis Lascelles*, Luke Robinson* and John Wastell* – and in August 1650 he was commissioned as a captain in the county’s militia by the council of state.34Doncaster Archives, DD/CROM/11/30; The Petition and Presentment of the Grand-Juries of the County of York (1649), 3 (E.548.26); N. Riding QS Recs. ed. J. C. Atkinson (N. Riding Rec. Soc. v), 37, 42, 56, 58, 75, 83, 88, 101, 108; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 508. In September 1651, Eure, Lascelles and Robinson were thanked by the council for their ‘great diligence and ready appearance’ against the invading Scots.35CSP Dom. 1651, p. 434.

Despite his evident willingness to serve the Rump, Eure was selected in the summer of 1653 as one of Yorkshire’s eight representatives in the Nominated Parliament. Commenting upon his selection, a republican pamphleteer referred to him as ‘a gentleman of Yorkshire, not very bulky or imperious for a lord’ and as one who was ‘well esteemed of for honesty’ – a phrase that could imply a puritan sensibility in religion as well as political support for Parliament.36A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament (1659), 32 (E.977.3). His succession to the peerage in 1652 may also have recommended him for selection – the council of officers perhaps hoping that the presence of a baron in the House would add legitimacy to the Parliament’s proceedings. In the event, he was named to only one committee – set up on 20 July to consider the state of the commonwealth’s finances and to receive accusations of corruption in the administration.37CJ vii. 287a. Nevertheless, he was sufficiently well-regarded by his fellow Members to be elected, with 56 votes, to the 7th council of state on 1 November 1653 and attended 24 of its 37 sittings.38CJ vii. 344a; CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. xxxvi-xxxvii. However, he was named to only one conciliar committee.39CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 237. He was listed among those Members of the Nominated Parliament who supported a national ministry and the retention of tithes.40A Catalogue of the Names of the Members of the Last Parliament (1654, 699 f.19.3).

Eure probably welcomed the establishment of the protectorate and was apparently confident of receiving a favourable hearing from the new regime, joining Lascelles in May 1654 to petition Cromwell for satisfaction of their arrears of army pay.41CSP Dom. 1654, p. 163. The petitioners claimed that they had ‘not only suffered very much by the enemy in their estates’, but had ‘exhausted themselves and friends to promote the good contentments of the nation’.42SP18/71/55, f. 130. Eure claimed arrears of £1,042 and Lascelles of £2,066, although between them they were granted only £1,650.43CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 163-4, 267. The two men were evidently friends, and their careers during the mid-1650s followed a very similar trajectory. As well as working together on the North Riding bench and in recommending ministers for vacant livings, they were both selected to represent Yorkshire in the Nominated Parliament, they were added to the East Riding bench on the same day in October 1653, and they were both appointed ejectors for the North Riding in 1654.44Add. 36792, f. 80v; C231/6, p. 270; Burton’s Diary, i. 323. Moreover, in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament that summer, Eure and Lascelles was returned for the North Riding, taking the first and second of the four places respectively. As a man of very modest estate compared with most of Yorkshire’s leading gentry, Eure probably owed his election to the strength of his reputation in defence of the county – most notably against the invading Scots in 1648 and 1651. He and two of the other successful candidates – Lascelles and George Smithson – were either former or serving officers in the Northern Association army and the Northern Brigade, and therefore they may also have enjoyed the backing of Major-general John Lambert* and the northern military establishment.45Supra, ‘Yorkshire’. Eure was named to seven committees in this Parliament, including those on the ordinance for ejecting scandalous ministers, to review the armed forces and for Scottish affairs.46CJ vii. 370a, 370b, 371b, 373b, 381a, 387a, 395a. In January 1656, he joined Major-general Robert Lilburne*, Lascelles, Robinson and other Yorkshire commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth in a letter to the lord protector, requesting the removal of malignant officeholders.47TSP, iv. 402.

Eure’s increasingly close identification with the Cromwellian regime was consolidated in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, when he was again returned, in first place, for the North Riding.48Supra, ‘Yorkshire’. He seems to have been more active in this than in previous Parliaments, receiving 26 committee appointments between September 1656 and June 1657.49CJ vii. 424a, 427a, 428a, 433a, 435b, 444a, 447a, 448a, 456a, 457b, 464a, 469a, 472, 484b, 485b, 488b, 494a, 502a, 532a, 535a, 538b, 542a, 543a, 545b, 546a. Several of these appointments suggest a concern on his part to promote godly reform. Thus he was named to committees for the ‘conviction and conformity’ of papists and for the settling and maintaining ministers in England and Wales.50CJ vii. 444a, 448a. Northern affairs also occupied some of his time in the House. On 20 November, he was named to a committee on a bill for erecting a court of law at York along the lines of the defunct council of the north.51CJ vii. 456a. And he was involved in drafting the bill for the suppression of theft upon the borders of England and Scotland.52CJ vii. 464a; Burton’s Diary, i. 175. He presented two Yorkshire petitions to the House: the first, on 9 December, from the Savoy Hospital in Yorkshire;53Burton’s Diary, i. 84. the second, on 23 December, from the ‘well-affected’ of the North Riding, requesting the abatement of assessments and the excise and proposing that all the burden of maintaining the army be laid upon the royalists, ‘that the old army may be encouraged and the new charges laid aside’.54CJ vii. 473; Burton’s Diary, i. 208-9. In other words, the petitioners were registering their support for a widening of the decimation tax. They further requested that no delinquent should bear civil or military office, ‘and that they be especially purged out of the House’. This petition was supported by Lambert, Lilburne and other leading northern Cromwellians.55Burton’s Diary, i. 209.

Eure’s alignment with the Cromwellian court interest during the early months of the second protectoral Parliament is particularly evident from his tellerships. On 9 October 1656, he was a teller with the protector’s son Richard Cromwell in a division on one of the provisions of the bill for the safety of the protector’s person.56CJ vii. 437a. And on 13 December, Eure and the Cromwellian grandee William Sydenham were majority tellers in favour of a motion for adjourning a debate as to how Parliament should punish the Quaker evangelist and supposed blasphemer James Naylor – a measure that the protector was known to oppose.57CJ vii. 468a; Burton’s Diary, i. 135. Two days after presenting the petition from the North Riding calling for a widening of the decimation tax (25 Dec.), Eure acted as a teller with either Robert or Francis Brewster II in favour of a proposal to place all or part of the cost of maintaining the militia on ‘such persons as have been in arms against the Parliament or sequestered for their delinquency in the late wars’.58CJ vii. 475a.

Eure’s position in the debates over the Humble Petition and Advice is not entirely clear. Although he was apparently a supporter of the new constitutional scheme, there are signs that he was opposed to offering Cromwell the crown – at least, that is, without imposing certain limitations upon his powers as king. He was certainly not listed among the ‘kinglings’ – those in the House who supported a monarchical settlement.59A Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 22 (E.935.5). On 2 March 1657, he acted as a teller with Colonel Joachim Matthews in favour of a motion for postponing a debate on several clauses in the Petition and Advice relating to Cromwell’s assuming the title of king.60CJ vii. 498a. Eure and Matthews lost this division to Colonel Charles Howard and Sir John Reynolds – two leading members of the ‘civilian’ court party, who strongly favoured Cromwell accepting the crown. Following Cromwell’s rejection of the crown for a second time, Eure was named to a committee to consider how the title of lord protector in the Petition and Advice should be ‘bounded, limited and circumstantiated’ (19 May).61CJ vii. 535a. On 25 May, Eure and the Scottish peer John Hay*, earl of Tweeddale led the Speaker and the House into the Painted Chamber to desire the protector’s assent to the revised Petition and Advice.62CJ vii. 538b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 123. Eure’s last appointment in the Lower House was on 25 June, when he acted as a teller with Alderman Thomas Foote in favour of retaining a clause in the additional and explanatory petition and advice that would have given the Cromwellian council of Scotland the authority to employ former Engagers.63CJ vii. 575a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 308. The opposing, majority tellers were Lambert and Sir William (now Lord) Strickland.

Along with his fellow Yorkshire peers the earl of Mulgrave and Lords Wharton and Fauconberg (Thomas Belasyse*), Eure was among the members of the ‘old nobility’ summoned by the protector in December 1657 to sit in the Cromwellian Other House in the forthcoming session of Parliament.64HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 504. He was selected, according to one pamphleteer, because the protector was ‘well satisfied with his principles and easiness...to be wrought up to do whatever their [Cromwell’s and his supporters’] will and pleasure is and to say ‘no’ when they would have him’.65Second Narrative, 32. Eure was one of only two members of the hereditary peerage who actually took their seats – the other was Fauconberg – attending most of the upper House’s sittings before Cromwell dissolved Parliament on 4 February 1658.66HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 505, 519; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 684. Summoned to the upper House by Richard Cromwell in the winter of 1658-9, he attended regularly between 27 January and 16 March 1659.67HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 525, 548.

It is not clear whether Eure approved of the army’s coup against the protectorate in April 1659. Nevertheless, during that summer he was one of three militia officers in Yorkshire that the council of state ordered to muster their troops in readiness to suppress the ‘common enemy’.68CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 16. On 30 July, the council ordered Lambert to write to Eure, ‘taking notice of his good affection to the commonwealth in his calling together and taking the charge of the militia troop appointed to be under his command’.69Bodl. Rawl. C.179, p. 244. Again, it is not known whether Eure welcomed the Restoration, although he was evidently regarded as conformable to the new regime, retaining his place on the North Riding bench and as an oyer and terminer commissioner for the northern circuit. He also attended the House of Lords in the Cavalier Parliament.70LJ xi. 240a. He was evidently on good terms with at least one leading Yorkshire royalist, Sir Francis Goodricke*, who secured his admission to Lincoln’s Inn early in 1672.71LI Admiss.

Eure died, a bachelor, in London in the autumn of 1672 and was buried in St Paul’s, Covent Garden on 24 October.72CP. In his will, he made bequests of about £300 and instructed his executors to take special care ‘of all such matters as were committed unto my trust by my late worthy friend Sir John Nelthorpe’.73PROB11/340, f. 97v. Nelthorpe had been returned as a ‘recruiter’ for Beverley in 1645, but had been secluded at Pride’s Purge. Eure’s estate appears to have consisted of little more than the manor or capital messuage of Easby and a moiety of the manor of Little Ayton.74C142/558/89; VCH N. Riding, ii. 228, 305. He was evidently not wealthy enough to afford a town house, for his London residence was rented accommodation.75PROB11/340, f. 97v. He was succeeded in the title by his younger brother Ralph, who was reported to have been a ‘journeyman to a woollen draper at £20 per annum’, whose estate, even after succeeding to the title, was less than £100 a year.76CP. None of Eure’s immediate family sat in Parliament.