APSLEY, Edward (1604-51), of Thakeham and Warminghurst, Suss.

The Apsley family could trace their Sussex ancestry back to the reign of Edward III, and they owned the manor of Thakeham from at least 1377.29E. Suss. RO, SAS/B575; SAS/D18-21, 26, 32a, 63, 74; VCH Suss. vi pt. ii. 35. Their representation in Parliament commenced in the mid-sixteenth century with John Apsley†, who was a knight of the shire in 1563. Although Edward Apsley’s father did not sit in Parliament, his uncle Henry Apsley† represented Steyning in 1589.30HP Commons 1558-1603. The former died in January 1610, leaving Edward a little over 5 years old.31Notes IPMs Suss. 7. His mother, who purchased the wardship, held the family lands until the mid-1620s, but administration was probably in the hands of Sir Edward Montagu† (later 1st Baron Montagu of Boughton) who had been nominated as trustee by Apsley’s father.32WARD9/162, f. 73v; VCH Suss.vi pt. ii. 35; PROB11/115/228. The Huntingdonshire portion of the estate was designated to be sold for the payment of Sir Edward’s debts, and in April 1614 a draft act confirming such a sale was considered by a Commons committee which included two of Sir Edward Montagu’s brothers, Sidney Montagu† and Sir Charles Montagu†.33HMC 4th Rep. 119; CJ i. 464b, 489b; PA, Main Pprs. (supplementary), 14 Apr. 1614; W. H. Blaauw, ‘Apsley mss. of the seventeenth century’, Suss. Arch. Coll. iv. 224-5.

In April 1619 Apsley was admitted to Christ’s College, Cambridge, but his tutor, Joseph Mede, one of the college’s most famous scholars, wrote at least two letters to Apsley’s mother complaining of his absence, and he appears to have left Cambridge before June 1620, without taking a degree.34Peile, Biog. Reg. i. 238; Blaauw, ‘Apsley mss.’, 225-6. He already had the court connections useful for a career in public life. His distant cousin Sir Allen Apsley (d. 1630), from 1617 lieutenant of the Tower of London, was a friend of George Villiers, the royal favourite soon created 1st duke of Buckingham.35‘Sir Allen Apsley’, Oxford DNB. Lady Apsley, his mother, was close to the family of Richard Sackville, 3rd earl of Dorset, and his sister Anne married one of the earl’s clients, Matthias Caldicott.36Blaauw, ‘Apsley mss.’, 225. More materially, his sister Elizabeth was by 1615 in the service of Princess Elizabeth, countess palatine and later queen of Bohemia, and remained so until she married the diplomat Sir Albertus Morton† in January 1625. 37Blaauw, ‘Apsley mss.’, 221-4; The Letters of Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia ed. L.M. Baker (1953), 44-5, 67. Following the latter’s death that September, Lady Morton was granted a generous pension by a grateful Charles I, and when, in December, she too died, Apsley inherited her property at much the same time as he came of age and assumed control of the family estate.38‘Sir Albertus Morton’, Oxford DNB; C142/436/37; C54/2628/22; C54/2894/12.

There is relatively little evidence for the course of Apsley’s life in the later 1620s and 1630s. In February 1633 he was granted a pass to travel for three years.39PC2/42, f. 211v. After his return to England, sometime before April 1635, he lived in Westminster, where he developed his estate in Hart’s Horn Lane, in the fashionable parish of St Martin-in-the-Fields.40PC2/44, ff. 267v-68; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 262; SP16/408, f. 143. Although his sister Alice married the godly George Fenwick*, and travelled to be with him in colonial New England, direct evidence for Apsley’s own outlook at this point is lacking.41‘George Fenwick’ infra. The clergy who occupied the livings for which he was patron give no clear indication of his religious views. The noticeably prosperous George Woodman, presented to Thakeham in 1619 and confirmed by Apsley in 1628, made a pious but not distinctive will in May 1639.42Add. 5698, f. 253v; Al. Cant.; PROB11/185/268. His successor, Thomas Bankes, of obscure origins, was still there in October 1662.43Add. 5698, f. 253v; Al Cant. Evidence for Warminghurst is ambiguous and incomplete.44W. Suss. RO, Clough-Butler MS 172, 173; Clergy of the C of E database; Al. Cant.; Al. Ox. Furthermore, Apsley gave no obvious sign of resistance to government policies during the personal rule. Named to local commissions in 1637 and 1639, in the latter year he also served as sheriff, and in that capacity was responsible for collecting nearly half of the county’s Ship Money assessment of £5,000 demanded by the privy council.45C181/5, f. 70; C192/1; CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 377; PC2/51, f. 124.

As sheriff, Apsley was ineligible to stand for Parliament in 1640. His emergence, on the outbreak of civil war, as a parliamentarian activist looks somewhat surprising; most of his immediate relatives were royalists. Initially, he appears to have served as a lieutenant in the regiment of Colonel Thomas Grantham, destroyed in November 1642.46A Catalogue of the Names, 11. At some date, plate he had brought from Sussex was seized at Lambeth and brought to the Commons, but on 17 January 1643 the House ordered its restitution, having established that Apsley was ‘well-affected’.47CJ ii. 931a. From February he was named to parliamentarian commissions in Sussex, and in the summer was made a deputy lieutenant and member of the county committee, of which he soon became an active member.48CJ iii. 156a, 173a; SP19/90, f. 40. He was also made colonel of a regiment of foot based at Bramber, one of the few reliable parliamentarian forces in the western half of the county, which was otherwise sympathetic to the Royalists. Apsley’s men were eventually put into Cowdray House, and were involved in the defence of Arundel Castle in December 1643. Apsley himself was captured, and held prisoner until the castle was relieved on 6 January 1644 by Sir William Waller*.49Blaauw, ‘Passages of the Civil War in Suss.’, 57-9.

By April 1644 Apsley had joined the commission of the peace, but he was more active on the county committee, alongside ‘war party’ leaders Harbert Morley* and Anthony Stapley I*. 50Suss. QSOB 1642-49, 49, 54. Like Stapley, he clashed with Waller over the military organization of the county. In June the Committee of Both Kingdoms ordered Waller to disband Apsley’s regiment, on the grounds that it imposed an intolerable burden on the locality.51CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 198, 202. Waller, who complained of constant incivilities from the Sussex gentry, was more than willing to comply.52CSP Dom. 1644, p. 219. Articles were lodged against Apsley and on 26 August the Commons sent for him as a delinquent.53CJ iii. 607a. His friends on the county committee, to whom the case was referred, appear to have ensured that Apsley was cleared of the charges, and on 30 September he was bailed.54Blaauw, ‘Passages of the Civil War in Sussex’, 57-9; CJ iii. 646a. On the other hand, he was obliged to pay the arrears of his troops from the income of his own estate and was temporarily removed from the commission of the peace.55CJ iii. 685b, 703a; CCAM, 60, 496; HMC 6th Rep, 74; LJ vii. 537a; C231/6, p. 40. Still on the county committee, in January 1645 he was involved in its attempts to help Thomas May*, who had been wrongly accused of having borne arms against Parliament, and in September he signed a letter to the Commons defending it from the accusations levelled by the Sussex clubmen.56SP23/176, p. 211; Bodl. Tanner 60, ff. 251-5.

Apsley’s connections on the committee seem to have underlain his election in October as a recruiter MP for Steyning alongside Herbert Board, in a contest in which spoils were shared between the ‘war party’ and more moderate figures such as Sir Thomas Pelham* and Sir Thomas Parker*.57C219/42ii/26. Returned to the House at much the same time as his one time brother-in-law George Fenwick, Apsley appeared in the chamber much more promptly, taking the Solemn League and Covenant on 29 October.58CJ iv. 326a. Thereafter, signs of Apsley’s attendance at the Commons were rare, but his committee appointments largely appear to reflect his support for the Independents. One of their leaders, Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, father of Fenwick’s second wife, apparently became a friend.59PROB11/224/410.

His first nomination on 22 June 1646 was to consider the Newcastle Propositions to be sent to the king, a move which reflected the demands of the ‘war party’.60CJ iv. 584b. His only other appearance in the Journal in 1646 was on 29 October, when he was added to the committee which sought to curb the excessive deployment of parliamentary privilege.61CJ iv. 709a. His next appointment was on 22 March 1647, when he was nominated to consider the ordinance against malignant ministers.62CJ v. 119b. That he might be a controversial and divisive figure is suggested by the fact that on 3 February 1647 two petitions against him were read in the Commons: the first, alleging that he had sued Ralph Cowpar and George Churchar in king’s bench ‘for something they did as committee-men in Sussex’, elicited an order that he withdraw his suit ‘until further notice’; the other, a complaint from Westminster residents that he had stopped the common sewer, presumably in the course of his developments, was not acted upon, and the dispute was still continuing in July 1649.63CJ v. 70b-71a; Add. 31116, p. 599; SP46/95, ff. 140-1.

There is no sign of Apsley in the House between March 1647 and January 1648. His absence, if such it was, could only partly be explained by the more widespread withdrawal from the Commons of the Independents in the face of pressure from Presbyterians within the City of London. That Apsley sympathised with the Independents, however, is probably evident from his appointment on 4 January to the committee for grievances, and on 20 April to the committee to consider an ordinance for the relief of Ireland.64CJ v. 417a, 538b. When a royalist uprising threatened Sussex in June, Apsley was among those dispatched by the Commons to defend it.65CJ v. 614b. In September he and Morley were directed to write a letter chivvying those collecting arrears of assessments.66CJ vi. 30b.

Apsley did not reappear in the Journal until after the purge of 6 December. Significantly, he re-surfaced on 29 January 1649, the day before the execution of Charles I, when he dissented from the vote of 5 December 1648.67CJ vi. 124b. He and the ten other MPs who returned to the House on that day must be considered as having condoned the regicide; indeed, six of them signed the death warrant. Nevertheless, Apsley was far from active during the Rump, and was named to only three committees before his death more than two and a half years later. His nomination to the Committee of Navy and Customs and the committee for excise (29 May 1649) probably reflected the influence of Harbert Morley, with whom in May 1650 he was appointed to a committee regarding Sackville College in East Grinstead.68CJ vi. 219b, 418a. Meanwhile, in November 1649 he was consulted by the council of state about London’s sewer, a subject in which he had an obvious personal interest.69CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 390. His final recorded appearance at Westminster was on 29 May 1651, when he was appointed to a committee investigating the soap monopoly.70CJ vi. 581a. However, he was active on the commission of the peace in Sussex until his death that October.71Suss. QSOB 1642-9, 162, 181, 183, 194; E. Suss. SRO, QO/EW2, ff. 2, 6v, 8v, 13, 17v, 19v; QR/EW92.

Apsley had remained unmarried. Confusion surrounds the intended disposition of his estate, and indeed his last days, but what evidence there is throws retrospective illumination on his previous political contacts. One source records Apsley’s death as having occurred on 6 October, but his burial as on the 14th.72Add. 5698, ff. 251, 253. A will made when he was ‘sick’, dated the 11th, and attested by six witnesses, surfaced in the probate court ostensibly to be proved by two of the four trustees named therein (George Fenwick and one John Pay) before one official on 30 October, and by the other two (Sir Allen Apsley†, son of the lieutenant of the Tower, and one William Newton) before a different official on 6 November. While the will confirmed a previous grant to Pay of Apsley’s livestock and granted a house in Thakeham to Apsley’s nephew Richard Caldecott, no residuary heir was named.73PROB11/218/629; E. Suss. RO, SAS/D310. On 22 July 1652 Sir Nathaniel Brent delivered a sentence – in which Fenwick was not mentioned – that Allen Apsley, Newton and Pay, ‘pretended executors’ named in the ‘pretended will on scroll’, plaintiffs, were in contempt for not appearing before his court. It acknowledged potential claims by Richard Caldecott and two unnamed daughters of Alice Fenwick, but gave judgement in favour of Sir Arthur Hesilrige, ‘legatory’ [legatee] or ‘principal legatory’ ‘in the true last will in writing of the deceased’.74PROB11/224/284. Entry in the register of a grant of administration of the estate to Hesilrige on 13 August was preceded by a copy of an undated will of Apsley’s perhaps made several years previously. This time the testator affirmed in personal terms his ‘firm belief’ in his salvation, named a larger number of beneficiaries (including the poor of Steyning and Hesilrige, who was to receive two horses) and named his nephew Edward Fenwick as his heir, provided he adopt the name of Apsley; George Fenwick was to have charge of the estate during Edward’s minority.75PROB11/224/410. It seems impossible to determine exactly what had transpired, but it seems plausible that Apsley had neglected to specify an alternative heir after the early death of Edward Fenwick and that, in the absence of George Fenwick in Scotland, Hesilrige, a member of the council of state, acted to safeguard his son-in-law’s interests and to block the pretensions of Sir Allen Apsley†, who as the former royalist governor of Exeter and Barnstaple was a delinquent. George Fenwick presided over a court at Thakeham in January 1653, and was possessed of the former Apsley estates in Sussex, Kent and Middlesex when he died, without surviving direct male heirs, in 1657.76E. Suss. RO, SAS/DN 190, p. 4.