TOLYE (TOOLY), John (bef. 1582-1654), of Norwich, Norf.

There had long been members of the Tolye family living in Norwich, although this MP’s ancestry can only be traced with certainty back to his grandfather, Richard Tolye senior, who had been a scrivener.19First Par. Reg. of St George of Tombland, 198-9. His son, Richard junior, the MP’s father, was also a scrivener and he rose to become mayor of the city in 1620.20Cozens-Hardy and Kent, Mayors of Norwich, 74. The future MP must have been born before 1582, as he was then mentioned in his grandfather’s will. A brother, Robert, was born in 1577, while three of their sisters were born between 1571 and 1580.21First Par. Reg. of St George of Tombland, 13-15. John Tolye was admitted as a freeman of Norwich in 1608.22Millican, Reg. Freemen Norwich, 104. What is not known is whether he ever earned his living through trade. If he did do so, the most likely possibility is that he too was a scrivener.

In the early 1630s Tolye was part of the group of godly Norfolk gentlemen, including his kinsman, Thomas Atkin*, and Miles Corbett*, who joined together to promote their favoured clergymen by purchasing impropriations and advowsons within the county.23SP16/531, f. 196. In doing so, they were consciously acting as the local equivalent of the nationally-based feoffees for impropriations. One clergyman they supported was William Bridge, who from 1632 combined the living of St Peter Hungate with a lectureship at St George Tombland. The latter was Tolye’s local church and he served as one of the churchwardens there in 1633.24Norwich Rate Bk. 56, 58.

In 1631 Tolye was elected as one of the Norwich aldermen.25Index to Norwich City Officers, pp. xxx, 153. He was then able to use that civic position to help defend the Norwich lecturers when two years later some of them, including Bridge, were suspended by the bishop, Richard Corbet.26Mins. Norwich Ct. of Mayoralty, 1632-1635, 30, 58, 96, 99, 117. He was also one of the aldermen who pressed the corporation’s case in the concurrent dispute over their seating in the cathedral.27Mins. Norwich Ct. of Mayoralty, 1632-1635, 99, 101. When the dismissal of Bridge and other clergymen in 1636 by the new bishop, Matthew Wren, split the corporation, Tolye led the faction that supported the dismissed clerics. In October 1636 he and Thomas Shipdham delivered their petition against Wren to the king.28Bodl. Tanner 68, f. 149. He was again sent to London by the corporation in March 1638 to lobby on behalf of the Norwich clergymen.29Norf. RO, Norwich assembly bk. 1613-42, f. 342.

Other civic business also took up his time. In 1628 Charles I had founded a children’s hospital at Norwich. Two years later, as sheriff, Tolye handled the purchase of lands for its endowment. He subsequently served as one of its surveyors.30Mins. Norwich Ct. of Mayoralty, 1630-1631, 96, 98, 165. In October 1634 he sat on the corporation’s committee to consider the state of the local worsted weaving industries.31Mins. Norwich Ct. of Mayoralty, 1632-1635, 182. The following month he and Atkin were sent to London on business connected with the first Ship Money writ.32Mins. Norwich Ct. of Mayoralty, 1632-1635, 190-1. Most important of all, Tolye served as the city’s mayor in 1638.33Cozens-Hardy and Kent, Mayors of Norwich, 80. In that capacity, he attended the meeting at Bungay in December 1638 at which the sheriffs and the representatives from the major towns agreed on how to apportion the money demanded by the latest Ship Money writs for Norfolk and Suffolk.34CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 403.

Their records as opponents of the king’s religious policies provide the best explanations as to why Tolye and Atkin were elected to serve as the Norwich MPs in the Short Parliament of March 1640. Tolye doubtless supported the city’s petition against Bishop Wren, although it was Atkin who presented it.35Procs. Short Parl. 279; Aston’s Diary, 12. On 1 May Miles Corbett secured an order from the Commons halting a case in the court of wards that had been brought against Tolye by Thomas Wormall.36CJ ii. 17a.

In the Long Parliament election that autumn Tolye faced a challenge for second place from Richard Catelyn* who was not a resident freeman. Although Tolye came bottom of the poll, the sheriff was sufficiently disconcerted to make a double return, annexing a schedule to the effect that Catelyn was returned contrary to city custom and if, in the opinion of the House, he were not ‘duly chosen’, Tolye should take his place. But after reviewing the indentures on 7 November, the House ruled against him.37CJ ii. 22a-b; Procs. LP i. 24, 32, 37, 39, 46.

Tolye remained an active figure in Norwich civic politics for most of the next decade. In early 1641 he acted the deputy mayor during the illness of the mayor, Henry Lane.38Norf. RO, Norwich mayor’s court bk. 1634-46, f. 305. The following year, when civil war broke out, he sided with Parliament. For the past decade he had worked hard to promote godly reformation in his home city. What he and others now found was that they would literally have to fight to achieve this. Parliament soon recognised his usefulness. On 17 April 1643 the Commons augmented the existing Norfolk assessment and sequestration commissions by appointing eleven new commissioners, including Tolye, specifically for Norwich. Their names were therefore included in the additional ordinance for levying of money of 1 June.39CJ iii. 49a; A. and O. Using these powers, Tolye then joined with Thomas Sotherton* (a distant cousin) to help seize the estates of the new bishop of Norwich, Joseph Hall. According to Hall, Tolye did at least intervene to stop the confiscation of all the clothes of Hall and his family.40J. Hall, The Shaking of the Olive-Tree (1660), 56-7 (E.185.1). That same year Tolye contributed £10 to the Norwich collection for the relief of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.41F.R. Beecheno, ‘The Norwich subscription for the regaining of Newcastle, 1643’, Norf. Arch. xviii. 156.

The rule in Norwich since 1620 had been that aldermen who had already held office as sheriff served as mayor according to strict seniority. Cases of aldermen serving twice as mayor were therefore rare, because, with 24 of them in total, there were almost always aldermen who had not yet served their turn. However, in 1643 the parliamentarian hardliners on the corporation ignored this rule so that their preferred candidate, John Thacker, could become mayor. The following year the rule was formally abolished, making it possible for Tolye then to be elected as mayor for a second time.42J.T. Evans, Seventeenth-Century Norwich (Oxford, 1979), 127-8.

One immediate problem he faced was the fallout from the decision to dismiss the recorder, Francis Cory. In late June 1644 the city’s MP, Richard Harman*, and three of the other Norfolk MPs, Sir Thomas Wodehouse*, (Sir) John Potts* and Corbett, wrote to inform Tolye that they had received assurances from Cory that he would not cause trouble over this.43Add. 22619, f. 198. Harman subsequently wrote regular letters to Tolye as the mayor with news of his activities in Parliament.44Add. 22619, ff. 146, 149, 159, 161, 164, 166, 171, 173, 207, 208, 215, 217, 230, 235, 236; Add. 22620, ff. 20, 22. Soon the biggest problem was the latest assessment demand. Norwich was ordered pay £2,000 towards the £6,000 demanded from Norfolk. In early September Tolye wrote to London explaining that this would be ‘an extraordinary oppression to the city’ and that they would therefore refuse to pay this.45Add. 22619, f. 209. What he would have known was that the collection several days earlier had raised just £1,252 10s. Of that, £100 had been paid by Tolye himself, the second largest sum paid by any individual.46Add. 22619, ff. 126-127. This was not enough. By early 1645 some Norfolk MPs, led by Potts and Thomas Toll I*, were complaining that Norwich had not paid its fair share. That March, Harman had to write to Tolye with the news that he had failed to block the move by the Commons to reprimand the city for its negligence.47CJ iv. 75a; Add. 22619, f. 173.

Meanwhile, the committee for taking the accounts of the kingdom had sent their commission extending their work to Norfolk to the Norwich corporation. Tolye and Thacker (as his immediate predecessor) however wrote back in February 1645 to its chairman, William Prynne*, asking for a revised list of commissioners on the grounds that so many of the commissioners who had previously been named would themselves have to submit accounts.48Add. 22619, f. 151. It is possible that this was just a stalling tactic. The House of Lords then clashed the city’s two sheriffs, Thomas Baret and Barnard Church*, after they arrested a parliamentarian army officer, Captain James Hobart, for debt. Baret refused to implement the order of 19 March 1645 by which the Lords commanded that Hobart be released. At that point Tolye wrote to the Speaker of the Lords, 1st Baron Grey of Warke, requesting that the proceedings against Baret be dropped.49LJ vii. 279b, 291b; HMC 6th Rep. 52.

The arguments over Norwich’s tax burden continued after Tolye had stepped down as mayor. In July 1646 he was one of the two aldermen who presented the petition to Parliament from the city asking that their share of the Norfolk assessments be reduced. They were also instructed to lobby for the appointment of justices of the peace with powers to act within the precincts of Norwich Cathedral and for the redrawing of the city’s parish boundaries.50Norf. RO, Norwich assembly bk. 1642-68, f. 44v.

So far Tolye had seemed a loyal supporter of Parliament. The disputes over the Norwich assessments had been bitter, but if he thought that too much was being demanded from the city, he did not appear to have doubted the cause itself. Yet the disorders at Norwich in the spring of 1648 were about to destroy his civic career. The mayor elected in 1647 was John Utting, who was certainly lukewarm in his support for Parliament and who was suspected by some of being a crypto-royalist. Lobbying by his enemies persuaded the Commons to order Utting’s arrest on 18 April 1648.51CJ v. 534b-535a. Utting’s supporters reacted to this by organising a petition for his release. Their efforts however got out of control on 23 April, developing into a major riot. This ended only when a gunpowder store in the city centre exploded. In all this, Tolye had sided with Utting. For all his earlier support for the cause of godly reform, he evidently now feared the pressure for greater radicalism represented by the army. The subsequent parliamentary investigation would conclude that he had been ‘a great countenancer’ of Utting and that he had tried to pay £30 to him from corporation funds without permission.52CJ vi. 294a-b.

That investigation began on 8 May 1648, when the committee for complaints was ordered to establish what had happened.53CJ v. 553a. It finally reported 16 months later on 12 September 1649. The House accepted its recommendation that Tolye and Utting be declared delinquents for ‘promoting, abetting and contriving the petition, whereby the said riot happened.’54CJ vi. 294a-b. The pair appeared at the bar on 9 October to hear their sentences. Tolye was barred from public office, fined £1,000 and sent to the Fleet prison for three months.55CJ vi. 304b; C204/14. The following month the Norwich corporation appointed commissioners to conduct negotiations with Tolye about his fine. By the following January, on his release from prison, they were offering him a deal by which he could instead grant the corporation lands worth £30 a year, as well as surrendering the lands he currently leased from them.56Norf. RO, Norwich assembly bk. 1642-68, ff. 89-90, 100. In the end a different deal was settled. On 3 September 1651 he and the corporation agreed that his fine could be reduced to £400. It was subsequently conceded that he could pay this in instalments over two years.57Norf. RO, Norwich assembly bk. 1642-68, ff. 100v, 101v, 105, 107, 139.

Tolye died a ruined man. He was buried on 8 February 1654 in the parish of St Michael at Plea.58St Michael at Plea par. reg. He and his wife had no children, so the main beneficiaries of his will were his nephews, Richard Stephenson, son of his sister, Ann, and Benjamin and Richard Cooke, sons of another sister, Luisa. After the death of his widow, most of his lands were to be divided between them. Stephenson acted as the executor.59PROB11/246/38. A few years earlier Tolye had been the executor for Arthur Dee (1579-1651), the Norwich physician and alchemist who was the son of the more famous John Dee.60PROB11/218/503. Stephenson was now also bequeathed a desk and a watch which Dee had left to Tolye, as well as some of Dee’s books and apothecary equipment.61PROB11/246/38. Tolye’s widow, Katherine, survived him by 20 years.62Norf. RO, NCC will reg. Wiseman 22. An undated annotation would later be added to the will of Tolye’s grandfather, Richard Tolye, noting that he had been the ‘grandfather to Alderman John Tolye that died the last of the Tolyes in 1653’.63First Par. Reg. of St George of Tombland, 199.