TUFFNAYLE, Richard (?1598-1640), of Clapham, Surr.

Representatives of this family, variously spelled but most commonly rendered Tuffnayle, can be found in Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The MP is plausibly the son of the Richard baptized at Enfield, Middlesex, in 1570, second son of Robert Tuffnell and Cecilia Morris married there in 1563, and himself the Richard baptized there in 1598.12Tufnell, Fam. of Tuffnell, 5-6; Steer, Tufnell of Langleys, 1; St Andrew, Enfield, Mdx. par. reg. Richard senior prospered in the City of London, being master of the Salters’ Company in 1628, and acquired an estate at Monken Hadley in Middlesex, where he was buried in 1636 with a brass bearing arms.13Steer, Tufnell of Langleys, 1. In a pious will he left to his elder son, Abraham, property he had purchased in St Sepulchre and leases held from St Bartholomew’s hospital, as well as a substantial estate in plate and money to his large family and others.14PROB11/171/366.

Like his elder brother, the MP was initially a Salter operating in St Sepulchre, but in October 1631, possibly as a result of his marriage the previous year to a Southwark widow, he was admitted to the Brewers’ Company, which was strong in that suburb.15Tufnell, Fam. of Tuffnell, 8. He was already sufficiently well-established to invest in colonial ventures and subsequent conveyances from his father consolidated his wealth.16Rose Troup, Massachusetts Bay Co. 20, 62; Steer, Tufnell of Langleys, 3. As well as property at Highgate, Deptford and Islington, he acquired a house at Clapham, where he was part of a godly community surrounding the vicar, Francis Taylor, which included Hester, wife of Sir Walter Pye*, and Daniel and Elizabeth Penington, brother- and sister-in-law of Isaac Penington*.17PROB11/184/6; F. Taylor, Selfe-satisfaction occasionally taught the citizens (1633), dedication; ‘Elizabeth Penington’, Oxford DNB. But he was also close to Nicholas Moreton, vicar of St Saviour, Southwark, who named him as overseer of his will drafted on 29 May 1640.18PROB11/183/704.

Elected to Parliament for Southwark in March 1640, Tuffnayle made no mark on its records. He was sick when he made his will at Clapham on 9 August in the presence of the overseers, Taylor and Elizabeth Penington’s cousin, Francis Bridges, a Salter, but he perhaps died in Southwark, since he was buried under the communion table at St Olave’s church there on the 18th. He confided to his wife and executrix £100 for ‘the poor in great necessity’ at her discretion, and his substantial estate, leaving to her care five small children as well as the young sons of her first marriage, Thomas and William Moore.19PROB11/184/6; Tufnell, Fam. of Tuffnell, 9. Both Elizabeth Tuffnayle and her brother-in-law Abraham Tuffnayle invested in Irish ventures.20CSP Adv. Ire. 1642-59, pp. 107, 224, 344. Before 5 August 1645, when their daughter Elizabeth was baptized, Elizabeth married her third husband, George Thomson*, a merchant with even wider commercial and colonial interests, who was elected MP for Southwark in 1645 and 1659. Elizabeth’s elder son with Richard, also Richard, died unmarried in 1660, but their younger son, John, also a merchant, was the father of Samuel Tufnell†, who was to have a long parliamentary career in the first half of the eighteenth century.21Tufnell, Fam. of Tuffnell, 9-10; HP Commons 1715-1754.