HARINGTON, John I (c.1589-1654), of Kelston, Som.

Harington was the eldest son of Sir John Harington (1560-1612), the godson of Elizabeth I, translator of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso and promoter of flushing water-closets. This branch of the family traced themselves back to Sir Robert Harington† of Badsworth, Yorkshire, who, as a staunch Yorkist, had been attainted in 1485. Their connections with Somerset dated from Sir John’s stepmother, Ethelreda Malte alias Digneley, who was later rumoured to be Henry VIII’s illegitimate daughter and who had inherited the manor of Kelston a few miles to the west of Bath. While Sir John never fully satisfied his ambitions as a writer or as a courtier, he left a reputation as a minor literary figure which always overshadowed his eldest son. More tangibly, he left him extensive estates in Somerset, Cornwall, Wiltshire and Dorset.24[F.J. Poynton], ‘Harington of Som.’, Misc. Gen. et Her. n.s. iii. 400.

John Harington junior received an excellent education, first at Eton and later at Oxford, Cambridge and Lincoln’s Inn. That education left its mark. The contents of his commonplace book, for which he reused the best surviving manuscript of the poems of Sir Thomas Wyatt†, confirm his wide range of scholarly interests, including theology, languages and mathematics.25Eg. 2711. But he was no mere dilettante. He completed his legal studies at Lincoln’s Inn and in 1615 he was called to the bar.26LI Black Bks. ii. 173. Three years later he helped organise the collection of money for the rebuilding of the inn’s chapel.27LI Black Bks. ii. 203. Little is known of his work as a barrister. However, although he may not have needed the money, it does seem probable that he practised in some form during the 1620s. Had he not practised, it is unlikely that he would have been promoted to become a bencher of his inn in 1633 and improbable that he would been asked to serve as Lent reader there in 1635.28LI Black Bks. ii. 309, 320; Baker, Readers and Readings, 140, 542.

But he did not entirely concentrate on his legal career in London. Following his marriage in 1623 to Dionysia Ley, daughter of the 1st earl of Marlborough, Harington settled at Corston, one of the Harington estates adjacent to Kelston. Several of his children were born there.29Poynton, ‘Extracts’, 196. Only on the death of his mother in 1634 did the main seat at Kelston become available to him.30[F.J. Poynton], ‘The monument inscriptions of the family of Harington, co. Som.’, Misc. Gen. et Her. n.s. iii. 60; Poynton, ‘Extracts’, 195. At about this time he was acting for the 2nd earl of Salisbury (William Cecil*) as the steward of his lands of the honour of Gloucester in Somerset.31Hatfield House, CFEP Box I/4, f. 27v; Harington’s Diary, 105-8. During these years he played a full part in Somerset county affairs. He was an exceptionally hardworking justice of the peace and regularly acted as the chairman of the Somerset bench.32QS Recs. Som. Charles I, 19-315; Som. Enrolled Deeds, ed. S.W.B. Harbin (Som. Rec. Soc. li), 240-77; Wells Convocation Acts Bks. i. 460; Som. Assize Orders 1629-1640, 18-20, 34; CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 350; Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 2. His notes on some of his speeches written for the opening of the Somerset assizes show that he viewed this work in the highest moral and religious terms.33Harington’s Diary, 87-108. In 1641 he was also appointed as a subsidy commissioner, the duties of which he is known to have been active in carrying out.34SR; Som. Protestation Returns, 187, 189, 219, 233, 272.

Such conspicuous local activity in the years before the civil war contrasts with the more circumspect role Harington played during it. There is no doubt that he sided with Parliament. In January 1643 the Commons included him on the commissions to raise money on their behalf within Somerset and in March he became one of the local sequestration commissioners.35A. and O. The king had, in the meantime, dismissed him from the commission of the peace.36Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 11. But by the summer of 1643, in the aftermath of their victory at Lansdown (5 July), the royalists gained control of the area around Kelston and there was then little that Harington could do except maintain a prudent low profile. Only with the return of the county to parliamentarian control in 1645 could Harington once again take on a prominent political role. This recent inactivity would work to his advantage later that year when he stood for Parliament.

The Somerset recruiter election in December 1645 was a contest surrounded by more than usual quantities of bitterness, feuding and chicanery. The sheriff, Sir John Horner*, was determined to secure one of the seats for his son, George*, and, equally importantly, to frustrate the wishes of his arch-rival, John Pyne*. Harington was, to some extent, a compromise candidate, in that he did enjoy the official backing of Pyne and the county committee, while also having Horner’s approval. In the end, the actual result owed more to the fact that Horner shamelessly manipulated the poll and that Horner’s adversaries then boycotted it in protest.37Scottish Dove no. 113 (10-17 Dec. 1645), 893-4 (E.313.1); Scottish Dove no. 119 (21-29 Jan. 1646), 942-5 (E.319.17); CJ iv. 565b-566a. There can never have been any doubt that Harington’s return would be challenged. The question mark over his election presumably explains why Harington (unlike the younger Horner) waited four months before taking his seat at Westminster.

Harington took that seat in the Commons on 31 March 1646. To mark the event he began to keep a diary.38Add. 10114; Harington’s Diary, 15. What he recorded in it remains an important source of information for proceedings in the Commons over the next 17 months. During his first weeks at Westminster his interest in religious affairs was already to the fore. His first committee appointment, on 7 April, was to the committee to consider how a preaching ministry could be established throughout the kingdom, or, as he put it, for ‘filling churches with minister[s].’39CJ iv. 502a; Harington’s Diary, 18. Four days later he voted in the divisions on whether the petition from the Westminster Assembly amounted to a breach of parliamentary privilege. In the first of the votes, he supported the majority who wanted the main question to be put immediately. Like some of the others, he may have thought that they could already defeat this move. Those that he regarded as being ‘the saints’ voted against. Harington did not record how he voted in the second division, although, if he had calculated that the issue could be killed off immediately, he would then have been proved wrong.40Harington’s Diary, 18; CJ iv. 506a. He took the Covenant on 29 April (a fact that is not recorded in the Commons’ Journal).41Harington’s Diary, 24. On 15 May he was among those added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers.42CJ iv. 545b; Harington’s Diary, 27. Although generally dryly factual, his diary does occasionally reveal his pro-Presbyterian leanings. When on 22 April the Commons voted on the powers to be given to Presbyterian elders, Harington clearly approved when he recorded that there was ‘much joy’ that the Independents would be ‘bolted out of their burrows.’43Harington’s Diary, 21. When Paul Best was charged with blasphemy over his ‘outrageous, horrible expressions’ against the Trinity, Harington was so shocked by those remarks that he refused to write them down.44Harington’s Diary, 16.

But Harington’s place in the Commons was not yet secure. Parliament had received complaints about the Somerset election as early as January 1646 and on 23 April the Committee for the North, which had been asked to investigate, decided to recommend that the result be overturned. George Horner, whose return was equally in doubt, approached Harington to suggest that, if a new election was called, they should combine forces. Harington refused, but did indicate that he would stand again if the previous result were reversed.45Harington’s Diary, 22. On 5 June the Commons agreed that their return had been invalid and so ordered a new election.46CJ iv. 565b-566a. Harington was not around to hear this verdict. On 18 May he and James Ashe* had set out from London to return to Somerset.47Harington’s Diary, 27. Harington may have feared the worst and judged that it would be better to be back home preparing for another contest. He spent the next few weeks visiting a wide selection of the county’s leading gentlemen, doubtless with the aim of securing their support.48Harington’s Diary, 27-8. This paid off. He and Horner were re-elected on 13 July.49Harington’s Diary, 28. He was back in London four days later and resumed his seat on 22 July.50Harington’s Diary, 29.

Harington returned to Westminster fully determined to carry out his parliamentary duties. In the days beforehand he had been drafting a maiden speech, which he had discussed with his friends Samuel Browne* and William Prynne*; Browne seems to have been less than encouraging.51Harington’s Diary, 28-9. By the end of the month Harington and Francis Rous* had been assigned the task by the Commons of drafting a bill on the ordination of clergymen.52CJ iv. 630b; Harington’s Diary, 30. This was passed by the Commons ‘as I had drawn it’ on 27 August.53CJ iv. 652a-b; Harington’s Diary, 34. The resulting ordinance set out in detail the rules by which Presbyterian classes were to judge whether candidates were suitable for ordination.54A. and O. i. 865-70. It seems reasonable to suppose that Harington had specifically promoted this piece of legislation and that this was what he had planned to make the subject of his maiden speech. He can also be assumed to have played a major role in the decision to prosecute Sir John Stawell*, one of the most prominent of the Somerset royalists.55CJ iv. 648a; Harington’s Diary, 33.

It was a measure of Harington’s own personal piety that he was moved to tears by a sermon in August 1646.56Harington’s Diary, 32. Religion remained one of his major political interests. On 30 September he was included on the committee against ‘ungodly oaths’ and ‘clandestine and incestuous marriages’.57CJ iv. 678b; Harington’s Diary, 40. That same month he may have been disappointed not to have been included on the committee to prepare legislation to sell off the lands of the cathedral chapters.58Harington’s Diary, 40. But he was a member of the committee appointed on 2 November to make last-minute checks to the equivalent bill for the sale of bishops’ lands before it was sent up to the Lords.59CJ iv. 712a. Two days later he sat on the committee on the bill to enforce payments for the repair of church buildings.60CJ iv. 714b. He had already spoken in the grand committee debate on 14 October on the bill against blasphemy. His intervention, which was to correct John Selden*, was done on the spur of the moment.61Harington’s Diary, 43. He supported plans to encourage the printing of affordable bibles and was named to the committee on the bill for that purpose on 16 October.62CJ iv. 695a; Harington’s Diary, 44. Given that he had played such a crucial role in setting out their powers, it is not surprising that he should have been consulted by Sir John Horner in April 1647 about the plans for Somerset Presbyterian classes.63Harington’s Diary, 47. In due course he would be appointed as an elder of his local classis.64Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 415. In May 1647 Rous showed him his draft bill for a visitation of Oxford University, perhaps in order to seek his advice.65Harington’s Diary, 49-50. When the Commons debated the first chapter of the Westminster Confession of Faith on 19 May, Harington raised a particularly pedantic objection. The Confession states that the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, but, as Harington pointed out, parts of it – he must have been referring to Daniel and Ezra – are actually written in Aramaic (‘Chaldee’). He himself thought that he had spoken ‘weakly’ on this occasion and that passage was allowed to stand as it was.66Harington’s Diary, 52. Old Testament texts were something of a hobby for Harington and he would later borrow biblical manuscripts in Syriac and Arabic from the archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher, and Selden.67Harington’s Diary, 62, 64, 65-6, 69, 70, 77-80, 82, 84; Add. 46367, ff. 77v, 101.

As a keen supporter of religious Presbyterianism, Harington had some sympathies with the Scots. But he also had reservations. These became evident when he spoke in the debate on 5 October 1646 on whether Parliament should stick to the former arrangements for the payment of £400,000 to their Scottish allies. Harington felt that the Scots had not kept their side of the deal, so the English were now entitled to pay what they could at this time on condition that the Scottish army withdrew at once. This was his first speech in the House as an MP and his inexperience showed. His arguments went down badly, with his colleagues apparently feeling that he had not kept to the precise topic under discussion.68Harington’s Diary, 35.

As a barrister, Harington exhibited a professional concern with legal matters. On 21 October 1646 he was named to the two committees set up to consider how to reform the courts of chancery, exchequer and the duchy of Lancaster.69CJ iv. 701a-b; Harington’s Diary, 45. Later that month he was also named to the committee appointed to decide what to do about those unresolved cases still before the soon-to-be defunct court of wards.70CJ iv. 710a. Another committee on which he may have sat was that on the bill to remove MPs’ legal immunities.71CJ iv. 708b. On the question as to whether the new commissioners of the great seal could be MPs, Harington adopted an ambiguous, even inconsistent, stance. On 1 October 1646 he voted with the minority who took the view that the commissioners should be MPs.72Harington’s Diary, 40. The Commons returned to the subject 12 days later after the bill had been returned from the Lords and when a similar amendment was proposed. This time Harington took part in the debate. He argued that, if subsequently elected to the Commons, a commissioner could be dismissed from his post. This need not mean that he had changed his mind on the main principle, only that he was making a suggestion as to how this particular provision might be framed. Either way, he thought that the Commons ignored him.73Harington’s Diary, 43. It begins to seem that he was an ineffectual debater. Several weeks later he took part in the discussions with the Lords about how to dispose of the great seal.74CJ iv. 714a.

Harington seems to have been present in the Commons on 7 June 1647 when they were threatened by a mob of disbanded soldiers demanding their arrears.75Harington’s Diary, 55. It may be significant that there is a gap in his diary between then and 26 July, when, in a similar incident, Parliament was besieged by Londoners demanding that the recent militia ordinance be withdrawn. His notes suggest that he was among those MPs who attended the Commons on 30 July, in the absence of the Independent minority who had withdrawn to join the army. He was probably also present on 4 August.76Harington’s Diary, 55-6. Despite this, he was still named to the committee created on 11 August, in the aftermath of the army’s arrival in London, to handle the bill to repeal all their votes between 26 July and 6 August. Harington made relatively detailed notes in his diary on the passage of this legislation without revealing whether he thought that this was desirable or to be regretted.77CJ v. 272a; Harington’s Diary, 56-8. What can be said is that, amid all this political confusion, Harington’s faith allowed him to remain optimistic. On 16 August the prolocutor of the Westminster assembly, Charles Herle, preached a sermon expressing doubt as to whether truth could emerge from these struggles. Harington disagreed and later that day, on being introduced to him by William Ashhurst*, he had the chance to discuss his views with Herle.

I incline that every[one] ought to pray in faith for the greatest measure of sanctifications presently, and also for a blessed agreement in the truth among God’s people, and that it is not because we will not believe God’s promises nor pray for the performance he oppose, for it may be God will bring good out of these evils.78Harington’s Diary, 58.

By this stage, few of his contemporaries would have been quite so confident.

Harington’s diary breaks off on 1 September 1647, after which several pages have been removed, so we do not have his perspective on the politically sensitive events which followed.79Harington’s Diary, 8-9, 60. He still attended Parliament, however. The Journal shows that he remained an active presence at Westminster throughout the rest of 1647 and for much of 1648. On 27 September 1647 he was asked to thank those Somerset inhabitants whose petition had been read that day, and was therefore probably the MP who had presented it.80CJ v. 318b. At this time he was still keen to see some sort of negotiated settlement with the king, despite the king’s declared preference for the Heads of the Proposals over the recent set of pro-Presbyterian parliamentary propositions. On 30 September and 6 October he was named to the committees to prepare new religious proposals to be submitted to Charles.81CJ v. 321b, 327b. He recognised that the army had genuine concerns, probably supporting their demands for indemnity (he was added to the Committee for Indemnity in January 1648) and for their arrears.82CJ v. 327b, 397b; LJ ix. 669a. But he is unlikely to have been a sympathetic member of the committee on John Lilburne.83CJ v. 347b. In December 1647 he lost out to Prynne in the vote by the Bath corporation on who to appoint as their new recorder.84Bath and N.E. Som. RO, Bath council bk. 1631-49, p. 296.

His known activity during 1648 shows that he continued to believe that Parliament had a duty to support and promote godliness, presumably ideally within a Presbyterian ecclesiastical structure. In March 1648 he probably supported the bills to compensate the surviving feoffees for impropriations from the early 1630s and for the stricter observance of the sabbath.85CJ v. 519a, 522a-b. He can certainly be assumed to have supported the bill to promote preaching ministers in Bath; he was first-named to the committee on it (21 Apr.) and he later reported back to the Commons on the amendments that this committee wished to recommend (1 May).86CJ v. 539a, 548b. He may also have played a part in April 1648 in drafting the order requiring prayers from clergymen in and around London.87CJ v. 545a. In June 1648 he probably supported the appointments of new prebendaries for Christ Church, Oxford (formerly the cathedral).88CJ v. 603b. As his wish to see a Presbyterian settlement negotiated with the king had never wavered, he almost certainly supported the Newport negotiations between September and November 1648. That would explain why he was included on the committee appointed on 27 October to prepare bills incorporating those proposals to which the king had already agreed.89CJ vi. 62b. The failure of these negotiations must have come as a great disappointment to Harington and it can be supposed that he was among those MPs in early December who still hoped that negotiations might be resumed. Harington was therefore exactly the type of MP Thomas Pride* wished to remove when he purged the Commons on 6 December. That purge abruptly ended Harington’s parliamentary career. The king’s execution the following month would have appalled him.

His resumption of the diary in May 1650 helps provide a detailed picture of his life in enforced political retirement. In London he had a circle of lawyer friends centred on Lincoln’s Inn with whom he often dined, including William Lenthall*, Oliver St John* and (Sir) Harbottle Grimston*. His other associates included Sir Robert Pye I* and Sir Gilbert Gerard*. He knew Oliver Cromwell* and dined with him in April 1652.90Harington’s Diary, 61, 72. He may also have encouraged John Milton in his efforts to get Brian Walton’s Polyglot Bible published.91Harington’s Diary, 73. But his most valued friend in these years was Archbishop Ussher. From 1647 Ussher was lodging at Lincoln’s Inn and in the years that followed, he and Harington saw each other regularly. The two often dined together, the archbishop lent him rare books and Harington seems to have gained much spiritual sustenance from Ussher’s sermons in the inn’s chapel.92Harington’s Diary, 61-85; LI Black Bks. ii. 399. Throughout this period Lincoln’s Inn served as his base in the capital. He was appointed as its treasurer in 1650 and, had he not declined to do so, he would have been Lent reader again in 1652.93LI Black Bks. ii. 389, 392; Harington’s Diary, 64. No doubt mindful of his friendship with Ussher and his own scholarly interests, his colleagues appointed him as the keeper of their library in November 1652.94LI Black Bks. ii. 403; Harington’s Diary, 78. What remains unclear is how far he maintained his practice at the bar during this period. He returned at regular intervals to Somerset, where he continued to serve as a justice of peace under both the Rump and the protectorate.95QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, pp. xxi, 136, 231; Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 38. In February 1653 he visited William Prynne on his return to the county following his release from prison.96Harington’s Diary, 80.

Harington’s main health concern during these years seems to have been a problem with his feet, most likely gout, and in January 1653 one of his toes became infected.97Harington’s Diary, 79-80. The last entry in his diary dates from 29 November 1653.98Harington’s Diary, 85. On 21 April 1654 he drew up his will.99PROB11/242/491; PROB11/248/5; Som. RO, DD/BR/cr/5. He was dead by 31 May, for on that day the benchers of Lincoln’s Inn appointed his successor as master of the library.100LI Black Bks. ii. 403. In accordance with the settlement made at the time of his marriage in 1623, his lands at Kelston passed to his widow for life as her jointure estate. The manor at Corston and the rest of his estates were left to his eldest son, John II*.101PROB11/242/491; PROB11/248/5; Som. RO, DD/BR/cr/5. He was buried in the church at Kelston, but the tomb was unmarked and his only memorial there would be a much later inscription recording the deaths of several generations of the family.102Collinson, Som. i. 129.