LONGE, Richard (1579-1648), of Bristol.

Richard Longe’s Devon origins in the decayed town of Axminster are obscure, but were in any case completely effaced by his arrival in Bristol in 1600 as an apprentice merchant. His marriage to the daughter of John Barker, who died in office as mayor in 1607, introduced him to the inner circle of the city’s governing class, and to residence in the central parish of St Werburgh.19St Werburgh par. reg.; Latimer, Annals of Bristol, 33. Longe was an active Merchant Venturer, serving as warden of that company even before he had been admitted to the common council of the city corporation. With John Taylor*, he was a partner in Mary Rose in the Newfoundland fishing industry, adapted in 1639 to carry would-be colonists to New England.20PC2/48, p. 49; PC2/51, pp. 59-60; Latimer, Annals of Bristol, 98; Soc. of Merchant Venturers, merchants’ hall bk. of procs. 1639-70, p. 2. He also traded into France, Portugal and Spain, importing wine.21Bristol Depositions Bks. 1643-7, 71, 131, 136-7, 141, 248. His brother-in-law, John Barker†, was active in the running feud between the Bristol merchants and the privy council over duties and privileges, and Longe himself was implicated in the allegations before the privy council in the 1630s that butter had been illegally exported. He was alleged, when mayor, to have refused to co-operate with government commissioners investigating the supposed fraud against the poor.22CSP Dom. 1634-5, pp. 177-8; 1637-8, p. 138; Bodl. Bankes 55/85.

Longe followed a conventional progress along the civic cursus honorum. In 1627, he was active in buying in grain worth £500 to fill the city storehouses, and the following year served on a committee to set out two ships to guard Bristol shipping from pirates in the Irish Sea. When in 1628, soldiers were despatched to Ireland, Longe was charged with visiting Hung Road, the tidal anchorage towards the mouth of the Avon, to organise transportation.23Bristol RO, 04264/3, ff. 1, 3v, 5v. In 1630, he acquired a fee farm of property in Congresbury by virtue of his office as hospital governor, and the same year served on a committee for wharfage fees, and - with John Taylor - on a committee to renew navigation aids in the Avon.24Bristol RO, 04264/3, ff. 20v, 21v, 22. With Humphrey Hooke*, Longe sought to secure an admiralty jurisdiction for the city, which bore fruit in 1637.25Bristol RO, 04264/3, f. 40v; CSP Dom. 1637, p. 305. In 1636, he took a leading role in attempts to protect Bristol from the arrival of plague from London, and during his mayoralty, the following year, had to contend with another unwelcome visitation, on this occasion the floods which destroyed much livestock in the low-lying areas of the city.26Bristol RO, 04264/3, ff. 68, 69; Adams’s Chronicle, 243-4. With Hooke and Taylor, Longe briefed Richard Aldworth* on his journey to London in 1638 to negotiate with the privy council and remedy the deteriorating relationship between Bristol and the government.27Bristol RO, 04264/3, f. 87v; Adams’s Chronicle, 256.

In the council chamber votes of July 1639 over the appointment of the future royalist clergyman, Abel Lovering, Longe voted in his favour, alongside Humphrey Hooke and against John Taylor, Richard Aldworth and Joseph Jackson*. Longe had had a very active involvement with his own parish of St Werburgh ever since his first arrival there as a resident in 1620. He served on several occasions as churchwarden and clavenger (seemingly a financial office), and invested much of his own money in beautifying the church. In 1624 he paid for wainscoting behind the communion table, and in 1629 raised and paved the chancel floor under the communion table. The works extended to ‘pointing of the north east pane ... wherein the Decalogue is inscribed, the rest of the chancel, the arms of Queen Elizabeth and King James, the new erecting of the minister and clerk their seats, and beautifying of the pulpit’.28Bristol RO, P/St. W/Chw/3(b), pp. 37, 54. The grateful parishioners recorded their thanks to Longe in the churchwardens’ book. With expenditure during his wardenship on herbs and flowers (including rosemary, bay and holly), and both wax and tallow candles, there seems little doubt that Longe sympathised with ritual in liturgy, even if we cannot describe him as Laudian.

On the question of who should become the new chamberlain, in December 1639, Longe voted with the majority, including Taylor, Richard Aldworth, Luke Hodges*, Miles Jackson* and Joseph Jackson against Hooke. Their candidate, William Chetwyn, was victorious after a concession by the crown, in an assertion of the chamber’s right to appoint its own man.29Bristol RO, 04264/3, ff. 95v-7, 98v, 99. The summoning of the Short Parliament in 1640 gave the corporation an outlet for its many grievances, and Longe worked with Taylor and Miles Jackson to compile a list of the city’s most pressing complaints. He served with the same men on a parallel committee with exactly the same functions, on behalf of the Merchant Venturers.30Bristol RO, 04264/3, f. 102v; Soc. of Merchant Venturers, merchants’ hall bk. of procs. 1639-70, p. 23. A few months later, Longe found himself at Westminster as one of the two Members for Bristol in the November 1640 assembly. He was an alderman and had recently served as mayor; he was the brother-in-law of an outspoken MP of the 1620s, John Barker. Probably more important than any of this was his distinguished service as twice master of the Society of Merchant Venturers. His senior colleague, Hooke, had an even more impressive record of service, having served seven terms in that office.

In September 1640, Hooke, Longe and Richard Aldworth undertook to compound with the London Vintners’ Company for duties on wines at Bristol.31Soc. of Merchant Venturers, merchants’ hall bk. of procs. 1639-70, pp. 29, 32. Once at London, Hooke and Longe pursued their goal of removing this duty in the long term, and Longe was also active in working around the palace of Westminster to remove another patent odious to the Bristol merchants, that of Hugh Lewis on calfskins.32Soc. of Merchant Venturers, merchants’ hall bk. of procs. 1639-70, pp. 40, 45, 50. The Bristol MPs together offered £1,000 security against the proposed City of London loan of £100,000 to the king to relieve the armies in the north.33Procs. LP i. 228. Both the Bristol MPs were paid their 6s 8d. per day remuneration on the same basis, 309 days each, in 1641. The threat from the rebellion in Ireland seems to have been Longe’s main interest in the Commons. Letters were sent by the corporation to Longe about the guarding of the Irish coast against excursions by rebels, and in 1642 he secured two ships for this duty (17 Jan.).34Bristol RO, 04026/22, pp. 112, 164; PJ i. 100. He was named to a committee to attend the lord admiral, Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, about shipping from Dunkirk carrying arms for Ireland (13 Jan.).35PJ i. 57; CJ ii. 375a. On 24 January, it was probably he who passed to the House a pessimistic report on the threat from rebels to towns on the east coast of Ireland, and the following day reported suspect Irish activity in Bristol.36PJ i. 155, 163, 169

On 5 February, the cases of Longe and Hooke as participants in the Vintners’ wine monopoly came before the House, ironically in view of the entry by the Merchant Venturers into the into the scheme as a means of ridding themselves of the imposition. Longe was the only one of the two to speak, and argued that he only became involved as an agent of the city of Bristol; but expressed himself willing to resign his seat if a committee enquiry could not clear him. Longe withdrew, on a motion of George Fane. Sir Simons D’Ewes* considered the debate a distraction from the pressing matter of sending an expeditionary force to Ireland.37PJ i. 281, 284, 285, 287. Not until 12 May did the committee report, when it was resolved that both Hooke and Longe were not monopolists, but were beneficiaries in the wine patent. Both were declared no longer qualified to sit.38CJ ii. 567b-568a. In September, Longe received £60 4s 6d as a final payment for his services as MP.39Bristol RO, 04026/22, p. 178.

Back in Bristol, Longe and Hooke each offered £200 towards supplying an army for Ireland (14 June), and were named to the king’s commission of array for the city and not to the civic committee of safety (which included Luke Hodges) in August.40Bristol RO, 04264/3, ff. 120v, 123; Northants. RO, FH133, unfol. After the civil war had begun, both men helped prepare petitions to both king and Parliament.41Bristol RO, 04264/4, pp. 5-6, 19. The surrender of the city to Prince Rupert marked the abandonment by Longe and Hooke of their apparent bi-partisan allegiances. Longe did not vote in the Bristol chamber’s decision to offer a gift to the king of £10,000, but served on the committee to raise the money.42Bristol RO, 04264/4, p. 33. Longe took a protestation of 1643 not to bear arms against the king or contribute to the parliamentarian cause, but with Taylor and Hooke attended the royalist governor to seek concessions for the citizens under martial law. In December 1643, Hooke and Longe listened to citizens’ grievances, but in May 1644 Longe supplied the wine for a gift to the deputy governor, doubtless as part of a continuing programme of mediation.43Bristol RO, 04264/4, pp. 35, 37, 46; 04026/22, p. 304.

In February 1644, Longe was named to a city committee to prepare instructions for whoever was to become Bristol’s envoy to the king’s court at Oxford; in the event, it was the two sheriffs who went, taking with them a butt of sack for entertaining there, paid for by Longe.44Bristol RO, 04026/22, p. 304; 04264/4, p. 55. He was in the forefront of financial contributions to the royalist war effort. In April 1644, he voted for £500 to be given as a present to the queen (Hooke wanted to give only £100), and served on a committee to negotiate with Lord Hopton’s (Sir Ralph Hopton*) commissioners for the associated neighbouring counties. He and Hooke were asked to raise £500 more than the £1000 they had already promised Hopton, and in June, when Hooke provided £112 in arms, Longe supplied gunpowder worth £102, for the city magazine. In November, following an oath taken in the city to defend the king against his enemies, Longe offered to supply a horseman, complete with armour, where Hooke promised two. In June In January 1645, Hooke, Longe and Taylor were contemplating raising £150 a week from the populace, and they formed a triumvirate on Bristol’s committee of safety from March.45Bristol RO, 04264/4, pp. 62, 67, 81, 82, 86, 93; 04026/22, p. 304. Longe and Taylor participated in the extensive voting on membership of the council the day before Bristol was stormed by the New Model army. Inevitably, Longe was suspended from his place on the council, by parliamentary ordinance, but not before he had scrutinised a petition with Hooke to Lord General Sir Thomas Fairfax*, and participated in the vote to promote Richard Aldworth to the aldermancy in lieu of John Taylor.46Bristol RO, 04264/4, pp. 110, 119, 120, 125; LJ vii. 664-5; A and O.

The following year, Longe sought to compound for his delinquency, pleading the articles of surrender of Bristol. He was fined £800, at one tenth of his estate.47CCC 1556. He never recovered his place on the city council. He made his will on 10 June 1646, noting the counsel of the prophet Isaiah to be ready for the appointed time of his death. He left bequests to the minister of St Werburgh, John Tilladams, who was promoted by the corporation to the living of Christ Church in 1658; but also to the royalist ministers Richard Standfast and Richard Towgood.48Bristol RO, Great Orphan Bk. 2, f. 128; Latimer, Annals of Bristol, 156, 275. His funeral was to be an elaborate affair, with poor men of the almshouse decked out in coats of seawater green - a colour associated in Bristol in 1655 with royalism - and those who refused his livery were to be barred from future benefits of his charity.49TSP iii. 153-4. He died in February 1648, and none of his descendants are known to have sat in Parliament.