HODGES, Thomas II (1603-49), of Wedmore, Som.

Thomas Hodges was lucky to become an MP. He and his family were never more than village gentry and his election to Parliament in 1646 resulted from the peculiar circumstances of the Ilchester by-election. By the late sixteenth century this MP’s great-grandfather, Thomas Hodges, was already living at Wedmore, a village eight miles to the west of Wells. He was predeceased by his eldest son, Thomas junior, who was said to have died at the siege of Antwerp in ‘about 1583’, suggesting either that he helped defend Antwerp against the Catholic Spanish forces of Alexander Farnese, duke of Parma in 1584-5, or, more probably, that he took part in the subsequent English expedition to the Netherlands under Sir John Norris†.13Collinson, Som. i. 191; Vis. Som. 1623, 53. This Thomas left a son, George, who therefore inherited a house and some land at Wedmore on the death of the elder Thomas in 1600.14PROB11/97/80. These estates were never substantial, although at some point the family acquired the impropriated tithes of the local parish.15CSP Dom. 1629-30, pp. 247, 297. George seems never to have held county office. His epitaph, which was erected in the parish church at Wedmore after his death in 1634 and stated that he ‘lived many years at this place in a pious and religious manner’, is consistent with the impression of him as very much a local figure.16Collinson, Som. i. 191.

Thomas, the future MP, appears to have been admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in 1629, when he would have been in his mid-twenties, a relatively late age to begin studying there; the doubt is that the admissions register incorrectly gives his father’s name as ‘Thomas’.17LI Admiss. i. 209. Thomas probably inherited what little land his father held at Wedmore on George Hodges’s death five years later.18Coventry Docquets, 334. In 1639 he was able to supplement this by leasing some lands, Balls Close, at Wedmore from the corporation of Wells for three years.19Wells Corporation Properties, 137, 138, 140, 141, 145; Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 754, 766, 779, 797, 803. However, the most interesting feature of that transaction is that the entry in the corporation act books describes this as a ‘grant to Captain Hodges’.20Wells Corporation Properties, 137; Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 754. The inference must be that Hodges was serving as a captain in the county militia. Evidence for other public roles held by him at this date is less certain. He may have been the Thomas Hodges who had been impanelled by the sheriff, Sir William Portman*, to serve on the Somerset grand jury in 1638.21CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 598; Som. Assize Orders 1629-1640, 61. Three years later he was included on the sewers commission for the county.22C181/5, f. 205. More speculatively, he may have been the constable of that name who joined with the other Somerset constables in the summer of 1642 in asking the judges at the Bath assizes to declare the king’s commission of array to be illegal.23Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 54.

Hodges probably supported Parliament from the outset of the civil war. By 1644 his enthusiasm was being recognised by Parliament, for he was appointed first as a commissioner for Somerset and later as an assessment commissioner.24A. and O. The re-capture of the county for Parliament in the summer of 1645 then accelerated his rise to local importance. It was probably at this point that he was added to the commission of the peace and, as he was later referred to as a ‘colonel’, he was probably given the command of one of the regiments in the local militia. However, the parliamentarian ascendency in Somerset brought its own tensions. The dominance of John Pyne* and his allies on the county committee was deeply resented by many and those critics found a spokesman in the form of William Strode II*. Strode’s decision to stand in the recruiter election at Ilchester in early 1646 was an open challenge to Pyne’s assumption that he could simply dictate the result. That Hodges was the man Strode asked to stand with him reveals him to have shared in the popular distrust towards Pyne. That he had no connection at all with Ilchester was irrelevant. He apparently summed up his approach to the election when he told one local that ‘he did not solicit [for votes] beforehand as Mr Strode did.’25Add. 28716, f. 34v. They were opposed by Pyne’s two nominees, Alexander Pym and Henry Henley*. After a very messy election dispute, the committee for privileges found in favour of Strode and Hodges.

On taking his seat at Westminster, Hodges joined a House of Commons in which his exact namesake, Thomas Hodges I, already sat as the MP for Cricklade. As if that was not confusing enough, Luke Hodges had recently been elected as the MP for Bristol. The Journal rarely distinguished between Thomas Hodges I and II, so it is usually impossible to separate them with any certainty. But some assumptions can be made. In 1646 Thomas Hodges I was already an experienced MP with a track record of activity in the Commons. That activity is unlikely to have suddenly diminished and many of the potential references, especially those relating to army pay, can confidently be attributed to him. In contrast, only a handful of the Journal references are more likely to refer to Thomas Hodges II. Of particular importance is the fact on 23 December 1647 it was ‘Colonel Hodges’ who was sent to Somerset to help speed up the collection of the assessments.26CJ v. 400b. This was surely the Ilchester MP. On that basis, we can assume that he was also the ‘Colonel Thomas Hodges’ who had been granted leave to go into the country on 26 August 1646 and the ‘Colonel Hodges’ granted leave on 22 February 1647.27CJ iv. 650a.

Tellingly, there is more evidence for Hodges’s activities back in Somerset than there is for his presence at Westminster. Several days of his period of leave in the autumn of 1646 were spent attending the Bridgwater quarter sessions in early October.28QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 1. Meanwhile, he used his influence to support the reduction in the composition fine imposed on a Wells man, John Morgan, who had been a major in the king’s army.29CCC 1244. Hodges’s motive for doing so may not have been entirely disinterested, for Morgan was probably the father of William Morgan, who at some point married Hodges’s sister, Barbara.30Brown, Abstracts of Som. Wills, ii. 29; Vis. Som. 1672 (Harl. Soc. n.s. xi), 48. Similarly, his period of leave the following spring allowed him to be one of the justices of the peace appointed to investigate the recent disturbances at Bridgwater.31Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 17, 18-19; QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 30. By sending him to Somerset in December 1647, the Commons also made it possible for him to attend the Wells quarter sessions in the following months.32QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 53, 54, 60. Two months later the Chard assizes appointed him to help determine who was responsible for the repairs to the bridges at Berrow and Ivelchester.33Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 21-2. In October 1648, when a Cossington woman was fined for tippling without a licence, Hodges was the local justice asked to deliver the money to that parish’s overseers of the poor.34QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 75. All this supports the assumption that it was Thomas Hodges II, not Thomas Hodges I, whose absences were repeatedly excused by the Commons.35CJ v. 330a, 348b, 543b. Moreover, on one of those occasions, on 3 November 1647, that excuse was approved on the grounds of ill health.36CJ v. 348b. Hodges thus seems to have been an absentee for much of his time as an MP.

Hodges had been elected in 1646 as a critic of one particular local parliamentarian firebrand and, on encountering them at first hand, he is unlikely to have become any more sympathetic towards Pyne’s equivalents at Westminster. Had he been there on 6 December 1648, he would probably have been purged by Thomas Pride* and his military colleagues at Pride’s Purge. The name of only one Thomas Hodges appears on the lists of secluded Members made at the time, and Thomas Hodges I was re-admitted to the House in June 1649, so was certainly secluded. It seems likely that as a long-term absentee, Hodges II was not present, and he certainly made no further recorded appearance. In any case, his ill health soon caught up with him. On 25 May 1649 he drew up his will on 25 May 1649 and six days later he was buried at Wedmore.37PROB11/208/751; Wedmore Par. Reg. iii.101. His mother died soon afterwards.38PROB11/210/259. Thomas had never married and so left his property, which consisted of just two houses at Wedmore, to his four surviving sisters, Jane, Agatha, Margaret and Barbara.39PROB11/208/751. He was also survived by his younger brother, George, but he lived only until 1655 and, with that death, the male line of the family became extinct.40Collinson, Som. i. 192.