PRIDEAUX, Richard (1606-67), of Thuborough, Sutcombe, Devon, and Trecarne, St Mabyn, Cornw.

Richard Prideaux’s family had been established in the west country since the middle ages, but in the early seventeenth century his father, Jonathan Prideaux, was forced to sell and mortgage property to appease creditors, and on his father’s death in 1637 Richard may have been left with little more than the manor of Thuborough in Devon, which was the family’s patrimonial estate.16PROB11/175/214. Prideaux’s own financial position had been eased by his marriage, three years earlier, to a daughter and coheir of Richard Barrett of Trecarne in Cornwall, and this match may also have drawn him closer to his other Cornish relatives, such as the Arundells of Trerice. By April 1640 Prideaux was sufficiently well enough established in the county to be chosen as a suitable burgess for the borough of Bodmin in the elections to the Short Parliament.17Vivian. Vis. Cornw. 620. There is no evidence, however, that Prideaux was active during the brief parliamentary session.

In the early summer of 1642 Prideaux signed the Cornish petition asking the king to make peace with Parliament and denouncing arbitrary government, but he readily joined his kinsman, John Arundell I*, in supporting the royalists when civil war broke out a few weeks later.18Coate, Cornw. 356. Prideaux had been appointed as a royalist commissioner for Cornwall by the spring of 1643, and in March he was at Bodmin, where he and John Roscarrock met ‘to compound with the prisoners’.19Cornw. RO, B/BOD/285, unfol. In the following May he returned to the town to organise the conscription of ‘the third men’ from the Cornish hundreds.20Cornw. RO, B/BOD/285, unfol. He was made a justice of the peace for Cornwall in October 1643 and for Devon a month later, and he was present at the siege of Plymouth, signing the summons delivered to the garrison on 18 November.21Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 78, 103; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 298. In October 1644 the king ordered Prideaux and others ‘to make inquiry what arrears of pay are due unto John Arundell Esq of Trerice’ and his soldiers at Pendennis, and to ensure that regular payments were made in the future.22Cornw. RO, B/35/40. In the same year Prideaux was listed as having given £20 to the royalist cause.23Cornw. RO, B/35/61. By the summer of 1645 he was serving as sheriff of Cornwall, seizing arms hidden by parliamentarian sympathisers, and on 1 September he wrote to Sir Edward Hyde* in support of a Cornish petition complaining of the embezzlement of money and the lack of accounts by collectors and other officials.24CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 213; CCSP i. 275; Coate, Cornw. 191. It was probably during 1645 that Prideaux was knighted, perhaps as a reward for his services as sheriff, although the exact date is unknown.25Vide supra, ‘Henry Killigrew’.

In March 1646 Prideaux was a signatory of the Truro articles, which saw the surrender of Sir Ralph Hopton’s* army and the end of royalist hopes in the south west.26Som. RO, DD/BK/9/2/1c; LJ viii. 227b, 203a. Shortly afterwards his estates were sequestered, and he was labelled a ‘notorious delinquent’.27CCC 97, 116. In April 1649 Prideaux petitioned the Committee for Compounding*, claiming his rights under the Truro articles, and asking that his estate might be released. Even though his statement that he had been ‘forced’ to engage for the king against Parliament (and only at the very end of the war) beggared belief, he was allowed to compound on a fine of £426, and his lands were discharged in June of that year.28CCC 1996. Prideaux remained under suspicion, however. In April 1650 Colonel Robert Bennett* warned his Cornish subordinates of ‘a sudden attempt upon this county’, and reported that Prideaux’s horses had been confiscated as a precaution.29FSL, X.d.483 (53). A month later the Cornish committee re-opened the investigation of Prideaux’s estates; and the Committee for Compounding subsequently ordered the Devon authorities to assist in providing further information.30CCC 235, 237. The result of this new investigation is unknown, but Prideaux had been imprisoned at Lostwithiel by April 1651, when he wrote to Colonel Bennett, hoping that ‘some expressions of yours at the last assizes, very much resenting my present condition, and those irregular ways which brought me thereinto from hence’, might influence his case. He also told Bennett that he was also hopeful of the ‘favour’ of the regional commander, John Disbrowe*. Whether through the intervention of Bennett and Disbrowe, or otherwise, in August or September 1651 Prideaux was finally released on bonds for good behaviour.31FSL, X.d.483 (87, 95).

Prideaux remained unmolested for the remainder of the interregnum. At the Restoration his loyalty was as last rewarded, as he was made surveyor-general of the duchy of Cornwall.32CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 212. The position was, however, more onerous – and not as lucrative – as Prideaux had hoped, as at the end of 1660 he was charged with compiling ‘a more exact survey of the duchy’ than so far existed.33CTB i. 91. This was a costly project, and although warrants were repeatedly issued for payment of his expenses, these were not paid. In 1666 he was forced to petition for reimbursement of £300 he had paid from his own pocket for his ‘exact survey’, pointing out that his work had increased the royal revenue from those estates to £3,000 a year.34CTB i. 281, 528; CSP Dom. 1666-7, p. 405. The costs of his official duties put an additional strain on Prideaux’s already weak finances. He had spent much of the early 1660s fighting legal cases against an array of local gentlemen, and in December 1665 was forced to propose a settlement to satisfy his creditors, reserving £1,000 a year for himself.35C6/19/40; C8/32/81; C9/19/40; C9/27/120; C9/28/152; C9/29/129; C10/65/39; Cornw. RO, AR/25/32. Prideaux died in 1667. His eldest son, Richard, died without heirs three years later, and what remained of the estate passed to his third son, Jonathan†, who was elected at MP for Callington in 1689.36Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 620; HP Commons 1660-1690.