SYDENHAM, Sir Ralph (d. 1671), of Youlston, Shirwell, Devon.

Sydenham was a younger son of a Somerset landowner, Sir John Sydenham, but he was brought up in London, and as a young man probably had some official position at the royal court.1Keeler, Long Parliament, 356. He attended James I to Scotland in 1617 and was knighted at St Andrews, and it was at this time, or shortly afterwards, that he was made a gentleman of the privy chamber.2Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 163; Keeler, Long Parliament, 356; N. Carlisle, Gents. of the Privy Chamber (1829). In the last years of James’s reign, the king had promised Sydenham the reversion of the office of surveyor of the ordnance, but this was not honoured, despite Sydenham’s reminders to prominent courtiers in May and November 1624.3CSP Dom. 1623-5, pp. 251, 397. He was finally granted the reversion by Charles I in June 1630.4CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 555. During the personal rule, Sydenham became involved in local Devon administration, serving on local piracy, sewer, and hard soap commissions, and by the end of the decade he was an active member of the commission of the peace.5C181/4, ff. 52v, 163v; C181/5, ff. 84, 92, 102v, 132v; Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 131, 158, 197. He also entered the service of Henry Bourchier, 6th earl of Bath, becoming his chief agent at Tawstock by 1637.6CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 509; Granville, Granville Fam. 231.

Sydenham’s return for the Cornish seat of Bossiney in the elections for the Long Parliament was on the interest of Sir Bevill Grenvile*. Grenvile, who owed Sydenham a ‘great sum of money’, was hampered in his design by William Coryton*, acting as agent for Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke. In a letter he explained to Sydenham that two elections had been held, ‘one by Mr Coryton’s men, and another by all the freemen, and they have chosen you and another called Sir John Clotworthy*’, but insisted that ‘I am confident your election must stand’, and ended by begging Sydenham to use his court contacts ‘to prevent my lord chamberlain from having a misconceit of me’.7Granville, Granville Fam. 233-4. The result was the return of five MPs. On 7 December 1640 the Bossiney election was declared void by the Commons, and another writ was issued, resulting in a further return, dated 22 December.8Procs. LP i. 484n; CJ ii. 46a, 47a; C219/43/14. In this election, Sydenham was again returned, but the election was confused, and was again rescinded by the House on 15 February 1641.9D’Ewes (N), 362. In the third election, held at the end of February, Sydenham was again returned, alongside Sir Christopher Yelverton*.

Despite the effort to secure him a seat, Sydenham’s career as an MP proved undistinguished. He took the Protestation on 3 May 1641, but played very little part in politics thereafter, and was granted leave of absence on 23 July 1641, 28 February and 28 June 1642.10CJ ii. 133a, 221a, 460b, 643b. In July 1642 Sydenham was named as one of the commissioners of array for Devon, and his royalist sympathies were soon all too apparent.11Bellum Civile, 105. On 2 September he was suspended from the Commons while his continuing absence could be investigated.12CJ ii. 750a. On 24 September 1642, William Russell, 5th earl of Bedford, denounced Sydenham, along with the earl of Bath, as one of the leading troublemakers in Somerset and northern Devon, and issued instructions that he should be arrested.13HMC 4th Rep 304. Sydenham and Bath did their best to assist Sir Ralph Hopton’s* passage into Cornwall, providing servants to guide his horsemen from Minehead to Barnstaple and thence to Grenvile’s house.14Bellum Civile, 19n. Sydenham was also accused of having sent money to William Seymour, 1st marquess of Hertford, and of attending Hopton into Cornwall in person.15Add. 18777, f. 37v. On 29 September the Commons finally lost patience, and resolved that Sydenham ‘shall be disabled to continue any longer a Member of this House, during this Parliament’.16CJ ii. 788a.

In January 1644 Sydenham signed the letter from the Oxford Parliament to the parliamentarian lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.17Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. By the summer he was living in Exeter, and was a member of the royalist council of war there, signing warrants in June and July.18Devon RO, 1392 M/L1644/39; Devon RO, 3799-3, 15 June and 25 July 1644. From June until November 1644 he was a regular correspondent with the earl of Bath, passing on court gossip as well as political and military developments. In June he told Bath of the birth of a new princess, and that the minister had mistakenly given thanks for the safe delivery of a baby boy.19HMC 4th Rep. 296. In the same month he monitored the earl of Essex’s advance into the west, commenting that ‘this comes by rating the people and not paying of our own’, and adding the gloomy prediction that Exeter could only withstand a month’s siege.20HMC 4th Rep. 296. In September he told Bath of the recent losses in Wales and the mission to France by John Wilmot*, 1st Baron Wilmot; and in November he reported Prince Rupert’s threat to resign his commission.21HMC 4th Rep. 296-7. In the spring of 1645 Sydenham had crossed to France, on an unspecified mission, and he was noted as being in Rouen at the end of April, and at St Germain in August.22HMC 7th Rep. 450-1.

Sydenham’s active royalism ended when the king’s fortunes declined. He wrote to Sir John Northcote* and Sir John Bampfylde* at the end of 1645, asking for a pass to return to England.23CCC 1535. He did not make the journey until the end of September 1646, when it was feared that he had been drowned in a storm off Dieppe, but on 1 October he submitted to Parliament, begging to compound for his estates.24HMC 7th Rep. 456. Somewhat disingenuously, Sydenham told the Committee for Compounding that he had attended the king for only a month, that he had disliked the royalists in Exeter, and that his efforts to compound had been prevented by the ‘state of the country’ from travelling to London during the civil war. The committee was unconvinced, and in April 1647 imposed a fine of £1,310, which Sydenham thought ‘heavy and extreme’. After protracted haggling, and scrutiny of the case in the Commons, the fine was reduced to £600 in 1648, and in November 1649 a further £100 was respited.25CCC 1535; CJ vi. 202b, 208b, 212a. In the same period, Sydenham was also being pursued by the Committee for Advance of Money. In March 1647 he was assessed at £500, but a month later the fine was suspended until the sequestration of his estate was lifted.26CCAM 792.

Although he had been treated with relative leniency by the parliamentarian authorities, Sydenham remained under suspicion. In April 1648 he was listed as a ‘notorious’ delinquent, and he may have been kept in London for much of the summer, only being allowed to return to Devon by order of the Lords on 27 July.27CCC 97; LJ x. 400b. In August 1651, during Charles Stuart’s march to Worcester, Sydenham was again assessed at £500 by the Committee for Advance of Money.28CCAM 1487. In 1656 Sydenham was among the Devon royalists forced to pay the decimation tax, and in January 1657 he petitioned the council to be discharged, whereupon his case was referred to John Disbrowe* as major-general, and the local commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth.29CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 226. Sydenham’s notoriety made him vulnerable in other ways, and he spent much of the 1650s fighting legal disputes over properties in Devon and Somerset, including the defence of lands leased from the dean and chapter of Wells Cathedral.30C5/17/22; C5/397/157; C6/150Pt2/55, 58; C8/129/177; C9/15/85; E134/1658/East11. While Sydenham had been politically inactive during the interregnum, he remained a royalist at heart, and, according to John Aubrey, in February 1660 he was one of those who welcomed George Monck* on his entry to London, and ‘went and dined with him, and after dinner told him that God had put a good opportunity into his hands’ to restore the king.31Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 74. There may be some truth in this, as one of the Sir Edward Hyde’s* informants included Sydenham among those who lobbied Monck in March 1660.32CCSP iv. 603. After the Restoration, Sydenham petitioned Charles II, probably with Monck’s blessing, for the vacant mastership of Sutton’s Hospital, otherwise known as the Charterhouse, invoking his service to the previous two monarchs, and his sufferings for the cause. He was duly appointed master on 17 July 1660.33CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 122, 169.

Sydenham was much envied for his good fortune. In November 1666 Sir Philip Mainwaring petitioned Charles II for the reversion of the mastership, commenting that Sydenham was ‘very ill’, and likely to die.34CSP Dom. 1666-7, p. 239. Sydenham again fell ill in April 1669, leading some to hope that his position might soon be vacant; but it was noted in May that he was ‘abroad again, and hearty, so we may take breath’.35HMC 7th Rep. 487. In November of the same year the reversion was granted to Martin Clifford, in the expectation that Sydenham did not have long to live.36CSP Dom. 1668-9, p. 568. In the event, Sydenham did not die until the autumn of 1671. His will, drafted on 10 October, mostly comprised of ‘small legacies’ to the officers and members of the hospital, including wine and clothes for those attending his funeral, and he stipulated that ‘my desire is that not any one be invited but such as are of this society, to avoid both trouble and charge’.37PROB11/337/438. The extent of Sydenham’s estate, and how it was divided at his death is uncertain. The bulk of the lands in Devon had been acquired on his marriage, and these now passed to his wife’s son from her first marriage. Another son, born in October 1631, almost certainly pre-deceased his father, and although Sydenham’s will mentions an unmarried daughter, Joan, nothing further is known of her.38CCC 1535; Shirwell par. regs.; PROB11/337/438.