PELHAM, Herbert (c.1600-74), of Cambridge, Mass. Bay, New England, and Mount Bures, Essex.

This branch of the Pelham family owned a wide variety of estates in Lincolnshire, Dorset and elsewhere, but since the late fifteenth century they had been based primarily in Sussex.23Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. liii), 20-1; Lincs. Peds. iii. 767; Chester, Herbert Pelham, 2-3; K.W. Kirkpatrick, ‘The “Loving Cosens”: Herbert Pelham, Sir Arthur Hesilrige, and Gov. Edward Winslow’, New Eng. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. cliv. 87-8. This MP’s grandfather, Herbert Pelham†, the first of four generations of the family to be given that forename, sat for Winchilsea in 1584 and for Reigate in 1604.24HP Commons 1558-1603; HP Commons 1604-1629. He was able to marry, as his second wife, the daughter of a peer, Elizabeth West, the eldest daughter of the 2nd Lord de la Warr. Confusingly, her younger sister, Penelope, later married Herbert’s son, the second Herbert Pelham, and so became the mother of this MP. Little is known about this MP’s early life. It is even uncertain where he is likely to have spent those years – his father was living in Hastings, Sussex, in 1621, but died three years later at Boston, Lincolnshire, where the family also owned estates.25Chester, Herbert Pelham, 6. Those Lincolnshire estates, which were centred on Swineshead, several miles to the west of Boston, probably formed the bulk of Pelham’s inheritance. The future MP’s marriage to Jemima Waldegrave in 1626 linked him to one of the major Suffolk families and so provided him with his first connection with East Anglia.26London Mar. Lics. ed. Foster, 1038.

Pelham’s role in the early history of New England would be a substantial one. His direct interest in the colonisation of North America dated from March 1631 when he was the most junior member of the syndicate which acquired the lands between the forty-first and the forty-second parallels (roughly the modern state of Connecticut) from the 2nd earl of Warwick (Sir Robert Rich†). Other members of the syndicate included William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke, Lord Rich*, Richard Knightley*, John Pym* and John Hampden*.27The Trumbull Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc. 5th ser. ix. 1885), 381. Four years later this group promoted the founding of the Saybrook colony. Pelham’s first wife was related to John Winthrop, the first governor of Massachusetts, and his younger brother William Pelham had probably accompanied Winthrop to New England in 1630. William may well have been in Winthrop’s service at this time and certainly for a period was living in Winthrop’s household at Boston. Herbert therefore kept in touch with Winthrop throughout the 1630s.28Winthrop Pprs. ii. 274, 317, iii. 228, 393-4; Shurtleff, Recs. i. 39, 46, 89; Chester, Herbert Pelham, 5.

In 1638 Pelham himself emigrated to New England. His wife died on the crossing.29R. Fraser, The Mayflower Generation (2017), 162. On arrival he settled at Cambridge, the new town across the Charles River from Boston.30Trans. 1913-14 (Publications of the Colonial Soc. of Mass. xvii. 1915), 134; Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence 1628-1651 ed. J.F. Jameson (New York, 1910, reprinted 1959), 188. Almost at once he remarried, his second wife, Elizabeth Bossevile, being the widow of an earlier emigrant, Roger Harlackenden. Pelham had probably known the Harlackendens already as, back in England, they had been neighbours of the Waldegraves in the Stour valley. The Pelhams’ first child, Mary, was born in New England in November 1640.31Chester, Herbert Pelham, 7-8. In 1639 Pelham was granted some lands at Sudbury, although, when this grant was confirmed the following year, it was agreed that he did not have to live there but he did have to promise that he would build a house and spend as much time there as he could.32Shurtleff, Recs. i. 271, 292. His principal estates, which he gradually extended by further grants and purchases, remained in and around Cambridge.33Recs. of the town of Cambridge, 33, 67-8. When John Phillips, the former minister at Wrentham and Dedham, arrived in Massachusetts in 1639, he spent about a year living in Pelham’s house at Cambridge.34Trans. 1913-14, 212-13. This may well have been the house belonging to Pelham which was destroyed by fire in 1640.35Jnl. of John Winthrop, 340. Pelham’s background, wealth and friendship with Winthrop made him a figure of some standing within the town and he played an active part in local affairs. In 1643 he was appointed as the first treasurer of Harvard, the college which had been established at Cambridge seven years earlier.36Harvard College Recs. pp. clvi-clvii, 16, 175; Jnl. of John Winthrop, 490. At about the same time he also began to be appointed to the various civic offices.37Recs. of the town of Cambridge, 49, 50, 51, 52, 56, 57; Recs. of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of the Mass. Bay 1630-1692 (Boston, Mass. 1912), 10, 12.

Under the articles of confederation of 1643 between the united colonies of New England (Massachusetts, New Plymouth, Connecticut and New Haven), Massachusetts was entitled to send two commissioners each year to the joint meetings of the confederation. Twice, in 1645 and 1646, Pelham was elected to perform this role.38Whitmore, Mass. Civil List, 28; Jnl. of John Winthrop, 621. In 1646 he was one of the signatories of the treaty made by the united colonies with the Narragansetts and the Nianticks.39W. Bradford, Hist. of the Plymouth Plantations 1620-1647 (Mass. Hist. Soc. 1912), 387-8; Winthrop Pprs. v. 96. His sister, Penelope, married Richard Bellingham, who had served as governor of Massachusetts in 1641 and who would do so again in 1654 and after the Restoration.

Pelham’s return to England was made with some reluctance. The decision had been made for him by the general court of Massachusetts in 1646 when, despite their objections, it named Pelham and Richard Saltonstall junior as commissioners to ‘attend the service of the country in England’. The idea was that Pelham and Saltonstall, together with Edward Winslow, would travel to London to consult with the Committee for Foreign Plantations about the land disputes in Narragansett county. In November 1646 he and Saltonstall, who were still unhappy about having had their objections ignored, petitioned the general court asking that their names be removed from the commission.40Winthrop Pprs. v. 120-1; The Saltonstall Pprs. 1607-1815 ed. R.E. Moody (Mass. Hist. Soc. lxxx-lxxxi), i. 35-6, 141. In the event, Pelham decided to go, possibly crossing the Atlantic on the Supply before the year was out.41G.L. Kittredge, ‘Dr. Robert Child the remonstrant’, Trans. 1919 (Pubs. of the Colonial Soc. of Mass. xxi), 33-6. One New England resident, Edward Johnson, marked this event by composing a short verse tribute to him.

Harbertus, hye on valient, why lingerst thou so long?
Christ’s work hath need of hasty speed, his enemies are strong:
In wilderness Christ doth thee bless with virtues, wife and seed,
To govern thou at length didst bow to serve Christ’s peoples’ need;
To thine own soil thou back dost toil, then cease not lab’ring there,

But still advance Christ’s ordinance, and shrink no where for fear.42Johnson’s Wander-Working Providence, 188.

How soon Pelham realised that his return would be permanent is uncertain. When he wrote to Winthrop in May 1647, he assured him that he would prefer to be in New England.43Winthrop Pprs. v. 157. He retained his lands in Massachusetts and, although he ceased to hold some of his local offices, there is no reason why he could not have resumed them had he gone back. His friend Thomas Danford succeeded him as treasurer of Harvard, quite possibly assuming that position sometime before he was confirmed in office by the charter of incorporation of 1650.44Harvard College Recs. pp. clvi, 40, 181.

Pelham returned to find England a kingdom in crisis. In May 1647 he told Winthrop that the army was becoming restless and the Long Parliament unpopular. He thought that Parliament was ‘at present in as great a strait as they have been [for] some years past’ and that ‘the wisest heads in the kingdom see more cause for serious humiliation, in regard of those new approaching dangers than formerly’.45Winthrop Pprs. v. 157. The following year he sent Winthrop a detailed second-hand report on the rioting by the London apprentices on behalf of the king on 9 and 10 April 1648.46Winthrop Pprs. v. 216-19. The interest he took in these political events was more than casual. He and Winslow were all the while busy lobbying Parliament on behalf of the Massachusetts Bay colonists.47Winthrop Pprs. v. 237. The most obvious result of those efforts came in 1649. The scheme they promoted was one to create a fund to support the conversion of the native American tribes. The result was the Act for promoting and propagating the gospel in New England, which was approved by Parliament in July 1649. Pelham was one of the 16 members of the corporation appointed by it to oversee this work.48A. and O.

Despite this appointment, Pelham was to remain in England. In 1637 his first wife had inherited some of the Waldegrave estates at Alphamstone, several miles from Mount Bures.49Morant, Essex, ii. 267. Pelham therefore settled on the Essex-Suffolk border and began involving himself in the affairs of his adopted county. His initial appointment in 1650 was as one of the assessment commissioners for Suffolk, but by 1651 he was serving as an Essex justice of the peace and thereafter it was as a magistrate and commissioner in Essex that he was most active. As a justice of the peace he was particularly conscientious, involving himself to the full in the work of the Essex bench throughout the 1650s.50A. and O.; Essex QSOB ed. Allen, pp. xxxviii, 1-139. He is known to have helped prosecute Quakers, including James Parnell.51J. Parnell, The Fruits of the Fast (1655), sigs. B2v-[B3v], C2v (E.854.14); The Lambs Defence against Lyes (1656), 17 (E.881.1); Josselin, Diary, 380. In 1654 he was included on the Essex commission for scandalous ministers and he later served as a militia commissioner.52A. and O.; SP25/76A, f. 14v. In some ways, his election as one of the Essex MPs for the 1654 Parliament could be regarded as the climax of this career as an active local supporter of the protectorate; it can certainly be seen as the clearest evidence of the extent to which he had managed to assimilate himself into the ranks of the Essex county gentry. However, nothing is known of any part he may have played in the proceedings of that Parliament. In 1659 he and Nathaniel Bacon* were among the trustees appointed by the general council of Massachusetts to head a fund-raising campaign for Harvard.53Shurtleff, Recs. iv. pt. i, 362; An Humble Appeal for the Inlargement of University Learning in New Eng. [1659]; S.E. Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (Harvard, 1936), ii. 367.

Pelham seems to have lived quietly at Mount Bures during the 14 years he survived the Restoration. The day before he died, he was visited by his friend Ralph Josselin, the vicar of Earls Colne. In Josselin’s view, the deathbed scene was less than perfect: Pelham was

a choice saint but faulty in his children. He minded them not to counsel them in sickness. He was as noteless to good yet minded some little other things. I commended him to God. Lord, what is man?54Josselin, Diary, 577.

This appears to say that Pelham had failed to offer the spiritual guidance expected on such occasions, with hints that his relations with his children were less than harmonious. Others who knew him were more straightforwardly complimentary. Edward Johnson remembered him as ‘a man of a courteous behaviour, humble and heavenly minded’.55Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence, 188. Pelham was buried at Mount Bures on 1 July.56Chester, Herbert Pelham, 8.

Pelham’s estates were divided between his three surviving sons. Most of his English lands were left to his son from his first marriage, Waldegrave, while a son from his second marriage, Edward, received the lands in New England. A third son, Henry (probably also from the second marriage), received lands in Ireland in County Cork which Pelham had presumably acquired in the 1650s.57PROB11/352/9; Chester, Herbert Pelham, 8-10. Edward, who was then a student at Harvard, would become a prominent Massachusetts citizen, while Waldegrave continued to live at Mount Bures until the end of the century. Pelham had long been estranged from his daughter from his first marriage, Penelope Winslow (wife of Josiah, Edward Winslow’s son), who accused him of defrauding her of an inheritance from her maternal grandfather. In 1683 she sued her brother Waldegrave, in an attempt to gain the lands she thought were rightfully hers.58Fraser, Mayflower Generation, 227-9, 297-9, 309-10. The male line of the MP’s descendants probably became extinct on the death of his great-grandson, Waldegrave Pelham, in 1763.59Chester, Herbert Pelham, 11. No further member of this branch of the family sat in Parliament.