LONG (LONGE), Robert II (c.1607-98), of Stanton Prior, Som.

Unlike his elder brother Walter*, Robert Long was still only a young boy when he lost first his grandfather, Henry Long senior, and then his father, Henry Long junior, in quick succession.11PROB11/117/405; PROB11/119/630; C142/331/111. He probably spent much of the rest of his childhood in the household of his mother’s second husband, Henry Sherfield†, in Salisbury. By the terms of the settlement under which Henry junior had placed the family estates shortly before his untimely death, his eldest son, the third Henry Long, was required to make financial provisions for Robert and his sisters and, on the death of this Henry in 1621, the obligation passed to Walter. This requirement would be a major factor in the substantial debts under which Walter struggled for much of his life.

Whom Robert Long married is not at all clear. The statement that she was Alice, daughter of Thomas Coward of Wilton, seems to be a confusion with the wife of John Harington II*. Both Long and Harington outlived Alice Coward, so she cannot, as has been assumed, have married Long after being widowed.12Burke Dorm. and Extinct Baronetcies, 320. Without any inherited estates of his own, Long chose to settle not in his native Wiltshire, a county in which the Longs had been well established for centuries, but at Stanton Prior in north-east Somerset, although this was no more than about 15 miles across the county border. Moreover, in what was doubtless a reflection of his brother’s influence, it was in Wiltshire, not Somerset, that Long initially made his mark in local administration during the civil war. In July 1644 he was included on the local committee created by Parliament to raise money to pay for a military force to protect that county. Two months later he joined Walter on the Wiltshire assessment committee.13A. and O. As an MP, he would be described as ‘Major Long’, which raises the possibility that, like Walter and their younger brother, Thomas, who were both colonels, he served in the parliamentarian army.14CJ vii. 375a, 380a. But his rank as a major is much more likely to have derived from a militia position.

Long’s appointment as a Somerset justice of the peace in 1653 is the earliest firm evidence of his playing any public role in that county.15C231/6, p. 254; QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, p. xxi. From 1655 he began to undertake his duties as a justice there with some diligence.16Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 45; QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 272-338. But, even so, this alone cannot explain why, in the meantime, he was one of the 11 men selected on 12 July 1654 to represent Somerset in the first protectoral Parliament. Once he reached Westminster, it is often difficult to know with certainty whether references in the Journal relate to Long or to his distant relative, Lislebone Long*. Most from before June 1655, the date when Lislebone Long was appointed as recorder of London, simply mention ‘Mr Long’.17CJ vii. 366b, 368a, 370a, 374a, 374a, 375b, 380a, 381a, 381b, 382a, 394b, 399b, 403a, 405a, 407b, 410a, 415a. Plausibly, almost all, and probably all of these, relate to Lislebone. Certainly, after June 1655, when the clerk took care to identify him unambiguously, all mentions are of Lislebone Long. On the other hand, as has been noted, the two mentions of ‘Major Long’ can be assumed to refer to Robert. This ‘Major Long’ was added to the committee on chancery after it was asked to consider the status of the legislation passed by the 1653 Nominated Parliament (10 Oct. 1654), and was named to the committee on the Lincolnshire fens (31 Oct.).18CJ vii. 375a, 380a.

Long successfully stood for re-election when the second protectoral Parliament was summoned in 1656. This time, in the Somerset poll held on 20 August, he came third with 2,067 votes.19Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 77. However, like the two men who had received more votes, John Buckland* and Alexander Popham*, he was prevented by the protectoral council from taking his seat.20CJ vii. 425b. Whether he ever sat in this Parliament is unclear. If he participated in the brief second session in early 1658, after all the excluded Members had been readmitted, he left no trace in the records. The restoration of the old franchises for the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament narrowed Long’s options in and around Somerset. He is unlikely to have been considered again for one of the county seats, while Bath, Wells and Bristol, the three constituencies nearest to Stanton Prior, had no need to consider him either. If he was elected at all, it was at far-distant Tewkesbury, a town with which he had no obvious connections, and that he was ‘Robert Longe’ the Tewkesbury MP is far from certain.21A Perfect List of the Lords of the Other House (1659). If this was he, he was no more active as their MP than he had been in his previous Parliaments.

The return of Charles II in 1660 abruptly terminated Long’s political career. Although he was to live for another 47 years, he never held another public office. By the time he died in 1698, at the age of 91, he had outlived his only son, Henry.22‘Notes on Long’, 100; Collinson, Som. ii. 440. His lands therefore then passed to his only daughter, Mary, who had previously been married to George Stedman of Midsomer Norton (brother of James Stedman*) and who was by now wife of Thomas Bere of Huntsham, Devon.23PROB11/444/416; ‘Will of Robert Long’, 104-7. Henry’s widow, Dionysia Harrington, had meanwhile married his cousin once removed, Calthorpe Parker (grandson of Sir Philip Parker*), the man to whom the lands of the main Whaddon line of the Longs eventually descended.24Burke Dorm. and Extinct Baronetcies, 320; ‘Long of Semington’.