CASTELL, Robert (c.1604-65), of East Hatley, Cambs.

The Castells of East Hatley claimed descent from Robert Castell, an exchequer clerk from Yorkshire who was granted armorial bearings in 1479 and who soon after acquired a modest estate in south east Cambridgeshire.36Grantees of Arms ed. W.H. Rylands (Harl. Soc. lxvi), 48; Vis. Cambs. 1575 and 1619, 42; A. Taylor, Archaeology of Cambs. I: South West Cambs. (Cambridge, 1997), 68. By the early seventeenth century these lands had been passed down through several generations, to another Robert Castell (d. ?1630), grandfather of this MP, whose 1629 will reveals a strikingly godly outlook.37Vis. Cambs. 1575 and 1619, 42-3; PROB11/158/523. The MP’s father, also Robert Castell, was sent to the puritan seminary of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, before his marriages, first to a daughter of Edmund Lewknor† (from which there were no children), and secondly to one of the Alleyns of Hatfield Peverel.38Vis. Cambs. 1575 and 1619, 43; Vis. Essex…1634 ed. W.C. Metcalfe (1878-9), 134; Morant, Essex, ii. 131. Exactly when his heir, the future MP, was born is uncertain, but at the time of the heralds’ visitation of Cambridgeshire in 1619, Robert was said to have been aged 15.39East Hatley par. reg.; Ely Episcopal Recs. 314; Vis. Cambs. 1575 and 1619, 43. His early life was probably spent at East Hatley, where several of his siblings were baptised between 1606 and 1610.40East Hatley par. reg.; Ely Episcopal Recs. 314. Possibly encouraged by the longevity of his paternal grandfather, the family are likely to have moved to Essex about 1616, after the MP’s father inherited lands at Woodham Walter from his father-in-law.41PROB11/128/286. Robert junior and his younger brother Edmund (bap. Jan. 1606) went up to Cambridge together in 1621, but whereas his brother remained to pursue a clerical and academic career, Robert went on to the inns of court.42Al. Cant.; ‘Edmund Castell’, Oxford DNB; LI Admiss. i. 195. Admitted to Lincoln’s Inn through the influence of one of its senior members, George Scott (to whom he was related through the Alleyns), Castell was in due course called to the bar.43LI Admiss. i. 195; LI Black Bks. ii. 306. Perhaps he then practised as a barrister.

The terms of his father’s 1637 will suggest that Robert senior had already handed over the Cambridgeshire lands to his son, possibly at the latter’s first marriage in 1631; the lands in Essex were bequeathed to Edmund.44PROB11/178/70; C142/547, no. 205. In the years following his father’s death Robert made small additions to these holdings.45Cambs. RO, L.64.33. In 1632 he became a shareholder in the syndicate, led by Francis Russell, 4th earl of Bedford, which planned to drain the Great Level.46Jonas Moore’s Mapp ed. Willmoth and Stazicker, 46. But by the late 1630s he still ranked as one of the more minor Cambridgeshire gentlemen.

During the civil war, several members of the Castell family were enthusiastic supporters of Parliament. Castell’s brother-in-law Stephen Marshall, the vicar of Finchingfield, Essex, regularly preached to Parliament. Robert’s signing of the 1641 Cambridgeshire petition against the arch-Laudian bishop of Ely, Matthew Wren, is an early indication that he too disapproved of Charles I’s religious innovations.47Eg. 1048, f. 25. From the outbreak of hostilities, he played a leading role in organising the war in Cambridgeshire and beyond. With Sir John Cutts* and Oliver Cromwell*, he was one of the five gentlemen appointed by the Commons in August 1642 to raise money, plate and horse in Cambridgeshire and he was soon being appointed to all the county’s assessment commissions.48CJ ii. 698b; A. and O. In January 1643 he was among commissioners appointed by Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, to oversee the Cambridgeshire trained bands and to raise troops within the county.49SP28/5, ff. 74-5. The following August he was the person ordered to receive the pikes, clubs and gunpowder sent by the Commons to the Isle of Ely for Cromwell’s use.50CJ iii. 199a. With the creation of the committee of the Eastern Association at Cambridge, he became not only a member but also one of its chairmen.51CJ iii. 180a; HMC 7th Rep. 556; SP28/23, f. 201. Many of the committee’s surviving warrants from 1643, 1644 and 1645 carry his signature.52SP28/18-21; HMC 7th Rep. 550, 562; Eg. 2647, f. 214; SP28/222, ff. 30-88, 316, 512; SP28/223; SP28/152/12, f. 5; Norf. RO, HMN 7/172/2; Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA54/1/1: Eastern Assoc. cttee. warrant, 21 Dec. 1644. He was also one of the more assiduous members of the local committee for scandalous ministers.53The Cambs. Cttee. for Scandalous Minsters ed. G. Hart (Cambs. Rec. Soc. xxiv), 73, 75, 80, 84, 86, 92, 96, 150.

Payments to him for his attendance at committee meetings in the spring of 1644 confirm that he then held the rank of colonel in the local militia, while other Castells who were possibly kinsmen served in the army outside the region.54SP28/152/20, ff. 17v-19; SP28/152/6, ff. 128, 130v; SP28/207, ff. 440, 442; SP28/152/20, f. 46; SP28/152/17, f. 9; CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 489, 526, 532, 534-6, 540; 1649-50, p. 572; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 632-3. Later that year he played a major part in enforcing the ordinance of 12 July 1644 to raise more men in East Anglia, collected the assessments at East Hatley and made sure that his men secured Cambridge.55SP28/152/20, ff. 37, 41. A payment of £26 made by him to the treasurer of the Cambridgeshire county committee in April 1645 appears to have been his own assessment contribution, although the period covered was not specified.56SP28/152/20, f. 1v. Perhaps by way of compensation for a reduced military role, Castell remained particularly active in local administration. In early 1646 he first visited Bury St Edmunds, quite possibly to consult with the Suffolk standing committee on those local matters which then took him to Westminster to lobby Parliament.57SP28/152/20, ff. 44v, 45v. The unnamed piece of business which required his presence at Westminster might well have been the ordinance to raise £20,000 for Eastern Association forces at the siege of Newark.58LJ viii. 190b. His attendances at meetings of the Cambridgeshire standing committee, by now clear, became, if anything, more frequent as the decade progressed.59SP28/222, ff. 166, 170, 176, 177, 652; SP28/223.

After the execution of Charles I, Castell continued to serve the commonwealth as an active participant on the commission of the peace, the assessment commissions, the county standing committee and the militia commission.60SP28/207, f. 614; SP28/223; SP28/338; A. and O. He was also the Rump’s first choice to occupy the burdensome position of sheriff in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdon.61List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 15. In that capacity he was among the commissioners who visited Cambridge to require the dons to take the Engagement.62CUL, University Archives, O.1.21(4).

From 1649 Castell was heavily involved in the revived scheme to drain the Great Level. It was not just that he was an Adventurer, a member of the syndicate headed by the 5th earl of Bedford, which in May 1649 was granted the exclusive right to undertake that work.63A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 447. His fellow investors quickly made him their comptroller, with a salary of £240 a year and the right to appoint his own subordinates.64Cambs. RO, R.59.31.9.1, 2nd fol. ff. 8, 21, 25v. When there was conflict with the director, Sir Cornelius Vermuyden, over how to proceed, Castell was part of the delegation from the Adventurers sent in late November 1649 to meet Oliver St John* in the hope that he would mediate. In early January 1650, when the dispute with Vermuyden was still unresolved, nine of the Adventurers, including Castell, St John and Sir Edward Partheriche*, were appointed to manage the drainage works.65Cambs. RO, R.59.31.9.2, unf.; R.59.31.9.3, 1st fol. ff. 9, 26v-27.

Castell’s selection as one of the four Cambridgeshire representatives for the Nominated Parliament testifies to his godly reputation. It is possible that he did not then rush up to London for the opening of the session, for it was not until 19 July that the council of state allocated him lodgings in Whitehall.66CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 35. The following day he was named by Parliament to its committee for public debts and it was this business which preoccupied him over the coming months. Three weeks later he reported to the House on the rewards which the committee had decided to recommend to those informing against revenue fraud. On several subsequent occasions the committee again delegated to him the task of reporting to the House on some of the deserving cases for payment of arrears which had come before them. When the trustees for the sale of fee farm rents were granted use of the committee’s rooms at Worcester House, it was Castell who wrote to them on behalf of his colleagues to smooth over the difficulty.67CJ vii. 287a, 299b; CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 135, 153, 288; 1654, pp. 38-9; Stowe 185, ff. 15, 35. On the evidence of the list printed in 1654, Castell was among those in this Parliament who favoured official support for a ‘godly learned ministry’, indicating that, in religious matters, he was not a separatist.68Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 412.

Castell was one of the more obvious beneficiaries of the increase in Cambridgeshire’s representation in the Parliaments of the 1650s. The return for the county election for in 1654 listed Castell in fourth place, implying that he was thought a less substantial figure than men like John Disbrowe* or Francis Russell*, and that without the extra places he would not have been chosen. Once elected, he left no trace in the records of his second Parliament, except to be named by it to those local commissions covering Cambridgeshire.69A. and O. He probably supported the work for further reformation undertaken by either the commission for scandalous ministers or the visitation commission sent to Cambridge University.

Castell was among the local gentlemen who met the local deputy major-general, Hezekiah Haynes*, in August 1656 to discuss the arrangements for the forthcoming election for the newly franchised constituency of the Isle of Ely. Haynes favoured holding it at Ely rather than Wisbech, but then reported to Secretary of state John Thurloe*, whose local power base this was, that Thurloe’s supporters at Wisbech saw in this proposal a trick by Castell ‘to put a blot upon yourself’.70TSP v. 311-12, 352. But since Haynes informed Thurloe of this, it seems unlikely there was any genuine intrigue by Haynes and Castell against Thurloe. Indeed, Castell was one of those who attempted to dissuade William Fisher* from challenging Thurloe for one of the Ely seats.71TSP v. 352-3. The election for the county seats was largely a re-run of the result in 1654, with Castell, Russell and Henry Pickering* again taking three of the four places.

Castell was far more conspicuous in this Parliament than he had been in 1654. In spite of a spell of ill-health towards the end of 1656, he was named to 20 committees, some of which, such as that on the bill to confirm the liberties of the Isle of Ely (28 Nov.), were on matters of obvious local importance.72Burton’s Diary, i. 284; CJ vii. 461a. Especially noteworthy was the fact he was named second to the committee on the blasphemies of James Naylor (31 Oct.), presumably indicating th had a particular interest in that cause célèbre.73CJ vii. 448a. His concern for the public debts was again evident. On 5 June he spoke against the bill to grant estates to Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*), arguing that it was more important to pay off the government’s debts than Broghill’s private ones. Eight days later he and Lambarde Godfrey* maintained that the £400,000 subsidy was now no longer an appropriate form of security for those who had lent money against it. He was then named to the committee to consider the bill for the stating of the public debts (19 June).74Burton’s Diary, ii. 176, 238; CJ vii. 545b. This session also saw the single occasion on which Castell acted as a teller. On 20 June 1657 he and Francis White* counted the majority who amended the bill to prevent the growth of London so that it did not apply to a development already planned in Stanhope Street in the parish of St Clement Danes.75CJ vii. 566a; A. and O. ii. 1233-4. During this Parliament’s second session in early 1658 Castell was named to several committees, two of which concerned the maintenance of ministers, confirming his support for a preaching ministry.76CJ vii. 580b, 581b, 588a. In the meantime, in August 1657 he had been appointed joint treasurer for Cambridgeshire with Henry Pickering* for propagating the gospel in New England.77GL, MS 8011, p. 42.

The restoration of the old franchises for the elections to the 1659 Parliament once more restricted opportunities in Cambridgeshire, and Castell had to be satisfied with a secondary role. He probably responded positively to the approach from (Sir) Francis Russell seeking his support for Thurloe for one of the county seats.78TSP vii. 565. In the event Thurloe was elected for the university, but Castell signed the indenture returning Sir Thomas Willys and Henry Pickering as the Cambridgeshire MPs.79C219/46: Cambs. election indenture, 6 Jan. 1659. Castell was still serving as a colonel in the Cambridgeshire militia and so was put on to the alert in the summer of 1659 at the time of Sir George Boothe’s* rebellion. His appointment by Parliament to the new militia commission, on which he probably played an active part, was only to be expected, and his position in the local militia was confirmed that September when Parliament named him as one of the militia captains. Among the suspected royalist conspirators he took into custody at this time was Sir William Compton†.80CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 176; 1659-60, pp. 16, 149; A. and O.; CJ vii. 772a; SP28/223.

Castell’s prominence in Cambridgeshire affairs ceased with the Restoration. Although he obtained a royal pardon in November 1660 and remained a member of the militia commission, his place on the commission of the peace was not renewed.81PSO5/8, unfol.; SP28/233. He was an obvious target for investigation by the commissioners for defaulting accountants, but, apart from noting that he still had in his possession the records of the Cambridgeshire decimation commissioners (of which he had been one), they found insufficient evidence to proceed against him.82Bodl. Rawl. C.948, p. 24. Castell however had more immediate concerns. By 1661 his finances were in such a poor state that he was forced to sell the lands at East Hatley. As had been the case two centuries before, the purchaser was an exchequer official, namely (Sir) George Downing*, the former New Model army chaplain.83CP25/2/632/12-13CHAS II HIL, no. 12; VCH Cambs. viii. 44, 130-1, 133. Castell’s experience in fen drainage was again put to use in 1663 when he was appointed as one of the bailiffs of the latest scheme to drain the Bedford Level.84SR. After selling up at East Hatley he had probably retired to the Isle of Ely to live at March, for it was there that he died in 1665. His body was returned to Hatley for burial in the local church.85MIs Cambs. 43; RCHM Cambs. i. 146.

Although no will has been traced, it would seem that the responsibility for settling Castell’s affairs fell on his younger brother Edmund, now professor of Arabic at Cambridge. The burden of paying of Robert’s debts is said to have contributed to the financial ruin of Edmund who, having invested over £12,000 from the sale of his own inheritance in his Lexicon Heptaglotton (1669), died in debtors’ prison in 1667.86Diary and Corresp. of Dr John Worthington ed. J. Crossley (Chetham Soc. xiii, xxxvi, cxiv), i. 226, 244, ii. 21-2, 104, 109, 202-3, 309, 310, 316; J. Leland, Collectanea, ed. T. Hearne (1770), vi. 80; J. Granger, A Biographical Hist. of Eng. (1804), iii. 277n; F.A. Blaytes, ‘Castell of East Hatley, Cambs.’, N. and Q. 7th ser. ix. 91; ‘Edmund Castell’, Oxford DNB. Nonetheless, Robert’s provision for payments of 10s each year for the poor at East Hatley ensured that the family’s name was remembered there into the second quarter of the eighteenth century.87Abstract of the Returns of Charitable Donations (1816), i. 86-7. He was the only member of the family ever to sit in Parliament.