STUDLEY, Nathaniel (1602-aft. 1667), of Mayfield, Suss.

Although his father was a gentleman of standing and substance, little is known of this MP before the mid-1640s. His paternal grandmother was Mary Baskerville of Herefordshire, while his grandfather, John Studley, held property in Cranborne and in Wimborne Minster, Dorset, when he drafted a notably pious will in November 1612. Among the beneficiaries were the future MP (who received silver and £20) and his three sisters, Elizabeth, Mary and Jane.19PROB11/134/428; Vis. Kent (Harl. Soc. xlii), 171; C2/JasI/S26/33. John’s heir, Nathaniel Studley the elder, the MP’s father, proved the will seven years later, by which time he had long since settled in Kent. From Queen’s College, Oxford, he had been admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1588, and the following year married Elizabeth, daughter of John Gilbert or Jelbard or Iylbert of Sevenoaks; their first child, Elizabeth, was baptized at Chevening in February 1590.20Vis. Kent (Harl. Soc. xlii), 171; Al. Ox.; GI Admiss, 72; Chevening par. reg. (IGI). A few miles away at Westerham the vicar between 1580 and at least 1605 was John Studley, probably the classical scholar, poet, and translator charged with nonconformity while at Cambridge in the 1570s; he was a kinsman, and has sometimes been confused with the MP’s grandfather.21‘John Studley’, Oxford DNB; Al. Cant.; Clergy of the C of E database; HMC Hatfield, xvii. 406.

Nathaniel the elder added to any Kentish land he may have acquired on his marriage by purchasing the manors of Ranesley, near Penshurst, and (in 1610) East and West Ewehurst; for a while before May 1613 he also occupied land at Brasted.22Hasted, Kent, iii. 224, 286; W. Suss. RO, WISTON/4839. He was ‘of Sundridge’ when, on 23 February 1619, he was admitted as a freeman of the East India Company.23CSP Col. E Indies, China and Japan, 1617-21, p. 340. His residence was specified as the Old Park in the heralds’ visitation of that year; described as a justice of the peace, he remained so into the reign of Charles I.24Vis. Kent (Harl. Soc. xlii), 171; PC2/32, f. 651; ASSI35/67/5; Cal. Assize Recs. Kent Indictments Jas. I ed. Cockburn, 145, 156, 159; Charles I, 2, 3. In the later 1620s his personal affairs were consistently transacted in the company of his neighbour, Sir Thomas Hamon† of Brasted, who served as lieutenant of Dover Castle (1615-20), deputy warden of the Cinque Ports and sheriff (1624-5).25C54/2654/22; C54/2704/9; C54/2873/6.

By 1630, when he compounded for knighthood at £10, Studley senior was also established in Sussex.26E401/2586, p. 88. At this point, more than a decade after his father’s death, he severed his ties with Dorset by selling the estate in Wimborne Minster, although other members of the family remained in that county.27C54/2855/10; Coventry Docquets, 418; PROB11/134/428. In June 1631 he proved the will of his father-in-law, John ‘Iylbert’, by which he and his wife stood to gain further property in Sundridge, and that April either he or his son witnessed a deed relating to the trusteeship of the lands of Harbert Morley*, subsequently one of the most prominent political figures in Sussex and at Westminster.28E. Suss. RO, GLY/155a. It is quite possible that the father was the Nathaniel Studley ‘gentleman’ buried in the City of London in July 1632, when – on the evidence of his Oxford admission – the Kent and Sussex man would have been about 65.29St Mildred, Bread Street, par. reg. This man was probably the deceased partner in land purchases of veteran Sussex MP Sir Thomas Bowyer*, mentioned in a related lawsuit in 1635.30E134/11and12ChasI/Hil30.

Meanwhile, Nathaniel the younger had entered Grays Inn, as son of Nathaniel ‘of this inn’, in November 1622, but he seems not to have been called to the bar or pursued a legal career.31GI Admiss. i. 168. Two decades of obscurity followed, although if he had already succeeded to his father’s estate, he was the Nathaniel Studley ‘gentleman’ who complained of having been burgled at Sundridge in December 1633.32Cal. Assize Recs. Kent Indictments Charles I, 211.

Nathaniel Studley the elder may have contributed £2 for the relief of Irish Protestants in May 1642.33Preston Manor, Brighton, Thomas-Stanford coll. ES/EZ/11; E179/191/390/3. However, since he was definitely dead by February 1646, and since he would at the outbreak of civil war have been in his late 70s, there is no doubt that it was Nathaniel the younger who became a parliamentarian stalwart. In March 1644 Studley was added to the Sussex county committee, established four months earlier and dominated by Harbert Morley.34CJ vi. 450a. While not obviously one of its inner leadership, he regularly appeared in its records.35SP28/181, unfol; SP28/246, unfol; SP28/343, unfol; E179/191/407. In October he signed a letter to the Speaker of the Lords defending, as essential to the safety of the garrison, the committee’s decision to cut down woodland around Arundel Castle belonging to Thomas Howard, 21st earl of Arundel.36  LJ vii. 25b. Studley also signed a letter to the Speaker of the Commons (William Lenthall*) in September 1645 concerning local clubmen, whose activities appear to have been largely provoked by Morley’s policies regarding taxation and sequestration.37Bodl. Tanner 60, ff. 251-55v.

By the mid-1640s, Studley was evidently a figure of some standing in the county. Thereafter, he sold his inheritance in Kent, and extended and consolidated his holdings in Sussex, a process which continued well into the 1650s.38C54/3773/20; Suss. Manors, i. 131. But politics rather than social status was principally responsible for a simultaneous rise to local prominence. As part of Harbert Morley’s attempt to undermine the influence of Presbyterians like Sir Thomas Pelham*, Studley began to work unofficially with the justices of the peace in January 1648.39Suss. QSOB 1642-9, 146. Later in the year he was among those who opposed Presbyterians and royalists who sought a negotiated settlement with the king, and he signed a letter to Lenthall (29 June) regarding the rising at Horsham.40Bodl. Nalson XI, no. 290. In the reorganization of the magistracy which followed Pride’s Purge and the execution of Charles I, Studley finally joined the commission of the peace, thereafter becoming an active justice at the Lewes quarter sessions.41ASSI35/90/2; Suss. QSOB 1642-9, 177, 179, 200; E. Suss. RO, QO/EW2, ff. 4v-46; Salzman, Town Bk. of Lewes, 74. This work, together with the collection of assessments and the securing of help for maimed soldiers, dominated Studley’s career during the commonwealth.42E. Suss. RO, QR/E85; SP28/181, unfol.

Studley displayed no visible zeal for political or religious reform during the early 1650s. Nevertheless, his nomination to Parliament in 1653 suggests that he was regarded as being of a different stamp from Morley, who had been prominent in the Rump. The basis of Studley’s nomination – like that of the county’s other two Members, Anthony Stapley I* and William Spence* – remains obscure. Unlike Stapley, who served on the council of state, and Spence, who was an active reformer, Studley’s profile at Westminster was slight. He was named to only two committees during the Parliament. The first of these (20 July 1653) was the standing committee for Scottish affairs, a predominantly ‘moderate’ committee, whose membership had proved uncontentious when nominations were presented to the House.43CJ vii. 286. The second, to which Studley was added on 5 September, was the committee for public debts, even more markedly ‘moderate’ in composition.44CJ vii. 314a. According to a near contemporary listing of MPs, Studley and his Sussex colleagues were not among those who supported an established ministry.45A Catalogue of the Names of the Members of the Last Parliament (1654). However, this conflicts with his appointment in 1654 as one of the ‘triers’, the officially appointed examiners of preaching ministers, and with his subsequent willingness to accommodate himself to the protectorate.46A. and O.

Studley remained an active member of the commission of peace throughout the 1650s, and in that capacity was involved in parish church life, including the conducting of marriages.47E. Suss. RO, QO/EW2, ff. 60, 61, 70; QO/EW3; PAR372/1/1/1, f. 59v. Unlike old colleagues like Morley, he was on good terms with the new regime. In March 1655, as a trier, he was ordered to investigate the petition of Edward Nathley, vicar of Nenfield, ‘to learn what he can of the petitioner’s affection to the present government’, although his findings remain unknown.48CSP Dom. 1655, p. 68. In November – when it was noted that he was ‘now of Lewes’ – he was nominated by Major-general William Goffe* to become one of his commissioners.49TSP iv. 161. Studley also participated in the investigations into royalism in the county following the abortive rising hatched by John Stapley* in May 1658.50TSP vii. 111. During the period of the reassembled Rump in 1659, Studley was named to the county militia.51SP28/335/59, 63.

Studley was removed from the commission of the peace sometime between January 1660 and July 1661.52E. Suss. RO, QO/EW3, f. 75; ASSI35/102/7. Apparently still comfortably circumstanced after the Restoration, in May 1665 he and his wife settled a life interest in various properties in and around Eastbourne which had once belonged to her father, the vicar of Selmeston.53E. Suss. RO, SAS/PN/270. In 1668 he was the defendant in a law suit, but thereafter he disappears from the record.54E. Suss. RO, C7/1113/12. He was evidently dead by 1672, when his son Joseph, an active Congregationalist, was in control of the family estate.55C. Brent, ‘Lewes dissenters outside the law, 1663-86’, Suss. Arch. Coll. cxxiii. 204; E. Suss. RO, SAS/DR/20. There is no evidence that any other members of the family sat in Parliament.