HARLEY, Sir Robert (1579-1656), of Brampton Bryan, Herefs., Westminster and Ludlow, Salop.

By the opening of the Short Parliament in April 1640, Sir Robert Harley combined prominence among the Herefordshire county gentry with a strong profile in official circles in London. The three marriages he contracted between 1603 and 1623 were all with families outside Herefordshire, and each bride brought a substantial marriage portion. Although the Harley family had been settled in Brampton Bryan for 300 years, Sir Robert steadily raised the standing of the family from the time of his knighthood, when James I was crowned in 1603. His third and longest enduring marriage, to Brilliana Conway, was the means by which Harley came within the orbit of patronage of George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, by way of his father-in-law, Sir Edward (Viscount) Conway†. Master of the mint for nearly nine years from September 1626, Harley lost office after the death of Conway, his immediate patron. He had been a wholehearted, zealous supporter of radical, godly Protestantism probably before he married Brilliana, and without his protectors, was subject to the plotting of those at court who were unsympathetic to puritanism. His reputation as a godly magistrate at home was reinforced by purchases of advowsons and church lands before 1640. Among these were the rectory and advowson of Presteigne, which Harley subsequently conveyed to the feoffees for impropriations - the London-based trust intent on settling puritan ministers in livings - before his interest passed to the crown after official, anti-puritan intervention.43Brampton Bryan MSS, 8/34/1. The core of Harley’s stock of clerical livings lay near his home, but in 1610 he acquired an interest in nine rectories in Monmouthshire which enabled him, through his use of clerical patronage between then and 1640, to acquire an enduring place of honour among the godly of the marcher counties as one who ‘first that brought the gospel into these parts’.44Brampton Bryan MSS, 74/15; T. Froysell, The Beloved Disciple (1658), 97. On the eve of his selection for the first of the Parliaments of 1640, he concluded some land transactions to secure marriage portions for his children, suggesting that he viewed the journey to Westminster as having implications for his family, as well as his public, life.45Brampton Bryan MSS, 61/4.

Harley was a veteran of four Parliaments when in February 1640 it became clear that he would stand again as knight for Herefordshire, a seat he had last occupied in 1626. As was the custom preferred by the gentry of that county, there was an understanding among them before election day; on this occasion Harley would be returned with Sir Walter Pye*, although local commentators could never be confident that a last-minute entrant would not force a competition. Pye took the senior seat, but deferred to Harley as an experienced organiser, and it was the latter who distributed largesse among the voters at Hereford in both the elections of 1640 in order to secure the result.46Add. 70002, ff. 255, 261, 273, 311. Harley was a vocal member of the Short Parliament. He made his first speech on 16 April, although its contents were not noted by any of diarists, a day when he was named to two committees, including the important committee of privileges.47Procs. Short Parl. 234; CJ ii. 4a. He was evidently in a frame of mind to open up issues that been long festering, calling for a re-examination of the alleged collusion of the Speaker with the dissolution of the Parliament of 1628-9 (18 Apr.); a few days later he tried to insist on presenting the petition of the long-imprisoned puritan clergyman, Peter Smart, but the Speaker, and then the House, over-ruled him.48Aston’s Diary, 14, 22-3, 24; CJ ii. 8a. He was active in drawing up the remonstrance of grievances which Members intended to present to the king, supporting Sir Walter Erle in seeking to separate out separate heads, rather than conflating them. He particularly wished to see the names of Secretary Sir Francis Windebanke* and Lord Treasurer Cottington identified in the grievances, but on 27 April urged that the Commons speed up their drafting.49Aston’s Diary, 44, 53, 60, 62, 71; CJ ii. 10a. Two days later, he was outspoken in rebutting the argument advanced by Edward Hyde and Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland [S] that positioning the communion table altar-wise was not against the rubrics of the Church of England, asserting that bowing to the altar verged on idolatry; and supported John Pym in regarding the suspension of godly ministers without warrant as a crime.50Aston’s Diary, 89, 94; Procs. Short Parl. 181. Yet despite this outspoken and truculent profile, Harley was a reluctant rebel, and subscribed strongly to the notion that ultimately the king deserved submission. ‘Let us never surprise the king’, he urged on 30 April, and the day before the Parliament was dissolved on 4 May, he was comparing King Charles with King David, voicing the hope that Members ‘might fall down before our David as Abigail with tears of acknowledgement’.51Aston’s Diary, 105, 131.

Puritan zealot, 1640-2

In October 1640, Harley was returned again as knight of the shire, taking precedence over Fitzwilliam Coningsby, like Pye a representative of the long-established gentry, but no puritan. The pair sought the approval of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, for their nominations, acknowledging his importance as a regional territorial magnate.52Add. 70002, f. 307. Once again, Harley was named to the committee of privileges, and was later to apply the extensive experience he gained on this body to hearings on disputed recruiter elections.53CJ ii. 20b; Add. 28716. He immediately took up again the themes he had pursued in the previous assembly. Addressing recent grievances, he successfully moved that the celebrated martyrs of the king’s repression of puritanism, John Bastwick and Henry Burton, should be invited to pursue their cases for reparations (7 Nov.), and served on committees that took up their cause.54CJ ii. 44b, 52b. On 19 November, he seems to have interrupted a debate on the Great Marlow election, perhaps having been granted the floor as a member of the privileges committee, to introduce the subject of moving the communion table at St Margaret’s Westminster, the MPs’ church. His motion ‘died’, without support, but within hours he was able to revive it.55D’Ewes (N), 5, 43, 46; Procs. LP i. 196. The committee on the taking of communion, which he probably chaired, became his vehicle for the campaign to stamp out the altar-wise orientation of communion tables. He was able to report (20 Nov.) that two leading prelates had agreed to co-operate, although this was surely a false dawn, while he continued to nurture a plan to rid the Commons of all Catholic-inclined MPs and their families.56D’Ewes (N), 48, 91; Procs. LP i. 214; CJ ii. 24a, 32b.

Harley’s interests in religion extended further than the symbolic re-arranging of church furniture, of course, and on 28 November it was reported that he took the chair at a grand committee on religion. This was probably the origin of the committee for scandalous ministers and on the shortage of preaching ministers, which was more solidly constituted on 19 December.57Diary of Henry Townshend ed. Willis Bund, i. 16; CJ ii. 54b. It must have been his experience as a former master of the mint, with connections to the London business community, that recommended him as a member of the grand committee for trade, which was meeting late in November to consider, inter alia, the patent for lighthouses at the Foreland in Kent, complaints from trading companies against custom house practices, and a petition from gold wire manufacturers.58D’Ewes (N), 96; Brampton Bryan MSS, 10/16; Add. 70002, f. 364; Add. 70062, paper on silver and gold thread. Harley was probably chairman of the trade committee in the early months of this Parliament, but his interest in the topic was not sustained beyond 1641, except in the potential of the merchant community as a source of loans for the parliamentarian cause.59Add. 70082, f. 36; CJ ii. 92b, 154a, 179b, 214b, 276a, 309a, 393a; D’Ewes (N), 526. He was associated for longer with the cause of university reform. In December 1640, a committee he attended heard a presentation by a Hereford-born don on the grievances of Oxford University. From February 1641, Harley was chairing a committee either on ridding Emmanuel College, Cambridge, of ‘popish’ influences, or for the reform of universities generally, but even before that he was being approached by canvassers for the puritan controversialist Daniel Featley for their support.60Add. 70062, presentation by Richard Gardiner, 11 Dec. 1640; D’Ewes (N), 399n; CJ ii. 95a; Add. 70113, Joshua Crosse to Harley, n.d. 1640, Jan. 1641. The puritan group at Oxford hoped that Harley would establish a committee for universities that would meet at Oxford and adjudicate on college-university disputes, and sought his backing for Sir Nathaniel Brent as vice-chancellor.61Add. 70113, Joshua Crosse to Edward Harley, May 1641; Robert Crosse and Edward Corbett to Edward Harley, 26 July 1641. By July 1641, Harley was an influential chairman of the committee on universities, whom clergy and laity had to approach for access to institutional records which had been brought to Westminster, and for an opinion on relations between university and colleges. The main thrust of this committee was to rid the universities of ‘innovations’ in religion, but by November 1641 sufficient progress had been made to permit a discussion on the return to colleges of their books.62Add. 70113, Joshua Crosse to Harley, May 1641; Add. 70003, f. 142; Add. 70004, Brilliana Harley to Harley, 20 Dec. 1641; Procs. LP v. 313, 386; D’Ewes (C), 161.

Nearer to home, it is unsurprising that Harley was active in the cause of promoting a Welsh godly ministry, at the same time as attempting to secure the opting out of the four English counties from the jurisdiction of the council in the marches of Wales. He had long been active in sponsoring clergy in Welsh and border counties advowsons, and was lobbied by one of his favoured ministers, who wrote to him in July 1641: ‘If the care or provision of us be committed to our Welsh parliamentary knights and burgesses, our hopes are gone’.63Add. 70106, f. 155. Harley was interested in the problem of the scarcity of preachers in Wales, and was almost certainly active in encouraging the circulation of a petition apparently signed by 312 men from the south-east corner of Wales, presented by ministers known to have been favoured by him, including William Wroth and Walter Cradock.64Add. 70002, f. 367; Add. 70109, misc. 69. The Commons’ response was to authorise itinerant preaching in Wales, backed up by further orders against those who tried to thwart the principle of itineracy, which was eventually to culminate in the celebrated 1650 act for the propagation of the gospel in Wales, even if Harley had by that time been driven out of political life.65CJ ii. 189a; Procs. LP ii. 461; v. 363, 371. The matter of preaching the gospel in Wales was referred in June to the Committee for Scandalous Ministers, a development from the grand committee of religion, which Harley had chaired.66Procs. LP v. 363-4. He saw nothing contradictory in bending his efforts towards an improved Welsh ministry at the same time as spearheading the process of severing the links between the four marcher English counties and the Council in the Marches. Items among his papers for 1641 show how he was responding to expressions of a long-standing grievance harboured by Herefordshire and its neighbour counties.67Add. 70062; Add. 70003, ff. 116-21; CJ ii. 191b, 198b, 210a, 216b, 217a; Procs. LP v. 640, 643; vi. 11.

Harley was active in framing the Protestation of May 1641, a vow to uphold the Protestant religion, king and Parliament (in that order), together with the unity of the kingdoms. The Protestation originated in the various alarms and rumours of plots surrounding the trial of the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†). On 3 May, Harley supported Henry Marten in calling for an association in defence of king and church, and was later that day among the 12 Members called upon to frame the promise, by way of an oath or some other form. They worked quickly, and came up with a promise or vow, less controversial for godly Protestants than an oath, which Harley made himself with other Members the same day.68CJ ii. 132b, 133a; Procs. LP iv. 181. He continued in his support for the Protestation down the years, and later defended the Solemn League and Covenant as a development of it, in that both were appeals for public unity which required active assent from the people.69Brampton Bryan MSS, 29/9. He was quick (8 May) to commend the Protestation to the sheriff of Herefordshire, but in the spring of 1642 his critics in the county, who were to form the core of the royalist group there, doubted whether Parliament had the authority to impose it on the country at large. The vow and promise marked a point on the growing rift between Harley and the majority of the Herefordshire gentry.70Add. 70003, ff. 94, 227-8v, 238-9.

The origins of Harley’s positive attitude towards the Scots may be seen in 1640-1. In November 1640, he was named to the committee to review the condition of the army facing the Sots in the north of England, and on 19 May 1641 was required to ask the Lords for a conference between the Houses on disbanding the armies and paying off the Scots. Against the doubters, he took an optimistic view of the capacity of the mint to produce enough to satisfy the immediate demand for coin. He was prepared himself to contribute to this cause, lending £500 towards maintaining the garrison at Berwick, the first of a number of losses he sustained in the cause of Parliament.71HMC Portland, iii. 119. In the febrile atmosphere of the summer of 1641, Harley made rather a hash of revealing what he probably thought to be a plot. Sir William Withrington* had already been in trouble for his anti-Scots views, and on 14 June, Harley revealed to the House Withrington’s dislike of the growing habit then prevalent in the Commons of calling the Scots ‘brethren’, making a feeble show of withholding Withrington’s name. Nothing further came of Harley’s disclosures.72Procs. LP vi. 130, 140, 143. In August, he was active in attempts to conclude the financial settlement with them, and in arranging the day of religious observance called to mark the treaty.73CJ ii. 151a, 239a, 250b, 273b, 274a; Procs. LP vi. 217.

Harley’s visit to the Lords on 19 May as messenger on Anglo-Scots relations and the military was the fourth time since January he had made the short excursion to the Upper House. Taking messages to the Lords evidently involved more than simply delivering terse communications from the Commons. The task required skills of presentation in which Harley was presumably well versed, and as a senior Member of the House he could put to good use his age and experience in front of his social superiors. The important purpose of these exercises was to win the support of the Lords and to return with some kind of agreement, assent or sometimes a message that the Lords would send messengers of their own, later. Harley evidently enjoyed the confidence of his colleagues, but sometimes he made mistakes in these missions, a number smugly noted by Sir Simonds D’Ewes*, who could be critical of the Herefordshire man. An instance came in February 1643, when Harley forgot the last of the four messages he had to deliver, and ‘was departing away when Sir Henry Mildmay rounded him in the ear, and so he supplied his former omission’.74Harl. 164, f. 288v. Over the next few years, Harley had plenty of opportunities to perfect his technique as messenger to the Lords. In total he acted in this capacity 10 times in 1641, 25 in 1642, 33 each year in 1643 and 1644, before falling back to a lower level of activity in 1645, when he went to the Lords 14 times.75CJ ii, iii, iv. The frequency of his journeys in 1641 owed something to his enthusiasm for the bills on religion that were the object of much endeavour by godly reformers, but which seemed less and less likely to reach the statute book as the domestic political crisis deepened. The bill to abolish pluralities, the practice of holding more than one church benefice at a time, was one of those that were the objects of Harley’s skills as a broker between the Houses. Had this legislation not been lost after the king left London, it would have been a moderate measure that limited the effects on those currently holding benefices, and maintained government by bishops. Harley’s notes on the bill show how he was active in keeping hopes alive that an ordinance on this topic might have reached fruition in the spring of 1642, but it was not to be.76Brampton Bryan MSS, 29/9; CJ ii. 101a, 429b, 431b, 438a, 493b, 555a.

In the autumn of 1641, Harley was horrified by the outbreak of the Irish rebellion. His resolutely anti-Catholic sensibilities were bound to be offended by the revolt, and he had also involved himself in dismantling the structures built up by Strafford. He bent his efforts towards co-operation with the Lords on government in Ireland, and in the early months of 1642 played a significant part in fitting out ships for a punitive expedition there. Harley’s contacts with London merchants, probably established years earlier when he was master of the mint and more recently enhanced through his work as chairman of the committee on trade, were essential in this, as was his prominence in the committee of both Houses for Irish affairs and its successor, the Commission for the Affairs of Ireland.77CJ ii. 279b, 302a, 309a, 331a, 351a, 393a, 436b; Harl. 164, f. 73; D’Ewes (C), 326, 393, 399-402; PJ i. 23, 38. While the Five Members were in hiding in the City, Harley chaired the committee of both Houses, normally a responsibility shouldered by John Pym, an indication of not only how senior, respected and central in the parliamentary cause he was, but also how sympathetic he was to the radicals, whose own standing was high in the wake of the king’s attempt to arrest their leaders.78PJ i. 14n. In February 1642, he was working closely with his friend and kinsman, Sir Robert Cooke* (with whom, incidentally, he shared a surprising admiration for the poet George Herbert†), both on the Irish committees and on a bill for suppressing the rebellion.79CJ ii. 453b, 468b; Add. 70105, Sir Robert Cooke to Harley, 21 June 1641. This was later to be an important relationship in cementing the initial civil war effort by Parliament in Gloucestershire and Herefordshire, but in the first half of 1642 it was rooted in an active collaboration in the Commons. Both Cooke and Harley were assiduous attenders at the Commission for the Affairs of Ireland between April and June 1642.80PJ ii. 469. Their perceptions of the dangers in Ireland outran those of the Herefordshire gentry, who complained to Harley at the burden proposed for their county in the bill to raise £400,000. He replied uncompromisingly, stressing the need for urgent action ‘when you consider the bloody and barbarous rebellion of the papists in Ireland which if it be not powerfully and fully stopped is like to endanger the peace in England’.81Add. 70086, Harley to Herefordshire gentry, 3 May 1642.

Unfortunately for Harley, it was not merely objections to the tax burden that distanced him from the leaders of Herefordshire society. By March 1642 those in control of the means of public expression in the county were writing to him to indicate that the king’s assent to bills to remove the manifestations of Laudianism from churches, the hope that both Catholicism and the Protestant sects would be suppressed and the enforcement of the Book of Common Prayer were for them a sufficient parliamentary programme. They admitted that delays in the treaty with the Scots and the sluggishness of the economy were disappointing, but they saw no threat from foreigners, and observed that English Catholics were quiet.82Add. 70003, ff. 227-8v, 238-9. Things looked very different to Harley, of course, as they well knew. A year earlier, in February 1641, he had been active in drawing up legislation to abolish superstition.83CJ ii. 84b; Spraggon, Puritan Iconoclasm, 63. During the six-week recess from September 1641, Harley had gone back to the county, and embarked on the destruction of the stone cross and window glass at Wigmore and Leintwardine churches, serving notice on the churchwardens of his intention to do the same at Leominster.84Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, 115-6. Harley was said in his zealous iconcolasm to be self-consciously imitating the biblical King Asa, who ‘threw images into the brook Kidron’.85Spraggon, Puritan Iconoclasm, 84-5.

Harley was in the spring of 1642 not simply as usual keen on rooting out superstition, he was gripped also with fears of plotting. In March, he did what he could to bring to the attention of the House a faction mobilising in Oxfordshire in favour of the Book of Common Prayer, securing an appearance before the Committee for Examinations of its alleged leader; in April, Brilliana fed him a story about Sir Sampson Eure* interrogating a gardener at Ludlow about a conspiracy nearer home.86PJ ii. 9, 53; Add. 70062, Brilliana Harley to Harley, 29 Apr. 1642. In the summer, there was plenty of activity in the country to vindicate Harley’s interventions. As control of the militia became fiercely contested, Harley tried to counter the king’s attempts to force sheriffs to publish a repudiation of Parliament’s encroachments on the royal prerogative; the committee for universities that he chaired brought to the House news that Oxford colleges intended to send plate to the king at York.87PJ iii. 37, 204. On 10 June, he offered £500 in plate and two horses for the cause of Parliament as the country drifted towards civil war, and from this point was active in attempts to raise money from the London merchant community, including Merchant Adventurers, the merchant strangers and the maritime interest group at Trinity House, Deptford.88PJ iii. 58, 471, 478; CJ ii. 580b, 601b, 621b, 633b, 635a, 685b, 698b.

Harley was receiving reports of anti-parliamentary activity in Herefordshire, such as the assertion by one of his allies that the cathedral clergy were intent on trying ‘to work a hatred in the hearts of the people against the Parliament and all good ministers, calling them schismatic’.89Add. 70004, John Wancklen to Harley, 1 July 1642. Brilliana’s frequent reports kept him informed of how the nascent royalist party in the county was settling the militia, taking over his militia troop and removing him from the commission of the peace.90Add. 70004, Brilliana Harley to Harley, 5 July, 8 July, 13 July, 14 July, n.d. prob. July, 1642. Harley had some local supporters among the relatively well defined godly Protestant laity and clergy – one defended him in Ledbury in a revealing comment on Parliament’s status: ‘Though Sir Robert Harley be low here, yet he is above, where he is’ – but his was a minority group.91Brilliana Harley Letters, 179. It is unsurprising that the stream of local news left Harley eager to counter royalist propaganda such as the Declaration ... of the County of Hereford, a commentary in support of the king’s actions in leaving London for York and of the liturgy of the Church of England, but critical of Parliament’s driving ‘on with more haste than good speed to the other extreme’.92Webb, Memorials, ii. 343-4. Harley involved the Lords in hearing evidence that the paper had been publicised in London, and secured assent from the peers to an order that the knights of the shire should investigate the extent of support for it in Herefordshire.93CJ ii. 662a, 691a. He himself remained at Westminster throughout the summer. Irish affairs, in which he supported the line taken by John Pym, and securing finance for Parliament from the merchant community were his main activities, and the lion’s share of his visits to the Lords that year – 21 of them were in the months between mid-June and mid-September.94CJ ii. 685b, 698b, 709b, 713a, 723a, 724a, 743a; PJ iii. 332. On 13 August, he exploited his growing standing with the upper House in order to accuse two peers, the 1st marquess of Hertford (William Seymour†) and Spencer Compton, 2nd earl of Northampton, of high treason, adding to the list Henry Hastings, son of the 5th earl of Huntingdon: a direct response to the king’s proclamation declaring the earl of Essex a traitor.95CJ ii. 715a, b, 718b, 719a. Harley supported the appointment of Essex, whose interest in Herefordshire he had acknowledged at the time of his election to this Parliament, as lord lieutenant of that county.96CJ ii. 709b.

Parliamentarian iconoclast, 1642-5

Given his religious outlook, his profile in the Commons since 1641 and his loyalty to the earl of Essex, there was no doubt how Harley would commit himself when the civil war finally broke out. In the early months of the war, he was busy securing the expulsion from the country of the queen’s Capuchin priests at Somerset House, impeaching James Stanley† - Lord Strange, the future 7th earl of Derby – and serving on the committee to impeach Lord Capel (Arthur Capel*).97CJ ii. 747a, 750a, 762a, 764a, 767a, 785b. Harley was one of the ‘fiery spirits’ at this point, enthusiastic for the cause of Parliament and eager to identify any laggards. On 12 September, he was named to a committee for singling out those Members not contributing financially, on the 19th announced that he had brought in £350 in plate already with a promise of more, and on the 22nd made an enemy of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, who was under pressure from the radicals to declare his position because his brother had gone to the king. D’Ewes recorded how Harley ‘had so little wit as to desire that I should declare what I would do’.98CJ ii. 763a, 772b; Harl. 163, f. 376. Harley was in no doubt what he himself would do. On 3 October, he, John Wylde and John Nashe, Members for Worcestershire constituencies, were given leave to attend Essex to execute military instructions and raise money on the ‘propositions’ for the parliamentarian war effort.99CJ ii. 791b.

A few days later (8 Oct.), the foundation document of the military Association for Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Shropshire was signed, a drafting in which Harley must have taken a significant part.100HMC Portland, iii. 100. This was another collaboration between Harley and Sir Robert Cooke. Between then and early January 1643, Harley remained in the marches, supporting the campaign of Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford as commander under Essex. In November, Harley and Cooke wrote to the Committee of Safety to request that in the face of the formidable strength of Lord Herbert (Edward Somerset), son of Henry, 5th earl of Worcester, Stamford should make deputies in each county and with permission from the 4th earl of Pembroke (Philip Herbert*), be given authority over south Wales as well.101HMC Portland, iii. 102. For his part, Stamford was effusive in praise of Harley, calling him ‘a mighty operator in any good that hath happened to me’.102LJ v. 444a. Harley was able to recover some of his standing in Herefordshire during this period, as evidenced by the contrite approach to him by the Leominster corporation, its members fearful that they had upset Stamford.103HMC Portland, iii. 102. In fact, the commander’s grip on the region was not as strong as it looked. Some raids in the marches by Stamford were successful, but despite propaganda attributing to him great parliamentarian victories, he was being squeezed between royalist forces. Harley’s call for an extension of Stamford’s power was made against a background of retreat to Gloucester, followed shortly by Stamford’s withdrawal from the region altogether.104Add. 18777, ff. 58, 72; R. Hutton, Royalist War Effort, 1642-46 (1982), 34-5; Webb, Memorials, ii. 190-208.

Harley was back in the Commons by 5 January 1643, when he spoke out in praise of the Bristol corporation for its commitment to the cause, doubtless mindful of the contrast with Hereford.105Add. 18777, f. 116v. He was active that month in the Commons’ revisions of the peace proposals intended to be submitted to the king. With Nathaniel Fiennes I, he lost to Denzil Holles in a division on the wording of the proposition on control of the militia, although the outcome, a defence of Parliament’s Militia Ordinance, was presumably to his satisfaction. He also sought a committee with the Lords on the proposal to promote leading Commons lawyers such as Speaker Lenthall and John Wylde to high legal office.106CJ ii. 928a, 935a. But the heaviest demand upon his time in January was the committee for prisoners, which he chaired. This body considered not only the dispersal of royalist prisoners of war, including those with a high public profile, but also the terms on which they could be sustained (at a rate of 6d. per day for the indigent among them) or released. It was Harley who brought in the protestation (not an oath, which might have offended against godly consciences) that royalist prisoners should take before their release (11 Apr. 1643). It embodied a solemn promise not to fight again against Parliament.107CJ ii. 928a, b, 932a, 935b, 937a, 950a, 957b. 961a; iii. 38b; Add. 18777, f. 120v; Harl. 164, f. 362v. Important and time-consuming though this work was, it would not have seemed more vital to Harley than his continuing efforts to abolish the hierarchy of the church. He took the bill to abolish bishops to the Lords (23 Jan.), in defiance of the counsels of those who argued that such a move would lead the Lords into a delaying inter-House conference.108CJ ii. 938b; Add. 18777, f. 131v; Harl. 164, f. 280.

In the process of finalising the bill against the bishops, Harley argued that committees of the Whole House had the power to revoke their own votes. When Harley wished to make some pronouncement, it seems that he was usually listened to, even when he cut across important business in progress. This had happened in November 1640 when he cut across the debate on the Great Marlow election, and it occurred again (4 Feb. 1643) when he interrupted John Wylde’s introduction of what would become the new excise tax in order to push to the fore of business some orders about prisoners and Windsor castle that he wished to take to the Lords.109Harl. 164, ff. 279, 288v. Harley’s seniority helped secure him a respectful hearing, but so did the increasing number of messages he was taking to the Lords: building up to five visits in March 1643 (on 3 March he took up 12 orders), and six in April. Sir Simonds D’Ewes liked to puncture the aura of sanctity surrounding Harley by recording his errors and foibles, but the diarist was never inclined to the belief that Harley was - like Humphrey Salwey, for example - an aged captive of the radicals. Harley was consistently opposed to the Oxford peace proposals, and was allied closely with Pym.110Harl. 164, ff. 321v, 323v, 332v, 333v, 350v, 363v, 148; CJ iii. 27b, 58a., He might have used a variety of techniques, including a briefing visit to the earl of Essex, and on 11 March two divisions of the House, to oppose the Oxford treaty, but there was no doubt he remained his own man.111Harl. 164, ff. 315, 321v, 323v, 382v; CJ ii. 987b, 992b, 999a, 1001a. A further reflection of his current influence was his successful bid to recover the office of master of the mint, for which he secured the consent of the House to bring in a parliamentary ordinance (16 Mar.).112CJ iii. 5a. It passed the Lords on 6 May, and the royalist-inclined Oxford press immediately saw his appointment as Parliament’s transfer of this important office into reliable hands before they began to stamp its own coin.113CJ iii. 69b; LJ vi. 35a; Newsbooks. Mercurius Aulicus, II. 264.

Harley’s interest in demolishing superstitious monuments was well-attested before 1643. He had supported proposals to demolish Cheapside Cross as long ago as 1626, and he had initiated his own campaign of destruction in Herefordshire in 1641. He was first-named to the committee ‘for the demolition of monuments of superstition and idolatry’ when it was established on 24 April 1643. The brief of this committee was initially to concentrate on Westminster Abbey and other churches in the City of London and Westminster, but it was within weeks extended to include monuments in all open spaces, too.114CJ iii. 57b, 63a. The co-operation of the City authorities was evident in the work of the committee from the outset, and an early much-publicised achievement of the committee, bringing to fruition a long-harboured wish of Harley’s, was the demolition of Cheapside Cross in early May.115Spraggon, Puritan Iconoclasm, 85-6. This was followed up by an order requiring enforcement by London churchwardens of earlier stipulations that in churches all stone altars should be removed, communion tables minus candlesticks moved to locations other than the east end, and all images of the Virgin or the Trinity discarded.116Spraggon, Puritan Iconoclasm, 86, 258. The most recent historian of Harley’s committee concludes that after the initial, eye-catching campaign of May 1643, it settled down to an uneven pace of activity, probably responding to information brought in against specific churches, or to reminders from Parliament itself. The evidence of Harley’s own papers suggests that the building work at Westminster abbey, which included much demolition, took place over a period of years, not months, and remained a primary focus of the committee’s work. Other important buildings which earned the doubtful privilege of Harley’s attention included St Margaret’s Westminster, St Paul’s cathedral, and the chapels of the royal palaces.117Spraggon, Puritan Iconoclasm, 87-98; Add. 70005, ff. 1-135 (1st foliation).

For Harley, the work of demolishing the physical evidence of idolatry, dismantling the episcopal church and covenanting in the interests of making the nation godly were of one piece. In the same month as he launched his campaign against London monuments, he was named to the committee to produce proofs against Archbishop William Laud and Bishop Matthew Wren at their trials. His suggestion that they both be banished to New England was taken as a joke by some, including John Selden*, but D’Ewes thought Harley perfectly serious.118Harl. 164, f. 382v; CJ iii. 68a. His thinking was very heavily influenced by covenant theology, and drafts of his unpublished speeches suggest that as delivered they were larded with copious scriptural references to covenanting. Not only had Harley viewed the Protestation of 1641 as a practical expression of covenanting, but he approved of the Vow and Covenant of June 1643 and the Solemn League and Covenant with the Scots of September that year as continuations of the same commitment to distilling ‘the godly in the land’ into a recognisable force.119Brampton Bryan MSS, 29/9. Harley was third in the queue of Members to take the June 1643 covenant, and supported Pym in the fall-out from the plot of Edmund Waller* which had brought it into being.120CJ iii. 116b, 118a; Add. 31116, p. 115. He seems to have viewed the images in public places, which he set about destroying with so much vigour, as a form of ‘selling’ or prostituting Christ and the Christian nation.121Brampton Bryan MSS, 29/9. Iconoclasm and the building of covenants were two aspects of the project of building the godly nation. When John Pym died in December 1643, Harley was a natural choice to succeed him on the parliamentary committee in support of the Westminster Assembly of Divines, whose members were wholly in sympathy with Harley’s brand of covenant theology.122CJ iii. 341a, 344a, 344b; LJ vi. 342a.

Harley remained in London throughout 1643 and 1644, during which time his house at Brampton Bryan was subjected to two sieges by the royalists. In the preparations for the first, in July 1643, the Herefordshire besiegers cited the parliamentarians’ ill-treatment of Catherine Stuart, widow of George Stuart, 9th seigneur of Aubigny (killed at Edgehill) as justifying the rough usage they proposed for the defenders of Brampton. This message must have been conveyed to Harley in London, who with three other MPs formed a committee on 3 August to look into the Aubigny case.123HMC Bath, i. 8; CJ iii. 188a. His own endeavours were in the summer of 1643 more bent towards securing the Tower of London than his own home in Herefordshire. Sir John Conyers, a kinsman of Harley’s, had faltered in his commitment to Parliament. Harley, as chairman of the committee for prisons and prisoners, had a direct interest, beyond mere kinship ties, in securing the Tower as the proper bastion of Parliament’s military strength in London. As the new master of the mint, which operated in the Tower, he had a double incentive to be taking a lead role in managing the business. In August he was one of a small committee which arranged to move captives from London to prison ships, while another body arranged for Conyers to hand over custody of the Tower to the city authorities. Harley offered to pay off Conyers’ debts, and acted as the intermediate keeper of the Tower between Conyers and the corporation of London.124CJ ii. 349b; iii. 192b, 195b, 201a, 201b, 219a; LJ vi. 178a; Add. 70113, Conyers to Edward Harley, 1 April [n.d.]. This transfer of authority coincided with a last-ditch attempt by the peace party to keep the peace talks going, and a division in which Harley and Sir Thomas Barrington were tellers for the war party (7 Aug.) initially seemed to encourage the proponents of peace such as D’Ewes. When it turned out that Harley and Barrington had miscounted (because they were elderly and therefore no longer sharp-witted, in D’Ewes’ opinion), the diarist was despondent at the revised seven-vote victory of the hardliners, who ‘added an end to all our hopes of peace and tranquillity’.125Harl. 164, f. 148; CJ iii. 197b.

In the last four months of 1643, as well as managing the committee for demolishing monuments and the mint, Harley was busy in various aspects of the parliamentary war effort. He was a supporter of Sir William Waller*, proposing him to Essex as governor of Portsmouth, helping fund his army, advising him of Essex’s commitment in the first battle of Newbury, and mediating in the dispute that by October had sprung up between Essex and Waller.126CJ iii. 239b, 241a, 249b, 266b. Two of Harley’s sons joined Waller in arms in the field.127Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, 152. Harley also began at this time to intervene in local affairs other than in Herefordshire, by means of parliamentary committees. While the royalists controlled the county, the rash of appointments to Herefordshire local committees that Harley had accepted earlier in the year was symbolic only. On 23 September, after the lifting of the siege of Gloucester, Harley joined the committee for the garrison there, which gave him a stake in an emblematic centre of resistance to the king in an area where Charles was in the ascendant.128CJ iii. 254a. His friendship with the Gloucester governor, Edward Massie*, probably dated back to 1642 when Massie had accompanied Stamford in his early campaign in Herefordshire. In October, Harley initially chaired the Committee of the West, a vehicle for supporting Waller in his campaigns in the west country.129CJ iii. 291a, 291b, 294b. In November, Harley took the chair at the privileges committee, reconvened in order to deal with disputed elections, initially in the west of England: at Bristol, Tewkesbury and Plympton Erle. By 1646, the committee was to have become an important arena for political fighting over disputed ‘recruiter’ elections.130CJ iii. 311a, 314b, 319a, 337b, 352a.

On 9 November, reports appeared in the London press of Brilliana Harley’s death at Brampton Bryan.131Newsbooks, Mercurius Aulicus, II. 192. She lay unburied in a high room in one of the castle’s towers at least until the following March, when close associates of the family wrote to her son for advice on how to proceed, but Sir Robert still remained in London.132Add.70125, Nathaniel Wright to Edward Harley. The sheer volume of business confronting him, together with his godly sense of a mission, kept him there. He also needed to pursue the recovery of sums he had invested in the cause of Parliament, receiving £300 in August and another £500 in December 1643.133Harl. 164, f. 151; HMC Portland, iii. 119. In March 1644, Harley delivered a remonstrance about his personal finances to the Committee for Revenue, ostensibly about his remuneration at the mint, but extending his request for arrears of £3,875, which he claimed had been accumulating since his unjust expulsion from his post in 1635, to include a claim for £4,000 lost by the destruction at Brampton Bryan and his loan of £649 on the propositions.134Add. 70107, memo. Harley to Cttee. for Revenue, 22 Mar. 1644. He secured an order in October for £200 of £1,000 owed him, and may have received the rest from sales of property authorised by the Committee for Advance of Money*, but Edward Harley* maintained that his father was never properly recompensed for his outlay, as ‘he was more zealous for the public good than to obtain recompense for his private losses, which he never had in this world’.135LJ vii. 44a; Add. 70130, draft memoir by Edward Harley of Sir Robert Harley. His personal circumstances which, after the sacking of Brampton Bryan and the death of his wife, he justifiably described as ‘sufferings’, only worsened when he was robbed at his London home.136Add. 70062, Harley to ‘G.L.’, n.d. June 1644; Webb, Memorials, ii. 361.

Early in 1644, Harley’s committee for the demolition of monuments extended its range of activities to include seizure of the fine clerical vestments at the palace of Whitehall, and the confiscated royal plate then in the custody of Sir Henry Mildmay*, which were to be sold for the use of those with a claim on Parliament’s charity. In April, costly clerical artefacts from St Paul’s and Westminster Abbey found by Harley or his agents, were ordered to be sold, and on 24 April Harley reported an ordinance for defacing copes. The following day, however, a new committee was appointed to produce an ordinance on removing superstition in worship, a broadening rather than a narrowing of the brief of the iconoclasts. This evolved into the ordinance of 9 May on ‘further demolishing of monuments’, an extension to all of England and Wales of the work of demolition, entrusting it to the usual local authorities.137CJ iii. 389a, 468b, 470a, 470b; Spraggon, Puritan Iconoclasm, 77-8, 261. D’Ewes was first named to the committee that produced the 9 May ordinance. He wished, despite his lukewarm stance on the war and previous criticisms of Harley, that ‘this course had been taken long since’. With D’Ewes, Harley played an important part in the gestation of the ordinance. It was doubtless D’Ewes’s reservations about the fate of the tomb of his wife’s family, rather than Harley’s sensibility, that led to the important concession in the ordinance which protected family funeral monuments from destruction.138Harl. 166, ff. 52v, 57, 58; CJ iii. 486b, 487a.

From April 1644, Harley took a leading part in the restructuring of committee support for Gloucester and the surrounding region. His friendships with Massie and Waller helped in this, as did his own standing in the west of England. The maintenance of Gloucester garrison was referred to a committee which was to invite contributions on the ‘public faith’, but the new body was given oversight over the counties of south-east Wales, which remained a hard nut for Parliament to crack, and for reducing which territory Parliament was still open to suggestions.139CJ iii. 455b, iv. 34b. Harley was named to the new committee, took the ordinance for it to the Lords and defended it from their watering-down suggestions on sequestrations of ‘delinquents’.140CJ iii. 455b, 458a, 460a, 478b. Harley’s collaborators in this venture were the Independents John Wylde* and Thomas Pury I*; during the re-organisation, Pury in particular fell out with Massie, but Harley was not drawn into the quarrel, and ensured that the dealings of the new body with the prickly Massie were reassuring and emollient.141CJ iii. 488b; HMC Portland, iii. 131; infra, ‘Edward Massie’. The new committee, usually called the Committee for Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and south Wales, quickly divided into a body which met in Parliament, in support of Gloucester garrison and its hinterland, and a flexible organisation based in the marches. The parliamentary group met twice weekly, sometimes at Harley’s London house, sometimes at Grocers’ Hall.142Add. 70086, loose papers of the committee, 13 July, 16 July 1644. Harley sought to raise money for its military activities, by approaching the Merchant Strangers for a loan at eight per cent, which it was proposed to repay by putting the excise into effect and sequestering malignants and papists.143Add. 70004, Committee of Glos. etc. to Merchant Strangers, n.d. post 10 May 1644. Harley had had previous experience of dealing with the Merchant Strangers.144CJ ii. 491b, 499a, 601b, 743a, 770a.

In religion, Harley was a convinced Presbyterian, and was recognised in the House as one of its most godly Members. Among the signs of this respect that were afforded to him was the call to approach the distinguished ministers requested to deliver fast day sermons before the House. Harley performed this task occasionally throughout his career in the Long Parliament, but in 1644 he worked with five pairs of preachers on their appearances before the Members.145CJ iii. 468a, 542b, 564b, 574b, 622a, 625b, 638b. This activity coincided with Harley’s heightened profile in religious affairs. From June 1644, he began to take an active interest in the workings of the Westminster Assembly, taking to the Lords an order for the divines to receive £400, and chairing a committee (8 July 1644) to bring in an order against blasphemy, typical of the Assembly’s tendency towards compulsion in religious matters.146CJ iii. 528ab, 555a. No ordinance emerged on this topic, but Harley was able to make more of an impact on the work of the Assembly itself. In a division on 26 November on the wording of the proposed Directory of Worship, Harley was a teller for those who wanted the phraseology of the Church of Scotland to be imported into the chapter on the Lord’s Supper. Harley’s side lost, but he was named to the committee to draft new wording, successfully reported amendments to the House and secured assent to the suggestion that the Directory should be translated into Welsh, a reflection of his commitment to protestantizing the church in Wales and the marcher counties.147CJ iii. 705b, 722a. When the Directory appeared, in either Welsh or English, its impact was muted, but the most celebrated Welsh commentator on its diffusion, John Lewis, dedicated his work to Harley, Sir Thomas Myddelton* and John Glynne*, in tribute to their pioneer work.148J. Lewis, Contemplations upon these Times; or the Parliament Explained to Wales (1646, E.349.19).

January 1645 saw Harley preoccupied with promoting the Directory and the Assembly. He was involved in constructing a narrative of the work of the Parliament and the Assembly for the Scots Parliament and synod and defending the draft Directory against the amendments of the Lords.149CJ iv. 7b, 9b, 10a. He carried to the Lords the Commons’ view that publishing about the Assembly, including the ordinance for abolishing the Book of Common Prayer, be left in the hands of the Assembly, and thanked a delegation of Suffolk ministers for their plea that action be taken to suppress the burgeoning sects. He was named to the committee for suppressing the more lurid sins such as incest, and in the early spring worked with the Assembly on what was to become the vexed question of devising criteria for admission by communicants in parishes to the Lord’s Supper.150CJ iv. 11a, 27b, 35b, 85b, 90a; Harl. 166, f. 193v. Support for the alliance with the Scots and sympathy with the aims of the Scots-driven negotiations at Uxbridge went naturally with this outlook.151CJ iv. 62b, 66b, 68a, When these negotiations foundered, Harley, once the opponent of peace proposals, was left on the wrong side of the fence as the Independents stepped up their offensive. Although Harley was asked to approach the Westminster Assembly for the names of chaplains to the New Model army (21 Mar.), he played no other role in the military reorganization, and after the New Model regiments were constructed, seemed more interested in the future prospects for the Scots army and how it was to be deployed in England.152CJ iv. 86a, 202b, 204a, 209a, 232b, 245b, 243a, 273a. He must have personally approved of the despatch of the Scots army to besiege Hereford in July 1645: the Members sent to accompany it included two elderly godly Presbyterians like himself - Humphrey Salwey and William Purefoy I.

In the wake of the battle of Naseby (14 June 1645), the possibility of Parliament’s extending its authority into Herefordshire and then south Wales was very real, whether by means of the Scots army or the New Model. Harley retained an immense influence over the parliamentarians of Herefordshire, but structurally the committee machinery of May 1644, which united the marcher counties and south Wales behind Gloucester, was never reformed to meet changing circumstances. Thus, the first batch of mainly Glamorgan and Monmouthshire men was added to the committee in October 1644, with further importations in July and August 1645. In the second of these, there were some Herefordshire men, a core of them associates or relatives of Harley’s, others, such as Herbert Perrott*, of less certain allegiance.153CJ iii. 661a; iv. 198b, 243a, 247b; LJ vii. 612a, 678a, 679a. Agendas other than Harley’s were at work in these additional nominations, and although he would have been happy at the inclusion of the earl of Essex and probably the earl of Pembroke, he was unable to regard the committee composition in his home territory as reliable or predictable when Hereford eventually came under parliamentary control. Nevertheless, he worked with the Independents and associates of Pembroke, Michael Oldisworth* and Thomas Pury I* to draft a declaration to promote Parliament’s intentions in south Wales, making good propaganda use of the king’s cabinet of letters, captured at Naseby. In preparation for this offensive, the committee of Herefordshire and Gloucestershire paid for 500 books of ordinances, for distribution in their territory.154CJ iv. 242b; Declarations of Lords and Commons (1645, 669.f.9.45); Add. 70086, cttee. procs. 20 May 1645.

Harley’s zeal as an iconoclast was undiminished in 1645. It was not his committee for demolition of monuments but another body, with quite different membership, which was required to visit York House on 23 April, to make an inventory of the pictures there. It was the art collection of the 1st duke of Buckingham, which had hung undisturbed since his death in 1628. Harley, notepaper in hand, must have made his inventory as he and his six colleagues moved through the rooms, noting in passing at least 40 paintings, among them Titian’s Ecce Homo. There were also a number of altarpieces and crosses which Harley noted with disapproval. His concern as ever about the survival of this art was that ‘they were bought to betray us’, and unless they were destroyed, ‘the reformed churches will scorn us ... the godly of the land that support us will forsake us’.155Brampton Bryan MSS, 10/3; CJ iv. 121a, 180a, 187b, 214b; Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, 184. On 24 July, Harley made his report, and it was doubtless through his influence on the House that it was ordered that art works at York House ‘without any superstition’ should be sold for the war effort in Ireland and the north of England, and that the others should be burnt. A series of votes was taken which detailed the religious imagery that was unacceptable, and as Harley’s manuscript inventory noted only works which figured the persons of the Trinity and the Virgin, he must have imagined a conflagration of most of the art works at York House.156CJ iv. 216a,b. In the event, the votes of 23 July were not acted upon, and the collection was later broken up into separate lots for sale abroad or at home.157L.-R. Betcherman, ‘The York House Collection and its Keeper’, Apollo xcii. 250-9.

Presbyterian grandee, 1645-8

In the autumn of 1645, Harley was busy at the committee for elections or privileges, between September 1645 and February 1646 sitting to consider disputes in Cockermouth, Reading, Buckinghamshire and East Grinstead.158CJ iv. 260a, 264b, 278a, 341b, 346b, 363a, 364b, 427b, 428b, 432a; Add. 31116, p. 486; Notts Univ. Lib., PW2 Hy36. Between February and June 1646, Harley chaired meetings on disputed elections in at least another seven election disputes. At a time of many ‘recruiter’ elections, hotly contested between Independents and Presbyterians, the importance of this committee is clear. Not only did it adjudicate on election outcomes in contention, but the committee also responded to referrals by the Commons on matters of enfranchisement, such as the ordinance it brought in to enfranchise Durham and County Durham, in response to petitions to that end.159Add. 28716, ff. 1-48v. The strategic importance of Harley’s role as chair is glimpsed in his keeping the indenture from the Derby election of 12 November 1645 among his own private papers.160Brampton Bryan MSS, 31/3. The growing controversy over electoral practices was one outcome of the political factionalism opening up in Parliament; another was the slowing down of Presbyterian-inspired legislation. In January 1646, Harley and Francis Rous were entrusted with bringing in an ordinance on better observation of the sabbath, but no longer could a scheme to impose religious conduct be guaranteed support in the divided Commons, and no legislation was forthcoming.161Add. 70108, order to refer bill to Harley and Rous, 15 Jan. 1646.

Hereford fell to Parliament in December 1645, not through the efforts of the Scots army, which had decamped from the siege of the city earlier in the year, but by the bold and imaginative initiative of Colonel John Birch*, working under the supervision of the Committee of Both Kingdoms and, locally, the governor of Gloucester and Thomas Hodges I*. Harley immediately took the lead in bringing in ordinances to tax Herefordshire and promote the gospel there, and took the order for Birch to be governor of Hereford to the Lords.162CJ iv. 382a, 387b, 389b, 396a, 493b; Add. 70108, misc. 41, papers of 27 and 29 Dec. 1645. Despite the long-awaited defeat of his royalist enemies at home, which given the sufferings of his household at Brampton Bryan he had every reason to welcome joyfully, Harley found that because of poor relations between Birch, the committee in Hereford and himself, the taste of victory quickly turned bitter. As soon as Birch had taken Hereford, he had asked for Harley’s co-operation in obtaining more soldiers for the area, necessary as Hereford was ‘extremely disaffected’.163Add. 70005, ff. 68 (2nd foliation), 2 (3rd foliation). Harley did not respond well. Early in March 1646, the Hereford committee – a small group, augmented by two Monmouthshire men – complained to Harley about the state of the garrison, and asked for more members to be appointed.164Add 70005, ff. 9, 11 (3rd foliation). By June, the committee faced complaints about its conduct in levying taxes, standing behind Walter Kyrle*, the steward of the earl of Essex in the county, a weak figure whose loyalty was in doubt but who was propped up against criticism in the Commons by Harley. The committee reported allegations by Birch that Harley had denounced him in the House for plundering. Edward Massie, in August enthusiastic about the possibilities of recruiter elections to bring more Presbyterians into the House, wrote frankly to Harley of their shared hope that Edward and Robert Harley would take the Herefordshire and Hereford seats, vacant after Humphrey Coningsby and James Scudamore had been disabled from sitting. But this was hopelessly unrealistic, since it had become apparent that Birch harboured electoral ambitions of his own.165Add. 70005, ff. 24, 42 (3rd foliation); Add. 70058, John Flackett to Edward Harley, 6 June 1646. Harley’s supporters circulated petitions against the burdens of the soldiery under Birch’s command as a counter-measure.166Add. 70109, misc. 63: petition, summer 1646.

In October, Harley used a Herefordshire grand jury presentment as a Trojan horse against his enemy, Birch. The jurors had thanked Parliament for delivering them from their enemies, professed to abhor any expressions made in the interests of the county that detracted from the authority of Parliament, ‘the cause of God and the liberties of this kingdom’. Now that the county was peaceful they wanted the soldiers removed, and although there was nothing more important to them than the free election of MPs, they urged that writs should not be moved until the soldiers had gone: as things stood the military ‘do much interpose in that business’, an obvious dig at Birch. 167Add. 70005, f. 42 (3rd foliation). Another version of the presentment lies in Harley’s papers; it called for magistrates to be empowered to appoint church officers and repair churches, and recommended ‘schools of learning’ and the appointment of clergy on adequate stipends: authentically Harleian concerns.168Add. 70005, f. 59 (3rd foliation). But the writ for Herefordshire had already been moved (11 Sept.), and although Harley rehearsed his attack on Birch in some detail, bringing in local examples of his opponent’s overbearing ways, the House declined to countermand the writ on the grounds that it was procedurally inappropriate.169Add. 70105, Isaac Bromwich to Harley, 16 Oct. 1646, 20 Oct. 1646; Harington’s Diary, 46; Add. 70107, misc. 12, draft articles by Harley, 24 Oct. 1646; Add. 31116, p. 573. The elections went ahead, though even the change of venue, from the usual Hereford to Leominster, did not stop Birch, who got in for that borough. The mood of the county committee members after the elections was sullen, as they fell to mutual recriminations. Their clerk lost his position, and the opposition to the Harleys was clarified among a small group of radical committeemen, one of whom, Miles Hill, later published a critique of Parliament’s ascendancy which implicitly laid much at the door of Harley and his pro-Scots policies.170Notts. Univ. Lib. PW2 Hy39, 40; Add. 70082, f. 35; M. Hill, A True and Impartiall Account (1650, E.607.3).

Harley had failed to take the House with him in his assault on Birch, partly no doubt because the soldier was something of a hero for having taken Hereford with an audacious coup, and partly because there was an obvious social sneer behind the language of Harley and his gentry associates against the merchant outsider, Birch. But Harley’s grip on the Commons had in any case lessened since 1645, if his role as a mediator with the Lords is anything to judge by. From the high point of 33 missions to the Upper House in 1644, his journeys on that business slumped to 14 in 1645, 17 in 1645 and only 11 in 1647.171CJ iii., iv., v. He was, of course, busy with his superstitious monuments committee, the mint and the excise, and like Humphrey Salwey*, another elderly Presbyterian, with the outcomes of the Westminster Assembly. Some of Harley’s preoccupations are visible in his purchases of official literature: in September 1646, he bought 200 copies of the new Directory of Worship, 500 ordinances for removing superstitious monuments, and 100 ordinances for the better observation of the Lord's Day.172Add. 70068, stationer’s bill, 9 Sept. 1646. But his advocacy of Presbyterianism was becoming a political liability. When taxed with the suggestion that it was a hopeless cause, he replied

Let us so much rather be earnest for it though we gain it by inches; what we do now with much difficulty [and] opposition, shall be of use one day when there shall not be heard so much as the sound of a hammer.173Add. 70130, memoir by Edward Harley of his father.

The allusion was to 1 Kings vi. 7 and the building of the Temple, as well as a probably unintended one to his own iconoclasm.

With the rise of Independency in the Commons and the arrival of Birch in Herefordshire, Harley and his supporters were forced on to the back foot. He spent much time in 1647 working on removing the military presence in Herefordshire. This was focused on a scheme to despatch Birch and his regiment to Ireland, set against a background of Parliament’s plans to reduce the overall size of the armies. Harley’s earlier experience of Irish affairs may have been a useful tool in working out this plan.174Add 70062, Harley’s notes on meeting at Derby House, 23 Mar. 1647; agreement, n.d., at Cttee. for Irish Affairs on management of Hereford garrison; order of Parliament, n.d., for setting aside £6740 for Birch’s regt.; papers on paying off Birch’s regt. 25 Mar. 1647; Herefs. committee to William Lenthall, 10 Aug. 1646; Goldsmiths’ Hall Committee order, 5 Apr. 1647; CJ v. 139b, 176b, 211a, 250a, 287a. Having elected him as their high steward, the mayor and common council of Hereford appealed to Harley for help to lift the odour of delinquency from the city.175Add. 70061, list of delinquents, 30 Jan. 1647; Add. 70106, f. 48. Given that a number of those available to play a part in local government in and around Hereford had remained in the district during the royalist occupation, it was probably inevitable that critics of Harley would seize upon his contacts with men such as Bennet Hoskins* and Edmund Weaver*, whose support for Parliament had been less than whole-hearted. But growing hostility towards Harley from the New Model army owed much more to the breakdown of relations between Edward Harley and his New Model foot regiment. Edward revealed to the House on 29 March a report that his lieutenant, Thomas Pride*, had urged their soldiers to back a protest against Parliament’s plans to disband them or ship them to Ireland. His conduct provoked the radicals into publishing A New Found Stratagem, which denounced Harley and other ‘corrupt’ MPs and vindicated the integrity of the New Model. Sir Robert was named to the parliamentary committee to investigate what was inevitably seen as a libel, and served a subpoena on John Eve, a non-commissioned officer in the regiment of John Lambert*, to appear before it.176A New Found Stratagem (1647, E.384.11); CJ v. 153a; Add. 70107, misc. 8: papers on A New Found Stratagem. The last meeting of Harley’s committee met on 11 May. Meanwhile, elements within the New Model circulated papers on his manipulation of committees in south Wales and the marches, his interference in parliamentary elections and his promotion of cronies. It was even alleged that Harley had ‘much deserted the godly party’, an assertion that could have borne scant scrutiny, except on an interpretation of godliness that elevated sectarian varieties of it.177Clarke Pprs. ii. 157-8. These critical observers of Herefordshire politics betrayed their origins in the New Model and the sects by including the Presbyterian Birch within the scope of their attacks, although this probably brought little comfort to Harley.

Among the miscellaneous other topics that attracted Harley’s attention in the first half of 1647 were the reform of Oxford University (23 Mar.), which produced a first ordinance for regulating the university, and a second (20 July) for restoring the earl of Pembroke, as chancellor; the disputed Shropshire election (6 Apr.) and (with Zouche Tate) the wording of the confession of faith proposed by the Westminster Assembly (22 Apr.).178CJ v. 121b, 122b, 251b, A. and O. i. 925, 995; CJ v. 134a, 151a. The appointment of Sir Nathaniel Brent as president of the visitation of Oxford must have owed much to Harley’s support.179Oxford DNB. In June, he was first named to the committee charged with producing a seal for the Brecon circuit of the great sessions in Wales, a means by which the administration of justice could be resumed. It was in his capacity as de facto commissioner of the new seal for south Wales that he received reports on the legal activities of Bennet Hoskins and Edward Freeman*. The new seal was put under the care of the earl of Pembroke as chamberlain of Brecon, which with Pembroke’s Oxford appointment suggests that Harley and the earl were co-operating that summer. Harley had at the start of the civil war made a point of deferring to Pembroke’s authority in south Wales.180CJ v. 220b; LJ ix. 419a; HMC Portland, iii. 102, 161; Williams, Welsh Judges, 152. In the tumults surrounding the army's impeachment of the Eleven Members, among them Harley’s eldest son, Edward, he was active in attempts to unify Lords, Commons and the committee for the City militia against the disorders. Harley was a member of the committee to draft an apologia for Parliament’s actions (14 June), and continued to report on disputed elections that had been scrutinized by the privileges committee (21 June, 26 July). In the aftermath of the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster on 26 July, Harley continued to attend the Commons and was appointed to the committee for investigating the origins of the disorder and was added to the Presbyterian-dominated ‘committee of safety’, which had been set up in June to mobilise London against the army (2 Aug.).181CJ v. 218b, 258a, 260a, 265a. After the army entered London on 6 August, Harley quickly became persona non grata to it, by association with his son and because of his earlier involvement in army reduction planning. He did not attend the House after 8 September 1647, reporting to Edward on criticisms made of him, and on the moves towards rehabilitation by other leading Presbyterians.182Add. 70005, ff. 77, 80, 97 (4th foliation); CJ v. 296b, 334b.

Only in May 1648 did Harley resume his seat in the Commons. Against a background of the national emergency of the second civil war, much of his time in what was to be the last phase of his parliamentary career was invested in establishing the militia. His interests included the force provided by the City to protect Parliament, and the local militia of his own county, in which he secured a commission for Edward as colonel.183CJ v. 565a, 569b, 574a; Add. 70006, f. 30. In June he was given charge of the ordinance for the national militia, and first reported amendments to it in July. Throughout the summer, Harley continued to report progress on the ordinance, which in August was considered more usually by a grand committee which he chaired. It did not pass the Commons until 3 October, and was finally published on 2 December.184CJ v. 597b, 623a, 632b, 660a, 663b, 664a, 665b, 668a, 671a, 683a; vi. 1a, 6b, 22b, 33a, 42b, 45a. Its intention was to restructure the militia along traditional lines, with each county responsible for its own force. It was bound to be seen as a challenge to the standing armies and garrisons, and to Harley’s enemies in the New Model. Despite the collapse of Parliament’s alliance with the Scots, Harley was one of a small number of MPs, ‘pillars of the Scottish interest’, who still worked to salvage something from the wreck of the Solemn League and Covenant, helping prepare an address to the public on efforts to rebuild bridges.185CJ v. 633b, 643b; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 39 (19-26 Dec. 1648), Sig. Eee2(v) (E.477.30). Despite the intensity of their conflict in 1646, Harley and John Birch had by February 1648 become reconciled, as they shared an anti-New Model and pro-Presbyterian outlook. Birch was sent as an ambassador to the Scots in the hope of staving off war with them, reporting to the Harleys on the need to avoid an ‘ill-grounded peace’.186Add. 70005, f. 62 (4th foliation); Add. 70112, Birch to Edward Harley, 3 July 1648.

It was natural that someone with Harley’s pro-Scots outlook and conservative views on home defence should support continued addresses to the king.187CJ vi. 57b, 63a. He was still active in demolishing monuments, albeit in a less publicised manner, and Marchamont Nedham linked these two inclinations in his caricature of ‘that old babe’, Harley:

a grievous plunderer of the Saints in church windows because they were but painted, like himself. I should wonder, when he demolished all the famous monuments of antiquity in Harry the seventh’s chapel [in Westminster abbey], how he forbore to do execution on his own face it being as antique as any, but that I know he loves himself better than the house of God. 188Add 70006, f. 37; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 14 (27 June- 4 July 1648), Sig. O2 (ii).

Harley was charged with sugaring the bitter pill of Presbyterianism sufficient to make it palatable to the king, and was, in the final weeks of negotiations over the Newport Treaty with Charles, seen as a last hope of the commissioners who were working for a Presbyterian solution to the problems of the church. Sir Harbottle Grimston* wrote to Harley to use all his influence with the House to win acceptance for the king's final answer, a rejection of the permanent abolition of episcopacy.189CJ vi. 63a; Add 70006, f. 47. Even Mercurius Pragmaticus had moderated its view of Harley by 4 December, listing him among the ‘ancient men’ who argued that the king’s responses to the Treaty were sufficient for it to proceed.190Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 36/37 (5-12 Dec. 1648), Sig. Ccc2(ii) (E.476.2). The New Model of course disagreed. Harley was among those arrested at Pride’s Purge on 6 December, and spent that night in the victualling-house called Hell, refusing the parole offered to him because of his age and the heavy cold with which he was suffering at the time. He remained a prisoner until 25 December, and then endured a period of house arrest that lasted until February 1649.191Add. 70130, Edward Harley’s draft memoir of his father; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 147-8, 154, 167-8, 195.

Political outcast, 1649-56

After the trial and execution of the king, the Rump dealt very coolly with Harley. They ordered that he should bring in papers that related to the disputed Cirencester recruiter election of 1647, in which his own kinsman and erstwhile enemy of John Birch, one Isaac Bromwich, had stood as a candidate. The dispute had never emerged from the committee of privileges.192CJ vi. 131a; supra, ‘Cirencester’. The council of state summoned him to give an account of the mint; in October 1648, Harley had been granted £820 as compensation for his outlay for Parliament during two months of 1643; but now he declined the Rump’s invitation to account for his stewardship, and he surrendered the office before it was taken from him.193CJ vi. 47b; 206b, 210b; Add. 70059, council of state to Harley, 11 May 1649; Add. 70062, Harley to council of state, 12 May 1649; CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 130, 142. Even his place of residence was a trial to him after 1648. He was forced to raise funds through a mortgage of two of his manors.194Brampton Bryan MSS, 61/1. Brampton Bryan remained a ruin, and his attempt to settle in Shrewsbury was met with a rebuff by the governor, Humphrey Mackworth I*, who advised him with the government’s approval that if he could not take the Engagement he should stay away.195Add. 70006, ff. 177, 179; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 75. Eventually he found a home in Ludlow, and the antipathy towards him by the Rumpers was reciprocated; John Bradshawe* had Harley’s door closed against him when he tried to visit.196Add. 70057, receipt by Somerset Fox, 17 Apr. 1652; Add. 70089, draft memoir of Edward Harley. Pride’s Purge marked the end of Harley’s parliamentary career, and it must have been a source of anguish for him to witness the rise of the sects in Herefordshire, promoted by Colonel Thomas Harrison I* and Wroth Rogers*. The project of propagating the gospel in Wales and the marches, close to Harley’s heart for many years, was inherited by the millenarians under Harrison. Harley had secured orders for his county from the Committee for Plundered Ministers, but the schemes under the Rump for propagation were more ambitious. Despite their ownership by the millenarians, however, they owed much to Harley’s sustained endeavours.197Add. 70062, Cttee. for Plundered Ministers order, 15 Apr. 1646; HMC Portland, iii. 144; Add. 70005, f. 59 (3rd foliation); A Petition of the Justices of Peace … at Hereford (1649), 5; S.K. Roberts, ‘Propagating the Gospel in Wales: the making of the 1650 Act’, Trans. Hon. Soc. Cymmrodorion n.s. ix. 53-71.

In religious affairs and in so much else, Harley continued to cast a long shadow over Herefordshire even when out of office. Sir William Waller, whose troubles were no less great than Harley’s own, wrote from detention to thank Harley for his support, and noted his kinsman’s quality of steadfastness: ‘I see you are the same today as you were yesterday, and there is something of a divine impression in that constancy’.198Add 70106, f. 198; Add 70006, f. 80. In retirement, Harley maintained his legendary piety. His son recorded that each Sunday Sir Robert would rise early to be at prayer, even when ill. His servants once let him lie in for an hour, after he had suffered a restless night; when Harley woke, he wept at the opportunities he had lost for his devotions.199Add. 70130, Sir Edward Harley’s recollections of his father, n.d. He stayed out of office until 1654, when he was named as a commissioner under the ordinance for ejecting scandalous ministers: his continuing support for Presbyterian ministers by then counted less against him. In the interests of building the ministry, he seems to have co-operated with radical newcomers such as Benjamin Mason*.200Add 70007, f. 2; Brampton Bryan MSS, 84/21. For his sons, life under the Rump was even more difficult, as they were arrested and detained during the emergency of 1650-1.201Add. 61899, f. 4. When Edward Harley broke the news to his father that the Nominated Assembly would benefit from ‘the abilities of Mr [John] James* and Mr [Robert] Holmes*’, he was surely being understandably sarcastic.202Add. 70007, f. 22v. Nevertheless, relations between the Harleys and some of the Herefordshire millenarians such as James were eventually rebuilt.203Brampton Bryan MSS, 28/12, 14; Notts. Univ. Lib., PW2 Hy113. Harley died at his house in Ludlow on 6 November 1656, probably of the stone; his last words were ‘I die, Lord be gracious’.204Add. 70007, f. 90; Add. 70130, Edward Harley’s draft memoir of his father.