HARRIS, John I (c.1586-1657), of Hayne, Stowford, Devon.

Although the Harrises of Hayne were the junior branch of the Harrises of Radford, by the early seventeenth century they were by far the richer of the two, with John Harris I’s father, Arthur Harris, owning extensive properties in north-west Devon and in Cornwall. Arthur Harris was also a justice of the peace in both counties, served as captain of St Michael’s Mount and as MP for St Ives in 1624, and had family links with courtiers like Sir Fulke Greville† and Sir Edward Conway†.21HP Commons 1604-1629. John Harris’s upbringing befitted his status, with his studies at Oxford and Lincoln’s Inn being followed by a grand tour on the continent which may have lasted as long as three years.22Al. Ox.; LI Admiss. i. 145; HMC Cowper, i. 483-4. In 1621 he was elected for the borough of Launceston, just across the border from the family seat at Hayne (near Lifton), but he played only a minor role in the affairs of either county during the 1620s – a situation that changed little after his inheritance of the family estates on his father’s death in 1628, or his second marriage to a daughter of the influential landowner and courtier, John Mohun†, 1st Baron Mohun, in 1631.23HP Commons 1604-1629.

In the elections for the Short Parliament in March 1640, Harris was returned for the Devon borough of Bere Alston, but the result was challenged in the Commons, as there had been a preliminary round of voting, in which two of the candidates (Thomas Wise* and Sir Nicholas Slanning*) had agreed to stand down in favour of a third (William Strode I*) if they were returned for other seats.24Aston’s Diary, 77, 151; CJ ii. 6b, 14b. Harris, who had come top of the poll in the second election, was apparently an innocent party in all this, and was understandably put out when the mayor declared that ‘that he should not have the first place, but must content himself with the second because Mr Strode [was] in the first’.25CJ ii. 14b; Aston’s Diary, 151. Harris’s return was subsequently upheld by the Commons, on the recommendation of the committee of privileges, on 28 April, but he does not seem to have played any role in the remaining days of the Parliament.26CJ ii. 14b.

Harris was elected for Launceston in November 1640, presumably on his own interest as a local landowner and freeholder in the borough.27Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/345. There is no record of his activity in the early months of the Long Parliament, although he may have been the Mr Harris who took the Protestation on 3 May 1641.28CJ ii. 133a. He was probably the John Harris who invested £100 in the Irish Adventurers’ scheme in March 1642 and a further £50 in the Sea Adventure in June.29Bottigheimer, English Money and Irish Land, 183; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 470. In the same month he promised £50 for the defence of Parliament, in the first sign that he was now a supporter of the parliamentarian cause.30PJ iii. 473.

Harris’s allegiances had become clearer by February 1643, when he was added to the Devon commission of the peace, and he was made a member of the county committee in July 1644.31Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 11; A. and O. When the Commons voted in June 1645 that those MPs whose estates were still in royalist areas should receive a weekly allowance for their subsistence, Harris was allowed £4 a week, and he received this sum from July 1645 until the fall of Pendennis Castle in August 1646.32CJ iv. 161a; Add. 18780, f. 29; SC6/ChasI/1662, m. 10; SC6/ChasI/1663, m. 8; SC6/ChasI/1664, m. 14-15. This coincided with his period of greatest activity at Westminster. On 31 July 1645 he was named to the committee to consider the Scottish commissioners’ allegations against Richard Barwis*, and in August he was appointed to the committee to consider a petition for redress from Scottish reformado officers.33CJ iv. 226a, 249b. In September Harris joined other west country MPs in signing a letter to Norwich (and presumably other boroughs) asking for contributions for the relief of the inhabitants of Taunton ‘whose dwellings are burnt and their estates utterly wasted by the enemy’.34Fairfax Corresp. iii. 219-220. In March 1646 Harris was given leave to go to the west country, and was added to the committees for Devon and Cornwall at the same time, but in October he was back in Commons, and was one of those chosen to consider who should be pricked as sheriffs or appointed as justices of the peace in the English counties.35CJ iv. 492b, 709b.

On 22 February 1647 Harris was again given leave to go to the country, renewed in February 1648, and he was excused his absence from the call of the House on 24 April.36CJ v. 93a, 466a, 543b. During 1647-8 he was closely involved in the local administration in Devon and Cornwall. He was appointed assessment commissioner for Devon in June 1647, and was re-appointed in February 1648.37A. and O. In March 1647 he was also added to the commission of the peace for Cornwall.38C231/6, p. 78. Harris continued to be active as a magistrate in Devon at least until the spring of 1648, he was present at the assizes at Launceston in April, and in May he was on hand to advise Colonel Robert Bennett* on the royalist uprising that led to the brief occupation of Penzance.39Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 277; Cornw. RO, B/LAUS/182-3; FSL, X.d.483 (18). He was appointed as militia commissioner for Devon on 2 December 1648, but his seclusion from Parliament, apparently as a lukewarm Presbyterian, four days later ensured that this was his last local appointment.40A. and O.; A Vindication (1649), 29 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5). By June 1649 Harris had been dropped from the Devon commission of the peace, and his political career was at an end.41Devon RO, QS28/5.

Despite some evidence to the contrary, it is unlikely that Harris joined plots against the commonwealth regime after the regicide. In June 1649 he complained to Bennett that the swords belonging to him and a companion had been ‘taken from us at Trelowarren, the house of Sir Richard Vyvyan*’ by troopers based at Pendennis, but Bennett’s intervention to see that they were returned suggests that Harris was not a suspect.42FSL, X. d.483 (41). Equally, a report of a planned royalist landing in Cornwall in February 1651, which asserted that ‘there is one Harris or Harrison of the west of Devonshire and Cornwall, formerly in the Parliament’s service, their correspondent, that is to give them inlet, and hath made a party in those parts to join with them’, cannot be corroborated, and, with its factual inaccuracies, it appears to have been based either on misunderstanding or mistaken identity.43HMC Portland, i. 559.

It seems more plausible that Harris lived in quiet retirement until his death in 1657. His main concern in his last days was to leave a direct heir. In July 1644, when Prince Maurice’s troops were quartered at Lifton and Hayne, Richard Symonds had written scornfully of Harris and his second wife as ‘sans children, both ‘O’, but she the cause’.44Symonds, Diary, 44. Symonds’ gynaecological diagnosis proved false, however, as in or around 1650 Harris’s heir, Arthur Harris†, was born. In his will, drawn up in February 1657, Harris was careful to make provision for the education and upbringing of his only son, ‘whom God hath given as a blessing in mine old age’.45PROB11/265/339. Arthur Harris went on to serve as MP for Okehampton from 1671 until 1681.46HP Commons 1660-1690.