KYRTON, Edward (1585-1654), of Almsford Park and Castle Cary, Som.

Edward Kyrton’s political career was moulded by the Seymour interest, headed by the 2nd earl of Hertford. Kyrton, who rendered his name thus, had been the household servant of the earl since 1619, and in the Parliaments of the 1620s he sat for Seymour-dominated seats in Wiltshire.20SP23/194, p. 486; C2/Chas.I/D58/46; Coll. Top. et Gen. v. 39. His activities at Westminster reveal that he adhered closely to the ‘country’ interest favoured by Hertford. As a result of his vigorous attack on the 1st duke of Buckingham in support of Hertford’s ally, the 1st earl of Bristol, Kyrton was summoned before the privy council in 1626, along with other Digby associates, notably Sir John Strangways* and Sir Lewis Dyve*.21Eg. 2978, f. 18. Kyrton’s attachment to this group may have been reinforced by his religious views. Although in 1629 he attacked Arminian religious innovation, which he branded as an attempt ‘to bring in the Romish religion amongst us’, like Hertford and other moderate opponents of the crown, Kyrton was no puritan.22Sloane 826, ff. 140-1. As resident patron of the rectory of Castle Cary, he had a direct influence over the affairs of the parish, yet the surviving accounts show that Laudian furnishings were introduced in the 1630s (altar rails, vestments etc.), and the only serious disagreement with the bishop of Bath and Wells concerned the preaching of sermons without the Prayer Book service to accompany them.23Som. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. xxxvi, pt. 2, 60-9. Kyrton’s views were probably very similar to religious conformists such as Strangways, Hertford and Bristol, and he would later join them in opposing the ultra-Calvinist reforms proposed by the king’s opponents in 1641 and 1642. Kyrton’s strong political connection with both Hertford and Bristol continued during the 1630s. In 1634 Hertford made him one of the trustees of his lands at Milborne Port and Kingsbury Regis, and in August 1639, he attended a private meeting at Bristol’s house at Sherborne in Dorset, with Hertford and two other noble malcontents, the 3rd earl of Essex and the 1st earl of Cork.24Som. RO, DD/AB54; Lismore Pprs. ser. 1, v. 100.

Kyrton’s election for the borough of Milborne Port in Somerset for the Short and Long Parliaments was due to the local prominence of the earl of Bristol, whose seat at Sherborne was close to the town, and to the proprietorial influence of the earl of Hertford, who held lands in Milborne parish. In the Short Parliament, Kyrton was elected with Thomas Erle, the son of the veteran opponent of royal policies from the 1620s Parliaments, Sir Walter Erle*, who had contacts with Sir John Strangways and other Dorset allies of the Digbys. Kyrton’s fellow-MP in the Long Parliament elections was Bristol’s son and heir, George Lord Digby, who, on being returned as knight of the shire for Dorset, was replaced by his brother, John Digby. This broad alliance of west country opponents of the court interest, under the leadership of the Seymour and Digby families, was to prove as much of an influence on Kyrton’s parliamentary career in the early 1640s as it had been in the 1620s.

As a veteran ‘Parliament man’, Kyrton was named to various key committees from the very start of the Short Parliament. He was appointed to the committee of privileges (16 Apr.), the committee to report the state of the House’s records (17 Apr.) and a committee for drafting grievances (23 Apr.); and he was made manager of a conference on the same with the Lords (27 Apr.).25CJ ii. 4a-b, 10a, 12a, 14a. Kyrton was a leading opponent of crown policies in the Short Parliament. He denounced Laudian religious reforms, and was named to committees to consider the treatment of the anti-Laudian prebendary, Peter Smart, whose cause he championed in debate.26CJ ii. 8b; Procs. Short Parl. 167. On 1 May, Kyrton was teller in a vote condemning Dr Beale, the Laudian master of St John’s College, Cambridge.27CJ ii. 18a; Procs. Short Parl. 205. Kyrton also attacked the government for what he perceived as illegal taxation, saying that the abolition of Ship Money alone would not be sufficient: ‘for others could invent as well as Mr [attorney-general] Noye, and we must expect new oppressions’.28Procs. Short Parl. 190. In many of these debates, Kyrton acted in concert with his allies in the Seymour-Digby group. On 23 April, for example, Sir Ralph Hopton argued that the redress of grievances should precede supply, and he was supported by Sir Francis Seymour and Sir John Strangways. Immediately afterwards, Kyrton joined the fray, demanding that grievances should be considered under three heads: religion, property in goods, and the liberty of Parliament; and he was seconded by Sir Walter Erle.29Procs. Short Parl. 170-2; Aston’s Diary, 38.

The collapse of the Short Parliament early in May 1640, and the renewed war with the Scots, did little to allay the fears of the Seymour-Digby group. Hertford joined the 12 peers in petitioning the king for a new Parliament in late August 1640, and Bristol was quietly sympathetic to their aims. The opening of the Long Parliament in November was the occasion for another attack upon the Caroline regime, and once again Kyrton and his friends were in the vanguard. From early November, Kyrton took an active part in the presentation of grievances against the crown. He was appointed (with Lord Digby, Seymour, Strangways and others) to draft a general report to the Commons on 10 November.30CJ ii. 24a. In the next few weeks he was named to committees dealing with monopolies, Ship Money, the militia, and the Laudian persecution of Alexander Leighton, William Prynne*, John Bastwick and Henry Burton.31CJ ii. 24a, 30a, 43a, 44b, 46b, 50b, 52b. As a trusted ‘ancient Parliament man’, Kyrton was also involved in the initial stages of the proceedings against the 1st earl of Strafford. He was named to a committee to consider the charges against the lord lieutenant of Ireland on 30 November, and in February 1641 he was added to another committee on the trial.32CJ ii. 39b, 79b. Similarly, in the winter of 1640-1 Kyrton continued his attack on ‘abuses’ in the church. He took an active part in the Commons’ defence of the parishioners of St Gregory’s in London (whose church had been demolished to make way for Laud’s refurbishment of St Paul’s), and reported the findings of the investigation.33CJ ii. 36a, 63b; D’Ewes (N), 223. In February and March 1641 he was appointed to committees against idolatry, the involvement of clergymen in secular government, and plurality of livings.34CJ ii. 84b, 99a, 101a.

The handling of the Strafford trial caused Kyrton and his allies to reconsider their position. As the impeachment proceedings were dropped in favour of a vote of attainder early in April, Lord Digby began to question the legality of the attack on the lord lieutenant, and he was supported in this by Kyrton, who opposed the second reading of the attainder bill against Strafford on 12 April, and in the course of debate lost his temper, spoke ‘after a contemptuous manner’, and, ‘with some offensive expressions’, ‘went jeering out of the House’.35Procs. LP, iii. 516. The Commons took grave exception to Kyrton’s behaviour, and some MPs argued that he should be excluded from the House. Kyrton apologised, however, denying that he had shown disrespect to the House, and was allowed to resume his seat on 14 April.36CJ ii. 120a; Procs. LP iii. 549. When the attainder vote was passed in the Commons in late April, Kyrton opposed the motion, and his name was included (along with those of Lord Digby, John Digby and Strangways) in the lists of ‘Straffordians’ which circulated in London during May.37Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 249; Procs. LP iv. 194. Lord Digby soon came under attack in the Commons for his support of the lord lieutenant, and on 10 June he was sent for by the House. Kyrton retorted that it was too late to summon him, as he had been called to the House of Lords that day as Lord Digby of Sherborne, and was ‘even now putting on his robes... to take his place there’.38Procs. LP v. 79-80. In July the Commons drew up a petition to the king, asking him not to employ Digby in the royal service because of his defence of Strafford, and in the subsequent division, Kyrton and Strangways unsuccessfully opposed the sending of this petition.39Harl. 479, f. 59.

From the spring of 1641 Kyrton had begun to question the wisdom of Pym’s call for the ‘further reformation’ of the church. This can be seen as early as February, when he joined Digby, Seymour and Sir Ralph Hopton in opposition to a London petition against bishops.40D’Ewes (N), 337. In the debate on the ‘free passage’ of the gospel on 12 April, Kyrton argued against Sir Simonds D’Ewes, who wanted to remove crosses and vestments from all churches as an aid to godly ‘uniformity’.41CJ ii. 119a; Procs. LP iii. 510. On 27 May, Kyrton was a minority teller against (not for, as the clerk of the Commons mistakenly recorded) giving a second reading to the bill for abolishing episcopacy.42CJ ii. 159a; Procs. LP iv. 606, 614. He was also involved in moves to defend the royal court from outside interference. On 15 June he joined the debate on the care of the prince of Wales, courting controversy by arguing that the 1st earl of Newcastle should be retained as guardian; and on 26 July, when Newcastle was implicated in the army plot, Kyrton defended him as ‘a noble gentleman’.43Procs. LP, v. 174; vi. 96. His association with Newcastle soon became more formal, as by the beginning of August he was acting as deputy to the earl as gentleman of the robes to the prince.44HMC Portland, ii. 133; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 260. Kyrton was also keen not to allow the king’s enemies to take control of the Commons: on 19 August when it was suggested that Lancashire MPs should return home to disarm recusants, he argued that ‘it had not been the use of the House to send away our Members, and that the House was so thin that he desired that either we might all stay or all go’.45Procs. LP vi. 488.

After the recess, Kyrton continued to be a controversial figure in the Commons. On 18 November he argued in favour of accepting petitions in support of bishops, and attracted criticism for questioning the validity of anti-episcopal petitions in the past.46D’Ewes (C), 166. On 20 November the Commons investigated seditious pamphlets, and examined one Nicholas Beale, who had attacked the political stance of Parliament and the City of London. Kyrton, ‘blushing extremely’, was forced to admit that he had been feeding information ‘against Anabaptists, Brownists and such like’ to Beale.47D’Ewes (C), 176. Ten days later, Strangways and Kyrton presented papers to the Commons saying that there was a plot by the London mob to kill MPs who supported the king, and that opposition MPs had encouraged this. Pym retaliated by accusing them of trying to blacken the reputation of the Commons.48D’Ewes (C), 215-6. The winter of 1641-2 saw the further polarization of political opinion in England. Bristol and Digby had already sided with the king, Hertford and Seymour were gradually moving in the same direction, and Kyrton became more open in his support of the crown. When the king entered the Commons in his attempt to arrest the Five Members in January 1642, his actions were vindicated by Hopton, and Kyrton made clear his support for this view by opposing the creation of the Guildhall committee which criticised the king’s abuse of parliamentary privilege.49CJ ii. 368b. Kyrton attendance at Westminster apparently became very irregular in the following months. In February 1642 he had returned to Somerset, where he was active in support of bishops, and was criticised in the Commons for conniving with Sir John Poulett* in drawing up a Somerset petition ‘for bishops’.50PJ, i. 465. Kyrton was absent from the Commons after the beginning of May, when he opposed the election of the parliamentarian Sir William Waller* as MP, and he refused to attend the call of the House on 16 June.51CJ ii. 554b, 626n.

In Somerset, Kyrton assumed a leading role in attempts to keep the county loyal to the king during the summer of 1642. Kyrton’s later claim that he deserted Parliament ‘by reason of his daily attendance of the prince’ is in some senses true, as in August, Kyrton had joined the prince’s governor, the newly-minted marquess of Hertford, in publishing the royal commission of array in Somerset.52SP23/194, p. 486; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 685. When Hertford was chased out of Somerset and took refuge at Bristol’s castle at Sherborne across the Dorset border, Kyrton went with him.53A Declaration made by the Lord Marquesse of Hertford (1642), 2 (E.118.31). Thereafter, Kyrton’s activities become more obscure. He was in Oxford in January 1643, when he received an honorary MA from the university, and he attended the Oxford Parliament in January 1644, where he was joined by members of the Digby, Seymour and Strangway families.54Al. Ox.; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 574. By April 1644 he had returned to Somerset, where he acted as receiver of composition monies for the king.55CSP Dom. 1644, p. 108. With the creation of a new council of the west chaired by Prince Charles in 1645, he resumed his function as deputy gentleman of the robes under the prince, and was also appointed treasurer and receiver-general of Charles’s revenues in the same year.56CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 260; SO3/13, unfol. Yet he did not accompany the prince abroad, preferring to make his peace with Parliament in May 1646, when he petitioned to compound.57SP23/194, p. 486.

With the defeat of the king in 1646, Parliament treated Kyrton relatively leniently. After taking the Covenant and the Negative Oath, he was allowed to compound for his estate at a third of its value, the fine amounting to £504.58SP23/194, pp. 487, 490, 479. This was later reduced to £350 on condition that £20 a year from the Castle Cary rectory lands would be used to maintain a minister in the parish. Kyrton was unable to pay this sum, however, and the required stipend was gradually increased to £50 in 1650, in lieu of which the whole fine was discharged.59SP23/194, p. 479. Kyrton’s inability to pay even a modest fine suggests that his already slender resources had been crippled by the war.

Despite his submission to Parliament, Kyrton maintained his religious and political affiliations. Retiring to Castle Cary, he may have devoted his time to repairing the effects of war on the parish church. In the late 1640s the roof was re-leaded and the bells recast; contacts were maintained with the old vicar, while the minister employed from 1650 onwards was a former sequestered royalist. The church accounts for 1651 show that Kyrton took an interest in the parish, and continued to contribute generously to the church’s funds despite his straitened circumstances.60Som. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. xxxvi, pt. 2, 65-6; Walker Revised, 369. During the late 1640s and early 1650s, Kyrton also maintained his old royalist contacts, apparently acting as Hertford’s agent in a land deal involving the dowager countess of Kent in 1647, and organising the mortgaging of Hertford’s Gloucester lands in 1648.61C54/3365/13; C54/3402/43. Kyrton’s continued contacts with the Seymours seem to have drawn him into royalist plotting in the early 1650s, and in 1651 Charles Stuart reputedly slept at Castle Cary after his escape from Worcester.62Som. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. xvi, pt. 2, 5. Kyrton did not live to see the longed-for restoration of the monarchy. He died in early 1654, and was buried at Easton in Wiltshire. The note of his burial in the parish registers simply stated that he was an ‘officer to the lord marquess of Hertford’ – a fitting epitaph for this loyal retainer of the Seymours.63Som. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. xvi, pt. 2, 27.