OWFEILD (OLDFIELD), Samuel (1593-1643), of Upper Gatton, Surr. and Elsham, Lincs.

Owfeild’s father, Roger, had been a prosperous London fishmonger who had left him as sizable fortune, including lands in north Lincolnshire.22PROB11/112/508. But Samuel Owfeild had acquired estates much nearer to London when he had bought the manors of Upper Gatton, Chipstead and Purbright in Surrey.23Hylton, ‘Manor of Chipsted’. 43; VCH Surr. iii. 191, 193, 199. Owning the lands at Gatton gave him a decisive electoral interest over the two Gatton parliamentary seats (the other major local landowners, the Copleys, were Catholics) and Owfeild had taken advantage of this to get elected there in 1624, 1626 and 1628. He had also sat for Midhurst in the 1625 Parliament. He had, however, made no great impact on any of those assemblies. Nor can it be said that he had been active in local affairs. His only other public office before 1640 was as a Lincolnshire sewers commissioner.24C181/4, ff. 170, 201.

Owfeild was re-elected at Gatton on 20 March 1640, almost certainly unopposed. He then left no trace at all in the records of the Short Parliament. His re-election that autumn, on 23 October, was almost as smooth, although there was a contest for the second seat between Edmund Saunders* and Thomas Sandes* that resulted in a double return. The Commons took over a year to resolve this dispute. In reporting to the House on it from the Committee of Elections in November 1641, John Maynard* stressed that any doubts about Owfeild’s return had been settled long before.25CJ ii. 303b. Indeed, Owfeild had certainly taken his seat when Parliament had first assembled, as he was named to the committee of privileges, an obvious honour for a former MP of his experience, as early as 6 November 1640.26CJ ii. 21a.

Like many of his colleagues in the Long Parliament, Owfeild was suspicious of many aspects of the king’s rule over the previous decade. Some of his earliest committee appointments, such as those on the state of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (17 Dec.), on the treatment of John Bastwick (17 Dec.), on the need for preaching ministers (19 Dec.) and on the complaints against the bishop of Ely, Matthew Wren (22 Dec.), identify him with the critics of Laudianism.27CJ ii. 52a, 52b, 54b, 56a. Later he was included on the committee on the bill to bar the clergy from holding secular offices (8 Mar. 1641).28CJ ii. 99a. A concern about the activities of the court of star chamber is indicated in his addition to the committee on that subject when it was asked to consider the petition from John and Mary Levett (29 Jan. 1641). He also sat on the committee investigating the breaches of privileges in the 1628 Parliament (23 Feb.). Having already lined himself up with the king’s critics, he can have had few qualms about taking the Protestation on 3 May 1641.29CJ ii. 75a, 91a, 133b. In November 1640 he was among MPs who personally advanced £1,000 for the disbanding of the English and Scottish armies in the north of England, while the following March he offered the same amount as security on the loan from the corporation of London for the same purpose.30Procs. LP i. 228, 231, 235, 236, ii. 654. Not that all his attentions were directed to issues of national importance, as he also sat on a number of committees considering specific private bills.31CJ ii. 64b, 93b, 151b, 160b. In the case of the bill to alter the terms of the entail on the estates of James Enyon, Owfeild, as a teller for those who refused to allow it to be referred to a committee, may have helped secure its defeat.32CJ ii. 91b. His interest in the case of Anthony Thompson (3 Dec. 1640) was doubtless due to the fact that Thompson was a Lincolnshire clergyman who claimed that he had lost some of tithes as a result of the drainage work in that county by Sir Cornelius Vermuyden.33CJ ii. 44a.

Owfeild was knighted by the king at Whitehall on 13 May 1641.34Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 208. If Charles I hoped to win him over, he was to be disappointed. Little is known of Owfeild’s activities during the second half of 1641, but he was probably still aligned with those pushing for further reform. On 30 July he was named to the committee to prepare the impeachments against the bishops.35CJ ii. 230b. In early November, in the wake of the news of the rebellion in Ireland, he acted as the messenger to the House of Lords to ask for a conference to discuss the declaration to be issued in response to the rebels. On 16 December he was added to the delegation to present the Grand Remonstrance to the king. Amid the fears that the Catholic uprising in Ireland might spread to England, he supported the bill to disarm recusants.36CJ ii. 305b, 346b, 349n, 387a. The king’s attempt on 4 January 1642 to arrest the Five Members only added to the sense of alarm. Three weeks later Owfeild was again appointed as a messenger to the Lords. This time he took with him a request for a joint conference about Ireland, the latest resolutions concerned the suspected plotter Daniel O’Neill, the set of questions to be put to the 12 impeached bishops and the Commons’ call for the 1st earl of Dover (Henry Carey†) and William Juxon, the bishop of London, to be interrogated.37CJ ii. 398a, 399a; PJ ii. 182, 193, 194. In March 1642, following the passage of the Militia Ordinance, he was appointed by the Commons as one of the new deputy lieutenants for Surrey. The following month he was included on the committee appointed by the Commons to meet with their counterparts from the Lords to discuss the king’s wish to travel to Ireland, an idea the Commons considered to be most ill-advised in the circumstances.38CJ ii. 485b, 498b, 525b.

On 23 April 1642, in one of the most decisive steps towards civil war, Sir John Hotham* refused to allow the king to enter Hull. Four days later Parliament showed its support for Hotham’s actions by sending two peers and four MPs, one of whom was Owfeild, to Lincolnshire with powers to assist him.39CJ ii. 544b, 545b, 547a-548a; PJ ii. 234, 236, 241; Hotham Pprs. 51. Although he was sitting for far-distant Gatton, Owfeild could still be counted as a local MP as his own estates at Elsham were only a few miles south of the opposite bank of the Humber. By 3 May he and the other three MPs – Sir Edward Ayscough*, Sir Christopher Wray* and Thomas Hatcher – had visited Hull and wrote to inform the Commons that they were making arrangements for the all-important ammunition stores to be shipped to London. Unlike the others, Owfeild may not have remained in the town, as he did not sign their next letter sent on 16 May.40PJ ii. 280-1, 336. Their powers were confirmed by Parliament on 28 May.41CJ ii. 592a-b. Owfeild was probably back in London by 1 June, as he was then one of the MPs sent by the Commons to inspect the latest shipment of the ammunition from Hull. He performed the same task on 14 July after the next shipment had arrived.42CJ ii. 597b, 672a. Due in no small part to the standoff at Hull, war with the king now seemed imminent and so Parliament was already busy raising money and supplies. Owfeild was on the delegation sent in early June to seek loans from the 12 great London livery companies (which would have included his own, the Fishmongers), while he had personally offered to provide four horses.43CJ ii. 605a; PJ iii. 470. On 21 July he was included on the committee concerning the election of a replacement for Sir Richard Gurney as the lord mayor of London following Gurney’s arrest.44CJ ii. 684b.

All the fears of armed conflict became a reality that autumn. Owfeild had already made it clear on which side his loyalties lay and, now that the fighting had begun, he did not waiver in his support for Parliament. On 13 October he was among MPs sent to Surrey by the Commons to encourage the collection of money lent under the Propositions. Later that month, when news arrived of the battle of Edgehill, he was part of the delegation sent to inform the corporation of London.45CJ ii. 806b, 825a. Moreover, as Lincolnshire, and especially the southern half of the county, soon became a key battleground, Owfeild increasingly focused his efforts there rather than at Westminster. In mid-January 1643 Parliament appointed him a deputy lieutenant for the county.46CJ ii. 926a. He spent time at Westminster in late February, but his activities in the capital were very much concerned with events in and beyond Lincolnshire. On 25 February the Commons appointed him, with Samuel Vassall*, to ask the treasurers at the Guildhall for a loan of £2,000 to pay the Hull garrison. This request was successful.47CJ ii. 980a, 983b. With similar concerns in mind, he was also named two days later to the committee to consider how the army in the north could be paid.48CJ ii. 981a. His final committee appointment, on 20 March, concerned the payments which had been made to the army via the lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.

In late April 1643 Oliver Cromwell* took Peterborough and Crowland, opening the possibility of an advance northwards through Lincolnshire to take the key royalist stronghold at Newark-upon-Trent in Nottinghamshire. On 2 May Owfeild was one of the MPs sent to Lincolnshire to assist him.49CJ iii. 67b. It was assumed that it would be only a matter of time before the royalists made another attempt to take Hull, which was still held for Parliament by Hotham. But if Owfeild ever made it to Hull, he must have died on his arrival, as he was buried there in one of the parish churches, St Mary’s, on 4 May.50Sykes, ‘St Mary’s, Hull’, 468. In 1646, when discharging his eldest son, William*, of his wardship, the Commons described Owfeild as having been ‘employed in the service of the Parliament, for the defence of the town of Kingston upon Hull’, adding that he had ‘died in that service’.51CJ iv. 432a. It would appear, however, that Owfield’s body was later reburied in St Katherine Creechurch, London, given that his widow, Katherine, was to leave instructions that she was to be buried next to him there.52PROB11/315/229. Under the terms of his will, which he had drawn up in 1636, Owfeild had left everything to her.53PROB11/192/365; Waters, Genealogical Gleanings, i. 869. William*, their son, was elected as MP for Gatton in 1645 in the by-election held to fill the vacancy which had been created by Owfeild’s death. Owfeild’s niece Catherine, daughter of his brother John, married George Fleetwood* in 1647.54St Andrew Undershaft, London par. reg.; PROB11/269/170.