LUCY, Sir Thomas (1585-1640), of Charlecote, Warws.

The Anglo-Norman Lucy family was established at Charlecote by the reign of Richard I.24Dugdale, Warws. i. 502; Fairfax-Lucy, Charlecote and the Lucys, 27-42. From their origins as a dynasty of substance and local power, the de Lucys were associated with the dominant feudal lords at Warwick Castle. The first Lucy to attend a Parliament was William de Lucy, who was summoned to the assembly of 1312 and to three other Parliaments before 1329.25OR i. The family regularly supplied Members to Parliaments through the later medieval period. Thomas Lucy consolidated the family’s land holdings when he took the profits from Thelesford priory, very near Charlecote, at the dissolution: the family had founded the monastery in the early thirteenth century.26Fairfax-Lucy, Charlecote and the Lucys, 318-9. The grandson of this Thomas Lucy, another Thomas, was educated at home by the martyrologist, John Foxe, sat in three Parliaments beginning in 1559, and rebuilt Charlecote.27HP Commons, 1558-1603, ‘Thomas Lucy’; Dugdale, Warws. i. 506. He was the first of three successive Sir Thomas Lucys. From this period the family was strongly imbued with a Protestant outlook, and developed a close relationship with the corporation of Stratford-upon-Avon. Sir Thomas Lucy, this Member’s father, enjoyed his inheritance for only five years before his death in 1605. His son was 19 years old when he inherited an estate which had been augmented greatly by marriages with wealthy families over several generations. His mother was heir to the wealth of her father, Richard Kingsmill† of Highclere, Hants, surveyor of the court of wards.28HP Commons, 1558-1603, ‘Richard Kingsmill’. When the subject of this biography came of age he was able to enter into an estate with properties in several English counties, though depleted through lawsuits.29Fairfax-Lucy, Charlecote and the Lucys, 101.

After a conventional education at Oxford and Lincoln’s Inn, Lucy embarked on travel in France, in the company of Sir Edward Herbert†, the future 1st Baron Herbert of Chirbury. By October 1607, he was a firm friend of John Donne, who wrote him letters of metaphysical speculation. He was involved in at least two duels, and on his return to England in January 1609 was shipwrecked off Dover in a violent storm. He owed his life to Herbert, who, according to the latter’s account, dragged him, ‘half dead of seasickness’, into a small boat and thence to the shore.30Autobiography of Edward, Lord Herbert of Cherbury ed. S. Lee (1906), 58-9; Life and Letters of John Donne ed. E. Gosse (2 vols, Oxford, 1899), i. 173-77. It was shortly after this, in 1610, that Lucy was in contact with Richard Sackville, 3rd earl of Dorset, and Lucy was evidently still able to do favours for Sackville in 1622.31Autobiography of Lord Herbert, 68; Life and Letters of John Donne, i. 315. In October 1621, Lucy was counted by Donne, angling for the deanship of St Paul’s, as a client of Lionel Cranfield†, the lord treasurer.32Life and Letters of John Donne, ii. 151.

As probably the leading gentry figure in south Warwickshire, if not in the county as a whole, Lucy evidently took seriously his responsibilities in local administration, becoming by the 1620s, a conscientious and very prominent member of the bench of magistrates.33Warwick County Records, i. p. xxviii. He had evidently put the duelling and other adventures of his youth behind him, and drew heavily on the puritan traditions in his own family to develop a reputation for integrity and godliness. He was capable of opposition stances, as in the case of the Forced Loan, when he chose to leave Warwickshire and pay his contribution in London, as if to distance himself from the tax.34E401/2323; SP16/50/54; Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, DD PH 219/67; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 96. His standing in Stratford-upon-Avon was confirmed when he was appointed the town’s recorder in 1628, and he regularly enjoyed New Year’s gifts from the corporation in return for the consultations between himself and the townsmen.35Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, BRU 2/3, pp. 4, 7, 32, 56, 67, 83, 106, 125. Lucy supported the project by William Sandys* to make the Avon navigable to Stratford, in line with the approval given it by the corporation.36Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, BRU 2/3, p. 126; Fairfax-Lucy, Charlecote and the Lucys, 130. In Warwick, too, he was regarded with affection, as a man ‘of an ancient family’ who took seriously his duty to organize grain supplies for the market in times of dearth, and he was favoured by the corporation there with the election of his brother, Francis†, to the 1625 and 1626 Parliaments.37Procs. 1628, vi. 169.

Lucy’s own long career in Parliament as knight for Warwickshire was, if measured in noted speeches, marked by a relatively low profile. He was named to many committees, however, and as well as local concerns, and specific personal cases, an element of opposition to the crown can be detected among them.38HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir Thomas Lucy’. In the 1630s, Lucy settled into a critical stance vis-à-vis the government, as part of a Warwickshire circle which had Robert Greville†, 2nd Baron Brooke at its heart. The Warwick schoolmaster, Thomas Dugard, noted in his diary Lucy’s interests in puritan sermons, and Lucy shared newsletters with Brooke.39Add. 23146; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 71-6, 90. However, his various presentations to livings suggest a man not determined enough to entrench his moderate puritanism wherever he could. The appointment to Charlecote of Abraham Olney, deprived for recusancy in 1626, cannot be attributed to Lucy, since he had granted the right of presentation to Richard Hayle, a minor gentleman of the parish. Hayle appointed Olney in 1621, and Lucy is likely to have been behind Olney's removal before he took the advowson back into his own hands. Olney's successor as vicar, Michael Walford, recently described as a pluralist, may have been appointed faut de mieux in the circumstances.40Worcs. Archives, 778:7324/ BA 2442/240, 370, 371; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 67. The minister at Rochford in Herefordshire, another Lucy living, was described in a puritan survey of around 1640 as ‘neither preacher nor of good life’.41Corpus Christi Oxford, MS 206, f. 8. Although the corporation of Warwick thought highly of his sense of social responsibility, Lucy was listed by the government among suspected depopulators in 1633.42CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 387. That year, he himself claimed to know only one privy council member, which suggests that the once cosmopolitan golden youth had by this time settled into a restricted, provincial social circle.43HMC Cowper, ii. 36.

After conscientious service on the Warwickshire bench for over 30 years, Lucy found himself removed from it on 24 February 1640; he was also omitted from the January 1640 oyer and terminer commission for the Midland circuit.44C231/5, p. 370. In March, he was summoned with William Combe* to the privy council. By this time his poor health made even a journey to Warwick very difficult, and he had to send his apologies to Sir Henry Vane I*. He was anxious to assure the council of his loyalty: ‘it is fit, though I had a hundred lives, I should hazard them all to testify my obedience’.45PC2/51, pp. 311, 318; SP16/448/82. It has been suggested that the summons was a response to government fears that Lucy and Combe were orchestrating local opposition to Ship Money, although direct proof of this is lacking.46Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 115-16. Whatever his alleged offence, it must have been a serious one to warrant his exclusion from the magistracy. On the day of the order for his dismissal as a magistrate, an attempt was made to hold the parliamentary election for Warwickshire with Combe and Lucy as candidates. The meeting proved abortive, but another was successfully concluded on 23 March. Lucy and Combe were returned for the county without opposition, and it is thus possible that Lucy’s removal from the bench was connected with his and Combe’s parliamentary candidature.47Add. 23146, f. 88; Add. 11045, f. 96.

Lucy’s ill-health notwithstanding, he certainly made the journey to London to take his seat in the Short Parliament. He was named to one committee, to review the record-keeping of the House (17 Apr. 1640), an appropriate appointment for one of the more experienced Members.48CJ ii. 4b. This appears to have been the sum of his contribution to the assembly. The fact that he was again a candidate for the Long Parliament suggests that he was not thought beyond hope of an active life. This time, however, he moved to Brooke’s safe seat of Warwick, perhaps to shield him from an expected contest for the county places. The election took place on 27 October, and Lucy was successful, but he did not take his seat.49C219/43/pt. 3/64. On 8 November, he was prescribed a diet to remedy his lack of appetite, but some weeks later was thrown from his horse at Charlecote, and died on 10 December.50Fairfax-Lucy, Charlecote and the Lucys, 137. He was buried at Charlecote on 20 January 1641.51Charlecote par. reg. The preacher at his funeral dwelt on Lucy’s public virtues as landlord, leader and ‘light’ to the local and national community, and expressed confidence that had he lived, Lucy would have contributed to healing the dangerous conflicts within the state.52R. Harris, Abner’s Funeral (1641), 25-7. His sons Richard and Fulk sat in Parliaments in this period, but no member of the family sat beyond the seventeenth century.