PARKHURST, Sir Robert (1603-51), of St Mary le Bow, London, and Pyrford, Surr.

The Parkhursts were well established in Guildford, prospering through cloth trade and their connection with the family of George Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury from 1611. The MP’s father, a fourth son, maintained his links with the town, but moved to Cheapside and outdid his brothers in the brilliance of his career. He rose to become master of the Clothworkers’ Company and alderman of Portsoken (1624) and Bread Street (1634), sheriff (1625) and lord mayor (1634-5) of the City of London. He was a member of the East India Company, from 1626 until his death a decade later was governor of the Ulster plantation, and in August 1632 was a member of a syndicate which obtained a charter for extracting salt in Ireland.31Baker, Northants., 228; Beaven, Aldermen of London, ii. 57; CSP Ire., Add. 1647-60, p. 192; Coventry Docquets, 266; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir Robert Parkhurst’.

This MP was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, where his uncle, Dr John Parkhurst, had succeeded Robert Abbot as master two years earlier and where he was sufficiently committed to his studies to take his degree.32Al. Ox. Through the influence of his father, and perhaps also the Abbots, he was elected to Parliament for Guildford in 1625, 1626 and 1628, on the last occasion on a double return, apparently formally unresolved during the life of the Parliament. He made no recorded contribution to proceedings.33HP Commons 1604-1629.

On his marriage in 1628, Parkhurst’s father settled on him, as well as valuable property in his native parish of St Mary le Bow, a newly acquired estate at Pyrton, about seven miles north east of Guildford.34VCH Surr. iii. 432; Hist. Gazetteer of London: Cheapside, 336-42; Coventry Docquets, 474–5. It was, according to John Aubrey, ‘a very delightful place’.35Aubrey, Nat. Hist. Surr. iii. 197. Before his father’s death in October 1636 he began to occupy local office.36C231/5, p. 138; T. Rymer, Foedera, ix. pt. 1, p. 19. After it, as the only son of an apparently very wealthy man, he inherited land and financial interests in the west of England and Ireland.37PROB11/173/372. Parkhurst senior and his son-in-law George Mynne†, husband of the MP’s sister Anne, were creditors of Irish officeholders Thomas Ridgeway†, 1st earl of Londonderry, and Thomas Roper, 1st Viscount Baltinglass, and thus obtained titles to their land when the latter were ruined and defaulted on their mortgages.38Hants RO, 39M89/E/T63–71; SP63/319, f. 29; PROB11/220/321; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Thomas Ridgeway’; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. viii. 205-21. However, not only were claims sometimes difficult to enforce, but in the mid-1630s Mynne, who had settled some 12 miles from Pyrford at Epsom, faced disgrace. Regarded as a notably corrupt clerk of the hanaper in chancery, in 1634 he was suspended and in 1636 forbidden to make any surrender prejudicial to his replacement, calling into question almost as soon as it was made the grant in reversion made on 22 July that year to the MP.39Aylmer, King’s Servants, 117-21; Coventry Docquets, 198; CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 177.

By April 1638 Parkhurst was in Ireland, probably looking after his estates and the substantial adventure made by his father.40SP63/290, f. 265. He was knighted in Dublin that month by the lord deputy, Thomas Wentworth†, Viscount Strafford.41Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 205. He was still (or again) there in January 1639, when he was negotiating over unpaid assessment on his land.42Lismore Pprs. ser. 2, iv. 9.

Elected once again for Guildford in March 1640, Parkhurst had his first parliamentary appointment. On 29 April he was added with others to the committee receiving the accounts of subsidies and fifteenths granted in the last year of James I’s reign.43CJ ii. 15b.

Returned to Parliament a fifth time in October 1640, for some months Parkhurst made little visible contribution to proceedings, although he was apparently present on 21 November to offer security for the loan from the City.44Procs. LP i. 231, 235. He received only two committee nominations in the first session. On 18 December he was named to receive petitions regarding the Virginia plantation (reflecting another of his father’s many interests) and on 28 June 1641 he was added to the committee discussing a new parish in Covent Garden.45CJ ii. 54a, 191b. While the piety of his father is plain – Parkhurst senior left bequests to Jeremy Leech and Richard Holdsworth, the ministers of St Mary le Bow and St Peter le Poer in Broad Street, as well as to ‘ten godly and conformable preachers’ to be selected by his executors – the commitment of the MP is less clear, although in 1647 he sent his son to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where Holdsworth was master, and he may have shared the latter’s moderate Calvinism.46PROB11/173/372; Al. Cant. He took the Protestation promptly on 3 May 1641 and, perhaps more significantly, successfully moved on 23 June for Robert Holborne* to join Edward Bagshawe* as counsel in the Lords for Dr Alexander Leighton, the anti-episcopal controversialist who was seeking compensation for the savage punishment he had received in star chamber.47CJ ii. 133b; Procs. LP v. 292, 298. However, this might have been motivated by personal friendship with these fellow Surrey MPs.

Parkhurst may have had a rather higher profile at Westminster than his meagre committee appointments in this period suggest. On 29 March, during the trial of Strafford, the prosecution alleged that, as an instance of the lord deputy acting on his own initiative and to his private advantage, he had without reference to his council made a ruling on a petition from Parkhurst regarding the claim on Baltinglass’s estate and had subsequently obtained a profitable interest in the land on his own account. Strafford professed to remember little of the business, but asserted that Parkhurst was in full possession of the estate at the time and thus needed no assistance in equity, and that he himself had ‘no interest in it, but only of trust to another’s use’.48Procs. LP iii. 199, 202, 208; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. viii. 205-21 The evidence was a relatively unimportant component of the trial but it reveals that Parkhurst nursed a grievance and it offers a window on his preoccupation with Ireland.

The latter became apparent when the House returned from the recess. As news of the Irish uprising reached London, he was among those chosen to meet immediately with the Lords and subsequently to act as a standing committee on the crisis (2 Nov.).49CJ ii. 302a. The same day he was appointed to treat with the City for a loan to meet consequent expenses and a week later to consider further proposals to fund the response to the rebellion.50CJ ii. 302a, 308b. Given leave on 14 December to attend the commission for Windsor forest with fellow west Surrey MP Sir Richard Onslow*, he had returned by the 24th, when he introduced a petition from merchants trading to Ireland seeking further action to protect English Protestant interests there.51CJ ii. 342b; D’Ewes (C), 286-7, 342. Support for vigorous action against potential sedition in England too is indicated in his inclusion among four Members sent on 28 January 1642 to wait on the king at Windsor to chivvy him for a answer to Parliament’s request to put the kingdom into a posture of defence – also suggesting an otherwise unsuspected standing at court – and his addition on 12 March to the committee for the supply of gunpowder, of which Sir John Evelyn of Surrey* was chair.52CJ ii. 401b, 476a. Meanwhile, having been named to further committees on Ireland, in April he was formally appointed a commissioner for Irish affairs.53CJ ii. 453b, 498a, 536b; CSP Ireland, 1633-47, p. 366. He was among the more assiduous members of the Committee for Irish Affairs in April and May, although his attendance fell off somewhat in the summer, when other business probably intervened.54PJ ii. 469; iii. 438. On 14 July he was nominated to an additional small committee to deal with the particular circumstances of Munster.55CJ ii. 672b. Two days earlier he had taken an oath that, although the receipts for his father’s £1,000 adventure in Ireland were lost, the property involved had been neither altered or sold.56SP63/290, f. 265. He himself invested a further £2,000 in Ireland in instalments on 7 April and 13 July.57Irish Hist. Studies, x. 53.

Appointed on 23 May as a deputy lieutenant for Surrey, was perhaps initially distracted from fulfilling attendant obligations, by his second marriage, which took place in Westminster on 6 June. His bride was one of the daughters of Sir Thomas Crew†, in his lifetime a notable Speaker and a staunch puritan.58CJ ii. 584a; PJ ii. 362. Summoned on 12 August by the lord lieutenant, Charles Howard, 2nd earl of Nottingham, to a meeting with other deputies at the earl’s house in Leatherhead, Parkhurst and Nicholas Stoughton* apparently attended where Sir Richard Onslow* and Poynings More* did not. But this did not amount to acceptance of Nottingham’s intention to ‘settle the country in a posture of arms’ in the form of a force which would rally to the king.59Surr. Hist. Centre, 6729/4/133; LM/COR/5/15. While Onslow and Stoughton actively used their commands in the militia in the service of Parliament, Parkhurst appears to have stayed aloof from military engagement in the county, perhaps reserving his energies for Westminster, where on 22 August he was one of a small committee deputed to draft a declaration exhorting towns to prepare to defend themselves against attack from royalist forces.60CJ ii. 732a.

At first, Parkhurst’s primary sphere of activity in Parliament remained the conflict in Ireland. On 29 September he took to the Lords the Commons’ request for concurrence in the appointment as governor of Munster of Murrough O’Brien, 6th Baron Inchiquin, while on 10 December he joined leading Members on a committee considering representations from commanders of the army in Ireland and the king’s response.61CJ ii. 787a, 788a, 883b. He endorsed the report of Robert Goodwin* from the Committee for Irish Affairs (15 Dec.) recommending the payment of funds for the new lord lieutenant, Robert Sidney, 2nd earl of Leicester, and, when this was agreed, carried the resulting orders to the Lords (19 Dec.).62Harl. 164, f. 263a; 895b, 897a. He was among those appointed to consider propositions from the Scots relating to the campaign in Ireland (31 Jan. 1643), was named first to the committee to identify and pursue Members who had defaulted on their promises to subscribe to Irish adventures (20 Feb.) and investigated the damaging rumour that Parliament would not release money for war in Ireland until it had defeated the king (28 Feb.).63CJ ii. 949b, 973b, 984a. Still associated with Irish matters in May, he was named to a revived standing committee at the end of the month.64CJ iii. 78b, 109b.

In the meantime, however, Parkhurst was also drawn into raising money and organising supplies for the war effort and dealing with related petitions (28 Oct.; 27 Dec.; 24, 27 Jan.); his City connections made him a potentially useful intermediary when loans were sought (18 Feb.).65CJ ii. 825b, 904a, 940b, 945b. He was named to prepare the ordinance authorising defensive fortifications in London and Westminster (6 Mar.) and to raise and equip cavalry there (17 May).66CJ ii. 991a; iii. 89a. A continued association with Dr Leighton, who had been appointed keeper of the library and archives at the former Lambeth palace, possibly lay behind his inclusion on the committee investigating disturbances there (21 Feb.).67CJ ii. 974b.

Occasionally there are signs that Parkhurst was a moderate, perhaps regarded as being somewhat lukewarm in his commitment to Parliament. In November 1642 he was a teller for the minority who failed to defeat the more militant MPs led by Sir Peter Wentworth* and William Purefoy I* in a division which denied bail to Sir Robert Hatton*, who had been imprisoned and disabled for his royalism.68CJ ii. 856a. On 7 March he marshalled insufficient support to prevent William Strode I* and Sir William Allanson* securing an order sending Sir Philip Parker* to hasten the collection of weekly assessments in Suffolk.69CJ ii. 992b. He was evidently increasingly unhappy about the burden placed on local communities. When on 31 March Sir Ambrose Browne* exposed the problem of competing demands for contributions from rival parliamentarian authorities in mid-Surrey, which had recently suffered much from occupying forces, Parkhurst rose to speak of the ‘great charge’ to the inhabitants of the west of the county of the garrison at Farnham Castle.70Harl. 164, f. 349v. He took the oath to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, as lord general promptly on 6 June, but in company with Sir Ambrose Browne, George Evelyn* and others whose stance proved less than certain was a late addition to commissioners for raising forces in Surrey to cope with the military reversals of the summer (24 July).71CJ iii. 118a, 180a. None the less he was involved in the discussions between Lords and Commons over the latter’s imprisonment of the former’s official printer for issuing the excise ordinance (25, 27 July).72CJ iii. 182a, 184a.

On 8 September Parkhurst clashed directly with one of the more radical Members, Denis Bond*. If the diarist Simonds D’Ewes* is to be believed, this may have been unintentional, although equally Parkhurst may have been the spokesman of many dismayed at those who employed energetic methods to collect funds for war. Having that spring himself been appointed a sequestration commissioner for Surrey, he reported to the House what he evidently considered to be the rather dubious conduct of one Captain Guest with regard to the sale of confiscated goods. But the Committee for Advance of Money sitting at Haberdashers’ Hall ‘did much employ and countenance this Captain Guest and had as [D’Ewes] gathered by that which ensued, allowed of this sale’. Thereupon Bond, a CAM member, ‘with much heat and passion’ accused the House of calling its actions in question, challenging them furiously ‘to sift them to the very bran’. Parkhurst was prevented from responding, but D’Ewes, who had been sitting just above him, rose to his defence and attempted to convince Bond that he had misunderstood the motion and that there was ‘no intention at all to lay any aspersion’ on the Committee. However, by adding a rider that there was nothing more important than questioning ‘all such as have abused the trust and power committed to them by the House’, he may well only have exposed the more his own and Parkhurst’s concerns; ‘violent spirits’ refused to allow either to pursue the subject.73Harl. 165, f. 173a-b.

After this incident Parkhurst played no further recorded part in the Long Parliament. It is not clear to what extent this was due to political disaffection and to what extent to the long-lasting illness to which he referred in his will, but the fact that he was nominated to local office for quite some time afterwards and continued on the commission of the peace until just before his death indicates that he cannot have been completely alienated from the parliamentary cause.74PROB11/220/321.; A. and O.; Names of the Justices (1650), 55. At calls of the House on 9 October 1647 and 26 September 1648 his absence was excused on account of sickness.75CJ v. 330a; vi. 34a. His name appears on only one of the contemporary lists of those secluded at Pride’s Purge on 6 December.76A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62). Whether or not he was secluded he certainly seems not to have resumed his seat subsequently. The marriage of his youthful eldest son in 1649 or 1650 to a recent lord mayor of London who had been a notable political Presbyterian may reveal his sympathies.77Manning and Bray, Surr. i. 50, 157.

When the ailing Parkhurst made his will on 7 January 1650 he appeared to have considerably less disposal wealth than his father had enjoyed fifteen years earlier. There was a much more modest collection of bequests; his daughter’s portion of £2,000 included a £500 legacy from her grandmother and Parkhurst mentioned a debt of £2,000 to three of his kinsmen.78PROB11/220/321. He was already embroiled in some of the lawsuits over property which were to ensnare his eldest son Robert* and it seems that the investment in Ireland had not prospered.79C5/387/190; C6/5/46; C6/114/85; C10/13/18. Parkhurst died in the summer of 1651 and was buried at Guildford on 29 August.80Manning and Bray, Surr. i. 50, 157. While Robert the younger sat for the borough in the 1659 Parliament, it was John Parkhurst†, the son from his second marriage absent from his will and brought up by maternal relatives, who had a lengthy parliamentary career after 1678.81HP Commons 1660-1690; HP Commons 1690-1715.