PELHAM, Sir Thomas (1597-1654), of Laughton and Halland, East Hoathley, Suss.

The Pelhams had been established in Sussex since the fourteenth century. Wealthy, and prominent in and beyond their county, their extensive connections included many families represented in Parliament, including the Pelhams of Lincolnshire. Pelham’s mother was the daughter of Sir Thomas Walsingham†, elder brother of Queen Elizabeth’s secretary of state, while his father, who had sat at Westminster for Lewes and for Sussex in the 1580s, was created a baronet in May 1611.33Vis. Suss., 20-1; HP Commons 1509-1558; HP Commons 1558-1603; HP Commons 1604-1629; CB; M.A. Lower, Pelham Fam. (1873); CB.; Pelham and McLean, Early Pelhams. As early as June 1615, the year he matriculated at Cambridge and was admitted to Gray’s Inn, a marriage was planned for the future MP, involving a settlement of £5,000, to Mary, daughter and co-heir of Sir Roger Wilbraham†, master of requests, although the ceremony may not have taken place for several years.34Add. 33188, ff.100-1; Add. 33137, ff. 60-3. Already in a position to have purchased property, Pelham first entered Parliament in 1621 as a burgess for East Grinstead, perhaps owing his seat to his kinsman Richard Sackville, 3rd earl of Dorset. Having been placed on the commission of the peace in 1622, he was returned as a knight of the shire in 1624 and again in 1625, but made no mark in parliamentary records.35HP Commons 1604-1629; C231/4/145; Add. Ch. 29753-60; VCH Suss. ix. 3.

The funeral procession of his father, who died in December 1624, proclaimed the standing of a gentleman who could leave his son a considerable number of Sussex manors and a useful network of friends and patrons. The procession was led by Pelham, his brother-in-law (to whom he was close) Henry Carey†, Viscount Rochford (later 1st earl of Dover), Sir John Shurley†, Sir Edward Burton, and Anthony Stapley I*.36Pelham and McLean, Early Pelhams, 222; Notes IPMs Suss. xiv. 182; Add. Ch. 29654 A/B, 29658; Add. 33145, ff. 21, 30, 143v. Pelham’s social circle encompassed many of the most important Sussex families.37Fletcher, Suss. 46-50. Sir Edward Burton seems to have been a life-long friend, while it is hard to overplay the bond between Pelham, his ‘cousin’ Anthony Stapley and James Rivers; during the 1630s they were his ‘constant companions’.38E134/1Chas1/Trin6; Fletcher, Suss. 49; Add. 33145, f.132v. Pelham was a beneficiary under the wills of Sir Thomas Eversfield, John Alford*, and Sir Walter Covert, who in 1631 made him a trustee.39PROB11/161/136 (Sir Walter Couert); PROB11/212/310 (Sir Thomas Earsfield); PROB11/208/34 (John Alford). The following year Robert Morley made him the guardian of his son Harbert Morley*.40PROB11/162/551 (Robert Morley). Edward Sackville†, who in 1624 succeeded as 4th earl of Dorset, was both a kinsman and friend, and worked with Pelham as keeper of Broyle Park.41Add. 33145, f. 112v By 1641, but perhaps much earlier, Pelham was on close terms with Algernon Percy, 4th earl of Northumberland, exchanging gifts and visits, and making use of the stud at Petworth; such contacts were to last into the 1650s.42Alnwick, Northumberland Papers, U.I.6; Add. 33058, ff. 69, 71, 71v; Add. 33084, ff. 38, 81, 83; Add. 33145, ff. 88, 107v, 117v, 142v, 164v; Fletcher, Suss. 253.

Armed with illustrious connections, Pelham was soon at the centre of public life in his county. A lay subsidy commissioner in Pevensey in 1626, he contributed to the Forced Loan both in Sussex and London, but obtained an abatement on his own account and encountered difficulties as a collector.43E. Suss. RO, LCD/EW1, ff. 35, 40v, 44, 46, 54, 67, 68v, 73-74v; E179/191/377a; E401/2586, pp. 36, 424, 459, 547; APC, 1625-6, p. 369. Although he headed a list of Sussex gentlemen warned for not having attended the council, in December 1627 he was named a commissioner for martial law.44E. Suss. RO, LCD/EW1, f. 56; SP16/89/6v; SP16/369/163. Probably by 1627 he was appointed a deputy lieutenant by Lords Lieutenant Dorset and Thomas Howard, 21st or 14th earl of Arundel.45PC2/39, f. 313. However, he did not sit in either the 1626 or the 1628 Parliament.

During the 1630s Pelham expanded his estates, acting with Anthony Stapley and James Rivers in deals with Edward Montagu, 1st Baron Montagu of Boughton, and Robert Bertie, 1st earl of Lindsey.46Add. Ch. 29656-7, 29666, 29695, 29969, 30144, 30543, 30545; HMC Buccleuch, iii. 362; Suss. Manors, ii. 362-3, 370; W. Suss. RO, Clough-Butler Archives 112–115; CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 11; C2/CHAS1/P4/50; C2/CHAS1/P3/8. His large rent roll yielded about £2,000 a year, while another significant source of income was provided by his iron works.47Add. 33144; Add. Rolls 31350-8; The Iron Industry in the Weald, ed. H. Cleere and D. Crossley (1985), 149, 181-4. Pelham’s two forges at Brightling and Biblesham produced up to 200 tons a year and his operations were highly profitable. In 1645 100 tons of iron was produced at a cost of around £270, yet receipts for the sale of iron amounted to £1,330; in 1651, when 140 tons were produced at a cost of £490, receipts reached over £4,000.48Add. 33155, ff. 14v-75; Add. 33144, f. 123v and passim; Add. 33146, f. 133 and passim; Add. 33154; Fletcher, Suss. 14, 20-1.

Confirmed as a deputy lieutenant in 1635, Pelham seems to have been pre-eminent among the county gentry in this period. Left a large degree of autonomy in appointing to the Sussex bench, he favoured, among others, his friends Stapley and Rivers.49Add. Ch. 29276; Fletcher, Suss. 130, 178, 221-2, 241; SP16/192/147; SP16/203/155; SP16/220/112; SP16/329/147; SP16/364/228; SP16/395/40. He compounded for knighthood at £200 in 1631 and was fairly assiduous in paying other taxes.50E401/2450; Add. 33145, ff. 3, 4v, 7, 11, 15v, 18v, 21, 23, 114v; Fletcher, Suss. 191-2, 200, 214 Like most others in Sussex, he paid Ship Money until 1639; his final payment was in 1638, the year he bought for £1 a copy of the arguments regarding the test case brought by John Hampden*.51Add. 33145, f. 85, 89v, 94, 95, 96v, 101, 104, 109, 114; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 914; Fletcher, Suss. 206, 364; Sharpe, Personal Rule, 592.

By January 1640 reports were made to the chaplain of Archbishop William Laud that the puritans held sway over the bench in Sussex, and that they were driven more by ‘faction than justice’ to challenge such ‘innovations’ as the placing of communion tables ‘altarwise’.52CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 386-7. In July 1640 the magistrates indicted the son of the bishop of Bangor for having preached against the Henrician reformation and against the feoffees for impropriations, the trust established to fund preaching ministers.53CSP Dom. 1640, p. 520. That Pelham, at their head, shared this outlook is apparent from the late 1620s in his role in organising – with Stapley and Rivers – the lectureship at Lewes. Their chosen preacher, Anthony Lapthorne, would later attract attention for his preaching in Durham, and at Barnard Castle before Sir Henry Vane II*, Pelham’s brother-in-law, and was eventually called to answer before the court of high commission.54Add. 33145, f. 27v; Fletcher, Suss. 71-2; Howell, Newcastle, 105, 111, 138, 226.

The escalation through the 1630s of a long-running feud with his neighbour, Thomas Lunsford, begun in his father’s lifetime, was to have later repercussions.55Gent. Mag. (Mar. 1837), 265-6; Add. 5702, ff. 59v–60; Add. 33188, ff. 87-97. While Pelham was out hunting on 26 June 1632 one of his hounds strayed on to Lunsford’s property, whereupon the latter ordered the dog to be shot. Pelham’s friend Sir Thomas Parker* filed a magistrate’s report on the case; Lunsford was subsequently prosecuted in star chamber, and committed to the Fleet. On the way to church with Stapley and Rivers in August 1633, Pelham was fired upon by Thomas Lunsford the younger. Although the three escaped unhurt, Lunsford was committed to Newgate and was eventually sentenced in star chamber to pay £5,000, with £3,000 damages to Pelham.56SP16/223/1; CSP Dom. 1631-3, pp. 410, 424; 1633-4, p. 423; 1634-5, pp. 308, 471; 1635, pp. 99-100, 303; 1635-6, p. 74; 1636-7, pp. 398, 416; 1637, pp. 220, 472; 1625-49, p. 469; Fletcher, Suss. 54-7. The latter evidently benefited from the support of the earl of Dorset, whom he thanked for ‘your noble care of my safety’.57Add. 5702, f. 60. This was to become a cause célèbre when in 1640 the king decided to pardon Lunsford and remit his fine, and the episode would rebound on Lunsford in the Long Parliament.58CSP Dom. 1640, p. 542; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 192.

Stapley and Pelham faced little opposition when they stood for Parliament as knights of the shire in March 1640, although Pelham spent £130 entertaining the freeholders at Lewes.59Add. 33145, f. 126. This was another call on his income at a time when his expenditure had more than doubled from £2,000 a year in the 1630s, mostly owing to the cost of educating his son John Pelham*.60Fletcher, Suss. 44; Add. 33145, ff. 51, 105v, 127, 137, 186 and passim. Pelham already had a house in Clerkenwell, and other property in London, to enable an increasingly extravagant lifestyle centred on the capital, but he made no visible impact at Westminster over the three weeks of the parliamentary session.61E401/2586, p.424; C2/CHAS1/P79/11; C2/CHAS1/P41/18; C2/CHAS1/P5/18.

On 3 June 1640 Pelham, a widower after the death of his second wife Judith, and the father of six children, made a final marriage which further reinforced his public standing and his private wealth.62Add. 5697, f. 265; Suss. Arch. Coll. ii. 99-101; Add. Ch. 29663. His bride was Mary, daughter of Sir Henry Vane I*, who brought not only a portion of £2,500 but also an important connection to parliamentary radicals.63Add. 5697, f. 265; Add. Ch. 30710; Add. 33144, f. 86; C. Dalton, The Wrays of Glentworth 1523-1852 (1881), 114. ‘Great entertainment’ at Fairlawn in Kent celebrated a wedding attended by, among others, Sir Thomas’s legal adviser Henry Pelham*, but it was somewhat soured the following day when Lady Pelham was taken ill, leading to some to some cruel jibes about Pelham’s being a ‘kill woman’.64HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 279; HMC Rutland, i. 520; Add. Ch. 29566. Despite this, Pelham was apparently close to his father-in-law: thereafter he lodged in Covent Garden or with Vane I in Charing Cross, before buying a house in the Strand in 1644.65Fletcher, Suss. 43.

In the autumn of 1640 Pelham spent £193 on re-election to Parliament.66Add. 33145, f. 132v; C219/42ii/27. Once at Westminster, his visible activity was limited and mostly confined either to Sussex or London affairs or to religion. His first appointment concerned investigating and disarming papists in and around London (9 Nov.), and his next the provision of preaching ministers in Buckinghamshire and elsewhere (19 Dec.).67CJ ii. 24b, 54b. On 21 November 1640 he pledged £1,000 to the loan.68Procs. LP, i. 228, 232. It seems likely that it was Pelham and Stapley who on 25 January 1641 presented the Sussex petition for ‘Root and Branch’ reform of church government.69Procs. LP, ii. 272. However, Pelham’s name is absent from the Journal between December and 5 May, when he took the Protestation.70CJ ii. 135a. Thereafter, his local prestige ensured that, following the first revelations of the army plot, on 14 May he was first among those added to the committee for the security of Sussex – threatened by the alleged plan of George Goring* to enable a French landing at Portsmouth.71CJ ii. 146b. In August, as further accusations of subversion surfaced, Pelham was named to the ordinance for disarming recusants.72CJ ii. 267b; LJ iv. 385a.

Over the next 12 months there was no indication in the Journal that Pelham was actually in the House, and it seems likely he was preoccupied with local affairs. But he was a visitor to the earl of Northumberland – a key member of the Lords – at Petworth, and there was a certain intersection between the national, the local and the personal.73Add. 33145, f. 142v; Fletcher, Suss., 253. When in December 1641 the king proposed to appoint the recently-knighted Thomas Lunsford as lieutenant of the Tower of London, it appeared to be a challenge to Parliament and a signal of an impending coup. In opposing the move MPs invoked, among other factors against Lunsford, his ‘desperate carriage’ in the attempted murder of Pelham.74‘Sir Thomas Lunsford’, Oxford DNB; Fletcher, Suss. 170-2; D’Ewes (C), 339-40; LJ iv. 487; Nalson, Impartial Collection, ii.774; CJ ii. 355a.

Pelham’s name was then once again absent from the Journal until 7 September 1642 when he signified his support for Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, as commander-in-chief of the parliamentary forces.75CJ ii. 755b. He subscribed £200 to the cause, as well as £2 10s. for the relief of distressed protestants in Ireland.76PJ iii. 478; CJ ii. 787a; E179/191/390/3. On 21 November and order was given for a commission to Stapley, Sir Thomas Parker, Pelham and his former ward Harbert Morley to raise forces in Sussex.77CJ ii. 857b. From February 1643 Pelham was regularly named as a commissioner for assessments, and in March for sequestrations, but like other moderate knights of the shire, he was resistant to being despatched from Parliament to ask his neighbours for money.78A. and O. When on 7 March the Commons debated a series of submissions, initially ‘no excuse [Pelham] could make was admitted’, but Sir Thomas Dacre* and Sir William Waller* managed to marshal sufficient voices in a thin House to spare him the necessity to chivvy in person: instead he was to send the assessment books to Stapley and the more militant Morley.79Harl. 164, f. 315; CJ ii. 992b. However, the victory was short-lived: on 8 and 14 April Pelham was ordered to go to Sussex ‘to advance the service’ regarding both assessments and sequestrations – although, contradictorily, he was named the same day (with Sir Henry Vane I) to a committee to consider a petition from the Merchant Adventurers.80CJ iii. 36a, 43b, 44a.

On this occasion Pelham does not seem to have been long absent from London, where he and John White I* faced a dispute over property in St Sepulchre’s parish, until on 10 May the Commons ordered a halt to judicial proceedings on the ground that they breached parliamentary privilege.81CJ iii. 79a. A week later Pelham gained a rare committee nomination to review a plan to list horses in London which might be utilised for the war effort (17 May).82CJ iii. 89a. Yet for all his reluctance to implement taxation there, or perhaps because of it, he did not neglect Sussex quarter sessions and other local administration; apparently he travelled regularly between London and his county.83Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 480-1; Suss. QSOB 1642-1649. He was not in the House when Members took the Covenant on 6 June but, having requested a little time to digest it, subscribed two days later.84CJ iii. 120a. In Sussex that month when he reported the seizure of the magazine at Horsham to Speaker William Lenthall*, he was presumably at Westminster around the 23rd, when he was named to a committee to discuss supply for Ireland with the Lords.85Bodl. Nalson XI. 290; CJ iii. 142a.

During a summer of military reversals for Parliament, Pelham may have been torn between his conservative instincts and a loyalty to the wavering earl of Northumberland on the one hand, and ties to the zealous Stapley and the increasingly radical Morley (with whom he now seems to have been involved in dispute over Broyle Park) on the other.86Add. 5705, ff. 57-58v; Bodl. Nalson XIV. 195. His attempt to steer a middle path became increasingly fraught. Unlike Stapley and Morley, who had military commissions, he was not initially named to the Sussex sub-committee established as part of plans for a southern association to prosecute the war more effectively (18 June), but he was added to it with Sir Thomas Parker on 21 June and actively promoted it.87CJ iii. 171a, 173a, 177a; Bodl. Nalson III. 21. He assented to the solemn league and covenant on 2 November and two days later was appointed a commissioner in the association.88CJ iii. 299a; A. and O. In tandem with fellow moderate Sir Richard Onslow*, knight of the shire for Surrey, he defended the deputy lieutenants of their respective counties acting under the association’s commander, Sir William Waller*, against charges of inadequacy lodged by Sir Henry Mildmay* – apparently at a committee on the deployment of the London militia (22 Dec.).89CJ iii. 349a; Harl. 165, f. 254. Six weeks later he was nominated to prepare an ordinance for raising money for the association (30 Jan. 1644); with Onslow and Sir Thomas Jervoise*, Pelham secured a loan towards it from the committee for the king’s revenue (1 Mar.).90CJ iii. 383b, 412b; SC6/Chas 1/1661, m.6r.

The association continued to be fragile and controversial, however. On 8 February Pelham was appointed to a committee headed by Vane I and Onslow addressing a dispute between Waller and Colonel Stapley.91CJ iii. 393a. When on 24 February the Commons heard a petition from west Sussex detailing clashes between inhabitants of Nuthurst and Waller’s forces, Pelham ‘informed the House that Sussex was undone by these soldiers’.92CJ iii. 407a-b; Harl. 166, f. 17v. On 9 May he and ‘the other gentlemen of Sussex’ were ordered to prepare a letter instructing the county committee to send the Sussex regiment to join Waller on campaign outside its boundaries.93CJ iii. 487a. Caught in the middle of opposing interests, Pelham – who in June was again made a commissioner for the associated counties – tried to protect the interests of his friends, such as John Alford and the earl of Dorset, writing to the latter in July to reassure him that his tenants would not be molested for non-payment of taxes.94A. and O; Add. 33084, ff. 65, 69; Kent AO, U269/C7/2. Eventually he and his friend Sir Thomas Parker were targeted by those in the county who considered that they were ‘backward’ in their support for Parliament, and perhaps excessively wedded to pre-war leisure pursuits.95Fletcher, Suss., 28-31; Add. 33084, f. 78. Matters came to a head in the House following the ordering by the Lords of a survey by Pelham, Parker, Morley and Stapley of the woods at Arundel Castle belonging to Thomas Howard, 21st or 14th earl of Arundel, who was living in exile – seemingly prompted by a letter from the county committee regarding the raising of money by wood sales (15 Oct.).96LJ vii. 25a. The next day a petition against Pelham, Parker and ‘divers of the committee’ was presented to the Commons and referred to the Committee for Examinations.97CJ iii. 666b. Blamed by Sir Simonds D’Ewes* on ‘some violent, hot-headed men of the county of Sussex’, it may have been the work of men like William Cawley* and Morley.98Harl. 166, f. 149a; Add. 31116, f. 167; Fletcher, Suss., 282.

Ultimately, neither Parker nor Pelham were usurped, and Pelham continued to act on Parliament’s behalf in Sussex.99SP28/246; SP28/181; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 84; 1644-5, p. 615. His brother-in-law Sir Henry Vane II kept him informed of military affairs, while his friend Henry Shelley* wrote to him of business in London while he was in Sussex.100Add. 33084, ff. 46-7, 67, 71. He had been consulted by William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, and the Committee of Both Kingdoms in August 1644 regarding raising troops for service in the western counties; Northumberland, to whom he remained close, wrote to him on the same matter a year later.101Add 33084, f. 74; 33058, f. 73. Although largely invisible in the Journal, he nonetheless maintained a certain presence at Westminster: he was ordered to go to Sussex on 8 January 1645 to oversee the preservation of the county and on 11 March to bring in arrears of money to pay off the Scottish army.102CJ iv. 14a, 75b. Apparently indispensible to its successful implementation, in February he was made a commissioner under the New Model ordinance.103A. and O.

Between March 1645 and September 1646 Pelham was absent altogether from the Journal, although in September 1645 he wrote to Lenthall regarding the Clubmen’s activities and demands in Sussex.104Bodl. Tanner 60, ff. 251-255b. Two committee appointments in 1646 included one to examine the seizing of the belongings of the earl of Essex from Essex House after his death (1 Sept., 17 Oct.).105LJ vii.25a; CJ iv. 658b, 696b Still active on local commissions, he was visible in the Commons for most of 1647 only when he was given leave to go into the country on 19 July, as the army was preparing to advance on London, and when his absence was excused on 9 October and 3 November, in the aftermath of the failure of the Presbyterian coup.106A. and O.; Add. 33058, ff. 75, 77; CJ v. 250a, 330b, 348b; However, he had presumably returned by 23 December, when he was again ordered to go to Sussex to fulfill his obligations as an assessment commissioner.107CJ v. 400b.

One distraction in 1647 was the negotiation of the marriage between Pelham’s son John, who had entered Parliament two years earlier as a recruiter, and Lady Lucy Sidney, daughter of Robert Sidney, 2nd earl of Leicester, which took place in January 1648. The match underlined Pelham’s pre-eminence in his county – the bride was also a niece of the earl of Northumberland – but it came close to foundering owing to Pelham’s niggardliness as regards her jointure; according to Leicester, Pelham, who employed ‘his cousin the lawyer’ (Henry Pelham) in the business, was ‘none of the least scrupulous persons’.108HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 441-3; Suss. Arch. Soc. xxxvii. 50; Fletcher, Suss., 32. When made, the marriage settlements involved a clutch of local grandees of varying political viewpoints from Sir Henry Goring and Lord Montagu to Stapley, and Leicester’s sons Philip Sidney*, Viscount Lisle, and Algernon Sydney*.109Add. 33137, ff. 65-6; Add. Ch. 29530; E. Suss. RO, SAS/P/50.

In June 1648 Pelham was nominated to the committee investigating royalist insurrection in Leicester’s county of Kent.110CJ v. 599b. It was to be his last Commons appointment. In December, like his son, he was a victim of Pride’s Purge.111A Vindication (1649), 29 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5).

Although he continued to be named as a justice of the peace and local commissioner until his death, Pelham made no appearance on the Sussex bench during the 1650s.112E. Suss. RO, QO/EW2, QO/EW3; A. and O. Most of the surviving evidence of his activity in this period concerns his litigation, often in connection with his ironworkings.113C6/123/110; C6/5/128; C7/277/117; C7/394/77. Pelham and Vane II continued to do business.114Add. Ch. 29970, 29996, 30735, 30913. There is an undated letter (probably from the early 1650s) alleging that Pelham was involved with Morley, Northumberland, Sir William Waller, and Sir Richard Onslow in a royalist plot, but this cannot be substantiated.115TSP i. 750. Still a force to be reckoned with in the county, Pelham was elected to the first protectorate Parliament, but died before it could meet.116CJ vii. 377b. He was buried at Laughton on 28 August 1654; the funeral expenses exceeded £400, despite Pelham’s request for no ‘pomp, feast or heralds’.117Add. 5697, f. 265; Add. 33148, ff. 57v–58.

In his will, drawn up in January 1653, Pelham claimed that ‘for minutes of peace and prosperity enjoyed, [I] have had months of trouble and disquietude’.118PROB11/241/346. That year his medical fees included £50 for a trip to the spa at Bath, while the earl of Leicester complained that Pelham had continued to treat his daughter badly.119Fletcher, Suss., 41–2; Add. 33145, ff. 77, 116, 159, 201v, 210; 33148, ff. 29–38, 44, 49, 56–7; HMC De Lisle and Dudley, vi. 614. However, Pelham left money for rings to a host of kin, including his nephew Lord Rochford, his sister the countess of Dover, Sir Thomas Wilbraham and Sir Robert Honywood. Sir Henry Vane II, Anthony Stapley and Henry Shelley were named as his executors. His wife was to have Halland, while two younger sons each received £1,000 and his daughter Elizabeth £5,000.120PROB11/241/346. John Pelham sat in further Parliaments before and after the Restoration, while his half-brother Nicholas, son of Margaret Vane and subsequently knighted, was elected five times to Parliament for Sussex seats between 1671 and 1726.121HP Commons 1660–1690; HP Commons 1690–1715; HP Commons 1715–1754.