MORLEY, Sir William (1606-58), of Halnaker, Boxgrove, Suss.

The Morleys of Halnaker, or Halfnaked, near Chichester, were genealogically distinct from the Morleys of Glynde, nearly 40 miles to the east, headed in the mid-seventeenth century by Harbert Morley*. Sir William Morley was a grandson of John Morley† (d. 1587) of London, foreign apposer in the exchequer from 1579 to 1581, and clerk of the pipe.20Sainty, Officers of the Exchequer, 65, 84; HP Commons 1558-1603. Originally from Saxham in Suffolk, John Morley spent over £8,000 to establish himself as a member of the Sussex gentry. He purchased the manors of Boxgrove and Halnaker, together with over 4,000 acres of land, from John, Lord Lumley, and further properties in Sussex from Sir Thomas Sackville†, Lord Buckhurst. By 1581 he was the owner of Tangmere, later sold, but repurchased by the family in 1635.21Goodwood Park, E288, 290, 292-3, 297-9, 441-4, 448-9, 2246-7, 3962, 4212. Morley was granted armigerous status in 1575 or 1580, by which time he was a great magnate.22W. H. Rylands, Grantees of Arms (Harl. Soc. lxvi), 176.

John Morley†, father of this MP, sat in four parliaments between 1601 and 1621, but like his brothers, was suspected of Catholicism, particularly in the light of his marriage to Cecily, daughter of Sir Edward Caryll of Harting, from the most prominent recusant family in the county.23Goodwood Park, E300. Having considerably extended the family property, in his will he left it in trust for his son William, still a minor. The trustees were his son-in-law, Sir Thomas Puckering†, his brother Sir Edward Morley†, Sir Humphrey May†, Sir Richard Caryll, Sir William Ford, and Sir Thomas Bowyer*; Puckering, Ford, and Bowyer were named executors, and May, Ford, and Bowyer nominated as William Morley’s guardians.24Goodwood Park, E1094-1103, 1121; PROB11/140/590 (Sir John Morley); Eg. Ch. 1720; Notes IPMs Suss., 166; C66/1089/14. The friends of Sir John and Sir Edward, who was recorder of Chichester, became those of Sir William, and this group nearly amounted to the body of courtiers, and later royalists, of the western rapes of Sussex, inter-connected by kinship and business.25Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. lxxxix), 77-8. The circle included Sir Robert Heath†, solicitor-general from 1621 and attorney-general from 1625, whose daughter Morley married by the end of 1624.26Goodwood Park, E4947; Misc. Gen. et Her. 5th ser. iv. 161.

The marriage ended, or interrupted, an apparently brief education at Oxford and the Inner Temple.27Al. Ox.; I. Temple database. In September 1625 Morley was knighted and the following February, still barely 20 years old, he was returned to Parliament for Guildford in a by-election.28Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 189. He replaced the then solicitor-general, Sir Richard Shilton†, who had secured the seat thanks to Sir Robert Heath’s close links with the corporation, but who had then chosen to sit for Bridgnorth.29HP Commons 1604–1629. Morley made no recorded contribution to proceedings, and does not seem to have stood for Parliament in 1628.

Morley did not gain possession of his estates until 1631.30Goodwood Park, E306. However, he had already begun to manage them by 1629 and he held his first local office soon after attaining his majority.31Suss. Manors, i. 4, 22. In April 1627 he was named to a commission of oyer and terminer, and the following December to another for imposing martial law on billeted soldiers.32C181/3, f. 216v; CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 461. He received further commissions in the 1630s.33C181/4, ff. 46v, 53v; C181/5, ff. 69v, 115v, 257. By March 1633 he was a justice of the peace; until July 1642 he was an assiduous attender at the assizes, as well as an active magistrate with Sir William Ford and Thomas May* in the Chichester area.34ASSI35/75/8-ASSI35/84/8; SP16/363, f. 155; SP16/364, f. 235; SP16/382, f. 182; SP16/386, f. 224; SP16/393, f. 87; SP16/395, f. 228; SP16/405; SP16/425, f. 217; Bodl. Bankes 16, f. 131. Appointed sheriff in February 1636 to replace Sir William Culpeper, Morley set about collecting Ship Money with some zeal. On 23 July he reported to the lord treasurer, Bishop William Juxon, that he had already received the full £23 arrears due from Sussex, and £250 of £4,000 outstanding from Surrey, but had encountered problems in Southwark and Guildford, which he would do his best to overcome.35CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 74.

In the meantime, Morley had received a disappointing rebuff at the hands of the crown. Since the age of three he had held a reversion of the clerkship of Star Chamber, procured through his former guardian Sir Humphrey May. Upon May's death, Charles I initially instructed Attorney-general Heath to prepare a new grant of the clerkship to Morley and Sir William Uvedale*.36CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 68. However, this was reversed in 1635 because it was noted that, although Morley had been receiving a moiety of the profits, he ‘lives remote and has not disposed himself in a way fit for the execution of the said place, which the king resolves to have exercised by a person of experience in the proceedings of that court’.37CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 57. Nevertheless, in 1639 Morley loaned the crown £2,000, to be repaid within a year.38CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 477; E403/2658, f. 90; SO3/12, f. 23v.

Morley was not elected to the Short Parliament, but in the autumn of 1640 he was returned as a burgess for Chichester, alongside Christopher Lewknor*. He made very little visible contribution to proceedings. He loaned £1,000 in late November, but on 2 December, following a motion by his former guardian Sir Thomas Bowyer, was granted leave to return to Sussex for ten days or a fortnight, ‘being very sick’.39Procs. LP i. 228, 235, 420, 423, 425. In the House to take the Protestation promptly on 3 May 1641, he appeared to have acted swiftly on the first intimations of the army plot.40CJ ii. 133a. On the 15th John Hampden* produced in the Commons details sent to him by Morley and William Cawley* (a business associate of Morley from at least the 1630s and again even after their subsequent political rift) of examinations taken in west Sussex regarding the movements of Henry Percy*, a leading suspect.41Procs. LP iv. 393; Goodwood Park, E710, 712-7. On 28 June he received his sole committee appointment – as a slightly surprising addition to those discussing the new church in Covent Garden.42CJ ii. 191b. Thereafter he disappears from view until 29 March 1642, when he subscribed £1,200 for the reduction of the Irish rebels.43Rushworth, Hist. Collns., iv. 565.

On 9 August he, Thomas May, John Alford* and Sir Thomas Bowyer were summoned to attend the House, to be questioned regarding a letter which they had sent with Sir William Goring ‘regarding commissions from his majesty to Colonel Goring [George Goring*], governor of Chichester’.44CJ ii. 711a. One newspaper reported that Bowyer, Morley, and May, acting with royalist clergy from the cathedral, had led a plot to betray the city to Goring, at that point the king’s governor of Portsmouth, and had exerted pressure upon William Cawley; they had demanded the magazine in the king’s name, only to be refused by Captain Henry Chittey.45An Exact Relation from Portsmouth (1642), sigs. Av-A2 (E.112.34); Exceeding Good News (1642), 5 (E.114.3). Perhaps discouraged by this reversal, as well as prompted by the fact Henry Marten* had drawn attention to the omission, Morley returned to London, where on 27 August he belatedly acceded to the covenant to support Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, as commander-in-chief of parliamentary forces.46PJ iii. 321-2; CJ ii. 740a. For good measure, he then offered to contribute six horses and £200 to the cause, a gesture for which he was thanked on 7 September by Speaker William Lenthall; the House was ‘satisfied of his affection and intentions’ and Marten was instructed to prepare an indemnification.47CJ ii. 757a; PJ iii. 477. A week later the offer changed to £400 and 2 horses.48CJ ii. 765a.

Possibly convinced that he had laid the matter to rest, on 3 October Morley made a rare appearance on the county bench at Chichester.49Suss. QSOB 1642–1649, 18. On 21 November, however, William Cawley reported to Lenthall that Morley had assisted the sheriff of Sussex (Sir Edward Ford, son of Sir William) in seizing Chichester, and in executing the commission of array. Two days later Morley, who ‘hath sent the sheriff four horses completely furnished for war’, was sent for by the Commons as a delinquent, and John Glynne* and Edmund Prideaux I* were ordered to draw up his impeachment.50CJ ii. 860b; HMC Portland, i. 72. The London diurnalls reported Morley’s disablement from sitting in Parliament as one of the ‘chief agents’ at Chichester.51CJ ii. 860b; Add. 18777, f. 68v; C231/6, p. 19; A Perfect Diurnall, no. 24 (21-28 Nov. 1642), n.p. (E.242.27).

Morley was among the royalists in Chichester when it was besieged in December by troops under Sir William Waller*.52Latest Printed Newes (1642), 2 (E.83.8). When after eight days the city fell, it was Morley who, with John Tufton, 2nd earl of Thanet, surrendered the garrison.53Brave Newes of the taking of Chichester (1642) (E.83.36); Add. 18777, f. 106v. Waller would complain that malignants had burnt houses in the town to prevent his entry, and that there had been a plot to murder him after the surrender.54True Relation of the Fortunate Sir William Waller (1643) (E.84.22). Much was also made of the fact that Morley was son-in-law to the controversial Judge Heath.55England's Memorable Accidents (26 Dec. 1642-2 Jan. 1643), 134 (E.244.34). Those taken prisoner included Morley, Bishop Henry King, Christopher Lewknor*, Sir Edward Ford, and Thomas May (who had been disabled from Parliament with Morley on 23 November).56Speciall Passages, no. 21 (27 Dec. 1642-3 Jan. 1643), 277-8 (E.84.1); Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer, no. 1 (27 Dec. 1642-3 Jan. 1643), 6 (E.84.4); Continuation of certain Speciall and Remarkable Passages, no. 25 (26-30 Dec. 1642), 7 (E.244.28); Perfect Diurnall, no. 29 (26 Dec. 1642-2 Jan. 1643), sig. Ee3 (E.244.32). They were a close-knit group. Another leading player was Morley’s nephew, Sir John Morley, brother-in-law of May and a resident of the cathedral close.57Notes IPMs Suss. 165; Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. liii), 140; Vis. Sussex (Harl. Soc. lxxxix), 76-7; PROB11/234/213 (Sir John Morley); Add. 5699, f. 265; Berry, Suss. Pedigrees, 21; West Suss. Protestation Returns, 46, 56. An exuberant and combative cavalier, he was subsequently sequestered.58CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 169; PC2/52, p. 544; CJ ii. 860b; HMC Portland, i. 72-4; CCC 837–8; SP23/103, f. 125; Suss. Arch. Coll. xix. 95, 104-5.

Sir William Morley too faced penalties as a delinquent. On 8 September 1643, the Commons resolved that the sequestration of his estates would be discharged upon payment of £1,000 to the garrison at Portsmouth within 14 days.59CJ iii. 233b, 235a. He complied, and on 18 October the Commons ordered the Committee for Sequestrations to clear his estate. By 22 November the ordinance for restoring Morley’s lands had been passed by the Lords.60CJ iii. 279b, 305b, 313b, 317b; PA, MP22/11/43; HMC 5th Rep. 114; LJ vi. 308-9. This angered members of the county committee like Anthony Stapley*, who wrote to Lenthall furiously on 18 November that, if this or any other discharge from sequestration went ahead without alternative provision for paying forces ‘under my command, you will, I hope, give me leave to provide for myself and men as I can, and to quit the employment when I cannot longer serve you in it’.61HMC Portland, i. 156. Allegations were later made that William Cawley had retained at least £100 of the fine paid by Morley in his own hands.62SP28/253A, f. 11; SP28/260, f. 364v.

In a key respect, Morley was still classed as a delinquent. On 3 September 1645 new writs were issued to replace both him and Christopher Lewknor in Parliament.63CJ iv. 262b. As early as May 1643 he obtained from the king a licence to travel abroad with six servants, but it seems unlikely that he utilised it.64SO3/12, f. 227v. His nomination as a commissioner for assessment in October 1644 and for sewers in July 1645 indicates a measure of rehabilitation.65A. and O. In April 1647 his name was even put forward, along with other delinquents like Thomas Middleton*, as a new member of the Sussex sub-committee of accounts. This plan, proposed by William Marlott*, Anthony Fowle* and Nathaniel Powell*, does not seem to have been accepted, however, and Morley did not again hold local or national office.66SP 28/257.

Otherwise, Morley’s contacts remained notably royalist or out of sympathy with the regime. Samuel Hill, instituted by Morley to the living at Boxgrove in 1636, was sequestred by Cawley in 1648.67Suss. Arch. Coll. lxxxvi. 153; Bodl. Ashmole 1144, p. 369; Add. 5699, f. 154v; Walker Revised, 358. Joseph Henshaw (brother-in-law of Thomas May, and later bishop of Peterborough), presented by Morley to East Lavant in December 1638, was an active royalist conspirator.68IND1/17004, Sussex, p. 69. In 1649 suspicions regarding Morley’s royalism hampered his efforts to make good his claim to the manor of Oldberry, while in July 1648 he acted as surety for his kinsman Edward Heath, who was called to appear before either Parliament, Sir Thomas Fairfax*, or the sequestrations committee at Chichester.69Suss. Arch. Coll. xxiv. 247; Add. 2978, f. 237. However, his relationship with other members of the Heath family was compromised by his behaviour towards his wife. In 1647 John Heath informed his brother Sir Robert of ‘the baseness of my brother Morley’s behaviour’ in beating her, concluding that ‘they that think to keep him from mischief, must keep him in awe, for love of goodness will never prevail upon him’.70P. E. Kopperman, Sir Robert Heath (1989), 293.

For the purposes of decimation in 1655, Morley’s estate was valued (by his own consent) at £1,500 a year. Nevertheless, as Major-general William Goffe* told Secretary John Thurloe*, he ‘takes it very much at heart, that he should still be reckoned a malignant, having long been satisfied of the justness of our cause’. Goffe added – giving some insight into why Morley had survived as long as he had in local office – ‘indeed, very good men here do speak well of him, and I believe his highness will be solicited about him’.71TSP iv. 208, 240. Although royalists placed Morley’s name on a commission to raise forces in Sussex in 1658 (the Stapley plot), it became clear that this was without his knowledge.72TSP vii. 81, 110, 165-6.

Morley died in June 1658. In his will, dated the 14th, he made generous provision for two daughters and two younger sons.73PROB11/286/611; Goodwood Park, E307, 451. His heir, John Morley, named as executor, died within a year of his father, leaving the estate to his younger brother, Sir William Morley†.74Goodwood Park, E452. Sir William sat in Parliament as a tory until the late 1690s with his son William Morley†.75HP Commons 1660-1690; HP Commons 1690-1715. Mary Morley, granddaughter of our MP, eventually carried the estate – by then supposedly worth £50,000 – to the family of her husband James Stanley†, 10th earl of Derby.76Goodwood Park, E322; Vis. Sussex (Harl. Soc. lxxxix), 77-8.