POOLE, Sir Neville (1592-1661), of Oaksey, Wilts.

Members of the Poole family had sat in Parliament since the mid-fifteenth century, and by 1640 Sir Neville Poole, one of the leading members of the county gentry, had parliamentary experience stretching back to 1614.22HP Commons 1604-1629. He was probably a reluctant Ship Money sheriff, and although he collected £5,800 of the £7,000 required from the county upon the writs issued in August 1636, he became embroiled in controversy with the local clergy, and failed to satisfy the privy council, who were still pursuing him for arrears in May 1639.23CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 122, 124, 574; 1638-9, pp. 232, 369; 1639, pp. 238, 246. Thereafter, although he was evidently prepared to remain active in local administration and in mustering the trained bands, Poole was one of those who refused to finance the first bishops’ war.24Wilts. RO, G23/1/38; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 915.

Returned to the Short Parliament as one of the Members for Malmesbury (the scene of his parliamentary debut), Poole made no recorded impression upon proceedings. However, he evidently had little difficulty in retaining his seat in the Long Parliament, where he was joined by his son, Edward, one of the Members for Wootton Bassett. This time he had a higher profile in the House.

A week into the session Poole was named to the committee addressing the politically-charged complaint by the Lords of a breach of their privilege, involving search warrants targetting peers critical of royal policy in the previous Parliament, signed in their capacities as secretaries of state by MPs Sir Francis Windebanke* and Sir Henry Vane I* (10 Nov.).25CJ ii. 25b. Doubtless this nomination owed something to Poole’s parliamentary experience, which was presumably among factors in play in his appointments to consider contested elections at Tewkesbury (11 Dec.) and, nearer home, at Salisbury (30 Nov.).26CJ ii. 39b, 49b, 82a, 108a. However, Sir Neville may have had a known interest in the protocol and the reputation of the House. On 4 February 1641 the Commons summoned his kinsman Francis Neville* to account for his reporting to the privy council of speeches made in the Short Parliament; five days later Poole presented the petition acknowledging guilt and craving pardon which soon procured Neville’s release from the Tower.27Procs. LP ii. 360-1, 396-7. When on 1 March Dr Thomas Chafin was hauled before the House to explain a sermon delivered at an archiepiscopal visitation in Salisbury in which he had allegedly invoked divine deliverance from ‘lay puritans and lay parliaments’, Poole was a teller on a division over punishment for the Wiltshire clergyman. According to the manuscript Commons Journal, Poole was a teller for those who wished to send him to the Tower, defeated by one vote, but according to diarist John Moore*, a teller on the other side, Poole led the tiny majority who wished to spare Chafin that fate.28CJ ii. 94b; Procs LP ii. 583, 585-6, 589-90.

Appointed to committees addressing some of the lesser grievances of the personal rule of Charles I – forests (4 Dec. 1640); coat and conduct money (14 Dec.); abuses of postmasters (10 Feb. 1641); usury (19 Mar.) – Poole appears to have had a somewhat nuanced and idiosyncratic approach to obtaining redress.29CJ ii. 45a. 50b. On 12 November 1640 he moved for action against monopolists and patentees, but a later motion relating to the Merchant Adventurers’ ‘hindrance’ of the sale of wool (14 July 1641) and his membership of committees to restrict the export of wool (3 Feb. 1641) and considering the cloth trade (14 Feb. 1642) may have their roots in a specific concern for Wiltshire’s major industry, of which his father had been a consistent champion in previous Parliaments, rather than broader political conviction.30CJ ii. 30a, 77b, 210b, 429b; Procs. LP i. 115, 121; v. 643. Poole had engaged in the initial debates on Ship Money (7 Dec.), but when the enthusiastic reformer George Peard* reported the bill for its abolition on 26 July 1641, Poole criticised his chairmanship of the drafting committee.31Northcote Note Bk. 39; Procs. LP vi. 93-4. Twice to the fore among those offering £1,000 towards underwriting loans for the campaign in the north (21 Nov. 1640; 6 Mar. 1641), on 22 March he took to the Lords the new subsidy bill ‘reforming things mistaken’ in the previous draft.32CJ ii. 60a, 60b, 110b, 160a, 182a Procs. LP i. 228, 231, 235; ii. 654. It seems significant that on 18 January his had been the name omitted from that when it was discovered that the Commons had exceeded their quota of commissioners relative to the Lords.33CJ ii. 69b; LJ iv. 194b; Procs. LP ii. 216.

Like his father, Poole exhibited an interest in private bills and pursued a committed but moderate course in religion. Added on 19 December 1640 to the Committee for Plundered Ministers* and on 5 August 1641, in the midst of heightened tensions, to the committee for recusants, he was also named to the committee to consider measures to suppress superstition and idolatry (3 Feb. 1641).34CJ ii. 54b, 84b, 238b. On the other hand, the parliamentary preachers he moved to thank on 1 December 1640 were in varying degrees conservative, and he described parts of London’s ‘root and branch’ petition as ‘scandalous’ (11 Dec.).35Procs. LP i. 399; Northcote Note Bk. 51. On 8 February 1641 he spoke against committing the London petition, and when on 11 June fellow Wiltshire Member William Pleydell expatiated at length in support of episcopacy, citing ‘much Latin and many traditions’, Poole ‘desired that he might translate it into English’.36Procs. LP ii. 391; v. 98.

In the wake of revelations regarding the army plot in May 1641, Poole took the Protestation promptly.37CJ ii. 133a. But like many of those who later became royalists, he appeared less in the Journal over the summer, and there is no evidence of his presence in the House between the first week of August and late November, significantly beyond the period of the recess.38CJ ii. 238b, 324b. His reappearance – probably provoked by news of the Irish rebellion – was fleeting: he then vanished again from the record until mid-February 1642, his return perhaps prompted at least partly by his concern for the cloth industry.39CJ ii. 324b, 429b, 431a. His nomination to the committee charged with witnessing the opening of George Digby, Lord Digby* to Secretary of state Sir Edward Nicholas (14 Feb.) indicates that at this point he retained the trust of at least some Commons leaders, but he then drops from view again until one of them, John Hampden*, moved on 13 June that he be permitted to go into the country for his health.40PJ iii. 67. That Poole felt the need to promise his resolve to ‘stick to the Parliament’, in addition to promising to supply horses on behalf of himself and his son, probably indicates a recognition that other MPs may have doubted his loyalty.41PJ iii. 67, 475.

Whatever the degree of Poole’s previous loyalty to Parliament, once preparations for war got underway his allegiance to it was clear. Among the early recruits to the Wiltshire committee sitting at Falstone House and organising the county’s defence, by 18 September 1642 he had intercepted royalist correspondence, which he duly sent with its carrier to Westminster.42Waylen, ‘Falstone Day Bk.’, 343-91; Harl. 479, f. 93; CJ ii. 776b, 779a; Add. 18777, ff. 7v, 8v; LJ v. 367a-8a; HMC Portland, i. 65. He was in Marlborough at its storming by royalist forces in December, and later informed the House about the harsh treatment of parliamentarian prisoners including the local MP John Francklyn*.43Harl. 164, f. 243v; CJ ii. 931a. Poole incurred personal losses of £2,000 through such service, which eventually prompted the Commons to grant him £10 per week, in addition to his standard allowance.44CJ iii. 448b; iv. 82b; Harl. 166, f. 43v; Eg. 806, f. 57. Back at Westminster early in 1643, moreover, he became involved in a number of committees relating to the war effort, financial management, and the sequestration of delinquents, and, despatched by the Commons with Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire* to inform the lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, of the situation in Wiltshire (14 Jan.), joined other county colleagues in seeking to expose the dangerously maverick behaviour of fellow MP Sir Edward Bayntun*, whose feud with Sir Edward Hungerford* jeopardised the whole entreprise.45CJ ii. 940b, 942b, 957b, 958b, 992a, 997b; iii. 1a, 3b, 9b, 80b, 84a, 108b, 125a, 186a, 191a, 196b, 203b, 222a, 236a, 244b; Add. 18777, f. 132; Harl. 164, f. 276.

Although zealous in his support for Parliament, Poole ought to be regarded as a member of the peace party during 1643. As a teller in divisions, on issues such as peace proposals, he invariably lined up against radicals like Sir Peter Wentworth*.46CJ iii. 18a, 36b The frequency with which he was nominated by the Commons as a messenger to the earl of Essex, particularly over that summer, is probably indicative of their political alliance.47CJ ii. 928a; iii. 4b, 5b, 88b, 211b, 256a, 266b, 274a, 278a; Harl. 165, f. 153. Likewise, the tendency to appoint Poole as a messenger to the Lords – a bastion of the peaceniks during this period – probably indicates a determination to maintain the influence of the Upper House not shared by John Pym and his allies.48CJ iii. 98a, 116b, 119a, 126a, 149a; LJ vi. 85a. Poole’s negative reaction on 16 August to the republican outburst for which Henry Marten* was expelled from the Commons was singled out in reports of the incident.49Harl. 165, f. 180v; Whitelocke, Mems. (1732), 71; W. Sanderson, A compleat history of the life and raigne of King Charles (1658), 627.

The politics of the lord general’s faction probably informed Poole’s subsequent parliamentary career too, although this only occasionally became very obvious, given that he remained a relatively inconspicuous Member of the House in late 1643 and 1644.50CJ iii. 286a, 302a, 309b, 311a, 457a, 551b, 566b, 592a; Harl. 166, f. 80. Nevertheless, when he acted as a teller it was in opposition to men like Sir Arthur Hesilrige* and Augustine Skynner*.51CJ iii. 536a. Moreover, he was responsible for instigating a debate regarding what he described as the ‘unnecessary procrastination’ of Essex’s rival, Sir William Waller*, ‘in deferring his journey into the west’, and he also continued to serve as a messenger to the lord general.52Harl. 166, f. 109v; CJ iii. 677b; LJ vii. 39a. Poole’s most important role during the mid-1640s, however, was as a member of the body which managed the war effort in the western counties, the Committee of the West*, to which he was appointed in October 1643.53CJ iii. 291b, 498a, 515b, 536a, 553a, 656b; iv. 168b; Add. 22084, ff. 14, 25; LJ vi. 637b. It was almost certainly his local service, rather than parliamentary activity, which prompted the king’s decision to include his name among those Wiltshire men who were indicted for treason in December 1643.54Northants. RO, FH133.

Nevertheless, local service only goes some way towards explaining the infrequency with which Poole attended the Commons after the autumn of 1644.55CJ iii. 656b, 728b; iv. 168b. His disillusionment appears to have coincided with the early stages of the process by which the parliamentarian army was re-modelled, and aside from occasions when his absence became a matter of debate, Poole’s name appears in the Journal only a handful of times between October 1644 and December 1648.56CJ iv. 335b, 562a, 593a; v. 199a-b, 330b, 337a, 348b, 374b, 543b, 647b; LJ viii. 352a; ix. 240a. Although present in the House in late November 1648, he may have been in Wiltshire overseeing the collection of assessments at Pride’s Purge, when he was secluded by the army.57CJ vi. 88a; A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); A Vindication (1649), 29 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5).

Poole played no part in either local or national politics during the commonwealth or protectorate, although he was forced to negotiate with both Parliament and the Committee for Indemnity* regarding the financial problems which arose from his having provided security for loans raised for parliamentarian service in Wiltshire during the early 1640s, and which remained unpaid.58CJ vi. 219b; vii. 260a; CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 440, 456; 1653-4, pp. 400, 410. His will, written in January 1654, bemoaned the burden of his debts, which had been made worse by the ‘late unhappy troubles and distractions of this nation’.59PROB11/304/555. Poole did not return to Parliament in 1660, and died sometime before 29 June 1661, when his will was proved.60PROB11/304/555. His heir, Edward*, who had been elected at Cricklade in 1659, was subsequently returned to the Convention in 1660, and secured a seat in the Cavalier Parliament in a 1668 by-election.