PYE, Sir Walter (1610-59), of The Mynde, Much Dewchurch, Herefs.

Walter Pye was the eldest son of a member of the council in the marches of Wales, chief justice on the Brecon circuit and attorney-general in the court of wards.19HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Walter Pye I’. Long established in Herefordshire, the Pyes were nevertheless not great landowners, and the pursuit of office by Pye’s father was necessary to maintain the family’s standing. Walter Pye senior, like Sir Robert Harley*, was a client of George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, through Buckingham’s proprietorship of Leominster, and became an important, indeed pre-eminent, figure in parliamentary elections before 1628. This influence extended beyond Leominster; Sir John Scudamore†, Viscount Scudamore [I] was advised that ‘if you come down and have not Sir Walter for you’, there would inevitably be a contest for a knight’s place and a division among the gentry that might last for years.20Hereford City Library, Pengelly and Scudamore pprs. 109. Walter Pye the younger was groomed for county office, being admitted to his father’s inn on special terms because of Pye senior’s office as treasurer of the Middle Temple.21MTR ii. 713, 715, 731. He was at Oxford for a while, but had rooms at the Middle Temple at the same time. His education was cut short by his election to the 1628 Parliament when his father opted to sit for Herefordshire; his father’s interest on the south Wales circuit ensured his success. He made no mark on that assembly.22HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Walter Pye II’.

Pye inherited his father’s political influence, but also some economic problems consequent upon Sir Walter senior’s huge investments and improvements in estate. Pye junior had to sell lands worth more than £4,000 between 1637 and 1639.23Aylmer, King’s Servants, 310. This did not make him any the less eligible for service in Parliament. At the first election in 1640, Pye was returned with Sir Robert Harley as knight of the shire, without any contest. The association between these families had worked electorally before, and there was in the county a developing pattern, also seen in Gloucestershire, by which the gentry would organise themselves to pre-select the knights, thus avoiding an unseemly dispute.24Brilliana Harley Letters, 84, 87. Pye was at the same time returned for Wendover, on the interest of his wife’s family, but chose to sit for Herefordshire. He made no more of an impression on this Parliament than he had on his first. He is not known to have sought a place in the second Parliament to be called in 1640, but was granted royal household office in 1641, which probably took the edge off his political appetite. In March 1642, he was in Rome with a delegation of courtiers: Cardinal Francisco Barberini assured Pye that Charles I’s political difficulties in England and Ireland had not arisen through any interference by agents of the papacy.25CCSP i. 227. There is no reason to suppose that Pye was himself flirting with Catholicism, although his children later converted.26Burke, Commoners, i. 350.

On the outbreak of civil war, Pye was naturally and correctly assumed to be of the king’s party. He was given a number of civil commissions by the king when at York and Oxford, all relating to Herefordshire, and was reported to be in the county recruiting soldiers by early July 1642. Later in the year he was made lieutenant-colonel of horse in the regiment of Sir Arthur Aston, governor of Reading.27Add. 70110, f. 71; Mems. Prince Rupert, ii. 69. Brilliana Harley, wife of Sir Robert, corresponded with Pye, Viscount Scudamore and Fitzwilliam Coningsby* in January 1643, accusing them of threatening the lives of her children. Pye was in Hereford when it was taken by Sir William Waller* in April 1643, and was imprisoned briefly in Gloucester, but was released by the end of June in a hostage exchange and was soon reported to be back in Herefordshire.28HMC Portland, iii. 87, 103; Brilliana Harley Letters, 198, 205; Duncumb, Collections, i. 245, 255, 256. He seems to have acted as an intermediary between those who demanded relief from the burden of royalist soldiers and the Princes Rupert and Maurice. He persuaded the merchants of Hereford willingly to surrender all their plate to the king, though it was noted that no thanks ever came back from Oxford.29Harl. 7189, ff. 246v, 248v. The military commission he was given by Rupert on 2 April 1645 to raise a regiment in two Herefordshire hundreds, must have been his last.30C115/71/6517. Pye was in the king’s quarters at Oxford when it surrendered, and sought to compound with the Westminster Parliament for his being in arms for the king. He was fined £2,360 at one tenth of his estate (28 Nov. 1646), and was not free of the attention of the Committee for Compounding until November 1650.31CCC 1202, 1482; Add. 70061, loose: list of persons charged with delinquency, 30 Jan. 1647. His son was allowed to compound on the same articles of surrender.32CCC 1526.

The diarist Richard Symonds, who travelled with the king’s army into the west of England, considered Sir Walter Pye’s estate to be ‘decayed’, but there was sufficient of it to excite the interest of the Herefordshire sequestration committee. From July 1646, Pye’s tithes at Much Birch, Dewchurch and Kilpeck were allocated to Benjamin Mason*, valued at £40 a year, and further grants of his property were made in the following months. The local committee decided his estate was in fact worth £945 a year.33Add. 16178, ff. 70, 77v, 94; f. 10, reverse. The exactions of the committee must have exacerbated financial problems he inherited from his father, and in 1648 he was subjected to a writ of outlawry for debt.34CCC 1482; CCSP i. 428. Naturally, as a former royalist in arms, Pye was kept under surveillance during the 1650s. He was identified as a recipient of letters that Charles Stuart was to write to his supporters in Gloucestershire (May 1654), and was imprisoned with other Herefordshire royalists in 1655.35CCSP ii. 359; Bodl. Rawl. A.34, p. 901. With Viscount Scudamore and Roger Bosworth*, Pye was one of the circle that John Beale described to the polymath Samuel Hartlib as enthusiastic promoters of Herefordshire cider, and in January 1659 was described as ‘a gentleman of strong natural abilities’.36Sheffield Univ. Lib. Hartlib Pprs. 52/14A. His strength notwithstanding, however, he was not to play a part in the upheavals of 1659-60. He made his will in orthodox Protestant fashion in October 1659, and died soon afterwards, presumably at his London house. He was buried at St Clement Danes. Henry Gorges†, the husband of his grand-daughter, inherited his political interest to sit for Herefordshire between 1698 and 1708.37HP Commons 1690-1715.