RICH, Robert, Lord Rich (1611-59), of Leighs Priory, Essex and Warwick House, Holborn, Mdx.

This MP’s family was the most powerful in Essex. Preaching the funeral sermon for the 4th earl of Warwick (Charles Rich*) in 1673, Anthony Walker would lament the near extinction of the family because they were

the ornament of Essex, the sun of this horizon; the sanctuary of religion, the standard of grandeur, and the methods of living nobly; the great exemplar of best household discipline, the centre of hospitality, the storehouse of charity.14A. Walker, Leez Lachrymans (1673), 22.

They had first come to prominence during the reign of Henry VIII, when Richard Rich†, this MP’s great-great-grandfather, had held a series of important public offices, including that of Speaker in the 1536 Parliament. In 1547 Rich was raised to the peerage as Baron Rich and appointed lord chancellor. In 1618 his grandson, Robert, 3rd Lord Rich, was granted the earldom of Warwick. The following year the future MP’s father succeeded as the 2nd earl.

Rich was brought up in one of the most godly of all aristocratic households in early-Stuart England and he completed his education at Emmanuel, the Cambridge college with the staunchest Protestant traditions. Even before he had graduated, his father got him elected as one of the knights of the shire for Essex. He was already being groomed to become the natural leader of Essex society. As he was then aged only 17, he unsurprisingly played little part in his first Parliament. His lucrative marriage to a daughter of the earl of Devonshire failed to encourage him to settle down. The large dowry was quickly consumed and before long he was heavily in debt.15C115/M36/8430; CCC 1729-30. The death of his first wife in 1638 was marked by Edmund Waller* in a poem celebrating their marriage as a love which had been cruelly cut short.16The Poems of Edmund Waller, ed. G.T. Drury (London and New York, 1893), 37-9.

The vigorous backing of his father smoothed the way for Rich’s election as knight of the shire for Essex in the Long Parliament.17Essex RO, D/Y 2/4, p. 89; D/Y 2/9, p. 53. His brief period as a member of the Commons in that Parliament gave him little chance to shine. His appointment to the committee which attended the joint conference with the House of Lords on 10 November 1640 to discuss the breach of privilege allegedly committed by Sir William Beecher is easily explained – Warwick was one of the two peers whose papers had been seized by Beecher, acting as one of the clerks of the privy council, in the aftermath of the previous Parliament.18CJ ii. 25b. He was also named to one other minor committee.19CJ ii. 43a.

Rich’s membership of the Commons was brought to an abrupt end on 26 January 1641 when the king summoned him by writ of acceleration to sit in the Lords by virtue of his father’s barony as Lord Rich of Leighs. He took his seat in the Lords the following day.20LJ iv. 145b; CJ ii. 74a. Perhaps the king saw him as a potential supporter who would bolster his voting strength there. It was this suspicion which lay behind the decision by the committee for the declaration for causes and remedies to query this and similar writs of summons in January 1642.21PJ i. 107-9. Alternatively, Charles may have seen this as a concession intended to help win over Warwick, in which case it may have been linked to the grant of a baronetcy to Sir Martin Lumley*, the Warwick associate who succeeded Rich as MP for Essex. Rich’s conduct thus far in this Parliament suggests that he and his father were still political allies. It was the former interpretation, however, which Parliament preferred. In June 1642 Rich and eight other heirs who had received such writs were impeached by the Commons.22CJ ii. 626a, 627b; LJ v. 140a-141a. On 20 July 1642 the Lords agreed to bar them from their ranks, stripped them of their parliamentary privileges and sentenced them to imprisonment in the Tower.23LJ v. 222b-223b. In Rich’s case, this action was taken in the knowledge that he had already sided with the king by obeying the royal summons to all the peers ordering them to join him at York.24PJ iii. 47, 64; A. Wilson, The Inconstant Lady (Oxford, 1814), 135; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 186; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 344. This would be consistent with the view that Rich was one of those peers who, on being faced with the stark choice between king and Parliament, felt obliged to side with the king, although, if his relations with his father were already deteriorating, there may have been a personal dimension to this decision. Their political differences certainly ensured that relations between the two of them would be strained thereafter.

Rich later spent time at the royalist headquarters at Oxford and took his seat in the Lords in the royalist Parliament there.25Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 562, 573; CCC 1729-30; CAM 1150. In June 1644 he was intercepted by the forces of Sir William Waller* trying to make his way from Oxford to London. He was released from custody after an investigation by the House of Lords.26LJ vi. 644a, 647b. Had his father not retained a firm grip over the Rich heartlands in Essex, Rich might have been able to play a more constructive role in support of the king during the civil war. In 1644 he was assessed to pay £800 by the Committee for Advance of Money and it was only because his father used his considerable influence on his behalf that the Committee for Compounding eventually abandoned its proceedings against him. The family estates had already been entailed to protect it from such proceedings or from Rich’s many creditors.27CAM 466, 1486; CCC 1729-30; CJ vi. 309b, 587a-588a. He remained under suspicion in the years which followed.28CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 372, 450, 549; 1655, p. 592.

The marriage of his only son, Robert, to Frances Cromwell, daughter of the lord protector, in November 1657 was entirely Warwick’s doing. Rich was estranged from his son and disapproved of the match.29TSP v. 146; HMC Astley, 21. The bride’s sister, Mary Cromwell, told her brother, Henry Cromwell*, that Rich created difficulties over the marriage settlement as he had ‘no esteem at all of his son, because he is not so bad as himself’.30TSP v. 146. The marriage settlement confirmed the entail on the Rich estates to prevent Lord Rich depleting them before Robert Rich inherited. Under these arrangements Rich was allocated an allowance of just £1,050 a year compared to the £2,000 a year provided for the couple.31TSP v. 146. The marriage lasted only three months as the groom died on 16 February 1658.32TSP vi. 807, 820-1; The Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell ed. R. Vaughan (1839), ii. 444; Gauden, Funerals made Cordials. This left Rich without a male heir. Attempts were then made by him to repair the strained relations with his son’s widow.33HMC Astley, 23, 24. Rich finally succeeded his father as earl of Warwick in April 1658 but died himself just over a year later. He had been ill for some time.34HMC Astley, 21; Protectorate of Oliver Cromwell ed. Vaughan, ii. 458. He was buried with his ancestors at Felsted on 9 June 1659.35Warwick, Autobiog. 26-7; F. Chancellor, ‘Essex churches XIX – Holy Cross, Felsted’, Essex Review, vi. 42; Chancellor, Ancient Sepulchral Monuments, 140. The earldom then passed to his younger brother, Charles*.