RODENEY, Sir Edward (1590-1657), of Pilton, Som.

In 1655 Sir Edward Rodeney compiled a short history of the Rodeney family.29Som. RO, DD/TB/20/1, ‘Sir Edward Rodney’s acct. of his own family’; Add. 34239, ff. 2v-18v; ‘Genealogy of the fam. of Rodney’, The Gen. n.s. xvi. 207-14; xvii. 6-12, 100-6. By then all his sons were dead and he thought of himself as the last of his line. Their ancestry, he claimed, was lost in the mists of time, but the Rodeney line could be traced back to the twelfth century.30‘Genealogy of the family of Rodney’, xvi. 208-9, 213-14. On his mother’s side, moreover, he was related to the Seymours. His maternal grandfather was Sir Henry Seymour†, brother of Jane Seymour, so his mother, another Jane Seymour, had been a first cousin of Edward VI. The Rodeneys had lived in Somerset for centuries. Under Sir Edward’s father, Sir John Rodeney, they had acquired a long lease from the Seymours on an estate at Pilton, three miles to the south-west of Shepton Mallet, and this became their principal residence. Sir John, for sentimental reasons, also bought back the ancestral estates at Rodney Stoke when they were sold by another branch of the family.31‘Genealogy of the fam. of Rodney’, xvii. 101-2. As a young man, aged only in his early twenties, Edward had inherited these lands on the death of his father. Through his Seymour relatives, he had always had strong connections at court and those were strengthened in 1614 when, in a splendid court wedding at Denmark House, he had married one of Anne of Denmark’s ladies of the privy chamber, Frances Southwell.32‘Genealogy of the fam. of Rodney’, xvii. 104. The marriage was a happy one and Rodeney considered his wife ‘the desire of mine eyes, and the joy of mine heart’.33CUL, Dd.III.84, f. 91v. He later became a gentleman of the privy chamber extraordinary under Charles I.34LC3/1. From 1619 he had served as the recorder of the corporation of Wells and so was elected to represent that city in the four Parliaments between 1621 and 1626. In 1628 he was one of the knights of the shire for Somerset.

By the 1630s Rodeney ranked as one of the leading gentlemen of Somerset. He held most of the county offices. He served as a justice of the peace throughout this period.35QS Recs. Som. Charles I, 23-298; Som. Assize Orders 1629-1640, 8, 46; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 404; 1633-4, p. 351. His duties as a deputy lieutenant were combined with those as a colonel in the county militia.36Wells Convocation Acts Bks. i. 415, 418; Som. RO, DD/PH/222/7; DD/PH/223/46-7. He took seriously his role as the local vice-admiral.37CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 501; 1629-31, pp. 74-5; 1635, pp. 33, 55; 1635-6, p. 374; 1637-8, pp. 179, 362, 502. He gave every appearance of being an assiduous public servant who willingly implemented royal policy within his county.38CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 445. His attitude towards the king’s religious policies may also have been supportive. In 1625 he paid for the installation of a new chancel screen in the parish church at Rodney Stoke. At such an early date that was perhaps not an example of ‘Laudian’ redecoration. More telling, however, is that in 1634 he added a new communion table, pulpit and font cover.39Pevsner, North Som. and Bristol (1958), 252. This same interest in ecclesiastical décor can be seen in the encouragement he gave to the Wells corporation in 1633 to contribute to the collection for the repair of St Paul’s Cathedral in London.40Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 606. He was also among donors who paid for the re-glazing of the windows of Bath Abbey.41J. Britton, Hist. and Antiquities of Bath Abbey Church (1825), 206. However, Rodeney’s own manuscript notes show that he still believed in the doctrine of predestination.42CUL, Dd.III.84, ff. 76-77v. Those writings, which consist mostly of extensive religious advice prepared for the benefit of his children, confirm his deep piety.43CUL, Dd.III.84, ff. 59-125; Add. 34239, ff. 21-44, 52-67. His friends included the late dean of Wells Cathedral, Ralph Barlow, for when Barlow died in 1631, Rodeney acted as the joint overseer of his will.44Brown, Abstracts of Som. Wills, i. 56.

In 1640 Rodeney was again an obvious person to be selected to sit for Wells in Parliament. The letter he wrote to the Wells corporation in December 1639 was almost certainly a request, however veiled, that they consider him for the seat. His wish was granted. On 19 March 1640 Rodeney was elected as MP for Wells, along with John Baber*, the man who had succeeded him as the city’s recorder 15 years earlier.45Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 774, 781. In the elections for the county seats he probably supported John Coventry* and Sir Ralph Hopton*.46Cal. Corresp. Smyth Fam. 195.

Although there is no mention of Rodeney in the Commons Journal for the Short Parliament, he does not appear to have been completely inactive. On 14 April the mayor of Wells informed the corporation that Rodeney had suggested that they try to get Parliament to consider resolving the disagreements involving the city’s companies of tradesmen.47Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 782. However, no move appears to have been made to raise this in the Commons before the dissolution four weeks later.

The following October Rodeney, Baber and Sir Ralph Hopton* all offered their services to Wells in the next Parliament. Rodeney and Hopton were elected on 17 October.48Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 795, 796. During the first year of the Long Parliament, Rodeney was more obviously active than he had been in any of his previous Parliaments. Some of the committees on which he sat, such as those on monopolies (19 Nov. 1640), to examine witnesses for the impeachment of the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) (30 Nov.) or on the bill for annual Parliaments (30 Dec.), were matters of national importance.49CJ ii. 31a, 39b, 60a. He also took the Protestation on 3 May 1641.50CJ ii. 133b; Som. Protestation Returns, 148. Other issues were more matters in which he had a specific personal interest. His inclusion on the committee to consider the bill for the levying of mariners (8 and 10 May 1641) was doubtless a result of his role as a vice-admiral.51CJ ii. 139b, 141b. Similarly, as a militia colonel himself he was well placed to have an informed opinion on the bill to regulate musters and trained bands (15 June, 24 July).52CJ ii. 212b, 223a. His final confirmed appearances in the Commons were in mid-December 1641 when he was named to the committees concerned with the alleged breach of privilege arising from the decision to send the London trained bands to protect (or, alternatively, to coerce) Parliament.53CJ ii. 340a, 343b. Thereafter he disappears from the Journals. Given his subsequent stance, there must be a strong possibility that he was becoming increasingly disenchanted with Parliament’s stance against the king and so was losing interest in participating in its proceedings.

When the civil war broke out in 1642, the lead in organising royalist support in Somerset was taken by the 1st marquess of Hertford (Sir William Seymour†). Hertford was Rodeney’s second cousin twice removed, as well as his landlord, as he owned the lands at Pilton. He was also one of Sir Edward’s closest friends. Years before they had attended school and university together and Rodeney had accompanied the future marquess on the first leg of his continental grand tour. Rodeney later wrote (in the third person) that

he [Rodeney] readily exposed himself to any hazard to be in his [Hertford’s] company, and since so much favour from the same person being marquess and so much respect from Sir Edward Rodeney to the marquess as to no man so much.54‘Genealogy of the fam. of Rodney’, xvii. 103.

This personal connection is certainly one reason why Rodeney came out in support of the king and made him someone on whom Hertford immediately depended.

But there was much more to Rodeney’s royalism than that. His private writings show that he was convinced that legitimate political power derived from the patriarchal authority of fathers and, through them, from God. He explicitly denied that it could depend on the consent of the people.55CUL, Dd.III.84, ff. 103v-105v; Add. 34239, ff. 23-26. As these comments were made in an essay which betrays no awareness of either the civil war or the fate of Charles I, it is likely that these were views he already held before 1642. As a royalist, Rodeney was a true believer.

Given that he was already a deputy lieutenant and a militia colonel, Rodeney was particularly well placed to ensure that at least some of the Somerset militia supported the king. He was now included on the king’s commission of array for the county.56Northants. RO, FH133, unfol. In late July he provided about 100 men to join Hertford at the major royalist rendezvous at Wells. They were said to be ‘well armed, but not so well resolved, for they stood not by him, when there was occasion.57Bellum Civile, 3. On 4 August he and William Walrond requested gunpowder and ammunition from the Wells corporation.58Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 831. Hertford was reviewing Rodeney’s troops just outside the city on 5 August when the pro-parliamentarian forces led by Sir John Horner*, Alexander Popham* and John Pyne* came into view.59Bellum Civile, 9. Outnumbered, Hertford retreated the following day.

The Commons was quick to make plain their displeasure against Rodeney. On 22 July, when his support for the king had first become apparent, they had summoned him to attend to explain himself.60CJ ii. 685b; PJ iii. 252. Rodeney had ignored them. The next step was to expel him from Parliament. The Commons voted to do so on 12 August.61CJ ii. 716b. Worse was to come. On August 1642 his name was among those of the prominent royalists whom the Commons agreed to impeach.62CJ ii. 745a-b. Within weeks impeachment articles against him had been prepared and had been sent up to the Lords.63LJ v. 360a.

In the meantime, Rodeney continued to support the efforts to secure Somerset for the king. In early October he and Sir Edward Berkeley led the defence of Hopton’s house at Witham. When they came under attack from some of Pyne’s troops, they were forced to surrender. Rodeney, Berkeley and Hertford’s chaplain, James Dugdale, were then transported to London, where they were imprisoned in the Counter in Wood Street.64Certaine and true News from Somerset-shire (1642, E.122.18). The claim made in print at the time that the trio had appeared at the bar of the Commons as delinquents on 12 October is not confirmed by the Commons Journal.65The Queenes Resolution Discovered (1642), 3-5 (E.130.28); CJ ii. 804b-806a.

Rodeney was still being held in Wood Street in January 1643 when he petitioned the House of Lords. Rather implausibly, he tried to claim that he had taken no part in the war. His main concern, however, was to get transferred to more comfortable confinement. His request was that, as his health was suffering, he should be imprisoned in Edward Stone’s house at Westminster. The Lords were sympathetic and advised the Commons to grant this wish.66LJ v. 560b-561a, 567a; CJ ii. 932b. News of this decision reached Somerset as garbled reports that Rodeney had been bailed, prompting complaints from some of the local parliamentarians. When, a week later, the Commons raised those complaints with the Lords, the peers had to remind them that all that had been done was to change Rodeney’s place of imprisonment.67LJ v. 577b. Several weeks later the Commons ordered the Somerset deputy lieutenants and county committee to ensure that all arms were removed from Rodeney’s house at Pilton.68CJ ii. 961a. By March 1643 the Lords had agreed to relax the conditions of his imprisonment, once again on the pretext of his health problems. Rodeney was to be allowed to visit his family at Westminster and to walk within the grounds of Westminster Abbey, provided that he was escorted at all times by Stone.69LJ v. 629a. He seems finally to have been released in late August 1643, as the Wells corporation then agreed to ride out to Pilton to greet him on his return.70Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 853. Talk by Parliament of impeaching him seems to have been quietly abandoned.

If Rodeney had made any undertakings that he would avoid participation in the war, he did not keep his word. By January 1644 he had taken his seat in the Oxford Parliament.71Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 574. He later brought with him 200 men to the rendezvous with the king at Ilchester in July 1644.72Symonds, Diary, 36. These were formed into a regiment of foot which saw action at the second battle of Newbury three months later.73Scott, Battles of Newbury, 124. He was also present as one of the royalist defenders of Bristol during Sir Thomas Fairfax*’s siege of the city in August and September 1645. This meant that he was covered by the terms of Prince Rupert’s surrender. On 6 October, he therefore applied to the Committee for Compounding in London for permission to compound for his delinquency.74CCAM 432; CCC 916. The year before the Committee for Advance of Money had set his fine at £1,200. This was now reduced to £600. As a precaution, the Committee on 12 November ordered that he be imprisoned in Ely House in London. He was released on 1 December only after giving securities for that money.75CCAM 432. The following March the Committee for Compounding set his composition fine at £1,200. That autumn, after he had failed to pay this, the Somerset sequestration commissioners proceeded to sequester his estates.76CCC 73, 916. This was enough to persuade Rodeney to cooperate and by April 1648 he had agreed to pay them this money. On that basis, Parliament pardoned him.77LJ x. 198a-b. However, Rodeney paid the first instalment and then defaulted. National events, not least the execution of the king, may have strengthened his doubts about submitting to Parliament. The result of Rodeney’s intransigence was that his estates were re-sequestered in February 1649. This was lifted several months later only once it was agreed that he could pay £40 a year each to the rectors of Pilton and Westbury in lieu of the remaining money he owed.78CCC 916. In early 1650 he still owed money to the Committee for Advance of Money.79CCAM 432.

By the summer of 1650 the more zealous West Country royalists were planning an uprising. Rodeney was probably involved, quite possibly heavily, and his younger brother, William, was certainly involved, for he carried messages from the conspirators to Charles Stuart.80D. Underdown, Som. in the Civil War and Interregnum (1973), 161. In August 1650 the plot began to unravel. The government discovered what was going on and rounded up the usual suspects. Those arrested included Sir Edward. He and the other alleged ringleaders were held in Taunton Castle. Some of his religious meditations, on the existence of God, the nature of sin and the appropriate manner of praying, were probably written during the early weeks of his imprisonment.81CUL, Dd.III.84, ff. 65v-71. He was not released until June 1651 when he paid bail of £1,000 from himself and a further £1,000 from two sureties.82CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 338, 371-2; 1651, pp. 169, 194, 234. He attributed his release to the efforts of his son, George.83‘Genealogy of the fam. of Rodney’, xvii. 105. Later that summer the Committee for Advance of Money was still trying to pursue Rodeney for the money he owed them.84CAM 432.

Within months of his release, Rodeney endured a particularly distressing family bereavement. On 30 November 1651 his fifth and last surviving son, George, who was still aged only 22, died. He was buried in the family chapel at Rodney Stoke, where Sir Edward erected a large monument to mark this loss.85Collinson, Som. iii. 607; Add. 34239, ff. 1-2, 91v-105v; Pevsner, North Som. 252. Although he had nephews by his two brothers, Rodeney now considered himself to be the last of the Rodeneys. He tried to be philosophical. In the family history he now compiled to ensure that his daughters’ families would not forget their Rodeney ancestors, he mused that

Five hundred years is the common period of kingdoms; and very few or no families go beyond that period, very many come short of it; so as in true account, it is rather a blessing to have lasted so long, than a punishment to end at last.86‘Genealogy of the fam. of Rodney’, xvii. 105.

George may have been the son whose loss he mourned by acknowledging to God that ‘my sins have justly deserved the greatest punishment of thy wrath’.87CUL, Dd.III.84, f. 97v.

Rodeney had six surviving daughters. One, Penelope, had already married Sir Peter Gleane†, who during the 1640s had served as a royalist officer under Sir Thomas Bridges, husband of another married daughter, Anna. It was probably during the final years of his life that the Rodney Stoke estates were settled to the use of Rodeney’s three unmarried daughters.88PROB11/297/167. His will, made the day before he died in 1657, left the rest of his property entirely to his wife.89PROB11/266/391; PROB11/267/20. He was then buried at Rodney Stoke.90Rodney Stoke par. reg.; Collinson, Som. iii. 607; Pevsner, North Som. 252. It was left to his widow to finalise the financial arrangements for the daughters. On her death in 1649 she left the lease on the lands at Pilton to Elizabeth, the eldest of the unmarried daughters, on condition that she surrender her share in the settlement of the Rodney Stoke lands; Elizabeth was also appointed as her sole executrix. Lady Rodeney also left instructions that her lands at Backwell were to be sold to their neighbour, John Churchill† of Churchill.91PROB11/297/167. The lands at Rodney Stoke eventually passed to Sir Edward’s great-great-nephew, George Brydges Rodney†, who was raised to the peerage as Baron Rodney of Rodney Stoke in 1782.92HP Commons 1754-1790.