ROWE (ROE), Sir Thomas (1581-1644), of St Martin’s Lane, Westminster, and Woodford, Essex.

Almost certainly its most widely travelled Member, Rowe (who thus signed himself) brought to the Long Parliament a wealth of experience of commercial and political affairs in and beyond Europe.31Bodl. Ashmole 1111, f. 33v. He had worked closely with members of the privy council, individually and collectively, yet he was also his own man, with a reputation for integrity and incorruptibility. Of shrewd and penetrating judgement, he had submitted to the government several robust schemes for the improvement of his country, and even from afar he had watched as closely as he could the course of the previous two Parliaments. He still had viable ideas in the winter of 1640-1. Yet for all his considerable perspicacity he appears to have underestimated the extent to which the king and some Members had come to distrust each other by this time, and thus he was ineffectual in his efforts to promote compromise for the public good. The negative impact of trouble at home on England’s image abroad and the impossibility of obtaining supply to fund cherished policies continued to exercise him greatly. Absent on embassy for a critical period in 1641-2, he returned to find himself in limbo – entrusted by the king to oversee foreign missions, but alienated from the royal court; acknowledged as a Member at Westminster until at least July 1644, but assessed for delinquency and afraid to go to London.

Connections, counsel and view of Parliament

At the beginning of Charles I’s personal rule, Rowe’s first two stints of parliamentary service were already well behind him, and he had only recently arrived in London after an extended period as ambassador in Constantinople.32Coventry Docquets, 89; Strachan, Sir Thomas Roe, 134-88; CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 407. None the less, in a letter of 20 March 1629 Rowe wrote perceptively from his usual lodgings in St Martin’s Lane to Horace Vere, 1st Baron Vere, English commander in the Netherlands, of ‘the funeral of our parliament’. Characteristically, he castigated MPs for foolishly risking all in a good cause, only to lose everything. Their ‘zeal’ had been ‘vented with more passion than wisdom’; they ‘were thrust upon a work that hath shipwrecked all, and by striving for a shadow of liberty have lost the substance’. His habitual confidence in Charles, which led him to assert that, had Members ‘first given the king the ancient benevolence … and so sweetened the first actions, they might have done what they pleased in the establishing of religion’, was open to question. However, his ‘fearful conclu[sion] that not only all mouths are stopped, but the parliament doors sealed for many years’, with a diminution in trade in the meantime, proved all too prophetic.33L.J. Reeves, ‘Sir Thomas Roe’s prophecy of 1629’, BIHR lvi. 115-21. It also set the tone for his stance a decade later.

Although regularly disabled by gout, Rowe was eager for further employment.34CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 523. In June 1629 he was despatched to the Baltic with the joint objectives of securing the area for British and Dutch trade and setting up concerted campaigns in Germany by Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and Bethlen Gabor of Transylvania, the target in both cases being the power of the Habsburgs. The mission, which took him from Copenhagen via Danzig (now Gdansk) to Warsaw and then Hamburg, was based on his own proposals, discussed with his longstanding friends and patrons the exiled king and queen of Bohemia, and was intended to contribute to the long-term goal he shared with them of the restoration of their palatinate on the Rhine. It had mixed success, but eventually brought him a present worth about £2,500 from Gustavus Adolphus in recognition of ‘his good counsel and persuasions, to which’ that king reportedly ‘next under God’s own hand … does impute all his happy proceedings’.35CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 575, 577; 1629-31, p. 6; 1631-3, pp. 276-7; The Private Corresp. of Jane Lady Cornwallis Bacon 1613-1644 ed. J. Moody (2003), 213-4; Strachan, Sir Thomas Roe, 189-208; Corresp. of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia.

Having returned to St Martin’s Lane shortly before 4 July 1630, Rowe embarked on his most prolonged stay in England since 1615.36CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 306. He acquired a residence in Northamptonshire and in time joined its commission of the peace, but although he occasionally claimed to be in retirement, excluded from a royal court whose ways were mysterious, most of his correspondence reveals his continuing ambition.37Strachan, Sir Thomas Roe, 210-11; HP Commons 1604-1629; CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 32 He cultivated courtiers and councillors including Henry Rich†, 1st earl of Holland, Lord Treasurer Sir Richard Weston†, 1st earl of Portland, the secretary of state Sir Dudley Carleton†, 1st Viscount Dorchester, the chancellor of the exchequer Sir Francis Cottington†, 1st Baron Cottington, and Thomas Wentworth†, 1st Viscount Wentworth (later earl of Strafford), acquiring what one commentator designated a ‘cabinet’ of supporters.38CSP Dom. 1629-31, pp. 344, 350, 354; 1631-3, p. 323; 1633-4, pp. 81, 100, 113, 133; 1634-5, pp. 74, 75, 77, 151, 166, 338, 460. One motive was to obtain reimbursement for expenses related to his embassies, including for several thousand pounds worth of diamonds bought for the king, payment for which came in instalments through the 1630s.39CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 559; 1631-3, p. 367; 1634-5, pp. 11-12, 27, 72; 1635, pp. 202-3, 245; 1635-6, pp. 1, 399. But proffering counsel appears to have been second nature to him and he was a constant promoter of trading ventures.40CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 354. While maintaining an interest in the Baltic, in 1631 he was entrusted by the king with preparations for a voyage to discover a north west passage to China and the Indies and appointed a commissioner to review the state of the colony in Virginia.41CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 236; Rymer, Foedera viii. pt. 3, p 192; Strachan, Sir Thomas Roe, 211-21. Over the next few years he became a commissioner for piracy, rose to deputy governor in the Fishery Company and joined the Merchant Adventurers.42C115/M35/8398; HMC 5th Rep. 355; CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 203, 297, 489. Spells of unavoidable idleness or constricting illness gave time for constructive reflection, as expressed in the 17-page discourse on England’s natural allies, sent to the earl of Holland in 1632. For Rowe, Sweden and the Netherlands were self-evidently friends and Spain the obvious enemy.43CSP Dom. 1631-3, pp. 350, 401. A trenchant anti-Catholic, he advised on how to avoid idolatry in Italy (recourse to the word of God) and reported with satisfaction the progress of Protestantism in Poland, although he was convinced that the papacy now aimed at nothing less than its eradication everywhere.44CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 405; 1633-4, p. 133; 1634-5, pp. 9-11, 80, 84; 1635, p. 11.

This outlook did not make Rowe a natural ally of William Laud, and was perhaps one reason why, having looked the most likely candidate, he was passed over in favour of Francis Windebanke* when in 1632 a successor was sought for Dorchester.45Strachan, Sir Thomas Roe, 221; cf. W. Laud, Works ed. J. Bliss, W. Scott (Oxford, 1847-60), vii. 74. However, Rowe did about this time regain a position as an extraordinary gentleman of the privy chamber and, perhaps driven by a realisation that co-operation was indispensable to realising his schemes, he worked hard thereafter to this end.46LC5/132, p. 284; Laud, Works, vii. 48-51, 73-5, 86-8. The archbishop, he assured Elizabeth of Bohemia (to whom he could be frank), improved upon acquaintance and was more obliging than his reputation alleged; of ‘good inclinations’, he had ‘as much credit [with the king] as ever any servant had’, but ‘not versed in foreign affairs’ he was ‘fearful to engage himself and his master in new ways’ and did not lack rivals in power.47CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 41, 441. For a long time there was no appreciable return on Rowe’s patient commendation of his longstanding client, John Durie, and his schemes for European protestant ecumenism, and his equally persistent promotion of the interests of the young Charles Louis, elector palatine, sometimes manifested in lengthy papers, and occasionally conducted at Lambeth or Rowe’s residence.48CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 75; 1633-4, p. 149; 1635-6, pp. 142, 342-3, 400-3; 1636-7, pp. 86, 99-100; Bodl. Rawl. C.911; Laud, Works, vii. 265-6, 271. Laud himself advised that, although he had spoken to the king on Rowe’s behalf, ‘more and more often … than ever I promised you to do, or than ever I thought I should have had opportunity to do’ and had ‘received at all times very good answers, yet, notwithstanding,’ he could not see ‘any footing given me upon which I can ground any hopes to serve you’.49Laud, Works, vii. 74. In October 1636 Rowe felt the need to defend himself vigorously to Laud against charges of being impertinently and disloyally ‘busy’ in these matters.50CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 154. But within a few months he had both undertakings from Laud to disseminate Durie’s views and tangible proof of favour when he was made (by January 1637) chancellor of the order of the Garter.51CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 216, 219, 239, 336, 356, 378, 400.

Rowe prepared conscientiously for the Garter role, which brought him into closer contact with leading nobility and foreign dignitaries.52Bodl. Ashmole 1109, ff. 208-211v; 1111, ff. 39v, 131v-132; 1115, f. 80; CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 61, 529, 531. Consulted on various policy matters in 1637, he dismissed as ludicrous the notion of sending Prince Rupert to Madagascar, but, to the young prince elector’s satisfaction, took infinite pains over accommodation of the latter in proposals for a commercial and colonisation initiative in the West Indies – an initiative which Rowe well knew might provoke war with Spain.53CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 227-8, 310, 336-7, 429-30, 553-5. Meanwhile, while continuing to pursue his ecumenical interests, he kept an eye on the situation in Sweden, maintained cordial relations with Protestant leaders abroad, reported (January 1638) from the commission on piracy with a carefully considered proposal to send a fleet to the Barbary coast to take hostages to exchange for English prisoners.54CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 80, 392-3, 435, 493, 503-5, 557; 1637, p. 413; 1637-8, pp. 192, 264.

Although he expressed reservations about court life, by 1635 convenience led Rowe to take a house closer to London at Cranford, Middlesex, where again he was appointed to the commission of the peace.55CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 510; 1636-7, p. 352; Strachan, Sir Thomas Roe, 225. This move too proved temporary. Mooted as early as June 1637 as a potential envoy to Hamburg, on 5 May 1638 he was issued with a commission to go there to treat with the king of France, the queen of Sweden and estates of ‘Belgium’ for a general peace and for the restoration of the elector palatine.56CSP Dom. 1637, p. 206, 308; Rymer, Foedera, ii. 896, 897; E.A. Beller, ‘The Mission of Sir Thomas Roe to the Conference at Hamburg’, EHR xli. 61-77. Rowe made some headway in establishing good relations with Denmark, but the aim of his mission was from the outset over-ambitious: Laud, while praising later his achievement, observed that ‘as for that for which you were principally sent, I never thought from the beginning that any good could come of it’.57Add. 4168, esp. f. 141; Laud Works, vii. 599. Quite apart from frequent illness, Rowe’s efforts were increasingly overshadowed by the fall-out from events in Scotland. This diverted the attention of Laud and other councillors at home, and both undermined and dictated Rowe’s diplomacy.58Laud, Works, vii. 458-60, 472-3, 486-7, 494-5, 530-1, 558-9; CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 599; HMC Cowper, ii. 224; Add. 4168-4170, passim. He passed on intelligence about Scots’ activities on the continent, proffered welcome advice on economic sanctions through imposing a stranglehold on the coal trade, and in spring 1639 concluded a contract to supply armaments for the English army in the north, although Laud was less than impressed with their quality.59Laud, Works, vii. 548, 577-8; CSP Dom. 1639, pp. 54, 143, 188, 316, 402; 1639-40, pp. 134, 137, 323; 1640, pp. 92-3. In November Rowe sent a paper detailing how General Leslie might be prevented from returning to Scotland with munitions and other supplies.60Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 979; CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 371. Clearly in agreement with the archbishop’s view of ‘impudent rebels [who] pretend religion for their cloak’, he considered that the Scots were ‘a nation to be treated, as a people impatient of government, and dangerous to be set at liberty’.61Laud, Works, vii. 576; Add. 4169, f. 159v.

Hearing late in 1639 of the intention to call a Parliament in England, Rowe commended it to Laud as the only answer ‘to the general and spread diseases of the time’, but ‘as in natural bodies and their cures, the best and most virtual drugs are most dangerous’. The king would ‘now play the greatest game of all his life, equal to a battle’. Parliaments, especially the Commons – factionally divided and ‘unstable, unquiet, easily raised with a gust of wind’ – must be guided with moderation: ‘it is less dangerous every way to ply and bend than to break … that which is broken is of no more use’.62Add. 4170, f. 126. Convinced that his counsel would be invaluable in keeping business at Westminster on course, even if he returned too late to be elected an MP, he pressed with increasing urgency for a recall to England, ‘it being a death to waste in idleness’.63Add. 4170, f. 156 and passim. Rowe’s correspondents endorsed his sentiments and in the meantime he was nominated comptroller of the royal household, but he was squeezed out by others prepared to offer thousands of pounds for that office and his revocation reached him only in late March 1640.64CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 351, 433-4, 494, 526, 564, 589; Laud, Works, vii. 597, 600. Hope to arrive in time to ‘work upon men’s affection’ and inform MPs of ‘the foreign dangers only fomented by our own private follies or worse’ was dashed; logistical difficulties delayed his return to London until May.65Add. 1470, f. 180v; 1471, f. 5v; CSP Dom. 1640, p. 194.

A disappointed and pain-wracked Rowe contemplated retirement into ‘a private life’, but within days was being spoken of in connection with a new embassy to Cologne or an imperial diet.66Add. 1471, f. 9; CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 209, 270, 320-1, 345, 531. More immediately, he received his opportunity to assist his ‘dear distempered country’ and his ‘good king’, forced by lack of money to ‘do that which otherwise his own goodness, reason and profit would be against’.67Add. 1471, ff. 18, 20, 23, 23v. He continued to organise supply of arms and military stores from the Netherlands and soon joined the privy council.68CSP Dom. 1640, p. 374-5. Sworn in on 23 June, he became an active and loyal member, protesting to the earl of Holland that, with Charles in the north, ‘I can remember, nor consider no other part of the world, while my master, the joy of Israel, lies in tents, nor have a wish left, but for his safety and victory’.69PC2/52, pp. 572-752; CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 369, 47; Add. 1471, f. 35. Yet Rowe’s loyalty was informed rather than abject, and proceeded partly from his acute sense of the damage done to the king’s reputation abroad by the failure of Parliament.70CSP Dom. 1640, p. 565. As well as keeping his eye on suspicious Scotsmen in London and beyond, he continued to promote Durie, received reforming tracts from Samuel Hartlib and delivered to the council in July a measured and authoritative opinion on a plan to improve the coinage.71Sir Thomas Rowe his Speech at the Councell Table (1641); CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 547, 568-9, 623; 1640-1, pp. 17, 101-2.

Remaining in London in September (to the regret of his ardent champion Elizabeth of Bohemia) he supplied councillors at York with intelligence and encouragement, declaring confidence in the king’s capacity for independent judgement, ‘as from a clear fountain of wisdom’, but he neither underestimated the Scots’ power to do harm nor ‘feare[d] to tell truths fit to be known’. Recent royal proclamations, he told the secretary of state Sir Henry Vane I*, ‘have done much harm and blown up new, unseasonable murmurings; there is a time to smooth and to relax, as well as to pretend right’.72Add. 1471, ff. 37-8; CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 120, 131. A petition against the Canons issued by Convocation, directed to the council, received a typically temperate response: ‘nothing relishes all men … even the wisdom of the clergy may be deceived in their medicines to cure as well as the physicians’; ‘perhaps the medicines in themselves orthodoxical, but not seasonably applied, or the disease mistaken’.73Add. 1471, ff. 38-9. As the City of London revealed itself through September to be increasingly uncontrollable, Rowe advised that, ‘in such a conjuncture I would not press things not likely to be obtained, and thereby teach, or necessitate, a disobedience’. While he recognised that it was ‘impertinent for me to intrude into your counsels’, he observed that ‘nothing will be securely settled, neither among ourselves nor with the Scots, but by Parliament. Yet nothing can be of more scorn, than to hold that assembly, with a rebel’s sword over our head.’ Anything agreed would be vulnerable to the objection that it was obtained under ‘fear and compulsion’. He therefore advocated a truce whereby the English peerage and people would declare their faith that the king would address grievances and the Scots would retire ‘and dutifully attend the issue of his Majesty’s grace’. If the Scots refused, the English would be bound in honour to unite to expel them, for if the invaders were to hold

Newcastle till the issue of a Parliament and his Majesty in consequence keep his army (not to trust them that will not trust him), more than half the kingdom will be undone, and less able to relieve the king in Parliament, or to beat them out.74Add. 1471, f. 42v.

Long Parliament: early weeks

The disjunction between, on the one hand, Rowe’s realism about implementing policies in London and his gloomy prognosis for Parliament and, on the other, his optimism about the cohesive effect of fear may have been apparent to the recipients of his letters in the north. None the less, an expectation that he would be an effective advocate for the privy council may have combined with the appeal of his evident moderation in forwarding his candidature for the Long Parliament. His Garter role doubtless influenced the mayor and leading members of the corporation of New Windsor in choosing him as one of their representatives, but at an early stage Rowe – who had some opportunity to canvas in early October between council meetings – opted for Oxford University, where he was elected as senior member on the 17th.75CJ ii. 47a-b; PC2/53, pp. 5, 16-7, 25; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 248. That seat had customarily been in the gift of the chancellor, at this juncture Laud, but Wood’s assertion that the choice of Rowe was unopposed should not necessarily be taken at face value.76Wood, Hist. Univ. Oxford (1786), ii. 424. He had earned the gratitude of some for his gifts of oriental and late medieval manuscripts a decade earlier but he may also have had to work at cultivating friends of Laud’s rival for influence, Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke.77CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 542; 1629-31, p. 530; 1631-3, p. 67. Rowe and the earl shared many interests and had worked together, but their different personalities may not previously have made them natural allies; significantly or not, a rare letter from Rowe to Pembroke in September made no mention of elections.78Add. 1471, ff. 41v-42.

Part of the earl marshal’s procession at the opening of Parliament on 3 November, for its first seven weeks Rowe was a highly visible Member of the House.79CJ ii. 20a. He was sometimes an apologist for the government, as when he placed responsibility for the imprisonment of Henry Burton and John Bastwick in 1637 on the courts of justice rather than the council or the king (7 Nov.) and when he assured his colleagues ‘upon his reputation’ that Charles had no sinister intent to move against the City of London in reviewing the garrison at the Tower (11 Nov.).80Procs. LP i. 42, 100, 102, 107, 110. Later (17 Feb. 1641) his name headed the list of those delegated to prepare an act confirming grants made by the king to the queen.81CJ ii. 87b. But he had regard to constitutional proprieties, moving that the records of the House be kept under lock and key (7 Nov.); it was he who relayed messages between king and Commons in the delicate matter of the restoration to the executors of Sir Edward Coke† of his papers seized in 1629 (7 Dec.; 6 Feb. 1641).82Procs. LP i. 31, 489, 497; CJ ii. 80a. Nominated first on 30 November to the committee to confer with the Lords about the presence of observers from the Commons at the trial of Thomas Wentworth, now earl of Strafford, he had previously proposed that its members be permitted to speak at their own discretion.83Procs. LP i. 342; CJ ii. 39b; LJ iv. 101a. His subsequent position on the trial is unclear, but in February he was the conduit for a message from Oxford University’s steward, Thomas Howard, 1st earl of Berkshire, in which the earl defended himself to MPs against accusations made by Strafford during proceedings.84Procs. LP ii. 565.

Rowe’s independence of Charles’s chief ministers was, characteristically, manifest in his stance against popery. Placed on the committee to oversee implementation of the proclamation disarming recusants (9 Nov.), he none the less ‘made a moderate speech to show that other foreign princes have admitted papists’ (30 Nov.), but he was vigilant when security appeared to be compromised by laxity.85CJ ii. 24b; Procs. LP i. 376 Diarists noted his view that the proclamation should be extended to cover unconvicted recusants and that MPs coming to Westminster communion services should, ‘for the prevention of deceit’, bring with them certificates of previous attendance (9, 28 Nov.).86Procs. LP i. 64, 65, 356. He put before the House the case of Kentish justice of the peace Sir Michael Livesay*, who had been threatened by members of the Finch family after he had insisted on administering the oath of allegiance (23 Nov.).87Procs. LP i. 252, 255, 258–9. All the same, added on 9 February 1641 to the committee to consider the root and branch petition, he probably argued vigorously against many of its demands.88CJ ii. 81b. As he wrote that month to Joseph Avery, English agent in Hamburg, among other concerns his ‘great fear’ was ‘an utter subversion of the Church government, which many do press to root out bishops, deans and chapters and liturgy, and to reduce all to a presbytery’; the risk was ‘to bring in confusion, instead of reformation’.89Add. 1471, f. 51.

Elsewhere Rowe’s experience and constructive attitude still had some scope. In addition to miscellaneous activity on private petitions and disputed elections he was named to committees on the plight of prisoners of the Turks (10 Dec.) and on the colony in Virginia (18 Dec.).90CJ ii. 39b, 48b, 49b. He explained to the Commons the difficulties of recruiting and retaining mariners, and advised a bill which would keep the navy up to strength without infringing subjects’ liberties (16 Apr.).91Procs. LP iii. 585. At some point he delivered a version of his speech to the council in July 1640, proposing remedies for the scarcity of coin and the depression in trade. His solutions, which included solving political ‘troubles’ in order to improve confidence, agreeing international exchange rates, grounding exports in basic commodities like wool and fish, turning drained fenland over to hemp and flax, embracing new draperies and granting freedom of worship to immigrants, contained much good sense.92CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 281; Sir Thomas Roe his Speech in Parliament (1641, E.198.31); cf. Procs. LP iv. 86.

The evidence suggests, however, that, as he had foreseen, Rowe’s parliamentary activity was dominated by the negotiations with the Scots. It was doubtless an indicator of the gravity with which he viewed the crisis that in early November 1640 and in April 1641 he was prominent in liaison with the Lords over fast days.93CJ ii. 22a, 23a, 23b, 24a, 122b; LJ iv. 84b; Procs. LP i. 58. With fellow university Member John Selden and four others he prepared the joint declaration on the treaty with the Scots at Ripon and York (12 Nov.).94CJ ii. 27a, 27b. The next day he made what Simonds D’Ewes* considered ‘a moderate and discreet’ speech outlining how the Commons might persuade the hitherto reluctant City of London to raise money for the king’s forces.95Procs. LP i. 131, 132, 135, 141. On the 18th he gave a ‘very long’ report from the committee of both Houses on the state of affairs in the north, which conveyed to hearers an impression that the Scots had very much the upper hand.96CJ ii. 30b; Procs. LP i. 165-6, 168, 169, 170-1. Two days later he reported from the same committee the king’s reappointment of treaty commissioners, moving for speedy resolution of their powers; he depicted in some detail the pressing and costly needs of both armies.97CJ ii. 32b, 33a; Procs. LP i. 211-14, 218-9. On the 21st he pleased D’Ewes with another ‘excellent motion’ for securing city money to underwrite the treaty, offering £1,000 security for the loan on his own account, and then returned to the Lords to convey the Commons’ approval of the lords commissioners and their determination that no outcome should be binding without Commons’ consent.98LJ iv. 95b; Procs. LP i. 228, 231. Called upon again on 4 December to report progress to the Commons, and convey the Lords’ assurance that they would not unilaterally renew the truce, he was somewhat unconvincingly self-deprecating.99CJ ii. 45a; Procs. LP i. 463. He begged leave to read his notes and hoped that his hearers would ‘not expect from my age and weakness a repetition of the same words’ used by John Digby, 1st earl of Bristol, and the lord keeper, John Finch, 1st Baron Finch, to the committee of both Houses, ‘a task too great for my memory unpractised for many years in such exactness’. He then proceeded to speak at considerable length, eschewing comment only on two additional papers presented to him because ‘I know not how or to what use to employ them’.100Bodl. Rawl. A.78, ff. 197-219v. His relation having proved acceptable, he was then sent back to the Upper House with the Commons’ assent.101LJ iv. 104b. Evidently prepared, for the sake of expediting peace negotiations, to concur in ‘the funeral of Ship Money’ on 7 December, he spoke for the carriage to the Lords of the vote abolishing it, and he continued to push for subsidies to relieve the northern counties and pay off the armies.102Procs. LP i. 493, 557, 636; CJ ii. 53a. On 15 February 1641 he was nominated second after the Treasurer in a delegation to attend the king with the resulting bill.103CJ ii. 85b.

‘All is like a broken glass’: the 1641 embassy

An absence from the Commons Journals between 18 December 1640 and 6 February 1641 is more than accounted for by the nine weeks of ‘sickness and pains’ of which Rowe complained in correspondence. It evidently engendered a mood close to despair. He could hardly bring himself to talk of Parliament to the queen of Bohemia: ‘all is like a broken glass wherein we see a hundred faces, hardly to be so joined as to see but one’; ‘I … am now as willing to die as to live’.104Add. 1471, ff. 49v-50v. Cataloguing to Avery a list of ills – the flight of Coventry and Windebanke, the fall of Laud and Strafford, the possibility that the judges would be removed, and the threat to the church – he anticipated that the Scottish treaty would stall ‘till the Parliament have all their ends’. In the meantime the burden of subsidies would only increase the people’s grievances. All was ‘in confusion’; ‘I fear more than I dare write’. Rowe felt immune to personal censure – ‘I am like to have no share in these charges, because I have stood neutral, upright, and not given my self to any faction’ – but this was little consolation.105Add. 1471, ff. 51-2. Not only had his peacemaking efforts been fruitless, but he had also accomplished nothing for the elector palatine, and even attempts to secure the election of his colleague and kinsman Sir Richard Cave* in his place at Windsor had failed.106CSP Dom. 1640, p. 535-6; 1640-1, p. 120-1, 241, 248, 263, 279, 468; Add. 1471, f. 52; Procs. LP i. 511-12. Yet Rowe’s spirits recovered somewhat with his health, and in a swansong to the Commons on 24 April he made ‘a long speech touching fishing, herrings, to prevent export of money and decay of trade, and to keep our trade of spices in the East Indies’.107Procs. LP iv. 86.

That day he announced that he was to depart on embassy to the imperial diet, to which he had been invited by the king of Denmark and other protestant princes; at his request, he was given leave of absence. His parting gift was a petition, the contents of which are unknown, and ‘a book concerning the unity of religion’, doubtless by Durie.108Procs. LP iv. 86; CJ ii. 127a-b. As details of the ‘army plot’ unfolded at Westminster, and the ports were closed against foreign forces expected to rescue Strafford, on 6 May Rowe and his party were given a special dispensation to sail from Gravesend.109LJ iv. 236b; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 571. Detained there notwithstanding, the frustrated ambassador despatched letters from his ship – ironically, as he noted, The Hope – pointing out to Vane, the Lords and Robert Devereyx, 3rd earl of Essex, the disorder and the damage to trade and poor men’s livelihoods arising from the general embargo. ‘The tides return every season, but obedience will be long lame, if the Parliament restore it not.’ Rowe hoped that, on his return, he might ‘find you in a better state than I leave you’.110Add. 4172, ff. 1v-2; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 573.

If uncertainties at home had hampered his mission to Hamburg, this was even more the case with the embassy to the diet, which had its own labyrinthine agendas.111R.B. Mowat, ‘The Mission of Sir Thomas Roe to Vienna’, EHR xxv. 264-75. Moreover, confronted with dissension and war in Germany Rowe foresaw a ‘general desolation’ and ‘redouble[d] my prayers for peace in England’.112Add. 4172, f. 17, 18v-19. Calling in at The Hague, he was able to report some progress on discussions with the states general on differences between the English and Dutch East India Companies, but at Regensburg, plagued by gout and short of credit, he found himself confronted with the consequences of ‘this liberty of printing everything’.113Add. 4172 ff. 3v-4v, 7-8; CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 27, 70-1. He ‘humbly’ asked Vane

that it may be considered in Parliament, that they make not their debates the subject of envious discourse, and that there may be some course taken to discover those writers who, like spiders, convert all things into poison. Nothing but experience can impress what harm it doth here, and how these publishings do expose us to the public scorn.114Add. 4172, f. 41v.

He was also ‘extremely dismayed’ to learn of measures against episcopacy. These might ‘be wise for present necessities’ but a church ‘that hath no government’ would be weak. MPs had failed to grasp ‘what disreputation they cast on our first reformation, that was glorious in all the world, nor what advantage they give to the public enemy, to object us to so many innovations, dangerous in all estates’. None the less, he would ‘not yet doubt of their moderation, when they come to the last sentence’.115Add. 4172, f. 42. In the meantime, Rowe sent home for the king’s eyes only detailed accounts of rumours circulating about England, and cultivated through his correspondence a heterogeneous circle of friends; he even passed his regards to the disgraced Windebanke.116Add. 4172, ff. 25v-28v, 168, 172; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 293. News of the replacement of Pembroke as lord chamberlain by Essex brought a typical response.

I am sorry for the disfavour of my lord of Pembroke, and how can that stand with my joy of his successor, but as a true servant to both, that am glad, that yet they are friends and agree for the public service.117Add. 4172, f. 46.

By mid-October 1641 Rowe, who established cordial personal relations with the young emperor, had achieved the significant coup of securing the release of Prince Rupert from imprisonment at Linz in Austria.118Strachan, Sir Thomas Roe, 258. This action gained approval at Whitehall and reinforced the gratitude of all the Palatine family; the queen of Bohemia tried hard to persuade her brother to make Rowe lord treasurer.119CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 91, 129-31, 141, 173, 191, 198, 264, 275; Eg. 2533, ff. 267-8. Yet there were those who opposed Rowe’s next move with Rupert to Vienna, and indeed he reported back to the secretary of state Sir Edward Nicholas† in late December ‘not only a great coldness … but a cunning malice’ in various officials there.120CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 188; Eg. 2533, ff. 258-60. Difficulties in his negotiating position with the Habsburgs, already presaged at preliminary meetings, were starkly revealed at a conference there on 17 March 1642, when the imperial mediators asked if any promises made by Charles would be ratified in Parliament, ‘that he might be sure of means to perform his engagements’. Rowe’s retort was that it was ‘not for them to intermeddle between the king and his Parliament’; ‘peace and war and confederations’ were his ‘royal prerogative, in which he consulted Parliament only as his counsel’.121Harl. 1901, f. 6; Eg. 2533, f. 284v. ‘Well informed’ that ‘they do play with me’, Rowe concluded that his embassy would be entirely fruitless and made repeated requests for release from the ‘tortures of this employment’.122Harl. 1901, f. 19, 22v-23; Add. 4172, f. 170. But he was still awaiting formal recall and enduring jibes that ‘the English ambassador offers nothing for his king can do nothing’, when he learned that his actions had been traduced at home.123Eg. 2533, f. 344v.

Accused before Parliament

On 11 May 1642 the earl of Holland laid before the House of Lords accusations made by the French ambassador that, in return for a guarantee of the restitution of the Palatinate to the elector, Rowe had promised the Habsburgs in the king’s name an offensive and defensive league which prejudiced the alliance between England, France and the Netherlands. On behalf of Louis XIII, his agent sought confirmation that Rowe had received no such instructions either from his king or Parliament. The Lords immediately disavowed any such orders, but referred the allegations for investigation.124LJ v. 58b. First (13 May) among the flurry of friends and contacts who wrote to warn Rowe, Sir Richard Cave, now an MP, pressed in the Commons for a committee to hear the case in private, while muttering a discreet refutation to those sitting around him; the banker Philip Burlamachi lobbied Members outside the House and undertook to tell John Pym* the truth of the matter. Burlamachi lamented the dearth of Members present in possession of the facts, Sir Henry Vane (among others) being absent; both he and Cave suspected a plot to drive a further wedge between king and Parliament, as did Edward Hyde*, according to his later account.125CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 320-1; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 415. At York the news reaching the court via Lucius Cary*, 2nd Viscount Falkland, appears finally to have galvanised the king into issuing Rowe’s recall, with a reassurance that his proceedings met with approval (17 May), and a complaint to Louis XIII; the elector palatine, also there, leapt to Rowe’s defence.126CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 324-6, 331. In London acquittal took longer. While Rowe did not lack friends convinced both of his probity and of Cardinal Richelieu’s capacity for trickery, and while the notion of Charles offering tangible help to the Habsburgs was inherently absurd, Rowe’s very loyalty to the Palatine family, determination to reclaim the Palatinate, success with regard to Rupert’s release and apparent preparedness to promise at least non-aggression lent some plausibility to French claims.127CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 327-30.

On 3 June (?NS) Rowe wrote to Holland, as representative of the Lords, and to Edmund Waller*, as representative of the Commons, dismissing the accusations as false and unjust. He asserted his record of faithful public service and devotion to the advancement of Protestantism, sought publication of a complete exoneration, and expressed confidence ‘in the equity and wisdom of the House of Commons’ that they would not only accept his version of events ‘but that they will so far regard the reputation of one of their Members, as to blot out and expunge all record or memory of this imputation’.128Harl. 1901, ff. 28v-29. Three days later he entrusted to Waller, whom he understood to have undertaken the task, his public defence.129Harl. 1901, f. 29v. With Pym and Selden, on 20 June Waller was placed on a small Commons committee to review the case, but the only immediate result (27 June) was another declaration to the French ambassador denying any authorisation to Rowe to treat in the manner complained of.130CJ ii. 633a, 642b. It was not until 11 July that it was reported at a joint committee that the French ambassador had conceded that his master was liable to ‘rest satisfied’ with Rowe’s answer.131CJ ii, 665b, 666a; LJ v. 190a, 191a, 198a. Greeted positively also by Charles, Rowe’s vindication was published that month.132CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 351; T. Roe, A Letter from the Right Honourable Sir Thomas Roe (18 July 1642). The issue then seems to have disappeared from view, although Louis was not so easily appeased and there may have been lingering distrust in England.133CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp 363-4.

‘Distrust is the great impediment’, 1642-4

By 23 July Rowe was in Frankfurt, trusting that he had escaped Vienna ‘with honour and a general content’, and rejoicing that he had at last escaped the ‘nets’ of the imperial mediators.134Eg. 2553, f. 359. In The Hague in mid-August, he had left by 4 September, when Sir William Boswell wrote from there wishing him a good passage to England and hoping that he might arrive in time to be selected by king and Parliament for the conciliatory role for which his wisdom and ‘upright affections’ suggested him.135Eg. 2553, ff. 361-2; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 385. Such was clearly Rowe’s aspiration also, but events had overtaken him. At his landing he was met with ‘rudeness’ from the common people and evidently perceived a wider absence of welcome.136CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 398, 403. On 13 September Secretary Nicholas greeted his arrival with a royal command to forbear joining the king in his current headquarters at Nottingham, adding discouragingly that those at London (where he expected Rowe to be) were so confident of their invincibility that they would not entertain any moderate accommodation.137CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 389. Within a month Rowe had apparently concluded that his only option was to retreat to Woodford, Essex, where he had acquired a house in 1640. ‘I have no other hope of safety but a wary guard of lying still, and if it were possible, hidden or forgotten’, he told Elizabeth of Bohemia on 18 October. He dared not live in London, ‘lest I be called up to declare [my allegiance]’, but in Woodford ‘I live in fear to be judged worse than I am, or to be punished and plundered before I be judged’. Dismissing talk of a treaty, he was persuaded that ‘nothing can decide this quarrel but blood’, yet could not quite reject mediation. If suitable intermediaries could be found ‘who might propose … that which no subject may to his king, nor no Member dare to the Parliament’, reconciliation was not inconceivable, and Rowe was willing to participate. As things stood, however, he would ‘be able to do no more than to be condemned, if not laughed at, on both parts’; prevented from riding by infirmity and ‘at the mercy of physicians’, he was an unserviceable negotiator, ‘but I will omit no occasion to creep into the fire, if my ashes might smother it’.138Harl. 1901, f. 49; CSP Dom 1641-3, p. 436.

Given leave by the Commons on 9 January 1643 to go to the king at Oxford to report on his embassy, he did so by mid-February, but had a short and uncomfortable visit, confiding later to Falkland, a like-minded ally in the search for peace, ‘the little use I found of my service there’.139CJ ii. 920a; Letters of Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia ed. L.M. Baker (1953), 153. He left with a royal mandate to prosecute Palatine business and apparently to exercise some kind of oversight over other ambassadors. Accorded considerable freedom by his distracted king, he corresponded not just with his colleagues and friends but also with the monarchs of France, Sweden and Denmark and numerous German princes, explaining to the duke of Bavaria that ‘his Majesty being full of business in his camp, which may often remove’ had delegated the task.140Harl. 1901, ff. 47v, passim; Add. 4172, ff. 178-9, passim; Eg. 2533; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 507. Elizabeth requested that ‘at a fit opportunity’ he present to Parliament her pressing financial difficulties, but there is no evidence he did so in person: his advice, which she took, was that she write to the Speakers of both Houses.141Lttrs. of Elizabeth of Bohemia, 154-5, 157-8, 161.

On 15 April, his extended leave of absence given in August 1641 having presumably run out and his activities having been noticed, Rowe was summoned forthwith to attend the Commons.142CJ ii. 245a; iii. 45b. Three weeks later he told Falkland, who had conveyed (18 Apr.) an invitation to seek refuge in Oxford, that ‘the jealousy’ of some Members ‘called me in question and divers did harangue against me’ but that his lameness had proved sufficient excuse not to comply when sent for by ‘the serjeant’s man’. Since then he had

been advised by my friends here, who understood the grounds of the suspicion against me, to retire hither among the woods and wild beasts, to avoid all occasion or scruple of offence; for scandal given, or taken, is equally obnoxious.

In such circumstances, ‘to ask leave to come down would raise new doubts and it would not be granted’; besides, he was ‘not yet able to remove’. He clung to the belief that problems could be solved only ‘in a parliamentary way’. King and Parliament ‘began at the wrong end’ and ‘distrust is the great impediment’, yet the matter was urgent. Begging Falkland’s pardon for ‘vent[ing] these notions which I cannot contain, the zeal of my country confirming my bowels’, he concluded that if peace were not made, ‘the king and kingdom will be undone irreparably, Ireland lost forever and the monarchy of Great Britain dissolved’.143Harl. 1901, f. 74; CSP Dom 1641-3, p. 456-7.

As the tide turned in favour of the royalists in 1643, such opinions had limited appeal at Oxford, while Rowe’s regular contact there could only undermine his position as an MP.144CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 461. He refused to give up, writing to Nicholas on 26 October that ‘though discouragements, if not disgraces, are multiplied upon me, yet nothing can lessen or slacken that duty, that hath better grounds than the ambition of rewards or preferment’.145Eg. 2533, f. 380. But his efforts received a very sceptical response.146CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 503. His attendance in the Commons was respited on 22 January 1644, but on 7 February he was handed to the assessors at Haberdashers’ Hall.147CJ iii. 34b, 390b. Sequestration was lifted in June provided he pay promptly, and he seems to have complied, but his health was fragile and his correspondence subject to seizure.148CCAM 302; CJ iii. 398b; Lttrs. of Elizabeth of Bohemia, 162. On 3 July he was given a parliamentary warrant to go to Bath for the recovery of his health.149CJ iii. 549b. Elizabeth of Bohemia, who pressed him to consult doctors in the Netherlands, assured him that summer that he still had a useful public role, but his condition, which prevented him from crossing the Channel, continued to deteriorate.150Lttrs. of Elizabeth of Bohemia, 163-4; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 76, 209-10. Still officially a Member of Parliament, he died on 6 November.151Ath. Ox. iii. 114.

In his will, made on 8 July, Rowe thanked God for being

born and bred up in the time of his revealed light and truth in the Church of England, which I acknowledge and believe to be as pure in doctrine and perfect in discipline as any Christian church in the whole world, and in the faith therein truly taught and for which I would willingly suffer death, detesting all additions of man’s merits and detracting derogations from the full and only satisfaction of my blessed Redeemer, and all other heresies, sects and schisms whatsoever.

He prayed that others might come to accept this view. The bulk of his estate, including over £8,900 of debts due from his diplomatic service, was left to his wife, the ‘dear companion’ of his varied life.152PROB11/199/680. They had adopted Jane Rupa, a Bohemian noblewoman who entered Queen Elizabeth’s service, but there were no children to succeed Rowe in Parliament.