RASHLEIGH, Jonathan (1591-1675), of Menabilly, Trewardreth, Cornw.

Originally from Barnstaple in Devon, the Rashleighs had settled in the Cornish port of Fowey in the early sixteenth century, where they soon became the dominant merchant family. By the early seventeenth century the family had also established itself among the local gentry, and the marriage of Jonathan Rashleigh’s father to Alice Bonython brought with it kinship connections with important families, including the Carews, Arundells and Godolphins. Rashleigh was given the usual gentry education at Oxford and the inns of court, and was first elected as MP for Fowey in 1614, at the age of 22. He was re-elected for the borough in 1621 and 1625, and in 1627 was appointed sheriff of Cornwall. His absence from Parliament later in the 1620s is in part explained by this last office, but it is also likely that he was sympathetic to critics of the Caroline regime at this time, and he apparently assisted the election of William Coryton* for Fowey.24HP Commons 1604-1629.

Rashleigh was elected for Fowey, on his own interest, in the elections for the Short Parliament in March 1640 and the Long Parliament in November of the same year. His performance as an MP was unimpressive. Nothing is known of his career in the Short Parliament, and in the Long Parliament he was named to no committees. He became the focus of a brief debate on 25 February 1641, when the Commons considered a letter asking that a suit against one of Rashleigh’s tenants should be halted on the grounds of parliamentary privilege, as Rashleigh held the freehold.25Procs LP ii. 553-4; CJ ii. 92a. It is recorded that he took the protestation on 3 May 1641, but within a month he had been granted leave to return to the country.26Procs LP iv. 173, 687; CJ ii. 133b, 164b. Something of his activity can be glimpsed in a letter of 20 May sent from his son-in-law Sir Peter Courtney*, who passed on his best wishes to Rashleigh’s friend John Harris I*, and added that he was ‘glad to hear of your good effects against my Lord of Strafford’ – suggesting that Rashleigh had joined the majority of MPs in supporting the attainder of the earl (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) earlier in the month.27Cornw. RO, RS/1/35. During the summer of 1641, Rashleigh left for Cornwall, and it is doubtful that he returned to Westminster in the next 12 months. He was again given leave of absence on 4 December 1641, was resident at Menabilly (writing a reply to Harris in London) in May 1642, and was listed as absent at the call of the House on 16 June.28CJ ii. 332a, 626n; Cornw. RO, RS/1/1059.

As civil war approached, Rashleigh threw in his lot with the royalists. He was appointed to the commission of array on 29 June 1642 and included in the new commission of the peace chosen by the king on 15 July.29Northants RO, FH133, unfol.; C231/5, p. 527. He was no doubt encouraged in his choice of sides by his relatives, including the Arundells of Trerice and his son-in-law Sir Peter Courtney. The latter wrote excitedly from Devon in November, saying that ‘we shall be at least six or seven thousand within this four days, and I hope by that time you will find Plymouth in ill condition to trouble you’.30Cornw. RO, RS/1/1051. In the winter of 1642-3, Rashleigh lent £104 in silver plate to the local royalist forces, and in the following April was appointed one of the receivers of plate for the county, standing surety for loans and incurring, as a result, losses of £600.31Coate, Cornw. 38, 110, 358. In January 1644 Rashleigh was in Oxford, where he sat in the royalist Parliament and lent still more money to the king.32Coate, Cornw. 131, 357-8. Parliament took action against him on 22 January, when he was one of those MPs disabled from sitting ‘being in the king’s quarters, and adhering to that party’.33CJ iii. 374a. His signing of the letter to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, and his own estimate that he lent the king a further £50 ‘at the last meeting of the Parliament members there’, undermines his later claim (made to the parliamentarian compounders) that he was an inactive MP at Oxford, and did not assent to any measures hostile to Westminster.34Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573; Coate, Cornw. 358; CCC 1327. Rashleigh was back in Cornwall by October 1644, when the king ordered him to investigate the arrears owing to his cousin, John Arundell, and his garrison at Pendennis Castle.35Cornw. RO, B/35/40. In January 1645 he was again active in raising money, this time for the forces of Sir Richard Grenvile.36Cornw. RO, RS/1/39. In the dying days of the royalist regime in Cornwall, Rashleigh remarried, taking as a wife Mary Harris, the sister of his old friend John Harris I of Lanrest. The marriage settlement was finalised on 24 January 1646, only a few weeks before the New Model army invaded Cornwall.37Cornw. RO, CF/2773.

Defeat threatened Rashleigh with ruin. He had already incurred significant debts and obligations for the royalist cause, as well as the money he had lent the king that would never be repaid; and during the earl of Essex’s incursion into Cornwall in the summer of 1644 he had paid a high price: Menabilly had been sacked by the parliamentarians, ‘having nothing left but the bare walls’, and all his stock, stored grain and farming equipment had been stolen.38Coate, Cornw. 358-60. In the spring of 1646 Rashleigh submitted quickly, begging to compound under the Truro articles, and in the next few months jumped through all the required hoops – taking the national covenant and the negative oath and begging to compound for delinquency – in the hope of securing his estate.39Coate, Cornw. 234. In response, Rashleigh was (in his own words) ‘ordered to depart out of Cornwall’ and ‘forced to attend [Goldsmiths’ Hall] two years before I could have my discharge’.40Coate, Cornw. 358. On 7 July, Rashleigh, newly arrived in London, told his wife that ‘for my return, I now know not when it will please God to put it into the hearts of those we suffer under to lay reasonable fines on us, as yet they are so great as (for my part) my estate is not able to bear it’; and he added that ‘I must wait here in hope of more favour than I find’.41Cornw. RO, RS/1/40. The situation was not as bad as Rashleigh at first feared, as by the standards of the Committee for Compounding* his case proceeded reasonably smoothly. After the initial petition of June 1646, Rashleigh’s fine was set in November 1648, and the final decision was only delayed until April 1650 because he demanded a review, claiming that his debts had not been taken into account.42CCC 1327. Throughout the process, Rashleigh had cooperated fully with the parliamentarian regime. There is some indication that he may have been in touch with the royalists on the continent in the later 1640s, but it is unlikely that he was an active supporter of the king.43CCSP i. 356. Instead, he became a reluctant collaborator, as can be seen in the spring and summer of 1648, when he arranged the election of Gregory Clement* as his own replacement as MP for Fowey.44Coate, Cornw. 245-6; vide supra, ‘Fowey’. According to Clement, writing on 30 May, ‘I must rely upon you, and such friends as you can procure to draw the sheriff to do me this favour’, and promised that his election would ‘infinitely oblige’ him to Rashleigh, who could ‘freely command’ him in ‘all occasions whatsoever’.45Cornw. RO, RS/1/906-7. Rashleigh may have resisted such blandishments at first, but his decision to oblige such men as Clement in the late 1640s and early 1650s no doubt helped to supply the want of ‘favour’ that he had feared in 1646.

Even as Rashleigh’s case before the Committee for Compounding reached its resolution, he was facing trouble from a different quarter. In January 1650 he was summoned before the Committee for Advance of Money* to answer for ‘assessment’ money levied on him in 1644 and 1646, although he declined because he was too ill to travel; nevertheless, a month later he was arrested and sent to St Mawes Castle, where he was incarcerated for the next 18 months at his own cost.46CCAM 431; Coate, Cornw. 235-6, 358. In April 1651 the authorities were warned that Rashleigh was still a threat, even though he was in prison. He was described as ‘less active’ than some, but one of those ‘which will immediately repair to a body’ if given a chance.47HMC Portland, i. 584. Despite this, in July the governor of St Mawes, George Kekewich*, reported to Colonel Robert Bennett* that he had taken a bond of £2,000 from Rashleigh for his good behaviour, and had released him.48FSL, X.d.483 (94); Coate, Cornw. 236. Despite his relatively harsh treatment, there were those locally who were intent on protecting the Rashleigh interest. When summoned before the Committee for Advance of Money in 1650, Rashleigh was told that Anthony Nicoll*, Thomas Arundell* and Robert Bennett were prepared to intervene on his behalf, and it may have been their good offices that secured a reduction of the fine to £200.49Coate, Cornw. 235. Later concessions may have been secured by the same men. The committee’s leniency certainly continued in March 1651, when it was agreed that the reduced amount would be waived if the county commissioners certified that he had paid a similar sum locally, and with Cornish help he was discharged entirely in May.50CCAM 431-2.

It may be significant that Rashleigh had remained quietly confident throughout his ordeal, telling a cousin that William Scawen* had been ‘questioned in the same case [and] hath freed it’.51Cornw. RO, RS/1/33. There also seem to have been moves to protect his family estates at around this time, especially after the premature death of his son and heir, John, in the autumn of 1651, when the extended family closed ranks.52Cornw. RO, RS/1/44-45. In November 1651 Rashleigh’s trustees, including John Arundell†, released the estate back into his hands, presumably with the intention of Rashleigh finding less compromised men to perform this role.53Cornw. RO, R/3624. In May 1652 the wardship of the grandson and heir was granted to a cousin, and trustee of the family estates, Jonathan Sparke, and thus saved from falling into hostile hands.54PROB6/27, f.70; Cornw. RO, R/3621, CF/2773. In later years it appears that Rashleigh had learned to play the system. His response to the commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth in February 1656, when they demanded an account of his estate, suggests that he was confident that he could beguile them. According to his estimate, his vast real estate was worth only £381, with chattels of only £500.55Cornw. RO, R/4272. The £135 which he paid for the decimation tax in the same year was correspondingly modest.56Coate, Cornw. 358.

Although Rashleigh could use his connections to ameliorate the effects of his delinquency, he could do little to avoid the attentions of litigious Cornishmen. In the early 1650s he calculated that his debts stood at over £2,800, and to this sum he would soon add his obligations to Courtney, who was driven to sell land to satisfy his own creditors (who were owed around £2,000) and to ask money from Rashleigh.57Cornw. RO, RS/1/33, 55, 63-4. A legal dispute with the Sir Richard Vyvyan* was brought to arbitration in October 1652, but was not easily resolved.58Cornw. RS/1/48, 159. In 1654 Rashleigh was embroiled in a ‘difference about the fishing in the river of Fowey’, which his family had leased from the duchy of Cornwall, and he apparently managed to keep this privilege from confiscation until 1656, when it was ‘discovered’ by Anthony Rous*.59Cornw. RO, RS/1/1064; Parl. Surv. Duchy Cornw. i. 40. In 1654-5 Rashleigh was in dispute with John, 2nd Baron Robartes, in 1656 he was sued by High Trevanion, and in 1657 he was also pursued by John Lampen*.60C5/32/100; C7/431/118; C7/436/48; C21/R34/14; C22/452/56. Apart from this constant battle against creditors and rivals, Rashleigh was generally inactive during the protectorate and the restored commonwealth of the later 1650s. After the restoration of the monarchy, he was once again returned for Fowey in the elections of 1661, and no doubt influenced the election of his cousin and son-in-law John Rashleigh† as his running mate. He played little part in the new Parliament’s proceedings, however, and there is no record of his having sat after 1664. Rashleigh died in 1675, at the age of 83, and was succeeded by his grandson Jonathan Rashleigh II†, who also inherited control of the family’s parliamentary seat at Fowey.61HP Commons 1660-1690.