ARUNDELL, Richard (c.1616-87), of Trerice, Newlyn, Cornw.

Richard Arundell was a younger son of one of the most prominent gentry families in Cornwall, and received the upbringing appropriate to his station. He was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn on 16 November 1633 with his two brothers, John I and William (with John Trevanion* standing as one of his manucaptors, or sureties).20LIL, Adm. Bk. vi, f. 83. He was the only one of the three to complete his studies, being called to the bar in November 1640, and retaining chambers at Lincoln’s Inn until the beginning of the civil war.21LI Admiss. i. 222; LI Black Bks. ii. 356, 368. He was elected as MP for Lostwithiel in April 1640, presumably on his father’s interest, but there is no evidence of him taking an active role in this Parliament. In the elections for the Long Parliament, Arundell was returned for the same seat, but expectations that he might have adopted his father’s critical stance towards the government were not fulfilled. On 21 April 1641 Arundell joined eight other Cornish MPs in voting against the attainder of Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford, leaving his father ‘very angry with his son Richard for voting him not guilty of high treason’.22Coate, Cornw. 27; Cornw. RO, R(S)/1/35. Arundell took the protestation on 3 May 1641, but there is no record of his involvement in Westminster affairs after that date.23CJ ii. 133b.

At the outbreak of civil war in 1642, the Arundells were united in their support for the king, with John Arundell senior ‘engaging himself and all his four sons in that quarrel’.24Cornw. RO, T/1767. Richard and his brother John were noted as ‘very active men and in command’ during the autumn of 1642, working with Sir Charles Trevanion*, Sir Nicholas Slanning* and Sir Bevil Grenville* to raise troops for the royalist cause.25Clarendon, Hist. iii. 104n. According to his own account, Richard Arundell served as a colonel under Sir Ralph Hopton* at the battle of Stratton and at the taking of Exeter, Bath, Bristol and Weymouth in 1643.26Cornw. RO, T/1767. In January 1644 Arundell subscribed the Oxford Parliament’s letter to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, and in the same month the Westminster Parliament disabled him as an MP, ‘being in the king’s quarters’.27Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573; CJ iii. 374a

When his elder brother was killed near Plymouth in the autumn of 1644, Arundell became heir apparent to the family estates. It was probably in the months following his brother’s death that he married, taking as a wife the widow of his friend and fellow royalist, Sir Nicholas Slanning.28Keeler, Long Parliament, 88. Arundell also became more active in county affairs, working with Francis Godolphin I* in sequestrating parliamentarian estates.29C10/10/17. In October 1645, he was appointed by his father as ‘assistant to him’ as governor of Pendennis Castle, and as commander of the trained bands and garrison there.30Cornw. RO, T/1767. He probably remained there through the winter of 1645-6, despite demands by the prince of Wales to re-deploy his men to Launceston in November 1645 and Tavistock in January 1646.31Clarendon, Hist. iv. 106; Coate, Cornw. 195; CCSP i. 295. He attended the council of war at Pendennis in the spring and summer, advising Sir Edward Hyde* about the state of Cornwall and the Scilly Isles in May, and signing the last desperate plea to the prince of Wales drawn up on 27 June.32Coate, Cornw. 210, 218-9; CCSP i. 316. The end came on 17 August 1646, when Pendennis was starved into submission, and Arundell joined his father in signing the articles surrendering the castle to Parliament.33CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 467; Clarendon, Hist. iv. 215.

The Pendennis Articles allowed those in the castle to keep ‘their lives and estates’ and to have ‘transportation to his majesty that now is beyond the seas’, and Arundell spent some time ‘following his majesty’s fortune in foreign parts, being forced for want of money to return into England’.34Cornw. RO, T/1767. He had already been fined £1,500 by the Committee for Advance of Money in 1644, and after 1646 he was pursued by the Committee for Compounding as a sequestered person, and his properties in Devon were confiscated.35CCAM 435; CCC 117, 153. In November 1646 he was suspended from his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn (only being readmitted in the autumn of 1650), and he was suspected as one of those behind the royalist insurgency in Cornwall in May 1648.36LI Black Bks. ii. 371, 387; Antony House, Carew Pole muniments, BC/24/2/162; M. Stoyle, West Britons: Cornish Identities and the Early Modern British State (2002), 126. Richard’s step-son, Nicholas Slanning, also had his lands sequestered, apparently in a vindictive move prompted by a desire to further punish the Arundells, and in the early 1650s Richard was also involved in settling the private debts left by the father.37CCC 2210; C10/22/3. In the meantime, Arundell’s father was ‘plundered and sequestered of a very great stock of quick and dead goods, and of an active estate in land worth above £2,000 per annum for seven years at least’, and the sale of the estate was only prevented by the outlay of a further £2,000.38Cornw. RO, T/1767. Richard Arundell was made jointly liable for the fine of £10,000 eventually settled in March 1651. In November of the same year, father and son petitioned the committee for relief on articles of war, saying that their treatment contravened the agreement made when Pendennis surrendered, and this may have had an affect on the government’s attitude towards the case. In October 1653 the Nominated Assembly allowed the Arundells to sell lands to pay their £10,000 fine.39CJ vii. 328b. In February 1654 the protectoral council announced that it was willing to allow composition on easier terms, with the profits paid out in the previous seven years to be taken into account, and Richard regained control of his lands in December 1654, only a few weeks after his father’s death.40CCC 2237-9. When the restocking and rebuilding of the estate had been achieved, Arundell calculated that he had lost ‘above £30,000’ in the king’s service.41Cornw. RO, T/1767.

One reason for Parliament’s vindictiveness was the suspicion that Richard Arundell and his father were involved in royalist plots, and in March 1651 measures were included which prevented the release of the estate until allegations of treason had been disproved.42CCC 2238. Richard Arundell was certainly the focus for much royalist wishful thinking, but there is little evidence that he was an active conspirator during the interregnum. As early as May 1648 there were claims that Arundell, his father, and other royalists were planning to join the general rebellion against Parliament.43Coate, Cornw. 238. In 1650 Charles Stuart had identified Arundell as a likely supporter of a Cornish rising, and witnesses testified that he had sponsored a plan to join Sir Richard Grenville in capturing Scilly before raising Cornwall in rebellion and marching on Plymouth.44CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 47, 89. In April 1651 Arundell was implicated by Thomas Coke, who claimed that he had attended a royalist conference at Covent Garden, and was one of those pledged to ‘engage’ in a Cornish rebellion.45HMC Portland, i. 583. In the following August, as the Scottish army marched into England, Arundell was again arrested as a precautionary measure.46FSL, X.d.483 (97). Similar allegations appeared in later years. Before Penruddock’s rising in 1655, Jonathan Trelawny was sent to Arundell at Trerice, where he discussed a plan to capture Pendennis and Plymouth. Although when the rebellion broke out elsewhere, Arundell remained prudently inactive, again witnesses came forward to claim that trunks of arms had been collected at Trerice, and the conspirators only awaited the word to rise up against the government.47Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 113, 150; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 238; CCSP iii. 19. Arundell was not arrested, however, and in July 1655 he was given leave, on his physician’s certificate, to stay in London.48TSP iii. 384, 457; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 592. Richard may have been the ‘Mr Arundell’ who was involved in raising money for the personal use of the king in exile in October 1657, and in March 1658 there were reports that he had been released from a period of arrest.49CCSP iii. 374; iv. 19. But when further rebellions were organised in the summer of 1659, and royalist agents again visited Trerice, hoping to draw Arundell into a plot to seize Exeter, their efforts came to nothing.50CCSP iv. 186, 258, 263, 330; Coate, Cornw. 306; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 265.

Sir Richard Grenville was in contact with Arundell after the latest rebellion had fizzled out, but it was only in April 1660, when the restoration of Charles II had become a virtual certainty, that Arundell came out into the open, corresponding with Hyde and sending one of his kinsmen to attend the king at Breda.51CCSP iv. 390, 526, 552, 672. Thereafter, Arundell was quick to capitalise on his reputation as a suffering servant of the Stuarts. He was elected as MP for Bere Alston in by-elections in 1660 and 1662, and was granted his father’s old office as governor of Pendennis Castle. He was created Baron Arundell of Trerice in 1665, and on his death in 1687 was succeeded by his surviving son, John Arundell, who became the second baron.52Vivian, Vis. Cornw. 14.