ROUS, Francis (c.1581-1659), of Brixham, Devon, Acton, Mdx. and Eton College, Berks.

Francis Rous was a younger son of a prominent west country family with extensive landed interests in Cornwall and Devon, and step-brother of John Pym. His education was extensive – including not only periods at Oxford and the Middle Temple but also a year or more at Leiden – and thanks to a comfortable inheritance from his father and a series of advantageous marriages, Rous could devote much of his early life to theological study and writing. During the 1620s Rous began to focus on the perceived threat to the church from Arminian teaching, especially Richard Montagu’s anti-Calvinist book, Appello Caesarem, published in 1625, and as MP for Truro in 1626 and Tregony in 1628, Rous emerged as a powerful critic of Charles I’s religious policy, perhaps encouraged by Pym. This stage of Rous’s political career culminated in his speech of January 1629, in which he denounced Arminianism as a ‘Trojan Horse’ by which ‘Romish tyranny’ would again be imposed on England. Rous’s intervention did much to further heighten animosity towards the crown in the Commons, and to hasten the king’s decision to abandon Parliaments altogether for the next decade.36HP Commons 1604-1629.

1630s and Short Parliament

During the 1630s Rous returned to his study, but eschewed polemic, instead producing such contemplative works as The Mystical Marriage in 1635 and The Heavenly Academy in 1638, and it was during this period that he created a new metrical translation of the psalms (based on the Tudor version by Sternhold and Hopkins), published in 1641. In the elections for the Short Parliament of April 1640 Rous was again returned as MP for Truro, perhaps on the interest of the recorder, Hugh Boscawen*. Within days of Parliament meeting, he had returned to the fray, with one contemporary noting that he and his friends ‘moved strongly to take beginning where they had left the last Parliament’.37Procs. Short Parl. 212. On 17 April he again alleged that there was ‘an intended union between us and Rome’ at the heart of Caroline religious policy, and he denounced those, like the Catholic theologian ‘Santa Clara’ (Christopher Davenport) who played down the differences between the two churches: ‘let us agree with them of Rome in all points and differ from them in one, which is the pope’s supremacy, and agreement in all other is to no purpose’. He deplored attempts to discredit the godly by calling them ‘puritans’, saying that ‘this word in the mouth of a drunkard doth mean a sober man, in the mouth of an Arminian it means an Orthodoxian, in the mouth of a papist it means a Protestant’. Rous then turned to specific grievances, including the suspension of ‘conscionable and religious ministers’, and linked religious to secular policy, such as Ship Money and monopolies. Monopolists, he claimed, were ‘like caterpillars of Egypt upon which plague the other plague is attended’.38Procs. Short Parl. 145-8; Aston’s Diary, 7; CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 38-9. Over the next few days Rous made further speeches in a similar vein, attacking ‘innovations in religion’ on 23 April and the ‘real presence’ at the holy communion on 29 April.39Aston’s Diary, 34, 89. He was also named to committees to consider the taking of communion on the fast day (23 Apr.) and to note the MPs who did so (25 Apr.), and on 1 May he was appointed to the committee for reforming the abuses of the ecclesiastical courts.40CJ ii. 9b. 12a, 14a. Rous’s only non-religious appointment during the short-lived session came on 28 April, when he was named to the committee to examine those indentures submitted with blanks.41CJ ii. 17b.

The opening of the Long Parliament, 1640-1

In the elections for the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, Rous was again returned for Truro. On the meeting of Parliament on 3 November, Rous was immediately thrust into a central role in attacking the Caroline church. Secular affairs took second place in the first months of the Parliament, although he was named to the committee of privileges on 6 November 1640, and day later was one of the veteran MPs chosen to peruse the records of the House.42CJ ii. 21a-b. West country matters only occasionally attracted his attention. On 21 December he named to the committee on the complaint of the Dorset port of Weymouth against their customs officials.43CJ ii. 55a. On 20 May 1641 he was named to the committee on a bill for the church at Plymouth, alongside Sir Samuel Rolle, Sir Richard Buller and all the Devon and Cornwall MPs.44CJ ii. 151a. On 3 June 1641 he ‘altered the opinion of the House’, ensuring that the bill for settling a Devon estate for the repayment of a debt was not ‘cast forth’ at an early stage, presumably because he had personal knowledge of the case.45Procs. LP iv. 707. He was duly named to the committee on this business on 21 June.46CJ ii. 182a. From the late summer Rous was gradually drawn into other non-religious business, being appointed to committees on the state of the navy and foreign merchants in August, and for duties on salt and wine in November, but such concerns remained as yet a minor part of his parliamentary activity.47CJ ii. 271b, 276a, 327b.

When it came to religion, Rous’s principal concern during this period was the exoneration of the victims of the Laudian church, and the prosecution and punishment of the church leaders themselves. On 9 November 1640 he delivered to the Commons the petition of the wife of Laud’s most famous victim, William Prynne*.48Procs. LP i. 70. On 30 November he reported on the case of one Wilson, sequestered from his living for four years for refusing to read the Book of Sports, and threatened ‘for not reading one of the arbitrary prayers against the Scots’.49CJ ii. 39a; Procs. LP i. 372-3, 377, 379, 382. In January 1641 he reported the case of a Mr Foxley, who had been tried by the court of star chamber.50CJ ii. 69a. In the same month, Rous moved the Commons to consider the case of the ejected and imprisoned Durham minister Dr Peter Smart, and he reported the case on 22 January.51D’Ewes (N), 250; CJ ii. 71b. In June he was named to a committee to consider the Lords’ response to the Smart case, and was chosen as messenger to the upper House on the same business.52CJ ii. 169a, 178b. On 9 April 1641 Rous reported the case of Dr Alexander Leighton, who had been imprisoned by Laud in 1628, ‘by which means he was brought into a dangerous sickness’.53CJ ii. 117b; Procs. LP iii. 478-9. On 4 May he was reporter of John Lilburne’s case.54CJ ii. 134a.

Alongside this, Rous was intent in bringing the hated churchmen to justice. On 9 November 1640 he argued against allowing any members of Convocation to preach to Parliament ‘because of their business’, and on the same day he urged that the bishop of Lincoln should be prosecuted alongside other leading culprits.55D’Ewes (N), 18n, 19. On 22 December he was named to the committee on the petition of the townsmen of Ipswich against the bishop of Ely, and he joined similar committees on the bishops of Bath and Wells and of Norwich in January and February 1641.56CJ ii. 56a, 75a, 91a. On 4 March Rous preferred the charge against Smart’s adversary, Dr John Cosin, outlining the reasons for the prosecution.57Procs. LP ii. 624; D’Ewes (N), 437. He took Cosin’s impeachment to the Lords on 11 March, and again on 16 March.58CJ ii. 101b, 105b; LJ iv. 186a. Rous’s speech made to the Lords when he ‘opened the charge’ in the impeachment proceedings against Dr Cosin on 16 March became a lengthy polemic against the Caroline church.59Harl. 6424, f. 50. In it he lauded Smart as ‘a protomartyr or first confessor of note in the late days of persecution’, whose ‘long misery’ was the result of ‘priestly cruelty’.60Mr Rouse his speech before the Lords (1641), 1, 4. He linked this individual case to the wider plot of the Arminians to raise ‘an army of priests’ to ‘advance the designs and plots of popery’, warning that they had already started to undermine the kingdom, as seen in recent months: ‘the late war was Bellum Episcopale, and we have the papists’ confession that it was Bellum Papale’.61Mr Rouse his speech, 2-3. On 26 May Rous was added to the committee to consider proceedings against the archbishop of Canterbury himself.62CJ ii. 157b. In July he was involved in the attempt to prevent the printing of pamphlets defending the established church, and was added to the committee for printing and to the committee on the bill to regulate it.63CJ ii. 221b, 222b.

The righting of wrongs and the punishment of offenders were vital if the government of the church was to be properly reformed, and Rous was involved in initial discussion on what form the new church should take. In February he joined Pym, Hampden and other godly MPs on the committee for a bill to abolish superstition and idolatry.64CJ ii. 84b. On 8 March he was named to a committee, with Denzil Holles, Edmund Prideaux I and others, on a bill to prevent clergy from holding lay office.65CJ ii. 99a. On 27 April he was appointed to committees on the bill to correct abuses in ecclesiastical courts and to prosecute the former members of Convocation.66CJ ii. 128b, 129a. On 3 June Rous was named to the committee to answer the Lords’ objections to the bill preventing clergy from holding secular positions, this time with John Hampden as well as Holles.67CJ ii. 165b. Rous’s involvement in church reform gives a good indication of those with whom he now worked in the Commons. He also joined in the attempt, associated most strongly with Pym, to raise religious tensions for political ends. On 12 November 1640 it was recorded that ‘Mr Rous said a Scotsman told him that a papist said our throats should all be cut’.68Procs. LP i. 120, 121. On 9 December 1640 Rous told MPs during the discussion of the new Canons that ‘there is a monopoly granted to the archbishop of Canterbury, that after three years he may make new articles, and then impose on us what wicked matters he pleases either for doctrines or ceremonies’.69Procs. LP i. 525. On 10 May 1641 he ‘informed the House that yesterday he saw near upon 300 people coming out of the Portugal ambassador’s house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, from Mass.70Procs. LP iv. 295.

Catholic conspiracy and Irish rebellion, 1641-2

These interjections were designed to scare MPs; but Rous was not immune from such fears himself, especially after the unmasking of the army plots in the late spring and early summer. In May he was named to a committee on the bill to uphold true religion and suppress popery; two days later he was on a committee to consider repealing the law of James I concerning recusancy; and on 20th he was added to the committee on recusants convicted in London.71CJ ii. 136b, 139a, 151b. News of the outbreak of rebellion by the Catholics in Ireland in October made the Catholic threat all too real, and Rous shared the concern of other MPs. On 8 November he moved that all Irish students at the inns of court would have to swear oaths of loyalty.72D’Ewes (C), 104, 111. On 16 December he moved that the relief of the distressed Protestant refugees from Ireland be considered without delay, and was named to the committee to collect voluntary donations for this from MPs.73D’Ewes (C), 296; CJ ii. 344b. Four days later he was named to the committee stage of the bill for disarming recusants.74CJ ii. 349b, 350a.

Despite his strong views on Arminians and Roman Catholics, Rous could be more balanced in his opinions than some, perhaps influenced by his theological studies. Despite his attacks on individual bishops, his attitude towards the episcopate was surprisingly equivocal. On 10 November 1640 he did not reject bishops’ authority outright, instead informing the Commons although ‘ministers are jure divino’ and archbishops certainly were not, there was ‘some doubt whether bishops be’.75Procs. LP i. 81. Nearly a year later, Rous was added to the committee to consider the king’s decision to appoint five new bishops.76CJ ii. 300a. On 20 December 1641, Rous moved that an ironmonger who had printed an abusive pamphlet about bishops should be sent for and questioned.77D’Ewes (C), 318. On 30 December Rous followed this with a moderate speech in the Commons against the appointment of new bishops by the king. Rather than denouncing episcopacy, or attacking the individuals chosen, he argued that the current status of bishops – with some facing impeachment, and their position in the Lords far from secure – made such a move decidedly premature: ‘it can neither be requisite nor convenient to make new bishops till a certain form of their government be fully concluded and settled by the whole state of this kingdom’.78Mr Rowse his speech made in the lower house of Parliament (1642), 1-5 (E.199.47).

Religion continued to dominate Rous’s parliamentary activity during 1642. On 8 February he was named to a committee to prepare reasons why the king should give his assent to the bill barring bishops from lay office, and on 17 February he was named with Hampden, Prideaux, Sir Walter Erle, and Sir Richard and Francis Buller to the committee stage of the bill against innovations in worship, to keep the sabbath, and to promote preaching.79CJ ii. 419b, 438a. At times he showed his frustration at the lack of progress in reforming the church. On 31 March he moved that religion should be debated as a matter of urgency.80PJ ii. 112. On 4 April he moved that ‘some divines might be appointed to prepare a way to settle the church in doctrine and discipline’, and he, Pym, Hampden and others were named to a committee to prepare a declaration vindicating Parliament’s approach to church government and the preaching ministry.81PJ ii. 126; CJ ii. 510b. This was followed on 25 April by his appointment to a committee to consider how to implement the existing orders on church government, in consultation with a number of divines.82CJ ii. 541b. During the summer the political crisis prevented much progress on this front. On 18 July Rous was named to the committee to amend the bill against innovations, and on 4 August he was named to the committee stage of the bill for the better observation of fast days – in both cases serving alongside Prideaux and Miles Corbett.83CJ ii. 677b, 702b. As these issues lumbered on without resolution, Rous had more success in the renewed campaign against bishops. On 21 July he moved ‘to have “dissoluteness” added to “the avarice and ambition” of the bishops’ in the charge against them.84PJ iii. 244. On 1 September Rous, Pym and others were named to a committee to consider the declaration of the Scottish general assembly, denouncing episcopacy.85CJ ii. 748a. In the debate on the same day, Rous received near unanimous support, as ‘all men argued for the abolishing of bishops after Mr Rous had first made the motion, and scarce a man spake for them’.86PJ iii. 329. On 7 October there was some progress on church government, and Rous was named to a committee to arrange for an assembly of divines to discuss this.87CJ ii. 798b. There was also hope that the plight of ministers would be addressed, and on 31 December Rous was named to the new Committee for Plundered Ministers.88CJ ii. 909a.

The relief of Protestant refugees from Ireland was a matter of religious obligation for Rous. On 17 January 1642 he moved that part of the money collected should be sent to Chester for those who were sheltering there, and on 7 February the Commons ordered that he should be in charge of £100 to be sent to those who had fled to Cornwall.89PJ i. 94; CJ ii. 417a. In March Rous and William Wheler were ordered to pay out money from the committee for contributions; Rous was messenger to the Lords with the subsequent bill for the distribution of the money collected for Irish fugitives, and orders allowing for the relief of the poor in Dublin; and he was named to the committee of both Houses for the distribution.90CJ ii. 470a, 478a, 485b, 486a; LJ iv. 652a. The last marked the beginning of shift in policy confirmed on 15 July when Rous and Robert Reynolds were ordered to prepare measures to divert the contribution money from refugees to distressed Protestants inside Ireland.91CJ ii. 674b. From 3 September Rous’s involvement in Ireland became more intense, as he was appointed to the new Committee for Irish Affairs.92CJ ii. 750b. On 10 October he was reporter to the Commons on Irish affairs, including the supply of money and ammunition to the Adventurers and the need for Parliament to have a veto over the king’s commands to the lord lieutenant, Robert Sidney, 2nd earl of Leicester.93CJ ii. 790b.

The Approach of civil war, 1642

As the political crisis led to civil war in England, Rous found both religious reform and Irish affairs subordinated to more immediate demands. During the same period, his own involvement in politics began to grow. At first, he was involved only sporadically. On 17 January 1642 he was named to a committee of both Houses to draft a petition to the king upholding the privileges of Parliament.94CJ ii. 384a. On 29 March he was appointed with Pym and others to the committee to answer the king’s declaration from Newmarket; on 16 April he was named to the committee to investigate the ‘considerable persons’ who had refused to sign the Protestation; and in May he was appointed to the committee to consider bringing charges against the most notorious delinquents.95CJ ii. 504b, 530a, 556b. On 9 July Rous was appointed to the committee on the militia bill alongside such friends as Holles and Prideaux, and on 20 August he was added to the Committee for Examinations and to a committee for considering the king’s concern that the Irish Adventurers had lent £100,000 to the committee for defence of Parliament.96CJ ii. 663b, 728b. As the war began in earnest in October, Rous’s involvement in national politics increased. He was named to committees to arrest and disarm suspects and to draw up an oath of association, and he managed a conference to consider propositions on military affairs.97CJ ii. 818b, 819b, 822a. He was also involved in managing the public reaction to the king’s attempt to seize London, being added to the committee on the king’s actions on 19 November, and reporting to the Commons of ‘the cruelty of Brentford’ later in the month.98Add. 18777, f. 68v; CJ ii. 857a. On 2 December he joined Pym, Holles, William Strode I and other leading MPs in being named to the committee to prepare a manifesto to justify Parliament’s decision to continue the war against the king.99CJ ii. 873a. The year ended with hopes of a peace treaty with the king, and Rous was named to the committee to consider the preamble to the propositions on 26 December, again working with Pym, Holles and Strode.100CJ ii. 903a.

In 1642 as in 1641, Rous monitored the west country from a distance, intervening only very occasionally in the affairs of Cornwall and Devon. On 10 February he argued that the godly John, 2nd Baron Robartes should be lord lieutenant of Cornwall, as Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, already held the post in four other counties.101PJ i. 342. In July 1642, as war became more likely, Rous’s involvement in local affairs deepened. He was manager and reporter of a conference with the Lords which included measures to prevent cavalry raised in Cornwall from joining the king at York, he was added to the committee to stop the county magazine in Dorset from falling into the wrong hands, and at the end of the month he was messenger to the Lords with a resolution appointing Nicholas Trefusis* and Richard Erisey* deputy lieutenants for Cornwall.102CJ ii. 665b, 676a. Despite this activity, the Cornish royalist Joseph Jane* was surely mistaken in seeing Rous as one of the ‘zealots’ directly responsible for encouraging men in the west to arm against the king, not least because he remained firmly ensconced at Westminster.103Coate, Cornw. 330. All that Rous could hope to do was to bring the region to the attention of the Commons, as on 27 September, when he warned the House that ‘there were divers ill-affected citizens in the city of Exeter in the county of Devon who would not show their arms when the ordinance of the militia was put in execution’, and urged that the mayor and corporation should have permission to disarm suspects. Sir Simonds D’Ewes commented that ‘this was a strange motion, and yet to that servitude was the House of Commons grown … that no man opposed it’.104Harl. 163, f. 385v. On 15 November Rous was named to the committee on an order concerning the failure of the Exeter corporation to comply with Parliament’s orders, as presented by Prideaux, and on 26th he managed the conference on the same, alongside Pym, Prideaux, Strode and John Maynard.105CJ ii. 851a, 865b. On 13 December Rous, Pym and Prideaux joined Antony Nicoll, Francis Buller and other MPs from the south west on the committee of both Houses to attend the City of London about raising money to fight the war in the region.106CJ ii. 886b.

The pressing need for money for Parliament’s armies brought a new role for Rous. On 12 September 1642 he was named to the committee on the king’s revenue, to decide what could legitimately be paid to Parliament from the crown receipts, and the next day he was added to the committee on propositions for raising money and horses for the army.107CJ ii. 762b, 763b. On 23 September he moved that ‘in this time of fasting that feasting be forborne, and if any have too much money they may do well to bestow their money for defence of our religion and nation’.108Add. 18777, f. 10. Rous subsequently made his own loan to maintain the army, but the amount is not known.109Add. 18777, f. 107v. By the end of September Rous was chairman of the committee for the king’s revenue, and on 14 October he reported from the same that it recommended the stopping of crown pensions to prominent royalists.110Add. 18777, ff. 10v, 28v; CJ ii. 808a. Four days later Rous’s committee took charge of measures to formally sequester the king’s revenues.111CJ ii. 813b. On 26 November he was given care of implementing an order to ensure that no money should be paid from the king’s revenues unless the Commons agreed.112CJ ii. 866a. This led to detailed investigations, and on 9 December Rous reported that a search of the exchequer had revealed ‘divers trunks and hampers locked up, in which was conceived that there were great sums of money ready to be sent away to the king’, and the Commons ordered that they should be opened.113Harl. 164, f. 245; CJ ii. 881b, 886a. Rous’s involvement in the king’s revenues led to another important appointment on 24 October, when he was named to the committee to draft ordinances for the safe keeping of the king’s younger children, who remained at St James’s Palace.114CJ ii. 820b. On 5 November Rous was ordered to prepare an order for the court of wards to recoup money already spent for the maintenance of the royal children, including £700 disbursed by William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele.115CJ ii. 836b. The question of the crown revenues and the care of the king’s children were to recur frequently in later years.

War and religion, 1643

Rous was opposed to the peace talks that dominated the first three months of 1643, and did his best to undermine them. In January he was named to committees to publish an account of Lord Fairfax’s victory at Leeds, and to add a gloss to an incriminating letter from the king to the queen.116CJ ii. 947b, 948b. In February he was involved in the disclosure of news of the king’s willingness to treat with the Irish Catholics, the publishing of a ‘digest of letters’ about the mistreatment of prisoners in royalist hands, and the investigation of a design on London.117CJ ii. 965a, 967b, 978b. In the same month D’Ewes suspected that new schemes to raise money, were ‘a mere compact of these fiery spirits in London, with Hampden, Rous, Pym, and some others of the House of Commons of the same mind’ to renew the war.118Harl. 164, f. 302v. A day later, when a message from the king was discussed, Rous ignored it, moving instead that a committee attend the lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, at Windsor to discuss the cessation, and this again caused D’Ewes to brand him as one of the ‘fiery spirits’.119Harl. 164, ff. 304, 305v. In the same period, Rous was keen to keep the war alive in the west country. In January 1643 he was named to committees to allow the general in the west, Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford, to pardon repentant royalists and to arrange a local assessment tax in the western counties; he was messenger to the Lords with ordinances for Devon and Cornwall, and he also moved that Devon should be allowed to borrow against the uncollected subsidy.120CJ ii. 930b; LJ v. 559b; Add. 18777, f. 138v. Rous broke the news of Sir Ralph Hopton’s* withdrawal from the Plymouth siege on 6 February, and ten days later he and Pym told the House of the efforts made by the mayor of Plymouth to keep the town supplied, urging that he should be recompensed.121Harl. 164, ff. 289v, 299. On 9 March Thomas Gewen* and other deputy lieutenants at Exeter wrote to Rous and Prideaux warning of attempts to broker a local peace deal, and when this was read in the Commons, it was agreed that Nicoll and Prideaux should be sent to prevent it.122HMC Portland, i. 101; CJ ii. 998b. On 18 March Rous, Pym, Holles, Francis Buller and others, were named to the committee to consider further letters from Devon and Cornwall concerning the negotiations.123CJ iii. 8a. On 11 April Rous was appointed to a committee to prepare a declaration on the failed local treaty.124CJ iii. 38b.

Having seen off both national and local attempts to make peace, Rous spent the remainder of 1643 furthering a range of causes, although the patchy nature of his appointments suggests that he was spreading himself rather too thinly. Rous was only occasionally drawn into the affairs of the west country in this period. On 29 April he and Strode were ordered to prepare a letter thanking Major-general James Chudleigh for his success against the Cornish royalists, shortly before the defeat of Stamford’s main force at Stratton.125CJ iii. 63b. On 3 August he joined a number of MPs from the west, including Prideaux and Buller, on the committee for the speedy relief of Exeter and the western parts.126CJ iii. 192b. On 20 November Rous was vigorous in his defence of Anthony Nicoll, who had fallen foul of the disgraced Stamford, and urged the Commons to refuse to accept proceedings against Nicoll initiated by the Lords.127Add. 18779, f. 7v. On 15 December he was one of the MPs given permission to visit the Cornish turncoat Sir Alexander Carew* in the Tower of London.128CJ iii. 341b.

Ireland continued to worry Rous, but his involvement was now only sporadic, and he attended only one meeting of the Committee for Irish Affairs between February and September.129SP16/539/127, p. 24. Specific issues could command his full attention for short periods, however. In February 1643, when news arrived that the king was seeking to start talks with the Catholic Irish, Rous played an important part in the subsequent discussion, warning that ‘if they have a peace by treaty that they will come over hither and set up popery here’.130Add. 18777, f. 155; CJ ii. 965a. On 18 May Rous and John Glynne were ordered to take care of the business of a committee to prepare a declaration linking the Irish war with that in England, as part of a plot to overthrow the Protestant religion, and on 25 May he was teller in favour of reading a report from the Committee for Irish Affairs, outlining a bill for the relief of Ireland.131CJ iii. 91a, 102b. He returned to the theme on 13 June, when he was named to a committee to prepare a conference with the Lords on the state of Ireland, justified by the threat to Protestantism that the war entailed, and he was also involved in preparing a declaration on Ireland in early July.132CJ iii. 127b, 154a. These cases suggest that Rous’s primary interest in Ireland was to find fuel to stoke up the cause of the ‘fiery spirits’ in England.

During 1643 Rous continued to play a part in financial affairs, although not to the same extent as before. In January the Commons ordered that that the raising of money from delinquents would now be dealt with by the subscriptions committee chaired by John Trenchard, rather than by Rous’s committee.133CJ ii. 910a. On 2 February Rous was named to the committee to consider the imposition of a weekly assessment.134CJ ii. 951a. On 12 April he was appointed to a committee to negotiate a loan for the army from the City.135CJ iii. 41a. Later in the same month Rous was named to a committee to consider how to manage the crown revenues.136CJ iii. 59a. He was named to the committee on the assessment ordinance on 25 July, and four days later was appointed to the committee on public money, designed to oversee other committees handling revenues.137CJ iii. 181a, 186a. It was only in the autumn that he took greater responsibility for Parliament’s finances, as suggested by two appointments. On 14 September Rous was added to the committee for the care of the king’s children, which he had neglected since 1642, and on 23 September the Commons ordered that he would take the chair of the newly-formed Committee for the Revenue, in the absence of Sir Henry Vane II.138CJ iii. 241b, 254a. He was signing warrants of the Committee for Revenue by October, but his involvement in this body was as yet intermittent.139Supra, ‘Committee for the Revenue’; SP28/269, ff. 99-100, 120.

From the summer of 1643 Rous’s part in national politics had also become much narrower, being focused almost entirely on the successive covenants. This perhaps reflected his theological interests and concern for the precise wording of such statements of faith. On 6 June he was appointed with Pym, Vane II, and others, on a committee to devise an oath for the discovery of plots against Parliament; he took the oath and covenant on 6 June; and on 9 June he was named to another committee, to prepare instructions for taking the new oath throughout the kingdom.140CJ iii. 117b, 118b, 122b. On 14 June he was appointed to the committee to prepare an official narrative of the plot of Edmund Waller*, on 24 June he was named to the committee to prepare instructions for the oath to be taken across the country, and on 19 July he was appointed to further committees, to justify the vow and covenant and ensure it was subscribed by the army.141CJ iii. 128b, 144a, 165b, 173b. On 25 July the Commons ordered that Rous bring in the ‘vindication’ of the vow and covenant, and on 23 August he was named to the committee to investigate those MPs who had violated their oath.142CJ iii. 182a, 216b. In early September the vow and covenant was superseded by the Solemn League and Covenant with the Scots. On 4 September Rous was named to the committee to consider the 5th article of the Covenant (ensuring a lasting ‘firm peace and union’ between the kingdoms) and to arrange suitable lodgings for the Scottish commissioners, and on 7 September he joined Pym as manager on the same article for conference with the Lords.143CJ iii. 227b, 231b. This activity would bring him into close contact with the Scottish commissioners. One of them, Robert Baillie, was impressed by their first meeting, thinking Rous ‘an old honest member of the House of Commons’.144Baillie, Letters and Jnls. ii. 120.

Rous’s inconsistency on some issues and narrowness on others came in contrast to the diligence with which he pursued religious affairs. On 3 January he was named to a committee to devise an oath to ‘discover’ closet papists, and on 23 January he presented a document for churches, to be read on fast days, asking for forgiveness of ‘national sins’.145CJ ii. 913a, 938b. The next day he spoke in favour of selling off episcopal lands, saying that the proceeds should be ploughed back into the church, for ‘we are to consider the end for which these livings were first given to the bishops, viz. for the maintenance of religion and spiritual uses, and therefore we should keep that end always and let the same be employed to the same use still’.146Add. 18777, f. 115. On 11 February Rous was named to the committee on a fast to be authorised for use on fast days, and on the 14th he brought in the text to the Commons, and took the same to the Lords.147Add. 18777, f. 154v; CJ ii. 962a, 965a, 966a; LJ v. 605b. At the end of March he was involved in attempts to discredit Catholics, being named to a committee of both Houses to consider reports that the royalist 2nd earl of Northampton (Spencer Compton), killed in battle, had been wearing a crucifix, and reporting to the Commons the removal of Capuchins from London, and in April he was named to a committee to investigate superstitious imagery in the capital’s churches.148CJ iii. 23a, 24b, 57a. On 3 May Rous and Humphrey Salwey were given charge of the committee to consider the prosecution of Archbishop William Laud and Bishop Matthew Wren.149CJ iii. 68a. Despite his involvement with harsh measures against the bishops and their adherents, Rous could be magnanimous. In September 1643 he wrote to Sir Thomas Barrington* recommending that one minister should be treated leniently

for I think he hath made a different expression from other bishops’ chaplains, having given much of a little for the Parliament’s use, which may well free him from undergoing the notion of a malignant. Besides, I have reason to think him poor, and … having a wife and child.150Eg. 2647, f. 233.

The long-awaited scheme to reform church government, in consultation with leading ministers, finally came to fruition in the summer of 1643 with the creation of the Westminster Assembly. On 19 May the Commons ordered that Rous was to report from the committee for the Assembly; he reported the ordinance the next day, when the Commons gave their assent; and took it to the Lords for approval on 24 May.151CJ iii. 93a-b, 99b; LJ vi. 60a. On 12 June Rous was himself appointed as a lay member of the Assembly.152A. and O. Rous’s role in the Assembly was as a point of contact with Parliament. Thus when the Assembly petitioned the Commons concerning certain books and authors on 10 August, Rous was named to the committee to consider the matter, and when one minister desired leave of absence on 23 August, Rous was sent to square it with the Assembly.153CJ iii. 201a, 216b. He was also required to smooth over possible problems, as on 2 September when he was made manager of a conference between the two Houses concerning moves to eject Dr Cornelius Burgess from the Assembly.154CJ iii. 225b. Twice in September he was employed as a messenger to the Assembly, on report on the opinions of antinomians and to procure prayers to accompany the Covenant, in the last case working with Sir John Clotworthy.155CJ iii. 237b, 255a. Rous’s closeness to both Assembly and Parliament compromised his position, but Parliament turned a blind eye. On 20 November the Commons requested from the Assembly that Rous’s edition of the psalms should be the one authorised for use in services for the time being.156CJ iii. 315b.

Religion and War, 1644-5

Rous’s career in 1644 was determined by the same issues as before, but it was conducted in very different circumstances. John Pym’s death in December 1643 had hit Rous very hard; he had lost his closest political ally as well as his step-brother. On 9 December, Rous and Oliver St John were ordered to take Pym’s books and writings, many of them in effect state papers, into their care, and at the end of the month Rous was added to the committee for Pym’s business – an appointment that marked the start of a long process of raising money to care for Pym’s children and to satisfy his creditors.157CJ iii. 334b, 355a; E404/235, unfol. On 24 July, for example, he was ordered to bring in an ordinance for settling confiscated papists’ estates on Pym’s heirs; periodically named to committees to further this in later years, he kept Pym’s papers in his keeping.158CJ iii. 568b; iv. 59b, 190a, 269a, 579a. The death of Pym left Rous with a much reduced role in secular affairs. On 10 February he was manager of the conference concerning the Commons’ reservations about the ordinance creating the Committee of Both Kingdoms, but he was not named to the new executive body.159CJ iii. 396a. In early March Rous was involved in the committee to consider the Lords’ refusal to accept that all those dealing with the Scots in committees should take an oath of secrecy, and he reported its findings to the Commons.160Add. 31116, p. 241; CJ iii. 411b, 416a. He delivered the ordinance for the oath to the Lords at the end of March.161LJ vi. 477b. In the same month Rous was named to the committee to consider letters sent by the king to the Lords, and he was appointed to the committee to prepare heads for a conference on a renewal of peace negotiations.162CJ iii. 416b, 428b. Rous continued to serve on the Committee for Revenue in this period, signing occasional warrants from February through to October, and he was involved in setting up a committee of both Houses to regulate the care of the king’s children and in passing on ordinance on the same, but otherwise he played virtually no part in financial affairs.163Add. 32476, f. 23; E404/235, unfol.; SP28/269, f. 119; HMC Laing, i. 213-4; CJ iii. 410b, 420a, 516a; LJ vi. 445a. His involvement with the affairs of the west country also declined, although in May he was named to the committee to investigate the conduct of Anthony Nicoll’s nemesis, the earl of Stamford.164CJ iii. 498a.

Without Pym’s guidance, it seems that Rous’s politics became reactive. During the spring, he was apparently working with the supporters of the earl of Essex. On 2 May D’Ewes recorded that ‘Mr Glynne, Mr Rous and some other discreet men’ had moved to delay a vote attacking the Lords for their support of Essex, even though it had been demanded by some MPs ‘with desperate and high language’.165Harl. 166, f. 54v. Conversely, after the disastrous Lothwithiel campaign, which encouraged MPs to renew the attack on the earl, Rous was prepared to join in attempts to undermine him. On 21 September, according to D’Ewes, Essex’s request that his cavalry should be rested allowed Rous, ‘being doubtless instructed beforehand’, to move that troops of Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester, might support Sir William Waller* instead, leaving the lord general effectively excluded.166Harl. 166, f. 123v.

Although Rous’s part in secular affairs was much diminished in 1644, this was counter-balanced by his increasing importance in religious affairs. He had been appointed to the Committee for Plundered Ministers in December 1643, and he also worked on the perennial task of rooting out idolatry, as in April 1644, when he was named to the committee to remove superstitious worship.167CJ iii. 342b, 470b. Rous was especially involved in the work of the Westminster Assembly. Much of this was routine work of carrying messages back and forth. On 13 January the Commons ordered that Rous and St John attend the ministers to request that they prayed with the Commons every morning.168CJ iii. 365a. On 24 January Rous was messenger to the divines asking that they hasten their resolutions on church government.169CJ iii. 376b. On 30 January he was added to a committee to meet with the divines, and acted as messenger to the assembly, to request an ‘exhortation’ to accompany the Solemn League and Covenant.170CJ iii. 382a. Once the exhortation had been read by the Commons, Rous was sent back to the Assembly to report, and in the next few days he also attended the Lords to expedite the printing and distribution of the Covenant.171CJ iii. 389a, 396b, 397b, 398a, 399a; LJ vi. 423b. In March Rous and John Selden were messengers to the Assembly to request the printing of its letters to and from the reformed churches abroad.172CJ iii. 462b. On 16 May Rous was messenger to the Assembly with the request that they maintain regular correspondence with the Scottish Parliament.173CJ iii. 496a.

Rous was also involved in negotiating with the Assembly, leading moves to introduce controversial new arrangements for the ordination of ministers. On 6 June he moved that a paper on the subject be considered in the Commons.174Harl. 166, f. 69v. On 31 July it was ordered, on Rous’s motion, that the ordination debate would take place on 2 August.175Harl. 166, f. 101v. In August and September he acted as messenger to and from the Assembly, on the ordination of ministers, no fewer than four times, and he was also added to the committee to meet with the Scottish commissioners to settle their scruples on the matter.176CJ iii. 591b, 593b, 611a, 625b, 628a; LJ vi. 677a; Mins. and Pprs. of the Westminster Assembly ed C. van Dixhoorn and D.F. Wright (5 vols. Oxford, 2012), iii. 232-3, 244, 254-5, 290, 296. Finally, on 18 September, the Commons ordered that Rous and the Presbyterian, Zouche Tate, would take care of choosing the names of those ministers who would approve ordination under the terms of the ordinance, and Rous was instructed to take the final document up to the Lords.177CJ iii. 630a, 631a; LJ vi. 709a. Rous also played an important part in the debate on the Lord’s Supper, and he went on to take care of the business when it came before a Commons committee in November.178CJ iii. 705b.

Rous’s involvement in the Westminster Assembly had two important by-products. First, it helped to secure him the prestigious post of provost of Eton. On 29 January 1644 it was resolved by the Commons that Rous should replace the former provost, a royalist, and that Rous’s friend, Edmund Prideaux I, was to bring in an ordinance to this effect.179CJ iii. 381a-b. On 3 February Oliver St John, another associate of Rous, introduced the ordinance, which was passed by the Commons and taken to the Lords by St John.180Harl. 166, f. 6v; CJ iii. 386b, 387a-b. Sir Robert Harley was sent to the Lords on 10 February to ask for their approval.181CJ iii. 395a. Despite being sponsored by both Presbyterians like Harley and Independents like St John and Prideaux, the appointment was not universally popular. D’Ewes was ‘utterly against it’, pointing out that it gave the impression that ‘we intended to prefer all the Members of the House’, which would ‘make us ill spoken of abroad’.182Harl. 166, f. 6v. One royalist newsbook commented sourly of the appointment that Rous ‘sure hath deserved better, for turning David’s psalms into metre (almost half as well as Hopkins)’.183Mercurius Aulicus no. 10 (5-11 Mar. 1643), 865 (E.247.20). The second result of his importance in the Assembly was the development of a strong relationship with the Scottish commissioners. There are signs of this in January and February, when Rous was ordered to thank Samuel Rutherford for preaching and he twice invited Robert Baillie to preach, while no doubt Rous’s part in preparing the Solemn League and Covenant also encouraged the Scots to treat him with increasing trust.184CJ iii. 383b, 410a. On 28 June Baillie wrote that ‘my good friend Mr Rous’ had warned him of ‘a dangerous design’ against the Presbyterians over the ordination of ministers, and the two were preparing a paper on the subject to be submitted to both Houses.185Baillie, Letters and Jnls. ii. 197. On 17 August Rous and Tate were added to the committee to meet with the Scottish commissioners to reconcile differences over ordination.186HMC 6th Rep. 23; CJ iii. 593b; LJ vi. 677a.

The arguments of the late summer and autumn had split the divines into two hostile groups, with some refusing to countenance the new Directory of Public Worship. On 12 November Rous took the Commons’ reaction to this dissent to the Assembly, and on 20 December he and Tate urged the Assembly to complete their deliberations on church government, and provide reasons for the refusal of some of their members to agree with it.187CJ iii. 693b, 730a. On 28 December he reported from the committee on the Directory, and the ordinance was passed by the Commons, with Rous then taking it to the Lords for their approval.188CJ iv. 3b. In the early months of 1645 Rous was busy managing the passage of the Directory. On 1 January he was messenger to the Lords with the enabling ordinance, two days later he was named to the committee to consider the Lords’ suggested amendments, and on 4th he joined Tate and Harley as manager of the conference on the same.189CJ iv. 6b, 9b, 10a; LJ vii. 119a. On 25 January Rous was messenger to the Lords on two occasions, with votes on the establishment of Presbyterian church government, and he returned on 6 February with further votes on the matter.190CJ iv. 31a-b, 43a; LJ vii. 158a, 179a. In the next few months, progress was slower, partly because of need then to liaise with the Scottish Parliament.191CJ iv. 7b. On 24 February Rous moved that the settlement of religion be considered the next day, but to no avail.192Harl. 166, f. 179v. On 14 April he delivered a paper from the Scottish commissioners indicating the approval of the Directory by the Scottish Parliament, and urging that it would now be adopted throughout England.193Harl. 166, f. 200v. This removed the log-jam. On 17 April Rous and Tate were sent to the Assembly to ask them to draft a confession of faith, and both were appointed to a committee on an ordinance to put the Directory into execution.194CJ iv. 114a; Add. 18780, f. 4v. On 23 April Rous and Tate were instructed to consider the papers of the Scottish commissioners on church government, and on 3 May they were instructed to draft a reply.195CJ iv. 121b, 131a. On 6 May Rous took the Commons’ votes on church government to the Lords, and the next day he attended both the Lords and the Assembly, asking that they might bring their deliberations to a speedy conclusion.196CJ iv. 133a, 134a; LJ vii. 357a; Add. 18780, f. 84.

After the frenetic activity of April and May, progress on the settlement of the church government stalled. For the next few months, Rous’s activity diminished correspondingly. On 30 June he joined Denis Bond and Prideaux as messengers to the Assembly asking for a day of prayer for the forces in the west.197CJ iv. 189b. On 25 July he was named to committees to consult with the Assembly on the means to elect elders and to draw up an ordinance for publishing the directory.198CJ iv. 218a, 218b. On 29 July he was named to a committee to prepare reasons why peers were not to be exempted from the new church settlement, and on 5 August he and Tate were managers of a conference on this matter with the Lords.199CJ iv. 224a, 231b. Ten days later the two men managed another conference on the Directory.200CJ iv. 242a. Despite the delays, Rous was still hopeful of a final decision on the church. On 12 September he went to the Assembly to urge progress on the confession of faith, and the Assembly decided that Rous’s psalms should be sung in churches.201Mins. of the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly of Divines ed. A.F. Mitchell and J. Struthers (1874), 131. On 20 September he was named to a committee to consider scandalous attacks on the proposed system, and on 26 September he and Tate were ordered to take care of an ordinance to comprehend all the votes on the church and report back to the grand committee on religion.202CJ iv. 280a, 290a. On 10 October Rous was teller against putting the question that the ordinance for church government needed the consent of both Houses, in opposition to the Presbyterians, but the question was put and the main motion carried.203CJ iv. 303b. Later in the same month, Tate and Rous were at last ordered to bring in the ordinance for ordination of ministers.204CJ iv. 317a. Little had been achieved by 11 December, when Rous and Selden were given care of another printed attack on the Assembly, and Rous was chosen as messenger to report the matter to the Assembly itself.205CJ iv. 373a.

Religious Presbyterian, political Independent, 1645-6

During 1645 Rous was more engaged with politics than in the previous year. On 11 January the Lords again refused to accept an oath of secrecy, and when Rous delivered a request for a conference on the matter it was denied.206Harl. 166, f. 175v. He was also involved in the peace negotiations with the king at Uxbridge. On 28 January he joined Strode and others as a manager of the conference with the Lords on the treaty, and on 15 February he was appointed to a committee to prepare instructions for the commissioners at Uxbridge concerning the Irish cessation.207CJ iv. 34a, 50b. The Self-Denying Ordinance, and moves to new model the army saw the military peers sidelined, and Rous helped to smooth their ruffled feathers in the spring of 1645. On 4 March he was named to a committee to produce a narrative of the successes of the old armies, and on 2 April he was appointed to a Presbyterian-dominated committee to consider how the earls of Essex, Manchester and Denbigh (Basil Feilding, 2nd earl) might be rewarded for their service.208CJ iv. 67b, 96b.

Despite this last appointment, there are signs that Rous was now distancing himself from the political Presbyterians. He became increasingly active on the Independent-dominated Committee for Revenue during 1645, signing warrants and attending meetings.209SP28/269, ff. 130-1, 135, 140-1, 144, 146-8, 151, 153, 264; E404/235, unfol. In parallel with this, Rous was also busy in ensuring the maintenance of the king’s children in the Commons. On 15 April the report on this, which had long lain in Rous’s hands, was requested by the Commons, and three days later Rous reported the committee’s recommendations.210CJ iv. 111b; Add. 31116, p. 410; Harl. 166, f. 202. The Commons again ordered Rous to report on 3 June.211CJ iv. 161a. When his next report came, on 23 June, it recommended that the Independent peer, Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, should be given £3,000 a year for taking them into his care.212Harl. 166, f. 221; Add. 18780, f. 43; CJ iv. 115b. Another report from Rous on 11 September recommended that the Commons should increase this to £10,000, although the lesser sum of £5,000 was eventually agreed.213Harl. 166, f. 262; CJ iv. 270a. Rous’s support for Northumberland, his fellow member (from early 1646) of the Committee for Revenue, contrasted with his apparently hostile attitude to the Presbyterian earl of Manchester. On 14 June Rous preferred a petition from the heads of the Cambridge colleges asking that Manchester should be removed as chancellor, and the regulation of the university be taken over by a committee of both Houses, and he was named to a committee to consider this.214Harl. 166, f. 219; CJ iv. 174a, 229b. In October Rous steered the Cambridge ordinance through the committee, and on 7 November he brought in a report on filling vacant college fellowships and appointing new ministers to the university church and five parishes in Cambridge, which, it was alleged, Manchester had failed to do.215Harl. 166, ff. 269, 270; Add. 31116, p. 481; CJ iv. 334b.

Rous was perhaps encouraged in his more favourable attitude towards the Independents by old friends, including Oliver St John and Edmund Prideaux I. The connection between Rous and Prideaux was as strong as ever in 1645, and on 19 July Rous was named to chair the committee to investigate scandalous words spoken against Prideaux.216CJ iv. 213a. There were obvious religious implications in Rous’s move away from the political Presbyterians. In the summer of 1645 Rous published The Ancient Bounds, or Liberty of Conscience tenderly stated, which outlined his recent thinking on the problem of accommodating Independents and others to a Presbyterian system.217J.S. McGee, ‘Francis Rous and “scabby or itchy children“’, HLQ lxvii, passim. In the introduction, Rous stated his intention as writing ‘in favour of the persons that differ, not their errors’, and ‘to take men off from the wrong way of opposing errors’.218F. Rous, The Ancient Bounds, or Liberty of Conscience tenderly stated (1645), sig. A3 (E.287.3). Those who disagree with the Presbyterian way must be given respect, as they must not be subject to coercion. This was a contribution to a wider debate; but it also reveals something of Rous’s own developing ideas, towards (very limited) toleration, and a flexible Presbyterian church which the moderate Independents could also embrace. Rous’s positive tone showed that he remained hopeful of a future settlement, but it did not reflect what in politics and religion had been an unstable and frustrating year. This had been alleviated only by a clutch of minor personal achievements. In August the Commons had passed an ordinance exempting Eton College from the assessment; in September a further ordinance had been drafted, which promised to settle the matter of John Pym’s debts (resulting in the payment of an allowance to his dependents from October); and in November the Commons agreed a request from the Assembly that Rous’s psalms would be the ones authorised for use in churches.219CJ iv. 256a, 257a, 269a, 279a, 342a: LJ vii. 556a, 705a; Add. 31116, p. 485; E404/235, unfol.

During 1646 Rous continued to be active in the political sphere. He remained a member of the Committee for Revenue, although his involvement was less frenetic than it had been in the last months of 1645.220E404/235-6, unfol. This may reflect his busyness elsewhere. He was made a temporary member of the Committee of Both Kingdoms on 3 January, when a letter from the king was considered; he was on a committee to prepare letters to the Scots on 29 January; and on 31 January he was named to the committee on the first of the peace propositions then under consideration.221CJ iv. 395b, 422a, 424b. On 26 February he was named to the committee to draw up reasons why the Commons adhered to the fifth proposition, sitting with Prideaux and Vane II as well as Tate and Sir Philip Stapilton.222CJ iv. 454b. He was also involved in the case against John Lilburne (who had evidently lost Rous’s compassion since 1640), taking the examination to the Lords in January and subsequently being added to the committee on his petition.223CJ iv. 418b, 601b. During the spring, as Parliament’s victory became certain, Rous used his pen to influence public opinion. On 7 March he was named to a committee to prepare an account of recent ‘mercies and successes’ for a day of thanksgiving; and on 16 May he was appointed to a committee to prepare a declaration vindicating Parliament’s actions.224CJ iv. 467a, 548b. On 25 May Rous joined Holles, Vane II and other leading MPs of both factions as reporter of a conference with the Lords on letters from the king and the Scottish commissioners, concerning the king’s flight to the Scottish army.225CJ iv. 554b.

In the months following the king’s surrender, Rous was less active, although he was named to committees to investigate an unauthorised remonstrance to the king from London (11 July), and to allow the Committee for Revenue to issue grants under the great seal (27 Aug.).226CJ iv. 615b, 653a. This may have reflected Rous’s somewhat frosty relations with the Presbyterians, whose influence in the Commons had revived. In the summer of 1646 Rous’s use of public money was called into question. For at least two years he had received £84 a year from the Committee for Revenue as provost of Eton, for his own salary and that of the fellows.227SC6/ChasI/1661, m. 8d; SC6/ChasI/1662, m.11d; SC6/ChasI/1663, m. 10d. In August, on a Commons order of 8 June, Rous was allocated further sums to fund four ‘godly ministers’ to study at Oxford.228SC6/ChasI/1664, m. 13. On 25 August Rous wrote to Speaker William Lenthall justifying the arrangement, which had come under criticism. In his letter, he specified the charitable causes he was supporting from this money, including a preacher at the church at Eton, and eight ‘young scholars that wanted maintenance’ at the college. Rous was at pains to emphasise that this was done ‘for the public good’, and that ‘I have not been in earnest to save and gather for myself, though I have not for sundry years received one penny of my own estate’.229Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 499. This explanation apparently satisfied Rous’s critics, and in September he was brought in to negotiations to ensure the swift departure of the Scottish forces from the north of England and the transfer of the king into Parliament’s custody. On 5 September he was appointed to a Presbyterian-dominated committee to raise a loan of £200,000 to pay off the Scots, and on 24th he was named to the committee of both Houses to meet the Scottish commissioners to consider the ‘disposal’ of the king.230CJ iv. 663a, 675a.

In 1646 Rous’s role in religious affairs was more muted, and less focused, than in the previous year. At the beginning of the year he was still trying to get a Presbyterian church structure erected. In January he was named to the committee on the better observation of the Lord’s Day, alongside leading Presbyterians like Holles and Tate, and to a committee on an ordinance to bring exempted churches in London into the Presbyterian system.231CJ iv. 411b, 413b. On 7 April he was named to the committee to consider the establishment of a preaching ministry.232CJ iv. 502a. Relations between the Commons and the Westminster Assembly had, however, become strained. The Assembly’s objections to the ordinance on suspension from the Lord’s Supper had brought accusations that they had breached parliamentary privilege. On 16 March Rous was diplomatic, reassuring the Assembly that things could be smoothed over and urging ‘that your work is to go forward’; but in April he was involved in Commons’ committees to consider the alleged breach of privilege.233CJ iv. 511a, 518b; Mins. and Pprs. of the Westminster Assembly ed van Dixhoorn and Wright, iv. 15. On 22 April 1646 the Commons considered the questions to be put to the Assembly on the recommendation of Rous and Tate, adding that the members must ‘subscribe their names with their opinions, affirmative or negative, to every one of those questions’.234Add. 31116, p. 530. The bad feeling slowed progress still further. On 22 July Rous delivered messages from the Commons to the Assembly, asking about progress on the confession of faith and the catechism, and the Commons ordered that he should try to get the Assembly to submit the final version of the confession on 17 September.235Mins. Westminster Assembly ed. Mitchell and Struthers, 258; CJ iv. 671a. On 7 December Rous and Selden were sent to the Assembly once more, to request whether any progress had been made on their consideration of the article of religion.236CJ v. 2b. Other religious issues were brought closer to settlement, however. On 31 July Rous and John Harington I brought in the long-awaited ordinance on the ordination of ministers.237Harington’s Diary, 30; CJ iv. 630b. Rous was messenger to the Lords with the same ordinance on 27 August, and brought their answer the next day.238CJ iv. 653b, 656b, 657a; LJ viii. 474a. On 4 November the ordinance for the repairing and maintaining churches reached the committee stage, with Rous among the members; on 2 December Rous was named to the committee for the sale of bishops’ lands; and a week later he was again named to a committee to consider and enumerate ‘national sins’.239A. and O.; CJ iv. 714b; v. 7b.

Religion, education and politics, 1647-8

During the first half of 1647, Rous continued to pursue his religious agenda, but largely without reference to the Westminster Assembly. On 27 January he was named with Tate and others to a committee to prepare a text to be read in churches on the forthcoming day of national humiliation.240CJ v. 66a. On 22 March he was appointed to the committee on an ordinance for restraining royalists from entering church livings.241CJ v. 119b. On 27 April Rous was ordered to meet the divines who had come to the door of the chamber, and excuse the House for not receiving them, as they were very busy.242CJ v. 154b. On 10 June Rous reported the ordinance on impropriations and dean and chapter lands.243CJ v. 204b. Only at the end of June and beginning of July did any progress on the church settlement look likely. On 30 June Rous was named to the committee to nominate divines to consider heads of religious accommodation between the different factions, and given care of its business; and on 1 July he reported its deliberations to the House.244CJ v. 228b. This issue was brought to an abrupt end by the ‘forcing of the Houses’ at the end of July, and Rous joined the Independent MPs who had left Westminster and sought the protection of the army by the beginning of August.245HMC Egmont, i. 440.

Rous had mostly managed to avoid the factional fighting of the first eight months of 1647, although he remained a member of the Committee for Revenue, signing warrants in the spring and summer.246LJ ix. 103b; E404/236; Add. 32476, ff. 26-7. After the army’s entry into London on 6 August, however, he became more involved in secular affairs. On 11 August he was appointed to the committee on an ordinance annulling all the legislation that had been passed during the forcing of the Houses, and he was later appointed to the committee that prepared the declaration on that episode.247CJ v. 272a, 322a. At the end of August he went to the Lords as messenger with various ordinances concerning the Plymouth garrison, the peace negotiations and Oxford University.248CJ v. 285a. By this time he had also resumed his position at the Committee for Revenue, and he attended regularly for the rest of the year.249E404/236, unfol.; SP28/269, ff. 243-4, 254v. The renewed attempts to make peace with the king occupied Rous for much of the autumn. On 30 September he was named to the committee to prepare the religious proposals to be put to the king; on 6 October he was appointed to another committee to prepare a further proposition establishing Presbyterian church government; and on 1 November he was teller against a motion agreeing to amendments on the religious propositions made by the Lords.250CJ v. 321b, 327b, 348a. A further problem was deciding who would be exempted from pardon in any treaty. On 14 September Rous had been teller against lifting the sequestration imposed on Jerome Weston, 2nd earl of Portland; and on 20 October he was teller with Henry Marten in favour of increasing the number exempted from pardon from a mere seven.251CJ v. 300b, 337a.

Rous’s involvement in the regulation and reform of the universities increased markedly during 1647, and he took the issue very seriously. He had played a role in reform during the previous year, and on 1 July 1646 he had been named to the committee on the ordinance for regulating Oxford.252CJ iv. 595b. This body remained dormant for the next few months, but was revived, with Rous again named, on 13 January 1647, and on 10 February he was reporter of the ordinance and was included in the list of visitors.253CJ v. 51b, 83a, 84b. He took the ordinance to the Lord the next day, and in March joined his old ally, John Selden, as manager of the subsequent conference.254LJ ix. 3a; CJ v. 121b. Rous reported from further conferences on the same issue in April, and on 15 April was named to the committee to draw up reasons why the Commons stood by their earlier vote on the ordinance.255CJ v. 139b, 142a, 143a. On 1 May he was appointed to the committee of both Houses to implement the reforms at Oxford.256A. and O. Two days later he delivered an ordinance for its visitation and reformation.257Harington’s Diary, 49. On 20 July Rous was named to the committee stage of an ordinance to restore the Independent peer the earl of Pembroke to his position as chancellor of Oxford.258CJ v. 251b. Rous was active as visitor, and on 30 October he went to the Lords with orders that the visitors’ findings should be referred to the Oxford committee.259CJ v. 345b, 346a-b; LJ ix. 540a. By December 1647 Rous was chairman of the committee of both Houses for regulating the university.260CCSP i. 414.

For the first half of 1648, Rous remained busy with religious affairs and the needs of the universities. On 11 January he was added to the committee for public grievances, to allow him to advise on a petition from the London provincial assembly, and given care of the business.261CJ v. 427a. On 27 January he was messenger to the Lords with an ordinance for settling Presbyterian government more effectively, and on 1 March he and Nathaniel Bacon were ordered to take care of printing returns from various counties of the elections to Presbyterian classes there.262CJ v. 445b, 474b. The Westminster Assembly cast a long shadow. On 17 March Rous was teller against a motion that the House should vote on whether the advice of the Assembly should be considered a formal ‘confession of faith’, and when it was duly voted down, Rous was one of those sent to the Lords to request a conference.263CJ v. 502a. University affairs were less indigestible, and their passage easier. On 17 February Rous went to the Lords with an ordinance to make the moderate Presbyterian (and stalwart of the Westminster Assembly) Edward Reynolds the new vice-chancellor of Oxford, and on 2 March he was again sent with the same ordinance, this time returning with their agreement.264CJ v. 466b, 477a; LJ x. 86a. On 24 March Rous was ordered to take care of orders providing funding for both Oxford and Cambridge from the sale of the dean and chapter lands, and this may explain his appointment on 16 June to the committee for the ordinance for the sale, with he and Bacon being given care of the business.265CJ v. 512b, 602a. On 21 April Rous was reporter from the committee of both Houses on Oxford, and was ordered to take the thanks of the Commons to Pembroke as chancellor, and on 27 May he was sent to the Lords with an order allowing the same committee to examine the doctors charged with contempt of Parliament.266CJ v. 538b, 539a, 574b; LJ x. 213a, 286a. On 17 June Rous was appointed to a committee on the ordinance to make further appointments at Oxford, alongside such old allies as Tate, Selden, Erle and Prideaux.267CJ v. 603b.

During the summer of 1648 Rous was drawn into politics once again. On 1 June he was added to the Derby House Committee, which had taken over as the main executive committee at the beginning of the year. He was sworn in on 16 June and attended assiduously during June and July.268CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 90, 130, 141, 144, 145, 156, 166, 188. During this period he was also busy in the Commons, being named to a clutch of committees in June.269CJ v. 602a, 603b, 608a. On 1 August he was reporter from a committee on compensation for Colonel Anthony Buller*, as governor of the Scilly Isles; appointed to a committee to repay loans to London; and named to a committee on the preaching ministry in London.270CJ v. 654b, 655a-b. In the late summer Rous also reappeared on the Committee for Revenue, after an absence of several months.271E404/236; SP28/269, ff. 260-1, 298-9, 300-1. Rous’s new prominence, and especially his appointment to the Derby House Committee, made him a target for pro-royalist newsbooks in the summer, with one attacking him in June as

one that sits warm under the shadow of Windsor Castle, in the college of Eton, where instead of propagating learning he creates barbarism, and hath made King David [author of psalms] a worse barbarian than he was left by Hopkins. It would grieve his heart to see how he hath wracked and mangled the text into metre.272Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 12 (13-20 June 1648), sig. M4(2) (E.448.17).

In the same month Rous published another tract calling for toleration and unity among all Christians, as ‘it is a sad thing when saints shall do the Devil’s works, dividing and destroying’.273The Balme of Love (1648), 12 (E.450.16). Rous went far further than before, allowing toleration to non-Protestant churches – the Orthodox, Coptic and Indian churches, even those in ‘the tents and territories of Rome’ – but he qualified this by arguing that the more serious errors could not be overlooked. Rather he sought to play down ‘such differences and divisions as are of a lower nature’, or affecting only ‘externals’ of religious practice.274Balme of Love, 7-8, 12. This suggests that his intended audience was not the universal Catholic Church but the deeply divided Presbyterian and Independent churches at home.

After the burst of activity in the summer of 1648, Rous did not attend either the Commons or the Derby House Committee for the next few months, perhaps owing to ill health. In the autumn he briefly returned. He signed warrants of the Committee for Revenue in September and October 1648, including those ordering money to be supplied for those attending the king on the Isle of Wight, and his attendance at the Derby House Committee, which had declined dramatically in the late summer, improved markedly in October.275SP28/269, f. 260v; E404/236, unfol.; Add. 21482, ff. 7-10: CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 294, 307, 309, 313, 329. He also attended Parliament, being named on 16 October to a committee on a petition from London concerning the preaching ministry there.276CJ vi. 53a But by the end of October it seems Rous was once again taking no part in public life.

Apologist for the commonwealth, 1648-9

When Thomas Pride* and his associates purged the Commons on 6 December 1648, Rous was absent. Although he subsequently sat in the House on 12 and 13 December, by the 20th he had again withdrawn, and was listed among those ‘which had the grace to refuse the subscription’ of the declaration renouncing the earlier attempts to make peace with the king, and he took no part in the regicide.277Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 166n; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 38 (12-19 Dec. 1648), sig. Ddd4v (E.476.35); no. 39 (19-26 Dec. 1648), sig. Eee3 (E.477.30). Rous had returned to the Commons by the end of February 1649, and in the next six months he was appointed to a number of important executive posts.278CJ vi. 147b. On 29 May he was added to the Committee of Navy and Customs and to the committee for excise.279CJ vi. 219b. He was again attending the Committee for Revenue from June 1649, but not with the same regularity as before.280SP28/269, ff. 313-4; E404/237-8, unfol.; Add. 21506, ff. 58-61. On 26 September he was made a governor of Westminster School.281A. and O. And on 11 October he signed the Commons order putting the votes on the visitation of Oxford University into execution.282HMC 4th Rep. 457.

Despite these appointments, Rous’s most important function during 1649 was as an apologist for the new regime. In the early weeks of the year he was approached by the irenicist John Dury, who wanted a fellowship at Eton; and Rous in return encouraged Dury to write his Considerations Concerning the Present Engagement, which was published at the end of the year, probably at the behest of committee on the Engagement, on which Rous sat.283Add. 24863, f. 80; CJ vi. 314a; J. Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers (Aldershot, 2004), 198-9. In April Rous published his own defence of the commonwealth, The Lawfulnes of Obeying the Present Government, written anonymously by ‘one that loves all Presbyterian lovers of truth and peace, and is of their communion’.284The Lawfulnes of Obeying the Present Government (1649), title page (E.551.22). The argument was summed up in the statement that ‘the power is one thing which is of God, and the getting and the use of the power is another’.285Lawfulnes of Obeying, 7. The subject had the duty to obey whatever form of government there happened to be, and those who resisted ‘would have confusion, distraction, destruction to bring forth order and safety’.286Lawfulnes of Obeying, 8. All that one should require of a magistrate is the ability ‘to live a peaceable life in godliness and honesty’.287Lawfulnes of Obeying, 8-9. Even the Solemn League and Covenant had not been breached by the republic, as it prescribed loyalty to Charles I and his successors, and ‘in the ordinary acception, the word successor is taken for him that actually succeeds in government, and not for him that is actually excluded’.288Lawfulnes of Obeying, 12.

This sort of double-thinking may have satisfied Rous, but others were less convinced. Indeed, Rous’s short pamphlet provoked a hail of abuse, which was in turn answered by longer justification of compliance, The Bounds and Bonds of Public Obedience, published in August 1649. It is uncertain whether Rous wrote this last work, or whether Anthony Ascham penned it in his defence. Its tone was very similar to the earlier work, telling the reader that the form of the government was of no great concern to the subjects, and they should rise above it, as ‘we have nothing else to do in the world but to praise God and love our neighbour’.289The Bounds and Bonds of Public Obedience (1649), 3 (E.571.26). The Rump ruled because ‘it is the supreme present power’; the alternative was anarchy.290Bounds and Bonds, 5, 10-11. This time the main target was not the outright opponent of the republic but those who did the minimum to keep out of trouble: these were reminded that ‘the distinction of active and passive obedience is a nicety, and if one be not a sin, the other is not’.291Bounds and Bonds, 66. Rous’s prominence in this debate dismayed former friends. An anonymous secluded member asked bitterly ‘who would have thought that any worldly profit or preferment could have moved old Rous, a man in matters of religion and conscience always esteemed severe and resolute, now in his old age, when he can keep nothing long, to run away from his imbibed principles and persuasions, to be continued yet a little longer provost of Eton?’292A Letter from an Ejected Member of the House of Commons (1648), pp. 11-12. (E.463.18). The Scottish minister Robert Baillie was also troubled, as ‘Mr Rous, my good friend, has complied with the sectaries, and is a member of their republic’.293Baillie, Letters and Jnls. iii. 97.

Rump MP, 1649-53

As a Rump MP, Rous was less active than before, but he continued to champion the same causes, and once again his principal focus was on religion, working closely with other religious Presbyterians, including John Gurdon, Gilbert Millington, Nathaniel Bacon and his old friend, Edmund Prideaux I.294Worden, Rump, 126-7, 130. The maintenance of ministers and the exclusion of those deemed unsuitable bulked large. On 26 April 1649 Rous was added to the committee stage of a bill to raise £20,000 to maintain ministers, and on 21 May he was named to the committee on a further bill to dispose of crown livings, now under the state’s jurisdiction.295CJ vi. 196a, 213a. He was again involved in similar discussions in February 1650, when he was named to the committee stage of the bill on presentation to livings in general, and on 15 March he was added to the committee on yet another bill for the maintenance of ministers.296CJ vi. 359a, 382b. These committees were followed, in May 1650, by another to consider the bill to raise augmentations from impropriated church lands, and that on the bill to maintain a preaching ministry in Coventry in August.297CJ vi. 418a, 458b. His main powerbase in the work of settling a godly ministry was the committee for regulating the universities, which evolved in the spring of 1649 from Rous’s committee for regulating Oxford University.298CJ vi. 200b; LPL, Sion L40.2/E16, passim.

The new commonwealth also allowed a new church establishment to take shape, and Rous was involved in this process. On 20 February 1649 he was appointed to the committee to abolish the deans and chapters of cathedrals; on 26 July Rous and Gurdon were give the care of a committee to consider the old articles of religion; and on 7 August he was again working with Gurdon on a committee to consider church government and how the earlier ordinances initiating a Presbyterian system might allow liberty of conscience.299CJ vi. 147b, 270a, 275b. This last appointment led to yet another, as on 16 August he and Nathaniel Bacon were added to the existing committee to consider liberty of conscience.300CJ vi. 280a. Rous, who had advocated toleration in the past, was clearly comfortable with this sort of modified Presbyterian church system, although it stood little chance of surviving concerted opposition from the radicals in the House.

The extent to which Rous could use his influence to ensure a broadly Presbyterian settlement was reduced still further by a long bout of illness. Between August 1650 and February 1652 he is mentioned only once (17 June 1651) in the Journal and he is known to have signed only one Committee for Revenue warrant (22 Oct. 1650).301CJ vi. 589a; E404/237, unfol. His return to Parliament in the spring and summer of 1652 was only temporary, and he undertook only light duties, such as preparing fast days (1 June, 10 and 19 Aug.).302CJ vi. 589a; vii. 137b, 162b, 166b. Despite his absence, Rous made every effort to further causes in which he had a personal interest. He remained an effective advocate of Eton College, in August 1650 petitioning the Committee for Compounding to secure the arrears of rent due from a rectory owned by Eton but leased to the sequestered royalist Sir Lewis Dyve†.303CCC 1306. On 22 October he signed a Committee for Revenue warrant to ensure the payment of stipends to Devon ministers from the income of Exeter Cathedral.304E404/237, unfol. On 16 June 1651 Rous wrote to Vane II in connection with a ‘labour of love’, to settle the compensation due to that ‘saint in glory’, John Pym. The sale of the estates set aside for this purpose had been disputed, and Rous now asked for a cash payment to finally bring the matter to an end.305Bodl. Tanner 54, f. 87. This lobbying had an effect, as the next day Parliament instituted a committee to prepare a bill to satisfy Pym’s debts, with both Rous and Vane chosen to attend.306CJ vi. 589a. On his return to activity in the summer of 1652, Rous was able to use his position in the Committee for Revenue to ensure payments to Westminster College (1 June).307E404/238, unfol. As a leading member of the committee for regulating the universities, he was also ready to intervene in specific academic cases, as in July 1652 when a fellow of University College was awarded the degree of bachelor of physic on his recommendation.308CJ vi. 378b; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 566. In November 1652, though wracked with ‘bodily infirmities’, he again raised the case of Dr Peter Smart with the authorities. Smart was dead by this time, and Rous was keen that his family should not be saddled with debts dating from the 1630s, when he was deprived of ‘his whole estate for many years, as his losses have been valued at £1,400’.309Add. 24863, f. 61.

Speaker and Councillor, 1653-9

Rous had recovered his health in time to be chosen to sit for Devon in the Nominated Assembly that succeeded the Rump, and on 5 July 1653 he was elected chairman of the new body by the Members – acquiring the title Speaker once the Assembly had voted itself a Parliament.310CJ vii. 281a. The choice of Rous as Speaker was apposite, as ‘to a unique degree he combined parliamentary experience, puritan piety, deep learning, broad sympathies, good social standing, and strong commitment to the commonwealth’.311Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 151-2. One might add that his absence from public life for the last two years of the commonwealth meant that he was untainted either with the vacillation of the Rumpers or the increasingly aggressive stance of the army’s supporters. Rous seems to have managed the chamber well enough, and he was re-elected by Members each month without demur.312CJ vii. 294a, 310a, 325a. He was also willing to join in the ceremony of office, wearing the traditional gold laced robes, and processing into the chamber behind the serjeant-at-arms, bearing the Rump’s mace. Both feature prominently in the portrait of Rous painted at this time.313S. Kelsey, Inventing a Republic (Manchester, 1997), 115, 171. On 29 November Rous gave Bulstrode Whitelocke* his commission as ambassador to Sweden, and he played an important role in the voluntary dissolution of the Assembly two weeks later.314Whitelocke, Diary, 297. According to Edmund Ludlowe II*, Rous was heavily implicated in the events of 12 December. Rous, claimed Ludlowe, was one of ‘Cromwell’s junto’ and ‘of the plot’. He facilitated the meeting of the pro-Cromwellian MPs ‘earlier in the House than was normal … hoping by surprise to obtain a vote for their dissolution’; and once the vote was passed, Rous, ‘descending from his chair, went out of the House, and … resigned that power into the hands of Cromwell’.315Ludlow, Mems. i. 366-7. While Rous’s part in the conspiracy is uncertain, two newsletters confirm the broad details, stating that the Cromwellian MPs came to Whitehall with the Speaker and the mace, ‘and there in the chamber where their commission was delivered to them did resign up their power’.316Clarke Pprs. iii. 9; v. 127-8. Another source states that Rous delivered the mace to Cromwell in person, and received it back into his keeping.317HMC Egmont, i. 532.

Just as Rous had been the perfect choice of Speaker in July, so in December he was obvious candidate as one of the new protectoral councillors, and he was duly included in the initial list of the council on 16 December.318CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 298. Even at this stage it was obvious that the protectorate stood a better chance of survival if it was as broadly-based as possible, and the civilian and religiously Presbyterian Rous was a reassuring presence on a list mostly made up of army officers, Independents and Baptists. It was no surprise that Rous’s main role throughout 1654 was in religious affairs, and he was one of three councillors given special care of religion when the portfolios were divided up in June 1654.319CSP Dom. 1654, p. 215. Among the religious matters discussed in council, Rous was concerned with printing, especially of heretical works. On 23 February 1654 he was on the committee to consider the Twofold Catechism of an antinomian, John Biddle.320CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 414. He was appointed to the committee on the ordinance for the regulation of printing in the following June.321CSP Dom. 1654, p. 219. He shared the general concern raised by the growing Quaker movement, and in June 1654 he was named to the council committee to decide how to prevent ‘tumultuous meetings by this sect.322CSP Dom. 1654, p. 210. A month later he joined the committee on charges against another religious radical, John Rogers.323CSP Dom. 1654, p. 263. As well as pursuing troublemakers, Rous continued to be concerned about the reform of the church, especially the removal of inadequate or scandalous ministers and moves to ensure good ministers had acceptable stipends. On 1 March 1654 he was named to the council committee to meet a number of ministers to consider a way to approve ministers; this was reported on 13 March to the council, which ordered that an ordinance would be drafted; and on 20 March Rous was included in the resultant commission for the approbation of preachers (popularly known as the ‘triers’).324CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 1, 27; A. and O. In April Rous and Humphrey Mackworth I* were given the task of considering the rules for admitting new ministers into sequestered livings, and the two seem to have acted as a team on specific cases in later months.325CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 119, 308, 312. Adequate training of ministers depended on the universities, and Rous’s expertise again came to the fore. In August Rous and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper* were ordered to confer with the vice-chancellor of Cambridge concerning the salary of the regius professor, and Rous attended the protector with reservations about the universities ordinance; on 1 September he was on the committee to consider the petition of the professor of civil law at Cambridge.326CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 321, 346, 354. Later in September Rous was made a commissioner for visiting Cambridge University, which gave him a role in overseeing both English universities.327A. and O. Rous’s efforts as a councillor in this period certainly raised his standing among the more moderate religious communities. In May 1654, for example, Richard Baxter and the Worcester Association ministers recommended Rous’s psalms to the London churches, as they were ‘already agreed by so many churches in our faith and covenant with us, and … approved of by the late Assembly’.328Cal. Baxter Corresp. i. 139.

Alongside religious affairs, Rous was involved in a wide range of secular matters arising from the everyday business of the protectoral council. This varied from membership of the committee to regulate justices of the peace (3 Jan. 1654), to that considering the ordinance on the grand excise (18 Jan.), and a committee to consider petitions from Scottish nobles (12 July).329CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 344, 363; 1654, p. 251. Some issues were of particular interest to Rous, as they reflected or continued causes he had championed during the Long Parliament, for example his appointment to the committee on crown revenues and the claims of former royal servants on 17 July, and the order that he consider the petition of the attendants on the late king’s children on 17 August.330CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 255, 308. Other matters were of personal relevance, such as the committees to recompense his fellow Cornishman, Anthony Buller, for his time as governor of the Scilly Isles (14 Feb. 1654), to consider the petitions of William Pym (28 Feb., 2 Mar.), and of Rous’s friend Samuel Hartlib (21 Mar., 11 July).331CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 401, 424; 1654, pp. 3, 44, 249.

Rous was elected as MP for Truro for the first protectorate Parliament which met in September 1654. His role in this Parliament was partly as a councillor – he was named to the committee for privileges on 5 September and the committee of public accounts on 22 November – but mainly as a religious expert.332CJ vii. 366b, 387b. On 14 September he was ordered to give thanks to Stephen Marshall for preaching, and on 22 September he was named to the committee on the ordinance against scandalous ministers.333CJ vii. 367b, 370a. On 12 December Rous was named to the committee for enumerating damnable heresies, and he was required to join Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle), John Maidstone and John Bulkeley in giving the thanks of the House to the ministers who had advised the committee on religion.334CJ vii. 399b. On the same day, Rous was added to the committee for printing as it considered the scandalous books published by his old enemy, John Biddle.335CJ vii. 400a.

During 1655 and 1656 Rous was again an active councillor, being involved in the humdrum business of the excise and trade, the assessment, law reform and other matters. Again, religion dominated, and many of the cases were the same as in earlier years. In May 1655 Rous was given care of the case of the widow of Dr John Bastwick, and he was on the committee to consider her pension in June and November.336CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 180, 204; 1655-6, p. 25. In July 1655 Rous and Philip Skippon were ordered to investigate further charges against John Biddle.337CSP Dom. 1655, p. 224. In February 1656 he was on the committee to consider two papers published by Quakers.338CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 164. Rous was also involved in the continuing work to strengthen the ministry. He was added to the committee for augmentations in January 1656, he was one of those councillors who considered additional members for the committee of scandalous ministers in April, and in the same month was on the committee to consider a petition from the trustees for the maintenance of ministers.339CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 116, 117, 252, 301.

Alongside these perennials were new developments. On 17 May 1655 Rous was appointed to the committee on the petition from the distressed Protestants of Savoy, and he was named to a further committee on this in January 1656.340CSP Dom. 1655, p. 165; 1655-6, p. 99. He was also involved in the talks with Menassah Ben Israel concerning the return of the Jews to England in November 1655.341CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 15. In January 1656 he was on the committee to consider the petition of the Durham corporation concerning the college in the city, and in the following March he was appointed to the committee for the better government of the college, with special care for preparing new rules and statutes.342CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 140, 213, 218. When the university at Durham was founded by writ of the privy seal a year later, Rous was named as one of those who had advised Cromwell so to do.343Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 522. Rous was also involved in moves to favour Dr John Owen* in the spring of 1656, arranging the payment of his salary arrears and investigating an attempt to arrest him by Westminster bailiffs.344CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 288, 319.

Despite his apparent links with Owen and the Cromwellian national church, Rous continued to be seen as friend of the Presbyterians – a reputation that grew in importance at the meeting of the second protectoral Parliament in September 1656, as many of the leading Presbyterians were excluded from the Commons by the council. Rous, who was returned for Cornwall in the elections, was welcomed by his erstwhile ally Robert Baillie, who wrote to him on 6 September praising his position as ‘a special instrument to save the churches of Britain from the mad follies of these Fifth Monarchists of the last Parliament’, and hoping that ‘you will be a special watchman in the House, and a continued remembrancer to the protector that the Church of God … shall suffer no new detriment’.345Baillie, Letters and Jnls. iii. 325. Rous was certainly willing to build bridges with west country Presbyterians, including Francis Buller I* and Anthony Nicoll. As Buller’s son told him in October, there were hopes that he might avoid the onerous job of sheriff, and Rous, with Nicoll, ‘promise me to be your friends in this’. He added that ‘Nicoll, Rous and others have been upon me to have your name in the commission for the peace and in the other country employments’, in an attempt to draw as many of the moderates into the protectoral fold.346Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/1/72. This constituency would have been encouraged by Rous’s trenchant opposition to any leniency in the treatment of James Naylor, the Quaker, in December 1657. On 5 December he told the Commons to take a firm line: ‘when you have agreed that it is blasphemy, and that you have an Antichrist amongst you, then you will not, I hope, be at a stand what to do’.347Burton’s Diary, i. 27. Three days later Rous again called for harsh treatment: ‘I think, call it what you will, it is a high offence and encroachment upon the honours of God, and ought to be punished as blasphemy or idolatry’.348Burton’s Diary, i. 66. On 26 December, when the House considered the protector’s intervention on Naylor’s behalf, Rous refused to accept that the Commons had acted ultra vires [beyond their powers], saying that ‘we should return this short answer to his highness’s letter, “we had power so to do”. I doubt not you will satisfy my lord protector with it’.349Burton’s Diary, i. 253. This last statement demonstrates not only Rous’s preference for religious orthodoxy over legal niceties but also his lack of understanding of Oliver Cromwell.

Rous’s orthodox position on Naylor may have been a factor in encouraging the majority Resolutioner party in the Scottish kirk to seek his favour in their internecine struggle with the radical Protester faction, played out before the protectoral council in the early months of 1657. On 16 January Baillie again wrote to Rous as ‘his assured friend’, referring to their recent correspondence and calling on their ‘old friendship’ in the hope that he would use his influence with Cromwell to prevent ‘the total subversion of our Presbyterial government’.350Consultations ed. Stephen, i. 285-7. The extent to which Rous fulfilled Baillie’s expectations is not known, but he was clearly supportive of moves to create a national church along lines that the moderate Presbyterians would accept. On 31 March he was named to the committee stage of the bill allowing trustees to purchase impropriations to maintain ministers – a cause he had championed earlier in his parliamentary career.351CJ vii. 515b. Rous was also close to Richard Baxter in the spring, writing on 6 May thanking Baxter for sending him two theological works, including one seeing common ground on the sacrament of communion, saying that it was ‘most desirable that an institution which Christ hath set up as an especial means of unity and bringing us into one bread were not made an instrument of breaking us into crumbs’.352Cal. Baxter Corresp. i. 250. Rous’s contact with Baxter may have encouraged him to publish his Treatises and Meditations, a collection of his earlier theological writings, in the same year.

Aside from religious matters, Rous was a fairly active parliamentarian in the first sitting of this Parliament. In September he had been named to the committee of privileges and to the committee on the bill to renounce the title of Charles Stuart.353CJ vii. 424a, 425a. He had also been involved in organising the fast day and the correct way in which to address the protector with bills and other business.354CJ vii. 424a, 426b, 429a. This initial business reflected his position as councillor, and his almost total absence from the parliamentary record through the winter months (except for the Naylor debates) as well as his absence from the council chamber in the same period suggests that he was again suffering from ill health.355CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. xxii. Rous appeared in Parliament only fitfully in the spring of 1657. On 10 March he was named to the committee on the bill for the sale of part of the estate of John Nevill, 1st Baron Abergavenny.356CJ vii. 501a. On 9 April he was appointed to the committee to attend Cromwell concerning the Humble Petition and Advice, although he was not listed as having voted for kingship, and he was not one of the inner circle of advisers who debated the issue with the protector over the next few weeks.357CJ vii. 521b. On 29 April Rous joined another Cromwellian, Charles Howard, in moving that the existing laws on marriage should be continued, ‘lest it be left loose, and no form at all’.358Burton’s Diary, ii. 68. On 28 May Rous and his fellow councillor Philip Jones proposed the motion that a day of thanksgiving should be held to celebrate the naval victory at Tenerife.359Burton’s Diary, ii. 143. He also spoke in the chamber on 6 June, on a case involving the breaking of a charitable trust, and on 10 June, when he ‘move something touching the university’.360Burton’s Diary, ii. 183, 207.

Rous remained in the protectoral council after the re-inauguration of Cromwell, taking the new oath on 13 July, but he was becoming elderly and increasingly infirm.361CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 26. In July Sir Francis Russell* told Henry Cromwell* that he considered Rous to be among the less influential councillors who were ‘too grave and wise for this mercurial quick age’.362Henry Cromwell Corresp. 297. In August, James Sharp, the Resolutioner agent, told the Edinburgh ministers of his hopes for Rous’s support in the continuing dispute with the Protesters, and Rous was indeed one of those councillors considering the paper submitted by the Protesters on 18 August.363Consultations ed. Stephen, ii. 105; CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 69. Rous was ill during the autumn of 1657 – he was absent from the council altogether from October onwards - and some hoped that his offices, especially the place of provost of Eton, would soon be available.364CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. liv. Bulstrode Whitelocke was one such, and he noted erroneously, but with evident satisfaction, Rous’s death in his diary on 25 October.365Whitelocke, Diary, 478. On 10 December 1657 Rous was raised to Cromwell’s Other House as Lord Rous, but when Parliament reconvened in January he was unable to attend.366TSP vi. 668. On 2 February, at the call of the Other House, he was excused, ‘being lame’.367HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 522.

Rous made little impact on public life for the rest of the year. After a long absence, he attended the council again in the late spring, being named to committees on the maintenance of some ministers, the ejection of others, and the uniting of parishes, but from July he made only very occasional appearances.368CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. liv; 1658-9, pp. xxxiii-xxxiv, 18, 30, 93, 112. On 24 December he wrote a final letter to Henry Cromwell, in which he explained that he had ‘been visited with a long infirmity which hath detained me against my desire from public services’, but was hopeful of recovery, and optimistic about the future.

I shall be ready to express my willingness to do service for the public, the greatness of the work expected needing earnest endeavours, but especially requests to the God of peace that he will continue the peace which he hath thus graciously begun to create.369Henry Cromwell Corresp. 436.

Rous died on 7 January 1659, and was buried in the chapel of Eton College.370Ath. Ox. ii. 468. His will, written on 18 March 1657, revealed that, behind all his attempts to foster unity and toleration between Christians, and his frequent acts of charity towards individuals, his personal life had long been rent asunder by estrangement from his only son. This son, ‘marrying against my will and prohibition, and giving me and absolute discharge before the marriage under his hand not to expect anything from me if he did marry contrary to my prohibition’, had in effect disinherited himself. Rous was in no mood for reconciliation, and he justified his obduracy with reference to social norms and biblical precedent, as

I hold it a good example for the benefit of the commonwealth that marks of discouragement should be put upon such marriages, that others may not dare to make unfit and forbidden marriages … and that which Solomon sayeth is to be considered, ‘an understanding servant shall have rule over a son that maketh ashamed’.

The son having died more than a decade before, Rous reluctantly allowed his grandson, living with his mother in Scotland, ‘a competent maintenance for him towards a profession and in it utterly abhorring to give him an estate as the heir of idleness’. By contrast, his bequests to his many other relatives, to the poor of various parishes, to university students and scholars at Eton were characteristically generous, and he left the bulk of his estate to his executor, his nephew Colonel Anthony Rous*.371PROB11/287/260.

Conclusion

Francis Rous’s parliamentary career had been long and arduous. A scholar by nature, he became involved in politics only reluctantly, and with the death of John Pym in December 1643 he drifted unhappily between the Presbyterians and the Independents until the end of 1648, when he caused deep offence to the former by siding with the commonwealth. Whether through illness or reticence, Rous managed to avoid becoming implicated in the great political rows of the time. He neither opposed nor supported the rise of the New Model in 1647; he was absent from Westminster at Pride’s Purge; he refused to countenance the regicide, but was quick to return to the Commons thereafter; and he was absent during the acrimonious final months of the Rump Parliament in 1652-3. As Cromwell also discovered, absence could pay dividends, and in the later 1650s the untainted Rous was able to assume the role of elder statesman, as Speaker and protectoral councillor. Yet for Rous politics was always a side-show to religion. His furious assault on the Caroline church and his defence of its victims in 1640-2 gave way to attempts to produce a stable church settlement, with a well-educated and well-endowed preaching ministry and doctrinal documents of sufficient breadth to satisfy both Independents and Presbyterians. This could not be delivered by the Westminster Assembly or the Rump, and the Cromwellian national church remained in an embryonic state by the time of Rous’s death. This, the ultimate aim of his ‘earnest endeavours’, remained just out of reach.