BEAKE, Robert (d. 1708), of Coventry, Warws.

Nothing certain has been discovered about Robert Beake’s origins, though they probably lay in the English midlands. His was perhaps not an armigerous family, and his career certainly owed most to parliamentarian military service. He was probably the 'Lieutenant Beakes’ who in October 1644 was an officer in the midlands-raised regiment of Col. John Fiennes, along with Edmund Temple*. He was part of the council of officers that agreed to raise the siege of Banbury under military pressure from the 3rd earl of Northampton (James Compton*, Lord Compton).26Perfect Occurrences no. 12 (25 Oct.-1 Nov. 1644), sig. M3 (BL Burney Coll. 19A). When John Barker’s* Coventry regiment was passed to Thomas Willughby* in the summer of 1645, Beake became Willughby’s captain-lieutenant, and was still in that rank and regiment in October 1648. 27SP28/124, ff. 284-7. By 1647, he was trusted enough by Coventry corporation to have attended a committee in Parliament in April of that year, as ‘Mr Beake’, part of a delegation from the city. The team of which he was a member sought to keep the militia in the hands of freemen and to win compensation for damage to the fabric of the city caused by defensive construction works.28Coventry RO, BA/H/Q/A79/214.

In March 1649, Beake petitioned the council of state on a matter relevant to the military hierarchy, and maintained a correspondence with William Clarke, secretary to the army council of officers, on the activities of radical preachers in Coventry. In March 1650, he described Joseph Salmon and Abiezer Coppe to Clarke as men ‘of acute wits and voluble tongues', and shortly afterwards arrested and imprisoned Andrew Wyke, another radical preacher, who denounced the magistrates of Coventry from prison.29CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 48; HMC Popham, 57, 59. In July, on the orders of the council of state, John Herring was another minister, albeit a Presbyterian one, to be shown the city gates by Beake.30CSP Dom. 1650, p. 247; Calamy Revised, 259. He was no mere enforcer, however, and worked upon Salmon to persuade him to recant, with success. When the preacher published Heights in Depths and Depths in Heights in 1651, he singled out Beake for mention. Not only had he brought Salmon to see his errors, he had also sponsored his petition for liberty to the council of state. A visit from William Purefoy I* was the final guarantee of Salmon's freedom, and it was also an indication of an important influence on Beake. He and Purefoy shared the same Presbyterian religious outlook, and they both served in the Coventry militia, Beake of course in a junior capacity. By 1650, Beake had achieved the rank of major, second only to Willughby, the city governor. After this spate of crackdowns on unorthodox preachers, Beake was admitted first in 1650 to the freedom of the city, as a qualification for serving the same year as sheriff. In the aftermath of the battle of Worcester in the autumn of 1651, Beake was relied upon by the council of state to secure disaffected persons.31CSP Dom. 1651, p. 464.

Service as sheriff in Coventry was in itself a qualification, for membership of the mayor’s council.32VCH Warws. viii. 265. On 24 March 1652 Beake was promoted to the council, on the same day that Purefoy was sworn recorder.33Coventry RO, BA/H/C/17/2, ff. 93, 103v; List of Sheriffs (List and Index ix), 179. He quickly became on of its stalwarts, and worked to improve the regularity and size of stipends paid to the city’s ministers.34Coventry RO, BA/H/C/17/2, ff. 108v, 110v, 111. His membership and eventual mastership of the drapers’ company should surely be seen as another civic qualification, rather than as an indication of purely mercantile activity.35'Diary of Robert Beake', 122. From 1650 he began to appear in tax commissions for both Coventry and Warwickshire. It looks rather as if Beake was from 1650 groomed for high office, both inside Coventry and beyond, and the only person with that quality of patronage to dispense was William Purefoy, who had the city fathers in his pocket in the early 1650s.36Coventry RO, BA/A/A/26/3, pp. 219, 241, 257, 258, 259, 272, 284. In April 1651, the corporation entertained Purefoy at Beake’s house, even before the latter had joined the council.37Coventry RO, BA/A/A/26/3, p. 258. Unlike his predecessors as MPs for the city, Beake leased no property from the corporation at the time of his election to Parliament, and had no ancestry of eminent public service in Coventry. He did, however, take advantage of confiscated land sales by the state, from around 1650 collecting fee farm rents arising from properties in Derbyshire confiscated from the capitular estates of Lichfield cathedral. The rents were payable to Beake by the long-standing tenants of the properties, John Gell* and the 8th earl of Rutland (John Manners*).38Hughes, ‘‘Political Eclipse, Administrative Change and Social Tension’, 30, 34.

It was therefore as a military man who had been fitted into the recognized cursus honorum of the Coventry chamber that Beake made his way to London for the first protectorate Parliament. Purefoy had accepted the Cromwellian regime, and his protegé was elected to the important committee of privileges on 5 September 1654.39CJ vii. 366b. John Gell had also been elected, but it seems likely that he had refused to take the Recognition of loyalty to Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell* and his regime. Beake’s relations with Gell were cordial, and had overcome any awkwardness arising from their disparate social standing and Gell’s initial slowness to pay Beake his rents. Beake assured Gell that his abilities would be put to good use in Parliament, and hoped he would change his mind and attend: ‘I beseech you sir look upwards once more and harken whether our present complexion will not invite you in’.40Derbys. RO, D 258/7/13/62 (iv). Beake’s legislative committee interests in this Parliament included law reform. His service in Coventry and Warwickshire from October 1653 as a local judge in the cases of imprisoned debtors suggests an interest and a knowledge of the law. He sat on two committees to reform chancery and to review all laws made since 3 July 1653.41CJ vii. 375b, 378b. He served also on a committee to encourage civil law (22 Dec.), suggesting that there were limits to his interest in reform.42CJ vii. 407b. It was entirely in keeping with his conservative religious views that this commissioner for dealing with scandalous ministers should be named to a committee to list damnable heresies (12 Dec.).43CJ vii. 399b. He reported news from Parliament to John Fitzjames* of Dorset, probably a friend from army days and a fellow Presbyterian, and received in return a gloomy estimate of the consequences of the toleration guaranteed by the Instrument of Government

And so shall all be razed out of the communion of saints that are not of this or that, or I know not what congregation: so many new doctrines, and so many old sins are threatening symptoms, without miracles, of our crumbling and approaching ruin.44Alnwick Castle, Northumberland ms 551, f. 8.

Beake was back in Coventry after the closure of this Parliament by 9 February 1655: the corporation was evidently pleased with his performance, and congratulated him with drinks at the mayor’s parlour.45Coventry RO, BA/A/A/26/3 p.314.

In August 1655, Beake was given notice that he would be Coventry’s next mayor. He invited Gell to attend his inauguration, hoping for spiritual support, and confessing the mayoralty to be ‘a weight that will break the twig it’s hanged on without prayer support’.46Derbys. RO, D 258/7/13/62 (vii). When he took up his office in November, he was at the same time promoted to be alderman of one of the city’s wards.47Coventry RO, BA/H/C/17/2, ff. 120, 121. His tenure of the mayoralty coincided with the regime of the major-generals, and he acted in the city and the county of Warwickshire as one of the major-generals’ commissioners. During his mayoralty, he kept a diary, which reveals his zeal as a reformer of manners. He walked the city’s parks looking for offenders, sat in the mayor’s parlour signing orders to suppress alehouses, and pronounced upon sabbath-breakers and swearers. On one occasion, he ordered 27 alehouses to be closed. He ventured outside the city, to arrest travellers on Sundays. His superintendent major-general was Edward Whalley*, with whom he evidently enjoyed cordial relations. He noted with a trace of amusement Whalley’s inadvertent breach of protocol when the major-general sat in a higher seat than the mayor in church.48'Diary of Robert Beake', 111-37. Although he ordered three Quakers to be ‘set in the cage’ for sabbath-breaking, he ‘grieved ... that this poor deluded people should undergo punishment of such a nature’.49'Diary of Robert Beake', 115. That he was by no means inflexible in his administration is evident from his willingness to consider the circumstances in which people were arrested for breaking the sabbath. He was willing to consult divines and to weigh up difficult cases, and sometimes came down on the side of leniency.50'Diary of Robert Beake', 117, 123. He was sensitive to receiving gifts from citizens lest the donors thought they had successfully bought his judgment: an unlicensed ale-seller and a suspected delinquent were two men whose gifts of oats and turkeys were returned or paid for.51'Diary of Robert Beake', 121, 122.

A little over half way through his mayoralty, in May 1656, Beake left Coventry for London, to take up an appointment as a commissioner for the admiralty.52'Diary of William Beake', 137. No city in England was more land-locked than Coventry, and so one has to look for influences other than maritime ones to account for his calling. Once again, the trail seems to lead to Purefoy, who had served on the Navy Committee under the Rump. From August 1656 onwards Beake was in regular attendance at the admiralty, and continued to attend after the start of the second protectorate Parliament on 17 September.53Add. 9305, ff. 150v-242v. The Coventry chamber ‘entreated’ him to pursue in the Commons a strengthening of an earlier act to levy a rate for the ministers of the city, who had for some years been complaining of their poor remuneration.54Coventry RO, BA/H/C/17/2, f. 124; BA/H/Q/A79/228, 231. He had already been busy in London on their behalf behind the scenes, reporting on 19 August of difficulties he was encountering.55Coventry RO, BA/H/Q/A79/230. Beake went again to Parliament in an optimistic but realistic frame of mind: ‘The motion of that great body is slow; there are many things on the wheel, I hope the Lord will make the whole end in a glorious peace.’ 56CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 138.

Beake was once again named to the committee of privileges, and further evidence of his standing in the House is afforded by his assisting in making arrangements for fast days.57CJ vii. 424a, 425a, 426a, 428a; Burton's Diary, i. 340. As in the previous assembly, Beake sat on committees concerned with the law: to remove customary oaths, to erect law courts in the north of England, to consider the status of civil law (another theme of 1654).58CJ vii. 435b, 438a, 456a, 457a. He and Purefoy won a division in December which secured for Coventry the location of the new intended registry for deeds.59CJ vii. 463a. His admiralty office probably kept him out of many of the more demanding committees, and there is a contrast between the high quality of his interventions on the floor of the House, recorded by Thomas Burton*, and the mundane nature of most of his committee appointments. While he played no part in the committee examination of James Naylor, he was convinced that the Commons were not only the most appropriate authority to judge the Quaker, but also the only source of the law by which he was judged. He would accept the judgment of the committee that examined Naylor, and wondered why any should challenge the finding that he was guilty of ‘the ungodding of God’. On 9 December Thomas Burton* tried to record a ‘dark’ speech by Beake, in which the diarist thought he called for mutilation and banishment for the Quaker: there seemed little in his words of the sympathy that had marked his attitude towards Friends in Coventry.60Burton's Diary, i. 43-4, 58, 90.

Perhaps it was Beake’s standing as an admiralty commissioner as well as master of a mercantile company that recommended him to the Levant Company when it petitioned Parliament in January 1657, and employed him as an agent.61Burton's Diary, i. 340. The petition, together with a counter-petition from Sir Sackville Crowe, erstwhile ambassador in Turkey, were referred to a committee which included Beake, and on 1 May, he denounced Crowe in the House as the most extravagant man ever to be considered by it.62CJ vii. 482b; Burton's Diary, ii. 99. His unease at accepting gifts in Coventry was extended to gratuities proposed by Parliament to reward its friends. On 8 June he warned of the adverse effect on public opinion that a gift of lands to Charles Fleetwood* would produce, reminded Members of the size of the public debt and how such grants tarnished the reputation of the Rump Parliament, and urged that social policy be a priority: ‘Poor people’s cries are a load upon you, and such gratuities as these are ill-timed’.63Burton's Diary, ii. 199.

This concern for the poor is a theme to emerge in another speech captured by Burton. He moved against the bill to fix wine prices, which contained within it a retrospective element, by which ‘a thousand families will be undone’.64Burton's Diary, ii. 202. Although the most thorough cataloguer of the Cromwellian interest included him in it, by virtue of his former military office and present admiralty post (the critic adding another fanciful £100 to his salary in the process), Beake’s view of the form of government was as sceptical as that of many other Presbyterians.65Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 15 (E.935.5). On 16 March 1657, he and Joseph Hawkesworth were named to the committee considering a clause about the lives and liberties of the people, to be added to what became the Humble Petition and Advice, and he was one of the large body attending Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell* on 27 March. The following day he reported to a Coventry correspondent in tones of cautious approval about the new constitution. Its clauses about religious provision he thought imperfect but nevertheless of value:

I would not have too much prejudice conceived against it upon the account of religion, for although it be not provided for as it ought yet the provision is better than what we yet have had.

Beake noted the Commons’ intention to bind the protector to take all or nothing of the Humble Petition, including its kingship clauses. He was confident of its successful passage:

I question not but it will within a few days after be accepted of, however many and great wagers are laid that [Cromwell] will not accept of it.66Coventry RO, BA/H/Q/A79/302.

Beake was one of the group that took the votes of 4 April to the protector, and on the 9th attended him to receive his comments on the Humble Petition. He thus played some part, but by no means an important one, in the affair, and can hardly be considered on this evidence as a very active ‘kingling’, even if he was noted as one.67Narrative of the Late Parliament, 22. He was certainly a supporter of the Humble Petition once it was accepted. Clause 11 called for a confession of faith to be drawn up, and such a document needed an assembly of divines to produce it. On 21 January 1658, Samuel Hyland dismissed the proposal for an assembly as a diversion from the need to reduce state debt, and a distraction for the clergy. Beake opposed him, arguing that government in principle had a duty to provide moral nourishment for the people, and reminded MPs of the commitment enshrined in the Humble Petition. He saw the potential of an assembly of divines as a way of overcoming differences between the churches in England, Scotland and Ireland. In this, he was clearly influenced by Richard Baxter, for whom he had a high regard from his days in the Coventry garrison, and to whom he introduced a Scots minister, representing the moderate Resolutioners, in October 1657.68S.R. Gardiner, Constitutional Documents of the Puritan Revolution (1906), 454; Burton's Diary, ii. 333; Cal. Baxter Corresp. i. 270-1. In return, the Scot, James Sharp, thought it a mark of providence to have on the Resolutioners’ side a man like Beake, ‘of sound principles, a strong Presbyterian and truly affectionate to our cause’.69Consultations ed. Stephen, ii. 126.

Fêted in the mayor’s parlour on his visits back to Coventry, Beake nevertheless spent much of his time at the admiralty after the end of the second protectorate Parliament.70Coventry RO, BA/A/A/26/3, p. 347; CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 421, 468, 491, 499, 545; CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 415, 416, 473. His services to his adopted city in trying to improve the maintenance of its ministry, among other things, continued to the end of that assembly, and were such that he was a natural choice to serve again in Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament.71Coventry RO, BA/H/Q/A79/234. He was one of the eight commissioners who tendered to MPs the oath of loyalty to the protector, and was named ninth to the privileges or elections Committee, serving with Purefoy. Apart from his involvement in preparations for a fast day, he was named only to one committee, that to consider transacting with the Other House.72CJ vii. 593a,b, 594b, 622a, 627a. He had already spoken on the topic of the second chamber. In the previous Parliament, in its short second session, Beake had urged that consideration be given to the title of that House, and plainly preferred for the traditional style. Arguing from the intentions of both Commons and protector in framing the Humble Petition, from the legal precedents of writs of summons, and from ideas of ‘balance’ between army, Lords and Commons, he advanced a cogent case for accepting the Other House, with its new Members and their ‘interest’, as the successor to the House of Lords, in name and constitutional function. He dismissed the Engagement to maintain the commonwealth of 1649-53, but was troubled by the Solemn League and Covenant, never officially repudiated, which had included the House of Lords as an object of loyalty. The survival of the Covenant tended to support the old Lords, and Beake’s argument, but he did not push his point home too far. He contented himself instead with repudiating the Rump: ‘God has poured contempt upon a commonwealth’.73Burton's Diary, ii. 414. He was able to resume this line in the 1659 Parliament. He argued that public opinion would not allow an expansion of the second chamber so that it overshadowed the Commons, pointed out that the Lords would provide a suitable location for the judges – ‘we have been tumbling ever since they were taken away’ – and again employed the metaphor of balance: ‘I take the single person and the Commons as two scales, the House of Lords as the beam’. Naturally, he was wholly in favour of transacting with the Other House.74Burton's Diary, iii. 362-3, 588-9; iv. 289-90, 371-2.

It is clear that even if Beake was sympathetic to notions of a Cromwellian crown, and was certainly supportive of the right of the protector to summon Members to Westminster out of Scotland as well as England, he was not in favour of a return to the status quo ante of 1640. A single person alone was nothing.

The state of a commonwealth is best for the grandeur and splendour of a nation; that the opposite to a single person is the best government, and that no government can be but what has its power from this House.75Burton's Diary, iii. 113; iv. 146.

He reflected on the futility of the Engagement, which he saw as divisive, especially among the clergy. He singled out for praise Baxter’s 1653 petition on their behalf, promoted by Thomas Foley*, which sought to repair the damage. He disputed the assertion by commonwealthsmen that all power lay with the people, and urged the importance of recognizing Richard Cromwell as lord protector without reservation, lest the people grow restless.76Burton's Diary, iii. 113, 218. On a number of occasions he intervened in debate in order to urge equal treatment for all Members, brushing aside Sir Arthur Hesilrige’s elevation of the Speaker as ‘the greatest man in England’.77Burton's Diary, iii. 299, iv. 346. In his only recorded speech on foreign affairs, he argued for the protector and council, not his own admiralty commission, to examine the issue of Baltic trade, because he thought it a matter of the highest importance. He was in favour of support for Sweden against the interests of the Dutch and the Empire.78Burton's Diary, iv. 471.

Beake’s fate after the collapse of Richard Cromwell’s protectorate was to fall under the suspicion of the revived Rump, at the time of the rising of Sir George Boothe*. A letter from Baxter to Beake, evidently couched in discreet language, was intercepted and conveyed to Sir Henry Vane II*; Beake was summoned to London for questioning, but was released without charge.79Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696), ii. 206-7; CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 84, 86, 118, 137, 149. At that time, the Coventry chamber entertained John Lambert* on his way to confront the rebels, but in December the corporation mobilized the citizens against his soldiers, and stood firm for the commonwealth. The mayor broke open the magazine, armed the citizens, and Beake mustered them in St Michael’s churchyard. As the city annalist recorded

He marched at the head of them (being about 160 men) through Hay Lane and in at the Broad Gate to the Cross, where he demanded the guard for the Parliament of England, who having no orders to oppose, marched away, and this city was secured for the Parliament.80Add. 11364, f. 20; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 222.

On 6 January 1660, Charles Stuart was informed that Sir John Norwich and Francis Hacker* had raised a regiment of foot and two troops of horse at Coventry, and had left them there under Beake’s supervision while they went to secure Northampton.81Bodl. Clarendon 68, f. 108. On 22 February 1660, Beake reported to George Monck* his seizure of arms and ammunition passing through the city, suggesting that he had by this time abandoned his loyalty to the commonwealth.82HMC Popham, 156. In the spring, he drilled the city militia against a further threat from Lambert’s troops, arriving on 22 April from London, fearing ‘we shall be again in blood’.83Derbys. RO, D 258/7/13/62 (x).

Although he sat in the Convention, it was only a matter of time before Beake’s past would force him out of office. He resigned his Coventry offices before the commissioners for corporations came to the city.84Coventry RO, BA/H/C/17/2, f. 143. He became thereafter a pillar of the Independent cause in Coventry, and from 1673 resumed office as a commissioner for various direct taxes.85HP Commons, 1660-90, i. 611-2. He sat in the March 1679 Parliament as a moderate Exclusionist. At the time he made his will in 1706, he was a friend of the son of John St Nicholas*, and left a small estate of 80 acres at Stoke Golding, Leicestershire. Beake died in 1708, and was buried on 22 September at St Michael’s church, Coventry. 86Coventry St Michael's par. reg.; PROB11/506, f. 213v. None of his descendants are known to have sat in Parliament. He is not to be confused in 1659 and after the restoration of the monarchy with Richard Beke*, who served in a field regiment, and after 1660 was marked as a potential republican activist.87CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 376, 383, 393; 1659-60, p. 577; 1663-4, p. 562; 1664-5, p. 484; 1666-7, p. 495; 1670, p. 281.