BLAKER, Edward (1630-78), of Buckingham House, Old Shoreham, Suss.

The Blaker family had lived in the Shoreham area of Sussex since at least the fifteenth century, but were yeomen until 1617, when Blaker’s father was granted armigerous status. A lowly constable of Fishergate hundred (1618), and a captain of the pioneers in Lewes Rape (1626), Blaker senior had a modest public profile.19Renshaw, Blaker Fam. 22-28; Cunliffe, ‘Booke dep. leiuetennantshipp’, 18. He seems to have played no part in the civil war. Edward Blaker junior was only 12 when the conflict began. Admitted to the Inner Temple in 1648, he appears not to have been called to the bar, and he disappears from view until after his father’s death in 1654.20I. Temple database. Although the family had only a modest estate, Blaker senior left £600 to both his two unmarried daughters and instructed his heir to buy land to make his younger son’s portion up to £100 a year.21PROB11/234/247.

Edward Blaker junior achieved office under the protectorate, although it is likely that his political sympathies and those of his family lay elsewhere. His widowed mother married Dr Edward Burton, a prominent cleric with royalist sympathies, while Blaker himself married one of the ten daughters of Henry Goringe* of Highden, who was widely regarded as having supported the king in the 1640s, even if he had avoided commitment to either side. In June 1655 Blaker and Goringe’s son were involved in the estate business of royalist ‘delinquent’, Sir Edward Bishoppe*, to whom Goringe was executor.22W. Suss. RO, Wiston MS 3665. Blaker was married by July 1657, when deeds were drawn up concerning his wife’s jointure lands.23C54/3994/27. In 1658, by which time he had built a family house in New Shoreham, he was engaged in further property transactions on behalf of the Goring family, alongside Henry Peckham*, another prominent county figure who was probably a royalist sympathiser.24C54/3994/27; W. Suss. RO, Greatham MS 10.

Despite such connections, in the autumn of 1657 Blaker was appointed sheriff of Sussex by Parliament.25List of Sheriffs, 141. Some months into his tenure his name cropped up obliquely as evidence emerged about the royalist plot organised by John Stapley*. According to an examination taken before Major-general William Goffe* on 16 April 1658, one William Smith of Steyning related that ‘in Candlemas term last’ [probably February] Blaker had expressed to him surprise at the lack of enthusiasm for the king in exile: ‘he wondered that Charles Stuart should be so ill-beloved, for he could not hear that any body loved him’. At the time, Smith had agreed that ‘it was strange to him’ too. When the pair met again at Blaker’s house in mid-March, Smith – evidently energised in the interim – had said ‘that he thought the king ... in a very good posture, and had an army, which he thought would land very shortly’. But the lack of local monarchical sentiment had apparently rendered Blaker sceptical: the latter ‘replied, he did not believe it; for he could not conceive how [Charles] should be able to do it’.26TSP vii. 83. If the account scarcely painted Blaker to the government in the most flattering colours, on the other hand it revealed a complete absence of inclination to engage in plots and conspiracies. Furthermore, although one of the plotters, Anthony Stapley II*, mentioned having met Blaker while plans were being hatched, he did not suggest that Blaker had been invited to participate.27TSP vii. 86.

In elections to the 1659 Parliament the single seat at New Shoreham was initially taken by John Whalley*, who was probably a kinsman of Major-general Edward Whalley*, and a ‘court’ candidate. Whalley was also returned for Nottingham, however, and opted for that seat. On 16 February, therefore, the Commons ordered the issue of a new writ, upon which Blaker was evidently returned.28CJ vii. 604a. He played no visible part in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament before its dissolution that April.

Blaker was re-elected as Member for Shoreham to the Convention.29HP Commons 1660-1690. Some time before 3 May 1660, when he first appeared at sessions, he was appointed to the commission of the peace; thereafter he proved an assiduous attender.30E. Suss. RO, QO/EW3, f. 79; QO/EW4, ff. 2-80; QO/EW5, ff. 12-126. In contrast, his impact at Westminster was negligible. Although he was returned again to the Cavalier Parliament in 1661, and sat until his death in 1678, he was named to only two committees during his entire time as an MP. Yet his credentials as a supporter of the court led Anthony Ashley Cooper* (1st earl of Shaftesbury) to mark him as ‘doubly vile’ in 1677.31HP Commons 1660-1690.

A will delivered verbally on his deathbed on 9 September 1678 emphasised Blaker’s desire to make a pious end. It made provision for his mother’s jointure and for his niece Betty Cook, leaving everything else to his wife. A challenge to the will by Blaker’s brother William was unsuccessful in the short term, although the estate passed to him eventually.32PROB11/358/398; HP Commons 1660-1690. No further Blakers sat in Parliament.