CHAPLIN, Thomas (1591-1672), of Bury St Edmunds, Suff.

The Chaplins may have originated in Essex, but, by the mid 1570s, Thomas Chaplin’s paternal grandfather, William, was a yeoman farmer at Long Melford in Suffolk. His son and namesake became bailiff to the Brand family at Semer, several miles to the east, and this younger William sired a large family: at least six sons and three daughters with his first wife survived into adulthood.21Muskett, Suff. Manorial Fams. iii. 102-3, 110; Copinger, Manors of Suff. i. 181, iii. 202. Thomas, the future MP, was born in October 1591 (probably at Semer), the sixth child of this marriage.22Muskett, Suff. Manorial Fams. iii. 110, 114. His mother underwent a further five pregnancies and her death shortly before Thomas’s eleventh birthday was probably the result of giving birth to his youngest brother, Robert.23Muskett, Suff. Manorial Fams. iii. 110. His father remarried and this second wife, Anne (a twice-widowed daughter of Andrew Hobart of Lindsey, Suffolk) produced a further son, Richard.24Muskett, Suff. Manorial Fams. iii. 110; Wills of the Archdeaconry of Sudbury 1630-5, 97.

Like most of his brothers, the young Thomas Chaplin went into trade and he then prospered as a mercer in Bury St Edmunds.25Wills of the Archdeaconry of Sudbury 1630-5, 167; Muskett, Suff. Manorial Fams. iii. 110. His appointment by 1631 as receiver to the trust which managed the estates belonging to the corporation of Bury probably indicates that by then he was already a member of the corporation.26Suff. RO (Bury), D6/4/1(9). Chaplin married a daughter of another Bury merchant, the goldsmith Robert Ignes, and the connection between the two families was reinforced when Chaplin’s younger brother, Clement, married one of Ignes’s two other daughters.27Muskett, Suff. Manorial Fams. iii. 104, 113-14; Vis. Suff. 1664-8, 188; Wills of the Archdeaconry of Sudbury 1630-5, 154-5; PROB11/258/225. A house in Cook Row in Bury St Edmunds was bought by Chaplin from Ignes and it was at that address that he was listed in the town’s 1635 muster roll.28Muskett, Suff. Manorial Fams. iii. 109; Suff. RO (Bury), HD12/1(c). Clement Chaplin emigrated to America in 1635, later becoming treasurer of New England and a non-conformist preacher, and Thomas probably shared his godly outlook. One of the Chaplin sisters, Martha, who married Robert Parker, may also have emigrated to New England.29The Planters of the Commonwealth ed. C.E. Banks (Boston, 1930), 155; J. Savage, A Geneal. Dictionary of the First Settlers of New Eng. (Boston, 1860-2), i. 360; PROB11/258/225; Geneal. Gleanings in Eng. ed. H.F. Waters (Boston, 1901), i. 32.

During the crisis of 1642, as both sides were preparing for a civil war, Chaplin first came to Parliament’s attention as a suspected opponent of its policies. On 15 September the Commons heard that one of the 3rd earl of Essex’s lieutenants, John Balston, had been prevented from recruiting at Bury St Edmunds by Chaplin and one of the local aldermen, Thomas Smyth. Chaplin and Smyth were therefore summoned to London. However, this was evidently a misunderstanding and so the pair were released on 20 September. Robert Reynolds* was instructed to write to the town to assure them that the Commons was satisfied of its loyalty.30CJ ii. 767b, 774a.

Chaplin was alleged to have acted against Balston in his capacity as a justice of the peace. This was not his only public office, for by now he was almost certainly one of the chief burgesses of the Bury corporation and indeed he may well have been so for quite some time. That position, combined with his strong support for Parliament, allowed him to join the major gentry of the county on the various committees created to govern Suffolk on Parliament’s behalf during the 1640s. Whereas his younger brother, Robert, probably died while serving as a captain in the parliamentarian army, Chaplin remained a civilian, devoting himself to the local war effort. 31Muskett, Suff. Manorial Fams. iii. 118, 120. He served on the Suffolk county committee from its creation and during the war was one of the most regular attenders at its meetings.32Suff. ed. Everitt, 27, 59, 72, 74, 75, 76; SP28/243; Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE1/O2/1, f. 87v; HD36/2781/45; HD36/2781/51a-b. He was also present at the meeting at Bury St Edmunds on 9 February 1643 at which the Eastern Association was formed.33Suff. ed. Everitt, 40. He was fully involved in the collections of Parliament’s various taxes and assessments. In the autumn of 1642 Chaplin, with Sir William Spring* and Samuel Moody*, acted as receivers of the money lent on the Propositions in the west of the county and, from February 1643, he and Moody belonged to the small group of men (they were later joined by John Clarke*) who organized the collection of the assessment revenues in Bury.34SP28/176: acct. of Samuel Moody, 1643-4, f. 8; P. Fisher, For the…Cttees. for the County of Suffolke (1648), 6, 10, 14, 26 (E.448.13); Suff. RO (Ipswich), HD36/2672/24; A. and O.; Suff. RO (Bury), Acc. 613/770. In January 1645 he was part of the Suffolk delegation to the meeting (again held at Bury) at which the various county committees of the Eastern Association agreed to protest to Parliament against the incorporation of their forces into the New Model army.35Suff. ed. Everitt, 84.

Some of Chaplin’s other appointments during the 1640s suggest that he was equally willing to devote time to the supervision of the local Suffolk churches. The visit to Bury St Edmunds by the iconoclast approved by Parliament, William Dowsing, in February 1644 was a perfect opportunity for Chaplin to display his enthusiasm. It proved unnecessary for Dowsing to inflict the required damage on one of the two local churches, St Mary’s, because Chaplin agreed to ‘do down the steps’ to the communion table and ‘take away the superstitious pictures’.36Jnl. of William Dowsing, ed. T. Cooper (Woodbridge, 2001), 243. One result of that helpfulness may have been Chaplin’s appointment several weeks later to the Suffolk commissions for scandalous ministers, although his inclusion seems to have been an afterthought. His name did not appear in the March 1644 commission appointing them issued by the major-general of the Eastern Association, the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†), but, once the committee covering the western half of the county began its work, Chaplin was present as a commissioner at most of the meetings.37Suff. Cttees. for Scandalous Ministers ed. Holmes, 25. In 1640 Elizabeth, Dowager Countess Rivers (whose grandfather, Sir Thomas Kitson of Hengrave, had been a major local landowner) endowed a trust to support four sermons at Bury each year, and from about 1644 Chaplin acted as one of the trustees.38S. Tymms, An Architectural and Historical Acct. of the Church of St Mary, Bury St Edmunds (Bury St Edmunds, 1854), 134-5; Suff. RO (Bury), D4/1/2, f. 36. (It may well be that the countess thus wished to disassociate herself from her Catholic son, John, the 2nd earl.) Chaplin was among those who signed an order in May 1645 to several of the Suffolk constables, which among other things, directed that they ensure that the Directory for Public Worship was being used, that lists of those who had taken the Covenant were compiled, and that the monthly fasts were observed.39Suff. RO (Ipswich), HD36/2781/45. Later that year he became an elder of the Presbyterian classis for Bury and the surrounding area.40Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 428. He was named to this position in his own right, even though he already qualified as a corporation member, confirming the impression that he now had some standing beyond Bury itself. In May 1648 he alerted the colonel of the local militia, Sir Thomas Barnardiston*, to the outbreak of the royalist uprising at Bury and so helped ensure that the uprising was swiftly suppressed.41Essex RO, D/DQs.18, f. 36.

The execution of the king in January 1649 did not interrupt Chaplin’s involvement in local government: if anything, he now became even more active. Between August and December 1649 he and Samuel Moody* conducted the investigations into the insurrection around Newmarket in June 1648 in support of the royalist rising in Essex.42Suff. ed. Everitt, 95-103. The council of state, anxious to make sure that the commission of the peace could be relied upon, had Chaplin, along with two other trustworthy members of the Bury corporation (Moody and John Clerke I), named as a Suffolk justice in May 1650.43C231/6, p. 185; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 143; Names of the Justices of the Peace, 54; Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/2, ff. 55, 109; B105/2/1, f. 170v. The government’s faith in his loyalty to the regime is also evident in his appointment seven months later to serve on the high court of justice which met at Norwich in December 1650 to try the Norfolk rebels.44A. and O. During 1650 he also served as alderman of Bury St Edmunds, the town’s equivalent of mayor, possibly for the second time.45Suff. RO (Bury), D4/1/2, f. 24v; Muskett, Suff. Manorial Fams. iii. 104, 113.

Chaplin had been a militia commissioner for Suffolk since 1648.46A. and O.; SP28/243. In the summer of 1651, as the risk increased of an invasion by Charles Stuart from Scotland, John Fothergill* raised a volunteer regiment of horse in Suffolk and assigned Chaplin to command one of the troops. During the following months this regiment was used outside the county, although it is not known whether it saw action at Worcester, the major engagement in this campaign. Once the king had been defeated, however, it was decided to send Chaplin’s troop to Scotland.47CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 456, 516; Ive, ‘Local Dimension of Defence’, 232. Chaplin himself was at Bury on 13 October, at which date the council of state was still trying to work out how to find money to pay his soldiers before they set out.48Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/1, f. 170v; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 456, 475. If he did accompany his troop to Scotland, he was certainly back in Suffolk by the middle of January 1652.49Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/2, f. 109. Chaplin later served under Fothergill as captain in one of the three foot regiments of the Suffolk militia.50Ive, ‘Local Dimension of Defence’, 232.

Chaplin’s name first figured in discussions about the choice of MPs in 1653 when he was one of those proposed for the five Suffolk seats in the assembly which became the Nominated Parliament. The congregations in Bury St Edmunds responded to the request from the council of state for nominations by writing to Oliver Cromwell* suggesting Chaplin, Moody and Clarke, the trio of local men who were the town’s most conspicuous supporters of the government. The Bury churches may have made these nominations because they felt that they had been insufficiently consulted over the official nominations made in the name of all the Suffolk congregations and, in the event, it was the earlier nominations which determined the final allocation of the Suffolk seats.51Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 94-5, 126. Over the next six years, Chaplin busied himself in local affairs as a justice of the peace, as a Bury burgess and, in 1655 and 1656, as a commissioner for securing the peace of the commonwealth.52Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/3, ff. 14, 29, 44v, 52v, 59v, 66v, 73v, 80, 87v, 94, 99v, 105, 111v, 119, 126v, 133v; B105/2/4, ff. 8v, 15, 21v, 32v, 42v, 49v, 56v, 62, 72v, 83, 96v; Bury St Edmunds: St James Par. Reg.: Marriages 1562-1800, 41, 50, 57, 58, 59, 61, 63, 64, 66, 69; Suff. RO (Bury), D4/1/2, ff. 1-25; TSP iv. 225, 427-8; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 242. In the two elections since 1653, Bury St Edmunds had returned Chaplin’s two colleagues, Moody and Clarke. (Chaplin had, as a member of the corporation, signed the 1654 indenture.)53C219/44/2, no. 27. By 1659, however, Moody was dead and, when the freemen met on 14 January 1659, they simply substituted Chaplin, with Clarke moving up to take the senior place. Chaplin appears to have been inactive during the proceedings of this Parliament.

In the Bury St Edmunds elections to the Convention, held on 9 April 1660, Chaplin and Clarke stood against two strong supporters of a restored monarchy, Sir Henry Crofts† and Sir John Duncombe†. The contest resulted in a double return, with the alderman (as returning officer) standing by his colleagues on the corporation, Chaplin and Clarke. The two were briefly allowed to take their places in the Commons, but 11 days later Crofts and Duncombe succeeded in getting that decision overturned.54HP Commons 1660-1690. This short second term as the town’s MP in effect marked the end of Chaplin’s involvement in the municipal life of Bury St Edmunds. Even before this election he had been dropped from the local commission of the peace, and by the end of that year he had stopped attending corporation meetings.55Suff. RO (Bury), D4/1/2, ff. 26-7. Later, the renewal of the trust to administer the bequest of the Countess Rivers gave the corporation the chance to snub Chaplin. By January 1662 Chaplin was one of only three trustees still living and it seems to have been deliberate that he was not appointed to a new trust when the other two remaining trustees, Clarke and William Munning, were appointed to it.56Suff. RO (Bury), D4/1/2, f. 36. By the time the commissioners for the Corporation Act visited Bury in October 1662, Chaplin was no longer a member of the corporation and so did not need to be purged from it.57Suff. RO (Bury), D4/1/2, f. 44; D14/1. The corporation then spent much of the 1660s pursuing him and the other trustees of their estates through the courts to regain control of them.58Suff. RO (Bury), D10/3; D7/1/4.

The final ten years of his life, which he probably spent in Bury, otherwise passed quietly. His eldest son, William, who was also a mercer in Bury, died in June 1667, leaving him with three married daughters, Elizabeth, Anne and Abigail.59Muskett, Suff. Manorial Fams. iii. 113-14; Vis. Suff. 1664-8, 188. Given this, when Chaplin came to make out his will in April 1672, his main concern was to provide for his wife and their numerous grandchildren. His wife was left his lands at Wyverstone (about 12 miles to the east of Bury) during her lifetime and, after her death, these were to pass to his senior grandson, Thomas, the eldest son of William. His properties in Bury St Edmunds were left to William’s other son, also William. Chaplin died at some point during the next seven months and this will was proved on 25 November 1672.60Muskett, Suff. Manorial Fams. iii. 109. The history of the family down to the beginning of the twentieth century is well recorded, but none of his direct descendants entered Parliament.61Muskett, Suff. Manorial Fams. iii. 114-15. A nephew, Sir Francis Chaplin, was lord mayor of London in 1677 and two of Sir Francis’s sons, John† and Sir Robert† (a director of the South Sea Company), sat for Great Grimsby at various times during the reigns of William III, Anne and George I.