COLE, Thomas (1622-81), of Liss, Hants

This MP’s family traced its ancestry to thirteenth-century Devon, but Cole’s great-grandfather, Thomas Cole (d. 1571), was a wealthy Grocer of All Hallows, London, several of whose numerous descendants were well established in the mercantile community there. Cole’s grandfather, Solomon Cole (1547-1629), was a younger son and an attorney active in London and Hampshire, who acquired property at Liss, near Petersfield, on his marriage to Mary Dering, and settled there at the end of the sixteenth century. The manor of Liss was bought in 1612 from Mary’s brother Henry Dering by Cole’s father, another Thomas Cole (c.1573-1641), who seems to have been the Staple Inn educated man who eventually became a barrister of Gray’s Inn in 1614 and a bencher in 1622. Professional connections helped him in 1620 to marry a daughter of Thomas Waller (1546-1627), one of the prothonotaries in the court of common pleas, and his wife Dorothy Gerrard (d. 1626), and thereby to acquire an extensive kinship circle among the legal and parliamentary elite.21Misc. Gen. et Her. ii. 240-1; VCH Hants, iv. 85; Cavanagh, Col. Chesapeake Fams. i; PBG Inn i. 194, 210, 246.

By the 1620s Cole senior was established among the Hampshire gentry. He was assessed at £10 for the privy seal loan of 1625, and was a collector of the loan in Basingstoke in 1626, and of the subsidy in 1628.22Add. 21922, f. 16v; SP16/521, f. 308v; Hants RO, 44M69/G4/1/29, 33-4; 44M69/G4/1/36/9; 44M69/G4/1/51-2; 44M69/G4/1/99. Although he refused to compound for his knighthood in 1630, he paid £30 upon the second commission.23Add. 21922, ff. 180, 181v. In his will, drafted in May 1641, he left more than £4,500 to be divided between his 14 younger sons and daughters.24PROB11/187/53.

When Cole senior died in July 1641, his eldest son and heir Thomas Cole was still about six months short of attaining his majority, but the will had confided his custody to excutors and kin including his uncle Thomas Waller of Gray’s Inn and his great-uncle Solomon Cole, citizen and Skinner; it had also mentioned a potentially useful cousin, Thomas Cole of the court of wards.25PROB11/187/53. Thomas junior had himself recently been admitted to Gray’s Inn, but seems soon to have forsaken his legal training in order to assume control of his patrimony.26GI Admiss. 229. He probably adhered to Parliament from the outbreak of civil war, for in March 1644 the Commons ordered that he should be added to the Hampshire county committee, although this may not have been effected until June 1645.27CJ iii. 412b; A. and O.; Add. 24860, f. 145. He was subsequently named as a commissioner for assessments and the militia, and was appointed to the commission of the peace some time before March 1648.28Western Circ. Assize Orders, 270.

Cole served both the Rump and the protectorate. His appointment in 1655 as a commissioner for preserving the peace of the commonwealth is evidence of his perceived loyalty to the regime, and this work, together with his willingness to assist with the decimation tax, seems to have secured him a seat in the 1656 Parliament as one of the knights of the shire for Hampshire.29TSP iv. 363. Major-general William Goffe* told John Thurloe* that he was hopeful Cole would favour a political settlement which was advantageous to Oliver Cromwell* (a distant kinsman).30TSP v. 329. This record establishes that the MP is to be distinguished from a namesake at Southampton, whom Goffe described in September 1656 as ‘a perfect Leveller’.31TSP v. 396-7.

Cole made no visible contribution to proceedings in the first three weeks of the 1656 Parliament. Between mid-October and mid-December, however, he was named to nine committees. These covered a range of issues including the somewhat minor, such as the abuses of manorial stewards, to the ostensibly somewhat ephemeral, in the shape of a bill relating to Cambridge colleges.32CJ vii. 438a, 466b. However, appointments to two committees relating to the preservation of timber (23 Oct., 6 Dec.), suggest an interest in the subject, while those to consider the petition of the civil lawyers (1 Dec.) and to address the long-running complaint of George and Sarah Rodney versus John Cole (perhaps among his many kinsmen, 22 Nov.) possibly arose from his legal and family connections.33CJ vii. 444b, 457b, 462b, 465a. Nomination to the committee to call to account the trustees for the sale of church lands (17 Oct.) and addition to that for Drury House, where the trustees for the sale of delinquents’ lands were based (2 Dec.), argues some significant engagement with the matter of confiscation, although precisely what stance this revealed does not appear.34CJ vii. 440b, 463b. Most important perhaps, was his addition on 25 November to the committee to attend Cromwell with bills for his assent.35CJ vii. 458b.

Cole disappeared from the Journal for nearly eight weeks between 10 December and 2 February 1657, although at a call of the House on 31 December his absence was excused; his excuse is not recorded.36Burton’s Diary, i. 286. He received four committee nominations in February, all relating to private bills or petitions.37CJ vii. 485a, 488a, 494b, 496b. There is no evidence of his attendance either after 24 February 1657, or during the second session of the Parliament in January 1658.

Cole did not sit in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament in 1659, but in 1660 he was returned to the Convention both at Winchester, where he defeated the republican Thomas Muspratt, and Petersfield, where he opted to sit, forcing a new election at Winchester on 8 June.38Hants RO, W/B1/5, ff. 137v, 140. However, Cole played little part in parliamentary proceedings, and was not re-elected, although in 1679 Lord Montagu of Boughton hoped that he might stand for Stamford on the country interest.39Add. 29557, f. 91. After Cole’s second marriage in 1662 he lived mainly in Northamptonshire, and when he was chosen sheriff of Hampshire in late 1663 he was granted a dispensation to reside outside his native county.40CSP Dom. 1663-4, pp. 386, 483-4. Nevertheless, he did not sever his ties with Hampshire: while almost certainly not the namesake who was a collector of customs in Southampton from 1669 until at least 1679, he was the man appointed a commissioner for recusants in 1675.41CTB iii. 585, 595; iv. 791; v. 388; vi. 266. Cole was living in Hampshire at his death, and was buried at Liss on 4 March 1681.42Cole, Fam. of Cole, 31. No further member of this branch of the family sat in Parliament.