CUST, Richard (1622-1700), of Kirton and Barholm, Lincs.

The Custs had established themselves in the fen country of east Lincolnshire by the early fourteenth century, and by the Jacobean period they had joined the ranks of the county’s gentry. The family’s rise in status was probably accelerated by the ‘large fortune’ that Cust’s father, Samuel Cust (a Lincoln’s Inn lawyer), had acquired on his marriage to the daughter of a wealthy London tradesman and Lincolnshire landowner, Richard Burrell.

Richard Cust followed his father into the legal profession, although he was admitted not to Lincoln’s Inn where his father had studied but to the Inner Temple. In 1640, a year before Cust’s admission to the inns of court, his family had moved to the godly stronghold of Boston, and it is possible that Samuel Cust was himself a man of puritan sympathies.27Supra, ‘Boston’; Cust, Recs. of the Cust Fam. 1-2, 163-4, 168-9. He certainly seems to have been on friendly terms with at least one of the town’s godly gentleman, the future parliamentarian Humphrey Walcott*, reaching an agreement with Walcott in the spring of 1642 for a match between Richard and Walcott’s step-daughter Anne Purie, heiress to an estate at Kirton in south Lincolnshire worth £200 a year.28Infra, ‘Humphrey Walcott’; Cust, Recs. of the Cust Fam. 213-14. That Cust junior had also imbibed a strong measure of puritan piety can be inferred from his later friendship and correspondence with the prominent religious radical Sir Henry Vane II*.

With the outbreak of civil war, Richard Cust temporarily abandoned his legal studies and took up arms for Parliament, being commissioned in December 1642 by Sir Edward Ayscoghe*, Thomas Grantham*, Thomas Lister* and several other leading Lincolnshire parliamentarians as a captain of horse in the Holland militia.29Cust, Recs. of the Cust Fam. 213. Samuel Cust also sided with Parliament and was named to numerous local parliamentary commissions, becoming, like Walcott, an active member of the Lincolnshire county committee.30E113/9 (deposition of Samuel Cust); Bodl. Nalson LVIII, f. 39. Despite his captaincy, there is no evidence that Richard Cust saw military service during the civil war, and it is likely that he spent most of the 1640s studying at the Inner Temple, where he was called to the bar in February 1650.

Neither Cust nor his father could be described as major figures in Lincolnshire politics during the early 1650s, and it is possible that Richard owed his selection to represent the county in the Nominated Parliament to the recommendation of his father-in-law, Humphrey Walcott, who was also selected.31Infra, ‘Humphrey Walcott’. Cust was named to four committees in this Parliament – including the standing committee for the advancement of learning – and served as teller with Colonel John Clerke II in one (minor) division.32CJ vii. 287b, 300b, 339b, 340a; A List of the Names of All the Members of this Present Parliament (1653, 669 f.17.45). He was evidently considered knowledgeable on financial matters, for in July 1653 the council of state attempted, apparently without success, to have him appointed one of the inspectors of the treasury.33CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 45. His most important appointment came on 27 July, when he was named to the Army Committee* – of which he was an active member – although it is far from clear what his qualifications were for this office (beyond holding a captaincy in the Lincolnshire militia), or who had recommended him.34CJ vii. 287a; SP28/98, ff. 75, 365. In the elections to the seventh council of state on 1 November, Cust and three other Members all received the minimum 52 votes for the last three places on the council, and in the subsequent draw to decide who filled those places it was Cust’s name which remained at the bottom of the hat.35CJ vii. 344b.

Cust’s failure to secure a place on the council was esteemed no great loss by his newly-acquired friend, Vane II, who had taken up residence at Belleau in Lincolnshire after the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653. Cust was instrumental in warding off a ‘thrust’ at Vane in the autumn of 1653 – possibly an attempt to have him pricked for sheriff of Lincolnshire – and thereafter the two men socialized and exchanged letters for at least two months and possibly much longer. Although only four letters of their correspondence survive – all from Vane – there are hints that the two men were of very similar mind ‘as well in the things of Christ as of the present transactions [of state]’. Vane certainly felt able to share his impassioned spiritual yearnings with Cust and expressed considerable interest in the latter’s deeply considered views on Christology.36Infra, ‘Sir Henry Vane II’; Cust, Recs. of the Cust Fam. 216-20.

The anonymous author of the 1654 broadsheet A Catalogue of the Names of the Members of the Last Parliament identified Cust among the MPs in the Nominated Parliament who were at least tolerant of the sects and willing to overhaul the tithe system.37A Catalogue of the Names of the Members of the Last Parliament (1654, 699 f.19.3). In November 1654, he and his father were among a group of Lincolnshire justices of the peace (which included Walcott) that the protectoral council ordered to investigate the case of several Baptists who had been arrested on their way to a prayer meeting.38CSP Dom. 1654, p. 395. A year later, Cust and this same group endorsed complaints against the arresting magistrate for frequenting and licensing ale-houses.39CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 46, 398. In contrast to Walcott, however, neither Cust nor his father co-operated with Major-general Edward Whalley* in the mid-1650s. Cust either stood or was proposed as a candidate for one of the Lincolnshire county seats in the elections to second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, but received only 133 votes on a poll – 20 votes more than Vane II received, but well below the number achieved by the ten successful candidates.40Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’.

With the re-establishment of the Rump in May 1659 and the return to power of his friend Vane, Cust was restored to favour, and at some point between May and July 1659 he was made a captain in the Lincolnshire militia (replacing Francis Clinton alias Fines*), having apparently been removed from his former command by the protectoral regime.41CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 38. That summer, he was active in the arrest and detention of suspected royalist conspirators in Lincolnshire, and, early in August, the council of state appointed Vane to report Cust’s ‘great and faithful services’ to Parliament.42Bodl. Rawl. C.179, pp. 277, 316, 407, 413; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 56, 77, 91, 94, 99, 132. After the Restoration, Cust claimed that he had done the Rump’s bidding in 1659 only reluctantly, his desire being to protect the persons and estates of those who had suffered for their loyalty to Charles I.43E113/9. However, his career under the Rump and the restored Rump, and in particular his ties with Vane, suggest that he had little sympathy either for the Presbyterians or the cavalier interest.

Cust evidently fell out of favour after the restoration of the secluded Members in February 1660 and was omitted from the Lincolnshire magistracy when the commissions of peace were remodelled in March 1660. Although he may not have welcomed the return of the king, he seems to have emerged from the change of regime largely unscathed – possibly through the good offices of his mother’s kinsman, Sir Edward Nicholas†, Charles II’s secretary of state.44Cust, Recs. of the Cust Fam. 223-4. For most of the 1660s, Cust seems to have remained persona non grata. However, in 1670 he was restored to the Holland and Kesteven benches and began to resume his role in county government.45Kesteven QS Recs. ed. Peyton (Lincoln Rec. Soc. xxv), 1, 128. By 1677, he was on friendly terms with one of Lincolnshire’s leading royalist families, the Berties, and with the help of Charles Bertie†, secretary to the treasury, he purchased a baronetcy.46Kesteven QS Recs. ed. Peyton (Lincoln Rec. Soc. xxv), 1, 128; Cust, Recs. of the Cust Fam. 228. The following year, Cust was instrumental in securing Bertie’s election at Stamford, where Cust and his family had moved in 1655. Although Cust took up residence at Barholm, about five miles east of Stamford, in 1678, he continued to enjoy considerable standing in the town; and in the elections to the first Exclusion Parliament in March 1679, the corporation returned him in place of Bertie. Cust was returned on the interest of John Cecil†, earl of Exeter, although his evident sympathy with the ‘country’ faction may also have found favour with the electors, who appear to have distrusted Bertie for his close ties with the earl of Danby and the court interest. Cust was returned for Stamford to the second and third Exclusion Parliaments in 1679 and 1681.47Cust, Recs. of the Cust Fam. 220-1, 228-37; HP Commons, 1660-90, ‘Stamford’; ‘Sir Richard Cust’. In all three Parliaments he acted with the whigs; and in July 1681 he was purged from the commission of the peace. In 1683, he was described as a leading member of the ‘disaffected’ element in Lincolnshire.48C231/8, p. 51; CSP Dom. 1680-1, p. 232; CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, pp. 32, 180; HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Sir Richard Cust’. Cust’s son, Sir Pury Cust, was active in support of the Glorious Revolution, and Cust himself was restored to the Kesteven bench in 1689.49Kesteven QS Recs. ed. Peyton (Lincoln Rec. Soc. xxvi), 346, 471; HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Sir Richard Cust’.

Cust died on 30 August 1700 and was buried in St George’s church, Stamford, on 5 September.50CB; Cust, Recs. of the Cust Fam. 249. He died without surviving sons, and in his will he left the bulk of his estate to his grandson and made bequests totalling approximately £1,500.51PROB11/458, f. 104; Cust, Recs. of the Cust Fam. 256. Cust’s great-grandson sat for Grantham from 1743 to 1770.52HP Commons 1715-54, ‘Sir John Cust’.