EYRE, Henry (1628-78), of Woodlands, Dorset.

The Eyres had been established in Wiltshire at least since the reign of Edward II.15VCH Wilts. x.180; Vis. Wilts. 1623 (Harl. Soc. cv-cvi), 59-61. By the seventeenth century several branches flourished, their fortunes replenished by astute marriages and by careers in the law and the City, and their very ubiquity sowing the seeds of subsequent confusion. Sir William Eyre† and Sir John Eyre†, from the senior line, seated at Great Chalfield, were returned to early Stuart Parliaments, but our MP’s family had also attained prominence, acquiring property not only around Salisbury but also in Hampshire and Dorset.16HP Commons 1604-1629. In the later sixteenth century Henry’s great-grandfather Robert Eyre† and grandfather Thomas Eyre† each served Salisbury first as mayor and then as MP.17Vis. Wilts. 1623, 59-61; HP Commons 1558-1603. His uncles included Robert Eyre of Lincoln’s Inn, a steward to the bishops of Salisbury, but also a member of the feoffees for impropriations; the equally godly Christopher Eyre, Merchant Adventurer and founder member of the East India Company; William Eyre I* and (by marriage) Giles Tooker†, both also of Lincoln’s Inn.18MIs Wilts. 1822, 304-5, 314; PROB11/145/28; P. Hembry, The Bishops of Bath and Wells, 1540-1640 (1967), 186, 194-5, 210, 221, 233, 236; ‘Sir Samuel Eyre’, ‘Anne Eyre [née Aldersley]’, Oxford DNB.

By 1640 only two of Thomas Eyre’s sons were still living – William and Giles, our MP’s father. Giles, seated some seven miles south-east of Salisbury, was at that date a justice of the peace and was sheriff of Wiltshire in 1640-1, the latter appointment probably designed as a punishment: his funeral monument records that ‘he was oppressed for his opposition to measures in the reigns of James I and Charles I’ and that ‘in 1640, for then well-known court reasons…’ something happened which has been erased.19Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 189; Wilts. N and Q, v. 98. Even before the purge of the winter of 1641-2 he had been removed from the commission of the peace.20SP16/491, ff. 349-351v. Although he was not among the gentry who constituted the parliamentarian county committee, during the first civil war Giles was allegedly ‘plundered at Brickworth by the king’s soldiers of £2,000 value, and imprisoned for refusing to pay the sum of £400 illegally demanded of him by two instruments under the privy seaI, bearing date at Oxford, 14th Feb. 1643 [or 1644]’.21Wilts. N and Q, v. 98. As hostilities drew to a close he joined his wider kin at the forefront of county administration, being added to or confirmed on the commission of the peace in May 1646.22C231/6, p. 45; Western Circuit Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 237. From 1648, despite his advanced age, he appeared at Salisbury quarter sessions, and he was an assessment commissioner during the commonwealth – unless that man was his heir and namesake.23A. and O.; An Act for an Assessment (1653), 302 (E.1062.28); C231/6, p. 131; C192/13/3, f. 68v; C193/13/4, f. 109v; Wilts. RO, A1/160/1, ff. 102, 151, 175, 195, 239. Meanwhile, his son William (1612/3-1670), rector of Compton Bassett and (from 1646) Odstock, became a preacher in Salisbury cathedral close, delivering the assize sermon in 1652.24W. Eyre, Christ’s Scepter Advanced (1652), sig. [A2v-A3]; Vindiciae Justificationis Gratuitae (1653, E.718.5); Clergy of the C of E database; Calamy Revised, 187. Two of Giles’s other sons, John (d. 1685) and Edward (1626-1683), went with the republic’s army to Ireland, settling in Co. Galway, which both later represented in the Irish Parliament.25‘Edward Eyre’, DIB.

The tenth-born son, Henry Eyre was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in January 1647, with the assistance of his much older first cousin Edward Tooker*, and was called to the bar rather less than the usual seven years later in June 1653.26L. Inn, Admiss. bk 7, f. 61; LI Black Bks. ii. 399. He had illustrious connections, but a certain intellectual precosity is suggested. In the meantime, having been intruded by the parliamentary visitors as a fellow of Jesus College, Oxford in 1648, he graduated in 1649, became a fellow of Merton College in 1651, and proceeded MA in 1652.27Reg. Visitors Univ. Oxford, 177, 504.

Following his father’s death in early 1656 Eyre, who seems to have inherited a comfortable competence, gained local office in Wiltshire.28PROB11/253/282. That September he was appointed recorder of Salisbury, and a year later (still under 30 years old) master of the almshouses in the city founded by his uncle Christopher. 29Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, ff. 91, 95, 99, 106v. In 1657 he also became a justice of the peace and an assessment commissioner for Wiltshire.30C231/6, p. 359; Wilts. RO, A1/160/2, pp. 97, 107, 113, 135; A. and O. Probably in 1658 he married Dorothy, widow of Lincoln’s Inn bencher Christopher Dodington, who had died the previous autumn; apparently wealthy, she was a daughter of Sir George Hastings†, and a cousin of the earls of Huntington.31Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 155; PROB11/269/290.

Eyre’s standing in Salisbury, and his family history and connections, account for his election on 3 January 1659 as one of the borough’s MPs for Richard Cromwell’s Parliament.32Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, f. 112v. He occupied the seat previously held by Edward Tooker, and served alongside his distant kinsman and colleague on the commission of the peace, William Eyre II*, Member for Westbury.33Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, f. 112v; HP Commons 1660-1690. Eyre made no recorded impact on proceedings.

In the spring of 1660 Eyre was re-elected to the Convention.34Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, f. 119v. The re-appointment of Robert Hyde* in June meant that he lost his place as recorder, and he was not elected to the Cavalier Parliament of 1661.35Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, f. 120. However, while his brother William, who had become a Congregationalist, was ejected from his livings in Salisbury and elsewhere, Henry continued for a while as an assessment commissioner and a justice of the peace.36Calamy Revised, 187; Wilts. RO, A1/160/2, pp. 187, 207; An Ordinance for an Assessment (1660, E.1075.6); SR. In the mid-1660s he retired to his estate at Woodlands in Dorset, but eventually returned to Westminster in 1675 having secured a seat at Downton in a by-election. He was reckoned to be an opponent of the court, and an ally of the earl of Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper*). Eyre died in July 1678, and was buried at Whiteparish, where a monument was erected in his honour.37Dorset Hearth Tax Assessments ed. C.A.F. Meekings (1951), 33; W.D. Christie, Life of Anthony Ashley Cooper (1871), i. pp. xxxvii, liv; Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 155; Wilts. N and Q, v. 99. His nephew Giles Eyre† of Brickworth and Lincoln’s Inn, who had sat for Downton in the Convention, became a recorder of Salisbury and was MP for the city in 1689.38HP Commons 1660-1690.