GOTT, Samuel (1614-71), of Battle, Suss. and Gray’s Inn, Mdx.

Samuel Gott’s father, born in Royston, Cambridgeshire, became a prominent London iron merchant, master of the Ironmongers’ Company in 1639, and a wealthy man, with property throughout the capital.27PROB11/188/147; CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 445; C54/2891/16; C54/3416/24. Gott himself maintained these business interests throughout his life, while his marriage into the family of one of the principal Sussex ironmasters brought him still greater wealth, and important political contacts with the county’s greater gentry. Ultimately, however, it was as a political figure and as a writer that he left his mark.

Gott’s academic interests were nurtured at Merchant Taylors’ School under Dr Nicholas Grey. Gott remained friendly with Grey, who was head of Eton College from 1632 until his ejection during the civil war, and assisted in the publication of – or according to some, wrote – his Parabolae Evangelicae (1650).28‘Nicholas Grey’, Oxford DNB; Ath. Ox. iii. 400, 504-5; R. Baxter, A Holy Commonwealth (1659), following 517 (E.1729.1). At St Catharine’s, Cambridge, Gott studied from 1630 to 1633 under Richard Sibbes, who was also preacher at Gray’s Inn. Having entered the inn in 1633, Gott was called to the bar in June 1640, and for a few years worked as a solicitor in the court of king’s bench.29KB125/76, 78, 79.

He had not turned his back on the iron industry, however. Probably as a result of his father’s empire-building, the Gotts had contacts among ironmasters in the Sussex Weald. In August 1634 one such, Richard Farnden of Sedlescombe, left money for mourning rings to both Samuel Gotts, as well as to a Mr Foote (possibly Thomas Foote*, also born in Royston).30PROB11/166/548 (Richard Jarnden). In 1638 young Samuel married Richard’s niece Joan, eldest daughter of Peter Farnden and another beneficiary of the will. It was a lucrative match, and the settlement (dated October) probably brought him a portion of over £1,000, since this was the sum received by a younger daughter in 1640.31Vis. Suss., 45; Misc. Gen. et Her. 5th ser. iii. 221; E. Suss. RO, SAS/FA/288; Dyke MS 990. Gott and his wife settled in his native parish of St Dunstan-in-the-East, where nine children were baptized (and six buried) between March 1640 and May 1657.32Reg. of St Dunstan in the East 1558-1654, 76-91, 209-11, 223-7; Reg. of St Dunstan in the East 1653-1691, 5-6, 71. At his father’s death in late 1641, Gott shared with his mother a fairly substantial estate, not only in east London, where his father had continued to extend his interest right up to his death, but in Godmanchester, Huntingdonshire.33C54/3226/10; Reg. of St Dunstan in the East 1558-1654, 213; PROB11/188/147. By 1644, Gott and his family had taken up residence in Sedlescombe.34E. Suss. RO, Sedlescombe par. reg.

Given that Gott was a recent arrival in Sussex, his return on 2 October 1645 as a recruiter MP for Winchelsea, suggests that he received support from local grandees.35E. Suss. RO, SAS-WH/404. Gott’s father-in-law was a close associate, both in business and on the commission of the peace, of Sir Thomas Pelham*, one of the most powerful figures in the county.36E. Suss. RO, Dunn MS 46/1; Add. 33084, f. 40. It seems likely that Pelham helped to secure Gott’s election alongside Henry Oxinden*, as part of a strategy to strengthen the peace party against the efforts of radicals on the county committee.37‘Suss. deeds in private hands’, Suss. Arch. Coll. lxvi. 118.

Gott had arrived at Westminster by 29 October, when he subscribed the Solemn League and Covenant.38CJ iv. 326a. Within a week he was added to a committee considering captured royalist correspondence (4 Nov.), but his political career otherwise looks to have been slow to take off.39CJ iv. 332a. In the next eight months he was named to only three committees: to work on bills for sabbath observance and regulation of access to the holy communion (20 Jan., 23 May 1646) and to appoint accountants to inspect the excise audit (11 Mar.).40CJ iv. 412a, 472b, 553b.

Named a commissioner for exclusion from the sacrament (3 June), thereafter Gott began to assume a more active role amongst the political Presbyterians, playing an important part in key aspects of their cultivation of the Scots and resistance to the pretensions of the Independents and the New Model army. He was probably part of the party’s minority interest on the committees formed in July 1646 to investigate the Presbyterian remonstrance from the City of London (of May 1646), and to discover the authors, printers, and publishers of the Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens – committees dominated by Independents like Nathaniel Fiennes I* and Sussex activist Harbert Morley*.41CJ iv. 616a-b. As a Londoner with strong family ties to the upper echelons of the City merchant community, Gott was a potentially vital ally for Presbyterian leader Denzil Holles* on the delegation which on 5 September went to lord mayor and common council seeking an advance of £200,000 to pay the Scots.42CJ iv. 663a. Over succeeding months he was closely involved in ensuring the money was both delivered and repaid, an essential component of which was the realization of ecclesiastical assets. Named to committees for the sale of dean and chapter lands (29 Sept; 2 Nov.), Gott reported a conference with the Lords on the matter (12 Nov.) and explanations desired by the commissioners for the sale of episcopal lands (19 Nov.); with a commitment attested by his Arundel colleague Henry Oxenden, he chaired a committee clarifying the provisions for the latter (27 Feb., 1 Mar. 1647).43CJ iv. 678a, 712a, 720a, 725b; v. 99b-100a, 101a: Add. 28001, f. 243. Meanwhile, he was on another delegation to encourage the City to hasten the collection of arrears of assessments (2 Dec. 1646).44CJ iv. 738a.

Another important component of the alliance with the Scots was the implementation of religious reform. Gott was nominated to committees to enforce the ordinances on church government and consider orders about the taking of the Solemn League and Covenant (3, 12 Oct. 1646), and made chairman of the committee to discuss with the common council the ordinance abolishing episcopacy (9 Oct.).45CJ iv. 681a, 688b, 691a. But it seems likely that Gott’s commitment to Presbyterianism went beyond mere political necessity. As well as the committee for restraining malignant ministers, which unquestionably had a political edge (22 Mar. 1647), he was also committees to appoint preachers for Chichester (11 Nov. 1646, with Francis Rous* and Zouche Tate*), support ministers’ salaries (11 Nov.), and investigate lay preachers (31 Dec., with Holles and Tate).46CJ iv. 719b; v. 35a, 119b. His inclusion among MPs perusing the books left by Archbishop Richard Bancroft to the University of Cambridge for material that might ‘concern the state’ played to both his religious and his scholarly interests (10 Feb. 1647).47CJ v. 84a.

Meanwhile, among other appointments Gott received in the autumn of 1646 were those which made use of his professional expertise – committees discussing the regulation of fees and proceedings in the English courts, habeas corpus, and the custody of the great seal.48CJ iv. 660a, 701b, 703b, 708b, 713b, 735b; CJ v. 6b, 14b. Already caught up in dealing with petitioning by military forces in London (15 Oct.), on 16 December, the day he was added to the committee of privileges, he was forced to answer allegations that he had been spreading rumours against the Independent, Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire*, to the effect that Evelyn had called for the army to ‘curb the pride and insolency of the mechanic citizens’ of London. Gott denied the charges, but in an attempt to discredit a number of prominent Presbyterians, further witnesses were produced to support the claims made against him and his friends, including Laurence Brinley, a member of the Presbyterian-dominated Committee of Accounts*. 49CJ iv. 694b; v. 16a, 17a. Gott’s position may have been rendered temporarily uncomfortable: after a period of intense activity, in the succeeding eight weeks he appeared only once in the Journal.50CJ v. 35a.

Returning to Westminster in mid-February 1647, Gott re-engaged with the Presbyterian programme.51CJ v. 84a, 8a, 99b–100a, 101a, 119b. By April he was at the centre of the attempt to return control of the London militia to the City, where Presbyterians were dominant. As joint chairman with the Presbyterian recorder of London, John Glynne*, and Robert Reynolds of the committee preparing the enabling ordinance (2 Apr.), Gott reported on 15 April. When Glynne and Sir Philip Stapilton* marshalled a majority approving his amendments, Gott was ordered (with Glynne, Sir John Maynard* and Colonel Edmund Harvey I*) to manage the ensuing conference with the Lords.52CJ v. 132b, 143b. This concession by Parliament to the demands of the City – like the ordinance for days of recreation, requested by apprentices, to which Gott was named first on 20 April – represented a sweetener in negotiations for the raising of a City loan (£200,000) to finance a new Irish campaign.53CJ v. 148b. From that day Gott became a pivotal figure in organizing the loan and in reserving funds from it for the militia.54CJ v. 147b-48a, 172b, 175b, 188a, 196a-b; LJ ix. 232a. Simultaneously, with his friend John Swynfen* he drafted the bill establishing the Committee for Indemnity* (7, 14 May), the bi-partisan body accepted by Presbyterians as a means of pacifying the New Model.55CJ v. 166a, 174a. Gott was himself a member of the Committee and was on the Commons committee which refined its scope in response to army criticism (4 June), but its meetings were soon overtaken by outside events.56CJ v. 198b; s.v. ‘Committee for Indemnity’; SP24/1, ff. 8v, 13.

After the king passed into the hands of the army and Parliament was threatened by disbanded soldiers demonstrating in the capital, Gott chaired the committee working on an ordinance to allow the raising of horse for the defence of the City (8 June) and was three times named to go to the London militia seeking protection (7, 10, 11 June).57CJ v. 202a, 203b, 205a, 205b, 208a. He then disappeared from the Journal and perhaps from the House, but while he may not have been in Parliament to witness the impeachment of the Eleven Members or the attempt by the Independents to reverse the moves to reform the militia, he remained in London, attending meetings of the Committee for Indemnity on 26 June and 3 July.58SP24/1, ff. 8v, 13. Six days after the Presbyterian coup, he resurfaced in the Journal: on 1 August he and Holles were appointed to head a committee to augment the powers of the Presbyterian-dominated ‘committee of safety’, which had been set up in June to mobilise London against the army.59CJ v. 263a. Otherwise, however, he appears to have maintained a low profile. Following the army’s march on London on 6 August and the consequent return of the Independents, Gott was in evidence again only when the Committee for Indemnity resumed sitting on 19 August.60SP24/1, f. 30v. That day he was again named to discuss the sale of episcopal lands, reporting from the committee on the 21st.61CJ v. 278b, 281b.

There was no immediate return to his former prominence. Over the next nine months Gott’s visible activity was greatly reduced, although not without significance; his involvement in the Presbyterian cause may have been greater behind the scenes. Named on 2 September to a committee addressing the problem of debased coinage, of particular concern to City traders, Gott re-appeared on 6 October, when he was nominated to consider propositions to be delivered to the king, then at Hampton Court, for a Presbyterian settlement of the church.62CJ v. 289b, 327b. He attended the Committee for Indemnity on 7 October, but was absent from the records of the Commons until the 28th, when he was given special responsibility for the ordinance for the removal of obstructions to the sale of bishops’ lands.63SP24/1, f. 41v; CJ v. 344a. Perhaps these were the areas where he concentrated his efforts. Although he attended ten meetings of the Indemnity Committee between 3 November and 22 March 1648 (and possibly more: after mid-April evidence is incomplete), from November to the following summer he was named to only three committees, at least two – those relating to tithes (19 Feb. 1648) and the regulation of Cambridge University (6 May) – with a potentially Presbyterian agenda.64SP24/1, ff. 66, 70v, 86v, 103v, 143v, 176, 190; SP24/2, ff. 15v, 16, 23v; CJ v. 421a, 460b, 552b.

Gott’s return to prominence coincided with the Presbyterian resurgence which accompanied the decision to re-open negotiations with the king (24 May) and the dropping of the charges against his impeached colleagues (3 June). Having been substituted for his friend Swynfen in negotiations with the common council over the militia (5 June), Gott was included with Swynfen on committees to prepare a declaration on progress in reaching a peace settlement (10 June) and to consider army officers’ pay (14 June).65CJ v. 586a, 593a, 599a. At the height of the summer’s unrest, when the Lords endorsed calls for the king to be brought to London for negotiations, Gott was named to the committee to put the Commons’ case to peers (15 July).66CJ v. 637a. Once again, he was to the fore in matters requiring dealings with the City and its militia (25, 31 July; 15, 22 Aug.; 16 Oct.).67CJ v. 647b, 645b, 671b, 678a; vi. 53b. In his stance on these and other matters – preparing the justification for calling the House (3 Sept.), and seeking reparations for his Sussex colleague, former commissary-general Henry Peck (8 Sept.), for Presbyterian hero, Dr John Bastwick (24 Oct.), and for other ‘well-affected persons’ who had money owing from delinquents (16 Oct.) – Gott probably marked himself out for reprisals from the army.68CJ vi. 7a, 10a, 53a, 60a. Critically, however, on 27 October, the day Parliament agreed to extend the deadline for negotiations with Charles I, he was among MPs appointed to consider the propositions to which the king had agreed at Newport, and reduce them to bills.69CJ vi. 62b. As Presbyterians began to doubt the intentions of army radicals, on 4 November Gott was once again included on a delegation to the common council to seek assistance.70CJ vi. 69b.

Although made a militia commissioner for Sussex on 2 December (albeit not London), on the 6th Gott was an unsurprising victim of the purge of the Commons.71A. and O.; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 212 and n. On 16 January 1649 he joined 11 other leading Presbyterians in attempting to counter propaganda launched against them in The Humble Answer of the General Council of Officers, by seeking a licence from James Cranford, one of the Presbyterian licensers of the press, for a book in defence of the secluded Members.72HMC Portland iii. 166. But after this show of defiance, Gott retired from the political fray.

He had already disposed of his outlying estates in London and Huntingdonshire, and consolidated his position in Sussex through the acquisition of Gate-Place.73C54/3358/5; C54/3416/24; C54/3482/31; Suss Manors, i. 178. However, he also bought property in Worcestershire and engaged in deals with friends from the legal community, such as his brother-in-law, Edward Polhill of Gray’s Inn, and John Hervey* of Lincoln’s Inn.74C54/3448/33; C54/3542/11. Alongside this he made several forays into literature. His first book, a romance called Novae Solymae (or ‘The Ideal City’), had appeared sometime in 1648, its otherwise anonymous authorship established – as against attributions to John Milton – by the testimonies of his printer in 1659 and of his friend Francis Goldsmith.75[S. Gott], Novae Solymae (1648); Baxter, Holy Commonwealth, following 517; F. Goldsmith, Hugo Grotius his Sophompaneas (1652), sig. K2. Gott’s An Essay of the True Happines of Man, published in June 1650, displayed both his moderation and his disdain for the political extremism of his times. In the preface, Gott claimed that ‘in times of action, whosoever would appear considerable, and make any moment in business, must pursue one of the extremes, and desperately run up to the height of it’. He himself, on the other hand, had pursued that ‘sober and solid truth’ which ‘passes in a straight line through the crowd of errors and confusions, without any great noise or show of itself’.76S. Gott, An Essay of the True Happines of Man (1650), sigs. A4v-5 (E.1407.1). Ostensibly, he preferred a life outside politics: ‘our common saying is very true, that the best condition of life is between a constable and a justice of peace’.77Gott, Essay, 50.

Amid reflections upon abstract moral philosophy, Gott occasionally revealed his political outlook. He emerges as a monarchist, yet not a royalist. Commenting on ‘the goods of fortune’, Gott displayed his support for a patriarchal monarchical constitution: fortune was ‘summed up in a crown, or the royal state, which the heathens called the fairest gift of the gods bestowed on mortal men’; every father was a ‘king within doors’, from whom emanated ‘the best pedigree of lawful monarchy’.78Gott, Essay, 46-9. Nevertheless, ‘the greatest potentates are not omnipotent’, and ‘the world hath always declaimed against usurping tyrants, and philosophers have as much cried down their happiness’. Tyrants were ‘kings of a bastard kind, which yet commonly afterward obtain a legitimation’.79Gott, Essay, 47-9. Gott mocked the ‘licentious course of life’ adopted by courtiers, which ‘disable[s] both body and mind’, but expressed his support for the ‘indelible’ nobility.80Gott, Essay, 30, 66.

Gott’s veneration for a constitution including the two ‘estates’ of king and Lords, so recently abolished by the Rump, was mixed with a cynicism towards all politicians and political power. Civil rulers ‘commonly’ took ‘a pride and a delight in oppressing private men’ and despised justice.81Gott, Essay, 51. They sought to out-wit ‘providence, and to set their mountain so sure that it cannot be moved’; but since ‘the greatest designs and wisest counsels’ were easily ‘overturned by the least and most unexpected accidents’, ‘all the great captains and counsellors of the world’ should ‘submit all their powers and policy to the beck of a divine will’.82Gott, Essay, 201-2, 205. This censorious attack was launched not so much from the moral high ground, as from a political realism which Gott had learnt from study of Machiavelli’s notions regarding the sordid world of politics, and its incompatibility with true Christianity.83Gott, Essay, 88.

Gott never suggested a right of resistance. When discussing religion, and the consciences of dissenters, Gott admitted that ‘no human authority can force the conscience’; attempts to do so by legislation were fruitless. Even if the ruler acted contrary to the law, ‘it is better to obey God than man’ and to accept consequential retribution, ‘which is the only lawful escape [God] hath reserved for such as are under lawful authority’. Those ‘proud and furious spirits, impatient of suffering, and despising this low and humble way of passive obedience’ would ‘rather confound all laws and bonds of human society, than be crossed of their own wills’.84Gott, Essay, 263-5. To the limited extent that he expressed his own religious views, they were consistent with his desire for a via media between conflicting extremes. Religion was ‘a chief bond of human society, and indeed the very spirit and soul thereof’, and ‘dissensions about it have always proved dangerous and sometimes fatal to the states’. Thus they might ‘be no more tolerated than a civil sedition’, and he opposed all ‘fanatic consciences’, whether Lutheran, Calvinist, Arminian or anti-Arminian.85Gott, Essay, 265-6.

Persisting with his scholarly pursuits, in 1652 Gott wrote dedicatory verses for his friend, Francis Goldsmith.86Goldsmith, Hugo Grotius, sig. B. While there is no evidence of direct contact between the two, Gott probably belonged to an extended circle around the great Presbyterian divine, Richard Baxter, with whom he shared the same publisher, Thomas Underhill. Underhill also issued the works of another of their Presbyterian friends, Anthony Burgess, while both Baxter and Gott were close to Peter Gunning, the future bishop of Chichester. Another of Baxter’s friends, John Bridges*, governor of Warwick Castle during the wars, was Gott’s brother-in-law.87Baxter, Holy Commonwealth, following 517; PROB11/188/147.

Following the death in 1653 of his father-in-law, to whose estate he was both trustee and executor, Gott took over his business and steadily bought further property on his own account, extending his interest in the iron industry to a considerable extent and generating significant profits; among his acquisitions was Brede furnace and forge in Seddlescombe, from another Sussex ironmaster, Nathaniel Powell* (Sept. 1659).88Abstracts Suss. Deeds and Docs. 64, 167-8; PROB11/227/585 (Peter Farnden); Add. 33144, f. 172v; E. Suss. RO, SAS/F/52; Dunn MSS 27/2, 3; 29/1, 3; 46/2; 47/1-3; Suss. Manors, i. 29; C54/3983/14. With the advent of the protectorate, in January 1654 he was named a sewers commissioner for Middlesex, presumably an indication that he had not entirely forsaken London.89C181/6, p. 6.

In the last week of August 1656, Gott was returned to Parliament as one of the nine members for the county of Sussex under the Instrument of Government.90Mercurius Politicus, 324 (21-28 Aug. 1656), 7206 (E.497.12). This poll returned very few friends of the protectorate, and Gott’s colleagues included a number of other men purged in 1648, together with disillusioned republicans and even a few royalist sympathizers. The lord protector’s council punished the county’s defiance of Major-general William Goffe* by excluding Gott and others from the House on 17 September.91Bodl. Tanner 52, f. 156; SP18/130, f. 46; OPH, xxi. 16. Five days later, Gott signed their letter of protest to the Speaker.92Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 274-80.

Despite this setback, Gott not only reinvigorated his legal career but also acquired further public office. In 1657 and 1658 he was appointed to sewers and assessment commissions and took on duties for Rye and Hastings corporations, while being chosen as reader for Barnard’s Inn (Nov. 1657) and as an ancient of Gray’s Inn (May 1658).93C181/6, p. 194; E. Suss. RO, Rye MSS 1/14, f. 265; 112/5-7; A. and O.; Hastings Museum, Suss. C/A(c)3, unfol.; PBG Inn, i. 420, 422. That Gott was eager to return to Westminster is evident from a letter to his friend Swynfen on 20 January 1658, two days before the opening of the second session of Parliament, in which he sought advice over whether to take the oath which would enable him at last to take his seat. The dilemma was ‘the most difficult I ever met with in the whole course of my life. I protest if I know my own deceitful heart I have no respect of fear or favour to sway me either way’. Gott also asked Swynfen to seek advice from Anthony Burgess, to be conveyed through the publisher, Underhill.94Wm. Salt Lib. SMS 454/10 (Swynfen MS). It is unclear what then took place. If Gott took the oath and then his seat, he made no impression on parliamentary records before the dissolution on 4 February.

In January 1659 Gott was elected to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament, as member for Hastings, where he was the corporation’s retained counsel.95C219/48; Hastings Museum, Suss, C/A(c)3, court book 1655-7, unfol.; Mercurius Politicus, 549 (6-13 Jan. 1659), 160 (E.761.4). During the three months of the Parliament, he was a frequent contributor to debates, although he was named to only one committee – that for privileges.96CJ vii. 595a. Gott’s speeches reveal his pragmatism, and his frustration with the way in which republicans disrupted proceedings with lengthy and tendentious arguments. On 8 February his contribution to debate over whether to grant recognition to the new protector echoed themes expressed in his Essay. Speaking in favour of Richard Cromwell, and against an insistence on strict constitutional safeguards, he declined to look ‘back to times past’, or, in the manner of James Harrington, to ‘look forward to Oceana’s Platonical commonwealth; things that are not, and that never shall be’. He warned that to ‘go about to grasp more’ would only result in the loss of ‘that which we would have’. He sought to hasten proceedings by adopting as the basis of recognition the oath drafted by the 1656 Parliament, which ‘bounded us and him too, to rule according to lex et consuetudo Angliae’[the law and custom of England].97Burton’s Diary, iii. 144. The recognition was, he insisted on 14 February, a small step: to accept it ‘signifies no more but a bare acknowledgement of what is, be it by the Petition and Advice, or what way soever it be’; the oath to the protector was ‘nothing but the echo of what he is’.98Burton’s Diary, iii. 277. Urging again a decision on the protector’s negative voice and the ‘Other House’ on 18 February, he was opposed by leading republican, Sir Henry Vane II*.99Burton’s Diary, iii. 343.

Keen to avoid an ‘arbitrary government’ but concerned that the country would descend once more into ‘blood and confusion’, Gott thought any government was ‘better than no government, and any civil better than a military government’ (7 Mar.).100Burton’s Diary, iv. 56. Nevertheless, he was a traditionalist. He noted (22 Feb.) ‘the unsuitableness and inconveniency of a commonwealth with the constitution of the people’, and dismissed the experiment of ‘a single person and a commonwealth’, calling instead for ‘the ancient constitution we are again come to: a single person and two houses of Parliament’. While recognizing the worthiness of those ‘many great men’ currently sitting in the ‘Other House’, he also sought an aristocratic element on the basis that ‘our writ is to consult with great men and nobles’. There were already members ‘that have a good sword’, but he wished to add ‘some there that have a good purse; and both together will make a good balance’.101Burton’s Diary, iii. 421. Although he was ‘as little pleased with these Lords as any man’, he considered that ‘we are but one leg, and cannot go, but hop up and down without them’. Referring perhaps to fellow MP George Thomson*, he added that, while the composition of the chamber might ‘be not to our content, I have seen a man walk very well with a wooden leg’.102Burton’s Diary, iv. 56-7. Unlike the republicans, Gott also supported the admission of the Scots into Parliament: ‘we were afraid to transact with the lords, because we were afraid to own them; we have transacted with these, and yet we have not owned them’. ‘All the parts of the commonwealth’, Gott concluded, ‘ought to contribute to the legislative’. According to Harbert Morley*, once his adversary but now converted from his radicalism, Gott spoke for ‘prudence, conveniency, safety, and law’.103Burton’s Diary, iv. 134-6.

Once the Long Parliament reassembled (21 Feb. 1660), Gott returned to Westminster. Unlike many of his old colleagues from among the Presbyterians, he does not appear to have played an active part in the events leading to the Restoration. He was named to only one committee, once again being among those sent to the City regarding a loan (1 Mar.).104CJ vii. 858a. He was still sitting on 16 March, the day that the Long Parliament finally dissolved itself.105  A True and Perfect Catalogue (1660).

Like those of other Presbyterians, Gott’s career flourished in the immediate aftermath of the return of Charles II, even if only briefly. He secured a place on the commission of the peace and a seat in the Convention, to which he was returned for Winchelsea.106E. Suss. RO, QO/EW3, f. 80; ASSI35/102/7; ASSI35/103/7-8; HP Commons 1660-1690. In this Parliament he generally sided with the Presbyterians, but was prepared to accept a religious settlement based on ‘primitive episcopacy’.107HP Commons 1660-1690. He was active in the debates on the bill of pardon and indemnity, and balked at the abrogation of the king’s promise of protection to regicides who surrendered themselves, moving for their banishment instead.108OPH, xxii. 442, 448. On the other hand, Gott appears to have been zealous in pursuit of those in Sussex disaffected to the new regime.109PC2/55, f. 130v.

Nevertheless, Gott’s open alignment with the Presbyterians probably helps explain his failure in 1661 to gain election to the Cavalier Parliament as Member for Rye, where ostensibly he had friends and connections.110T.W.W. Smart, ‘Extracts from the MSS of Samuel Jeake’, Suss. Arch. Coll. ix. 56-60; E. Suss. RO, Rye MS 47/167/8, 11; HMC 13th Rep. iv. 243. However, he continued to serve as the town’s counsel, providing legal opinions in 1662, and as a justice of the peace for the county, although his attendance at quarter sessions was never more than sporadic; he was removed from the bench in May 1670 in a purge of justices thought unlikely to enforce the Conventicle Act.111E. Suss. RO, Rye MS 47/168/10; QO/EW3, f. 80; QO/EW4, ff. 4, 22v, 71; QO/EW5, ff. 3, 24, 48, 65, 111; C220/9/4; C231/7, p. 367. In 1663 he was the victim of an assault by two men, for which the king ordered severe punishment.112CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 345; CTB 1660-7, p. 583. By this time he had disencumbered himself of the iron business.113Suss. Manors, i. 115; ii. 422; E. Suss. RO, Dunn MS 27/3. Shortly before his death, Gott resurfaced in print, publishing The Divine History of the Genesis of the World, a philosophical commentary on the first book of the Bible, a copy of which he presented to Peter Gunning, now bishop of Chichester.114[S. Gott], The Divine History (1670), St John’s College Lib., Camb., Ff.12.8.

Gott died in December 1671, and was buried on the 18th at Battle.115Add. 39481, f. 113. His will of 13 December left the estate to Peter Gott†, the sole survivor among his seven sons; the inheritance included a chamber at Gray’s Inn and law books.116PROB11/388, f. 23v. Peter Gott was defeated at the Hastings election in 1689, but sat for the port in three later Parliaments as a court whig. He also presided over the continued growth in the family’s fortunes, exemplified in his rise to become a director of the Bank of England. His son, Samuel Gott†, took the family’s representation at Westminster into the eighteenth century.117HP Commons 1690-1715.