HARE, Sir Ralph, 1st bt. (1624-72), of Stow Bardolph, Norf.

The Hares of Stow Bardolph believed themselves to be descended from Jervis, earl of Harcourt, who had come over with William the Conqueror and who was also the putative ancestor of the Harcourts of Stanton Harcourt, Oxfordshire.32Blomefield, Norf. vii. 440. One member of the family, Sir Nicholas Hare†, elder brother of this MP’s great-great-grandfather, had been Speaker of the House of Commons in 1539 and later master of the rolls under Mary I. Sir Nicholas and his brother John acquired their lands at Stow Bardolph, thus moving the family’s base from Suffolk to the far west of Norfolk.33Blomefield, Norf. vii. 441. Just as importantly, one of John Hare’s grandsons, Hugh Hare†, built up a huge fortune as a moneylender and, dying unmarried in 1620, left his money to two of his relatives. One recipient, Hugh Hare, was thereby wealthy enough to be raised to the Irish peerage in 1625 as Baron Coleraine of Coleraine.34CP iii. 365. The other was this MP’s father, Sir John†, who immediately became one of the richest men in Norfolk and married one of the daughters of the solicitor-general, Sir Thomas Coventry†.

According to his father’s inquisition post mortem, the future MP, the first child of that marriage, was born in March 1623, but this was probably a clerical error as Ralph was baptised at Stow Bardolph on 27 March 1624.35‘Inquisitions post mortem’, 241; Stow Bardolph par. reg. He was therefore only 13 when his father died on 4 November 1637.36‘Inquisitions post mortem’, 241. His wardship was granted to his maternal grandfather who by this time was lord keeper and 1st Baron Coventry.37Coventry Docquets, 483. Provision for Ralph’s many siblings involved the partial division of the family estates, with John junior and Thomas receiving the lands at Snetterton, Hugh those at Hilborough and Nicholas those at Hargham, all of which were in Norfolk.38PROB11/176/363. However, such was their vast extent that Ralph was still left with substantial lands, mostly in eastern Norfolk centred on Stow Bardolph.39Blomefield, Norf. vii. 273, 277, 300, 315, 346, 352, 365, 375, 415, 442, 509, 516-17. The Hares’ status as one of the premier Norfolk families was confirmed in July 1641 when Ralph was created a baronet. It cannot have been a coincidence that a week later he gave £1,095 to the king to help fund a troop of horse in the army still stationed in the north of England.40CB ii. 109; Norf. RO, Hare 5635A.

Aged 18 when civil war broke out in 1642, Hare chose to go abroad; on 13 April 1643 the House of Lords granted him permission to travel to France.41LJ v. 716b; Norf. RO, Hare 5635B. He may have remained on the continent until after the fighting in the first civil war was largely over. However, on his return, Parliament seems not to have doubted his loyalties. He was added to the Norfolk commission of the peace as early as July 1646.42C231/6, p. 49. Similarly, he was one of the eight hostages (who also included Ralph Delaval* and Henry Mildmay*) briefly – and seemingly willingly – handed over by Parliament to the Scots in January 1647 as security for the first instalment of the money they had been promised, which was duly paid.43Norf. RO, Hare 5635D; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 499. Later that year Hare also began to appear on the Norfolk assessment commissions.44A. and O.

Hare was no less willing to serve under the republic after 1649. He was continued as an assessment commissioner and became one of the commissioners to enforce the taking of the Engagement in Norfolk.45A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 438. In November 1650 he was named as the sheriff of Norfolk.46List of Sheriffs, 89; Norf. RO, Hare 5638; Hare 5639; Hare 5637. Within weeks a royalist rebellion broke out in the county. After that had been suppressed, it fell to Hare to bring the captured rebels to trial at the special high court of justice held at Norwich on 20 December.47Norf. RO, Hare 5635C.

Hare entered Parliament in 1654 as one of the ten MPs for Norfolk, having come fourth in the poll with a total of 1,539 votes.48R. Temple, ‘A 1654 protectorate parliamentary election return’, Cromwelliana, ser. 2, iii. 58. One of the major issues facing this new Parliament was how far they should attempt to alter the constitutional settlement created by the Instrument of Government. Hare was probably absent during late September and early October 1654 and thus unable to participate in some of the early debates on the subject.49CJ vii. 369a. But on his return he became a leading figure in the resurgent Presbyterian faction that spearheaded the attack on the Instrument. Hare acted as a teller in some of the key votes between mid-November 1654 and the dissolution in January 1655. He first did so on 14 November, when he was the teller for those who wished to avoid an immediate vote on the oaths to be taken by the lord protector and by new MPs to uphold the principle of government by a single person and a Parliament.50CJ vii. 385a. Questioning that principle may well have been what Hare was now keenest to do. He was a teller four times on 27 November in order to continue the traditional 40s freehold franchise for the county seats in parliamentary elections, partnering such staunch Presbyterians as John Birch* and William Gibbs*. Six days later he was among those who, if given the chance, would have continued to debate revisions to the constitutional settlement further into the evening. However, on 6 December, as teller, he sided with those who tried to block the move to deprive the lord protector of the power to pardon those convicted of treason.51CJ vii. 391b-392a, 394b, 396a. His view on the question as to whether laws could only be altered with the consent of Parliament is less clear, as the division in which he was teller (with the pro-Presbyterian Sir John Witteronge*) was only on whether that question should be put, but it seems most unlikely that he disapproved of this as a basic constitutional principle. The subject of the seventeenth clause for which Hare was a minority teller on 29 December is not known, but as he acted alongside that confirmed critic of the protectorate, Harbert Morley*, against two Cromwellian loyalists, Sir Charles Wolseley* and Lord Broghill*, it is unlikely to have been much to the government’s liking. With another Presbyterian, Joachim Matthews*, he counted the majority which on 13 January insisted that suspension as well as repeal of the contents of the proposed bill to settle the government would require the consent of Parliament.52CJ vii. 406b, 409b, 415a. When Parliament then moved on to debate the financial settlement, Hare was equally wary. On 16 January he was the teller for the minority that opposed the extension of the duration of that grant from 1656 to 1659.53CJ vii. 415a-b, 418a. Finally, on 18 January, with a hasty dissolution now a real possibility, Hare was a teller in the division concerning the manner in which bills were to be presented to the lord protector.54CJ vii. 419b-420a. He may thus still have retained a faint hope that all these debates might yet produce some actual legislation.

All this left Hare little time to engage with other matters being considered by this Parliament. His inclusion on the committee to consider the petition from the adventurers promoting the draining of the Lincolnshire fens (31 Oct.) is easily explained: Stow Bardolph lay within the Great Level of the Isle of Ely and so Hare had a personal interest in the similar drainage project being carried out there.55CJ vii. 380a. His own experience four years earlier would have been of obvious relevance to the committee to reduce the workloads of sheriffs and undersheriffs (4 Dec.), while the same may have been true for his appointment to the committee on the writs of certiorari and habeas corpus (3 Nov.). Other committee appointments included those on the bill to abolish purveyance and on the teaching of civil law in the universities (both 22 Dec.).56CJ vii. 381b, 394b, 407b.

Hare stood for re-election as a Norfolk MP in 1656 and, with 2,318 votes, again came fourth.57Norf. Arch. i. 67. However, he was one of those MPs prevented from taking their seats in the new Parliament on the orders of the council of state. His activities in the previous Parliament were probably sufficient grounds for suspicion. Hare now headed the list of 160 excluded MPs who signed the letter of complaint to the Speaker, Sir Thomas Widdrington*, which was read to the House on 18 September 1656.58CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 112; CJ vii. 424b. When, the following day, the deputy clerk of the commonwealth in chancery appeared at the bar to be questioned about these exclusions, Hare’s case was the first to be raised by Widdrington. The deputy clerk simply replied that, ‘he was not approved’.59CJ vii. 425a. It is entirely possible that Hare finally took his seat when this Parliament reassembled in January 1658, but, if so, he left no mark on its brief proceedings.

None of this seems to have affected his tenure of local offices. He remained a justice of the peace throughout the 1650s and in 1657 he was appointed, as had become usual, to the Norfolk assessment commission.60A. and O. A particularly well-documented aspect of his private life from these years is that between 1656 and 1657 he paid for the tour of France and the Low Countries by his nephew, Thomas Leigh, and his tutor, Joseph Williamson†. Related correspondence ended up among the State Papers.61CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 176, 179, 190, 259, 284, 344; 1657-8, pp. 46-7, 87, 103, 114, 122, 201, 288, 304, 334.

Having previously supported the summoning of a new Parliament, Hare was elected for King’s Lynn in the Convention. He voted for the royalist Sir Horatio Townshend* in the county poll.62GL, Norf. poll bk. 1660, unfol. Hare had little difficulty accepting the Restoration and obtained a pardon from Charles II under the great seal in July 1660.63Norf. RO, Hare 5640. He then sat as one of the knights of the shire for Norfolk in the Cavalier Parliament. He was now a colonel in the county militia - by 1666 the captains serving under him included Lawrence Oxburgh alias Hewer* - and he also became a deputy lieutenant.64Norf. Lieut. Jnl. 8-112.

Back in 1647 Hare had married Mary Crane, one of the daughters and co-heiresses of the late Sir Robert Crane*.65London Mar. Lics. ed. Foster, 625; Norf. RO, Hare 2292. She had given birth to seven children, but only one daughter and a sole son (born in 1658) survived. Lady Hare herself had died in December 1659.66Stow Bardolph par. reg.; Vis. Norf. 1664, 94. Sir Ralph remarried in August 1660. His new wife, Vere Townshend, was a sister of Sir Horatio, soon to be created Lord Townshend.67London Mar. Lics. ed. Foster, 625; Norf. RO, Hare 5635E-G. She came with a substantial dowry, a single instalment of which, paid in November 1660, amounted to £3,000, but died childless in 1669.68Norf. RO, MC 170/19. Sir Ralph’s third wife, Elizabeth, produced a short-lived second son in 1672, but by that time Sir Ralph was dead .69London Mar. Lics. ed. Foster, 625; Stow Bardolph par. reg.; Vis. Norf. 1664, 94. Hare was buried on 1 March 1672 in the church at Stow Bardolph.70Blomefield, Norf. vii. 445; Stow Bardolph par. reg. Thomas, his son from his first marriage, inherited everything.71PROB11/346/401. Sir Ralph’s male line and the baronetcy survived until 1764, and the death of his grandson, Sir George Hare, 5th bt.72Burke Dorm. and Extinct Baronetcies, 245.