HARLEY, Edward (1624-1700), of Brampton Bryan, Herefs., Ludlow, Salop and Westminster.

Edward Harley was educated out of Herefordshire, a reflection of his father’s acute awareness of his own county’s rusticity. At Oxford, he received news from Brampton Bryan, and during vacations and after he had left the university he was kept abreast of academic gossip by his tutor, Edward Perkins. Other correspondents of Harley’s from that quarter were willing to try to pull strings with Sir Robert via his son. There was never any question about the younger Harley’s orientation on questions relating to the governance of the university, Sir Robert being such a champion of the puritan element there.29Add. 70122, Perkins to Harley, various dates, 1638-Dec. 1640; Add. 70116, Nathaniel Cradock to Harley, 28 Mar. 1640. Harley’s most ardent correspondent was his doting mother, Brilliana, who, while he was at Lincoln’s Inn, kept him abreast of all the local political news. She pushed Edward forward as a candidate in the Hereford by-election of 1642, caused by the death of Richard Weaver*. Despite a creditable campaign by the supporters of the Harley family to consolidate his electoral support, Edward was obliged to withdraw once it was known that the high steward of the city wished the seat to be bestowed on his son, James Scudamore.30Brilliana Harley Letters, 145, 154, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166.

Military career, 1643-6

Harley remained in London after this disappointment, and after the outbreak of the civil war, turned his talents to use in the army of Parliament. By June 1643 he had been commissioned as a captain in Sir William Waller’s horse regiment. He fought at Lansdown and Roundway Down in July, and took his military duties seriously, purchasing manuals on gunnery, tactics and military discipline from a London bookseller in August.31Add. 70004, list of Harley’s troop 5 Aug. 1643; Add. 70068, list of books purchased from 5 Aug. 1643; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 359. By mid-November, he been given his own regiment of 1,200 foot, and was ordered to take his men, some of whom were raised in Essex as well as Kent, by sea to augment the threatened garrison of Plymouth.32HMC Portland, iii. 118, 119; Add. 70068, note of money, 1643; Add. 70126, cttee. of safety order, 17 Nov. 1643; CJ iii. 312a; Notts. Univ. Lib. PW2 Hy34. In March 1644, Dr Nathaniel Wright wrote to Harley in Plymouth to discuss with him the proper burial arrangements for Harley’s mother, Brilliana, whose body had been kept safe in a tower of the castle at Brampton Bryan after her death during the siege months earlier.33Add. 70125, Nathaniel Wright to Harley, 6 Mar. 1644. Wright conveyed to him the need for soldiers in Herefordshire, and by the summer Harley was back in Herefordshire. In a skirmish at Redmarley near Ledbury (27 July 1644), he conducted himself notably bravely, but sustained a shot in the left arm.34Corbet, ‘Historicall relation’, 104; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 397-8.

On 12 October Harley was made governor of Monmouth, which had been captured by Edward Massie*, governor of Gloucester, by a ruse.35Luke Letter Bks. 30, 32, 38; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 54. Massie was a friend of Harley and his father, and it was entirely natural that as the eldest son of a leading parliamentarian in the area Edward Harley should have been named to civilian committee roles on the side of Parliament in support of Massie, who was installed at Gloucester as the governor of the pre-eminent parliamentarian town in the region. In dealing with the touchy Massie, Harley showed himself able to maintain the politician’s distance from, and even claim ignorance of, military affairs, even if his protestations seemed at times to border on the disingenuous.36HMC Portland, iii. 131. Massie complained to Harley about the committeemen he was dealing with at Gloucester, among them Isaac Bromwich (a relation of Harley’s), Colonel Thomas Stephens, one of the Gloucestershire Presbyterian family, and the Independent, Thomas Pury I*; indeed Harley was one of the few committeemen with whom Massie maintained a consistently warm relationship.37Add. 70005, ff. 29, 35.

Despite his growing importance as a Gloucester committeeman, Harley was still a soldier himself, his gubernatorial career at Monmouth proving very short-lived as the town soon fell to the royalists. He was reported in January 1645 to have taken 100 horse and 40 prisoners in Worcestershire.38Add. 31116, p. 425. Divisions in the Gloucester garrison were not confined to Massie and the civilians. The first captain recruited by Harley to his regiment was on the point of leaving it in February, alienated by Bromwich and his faction. 39Add. 70005, f. 22. Harley himself spent time away from the region in the spring of 1645, and was in London during the last stages through Parliament of the New Model ordinance, in which he was commissioned as a foot colonel, succeeding a Scot, Henry Barclay, who had resigned his commission.40Add. 70136, accts. of John Griffiths, 1645; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 287; M. Kishlansky, Rise of the New Model Army, (Cambridge, 1977), 49. He was soon back near Ledbury, to be wounded again in another fight between Waller and Prince Rupert (22 April 1645).41Oxford DNB. The shot from one of these wounds remained in his body for the rest of his life, and may have delayed his taking up his commission with the New Model.42Add. 70089, draft memoir of Edward Harley; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 359. On the other hand, he seems to have been well enough to busy himself with other business in 1645, raising the suspicion that he was not in sympathy with the Independents whom he had been given as his senior officers, and deliberately stayed away from his New Model colleagues.43Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 359.

Harley seems mainly to have been based at Gloucester during this period, combining military duties, such as arranging prisoner exchanges and with issuing commissions on behalf of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex and the lord lieutenant of Herefordshire (an indication of his socially conservative outlook on recruiting officers), with committee activity.44Add. 70120, Samuel More to Edward Harley, 24 May 1645; Add. 70005, f. 48 (2nd foliation). Here again there was a social conservatism evident in Harley’s correspondence with representatives of the leading Gloucestershire families, such as John Tracy, Viscount Tracy of Rathcoole [I], like his son Sir Robert Tracy* an ardent royalist.45Add. 70125, John, Viscount Tracy to Edward Harley, 7 July 1645. It was through the recommendation of two trusted godly associates of the Harley family, that the key post of treasurer of revenue raised for Parliament in Herefordshire was given by the committee to Miles Hill, who later became a radical and a thorn in the Harleys’ flesh.46Add. 70005, f. 55 (2nd foliation). In the summer of 1645, Harley was given another governorship, of Canon Frome, near Ledbury. The Scottish army was in the region, camping before Hereford for its unsuccessful siege. For Presbyterians like the Harleys and their allies, the presence of the Scots offered a breakthrough, but the Harley family’s reluctance to deviate from its pro-Scottish stance was to undermine its authority in the eyes of those who had reason to view the Scots as a destructive imposition.47Add. 70005, f. 56 (2nd foliation); M. Hill, A True and Impartiall Account (1650, E.607.3).

Harley had joined his New Model regiment by September, being in Bristol the day after it was stormed on 10 September.48Add. 70136, accts. of John Griffith, Sept. 1645. But instead of remaining with them on active service, which was probably the expectation of the Committee of Both Kingdoms*, he stayed at Canon Frome. While he built up his garrison there, an outlier of the more vital military presence at Gloucester, Hereford was taken by Colonel John Birch*, in a coup which was organised independently of the Herefordshire committee. Birch, de facto governor of the city, immediately applied himself to Harley, requesting an exchange of soldiers between the Hereford and Canon Frome garrisons. Harley secured an order from the Commons to be commander-in-chief of Herefordshire and Radnorshire, which could only have been aimed at Birch’s authority.49CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 151; Add 70005, ff. 61, 71 (2nd foliation); Add. 70126, Commons order of 3 Jan. 1646; Add. 70108, misc. 41. As soon as this order was granted, however, Harley left Herefordshire to participate in his New Model regiment’s campaign in the west country. He was at the battle of Torrington (17 Feb. 1646), and was a commissioner for the surrender of Exeter (9 April) and Oxford (24 June).50Anglia Rediviva, 243, 244, 264, 283. The local committeemen wanted him back, suggesting him as sheriff.51Bodl. Tanner 60, f. 588. With the elder Harley at Westminster, and the younger in the field, however, Birch was able to extend his grip on Herefordshire, provoking outrage among the committeemen loyal to the Harleys. In June, John Flackett* wrote to Edward, reporting Birch’s request for support from the committee in his attempt to clear his name from accusations brought against him in the House by Sir Robert. Flackett reassured Harley that the committee would not comply with Birch’s request, commenting darkly on how ‘private interest’ motivated Birch.52Add. 70058, John Flackett to Edward Harley, 6 June 1646.

An issue which had developed in Herefordshire at this time was the procedure for filling the two parliamentary seats for the county. By June 1646, Birch was to the chagrin of the Harley camp building up a credible interest for one of the county places, while Massie was doing what he could in Westminster to advance the cause of Harley, as part of a wider campaign against Independency.53Add. 70058, John Flackett to Edward Harley, 6 June 1646; Add. 70005, f. 42 (3rd foliation). Over the summer, Harley took to his heart the committee’s hostility towards Birch, complaining to Speaker Lenthall about the conduct of individual officers in Birch’s regiment and the burden of the soldiery in general, noting in passing that the military in Herefordshire was not under the control of the local committee, as it was in Shropshire, but under the direction of Birch, despite Harley’s own appointment as militia commander at the beginning of the year.54Add. 70005, ff. 46, 49 (3rd foliation). When in September, charges were brought by the Herefordshire committee against one of Birch’s officers, Captain Milward, the name of John Wylde*, a leading Independent, was cited in support of the prosecution, revealing how the local hostility between the Harley and Birch camps were not a mere local rehearsal of national faction-fighting.55Add. 70005, f. 52 (3rd foliation). On the other hand, with an eye to his own electoral chances, Harley was not above corresponding with royalists such as Sir Walter Pye*, who confessed himself too hemmed in by the procedures of punitive taxation to be able to help Harley in ‘the public affairs of so high a concern’: namely, Harley’s campaign to have himself elected.56Add. 70123, Pye to Harley, 10 Aug. 1646

Recruiter MP, 1646-8

Harley’s electoral efforts intensified after 11 September, when the writ for the county election was moved. He was urged to seek the support of royalists such as Dr William Sherborne, ‘for he commands beyond Hereford’. Sherborne’s interest was reported to be in the power of the marquess of Hertford (William Seymour†). It was typical of the kind of supporters Harley was canvassing that Sherborne, though a ‘delinquent’, should produce a certificate from Rowland Laugharne† , the Presbyterian commander based in south-west Wales, that the doctor had helped the soldier at Brecon earlier in the year.57Add. 70125, Richard Wigmore to Harley, 2 Oct. 1646; Add. 70123, William Sherborne to Harley, 26 Oct. 1646. Another of Harley’s agents reported on how he was faithfully following instructions ‘to send and go as in to other parties so in to Laugharne’, and had written to Sir John Winford, a noted royalist.58Add. 70123, Samuel Shilton to Edward Harley, 9 Nov. 1646. Harley’s contacts with Laugharne would not have been unexpected, given that he was the most distinguished military figure in the region in Parliament’s service, and a client of the earl of Essex, who died just before the Herefordshire election, and that his interest in the county had long been respected and courted by the Harley family. Laugharne and Harley’s friend, Massie, were soon to personify professional military opposition to the New Model and its political supporters, but in 1646 this was not yet entirely predictable. Harley’s enemies later drew attention to his predilection for associating with royalists in Herefordshire, but in the 1646 election he was attempting to harness the electoral support of their tenants and kin rather than seeking their personal votes, which in any case were forfeit because of their ‘delinquency’.

Because of the head of steam being developed by the Birch camp, the Herefordshire committee deployed a new tactic in the closing weeks of the election. A petition of the grand jury of the county to the Commons identified the presence of the soldiery as inimical to free selection at the hustings. It was duly deferential to the authority of Parliament, but deplored the emergence of public statements which claimed to speak for the county but which derogated from the role of Parliament. This was an obvious swipe at Birch, but the jurors, through their medium, the committee, called upon Parliament to postpone the elections until the soldiers, who were only to evidently willing to ‘interpose’ in civil matters, had been removed.59Add. 70005, ff. 56, 57 (3rd foliation). Edward Harley was clearly behind this suggestion, but some of his supporters were uneasy at the tactic, fearing that it would appear as if ‘private ends [were] thrust among public’.60Add. 70124, John Styles to Edward Harley, 17 Oct. 1646. The Commons declined to postpone the election, but it took place at Leominster, not in the usual Hereford, where the influence of royalists but also that of John Birch were strongest and threatening the civilian moderate parliamentarianism of the Harleys and the resident committee. At the election, eventually held on 14 November, Harley spent over £470 on 577 suppers and 2,898 dinners, and prevailed. Birch’s coming in for Leominster was possibly some kind of compromise deal between them.61Add. 70005, ff. 70-4 (2nd foliation) (HMC Portland, iii. 147).

Harley went to London immediately after the election, leaving behind him recriminations among the committeemen. They complained to him about the intrusions of men from Monmouthshire and even as far west as Glamorgan into their proceedings, with their ‘sinister practice of inviting strangers, unknown to us whether of our committee or not’, but there was never a Herefordshire committee in the 1640s that was constituted solely from within the county, and they had only themselves to blame for being slow to initiate reform. 62Add. 70125, Nathaniel Wright, John Flackett to Edward Harley, 17 Nov. 1646. Furthermore, an unholy alliance was developing between Birch and the more radical elements of the parliamentarian infrastructure, led by Miles Hill, who had supported the colonel in the election and who in February 1647 was rescued by Birch’s brother from the sheriff’s prison, where he had been detained for debt.63Add. 70125, Nathaniel Wright to same, 31 Dec. 1646; Add. 70123, papers on Nicholas Philpott; Add. 70005, f. 24 (4th foliation). Despite the querulous tone of the correspondence he was receiving from his native county, Harley was settling into parliamentary life, and was named to his first committee, on disorder in and around Westminster, on 7 December. On this and his first few appointments, he was nominated with his father. Harley took the Covenant on 8 December, and for the rest of the month quickly established himself, appearing on committees on soldiers’ arrears in general, and the complaints made by Massie’s troops in particular; and on the privileges committee, which under the chairmanship of his father, was pronouncing on many disputed ‘recruiter’ elections.64CJ v. 4a, 7b, 9b, 15a, 28b.

Harley is not recorded as having been in the House during the first ten weeks of 1647. The Herefordshire sequestrations committee recorded four weeks of regular attendances by him at their proceedings in January and February.65Add. 16178, f. 145v. On 3 January he was able to join with the Herefordshire committee in another denunciation to Sir Robert of the soldiers, suggesting that he was back in the county, working with his old colleagues on their obsessive pursuit of John Birch.66Add. 70005, f. 3 (4th foliation). Added to the usual catalogue of Birch’s alleged crimes, on this occasion was an expression of disgust that Birch was taking credit for a parliamentary ordinance, which should properly have been the due of others. The inclusion of this kind of material, with a direct link to activities inside the Commons chamber, raises the suspicion that Sir Robert Harley was being fed and sustained in his indignation against Birch by the committee at Hereford, led by his son. Edward Harley was still only 22 years old at this time, and his relationship with his father, elderly and very senior in the Commons, must be taken into account in any assessment of his behaviour. Other correspondence of Harley’s in those months included letters full of sympathy and courtesy from royalists like Sir Walter Pye, concerned for his case at the Committee for Compounding, and neutrals like William Scudamore of Ballingham, who wished to discuss on behalf of his clergyman son the possibilities afforded by legislation on the tenure of clerical livings currently before the Commons.67Add. 70123, Sir Walter Pye to Edward Harley, 16 Jan. 1647; William Scudamore to Harley, 21 Jan. 1647. While the campaign by the committee against Birch and the soldiers continued into the spring, there is no evidence that Harley joined his New Model regiment during his absence from the House.68Add. 70126, Herefs. petition against the soldiery, 4 Feb. 1647; Add. 70005, f. 30 (4th foliation). The committee’s expressions of hope that quartering of soldiers would be ‘by order from the committee of the county and not at the will of the soldier’, may indicate that Harley was exercising authority as commander-in-chief of the Herefordshire militia at this point.69Add. 70126, Herefs. petition against the soldiery, 4 Feb. 1647. On 18 March, he was in the Commons, apparently, in order to be named to the committee on the ordinance to entrust the great seal into the hands of commissioners, but he must have left London soon afterwards to be at Saffron Walden by 21 March, where he participated in a meeting of the general army council.70CJ v. 117b.

The council had been summoned by Sir Thomas Fairfax* to consider proposals from the Derby House Committee of Irish Affairs on the despatch of New Model regiments to Ireland. At Saffron Walden, on behalf of the parliamentary commissioners, Fairfax asked the officers whether they were willing to participate in the Irish expedition. In order to formulate their response, they put four questions of their own to the lord general. They wished to know which regiments were to continue in England; who would command the units designated for Ireland; what assurance there would be of pay and subsistence; and how they would secure indemnity and arrears of pay. Each officer was then asked by the commissioners whether an answer to any of the four questions was necessary before he could declare himself for the service. The third and fourth questions, on pay and conditions, were regarded as essential by all; the second question, on the command of the army was declared as essential by all except a small group led by Harley, who was also among a small minority of officers to indicate themselves content to respond to Fairfax’s original question without staying to know which regiments were to be excepted from Irish service.71LJ ix. 112b-115a; The Petition of the Officers and Souldiers in the Army (1647), n.p. (E.383.12); Moderate Intelligencer no. 106 (18-25 Mar. 1647), 2-3 (E.381.16); Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 32-33. On the following day, the officers met again, to consider the votes of the Commons on 16 March, which had earmarked £16,000 a month for the expedition. They were each asked whether they wished, in the light of this new information, to withdraw their insistence of the previous day on guarantees of pay and conditions. None did, except Harley and two others. That day, Harley subscribed the Engagement of the officers for Ireland.

At Saffron Walden, Harley had revealed himself as one of the principal proponents of the plans to ship regiments to Ireland, and was at a political distance from other officers in his regiment, who included two Independents, Lieutenant-colonel Thomas Pride* and Captain William Goffe*. After the debates, Harley left his regiment and returned to Westminster. On the 27th, he was named with his father to the committee charged with investigating The Petition of Officers and Soldiers in the Army, which included a summary of the proceedings at Saffron Walden, but which was prefaced by a statement of unhappiness in certain quarters in the army at the parliamentary plans for shipment to Ireland.72CJ v. 127b. Two days later, Harley rose in the House to reveal a report he had received of Thomas Pride’s mustering his own regiment, in order to extract signatures to the petition. Pride apparently threatened any of the regiment present – more than a thousand in number – with cashiering if they did not sign. Harley’s informant glossed his account with a warning that Parliament should take care not to enslave the kingdom, but this point was lost in the uproar that followed Edward Rosseter’s presentation of a second letter, which identified the officers who were leading the drive to attract signatures to the army petition.73Add 70005, f. 41 (4th foliation); LJ ix. 115a; CJ v. 129a, 131a; Add. 31116, p. 612; Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 37. Rosseter’s letter was instrumental in persuading the Commons to frame its ‘Declaration of Dislike’ (29 Mar.) of the army’s conduct over the Irish proposals, but the letter brought in by Harley did much to stoke the atmosphere, could only have been introduced to the House with that result in mind, and was viewed by commentators as crucial in setting off the Presbyterians’ pursuit of the Independent officers in the army.74Juxon Jnl. 152; Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 37; Clarke Pprs. i. 3. On 2 April Harley was named with his father to a committee on the City militia, and then was not noted by the Journal clerk for over a month.75CJ v. 132b.

Harley seems to have returned again to Herefordshire, where once again with his friends at the committee, he resumed his attack not simply ad hominem against Birch and his brother, but now against the soldiers, which he now tried actively to disband. By 12 April he was able to report that the disbanding of some of the local soldiers and the start of transporting others to Ireland were taking place, with the knowledge of the Derby House Committee. Some officers in Harley’s New Model regiment were prepared to take their chances in Ireland, and it was reported that month that some had volunteered for Irish service.76LJ ix. 153a, 208a. Others were sceptical of the good faith of those seemingly keen to serve. Harley was mentioned along with others who had supported the Irish scheme at the Saffron Walden convention as ‘undertakers’ who ‘do not mean to go to Ireland but only to draw up their men to the sea side and never mean to go’.77Clarke Pprs. i. 1-2. The comment by one of Harley’s closes local allies on the committee, John Flackett, against the ‘heathenish soldiers designed for the bogs in Ireland’, betrays the hostility and contempt of the Presbyterians in Herefordshire towards the military, and may indicate more than a little of Harley’s own outlook.78Add 70105, Edward Harley to Sir Robert Harley et al. 12 Apr. 1647, Harley to Sir Robert Harley, 13 Apr. 1647; Add. 70005, f. 39 (4th foliation). The attitude of the Herefordshire committee, which remained an important political base for Harley, would have confirmed an anonymous critic in his view that Harley and the Presbyterian colonels were ‘very knaves in their designs’.79Clarke Pprs. i. 2. By 19 April, Harley was noted as having withdrawn his personal engagement to the Irish expedition; it is highly doubtful whether he was ever serious in committing his own person to it.80Clarke Pprs. i. 12.

It is most unlikely that Harley had any further dealings with his New Model regiment. On 25 May the Commons ordered it to be disbanded at Cambridge, with those bound for Ireland to be marched away.81CJ v. 183a; LJ ix. 208a. He was as usual preoccupied instead with the outrages of the soldiers in Herefordshire, disorders now compounded by stirrings among the country people, led by one of the Walbeoffe family, minor gentry of Breconshire. In the style typical of Harley, stressing local difficulties but mentioning the honour due to Parliament which would have gratified Sir Robert, he told his father how ‘nothing but fear of displeasing the Parliament keeps the country from writing themselves’.82Add. 70005, ff. 60-1 (4th foliation); SP28/228/Pt 5/1025, 1048. Harley senior responded by sending down money to help with the local disbanding.83Add. 70109, receipt from Edward Harley et al. to Sir Robert Harley, 2 June 1647. The army would not let Harley retreat to his local fiefdom, however, nor dissociate himself from his former military responsibilities. The anonymous pamphlet, A New Found Stratagem, appeared in London on 18 April, and had evidently emanated from within the army. It denounced the ‘treacherous party of corrupt Members in both Houses, and covetous ambitious clergy ... proud, covetous priests’, and specifically mentioned the aspersions of Rosseter and Harley against the army.84A New Found Stratagem (1647), 4, 9, 11 (E.384.11). The tract constructed an apology for the army and a libel against Parliament. The Commons immediately appointed a committee to investigate it, and Sir Robert Harley was actively involved.85CJ v. 153a. Other material circulating during the late spring of 1647 exposed the political behaviour of the Harleys in their heartland, singling out their associations with royalists in elections, and locating them in a context of corruption by Presbyterians in the west of England and south Wales.86Clarke Pprs. i. 157-60.

On 11 June, the army laid charges against eleven Members, including Harley, before the common council of the City, intending that an impeachment should be commenced in Parliament. This was not introduced into the Commons until 16 June.87Juxon Jnl. 159; CJ v. 214b; Kishlansky, New Model Army, 243. The House of Commons temporised in the face of the army’s demands, declaring on 25 June that it would take no action against the Eleven Members until some proofs were brought in. The following day, Harley and his colleagues were given leave of absence from the House in response to their request for it, and on 6 July, a deputation of army officers, including Harley’s former subordinate, Thomas Pride, brought in the charges against them.88CJ v. 225a, 236a; The Heads of the Great Charge presented to the Honourable House of Commons (1647). These were general and unsubstantiated allegations, dwelling vaguely but darkly on ‘indirect and corrupt practices’. The scheme to disband or ship to Ireland the regiments of the New Model was of course mentioned, presented as a conspiracy by the Eleven Members to raise a new force to subdue England and set off a new civil war.89The Heads of a Charge delivered in the name of the Army (1647), 4. Supplementary material published by the army failed to dredge up new dirt to throw against Harley, but made it clear that his real offence was to have introduced to the Commons the letter about Pride’s mustering his regiment at Saffron Walden.90A Particular Charge or Impeachment (1647), 8-10 (E.397.17). He was in any case dismissed by his army enemies as ‘an innocent Puny’, not worth troubling with.91R. Ashton, Counter Revolution (1994), 173. William Prynne’s* Vindication of the Eleven Members simply justified Harley’s actions as his parliamentary duty.92A Full Vindication and Answer (1647), 14 (E.398.17). Harley’s withdrawal did not disrupt a busy parliamentary schedule. Between 11 May and 26 June, there is only one mention of his being named to any committee: that on the great seal of south Wales (23 June), to which he was named with his father.93CJ v. 220b. But after his withdrawal, he seems to have become inactive in Herefordshire as well as in national politics, if his surviving papers are any guide. He was invited back to the House on 30 July, during the brief period of Presbyterian ascendancy, and was asked to tell the king’s children at Hampton Court that the new City militia would protect them in future, but when the army entered London, he must have withdrawn again. At a roll call of the House in October he was absent, and it was not until December that he was mentioned again in the Journal, and then only to note his despatch with the hardly assiduous attender, Walter Kyrle, to gather in the Herefordshire assessments.94CJ v. 260a, 260b, 330a, 400b.

Harley was in Herefordshire in September 1647, but since the settlement of the dispute with Birch (which had ended with disbandment), the appointment of a new governor on Birch’s election to Parliament, and the purchase for the county of Hereford castle as a reassertion of civilian power, there was little for him to engage himself with. On 27 January 1648 the Commons disabled him from sitting, whereupon he withdrew from public life until June, when the House rescinded its order of 27 January and he returned to Westminster.95CJ v. 445a, 589b-590a. He was included that summer on a committee to investigate a breach of privilege case, and on several others on the militia. Parliament was again working on proposals for a new form of military authority: a national militia under county committees, which Harley had always preferred to a national standing army nominally under parliamentary control.96CJ v. 593b, 599a, 630a; Add. 70005, f. 49 (3rd foliation). The prospect of a Herefordshire militia, not linked with unpredictable committees from other counties, evidently pleased him. In June he was made colonel of the Herefordshire militia foot, and after his force had been tried in the field, took an ordinance to the Lords, authorising the raising of money for militia in his own county. This duty marked the high point of his parliamentary career in the 1640s, in purely procedural terms, as he was never a teller and never took charge of a committee. It had taken that essentially local issue to motivate a revival of his interest in the work of Parliament, which is proof enough of Harley’s essentially localist outlook, despite his notoriety as one of the Eleven Members.97CJ vi. 20a.

In Herefordshire in 1648, things had at last moved on from the protracted struggle between the Harleys’ committee and John Birch. The principal troublemaker for the family was now the committee treasurer they had advanced, Miles Hill, who was busy attributing the second civil war in Wales and the marcher counties to the Presbyterians, and casting aspersions on the Harleys. In fact, the Harleys were now friendly with Birch; they were all Presbyterians, and their rapprochement is a good example of national political divisions imposing unity upon a divided local ruling group.98Add. 70006, f. 23; Add. 70112, John Birch to Edward Harley, 3 July 1648. In Herefordshire, these changes of orientation, by which Harley had become a local Presbyterian squire working with others whose interest in conservative puritanism was what united them, were slow to be appreciated by all. In May, William Gregory† imparted to his patron, Viscount Scudamore [I] (Sir John Scudamore†), as fresh news the blindingly obvious truism about Harley that the New Model ‘do now look on him as one not of them, and by that means his interest with the general is somewhat clouded’.99Add. 11043, f. 102. But Harley answered his critics in sectarian army circles magnificently in August, when by virtue of the authority bestowed on him in March as colonel of the county militia, he joined with Colonel Thomas Horton of the New Model to defeat the revolt of Herefordshire royalists under Sir Henry Lingen, near Montgomery.100Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 17 (22-29 Aug. 1648), sig. Dd (E.461.17); Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 385; Webb, Memorials, ii. 300-02, 422-5; Ashton, Counter Revolution, 449-50.

However, the defeat of the Herefordshire royalists by Edward Harley’s militia did nothing to mollify the Independent officers of the New Model, and probably inflamed them, as it offered proof that a county-based militia system, as opposed to a centralized standing army, could be effective. There were by now so many reasons why the Harleys were personae non gratae with the army that their expulsion from the Commons in Pride’s Purge (6 Dec.) was inevitable. Edward Harley’s last acts in the Commons were to serve on committees, as so often before with his father, on the guard for Parliament and on which garrisons to maintain in the new militia (4 and 25 Nov.).101CJ vi. 69b, 87a. With his father, he was imprisoned until 25 December, and was then confined to his London house. He and other secluded Members wrote to Fairfax for permission to publish their Vindication, which appeared on 20 January 1649. Harley wrote a conciliatory appeal to the lord general a week later; Fairfax’s warrant to end his house arrest was issued on 12 February.102Add. 70006, ff. 62, 64, 67; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 167-8, 195.

Interregnum, 1649-60

After their release, both Harleys returned to the marches, but not to Brampton Bryan, which was still in ruins. They settled in Ludlow, but Edward Harley, despite losing all his local offices after the trial and execution of the king, was still informally in contact with his former colleagues on the Herefordshire committee. This body, now functioning independently from neighbouring counties in overseeing militia and taxation matters, sought via its conservative members such as John Flackett, who had worked with the Harleys since 1640, to harness Edward Harley’s support in tidying up loose financial ends, such as the recovery of money owed to the county for paying off Birch’s soldiers. Harley was encouraged to ‘own the business’ and thereby endear himself to Herefordshire. 103Add. 70114, John Flackett to Edward Harley, 15 Oct. 1649. Despite this evidence of local bridge-building, the Harley family was regarded as a threat to state security in the emergency of 1650-1, when it was feared that prominent Presbyterians would make common cause with the covenanted king in Scotland. Stephen Winthrop* arrested Edward Harley and his brothers. Edward and the Scots Presbyterian minister domiciled in Herefordshire, Alexander Clogie, were taken to Hereford, while Robert and Thomas Harley were imprisoned in Bristol. Edward was then allowed to travel to London on a pass of the Hereford governor, Wroth Rogers*, where he returned to the house arrest he had endured the previous year. A condition of this relatively lenient treatment was that he was not allowed to live in Herefordshire for ten years. 104Add. 61899, ff. 4-6; Add. 70006, f. 190. His uncle, Edward Conway, 3rd Viscount Conway, advised him to steer clear of politics: ‘My son, fear God and the Parliament and meddle not with the Presbytery’.105Add. 70113, Viscount Conway to Edward Harley, 27 Aug. 1650.

In 1651, after his period of detention had ended, Harley acted as a clearing-house for communications between English Presbyterian leaders in prison. He was living in London, and could therefore be a useful mediator at the centre of the communications network. Major-general Richard Browne II* while in Ludlow castle corresponded with Harley, as did Sir William Waller from Denbigh castle. Lionel Copley* was another correspondent, part of a circle keeping in touch by post that included Sir William Lewis*, Sir John Clotworthy*, Colonel Richard Fortescue and Henry Stapylton*. They agonized over whether to take the Engagement of loyalty to the government, tried to work out a common political position, and pondered whether they should submit themselves to the unicameral Parliament, the supreme authority, or to the council of state, calculating that submission to the latter – less than the sovereign body - would provide a way out of their difficulties. Harley’s role in all this seems to have been less as a contributor to the private intellectual debate, and more as a mediator: between men like Copley and Waller and the government; and between the Presbyterian grandees themselves.106Add. 70113, Lionel Copley to Harley, 27 Sept., 1, 11, 15, 18, 25 Oct. 1651; Add. 70112, Richard Browne to same, 6 Oct. 1651; Add. 70125, Sir William Waller to same, 14 Oct., 17 Nov. 1651. He was thought to be involved in a plot against the government around 1653, but the dramatis personae other than himself –the Stephens family of Gloucestershire and Nicholas Lechmere* - seem implausible conspirators.107TSP i. 750.

Although Harley remained out of office during the Rump and the period of Oliver Cromwell’s* ascendancy during 1653, he had never departed from his interest in Presbyterian forms of church government, a commitment he had inherited from his father, who did a great deal to foster that brand of godliness in the Herefordshire region. This was an outlook he shared with his closest allies in the county. While he had been battling with the Independents in his New Model regiment in March 1647, John Flackett had been corresponding with him on ways to ensure that the Presbyterian minister Thomas Froysell was kept in the district, because he had experience of ‘that form of church government intended to be set up amongst us’.108Add. 70005, f. 37 (4th foliation). Sir Robert Harley had presented many clergy to livings, a responsibility that was now devolving on to Edward. During the protectorate, presentations were no longer an uncomplicated matter, and Edward shared with his father some of the practical difficulties of presenting to benefices in the absence of bishops to record institutions.109Add. 70007, f. 42. Harley’s undoubted commitment to building up the godly ministry in a relatively pragmatic way in Herefordshire parishes, in co-operation with the government of the protectorate, evident by March 1654, earned him a place from August that year on the commission for ejecting scandalous ministers in the county, and in 1655 a return to the bench of magistrates.110Add. 70087, Stanley Gower to Harley, 4 Mar. 1654; Add. 36972, f. 87; A. and O.; SP18/95/72 I.

Much of Harley’s work in developing the godly ministry was uncontroversial, and his reach was extended over the whole of Herefordshire after he became an ejector.111Add. 70123, George Primrose to Harley, 21 Sept. 1655; Francis Rickards to same, 16 Nov. 1655; Add. 70083, no. 59: William Low to same, 27 Mar. 1656. He was not above settling old scores, however, writing for example to the commissioners for the approbation of public preachers to undermine the position of the sectary and client of Wroth Rogers*, Richard Delamain, whose ‘variable carriage’ disqualified him in Harley’s eyes from holding a living in Herefordshire.112Add. 70007, f. 65; Impostor Magnus (1654). By reason of his social eminence, honourable family history of supporting the clergy, and evident personal commitment, Harley grew to be at the centre of a group of Herefordshire clergymen who regarded him as their ally and reference point for contact with civil government. He was canvassed on the need to appoint well-qualified clergy, rationalise parish sizes and stipends, restrict the toleration for all Protestant groups enshrined in the Instrument of Government, and reduce the high fees at manorial courts which interfered with the capacity of the clergy to recover glebe and tithes. 113Add. 70007, f. 95. There is no reason to suppose that Harley was unsympathetic to this kind of lobbying, which formed a major part of his motivation in standing for the second Parliament of the Cromwellian protectorate, in 1656.

Harley’s appearance on the hustings at Hereford was as one of a group from county gentry families, standing against the military interest represented by Major-general James Berry*, John James* and Benjamin Mason*.114Add. 70007, f. 80. Not only did the two camps represent opposed interests with regard to the army presence, but there was a history of religious conflict between them also. Harley and his supporters had promoted the Presbyterian orthodox ministry, while Rogers and his allies had championed the sects, even evincing sympathy for the Quakers. Harley was successful, and soon after the election wrote to Richard Baxter for his views on ‘how to move in this ensuing Parliament for the service of the distressed church’.115Cal. Baxter Corresp. i. 221-2. As was usually the case when his advice was sought, the minister replied at great length, suggesting to Harley that no lasting settlement would be achieved until the old constitution of king, Lords and Commons were restored, but in the immediate circumstances the best that MPs could do for the church would be to introduce a bill on religion ahead of any legislation on the secular constitution.116Cal. Baxter Corresp. i. 222-6.

Fully armed with Baxter’s advice as he was, when the Parliament opened, Harley nevertheless found his name on a list of proscribed Members.117CJ vii. 425a; Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 304. The trouble he had taken to canvass Baxter indicates that his exclusion must have been a surprise to him. His name appears on a list of members who signed a remonstrance against the action of the protector’s council, but doubts have been cast on the authenticity of the document.118Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 280; C.S. Egloff, ‘Search for a Cromwellian Settlement Pt. 2’, PH xvii. 301-2. Harley stayed in London, and probably applied himself to overcoming the government’s objections to his admission. ‘If you stay [in London] much longer the report will be that you are chosen to sit in Parliament’, Harley’s wife joked with him in March 1657, but he never took his seat.119Add. 70118. The plans he had discussed with Baxter for championing the learned ministry could only be implemented in Herefordshire; in 1658 he must have been pleased by the meeting of more than 20 ministers on how best to form a regional association to promote uniformity of liturgical ordinances, and maintain the dignity of clerical ordination.120Add. 70007, f. 137. From 1657, his name began to appear with increasing frequency as one who might be helpful to the cause of Charles Stuart, but it is unlikely that Harley did anything more than fail to discourage speculation about his position.121TSP vii. 20, 84, 99. More importantly, his work on behalf of the ministry built bridges between himself and rival local politicians such as John James, who despite opposing Harley at the 1656 election, was working with him in local government by October 1657, and who was to remain an ally of the Harleys for many years afterwards.122Notts. Univ. Lib. PW2 Hy113; Brampton Bryan MSS, 28.

Although Harley’s stock was sufficiently high in 1659 for him to be flattered by an agent of the colony of Barbados, seeking Harley’s support for a petition to the Speaker, he did not enter the House as a Member until the return of those secluded at Pride’s Purge (21 Feb. 1660).123Add. 70120, John Jennings to Harley, 2 Dec. 1659. On 23 February, he was named to a committee on the militia, an immediate return to his pet subject in 1648. In elections to the council of state, Harley was both a teller and a candidate, coming seventeenth with 69 votes and thus finding a place.124CJ vii. 849a, b; Add. 70059, paper of 23 Feb. 1660. He was elected to the chair of the committee on religion, his Presbyterian piety no longer any obstacle.125Add. 70007, f. 192; CJ vii. 855b. He was now able at last to develop the principles of the thoroughly conservative, but Erastian, scheme of church government that his clerical friends in Herefordshire had pressed upon him. He reported a Confession of Faith on 2 March, which the House remitted to his committee for fine tuning. Arrangements for the tenure of ministers in parishes where patronage had lapsed were agreed, and Harley chaired an ad hoc committee to bring in a proclamation against Jesuit priests (8 Mar.).126CJ vii. 858a, 862b, 866a, 867a. In an act of revenge against the commission for the propagation of the gospel in Wales which had usurped Sir Robert Harley’s approach to extending the ministry, Edward chaired a committee which brought in an act for taking the accounts of the body which had lapsed in 1653, by this time widely thought to have been corrupt.127CJ vii. 868a. With the redoubtable Presbyterians William Prynne and John Maynard, Harley oversaw the expunging of references in the Journals to the taking of the Rump’s Engagement.128CJ vii. 872b. Between 21 February and the dissolution of the Long Parliament on 16 March, Harley played a leading part in the framing of five acts that reached the statute book, however brief their duration.

Restoration and later career, 1660-1700

Harley was still an opponent of episcopacy, even when the prospect of the king’s return was imminent. His principles seemed to be rooted still in the Presbyterian outlook of 1647, as he also believed that the militia should remain under parliamentary control. His personal influence was considerable enough for George Monck* to write to Harley to find either a fellowship at Eton, already promised by Parliament, or the wardenship of All Souls for his man-of-business, Dr Thomas Gumble.129Add. 70007, f. 205. In March 1660, Harley was approached in his role as a councillor of state by the Warwickshire gentry, whose views on the composition of the liber pacis, militia and tax commissions were conveyed to him by his cousin, Edward Conway of Ragley. Their nominees were mostly men who had served through all the changes of the 1650s, with some whose service predated 1649, and others who had canvassed for a free Parliament. Conway’s gloss on these suggestions was that they were all gentry and freeholders, a statement of their desire to see a return to what they considered the natural order.130Add. 70007, ff. 198, 209. Harley was apparently approached as a possible intermediary between the secluded Members and the king, but declined the task.131CCSP iv. 580.

In the closing months of the interregnum, authority at Hereford was shared between the governor in the castle, commissioned by the council of state, and Wroth Rogers, who held an order to hold the city and the county. The ministers of the county seem largely to have remained loyal to Harley.132Add. 70114, John Greene to Edward Harley, 5 Mar. 1660. As early as 2 March, Harley’s sister was speculating as to who would be his running mate in the free election that was bound to follow the dissolution of the Long Parliament.133Add. 70124, Brilliana Stanley to Edward Harley, 2 Mar. 1660. Although support seemed assured from long-established gentry figures such as John Scudamore* of Kentchurch and Richard Reed*, Harley had to read a long critique from his brother, Robert Harley*, of the difficulties his campaign might encounter.134Add. 70007, ff. 76-77v, 214, 214v. Some thought of him as ‘the cause of all the troubles in this county’. He was associated with upstarts like Birch; through his residences in London, he was considered by some to be remote from county society; he was thought by some to be too royalist, by others too Presbyterian. Robert Harley’s letter conveys some of the anxiety felt by the family at the uncertainties of the Restoration; but as he pointed out to Edward, their suggestions for militia commissions had mostly been implemented, and the clerkship of the peace for the moment seemed in Edward’s gift.135Add. 70007, f. 76-77v.

Harley was successful in the election for the Convention, and sat in seven more Parliaments after that. He served with distinction as governor of Dunkirk but would only accept the appointment once the king had landed in Dover.136Add. 70089, draft memoir of Edward Harley; CCSP v. 11, 25. The ministers of Hereford, in March 1660 thought by the Harleys to be loath to wean themselves from the patronage of Wroth Rogers, were in June applying themselves to Harley to protect them from the uncertainties conjured by the restoration of the dean and chapter. They asked him to settle their stipends in accordance with the ordinance Sir Robert had acquired for them in 1646, even though that and all other interregnum legislation was now void.137Add. 70126, Hereford ministers to Edward Harley, 30 June 1660. It is said that he preferred the honour of knight of the Bath to the peerage that was offered him, and was responsible for building a new house at Brampton Bryan, fulfilling his father’s pious hope that God would restore the family home. As a noted Presbyterian, Harley had to endure the reign of James II, and lost all offices once again. He rode into Worcester to take the city for William III, but was not rewarded with any great generosity by the new king for his conspicuous show of support.138Oxford DNB. It was said of him that ‘he had a great quickness in his eyes which commanded respect, his temper was naturally passionate, though mixed with the greatest kindness and humanity’.139Add. 70089, draft memoir of Edward Harley. He died at Brampton Bryan on 8 December 1700, and was buried in the church there, which he had restored in 1656.140Notts. RO, DD/4P/72/40.