HARLEY, Robert (1626-73), of Brampton Bryan and Walford, Herefs.

Harley’s elder brother ‘Ned’ was their mother’s pride and joy, and ‘Robin’ received less favourable attention even than his younger brother Thomas. In 1636 Edward and Robert were at school 20 miles from their home, Brampton Bryan Castle, but by 1638 Robert was subject to ‘fits’, which persisted over the next few years.23Brilliana Harley Letters, 8, 91; HMC Portland, iii. 52; CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 440; Eales, Puritans and Roundheads, 28-9. ‘Tall’, ‘lean’, and apparently neglectful of himself in adolescence, he did not proceed to university, having proved an inept scholar. He showed no interest in the political excitement of 1641 and a year later, in a letter thanking Edward for good advice, he added ‘but there is no health of body without exercise nor of the mind as long as it is in hope one while, in fear another while, and in pain another while’.24Brilliana Harley Letters, 119, 120, 121; HMC Portland, iii. 88.

Harley’s father, Sir Robert, a parliamentarian ‘earnest for presbytery’, contributed generously to the war effort and presented Robert with a sword in July 1642. Like Edward, Robert first saw service with Sir William Waller’s forces, though the brothers were separated in the spring of 1643 when Robert proceeded from Sussex to Hampshire.25HMC Portland, iii. 95. Robert sent Edward a long account of the action at the first battle of Newbury. In July they were together at Bristol, and soon afterwards Robert was a cornet, and within months, a captain in Edward’s troop.26HMC Portland, iii. 106-10, 113, 118. After 1644 Robert is distinguishable as ‘Major’ Harley, Edward being ‘Colonel’. On 30 June 1644, their brother Thomas reported how the three brothers had met at the Gloucester garrison.27HMC Bath, i. 36. By September he was with Colonel Edward Massie* at Bath, on a foray from Gloucester. He was asked by Massie to fit out a troop of dragoons with firearms. Robert was anxious about the funding of his command, and evidently felt vulnerable during his elder brother’s absence.28HMC Portland, iii. 126, 128, 130, 131. After the taking of Monmouth, where Robert Harley was briefly governor, he elicited Edward’s promise to return to them. He himself was, despite wounds, ‘wonderfully preserved’ from the enemy at Lydney early in 1645, remained with Massie as a member of his Western Association brigade, and was present in July at the taking of Bridgwater.29HMC Portland, iii. 136, 138; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 131.

Harley had shown little interest in politics before he was elected as a recruiter at New Radnor. On 26 April 1647 an indenture was made out there returning him, but remained among the papers of his father, on whose interest he was elected. Probably because of some mild protest by the out-boroughs, a new indenture was drawn up on 13 May, which duly reached Westminster. There is no evidence of any contest for the seat.30Brampton Bryan mss, 27/18; C219/43/6/7/215. When Harley entered the House, he joined his father and elder brother to swell the Presbyterian interest. Edward had been recruited for Herefordshire six months earlier. Indeed, Edward Massie had hoped to see Robert returned for Hereford city.31HMC Portland, iii. 144. His father had sat for Radnor in James I’s first Parliament, but despite the family’s grip on the seat, his own return was alleged by New Model army critics of the Harleys to have been the work of the ‘committee of south Wales’, and tainted by oligarchy and peculation.32Clarke Pprs. ii. 157-8. Harley was at Westminster by 9 June 1647, when with 13 others, he took the Solemn League and Covenant. He was sent by the Commons to Herefordshire and south Wales (23 Dec.), among the Members required to ‘quicken’ the assessments. Next day the south Wales delegation was reduced from three to two, but Harley was retained.33CJ v. 203b, 400b, 402b. In February 1648 he was employed by the House in disbanding forces in Herefordshire, and wrote to complain of tumult and affront offered him by Captain French’s troop. The House responded with disciplinary orders, a vote of thanks to Harley, and an award of £500 towards his arrears (25 Feb.).34CJ v. 472a; HMC Portland, iii. 161; LJ x. 82a. While his brother Edward was one of the Eleven Members and therefore disabled from sitting for the first six months of that year, Robert was added to the Herefordshire assessment committee (17 Apr.) and sequestration committee (19 Apr.).35CJ v. 533a, 536a; LJ x. 204b, 206a, 211a.

Given leave of absence on 30 May 1648 to settle the Herefordshire militia, Harley was nevertheless added two days later to the committee on the bill to appoint an army accounts committee, a subject which the Presbyterians had made their own.36CJ v. 578a, 581b. His militia duties included the command of a troop (confirmed in September as numbering 100 horse), and on 17 July the Committee of Both Houses directed him to assist in the defence of Ludlow Castle against ‘some design of the malignants’ of which he had warned them.37CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 195, 197: LJ x. 505b. He next appeared in Montgomeryshire, writing to the House from Llanidloes (18 Aug.), four days after the defeat of Sir Henry Lingen, the royalist commander who had besieged the Harleys’ castle in 1644. The House ordered in consequence £2,000 for repairs at Brampton Bryan and a letter of thanks to Colonel Thomas Horton of the New Model army and to Harley for their services (22 Aug.), as well as their inclusion in the list of successes for which thanksgiving was to be offered on 7 September.38CJ v. 679b, 685b; HMC 7th Rep. 46; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 248. With Robert Kyrle, of a family friendly with the Harleys, he was once more appointed by the House (25 Nov.), to supervise the Herefordshire assessments.39CJ vi. 87b.

Only months after winning parliamentary accolades for his military exploits in Wales, Harley found his career in the Long Parliament brought to an abrupt end by the army’s purge in December 1648. His father and brother were imprisoned, though Robert was not.40Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 211-12. By 27 December it was reported that Harley had been arrested at Presteigne by Horton, his recent co-honorand and now a New Model army associate of Col. Thomas Harrison I*. Sir Thomas Fairfax*, the New Model’s commander-in-chief, allowed Harley’s servant to travel to Herefordshire the following month.41Mercurius Elencticus no. 58 (26 Dec. 1648-2 Jan. 1649), 554 (E.536.31); HMC Portland, iii. 166. The arrest of Harley and others in Herefordshire, followed by their examination before a local committee, so soon after the purge at Westminster, was a style approved by one of the newspapers as ‘the best way of purging and the clearest ground for a new representative’.42The Moderate Intelligencer no. 197 (21-8 Dec. 1648), n.p. (E.536.18). Both the Harley brothers were summoned before Stephen Winthrop* in August 1650 and challenged over their reluctance to take the Engagement of the new commonwealth: Robert was subsequently imprisoned in Bristol.43Add. 70006, f. 185. He was bailed by the council of state on 15 October, on his own security of £2,000 and two sureties of £500 each to the governor of Bristol. These were supplied on 12 November, but Harley’s contribution was £1,000. He was obliged to appear before the council when summoned, and to be of good behaviour, on condition of which the goods seized at his detention were restored to him, though two horses of his (all of them, as he later put it) seem to have been requisitioned for state service.44CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 387, 463, 523; 1651, p. 262.

Because of their refusal to give active assent to the new regime, the Harley family fared no better under Oliver Cromwell’s* protectorate. In its early years, Robert was at liberty, mainly living in London and supplying Edward with news. He later claimed to have been active in Herefordshire in the 1656 election campaign, ‘to endeavour the elections of the Parliament which was then called to be such as might most perplex; to get such persons to be in town as might countenance, sway, and turn to the best what was hoped to happen’. The independent evidence suggests that he sought to advance his brother’s cause, but mainly by passing on local intelligence.45HMC Portland, iii. 204, 208; viii. 10. Constantly under government suspicion as a likely insurrectionist in the cause of Charles Stuart, and regarded by the exiled royalists as a significant intermediary between themselves and the Presbyterian interest, he was detained again in 1657. In what was apparently his fourth incarceration since 1648, he was imprisoned in the Tower with ‘liberty to walk on the green, which most of the prisoners have’.46HMC Portland, iii. 210, 211; viii. 8-9; CCSP iii. 242, 245, 397. On 21 March 1658, on this occasion sent for with Sir William Waller* (who was discharged), he was again confined in the Tower under suspicion of collusion with the 2nd duke of Buckingham (George Villiers) and his father-in-law Lord Fairfax [S] (Sir Thomas Fairfax*), who was Harley’s cousin. Questioned by John Thurloe* about his possible contacts with the marquess of Ormond [I] and the Leveller turned suspected royalist John Wildman*, he was released, but was re-arrested at Kinsham Court, near Presteigne, by an order of the protector’s council made on 28 December.47CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 357; 1658-9, 113, 119, 233, 581, 58; TSP vii. 20, 84; CCSP iv. 30, 31; Verney Pprs. ii. 123.

Harley spent the first month of 1659 in the Tower suspected of high treason and other misdemeanours, ‘some verses ... lately printed reflecting upon the person and government of his late highness’, that is, Oliver Cromwell, being attributed to him.48PRO31/17/33, p. 366; Brilliana Harley Letters, 239; TSP vii. 598, 605-6; Clarke Pprs. iii. 145, 172; CCSP iv. 4. From the Tower he wrote a paper against Robert Weaver, who for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament had been elected to Harley’s old seat in Radnor.49Add. 70007, ff. 106-8. The earliest of three surviving letters from Charles Stuart acknowledging Harley’s services is dated 28 February 1659, the others dating from 6 May following and 6 March 1660.50CCSP iv. 155, 196, 587. The royalist inner circle was somewhat guarded about him, and John Mordaunt, writing to Edward Hyde* in May 1659, objected to Harley’s suggestion that the king should make concessions palatable to the Presbyterian party.51Letter Bk. of John Lord Mordaunt 1658-60 (Cam. Soc. 3rd ser. lxix), 10; CCSP iv. 201. In July 1659 Harley was examined by the council after claiming that Charles Fleetwood*, John Lambert* and other army grandees were intent on dissolving Parliament and re-establishing Richard Cromwell as protector. He and his informant Philip Howard* were detained, and Harley was obliged to ‘confess the report’ to the House on 19 July. The Speaker questioned him about his recent meeting with his old commanding officer Edward Massie, (a Presbyterian in even worse odour with the restored Rump than Harley) which Harley in reply alleged was accidental and had been reported by him to ‘several grand officers of the army’.52Clarke Pprs. iv. 24, v. 309; CCSP iv. 289; CJ vii. 723b, 725a, He and Howard were ordered to be bailed and Harley discharged from ‘all commissions’ for ‘false and scandalous propaganda’. He was denied a travel pass on 8 August, but on 14 September was allowed to proceed to Herefordshire until further notice.53CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 36, 86, 567. According to his own later testimony, he spent 14 days with Sir George Boothe* during his rising of August, but he asserted this in the context of a strenuous claim to material consideration by the restored Charles II.54HMC Portland, iii. 11. On 16 November he was a signatory to the Remonstrance against the officers who had expelled the Rump on 13 October.55Diurnal of Thomas Rugg (Cam. Soc. 3rd ser. xci), 12.

Thereafter, Harley appears unmistakably in royalist correspondence as one of the Presbyterians plotting for the restoration of the king. In January 1660, the secluded Members of the Long Parliament sent him to George Monck*, from whom he obtained assurances that the general supported their efforts to return to take their seats.56CCSP iv. 526, 532-3; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 334. Harley himself could not refrain from boasting in Westminster Hall that they could ‘have their footmen chosen to supply their places’, so confident were they, and when the secluded Members duly resumed their places (21 Feb.), Harley was among them.57Ludlow, Mems. ii. 232. On 23 February he was named to the committee to bring in a county militia bill, both ‘Colonel Robert Harley’ and ‘Major Harley’ being listed. The same day ‘Colonel Harley’ was one of the tellers for the election of a council of state in which Colonel Edward Harley was chosen. On 2 March Robert Harley had the satisfaction of seeing the House’s votes against him of 21 July 1659 nullified.58CJ vii. 849a, 859b, CCSP iv. 603; TSP vii. 855, 866 His loyalty, measured by his actions, was still to the Parliament of which he was a Member. Having with Waller tried to sow dissension among the regiments in February, he was at the head of his own command in East Anglia in early March, shadowing the regiment of Nathaniel Rich*, which took its orders from the grandee army officers in opposition to Parliament.59CCSP iv. 544; HMC Portland, iii. 218. On 1 March he was described as an agent to the king for the Presbyterians, and Mordaunt, who labelled him ‘honest’, wrote on 16 March that he had spoken ‘fully to the king’s advantage in Parliament two days past’. So considerable was Harley’s standing at this point that Mordaunt had to assure the king that he was not ruled by him.60CCSP iv. 590, 603.

Harley’s contact with Monck stood him in good stead locally: he was trusted above others in April 1660 to command the military in Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, though Thomas Pury II* bore at least as great a burden.61HMC 5th Rep. 361. On 6 April he wrote to Edward Harley with a frank assessment of the latter’s chances of election to the Convention. He considered his brother’s prospects damaged by rumours that he was opposed to the king, but confirmed that he was working in the interests of Edward and Bennet Hoskins* for their selection as knights ahead of a possible poll. He was incensed at the survival in office of ministers appointed by Wroth Rogers*, one of them ‘better to be punished than to be ordained’.62Add. 70007, ff. 76-7. He himself was returned for New Radnor to the Convention, but played little part in it. In May 1660, Harley acted as an emissary to the king at The Hague, fortified by Mordaunt’s admiration for his ‘tact, honesty and dexterity’: according to his own gloss, he bore an invitation to Charles to return to London.63CCSP v. 27; HMC Portland, iii. 13; Pepys’s Diary, i. 147. Despite his wholehearted commitment to the king’s cause, he was sufficiently mindful of former loyalties privately to warn Edmund Ludlowe II*, who had dared to take his seat in the Convention, against speaking in the House to attempt to justify the trial of Charles II.64Ludlow, Mems. ii. 264.

Edward Harley’s regiment was given to him, and it was posted to Dunkirk in July. Though John Aubrey recorded Harley as extolling the virtues of commanders who engaged closely with their men, he spent only brief intervals in Flanders, between periods at Westminster spent improving his standing at court (he was knighted in November 1660) and lobbying for his brother’s interests.65HMC Portland, iii. 231, 239, 240, 243, 247, 254-5; Aubrey, Brief Lives, i. 157. The following year, he went to Barbados, where he acquired office and made a foray to Surinam, but by February 1664 had fallen out with the governor of Barbados, the 4th Baron Willoughby of Parham (Francis Willoughby). Stripped of the official seals, he sold up in Barbados in 1665, and thereafter suffered the ill-health that had marked his youth.66HMC Portland, iii. 271, 273, 277-81, 284-5, 288, 293. His tenure of the very modest local office of the receivership of fee farm rents in three counties, including his own, was short-lived, as the impecunious crown decided to sell them.67HMC Portland, viii. 8-9. Perhaps in compensation, he was made a gentleman of the privy chamber but did not live long enough to enjoy the sinecure. Harley died on 6 November 1673 and was buried at Brampton Bryan. He had married the widow of a comrade-in-arms in 1671, but had no children.