UPTON, John I (1590-1641), of Lupton, Brixham, Devon.

The Upton family could trace its roots back to Cornwall, but it had been settled at Upton, in Cullompton, since the thirteenth century.14Prince, Worthies (1701), 576; Vivian, Devon, 743. Lupton, or Lucton, as it was more usually known before the seventeenth century, was in the ownership of the Uptons by the mid-sixteenth century. In 1581, in Brixham parish, no-one was rated more highly for paying subsidy than John Upton of Lupton.15Vivian, Vis. Devon, 743; Devon Taxes, 61. Arthur Upton, John Upton’s father, was a trustee for the lands owned by the parish by 1600, described himself in his will as ‘the unprofitable servant of God’, and asked to be buried in Brixham church next to the wives who had predeceased him.16PROB11/133/208. Arthur Upton made a deposition in chancery against the vicar of Brixham, John Sheares, who tried to enforce tithe payments in the parish ‘against the ancient custom’.17Devon RO, 1026M/E5. John Upton received the conventional higher education for a Devon gentleman, taking his degree at Oxford and then proceeding to the Inner Temple. His marriage in 1613 was to the daughter of the staunchly puritan Sir Anthony Rous†, which made Upton the brother-in-law of Francis Rous* and his wife the step-sister of John Pym*. He became a justice of the peace in 1624, and held other local offices in Devon subsequently. Like his father before him, he was a feoffee for the Brixham parish lands.18Devon RO, Exeter City Deeds and Docs. 4534, 4536, 4537, 4542.

Upton was a businessman as well as a landowner before 1640. He seems to have been acquiring lands through others’ alienations during the late 1620s.19Coventry Docquets, 423, 577, 581, 646. Probably through his family ties with men such as John Pym, he became a member of the Providence Island Company and at some point became a partner in shipping enterprises with Thomas Boone*, probably after Boone married Upton’s daughter.20CJ iv. 683b. Another associate was the Devon magistrate Arthur Champernowne of Dartington, who sold his lands in the 1630s to meet the losses he incurred in the war with Spain.21Devon RO, Z15/39/1/21, Z15/39/2/31/4, Z15/39/2/47, Z15/40/5/3; M. Wolffe, Gentry Leaders in Peace and War (Exeter, 1997), 23. By 1640, Upton had sat in three Parliaments. He had played only a modest part in these assemblies, but in 1640 Dartmouth corporation reaffirmed its confidence in him by returning him again, to both the Parliaments which met that year. In the Short Parliament he was named to the committee to peruse election indentures (28 Apr.), and when the new Parliament assembled in November, he was named to the privileges committee, no doubt partly in recognition of his nomination in April.22CJ ii. 14a, 21a. In turn, it was because of his membership of the privileges committee and because he was a member for a constituency in the south west that Upton was appointed to the committee on the case of the election at Bossiney, Cornwall (14 Nov.).23CJ ii. 29a.

In contrast to the lacklustre performance he had put up during the Parliaments of the 1620s, the Upton of 1640-1 was energetic. His seniority was recognised on 23 November, when in the company of four other Members he was asked to investigate an assault on a servant of the House, whose case had come to the notice of the king.24CJ ii. 34b. In a similar sign of his standing, he was a few months later (3 Mar. 1641) included in the committee chaired by John Selden which reviewed statutes to determine whether or not to repeal them.25CJ ii. 95b. He sat with fellow Devonians John Maynard on the committee for the bill of supply (19 Nov. 1640) and George Peard on the bill to abolish star chamber and high commission courts (3 Dec.).26CJ ii. 31b, 44b. Having been named by 10 December to four committees on petitions from individuals, on the 12th he was well qualified to serve on the body to determine which petitions were fit to be laid before the House.27CJ ii. 40a, 44a, 48a, 49b. Religious reform was an interest of Upton’s. He was added to a committee on the case of William Piers, bishop of Bath and Wells (29 Jan. 1641,) and to another on the remonstrance from ministers for better preaching of the gospel (27 Feb.). On 8 March he served with Sir Edmund Fowell and Edmund Prideaux I on a bill to bar the clergy from secular offices, and two days later was named to a bill to ban clergy from holding more than one living.28CJ ii. 75a, 94a, 99a, 100b. On 6 March Upton had also been included in the bloc of five MPs from Devon constituencies which formed part of 48 required to meet with a delegation from the Lords to plan the trial of Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford.29CJ ii. 98a.

A number of Upton’s committees in 1641 were natural appointments for a landowner from a maritime county. There were committees on the law surrounding salt marshes (27 Jan.); the export of wool (3 Feb.); to enable the sale of the estates of the late Sir Thomas Finch†, 2nd earl of Winchilsea (27 Feb.); and to deal with the powerful merchants with the potential to become commissioners of the tonnage and poundage revenues of the customs (2 June).30CJ ii. 73b, 77b, 94a, 165a. Upton was on a committee to settle damages on two Devon men (21 June), and took a leading part in the bill for settling lands on the family of the recently deceased Francis Russell, 4th earl of Bedford, whose patrimony lay close to Upton’s estates and whose important clients had included Upton’s kinsman John Pym. It was Upton who reported this bill when it had cleared its committees without amendments (20 July).31CJ ii. 182a, 215a, 217b. More broadly, his committee appointments in the spring of 1641 included work on a bill to abolish trial by combat (11 Mar.), on which he was joined by the Devon Members Sir Edmund Fowell*, Lawrence Whitaker* and William Strode I*, and with Whitaker and Edmund Prideaux I he was named to a joint committee with the Lords on pressing mariners (8 May).32CJ ii. 101a, 140b. As an active Member interested in moderate reform, the taking of Parliament’s Protestation (3 May) is unlikely to have troubled him.33CJ ii. 133b.

In March 1641, Upton had declared himself willing to offer £500 towards the cost of disbanding the northern armies.34D’Ewes (N), 439. His last service to the Commons was to examine the bill enshrining the treaty with the Scots (9 Aug.), which he undertook with only two other Members. Upton and the burgess for Barnstaple, George Peard, apparently offered their services for this task while the House was at dinner. The same small group managed the conference with the Lords on the same topic.35Harl. 164, f. 12; CJ ii. 247b, 248a. His committee appointments came to an abrupt end at this point. Upton had made his will in June 1639, declaring ‘Christ is to me both in life and death advantage because the God of order hath commanded us to set our affairs in order in regard of mortality and the frail and uncertain condition of man’s life’. His health had for some time, therefore, been probably less than robust. He died on 11 September and was buried at Brixham the following day, so must have made his way back to Devon after being taken ill. He had entrusted Charles Vaghan*, Francis Rous* and Thomas Boone* with overseeing his will, which stipulated that his younger sons should be bound apprentices. Upton’s puritan piety is evident in his insistence that their masters should be ‘men that fear God and that will train them up in religion’; his sons were to be ‘bred humbly and in professions and not live as too many do, in idleness and following of pleasure’.36PROB11/187/490. When news of Upton’s death reached the Commons, Sir Simonds D’Ewes was one of a number who ‘did openly declare our sorrow for the loss of so worthy and useful a member’.37D’Ewes (C), 16. His memorial in Brixham confirms his reputation for public-spiritedness: ‘Others do good by fits, and in a mood/ But this man’s constant trade was doing good’.38Prince, Worthies (1701), 578.