HENLEY, Henry (1611-96), of Leigh, Winsham, Som. and Colway, Lyme Regis, Dorset

Although originally from Somerset, the Henley family had acquired substantial land holdings in Devon and Dorset by the beginning of Charles I’s reign. Henry Henley’s grandfather, Robert, had married into Dorset and Exeter families; his father, also Henry, had been sheriff of Hampshire in 1620.24Hutchins, Dorset iii. 742. After his father’s death in 1639, Henry Henley resided in his mansion at Colway, in the hills above Lyme Regis, but retained considerable estates (and political influence) in Somerset, and his wife, whom he married in 1633, was the daughter of a deceased Exeter merchant and a ward of the city’s corporation.25C142/580/85; Coker’s Survey of Dorsetshire (1732), 21; Hutchins, Dorset iii. 742; Som. Protestation Returns, 250; Devon RO, Exeter City Act Bk. VIII, f. 51v. In 1639 his sister married the future Member for Lyme Regis, Richard Rose*.26Hutchins, Dorset ii. 71. This pattern of multiple interests, and divided county loyalties, would affect Henley’s later career.

Henley was a committed opponent of Charles I. He was one of the ‘Little Robins’ who supported Thomas Smyth I* and Sir Francis Popham* against the court interest in the Somerset election in March 1640.27Cal. Corresp. Smyth Family, 195-6. He signed the Protestation for Somerset in the spring of 1642, and in the opening months of the civil war he joined the efforts of a broad spectrum of Dorset and Somerset gentry who opposed the attempt of the royalist William Seymour†, 1st marquess of Hertford, to recruit forces in the west. Henley served as a captain in the local parliamentarian forces at the start of the conflict, and he was later paid by the Dorset treasurer for his company’s service in the attack by William Russell*, 5th earl of Bedford, on Sherborne Castle in the winter of 1642-3.28Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 106. At the beginning of February 1643 Edward Popham* and John Pyne* ordered Henley and other commanders stationed at Chard to return to Taunton in case of a royalist invasion of Somerset.29Som. RO, DD/HI/B/466, unfol. Over the next few months Henley was appointed to various commissions in Somerset to raise money for the war effort through assessments and sequestrations.30A. and O. He was also promoted to colonel, a rank he held when he was captured by the royalists early in 1644, and briefly imprisoned at Oxford.31Ludlow, Mems. 86. In April 1644, Henley was exchanged for Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Sandys, and returned to the west.32Ludlow, Mems. 89. In July 1644 he was appointed as a founder-member of the county committees for both Somerset and Dorset.33A. and O.; Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, p. xii.

Henley’s role in Somerset politics was controversial. By the summer of 1645, he had become involved in the godly party in Somerset, led by John Pyne*, a religious Presbyterian hot-head but strong political Independent, who was bitterly opposed to the stance of moderates such as Sir John Horner* and William Strode II*.34D. Underdown, Som. in the Civil War and Interregnum (Newton Abbot, 1973), 125. In the later stages of the war, Pyne’s group took control of the Somerset county committee and tried to influence the recruiter elections, held to fill seats left vacant by the disablement of royalist MPs. On 1 December 1645, Henley’s own candidature for the county seat was stymied when Horner, as sheriff, moved the venue for the poll at the last moment.35HMC Portland, i. 318-9. The freeholders of the shire protested to Speaker William Lenthall on 2 December, complaining of this tactic as a design ‘to hinder their free choice of Colonel Henley and Mr [John] Harington* for whom the greater number by far did express themselves’.36Bodl. Nalson V, ff. 101-2v. The faction fight came to a head during the Ilchester borough election, held early in 1646. Henley was at one point put forward as the county committee’s choice, along with the radical Alexander Pym, but two rival indentures were eventually returned. The failure of the county committee to sway Parliament in the ensuing debate may have been the result of Presbyterian influence in the committee of privileges, which decided in favour of Henley’s enemies.37D. Underdown, ‘The Ilchester Election, Feb. 1646’, Som. Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. Procs. cx. 40-51. In the summer of 1646 the county election was re-examined, the elected MPs were unseated by the Commons on 5 June, and a new writ of election issued.38CJ iv. 565b-566a; Underdown, Som. 131-2. A period of intense lobbying ensued. Pyne and Henley refused to take their oaths as JPs, and they were joined in this protest by Alexander Popham* and his brother, who ‘commend Mr Henley, [and] complain of Sir John Horner’s unkindness’.39Harington’s Diary, 27-8. It is unclear whether Henley stood as a candidate in the election that followed, but he was not returned, and the feuding in Somerset continued.40Som. RO, Hippisley MSS, DD/H1/10.

Despite these repeated electoral snubs, Henley’s involvement in local affairs apparently increased during the later 1640s. He was active as a JP in Somerset from the summer of 1646 to the summer of 1648, and was frequently called on to act on the orders of the assize judges in the same period.41QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 1-68; Somerset Assize Orders, 1640-59 ed. J.S. Cockburn (Som. Rec. Soc. lxxi), 13-22. The decline in his attendance and commitment came only in 1648, when he seems to have become more suspicious of the army’s influence at Westminster. In March 1648, he joined his former enemy, Sir John Horner, and the arch-Presbyterian William Prynne* in drawing up a list of ministers and lay elders for the Presbyterian church in Somerset, and was himself named as an elder of the Ilchester and Ilminster classis.42Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 419; Underdown, Som. 143. In Dorset, Henley’s career followed a similar pattern. He attended meetings of the county committee when present in the locality from 1646 to 1648.43PRO30/24/2, no. 72/2; Add. 29319, f. 23; LJ vii. 67b; Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 33-463. He was named to assessment commissions in the county in 1644, 1647 and 1648, was active as a militia commissioner in August, and his military and financial support for the government in the second civil war was rewarded in November 1648 by a grant of arrears from the monthly rate raised by the county committee.44Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, ff. 48, 56, 61v, 73; A. and O.; Christie, Shaftesbury i. appx. i. p. xlviii; Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 471. Henley’s appointment as sheriff of Dorset, passed by Parliament on 25 November 1648, may have been in recognition of his local standing, but it also suggests that he was now perceived as an opponent of the army.45LJ x. 607b.

Pride’s Purge and the regicide caused Henley deep concern. On 3 February 1649 he wrote to Lenthall expressing his worries about the legitimacy of his own position: ‘I being made sheriff under the king’s writ, upon the death of him my office of sheriff expireth, and I do therefore forebear acting anything as sheriff until further order of the House of Commons in Parliament assembled enabling me thereunto’.46Bodl. Tanner 57, f. 511. It is telling that in the same period Henley also withdrew from the Somerset commission of the peace.47Underdown, Som.137-8. In 1649-50 he seems to have busied himself with private affairs, engaging in various law-suits, settling his estates, and becoming embroiled in an inheritance dispute with his brother-in-law, Richard Rose.48C5/8/120; C5/387/112; C7/53/125, 130; Dorset RO, D/BTM/A5/1; D/BLX/F3. In 1651 he remarried, taking as his second wife the daughter of the late John Bampfylde, a Devon Presbyterian who had sat for the Cornish seat of Penryn.49Som. RO, DD/TOR/26. Despite his reluctance to serve the state, the Rump Parliament appointed Henley to the assessment commissions for Dorset and Somerset in the early 1650s.50A. and O. He seems to have maintained his connections with Pyne and his allies, and this group almost certainly influenced Henley’s selection to represent Somerset in the Nominated Assembly in July 1653, although his late nomination suggests that he was brought in to lend the Assembly greater influence locally.51Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 139-40, 418-9. In the session that followed he was named to only one committee: that for Scottish affairs, on 20 July 1653.52CJ vii. 286b.

Henley’s relationship with the protectorate was also equivocal. His appointment to the commission for ejecting scandalous ministers in 1654 and 1655 may reflect his local status and concern for religious order rather than any attachment to the regime.53A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 144. In Dorset, Henley was by this time allied to the broad-based gentry group – characterized by a local rather than national political bias –which sought to influence the county elections. This explains Henley’s return for the county of Dorset on 12 July 1654, in company with William Sydenham*, John Bingham*, Sir Walter Erle*, John Fitzjames* and John Trenchard* — virtually a roll-call of the important figures in Dorset politics during the mid-1650s.54C219/44, unfol. A similar slate of candidates was put forward for the county in 1656, but Henley was not included, apparently owing to competition for places. As John Fitzjames* explained to Walter Foy, Henley had not suddenly fallen from favour with the Dorset gentry, and ‘for my own part, I could wish Col. Henley in also with all my heart, and shall resign rather than break or disunite our voices’.55Alnwick, Northumberland MS 551, f. 94v.

Henley was elected for his home borough of Lyme Regis for Richard Cromwell’s Parliament* of 1659. He was not named to any committees in this Parliament, but his recorded speeches suggest that he was a constitutionalist, respectful of Parliament and its privileges, and that he now supported the Cromwellian regime as a bulwark against both resurgent royalists and radical army officers. On 2 February 1659 he attacked Major Lewis Audley* for a breach of privilege, stating that ‘the offence is heinous. That he is a servant to the commonwealth makes his offence the greater. It is against his duty and his trust. Especially as an officer he ought to give the better example’. He went on to urge the Commons to protect its rights to the full and ‘be so tender of your privileges, and bear such testimony against all offenders of this kind, as to let them know they kick against pricks’.56Burton’s Diary iii. 43. Three days later Henley intervened in the debate about measures against an unrepentant royalist, one Mr Giles. He took the opportunity to defend the Humble Petition and Advice, proclaiming that the paper constitution was ‘the greatest bond of amity that can be. We must stand upon this foundation. Where shall the righteous stand, if the foundations be shaken?’ He then attacked those who refused the oath to the protector (‘four hundred have taken the oath, why should two or three refuse, or, at least, not forbear to sit till they have taken it?’), before concluding with a further endorsement of the regime: ‘nature and reason require not to question the authority that called us’, and a call for the removal of any MPs ‘that are profane, or have been cavaliers’.57Burton’s Diary iii. 72.

Henley represented nearby Bridport in the Convention Parliament in April 1660, before returning to Lyme Regis in the Cavalier Parliament the next year. Henley’s Presbyterianism became more pronounced during the restoration period. After the Declaration of Indulgence in 1672 he retained a non-conformist as his chaplain, and funded the building of a chapel at Marshwood in Dorset.58HP Commons 1660-1690. He drew up his will in 1695 ‘being of great age’, and was notably generous to the poor of Winsham parish, Somerset, and of Lyme Regis, Dorset. The bulk of the estate went to his grandson, also Henry Henley†, MP for Lyme Regis.59PROB11/437/371.