HOBY, Peregrine (1602-79), of Bisham Abbey, Bisham, Berks.

Originally from Leominster in Herefordshire, the Hobys had risen to prominence as a courtier family during the sixteenth century, starting with Sir Philip Hoby who had been one of Henry VIII’s gentlemen ushers of the privy chamber. Bisham Abbey, a substantial house in Berkshire which had only recently been the residence of Anne of Cleves, was granted to Sir Philip by Henry in 1553 as a reward for his services.18VCH Berks. iii. 139. It later passed to Sir Philip’s younger brother, Sir Thomas Hoby, this MP’s grandfather. Through Sir Thomas’s wife, Elizabeth Cooke, the family became part of the Cecil kinship and his son, another Sir Thomas, married one of Elizabeth I’s cousins, Margaret Hunsdon.

The lands at Bisham and elsewhere were inherited by Sir Edward in 1566.19VCH Berks. iii. 147-8. None of Sir Edward’s three marriages produced surviving children, but he acknowledged Peregrine, his illegitimate son with his mistress, Katherine Pinckney, at birth, raised him as a member of the family and sent him to Eton.20PROB11/129/350; Sterry, Eton College Reg. 175. When he died in 1617, Sir Edward left everything to Peregrine.21PROB11/129/350; PROB11/131/185. Given the unorthodox circumstances, there was always a possibility that this bequest would be challenged by the other members of the family, but Sir Edward’s closest legitimate male heir, his brother Sir Thomas Posthumous Hoby†, formally surrendered any claim to it in 1620.22VCH Berks. iii. 148. In accordance with his father’s wish, Peregrine was brought up by the archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot, until he came of age in 1623.23PROB11/129/350. His bastardy does not seem to have prevented him being accepted socially by his Berkshire neighbours, nor did it prevent James I from staying at Bisham in 1619.24HMC Kenyon, 25. His marriage to a co-heiress, Katherine Doddington, was a lucrative one.

The Buckinghamshire constituency of Great Marlow was situated on the opposite bank of the Thames from Bisham. Standing as one of the four candidates there in October 1640, Hoby found himself at the centre of one of the bitterest disputes arising from the Long Parliament elections. Although Hoby claimed that he had come first in the second of the two polls held at Great Marlow, there was a double return and his election was indirectly challenged when Bulstrode Whitelocke* petitioned against the election of John Borlase*. On 9 November the committee for elections ruled that Hoby was not to take his seat. Ten days later the Commons ordered a new election. The day before this second election took place Hoby received a writ appointing him as sheriff of Berkshire. This threatened to disqualify him from sitting, which was why he suspected that this appointment had been made specifically to ruin his chances at Great Marlow. That Hoby then claimed that he had outpolled Borlase only heightened tensions between the king and Parliament as some felt that Hoby’s appointment as sheriff had been a partisan intervention by the king in the continuing election dispute. Already there was probably a perception that Hoby was a critic of the king’s policies. The king maintained that as Hoby had been appointed before the election was held, he ought to serve his term as sheriff.25Verney, Notes, 1-4; Procs. LP i. 580, 582-3; Northcote Note Bk. 53. On 13 January 1641 the Commons ordered that Hoby should not sit.26CJ ii. 67a-b. In the meantime Borlase had been elected at Corfe Castle and this allowed both sides to drop the matter without forcing it to a definitive conclusion. Hoby served for his year as sheriff, during which time he probably refrained from taking his seat at Westminster. Later that year he took his seat without a fuss.

It was only during the deepening crisis of 1642 that Hoby emerged as an active MP. Even then, he was more obviously active in Berkshire than at Westminster. In June 1642 he was sent back to Berkshire to enforce the implementation of the Militia Ordinance.27CJ ii. 618a. Two months later he wrote the Speaker to report that the collection of the assessments in Berkshire was very slow and that the amount received would almost certainly be less than had been raised by Ship Money.28Harl. 163, f. 71v. The following month he and Sir Francis Knollys II* were sent to encourage tax collection in the county.29CJ ii. 788b. Once the fighting started, he found himself on the front line. Berkshire was a crucial military theatre during the opening months of the conflict. Some of his estates may have been plundered by the royalist army under Prince Rupert in November 1642 as it advanced through Berkshire towards Brentford. This would explain why on 7 December he was added to the Commons committee on the bill to compensate those who had suffered in that way and he may also have been the ‘Mr Holby’ whose plundered property the Commons ordered the following day could be seized back again.30CJ ii. 879b, 881a-b.

Like many who found themselves directly affected by the fighting, Hoby’s support for Parliament was not uncritical. On 26 April 1643 Reading fell to the parliamentarian forces under the command of the lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, but this left the army desperately short of cash. As one of the local MPs, Hoby was then included on the Commons which sought to raise volunteers to reinforce the town.31CJ iii. 80a. However on 20 May the other Great Marlow MP, Bulstrode Whitelocke, told the Commons that he had heard from Hoby that a number of army officers at Reading, including Lionel Copley* and Charles Fleetwood*, had been levying up to £7,000 throughout Berkshire using false papers allegedly issued by Essex. It was also alleged that they had requisitioned horses without the proper authority. The Commons asked Essex for an explanation.32Add. 31116, p. 102. On hearing this, Essex was furious. Copley and Fleetwood appeared before the Commons on 26 May to explain that they had been acting on genuine orders from Essex. Moreover, although Essex acknowledged that, in theory, he ought to have first consulted the local deputy lieutenants before requisitioning the horses, he argued that the army’s need for them had been so urgent that he had felt it more important to act without formal permission. The Commons accepted these explanations and offered a full apology. To make things worse, Hoby had since been telling people in Berkshire that the order of 20 May had meant that the Commons had declared that Essex was not to raise the money. The Commons therefore reprimanded him for this and for the original misinformation.33CJ iii. 104b; Harl. 164, ff. 393v-394; Add. 31116, p. 106.

This is not the only indication that Hoby had reservations about certain aspects of the parliamentarian war effort. Two months later he sat on two Commons committees which investigated abuses connected with the assessment collections and which considered financial affairs of some of the parliamentary committees.34CJ iii. 181a, 186a. That November he was sent by the Commons to inform Essex of the plans which had been proposed by Isaac Penington* to reduce the impact of the major garrison at Reading on the surrounding countryside.35CJ iii. 314a. It was as much in the interests of the local inhabitants as of the soldiers themselves that garrisons were paid on time – not paying the soldiers only exacerbated the social tensions with the locals – so Hoby’s support for payments to the Windsor garrison later that year reflected that same local perspective.36CJ iii. 388a. Hoby was also able to exact some revenge on Borlase; his statement to the Commons on 4 March 1644 informing them that his old rival was at Reading, which was then still in royalist hands, resulted in Borlase’s expulsion from the House.37Harl. 166, f. 24.

The military campaigns of 1644 brought a further burst of activity from Hoby. That spring he was named to a number of committees on the question of army pay.38CJ iii. 457a, 486b. Again, the arrears of the Windsor garrison seem to have been a particular concern.39CJ iii. 507b, 703a. In early June, when, despite initial indications to the contrary, it was correctly anticipated that the main royalist attack in the midlands would focus on Oxfordshire, he was a member of the delegation sent to encourage the London militia committee to dispatch reinforcements.40CJ iii. 523a. In the aftermath of the king’s victory at Cropredy Bridge on 29 June Hoby passed on reports to the army about rumours of a planned royalist attack on Reading, although the king was in fact heading in the opposite direction and the raid never took place.41CSP Dom. 1644, p. 334.

Hoby’s attendance at Westminster throughout 1645 and 1646 seems to have been only very intermittent. Those occasions on which he is mentioned as contributing to the Commons’ proceedings tend to confirm that he was most interested in matters of direct concern to Berkshire. On 31 January 1645 he and Sir Philip Stapilton* were sent to consult with Essex about the complaints which had been received from Berkshire about violent behaviour from soldiers.42CJ iv. 38a. In late July he wrote to the bailiffs of Ipswich defending one of his unnamed neighbours who had been accused of poisoning wine at Reading. In doing so, he sent his regards to the Ipswich MP, William Cage*.43Suff. RO (Ipswich), HD36/2672/28. His only committee appointment that year concerned the garrison at Abingdon and one of his only three committee appointments in 1646 was that to organise those troops from Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire to be sent to Ireland.44CJ iv. 351a, 633a. What few indications there are suggest that Hoby was probably relatively conservative on those religious question now dividing the Commons; in December 1646 he was named to the committee to receive complaints about lay preachers, while in March 1647 he probably helped investigate the publication of a radical pamphlet.45CJ v. 35a, 112b.

His whereabouts between 26 July and 6 August 1647 are not known. He does not appear in the Commons’ Journal between those dates, although that may just be a reflection of his patchy record of participation. He was listed as absent from the House on 9 October, but he seems to have been present on 22 October when he was named to the committee to secure the army arrears.46CJ v. 330a, 340a. He remained at Westminster until at least the middle of December, when, as one of the tellers in a division on 15 December, he helped get the Tower Hamlets militia bill recommitted.47CJ v. 364b, 367a, 386a. The following spring the 1st earl of Holland (Henry Rich†), as chief justice in eyre south of Trent, authorised him to hear complaints about damage done to Windsor Forest during the civil war.48CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 38. After what may have been a prolonged absence, he reappeared at Westminster in the summer of 1648, being named a series of committees, including those on the bills to settle the militia and to raise horse in London.49CJ v. 597b, 631a, 678a. He was among those sent to Berkshire that November to speed up the assessment collections in the hope of mollifying the army.50CJ vi. 87b. The following month he was secluded from the Commons.51A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); A Vindication (1649), 29 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5); Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 376. In 1664 the Clarencieux king-of-arms, Sir Edward Bysshe, in granting him a revised former of the Hoby arms, would state that he was doing so in recognition of Hoby’s ‘prudent discharge of his duty to his country’ as MP for Great Marlow under Charles I and Charles II.52Vis. Berks. 1532, 1566, 1623 and 1665-6, ii. 150. In doing so, Bysshe glossed over the extent to which Hoby had supported Parliament against the first of those kings.

Hoby did not apply to resume his seat in the Rump following the regicide. Over the next ten years he played no part in local or national politics, suggesting that he disapproved of both the commonwealth and the protectorate. It was only in 1659, when he was re-elected at Great Marlow, that his political career resumed. Even then he seems to have kept a low profile in that Parliament. His experience as a veteran of the Long Parliament no doubt explains why he was included on the committee for elections and privileges. His only other committee appointments concerned the enfranchisement of Durham and the planned impeachment proceedings against William Boteler*.53CJ vii. 595a, 622b, 637a.

Hoby went on to serve as MP for Great Marlow in the next two Parliaments. In the Convention and the early stages of the Cavalier Parliament he was part of the Presbyterian circle around the Buckinghamshire peer, Philip, 4th Baron Wharton. One consistent strand of his career in the Cavalier Parliament was his suspicion about the growth of popery and by the end of his career he was allied to those critical of the policies of the earl of Danby (Sir Thomas Osborne†). He died five months after the dissolution of his second ‘Long’ Parliament. His eldest son, Sir Edward, who had been granted a baronetcy in 1666, had predeceased him. The estates therefore passed to his younger son, Thomas†, who sat for Great Marlow in 1681 and later as MP for Salisbury.54PROB11/359/611; HP Commons 1660-1690.