JENINGS, Edmund (1626-91), of Ripon, Yorks.

Jenings’s family did not formally join the ranks of the Yorkshire gentry until 1641, when his grandfather, Peter Jennings – who owned an estate in Silsden and Ripon worth about £400 a year and augmented his income through usury (lending sums in excess of £500) – was granted arms.30C5/404/295; SP23/181, pp. 249, 255; Grantees of Arms ed. W.H. Rylands (Harl. Soc. lxvi), 138. His father, Jonathan Jennings, a Lincoln’s Inn lawyer, had settled at Ripon and was a busy man in local affairs.31E134/13 CHAS1/MICH50; E125/22, f. 122v; LI Black Bks. ii. 263. By the 1630s, he could afford to lend £500 to Arthur Aldburghe (father of the future royalist Richard Aldburghe*), by whom he was employed as steward of the manorial courts of Aldborough.32SP23/62, p. 103; N. Yorks. RO, ZUH, Lawson-Tancred mss (mic. 1759).

After the civil war, both Peter and Jonathan Jennings were obliged to compound as delinquents for having resided in several of the king’s garrisons and, in Jonathan’s case, served as a regulator of assessments for the earl of Newcastle’s northern royalist army.33SP23/181, pp. 249, 255; SP23/187, pp. 395, 404, 412; CCC 1023, 1159. According to Sir Charles Egerton*, they had also raised forces against Parliament within the liberty of Ripon.34SP23/1, pp. 99-100. Peter Jennings was fined £878 and Jonathan was fined £156.35CCC 1023, 1159. It was probably in an effort to have their composition fines reduced or lifted that the Jennings sought an alliance with Yorkshire’s most influential parliamentarian family, the Fairfaxes of Denton. At some point during the spring or summer of 1646 they proposed a marriage between Edmund and a daughter of Charles Fairfax, the younger brother of the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*). On 24 July, Charles Fairfax wrote to Lord Fairfax concerning the proposed marriage. Peter Jennings, he claimed

was one of the most innocent delinquents in all the country, for that little he did for the enemy’s party was extorted from him by threats and imprisonment. The best part of his estate laid under the power of that garrison of Skipton [a royalist stronghold], and himself likewise in too near a tie to the late earl of Cumberland [a leading northern royalist of whom he was a tenant] ... The young gentleman [Edmund Jenings] has a good report ... A Cambridge man of about 19 years of age that never contributed any fuel to these flames. I cannot but acknowledge a good providence in it that it should come of their seeking, for (being so far above my hopes in respect of the estate) I should never have attempted it. His son (Jonathan) [Edmund’s father] is now upon composition, his only offence was acting as a subcommittee[man] in the Lord Newcastle’s time for regulating of assessments and allowing of billet for the safety of the country. His father [Peter Jennings] paid £900, and I fear they will have £100 from him for his wife’s lands being £40 per annum. A good word from your lordship may very much avail him.36Bodl. Fairfax 32, f. 126; C10/474/100.

In August 1646, Charles Fairfax again asked Lord Fairfax to use his influence to ‘ease’ the Jennings’ composition fines.37Bodl. Fairfax 32, f. 128. On this occasion, however, money could not buy love, for Charles Fairfax reported in December that Edmund Jenings had his eye on a daughter of the Yorkshire knight Sir Thomas Harrison (father of Thomas Harrison II*), although Peter Jennings was apparently still very much in favour of the match. To sweeten the pot, Charles Fairfax promised Jenings’s father the clerkship of the manorial courts of Ripon if the marriage went ahead.38Bodl. Fairfax 32, f. 140. In the event, the hoped-for union never materialised, although Charles Fairfax apparently still had lingering thoughts in that direction in 1650, prompting his brother-in-law and match-maker in London, Sir William Constable*, to dismiss the idea as ‘but a dallying of the old man [Peter Jennings] and never intended by the young gentleman [Edmund], who having been twice distempered in his brain, as I have heard, may deserve a caution in entertaining a further treaty there, if any such were offered’.39Supra, ‘Sir William Constable’; Belvoir, PZ 1, f. 29.

With the death of his father in 1649, and of his grandfather two years later, Jenings inherited the family’s estates in Ripon and Silsden.40PROB11/218, f. 259. According to one of Jenings’s legal opponents, his inheritance in land and goods was worth over £10,000, although this was almost certainly an exaggeration.41C10/474/100. When Jenings married in December 1652, he settled lands worth only about £50 a year on his wife as her jointure. Nevertheless, he was wealthy enough to have obtained a ‘considerable’ marriage portion from his father-in-law, Sir Edward Barkham†, who was apparently on close terms with the Fairfaxes’ man-of-business, William White*.42C10/117/23. Jenings is known to have purchased only one piece of forfeited royalist land during the 1650s and that was probably to hold in trust for its original owner.43Yorks. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. J.W. Clay (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. xx), 190. Although he seems to have remained politically inactive for most of the interregnum, he would have enjoyed considerable local influence as the farmer of tithes for the demesne lands of the former archdiocese of York in Ripon, for which he was paying ‘a great yearly fee farm rent’ to the protectorate by early 1654.44SP24/30, unfol.; E112/346/172; E134/16CHAS1/MICH 37.

When Ripon regained its two seats in the elections to the Richard Cromwell’s Parliament (having lost them under the Instrument of Government of 1653), the town’s voters returned Jenings and his younger brother Jonathan on 5 January 1659.45N. Yorks. RO, DC/RIC II, 1/1/2, p. 506. Jenings apparently took little part in this Parliament’s proceedings, receiving only three appointments – to the committee of privileges (23 Jan.), a committee on a bill for the enfranchisement of county Durham (31 Mar.) and a committee to investigate the earl of Arundel’s detention abroad (8 Apr.).46CJ vii. 595a, 622b, 632a. The ‘Mr Jennings’ who sided with the republican interest on 7 March, during a debate on the double return for the Yorkshire borough of Malton, was probably either Edmund or Jonathan rather than the Hertfordshire MP Richard Jennings. The debate was prompted by a report from the committee of privileges supporting the return of the royalist sympathisers Philip Howard* and George Marwood* and rejecting that of the republicans Luke Robinson* and Colonel Robert Lilburne*.47Burton’s Diary, iv. 42-6. The radical element moved to have the case recommitted, a course also favoured by ‘Mr Jennings’.48Burton’s Diary, iv. 44. However, the House rejected this motion and resolved to uphold the return of Howard and Marwood. If Jenings did indeed side with the radicals on 7 March, it would suggest that he was not, at this stage, in favour of a return to monarchy. Apparently seen as politically acceptable by the restored Rump, both he and Jonathan were named to the July 1659 militia commission, and Edmund was added to the January 1660 assessment commission by the Commons on 23 January 1660.49A. and O. ii. 1324, 1367; CJ vii. 819b.

Jenings was returned for Ripon to the 1660 Convention and was classed by Philip Lord Wharton as a likely supporter of a Presbyterian church settlement.50N. Yorks. RO, DC/RIC II, 1/1/2, p. 525; G.T.F. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 344; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Edmund Jennings’. Jenings lost his seat in the elections to the Cavalier Parliament, but was evidently regarded as loyal to the Restoration regime, for he retained his place as a West Riding magistrate after 1660.51C220/9/4, f. 28v; E193/12/3, f. 35; W. Yorks. Archives (Wakefield), QS 10/4 ff. 25, 35, 53. His appointment to Ripon’s aldermanic bench by the corporation commissioners in 1662 is further evidence that he seen as a loyal king’s man.52N. Yorks. RO, DC/RIC II, 1/1/2, p. 549. His mayoralty, the following year, was marked by vigorous measures for the stricter observance of the sabbath.53Ripon Millenary ed. Harrison, ii. 66. After regaining his seat at a by-election in 1673, he became an active member of the Cavalier Parliament, where, as a client of the earl of Danby he consistently supported the court interest.54A. Browning, Thomas Osborne, Earl of Danby, i. 156, 164, 367, 374, 468; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Edmund Jennings’. During the Exclusion Crisis, he upheld the duke of York’s right to succeed, although he did favour tougher measures against Catholics.55HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Edmund Jennings’. Returned to James II’s Parliament, he went into opposition in the second session and subsequently opposed the king’s religious policies.56W. Yorks. Archives (Bradford), SpSt/11/4/6/15; Browning, Danby, iii. 156; Penal Laws and Test Act ed. G. Duckett, i. 82. He last represented Ripon in the Parliament of 1690, in which he emerged as a tory supporter of the Williamite court and a leading opponent of the Dissenters.57Browning, Danby, iii. 177; HP Commons 1690-1715, ‘Sir Edmund Jennings’.

Jenings died at Westminster in the autumn of 1691 and was buried at St Clement Danes on 11 September.58St Clement Danes, Westminster par. reg. In his will, he assigned the lands and messuages he held by lease from the countess of Pembroke and the archbishop of York to his eldest son Jonathan for raising £3,000 – presumably to help pay off his debts and raise portions for his daughters.59PROB11/406, ff. 18v-19. His heir Jonathan Jennings served as MP for Ripon between 1691 and 1701.60HP Commons 1690-1715, ‘Jonathan Jennings’.