LUCY, Richard (c.1619-77), of Charlecote, Warws.

Richard Lucy has been confused by biographers of the family with his uncle, Sir Richard Lucy*.29Aylmer, State’s Servants, 406; Lucy, Biography of the Lucy Fam. 33-5; A. Fairfax-Lucy, Charlecote and the Lucys (1958), 138-9, 144, 145, 147-50. After the death of Sir Thomas Lucy*, which occurred in 1640 when Richard may have been travelling abroad as part of his education, the Charlecote estate passed to the eldest son, Spencer Lucy.30PROB11/185, f. 153v. Spencer was a royalist in the civil war, despite the critical stance of his father towards the government of Charles I and Sir Thomas’s summons to the privy council, probably on charges of political disaffection, in the last year of his life. Spencer Lucy became a colonel of foot, fought at Hopton Heath in March 1643, and by 19 July 1644 was in custody in London.31P.R. Newman, Royalist Officers in Eng. and Wales, 1642-60 (1981), 241. Spencer’s stance was in the local context unexpected in a family so close to Lord Brooke (Robert Greville†) and the dynasty at Warwick Castle over many centuries; but Sir Thomas’s brother, William, rector of Burghclere and Highclere in Hampshire, was also a royalist, and later became bishop of St David’s.32Walker Revised, 187; HP Lords 1660-1715, ‘William Lucy’. The family was thus seriously divided in its loyalties. It is clear that Richard Lucy, the third brother, was at this time already in sympathy with Parliament. On 31 January 1644 he was given a pass through the parliamentarian lines, to move between Warwick and London, at a time when his brother was actively in arms against Parliament. That Charlecote was one of the destinations approved by Sir William Waller* suggests that Lucy was still an acceptable visitor to the house and to his mother, Lady Alice, who survived until August 1648.33Lucy, Biography of the Lucy Fam. 32, 34.

In the 1640s Richard Lucy had no estate of his own, so far as can be ascertained, but may have had intellectual interests wider and deeper than the only fact known about his education as a youth, matriculation at Queen’s College, Oxford, would suggest: his father left him the library at Charlecote.34PROB11/185, f. 153v. From a base there, Lucy was an active member of the Warwickshire bench of magistrates between October 1645 and July 1646 and was briefly active on the county committee in October 1646. He was nominated sheriff of the county for the year starting December 1646.35Warwick County Records, ii. p. xxi; List of Sheriffs (List and Index ix), 147; A. Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warws. 1620-60 (Cambridge, 1987), 363. His willingness to serve in this way ensured that one of Warwickshire’s most illustrious gentry families continued to be represented in a county administration which contained many lesser figures. He was the county committee’s candidate in the recruiter election for Warwickshire in October 1645. Beginning on 27 October, the poll at Warwick was, as in December 1640, a protracted affair, with many forceful tactics being deployed by the committee to ensure the election of Lucy and John Bridges*, to no avail.36The Scottish Dove no. 108 (7-12 Nov. 1645), 852-4 (E.309.5); no. 109 (12-19 Nov. 1645), 858 (E.309.24). After several days of disturbances, the poll was adjourned by the committee to Coleshill, but the committeemen found that the royalist garrisons of Lichfield and Dudley seriously inhibited electors’ willingness to cast a vote. The poll was moved again, to Meriden, where finally the committee had to admit defeat and accept the election of Thomas Boughton and Sir John Burgoyne.37Dugdale, Diary and Corresp. 82-3. The most powerful figure on the Warwickshire county committee was William Purefoy I*, and it must have been with his active backing that Lucy had appeared as a candidate.

When in August 1646 Spencer Lucy incurred a fine of £1,647 at the hands of the Committee for Compounding, paid by October 1647, it must have reduced the value in goods of the Charlecote estate.38CCC 1243. Richard Lucy inherited glebe and tithes in Hampton Lucy from his mother, and leased some of these to Spencer Lucy in March 1649 for £138, further evidence that family loyalties transcended civil war allegiance in this particular family.39Warws. RO, L6/439. It is unclear in whose interests this transaction was concluded: that of the owner of Charlecote, smarting under a heavy delinquency fine, or the younger brother, for whom cash might be more useful than the uncertainties of tithes. Richard’s own circumstances might have eased by the late 1640s. If his marriage took place at the coming of age of his spouse, Elizabeth Urry, it would have been contracted in 1648 or soon after.40Thorley, Hants par. reg. Lucy married into a family associated with the parish of Thorley, Isle of Wight, since 1273, and the connection with the Urrys was doubtless established through the Lucy ownership of Hampshire manors.41VCH Hants, v. 285.

Spencer Lucy died in 1649 aged 33, shortly after Richard agreed to lease him his inherited tithes and glebe.42Lucy, Biography of the Lucy Fam. 32. The patrimony of Charlecote and the associated manors in Warwickshire and Hampshire then passed to Sir Thomas’s second son, Robert. One can only speculate on the effects this had on Richard Lucy. He continued to attend quarter sessions up to July 1649, but then made no appearances there between October 1650 and July 1651. This complete absence suggests a temporary moving away, rather than political distaste for the Rump, since Lucy was back as a regular sessions attender between October 1651 and June 1652.43Warwick County Records, ii. p. xxi; iii. p. xxi. It may have been that his relations with Spencer were better than with Robert Lucy. Richard’s disappearance from Warwickshire is confirmed by his absence from the quarter sessions from June 1652 to October 1658. One can only assume that Lucy had concluded that there was no future for him at Charlecote.44Warwick County Records, iii. p. xxi; iv. p. xxv. Once in London, Lucy was admitted to Gray’s Inn in November 1652, when he was over 30, an unusually late age for a man to enter.45G. Inn Admiss. i. 262. Gray’s had been the inn of William Purefoy I, and it seems likely that he was behind Lucy’s admission, surely more an honorific courtesy, or even recognition of legal expertise acquired extramurally, than a serious step towards a career in the law. Little more than six months after his entry to the inn, Lucy received the summons to the Nominated Assembly, signed by Oliver Cromwell* on the day that most of the writs were issued.46Fairfax-Lucy, Charlecote and the Lucys, 153; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 136.

It is hard to detect any particular influence in Lucy’s selection for the Nominated Assembly. Purefoy was not on the council of state, nor was he himself selected. It is more likely than not that Lucy was chosen because he was of a major gentry family in his home county, even though he was probably absent from it when the summons was received. It seems likely that there was a link between Lucy and William Sydenham*, governor of the Isle of Wight, where the former had an interest through his marriage to Elizabeth Urry. Sydenham enjoyed good relations with Isle of Wight families, made appointments to government commissions there and, following tradition, had in normal circumstances the right to nominate to one seat in each of the boroughs on the island.47A.M. Coleby, Central Government and the Localities: Hants 1649-89 (Cambridge, 1987), 18, 67, 72. Sydenham was a member of the council of state which scrutinized nominations to the assembly, and his name headed the list of those named to the Committee for the Army on 20 July 1653: Lucy was second named.48CJ vii. 287a. Lucy signed army warrants for Sydenham on a number of occasions in he later 1650s.49Add. 29319, ff. 112, 113. Sydenham was also named with Lucy on 1 October to an ad hoc committee to consider a petition from Rutland: these proved to be the only two committees to which Lucy was nominated.50CJ vii. 328a. His low profile in the House is explained by the importance of his work on the Army Committee, which was established by an act published a week after the nominations. Its task was to ensure that the monthly assessments were brought in, by supervising the work of all collectors. The committee could appoint salaried servants of its own, and arrange borrowing at 6 per cent interest for the payment of the army. It was also made responsible for the transport of specie to Ireland and Scotland to pay the forces there, and was to ensure that a third of receipts were handed over to the treasurers of the navy.51Supra, ‘Committee for the Army’; A. and O. ii. 703-8.

On 19 October, an act was passed to bestow wider powers on the Army Committee. They were now to audit the accounts of soldiers and other accountants in service since 15 January 1648, and to refer the cases of defaulters to the commissioners for sequestrations.52A. and O. ii. 768-72. The committee survived the downfall of the Nominated Assembly, being confirmed in position by an ordinance of 28 January 1654, renewed without limitation of time on 20 June of that year.53CSP Dom. 1654, p. 385; A. and O. ii. 835-9; 939-40. It is unsurprising that Lucy, of a county gentry family enjoying several advowsons, was listed with those who sought to retain a godly, state-maintained ministry in the final debates before the assembly’s dissolution.54A Catalogue of the Names of the Members of the Last Parliament (1654, 669.f.19.3). The work of the Army Committee was enough to ensure that Lucy was away from Warwickshire, or at least away from local government there, for most of the 1650s, but it did not destroy his local interest. It brought him closer to the protectoral regime, which appointed him to further offices, as a commissioner for arrears of the excise, and a member of the bench of probate judges.55A. and O. The former office dovetailed neatly with his work on the Army Committee, the ordinance giving him powers to investigate arrears of taxation over another crucial source of state income, and authorizing the farming of the tax.56A. and O. ii. 828-9. It must have been these central offices, and his history of support for the Warwickshire county committee, which gave Richard Lucy the status if not the legal or genealogical title of head of household at Charlecote, where his elder brother lived in seclusion from public life. In the county election for the second protectorate Parliament, held on 12 July 1654 at Warwick, Lucy’s name was first of the four candidates returned: the electors signing the indenture were a mix of former county committeemen and figures like James Prescott, a Lucy family trusted friend and probably their solicitor, who had been charged in the will of Sir Thomas Lucy with helping his widow and children.57C219/44/3; PROB11/185, f. 153v; Warws. RO, L6/185. He was evidently returned at the same time for Warwick, and on 6 October, waived the right to sit for the borough, after William Purefoy, who had been returned for the county and for Coventry, waived his Warwickshire seat. The same day, he and Purefoy were named to a committee on grain supplies; it seems likely that the decisions about the allocation of seats were arranged between the two Warwickshire allies. 58CJ vii. 374b.

Legal matters were prominent in Lucy’s other committee appointments in this Parliament, suggesting that the government was making use of his legal standing as a probate judge. He was on a committee for reform of chancery, was added to one examining the working of writs, and was named to another on petitions of doctors of civil law.59CJ vii. 374a, 382a, 407b. On 29 September he was named to the important committee on the affairs of Scotland, and a few days later was one of a group of 86 Members added to the committee of privileges when its jurisdiction was confirmed to extend to Irish constituencies.60CJ vii. 371b, 373b. The government made use of him as a commissioner in a court of justice to try those responsible for a disturbance at the New Exchange; he had been named on circuit commissions of oyer and terminer from February that year.61CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 156, 169; A. and O; C181/6, p. 15. At the same time, Lucy was prepared to use his influence to intervene on behalf of those excluded, on suspicion of royalism, from the benefit of articles of surrender.62CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 220-1. As befitted one who had reputedly been for a godly, state-supported ministry, Lucy was named to a committee which considered ways of uniting parishes and measures to allow civic corporations to raise maintenance for their ministers.63CJ vii. 397b. He was named as an ‘ejector’ for Warwickshire, further proof of his commitment to a state church. In March 1655, he was named to a special commission of oyer and terminer to deal with the Penruddock rebels.64TSP iii. 296.

Lucy was again returned for Warwickshire in the second Protectorate Parliament, and was more prominent in lists of committee appointments. There was some continuity between his appointments in the last Parliament and this one. Probate reform, abolition of lingering remnants of royal jurisdiction - purveyance and the court of wards - and the interests of the doctors of civil law were the subjects of his committee nominations in the closing months of 1656.65CJ vii. 446a, 449b, 450a, 457a. On the topic of a new bill for probate procedure, Lucy was named with William Purefoy I, and acted as teller opposite his Warwickshire colleague on two occasions. On 15 November, Lucy told for the noes on a motion to stop all private business in the House for 14 days; Purefoy’s ayes tied with the noes at 37 votes, and the Speaker used his casting vote for the ayes.66CJ vii. 454b. Disagreement with Purefoy could focus on local matters. On 2 December, the House debated the locations of county registries for probate, and voted without division on three counties. The House divided on the case of Warwickshire, however. Lucy was teller for the yeas on a motion that the registry should be in Warwick, the county town, and Purefoy told for the noes: the alternative was Coventry. By one vote it was resolved for Coventry. The issue had resurrected tensions between the activists of the Coventry-based county committee, and those who favoured traditional patterns of county government.67CJ vii. 463a; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 296-7.

On religious matters, Lucy maintained his conservative line, telling against a motion which proposed leniency towards the Quaker, James Naylor. He was appointed to a number of committees dealing with state maintenance of ministers, religious observance and the interests of the universities.68CJ vii. 466b, 476b, 477a, 477b, 493b, 588a. He was named also to a range of committees on difficulties arising from entailed estates and property rights, including the notorious case of the legacy in Devon of Eliseus Hele, the details of which were recorded minutely by Thomas Burton*.69CJ vii. 472a, 496b, 501a, 503b, 504a, 505b, 507a, 515b, 546a; CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 385; 1657-8, p. 52; Burton’s Diary, ii. 182-9. These appointments arose naturally from Lucy’s work as a probate judge. He played a minor part in the various meetings between Parliament and the protector over the issues of kingship, and was probably in favour of the offer to Cromwell of the crown, at least according to a republican critic who identified Lucy as a placeman.70A Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 16 (E.935.5). On one of these large delegations to attend the protector, Lucy was listed 89th out of 98, although he and Purefoy were named to a smaller committee of 35, which on 23 May 1657 visited him to fix a further meeting.71CJ vii. 519b, 521b, 538b.

In the second session of this Parliament, Lucy was appointed to a committee on the records of Parliament, and was part of a delegation which visited Henry Scobell, the clerk, to complain that his inventory had omitted all acts and bills. Scobell stood his ground, insisting that the texts of legislation were in public ownership, and were not the private property of either chamber. The committee retreated, abashed.72CJ vii. 588a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 404. In February 1658, Lucy was a teller for the yeas on a motion to put the main question that the title of the Other House should be considered in grand committee. After the votes tied, an intervention by the republican John Fagge ensured that the motion was put, and was lost by 93 votes to 87. There seems little doubt that as a protectorate office-holder, Lucy would have had no objections to the existence of the second chamber.73CJ vii. 591b. It was probably some time between the dismissal of this Parliament and the summer of 1658 that Lucy’s circumstances were transformed by the death of his elder brother, Robert. As the Charlecote estate was entailed on the male side, Richard Lucy now found himself, instead of Robert’s only daughter, its legitimate owner. In order to settle the interests of his niece, Lucy employed the bi-partisan team of Chaloner Chute II* and Geoffrey Palmer* to arbitrate a deal. Richard Lucy was confirmed in possession of the estates, and Bridget Lucy, aged three, received £10,000 as her marriage portion, with an annuity of £800 for life for her mother. Although the case went to law, there is no need to assume that the settlement arose from bitter, personal conflict; it would have been a necessary procedure in the circumstances of Lucy’s unexpected inheritance.74Warws. RO, L6/986; L6/86, 185, 187, 1157. He began to play a part once more in Warwickshire county administration, making six appearances as quarter sessions between October 1658 and July 1659.75Warwick County Records, iv. p. xxv. The corporation of Stratford-upon-Avon had already expressed its confidence in him, recognizing his legal standing as a probate judge, by appointing him recorder in August 1657.

When the elections for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament took place, Lucy was thus possessed of a major estate in Warwickshire, as well as an interest in the Isle of Wight, and he was returned both for his native county and the island borough of Yarmouth. On 2 March 1659, he opted to sit for the county, and a new writ was issued for the borough.76CJ vii. 609b. He played little part in this assembly, perhaps because of a preoccupation with his new estate, but was certainly well-disposed to the regime, being named on 18 April to a committee on security, and making recommendations for navy posts.77CJ vii. 642a; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 354. He was evidently considered reliable enough by the revived Rump to be named as a militia commissioner in Coventry, Warwickshire and the Isle of Wight, and when it was restored for the second time, Lucy was appointed to the Army Committee, a post which he had kept through the various changes of regime since 1653.78CJ vii. 727b, 799a, 824a.

In the elections for the Convention in 1660, he seems to have been again a candidate for the county seat. A friend of Thomas Archer* reported that Lucy and Sir Richard Temple* could expect to pick up votes from the failed campaign of Sir Roger Burgoyne*.79Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, DR 37/box 87/115. Lucy’s own candidacy was either unsuccessful, however, or he may have abandoned it to concentrate on his interest on the Isle of Wight, as he took the seat for Yarmouth. He was quick to adapt to the new monarchy, accepting the royal pardon on 24 May, and signing ‘The humble address of the nobility and gentry of the county of Warwick’ to Charles II. The address enthused over the ‘prudent government of your majesty’s royal father and grandfather’ but noted that this had lasted ‘so long as the known laws of the land in reference to both had their due cause and power’.80SP29/1/49. Lucy held on to his place in the commission of the peace, although he is not known to have attended quarter sessions between July 1659 and 1666. He never recovered a place on the quorum, and inevitably lost office.81CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 445; Warwick County Records, iv. p. xxv; v. p. xxii. In the Cavalier Parliament, he again sat for Yarmouth, as a moderately active Member with sympathies towards the opposition.82HP Commons, 1660-90, ‘Richard Lucy’. Lucy’s daughter married the grandson of Sir John Burgoyne, his opponent at the 1645 election. After Richard Lucy’s death, Charlecote passed to his eldest son, a naval officer, for a few years before it was inherited by the son of Sir Fulk Lucy*.83Fairfax-Lucy, Charlecote and the Lucys, 162-5.