LUKE, Sir Samuel (1603-70), of Woodend, Cople, Beds.

Sir Samuel Luke, widely believed to be the model for the title character in Samuel Butler’s bestselling satire on the civil war, Hudibras (1663), was the epitome of the godly parliamentarian commander. In fact, the identification of Luke as Hudibras himself was not explicitly made until 1715, supposedly on information from the late Sir Roger L’Estrange†, and it must be considered extremely doubtful.28S. Butler, Posthumous Works (1715-17), i. ‘Key to Hudibras’; S. Butler, Hudibras ed. J. Wilders (Oxford, 1967), 452-4. Equally dubious was an earlier claim that Butler had written the poem while living with Luke.29S. Butler, Hudibras (1704), i. sig. a4v-[a5]. What is more certain is that Butler has his hero compare himself to Luke in the lines

ʼTis sung, there is a valiant mamaluke
In foreign land, yclep’d —
To whom we have been oft compar’d,
For person, parts, address, and beard;
Both equally reputed stout,
And in the same cause both have fought.
He oft in such attempts as these

Came off with glory and success...30Butler, Hudibras, 27 (1st part, canto I, ll. 885-92).

The assumption was that the reader would fill in the blank with Luke’s name as a rhyme for ‘marmaluke’. The gloss attributed to L’Estrange explained that Luke was ‘a self-conceited commander under Oliver Cromwell’.31Butler, Posthumous Works, i. ‘Key to Hudibras’. That Butler knew Luke is not in itself implausible as the poet is said to have spent time in the service of one of Luke’s Bedfordshire neighbours, Elizabeth, countess of Kent (widow of the 8th earl).32Aubrey, Brief Lives, i. 135.

Sir Samuel was descended from two distinguished puritan families, the Lukes and the Knightleys. His father, Sir Oliver, was one of Bedfordshire’s most prominent gentlemen and sat as its knight of the shire in all the Stuart Parliaments from 1614 until his death in 1651. A champion of subjects’ liberties, he had been imprisoned for refusing the Forced Loan of 1626-7 and was a patron of godly clergymen. Sir Samuel’s mother, Elizabeth, was one of the Knightleys of Fawsley. Through them, his cousins included the Hampdens and the Fienneses. After three years at Eton, he appears not to have attended either of the universities nor any of the inns of court, but in 1623, aged 20, he embarked on a period of six months’ travel on the continent.33APC 1621-3, p. 468. By his early thirties he was beginning to take on some of the local responsibilities usually expected of the greater gentry; he was named to the Bedfordshire sewers commission in 1636, but it was not until 1640, when he was aged 36, that he was named to the commission of the peace for Bedfordshire and Bedford.34C231/5, p. 418; C181/5, ff. 37v, 187v. That he was not promoted to the bench earlier may reflect suspicions by the court of his family’s puritan connections.

Luke was chosen to represent Bedford in both parliamentary elections of 1640, owing his nomination to his father’s interest in the town and his family’s affluence and prestige within the county. However, on both occasions the election was contested and Luke was double-returned with Sir William Boteler*. That the Commons took time to consider the contested returns prevented him participating in early stages of both Parliaments. In the case of the Short Parliament, his return was still being considered at the time of the dissolution and it seems that he never took his seat.35CJ ii. 17b. He faced similar problems later that year during the opening months of the Long Parliament. Again, his rival was Boteler. This time the election dispute dragged on for months. It was still unresolved on 11 June 1641 when Denzil Holles* raised the issue on Luke’s behalf in the Commons.36Harl. 163, f. 306v. Over a month later the House asked for a report on the case and this led eventually to the decision on 6 August to find in Luke’s favour.37CJ ii. 212b, 239b; Procs. LP vi. 245. It was a measure of how quickly he made his mark in the Commons, or, perhaps more realistically, a reflection of his father’s standing in the House, that almost the first committee to which Luke was appointed was the Recess Committee, the prestigious body created to remain in session while Parliament rose for the duration of the king’s absence in Scotland.38CJ ii. 288b.

With the outbreak of war in the summer of 1642, Luke became an active supporter of the parliamentarian cause in the field, serving as an officer in the army of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.39BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database. For the next three years the war in the country rather than the political battles at Westminster would preoccupy him. His violent engagement with the king’s forces occurred as early as July 1642, even before the king had raised his standard at Nottingham. An attempt to arrest Sir Lewis Dyve†, a royalist, ended in ‘a riot’ in which Luke and one of his servants were reported to have been wounded and to be in ‘peril of their lives’.40HMC 5th Rep. 40; LJ v. 246a; Life and Lttrs. of Sir Lewis Dyve, 39-40, 43, 47. He was therefore granted leave to spend time in the country recuperating, as well as being indemnified for any actions taken during this incident.41CJ ii. 611a, 707a; PJ iii. 38. (The following year he got his revenge when he raided Dyve’s house.42CJ iii. 59a; Harl. 164, f. 379v.) In his absence, Sir Robert Cooke* informed the Commons that Luke would be willing to supply Parliament with two horses and £100.43PJ iii. 467. Despite his earlier wounds, Sir Samuel was nevertheless granted permission to serve with the army, and so was able to take part in the battle of Edgehill in October.44CJ ii. 768a. He was one of the friends of Sir Ralph Verney* who assured Verney’s servant that there was no chance of recovering the body of Sir Edmund Verney* as he had been buried in an unmarked grave.45HMC 7th Rep. 442. The following week he was one of the MPs assigned the task of preparing the letter of thanks for the earl of Essex.46CJ ii. 833a. By the end of that year his immediate concern seems to have been organising the seizure of horses from Parliament’s opponents for the use of the cavalry regiments.47CJ ii. 833a, 834b, 857b, 904b. He was also worried about how the men and those horses would be fed.48Add. 18777, f. 50.

The commission which Luke received from Essex in January 1643 entitled him to raise a troop of dragoons in Bedfordshire.49CJ iii. 156b. Just as importantly, he was now serving as the scoutmaster-general, coordinating the gathering of military intelligence for Essex’s army.50SP28/5, ff. 167; SP28/7, ff. 55, 140, 302, 359; SP28/8, ff. 79, 234; SP28/9, ff. 158, 219; SP28/10, f. 181; SP28/11, ff. 304, 350, 380; SP28/12, f. 130; SP28/13, f. 99; SP28/14, f. 344; SP28/15, ff. 124, 176, 245; SP28/17, ff. 55b, 69, 288, 322; SP28/19, f. 7; SP28/20, f. 59; SP28/21, ff. 161, 183. It was at this time that he began to keep the journal which remains one of the key sources for the military history of the civil war, although it is one which reveals little about Luke himself or indeed about his own military activities.51Luke Jnl. On 23 March a letter from him reporting that the attack by Prince Rupert on Aylesbury had been fended off was read to the Commons.52Add. 31116, p. 69. Several weeks later he and his men were present at the siege of Reading.53C. Coates, Hist. of Reading (1802), 31. Two months later he and John Hampden* were praised by Essex for the enthusiasm with which they pursued the advance towards Oxford and Luke was present at Chalgrove Field (18 June) when Hampden was mortally wounded.54Harl. 165, f. 114. That same month, at the head of a force of 1,000 horse, he was busy trying to prevent a royalist raiding party plundering in Buckinghamshire.55HMC 7th Rep. 552. On 5 July Sir Peter Wentworth* was instructed by the Commons to write to Luke to thank him for his efforts in raising his regiment.56CJ iii. 156b. Luke again saw action at the first battle of Newbury on 20 September, which was why he was one of five army officers thanked by the Commons eight days later.57Luke Jnl. p. v; CJ iii. 256b; Add. 31116, p. 161.

Given his close identification with the earl of Essex, it is perhaps unsurprising that Luke seems to have been linked with the ‘peace party’ in the autumn of 1643. After the loss of Bristol in July of that year, Sir Thomas Barrington* reported that rumours were circulating in his native county, Essex, about a speech, apparently defeatist in tone, which was being attributed to Luke. John Pym* wrote to Barrington to reassure him that ‘I know of no such speech of Sir Samuel Luke’s that should give any cause for amazement’.58HMC 7th Rep. 557. Any sense on Luke’s part that peace was desirable may have been reinforced in October 1643 when royalist forces under Dyve’s command attacked Bedford and destroyed the house he owned on the outskirts of the town.59Life and Lttrs. of Sir Lewis Dyve, 39-40, 43, 47.

Luke clearly stood high in Essex’s opinion, for, after the town fell to Parliament in October 1643, the earl appointed him to command the garrison of Newport Pagnell, the Buckinghamshire fortress which controlled much of the midlands. The garrison comprised between 500 and 1,000 men. Luke’s duties were not merely to ensure its safety but also to operate as the centre of a military intelligence network, responsible for keeping the lord general informed of the latest movements and deployments of their royalist opponents. On a number of occasions, he was able to write to the Commons to warn of royalist advances requiring immediate action from the centre.60CJ iii. 351b, 549b; Harl. 166, f. 61; Add. 31116, p. 261. As his surviving correspondence shows very clearly, the job also involved a constant struggle to extract men, money, arms and other supplies from the surrounding area.61Luke Letter Bks.; ‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir Will. Boteler’, 7-9, 11-13, 15-16. In June 1644 the Commons gave him permission to take timber from the estates of local delinquents so that it could be used to improve the garrison’s fortifications.62CJ iii. 524b. Almost a year later he was given further powers to confiscate men and transport to help repair them.63CJ iv. 70b; ‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir Will. Boteler’, 16. The few parliamentary committees to which he was named during his period as governor were usually connected in some way with his military duties, such as that to organise the requisitioning of horses for Essex’s army (16 Oct. 1643), for the implementation of the sequestration ordinance in Bedfordshire (9 Dec. 1643) or to consider complaints from Bedfordshire about the behaviour of soldiers (24 Jan. 1645).64CJ iii. 276b, 334a; iv. 28b; Add. 18779, f. 25. In October 1643, after the French ambassador sought protection for Walter Montagu, Luke denounced Montagu to the Commons as ‘a Jesuit’.65Add. 18778, f. 61.

Luke took care to cultivate Essex and the earl reciprocated by recognising him as a valued client.66Luke Letter Bks. 398, 415, 439, 452, 473. In June 1644 Essex wrote to Parliament advising them to pay Luke’s arrears.67CJ iii. 531b. This created difficulties, however, once Essex’s position came under attack at Westminster. By March 1645 Sir Oliver was advising his son to adjust to the fact that Essex was probably going to be removed as lord general, telling Sir Samuel to ‘hasten your business and play your own game’.68Luke Letter Bks. 467. Faced with the prospect of his own dismissal, Luke asked his father whether a troop of horse could be found in the New Model army for his own son, but received the discouraging reply that this was ‘not to be attempted, for they want horse for officers [already] appointed’.69Luke Letter Bks. 477-8. By April 1645, after Essex had laid down his commission, Luke was told by his father to concentrate on obtaining his arrears and to keep his junior officers ‘in peace and quiet as well as you can’.70Luke Letter Bks. 502. Essex continued to be his loyal patron – ‘his care of you still seems extraordinary’, Sir Oliver wrote on 14 April – and he advised him to quit Newport Pagnell as soon as he could, lest the poorly paid troops should mutiny to the discredit of Luke’s reputation.71Luke Letter Bks. 513-14. When it came to appointing Luke’s successor as governor, the Presbyterian interest in the Commons rallied in April 1645 to the support of Luke’s favoured candidate. With Essex’s support, Sir Samuel expressed his wish to be replaced by his lieutenant-colonel, Richard Cockraine, and Essex’s allies, Holles and Sir Philip Stapilton*, therefore lent their weight to this appointment.72Luke Letter Bks. 517, 524, 548, 549; CJ iv. 136b. In the end, however, it was the nominee of Sir Thomas Fairfax*, Charles D’Oilie, who was appointed.73CJ iv. 235a; BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database. It seems clear that Holles meanwhile played an instrument part in getting Luke an exemption from the Self-Denying Ordinance in early June 1645 so that he could continue as governor until the end of the month.74CJ iv. 164b, 165a, 166a; Luke Letter Bks. 559, 563. Luke had fewer regrets about relinquishing his position as scoutmaster-general, not least because he had been talking about resigning it anyway.75Luke Letter Bks. 40-2, 67-8, 83, 103, 353, 365-6, 383-4, 393. His replacement was his deputy and protégé, Samuel Bedford*.

Luke suffered a serious illness in May 1645 which, despite his father’s frequent injunctions to attend the House, prevented him from coming up to Westminster.76Luke Letter Bks. 546. His intelligence-gathering skills were nevertheless well-regarded by the Committee of Both Kingdoms, on which, during that summer, Lord Robartes became as important a patron to him as Essex had been. Robartes professed Luke to be ‘a person I much value’.77Luke Letter Bks. 557. Recognising the value of this, Sir Oliver advised his son to address all his communications with the Committee through Robartes. His lordship later assured Luke that he would see to it that he was supplied with arms.78Luke Letter Bks. 559, 562.

Even so, Luke continued to think it worthwhile to foster his links with Essex, who returned his compliments in June 1645, acknowledging Luke’s ‘continual great testimonies of your constant affection to me in these disobliging times’.79Luke Letter Bks. 563. When Luke solicited the earl’s advice on a pressing matter – probably in connection with the continuing uncertainty over his successor at Newport Pagnell – the answer he got back was, according to Sir Oliver, ‘the less you meddle, the safer’.80Luke Letter Bks. 566. But Luke was by now clearly linked with the political Presbyterians. In June 1645, at the time of Fairfax’s campaign in the midlands which culminated in the victory at Naseby, one of the members of the Committee of Both Kingdoms informed Luke’s father that he had heard that Sir Samuel had not invited ‘the General’ during ‘all the time he was in those parts’ near Newport Pagnell.81Luke Letter Bks. 578. His relations with Fairfax were certainly strained, with Fairfax later complaining that Luke had failed to help send horses he had needed for the delivery of despatches.82Luke Letter Bks. 580. This was perhaps unfair, for, as soon as he had heard the news, Luke had written to the Bedfordshire county committee to inform them of the great victory at Naseby, recommending that they send supplies to the army at once, although it is also true that this was partly to discourage the army from billeting in the county on its return.83‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir Will. Boteler’, 21. That he was included in the Commons’ order of 1 July by which he was required to raise recruits in Bedfordshire for Fairfax may have been intended as something of a rebuke by those at Westminster who thought that he ought to be doing that anyway.84CJ iv. 192b; Add. 18780, f. 59v. Philip Skippon*, a political Independent and another of the New Model’s most influential officers, emerged as another of Luke’s enemies at this time.85Luke Letter Bks. 578. By August his appointment as governor of Newport Pagnell was finally terminated. He cannot have been happy to then be asked by the Commons to write to Cockraine to inform him that he was to manage the garrison until Parliament had decided who should replace him.86CJ iv. 235a.

It was not until the final months of 1645 that Luke was free of his military responsibilities and even then he seems to have been reluctant to return to Westminster. Despite the fact that the Long Parliament was then in its fifth year, Luke had spent less than 12 months in attendance before the outbreak of war and so returned only a little more experienced as an MP than he had been when he had first attended the Commons in 1641. His return to Westminster coincided with the period when the divisions between political Presbyterians and political Independents were becoming sharply delineated, first in the context of the debates on the church settlement and later on the terms to be offered to the king in any future settlement. With virtually all his political allies associated with the Presbyterian interest – most obviously, Essex, Holles and Stapilton – he gravitated towards that faction in the House. In October 1646 he carried one of the banners in Essex’s funeral procession.87The True Mannor and Forme of the Proceeding to the Funerall of the Right Honourable Robert Earle of Essex (1646), 10 (E.360.1); Mercurius Civicus no. 179 (22-29 Oct. 1646), 2429 (E.359.9).

In religion, Luke appears to have been a zealous Calvinist who supported Presbyterianism during the 1640s as a means of maintaining order within the church and who was hostile to the excesses of the sectaries. The physician and puritan martyr of 1637 John Bastwick was a friend who acknowledged his ‘frequent courtesies’ and who seems to have provided him with medical advice about an ‘indisposition of body’ in the autumn of 1644.88Luke Letter Bks. 395. As an MP Luke supported moves to appoint elders for the London classes and to enforce the observance of the sabbath, was appointed as one of the commissioners for scandalous offences, backed the moves to regulate Oxford University, and helped suppress lay preaching.89CJ iv. 218a, 411b, 562b, 595b; v. 35a, 174a. At Cople, his country seat, he was proprietor of the local parsonage, which he held from Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1646 he helped sequester those rents for Parliament.90P. Bell, ‘Mins. of the Beds. cttee. for sequestrations 1646-7’, Miscellanea (Beds. Hist. Rec. Soc. xlix), 88, 94; ‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir Will. Boteler’, 29.

One recurring theme of his activity as an MP during his remaining years in the Commons was his interest in the arrears due to the army officers. At its broadest, this probably reflected his wish to see the New Model army disbanded as smoothly and as quickly as possible, but, more narrowly, he was no doubt concerned for the welfare of his former fellow officers. On 12 December 1646 and again on 9 January 1647 he reported to the Commons on the list of delinquents whose estates could be confiscated in order to raise £10,000 for this purpose. On his recommendation, this plan was then approved.91CJ v. 10b, 47b; Add. 31116, p. 593. As it happened, the Committee of Accounts had established that Luke’s own arrears amounted to £4,482 and it may not have been a coincidence that this payment was approved two days later.92CJ v. 45a, 48b. Four months later he updated the House on the plight of those Dutch officers who were still owed money.93CJ v. 173a-b. In July 1648 he was asked to prepare the bill to authorise payments to the reformado officers.94CJ v. 654a.

On 9 July 1647 Luke was granted permission to withdraw to the country and was thus absent from the capital during the crisis of late July and early August. He was, however, at the centre of local events inspired by developments nearer London. On 1 August he was trying to raise forces in Bedfordshire for the defence of London against the army when he was arrested by a group of soldiers. On hearing the news, the Commons, by now dominated by Luke’s Presbyterian friends, set up a committee to investigate this breach of the privileges of one of their own number.95CJ v. 264a, 265a. Luke is likely to have been released after only a short time in custody. That October he was still absent from the House on the grounds of ill health and may not have reappeared there until mid-November, when he was appointed to the committee to investigate the king’s escape from Hampton Court.96CJ v. 329a, 357a.

The following year he was more obviously involved in the response to the uprisings in the south east. On 26 May 1648, in the wake of the rising in Kent, he was one of those sent to consult with the common council of London and with the London militia commission about how best to provide protection for the palace of Westminster.97CJ v. 574a. Once the rebels had occupied Colchester, Luke sat on a number of the committees which organised resistance, including that on the bill to unite the Westminster, Southwark and London militias.98CJ v. 611b, 630a, 631b. In the meantime, he acted as teller in the division on 17 June in which he and his friends tried unsuccessfully to insist that all army officers receiving commissions from Parliament be required to take the Covenant.99CJ v. 604a.

In the first week of December 1648 Luke unquestionably sided with those who favoured further negotiations with the king. On 1 December he acted as a teller, counting those who were cautioning against a too-hasty rejection of the king’s most recent answer. Three days later he again acted as a teller. On that occasion he was on the side which wanted to make it clear that the king had been removed from the Isle of Wight without the Commons’ consent.100CJ vi. 92a, 93a. This ensured that he was among those imprisoned following the purge of the House on 6 December 1648.101A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); A Vindication (1649), 25 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5); The Parliament under the Power of the Sword (669.f.13.52). Unsurprisingly, he took no further part in the Long Parliament after the execution of the king. Thereafter, he is conspicuously absent from any of the local commissions set up during the 1650s. One of his alternative pleasures during those years was his garden, which was why his neighbour, Dorothy Osborne, was able to describe him as ‘a nice florist’.102Dorothy Osborne: Lttrs. to Sir William Temple, 1652-54 ed. K. Parker (Aldershot, 2002), 99.

Luke’s public career revived only in 1660 when he was among those surviving MPs purged in 1648 who resumed their seats in the recalled Long Parliament. For a brief moment in late February and early March 1660 he was once again an active MP. In some respects, this was picking up business where they had left off on being interrupted 11 years earlier. In 1648 Luke had been a member of the committee which had been considering the claim for arrears by Henry Peck*; on 29 February 1660 he was first-named to the committee which continued those deliberations.103CJ vi. 10a; vii. 855b. His other six committee appointments included such familiar topics as the London militia and the treatment of former soldiers.104CJ vii. 854a, 856a-b, 857a, 860b.

In the Convention of 1660 Luke was again returned for Bedford, but took little part in its proceedings.105HP Commons 1660-1690. Although he probably supported the Restoration of the monarchy and received a pardon from the king, he is likely to have been far less comfortable with the full restoration of episcopacy.106PSO5/9, unfol. He died in the summer of 1670 and was buried at Cople, the family seat which he had inherited from his father in 1651. The anonymous editor of an early collection of Samuel Butler’s works claimed that Butler had written a ‘pastoral’ on Luke’s death, but no such poem exists and the claim was presumably made to reinforce the idea that Luke was the model for Hudibras.107Butler, Posthumous Works, ii. sig. [A8]; A.H. de Quehen, ‘An account of works attributed to Samuel Butler’, Review of English Studies, xxxiii. 270. No member of the Luke family sat in any later Parliaments.