MARTYN, Christopher (c.1617-78), of Plympton Erle and Chaddlewood, Plympton St Mary, Devon.

Christopher Martyn (as he signed his name) may perhaps have had distinguished antecedents.13Bodl. Nalson VIII, f. 178. One John Martyn sat for Plympton Erle in seven Parliaments between 1363 and 1380, but proof of a genealogical link is lacking. By the mid-seventeenth century, the Martyns of Plympton were of borderline yeomanry-minor gentry status. There were a number of branches of the family in the borough of Plympton Erle, or the wider parish of Plympton St Maurice in which it was situated. The Christopher Martyn ‘gentleman’ whose will was proved in 1592 was presumably a kinsman, but probably not a direct ancestor of the MP.14PROB11/80/46. This Christopher held lands beyond Plympton, and in 1573 leased a tenement in Plympton borough from the feoffees of the town’s charities.15Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 372/17/4/8; 125/387. It is likely that the younger Christopher Martyn’s parents were the John Martyn and Mary Mudge who married at Plympton St Maurice on 8 October 1616, but deficiencies in both parish and borough records leave some doubt. A daughter of ‘Mr’ John Martyn was baptised there in 1620.16Eg. 2764, f. 111v. It is not known how exactly Christopher made his living before 1642, but he was rated on goods worth £5 in the subsidy roll for Plympton Erle in 1641.17E179/102/494. This indicates that by this time he was living independently from his father. At the time of the Protestation imposed by Parliament on the parishes of Devon, probably in the second half of 1641 or early 1642, there were five adult males called Martyn in Plympton St Maurice and another three in Plympton St Mary, but Christopher was at that point churchwarden of his native parish.18Devon Protestation Returns, 234, 236.

Nothing is known of Martyn’s politics before 1642, but after the outbreak of civil war he moved to Plymouth to take a commission in the army of Parliament. In January 1643 he was probably the Captain Martyn who served with Ellis Crymes* in the regiment raised for the town, rather than in the garrison or fort.19SP28/128, pt. 20; Worth, ‘Siege of Plymouth’, 274. But once again, the commonness of the surname in the junior officer cadre of the parliamentarian armies hampers attempts to trace his military career. A Christopher Martin was a quartermaster in one of the regiments of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, in the early years of the war, but his unit was stationed in Middlesex at that time, and Martyn the future MP is not known to have left Devon.20SP28/4/151, SP28/8/95: CSP Dom. 1644, p. 119. In Plymouth, during the siege, a Martyn was promoted to colonel at some point in 1644.21SP28/128, pt. 17. After the death of the garrison commander, Colonel William Gould, in March 1644, the command of the town was put in commission. By mid-April, the officer in sole charge was Lieutenant Colonel Martyn, who broke out of the town to launched attacks on neighbouring settlements and royalist camps, including St Budeaux, Trenaman’s Jump and Mount Edgcumbe.22A Continuation of the True Narrative (1644), 4, 6 (E.47.1); Worth, ‘Siege of Plymouth’, 277-9. But this officer, Robert or Richard Martyn, died in October 1644, with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.23SP28/128, pt. 17; Worth, ‘Siege of Plymouth’, 281. Because Plympton was a stannary town, it may well have been Christopher Martyn who with the rank of captain was in charge of a company in the tinners’ trained band regiment.24Add. 35297, f. 30. What is certain is that, as garrison accounts for April 1645 show, Christopher Martyn never advanced beyond the rank of major.25SP18/128, pt. 17. Around November 1646, after the New Model army had secured the region for Parliament, Martyn was paid for military intelligence he brought to the garrison.26Worth, ‘Siege of Plymouth’, 307.

Martyn’s election to the Long Parliament in February 1647 owed everything to his local credentials and his status as a major in the Plymouth military establishment. Until this point he had played no part in the emerging Devon county committees for militia or penal taxation. He was in the House by 23 April, when with fellow-Devonians Thomas Boone and Edmund Prideaux I he was named to a committee on publications from the army which the Commons found objectionable.27CJ v. 153a. On 9 June he took the Covenant, but that was the last heard of Martyn in the House until 9 October, when with 14 other members from Devon he was reported as absent.28CJ v. 203b, 330a. He was thus in the majority of members from his county who felt alienated from the political conflict at Westminster, and at this phase of his political career showed no trace of sympathy with the line taken by the Independents. But he was back in the Commons by 10 January 1648, when he was named to the committee for reparations due to Members for losses in the civil war.29CJ v. 425a. A few days later he was called to the committee chaired by John Maynard on making the monthly assessment rates more equal. This had been a repeated concern voiced by Devon magistrates and committeemen since 1645, and so the committee attracted a number of Members from that county. But it was not the start of a reinvigorated career at Westminster by Martyn, who was given leave of absence on 24 February and excused at another call of the House on 24 April.30CJ v. 434a, 471a, 543b.

By March 1647, Martyn’s name had appeared in the Devon commission of the peace, but he seems never to have attended quarter sessions at Exeter at any time until he was removed from it in 1660. In 1648, however, he was named to the commission for the militia, and was sufficiently active in it by August to be named to one of the sub-committees that shared the duties that fell to the Devon committeemen.31Add. 44058, f. 26v. By December, it was reported that ‘there are so few of the committee that they have not sat constantly but as much as their occasions would permit’, so the likelihood that Martyn was ever very active has to be discounted.32Add. 5494, f. 99. If in 1648 Martyn was in the House at all that year after January, no proof has been found of it. A potential confusion between Henry Marten* and Christopher Martyn arises in the journals. In both cases, the surname was rendered inconsistently by the journal clerks, and Henry Marten appears as ‘Mr’ and ‘Colonel’ interchangeably. As Christopher Martyn was never a colonel, at least we are left with only the ambiguous ‘Mr’ to deal with. On 14 December, the House divided on a motion to complain to the lord general, Sir Thomas Fairfax* about the continued control by the army over admissions to the palace of Westminster after Pride’s purge.33CJ vi. 97a. A ‘Mr Martin’ was a teller in this division, but it seems very unlikely that it was Christopher Martyn rather than Henry Marten. If it was Christopher, he was pitched into a highly sensitive and controversial political situation for the first time in a career spent in the shadows. In 1660, Martyn’s name appeared in William Prynne’s* catalogue of Members waiting to be properly re-admitted into the restored Long Parliament, but he did not figure in lists which appeared in London on 26 December 1648 and the following 23 January.34W. Prynne, A Full Declaration (1660), [p. 56] (E.1013.22); A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); A Vindication of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1649, E.539.5).

And yet Martyn did return to Parliament: by 8 February 1649, when two men by the name of Martyn, one him and one evidently Henry Marten, were called to a committee revising the commissions of the peace.35CJ vi. 134a. Local confirmation that Martyn embraced the regicide is provided by the request in September from the solicitor for sequestrations that Martyn be added to the Devon committee.36CCC 152. It may have been him or Henry Marten who was named to a committee for the abolition of deans and chapters of cathedrals (20 Feb.) but it was certainly Martyn that was reported on favourably (16 April) by the committee reviewing membership of the Parliament.37CJ vi. 187a. This report presented Martyn’s case as a readmission, but it was surely his long absence from Westminster rather than his conduct in the Commons during December that had prompted the scrutiny. The question inevitably arises as to why Martyn had moved from being a typical Devon MP of the late 1640s, making little contribution to the proceedings of the Commons, to being a Member of the Parliament which had assented to the execution of the king. Martyn seems an isolated figure, in terms of his connections within Devon. No local connections, of a personal or political kind, either in Plympton or in the wider county, can be traced. In July 1651, John Carew* was detailed by the council of state to speak to Martyn about matters of security in the Scilly Isles.38CSP Dom. 1651, p. 388. A few years later, Martyn was summoned to the Nominated Assembly, a body initially dominated by millenarians like Carew and Thomas Harrison I, so it is possible, though seemingly beyond proof, that Martyn came under the influence of Carew at some point in 1648-9.

A number of committees in May 1649 may have claimed the attention of either Martyn or Henry Marten: one on taking public accounts (8 May), one on proceedings in exchequer (21 May) and one to review the operation of the Committee for Advance of Money (28 May).39CJ vi. 204b, 213a, 218b. These were all financial committees. On 29 May both Marten and Martyn were added to two important committees involving revenue – the Committee of Navy and Customs and the committee for the excise – and it is known that Martyn was active in both these bodies.40CJ vi. 219b. He was not a frequent attender at the excise committee, but turned up on average about once a month.41Bodl. Rawl. C.386. Far less evidence can be assembled for his involvement with the Committee of Navy and Customs, but he is known to have attended on occasion in each of the years 1650, 1651 and 1652.42Add. 22546, f. 31; SP18/17/175, 178; SP18/30/142.

From June 1649, Martyn was involved in a number of committees involving religion, which tend to support the idea that an association with the millenarian Carew may lie behind his involvement in the Rump. He was called to a committee on the gospel in New England (13 June), on whether or how the Parliament should draw up articles of faith (26 July) and on the gospel in Yorkshire (7 June).43CJ vi. 231a, 270b, 420b. Unfortunately, in the early months of 1651 the Journal clerk lapsed into a vague description of ‘Mr Martin’ which makes it hard to distinguish between Martyn and his much more prominent colleague. In January 1651, it was probably he to whom the petition of a London merchant, Maurice Gardner, was referred, because trade was an interest of his, and because the petition was also referred to another rare west country Rumper, John Moyle II.44CJ vi. 527b. It was certainly Martyn who was called to produce further legislation on the sales of estates (3 Dec.), and on army finance (26 Dec.).45CJ vii. 46b, 58a. On 23 December, he was named to the committee on a petition, and on 21 January 1652 was named to the committee for the better enforcing the judgment against the Leveller leader, John Lilburne.46CJ vii. 55b, 75b. Much less certainty attaches to the committees on negotiations with Portugal (10 April 1651) and the division on a clause in the bill for sales of estates (16 July), in which either Martyn or Marten may have been involved.47CJ vi. 560a, 605a. It seems more plausible that it was the highly visible Marten, rather than Martyn, who brought in a bill in the spate of rewards and thanks after the battle of Worcester (6 Sept. 1651).48CJ vii. 13b.

Martyn’s last unquestionable appearance in the Rump came on 15 July 1652, when he was a member of a committee to consider ways of raising money from forfeited estates.49CJ vii. 154b. No evidence has been found to show that he attended a meeting of either the excise committee of the Committee of Navy and Customs after January 1652. Unlike those Rumpers who were regarded askance by the millenarians, however, Martyn was evidently considered by men like Harrison and Carew to have something to bring to the new assembly, inaugurated in July 1653. Martyn was one of a small and mainly obscure group from Devon, and the influence of John Carew, rather than that of the army officers, is probably significant in the appointments. In the event, however, Martyn seems not to have taken his seat. There is no record of his attendance nor of lodgings in London being procured for him. During the year when he should have been in London attending the Nominated Assembly, he was in south Devon perfecting his marriage arrangements with Jane Snelling.

The Snellings were a family of more unambiguously armigerous status than the Martyns, although they were minor gentry. A Martyn and a Snelling had intermarried earlier in the century, their union recorded on a tomb in the church at Plympton Erle.50J. Brooking Rowe, Hist. Plympton Erle (1906), 254. The Snellings had run out of male heirs by the time that Christopher Martyn married into their family. Jane Snelling was one of the heiresses, and after November 1655, Snelling took possession of the Snellings’ home, Chaddlewood, in right of his wife.51PROB11/246/282. From 1650 he farmed the tithes of Plympton Erle after their confiscation from the dean and chapter of St George’s, Windsor, and the same year presided over an inquiry into the two Plympton parishes which proposed a merger. 52E113/6; Brooking Rowe, Hist. Plympton Erle, 278. His marriage, his property interests and his parliamentary experience combined to make Martyn an important figure in Plympton, and he retained his place in the commission of the peace when commonwealth gave way to protectorate in December 1653. His appointment as a commissioner for ejecting ‘scandalous’ ministers under the legislation of the Cromwellian council of state showed that he was regarded by protectorians both as loyal and godly.

When the Cromwellian protectorate itself ran into the sands, Martyn reclaimed his seat in the revived Rump, and was in the House at the latest by 20 June 1659. He and Thomas Boone, the Dartmouth Member, were named to a committee on a bill for bringing in revenue.53CJ vii. 690a. On 27 June he was one of those required to bring in a bill on the militia, an appointment which recognized his long service in Devon as a militia commissioner, confirmed in a renewal of his commissionership in August.54CJ vii. 694b, 744a, 750b. During that summer he was called to four more committees: on petitions from Lincolnshire (30 June), the petition of the Irish adventurers (6 July), the bill for probate of wills (14 July) and the committee for the Forest of Dean, to which Martyn was added to consider the petition of the military purchasers of Enfield Chase, Middlesex.55CJ vii. 697b, 706a, 717b, 721a. After mid-August he becomes once again hard to distinguish from Henry Marten in the parliamentary record. On 2 September, the council of state ordered lodgings to be found for him in Whitehall, and he may have been the ‘Mr Martin’ who was asked to consider Parliament’s oath of allegiance, the Engagement, on the 6th; but by the 16th of that month, Martyn was in Plymouth. From there, he was evidently acting as a militia commissioner, alongside Henry Hatsell*. He and his colleagues complained that no money had been raised either in Devon or Cornwall for the militia, preventing them from acting on the orders of the council of state.56CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 165; CJ vii. 744b; Bodl. Nalson VIII, f. 178. They requested further orders, but Parliament’s response was to fine Martyn £20 for absence, at a call of the House on 30 September.57CJ vii. 789b.

Martyn probably never returned to London from the south west before the Convention of 1660. In January that year he was appointed governor of Pendennis Castle, an appointment which lasted until the return of the Members secluded in 1648.58CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 322. After having sat in the Rump, been called to the Nominated Assembly, served the protectorate locally, and sat in the restored Rump, ‘Mr Christopher Martin’ now appeared among William Prynne’s list of diehard Secluded Members, ‘refusing to sit till their restitution, to undeceive the nation and world’.59Prynne, A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members (1660), [55] (E.1013.22). It was doubtless his low political visibility that accounted for this, rather than any special capacity on his part for trimming. He did not in fact join the Secluded Members, and although elected for a final time as Member for Plympton in the Convention, played no part in its proceedings. The Restoration marked the end of his political career. He lost all local offices after the summer of 1660, and the monarchical government marked him as a suspect. In 1665 he and Henry Hatsell were identified as men most likely to cause an insurrection in the south west.60SP29/449/90. For that reason, and because of his local social seniority and reputation, politically tarnished though they were, it is unlikely that he would have been acceptable as a mayor of Plympton Erle in 1663, or that he would have been willing to serve.61HP Commons, 1660-90. Martyn died in January 1678 and was buried at Plympton St Mary. His son, John Martyn, married into the Walrond family - like the Snellings more socially elevated than the Martyns themselves – with a settlement of £1,000.62Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 710/942. His grandson was still at Chaddlewood in 1709, but the family played no known further part in parliamentary politics.