ONSLOW, Arthur (1622 or 1624-1688), of Knowle, Surr.

Described by his grandson as ‘a man of great plainness and sincerity and of most remarkable sobriety of life’, who ‘knew more of the law and the constitution, especially which related to the administration of justice in the country, than perhaps any gentleman of that age’, Onslow began his parliamentary career while still under age.31HMC 14th Rep. IX, 483-4. Different dates have been given for his baptism, but even if the earlier is correct, as the grandson assumed, he was still under 20; if the later, as is indicated by abstracts from the Cranley parish registers, then he was under 18. Either way, the assertion that he owed his candidacy at Bramber to his father’s friendship with Thomas Howard, 14th or 21st earl of Arundel, remains very plausible.32HMC 14th Rep. IX, 483; Surr. Arch. Colls. vi. 54; infra, ‘Sir Richard Onslow’. Elected first on a double return declared void on 16 December 1640, he was returned at a by-election and had taken his seat by 3 May 1641, when he took the Protestation.33Procs. LP, i. 618-19, 621; CJ ii. 51b, 133b.

Initially without experience of public office and, according to his grandson, ‘not anyways formed for the business of state’, Onslow spent many years in his father’s shadow.34HMC 14th Rep. IX, 483. He was made an assessment commissioner in February 1643, but it was not until 26 May that year that he had his first committee nomination in the Commons, to consider propositions for supplying eastern England with coal from Newcastle and for capturing the port itself – unless, as is not unlikely, uncertainty in the record indicates that his father was the Member intended.35A. and O.; CJ iii. 104b. He took both the vow and covenant, pledging support for the parliamentarian army, on 15 June and the solemn league and covenant, confirming acceptance of the alliance with the Scots, on 30 September.36CJ iii. 130b, 259a.

Meanwhile, he was consistently named to local commissions.37A. and O. There is no evidence that he undertook military service, either in his father’s regiment or elsewhere, but he appeared to be involved related matters. On 5 June 1645 he was named with Sir Richard to the committee sent to Guildhall to treat with financial backers of the New Model army, while that September he seems to have been sent with Sir Robert King* to do business related to the forces in Ireland.38CJ iv. 164a, 261b, 264b. He was last on the Journal’s list of nominees to the committee to discuss the ordinance for martial law (1 Jan. 1646).39CJ iv. 394b.

In April 1647 Onslow married the only child of Sir Richard’s longstanding associate in the Surrey militia, Nicholas Stoughton*, who had entered Parliament in 1645. Stoughton barred the entail on his estate to allow his daughter to inherit, but she died in childbed only a week after her father in March 1648, leaving a short-lived daughter, and the property soon reverted to the male line. Within about a year Onslow married the eldest daughter of Thomas Foote*, a Grocer and London alderman, who was a member of the London militia committee and treasurer for the Irish subscriptions, and who was lord mayor 1649-50.40HMC 14th Rep. IX, 487; Add. 6174, ff. 140, 141; Nicholas Stoughton, infra, Thomas Foote, supra. The match not only extended Onslow’s links with religious Presbyterians (reflected in his appointment with his father and Stoughton as an elder in 1648) but also brought him ‘a great fortune’.41HMC 14th Rep. IX, 487; Shaw, Hist Eng Church, ii. 433.

On 19 June 1648 Onslow reported from the Committee for Irish Affairs, on which he had perhaps replaced Stoughton, a letter from the Old English commander in Ireland, James Butler, 1st marquess of Ormond, by this time exiled in France.42CJ v. 605b. While Sir Richard pursued the Newport treaty with the king, Onslow was appointed to the committee considering which castles and garrisons would be maintained and which destroyed (25 Nov.).43CJ vi. 87a. He was secluded at Pride’s Purge (6 Dec.), his name appearing in the same garbled form (‘Aneslco’) as his father’s in a contemporary listing of the purge victims.44A Vindication (1649), 29 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5). Like his father, he did not sit after the purge, but like both Sir Richard and Foote he accepted local office, being appointed for the first time in March 1651 to the Surrey commission of the peace.45C231/6, p. 212.

With his father, Onslow was elected to the first protectorate Parliament, but left no trace of his attendance in the official record. Re-elected in 1656, he was named on 18 September to the privileges committee, but received no other appointments during the first session.46CJ vii. 424a. Absent at the call of the House on 31 December, he was excused on the grounds of having smallpox in his family.47Burton’s Diary, i. 287. It is not known whether he shared his father’s enthusiasm for the scheme to offer the crown to Oliver Cromwell*.

Onslow finally emerged from Sir Richard’s shadow in the second session of the Parliament, when the latter was called to the Other House. A clutch of committee nominations in late January 1658 – in particular his addition to the committee for highways (26 Jan.) – suggest that he was acknowledged to be taking over the baton from Sir Richard, but his recorded interventions in debate at this juncture reveal a man with his own opinions and expertise.48CJ vii. 588b. On the first day of normal proceedings he was among a small group of MPs appointed to consider the form of oath taken by the clerk of the House, a task requiring grasp of precedent and technicalities (21 Jan.).49CJ vii. 579a. Evidently concerned to widen representation in the Commons as well as to expedite its traditional business, he moved successfully the same day for a revival of the committee of privileges and an increase in its membership.50Burton’s Diary, ii. 331, 333. He himself was among those added: the fact that he had already been named in September 1656 provides evidence that he may have been hitherto inactive.51CJ vii. 580b. Consistently with his intervention a few days earlier, he supported the committee’s recommendation that more time be allotted to the bringing in of petitions regarding contested elections, presumably to hear thoroughly the representations of those who had been excluded by the government for their Presbyterian sympathies.52Burton’s Diary, ii. 348, Having failed to gain more time for private business, especially the case of the ruined royalist financier, William Craven, Baron Craven – he was defeated by the radical civilian Sir Arthur Hesilrige* in a division (28 Jan.) – when Hesilrige moved for the issuing of a writ for an election at Hereford, Onslow complained that discussion had taken three days (4 Feb.).53Burton’s Diary, ii. 375-7, 442; CJ vii. 589a.

Added (21 Jan.) to the committee for raising maintenance for ministers of the church, the same day Onslow nailed his Presbyterian colours to the mast by moving for a clerical assembly to advise Parliament on the settlement of religion.54Burton’s Diary, ii. 580b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 335. He was also added to the committee for a bill enabling trustees to purchase impropriations (26 Jan.) – another revival of a godly project from the 1630s.55Burton’s Diary, ii. 588a. Other signs of his religious and social agenda surfaced in his appointment to committees to consider acts for the registration of births, deaths and marriages and to curb non-residence among heads of university colleges and halls (22 Jan.).56CJ vii. 581a.

Onslow’s inclusion on the deputation to attend the protector to encourage him to deliver a paper on public finance (28 Jan.) suggests that he had at last made an impact in the chamber.57CJ vii. 589a. Perhaps he was less persuaded than his father of the necessity of loyalty to the protectorate. As the House engaged in frustratingly lengthy debate about the nature of the Other House, he expressed indifference to its nomenclature – ‘I think there is not so much in it’ – but he was clear that its authority should be defined and limited, calling for the insertion of a clause that the title chosen ‘shall not extend to the giving of any powers more than are given, or shall be given by the Petition and Advice’.58Burton’s Diary, ii. 456.

Elected again to the 1659 Parliament, Onslow was named to only two committees, albeit ones which potentially afforded him influence over the proceedings of the House. As before, he was included on the privileges committee (28 Jan.) and under commission from Protector Richard, he was among those Members authorised to tender to MPs the oath of loyalty to the protector (27 Jan.). 59CJ vii. 593a, 595a. He expressed himself content to employ the same clerk he had helped to appoint in the previous Parliament.60Burton’s Diary, iii. 5.

However, he made a major contribution was to debate, where he showed himself a supporter of legality, traditionalism and moderation. Keen to see due procedure, he evidently took very seriously the charges of atheism and blasphemy levelled against Henry Neville* and for that very reason would accept only a formal and appropriately drawn accusation against him, to be fully investigated (16 Feb.).61Burton’s Diary, iii. 297–8, 301, 304. As he observed the next day, he ‘would have no jangling motions’ driving business in the House; a letter addressed to it from the protector should be put ‘wholly aside’ since it did not relate to what was in hand.62Burton’s Diary, iii. 310, 321. Equally, ‘hasty acts of Parliament’ deserved to be repealed, unless they had not been properly engrossed, in which case he implied they could be ignored.63Burton’s Diary, iii. 509.

When discussion turned to political settlement and the role of the chief magistrate, he exhibited both pragmatism and a desire for a balanced and relatively familiar constitution, preferably on the basis proposed in the negotiations of 1648. ‘I am not for debating new forms, but for stating that we live under’, he explained; ‘we have recognised a protector [and] I would have us recognise a Parliament’. Although ‘we are creating a government out of the ruins of the people’, it was a question of rebuilding: he ‘knew no difference between our constitution now and before, but in the name of the single person’, and this person should be accorded neither more nor less power than the late king (18 Feb.).64Burton’s Diary, iii. 329, 334. Specifically, he ‘would have no more given to this single person than was comprehended in the propositions at the Isle of Wight’ (19 Feb.).65Burton’s Diary, iii. 366. As he indicated in his endorsement of the verdict from the committee of grievances that an imprisonment by the lieutenant of the Tower, authorised by the protector, was unjust and illegal, he did not advocate unfettered authority: ‘no law gives the chief magistrate power to commit any man of his own accord’; the committals of parliamentary critics of the crown in 1628, for example, had been authorised by the privy council rather than the king, and had anyway been condemned (26 Feb.).66Burton’s Diary, iii.496–7.

As regarded the Other House, Onslow thought it should be established on traditional lines but with its composition regulated by the Commons within a defined system of checks and balances. He refuted the idea that ‘it was any part of the [original] quarrel to take away a House of peers’ and ‘hope[d] in due time, we shall return where we were’ (18 Feb.).67Burton’s Diary, iii. 344. On the other hand, he moved to restrict its size, to void all peerages made since the king had abandoned his capital and the great seal, and to subject any new creations to ‘the judgement of both Houses’. He agreed that the powers of both should be scrutinized. ‘There may be as much reason for bounding the House of Commons: we have seen how all have exceeded their bounds’ (19 Feb.); ‘I hope, while making limits for others, we make not ourselves boundless’ (22 Feb.).68Burton’s Diary, iii. 366, 368, 415. If legislation was to be taken as the basis for limitation, then he hoped that MPs would ‘not forget to look into the good old laws, Magna Charta and others, and not begin with the Petition and Advice, and conclude that [to be] a law, which is not yet determined to be a law’ (28 Feb.).69Burton’s Diary, iii. 510. The issue was difficult, he conceded, and the Commons had lost clear direction

I am afraid we are in a wood. No wonder the nation is puzzled, when the wisdom of the nation is puzzled in this place. Once out of the way, we see how hard it is to get in again.

MPs also lacked expertise: ‘none of us are attorneys or solicitors’ (a somewhat tactless assertion given the lawyers and antiquaries present). The rules should thus be set by consultation ‘with nobles and great men’ and with reference to the whole framework of the law (22 Feb.).70Burton’s Diary, iii. 415–6.

Such sentiments were unwelcome not just to radicals but also to those who wished to assert the pre-eminence of the Commons. However, if they did cause serious altercations, these were not recorded: Onslow seems to have escaped direct attacks on his integrity. There is a glimpse of confrontation with Edmund Ludlowe II*, but this was over a relatively minor issue of alleged delinquency in Worcester (22 Feb.), and he contested the assertion of Sir Henry Vane II* that the proposed declaration of a fast was coercive (2 Apr.).71Burton’s Diary, iii. 434; iv. 329. Onslow’s apparently temperate demeanour and moderate stance allowed for some co-operation over particular issues with those of otherwise different positions. He was at one with Hesilrige in moving ‘that a very considerable navy be forthwith provided and put to sea for the safety of this commonwealth and the preservation of the trade and commerce of thereof’ (23 Feb.).72Burton’s Diary, iii. 444. It was ‘a business which deserves a vigorous prosecution’. But he refused to be precipitated into an aggressive war against the Dutch or anyone else: ‘it is not Christian, when our neighbour’s house is on fire, to run to partake of the spoil’ (21 Feb.). 73Burton’s Diary, iii. 399. While conceding that he was ‘as jealous of [the Dutch] as any’, he declined to provoke those who were currently allies; the purpose of both the navy and the militia were to keep things ‘in a balance’ and preserve peace. The Commons having voted that the fleet set sail on this basis, he was happy to leave the details of implementation to the protector (24 Feb.).74Burton’s Diary, iii. 451, 463.

A readiness to trust others within defined limits and perhaps a reputation for reasonableness may have assisted Onslow in pressing for leniency for delinquents. When Sir Thomas Fairfax*, now 3rd Baron Fairfax, preferred a petition for the discharge from imprisonment of his son-in-law George, 2nd duke of Buckingham, Onslow moved ‘that he be at liberty, not upon the terms that Lord Fairfax moved, but upon the principles of common justice’. To release him on security offered by Fairfax made sense based on experience of the former general: ‘he that has been trusted with three nations, we may well trust him with a single person’.75Burton’s Diary, iii. 370.

Onslow was absent from records of proceedings during March 1659 and his name occurs only twice in the diary of Thomas Burton* in April. None the less, his promotion on 2 April of the fast day surely relied on his being a consistently conscientious Member.76Burton’s Diary, iv. 329–30. His report on 13 April regarding justices of the peace summoned to account for their conduct in levying assessments or excise indicates that his committee work may have been greater than appears in the Journal.77Burton’s Diary, iv. 419.

It is not clear whether Onslow joined his father among those of the Long Parliament who re-took their seats in February 1660. It would be noteworthy if he did, but then immediately retreated to his previous, subordinate role in the shadows. It may be indicative that, unlike Sir Richard, he was not reappointed to the commission of the peace that March, although he was named a militia commissioner.78A. and O.

Father and son were defeated at the county elections to the Convention, but were returned at Guildford. After the Restoration both benefited from their long-standing connection with the Howard family. Re-elected for Guildford to the Cavalier Parliament, Onslow received a mark of royal favour in the form of the special remainder of his father-in-law’s baronetcy, although it was to be a long time before he could enjoy it. He represented the county on three further occasions before his death on 21 July 1688.79HP Commons 1660-1690; CB; Norf. RO, How 19/343; Sheffield Archives, CM/1807. His grandson was mistaken in not ‘find[ing] him at all engaging in parliamentary transactions’ and perhaps underestimated his role in party politics, but there was at least some plausibility in his assertions that Onslow’s exemplary private life earned respect, that he ‘had all the qualities which make men useful to and beloved by their neighbours and countrymen’ and that in Parliament he was ‘stead[y]... to his own principles and in support of the liberties of the people and the Protestant interest’.80HMC 14th Rep. IX, 483-5. Through his sons Richard Onslow† and Foot Onslow† and their descendants, he also helped to perpetuate an important parliamentary dynasty.