POOLE, Edward (c.1617-73), of Kemble, Wilts.

Poole was at Lincoln’s Inn when he married Dorothy Pye, and he owed his election for Wootton Bassett in 1640 to the interests of his father and his father-in-law in Wiltshire. The Pooles had been elected to Parliaments since 1442. Edward’s profile in the Long Parliament was a very modest one. He took the Protestation in May 1641, but it was not until March 1643 that he was named to a committee, and then in the company of his father. It was not a committee of any great consequence: an investigation of a brawl between English and Scots army officers in Westminster Hall.12CJ ii. 133a; iii. 3b. By this time both Pooles, father and son, were in the parliamentarian camp in the civil war, and Edward was much less active than his father. Edward Poole was not active in arms, but from March 1643 served on Wiltshire tax assessment committees on the side of Parliament. He took the Covenant in June, and in August either he or his father were named to committees on illegal movements through the custom house (7 Aug.) and on a petition of clothiers (29 Aug.).13CJ iii. 118a, 196b, 221a.

In September and October 1643, Poole was involved with John Wylde and Francis Rous in inviting and thanking two ministers for their sermons before the assembled Commons, suggesting that Poole was sympathetic to orthodox, Presbyterian clergy.14CJ iii. 255b, 288a. He performed the same tasks with different colleagues twice more, in the summer of 1645, and in 1646 he was involved in selecting the minister for the thanksgiving sermon after the battle of Torrington.15CJ iv. 224b, 245a, 449b, 653a. With Thomas Hodges I, who came from his part of the Wiltshire/Gloucestershire border, he served in December on a committee for reconciling the differences between quarrelling parliamentarians in Somerset, doubtless because of his west country roots.16CJ iii. 352a. Nothing further is heard of Poole until August 1644, when he took to the Lords the ordinance commissioning Sir William Waller* to harass the king’s forces on their return from Cornwall.17CJ iii. 603b, 604a. Another seven months elapsed before he was entrusted with another task, membership of a committee to establish a trust for the payment of the late John Pym’s* debts (4 Mar. 1645). Later the same month, the House awarded Poole and his father a weekly pension of £5 for subsistence.18CJ iv. 69a, 82b.

In July 1645, Poole was named to a committee to take note of the needs of widows of Scots and English soldiers, and on 2 September served on a committee to redress grievances in the south-western counties.19CJ iv. 197a, 262a. In October, Poole was given leave of absence for a month, but did not return for certain until February.20CJ iv. 315b, 449b. Throughout 1646, there are only two mentions of Poole in the Journal; one, another courtesy task involving a preacher to Parliament; the other the granting of further leave to him, from 29 September, for a month.21CJ iv. 653a, 677b. Despite this lacklustre performance, he was not considered ill-disposed to the cause of Parliament. He was named as a commissioner for appeals at his own university, and to a committee to scrutinise the behaviour of MPs suspected of desertion to the king: both tasks unlikely to be allotted to one whose loyalty was in doubt.22CJ v. 83a, 205a. The absences interspersed with relatively prominent appointments may suggest that Poole continued to live entirely in the shadow of his more active father. In 1647, he was granted further periods of leave, evidently on tasks connected with his own county, but never returned to the House. When Parliament was purged in December 1648, Poole may have been absent for almost a year, but nevertheless his name appears on two contemporary lists of those secluded.23CJ v. 281a, 330b, 400b; A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); A Vindication (1649), 29 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5)..

Both Poole and his father withdrew from public life altogether under the commonwealth and the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell*. He was returned for Cricklade to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in January 1659 probably on his own interest.24C219/46, unfol. (Wilts.). Poole was named to two committees, appointed on 1 April to decide what Scottish and Irish business should be discussed by the House.25CJ v. 623a, 623b. He played a minor part in debates on the right of Scottish MPs to sit (18 Mar.), the declaration for a fast day (2 Apr.) and a Quaker petition (6 April), but made only one recorded speech, on 28 March, on the status of the Other House.26Burton’s Diary, iv. 189, 277, 329, 446. Poole’s views on the latter were trenchant. He denounced the new upper chamber as ‘but a mock, an image of the House of Lords’, and dismissed its membership as mostly comprising ‘persons of mean quality, not gentlemen’. By recognising the Other House in its current form, he warned the Commons

You will set up the picture, the representation, the shadow of a House of Lords, and you do wrong to those that are gentlemen and persons of quality among them. An ape is the most ridiculous creature in the world, because like a man and is not. I should think myself at a stage play, to transact with a sort of men in gay clothes, and when those are off, they signify nought.27Burton’s Diary, iv. 277.

Poole ended his speech on a cynical note, suggesting that the new Lords should pay for their elevation: ‘The commonwealth wants money. Let them pay a little money for dubbing’.28Burton’s Diary, iv. 277; Derbs. RO, D258/10/9/2, f. 6v.

After the collapse of the protectorate Poole took no further part in politics until he was re-admitted to the Long Parliament on 21 February 1660.29W. Prynne, A Full Declaration (1660), [56] (E.1013.22). He served in two further Parliaments, elected in 1660 and 1661, but was no more active in either. He was probably preoccupied with his financial affairs. When he made his will in 1672, he recorded how he had had to sell lands for the better settlement of his dependents. Poole left 300 of the best trees in Oaksey Park to his daughter for her portion, and enjoined his trustees to take the advice of the best timber merchants on their value.30PROB11/344/174. None of his family sat in Parliament again.