POTTER, Hugh (1596-1662), of Lincoln’s Inn, Mdx., and Petworth, Suss.

Potter belonged to a minor Devon gentry family, whose pedigree was not registered with the heralds until the visitation of 1620.21Vivian, Vis. Devon, 612. His father was reportedly ‘a man of a good real and personal estate to the value of two thousand pounds and upwards’.22C7/172/138. Although the eldest son, with the expectation of inheriting the family estate, Potter decided to enter the legal profession – probably because his patrimony was too modest to sustain the lifestyle of a gentleman. He undertook the usual seven years’ study for the bar before being called at Lincoln’s Inn in 1622.23LI Black Bks. ii. 236. The following year, he joined the household of Henry Percy, 3rd earl of Northumberland, as a ‘payer of foreign payments’ and was to remain in the service of the Percys for the rest of his life.24Household Pprs. of Henry 9th Earl of Northumb. ed. G.R. Batho (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xciii), 160. His likely patron was his ‘much esteemed friend and cousin’ (Sir) John Melton*, who was the earl’s ‘disburser of the privy purse and payer of foreign payments’.25Alnwick, X.II.6, box 12, bdle. k: Melton to Potter, 6 July 1638; Northumb. Household Pprs. ed. Batho, 158. By 1626, Potter had become the earl’s secretary and paymaster of his Sussex estates and was described by one of his acquaintances at Petworth – the Percys’ Sussex seat – as ‘a marvellous honest, civil young man’.26W. Suss. RO, PHA 611-14; Cosin Corresp. ed. Ornsby, 97.

Potter’s honesty and civility evidently recommended him to Algernon Percy†, who succeeded to the earldom of Northumberland in 1632. The 4th earl retained Potter as his secretary (until 1633) and appointed him receiver of the Percys’ extensive estates in northern England (in 1650, Potter was promoted to receiver-general and surveyor of these estates).27Alnwick, U.I.5, U.I.6: general household accts. 1631-86; O.I.1(h): patent, 15 Mar. 1650; W. Suss. RO, PHA 5831; Northumb. Household Pprs. ed. Batho, 160. With his appointment as lord high admiral of England in March 1638, Northumberland was ideally placed to secure Potter the lucrative office of registrar of the admiralty court in 1639.28HMC 6th Rep. 223. As one of the earl’s most trusted men, Potter helped to initiate Robert Scawen* into Northumberland’s service in 1639-40 and was congratulated by Melton accordingly: ‘I doubt not but my lord will find good satisfaction, and you have discharged not only the part of a friend to the gentleman [Scawen] but of a good officer and servant to my lord’.29Alnwick, X.II.6, box 12, bdle. k: Melton to Potter, 17 Jan. 1640.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Potter was returned for Berwick-upon-Tweed. Although he was obviously a carpetbagger, the backing not only of Northumberland but also of the town’s recorder, Sir Thomas Widdrington*, was enough to see off a challenge from a nominee of Berwick’s military governor.30Supra, ‘Berwick-upon-Tweed’. He received no appointments in the Short Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. His friend and fellow Northumbrian MP Sir John Fenwick wrote to him at Alnwick on 14 April that there had been a call of the House on the first day of sitting and that Potter’s absence had been noted: ‘but nothing [was] said against those that were absent’. When there was occasion, Fenwick reassured him, ‘I shall make the best excuse I can for you’.31Alnwick, Y.III.2(4)8: Fenwick to Potter, 14 Apr. 1640.

In the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn, Berwick’s governor took advantage of Northumberland’s tardiness in writing to the corporation on Potter’s behalf to have a nominee of the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) returned in his place.32Supra, ‘Berwick-upon-Tweed’. Denied a seat at Berwick, Potter was returned for the Devon constituency of Plympton Erle on 20 November 1640 in place of Sir Nicholas Slanning, who had opted to sit for Penryn. Although a native of Devon, Potter had no proprietorial interest in the borough, and it is clear that he owed his return to Northumberland. This would explain why the earl’s attorney, Thomas Cartwright, hired the antiquary, William Hakewill†, to obtain new writs for ‘Portsmouth, Plympton and St Ives for new elections for one burgess in each of them’.33Kent Archives, U1475/A98: Thos. Cartwright’s acct. to Jan. 1641. Both of the men returned for the other two boroughs in November 1640 were intimately connected with Northumberland.34Supra, ‘Edward Dowse’; infra, ‘Edmund Waller’.

Despite all the effort that went into getting him elected, Potter cut a lacklustre figure at Westminster. He was named to only four committees in the Long Parliament – for reforming the postal service (10 February 1641), investigating the impost on wine (26 May), on a petition from Hertfordshire (30 August) and for redressing the grievances of the county of Northumberland (28 May 1642).35CJ ii. 82a, 157a, 276a, 591b. And he made only one recorded contribution in debate, when he informed the House on 2 March 1641 concerning Northumberland’s intentions as lord admiral.36Procs. LP ii. 598. He was among several northern MPs whom Strafford wished to call as a defence witness at his trial – an indication of Potter’s importance in the Strafford-Northumberland network in the north.37LJ iv. 191a. However, on 26 March 1641 he was granted leave of absence on Sir John Hotham’s motion, and it is unlikely that he returned to Westminster much before 19 May (weeks after the trial had ended), when he took the Protestation.38CJ ii. 113b, 149b; Procs. LP iii. 153. He was granted further leave of absence on 24 March 1642 – this time on the motion of Sir Henry Vane II – and again on 27 June when his services were required by Northumberland to fill in for the recently-deceased auditor of the earl’s northern estates.39CJ ii. 494b, 641a; PJ ii. 78.

During the early stages of the civil war, Potter had dealings with the king’s party that in a less well connected MP might have been taken as prima facie evidence of royalism. For example, he secured a patent for his office in the admiralty at the royalist headquarters at Nottingham on 24 August 1642.40Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 335. He had returned to London by early February 1643, when some of the ‘fiery spirits’ indignantly noted that whereas he and several other MPs could be seen walking the capital’s streets every day they did not deign to grace the Commons with their presence.41Add. 18777, f. 142. The Commons ordered that the MPs in question attend the House ‘peremptorily’.42CJ ii. 955a. Potter duly appeared on 8 February, but when pressed as to whether he would assist the earl of Essex with life and estate, replied that ‘it was a matter of great weight [and] desired that he might have time to consider of it’.43Harl. 164, f. 291. This answer did not satisfy many in the House, who pressed him again to declare himself, whereupon ‘he humbly showing that he could not for the present satisfy his conscience therein, some of the hotter spirits called out “withdraw, withdraw”’. Commanded to withdraw by the House, he does not seem to have attended the Long Parliament ever again.44CJ ii. 958b; v. 330a, 543b; vi. 34b. On 28 September 1643, the Commons resolved that his estate and office in the admiralty be sequestered for his ‘long and willful neglecting and deserting the service of the commonwealth in not attending, as he ought, in the House’.45CJ iii. 256a.

Whether Potter genuinely sympathized with the king’s party is not clear. Certainly his brother George Potter, an Exeter merchant, was a firm royalist and suffered for his loyalty to the king.46Mercurius Aulicus no. 2 (8-14 Jan. 1643), 22 (E.86.22); CCC 1384; CCAM 820. However, there were obvious pragmatic reasons for Potter’s not wishing to seem a committed adherent of the parliamentarian cause. For much of the 1640s his main preoccupation was managing Northumberland’s northern estates, and during the early years of the civil war many of these lay under royalist control. Potter’s residence at York during its time as a royalist garrison, and his attendance upon the queen there in April 1643, were occasioned largely, it seems, by the routine duties incidental to his management of the earl’s estates.47Alnwick, P.I.O(o): Potter to Northumberland, 28 Sept. 1642, 29 Apr. 1643, 1 May 1643. Nevertheless, the Oxford Parliament tried to claim him as one of its own in January 1644, listing him among those MPs whose duties in the king’s service elsewhere prevented them from attending its proceedings.48Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 575.

Following the collapse of the royalist war-effort in the north after the defeat at Marston Moor in July 1644, Potter was active in guarding the earl’s local interests against parliamentarian, and particularly Scottish, encroachment. With the unpaid Scottish army quartered across the northern counties during the mid-1640s, draining the region of money and supplies, the collection of rents remained his major problem. In the course of his duties as the earl’s northern steward he fraternized with most of his master’s friends and clients in the region, including Ferdinando 2nd Baron Fairfax*, Sir John Fenwick, Sir Wilfrid Lawson*, Francis Pierrepont*, Francis Thorpe* and Robert Fenwicke*.49Alnwick, P.I.3(o, p, q, r): Potter to Northumberland, 29 Apr. 1643, 15 Dec., 26 Dec. 1644, 3 Jan., 27 Jan., 31 Jan., 14 Mar. 1645; 9, 15 May, 21 June, 18 July, 28 Oct., 6 Dec. 1645; 4 Nov. 1646. In the spring of 1645, he met with Sir William Armyne*, the most influential of Parliament’s commissioners in the north, who proved keen to defend the earl’s interests against the Scots and informed Potter that ‘he had received letters from some friends of mine [Potter’s] in the House to know why I so long absented myself from the House, notwithstanding the orders for summoning Members’. Potter replied that he had never received any summons from the House and had received a dispensation from the (now defunct) Committee of Safety* to attend Northumberland’s affairs in the north.50Alnwick, P.I.3(q): Potter to Northumberland, 9 May 1645. Armyne was apparently satisfied with this explanation, although it is possible that he was concerned less by Potter’s absenteeism than the thought that a potentially useful link in the Independent network at Westminster should go wanting. Scawen, for example, was a hugely important figure in the supply and management of the New Model army.51Infra, ‘Robert Scawen’.

Like Sir John Fenwick, Potter came under suspicion at Westminster during the winter of 1645-6 for his former willingness to do business with the royalist administration in the north.52Alnwick, O.I.P(q): Potter to Northumberland, 29 Dec. 1645. But unlike Fenwick, he did not have powerful enemies on the Northumberland county committee, and nor was he as deeply compromised by his involvement with the royalists.53Supra, ‘Sir John Fenwick’; Alnwick, O.I.2(f): Northumberland to Potter, 12 May 1646. Northumberland assured Potter of his support and that of Widdrington and the earl’s other friends when his case came before the House and was confident of a good outcome: ‘you having done so little to give offence’.54Alnwick, Northumberland MS O.I.2(f): Northumberland to Potter, 13 Jan. 1646; O.I.P(q): Potter to Northumberland, 17 Jan. 1646. In the event, Potter retained his seat. At the risk of incurring the House’s further displeasure, he maintained at least some contacts with leading royalists. In early 1647, he assured the king’s secretary of state, Sir Edward Nicholas†, that he was a ‘true heart’ and ready to serve him; but such contacts do not necessarily indicate crypto-royalist sympathies.55Nicholas Pprs. i. 76, 81. Nicholas, another former officer of the admiralty, was someone whom Potter had known since the 1630s, and his offers of ‘service’ were probably no more than the common courtesy expressed by many loyal parliamentarians to erstwhile friends who found themselves on the losing side.56Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 70.

Although Potter had returned to London by the summer of 1648, he did not attend the House and was perhaps fortunate to retain his seat at Pride’s Purge.57Cumb. RO (Whitehaven), DLEC/169/1648: Thomas Hockin to same, 24 Aug. 1648; Pennington to same, 1 Sept. 1648. Like his master, he abstained from involvement in national politics after the regicide, and he spent the commonwealth and protectorate tending the earl’s personal and estate affairs. He and another of Northumberland’s servants were almost certainly acting on their master’s orders in December 1654, when they acquired the mortgage on several of Francis Viscount Montague’s manors in Sussex that had been sequestered for his recusancy. The compounding commissioners certainly smelt an aristocratic rat and denied the two men’s title to the manors until they could prove that the £1,500 they had paid for the mortgage had not been put up by the viscount himself.58CCC 2545.

Potter re-entered the political fray in the spring of 1660, when he managed (unsuccessfully) the Northumberland interest at Cockermouth in the elections to the Convention.59Supra, ‘Cockermouth’; Alnwick, X.II.6, box 12, bdle. l: Wilson to Potter, 12 Mar. 1660; Cumb. RO (Whitehaven), DLEC/169/1660: Potter to the bailiff of Cockermouth, c.Jan. 1661; same to Curwen et al., 19 Jan. 1661. In September 1660, he was restored to his office in the court of admiralty, and in the elections to the Cavalier Parliament the following year he was returned on Northumberland’s interest for Cockermouth.60HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Cockermouth’. Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton’s listing of Potter as one likely to support a Presbyterian church settlement was probably optimistic, and in the event he was named to only nine committees in this Parliament before his death on 12 February 1662.61HP Commons, 1660-90 ‘Hugh Potter’; Vivian, Vis. Devon, 612. He was buried on 14 February in the chancel of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster.62St Martin-in-the-Fields par. reg. He died unmarried and relatively wealthy, leaving approximately £4,000 to be distributed among his relatives and friends. His legatees included two of Northumberland’s gentlemen-servants, Robert Scawen and Orlando Gee†, as well as the poor of Iddesleigh, Petworth, Alnwick and Cockermouth.63PROB11/308, ff. 6-7. He was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.