PYE, Sir Robert II (c.1622-1701), of Gt. Faringdon, Berks.

Pye’s father, Sir Robert Pye I*, was a distinguished public servant, most notably as the auditor of the receipt of the exchequer. Robert junior would have grown up immersed in the worlds of the court and of Westminster. His father probably took it for granted that his eldest son would pursue a career similar to his own. Thus, to receive a grounding in the law, Robert junior was admitted in 1639 as a student of the Middle Temple. On admission he was bound to Frederick Hyde† and James Scudamore*, both themselves the sons of well-connected courtiers.19M. Temple Admiss. i. 136; MTR ii. 884. Any expectation that he might attend one of the universities was however ruled out by his early marriage. His bride, Anne, daughter of John Hampden*, immediately linked him into the circles of those most critical of the king’s current policies. He had nevertheless been knighted at some point before the outbreak of the civil war.20SP28/1a, f. 91.

Whereas Sir Robert senior only ever supported the war against the king with reservations, his son, at least initially, was a keen parliamentarian, volunteering to fight as soon as war became a reality. Still aged only about 20, Pye junior was commissioned as a captain of horse in the army being raised by Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex as early as mid-August 1642.21Peacock, Army Lists, 52; SP28/1a, f. 91; SP28/4, f. 33; SP28/5, ff. 11, 304. It is slightly uncertain in which regiment his troop was serving, but it was probably that of his father-in-law, not least because Pye was undoubtedly in that regiment during the brief period in 1643, when, following Hampden’s death, it was being commanded by Arthur Goodwin*.22SP28/7, f. 438; SP28/10, f. 224. Previously, in January 1643, he had assisted in Goodwin’s attack on the fort at Brill.23Mercurius Aulicus (22-28 Jan. 1643), 52 (E.246.9). One story about the death of Hampden, allegedly told to Edward Harley* by Pye himself, was that Hampden had been killed at the battle of Chalgrove Field when a pistol given to him by Pye accidentally exploded.24HMC 13th Rep. IV, 403-4. This is difficult to reconcile with the various contemporary reports about the battle, however.

Pye’s cornet throughout this period was Nathaniel Waterhouse, who later became master of the household to Oliver Cromwell* as lord protector.25SP28/5, f. 304; SP28/7, f. 438; SP28/8, f. 101; SP28/9, f. 228; SP28/10, f. 224; SP28/11, f. 258; SP28/19, f. 40. On 14 June 1643, just four days before Chalgrove Field and when Parliament was seeking to strengthen its hold over the county following the taking of Reading, the Commons appointed Pye as one of the deputy lieutenants for Berkshire.26CJ iii. 129b. In September 1643 he was wounded at Cirencester, so several weeks later some of his arrears were paid to him on the grounds that he had ‘received very great hurt in the service of the state’.27SP28/10, f. 292. The following summer, as Essex advanced westwards into Devon and Cornwall, Pye and Robert Blake* were sent to re-take Taunton. Having arrived there on 2 July 1644, they secured its surrender within no more than eight days.28Lives and Letters of the Devereux, Earls of Essex ed. W.B. Devereux (1853), ii. 415; CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 90; Ludlow, Mems. i. 90. Pye remained at Taunton in the immediate aftermath of the surrender.29SP28/17, f. 314. These duties in Somerset probably meant that he was not present at the disaster at Lostwithiel. In February 1645, when reports were received that a petition was being organised at High Wycombe with the intention of presenting to the parliamentarian commissioners to the Uxbridge negotiations, Pye was sent to Buckinghamshire to make sure that this did not escalate into wider trouble.30CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 302.

As an officer of almost three years’ experience, Pye had a strong claim in 1645 to be commissioned to the New Model army. However, the question of what position he should receive became entangled in one of the key parliamentary quarrels surrounding those appointments. In drawing up his list of officers, Sir Thomas Fairfax* assigned Pye’s existing regiment to Nathaniel Rich*, but this proposal encountered opposition from Presbyterian MPs when the Commons came to consider those nominations. In the debate on the subject on 3 March 1645, Rich’s critics, like Sir Simonds D’Ewes*, argued that Pye should be appointed as the regiment’s colonel and that Rich should serve under him as his major. Sir Arthur Hesilrige* led those arguing against this. The Commons therefore decided not to force this to a vote.31Harl. 166, ff. 180v-181; CJ iv. 65b. Pye’s supporters were more confident two days later, when they secured a resolution in his favour as well as one relegating Rich to be his major.32CJ iv. 66b. In the days that followed, Rich was denied even that appointment, with Matthew Thomlinson* being appointed as Pye’s major instead.33Temple, ‘Original officer list’, 65-5n, 66. His captains included Ralph Knight* and Henry Ireton*.34Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, i. 53.

The first instructions to Pye’s regiment, issued in early March 1645, were that they should march to royalist-held Newark-upon-Trent.35Luke Letter Bks. 476. This was almost immediately countermanded so that they could be sent to join up with Major-General Lawrence Crawford in Buckinghamshire.36Luke Letter Bks. 499. By early April Pye was, in Crawford’s absence, commanding the forces stationed at Ivinghoe.37Luke Letter Bks. 507. That same month some of the soldiers who had formerly served in Essex’s own regiment were transferred into Pye’s new regiment.38J. Vicars, Magnalia Dei Anglicana (1646), 133 (E.348.1). Pye meanwhile signed the letter from the Newport Pagnell garrison to Sir Samuel Luke* complaining about their wage arrears.39Luke Letter Bks. 514-15. He and his regiment were soon on the move again. In May the king headed north-eastwards through Gloucestershire and Warwickshire, apparently making for the north of England. The Committee of Both Kingdoms therefore sent Pye northwards with large numbers of troops with the intention that he reinforce the Scottish army in Yorkshire.40CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 471, 472, 486, 504; CJ iv. 137b; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 32. On 14 May he came close to engaging with the king’s army near Warwick but, in the end, he used this as no more than an reconnaissance mission.41Luke Letter Bks. 536-7. On 23 May the Commons ordered the Committee for Examinations to pay £200 to him as part of his arrears.42CJ iv. 152a. Prince Rupert was soon advancing towards Leicester. As Pye happened to be passing through the town on his way north, he agreed to delay his march in order to defend it.43Symonds, Diary, 180; A Narration of the Siege and taking of the town of Leicester (1645), 5-6 (E.289.6). Rupert arrived outside the town on 29 May and succeeded in storming it two days later. Pye was captured during the fighting.44CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 570; Luke Letter Bks. 552; Clarendon, Hist. iv. 38. One report was that he had died as a result of mistreatment at the hands of his captors.45Luke Letter Bks. 299. That proved to be false and Pye seems to have been released on parole almost immediately.46Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 37; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 577. An exchange with Colonel Henry Tillier, who had been captured at Marston Moor, was then arranged. The resolution to that effect, which had been approved by the Commons on 7 June, was passed by the Lords on 10 June after it had been carried up to them by Pye’s father.47CJ iv. 167b, 170a-b; LJ vii. 421b; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 601, 602. Without him at their head, Pye’s men fought under Cromwell on the right wing of the parliamentarian front line at Naseby (14 June). By mid-July some of them were based at Wells in Somerset, where they were attacked by Rupert on a sortie from Bristol.48Symonds, Diary, 210. That month other members of his regiment were employed in providing an escort for the money and supplies being transported to Portsmouth.49CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 624; 1645-7, pp. 4, 28, 29, 30, 32, 33, 199. In September Pye himself took part in the retaking of Bristol.50Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva, 118.

Pye probably spent the 1646 campaigning season assisting in the closing stages of the siege of Oxford.51Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 277. His particular task was to blockade the royalist garrison at Great Faringdon, 16 miles to its west. This was of considerable personal significance to Pye as Faringdon House, where that garrison was based, belonged to his father and was the country estate which Pye probably expected to inherit. They capitulated on 24 June, the same day that Oxford surrendered.52Sprigge, Anglia Rediviva, 258, 267 With the fall of Oxford, Pye’s war was effectively over. The following January, prompted by his petition, the Commons ordered that Pye was to receive his wage arrears, which were to be paid from the money received as the composition fine of his cousin Sir Walter Pye*.53CJ v. 39a.

In February 1647 a detachment from Pye’s regiment helped escort the king from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Holdenby House in Northamptonshire. They then remained there as his guards. Now that the fighting was over, many Presbyterians in Parliament (including Sir Robert Pye I) wanted either to disband the army or to send parts of it to re-conquer Ireland. On 29 March Pye junior was among the minority of 29 officers who declared their willingness to take part in the proposed Irish expedition.54LJ ix. 114; Clarke Pprs. i. 12. Not all of his soldiers were so sure, however. Some in Pye’s regiment soon openly supported the agitators and approved the army’s declaration of 15 May.55Clarke Pprs. i. 44-5. Pye therefore joined his regiment to try to restore order, but found them restless and unwilling to listen to his reassurances.56Clarke Pprs. i. 93, 113. The abduction of the king from Holdenby on 4 June, made possible by the fact that the guards from Pye’s regiment offered no resistance, only complicated things further. Pye, with Richard Graves, rode immediately to London to warn Parliament of this latest sensational development.57Clarke Pprs. i. 427. Accompanying them seem to have been some of his soldiers, as the following day Parliament voted that £200 be paid to Pye, partly as payment for the quartering of those troops who had remained loyal to him.58CJ v. 198b; LJ ix. 242a, 243a. Two days later they were among the troops that the Commons ordered were to be mustered.59CJ v. 200b. By mid-June some of them were quartered at Deptford, where their behaviour began to attract complaints.60CJ v. 215b. Pye meanwhile probably waited on the king at Newmarket, for according to the published memoirs of Edmund Ludlowe II*, Pye had ‘supplied the place of a query [equerry], riding bare before him [the king] when he rode abroad’.61Ludlow, Mems. i. 151. If Pye had indeed done so, this would have increased distrust of him among the more radical members of the army.

These tensions became even clearer when the army advanced on London. Pye was one of the most prominent of the small group of army officers who now sided openly with the Presbyterian majority in the Commons by declaring their support for an expedition to Ireland and an immediate disbandment.62Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 495; CJ v. 227a. To the bulk of the army intent on challenging those policies, this was a betrayal and some set out to exact revenge. In late July some soldiers, possibly from the troop of John Disbrowe*, attacked those of Pye’s soldiers quartered at Deptford, killing several of them.63CJ v. 263b; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 741; CCSP i. 385; Memoirs of Denzil Lord Holles (1699), 159. Pye took the hint. Within days his wife had obtained permission from Fairfax for him to depart to the continent.64Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 751. One pamphlet satirised this apparent cowardice by suggesting that, ‘we fear not but to find him before Christmas, minced, and ready baked, or with a cocks comb, turkey’s or goose’s head peaking out of his crust.’65A speedy Hue and Crie (1647), 6 (E.401.20). Yet his exile was short-lived and he may not even have left the country; by late August he had submitted to the army, which placed him under arrest. Fairfax, however, ordered his release.66Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 792. Thomlinson had meanwhile taken over the command of his regiment.67Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, i. 151.

Pye’s military career was over. Over the next few years he seems to have kept his head down as events nationally took a direction with which he was probably uncomfortable. This was plausibly when he took up residence at Great Faringdon, apparently settled on him before his father’s death.68Noble, Mems. of House of Cromwell, ii. 102. Certainly, most of the local offices Pye junior held during this period were in Berkshire. He was appointed by Parliament as a militia commissioner for the county in December 1648, while in late 1651 he was added to its commission of the peace.69A. and O.; C231/6, p. 226. He seems to have continued to serve as a magistrate under the protectorate. He could thus present himself as a local man when he stood in the Berkshire election for the first protectoral Parliament in 1654. He was one of the five successful candidates in the poll held on 12 July, but soon faced what may have been a trickier challenge.

On 19 August 1654, before he could take his seat, Pye was arrested for debt by the undersheriff of Middlesex, Thomas Crooke.70CJ vii. 376a. The debt in question, amounting to £400, had arisen from a bond which the late Thomas Smyth I* and Pye’s brother-in-law, Edward Phellips*, had entered into as long ago as 1641 for a loan of £200 from John Angell†. Phellips had soon lent the unpaid £400 to Sir George Wyndham for Pye’s use. Claiming that he had given the original £200 to Angell and that Smyth and Phellips had defaulted, Henry Bettey had entered into a second bond, also for £400, with Pye in 1644 for the recovery of his debt. However, Pye had since discovered that Bettey had lied and that Angell had in fact been repaid.71C7/408/95; C22/285/10. In May 1654 he brought a case in chancery against Bettey’s widow, Joan, and her new husband, John Spragg, for the cancellation of the second bond.72C7/408/95; C33/202, ff. 1162v, 1179. Spragg retaliated by persuading Crooke to arrest Pye for the debt he claimed was due on that second bond.

Serving MPs enjoyed a well-established privilege of immunity from arrest in such cases, but, given that the new Parliament had yet to meet, could Pye be said to be a serving MP? Pye lost no time in complaining to the council of state. On 23 August, the council advised him instead to seek redress from Parliament itself.73CSP Dom. 1654, p. 328. The case was raised there by William Yorke* on 5 October. John Trevor* informed the House that he had been present following the arrest and could confirm that Pye had specifically warned Crooke that this was a breach of parliamentary privilege.74CJ vii. 373b. The diarist Guibon Goddard* claimed Parliament then declared that MPs’ privileges commenced from the day of their election; however, this is not confirmed by the Journal, which merely records that the House issued warrants for the arrest of Crooke and his bailiffs.75Burton’s Diary, i. p. xlviii; CJ vii. 373b. (There seems to have been no question of proceeding against Crooke’s superiors, the two sheriffs of London, one of whom had been Walter Bigg*.) Those summoned appeared before the House on 12 October. The result was that MPs ruled that Pye’s privileges had indeed been violated.76CJ vii. 376a. Crooke was also ordered to repay the £400 which his deputy, William Hastings, had seized from Pye, although it took another round of arrests by the serjeant-at-arms before Pye finally received this money.77CJ vii. 382b, 398b-399a.

Pye was not willing to let things rest at this, however. The following year, by which time Parliament had been dissolved, he brought a case on the subject in the court of upper bench. The judges, who may have been wary about ruling on a case involving parliamentary privilege, struggled to find an appropriate precedent on which to base a decision: all previous cases had involved arrests occurring after a Parliament had ceased to sit. Lord Chief Justice Glynne (John Glynne*) suggested that privilege should take effect 15 days before Parliament assembled, which, coincidentally or not, would have meant that Pye’s arrest had just fallen within the time limit. The other judges were more sceptical and, in the end, they left the issue unresolved.78Gray’s Inn, MS 33, p. 225. The original chancery case against the Spraggs was finally resolved in February 1658 in Pye’s favour.79C33/204, ff. 2v-3; C33/206, ff. 126, 483, 664v-665, 751, 817v, 927v, 935, 995v-996, 1055v, 1573; C33/208, ff. 557, 632v, 638v, 671, 697, 715; C33/210, ff. 29v, 478.

The dispute over his arrest necessarily preoccupied Pye for much of the 1654 Parliament and the leave of absence for a fortnight, granted to him on 10 October, was probably connected to it.80CJ vii. 375b. However, he had been included on the delegation sent on 18 September to ask the lord protector to issue a declaration appointed a fast day, while on 25 September he was named to the committees on the bills to recognise the government and to eject scandalous ministers.81CJ vii. 368b, 370a. His only other notable contribution in this Parliament came on 27 November, when he and Sir Ralph Hare* were tellers for the minority opposing the proposal that the property qualification for those voting for county MPs in parliamentary elections should be fixed at £200.82CJ vii. 391b.

Pye seems not to have stood for the 1656 Parliament and his name never figured in the bitter (and well-recorded) dispute over the Berkshire poll. The next election after that took place following Oliver Cromwell’s death. In the lord protector’s funeral procession on 23 November 1658, Pye, as the husband of a cousin once removed of the deceased, walked with Cromwell’s male relatives.83Burton’s Diary, ii. 527. Among them also was John Dunch*, with whom Pye was elected as MP for Berkshire in a poll held just over a month later. Both may have been viewed as men who would support the new lord protector, Richard Cromwell*. During this brief Parliament, Pye was named to only a handful of committees, namely those for elections and privileges (28 Jan.), on the rents of Hatfield Chase (31 Mar.) and on Scottish affairs (1 Apr.).84CJ vii. 595a, 622b, 623b. By mid-April, with tensions building between Parliament and the army, Pye shared the suspicions of those MPs who feared that the soldiers were planning a coup. On 18 April he therefore moved in the House that there should be no further meetings of the general council of the army without the permission of the lord protector and Parliament.85Burton’s Diary, iv. 448-9. The Commons agreed, passing his motion by 163 votes to 87.86CJ vii. 641b. That day he was named to the committee created to counter any plots in London.87CJ vii. 642a. Pye had sealed this Parliament’s fate. Within four days the army officers, enraged by the vote against the general council, had forced Richard Cromwell to dissolve Parliament.

Pye therefore had no reason to view the rule of the army or the revived Rump with any sympathy. In January 1660 he and Major Richard Fincher organised the Berkshire petition calling for a free Parliament, which they then presented to the Rump. For such temerity, on 25 January Pye and Fincher were sent by the Commons as prisoners to the Tower.88CJ vii. 822b, 859b; Mordaunt Letter.-Bk. 180-1; Verney MSS, W. Denton to Sir R. Verney, 26 Jan. 1660 (M636/17); CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 345; CCSP iv. 532, 546; Diurnal of Thomas Rugg, ed. W.L. Sachse (Cam. Soc. 3rd ser. xci), 30-1; R. L[’E]s[trange], L’Estrange his Apology (1660), 58 (E.187.1). They challenged this decision by applying to the court of upper bench for a writ of habeas corpus. On 6 February Justice Richard Newdigate† indicated that he would bail them unless cause for their imprisonment could be shown, but the argument was then made that the court did not have the authority to overrule a parliamentary order.89T. Siderfin, Les Reports des divers special Cases (1683-4), ii. 179; HMC Leyborne-Popham, 144; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 232-3. Fortunately for Pye and Fincher, wider events now turned in their favour. The readmission of the secluded Members (including Pye’s father) on 21 February changed the balance in the Commons and that day, as one of its first acts, the enlarged House ordered that the pair were to be released.90CJ vii. 847a; Diurnal of Thomas Rugg, 43-4. It was later resolved that the order of 25 January committing them to the Tower was to be struck from the Journal.91CJ vii. 822b, 859b.

This high-profile support for a free Parliament counted in Pye’s favour once the Parliament elected on that basis – in which he sat again as MP for Berkshire – restored the monarchy. Charles II rewarded him with an appointment as an equerry, presumably on the recommendation of the new master of the horse, George Monck*.92Sainty and Bucholz, Royal Household, ii. 140. This position was one reason why, in 1670, Pye was specifically exempted when Charles ordered all former parliamentarian army officers to leave London.93CSP Dom. 1670, p. 292. At the height of suspicion surrounding the Rye House Plot in 1683, Pye was removed as a justice of the peace, but he retained his court office until the accession of James II. In 1688 he supported William of Orange. He lived on until 1701, when he died only a week after his wife of about 60 years.94Noble, Mems. of House of Cromwell, ii. 105.