RAVENSCROFT, Hall (c.1600-81), of Horsham, Suss.

Hall Ravenscroft’s ancestors came from an ancient Cheshire family. His paternal grandfather, Peter (d. 1574), moved to Sussex, became a gentleman of the horse to Thomas Howard, 4th duke of Norfolk, married locally, and acquired leases of the parsonages of Horsham and Warnham.27Vis. Cheshire (Harl. Soc. xviii), 194-5; Ormerod, Cheshire, iii. 207-8; E. Suss. RO, SAS/DD/342; Vis. Suss. 171. His son John, this Member’s father, was the heir of his uncle, George Hall of Horsham, and clerk of the peace until his death in September 1615, only a few months after marrying his second wife, Elizabeth Michell, and leaving his only son a ward about 15 years old.28Vis. Suss. 171; Harl. 1971, ff. 97v-98v; Berry, Suss. Pedigrees, 32; Misc. Gen. et Her. 5th ser. i. 210-25; Par. Reg. of Horsham ed. R. Garraway Rice (Suss. Rec. Soc. xxi), passim; Suss. N. and Q. xiii. 147; Notes IPMs Suss. 189-90. Hall Ravenscroft went to Oxford and then Lincoln’s Inn, where his kinsman William Ravenscroft†, a bencher, acted as manucaptor, providing a surety.29Al. Ox.; LI Admiss. i. 179; LIL, Admiss. Bk. 5, f. 16v; HP Commons 1604-1629. But his legal education was probably cut short by his marriage in London in December 1619 to Elizabeth Colthurst, daughter of John Stapley of Hickstead.30St Andrew by the Wardrobe, London, par. reg.; Vis. Suss. 171. She appears to have been the widow of Henry Colthurst (d. 1619) of Cuckfield and Twineham, and had been managing her late husband’s estate in St Martin Outwich, London, since at least May 1616, when he had been declared a lunatic.31Notes IPMs Suss. 56; Index to Acts of Admin. in PCC 1609-1619, 27. She was thus some years older than Ravenscroft.

Ravenscroft’s estate in and around Horsham was fairly modest.32PROB11/129/559; Parlty. Hist. Horsham, 21, 27, 518; Lansd. 784, f. 35; C142/351/114; Notes IPMs Suss. 189-90; W. Suss. RO Ep.I.25/3; E179/191/383; E179/258/12. Soon after taking possession of it he became embroiled in litigation over the estate of his neighbour, Sir Thomas Ersfield.33C2/JAS1/R14/61; C2/JAS1/R15/39. He contributed £10 to the Forced Loan of 1625 and compounded for the same fee for not taking a knighthood at the coronation of Charles I.34E401/2586, p. 31; E407/35, p.164; Ellis, ‘Compositions’, Suss. Arch. Coll. xvi. 49. In 1628 he gained some experience of local administration as high collector of taxes in Sussex, while in 1639 he was named a commissioner for charitable uses.35E179/191/383; C192/1 unfol.

Probably at least partly on his own interest as a burgage-holder, Ravenscroft was returned for Horsham to both Parliaments in 1640, each time alongside Thomas Middleton.36C219/42ii/40. There is no evidence of Ravenscroft’s activity during the Short Parliament. Over the next two years he continued to be named to local money-raising commissions, but his profile in the Long Parliament was scarcely higher than before.37SR. He made the Protestation promptly on 3 May 1641, but received his first committee nomination only on 9 April 1642 as future royalists were beginning to melt away; that it was to consider an individual petition and the relatively minor question (in its context) of the government of the Charterhouse and Savoy, suggests a particular interest in the person or the issue.38CJ ii. 133a, 519b. Following the king’s raising of his standard at Nottingham, on 7 September Ravenscroft declared his support for Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, as commander-in-chief of the parliamentarian forces, and a week later subscribed £50 to the cause.39CJ ii. 755b, 769a; PJ iii. 477.

Ravenscroft then disappears again from the Journal, this time for nearly ten months, during which he evidently engaged with both the war effort and godly reform in Sussex. On 19 December the House heard a petition from Horsham parishioners, including Ravenscroft and Middleton, complaining that the new vicar presented by the patron, Archbishop William Laud, was ‘unfit’ on account of his alleged drunkenness, fighting, and royalism. The Commons registered a sympathetic response, and on 28 March 1643 ordered the two MPs and others to sequester the vicarage and admit John Chatfield, ‘a godly and painful preacher’ previously threatened ‘to be put from his lecture there’, ‘whom the parishioners approve of’.40PA, Main Pprs. 19 Dec. 1642; Add 5698, f. 196; LJ v. 498b-9a, 678b-9a; Walker Revised, 259. Nominated as an assessment and a sequestration commissioner for the county in February and March, Ravenscroft steadily collected other appointments thereafter.41A. and O. In July he was among those approved by the Commons as deputy lieutenants for the county, although this was not finalized until December.42CJ iii. 156a, 354a. He was also placed on committees to consider a petition from Sussex and to oversee its affairs (17, 18 July).43CJ iii. 170a, 173a.

Having taken the Solemn League and Covenant in on 1 November, Ravenscroft was appointed a commissioner for the southern associated counties.44CJ iii. 297b; A. and O. On 8 January 1644 he was dispatched by the Commons with a message to its commander-in-chief, Sir William Waller*, ostensibly conveying encouragement, and at the end of the month was placed on a committee devising better means for money-raising for the war, but Ravenscroft proved critical of Waller.45CJ iii. 360b, 383b. When in February the House received a letter from Horsham describing the ‘oppression’ that inhabitants of the area had received at the hands of Waller’s soldiers, Ravenscroft was heard to speak ‘very freely that these soldiers were to be accounted no better than robbers and vagabonds’ and to say that ‘the town had justly defended themselves’.46Harl. 166, f. 17-17v. It seems likely that, in the confrontation which blew up between Waller and the more locally-rooted but more radical commander Colonel Anthony Stapley I*, Ravenscroft took the side of the latter. That July he was summoned to attend the Committee of Both Kingdoms in order to encourage the bringing in of money to pay Stapley and his forces.47CSP Dom. 1644, p. 340. His only other appearance in the Journal that year was on 16 October, when he was named to the committee considering complaints made against the peace-party leaders in the county, Sir Thomas Pelham* and Sir Thomas Parker*.48Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 480-1; CJ iii. 666b.

Although Ravenscroft was sufficiently identified as a significant player in the parliamentarian cause to be considered by the king’s attorney-general, Sir Robert Heath, as a subject for indictment on a charge of high treason, his visible profile both in the county and at Westminster continued to be modest.49  Eg. 2978, f. 151. By April 1645 Ravenscroft had been named to the Sussex commission of the peace, but his appearances were infrequent. 50Suss. QSOB 1642-9, 72, 123. In the Commons Journal he had only three mentions that year: an exhortation to bringing in arrears of assessments in the rape of Bramber (11 Mar.); and nominations to committees considering a request from Prince Rupert for a pass to leave the country (1 Nov.) and reviewing the regulation of the office of arms.51CJ iv. 330a, 351b. He then disappeared from the record until 10 and 11 July 1646, when he gained not inconsequential appointments to consider the ordinance for the sale of the estates of papists and delinquents and to investigate the authorship of A Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens, an early Leveller work by Richard Overton and William Walwyn.52CJ iv. 616a; A Remonstrance (1646, E.343.11). Surfacing once again on 16 December, he was added to the committee of privileges, an indication perhaps that he was expected to be more active in the House thereafter, but although his participation was greater in the next 12 months, it was still intermittent.53CJ v. 15a. Of seven mentions in the Journal during this period, four related to money-raising/accounting or soldiers’ pay (25 Dec. 1646; 25 Jan., 12 May, 23 Dec. 1647); a letter that April reveals him as a member of the sub-committee of accounts for Sussex.54CJ v. 28b, 62b, 168b, 400b; SP28/257. A rare indication of interest in religious matters came when on 10 February he was nominated to a committee related to a church appointment in Cornwall.55CJ v. 84b.

There is no sign of Ravenscroft’s presence between mid-May and 9 October, but his nomination then to investigate absentee MPs suggests that he had not altogether removed himself from the tumultuous party fighting of the previous few months, and that once the Presbyterian coup of the summer had failed, he had proved a reliable moderate.56CJ v. 329a. That he was not by this stage an army-orientated Independent is indicated by subsequent events. Named on 16 October to the important committee considering papers from the Lords on the king and the Scots, he next appeared on 23 December, when he was sent to Sussex to oversee the collection of assessments.57CJ v. 336a, 400b. His name does not occur again in the Journal.

Such scant evidence as there is suggests a retreat not only from active involvement at Westminster, but also from the enthusiasm he had displayed in 1644. Ravenscroft was among those who helped Richard Sackville, Lord Buckhurst*, in his attempt to evade the sequestrators and regain lands seized from his father, the Sussex grandee Edward Sackville, 4th earl of Dorset.58CKS, U269/O8/3. According to William Prynne*, reporting 12 years later to the Convention, Ravenscroft had confessed to having detained two years’ rent to the crown in 1648.59HP Commons 1660-1690. Ravenscroft was appointed a militia commissioner for Sussex on 2 December 1648, but like others so named was among those excluded from Parliament at the purge four days later.60A and O.; A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62).

This was not a total retreat from public life, however. Ravenscroft was again named an assessment commissioner in 1649 (although not thereafter), remained on or was reinstated on the commission of the peace, and was regularly appointed to commissions of oyer and terminer under the protectorate.61A. and O.; C181/6, pp. 14, 60, 90, 125, 146, 171, 220, 238, 278, 307; Stowe 577, ff. 53-4; C193/13/5 ff. 105-7v; C193/13/6 ff. 88-89v; C231/6, p. 227. Named a militia commissioner in March 1660, shortly afterwards he was a signatory to the Humble Address delivered to Charles II.62A. and O.; SP29/1 f. 89. Re-elected for Horsham to the Convention that spring, he was named on a list of the Presbyterian friends of Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, ‘to be managed by Sir Richard Onslow*’, with whom he had earlier worked on the Committee for Examinations; he was named to four committees.63House of Commons 1660-1690; Bodl. Carte 81, ff. 74-7; CJ iii. 666b.

However, although he served as a subsidy commissioner in 1660, Ravenscroft was soon removed from the commission of the peace, and thereafter played no visible part in local administration.64SR; House of Commons 1660-1690. To what extent this was because his focus of interest had moved outside Sussex is unclear. In 1649, when his only surviving daughter, Elizabeth, married Thomas Delves, grandson of Sir Thomas Delves (d. 1658), 1st baronet, and son of Sir Henry Delves of Doddington, Cheshire, Ravenscroft settled Hewell manor and Horsham rectory on the couple, retaining to his own use land in Horsham and Nuthurst.65Misc. Gen. et Her. 5th ser. i. 218; F. Lambarde, ‘Coats of Arms in Suss. Churches’, Suss. Arch. Coll. lxix. 211; Suss. Manors, i. 215; Add 6350, f. 19v; J.R. Daniel Tyssen, ‘Parliamentary Survey of Suss.’, Suss. Arch. Coll. xxiii. 290, 292. But the death of Elizabeth in childbirth at the age of 26 in 1654, leaving Ravenscroft two grandsons, seems to have somewhat weakened his ties to the south.66H. Ellis, ‘Compositions for Knighthood’, Suss. Arch. Coll. xvi. 49; Burke Dorm. and Extinct Baronetcies. He spent some time in Gloucestershire, perhaps with the Throckmorton family, but by 1667 he was living in Doddington, Cheshire, doubtless with his son-in-law, who had succeeded as 3rd baronet. In that year Ravenscroft leased, for a term of 21 years, the rectory of Warnham (two miles from Horsham) from the dean and chapter of Canterbury.67Preston Manor, WS/GG/39

Ravenscroft drew up his will in May 1673, naming his grandson Thomas Delves as his executor. Other beneficiaries included his son-in-law Sir Thomas, the poor of Horsham and Gloucester, his god-daughter Elizabeth Throckmorton (daughter of Sir Baynham Throckmorton*), and his sisters.68PROB11/367/243. He died in the summer of 1681 and was buried at Wybunbury, a little to the north of Doddington, on 21 June.69Wynbunbury par. reg. In November that year Thomas Delves took over the lease of Warnham rectory, but that family did not follow Ravenscroft into Parliament, and the baronetcy became extinct in the eighteenth century.70Preston Manor, WS/GG/40; Burke Dorm. and Extinct Baronetcies.