PYE, Sir Robert I (1585-1662), of St Stephen’s Court, Westminster, and Faringdon, Berks.

By virtue of his exchequer position, in late 1640 Pye had already been resident for two decades in St Stephen’s Court, adjacent to both the Commons chamber and his office. As a veteran of five previous parliaments, a diligent auditor, a longstanding local magistrate and a leading lay member of St Margaret’s church, Westminster must have appeared to him and others as his natural sphere. His activity in the Long Parliament was relatively narrowly focused but intense, deriving largely from his established experience and interests. Within these limits he was a highly significant figure, although not so much on the floor of the House as in action on the orders that emanated from it and in liaison with his patrons and associates in the Lords. A Presbyterian, he appeared to falter in his commitment to Parliament in the winter of 1642-3, but together with his fiscal expertise, his extensive aristocratic contacts clearly rendered him invaluable and unassailable until his and their desire for peace led to his exclusion at Pride’s Purge.

Man of business to crown and aristocracy

In tune with his career as a whole, the keynotes of Pye’s parliamentary service were struck in the 1620s. Themes apparent then account in some measure for his prominence and his effectiveness in the 1640s. Having made his way as a client of George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, he defended the latter’s interests when he was attacked in Parliament, but he was neither obsequious nor uncritical, conceding the duke’s blatant faults. Having built a substantial fortune on the profits of his lucrative office, he was a creditor to high-ranking contemporaries and wielded commensurate influence, but he also worked hard both as auditor for the crown and as careful manager of others’ affairs. He supplied Parliament with authoritative information about royal revenues and argued for a more realistic provision of subsidies to prevent recourse to extraordinary taxation, as well as for a commensurately less ambitious foreign policy. Through Buckingham’s tenure of the high admiralship he gained familiarity with naval affairs. A ‘mainstream Calvinist’, he displayed disquiet at the rise of Arminianism.63HP Commons 1604-1629.

That the assassination of Buckingham made no discernable impact on the trajectory of Pye’s public life is testament to his having achieved an independent stature. But this did not mean that old loyalties were dissolved, or preclude the forging of new ones. With the duke’s father-in-law, Francis Manners, 6th earl of Rutland, Pye was among Buckingham’s executors. Within months it was clear that Pye was the chief actor, controlling the discharge of debts due and promises made by the duke.64CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 310; 1629-31, pp. 4, 28. When in 1634, following Rutland’s death, Katherine, dowager duchess of Buckingham, and her kinsman the 7th earl of Rutland settled the Manners estates, Pye was a trustee.65Coventry Docquets, 669. Meanwhile, before 1631 he became with Sir Benjamin Rudyerd* a man of business for Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, whose family had acquired the guardianship of Katherine’s children.66Sheffield Archives, EM1351; ‘Katherine Macdonnell’, Oxford DNB. At Katherine’s marriage in April 1635 to Randal Macdonnell, Viscount Dunluce [I], valuable works of art and other goods were conveyed to Pembroke and Pye in trust for her son George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, while these two were subsequently also named trustees for her younger son Lord Francis and daughter Lady Mary, briefly wife of Lord Charles Herbert.67Add. 18914; Sheffield Archives, EM1352; Coventry Docquets, 229, 263. To the frustration of Archbishop William Laud, in the later 1630s Pye was assiduous in protecting Katherine’s financial interests even when they seemed to conflict with those of the crown; summoned to Lambeth in 1638 to explain the sending over to Ireland of payments to the lady who by this time was countess of Antrim, Pye was robust in defence of his actions.68CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 467; 1636-7, p. 173; W. Laud, Works ed. W. Scott and J. Bliss (Oxford, 1847-60), vi. 527; vii. 403, 409, 418, 448. He was to be a key administrator of both Villiers and Herbert inheritances until his death.

From 1629 Pye’s hold on the purse-strings also gave him a continued interest in the navy.69CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 576; 1629-31, pp. 176, 486, 513; 1631-3, pp. 315, 544; 1634-5, p. 219. His personal wealth and standing further enhanced through the acquisition of wardships and the extension of mortgages and credit to men of substance like John Ashburnham*, he took on additional trusteeships and his place in the exchequer guaranteed there would be recourse to him as a ‘fixer’.70CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 199, 248; 1631-3, pp. 369, 378; 1633-4, p. 140; Coventry Docquets, 321, 483, 537; LJ iv. 208b. His potential for control of the flow of money was noted in print.

[He] hath the keeping of all privy seals and enrollment of patents, and warrants, for the issuing of treasure. And the accounts thereof from the tellers, whereof he hath a great number in bags and press, in an office close by the court of receipt, and in another office which he hath below, near his house.71The repertorie of records (1631), 16.

Extraordinary measures such as the voluntary collection for the family of the queen of Bohemia, the collection of which was concentrated through his hands in June 1633, reinforced his power.72CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 100. Opinion was divided over the use he made of it. For example, a 1633 petition in verse from the king’s watermen in the hand of John Taylor claimed that ‘We sue and seek and can no payment get’ and ‘do fear that Sir Robert Pye is slack,/ Or else unwilling’.73CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 342, 402-21. On the other hand, other evidence points to relatively sympathetic and efficient operation by the modest standards of the 1630s.74CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 192; 1631-3, p. 397; 1635, p. 148; 1635-6, p. 249; Add. 31043, f. 19; J. Howell, Epistolae Ho-elianae (1650), 206-7. It is clear that, as earlier in his career, the office was no sinecure: signs of active engagement are plentiful and in March 1635 the commissioners of the treasury were moved to issue an order that he should not authorize payment without their warrant.75Add. 31042, f. 22; CSP Dom. 1634-5, pp. 55, 583; 1635, pp. 8, 64, 320, 435, 473; 1635-6, p. 565; 1636-7, p. 218; 1636-7, p. 567; 1637, pp. 226, 467. In March 1634 his ‘Proposals concerning the revenue’ envisaged a more careful scrutiny of accounts and a simplification of procedures, aiming to avoid waste and rescue the king from the unpopularity attached to his tax farmers.76Harl. 3796, f. 7. That at least some notice of his advice was taken by privy councillors is revealed in a note by Secretary of State Sir Francis Windebanke* of his preference for existing tax farmers in the Forest of Dean, ‘for all their faults’, over potential new ones proposing unrealistically high returns.77CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 24.

Meanwhile, although by the mid-1630s Pye had finally taken possession of his house at Faringdon, he remained an active magistrate in Westminster and Surrey.78CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 298; 1636-7, p. 158. With a group of fellow parishioners, in November 1633 Pye became a governor of St Margaret’s hospital.79Coventry Docquets, 258. Puritan convictions, lived out in an active role in his own church, were no bar to his accepting a role of commissioner for the repair of St Paul’s Cathedral: that Laud did not find him wanting in this regard is attested by his nomination in May 1634 to a sub-committee to advance the work.80CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 7; 1634-5, p. 16; J.F. Merritt, The Social World of Early Modern Westminster (Manchester and New York, 2005), 127.

By 1640 Pye was in as good a position as anyone to size up the impact of government policies, the viability of its finances and its likely future religious direction. In February 1637 the original documents justifying Ship Money and the attendant legal judgments were deposited with him.81CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 461. Especially from 1638 the regular requests addressed to him from the council of war testify to the formidable amounts he was paying out for ordnance and supply to support the Scottish campaign and a navy on alert.82CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 9, 39, 291, 530, 592; 1639, pp. 17, 377, 398. Intimately acquainted with the high and unwelcome costs of entertaining the queen mother in 1638, he handled dealings with the king’s creditors and had himself lent money to the crown: a warrant of March 1640 ordered repayment of £2,000 with eight per cent interest, though it is not clear whether he received it at this juncture.83CSP Dom. 1638-9 p. 91; 1639-40, p. 567; 1640, p. 59.

Although his personal agenda may only be guessed, it seems natural that he should seek a seat when a Parliament was called that spring. Ashburnham thought him a candidate for Westminster (where Pembroke was steward), and rejoiced that he failed.84CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 511. Whatever his ambitions, Pye sat out the Parliament. However, on 27 April, two days after the Lords had supported Charles’s request for a grant for war in advance of redress of grievances, it was he who was given what proved a loaded instruction to draw an order for issuing £10,000 to lord deputy of Ireland Thomas Wentworth*, 1st earl of Strafford, for levying and paying 9,000 men for his majesty’s service.85CSP Dom. 1640, p. 72. Paying out to army officers was probably a constant concern over the next few months.86CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 37.

Financial expert in the Commons, 1640-1

It is not clear where, or indeed whether, in the early autumn Pye sought election to what became the Long Parliament. But the preference of Pembroke’s son William Herbert* for a seat for Montgomeryshire over New Woodstock, to which he had also been returned, created an opportunity for the earl’s associate. Eight days after the issue of a new writ, on 2 December Pye was returned for the borough.87C219/43, 4/6/109, 110; C231/5, p. 414. Unlike fellow central officeholder Sir William Fleetwood*, disappointed there in October, Pye had no direct personal link to the constituency, but he was accustomed to taking seats where he could find them. The corporation of this town overshadowed by a royal palace and park had already had its votes disregarded, and Pembroke, as steward of the palace, almost certainly wielded his influence again, more successfully than at Westminster.88C219/43, 4/6/108.

By 13 December Pye was visible in the Commons chamber, adopting familiar tactics to contain attacks on government money-raising measures. In a debate on royal revenue he conceded that subjects were disadvantaged by monopolies, but deflected the blame from the king on to some of his officers; as discussion continued he underlined an alleged disparity between what was levied by such oppressive fees as distraint of knighthood and the sums actually reaching ‘the king’s purse’.89Northcote Note Bk. 59, 65. On the 16th Pye received his first two committee nominations (to hear complaints against or petitions from individuals) and he accumulated others in the next few days (concerning Virginia plantations, 21 Dec.; abuses in customs and patents, 21 Dec.; the jurisdictions of the courts of York and the Marches, 23 Dec.), but in both frequency and diversity this pattern was to be uncharacteristic.90CJ ii. 51b, 52a, 54a, 55a, 57a. Compared to other leading Members, Pye’s activity became increasingly concentrated and specialised.

As discussion of royal finances continued with the sanction of the king, on 17 December Pye was ready enough (according to Sir Simonds D’Ewes) to support the call of John Pym* for a balance of the king’s revenue to be supplied, but dismissed as impossible Pym’s motion that it be presented the following day.91Procs. LP i. 634 This probably seemed a reasonable response at the time. In further debate Pye held a moderate course, arguing for due procedure when Lord Keeper John Finch* came under attack (21 Dec.) and expressing keenness for probing and addressing royal solvency.92Northcote Note Bk. 90. He moved (21 Dec.) for examination of monopolies, ‘averred’ (24 Dec.) that the king had ‘gained but £700’ from a dubious salt project, and pressed (23 Dec.) for subsidies for the ‘preservation of [the] navy, or else submit ourselves and all we have to king of France’.93Northcote Note Bk. 88, 106; Procs. LP ii. 38, 47. With Arthur Capel* and Sir Thomas Barrington*, he agreed to be a receiver of such subsidies (23 Dec.), although the nominations were apparently rejected by City moneylenders.94Procs. LP ii. 35, 38. There is no reason to interpret this as an early sign of lack of confidence in him – the same day he was visibly co-operating with Pym.95Northcote Note Bk. 110; CJ ii. 57b. However, on 22 December the Commons had ordered Pye and his colleague Sir Edward Wardour* to consult with Lord Treasurer William Juxon, bishop of London, and Chancellor of the exchequer Francis Cottington†, 1st Baron Cottington, to produce a balance of royal receipts and expenditure.96CJ ii. 56b. When Wardour reported apologetically a week later that the balance went only as far as 1635, D’Ewes cannot have been the only MP to distrust what he heard.97Procs. LP ii. 53. Although the exchequer officials were ultimately dependent for a full picture of the king’s finances on figures supplied by these privy councillors, it is puzzling that as auditors they could not put forward more recent calculations, whether on 18 December 1640, as originally asked (since that is the date of the statement filed with Pye’s 1635 notes), or subsequently.98Harl. 3796, ff. 77-92. Pye, whose assistance was gratefully acknowledged by Wardour, did add that the war with Scotland had cost £2,000,000 and perhaps mentioned other expenses, but he still insisted that an up-to-date balance could not be produced for two months.99Northcote Note Bk. 113, 114; Procs. LP ii. 53. Whether Pye knew more than he was telling, or was covering for his own incompetence, or playing for time to protect others, or had some other ploy, is unknown, but it seems highly likely that any propensity to share with opposition leaders in the Commons doubts about the uses to which royal revenue had been put was balanced by a desire to hang on to his own lucrative powers.

Following the confirmation of his and the Speaker’s election to the House on 5 January 1641, Pye was regularly involved in financial matters through the year.100CJ ii. 63a. A memorandum drawn up in the spring for the lord treasurer-designate, Francis Russell, 4th earl of Bedford, named Pye as the chief consultant in preparing a balance of revenue pursuant to an overhaul of the entire system, and he seems to have obliged.101CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 565-6; ‘Francis Russell’, Oxford DNB. In D’Ewes’ opinion, Pye’s (telling) habit of discussing taxation matters with peers (freely admitted in a debate on 14 May) risked breaching Commons privilege. Yet even in D’Ewes’ account, Pye deflected criticism by claiming the Lords’ concurrence in proceedings in the Lower House, while he also had support among his fellows for his view that it was not wise to trample on the Lords’ privileges by aspiring to tax the bishops.102Procs. LP iv. 380-1.

Pye was included on committees to consider supply for the army (12 Jan.); to treat for loans (23 Feb.; 11 May); to investigate any misdemeanors of revenue and customs officers (22, 31 May); to raise £10,000 for the queen mother (5 July) and to track down those who had sent money to Sir Francis Windebanke and others of the king’s servants who had fled (7 July).103CJ ii. 67a, 91b, 143a, 154b, 162a, 198b, 199a, 201a. Placed on the committee to examine profiteering by vintners through the extension of wine patents (26 May), he blamed the projectors concerned and argued that, although subjects had lost over £170,000 a year by their actions, the crown had gained only £19,000 in all.104CJ ii. 157a; Procs. LP iv. 580-1. As instructed (7 May), on 10 May he and Sir Thomas Fanshawe* detailed to the Commons the larger Elizabethan and Jacobean subsidy returns; Pye was then added to the committee preparing instructions for the current collectors.105CJ ii. 139a, 141b; Procs. LP iv. 298, 303, 305. Among those deputed to treat with potential commissioners for tonnage and poundage (1 June), to prepare an act abolishing Ship Money (19 June), and to draw a bill for levying money on particular persons (18 June), he showed himself alert as to detail.106CJ ii. 165a, 190a, 181b. He irritated John Moore by requesting the insertion of an extra penny just as the bill for speedy provision of money for settling an Anglo-Scottish peace came to question (29 June).107Procs. LP v. 408. By some judicious flattery, and perhaps at the behest of his patrons, he convinced the Commons that the Lords should have some power to appoint collectors under the act (2 July), he brought in a proposal for collectors’ allowances (3 July), and almost certainly chaired committees to prepare an order for taking their accounts (16 July) and redress ambiguities in the act (28 July).108Procs. LP v. 461, 480; CJ ii. 197a, 197b, 214a, 228a. Their remit seems to have overlapped with other committees on which Pye sat – for distributing money paid by Members to reward servants of the House (2 July) and for the securing of loans for paying off the Scots and disbanding the army (27 July) – and on several occasions it was Pye who gave a running account of income.109CJ ii. 182b, 186b, 196a, 198b, 226b, 229a, 236b, 252a; Procs. LP vi. 26, 127. On 23 July he himself extended a previous loan of £2,000 for the public service.110CJ ii. 222a. By August he had emerged as pre-eminent among those appointed receivers and treasurers for various purposes, with his like-minded neighbour, Wheler, as his chief associate.111CJ ii. 223b, 252a, 263a, 266a, 276b, 277a, 278b On the 9th he was granted a week’s leave – his only official absence of the Parliament – to attend a daughter ill with smallpox, but on his own initiative later that month he was part of a small group reviewing receipts of poll money; additionally, with Wheler and Robert Scawen* he was ordered to examine the accounts of the Carlisle and Berwick garrisons.112CJ ii. 246a, 270b, 271a, 277a; Procs. LP vi. 555.

Religion and other matters, 1640-1

Meanwhile, Pye had been active in other directions. He had been named (21 May) to a committee regulating Thames watermen and, evidently a keen member of the committee investigating customers, twice expatiated at length in the House on the need to take into custody Sir Thomas Dawes, whom he regarded as the principal offender (6, 20 Aug.).113CJ ii. 152b, 241b; Procs. LP vi. 237, 246, 249, 502. He had been added to a committee looking at the abuses of postmasters (10 Feb.), was periodically named to deal with private bills and disputes (15 Feb., 13 Mar., 27 Apr., 28 July), and occasionally presented or adjudicated petitions (30 Aug.).114CJ ii. 82a, 85b, 103b, 128b, 226b, 276a; Procs. LP vi. 611, 626, 634. Drawing on previous experience, he also sat on some committees discussing naval and foreign matters (11 Mar., 5 July, 25 Aug.).115CJ ii. 102a, 199b, 271b; Two Diaries of the Long Parliament, 15. But his most visible other contributions to Commons proceedings related to religion and to events unfolding within Westminster.

Added (23 Jan.) to the committee investigating former Secretary Windebanke when its remit was extended to consideration of innovations in religion, he was first-named on 13 February to its successor, the committee for the abolition of superstition and advancement of true worship.116CJ ii. 72a, 84b. Two weeks later Pye was added to that considering the ministers’ petition against episcopacy, while on 8 March he was among those deputed to discuss the disablement of clergy from holding temporal office.117CJ ii. 94a, 99a. When Alderman Isaac Penington* reported the City’s measures for sabbath observance on 12 April, Pye claimed – credibly – that, acting as a justice of the peace, he had done the same for Westminster.118Procs. LP iii. 509. That day he was added to those investigating clandestine attempts to promote popery, with the particular aim of examining Browne, a priest in custody in the parish.119CJ ii. 119a. He was subsequently a key actor in various measures taken to root out recusants and their clergy who had remained in and around the capital contrary to parliamentary order; he was made a commissioner for disarming recusants on 30 August, a task to which he was frequently re-assigned.120CJ ii. 134b, 139a, 151b, 158a, 197a, 204a, 221a; Procs. LP iii. 510; LJ iv. 385b. On 3 May he supported the reading of the remonstrance and was among the first to take the Protestation; the next day he was with Wheler, Sir Edward Hungerford* and George Peard* ordered to check which Members had yet to do so.121CJ ii. 132b, 133b; Procs. LP iv. 181. Perhaps his links with the Lords lay behind his inclusion on the committee to establish the parish of Covent Garden to serve the new church of St Paul’s and its aristocratic patrons (25 May), although his experience as a vestryman was doubtless useful.122CJ ii. 156a. In the meantime, he evidently remained committed to the suppression of liturgical innovations and to the promotion of preaching: when on 1 September the orders from the committee against innovations were read, he was a teller for the majority who wanted further additions.123CJ ii. 279b

Both exchequer duties and the management of the countess of Antrim’s affairs had given Pye a perspective on Ireland. Several times (16 Jan., 17 May, 20 Aug.) he was trusted to communicate, in the presence of the gaoler and presumably on the countess’s business, with Sir George Radcliffe, the associate of Lord Deputy Strafford now imprisoned in the Gatehouse on charges of treason.124CJ ii. 69a; LJ iv. 252a, 372a. As a local magistrate he was after all routinely examining those detained, as he did also suspicious strangers presenting themselves at the House (28 Jan.).125CJ ii. 74b. Local standing and his links with the Lords explain his inclusion on the committee to organise attendance by Members of the Commons at Strafford’s trial.126CJ ii. 107b. Like Wardour, he was able to confirm the extraordinary nature of the £500,000 eventually sent to the deputy for the army in Ireland in the previous year, and it is thus unsurprising that he was among witnesses called to testify once proceedings opened on 22 March.127Procs. LP iii. 69, 73, 75, 76; LJ iv. 195b. That Pye could point to incriminating financial evidence, that he had crossed Strafford over remittances to the countess and that he was convinced of a Catholic threat seems beyond doubt, but his stance on Strafford’s execution (over which the Lords hesitated) is unknown. Even the slender evidence of his reaction to the ‘army plot’, which sought to prevent it, is not entirely clear. When in July, some time after the initial investigation had left the perpetrators’ fate undecided, a compromising letter came to light from Henry Percy*, Pye was heard to say that ‘being against himself and being the heir of a house, [it] ought to have great consideration’.128Procs. LP vi. 84. Given that Percy had previously gone some way to redeeming himself by confessing his activities to his brother Algernon Percy, 4th earl of Northumberland, it cannot be concluded for certain that Pye, with his aristocratic friends, thought that the ‘consideration’ should be damning. At any rate, he was given leave to be examined by the Lords as a witness (23 July).129CJ ii. 221a.

As the incidence of plague increased in the environs of Parliament that autumn, Pye was deputed with others on 6 September to discuss with the Lords measures for its containment.130CJ ii. 280a. Two days later he was instructed to write to the king with the Commons’ advice that the Spanish ambassador should be sent home for presuming to complain about the stop on Irish troops being sent to Spain – a choice indicative of his sentiments.131Procs. LP vi. 691. When an a six-week adjournment was agreed on 9 September, Pye was appointed to the committee that was to sit in the recess, deploying considerable powers to deal with the Scots, the disbandment of the army and the suppression of disorder, and to work on the revenue.132CJ ii. 288b.

Security at Westminster and the coming of war, 1641-2

By the time the Commons reassembled on 22 October, concern over unrest and subversion around Parliament had increased. In October, November and December Pye took a prominent part in organising the guard about Middlesex and Westminster and in examining those suspected of sedition.133CJ ii. 294a, 295b, 303a, 306a, 306b, 308a, 310b, 326b, 334b, 340a, 350a. He was regularly involved (partly by virtue of his office) in raising and paying out money for Ireland, the Scots, English garrisons and general purposes, and he sat on a small committee addressing piracy (2 Nov.), but the main thrust of his activity was in promoting security.134CJ ii. 297b, 298a, 301b, 302a, 302b, 305b, 309a, 316b, 335b, 336b, 341b, 350a, 357a. When Cornelius Burges was invited to preach before the House on 5 November, Pye was among those who were to ensure the exclusion of the public from St Margaret’s.135CJ ii. 299a. At the beginning of December he was engaged with Wheler, Peard and John Pury* in collating and preparing all the evidence to be presented against episcopacy – an unequivocal sign of his ideological commitment to reform.136CJ ii. 329a. As tension mounted, he was again instructed to keep St Margaret’s exclusively for MPs (17 Dec.), and with Wheler and Recorder John Glynne* to strengthen the watch and discharge from prison apprentices inappropriately detained for rioting in support of measures against bishops (27-30 Dec.).137CJ ii. 348a, 358b, 361a, 364a. He sat on the committee to investigate the raising of volunteers to quell the protestors (31 Dec.) and on 4 January 1642, the day of Charles I’s abortive attempt to arrest the Five Members, he searched the house of the French envoy, Charles, marquis de Vieuville, on information that it had been ‘furnished with warlike ammunition’.138CJ ii. 365a, 368a.

For the first five months of 1642 Pye was very busy. In January the unrest and its aftermath continued to detain him, and he was placed on committees for the defence of the kingdom, supplying garrisons (followed up in February), the detention of Irish Catholics arriving in England and Wales and for receiving and investigating information of security threats.139CJ ii. 375b, 376b, 377b, 383b, 394b, 395a, 402b, 403b, 457a. On 25 January he was added to a new committee for naval affairs, which would evolve in August into the Committee of Navy and Customs.140Supra, ‘Committee of Navy and Customs’; CJ ii. 393a. With Glynne, Sir Henry Vane II* and others he refined the declaration or privileges arising from the events of the 4th (27 Jan.).141CJ ii. 398b. In February, among routine affairs, he worked on bills for vindicating the peer targeted by the king, Edward Montagu, Lord Kimbolton, from accusations of treason and for punishing the archbishop of York, John Williams.142CJ ii. 422a, 422b, 425b, 432b, 436a, 447a, 448b, 460b, 461a, 461b. During March, when Pye was mentioned 17 times in the Journal, mainly in relation to finance and security, he and Glynne presented their accounts of money received from Members for servants of the House, approved on the 22nd.143CJ ii. 467b, 468a, 468b, 474a, 482a, 486a, 491a, 492a, 493b, 496a. As a teller in favour of the imposition of double customs rates on most sugar imports (17 Mar.), he was disappointed by the Speaker’s casting vote; he was also on a committee considering a request from Dutch merchants in London for the same exemptions from paying subsidies as natives.144CJ ii. 482b, 499a. Unsuccessful in an attempt to resolve by committee a dispute over the House’s appointment of Stephen Marshall to the lectureship of St Margaret’s (25 Mar.) – but still a powerful actor in the matter – on the same day he was nominated to prepare the act for improving the maintenance of the ministry.145CJ ii. 496b, 497b; J. F. Merritt, Westminster 1640-60 (Manchester, 2013), 112. Confirmation of his standing among his colleagues had already come on the 17th, when the Commons approved him and Glynne and deputy lieutenants for Middlesex.146CJ ii. 483b. Despite a fortnight’s absence from the Journal in the latter half of April, he was still mentioned 25 times in the two months to the end of May. More often than not this was in relation to the raising and payment of money, but a variety of other matters came Pye’s way, including reform of the Charterhouse and Savoy, and Protestation defaulters.147CJ ii. 507b, 509a, 511a, 518a, 519a, 519b, 520b, 524a, 530a, 551b, 553b, 557b, 561a, 569b, 570b, 572a, 576b, 581a, 584b, 585a, 588a, 594a. That spring, he invested £1,000 as an Irish Adventurer.148Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 189.

On 27 May Pye was once again among the parliamentary leaders who met the Lords to discuss the defence of the kingdom.149CJ ii. 589a. In this context the fact that he appeared only three times in the Journal in June would not seem to indicate any wavering as to whether to join the king in the north; in any case, two of these related to raising money for the parliamentarian cause.150CJ ii. 605a, 628b, 631a. Through the high summer and autumn he was among the core of activists advancing the war effort in England and Ireland through securing loans, encouraging supporters (especially in Berkshire), securing strongholds, fitting out the navy, pursuing hostile local administrators, and addressing local justice.151CJ ii. 652a, 652b, 653b, 654b, 664b, 669a, 680b, 694a, 694b, 697a, 713a, 718b, 725a, 727b, 728b, 731a, 737b, 750b, 754b, 759a, 759b, 766a, 772a, 780a. On 16 September he was nominated to the committee to identify, and potentially punish, Members who had adhered to the king or executed the commission of array.152CJ ii. 769b. He probably chaired the committee to consider the royal revenue which met in the exchequer chamber on 13 September with the remit of determining payment (or withholding) of pensions and, having supplied the Commons with the standard rates for ambassadors, was certainly given care of the reimbursement of the commissioners negotiating with the Scots.153CJ ii. 762b, 780b; Add. 18777, f. 10. Preoccupied at Westminster, he could not be spared to oversee collections of money in Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire.154CJ ii, 782b, 783a, 787b; Add. 18777, f. 16v. Added to the committee of accounts on 5 October and to a complementary committee to process contributions from the counties on the 28th, he doubtless brought invaluable experience and determination.155CJ ii. 795a, 825b. In the Commons he commented on the overpriced and defective arms supplied for Ireland (7 Oct.) and skillfully put D’Ewes on the spot over his laggardliness in lending money (8 Oct.).156Add. 18777, f. 23v; Harl. 163, f. 10. Although he claimed (13 Oct.) that there ‘was not £40 come into the exchequer these three months’, the exchequer was receiving at least some novel income by parliamentary order (e.g. 1 Nov.), and in any case as treasurers for the contribution monies at Westminster he and Wheler had control of, and were regularly deploying, significant sums.157Add. 18777, f. 27v; CJ ii. 804b, 817a, 830b, 831a; LJ v. 400a, 421b.

Pye was also more directly involved in military and naval matters. Appointed to Parliament’s new naval executive, the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports (19 Oct.), he was still supervising defence and security in Westminster, and took on the problem of enemy prisoners (including Colonel William Legge) and provision for the wounded.158CJ ii. 795b, 799a, 807b, 812b, 818b, 832a, 846a. As both the king’s and Essex’s armies marched from the west toward London, Pye was among the parliamentary delegation sent to bolster the resolve of the City (20 Oct.), while two days after the inconclusive engagement at Edgehill he carried to the Lords the declaration of a solemn fast in and around the capital (25 Oct.).159CJ ii. 817b, 823a.

Equivocation and the search for peace, 1642-3

Notwithstanding such activity, at this juncture, Pye’s inclinations, like Pembroke’s, were turning to peace. When on 31 October Edmund Waller* painted a gloomy picture of what might happen if armies descended on London and called for discussion of a settlement, he was seconded by Pye’s fellow trustee Rudyerd, and Pye lined up behind him.160Add. 18777, f. 47. Yet there is no obvious sign that he proceeded half-heartedly with money-raising. On 6 November he took to the Lords an ordinance enabling Sir Gilbert Gerard to process funds for the earl of Warwick’s forces and an order rallying those of Essex’s soldiers loose in London to rally to their colours forthwith; on the 9th he went with Pym, Gerard, Wheler and others to liaise once again with the Common Council.161CJ ii, 837a, 842a. When Pembroke was made general in the west, Pye moved (26 Nov.) that there should be provision for his force’s subsistence – a not unnatural attempt, presumably, to ensure that if the task were undertaken at all, it should be done with a reasonable chance of success.162Add. 18777, f. 70v. Pye was also nominated (6 Dec.) to a small committee to ensure that military expenditure was properly accounted for.163CJ ii. 878a.

The opening for preachers of St Margaret’s chapel-of-ease at Tothill Fields in Westminster of which Pye was the dominant trustee and became the leading layman (9 Dec.) is one instance of a range of loyalties which may have encouraged him to stay there.164Add. 18777, f. 87v; Merritt, Westminster 1640-60, 113-14. His religious convictions were probably also in play, as perhaps was his son Robert Pye II’s* service in the parliamentarian army. He still had his exchequer post, although uncertainty as to which master he served must have been unsettling.165Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 348; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 373. If others had failed to grasp this too, then Pye’s delivery on 9 December of a petition from the king’s coachman seeking permission to go to Oxford possibly drew attention to it.166Harl. 163, f. 245v. On the surface things continued as before. The same day Pye took a message to the Lords desiring a conference over a letter to the States General of the Netherlands; in the next few weeks he was placed on committees to enquire into petitioning around Parliament (12 Dec.), to list prisoners taken in combat for a possible exchange (21 Dec.), and to prepare an act for the liberty of the subject (7 Jan. 1643).167CJ ii. 882b; 884b, 898a, 918b. But when the Commons debated proceedings against delinquents on 26 December, D’Ewes recounted that Pye argued against naming too many, ‘and showed that we had already suffered by it’, adding provocatively that, ‘the king did very prudently in his proclamations to pardon whole counties except some two or three in a county’. An outraged Walter Long ‘spake vehemently against’ Pye, ‘as if he had intended by what he said to justify the king’s proclamation’. D’Ewes, another with reservations about a hard line, thought Long’s intervention ‘a gross mistake’, and endorsed what Pye had said, but Long’s doubts were doubtless shared by more than just the ‘hot spirits’.168Harl. 163, f. 275.

On 31 December Pye made another contribution to the parliamentarian cause, although he must have known that such sums would not go far.169Add. 18777, f. 109v. In debate on the propositions about popery to be sent to the king (7 Jan. 1643) he cited Elizabethan and Jacobean precedents to dampen expectations of how much fines on recusants might raise.170Add. 18777, f. 119v. He was trusted to go to the Lords on 12 January with orders for preventing ships going to Newcastle and for the defence of East Anglia, but on the 18th Pym reported intercepted letters, including one from Pye to secretary of state Edward Nicholas.171CJ ii. 922b, 933b. Dated the 10th, it referred not only to previous letters to Oxford (which had gone astray) but also listed sums in hand or paid (apparently from the exchequer), of which the largest was £3,700 to Sir Nicholas Crisp* ‘for secret service’. Distancing himself from the exploits of his soldier son, Pye sought Nicholas’ help to ‘regain his Majesty’; fearing destruction and famine if the war continued, he wished for peace. Pym’s committee ‘thought much that there should be intercourse between a Member ... and the court at this time, being a restraint of money’ and D’Ewes observed that others had been excluded from Parliament ‘for less offences’. But Pye claimed his recent communications had come only after a gap of four months and denied paying Crisp, while the latter, called in and examined more than once, denied any receipt. D’Ewes, for one, considered Crisp told ‘a manifest lie’, and when after several days of consideration Pye was given the benefit of the doubt, concluded that the ‘fiery spirits’ had deferred to pressure from John Hampden*, who was Pye junior’s father-in-law.172Harl. 163, ff. 277-277v; Add. 18777, ff. 128v-129.

It seems plausible that another critical factor was support for Pye among peace-makers in the Lords. News of the letter spread: a libel found at Nottingham which asserted Pye had ‘long been a knave’ was read in the Commons on 24 January.173Harl. 163, f. 401; The sence of the House ...concerning the Londoners petition for peace (1643), f.6. His defection was expected at court: a new writer of tallies within the receipt of the exchequer was appointed on 8 February, until such time as Pye repaired to Oxford; thereafter he was to be accountable to Pye.174E403/2522, p. 9. Having weathered the storm, however, Pye adhered to his London post. It was his colleague Sir Edward Wardour who, thwarted in his attempt to get to the king with a Londoners’ petition for peace, subsequently departed. On 16 February Pye, his rehabilitation evidently accepted, was ordered with Glynne to bring in the next day an ordinance to replace Wardour.175CJ ii. 968a. By this point, Pye was attending meetings of Parliament’s executive for Ireland, the Committee for Irish Affairs (where the Commons had ordered that ‘Adventurers of the House shall be admitted to have a voice’) and he would continue to do so intermittently until at least January 1644.176CJ ii. 750b; Add. 4782, f. 85v; Add. 4771, f. 10v.

It took until June 1643 for Pye to resume his habitual rate of activity in Parliament, but there is no obvious sign that his standing had been permanently compromised. Nor indeed does he seem to have eschewed his former scepticism on the war. His committee appointments conformed to the familiar pattern – money, security, religion, commerce.177CJ ii. 974b; iii. 5b, 9b, 23b, 44a, 65b. He was even placed on the sequestrations committee for the liberty of Westminster (27 Mar.) and, in October, he made his only recorded appearance at its bicameral oversight body, the Committee for Sequestrations.178SP20/1, f. 65; A. and O. While the usual orders to make payments came his way, he sometimes dragged his feet over this and other matters.179CJ ii. 985b; iii. 73a; LJ vi. 29b. He and Glynne opposed the prompt passing of Sir Thomas Soane’s* ordinance for money for the fortification of London (6 Mar.).180Harl. 164, f. 312v. When on 22 March the Commons belatedly received from the Lords an order that Pye should pay £300 from crown income towards fuel for heating the Houses, Pye declared that he had no money in hand, adding that ‘he should be foresworn if he did pay it because he was bound by his oath to pay out no money but by warrant from his majesty or from the lord treasurer or the commissioners for the treasury from the time being’.181Harl. 164, f. 338; CJ iii. 12b; LJ v. 612b. In April he made only two appearances in the Journal, of which one, a few days after the rejection of the king’s peace proposals and abandonment of the negotiations at Oxford, was in an order to him, Rudyerd and Wheler to attend the House and not to depart without leave.182CJ iii. 48b. Whether galvanised by this or by the real prospect that Charles might win an easy victory, Pye was more visible in May. Besides being named as an assessment commissioner, he had three committee appointments which presupposed renewed commitment: to prepare a letter to the Scottish Parliament demanding that the penalties laid down by the Act of Pacification be visited on peers who had sought to undermine the Anglo-Scottish alliance (9 May); to review problems in the courts of justice arising from the absence of the great seal or of judges (19 May); and to expedite Irish affairs (29 May).183CJ iii. 78a, 92b, 109b; LJ vi. 29b.

Evolution of a peace party activist, 1643

By June – when his first duty was to oversee the taking of an inventory of crown regalia at the Abbey – Pye was back at the centre of Westminster politics, seemingly in attendance almost daily at the House.184CJ iii. 114b. On 25 May was sent to the Lords with a paper from Montagu Bertie, 2nd earl of Lindsey, a royalist officer imprisoned at Warwick Castle.185CJ iii. 101b. He had previously been a periodic messenger between the Houses, sometimes on sensitive matters, but now such employment became regular, and indeed the most notable characteristic of his parliamentary service.186CJ ii. 76b, 419a, 757b, 816a, 817a. From June to September, a period of dismal military reversals, Pye delivered an average of six messages a month, about half of them related to financial matters but others related to London security and negotiations with the Scots, or simply requesting peers to prolong their session for the day.187CJ iii. 115a, 126b, 132b, 140b, 150a, 160a, 176b, 178a, 186b, 187a, 190a, 194a, 202a, 204a, 208b, 211a, 219a, 227b, 230a, 241a, 242b, 248a, 252b, 260a. That he was chosen for his close association with some in the Lords and that he remained a particular ally of the peace party there seems beyond question, although committee appointments continued to link him with military activity.188CJ iii. 125a, 139b, 140a, 142a, 181a, 186b, 203b, 222a, 236a, 244b. But he was also nominated to committees investigating Sir Peter Osborne’s rule in Guernsey (19 June), preparing the ordinance for the abolition of the court of wards and for establishing an alternative income for the king (24 July), and examining the grievances of Gloucestershire clothiers (22 Aug.).189CJ iii. 134b, 179b, 214b.

The revelation on 6 June 1643 of Edmund Waller’s plot for an armed uprising in London allowed or propelled Pye to demonstrate his loyalty. That day he was among the first to take the new oath and covenant affirming the legitimacy of Parliament’s stance; he was also instructed with Wheler to send printed copies of the official narration of the plot to the churches in Westminster (14 June) and deputed to investigate information about the behaviour of troopers at Paddington (19 June).190CJ iii. 118a, 130a, 135a. When Waller implicated Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, in his conspiracy, Pye was appointed to take the demand for the earl’s examination to the Lords; his departure from the chamber was delayed by an unsuccessful attempt by Henry Marten* to insert a request for Northumberland’s arrest, but it is not clear what part if any Pye played in the lengthy debate which ensued.191CJ iii. 150a; Harl. 164, ff. 103, 103v, 104v. Doubtless more to his taste was an order directed to him, Wheler and others (26 June) to prepare the chambers and lodgings for the forthcoming opening of the Westminster Assembly.192CJ iii. 144a. Three weeks later he was a teller for those who wished to deflect the sequestration of one its most controversial members, the episcopalian Daniel Featley, from his parsonage at Lambeth; they were initially defeated by one vote, but on a later division Featley escaped for the time being.193CJ iii. 161a; ‘Daniel Featley’, Oxford DNB. Pye was apparently ready enough to investigate the contents of trunks sent to John Trenchard* by William Russell*, 5th earl of Bedford (14 and 15 Aug.), but when the case of another turncoat, John Hotham*, came before the Commons ten days later Pye was a teller for the majority who successfully thwarted a move to have him cross-examined in the Commons.194CJ iii. 204b, 206a, 218a. Perhaps surprisingly, he was nominated to the committee to expedite the sequestration of the estates of absent Members (24 Aug.), but it may have been thought that awareness of the vulnerability of his own lands in Berkshire to the depredations of royal forces would ensure his co-operation.195CJ iii. 220a. It may have worked: on 9 September he was placed on committee dealing with the case of Sir Edward Bayntun*, yet another parliamentarian who had dallied with the king.196CJ iii. 235b. On the other hand, this might simply demonstrate the residual power of the peace party to mitigate the punishment of those at its unstable margins and more generally to thwart the radicals. When the war party tried to take advantage of sparse attendance on 10 August to further discussion of the Scottish alliance, Pye apparently undermined progress by highlighting the inadvisability of assenting to a treaty that would take four hours to read aloud.197Harl. 165, f. 164v.

The autumn of 1643 saw Pye active in measures related to the defence of London and to support for the parliamentarian army under its increasingly beleaguered commander-in-chief, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, which withdrew there in September. Committee appointments involved him in discussion with the Lords and the Common council and in matters of military supply and keeping order in Kent; with increasing frequency he delivered related messages to the Upper House.198CJ iii. 239a, 253b, 257b, 261a, 263b, 264a, 266b, 274a, 290a, 297a, 304a, 341b. Later he was one of those deputed to prepare the ordinance for the placing of west midlands forces under another commander drawing the ire of the war party, Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh (2 Nov.), while he was also occasionally named to consider navy business.199CJ iii. 298b, 308a, 311a.

Meanwhile, lengthy discussion of the diversion of royal income to the use of the parliamentarian government had resolved into a complex ordinance establishing a new committee for revenue. In the summer Pye was still being ordered to make payments from the exchequer, apparently in the traditional manner, but by 21 September, as D’Ewes recorded, Pye’s receipt office had been ‘shut up’, and on his and Glynne’s initiative, former clerk Thomas Fauconberge* had been appointed ‘sole manager’ of the ‘new exchequer’.200CJ iii. 131a, 144a; Harl. 165, f. 196v; Aylmer, State’s Servants, 26. As a result, Pye’s financial role was evidently evolving. He received at least some sequestered rents, including those from the estate of customer Sir Thomas Dawes in whose business he had first been engaged two years previously, and dispensed the proceeds to Parliament’s nominees.201CJ ii. 241b; iii. 267b, 268b, 286b; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 655. Nominated to the committee for settling the revenue of the court of wards (22 Nov.), he chaired that devising a means of accounting for income arising from the excise ordinance (13 Nov.), reporting on 25 December.202CJ iii. 310a, 317a, 352b. By this time the king, having finally concluded that Pye would not join him, had declared Pye’s exchequer office forfeit (28 Oct.).203CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 494, 498. The die was cast. In the midst of a flurry of trips to the Lords in late November and mid-December with measures designed to strengthen Parliament’s position, Pye was reported to have ‘grown cold’ about negotiations with Oxford.204CJ iii. 317b, 325b, 337b, 343a, 344a, 344b, 350b; Harl. 165, f. 221.

Presbyterian man of business, 1644

The first half of 1644 saw Pye consolidate his position in the Commons as a financial expert and a messenger to the Lords. The first named of additions to the committee for excise (8 Jan.) to review the accounts and work of its commissioners, he was appointed for excise business on several subsequent occasions (7 Feb., 30 Mar., 17 Apr., 11 May, 15 June).205CJ iii. 360a, 391a, 442a, 462b, 489a, 531b. He sat on numerous committees and delivered numerous messages related to raising money for commanders, regiments, garrisons and local defence, both within and beyond regions in which he had a personal interest.206CJ iii. 365b, 380b, 383b, 390b, 418b, 431a, 431b, 435a, 437a, 456a, 457a, 458b, 462a, 474b, 486a, 507b, 508b, 510b, 523a, 523b, 536b, 543a, 544b. He was also among MPs who each lent £50 at short notice to ensure that a train of artillery could march (18 Apr.) and he offered £100 towards the advance of Serjeant-major Richard Browne (12 June).207CJ iii. 464a; LJ vi. 524b; Harl. 166, f. 73. Engagement with military affairs, confirmed by his appointment as a commissioner for the defence of London (19 Feb.), together with his continuing experience in local government was reflected in his nomination to committees to settle disputes between individual officers and among county administrators, to examine other local grievances and to seek approval of local appointments from the Lords.208CJ iii. 355b, 372b, 429a, 436b, 442a, 456a, 467b, 485b, 498a, 504b, 507b, 513b, 518a; A. and O. Occasionally admiralty business came his way, and having taken an active part in debate over accusations made by one Captain Blythe against Vice-admiral Batten, Pye was among MPs who, when these were dismissed as frivolous, pressed for Blythe’s punishment.209CJ iii. 465b; Harl. 166, ff. 42v, 43a. Named to work on the ordinances for increasing the power of the committee of militia (13 June) and for raising horse and foot for Wiltshire (17 June), he carried to the Lords (22 June) that for creating the association of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, for which Browne was to be commander and Pye was to be a commissioner.210CJ iii. 527b, 532b, 539b; LJ vi. 605b; A. and O.

Pye’s backbone for this and other business was doubtless stiffened by the fact that on 9 February the king had ordered the seizure of his estate and goods at Faringdon. Instructions for the sale of his property and collection of his tenants’ rents were issued on 21 March.211Bodl. Rawl. D.395, f. 127. He may also have seen real prospect of religious reform and ending of abuses. Belatedly made a commissioner to the Westminster Assembly, he had made a contribution to proceedings there on 9 November 1643.212The Minutes and Pprs. of the Westminster Assembly ed. C. van Dixhoorn, D.F. Wright (Oxford, 2012), ii. 293. His committee appointments included investigation of the collegiate church at Westminster (13 Jan.) and adjudication on a petition from the break-away group from his own parish who worshipped at Tuthill Fields (7 June, which he probably chaired).213CJ iii. 365a, 405a, 521a. He was evidently the main conduit for the selection of the preachers before Parliament on the fast day on 24 April.214CJ iii. 439a, 468a. The accession of the Commons to Laud’s request that he be called as a witness at the archbishop’s trial (20 Mar.) may have been unwelcome but the composition of the long-lasting feud between Sir Edward Bayntun and Sir Edward Hungerford, of which he probably had charge, potentially enhanced his standing.215CJ iii. 433a, 517b.

The frequency of the messages Pye took to the Lords – nine in April 1644 alone – and their nature made it a responsibility of some weight, sometimes involving multiple issues and more than one trip in a day. D’Ewes suggests some occupational hazards: on 22 February ‘having mistaken his message’, probably because of its complexity, Pye ‘was sent up the second time to do the message right’, while on 5 June, when both men were dispatched, ‘we stayed long before admitted’.216Harl. 166, ff. 16, 69; cf. CJ iii. 404a. 404b. Sensitive diplomatic issues were prominent among the messages Pye transmitted during this period: negotiations with the Scots, the affairs of the Committee of Both Kingdoms, and communications with the king and foreign ambassadors required tact, power to convince the Lords to remain in sitting for reasons yet to be fully disclosed, and discretion over secret business.217CJ iii. 365b, 381b, 395b, 403b, 404a, 404b, 415b, 423b, 431a, 431b, 436b, 437b, 452b, 457b, 460a, 461b, 462b, 463b, 469a, 506a, 507a, 507b, 517b, 524a. That in all this he continued to be a partisan of the Essexians seems beyond doubt.

In the second half of 1644 Pye was significantly less visible in the Journal, but his service in the Commons followed a familiar pattern. Alongside nominations to committees for raising revenue by various means, recruiting troops, establishing a nationwide militia, settling local differences, supplying vacancies in local government, and handling compensation claims and the occasional maritime problem, he regularly took the resulting votes and orders to the Lords.218CJ iii. 553a, 561b, 579b, 580b, 582b, 591b, 592a, 594a, 601a, 606a, 607a, 625a, 637b, 644b, 647a, 655b, 660a, 660b, 699a, 701a, 722a. He was also among those deputed to consider the delicate question of the reception in the England of the king’s nephew the elector palatine (30 Aug.) and deploy their judgment or favour in prioritising petitions presented to the House (3 Oct.).219CJ iii. 612b, 649b. Again he was dispatched to inspect the royal regalia in the Westminster treasury, this time to report on what ‘superstitious plate’ might be melted down and sold (9 Oct.), while on 19 November he was added with John Selden* (a man of significantly different religious outlook), Rudyerd and others to the Committee for Plundered Ministers.220CJ iii. 657a, 699b.

Protecting, as before, the interests of his friends in the Lords, he opposed a move to expel from Parliament peers who had not taken the national covenant (10 Aug.) and when the earl of Denbigh faced complaints from local militants over his action as commander-in-chief in the west midlands, Pye was a teller for dismissing accusations of favouring delinquents (20 Nov.).221Harl. 166, f. 106: CJ iii. 700b. It is likely that he was a peacemaker on the committees to draft articles to be presented to the king (17 Aug.) and to work on the propositions of the City of London (15 Oct.).222CJ iii. 594a, 665a. The extent of his engagement in high politics is probably revealed by the employment of his servant in communication by the Committee of Both Kingdoms and in his relaying to the Lords on 19 December a request to convene a meeting with the Scots commissioners to discuss proposals from Oxford.223CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 101; CJ iii. 727a. Surprisingly, five days later he took to the Lords the Self-Denying Ordinance, a device of the war party unpalatable since it automatically deprived peers of military command, and before the year was out he also took up the ordinance for martial law (30 Dec.) and the Commons’ verdict that Sir John Hotham* should suffer death for his desertion of Parliament for the king (31 Dec.).224CJ iii. 734b; iv. 4a, 6a. Quite what convinced Pye and also Pembroke, another somewhat surprising supporter, of the necessity of these measures, is unknown, although a desire for a definitive resolution of conflict around Oxford might have been a factor. At any rate, Pye, probably one of the few men likely to persuade the Lords to accept the Ordinance, failed in the task at this point.

Presbyterian pragmatist, 1645

The impression of a period of behind-the-scenes manoeuvring and compromise receives some confirmation from the record. Overall Pye was as visible in the Journal in 1645 as he had been the previous year, but he received no mention until mid-February, when he reprised his messenger role, desiring the Lords to prolong their sitting (12 Feb.) and to confer on the ordinance for the New Model army (14 Feb.).225CJ iv. 46b, 48b. Not only was he a commissioner under the ordinance, passed on 17 February, but the next day and in succeeding weeks he sat on parliamentary committees and took messages related to its funding, manning and arming.226A. and O.; CJ iv. 52a. 71b, 81b, 93a, 142a, 164a, 177b, 178b, 184a, 186a, 190b. As the Self-Denying Ordinance was modified, Pye carried up the vote referring MPs’ commissions to committee (8 Apr.).227CJ iv. 103b, 104b. On 21 February he was nominated to prepare an ordinance giving further authority to the commissioners of the navy, and as the year went on he continued to be named in connection with such military matters as the London militia, provincial garrisons, county forces and pensions; his place on the Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire committee was confirmed (2 June) and he was among MPs entrusted with contracting for ammunition for the state.228CJ iv. 57a, 132a, 153b, 155a, 160b, 180b, 182a, 182b, 186b, 200a, 227a, 238a, 351a, 364a, 365a, 377b, 388b; LJ vii. 468a.

A commissioner for raising £21,000 for the Scots army from London and Middlesex (21 Feb.), as before he was regularly placed on committees and entrusted with messages to the Lords relating to money. He was first named to a committee considering the establishment of a committee of accounts, and retained a prominent role on the excise committee.229LJ vii. 207b; CJ iv. 72b, 92b, 96a, 96b, 122b, 163b, 170a, 223b, 124a, 146a, 186b, 275a, 301b, 305b. An order of 6 June specified that it sit at least every 14 days and it was perhaps in recognition of the labour entailed in this as well as in acknowledgement of what he had lost in exchequer perquisites that three days earlier a committee was set up to consider making him an allowance.230LJ vii. 415b; CJ iv. 161b. Meanwhile, his financial expertise was deployed on committees devising measures to sequester and sell delinquents’ estates and to compensate servants in the royal household whose posts had disappeared; once again, the messages he conveyed to the Upper House indicate active involvement.231CJ iv. 178b, 200a, 222b, 225a, 335b.

As in previous years, a few nominations to committees dealing with religious matters came Pye’s way, but this time of more than usual significance, for they included the regulation of Westminster Abbey (7 July; commissioner 18 Nov.) and the division of London into classical presbyteries with allocated ministers and elders, a critical step in the imposition of a Presbyterian settlement for which the capital was to provide a model (25 July).232CJ iv. 97b, 198b, 218a; LJ vii. 711a. It was Pye who sought a conference with the Lords on rules for the election of elders (15 Aug.), while as a magistrate he was still deputed to interrogate seminary priests (20 Oct.).233CJ iv. 242a, 242b, 315a. More surprisingly at this juncture, he was also named to prepare ordinances for the regulation of Cambridge University and of the offices of [heraldic] arms (both 22 Nov.).234CJ iv. 350b, 351b. He had a more fathomable interest in officeholding: he told for the majority against committal of an ordinance for appointing a clerk in the court of wards (10 June) and took to the Lords an ordinance appointing a new baron of the exchequer (29 Sept.).235CJ iv. 169b, 293a. In the days of military manoeuvring that preceded the battle of Naseby, Pye was named to investigate the circulation of intelligence from intercepted letters from the close committee to Oxford (11 June).236CJ iv. 173a.

In 1645 Pye’s contact with the Upper House was as frequent as ever. While he delivered messages of all kinds, including on 10 June the Commons’ vote to exchange his eldest son, a royalist prisoner, politically sensitive issues were again prominent, along with those pertaining to the Commons’ links with the peers, individually or collectively.237CJ iv. 170a. His intervention in debate on the sale of the duke of Buckingham’s pictures to assert the young nobleman’s intention to submit to Parliament, and thus to protect his property (31 Mar.) and his addition to the committee for Gloucestershire and Marcher counties (15 Aug., when it was strengthened to counter the king’s presence in the area) were among public manifestations of his ongoing links with the Villiers and Herbert families.238Harl. 166, f. 196; CJ iv. 243a; Sheffield Archives, EM1352/6. The fact that they were on opposing sides in the conflict – or rather, in the latter case, ranged on both sides – probably contributed to Pye’s usefulness as a broker and to a personal propensity towards pragmatism.

Having been sent on 19 February to desire the Lords to sit on the peace treaty with the king, two days later Pye carried to them an ordinance requested by the commissioners at Uxbridge, while in March he was entrusted, among much other business, with promoting a conference to preserve good correspondence between the two Houses.239CJ iv. 54a, 57b, 68a, 88a. As the king’s military power ebbed he took an order authorising the Committee of Both Kingdoms to receive messages from the enemy (7 May) and was again sent to persuade the Lords to continue sitting to await important business (12 May, 7 June, 28 June).240CJ iv. 134a, 139b, 167a. It was he who conveyed the desire for a conference on the royalists’ surrender of Carlisle to the Scots and for presence at the communication of royalist papers captured at Naseby (3 July).241CJ iv. 194b. This had wide repercussions. In a context of the faction fighting at Westminster that summer, and recriminations from various directions on peers who had changed sides, Pye took messages related to Thomas Savile, 1st earl of Sussex (accused of secret negotiations with the Scots; 14 and 15 July) and the impeachment of Henry Grey, 1st earl of Stamford (for assault on Sir Arthur Hesilrige*; 25 July); he brought the Lords’ rejection of the latter (probably very willingly, 5 Aug.) but was again involved when it resurfaced later (13 Oct.).242CJ iv. 207b, 208a, 218b, 231b, 305b.

In the meantime, Pye also relayed the nominations of commissioners to be sent by Parliament for a new round of negotiations in Scotland (7 July).243CJ iv. 199b In the aftermath of the marquess of Montrose’s victory at Kilsyth in mid-August, which diverted the energies of the Covenanters from Westminster, Pye was among MPs chosen to meet the Scottish commissioners to hear their report (12 Sept.).244CJ iv. 273a. Negotiations with the Scots again took him to the Lords (25 Nov.), as did papers captured by Colonel Lionel Copley* from a royalist force defeated in Yorkshire (27 Oct.), admiralty matters (18 Nov.), a vote to continue the commissioners of the great seal (15 Dec.), and another request to prolong the Lords’ sitting (30 Dec.).245CJ iv. 324a, 347b, 355a, 377a, 392a, 392b.

In pursuit of peace, 1646

During 1646 Pye had slightly fewer mentions in the Journal than in preceding years. Nearly half of them, occurring disproportionately in the first seven months, were as messenger to the Lords. In this final phase of the war, he was placed on committees for martial law (1 Jan.) and for garrisons in Wales (4 Feb.) and Hull (30 Apr.), while he took messages on the surrender terms of royalist strongholds, the behaviour of troops and other military matters.246CJ iv. 394a, 429a, 471b, 474b, 505a, 527b, 546a, 546b, 579b He reminded the Lords (3 Mar.) about the authorising of payment for Abingdon from the excise, was nominated with paymaster Robert Scawen to a committee preparing new means of applying the excise to the army’s needs and reviewing previous audits (11 Mar.), pressed the Lords for the continuation of the excise ordinance (31 Mar.) and was among those deputed to draft an ordinance bringing in arrears due before the abolition of the court of wards (7 May).247CJ iv. 460b, 472b, 473a, 495a, 538b.

Perhaps because his own son-in-law Edward Phelps was also a sufferer, Pye was a teller for those supporting the discharge from sequestration of one John Carill of Sussex (9 Mar.) and, once again on the side of leniency in this direction, he was sent to persuade the Lords to extend this to all delinquents who had compounded and paid half their fines (31 Mar.).248CJ iv. 471a, 495a; Sheffield Archives, EM1368/12. Subsequently, he was busy on a variety of related tasks; in December he made a submission to the committee on behalf of Phelps.249CJ iv. 536a, 536b, 550b, 571b, 586b, 587a, 594b, 617a, 658a; Sheffield Archives, EM1368/12. He was also nominated to committees preparing legislation on the wider issues: the satisfaction of debts due by those exempted from composition (6 July) and the sale of the estates of papists and delinquents (10 July); he was sent to the Lords to desire a conference on the latter (21 Aug.).250CJ iv. 603a, 613a, 651a. On 23 July, as Parliament dealt with the fall-out from the surrender of Oxford the previous month, he was placed on the committee set up to receive complaints against those who had been in arms against Parliament but were within its sphere of authority, as well as sequestered persons clinging to their public office.251CJ iv. 625a.

While hostilities lasted, Pye had continued to transmit important and sensitive messages. In January, February and March these related to peace propositions to and from the king and negotiations with the Scots commissioners.252CJ iv. 395b, 396b, 426a, 455a, 455b, 458a, 458b, 490a. He also sought a conference on the publication of Some Papers of the Commissioners of Scotland (14 Apr.).253CJ iv. 508a. Following Charles’s covert flight from Oxford, Pye took to the Lords the order (which they duly agreed) that anyone harbouring the king and failing to reveal it to the Speakers would be proceeded against as a traitor (4 May).254CJ iv. 532a, 533b. His effectiveness appears to have been taken for granted: among many messages in the early summer on subjects such as controversial comments by Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire*, delinquent MPs, further peace propositions and the arrangements for replacing official seals (6 July), Pye was entrusted with pressing the Lords to expedite the ordinance giving power to the lord lieutenant of Ireland to levy men in England for service there ‘because it required dispatch at this instant’ (26 May).255CJ iv. 551a, 555b, 570a, 571a, 581b, 591a, 591b, 603b. This above all was an indication that he was still – or perhaps more than ever – a political Presbyterian, convinced that the parliamentarian army should be dispersed as soon as was practicable – a line also taken by Pembroke as the summer advanced. It may have been with some optimism that on 9 July he took to the Lords a request to hasten their answer to the vote declaring that there was no further use for Scots forces in England and that there should be a public thanksgiving for the fall of Oxford, and returned that day and the next with the news that the peers were considering peace propositions.256CJ iv. 611b, 612a, 613b.

For the remainder of 1646 Pye’s parliamentary activity largely revolved round settling aspects of the peace. As indicated, an element in this was the transference of the theatre of war to Ireland. Galvanised perhaps by experience on the committee hearing the plight of poor Irish protestants (to which he had been nominated on 20 Apr.), Pye was a member of that devoted to financing the projected military campaign there (11 Aug.), while he later took to the Lords the ordinance for channelling £25,000 from the excise to that cause.257CJ iv. 516b, 641b, 718a. With Wheler he was listed as a treasurer for Irish money raised in Westminster.258CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 704. Added to the committee at Goldsmiths’ Hall for the purpose of raising money to pay off the Scots (21 Aug.), he was on delegations to the City authorities seeking loans for the state (5 Sept.) and payment of outstanding assessments for the New Model (4 Dec.).259CJ iv. 650b, 663a, 738a. He was also among MPs considering petitions from the king’s creditors (3 Oct.).260CJ iv. 681b.

On 22 August Pye made what was apparently a uniquely recorded appearance at the Committee for Compounding.261SP23/3, p. 215. He continued to be named to consider delinquents’ cases, including that of MP Sir Robert Napier*, and he was nominated to prepare instructions to county committees for pursuing undiscovered properties and maximise the return of sales of sequestered land (29 Oct.).262CJ iv. 687b, 708a, 712b. As a Presbyterian and a money-raiser, he was an unsurprising member of the committee to draft an ordinance for the sale of episcopal lands (30 Oct.) and a suitable man to persuade the Lords to a conference on it (17 Nov.).263CJ iv. 712a, 723b; LJ viii. 585b. As before he was an occasional adjudicator on local disputes and investigator of security matters, and he was on the committee to nominate and vet sheriffs and justices of the peace (30 Oct.).264CJ iv. 681b, 709b; v. 6b. Having sought a conference on the ordinance for appointing new commissioners of the great seal (13 Oct.), for reasons unknown – but perhaps in an attempt to block factionally-motivated appointments – he was a teller for the minority in favour of retaining an order disabling members of either House from occupying the office (20 Oct.).265CJ iv. 691b, 700b.

Meanwhile Pye did occasional but important duty on religious matters, although it is notable that he had no discernable connection with the abolition of episcopacy or with discussion of material reaching Parliament from the Westminster Assembly. He was among MPs deputed (4 Aug.) to co-ordinate arrangements for the three churches in Westminster, in particular provision for ministers, and among magistrates to tighten up on the observance of local fast days (26 Aug.).266CJ iv. 632a, 653a. He was also nominated to the committees preparing ordinances for the publication of the Septuagint Bible (16 Oct.) and for the maintenance of ministers in England (11 Nov.).267CJ iv. 695a, 719b. Among significantly fewer messages to the Lords was that on 4 December with an ordinance for fixing a fast day reflecting faltering negotiations with the king over the Newcastle Propositions.268CJ iv. 623a, 623b, 738a, 738b.

Adhering at Westminster, 1647

The pattern changed with the turning of the year. Having taken only one message about the Scots to the Lords in the autumn, in a flurry of trips to the Upper House between 15 December and 3 February 1647 a majority of Pye’s messages were connected to the transfer of the king at Newcastle from Scottish to English hands.269CJ v. 12b, 14b, 39b, 40a, 43a, 50a, 50b, 65a, 66b. He was still concerned with delinquents but his longer-term financial role is more apparent in the record.270CJ v. 50a, 72b. When a report from the committee of accounts on 25 January revealed that Pye and his colleagues Wheler and Bell had not claimed for their charges ‘expended in service’, they were awarded £150 from unassigned fines at Goldsmiths’ Hall.271CJ v. 61b, 62a. With the disbandment of the army within the sights of the Presbyterians, on 15 February the Commons belatedly received and approved accounts submitted before March 1645 by Pye, Sir Isaac Penington and others as treasurers for the relief of the king’s army in the north; a modest £72 was still owed by them.272CJ v. 88a; LJ ix. 107. Three weeks later they allowed an account presented by Pye and other exchequer officers of receipts from customs farmers negotiated by the Committee of Navy and Customs, on which Pye himself still sat as an active member.273CJ v. 106a, 106b; vi. 17b; Add. 22546, f. 13. In the meantime Pye, Wheler and Glynne were once again ordered to receive contributions from Members and pay them to officers of the House (22 Feb.); the same day, as one of a string of orders involving money, Pye carried to the Lords an ordinance relating to lands sold by the Committee for Revenue, and instructions on the excise.274CJ v. 93b, 88a, 88b, 91a, 91b, 94b, 95b. The same week he was nominated to work again on the sale of bishops’ lands.275CJ v. 99b. It seems evident that, as in the satire of his earlier critics, he had a finger in every financial pie.

As a client of Pembroke, Pye was an obvious choice for the committee for the regulation of the University of Oxford (13 Jan.), the goals of which included the preservation of the earl’s rights as chancellor.276CJ v. 51b. He also collected three other nominations to committees dealing with religious and academic issues, most notably that preparing the ordinance for preventing the admission of royalist ministers and scholars to livings and posts (22 Mar.).277CJ v. 84b, 86b, 119b. Although not named in February to investigate seditious publications then circulating, he was called on in March to examine the Leveller tract, The Outcries of the Oppressed Commons, and The Scots Apostacy, the latest attack on Parliament’s allies by the royalist satirist John Cleveland.278CJ v. 109a.

The somewhat uncharacteristic employment in such business of Pye, a man who seems more pragmatist than propagandist, may be testament to his factional allegiance. Unusually he took no messages to the Lords between late February and mid-May, but he was engaged preponderantly on politically-charged rather than specifically financial business. Apart from dealing with local matters (government in Warwickshire, 24 Mar.; the Newcastle election, 6 Apr.), his committee nominations related to key features of the maneouvring between a divided Parliament and the army.279CJ v. 122b, 134a. He was named to consider the petition from army officers against disbandment and dispatch to Ireland (27 Mar.) and, in the wake of disturbances at Westminster on 1 April when Colonel Thomas Pride was examined over his part in that petition, to work on the ordinance for the London militia (2 Apr.) which resulted in its being put under Presbyterian control.280CJ v. 127b, 132b. As the agitation among soldiers increased (and his son Robert faced mutiny), Pye was involved in measures intended to decrease grievances and hasten disbandment: the settlement of land on General Sir Thomas Fairfax* and Oliver Cromwell* (5 and 11 May); the ordinance of indemnity for all who had served Parliament (7 May); the raising of a loan to pay for military service in England and Ireland (12 May); a review of debts contracted under a 1642 ordinance for supplying horses for military purposes (14 May).281CJ v. 162b, 166a, 167a, 168b, 171b. His determination here was doubtless heightened by the trouble Robert junior had experienced the previous year when sued for a horse he had commandeered in Reading.282‘Sir Robert Pye (c.1622-1701), Oxford DNB. On the other hand, with other local MPs and magistrates, Pye was deputed to investigate pamphlets circulating in the capital which denied any right of subjects to take up arms against their sovereign (11 May).283CJ v. 167b.

Resuming frequent contact with the Lords, Pye was nominated to consider the request of northern magnate Edmund Sheffield, who had recently succeeded as 2nd earl of Mulgrave and become a commissioner for compounding, to be recompensed for the grant to others of the alum monopoly on which his family’s ailing fortunes rested (13 May).284CJ v. 170b. Alongside occasional miscellaneous committee nominations (the petition of Sir Martin Lister*, 21 May; the seal of south Wales, 22 June; the ordinance replacing holy days by ‘days of recreation’ for scholars and apprentices, 24 June), Pye took messages desiring a conference on the disbandment of Scottish forces in Ireland (14 May), conveying measures for satisfying arrears of pay and reminding the Lords of the act of indemnity (21 May), transmitting votes regarding the reduction of Jersey and a concessionary commitment that army volunteers would not be pressed to serve in Ireland (25 May), and listing commissions for officers who were to go there (28 May).285CJ v. 172b, 181a, 181b, 184a, 192a, 192b, 220b, 221b. With Wheler, Pye had evidently emerged as chief treasurer under the Acts for provision of money for disbanding the armies and for relief in Ireland, a circumstance brought to MPs’ attention on 4 June when, in a further attempt to assuage grievances, an order was issued for enrolment of the relevant accounts.286CJ v. 198a. On 6 June a warrant was issued to the treasurers at war to pay him £200.287CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 709.

With the king now in the hands of the army and Presbyterian sentiment strong in a city which felt itself menaced by the troops massed nearby, it is conceivable that Pye played a part as an initiator of anti-army policy rather than, as has been thought, simply an executive. As a major figure in Westminster itself he had standing independently of Pembroke or the Presbyterian leadership, while his son Robert was among the first officers to bring his regiment to London that month in readiness to embark on service in Ireland.288‘Sir Robert Pye (c.1622-1701)’, Oxford DNB. Added on 10 June with other Presbyterians to the committee investigating Members who had been in arms against Parliament, the next day he went twice to the Lords: the first time with votes and orders for payment of soldiers leaving the army; the second time ‘immediately’ with an ordinance authorising the London militia, working in conjunction with the newly-established parliamentary ‘committee of safety’, to mobilise a force in the City against the army.289CJ v. 205a, 207a, 207b, 208a. On the 12th he was dispatched again with an additional instruction to Parliament’s commissioners with the army to seek full information on the latter’s intentions.290CJ v. 208b. Significantly – and suggestive of Pye’s influence – by the time an order was issued to him on the 14th to instruct guards to assemble round the palace of Westminster in anticipation of the arrival of soldiers with The Representation of the Army, the local trained bands were unique in having obeyed earlier commands to mobilise.291CJ v. 209b. When the Commons refused to accede to army requests to impeach the Eleven Members who spearheaded opposition to them, it was Pye who, with Wheler, was given care of supervising the defence of the House.292CJ v. 229b. Yet his standing survived the resurgence of Independent influence in the chamber through most of July. He took to the Lords the vote that the king should be permitted to reside no nearer to London than army quarters (2 July) and non-controversial orders for compensation of Leeds clothiers (19 July), as well as chairing the committee of wood, charged with using money raised for sick and wounded soldiers (3 July), and sitting on committees collecting information on unemployed soldiers to be expelled from London (9 July) and investigating abuses in payments to them (21 July).293CJ v. 229b, 232b, 238a, 250a, 253a.

None the less, once demonstrators had invaded the House on 26 July demanding peace and disbandment, it was Pye who went to request the Lords (among other things) to sit on to consider the City petition.294CJ v. 258b. He was one of four Members sent on the 30th to seek out the Speaker, who had fled to the army at the onset of the Presbyterian coup; following the deputation’s return to the Commons to report that he was out of town and the election of a replacement, Pye was again sent to the Lords to seek a prolongation of their sitting.295CJ v. 259b, 260a. With Wheler, he was nominated (2 Aug.) to the committee to examine the cause of the tumult of 26 July, and with some of the same men was added that day to the Presbyterian-dominated ‘committee of safety’ which had been convened to co-operate with city authorities for its defence against the army.296CJ v. 265a; LJ ix. 370b. His son was even more actively engaged in resisting the army.297‘Sir Robert Pye (c.1622-1701)’, Oxford DNB.

However, notably although by no means uniquely, Pye also survived the next reversal. Following the army’s arrival in the city on 6 August and the re-appearance of fugitive Independent MPs, his son Robert obtained a pass from Fairfax to go into exile in France, but Pye’s own activity soon resumed much as before.298‘Sir Robert Pye (c.1622-1701)’, Oxford DNB. On the 11th he, Wheler and Westminster Member William Bell were put in charge of distributing relief to the sick poor in the locality, while three days later Pye was placed on a committee to establish a new administration of justice in the former county palatine of Durham.299CJ v. 271a, 274a. On the 18th he was sent to the Lords with the ordinance overturning the actions of the House during the period of Presbyterian ascendancy, the declaration vindicating the army and an order for the committee for Ireland to sit ‘instantly’; later the same day he was nominated to a committee refining the ordinance of repeal.300CJ v. 276a, 276b, 278a. The arrival of Lieutenant-general Oliver Cromwell* on the 20th and the passing of that ordinance under pressure prompted some Presbyterians to disappear from the House, but Pye maintained a high profile, taking to the Lords (among other messages) a request that they continue to sit.301CJ v. 280a. That he detected a positive purpose in so doing is indicated by the fact that, like fellow Presbyterian Sir Gilbert Gerard*, he was the recipient on the 21st of an order to go with radicals Sir Henry Vane II* and Hesilrige to communicate a letter from Fairfax to the Scottish commissioners, and to assure the latter that Parliament still sought union between England and Scotland.302CJ v. 280b. Pye was evidently more confident than Gerard, who secured leave of absence from the Commons the same day.303CJ v. 281a.

Conceivably, Pye was a lynchpin in Presbyterian rearguard action, or in maintaining a delicate correspondence between Lords and Commons, or both. He certainly played a notable role in forwarding a political settlement at a time when many others had deserted the House. Between 26 August and 14 September he went nine times to the Upper House, on a variety of matters – including raising money, Ireland and the navy – but most notably with messages connected to discussion in Parliament, in the Derby House committee and with the Scots of the Newcastle Propositions.304CJ v. 284b, 286a, 286b, 287a, 287b, 289a, 289b, 290b, 293a, 296b, 297b, 300b. Once the Commons had agreed to renew peace negotiations with the king, Pye took the vote to the Lords for concurrence (30 Sept.).305CJ v. 321b. He went on the same errand periodically into November as the Heads of Proposals replaced the Propositions as the basis for talks.306CJ v. 343b, 347a, 352b, 353b.

Nominated to the Committee for Indemnity on 6 October 1647 (although the Lords did not ratify this appointment until January 1648), Pye was not only named to investigate Members absent from the House (9 Oct.) but also, with Wheler, to collect £20 fines from those whose excuses were disallowed.307CJ v. 327b, 329a; LJ ix. 669a. A teller (in a division involving only 49 MPs) for the majority who concurred with the Lords’ order giving the French ambassador a pass to go home (20 Oct.), he was then among MPs chosen to join a party of peers deputed to give the envoy a valedictory audience – probably another sign of his close relations with certain of the Lords.308CJ v. 338a. Otherwise, apart from occasional nominations to committees dealing with religious or social business (tithes, 15 Sept.; examining an alleged nun, 22 Nov.; poverty and vagrancy, 23 Nov.), the main focus of his activity for the rest of the year was fiscal and military.309CJ v. 302a, 365b, 366b. Messages to the Lords about assessments, loans, payments from the excise, supply of the army and local appointments (12, 26 Oct.; 1, 18, 19 Nov.; 1, 27 Dec.) were complemented by duties within the Commons.310CJ v. 331a, 343b, 347a, 363a, 364a, 374a, 374b, 407a. Nominated again to expedite the sale of bishops’ lands (28 Oct.), a few days later Pye was again added to the committee raising money for Ireland.311CJ v. 344a, 347a. On 4 November he was a teller for the minority against the immediate payment by the Committee for Revenue to James Butler, 12th earl of Ormond, of £2,500 agreed at the earl’s surrender of Dublin; it is unknown whether his motives for withholding the money from a former enemy of whom many were still suspicious were political or simply financial.312CJ v. 350a. Added on 11 November to the committee for maimed soldiers, the next month (21 Dec.) Pye was named to one with a remit to review wider aspects of the welfare of combatants and their families.313CJ v. 356a, 396a.

Following the king’s flight to the Isle of Wight, Pye was included in the party of MPs which met with the Lords (15 Nov.) to devise instructions to be issued to Colonel Robert Hammond for his reception and on committees to investigate subversive activity in London by army agitators and others (16 Nov., 18 Nov.).314CJ v. 359a, 360a, 363a. A member of Wheler’s committee for managing the militia in Tower Hamlets (19 Nov.), he was a teller in an unsuccessful attempt to have a militia bill read a second time (1 Dec.) but had the opportunity to work on an ordinance for enlarging the power of the Westminster militia committee (31 Dec.) – an issue where his local interest may have conflicted with the usual Presbyterian concern to privilege the loyal City militia.315CJ v. 363b, 374b, 413a. His successful promotion with Sir William Lytton* (9 Dec.) of a reading of the July-August ordinance giving power to the committee of safety can be read either as a Presbyterian attempt at its reconstitution or an attempt to head off its detractors; but at this point, while his presence at the heart of politics is palpable, his precise stance is elusive.316CJ v. 378b. Capable of assiduously cultivating friends among those who did not necessarily share a Presbyterian stance – as he had done with the Rutland ‘recruiter’ Sir James Harington in July 1646 – in December 1647 he ‘was kind to [Bulstrode Whitelocke*] and invited him often to his house’.317Harington’s Diary, 29; Whitelocke, Diary, 202. Meanwhile, he was named to a committee to analyse progress in discharging financial obligations to the Scots (25 Dec.) and ended the year by delivering yet another request to the Lords to continue sitting (31 Dec.).318CJ v. 405b, 413a.

Pursuit of peace 1648

The outcome of that day’s discussion was a resolution, in the light of the king’s engagement with the Scots, to keep him a prisoner at Carisbrooke. It can probably be assumed that Pye, like most in the Lords, was against the ensuing Vote of No Addresses passed in the Commons on 3 January 1648. Two days later he was a teller for the minority who failed to secure rejection of an ordinance abolishing the payment of first fruits and tenths to the crown (although it was another measure that he might have opposed in financial terms alone).319CJ v. 419b. He was no more successful in voting against proceeding with the impeachment of the Presbyterian former Speaker of the Lords, Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham (27 Jan.).320CJ v. 445a. Yet Pye was not without sympathisers: in early February an ordinance for paying to him and the earl of Northumberland debts (respectively £1,300 and £2,500) due from Ulick Burke, earl of St Albans and Clanricard, carried to the Lords by Wheler, was immediately passed, privileging their claims over other lesser creditors.321CJ v. 457a, 459b; LJ x. 36a; To the Parlament...The humble petition of Thomas Brewer (1654) (669.f.19.55).

In the meantime Pye was still fairly visible in the Journal, if – by his standards – somewhat irregularly. He was nominated to committees to receive petitions relating to war damage (10 Jan.), protect tenants against oppression by popish and delinquent landlords (29 Jan.) and refine previous measures for the sale of episcopal lands (9 Feb.).322CJ v. 425a, 447b, 460b. He carried several messages prodding the Lords into debating the appointment of sheriffs (10 and 20 Jan.; 8 Feb.) and ordinances relating to delinquents’ compositions and payments for the army and navy (1 Feb.), while as a Westminster magistrate he continued to receive instructions to examine persons suspected by the Commons (2 Feb.).323CJ v. 425a, 439b, 451b, 452a, 453a, 458a. Later in February he was unable to marshal enough votes to prevent the Commons rejecting a clause in the Westminster Confession of Faith which would have extended the prohibited degrees of marriage, but he was still employed to take a variety of messages (18 Feb.).324CJ v. 467a. Early in March he had a clutch of committee nominations – most importantly to prioritise petitions to Parliament – and was thwarted by a small margin in a division over recommitting a report on another delinquent.325CJ v. 480a, 485b, 486a. After three weeks’ uncharacteristic absence from the record on 30 March he carried to Lords ordinances for amending the financial settlement on Sir Thomas Fairfax and the printing of Theodore Haak’s annotated translation of the Dutch Bible.326CJ v. 521b.

With the slow resurgence of Presbyterian influence and the advent of pro-royalist riots in the capital, from mid-April Pye was a more visible and regular presence in the chamber. He was still at work on Irish relief and took routine messages to the Lords 19, 20, 25 Apr.; 20 May).327CJ v. 537a, 538b, 545b, 567b, 569a. He looked into information contained in a petition from the City authorities (27 Apr.).328CJ v. 546a. Added apparently at the last minute to a delegation to the City on 16 May, when a crowd supporting the king attempted to invade the palace of Westminster, the next day he sat on an investigating committee.329CJ v. 561b, 562b. Twice he was among those deputed to extend or review the militia in and around Westminster (12 Apr., 27 May); he was also named to consider a more general militia (4 May).330CJ v. 527b, 551a, 575b. When at the height of the royalist insurgency Pembroke and other non-Independents were added to the Derby House committee, Pye was a teller for those who tried to block the inclusion of the maverick Sir John Danvers* (30 May); they were defeated, but it was Pye who brought the Lords’ consent to the additions (1 June).331CJ v. 579a, 581a.

His elder brother Sir Walter Pye† (d. 1635) had been an MP and justice of the peace in the Marches and Wales, so it was as a potentially very useful ally to Pembroke that Pye was made a militia commissioner in his native Herefordshire on 23 May.332LJ x. 276b. His relationship at this time to his nephew, former knight of the shire and royalist Sir Walter Pye*, is unclear. On 6 June Pye senior was placed on a committee for the sequestration of the estates of papists and delinquents in south Wales and Monmouthshire.333CJ v. 587a. He was also nominated to prepare the ordinance for the abolition of deans and chapters and the sale of their lands (16 June).334CJ v. 602a. In addition to distributing fast day collections to necessitous widows (order of 3 June), he took numerous messages to the Lords on miscellaneous matters including the militia, quelling disorder in Kent and appointing judges (5, 6/7, 13, 14 June).335CJ v. 582b, 585b, 567b, 588a, 588b, 597a, 597b, 599a.

After three weeks of absence from the Journal, and against a backdrop of unrest in London and petitioning of Parliament for a peace treaty, Pye resurfaced in the Journal on 4 July. That day he took to the Lords for their approval a clutch of measures, among which was a commission for Major-general Philip Skippon* to assume command of forces in London against both royalists and (potentially) Presbyterians and the vote, narrowly carried by the Independents and already rejected by the Upper House, for imposing preconditions on the treaty.336CJ v. 623a. The choice of Pye to take a message with such contentious elements could imply a conviction in some quarters that he agreed with them, or at least that he might explain why they should be accepted, but if so he did not succeed, for he was unable to report back an immediate answer. It is possible that, keen above all to retain his position at Westminster, rendered vulnerable by the actions of family members, and seeing the prospect of a peace settlement at last within sight, Pye had opted to compromise and was offered encouragement to do so. On 5 July the Commons ordered the delivery to him of horse and pistols taken from his sons by one Major Poe – which might have been denied him had political opponents been sufficiently numerous or determined to pursue him – and referred to the Derby House Committee the investigation of whether these were to have been used against Parliament.337CJ v. 625a. Yet on 10 July, once more in familiar guise, Pye was included on a Presbyterian-dominated committee for reuniting the militias and for considering peace petitions from London and its environs.338CJ v. 630a. On the 13th he went again to the Lords with an order for a public thanksgiving for victories over insurgents and a declaration on warships that had defected to the king, but the same day he and Wheler were tellers against radical Independents for a majority who rejected the postponement of discussion of reports from the Lords and the City.339CJ v. 635a, 635b.

Another fortnight of uncharacteristic invisibility passed before 31 July, when Pye was ordered to carry to the Lords a message about raising a guard for the Isle of Ely; he complied the next day, but again received no immediate response.340CJ v. 653b, 656b. Possibly in the interim he had taken the opportunity to confer with those Independent grandees now keen to pursue peace. Pembroke, his finances in disarray, was marking time on his estates in Wiltshire, but William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, was nearer at hand.341‘Philip Herbert (1584-1650)’, Oxford DNB. On 3 August Pye, Wheler, and three other MPs among whom Nathaniel Fiennes I* was almost certainly a galvanising force, were chosen to prepare instructions for a committee to present a treaty to the king.342CJ v. 659b. Later that month, in addition to further duty as a Westminster justice of the peace, Pye went to the Lords with messages on the Scottish envoy Halliburton and other matters (8, 19 Aug.); was named again to committees for paying arrears to army officers (9 Aug.), for raising militia in London (22 Aug.) and for further sequestrations of delinquents to pay for keeping order in Surrey (24 Aug.); and was added to the revived committee for relief in the north (12 Aug.).343CJ v. 664a, 664b, 669b, 675b, 678a, 681b.

In the wake of the repeal of the Vote of No Addresses and with the royalist threat receding, on 5 September Pye and Wheler were once again instructed to receive the fines of absent Members.344CJ vi. 7a. But September proved a relatively quiet month. Apart from three apparently routine committee appointments (related to the case of Henry Peck*, 8 Sept.; indemnity for mutinous sailors, 13 Sept.; and a monopoly for Bath stones, 22 Sept.), Pye’s visible activity was confined to conveying an invitation (11 Sept.) to Presbyterian minister Stephen Marshall to preach at St Margaret’s on the eve of his departure for discussions on the Isle of Wight.345CJ vi. 10a, 17b, 21a, 27b. On 4 October, two days after Parliament firmly rejected the king’s proposal from Newport which fell short of a full Presbyterian settlement, for only the second time since the Long Parliament opened, Pye was given leave of absence. This time it was not to attend to a local domestic crisis but to go into the country, and was plausibly a sign of loss of confidence.346CJ vi. 42b.

Pye reappeared in the Journal on 24 November as a messenger desiring the Lords to prolong their sitting, after the Commons had again found the king’s answers on religion unsatisfactory.347CJ vi. 86b. The next day he collected two committee nominations: to examine alleged forgers of an act of Parliament and to decide which castles and garrisons were to be keep up and which slighted.348CJ vi. 87a, 87b. On 2 December he was again named as a militia commissioner.349A. and O. However, on the 4th he was a teller with Sir Samuel Luke* for the majority who voted to insert into a declaration concerning the king’s removal three days earlier from Newport to Hurst Castle the statement that it was ‘without consent’ of the House.350CJ vi. 93a. This, his last recorded action in Parliament, probably sealed his fate. On 6 December he was among MPs excluded from the House and arrested by the army. According to William Prynne*, as the day advanced, Pye and a few others ‘were offered liberty to go to their lodgings (being near) upon their parole to appear before the general the next morning’, but ‘conceiving it inconsistent with the privilege of Parliament and a prejudice to their cause’ they refused to do more than undertake ‘to appear in the House the next morning’. This was rejected and that night ‘they were all enforced to remain in hell’ (the tavern in which they were held in cramped conditions).351W. Prynne, A True and Full Relation (1648), 5 (E.476.14); The Parliament under the power of the sword (1648), (E.669.f.13).

This may have been the end of Pye’s parliamentary career, but he did not disappear from public life. Still a force to be reckoned with in Westminster, he remained a vestryman at St Margaret’s, and in September 1649 was again named as a governor of the hospital and school.352A. and O. Evidence from the exchequer reveals him working through the winter of 1648-9 and dispensing sums for secret service, although this may have been before the purge.353CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 410. John Harington I* dined with Pye periodically in 1650, 1651 and 1652, encountering in his company Rudyerd, Sir Gilbert Gerard, John Stephens*, Denis Bond* and retired clerk of the Commons Henry Elsynge, among others.354Harington’s Diary, 64-8, 72-4, 76-9, 85. On 26 March 1650 there was an order to remove from Pye’s keeping guns and carriages at his house for use by the state, but it is not clear that this was a sign that he was suspect.355CSP Dom. 1650, p. 531. The death of Pembroke in Westminster on 23 January that year had deprived him of a patron, but in the process gave him further employment as an executor. This engaged him a good deal during the 1650s, as did trustee business for others and his own claims in the estate of the late earl of Clanricard.356Sheffield Archives, EM1317; EM1318; EM1352/1, 5; EM1368/13, 15, 22; EM1481.

By July 1653 Pye no longer had clerks working in his house; by October the parliamentary committee for lodgings concluded that, the office of clerk of the tallies having been voided by the abolition of monarchical government, he had no further title to it.357CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 226-7. Yet he still had a substantial habitable property at Westminster, some of it once lived in by Sir Gilbert Gerard, some of it on a long lease from the dean and chapter of Westminster which still had 21 years to run in 1649.358Sheffield Archives, EM1368/14. He was still imagined by at least one informant as a treasurer ‘to keep such money as should be sent in for Westminster’ if a Presbyterian plot succeeded, and he was still very wealthy.359TSP i. 745-54.

According to Prynne, Pye was among the excluded Members who sought readmission to the Commons on 7 May 1659 when the Rump reconvened.360W. Prynne, A Brief Narrative (1659), 3 (E.1011.4). The attempt was unsuccessful, and there is no evidence that Pye resumed his seat later. However, according to Edward Leigh in a 1659 dedication, Pye was highly satisfied with his career. Leigh had heard him

often say, though you had a great office many years, and was executor also to three eminent persons of the nobility, yet you scarce ever had any complaint against you for miscarriages in your place, or a suit at law with any (one excepted) in your whole life.

Acknowledging his added advantages of ‘a plentiful estate’ and ‘a healthful constitution of body’ (which would certainly explain his ability to attend the House so frequently), Leigh was also impressed by his ‘munificence’ in ‘edifying a specious chapel [at Westminster] for the solemn worship of the Lord and settling also a competent maintenance for a minister’. He applauded Pye’s ‘avoiding suretyship (though solicited to it by two royal persons to be bound for them)’ as ‘consonant to scripture-rules’, but exhorted him now, in his ‘declining age, to lay up your treasures in heaven’.361E. Leigh, England Described (1659), sig. A3.

In January 1660 Sir Robert junior was imprisoned in the Tower for presenting the Berkshire petition for a new Parliament, but his father avoided implication.362R. L’Estrange, L’Estrange his Apology (1660), 58 (E.187.1). He was made a militia commissioner for Berkshire in March and resumed his exchequer offices at the Restoration, but it was left to the younger Robert to sit again in Parliament.363A. and O.; Sainty, Officers of the Exchequer, 207. Pye senior made generous provision for his children before his death in May 1662. His funeral cost nearly £530, but the estate could easily bear it: an inventory taken at Westminster on 13 June totalled £1,566 10s 10d, but ten days later his son recorded in his father’s study over £2,500 in silver alone, as well as outstanding debts including £400 from George Monck*, 1st duke of Albemarle.364PROB11/308/238; Sheffield Archives, EM1482, EM1483.