HIPPISLEY, Sir John (d. 1655), of The Mews, St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster, and Bushy Park, Hampton, Mdx.

Hippisley’s family had joined the ranks of the Somerset gentry no earlier than 1544, when his ‘yeoman’ grandfather had purchased former monastic lands in the county.56PROB11/53, ff. 200v-201v; Jones, Hippisley Fam. 20; HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘John Hippisley’. It was his uncle, a successful lawyer, who had established the Hippisleys’ gentry status beyond doubt, sitting for Bridport in 1558 and Wells in 1563.57HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘John Hippisley’. Hippisley himself was a younger son of a younger brother, and with neither fortune nor estate to recommend him he took service in the household of Henry Percy, 3rd earl of Northumberland. How he had come to the earl’s attention is not known. By 1607, he was the earl’s gentleman of horse and seems to have retained a lifelong passion for all things equestrian.58Household Pprs. of Henry 9th Earl of Northumb. ed. G.R. Batho (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xciii), 5, 155. In about 1617, he left the earl’s employ to become ‘a principal favourite’ of the royal favourite George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham.59Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, ii. 152. Hippisley referred in 1619 to his ‘long and good service’ to the king, but there is no evidence that this pre-dated his association with Villiers.60C3/313/47. The duke’s patronage secured him the office of keeper of Bushy Park (one of the parks surrounding the royal palace of Hampton Court) and may also account for his appointment by 1625 as one of James I’s equerries.61E179/70/131; CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 272, 344.

He was returned for Petersfield to the 1621 Parliament on the interest of his brother-in-law, Sir Richard Norton†, and sat for the Hampshire constituency again in 1624 after losing in the Middlesex county elections, where he had stood as Buckingham’s candidate.62HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir John Hippisley’. Following the duke’s appointment as lord warden of the Cinque Ports that autumn, Hippisley was rewarded with the lieutenancy of Dover Castle, which effectively made him chief officer in admiralty affairs in the Cinque Ports.63CSP Dom. 1623-5, pp. 333, 374; J. Appleby, ‘A pathway out of debt: the privateering activities of Sir John Hippisley’, The American Neptune, xlix. 252. Armed with the authority and resources of his new position, and protected by Buckingham at court, he operated a flotilla of privateers in the Channel that did a brisk trade in French prizes during the later 1620s. Having been indebted to the tune of £2,500 in 1625, he had made approximately £5,000 net profit by the time he quit the privateering business in 1629.64E101/633/43; E351/2509; Appleby, ‘Pathway out of debt’, 251-61. He was returned for Dover to the first three Caroline Parliaments, in which he and his master regularly faced criticism for illegally detaining foreign vessels and profiteering by the sale of prizes.65HP Commons 1604-1629. It was not until 1639 that he obtained a pardon for his ‘Dover offences, which were charged on him by informations in the star chamber and exchequer chamber ... the sums laid in charge amounted to £411,000’.66LR9/111; SO3/12, f. 58; Coventry Docquets, 276; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 192. His last office as one of Buckingham’s ‘slavish dependents’ was to break the news of the duke’s assassination to the king.67CSP Ven. 1626-8, p. 571; Clarendon, Hist. i. 37. Shortly afterwards he sold the lieutenancy of Dover Castle to Sir Edward Dering*.68Supra, ‘Sir Edward Dering’; St. 743, f. 134.

Hippisley seems to have divided his time after 1628 between Bushy Park and his lodgings in The Mews as a royal equerry.69E115/214/60; E115/214/101. Despite his former intimacy with Buckingham, and lending the crown £1,000 in 1631, he received very little in the way of royal favour during the personal rule of Charles I.70CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 536. His finances were not particularly robust during the 1630s, it seems, for he was obliged to borrow £1,000 by statute staple to loan this sum to the crown in 1631, and he borrowed a further £1,000 in 1638.71LC4/201, f. 45v; LC4/202, f. 103v. Like a good courtier, he was careful during the 1630s to send regular gifts of vension to Archbishop Laud.72The Household Accts. of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1635-42 ed. L. James (Church of England Rec. Soc. xxiv), 23, 55, 104, 141. With the summoning of a new Parliament late in 1639, he approached Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, for his electoral patronage (Hippisley had been granted a pension of £40 on leaving the service of the 3rd earl, which he continued to receive until at least 1649).73Alnwick, U.I.5, General accts. 1632, unfol.; U.I.6., General accts. 1649, unfol.; Northumb. Household Pprs. ed. Batho, 93, 95, 155; CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 400-1. The earl invoked his office as lord admiral in recommending Hippisley to the Dover voters in December 1639, but as the earl’s servant Thomas Smith II* predicted, they were not interested.74Supra, ‘Dover’. Despite this setback, Hippisley remained eager to secure a seat in Parliament and the earl no less willing to find him one. Early in 1641, therefore, Northumberland recommended him to the voters of the newly re-enfranchised Cumberland borough of Cockermouth, where the earl was the principal electoral patron. The election took place at some point between March and June 1641 and saw the return of Hippisley and another of the earl’s friends, Sir John Fenwick.75Supra, ‘Cockermouth’; CJ ii. 245a.

Hippisley’s career in the Long Parliament began slowly. He made no recorded contribution to debate on the floor of the House before the outbreak of civil war and was named to just fifteen committees.76CJ ii. 164b, 222b, 223a, 239b, 280a, 294a, 303a, 317a, 318a, 369a, 385a, 400a, 476a, 530b, 613b. Over half of these appointments related to the maintenance of the trained bands, rooting out papists, and other security-related issues – particularly in London. During October and November 1641, he was named to four committees (one of which he may have chaired) for deploying the Middlesex trained bands – in which he commanded a troop of horse – to guard Parliament and search the houses of prominent Catholics.77CJ ii. 294a, 303a, 317a, 318a. It seems that by the winter of 1641-2 he was beginning to dissociate himself from the court interest he had been part of for so many years, and that one factor in this process was his apparent belief in the existence of a high-level popish plot. His appointment with John Pym, John Hampden and other prominent MPs in July as a parliamentary recusant commissioner suggests that he was keen on tough measures against Catholicism.78CJ ii. 197a. And this impression is strengthened by his involvement in the Commons’ crackdown against leading Catholics in London following news of the Irish rebellion.79D’Ewes (C), 148, 397. His appointment to the committees which sat at Guildhall and Grocers’ Hall in January 1642 in the wake of the king’s attempted arrest of the Five Members is perhaps further evidence that he took the threat to Parliament from cavaliers and papists very seriously.80CJ ii. 369a, 385a.

If Hippisley was associated with any political grouping, however, it was not the parliamentary leadership – known as ‘the junto’ – or the ‘fiery spirits’ in the Commons, but the knot of estranged courtiers around the earls of Northumberland, Pembroke and Salisbury. He was a leading member of the same church congregation as these lords – that of St Martin-in-the-Fields – and it is possible that he was elected to the vestry in July 1641 partly for the purpose of keeping Northumberland informed about parish affairs.81WCA, STM/F/1/2517. He almost certainly performed a similar function after the Commons gave him leave on 19 July 1642 to visit the king’s headquarters at York for a month.82CJ ii. 680b. Although Hippisley was one of several prominent parliamentarians – including Northumberland, Pembroke and Salisbury – that the king had removed from the Middlesex bench early in July, he reportedly remained in reasonably good esteem at court.83C231/5, p. 533; HMC Portland, i. 602. He would thus have been the ideal man for Northumberland and his friends to employ in discreetly sounding out the king’s advisers about the possibility of a negotiated settlement before hostilities got out of hand. Hippisley accompanied the royal entourage from York to Nottingham, where the king was strongly pressed by some of his leading supporters to sue for peace.84HMC Portland, i. 602; Gardiner, Hist. Civil War, i. 13-14. On 25 August, the king offered to negotiate with Parliament, and it is possible that Hippisley accompanied the bearers of this peace initiative to Westminster. He was certainly back in the House on 29 August – two days after the Commons had rejected the king’s overtures – when he declared himself ready to assist Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex with life and estate.85CJ ii. 741b. Before leaving Westminster for York he had pledged to bring in three horses for the service of Parliament.86PJ ii. 473; CJ ii. 801b. Hippisley’s reasons for failing to stand by his royal master can only be conjectured. There are signs that he was not entirely convinced that the king or his confederates could be trusted to preserve the Protestant religion against the threat of popery. There is also the possibility that he harboured a personal grudge against Charles for failing to intervene more promptly on his behalf in relation to the ‘Dover offences’.

Hippisley’s parliamentary activities during the first year of the civil war are broadly consistent with the political concerns of Northumberland and those eager for a swift resolution to the conflict. The failure of Essex’s Edgehill campaign had strengthened the hand of this peace interest at Westminster, and early in November Hippisley was among the five man delegation, headed by Northumberland, that Parliament sent to the king with an offer to treat for peace.87CJ ii. 834a, 844a; LJ v. 432a, 434a. Certainly the vigorous prosecution of the war seems to have figured as low on Hippisley’s list of priorities as it did on the earl’s. Although he commanded a troop of horse in the Middlesex militia, it was never deployed in combat and was disbanded in the autumn of 1643.88CJ iii. 172b, 242b, 290a. To judge by his 14 or so committee appointments during the first year of the war, his main concerns were the quartering of troops in London (he was named first to a committee on this issue on 28 October 1642) and preventing the abuses associated with the requisitioning of horses on the orders of Henry Marten* and other parliamentarian militants.89CJ ii. 782b, 825b, 876b, 898b, 943a, 990b, 991a; iii. 30b, 89a, 113b, 125a, 125b, 140a, 199b. His only tellership during this period was in an apparently non-partisan division on an ordinance for raising cavalry in London and the surrounding counties.90CJ iii. 177b. Two of his appointments are more revealing. On 5 April 1643, he was named to a committee that Northumberland’s right hand man Robert Scawen may well have chaired, which was set up in response to the peace interest’s complaints over the exorbitant cost of the earl of Essex’s army.91CJ iii. 30b. And on 9 August, he was named to a committee for thanking the women who had flocked to Westminster a few days earlier in support of the doomed attempt by Northumberland and his allies to secure a peace settlement before the Scottish Covenanters entered the war.92CJ iii. 199b.

The only point during the civil war where the parliamentary careers of Hippisley and Northumberland seem to have diverged was in August and September 1643. In the first place, Hippisley apparently remained at Westminster, whereas the earl withdrew to his Sussex residence of Petworth in preparation for defecting to the king. Secondly, he was named to the committee set up on 19 August, and dominated by the war-party grandees and their allies, for revitalising Essex’s army and, with it, the entire parliamentarian war-effort.93CJ iii. 211b. News of the king’s cessation with the Irish brought Northumberland back to Westminster, and from the autumn of 1643 Hippisley’s parliamentary activities resume a more familiar course. Few of the 15 appointments he received between October 1643 and December 1644 related directly to advancing the war effort – the majority were to do with the security of London and related issues, the maintenance of Windsor, Dover and other strong places, and diplomatic affairs.94CJ iii. 309b, 341b, 355b, 486b, 504b, 507b, 520b, 533b, 552b, 567a, 567b, 619b, 629a, 649b, 713b. As a former courtier, Hippisley would be regularly employed in the years ahead to receive and entertain foreign dignitaries. His parliamentary responsibilities also included the management of several royal parks in and around London.95CJ iii. 267b, 288b, 619b; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 68, 96. At some point in 1643, he was granted the keepership of Marylebone Park and of another of the parks surrounding Hampton Court – perquisites he may well have owed to Northumberland’s influence in the committees for Revenue* and Sequestration*.96Supra, ‘Committee for the Revenue’; Bodl. Nalson XIV, ff. 218, 336-7. His majority tellership on 5 June 1644 against breaking the Merchant Adventurers’ monopoly on exporting cloth to the Continent suggests another likely source of largesse – namely, London’s mercantile elite.97CJ iii. 518a.

Hippisley’s appointments reflected the earl of Northumberland’s support for ‘new-modelling’ only to the extent that he was added, on 18 February 1645, to a committee chaired by Scawen for recruiting the New Model army.98CJ iv. 52a. In general, he seems to have been more active in promoting the earl’s personal business rather than his political agenda. In 1645-6, for example, he was named to committees for protecting Northumberland’s interest in the paintings in York House, the earl’s custody of the king’s children, and for strengthening one of his main power-bases at Westminster, the Committee for Revenue.99CJ iv. 121a, 653a; v. 27a, 28a. It is likely that he proved equally useful to Northumberland as a St Martin-in-the-Fields vestryman – particularly during the dispute that flared up in October 1645 over the appointment of a parish lecturer. The parish’s vicar, Daniel Cawdrey, was apparently all set to appoint a fellow Presbyterian to this office when Northumberland, Edward Lord Howard of Escrick* and several other Independent grandees made a dramatic appearance at a vestry meeting and, with the backing of the ‘better sort’ and the vestrymen, had their own candidate elected. Hippisley doubtless supported the peers in this dispute and was also present a year later when the vestry declared that the future choice of parish lecturer would be determined by the vestrymen and ‘the lords inhabiting in the parish’. It was probably no coincidence that during 1646 the vestry allotted private pews to several parishioners closely connected with Northumberland and his circle, including Sir Gregory Norton* and Robert Sidney, 2nd earl of Leicester.100WCA, STM/F/1/2002, 144-147v; J. Adamson, ‘The peerage in politics 1645-9’ (Cambridge Univ. PhD thesis, 1986), 95-7. Hippisley was himself a friend of the Sidneys, and before the civil war he had often bought horses for the earl.101HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 75, 365, 370, 372, 377, 380, 384, 390.

Hippisley’s committee appointments and his two tellerships between February 1645 and the Presbyterian ‘riots’ of July 1647 generally say little about his factional alignment in the House, if indeed he had one.102CJ iv. 52a, 59b, 115b, 121a, 134b, 158b, 238a, 239a, 403b, 551b, 574b, 603a, 653a, 658b, 691b, 701a, 702b, 719b; v. 21b, 27a, 28a, 72b, 125b, 253a. His majority tellership with Sir Henry Cholmley on 8 May 1645 in a division concerning the procedure governing exclusion of scandalous persons from the sacrament, suggests that he was part of the dominant Erastian element in the House.103CJ iv. 134b; R.S. Paul, The Assembly of the Lord (Edinburgh, 1985), 127-8. The House may well have included him on the parliamentary delegation to present the Newcastle Propositions to the king in July 1646 precisely because he was not closely associated with the two main factions at Westminster.104CJ iv. 604a, 606b, 643a. He was not among those MPs and peers who fled to the safety of the army following the Presbyterian counter revolution of July 1647. However, it is possible that he was involved, at least peripherally, in the Independent grandees’ subsequent efforts to regain the political initiative. On 18 August, he was named to a committee on an ordinance sent down from the Lords for making void all legislation passed during the Presbyterian coup.105CJ 278a. Two days later (20 August), he was granted leave to attend the king – possibly as Northumberland’s agent in the grandees’ attempts to secure Charles’s acceptance of the Heads of Proposals.106CJ v. 280a. This impression is strengthened by his tellership with John Bulkeley a week later (27 August) against adhering to a list that the Commons had sent to the Lords of those royalists to be exempted from pardon in Parliament’s peace terms.107CJ v. 286a. The Independent majority in the Lords favoured a drastic reduction in the number of exempt royalists.108J. Adamson, ‘The English nobility and the projected settlement of 1647’, HJ xxx. 584.

Hippisley was named to only 11 more committees between August 1647 and Pride’s Purge – none of which reveal much about his direction of political travel.109CJ v. 295b, 359a, 364b, 413a, 447b, 527b, 538a, 538b; vi. 47a, 60a, 87a. His only tellerships during this period saw him partner the Presbyterian MP Sir Anthony Irby in two divisions on 16 March 1648 on whether the House should sit that afternoon to debate the cases of various delinquents who had petitioned to compound on the terms they had been offered at the surrender of Oxford and other royalist garrisons. That such terms should be honoured was a matter of considerable importance to the army, which may explain why the opposing tellers on this occasion were the Independents Sir John Danvers and Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire.110CJ v. 501a. Hippisley seems to have remained on friendly terms with Northumberland, for he was chosen on 21 October 1647 to acquaint the Lords with a Commons order allowing the earl to determine when Charles could see his children.111CJ v. 338b, 339; LJ ix. 487b.

Hippisley’s most important appointment in the months leading up to Pride’s Purge came on 2 August 1648, when he and John Bulkeley were chosen to inform the king (who was then on the Isle of Wight) that Parliament had agreed to the holding of unconditional peace talks.112CJ v. 658b, 660a. It was reported at the time that Hippisley had been chosen in place of the Independents’ candidate, Sir James Harington, to whom the Presbyterians had objected because he had once seconded a motion to impeach the king.113Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 19 (1-8 Aug. 1648), sigs. T3v-T4 (E.457.11). But perhaps a more likely explanation for Hippisley’s selection is that he was known to remain in good odour with the king and could speak for Northumberland, who was a prime mover behind the re-opening of negotiations. On 14 August, Bulkeley delivered a report on the commissioners’ proceedings on the Isle of Wight, informing the House of the king’s ‘longing desire for a speedy settlement’ and his ‘importuning us to do all good offices which might tend thereto’. This news was not well received by the more radical Independents, who began to ‘gnash their teeth at the reporter’ and demand that he and Hippisley be called to account for having ‘gone beside their commission, by private conference with the king’. The following day, therefore, the two men ‘conjured the House either to acquit them presently, or condemn them, that they might know what to trust unto and not have the matter put by at present’, whereupon they were voted the thanks of the House.114CJ v. 670a, b; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 20 (8-15 Aug. 1648), sig. X2v (E.458.25); no. 21 (15-22 Aug. 1648), sigs. A2v-A22v (E.460.21); [Walker], Hist. of Independency, 133.

Hippisley retained his seat for just a week after Pride’s Purge. On 13 December 1648, he and Robert Packer arrived at the Commons’ door only to be turned away by army officers.115The Second Part of the Narrative Concerning the Armies Force and Violence upon the Commons House (1648), 7 (E.477.19). Exactly how Hippisley had merited the army’s displeasure is not clear. But if he had been present in the House during the debate on 5 December as to whether the king’s answers from Newport constituted a basis for settlement, it is likely that he would have voted with the yeas. He may have avoided seclusion for a week simply because he did not attend the Commons again until 13 December, or because the army was initially wary of offending Northumberland. Needless to say, Hippisley played no part in the king’s trial and execution. But nor did he regard Charles’s demise as an insurmountable obstacle to the resumption of his parliamentary career. Hence on 12 February 1649 he made his dissent to the 5 December vote, and on 7 March he received his first appointment in the Rump – to a committee on the bill for abolishing kingship.116PA, Ms CJ xxxiii, p. 681; CJ vi. 158a. In fact, Hippisley seems to have been more active after Pride’s Purge than he was before it, which given his background as a courtier and pensioner of the Percys is not readily explicable. Perhaps he wanted to help stem the tide of radical republicanism; perhaps he also came to admire the Rump’s determination to build up English naval power, seeing it a fulfillment and vindication of what he and Buckingham had been striving to achieve in the 1620s.

In all, Hippisley was named to approximately 50 committees in the Rump and served as a teller in nine divisions.117CJ vi. 420b, 443a, 481b, 525a; vii. 221b, 237a, 260a, 265b. Several of his tellerships suggest his alignment with the conservative element in the House – those Rumpers who wished to preserve as much of the established order as possible.118Worden, Rump Parl. 245. On 9 October 1650, for example, he and Sir James Harington were majority tellers in support of exempting vicarages, parsonages and other non-consecrated ecclesiastical property from a bill for the sale of church lands.119CJ vi. 481b. The minority tellers were the hardliners Isaac Penington and Sir Thomas Wroth. Hippisley’s next tellership was on 10 January 1651 and saw him partner Major-general Philip Skippon in favour of subjecting a proposal reported by Henry Marten from the committee for legal reform to further scrutiny in committee.120CJ vi. 525a. On this occasion the radical partnership of Thomas Harrison I and Denis Bond won the division. In the furore kicked up at Westminster by the trial of the Presbyterian minister Christopher Love in 1651, Hippisley was among a group of ‘Presbyterian’ MPs who were alleged to have been party to his conspiracy.121Worden, Rump Parl. 245. This allegation was almost certainly groundless, but it confirms the impression that Hippisley was regarded as one of the more conservative-minded members in the House. The radical Cumberland lawyer John Musgrave complained in 1651 that Hippisley ‘never to this day preferred a petition for any well-affected in Cumberland, but [was] ready ever to serve cavaliers and delinquents here’.122J. Musgrave, The Humble Addresse of John Musgrave to the Supreme Authority (1651), 5.

Yet for an ex-courtier and likely opponent of the republican interest, Hippisley showed surprisingly few qualms about purchasing crown and church lands (despite the fact that he had contracted debts by 1650 of at least £1,500).123Eg. 1048, f. 121; C54/3680/20; SP28/288, f. 32; C6/122/80; LC4/203, ff. 102v, 153v; Jones, Hippisley Fam. 115. Moreover, he received half a dozen committee appointments for facilitating the sale of this property.124CJ vi. 178b, 556a, 558a, 563b; vii. 245a, 250b. The only occasion on which he was conspicuously against selling off royal assets was when his own interests were threatened. Thus on 29 December 1652, he was a teller against including the parks at Hampton Court in a bill for the sale of these and other royal properties.125CJ vii. 237a. Although Hippisley and Carew Ralegh won the division, the Rump overturned the vote two days later (31 Dec) and bought out Hippisley’s interest in Bushy Park for £1,250.126CJ vii. 239b-240a; SP46/96, ff. 237-8.

The squabble over Bushy Park was just one reminder for Hippisley of his previous career in the king’s service. On 14 February 1651 he was named first to a committee to oversee accommodation in Whitehall – an appointment almost certainly influenced by his familiarity with the palace from his days as a courtier.127CJ vi. 534b. Similarly, in employing him in its reception committee for newly-arrived foreign dignitaries the Rump was drawing, probably knowingly, on his long familiarity with courtly etiquette and ceremonial.128CJ vi. 522b; vii. 99a, 104b, 135a, 147a,b, 202b, 203b, 233b, 252a. And though he clearly failed to keep faith with the Stuarts, his appointment on 25 April 1651 to a committee to consider a petition from the earl of Northumberland suggests that he did remain attentive to the interests of the Percys.129CJ vi. 567a. But the majority of his committee appointments in the Rump concerned more mundane matters, such as managing public revenues, provisioning the navy and regulating trade.130CJ vi. 207b, 383b, 389a, 400a, 427a, 533b, 574a, 581a; vii. 138b. His involvement in nominating ministers to vacant livings, his work as a governor of Westminster School and almshouses and his addition to the Committee for Plundered Ministers* and its sister-body the committee for regulating the universities implies a more earnest, godly side to his character than he showed during his time as one of Buckingham’s ‘slavish dependents’.131Add. 36792, ff. 53, 70v; Westminster Abbey Lib. WAM 32465, 42745, 43190, 43335, 43337A; CJ vi. 180b, 437a, 557b.

Hippisley’s public career ended with the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653. He continued to attend meetings of the St Martin-in-the-Fields vestry until the summer of 1654, when he may well have moved out to his new country residence in Richmond – just across the Thames from Bushy Park.132WCA, STM/F/1/2003, p. 41. When he wrote his will early in 1655 he described himself as of Richmond.133PROB11/253, f. 98. However, his final resting place, following his death some seven months later, was in the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, where he was buried on 4 September.134St Martin-in-the-Fields par. reg. He died without surviving children, leaving the bulk of his estate to his widow. The signatories to his will were his kinsman Richard Norton* and the radical Rumper Augustine Garland.135PROB11/253, f. 98. None of Hippisley’s immediate family sat in Parliament.