SCUDAMORE, John (1600-69), of Kentchurch, Herefs.

A leading antiquary of the county noted in 1873 that the Scudamores of Kentchurch stood ‘almost alone in Herefordshire as proprietors of the same soil which their ancestors held five centuries ago’.16Robinson, Mansions and Manors, 154. One of John Scudamore’s forebears was John Kent alias Gwent, provincial of the Franciscans in England in the mid-fourteenth century. Another John Kent, or Sion Cent, who probably flourished somewhat later, was a recipient of the patronage of the Scudamores, became a priest and acquired a powerful reputation as a magician on the Welsh borders.17Oxford DNB, ‘John Kent’; Duncumb, Collections, v. pt. 2, pp. 16-17. That these legendary figures were associated with the Kentchurch Scudamores was a reminder that of the three houses of Scudamore extant in mid-seventeenth century Herefordshire, that at Kentchurch was the most senior. There were ancient genealogical links between Kentchurch and the families at Holme Lacy and Ballingham, but the families certainly did not behave as a single interest group. This is not to say that the Scudamores of Kentchurch were the most important branch politically; the power and influence of the ennobled Scudamores of Holme Lacy were much more extensive in this period.18Robinson, Mansions and Manors, 20-1, 138-40; I. Atherton, Ambition and Failure in Early Stuart England: the career of John, first Viscount Scudamore (Manchester, 1999), 25-6. The Kentchurch family slipped into eclipse when they adhered to the Lancastrian cause in the late fifteenth century, and the accidents of demography told against them when John Scudamore’s great-great-grandfather died in 1522 leaving a grandson under a year old as heir. Furthermore, political isolation for the family was assured as John’s grandfather continued loyal to Roman Catholicism. It was John’s father, also John, who married the daughter of a Cheshire office-holding family, and brought the family out of recusancy.19Atherton, Ambition and Failure, 26. Meanwhile, the Holme Lacy family, whose head from 1623 was Sir John Scudamore†, later the 1st Viscount Scudamore [I], continued to prosper so that it was by then probably the wealthiest family in the county.20Atherton, Ambition and Failure, 32.

John Scudamore’s father died when he was 16. He was married at 18 to a sister of Sir Robert Cooke* of Highnam, near Gloucester. Elizabeth Cooke brought with her a portion of £1,500, three times the amount that Amy Starkey had brought to her marriage with Scudamore’s father. Between the marriage of John and Elizabeth and John’s coming into his inheritance in 1625, Amy Scudamore re-married, to Thomas Cavendish of Chatsworth, Derbyshire. It is therefore quite possible that Scudamore’s early marriage took place in order ot expedite the settlement of his estates so that his mother would be free to leave Herefordshire.21Herefs. RO, AL40/678, 679, 904; M26/5/3, 4, 5. After reaching majority age, Scudamore was slow to enter public life, perhaps as a consequence of his immediate ancestors’ Catholicism. In the 1630s he may have been unsympathetic towards the government of Charles I; in 1631, it was noted that he flatly refused to compound for knighthood after the coronation of the king.22Add. 11050, f. 137. In 1633, he was an intermediary in land transactions involving his brother-in-law, Sir Robert Cooke, and was probably the John Scudamore who alienated his interest in the manor of Edgware, Middlesex.23Herefs. RO, AL40/1008; Coventry Docquets, 597, 714. Not until 1638 did Scudamore take his place among the Herefordshire magistrates, his inclusion possibly an acknowledgement of the firm friendship between his kinsman, Viscount Scudamore, and William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury.24Atherton, Ambition and Failure, 77-8.

Scudamore was present at the county election on 4 October 1640, which saw Sir Robert Harley and Fitzwilliam Coningsby returned.25C219/43/1/207. At the end of the month he turned out with the Herefordshire militia at the head of one troop of a hundred foot, while Sir Robert Harley captained another. At this point, Scudamore, like Harley, was happy to serve in the united county trained bands. In February 1642, ‘Captain Scudamore’ still appeared at musters, responding to an order from the magistrates to secure the county magazine, while others like Walter Brabazon and Fitzwilliam Coningsby* stayed away, revealing the uncertainties of the gentry in the face of the passage of the Militia Ordinance through Parliament.26Add. 70003, f. 204. John Scudamore’s conduct at this time is hard to determine. A magistrate himself, he may have been the John Scudamore who signed a letter from Herefordshire justices to Harley and Humphrey Coningsby, the county Members, on 5 March. They pointed out that they had recently taken the Protestation sent down to them by Parliament, and had striven to secure signatures, encouraging those with doubts about its legality. They had deployed arguments that signing it was a voluntary act, but they confided to the MPs their own doubts about its lawfulness, anxious about differences it highlighted between the king and Parliament, and between both Houses. The justices believed that the king’s assent to bills, the purging Hereford cathedral of candlesticks, copes and other apparatus of Arminianism, gave grounds for optimism. They hoped that popery would be removed, the Book of Common Prayer made uniform and that sectaries would be brought under control. They wished also for a bill for the more orderly and free election of MPs.27Add. 70003, ff. 227-8v.

The purpose of the justices’ letter to Harley and Coningsby was evidently to guide their conduct in Parliament. They wrote again on 28 April 1642, John Scudamore again among them, as anxious as before, and the Protestation was still uppermost in their considerations. No petition had come from the county to support it. They argued that they would best maintain their privileges by complying with the king. No threat came from foreigners; the papists at home were quiet, and they hoped for agreement between the king and Parliament. They expressed hope that the Protestants in Ireland would be protected, and regretted the continuing delays in clinching a treaty with the Scots. They noted that the act to continue Parliament had not brought in as much credit from the City as it was thought it would, and continued to hope that the king would be granted tonnage and poundage for life. Finally, the justices hoped that Harley and Coningsby would accept their letter as embodying the will of the county.28Add. 70003, ff. 238-9. It is hard to read this as anything other than a statement of support for the king, with diplomatic words of caution for a Parliament which the Herefordshire gentry considered to be in danger of behaving rashly.

It is clear that the John Scudamore among these justices working for reconciliation in the spring of 1642 was not John Viscount Scudamore, as he is described as an esquire. A recent historian of the county in the period of the civil war considers that it must therefore have been John Scudamore of Ballingham, later to side actively with the king. But that John Scudamore had been created a baronet the previous year, so one would have expected his new title to have distinguished him.29Atherton, Ambition and Failure, 247, n.23; Robinson, Mansions and Manors, 21. As sides were taken at the outbreak of civil war, both parties considered John Scudamore of Kentchurch to be one of theirs, leaving the possibility that he was the justice of that name politically active in the spring. He was named to the parliamentarian militia commission in September, and to the royalist commission of array. As the crisis deepened, however, he seems to have responded to the competing invitations by complete inactivity. His name does not occur among the members of the Herefordshire county committee, nor was he included in any of the commissions issued from Oxford in the name of the king. He was not subjected to the attentions of sequestrators or other agents of penal taxation. Only in August 1644 did some indication of his sympathies with Parliament eventually emerge, when he was included in a parliamentarian commission of the peace along with Sir Robert Harley*, Edward Massie* and Walter Kyrle*.30Brampton Bryan MSS, 27/4. This appointment may have confirmed to the Herefordshire royalists that Scudamore was indeed a parliamentarian. Around that time, the vicar of Kentchurch, Richard Hands or Hawes, was taken prisoner and tried at a council of war for his life, escaping only through a fortuitous change of military personnel. Hawes was plundered several times, suggesting that Scudamore may have suffered some of the same fate; on one occasion at Kentchurch a soldier imprisoned Hawes ‘at a gentleman’s house in the parish, designing after he done plundering there, to carry him away; but at his going off he forgot him, and left him behind’.31Webb, Memorials, ii. 23-4. On the other hand, Scudamore was sufficiently motivated against the invasive parliamentarian soldiery to contribute a loan in 1647 to discharge the regiment of Colonel John Birch* from the county.32Add. 70005, f. 43 (4th foliation).

Only from the second civil war did Scudamore’s name appear regularly among the lists of militia and assessment commissioners. He may have been radicalised by the re-opening of the conflict in 1648, but it is just as likely that he was viewed by Parliament as a token representative of the old county gentry family. The Kentchurch Scudamores were the only branch to adhere to the Parliament and to avoid sequestration. Both the houses of Ballingham and Holme Lacy seem to have had their sympathisers among the military and county committeemen, however: Sir Robert Harley and John Flackett* inclining towards William Scudamore of Ballingham, and the erratic Isaac Bromwich (later a candidate in a by-election at Cirencester) towards the viscount at Holme Lacy.33Hereford City Lib. Webbs collection, vol. ‘County of Hereford civil war’ pp. 71, 72-3, 84-5. John Scudamore of Kentchurch seems to have been aloof from all this, and emerged in 1654 as a candidate for the Parliament of that year as an obvious representative of the old landed interest – and the oldest and best-known family – of the county. The election took place at Lugg Meadow, Hereford on 12 July 1654, and Scudamore was named first on the indenture.34C219/44/1. There were objections by the godly interest against Bennet Hoskins, who may have stood for the county as well as the city of Hereford, and Richard Reed, but not apparently against Scudamore.35CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 319-20. His performance in the House was modest. He was added to the committee of privileges, with Birch and Hoskins (5 Oct.), but only sat on two other committees. One was the investigation into the activities of the Socinian John Biddle (12 Dec.), when Scudamore and others were added to the committee for printing. His last contribution came in January 1655, when with the Herefordshire men Flackett and Hoskins he was named to a large committee on public revenue and support for the armed forces.36CJ vii. 373b, 400a, 419a.

Scudamore stood unsuccessfully in the election for the second protectorate Parliament in 1656. Scudamore probably stood on a pre-arranged slate with Edward Harley*, Richard Reed and Bennet Hoskins.37Add. 70007, f. 80. The freeholders who later petitioned against the return noted the presence of 300 or so who were unwilling to give their voices for these four, and claimed that few of these dissenters were entitled to vote. The sheriff, Wroth Rogers*, apparently doubtful that the gentry group had the larger number of votes, denied the poll to the petitioners and declared for the military interest of James Berry and Benjamin Mason. In the demand for the poll by Edward Harley and John Birch, Scudamore was seen as competing against Berry. The petition seems to have got nowhere, and Berry and Mason took their places with Harley and Hoskins. Berry was also returned for Worcestershire and Monmouthshire, choosing to sit for the former, but although a writ was moved for a by-election for Herefordshire (17 June 1656), no election seems ever to have taken place.38CJ vii. 432a, 559a. The petitioners rightly questioned the commitment of the gentry slate to the Cromwellian regime. Scudamore was not an open royalist, but he associated with those who tended in that direction. In April 1656, his eldest son, John Scudamore junior, married the daughter of Andrew Lloyd* of Aston in Shropshire. Among the trustees of the marriage settlement were William Cooke of Highnam, a royalist and brother of Edward Cooke*; Robert Atkyns*, a well-connected lawyer who had recently been active in persecuting Quakers at Evesham where he was recorder; and Andrew Lloyd himself. Lloyd was excluded from the 1656 Parliament, suspect not for any republicanism on his part but because he was feared to be too sympathetic to monarchy.39Herefs. RO, M26/16/39; S. Roberts, ‘The Quakers in Evesham 1655-60: a Study in Religion, Politics and Culture’, MH xvi. 63-85; supra, ‘Robert Atkins’, ‘Andrew Lloyd’.

After Scudamore’s failure to secure election in 1656, some suspicion towards him was probably harboured by key Herefordshire Cromwellians like Wroth Rogers, and he failed to find a place in any local government commission between 1654 and 1660. The revived Rump found a place for him in its militia and tax commissions, but probably only because of what was perceived to be his distaste for the protectorate. On 2 April 1660 Edward Massie wrote to Edward Harley from Gloucester, to report that he had heard positive things from Scudamore about Harley’s campaign to secure a seat for Herefordshire in the Convention, suggesting that the Kentchurch interest was now firmly allied to that of the Harleys. At one point it seemed likely that Scudamore would himself be a running mate for Harley.40Add. 70007, ff. 76, 214v. The restored monarchy had no difficulty in bringing both Scudamore and his eldest son into the fold, although he was excluded from the more obviously partisan tasks such as taking care of the ‘loyal and indigent officers’ of the royalist regiments.41SR. Richard Hawes, the minister Scudamore had favoured at Kentchurch and later Llangua, was ejected in 1662, but only after the bishop had given him plenty of time to consider his position.42E. Calamy, Account of the Ministers (1713), 354-8; T. Richards, Religious Developments in Wales (1654-1662) (1923), 494. The political and religious climate favouring the cavaliers gave Scudamore some uncomfortable moments. In January 1663, he signed a county petition to the king’s chief minister, the 1st earl of Clarendon (Edward Hyde*), to recover monies raised in 1647 to disband soldiers, in the hope that the residue could be used to make the Wye navigable.43Bodl. Clarendon 81, f. 34. The same month, he was examined on an exchequer bill for the public monies he had handled during the interregnum. He claimed he had been forced to take office as sheriff in 1648, and that he had left all the financial aspects of the post to his under-sheriff. He denied having been involved in disbanding the army in Herefordshire, admitting only having handled a paltry sum collected for the Protestants of Piedmont.44E113/8, answer of John Scudamore. Scudamore made his will on 18 June 1669, disposing Llangua for the benefit of his younger children. He was at the time a tenant of the ultra-royalist 3rd marquess of Worcester (Henry Somerset*). He died the day after he made his will, and was buried at Kentchurch. Two sentences of memorial inscriptions remain in the church there, either from the same monument or from two: one was to John Scudamore ‘that settled both religion and peace amongst us’; the other amplifying

God’s cause had not a nobler undertaker

Nor the king’s peace a worthier peacemaker.45Duncumb, Collections, v. pt. 2, p. 2.

Though both may have applied to Scudamore’s father, the couplet seems more appropriate for this MP. His son, the grandson of a convert from Catholicism, was a zealous persecutor of papists during the Popish Plot of 1679-80; his great-grandson and namesake sat for Hereford in 1768, as a supporter of the Opposition, establishing a dynasty of whigs, albeit silent ones, in that seat.46Duncumb, Collections, v. pt. 2, p. 9; HP Commons 1754-1790; HP Commons 1790-1820.