SERLE, Samuel (1620-83), of Honiton, Devon

There were many families in east Devon called Serle or Searle or even Searell, all variants of the same name. Some of them aspired to be gentry. Hugh Serle of Hale, Samuel’s father, was churchwarden of Honiton in 1624 and again in 1642. By the time of his second period of service, he was accounted ‘Mr’, which must at least in part have been tacit recognition of his work from 1634 as Devon’s treasurer of the county rate for the gaol, hospitals and maimed soldiers.16Devon RO, 1639A/PW 1. This was a post rewarded by an annual fee, but there was a wide gulf in status between the servants of the county, like him, and their masters, the justices of the peace. He was a cousin of George Serle, the MP for Taunton in the Long Parliament, but not a first nor even a second cousin. Hugh Serle seems to have been a farmer, whereas the immediate kin of George Serle were in mercantile trade as drapers and mercers.17PROB11/273/19; PROB11/110/99. Another Serle family who were doubtless related to the Serles of Hale were postmasters of Honiton. Before the mid-1630s, Robert Serle was rewarded by the government for what he claimed as his invention of the ‘certain weekly and speedy’ post, and complained to the Long Parliament when his privileges were usurped by Thomas Withring.18To the Honourable the Knights, Citizens and Burgesses ... Arguments, or reasons humbly tendred (1640). He was succeeded in his office by his son, William, who in 1657 was to acknowledge Samuel Serle as one of his ‘loving friends’.19CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-1659, pp. 87, 381; PROB11/273/19.

Samuel Serle (who spelled his name thus) was not the eldest son of Hugh.20Devon RO, QS 128/64/2. Two of Hugh’s sons, both given the name Samuel, had been buried in Honiton long before his birth, and John Serle, Samuel’s elder brother, had been born 15 years before him.21Honiton par. reg.; Al. Ox. John Serle was educated for the church, while Samuel was apprenticed in the London Merchant Taylors’ Company in 1638. He was never made a freeman, however, and it is likely that his apprenticeship was disrupted by the civil war.22GL, MS 34038/11, p. 185; 304037/4. He seems thereafter to have been destined for the life of an agriculturalist. Although Hugh Searle contributed on the Propositions of Parliament in July 1642, Samuel’s record in the civil war is unknown.23Antony House, Carew-Pole PC/G4/9/21. He should not be confused with Michael Serle, who was a major and then a lieutenant-colonel in Plymouth during the siege there.24A True Narration of the Most Observable Passages (1644), 15 (E.31.15). Samuel Serle seems first to have entered public service not through the army but through the county administration. In 1650 he was appointed head collector of the monthly assessments in east Devon, thus taking a position at roughly the same level of the hierarchy as his father had done. In May that year he was given a commission in the Devon militia as a major of foot, and the following month, in what was evidently an annus mirabilis for Serle he entered into a marriage settlement. His wife, Mary Clarke, was the daughter of a Honiton yeoman.25Devon RO, 63/2/5/13/3. A party to the settlement was Serle’s older brother, John, then minister at Awliscombe, who had signed the Presbyterian Joint-Testimonie of the Ministers of Devon in 1648.26Calamy Revised, 554. Samuel Serle’s own religious position at this point seems to have been actively to support the state church, as he was churchwarden of Honiton in 1652.

Serle adapted comfortably to the change of government in 1653, becoming receiver-general of assessments for the county in December 1653, and taking up his father’s old post as treasurer for the county rate in 1655. By this time he had also been promoted in the militia to major. His election to the second Cromwellian Parliament must have been a result of the respect and influence he could command in Honiton in his own right, at a time when the Courteney interest, as lords of the manor and patrons of successive portreeves, was very weak. He sat on six committees in this Parliament. On 4 October 1656 he was added to the committee for those held prisoner for treason, and as ‘Major Serle’ he was called to the large committee on artificers’ wages and the sumptuary laws (7 Oct.).27CJ vii. 434a, 435b. As a burgess from a maritime county he was included in the committee on the laws of shipwreck (28 Oct.), and an equally obvious local interest lay behind his inclusion in the committee on better propagating the gospel in Exeter.28CJ vii. 446b, 488a. His military experience gave him an interest in the fate of ‘reduced’ or retired army officers, referred on 21 February 1657 to a committee, but on 18 March he was given leave to leave Westminster to go to the country.29CJ vii. 495b, 506b.

Serle seems to have worked amicably with the government of the protectorate, but there is no evidence that he held government office himself, outside Devon. He acted as treasurer in east Devon for the commission for propagating the gospel in New England, evidence of his piety and financial probity, but never found a place as a justice of the peace. Only in 1657, after he had been returned to Parliament, did he achieve a place as a commissioner for assessment and ejecting scandalous ministers, and later as a commissioner for the militia. Otherwise, his career in public service in Devon stuck obstinately at the level at which his father served for many years, and this speaks volumes for his very local social standing: which was in effect confined to Honiton. He was returned again to the Parliament of Richard Cromwell* in 1659, where he sat on only one committee, on the petition from, or on behalf of, sick and maimed soldiers of Ely and Savoy hospitals (7 Apr.).30CJ vii. 627b. As a treasurer for the Devon county fund for such victims, and indeed the son of such a treasurer, Serle would have had much to contribute to this body.

With the collapse of the protectorate and the return of the Rump, Serle kept his place as a militia officer, but seems initially to have been demoted to captain, the rank at which he served in 1650. In that capacity, he was put on standby in July 1659 during the emergency of the rising by Sir George Boothe*.31CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 16. In January 1660 the Devon magistrates gave him the arrears of the county fund for maimed soldiers to employ at the Honiton house of correction.32Devon RO, QS order bk. 1/9. He had recovered his rank as major in the east Devon militia regiment once again in the early months of the monarchy, but this is likely to have been a commission which lasted only a few months. His election to the Convention must surely be taken as evidence that the Courtenays and their portreeve were slow to re-establish their influence in Honiton. He lost his local offices, and in January 1663 at Exeter made a long answer to an exchequer bill against him. He detailed his various treasurerships and collectorships, and was able to clear himself of any financial malpractice.33E113/6 (Devon). He was not among those former parliamentarians and Cromwellians suspected by the monarchical government of fomenting trouble in Devon, and supported the petition for a pension of a Honiton soldier who had served in the bishops’ wars in the late 1630s.34SP29/449/90; Devon RO, 128/64/2.

By May 1672, Serle had become a Baptist, and a house of his was licensed as a meeting place.35CSP Dom. 1671-2, pp. 314, 437, 447; The Axminster Ecclesiastica 1660-1698 ed. K.W.H. Howard (Ossett, W. Yorks. 1976), 203. The hearth tax records for Honiton in 1674 suggest that his own dwelling house was a modest property of three chimneys, but he owned other properties in the town which he leased.36Devon Taxes, 9; PROB11/373/105. He made a last attempt at a return to Parliament in February 1679, inevitably in the country or whig interest, but was unsuccessful.37HP Commons 1660-90, iii. 410-11. He drew up his will in January 1683. It reveals that he held an extensive portfolio of small properties in Honiton. His son, Hugh, was a graduate of Oxford, intended by his father for the Anglican ministry, despite Samuel Serle’s leanings towards nonconformity.38PROB11/373/105; Al. Ox. Serle died soon after making his will, and was buried in Honiton on 2 February 1683. He is not to be confused with John Searle of Buckerell, a Devon committeeman who held government office under the protectorate as an auditor of accounts.39G.E. Aylmer, ‘Checklist of Central Officeholders, 1649-1660’, typescript, IHR Library; S.K. Roberts, Recovery and Restoration in an English County: Devon Local Administration, 1646-70 (Exeter, 1985), 40-42. No later generations of Samuel Serle’s family are known to have been represented in Parliament.