SMYTH, William (1617-97), of the Middle Temple, London; Akeley, Bucks. and Stepney, Mdx.

Smyth hailed from a Buckinghamshire family which had risen to prominence through the legal profession. He was a grandson of Dr William Smith, a distinguished civil lawyer, fellow of New College, Oxford (1558-71), and prebend of Lincoln (1581-1614), and the son of Robert Smith, principal of New Inn and sheriff of Buckinghamshire in 1627. 28Levack, Civil Lawyers, 269. William Smyth followed in their footsteps, and was admitted to New Inn and to the Middle Temple, where he was bound with Simon Harborne and William Stephens*.29MTR ii. 848. Despite being repeatedly fined for absence in 1638 and 1639, Smyth was called to the bar in July 1641, after which he was able to secure the admission of a kinsman.30MTR ii. 868, 874, 880, 885, 911-2, 924.

By the late 1630s Smyth was a creditor of Thomas Wentworth, 1st earl of Cleveland, who in 1641 mortgaged to him the manors of Hackney and Stepney, Middlesex.31CSP Dom. 1666-7, p. 217 He also appears to have been a member of the household of Frances Stuart (née Howard), dowager duchess of Richmond and Lennox; he was the executor of her will in October 1639.32Arch. Cant. xi. 250. Since he had no other known connection with Sussex, such employment may explain his election on 13 February 1641 as Member for Winchelsea, as a replacement for Sir Nicholas Crisp*, who had been nominated by the duchess’s nephew and current duke, but removed as a monopolist.33E. Suss. RO, WIN58, ff. 55-6. Smyth was not visible in the Commons Journal until 19 August, when he was excused for having been ‘in town’ when the House was called the day before.34CJ ii. 263b.

Smyth did not appear again in that record until January 1642, but in the meantime he made his mark in the House. Anthony Wood noted that Smyth was ‘for a time against the prerogative’.35Wood, Athenae ed. Bliss, iv. 669. This was made evident in the ‘long, confused, yet well-penned speech’ which he made on 28 October, and which Sir Simonds D’Ewes* felt ‘tended much that we should look to preserve our proprieties’ [property].36D’Ewes (C), 44-5; [W. Smyth], An Honourable and Worthy Speech (1641, E.199.8). Smyth attacked the introduction of idolatry and superstition, as well as the ‘unlawful Book of Sports’, and said that, while the king needed prerogative powers, yet ‘if it swells too high and makes an inundation upon his subjects liberty, ‘tis no longer then to be styled by that name’. Prerogative and liberty were both necessary

and like the sun and moon give a lustre to this benighted nation, so long as they walk at their equal distances: but when one of them shall venture into the other’s orb, like those planets in conjunction, they then cause a deeper eclipse.

The compass by which these divergent courses should be steered was the law.37The Diurnall Occurrences (1641), 395-9 (E.523.1).

On 29 December it was perhaps he among several who shared his surname – rather than the most plausible alternative candidate, Philip Smythe* of the Inner Temple – who spoke for securing Scottish assistance for the relief of Ireland in the aftermath of the rebellion, and for action against recusants. However, he also voiced his opinion that ‘the greatest stop in [Parliament’s] proceedings is the riotous and tumultuous assembly of vain and idle persons who presume to begirt our House’; they not only petitioned ‘in an irregular manner’ but also ‘with open clamour would prescribe us what laws to enact, and what not, and what persons to prosecute and who not’.38Mr Smith’s Speech in Parliament, 3-4 (E.199.46). On 4 January 1642, the day that the king made his abortive attempt to arrest the Five Members, Smyth received his first nomination, being dispatched to the Middle Temple to investigate claims that courtiers Sir William Killigrew and Sir William Fleming had tried to enlist support for the king amongst the legal community; to the House’s satisfaction, later that day he delivered a written response from his colleagues that they would ‘defend the king’s person no more than they were bound by the oaths of allegiance and supremacy’.39CJ ii. 367b; D’Ewes (C), 378-9; PJ i. 7, 9. On 20 January he may have been the Smyth who moved that the Protestation should be sent to each of the inns of court and then – in what D’Ewes considered ‘the best motion that had been made this day’ – proposed that Peregrine Pelham* be sent to encourage the vital port of Hull ‘so as the town should readily obey the orders of Parliament’.40PJ i. 116.

Yet thereafter Smyth – according to Anthony Wood, prompted by the ‘destructive courses’ taken by members of the Commons – began to distance himself from Parliament.41Wood, Athenae, iv. 669. He disappeared again from the record, and on 22 July was summoned to attend.42CJ ii. 685b On 7 September he took the covenant to support Parliament’s commander-in-chief Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, and on the 12th promised ‘a considerable’ sum for the defence of the commonwealth.43CJ ii. 755b, 772b. But he probably left London soon after: recorded as absent from the Middle Temple in November, the same month he was awarded a DCL at Oxford, newly-established as the royalist headquarters.44MTR, ii. 928; Al. Ox.

It is just possible that he was the William Smith who was provost-marshal of the royalist forces at Oxford in March 1643, but since a captain of the name still occupied the position in 1646 while the MP had held a higher rank in the meantime, this seems unlikely.45PA, MP21/3/43; Toynbee, Young, Strangers in Oxford, 28. Somewhat surprisingly, ‘William Smyth’ was recorded as having taken the vow and covenant at Westminster alongside Philip Smythe on 6 June 1643.46CJ iii. 118b. Either this was a short-lived reappearance or a scribal error. In November, despite apparently limited financial means, Smyth raised a regiment of horse and foot for the king at his own charge; according to his own later account, he and his brother were the only gentlemen in Buckinghamshire to do so.47HMC Dartmouth i. 129; Staffs. RO, D(w) 1778/I/i/1154B; Jnl. of Sir Samuel Luke, 202, 208, 211, 216-7, 220; SP23/203, p. 491. The force soon attracted allegations of ruthlessness and cruelty. Sir Samuel Luke claimed that Smyth made ‘great spoil’, while his enemies later said that he ‘gave his council to kill and destroy all the gentlemen, yeomen, farmers, their wives and children, without regard either to sex, age or condition, as he believed would be of the other side’.48Jnl. of Sir Samuel Luke, 202, 208, 211, 216-7, 220; [E. Whitaker], The Second Part of the Ignoramus Justices (1682), 2. Such reports doubtless hastened his exclusion from the Commons on 16 January 1644, ‘for deserting the service of Parliament and going to Oxford’.49CJ iii. 369b.

Later that month Smyth was listed amongst the members of the Oxford Parliament, but he cannot have attended for long.50Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 573-4. In February he retook from parliamentarian troops the home of Sir Alexander Denton* at Hillesden, Buckinghamshire, reportedly investing it with a garrison of 200 men.51Jnl. of Sir Samuel Luke, 247-8, 252-3, 257; Mems. of the Verney Family, i. 314-5; Newman, Royalist Officers, 349. Smyth was forced to surrender it on 4 March, however, and he and Denton, who had had a similar political trajectory, were taken prisoner.52Bodl. Tanner 62, f. 591; HMC 7th Rep. 446; Staffs. RO, D(w) 1778/I/i/1154B. Their local importance was signified in a Commons order of 12 March that neither man was to be exchanged without the consent of the House.53CJ iii. 425a. Called before the House four days later, Smyth admitted having taken (and thus having broken) the oath to adhere to Parliament, and was sent to close confinement in the Poultry prison; Sir Philip Stapilton* alleged that on his way to London Smyth had been offered £160 to escape by persons and for reasons D’Ewes did not record.54CJ iii. 430a; Harl. 165, f. 34. Royalist sources reported that he was fined £1,500, and Smyth himself later claimed to have suffered ‘a severe, close, and chargeable imprisonment for above a year’, but, having been transferred to the Tower of London he had sufficient liberty in July or August to marry one of Denton’s daughters, gaining him if not financial advantage at least access to a wide kinship network.55Mercurius Aulicus no. 36, 1145; Staffs. RO, D(w) 1778/I/i/1154B; Mems. of the Verney Family, i. 320.

Release eventually came through a prisoner exchange, apparently effected by the king’s adviser and agent John Ashburnham*.56A. Fea, The Loyal Wentworths (1928), 58. Identified thereafter with Ashburnham’s faction, Smyth became suspect in the eyes of rivals like Sir Edward Hyde*. The latter reported that Smyth went to Cornwall with authorisation from George Digby*, Lord Digby, to erect a mint at Truro, but through fraud used it for personal profit, as well as employing at least one known Catholic. Late in 1646, after the fall of Pendennis Castle, Smyth was sent by Ashburnham to Jersey.57CCSP i. 341, 363; Fea, Loyal Wentworths, 58; Bodl. Clarendon 2447; S.E. Hoskins, Charles the Second in the Channel Islands, ii. 139-42. In the summer of 1647 Smyth proceeded to Rouen (where he was on 11 August) and Paris, although on his own telling, he soon returned to England as a messenger from the exiled queen to Charles I at Hampton Court.58HMC 7th Rep. 456; Staffs. RO, D(w) 1778/I/i/1154B; HMC Dartmouth, i. 129. He was certainly in London in the first week of November, when he took the Covenant.59SP23/203, p. 497.

Thereafter Smyth appears to have remained in England. Despite his political and military record, by June 1648 he was back at the Middle Temple, when he stood bound for his younger brother John Smith, and subsequently helped to secure the admissions of two brothers-in-law, Edmund Denton (Nov. 1648) and Alexander Denton (May 1653).60MTR ii. 966, 974; iii. 1048. Smyth also sought to settle his estate. The county committee in Buckinghamshire had seized his property there, to the value of £208, and he later claimed to have been ‘sequestered many years [and] plundered of all he had.61CCC 68; Staffs. RO, D(w) 1778/I/i/1154B; HMC Dartmouth, 129. His father, who fell foul of parliamentarian commissioners in the region in August 1645 and was also ‘plundered’, had died soon afterwards in Oxford and left him an estate worth only £90 a year and encumbered with debts.62SP23/203, p. 491; Mercurius Aulicus no. 36, 1144-5. This inheritance complicated Smyth’s composition.63CCC 1634; SP23/118, pp. 25, 31. When his mother compounded in October 1647 her fine was set at £360, but the following month Smyth himself compounded only at £108, based partly on a small estate in Bristol and partly on his chamber at the Middle Temple; this was reduced in October 1649 to £53.64SP23/118, p. 35; SP23/203, pp. 494, 497, 500; CCC 1770-1. It subsequently became clear that the low fine was due to the fact that he had not compounded for lands acquired as collateral from the earl of Cleveland, despite being party to petitioning by the earl’s creditors to the Lords in February 1648.65HMC 7th Rep. 6; PA, MP 1 Feb. 1648; LJ x. 12a. The omission came to light in March 1651, and in July Smyth sought to compound on the Oxford articles.66CCC 1771. The dealings over Cleveland’s lands were complex, but it was decided that they were to go to the creditors, and that Smyth was the biggest claimant, having – by means that are obscure – purchased debts to the tune of £32,000.67CCC 2164; J. Thirsk, ‘The sales of royalist land during the Interregnum’, Econ. Hist. Rev. 2nd ser. v. 196-7.

The existence of helpful friends is indicated by this and by Smyth’s survival at the Middle Temple. Probably some time in 1654, he married as his second wife the daughter of a new arrival there, Nathaniel Hobart†, appointed in 1652 a master in chancery.68Mems. of the Verney Family, ii. 21. Hobart, like Smyth’s first wife, was kin to Sir Ralph Verney*, with whom Smyth seems to have spent much time when residing on his estate at Radcliffe.69Claydon House, Verney Pprs, Reel 15, unfol. As a prominent former royalist, however, he faced harassment from the government and army. It is possible that he was arrested in 1657 on suspicion of having been involved in plots against the protectorate.70Mems. of the Verney Family, ii. 124. In April 1658 he was arrested by George Fleetwood*, who (as Smyth related to Verney) told him that he had authority to imprison all who had been active supporters of Charles I. After a brief detention at Aylesbury, Smyth was allowed home under guard, but was probably released once Fleetwood became involved in prosecuting those for whom there was more evidence of royalist plotting.71Claydon House, Verney Pprs., Reel 16, unfol. Indeed, he was perhaps coming to terms with the regime: his enemies later claimed that ‘not many years after the war was done, when the title was turned, [Smyth] was the chief promoter in the county of Bucks, and other places, to procure addresses to Richard Cromwell*, and was then the most zealous and forwardest man in that service’.72Whitaker, Ignoramus Justices, 3.

Smyth was not elected to the Convention. Much of his attention in the months surrounding the Restoration may have been devoted to the continuing dispute over the Cleveland estate. The earl and his heir petitioned the resurrected House of Lords and Smyth was prosecuted in the exchequer court, where Matthew Hale* criticised him roundly and Smyth’s enemies claimed that he betrayed his trust as steward of the Wentworth family.73Whitaker, Ignoramus Justices, 3; HMC 7th Rep. 112; LJ xi. 80b; PA, MP 2 July 1660. In yet another of the surprising turns of his career, however, Smyth appears to have remained on friendly terms with the family for many years.74CSP Dom. 1663-4, pp. 580, 669; 1666-7, p. 560; 1667-8, pp. 236-7; 1668-9, p. 137; 1670, pp. 168, 252; Fea, Loyal Wentworths, 87, 196-7.

Smyth returned to Westminster as Member for Buckingham in 1661; claiming always to have been ‘for the king’s interest’, he was rewarded for his civil war service with a baronetcy.75Staffs. RO, D(w) 1778/I/i/1154B; HP Commons 1660-1690. He was not prominent around Westminster until the Exclusion crisis, when he emerged as a supporter of the future James II.76HMC 7th Rep. 474, 495; HMC Dartmouth, 129; The Charge Given by Sir William Smith (1682), 6. He was an active and controversial justice of the peace in Middlesex, where he opposed toleration, and suppressed both Catholics and non-conformists.77CSP Dom. 1680-1, pp. 503, 592; Charge Given by Sir William Smith, 1, 3, 4. He was foreman of the grand jury for the trial of Algernon Sydney* in 1682, and he also served as a grand juror against the 1st earl of Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper*).78Mems. of the Verney Family, ii. 338; HMC 7th Rep. 498. Although a candidate in the 1685 elections, by December Smyth had been removed from the commission of the peace, and thereafter he slipped into obscurity until his death in 1697, when he was buried at Akeley.79Mems. of the Verney Family, ii. 382; Fea, Loyal Wentworths, 205-6. Smyth was succeeded by his only surviving son, Sir Thomas Smyth, who did not sit at Westminster and died unmarried in 1732, when the baronetcy became extinct.80CB.