TOOKER, Edward (1595-1664), of Castle Street, Salisbury, and Maddington, Wilts.

Tooker’s family had lived in Salisbury since at least the early sixteenth century, and their association with the town was cemented by his father’s marriage into one of the borough’s more prominent families, appointment as its recorder, and election as its representative in 1601, 1604 and 1614.18Vis. Wilts. 1623, 196. Tooker was educated at Lincoln’s Inn, where his father was a bencher, admitted at an early age with the support of two of his Eyre cousins in 1610; he was called to the bar in 1616.19L Inn, Admiss. Bk 4, f. 58; LI Black Bks, ii. 188. Upon his father’s death in 1623, Tooker inherited a substantial estate, as well as an annuity of 100 marks a year.20PROB11/143/84; Abstracts Wilts. IPMs Chas. I, iii. 39.

Sometime shortly before August 1622, when his father’s will was updated, Tooker married Martha, daughter of Sir John Cooper†, and following Sir John’s death became in November 1631 guardian of her nephew Anthony Ashley Cooper*, by purchasing the latter’s wardship with Sir Daniel Norton†.21PROB11/155/70; Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 594; WARD9/163, f. 28; Coventry Docquets, 473. Tooker helped to manage the Cooper estate for much of the 1630s, and after Norton’s death in 1635, he also provided a home for his young ward, and oversaw his education.22PRO30/24/33/8; W.D. Christie, Life of Anthony Ashley Cooper (1871), i. 12. Such tasks were not without their problems, however. Allegations of financial irregularities levelled by Sir Edward Alford* led to protracted litigation, and at least one of Cooper’s tenants claimed to have been unfairly ejected from her house.23SP16/534, ff. 227-34; CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 475; 1634-5, pp. 220, 600; 1635-6, p. 323; 1639-40, p. 68; PRO30/24/2/31, 33. Cooper himself, however, later described Tooker as ‘a very honest, industrious man, an hospitable, prudent person, much valued and esteemed, dead and alive, by all that knew him’.24Christie, Cooper, i. p. x.

In May 1641 Tooker was nominated with his uncle William Eyre I* to the vestry of St Edmund, Salisbury, an indication that his sympathies lay with the city’s puritan activists.25Churchwardens’ Accounts Sarum ed. Swayne, 214. That his name was included on a list of members of the local parliamentarian committee soon after the outbreak of civil war, but not thereafter, suggests that in the first half of the 1640s he may sometimes have been absent in London.26Wilts. OPC Project (2017), ‘The Falstone Day Book’. That Tooker remained an active lawyer is evident from his sponsorship of his much younger cousin Henry Eyre*, who was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn in January 1647.27L. Inn, Admiss. Bk 7, f. 61. In the meantime, however, he was named to other local commissions, and by the summer of 1646 he was an active member of the commission of the peace, appearing in sessions across the county.28Wilts. RO, A1/160/1, ff. 47, 54, 68, 80, 85, 102, 133, 138, 151, 157, 164, 175, 180, 195, 217, 239; A1/160/2, pp. 73, 107, 165, 187. For a few months in 1648 he was sheriff of Wiltshire, a stop-gap replacement for Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper during the latter’s illness.29List of Sheriffs (List and Index ix), 154.

Tooker was elected to the first protectorate Parliament in 1654, as MP for Salisbury, probably as a last-minute substitute for Cooper, who seems to have withdrawn his candidature once he had secured a seat for the county.30Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, f. 82. Tooker was only admitted as a freeman on the day of the election (10 July), when he was returned alongside the town’s recorder, William Stephens*.31Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, ff. 82-v. Tooker made no visible impression on proceedings, but was nevertheless returned once again in 1656, although his association with Cooper probably ensured his exclusion from the Commons, on suspicion of being at best a Presbyterian, and at worst a closet royalist. If Tooker did indeed share the political views of his nephew, this may have proved an advantage in 1659, when Tooker secured election at Hindon, although he once again failed to receive any committee nominations or make any recorded speeches.

Tooker resumed his position as burgess for Salisbury in both the Convention and the Cavalier Parliament, as a friend of Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton.32HP Commons 1660-1690. He also continued on the commission of the peace at least into 1662 and on other commissions until his death.33A1/160/2, pp. 165, 187, 233; C181/7, pp. 9, 95, 103, 130, 155, 185, 202, 235. He died during the parliamentary session, on 17 April 1664.34Wilts. RO, G23/1/4, f. 119v; CCSP v. 393. In accordance with Tooker’s will, for which Cooper acted as executor, the burial took place at Maddington, and the estate was inherited by his only surviving son, Giles Tooker. The latter, who was the last of the male line, had married in 1649 a daughter of the republic’s attorney-general, Edmund Prideaux I*, and would be made a baronet in 1665.35PROB11/314, f. 81v; CB.