GAWDY (GAUDY), Framlingham (1589-1655), of Bardwell Hall, West Harling, Norf.

A pedigree compiled for Framlingham Gawdy in 1611 traced his ancestry back to Sir Brews Gawdy, a French knight who had been taken prisoner by the English in 1352.24Millican, ‘Gawdys of Norf. and Suff.’, 336-7. Later generations were minor landowners in the Waveney valley until the mid-sixteenth century when they rose to wealth and eminence in the law and acquired West Harling by marriage. Members of the family represented King’s Lynn and Norwich in Parliament under Edward VI. Gawdy’s father, Sir Bassingbourne, twice represented Thetford, six miles from Harling, and was knight of the shire in the last Parliament of Queen Elizabeth. Gawdy himself was introduced at court in 1605 and first entered Parliament for Thetford in 1614.25Letters of Philip Gawdy, ed. I.H. Jeayes (1906), 160.

The Short Parliament of 1640 was the sixth Parliament in which Gawdy had represented Thetford. But he had never been a conspicuous figure at Westminster and nothing is known about his conduct as an MP in this latest Parliament. When that October he wrote to the Thetford corporation seeking re-election, he looked forward to ‘this happy Parliament where so many and so great matters are like to be concluded of to the high honour of God, the king and his kingdom’.26Add. 27396, f. 166. He supported the return of John Potts* rather than Sir John Holland* as knight of the shire.27Eg. 2716, f. 333.

Despite his considerable parliamentary experience, Gawdy seems again to have been more of an observer in the Long Parliament than an active participant. That has advantages for the historian as, at times, Gawdy instead devoted his attention to keeping a parliamentary diary. Three of his notebooks survive, seemingly representing three distinct phases of diary-keeping between 1640 and 1642. Tantalisingly, these may not have been the only records he kept. There are hints that he may have written weekly letters to his eldest son, William†.28Add. 36989, f. 98. If so, only a handful survive among the extensive but incomplete family papers.29Add. 27396, ff. 172, 174v-175, 176, 180, 182.

One thing that the surviving papers do provide is an unusual amount of information about Gawdy’s London lodgings during this Parliament. In April 1641 he was living at ‘Mr Pratt’s house in Drury Lane between the Cockpit and the Horseshoe Tavern’.30Add. 36989, f. 97v. That same month he went back to Norfolk and on his return several weeks later he instead stayed at ‘Mr Ward’s house in Fleet Street’.31Procs. LP, iii. 572. That was an address he knew well, as he had stayed here nine years before, when it had been described as ‘a barber’s right over against the King’s Head Tavern’.32Add. 36989, f. 49v. By February 1647 he was living at ‘the Golden Anchor in Fleet Street’.33Add. 36989, f. 99v.

The first of Gawdy’s diaries covers only the opening four weeks of the Long Parliament.34Add. 56103; Procs. LP, i. p. xlii. Although some of the entries are very brief, others record the proceedings in greater detail and he made some attempt to set down something of the contents of the more important speeches. Already he was taking a particular interest in the criticisms being made against the lord lieutenant of Ireland, the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†).35Procs. LP, i. 101, 147, 168, 191, 230, 272, 338, 377-8. This diary ends on 30 November 1640.36Procs. LP, i. 377-8. That Gawdy was granted leave for a fortnight on 8 December because of ‘indisposition of health’ explains why.37CJ ii. 47a; Procs. LP, i. 510, 518.

Gawdy began a second diary in a different notebook on 22 February 1641 and he kept this one up, with some gaps, until the following July.38Add. 14828; Procs. LP, ii.-v. The style was much the same as before. The proceedings against Strafford remained his most obvious interest and his notes contain much about the preparations for the earl’s trial.39Procs. LP, ii. 511, 523, 553, 567-8, 577, 651, 666, 729, 743, 756, 770, 797, 833-4. After the trial commenced on 22 March, Gawdy attended the first four sessions in Westminster Hall.40Procs. LP, iii. 5, 65-6, 92, 121. He seems then to have instead attended the Commons, even although several entries mention that ‘Nothing of note’ was happening there or that there was ‘Nothing done’.41Procs. LP, iii. 135, 155, 188, 213, 240, 279, 311, 319, 363, 416-17, 455. He again attended Strafford’s trial between 8 and 10 April, while he made lengthy notes of the speeches delivered on 13 April.42Procs. LP, iii. 461, 474, 489, 527-9 He however left London on 15 April, when the trial was still unfinished. He was therefore absent when the Commons voted on the attainder bill against the earl.43Procs. LP, iii. 499, 572. His son, William, who had been managing the Norfolk estates, had meanwhile persuaded the Norfolk subsidy commissioners to reduce their assessments from £14 between the two of them to £12 for Gawdy alone.44Add. 36989, f. 96.

Gawdy arrived back in London on 5 May.45Procs. LP, iii. 572. On appearing in the House the next day, he took the Protestation.46CJ ii. 136b; Procs. LP, iv. 230, 232. At this point he also resumed his diary, with the entries now tending to become slightly more detailed. His comment that Miles Corbett* ‘railed against the Scots’ on 17 May is a rare example of his hinting at his own opinion about the speeches he was recording.47Procs. LP, iv. 418. As he was not present in the House on 3 June when the Irish petition against episcopacy was present, his information about it was gleaned from Sir Edmund Verney*.48Procs. LP, iv. 705. One unusual feature of the diary from June 1641 onwards is that Gawdy began to record not only the result of divisions but also how he himself had voted in them. That makes it a bit less impersonal than most parliamentary diaries of this period. On 8 June Herbert Price* and Sir William Withrington* had tried to remove the candles which had been brought in to prolong the sitting. The next day the House voted on whether they should be sent to the Tower. Gawdy was one of the 189 MPs who thought that they should.49Procs. LP, v. 68. On 19 he was one of those who blocked the move to get Sir William Savile* released from the Tower and later that same day he voted with the minority in favour of additions to the wording of a clause in the treaty with Scotland about remanding delinquents.50Procs. LP, v. 241. In the committee of the whole House on 23 June, Gawdy was one of those who voted against the clause introducing a penalty for those who tried to dissuade others from paying the poll tax.51Procs. LP, v. 297. On 1 July he was among the majority who got the word ‘liberties’ removed from the bill for abolition of the court of star chamber.52Procs. LP, v. 440. This second diary ended the following day.53Procs. LP, v. 463-4.

The crisis of early January 1642, with the attempted arrest of the Five Members and the king’s departure from London, may have been what prompted Gawdy to resume his diary. He did so in a third notebook begun on 14 January.54Add. 14827; PJ i.-iii. Its earliest entries were dominated by Parliament’s uncompromising responses to the king’s recent actions.55PJ i. 73-5, 101-3, 105, 125-7, 131-2, 141, 155-7, 171-2, 183-4, 213-15, 222-4, 235-6, 248-9. Those responses included the replacement of Endymion Porter* as captain of the St. Martin-in-the-Fields trained band on 24 January, a decision for which Gawdy voted in favour.56PJ i. 155. Three days later he also voted for the motion that James Stuart, 1st duke of Richmond was of the ‘malignant party’ and ‘an ill counsellor’.57PJ i. 200. But thereafter Gawdy showed himself to be more accommodating than some of his colleagues. On 2 February he opposed the motion that Sir Edward Dering* be sent to the Tower.58PJ i. 265. By voting on 15 February that the main motion should not be put, he seemed to align himself with those who did not want Endymion Porter to be removed from the king’s presence.59PJ i. 393. Moreover, on 17 February he voted against what became the fifteenth remedy in the declaration presented to the king; that implies that he thought that clergymen should have to follow the Book of Common Prayer until such times as Parliament approved changes to those ceremonies.60PJ i. 408. After the king had asked that the ship, the Prince Royal, be sent to sea, a majority of MPs, including Gawdy, voted on 7 March to refer the issue to a committee.61PJ ii. 6-7. Three days later he voted in favour of the appointment of Henry Stradling as one of the captains to serve with the fleet.62PJ ii. 24. On 14 March he voted against delaying the appointment of a committee on the new buildings in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.63PJ ii. 37.

Occasionally, Gawdy relied on information from fellow MPs for events that occurred when he was absent from the House, usually when he was having dinner; his wide circle of informants included John Glynne*, Michael Noble*, Edward Exton*, Richard Ferris*, Thomas Pury I*, Thomas Fountaine*, Roger Mathew*, William Cage*, Sir Richard Buller*, Richard Catelyn*, Richard More*, John Nashe*, Sir John Potts*, Humphrey Salwey* and John Blakiston*.64PJ i. 305, 435, 496, 507, ii. 49, 76, 334, 335, 346, 381, iii. 22, 64, 160, 169, 173, 180, 200, 216, 233, 241, 262, 265. After being recommended as a Norfolk deputy lieutenant on 17 March, Gawdy returned home for Easter at the end of that month.65CJ ii. 483b; PJ ii. 54, 113.

Back at Westminster from 20 April, he voted on 23 April in the majority in favour of appointing Matthew Levett, canon of Durham, allegedly ‘a forward man for the late innovations’, to the assembly of divines.66PJ ii. 113, 193, 209, 211. Thereafter he voted that the election of Sir William Waller* for Andover was not good (3 May), in the majority in favour of withholding payment to 2nd Viscount Grandison’s troop in Ireland unless Captain John St John was given the command (9 May), in favour of committing the Merchant Adventurers bill to the whole House (28 May), and in favour of appointing James Marsh, vicar of St Dunstan-in-the-West, to the assembly of divines (31 May).67PJ ii. 271, 298, 385, 395. On 11 June he was against putting the question that the departure of the nine peers to York was an affront to Parliament.68PJ iii. 63. Two days later he offered £50 for the defence of Parliament.69PJ iii. 475. At the call of the House on 16 June he voted against accepting the excuses of Sir Christopher Hatton*, and was in the majority in favour of putting the question that absent Members should not be allowed to take their seats unless they had satisfied the committee for absent Members.70PJ iii. 90-1. He opposed the motion on 30 June that witnesses be examined concerning the Cockermouth election dispute.71PJ iii. 155. Against raising 10,000 volunteers from London on 9 July, Gawdy voted in the majority ten days later in favour of retaining the king’s proposed amendment to the third article of the treaty of Ripon.72PJ iii. 193, 237. On 23 July he was one of those who successfully voted against the motion that the 2nd earl of Leicester (Sir Robert Sidney†) should be allowed to delegate his duties as lord lieutenant of Kent to his deputy lieutenants during his absence as lord lieutenant of Ireland.73PJ iii. 260.

Gawdy left London on 28 July with Sir Edmund Moundeford* and it was at that point that his diary effectively ended.74PJ iii. 270. A few days later he was appointed a commissioner to raise money and arms on the Propositions and to suppress the king’s commission of array in Norfolk.75LJ v. 251b-253a. That autumn he attempted to assist as an assessment commissioner in the far north of the county, an area some distance from his own estates, but encountered only resistance; writing to Sir John Potts in late October, he thought that ‘the coldness of the people’ was so great that these duties should be undertaken by ‘hands better known in the hundreds’.76Bodl. Tanner 69, f. 194. He was however able to pay in £50 from the hundred of Shropham as a loan on the Propositions several weeks later.77Eg. 2716, f. 382.

Acting on advice from Sir John Holland, Gawdy returned to London on 9 February 1643.78Add. 14827, f. 172. On 4 March, William Strode I* proposed to the Commons that Sir Thomas Dacres* and Gawdy should go back to Hertfordshire and Norfolk respectively in order to support the work of the newly-created Eastern Association. This was clearly intended as a test of loyalty, which they both proceeded to fail by asking to be excused, with the result that, according to Sir Simonds D’Ewes*, ‘the House manifestly perceived an unwillingness in them to meddle therein.’79Harl. 164, f. 312v. The Commons tried again three days later when Gawdy was ordered to report from Norfolk on the progress of the collection of the weekly assessment. A similar order was made to Dacres at the same time.80CJ ii. 992a. Gawdy seems to have ignored this, so on 25 April he and Sir John Potts were ordered to travel to Norfolk to promote the gathering in taxes, as well as to take control of the country trained bands. Gawdy, Potts and Holland were also ordered to write to the Suffolk county committee for the same purpose.81CJ iii. 59b. Gawdy took the oath in support of the 3rd earl of Essex at Westminster on 6 June, but continued to prevaricate over returning to the country to advance Parliament’s cause, despite a peremptory reminder on 24 June.82CJ iii. 118b, 142b.

By that autumn this failure to act had become too much for Miles Corbett. On 13 September the Great Yarmouth MP made an intemperate speech in the Commons against those officials in Norfolk who were unwilling to pull their full weight on behalf of Parliament. When others demanded that he be more specific, Corbett accused Holland and Gawdy of disregarding these orders from the Commons, and spoke ‘very foully’ against Gawdy. Challenged directly by Corbett to explain what he had done about the assessments, Gawdy ‘stood up and with much mildness answered that he did not yet hear of any monies collected, but, as soon as he should, he would give notice to the House’. The Speaker, William Lenthall*, was unimpressed and several MPs demanded that Holland and Gawdy should have their estates sequestered.83Harl. 165, ff. 190-191. Others were not so censorious and in the end the Commons merely ordered that Gawdy and Holland should travel to Norfolk immediately to help promote the war effort.84CJ iii. 238b-239a. Unlike Holland, Gawdy now did as he was told. He left the next day and reached Norfolk on 15 September.85Add. 14827, f. 172.

The following week Gawdy joined with other members of the Norfolk county standing committee in writing to Lenthall to complain about the county’s high tax burden.86HMC Portland, i. 131. On 6 November he was also one of those who certified that Sir William Doyly* had submitted himself to that committee.87HMC Portland, i. 149. Gawdy seems then to have stayed on in Norfolk until mid-January 1644, when, encouraged by the other Thetford MP, Sir Thomas Wodehouse*, he returned to London.88Add. 14827, f. 172. Gawdy may well have remained at Westminster throughout 1644 and early 1645, although that period of his career is a complete mystery.

On 9 April 1645 Gawdy spoke with ‘old Mr Rous’, doubtless Francis Rous*, about getting the ‘Parliament charges’ reduced, possibly a reference to the on-going complaints that Norfolk was still paying too much tax. Rous could only make vague promises about trying to help.89Add. 27396, f. 175. Gawdy subscribed the Solemn League and Covenant with the King’s Lynn Member, Thomas Toll I*, on 30 April.90CJ iv. 127b; Harl. 166, f. 206. In early July Gawdy joined Potts in Norfolk to ensure that the proportion of horse assigned on the county were sent to Grantham for the defence of the Eastern Association.91CJ iv. 202a; Add. 14827, f. 172v. That November he wrote with the other members of the county committee to tell the mayor of Norwich, John Tolye*, that the assessments collected from the parish of Thorpe next Norwich should be set to one side until it was determined whether it was to count as part of Norwich for tax purposes.92Add. 23006, f. 43.

Gawdy was presumably back at Westminster by the autumn of 1646, for on 30 October he was appointed to the committee to nominate sheriffs for the following year.93CJ iv. 709b. Periods of leave were granted to him on 26 November 1646 and on 13 March 1647.94CJ iv. 729a, v. 111a. When he wrote to his son on 7 July 1647 he hoped that he would be able to return to Norfolk in August, by which time he hoped that ‘we shall see things settled or settling.’95Add. 27396, f. 180. Also mentioning that the army’s charges against the Eleven Members had been presented to the Commons the day before, he noted that these were ‘very long’.96Add. 27396, f. 180. He was again given leave on 21 August and was still absent at the call of the House on 9 October.97CJ v. 281a, 330a. He obtained a further grant of leave for six weeks on 23 November.98CJ v. 366b. A month later he was one of the four MPs ordered to ensure the collection of the Norfolk assessments.99CJ v. 400b. He was back at Westminster by May 1648, for on 10 May he wrote to his son with news of the London petition about the London militia committee, the negotiations with the Scots and the departure of Oliver Cromwell* for Wales.100Add. 27396, f. 182. He acted as teller with Charles Rich* in the minority on 26 August in favour of returning a letter from the king addressed to the Scottish Parliament and officers of the Scottish army to the messenger who had been arrested at Tilbury.101CJ v. 684b.

Gawdy was secluded at Pride’s Purge of December 1648, and did not sit in the Commons subsequently.102A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); A Vindication (1648), 28 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5). He seems to have withdrawn from public life entirely after the king’s execution. He saw few reasons to be optimistic. Writing to offer the future archbishop of Canterbury, William Sancroft, a place in his nephew’s household in January 1650, he lamented, ‘our great calamities beget so much uncertainties in our fortunes as wisdom or honesty are but little protections for our persons against our evil persecutors’.103Bodl. Tanner 56, f. 163. Attended in his last sickness by Sir Thomas Browne, Gawdy died five years later and was buried at West Harling on 26 February 1655.104HMC Gawdy, 184; Blomefield, Norf. i. 306; Add. 36989, f. 110.

Many years before, following the death of his first wife in 1630, Gawdy had drawn up a will. In that, he had asked that the king should grant the wardship of his eldest son to Sir Edmund Moundeford, who was his late wife’s cousin.105Add. 36990, ff. 96-98. In August 1652, in very different circumstances, with wardship no longer an issue and Moundeford long dead, Gawdy had prepared a new will. William, the eldest son, inherited most of his lands, although his estate at Gasthorpe passed to his second son, Framlingham junior, while some of his Suffolk lands at Stemfield, Benhall, Snape and Freston passed to his three youngest sons, Bassingbourne, Thomas and Charles.106PROB11/248, ff. 129v-130. The other significant beneficiary was his cousin, Dorothy Gawdy, who had long served him as his housekeeper and to whom he left a life interest in some of his rents. In January 1653, five months after he had made this will, the two of them had married. She survived him.107PROB11/248, f. 130; Millican, ‘Gawdys of Norf. and Suff.’, 352, 361, 364. William Gawdy was subsequently elected for his father’s former constituency in 1661. He became a baronet in 1663.