CURWEN, Sir Patricius (1602-64), of Workington, Cumb.

The Curwens claimed descent from the Saxon kings of England and the kings of Scotland. The family had settled at Workington by the end of the twelfth century and had regularly supplied knights of the shire for Cumberland from the late 1300s.36Curwen, House of Curwen, 11, 26-7; HP Commons, 1604-29, ‘Sir Henry Curwen’. Following his second marriage, which was to the widow of one of the Gunpowder Plotters, Curwen’s father, Sir Henry Curwen, was regarded as Catholic sympathiser, and perhaps for that reason he was excluded from county office until his mid-thirties.37HMC Hatfield, xix. 4; HP Commons, 1604-29; ‘Sir Henry Curwen’, Oxford DNB; Phillips, ‘Gentry in Cumb. and Westmld.’, 56. His stand against ‘the pretended custom of tenant right’ earned him the admiration of his gentry neighbours, however, and he was returned for Cumberland to the 1621 Parliament.38HP Commons, 1604-29.

Curwen inherited a thriving estate from Sir Henry in 1623 which he further improved, deriving income not only from tenurial rents and arable and livestock farming but also from coal mining, forestry, salmon fishing, salt making, trade with Ireland and Scotland (exporting iron ore, coal, salt and other goods), and port dues at Workington.39Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DLONS/L/3, Stray accts., box 388 (Sir Patricius Curwen’s acct. bk. 1625-46); HP Commons, 1604-29; ‘Sir Patricius Curwen’, Oxford DNB. He also inherited his father’s electoral interest in Cumberland and was returned for the county to every Parliament called by Charles I. He seems to have figured very little in proceedings at Westminster during the 1620s, although his political sympathies apparently lay with the court – when he purchased his baronetcy in 1627, George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham, either reduced or waived the customary fee of £1,095.40SO3/8 (entry for Mar. 1627); CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 85; Phillips, ‘Gentry in Cumb. and Westmld.’, 22-3. Curwen was active on the Cumberland commission for the Forced Loan in 1627, served diligently as an deputy lieutenant from the late 1620s and, as sheriff of Cumberland in 1636-7, collected all but a fraction of the county’s Ship Money assessment.41SP16/56/34, f. 48; SP16/73/41, f. 57; CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 106; CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 485; M.D. Gordon, ‘The collection of ship-money in the reign of Charles I’, TRHS ser. 3, iv. 157. During the bishops’ wars, he was entrusted with raising the Cumberland trained bands against the Scots.42Strafforde Letters, ii. 315-17; Curwen, House of Curwen, 144-5.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Curwen and Sir George Dalston were returned as knights of the shire for Cumberland.43Supra, ‘Cumberland’. Neither man received any appointments at Westminster or made any recorded contribution to debate. In mid-August 1640, with the Covenanters poised to invade England, Curwen and Dalston wrote to the Westmorland deputy lieutenants giving them notice ‘that so those enemies of our country may not find us unprepared but ready to defend ourselves ... we intend with all speed to make ready our trained bands, both horse and foot, to march at three hours’ warning’.44Chatsworth, Bolton Abbey mss, box 2, II.164.

Curwen and Dalston were returned for Cumberland again in the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640.45Supra, ‘Cumberland’. Curwen was named to 12 committees in this, his fifth, Parliament, including several for eradicating church pluralism and to suppress innovations in religion and promote a preaching ministry.46CJ ii. 61b, 69b, 101a, 108a, 152a, 172b, 196a, 219b, 423b, 438a, 515a, 591b. But his main concern at Westminster seems to have been the relief of the northern counties, where the quartering of the English and Scottish armies since the second bishops’ war had been causing considerable hardship. In November 1640, and again the following March, he pledged £1,000 towards securing a City loan for paying the soldiery.47Procs. LP i. 229; ii. 628. He was also named to several committees for supplying and disbanding the armies and for relieving their civilian hosts.48CJ ii. 69b, 152a, 172b, 196a. A likely opponent of the Scottish Covenanters and their English allies, he voted on 21 April 1641 against the attainder of the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†).49Procs. LP iv. 42.

Curwen was granted leave of absence on 23 June 1641 and received no mention in the Commons Journal between late July 1641 and early February 1642.50CJ ii. 221a. On 10 February, he and the Westmorland knight Sir Philip Musgrave moved that the future royalist peer Henry Clifford,† 5th earl of Cumberland, be appointed lord lieutenant of Cumberland and Westmorland under the Militia Ordinance. However, the majority of Members preferred the future parliamentarian peer William, 1st Baron Grey of Warke.51PJ i. 342; CJ ii. 424b. On 17 March, the House recommended Curwen to the new lord lieutenant as one of his deputies, but there is no evidence that Lord Grey acted on this advice.52CJ ii. 483b. Curwen’s appointment as a commissioner of array for Cumberland on 18 June 1642 suggests that the king’s party regarded him as sympathetic to their cause, even though he had not yet withdrawn from Westminster.53Northants. RO, FH133. Although granted leave on 28 June, he was still present in the House on 30 June, when he and Sir George Dalston were majority tellers against the committee of privileges examining witnesses concerning the disputed return for Cockermouth of Dalston’s son-in-law, the future royalist Sir Thomas Sandford*. The defeated tellers were the leading ‘fiery spirits’ William Strode I and Denzil Holles.54Supra, ‘Cockermouth’; CJ ii. 643b, 645b. Curwen and his wife left London for the north at some point in July.55Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DMUS/5/5/3: J. Taylor to Sir Philip Musgrave n.d., but July 1642.

By September 1642, Curwen was working with Musgrave and the earls of Derby and Cumberland in an effort to form a royalist alliance between the gentry of the five northern counties, but to little practical effect.56Infra, ‘Sir Philip Musgrave’; SP23/150, p. 439; Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DMUS/5/5/1/1. On 15 March 1643, he was disabled from sitting by the Commons after the House had received information that he was active on the commission of array, as indeed he was.57CJ iii. 1b; J. Musgrave, Yet Another Word to the Wise (1646), 19 (E.355.25). In his civil-war correspondence, Curwen expressed considerable sympathy for the king’s cause, ‘to which no man living can wish more happiness’.58Musgrave, Yet Another Word to the Wise, 21. It was later alleged that in the spring of 1643, Curwen and his fellow commissioner of array, Sir Wilfrid Lawson*, had put themselves at the head of a rising to seize Carlisle for Parliament – a rising that they had then betrayed as part of a design to consolidate royalist authority in the region.59Infra, ‘Sir Wilfrid Lawson’; LJ vii. 465a; Musgrave, Yet Another Word to the Wise, 7. But Curwen and Lawson told a different story after the war.

For the preservation of many of the inhabitants of the county ... from the incensements [sic] of the then commissioners [of array], he [Curwen] therein joining with Colonel Lawson for their relief, they both were restrained by the said commissioners at Carlisle and afterwards presently sent for by a troop of horse by the earl of Newcastle [the commander of the king’s army in the north], where Sir Patricius appearing was again restrained and much threatened by the said earl.60SP23/179, p. 598.

The fact that Lawson had been removed from the Cumberland bench in May 1643 lends some credence to this version of events.61Infra, ‘Sir Wilfrid Lawson’. Yet Curwen seems to have retained his offices – indeed, by August 1643 he had apparently accepted a commission from William Cavendish, earl of Newcastle, as a colonel of horse and foot.62Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DMUS/5/5/1/1/8; DMUS/5/5/4/27. Even so, it seems that Curwen was aligned with the faction among the Cumberland and Westmorland gentry that was determined to prevent Musgrave’s efforts to raise men and money for the royalist war-effort from pressing too heavily upon the region’s slender resources.63Phillips, ‘Gentry in Cumb. and Westmld.’, 289-93. Curwen’s decision to side with the king probably owed much to simple expediency – a desire to preserve his estate and retain his local offices. Nevertheless, his royalism, such as it was, was consistent with the religious convictions he expressed in the preface to his will of 1664

I utterly abhor and renounce all idolatry and superstition, all heresy and schism and whatsoever is contrary to sound religion and the word of God, professing myself with my whole heart to believe all the articles of the Christian faith and the whole doctrine of the Protestant religion taught and maintained in the Church of England, of which church I esteem it my great honour and happiness to live and die a true son and lively member.64Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 47, f. 125; Phillips, ‘Gentry in Cumb. and Westmld.’, 56.

Curwen attended the Oxford Parliament early in 1644, but he claimed later that he had done so only under duress and with the intention of promoting an accommodation between the king and the Westminster Parliament.65SP23/179, pp. 582, 589, 600, 602; Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DMUS/5/5/4/24. His concurrence with the letter from the MPs at Oxford to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, of 22 January 1644, urging him to compose a peace, prompted the Commons to disable Curwen from sitting a second time.66Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 575; CJ iii. 374a. When Cumberland and Westmorland were seized by Parliament in September 1644, Curwen promptly surrendered himself to Richard Barwis*, his friend and ‘near kinsman’ and took the Covenant.67SP23/179, p. 590; PROB11/207, f. 264; HMC Portland, i. 186; LJ vii. 465a.

Curwen petitioned to compound on 25 November 1645, claiming that he had been put into the commission of array against his will by the earl of Newcastle (who did not assume command in the north until well after Curwen’s nomination to the commission), had hindered the commissioners from raising men for the king’s service, had protected the estates of Parliamentarians, and that since his surrender he had assisted Parliament with ‘money, horses and arms’.68SP23/179, p. 600; CCC 985. The Committee for Compounding* fined him initially at a third of his estate – that is, £2,700.69CCC 985. However, after Curwen’s story was confirmed by Lawson and other Cumberland county committeemen, who also testified to the ‘great losses’ he had sustained through plundering by the Scots and royalists, the disruption of trade with Ireland (to which Curwen had exported iron ore, salt and other products in his own ship) and the flooding of his coal mines, the Committee for Compounding reduced his fine to £2,000.70SP23/179, pp. 584-5, 586, 594, 598, 602; CCC 986; Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DLONS/L/3, Stray accts., box 388. An ordinance for his pardon was passed by both Houses in February 1647.71CJ iv. 660b; LJ ix. 10b.

For reasons that are now unclear, Curwen, the faint-hearted royalist of the first civil war, raised a regiment for the king in 1648, although to little military purpose.72Alnwick, X.II.3, box 7, j: W. Penington to Hugh Potter*, 6 Oct. 1648; CCC 124; Phillips, ‘Gentry in Cumb. and Westmld.’, 306. He petitioned to compound for a second time in November 1648 and was fined at a sixth – that is, £1,392 – which was subsequently abated to £1,152.73SP23/6, p. 25; SP23/179, p. 576-7, 579; SP23/229, f. 63; CCC 986. His past delinquency proved no bar to his preferment by the parliamentarian peer Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, who appointed him lieutenant of the honor of Cockermouth in 1652.74Cumb. RO (Whitehaven), DLEC (patents rel. to estate officials). That same year, Carlisle corporation ‘banquetted’ Curwen, Lawson and other local gentlemen.75Cumb. RO (Carlisle), CA/4/3 (entry for May 1652). Although he was considered sufficiently well-affected by 1655 for re-admission to the Cumberland bench, he asked Hugh Potter*, Northumberland’s northern steward, to prevent his appointment, and the following year he was deemed liable to pay the decimation tax, for which his estate in Cumberland was assessed at £40.76Alnwick, X.II.3, box 10, h: Curwen to Potter, 12 June 1655; J.T. Cliffe, ‘The Cromwellian decimation tax of 1655’ (Cam. Soc. ser. 5, vii), 432.

Curwen almost certainly welcomed the Restoration, and during the second half of 1660 he was restored to the Cumberland bench and appointed a deputy lieutenant for the county. In the elections to the Cavalier Parliament in 1661, he helped secure the return of Sir Wilfrid Lawson and Hugh Potter at Cockermouth, while he himself was elected knight of the shire for Cumberland.77Cumb. RO (Whitehaven), DLEC/169/1660: Potter to Curwen, 19, 29 Jan. 1661; Curwen to Potter, 21 Jan. 1660; CSP Dom. 1661-2, pp. 515, 535. He was listed by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton as a possible ally, but he showed more enthusiasm for harassing the Cumberland Quakers than in securing a godly church settlement.78CSP Dom. 1663-4, pp. 315, 318; HP Commons, 1660-90; G.T.F. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 353. In 1662, he joined Musgrave and three other gentlemen in acquiring the farm of the excise in Cumberland, paying an annual rent of £900.79CTB i. 424.

Curwen died late in 1664 and was buried at Workington on 16 December.80Curwen, House of Curwen, 149. An elaborate memorial service was held for him on 12 April 1665 at a cost of £680.81HMC Le Fleming, 34, 36, 37. In his will, he charged his estate with annuities of £15 towards establishing a school at Workington, and he made bequests amounting to about £170.82Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 47, f. 125. He died without surviving issue, and upon the death of his widow in 1667 the estate passed to his brother Thomas and then, in 1672, to his recusant half-brother Eldred.83HP Commons, 1660-90; Jackson, ‘Curwens of Workington Hall’, 212. Curwen’s cousin Eldred Curwen† represented Cockermouth from 1738 to 1741.84HP Commons, 1715-54.