BRUDENELL, Thomas (1578-1663)

The Brudenell family can be traced back to the fourteenth century, when they were minor freeholders on the Oxfordshire / Northamptonshire border. They acquired a significant estate, principally in Buckinghamshire, by marriage in the reign of Edward III. The first Brudenell to sit in Parliament was Edmund Brudenell^‡ (d.1425/6), a crown lawyer who represented Buckinghamshire in 1404 and 1406. A cadet branch of the family was founded by Edmund’s great nephew, Sir Robert Brudenell (c.1461-1531), who became lord chief justice of Common Pleas and a privy councillor in 1520. The first member of the family to be summoned to the upper House (albeit as an assistant), Sir Robert gradually accumulated a large landed estate, including four manors in Leicestershire, two in Rutland and eight in Northamptonshire. From about 1495 he lived at Stonton Wyville in Leicestershire, but, in 1514, he acquired the manor of Deene, in Northamptonshire. Situated on the edge of Rockingham forest, close to the highway between Kettering and Stamford, Deene became the principal seat of Sir Robert and his descendants.16 Wake, 1, 2, 11, 18, 25, 28-9; HP Commons, 1386-1421, ii. 392-3; Sainty, Judges, 48; M.E. Finch, Wealth of Five Northants. Fams. (Northants. Rec. Soc. xix), 135-6.

Sir Robert’s estate ultimately descended to Thomas Brudenell, the subject of this biography, for although Thomas’s father was a younger son, none of Thomas’s paternal uncles produced male heirs.17 Wake, 102; Finch, 142, 144. Brudenell inherited seven years after the death of his father, by which time he was aged 28. Over the course of the next 25 years or so, he doubled the income from the Brudenell estates, until by the eve of the Civil War they probably yielded £5,500 or more per annum. He achieved this feat by converting the leases of those who farmed his land to tenancies at will, which were issued at full commercial rates. He also undertook a gradual process of consolidation and enclosure. His estate policies were controversial, but he argued that he had to make the most of his property to enable him to pay for the hospitality and appearances that men of his status were expected to maintain. He also argued that scripture only condemned wealth when it was wasted, and that the law did not prohibit enclosure, only depopulation and conversion of arable lands to pasture. Nevertheless, in the mid 1630s he was fined £1,000 for his enclosures.18 Finch, 154-5, 159, 162-3; CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 316; E405/547, unfol.

The Brudenell family seems mainly to have been Catholic. Thomas’s mother was convicted of recusancy, and the Deene household included several Catholics before Brudenell inherited it, although his uncle John, on whose death in 1606 he succeeded to the estate, conformed enough to keep within the law.19 Wake, 94, 192; APC, 1617-19, p. 331. Brudenell himself married into a prominent Catholic family, the Treshams, and had numerous other Catholic connections, including his kinsman, the Bye-Plotter Sir Griffin Markham, and Edward Vaux^*, 4th Lord Vaux, who was related to the Treshams.20 HMC Hatfield, xvii. 633-4; CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 534. Moreover, he himself was Catholic, a fact which was widely known, but hard to prove. In 1605 his property was promised by the crown to Richard Fiennes^*, 1st or 7th Lord Saye and Sele, if the latter succeeded in convicting him of recusancy. From 1607, he and members of his family and household were repeatedly presented as recusants at the quarter sessions, and, in 1613, he was prosecuted for recusancy at the Northampton assizes. However, before 1626, Brudenell was always able to avoid the penalties for recusancy by occasional conformity. In 1613, for instance, he procured a certificate from the bishop of London (John King^*) testifying that he had conformed. Nevertheless, that same year Brudenell suffered the indignity of having his arms confiscated for being ‘ill affected in religion’.21 Wake, 117; HMC Hatfield, xvii. 633-4; xix. 290; SP14/50/94; HMC Buccleuch, iii. 149, 156, 158-60; D.M. Clarke, ‘Conformity Certificates among the King’s Bench Recs.’, Recusant Hist. xiv. 58.

Brudenell evidently blamed Sir Edward Montagu^* (subsequently 1st Lord Montagu) for the confiscation of his arms. The two men had recently fallen out over an office in Rockingham forest conferred on Brudenell by the warden of the forest, Thomas Cecil^*, 1st earl of Exeter, but which Montagu, the nephew of the previous incumbent, had wanted for himself. Montagu argued that Brudenell’s Catholicism disqualified him from public office, a view endorsed in the 1620s by the House of Commons, which repeatedly presented him as a Catholic officeholder. However, this was not an opinion shared by Exeter, or by the earl’s son, William Cecil^*, 2nd earl of Exeter, who appointed Brudenell one of his deputy lieutenants for Northamptonshire.22 HMC Buccleuch, i. 239; iii. 148, 157; E.S. Cope, Life of a Public Man, 58; LJ, iii. 395a, Procs. 1626, iv. 213; CD 1628, iii. 63. It was in this capacity that Brudenell, somewhat ironically, helped implement a further confiscation of arms belonging to recusants in the autumn of 1625.23 Add. 61481, f. 18.

His religion did not serve to isolate Brudenell from mainstream social and intellectual circles in early Stuart England. In addition to the Cecils, he was a friend of Francis Fane^*, 1st earl of Westmorland, who acquired a large Northamptonshire estate by marriage and appointed Brudenell one of the overseers of his will. Brudenell and Westmorland may have been brought together by their common enmity to Montagu.24 PROB 11/155, f. 298v; FRANCIS FANE. Brudenell was also an avid antiquarian, corresponding with William Camden, Sir Robert Cotton^‡ (whose library he used) and the historian of Leicestershire, William Burton. His plan to write a history of Northamptonshire was cut short by the outbreak of the Civil War, but in the process he created a valuable collection of local records.25 Wake, 106-7; Cott. Vespasian F.XIII, f. 329; V[iri] Cl[arissimi] Gulielmi Camdeni et illustrium virorum ad G. Camdenum Epistolae (1691) ed. T. Smith, 273-4.

Brudenell was finally convicted of recusancy at the Northampton quarter sessions in June 1626, having been indicted the previous April. Why he failed to conform in time to avert this eventuality is unknown. He now faced the crippling prospect of either paying £20 a month in fines or losing his personal estate and two thirds of his lands to the crown in the autumn.26 C66/2375/2. The timing was particularly perilous for Brudenell because, on 26 July, his eldest son, Robert, who had permission to travel to France to learn the language, was captured shortly after sailing from Dover by a warship from the Spanish Netherlands. Although Brudenell’s younger brother, John, had served in the army of Flanders in 1622, Robert and his attendants were judged lawful prizes (England and Spain being now at war), and a ransom of £3,100 was demanded for their release.27 APC, 1621-3, p. 307; 1625-6, p. 357; A.J. Loomie, ‘Gondomar’s Selection of English Officers in 1622’, EHR, lxxxviii. 579; SP23/129, p. 429; CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 425. Robert became dangerously ill in prison, but was freed on bail thanks to the intervention of Brudenell’s brother-in-law, Sir Edward Parham, and Sir Griffin Markham, then serving with the Spanish forces.28 Wake, 114-15; Finch, 187.

Brudenell was a longstanding friend of the Catholic Francis Manners^*, 6th earl of Rutland, father-in-law of the favourite, George Villiers^*, 1st duke of Buckingham.29 HMC Rutland, iv. 489; HMC Montagu. 107. Thanks to Buckingham’s support, Brudenell obtained agreement that the king would forbear to seize the two thirds of Brudenell’s lands due to the crown, an arrangement which seems to have echoed one made in 1625 in respect of Lord Vaux (for whom Brudenell and his brother-in-law, Sir Lewis Tresham were trustees). However, Brudenell was not satisfied with this deal, for in September he asked for a full pardon, arguing that, as he was already heavily indebted, he would need to sell lands to pay his son’s ransom, which he could not do unless he had clear title to his property.30 SP16/35/65; T. Rymer, Foedera, viii. pt. 1, pp. 27-31. His appeal was received sympathetically, for the following month the attorney general was ordered to prepare a pardon for Brudenell, who sent Buckingham an unspecified present in gratitude.31 CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 448. However, it may have been suspected that Brudenell’s financial situation was not a bad as he pretended, and that he was trying to use his son’s misfortune to obtain immunity from the recusancy laws. This would explain why no pardon was issued. Instead, in December, a warrant was issued granting all the penalties and forfeitures due from Brudenell’s recusancy to Brudenell’s nominees: Rutland, Westmorland and Westmorland’s eldest son, Mildmay Fane^†, Lord Le Despenser (subsequently 2nd earl of Westmorland). However, this grant proved abortive.32 Ibid. 581; SO3/8, unfol. (Dec. 1626).

In January 1627 Brudenell was allowed to come to London, when another warrant was issued for leasing the forfeited two thirds of Brudenell’s lands for 60 years to Rutland, Westmorland and Le Despenser for the nominal yearly rent of 2s. Rutland, Westmorland and Le Despenser promptly made over their lease to Brudenell, who mortgaged it back to them as security for the loans they had raised on his behalf to pay the ransom money.33 APC, 1627, p. 6; SO3/8, unfol. (Jan. 1627); C66/2375/2; CCC, 1081; Wake, 121. The technical forfeiture of the bulk of his estate meant that Brudenell had now secured immunity from the recusancy laws. As a result, he was able to put his occasional conformity firmly behind him.34 CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 347.

It was not until February 1628 that Brudenell finally paid his son’s ransom, for which task he employed Capt. Henry Lucy, a former captain in the earl of Argyle’s regiment in the army of Flanders who had once been in the service of John Mordaunt^*, 5th Lord Mordaunt (a Northamptonshire peer who had recently abandoned Catholicism and was about to become 1st earl of Peterborough).35 APC, 1627-8, p. 276; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 23; Wake, 15; D. C. Worthington, Scots in Habsburg Service, 72, 79; JOHN MORDAUNT. One reason for the delay, perhaps, was that the ransom had risen to £5,000, but another factor may have been Brudenell’s desire for social advancement. In the same month Lucy went to the Spanish Netherlands, Brudenell purchased a barony.36 HMC Skrine, 142; Birch, i. 328-9.

Brudenell had long sought an increase in his status of honour. In January 1610 he had complained to Robert Cecil^*, 1st earl of Salisbury, that ‘divers gentlemen in my country, whose predecessors never being reputed in equal rank with mine, have lately thought their grace and priority far to exceed mine because I stand still in the same degree that my birth bestowed upon me’. He asked to be ‘raised … to such order and degree as it shall like his royal Majesty at this time of solemnization to distribute to unhonoured gentlemen of better rank’.37 Hatfield House, CP126/167. This was a coded request to be included among those who were to be inducted into the order of the Bath at the forthcoming creation of Prince Henry as prince of Wales. However, his appeal was in vain, as those knighted were personally selected by Henry from young men of the highest social standing. Not until the following year, when he purchased one of the first baronetcies, did Brudenell obtain the recognition he desired. So too did a number of other Catholics, who probably felt, like Brudenell themselves, that their religion had excluded them from acquiring honours.38 P. Croft, ‘The Catholic Gentry, the Earl of Salisbury and the Baronets of 1611’, Conformity and Orthodoxy in the Eng. Church ed. P. Lake and M. Questier, 264, 280. Not surprisingly, Brudenell subsequently deployed his antiquarian researches to defend the new honour from its critics. He ‘found both in chronicles and manuscripts a very community’ between the order of baronet and the older order of knight banneret. He was also one of the four baronets who presented a petition to the king, in early 1612, about the precedence of members of the new order.39 Barnsley Archives and Local Studs., EM 1284(a); Stowe 743, f. 24; Her. and Gen. iii. 454.

Although he bought himself a baronetcy, Brudenell failed to participate in the Jacobean sale of peerages, unlike his Northamptonshire neighbour and enemy, Sir Edward Montagu, who became Lord Montagu of Boughton. This meant that he once more fell behind socially. His decision to purchase a barony in 1628 may have been motivated by a desire to repair this omission, though he was still ranked below Montagu, or his friend, Westmorland, who had acquired an earldom. He may also have hoped that purchasing a title would win him government favour, as at that time he was in the process of ransoming his son from an enemy power. On becoming a baron on 26 Feb.,40 The date is recorded incorrectly as 25 Feb. in CP, ii. 354, but recorded correctly elsewhere in this same publication (ibid. iii. 13). Brudenell took as his territorial suffix Stonton in Leicestershire rather than Deene, presumably because, among the manors he owned, Stonton had been longest in his family’s possession. The Brudenells were so closely connected with Stonton that they tried to rename it Stonton Brudenell. Indeed Brudenell described himself as ‘Lord Brudenell of Brudenell’s Stonton’ in his will.41 Wake, 19, 112; PROB 10/965, original will of the earl of Cardigan.

According to Brudenell’s brother-in-law, Sir William Tresham, and Richard Oliver^‡, Buckingham’s receiver general, Brudenell agreed to pay £6,000 for his barony, of which £5,000 was paid by the end of March. The residue was due in May 1629, for which a bond for £600 was taken. However, this sum remained outstanding in August 1629, when an order was given for it to be paid to the courtier William Murray^‡. It was still unpaid in February 1630, when Tresham and Oliver were quizzed about the transaction. There is no evidence that it was ever paid. There is also no trace of the payment of the principal sum of £5,000 into the Exchequer. It seems likely, from the involvement of Oliver, that it was actually given to Buckingham, perhaps as recompense for sums the duke had paid out of his own pocket towards the Île de Ré expedition.42 SP16/160/13; SO1/1, f. 243; Wake, 112; L. Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, 106.

Brudenell is recorded as having attended the first two sittings of the 1628 session, on 17 and 19 March. After the next sitting, on the 20th, the Lords began administering the oath of allegiance to peers, which was presumably why Brudenell ceased attending after the 19th. When the House was called on the 22nd, Brudenell was recorded as absent and as having sent his proxy, which he gave to Westmorland.43 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 26, 73, 87. On 2 Oct. Brudenell informed Westmorland that the second session had been postponed until the following January. When it met Brudenell continued to stay away. He again gave his proxy to Westmorland.44 HMC Rutland, i. 487; LJ, iv. 3b, 25a.

Freedom from any further need to compromise with the Church of England may have bolstered Brudenell’s status within the English Catholic community. In the late 1620s and early 1630s he became a prominent supporter of the Jesuits in their conflict with Richard Smith, the bishop of Chalcedon. In December 1631 Smith was informed that Brudenell had tried to win Henry Parker^*, 14th Lord Morley, to the Jesuit faction by telling Morley that the bishop would excommunicate Morley for living separately from his wife.45 M.C. Questier, Catholicism and Community in Early Modern Eng. 437, 475n.13; Newsletters of the Caroline Ct. ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xxvi), 42-3.

Following the death in November 1635 of Henrietta Maria’s chancellor, Thomas Savage^*, 1st Viscount Savage (the most senior openly Catholic member of her household), Brudenell was, by his own account, twice approached as a possible replacement. However, Brudenell refused because he ‘desired now in my [old] age to be quiet and sequestered’, and because he worried he would be isolated, ‘knowing no other of her board of my religion’. He may also have feared the opposition of William Laud^*, the archbishop of Canterbury, who ‘branded’ him for having ‘devoured the people with a shepherd and a dog’ through his enclosures.46 SP16/319/104.

In 1637 Brudenell was chosen by the inhabitants of two neighbouring hundreds of Northamptonshire, who complained about the unequal apportionment of Ship Money in their county, to help settle a new assessment. However, Brudenell and his colleagues were unable to come to an agreement and had to refer the matter to Francis Dee^*, bishop of Peterborough, although the latter reported to the Council that Brudenell ‘had taken a great deal of pains’.47 PC2/47, pp. 355-7; SP16/365/16. That same year Henry Rich^*, 1st earl of Holland, chief justice in eyre for southern England attempted to expand greatly the bounds of Rockingham forest. As a result Brudenell and other local landowners were prosecuted for encroaching on the forest. In response Brudenell drew up a memorandum opposing the expansion of the forest. Drawing on his antiquarian knowledge he defended the bounds set in the reign of Edward I, arguing that any extension would drive members of the gentry out of the county. He claimed that the woodlands in the existing forest had been ruined by the abuse of common rights by the local inhabitants and that re-afforested lands would suffer a similar fate. He requested a hearing before the king, but there is no evidence that he ever presented his memorandum. After two years of negotiation Brudenell paid £400, for which his lands were disafforested, and he was given permission to create a thousand-acre park.48 Strafforde Letters (1739) ed. W. Knowler, ii. 117; P.A.J. Pettit, Royal Forests of Northants. (Northants. Rec. Soc. xxiii), 89-93, 107-8, 124-5; Wake, 123-5; CSP Dom. 1639, p. 481.

In response to the summons issued to the nobility by Charles I, in January 1639, to attend at York the following April to fight the Scottish Covenanters, Brudenell took the opportunity to complain about his treatment as a Catholic. He claimed that, as a result of religious persecution, he was ‘more disabled than most men of my rank’ to serve the king. As well as having been deprived of his arms in the previous reign, he protested that he ‘had a jealous eye upon me in point of horses, with continual reproachful false rumours daily raised of my disaffection and sinister use thereof’. He nevertheless offered to provide horses and unarmed men, or to send a representative to Flanders, ‘where I am made believe such munition may be had’. He ended by declaring that ‘though former ages valued not my family but at three horses in this kind of duty yet love and an obliged heart shall carry me much further (though honour and estate rise not together)’. However, the only firm promise he made was to attend in person.49 SP16/412/141. Years later, while pressing Charles II to make him an earl, he claimed to have spent £1,200 in buying horses and arms to fight the Scots, and that he sent £500 instead, having been informed that the presence of Catholics was unwanted. However, there is no contemporary evidence that he contributed to the war effort.50 HMC Buccleuch, i. 313.

Brudenell’s activities in the early months of the Civil War are obscure. In January 1643 the House of Lords granted him permission to go to France, but finding his passage to London blocked by parliamentarian soldiers he made his way to Wales, where he lived secretly until poor health forced him to seek a doctor in Hereford. Captured by parliamentarian forces in 1645, he was imprisoned in the Tower, where he continued his antiquarian researches in the records stored there. In 1648 the imprisoned Charles I promised to make Brudenell earl of Cardigan in return for £1,000, which sum was contributed by Brudenell’s son, Robert^†, to fund an abortive escape plan. Brudenell’s own contribution to the royalist cause is more difficult to establish. After the Restoration, Brudenell claimed to have raised a troop for the king at his own expense in 1642, but there appears to be no corroborating evidence. On the contrary, during the 1640s and 1650s he claimed that he had only been classed as a royalist because of his Catholicism. Moreover, on drawing up his will on 3 May 1662, Brudenell complained that he had suffered ‘for my religion’, not for his loyalty to the Stuarts. The promised earldom was finally conferred by Charles II in 1661. He died two years later, being succeeded by his son, Robert, who proved his father’s will on 20 Oct. 1663. He was buried at Deene, where a monument made of Stanwick marble was erected to his memory.51 Ibid. 310, 313; SP23/70, p. 327; SP23/70, pp. 311-15; HMC 6th Rep. 185, 191; LJ, v. 557b; CCC, 1078; PROB 10/965, original will of the earl of Cardigan; Wake, 137, 174.