EURE, Ralph (1558-1617)

Despite an unauthorized visit to Italy in 1582-3, and the avowed Catholicism of his brother and eldest son, Eure was a conformist who, like his father and grandfather before him, enjoyed a lengthy career in the north and the Marches of Wales. However, his tenure at Ludlow was disrupted by vehement complaints from the Marcher shires, and he surrendered his post shortly before his death.

Career to 1607

One of the knights of the shire for Yorkshire in 1584, and sheriff in 1593-4, Eure inherited substantial estates in Yorkshire and county Durham.25 CSP Dom. Addenda, 1580-1625, p. 98; C142/242/102. On two occasions late in Elizabeth’s reign, he served as warden of the Middle Marches, a volatile border region which tested his skills. In addition, in 1602 he led a trade mission to Bremen to negotiate with the Danes and the Hanseatic League.26 Hunter Blair, 75; Bell, 23.

Still abroad at James’s accession, Eure missed his chance to share in the spoils distributed at the start of the new reign, although his son was appointed a gentleman of the Privy Chamber and dubbed a knight of the Bath at the coronation.27 Gawdy Letters ed. I.H. Jeayes, 130; Shaw, i. 153. He might have been a contender for the presidency of the council in the North – granted to Edmund Sheffield^*, 3rd Lord Sheffield in July 1603 – but for an incident in August 1600, when one of his brothers and his son had spent a night mocking their puritan neighbour Sir Thomas Posthumous Hoby^‡. The latter had complained to the council in the North, but Eure, then vice president, suppressed the arrest warrants issued by John Thornborough^*, dean of York (later bishop of Worcester), and dismissed Hoby’s protest with ‘a long discourse about duellos’, in which he argued ‘that men carried not swords in vain, but to defend their reputations as occasion required’. Eure’s appointment would have institutionalized his feud with Hoby, who had an elephantine memory for slights.28 STAC 5/H50/4 (deposition of John Thornborough); 5/H6/29; HP Commons, 1604-29, iv. 735. Eure claimed to be unable to remember his own words: STAC 5/H22/21 (deposition of Ralph, Lord Eure).

When Parliament was summoned early in 1604, Eure secured a seat at Scarborough for one of his brothers, the lawyer Francis Eure^‡, with the backing of the lord admiral, Charles Howard^*, 1st earl of Nottingham.29 HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 504. Eure attended 60 per cent of the Lords’ sittings during the 1604 session. During one of his absences from the House, on 14 Apr., he missed the conference at which the king laid out his initial plans for uniting England and Scotland. However, he was ordered to attend a second conference, and was named to the commission which met the following autumn to discuss the terms of the Union.30 LJ, ii. 284a, 296a. He was also nominated to attend conferences on two financial measures - composition for purveyance and amendments to the tunnage and poundage bill - and was appointed to consider the ill-fated bill to create an entail of crown lands.31 Ibid. 290b, 323a, 341a. Eure was included on the delegation sent to confer with the Commons about ecclesiastical reform, which met on several subsequent occasions; and committees for the bill to prevent the import of ‘seditious, popish, vain and lascivious books’, the recusancy bill and the bill to regulate proceedings in church courts.32 Ibid., 282b, 290a, 301b, 323a, 314a. His northern interests explain his inclusion on committees for bills for repair of Bridlington and Whitby harbours in Yorkshire, and the bill to confirm the new charter of Berwick-upon-Tweed.33 Ibid., 281a, 286a, 309a.

In the summer of 1605 Eure oversaw militia musters in the North and East Ridings on behalf of Lord President Sheffield, whose duties kept him at York.34 Add. 36293, ff. 93-4. During the parliamentary session which began in the following November, Eure attended almost two-thirds of the Lords’ sittings, but played a relatively minor role in proceedings. In the heightened anti-Catholic atmosphere created by the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, he was named to the committee appointed early in the session to discuss the need for fresh recusancy legislation, ordered to attend a conference to discuss these plans with the Commons, included on the committee for the resulting legislation, and named to the committee for the revived bill to ban the import of popish books.35 LJ, ii. 360b, 367b, 380b, 419b. In addition, he was ordered to attend a conference on ecclesiastical reform, and another on purveyance.36 Ibid. 411a, 413a; Bowyer Diary, 116-17. Many of his other committee nominations involved legislation about northern interests: the Newcastle Hostmen’s monopoly; the grammar school at St Bees, Cumberland; a bill to discount customs duties on exports of northern cloth; and the naturalization bill for the Scottish courtier Sir David Foulis, who had settled in the North Riding and was to buy the manor of Ingleby Greenhow from Eure in 1609.37 LJ, ii. 370a, 374a, 396b, 401a. Finally, he was included on the committee for the bill to allow Robert Cecil^*, 1st earl of Salisbury to purchase part of the grounds of Durham House in the Strand, to improve his house, which lay adjacent.38 Ibid. 420b.

Laid low by ‘the stone and sciatica’, Eure missed much of the parliamentary session of 1606-7, consigning his proxy to Salisbury, and appearing in the Lords only once before Easter 1607. However, he attended regularly from the end of April, and was included on the committee for the only item of Union legislation which passed the Lords, the bill for the repeal of anti-Scottish statutes.39 HMC Hatfield, xviii. 343, 346; LJ, ii. 449a, 520a. He was also named to committees for the bill to confirm compositions for copyhold estates to be made on crown manors, and the bill to regulate cloth manufacture.40 LJ, ii. 514b, 524b.

President of the Marches 1607-10

Eure’s poor health may have delayed negotiations for his acquisition of the presidency of the Marches, vacated in 1606 by Edward La Zouche^*, 11th Lord Zouche. He was not the only contender for the post, as Sir George Carey, a former lord deputy of Ireland, was also considered.41 Carleton to Chamberlain ed. M. Lee, 88; G.D. Owen, Wales in the Reign of Jas. I, 28-9. Consequently, even with Salisbury’s backing, he was not confirmed in office until September 1607, well after his health recovered.42 Chamberlain Letters, i. 233; SP14/47/97; HMC Hatfield, xix. 348-9. The protracted delay was caused by a long-running dispute about the council’s jurisdiction over the English counties of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, Monmouthshire and Shropshire, a source of contention for several years, which was questioned by King’s Bench in 1604-5, and the Commons in 1606. Eure’s instructions offered a compromise: the council was confined to jurisdiction over cases for debt and trespass worth no more than £10; while the court’s chief critic, Sir Herbert Croft^‡, was removed from local office.43 Skeel, 133-7; HP Commons, 1604-29, iii. 750-1.

On arriving at Ludlow, Eure asserted ‘that his Majesty had not exempted the four English shires from the sole jurisdiction of this court’, explaining that the council still had cognizance over some types of suit. This provoked a backlash in the Marches: at their Michaelmas quarter sessions in 1607 the Herefordshire gentry, having expressed gratitude for the ‘great peace and quiet’ promised by Eure’s instructions, complained that summonses were still being issued by the council; while in Worcestershire, Sheriff Sir John Pakington refused to execute Ludlow’s writs. Sir Herbert Croft persuaded the Westminster courts to issue injunctions against these writs, at which Eure fumed ‘the peril seemeth great, that all the judicial actions formerly committed by the authority of this court, shall be made void, as unjust’.44 Cott., Vitellius C.I, ff. 205-6; SP14/31/14, 24, 30; 14/32/13; Skeel, 137-8; HP Commons 1604-29, iii. 752. The cause was aired before the Privy Council in November 1608, when Eure, advised by Solicitor General Sir Francis Bacon^* (later Viscount St Alban) argued that his council’s authority should be argued ‘as well out of the king’s prerogative as out of the law’. At the outset, the king annoyed the judges by insisting that they were merely his deputies: ‘shall not I be as able to maintain my prerogative as my predecessors have done, yea verily, and will do?’ One commentator believed the council’s case had been upheld, but the written opinion the judges eventually offered to the king was presumably judged unsatisfactory, as it was never published.45 HEHL, EL1763; Chamberlain Letters, i. 269; Skeel, 138-9; HP Commons, 1604-29, iii. 565.

Squabbles over the council’s jurisdiction were by no means Eure’s only concern. He complained that the deputy lieutenants of the Marcher shires – who included some of the most vehement opponents of the Ludlow court – were refusing to co-operate over militia affairs. He also kept a close eye on the movements of Catholic priests in the Marches, and promoted the enforcement of the oath of allegiance on lay recusants. On a tour of Monmouthshire in 1609, Eure and Francis Godwin^*, bishop of Llandaff, formulated a scheme similar to the one promoted by the ‘king’s preachers’ of Lancashire, whereby recusancy fines would be allocated to fund six preachers in the local towns; they forwarded the idea to Salisbury (now lord treasurer), but it was not implemented.46 SP14/28/95, 122; 14/48/121; Cott., Vitellius C.I, f. 206. One reason for the council’s unpopularity was its increasingly sedentary existence at Ludlow. In 1609 Eure therefore proposed adjourning the Michaelmas term to Hereford. However, this plan was disrupted by an outbreak of sickness. The council subsequently spent the winter at its secondary property, Tickenhill House, Worcestershire, which was in a state of disrepair.47 SP14/35/41-2; 14/47/30; 14/48/121; Eg. 2882, f. 68v.

In August 1609, Eure protested to Salisbury about his ‘distressed estate’, having returned from Bremen £6,000 in debt. He insisted that a salary of 100 marks and expenses of £1,000 a year failed to cover his costs at Ludlow, and begged for further relief in the form of a grant of £600 worth of concealed lands, to be shared between himself and Edward Parker^*, 12th Lord Morley.48 SP14/47/97; Heard Before the King: Reg. of Petitions to Jas. I, 1603-16 ed. R.W. Hoyle (L. and I. soc. spec. ser. xxxviii), 100; HMC Hatfield, xxi. 148. (His income as president had presumably been affected by the boycott of the council by the Marcher gentry, and was further reduced in 1610, when some of the revenues allocated to meet the council’s running costs were assigned to Prince Henry).49 SP14/63/46. He claimed that he would be forced to sell lands worth £900 p.a. to pay his creditors, which suggests his debts had risen considerably since 1603.

Eure began selling parts of his estate shortly thereafter, indicating that there was some truth in his claim of financial difficulties. This is despite the fact that, on his arrival in the Marches, Eure had put the Caernarvonshire squire Sir John Wynn^‡ in touch with a German mining engineer in an attempt to forge a partnership prospecting for alum shale (as several of Eure’s Yorkshire neighbours had recently done) and other minerals.50 NLW, 9053E/455-6, 460, 466-7, 470-1; R.B. Turton, Alum Farm, 70-4. His only success in raising his income was marginal: in 1609, he was appointed constable of Harlech Castle, Merioneth, worth £50 p.a.; the local magistrates offered him another £30, and the burgesses of Harlech £50, to secure a charter for the assizes and quarter sessions to be kept there, which he secured via a signet letter.51 SP14/43/58; 14/44/30; Arch. Cambrensis, o.s. i. 255-8; HMC Hatfield, xx. 295; NLW, Brogyntyn deeds 3337; NLW, Clenennau 484; SO3/4, unfol. (June 1609); HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 576. Eure and Morley never obtained their grant of concealed lands, but were granted a monopoly of the printing of God and the King, a textbook exposition of divine right principles.52 APC, 1616-17, pp. 145, 159-60.

Parliament and the Marches controversy, 1610

Parliament reconvened in February 1610, when Salisbury outlined the crown’s urgent financial needs, and inaugurated negotiations about fiscal reforms, known to posterity as the Great Contract. In preparing for the session, a string of by-elections were ordered to fill up vacancies in the Commons. Eure recommended his brother Francis, now a knight, for a seat at Ludlow, although the latter already had a place in Parliament; his nomination may have been merely a device to establish the principle of council influence over the corporation. In the event, the corporation rejected both this nomination and another from Salisbury, and returned one of their own bailiffs instead.53 Salop RO, LB2/1/1, f. 81v; HP Commons, 1604-29, iv. 206. Eure had no better fortune with the Worcestershire by-election of November 1609, which was held without giving any notice to the freeholders; he was infuriated by the return of Sir Samuel Sandys^‡, an opponent of the council in the Marches.54 SP14/49/26; HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 455-8.

In advance of the parliamentary session, Eure took the trouble to ask Salisbury for leave of absence from the Marches, as his instructions required – presumably to forestall criticism from the local gentry if he did not. On 14 Feb. he was ordered to attend the conference at which the lord treasurer outlined his plans for financial reform, known to posterity as the Great Contract. Eure was then included on two delegations sent to inform the king of the Commons’ desire to compound for wardship. A compromise emerged slowly over the spring, and on 26 May he was included on another delegation passing the latest offer from MPs to the king. Matters had progressed no further a month later, when Eure successfully moved for Lord President Sheffield, who had missed the start of the session, to be added to the committee handling the negotiations.55 SP14/52/25; LJ, ii. 551a, 556b, 564b, 603a; Procs.1610 ed. E.R. Foster, i. 113. He made one recorded speech during the session, on 18 July, during a debate on the bill to punish the families of any who attempted to assassinate the king; Eure was content that a traitor’s descendants should be disinherited, but objected to the clause for ‘the punishment of those of a collateral line, by which means it will extirpate all noble houses’; he was included on the committee for this bill.56 LJ, ii. 649a, 651a; Procs. 1610, i. 147.

Eure was appointed to committees for two items of recusancy legislation during the session, one to impose the oaths of supremacy and allegiance on all those seeking to be naturalized or restored in blood, the other to impose the oath of allegiance on all who were above the age of 16.57 LJ, ii. 606b, 645a. He was ordered to attend a conference about a textbook written by the civil lawyer John Cowell, which MPs complained was couched in absolutist language. Later in the session, several items of puritan legislation were sent up from the Commons: the bill to reduce pluralism and non-residence among the ministry was attacked by the bishops; and on 3 May Eure was included on a committee ordered to investigate alternative ways of raising ministerial stipends. He was also named to committees for bills to prevent the deprivation of ministers under the 1604 Canons and to allow the prosecution of scandalous ministers in secular courts – neither of which passed the Lords.58 Ibid. 557b, 587a, 611a, 641b.

Eure was named to a number of committees for legislation of northern interest: the bill to confirm the enfranchisement of the crown copyholders of Wakefield, Yorkshire; another to regulate the season for moor-burning in the north; two relating to the interests of the Stanley family, earls of Derby; another for the Lancashire estates of Sir John Byron^‡; and a bill committee and a conference about the remanding of felons across the Anglo-Scottish border. He was also included on the committee for the bill to punish the Yorkshire landowner Sir Stephen Proctor, an enemy of his brother-in-law Sir John Mallory^‡.59 Ibid. 553b, 592b, 601a, 606b, 616b, 619a, 634b, 647b.

For Eure, the most disturbing aspect of the Great Contract was the concessions made in the final stages of the negotiations in order to secure an agreement in principle before the prorogation. On 18 July, Sir Herbert Croft and Sir Samuel Sandys moved that the removal of the Marcher shires from the jurisdiction of the council be added to the Contract. Salisbury readily conceded the point, although the king in his closing speech merely insisted that the council’s jurisdiction would be maintained until he had considered the matter further,60 CJ, i. 451-3; Procs. 1610, ii. 286-9; ‘Paulet 1610’, ff. 27-8; LJ, ii. 661b. Eure’s authority over the Marches was thereby undermined. When he returned to Ludlow, the president was quick to inform Salisbury of the trouble provoked by his concession, particularly in Herefordshire, where Croft and his allies persuaded the grand jury to condemn the council’s jurisdiction.61 LJ, ii. 659b-60a; SP14/57/22, 96; HP Commons, 1604-29, iii. 754-5. It was presumably because of this situation that Eure decided to remain in Ludlow when Parliament reconvened in October; his decision to assign his proxy to the lord chancellor, Thomas Egerton^*, Lord Ellesmere (later 1st Viscount Brackley) may be seen as an expression of dismay at Salisbury’s failure to support his presidency.62 Eg. 2882, f. 71v; LJ, ii. 666b. Although the negotiations for the Great Contract quickly collapsed, Sir Herbert Croft raised the question of the Marcher shires afresh when alternative proposals for supply were discussed. Eure, having presumably learned of this exchange, complained to Salisbury and the earl of Dunbar [S] that the council’s opponents were the ‘private distaste’ of a handful of MPs, rather than a ‘general grievance whereof the country desired to be eased’. He also insisted that the deputy lieutenants of Shropshire had disavowed Croft and his clique, and warned that any concession would offer ‘too prejudicial an example to the northern parts of England’.63 Procs. 1610, ii. 337-8; HMC Hastings iv. 226-7; SP14/58/56. Fortunately for Eure, the session collapsed before any deal could be struck involving the Marches court.

Final years in the Marches, 1611-17

In February 1612 Eure was granted leave of absence from his presidency, on the grounds that his personal affairs needed to be put in order. His wife died shortly before he left Ludlow, and by the time he returned early the following year, he had married again, choosing as his wife the widow of George Carey^†, 2nd Lord Hunsdon, whose house in the Blackfriars became his London base thereafter.64 HMC Hatfield, xxi. 330; Y Cwtta Cyfarwydd ed. D.R. Thomas, 33; HMC Downshire, iv. 8. Despite the continued efforts of Sir Herbert Croft, the jurisdiction of the Marches court ceased to be a major bone of contention, although the fact that the privy seal loans of 1611-12 produced little more than half the national average in the Marcher shires suggests that resentment continued to simmer among the gentry.65 Skeel, 139-40; Add. 27877; E401/2415-20. He focussed his attention on more routine matters, such as the disarmament of recusants, the regulation of the staple for Welsh cloth at Oswestry, Shropshire; while he attended Prince Henry’s funeral in December 1612.66 NLW, Clenennau 283, 297; APC, 1613-14, pp. 310-11, 351-5; Harl. 1576, f. 208.

The summons of a fresh Parliament in the spring of 1614 allowed Eure to exercise a modicum of parliamentary patronage. At Ludlow, where he had earlier secured the appointment of one of his chaplains as assistant preacher, he nominated Sir Henry Townshend^‡, the town’s recorder and one of the judges of the Marches court, and probably backed the local landowner Sir Edward Foxe^‡ for the other seat. The corporation, always reluctant to admit outsiders, elected Townshend, but passed a resolution barring all but corporation members from election in future. Eure may have arranged for the return of the town’s high bailiff, Robert Berry^‡, to be questioned in the Commons; but even after the latter was ejected from the House, the corporation still declined to return Foxe, electing a courtier in his stead.67 Salop RO, LB2/1/1, ff. 90v, 104; HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 334-5. Eure may also have supported the return of another Welsh judge, Lewis Prowde^*, at Shrewsbury, but he had no perceptible influence elsewhere in Wales or the Marches.68 HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 339.

Eure attended two-thirds of the sittings of the brief 1614 Parliament; poor health kept him away at other times.69 LJ, ii. 699a, 708a. Early in the session he was ordered to attend a conference with the Commons about the bill confirming the rights of Princess Elizabeth’s children to the succession, and included on committees for the bill to restrict the use of gold and silver thread and another for legal procedure.70 Ibid. 691a, 694a. He was later included on the bill for the endowment of Monmouth school, while on 4 June he and Lord Morley claimed privilege for two servants; their plea was denied, as the men concerned had committed a breach of the peace.71 Ibid. 711b, 714b-15a. Eure was present in the Lords, but remained silent during the key debate of 24 May, over whether to confer with the Commons about their objections to impositions; as a crown official, he presumably voted against the motion.72 Chamberlain Letters, i. 533.

Eure was less active in the Marches in the final years of his presidency, perhaps because he was spending more time at his wife’s house in London, where he was consulted by the Scarborough corporation in August 1614 over tolls on foreign fishing vessels; he was also summoned to London in 1616, to act as a juror for the trial of Robert Carr^*, earl of Somerset.73 Scarborough Recs. 1600-40 ed. M.Y. Ashcroft (N. Yorks. CRO, xlvii), 59-60; APC, 1615-16, p. 503. In Wales, his court handled the trial of Sir John Wynn^‡ for harassment of his tenants at Llysvaen, Caernarvonshire. Fined 1,000 marks and ordered to be removed from his local offices, Wynn fled to London to appeal against this sentence; Lady Eure was offered a bribe to have the fine reduced, but Wynn was still required to make a public apology before the council at Ludlow.74 NLW, 9053E/718-19; 9055E/748; SP14/86/87; Eg. 2882, f. 85v; J.G. Jones, Wynn Fam.of Gwydir, 88-90.

By the summer of 1616 Eure, tiring of the financial and administrative burden of his office, offered to sell the presidency to his second wife’s relative Gray Brydges^*, 5th Lord Chandos. However, the king’s new favourite, George Villiers^*, earl (later 1st duke) of Buckingham, backed a rival candidate, Thomas Gerard^*, 1st Lord Gerard. Before any sale was agreed, Eure had his brother Sir Francis appointed chief justice of north Wales. The negotiations for the presidency were complicated at the beginning of 1617 by the emergence of a third candidate, John Egerton^* (later 1st earl of Bridgwater), son of Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, and stepson of Lady Eure’s sister. Buckingham’s influence ultimately carried the day, and Gerard was appointed in March 1617.75 SP14/87/57; 14/90/81; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 10, 58-9; Eg. 2882, f. 94v. Eure was still at Ludlow when he died on 1 Apr., before his successor reached the Marches; he was buried next to his first wife in the parish church. His death was presumably unexpected, as his will was clearly drafted in a hurry, leaving all his goods to his son William, who was asked to ensure that those who had stood surety for his debts should be cleared of their obligations.76 C142/368/116; Ludlow (Salop par. reg. soc. xiii), 303, 313; PROB 11/129, f. 236v.