EURE, William (1579-1646)

Eure’s father was a conformist, but his mother’s family had Catholic connections, while his paternal uncle, Sir William Eure, was an avowed Catholic. Eure’s own sympathies became clear in August 1600, when he, his uncle and a party of huntsmen spent a night at Hackness, Yorkshire, home of Sir Thomas Posthumous Hoby^‡, where they offended their puritan host by swearing, drinking, gambling and parodying Hoby’s psalm-singing. The next morning, Eure paid his respects to Lady Hoby, then ill in bed, who observed that he ‘was so drunk that I soon made an end of that I had no reason to stay for’. One of her servants later recalled that Eure called Hoby ‘scurvy urchin and spindle-shanked ape, and sundry other names not fit to recite’. The latter, outraged, complained to the council in the North at York, where John Thornborough^*, dean of York (subsequently bishop of Worcester) issued an arrest warrant. This was suppressed by Eure’s father Ralph Eure^*, 3rd Lord Eure (then serving as vice president), who made a feeble attempt to reconcile Hoby and his tormentors. Hoby subsequently pursued the matter in Star Chamber, but while the other defendants were penalized with modest fines, Eure seems to have escaped censure.14 Aveling, 117, 178; Pvte. Life of an Elizabethan Lady ed. J. Moody, 108; STAC 5/H22/21 (depositions of Sir John Ferne and Lord Eure); 5/H50/4 (deposition of John Thornborough); H67/29 (depositions of Thornborough and Sir William Mallory); HMC Hatfield, x. 325; M.C. Questier, ‘Practical Anti-Papistry during the Reign of Eliz. I’, JBS, xxxvi. 371-96.

In September 1601 Eure married a daughter of the godly Rutland squire Sir Andrew Noell^‡, who was apparently more concerned about the financial probity of his future son-in-law than his religious beliefs.15 LMA, Acc.1876/F/03/002/30-2. In May 1603 he was appointed a gentleman of the privy chamber to the new king, James I, perhaps as a reward for his father’s diplomatic services in Bremen the previous winter. At the coronation two months later he was also created a knight of the Bath. However, for reasons that are unclear, by 1608 he no longer held office in the privy chamber.16 Gawdy Letters, 130; Shaw, i. 153; E179/70/122.

In 1607 Eure’s father was appointed lord president of the council in the Marches of Wales. Although in 1611 Eure visited Ludlow, the Shropshire seat of the council’s administration, he generally remained in Yorkshire, where he served as a magistrate. However, it was while out hunting in Lincolnshire in 1609 that he was challenged to a duel by Sir George Wharton, a confrontation his father apparently defused.17 Aveling, 203; Salop RO, LB2/1/1, f. 90; Add. 12514, p. 132; G.D. Owen, Wales in the Reign of Jas. I, 37. In October 1614, either Eure or his uncle Sir William (both men were then knights) was summoned before the Privy Council. The cause is unknown, and the case was swiftly dismissed.18 APC, 1613-14, pp. 298-9, 575.

Eure had probably been Catholic for years, but he was only convicted of recusancy in October 1618: his inheritance of the family estates in the previous year had rendered him liable for the maximum statutory fine of £20 per month. However, he only paid £120 upon this conviction before his case was removed to King’s Bench by a writ of certiorari, the procedure the crown habitually used to quash further proceedings. His fines were granted to several relatives, including William Mallory^‡. At the same time, however, the Privy Council required him to send his two sons up to London, probably under suspicion that they were receiving a Catholic education.19 Aveling, 203; E401/2430, unfol.; Miscellanea ed. C. Talbot (Cath. Rec. Soc. liii), 421; C66/2209/4; APC, 1618-19, p. 323.

When approached about the benevolence raised for the Palatinate in the autumn of 1620, Eure temporised, saying he would be ‘not first nor last’ to contribute; the project was cancelled before he was pressed any further.20 SP14/117/97. He was licensed to be absent from the 1621 Parliament, granting his proxy to the favourite, George Villiers^*, marquess (later 1st duke) of Buckingham.21 SO3/7, unfol.; LJ, iii. 4a. In the following year, as the prospects for a Spanish Match increased, Eure was one of the Catholic peers recommended to the Spanish by the secular priest William Bishop for inclusion on the English Privy Council as guarantors of the toleration the Spanish required, but the abrupt collapse of negotiations at the end of 1623 spelt the end of such hopes.22 Stuart Dynastic Policy and Religious Pols. 1621-5 ed. M.C. Questier (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xxxiv), 155n.

Eure attended four sittings at the start of the 1624 Parliament, but was one of the Catholic peers who absented themselves on being required to take the oath of allegiance, leaving his proxy with Buckingham’s Catholic father-in-law, Francis Manners^*, 6th earl of Rutland.23 ‘Hastings 1621’, p. 35; Add. 40087, ff. 3, 18. Many years later, Godfrey Goodman^*, bishop of Gloucester, recalled that, during this session, Eure broadcast reports that King James was ‘to retire to a private life’ under pressure from the Parliament. Eure’s willingness to promulgate this rumour, started by the Spanish embassy in an attempt to procure Buckingham’s disgrace, suggests a reckless desire to preserve the Spanish Match against the threat of imminent collapse, but James, aware that a public furore would play into the hands of the anti-Spanish ‘patriots’, quietly advised Eure to desist from such treasonous speeches.24 G. Goodman, Ct. of Jas. I, i. 386-8; GEORGE VILLIERS, JOHN WILLIAMS. Anti-Catholicism ranked high on Parliament’s agenda, and in April Sir Thomas Hoby persuaded the Commons to compile a list of recusant officeholders, which cited Eure as a magistrate for county Durham. However, Eure was not removed from office, as the king refused to allow the Commons to dictate appointments.25 LJ, iii. 394b; HP Commons 1604-29, iv. 740.

In 1625 Eure attended the first two days of the parliamentary session, but, presumably to avoid the oath of allegiance, absented himself from 23 June, when the roll-call of the House recorded him among those excused attendance. He is not known to have sat again, either in this Parliament or any other. Five days later, a Northamptonshire Catholic claimed parliamentary privilege as Eure’s servant, following his arrest by an informer for breach of the recusancy statutes. However, the House resolved that ‘none are to be privileged against any statute of recusancy’, and the case was allowed to proceed.26 Procs. 1625, pp. 47, 65. In 1626 Eure assigned his proxy first to Buckingham, and then, after the duke felt compelled to relinquish some of his proxy votes, to Henry Rich^*, 1st earl of Holland. He was again cited in the recusant officeholders’ petition, not in his own right, but as part of the evidence Hoby brought against the lord president of the north, Emanuel Scrope^*, 1st earl of Sunderland, who had not only failed to disarm Eure the previous autumn, despite knowing him to be a convicted recusant, but had also stayed at his house at Malton.27 Procs. 1626, ii. 266; iv. 11, 211. The 1626 petition may have led to Eure’s removal from office, as he was not included on the 1627 commission of the peace. However, Hoby still had him cited as a recusant officeholder in the 1628 session of Parliament, perhaps because Eure was included on the Yorkshire commission for the Forced Loan. On this occasion Eure assigned his proxy to his brother-in-law Edward Noel^*, 1st Lord Noel, and in 1629 to his Yorkshire neighbour, Thomas Belasyse^*, Lord (later 1st Viscount) Fauconberg.28 C66/2449 (dorse); CD 1628, iii. 63; iv. 319, 323; Lords Procs. 1628, p. 26; LJ, iv. 3b.

Eure was experiencing serious financial problems by 1624, when he sold one of his Yorkshire manors to the London Alderman Sir Thomas Bennett. Later in the decade he pinned his hopes for retrenchment on a marriage alliance between his heir, Ralph Eure, and Katherine, daughter of a fellow Catholic peer, Thomas Arundell^*, 1st Lord Arundell of Wardour. She brought with her a dowry of £3,000, while her father also stood surety for Eure’s debts of £8,610, for the payment of which parts of his Yorkshire estate were assigned to trustees nominated by Arundell in 1627. This settlement never produced the income Eure promised, and in February 1631 Arundell secured a Chancery decree forcing Eure to sell lands to pay debts of £21,500.29 CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 299; PC2/42, ff. 134-5v; C54/2927/7; SP16/294/15; C2/Chas.I/A1/62, 2/Chas.I/A49/162; 2/Chas.I/E11/14; THOMAS ARUNDELL. Eure later claimed that he was prepared to co-operate with this order, provided he could keep his house and park at Malton; but he lost patience with Arundell when a further injunction of May 1631 ordered the seizure of his house. In October 1632 Sheriff Sir Thomas Layton arrived to take possession, only to find that Eure had garrisoned the property and was prepared to resist its seizure. Eure was subsequently hauled before the Privy Council and committed to the Tower for contempt. In his absence, at the suggestion of the lord president, Thomas Wentworth^*, Viscount Wentworth (later 1st earl of Strafford), ordnance was brought against the house; the defenders quietly slunk away after a breach was made in the walls. Even after this confrontation, Eure was offered six months’ grace to avert the sale of his estates by finding another backer to underwrite his debts, but he refused to cooperate, and spent over two-and-a-half years in the Tower.30 SP16/224/28; 16/225/47; 16/286/93; 16/294/15; PC2/42, ff. 107, 109, 134-5, 166v-7; 2/43, ff. 27v-9, 39, 86.

Eure’s recalcitrance cost him dearly; in 1639 he claimed that the land sales required by Chancery had cost his estate £32,000. Pressed by the crown on this occasion for a contribution towards the Bishops’ Wars, he offered the king his ‘estate, house and life’, but pleaded his own lameness in mitigation, and offered the services of his second son, William, instead.31 SP16/412/127. He attended neither the Short nor Long parliaments, entering a proxy on both occasions.32 LJ, iv. 58a, 92a, 249a, 267b, 279a, 5781a, 693b, 718b. During the Civil War his house at Malton was garrisoned for the king, and he signed the Yorkshire Engagement of February 1643, which offered his estates as surety for repayment of loans to the royalist cause. His lands were sequestrated after Yorkshire fell to the parliamentarian forces in 1644, but he did not live to redeem them, being buried at Malton on 28 June 1646; no will or administration has been found. The title passed to his grandson William^*, who died underage in 1652, being succeeded by his second cousin George^*, a Cromwellian who sat in the Commons for the North Riding in 1654 and 1656.33 CCAM, 895, 920; CP.