DELBRIDGE, John (1564-1639), of Barnstaple and Bishop's Tawton, Devon

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604-1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris, 2010
Available from Cambridge University Press

Constituency

Dates

Family and Education

bap. 9 July 1564, 2nd s. of Richard Delbridge (d. aft. 1595) of Barnstaple, merchant and his w. Alice. m. 10 Jan. 1585, Agnes (bur. 15 May 1639), da. of Henry Downe of Barnstaple, 5s. (4 d.v.p.) 3da. (2 d.v.p.).1 d. 24 June 1639.2

Offices Held

Freeman, Barnstaple by 1596,3 mayor 1600-1, 1615-16, 1633-4, capital burgess by 1611,4 capt. militia ft. by 1629, clerk of the market 1633-4.5

Servant to Sir Robert Cecil† by 1602-at least 1606.6

Member, E.I. Co. 1611-21,7 French Co. 1611,8 Virg. Co. 1612-at least 1623,9 N.W. Passage Co. 1612,10 Somers Is. Co. 1615-at least 1622.11

Member, Council for Virg. 1621.12

Biography

The Delbridge family can be traced in north Devon by the 1520s, and held municipal office in Barnstaple from around the middle of Elizabeth’s reign. Delbridge himself was born in the town, and rose to local prominence as a successful cloth merchant, his initial business network embracing London, Northamptonshire and the Continent. A puritan, he and his wife’s kinsman Nicholas Downe shipped grain in from London to provide cheap food for Barnstaple’s poor during the hard winter of 1596-7.13 As mayor in 1600-1, Delbridge oversaw the victualling and transport of the soldiers who passed through the town en route to Ireland. His efficiency brought him to the notice of Sir Robert Cecil, who took him into his service, and drew on his trading operations in Spain as a source of intelligence.14 This government connection proved invaluable when relations between Barnstaple’s corporation and its recorder, the 3rd earl of Bath, descended into acrimony. In 1601 the earl attempted to smear Delbridge as the ‘factious, pernicious head’ of Devon’s ‘seditious schismatics’, but, exploiting his direct access to his employer, Delbridge apparently convinced Cecil that the trouble stemmed from the malicious scheming of a personal enemy, Bath’s receiver-general, Thomas Hinson*. The earl’s subsequent complaint to Cecil in 1606 that Delbridge was stirring up opposition to him, and had ‘of late years diversely dishonoured’ him, apparently also fell on deaf ears.15

By now Delbridge was becoming a regular visitor to the capital. He was at Court in January 1604, seeking government concessions for the local cloth industry. Three years later, with the corporation now at odds with its recorder over the project for a new town quay, Delbridge attended the Privy Council with a complaint against one of Bath’s allies, the local magistrate Hugh Acland. He also held discussions in 1611 with Sir Thomas Lake I* and the attorney-general, Sir Henry Hobart*, probably in connection with the new borough charter.16 Increasing personal affluence allowed Delbridge to expand his social and commercial horizons during these years. In 1604 his eldest son was admitted to the firmly Protestant Emmanuel College, Cambridge, proceeding from there to the Middle Temple, where he qualified for the bar. Delbridge also began to invest in land, and in 1611 paid £350 to extend by 50 years his existing lease of a barton at Bishop’s Tawton, near Barnstaple.17 In around 1607, he became involved in the farm of the great customs, providing £1,000 surety for two of the farmers, William Garway and Francis Jones. He greatly consolidated his London ties in 1611-12, investing in no less than four joint-stock enterprises, most notably the Virginia and East India companies.18

In 1614 Delbridge was elected to represent Barnstaple in Parliament, a role he would fulfil a further five times. The novice Member was mistakenly described as ‘Mr. Delliverge’ in the Commons Journal, and made little mark on the Parliament’s proceedings. Nevertheless, he was appointed on 8 Apr. to help select statutes for repeal or continuance, and on 5 May to prepare for a conference on impositions. The latter was an issue with which he was to be particularly associated in subsequent sessions, and the same day he supported Sir John Savile’s motion to defer supply, ‘in respect of the little hope yesterday of relief of impositions’.19 Upon his return home, he received £5 from the corporation ‘towards his charges’. Despite his expressed dislike of extra-parliamentary taxation, he delivered into the Exchequer the town’s contribution to the 1614 Benevolence.20

In 1615 Delbridge was again elected mayor. The same year saw the marriage of his widowed daughter, Mary Ayres, to William Hakewill’s* elder brother, which served to strengthen his ties with Exeter, Devon’s biggest port. He also joined the Somers Islands Company, and having obtained shares in the plantation there, he imported tobacco from the colony in 1620-1.21 In addition, he and some associates were granted land in Virginia in November 1619, and undertook to ship 200 settlers there. A few weeks later, however, when he applied to participate in the Cape Cod fisheries, he was opposed by Sir Ferdinando Gorges†, who asserted that Delbridge was aiming to breach the New England Company’s monopoly over these waters. In 1621, he was added to the Council for Virginia, which was short of active members, and in November that year, he helped to finance another voyage to the colony, joining a consortium that included the earl of Southampton, Sir Edwin Sandys* and John Ferrar*.22

Back in the Commons in 1621, Delbridge again attracted few committee nominations, but he was significantly more vocal than he had been before, with at least 17 recorded speeches, almost all of which related to trade. While his utterances lacked rhetorical polish, his trenchant and repetitive observations on the realities of merchant life attracted notice, and his command of facts and figures ensured that he was taken seriously. On 26 Feb. he used the debate on the scarcity of money to draw attention to the decline of the Barnstaple cloth industry, where production had dropped by four-fifths, and exports had fallen off dramatically. The next day he blamed the coinage problem on the reluctance of Spanish merchants to pay for goods in silver, but he also highlighted the burden that impositions placed on English traders. Delbridge reiterated the latter point on 14 May: ‘impositions are so great that we cannot send out a £100 in goods to sea, but homeward and outward we pay £25 to the king; perchance the merchant may get £5 for himself, a poor reward considering the adventure’. In the same speech, he also attacked the levies that the Merchant Adventurers were allowed to collect in the provinces, which again undermined local production. On 1 May he successfully moved that the committee appointed to examine the Merchant Adventurers’ patent should also inspect the Company’s own book of impositions. He was nominated on 12 May to help scrutinize the bill on the manufacture of the cloths known as perpetuanos.23

Unsurprisingly, given his recent involvement in the American colonies, Delbridge’s other principal concern was to defend the settlers’ tobacco crop. On 26 Feb. Sir Edwin Sandys blamed the import of Spanish tobacco for the nationwide shortage of coin, and proposed to allow only tobacco grown in England’s colonies to be imported. Delbridge was happy to go along with this proposal, even if it meant a trade war. As he remarked optimistically the next day: ‘if the Spaniard should forbid our commodities, happy for England’. One of his reasons for supporting Sandys’s proposal emerged on 18 Apr., when he argued that, because of the high demand in England for Spanish tobacco, West Country merchants were forced to accept lower prices in Spain for their own goods in order to secure a share of this valuable produce. Later that day, however, after Sir Lionel Cranfield and others called for a total ban on all tobacco imports, Delbridge warned that this would have ‘exceeding great’ consequences for the Somers Islands colony. On 23 Apr. he also joined with Sandys in attacking the recent patent for the regulation of the tobacco trade, which was adversely affecting Virginia’s tobacco planters, and he was promptly named to a select committee to investigate these problems.24

Despite his objections to the New England Company’s patent, Delbridge made no comment on the bill for free fishing in America until it was reported on 24 May. He then highlighted the domestic consequences of the colonists offering their produce to all comers, requesting ‘that those of that country may be restrained not to sell their fish to any others than those of this kingdom; for now they sell their fish to strangers, and hinder our fishermen’. During the debate on 7 May on the bill against extortionate customs officials, he managed to raise a Barnstaple complaint about the duties levied on cargoes of Welsh lime. As a port town burgess, he was entitled to serve on the bill’s committee. However, his request ten days later, ‘that the patent of the king’s grocery in seizing of men’s grocery may be called in’, fell on deaf ears.25

Given the mounting evidence of his mercantile expertise, Delbridge was predictably appointed on 19 Apr. to help prepare for a grand committee debate on trade by drawing together the various problems already considered in the House. Nevertheless, he was disappointed by the Commons’ slow progress on these issues, and objected strongly on 29 May when the imminent adjournment was announced. Asserting that he would ‘freely discharge his conscience, as becometh an honest man’, he continued: ‘we have been here 16 weeks, and in the matter of trade nothing hath been done. I had rather never have gone home than go home in this manner. I do dislike it. I protest I think it will do that hurt that I wish I were in heaven’.26 These remarks clearly hit home, for the next day Cranfield, referring obliquely to complaints from the West Country, reassured Members that the state of the country’s trade was actually much healthier than had been suggested, and that some outports were prospering as never before. Assuming that he attended this debate, Delbridge opted not to rise to the bait immediately. However, he returned to the attack on 31 May, repeating his earlier comments on the excessive levels of impositions, and insisting that any assessment of trade based on the port books was misleading, as this simply reflected the high level of customs duties. He then offered a startling proposition for inclusion in the forthcoming conference on business to be accomplished before the adjournment.

Mr. Delbridge would have no bills pass, but, because trade is much decayed, and lieth a bleeding, he would (to give some satisfaction to the country) that there might be liberty given to trade freely [during the recess] ... notwithstanding the patents and monopolies which are granted, and that the impositions laid on trade, since the last Parliament, may be taken off till that time.

This speech also hit its target. Cranfield immediately confirmed that his statement the previous day had been aimed at Delbridge, but insisted that, even taking impositions into account, Barnstaple’s trade had doubled in the previous 20 years, and that the town had actually secured some concessions from the government over impositions. Sir Dudley Digges now sprang to Delbridge’s defence, affirming that the latter’s main point was rather that local manufacturing was decayed. However, this intervention failed to defuse the situation. A little later, ‘there beginning some heat’ between Cranfield, Sir Edwin Sandys, Delbridge and Sir Peter Heyman, ‘the same appeared to arise by mistaking of each other’s speeches; and all of them, by the general voice of the House, were freed from having spoken anything unfitly’.27 It seems likely that Delbridge and Digges continued to talk together behind the scenes, as on 2 June the former rushed to welcome Digges’s proposal that the outports be invited to bid for the farm of their own customs. Satisfied that this would give him something of substance to report to his constituents, Delbridge now successfully moved for a rapid adjournment. On 4 June Cranfield agreed to his request for all outports to be allowed access to the port books, in order to calculate what the customs farm was worth. Later that day, and now in much higher spirits, Delbridge backed Sir James Perrot’s call for a declaration that Parliament would back armed intervention in the Palatinate, improbably offering to serve there in person.28

In the event, nothing came of Digges’s customs farm project, not least because of Cranfield’s opposition to it. Nevertheless, Delbridge remained silent on the question of trade during much of the Parliament’s second sitting, apparently absorbed in the pressing Palatinate issue. He found his voice again only on 5 Dec., after it emerged that the Commons had misjudged the king’s intentions, and that its petition urging war against Spain would not be received. Breaking the lengthy silence with which the day’s proceedings began, he recited his usual economic concerns, noting that the West Country was now oppressed not only by impositions but also by Turkish and French pirates. Nevertheless,

he would have us lay aside all respects of trade, considering the miserable state of religion [and] the lamentable estate of the king’s children. ... As for the privileges of this House, touching the petition we prepared for the king, he had as willingly hang under the gallows as fry over a faggot. And therefore, the state of religion standing as it doth, he would have us go to the king again and again with our petition, as we do to God, and no doubt but His Majesty will hear us at length.

The bluntness of this argument, and Delbridge’s open defiance of the royal veto, went well beyond what many Members deemed wise at this sensitive juncture, even if many of them sympathized with his sentiments. The next speaker, the more experienced Sir Robert Phelips, immediately sought to redirect the debate, stressing the need to demonstrate the Commons’ loyalty to the monarch. On the following day, acknowledging his error, Delbridge requested pardon ‘if any word amiss have slipped from him’, which was granted ‘by a general acclamation’.29

Returned to the Commons for a third consecutive time in 1624, Delbridge was now sufficiently well known to attract a wider range of nominations. He was named or added to the committees for two private bills, one concerning the estates of (Sir) Charles Caesar*, the other the naturalization of three Scots (1 and 4 May). He also attended a meeting of the legislative committee dealing with the enfranchisement of County Durham, serving ex officio as a Devon burgess.30 Nevertheless, there can be little doubt that when he moved on 23 Feb. for a committee for grievances, it was trade issues that he wished to raise. Three days later, he resumed his attack on the New England Company’s patent, reporting that in the past year Barnstaple sailors had been forced to pay the Company £200 for licences to fish off the American coast. Appointed on 15 Mar. as a port town burgess to the committee for the bill for freer fishing in America, he attended five out of its seven meetings. On 28 Apr. he used this measure’s third reading debate to introduce a petition against the imposition on fish caught in the Irish Sea.31 Named as a port town burgess to the legislative committee concerning exactions by customs officials (24 Mar.), he attended at least five of its six meetings, a record matched only by the Plymouth Member, Thomas Sherwill. Delbridge revived his old complaints about impositions on cloth on 1 Apr., complaining also that the Crown now demanded £30 for every £100-worth of imported sugar. Eight days later, he was appointed to the committee to inquire into the introduction of the new book of rates, which lay behind the impost on sugar and other West Country grievances. On 5 May he dismissed fears that cloth exports would suffer if the Merchant Adventurers were not protected, assuring the House that many outport merchants were capable of transporting 1,000 cloths a year.32

As in 1621, however, Delbridge remained anxious about the mounting crisis over the Palatinate. Although he made no known contributions to the debates about war, perhaps mindful of his earlier faux pas, he could see the potential threat posed by English Catholics. On 1 Apr., following his remarks on impositions, he abruptly changed the subject to London’s recusants: ‘this day sevennight two citizens came to him, and asked him what [was] done against them, ... [since] 3,000 or 4,000 flocked that day to the Spanish ambassador’s house’. Having thus grabbed Members’ attention, he added that there was ‘great expectation through the kingdom that something should be done against recusants’, warning that ‘men suspect things go not so well as is reported’. He seems not to have proposed a specific course of action, but the effect of his speech was to start the ball rolling for a petition against recusants. Ten days later, he was named to the committee to scrutinize the bill to establish three regular sermons in London, another potential means of discouraging recusancy.33

Now a well-known figure in the House, Delbridge marked the start of the 1625 Parliament by securing a place on the prestigious committee for privileges. On 4 July he spoke in support of Arthur Bassett*, who had been elected to the Commons despite being confined in a debtor’s gaol. Since this case was already on the committee’s agenda, Delbridge, who was a trustee of Bassett’s estates, was presumably trying to encourage a speedy verdict.34 When Sir Francis Seymour revived on 22 June the proposal for a petition against recusants, Delbridge seconded his motion. However, later the same day he also concurred with Sir Robert Phelips’ view that it was too early to establish a committee on religion, and he made no further comments on this subject during the first sitting. On 29 June, Delbridge presented a petition from English wine importers, protesting against the new imposition on their cargoes, and he was duly named to the committee to consider this petition. He was also appointed to legislative committees concerned with petty larceny and the estates of the 4th earl of Dorset (Sir Edward Sackville*).35 In his only comment on supply in the Westminster sitting, he merely complained that local subsidy commissioners abused their position and assessed taxpayers arbitrarily. At Oxford, however, his was one of the first voices raised on 10 Aug. against the government’s request for a further vote of supply to fund the war effort:

heretofore we had hopes and expectations wherewith to please the country, though we gave away the money. Now there are nothing but discouragements: pardons to Jesuits, the news from [La] Rochelle, ... the interruption of the fishing trade, the losses by pirates. So that, whereas we returned the last time with fasting and prayer, now we may return with sackcloth and ashes.

As Conrad Russell observed, ‘at least one Member, faced with the panoply of official pressure, was still more afraid of his neighbours than of the Crown’.36

Delbridge’s first contribution to the proceedings of the 1626 Parliament was, somewhat surprisingly, a motion on 13 Feb., the final day of the Hilary law term, that lawyers should not leave London without permission from the House. Doubtless aware that the spring assizes would shortly begin, he clearly aimed to prevent a general haemorrhage of the Commons’ legal experts. Now generally recognized as one of the more godly Members, he was appointed to three legislative committees concerned with religious matters, namely scandalous clergy, the removal of seasonal restrictions on marriage, and the regulation of ecclesiastical courts (15 Feb., 9 Mar., 6 May); indeed, he was the first nominee to the last of these committees.37 Following the reading of a fresh petition against the new impositions on wine, Delbridge argued on 15 Feb. that it would be better for Parliament to address the wider issue, rather than considering a series of individual complaints; ‘if imposing continue we are the miserable[st] nation in the world’. This proposal was not adopted, but he was named five days later to a committee to consider how to pursue further the matter of the wine impositions. He was also appointed to scrutinize bills for freer fishing in America, and to punish Edmund Nicholson, projector of the pretermitted custom (18 and 28 February). His own trading activities came to the House’s notice on 27 Apr. when one of the Rolle brothers, probably John, successfully moved for a grant of privilege, to stay a suit in London involving Delbridge’s goods.38

The sustained political drama of Buckingham’s impeachment seems largely to have passed Delbridge by. Certainly his comments on these events were rare and limited to issues of which he had some personal knowledge, however tangential. On 22 Feb. he responded to (Sir) John Eliot’s report on the second arrest of the St. Peter by describing the fair treatment he had received from the Danish government after it seized one of his own ships. He was considerably blunter during a debate six days later about the Navy’s failings. Condemning the ease with which Sallee pirates and Dunkirk privateers were plundering English merchant shipping, he noted grimly that the fault lay neither with the king, nor with his ordinary subjects, whose taxes were supposed to be employed to prevent such a situation. Doubtless alluding to Buckingham’s responsibilities as lord admiral, he observed: ‘the omitting of somebody’s office [is] the cause of it, and of our losses’.39 On 22 Mar. Delbridge headed the list of Members added to the select committee set up to investigate the Navy’s defects. He was also appointed to consider Digges’ proposal for a joint-stock company to fund a naval war against Spain, and apparently recommended that this organization should be free from interference by all other trading companies (14 Mar., 14 April).40 Given his conviction that public funds had been squandered, he remained reluctant to endorse any further grants of supply. On 23 Mar. he suggested that more could be done by way of ‘good husbandry’, given that Ireland’s customs revenues were allegedly sufficient to cover the costs of the Dublin government and yield a surplus. Four days later, when a vote on supply was mooted, he complained that ‘no town in the west pays so much for subsidies as the town for which he serves’, and proposed that recusants should be charged double. He was absent from the call of the House on 2 June, but attended three days later, when his explanation was accepted ‘upon special reasons’.41

Shortly after the Parliament’s dissolution, the Crown sought to boost its naval strength by levying ships from all significant ports. In January 1627 Delbridge was sent to London to present Barnstaple’s excuses, his expenses partially covered by other neighbouring boroughs.42 Elected to Parliament for the last time 13 months later, Delbridge was again largely peripheral to the major debates in the Commons. His five committee appointments during the 1628 session were all trade-related. They included bills concerned with alnage on new draperies, freer fishing in America, and the manufacture of sailcloth (1 and 17 Apr., 26 May). He was also nominated to inquire into reports of a new book of rates, and to consider a petition from the merchants of the London customs house (17 May, 20 June). During the debate on 22 Apr. on the bill to allow marriage at any time of year, he explained that he wished to make life easier for sailors who had problems organizing their weddings during their brief sojourns ashore.43

Delbridge’s fixation with impositions continued unabated. On 4 Apr. he urged that the Tunnage and Poundage bill should be used to limit what impositions could be introduced. He also complained on 17 May about an imposition on tobacco.44 Only during the supply debate on 4 Apr. did he engage with the wider issues of prerogative government. Arguing that Devon could no longer afford to pay taxes on the scale that it once had, he first blamed the dramatic decline in trade, but then condemned the harsh tactics employed during the collection of the 1627 Forced Loan, and the local burden of billeting the soldiers employed in the recent naval expeditions. The latter alone had cost Barnstaple £700.

All things are dead with us, and yet we are called upon to give. When a man hath a good friend that supplies him, he is still in heart, but when a friend dies, misery follows. Soldiers and pursuivants are now our companions, and although in poor towns, where the labourer lives by his trade, he offers his goods to be sold to pay for these billetings, yet nothing will satisfy but ready money. I could say much more, but I speak not to diminish the supply of the king, but to settle and secure the safety of the subject.45

On 27 May Delbridge was licensed to go into the country ‘for his health’, but he was back in the Commons three weeks later, and on 24 June launched a final attack on impositions. Complaining particularly about the duties on imported American tobacco, he called for the Tunnage and Poundage bill to follow the format employed during Elizabeth’s reign, which was not generally thought to validate the collection of impositions. Controversially, he also called for a short time limit on the grant of Tunnage and Poundage, so that its execution could be regularly monitored by Parliament.46

Delbridge attended the 1629 session, attracting nominations to legislative committees concerned with the promotion of trade, and the Somers Islands Company’s patent (11 and 23 February). Surprisingly, he made no further comments on the Tunnage and Poundage bill, instead making his only recorded speech during a debate on whether parliamentary privilege could be used to recover the goods confiscated from John Rolle for non-payment of this levy. Delbridge was unconvinced by the argument propounded by Eliot and John Selden, that the disputed merchandize had been taken for the benefit of the customs farmers only. As he correctly explained, ‘all seizures use to be made only for the king, and must be so judged, and not for the farmers, albeit the profits thereof by contract goeth to the farmers’. The Commons’ refusal to accept this advice significantly hastened the Parliament’s dissolution. Following that event, he received £1 7s. from Barnstaple corporation towards his expenses at Westminster.47

Delbridge may have responded to the latest failure to approve the Tunnage and Poundage bill by refusing to pay customs duties himself. In March 1629 he was brought before the Privy Council ‘upon complaint made of some undutiful carriage of his towards His Majesty, not only in refusing himself but in persuading others to refuse to pay any duties to the king for goods exported and imported’. However, under examination, he convinced the councillors of his innocence, and sensibly discouraged them from sending for his accusers. In the following year he and some partners were granted letters of marque for a 60-ton ship. Delbridge found himself in trouble again in 1631, when one of his shipments of American tobacco was brought into Barnstaple, contrary to a recent Proclamation forbidding unlading at the outports. His excuse that the vessel was insufficiently seaworthy to complete the voyage to the Thames was not accepted by the Privy Council.48

In 1630 Delbridge married his surviving son into a local gentry family, the Chichesters of Hall. He himself now possessed a landed estate of several hundred acres, including the manor and advowson of West Buckland, and in 1632 he instituted a perpetual rent-charge on one of his Barnstaple properties, to provide 40s. a year for the poor of the borough.49 He travelled to London again in April 1633 on the corporation’s behalf, to appeal for action against the pirates who preyed on the Newfoundland fishing fleets, William Laud describing him on this occasion as ‘a great Parliament man’. Despite the Council’s unfavourable verdict, Delbridge was elected mayor for the third time later that year. In that capacity, he wrote to Edward Nicholas* in early 1634, appealing on the strength of their ‘ancient acquaintance’ for favour towards some local merchants involved in a dispute with the Admiralty. He presumably also organized a petition shortly afterwards against the latest threat to Barnstaple’s prosperity, a new customs house at nearby Bideford. In around 1636, he contributed only £2 13s. towards his home town’s Ship Money payment, though it is unclear whether this comparatively small sum indicated that his personal income had fallen.50 Delbridge made his will on 27 May 1639, just 12 days after his wife’s burial, describing his Bishop’s Tawton estate as his main residence. Now ‘weak of body’, he beseeched God to purge his soul of ‘all filthiness of sin’, and left £6 10s. in total to the poor of Barnstaple, Bishop’s Tawton and West Buckland. He consigned the bulk of his property to his son Richard, but provided token bequests for 16 other relatives. Delbridge died in the following month, and was buried at Barnstaple. His descendants failed to consolidate their place among the Devon gentry, and no further member of this family is known to have entered Parliament.51

Ref Volumes: 1604-1629

Authors: Tim Venning / Paul Hunneyball

Notes

  • 1. D. Drake, ‘Barnstaple MPs’, Reps. and Trans. Devon Assoc. lxxii. 258; Barnstaple Par. Reg. ed. T. Wainwright, i. 10, 13, 29, 31, 34-5, 38, 40, 43; iii. 21, 23-5, 32, 43, 59; Barnstaple Recs. ed. J.R. Chanter and T. Wainwright, i. 222.
  • 2. WARD 7/94/180.
  • 3. J.R. Chanter, Literary Hist. of Barnstaple, 104.
  • 4. J.B. Gribble, Memorials of Barnstaple, 202, 399.
  • 5. Barnstaple Recs. i. 35; ii. 108.
  • 6. HMC Hatfield, xii. 210; xviii. 213.
  • 7. T.K. Rabb, Enterprise and Empire, 279; CSP Col. E.I. 1617-21, p. 506.
  • 8. Rabb, 279.
  • 9. A. Brown, Genesis of US, 548; Recs. Virg. Co. ed. S.M. Kingsbury, iv. 157.
  • 10. CSP Col. E.I. 1513-1616, p. 240.
  • 11. Brown, 770; Hist. of the Bermudas ed. J.H. Lefroy (Hakluyt Soc. lxv), 216; Letters from Bermuda 1615-46 ed. V.A. Ives, 244.
  • 12. Recs. Virg. Co. i. 473.
  • 13. Devon Lay Subsidy Rolls 1524-7 ed. T.L. Stoate, 93; Barnstaple Recs. i. 43; Chanter, 103-4, 110; CSP Dom. 1601-3, p. 200.
  • 14. APC, 1600-1, pp. 314-5; 1601-4, p. 233; HMC Hatfield, xi. 487; CSP Dom. 1601-3, pp. 200, 292.
  • 15. Gribble, 281; HMC Hatfield, xi. 443; xii. 210-11; xviii. 253; CSP Dom. 1601- 3, p. 200.
  • 16. HMC Hatfield, xvi. 6; Chanter, 116; Gribble, 287, 290; Barnstaple Recs. ii. 137.
  • 17. Al. Cant.; M. Temple Admiss.; C2/Jas.I/D7/50.
  • 18. Lansd. 168, f. 191.
  • 19. Procs. 1614 (Commons), 35, 151, 153.
  • 20. Barnstaple Recs. ii. 103, 148.
  • 21. Vivian, Vis. Devon, 437; J. Smith, General Hist. of Virg., New Eng. and Summers Islands, i. 369, 372; Hist. Bermudas, 225, 272.
  • 22. Recs. Virg. Co. i. 259, 273, 277, 473; iii. 513.
  • 23. CJ, i. 527a, 598b-9a, 619a; CD 1621, ii. 364; iii. 246; v. 514, 526.
  • 24. CD 1621, iii. 9; v. 528; CJ, i. 581a-b, 586b.
  • 25. CJ, i. 611b; CD 1621, ii. 378; iii. 186; Nicolas, Procs. 1621, ii. 97.
  • 26. CJ, 582b; Nicholas, ii. 121; CD 1621, iii. 344.
  • 27. CD 1621, iii. 363, 373; Nicholas, ii. 133, 139-40; CJ, i. 633b, 634a.
  • 28. CJ, i. 636b, 639a; CD 1621, ii. 429; iii. 399; Nicholas, ii. 167.
  • 29. CJ, i. 658a, 659a; Nicholas, ii. 279-80.
  • 30. CJ, i. 696b, 783b; C.R. Kyle, ‘Attendance Lists’, PPE 1604-48 ed. Kyle, 211.
  • 31. CJ, i. 671b, 777a; ‘Nicholas 1624’, f. 25v; ‘Holland 1624’, ii. 55; ‘Pym 1624’, f. 81; Kyle, 221.
  • 32. Kyle, 218; ‘Earle 1624’, f. 109; Holles 1624, f. 115; ‘Nicholas 1624’, f. 194; CJ, i. 760b.
  • 33. CJ, i. 751b, 762b; ‘Earle 1624’, f. 109; R.E. Ruigh, Parl. of 1624, p. 239.
  • 34. Procs. 1625, pp. 206, 295; C2/Jas.I/B36/70.
  • 35. Procs. 1625, pp. 216, 220, 245, 268-71, 349.
  • 36. Ibid. 313, 448; C. Russell, PEP, 250.
  • 37. Procs. 1626, ii. 27, 44, 238; iii. 180.
  • 38. Ibid. ii. 47, 50, 69, 73, 147; iii. 83.
  • 39. Ibid. ii. 90, 94-5, 150, 154-5.
  • 40. Ibid. 340, 280, 441.
  • 41. Ibid. 351, 379-80; iii. 346, 368.
  • 42. APC, 1626, p. 48; CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 31; Barnstaple Recs. ii. 92.
  • 43. CD 1628, ii. 227, 507; iii. 34, 36, 448, 610; iv. 389.
  • 44. Ibid. ii. 317; iii. 458.
  • 45. Ibid. ii. 304, 310, 314.
  • 46. Ibid. iii. 623; iv. 455, 457.
  • 47. CJ, i. 928b, 932a; CD 1629, p. 160; Barnstaple Recs. ii. 103.
  • 48. APC, 1628-9, pp. 373, 411; CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 469; 1631-3, pp. 141, 252- 3.
  • 49. WARD 7/94/180; Gribble, 117-18.
  • 50. Barnstaple Recs. ii. 64, 136; LPL, ms 943, f. 181; CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 460; 1634-5, pp. 172-3.
  • 51. PROB 11/181, f. 163r-v; Barnstaple Par. Reg. iii. 59.