Family and Education

b. c.1632, o.s. of Thomas Lamplugh of Beverley, Yorks. and Ribton Hall by Eleanor, da. of Richard Barwis of Grange, Westward, Cumb. educ. Queen’s, Oxf. 1650; G. Inn 1650, called 1657. m. (1) by 1668, Frances, da. of Sir Christopher Lowther, 1st Bt., of Whitehaven Cumb.; (2) by 1682, Maria, da. of Abraham Moline, merchant, of London and Dovenby, Cumb. and coh. to her bro. Abraham, 2s. (1 d.v.p.) 1da. suc. fa. 1670.1

Offices Held

Commr. for assessment, Cumb. Jan. 1660, 1663-4, 1666-80, 1689-90, j.p. Mar.-July 1660, 1665-May 1688, Oct. 1688-d., sheriff 1690-1.

Biography

Lamplugh’s family had held the Cumberland village from which they took their name since the reign of Henry II, and first represented the county in 1384. The senior branch was royalist in the Civil War, but Lamplugh’s father, whose direct ancestors had resided in Yorkshire for several generations, acted as treasurer for sequestrations to the Cumberland county committee and built Ribton Hall. After the Restoration he retired into private life. As the first cousin of Thomas Lamplugh, for whom (Sir) Joseph Williamson obtained the bishopric of Exeter in 1676, Lamplugh was not without friends in the court party, and relations with the head of the family were strengthened by marriage alliances. Nevertheless he would hardly have been considered a possible knight of the shire but for the last-minute withdrawal of Lord Morpeth (Edward Howard) just before the first general election of 1679. He was returned with his brother-in-law Sir John Lowther II, defeating an ultra-royalist candidate. Shaftesbury correctly classed him as ‘honest’; he voted for the first exclusion bill, unlike Lowther, but was appointed to no committees and did not speak. He refused to stand again in the autumn, giving way to the anti-exclusionist Lord Morpeth. In 1685 he voted for the Whig candidates at Cockermouth, but remained on the commission of the peace until 1688. On 22 Jan. he wrote to Sir Daniel Fleming that he was laid up with the gout and unable to attend the lord lieutenant at Penrith, but he answered the questions on the repeal of the Test Act and Penal Laws with a written negative, ‘unless I can see the Protestant interest secured by a new law’, and was dismissed. He accepted the Revolution, serving as sheriff under William and Mary, but never stood again. He was buried at Bridekirk on 24 Mar. 1705, the only member of this branch of the family to sit in Parliament.2

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

• 1. Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. Trans. n.s. xxxvii. 115; xxxix. 84-85.
• 2. Ibid. xxxviii. 104-5; xxxix. 82; Cal. Comm. Comp. 257; Cumb. RO, Lowther to Lamplugh, 22 July 1679; Westmld. RO, D/Ry 2890; HMC Le Fleming, 209.