Sir Richard Ottley (5 August 1626 – 10 August 1670) was an English Royalist politician and soldier who served as a youth in the English Civil War in Shropshire. After the Restoration he played a prominent part in the repression of Parliamentarians and Nonconformists and was MP for Shropshire in the Cavalier Parliament.
Background, early life and education
Richard Ottley was the eldest son of Sir Francis Ottley of Pitchford, Shropshire, who was military governor of Shrewsbury for part of the English Civil War Lucy Edwards, daughter of Thomas Edwards of the College, Shrewsbury. She was the widow of Thomas Pope, another Shrewsbury resident.
The Ottley family were part of the landed gentry of Shropshire and claimed descent from the more ancient Ottleys of Oteley, near Ellesmere, Shropshire.Grazebrook and Rylands, p.380-381 However, Thomas Ottley, the ancestor who bought Pitchford Hall in 1473, was a Merchant of the StapleB.D. Henning (editor): History of Parliament Online: Members 1660–1690 – OTTLEY, Sir Richard (1626–70), of Pitchford Hall, Salop. – Author: Eveline Cruickshanks. Accessed 1 November 2013 with a house in CalaisLeighton, Stanley (1901): Shropshire houses past & present, no.3 as well as in Shrewsbury. The Ottleys of Pitchford owed their status to wealth made as merchants of the thriving county town, with its monopoly in the finishing of Welsh cloth.Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris (editors): History of Parliament Online: Constituencies 1604–1629 – Shrewsbury – Author: Simon Healy, accessed 30 October 2013.
Richard Ottley was born on 5 August 1626 and christened on 15 September.Horton, p.13 He had a brother, Adam, who was born in 1628 and a sister, Mary, who was born in 1630. He was admitted to Shrewsbury School on 9 April 1638, the same day as his brother Adam.Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.234. but his education beyond that stage was interrupted by the outbreak of the Civil War in 1642.
The Civil War and Commonwealth
Francis Ottley was quick to act to disrupt Parliamentary mobilization in Shropshire as Civil War threatened in the summer of 1642Coulton, p. 91 and was instrumental in preparing the king's move from Nottingham to Shrewsbury in September, when the king knighted him.Subscription required: free to most UK public library members. Richard Ottley, who was commissioned a captain in the royalist army, served under his father in the Shrewsbury garrison. Sir Francis held the town after the king's departure and was formally appointed as military governor in January 1643. He was removed by Prince Rupert in the summer of 1644. Sir Francis was captured by Parliamentarian forces in February 1645 on the eve of the fall of Shrewsbury, although later released.
Richard was present at the siege of Bridgnorth in 1646 and was covered by the surrender agreement negotiated by his father, which allowed the Royalist garrison to choose between peace and exile. The agreement explicitly granted permission to Lady Ottley and her children to live at Pitchford.Phillips (ed), 1896, Ottley Papers, p.303. The estates of both Sir Francis and Lady Ottley had been sequestrated by Parliament. Lady Ottley used the good offices of a friend and relative, Elinor Davenport, in contacting the sequestrators over furnishings and clothing.Phillips (ed), 1896, Ottley Papers, p.306. and employed Thomas Lee, a relative of Sir Francis and a Lincoln's Inn lawyer, to negotiate recovery of her own estates.Phillips (ed), 1896, Ottley Papers, p.307. On 16 June 1646 Richard was given a pass to travel to Shrewsbury to speak to Parliament's County Committee,Phillips (ed), 1896, Ottley Papers, p.308-9. probably in connection with his father's request to compound for delinquency, which was made on that date. A decision on the allowance for Lady Ottley and the children was soon made: a fifth of Sir Francis's estates was handed over to them for their maintenance by an order of 5 September 1646.Phillips (ed), 1896, Ottley Papers, p.310. However, the outstanding issues took three years to resolve.
Richard Ottley spent a considerable part of this time in London with his father, often having to attend Goldsmiths' Hall, where the Committee for Compounding with Delinquents was housed. On 12 January he wrote to his mother from Gray's Inn to report that his father had obtained permission to live at home and that his personal property had been secured while he compounded. He thanked her for a pie.Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.234-5. Richard was admitted to Gray's Inn for legal training on 1 March 1647.Foster, Folio 1020, p.243 In April Lady Ottley wrote to him to report that Sir Francis had not actually gone home as there was a possibility he would be prosecuted by Humphrey Mackworth,Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.236-7. who, although reckoned a cousin, was the Parliamentarian governor of Shrewsbury. Later in the year, on 2 August, Richard's younger brother Adam was also admitted to Gray's Inn.Foster, Folio 1027, p.245
Adam wrote to Lady Ottley in September 1648 in anticipation of Richard's engagement to Lady Lettice Ridgeway,Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.242-5. "soe good a sister in ye place of yt deare one w'ch I soe lately lost." The marriage probably took place in January 1649: their first child was born on October. On 24 March Sir Francis, with his last extant letter, sent Lettice a copy of Eikon Basilike,Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.257-8. purportedly a collection of Charles I's final meditations and apologia: the same book had recently been sent by Adam Ottley to his mother.Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.253-4. The Ottleys were clearly finding resources to sustain their royalist faith.
On 13 April 1649 Sir Francis asked for Richard to be included in his composition.Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.242. A reduced fine of £1860 was announced on the very next day. In recognition that the estates were encumbered by about £4,000 of debts, a further reduction of £660 was ordered on 25 June 1649, leaving a fine of £1200 to pay. Sir Francis survived only a few months, dying on 11 September, and leaving Richard as his heir. On 9 March 1650 Richard Ottley took the oath of loyalty before two Middlesex justices of the peace to the Commonwealth, "as it is now established, without a King or House of Lords."Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.260. This was necessary to gain permission to travel, as recusants and delinquents needed a pass from their county committee to travel more than five miles from home. With permission from the Parliamentary committees in Shropshire and Staffordshire, he was able to travel to the Midlands, settle his affairs and regain his estates. In July he obtained a pass to journey into Wales and to Oswestry on business, and in September he travelled to Yoxall to visit his wife's grandmother in Staffordshire.Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.261-2. Lettice Ottley was by this time pregnant with their second child, as one of her great aunts, Cassandra Willoughby of Wollaton Hall noted shortly afterwards in a letter.Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.265.
The end of the year brought prospects of Ottley's completion of his business with the Commissioners for Compounding. On 20 December he was told that he owed £296 and could discharge this in two equal instalments at fortnightly intervals.Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.265. However, the sum seems to have been wrongly transcribed, for the next communication from the commissioners, dated 17 January, refers to a debt of £269.Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.267. Ottley had already promptly paid £134 10s. The commissioners had reviewed his debts and told him that they required only another £35 10s. This he paid immediately and on 24 January 1651 all seizures, sequestrations and penalties on the Ottley estates were discharged.
Ottley seems thereafter to have been mainly quiescent during the rule of Oliver Cromwell. He took no part in the Penruddock uprising of 1655, although he probably alluded to it in a letter of May 1655, sent from his Inn of Court, where he stayed when in London.Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.270-1. However, later that year he was faced by a large claim for compensation from a Mary Moloy, widow of Hugh Lewis, a London goldsmith. In a letter to Ottley, Humphrey Mackworth, the son and successor of the earlier governor, alleged that Sir Francis Ottley had confiscated from Lewis jewellery to the value of £600 during the Civil War. When she later sued him, Sir Francis had offered £300. Mackworth recommended that Ottley pay up, as Cromwell was exasperated by royalists because of the recent rising.Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.271. Apparently Ottley decided to wait on events and Moloy's petition to Cromwell portrayed her as the daughter of a hero of the Nine Years' War in Ireland who had taken refuge in England during the Civil War. Now having four small children to feed, she had in turn sued Sir Francis and asked his heir for recompense.Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.272-3. On 13 October Cromwell referred the matter to Mackworth, who was authorised to summon and question Richard Ottley. The matter seems to have been resolved the following month by Ottley paying Moloy the much smaller sum of £60.
Ottley witnessed the funeral of Cromwell in November 1658 and wrote from Gray's Inn to inform his mother, enclosing a printed description.Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.275-6. The Protectorate fell apart during the succeeding year. On 25 November 1659, a day after General Monck took overall command of the army, Richard and Adam Ottley were given a pass by Charles Fleetwood allowing them to travel between London and Pitchford without further hindrance:Phillips and Audley (ed), 1911, Ottley Papers, p.277. the regime had ceased to wield effective authority and had given up the attempt to control its enemies.
Restoration and repression
After General Monck's intervention against the remaining Commonwealth forces, at the beginning of 1660, Richard Ottley came back into public life and began to take part in local government. He was appointed a Justice of the Peace for Shropshire in March 1660. There are no records for 1660 but he and Adam, his brother, are recorded as sitting on the bench at the January quarter sessions of 1660/61.Lloyd Kenyon, p.71 Thereafter he does not appear in the record again until July 1662Lloyd Kenyon, p.79 and his attendance thereafter seems to have been sporadic.
Ottley contacted Charles II and on 5 March Charles issued a commission from Brussels, appointing Ottley, his friend Richard Scriven and others as commissioners for Shropshire. They were authorised to raise a large militia force for the king's cause, to set up a command structure and to levy contributions for its support.Phillips, 1904, Lord Lieutenants of Shropshire, p.144-5 Shrewsbury was still held by the stalwart Parliamentarian Colonel Thomas Hunt, who carried out a review of military resources and preparedness during April and arranged a muster of his forces for 1 May.Phillips, 1904, Lord Lieutenants of Shropshire, p.146 However events were moving too quickly for Hunt's measures to take effect. The Convention Parliament accepted Charles II as king on 8 May. Ottley set off for DoverOwen and Blakeway, p.478 to welcome Charles to England in May. Charles entered London on 29 May and Ottley wrote from there to his mother: "My most deare and evere honored Mother,