144 PROCEEDINGS FOR COMPOUNDING. 



King Charles I.* He was a man of considerable political ability 

 and decision of character, and strenuously supported the King's 

 side. He was one of the members for the borough of Leicester ; 

 and after having got into trouble several times for rash speech, he 

 was expelled the House on September 30th, 1645, for " being in 

 the King's quarters and adhering to that party." In 1650, he 

 was apprehended and brought before the Council on a charge of 

 high treason against the Commonwealth, but escaped from 

 custody. An Act was then passed declaring Thomas Coke a 

 traitor unless he surrendered to the Serjeant-at-arms to take his 

 trial within four days from March 20th, 1650, and five hundred 

 pounds was offered to those who should deliver him up. The 

 compounding Order of 1655, whereby all who had been active 

 royalists were to pay the tenth part of their estates, was a severe 

 fine on Thomas Coke, of Melbourne, who paid then to the State 

 the sum of two thousand two hundred pounds. He was evidently 

 one of the ricliest men in Derbyshire, for out of the forty leading 

 men of the shire who submitted to this exaction, there were only 

 two whose tenth came to a larger sum. He died at Tottenham 

 High Cross on August 23rd, 1656, and was buried at Melbourne.! 



" Whereas the Estate reall & personall of Thomas Coke of 

 Melburne in the said County of Derby Esq'5 is seized & 

 sequestered to & for the Use and benefitt of the Comonwealth & 

 whereas the said Thomas Coke was heretofore seized of the 

 Manner of Ashbarne in the said County of Derby with the toles 

 of the Fayres & ordinary Markett days & divers small rents for 

 incroachments upon the wast part of which is now in tenure of 

 Mrs. Greenwood or her assignes & an other part in the possession 

 of the said Thomas Coke or his assignes. Now these presents 

 wittness that we Robert Mellor & Gervase Bennett sul)stituted & 



* See the Account of the Coke Papers, edited by our member, Mr. 

 Dash wood F.ane, in the iith Vol. of the Journal of the Derbyshire Archaeo- 

 logical and Natural History Society. 



t " Coke of Trusley," a privately printed family history. 



