POLITICAL HISTORY 



only to known recusants but to such as were suspected of disaffection in 

 religion. 1 These recusants were now powerless, and such gentry and 

 yeomen as were Royalist were overawed by the other side. The new 

 Earl of Nottingham, Charles Howard the younger, had been made lord 

 lieutenant on the death of the Lord Admiral in 1624. The Long 

 Parliament named him again as lord lieutenant on February 28, 1642, 

 when they took the executive power into their own hands. His three 

 deputy lieutenants were Sir Poynings More, Sir Robert Parkhurst, 

 member for Guildford, and Nicholas Stoughton. He summoned them 

 to a meeting on August 12, 1642, 'to settle the country in a posture 

 of arms.' a It was just before the king's standard was raised at Notting- 

 ham, and there was no doubt that the arms were not for the king's 

 service. Already in that month before the king's standard was raised, a 

 Mr. Quennell of Lythe Hill, Haslemere, had got a small Royalist band 

 together. They were overpowered and disarmed by the county authori- 

 ties. Of his seventy-two men only twenty-two were fully armed, and 

 five were not armed at all, a comment on the state of preparation of the 

 militia to which these men potentially belonged. 3 The Surrey trainbands 

 had shown their feelings in May, 1 640, when they were called out on 

 the occasion of the riots in Southwark and Lambeth against Laud, 

 attacked as ' the breaker ' of the Short Parliament, and had displayed 

 marked sympathy for the rioters. Nottingham died on October 3, and 

 two days later Parliament nominated the Earl of Northumberland as lord 

 lieutenant. Northumberland was too great and busy a man to carry on 

 the county affairs personally. He named Sir Poynings More a deputy 

 lieutenant on October 15,* but Sir Richard Onslow became the most 

 prominent of his subordinates. He was zealous in the cause and was 

 one of the county members. He raised a regiment in the county for 

 the Parliament, mostly officered by local gentlemen, and commanded it 

 till the passing of the Self-Denying Ordinance. 5 He was also a deputy 

 lieutenant. According to George Wither, his opponent, Sir Richard 

 was supreme head in the county in all causes and over all persons civil 

 and ecclesiastical. 6 This was an exaggeration ; but Onslow's power was 

 undoubtedly great, and as he was at least honest and moderate might 

 have been in worse hands. 



The members elected in the county to the Long Parliament were 

 nearly all found on the Parliamentary side when civil war began. To 

 a certain extent we can gauge the Royalist or Parliamentary sympathies 

 of various counties by the action of their representatives. The majority 

 continued to sit at Westminster or otherwise gave active support to the 

 Parliamentary side. Some attended the king's Parliament at Oxford, 

 and were presently ' disabled ' by the Parliament at Westminster for so 

 doing, and other members were elected in their room. 7 Constitutional 



1 Loseley MSS. October 8, 1625, v. pt. 2, 66. * Ibid, date cited, vi. 133. 



3 Ibid. August, 1642, vi. 174. * Ibid. vi. 141. 



6 Account of the Onslow family by Arthur Onslow the Speaker : Onslow Papers, Hist. MSS. 

 Comm. 14, 9, p. 477. 



6 Wither, J ' ustiaarius Juitificatui. 7 See Appendix, Members for the County of Surrey. 



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