The Ravenscrofts were taxed at £7 in lands at the end of Elizabeth’s reign, placing them in the second rank of Flintshire’s gentry, behind the Mostyns, Hanmers and Pulestons.
The Flintshire seat went to Ravenscroft’s second cousin Roger Puleston in 1604, and his nephew Robert Ravenscroft in 1614. On both occasions Ravenscroft was returned for Old Sarum, probably through the efforts of Egerton (newly created Lord Ellesmere), who presumably lobbied one or both of the borough’s rival patrons, the earls of Pembroke and Salisbury (Sir Robert Cecil†). Ellesmere’s death in 1617 closed off this avenue of patronage, but Ravenscroft was returned for Flint Boroughs throughout the 1620s, doubtless with the support of his family: Robert Ravenscroft signed the surviving election indentures of 1620, 1624 and 1628.
One of Ravenscroft’s most important functions as an MP was to brief friends and patrons about the House’s proceedings. In March 1606 he forwarded Sir John Davies*, a fellow Lincoln’s Inn barrister then serving as Irish solicitor-general, details of the debates on the king’s proposal to naturalize post-nati Scots. He is known to have written to Davies shortly before the opening of the 1604 session, and it is likely that the two men maintained a regular correspondence.
Although Ravenscroft did not play a significant political role in the Commons, he occasionally contributed to important debates. On 11 Mar. 1606, at the height of the purveyance controversy, his was the sole voice to favour dropping the issue until the following session. He also spoke, to unknown effect, three days later, when the House debated whether to offer additional supply in return for a general composition for purveyance.
Ravenscroft gave no perceptible support to his departmental chief, lord chancellor St. Alban (Sir Francis Bacon*) during the latter’s impeachment in 1621. He may have felt little obligation towards his superior, as he had intended to remain in Ellesmere’s service when the latter retired from public life in 1617, and proposed to surrender his Chancery office to Sampson Eure* until his patron’s death caused him to reverse his plans.
till the lord chancellor [Sir Christopher] Hatton’s† time there was never anything referred to a master in Chancery, and the reason why he referred business to them was because he was a stranger to the law and the proceedings of the Chancery.
He also insisted that the Privy Seal authorising increases in the masters’ fees had passed the Great Seal without due warrant, an assertion which undoubtedly contributed to the Commons’ decision to include the patent in the grievance petition.
At the start of the 1621 session Ravenscroft informed Bridgwater that there was a general consensus on the need for supply, and observed that ‘I am in good hope we shall proceed roundly to the errands’ a comment which presumably referred to the need to relieve the Elector Palatine. He was apparently more reluctant to support the Palatine benevolence raised after the dissolution, as he was called before the Privy Council in January 1622 to explain his failure to contribute, a summons which elicited a donation of £20.
In his letter to Bridgwater in February 1621, Ravenscroft noted the expulsion of Catholics from London and the Court with satisfaction, but he had very little to do with religious issues in Parliament. In the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot he was twice named to committees for recusancy legislation (27 Mar., 5 Apr. 1606), and in May 1621 he complained about the printing and distribution of Catholic books, a topic he and John Pym managed to include on the list of grievances submitted to the king at the end of the 1624 session.
As a lawyer, Chancery official and long-serving MP, Ravenscroft was well qualified to deal with questions of parliamentary privilege and procedure. He was one of those named to draft a justification of the Commons’ claim to adjudicate the Buckinghamshire election case (30 Mar. 1604), and spoke, to unknown effect, in the debate of 8 May 1604 on the punishment of the warden of the Fleet, who had incarcerated Sir Thomas Shirley I in breach of privilege. When a call of the House was proposed on 3 Apr. 1606, Ravenscroft backed Richard Martin’s motion to recall absent Members by a proclamation, and insisted that Speaker Phelips could issue a warrant to draft such a proclamation on his own authority.
Like many other lawyers, Ravenscroft was named to a large number of committees for bills which required scrutiny by experienced draftsmen. These included a number of legal and administrative reforms: jointures (26 Feb. 1607), payment of debts (26 Feb. 1607), fees for copying legal documents (12 May 1607), Exchequer procedure for sheriffs’ accounts (15 Mar. 1621, 14 Mar. 1626), restitution of possession in cases of forcible entry (24 Mar. 1621), shortening of the Michaelmas law term (20 Nov. 1621), repeal of the prerogative clause of the 1536 Welsh Act of Union (6 Mar. 1624), prohibition of secret inquisitions post mortem (8 Mar. 1624) and bankruptcy (22 Mar. 1624).
Ravenscroft left little trace on the surviving records of his last two parliaments, perhaps because of failing health: he drafted his will in the summer of 1626, and was ‘visited with an ague’ in May 1627. In a letter of 3 June 1628 he glumly advised Bridgwater
this morning is appointed to consider of His Majesty’s [first] answer [to the Petition of Right] which (albeit beggars should be no choosers, and I ever wished we might have trusted the king’s royal word without these aggravations) yet I see the general voice is either to have more or to do nothing, though it be to their own undoing, which the Lord forbid.
He asked the earl to return his copy of Sir Henry Marten’s speech (doubtless that of 23 May which quashed the Lords’ proposed amendment to the Petition saving the prerogative) and clearly intended to plead for a moderate response to the king’s answer. In the event, Eliot pre-empted the discussion by calling for a remonstrance, and Ravenscroft wisely held his tongue amid the intemperate debates which followed.
Ravenscroft added a codicil to his will on 25 Oct. 1628, and was dead by 1 Nov., when his successor was sworn in at the petty bag office. Being unmarried, he left his main private income, a 21-year annuity of £400 charged against Bridgwater’s Northamptonshire estates, to his brother Anthony, whom he made his executor. He bequeathed £50-£100 each to his other brothers and their children, £100 to Lincoln’s Inn on condition that the benchers indemnified his estate against two loans for which he had stood surety, and a similar sum to Bridgwater provided the earl discharged Ravenscroft’s estate from liability for £7,000 of his debts. Probate was granted to his brother Anthony on 10 Nov., who thereby secured control of Bridgwater’s annuity and a personal estate worth £5,000; it is hardly surprising that the administration of the will was contested, unsuccessfully, by his brothers Edward and Roger some months later.