CRESSETT, Richard (1608-77), of Cound and Upton Cressett, Salop.

The Cressetts were established in Shropshire at Little Withiford, Shawbury, by 1327. They provided sheriffs for the county on at least two occasions during the fifteenth century; one of these men, Hugh Cressett (sheriff 1435) is described as of Upton Cressett. The family seems to have occupied a niche as minor to middling Shropshire gentry over several centuries. Thomas Cressett, gentleman, bought lands in Ludlow and was a burgess there in 1551. He married Elizabeth Cornwall, daughter of Sir Edmund Cornwall, Baron Burford, but this auspicious marriage produced a son, Francis, whose most notable service to king and country was as the escheator of Radnor. 12Vis. Salop 1623, i. 158; Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 4, vi. 215, 217, 218. Only in 1605 did Francis and his son, Edward, seem to have purchased the manor of Upton Cressett. The deed specifies the estate as comprising 4,000 acres in Upton, Cound and Cleobury North, and even allowing for the notional figures, the scale was clearly impressive.13Salop Archives, 5460/3/10. The Cressetts accumulated lands by their marriages, and Edward, Richard Cressett’s father, continued this process when he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Henry Townshend† of Cound. Although there were Townshend male heirs, Cound came to the Cressetts on a long lease. Edward lived at Cound, while his first cousin, the annalist Henry Townshend, lived at Elmley Lovett in Worcestershire.

Richard Cressett went to Trinity College, Oxford, as the son of a substantial Shropshire gentleman. He left without taking a degree, and married Jane Huxley of Edmonton five years later, in 1628. His wife was the daughter of George Huxley, who had rebuilt Wyer Hall his house in Edmonton, before his death in 1627.14Lysons, Environs of London, ii. 259-60. Jane Huxley’s mother had remarried a wealthy Shropshire gentleman, Sir Robert Needham† (cr. Viscount Kilmorey in 1625), so the match was wholly to the advantage of the Cressetts. Parties to the marriage settlement included representatives of important gentry families including Edward Pytts* of Kyre and Edward Acton*, from Aldenham, near Upton Cressett. The settlement included a provision that if the marriage produced only one daughter, she should be entitled to a portion of £2,000.15Salop Archives, 5460/3/12. In the event one son and three daughters of Richard and Jane Cressett survived to adulthood. Elizabeth Cressett, Richard’s mother, died in 1635. Edward Cressett took as his second wife Elizabeth Berkeley, widow of the judge Francis Berkeley of Ewdness, in Worfield parish. Richard Cressett was granted probate after she in turn died in June 1639, but the Berkeley family connection was maintained after her death.16PROB11/180 f. 486v.

It was Richard Cressett, rather than his father, Edward, who represented Much Wenlock in the first of the two Parliaments to assemble in 1640. He was doubtless elected on the family’s own interest there, and in that election a number of heirs of gentry families stood for seats, notably in Bridgnorth. He made no impression on the Parliament. Later in 1640, he was active in the affairs of Much Wenlock, in September putting his hand to an election of a borough officer.17Salop Archives, WB/B3/1/1. When civil war broke out, his father, Edward Cressett associated himself with the king’s cause. He was active as a commissioner of array, and in August 1642 hindered the reading of the Militia Ordinance in Shrewsbury, reading out the commission of array instead. In December, he joined the association to raise a dragoon regiment under the command of Sir Vincent Corbett*.18Northants RO, FH133, unfol.; LJ v. 269b; Wiltshires Resolutions (1642), 7 (E.130.22); W. Phillips, ‘Ottley Pprs.’, Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 2, vi. 63. Edward Cressett sat at the council of war in Shrewsbury in April 1643, but was later taken prisoner, and in May 1644 was a party in an exchange of prisoners involving Samuel More*. Cressett was described to Prince Rupert by his supporters in this episode as ‘a ready and constant servant to the king’.19W. Phillips, ‘Ottley Pprs.’, Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 2, v. 303; Salop Archives, 5460/8/2/2. Edward Cressett is said to have been killed at Bridgnorth, presumably during the parliamentarian siege of the royalist garrison there, in April 1646, but his death figures in Richard Cressett’s correspondence in January of that year.20Salop Archives, 6001/2791 p. 455; Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 4, vi. 219; Phillips, ‘Ottley Pprs.’, Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 2, viii. 300-1.

Richard Cressett's passage through the civil war was much more cautious than that of his father. After Edward’s death, the royalist Salopian grandees, among them Sir Edward Acton* and the governor of Shrewsbury, Sir Francis Ottley, wrote in January 1646 to Richard, to attempt to harness his support for the king’s cause in the west midlands. Cressett’s reply was unenthusiastic, even evasive, and conveyed his wish to be left alone.21Phillips, ‘Ottley Pprs.’, Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 2, viii. 300-1. Later that year, after Bridgnorth fell to Parliament, an informer told the Committee for Advance of Money that Cressett had been a commissioner of array, a soldier and a principal instrument in the garrisoning of the recently-surrendered garrison. In June 1648, Cressett was informed upon to the same committee, but nothing further seems to have come of the case, and he seems not to have been dealt with by the Committee for Compounding.22CCAM 880. It seems unlikely that his profile was ever that high, but he was probably the lessee of the Bringwood ironworks in Herefordshire that produced cannon for the king’s garrisons at Shrewsbury and Bridgnorth.23VCH Salop, x. 150. He maintained his involvement with Much Wenlock corporation. In June 1647, he voted for Sir Humphrey Brigges* when he was elected as recruiter Member for the borough, and later that year put his name to an order that only the bailiff and justices were to be exempt from paying for their own civic dinners.24Salop Archives, WB/B3/1/1 pp. 700, 730. Cressett was well enough thought of by the parliamentary regime in 1647 to be admitted to the commission of the peace, despite the allegations of his delinquency.25C231/6 p. 74 He was named an elder under the arrangements for a Presbyterian church system in Shropshire in 1647, but this probably tells us more about his political compliance than about his religious principles.26Severall Divisions and Persons, 5.

In December 1647, Cressett had paid Maurice Berkeley of London, son of the political Independent City alderman, William Berkeley, a legacy from Francis Berkeley, his late step-mother’s first husband.27Salop Archives, 5460/7/3/6; V. Pearl, London and the Outbreak of the Puritan Revolution (Oxford, 1961), 313. Cressett was probably merely performing a filial duty in this transaction, rather than developing contacts with the parliamentarians among that great family. In 1652, a marriage was contracted between Cressett’s eldest son, Robert and Catherine Berkeley, daughter of Sir Robert Berkeley†, the royalist judge who had been impeached by the Long Parliament. Catherine brought a portion of £3,000 to the marriage.28Salop Archives, 5460/3/14. But this heralded no resurgence of royalism on the part of the Cressetts of Upton. Instead, Richard Cressett settled down to life as a country gentleman during the rest of the interregnum, including as a regular attender at Shropshire quarter sessions. Under the commonwealth, he was cautiously advanced to limited but significant places of trust, as an assessment commissioner.

In April 1653, a few days before the fall of the Rump, Cressett was appointed treasurer for the Shropshire maimed soldiers. This was an intriguing appointment for one who was a few short years earlier alleged to have served in the king’s army, and for one whose father certainly was an active manager of the late king’s troops. Cressett was also made treasurer for the house of correction, but the protector’s council (of which Humphrey Mackworth I* was for less than a year a member) took less benign a view of Cressett than had the Rump. Cressett lost his place as a justice and had to be chivvied by his former colleagues on the bench into paying in the rates he had collected.29Orders of Salop Quarter Sessions (1902), i. 5, 7, 15, 17, 32, 57.

The advent of the Cromwellian protectorate seems to have marked the end of Cressett’s public career. However distinguished the contribution his father had made to the cause of Charles I, it was insufficient to overcome the coldness of the restored monarchy towards him en revanche for his own supine attitude to the executed monarch. There is no evidence that Cressett was sympathetic to dissent, despite his nomination to the classis in 1647. His brother, James Cressett, had been minister at Cound under Richard’s patronage, and evidently had no difficulties in conforming to the restored church order in 1662, although he had to undergo a formal induction to his living in that year.30Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 4, vi. 219. After the Restoration, Richard Cressett had to mortgage his lands and in 1675 had judgements recorded against him in common pleas.31E34/27/Chas 2/Mich. 36; E134/27/Chas 2/Mich. 41. Cressett died in April 1677 and was buried at Upton Cressett. His eldest son, Robert, was receiver-general in Shropshire for the assessment the same year.32Salop Archives, 5460/9/2/2.