STAWELL, Ralph (1640-89)

The Stawells came to England at the time of the Norman Conquest. The family maintained a long tradition of loyal military and parliamentary service for the crown and by the seventeenth century they were among the leading gentry families in the west country. Stawell’s father inherited property in Somerset and Devon valued at £6,000 per year. HP Commons, 1660–90, i. 632. His father and older brothers fought for the king in the civil wars and suffered considerably during the Interregnum, being imprisoned in the Tower from 1646 to 1653. After the Restoration, the Stawells regained their estates and resumed a prominent role in the political, social and economic life of the south-west. Stawell’s brother, George Stawell, succeeded his father in 1662 and was a deputy lieutenant for Somerset in 1666 and 1667. Som. Heritage Centre, Popham mss, DD/POT/162; Blathwayt mss DD/BR/bn/37. George had two daughters: Elizabeth, who married her cousin Sir Robert Austen^‡, and Ursula, who married Edward Conway, 3rd Viscount (later earl of) Conway. Stawell succeeded his brother in October 1669. Appointments to local office in Somerset and Wiltshire were followed in October 1679 by election to Parliament for Bridgwater. Significant legal battles ensued over the personal estate of George Stawell after the death of his widow in 1676/7 between her brother Sir John Austen^‡ on one side and her second husband, Henry Seymour^‡, her two daughters and Stawell on the other. TNA, C 10/189/1; C 10/141/2. George Stawell’s wealth must have been considerable; his daughters had both made good marriages, Ursula being variously reported to have brought Conway either £15,000 or £30,000. Hatton Corresp. (Cam. Soc. n.s. xxiii), 7; HMC Rutland, ii. 56; Conway Letters, 469.

Stawell played a crucial role as a political and military leader in Somerset, providing staunch service for the crown. After he had been raised to the peerage, he personally supervised the prosecution of Dissenters and rioters in Taunton and house searches in Bridgwater and Taunton following the Rye House Plot. He used the Somerset militia, which he commanded, to confine ‘fanatics’ to their houses. In Bridgwater he demolished a meeting house and had the pulpit and furniture burned. CSP Dom. Jan.–June 1683, pp. 193–4, 266, 288, 387. Thomas Venn’s book on the art of drilling (part of his work on Military and Naval Discipline) was dedicated to Stawell in his capacity as deputy lieutenant and colonel of the Bridgwater regiment of foot. Stawell, 115; T. Venn, Military and Marine Discipline in Three Books (1672), sig. I (p. 27).

Stawell’s promotion to the peerage in January 1683 was clearly a reward for unstinting loyalty and recognition of his considerable influence in Somerset and the west country generally. The patent made mention of the fact that his father had fought and suffered for the royalist cause, raising three regiments in the south-west for the king’s service in the 1640s. Stawell, 421–2. In 1683 Stawell, with the help of Peter Mews, bishop of Bath and Wells, succeeded in having the 1628 charter of the corporation of Bridgwater surrendered. The new charter enabled the removal of Sir John Malet^‡, the recorder, and ten burgesses, which ensured a Tory majority in the elections of 1685. VCH Som. vi. 223–8. In February 1685 Robert Spencer, 2nd earl of Sunderland, sent a circular letter to Stawell from the king recommending that the latter use his ‘utmost endeavour’ to ensure that the elections to Parliament returned ‘persons of approved loyalty and affection to the government’. CSP Dom. 1685, p. 21. Stawell replied from Ham on 21 Feb. that he was confident in Somerset and Dorset and had written into Wiltshire and Hampshire ‘where I have some little concerns’. Stawell, 422. Although he had been ill, he attended the coronation in April, with his daughters. HMC 9th Rep. pt. 2, p. 495.

Stawell took his seat on the opening day of the 1685 session, 19 May, being introduced by Richard Arundell, Baron Arundell of Trerice, and Richard Butler, Baron Butler of Weston, better known as earl of Arran [I]. He attended regularly until 13 June, sitting on 14 occasions (88 per cent of the total) and was named to several committees. On the 13th he registered his proxy with George Jeffreys, Baron Jeffreys, and then left London to command the Somerset militia against James Scott, duke of Monmouth, whereupon most of his troops deserted to the rebels.

Family tradition has it that Stawell was opposed to the harsh treatment of the rebels after Sedgemoor and allegedly refused to meet Jeffreys, who hung the corpse of one of the rebels, Colonel Bovett (an enemy of Stawell’s father), on the gates at Cothelstone. Stawell, 116; HP Commons, 1660–90, i. 479. However, this was at odds with his tone when he wrote from Bristol on 8 July 1685 to Secretary Sir Leoline Jenkins^‡, describing the capture of Monmouth and Ford Grey, 3rd Baron Grey of Warke (later earl of Tankerville), and expressing the hope that ‘this good news will deserve a fat buck out of George Speke’s^‡ park’. Bodl. Carte 117, f. 473. At least initially, Stawell seems to have been regarded as a loyal supporter of James II. On one list of 1687 charting supposed attitudes to the Test Act, he was thought to favour repeal. Other lists are more equivocal: in about May 1687 he was classed as doubtful in his attitude to James II’s policies, while in about November he was again thought to be a supporter of repealing the Test Act, as he was in a list published in Holland in January 1688. However, he may have lost his deputy-lieutenancy in February 1688 when a new batch was approved, and in 1687–8 Danby listed Stawell as an opponent of the king. CSP Dom. 1687–9, p. 144.

Significantly, when James II turned back to the Anglicans in October 1688, he turned initially to Stawell. On 31 Oct. a warrant was issued for Stawell to be lord lieutenant of Somerset, Charles Middleton^‡, 2nd earl of Middleton [S], sending him word of the appointment on 6 November. Ibid. pp. 337, 342. On the 8th, Stawell responded, expressing his willingness to serve the king but pleading disability, having been three years ‘under the surgeon’s hands’. Add. 41805, f. 165. This may have been an excuse because in the same month he signed an association of Somerset notables in defence of the prince of Orange. HMC 6th Rep. 346–7. However, in his will drafted in July 1688 he did refer to himself as ‘very infirm in body’.

Stawell did not attend the Convention. He was excused calls of the House on 25 Jan. and 22 May 1689 because of ill health. Add. 41805, f. 165. In the interim, in answer to a summons from the Lords on 2 Mar., he sent a letter accompanied by signed certificates from a doctor and a surgeon, indicating that he was too ill to travel to London. PA, HL/PO/JO/10/1/404/21. He died on 8 Aug. 1689. He left his personal estate to his wife and asked that his younger son, Edward Stawell^†, the future 4th Baron, be raised a ‘scholar’. A Calendar of the Charters, Rolls and Other Documents … in the Muniment Room at Sherborne House (1900), 194. He was succeeded by his elder son, John Stawell, as 2nd Baron Stawell.