ROPER, Christopher (1621-73)

The Barons Teynham were descended from a younger son of John Roper, prothonotary of the court of king’s bench during the reign of Henry VIII. The first baron, John Roper^†, was said to have earned his peerage during the reign of James I for ‘his forward attachment to the king’s interest, having been the first man of note who proclaimed the king’ in Kent. The reality was more prosaic. Roper’s peerage was not conferred until some 13 years after James’s accession and only after payment of a £10,000 fee. Hasted, Kent (1798), vi. 300; Arch. Cant. xliv, 151.

The 4th Baron inherited a substantial estate from his father. The principal seat, the Lodge at Lynsted, dated from the closing years of Elizabeth I’s reign and in 1664 was rated for hearth tax at 43 hearths. Arch. Cant. xliv, 147–8; Kent Hearth Tax Assessment Lady Day 1664 ed. D. Harrington, 275. Wardship of the underage lord was granted to George Kirke^‡ after an application by Lord Petre and Henry Somerset^†, 5th earl of Worcester, was refused because of their recusancy. Kent HLC (CKS), U498/z5. Despite this, custody of the young peer seems to have been retained by his mother, who ensured that he was brought up a Catholic. As a recusant, Teynham was subject to regular fines and his estates suffered further through sequestration during the civil wars, though he was fortunate in that Parliament let his lands to his uncle Sir Robert Thorold. CCC, 887; E. Selby, Teynham Manor and Hundred 798–1935, pp. 28–29. It may have been a sign of aristocratic poverty that at least one of his sisters joined a Benedictine order at Ghent. Surviving rent rolls suggest that Teynham had an annual income of just over £2,000 during the 1670s, but this may be an under-estimate as it is difficult to be sure that they are complete. Kent HLC (CKS), U498/E1. His affairs were certainly sufficiently embarrassed to require him to enter into a debt trust sometime between 1666 and June 1672, but in the long term the prospects for economic recovery were good, and the evidence of the marriage settlement of Henry Roper, 8th Baron Teynham, suggests that by 1705 most if not all of the family’s pre-civil war landholdings had been recovered. C6/199/80.

Teynham himself does not appear to have been an active royalist during the Civil War. His mother protested against his summons to York, insisting that he was too frail and was unequipped as all the family’s arms had been seized. Nevertheless, Teynham seems at least to have attempted to act as an unofficial commissioner of array for the king in Kent. As such he was arrested by Edwin Sandys’ men and sent up to London under guard. His younger brother, Francis, was more officially employed in the royalist cause and served the king as envoy in Germany. Add. 61485, f. 150. He was rewarded with a warrant appointing him as a gentleman of the privy chamber in consideration of his ‘true and faithful service’ and was later employed as an envoy to the duchy of Savoy to commiserate with the duke on the death of the dowager duchess (Charles II’s aunt). Eg. 2542, f. 291; CSP Ven. 1664–6, pp. 13–20.

Teynham’s personal social network included leading Catholics such as William Petre of Stamford Rivers, Essex, Sir John Arundell of Lanherne, Cornwall, and John Carryll of Harting, Sussex, who all served alongside his brother Francis on his debt trust. His daughter married the Catholic Bernard Howard, nephew of Thomas, 5th duke of Norfolk, and Henry Howard, 6th duke of Norfolk; his younger son, Thomas, is believed to have been educated at St Omer and to have joined the Jesuits. G. Oliver, Collections towards Illustrating the Biography of the Scotch, English and Irish Members of the Society of Jesus, 183. Through his second wife he was related to the court supporter Thomas Knollys^‡ and to the Presbyterian sympathizer Charles Kerr^‡, 2nd earl of Ancram [I], and through his third wife to Sir Thomas Leigh^‡, son of Thomas Leigh, Baron Leigh.

Teynham may have spent some of the civil wars and Interregnum abroad (he was granted permission to travel to France in 1657) but by the time of the Restoration he was back in England. In March 1660 he was one of a number of local gentlemen to sign a certificate on behalf of Rob Barham recommending his appointment to the office of postmaster of Sittingbourne. CSP Dom. 1657–8, p. 549, 1659–60, p. 387. Later the same month he contracted his third (and final) marriage. Soon after this he was one of the ‘young lords’ who entered the House on 27 April. Over the course of the Convention he was present on 53 per cent of all sitting days and was named to nine committees in addition to the sessional committees for privileges and petitions (to which he was added on 7 and 9 May). On 10 May and again on 24 Aug. he was granted leave of absence, on the latter occasion not troubling to return to the chamber prior to the September adjournment. Teynham was missing again from the early stages of the first session of the Cavalier Parliament. He took his seat finally after the adjournment on 20 Nov. 1661 and was thereafter present on 42 per cent of the remaining sitting days (though this amounted to just 28 per cent of the whole). Between his reappearance in November and the close of the session in May 1662 he was also nominated to seven committees in addition to the privileges committee.

Teynham returned to the House at the opening of the ensuing session on 18 Feb. 1663. He was present for just under half the sitting days in the session and in July was listed as likely to support the attempt by his fellow Catholic, George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol, to impeach Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon. On 14 July he attended the House, which dealt with Bristol’s impeachment of Clarendon, but that same day he registered a proxy in favour of his fellow anti-Clarendonian Charles Goring, 2nd earl of Norwich. However, as he last attended for the session on 17 July, it may have been intended to come into effect from that date.

Teynham failed to attend the ensuing three sessions. In March 1664 he registered his proxy with Norwich again and was excused at a call of the House on 4 April. On 7 Dec. 1664 he excused his absence by pleading sickness. Teynham returned to the House on 25 Sept. 1666. On that day he was named to the committee for the hemp and flax bill and he was named to a further six committees during the remainder of the session. He attended the two prorogation days of July 1667 and was present once more on 10 October. He was missing at a call of the House without explanation on 29 Oct. but on 7 Nov. secured leave of absence. He returned on 20 Nov. and the same day entered a protest reflecting his continuing enmity to Clarendon and his support for Clarendon’s immediate commitment. On 7 Dec. he was named to the committee for the bill for banishing Clarendon (one of five committees to which he was named in the course of the session).

Teynham returned to the House for the subsequent session of 1669–70, of which he attended 39 per cent of all sitting days, but his only obvious activity was his nomination on 9 Nov. to the committee considering the records supplied by the commissioners for accounts. He took his seat once more at the opening of the new session on 14 Feb. 1670, of which he attended 45 per cent of all days prior to the adjournment. He was named to four committees, including that for bill for the sale of fee-farm rents, which had been appointed following an unsuccessful attempt to deal with the matter in a committee of the whole. He was listed as present on 17 Mar. but was not one of those to enter a protest against the resolution to grant a second reading to the divorce bill of John Manners, Lord Roos (later duke of Rutland). He was then absent from the House on 28 Mar. when the bill passed.

Teynham attended for the final time just over a week later on 8 April. The reason for his absence from then on may have been ill health, as in June of that year it was reported (inaccurately) that he had died at his seat in Kent (‘not much wanted’, said one account, and as a result of ‘excess in drinking white wine’). CSP Dom. 1670, pp. 300, 302. In November he entered a proxy, again in favour of Norwich. It was vacated by Norwich’s death on 3 Mar. 1671, but a week later Teynham entered another, this time in favour of the Catholic apostate Thomas Savage, 3rd Earl Rivers. The proxy ended with the session a month later but, although Teynham remained away from the House, no further proxy was entered on his behalf. No explanation was attached to his absence from a call of the House of 13 Feb. 1673.

Throughout his career in the House Teynham was named regularly to a handful of committees, though he seems not to have taken a prominent role in any of them. Those committees on which he served were overwhelmingly concerned with private bills; only a few of them, like the estate bill promoted by his neighbour and fellow Catholic, Philip Smythe^‡, 2nd Viscount Strangford [I], seem to have been of personal interest.

Teynham died on 23 Oct. 1673, and was buried at Lynsted on 29 October. No will has been traced but an inventory of his effects, dated 12 June 1675, survives among the papers of the archdeaconry of Canterbury. Somewhat surprisingly, given Teynham’s apparent poverty, it describes a comfortable and well-furnished house, complete with luxury items such as an organ and harpsichord as well as foot-carpets. Kent HLC (CKS), PRC/11/38/191. His estate passed to his eldest surviving son, also named Christopher Roper, who succeeded as 5th Baron Teynham.