Resident at Strode in Ermington, Devon by the thirteenth century, Strode’s ancestors acquired their main seat of Newnham under Henry IV, and first represented the local borough of Plympton Erle in the Parliament of 1437. By the mid-sixteenth century, when Strode’s father and uncle sat for Plympton, the family were well-established Devon gentry. Through his mother, Strode was also related to the Barons Cromwell and earls of Hertford. In 1581 he inherited at least 1,750 acres, primarily in the Plymouth region, along with substantial tin-mining interests. Although aged only 19, he was apparently not subject to wardship.
At the 1604 general election Strode resumed his seat at Plympton, and successfully nominated his son Richard for a burgess-ship at Bere Alston. He was now starting to attract notice in the Commons, receiving 29 committee nominations during the first session, and making nine speeches. Appointed on 24 Mar. to help draft the bill for continuance of expiring statutes, he was named to the committees for both this measure and a supplementary bill (5 and 22 June), though the text of his speech on 18 June on this topic has not survived. He was also nominated to the committees for five other bills with legal themes, their subjects including magistrates’ authority to release prisoners from gaol, and the punishment of sturdy rogues (31 Mar., 5 May).
Strode presumably disliked the bill for defraying the costs of the king’s Household, which he was appointed to scrutinize on 31 May, since two days later he opposed a proposal to offer regular subsidy grants as an alternative to purveyance. He was apparently more enthusiastic about the Commons’ attempts to broach the sensitive issue of Crown wardship, and was named on 22 May to attend the conference about a proposed joint petition from both Houses requesting James’s permission to discuss this subject. When Sir Edwin Sandys on 1 June reported the peers’ negative response, Strode contributed to the ensuing debate, though his words went unrecorded. He was named that day to the select committee to devise an Apology justifying the Commons’ behaviour, particularly with regard to the wardship issue. The text of his speech after the controversial draft Apology was presented to the House on 20 June has not survived, but he was evidently unhappy with the subsequent attempt to bury the document. Taking the initiative on 29 June, he moved
that the frame of satisfaction, touching the proceedings of the House ... might be re-committed, and some more committees added; and such of the first committee, or others, as found any cause of exception, or were not present at the former several meetings, might be commanded to attend; that they might receive satisfaction from the rest, or otherwise yield their reasons of difference; so as ... some resolution may be taken for further proceeding, or surceasing, in the said business.
This motion was accepted, but Parliament was prorogued on 7 July before the Apology re-emerged from committee.
Strode was present when the Commons reassembled on 5 Nov. 1605, being named to the select committee to consider the recent incorporation of the Spanish Company. During this session he was nominated to 44 committees, a sign of his rising profile in the House, and made at least 16 speeches. Commercial affairs remained a significant preoccupation, and consequently he was appointed to committees for bills concerned with free trade, Tunnage and Poundage, cloth manufacture, dairy products, pin making, wine sales, and trade with Russia (28 Jan., 5 Feb., 20 Mar., 1, 3, 4, and 8 Apr. 1606).
In the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot, Strode made the most of the opportunity to push his own religious agenda. Named on 21 Jan. to the committee to consider action against other potential papist plotters, he called on 3 Feb. for Catholics who nominally conformed to be treated the same as recusants, and on 1 Mar. recommended the drafting of three separate bills to address the recusant threat. Having been appointed to the committee for the Sabbath observance bill (29 Jan.), he warned after the measure’s third reading on 17 Feb. that ‘to dash it would be a scandal’, helping to get it passed despite some opposition. He was also nominated to consider how to encourage a more learned ministry, and to scrutinize the bill against pluralist and non-resident clergy (22 Jan., 5 March).
On 11 Apr. Strode opposed Nicholas Fuller’s bid to block debate on the Union. He also conspicuously defended the Crown’s dubious dealing in the lands of the attainted 11th Lord Cobham (Henry Brooke†). The king legally enjoyed only temporary possession of this property, but James had rapidly given much of it away, necessitating a bill in this session to secure the title of the new owners. On 19 May Strode asserted that Cobham’s heirs had consented to the Crown’s actions, and when this statement failed to convince the House, he produced documentation three days later to corroborate his claim. Although he himself later acquired part of Cobham’s estate, at this juncture he appears to have been doing the government a favour, rather than acting from self-interest.
On the wider questions of the Crown’s finances, however, Strode was much less co-operative. Named on 30 Jan. to the committee stage of the bill to restrain abuses in purveyance, on 25 Feb. he backed the strategy of reforming the system by legislation. By 6 Mar. he seemed willing to contemplate the alternative approach of relief through composition, but when a further subsidy grant was suggested on 11 Mar. to meet James’s immediate needs, Strode dismissed this idea as ‘a greater grievance than any else that hath been opened’. On the following day he halted another debate on supply by proposing that any supplementary grant of subsidies be made conditional on the king declaring war on Spain or France. It is unclear whether he was reminding the House of the traditional link between parliamentary supply and military spending, or simply being obstructive. He was one of the tellers in the vote on 18 Mar. on whether to approve further subsidies without first agreeing in principle to offer financial assistance. It seems probable that he opposed the motion, though the records do not indicate which camp he marshalled.
Strode’s growing stature in the Commons was recognized in the 1606-7 session when he was appointed to the committee for privileges (19 November). He was also nominated to select committees to consider the continuation of business during one of Speaker Phelips’s illnesses, review recent entries in the Journal on the subject of privilege, and decide how best to distribute the Members’ benevolence at the end of the session (23 Mar., 19 June, 3 July).
Strode played a fuller part in the first session of 1610, receiving 32 committee nominations, though he made only 10 speeches. One major preoccupation was West Country economic life. On 13 Mar. he moved to allow the gentlemen of Devon and Cornwall to be heard at the bill committee concerned with the transporting of sea sand into Devon and Dorset, probably from fear that local property rights were at risk. His comments on 28 Mar. on the Minehead harbour bill were not recorded, but he presumably did not welcome competition for north Devon’s ports. He was named to legislative committees concerned with the preservation of timber for shipbuilding, and the threat of piracy, and acted as teller for the noes when the House voted not to recommit the bill on dyeing abuses (3 and 22 Mar., 1 June).
Despite his ties to Salisbury, Strode was at best sceptical about the Great Contract, which initially excluded the issue of wardship. Named on 15 Feb. to the conference with the Lords at which Salisbury expounded the Crown’s financial position, he called four days later for grievances to be debated before any supply was considered. On 28 Feb. he supported the proposal for a joint committee of both Houses to broach the subject of wardship. That same day, as teller for the victorious noes in the vote on whether to defer debate on the Contract, he may have helped to block a bid to delay discussion while more support was sought for the project. With James stalling over wardship, Strode moved on 5 Mar. for a message to be sent to the Lords, ‘that we can neither give support, nor supply, except the king please to treat’. Genuinely eager to see progress on wardship, he was appointed on 26 Mar. to the conference at which the Commons offered £100,000 in return for the Contract. When this sum was rejected, he proposed on 1 May that Members should repackage their offer as a bargain for wardship alone.
As the Contract negotiations stalled, the Commons turned their attention to impositions, prompting James to restrict debate on this sensitive topic. Initially the House sought to ignore this intervention on the grounds that the message had come via the Privy Council, and as a member of the committee for privileges Strode was nominated on 11 May to help draft an order that the Speaker should not ordinarily accept instructions from this source. However, when James reiterated his objections, Strode was named on 14 May to the committee to draft a more conciliatory reply. He was also appointed on 24 May to attend the king during the presentation of a remonstrance affirming the Commons’ right to examine impositions. Nevertheless, Strode remained curious about what concessions the Crown might make in return for the Contract. On 14 June he argued that a full list of grievances should be submitted to James, accompanied by a meagre interim grant of a subsidy and two fifteenths, with the full price to be settled afterwards: ‘a good answer, and good dealing, or else no more’. Nominated on 18 June to consider alternative proposals for a message to the Lords detailing the Commons’ current negotiating stance, he opposed the proposal on 11 July for a grant of fifteenths as well as subsidies.
By 1610 Strode was locked in a complex legal dispute over the marriage settlement he had arranged for his son, Sir Richard. The latter’s wife had died around two years earlier, whereupon her father had cancelled one of the two entails under which the Devon line stood to benefit. Strode and his son sued for breach of contract, but to little effect, and in February 1611 Sir Richard conveyed the remaining estates that he had received in 1597 to Strode himself, apparently to safeguard the original £2,000 investment. However, Sir Richard’s mounting frustration at his diminished circumstances seems to have set him at odds with Strode, who never again nominated him for a Commons’ seat.
In August 1611 Strode was elected recorder of Plymouth, a surprising choice for a borough which generally appointed high-profile lawyers to this post. He was returned for Plymouth at the 1614 general election, and placed his cousin, Sir Richard White, at Bere Alston, but both seats at Plympton Erle went to his neighbours, the Hele family.
At the Parliament’s flashpoints, Strode once more tended to confrontation. On 13 Apr. he was named to help prepare the Commons’ protestation to the king about undertakers. After news broke of Bishop Neile of Lincoln’s attack on the House, he was the first Member to move that all business be suspended until the Commons’ reputation was cleared, though his proposal was not immediately taken up (25 May). Two days later, with James accusing the House of invading his prerogative by assuming the power of adjournment, Strode asserted that the previous Parliament offered numerous precedents for brief cessations. Not surprisingly, he was appointed on 28 May to attend the king when the Speaker justified the Commons’ behaviour, and on 30 May to prepare a message to the Lords about Neile. He was unmoved by James’s threat on 3 June to dissolve Parliament unless the Commons made progress on supply.
Sir William Strode wished to have a committee presently how to send to His Majesty and to consider of a bill for the continuation of statutes, and to move His Majesty for redress in the impositions; but for supply, he would not now speak of that but pray to God to move His Majesty’s heart not thus to dissolve the Parliament.
Only on 7 June did he finally express willingness to offer supply, on the grounds that progress towards the abolition of impositions would be impossible if Parliament were dissolved, but by then the king’s patience was already exhausted.
In October 1614 Strode was summoned before the Privy Council for some unspecified reason relating to Devon affairs. In the following year he reinforced his puritan reputation by founding lectures at Modbury. Still a very active local administrator, he spent part of 1619-20 assessing the county’s readiness for war, as the international situation deteriorated. Meanwhile, Plymouth’s merchant community faced a new threat from the New England Company, headed by Sir Ferdinando Gorges†. In 1620 the corporation paid Strode £20 as a reward for his services in Parliament and other spheres, but he was an old friend of Gorges, and perhaps lacked the stomach for a fresh battle. He resigned his recordership by September of that year, to be succeeded by the lawyer John Glanville*.
For the 1621 Parliament Strode once more found a seat at Plympton Erle, while at Bere Alston his neighbour Sir Thomas Wise probably relied on his backing. During the first sitting he was at his most vocal, with 76 recorded speeches; he was also named to 34 committees. Once again a member of the committee for privileges, he was appointed to select committees to sift the petitions presented to the Commons and to order the House’s business (5 and 21 Feb., 26 April). With a major bill for repeal of statutes in the offing on 13 Feb., he secured an order prohibiting lawyer- Members from departing for the assizes without first obtaining leave. He successfully proposed on 12 Mar. that bills should receive their second reading by 8.30 am, and apparently also convinced Members that the committee appointed to consider the continuance of expiring statutes should review the legislative programme generally during the Easter recess (22 and 24 March).
Strode’s puritan credentials were once more firmly displayed. On 9 Feb. he concurred with the argument that a willingness to receive the Anglican sacrament of communion was a good test of whether Members had taken the oaths of supremacy and allegiance. With Protestant forces on the Continent in retreat, Strode was even more anxious to counter the Catholic threat at home, and on 5 Feb. he emphasized the importance of a fresh petition against recusants. Named to the conference with the Lords about this petition, and to the select committee on the enforcement of existing anti-recusant legislation (15 and 17 Feb.), he also defended Sir James Perrot’s improperly authorized search of the recusancy fine records (8 March). Following Thomas Sheppard’s provocative attack on the Sabbath observance bill, Strode considered that ‘it were a favour to let him be gone’ from the House. He was appointed to help manage the conference concerning this bill, and was also named to the committee stage of the bill for catechising children (16 and 24 May).
Strode presented two bills of his own to the Commons. On 28 Apr. he introduced a bill to preserve game by reviving restrictions on the use of guns in hunting. Despite an objection that longbows were now obsolete, he mustered sufficient support for the issue to be referred to the committee for the continuance of expiring statutes. However, a bill to introduce lesser punishments for petty crimes was not taken up by the House, despite a theatrical presentation on 22 Feb., when Sir Warwick Hele raised the issue and Strode, on cue, proffered his solution.
Strode showed little interest in private legislation during this Parliament. His decision to back Sir Reginald Mohun’s* controversial estate bill on 17 May was probably influenced by the fact that Mohun’s brother-in-law, George Chudleigh*, was also Strode’s son-in-law.
A prominent member of the committee for the bill to secure free trade in Welsh cloth (2 Mar.), he attempted unsuccessfully to reassure the House on 20 Mar. that the measure’s wider impact had been carefully considered. While acknowledging that money was scarce because of the excessive importation of luxury goods, he consistently opposed any restrictions on corn imports for fear that this would push up prices beyond the reach of the poor (26 Feb., 8 Mar., 28 May).
Strode objected to Sir Robert Phelips’ proposal on 5 Feb. for a joint petition of both Houses about freedom of speech, on the grounds that the Commons’ privileges were no business of the Lords, but he supported a unilateral petition to the king on 12 Feb. in preference to the slower strategy of a bill. In general his attitude towards relations between Parliament and the Crown remained fairly assertive for much of this first sitting. On 25 Apr. he opposed the bill to confirm royal grants, provocatively suggesting that a bill of resumption would be more appropriate, and five days later, despite James’s clear objections to Parliament investigating Irish grievances, Strode recommended that the Commons request permission to continue its inquiries.
In the second sitting Strode renewed his call for faster progress on legislation (28 November). However, he spent little time himself on routine business, making 17 speeches but receiving only six committee nominations, whose subjects included bills against sturdy rogues and scandalous clergy (22-3 November). On 20 Nov. he blocked an attempt to summon Sir Ferdinando Gorges to defend the New England Company’s patent by explaining that he was the serving commander of Plymouth fort. He backed the bill to make clergy capable of taking leases for the benefit of their families, providing such properties did not become a distraction from spiritual labours, and called for the committee preparing a petition on religion to be allowed the widest possible brief (23 and 28 November). With supply once more under discussion, he argued on 28 Nov. that, rather than the poor being taxed, recusants should be made to pay double. He was also named on 1 Dec. to the conference with the Lords about informers.
Still concerned about how well the Commons was functioning, he called on 22 Nov. for an immediate end to the abuse of parliamentary privilege. Nevertheless, he was one of the leaders of the search party which, to the king’s irritation, was sent on 24 Nov. in pursuit of Lepton and Goldsmith, who had plotted against Sir Edward Coke*. He also reacted strongly on 4 Dec. when James attacked the House for preparing a petition on foreign affairs: ‘our thoughts being now disturbed by this message from His Majesty, we are not fit or able to debate of anything, ... and therefore would have us rise, and not so suddenly debate of this business, it being of the greatest consequence for our privileges, that ever came hither.’ Having reflected on the king’s message overnight, he adopted a more conciliatory tone the following day, recommending that the Commons stand by their petition, but reminding the House that it could discuss ‘mysteries of state’ only with James’s permission. On 7 Dec. he objected to the Members’ latest justification to the king being delivered by the Speaker, as was customary, since this would prevent normal business being resumed should a more conciliatory message arrive from James during the Speaker’s absence. He agreed with William Hakewill on 17 Dec. that there should be further consideration of bills, and that the question of privilege should be assigned to a select committee. Strode was now pinning his hopes of real progress on a further sitting after Christmas, and when James offered just that on 18 Dec. he was eager to accept it. He played no known part in the drafting of the Protestation which precipitated the Parliament’s collapse the next day.
In early November 1621, Strode had been appointed a commissioner to investigate the decay of trade, a task in which he was still engaged the following year. He returned to the Commons in 1624, when he represented Devon for the second time, having provided seats at Plympton Erle and Bere Alston for his son-in-law Sir Francis Drake and son William respectively.
With a breach with Spain now looking likely, his pronouncements on religion became even more outspoken. On 23 Feb., while backing Sir Edward Cecil’s motion for a general fast, he requested that the knights of the shire might report any borough Member known to have Catholic sympathies. Two days later he proposed a petition to the king from both Houses requesting that all recusants be excluded from London while the business of the Spanish Match was resolved. This idea was adopted, and Strode was appointed to help draft an invitation to the Lords.
In the 1625 general election Strode again took a seat at Plympton Erle, and provided his son William with a place at Bere Alston. Appointed once more to the committee for privileges, he received eight other committee nominations, and made six recorded speeches. His motion on 21 June for a committee to receive petitions was possibly made to divert attention from William Mallory’s call for Parliament to be adjourned on account of the plague. However, despite this apparent gesture of support for the government, Strode now showed little interest in the war effort, even though he had recently been an active impressment commissioner.
Strode attended the Oxford sitting, on 6 Aug. receiving a solitary bill committee nomination concerning the punishment of petty larceny. He now openly opposed the Crown’s request for a supplementary grant of supply, on 5 Aug. attacking the notion that payment could be delayed until after the initial subsidies had been collected. Some of this rhetoric may have been for show, for, according to lord keeper Williams, Strode was then one of the senior Members who were ‘never out my lord duke’s chamber and bosom’, seeking policy concessions from Buckingham in order to end the deadlock in Parliament. These discussions having failed, the king demanded a clear undertaking on future supply, which Strode firmly rebuffed on 11 Aug.: ‘To give at this time is the worst way and to fall to an answer will amount to an engagement, which he did not like.’
Despite his very obvious distaste for fiscal innovations, Strode was appointed a few months later to help supervise the Privy Seal loan in Devon. As a commissioner for both billeting and martial law in the Plymouth area, he witnessed at first hand the disruption caused by the return of the Cadiz expedition during the winter. It was probably the burden of these offices that persuaded him against standing in the 1626 parliamentary election. However, he effectively left his options open by securing seats for his son William at both Plympton Erle and Bere Alston. It is unclear whether he also had a hand in Buckingham’s nomination of his son Sir Richard at Bridport. William opted to sit for Bere Alston on 18 Feb., whereupon Strode himself duly filled the Plympton vacancy, though it was not until late March that he finally set out for London, carrying with him a message for the Privy Council about the shortage of funds for managing the billeting at Plymouth.
Despite missing almost two months of the Parliament, Strode still made 11 speeches and received 13 committee nominations. By the time he took up his seat the Commons had begun its attack on Buckingham, and his first formal business was an appointment on 5 Apr. to attend the king when the Lower House presented a remonstrance defending its proceedings. On 14 Apr. he moved for a bill to be drafted concerning Sir Dudley Digges’ scheme for a privately funded naval war, but objected to Sir Benjamin Rudyard’s assertion that any opponents of this plan were not true Englishmen. He was named on the following day to the select committee to review impressment and sailors’ wages. He also attracted nominations to legislative committees concerned with the mitigation of excommunication, clerical subscription, and the encouragement of preaching (2, 6 and 25 May).
Although not one of Buckingham’s more vocal supporters, Strode consistently opposed the impeachment campaign. On 24 Apr. he was a teller for the noes in the vote on whether the committee preparing charges could use evidence not yet presented to the whole House. He questioned whether the St. Peter case constituted a serious grievance, and sought to undermine the credibility of a witness who claimed that the duke had displayed Catholic sympathies while in Spain (1 and 4 May). His own reputation suffered on 6 May when he was implicated in the alleged purchase of a peerage by Lord Robartes, but he twice urged the House against confrontation with the king over the arrest of Digges and Sir John Eliot (12 and 22 May).
In the aftermath of the 1626 Parliament Strode was widely recognized as being ‘well-affected’ to Buckingham. Nominated in July to the commission to investigate the conduct of the duke’s former client, Sir John Eliot, as vice-admiral of Devon, he was also a friendly witness during Buckingham’s mock trial in Star Chamber, testifying in June 1627 that the favourite had rejected Robartes’ attempt to buy a barony. During the following autumn he worked closely on the Eliot inquiry with the duke’s principal West Country agent, (Sir) James Bagg II, whom he provided with a seat at Plympton Erle in the 1628 general election.
In the following decade Strode remained a highly respected local administrator, his reputation in Whitehall apparently untarnished by his son William’s part in the final collapse of the 1628-9 Parliament and subsequent imprisonment. However, his health was declining, and in 1632 he vainly attempted to resign as a magistrate and deputy lieutenant. In early 1635 he and Sir Edward Giles* were summoned before the Privy Council for lending their backing to the growing protests in Devon against Ship Money.