Family and Education

bap. 30 Nov. 1622, 2nd s. of Sir Richard Newport^† (d.1651), 1st Baron Newport of High Ercall by Rachel, da. of Sir John Leveson^† of Halling, Kent and coh. to her bro. Sir Richard Leveson of Trentham, Staffs.; bro. of Francis Newport, 1st Earl of Bradford. educ. Wroxeter g.s. c.1632; Christ Church, Oxf. 1640. unm.1

Offices Held

Esquire of the body ?June 1660-67; asst. R. Fishing Co. 1664; comptroller of the great wardrobe 1667-81; commr. of customs 1681-4.2

Capt. of ft. Portsmouth 1662-73.3

J.p. Mont. July 1660-Mar. 1688, Oct. 1688-96; commr. for corporations, Salop 1662-3; freeman, Portsmouth 1665, Much Wenlock 1680, Ludlow 1695; sub-commr. of prizes, Portsmouth 1665-7; commr. for assessment, Mont. 1677-80, Salop 1679-80, Mont. and Salop 1689-90; custos rot. Mont. Jan.-Dec. 1679, 1685-7, 1691-2, 1695-6.4

Biography

Newport’s father and elder brother were active Royalists in the Civil War, and during the Interregnum he himself became treasurer of the Cavalier funds in England. An active conspirator, he derided the caution of the Sealed Knot. He was arrested after Penruddock’s rising, when he was supposed to seize Shrewsbury for the King. He was warmly commended by Mordaunt in 1659, and again arrested after the rising of Sir George Booth. He spent four months in the Tower before being released on £1,500 security.5

At the Restoration Newport became a courtier, attending the King at the great entertainment given by the City in July 1660. He was proposed for the order of the Royal Oak with an income estimated at £800 p.a., presumably derived from the Deythur estate which had been settled on him. At the general election of 1661 he considered standing for Shrewsbury on the family interest, but desisted. He was returned for Montgomeryshire at a by-election later in the year, doubtless with the support of his friend and kinsman, the 3rd Lord Herbert of Chirbury. A moderately active Member of the Cavalier Parliament he probably acted as teller in nine divisions, and was appointed to 123 committees, including the committee of elections and privileges in twelve sessions. He was twice appointed to consider additional corporations bills. In 1663 he also helped to hear a petition from the loyal and indigent officers, to recommend remedies for meetings of sectaries, and to consider the prevention of abuses in the sale of offices and honours. On 25 July he was teller on the third reading for the bill to recover arrears of excise, and on 14 May 1664 he opposed a proviso to protect the privilege of peers under the conventicles bill. Listed as a court dependant, he was granted a lease of the extra-parochial tithes in Delamere forest at a quarter of their real value. A prize commissioner in the second Dutch war, he was allowed to purchase a prize ship, and was named during the Oxford session to the committee on the bill to prevent the embezzlement of prize goods. He twice acted as teller with Henry Brouncker in December 1666, for putting the question on a proviso to the public accounts bill and for continuing the debate on supply.6

Newport probably supported the attack on Clarendon. A new post was created for him in the great wardrobe with a salary of £300 p.a. after the discovery of gross maladministration by Clarendon’s ally, the Earl of Sandwich (Edward Montagu I). He was appointed to the committee on the conventicles bill on 2 Mar. 1670. As a court dependant his name appears on both lists of government supporters in 1669-71. From November 1670 he cannot be distinguished in the Journals from his nephew Richard Newport, but it is probable that most, if not all, of the 43 committee appointments in the later sessions of the Cavalier Parliament refer to him. In 1674 he acted as teller for proceeding with a vote of thanks for the speech from the throne and for rejecting the report from the elections committee recommending that the election of Samuel Pepys, the court candidate at Castle Rising, should be declared void. He was among those ordered to inspect the Scottish army laws. Listed as an official in 1675, he was named to committees to prevent the growth of Popery and illegal imprisonment. He was teller for a proviso to a bill to prevent frauds and abuses in the import of Irish cattle on 5 Apr. 1677. A Seasonable Argument attributed to him a pension of £400 p.a., and he was classed ‘thrice vile’ by Shaftesbury, and a member of the court party in the government list of 1678.7

Unlike most of his kinsmen, Newport probably opposed exclusion. Although not blacklisted in the ‘unanimous club’ he did not sit in any of the Exclusion Parliaments. Appointed a customs commissioner in 1681 at a salary of £1,200 p.a., probably on the recommendation of his friend Laurence Hyde, he resigned three years later. He was returned for Preston at a by-election in 1685, when the electors were anxious to choose ‘such a person at Court as may be qualified to do services for their corporation’, although he no longer held any post. A moderately active Member of James II’s Parliament, he was appointed to the committees for the reform of the bankruptcy laws and the rebuilding of St. Paul’s on 22 June, and after the recess helped to estimate the yield of a tax on French wines. On 12 Nov. he reported to the Hon. Henry Herbert, a Whig who had married his niece, that the House had resolved to grant a supply:

But no mention is yet made for what end, the House not seeming inclined to give anything for the support of a standing force. Next, that a committee be appointed to consider how to make the militia more useful, for some had endeavoured to render it of little use.

Succeeding letters betray an increasing antipathy to James II’s policies. On 20 June 1687 he wrote: ‘I heartily wish my executorship were at an end, that I might return to my all in the country and wash my hands of the politics, leaving God to govern the world’. Nevertheless, he remained in London reporting his disgust at the apostasies at Court and at the quo warranto proceedings begun against the Shropshire corporations in May 1688.8

Returned for Shrewsbury in 1689 with Herbert’s support, Newport was moderately active in the Convention. He voted to agree with the Lords that the throne was not vacant, and may have been appointed to 15 committees, of which the most important was to inquire into the expenditure on the war; but he was never recorded as speaking in the House. He continued to act with the Tories under William III, refusing to sign the Association in 1696. He died on II Sept. 1699, and was buried at Wroxeter, leaving Deythur and other property in Montgomeryshire and Shropshire to his nephew Thomas Newport^†, who sat for Ludlow and Wenlock as a Whig.9

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

• 1. DNB; M. Sylvester, Reliquae Baxterianae, i. 3; Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. (ser. 4), xii, 219-20.
• 2. LC3/2; Sel. Charters (Selden Soc. xxviii), 183; CSP Dom. 1667-8, p. 34; Cal. Treas. Bks. vii. 290, 403, 1464.
• 3. CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 487; 1672-3, p. 587.
• 4. Bodl. Ch. Salop 146, R. East, Portsmouth Recs. 358; SP44/23/83; Salop RO, Forester mss, Wenlock corp. bk.; Ludlow bor. recs. minute bk. 1690-1712.
• 5. Cal. Cl. SP, iii. 263, 337, 390; iv. 30, 194, 270, 430, 432; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 38, 210.
• 6. HMC 5th Rep. 154, 159; Mont. Colls. xxviii. 32; CSP Dom. 1663-4, pp. 285, 578; 1664-5, p. 26; CJ, viii. 661, 666.
• 7. CSP Dom. 1667-8, p. 170; CJ, ix. 292, 304.
• 8. Clarendon Corresp. i. 92; Rylands Lib. Legh mss, Bradshaigh to Legh, 1685; PRO 30/53/8, ff. 15, 18, 40, 46, 60.
• 9. PRO 30/53/8, f. 69; G.T.O. Bridgeman, Hist. Newport Fam. 20.