RANDYLL, Morgan (1649-at least 1738), of Chilworth, Surr.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660-1690, ed. B.D. Henning, 1983
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Oct. 1679
Feb. 1701
Dec. 1701
3 Feb. 1711

Family and Education

bap. 7 Oct. 1649, 1st s. of Vincent Randyll of Chilworth by Dorothy, da. of John Duncombe of Weston. educ. Wadham, Oxf. 1666, BA 1670; M. Temple 1670, called 1677. m. lic. 5 Feb. 1678, Anne, da. and coh. of Sir Thomas Gould, Draper, of Aldermanbury, London, 2da. suc. fa. 1673.1

Offices Held

Commr. for recusants, Surr. 1675, assessment 1677-9, 1690, j.p. by 1677-80, Feb. 1688-?1720, sheriff 1686-7, dep. lt. Feb.-Oct. 1688, 1702-?15.2

Biography

Randyll’s grandfather held land in Surrey from the closing years of Elizabeth. He acquired Chilworth, two-and-a-half miles from Guildford, together with two gunpowder mills, by marrying an heiress. These mills, leased to the East India Company, supplied the Cavalier army until they were pulled down by Sir Richard Onslow in 1642, thereby initiating a family feud that lasted for three generations, and enabling Randyll’s father to claim that he had ‘worked for the late King, suffering much thereby’. Although he offered to supply gunpowder to the Commonwealth in 1653, he was recommended for the order of the Royal Oak at the Restoration, with an annual income of £1,000.3

Randyll qualified as a barrister, but he is not known to have practised. ‘Worthy Morgan Randyll’, as he was described in the opposition press, displaced the court supporter Thomas Dalmahoy as Member for Guildford in the second and third Exclusion Parliaments, and was removed from the commission of the peace as an exclusionist in 1680. On 23 Dec. he proposed the impeachment of Lord Chief Justice Scroggs as ‘a traitor, for countenancing and bringing off a traitor’, a reference to the acquittal of Sir George Wakeman in one of the Popish Plot trials. Otherwise he was completely inactive in both Parliaments and was named to no committees. He contested Guildford in 1685, but was defeated by the Hon. Heneage Finch I by two votes. He may have been a Whig collaborator since he was appointed to the lieutenancy and reappeared at quarter sessions in the spring of 1688. He was again defeated at the following general election, and his petition against the Tory John Weston was rejected.4

A friend and trustee of (Sir) Thomas Clarges, Randyll signed the Association in 1696. But he became a high Tory under Anne and a member of the October Club. He was the only member of his family to sit in Parliament. Election expenses compelled him to sell all his property in 1720 for £29,000, and he is last heard of in a debtors’ prison in 1738.5

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: J. S. Crossette

Notes

  • 1. Manning and Bray, Surr. ii. 118, 127; Le Neve’s Knights (Harl. Soc. viii), 302; London Mar. Lic. ed. Foster, 1111.
  • 2. Surr. RO, QS1/1/1a, 2/1/6/232.
  • 3. Manning and Bray, ii. 124; HMC Dartmouth, i. 3; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 4; 1660-1, p. 388.
  • 4. True Prot. Merc. 26 Feb. 1681; HMC 12th Rep. IX, 103; Surr. RO (Guildford), 1251/3; CJ, x. 101.
  • 5. PCC 170 Irby; Manning and Bray, ii. 118.