Nathaniel Rich (soldier)

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Nathaniel Rich, (d. 1700x02), army officer, was the eldest son of Robert Rich of Felsted, Essex, and Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Dutton. Sir Nathaniel Rich, who was probably his uncle, left him his manor of Stondon, Essex, in 1636, at which time he was still a minor. He matriculated from St Catharine's College, Cambridge, in 1637, and on 13 August 1639 was admitted to Gray's Inn. Some time during the 1640s Rich married Elizabeth (d. 1655), daughter of Sir Edmund Hampden, and sister of John Hampden of ship money fame. Together they had three children, including two sons, Nathaniel and Robert.

When the civil war broke out Rich, along with other young gentlemen from the inns of court, joined the earl of Essex's life guard regiment. In the summer of 1643 he was commissioned captain of horse, and returned to Essex to raise a troop for the earl of Manchester's army. By December 1644 he had risen to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. In the parliamentary inquiry into the quarrel between Manchester and Oliver Cromwell, Rich sided with Cromwell, giving damning testimony about Manchester's reluctance to fight the king, and his dilatoriness in obeying the orders of the committee of both kingdoms.

At the time of the New Model Army's formation in February and March 1645, Rich's nomination as colonel of horse was rejected by the House of Commons; the parliamentary diarist Sir Simonds D'Ewes claimed that this was on account of his youth, but his recent identification with Cromwell is the more likely explanation. However, he was permitted to take up his colonelcy later that spring. He and his regiment saw action at the battle of Naseby (14 June 1645). In March 1646 he led a party of horse and dragoons that routed a royalist outpost at St Columb Major, Cornwall. He was also one of Fairfax's commissioners who negotiated the surrender of Oxford in May and June of that year. Early in 1647 he stood, along with Sir Thomas Fairfax, for Cirencester in the recruiter election. Their return as MPs was blocked by cavaliers who prevented the poll from being taken.

During the conflict between army and parliament in 1647 Rich played a moderating role, which prompted the Leveller leader John Lilburne to rail against him as ‘a juggling, paltry, base fellow’ (Lilburne, 8). At first, according to the Leveller John Wildman, Rich tried to suppress the petitioning activity of the soldiers. Later, however, he changed tack, and merely strove to remove those demands made by his regiment that were ‘impertinent and extravagant’ . He spoke forcefully against the Irish expedition, especially under a strange or new commander, and urged parliament to settle the soldiers' pay arrears before giving them fresh assignments. In July he was one of three officers who acted as intermediaries between the army and lords Wharton and Saye while they drafted ‘The heads of proposals’. He was also a member of the delegation of officers that presented the ‘Heads’ to the king and spent three hours debating with him, removing some of the parts to which he objected most. Rich's participation in these and other negotiations marked him as one of the senior officers of the army, despite his youth. Such was his reputation for moderation that when the counter-revolutionary presbyterians briefly recaptured control of parliament at the end of July they appointed Rich to their reconstituted committee of public safety.

During the army's debates at Putney over the Leveller Agreement of the People Rich backed Henry Ireton in opposing a democratic franchise, reminding his listeners of the disaster that had befallen ancient Rome when it had followed the same route. He was appointed to an eighteen-man committee of officers and agitators to review the Agreement to see whether it conflicted with any of the army's previous engagements and declarations.

In January 1648, on the eve of the second civil war, Rich's regiment was one of two quartered at the Mews in Westminster to guard parliament and keep a watch on the City. It was instrumental in quelling the crypto-royalist Easter rising of London apprentices on 2 April, in which several apprentices and watermen were killed. On 1 June it was part of the army with which Fairfax defeated the royalists at Maidstone. Rich was then detached to relieve Dover. With efficient professionalism he overran Dover and then retook Walmer, Sandwich, Deal, and Sandown castles before the end of August.

In December 1648 the army resumed its debate on the Agreement of the People. While he had shown himself a conservative on the franchise question, Rich parted company with Ireton on religious toleration. A radical libertarian, he spoke out against allowing the magistrate any power over men's consciences. He felt uneasy about the legality of the king's trial, and significantly was not named to the high court of justice, but he did approve of the establishment of the republic. In February 1649 he was at last admitted to parliament, as member for Cirencester. In December 1650 he took charge of the suppression of a royalist rising in Norwich.

Rich remained an active supporter of the republican regime, working diligently to promote the army's reform programme until the downfall of Barebone's Parliament at the end of 1653. Having supported Cromwell's expulsion of the Rump, he was appointed to the commission of the admiralty and navy, and was one of a three-man committee to consider what to do about the Post Office. Concerned chiefly with national security and guarding the regime against subversion, the committee recommended that the Post Office ought to be in the hands of those ‘who have given evidence of their good affeccion’, and should principally serve the strategic needs of the navy (BL, Add. MS 22546, fol. 109). Between 1651 and 1653 Rich was one of the largest purchasers of confiscated crown land, acquiring the manors of Eltham, Kent, where he took up residence in 1653, and High Easter, Essex. The value of the two properties was well in excess of £36,000. He was also part of a consortium each member of which obtained a sixth of Newfoundland.

In 1654 Rich began to show his millenarian colours by associating with Fifth Monarchist critics of the Cromwellian regime. Before the end of the year he had been removed from the army, possibly in connection with the petition that the three colonels—Okey, Saunders, and Alured—had drawn up against the protector and circulated in the army. As part of a Fifth Monarchist deputation Rich criticized the parliament, ‘whereby power is derived from the people, whereas all power belongs to Christ’. Because the present government was ‘carnall’ and illegitimate, ‘armes may bee taken upp againste it’ (Clarke Papers, 2.244). Furious, Cromwell accused Rich of hindering tax collection, and placed him and three others under house arrest. Rich was allowed to attend to his wife, Elizabeth, who died in 1655, but was later incarcerated at Windsor Castle and then Carisbrooke on the Isle of Wight. He was not freed until March 1656. Despite the displeasure of Cromwell and the major-generals, he was then apparently elected to the parliament of that year, though barred from sitting.

When the Rump was restored in 1659 Rich was given a regiment and offered the post of English resident in the Netherlands, which he declined. When Lambert again expelled the Rump in October, Rich, who managed to hang on to his command, backed Ludlow in the latter's campaign for parliament's restoration. When his regiment was sent to Portsmouth to subdue the garrison that supported the Rump, Rich joined his forces and the whole regiment declared for parliament, and united with the garrison in marching to London. This led to the restoration of the Rump, which thanked Rich and gave him a new commission. His triumph was short lived, for by February General Monck had recalled the excluded members of the Long Parliament, and a Restoration had become all but inevitable. Dismissed from his regiment, Rich tried to make a last stand in East Anglia, but was arrested and imprisoned. He was released a few days later, and since he had not been one of the king's judges he was allowed to benefit from the Act of Indemnity.

Nevertheless the government distrusted Rich, and in the panic over Venner's plot he was once again arrested, on 10 January 1661. In the following August he was imprisoned at Portsmouth. In addition to losing his freedom he had been compelled to surrender his crown lands, which reduced his income by £800 a year. Despite his penurious imprisonment he none the less found favour with a high-born lady, Elizabeth, daughter of Robert Kerr, first earl of Ancram, whom he had been courting for several years. Writing to her brother William, the third earl of Ancram, she boasted of Rich's connection with the family of the earl of Warwick, though more important to her was ‘his nearer relation to the Lord, who has soe well accomplished him with the best qualifications, that I have reason to think myselfe unworthy of him’ (Correspondence, 2.454). The two were married some time before 13 August 1663, but had no children.

Thanks to his wife's persistent lobbying, and the intervention of Lord Falmouth, Rich obtained his release in 1665. From that point onwards he lived quietly at his ancestral manor of Stondon until the beginning of the next century, though he is known to have taught at sectarian conventicles. When James II was trying to create a parliament to repeal the penal laws he made Rich a JP for Essex, to the great disgust of Sir John Bramston, deputy lieutenant of Essex. When he died at Stondon, some time between signing his will in October 1700 and March 1702 when it was proved, he left the manor, burdened with a mortgage, to his wife during her lifetime, and to his elder son, Nathaniel, in reversion. Apart from a small bequest to ‘Mr Pagit, minister of Stondon meeting’, he appears to have had little other disposable wealth (will, PRO, PROB 11/464, fol. 54v). A scion of the Warwick family of Essex, Rich was an example of those pious puritan gentlemen who were inspired by the ideals of the English revolution.