He had two sisters, Essex (1585-1658) and Lettice (1587-1619) and a younger brother Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland (1590–1649). He also had a number of half brothers and sisters, including Penelope (1592-?), Isabella, Mountjoy Blount, 1st Earl of Newport (1597-1666), and Charles (1605-1627). Almost certainly fathered by Charles Mountjoy, these children were brought up within the Rich family and appear in its pedigree, with the exception of Mountjoy, who was legitimised after his father's death.[3]
Robert Rich married three times, first in February 1605 to Frances Hatton (1590–1623) Lady of the Manor of Hunningham,[1] daughter and heiress of Sir William Hatton (1560–1597)[4] Lord of the Manor of Hunningham,[1] formerly "Newport",[5] the granddaughter of Francis Gawdy. Their children included Anne (1604–1642), Robert (1611–1659), Lucy (1615–after 1635), Frances (1621–1692) and Charles (1623?–1673). Sometime before January 1626, he married Susan Rowe (1582–1646), a daughter of Sir Henry Rowe, Lord Mayor of London, and widow of William Holliday (c.1565–1624), Alderman of London, a wealthy London merchant and chairman of the East India Company. In March 1646, he made his third and last marriage to Eleanor Wortley (died 1667); neither of these produced children.[6]
Career
Captain John Smith's 1624 map of Bermuda, showing Warwick Parish (3) and contemporary fortifications, including at Castle Harbour (originally "Southampton Port") where the ship Warwick was lost in 1619
He succeeded to his father's title as Earl of Warwick in 1619. Early developing interest in colonial ventures, he joined the Guinea, New England, and Virginia companies, as well as the Virginia Company's offspring, the Somers Isles Company (the Somers Isles, or Bermuda, was at first the more secure of the Virginia Company's two settlements, being impossible to attack overland and almost impregnable against attack from the ocean due to its encircling reef, and was attractive as a base of operations for Warwick's privateers, though his ship the Warwick was lost at Castle Harbour in November 1619).[7][8]
By the summer of 1640 Warwick had emerged as the centre of the resistance to Charles I. [14] This was the result of decades of resisting actions including opposing Charles I's compulsory loans during the 1620s and in January 1637 – 12 years into Charles I’s personal rule – personally presenting the case for a new parliament to the king. [15]
In September 1640, Warwick signed the Petition of Twelve to Charles I, asking the king to summon another parliament.[16]
Over the early part of the new parliament, Warwick led one wing of the opposition to Charles I. The Warwick House group pushed for further reform than the more conciliatory Bedford House group, and in particular urged the need for the execution of the Earl of Stratford. [15]
Civil War period
In 1642, following the dismissal of the Earl of Northumberland as Lord High Admiral, Warwick was appointed commander of the fleet by Parliament.[17] In 1643, he was appointed head of a commission for the government of the colonies, which the next year incorporated Providence Plantations, afterwards Rhode Island, and in this capacity, he exerted himself to secure religious liberty.[11]
As commander of the fleet, in 1648, Warwick retook the 'Castles of the Downs' (at Walmer, Deal, and Sandown) for Parliament, and became Deal Castle's captain 1648–53.[18] The subject was criticized for not recapturing the royalist fleet in 1648 when Prince Rupert suffered mutiny and disarray in Hellevoetsluis.[19] However, he was dismissed from office on the abolition of the House of Lords in 1649. He retired from national public life, but was intimately associated with the Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, whose daughter Francis married his grandson and heir, also Robert Rich, in 1657 (the marriage was a short one as the grandson died the following year).[11]
References
^ abcHunningham, in A History of the County of Warwick: Vol. 6, Knightlow Hundred, ed. L F Salzman (London, 1951), pp. 117–120.
^Bojakowski, Katie (2014). "The Wreck of the Warwick, Bermuda 1619". tDAR (the Digital Archaeological Record). Center for Digital Antiquity, a collaborative organization and university Center at Arizona State University. Retrieved 30 May 2022.
^Inglis, Doug (5 June 2012). "1619: Unrecoverably lost in Castle Harbour". Warwick, 1619: Shipwreck Excavation. The Warwick Excavation is a National Museum of Bermuda (NMB) project in partnership with Texas A&M and the Institute of Nautical Archaeology (INA), in association with The Global Exploration and Oceanographic Society (G-EOS) and Department of Archaeology at the University of Southampton. Retrieved 30 May 2022.
^Richard J Blakemore and Elaine Murphy. (2018). The British Civil Wars at Sea, 1638-1653. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: The Boydell Press. pp. 149–152; ISBN9781783272297.
