Arthur Capell, 1st Baron Capell of Hadham

Arthur Capell, 1st Baron Capell of Hadham (20 February 1608 – 9 March 1649) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1640 until 1641 when he was raised to the peerage as Baron Capell. He supported the Royalist cause in the English Civil War and was executed on the orders of parliament in 1649.

Life

Capell was the only son of Sir Henry Capell, of Rayne Hall, Essex, and his wife Theodosia Montagu, daughter of Sir Edward Montagu of Broughton, Northamptonshire. He was educated at Queens' College, Cambridge.^[1] In April 1640, he was elected Member of Parliament for Hertfordshire in the Short Parliament and was re-elected MP for Hertfordshire for the Long Parliament in November 1640.^[2] At first he supported the opposition to Charles's arbitrary government, but soon allied himself with the King's cause, on which side his sympathies were engaged. He was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron Capell of Hadham, in the County of Hertford, on the 6 August 1641.

On the outbreak of the war he was appointed lieutenant-general of Shropshire, Cheshire and North Wales, where he rendered useful military services, and later was made one of the Prince of Wales's councillors, and a commissioner at the Treaty of Uxbridge in 1645. He attended the queen in her flight to France in 1646, but disapproved of the prince's journey thither, and retired to Jersey, subsequently aiding in the king's escape to the Isle of Wight.

Capell was one of the chief Royalist leaders in the second Civil War, but met with no success, and on the 27 August 1648, together with Lord Norwich, he surrendered to Fairfax at Colchester on promise of quarter for life. This assurance was afterwards interpreted as not binding the civil authorities, and his fate for some time hung in the balance. He succeeded in escaping from the Tower, but was again captured, was condemned to death by parliament ^[3] on 8 March 1649, and was beheaded together with the Duke of Hamilton and Lord Holland the next day. Capell also wrote Daily Observations or Meditations: Divine, Morall, published with some of his letters in 1654, and reprinted, with a short life of the author, under the title Excellent Contemplations, in 1683.

Capell married Elizabeth Morrison, daughter and heir of Sir Charles Morrison of Cassiobury, Hertfordshire, who brought the estate into his family. They had four daughters and five sons, the eldest Arthur being created Earl of Essex at the Restoration.

Footnotes

1. ^ Capell, Arthur in Venn, J. & J. A., Alumni Cantabrigienses, Cambridge University Press, 10 vols, 1922–1958.
2. ^ Browne Willis Notitia parliamentaria, or, An history of the counties, cities, and boroughs in England and Wales: ... The whole extracted from mss. and printed evidences 1750 pp229-239
3. ^ Ronald Hutton, ‘Capel, Arthur, first Baron Capel of Hadham (1604–1649)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, Oct 2006 http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/4583, accessed 30 March 2007.

References

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Pages
• www.thepeerage.com