POLITICAL HISTORY only to known recusants but to such as were suspected of disaffection in religion. 1 These recusants were now powerless, and such gentry and yeomen as were Royalist were overawed by the other side. The new Earl of Nottingham, Charles Howard the younger, had been made lord lieutenant on the death of the Lord Admiral in 1624. The Long Parliament named him again as lord lieutenant on February 28, 1642, when they took the executive power into their own hands. His three deputy lieutenants were Sir Poynings More, Sir Robert Parkhurst, member for Guildford, and Nicholas Stoughton. He summoned them to a meeting on August 12, 1642, 'to settle the country in a posture of arms.' a It was just before the king's standard was raised at Notting- ham, and there was no doubt that the arms were not for the king's service. Already in that month before the king's standard was raised, a Mr. Quennell of Lythe Hill, Haslemere, had got a small Royalist band together. They were overpowered and disarmed by the county authori- ties. Of his seventy-two men only twenty-two were fully armed, and five were not armed at all, a comment on the state of preparation of the militia to which these men potentially belonged. 3 The Surrey trainbands had shown their feelings in May, 1 640, when they were called out on the occasion of the riots in Southwark and Lambeth against Laud, attacked as ' the breaker ' of the Short Parliament, and had displayed marked sympathy for the rioters. Nottingham died on October 3, and two days later Parliament nominated the Earl of Northumberland as lord lieutenant. Northumberland was too great and busy a man to carry on the county affairs personally. He named Sir Poynings More a deputy lieutenant on October 15,* but Sir Richard Onslow became the most prominent of his subordinates. He was zealous in the cause and was one of the county members. He raised a regiment in the county for the Parliament, mostly officered by local gentlemen, and commanded it till the passing of the Self-Denying Ordinance. 5 He was also a deputy lieutenant. According to George Wither, his opponent, Sir Richard was supreme head in the county in all causes and over all persons civil and ecclesiastical. 6 This was an exaggeration ; but Onslow's power was undoubtedly great, and as he was at least honest and moderate might have been in worse hands. The members elected in the county to the Long Parliament were nearly all found on the Parliamentary side when civil war began. To a certain extent we can gauge the Royalist or Parliamentary sympathies of various counties by the action of their representatives. The majority continued to sit at Westminster or otherwise gave active support to the Parliamentary side. Some attended the king's Parliament at Oxford, and were presently ' disabled ' by the Parliament at Westminster for so doing, and other members were elected in their room. 7 Constitutional 1 Loseley MSS. October 8, 1625, v. pt. 2, 66. * Ibid, date cited, vi. 133. 3 Ibid. August, 1642, vi. 174. * Ibid. vi. 141. 6 Account of the Onslow family by Arthur Onslow the Speaker : Onslow Papers, Hist. MSS. Comm. 14, 9, p. 477. 6 Wither, J ' ustiaarius Juitificatui. 7 See Appendix, Members for the County of Surrey. 405
