External links
- "The hostel of the Invalides by Thomas Povey", (1682) (Lambeth Palace Library MS.745). I. Med Hist. 1966 January; 10(1): 1–22.
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Thomas Povey (1613/14 – in or before 1705) FRS, was a London merchant-politician. He was active in colonial affairs from the 1650s, but neutral enough in his politics to be named a member from 1660 of Charles II's Council for Foreign Plantations. [1] A powerful figure in the not-yet professionalised First English Empire, he was both "England's first colonial civil servant" [2] and at the same time "a typical office holder of the Restoration". [3] Both Samuel Pepys and William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia, railed at times against Povey's incompetence [4] and maladministration.
The son of Justinian Povey of London, he was educated at Gray's Inn. He was a cousin of Thomas Povey, Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts, and of Sir John Povey, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland.
Povey became Member of Parliament for Liskeard in 1646, Bossiney in 1659 and held under Oliver Cromwell a high post in the Office of Plantations. Following the Restoration, he was appointed in July 1660 Treasurer to the king's brother James, Duke of York, but with the Duke's affairs falling into confusion, Povey was relieved of his office, 27 July 1668, for a consideration of £2000. [5] He was First Treasurer to the Lords Commissioner for Tangier, a lucrative post in which he was followed by the conscientious Samuel Pepys, organiser of the English navy. Povey made an agreement with Pepys in 1665, touching the profits expected from that office by the 17th-century convention. Years later, in 1691, Povey brought suit against Pepys and William Hewer at the Court of Chancery with reference to a breach of the agreement; it seems to have been settled out of court. [6]
Povey family interests in the English Caribbean were extensive: Thomas's brother Richard Povey looked after the family interests in Jamaica, where he was officially Commissioner General for Provisions, while another brother, William, attended to affairs in Barbados, where he was officially Provost-General. [7]
Povey was one of the original members of the Royal Society in May 1663 and had acted in the interests of its less formalised predecessor at Gresham College. Povey proposed Samuel Pepys for membership on 8 February 1665. [8]
John Evelyn, a fellow member of the Royal Society, found Povey "a nice contriver of all elegancies and exceedingly formal". As a Fellow, Povey offered the Royal Society a dissertation in 1693 on the manufacture of brass. [9] Povey presented a report on Louis XIV's Hôtel des Invalides, [10] which Charles II emulated in the Royal Hospital Chelsea, under a Royal Warrant of 22 December 1681.
Povey had apartments in Whitehall Palace by virtue of his Crown posts. Robert Streater painted a ceiling in Povey's London house, on the west side of Lincoln's Inn Fields; there John Evelyn visited him in July 1664:
Went to see Mr Povey's elegant house in Lincolns-Inn-Fields , where the perspective in his court, painted by Streater, is indeed excellent, with the vases painted in imitation of porphy and fountains... [11]
Pepys noted with approval Povey's neatly fitted up stables, lined with washable Delft tiles. [12] Povey also inherited from his father Hounslow Priory, situated in a suburban village west of London; it was sold in 1671, and by the end of the 18th century only the chapel remained. [13] He donated to the Royal Society the portrait that he asserted was of the historian George Buchanan and by Titian. [14] In his court appointment as Master of Requests, 1675–85, he received petitions and presented them for consideration by the Privy Council.
Povey advanced the early career of his nephew William Blathwayt, and it is surely due to his influence that his son-in-law Giles Bland was sent to Virginia as customs collector. [15] Some of the paintings from Povey's collection, which hung in his London house or at Hounslow, remain in Blathwayt's house, Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire. Povey's letter books are conserved in the British Library. [16]
He married Mary, daughter of John Adderly and widow of John Agard of King's Bromley, Staffordshire. His daughter Sarah married another member of the Staffordshire gentry, Robert Leveson of Wolverhampton and had three sons, including the soldier and politician Richard Leveson. Another daughter Sarah married Giles Bland, who was executed for treason in Virginia in 1677, having played a leading part in Bacon's Rebellion the previous year.
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Samuel Pepys was an English diarist and naval administrator. He served as administrator of the Royal Navy and Member of Parliament and is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade. Pepys had no maritime experience, but he rose to be the Chief Secretary to the Admiralty under both King Charles II and King James II through patronage, diligence, and his talent for administration. His influence and reforms at the Admiralty were important in the early professionalisation of the Royal Navy.
Charles II was King of Scotland from 1649 until 1651, and King of England, Scotland and Ireland from the 1660 Restoration of the monarchy until his death in 1685.
Nathaniel Bacon was a colonist of the Virginia Colony, famous as the instigator of Bacon's Rebellion of 1676, which collapsed when Bacon died from dysentery.
Bacon's Rebellion was an armed rebellion held by Virginia settlers that took place from 1676 to 1677. It was led by Nathaniel Bacon against Colonial Governor William Berkeley, after Berkeley refused Bacon's request to drive Native Americans out of Virginia. Thousands of Virginians from all classes and races rose up in arms against Berkeley, chasing him from Jamestown and ultimately torching the settlement. The rebellion was first suppressed by a few armed merchant ships from London whose captains sided with Berkeley and the loyalists. Government forces arrived soon after and spent several years defeating pockets of resistance and reforming the colonial government to be once more under direct Crown control.
John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton was an English royalist soldier, politician and diplomat, of the Bruton branch of the Berkeley family. From 1648 he was closely associated with James, Duke of York, and rose to prominence, fortune, and fame. He and Sir George Carteret were the founders of the Province of New Jersey, a British colony in North America that would eventually become the U.S. state of New Jersey.
Samuel Hartlib or Hartlieb was a Royal Prussian born, English educational and agricultural reformer of German-Polish origin who settled, married and died in England. He was a son of George Hartlib, a Pole, and Elizabeth Langthon, a daughter of a rich English merchant. Hartlib was a noted promoter and writer in fields that included science, medicine, agriculture, politics and education. He was a contemporary of Robert Boyle, whom he knew well, and a neighbour of Samuel Pepys in Axe Yard, London, in the early 1660s. He studied briefly at the University of Cambridge upon arriving in England.
Sir William Penn was an English admiral and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1660 to 1670. He was the father of William Penn, founder of the Province of Pennsylvania.
Sir William Berkeley was a colonial governor of Virginia, and one of the Lords Proprietors of the Colony of Carolina. As governor of Virginia, he implemented policies that bred dissent among the colonists and sparked Bacon's Rebellion. A favourite of King Charles I, the king first granted him the governorship in 1642. Berkeley was unseated following the execution of Charles I, and has his governorship restored by King Charles II in 1660. Charles II also named Berkeley one of the eight Lords Proprietors of Carolina, in recognition of his loyalty to the Stuarts during the English Civil War.
William Blathwayt was an English diplomat, public official and Whig politician who sat in the English and British House of Commons between 1685 and 1710. He established the War Office as a department of the British Government and played an important part in administering the English colonies of North America.
First Families of Virginia (FFV) were those families in Colonial Virginia who were socially prominent and wealthy, but not necessarily the earliest settlers. They descended from English colonists who primarily settled at Jamestown, Williamsburg, the Northern Neck and along the James River and other navigable waters in Virginia during the 17th century. These elite families generally married within their social class for many generations and, as a result, most surnames of First Families date to the colonial period.
Gibbon's Tennis Court was a building off Vere Street and Clare Market, near Lincoln's Inn Fields in London, England. Originally built as a real tennis court, it was used as a playhouse from 1660 to 1663, shortly after the English Restoration. As a theatre, it has been variously called the "Theatre Royal, Vere Street", the "Vere Street Theatre", or simply "The Theatre". It was the first permanent home for Thomas Killigrew's King's Company and was the stage for some of the earliest appearances by professional actresses.
Enoch Seeman the Younger was a painter, active in England in the first half of the eighteenth century. He was born into a family of painters in Danzig, around 1689.
Richard Bennett was an English planter and Governor of the Colony of Virginia, serving 1652–1655. He had first come to the colony in 1629 to represent his uncle Edward Bennett's business interests, managing his plantation known as Bennett's Welcome in Warrascoyack.
London was a 76-gun second-rate ship of the line in the Navy of the Commonwealth of England, originally built at Chatham Dockyard by shipwright John Taylor, and launched in June 1656. She gained fame as one of the ships that escorted Charles II from Holland back to England during the English Restoration, carrying Charles' younger brother James Duke of York, and commanded by Captain John Lawson.
Robert Streater (1621–1679), was an English landscape, history, still-life and portrait artist, architectural painter, and etcher. He was Serjeant Painter to King Charles II, and decorated the ceiling of Christopher Wren's Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford.
Sir Martin Noell was an eminent London merchant, engaged in an extensive colonial trade that included the slave trade. He thrived under the Commonwealth as a tax farmer, taking up farms of the excise or customs and advancing other sums, secure in the knowledge that he would get his money back. At the Restoration of Charles II (1660) Noell was one of the four eminent London merchants— the others being Thomas Povey, Sir Nicholas Crispe and Sir Andrew Riccard— who took their seats among the courtiers on the Council for Plantations, whose restrictions on colonial trade in the interests of a mercantilist policy were resisted from the first by Virginia planters. He was knighted in 1662.
Sir John Povey (1621–1679) was an English-born judge who had a highly successful career in Ireland, holding office as Baron of the Court of Exchequer (Ireland) and subsequently as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland during the years 1673–9.
Bullen Reymes was an English courtier, diplomat and politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1660 to 1672. He fought in the Royalist army in the English Civil War.
Sir Henry Chicheley was a lieutenant governor of Virginia Colony who also served as Acting Governor during multiple periods in the aftermath of Bacon's Rebellion. Chicheley served in his leadership post during a period of sociopolitical turmoil and change, and, later in his career, was increasingly troubled by England's growing aggression and control over the colony.
