Family and Education

educ. appr. Ipswich. m. 1587, Elizabeth Cook of Ipswich, 1s.1 bur. 23 Oct. 1640.2

Offices Held

Freeman, Ipswich 1591,3 chamberlain 1606-7, treas. and gov. of Christ’s hosp. 1610-11, common councilman by 1613-d., coroner 1613-39.4

Biography

Day, a dyer by trade,5 was made free of Ipswich by service to one Robert Knapp in 1591. He first came to prominence in the municipal affairs of Ipswich at Michaelmas 1602, when he demanded that one of the town’s bailiffs should fulfil his promise to hold a free election for the office of town clerk.6 He did not press the point, however, and subsequently made his peace with the corporation. Elected chamberlain in 1606, on 27 Apr. 1607 he was ‘ordered to travel to London at the charges of the town to cause the Court of Exchequer to be moved about the business now depending in that court’.7 Although never elected a portman (alderman), he was ranked first among the common councilmen by 1619.8

In 1622 the corporation sent Day to London again, this time about the town preacher, Samuel Ward, who had been prohibited from preaching.9 Two years later, however, he was summoned before the town’s subsidy commissioners, presumably for having failed to pay his assessment.10 During the 1625 plague epidemic he supervised the care of infected houses.11 The following year he rode to the lord lieutenant ‘about keeping of the town’s trained soldiers from going to Landguard’ for coastal defence duties, and spent £24 4s. from municipal funds on a pipe of sack for Archbishop Abbot.12 On 2 Feb. 1627 he appeared before the Privy Council, having been summoned along with one of the borough’s bailiffs, presumably as a Loan refuser.13 Day may have had an interest in an Ipswich privateer, the Heart’s Desire, as in 1628 the ship was commanded by his son Samuel, who had been made free of Ipswich by patrimony the year before.14

Day was elected for Ipswich in 1628, but his only committee in the first session, on 26 May, was to consider the bill against the deceitful making of poldavies, doubtless in the interests of the local sailcloth industry.15 Named in the second session, with Ipswich’s other MP, William Cage, to examine the information of John Rolle* (3 Feb. 1629), Day left no further trace on the parliamentary records.16 He stood for re-election in the spring of 1640, but was defeated by John Gurdon†.17 He died intestate later that year, and was buried on 23 Oct. at St. Lawrence, Ipswich, administration of his estate being granted to his widow on 6 November.18 No other member of the family entered Parliament.

Ref Volumes: 1604-1629

Author: John. P. Ferris

Notes

• 1. Soc. Gen. Boyd’s mar. index, Suff. 1538-1600; Freemen of Bor. of Ipswich comp. M. McCurrach, i. unpag.
• 2. Soc. Gen. St. Lawrence Ipswich par. reg.
• 3. Freemen of the Bor. of Ipswich, i. unpag.
• 4. N. Bacon, Annalls of Ipswche ed. W.H. Richardson, 412, 426, 445, 452, 517, 522; R. Canning, Acct. of Gifts and Legacies That Have Been Given and Bequeathed to Charitable Uses in Town of Ipswich (1819), p. 116.
• 5. APC, 1627, p. 48.
• 6. Freemen of Bor. of Ipswich, i. unpag; Bacon, 412.
• 7. Suff. RO (Ipswich), C/4/3/1/3, ff. 127v, 213v.
• 8. Suff. RO (Ipswich), C/2/2/3/2, f. 140.
• 9. Ipswich Bor. Archives comp. D. Allen (Suff. Rec. Soc. liii), 580; Bacon, 479.
• 10. Ipswich Bor. Archives, 581.
• 11. HMC 9th Rep. pt. 1, p. 254.
• 12. Suff. RO (Ipswich), C/2/2/3/2, f. 329v.
• 13. APC, 1627, p. 48.
• 14. CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 306; Freemen of Bor. of Ipswich, i. unpag.
• 15. CD 1628, iii. 610.
• 16. CJ, i. 926a.
• 17. Bacon, 522.
• 18. Suff. RO (Ipswich), IC/A6/18/23.