Family and Education

b. 1632, 1st s. of James Deane of Deanland, Basing, Hants by his 2nd w. Frances, da. of Thomas Baynard of Lackham, Wilts.  educ. M. Temple 1650.  m. (1) Margaret, da. of Thomas Garrard of Lambourne, Berks.; (2) bef. 1665, Magdalene, da. and h. of John Stroughill of Barkham, Berks., 2s. 7da. (1 d.v.p.).  suc. fa. 1652.1

Offices Held

Lt. of ft. Sir William Killigrew’s regt. 1662.

Freeman, Portsmouth 1683.2

Biography

Deane had petitioned unsuccessfully in 1689 for a customs office, claiming that he had served the crown in a military capacity for nearly 50 years, that under the Commonwealth he had lost an estate worth £10,000, and that James II had turned him out of ‘all he had’ for not agreeing to the repeal of the Penal Laws and Test Act. Listed as a Tory in March 1690 by Lord Carmarthen (Sir Thomas Osborne†), he obtained the recommendation of Lord Nottingham (Daniel Finch†) in June of that year for the office of housekeeper of the excise, but although Nottingham represented him to the King as one ‘who has heretofore been a great sufferer, and is now very zealous in your service’, this indirect approach proved no more successful, and in March 1691 Lord Pembroke (Hon. Thomas Herbert†) requested Nottingham once more to ‘remember Colonel Deane’. None the less, Deane had been marked by Carmarthen on a list of December 1690 possibly in connexion with an attack on the Marquess in the House and in April 1691 he was classed as a Court supporter by Robert Harley*. So acute had Deane’s financial embarrassments become, however, that either during the winter of 1692–3 or later in 1693 he accepted a bribe of a mere £50 to oppose attempts in the Commons to put an end to the East India Company’s monopoly (see COOKE, Sir Thomas). On 19 Jan. 1693 a complaint of breach of privilege was brought on his behalf by Henry Goldwell, another Member bribed to defend the East India Company, against one Holt, a solicitor, who had ‘abused’ him in the lobby that morning. Not until March 1694 did Deane at last receive some compensation from the crown: the sum of £470 was paid him as ‘royal bounty’.3

In Parliament Deane was not very active. On 27 Nov. 1693, he was granted ten days’ leave of absence. He was named to two drafting committees in the final session of this Parliament: on 4 Dec. 1694 for bills to improve the condition of prisons, and on 21 Dec. to suppress hawkers and pedlars in towns, a bill he presented the following day. Any further involvement in the work of the House was cut short by Deane’s death from smallpox at Westminster on 31 Dec. 1694, from whence his body was carried for burial at Tidcombe. Soon afterwards his younger surviving son, a clergyman, took ship for the Indies. The elder son, having been settled with the Oxenwood estate at his marriage in 1683, secured in 1701 a private Act for its sale, worth then no more than £150 p.a., together with other land in Tidcombe and Shalbourne. For a further five years Deane’s widow enjoyed the profits from land leased in Chute, Wiltshire, but by 1704 she and a daughter were forced to sell Deanland under another Act.4

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Authors: D. W. Hayton / Henry Lancaster

Notes

• 1. Vis. Hants (Harl. Soc. lxiv), 199; Vis. Berks. (Harl. Soc. lvi), 291; M. B. Deane, Bk. of Dene, 20; Coll. Top. et Gen. vii. 188–9; PCC 289 Brent.
• 2. R. East, Portsmouth Recs. 366–7.
• 3. CSP Dom. 1689–90, p. 181; 1690–1, p. 300; HMC Finch, ii. 289, 291; CJ, xi. 326; Luttrell Diary, 373; Cal. Treas. Pprs. 1557–1696, p. 341; Cal. Treas. Bks. x. 552; Debates and Procs. 1694–5, p. 38.
• 4. Add. 46527, f. 39; Wilts. RO, 212B/1870; Deane, 21.