Family and Education

b. c.1634, 1st s. of Sir Robert Collingwood of Branton by 1st w. Margaret, da. of Sir John Delaval of North Dissington, Northumb. educ. Warkworth g.s.; Christ’s, Camb. adm. 6 Mar. 1650, aged 16; G. Inn 1650. unm. suc. fa. 1666.1

Offices Held

Commr. for militia, Northumb. Mar. 1660, assessment, Northumb. Aug. 1660-1, 1663-80 co. Dur. 1673-9, Berwick 1673-80, loyal and indigent officers, Northumb. 1662; j.p. Northumb. 1666-d., dep. lt. 1670-d.; asst. R. Fishery Co. 1677; commr. for carriage of coals, port of Newcastle 1679.2

Cornet (2) Life Gds. 1661, maj. 1670, lt.-col. 1672-d.; dep. gov. of Holy Island by 1667-72, gov. 1672-d.3

Biography

Collingwood’s ancestors first represented Northumberland in 1478, the senior branch of the family being recusant. His father was named to the commission of array in 1642, but three years later he was serving as a colonel in the army of Parliament. He was alleged to have raised dragoons for the King in the second Civil War, though no proceedings followed. was accused by a neighbour, nicknamed ‘Ranting Robin’, of saying in that ‘there was none now in power but the rascality’, and brought before the bar of the House. He was released on denying the charge.4

At the Restoration Collingwood’s father was made governor of Holy Island, and he himself was commissioned in the guards. He was also recommended for the order of the Royal Oak, with an income of £600 p.a. He defeated Thomas Grey at a by-election for Morpeth in 1665. A moderately active Member of the Cavalier Parliament, he did not speak and was appointed to only 36 committees, including the committee of elections and privileges in seven sessions; but he acted as teller in no less than 18 divisions. Probably a Buckingham supporter at the outset of his parliamentary career, he was second to Sir Thomas Osborne in his duel with Lord Fauconberg. He was named to the committee on the bill to prevent theft and rapine on the northern borders on 22 Nov. 1666, and to three later committees on the same subject. His first tellership was in the following month, when he succeeded in blocking the report on the regulation of printing. His was the first name on the committee for the bill to enfranchise Durham on 13 Feb. 1668. He was on both lists of the court party in 1669-71 as a dependent, during which period he was teller on 10 Dec. 1669 against continuing the debate on Sir George Carteret, against deferring consideration of the speech from the throne of 14 Feb. 1670 and for committing the subsidy bill on 16 Jan. 1671. In 1673 he was teller against dividing on a resolution against the use of the suspending power in ecclesiastical matters, and for adjourning a debate on the printing of grievances, and he was appointed to the committee of inquiry into the condition of Ireland (20 Feb. 1674). He was named as a court supporter on the Paston list, and Osborne, now Lord Treasurer Danby, first wrote him down for a pension of £300 p.a. out of the excise, later increasing it to, which he earned by his continued assiduity in division. Listed among the King’s servants in, he opposed reading an address for the recall of British subjects from the French service, only to lose on the Speaker’s casting vote; but in the autumn he succeeded in defeating an opposition motion designed to foreclose a supply debate. He carried a message to the Speaker from Col. Thomas Howard undertaking not to prosecute his quarrel with William Cavendish, Lord Cavendish, and was described in A Seasonable Argument as a ‘court janizary’. Marked ‘doubly vile’ on Shaftesbury’s list in 1677, he was appointed to the committee on the bill to prevent the growth of Popery, and acted as teller for the motion to refer the ban on Irish cattle to a committee of the whole House. On both lists of the court party in 1678, he defended its crumbling majority to the end. He was teller for adjourning the debates on war with France(ad May) and supply (25 June), against expelling Jonathan Trelawny I (21 Nov.), and for recommitting Danby’s impeachment (21 Dec.).5

One of the ‘unanimous club’ of government supporters, Collingwood was defeated by the youthful Ralph Grey at Berwick at the first general election of 1679, and his petition was never reported. Shaftesbury now marked him ‘worthy’, surely by a slip of the pen. Although named by (Sir) Stephen Fox as an excise pensioner, he reappeared in the second and third Exclusion Parliaments as MP for Morpeth. Presumably he opposed exclusion, but he left no trace on their records. He died on 3 Apr. 1681 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. His brother had sold Branton by 1689, and no later member of the family sat in Parliament.6

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: Gillian Hampson

Notes

• 1. Arch. Ael. (ser. 3), xx. 38-39.
• 2. Sel. Charters (Selden Soc. xxviii), 198; Cal. Treas. Bks. v. 1205.
• 3. HMC Portland, ii. 149; Cal. Treas. Bks. iii. 1223, 1233.
• 4. Arch. Ael. (ser. 3), xx. 37-38; CJ, vii. 701; Royalist Comps. (Surtees Soc. cxi), 171-2; Hist. Northumb. xiv. 406-7, 525; Burton, Parl. Diary, ii. 220.
• 5. Browning, Danby, i. 41, 170; CJ, viii. 667; ix. 251, 281, 343, 359, 370, 415.
• 6. Grey, vii. 324; True Prot. Merc. 3 Apr. 1681; Westminster Abbey Reg. (Harl. Soc. x), 202; Arch. Ael. (ser. 3), xx. 39-40.