John Marlay (MP)

He is best remembered for his heroic defence of Newcastle upon Tyne during the English Civil War, when he held the town for seven months against a besieging army on behalf of King Charles I.

John became an alehouse keeper and then a colliery owner, Hostman & Merchant Adventurer:[1] the latter occupation brought him great wealth, with an estimated income of £4500 a year, and he ran a victualling business as well.

He was prominent in local Government from the late 1630s: he was three times Mayor of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, his native town, and represented that constituency in the House of Commons from 1661 until his death.

With him were several Scots lords including Ludovic Lindsay, 16th Earl of Crawford, Robert Maxwell, 1st Earl of Nithsdale, and Lord Reed, together with their fellow Royalists Sir Nicholas Cole, 1st Baronet of Brancepeth Castle, Sir George Baker (Recorder of Newcastle), and the clergyman Dr. George Wishart, later Bishop of Edinburgh.

For the offence of having refused the terms of surrender, Marlay was proscribed, banished and driven into exile: for the next few years, he lived mainly in the Spanish Netherlands.

Marley returned to England, but the Government ignored his pleas for money, and he was clearly still regarded as a Royalist at heart, since he was briefly imprisoned in 1659 after the failure of Booth's Uprising in favour of the exiled King.

At the Restoration of Charles II Marley, despite his questionable loyalties, had little to fear from the new regime: the King's promise of mercy to his opponents in the Declaration of Breda was generously fulfilled in the Indemnity and Oblivion Act 1660.

He was allowed to resume his seat in the Commons, but after this disastrous start to his national political career he never made his mark as a politician, and for the rest of his life had to endure accusations of being a traitor.

Although he was appointed to a number of committees, he made only one recorded speech in the House in his 12 years as a member (although even this puts him slightly above the average: J.P. Kenyon notes that the great majority of MPs in the seventeenth century never once opened their mouths at Westminster).