George Downing

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 1556

Notes:

B.A. from Queen's College, Cambridge, 1573-74. M.A. from Corpus Christi, 1577. Master of Ipswich Grammar School, 1589-1610.

Family/Spouse: (Unknown) Bellamy. (Unknown) died before 1 Dec 1610; was buried on 1 Dec 1610 in St. Lawrence, Ipswich, Suffolk, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate death: 1659, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland
• Alternate death: Abt 1660, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland
• Alternate death: Aft 1660, Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland

Notes:

A lawyer of the Inner Temple, in London. He came to New England in 1638 with his second wife, Lucy, and settled at Salem, but returned to England several times and ultimately died in Scotland.

A son by his second wife, Sir George Downing, held various positions under Cromwell: minister to Holland, secretary to the Treasury, and Scout Master General of the Parliamentary army.

From Abandoning America (citation details below):

Emmanuel Downing was a lawyer of Inner Temple, London. He married Lucy, a sister of John Winthrop, in 1622. He had grown up in Ipswich and attended Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He worked in Dublin for a time but came back to London in 1626. He was an adventurer in the Massachusetts Bay Company from the start, and acted as the Company's attorney in England. He also looked after John Winthrop's business interests after Winthrop left for New England in 1630. Some of Downing's children -– James, Mary and Susan -– preceded him to New England, c. 1633. Emmanuel and Lucy Downing emigrated in 1638, with their son George Downing, at Winthrop's encouragement.

Downing, an investor and entrepreneur as well as a lawyer, settled in Salem, Massachusetts. He was admitted to the church on 4 November 1638, and as a freeman on 14 March 1638/9. He became recorder of deeds for Salem on 7 October 1640, and kept that office into the 1650s. He was active in town government and often acted as a representative at the Massachusetts General Court. Before Hugh Peter, Thomas Weld and William Hibbins returned to England as agents for Massachusetts in 1641, Downing briefed them on legal matters relating to the colony's charter.

Downing seems to have made three visits to England before he returned home for good in 1654. He was in England on business, c. October 1642 to c. June 1643. On this occasion he acted as an attorney for Adam Winthrop, and aided John Winthrop Jr (with Hugh Peter and Thomas Weld) to promote investment in the Saugus ironworks. Downing returned to New England but set sail for England again in December 1644. On 25 February 1644/5 he reported his arrival in London. The Massachusetts General Court had directed him to gather evidence against Thomas Morton. He also handled business for the Saugus ironworks, including the recruitment of Richard Leader as manager. Downing was associated with a scheme promoted by Hugh Peter and Thomas Weld, to send poor children from England to New England. Downing fell under suspicion (with Nehemiah Bourne) of pocketing some of the money raised by Peter and Weld. He sailed for New England in May 1645 and was back there by August. With Bourne, Thomas Fowle and Robert Sedgwick, Downing led a petition against laws restricting the presence of strangers and prohibiting anabaptists, arguing that these colonial policies were deeply unpopular among the godly in England. His son George Downing left New England for good in 1645. Before long, Downing visited England for a third time: he was there in May 1647, but came back to Boston by June 1648. Downing was keenly aware of temptations to return to England: he had heard John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton might go; he knew Hugh Peter was urging John Winthrop Jr to take up opportunities back home.

Emmanuel Downing's fourth journey to England was his last. He received a letter from Hugh Peter in the winter of 1652/3, asking him to come to England, with his wife Lucy. He suspected 'George would have us retorne, and putts Mr Peters upon the invitation'. On 25 September 1654, Emmanuel Downing declared he intended to travel back to England with Robert Sedgwick within two months. He sailed that winter. Stephen Winthrop reported, 11 March 1654/5, that Downing had recently arrived in London. By this time George Downing's star was rising as scoutmaster-general in Scotland. Emmanuel Downing joined him there and quickly became clerk to the new Council of Scotland, established in May 1655 (of which Samuel Desborough was also a member). Later, Downing welcomed Fitz John Winthrop to Scotland. His wife Lucy and daughter Martha joined him in Edinburgh by 1658. Emmanuel Downing died in Edinburgh in 1659. Lucy Downing lived on in England until her death in 1679, in straitened circumstances -- reliant on her son George, who was notoriously rich and notoriously mean.

Emanuel married Anne Ware on 7 Jun 1614. Anne (daughter of James Ware and Mary Brydon) died before 1622. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Emanuel married Lucy Winthrop on 10 Apr 1622 in Groton, Suffolk, England. Lucy (daughter of Adam Winthrop and Anne Browne) was born on 9 Jan 1600 in Groton, Suffolk, England; died on 19 Apr 1679 in Westminster, Middlesex, England. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: Abt 1620

Notes:

Emigrated on the Mary and Jane in May 1633, in the care of Governor William Coddington. [Hale, House and Related Families]

Mary married Anthony Stoddard about 1639. Anthony was born about 1614; died on 16 Mar 1687 in Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: 1623

Notes:

1st Baronet Downing. "A graduate of the first class of Harvard (1642), he returned to England in 1645 and became a member of Cromwell's staff; he switched allegiance to the monarchy in 1659-60 and became a baronet in 1663 and Secretary of the Treasury in 1666. His role in the growth of the British navy was substantial, though the opinion of his contemporaries of his character was not high. He was, as is often said, 'a serviceable man.'" [Myrtle Stevens Hyde, citation details below.]

Note: While two streets in New York and one in London are named after him, Downing College in Cambridge is named after his grandson Sir George Downing (1685-1749), 3rd Baronet.

From Wikipedia:

Sir George Downing [...] was an Anglo-Irish preacher, soldier, statesman, diplomat, turncoat and spy, after whom Downing Street in London is named. As Treasury Secretary he is credited with instituting major reforms in public finance. His influence was substantial on the passage and substance of the mercantilist Navigation Acts. The Acts strengthened English commercial and naval power, contributing to the security of the English state and its ability to project its power abroad.

More than any other man he was responsible for arranging the acquisition of New York from the Dutch, and is remembered there in the name of two other streets named after him in New York, one in Greenwich Village and one in Brooklyn.

From Abandoning America:

George Downing, son of Lucy and Emmanuel Downing, emigrated with his parents in 1638 and settled at Salem, Massachusetts. He entered Harvard in 1640 and graduated BA in 1642. John Winthrop listed him as one of the nine 'young men of good hope' in the first graduating class, with Benjamin Woodbridge, William Hubbard, Henry Saltonstall, John Bulkeley, John Wilson Jr, Nathaniel Brewster, Samuel Bellingham and Tobias Barnard. On 27 December 1643 he was appointed to read to junior pupils at a salary of £4 a year. Downing and his fellow students found their prospects in New England looked dim: seven out of the nine who graduated in 1642 eventually found their way back to England.

Downing returned to England via Barbados in 1645, travelling as a ship's chaplain. His mother Lucy wrote that his determination to leave sprang from 'his little expectation, and fears of supply here'. In 1646 Downing became a chaplain to Colonel John Okey's regiment in the New Model Army. The presbyterian polemicist Thomas Edwards singled him out for attention in Gangraena, as a 'young Peters' (Hugh Peter). Downing went north to Newcastle upon Tyne in 1648 as chaplain to the regiment of Sir Arthur Hesilrige, whose commander was Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell appointed Downing as scoutmaster-general (intelligence-gatherer) of the English forces in Scotland, 1 November 1649, at a salary of £365 a year. Downing served as an MP in all the parliaments of the Protectorate: for Edinburgh in 1654, for Carlisle in 1656 and 1659. Cromwell commissioned Downing to travel to the continent to lodge complaints from England about the massacre of protestants in Piedmont in April 1655. In 1657 he became Cromwell's envoy to The Hague. In the aftermath of Anglo-Dutch hostilities earlier in the 1650s, Downing played a pivotal role in shaping a protestant consensus against the powers of Catholic Europe. He also learned a great deal about Dutch trading practices and economic strategy, which he later brought to bear in England.

Downing turned Royalist at the Restoration. He made an approach to Charles II while the king was still in exile, declaring that his father had taken him to New England where he had 'sucked in principles that since his reason had made him see were erroneous'. He was knighted in 1660 and in 1662 delivered his former commander, the regicide John Okey, to the scaffold. Downing secured many high offices, and played a vital role in the fortunes of crown and country through his reform of the Treasury. Downing Street, the home of the British Prime Minister, takes its name from him.

George married Frances Howard in 1654. Frances (daughter of William Howard and Mary Eure) died on 10 Jul 1683. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Ann married Simon Bradstreet, Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony on 16 Jun 1676 in Salem, Essex, Massachusetts. Simon (son of Rev. Simon Bradstreet and Margaret) was born before 18 Mar 1604; was christened on 18 Mar 1604 in Horbling, Lincolnshire, England; died on 27 Mar 1697 in Salem, Essex, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]

Other Events and Attributes:

• Alternate birth: 27 Sep 1643, Boston, Suffolk, Massachusetts

Notes:

From Hale, House and Related Families by Donald Lines Jacobus and Edgar Francis Waterman (citation details below)::

He went to school in Cambridge to the famous Master Corlet. He was graduated at Harvard College in 1662, and was chosen Tutor of the College, 25 Nov. 1666. He is the first Librarian of the College on record. His health becoming impaired by too close application to his studies, he went to Barbados as Chaplain to Governor Serle. There he preached to the Dissenters.

In 1669 he was planning a voyage to England and was to embark on the following day, when a request from the church in Northampton, Mass., caused him to change his plans and to go thither. On 4 Mar. 1669/70, the town voted him £100 annually if he settled with them, but he did not formally accept tor nearly two years, and was ordained 11 Sept. 1672. Soon after coming to Northampton, he married the young widow of Rev. Eleazer Mather, his predecessor in the pastorate.

He was skilled in the learned languages and had a great reputation as a scholar. As a minister he was remarkably successful in gaining converts and in retaining the respect of his congregation. He was above the average in height, with good features and a venerable presence. He had a strong constitution, was seldom ill, and was a constant preacher for sixty years.

A considerable number of his writings were published. The Doctrine of Instituted Churches in 1700 maintains that the Lord's table should be ac cessible to all persons who are not immoral. This brought him into conflict with the conservative Mathers, and as late as 1709 the subject was discussed in pamphleted sermons on either side of the controversy. The subject was ably treated by Stoddard, and his influence on the churches of Connecticut and of the river towns of central Massachusetts is seen in their adoption of the "Half-Way Covenant," which permitted the baptism of children of baptized but "unconverted" parents who were not full church members.

In his old age, his grandson Jonathan Edwards became his colleague, and eventually his successor in the pastorate of the Northampton church. Oddly enough, it was the turning of Edwards from his grandfather's liberal doctrine towards a stricter Calvinsim which caused the Northampton church to dismiss him.

Solomon married Esther Warham on 8 Mar 1670. Esther (daughter of Rev. John Warham and Jane) was born before 8 Dec 1644; was christened on 8 Dec 1644 in Windsor, Hartford, Connecticut; died on 10 Feb 1736 in Northampton, Hampshire, Massachusetts; was buried in Bridge Street Cemetery, Northampton, Hampshire, Massachusetts. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]