England's Don Quixote.

Sir Samuel Luke of Cople (1603 - 1670). Scoutmaster General to the Earl of Essex, and England's Don Quixote.

He was in LOGIC a great critic,

Profoundly skill'd in analytic;

He could distinguish, and divide

A hair 'twixt south, and south-west side:

On either which he would dispute,

Confute, change hands, and still confute,

He'd undertake to prove, by force

Of argument, a man's no horse;

He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl,

And that a lord may be an owl,

A calf an alderman, a goose a justice

And rooks Committee-men and Trustees.

He'd run in debt by disputation,

And pay with ratiocination.

Samuel Butler’s words in the first canto of Hudibras describe the protagonist as a pernickety argumentative and ever so ridiculous character. It is of course a fiction, and a grave disservice to the man Butler based his poem on - Sir Samuel Luke of Woodend, Cople (1603 - 1670). What made the caricature worse was Butler’s betrayal of a former benefactor. Hudibras was a cruel repudiation of Butler’s own Civil War career. As Luke’s secretary in the First Civil War, Butler had served Parliament’s cause dutifully.

Luke was born into a prominent Buckinghamshire family. His father Oliver was a Member of Parliament, and influential Presbyterian, and the family owned a manor near Cople. He was famously short - Royalist newsbooks would taunt him as a dwarf - but this seemingly did not stop him progressing in society. He married in 1624, and had young numerous children by the outbreak of the Civil War. In 1642, he was MP for Bedford and a prominent opponent of the King. He raised a troop of Horse and fought in Fielding’s Regiment at Edgehill, with some distinction.

It was away from the field of battle that Luke would make his greatest contribution to Parliament’s cause. In January 1643, he was appointed Scoutmaster General to the Earl of Essex, and voted funds to create a special group of scouts to feed the army’s intelligence efforts. Luke left a wonderful historical record of his intelligence efforts. His letter-book and journal are filled with the work of his scouts, the news they brought, and the shadow war being fought by agents and spies on both sides. He was present at Chalgrove Field when John Hampden received a mortal wound, and later, followed the Earl of Essex to the relief of Gloucester and First Battle of Newbury.

In 1644, he was made Governor of Newport Pagnell - a vital roundhead outpost - and worked closely with Cromwell and the Eastern Association. One luminary who served under him in the garrison there, was Oliver Cromwell’s eldest son (also named Oliver who died there in 1644). Another was John Bunyan, of Pilgrim's Progress fame. Far from being the radical evangelist, Bunyan was renowned in the garrison as a foul-mouthed trouble maker.

Luke was an important element of the Parliamentry war machine, and his intelligence was vital in the build up to the Battle of Naesby (1645). Like Cromwell, and a few others, he initially had his appointment prolonged - despite the Self Denying Ordinance barring politicians from military command. However, the creation of the New Model Army, and the growing power of the Independent faction led to his resignation and he retired to Cople in the summer of 1645.

Much of the next two years was spent petitioning Parliament for costs incurred as governor in Newport. At the outbreak of the Second Civil War, he supported the Presbyterian faction but took no active role - he knew Cromwell’s ability too well to stand against him. Luke was arrested and excluded from Parliament in Prides Purge, but was swiftly released.

He lived quietly until the Restoration, when he was again elected for Bedford, but his later years were undistinguished nationally. Butler, his secretary during the 43-45 period, published his attack in 1662 and it became fantastically popular. Not everyone liked it; Samuel Pepys tried twice to read the poem but found nothing humorous in it. Hudibras was a quite vindictive and bitter character assassination - and successful. Butler transformed one of Parliament’s most pragmatic, intelligent, and successful officers into England’s Don Quixote. Luke’s reputation has never quite been redeemed. Despite the wealth of information he left us, beyond historians of the period, Luke is barely mentioned now in connection with the Civil War.

What Samuel Luke himself thought of Butler’s poem he did not record. Perhaps, with the razor sharp intelligence he shows in his war letters, he understood the-times-they-were-a-changin’. He, like many old Roundheads faced with the restoration, retired to his estates and from public life, living quietly until his death in 1670.

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