Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jephson, William
JEPHSON, WILLIAM (1615?–1659?), colonel, born about 1615, was the eldest son of Sir John Jephson of Froyle, Hampshire, and Elizabeth, his wife, daughter and coheiress of Sir Thomas Norreys [q. v.] of Mallow, co. Cork. He was one of the representatives of Stockbridge, Hampshire, in the Long parliament, and being in Ireland at the time of the outbreak of the rebellion in Munster in November 1641, he raised a troop of horse at his own expense, and was warmly commended by the lord president, Sir Warham St. Leger, for the zeal and bravery he displayed in assisting to disperse a body of the rebels in the neighbourhood of Waterford. In March 1643 he was despatched into England by Lord Inchiquin in order to solicit assistance from parliament. On 16 May 1644 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of Portsmouth and colonel of the forces there, by commission from the Earl of Essex. He was present in August of the same year at the siege and capture of Wareham, and appears to have been the author of the condition binding the garrison to serve the parliament against the rebels in Ireland. In August 1645 he was authorised to raise recruits for the Irish service, and on his arrival in Munster in the following summer he appears to have been appointed governor of Bandon, co. Cork, and on 20 Aug. 1646 he wrote from Youghal describing the storming of Piltowne. In March 1648, a rumour having reached the parliament of Lord Inchiquin's intended defection, Jephson was appointed to confer with him. Instead, however, of converting Inchiquin, it would appear, from the fact of his name being in the list of members expelled by Colonel Pride, and also from a passage in one of Cromwell's letters (Carlyle, Letters, p. 116), that he followed that nobleman's example. He thus forfeited all further military employment under the parliament, and, though his arrears of pay were probably secured to him by the Act of Indemnity of 7 June 1654, he was obliged to appeal to Henry Cromwell in order to rescue his estate, which was in danger of being allotted to the soldiers (Lansdowne MS. 822, f. 129). On 1 Feb. 1656 he was appointed one of a committee for arranging some of the details in regard to the transplantation of the Irish, and in the same year he was elected one of the representatives of county Cork in the second protectorate parliament, and it was with him that the first definite proposal for creating Cromwell king originated. ‘Get thee gone for a mad fellow, as thou art,’ said Cromwell, clapping him on the shoulders. ‘But,’ adds Ludlow, ‘it soon appeared with what madness he was possessed, for he immediately obtained a foot company for his son, then a scholar at Oxford, and a troop of horse for himself’ (Memoirs, p. 222). In August 1657 he was appointed envoy extraordinary to the king of Sweden for the purpose of negotiating a peace between Charles Gustavus and Frederick III of Denmark. He embarked at Margate on 3 Sept., and having arranged the preliminaries of the treaty of Roskild, he was succeeded by Philip Meadows. Being ordered to Berlin, he had an interview with the Duke of Brandenburg, and returned to England in July 1658. He died soon afterwards; the exact date is not known.
[Berry's County Genealogies, ‘Hampshire;’ Woodward's History of Hampshire, iii. 252; Lewis's Topogr. Dict. s.v. ‘Mallow;’ Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1644 pp. 163, 425, 484, 1645 pp. 234, 243; G. N. Godwin's Civil War in Hampshire; Whitelocke's Memorials; Carte's Life of Ormonde, i. 426, iii. 42; Addit. MS. 27949; Lansdowne MS. 822; Sloane MS. 4769, i. ff. 37, 45; Ludlow's Memoirs; Burton's Diary, ii. 140; Carlyle's Cromwell, ii. 193, where the ‘young Jephson’ referred to is evidently Jephson himself, and not his son; Prendergast's Cromwellian Settlement, p. 160; Thurloe State Papers, vols. v. vi. vii. passim; Hist. MSS. Comm. 6th Rep. pp. 24, 94, 103, 117, 7th Rep. pp. 234, 237, 435, 437, 471, 10th Rep. pt. vi. p. 88, from which it appears that his cousin was John Pym.]