Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Long, Robert (d.1673)
LONG, Sir ROBERT (d. 1673), auditor of the exchequer, was youngest son of Sir Walter Long of Wraxhall and Draycot in Wiltshire, by his second wife, Catherine, daughter of Sir John Thynne of Longleat in the same county. He was elected member of parliament for Devizes in 1625, for Midhurst, Sussex, in 1640, and for Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, in 1661. In 1643 he became temporarily writer of the tallies in the exchequer; he also held the office of surveyor of the queen's lands. In 1644 Long became secretary of the newly created council for the Prince of Wales. On 4 Dec. 1645 a warrant was issued authorising payment to him of ecclesiastical tenths for the king's use. He was suspected, however, of treacherous dealings with the Earl of Essex, and passed to London, and thence to France. He was at Paris on 4 May 1646, and made a complaint of the treatment he had received to the queen. Henrietta Maria liked Long, and he became one of her party as opposed to that of Hyde. She sent him back to the prince, with whom he took part in the expedition to the Thames of 1648, and he and John Colepeper [q. v.] were blamed for its ill success. At the Hague and Amsterdam in November 1648 the story was repeated that Long had been bribed. He continued, however, in favour with the prince, and on 14 May 1649 he was placed by Charles on his privy council. He was at Brussels in July, and at Paris in September of that year. Hyde, however, thought in February 1650 that Long's reign was drawing to an end. In 1650 he was with Charles in Jersey.
Long was relied on by the queen to carry out Colepeper's policy in Scotland in 1650, and to keep Charles firm in the presbyterian alliance. But Argyll seems to have suspected him, and he was released from his attendance on the prince, and arrived in Amsterdam in 1651. While there he tried by a misuse of Charles's authority to keep Hyde from going to Paris. In the management of Charles's money matters, which were largely in his hands, he gained a reputation for avarice. In the early part of 1652 Colonel Wogan revived the stories of Long's treachery in 1646, and Long not only challenged Wogan to fight, but made a very elaborate defence in writing. In 1653 he incited Sir Richard Grenville to bring an absurd charge against Hyde of having had an interview with Cromwell in London, which was easily disproved, as was another charge of neglect of duty. Long was accordingly dismissed from his secretaryship of the king's council, but in 1654, after asking Hyde's pardon, he was restored to favour. The circumstance that his estate was sequestrated by the parliament in 1651 (cf. Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. App. p. 122) seems to prove that the charges against him were untrue. In June 1654 he was in London.
At the Restoration Long was made a baronet (1 Sept. 1660); from 8 Sept. 1660 till 1667 he was chancellor of the exchequer; on 21 May 1662 he was made auditor of the exchequer. He continued his friendship with the queen-dowager, for whom from 1661 he again acted as surveyor, his appointment being confirmed on 19 June 1671 (cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1660-1, p. 478, and Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. pt. iv. p. 28). On 22 Sept. 1670 Charles II granted him a long lease of the Great Park, Great Park Meadow, and a house called Worcester House, all at Nonsuch, Surrey. He seems to have lived there before (cf. Pepys, Diary, iii. 129, 173). On 3 July 1672 he became a privy councillor. Long died unmarried on 13 July 1673, and was buried in Westminster Abbey. He left by his will, dated 27 March, and proved 20 Dec. 1673, 300l. to Sir Richard Mason, the husband of his niece, Anna Margaretta, to be expended for the benefit of his soul, a bequest that roused a suspicion that he was secretly a Roman catholic. His large property passed to his nephew, James (1617-1692) [q. v.], to whom the baronetcy also descended by virtue of the limitation in the patent. A portrait of Long, by Sir Peter Lely, is in possession of Earl Brownlow. Letters from Long may be found in British Museum Additional MSS. 15858, 18982, 21427, and 30305. A series of reports of proceedings in the House of Lords, State Papers, &c., forming Additional MSS. 27323-7, is ascribed to him, but was probably founded on his collections.
[Clarendon's Hist. of the Rebellion, Oxford ed., vols. iv. v.; Cal. of Clarendon State Papers, passim; Manning and Bray's Surrey, ii. 606; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1660-6; Chester's Reg. of Westminster Abbey; Misc. Gen. et Herald, new ser. iii. 58; Letters to Sir Joseph Williamson (Camel. Soc.), pp. 101, 106, 118; Evelyn's Diary and Corresp. iv. 193-4; Pepys's Diary, ii. 131, iii. 129, 173, iv. 364, v. 4; Return of Members of Parl.; Remembrancia, p. 167; Burke's Extinct Baronetcies.]