Pym, JOHN, was born of a good old Somersetshire stock at Brymore, near Bridgwater, in 1584. He entered Broadgates Hall (now Pembroke College), Oxford, in 1599, as a gentleman-commoner, but left in 1602 without taking a degree, and then probably studied law at one of the Inns of Court. He married in 1614, but in 1620 was left a widower with five young children, and next year was first returned to parliament by Calne. This seat he exchanged in 1625 for Tavistock. He at once attached himself to the Country party, and proceeded to war against monopolies, papistry, the Spanish match, and absolutism with a vigour that brought him three months' durance. He was one of the members who presented a petition to James I. at Newmarket, when 'Chairs!' cried the king, 'chairs! here be twal kynges comin'!' and in 1626, the year after the accession of Charles I., he took a prominent part in the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham. In the parliament of 1628 he stood second only to Sir John Eliot, whom he ably supported in the debate on the Petition of Right, but whom he opposed in the matter of tonnage and poundage, deeming the privileges of parliament inferior to the liberties of the kingdom. In the Short Parliament (1640), when, in Clarendon's words, 'men gazed on each other, looking who should begin, much the greater part having never sat before,' Pym on 17th April 'brake the ice by a two hours' discourse, in which he summed up shortly and sharply all that most reflected upon the prudence and justice of the government, that they might see how much work they had to do to satisfy their country.' And lastly, in the Long Parliament, having meanwhile joined hands with the Scots, and ridden with Hampden through England, urging the voters to their duty, Pym on 11th November named Strafford, twelve years earlier his friend and ally, as the 'principal author and promoter of all those counsels which had exposed the kingdom to so much ruin.' In the impeachment of Strafford which followed, resulting in his execution under a bill of attainder, Pym took the leading part; and Pym's is the chief credit of this masterstroke of policy, which deprived the king of the one man of resolute temper and powerful genius who supported his cause. In the proceedings against Laud Pym was also conspicuous, as in the carrying of the Grand Remonstrance and in every other crisis of moment up to the time when war became inevitable; he was the one of the 'Five
Members' whom Charles singled out by name. On the breaking out of hostilities he remained at his post in London, and there, in the exercise of the functions of the executive, rendered services to the cause not less valuable and essential than those of a general in the field. While the strife was yet pending he died, through the breaking of an internal abscess, at Derby House on 8th December 1643, having only the month before been appointed to the important post of Lieutenant of the Ordnance. 'King Pym' was buried in Westminster Abbey with great pomp and magnificence, but at the Restoration his remains were cast out into a pit in St Margaret's churchyard.
'The most popular man,' says Clarendon, 'and the most able to do hurt that hath lived in any time.' And such Pym was, only emphasis ought to be laid upon the 'able.' He was no demagogue, no revolutionist, as neither was he a narrow precisian. His intellect, on the contrary, was 'intensely conservative,' in Mr Gardiner's phrase; he was a champion of what he believed to be the ancient constitution against those who he thought were striving to subvert it. He was, moreover, an English country gentleman, who liked the good things of this life, and was not so circumspect in his conduct but what scandal made free with his name, asserting, for instance, that 'Master Pym had succeeded the Earl of Strafford in the affections of my lady Carlisle.'
See John Forster's Eminent British Statesmen (vol. iii. 1837); Goldwin Smith's Three English Statesmen (1867); and other works cited at CHARLES I., ELIOT (SIR JOHN), and STRAFFORD.