Portrait of Sir Allen Apsley, Senior, 1567-1630

Sir Allen Apsley Senior, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, was the younger son of John Apsley of The Old Place, Pulborough, Sussex, and Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Shelley of Warminghurst, Sussex. His daughter, Lucy Hutchinson (1620–1681), a noted poet, translator, and biographer, provided a succinct account of his early life within a biographic fragment as in introduction to her book, “Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson”. She recounted that her father, impatient to complete his studies, chose instead to take immediate action. He sold his annuity, acquired fine clothing, and, with some money in hand, travelled to London. Through a courtly connection, he secured a position in the household of Queen Elizabeth I, where he conducted himself in a manner that earned him the favour of many at court. However, being young, he developed a fondness for gambling and squandered much of his money.

By 1596, Apsley had joined the Earl of Essex’s expedition to Cadiz, working under the Victualler of the Navy. By September of that year, he was serving as a deputy purveyor for the navy in the west of England. His performance in this role must have been exemplary, as he was soon appointed Commissary of Victuals for Munster, serving in Ireland under Sir George Carew. Following the death of his first wife by 1602, Apsley married Carew’s niece, Anne. He was briefly imprisoned in Cork during the Recusancy Revolt of 1603 but was confirmed in his Irish post the following year and was knighted in Dublin in June 1605.

By 1610, Apsley had returned to England and was appointed Victualler to the Navy, a position he held for the rest of his life. He entered into a third marriage in October 1615, this time to Lucy St John (c.1589–1659), niece of Sir Oliver St John and a relative by marriage to the influential Villiers family. Turning again to his daughter, she describes her parent’s courtship as follows:

…he chanced to see my mother, at the house of Sir William St. John, who had married her eldest sister (Eleanor); and though he went on his journey, yet something in her person and behaviour he carried along with him, which would not let him accomplish it, but brought him back to my mother…

… While she was deliberating, and had fixed upon it in her own thoughts, resolving to impart it to none, she was with Sir William St. John, who had married my aunt, when my father accidentally came in there, and fell so heartily in love with her, that he persuaded her to marry him, which she did, and her melancholy made her conform cheerfully to that gravity of habit and conversation, which was becoming the wife of such a person, who was then forty-eight years of age, and she not above sixteen (note: a transcription error, she was actually twenty-six). The first year of their marriage was crowned with a son, called after my father’s name, and born at East Smithfield, in that house of the king’s which belonged to my father’s employment in the navy. The next year they removed to the Tower of London, whereof my father was made lieutenant, and there had two sons more before me, and four daughters, and two sons after; of all which only three sons and two daughters survived him at the time of his death…

Apsley’s appointment as Lieutenant of the Tower of London in March 1617 is attributed to the patronage of George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. The Duke’s half-brother, Edward, married another of Lucy St.John’s sisters, Barbara. For the princely sum of £3,000 (about £500,000 in 2024) Apsley was first in the queue to purchase the office, along with all the perquisites that went with it.

In this role, Apsley was responsible for overseeing notable prisoners such as Sir Walter Ralegh and Sir John Eliot, among other MPs imprisoned following the 1629 Parliament. In June 1627, he witnessed Buckingham’s will before the duke embarked on the ill-fated Ré expedition, which Apsley accompanied. However, he was soon reported to be "very sick and very melancholy" after contracting a fever on the voyage. According to his daughter, he never fully recovered and passed away in London in May 1630. He was interred in the chapel of the Tower of London on 24 May.

The portrait of Apsley, likely painted upon his appointment as Lieutenant of the Tower in 1617, reflects the style of the prominent Flemish artist at the Tudor court, Marcus Gheeraerts. According to the vendor, it was likely executed by an artist from Gheeraerts' studio.

The portrait was listed for sale in London in July 2024, with provenance from a private estate in Yorkshire. It was purchased by the Trustees of Cirencester Park, the ancestral home of the Bathurst Family, and home of the present Earl and Countess Bathurst. Sir Allen Apsley Senior’s great-grandson, Allen Bathurst, 1^st Earl Bathurst, was the eldest son and heir of Sir Benjamin Bathurst, and his wife, Frances Apsley, daughter of Sir Allen Apsley (son of Lucy St.John and Sir Allen Apsley Senior).