Tobin Titus on 22 Jul 2006  •  Link

This actually refers to Colonel "Silius" Titus. Silius is the half-brother of my 13th generation grandfathet. Robert Titus, who came to America in 1635, was born of the same father, Col Silas Titus, but had different mothers. Silas Titus served under Charles I. Silas Titus father was also named Silius. These three can often get confused in writing and I've also even seen some folks confuse Silius Titus with Titus Oates.

Michael Robinson on 11 Oct 2007  •  Link

Per L&M Companion:-

(c. 1623-1704). A Presbyterian royalist of Italian descent. He served in the parliamentary army but held court office from 1648 and acted as a royalist agent in the 1650's. After the Restoration he was active in the W. African trade and a member of several government committees on trade and plantations. M.P in 1660 and in five parliaments thereafter.

Terry Foreman on 1 Nov 2011  •  Link

Silius or Silas Titus (1623–1704), of Bushey, was an English politician, captain of Deal Castle, and Gentleman of the Bedchamber to King Charles II.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sila…

San Diego Sarah on 9 May 2023  •  Link

Silius Titus (1623–1704), was the grandson of an Italian immigrant. His father became a member of the Salters’ Company and went into the soap trade, leasing ‘the best soaphouse in London’ in 1603.
He had a small estate in Hertfordshire by 1625, but more important was the house off Holborn, which was reckoned to bring in £180 p.a.

Titus received a good education, and may have been intended for the law; he was still the nominal joint occupant of a chamber in the Temple in 1652, although it was ‘very ruinous and offensive’. He did not like most of the Puritanically-inclined young lawyers.

In 1642, he volunteer for the Earl of Essex’s bodyguard at the outset of the Civil Wars, preferring to accept a commission from the Hertfordshire committee.
His military record was not distinguished, although he was present at the siege of Donington Castle in 1644.
A Presbyterian, he was not required to serve in the New Model Army, and was appointed by Parliament to attend King Charles at Holdenby.
He soon became a royalist partisan, involved in organizing an attempted escape from the Isle of Wight, and had to go into exile.

Titus accompanied Charles II to Scotland in 1650, and undertook several hazardous missions as a royalist agent during the Interregnum.
It was chiefly as a propagandist that he was valued, although his part in the production of "Killing No Murder" appears to have been largely editorial.

Early in 1660 he was in England with Edward Massey who wrote on 27 Mar.: "I have been exceedingly angry at him that he could never be got to write anything in season. He hath wrote something concerning the elections, but so late ere we could get him to it that it will now signify nothing."

Hyde wished Titus would ‘scatter abroad some sheets of paper to make a republic, its constitution, tyranny and burden, as ridiculous and odious as the argument will bear’.

Massey ‘spent much time getting Titus into the Commons’; he believed through the kindness of a Mr. Browne of Shefford he had a sure seat for him, presumably at Ludgershall, but whether Titus went to the poll at the general election is not known.

Silus Titus was returned to the Convention Parliament at a by-election, and became an active Member. He was named to 16 committees, acted 4 times as teller, and made 12 recorded speeches.

He was appointed to examine a Lords’ amendment to the indemnity bill on 17 Aug. Throughout the debate he took the harshest line against the regicides, acting as teller for the exception of Sir Arthur Hesilrige from pardon and calling on his former commanding officer Richard Browne to repeat to the House the words which brought Col. Adrian Scrope to the block.

On 4 Dec. he moved for the exhumation of the regicides from Westminster Abbey.

San Diego Sarah on 9 May 2023  •  Link

PART 2

On 7 Dec. he seconded Prynne’s motion for more executions, specifying Sir Hardress Waller as a royal pensioner who had voted for his benefactor’s death.

On 10 Dec. he moved for reimbursing the corporation of London for their expenditure on Charles II’s reception, and 3 days later he brought in a bill to defray their militia costs.

On 19 Dec. it was Titus’ turn to be voted £3,000 by the House. The motion was ‘for his fidelity and service, not for any debt’, and it was resolved to lay the charge on the excise.

Still acting as spokesman for the City, he defended them against charges of reluctance to lend money to the restored monarchy, and on 29 Dec. wound up the session with a venomous attack on the Cromwellian soldier-diplomat Sir William Lockhart, saying that ‘there was not a verier villain upon earth’ and regretting that he had not been excepted from the Act of Indemnity.

Silus Titus lost his seat at the general election, and was out of Parliament for 9 years. He had some difficulty in collecting his £3,000 from the excise, and complained to his Puritan friends that he had become ‘a mere cipher’; but his post at Court (groom of the bedchamber to Charles II 1650-1, by May 1660-75), where his Mediterranean vivacity was more appreciated than in the Commons, brought him some compensation.

During the second Anglo-Dutch war he was in command of a mixed force of regulars, new army and militia on England’s classic ‘invasion coast’ from Deal to Thanet.

He was returned for Lostwithiel on the government interest at a by-election in 1670.

He was very involved in investigating the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Crisis debates.

‘Suspected by some and censured by more’, Titus was soon disillusioned with James II, especially over the remodelling of the army, and tried to reinsure himself with William of Orange.

But he could not escape from the consequences of collaboration; in the summer he was made a Privy Councillor, attending 10 meetings between July and William’s landing at Brixham.

He visited William at Windsor in December, but was refused an audience, after which he returned to Whitehall and attended the last meeting of James II’s Privy Council on 16 Dec. 1688.
With no family connections to support him, his political career was at an end, although he sat for Ludlow as a country Whig and contested both Huntingdonshire and Hertfordshire under William III.

He died in December 1704.

A colourful and entertaining speaker in the House, it is hard to credit Silus Titus MP with serious political principles, unless perhaps for toleration.
His experiences during the Interregnum gave him a love of intrigue, to which his miscalculations of 1687 may be attributed.

Excerpted from https://www.historyofparliamenton…