John Colepeper, 1st Baron Colepeper

John Colepeper, 1st Baron Colepeper (died June 11, 1660) was an English statesman who was an influential counsellor of Charles I during the Civil War and of Charles II in exile.

Elected member for Kent in the Long Parliament, he took the popular side, supporting the Earl of Strafford’s attainder and receiving an appointment to the Parliamentary committee of defense in 1641. He separated, however, from the popular party on the church question, opposing the proposals to abolish episcopacy and for religious union with the Scots. In 1642 he joined the King’s supporters, taking office as chancellor of the exchequer, but he disapproved of Charles’s attempted arrest of five members of the Commons. In the Oxford Parliament he advised concessions to secure peace. He received a peerage in 1644.

Colepeper was sent with Edward Hyde (afterward earl of Clarendon) in charge of the Prince of Wales, after Charles’s final defeat in 1645, to the Scilly Isles and thence to France (1646). In 1648 he accompanied the Prince on his unsuccessful naval expedition and returned with him to The Hague. After Charles I’s execution he pressed upon Charles II the acceptance of the Scots’ proposals. The treaty between Oliver Cromwell and Cardinal Mazarin in 1654 compelled Colepeper to leave France for Flanders. At the Restoration he returned to England but lived only a few weeks.