Sir Robert Pye
1585–1662
Auditor of the Receipt of the Exchequer; father-in-law to Hampden.
Biography
Of Inner Temple, Pye was Auditor of the Receipt of the Exchequer from 1618 — one of the senior treasury offices — and long-serving MP for Bath and later Berkshire. He had been Buckingham's protégé before falling out with Charles I over Ship Money. His daughter Anne married John Hampden, and Pye's seat at Faringdon was Hampden's last refuge in 1643. A moderate lay assessor at the Assembly, he sat through the Long Parliament's reduced years and died in 1662.
Lay Assessor — House of Commons
Parliament seated lay assessors alongside the divines to represent its interest and keep it informed of the Assembly's progress. The ordinance of 1643 named thirty members of the House of Commons as assessors; they could take part in debate but were not among the voting divines, and their attendance was often occasional as the war and parliamentary business pressed on them.