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‘Particular Businesses’ in the Long Parliament: The Hull Letters 1644–1648

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 October 2009

David Scott
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Extract

One of the least studied aspects of the Long Parliament is its role in addressing the legislative needs of private or sectional interests such as trading companies and borough corporations. In the field of parliamentary studies, the dissolution of the 1628–9 Parliament represents a major watershed. The pioneering work of Geoffrey Elton, Conrad Russell and others has allowed us to appreciate a long-overlooked facet of Parliaments before 1629 – their function as a ‘market-place of legislative business’. But the Parliaments called after the collapse of the Personal Rule tend to be scrutinised in a very different light. Understandably, perhaps, the focus is almost exclusively upon the debates and factionalism that attended the nation's slide into civil war and subsequent endeavours to restore peace. The general assumption among historians of the civil war period is diat the two Houses were so preoccupied with the great issues of the moment that they had little time to devote to any business of a more private nature. There is certainly no denying that the Long Parliament was often consumed with ‘greate & weightie affaires’, nor diat many of the MPs who remained at Westminster after the outbreak of war were under little pressure to promote the interests of their constituents or indeed of any private individuals. Even so, where the relationship between a serving Parliament-man and those who had elected him remained strong, it is unlikely diat he could have ignored entirely his obligation to act as their spokesman and lobbyist. One of the best and yet most neglected sources for examining the role of MPs as promoters of ‘particular businesses’ in the Long Parliament is the Hull letters.

Type
Research Article
Information
Royal Historical Society Camden Fifth Series , Volume 17 , July 2001 , pp. 273 - 341
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 2001

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References

1 Russell, Conrad, English Parliaments and Politics, 1621–1629 (Oxford, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, ch. 1; Elton, G. R., The Parliament of England, 1559–1581 (Cambridge, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Russell, Conrad, ‘Parliamentary History in Perspective, 1604–29’, History lxi (1976)Google Scholar; Graves, M. A. R., ‘The Management of the Elizabethan House of Commons: The Council's ‘Men-of-Business’, PH ii (1983), p. 11Google Scholar; idem, Elizabethan Parliaments 1559–1601 (2nd edn, London, 1996)Google Scholar; Dean, David M., Law-making and Society in Late Elizabethan England (Cambridge, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 HCA, 1/330; 1418; 1420; 1421; 1426; 1449: hereafter letter nos only are given in the notes.

3 L420.

4 The Hull letters are calendared in Stanewell, L. M., ed., Calendar of the Ancient Deeds, Letters, Miscellaneous Old Documents, etc., in UK Archines of the Corporation (Hull, 1951), pp. 154–308.Google Scholar

5 VCH, East Riding (6 vols, London, 1969–84), i. 134–9.Google Scholar

6 VCH, East Riding, i. 161Google Scholar; Hull's Managing of the Kingdoms Cause (London, 1644), p. 2Google Scholar (BL, E51/11).

7 HCA, Hull bench book 5, pp. 652–3, 669–71; L369; BL, Lansdowne MS 890, fols 132V, 141–2; VCH, East Riding, i. 138.Google Scholar

8 VCH, East Riding, i. 161.Google Scholar

9 Ibid. i. 29, 35, 38, 126; David Scott, draft constituency article, Hull 1640–60, History of Parliament Trust.

10 See Rowe, Violet A., Sir Henry Vane the Younger. A Study in Political and Administrative History (London, 1970).Google Scholar

11 For Pelham's life and career see David Scott, draft biography of Peregrine Pelham, History of Parliament Trust.

12 Macdermott, Kenneth H., ‘Extracts from the Parish Registers of Bosham, Sussex’, Sussex Archaeological Collections liv (1911), p. 57Google Scholar; HCA, PE185/1 (St Mary Lowgate parish register), unfol.; PE158/1 (Holy Trinity parish register), unfol.; Maddison, A. R., Lincolnshire Pedigrees (Harleian Society lii), p. 765.Google Scholar

13 Cambridge University Library, Mm.1.46, p. 84; PRO, C 7/275/91, 94; CSPD Addenda 1625–49, p. 249Google Scholar; CSPD 1628–3, p. 313Google Scholar; VCH, East Riding, i. 142.Google Scholar

14 HCA, BRG1 (Freeman register 1396–1645), fol. 179; Hull bench bk. 5, pp. 234, 422, 542, 821.

15 BL, Harl. MS 166, fol. 218; Mahony, Michael, ‘The Savile Affair and the Politics of the Long Parliament’, PH vii (1988), p. 218.Google Scholar

16 L375; L376; L379; L383, L424; L426; L430; L463; L464; L465.

17 L424; L426.

18 L375; L383; L463; L465; L477.

19 L428.

20 L401; L428; L444; L476; L481; Wildridge, T. Tindall, ed., The Hull Letters (Hull, 1887), p. 103.Google Scholar

21 Foster, Joseph, ed., The Visitation of yorkshire Made in the Tears 1584/5 (London, 1875), pp. 52–3.Google Scholar

22 PRO, C181/3 fols 96, 187v; C193/13/1, fol. 30v; REQ.2/413, fol. 216v; SP14/33, fol. 20.

23 Alumni Cantabrigiensis; Foster, Joseph, ed., The Register of Admissions to Gray's Inn, 1521–1889 (2 vols, London, 1889), i. 125.Google Scholar

24 Fletcher, Reginald J., ed., The Pension Book of Gray's Inn, 1569–1800 (2 vols., London, 1901–1910), i. 242, 300, 310, 343Google Scholar; VCH, East Riding, vi. 205.Google Scholar

25 Alnwick Castle, Duke of Northumberland MSS, U.I.5., unfol. (‘The Generall Accompte 1636’) [BL, Mic. 390]; Tickell, J., The History of the Town and County of Kingston upon Hull (Hull, 1798), p. 685.Google Scholar

26 L325.

27 PRO, C 219/43/3/119; David Scott, draft constituency article, Richmond 1640–60, History of Parliament Trust.

28 L370; L426; L427.

29 L424; L426; L429; L434.

30 L417; L418; L421; L426; L448; L468; L471; L491.

31 For Thorpe's life and career see David Scott, draft biography of Francis Thorpe, History of Parliament Trust.

32 L348.

33 I am grateful to Simon Healy for information concerning Hull's municipal revenues before the Civil War.

34 Dean, David M., ‘Public or Private? London Leather and Legislation in Elizabethan England’, HJ xxxi (1988), p. 535.Google Scholar

35 L417.

36 HCA, Hull bench bk. 5, p. 709.

37 L444.

38 L347; L350; L404.

39 L293.

40 Dean, , ‘Public or Private?’, pp. 545, 546Google Scholar; Archer, Ian, ‘The London Lobbies in the Later Sixteenth Century’, HJ xxxi (1988), pp. 344, 349.Google Scholar

41 L362; L371; L419; L473.

42 L353; L360; L371; L425.

43 L360; L362; L378; L396; L399; L404; L425; L428; L463; L480.

44 For Widdrington's life and career, see David Scott, draft biography of Sir Thomas Widdrington, History of Parliament Trust.

45 BL, Add. MS 21427, fol. 262; HCA, Hull bench bk. 6, p. 277.

46 Adamson, J. S. A., ‘Parliamentary Management, Men-of-Business and the House of Lords, 1640–49’, A Pillar of the Constitution: The House of Lards in British Poitics, 1640–1784, ed. Jones, Clyve (London, 1989), pp. 32Google Scholar n. 58, 33 n. 62; Adamson, , ‘The English Nobility and the Projected Settlement of 1647’, HJ xxx (1987), p. 598.Google Scholar

47 L369.

48 L368; L369; L373; L424; L426; L468; L480.

49 L293.

50 L371.

51 L332; L335; L342; L347; L351; L360; Wildridge, , Hull Letters, p. 52.Google Scholar

52 L342.

53 L342.

54 L331.

55 L345.

56 L347.

57 L345; L358

58 L360; L361; L365.

59 L360; L368.

60 CJ, iv. 9.Google Scholar

61 Ibid. 110.

62 L362; L369.

63 L360; L361.

64 L362.

65 L362.

66 L368; L369; L370.

67 CJ, iv. 166–7.Google Scholar

68 L371.

69 L373.

70 [Buchanan, David], An Explanation of Some Truths (London, 1646), pp. 53, 55–6Google Scholar (BL, E314/15).

71 L416.

72 Thorpe engaged Philip Lord Wharton to speed the ordinance through the Upper House: L464; L468.

73 L456.

74 L454.

75 L458

76 L468.

77 L475.

78 Robert Tittler has argued that municipal legislative initiatives often favoured the interests of the governing élite at the expense of ‘frequently voiceless majority’: Tittler, Robert, ‘Elizabethan Towns and the ‘Points of Contact’: Parliament’, PH viii (1989), p. 279.Google Scholar

79 L391.

80 L482.

81 L500; L506; L507; CSPD 1648–9, pp. 138, 226Google Scholar; Whitelocke, Bulstrode, Memorials of the English Affairs (4 vols, Oxford, 1853), ii. 279–80.Google Scholar

82 L501; VCH, East Riding, i. 106.Google Scholar

83 For example, see Mercurios Melancholicus, no. 38 (London, 8–15 05 1648), p. 228Google Scholar (BL, E442/14); L500.

84 L501.

85 HCA, Hull bench bk. 5, p. 820.

86 VCH, East Riding, i. 108.Google Scholar

87 A point that T. Tindall Wildridge himself conceded: Wildridge, , ed., Hull Letters, p. xiii.Google Scholar

88 Thomas Coleman was appointed minister of St. Peter's, Cornhill, after he had been driven from his living at Blyton, Lincolnshire, by the Royalists during the Civil War. In a letter to the mayor of Hull, dated 18 Sept. 1645, Coleman declared that while he looked upon the Independents as ‘honest men’, he disliked the gathering of churches, and ‘on the other side I am no rigid presbyterian, nor can I comply w[i]th the Scots’: L401; Wildridge, , Hull Letters, pp. 103–4Google Scholar; Holmes, Clive, Seventeenth-Century Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1980), p. 195.Google Scholar

89 This is a reference to a petition that the corporation had had drawn up in London and presented to the Commons ‘for p[ro]cureing from the Parliam[en]t a settled mainteynance for o[u]r ministers, & to have the election of o[u]r owne ministers, and for cutting off the dependence of the parishes from Hessle and Ferreby, and for monies to repaire the ruines about the town as have beene occasioned by the warres …’: HCA, Hull bench bk. 5, pp. 652–3.

90 This is probably a reference to John Blakiston, MP for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the chairman of the Committee for Petitions.

91 Sir Henry Vane senior, MP for Wilton, Wiltshire, was chairman of the Committee for Revenue.

92 Colonel Robert Overton.

93 Miles Corbett, MP for Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, and joint chairman with Laurence Whitaker of the Committee of Examinations.

94 For the Committee of Examinations' letter to the mayor, signed by Corbett, see Wildridge, , Hull Letters, p. 52Google Scholar. Corbett informed the mayor that the committee had upheld the complaint of James Melthorpe (a mercer and alderman of Beverley, and a subcommissioner for the excise at Hull) that he had been over-assessed by the town authorities. The committee order the mayor to make appropriate redress to Nelthorpe. The town's dispute with Nelthorpe can be followed in the Hull letters and in the corporation minute books: HCA, Hull bench, bk. 5, pp. 620, 651, 652, 664, 712.

95 i.e. Nelthorpe.

96 Ferdinande 2nd Lord Fairfax, MP for Yorkshire; appointed governor of Hull in July 1643.

97 Sir Matthew Boynton resided at Barmston, which lay about 20 miles north of Hull. He was elected a recruiter MP for Scarborough, Yorkshire, in October 1645. The Committee of Examinations order was dated 18 Apr. 1645, and was signed by Laurence Whitaker: HCA, M217.

98 In a letter dated from York, 6 Mar. 1645 (L337), Fairfax informed the mayor that he had written on Nelthorpe's behalf to the Committee of Examinations.

99 Laurence Whitaker, MP for Shaftesbury, Dorset, and joint chairman, with Miles Corbett, of the Committee of Examinations.

100 John Wylde, serjeant-at-law and MP for Worcestershire.

101 Sir Michael Wharton of Beverley, Yorkshire.

102 i.e. Londoners.

103 Colonel John Mauleverer. Mauleverer had served as deputy-governor of Hull under Lord Fairfax, and commanded the regiment that garrisoned the town: Firth, Charles and Davies, Godfrey, eds, The Regimental History of Cromwell's Army (Oxford, 1940), p. 529.Google Scholar

104 Robert Sidney, 2nd Earl of Leicester, had two sons: Philip Sidney, Viscount Lisle, and Algernon Sidney. It is likely that Algernon Sidney was the son referred to here. In 1645, Algernon Sidney was appointed governor of Chichester, which lay close to the Sussex estate of his uncle, the Earl of Northumberland, who had been the younger Vane's patron at Hull in the elections to the Long Parliament: Scott, Jonathan, Algernon Sidney and the English Republic, 1623–1677 (Cambridge, 1988), p. 43.Google Scholar

105 Sir Thomas Widdrington, MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed. Widdrington was Lord Fairfax's son-in-law and man-of-business. He was also chairman of the Northern Committee.

106 Governor of Hull until forced to resign his commission under the self-denying ordinance.

107 i.e. The Committee of Examinations.

108 On 22 Apr. 1645, the Committee of Examinations ordered that John Anlaby, Thomas St. Nicholas, and Richard Darley (all leading Yorkshire committeemen) be added to the committee set up on 18 March, consisting of the mayor, Lord Fairfax, and Sir Matthew Boynton, to examine the dispute between the sub-commissioners of the excise and the Londoners trading at Hull, and the town authorities (see L342): HCA, M220.

109 On 28 Apr. 1645, the Commons appointed Pelham and Alexander Bence to serve alongside the Earl of Warwick as commissioners to command the fleet over the summer. Pelham and Bence were chosen as experienced seamen: CJ, iv. 125, 128Google Scholar; BL, Add. MS 31116, pp. 413–14.

110 In the event, the appointment of Commons' commissioners to assist the Earl of Warwick was blocked in the Lords, and thus Pelham remained at Westminster: see L361.

111 Sir William Strickland, MP for Hedon, Yorkshire.

112 Miles Corbett and Laurence Whitaker.

113 John Blakiston, the chairman of the Committee for Petitions.

114 A large brass canon throwing a shot of about 200 pounds weight.

115 Henry Pelham, MP for Grantham, Lincolnshire.

116 This is a reference to letters from the Committee of Examinations (L345, L358), dated in April and May, and signed by Laurence Whitaker, ordering the mayor to reduce the ‘heavy and unheard of’ assessments that the town had laid upon Nelthorpe and citizens of London trading in Hull.

117 John Blakiston.

118 Captain William Batten.

119 Alexander Bence.

120 Robert Goodwin, MP for East Grimstead, Sussex.

121 Possibly Samuel Gosse, a citizen of London and receiver of moneys at Guildhall: Calendar of the Committee for Advance of Many, pp. 128–30.Google Scholar

122 The Committee of Examinations.

123 The Committee for Revenue.

124 The Northern Association ordinance in the Northern Committee.

125 The Northern Committee, chaired by Sir Thomas Widdrington.

126 Sir Thomas Widdrington.

127 The mayor of Hull.

128 This is probably a sarcastic reference to Pelham rather than Vane.

129 Thorpe was not an MP at this stage.

130 Thorpe appears to be referring here to Pelham and Vane respectively. Pelham was named to just eight committees in 1645, which may suggest that he did not attend the Commons on a regular basis.

131 The gentlemen the corporation named was evidently Sir Matthew Boynton: see L378. The corporation feared that Boynton was eager to promote religious Independency in the town: Wildridge, , Hull Letters, p. 38.Google Scholar

132 Henry Barnard was an alderman of Hull.

133 John Blakiston.

134 These letters revealed Charles's plans for using Irish and foreign troops in England. The bulk of this correspondence was published by Parliament.

135 The ordinance for the Northern Association.

136 Miles Corbett and Laurence Whitaker, chairmen of the Committee of Examinations.

137 Sir Walter Earle, MP for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis, Dorset. He was forced to resign his place as lieutenant of the ordnance by the self-denying ordinance.

138 The ordinance for the Northern Association.

139 The Northern Association army.

140 John Blakiston.

141 The king's letters captured at Naseby.

142 John Wylde.

143 John Blakiston.

144 By September 1645, certainly, Vane was preoccupied with fortifying Raby Castle, in County Durham: Rowe, Vane, p. 82.Google Scholar

145 Pelham had just married Dame Jacoba van Lore, widow of Sir Peter van Lore.

146 Welbeck House, Nottinghamshire, where the king arrived on 15 Aug. 1645.

147 Although dated from Hull, Barnard is evidently writing from London.

148 In L394.

149 i.e. His recent marriage.

150 The new chairman of the Committee for Petitions was John Goodwin, MP for Haslemere, Surrey: L419; CJ, iv. 317.

151 John Blakiston.

152 The Northern Committee, chaired by Fairfax's son-in-law, Sir Thomas Widdrington.

153 The Committee for Petitions.

154 John Goodwin.

155 John Rushworth, the secretary of the army.

156 This last sentence was omitted in Wildridge's transcription.

157 John Goodwin.

158 Walter Strickland, the Parliamentary agent in Holland.

159 i.e. Sir Thomas Fairfax.

160 Oliver St John, MP for Totnes, Devon, and solicitor-general.

161 John Shawe was lecturer at Trinity Church, Hull: HCA, Hull bench bk. 5, p. 675. For his life and career see Jackson, Charles, ed., ‘The Life of Master John Shaw’, Yorkshire Diaries and Autobiographies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth CenturiesGoogle Scholar, ed. idem (Surtees Society, lxv, 1875); Matthews, A. G., Calamy Revised (Oxford, 1934), pp. 434–5.Google Scholar

162 Received 5 Dec. 1645.

163 An additional ordinance for the maintenance of ministers in the northern parts passed the Commons on 6 Dec. 1645: CJ iv. 367Google Scholar; LJ, viii. 50.Google Scholar

164 Robert Goodwin.

165 This letter was not written in Thorpe's hand, but in that of his clerk.

166 In fact, the town's petition for maintenance of its ministers seems to have remained with the Committee for Petitions: see L420.

167 The Army Committee.

168 This letter was written in the same hand as L415.

169 Samuel Browne, MP for Dartmouth, Devon: see L444, L449, L453, L462, L465.

170 Sir John Harrington of Hatfield Broad Oak, Essex.

171 John Goodwin.

172 Walter Strickland.

173 This letter was written in the same hand as L415.

174 On 29 Dec. 1645 the Commons passed an order for the payment of £150 per annum out of the York dean and chapter lands for the maintenance of a preaching minister at Hull: CJ iv. 389–90.Google Scholar

175 A stale was a decoy bird used to entice other birds into a snare or net (OED).

176 L293 somehow ended up in private hands. Hull City Archives only possess a 19th century typescript of it, in which the spelling has been modernised. Wildridge evidently saw the original, and transcribed the section included here, before it was sold. Its whereabouts are now unknown: Wildridge, ed., Hull Letters, p. 134.

177 Thorpe is probably referring to Pelham here rather than Vane.

178 LJ, viii. 80, 81.Google Scholar

179 William Styles, vicar of Hull. A ‘moderate Puritan’, he was displaced as vicar in 1650 for refusing to take the Engagement: VCH, East Riding, i. 108Google Scholar; CSPD 1650, p. 385Google Scholar; CSPD 1651, p. 22.Google Scholar

180 John Gurdon, MP for Ipswich, Suffolk.

181 This letter was written in the same hand as 1415.

182 Sir John Meldrum, a Scot serving in Parliament's northern armies, was killed at the siege of Scarborough in May 1645.

183 Francis Bacon, M P for Ipswich, Suffolk.

184 John Gurdon.

185 This is a reference to the Glamorgan Treaty - Charles's attempt to make peace with the Confederate Irish and secure Irish troops for use in England. The treaty was brokered for the king by the Earl of Glamorgan. Copies of documents relating to the treaty reached Westminster on 16 Jan. 1646 and were subsequently published (see below): Gardiner, Samuel Rawson, History of the Great Civil War 1642–1649 (1987 edn, 4 vols, London), iii. 30–42.Google Scholar

186 The Irish Cabinet: or, His Majesties Secret Papers, for Establishing the Papall Clergy in Ireland (London, 1646)Google Scholar, BL, E316/29.

187 For the town's ministers.

188 Possibly John Watson, a Hull freeman: HCA, BRG/1, fol. 195.

189 The outcry made by hounds when they find the game (OED).

190 Coleman evidently died in March 1646, not early in 1647 as some authorities state: DNB, under ‘Thomas Coleman’.

191 St Michael's Mount in Cornwall.

192 Samuel Browne. On 26 Mar. 1646, Hull corporation ordered that ‘two barrells of aile shall be sent as a present from ye towne unto Mr. Browne … Mr. Pelham having gyven intimac[i]on soe to do’: HCA, Hull bench bk. 5, p. 709.

193 The Answer of the Lords and Commons Assembled in the Parliament of England at Westminster to the Several Papers of the Commissioners of Scotland (London, 1646)Google Scholar, BL, E333/14. This declaration was drawn up in response to papers presented to Parliament by the Scots commissioners the previous Autumn. So blunt was it in reproving the Scots for the ‘free quarterings disorderly plunderings’ of their army in the northern counties, that the Lords apparently refused to join with the Commons in ordering it to be printed. On 14 Apr. 1646, therefore, the Commons ordered it to be printed and published on their own authority: CJ iv. 317, 327, 338, 342, 347, 353, 371, 508Google Scholar; LJ, viii. 34–6Google Scholar; Lindley, Keith and Scott, David, eds, The Journal of Thomas Juxon, 1644–1647 (Camden Soc., 5th ser., xiii, 1999). pp. 114–15.Google Scholar

194 i.e. The Scots.

195 This letter was written neither in Thorpe's hand nor that of 1415.

196 The doctor who accompanied Charles on his flight to the Scots was in fact Dr Michael Hudson.

197 i.e. A Montero, a Spanish hunter's cap, having a spherical crown and a flap capable of being drawn over the ears (OED).

198 4 May 1646.

199 This sentence is in Thorpe's hand.

200 i.e. 30 Apr. 1646.

201 The MPs added to the Army Committee to consider the ordinance for the pay of Hull garrison included Sir Matthew Boynton: CJ, iv. 527.Google Scholar

202 Alexander Leslie, first Earl of Leven.

203 CJ, iv. 542.Google Scholar

204 Richard Lilly, the clerk of the corporation.

205 Bodleian Library, Oxford, Tanner MS 59, fol. 195: the county committee of York to Lenthall, 15 May 1646. The committee complained that the Scots, having imposed ‘intollerable leavies’ on the North Riding, were intent on moving southwards. They ask the Commons to order the removal of the Scots army from the county.

206 This sentence and the four additional Commons' resolutions passed that day and related by Thorpe are in the same hand as 1452. For the Commons' resolutions concerning the Scots army, see CJ, vii. 551.Google Scholar

207 This is possibly a reference to a Commons' speech by George Thomson, MP for Southwark, on 26 May. Thomson was highly critical of lord mayor of London, Thomas Adams, but it is not known whether he also attacked a member of the House: Lindley, and Scott, , eds, Juxon Journal, p. 124Google Scholar; BL, Browne papers (uncat.): William Garway to Richard Browne, 28 May 1646.

208 The Humble Acknowledgement and Petition of Divers Inhabitants in and about the City of London (London, 1646)Google Scholar, BL, E339/12; CJ, iv. 561.Google Scholar

209 Newcastle was held by the Scots. Parliament had been pressing the Scots to remove their garrisons from Newcastle and other places in northern England since the summer of 1645.

210 This is probably the letter from Walter Strickland to Sir Henry Vane (L442) that is printed in Wildridge, , Hull Letters, pp. 145–6Google Scholar. It concerns his efforts to secure redress at Amsterdam for several Hull merchants whose ships had been seized by the Dutch.

211 Philip Lord Wharton.

212 Those MPs nominated to this committee included Sir Henry Vane junior, and Thorpe: CJ iv. 570.Google Scholar

213 i.e. The Committee of Estates.

214 This is a reference to the defeat of the Scots' Ulster army by the Irish Confederates at Benburb, County Tyrone, on 5 June 1646. The ‘some who heighten it for other purposes' is probably a reference to the Scots’ more vociferous enemies among the political Independents.

215 The Catholic peer and ‘delinquent’, Henry Constable, first Viscount Dunbar [S], was lord of seigniory of Holderness and owned extensive property in the Hull area.

216 i.e. The Hollander, de Witt, who Thorpe mentions in 1468.

217 i.e. For permission to petition the king for his help in securing the release of several Hull merchantmen captured by the Dutch: see 1468.

218 i.e. Anglesey.

219 Pelham is probably referring here to John Ashe, MP for Westbury, Wiltshire.

220 i.e. Drogheria.

221 John Stephens, MP for Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.

222 The identity of this man has been impossible to establish.

223 The commissioners to present the Newcastle Propositions to the king were the Earl of Pembroke, the Earl of Suffolk, Sir Walter Earle, Sir John Hippisley, Robert Goodwyn, Luke Robinson.

224 Thorpe has missed out a word, presumably ‘debate’, in turning over to write on a new sheet.

225 Manifest Truths, or an inversion of Truths Manifest (London, 1646)Google Scholar, BL, E343/1. This tract was written by the Yorkshire Presbyterian minister, Edward Bowles, in answer to that of the Scottish apologist, Buchanan, David, Truth its Manifest (London, 1645)Google Scholar, BL, E1174/4. Bowles was particularly concerned to challenge Buchanan's criticism of the Parliamentary commissioners in the north (who were mostly political Independents), to whom Bowles had served as chaplain: Bodl., Nalson MS 111, fol. 315; Scott, David, ‘The “Northern Gentlemen”, the Parliamentary Independents, and Anglo-Scottish Relations in the Long Parliament’, HJ xlii (1999), p. 364 and n. 94.Google Scholar

226 Gilbert Millington, MP for Nottingham.

227 i.e. The manor house.

228 i.e. The Committee of Estates.

229 Colonel Christopher Legard of Anlaby, a near kinsman of Sir John Hotham: Legard, J. Digby, The Legards of Anlaby and Ganton (London, 1926), pp. 27, 84–5.Google Scholar

230 John Stephens and Gilbert Millington.

231 Probably the under-clerk of the Parliaments (clerk of the Commons), Henry Elsynge.

232 This letter has been misdated in the calendar as 21 Dec. 1644.

233 He probably means Pelham rather than Vane.

234 Robert Scawen, MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed and chairman of the Army Committee.

235 CJ, v. 561–2.Google Scholar

236 This letter was written in what seems to be the same hand as 1452.

237 For contemporary accounts of this fracas at Westminster, see A Trve Relation of the Passages between the Sunen Petitioners and the Souldiers at Westminster, May the 16. 1648 (London 1648)Google Scholar, BL, E443/5; The Sad, and Bloody Fight at Westminster between the Souldiers of the Parliaments Guard and the Club-Men of Svrrey (London, 1648), BL, E443/17.Google Scholar

238 An ordinance for ‘setding the Militia in the Northern Counties’ was passed in the Commons on Monday 22 May, and Thorpe was appinted to carry it to the Lords for their concurrence: CJ, v. 569.Google Scholar

239 From May 1648 some of the newsbooks were reporting that Hull was arming for the king: Mercurius Melancholicus, no. 38 (London, 8–15 05 1648), p. 228Google Scholar (BL, E442/14).

240 Alderman John Ramsden. The corporation instructed Ramsden to deliver letters to Pelham, Thorpe, Vane, and Widdrington, and to ‘desire their sev[er]all assistance’: HCA, M232: Instructions to John Ramsden, 20 Dec. 1647.

241 Colonel Robert Overton. The New Model Army and its supporters had become suspicious of Hull's Presbyterian-dominated bench, and late in 1647 Oliver Cromwell had prevailed upon Sir Thomas Fairfax to replace Colonel Mauleverer with Overton, a sectarian, as his deputy-governor: BL, Sloane MS 1519, fol. 169; L486.

242 For the matter of the pistols, see L502.

243 Henry Darley, MP for Northallerton, Yorkshire.

244 James Chaloner, MP for Aldborough, Yorkshire.

245 Pelham and Vane appear to have been more active in this role than Thorpe, Chaloner and Darley: CJ, v. 615Google Scholar; CSPD 1648–9, pp. 88, 102, 104, 105, 110, 111, 112–13, 115, 118, 119, 124.Google Scholar

246 Relations between the town authorities and the garrison became strained in 1648 as a result of the billeting of troops in Hull and Overton's sectarian sympathies: L487, L488; HCA, M234; VCH, East Riding, i. 106.Google Scholar

247 Probably the distinguished lawyer, Matthew Hale.