COPLEY, Lionel (1607-75), of Broom, Whiston, and The College, Rotherham, Yorks.

Copley belonged to a cadet branch of an ancient Yorkshire family, his ancestors having settled in the south of the county by the time of the Conqueror.31Foster, Yorks. Peds. i.; ‘353 Kingston v Copley’, in The Ct. of Chivalry 1634-40 ed. R. Cust and A. Hopper. Perhaps in consequence of his status as a younger son, details of his early life and education remain largely obscure. His elder brother Christopher studied at Cambridge, and it was probably there that he met their future business partner and brother-in-law Thomas St Nicholas*.32Infra, ‘Thomas St Nicholas’; At Vacant Hours: Poems by Thomas St Nicholas and his Family ed. H.N. Davies (2002), 230. But there is no record that Lionel attended university or any of the inns of court. It is possible that he was the ‘Mr Copley’ listed in 1630 among the gentlemen volunteers of Lord Vere’s company in the English expeditionary force fighting the Spanish in Holland.33Hexam, Siege of the Busse. This would certainly help to explain Copley’s preferment in 1642 as commissary-general under the commander of Parliament’s first field army, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.34V.F. Snow, Essex the Rebel, 118-24. If Copley did serve in Holland, then he would have done so alongside the future parliamentarians John Hotham*, (Sir) Thomas Fairfax* and Philip Skippon*. Another possible connection with Essex was through the future parliamentarian grandee Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke. Copley was a cousin of Brooke, and he and Christopher may have spent time at Knowle, one of Brooke’s Warwickshire residences, during the 1630s.35At Vacant Hours ed. Davies, 229-30. Brooke was a close political ally of Essex by 1642 and, like Copley, a senior officer in his army. But Copley’s closest contact at court, and among the future parliamentarian grandees, was Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke. In 1634, Pembroke had granted a patent to ‘my servant’ Lionel Copley as bailiff of his property in and around Rotherham.36LC5/133, pp. 33, 57; ‘128 Copley v Mountney’, in The Ct. of Chivalry 1634-40.

The Copleys were among the most enterprising of the Yorkshire gentry. By the late 1630s, Lionel owned several coal mines in the Wadworth area and was leasing an ironworks on the River Don from Viscount Rochford, another future commander in the earl of Essex’s army.37C7/416/16; C10/45/33; CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 516-17; 1639, p. 102. Copley’s aim, or that of the consortium he formed with his brother Christopher, Thomas St Nicholas and the future royalist Leonard Pinckney, was to create an integrated iron-manufactory, with woods and coal mines to supply the necessary fuel and flux for the furnace and forges. Copley would later describe himself as ‘a great dealer for many thousand pounds per annum in woods, ironworks, coal mines and other things’.38C10/92/28; Hey, Fiery Blades, 170. In December 1639, the partners leased lands in and around Rotherham and Sheffield from the earl of Arundel (who owned the manor of Sheffield) for the purpose of erecting two ironworks, paying the substantial yearly rent of £2,120.39Sheffield City Archives, WWM/D1715; Cat. of the Arundel Castle Mss ed. Meredith, 37; Yorks. Royalist Comp. Pprs. ed. J.W. Clay (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. xviii, 1895), 130-1; At Vacant Hours ed. Davies, 200-2. The necessary capital was raised largely, it seems, through loans, and although they incurred heavy losses during the mid-1640s, when the royalists seized the ironworks, they subsequently invested (or so they claimed) £6,000 in the venture.40LC4/202, ff. 156v, 179; C10/62/20; Add. 70113, unfol.: draft petition of Copley to the council of state c.1651; CCC 2476. For at least its first 15 years, however, the business did not prove particularly profitable – partly, it seems, because of financial wrangling among the partners and between the Copley brothers in particular.41C3/439/39; C8/139/16; C8/185/69; C10/32/28; C10/55/32; C10/62/20; C10/65/35; Yorks. Royalist Comp. Pprs. ed. Clay, 131-2. Copley’s ambitious business plans also strained his relations during the 1630s with one of the Rotherham area’s wealthiest landowners, the future royalist Sir William Savile*.42A. Hopper, ‘The Extent of Support for Parliament in Yorks. during the Early Stages of the First Civil War’ (York Univ. DPhil. thesis, 1999), 89.

During the first half of 1642, Copley emerged as a leading figure in Yorkshire’s nascent parliamentarian interest. In January, he joined a group of the county’s gentry in a petition to the king, protesting at the attempted arrest of the Five Members and expressing support for a ‘perfect reformation in matters of religion’.43Eg. 2546, ff. 23-4. The following month, he signed another Yorkshire petition, this time to the Lords, requesting that they work more closely with the Commons for the relief of the Protestants in Ireland.44PA, Main Pprs. 15 Feb. 1642, f. 55. And in mid-May, with the king’s party raising troops in Yorkshire, Copley and many of the county’s future parliamentarians addressed a letter to Charles, asking him to put his trust in the two Houses and to forbear raising any ‘extraordinary’ guard.45A Letter from the ... Committees of the Commons ... at Yorke (1642), 9 (E.148.4). He signed another petition to the king from this same group on 6 June, complaining about Charles’s abandoning Parliament and drawing together the county’s trained bands – ‘illegally’ as the petitioners conceived it.46PA, Main Pprs. 6 June 1642, ff. 84-5.

Copley was one of the first Yorkshire gentlemen to take up arms against the king, receiving a commission on 30 July 1642 as commissary of the foot musters (or commissary general) in the earl of Essex’s army.47SP28/18, f. 341. What moved him to side with Parliament in the civil war is not known. There is little to suggest that he was an ardent puritan in 1642; and the Worcestershire minister Richard Baxter was probably correct in listing him, with Essex and a number of his other senior officers, among the ‘moderate episcopal conformists’ in the Long Parliament.48R. Baxter, Richard Baxter’s Penitent Confession (1691), 30. Puritan or not, Copley was evidently trusted by the lord general, who employed him to carry Parliament’s peace overtures to the king (via Edward Sackville, 4th earl of Dorset) in October.49Add. 18777, f. 34v; CJ ii. 816a; A Letter sent from a Gentleman [Copley] to Mr Henry Martin (1642). Essex also relied on Copley to help smooth relations between the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*), the commander of Parliament’s northern army, and the Hothams.50Add. 18777, f. 138; Add. 34195, f. 35; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 37-8, 39.

Copley was closely involved in the efforts of Essex’s staff to find money and mounts for the lord general’s forces during the winter of 1642-3.51Bodl. Carte 103, ff. 102, 112, 131, 161. And by the spring of 1643, he was working with Sir Philip Stapilton* and John Hampden* to represent the lord general’s grievances to Parliament.52CJ iii. 10a. On 26 May, Copley informed the Commons that Essex ‘did take it very ill that his power to levy money was questioned by us and that yet we would not provide him money in due time... with some other very insolent expressions’.53CJ iii. 104b; Harl. 164, ff. 393v-394. Insolent Copley may have been, but the House was anxious not to offend Essex further and therefore backed a motion by Sir Gilbert Gerard* for giving the lord general ‘all due satisfaction’.54Harl. 164, f. 393v. The Houses responded in similar fashion late in July, after Copley, Stapilton, Skippon and other members of the lord general’s council of war had written to Parliament, complaining about the Commons’ raising of new forces under Essex’s rival Sir William Waller*.55LJ vi. 144b. At the first battle of Newbury in September, Copley received (or so he later claimed) ‘many wounds’ and his troop lost many mounts.56Add. 70113, unfol. draft petition of Copley c.1651; Bodl. Tanner 61, f. 100. His loyalty to Essex was apparently both political and military, for in the spring of 1644, he helped Stapilton drive Charles Fleetwood* and Thomas Harrison I* out of the lord general’s life-guard for having supported the war party’s effort to reform the army.57Juxon Jnl. 52.

As commissary general under Essex it is perhaps unsurprising that Copley was the first officer to have his accounts scrutinised by the standing Committee of Accounts* that Parliament set up in February 1644.58Supra, ‘Committee of Accounts’; Bodl. Tanner 61, f. 98; J. Peacey, ‘Politics, accounts, and propaganda in the Long Parliament’, Parliament at Work ed. C.R. Kyle, J. Peacey (2002), 59-64. However, the committee seems to have selected him partly on the basis of information that he had appropriated money that properly belonged to the public coffers.59CJ iii. 431a; Bodl. Tanner 61, f. 126v; CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 480-1. When he realised that the committee was preparing to make an example of him, Copley went on to the offensive, claiming that it was he who was owed money by Parliament, not vice versa. The committee, on the other hand, concluded that there was strong evidence that he had defrauded the state and that his accounts were ‘very unreasonable and not to be allowed without some establishment or warrant for the same’.60SP28/140, f. 260. In mid-March, the Commons referred his case to the ‘notoriously anti-Essexian’ committee for the reform of the lord general’s army, chaired by Zouche Tate.61Add. 18779, f. 84; SP28/255, unfol. (Tate to Cttee. of Accts. 21 Oct. 1644); CJ iii. 431a; J. Adamson, ‘The triumph of oligarchy’, Parliament at Work ed. Kyle, Peacey, 119. But Copley refused to appear before this or any other committee, preferring instead to defend himself in a petition that Stapilton presented to the Commons on 3 April.62CJ iii. 445a; Harl. 166, f. 43; Add. 18779, f. 84. Later that same month, Copley complaisantly informed the Committee of Accounts that he had been commanded away on business by the lord general and that he hoped that his failure to produce muster rolls would present no difficulties, ‘being confident you intend not to call such officers as are going out to fight in the Parliament’s service to account’.63CSP Dom. 1644, p. 139. In an effort to remove Copley from the firing line, Essex had ordered him north on the implausible errand of preserving a good correspondency with the Scots.64Harl. 166, f. 77v; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 162. But the lord general’s enemies in the Commons would not let the matter rest, and on 5 June, John Lisle reported

divers informations against Commissary Copley (proved by several witnesses) touching his constant making false musters in his own troop; touching his defrauding the officers and troopers of their pay ... touching false attestations made by him to the muster master and Auditor Broad [Henry Broad, auditor of Essex’s army], whereby he hath wronged the state.65CJ iii. 518b; Add. 31116, p. 284.

The Commons thereupon resolved that Copley’s refusal to answer the Committee of Accounts, and his ‘scandalous’ petition of 3 April 1644, represented a contempt of the House’s authority and that he be sent for as a delinquent and made to reimburse the state and the individuals he had defrauded out of his own pocket.66CJ iii. 518b; Add. 31116, p. 284. On 19 June, Essex wrote to the Commons, demanding a fair hearing for his officer – who was by now a prisoner in Ely House – and 27 June, the lord general’s parliamentary ally Denzil Holles presented a petition from Copley, requesting that his case be re-examined. However, the war-party MPs Oliver St John, William Strode I and Denis Bond combined to ensure that the House gave no respite to Copley or satisfaction to his commander.67CJ iii. 543a; Harl. 166, f. 77v. After another letter from Essex, the House voted on 5 August that Copley be bailed, but later that month ordered him to pay the £794 that the Committee of Accounts calculated he owed to the state.68CJ iii. 580b, 613b; Add. 31116, p. 306; Bodl. Tanner 61, f. 90. The House reiterated this order on 2 October and suspended his pay.69CJ iii. 648b. On 19 October, Copley petitioned the House yet again, requesting that as most of his personal estate had been confiscated by Parliament the House would accept his troop of horse in payment of the £794, ‘being well assured he shall clearly make appear there is a very great sum really due unto him’.70CJ iii. 670a; Bodl. Tanner 61, f. 98.

Having apparently learnt nothing from the Commons’ reaction to his 3 April 1644 petition, Copley had his 19 October petition printed and published (the result has not survived) along with a critique of the Committee of Accounts’ remit and procedures.71Bodl. Tanner 61, ff. 99-101. Nor did he endear himself to any but Essex’s friends by giving evidence in support of Sir John Hotham* at the latter’s trial early in December.72Mercurius Civicus no. 80 (28 Nov.-5 Dec. 1644), 738 (E.21.2). To cap his various follies, he and several of Essex’s staff officers turned up at the committee in person on 19 December ‘to vindicate themselves from oppression in their accounts’, ‘for they thought it hard that whilst they should fight for others’ liberties they should lose their own’.73SP28/255, unfol.; Bodl. Tanner 61, f. 96. The committee duly complained of Copley’s antics to the Commons, which on 27 December committed him to Southwark Compter for his effrontery.74CJ iv. 3; Add. 31116, p. 363. His petition requesting discharge from prison was presented to the House by the Essexian grandee Sir William Lewis late in April 1645 and was seconded by the heavyweight duo of Holles and Stapilton.75Add. 18780, f. 8v. But it was not until 7 May, and a long and impassioned Commons debate in which Holles championed Copley’s cause again, that the House ordered his release on bail.76CJ iv. 133a, 133b; Harl. 166, f. 207; Add. 18780, f. 15v; Add. 31116, p. 416; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 461. He was still battling with the Committee of Accounts for what he regarded as his ‘just demands’ in November 1648.77SP28/253A/1, pt. 1, ff. 72v-73; SP28/256 (doc. dated 14 Jan. 1646); SP28/257, unfol.; CJ v. 661b. And ten years later, the protectoral committee ‘for taking the accounts of the commonwealth’ would revive the case against him.78SP28/260, f. 566.

The creation of the New Model army and the Self-Denying Ordinance put paid to Copley’s military career – although he continued to be styled Commissary or Colonel Copley and, as such, is often confused with his brother Christopher Copley, who was a colonel of horse in the Northern Association army under Sednham Poynts.79Clarke Pprs. i. 4, 143. Freed from his military duties, not to mention prison, Copley devoted himself to bolstering Essex’s political interest. In the autumn of 1645, he attempted to secure a seat as a ‘recruiter’ for the Norfolk constituency of Castle Rising. But despite expending £120 in treating the voters, he was defeated by John Spelman. It was alleged in the Commons that one of Copley’s ‘chief actors’ had given ‘railing speeches against all our judges and lawyers that were of the House’.80Supra, ‘Castle Rising’; Add. 31116, p. 485. By the spring of 1646, Copley was helping Stapilton and Colonel Edmund Harvey* co-ordinate the strivings of Essex’s parliamentary interest and the ‘Covenant-engaged’ faction in London for a Presbyterian settlement.81Juxon Jnl. 114. Copley tried his hand at electioneering again in September 1646, when he contested the recruiter election at Pontefract against Lord Fairfax’s nominee William White*.82Supra, ‘Pontefract’. According to one of Fairfax’s correspondents, Copley

has not been wanting in a bountiful entertainment, in courting the burghers both with wine and venison, by himself and his agents, [and] giving all assurance of a real accomplishment of what they desired, possessing them all in his wonted confidence, that no man living was better acquainted with the mysteries of Parliament than he himself, that would be their incessant solicitor.83Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 318-19.

But though Copley’s candidacy was supported by Poynts, the commander of the Northern Association army, once again he was defeated.

When Copley finally secured a parliamentary seat, it was at practically the farthest remove from his native Yorkshire – namely, Bossiney in Cornwall. The writ for a new election at Bossiney was issued on 22 March (or possibly 10 April) 1647, and Copley was returned for the borough at some point between then and late May.84CJ v. 79b; C231/6, p. 85. Clearly a carpetbagger, he probably owed his election to his fellow Presbyterian grandee Anthony Nicoll. Nicoll had been MP for Bossiney in the Short Parliament, owned property in the borough and would be returned there again in 1659.85Supra, ‘Bossiney’; infra, ‘Anthony Nicholl’; D. Underdown, ‘Party management in the recruiter elections, 1645-8’, EHR lxxxiii. 261. Copley was ‘received into the House’ on 25 May and took the Covenant on 9 June.86CJ v. 203b; Perfect Occurrences no. 21 (21-28 May 1647), 136 (E.390.7).

Despite his efforts to secure a seat in the Long Parliament, he took little part in its proceedings before the 26 July 1647 Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster. Much of his attention, it seems, was turned to helping Stapilton maintain contact in Yorkshire with Poynts, whose army the Presbyterians hoped to use as a counterweight to the New Model.87Infra, ‘Sir Philip Stapilton’; Clarke Pprs. i. 144-5, 163, 168. On 6 July, Copley was added to the House Northern Association Committee* for the purpose of ensuring that £10,000 assigned to Poynts’s troops was speedily sent northwards.88CJ v. 236a. Unfortunately for the Presbyterians, Poynts was seized and removed from command by his own troops two days later, and on 15 July, Copley and Sir William Strickland were appointed to prepare letters ordering his release.89CJ v. 245a, 247b. Given Copley’s machinations against the army, which the adjutators were well aware of, it is perhaps surprising that there were only Eleven Presbyterian Members and not 12 indicted by the army in June. During the brief Presbyterian counter-revolution of late July and early August, Copley played a major role in raising troops in London to resist the New Model. Of the six committees to which he was named during this period, four related in some way or other to the Presbyterians’ military preparations; and on 2 August, he was added to the revived ‘committee of safety’, which had been set up on 11 June to join with the City militia for mobilising London against the army.90CJ v. 261b, 263a, 265a, 265b; LJ ix. 370b.

Copley remained defiant even after the army’s march into the City early in August 1647. On 9 August, he and other Presbyterian MPs successfully resisted an attempt by the Independents to exclude those Members complicit in the 26 July riots, prompting Sir Arthur Hesilrige to issue the warning that ‘it should be remembered unto them in due time’.91HMC Egmont, 443-4. And although Copley was named to the 11 and 18 August committees for repealing the legislation passed between 26 July and 6 August, he was a teller on 20 August against amending and passing an ordinance sent down from the Lords for that very purpose.92CJ v. 279a. In the following weeks, however, the Presbyterian majority in the Commons crumbled under pressure from the army, and on 27 August, Copley decided to take leave of absence while he still had the choice.93CJ v. 286b. With the Independents in the majority by early September, the warning that Hesilrige had issued on 9 August became a reality. On 8 September, Copley was summoned to the House to answer evidence assembled against him by Miles Corbett’s committee for investigating the Presbyterian counter-revolution – and specifically, that Copley had helped to raise forces against the army.94CJ v. 295b, 296b; The Moderate Intelligencer no. 5 (9-16 Sept. 1647), 33 (E.407.14); Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 806. He attended the House the next day (9 Sept.), and despite mounting what was evidently a spirited defence to the charges against him, the Commons voted that be disabled from sitting and sent to the Tower.95CJ v. 298a.

Copley’s third spell as a prisoner of Parliament kept him out of the House for over seven months. Nevertheless, he was not politically inactive during his confinement – nor, indeed, was he always confined. He spent at least some part of March 1648 at Hadzor, Worcestershire (where some of his kinsmen owned property), having presumably been let out of the Tower on parole.96VCH Worcs. iii. 128. Moreover, according to a correspondent of William Hamilton, 1st earl of Lanark (the duke of Hamilton’s brother), Copley had received assurances from Henry Marten* that if the Scots gave him their backing then he and his party would ‘appear for monarchy’ and against Oliver Cromwell*, ‘who was the falsest of mankind’. Copley had encouraged Marten in this design, ‘assuring him that little interest he had in Scotland should be heartily employed for so good a purpose, and he doubted not to give him a good accompt, providing that he would be as constant to these second thoughts as he had been to his first’.97NAS, GD 406/1/8277; Hamilton Pprs. Addenda ed. S. R. Gardiner (Cam. Soc. n.s. liii), 24-5. With the Presbyterian star back in the ascendant by the spring of 1648, the House resolved on 23 May that Copley be released from the Tower, and on 8 June it revoked the order of 9 September 1647 for disabling him as an MP.98CJ v. 570b, 589b.

The period from early July 1648 to Pride’s Purge in December was the busiest in Copley’s parliamentary career. He was named to almost 30 committees, served as a messenger to the Lords on three occasions and helped to manage two conferences.99CJ v. 639b, 647b, 657a, 668a; vi. 49a; LJ x. 384b, 395a, 435a. If his appointments and activities in the House during these months are any guide, much of his time was taken up with Parliament’s attempts to satisfy the City’s grievances and thereby secure London against a royalist uprising.100CJ v. 624a, 630a, 631a, 655a, 678a; vi. 10a, 20a, 39a, 47b. And despite his links with the Hamiltonian Scots, several of his appointments during the summer suggest that he did not relish the prospect of another Scottish invasion (although he may have favoured a military alliance between English Presbyterians and royalists against the army and Independents).101Cal. Charters... in the Muniment Room at Sherborne House (1900), 129. On 18 July, for example, he carried up to the Lords a Commons order declaring the invading Scots ‘enemies ... traitors and rebels’ – an order that the crypto-royalist majority in the Lords refused to pass.102CJ v. 639b; LJ x. 384b. Moreover, two days later (20 July), he was named to a committee for discovering the Hamiltonians’ English collaborators and proceeding against them as traitors.103CJ v. 640b.

Copley seems to have aligned with the ‘rigid’ Presbyterians in the summer of 1648 in their efforts to prevent an unconditional personal treaty with the king, as many of the ‘Scottified’ interest were demanding. On 25 July, he was part of a conference-management team for justifying the Commons’ insistence that prior to any treaty the king must agree to settle Presbyterianism for three years, relinquish control of the militia for ten and revoke all his wartime declarations against Parliament.104CJ v. 647b; LJ x. 395. For those at Westminster genuinely committed to a Presbyterian church settlement, these three propositions were considered indispensable in the face of resurgent royalism. The army grandees and their allies in the House represented an ever greater threat to the establishment of Presbyterianism, and just as in March when he had encouraged Marten to appear against Cromwell, so in the summer, Copley supported the release of another of the lieutenant-general’s radical opponents, the Leveller leader John Lilburne. Copley and the Presbyterian grandee Sir John Maynard ‘several times moved the House’ to take Lilburne’s case into consideration; and on 1 August, Copley was named first to a committee for recompensing the imprisoned Leveller and, with Maynard, managed a conference to request his release from the Tower.105A Speech Spoken in the Honourable House of Commons by Sir John Maynard (1648) 8, 14, 15, 16 (E.458.2); CJ v. 657a. Freed the next day (2 August), Lilburne professed himself ‘deeply engaged’ to Copley and Maynard for their ‘faithful and constant endeavours for his liberty’.106A Speech Spoken in the Honourable House of Commons, 16. Copley enjoyed a more personal triumph on 14 August, when the Houses passed an ordinance ratifying a grant of wardship made by the court of wards in July 1645, but suspended following his imprisonment ‘by the power of the Independent faction’ in September 1647.107CJ v. 670b; LJ x. 438b; [C. Walker*], Hist. of Independency (1648), 131-2 (E.463.19).

Copley backed the Presbyterians’ agenda regarding the treaty with the king at Newport in the autumn of 1648, serving as a teller with Colonel John Birch on 11 September in favour of allowing Charles to receive advice from the Scots, whom the Independents were keen to exclude from the talks.108CJ vi. 18b. Over the next two months, Copley received half a dozen appointments for furthering the treaty, of which perhaps the most important was on 27 October, when he was named to a committee to consider how the Covenant might be rendered acceptable to the king.109CJ vi. 19b, 29b, 51a, 63a, 68b, 81a. In the debate that preceded the establishment of this committee, it was reported by one (hostile) commentator that Copley had ‘moved the House so far as to pity his Majesty’s sick conscience as to pare off some of the excretions of the Covenant lest he should disgorge it again’.110Mercurius Militaris no. 3 (24-31 Oct. 1648), 23 (E.469.10). Once again, Copley was striving to reconcile his desire for Charles’s restoration with the establishment of Presbyterianism. Yet the gulf between his own idea of an acceptable church settlement and that of the king is suggested by his appointment to committees in October and November to promote a preaching ministry in London and for removing obstructions on the sale of church lands.111CJ vi. 53a, 81b. Copley’s other main preoccupations during the autumn were the provision of a cavalry guard for two Houses; resolving the quarrel at the siege of Pontefract between Colonel Thomas Rainborowe* and the Yorkshire Presbyterian MP Sir Henry Cholmley; and finding money to pay the New Model in the hope that it would accept the outcome of the Newport Treaty.112CJ vi. 34a, 38a, 41a, 47a, 49a, 57a, 58b, 60b, 69b, 78a, 83b.

Regarded by the army as one of the ‘pillars of the Scottish interest’, Copley was secluded and imprisoned at Pride’s Purge on 6 December.113Bodl. Clarendon 34, f. 17; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 39 (19-26 Dec. 1648), sig. Eee4v (E.477.30). He was held initially at the King’s Head inn on the Strand, but on 12 December he and three other leading Presbyterians – Sir John Clotworthy, Colonel Edward Massie and Sir William Waller – were moved to St James’s Palace.114Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 38 (12-19 Dec. 1648), sigs. Ddd2-Ddd2v (E.476.35). That same day (12 Dec.), the Rump, at the army’s behest, revoked the Commons’ order of 8 June that had overturned the 7 September 1647 order for disabling him as an MP.115PA, Ms CJ xxxiii, pp. 440-2; The Humble Proposals and Desires of His Excellency the Lord Fairfax (1648), 3-4; Several Votes, Orders and Ordinances of the Lords and Commons (1648), 3 (E.477.12). Before they were removed from the King’s Head, the four Members issued a formal protest against the army’s proceedings, which they denounced as a ‘higher usurpation and exercise of an arbitrary and unlawful power, than hath been heretofore pretended to, or attempted by this, or any king or other power whatsoever within this realm’.116[Walker], Anarchia Anglicana (1649), 39-41 (E.570.4). Their reaction to the king’s trial and execution can only be imagined.

In January 1649, Copley was moved to Windsor Castle, where he remained until March 1651, when he was transferred to St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall, and from there a few months later to Exeter Castle.117Bodl. Clarendon 34, f. 86; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 81, 294. Despite the length of this, his fourth spell as a prisoner of Parliament, he assured Colonel Edward Harley* in September 1651 that he was ‘no way abated, nor I hope never shall in my resolution, whatever become of me, of adhering to my principles, in which by the help of my God I will keep my integrity till I die’.118Add. 70113, unfol.: Copley to Harley, 27 Sept. 1651. Nevertheless, he was in regular contact with Sir William Lewis and other imprisoned Presbyterian grandees about how best to secure their freedom – whether it be through a joint petition to the council of state (whose authority Copley had fewer qualms about acknowledging than that of the Rump), or simply by waiting for an act of oblivion or the ‘new representative (if that be a real thing)’.119Add. 70113, unfol.: same to same, 1 and 11 Oct. 1651. In the end, he seems to have petitioned the council of state on his own, pleading that his continued imprisonment was damaging his iron-making business on which his wife and children depended for their subsistence.120Add. 70113, unfol.: draft petition of Copley c.1651.

Following his release from prison, which was apparently at some point in 1652, Copley quickly set about enlarging and improving his estate. His numerous property acquisitions during the 1650s included the leases of Chapel and Rockley furnaces and Kimberworth forge (another parcel of the Arundel-owned manor of Sheffield), which he purchased from Francis Nevile* in 1652 for £4,000.121C10/91/26; Doncaster Archives, DD/CROM/202, bdls. 11, 27, 29, 31-2, 34-5; F. Rockley, An Abstract of the Case of Francis Rockley (?1666); Hey, Fiery Blades, 170; ‘Lionel Copley’, Oxford DNB. There is no evidence that he attempted to revive his parliamentary career during the 1650s, although prior to the elections to the second Cromwellian Parliament in 1656 he allegedly joined Sir Henry Vane II*, Henry Neville* and other leading commonwealthsmen in trying to rally support against the protectorate under the slogan ‘no swordsmen, no decimators’.122TSP v. 296. Three years later (June 1659), he was being courted by the exiled king, who referred to ‘assurances received of his [Copley’s] affection’.123CCSP iv. 252. Copley attended the Long Parliament following the re-admission of the secluded Members in February 1660 and was named to committees on legislation for calling the 1660 Convention and for rewarding General George Monck*.124CJ vii. 868b, 872b, 877b.

In the elections to the 1660 Convention, Copley stood for Pontefract with the godly Yorkshire lawyer John Hewley*.125Notts. RO, DD/SR/221/96/8, 23. Their interest was based largely on the fact that Hewley was the town’s recorder and evidently enjoyed the support of the municipal elite.126Infra, ‘John Hewley’. But the popular vote was with their competitors, the local royalists Sir George Savile† and William Lowther†. On election day, the majority of the voters backed Savile and Lowther, as a poll confirmed, with the mayor and probably most of the aldermen supporting Hewley and Copley. Hewley managed to ensure that a double return was entered, but he then jettisoned Copley and submitted another indenture to the sheriff naming himself and Savile.127Notts. RO, DD/SR/221/94/14; DD/SR/221/96/12, 16-17. Hewley was evidently hoping that Lowther’s return would be disqualified under the ordinance passed in the last weeks of the Long Parliament disqualifying cavaliers from voting. The committee of privileges, however, found that Savile and Lowther had received ‘the greatest number of voices’, and on 16 May the Commons declared them duly elected.128CJ viii. 33.

Although described by Massie as ‘very zealous for the king’, Copley did little to manifest this royalist zeal beyond giving evidence against Thomas Scot I* at the trial of the regicides.129TSP vii. 856; Howell, State Trials, v. 1063. In July 1660, the crown granted him the office of registrar to the prerogative court of York diocese during the vacancy of the see, and the following year he received a royal pardon.130Doncaster Archives, DD/CROM/11/56, 57; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 144. However, he was omitted from the Yorkshire magistracy and most other places of trust in the county. And his stock probably fell further in 1663, when the authorities uncovered evidence that he had been trying to raise money for nonconformist ministers in the north.131Add. 33770, f. 28v. His godly sympathies apparently masked a violent temper, for in 1664 it was alleged that he had beaten one his neighbours and then ‘put a bridle into his mouth, got on his back and ridden him about for half an hour, kicking him to make him move’, in what was very probably a symbolic rebuttal of Leveller rhetoric that no man was born with a saddle on his back to be ridden by others.132Depositions from York Castle ed. J. Raine (Surt. Soc. xl), 125; D. Underdown, A Freeborn People, 112. Copley could be equally unscrupulous in his financial dealings, prompting one of his creditors to remind him that ‘straight reckoning keeps long friends’.133Doncaster Archives, DD/CROM/202, bdls. 34-5: G. Sitwell to Copley, 17 Dec. 1666, 29 Apr. 1667; George Sitwell’s Letterbk. 1662-6 ed. P. Riden (Derbys. Rec. Soc. x), 7, 16, 43, 57, 59-61, 78, 100, 164, 209. Despite cash-flow problems, his iron-making business was evidently flourishing by the mid-1660s, and after the death of his elder brother Christopher in 1664 he was able to buy up the family estate at Wadworth, near Doncaster.134PROB11/350, f. 102v; Doncaster Archives, DD/CROM/202, bdle. 4.

Copley continued to add to his estate and to consolidate his business until a few years before his death late in 1675.135Hunter, S. Yorks. i. 252. He was buried in Wadworth church on 19 December.136Wadworth Par. Reg. ed. Lindley, Preston, Barber, 95. In his will, he left the bulk of his estate to trustees, bequeathing his estranged wife an annuity of 100 marks on condition that she did not live with any of their children, ‘having had too sad experience of her proud and unquiet spirit, whereby both they and I do greatly suffer to this day’. He also charged his estate with annuities of 200 marks and £100 and bequeathed £500 to each of his two daughters in addition to their marriage portions of £1,000.137PROB11/350, f. 102v-104. After Copley’s death, his iron-making business, which included ironstone and coal mines, charcoal woods, forges and furnaces, fell into decay.138Hey, Fiery Blades, 170. He was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.