THOMPSON, William (c.1604-70), of Roxholme, Leasingham, Lincs.

Thompson’s family had settled in Lincolnshire by Tudor times. His grandfather had purchased the manor of Roxholme, about 15 miles south-east of Lincoln, in the 1590s and had made it the family’s principal residence.27Lincs. Peds. 959, 962. Thompson was stated as being 36 years old when his father, Richard Thompson, died in 1640 and was therefore almost certainly the William Thompson, son of Richard Thompson of Stoke Rochford, near Grantham, who matriculated from Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1621, aged 17.28C142/605/6; Al. Cant. However, there is no evidence to substantiate his further identification with the William Thompson who was subsequently ordained as a minister in the diocese of Peterborough.29Al. Cant. Thompson’s second wife, whom he married in 1632, was the sister of the future Nottinghamshire parliamentarian Charles White*.30Infra, ‘Charles White’.

Like his father, Thompson was one of the more obscure members of the Lincolnshire gentry and he received only one appointment to county government before the outbreak of civil war. By the summer of 1642, he seems to have been aligned with the nascent parliamentarian faction in Lincolnshire, signing a petition to the parliamentary lord lieutenant of the county, Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham, late in June, declaring a resolution to defend the king and ‘the true Protestant religion’ against ‘all such as shall attempt to separate his Majesty from his great and faithful council of Parliament’.31PA, Main Pprs. 4 July 1642. In April 1643, he was among those Lincolnshire Parliamentarians indicted of high treason by the royalists at the Grantham quarter sessions.32A Declaration of the Commons Assembled in Parliament upon Two Letters Sent by Sir John Brooks (1643), 11 (E.101.13). His reasons for siding with Parliament are obscure, although his later career, particularly under the protectorate, suggests that he favoured a godly preaching ministry.

Thompson was an active member of the Lincolnshire sequestrations and assessment committees during the mid-1640s and was among the committeemen involved in settling godly ministers in the county.33SP28/211, f. 514; E113/9, unfol.; Plundered Ministers of Lincs. ed. W.E. Foster (Guildford, 1900), 8, 83. Added to the Kesteven commission of the peace in September 1648, he continued to participate in local government after the regicide.34C231/6, p. 121; SP28/236, pt. 3, unfol. (entry for June 1651); Lincs. RO, Grantham Hall Bk. 1, f. 233v; CCC 666, 667, 676. Indeed, in February 1650, he was one of small body of individuals who were appointed to the Lincolnshire sequestrations commission.35SP46/105, f. 182; CCC 172. Nevertheless, Thompson was far from being a major figure in Lincolnshire politics during the early 1650s, and this is reflected in the manner of his appointment to represent the county in the Nominated Parliament of 1653. He was one of 19, generally obscure, men who appear to have been nominated at a later stage than the majority of MPs, which may well indicate that they were chosen because some of the original nominees had been considered politically unreliable or, more likely, because they had refused to sit.36Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 139-40. Thompson received only three appointments in this Parliament – to the committees for inspecting the treasuries, for poor relief and for Scottish affairs.37CJ vii. 293b, 294b, 295b.

Thompson’s appointment as one of Lincolnshire’s ejectors in August 1654 suggests not only that he supported the Cromwellian religious settlement but also that he was a man of godly convictions. He was certainly active on this commission.38T. Grantham, A Complaint to the Protector (1656), 9 (E.1710.2). Evidently trusted by the protectoral government, he had been commissioned as a captain of militia horse by July 1655, and that autumn he was appointed to the Lincolnshire commission for the security of the commonwealth, and in that capacity he assisted Major-general Edward Whalley* in levying the decimation tax and purging local government of malignants.39SP25/77, p. 871; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 345; TSP iv. 238, 337. He continued to be named to local parliamentary commissions until the Restoration, although in July 1659, the restored Rump saw fit to replace him as a militia captain with one of its own members, Thomas Lister.40CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 16, 24.

Thompson was omitted from virtually all local commissions during the course of 1660 and probably spent his remaining years in quiet retirement at Roxholme. He died in the spring of 1670 and was buried at Leasingham on 9 April.41Leasingham bishop’s transcript. In his will, in which he asked to be buried ‘without any funeral pomp or ostentation’, he made bequests totalling about £350 and left the bulk of his estate to his nephew and ‘immediate heir’. Evidently, Thompson outlived all his children. Among his legatees were the ejected nonconformist ministers Michael Drake and James Mowbray and the serving incumbent of Leasingham.42Lincs. RO, W1670/i/22; Calamy Revised, 170, 359. None of Thompson’s immediate family sat in Parliament.