MACKWORTH, Humphrey I (1603-54), of Betton Strange, Shrewsbury, and Green Mews, Charing Cross, London.

The ancient patrimony of the Mackworth family lay in Derbyshire; Thomas Mackworth† represented that county in Parliaments held in 1425 and 1430. A branch of the family was resident in Rutland by the late 1470s, providing a sheriff of Rutland then, and a decade later, the family seat was the manor of Empingham. The Mackworths had moved again by the 1530s to Meole Brace, outside Shrewsbury, by 1534, and it was from this offshoot of the Rutland family that Humphrey Mackworth was descended. His father, Richard, held lands outside Shrewsbury and was wealthy enough to send his only son to Shrewsbury school, Queens’ College, Cambridge and Gray’s Inn. It is said that as an assiduous law student in London, Mackworth collected reports from the courts of king’s bench and common pleas. He came into his family estates in 1624, after his wardship had been managed by his mother.31Oxford DNB. By 1631 Mackworth was established in Shrewsbury as its legal adviser, reaching a deal in April that year with agents of Thomas Howard, 1st earl of Berkshire who was suing the corporation for manorial dues, and the following year acting for the town in establishing a ‘preaching minister’ at Chirbury, Montgomeryshire.32Salop Archives, Shrewsbury min. bks. A3/99, 100, 105.

Mackworth was at the heart of the controversy in Shrewsbury over the curacy of St Chad’s, which happened to be the parish church for Mackworth’s home, Betton Strange. He had in 1633 been identified by the Laudian minister, Peter Studley, as one who during church services declined to bow his head at the name of Jesus.33Oxford DNB. The same year, Mackworth was reported to the privy council by another minister, Richard Poole, for putting it about that a commission for beautifying churches had been slipped past the king by Archbishop William Laud.34CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 341. Studley had chosen to take on the puritans of Shropshire, among them Richard More* and Esay Thomas* over the lurid axe-murders near Bishop’s Castle, which Studley chose to attribute to a collapse of religious discipline fomented by sectaries.35P. Studley, The Looking-Glasse of Schisme (1634). Mackworth was also active in determining the headship of Shrewsbury school, for which Richard Poole was a disappointed applicant, and when Mackworth became an alderman in 1636 it was by means of a coup which displaced various of his opponents, among them the Laudian controversialist, Studley. To this mixture must be added the campaign for a new town charter. By the time the issue of the curacy reached its climax, Mackworth had been in the eye of a number of Shrewsbury storms for some time.36Salop Archives, Shrewsbury min. bks. A3/112, 114.

The question of the curacy was partly occasioned by crown insistence on its historic right to make the appointment, and the government was faced with attempts by rival factions in Shrewsbury to suborn it to their point of view. The determination of the parties was sufficient to wrong-foot the privy council into supporting first one side and then the other, but the conflict squared up into competition for the place between a Calvinist on the one hand and a Laudian on the other. In defiance of what might have been expected, Mackworth seems to have supported the Laudian George Lawson, out of his respect for his scholarship, over the Calvinist Richard Poole. In fact, it was Richard Poole who remained curate of St Chad’s, by royal fiat; Lawson was taken up by another puritan, Richard More*. This affair even blighted the collection of Ship Money in Shrewsbury, and made Humphrey Mackworth something of a bête noire in the eyes of the beleaguered government.37CSP Dom. 1637-8, pp. 58, 337-8; C. Condren, George Lawson’s Politica and the English Revolution (Cambridge, 1989), 11-13. Nor was he universally admired in Shrewsbury. He instigated proceedings in the court of chivalry against his local detractors, among them a churchwarden, for casting doubts on his honour and for organising a shaming ritual involving the ringing of hammers when in July 1638 Mackworth accompanied his new bride through the town.38Cases in the High Ct. of Chivalry 1634-1640 ed. Cust and Hopper (Harl. Soc. n.s. xviii), 175. His marriage settlement with the Venables family, to which John Godbold* and Raphe Assheton I* were parties, reveals him to be a man of substance, his unpopularity notwithstanding. Were a daughter to be born of the union, a dowry of £1000 would be settled on her.39W. Glam. RO, NAS Gn/E 19/121.

Between 1640 and 1642, Mackworth was in Shrewsbury, and worked on behalf of the corporation, dealing with the civic investment in that part of the cloth industry called ‘jersey work’.40Salop Archives, 6001/290, 13 May 1641. He was also evidently active in support of the reform programme being driven forward in Parliament. He must have been the ‘Mr Mackworths’ reported by Brilliana Harley to have been busy collecting signatures to a Shropshire petition against episcopacy, probably in 1641. She noted with unease how subscribers were being added to the lists indiscriminately, and attributed this ruthless strategy locally to Mackworth.41Letters of Brilliana Harley, 113-4. In May 1642, he and a number of others in Shropshire pledged to invest £1900 for the punitive expedition to Ireland in the wake of the Catholic rising there, and by September had paid in all but £114 of the sum promised.42CSP Ire. Adv. p. 286. With his history of opposition to the government on matters of government, religion and taxation, it was natural enough that Mackworth should side with Parliament when civil war broke out. The king was in Shrewsbury in late September, and from Bridgnorth on 14 October pronounced Mackworth, Thomas Hunt* and Thomas Nicholls guilty of treason. A month later the corporation dismissed the trio from their places as aldermen, first for being non-residents and secondly for high treason.43Salop Archives, 6001/290, 16 Nov. 1642; Owen, Blakeway, Hist. Shrewsbury, i. 430-1.

As Shrewsbury remained under royalist control, Mackworth moved first to London, but by January 1643 had moved with his wife to Coventry.44W. Phillips, ‘Ottley Pprs.’, Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 2, vi. 58 His lands in Shropshire fell under sequestration by the royalist administration there, but his mother stoutly defended their manor of Sutton against the royalist governor of Shrewsbury on the grounds that it was her jointure, demanding the ‘right and privilege of a subject’ to enjoy her own property.45Phillips, ‘Ottley Pprs.’, Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. vii. 298-9, 302-3. Mackworth was named to all the commissions issued by Parliament for Shropshire in 1642-3, including the commission of the peace, but they were nominal appointments. Under the terms of the ordinance of 10 April 1643 for the defence of Staffordshire and Warwickshire he could contribute to the war effort in the west midlands, but even before then he was in Coventry, a town under parliamentary control, as a member of the committee there.46A. Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warws. (Cambridge, 1987), 360-1, 363. With George Abbott II* he drafted an order that buildings around the town gates be destroyed in order to improve resistance to a siege, and he remained an intermittent presence in Coventry until March 1645.47Coventry RO, BA/H/C/17/2, f. 35v. It was with Mackworth’s support that the Coventry garrison enjoyed the ministrations of Richard Baxter, himself a Shropshire man, who recorded how Mackworth, Abbott and Godfrey Bossevile* were among his auditors.48Reliquiae, 44. In September 1643, Mackworth was among an advance party sent to Shropshire to establish a foothold at Wem, ahead of a force under the earl of Denbigh, commissioned as commander-in-chief of the army for Staffordshire, Shropshire and Warwickshire. Mackworth went with the rank of captain, and tried to entice Baxter to accompany him, but by December he had returned to London, recognised now as one of the ‘chief men’ of the Shropshire committee.49Reliquiae, 45; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 503; HMC Portland, i. 141.

Mackworth was in London partly to prepare the way for Denbigh’s expeditionary force to relieve a region which was of strategic importance on routes to Chester and Wales, and also to give evidence in the trial of William Laud, for which he made a deposition on the interference by the archbishop in the affairs of Shrewsbury.50HMC 4th Rep. 263; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 2. But it is clear that Mackworth was able to exercise some influence with Denbigh, who in 1643 had become embroiled in a quarrel with the committee at Coventry, whose leading members were generally more radical than he. Such was the disagreeable atmosphere in the Coventry garrison because of this dispute that Baxter later cited it in his memoirs as contributing to his inclination to move to Wem. Denbigh was no radical, and even before he and Mackworth went to London to try to patch up the quarrel with the Coventry committee, the earl had been approached by a royalist agent, who promised him a thousand soldiers if he would change sides. During that stay in London, Denbigh spoke to Mackworth about the possibility of a ‘third party’ – presumably a peace party of some kind – being formed, but did not pursue the topic when he saw that Mackworth showed no interest.51Reliquiae, 45; CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 445-7.

From January 1644, Mackworth became an important conduit between Denbigh and his local support. Only in the spring of 1644 did Denbigh put troops in the field, against the background of various urgent pleas from Mackworth that delay would cost the tenuous hold that Parliament had in the west midlands.52HMC 4th Rep. 263, 264, 265. By the summer, the Shropshire committee commanded a small garrison at Wem, from whence Mackworth and his colleagues sought Denbigh’s help in for removing the notorious royalist prisoner, Lord Newport (Sir Richard Newport†), from the area as they feared his potential for inciting resistance to their soldiers.53Warws. RO, CR2017/C10/2. Mackworth was regarded by the Committee of Both Kingdoms* as essential in the regional wartime administration, and they vetoed his planned return to Coventry to attend to the stewardship of the city which he had earned through his legal expertise.54CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 493, 514.

In February 1645, Shrewsbury was taken with a minimum of violence for Parliament, and the following month Mackworth was chosen governor of the town by the committee. The appointment soon secured parliamentary approval, confirmed in 1646 and 1647, and Mackworth remained as governor, with the rank of colonel he had acquired at the end of 1644, until he moved to London in 1654.55Bodl. Tanner 60A, f.11; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 563. His duties at Shrewsbury included providing accommodation for the Shropshire committee, gathering military intelligence and organising raiding parties in the district in efforts to extend parliamentarian control.56Brereton Letter Bks. i. 209, 217, 225, 231, 238-9, 241-2,243, 265-6, 276, 277-8, 278-9, 282-3, 290-1, 303, 303, 343, 370, 393, 431, 443; ii. 124, 143, 148, 206-7, 222, 249, 279, 288, 299, 300, 319, 325-6, 353, 387, 388, 392, 398-9, 413, 420-1, 427, 441, 445, 447; Bodl. Tanner 59A, ff. 5, 10, 60A f. 52. As early as January 1645, tensions had developed between the committee, including Mackworth, and Thomas Mytton*, then colonel under Denbigh but soon afterwards major-general of north Wales. In mid-February 1646, Mackworth signed a letter to Speaker Lenthall reporting Mytton’s apparent willingness to blame disorders among the soldiery on the committee, while Mytton himself canvassed Lenthall on the committee’s failure to pay his men.57Bodl. Tanner 60B, ff. 444, 461,463. It was around 1647, while Mackworth was governor of Shrewsbury, that Richard Baxter canvassed his support for a university college for Wales, for which Shrewsbury would in Baxter’s view have been an ideal venue. The governor was unmoved, apparently.58Baxter Corresp. i. 256.

Mackworth was active in the field in the military emergency in the spring of 1648, having had to quell a mutiny in Shrewsbury at the start of the year.59CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 11-12, 232, 236, 241, 260. If he had any qualms about the trial and execution of the king in January 1649 he kept them to himself, and in December of that year his part in February 1644 in trying to keep the allegiance to Parliament of the earl of Denbigh from wavering was made known to the council of state.60CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 445-7. Despite what must have been the displeasure of Denbigh’s old adversaries from the Coventry committee, among them William Purefoy I*, the earl survived Pride’s Purge to make a significant contribution to the politics of the Rump, and Mackworth’s knowledge of his alleged political unreliability with him proved undamaging. Mackworth seems to have harboured no aspirations to a seat in Parliament, unlike another long-serving garrison governor, Colonel Philip Jones*, and he remained the government’s head of security in the north-west midlands.61CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 503, 505; 1650, 131, 150, 158-9, 203, 306, 475, 505. He did develop his legal career, however, and from 1649 was active as deputy chief justice of Chester, which gave him a jurisdiction in north-east Wales; it was because of this appointment that contemporaries, including the Shropshire annalist, Richard Gough, called him ‘Judge Mackworth’.62Gough, Hist. Myddle, 159.

Mackworth’s military apotheosis came in the summer of 1651, when he played an important role in combating the incursion from Scotland by Charles Stuart, and in interrogating prisoners both before and after the ‘crowning mercy’ at Worcester on 3 September.63CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 89, 100, 192, 194, 394, 415, 447, 457, 469, 501. Mackworth quickly raised a new regiment to put into the field against Charles, and soon disbanded it again in the autumn. He defied the Scots king at Shrewsbury, declaring himself ‘unremovable the faithful servant of the commonwealth of England’. A relieved and grateful Parliament bestowed on Mackworth gold chain worth £100.64CSP Dom. 1651, p. 373; 1651-2, pp. 79, 273, 352; Owen, Blakeway, Hist. Shrewsbury, i. 467-8. Thereafter, he was required to try James Stanley, 7th earl of Derby, on a charge of high treason for his part in assisting the covenanted king of the Scots. An act of Parliament had declared correspondence with Charles treasonous, but although the trial was held in Chester, it was by court martial, not, as a modern authority suggests, by virtue of his legal office in the palatinate. In this exercise, Mackworth’s colleagues included the governor of Chester, Robert Duckenfield*, and Thomas Mytton; presumably Mytton and Mackworth had put their quarrels at Shrewsbury behind them.65Corpus Christi, Oxf. MS 296, ff. 106, 112; Perfect Account no. 40 (8-15 Oct. 1651), 313 (E.622.11); Weekly Intelligencer no. 37 (9-16 Sept. 1651), 286 (E.641.16); no. 38 (16-23 Sept. 1651), 292 (E.641.21); Oxford DNB. An assistant at the military trials in Chester was Colonel John Jones*, an enthusiast for the propagation of the gospel in Wales; Mackworth, Duckenfield and Jones had all been named in the millenarian-driven commission for that purpose in February 1650; the Presbyterian Mytton had not. The coincidence indicates how far Mackworth had become associated with one of the Rump’s pet projects, and the extent to which the defeat of Charles Stuart was a triumph for radicals.66Corpus Christi, Oxf. MS 296, f. 112. But despite this leaning towards the radical Independents, Richard Baxter in 1652 still numbered Mackworth among the godly.67Baxter Corresp. i. 82. In fact, Mackworth’s religious sympathies seem to have been broader even than Baxter’s. From outside the House he recommended a number of individuals for clerical posts under the Rump – and his influence evidently counted – while for a vacancy in the Shrewsbury ministry in 1652 he favoured Francis Kettleby, a graduate with a higher degree and a sufferer under the parliamentary regime.68Add. 36792, ff. 18v, 28, 29, 57v, 85v; Baxter Corresp. i. 85.

Oliver Cromwell’s* dismissal of the Rump did nothing to damage Mackworth’s position in Shropshire, and he was able to petition the parliamentary commissioners in Ireland in July 1653, probably in connection with his grant of lands in Garricastle, King’s County, his allocation for his investment at the time of the Irish adventure in 1642.69CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 589; 1653-4, pp. 60, 161-2; 1661-2, p. 262; CSP Ire. Adv. 345. He was at this time a regular attender at Shropshire quarter sessions.70Salop County Records, i. 2, 5, 7, 9. His abilities as a local administrator and judge were harnessed by the protectorate. On 2 February 1654 the lord protector’s council sought Cromwell’s permission to co-opt Mackworth to its number, and he was sworn five days later.71CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 382, 391. Edmund Ludlowe II* attributed Mackworth’s rise simply to the lord protector’s favouritism. According to his story, Cromwell dismissed Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper* from the council after having denied Cooper his daughter’s hand in marriage. Seeking to maximise his own influence in the council, and become ‘chief juggler’ there, Cromwell appointed the pliant Mackworth in Cooper’s place.72Ludlow, Mems. p. lxxi. The story is implausible because Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper did not leave the council until a year later; and there is no evidence that Cromwell lay behind the invitation to Mackworth. He was doubtless elected on the strength of his ability, but once a member, he would inevitably later be identified as ‘one of Oliver Cromwell's creatures’.73Gough, Hist. Myddle, 164.

From his first appearance at the council table, Mackworth proved an assiduous member, fully justifying his colleagues’ confidence in him. He attended 88 per cent of the council’s meetings, and from March to December 1654 only the president of the council attended more often; Mackworth shared the distinction of second most frequent attender with Walter Strickland*.74CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. xxxvi-xliv. Between his arrival at the council and the opening of the first protectoral Parliament on 3 September, Mackworth actively contributed to the drafting of at least 20 conciliar ordinances, on a wide range of topics.75CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 408, 414; 1654, pp. 27, 28, 30-1, 46, 54, 65, 67, 98, 146, 156, 174, 180, 207, 211, 219, 252, 262, 281, 285, 295-6, 308, 321-2, 328, 343, 355. Among these were laws prohibiting cock-fighting (restricting opportunities for crowds to gather, rather than animal welfare, being the driving force), the conditions at Savoy military hospital, the better support of Scottish universities, and a directive that allowed former parliamentarian soldiers to practise trades in towns regardless of the restrictive regulations traditionally enforced by urban corporations.76CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 65, 67, 285, 295-6, 343. Among the ordinances to which Mackworth lent a particularly significant contribution were those on the church settlement (the trying and ejecting of ministers), the government of the island of Jersey, the revision of laws on imprisonment for debt, the management of the estates of former royalists and other enemies of the state.77CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 27, 28, 30-1, 146, 308 (church settlement); 65, 67, 156 (Jersey); 54, 262 (poor prisoners); 46 (delinquents’ estates). With Colonel Philip Jones (another Cromwellian and former garrison commander with whom Mackworth can usefully be compared), Ashley Cooper and William Sydenham*, he brought in the ordinance that authorised investigation of church finances in Wales. As both Jones and Mackworth had been commissioners under the Rump act of 1650 for propagating the gospel there, they had opportunities to blunt the effectiveness of the legislation if its purpose was genuinely investigative.78CSP Dom. 1654, p. 211.

Philip Jones and William Sydenham were the two councillors who seem to have worked most closely with Mackworth in this busy period in the life of Cromwell’s council. Jones was on at least 14 committees with him, Sydenham at least nine.79CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 411, 413, 419, 425; 1654, 54, 207, 211, 264, 281, 295, 308, 321, 322, 328 (Jones); 1653-4, pp. 401, 413, 419, 425; 1654, pp. 174, 264, 291, 295, 343 (Sydenham). Drafting legislation was only one of Mackworth’s many council duties. With his colleagues, he examined petitions, among them those of Richard Temple*, for whom special provision was made so that he could convey property though a minor; and of his fellow Salopian, Thomas Baker*.80CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 58, 116, 223. The administration of justice naturally bulked large in his caseload, given his judicial office. He investigated what the government clearly considered abuses in the use of habeas corpus to release public enemies from detention, and on 20 June 1654 was made a commissioner for the law.81CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 208, 215 Throughout the summer, a significant proportion of Mackworth’s time must have been devoted to regulating the process of law, and in particular, the procedures in chancery.82CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 252, 281.

By the summer of 1654, Mackworth was one of the government’s most reliable functionaries, and his election for Shropshire for the forthcoming Parliament was unproblematic. When the assembly duly met, he was elected immediately to the committee of privileges. The scale of his activities in the House was, however, small in comparison with his presence on the lord protector’s council. Nearly all of his committee appointments were on topics in which he had specialised in the council. These included the judging of debt cases at Salters’ Hall (15 Sept.), and on the ordinance he had worked extensively on, for removing ministers from their livings; on abuses in printing and for regulating chancery.83CJ vii. 366b, 368a, 369b, 370a, 374a. He was named to the important committees for Scotland and Ireland, and there is no doubt that in all of these parliamentary activities he was a trusted agent of the council.84CJ vii. 371b.

In October Mary Mackworth journeyed to London to join her husband. She broke her journey at Coventry, and was entertained by the corporation at an inn there, where gifts of wine and sugar were bestowed on her.85Coventry RO, BA/A/A/26/3, p. 299. It was a significant acknowledgement of Humphrey Mackworth’s importance, both regionally and nationally. The Mackworths’ life together at Green Mews, Charing Cross, was short. In December Humphrey Mackworth died suddenly, leaving no will. His political importance was recognised in a Westminster Abbey burial, although in March 1657 Mackworth’s widow was still petitioning for £300 of funeral expenses.86CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 313; 1658-9, p. 35. Only until the Restoration of the monarchy was this to be his resting place. Mackworth had played no part in the trial and execution of the king, but his offence was to have been interred in the burying-place of kings, and his remains were disinterred on a warrant of 9 September 1661 and flung into a common pit nearby. It was probably this incident which led to assumptions in 1662 that Mackworth was an attainted regicide, with assailable forfeit property.87CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 262. Mary Mackworth lived on in London as a widow until 1679, when she left property to various relatives but apparently not to any of Humphrey Mackworth’s children.88PROB11/360/583. By his assertion that Mackworth married the sister of the wife of Thomas Baker*, Richard Gough, the Shropshire annalist, has been taken by one authority to have meant that Mackworth married three times. The error lies in Gough; Mary Mackworth, née Venables, was first cousin, not sister, to Baker’s wife, Elizabeth Fenwick.89Oxford DNB.