WORSLEY, Charles (1622-56), of The Platt, Rusholme, Manchester, Lancs.

Worsley’s family claimed descent from one of the companions of Robert, duke of Normandy, the eldest son of the Conqueror.24Booker, Birch, 25. The Worsleys of The Platt, in Rusholme (now a suburb of Manchester), belonged to a junior branch of the family that had settled in the Manchester area in the second half of the sixteenth century.25Booker, Birch, 66. Worsley’s grandfather was a prosperous linen draper, though he was consistently styled ‘yeoman’ in legal documents.26Manchester Central Lib. M35/1/14/2; M35/1/27/2-3; M35/1/28/8; Booker, Birch, 25. Worsley’s father, Raphe Worsley, who was likewise a linen draper cum ‘yeoman’, was evidently a man of considerable means, laying out £550 in 1625 for the capital messuage of The Platt, which became the family’s principal residence.27Manchester Central Lib. M35/1/16/5; M35/1/25/3; M35/1/26/5; M35/1/29/3, 5; Booker, Birch, 23, 27. His subsequent purchases of property and leases in the area probably served to raise his social standing, and by the early 1650s both he and Worsley were being styled ‘gentleman’.28Manchester Central Lib. M35/1/16/5, 7-8; M35/1/25/3; M35/1/26/5; M35/1/28/1/10, 17, 19; M35/1/29/3; M35/1/30/4; M35/2/31; M35/6/1/12; Manchester Ct. Leet Recs. ed. Earwaker, iv. p. 187.

Little is known about Worsley’s upbringing and education. His father was probably a man of godly sympathies – he was, at any rate, on close terms with one of Lancashire’s leading puritan divines, Richard Heyricke, warden of the collegiate church of Manchester.29Manchester Central Lib. M35/6/1/5, 15; Richardson, Puritanism, 45. It was presumably Raphe Worsley who arranged the marriage in 1645 between Worsley and Mary Booth, who took her religion seriously enough to make notes on sermons by Heyricke and other local godly ministers.30Manchester Central Lib. M35/5/3/7. Like many of the leading men in and around Manchester, Raphe Worsley sided with Parliament during the civil war.31Booker, Birch, 28; Blackwood, Lancs. 85. Worsley himself became a captain in Lancashire’s parliamentarian forces (although his service record remains obscure), and at the end of the war he turned his hand to informing against royalists who had concealed part of their estate from the sequestrators.32Booker, Birch, 39; Morrill, Cheshire, 277.

Both Raphe and Charles Worsley were congregants and patrons of the chapel of ease that the grandfather of the future parliamentarian officer Thomas Birche* had established at Birch, in the Worsleys’ home parish of Rusholme.33Supra, ‘Thomas Birche’; Booker, Birch, 137-8, 142, 144. In the mid-1640s, the two men joined Birche in signing several petitions to Parliament from the parish of Manchester, requesting the ‘planting of a godly and constant ministry’ in the parishes’ chapels, that each chapelry be made into a parish in its own right and that the inhabitants of each ‘have liberty to elect their own ministers’.34Greater Manchester County RO, E7/28/5/8a-b.

Despite his less than glittering military career, Worsley was evidently highly regarded in army circles, for in the summer of 1650, Oliver Cromwell* himself appointed him lieutenant-colonel of a regiment of foot to be raised in Lancashire and which, that autumn, would become Cromwell’s own regiment.35Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 481-2. Worsley and the regiment marched up to Scotland shortly after the battle of Dunbar and served in the campaign in England that culminated in Cromwell’s victory at Worcester in September 1651.36CSP Dom. 1650, p. 308; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 482-3. The following month, Worsley and the regiment were assigned to the force with which Colonel Robert Duckenfeild* secured the Isle of Man for Parliament.37Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 483; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 488. In 1652, the regiment was given quarters at St James’s Palace, which is where Worsley lodged while he was in London.38Lancs. RO, DDKE/9/129/3; CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 460; TSP iii. 186.

As Cromwell’s regimental second-in-command, Worsley became a trusted subordinate of the lord general and closely involved in army affairs. In August 1652, he was part of a delegation of officers, headed by another loyal Cromwellian, Colonel Edward Whalley*, that presented a petition to Parliament, calling (in effect) for the Rump to set a period to its sitting and to bring in qualifications for electing ‘such as are pious and faithful to the interest of the commonwealth’.39CJ vii. 164b; To the Supreame Authoritie the Parliament of the Common-Wealth of England (1652, 669 f.16/62); Worden, Rump Parl. 307-8. Like many army officers, Worsley probably believed that MPs had been corrupted by power or – as in the case of the Cheshire Rumper Sir William Brereton – were simply corrupt. Worsley presented information to the Committee for Advance of Money* in the summer of 1652 that Brereton had illegally retained sequestered property of James Stanley†, 7th earl of Derby for his own profit.40CCAM 1354. Worsley himself acquired several of the earl’s former manors from the treason trustees the following year.41C54/3757/6; C54/3767/11; Manchester Central Lib. M35/2/4/1; CCC 1117. When Cromwell put an end to the Rump’s sitting in April 1653, it was Worsley who brought the ‘five or six files of musketeers’ into the House to help the lord general make his point more forcibly. After the MPs had been ushered out, the door of the House was locked and Worsley given custody of the key and the mace.42Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 642, 643, 646; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 483-4.

The momentous events that Worsley witnessed and played a part in during the early 1650s probably strengthened his millenarian perception of the workings of providence. A collection of sermons by the deceased Presbyterian divine Christopher Goad, published in June 1653, carried a preface by Worsley in which he assured the readers that ‘We are the children of the last times, and upon us are the ends of the world come; prophecies and promises which have been hid from ages and generations are now enriching us by their revealing and fulfilling in us’.43C. Goad, Refreshing Drops, and Scorching Vials (1653), preface (E.698.12). Worsley’s millenarianism was not as extreme or as political in nature as that of the Fifth Monarchists, with whom he quarrelled on one occasion in the presence of the protector.44Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 614. Nevertheless, whether Goad would have approved of the strongly anti-formalist tone of Worsley’s message to the Saints is open to question. During May and June 1653, Worsley was involved in the proceedings of the council of state – and probably also of the council of officers, which was largely responsible for determining the membership of the Nominated Parliament.45CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 302, 310, 319, 333, 393, 415. On 8 July, the new Parliament sent one of its officers to Worsley to take back custody of the mace.46CJ vii. 282b. The ‘Worsley’ who was reported to have taken part in Cromwell’s treaty negotiations with the Dutch in November 1653 was almost certainly Sir Charles Wolseley*, with whom Worsley is sometimes mistaken.47Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 122; ‘Charles Worsley’, BDBR.

Worsley doubtless welcomed the establishment of the protectorate in December 1653 and was quick to profit from it when, in February 1654, the protectoral council appointed him custodian of the office of clerk of the peace for Lancashire.48Lancs. RO, DDKE/1/32; DDKE/9/33/14; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 407. In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament that summer, he was returned for the newly-enfranchised borough of Manchester.49Supra, ‘Manchester’. Given his proximity to Cromwell and his inner circle, it is very likely that he had been consulted over the town’s promotion to the ranks of Lancashire’s parliamentary boroughs under the terms of the Instrument of Government. He was certainly an obvious choice as Manchester’s first MP, both for his family’s standing in the town and his own influence at the centre of power.

Worsley was named to 15 committees in the first protectoral Parliament, including those for introducing an oath requiring MPs to recognise the government; examining the powers of the Cromwellian ejectors and triers; Irish affairs; regulating and limiting the court of chancery; improving the public accounts; and for drawing up a list of ‘damnable heresies’ to be inserted in the bill for settling the government.50CJ vii. 370a, 371b, 374a, 374b, 378b, 380a, 381a, 387a, 388a, 394b, 397b, 399b, 407b, 419a. All three of his tellerships in this Parliament were in divisions relating to the House’s attempts to re-write the protectoral constitution. The first, on 2 January 1655, concerning the distribution of parliamentary constituencies for Kent under the Instrument of Government, was apparently of no great moment in terms of factional alignments in the House.51CJ vii. 411b. But the other two, on 13 and 15 January, saw him partnered with Colonel William Goffe and ‘Colonel Birch’ in support of questions intended to secure a reliable, and largely government controlled, source of revenue for maintenance of the protectoral military establishment.52CJ vii. 415a, 417a. The opposing tellers on both occasions were firm Presbyterians. Worsley’s partner in the second of these divisions was possibly the Presbyterian MP John Birch – who was styled ‘colonel’ but had left the army a decade earlier – but it is more likely to have been his fellow Lancashire officer Thomas Birche. Besides being members of the same congregation, Worsley and Birche both had a vested interest in ensuring the army was kept up to strength and in pay.53Supra, ‘John Birch’; ‘Thomas Birche’.

Worsley was a member of the ‘committee of officers’, which included that familiar pairing of Whalley and Goffe, to which the protectoral council regularly referred matters of business concerning the army.54CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 89, 106, 165, 166, 205, 227, 263, 354; 1655, pp. 74, 112, 121, 125, 148, 154, 171, 190, 250, 272, 329; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 196, 225, 304. In his dual capacity as one of London’s senior military men and as a Middlesex and Westminster magistrate, Worsley was closely involved in apprehending and examining various groups and individuals in the capital who were thought to pose a security risk to the state or to Cromwell himself.55CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 165, 205; TSP iii. 349-50; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 304. His reward – if that is the right word – for his conscientious service to the protectorate came in August 1655 with his appointment as the major-general in charge of the counties of Cheshire, Derbyshire and Worcestershire, with a salary of £666 a year.56CSP Dom. 1655, p. 275; 1656-7, p. 199. In October, there was some re-distribution of counties among the major-generals that saw Worsley lose Derbyshire and Worcestershire and gain Staffordshire and Lancashire.57CSP Dom. 1655, p. 378; C. Durston, Cromwell’s Major-Generals (Manchester, 2001), 26.

At the age of only 33, Worsley was the youngest of the major-generals; he was also probably the most zealous and hard-working. He made a whirlwind tour through his three counties in November 1655, resolving ‘to strike while the iron is hot and give myself no rest till I have (through the assistance of God) brought the business to some good issue’.58TSP iv. 247. Apparently undaunted by the size of the task facing him, his reports to Secretary John Thurloe* are full of godly satisfaction at the generally positive response he met with from the region’s ‘good people’: ‘truly I find in them a spirit extraordinarily bent to the work, and I plainly discern the finger of God going along with it ... that which is none of the least encouragements is that God hath already put into His people a praying spirit for this great and good work’.59TSP iv. 149, 179, 187, 189, 224, 340, 485, 595-6, 639.

Worsley was at, or near the top of, the league table in almost every aspect of the major-generals’ remit – suppressing alehouses and drunkenness (he closed down 200 alehouses in the Blackburn area alone); strengthening the triers and ejectors; imprisoning ‘suspicious idle and lewd persons’; replacing ungodly local officials with ‘honest, faithful and judicious men’; and disarming and fining royalists and other ‘disaffected’ persons (in which category Worsley included Catholics as well as the republican John Wildman*).60TSP iv. 179, 333, 340, 450, 473, 522-3; Morrill, Cheshire, 276-86; Durston, Cromwell’s Major-Generals, 84, 86-7, 117, 130-1, 159-60, 163, 166, 167, 175-6, 179; ‘Policing the Cromwellian church’, in The Cromwellian Protectorate ed. P. Little (Woodbridge, 2007), 193-4; J. Sutton, ‘Cromwell’s commrs. for preserving the peace of the commonwealth’, in Soldiers, Writers and Statesmen of the English Civil War ed. I. Gentles, J. Morrill, B. Worden (Cambridge, 1998), 152-3; ‘Charles Worsley’, Oxford DNB. His letters and activities as a major general provide overwhelming evidence of his strenuously puritan religious convictions. Indeed, he canvassed Independent congregations in his region, asking them ‘to make known their grievances, promising to make redress according to his power’.61Jolly Note Bk. ed. H. Fishwick (Chetham Soc. n.s. xxxiii), 127; Durston, Cromwell’s Major-Generals, 155. Yet although described in secondary sources as a religious Independent, there is no evidence to link him with any specific congregation besides that of Birch chapel.62Durston, Cromwell’s Major-Generals, 48. He had two of his children baptised by the local Independent divines Samuel Eaton and Thomas Jollie, but that was largely, it seems, a matter of convenience – they were simply the nearest godly ministers to hand.63Booker, Birch, 36-8. His attitude towards the Quakers was ambivalent. On the one hand, he complained several times to Thurloe that his region was ‘extremely troubled’ by their evangelizing activities and that he was taking action against them.64TSP iv. 333, 341. On the other hand, Friends themselves reported him ‘very loving’ and willing to ‘take especial care to protect us’.65P. J. Pinckney, ‘The Cheshire election of 1656’, BJRL, xlix. 425.

Worsley’s extraordinary zeal as a major-general, and his determination to deal severely with even minor delinquents, over-taxed what seems to have a weak constitution, and it is very likely that he worked himself into an early grave.66Manchester Central Lib. M35/5/24. In May 1656, he informed Thurloe that he was not feeling well and that he intended to rest at home and take physic.67TSP v. 19. A few days later, however, he and the other major-generals were summoned to London for a series of meetings with Cromwell. Once in London, his condition worsened, and on 12 June he died, 12 days short of his 34th birthday.68SP18/130/129, f. 201; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 486; ‘Charles Worsley’, Oxford DNB. On his deathbed, he stipulated that his recently purchased title to part of the estate of a Lancashire recusant be surrendered to the exchequer ‘that it might become decimable [liable to payment of the decimation tax], for he said he would not for all the world wrong the commonwealth’ nor prejudice the recusant’s heirs.69SP18/130/129, ff. 201-2. He was buried with full military honours the next day in Henry VII’s chapel in Westminster Abbey; as a result of an oversight, he was not disinterred at the Restoration. His funeral was attended by his fellow major-generals but not, it seems, by Cromwell.70Clarke Pprs. iii. 67; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 486; Booker, Birch, 47; ‘Charles Worsley’, Oxford DNB. Worsley made out a will shortly before his death, in which he left the bulk of his estate to his wife (during her life) and bequeathed £200 apiece to his two daughters. However, the will was contested by the guardians of his eldest son with his first wife and was never entered in probate.71C5/27/114. The council of state awarded his widow a grant of £200, his salary as a major-general and a state pension of £100 a year on condition that she relinquish her claim to Worsley’s estate based upon his will.72SP18/130/129, f. 201; CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 28, 97, 199, 266; 1657-8, p. 295.

Worsley was succeeded as major-general for Cheshire, Lancashire and Staffordshire by Tobias Bridge*. His regimental successor was Waldive Lagoe*, who married Worsley’s widow.73Supra, ‘Waldive Lagoe’; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 486. None of Worsley’s immediate family sat in Parliament.