LISTER, Sir William (1591-1649), of Thornton Hall, Thornton-in-Craven, Yorks.

Lister was descended from an old Pennine family the Listers of Middop and Thornton-in-Craven, who had acquired gentry status by the fourteenth century.27Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. ii. 134-5; Denny, Mems. of an Ancient House, 3-4, 162-3. Their estate lay close to the border with Lancashire and a full 25 miles west of the nearest Yorkshire constituency – Knaresborough. Because of their distance from, and lack of proprietorial interest in, the West Riding boroughs, the Listers were constrained to look for parliamentary seats outside the county. Lister’s father was elected for the Westmorland constituency of Appleby in 1588 – although his return was subsequently declared void – and Sir William himself would be returned for the Nottinghamshire borough of East Retford.28HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘Appleby’.

Lister’s tuition and the ‘government’ of his person and estate were committed by his father, ‘being very aged and infirm’, to his brothers (Lister’s uncles) Martin and Michael Lister.29C3/365/41. It was probably during his formative years that Lister acquired the puritan sympathies that were to mark his later career, particularly during the 1640s. In 1623, he presented the godly minister Thomas Drake to the parish living at Thornton-in-Craven.30IND1/17000, f. 46v. Having already been cited by the church authorities on several occasions for nonconformist offences, Drake was to be suspended and excommunicated in 1632 for preaching without a licence.31Marchant, Puritans, 244. Despite what appear to have been his family’s puritan leanings, Lister’s uncles arranged for his marriage to a daughter of one of the North Riding’s foremost church papists – namely, Sir Henry Belasyse†, the grandfather of the future royalists Henry* and John Belasyse*.32C3/365/41; Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. ii. 136.

That Lister secured a bride from one of Yorkshire’s oldest and wealthiest families was a reflection of his own standing in the county. By the early 1630s, his estate was worth, by his own reckoning, £1,000 a year, and with eight sons to marry off, he was in an excellent position to improve his finances.33Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Br P85/3, 12, 86a/5. In 1635, he secured a match between his eldest son and a daughter of the wealthy Yorkshire knight Sir Richard Hawksworth – although Lister’s demand for a ‘very great’ marriage portion provoked ‘discontents’ between father and son as well as with Hawksworth.34Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Br P85/12, 14, 86a/1, 5; Cliffe, Yorks. 371-2. In 1639, he secured what would prove to be an even more advantageous match for his family – the marriage of his eldest daughter Francis to the future parliamentarian major-general and Cromwellian statesman, John Lambert*.35Supra, ‘John Lambert’.

Lister was a leading figure in the government of the West Riding, for which he was appointed a subsidy and Forced Loan commissioner, a magistrate and a deputy lieutenant. In marked contrast to the Belasyses, he seems to have been on reasonably good terms with Viscount Thomas Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†, the future earl of Strafford), the lord president of the council of the north. Lister probably owed his appointment as a deputy lieutenant to Wentworth – possibly on the recommendation of his ‘very loving friends’ Francis, 4th earl of Cumberland and his son Henry Lord Clifford, from whom Lister held part of his estate.36Chatsworth, Bolton Abbey mss, box 1, I.103; Cliffe, Yorks. 374. Certainly Lister was not a close friend of Wentworth himself, for he is not mentioned in any of the latter’s correspondence.

Lister appears to have served the crown loyally for most of the personal rule of Charles I, and it was only during the preparations for the first bishops’ war that he openly began to question the wisdom of royal policy – at least in so far as it applied to Yorkshire. In January 1639, following a royal order that the county’s trained bands should muster for possible deployment against the Scots, he signed a petition to the king from the Yorkshire deputy lieutenants and militia commanders, expressing their readiness to march to any rendezvous, but reminding Charles that their troops were ‘never...once employed out of our county upon any remote service whatsoever’.37SP16/409/53, f. 141; SP16/409/67, f. 167; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, i. 353-4. In the build up to the second bishops’ war, in March 1640, Lister signed what Wentworth (by now the earl of Strafford) regarded as an insolent letter from the same group of leading Yorkshire gentry, this time to the privy council, in which they had refused to send reinforcements to Berwick until the necessary money had been provided and due consideration had been given to ‘the last year’s past and great charge of this county’. Strafford vowed to give those responsible for this letter ‘something to remember it by hereafter’.38SP16/448/66i, f. 133; CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 573; Strafforde Letters, ii. 408-9. Thereafter, however, Lister seems to have subordinated his concern for the county’s welfare to his loyalty to the crown. He and Sir Edward Rodes* were involved in despatching Yorkshire militia troops to reinforce the garrison at Berwick in April 1640, and he declined to join his kinsman Henry Belasyse and other ‘disaffected’ Yorkshire gentry in their petitions to the king that summer and autumn, in which they complained about the local impact of the bishops’ wars – petitions that Strafford denounced as ‘mutinous’.39SP16/462, ff. 44-5; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 1215, 1231; viii. 622. Moreover, late in August 1640, he and other loyalist gentry – including Rodes, Sir Thomas Ingram* and William Malory* – were named to the Yorkshire commission of array that was drawn up by the king and Strafford in an attempt to mobilize the county’s trained bands against the invading Covenanters.40Add. 28088, f. 94. Lister signed the indenture returning two of the county’s leading petitioners, Lord Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*) and Henry Belasyse, as knights of the shire to the Long Parliament.41C219/43/3/89. But his failure to sign any of the Yorkshire petitions, and his appointment to the August commission of array, strongly suggests that, despite his puritan leanings, he had little sympathy for the Covenanters.

Within a year of Strafford’s execution in May 1641, Lister’s political path had begun to converge with that of other prominent West Riding Calvinists in support of Parliament. With the king raising troops in Yorkshire by the spring of 1642, Lister and many of the county’s future parliamentarian leaders addressed a letter to Charles on 12 May, asking him to put his trust in the two Houses and to forbear raising any troops in the county.42A Letter from the...Committees of the Commons...at Yorke (1642), 9 (E.148.4). Although Lister was named to the Yorkshire commission of array the following month, this was apparently more in hope than in expectation.43Northants. RO, FH133. There is no evidence that he served as a commissioner of array or lent any assistance to the royalist war effort. Indeed, late in August, he signed an address to Parliament, headed by the leader of the nascent West Riding parliamentarian party, the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*), protesting at the king’s issuing of a commission of array at the Yorkshire summer assizes.44Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 649. Moreover, from February 1643 until his death in 1650, he was named to every major parliamentary commission for the West Riding.45A. and O.

At some point in the first year of the war, Lister’s main residence, Thornton Hall, became a parliamentarian garrison and military base for his son-in-law Colonel John Lambert, the scourge of the Pennine royalists.46Supra, ‘John Lambert’; LJ viii. 306. But Lister’s most important connection among the Yorkshire parliamentarians was Lambert’s commanding officer Lord Fairfax – the father of the future New Model army general Sir Thomas Fairfax*. The Listers were evidently political allies of Fairfax by late September 1642, when William Lister junior signed the Yorkshire ‘treaty of pacification’ – an attempt by the Fairfaxes and Lister’s friend, the royalist commander Henry 5th earl of Cumberland, to prevent the county sliding into war. The treaty was immediately condemned by Parliament, however, and quickly collapsed.47A. Woolrych, ‘Yorkshire’s treaty of neutrality', HT vi. 696-704. Soon afterwards, Lister junior obtained a captaincy in Parliament’s northern army under Lord Fairfax and was killed in action in December 1642 – Fairfax describing him as a ‘religious and resolute gentleman, whose death is much lamented’.48Denny, Mems. of an Ancient House, 186.

The death of his eldest son was by no means Lister’s only loss in support of Parliament. During Prince Rupert’s campaign in Lancashire and Yorkshire over the summer of 1644 (which culminated in his defeat at Marston Moor in July), royalist troops plundered Lister’s estate in Craven, burning Thornton Hall and its out-buildings to the ground.49CJ iii. 586a; vi. 87a; LJ vii. 28a. Lord Fairfax informed the Commons that Lister had been ‘ruined and undone’ and requested an order for his maintenance.50CJ iii. 586a. Lister himself put his losses at £15,000 or more.51Bodl. Nalson VI, f. 54. The claim that Lister fought at Marston Moor is without foundation.52Denny, Mems. of an Ancient House, 183. Having been ‘driven into the southern parts for protection and relief’, Lister and his family were granted a sequestered house in Covent Garden, and, on the recommendation of the Northern Committee* (chaired by Lord Fairfax’s son-in-law, Sir Thomas Widdrington), the Commons awarded him £1,500 out of the composition revenues.53CJ iii. 649b; iv. 281a; vi. 87a; LJ vii. 28a; CCAM 506; CCC 28-9. Lister would receive only about two-thirds of this sum before his death.54Bodl. Nalson VI, f. 54; CJ vi. 192a.

By the autumn of 1645, Lister seems to have been broadly aligned with the Fairfax interest in Yorkshire, many of whose members were Independents and strongly anti-Scots. Between October 1645 and January 1646, he signed numerous letters from the Yorkshire Northern Association and county committees relating the Scots’ ‘oppressions’ in the region and pleading that their army be deployed elsewhere.55Bodl. Nalson IV, ff. 212-13, 261, 282, 309; Nalson V, ff. 21, 99; LJ vii. 640a; viii. 135b-136a; HMC Portland, i. 304. Such letters were regarded by the Presbyterian grandee Denzil Holles* as part of an orchestrated campaign by the Independents to ‘embitter men’s spirits’ against the Scots and their English Presbyterian allies.56D. Holles, Mems. (1699), 46.

In the spring of 1646, Lister was returned as a ‘recruiter’ for the Nottinghamshire constituency of East Retford. A carpetbagger, he may well have owed his election to the Nottinghamshire parliamentarian grandee Francis Pierrepont*, whose elder brother, William Pierrepont, had been MP for East Retford in the Short Parliament. Francis himself had been returned as a recruiter for Nottingham in 1645. He and Lister were colleagues on the Northern Association committee at York – which Pierrepont probably chaired – and on the Yorkshire sub-committee for taking the Accounts of the Kingdom*. It is likely that he had recommended Lister to East Retford as a favour to their common friend and political collaborator Lord Fairfax.57Supra, ‘East Retford’; infra, ‘Francis Pierrepont’; SP28/256, unfol. (entry 21 Jan. 1646). The previous autumn, Pierrepont and Lord Fairfax had attempted (unsuccessfully) to obtain a seat at Scarborough for Fairfax’s nephew James Chaloner*.58Supra, ‘Scarborough’.

Lister received only seven committee appointments between taking his seat in 1646 and Pride’s Purge on 6 December 1648, making it very difficult to establish his political alignment at Westminster.59CJ v. 10b, 14b, 181b; v. 602a, 692a; vi. 53a, 87a. Certainly during 1646 and 1647 he seems to have remained an good terms with Lord Fairfax and his circle. By the summer of 1646, he was apparently an active member of the Commons’ Committee of the Northern Association*, which was dominated by Fairfax’s friends and men sympathetic to the New Model.60CJ vi. 421b. And it was possibly his links with the Fairfaxes that explain his appointment to the committee set up on 12 December 1646 to examine the Independent minister William Dell (one of Sir Thomas Fairfax’s chaplains), who had preached a sermon offensive to the Presbyterians.61CJ v. 10b. Although Lister almost certainly favoured some form of Presbyterian church settlement, he may have sought nomination to this committee partly to help shield Dell from punishment.

Given Lister’s closeness to Lord Fairfax, it seems unlikely that he supported the Presbyterians’ efforts during the early months of 1647 to disband or dismember Sir Thomas Fairfax’s army. He certainly received no committee appointments relating to this issue. On 22 June 1647, he wrote to Lord Fairfax in Yorkshire concerning some business pending between himself and William White*, Fairfax’s man-of-business. ‘I shall not need to give you any account of the affairs here [in London]’, he added, ‘you have it from better hands. All I can say is my prayers and endeavours shall be for a happy conclusion of these differences [between the army and the Presbyterians] that we may enjoy peace with truth’.62Add. 18979, f. 240. Lister was apparently not among those Members who fled to the army following the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster on 26 July 1647, but whether he continued to sit in the Commons is not known. In September, two of John Lambert’s sons were baptized at Lister’s Kensington residence, Coldherne House. The officiating minister was Henry Byard, the rector of Wheldrake, in Yorkshire, who was evidently a godly clergyman but would conform at the Restoration. One of Lambert’s daughters was baptized in the parish a year later.63Kensington Par. Reg. 36, 37; Calamy Revised, 96.

Although Lister would be secluded at Pride’s Purge, the nature of the army’s grievance against him is obscure. Certainly his parliamentary appointments during 1648 give no impression that he was either hostile to the army or a champion of a negotiated settlement with the king. Thus he was named to committees for abolishing deans and chapters and selling their lands (16 June), for disposing of the Scottish prisoners taken after Cromwell’s victory at the battle of Preston (29 Aug.) and for determining which of the kingdom’s castles and garrisons should be maintained and which slighted (25 Nov.).64CJ v. 602a, 692a; vi. 87a. When the Commons passed legislation in July for raising money in Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire for military supply, it was Lister who was appointed to carry it up to the Lords.65CJ v. 654a, 656b; LJ x. 405a. Moreover, Lister evidently retained the trust of his son-in-law, Major-general Lambert, who wrote to him on 4 July 1648 concerning the military situation in the north and the Scots’ invasion preparations.66HMC Portland, i. 474. A week later (11 July), the Derby House Committee* resolved to approach Lister in an effort to prevent Lambert publishing what it feared was a radical declaration.67CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 183. Evidently Lister was regarded as having considerable influence with his son-in-law. Nevertheless, despite his strong links with the Fairfaxes and with Lambert, Lister was listed among those secluded on 6 December 1648.68A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669 f.13.64); [W. Prynne*], A Vindication of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members of the House of Commons (1649), 29 (E.539.5). Perhaps the likeliest explanation for his seclusion is that he had spoken in support of the vote on 5 December 1648 – that the king’s answers to the propositions from both Houses (presented to him at Newport) were sufficient grounds for a settlement. Although secluded from the House he was not omitted from the West Riding assessment commission in April 1649.69A. and O.

Lister died in the summer of 1649 and was buried on 13 August at St Mary Abbots, Kensington.70Kensington Par. Reg. 120. In his will – for which there is no record in probate – he bequeathed lands worth £500 a year to his grandson and made bequests of over £800.71C10/9/53; C78/619/9. He died owing ‘several persons great sums’ – his indebtedness apparently exacerbated rather than caused by the royalists’ plundering of his estate in 1644.72C10/9/53; C78/619/9. In 1637, he had consigned his estate in trust to pay off his debts and to provide annuities of £30 for each of his younger sons and portions of £1,000 for his two surviving daughters.73C10/9/53; Leeds Univ. Lib. YAS/MD234/36-7, 39, 42. However, his trustees – a group headed by Sir Martin Lister* – had failed to administer his estate to the satisfaction of his children, who succeeded in obtaining a chancery order in 1650 appointing new trustees – among them Lambert and his military subordinates Colonel John Bright* (who had married William Lister junior’s widow) and Captain Roger Coates*.74‘Supra, ‘John Bright’; ‘Roger Coates’; C10/9/53; C10/41/61; C78/619/9. Lister’s second son, Christopher, was returned for Westmorland in 1654 and 1656 and his fifth son, Martin, was returned for the West Riding in 1654.75Supra, ‘Christopher Lister’; ‘Martin Lister’.