STRICKLAND, Sir William (c.1596-1673), of Boynton, Yorks.

Background and early career

The Stricklands had settled in Yorkshire by the early sixteenth century, and in the decades after the Reformation they had acquired nine manors in the county, establishing their principal residence at Boynton, near Bridlington.61Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. iii. 122; Carroll, ‘Yorks.’, 291-2. Strickland was the grandson of the prominent puritan MPs William Strickland† and Peter Wentworth†, who had championed the cause of godly reform in the Elizabethan House of Commons.62HP Commons 1558-1603; J. T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry (1984), 12. His father, Walter Strickland, was another man of strongly godly convictions and sent William and his younger brother Walter (also a future MP) to be educated at Queens’ College Cambridge, where the renowned puritan teacher John Preston was a fellow.63Cliffe, Yorks. 267. Among Strickland’s contemporaries at Queens’ was the future parliamentarian grandee Oliver St John*, and the two men would be on familiar terms during the 1640s and 1650s.64Barrington Lttrs. 182; Hants RO, 46M72/L10; 46M72/T1, ff. 125-126v, 127. The effect of Strickland’s godly upbringing can be gauged from the later description of him as ‘a public professor of religion and one that openly owned it and that to the uttermost of his power sheltered and protected the strictest professors thereof’.65Cliffe, Yorks. 268; Calamy Revised, 118. It is testament to Strickland’s exceptional credentials as a ‘professor of religion’ that the future regicide Sir John Bourchier* recommended him to Sir William Masham* in 1631 as a suitable match for a relative of the Barringtons of Hatfield Broad Oak in Essex – one of the kingdom’s foremost puritan families.66Barrington Lttrs. 181.

But although Strickland’s father was a loan refuser and was fined for distraint of knighthood in the early 1630s, there is no evidence that he and William were radically estranged from the crown and its policies during the personal rule of Charles I.67E101/682/35; R. Cust, The Forced Loan and English Politics (Oxford, 1987), 299. Indeed, Strickland was knighted in June 1630.68Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 198. Early in 1639, with war against the Scottish Covenanters looming, the lord president of the council of the north, Viscount Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†, the future earl of Strafford) appointed Strickland a deputy lieutenant and militia colonel for the East Riding in place of Sir Matthew Boynton*, who had emigrated to Holland. Strickland, for his part, was fulsome in his promise of obedience to Wentworth’s commands.69Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P18/171; Strafforde Letters, ii. 308. Explaining his decision to the vice-president of the council, Sir Edward Osborne*, Wentworth described Strickland as ‘well-affected to the government and to have more ability than at first sight he will be taken to have, by reason of his natural bashfulness and some odd gestures gotten by ill custom, which to a stranger prejudice him much’.70Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P10/273-8.

The first evidence of Strickland’s disquiet with the direction of royal policies emerges late in March 1640, when he joined Sir John Hotham*, his brother-in-law through his first marriage Sir Hugh Cholmeley*, and other Yorkshire deputy lieutenants and militia officers in a letter to the privy council in which they refused to send reinforcements to Berwick until the necessary money had been provided and due consideration had been given to the ‘great charge of this county’ arising from the first bishops’ war.71SP16/448/66i, f. 133; CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 573. Wentworth regarded this letter as an act of ‘insolence’ and vowed to give those responsible ‘something to remember it by hereafter’.72Strafforde Letters, ii. 408-9. Less than a fortnight later, however, the king ordered Sir Edward Osborne to mobilise six Yorkshire’s militia regiments, including Strickland’s, for deployment against the Scots. Strickland and several of his fellow East Riding deputy lieutenants acted energetically upon this order, but it was then countermanded – although not before at least one of the regiments had marched as far as Durham.73Supra, ‘Henry Cholmley’; SP16/462/45, f. 42; Cumb. RO (Kendal), Strickland ms vol. 1608-1700, N33 Car. I: the king to Osborne, 4 Apr. 1640. In July and August, at the height of the second bishops’ war, Strickland signed petitions to the king from Yorkshire’s ‘disaffected’ gentry, complaining about illegal billeting and pleading poverty in the face of royal efforts to mobilise the trained bands against the Scots.74Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 1215, 1231. He also signed the third Yorkshire petition, in mid-September, which requested that Charles summon Parliament.75Cumb. RO (Kendal), Strickland ms vol. 1608-1700, N38 Car. I. In the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn, Strickland was returned for the East Riding borough of Hedon, near Hull. Although he owned property in the Hull area, it is likely that he was returned on the interest of the godly Yorkshire squire John Alured*.76Supra, ‘Hedon’, ‘John Alured’.

Parliamentary career, 1640-2

Strickland was apparently a figure of relatively little consequence among the ‘northern gentlemen’ at Westminster during the first 12 months of the Long Parliament. He was named to just 13 committees during this period, none of which were of any major significance in the campaign to reform the ‘abuses’ of the personal rule.77CJ ii. 52a, 91a, 92b, 94a, 101a, 129a, 129b, 130b, 140b, 152a, 200a, 228a, 302a. His first known contribution on the floor of the House was similarly unimpressive, for when a petition from Yorkshire against the new ecclesiastical Canons and other grievances was presented on 9 November 1640, he was the only MP from the county to raise objections to it – upon what grounds is not known.78D’Ewes (N), 19. Even so, he evidently shared the distaste of the majority of Members for Laudian prelacy. In a debate on the Laudian new Canons on 14 December, he described the recent Convocation as ‘an unlawful conventicle’ that had endeavoured to sow sedition and ‘false doctrine’.79Procs. LP i. 591; Northcote Note Bk. 62. In the great root and branch debate on 8 February 1641, he joined those Commons-men – mostly, but not exclusively, future parliamentarians – who urged that the London root and branch petition, which called for the abolition of episcopacy, should be committed for consideration by the House rather than laid aside.80Procs. LP ii. 391. He was also named to committees for hearing complaints against the Laudian bishops of Norwich and Landaff and for punishing members of Convocation.81CJ ii. 91a, 129a.

Strickland seems to have shared the desire of other Yorkshire Members to remove the burden on the northern counties of the English and Scottish armies – which had been quartered on the region since the second bishops’ war – pledging £1,000 with Sir Hugh Cholmeley in March as security on loans to pay off the Scots.82Procs. LP ii. 628, 629. It is therefore a little puzzling that he was named to only one committee relating to the disbandment of the armies in the north.83CJ ii. 152a. His contribution to Strafford’s prosecution that spring was even more nugatory, for he featured on none of the relevant committees. Indeed, he was among the witnesses that the earl requested be summoned on his behalf, although in the event, Strickland did not give evidence at the trial.84Procs. LP iii. 362, 363. The crown evidently did not regard him as a lost cause, granting him a baronetcy in July and waiving the £1,095 creation fee.85SO3/12, f. 161. Nevertheless, the issue at Westminster that seems to have provoked the strongest reaction from Strickland during the second half of 1641 was not the parliamentary junto’s assault on Charles’s power but that of relieving Ireland’s Protestants in the wake of the October Rising. On 2 November, he was named to a standing committee for Irish affairs, and in the spring of 1642 he invested £600 as an Irish Adventurer.86CJ ii. 302a, 728b; Bottigheimer, Eng. Money, Irish Land, 192, 210. But although he received regular assignments in 1642-3 relating to the war in Ireland, he is known to have attended just one meeting of the Committee for Irish Affairs* set up on 3 September 1642.87CJ ii. 750b, 758a, 883b; iii. 92a, 282b; SP16/539/127, f. 21.

Strickland was granted leave of absence on 17 December 1641 and does not seem to have returned to Westminster much before 7 March 1642, when he was named to a committee of both Houses to present a declaration to the king expressing the grounds of Parliament’s ‘jealousies and fears’ of Charles’s proceedings.88CJ ii. 346b, 469b. With the approach of civil war, Strickland assumed a higher profile in the Commons. In April and May, he was appointed to several more committees relating to Parliament’s ‘paper skirmishes’ with the king, and on 25 March he was named first to a committee for the defence of Hull.89CJ ii. 479b, 484a, 497a, 525b, 562a. That he was trusted by the parliamentary leadership is evident from his nomination in May 1642 to a seven-man committee for assisting and monitoring Sir John Hotham* as governor of Hull.90CJ ii. 585b; PJ, ii. 341. The composition of this committee was apparently determined by John Pym and his allies and reflected their desire to surround Hotham with men they trusted.91Infra, ‘Sir John Hotham’; CJ ii. 584b-585a; Clarendon, Hist. i. 523-4. In August, Strickland received his first appointment as a messenger to the Lords – a duty he performed on at least 19 occasions before Pride’s Purge – and was added to the Commons’ principal instrument for hounding its enemies in and around London, the Committee for Examinations.92CJ ii. 710a, 722a, 725a, 735b, 833a, 852b, 854a, 854b, 914a, 1000b; iii. 29a, 72a, 154a, 159b, 161b, 363a, 578a, 579b; iv. 4b, 66b, 297b; v. 2b, 157b. At some point that summer, he joined the earl of Warwick, Viscount Saye and Sele and 37 other godly Parliament-men in a letter to John Cotton and two other puritan divines in New England, requesting they return home to attend the Westminster Assembly and assist in the great work of church reform.93J. Winthrop, Hist. of New England ed. J. Savage, ii. pp. 91-2; T. Hutchinson, Hist. of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay ed. L. S. Mayo (Camb. Mass. 1936), i. pp. 100-1. In September, he affirmed his support for the parliamentary war-effort by pledging £100 on the propositions for maintaining the army of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex; and in October, he supplied the earl’s commissary with four horses – each with a case of pistols, saddle and ‘furniture’ – worth an estimated at £77.94SP28/131, pt. 3, ff. 108v, 110v; CJ ii. 772a. He pledged to bring in a further £50 in December.95Add. 18777, f. 110. Like the ‘fiery spirits’ in the House, he was keen to pressure those MPs who had deserted Parliament’s service or were wavering in their allegiance, reporting several cases from the committee for absent Members that autumn (to which he had been named in second place in mid-August).96CJ ii. 725a, 757b, 798a.

Parliamentary career, 1642-5

Many of Strickland’s parliamentary appointments from the autumn of 1642 underscore his firm commitment to the vigorous prosecution of the war, particularly in the north. A central figure in all business relating to the encouragement of Parliament’s northern army and its commander, Ferdinando Fairfax, 2nd Baron Fairfax*, he was named in first place to a high-powered committee set up on 16 December – in response to a letter from Fairfax – ‘to consider of some means of raising of monies for supply of the northern occasions’. Strickland was also named second on 8 May 1643 to a committee for the supply of Lord Fairfax’s army.97CJ ii. 754a, 756b, 795b, 802a, 846a, 853b, 854a, 854b, 888a, 891b, 899b, 909a, 912b, 914a, 1000b; iii. 18a, 46a, 76a, 78a, 79b, 140a, 167a, 174b, 333a. Among his more particular briefs at Westminster was the maintenance of Parliament’s garrison at Hull – a task that involved much smoothing of relations between the inhabitants and the town’s military governors Sir John Hotham* and (following Hotham’s arrest in June 1643) Lord Fairfax.98CJ ii. 863a; iii. 10a, 152a, 159a, 161b, 175b; Harl. 164, ff. 352, 354.

Strickland’s political priorities more generally can be inferred from several of his committee appointments early in 1643. The first, on 26 January, was to a committee (made up almost exclusively of hardline MPs) on legislation for raising a London volunteer force to supplement the earl of Essex’s army.99CJ ii. 943b. Early in February, he was included on two committees to address the long-term funding of the war – that is, for establishing a weekly assessment and for sequestering delinquents’ estates.100CJ ii. 951a, 953b; iii. 29a. His tellership with Sir John Wray on 4 February 1643 against an ordinance for maintaining forces in Hampshire by an assessment upon a range of ‘disaffected’ persons, including bishops and deans, could be read as a sign of more eirenic leanings on his part.101CJ ii. 955b. But it is more likely that Strickland and Wray – both zealous puritans – were simply representing those in the House who wished to preserve church revenues for the maintenance of a godly preaching ministry.102CJ ii. 955b. Strickland can safely be included among those Members who attached great importance to ‘the true payment of tithes’.103CJ iii. 566b. The replacement of scandalous ministers with godly incumbents was one of the few issues that moved him to speak in Commons’ debates, as was the need to identify and suppress papists.104Harl. 164, f. 355v; Add. 18777, ff. 96, 227. His addition to the Committee for Plundered Ministers* on 9 August 1644 was in response to the Westminster Assembly’s complaints against sectaries – and he and those added with him were charged with finding ways to suppress Antinomian and Anabaptist views.105Supra, ‘Committee for Plundered Ministers’; CJ iii. 585a; Add. 31116 p. 308; SP21/1, f. 91v; SP22/2B, ff. 206, 221v; SP22/3, pt. 2, f. 164. True to his Calvinist principles, he seems to have had a special and abiding regard for the welfare of the elector palatine and his family.106CJ ii. 785b; iii. 612b, 615a; iv. 58a, 281a, 500b, 592b; v. 232a; CCC 28.

Although Strickland was not a leading figure in the war party’s campaign to forge a military alliance with the Scots, he was associated with several initiatives in 1642-3 aimed at strengthening Parliament’s ties with the Covenanters – most notably, the establishment of the Assembly of Divines.107CJ ii. 803b; iii. 68a, 72a, 244a. Whether he was sympathetic to the Scottish programme for a ‘covenanted uniformity’ between the three kingdoms is not clear. He took the Solemn League and Covenant on 10 October 1643, which was some weeks after it was first tendered to MPs for their subscription, and shortly thereafter he seems to have withdrawn from the House for several months.108CJ iii. 271b. By 7 November he was in Kent, where he joined his cousin Sir Edward Boys*, his friend or close acquaintance Sir Henry Mildmay* and the earl of Warwick in a letter to Speaker William Lenthall, urging that Parliament take steps to prevent the transportation of rebel Irish troops to England.109Supra, ‘Sir Edward Boys’; Hants RO, 46M72/T1/f125-126v; The Popes Brief (1643), 32 (E.77.35). Strickland had acquired an estate in Kent by his second marriage and was named to several committees on Kentish affairs.110CJ ii. 787b; iii. 31a, 238b, 275a. But given that most of his property lay in Yorkshire, he stood to gain materially from Scottish intervention in northern England – although it would come too late to prevent the royalists plundering his ‘mansion houses’ there to the tune (so he later claimed) of £4,000.111C8/138/139; Bodl. Nalson XII, f. 339; HMC Portland, i. 102. To add insult to injury, the king granted title to Strickland’s estate to one of his own adherents.112CJ iii. 154a; LJ vi. 118b. In recompense for his losses, the Committee for Sequestrations* granted him the house of Sir Henry Compton* in Salisbury Court, London, and the rents of a sequestered estate in Kent.113SP20/1, p. 14; Bodl. Nalson XII, f. 339; Nalson XIV, f. 223. He would have enjoyed additional financial advantages as an active member of the Committee for the Revenue* – a body dominated by MPs closely associated with the war-party grandees – which was not shy about rewarding its own members and their allies.114Supra, ‘Committee for the Revenue’; CJ ii. 785b; iii. 382a. But though he had received £1,100 by September 1646, this was still insufficient to meet the ‘great debts’ he had contracted in Parliament’s service, and in December of that year he mortgaged part of his estate for £1,000.115Bodl. Nalson XII, f. 339; E. Riding RO, DDSB/2/7/10. His own emoluments as a Parliament-man notwithstanding, he was apparently keen to prevent MPs profiting unduly from their office.116CJ iii. 695b; iv. 88a, 179a, 194a, 362a, 477a.

Strickland’s parliamentary career during 1644 reveals little about his political concerns beyond his continuing commitment to sustaining the war effort and to the cause of godly reform. He was included on numerous committees for the supply and ordering of Parliament’s armies in the north (including that of the Scots) and south and for settling a godly ministry.117CJ iii. 383b, 431b, 454a, 470b, 508b, 509b, 534a, 579b, 626b, 705b; iv. 35b. His brother Walter’s appointment as parliamentary envoy to the Dutch almost certainly explains Strickland’s central role in receiving and entertaining the States General’s ambassadors early in 1644.118CJ iii. 363b, 364a, 367b, , 368a, 386a, 535a, 713b. It is difficult to gauge exactly where he stood in the House on the issue of new modelling the parliamentarian armies, at least during the autumn of 1644. On 14 November, for example, he was a majority teller with his fellow Yorkshire MP Henry in favour of putting the question that Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh, commander of Parliament’s forces in the west Midlands, was innocent of disaffection to the public service. The tellers against both this and the main question were closely associated with the cause of laying aside dilatory aristocratic generals, such as Denbigh and the earl of Essex, and replacing them with men determined to fight for all-out victory. 119CJ iii. 700b. Darley backed Denbigh probably as a favour to his friend William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, who was Denbigh’s kinsman, but why Strickland should have done so is not clear.120Supra, ‘Henry Darley’. Any doubts he may have had as to the wisdom of wholesale military reform had evidently vanished by 25 February 1645, when he and Sir Thomas Widdrington were chosen to attend Essex’s proposed replacement as commander-in-chief, Lord Fairfax’s son Sir Thomas Fairfax*, and desire him to hasten his list of officers. On 3 March, moreover, Strickland was appointed a messenger to carry up Fairfax’s completed list to the Lords.121CJ iv. 62a, 64b, 66b, 71a; LJ vii. 259b. Strickland was obviously well known to, and probably a friend of, the Fairfaxes, and he may also have been on familiar terms with the earl of Northumberland – one of the architects of new modelling – from whom he leased part of his Yorkshire estate.122WARD5/48, bdle. R-Z; C142/553/45. Some kind of connection with Northumberland is certainly suggested by Strickland’s appointment on 3 April with Widdrington – Northumberland’s retained counsellor-at-law – to treat with the earl about the paintings from the royal collection in his London residence of York House.123CJ iv. 97b, 121a.

Strickland between the factions, 1645-8

After the furore surrounding new-modelling, Strickland’s parliamentary appointments resume a familiar pattern. The majority of the committees to which he was named during 1645-6 concerned northern affairs, godly reform and the maintenance of Parliament’s armed forces.124CJ iv. 97b, 112a, 178b, 203a, 211b, 218a, 225a, 294a, 300a, 360a, 595b, 605b, 611b, 613a, 625b, 719b. He was among the MPs that Peregrine Pelham* and Francis Thorpe* cultivated at Westminster to serve the interests of Hull – a network that included Widdrington and the town’s governor, Lord Fairfax.125Supra, ‘Kingston-upon-Hull’; Hull Hist. Centre, C BRL/L353, 360, 371, 425. The Cheshire parliamentarian leader Sir William Brereton* accounted Strickland among his closest friends in the Commons – a group comprised largely of prominent Independents.126Supra, ‘Sir William Brereton’; Brereton Letter Bks. ii. 271, 293, 469, 505, 520, 528; iii. 132, 134, 167. Strickland’s most important appointment of 1645 was his addition in July to what would become known as the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs* (SCCIA) – a standing, bicameral committee that was dominated by leading Presbyterians.127Supra, ‘Committees for Ireland’; CJ iv. 217b. However, he does not appear to have attended this committee at all frequently. Moreover, on 15 December, he was a majority teller with the Independent grandee Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire against putting Parliament’s Irish executive in commission – a decision that cleared the way for the appointment of Northumberland’s nephew and protégé, Philip Viscount Lisle* as lord lieutenant of Ireland.128HMC Portland, i. 326; J. Adamson, ‘Strafford’s ghost’, in Ireland from Independence to Occupation ed. J. Ohlmeyer (Camb. 1995), 134-5. The identity of the opposing tellers Denzil Holles and Sir John Clotworthy – both prominent Presbyterians and members of the SCCIA – highlights the partisan nature of this vote.

Several of Strickland’s committee appointments during 1646 suggest that he backed the Independents’ campaign to pressure the Scots into handing over the king and removing their army from English soil.129CJ iv. 481b, 541b, 548a. On 10 July, he was named to a committee on the controversial ordinance for the sale of delinquents’ estates – the proceeds of which were earmarked for paying Parliament’s soldiers and the maintenance of the war in Ireland. This legislation was opposed by the Presbyterian grandees, who were conspicuous by their absence from the committee.130CJ iv. 613a; J. Adamson, ‘The Peerage in Politics 1645-9’ (Cambridge Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1986), 162. It may also be significant that Strickland was one of the messengers that the Commons sent to the Lords late in 1646 in a vain attempt to persuade the peers to renew legislation for continuing the Army Committee*, without which Sir Thomas Fairfax’s troops could not be adequately paid.131CJ v. 2b; LJ viii. 597b-598a. This picture of Strickland as an ally of the Independent grandees is seemingly confirmed by his role in the arrest of three Presbyterian activists in London early in December 1646. Strickland chaired the meeting of the Committee for Complaints that ordered the men’s’ imprisonment and was allegedly a signatory to the arrest warrant.132J. Gauden, Hinc Illae Lachrymae or the Impietie of Impunitie (1647), 10 (E.421.6); M. Mahony, ‘Presbyterianism in the city of London, 1645-7’, HJ xxii. 109. However, in a Presbyterian tract recounting the incident, the ‘worthy Sir William Strickland’ is reported to have ‘protested against it as unlawful and none of his act or consent’.133Gauden, Hinc Illae Lachrymae, 10.

In religion, Strickland apparently stood in the Erastian puritan mainstream at Westminster, with friends (or those who professed themselves such) among both religious Presbyterians and Congregationalists. The Yorkshire Independent minister and chaplain to Sir Thomas Fairfax, John Saltmarsh, dedicated a tract on the workings of divine grace to Strickland and Sir John Wray* late in 1645.134Free-Grace or, the Flowings of Christ’s Blood Freely to Sinners (1645), epistle dedicatory (E.1152.1); ‘John Saltmarsh’, Oxford DNB. Saltmarsh’s friend, the Presbyterian minister and leading member of the Westminster Assembly, John Ley, dedicated his 1646 pamphlet Light for Smoke to Strickland and Harbottle Grimston*.135J. Ley, Light for Smoke (1646), epistle dedicatory (E.333.2); ‘John Ley’, Oxford DNB. In this work – a rebuttal of one of Saltmarsh’s pamphlets – Ley argued that

The Presbyterial government is more moderate, more subordinate to the parliamentary government, then the Independent, because that is humbly submitted to the debate of the Parliament for approbation of it and waiteth for their civil establishment before any part of it is put into execution.136Ley, Light for Smoke, 54.

Strickland shared the determination of the Presbyterian MPs to suppress Antinomianism and other heterodox opinions (he helped to manage the Commons’ case against the anti-Trinitarian exegete John Biddle).137CJ iii. 271b, 585a; iv. 218a, 373a, 553b, 562b; v. 184b. But there is no evidence that he subscribed to the view that Presbyterianism was iure divino. The ministers that he requested to preach on the Commons’ behalf or thanked for their sermons all seem to have occupied the middle-ground between ‘rigid’, Scottish-style Presbyterianism and ‘orthodox’ Independency.138CJ iv. 326a, 355b; v. 97a, 131a.

Strickland remained at Westminster during the Presbyterian ascendancy in the early months of 1647, and on 3 February he served as a teller with the Independent grandee Sir Arthur Hesilrige.139CJ v. 73b. The division, which concerned the reform of the Committee for Compounding*, was clearly a partisan matter, for the opposing tellers were Holles and Sir Philip Stapilton. On the other hand, several of Strickland’s appointments during the summer suggest a desire on his part to build bridges between the factions. On 30 June, he was named to a committee for an accommodation in religion, and on 15 July he and the leading Presbyterian Commons-man Lionel Copley were appointed to prepare letters ordering the release of Colonel Sednham Poynts, who had been seized by his own soldiers in the Northern Association army for his Presbyterian sympathies.140CJ v. 228b, 245a. Strickland’s willingness to attend the Commons after the Presbyterian ‘riots’ of 26 July is a sign of the distance (politically and geographically) between himself and leading Independents, the majority of whom fled London to the army. Yet the only evidence to show that he remained at Westminster is his tellership with John Ashe on 31 July against a Presbyterian-inspired declaration, desiring the king to come to London to conclude a swift peace.141CJ v. 262b.

Strickland’s dislike of at least some aspects of the Independents’ programme for settlement would continue following the army’s triumphant march into London early in August 1647. On 27 August, he was a teller with William Sydenham in favour of adhering to a list that the Commons had sent to the Lords of those royalists to be exempted from pardon in Parliament’s peace terms.142CJ v. 286a. The Independent majority in the Lords favoured a drastic reduction in the number of exempt royalists.143J. Adamson, ‘The English nobility and the projected settlement of 1647’, HJ xxx. 584. It was probably no coincidence that on 7 September he was granted his first official leave of absence since the outbreak of civil war.144CJ v. 295a. His differences with the Independents do not appear to have been irreconcilable, however, for before leaving Westminster he was added to the Army Committee* on an ordinance for overhauling the financial administration of the New Model.145CJ v. 298b. Six days later (15 Sept.), he was added to the committee for recompensing the Independent grandee Viscount Saye and Sele and his fellow officers of the defunct court of wards.146CJ v. 301b.

Declared absent at the call of the House on 9 October, Strickland would not return to Westminster for over 18 months.147CJ v. 330b, 332b, 543b; vi. 34b, 214a. In his absence, he was twice appointed a commissioner for Yorkshire to collect the county’s assessments quota.148CJ v. 400b; vi. 34b. On the betrayal of Hull to the royalists in July 1648, at the height of the second civil war, he fled Boynton to Hull, where he helped to raise horse for Parliament.149Bodl. Tanner 57, f. 167; HMC Portland, i. 490. Despite his ‘weak health’, he attended at least one meeting of the parliamentary committee for the East Riding that summer.150SP28/250, f. 140.

From Rumper to Cromwellian, 1649-55

Although Strickland almost certainly disapproved of Pride’s Purge and the regicide, he did not withdraw from public affairs like many Presbyterians did – indeed, he attended the Yorkshire spring assizes in March 1649 and signed a petition from the ‘well-affected party of this county’ calling for the demolition of Pontefract and Middleham Castles.151The Petition and Presentment of the Grand-Juries of the County of York (1649), 3 (E.548.26). However, it was not until 22 May that he registered his dissent to the 5 December 1648 vote – that the king’s answers at Newport were a sufficient ground for a settlement – and was formally re-admitted to the House.152CJ vi. 214a. The next day (23 May), he attended a meeting of the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs.153SP63/344, ff. 32, 34.

In what seems to have been a relatively undistinguished career as a Rumper, Strickland was named to 37 committees – mostly during 1649 and 1650 – and served as a teller on five divisions.154CJ vi. 232a, 236a, 275a, 446a, 598b. In terms of his alignment in the Rump, he stood firmly in the ‘conservative’, Presbyterian camp, along with men such as James Chaloner and Robert Reynolds who wished to preserve as much of the established order as possible. It was this trio of Members that was appointed on 26 May and 1 June to thank Sir Thomas (now 3rd Baron) Fairfax and his officers for suppressing the Leveller mutiny at Burford.155CJ vi. 218a, 221b. To judge by Strickland’s committee appointments, he remained steadfast in the cause of godly reformation.156CJ vi. 231a, 270a, 275b, 458a; vii. 46b, 141a. He was certainly active in settling and maintaining godly ministers in Yorkshire church livings.157SP23/6, p. 145; Add. 36792, ff. 42v, 47, 49; LPL, Sion L40.2/E16, pp. 678, 684; CCC 162. On 6 August 1649, he was a teller with the equally godly Sir James Harington in favour of inserting in a parliamentary declaration on church government a clause enjoining the payment of tithes and other duties to ministers.158CJ vi. 275a. The next day (7 Aug.), Strickland was named to a committee (which Harington probably chaired) to consider this declaration and to reconcile the retention of a Presbyterian church system with toleration for tender consciences.159CJ vi. 275b. It was in this same spirit of accommodation between Presbyterians and Independents that he acted as an arbitrator in a dispute among Hull’s puritan ministers and congregations early in 1652.160Hull Hist. Centre, C BRB/4, Hull Bench Bk., f. 49.

Strickland’s last appointment in the Rump was in July 1652, which does not suggest that he was vitally concerned at its forcible dissolution nine months later.161CJ vii. 156a. Indeed, he was being linked with the Cromwellian interest as early as March 1653.162Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 617. Although he apparently eschewed involvement with the Nominated Parliament, he almost certainly welcomed the establishment of the protectorate and the Cromwellian religious settlement (he was appointed an ejector for the East Riding in August 1654). In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, he was returned for the newly-created constituency of the East Riding, taking the first of its four places with his brother Walter Strickland taking the second.163C 219/44/3, unfol. He was returned on the strength of his interest as one of East Riding’s wealthiest landowners and most distinguished parliamentarians. He was named to 22 committees in this Parliament, including those for Scottish and Irish affairs and to draft legislation ‘upon the votes passed touching the government [protectoral constitution], so far as is agreed on’.164CJ vii. 371b, 398a, 415a. On 7 November 1654, he was appointed to thank the leading Presbyterian divine Thomas Manton for his sermon to the House, and on 12 December, he was named to committees for enumerating ‘damnable heresies’ in the bill for the settling the government and for thanking the ministers who had assisted in this task.165CJ vii. 382b, 399b. In the first of his two tellerships in this Parliament, on 9 January 1655, he partnered Colonel Philip Jones – a protectoral councillor – in trying to resist attempts to unpick the Cromwellian constitution. The opposing tellers were the Presbyterian grandees Sir Richard Onslow and John Birch, who distrusted the protectorate and were keen to restrict the bounds of the religious toleration established under the Instrument of Government.166CJ vii. 414a, 420a; Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 105, 114-15.

Parliamentary career, 1656-8

Strickland was evidently not regarded as an opponent of the major-generals by the protectoral council, which appointed him in June 1656 to assist Deputy Major-general Robert Lilburne* investigate malignant officeholders at York and Hull.167CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 385, 387; 1656-7, p. 41. In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament that summer, he was again returned in first place for the East Riding and was among those MPs allowed to take their seats by the council. He seems to have felt very much at home in this Parliament, receiving 76 committee appointments, serving as teller in five divisions and contributing regularly to debate.168CJ vii. 442a, 506b, 511a, 530b, 575b. Once again, it is not clear that he identified closely with any particular political grouping in the House. For example, on 23 December 1656, he joined Major-general John Lambert, Lilburne and other prominent Yorkshire Cromwellians in supporting a petition from the ‘well-affected’ of the North Riding, proposing that the burden of maintaining the army be laid entirely upon the royalists – in other words, a widening of the decimation tax.169CJ vii. 473; Burton’s Diary, i. 208-9. Yet generally when he spoke on the issue of taxation to maintain the armed forces, it was with the authentic voice of the ‘country’ interest in the 1620s Parliaments. He opposed the idea of a land-tax as a betrayal of his constituents’ welfare, and on 12 June 1657 he referred to the government’s efforts to raise assessment levels as a ‘court-project’.170Burton’s Diary, ii. 24, 217, 218, 235. Northern affairs and securing a fair deal for the Irish Adventurers were among his priorities in this Parliament.171CJ vii. 456a, 463b, 472b, 474b, 477a, 526b, 538a, 554a; Burton’s Diary, i. 4, 84-5, 127, 222; ii. 126, 159.

However, top of Strickland’s agenda, as usual, was the advancement of godly religion and moral reformation. Indeed, his very first appointment (18 Sept.) was to ask the Independent minister Thomas Goodwin to preach at the next day of public fasting and humiliation.172CJ vii. 424a, 447b. He was named to eight committees relating to godly reform and the suppression of sin and popery, one of which – to bring in a consolidated bill against alehouses and drunkenness – he was named first to and probably chaired.173CJ vii. 426a, 430a, 448b, 463b, 469a, 488b, 493b, 515b. In debate, he spoke out against popery, urged a tightening of the laws against ‘loose persons’ and their ‘nurseries of vice’ and supported Luke Robinson and other godly MPs in denouncing the observation of Christmas and other holidays.174Burton’s Diary, i. 7, 229, 230; ii. 35. His suggestion that the House be called on 25 December 1656 cannot have endeared him to the more festive-minded Members.175Burton’s Diary, i. 191. When the House was called, on 31 December, he joined Robinson and Adam Baynes in demanding fines for those Members they suspected of neglecting the service of the House.176Burton’s Diary, i. 286, 289. Strickland also thought Christmas day a ‘very fit time’ to debate a bill (which he championed) for the better observation of the sabbath, since the people seemed more interested in ‘this foolish day’s solemnity’ – in Robinson’s words – than honouring the Lord’s day.177Burton’s Diary, i. 299; ii. 260, 261, 266. At the root of the problem, in Strickland’s eyes, was the lack of sufficient maintenance for a godly ministry: ‘if there be scandalous maintenance, there must be scandalous ministers. How can we expect the lamp should burn without oil’.178Burton’s Diary, i. 160. His solution to this ‘oil’ shortage was a bill enjoining the strict payment of tithes.179Burton’s Diary, ii. 142, 165. It was on the issue of tithes that his support for godly religion and opposition to social levelling intersected, as he revealed on 1 June 1657:

Some men will leap over a hedge or ditch, the whole Decalogue [Ten Commandments], and wholly scruple at that of tithes. They make no scruple at all to detain them. If there be a law for a little severity in that kind, there is need of it. The same levelling principle will lay waste properties and deny rents upon the same accounts that they do tithes.180Burton’s Diary, ii. 166.

Strickland was at his most vocal in the second protectoral Parliament in the protracted debate on the crimes and punishment of the Quaker evangelist and alleged blasphemer James Naylor. As a regular attender of the committee to examine Naylor’s proceedings, he came away convinced that this ‘traitor’ and ‘leper’ had committed ‘horrid blasphemy’.181CJ vii. 448a; Burton’s Diary, i. 28, 33, 35-6, 44-5, 51, 75. However, he declared himself ‘very inclinable to mercy’ and was opposed to inflicting the death penalty

I cannot, without doubting, agree to those that would have him punished with death ... I shall submit to the smaller punishment, though I am not satisfied of the adequateness of the punishment. I would have this man so restrained, as that he may never do more harm. I would have him perpetually imprisoned, and that is a kind of a civil death.182Burton’s Diary, i. 79, 131, 157.

After the unfortunate Naylor had endured the first round of his punishment, Strickland supported George Downing’s motion that the Independent minister Joseph Caryl be sent ‘to work good upon him, if it be possible’.183Burton’s Diary, i. 183. But when Naylor showed no sign of repentance, Strickland (again, like Downing) confessed that ‘if the punishment had been higher, it might, haply, have wrought a better effect’.184Burton’s Diary, i. 220. On the subject of the Quakers generally, he was again keen to make the link between religious radicalism and a threat to the established order: ‘they are a growing evil and the greatest that ever was. Their way is a plausible way; all levellers against magistracy and propriety [property]’.185Burton’s Diary, i. 169. It was this ‘plausible’ aspect of the Quakers’ message that rendered them so dangerous in Strickland’s eyes, prompting him to move that Naylor might have a Quaker as his jailer, ‘that those that have not the plague may not be infected by him’.186Burton’s Diary, ii. 131.

Strickland was described in February 1657 as an opponent of the Remonstrance – the blueprint for the Humble Petition – and he would not be listed among the ‘kinglings’ in the House.187Henry Cromwell Corresp. 205; [G. Wharton], A Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 22 (E.935.5); Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 110. When the Commons voted on 25 March on whether to delay the vote on the first article of the new constitution (that concerning the title of king), he and Colonel Thomas Cooper were tellers in favour of adjourning the debate for an hour, in what was very likely an attempt by those worried by the kingship issue to re-group in the face of superior numbers. The majority tellers were the Cromwellian grandee Sir Charles Wolseley and the anti-army Presbyterian MP Sir John Hobart.188CJ vii. 511a; Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 115-16. But Strickland was not among those who rejected the proposed new constitution outright – a group that initially included his brother Walter.189Supra, ‘Walter Strickland’. On 17 March, Strickland was a teller with Edmund Thomas on whether to amend the ninth article in the Remonstrance, which related to religious observance.190CJ vii. 506b. Two days later (19 Mar.), he was named to a committee on a clause in the Remonstrance enjoining toleration for Independent ministers who agreed in matters of faith with the ‘true reformed Protestant religion’, but who could not accept Presbyterian church government.191CJ vii. 507b. In April and May, he was named to a series of committees for presenting the Humble Petition to Cromwell, justifying the offer of the crown to him and for satisfying his ‘doubts and scruples’ about accepting the kingship.192CJ vii. 520b, 521b, 524a, 535a, 538b, 540b, 570b. But he contributed little of substance to the debates on the Humble Petition, and his views on such thorny issues as the relative powers and jurisdiction of the protector and Parliament have to be inferred from his remarks on other issues. He had no qualms, for example, about the House passing sentence against Naylor without reference to the protector or by resort to a bill.193Burton’s Diary, i. 157, 253, 270, 275-6. Thus when Cromwell wrote to the Commons late in December 1656, requesting to know its grounds and reasons for giving sentence against Naylor without his consent, Strickland was adamant that the House’s proceedings needed no justification.

If you arraign the jurisdiction of your Parliament, I shall desire to go home ... What can the cavaliers say, but to deny our jurisdiction, or the sectaries abroad. I hope we shall be able to dispute and assert our jurisdiction. This is the essence and being of a Parliament.194Burton’s Diary, i. 253.

Yet there were subtle differences between Strickland’s defence of parliamentary sovereignty and that mounted by more radical figures at Westminster. As he informed the House on 30 December 1656, ‘I like not to hear the liberty of the people opposed to the privilege of Parliament; I understand not that kind of argument, I never heard those opposed to one another before’. He was evidently satisfied that the House could exercise the judicial powers of the defunct House of Lords without seeing the need to address the deeper question of the locus of supreme authority in the nation. He also insisted that the ‘essence of Parliament’ was not affected by the addition of the Members from Scotland, whose presence so disquieted the commonwealthsmen.195Burton’s Diary, i. 276. In fact, he seems to have favoured closer political and religious ties between the two nations. He was evidently an admirer of the leading Scottish divine Patrick Gillespie and at one point confessed to wishing that the Solemn League and Covenant had not been abolished.196Burton’s Diary, i. 360; ii. 11, 281. The main threat to the integrity of the government came not from the Scots, in Strickland’s opinion, but ‘the Levellers and the cavaliers’, whose hand he saw in Sindercombe’s plot to assassinate the protector.197CJ vii. 481a; Burton’s Diary, i. 356.

The only debate on the Humble Petition to which he made a meaningful contribution was that of late April 1657 on the extent to which it superseded previous parliamentary legislation. Whereas the opponents of the Humble Petition demanded the confirmation of all the Long Parliament’s acts, the court interest insisted on inserting a proviso denying confirmation to any laws that specifically contravened the new constitution. Strickland, for his part, tried to steer a middle course, urging first that the whole issue be turned over to a committee; and when that idea was ignored, that rather than insert the suggested proviso the House should merely repeal the legislation against government by a single person.198Burton’s Diary, ii. 38, 44, 86, 90, 92-3. Neither side in the debate was satisfied with this compromise, however, and it had no seconders. It seems that Strickland was generally satisfied with the watered-down monarchy that emerged from the struggle over the Humble Petition, declaring on 27 May that ‘now we are come to settlement, after all our fluctuations’, and moving that the new constitution be published.199Burton’s Diary, ii. 136. Summoned to the Cromwellian Other House late in 1657, he attended this body regularly from its first day of sitting, on 20 January 1658, until Parliament was dissolved the following month.200TSP vi. 668; Sl. 3246; HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 505-23. The author of the Second Narrative of the Late Parliament, in reviewing the membership of the Other House, claimed that Strickland was ‘of good compliance, no question, with the new court and settling the protector anew in all those things for which the king was cut off’.201[G. Wharton], A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament (1659), 30 (E.977.3). Strickland was again among the more regular attenders of the Other House in Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659.202HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 525-50.

Towards and after the Restoration

Although Strickland almost certainly disapproved of the overthrow of the protectorate in April 1659, he evidently felt duty-bound to resume his seat in the restored Rump, albeit he appears to have done so over a month after the House had reconvened.203CJ vii. 691b. His principal reason for returning to Westminster was probably the same as it had been in 1649 – to oppose any ‘levelling’ tendencies and to keep the power of the sectaries in check. Conspicuous among his 18 committee appointments in the restored Rump was that of 1 July on legislation for punishing persons who disturbed public worship – a measure clearly aimed at the Quakers. Strickland’s name headed this committee. 204CJ vii. 700b. Several of his four tellerships also help to locate him among the more conservative-minded element in the House. 205CJ vii. 704b, 714a, 749b, 790a. He and Sir Arthur Hesilrige were tellers on 4 July in favour of the commonwealth picking up the tab for Oliver Cromwell’s funeral expenses.206CJ vii. 704b. On 11 July, he was a teller with Colonel John Jones against excluding from a bill of indemnity any acts of maladministration committed since the fall of the Rump in 1653.207CJ vii. 714a. On 5 August, he was a teller with William Sydenham in support of giving command of a regiment of horse to the Cromwellian major-general Edward Whalley*.208CJ vii. 749b. Strickland and Sydenham lost this division, and the regiment was given to the Yorkshire republican Colonel Matthew Alured*. The opposing tellers in each of these divisions were all arch-commonwealthsmen.

The fallout from Sir George Boothe’s* rebellion in August 1659 exacerbated tensions among the Rump’s leading politicians, prompting the establishment of committees on 6 and 8 September – to which Strickland was named – to consider the introduction of a new engagement ‘against any king, single person and House of Peers and every of them’, and ‘to prepare something to be offered to the House in order to the settlement of the government of this commonwealth’.209CJ vii. 774b, 775b. He was granted leave of absence on 23 September, and his last parliamentary appointment was a week later (30 Sept.), when he was a teller in favour of fining Sir Thomas Widdrington £20 for being absent without excuse at the call of the House.210CJ vii. 785a, 790a. Strickland had always taken his parliamentary duties seriously, and he was unforgiving of those who failed to do likewise.

Strickland seems to have emerged unscathed from the Restoration, although by 1662 he had been removed from all local commissions. He apparently conformed to the Act of Uniformity, while employing as his private chaplain one Stephen Hill, who had been a lecturer at Beverley (Hill’s predecessor as Strickland’s chaplain had been the vicar of Gilling in north Yorkshire, William Etherington, who conformed at the Restoration).211Bodl. Rawl. H.104, f. 27; Calamy Revised, 266. Strickland died on 12 September 1673 and was buried at Boynton on 16 September.212Whitby par. reg.; Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. iii. 124. By a nuncupative will made on the day before he died, he made his son Thomas and his sons-in-law the executors of his estate.213Borthwick, Wills in the Dickering Deanery, Sept. 1673. Thomas Strickland* sat for Beverley in 1659, and Strickland’s grandson and great-grandsons were returned for numerous (mainly Yorkshire) constituencies between 1689 and 1747.214HP Commons 1690-1715; HP Commons 1715-1754.