WILLUGHBY, Thomas (1591-1661), of the Brick House, Sutton Coldfield, Warws.

Thomas Willughby’s lineage is difficult to unravel, as the family was noted for intermarriage between its various branches at Wollaton and Eresby, Nottinghamshire, Bore Place in Kent and Middleton, north Warwickshire. There are discrepancies between the printed pedigrees of the family, but Thomas Willughby was probably the son of Edward Willughby, who moved from Ightham, Kent, to Sutton Coldfield between 1594 and 1599.15Sutton Coldfield par. reg.; Arch. Cant. iv. 256. Edward was the 3rd son of Thomas Willughby of Bore Place, Kent and Catherine, daughter of Sir Percival Harte, also of that county. Before his removal to Warwickshire, Edward Willughby married Winifred Willoughby, daughter of Sir Francis Willoughby of Wollaton, who built Wollaton Hall on the profits of the coal seams beneath his lands there.16Thoroton, Notts. ii. 209, 212; J. Hatcher, Hist. of British Coal Industry. Vol.1 (Oxford, 1993), 166-7; J. Nef, Rise of British Coal Industry (2 vols. 1932), ii. 12-13. Winifred’s mother, grandmother of this Member, was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Lyttelton† of Frankley. Edward’s move to Sutton Coldfield was probably prompted by economic considerations. The head of the family at Bore Place was Edward’s kinsman, Sir Percival Willoughby, and a third son, such as Edward was, needed to find an estate of his own. Nor was his wife an heiress; she was a fourth daughter. Another branch of the family descended from the Wollaton Willoughbys, headed by George Willoughby, was already living at Sutton Coldfield, and nearby was the parish of Middleton, where Winifred’s eldest sister, their father’s heir, was installed.17Vis. Notts. 1569, 1614 (Harl. Soc. iv), 147. Edward and Winifred were involved in conveyances in Middleton in 1598, and this may have been the year they moved to Warwickshire from Kent.18VCH Warws. iv. 157.

The Willughbys of Middleton had been connected with Sutton Coldfield, where they had estates, since the late fifteenth century. The Willughbys of Middleton, like the family at Wollaton, were quick to exploit industrial resources. The pools they held at Sutton Coldfield powered mills for grinding blades and fulling cloth.19VCH Warws. iv. 237. The family had a civic involvement with the town which went back to the early sixteenth century: Sir Henry Willughby had been granted the office of steward of the town by 1505. Under the charter of 1528, Sutton Coldfield, henceforth to be known as a royal town, was to be governed by a ‘warden and society’, the equivalent of a mayor and corporation elsewhere. From that time, the office of steward was invested in the Devereux family and was decreed to be hereditary, so that in 1612 it was held by Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex. By 1642 he had granted the stewardship to Richard Newdigate†, of a nearby north Warwickshire family. The Willughbys remained prominent in the government of the town, but in a practical and local capacity, rather than as patrons. Edward Willughby, the father of this Member, was warden (mayor) of Sutton Coldfield five times between 1610 and 1634. He turned out to be the last of the name to serve as warden, and no Willoughby can be traced as actively participating in the government of the borough after his time.20Charters of Sutton Coldfield, 5, 9, 65, 70; A. Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warws. 1620-60 (Cambridge, 1987), 176. It is thus probable that Edward’s removal from Kent had been successful in that he had confirmed the family’s status in the ranks of the minor gentry, for whom civic service would have been inappropriate. Moreover, Thomas Willughby had distinguished relatives in that part of Warwickshire and Worcestershire. His first cousin was Sir Francis Willughby of Middleton (whose son Francis was to become a distinguished naturalist after 1660), and his second cousin was Sir Thomas Lyttelton* of Frankley.

Thomas Willughby, who spelled his name thus, was a taxpayer by the 1630s, and cast himself as an object of suspicion to the government of Charles I by refusing to pay Ship Money.21E179/275/14; E179/259/3; E179/272/55,58; signature SP28/247. He was not named to any commissions issuing from chancery before the civil war, but this may have been because he was of insufficient social standing, rather than because he refused to pay a controversial tax. A similar explanation may attend the fact that William Dugdale did not include him among the gentry who appeared in the field on behalf of Parliament: he was overlooked because of his undistinguished minor gentry status.22Northants. RO, FH4284. Actually, whether motivated by his own principles alone, or whether partly also by the influence of the earl of Essex in Sutton Coldfield, Willughby committed himself early to the parliamentary side in the civil war. On 13 June 1642 he received a commission from Lord Brooke (Robert Greville†) to raise men in Sutton Coldfield, Tamworth and the surrounding area of north Warwickshire. An unusual feature of his commission was that it empowered him to appoint junior officers, but only with the consent of the majority of the rank and file soldiery.23SP16/539/92. A similar commission, to John Barker I* as colonel of horse and foot in Coventry, made no such stipulation.24SP16/539/94. Willughby was probably at the muster at Coleshill on 5 July, along with John Bridges*.25Warws. RO, CR 1886/box 411. His troop of around 100 men was incorporated into Lord Brooke’s Warwickshire and Staffordshire Association in December 1642, and was apparently the only unit of the Association other than the reformado horse not to flee at the battle of Hopton Heath on 19 March 1643.26SP28/147/363; The Battaile on Hopton-Heath (1643, E.99.18); Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 181. From February that year, Willughby was named in Warwickshire commissions for sequestration and assessment, and he became a stalwart of the ‘committee of safety’, as it called itself, for the county.27A. and O. Under the Self-Denying Ordinance of 3 April 1645, Willughby took over the colonelcy of the Coventry militia foot regiment, as John Barker I was required to surrender his command there. A modern historian of the Warwickshire parliamentarian fighting units has concluded that Willughby was ‘very successful’ in retaining his complement of men, which fluctuated between 90 and 155 in number.28Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 195, 200.

As well as being an effective local military commander, Willughby was an active committeeman in Warwickshire, and was one of the dominant radical group in the standing committee, at odds with the moderate leadership offered by the 2nd earl of Denbigh (Basil Feilding) and his clients such as Thomas Boughton*. Between March 1643 and August 1644, Willughby was the fourth busiest committeeman, taking signatures on warrants as a measure. His importance grew steadily from December 1644, so that by the summer of 1645, he was signing 84 per cent of all the committee’s warrants, more than any other member. Furthermore, Willughby sustained his record as Warwickshire’s most active committeeman down to May 1647; and, if the sources permitted further analysis, doubtless after that.29SP28/246, 247, 248; Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War, 360-3. He was undoubtedly one of the inner circle who chaired the meetings of the committee when it met to deliberate on sequestrations.30Add. 35098, f. 38. This increasing prominence in county affairs was acknowledged by his nomination to the bench of magistrates of the county, by 24 December 1645. In this arena, too, he was energetic, quickly establishing after his first appointment a pattern of attendance at quarter sessions to rival that of any colleague.31Warwick County Records, ii. pp. xxi, 144. With his dominance of the county committee as a power base, Willughby can be assumed to have opposed attempts to reduce the size of the Warwickshire county force in 1648, and would thus be in agreement with radical Members such as William Purefoy I*.32Add. 5508, f. 156. Willughby had taken control of the Warwickshire horse and foot by October 1648, when a number of musters were held of the troops. Even so, the foot regiment had been reduced by early December to 80 men from the 152 mustered in October.33SP28/124, ff. 274-7, 284-7, 295-7. The alliance of the radical committeemen with the parliamentary advocates of the New Model army ensured that local opponents like Thomas Boughton suffered at Pride’s Purge. Willughby probably accepted the trial and execution of the king as a political necessity, and he continued to attend quarter sessions unhesitatingly though the period of the Rump Parliament.34Warwick County Records, ii. p. xxi; iii, p. xxi.

Willughby was an active Warwickshire magistrate in 1653 while the Nominated Assembly sat, and conducted marriages in Sutton Coldfield under the act passed by that Parliament.35Sutton Coldfield par. reg. He seems to have adapted to the advent of the protectorate without difficulty, as he was included among the commissioners for ejecting scandalous ministers in 1654, and served as sheriff in 1655. As a reliable servant of the republican regime, and as the leading Warwickshire committeeman of the late 1640s, Willughby had a claim to a seat in Parliament, but having been elected on 12 July 1654, he was completely inactive at Westminster.36C219/44/pt. 3. There is no evidence that he was refused admission to the House as an opponent of the government. Indeed, it is inconceivable that a man whose loyalties were in doubt would have been pricked for the shrievalty in the year of Penruddock’s rising and the inauguration of the experiment of the major-generals. Willughby’s election was not questioned in the way that the return of his fellow-Member, Peter Temple, was, and so it seems plausible that the lack of references to Willughby anywhere in the Journal was through his absence from, or at least his limited attendance in, the House. Another possible clue to his low profile in 1654 may lie in the few times (only three) he attended quarter sessions between October 1654 and July 1655, unusual in a man whose presence had been so much a feature of meetings of the bench during the first half of the decade. Was he ill?

This was not quite the end of Willughby’s aspirations to a career in Parliament, as in January 1658 he was appointed gentleman usher of the black rod to the Cromwellian Other House, during its short life.37Stowe 185, f. 123. It remains unclear how he acquired this position. He had no known links to the Cromwell family, so may have owed his advancement to Cromwellians in Warwickshire who held government offices, such as Richard Lucy* or Robert Beake*. In his county, he continued to appear in commissions issuing from chancery, and kept his place on the bench of magistrates. He was evidently expanding his landed estate in Sutton Coldfield, to judge from a 1654 deed in which he and two partners bought 700 acres of land, 15 messuages and 2 watermills.38William Salt Lib. SDP 983. He was also involved in litigation in Sutton Coldfield court of record from October 1658 to February 1659, as plaintiff in a case of trespass and damages.39Sutton Coldfield Library, t/s of Sutton Coldfield ct. of record bk. 1658-1727, unfol. At the restoration of the monarchy he lost all his offices, and died soon after, in August 1661. He was buried in a vault in the chancel of Sutton Coldfield church, as befitted as prominence in the town.40Sutton Coldfield par. reg. A matter of weeks after Willughby’s death, his son, Richard, a barrister of Gray’s Inn, was borrowing money from a fellow-barrister, who was a former business partner of Thomas Willughby and lord of the manor of Witton, near Sutton. By 1665, Brick House, the 13-chimneyed house of the Willughbys in Sutton, had been sold to a London haberdasher, and was soon sold on by him, ending the Willughby family’s connection with Sutton Coldfield.41BRL, Moulton and Keen 128; Shakespeare Birthplace Trust RO, ER4/777/2; Sutton Coldfield Lib. t/s, [R. Lea], ‘Calendar of deeds borrowed from Eddowes, Perry and Osborne, 1976’; t/s, A.F. Fentiman, ‘A Little Story about the Willoughby, Addyes and Hacket Families, 1661-1886’ (1995). None of Willughby’s descendants are known to have sat in Parliament.