CHADWICKE, James (1598-1674), of Wheeler Gate, Nottingham, Notts.

Chadwicke was descended from a Lancashire gentry family, the Chadwicks of Healey Hall.33Vis. Notts. 68. According to what was, in places, a fanciful account of his parentage and upbringing – submitted in a deposition to the Jacobean court of wards by one of Chadwicke’s cousins – both his grandfather and father had married French heiresses of the de Cadurcis family. Shortly before his birth, Chadwicke’s mother had returned to England to ensure that her son would inherit his grandfather’s ‘great estate’ in Lancashire, Yorkshire and Stepney, London. Chadwicke’s cousin, a royal chaplain, claimed that he himself had baptised the infant in Lancashire in 1604.34Dugdale’s Notts. and Derbys. Vis. Pprs. 128. But in Chadwicke’s own notes on his life and career, he states that he had been baptised in February 1598 – an event recorded in the register of the Nottinghamshire parish of Woodborough.35N and Q ser. 7, ii. 409; Thoroton, Notts. iii. 34. The court of wards case was apparently linked to a legal dispute over Chadwicke’s inheritance, for after his grandfather’s death the latter’s cousin ‘became possessed of the ancient lands of Healey Hall as the next then known heir to his kinsman’.36Dugdale’s Notts. and Derbys. Vis. Pprs. 129-30; Vis. Notts. 68. The prospect of gaining custody of Chadwicke’s ‘great estate’ during his minority seems to have compromised the honesty of some of his kinsmen.

Following the death of both Chadwicke’s parents soon after his birth, claimed his cousin, one of the trustees of the family estate

who lived in Nottinghamshire, and who was a person of eminency, upon pretence of trust and of kindred did cause the said James (being an infant) to be conveyed into Nottinghamshire [where]… the said James was obscured for divers years till, at last, some friends had private notice and did privately take some care for his education.37Dugdale’s Notts. and Derbys. Vis. Pprs. 129.

Assuming there is any truth to this account, the ‘person of eminency’ mentioned here was possibly one of the Nottinghamshire Chaworths – descendants of a branch of the de Cadurcis family that had settled in England after the Conquest. George Chaworth†, created Viscount Chaworth of Armagh in 1628, continued to style himself ‘de Cadurcis’ (Chaworth being the anglicised form of that name).38PROB11/181, f. 310; ‘Chaworth (de Cadurcis) family’, Oxford DNB. A less flattering picture of Chadwicke’s upbringing was provided by Lucy Hutchinson – wife of Nottingham’s parliamentary governor Colonel John Hutchinson* – who clearly despised him. She claimed that as a boy he had ‘scraped trenchers [plates] in the house of one of the poorest justices in the county ... from whom this boy picked such ends of law that he became first the justice’s, then a lawyer’s, clerk’.39Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 71.

Chadwicke was admitted to the Inner Temple at the relatively advanced age of 23, and after being called to the bar in 1630 he obtained a post as a judge in the manor court of the earl of Meath’s liberties in Dublin.40N and Q ser. 7, ii. 409, 450. How he gained preferment in Ireland was a mystery to Lucy Hutchinson and remains so today (Viscount Chaworth’s Irish peerage apparently came with no patronage or influence in Ireland).41Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 71. By the late 1630s, Chadwicke had returned to Nottinghamshire and secured appointment as acting steward of the honour of Peverel – an ancient local court for the recovery of small debts.42CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 65. One of the parties to a post-Restoration legal wrangle involving the honour of Peverel claimed that Chadwicke had been appointed acting steward by the honour’s high steward, Sir Percival Willoughby*. However, Willoughby had been forced to surrender the stewardship to the courtier Sir George Goring† in 1617, when Chadwicke was still a minor.43C7/387/6; J.T. Godfrey, Hist. of the Par. and Priory of Lenton (1884), 392; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir Percival Willoughby’. Chadwicke insisted that his stewardship of the honour proved ‘good and easeful for the people’.44N and Q 7th ser. ii, 409. But Lucy Hutchinson was adamant that he had executed his office ‘to the great abuse of the country’ and that he would have been prosecuted by the Long Parliament had not Goring persuaded Sir Thomas Hutchinson* to forbear proceedings against him.45Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 71; CSP Dom. 1640, p. 510. Yet despite Lucy Hutchinson’s references to his ‘mean education’ and lack of legal expertise, Chadwicke apparently enjoyed a reputation as a man ‘learned in the laws and of great abilities’ – attributes that made him a strong candidate for the recordership of Nottingham during the 1630s.46Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 72; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 582; Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 173.

By mid-1642 he was aligned with the nascent parliamentarian interest in the town, joining the mayor, Henry Ireton* and others in a petition to the Commons in June, requesting orders for preventing the town, castle and county magazine falling into the hands of the king’s supporters.47CJ ii. 644a, b; LJ v. 173a; Wood, Notts. 15-16. The following month the corporation chose as recorder John Holles, 2nd earl of Clare, who on accepting the place nominated Gilbert Millington* as his deputy and Chadwicke to fill in during Millington’s absence at Westminster (an arrangement that the corporation re-affirmed in 1645).48Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 204-5, 234-5. Chadwicke’s first task as acting deputy recorder was to prepare and deliver an address on the town’s behalf to the prince of Wales when the royal entourage visited Nottingham that July.49Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 205. In Lucy Hutchinson’s account of this episode, Chadwicke ‘so insinuated [himself] into the court, that coming to kiss the king’s hands, the king told him he was a very honest man’.50Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 72. And indeed, the following month Chadwicke was named on a commission of array for the town.51Northants RO, FH133. Nevertheless, he sought (and was granted) indemnity by the Commons for his proceedings that summer, and at the outbreak of civil war he sided with Parliament – a decision probably linked to his puritan religious sympathies.52CJ ii. 708b. Typically, Lucy Hutchinson thought his sober attire and cropped hair mere ‘flatteries and dissimulations to keep up his credit with the godly ... the better to deceive’.53Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 72. But his election as a ruling elder for St Peter’s, Nottingham in 1652, his participation in the Presbyterian classis set up in the town in 1656, and his involvement in ejecting scandalous ministers under the protectorate, suggest that there was more to his godliness than mere outward show.54St Peter, Nottingham par. reg.; Notts. RO, M/416, f. 203; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Hi2 M/1, f. 5; TSP iv. 211; Carpenter, Presbyterianism in Nottingham, 29. His first wife had been cited by the Laudian church authorities in 1638 for failing to receive communion at the east end of the church and may well have shared his religious convictions.55S.B. Jennings, ‘‘The Gathering of the Elect’: the Development, Nature and Social-Economic Structure of Protestant Religious Dissent in Seventeenth Century Notts.’ (Nottingham Trent Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1999), 116, 121.

In the spring of 1643, Chadwicke secured a commission as colonel of a regiment of foot and horse from the commander of Parliament’s northern army, the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*). (Chadwicke should not be confused with his kinsman, the parliamentarian officer Colonel Lewis Chadwicke, who was active in Staffordshire during the civil war).56N and Q ser. 7, ii. 409; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 105; LJ vii. 417b-418a; Brereton Letter Bks. ii. 129. Chadwicke had been moved to take up soldiering in order to destroy the royalist stronghold of Newark: ‘that base town’ as he called it.57B. W. To the Faithfull and True-Hearted Covenanters (1644), 6 (E.257.6). However, he began his military career as part of the parliamentary force that assembled at Sheffield in April 1643 to assist the Fairfaxes, who were besieged at Leeds.58N and Q ser. 7, v. 225. Chadwicke and his fellow officers at Sheffield attempted to secure reinforcements from Derbyshire with the ringing declaration that ‘Christ’s cause against Anti-Christ ... is now brought to an issue in these parts ... If we fail in this, we can expect no less than the curse of Meroz and to be presently destroyed by the merciless enemy’.59Certaine Informations no. 15 (24 Apr.-1 May 1643), 115 (E.100.10). In the event, the Fairfaxes held on at Leeds, at least until the summer, while the Sheffield forces were routed by the royalists.60N and Q ser. 7, v. 225. Lucy Hutchinson was predictably dismissive of Chadwicke’s military exploits, claiming that ‘he raised seven men which were his menial servants, went into Staffordshire, possessed a papist’s fine house and fired it to run away by the light when the enemy was 30 miles off from it and cheated the country of pay for I know not how many hundred men’.61Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 105. Other sources, however, and in particular one ‘B. W.’ – possibly the godly Staffordshire minister William Barton – give a more positive appraisal.62‘William Barton’, Oxford DNB. Indeed, this writer was full of praise for Chadwicke’s energy and resolution in the parliamentarian cause and claimed that there were

divers gentlemen thereabout [in the north midlands] that had raised forces for the preservation of the country … took a love unto him [Chadwicke] and desired he would be resident with them, who were all willing to come under his command, so that by that means he had 1,200 raised in a week’s space, the like hath hardly been seen in any place.63B.W. True-Hearted Covenanters, 6.

As a parliamentarian officer, member of the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire parliamentary committees and acting deputy recorder for the town, Chadwicke was a leading figure in municipal affairs during the civil war and became deeply embroiled in the factional struggle between the supporters and opponents of Colonel John Hutchinson.64Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 220, 225, 227; CJ iii. 225a; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 74, 104-5, 132-50; P.R. Seddon, ‘Col. Hutchinson and the disputes between the Notts. parliamentarians, 1643-5’, Trans. Thoroton Soc. xcviii. 71-9. At the root of this feud – which divided the committeemen, leading townsmen and local parliamentarian officers – was disagreement as to the extent of the governor’s powers in relation to the garrison and attendant military units and therefore to the defence of Nottingham itself. Chadwicke, Millington, Charles White* and John Mason* headed a faction that sought to vest military authority in the committee rather than the governor. Ranged against them in support of the governor’s claim to overall command were Colonel Francis Thornhagh*, Gervase Pigot* and – on the rare occasions he visited Nottingham – Ireton.65Infra, ‘John Hutchinson’; ‘Gilbert Millington’; Seddon, ‘Hutchinson and the Notts. parliamentarians’, 72, 74, 76, 77, 78. Religious tensions among the Nottingham godly may well have exacerbated this conflict. Lucy Hutchinson accused Chadwicke – ‘the engine of mischief’ – and his confederates of ‘having engaged the persecuting priests [orthodox puritan ministers] and all their idolaters [against Colonel Hutchinson] upon the insinuation of the governor’s favour to separatists’.66Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 132, 133, 136, 141-2. The disputants appealed their respective cases to the Committee of Both Kingdoms* and to the Commons, but it was the return of peace to the midlands after Naseby rather than any ruling from Westminster that seems to have taken the heat out of the quarrel.67Infra, ‘John Hutchinson’; CJ iv. 112a; Seddon, ‘Hutchinson and the Notts. parliamentarians’, 74-8. By 1645, Chadwicke was involved in a similar feud in Staffordshire, where he again backed attempts by a faction of mainly civilian parliamentarians to (in the words of Sir William Brereton*) ‘distract the military power’.68Brereton Letter Bks. ii. 18-19, 127-9. Chadwicke’s factional entanglements seem to have done his standing no harm – at least in the short term. He was added to the Nottinghamshire commission of the peace in February 1645 and remained a leading figure on the Nottinghamshire county committee, which he continued to attend until at least March 1649.69C231/6, p. 10; SP28/213, unfol.; SP28/241, unfol.; Bodl. Nalson VII, f. 122; Tanner 57, ff. 352, 454.

Chadwicke was omitted from all local committees and from the Nottinghamshire bench under the Rump. His willingness to serve on the county committee in March 1649 suggests that his subsequent withdrawal from local office was not voluntary. Rather than retire from public life in protest at the regicide, it seems likely that he was purged by the Rump authorities – possibly at the instigation of Hutchinson and Ireton. However, if Lucy Hutchinson can be credited, Chadwicke and his eldest son were involved in Presbyterian plotting against the commonwealth and were only spared punishment by the governor’s intercession.70Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 179, 199. The only evidence that might lend some (slight) support to this story is Chadwicke’s summons before the council of state in August 1650 ‘to answer things objected against him’.71CSP Dom. 1650, p. 553. His Presbyterian sympathies probably stood him in good stead with Nottingham corporation, which appointed him deputy recorder proper in September 1652.72Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 278.

With the backing of the town’s recorder the earl of Clare, Chadwicke stood for Nottingham in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654.73P.R. Seddon, ‘The Nottingham elections to the protectorate Parliaments of 1654 and 1656’, Trans. Thoroton Soc. cii. 94-5. Confident of his interest among the leading townsmen – whom he claimed supported him ‘una voce’ [unanimously] – and anxious not to arouse their suspicions of outside influence, he asked Clare not to recommend him to the corporation by name.74Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ne D 3759/25. On 11 July 1654, the day before the election, the municipal office-holders voted overwhelmingly to return Chadwicke and another former opponent of Hutchinson, John Mason.75Notts. RO, CA 3427, f. 36; Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 282-3. Chadwicke was named to 12 committees in this Parliament, almost half of them relating to law reform. He was also named to the committee for Irish affairs (29 Sept. 1654) and to the committee of privileges in relation to elections in four counties in Ireland (5 Oct.).76CJ vii. 370b, 371b, 373b, 374a, 374b, 378b, 380a, 381a, 381b, 394b, 401a, 407b. As an Irish landowner, he evidently regarded himself, or was regarded, as knowledgeable on Irish affairs.

Despite his Presbyterian sympathies, Chadwicke served as a commissioner in 1655-7 to assist Major-general Edward Whalley* in administering the decimation tax and securing the midlands against the royalists. Whalley praised Chadwicke several times for his loyalty and diligence: ‘I never knew any at his own cost more willing to serve the present government than he’.77TSP iv. 211, 686. Yet he also acknowledged that Chadwicke made a somewhat unlikely ally, describing him as ‘very able and well esteemed of, even amongst honest and godly men ... Certainly it was not a true character that was given to him to his highness’.78TSP iv. 211. In 1655 and 1656, Chadwicke was a signatory to letters from the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth, defending the decimation tax as a thing ‘absolutely necessary’ and praising Whalley for his ‘singular justice, ability and piety’.79TSP iv. 156, 212, 384, 468-9, 484. Restored to the bench in March 1656 – almost certainly through Whalley’s influence – he was also involved in implementing the major-general’s programme against vagrancy and unlicensed alehouses.80C231/6, p. 10, 328; Notts. RO, C/QSM/1/13, unfol. (entry for 14 Apr. 1656 and passim); P.R. Seddon, ‘Maj. Gen. Edward Whalley and the government of Notts. 1655-6’, Trans. Thoroton Soc. ciii. 133, 134. In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, he stood for Nottingham again, although it is not clear on this occasion whether he sought the backing of the earl of Clare. He certainly wrote to Clare before the election, offering his assistance in securing the return of whoever the earl might nominate and informing him that he had ‘had some conference with Major-general Whalley and shall not doubt of his concurrence and assistance’.81Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ne D 3759/26. On election day, Chadwicke was returned with Alderman William Drewry.

The majority of Chadwicke’s 17 appointments in the second protectoral Parliament were to committees on relatively minor issues and matters of local or private interest.82CJ vii. 424a, 426b, 427a, 428a, 429b, 435b, 447b, 453b, 463b, 495b, 496b, 521a, 534a, 536a, 546a, 557b, 559b. He was included on only one committee relating directly to the kingship controversy – that of 7 April to determine a time and place for the House to renew its offer of the crown to the protector – and contributed nothing material to the debates in 1657 concerning the Remonstrance and the Humble Petition and Advice.83CJ vii. 521a. He was, however, a leading member of the committee of privileges in this Parliament, chairing a number of its meetings – particularly, it seems, during the brief 1658 session.84CJ vii. 441b, 587a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 346, 348, 372, 441. Three of his committee appointments related to Irish affairs, and in debate he supported motions for extending the provisions of the Humble Petition to all of Ireland’s Protestants.85CJ vii. 427a, 463b, 546a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 248.

Most of Chadwicke’s speeches in the House were brief and offer little insight into his political alignment at Westminster. On several occasions, however, he seems to have sided with the protectoral interest within the army as represented by men like Whalley (it was Whalley who presented Chadwicke’s excuses to the House on 31 December 1657 for his absence on legal business).86Burton’s Diary, i. 285. Although the Quakers listed Chadwicke among those Nottinghamshire magistrates who persecuted Friends, he took a relatively moderate stance on the punishment of the Quaker evangelist and alleged blasphemer James Naylor.87Extracts from State Pprs. rel. to Friends ed. N. Penney (1910), 113. Like most of the officers and the court interest, he rejected calls for the death penalty: ‘first whip him for the lesser crime, as for being a seducer and an impostor, and haply that may work him into a sense of sorrow’.88Burton’s Diary, i. 92. Likewise, he supported those ‘merciful men’ in the House who thought it proper that Naylor be given the opportunity to speak before sentence was passed in the hope that he would recant and thereby mitigate his punishment.89Burton’s Diary, i. 91, 163-4.

Even more suggestive of Chadwicke’s possible links with the protectoral army interest – or at least that part of it unhappy with the new constitutional settlement of 1657 – was his support for a motion made by the radical officer Captain Adam Baynes on 24 June 1657 that the new oath to be taken by protectoral councillors include a clause that they be ‘faithful to the people ... We have good cause to suspect that we shall not always have good chief magistrates’.90Burton’s Diary, ii. 288. What is clear from at least one of Chadwicke’s speeches is his continued commitment to the suppression of ‘licentiousness’. Speaking on 20 June 1657 regarding legislation for better observance of the sabbath, he urged that constables be allowed to investigate ungodly activities in private dwellings as well as on commercial premises: ‘for nowadays, the greatest disorders were in private houses, by sending thither for drink; drinking in alehouses being both more penal and suspicious’.91Burton’s Diary, ii. 263. It was Chadwicke who drafted Nottingham’s petition to the protector in July 1658, calling for stricter observance of ‘religious ordinances’.92Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 297.

Chadwicke’s authoritarian views on local government may help to explain why some of the inhabitants of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire petitioned the Commons in February 1657, complaining of his ‘arbitrary actions’ as steward of the honour of Peverel and asking that the House deliver them ‘from the bondage of slavery and oppression’ (a similar petition was presented to the restored Rump in 1659).93CJ vii. 490a-b, 744a; Notts. RO, DD/TS/6/5/1; DD/481/13. The impression that Chadwicke was operating his own private legal fiefdom in the region is reinforced by the fact that he held court as steward in his own house in Nottingham.94Derbys. RO, D187/4/18. Chadwicke either did not stand for election to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, or his candidacy was rejected by the Nottingham townsmen. In March 1659, the town’s recorder, the earl of Clare, attended the corporation and declared that Chadwicke had ‘very much prejudiced him in his service’ – although how he had offended the earl is not recorded – and nominated a new deputy recorder in his place.95Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 301-2. The corporation’s objections to Chadwicke holding the honour court of Peverel in the town – which Whalley had apparently sanctioned – were possibly a factor in its decision to accept Clare’s new nominee for Chadwicke’s office.96Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 302.

The consummate political survivor, Chadwicke seems to have fared well at the Restoration, for by early 1662 he had entered the service of the region’s leading magnate the William Cavendish, 1st duke of Newcastle – the man who had commanded the king’s northern forces in the civil war – and by 1668 he was steward of the duke’s manor and corporation of Chesterfield.97Nottingham Univ. Lib. Pw 1/80, 81, 438. True to his brusque style of legal practice, he urged the duke to proceed in his affairs using the full authority of the law and his powers of office.98Nottingham Univ. Lib. Pw 1/80. It is also no surprise that Chadwicke’s activities as one of Newcastle’s deputy justices in eyre for Sherwood Forest aroused the anger of some local inhabitants.99Notts. RO, DD4P/75/42; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Pw 1/417. In 1672, Chadwicke asked the duke to appoint a time ‘that all accusers which can accuse me of anything in all the great transactions of forest affairs by the space of twelve years and somewhat more, may be likewise present (face to face) to wait on your grace’, when Chadwicke was confident it would appear that he had acted ‘all along faithfully, carefully and moderately both for the defence of your grace’s honour, interest and authority and also for the people’s good’.100Nottingham Univ. Lib. Pw 1/82.

Chadwicke died in the summer of 1674, whereupon it emerged that he had inveigled his second wife (who had predeceased him) and her father out of a £1,500 marriage portion and a fair estate: ‘for that all those lands in England and Ireland ... were such as he [Chadwicke] had no estate in at the time of the [marriage] settlement to make her a jointure of and whereby she would have had no benefit if she had survived him’.101Derbys. RO, D187/2/96-105, 110. Chadwicke’s place of burial is not known, and no will is recorded. His grandson James Chadwick† sat for New Romney in 1689 and for Dover during the 1690s.102HP Commons 1660-1690.