CUNLIFFE, Robert (1604-53), of The Sparth, Whalley, Lancs.

Cunliffe belonged to what was probably a junior branch of a family that had settled in Lancashire by the early thirteenth century.18C.H. Owen, Descendants of the Elder Branch of the Cunliffes of Wycoller (1871), 13; Trappes-Lomax, Clayton-le-Moors, 102. Several authorities have identified him as the second son of John Cunliffe of Hollins, head of the main branch of the family, but in fact he came from less gentrified stock, the Cunliffes of The Sparth, or Sparth House, near Blackburn.19J. Foster, Lancs. Peds.; Owen, Cunliffes of Wycoller, 18; Whitaker, Whalley, ii. 259; VCH Lancs. vi. 422; Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 159. Cunliffe’s grandfather and great-grandfather had both styled themselves ‘yeoman’; and although his father, Christopher Cunliffe, referred to himself as ‘gentleman’ in his will, his estate comprised merely The Sparth and 72 acres of land.20Lancs. and Cheshire Wills and Inventories ed. J.P. Rylands (Chetham Soc. n.s. xxxvii), 1, 2, 19; Lancs. IPM ed. Rylands, 24. Robert inherited lands that he valued at only £35 a year, putting him among the very lowest rank of Lancashire’s gentry.21Lancs. RO, DDLX 7/2, p. 5; Blackwood, Lancs. 84.

Not surprisingly, given his humble origins, Cunliffe made no recorded impact upon the county’s affairs before the 1640s. It was only after the coming of civil war that he gained any notable preferment, receiving appointment from Parliament in January 1643 as a receiver for assessment revenue in Lancashire and, as such, working closely with Richard Shuttleworthe I* to collect money and sequester property for the supply of Parliament’s forces.22E134/16Chas2/Mich26; LJ v. 573b; SP28/7, f. 176. From the summer of 1650, Cunliffe would become one of the most active members of Lancashire county committee.23SP28/211, ff. 608, 774, 788; SP28/236, unfol.; SP28/47, f. 30; Add. 59661, ff. 14, 16; Belvoir, QZ.26, f. 20; CJ vi. 504a; Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 146, 159, 161, 183, 206, 277, 328, 340, 343; Life of Humphrey Chetham ed. F.R. Raines, C.W. Sutton (Chetham Soc. n.s. xlix), 151; J.M. Gratton, ‘The Parliamentarian and Royalist War Effort in Lancs. 1642-51’ (Manchester Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1998), 341, 342. His local profile was such by the mid-1640s that he was one of the signatories to the indenture returning Sir Richard Hoghton as knight of the shire for Lancashire in the spring of 1646.24C219/43/2/11. His decision to side with Parliament probably owed something to his godly religious convictions. Named in October 1646 as an elder for the third Lancashire Presbyterian classis, he became one of the ruling elders of the congregation that the ‘orthodox’ Independent divine Thomas Jollie established in the late 1640s at Altham – a few miles from The Sparth.25LJ viii. 510; Jolly Note Bk. ed. Fishwick, 120-3; ‘Thomas Jolly’, Oxford DNB’.

Mindful of his experience in financial administration, the compounding commissioners appointed him one of three sequestrators for Lancashire in January 1650; and in 1652, he was elevated to the county commission of the peace, where he served with characteristic diligence.26CCC 168; Craven, ‘Lancs.’, 30, 39; Craven, ‘‘For the better uniting of this nation’’, 89, 90. As a sequestrations commissioner he played an important role in the maintenance of what he termed ‘godly and orthodox’ ministers in the county.27SP28/211, ff. 654, 669, 698; Lancs. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. J. Brownbill (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. xcvi), 393, 397, 402-3. Early in 1653, however, he was removed from his office as a sequestrator for refusing to work alongside a Warrington mercer, one Robert Massey, whom Goldsmiths’ Hall insisted be put in commission.28CCC 168, 588, 592, 603, 629; Lancs. Royalist Composiiton Pprs. ed. Brownbill, 379. Cunliffe and several of his colleagues – who were also removed – had objected that Massey had not only been lukewarm in the parliamentarian cause, but also that he was ‘a tradesman and living upon his credit’, who lacked an estate sufficient for his office.29CCC 499-500, 515, 621; Lancs. Royalist Composiiton Pprs. ed. Brownbill, 378-9, 381-9; Blackwood, Lancs. 86-7; Craven, ‘Lancs.’, 30-1. Cunliffe and his colleagues were supported by Thomas Birche* and Thomas Fell*, but apparently to no avail.30Craven, ‘Lancs.’, 31. However, Cunliffe seems to have reconciled himself to serving with Massey and thus been re-appointed, for by April 1653 he had resumed signing warrants as a sequestrations commissioner.31SP28/211, f. 717. Of a mean estate himself before the war, he had prospered sufficiently by the early 1650s to join with another gentleman in purchasing lands in Lancashire from the treason trustees worth £1,973.32Blackwood, Lancs. 92, 94.

In the summer of 1653, Cunliffe, his fellow sequestrations commissioner John Sawrey, and William West were selected by the council of officers to represent Lancashire in the Nominated Parliament. What precisely recommended Cunliffe to the council, beyond his godly credentials and career as a servant of the commonwealth, is not clear. He was named to only two committees in this Parliament – those of 9 and 20 July 1653 for managing the public treasuries and their officers.33CJ vii. 283b, 287a. An anonymous pamphleteer listed him among those MPs who favored a publicly-maintained ministry.34Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 414. On 16 September, he was granted leave of absence for a month; and he seems to have remained in Lancashire until early December, when, upon returning to London, he fell sick and died at his brother’s house in Southwark (4 Dec.).35CJ vii. 319b; Lancs. RO, DDLX/7/2, pp. 5, 146; Jolly Note Bk. ed. Fishwick, 126. Although described at his death as a Lancashire magistrate, he had in fact been omitted from the county commission of the peace in March 1653.36Jolly Note Bk. ed. Fishwick, 126; Lancs. RO, QSC/54. He was buried at St Dionis Backchurch, London on 7 December.37St Dionis Backchurch par. reg. No will is recorded. He was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.