WHALLEY, Peniston (1624-93), of Kirkton Hall, Screveton, Notts.

Whalley was the nephew of the regicide and Cromwellian major-general Edward Whalley*. His stepfather and guardian (a minor Nottinghamshire gentleman) sided with the king during the civil war, and it was probably through his influence that Peniston – in contrast to his uncles Edward and Henry Whalley* and cousin John Whalley* – became a royalist and staunch episcopalian.27Jaggar, ‘Whalley Fam.’, 241, 242. Indeed, he was reportedly in arms for the king at Newark in 1644, and it may have required some string-pulling by his uncle Edward to save his estate from sequestration.28C9/38/199; CCAM 1376; Jaggar, ‘Whalley Fam.’, 242-3. Whalley had apparently made his peace with the Nottinghamshire parliamentarians sufficiently by March 1646 to sign the indenture returning Colonel John Hutchinson and Gervase Pigot as ‘recruiter’ MPs for the county.29C219/43/2/78. Yet the fact that he received no appointments to local parliamentary commissions before 1657 suggests that he was regarded as politically unreliable by the authorities, and probably with good reason. In 1652, for example, he went so far as to pull down Screveton parsonage to prevent the incumbency of a ‘fanatic preacher’.30A. Henstock, K. Train, ‘Robert Thoroton: Notts. antiquary 1623-78’, Trans. Thoroton Soc. lxxxi. 23. And in 1655, he was strongly suspected of complicity in the royalist risings of that year, but though questioned was apparently not detained.31Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 145; Jaggar, ‘Whalley Fam.’, 243-5.

Whalley very probably owed his return for Nottinghamshire in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in 1656 to the influence of Major-general Edward Whalley. A few weeks before the election in August 1656, the ‘honest party’ in the county nominated Colonel Hutchinson to the major-general ‘as not knowing [who] better to pitch [upon]’ for the fourth and last place as knight of the shire.32TSP v. 299. The major-general ‘much wondered’ at this choice, given Hutchinson’s hostility to the protectorate; and with the honest party apparently at a loss to suggest a suitable candidate, it seems likely that he selected his nephew, who was promptly returned for the fourth place.33Supra, ‘Nottinghamshire’. If Whalley did indeed secure the election of his nephew it was to prove an embarrassment to him at Whitehall, where Peniston was regarded as an enemy of the government and, along with a hundred or so other MPs, was excluded from the House by the protectoral council.34C.S. Egloff, ‘The search for a Cromwellian settlement: exclusions from the second protectorate Parliament. Part 2’, PH xvii. 312. He was probably excluded under article XIV of the Instrument of Government, which disabled from sitting all those who had sided against Parliament since 1642.

Shortly after Charles II landed in Dover late in May 1660, Whalley joined Sir Gervase Clifton*, Robert Sutton* and other Nottinghamshire grandees in a congratulatory address to the king ‘for your so happy regaining at once both the affections and obedience of your people’.35SP29/1/42, f. 82. Whalley’s loyalty to the Stuart cause was rewarded at the Restoration with promotion to the Nottinghamshire bench, where he established a reputation for dealing harshly with Nonconformists and, in particular, the Quakers.36J. Besse, A Collection of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers (1753), i. 553-4, 560; Calamy, Nonconformist’s Memorial, iii. 98; Calamy Revised, 294. At general quarter sessions held at Nottingham in 1661 and at Newark in 1673, he delivered addresses defending the Church of England and inveighing against the Presbyterians, Independents and ‘all the rabble of sects’.37P. Whalley, The Civil Rights and Conveniences of Episcopacy (1661); The Religion Established by Law (1674). He stood as a candidate in the 1673 and 1677 Newark by-elections, but was defeated on both occasions by party-political sharp practice and the wiles and influence of his principal competitor Henry Savile†.38HP Commons, 1660-90, ‘Newark’; Godfrey, Notes on the Churches of Notts. 395. Not the least of his reasons for seeking a seat in Parliament may well have been to avoid prosecution by his creditors, for as a result of his minority and the profligacy of his father and grandfather he had inherited an estate heavily encumbered with debt.39Jaggar, ‘Whalley Fam.’, 13, 56, 253, 260, 265, 281. His financial difficulties were such that by 1685 he had sold off most of his estate.40Jaggar, ‘Whalley Fam.’, 281, 285. Indeed, if Edmund Calamy can be believed, Whalley ended his days as a debtor in a London gaol.41Calamy, Nonconformist’s Memorial, iii. 98. Whalley was certainly living in London by 1691, when he wrote his will.42PROB11/416, f. 279.

Whalley died in the summer of 1693 and was buried in St Andrew, Holborn, on 29 August.43St Andrew, Holborn par. reg. He died without surviving sons and was the last of his line to sit in Parliament.