ALDWORTH, Robert (c.1624-76), of Broad Street, Bristol and Lincoln’s Inn.

Aldworth’s father, a Bristol merchant, was a leading member of the Puritan group there and represented the city as a recruiter and a conformist Rumper from 1646 to 1653. Aldworth was a lawyer and a Cromwellian, active in the disposal of crown and church lands. He presumably opposed the Restoration, deploring the return of the secluded Members in 1660. His views made him unacceptable at Bristol in the ensuing general election; but as recorder of Devizes he enjoyed enough interest to secure his return by the mayor. Though challenged by John Norden, he was allowed to take his seat, and the election was upheld on 31 July. Doubtless he voted with the Opposition, but he was an inactive Member of the Convention, making no recorded speeches and serving on only three committees, those for preserving timber in the Forest of Dean, for the Earl of Cleveland’s estate bill and for the prevention of swearing. On 19 Oct. he obtained a letter from the King to the Bristol corporation requesting his retention as town clerk. He probably did not stand in 1661, and was dismissed as recorder of Devizes even before the Corporations Act was passed, while Bishops Cannings rectory, which had provided his original link with the neighbourhood, had already passed into the hands of Secretary Nicholas. Repeated efforts were made to remove Aldworth as town clerk of Bristol; but he was protected by royalist kinsmen such as his brother-in-law Sir Humphrey Hooke, and it is not certain that he conformed even to the extent of taking the oaths. He died on 20 Mar. 1676, unlamented by ‘the good Church and King men’, who considered him ‘leaning to the nonconformist interest’, and was buried at All Saints, Bristol.CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 320; 1660-1, p. 569; 1661-2, pp. 148, 224, 535; 1663-4, pp. 427-8; 1676-7, p. 31; HMC Popham, 160; Bull, 303; Wilts. Arch. Mag. xli. 107; VCH Wilts. vii. 189.