WILLOUGHBY, Thomas (1602-92)

At the death of Charles Willoughby, 9th (CP 10th) For the numbering of the Barons Willoughby of Parham, see vol. 1, appendix. Baron Willoughby of Parham, the line of male descendants of William Willoughby, eldest son of Charles Willoughby^†, 2nd baron Willoughby of Parham, became extinct. This biography is based on P.J.W. Higson, ‘A Dissenting Northern Family: The Lancashire Branch of the Willoughbys of Parham, 1640–1765’, Northern Hist. vii. 31–53; ‘The Lancashire Lords Willoughby of Parham (1680–1765), Genealogists’ Mag. xvii. 1–12; Genealogist, iv. 34–49. The grandson of Ambrose Willoughby, William’s next younger brother, was at that point alive and had the legitimate claim to the title, but he had emigrated to Virginia and those in England were unaware of his existence. Thus in December 1679 it was Thomas Willoughby, the 77-year-old son of Sir Thomas Willoughby, youngest son of the 2nd Baron Willoughby of Parham, whose claim to the barony was accepted without question or prolonged enquiry. He was granted a writ of summons to the House and first took his seat on 21 Oct. 1680. When in 1767 the true heir to the barony was allowed to sit in the House (following the extinction in 1765 of the line through the 2nd baron’s youngest son), it was determined that the writ of summons of 1680, although incorrectly stating that Thomas Willoughby took his seat ‘by descent’, had in effect created a new barony by writ and ennobled that branch of the family. It was adjudged in 1767 that, as ‘different peers may sit by the same nominal title’, the Barons Willoughby of Parham created by writ in 1680 had not all this time been depriving the older branch of their due rights and place in the House. Though considered at the time, therefore, to have continued the existing line of Barons Willoughby of Parham (he would be referred to as the 11th, although as a result of another genealogical mixup to which this family seem to have been prone and which is explained in an appendix in volume 1 of this publication, he was in fact the 10th), after 1767 he was retrospectively deemed to have been the first holder of a new barony of that same name.

Thomas Willoughby’s family were originally of Lincolnshire extraction, but from the time of his own marriage in 1640 to Eleanor Whittle, daughter and heiress of a yeoman of Horwich, he and his branch of the family were firmly based in Lancashire. He sided with Parliament from the early days of the Civil War, signing the Protestation in early 1642, and served as an infantry captain in the Battle of Middlewich in December 1643 and the unsuccessful defence of Bolton in May 1644. He maintained his commission as a major throughout the Interregnum, for he was still referred to as ‘Major Willoughby’ in the records of the Rivington Free Grammar School, founded by the Elizabethan puritan James Pilkington^†, bishop of Durham. Willoughby became a governor of the school in 1650. He was probably the ‘Willoby of Horwich’ who was to be secured by the county militia in August 1665 under suspicion of a nonconformist plot. Trans Hist. Soc. Lancs. and Cheshire, lxiii (n.s. xxvii), 146. In 1672 he had his house at Horwich licensed as a Presbyterian meeting-house under the provisions of the Declaration of Indulgence. CSP Dom. 1672, p. 678.

There had long been almost no contact between the Lincolnshire and Lancashire branches of the family and the 9th (CP 10th) Baron Willoughby of Parham, the last of the Lincolnshire Willoughbys, unaware of the existence of a successor to the title, had bequeathed almost all his remaining estate to his niece Elizabeth, later the wife of James Bertie^‡ and mother of Willoughby Bertie^†, 3rd earl of Abingdon. In late Feb. 1680 the new 10th (CP 11th) Baron Willoughby of Parham, with no fortune of his own and married to a yeoman’s daughter, was provided with an annual secret service pension of £200, in order to allow him to maintain the dignity of his title. This appears to have been paid regularly throughout that decade. CSP Dom. 1679–80, p. 405; CTB, vi. 436; viii. 200, 674, 742, 964, 1006, 1340; ix. 1447; Clarendon Corresp. i. 657–8. The reaction of William Lloyd, bishop of St Asaph, to the poverty and piety of Willoughby of Parham’s youngest son, Jonathan, reveals much about the circumstances of the baron himself. Lloyd first found Jonathan ‘very raw’ after attending his ‘mean country school’ in Rivington, but in 1684 recommended him to a studentship at Christ Church, Oxford, on the ground that ‘his poor father can do nothing for him’ and ‘for his religion and morals he deserves singular commendation … he eats but one meal a day and thinks no clothes too mean for him to wear’. Add. 4274, f. 225.

Willoughby of Parham first took his seat in the House at the beginning of the second Exclusion Parliament on 21 Oct. 1680 but, perhaps because of his advanced age and distance from Westminster, only attended three times, the last on 27 October. Three days later, at a call of the House, he was formally excused from attending and he did not sit again in any of Charles II’s remaining parliaments, nor did he register his proxy with any other peer. He dutifully attended the opening of James II’s Parliament on 19 May 1685, but his attendance there was equally short-lived, and he only sat six times, the last being on 19 June.

He may not have made much of an impact at Westminster, but it appears that Willoughby maintained local influence in Lancashire, particularly among the Dissenters there. His signature certified a list of Lancashire justices of the peace submitted to the committee which in November 1680 considered recent pro-Catholic alterations made to the commissions of the peace. HMC Lords, i. 181. James II counted on Willoughby of Parham as an important northern ally in the coalition which he attempted to forge between Catholics and nonconformists, and all contemporary commentators and foreign observers during 1687–8 predicted that Willoughby would support the plans to repeal the Test Act. Willoughby and his son Hugh Willoughby, later 11th (CP 12th) /2nd Baron Willoughby of Parham, were singled out among Lancashire Dissenters for favour during James II’s visit to Chester and Holywell in August 1687, when they were presented to the king by the Whig collaborator Charles Gerard, styled Lord Brandon (later 2nd earl of Macclesfield). By the end of the year both father and son were suggested as justices of the peace for Lancashire and in April 1688 they were among the few Protestants placed on a new commission of the peace for the county, their remaining colleagues being almost all Catholics. Duckett, Penal Laws, ii. 278; Glassey, JPs, 275.

Willoughby was not removed from this responsibility until 20 Mar. 1689, when the new regime of William and Mary effected a purge of collaborators of James II from the magistrates’ bench (although his son Hugh was retained in the commission). Glassey, JPs, 278n6. He nevertheless demonstrated his commitment to the new Protestant monarchs when he appeared in the House the next day, and continued to sit for the next several weeks during his only extended and regularly attended period in the House. In May he voted in favour of reversing the two judgments of perjury found against Titus Oates and, already in his late 80s, took part in proceedings until he left the House for good on 12 June.

Despite Willoughby’s brief alliance with James II, William III continued to authorize his pension of £200 p.a., and in the first year of his reign topped it up with a ‘bounty’, taking the amount to £350. Bodl. Rawl. A 306, pp. 12, 43, 139, 176; Add. 37157, f. 76v; HMC Lords, iii. 399. In January 1692 it was decided to transfer payment of his pension from the secret service funds to the exchequer, but Willoughby did not live long to enjoy his newly confirmed payment as he died in Feb. 1692. CSP Dom. 1691–2, p. 104. His will suggests that, regardless of his title, his existence was still that of a yeoman farmer. The most valuable items listed in the inventory of his goods and chattels taken in March 1692 are his oxen, cows and horses, worth £70 altogether. In total his personal estate was worth £182 19s. 2d., which he divided among his wife and six children. His eldest son, Hugh, inherited the title and five shillings, but not much else. To his wife and executrix, Ellen, he bequeathed the house at Horwich, which by that time was known as ‘Old Lord’s’ in his honour.