CAWLEY, William (1602-1667), of East Street, Chichester, Suss.

Cawley’s father John was a wealthy brewer and thrice mayor of Chichester, leaving sufficient property in and around Chichester for his son to join the gentry. John was keen for Cawley to have an education appropriate for a member of the landed elite and consequently left him £30 a year while he studied at university and the inns of court. He also instructed his son to pay £5 a year for 20 years to the poor of Chichester. It may have been in lieu of this bequest that in 1625 Cawley built an almshouse for 12 decayed tradesmen outside the north gate of the city. PROB 11/137, ff. 306-8; Notes of Post Mortem Inquisitions taken in Suss. 47; VCH Suss. iii. 81; Arnold, 24-6.

In 1628 Cawley was rewarded for his beneficence by election to the third Caroline Parliament. He made no recorded speeches and his only committee appointment, on 17 May, was for a bill promoted by Lord Bergavenny (Sir Henry Neville II*), whose uncle, Francis Neville I*, lived in Chichester. CD 1628, iii. 447. In October he and his older colleague, Henry Bellingham, were summoned before the Privy Council as ‘the principal encouragers’ of opposition to billeting in the city, having apparently warned the mayor and corporation that they would be held accountable by Parliament if they allowed troops to be billeted on householders. They appeared before the Council on 14 Oct., but were discharged the following day. APC, 1628-9, pp. 187, 197. Cawley left no trace on the records of the 1629 session.

In 1630 Cawley compounded for knighthood at £14. ‘Compositions for knighthood’ ed. H. Ellis, Suss. Arch. Colls. xvi. 50. He purchased two more manors in the neighbourhood of Chichester: Fishbourne in 1633 and Rumboldswyke in 1634. VCH Suss. iv. 155, 172. Returned for Midhurst to the Long Parliament, he has to be distinguished from another prominent supporter of the parliamentary cause, William Calley of Wiltshire. As a regicide he was consequently exempted from the Act of Indemnity at the Restoration, but escaped overseas, to die at Vevey in Switzerland on 6 Jan. 1667. No will has been found. His elder son sat for Chichester in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament and, briefly, in the Convention; his younger son became archdeacon of Lincoln. M.F. Keeler, Long Parl. 130; J. Waylen, Hist., Military and Municipal, of the Town ... of Marlborough, 247-8; Oxford DNB.