BETHELL, Hugh (1615-79), of Rise, Yorks.

Bethell’s family, a cadet branch of the Bethells of Alne and Ellerton in the North Riding, had settled at Rise, about 10 miles north east of Hull, by the early seventeenth century.37Harl. 6288, f. 88v. Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. iii. 470-1; Poulson, Holderness, i. 408-9. They appear to have been a relatively affluent family, leasing the manor of Rise from the crown at a clear annual profit of £218.38Harl. 6288, f. 90. Almost nothing is known about Bethell’s upbringing or education, and it was not until the mid-1640s, as a parliamentarian officer, that he achieved any prominence in the county’s affairs. His father was equally obscure and should not be confused with his cousin Sir Hugh Bethell of Alne, who signed the petitions of the ‘disaffected’ Yorkshire gentry to the king in the summer of 1640.39Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 1215, 1231.

Bethell sided with Parliament at the outbreak of civil war, serving as a captain in the Hull garrison under Sir John Hotham* and lending 215 ounces of plate towards the parliamentarian war effort.40SP28/134, pt. 4, f. 51v; CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 643; Hotham Pprs. 271. Captain-lieutenant of horse under Sir Francis Boynton (son of the prominent Yorkshire parliamentarian Sir Matthew Boynton*) by early 1643, he was part of the cavalry force that Captain John Hotham* led against the Lincolnshire royalists that spring.41Hotham Pprs. 20, 289; Jones, ‘War in north’, 370. He succeeded in distancing himself from the Hothams following their attempted defection to the king in mid-1643, and by the autumn he had been drafted into the regiment of horse commanded by Sir Thomas Fairfax*, the future general of the New Model army. Bethell ended the year as a major under the godly East Riding knight Sir William Constable*, who was a brother-in-law of the commander of Parliament’s northern army, Ferdinando 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*).42Jones, ‘War in north’, 370. Commissioned a colonel of horse in April 1644, Bethell fought at the battle of Marston Moor in July 1644, where he lost an eye; he was wounded again at Scarborough in November 1644.43Lansd. 988, f. 326; Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 60 (18-25 June 1644), 486; London Post no. 13 (26 Nov. 1644), 6 (E.18.18); The Monckton Pprs. ed. E. Peacock (Miscellanies of the Philobiblion Soc. xv), 17. His regiment was retained in the Northern Association army under Colonel-general Sednham Poynts, who commended him to Parliament in November 1645 for his ‘manhood and gallantry’ at the battle of Rowton Heath, where he had received ‘many wounds’ commanding the vanguard of horse. According to Poynts, Bethell was ‘the only man that stuck to me at my march out of Yorkshire to that service’.44Bodl. Nalson V, f. 25: HMC Portland, i. 306; LJ vii. 608b-609a. In October 1646, he was returned the thanks of Parliament for his ‘many faithful services’ and was granted £1,000 for his arrears of pay.45CJ iv. 685a; CCC 796.

Bethell was one of only a handful of prominent Yorkshire parliamentarians who was in sympathy with the pro-Scottish, Presbyterian interest during the mid-1640s. The evident trust reposed in him by Poynts is perhaps the first sign of this shift in his allegiance away from the Fairfaxes, who, with Sir Thomas Fairfax’s appointment as commander of the New Model, became closely identified with the opponents of the Scots’ and their English Presbyterian allies. By the summer of 1646, Poynts had forged close links with the Scots’ commanders in the north and joined them in condemning attempts by their enemies at Westminster – who included several of Lord Fairfax’s clients – to have the Scottish army removed from England.46Truth’s Discovery of a Black Cloud in the North (1646), 21 (E.346.9). On 29 March 1647, when the Presbyterian-dominated Commons came to debate the disbandment of the kingdom’s forces, it was no accident that the three regiments of horse which it voted to retain were those of Poynts, Bethell and another northern colonel closely associated with the Presbyterian interest, Christopher Copley, the elder brother of Commissary Lionel Copley*.47CJ v. 128b; Clarke Pprs. i. 4.

Poynts and his allies’ Presbyterian connections aroused fears among the New Model’s friends that he was planning to place the Northern Association army at the disposal of the Scots. In an effort to forestall such a development, five northern agitators gained admittance to Poynts’s council of war at York in June 1647 and demanded that his officers, and in particular Bethell and Copley, sign an ‘engagement and declaration’ (probably a copy of the New Model Army’s Declaration of 14 June, demanding a purge of the Presbyterian MPs and a redistribution of parliamentary seats) and that they repair immediately to their regiments. Most of the officers present signed this ‘engagement’, but Bethell and Copley both refused.48Bodl. Don. C.184, f. 175; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 363-4; Early in July, agitators in Poynts’s, Bethell’s and Copley’s regiments asked Sir Thomas Fairfax for exemption from obedience to any commander who did not support the New Model’s cause.49Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 623.

But though Poynts was forcibly removed from his command by the soldiery on 8 July, nothing seems to have been attempted against Bethell; and in contrast to many senior Presbyterian officers he retained his command after the defeat of the Presbyterian counter-revolution of July-August 1647. In response to letters from Poynts’s successor, Colonel John Lambert*, the council of officers resolved on 31 August to move Fairfax ‘that Colonel Bethell and Colonel Copley be desired to leave their commands’.50Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke ms LXVI, f. 2v. But Fairfax evidently ignored this request, and in December it was reported that Bethell was one of the colonels left in charge of the northern forces during Lambert’s absence on campaign in Scotland.51Clarke Pprs. ii. 253.

Although Bethell remained entirely loyal to Parliament during the second civil war, helping to raise the East Riding trained bands against the invading Scots, he continued to be identified with the Presbyterian interest.52Clarke Pprs. ii. 22; Packets of Letters from Scotland, Newcastle, York and Lancashire (1648), 5 (E.446.3). Late in June 1648, the Presbyterian mayor and aldermen of Hull asked Sir Thomas (now 3rd Baron) Fairfax that Bethell be made governor of Hull in place of the army radical sectary Colonel Robert Overton, who, they claimed, was ‘averse to anything we desire’.53HMC Portland, i. 468; Perfect Weekly Acct. no. 15 (21-28 June 1648), 120 (E.450.3). Reports reached Westminster that Bethell had indeed replaced Overton and that he was a great enemy of Fairfax’s army.54BL, Verney mss: Alexander Denton to Sir Edmund Verney, 26 June 1648 (M636/9). The notion of Bethell as governor of Hull was certainly appealing to the royalists, who were under the (mistaken) impression that he could be won over for the king.55CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 216. The Scottish Engagers, on the other hand, feared that Bethell and ‘divers other Presbyterians’ in Yorkshire intended to ‘join with the rigid party of the Presbyterians’ against them.56NAS, GD 406/1/2318. In the event, Fairfax retained Overton at Hull, while Bethell, having probably fought at the battle of Preston in August, was ordered with his regiment to attack Scarborough, where Colonel Matthew Boynton had declared for the king.57HMC Portland, i. 489; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1250-1, 1265. Bethell’s forces captured Scarborough Castle late in December, whereupon Fairfax appointed him governor in place of Boynton.58Col. Bethel’s Letter, 3-4. Dismayed by Fairfax’s decision, the editor of the radical newsbook The Moderate urged that the castle be demolished, ‘or a right man put into it and not a juggler, a clawback [flatterer] etc.’.59The Moderate no. 24 (19-26 Dec. 1648), 222 (E.536.2). In mid-January 1649, Bethell’s regiment of horse was disbanded by Lambert – ostensibly to plug holes in his own regiment, although at least one contemporary believed it was because Bethell was known to have been unhappy at the trial of the king.60Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1393; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 262; Jones, ‘War in north’, 370.

Given his Presbyterian leanings, Bethell may well have been opposed to the regicide. But the fact that he was retained as governor of Scarborough suggests not only that he was trusted by Lambert (or at least by Fairfax), but also that he had been willing to take the Engagement, pledging loyalty to the Commonwealth and abjuring monarchy and the House of Lords. Moreover, Bethell appears to have been on good terms with Lambert’s principal man-of-business, Captain Adam Baynes*, the London agent of the Northern Brigade, writing numerous letters to him during 1649 and 1650 concerning the pay and establishment of the Scarborough garrison. As Bethell admitted to Baynes, he had ‘many adversaries’ in London, but was at pains to emphasise his ‘integrity’ to the regime. He was convinced that attempts to have Scarborough Castle demolished and the garrison starved of pay did not reflect any lack of faith in him by the Rump, but were part of some purely private vendetta against him.61Add. 21417, ff. 217, 239, 269, 305, 317. He welcomed the Rump’s suppression of the Levellers, he informed Baynes, because it boded well for army unity: ‘I am very glad to hear things are so well composed touching the Levelling business. It is a great unhappiness that we that have served faithfully in the self same cause should now jar or seem to differ. It too much opens a gap to our implacable enemies’.62Add. 21418, f. 25.

Bethell’s Presbyterian sympathies did not preclude his purchase of former crown lands. As he informed Baynes in December 1649: ‘I would willingly deal in something to make good that little which is due [to me]’.63Add. 21418, f. 171. In 1650, he used his debentures for arrears of pay to purchase the royal manor of Hempholme, near Rise, and several houses and fee farm rents, mainly in the East Riding.64E121/5/7/26; LR2/266, f. 68; CCC 1979. His personal prosperity contrasted with that of his garrison, which was continually short of pay, forcing Bethell to go cap in hand to the Scarborough townsmen for loans.65Add. MS 21418, ff. 43, 50, 131, 139, 381; Add. 21419, ff. 31, 97, 117, 125, 139, 161, 202; Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. M. Y. Ashcroft (N. Yorks. RO publications xlix), 120-1, 128, 146, 170. ‘We are now much behind [in pay]’, Bethell confided to Baynes in July 1650, ‘...I have lent them [the soldiers] myself so long as I had it or could procure it...I have none to depend upon but yourself’.66Add. 21419, f. 202. But even Baynes could apparently do little to help, and by 1651 Bethell had ceased writing to him. The ‘abuses’ committed by Bethell’s troops in the town soured his relations with the corporation, which lobbied either Fairfax of Oliver Cromwell* ‘for the removal of the whole company under Colonel Bethell and that a faithfull company both of honest officers and soldiers may be given the governor (if the lord general still think fit to continue him)’.67Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 140, 268. Ordered into the field against the Scots in June 1651, he apparently saw this as an attempt to replace him as governor of Scarborough Castle and resigned his commission.68CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 188, 191, 192, 206, 238, 287. His decision to leave the army may also have been influenced by the prospect of fighting against the Scots – the issue over which Fairfax had resigned his command a year earlier. Despite Bethell’s apparent reluctance (for whatever reason) to serve against the Scots, he appears to have retained the trust of the Rump, which raised no objections to his appointment as sheriff of Yorkshire in November 1652.69List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 164.

The establishment of the protectorate late in 1653 was probably welcomed by Bethell, and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654 he was returned for the East Riding, taking the third place behind Sir William Strickland and Walter Strickland.70Supra, ‘Yorkshire’. He probably owed his election to the strength of his ‘great reputation in the late [civil] war’ and as a figure reportedly ‘well-beloved of the soldiery in Lambert’s army [i.e. the Northern Brigade]’.71Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, ii. 152; Baker, Chronicle, 669. He was named to four committees in the Parliament, including those to consider the powers of the commissioners named in the Cromwellian ordinance for ejecting scandalous ministers (25 September); for reviewing the armed forces (26 September); and for Scottish affairs (29 September).72CJ vii. 370a, 370b, 371b. Bethell had himself been named as an ejector for the East Riding and Hull and was clearly in favour of some form of publicly-maintained ministry.73A. and O. ii. 970. Although it was said that he repeatedly refused offers of military command from Cromwell, he was willing to serve the protectorate as a commissioner for supervising the repair of the fortifications at Hull in 1655 and 1657.74Clarke Pprs. iv. 253; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 182; 1656-7, p. 318; 1658-9, p. 52; Hull Hist. Cent. C BRB/4, pp. 274-5. He was also active on the East Riding bench during the protectorate.75Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Br P64/3, 12-13, 15.

In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Bethell was again returned for the East Riding, on this occasion taking the second of four places behind Sir William Strickland. But while Bethell and Strickland were allowed to take their seats, their two fellow Members, the former Rumpers Henry and Richard Darley, were excluded by the protectoral council as opponents of the government.76Supra, ‘Yorkshire’. He made no recorded contribution to debate in this Parliament, but was named to 12 committees – all of them set up between October 1656 and early January 1657.77CJ vii. 433a, 434a, 434b, 435b, 442a, 444b, 446a, 448a, 456a, 469a, 472a, 477b. At least one of these appointments reflected his likely support for a godly national ministry – that of 31 October, when he was named to a committee to consider ways of settling and maintaining ministers in Wales and the northern counties.78CJ vii. 448b. On 8 January 1657, having been excused a week earlier through illness, he was granted leave of absence and appears to have taken no further part in the House’s proceedings.79CJ vii. 480a; Burton’s Diary, i. 288, 331; Had he remained at Westminster, it seems probable that in the debate over the Humble Petition and Advice he would have sided with the civilian members of the court party in support of Cromwell’s acceptance of the crown.

In December 1658, Bethell and his civil-war commander Sir Francis Boynton presented Protector Richard Cromwell* with a loyal address from the East Riding. Cromwell thanked the two men and took notice of their ‘particular affections to him in taking upon them so bad a winter journey about that service’. Bethell was knighted by the lord protector two days later (29 December).80Mercurius Politicus no. 547 (23-30 Dec. 1658), 122-3, 128. Given his support for the protectorate, Bethell was almost certainly opposed to the army’s overthrow of Cromwell in April 1659 and its subsequent assumption of complete power in October. His antipathy towards the rule of the army and the sects, combined with his popularity among the northern soldiery, recommended him that winter to Lord Fairfax, who was planning a rising in Yorkshire in support of General George Monck*.81Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, ii. 152; Baker, Chronicle, 669. Fairfax communicated his intentions to Bethell through Sir Philip Monckton†, who had been a prominent royalist commander during both civil wars.82Lansd. 988, f. 327. According to Monckton, Bethell took considerable persuading to join Fairfax and would only do so after Monckton had assured him that he ‘should not lose those lands he had of the crown by [the] restoring of the king’.83Monckton Pprs. ed. Peacock, 25-6. However, Bethell’s reluctance to join Fairfax was not just financially-motivated; he also had strong reservations about any undertaking which would facilitate the restoration of the Stuarts. When Bethell and Lord Fairfax’s other East Riding confederates (who included Sir Henry Cholmeley* and Sir Francis Boynton) mustered their forces at Malton on 30 December, Bethell took ‘great offence’ at the presence of the royalist William Gower and his followers. Similarly, at the final rendezvous of Fairfax’s forces on 1 January 1660, the presence of Fairfax’s royalist son-in-law the duke of Buckingham was again reported to have given ‘great occasion of offence’ to ‘honest Colonel Bethell’ and other civil-war parliamentarians.84[J. Strangways], A Letter from a Captain of the Army to an Honourable Member of the Parliament (1660), 4, 5 (E.1013.9). And while Bethell, Major George Smithson* and most of their men subscribed to a declaration of fidelity to the recently re-restored Rump, Fairfax and his closest supporters pointedly declined to make any such a commitment.85[Strangways], Letter from a Captain of the Army, 5-6; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 293; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 275. In fact, Fairfax probably aimed at re-admitting the Members secluded at Pride’s Purge – a measure that would almost certainly result in the restoration of monarchy. With tempers running high, a compromise was reached by which the units that had subscribed the declaration occupied York, whilst Fairfax and his followers quartered their men in the surrounding villages.86[Strangways], Letter from a Captain of the Army, 6; A.H. Woolrych, ‘Yorks. and the Restoration’, YAJ xxxix. 483-507.

Whether Bethell was as devoted to the Rump as his actions during Fairfax’s rising would seem to suggest is unlikely. There is no evidence that he was a committed republican, and it is probable that, like Smithson, he supported the Rump merely because it represented, in his view, the only viable alternative to a return to monarchy. As the owner of former crown property and one who had fought hard against the royalists during the 1640s, Bethell had little reason to welcome a restoration of the Stuarts.

Bethell was evidently trusted by Monck, who appointed him commander of Lambert’s regiment of horse in mid-January 1660, describing him to the Speaker as

a person of great interest in the northern parts ... and the regiment was much of it his before Lambert had it, and he is of unquestionable courage and faithfulness, which he eminently testified ... by raising the country for you; and he took the declaration of the Irish Brigade [which had joined Fairfax at the final rendezvous], which directly tended to an adherence with you.87Clarke Pprs. iv. 253; HMC Portland, i. 695.

Although he had been active in the Rump’s interest in December and January, by the spring of 1660, Bethell had apparently reconciled himself to the re-admission of the secluded Members and the likely restoration of the monarchy. As de facto governor of York by April, he helped to put down a conspiracy of ‘Lambertonians and sectaries’ to seize the city and declare for a Commonwealth.88HMC Leyborne-Popham, 175, 176; HMC 5th Rep. 199. And that same month he joined Charles Howard* and other senior army officers in an address to Monck, pledging their obedience to him and to the forthcoming Parliament.89The Remonstrance and Address of the Armies...to the Lord General Monck (1660), 5-8, 14 (E.1021.1).

In the elections to the 1660 Convention, Bethell was returned for Beverley and Hedon and opted to sit for the latter (which lay about eight miles south of Rise).90CJ viii. 40a-b. Although he owned numerous properties in the Hedon area and had supported the corporation’s petition for government relief in 1657 after a large part of the town had been destroyed by fire, his election probably reflected the strength of his interest as one of the East Riding’s most influential figures.91CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 285. He was marked by Philip, 4th Baron Wharton as a likely supporter of a Presbyterian church settlement.92G.T.F. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 344.

At the Restoration, Bethell’s ‘eminent services’ during the Yorkshire rising earned him considerable favour with the new regime. Following the disbandment of his regiment in November 1660, he was allowed to hold what appears to have the honorary rank of a colonel of horse in the Coldstream Guards.93CSP Dom. 1668-9, p. 102. He also kept his knighthood, and, as a ‘Coldstreamer’, he was granted leases, at nominal rents, for the lands and fee farm rents he had purchased during the 1650s.94CRES6/1, p. 76; CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 70; 1668-9, p. 102. Evidently regarded as politically reliable by the new regime, he retained his place on the East Riding bench and was named as a commissioner for corporations in 1662 – an appointment which strongly suggests that he was conformable to the Anglican church.95HMC 8th Rep. 275.

Re-elected for Hedon to the Cavalier Parliament, Bethell seems to have been loosely aligned with the court interest during the 1660s and was listed in 1671 as one of the independent Members ‘who have for the most part voted for supplies to his majesty’.96Browning, Danby, iii. 42; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Hugh Bethell’. In 1670, the crown extended his leases (although only for 31 years rather than the three lives he had requested); in 1674, he was granted a new lease for Hempholme for 99 years; and in 1676 he was allowed to buy the reversion of his fee farms rents.97CSP Dom. 1668-9, p. 102; CTB iii. 622, 651; v. 136, 531, 549, 560. Despite such concessions, Bethell, had aligned by the mid-1670s with the country interest at Westminster.98CSP Dom. 1675-6, p. 142; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Hugh Bethell’. Returned for Hedon to the first Exclusion Parliament in 1679, he was classed as ‘thrice worthy’ by the whig leader, the earl of Shaftesbury (Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*).99HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Hugh Bethell’. He was returned for Hedon again in the autumn, but died on 3 October 1679 before the second Exclusion Parliament met. He was buried at Rise on 6 October.100Foster, Yorks. Peds.

Having died without surviving sons, Bethell, in his will, left the bulk of his property to his nephew Hugh Bethell† and charged his estate with bequests amounting to over £1,700. Among his numerous legatees was his cousin, the London republican Slingisby Bethell*. His personal estate included shares in three merchantmen, the Phoenix, the Hedon and The Friendship of Hull, the master of the latter being his nephew Richard Bethell. His supervisors included his ‘good friends’ Sir Francis Boynton and Hotham’s grandson and heir Sir John Hotham†, 2nd bt.101Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 59, f. 321. Bethell’s nephew was later to claim that his uncle’s estate had been worth £1,800 a year and that his personal estate had amounted to £5,000.102C10/272/13. But this assertion – made during a legal battle over title to Bethell’s personal estate – was almost certainly an exaggeration. Bethell’s nephew represented Hedon from 1695 to 1700.103HP Commons 1690-1715, ‘Hugh Bethell’.