WROTH (WROTHE), Sir Thomas (1584-1672), of Petherton Park, North Petherton, Som.

The Wroths had held land in Somerset since the late twelfth century. However, Sir Thomas Wroth had become connected with the county only when one of his uncles, John Wroth, designated him as his heir. From the 1620s Sir Thomas was resident on the manor of Newton-Regis at North Petherton and he inherited it outright on John Wroth’s death in 1633.29VCH Som. vi. 286; E115/410/116; E115/421/1; E115/426/23. He obtained the remaining Wroth lands at North Petherton in 1634, when, as part of a deal to clear their relatives’ debts, he and his elder brother, Sir Peter*, swapped their share of the Wroth lands at Enfield in Middlesex for them.30Coventry Docquets, 666, 667; Collinson, Som. iii. 68-9. The result of these acquisitions was that Sir Thomas came to base himself in Somerset rather than his native Kent. In 1628 he was elected as MP of the adjacent town of Bridgwater and, having obtained a new charter for the borough, he was then named as its recorder. A salt cellar presented by him in 1637 commemorates his connections with the corporation.31L. Lewitt and W.H. St John Hope, The Corporation Plate and Insignia of Office of the Cities and Towns of Eng. and Wales (1895), ii. 302. In the mid-1620s he had also served for a time as a justice of the peace for Somerset.32QS Recs. Som. James I, 349, 353; QS Recs. Som. Charles I, p. xviii. He was restored to the commission in 1636 and thereafter became an active member of the Somerset bench.33Broadway, Cust and Roberts, ‘Additional docquets’, 235; QS Recs. Som. Charles I, 262. This was also a period when, in conjunction with his Rich in-laws, he was heavily involved in the activities of the Virginia Company. His real interests may have been more cerebral, however. In 1648 he would donate 31 manuscripts in Turkish and Arabic to the library of Sion College in London.34LPL, Sion L40.2/E64, p. 51.

Securing Somerset, 1640-5

By 1640 Wroth was unavoidably at the forefront of Somerset politics. The previous November he had been appointed by the king as the high sheriff.35Coventry Docquets, 369; List of Sheriffs, 125. Three national issues dominated his year in office. First, it fell to Wroth to attempt to collect the money due under the last of the Ship Money writs.36CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 569-70, 588; Som. RO, DD/AH/21/16/2; Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 775. 778. His efforts to do so were strikingly ineffectual, as £7,665 12s 4d of the £8,000 he was supposed to raise remained uncollected.37Gordon, ‘Collection of ship-money’, 160; Som. RO, DD/AH/21/16/2. While Wroth’s own lack of enthusiasm for the task should not be discounted, this was probably more a reflection of just how unpopular the levy had now become. Secondly, Wroth was required to organise the forces to be sent from Somerset to be fight against the Scottish Covenanters. He complained that when those soldiers were assembled in late May 1640, they threatened to mutiny and so had to be paid by him from his own pocket.38CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 62-3, 313-14.

The third task, presiding over the parliamentary elections for both the Short and the Long Parliaments, was only slightly less thankless. The main personal disadvantage was that he was unable to stand himself. The best he could do was to get his brother Sir Peter elected at Bridgwater in the autumn. A second chance arose once his year as sheriff was over when the other Bridgwater MP, Edmund Wyndham*, was barred from taking his seat, but Robert Blake* set out to block Wroth’s candidacy on the grounds that he would ‘prove but disserviceable unto the public’ and got Thomas Smyth I* elected instead.39Cal. Corresp. Smyth Fam. 168. The stigma of being a Ship Money sheriff may still have counted against Wroth. A year later he helped organise the county’s petition against episcopacy, which he presented to the Commons on 25 February 1642. In addressing MPs from the bar of the House he compared them to ‘the day of judgment’.40PJ i. 465, 466-7; To the Honourable Assembly of Commons, In this present Parliament (1642, 669.f.4.44).

Years later, in 1659, Wroth told the Commons, ‘I had a sword once. I never had a penny. It cost me £10,000’.41Burton’s Diary, iv. 17. Earlier, in 1646, he had claimed that only one other person had lost more than he had during the royalist occupation of Somerset.42SP28/256, pt. 2, unfol. While quite possibly exaggerated, these statements did express basic truths about Wroth’s experience of the civil war. From its beginning, Wroth sided with Parliament and so was named to all the major local commissions created by it in Somerset.43A. and O. He also raised a troop of his own.44SP28/256, pt. 2, unfol. But Somerset did not remain in parliamentarian hands for long. In late May 1643 Wroth joined with John Pyne* and Edward Popham* to try to defend Taunton from the advancing royalist army under Sir Ralph Hopton*.45CCSP i. 240. Once Popham had retreated, the road to Bridgwater was open. Within weeks Somerset was entirely in royalist hands. Wroth fled and his house at North Petherton was ransacked.46SP28/256, pt. 2, unfol.

Wroth probably spent the next two years in London. In early 1644, when he was considering fleeing abroad, his kinsman Sir Edward Dering* consulted him about the possibility of obtaining a pass from the Speaker. Wroth discouraged him and Dering abandoned the idea.47 Dering Diaries and Pprs. 155. Wroth’s estates were recaptured only in July 1645, when Bridgwater was retaken by force. In the meantime Parliament’s Committee for Advance of Money recognised the extent of Wroth’s plight. Having initially asked him to pay £500, it abandoned that demand in November 1643 on hearing how his estates had been plundered.48CCAM 272-3. Wroth therefore had little reason to sympathise with the royalists and from the summer of 1645 he allied himself with those hardliners, headed by Pyne, who firmly re-established parliamentarian control within Somerset. Significantly, when Roger Sydenham was given permission by Sir Thomas Fairfax* to raise troops to recapture Dunster Castle, still being held by Francis Wyndham*, he seems to have suspected that Wroth might see him as a rival in the western parts of Somerset.49Som. RO, DD/AH/21/16/4. The recapture of the county also enabled Wroth to resume his parliamentary career.

Presbyterian MP, 1646-7

With Blake, Wroth entered the Commons in February 1646 following the recruiter by-election at Bridgwater.50Supra, ‘Bridgwater’. He had taken his seat by 17 February and eight days later he swore the Solemn League and Covenant.51CJ iv. 445b, 454a. Over the next year he played a full part in the work of the Commons. He was sufficiently respected to be appointed as early as May 1646 as a messenger between the two Houses, being sent on that occasion to request a conference about controversial remarks made by Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire* about the king.52CJ iv. 548a, 552a; LJ viii. 321a. With the war in England now drawing to a close, the big question for MPs was increasingly the shape of any future peace. Wroth showed little sympathy for Parliament’s royalist opponents, consistently favouring tough action against delinquents.53CJ iv. 571b, 622b, 663a, 712b, v. 74a; LJ viii. 482b-483a. Wroth was among local MPs asked in August 1646 to arrange for the prosecution of the leading Somerset royalist, Sir John Stawell*, at the next Somerset assizes.54CJ iv. 648a. But, with peace now a real possibility, Wroth began to see the New Model army as potentially the bigger problem. Of course he had personal experience of the inconveniences of military occupation, although most recently this had been in the summer of 1646 when parliamentarian soldiers from the Bridgwater garrison were billeted in his house. At least Wroth was able to use his position as an MP to raise the subject in the Commons and obtain an order for the soldiers to leave.55CJ iv. 592b-593a. Anxious to find a new role for the army, he probably supported the Presbyterian party’s policy of sending as many regiments as possible to Ireland.56CJ iv. 612a, 641b; LJ viii. 424b, 425a. By December 1646 he was especially keen to see the army paid off as soon as possible.57CJ v. 9b, 53b, 55a; LJ viii. 677a. Meanwhile, in July 1646, the Committee of Accounts had ordered him to account for any public money he had received. Wroth responded by arguing that all his papers had been lost when his house had been sacked in 1643 and that the only sums he had received were payments for the troop he had raised.58SP28/256, pt. 2, unfol.

All the indications are that Wroth’s preference on religious questions would have been for a state church along Presbyterian lines. In May 1646 he was added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers and, having sat on the committee to prepare the legislation to exclude scandalous persons from the sacrament, he was then appointed as one of the commissioners to enforce it.59CJ iv. 545b, 553b, 562b; A. and O. He had little sympathy for the publication of seditious or heterodox pamphlets.60CJ iv. 616a, 644b; v. 72b. That he was named to the committee on the bill to improve the previous legislation on the sale of bishops’ lands (27 Feb. 1647) indicates that he strongly approved of the dismantling of episcopacy.61CJ v. 100a. He also seems to have taken a particular interest in the confiscated revenues of St Paul’s Cathedral.62CJ iv. 538b, 671b. As a commissioner to regulate Oxford University, he helped purge his alma mater.63CJ v. 121a; A. and O. Meanwhile, he became one of the elders of his local Somerset Presbyterian classis.64Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 421.

From Presbyterian to Rumper, 1647-53

Wroth almost certainly spent much of 1647 away from Westminster. He was granted leave of absence on 29 March and, although he was named to a committee in the following week (6 Apr.), he was still absent when the House was called on 9 October.65CJ v. 128a, 134a, 330a. He would therefore have played no direct part in the crisis of July and August 1647. That he was back in Parliament by 21 October, when he was named to the committee to consider propositions to be sent to the king, may mean that his return was prompted by the renewed attempts to negotiate with the king.66CJ v. 339a. If so, he was quickly disappointed. Charles’s rejection of the Four Bills seems to have been the turning point for Wroth. He had lost patience with the king. On 3 January 1648 he told the Commons, ‘From devils and kings, good Lord deliver men. It is now high time, up and be doing. I desire any government rather than that of kings’.67‘Boys Diary’, 155. Others supported him and from these frustrated comments there emerged the Vote of No Addresses. At some point during the weeks that followed, when the Commons were discussing proposals to limit the number of servants around the king, Wroth was equally blunt. That time he was alleged to have said ‘in a fury’ that, the king ‘being a prisoner, it was more fit he were brought to his trial, and to give an account for all the blood that he hath spilt’.68Mercurius Elencticus no. 11 (2-9 Feb. 1648), 80 (E.426.12). More than some of his colleagues, Wroth was now prepared to envisage a settlement without the king. That he carried up the Commons’ orders on the subject to the Lords on 27 January possibly indicates that he was among those MPs who were now desperately seeking a new alliance with the Scots on the basis of a Presbyterian church settlement in England.69CJ v. 444b; LJ x. 3b.

This flurry of activity was followed by further periods of prolonged absence, however. Although he was included on a couple of committees in March, by late April 1648 he was listed as being absent.70CJ v. 497a, 505b, 543b. During the anti-parliamentarian uprisings that summer, he was named to the committee to investigate the rising in Surrey, but a week later, on 18 July, he was given permission to leave the capital.71CJ v. 631b, 639a. He was still absent on 26 September, although the Commons later apologised for having failed to realise that the reasons for his absence were legitimate.72CJ vi. 34a, 56b. Consistent with his previous support for the Vote of No Addresses, he disapproved of the negotiations with Charles I at Newport. This was made clear by his speech on 17 October. With the Lords proposing an adjournment on the assumption that this would aid those talks, Wroth, in another ‘great fury’, maintained that whether the Commons should adjourn was no business of the Lords.73Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 30 (17-24 Oct. 1648), sig. Tt2 (E.468.37). He was therefore unaffected by the purge of the Commons on 6 December. He probably dissented from the vote of 5 December as early as 20 December.74[C. Walker], History of Independency (1648-9), ii. 48; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 214n. Three days after that he was included on the committee to consider the letter from the elector palatine.75CJ vi. 102b. He was then appointed as one of the 135 commissioners to sit in judgment on the king.76A. and O. Unlike some, Wroth did not boycott the king’s trial completely. On 15 January he attended one of the preliminary private sessions of the high court of justice.77Muddiman, Trial, 202. The main item of business considered by the court that day was the appointment of a committee to prepare the charge against the king. But Wroth had seen enough. He attended no further sessions and certainly did not sign the death warrant. Since his outburst just a year earlier, his determination to put the king on trial had evidently softened. In late December 1648, after he had been readmitted to the Commons, Mercurius Pragmaticus had called him Edmund Prideaux’s* ‘monkey’.78Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 39 (19-26 Dec. 1648), E.477.30. Whatever their exact relationship, Wroth was, like Prideaux, a radical voice who carefully distanced himself from regicide but who nevertheless went on to support the republic.

That Wroth had not changed his mind about the need for a republic was soon made clear. By 7 March 1649 he was back at Westminster, for on that day he was named to the committee on the bill to abolish the monarchy.79CJ vi. 158a. Over the next four years he also gave his backing to the sale of Charles I’s possessions and to the conversion of Whitehall Palace to non-royal uses.80CJ vi. 382a, 534b; vii. 250b. More immediately, Wroth had to take up arms again to defend the new republic. The small-scale uprising in Somerset in the spring of 1649 may have been prompted by the Leveller mutinies elsewhere. Pyne and Wroth swiftly raised the soldiers required to suppress it.81CJ vi. 221b. Later that summer those forces were placed on a more permanent footing.82CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 256. Two years later, when the commonwealth was more confident of its hold over the south west, Wroth was among those Somerset justices given the task of overseeing the slighting of Taunton Castle.83CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 474, 505.

Wroth’s most significant contribution to the establishment of the republic took place in London, however. He worked hard as a Member of the Rump, clearly keen to ensure that the new form of government was successful. He continued to favour tough action against royalist delinquents and from November 1649 he was a member of the Committee for Compounding at Goldsmiths’ Hall.84CJ vi. 162a, 318a, 369b, 463b; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 373; CCC 161. He also proved to be an enthusiastic supporter of the continued sale of the former lands of the bishops and cathedral chapters.85CJ vii. 115a. Thus, on 9 October 1650 he served as a teller on one of the provisos to the latest bill on the subject, counting those wanted to include the widest possible definition for the lands to be included in that sale.86CJ vi. 481a-b. Those sales worked to his personal advantage, for he took the opportunity to buy lands at North Petherton adjacent to his existing estates which had belonged to the vicars choral of Wells Cathedral.87VCH Som. iv. 287; Som. RO, DD/AH/19/15/3. More generally, he was always willing to support other revenue schemes, while, at the time, seeking an overhaul of the antiquated bureaucratic structures of the exchequer.88CJ vi. 183a, 186a, 369b, 400a, 467a, 487b, 513a. Those reforming instincts were also evident in the fact that he was one of the three MPs asked in June 1650 to take the lead on the committee to consider which offices were burdensome to the people.89CJ vi. 432b-433a. He seems to have followed the Irish campaign with interest and he probably approved of the union with Scotland.90CJ vi. 383b, 512b, 541b, 563a, 573a; vii. 118b.

Some of Wroth’s activity in the Rump had obvious Somerset connections. Alexander Popham* was a friend, so Wroth was understandably keen that he should receive the substantial sums of money owed to him as arrears.91CJ vi. 196a, 199b. In September 1649 Wroth was an obvious choice to include on the committees to ensure that the income from the estates of several prominent Somerset royalists was used for the repair of Taunton.92CJ vi. 291a-b. The following May he was an equally obvious choice to draft the letter from the Rump to the corporation of Bridgwater following a disputed mayoral election.93CJ vi. 407b.

Whether by the spring of 1653 Wroth recognised that the Rump had already outstayed its welcome is unclear. His final known contribution to its proceedings was in one of the divisions on 16 March 1653 on the bill to bring it to an end. The vote was on whether Andover should have one MP in the next Parliament, with Wroth acting as teller for the minority who thought that it should.94CJ vii. 268a. Wroth is perhaps as likely to have wanted to delay the bill’s passage as to have been moved by any deep concern for the Hampshire borough’s rights to representation in Parliament.

Irony and ambiguity, 1653-9

Wroth was willing, at least in practice, to accept the creation of the protectorate. He continued to act as a justice of the peace in Somerset as diligently as before.95QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 223-335. There was just one personal drawback, as the redistribution of parliamentary seats under the Instrument of Government created problems for him in the elections for the 1654 Parliament. Blake, the hero of the recent naval war against the Dutch, easily claimed the single Bridgwater seat. If Sir Thomas did stand for one of the county seats, he was unsuccessful. Later that year this Parliament included Wroth on its commission for scandalous ministers in Somerset.96A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 144.

Wroth’s path back into Parliament in 1656 was less than smooth. The Bridgwater electorate preferred to choose the local major-general, John Disbrowe*, so instead Wroth had to try his luck in the elections for the Somerset MPs. That proved to be an embarrassing mistake. Wroth was one of the candidates who received only ‘a few voices’ in the county poll at Wells on 20 August 1656. There was a silver lining to this result, however, as Disbrowe was a successful candidate there too and then decided to sit as a Somerset MP. But Wroth was elected to fill the vacancy at Bridgwater on 20 October only after the sheriff, Robert Hunt*, had declined to stand.97Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 74, 77, 79.

There is much about Wroth’s conduct in the 1656 Parliament that seems capricious. This may be because the sketchy state of the parliamentary diaries fails to capture the full subtleties of his views. His sarcastic tone is only sometimes apparent. But his opinions may have been rather slippery anyway. One major issue on which he spoke regularly without his actual views being fully clear was that of James Naylor. Wroth opened the debate on that subject on 8 December 1656 by proposing that MPs consider how Naylor should be executed. Later that same day he helped press for a vote on the question of whether Naylor’s offence had amounted to ‘horrid blasphemy’.98Burton’s Diary, i. 53, 66. The following day he argued for the passing of a bill of attainder against him, but leaving blank the section indicating the punishment to be imposed.99Burton’s Diary, i. 91. However, when it became apparent that many of his colleagues were only too willing to specify how they thought Naylor should be punished, Wroth contributed some suggestions of his own. His idea, as outlined in the debate on 16 December, was that they should slit or bore Naylor’s tongue and then have him branded with the letter ‘B’, the mark of a blasphemer.100Burton’s Diary, i. 153. However, he was surely being ironic when, during discussion about possible places of exile for Naylor, he suggested the Isle of Dogs.101Burton’s Diary, i. 155. Yet he was also prepared to maintain that the judges had been wrong not to grant habeas corpus in the case and, when Naylor appeared at the bar on 17 December, Wroth wanted to let him address the House.102Burton’s Diary, i. 162, 165. The next day Wroth joined Sir William Roberts* in seeking clarification as to whether Naylor was to be whipped that day.103Burton’s Diary, i. 168. Did Wroth want a delay or did he want to make sure that the punishment was carried out as planned? The same ambiguity applies to his response to the Londoners’ petition on 23 December. He reacted to their request that the punishments be remitted by suggesting that the petition only be discussed once the House was ‘better refreshed’.104Burton’s Diary, i. 220. Yet, when a week later Samuel Hyland* criticised the decisions in the Naylor case, Wroth warned him that this amounted to criticism of Parliament’s conduct.105Burton’s Diary, i. 269. On the other hand, his comments about the Quakers on 18 December were unambiguous. Wroth called them ‘a very numerous party’ and so backed the moves for action to be taken against them.106Burton’s Diary, i. 169. Whatever his actual concerns about Naylor, he was among those MPs who were asked on 28 February 1657 to receive the report from the governors of Bridewell prison on Naylor’s current condition.107CJ vii. 497b.

Several times during this Parliament Wroth supported the concerns of London and its corporation. In December 1656 he agreed with two of the London MPs, Christopher Packe* and Thomas Foote*, that action should be taken to discourage beggars coming to the capital. Whether he was equally serious that the proposed clause against minstrels in the vagrancy bill should be extended to include harpers is less clear.108Burton’s Diary, i. 21, 23. When, on 19 December, Griffith Bodurda* complained that the elections for the London sheriffs had been rigged, Wroth took the line that Bodurda was objecting only because the candidate he had supported had been defeated.109Burton’s Diary, i. 178; CJ vii. 470b. During the debate on 30 April on the debts owed by a number of peers, Wroth was more sympathetic towards their City creditors, on the grounds that the City deserved to be favoured because it had lent so much money to Parliament.110Burton’s Diary, ii. 83-4. Yet his support for London was never uncritical. The corporation of London would not have been happy with Wroth’s attempt on 23 December to get the inns of court exempted from the London assessment arrears, although, in that case, Wroth was merely revealing other loyalties.111Burton’s Diary, i. 210. As a teller on 20 June 1657, he also helped block an amendment to the bill against the multiplicity of buildings which would have allowed the London corporation to construct new buildings outside Moorgate.112CJ vii. 565b.

Two pieces of legislation considered by this Parliament can be specifically associated with Wroth. When the bill to settle the post office was introduced on 29 May 1657, he called it ‘very good and specious [pleasing]’.113Burton’s Diary, ii. 156. He then headed the list of MPs appointed to consider the bill.114CJ vii. 542a. This was legislation being promoted by the council of state, so is an example of Wroth doing a favour for the government. Two weeks later, on 13 June, he and Sir William Strickland* introduced the bill for the probate of wills. One of them explained their motivation by claiming that they were ‘old men’ and that it was ‘time for them to think of their graves, and settlement of their estates’.115Burton’s Diary, ii. 237.

On the face of it, Wroth was unconvinced by the need for a new constitution and he said so as soon as John Ashe* mentioned the idea on 19 January 1657.

I conceived the government was so well settled before, that it needed not to admit of a debate to alter it. Yet, seeing it is so pressed upon the account of preservation, and safety of the nation, let it have a full and serious debate. I doubt not but weighty arguments may be brought, as well against as for, hereditary government.116Burton’s Diary, i. 365.

In calling for Ashe’s proposal to be discussed in more detail another day, he may have been calculating that Parliament would be more sceptical once the high emotions surrounding the discovery of Sindercombe’s plot had subsided. He seems to have remained just as wary once the draft of what would become the Humble Petition and Advice had been prepared. On 25 February he was a teller for the minority that tried to get this referred to a grand committee.117CJ vii. 495b; Burton’s Diary, i. 379. Once Cromwell had refused the title of king, Wroth was named to the committee to consider how to limit the title of lord protector (19 May).118CJ vii. 535a. Yet he did not subsequently play any obvious role in the passage of the Additional Petition and Advice. His only recorded intervention in those debates was to back the call by Lambarde Godfrey* on 15 June for the Additional Petition to include more detailed provisions for the summoning of future Parliaments.119Burton’s Diary, ii. 252. Perhaps he had no wish to improve a document of which he disapproved in principle.

All this would seem to indicate that Wroth opposed the offer of the kingship to Cromwell. However, at least some of his contemporaries thought otherwise. News of this spread to Somerset almost immediately. On 10 June 1657 the Commons heard information about comments allegedly made by one of the inhabitants of Ilchester, John Browne. Several witnesses had testified that Browne had on 12 May made insulting remarks about Wroth, John Glynne*, William Jephson* and Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*). The gist of Browne’s comments was that those in Parliament who wanted Cromwell to become king were ‘knaves and fools’. Significantly, Browne seems to have assumed that those supporting the kingship included Wroth, observing (in what was presumably a reference to the dissolution of the Rump) that Sir Thomas had ‘been kicked out of the Parliament house once already’.120CJ vii. 553a-554a. Nor was Browne alone in believing that Wroth favoured a new Cromwellian monarchy. Wroth’s name later appeared on the printed list of supposed ‘kinglings’.121A Narrative of the late Parliament (1657), 23 (E.935.5). Yet, that claim is difficult to reconcile with some of Wroth’s subsequent comments. Two years later he told the 1659 Parliament that much of the legislation passed by this Parliament had been ‘very lame and imperfect’.122Burton’s Diary, iii. 414. He surely had the Humble Petition in mind. He also drew a sharp distinction between the titles of king and lord protector – a lord protector was, to him, not just a king by another name.123Burton’s Diary, iii. 534. However, what most concerned him was the concept of hereditary appointments, especially to a second chamber, so it is possible that he was prepared to accept Cromwell as a king for life. He was also perhaps less critical of Cromwell’s rule than some of the more overtly republican critics.

On 20 June 1657 Wroth requested leave of absence from Parliament for ‘urgent occasions’, adding that he had ‘attended constantly, ever since the Parliament sat’. Charles Fleetwood* and Philip Jones* seconded him and he was given permission to leave London in three days’ time.124Burton’s Diary, ii. 260; CJ vii. 566b. He would therefore have missed the presentation of the Additional Petition and Cromwell’s second inauguration as lord protector on 26 June. That may have been deliberate.

When this Parliament was recalled in January 1658, Wroth was among those appointed by the protectoral council to administer the oaths to new MPs.125CJ vii. 578a-b. This was a sensitive task, as most of those who would have needed to take those oaths would have been MPs excluded in 1656. Another oath – that of the new clerk of the Commons – created its own problems. Most of his colleagues were unimpressed when Wroth suggested that the new clerk, John Smythe, should be allowed to take his place while MPs discussed that oath.126Burton’s Diary, ii. 331. This was an issue tangentially related to the status of the Other House, given that the vacancy had occurred only because Henry Elsynge had been promoted to become its clerk. Given his reservations about the Humble Petition, Wroth was reluctant to acknowledge the new second chamber. On 25 January 1658 he therefore told the Commons that their priority should be deciding what to call the Other House. This was a loaded question, for how they referred to that body might come to define its role.

The elections for the 1659 Parliament witnessed a strong reassertion of the Wroth interest at Bridgwater, where Wroth got his nephew, John Wroth*, elected as well as himself. For Sir Thomas, one issue in this Parliament – the future of the 1657 constitutional settlement – overshadowed all others. It is an indication of how this monopolised his attention that he was named to only one committee. Since that was the committee appointed to investigate the assault by his ‘near kinsman’, Sir Henry Wroth, on the former deputy major-general, William Packer*, Sir Thomas asked to be excused from serving on it.127CJ vii. 610a; Burton’s Diary, iv. 2, 6. (Sir Henry of Enfield was actually Sir Thomas’s second cousin twice removed.) Wroth remained convinced that the Humble Petition and Advice had been a mistake and, like many of his fellow MPs, he was still suspicious of the Other House. His views were set out in greatest detail in a long speech during the debates on 22 February. He explained that he was not against a second chamber per se.

I am against hereditary lordship, for the reason why his Highness refused [the title of] king; because he knew not what he that came after him should be, a wise man or a fool. I see plainly here is a great inclination to come round again. It is to bring in old lords by degrees, and then, consequently, one who I hope my eyes shall never live to see here.

He also feared that a second chamber of ‘mean people’ would be easily corrupted.128Burton’s Diary, iii. 414; Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, p. 141. His opposition to an hereditary peerage of any sort would be repeated in a subsequent debate.129Burton’s Diary, iii. 540. Yet he was equally willing to argue that what mattered most was not who sat in the second chamber, but the particular powers that body exercised.130Burton’s Diary, iii. 534. At times he argued that these debates were distracting the Commons from more important business, but he was also often keen to prolong them by supporting adjournments to later dates.131Burton’s Diary, iv. 16-17, 53, 88, 104. On the question of whether MPs representing Scottish constituencies should be allowed to take their seats, Wroth was sympathetic enough towards them that he conceded that the Commons should at least hear from the Scottish MPs before they ruled on the matter.132Burton’s Diary, iv. 116, 216.

The republic revived, 1659-60

Wroth showed little hesitation in re-joining the Rump when it was recalled in the wake of the dissolution of the 1659 Parliament and the fall of Richard Cromwell*. He was presumably present as early as 10 May 1659, when he was named to the committee to review the cases of persons imprisoned for the sake of their consciences.133CJ vii. 648a. Such persons might be thought to have included Naylor. As a candid critic of much that the protectoral Parliaments had done, it is not much of a surprise that Wroth was then named to the committee to consider all legislation which had been passed since the Rump’s sittings had been interrupted six years earlier.134CJ vii. 661b. A flurry of other issues arising from the attempt to reinstate republican rule also had to be dealt with. The committees on the bills to appoint admiralty and navy commissioners, to collect tax arrears, to sell off the remaining royal forests and to define the powers of the treasury commissions were all ones to which Wroth was then named.135CJ vii. 656b, 676b, 726a. In addition, he probably had a say on whether the new government should reimburse the unpaid bills from Cromwell’s funeral.136CJ vii. 704b. He was also, naturally enough, involved in the efforts to revive the probate bill from the previous Parliament.137CJ vii. 717b. Other, more local measures that may have detained his attentions included improvements to the River Thames, permission for a market in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the endowment for the poor knights of Windsor.138CJ vii. 751a, 757a, 782a. There is no indication here that Wroth doubted the viability of the revived republic.

This may have remained so even once the Rump had been dismissed a second time in October 1659 and then brought into being yet again two months later. By-elections to fill vacancies created by the deaths of MPs might just have restored some of the Rump’s much depleted legitimacy. Wroth was sufficiently supportive of this idea that he was named in January 1660 to the committees to decide what qualifications should be imposed on any MPs elected in that way.139CJ vii. 803a, 807a. This has all the appearance of desperation, by Wroth and by his colleagues.

Once George Monck* and his army entered London on 3 February 1660 Wroth disappeared from the parliamentary records. This may have been a recognition of his powerlessness in the face of unfolding events. He nevertheless successfully stood for re-election at Bridgwater and so witnessed the Restoration and the early months of Charles II’s reign from the Commons’ benches in the Convention. The pardon he sought and obtained from the new king was a formality, no different from those obtained by so many of his contemporaries, but he may not have expected that his role in the trial of the king, very minor though that had been, would be forgiven quite so easily.140CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 9. His claim, made to the Commons on 12 May, that he had been unaware of his appointment to the high court of justice was implausible and would have been easily disproved. He nevertheless adopted a suitably modest tone, averring that he had ‘so lived as much to need mercy’, and so escaped punishment.141Lancs. RO, DDBa Uncat. Box 19: diary of William Banks, 1660, unfol. Later, when the House came to debate the bill to reclaim the royal lands, he took care to announce that he would willingly return all the lands he had purchased.142Bodl. Dep. F. 9, f. 69v. Despite these efforts to prove his loyalty, there was no question of him being allowed to retain his local offices, however. He therefore lived quietly on his Somerset estates until his death in 1672.

He had never remarried and so left no children. At the time of his wife’s death four decades earlier, he had promised that, ‘I will lie by thee, who lay by me/For twenty years and one’.143Manchester, Court and Society, i. 348. But the Great Fire had since destroyed the site of her grave, St Stephen Coleman Street, and so Wroth instead left instructions to be buried at North Petherton. His will spoke of ‘my great losses these 30 years last past’, but he was still able to leave the Somerset lands to his great-nephew, Sir John Wroth, 2nd bt., son of the late (Sir) John Wroth*.144PROB11/339/530.