HATCHER, Thomas (1590-1677), of Careby, Lincs.

Hatcher’s great-grandfather had acquired the manor of Careby, which lay about five miles north of Stamford, in 1560, and it became the family’s principal residence.52Cal. Patent Rolls 1558-60, p. 371. His father, Sir John Hatcher, was one of Kesteven’s longest serving magistrates and had been sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1610-11.53Add. 38139, f. 138v; E163/18/12, f. 45; List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 80. Sir John was also one of the county’s foremost patrons of godly ministers.54Holmes, Lincs. 94. It was Thomas, however, who became the first of his line to sit in Parliament. He was returned for Lincoln in 1624, probably on the interest of the godly Lincolnshire knight Sir Thomas Grantham†, father of the future parliamentarian MP Thomas Grantham*. Hatcher was certainly on close terms with Grantham by the end of the 1620s at the very latest, and the two men had a common friend in the equally godly Sir Edward Ayscoghe*, Hatcher’s brother-in-law.55J. Forster, Sir John Eliot (1864), ii. 653, 656. Hatcher was returned for a second Lincolnshire borough, Grantham, in 1628 – probably on the interest of yet another of Lincolnshire’s puritan knights, Sir William Armyne*.56HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Thomas Hatcher’.

Although Hatcher was largely inactive at Westminster, he struck up an intimate friendship with the leading Commons ‘patriot’, Sir John Eliot†, who was imprisoned in the Tower for his part in the tumultuous conclusion to the 1628-9 Parliament.57Forster, Eliot, ii. 654, 655. Eliot included Hatcher among his ‘honest sons of Lincolnshire’, a group that also included Armyne, Ayscoghe and Grantham.58Forster, Eliot, ii. 650. In September 1631, Eliot, who was still a prisoner in the Tower, sent Hatcher the manuscript of his treatise, The Monarchy of Man.59Forster, Eliot, ii. 653 Hatcher was only the second person to be shown the manuscript, the first being John Hampden*, and he showered it and its author with praise.60Forster, Eliot, ii. 654, 658-9. Yet despite his friendship with leading figures in the ‘country’ interest at Westminster, and the fact that his father emerged as one Lincolnshire’s most prominent ship-money defaulters, Hatcher himself appears to have remained generally conformable to the crown during the personal rule of Charles I.61CSP Dom. 1635-6, pp. 289, 361; 1636-7, p. 397.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Hatcher was returned for Stamford.62Supra, ‘Stamford’. He was elected on his own interest, it seems, as one of the area’s principal gentry landowners – his estate at Careby lying about five miles north of the borough. As in previous Parliaments, he was largely inactive in the House, receiving only three committee appointments and making no recorded contribution to debate.63CJ ii. 4a, 12a, 17b. He was returned for Stamford again in the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn, and this time he began to fulfill at least some of the promise that Eliot had seen in him as one of Lincolnshire’s ‘honest sons’.64Supra, ‘Stamford’. Between November 1640 and the outbreak of civil war, for example, he was named to almost 30 committees – although relatively few of these appointments would have placed him in the vanguard of the reformist cause, and he made no recorded speeches on the floor of the House.65CJ ii. 20b, 44a, 45b, 50a, 52a, 64b, 69b, 73b, 84b, 91a, 92b, 94a, 94b, 101a, 119a, 122a, 172b, 190b, 196a, 197a, 427a, 429b, 505b, 533b, 541b, 672a, 689b. Mindful of his own region’s grievances, he secured nomination to several committees for paying the billet money due for Lincolnshire and adjacent counties – where English troops had been quartered since the summer of 1640 – and for disbanding the English and Scottish forces in the north.66CJ ii. 69b, 172b, 196a.

But perhaps Hatcher’s highest priority at Westminster in 1640-1 was addressing the related issues of suppressing popery and purging the church of its Laudian accretions. He was named to committees to receive petitions against the bishop of Bath and Wells (12 Dec. 1640); to put into execution the laws against priests and Jesuits (26 Jan. 1641); on a bill for abolishing superstition and idolatry (13 Feb.); to consider the ministers’ remonstrance for further reformation in religion (27 Feb.); and for the ‘more free passage’ of the Gospel (12 Apr.).67CJ ii. 50a, 73b, 84b, 94a, 119a, 541b. In August 1641, he was named with Thomas Grantham and John Broxolme* as a commissioner for disarming recusants in Lincolnshire.68CJ ii. 267b; LJ iv. 385a. Equally revealing is his appointment as a messenger to the Lords on 1 December to desire a conference concerning proceedings against the thirteen bishops accused of promoting the Laudian new Canons.69CJ ii. 329a; LJ iv. 458a.

Late in April 1642, the Houses commissioned Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham – Parliament’s lord lieutenant of Lincolnshire under the Militia Ordinance – Hatcher, Sir Edward Ayscoghe and Sir Christopher Wray* to secure the county for Parliament and to assist Sir John Hotham* at Hull.70CJ ii. 544b, 545b, 547b-548a; LJ v. 27b; PJ ii. 281, 293, 336; HMC Portland, i. 38-9. Hatcher reported to the House on 24 May concerning the shipment of Hull’s magazine to London, and that same day the Commons sent him, Ayscoghe, Wray, Sir Anthony Irby and several other Lincolnshire MPs into the county to execute the Militia Ordinance and frustrate any attempt to raise the county for the king.71CJ ii. 585b; LJ v. 87a-88b. It was with these appointments that the Lincolnshire county committee was established. Commissioned by Willoughby as a deputy lieutenant and captain of militia foot, Hatcher spent most of the summer supporting the lord lieutenant’s efforts to wrest control of the Lincolnshire trained bands from the king’s party.72LJ v. 104, 131b-132a; Lincs. RO, HOLYWELL/93/14, 18. He had returned to Westminster by 25 July, when he was named to a committee for monitoring the activities of the commissioners of array.73CJ ii. 689b.

Hatcher seems to have favoured the belligerent stance of John Pym and his allies at the outbreak of civil war, joining this group on 1 September 1642 in a high-powered committee for drafting a declaration to the General Assembly of the Kirk, relating the ‘mischiefs that have come to this church and state by episcopacy’.74CJ ii. 748a. This attempt to depict Parliament’s struggle against the king as a war in defence of the Protestant religion was part of a broader campaign by Pym and his confederates to forge a military alliance with the Covenanters. That same day (1 Sept.), Hatcher received a commission from Parliament’s lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, as a captain of horse in the parliamentarian army – although the Committee of Safety* had been issuing warrants for equipping Hatcher’s militia troop since early August.75SP28/261, ff. 18, 67, 70, 129, 416; Lincs. RO, HOLYWELL/93/10. Granted leave on 15 September to attend his new command, Hatcher was among six Lincolnshire MPs who were subsequently reported to have brought in money and horses upon the propositions for the maintenance of Essex’s army.76CJ ii. 768a, 772b. His decision to side with Parliament was almost certainly linked to his godly religious convictions. In October, Hatcher and Wray led their troops to the assistance of Wray’s kinsman Captain John Hotham* in Yorkshire, where they formed part of the force with which Hotham and Ferdinando 2nd Baron Fairfax* attempted to impede the southward march of the earl of Newcastle’s royalist army.77Supra, ‘John Hotham’; infra, ‘‘Sir Christopher Wray’; Add. 18777, f. 45; England’s Memorable Accidents (17-24 Oct. 1642), 51-2 (E.240.45); Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 416, 417, 420; HMC Portland, i. 68-9. In mid-December, Fairfax sent Hatcher back to Westminster ‘purposely to give a true relation to the Houses of these affairs’.78Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 29-30.

Hatcher’s parliamentary appointment during the early months of 1643 place him with his friend Sir William Armyne among those MPs who were committed to the vigorous prosecution of the war yet not implacably hostile to the idea of a negotiated settlement.79Supra, ‘Sir William Armyne’. Alongside his nomination to committees for supplying and encouraging Lord Fairfax’s army came a series of appointments as a committeemen, messenger to the Lords and a conference-reporter on matters relating to the Oxford peace treaty.80CJ ii. 981a, 991b; iii. 9a, 11a, 14b, 15a, 18a, 24a; LJ v. 654b, 661a. His majority tellership on 17 March with the ‘fiery spirit’ Sir Peter Wentworth in favour of receiving a report in the Speaker’s hands concerning instructions for the parliamentary delegation at Oxford was apparently part of the wider factional struggle to shape the negotiations’ outcome, for the opposing tellers were the pro-peace MPs Sir Thomas Hutchinson and Sir Alexander Denton.81CJ iii. 7a. On 30 March, however, Hatcher was teamed with the prominent peace-party MPs Denzil Holles and Harbottle Grimston as reporters of a conference concerning a letter sent from Parliament’s chief negotiator at Oxford, Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland.82CJ iii. 24a.

It is not known whether Hatcher welcomed the Oxford treaty’s collapse in mid-April 1643. But by mid-May, he seems to have swung behind Pym’s preferred policy of bringing the Scots into the war. It was probably with one eye on soliciting Scottish support that Hatcher, Pym and other godly Members backed an initiative on 18 May for a parliamentary declaration that the Irish rebellion and the English civil war sprang from ‘one head and are managed with the one end of overthrowing and extirpating the Protestant religion’.83CJ iii. 91a. And early in June, the Lincolnshire trio of Hatcher, Armyne and Irby assisted Pym and his allies in using the discovery of the plot of Edmund Waller* to coerce their peace-party rivals and to introduce a Scottish-style ‘oath and covenant’.84CJ iii. 20b, 67b, 116b, 118a, 120a. On 17 June, the Commons resolved that Hatcher and Sir Henry Vane II* be added to Armyne and the other commissioners that the House had appointed to negotiate a military alliance with the Scots.85CJ iii. 132b, 145a. Hatcher seems to have been chosen in place of the recently deceased John Hampden*.86CJ iii. 169a. In the weeks before his departure for Scotland, Hatcher was involved in the House’s efforts to consolidate the parliamentarian cause in Nottinghamshire and Hull in the wake of the Hothams’ attempted defection, and to rebut a royal proclamation offering a pardon to all Parliament-men who would repair to Oxford.87CJ iii. 138b, 140a, 145b, 146a, 152a; LJ vi. 103b, 111a.

Hatcher and his fellow parliamentary commissioners arrived at Edinburgh early in August 1643, charged with the task of negotiating a military alliance with the Scots and promoting ‘a nearer conjunction betwixt both churches’.88Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 466; LJ vi. 139a, 140a-142a. The negotiations proceeded relatively swiftly, and early in September, Hatcher was sent back to Westminster to ‘communicate the particulars of the treaty to the House’, which he did on 12 September.89Harl. 165, ff. 176v, 177v-178v, 194v, 196v; CJ iii. 234b, 237b. Two days later (14 Sept.) he advanced £200 for enabling Sir William Waller’s* army to take the field.90CJ iii. 241a. For the next six weeks, Hatcher played a leading role in the Commons’ efforts to meet its military, political and logistical commitments under the new treaty. He was named to several teams for managing conferences on military affairs across the three kingdoms and was also included on a series of committees for raising money for the Scottish forces and to liaise with the Scots commissioners concerning the relief of the Protestant armies in Ireland and on other issues arising from the treaty.91CJ iii. 244a, 253a, 254a, 258a, 259a, 276b, 281b, 285b, 286a, 287a, 296b; LJ vi. 285b. His most important such appointment was to a high-powered committee set up on 28 September for liaising with the City authorities about raising money for the Scottish forces in Ulster and those soon to enter England.92CJ iii. 258a; SP23/1A, pp. 1-4; SP23/2, pp. 4, 8, 10, 12, 13, 16. The Members named on this occasion formed the nucleus of the Committee at Goldsmiths’ Hall for Scottish Affairs, which would evolve into the Committee for Compounding*.93Supra, ‘Committee for Compounding’; CCC 1.

Early in November 1643, Hatcher returned to Edinburgh and was a signatory to an additional treaty with the Scots on 29 November allowing them overall command of the Protestant forces in Ulster.94LJ vi. 275b, 288a-289a; LJ vi. 365b, 366b; Harl. 165, ff. 242, 257. Hatcher, Armyne and several of their fellow commissioners entered England with the Scottish troops of Alexander Leslie, 1st earl of Leven, in January 1644, assuring Parliament that it could ‘confidently expect all possible endeavours from this army’.95LJ vi. 400. He continued to attend the needs of the Scottish army in the north of England until early July, when he carried a letter to Westminster from the three parliamentarian generals at York, informing the Houses of their victory at Marston Moor.96Bodl. Nalson III, ff. 95, 221, 179; HMC Portland, i. 169; LJ vi. 626b.

After returning to Westminster in the summer of 1644, Hatcher worked closely with the Committee of Both Kingdoms (CBK) and the treasurer of the Scottish forces Sir Adam Hepburn of Humbie in an effort to improve the supply of General Leven’s army.97CJ iii. 572b, 601a; HMC Portland, i. 181; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 360, 376, 458. On 22 August, he was named to a committee for imposing an assessment of £10,000 a month upon the northern counties for maintenance of Leven’s troops.98CJ iii. 602b. A month later (18 Sept.), however, he was given leave to suspend his employment as a commissioner to the Scots and to attend his charge as commander-in-chief, under the earl of Manchester, of the Eastern Association forces in Lincolnshire.99CJ iii. 630b; Luke Letter Bks. 350. With the Lincolnshire county committee and Colonel Edward King, the governor of Lincoln, at loggerheads by the summer of 1644, Manchester had dismissed King and replaced him on 22 August with Hatcher.100Lincs. RO, HOLYWELL/93/11; C. Holmes, ‘Col. King and Lincs. politics, 1642-6’, HJ xvi. 467. Hatcher’s time in charge of Lincolnshire’s forces (which was terminated by the Self-Denying Ordinance) was marked by ‘sweet harmony’ between the county committee and local commanders, although in January 1645 the CBK had to order Manchester not to thwart Hatcher’s actions (unspecified) in Lincolnshire, ‘it being approved by the Commons’.101CSP Dom. 1644-6, pp. 250, 473. Hatcher was still in Lincolnshire on 9 April 1645, when he, Sir Henry Vane I* and Henry Darley* were appointed commissioners to the Scottish army – their principal task being to persuade Leven to bring his forces south in defence of Yorkshire and the Eastern Association.102CJ iv. 105b; Add. 31116, p. 407.

From the summer of 1645, Hatcher emerged as a prominent figure in the anti-Scottish, Independent faction at Westminster. His shift from friend to opponent of Scottish intervention mirrored that of almost every other figure closely involved in negotiating the Covenant – a transformation prompted in most cases by dislike of the Scots’ demands for a clericalist Presbyterian church settlement and their alliance with the earl of Essex’s faction in pursuit of a soft peace with the king. In the wake of the Scots’ garrisoning of Carlisle late in June 1645, which was highly resented in the Commons, Hatcher was named to a committee set up on 5 July, and dominated by the Independents, to report on the state of the northern garrisons still in Scottish hands.103CJ iv. 194b. Two days later (7 July), the Commons appointed Hatcher, Armyne, Vane I and Zouche Tate (subsequently replaced by Robert Goodwin) as commissioners of both Houses to negotiate with the Scottish Parliament for the surrender of these garrisons.104CJ iv. 198a, 206a. After being kept waiting by the Scots for almost two months, the English commissioners met with their opposite numbers from Scotland at St Andrews, only to be told that the safety of the northern realm required the Scots to retain their garrisons in northern England.105LJ vii. 566b, 569, 573, 592, 605, 657, 690, 691a-695a; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 92; HMC Portland, i. 280. The English commissioners replied that this was ‘in no way answerable to the treaties, nor will be satisfactory to the Parliament of England’ – a response that the Commons endorsed, but to no avail.106LJ vii. 694a; CJ iv. 339b. Hatcher was returned the thanks of the House on 12 November for his services in the north and was named that same day to a committee for preparing a letter to the Scots, demanding the return of the disputed garrisons.107CJ iv. 339b, 340a. On 18 November, he was named to an Independent-dominated committee for inserting into a reply to the Scots’ complaints about their army’s lack of pay, an enumeration of all the money that the Scottish forces had received from Parliament. The result was a very acerbic document that the Lords refused to join the Commons in publishing.108CJ iv. 347b; D. Scott, ‘The ‘northern gentlemen’, the parliamentary Independents, and Anglo-Scottish relations in the Long Parliament’, HJ xlii. 364.

With Newark, on the Nottinghamshire-Lincolnshire border, the focus of military operations in the north by late 1645, Hatcher was named with Ayscoghe, Irby, Sir Christopher Wray and other Members from the two counties as a commissioner from both Houses to reside with the English and Scottish forces besieging the town.109CJ iv. 366b. The commissioners’ principal role was to supply and police the pay-starved and ill-disciplined Scottish army in order to prevent any ‘plundering, robbing or spoiling’ of the Newark area.110CJ iv. 374b-375a; LJ viii. 43b-44a. Leven’s army, however, as the commissioners informed Parliament, contained too many horse for the region to sustain, with the result that the Scottish soldiery resorted to extorting money from local communities.111LJ viii. 136. One incident early in 1646, in which the Scots terrorised the Yorkshire village of Tickhill, was particularly resented by the commissioners, who complained bitterly about it to Lieutenant General David Leslie, the commander of the Scottish horse.112HMC Portland, i. 340-1. They were even more angered by what they perceived as Leslie’s failure to punish the offending soldiers.113LJ viii. 348. At the conclusion of the siege of Newark early in May, the commissioners praised the English forces for their ‘fidelity, courage and good discipline’, but were pointedly silent about the conduct of the Scottish army.114LJ viii. 310a. On 30 May, the commissioners were thanked by the Commons for their ‘great industry, faithfulness and judgement’.115CJ iv. 559a. Once back at Westminster, Hatcher was named to a committee on 9 June 1646 to prepare a declaration relating the House’s ‘complaints and jealousies’ against the Scottish army.116CJ iv. 570b.

Hatcher received only a handful of committee nominations between June 1646 and the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster in July 1647.117CJ iv. 714a, 719b, 722a; v. 134a, 167a. His most important and revealing contribution to the House’s proceedings during this period was his minority tellership with the leading Independent MP Harbert Morley, on 29 March 1647, against retaining the regiments of three Presbyterian officers – Sednham Poynts, Hugh Bethell* and Christopher Copley – as part of a token field army after the New Model’s projected disbandment or despatch to Ireland.118CJ v. 128b. Hatcher was apparently in Lincolnshire during the Presbyterian counter-revolution at Westminster late in July, and on 9 October he was declared absent and excused at the call of the House.119CJ v. 268a, 329b.

Hatcher received only eight committee appointments during 1648, the most significant being his addition, with a group of mostly Independent Members, to the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports* on 2 March 1648.120CJ v. 417a, 447b, 476b, 505b, 593a, 602a; vi. 47a, 87a. On 17 April, he was granted leave of absence and was declared absent at the call of the House a week later (24 April).121CJ v. 533a, 543b. He may have been restored as governor of Lincoln during the second civil war, with Thomas Lister* serving as his deputy.122The Second Centurie (1648, 669 f.13.22). Hatcher’s last appointment in the Long Parliament was on 25 November.123CJ vi. 87a. Although he retained his seat at Pride’s Purge, he evidently found it impossible, like a number of other moderate Independents, to condone the army’s actions, and he withdrew from the House completely. On 9 June 1649, the Rump granted him leave to go abroad ‘for recovery of his health’, and on 14 June he was issued with a pass allowing him and his son John to take ship for France.124CJ vi. 228a; Lincs. RO, HOLYWELL/93/7. He appointed the Lincolnshire parliamentarians Thomas Skipwith* and John Archer to receive his rents and act as his attorneys in his absence.125Lincs. RO, HOLYWELL/2/27. How long he remained on the continent is not clear, but he was removed from the Kesteven bench in July 1650.126C231/6, p. 190. He had returned to England by July 1653, when he was appointed a sub-commissioner for resolving drainage disputes in the East Anglian fenlands.127CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 447.

In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, Hatcher was returned – apparently in sixth place – for one of Lincolnshire’s ten county seats. He probably owed his election to his standing as one of Lincolnshire’s most prominent parliamentarians. The fact that he was untainted by the regicide or involvement with the Rump may also have worked in his favour. He received just one appointment in this Parliament – to the committee of privileges on 5 September.128CJ vii. 366b. Although he was not restored to the Kesteven bench until July 1657, the protectoral council entrusted him and Skipwith with the resolution of a domestic dispute in Lincolnshire in January 1656.129CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 375, 376; C231/6, p. 370. He was returned for Lincolnshire again in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, coming second, after Thomas Hall, on a poll for the ten successful candidates. Deemed conformable to ‘this present government’ by Major-general Edward Whalley*, he was among four of the ten MPs who were allowed to take their seats – the other six were excluded as opponents of the government.130Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’; TSP v. 299. Once again, he received just one appointment – to a minor committee set up on 3 October 1656.131CJ vii. 433a. He was returned for Lincolnshire a third time in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659 and on 2 March presented a petition to the House from the inhabitants of Spalding and other townships in Lincolnshire that were in danger of being flooded by drainage works in the area.132Burton’s Diary, iii. 578-9. The House referred this petition to a committee to which Hatcher was named in first place.133CJ vii. 609a. He received just one other appointment in this Parliament – to a committee to consider how the Commons should transact business with the Cromwellian Other House.134CJ vii. 627a.

Hatcher evidently did not take his seat in the restored Rump and was not included on the July 1659 militia commission. His son John was one of the Lincolnshire gentlemen who presented the county’s petition for a ‘free, full Parliament’ to General George Monck* in February 1660, and he was returned for Stamford to the 1660 Convention on his father’s interest.135A Letter from Divers of the Gentry of the County of Lincolne…to General Monck (1660, 669 f.23.51); HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘John Hatcher’. Hatcher himself stood with Colonel Edward Rosseter* for the two county seats against an unnamed ‘third party’ who had opposed the county’s declaration for a free Parliament. This suggests that the two men were opposed by a leading republican, although in the event the successful candidates were Rosseter and the Lincolnshire peer Viscount Castleton [I].136J.W.F. Hill, Tudor and Stuart Lincoln (New York, 1956), 168; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Lincolnshire’; ‘Hatcher corresp. rel. to parliamentary elections’ ed. A. Trollope, Associated Architectural Societies Reports and Papers, xxiii. 135. Defeated in the county elections, Hatcher secured a seat at Boston, almost certainly on the interest of his long-time colleague Sir Anthony Irby, and was listed by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton as a manager of several Lincolnshire MPs who were thought likely to support a Presbyterian church settlement.137‘Hatcher corresp.’ ed. Trollope, 135; G.F.T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 338.

Hatcher and his son evidently welcomed the Restoration, signing the loyal address of the Lincolnshire gentry in June 1660.138The Humble Congratulation of the Nobility and Gentry of the County of Lincolne (1660). Having retained his place on the Kesteven bench, Hatcher was added to the Lindsey bench that autumn and commissioned as a Lincolnshire deputy lieutenant (although he lost this place in 1662).139SP29/11, ff. 208, 209; SP29/42, f. 119; Lincs. RO, HOLYWELL/93/1. He died in the summer of 1677 and was buried at Careby on 11 July.140Blore, Rutland, 134; Lincs. Peds. 470. No will is recorded. Besides the election of his son for Stamford in 1660, none of his immediate family sat in Parliament.