WIDDRINGTON, Sir Thomas (1600-64), of Cheeseburn Grange, Stamfordham, Northumb. and St Martin, Coney Street, York, Yorks.

Background and early career

Widdrington belonged to a cadet branch of the venerable Northumberland family, the Widdringtons of Widdrington. His father, the ‘base-begotten son’ of a minor Northumbrian gentleman, acquired Cheeseburn Grange by marriage in the 1590s.109Hist. Northumb. xii. 323, 325; Hedly, Northumb. Fams. ii. 128-9; Watts, Northumb. 92. According to the antiquary, Anthony Wood, Widdrington ‘spent some time in one of our northern colleges in Oxon [Oxford]’ – before matriculating at Christ’s College, Cambridge – ‘and afterwards, retiring to Gray’s Inn ... to obtain knowledge in the municipal law, became a barrister noted for his profession’.110Ath. Ox. iii. 662. In 1632, he was appointed recorder of Berwick on the recommendation of Sir John Fenwick* and other ‘good friends’ of the town.111Berwick RO, B1/9, f. 99v

It was possibly Fenwick who introduced Widdrington to the circle of Thomas Viscount Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†), lord president of the council of the north. Fenwick was on close terms with another of Widdrington’s future patrons, Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, who was to become one of Wentworth’s main allies at court.112Supra, ‘Sir John Fenwick’. As recorder of Berwick, Widdrington delivered an obsequiously loyal speech to the king, who had stopped at the town en route to his coronation in Scotland in 1633.113Rushworth, Hist. Collns. ii. 179-80. The following year, he married a daughter of one of Wentworth’s kinsmen and friends, the Yorkshire knight – and future parliamentarian general – Sir Ferdinando Fairfax* (father of Sir Thomas Fairfax*).114Supra, ‘Sir Ferdinando Fairfax’. Many members of the Percy-Wentworth-Fairfax network in the north harboured a deep distrust of the Scots and feared their supposed designs upon English lands and wealth – and there are signs that Widdrington shared these sentiments.115D. Scott, ‘‘Hannibal at our gates’: loyalists and fifth-columnists during the bishops’ wars – the case of Yorkshire’, HR lxx. 289-91; J. Adamson, ‘Strafford’s ghost: the British context of Viscount Lisle’s lieutenancy of Ireland’, in Ireland from Independence to Occupation 1641-60 ed. J.H. Ohlmeyer (Cambridge, 1995), 137-8.

Widdrington was residing in York by April 1637, when the city corporation elected him recorder on the recommendation of Wentworth’s neighbour and kinsman, the Gray’s Inn lawyer and judge Sir Richard Hutton, who lauded Widdrington as a ‘very honest, faithful and sufficient man, exceedingly well-learned and well-esteemed by the judges and generally beloved by all that know him’.116York City Archives, York House Bk. 35, f. 326; Oxford DNB, ‘Sir Richard Hutton’. Widdrington delivered another fulsome address to the king during a royal visit to the city in March 1639, in which he referred to the Scottish Covenanters as ‘rebels’.117Leeds Univ. Lib. YAS/DD53/III/545, unfol.; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 626; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 887. Before leaving York, Charles knighted Widdrington and the city’s mayor, Roger Jacques*.118CSP Dom. 1639, p. 48; HMC Rutland, i. 504. Widdrington’s house at York served as a temporary prison for the puritan peer Lord Brooke in April, following his refusal to assist the king in fighting the Scots.119CSP Dom. 1639, p. 98. By that autumn, Widdrington had joined the Yorkshire barrister Francis Thorpe* as one of the earl of Northumberland’s retained counsellors-at-law.120Alnwick, U.I.5 (Hugh Potter* acct. 1640). He was also a legal advisor and parliamentary man-of-business for the northern peers Francis 4th earl of Cumberland and his son – the future royalist commander – Henry Lord Clifford during the early 1640s.121Chatsworth, Bolton Abbey ms 179 (household accts. of Francis earl of Cumberland and Henry Lord Clifford, 25 Mar. 1640-Mar. 1642), ff. 54, 98, 101v.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Widdrington and the earl of Northumberland’s secretary Hugh Potter were returned for Berwick.122Supra, ‘Berwick-upon-Tweed’. Added to the committee of privileges on 17 April, Widdrington participated in several of the debates arising from its reports to the House, usually in clarification of legal points.123CJ ii. 4b; Aston’s Diary, 48, 151, 154, 155, 156. On 20 April, he was made a committeeman for drawing up a representation to the king concerning the crown’s perceived violation of parliamentary privileges in dissolving the 1628-9 Parliament. This committee was also charged with digesting the ‘material points’ of several county petitions to Parliament for redressing the grievances of the personal rule of Charles I.124CJ ii. 7b. On 1 May, he was named to a committee on a bill for the reform of abuses in ecclesiastical courts.125CJ ii. 17b.

In the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, Widdrington and Sir Edward Osborne*, the vice-president of the council of the north, stood for York as nominees of Wentworth (created the earl of Strafford early that year). But although the corporation had obliged Strafford in the spring elections, it now rejected Widdrington and Osborne – reportedly because Strafford had recommended them, and ‘by very undue means’ according to Widdrington – in favour of the prominent civic puritans Sir William Allanson and Thomas Hoyle.126Supra, ‘York’; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 158; HMC Rutland, i. 523. The day after his electoral defeat at York (29 Sept.), Widdrington wrote to the private guild (corporation) at Berwick, professing a ‘great desire to be a Parliament-man [for the town], in these times which so much concern us’. He also put in a brief word for Osborne as Strafford’s nominee for the other place.127Alnwick, Y.V.1d, bdle. 1: Widdrington to Berwick private guild, 29 Sept. 1640. On election day, 3 October, the town’s voters returned Widdrington and Osborne in that order and rejected the earl of Northumberland’s nominee Hugh Potter. The earl blamed the town’s governor for this snub, but it seems that Widdrington was anxious to excuse his own part in the election. In a letter to the private guild, he insisted that it had misconstrued his letter of 29 September and that had he been present he would have endorsed Potter rather than Osborne, even though he acknowledged that the vice-president was ‘a very honest and worthy gentleman’.128Supra, ‘Berwick-upon-Tweed’; Alnwick, Y.V.1d, bdle. 1: Widdrington to Berwick private guild, 12 Oct. 1640; Berwick private guild to earl of Northumberland, 17 Oct. 1640; same to John Rushworth*, 18 Oct. 1640; CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 258-9, 404.

Career in the Long Parliament, 1640-2

Having quickly established himself as a willing and capable draftsman and reporter, Widdrington emerged as one of the most trusted common lawyers in the House during the early years of the Long Parliament. Between November 1640 and July 1642 – when he took what would prove to be an extended period of absence – he was named to approximately 125 committees (not including those to which all lawyers in the Commons were added) and 16 conference managing or reporting teams and served twice as a messenger to the Lords.129CJ ii. 123b, 125b, 126a, 141a, 153a, 175b, 189b, 211b, 216b, 217a, 218a, 250b, 252b, 254a, 302b, 591a, 594a, 645a; PJ iii. 8. He may have chaired (and certainly reported from) as many as 12 committees during this period, including that established in January 1641 on a bill for enfranchising County Durham – legislation that passed the Commons in March 1642, but then disappeared in the Lords.130CJ ii. 50b, 56a, 61b, 128b, 164a, 167a, 199b, 215b, 217a, 219a, 257a, 302a, 305a, 469a, 482b, 491b, 601a, 603a, 672a, 672b; Procs. LP i. 570; v. 687; vi. 40; D’Ewes (C), 79, 116; PJ ii. 8; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 226. He also chaired at least one session of, and reported on two occasions from, the committee of privileges.131Procs LP i. 472; ii. 183; iv. 62, 66.

Many of Widdrington’s appointments during the opening session of the Long Parliament were to committees for reforming the perceived abuses of the personal rule and punishing their authors. Thus he was named on 10 November 1640 to a standing committee for drawing together and presenting all evidence of the ‘deplored state of the kingdom’ (this was also known as the ‘committee of twenty-four’), as well as to ad hoc committees for investigating the courts of high commission and star chamber (3 Dec.), to receive all petitions concerning Ship Money (5 Dec.) and on a bill for reforming the lord lieutenancy (14 Dec.).132CJ ii. 25a, 36a, 41a, 43a, 44b, 45b, 50b, 51b, 52b, 53a, 75a, 128b, 129a, 181b, 189b, 191a, 253b; Procs. LP i. 80, 83, 85, 86. His report from the committee on the lord lieutenancy in June 1641, relating the case of Sir John Corbet*, would form an important component in the subsequent impeachment proceedings against John Egerton, 1st earl of Bridgewater, lord lieutenant of Shropshire.133Supra, ‘Sir John Corbet’; CJ ii. 167a, 257a; Procs. LP iv. 714-15, 724-5. In a debate on 13 November 1640 concerning supply, Widdrington was confident that ‘hereafter we [Parliament] shall be able to raise a great sum of money of [sic] monopolists and the matters of the late Canons [i.e. the new Canons of 1640]...and other persons whose estates will be found liable to the censure of that [sic] House’.134Procs. LP i. 135-6. An eminent candidate for such censure – or so Widdrington seems to have believed – was his former patron the earl of Strafford. On 19 November, Widdrington was named with nine other leading lawyers in the Commons to search the records of attainder in the king’s bench for material in support of the charges against the earl.135CJ ii. 31b. And he would receive several further appointments relating to Strafford’s prosecution in the months that followed.136CJ ii. 39b, 64a.

Widdrington’s nomination on 22 April 1641 with four other Members, including John Pym and Denzil Holles, to prepare heads for and to manage a conference with the Lords to justify the bill of attainder, has been interpreted as part of an attempt by some members of the parliamentary leadership – the so-called ‘junto’ – to save Strafford from the scaffold.137CJ ii. 126a; Adamson, Noble Revolt, 257, 263. Like the earl of Northumberland, Widdrington may well have feared the political consequences of killing Strafford. But his apparent involvement in preparing the earl’s prosecution, and the fact that he seems to have voted in favour of his attainder, suggests that he had been at pains to distance himself from Strafford after entering the House. Widdrington certainly gave the junto little reason to doubt his reformist credentials, although there is no evidence that he was privy to its counsels or a knowing accomplice in its designs. Indeed, he clashed with Pym himself on 27 November 1640, after questioning whether an act of Parliament would suffice to abolish Ship Money, it being (in Widdrington’s opinion) ‘an inherent right of the crown’.138Procs. LP i. 336, 347; Northcote Note Bk. 11.

Widdrington was at the forefront of the Long Parliament’s attack on the Laudian ‘new Canons’. With his close friend John Whistler and another common lawyer, John Selden, he was twice ordered by the Commons in mid-November 1640 to search for documents and prepare material for debates on the Canons.139CJ ii. 30b, 33a; Leeds Univ. Lib. YAS/DD5, Box 38, no. 2: John Burniston to Sir Edward Osborne, 17 July 1641. On 9 December, he was named second to another committee of lawyers for assembling evidence on the new Canons; and on 14 December, he and Whistler made lengthy reports to the House on their evidential findings and legal opinions concerning the previous Convocation and its proceedings.140CJ ii. 48a; Procs. LP i. 590-1. Widdrington argued forcefully that Convocation’s authority was derived from Parliament and that with the dissolution of the Short Parliament ‘they [the members of Convocation] were mere commissioners and private men ... and so cannot make canons to bind either clergy or laity’. In any case, he maintained, the canons were ‘most unlawful ... they have meddled with all our liberties, courts and laws and taught new doctrine concerning the [royal] prerogative ... and in many parts of them directly to cross Magna Carta’. He concluded with the hope that ‘their burial would be more honourable than their birth’.141Procs. LP i. 590-1, 595, 596, 597-8; Northcote Note Bk. 61-2. Two days later (16 Dec.), Widdrington and Whistler were named to a committee for investigating Laud’s complicity in the Canons’ introduction and in ‘the great design of the subversion of the laws of the realm and of religion’.142CJ ii. 52a.

Widdrington showed particular hostility to two prominent clerics whose commitment to the ‘new divinity’ of the 1620s and 1630s exceeded even that of Laud himself – namely, John Cosin and the man he had succeeded as master of Peterhouse, Matthew Wren, bishop of Ely. Widdrington averred that Cosin was ‘convicted in his conscience’ for having denied (or so it was alleged) the royal supremacy, and urged that he be brought before the House.143Procs. LP i. 232, 236. And he would assume a leading role in a committee set up on 22 December for preparing a charge against Wren (that same day he was added to a similar committee on William Piers, the Laudian bishop of Bath and Wells).144CJ ii. 56a, 56b, 166b.

A number of Widdrington’s appointments between early December 1640 and August 1641 placed him close to the centre of various Commons’ initiatives for investigating clerical abuses of power in civil government and in the universities, removing clergymen from temporal office, reforming the church courts and abolishing high commission and for punishing members of Convocation.145CJ ii. 44b, 55b, 95a, 128a, 129a, 169a, 175a, 189b, 230b. On 5 June, he and nine other House lawyers were ordered to set all other business aside and expedite the Commons’ charge against Laud.146CJ ii. 168b. His support for convicting, disarming and otherwise suppressing Catholic recusants – evidenced in a number of his parliamentary appointments – probably sprang from this same concern: to preserve English liberties against clericalism and the perceived agents of arbitrary government.147CJ ii. 42b, 216b, 302a, 305a, 331a; LJ iv. 385a; D’Ewes (C), 79, 116.

Widdrington’s most notable contribution to the cause of extirpating Laudian prelacy was to take charge of the Commons’ case against Bishop Matthew Wren, which he conceived was a ‘business of great moment, for an arbitrary government in the church was worse than an arbitrary government in the commonwealth’.148Procs. LP iv. 250. On 5 July 1641, he reported 25 impeachment articles against Wren, in which the bishop stood accused of some of the most heinous Laudian crimes – persecuting ‘sundry godly and painful [i.e. conscientious] preaching ministers’; enforcing ‘the continual superstitious bowing to and before the [communion] table set altarwise ... suppressing and forbidding of sermons and prayers ... the suppressing [of the] means of knowledge and salvations [sic] and introducing ignorance, superstitions and profaneness... . Wren’s personal devotions were denounced as ‘superstititious and idolatrous’.149Procs. LP v. 499, 504-5, 506-510. After he had made his report, the Commons resolved that Wren was ‘unfit and unworthy’ to hold office in church or state and that the king be requested to remove him from royal service.150CJ ii. 199b. When he delivered the articles of impeachment to the Lords at a conference on 20 July, Widdrington made a ‘smart, aggravating speech’ against Wren, referring to him as ‘the complete mirror of innovation, superstition and oppression’. Widdrington also repeated his assertion that ‘an arbitrary government in the church is more dangerous, more grievous, than that in the state. This is exercised upon men’s consciences, the most tender parts, and is the very pinnacle of tyranny...’.151CJ ii. 217a, 218a; LJ iv. 320b-321a; Procs LP vi. 22, 25, 27-9; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 350. At the same conference, Widdrington delivered articles of impeachment against the royal architect Inigo Jones† for pulling down St Gregory’s church as part of his re-development of the west end of St Paul’s Cathedral and desired the Lords to hasten his trial.152Procs LP vi. 20, 22, 25; LJ iv. 321a.

Clearly, Widdrington shared the Erastianism of the majority of common lawyers in the House. But his hostility towards prelacy also seems to have been driven by sympathy for the cause of ‘further reformation’ more broadly. In his denunciations of the new Canons and of Wren, he made clear his support for godly ministers and his belief in the efficacy of the ‘painful’ preaching of the Word in the process of salvation.153Northcote Note Bk. 62; Procs LP v. 506-8. The sub-committee of the ‘grand committee for religion’ to which he was added on 22 December 1640 was charged with promoting initiatives for increasing the number of preaching ministers and for removing their ‘scandalous’ colleagues; and it was this sub-committee and the committee on Wren that tasked Widdrington with preparing for the Houses’s consideration the cases of two godly ministers who had been deprived of their livings by Wren and the court of high commission.154CJ ii. 54b, 221a, 257a; Procs. LP ii. 301; vi. 413, 418. During the first half of 1641, he was a committeeman on bills for abolishing idolatry and superstition, ‘for the more free passage of the gospel’ and for preventing bargemen working on the sabbath.155CJ ii. 84b, 119a, 165b. In a debate on 26 March on the ministers’ ‘remonstrance’ for wholesale church reform, he contributed to a vociferous attack by Sir Robert Harley, William Strode I and several other godly Members on the institution of deans and chapters by arguing that the leasing system used by capitular authorities was antiquated and should be scrapped.156Procs. LP iii. 156. When this issue was debated again, on 15 June, he supported Nathaniel Fiennes I and George Peard in calling for the abolition of deans and chapters in toto and opposed the contention of his fellow lawyer John Glynne that capitular lands could not be taken away by a ‘legislative power’.157Procs. LP v. 168, 174, 177.

The source of Widdrington’s godly sensibilities is not known, but it is unlikely to have been his family and early upbringing. His grandmother, who had resided at Cheeseburn Grange until at least 1615, had been a ‘notorious receipter [sic] of seminaries [i.e. Catholic priests]’, and his brother Henry – who would fight for the king during the civil war – married a Catholic and allowed his children to be raised in her religion.158Hedly, Northumb. Fams. ii. 129-30, 131-2; HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Henry Widdrington’. As a student at Gray’s Inn during the early 1620s, Widdrington may well have attended sermons by the inn’s lecturer, the celebrated puritan divine Richard Sibbes, and would certainly have rubbed shoulders with many godly gentlemen and future parliamentarians.159Whitelocke, Diary, 50. His marriage into the Fairfax family would have extended his range of connections among the godly, and on his wife’s death in 1649, he would write a deeply pious letter to her sister, the wife of the Presbyterian gentleman Henry Arthington*.160Bodl. Add. A.119, ff. 28-9.

Besides making the legal case against Laudian prelacy, Widdrington’s main priority at Westminster was the relief of the northern counties, where the king’s and the Scots’ armies had been quartered and causing great hardship since the summer of 1640. During April and May 1641, he was a manager of, and reported from, several conferences with the Lords concerning the near-mutinous state of Berwick’s garrison and the danger of an all-out revolt there if its soldiers were not paid.161CJ ii. 123b, 125b, 126a, 126b, 141a; Adamson, Noble Revolt, 250. He was also among that relatively small group of leading MPs that the Commons turned to when it came to dealing with the closely related issues of raising supply and demobilizing the armies in the north. Having been appointed on 11 January 1641 to the ‘committee for the king’s army and the north parts’, he was regularly named during the spring and summer to committees and conference management and reporting teams for paying off and disbanding the armies.162CJ ii. 66a, 152a, 153a, 175b, 177a, 189b, 250b, 252b, 253b. Peaceful disbandment was impossible without finding adequate supply, and here, too, Widdrington played his part. In January, he chaired a sub-committee of a committee of the whole House on the first subsidy bill; in April, he chaired a committee of the Whole on the second such bill; and he was active on the bicameral commissions for disbursing the proceeds of these levies – the bulk of which went towards paying the soldiery.163Procs. LP ii. 127; iii. 468; SP28/1C, ff. 14-15, 25-6, 41-2. On 31 May, he headed a sub-committee of four lawyers to draft the preamble to the second subsidy bill.164Procs. LP iv. 661. In addition, he was was named to half a dozen or so committees during the spring and summer of 1641 on a variety of expedients for improving revenue yields and collection – from levying subsidies at a higher rate to bringing in plate for turning into coin.165CJ ii. 130b, 165a, 178b, 196a, 199a, 232b, 235a, 239a. Two of these appointments were to draft legislation for securing the arrears of the ‘brotherly assistance’ to the Scots.166CJ ii. 232b, 239a. For a brief period in mid-August, he became closely involved – as a reporter of several conferences with the Lords – in finalizing the treaty with the Scots and agreeing terms for the withdrawal of their army from England.167CJ ii. 252b, 253b, 254a; Procs. LP vi. 369-70, 378, 381-2. In debate on 12 August, he raised objections to the Scots marching out of the kingdom through Berwick but was over-ruled.168CJ ii. 378. That same day (12 Aug.), he seconded a motion of Sir John Hotham* that the House show leniency towards the earl of Northumberland’s younger brother Henry Percy* for his complicity in the army plots.169Procs. LP vi. 385-6. Having been granted granted leave of absence on 5 and again on 12 August, Widdrington seems to have departed the House at some point during the second half of that month and did not resume his seat until after the autumn recess.170CJ ii. 239a, 253a.

Widdrington had returned to Westminster by 2 November 1641, when he was named to a bicameral standing committee set up in response to the outbreak of the Irish rebellion.171CJ ii. 302a. And on 4 and 18 November, he was named to further committees for raising troops and money for the war effort against the rebels.172CJ ii. 305b, 319b. The dreadful news from Ireland heightened the junto’s determination to wrest power, both military and political, from the king, but it faced a formidable obstacle in the Lords, where the bishops and ‘popish’ peers blocked all reformist legislation. Consequently, when the 13 bishops accused of promoting the new Canons presented their answer to the charges against them in mid-November, it was pounced upon in the Commons, denounced as ‘dilatory and insufficient’, and a committee was set up – to which Widdrington was named – to consider the House’s response.173CJ ii. 314b, 333b; D’Ewes (C), 134-7, 139-40; Adamson, Noble Revolt, 430-1. He himself attacked the bishops’ answer as ‘insufficient and frivolous’ and made clear that he expected a ‘clear confession’ from them.174D’Ewes (C), 134. On 6 December, he was named to a committee of seven leading lawyers to prepare the Commons’ case against the bishops for presentation to the Lords, ‘that they [the bishops] may be brought to judgement’.175CJ ii. 333a, 333b-334a. Four days later (10 Dec.), he was granted leave of absence, and by Chrismas eve he was in York and writing to Sir Ferdinando (now 2nd Baron) Fairfax of the lack of good society in the city.176CJ ii. 337b; Bodl. Fairfax 32, ff. 55, 56. He had returned to Westminster by 17 January 1642, when he was added to the committee for putting the kingdom in a posture of defence (set up following the king’s attempted arrest of the Five Members) and was among a group of lawyers delegated to attend the Lords to hear the 13 bishops’ revised answer to the Commons’ impeachment charges against them.177CJ ii. 383b, 385b.

The majority of Widdrington’s appointments during the first three months of 1642 covered familiar themes in his parliamentary repertoire – suppressing innovations in religion and promoting a preaching ministry, punishing the bishops, business relating to Berwick and County Durham and handling Parliament’s response to developments in Ireland.178CJ ii. 412a, 419b, 437b, 448b, 456a, 469a, 476b, 477b, 479a, 489a, 493a. He evidently supported the Militia Ordinance, refuting John Maynard’s claim on 8 February that an amendment by the Lords to the legislation would ‘give a greater power to the lord lieutenants than ever the king had’.179PJ i. 319-20. The House recommended Widdrington to Parliament’s lord lieutenant of Northumberland – the earl of Northumberland – on 17 March for appointment as one of his deputy lieutenants, but Widdrington was not commissioned as such by the earl until 1644.180CJ ii. 483b. The reports in several printed broadsides that he had been on hand to make a welcome address to the king when the royal court had arrived at York on 18 March are hard to reconcile with references in the Journal that appear to place him in the House on and around that day. Moreover, it was not until 22 March that he was granted leave of absence. A purported copy of his speech to the king, although full of loyal expressions, referred to ‘that high discontent arising from the heavy distance which it hath pleased God ... to break out between your Majesty and your grand council [i.e. Parliament]’ and to the ‘earnest, unutterable desire and inclination we all here have, as we are well assured have all your truly loyal subjects throughout your kingdom, to see...a happy and a firm correspondency between your majesty and this Parliament’. According to the broadsides, the king was observed ‘to show no pleasing countenance at those words nor gave no answer at all’.181CJ ii. 481a, 483b, 489a, 490b, 491b, 493a; A Letter Written by Master Symon Rodes (1642, 669.f.3.61); The King’s Entertainment at York (1642, 669.f.3.63).

Widdrington certainly took leave of absence in March 1642, whether or not it involved addressing the king at York, and had returned to the House by 23 April, when he was named to a minor committee on Northumberland.182CJ ii. 544b. During May, June and July 1642, he was named to 20 committees in all and to four teams for reporting or managing conferences with the Lords. A high proportion of these appointments concerned the raising of money for the war effort in Ireland, the vindication of Parliament in its ‘paper skirmishes’ with the king, and the execution of the Militia Ordinance.183CJ ii. 570b, 572b, 591a, 591b, 602b, 604b, 610b, 611a, 629b, 638b, 663b, 671b, 677b. On 30 May, he was named with Holles, Glynne and John Lisle as reporters of a conference on Parliament’s Nineteen Propositions to the king.184CJ ii. 594a. Four days later (3 June), he opened proceedings for the Commons at a conference with the Lords in which he made clear the House’s objection to an amendment proposed by the peers to an order concerning the magazine of Hull (now in the Tower). The Lords wished to acknowledge the king’s authority in disposing of the magazine; the Commons was adamant that it should be solely at the discretion of the two Houses.185LJ v. 103a, 103b; PJ iii. 8. Widdrington also worked closely with the junto MPs John Hampden and Nathaniel Fiennes I early in June to finalize details of Parliament’s treaty with the Scots for the supply of their forces in Ireland.186CJ ii. 601a, 603a; LJ v. 102b, 103a, 104b; PJ iii. 7. And on 13 June, he was named with Oliver St John, John Glynne and Samuel Browne (three lawyers closely connected to the junto) to prepare commissions for ‘conserving the peace’ between England and Scotland – in effect, maintaining confederal military links between the English and Scottish Parliaments.187CJ ii. 621b.

Widdrington’s collaboration with the junto during the summer of 1642 may have reflected, at least in part, his concern at events in Northumberland, where the earl of Newcastle was in the process of securing the county for the king. On 30 June, Widdrington was one of five managers of a conference on the earl’s military occupation of Newcastle.188CJ ii. 645a; LJ v. 170a-171a. Widdrington’s last major service to Parliament – and to the junto – before the outbreak of civil war, was his report on 14 July from a committee comprising himself and the godly lawyers Roger Hill II and Edmund Prideaux I for reviving legislation to establish an assembly of divines (what would become the Westminster Assembly).189CJ ii. 672a, 672b. The parliamentary leadership and its allies pursued this initiative with one eye on courting the Covenanters, whose willingness to lend support to Parliament against the king was largely conditional on progress at Westminster towards greater religious uniformity between the two kingdoms.

In the king’s quarters, 1642-4

Widdrington was granted leave of absence on 22 July 1642 on the motion of a fellow lawyer, the zealous parliamentarian John Wylde, and would not return to the House for nearly two years.190CJ ii. 686a; PJ iii. 250. By early September, he was attending meetings of the York corporation in his capacity as recorder, and he would continue to do so for almost a year and a half after the city was garrisoned for the king that autumn.191York City Archives, York House Bk. 36, ff. 75v, 95. In February 1643, he joined the lord mayor and aldermen in attending the queen upon her arrival at York, and according to a report in one of the London newsbooks a few weeks later,

the recorder of York, who was lately imprisoned by the cavaliers for his fidelity to the king and Parliament, made a speech to her majesty, which as it was full of loyalty to his majesty, so it was plain English to her majesty, that if she did not bend herself with all her faculties to a peace (great distractions having been in England since her departure, occasioned by the great supplies [of arms she had organized] from Holland), greater [distractions] would ensue, to the prejudice (he feared) of her majesty.

He also, so it was reported, shared with the queen his hope for the ‘utter extirpation of idolatry, for nothing was more against the known laws of England than for papists to be in arms, especially against the law-makers [i.e. Parliament]’.192The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 11 (7-14 Mar. 1643), 86 (E.93.6). There is certainly reason to believe that Widdrington, as recorder, made some sort of welcome address to the queen.193A True Relation of the Queens Majesties Return out of Holland (1643), 19 (Wing T3031). But even allowing for the possibility that he was not quite as ‘cautious and timorous’ as Sir Philip Warwick* claimed, it seems unlikely that he was either so brave or so foolhardy as to address the queen as bluntly as was reported.194Warwick, Mems. Charles I (1701), 381. Moreover, a Commons-man given to such open condemnation of Catholics in arms would not have resorted to civil-war York – the headquarters of the earl of Newcastle’s ‘popish’ northern army – but would sensibly have remained at Westminster. One explanation for this conundrum is simply that the report of his speech to the queen was fabricated and fed to the press by his friends. That he retained influential patrons in London is suggested by the Commons’ failure to take the kind of punitive action against him that it usually resorted to with Members who had deserted the service of the House during the war. The earl of Northumberland and Sir Ferdinando (now 2nd Lord) Fairfax – the commander of Parliament’s northern army – certainly had good reason to stand by him, for his position at the centre of royalist operations in the north would have made him invaluable as an intelligencer and a protector of their interests in the region. That said, the only reliable evidence concerning his activities in royalist York – besides his attendance at corporation meetings – appears to indicate his involvement in financial arrangements for supplying Lord Fairfax’s military antagonist, the earl of Newcastle, with arms from Holland.195SP84/157, f. 230.

Career in the Long Parliament, 1644-6

Widdrington attended his last meeting of the York corporation while the city was in royalist hands on 22 January 1644 – the very day that the Commons disabled many of its Members from sitting for being in the king’s quarters but postponed any ruling on Widdrington himself until further notice.196CJ iii. 374; York City Archives, House House Bk. 36, f. 95. On 3 June, the House received a report from the committee for absent Members regarding his ‘long absence’, after which it was resolved that be allowed to resume his seat – which he did within a few days.197CJ iii. 515b, 519a. A few weeks later, he took the Solemn League and Covenant.198CJ iii. 543a. The timing of his withdrawal from civic affairs in York and his return to the House is suggestive. The large Scottish army under the earl of Leven that had crossed the Tweed early in 1644 was expected to tip the balance of the war in England decisively in Parliament’s favour. Meanwhile, at Westminster, the earl of Northumberland had abandoned his opposition to a military alliance with the Scots – apparently in horror at the implications of the king’s Cessation with the Irish rebels of September 1643 – and had thrown in his lot with its war-party architects.199J. Adamson, ‘Of armies and architecture: the employments of Robert Scawen’, in Soldiers, Writers, and Statesmen of the English Revolution ed. I. Gentles, J. Morrill, B. Worden (Cambridge, 1998), 43-44.

Widdrington’s political career during 1642-4 seems to have followed a broadly similiar course to that of Northumberland’s. One reason for his quitting Parliament in the summer of 1642 may well have been growing alarm on his part at the junto’s eagerness to secure Scottish military support against the English royalists – a plan that would inevitably require another Covenanter invasion of northern England. But with that invasion a fait accompli by the summer of 1644, and his patrons the earl of Northumberland and Lord Fairfax well placed to influence the course of the war both in the north and nationally, he seems to have decided to cut his losses and rejoin what now appeared to be the winning side.

The two years or so following Widdrington’s return to the Commons in 1644 was the busiest period in his entire parliamentary career. Between June 1644 and July 1646, when he took leave of absence for several months, he was named to approximately 168 committees and to 21 conference teams and served as a messenger to the Lords on ten occasions.200CJ iii. 524a, 683a, 718b; iv. 14a, 48a, 119a, 194b, 216a, 235a, 271a, 296a, 307a, 363a, 364a, 395a, 397a, 400b, 416b, 422a, 425b, 431a, 475b, 565b, 583a, 584a, 592a, 595b, 602a, 606b, 613b, 625b; LJ vii. 43a, 130b, 334a; viii. 134a, 387b, 442a. He chaired and reported sessions of five committees of the whole House during this period – those concerning rules drawn up by the Westminster Assembly for ordaining ministers (June-July 1644);201CJ iii. 519a, 565a, 576a, 589a. on the grievances of the ‘well-affected’ in Kent (Nov.);202CJ iii. 698b. on an ordinance for raising £21,000 a month for Leven’s army (Feb. 1645);203CJ iv. 43b, 48a. for drafting the Newcastle peace propositions (Aug. 1645-Jan. 1646);204CJ iv. 246a, 394b, and for ‘raising money for payment of the army [the New Model]’ (Sept. 1645).205CJ iv. 273a, 275b, 278b, 279b, 293b; Add. 31116, pp. 462, 464, 465. On 17 July 1644, the Commons ordered him to assume the chair of its standing ‘committee for the north’ – often styled simply the ‘Northern Committee’ – and he would be chairman of its 1645 successor, the House Committee for the Northern Association (HCNA). By putting Widdrington in charge of its northern affairs the Commons probably sought to strengthen its lines of communication with the Fairfaxes and its military operations in the north.206Supra, ‘Northern Committee’; CJ iii. 563b. The House referred a considerable amount of business relating to the northern counties to Widdrington’s committee, and he regularly reported draft ordinances and a variety of proposals and recommendations to the House on anything from supplying Parliament’s forces in the north to remodelling municipal government in Newcastle and York.207Supra, ‘Northern Committee’; CJ iii. 586a, 597a, 612a, 626b, 628b, 636b, 637b, 658b, 668a, 700a, 703b, 707a, 709a, 714a; iv. 60b, 61b, 86a, 87a, 110a, 113b, 131a, 143a, 151a, 157b, 166b-167a, 169a, 199b, 210a, 212b, 252b, 291b, 295b, 301a, 321b, 367a, 371a, 380a, 387b, 392a, 401a, 402a, 405b, 414b, 417b, 426b, 443a, 452b, 570a, 593b, 603b, 650b.

Widdrington also reported from – and in most cases chaired – at least 16 ad hoc committees during 1644-6 and was therefore responsible, to a greater or lesser degree, for drafting several important pieces of legislation – notably, ordinances for levying assessments on the northern counties for Leven’s army, for managing the excise and for the maintenance of preaching ministers in the north out of the capitular revenues of York, Carlisle and Durham.208CJ iii. 526b-527a, 534a, 550a, 550b, 602b, 647a, 648a; iv. 6a, 94b, 97b, 107a, 113a, 117a, 119a, 121a, 159a, 160b, 161a, 193b, 194b, 214b, 220b, 222a, 263b, 273a, 273b, 291b, 320b, 394a, 478b, 488a, 587a, 588a, 604a, 606a. His continuing commitment to further reformation would bring him regular assignments in the Commons during the mid-1640s, as well as addition to the Committee for Plundered Ministers in November 1644. He was at the forefront of work on settling a preaching ministry in the northern counties, and he may also have contributed to measures for instituting godly religion in the universities and their surrounding parishes.209CJ iii. 597b, 645b, 678a, 699b; iv. 97b, 113a, 174a, 300b, 312a, 326a, 350b, 381b, 412a, 502a, 595b, 625b. In addition, he helped to hammer the final nails into the coffin of Laudian prelacy, receiving nomination to a committee for the trial of Archbishop Laud and, in January 1645, heading a quartet of four prominent lawyers to draft an ordinance for the archbishop’s execution. It was Widdrington who carried this legislation up to the Lords.210CJ iii. 628a; iv. 13b, 14a, 14b.

Widdrington’s enthusiasm for purging the church of its Romish trappings evidently extended well beyond the removal of popish prelates and clergymen. In one of his reports in September 1645 from the committee of the whole House for raising money, he recommended that the estates of the bishops and deans and chapters be sold, whereupon the House ordered that an ordinance be drafted to this effect.211CJ iv. 275b. And by that autumn, he had apparently assumed the chair of a committee for demolishing superstitious monuments and images in the kingdom’s churches. He was particularly allergic to ‘popish’ paintings, it seems.212CJ iv. 248b, 349a; Add. 31116, p. 487. Although there is little doubt that he favoured the establishment of a national Presbyterian church, it is equally probable that he was hostile to ‘rigid’ Scottish-style Presbyterianism. This probably explains his appointment to a committee set up on 16 April 1646, and dominated by prominent opponents of Covenanting clericalism, to reprimand the Westminster Assembly for implictly denying Parliament’s supremacy in matters of church government.213CJ iv. 511a; Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, i. 293-4; R.S. Paul, The Assembly of the Lord (Edinburgh, 1985), 506-11.

Managing and financing the war effort in England and Ireland, and the closely related issues of raising supply and overseeing its expenditure, accounted for a significant proportion of Widdrington’s appointments during the period 1644-6.214CJ iii. 519b, 521a, 526a, 526b, 534a, 574a, 592a, 594a, 611a, 618a, 635b, 654b, 655b, 676a; iv. 103a, 107a, 110a, 112a, 112b, 126a, 145b, 146b, 153b, 155b, 186a, 203a, 225a, 235a, 271b, 275b, 351a, 502b, 538b, 552a, 603a, 613a. Maintaining Parliament’s forces in Ireland and under the earl of Essex and Sir William Waller* probably represented only a tiny fraction of his workload, however, certainly compared with the heavy burdens he assumed in relation to Lord Fairfax’s army and its Northern Association successor under Sydnham Poynts. Besides finding money for Parliament’s northern forces, he was regularly employed in conveying the House’s orders and thanks to Fairfax, Poynts and their officers.215CJ iii. 541a, 563b, 602b, 612a, 616b, 638a, 647a, 648a, 657a, 659a, 679b, 691b, 719b; iv. 10a, 26b, 241b, 261a, 291a. As chairman of the Northern Committee he also became closely involved in the House’s increasingly desperate efforts from the autumn of 1644 to supply Leven’s army in the north and to maintain good relations with Edinburgh. Working with John Glynne and Robert Scawen, he drafted and, in mid-February 1645, reported an ordinance for an assessment of £21,000 a month for paying Leven’s troops.216CJ iii. 602b, 626b, 659a; iv. 3a, 3b, 6a, 39b, 43b, 48a, 121b, 202b, 242a; D. Scott, ‘The Barwis affair: political allegiance and the Scots during the British civil wars’, EHR cxv. 849. The wholesale remodelling of the parliamentary war-machine that winter made it even more vital to improve supply to the Scottish army, for without such an establishment there was little prospect of the Scots moving their forces southwards to provide cover while Parliament’s new military order took shape.217Supra, ‘Committee of Both Kingdoms’; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 160, 166, 184.

Not surprisingly for a man with such close ties to the Fairfaxes, Widdrington was among the Commons-men who championed the creation of the New Model army under its commander-designate, his brother-in-law Sir Thomas Fairfax. He was included on several committees for pressing the Lords to pass Fairfax’s officer list without amendment;218CJ iv. 48a, 62a, 77a. and it was Widdrington and the war-party stalwarts Sir Arthur Hesilrige, Sir Peter Wentworth and Alexander Rigby I who were selected on 19 February to request Fairfax to attend the House to receive his commission.219CJ iv. 53b. When Fairfax became lord general, Widdrington’s friend and kinsman John Rushworth* was appointed his secretary.220Supra, ‘John Rushworth’. Writing cryptically to Lord Fairfax early in March, apparently in reference to the New Model, Widdrington claimed that there were many at Westminster

that plot as zealously to crush A [the army?] in the bud as others do to bring A to perfection. It’s hoped that money will be got in K [the City?] upon the desire of T [the Commons?] to furnish A and such as follow in his [Fairfax’s?] alphabet, wherein the greatest part is for him. The wits of G [the Presbyterians?] act in K and it is feared in T also for no good.221Add. 18979, f. 182 (mis-transcribed in Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 167).

The Commons would turn to Widdrington repeatedly from the spring of 1645 for help in recruiting and supplying the New Model and in liaising with Fairfax and returning him Parliament’s thanks for his army’s victories.222CJ iv. 75a, 117a, 119a, 135b, 149b, 170a, 170b, 171a, 175b, 208a, 234b, 235a, 267b, 277a, 291a.

Widdrington and the Northern Committee figured prominently in another major military shake-up during the first half of 1645 – the re-organization of Lord Fairfax’s command into the Northern Association and a new army under Poynts. Widdrington’s committee was responsible for drafting the necessary ordinance, which he reported to the House on 7 April, 30 May and 7 June.223Supra, ‘Northern Committee’; CJ iv. 102a, 110a, 157b, 166b-167a; Harl. 166, ff. 201, 214, 216v-217. The HCNA which replaced the Northern Committee under this legislation was dominated by friends of the Fairfaxes and of the New Model.224Supra, ‘Northern Committee’. Widdrington’s support for new modelling brought him into closer alignment with the war-party interest at Westminster – or the Independents as they would become known – and lent a more partisan aspect to his relationship with the Independent grandee the earl of Northumberland. That the two men remained close is evident from Widdrington’s appointment in March 1645 with the Yorkshire MP Sir William Strickland to negotiate with Northumberland for the sale of the picture collection in his London residence of York House, which he leased from the sequestration authorities. On 23 April, Widdrington reported the earl’s willingness, ‘knowing the necessity of the public affairs’, to relinquish his interest in most of the house’s goods and artworks.225CJ iv. 94b, 121a. Early in 1646, Widdrington promised his ‘utmost assistance’ in prosecuting Northumberland’s affairs at Westminster and, in particular, in securing the re-admission to the House of the earl’s friend Sir John Fenwick.226Supra, ‘Sir John Fenwick’; CJ iv. 409b; Alnwick, P.I.3(q): Potter to Northumberland, 17 Jan. 1646.

Widdrington’s alignment with the Independents lent a political bias to the leading role he would assume in Parliament’s increasingly fractious relations with the Scots from the summer of 1645. In the ruction between Westminster and Edinburgh that followed the Scots’ occupation of Carlisle in June 1645, he was a conference manager and chaired a committee for preparing Parliament’s case against this and other treaty breaches in northern England.227CJ iv. 194b, 198a, 199b, 216a, 252b; Scott, ‘Barwis affair’, 850-1. It was in this spirit of recrimination that the Commons ordered Widdrington and the Independent lawyer John Lisle to draw up a commission in July for auditing the money and provisions that had been levied or received by the Scottish army in the north.228CJ iv. 212a. In response to papers from the Scots commissioners which included a request that Leven’s army be allowed to march back into Scotland to counter the earl of Montrose, a committee of both Houses was established on 12 September with Widdrington as its chair. Four days later (16 Sept.), he was named to a committee for warning the Scots of the consequences of their army leaving England. Should it remain, however, the Commons insisted that it be deployed further southwards, at the siege of Newark, ‘for if either their army or garrisons shall continue in the north, it will destroy those counties and dissolve the forces raised there [i.e. the Northern Association army].’229CJ iv. 273a, 273b, 274b, 275a, 283a; Harl. 166, f. 263. On 27 September, the House charged Widdrington with the job of informing the Scots commissioners of its resolutions concerning the deployment of the Scottish army in England.230CJ iv. 291b. And the Commons would require his services on several more occasions that autumn as it tried to pressure the Scots to march their army southwards and hand back the towns and garrisons they held in northern England.231CJ iv. 307a, 317a, 340a.

The abuses committed by the pay-starved Scottish forces in the north inspired Widdrington and his colleagues on the HCNA to strengthen their grip, and that of their factional allies, upon Poynts’s army, quite possibly in the hope it could be employed as a regional defence force against the Scots. Responding to a request from the Northern Association committee at York for a mechanism to remodel Poynts’s officer corps, Widdrington reported a proposal from the HCNA on 1 October 1645 for transferring the responsibility for appointing and cashiering officers from the Northern Association’s county committees to a Commons committee. The Presbyterians, however, were determined to frustrate what was evidently an attempt to hand control of the Northern Association to the Fairfax interest and the Independents; and following a division on the issue in which the Presbyterian MPs Sir Philip Stapilton and Sir Christopher Wray defeated the Independent grandees Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Sir Henry Vane II, Widdrington’s proposal was rejected.232Supra, ‘Northern Committee’; CJ iv. 295b, 296a; D. Scott, ‘The ‘northern gentlemen’, the parlty. Independents, and Anglo-Scottish relations in the Long Parliament’, HJ xlii. 361.

Widdrington’s most telling contribution to the Independents’ cause was as chairman of the committee of the whole House for drafting the Newcastle peace propositions. He had been was only peripherally involved, at best, in preparing for the Uxbridge peace treaty early in 1645, which had represented the high-water mark of Scottish confederalism.233CJ iii. 663a, 665a, 718b. But in mid-August, after the pro-New Model lawyer Samuel Browne had moved to resume the peace process on the basis of terms drawn up exclusively by Parliament and presented to Charles for his ratification (there would be no treaty this time round), Widdrington was made chair of a committee of the whole House to begin work on the new propositions.234CJ iv. 246a; Add. 31116, p. 448. Between the middle of August 1645 and January 1646, he chaired ‘the grand committee for the propositions’ approximately 29 times and delivered at least 15 reports from it to the House.235CJ iv. 246a, 252a, 306b, 310b, 311a, 316b, 318b, 325b, 332a, 332b, 334a, 338b, 340b, 347b, 349a, 350b, 354b, 356a, 358a, 359a-362a, 364b, 369b, 371b, 372a, 375a, 378b, 380a, 380b, 383a, 393a, 394a, 394b, . He was also named to numerous conference management teams and ad hoc committees from late 1645 for drafting the propositions and treating with the Scots commissioners about them.236CJ iv. 359b, 363a, 364a, 395a, 397a, 423a, 425b, 431a, 475b, 478b, 491a, 583a, 583b, 587a, 591b, 592a, 595b, 604a, 606b, 613b, 617a. Four of these committees he chaired.237CJ iv. 423a, 478b, 488a, 587a, 588a, 589a-b, 604a, 606a.

As initially drafted by Widdrington’s committee, the propositions leaned heavily towards the views and prejudices of the Independents. Indeed, the Scots saw the propositions as largely the work of a powerful clique of Independents, whose aim was to deprive them of any say not only in English affairs but also in the war in Ireland.238Scott, ‘Northern gentlemen’, 366-70. That their assessment was entirely justified is clear from the proceedings of Widdrington’s committee on 3 January 1646, when it resolved that Parliament should exercise sole authority in Ireland – a decision that helped clear the ground for the appointment of the earl of Northumberland’s nephew, Philip Sidney, Viscount Lisle*, as lord lieutenant.239Add. 31116, p. 503; Adamson, ‘Strafford’s ghost’, 134-5; Scott, ‘Northern gentlemen’, 369. Concurrent with the propositions’ implicit disavowal of Scottish pretensions to a ‘joint interest’ in Irish affairs, the king – in his repeated requests to Parliament during the winter of 1645-6 for a personal treaty – expressed his readiness to cede management of the war in Ireland entirely to Parliament. On 3 February 1646, Widdrington was named to a committee for highlighting Charles’s deployment of Irish Catholics in England and his attempts to engineer a personal treaty contrary to the Parliament’s determination to pursue a dictated settlement.240CJ iv. 428a. When the Scots commissioners presented papers to Parliament in mid-March, denouncing the propositions as an affront to the Covenant and the ‘happy union’ between the two kingdoms, the Commons set up a committee – which Widdrington chaired and reported from – to frame its (far from conciliatory) response.241CJ iv. 478b, 488a-b; Scott, ‘Northern gentlemen’, 367.

Widdrington’s role in challenging and undermining the Scottish interest during the first half of 1646 was not confined to his work on the Newcastle Propositions. On 20 March, he was named to a committee for preparing a declaration on a report made by Hesilrige from the Committee of Both Kingdoms, detailing the abuses of the Scottish army in northern England.242CJ iv. 481b. And in May, he was among a group of Commons-men – mostly Independents – that sought to pressure the Scots and their allies in the Lords into surrendering the king for incarceration in Warwick Castle.243CJ iv. 541b, 542a, 548a. On 1 and 9 June, he was named to committees – the first consisting almost exclusively of leading Independents – to demand that the Scots hand over the accounts of their army and to prepare a declaration, stating ‘what cause this House has of complaint and jealousies’.244CJ iv. 560b, 570b. These further revelations of Scottish plundering in the north prompted renewed efforts by the HCNA to gain control of Parliament’s northern army. Early in April, the committee had presented proposals to the Commons that the northern counties be associated for a further six months and that the Northern Association army be enlarged to 10,000 men and placed directly under Sir Thomas Fairfax’s command.245CJ iv. 501a. These proposals caused the Scots deep alarm. Aware that there were ‘no visible forces of the enemy’s which might give occasion for these resolutions’, they naturally feared that this new army would be turned against them.246Scott, ‘Northern gentlemen’, 371. On 4 June, the HCNA voted to make two recommendations to the House – that the Scots be paid £100,000 (a measure intended to deter them from plundering in the north in anticipation of their withdrawal); and that Fairfax ‘go down into the northern parts with such forces as shall be thought fit for [the] preservation thereof’.247Bodl. Nalson XIX, f. 398. This second recommendation – that that Fairfax and the New Model be sent into the northern counties – may well have had a more sinister purpose than simply the preservation of the region against the Scots. It is significant that Widdrington and his committee were proposing the very measure that Hesilrige, Henry Marten and other Independents had been pressing for since the spring – the dispatch of the New Model northwards to supplant the Scots army and (from May) to take custody of the king.248D. Holles, Mems. (1699), 60; Scott, ‘Northern gentlemen’, 371-3. The Presbyterian grandee Denzil Holles* was adamant that

could they [the Independents] have gotten a vote for this, their work had been done, and we should soon have heard of mischief and felt it. The animosity between these two armies [the New Model and the Scottish army] would have instantly put them and the kingdoms into blood, for which, no question, Sir Thomas Fairfax had his instructions...249Holles, Mems. 60.

The willingness of Widdrington and the HCNA to hand control of the fraught situation in the north to Fairfax and the New Model probably explains why the Presbyterian-dominated Lords had conceived such a dislike of the Northern Association by the summer of 1646. When Widdrington carried an ordinance for the continuation of the Association to the Lords late in July, the peers divided evenly on whether to pass it and then, a week later, rejected it outright, whereupon the Independent grandees Viscount Saye and Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton entered their dissents to this vote.250CJ iv. 625b; LJ viii. 442a, 442b, 447a.

Career in the Long Parliament, 1646-8

Widdrington took unofficial leave of absence during August and early September 1646, at least some of which he spent at York.251Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 457. The period between his return to the House in about mid-September 1646 and his appointment as a commissioner to the army in mid-June 1647 – an assignment that would take him out of the House for weeks on end – was a relatively quiet one in his career. During these months he was named to 38 committees and a single conference management team and served as a messenger to the Lords on only one occasion.252CJ iv. 674a; v. 34a. Similarly, relatively little legislation or committee-work was referred specifically to his care. On 1 October, he was ordered to bring in an ordinance for settling an estate worth £5,000 a year upon Sir Thomas Fairfax; and late in December, he handled preparations at Westminster for slighting the fortifications at Berwick and Carlisle once the Scots had vacated the scene.253CJ iv. 679b; v. 30b, 33b. He was named to only a handful of committees on the big and most politically-sensitive issues that autumn and winter – namely, paying off the Scots and the withdrawal of the their army, and custody of the king once they had handed him over to Parliament.254CJ iv. 673b, 675a; v. 26b, 74b. Most of his assignments related to less controversial matters – liaising with Poynts, for example, and legal business involving reform of chancery and winding up proceedings in the court of wards.255CJ iv. 674a, 682a, 688a, 696b, 701a, 710a, 714a, 731a, 731b; v. 21b, 23b, 87a. He took leave of absence early in March 1647, and his next appointment in the House was not until 5 May, when he was named to a committee for settling an estate upon Oliver Cromwell*.256CJ v. 106b, 162b.

Widdrington probably spent much of May and June 1647 engaged in work for the Fairfax interest and in addressing the grievances of Sir Thomas’s army over indemnity and pay. In mid-May, he was named to yet another committee for settling lands on Sir Thomas worth £5,000 a year and, with John Lisle, was charged with detailing the losses of Fairfax’s grandfather, the earl of Mulgrave, arising from his investment in the alum industry. A few days after Cornet Joyce’s seizure of the king at Holdenby, on 4 June, Widdrington was included on a seven-man committee for communicating to the soldiers its orders on army pay and for expunging Holles’s ‘declaration of dislike’ from the Journal.257CJ v. 166a, 167a, 170b, 174a, 198b. On 12 June, the House appointed Widdrington and another of the Fairfaxes’ parliamentary men-of-business, William White, as commissioners to the army in the hope that their intimacy with Sir Thomas would help smooth relations between Parliament and the New Model.258CJ v. 208b, 209a; LJ ix. 262a. Holles and his fellow Presbyterian memorialist Sir William Waller* saw the sending of commissioners to the army as an act of appeasement and as a means of putting the Independent grandees and the army officers in closer proximity, ‘the better to contrive and lay their business’.259Holles, Mems. 90; W. Waller, Vindication of the Character and Conduct of Sir William Waller (1798), 142. Although the Commons dispatched him to Fairfax’s headquarters on 25 June with its votes for justifying the continued sitting of the Eleven Members, Widdrington seems to have favoured a policy of satisfying the army’s demands for prohibiting the enlistment of Presbyterian reformados in London and for ‘purging the House of delinquent Members’.260CJ v. 223b; LJ ix. 298a; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 365-6. Having helped to negotiate the army’s withdrawal to Reading early in July, he returned to the House on 21 July to deliver a ‘general report of the brief heads’ of the army’s propositions for settling the kingdom – what would become known as the Heads of the Proposals.261CJ v. 253b; Sloane 1519, f. 104; The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 219 (20-27 July 1647), 609-10 (E.400.7); J. Adamson, ‘Politics and the nobility in civil-war England’, HJ xxxiv. 239. In residence at Gray’s Inn by 26 July – the day of the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster – he departed London shortly thereafter for army headquarters, where he probably remained for the duration of the Speaker’s absence from the House.262CJ v. 264a; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 377; HMC Egmont, i. 440.

With the collapse of the Presbyterian counter-revolution of July-August 1647, Widdrington quickly returned to London (probably with the army), and he was named on 6 August to a committee dominated by the Independents for investigating the ‘force and violence’ against Parliament on 26 July.263CJ v. 269a; [C. Walker*], Hist. of Independency (1648), 53 (E.463.19). That same day (6 Aug.), he was sent up to the Lords with the Commons’ order for establishing the above committee and also with a draft ordinance for appointing Fairfax lieutenant of the Tower.264CJ v. 269b; LJ ix. 379a. But for the remainder of the year, he showed little of his former appetite for Commons business, receiving only seven committee appointments during that period – although these included his addition to the Committee for the Army in September – and taking what seems to have been nearly two months’ unofficial absence from mid-October.265CJ v. 274a, 298b, 329a, 334a, 336a, 385a, 395b. His role at Westminster in shaping Parliament’s terms for settlement was apparently confined to whatever contribution he made to committees set up in October and December to revise the Heads of the Proposals and to deny the Scots commissioners’ request to peruse the Four Bills before they were sent to the king.266CJ v. 336a, 385a, 386a.

Widdrington’s work rate appears to have declined even further during the first half of 1648, when he was named to a mere four committees and none at all between early February and early July.267CJ v. 417a, 425a, 434a, 453b. He evidently retained the trust of Parliament, however, for in mid-March it passed an ordinance appointing him, Bulstrode Whitelocke* and two peers commissioners of the great seal.268CJ v. 477a; LJ x. 118a. This office came with a salary of £1,500 a year, although Whitelocke’s astrologer friend William Lilly, defending Widdrington against accusations of cupidity, reported that his annual income from his private practice ‘did far surmount’ that sum.269A List of the Names of the Members of the House of Commons (1648, 669.f.12.103); W. Lilly, An Astrological Prediction of the Occurrences in England (1648), 64 (E.462.1); Oxford DNB, ‘William Lilly’. According to Whitelocke, the commissioners were chosen ‘by the private junto of Cromwell’s party [i.e. the Independent grandees] beforehand’, and Widdrington ‘seemed not so backward’ as he was himself to accept this employment ‘but told Whitelocke that being joined with him was a great motive to him to accept it and that he would not hold it except Whitelocke did’.270Whitelocke, Diary, 206, 209, 211, 212-13; Mems. ii. 277. This appointment seems to have revived an old friendship between the two men, and they would remain close until at least 1657, when they fell out over money matters.271Whitelocke, Diary, 50, 216, 457, 473. Their new and exalted office was the excuse for much socializing in the spring of 1648, when they were ‘highly feasted’ by the Independent lawyer Edmund Prideaux I and paid at least one visit to Whitelocke’s ‘old friend’ the earl of Holland (Henry Rich†), who would lead a royalist rising against Parliament only a few months later.272Whitelocke, Diary, 214, 215, 217. Widdrington was diligent in the performance of his duties as a commissioner and, in consequence, hardly featured in the Commons’ proceedings during the spring and early summer.273Whitelocke, Diary, 213-14.

Widdrington was more active at Westminster from early July through to mid-October 1648, when he was named to eight committees and two conference teams and served twice as a messenger to the Lords.274CJ v. 627b, 640b, 661b; vi. 34a. Several of his appointments in July point to his support for a policy of imposing preconditions upon the king – the so-called ‘three propositions’ – before commencing a personal treaty with him.275CJ v. 627b, 640b. These preconditions included the settlement of Presbyterianism for three years. On 22 July, the Commons entrusted the task of preparing a declaration, emphasising Parliament’s endeavours to preserve the union between England and Scotland, specifically to the care of Widdrington, John Swynfen and Richard Salwey.276CJ v. 643b. The House also turned to Widdrington regularly during July and August to communicate its orders and thanks to Hesilrige and Parliament’s other commanders in the north and to draw up legislation for supplying its forces there.277CJ v. 625a, 628a, 663a, 670b, 678a, 681a; vi. 19b. And on 4 October, he headed a committee that comprised himself and the prominent Independents Oliver St John, Nathaniel Fiennes I and Thomas Chaloner to attend Fairfax and inform him of the House’s efforts to raise money for the army.278CJ vi. 43a; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 28 (3-10 Oct. 1648), sig. Pp4v (E.466.11). Responding on 12 October to a Commons’ request to the commissioners of the great seal to offer nominations for vacanies on the bench, he reported the names of numerous prominent barristers for appointment as serjeants-at-law. Those nominated included himself, Whitelocke, St John, John Bradshawe*, Samuel Browne, John Glynne and Francis Thorpe.279CJ vi. 50b; Whitelocke, Diary, 222. His patrons at the swearing-in ceremony for the new serjeants later that month were the earl of Mulgrave, Sir Thomas (now 3rd Lord) Fairfax and Speaker Lenthall.280Baker, Serjeants at Law, 441.

Career in the Rump, 1648-53

Widdrington, like Whitelocke, was ‘troubled’ by the rumblings of political discontent in the army during the autumn of 1648.281Whitelocke, Diary, 224. And with Fairfax’s headquarters at Whitehall by 5 December, and regiments quartered around Westminster, he was named to a seven-man committee set up by the Commons for ‘preserving a good correspondence’ between Parliament and the army.282CJ vi. 93b. On the day of Pride’s Purge (6 Dec.), this committee attended Fairfax in an attempt to secure the release of those MPs detained by the soldiers, but to no avail.283CJ vi. 94a; Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 470. Widdrington and Whitelocke were civilly treated by Pride and his men and permitted access to the palace of Westminster to conduct chancery business, but were ‘sad to see such doings’.284Whitelocke, Diary, 225. Widdrington was able to use his influence with Fairfax to secure the quick release of two of the imprisoned Members – his fellow lawyers Thomas Lane and Herbert Pelham.285Mercurius Elencticus no. 55 (5-12 Dec. 1648), 532 (E476.4).

On Whitelocke’s telling, he and Widdrington were reluctant to attend the Commons in the aftermath of the purge, despite their fear that the two Houses, ‘by absence of their Members, should dissolve themselves, which the army desired’.286Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 475, 478; Diary, 226-7. But a report that they stayed away from the House between Pride’s Purge and 25 December is contradicted by evidence in Whitelocke’s writings.287Bodl. Clarendon 34, f. 17; Add. 37344, ff. 234, 238; Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 475. Having agreed to meet with Cromwell and Lenthall on 18 and again on 21 December to discuss ‘how the settlement of the kingdom might be best effected’, the two lawyers accepted a brief to draft proposals ‘to endeavour to bring the army into better temper’ and ‘to frame somewhat in order to the restitution of the secluded Members...and heads for a declaration [of] what the Parliament intendeth for the settlement of the kingdom, to be...offered to the Parliament and council of the army’. Pleased that ‘the Members of the House and chief officers of the army’ had ‘engaged and trusted us only therein’, they flattered themselves even more in the hope that ‘the kingdom might receive good by this our employment and the courses of the army...moderated’.288Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 477, 478-9; Diary, 226-7. Why Cromwell sought their counsel at this juncture is not clear; perhaps he hoped it would send re-assuring signals to moderate Independents, and indeed to Fairfax, that the army was willing to proceed according to law.289Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 169; I. Gentles, New Model Army (Oxford, 1992), 297-8. At the ‘earnest desire of the Speaker and, by him, from...Cromwell’, Widdrington and Whitelocke spent all of 22 December preparing ‘some heads upon yesterday’s discourse’.290Add. 37344, f. 237; Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 479; Diary, 226-7. But the futility of this exercise quickly became apparent, particularly with the appointment of a committee on 23 December ‘for trial of the king’. The two men attended the House that day and were named in first and second place to this committee, which was set up after a heated debate in which ‘divers’ MPs ‘did not stick to name [Charles] for the greatest delinquent and to be proceeded against in justice’.291Add. 37344, f. 238; CJ vi. 103a; Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 480; Diary, 227. At a select gathering of Commons-men at the Speaker’s house that evening, they effectively signed off on their brief from Cromwell by speaking for ‘settling the kingdom by the Parliament and not to leave all to the sword’.292Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 481. Summoned on 25 and 26 December to attend the trial committee, they excused themselves and decamped to Whitelocke’s Oxfordshire country residence, resolving ‘not to meddle in that business’.293Add. 37344, f. 239; Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 484-5; Diary, 227. Allegations in the royalist press that the two men were responsible for drawing up the charge against the king are groundless.294Mercurius Elencticus no. 58 (26 Dec. 1648-2 Jan. 1649), 554 (E.536.31).

Widdrington appears to have returned to London by 2 January 1649 – two days before Whitelocke did – when he signed an Army Committee warrant for a month’s pay for Colonel Pride’s regiment.295SP28/58, f. 244; Whitelocke, Diary, 228. The two men were nominated to a committee on 6 January for settling proceedings in the courts of law, but they did not attend the House that day, and they made little effort to attend the committee itself. They did take their seats on 8 January.296CJ vi. 112b, 115b; Add. 37344, ff. 242v, 243; Longleat, Whitelocke Pprs. x, ff. 1-3; Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 491, 494; Diary, 228. Widdrington received further Commons’ appointments on 17 January – to committees for sending commissioners to Scotland to maintain good relations between the two kingdoms; and to consider petitions from the ‘well-affected’ interest in the west country.297CJ vi. 120a, 120b. Sitting in the queen’s court that day (17 Jan.) to hear cases, he and Whitelocke received an act from the Rump for adjourning the legal term, which authorized the commissioners to sign the requisite warrants. The two commissioners from the Lords refused to acknowledge this act, however, obliging Widdrington and Whitelocke to procure legislation in the Rump on 20 January enabling them to sign the warrants alone. Yet with the hard work done, Widdrington ‘scrupled’ to proceed without the two peers – doubtless because it broke with established legal precedent, but also, very probably, because it represented an implicit acknowledgement of the Rump’s sovereignty and, therefore, of a radical alteration to the ancient constitution. ‘I have ever found it the safest way to uphold old settlements’, he would later confide to Lord Fairfax, ‘and new introductions, besides what other trouble they bring with them, novitate perturbant [a quotation from St Augustine to the effect that innovation provokes disorder]’.298Belvoir, PZ.2, f. 8. Persuaded by Whitelocke to sign the warrants, he also needed cajoling by his friend to attend the House on 23 January.299CJ vi. 122a; Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 497-9, 501; Diary, 228-9. As the king’s trial reached its climax during the final days of January, Widdrington ‘had much discourse’ with Whitelocke and, ‘though dissatisfied with present proceedings’ and unwilling to attend the House, seems to have reconciled himself to acting under the authority of the Commons alone.300Add. 37344, ff. 250v-251, 252; Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 509; Diary, 229. On the day of the king’s execution, 30 January, Widdrington was named – almost certainly in absentia – to a committee for repealing various statutes concerning treason and the royal supremacy. Whitelocke was also included on this committee even though he ‘went not to the House’ that day but hunkered down at home.301CJ vi. 126a; Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 516; Diary, 229.

Widdrington accommodated himself rapidly, if not entirely, to the post-regicide political order. On 1 February 1649, he and Whitelocke attended the House and entered their dissent to the 5 December vote – that the king’s answer to the Newport propositions were an acceptable basis for settlement. That same day (1 Feb.), he was named to committees on a bill for compounding with delinquents and for taking the dissent of MPs seeking admission to the House – an important body in defining the Rump’s membership and political complexion.302CJ vi. 127b; [W. Prynne*], A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case (1660), 23, 25 (E.1013.22); Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 519. In fact, the month or so following the regicide was probably his busiest time in the Rump. During these weeks he received five appointments and reported from a committee comprising himself, Whitelocke and two other lawyers for drawing up new oaths of office to be taken by the judges.303CJ vi. 127b, 129a, 133b, 134a, 135b. Upon bringing the great seal to the House on 8 February as they had been ordered, Widdrington and Whitelocke were appointed commissioners for the Rump’s new great seal, but at this point Widdrington’s legal fastidiousness and political misgivings finally got the better of him.304CJ vi. 133b, 134b. Standing up in the House, he excused himself ‘very earnestly because of his unhealthfulness. But that excuse would not be allowed. Then he further excused himself by reason of some scruples in conscience which he had concerning the acting in this high place, though he did acknowledge the authority [of the House] and submit to it’. After ‘long debate’ the House excused him, ‘and to manifest their respects for his former services and that they took no notice of his scrupling their authority, they ordered that he should practise within the bar [in the courts of Westminster] and gave him a quarter’s wages more than was due to him [i.e. £250]’. Whitelocke, too, excused himself – but less strenuously than his friend and was retained in office.305Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 523; Diary, 230.

Before taking what seems to have been unofficial leave of absence from the House, Widdrington rendered it an important service on 2 March 1649 in reporting (from the 1 February committee on compositions) legislation establishing a new commission for compounding with delinquents in the four northern counties, which passed the House that same day.306CJ vi. 127b-128a, 153a; SP18/1/23, f. 32. The authority conferred by this act was apparently used by Hesilrige, the Vanes and their allies in the north to tighten their grip on power in the region.307Supra, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’. A few days after Widdrington delivered this report, he and another gentleman purchased the manor of Crayke, in north Yorkshire, from the trustees for the sale of church lands.308Coll Top. et Gen. i. 126. And in 1651, he would join a syndicate headed by Heslirige for purchasing the castle and adjoining property in Newcastle from the trustees for the sale of crown lands.309C54/3571/14.

Widdrington’s pattern of appointments in the Rump suggests that he attended the House only sporadically and made relatively little impact on its proceedings. In all, he was named to 34 committees in the Rump, but 11 of those were set up between Pride’s Purge and early March 1649, after which his name disappears from the Journal for months at a time. While Whitelocke gravitated to the centre of the Rump’s political and legal establishment, Widdrington moved in a wider orbit and seems to have spent a good deal of the period 1649-53 in the north, attending his various offices.310Supra, ‘Bulstrode Whitelocke’; CJ vii. 8a; Whitelocke, Mems. iii. 99; Diary, 246, 261. Northern affairs and the sale and management of sequestered estates accounted for about a third of his assignments in the Rump from mid-1649; the rest were a mixed bag that included committees for law reform (25 Oct. 1650; 2 Feb. 1653), to consider a petition from the earl of Northumberland (25 Apr. 1651) and to settle estates on Cromwell and the widow of Henry Ireton* (30 May 1650; 18 Dec. 1651).311CJ vi. 233a, 233b, 251a, 343a, 410a, 488a, 528a, 542a, 567a, 599b; vii. 46b, 52b, 190b, 239a, 253b. The work of committees for prohibiting clandestine marriages (10 Jan. 1651), for putting County Durham on the same legal and administrative footing as other counties (9 July) and for setting the poor on work (12 Oct. 1652) was referred specially to his care.312CJ vi. 522b, 599b; vii. 190b. But there is no evidence that he drafted or reported any of this legislation. His contribution to settling a godly ministry under the commonwealth, though significant, was made outside of the House itself.313Add. 36792, ff. 10v, 33v, 36, 41, 49, 60, 73v, 85v; SP23/6, p. 145; Leeds Univ. Lib. YAS/DD149, f. 84v.

Question marks over Widdrington’s commitment to the Rump may explain why the House divided in June 1650 on whether to approve his appointment as a serjeant-at-law for the commonwealth. The majority tellers for the yeas were Sir Henry Mildmay and Sir John Hippisley; their opponents were Denis Bond and Francis Allein.314CJ vi. 420b. Why Allein, a former political client of the earl of Northumberland, should object to Widdrington’s appointment is a mystery. Despite the death of his wife in May 1649, Widdrington remained close to Lord Fairfax and his circle in the West Riding and was a member of the committee that tried on 25 June 1650 to satisfy the general’s scruples concerning the proposed invasion of Scotland. Fairfax resigned his command the next day.315Supra, ‘Sir Thomas Fairfax’; ‘Henry Tempest’; CJ vi. 431b; Whitelocke, Diary, 260; Belvoir, PZ.2, f. 8. Widdrington was popular enough at Westminster to secure election to the council of state in February 1651.316CJ vi. 532b. However, he attended only 12 of its 249 meetings – the lowest number of any councillor – and was named to only one conciliar committee.317CSP Dom. 1651, p. xxxv. Not surprisingly, he lost his place on the council at the next elections. The only tellership of his entire parliamentary career occurred on 11 April 1651 in a minor, and apparently non-partisan, division on whether to receive a petition from the City.318CJ vi. 560a. He and Sir Henry Vane I’s friend Cornelius Holland were majority tellers in favour, but the contents of the petition, and therefore Widdrington’s reasons for endorsing it, are not known.

Widdrington’s poor showing in the Rump is perhaps not surprising given his belief that republican rule was fundamentally unsustainable. He was present at the meeting of MPs and army officers that Cromwell convened on 10 December 1651 at the Speaker’s house to discuss the ‘settlement of the nation’, where he joined other lawyers in advocating a constitutional monarchy with Charles I’s third son, Henry Stuart, duke of Gloucester, as titular king. Speaking directly after Cromwell, and echoing his words and those of Whitelocke, he opined that a ‘mixed monarchical government will be most suitable to the laws and people of this nation; and if any monarchical, I suppose we shall hold it most just to place that power in one of the sons of the late king [by which he meant Gloucester]’.319Whitelocke, Mems. iii. 372-4; Diary, 273. He was among the 20 or so Rumpers who attended a similar, but more highly charged, meeting on 19 April 1653 to debate ‘some expedient...for the present carrying on of the government of the commonwealth and putting a period to this present Parliament’. Widdrington and Whitelocke ‘expressed themselves plainly and freely’ against a proposal put forward by Cromwell that the Rump should swiftly dissolve itself and commission a council of Rumpers and army officers to form an interim government until elections could be held for (a yet-to-be-agreed-upon) ‘new representative’. The two lawyers ‘held it a most dangerous thing to dissolve this Parliament and to set up a new government, but rather to let them dissolve themselves by an Act and provide for future Parliaments’. Widdrington may have had no great liking for the Rump, but he clearly found the idea of handing power to an unelected body that the army would likely dominate and that was without constitutional foundation even less appealing. But the army officers and most of the MPs present were for ‘putting a period forthwith to this Parliament’; Cromwell dissolved the Rump the next day.320Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 4; Diary, 285; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 63.

Serving the protectorate, 1654-8

Widdrington almost certainly welcomed the establishment of the protectorate late in 1653 and would quickly profit by it, for in April 1654 he and Whitelocke were re-appointed to their former places as commissioners of the great seal. Writing to Whitelocke, Widdrington claimed that only the ‘commands and persuasions’ of Cromwell had induced him to accept this office, which was contrary to his own ‘former resolutions, present reason, repose and profit’. He further declared his unfitness for the place and that he was relying heavily on Whitelocke to manage the business. Widdrington’s apprehensions were doubtless heightened by Cromwell’s resolve to use this legal shake-up to revive work on reforming the law and proceedings in chancery – a task he referred to Widdrington, Prideaux I (the attorney-general) and Chaloner Chute*.321Longleat, Whitelocke Pprs. xv, ff. 117, 137; A.J. Busch, ‘Bulstrode Whitelocke and early Interregnum chancery reform’, Albion, xi. 324. Drawing heavily on the 1652 chancery bill, Widdrington’s committee drafted an ordinance for ‘regulating and limiting’ the court’s proceedings, which the protectoral council debated and then, in August, had published.322A. and O ii. 949-67; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 249; Busch, ‘Whitelocke and chancery reform’, 324-6. That same month, Widdrington and Whitelocke were made treasury commissioners, with a salary of £1,000 a year.323CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 73, 284; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 93, 128; Diary, 358, 391, 393.

In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, Widdrington was returned for York on the corporation interest, having retained his place as recorder, though doubtless his standing at Whitehall also recommended him to the city fathers.324Supra, ‘York’. He was evidently one of the more active members of this Parliament, receiving nomination to 18 committees between early September and 22 December. One of his first assignments in the House was to help draw up a declaration for satisfying MPs that the oath of loyalty to the protectorate ‘was not intended...to preclude or restrain ourselves from the examining or altering of any of the articles in the Instrument of Government, saving only that of the first article of settling the government in a sole person and the Parliament’.325CJ vii. 367b, 368a; Burton’s Diary, i. p. xxxviii. Three of his appointments were to committees on the House’s bill for revising the Instrument, including those of 12 and 18 December for settling church government and listing the ‘damnable heresies’ that would be exempted from toleration. He was also named to committees for reviewing the establishment of the armed forces, conducting Scottish affairs, reforming chancery and abuses in writs of habeas corpus and to consider petitions from the magistrates and inhabitants of the West Riding for erecting a court of justice at York for the northern counties.326CJ vii. 367b, 369a, 370b, 371b, 374a, 381b, 399b, 401a, 403a.

Despite Parliament’s suspension of the chancery ordinance pending statutory approval, Cromwell was determined to implement it, if necessary on his own and the council’s authority. Late in April 1655, three months after Parliament had been dissolved, the council put pressure on the commissioners of the great seal to execute the ordinance, but Widdrington and Whitelocke refused to comply and were removed from office early in June. The two men raised many objections to the ordinance on practical grounds, but it seems that their real motive in defying Cromwell on this issue was because (in Whitelocke’s words) they had been ‘commanded to execute that for a law which was an ordinance made by the protector and his council, who could not make a law but the Parliament only’.327CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 137, 152; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 191-203, 204-6; Diary, 404-9; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 417; Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 175-6; Busch, ‘Whitelocke and chancery reform’, 327-8. The following month (July), in recognition of their past services and sensible (or so Whitelocke claimed) of his ‘harsh proceedings’ in removing the two men from office merely ‘for keeping to that liberty of conscience which himself held to be everyone’s right’, Cromwell re-appointed them treasury commissioners.328Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 207; Diary, 410.

In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Widdrington was returned for both York and his native Northumberland and chose to sit as a knight of the shire.329Supra, ‘Northumberland’; ‘York’; CJ vii. 431a. When Parliament assembled on 17 September, his former colleague as a commissioner of the great seal, John Lisle, moved that Widdrington be made Speaker, as a ‘person of great integrity and experience in relation to this Parliament-work and every way qualified for that service’. The House approved this motion, and Widdrington, after making the usual protestations of his unworthiness for this great honour, took the chair. Commenting on his appointment, the Venetian ambassador described him as ‘a competent man, entirely devoted to his Highness’.330CJ vii. 423a; CSP Ven. 1655-6, p. 266. If Cromwell had reason to welcome Widdrington’s Speakership, then so to did the Presbyterian faction at Leeds and their friends among Fairfax’s circle in Yorkshire – notably, Arthington, Tempest and John Stanhope* – who looked to Widdrington for support in their struggle against John Lambert*, Adam Baynes* and the pro-army interest in the West Riding.331Supra, ‘Leeds’; Add. 21424, ff. 131, 132, 136; Add. 21427, f. 227.

During the winter of 1656-7, Widdrington fell seriously ill and the House had to be adjourned on several occasions in late December and early January due to his ‘indisposition of body’, prompting some Members to declare that he was unfit to take the chair and should therefore appoint a stand-in.332Burton’s Diary, i. 261, 264, 291, 297, 320, 321, 337, 339; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 283; Diary, 453, 454. His ‘infirmity of body’ notwithstanding, he joined the Members at the Banqueting House on 23 January in congratulating Cromwell on his deliverance from Sindercombe’s plot, making a speech in which he claimed that the protector’s survival was ‘a business that the welfare and safety not only of the people of this nation, but of all the reformed churches was involved in’.333Mercurius Politicus no. 346 (22-29 Jan. 1657), 7558-60. But he was so incapacitated by 27 January that even though he came to the House, it voted to replace him with Whitelocke pro tem.334Burton’s Diary, i. 369; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 284; Diary, 454-5. Widdrington resumed the chair on 18 February, although according to Whitelocke he was still ‘very weak and feeble’ and had returned to the House only in order to claim the Speaker’s fees due on the passage of numerous bills for naturalization, ‘he being desirous of the money, though to the harzard of his life, and to reap the fruits of Whitelocke’s labour’.335Burton’s Diary, i. 375; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 285; Diary, 457. Whitelocke claimed that his friends

were apprehensive of the hard measure I had in being thus defeated, and they were sensible of my pains and dexterity in managing the business of the House, wherein I had given them great content, and said that in the short time of my being Speaker, by my holding them to the points in debate, they had despatched more business than in all the time before of their sitting.336Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 285.

This ‘contest’ between the two men over the Speaker’s fees rumbled on until July, when Whitelocke reluctantly accepted £100 from Widdrington ‘to avoid [further] debate ... though he [Whitelocke] lost four times as much of that which was justly due to him’.337Whitelocke, Diary, 473.

Widdrington’s greed probably appeared all the worse in light of his notable incompetence as Speaker: he was indecisive, his grasp of procedure was occasionally weak, and his clumsy attempts to head off opposition to the government sometimes caused resentment. Thomas Burton* noted how, during a debate on the Humble Petition and Advice, on 24 April, Widdrington deliberately overlooked a motion of Thomas Bampfylde – a particular critic of Widdrington’s – aimed at bringing the army under closer parliamentary control.338Burton’s Diary, i. 161, 302, 304, 423; ii. 9, 10, 16, 33-4, 41, 42, 49, 58, 69, 70, 73, 122, 149, 191-2, 237, 322. Widdrington only acquitted himself well, it seems, on large ceremonial occasions. His speech to Cromwell on 31 March, marking Parliament’s presentation of the Petition and Advice to the protector was ‘at once grave and eloquent and long and prolix’. During this address, Widdrington urged Cromwell to accept the title of king, arguing that it was ‘well-known to the nation, agreeable to their constitutions and necessary to the temperament of the people’.339CSP Ven. 1657-9, p. 37; Mercurius Politicus no. 355 (26 Mar.-2 Apr. 1657), 7702-3. He also delivered speeches to Cromwell on 8 April, again asking him to take the crown, and on 25 May, when the House presented the protector with the revised Petition and Advice.340Burton’s Diary, i. 421-3; CSP Ven. 1657-9, p. 62; Mercurius Politicus no. 356 (2-9 Apr. 1657), 7719-20; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 535. The high point of his term as Speaker came at Westminster Hall on 26 June, when he presided at Cromwell’s investiture as protector under the new constitution.341OPH xxi. 152-9; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 303-5; Diary, 470-2; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 560-1.

Widdrington profited considerably from his various employments under Cromwell. He reportedly made nearly £1,500 during his first year as Speaker just from fees alone; his salary as Speaker was £1,829 a year, and he continued to receive £1,000 a year as a treasury commissioner and £50 a year as chancellor of County Durham.342Add. 32471, f. 12; A Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 10 (E.935.5). Appointed lord chief baron of the exchequer in June 1658 – on the advice, so Whitelocke claimed, of himself and Widdrington’s other friends – he was obliged to ride the Midland circuit in 1658 and the London circuit the following year.343Whitelocke, Diary, 493; CJ vii. 686b, 708b; CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 163, 375; 1659-60, p. 10.

Restored Rump, Restoration and final years, 1659-64

Widdrington apparently declined to stand as a candidate in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659 – possibly to avoid the indignity of not being re-appointed Speaker. With the restoration of the Rump in May 1659, he conveniently set aside his preference for a monarchical settlement and his time as a Cromwellian ‘kingling’ and resumed his seat in the House. Although republican critics of the protectorate had denounced him as a careerist, it was in serving the Rump in 1659-60 that he came closest to justifying this charge.344Narrative of the Late Parl. 10. He received 13 appointments in the House before its dissolution in October: the first on 21 May, when he and Francis Thorpe were assigned care of a committee to review – and, if necessary, to bring in an ordinance for repealing – the legislation passed since April 1653.345CJ vii. 661b, 662a, 676b, 685a, 693b, 705b, 706b, 707b, 709a, 715a, 717b, 755b, 769a. In contrast to several of their judicial colleagues, Widdrington and Thorpe took the oath ‘to be true and faithful and constant to this commonwealth’, and they rode circuit that summer.346Supra, ‘Francis Thorpe’; CJ vii. 686b, 687b, 708b; Clarke Pprs. iv. 284. Widdrington chaired and reported from a committee for authorizing the holding of assizes in County Durham (6 July), and he was named in first place to a committee for settling probate and adminstrations (14 July).347CJ vii. 706b, 707a, 717b. Granted a month’s leave of absence on 26 August after riding the London circuit, he had failed to return to Westminster by 30 September, when the House was called, prompting a division on whether to fine him £20. The majority tellers for the noes were the republican grandees Hesilrige and Henry Neville.348CJ vii. 789b, 790a.

Widdrington returned to Westminster following the Rump’s final restoration late in 1659, and he was elected to a new council of state on 31 December – although to no effect, for he attended none of its meetings.349CJ vii. 800b; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. xxv. His elevation to the council was probably part of a wider effort by the Rump to court General George Monck* and his principal ally in the north, Lord Fairfax. On 6 January 1660, the House ordered Widdrington to write a letter of thanks to Fairfax for his recent success in raising Yorkshire against Lambert and the committee of safety.350CJ vii. 804a. In mid-January, the Rump appointed John Wylde as lord chief baron of the exchequer, transferring Widdrington to the post of principal commissioner of the great seal.351CJ vii. 814a, 814b, 816a; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 389. He was named to six committees between late December 1659 and mid-February 1660, including that of 10 January for drafting a new Engagement of loyalty to the commonwealth.352CJ vii. 798b, 800a, 806b, 818a, 827a, 843a. On 14 February, Widdrington and his fellow lawyer William Ellys were instructed to bring in a less republican version of the Engagement – although it still declared against a king, single person or House of Lords – in an attempt to satisfy General Monck, which Widdrington reported the next day.353CJ vii. 843a, 844a; Prose Works of Milton ed. Ayers, vii. 173. Re-elected to the council of state that was appointed a few days after the re-admission of the secluded Members on 21 February, he attended 21 of its 57 meetings.354CJ vii. 849b; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. xxvi, xxvii. He continued to sit after 21 February, but received no further committee appointments before the Long Parliament was dissolved in mid-March.355CJ vii. 867b.

Although Widdrington had resigned his recorderships on his appointment as lord chief baron of the exchequer in 1658, he evidently rertained a strong interest in York and Berwick, for he was returned for both boroughs in the elections to the 1660 Convention.356HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Sir Thomas Widdrington’. On this occasion, he opted to sit for York, and, in May, the city corporation re-appointed him recorder.357York City Archives, York House Bk. 37, p. 139. Included on Lord Wharton’s list of Members deemed likely to support a Presbyterian church settlement, he was assigned responsibility for managing two other MPs.358G.T.F. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 344. He was an active member of the Convention, where his views ‘represented those of the most intransigent section of the older ex-parliamentarians’.359G.R. Jones, ‘Political groups and tactics in the Convention of 1660’, HJ vi. 164-5. At the opening of the first session late in April, for example, he moved that all former royalists and any other Members excluded under the qualifications for election be expelled from the House, but he failed to find a seconder.360CCSP iv. 686. Widdrington’s only son Thomas – who had been returned for the Northumberland borough of Morpeth – was permitted on 8 May to accompany Fairfax in Parliament’s delegation to Charles II at The Hague, where he would die of a ‘violent fever’.361CJ viii. 18a; Ludlow, Voyce, 158; HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Thomas Widdrington’. Later that same month, Sir Thomas lost his place as a commissioner of the great seal, although on 1 June he was re-appointed a serjeant-at-law. His patrons at the investiture ceremony were the earl of Northumberland and the former royalist commander, the earl (now marquess) of Newcastle.362Baker, Serjeants at Law, 443. Defeated at York in the elections to the Cavalier Parliament in 1661, he was returned again for Berwick.363HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Sir Thomas Widdrington’.

Widdrington died on 13 May 1664 and was buried three days later (16 May) in the chancel of St Giles-in-the-Fields, close to his wife and his daughter Dorothy, who had both died in 1649.364Desiderata Curiosa ed. Peck, ii, lib. xiv, 37; Widdrington, Analecta ed. Caine, xxx; J. Parton, Some Acct. of the Hospital and Par. of St Giles in the Fields (1882), 219, 221. In his will, in which he asked to be buried ‘without the least funeral pomp’, he referred to two indentures drawn up in July 1663 by which he had assigned the bulk of his estate to seven trustees – including two of his brothers, Lord Fairfax, Henry Arthington and John Rushworth – who were to settle these properties upon his four daughters and their children, his second brother Sir Henry Widdrington and his other brothers, and for the provision of a school at Stamfordham. He kept one of these indentures himself and committed the other to the safe-keeping of his ‘worthy friend’, the barrister and former Rumper William Ellys. He requested that his two younger daughters be ‘religiously and virtuously educated’, and he gave £10 to one of his brothers and Rushworth with the stipulation that they be ‘aiding and assisting’ to his daughters. He made bequests totalling about £450, charged his estate with £20 in annuities and left debts of £2,350. His legatees included his old ‘schoolfellow’, the Long Parliament’s envoy to to the Dutch Republic, Walter Strickland*. He appointed Lord Fairfax, Arthington and three other gentlemen his supervisors.365Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 46, ff. 330-3. His brother Sir Henry Widdrington represented Morpeth in the Cavalier Parliament.366HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Henry Widdrington’.