YORKE, William (1608-66), of West Lavington, Wilts. and the Inner Temple, London.

Despite their claims of descent from Yorkshire knights, their holding of lands since at least the fifteenth century, and an ancestor who was three times sheriff and a justice of the peace in the reign of Henry VIII, in the early seventeenth century the Yorkes were positioned rather precariously among the Wiltshire gentry.18Aubrey, Wilts. Top. Collections ed. Jackson, 181; Wilts N and Q vii. 171; VCH Wilts. xii. 24. William Yorke the elder was recorded by the heralds in the 1623 visitation, but had been described as a yeoman in 1617 when acting as attorney for William Herbert, 3rd earl of Pembroke, and others.19Vis. Wilts. 1623, 221; Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxvi. 272. Perhaps parish gentry covers it: Yorke senior was a churchwarden at Lydiard Tregoze in 1609/10.20Lydiard Tregoze par. reg. None the less, marriage with solid armigerous families inside and outside the county, the acquisition of further property in north Wiltshire, and individual ability and usefulness to the local élite ensured that the Yorkes were well placed to seize opportunities for advancement.21VCH Wilts. ix. 122; Wilts. RO, 348/2/4, 12.

William Yorke the younger’s entry in 1627 to the newly-founded Pembroke College hints at patronage from the earl; that he stayed to graduate indicates studiousness.22Al. Ox. While his younger brother Edward went on from the same college to a fellowship at Magdalen, Yorke himself proceeded to the Inner Temple, where he was called to the bar in May 1637. Active at the inn, he became a bencher in 1652, and eventually succeeded John Selden* in his chambers.23CITR ii. 234 and passim; iii. 2. In the meantime, he maintained contacts with his native county, serving as counsel when the commission of the peace met at Salisbury in January 1642, and again at Marlborough in October 1643, when it exhibited a royalist complexion.24Wilts. RO, A1/160/1, ff. 1, 27.

The extent of Yorke’s engagement with the royalist cause during the first civil war, or indeed later, is elusive. He was among those commissioned by Charles I in May 1644 and March 1645 to levy excise in Wiltshire.25Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 212, 261. According to information which reached the Committee for Advance of Money in January 1649, he was at Oxford when it was the royalist capital and assisted the king’s cause, while it was alleged in the 1650s that he had been ‘actually in arms in the late king’s own troop’.26CCAM 1049; TSP iv. 609. No evidence has surfaced to support these charges or of his activities as an excise commissioner. Indeed, Wiltshire commissioners certified in June 1649 that they could not find that Yorke was either an enemy to Parliament or guilty of delinquency, and that November he was discharged.27CCAM 1049. However, it is possible that links with either the Herbert or Danvers families, both of whom had royalist members, had fostered not unreasonable suspicions.

Some time between August 1644 and October 1646 Yorke married Elizabeth, widow of Henry Danvers I*.28Wilts N and Q i. 326. Through his wife he gained property at West Lavington (also known as Bishops Lavington), which he seems to have made his country home in his father’s lifetime, and an interest in the sequestered estate of the late Henry Danvers, 1st earl of Danby, who had bequeathed to his cousin and namesake a lease of the impropriated rectories of Idbury and Fyfield.29PROB 11/194, f. 100; CCC 1638; CCAM 1388. From 1646 Yorke acted for the earl’s brother Sir John Danvers* as steward for manors including Bishops Lavington, and possibly had an earlier connection, since the earl’s will also named Yorke’s Stampe relatives.30Wilts. N and Q iv. 144; viii. 211; PROB11/194/124. Yorke seems to have been vigorous in promoting the interests of both Danvers and himself, telling Robert Loggin of Idbury in November 1647 that Danvers would have settled rents on the incumbent had his petition against the sequestration not been delayed by pressure of business in the House of Commons, and in July 1649 expressing amazement that Loggin’s neighbours could not give as much for their corn tithes as they had ten years earlier, when all other farmers seemed to have no such difficulty.31Leics. RO, DG39/744-5. In 1652-3 he was named as trustee in the settlement of Danvers’ estates along with, among others, Richard Salwey*, Robert Atkyns*, and Thomas Yate(s), an ejected academic and covert royalist with whom he was to have a close association.32Wilts. RO, 9/26/3; C6/136/155; CCAM 464; ‘Thomas Yate’, Oxford DNB. On 1 June 1655, shortly after Sir John Danvers’ death, he conducted the second marriage ceremony of the latter’s younger daughter Anne and Sir Henry Lee*.33West Lavington par. reg.

Meanwhile, in 1646 Yorke had been placed on the commission of the peace.34Western Circuit Assize Orders, 224; C231/6, p. 69. He attended all four quarter sessions in 1648, but then did not appear again until April 1653, from when he immediately became one of the most regular attenders, usually being listed first.35Wilts. RO, A1/160/1, 2. Given that 1649 was when the case for his delinquency was dismissed (which might be deemed to have made his tenure more secure), this seems to indicate a distaste for the commonwealth which his employer had endorsed as a regicide, but a readiness to work with the protectorate. Local experience, professional expertise and the support of key members of the élite – almost certainly Danvers but perhaps also crypto-royalists – appear to account for his return to the 1654 Parliament for a county seat. As a bencher of his inn he may have been singled out in advance as someone likely to forward legal reform and constitutional legislation.

Appointed on 15 September to the committee to investigate the powers of the judiciary, it was as chairman – remarkably for a novice MP – that he reported on 25 October the shortcomings it had found in the ordinances for the relief of creditors and poor prisoners.36CJ vii. 368a, 378a; Burton’s Diary i. p. lviii. He was among those delegated to prepare the ordinance regulating chancery (5 Oct.) and to devize a court of justice for the north and arrangements for probate in England, Wales and Ireland (14 Dec.).37CJ vii. 374a, 401a. After only a month’s parliamentary experience, he was added to the committee of privileges (5 Oct.), and the same day had sufficient confidence to complain of their infringement in the arrest of Sir Robert Pye II*.38CJ vii. 373b. Involved from the outset (21 Sept.) in the preparation of the bill to settle the government, he was subsequently named to a succession of related tasks: drafting an oath to be subscribed by MPs (25 Sept.); rationalizing the offices of sheriff and under-sheriff (4 Dec.); recasting the constitutional bill as it evolved after votes in the House (7 Dec.); defining the ‘damnable heresies’ to be outlawed in it (12 Dec.); rephrasing the clause on the franchise (1 Jan. 1655); addressing the contentious proviso that that nothing should be altered without the consent of both protector and Parliament (12 Jan.); providing for revenue to underpin the settlement (13 Jan.).39CJ vii. 369a, 370a, 394b, 398a, 399b, 411a, 415a, 415b. He was also chairman of the small committee which reported on a bill to set confiscations and fines for treason and felony (30 Dec., 15 Jan.).40CJ vii. 409b 415b. Wider competence was recognised in his inclusion on committees dealing with censorship (22 Sept.) and the importation of vital foodstuffs (6 Oct.).41CJ vii. 369b, 374b. Although he was found quite frequently in company with fellow Wiltshire members Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper* and Edward Bayntun*, it would probably be misleading to conclude that Yorke operated in any county bloc. His offices as deputy governor of the Mineral and Battery Company (from 1652) and the Society of Mines (from 1655) indicate broad interests and extensive contacts, and suggest a continuing connection with the Herbert circle.42HP Commons 1660-1690.

A consciousness that Yorke’s patrons and contacts protected him from local accountability may have exacerbated the hostility of more radical elements. In March 1656 James Hely*, who was to sit for Salisbury later that year, joined a fellow Wiltshire commissioner in expressing astonishment to Oliver Cromwell* that such ‘a dangerous person’, who had ‘discourag[ed] honest men in assisting the Parliament at the late Worcester fight, and is still a discountenancer of religious people’, should ‘lie unquestioned all this while’ and be elected to the House ‘through the disaffection of some people, to the great grief of honest men’.43TSP iv. 609-10. Hely’s request for a trial before county commissioners does not seem to have been acceded to, but Yorke was not returned for succeeding Protectorate parliaments. However, he continued as a justice of the peace, albeit with brief intermissions in 1657 and 1658, and served as a commissioner of oyer and terminer thereafter.44C231/6, pp. 363, 371; C193/13/6, f. 96v; C193/13/5, f. 116; C181/6, p. 378; Wilts. RO, A1/160/2; A. and O. According to John Aubrey he was present at a meeting of gentlemen, held in Devizes in March 1659 for the purpose of choosing MPs for the county, at which a project was mooted to produce a work on Wiltshire’s antiquities ‘in imitation of Mr [William] Dugdale’s Illustration of Warwickshire’. Since it was considered ‘too great a task for one man’, Yorke ‘a lover of this kind of learning, advised to have the labour divided’, volunteering to ‘undertake the middle division’. While the accolade of the greatest antiquary in Wiltshire ‘as to evidences’ belonged to judge Robert Nicholas*, Aubrey noted that Yorke too had made memoranda of ‘ancient deeds that came into his hands’.45Aubrey, Wilts. Top. Collections ed. Jackson, 3.

Yorke’s professional and public career flourished after the Restoration. Active both at his inn and in Wiltshire, by 1666 he was a trustee for Philip Herbert*, 5th earl of Pembroke.46Commonplace Bk. of Sir Edward Bayntun, 7, 16; Wilts. N and Q i. 276; CITR ii, iii. Between 1660 and 1662 he became freeman, recorder and alderman of Devizes.47Cunnington, Devizes, 133; HP Commons 1660-1690. Elected to represent the borough in the Cavalier Parliament, he was a very active Member, sitting on many committees relating to procedural, legal, religious and economic affairs. A conformist who apparently supported the court, he was on the other hand a pronounced sabbatarian.48HP Commons 1660-1690. Having been given leave to go into the country on 10 November 1666, he died shortly afterwards, and was buried at the Temple church on 29 November.49HP Commons 1660-1690; CITR iii. 446. His only son had predeceased him in 1659, so his property appears to have descended to his nephew William Yorke and his stepsons Charles and John Danvers, who had followed him to the Inner Temple.50MIs Wilts. 1822, 246; CITR ii. 309; iii. 3; VCH Wilts. ix. 82.