WHICHCOTE (WHITCHCOTT), Christopher (1603-64), of Windsor Castle, New Windsor, Berks.

The Whichcotes traced their descent back to John Whichcot, a native of Shropshire who moved to Lincolnshire and who served as sheriff of that county in 1466. While one branch of his descendants prospered in Lincolnshire, another moved back to Shropshire.22Lincs. Peds. iii. 1069-73. John Tillotson, the future archbishop of Canterbury, described them as ‘a worthy and ancient family’.23J. Tillotson, A Sermon preached at the funeral of the Reverend Benjamin Whichcot (1683), 22. By the late sixteenth century Christopher Whichcote senior, was living at Stoke in Burford.24Lincs. Peds. iii. 1070-1. His third son, Christopher junior, the future MP, was baptised there in 1603, and his sixth, Benjamin, the future provost of King’s College, Cambridge, was born there in 1610.25Reg. of Burford, ed. Baldwyn Childe, 19, 25. By the mid-1630s the younger Christopher had followed in the footsteps of his elder brother, Charles, moving to London to pursue a career in trade. Sources in 1636 (at his marriage) and in 1643 described him simply as ‘a merchant’.26Regs. of Bitton, ed. Carlyon-Britton, 67; Dillon, ‘MS list of officers’, 135. Perhaps, like Charles, he became a member of the Grocers’ Company.27C. Webb, Grocers’ Co. Apprenticeships 1629-1800 (2008), 36, 83, 110, 168. Almost nothing else is known about the brothers’ commercial activities, although in the mid-1630s Charles was the joint owner of a 120-ton ship.28CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 453. Christopher was then living in the parish of St Helen’s within Bishopgate in a house with a rental value of £20 a year.29Regs. of St Helen’s, Bishopgate, 25-7; Inhabitants of London, 1638, 69. In 1642 he invested £100 in the Irish Adventure.30CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-59, p. 95; Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 194, 213.

Whichcote’s London connections were the key factor in the first stage of his military career. When the war broke out he was already a captain in the White regiment of the London trained bands (serving under its colonel, Isaac Penington*).31BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database; Dillon, ‘MS list of officers’, 135. By the autumn of 1643 he was also colonel of the Green auxiliary regiment.32Dillon, ‘MS list of officers’, 142. But he also seems to have had a position in the regular army, for by July 1643, when he was sitting on the committee for plundered goods at Sevenoaks in Kent, he was a lieutenant-colonel.33SP28/8, f. 52. It is unclear to which unit he was attached, although Sir William Waller* later claimed that Whichcote had once served under him with that rank.34The Poetry of Anna Matilda (1788), 119. From the spring of 1644 the Green auxiliaries were assigned to the army of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.35W. Emberton, Skippon’s Brave Boys (Buckingham, 1984), 101. They were then combined with the Yellow and Orange auxiliaries. It was therefore as their commanding officer that Whichcote supported Essex’s controversial decision in June 1644 to try to relieve Lyme, being one of the army officers who signed the letter to the House of Lords justifying that strategy.36LJ vi. 616b-617a. He then commanded the Green auxiliaries during Essex’s ill-fated campaign in the west country.37SP28/18, ff. 67, 370; SP 28/19, ff. 113-14; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 513, 514-15; [J. Vicars], England’s Worthies (1647), 5. Whichcote’s status as a London army officer would also explain why in August 1644 he was appointed as one of the commissioners for martial law within the capital.38CJ iii. 562b; A. and O. By this point he held the rank of colonel.39CJ iii. 562b; A. and O.; SP28/19, ff. 113-14.

His military career took a change of direction in April 1645. The London militia committee nominated him as governor of Farnham Castle. This was blocked by some local parliamentarians, whose preferred candidate was John Fielder*. But Whichcote then received a more substantial consolation prize, when it was decided that he should instead become the governor of Windsor Castle.40CSP Dom. 1644-5, 385, 399; LJ vii. 334b; Harl. 483, f. 191v. He replaced John Venn*, who had been forced to resign by the Self-Denying Ordinance. Windsor was not just a major royal residence. With Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire crucial military theatres, the castle had reverted to its other function as a fortress. Once again it protected the western approaches to London. It was also being used as a prison. As governor, Whichcote became one of Parliament’s principal military gaolers.

Whichcote got to work immediately. Within days the Committee of Both Kingdoms had received his proposals for the better running of the castle.41CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 441, 462. These were probably the basis of the proposal raised in the Commons the following month that a bill be passed to provide £300 from the excise for the maintenance of the garrison. The Commons ordered that this bill be prepared, but failed to follow up on the idea.42CJ iv. 153b. It was only on 5 July, when Whichcote persuaded the corporation of London to lobby the Commons on his behalf, that it was agreed that £400 should be paid to the Windsor garrison. In requesting this money, he had explained that there were only 200 soldiers at Windsor, ‘part of them very aged and unserviceable’, instead of the 50 horse and 400 soldiers there were supposed to be.43HMC 6th Rep. 69; CJ iv. 197b-198a.

In October 1645 Whichcote wrote to the Committee of Both Kingdoms warning that a force from Donnington Castle, the royalist-held fortress 30 miles to the west, might pose a threat to Windsor. The Committee responded by sending 100 men as reinforcements from Middlesex, but the threat soon passed and those reinforcements were almost immediately recalled.44CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 207, 212, 217-18, 232, 234, 239. In the meantime Whichcote had seized the moment to remind Parliament, through a letter to Speaker William Lenthall*, that his men were owed over 80 weeks’ wages. Several weeks later a second letter gave Lenthall details of royalist plundering in the area.45HMC Portland, i. 315, 327. This might also be the period when Whichcote warned Parliament that the Windsor garrison had been ‘reduced to very great extremity and continual dangers of mutinies threatening a total and sudden desertion’.46Longleat, Whitelocke pprs. XXI, f. 17. The result of these efforts was that in early January 1646 Parliament granted him £500.47CJ iv. 401b. A further £300 was raised later that year when damaged statues, possibly part of Henry VIII’s unfinished tomb in St George’s Chapel, were sold off.48CJ iv. 502b; M. Mitchell, ‘Works of art from Rome to Henry VIII’, Jnl. of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xxxiv. 192; Windsor Castle ed. S. Brindle (2018), 210. Whichcote had also handed over to Parliament the Garter collar of the late king of Sweden, Gustavus Adolphus, which had been found hidden in the castle.49LJ viii. 96b; Longleat, Whitelocke pprs. IX, f. 79.

In 1646 Whichcote petitioned the Lords on a more personal matter, claiming that Nicholas Loftus was refusing to repay a loan of £280, even though, as the deputy treasurer-at-war for Ireland, he had previously received at least that much money from the Irish Adventurers. As treasurer, Loftus had invoked parliamentary immunity and it was this that Whichcote wanted the Lords to overrule. As he pointed out, he too was working for Parliament. Having given Loftus three months in which to respond, the Lords ruled on 31 October 1646 that any privilege he claimed should be waived and that Whichcote had the right to take him to law.50HMC 6th Rep. 128, 138; LJ viii. 446b, 551b.

In June 1647 Parliament confirmed Whichcote in office as governor of Windsor.51CJ v. 126a; LJ ix. 239a; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 564. On 2 July he was placed in the invidious position of having to receive the king in what was still technically one of his palaces, but in the context of Charles contravening Parliament’s order of 29 June that he should move to Holdenby.52LJ ix. 307b, 313b. However, with the help of his men, Whichcote enforced Parliament’s order of 28 June that James Stuart, 1st duke of Richmond, and the king’s chaplains were not to have access to the king, despite the refusal of Edward Whalley* to obey without specific instructions from Sir Thomas Fairfax*.53Longleat, Whitelocke pprs. IX, f. 144. The king’s stay at Windsor proved to be brief: within a couple of days he had moved on to Caversham. Later that month Sir Thomas Fairfax sent an additional 100 men to join the Windsor garrison.54Mems. of the Great Civil War, ed. Cary, i. 315. In July 1648, during the second civil war, rumours that some of the secondary royal palaces in the Thames valley might be attacked prompted Whichcote to mobilise his forces. The scare soon passed, but the Derby House Committee was impressed by Whichcote’s swift action.55CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 156, 158, 164, 168, 170, 184-5, 188.

When the army’s council of officers met at Windsor town hall in late November 1648, Whichcote attended some of those discussions and on 25 November he was included on the council’s sub-committee to consider ‘present affairs’.56Clarke Pprs. ii. 56, 280. His company was then probably among those that entered London with Sir Thomas Fairfax on 2 December.57Clarke Pprs. ii. 65. He attended the meeting of the council of officers at Whitehall on 26 December, when he supported the proposal that the Agreement of the People should restrict Parliament’s powers to punish individuals.58B. Taft, ‘Voting lists of the council of officers, December 1648’, BIHR lii. 149.

By then Whichcote had already received the castle’s most important prisoner, for on the evening of 23 December he had accepted the king into his custody.59Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 714-15. The imprisoned monarch and his gaoler got on well: according to Sir Thomas Herbert, Whichcote accompanied the king on his daily walks along the north terrace, the former behaving ‘very civilly’ throughout.60T. Fuller, The Church Hist. of Britain ed. J.S. Brewer (Oxford, 1845), vi. 410. Recognising that even keeping the king as a prisoner was expensive, the Rump voted £20 a day to Whichcote, of which £15 was for the king’s expenses and £5 for the soldiers guarding him.61CJ vi. 108b. When the time came, it fell to Whichcote to inform Charles that he was to be moved to London in preparation for his trial.62Fuller, Church Hist. vi. 412. Whichcote organised Charles’s burial in St George’s Chapel on 8 February 1649, and prevented the bishop of London, William Juxon, from using the Book of Common Prayer.63Fuller, Church Hist. vi. 433; Clarendon, Hist. iv. 493. Two of the four peers present, the duke of Richmond and the 2nd earl of Lindsey (Sir Montagu Bertie†), had previously been held by Whichcote as royalist prisoners in the castle.

For Whichcote, the useful by-product of such activity was to remind Parliament of the need to improve the castle’s security. The previous spring they had acknowledged that Whichcote ought to have £1,500 for its repair, but now they made arrangements for payment.64CJ v. 575b-576a; LJ x. 292a. On 2 January 1649, having voted the money for the king’s upkeep, the Rump ordered the preparation of a bill to raise the sum by selling timber from the sequestered Buckinghamshire estates of George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham.65CJ vi. 108b, 116a. However, Whichcote had still not received the money by June 1650.66CJ vi. 424a. As governor of the castle, he was involved in the management of Windsor Great Forest and waged a constant battle against the illegal felling of its trees.67CSP Dom. 1650, p. 50; 1653-4, pp. 376, 384, 407; 1654, pp. 9-10, 169; Longleat, Whitelocke pprs. XVI, f. 78; Add. 24861, f. 95; Whitelocke, Diary, 440, 519. In September 1656 he suggested to Bulstrode Whitelocke*, the constable of the castle, that this ought to be raised in Parliament.68Longleat, Whitelocke pprs. XVII, f. 199. In late 1649 Whichcote took advantage of the sale of the king’s goods to buy a set of silver-studded horse furniture for £25.69Inventories King’s Goods, 431.

Following the invasion by Charles Stuart and the Scots in August 1651, in accordance with instructions from the council of state, Whichcote raised a militia company of 200 men from the surrounding area as an emergency addition to the existing Windsor garrison.70CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 382-3. The subsequent victory at Worcester enhanced the castle’s importance as forces were transferred from the scaled down garrison at Oxford.71CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 415-16. The castle was then used to house many of the Scottish prisoners captured at Worcester.72CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 130, 579, 589; 1652-3, p. 25. Its military significance continued to be recognised. In December 1653, in one of his last orders before being elevated to become lord protector, Oliver Cromwell* authorised Whichcote to raise his own company of foot soldiers as additional protection.73Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 129. But an investigation by the protectoral council two months later uncovered the scandalous fact that Whichcote was having to pay these men out of his own pocket.74CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 417-18.

In 1654 Parliament passed an act to clarify the legal status of the poor knights of Windsor, who lived in the castle’s Lower Ward, almost certainly based on Whichcote’s draft bill, submitted to the council of state in January 1650.75Longleat, Whitelocke pprs. X, ff. 7, 10v-11; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 490; A. and O. The extinction of the order of the Garter and the abolition of the chapter of St George’s Chapel, which managed their endowments, threatened both the poor knights’ incomes and their future just at a time when Parliament began to use those places as a convenient form of relief for ordinary soldiers who had distinguished themselves in its service. The bill appointed governors (including Whichcote) to manage lands for their maintenance.76A. and O. This measure was such a success that by 1659 the governors had a annual surplus of £213.77PRO31/17/33, ff. 390-1. Whichcote’s influence on the 1654 bill can probably also be detected in its granting of powers to these governors to dismiss any preachers in the town.78A. and O. Two years earlier the former lecturer of Windsor, Robert Bacon, had blamed Whichcote in print for getting him sacked.79R. Bacon, A Taste of the Spirit of God (1652), 29-36 (E.669.13). In March 1649 the council had instructed Whichcote to take care that sermons were regularly preached for the garrison and the prisoners, while in September 1650 he had pressed the council for money to provide for this.80CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 32; 1650, p. 353. The statute bolstered his powers.

Whichcote proved to be a loyal servant of the protectorate. The importance of the castle inevitably declined during peacetime, although locally he remained an important figure. He was routinely appointed to the local commissions covering Berkshire and, unsurprisingly, he attended the inaugural meeting of the Berkshire commission to secure the peace of the commonwealth at Reading in December 1655; he was later said to have helped collect the decimation tax.81TSP iv. 284-5; LR9/105, unfol. In July 1654 he was among the leading gentlemen of the county who signed the Berkshire election indenture and in August 1656, he signed the indenture returning the five candidates for knights of the shire who actually took their seats in the 1656 Parliament.82C219/44, unfol.; CP40/2703, rot. 560; CJ vii. 598b-599a. He was probably putting down roots in Windsor. In the sale of the royal lands he had acquired a number of properties in and around the castle, including the royal gardens and the farm at Frogmore.83Longleat, Whitelocke pprs. XII, f. 190; S.J. Madge, The Domesday of Crown Lands (1938), 387, 389; Roberts, Royal Landscape, 211. It also seems to have been at Windsor that in October 1657 his younger daughter, Mary, married one of Benjamin Whichcote’s protégés, John Worthington, the master of Jesus College, Cambridge. The guests probably included another of the Cambridge Platonists, the master of Christ’s, Ralph Cudworth.84Worthington Diary, i. 86-7, 89.

The death of Cromwell in September 1658 did not, in the short term, change Whichcote’s position. As governor, he took part in the late lord protector’s funeral procession on 23 November, walking immediately behind the poor knights of Windsor.85SP18/182, fo. 205; Burton’s Diary, ii. 521. One consequence of the accession of Richard Cromwell* and of the decision to revive the old parliamentary franchises was that New Windsor regained its two seats in the Commons. That Whichcote was then elected as one of its MPs for the 1659 Parliament is unsurprising; the castle interest in the town had always been strong and Whichcote’s position made him the leading local resident. He then left no trace on the records during his brief period in the Commons. In the weeks following this Parliament’s dissolution, he granted permission to Wenceslaus Hollar to produce his famous engravings of the castle for Elias Ashmole’s planned work on the order of the Garter.86E. Ashmole, The Institution, Laws & Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter (1672), 628.

In response to the anticipated royalist uprising, on 30 July 1659 Whichcote was commissioned by Parliament as a captain in the regiment of foot commanded by William Michell*.87CJ vii. 742b. The following day the council of state decided that Whichcote’s company should be used to defend Windsor Castle, with 100 men sent there as reinforcements from the London regiments, but recinded this within hours.88CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 58, 60; CCSP iv. 303. With the crushing of Sir George Boothe’s* rising, the danger passed without Windsor even being remotely threatened. The real emergency there came later that year and had more immediate origins. On 28 December a party of soldiers, led by Henry Ingoldsby* and John Wildman*, seized Windsor Castle in the name of Parliament and in opposition to John Lambert* and his allies.89Whitelocke, Diary, 555. Whichcote surrendered without a fight, but he was then reluctant to cooperate without instructions from Parliament.90CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 299. The Rump therefore decided to remove him, recommending on 18 January 1660 that John Lenthall* be appointed as governor in his place.91CJ vii. 814a. But on 15 February the council of state wrote to Whichcote, addressing him as governor, assuring him he had their confidence and instructing him to resume the command of the garrison.92CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 364. A week later Whichcote wrote to Parliament seeking instructions as to what to do with the three Scottish peers (the earls of Crawford and Lauderdale and Lord Sinclair) still imprisoned in the castle. The Commons’ response was that they should be released.93CJ vii. 860b. It may well have been only with the restoration of the king that Whichcote finally ceased to act as the governor.

Whichcote and his family remained in the Windsor area. His possession of the lands at Frogmore may have been why he attracted the attention of the 1660 commission for discoveries.94E178/6589. He was still living there at his death on 26 April 1664. Three days later he was buried at Windsor, as were five other members of his family over a five week period from 20 April.95New Windsor par. reg.; Worthington Diary, 133. Of his four children, only his two daughters, Elizabeth (who had married Matthias Crabbe of Alcester, Warwickshire) and Mary, survived him.96Lincs. Peds. iii. 1071. Among his other remaining relatives were his brothers, Charles and Benjamin, and his sister, Elizabeth Foxcroft, who around this time befriended Lady Anne Conway and became the muse of another of the Cambridge Platonists, Henry More.