WILMOT, Henry (1612-58), of Adderbury, Oxon.

The Wilmot family was of no great antiquity as gentry. Henry Wilmot’s great-grandfather, Edward Wilmot, was the son of a yeoman of Witney, in Oxfordshire. Edward had founded the fortunes of the family by judicious land purchases, and Henry’s father, Charles, served as a distinguished soldier in Ireland. He began his military career there under Elizabeth I, and rose to become governor of Cork in 1600. Elected MP for Launceston in 1614, as a classic carpet-bagger, Charles Wilmot became lord president of Connaught in 1616. His title of Viscount Wilmot of Athlone, bestowed on him in 1621, acknowledged the town of his residence, in West Meath. He commanded the ill-fated relief expedition to the Île de Ré in 1627, and returned to Ireland in 1629 as commander-in-chief.22Barron, ‘The Wild Wilmots’, 2-4. During the 1630s, the Wilmots formed an antipathy to the lord deputy, the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†), that coloured Henry Wilmot’s political behaviour in the early 1640s. In 1635, Lord Wilmot was pursued by Strafford for appropriating crown property for his own use, and was compelled to repay fee farm rents in Athlone to the Crown.23S.R. Gardiner, Hist. Eng. 1603-1642, viii. 183; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Charles Wilmot’. Henry Wilmot’s maternal lineage sprang from London merchants and traders, and so when the family acquired a part-freehold, part-leasehold estate at Adderbury in Oxfordshire, in 1612, it was almost as if the Wilmots were arriving in the county as newcomers.24HMC Lords n.s. iv, 172.

The young Henry Wilmot followed his father’s profession of arms, and served in the Low Countries in the 1630s. His own professional military experience, and the precedent of his father’s career doubtless recommended him to Charles I as a suitable commander when the king was forced to confront the Scots in 1639 and 1640. Wilmot had been appointed commissary-general of horse by 8 April 1639, and on active service in Scotland he was gaoled briefly for drawing his sword on an English infantry officer.25SP16/417/110; M. C. Fissel, The Bishops’ Wars (Cambridge, 1994), 85. At the skirmish at Kelso, on 3 June, he was one of those officers who persuaded the lord general, Henry Rich, 1st earl of Holland, to fall back before the Scots.26‘Journal of John Aston, 1639’, Six North Country Diaries (Surtees Soc. cxviii), 24; Fissel, Bishops’ Wars, 28. In the campaign of 1640, Wilmot saw action at Newburn, on 8 September. Leading three cavalry charges against the Scots, he was seriously wounded, and his horse was killed under him.27HMC Var. ii. 256; HMC Middleton, 193. Captured by the enemy, he was treated well, as he had served in armies abroad with some senior Scots officers, and he was handed over to the king at Ripon as part of the peace treaty. He reported to the king on the discipline and large numbers of the Scots, in terms that Edward Hyde* considered somewhat exaggerated.28HMC 11th Rep. IV, 393; HMC Ormonde, n.s.ii. 378; Clarendon, Hist. i. 206.

Wilmot was returned for Tamworth on 12 November 1640 in a by-election to the Long Parliament, when William Strode I chose to sit for Bere Alston in his native county of Devon.29C219/43/2/190. The likely conduit for his election was Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, with whom Wilmot had served in the horse regiment of the earl of Holland in 1639. The Devereux family retained a hereditary interest in the stewardship of Tamworth.30E351/292; C. F. Palmer, The Hist. of Town and Castle of Tamworth (Tamworth, 1845), 111-2. On 21 November, Wilmot was appointed to the committee to consider the state of the king’s army, and particularly whether it had been infiltrated by papist officers. The committee had a wider brief, to review the whole issue of the war with the Scots and the expense of the king’s campaign in the north.31CJ ii. 34a. Wilmot was named on 3 December to the committee to consider petitions from the victims of ‘Thorough’, and the following day the committee of the Commons assembling evidence against Strafford included him as a hostile witness. On 22 December, Wilmot was sworn as a witness against the lord deputy. In his initial months in the Commons, therefore, his sympathy towards the crown could by no means be guaranteed.32CJ ii. 44b; HMC Buccleuch, iii. 396, 402.

On 11 January 1641, Wilmot was required to consider the best means of raising money for the king’s army, and on the 29th, advanced beyond his position as merely an unsympathetic witness against Strafford, to become one of a group of Members drawing up a charge against him: specifically on the subject of his alleged commissions to the 5th earl of Worcester (Henry Somerset) and his son, Lord Herbert (Edward Somerset), to raise an army in England.33CJ ii. 66a, 75b. Early the following month, Wilmot was again named to a committee proceeding against Strafford, and might have persisted as a critic of the government, were it not for a vote on 6 March to divert funds from the English army towards the Scots. A proponent of this diversion of money was William Purefoy I*, who had served with Wilmot on the committee to investigate the state of the king’s army in the north.34CJ ii. 79b; Procs. LP, ii. 650-1. The vote sent the army officers into a fury. The following day, another straw in the wind was provided in the committee to hear the differences between John Wylde* and Sir Henry Herbert*, in which Wilmot was named on behalf of the courtier Herbert as an intermediary with the supporters of Wylde, a leading critic of the king. Wilmot complained about the procedure followed by the Speaker in the case.35CJ ii. 100b; Procs. LP, ii. 680, 685. Wilmot’s father appeared in the impeachment proceedings against Strafford to testify, probably grudgingly, that he, like Strafford, had employed martial law in Ireland. Henry Wilmot did not use this opportunity to develop a higher profile in the Commons – his future career lay with the army – but from these days in early March 1641 sprang Wilmot’s growing alienation from the parliamentary opposition to the king.36Procs. LP, iii. 168, 173, 175, 179; Clarendon, Hist. i. 291.

By 20 March the senior army officers had petitioned Parliament with a statement of grievances.37PA, Main Papers, 20 Mar. 1641. On 19 April, Wilmot announced to the House that he and other senior army officers who were MPs had to leave to rejoin their regiments immediately, on the command of the lord general, the earl of Holland. This did not go down well with their parliamentary colleagues, who decided to take several days over whether to grant them permission. The army continued to provide Wilmot’s main interest in the Commons; on 3 May, on the day Wilmot took the Protestation, he was named to a committee on army supply.38CJ ii. 123a, 131b, 133a. The following day he was appointed the intermediary between the House and the lord general, and on 7 May he was asked to arrange a conference between the Commons and the Lords on the safety of the kingdom.39CJ ii. 134a, 136a. His public demeanour during these days seems to have been supportive of the parliamentary opposition – Pym was to manage the conference that Wilmot arranged on 7 May – but he spoke in the House to defend Sir John Suckling against complaints by the City authorities, by repeating the doubtful story that the troops Suckling was raising in London were intended for Portugal.40Procs. LP, iv. 179, 254. This turned out to be the first stirrings of a storm over his attitude to Parliament and the army which ended his parliamentary career. The first revelations in the so-called army plot were made in the Commons on 8 June, when exception was taken by MPs to an alleged private oath taken by George Goring* in the presence of Wilmot. Lord Digby (George Digby*) was ordered to withdraw from the House, and Wilmot followed him, although not by order. On 11 June, Wilmot was required to promise to the House that he would not contact Goring.41Procs. LP, v. 95, 96.. The examinations of Henry Percy*, Goring, Wilmot, William Ashbournham* and Hugh Pollarde* were ordered to be taken by a committee, and on 14 June this body, chaired by Nathaniel Fiennes I, reported to the House with their findings.42CJ ii. 171a, b; 173a; 175b; C. Russell, ‘The First Army Plot of 1641’, TRHS 5th ser. xxxviii. 85.

The essence of the examinations brought forth by this process made clear the extent of the alienation felt by senior army officers at Parliament’s studied lack of financial support for them. Some articulated merely a sense of grievance at what was considered the House’s preferential treatment of the Scots, while others were party to a specific programme of action. Wilmot admitted taking an oath during a meeting, although he claimed to be vague as to its content; he was willing to confess that he and his colleagues expressed a determination to support the king ‘in any just thing’ against oppressors. He further confessed his support for the earl of Essex as a new lord general – others had promoted the earl of Newcastle (William Cavendish†) or Holland – but flatly denied being party to a further plot, which had apparently focussed on a design to bring up the army to overawe Parliament.43HMC Portland, i. 15-21; Procs. LP, v. 135. He seems to have tried to communicate a sense of his continuing support for parliamentary reform, by confessing that the plotters agreed to do nothing to jeopardise the remedial legislation or the trial of Strafford.44Procs. LP, v. 141-2. His support for Essex as a new lord general seems to have been an attempt to retain links with opposition elements in Parliament, as well as loyalty to a former patron, and it emerged during the examinations of 14 June that the king had repudiated the plotters’ suggestions as ‘foolish and frivolous’.45Procs. LP v. 138. The day ended with Wilmot’s being sent to the Tower, the only one despatched to that prison; one of the parliamentary diarists noted that the Tower was the only proper destination for errant Members.46Univ. of Minnesota Lib. Z942.062, f. 129; CJ ii. 175b.

Through July and August, further revelations in the plot were aired in the Commons, the opposition leaders making the most of the opportunity to sustain the high political temperature. Wilmot petitioned for release on 3 July, and five days later it was agreed that he should be bailed on terms identical to those imposed on his fellow-plotters. It is clear that he had supporters in the House, even though Sir Arthur Hesilrige was among those who sharply questioned the validity of the bail. In the Lords, Warwick (Robert Rich†), Howard of Escrick (Edward Howard*) and Mandeville (Edward Montagu†) were willing to stand bail.47Procs. LP, v. 480, 482, 564; CJ ii. 198a, b, 203b. Nevertheless, it is clear that opposition leaders took a poor view of Wilmot’s integrity: when the committee of John Glynne reported on 22 July, it was to denounce him as a liar and perjurer.48Procs LP, vi. 53. On the 24th, the Commons considered further revelations, that the aims of the plotters had been to preserve episcopacy, to prevent an Irish army disbandment ahead of that of the Scots, and to restore the king’s revenue.49CJ ii. 223a. Although the effect of articles drawn up against the plotters was to conflate the allegations into one grand conspiracy, there seems to have been little to associate Wilmot with these new revelations or with the design to use the army to overawe Parliament.50CJ ii. 224b, 225a. This impression was confirmed in the next round of hearings in the Commons, in mid-August, when Endymion Porter* was implicated in Suckling’s plot. By 25 August, the army was securely under the control of Parliament, and the pay of the conspirators stopped: in effect a cashiering.51CJ ii. 255b, 256a, 262b, 267b, 271a; Procs. LP, vi. 380, 553.

In October, the climate of rapprochement between army and Parliament allowed John Pym* to make use of allegations against Wilmot by his own former troopers, and on 4 November, Oliver Cromwell* revealed that there had been contact between Ashbournham and Sir John Berkeley, which had convinced him of the need to terminate the bail for Wilmot and the others. These further hostile reports served as background to a new round of examinations of those implicated in the second army plot, reported to the Commons on 17 November. Wilmot was not one of these examinees, but his case was ordered to be re-opened, as part of a drawing together of threads in the whole affair. On 6 December, Daniel O’Neill was accused of high treason, and after an examination of a Captain Chudleigh at the bar of the House on 9 December, Wilmot was accused at the instigation of John Wylde* of the lesser offence of misprision of treason: knowing of a treason by another, but concealing it. This was against the wishes of Sir Simonds D’Ewes and John Glynne, who argued that his offence had been high treason. Wilmot and three other conspirators who were Members were expelled the House, and new writs ordered for their seats. Wilmot continued at large, on bail. 52D’Ewes (C), 3-4, 80, 238-9, 258-9; CJ ii. 318a, 329a, 333a, 337a.

During 1642, Wilmot attached himself to the king. In May, when Charles protested that he had no thought of using the army to subdue Parliament, his parliamentary critics cited the army plots as evidence to the contrary.53Clarendon, Hist. ii. 93. Cromwell again moved that Wilmot be summoned to appear before the Commons so that his bail might be withdrawn, but the same day, he was summoned by the king.54PJ ii. 361, 363. On 9 June 1642 he was declared a delinquent by the Commons and ordered to be arrested and brought before the House. When a messenger of Parliament went to York to attempt to apprehend him, he was cudgelled and sent back to his masters.55CJ ii. 583a, 614b; PJ iii. 160. At York, Wilmot was involved in importing arms for the king, and was arrested on board a pinnace boarded in the Humber by officers loyal to the Hull committee of safety.56PJ iii. 170, 179, 181; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 253. A few days earlier, a letter from Wilmot to William Crofts in The Hague, intercepted at sea, was brought to the House and read. Pym wrote a preface to it and had it published. The letter expressed Wilmot’s perception that the once abandoned king now had a party, and that those loyal to the king might soon be dividing among themselves the property of MPs. Pym had seen the importance of this letter in embodying the new notion that the king now had a cause and people willing to fight for it.57PJ iii. 160; The Last Newes from York and Hull (1642), sig. A2iv (E.154.23); CJ ii. 647a; LJ v. 169b; HMC Portland, i. 41. These events were enough to persuade the House to call in the bonds still current in the names of the earls of Bedford and Essex for Wilmot’s liberty.58CJ ii. 655a, 659a. As the country descended into civil war, Wilmot was reappointed commissary-general of horse, given a new commission as lieutenant-general, and was reported to be raising 500 cavalrymen for the king. Edward Hyde held him responsible, by his alleged laxity with his men, for ceding Coventry to the parliamentarians. At the significant opening skirmish of the war, at Powick Bridge, Worcester, in September, Wilmot was reported seriously wounded, but recovered in time to lead successfully the royalist left wing of cavalry at Edgehill.59Harl. 163, f. 385v; HMC 5th Rep. 191; HMC Ormonde, n.s.ii. 380; Clarendon, Hist. ii. 275, 288, 290, 352, 358, 361.

It has been argued that in 1641, Wilmot was part of the group whose ‘army plot’ was favoured more by the queen than by the king, and Hyde identified him as among those favoured by the queen from the start of the war. Certainly, he was never especially popular with the king because of his hostility to Strafford, and by November 1642, according to Hyde, a mutual antipathy had developed between Wilmot and Prince Rupert.60Clarendon, Hist. ii. 390, iii. 389, 514; Russell, ‘First Army Plot’, 92. This was doubtless exacerbated by Charles’s confirmation that month of Wilmot as lieutenant-general of horse.61Clarendon, Hist. ii. 402. The Commons, meanwhile, voted that he should be arrested again, and only the previous month had got around to cancelling his pension from the court of wards. In December, Wilmot was listed among those in the royal court, ‘the sanctuary of all delinquents’. 62Add. 18777, ff. 28v, 67v, 86v; Harl. 164, f. 101v; CJ ii. 808a. His regiment and brigade were normally quartered in Berkshire and Oxfordshire, within convenient reach of Adderbury. In an early excursion, Wilmot was successful in taking Marlborough by surprise on 5 December, and it was claimed in a newsbook that he was involved in skirmishes outside Plymouth four days later, but this report was fictitious.63Clarendon, Hist. ii. 403-4; Exceeding Joyfull Newes from Plymouth and Devonshire (1642) (E.129.30). In 1643 his command was summoned to relieve those besieged by Philip Skippon* at Reading (18 Apr.), but failed to lift the siege. The command contributed to the spectacular victory over Sir William Waller* at Roundway Down (13 July), retiring afterwards to its base at Oxford. Those royalists surrounding Rupert took no joy in the victory of Wilmot, whose supporters were in ‘the good fellowship of the army’.64Clarendon, Hist. iii. 17, 84-5, 98-9, 102, 107.

In June 1643, through the interest of the queen, he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Wilmot. This built him up further as a rival to Rupert, with whom he at least sustained a polite relationship on military matters.65Add. 18980, ff. 76, 139, 169; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 388; HMC 9th Rep. pt. 2, 433. Underlying this superficial amity was a climate of suspicion that spilled into mutual recrimination among the officers at Oxford when events did not go their way.66Clarendon, Hist. iii. 191. Hyde’s reading of Wilmot’s character was that he was a ‘man proud and ambitious, and incapable of being contented; an orderly officer in marches and governing his troops’. A hard drinker, and one who loved ‘debauchery’, he was nevertheless capable of separating business from pleasure, and compared with Goring was capable of ‘scruples from religion’.67Clarendon, Hist. iii. 388, 444. Wilmot was of the peace party among the royalists, signing a letter to the Scots privy council to try to stop their invasion. With other royalist peers, he attended the Oxford Parliament, and signed the letter to Essex, urging him to use his influence with the Parliament at Westminster in the interests of peace.68Clarendon, Hist. iii. 288; HMC Lords, iv. 65. He had evidently concluded that to prolong the war would be pointless, and confided to Henry Percy* that an honourable discharge as a maimed officer seemed preferable to carrying on in his command.69Royalist Ordnance Pprs. ed. Roy, i. 379. His inclinations towards a negotiated settlement with the Westminster Parliament can only have been enhanced by his coming into his inheritance on the death of his father in the spring of 1644: the estate at Adderbury was in hotly contested territory. This conciliatory outlook marked Wilmot off from Rupert, although Hyde thought personal antagonism between Wilmot on the one hand, and Rupert, Sir John Culpeper* and Digby on the other, was more important than policy differences between them.70Clarendon, Hist. iii. 345-6.

His doubts notwithstanding, the campaigning season of 1644 saw Wilmot still in command, at the head of 12 cavalry regiments, totalling 2,470 men.71I. Roy, ‘The Royalist Army in the First Civil War’ (Oxford DPhil thesis, 1963), 114, 151. He enjoyed military successes and tactical victories near Oxford and at Worcester early in June, and defeated Sir William Waller at Cropredy Bridge (29 June 1644). This put paid to the shadowing of the armies of Waller and the king, and Wilmot moved west to deal with the earl of Essex. But he was about to over-reach himself. Thomas Elyott, groom of the bedchamber to the prince of Wales, wrote in cypher to Rupert on 17 June 1644 that ‘Digby, Wilmot and Percy are the men that endeavour your ruin’, but the letter was intercepted by the parliamentarians.72SP16/502/16; J. Macadam, I. Roy, ‘”Wilmot’s Blots” and Cavalier Plots, June 1644’, The Seventeenth Century, xxxvi. 1-18. On the march towards Cornwall, Wilmot drafted a petition and sought the hands of his officers to it. He proposed to approach the earl of Essex again, by sending an emissary to his camp. His plan was betrayed by his enemy, Digby, and when the battle lines were drawn up in Cornwall, Wilmot suffered the indignity of arrest ‘from his horse in the head of all the troops’ (8 Aug.).73Symonds, Diary, 106-10; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 389-90. Thomas Elyott had a hand in the proceedings against Wilmot, suggesting that factionalism among the royalist high command extended to those with backstairs roles.

Removed to confinement in Exeter, Wilmot nevertheless retained his commission, and when his officers petitioned in support of him, the king probably ill-advisedly published a list of charges. Wilmot was accused of spreading rumours that Rupert was about to become commander-in-chief, asserting that officers should submit to Parliament before submitting to him, and sending secret peace overtures to Essex. Wilmot’s dignified reply was that his only crime, if it were such, was ‘a too violent expressing my inclinations to peace’.74The Accusation given by his Majestie (1644), 1-8 (E.7.27). Wilmot, realising that his days of army command were over, sought and received permission to emigrate to France, and from there was able to plot against the leaders of the Commons and later to accompany the prince of Wales from Jersey.75Clarendon, Hist. iii. 393-4; iv. 183; HMC 12th Rep. IX, 18; HMC Portland, i. 324. The king appointed him gentleman of the prince’s bedchamber as recompense for his loss of command, but Sir Samuel Luke* reported fears among the courtiers that Wilmot might complain of his treatment to the Oxford Parliament, should it be revived.76Lttr. Bks. of Sir Samuel Luke, 77.

In October 1647, Wilmot was involved in a brawl with other royalist exiles, and played little part beyond the queen’s court until August 1648, when he received a military commission under Newcastle, by this time a marquess.77HMC 7th Rep. 456; HMC Pepys, 283. He was unable to act on this authority before the death of the king, and in March 1649 was not selected for a projected mission to Ireland by Charles Stuart. Nevertheless, he was sworn to the royal council on 21 May 1649. After travelling to Scotland with Charles in June 1650, by December Wilmot was one of the few of his retinue to remain with him there, and was firmly in the camp of the kirk party, led by the marquess of Argyll (Archibald Campbell*).78Nicholas Pprs. i. 117, 172, 206, 208; Clarendon, Hist. v. 108; HMC Ormonde, ii. 94. Through his intervention, Charles’s attempt to leave the Scots in November 1650 failed, and through the treachery of Wilmot’s servant, Charles’s cause was damaged further in April 1651 when the would-be king’s letters fell into the hands of the commonwealth government.79Nicholas Pprs. i. 201, 238. Nevertheless, the bond between Charles and Wilmot survived, and both came south with the Scots invading army in the summer of 1651. On 16 July 1651, the Rump included Wilmot in its list of delinquents whose lands were to be sold for the use of the commonwealth.80A. and O. ii. 521. After the rout at Worcester (3 Sept.), Wilmot accompanied his master on his adventures, after 1660 much publicised, first north into Staffordshire, then down through Gloucestershire to take ship eventually from Sussex. When a post-Restoration commemorative medal of the escape was eventually struck, Wilmot’s name was duly recorded on it. During this episode, Wilmot was responsible for contacting leaders of the royalist Association, among them John Coventry*, whose initial distaste for Wilmot’s recent Presbyterian sympathies, was overcome by the desperateness of the fugitives’ plight.81A. Fea, The Flight of the King (1908), 48; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 54.

These divisions among the royalists persisted in exile. A group of ‘bedchamber men’ around Charles, including Wilmot, were disliked by those episcopalian Anglicans who were willing to turn Catholic in the interests of the queen mother. By this time, because of the history of Charles’s sojourn in Scotland, Henrietta Maria’s advisers were regarding the influence of the Presbyterian-sympathising Wilmot as unhelpful to the cause of the monarchy, and doubted whether aid would be forthcoming from the royal courts of Europe.82Nicholas Pprs. i. 296, 300, 304; Clarendon, Hist. v. 239, 227, 310; HMC Bath, ii. 100, 103. Those like Sir Edward Nicholas† and Hyde, at the very heart of the exiled government, evidently saw Wilmot as an obstacle, despatched him as an ambassador to various states for the next few years, and were extremely sceptical about his value, his new earldom of Rochester and inclusion in the privy council notwithstanding.83Add. 15856, ff. 46v-47v; Add. 32093, ff. 296, 336; Nicholas Pprs. i. 301, 307; ii. 6, 10, 15; Clarendon, Hist. v. 246; T.D. Hardy, Syllabus of Rymer’s Foedera (1873), ii. 907, 911. After Rochester had reported optimistically about the financial promises of the Emperor Ferdinand III, Nicholas commented disparagingly on how little was forthcoming.84Nicholas Pprs. ii. 29, 71; Clarendon, Hist. v. 350. The English press carried reports of the emperor’s disinclination to help, but Charles told Rochester how much he felt encouraged by his efforts.85The Answer of the Emperour of Germany (1653, E.713.2); Add. 32093, f. 310.

It was a better intended use of Rochester’s talents that he was given supreme military command by Charles Stuart in September 1654.86Add. 15856, f. 46. He left Cologne in February 1655, officially bound for Denmark, but in reality on course for England, where he and Daniel O’Neill were to lead the Action Party, planning a royalist rising. Rochester cautiously approached a number of former parliamentarian military commanders, among them Waller and the 3rd Baron Fairfax [S] (Sir Thomas Fairfax*), and despite government preparations to crush a rising, decided to proceed with one in Yorkshire. After a debacle in darkness on Marston Moor, Rochester escaped south in disguise, was able to appoint a commander for a rising in Hampshire in March, and eventually escaped the country during the government clamp-down after Penruddock’s rising in 1655.87Nicholas Pprs. ii. 219, 255, 327-8; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 109, 117, 118, 132, 134, 137, 140, 151, 161. Even in these circumstances, Rochester was reported to be the focus for disputes among the plotters, and it was by the unwitting means of a friend of his that a double-agent, Henry Manning, was introduced to the court.88Nicholas Pprs. ii. 158; Clarendon, Hist. v. 387. Rochester died at Ghent on 19 February 1658, and was buried at Sluys on 24 February, reburied later at Spelsbury, Oxfordshire.89CSP Dom. 1658, pp. 297, 300; Wood, Life and Times, ii. 492. His son, the 2nd earl (John Wilmot), the well-known poet and libertine, continued his father’s career of service to the monarchy of Charles II; the earldom died out in 1681 on the death of the 3rd earl.90CP; Barron, ‘The Wild Wilmots’, 22-3; CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 297, 300; Wood, Life and Times, ii. 492.