COOKE, William (d. 1674), of Wallingford, Berks.

Many aspects of William Cooke’s life remain a mystery. Probably he was a native of Wallingford and details of his parentage, birth, marriage and offspring have been lost due to the haphazard survival of the town’s parish registers. It is plausible, however, that he was the William Cooke of Wallingford who left a will on his death in 1674. That document states that he was ‘of late a maltster’ and that his wife, Sarah, was a sister of Abraham Cock, a tailor from Great Missenden.10Berks. RO, D/A1/56/146a. In April 1653 a William Cooke was appointed as a sub-commissioner for the excise in Hampshire and that individual was then said to have previously held an equivalent position in Oxfordshire; it is just possible that this was the Wallingford William Cooke.11CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 251-2. The latter was later accused of having handled unspecified types of taxes raised by Parliament.12LR9/105, unfol. Fortunately, one aspect of Cooke’s life, his civic career, is well-recorded.

Cooke emerges clearly as an important figure in Wallingford with his appointment as a burgess of its corporation on 3 May 1648.13Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/1, f. 136. That was no ordinary appointment. During the civil war the town and its castle had been held by royalist forces, the latter being surrendered to Parliament only in July 1646. Many of the leading citizens had been implicated in the royalist cause and in October 1647 one of them, William Loader, was removed as mayor under the terms of ordinance banning delinquents from civic office.14Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/1, ff. 134v, 135. In a second, wider purge several burgesses, including Loader, were dismissed from the corporation.15Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/1, f. 143v. With Arthur Evelyn, the parliamentarian governor of the castle, Cooke was among men loyal to Parliament drafted on to the corporation to replace the delinquents. A new town clerk, Thomas Allen, was appointed, leading to the dispute that led to the sacking of the recorder, Anthony Barker*.16Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/1, f. 136. Cooke presumably supported Barker’s dismissal. In September 1648, less than five months after he had joined the corporation, Cooke was promoted to become an alderman, confirming that he and his pro-parliamentarian friends had secured control of it.17Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, f. 1.

Two years to the day (29 Sept.) after this, Cooke took over as the town’s mayor.18Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, f. 2. Over the next 12 months the corporation minutes suggest a whirlwind of mayoral activity: a new minute book was started, quite possibly to ensure that his achievements during his year in office were fully preserved for posterity. The town’s two maces were melted down and replaced by the single mace still used by the corporation. This was largely paid for with donations from Cooke (£10) and from Walter Bigg*.19Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, f. 5. The town seal was also altered.20Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, f. 5v. The three parishes within the town were united into one.21Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, f. 5v. A weekly lecture was established and, taking full advantage of the town’s proximity to Oxford, Cooke assembled an impressive list of preachers, including the warden of Wadham, John Wilkins.22Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, f. 6. In what was surely an unusual move for someone who was a maltster, he closed down 20 of the 32 alehouses operating within the town.23Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, f. 6. One of the serjeants employed by the corporation was dismissed for ‘misdemeanours’, while a bellman was appointed to walk the streets at night to warn householders to put out fires and candles.24Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, f. 6v. It may also have been at about this point that Cooke arranged for the corporation to purchase the local fee farm rents.25Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, f. 23.

Cooke was elected for a second term as mayor in the autumn of 1655, evidently picking up from when he left off in 1651.26Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, f. 13. Another campaign was launched against alehouses, the number of which had recovered almost to their previous levels. Fifteen of them were suppressed by Cooke to bring the number back to 12.27Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, f. 13v. Money was raised to help fund the lecture.28Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, f. 14. The corporation applied to the lord protector and in March 1656 obtained a commission of the peace, in which Cooke, as mayor, was naturally included.29C181/6, p. 136; Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, f. 14. This may have influenced the decision by the government the following year to include him on the commission for the county as a whole, although his main importance was still as a Wallingford worthy.30C231/6, p. 358.

It was that local importance that got him elected to Parliament with Bigg in 1659. Given that the pair were probably friends, they may well have stood for those seats together. Neither left any trace in the records of their activities at Westminster. In Cooke’s case, there is the possibility of confusion with his namesake, Edward Cooke*, but all the Journal references can confidently be attributed to the Tewkesbury MP.

In March 1660 the Long Parliament appointed Cooke as a militia commissioner of Berkshire, which, given that he was still a justice of the peace, is not surprising.31A. and O. Later that year he was elected as mayor of Wallingford for a third time.32Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, f. 20. His presidency over the election for the Cavalier Parliament in April 1661 was not without incident. In the weeks before the poll one of the men who had sat for Wallingford in the Convention, Thomas Saunders†, together with George Fane* and Sir Thomas Dolman†, all of them firm royalists, attempted to have Cooke removed as mayor. They argued that the 1648 purge, which had brought Cooke into the corporation, had been based on an illegal parliamentarian ordinance. A ruling from the privy council on 28 March 1661 rejected this and confirmed Cooke in office. Even so, Fane was then elected as one of the MPs three days later, although the other candidate returned, Robert Packer*, was probably more to Cooke’s liking.33CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 373, 374, 550; PC2/55, ff. 180-181; HP Commons, 1660-1690. But the question of the corporation’s composition was only postponed until the following year, when the real purge was carried out under the authority of the Corporation Act. Cooke was one of six aldermen (including the mayor, Thomas Norton) dismissed from the corporation by the commissioners on 26 June 1662.34Berks. RO, W/AC1/1/2, ff. 24v, 27. By then Cooke had already been removed from the county commission of the peace, so this terminated his political career.

Cooke lived on for another 12 years in apparent obscurity in Wallingford. During the 1665-6 heralds’ visitation of the county, he reasonably enough disclaimed the right to bear arms.35Vis. Berks. (Harl. Soc. lvi-lvii), ii. 2, 16. In accordance with his will, he was buried in August 1674 in St Mary’s, Wallingford, close to his only child, Ruth, and not far from the mayor’s stall.36Berks. RO, D/A1/56/146a; St Mary, Wallingford par. reg. His personal possessions, valued at £148 14s 10d, passed to his widow. He left few other surviving relatives. His sister and his brother-in-law, Thomas Hunt, a cloth dresser of Wood Street, London, were dead and their only son had run away while apprenticed to a joiner. Cooke therefore instructed that, if that nephew failed to come forward, his wealth was to pass after his wife’s death to her family.37Berks. RO, D/A1/56/146a-b.