SANDFORD, Sir Thomas (d.1658/1660), of Howgill Castle, Milburn, Westmld.

Sandford belonged to a junior branch of the Sandfords of Askham, who had settled in Westmorland by the end of the fourteenth century.12Nicolson, Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. i. 387; F.W. Ragg, ‘Helton, Flechan, Askham and Sandford of Askham’, Trans. Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. ser. 2, xxi. 176. His grandfather had acquired Howgill Castle, near Appleby, by 1589 and had made it the family’s principal residence.13Ragg, ‘Sandford of Askham’, 215. Sandford’s father, Sir Richard Sandford, was a long-standing member of the Westmorland bench and served as sheriff of Cumberland in 1623-4.14List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 28. Sandford’s date of birth is unknown, but it cannot have been before 1613, when his mother’s first husband died.15Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 32, f. 497. He would probably have had to have been confirmed, and thus been at least in his early teens, when he stood as a godparent to a son of John Sandford of Askham in 1628.16Askham Par. Regs. ed. M.E. Noble, 66. He had evidently reached the age of 21 by June 1640 at the very latest.17Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DHGB/1/60.

Details of Sandford’s upbringing and education also remain obscure, although the allegation in 1626 that his mother was a recusant suggests the possibility that he was exposed to Catholic influences as a child.18Rushworth, Hist. Collns. i. 396; Phillips, ‘Gentry in Cumb. and Westmld.’, 70. However, there is no evidence that he himself was a recusant or was regarded as being ‘popishly affected’. He was married – at what he himself considered was a very young age – to a daughter (baptised in 1614) of the Cumberland knight and future royalist Sir George Dalston*.19SP23/208, p. 87; ‘Seven vols. of Dalston par. regs.’ ed. M.E. Kuper, Trans. Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. ser. 1, vii. 204. The parties to the marriage settlement, which was drawn up in 1633, included another future royalist, the Westmorland knight Sir Henry Bellingham*.20SP23/208, p. 74.

The grant of a baronetcy to Sandford in August 1641 and the fact that the crown waived the customary creation fee suggests that he was regarded at court as a man who might be won over to the king’s cause.21SO3/12, f. 165v; CB. Sandford’s first known foray into public affairs occurred in the spring of 1642, when he stood as a candidate in the by-election at Cockermouth in Cumberland. Lacking any property in the Cockermouth vicinity, he relied upon the patronage of his kinsman, the future royalist Sir Henry Fletcher, whose father had been another of the parties to Sandford’s 1633 marriage settlement.22SP23/208, p. 74. The Fletchers were the most important local gentry family, and Sir Henry wielded additional influence as sheriff of Cumberland.23Lady de Villiers, ‘Parliamentary boroughs restored by the House of Commons, 1621-41’, EHR lxvii. 193. Sandford’s opponent was the London goldsmith and future parliamentarian Francis Allein*, who was the nominee of the lord of the honor of Cockermouth, Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland. The outcome of the election, which was held on 25 April 1642, was a double return, with one indenture signed by the bailiff and 31 burgage-holders in favour of Allein and another from Fletcher and his party returning Sandford.24Supra, ‘Cockermouth’. On 28 May 1642, the House ordered that Allein’s case not be prejudiced by his failure to petition the House within the designated period.25CJ ii. 590b.

The fact that the dispute was still unresolved did not deter Sandford from taking his seat in the Commons, and it was probably no coincidence that he apparently elected to do so on 28 May 1642, when he was named to a committee for the redress of grievances in Northumberland.26CJ ii. 591b. Sandford was also present in the House on 30 June, when his father-in-law Sir George Dalston and another future Cumberland royalist Sir Patricius Curwen won a division against allowing the committee of privileges to examine Allein’s witnesses to the election.27PJ iii. 154; CJ ii. 645b. Although this vote was reversed the next day, the outcome of the dispute was apparently one of the last victories obtained by the dwindling royalist interest in the House, for Sandford’s election was evidently allowed to stand and his return filed in chancery.28Supra, ‘Cockermouth’.

Sandford’s appointment to the Westmorland bench on 11 August 1642 is further evidence of his drift towards the king’s camp during 1642, and in March 1643 he and a number of other Cumberland and Westmorland royalists were made commissioners for disarming parliamentarians in the two counties.29C231/5, p. 541; SP23/150, p. 439. He was involved in raising troops for the king in Westmorland by June, and by September he had accepted a commission from the commander of the royalist army in the north, William Cavendish, 1st earl of Newcastle, as a colonel of foot.30Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DMUS/5/5/1/11; HMC 6th Rep. 335. It is likely that Sandford backed his kinsman Richard Crackenthorpe, Sir Henry Fletcher and another close friend of the family, Sir John Lowther, in their attempts to prevent Sir Philip Musgrave* raising men for deployment in the king’s armies outside the region.31Phillips, ‘Gentry in Cumb. and Westmld.’, 291-4. He admitted after the war that he had occasionally mustered and trained his regiment but only ‘for defence of themselves and their country ... from all invasions’.32SP23/208, p. 87. He should not be confused with the zealous Anglo-Irish royalist Captain Thomas Sandford, who served under Lord Capell (Arthur Capell*) in Wales.33Add. 18980, f. 169; An Addition to the Relation of Some Passages about the English-Irish Army (1644), 6 (E.32.13). What motivated Sandford to side with the king is not clear. Despite later allegations that Sandford’s father had assisted the Westmorland royalists, Sir Richard was nominated as an elder to the county’s Presbyterian classis in 1646 and retained his place on the Westmorland bench until July 1652.34SP23/171, p. 107; C193/13/3, f. 66v; C193/13/4, f. 104v; Bodl. Tanner 60, f. 529; HMC Portland, i. 186; Phillips, ‘Gentry in Cumb. and Westmld.’, 301, 302.

Sandford attended the Oxford Parliament early in 1644, and his concurrence with its letter to the earl of Essex of 22 January 1644, urging him to compose a peace, prompted the Commons to disable him from sitting.35SP23/208, p. 90; Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DMUS/5/5/4/24; Rushworth, Historical Collns. v. 575; CJ iii. 374a. When Cumberland and Westmorland were seized by Parliament in September 1644, Sandford laid down his arms, although it was not until 20 August 1646 that he petitioned to compound.36SP23/208, pp. 78; CCC 1460-1. The Committee for Compounding* resolved in April 1647 to proceed against him for attending the Oxford Parliament and for having done so under false pretences – the Commons having declared in 1645 that Allein, not Sandford, was the duly elected MP for Cockermouth.37Supra, ‘Cockermouth’; CCC 1461. Having thus avoided proscription for serving in arms against Parliament, he had little reason to fear a swingeing fine from the committee, which makes his decision to assist the royalist cause during the second civil war - in which he helped to raise troops for the king in Westmorland – all the more inexplicable.38SP23/171, p. 107; Cumb. RO (Kendal), WDRY/5/200, 202; HMC 7th Rep. 63; Nightingale, Ejected of Cumb. and Westmld. 1162. Fortunately for him, the committee failed to get wind of this relapse into malignancy, and on 18 January 1649 it fined him at a sixth of his estate – that is, £600.39CCC 1461. He was fined a further £20 in 1656, when he was deemed liable to pay the decimation tax.40J.T. Cliffe, ‘The Cromwellian decimation tax of 1655: the assessment lists’ (Cam. Soc. ser. 5, vii), 451.

Sandford died at some point between September 1658 – when he transferred his lodgings in London to Holborn – and June 1660, when his son Richard had succeeded him as second baronet. 41Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DCHA/11/3/5, f. 133; An Ordinance...for an Assessment, 61. Sandford’s date and place of burial are not known. His widow would later depose that he had died intestate in Holborn in 1659 and that she had administered his estate.42C5/550/87; C10/113/91. In his will of 1660, Sandford’s father, Sir Richard – in accordance, so he claimed, with his son’s wishes – bequeathed £500 to each of Sandford’s four younger children and his ‘castles’, manors, tenements and lands in Westmorland, County Durham and elsewhere in England to Sir Richard Sandford, the second baronet.43PROB11/312, f. 55. Sandford’s grandson, Sir Richard Sandford†, 3rd baronet, represented Westmorland, Appleby and the Northumberland borough of Morpeth in the Parliaments between 1695 and 1723.44HP Commons 1690-1715.