CORBETT, John (1609-71), of Halston, Pontesbury, Salop and Gray’s Inn, Mdx.

The Corbetts were a large and distinguished Shropshire gentry family, with many branches. They traced their ancestry to one who had accompanied the Conqueror to England, and in the heralds’ visitation of 1623 were able to demonstrate a satisfyingly long pedigree, showing how the various Corbett families were related. John Corbett’s family was a junior scion, a sub-division from the Corbetts of Leigh.33Vis. Salop 1623 i, 132-44. His grandfather was the first to be noted as of Halston. He was not the lord of the manor there; Halston was a 300-acre farm in the manor of Pontesbury, whose copyholders were until 1615 locked in dispute with their lord. Given freeholder status after that, Richard Corbett, John’s father, held the largest estate in the manor.34VCH Salop, viii. 272-4. Richard Corbett was a godly Protestant, expressing a testamentary wish to be buried without pomp and rehearsing in his will his view of the resurrection of the body. His estates were partly copyhold and partly freehold accretions in Montgomeryshire, and his wish that they should be subject to sale to realise legacies and meet debts is confirmation of the minor gentry standing of this particular branch of the ubiquitous Corbetts.35PROB11/139/610. John Corbett’s mother was also descended from a noble family, the Berkeleys of Gloucestershire, but her branch, of Shrewsbury, which usually spelled its name as Berkley or Barkley, carried like the Corbetts of Halston a resonant name but only modest material estate.

John Corbett was sent to Shrewsbury school and then to Gray’s Inn. Eldest son though he was, his modest patrimonial inheritance encouraged him to be serious in his pursuit of the law, and he was called to the bar in 1639. Around 1641, he made a marriage alliance with Abigail Penington which shaped his future political outlook. In Isaac Penington* he had as a father-in-law one who by that time had become a marked man in the eyes of the monarchy; a puritan noted for having become sheriff of London without previous municipal experience, and an MP in both Parliaments of 1640, known for his critical view of the government. When Corbett was not in Shropshire, he was probably resident at Gray’s Inn; his termly legal commitments probably ensured that he was never selected for any local government office before the civil war. His close family ties with Penington, intermittent residence in the capital and his own puritan upbringing made it likely that he would support Parliament during the civil war. He was first named to Shropshire committees in April 1643, but in this royalist county these were nominal appointments only. In any case, his legal skills were soon put to much greater use when he was selected by Parliament for an expedition to Scotland.

In June 1643, at the height of Isaac Penington’s influence as a radical and anti-episcopal lord mayor of London, his son-in-law was despatched by both Houses to the Covenanters in Scotland on a mission that was intended to bring together the Scots and Parliament, and at last wean away the Scots from the king. Corbett was to encourage a closer alliance generally; but was also instructed to persuade the Covenanters to send ministers to the proposed assembly of divines, and to request the extradition of Randal Macdonnell, 2nd earl of Antrim, for fomenting rebellion in Ireland.36CJ iii. 141b; LJ vi. 106a, 111a, b, 112b, 113ab; A. and O. i. 201, 202. Corbett’s instructions were given to him on 27 June, but it was not until late July that he arrived at Edinburgh, pleading plotting in England against Parliament as the reason for the delay. He seems to have received a cool reception, and was despatched back to London quickly. Robert Baillie, prematurely identifying Corbett as a ‘lower House man’, identified the future uniform church settlement to be imposed on the two kingdoms as the crucial issue, which did not appear in Corbett’s original brief. Even while Corbett was still in Scotland, the English Parliament appointed fresh commissioners to pave the way for the Solemn League and Covenant of later that year.37Baillie Lttrs. and Jnls. i. 80.

Independent MP, 1645-9

In 1644, Corbett was an agent of the Committee of Both Kingdoms, a link between Parliament and those advancing its military cause in the west midlands. He was more specifically an intermediary between the London-based Committee and Humphrey Mackworth I*, at this point working with the parliamentarian committee of Coventry.38CSP Dom. 1644, p. 112; 1645-7, pp. 27, 67, 252. But it was not until February 1645 that Shrewsbury fell to Parliament, making possible for the first time the creation of an effective parliamentarian committee structure in Shropshire. On 12 November, the writ was moved for the by-election at Bishop’s Castle, but it was some months before a return could be made. After his Scottish expedition, John Corbett continued to make himself useful in London to those advancing the cause of Parliament in Shropshire. On 8 January 1646, he and his close relative, William Berkley, were granted £2000 from the excise for this purpose.39LJ viii. 91a, 92b. He was an obvious candidate for election. Samuel More*, governor of Montgomery castle and sheriff of Shropshire, on 19 February 1646 recommended Corbett to the bailiff and burgesses of Bishop’s Castle as a suitable choice to represent them at Westminster, drawing to their attention Corbett’s family relationship both to Penington and to himself. The following day the burgesses met to draft an order that Corbett and Esay Thomas* would serve as MPs at their own expense. This was in effect a record of the election.40Bishop’s Castle Town Hall, minute bk. ff. 208v, 209. There are persistent difficulties in distinguishing Corbett’s career in the Commons. He is identified clearly enough as taking the Covenant on 27 May, but this was after a long interval from the date of his election.41CJ iv. 556a.

The nub of the problem is that he is hard to distinguish from Miles Corbett; both John and Miles are described by the clerk as ‘Mr Corbett’. In these early months of Corbett’s parliamentary service, he is clearly the man asked on 28 April to prepare thanks to the Shropshire committee after the fall of Bridgnorth to Parliament, and the one called upon in July to deploy the composition money of a leading Shropshire royalist to disband the local force there.42CJ iv. 526a, 614b, 628a. But like Miles, John was a lawyer, and the interests of the two men in the Commons naturally overlapped. Miles Corbett was by this time the chairman of the Committee for Examinations*, and a number of references to high profile inquisitorial cases, such as that of the royalist Welsh judge, David Jenkins, can safely be ascribed to him. But other parliamentary topics remain uncertain. One of the Corbetts was active in efforts to regulate the excise in 1646, and might plausibly have been either man.43CJ iv. 582a, 738a. Similarly, the early measures to sell the estates of enemies of Parliament might have attracted the involvement of either – they were both on a committee on this subject in August – although confiscations and sales of lands were certainly to be an enduring theme in John Corbett’s career.44CJ iv. 613a, 637b.

From the high summer of 1646, the clerks were beginning to recognise John Corbett, ascribing to him his forename in their record. On 11 July, he was part of a delegation charged with reproving the City of London governing body for drafting its own petition to the king, independent of the Newcastle Propositions, and his appearance on this committee must have owed much to the influence of Penington.45CJ iv. 616a. On 21 August he was named to the Committee for Compounding*, sitting at Goldsmiths’ Hall, for the express purpose of discussing strategies for raising money for the Scots army in England, by this time widely regarded at Westminster as a liability. When soon afterwards he was given leave of absence from the House, it was probably to help the final phases of Parliament’s war effort in Shropshire. Not until 4 December can he be identified beyond doubt as back in the House, again joining Miles Corbett in another deputation to the common council of London, this time on the need for urgency in bringing in the assessments to pay the soldiers of the New Model.46CJ iv. 738a.

There is no doubt that Corbett, like his father-in-law, should be numbered in political terms with the Independents, and this from his earliest appearances in the House. The group was suspicious of the Scots, but whether or not Corbett’s political alignment owed anything to his experience as an emissary north of the border in 1643 as well as to Penington’s influence, is impossible to determine. During 1647, Corbett played a significant role in the feuding between Independents and Presbyterians. He was named to a committee charged with taking the accounts of soldiers in Ireland (25 Jan.), at a time when Irish affairs were becoming hotly contested ground; his appearance in mid-March on a committee to invest the great sale in the hands of commissioners was his entry to another protracted struggle. On 24 March he was named to the committee on affairs in Coventry (probably by virtue of his Shropshire connections with Humphrey Mackworth, once in authority in the city), at the core of which was a dispute involving the military. If there were any lingering doubts among MPs as to who was Corbett’s patron, the task he took on of producing an ordinance to compensate Isaac Penington for financial losses (4 May) would have dispelled them.47CJ v. 61b, 117b, 161a. A week later, Corbett was named to the committee to settle lands on Sir Thomas Fairfax*, and to a committee for raising money for the army in Ireland. All of these appointments were strongly suggestive of Corbett’s reliability in the Independent cause, and indeed, of his steadily growing importance.48CJ v. 167a, 168b. His addition to the Committee for Advance of Money in May 1647 was solely to prepare an ordinance for compensating Parliament’s supporters for horses requisitioned from them during the war.49CJ v. 171b.

In the summer of 1647, Corbett was widely noticed for his chairing of a committee to examine allegations against Sir Philip Percivalle, who had been admitted into the House on 25 May.50HMC Egmont, i. 431. Percivalle, already a controversial figure because of his close links with Lord Inchiquin and the marquess of Ormond in Ireland, was a representative of the Presbyterians’ inclusive Irish policy which was objectionable to the Independents. By 2 June he was facing investigation into his conduct in Ireland from a committee which was chaired by Corbett.51CJ v. 195a. The inquisitorial nature of this body and the name of Corbett as chairman encourages confusion with the longer-established Committee for Examinations, chaired by Miles Corbett. It was probably Miles who had been the ‘Mr Corbett’ of a sub-committee of the Committee for Examinations back in November 1645.52A. and O. i. 802. No earlier committee involving John Corbett can convincingly be shown to have taken a role investigative of Members themselves, but once established, John Corbett’s committee expanded its role. On 10 June, what may have been a separate committee from Corbett’s was set up to scrutinize all MPs against whom there were outstanding allegations of involvement with royalism, and in mid-July, Corbett took the chair of this body too, and merged it with the ad hoc body investigating the loyalty of Percivalle and other individuals.53CJ v. 205a, 244a.

By the time Corbett’s committee came in mid-July to consider Percivalle’s case, therefore, it had widened its remit considerably from the initial brief of 2 June. The parliamentary background to the growing importance of the committee was a number of Commons votes against compromises with those who had supported the king in any way, or had even sued for his pardon.54CJ v. 233b; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 82. On 14 July, Percivalle protested his innocence of involvement in the 1643 Cessation in Ireland, sat in the House on the following day, only to have his case referred for the second time to the committee. Applying himself personally to Corbett, he was reassured loftily that his absence from the Commons ‘could only be interpreted as modesty, and that the cases would be taken in order’, Percivalle’s being fourth on Corbett’s list.55HMC Egmont, i. 431. But Percivalle’s opportunity to vindicate himself was denied him, at least for the time being, by the Presbyterians’ ‘forcing of the Houses’ on 26 July, which caused a group of mostly Independent MPs to take refuge with the army. Corbett was among the Members who withdrew from the House.56LJ ix. 385b.

He was back in the House by 21 August, taking then and a few days later a number of important ordinances and orders to the Lords. These included an ordinance to confirm godly ministers of religion in their places in defiance of attempts by ejected ministers and the lay owners of impropriations, which was a blow against those looking to reinstate the old order in the provinces, and for the rule by committees; and an order from the Committee of Advance of Money, which suggests Corbett's continuing connection with that body.57CJ v. 281b, 282b; A. and O. i. 999-1000. Nor did his committee investigating Members disappear with the July flight of MPs to the army. Corbett reported on 27 August his findings in the case of John D’Oyly*, which would have given the latter little comfort.58CJ v. 286a. He was appointed as a commissioner of the militia in Southwark in September. This was probably not the first association between that borough and Corbett, as he had been named to commissions of oyer and terminer in Surrey since 1644.59C181/5, f. 239. The City claimed jurisdiction over Southwark, and Penington’s patronage was the likely explanation for Corbett’s interests south of the Thames.

Corbett’s partisan committee on Members’ behaviour was naturally given a fillip by the forcing of the Houses, and after the call of the House on 9 October, he and Penington were given the task of following up unexplained absences. His committee could show favour to its friends as well as pursue its political enemies, and four Sussex Independents, including Harbert Morley*, were refunded fines initially levied on them at the call.60CJ v. 329a, 332b, 344a. A number of Corbett’s political interests were developed that October. He sat on two committees sympathetic to the financial plight of the army, and was named to a committee charged with clearing obstructions to the sale of bishops’ lands (28 Oct.).61CJ v. 339a, 340a, 344a. Corbett that month invited the religious Independent Peter Sterry to preach, suggesting that his religious predilections matched his political ones, but the evidence for his religious outlook is a little more ambiguous.62CJ v. 333a. He was named that year as an elder in the fledgling Shropshire Presbyterian classis, and later promoted the minister Francis Wright, a conformist in 1662.63Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, 407; Add. 36792, f. 63v; Calamy Revised, 549. His later involvement in the commission for the propagation of the gospel in Wales, and later still in the Cromwellian church settlement as an ‘ejector’, suggests a man with broad godly interests, certainly no high Presbyterian, but one committed to a state-sponsored framework for the church. Towards the end of 1647, Corbett was recruited to the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs: a committee noted by this point as an agency of the Independents.64Supra, ‘Irish Committees’; CJ v. 347b; LJ ix. 506a.

Whatever his theological preferences, and however he viewed the role of the government in supervising the church, Corbett was undoubtedly an enthusiast for the sale of church lands. The committee he joined in October 1647 for removing obstructions brought in an ordinance on 2 December, but in February 1648 the subject was re-opened.65A. and O. i. 1029-31; CJ v. 460b. These revisions of the 1646 legislation governing sales of bishops’ lands were attempts to remedy defects in the original ordinance.66I. Gentles, ‘The Sales of Bishops’ Lands in the English Revolution, 1646-1660’, EHR xlv. 577. On 14 March, Corbett reported from a committee which was working on another ordinance full of technical instructions on how obstacles in the conveyancing of bishops’ lands were to be overcome, and there is no doubt he was responsible for the legislation published a week later.67CJ v. 497b; A. and O. i. 1114-6. It has been noted how ‘intensely political’ was the act of selling off episcopal lands.68Gentles, ‘Sales of Bishops’ Lands’, 591. Corbett became involved in the process after the two waves of loans secured on these estates – an ‘Independent’ one in 1646 and a ‘Presbyterian’ one in 1647 – had been processed. But between August 1648 and August 1649 he himself was a buyer, securing bishops’ lands and entitlements in Worcestershire for a little over £4,000.69Worcs. RO, 009:1/BA 2636/48/43975; BA 2636/49/43987, 43995; BA 2636/90/45349, 45350; 899:1105/BA 10857/1; VCH Worcs. iii. 369. The bishopric of Worcester held lands in Richard’s Castle, Shropshire, Corbett’s native county, but local knowledge is unlikely to have helped him to these purchases.70Worcs. RO, 009:1/BA 2636/37 (v). More significant was Isaac Penington’s standing since 1631 as a tenant of the bishop of Worcester at Whitefriars, London. Penington held a lease for lives on a house there, and through this means his son-in-law probably acquired an insider’s knowledge of other properties in the Worcester episcopal estate.71Worcs. RO, 009:1/BA 2636/57/44083, 44095.

Corbett was involved in committees on the finances of the church that suggested there was a more constructive side to his outlook than his work on confiscations suggested. He was probably the Mr Corbett asked to draft an ordinance to enable the Committee for Plundered Ministers to dispose of the revenues from church livings held by bishops (27 Jan. 1648), sat on a committee for improving the payment of tithes to ministers in London and worked on compensation for the feoffees for impropriations of the 1630s.72CJ v. 446a, 460b, 519a. He may have been the Mr Corbett who encouraged the translator Theodore Haak, not only in a mission to Denmark as an emissary for Parliament, but also in his work of turning into English the so-called ‘Dutch annotations’ on the Bible, a project first initiated by the Westminster Assembly.73Baillie Lttrs. and Jnls. iii. 7; CJ v. 513a; ‘Theodore Haak’, Oxford DNB. But Corbett continued to be the dominant figure in the work of improving the system for selling bishops’ lands throughout the spring and summer of 1648, surely enhancing his status in the Commons as he did so.74CJ v. 569a, 571b, 610a, 685a; vi. 100b. The steady rise in Corbett’s authority probably provided the imperative for reviving his committee on Members (15 Apr.) as a vehicle for interrogating alleged servants of the king, including a boatman, prior to the disturbances of the second civil war. In June Corbett and Lislebone Long drafted ordinances to purge the City of London of the freemen, apprentices and boatmen who had supported the king in the disturbances. Corbett’s was a committee now even more readily confused with Miles Corbett’s Committee for Examinations.75CJ v. 532a, 589a; CSP Dom. 1648-9, 275.

It was not only on his investigative committee that Corbett was active in reprisals after the second civil war. He was among a group responsible for framing the commission of oyer and terminer to try any alleged to be responsible for the London riots of 9 April, and served on Penington’s committee of 27 April 1648 to investigate the revelations of one John Everard that the army was about to disarm the City so that it could offer no support for a Scots invading force.76CJ v. 529a, 546a; R. Ashton, Counter-Revolution (New Haven, 1994), 190-1. As a militia commissioner himself he was involved in the reform of the local forces, territory keenly disputed between Presbyterians and Independents, and sat on a number of committees dealing with the aftermath of the revolt in south Wales and elsewhere.77CJ v. 551a, 557a, 558a, 587a, 631b, 648a, 676a; vi. 10b. The task of vindicating to the public the response of Parliament to these disturbances fell partly to Corbett; he and Sir Robert Harley* took care of the public thanksgiving for the subduing of Kent.78CJ v. 593a, 597a. In July, he took to the Lords the orders in support of Philip Skippon* as commander of the London forces.79CJ v. 633a, 634b. The following month he helped draft the ordinance that invested the authority to recruit to Skippon’s militia in the London militia committee, which represented a swing back to civilian authority over the military.80CJ v. 678a; LJ x. 487-8.

By early September 1648, Corbett had become a powerful figure among the Independents in Parliament, by virtue of his practical work in investigating the enemies of Parliament and clearing obstacles to selling bishops’ lands. In the last quarter of the year, however, Corbett made few appearances in Parliament. Some of this unwonted absence may be accounted for by time spent in Shropshire, gathering in assessments and therefore working more closely with the county committee there, and some by his ever-deeper involvement with speeding up sales of bishops’ lands. The committees charged with the latter task were inevitably evolving from legislative committees of the House towards the status (de facto if not explicitly recognised) of executive authority. This was probably the change marked in the apparently redundant order of 19 December, appointing Corbett to the committee for removing obstructions, and was doubtless the business of Parliament that Corbett pleaded was preventing his full participation in the trial of Charles I. He was named to the high court of justice along with Miles Corbett and Isaac Penington, but only attended once, on 10 January 1649. On the 22nd, he sent word, via Edmund Harvey I, that it was ‘special employment’ that kept him away, not any dissatisfaction with the proceedings.81Muddiman, Trial, 209. He was less active in the trial than Miles Corbett, whose full name was recorded whenever he made one of his seven appearances, and there is no correlation between John Corbett’s single attendance and the five apparently made by Penington. It can be only a matter of speculation whether the deponent from Bishop’s Castle who came to give evidence against the king was there at Corbett’s behest.82Muddiman, Trial, 216.

Rumper, 1649-53

Corbett is known to have been a leading figure at the committee for removing obstructions in December and January.83LPL, Comm. Add. 1 ff. 45, 46v, 58. In further support of the view that Corbett’s absence from the trial was genuinely because of his growing administrative duties is the fact that on 1 January 1649 he was recruited to the Goldsmiths’ Hall Committee for Compounding with delinquents, specifically for his drafting skills, and he may have been the Corbett added the same week to another major executive body, the Committee for Indemnity. Despite a modern suggestion to the contrary, lawyerly scruples probably played little or no part in his distance from the proceedings at Westminster Hall, as he held at this point in his career no senior judicial appointment.84CJ vi. 107b, 113b, 116a; Oxford DNB. It is clear that Corbett from the outset was an enthusiastic Rumper. Even before the trial of the king had reached its conclusion, he had been named to a committee that adumbrated the sale of dean and chapter lands. With his successes in remedying the defects of the original legislation for selling bishops’ estates, he was a natural choice to co-chair (with Thomas Pury I) the committee working on the bill to sell the capitular properties, which reached fruition in the act of 30 April 1649.85CJ vi. 116a, 137b, 147b, 177b, 185a, 189b, 190b; A. and O. ii. 81-104.

The mechanics by which confiscated lands were sold off to satisfy the apparently insatiable demands of the government for cash were a preoccupation of Corbett’s during the first two years of the Rump. In May 1649, he drafted the instructions for the trustees of dean and chapter lands.86CJ vi. 202a, 223a. Until the summer of 1650, beyond which the evidence is lacking, he remained the dominant figure on the committee for removing obstructions to the sales of episcopal lands. (He did not attend the committee’s meeting to speed up his purchases in Worcestershire, sending along Penington to look after his interests).87LPL, Comm. Add. 1, f. 90v. It was therefore probably John rather than Miles Corbett who supervised the extension of powers of intervention by this committee in any obstacles to selling capitular estates.88CJ vi. 238b. The expertise built up by Corbett’s committee was such that it found itself on a course by which yet other sales were referred to it for clarification and processing. In January 1651, for example, the obstructions committee was entrusted with drafting legislation for the sale of the late king’s fee farm rents, and the following month pronounced on the market in debentures secured on former crown lands.89CJ vi. 528b, 530a, 538b. Corbett was active on a committee set up to receive claims on estates sold as delinquents’ lands (24 Jan.) and was named to committees to adjudicate on claims by the regime’s enemies (such as Lord Herbert of Raglan (Henry Somerset*)) and its friends (including Robert Lilburne* and Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*)).90CJ vi. 528a, 549b, 565b; vii. 23b. By November 1651, the task of easing difficulties in sales of the entire range of confiscated lands seems to have been allocated to Corbett’s committee on obstructions.91CJ vii. 44b, 51b, 56a.

Corbett’s brand of Erastian puritanism, sympathetic in an even-handed way towards moderates of both the Presbyterian and Independent persuasions, found full expression in his work in this Parliament. He reported on a bill for the maintenance of ministers (May 1649) and with five others including the Shropshire man Richard Salwey* considered how to allocate clerical livings in the state’s gift (24 May).92CJ vi. 199b, 216a, 219b. That same month he was added to the committee for regulating the universities – an important agency for settling a godly ministry – of which he was an active member.93CJ vi. 201a; LPL, Sion L40.2/E16, passim. In August 1649 he was involved with attempts to square the circle of Parliament’s former commitment to the Presbyterian system and relief for ‘tender consciences’. In December, on a committee chaired by the Presbyterian John Gurdon, Corbett was considering how the gospel might be preached throughout the nation, but the following month was working on the celebrated act for the propagation of the gospel in Wales. As a serving Member for a constituency on the marches of Wales, Corbett might have been expected to become a commissioner under this act, but did not. Instead, on the day he was appointed to the committee working on the Welsh bill, he was asked to bring in another bill for advancing the gospel in England. Nothing significant came of it. The Welsh experiment was firmly under the control of Thomas Harrison I and the millenarians, and the episode was a defeat for religious conservatives like Corbett.94CJ vi. 275b, 336a, 336b, 352a. Less controversially, he worked on the local bill for the preaching ministry in Bristol, and again with Salwey on proposals to rid Ireland of its ecclesiastical hierarchy.95CJ vi. 365b, 379a

In recognition of his public prominence, in May 1650 Corbett was promoted to the senior circle of the governing body at Gray’s Inn.96PBG Inn, i. 377. As a lawyer, and a drafter of legislation, he might have been expected to play a part in the general moves towards reform of the law. He may well have been the Mr Corbett who took an interest in the release of poor prisoners (debtors) and in the Marshalsea.97CJ vi. 190b, 206b, 276a, 327a, 416a, 424b. He was certainly the Corbett who with John Jones and Sir James Harington was required to codify the poor laws (1 Mar. 1650). Corbett may have been elected to this charge as a fulcrum between the radical Jones and the conservative Harington.98CJ vi. 374b, 427b. It seems to have been enduring interest of Corbett’s, but he took a more prominent part in the low-key efforts at reform for those in the provinces accountable at the exchequer and other London courts.99CJ vi. 467a, 487b. It has been argued that Corbett was an associate of Sir Thomas Widdrington in opposing reform of the law, but the two men served together only on nine committees, and of these only the committee on the relief for debtors (18 June 1650), the Friday committee on law reform (25 Oct.) and the committee reviewing the bill of oblivion (22 Jan. 1652) could really be described as on legal topics.100Oxford DNB; CJ vi. 120b, 127b, 417b, 424b, 488a, 528a; vii. 62a, 76b, 190b.

A much closer associate of Corbett’s than Widdrington was Nicholas Lechmere. Their relationship can be traced from Lechmere’s earliest days in the House, in July 1648. Both were barristers, both represented west midlands constituencies, and both bought bishops’ lands in Lechmere’s district in Worcestershire in 1648. Indeed, it may have been their common interests in these lands that brought them together initially.101Worcs. RO, 009.1/BA 2636/45a/43936, ff. 57, 68. Between July 1648 and April 1653, Corbett and Lechmere sat together on 32 committees. They worked together on legislation for removing obstructions in church land sales (20 June 1649), and they were particularly close in May and June 1650, working together on eight committees.102CJ vi. 409a, 416a, 417a, 417b, 420b, 423a, 424b, 427b. Most of the committees they collaborated on were on specific legal subjects, such as the bills of May 1651 to limit interest rates and to ensure that entailed lands were not exempt from liability to pay debts.103CJ vi. 574b, 575a, 587a. They doubtless shared a moderate puritan outlook, and took a cautious but not wholly obstructive view of law reform.

In November 1651, Corbett was elected to the fourth council of state, in the election coming seventh, ahead of Penington who took eleventh place.104CJ vii. 42b. Over the next year, Corbett went to a little over 50 per cent of the council meetings, which placed him as the seventh most frequently attending councillor.105CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. xlvii. A number of his council committee appointments built on Corbett’s existing interests. The topic of prisons and prisoners had emerged in Corbett’s career in the Rump in 1649, and became a theme in his career as a councillor: he was joint chairman of the prisons committee.106CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 65, 187, 215, 231, 295, 346. Naturally, he sat on the council’s committee on removing obstacles to selling the remaining fee farm rents; his involvement with the committees for Scotland and Ireland harked back to his experiences in the 1640s, and his support for Theodore Haak’s embassy to Denmark was echoed now in his entertainment of the Danish ambassadors.107CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 54, 81, 185, 245, 253, 348, 380. Three other important council committees that claimed Corbett’s attention were on the mint, the ordnance committee and foreign affairs.108CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 232, 322, 461.

Corbett’s appearances in Parliament naturally became less frequent after his election to the council, and it was the council and the committee of obstructions that were in 1652 his most frequent haunts. On 30 March 1652 a proposal that all the powers of committees on obstructions to sales be transferred to the commissioners for compounding with delinquents was defeated. Thomas Harrison I had been in favour of this; Sir John Danvers, who had been a small player on the committee for removing obstructions to sales of bishops’ lands, among its opponents. Corbett and John Fielder were left to draft fresh proposals for transferring the powers somewhere, but Harrison was first named to their committee, as if to keep an eye on them, and it is natural to view this tussle as symptomatic of the conflict between cautious civilian Rumpers like Corbett and the radical military figures led by Harrison. If this were the case, then Corbett fought off the challenge, as he was still reporting regularly from the committee on obstructions as late as August that year.109CJ vii. 112a, 152b, 170b. On the other hand, Corbett was not re-elected to the fifth council of state, and after December 1652 his name was noted much less frequently in the Journal. In the closing months of the Rump, the last piece of legislation attributable to Corbett was an act on probate (8 Apr. 1653).110CJ vii. 270a, 274a, 276b.

While an MP, Corbett did not neglect opportunities to acquire office. In June 1653 he was claiming the stewardship of Westminster, a position normally controlled by the now defunct dean and chapter.111CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 397, 410. His title was probably given some credibility through moves within the city of London to regularise jurisdictions in the liberties and suburbs, but was successfully resisted, it seems, and Thomas Latham* remained steward.112Westminster Muniment Room, WAM 6558; CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 397, 410. The springboard for Corbett’s claim was probably the stewardship of Southwark, in the gift of the City’s court of aldermen. In 1657 he was described as ‘steward of the Tower and of the borough of Southwark’, but the stewardship was doubtless his much earlier. As for the Tower, Penington had been lieutenant there between 1643 and 1645, but it seems more likely that Corbett's authority extended over the liberties and not to the Tower itself.113The City Law (1647), 66 (E.397.4).

Later career, 1653-71

In February 1652, Corbett had investigated the financial sources for paying the judges, and soon after the dissolution of the Rump he launched into a judicial career. In June 1653 he became the chief justice in Glamorgan, Brecon and Radnor, on a salary of £250.114CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 150; 1652-3, 451; 1653-4, pp. 29, 33; 1654, p. 444. He had been a long-serving commissioner of oyer and terminer and among other legal positions he held was soon that of commissioner of the high court of justice (June 1654). He was thus perfectly conformable to the Cromwellian regime, and was dependable enough to be included among the commissioners for the security of the lord protector. In 1656 there was talk at Whitehall of his serving as a judge in Ireland and as a member of the Irish council. John Thurloe* described him as honest and moderately skilled, but nothing came of the suggestion.115TSP iv. 545. Corbett was an ‘ejector’ of clergy under the 1654 ordinance in three counties, and served on the body established to investigate the finances of the Welsh church under the ‘propagators’, doubtless recalling the circumstances in which Harrison’s coterie had driven the 1650 act in a direction counter to the one he would have chosen for it. He seems to have entertained no ambitions to serve again in Parliament. Bishop’s Castle had no representation under Oliver Cromwell*, and the borough looked elsewhere for its representatives during the single Parliament of his son.

As a Welsh judge, Corbett walked in the funeral procession of Lord Protector Cromwell, but as soon as the Rump was restored in May 1659, Corbett again entered the House and became an active Member.116Burton’s Diary, ii. 525. He was from the outset of the Rump’s revival an active collaborator with Nicholas Lechmere in some important legislative developments. They both served on the committee to draft a new bill of indemnity (14 May 1659) and another to constitute a council of state, Corbett’s being the first name on the list.117CJ vii. 655a, 656a, 659b. He was the leading figure among those who had to decide what parts of the Journal should be expunged, as the Parliament came to review the account of its dissolution by Cromwell back in 1653, and was added to the committee which assessed the extent of the public debts since that time. All these appointments reveal Corbett to have been an enthusiast and apologist for the Rump.118CJ vii. 661b, 662a; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 375. Before he was confirmed in his judicial appointment in June, he sat on a range of committees dealing with petitions from various corporate groups, including the fishermen of Deal, the burgesses of Colchester and the free miners of the Forest of Dean.119CJ vii. 666a, 668a, 670b, 673b, 684b, 686b. A glimpse of Corbett’s former land sales interests is visible in his taking on, with Lechmere, the drafting of a bill – which seems not have reached fruition – to sell off woodlands in the possession of the state.120CJ vii. 676b.

After Corbett went to ride the circuit in south Wales, his attendances in the House naturally fell away before the Parliament was again interrupted in October. Revived for a second time in December 1659, the Rump was able yet again to rely upon Corbett as one of its most devoted servants, and recognized his loyalty by welcoming him back to the council of state.121CJ vii. 799a, 800a, 800b. His committee on absent Members, which had originated in 1647, was revived with a low quorum in recognition of the poor attendance in the House. It pursued the cases of a few high profile absentees such as Thomas, Lord Fairfax and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, but there was hardly scope for a revival of the faction fights of the late 1640s, and another, more useful committee (including, but not led by, Corbett) turned its attention instead not only to the issuing of writs to replace the many dead or absent Rumpers, but also to the qualifications for admission to the Parliament.122CJ vii. 798b, 803a, 804a, 805a. Even after the admission of the Secluded Members (21 Feb. 1660), Corbett was working away on the qualifications for membership of the House, but his assumptions about criteria for admission must have changed dramatically once the Rumpers became a minority in the House.123CJ vii. 807a, 848b, 856a, 873b. He was once again confirmed in his Welsh judicial post (14 Mar.) but contrary to a recent account there is no evidence that he was ever selected to become a serjeant-at-law: that was his near namesake Miles.124CJ vii. 700a, 876a; Oxford DNB; J.H. Baker, Serjeants at Law (1984), 192.

Corbett was not excepted from the act of indemnity and oblivion; he had, after all, only attended one meeting of the high court of justice in January 1649, and his assurances of solidarity at that time were evidently not held against him. He may have enjoyed the protection of a powerful intercessor at court, as did his friend Lechmere, and he must have been relieved to avoid the fate of his father-in-law, Penington. However, the Restoration of the monarchy brought a sudden and spectacular loss of paid and unpaid office for Corbett. Not only was his judgeship wrested from him, but he was never again admitted to any of the local commissions which gave him a standing in Shropshire.125CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 214. At Gray’s Inn, his credit was low; he had been called to the bench (the governing body) there in May 1658, but in November 1663 he was removed from it, ostensibly because he had refused to become a Lent reader. He was fined again in 1668 for the same offence.126PBG Inn, 422, 446, 459. In 1660 Corbett lost the titles to his Worcestershire properties, which were returned to the bishop, but he remained a freeholder at Hallow until at least 1662, and retained copyhold tenancies in Grimley until his death.127Worcs. RO, 009:1/BA 2636/49/43995a; PROB11/339/159. When he drew up his will in May 1670, he was unable to sign his name through illness, and died the following February. His estates at Halston were retained by his widow until her death. Thereafter, they passed to the Lechmere family; the old association between Corbett and Nicholas Lechmere had been cemented by the marriage of a younger son of Lechmere and Corbett’s only daughter.128Salop Archives, 11/431.