IRELANDE, Gilbert (1624-75), of The Hutt, and Hale Hall, Childwall, Lancs.

Irelande’s family had owned land in Hale, some ten miles south east of Liverpool, since the late thirteenth century.1VCH Lancs. iii. 142-5; Beamont, Hale and Orford, 10-11. Several of his ancestors had been returned for Lancashire and other constituencies since the fourteenth century – although the Thomas and George Ireland returned for Liverpool in 1614 and 1624 respectively belonged to the Bewsey Hall branch of the family (into which Gilbert married in 1647) and were only distant kinsmen.2HP Commons 1558-1603; HP Commons 1604-29. Irelande’s father died when he was eight years old, leaving him to be raised by his mother and her second husband Hugh Rigby, a Lancashire lawyer.3WARD9/163, f. 42; Cheshire and Lancs. Fun. Certs ed. Rylands, 205-6; CSP Dom. 1637-8, pp. 27, 231, 363. An inventory of Irelande’s father’s personal estate, taken in 1633, mentions a ‘schoolhouse’ at The Hutt, which suggests that Gilbert was privately tutored at home.4B.G. Blackwood, ‘The Lancashire Gentry, 1625-1660: a Social and Economic Study’ (Oxford Univ. DPhil. thesis, 1973), 72. There is certainly no evidence that he attended university or the inns of court. In about 1640, Hugh Rigby negotiated a match between Irelande and Anne Fiennes, the youngest daughter of the godly peer and future parliamentarian grandee William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele. But Saye’s appointment as master of the court of wards in 1641 encouraged him to seek a more profitable alliance for his daughter – and in 1648, she married the future protectoral councillor Sir Charles Wolseley*.5C7/297/119; C7/426/104; C7/431/104.

Irelande sided with Parliament during the civil war – a decision probably linked to his godly religious convictions. Despite his tender years, he was nominated by the Commons to the Lancashire county committee in October 1643 – a vote that the Lords, for some reason, chose to ignore.6CJ iii. 291a. By January 1644, he was serving as a captain in the Lancashire parliamentarian horse and was being styled colonel by early 1645, although there is no evidence that this was anything but a courtesy title before 1650.7HMC 10th Rep. IV, 70; CCC 1369; Chandler, Liverpool, 329; Cal. of Deeds and Pprs. of the Moore Fam. ed. J. Brownbill (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. lxvii), 207; Gratton, Lancs. 289. At some point during the period 1642-5, he was commissioned by Philip 4th Baron Wharton as one of his deputy lieutenants for Lancashire. In the summer of 1645, Irelande was involved with John Holcrofte* and several other officers at the siege of Lathom in arresting and imprisoning one of the county’s most militant parliamentarians, Thomas Birche*. That autumn, Birche hit back against Irelande, Holcrofte and their confederates, prosecuting them at the assizes for false imprisonment.8Supra, ‘Thomas Birche’; ‘John Holcrofte’; SP24/77 (case of Stanley v. Birche). Although Birche accused his enemies of lukewarmness in the parliamentarian cause, Irelande was an active member of the Lancashire county committee – to which he was added in August 1645 – and commission of peace and was sufficiently trusted by both Houses to be appointed county sheriff in 1647 and to be retained in that office until early 1649.9Supra, ‘Thomas Birche’; Bodl. Tanner 58, f. 469; Lancs. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. J. H. Stanning (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. xxiv), 16, 236, 253; (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. xxvi), 302; (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. xxix), 2, 259, 261, 275, 278; Lancs. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. J. Brownbill (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. xcv), 135, 153; Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 159, 183; CJ v. 390a; LJ ix. 535b; List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 73. A royalist newsletter-writer reported in March 1648 that

the sheriff of Lancashire, having received a warrant for executing of some persons condemned at the assizes, came away to London without performing it ... alleging that it goes against his conscience to execute any man not condemned according to the law of the land. Divers divines have been sent to him to satisfy him, but his scruple remains unremoved.10Bodl. Clarendon 31, f. 37v.

Yet despite Irelande’s likely support for a Presbyterian church settlement – he was an elder in the fifth Lancashire classis and a patron of the Presbyterian minister Robert Yates – and his alleged squeamishness about contravening ‘the law of the land’, he played an active part in local affairs and government under the Rump.11LJ viii. 510; Calamy Revised, 551; Add. 59661, f. 25; SP28/211, ff. 629, 660; CSP Dom. 1651, p. 480; Lancs. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. J. Brownbill (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. xcvi), 313; Craven, ‘Lancs.’, 26, 29, 39, 71. Moreover, as a colonel of foot in the Lancashire militia, he was part of the army that defeated Charles Stuart and the Scots at Worcester in September 1651.12CSP Dom. 1650, p. 505; 1651, p. 317; CCC 643; Lancs. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. Brownbill (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. xcvi), 369. He also played a prominent role in settling and maintaining a ‘godly and orthodox’ ministry in the county during the early 1650s.13Cheshire RO, ZML/3/334; Lancs. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. Brownbill (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. xcvi), 393, 394; Lancs. and Cheshire Church Surveys ed. Fishwick, 1, 65.

In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, Irelande was returned for Lancashire and appears to have claimed the senior place.14Supra, ‘Lancashire’. His strong electoral interest was doubtless linked to the fact that he was one of Lancashire’s leading landowners, for by a settlement made in 1625 between his father and his future father-in-law, and then his marriage in 1647, the estates of two branches of the Ireland family, sundered since the later fifteenth century, had been re-united, giving him an annual income that was probably well in excess of £1,000.15WARD7/84/117; Lancs. RO, QDD/33/5; QDD/50/20; Lancs. Fun. Certs. ed. King, Raines, 83. He probably benefited, too, from his high profile in county affairs since the mid-1640s and perhaps also from the approval of Lancashire’s influential Presbyterian interest. He was named to 15 committees in this Parliament, including four that related to the House’s debates about enacting and revising the protectoral constitution – the Instrument of Government.16CJ vii. 369a, 370a, 399b, 415b. Having been appointed that August to the Lancashire commission for ejecting scandalous ministers, he was named to the committee set up on 25 September 1654 to consider the ordinance by which the system of triers and ejectors had been established.17CJ vii. 370a.

Perhaps Irelande’s most revealing appointment in this Parliament came on 12 December 1654, when he was named to a committee for the ‘enumeration of damnable heresies’ to be inserted in the bill for settling the protectoral government.18CJ vii. 399b. This initiative was part of a wider, Presbyterian-dominated, campaign to reduce the provisions for liberty of conscience allowed under the Instrument.19Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 200. Irelande’s association with the Presbyterian interest did not lose him the favour of the protector, Oliver Cromwell*, who, in April 1655, appointed him to the strategically important office of governor of Liverpool.20TSP iii. 359; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 329.

In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Irelande was again returned in first place for Lancashire.21Supra, ‘Lancashire’. He received nine committee appointments in this Parliament – although he was actually named twice to a committee set up on 22 December 1656 for considering a petition from Lancashire’s leading nobleman, Charles Stanley, 8th earl of Derby.22CJ vii. 472a, 472b. Irelande had been appointed to the court martial established in September 1651 that had tried and executed the earl’s father for his part in Charles Stuart’s invasion of that year.23Stanley Pprs. ed. Raines, p. cccxxxvi. However, Irelande had apparently played no part in the trial proceedings, and he moved on 30 April 1657 that the House confirm an act made by the Nominated Parliament for settling £500 a year upon the 8th earl for the relief of his ‘distressed’ family.24Burton’s Dairy, ii. 80. Irelande’s only other recorded contribution to debate had come the day before (29 Apr.), when he had urged that the ordinances for reviving the jurisdiction of the court of the duchy of Lancaster be continued, which the House acted upon immediately.25Burton’s Dairy, ii. 65.

Irelande appears to have contributed nothing to the debates on the floor of the House in the early months of 1657 concerning the adoption of a new protectoral constitution, the Remonstrance – or, as it became, the Humble Petition and Advice. He received only three appointments relating to the Remonstrance, although one of these was to the important committee set up on 9 April to satisfy Cromwell’s ‘doubts and scruples’ about accepting the offer of the crown.26CJ vii. 502a, 514b, 521b. Irelande’s insignificant role in these events notwithstanding, he was the only MP who sat for a Lancashire constituency who would be listed among the ‘kinglings’ in the House.27[G. Wharton], A Narrative of the late Parliament (1658), 23 (E.935.5). His last appointment in this Parliament was his tellership in a minor division on 11 May concerning postponing the reading of a bill for the Irish Adventurers.28CJ vii. 532b. That he failed to make any further impression upon the records of the House may reflect disillusionment on his part with the failure to achieve a more robustly monarchical settlement.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Irelande was returned for Liverpool, where he was apparently still governor.29Supra, ‘Liverpool’; Liverpool Town Bks. 1649-71 ed. M. Power (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. cxxxvi), 117. He received only one appointment in this Parliament, when he was named first to a committee on 13 April to consider a petition from Lancashire’s lately disbanded supernumerary forces.30CJ vii. 638a. Again, there is the suspicion that he had lost faith in the protectorate either in itself or its ability to keep the army and the sects in check. His removal by the restored Rump in July from his command in the Lancashire militia, and his omission from the county’s militia commission that same month, reveal that he was seen by the army and its republican allies as politically suspect.31CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 24. Irelande confirmed this assessment in dramatic fashion the following month by joining the earl of Derby, Henry Brooke* and other Cheshire and Lancashire grandees in the Presbyterian-royalist rising organised by Sir George Boothe*. Irelande’s principal contribution to this doomed enterprise was to seize Liverpool (where he had presumably been removed as governor by the restored Rump) in the name of the rebels. He was present at the rout of Boothe’s forces at Winnington Bridge, in Cheshire, on 19 August, after which he reportedly retreated with 100 or so horse to Liverpool.32Supra, ‘George Boothe’; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 113-14, 147; Nicholas Pprs. iv. 177; CCSP iv. 312, 323; Cheshire Civil War Tracts, 164, 172; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 274. But it is not clear whether he was then captured and imprisoned (as one authority has claimed), took ship to some safe destination, or was simply not proceeded against.33Beamont, Hale and Orford, 65.

Returned for Liverpool again in the elections to the 1660 Convention, Irelande was listed by Lord Wharton as likely supporter of a Presbyterian church settlement.34G. F. T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 337. In about May, he signed a loyal address to the king from the Lancashire and Cheshire gentry, and on 16 June 1660 he was knighted – presumably as part of the king’s attempt to solicit the support of leading Presbyterians.35SP29/1/35, f. 68; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 228. Shortly afterwards, he was appointed a deputy lieutenant for Lancashire by the earl of Derby, who probably supported his return for Liverpool to the Cavalier Parliament.36SP29/11/166, f. 206; HP Commons, 1660-90. When, in 1662, the loyalty of several of Derby’s deputy lieutenants was challenged by his local rivals, the earl defended his selection of Irelande on the grounds that he was a man of ‘estate and interest’ and that his appointment would be a means to ensure that he was ‘reclaimed’ to the royal interest. Nevertheless, the king apparently refused to ratify Irelande’s appointment, although the nature of the crown’s objections to him is not clear.37SP29/61/85, ff 151-3; CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 524. Edward Moore, son of the Lancashire regicide John Moore*, held a similarly low opinion of Irelande, scrawling on Irelande’s correspondence the words ‘perfidious letter; a false-hearted knave’.38Moore Fam. Pprs. ed. Brownbill, 213. Unlike Sir Richard Hoghton*, who was another of Derby’s appointees rejected by the crown, there is no evidence that Irelande was a patron of dissenting ministers.39Supra, ‘Sir Richard Hoghton’. His household chaplain by 1670, one Mr Nixon, was not among the ministers ejected in 1662.40HMC 10th Rep. IV, 119. In the early 1670s, Irelande was accounted an opponent of the perceived alliance between ‘the violent Presbyterians and papists’ against the Church of England.41Lancs. Fun. Certs. ed. King, Raines, 85.

Irelande died of apoplexy on 30 April 1675 – a condition probably brought on by his ‘excessive drinking’.42Gregson, Fragments, 202, 212; HP Commons, 1660-90. According to his friend Richard Legh*, he ‘looked death in the face without dread and met the blessed master he always profess’d to serve ... with sweet content and undaunted spirit’.43Lancs. Fun. Certs. ed. King, Raines, 86. He was buried in Hale chapel on 13 May.44Hale ed. Dickinson, 99. He made a will, but it has not survived.45Index to the Wills at Chester ed. J. P. Earwaker (Lancs. and Cheshire Rec. Soc. xv), 148. In a separate settlement made at about the same time he drew up his will, he assigned property worth between £300 and £500 a year to trustees (who included Legh) for 31 years to pay off debts of reportedly £2,500. He also charged his estate with annuities of £380. His personal estate was valued at £1,500.46HMC Lords, iii. 265-6; Gregson, Fragments, 202. Since he died childless, his estate was inherited by his nephew and a more distant relation, Richard Atherton†.47HP Commons, 1660-90.