NEAST, William (1622-70), of Chaceley, Worcs. and Twyning, Glos.

When the heralds visited Gloucestershire in 1682-3, they noted that William Neast’s son, Thomas, produced for their inspection ‘a vellum escutcheon of … arms, not attested’.18Vis. Glos. 1682-3, 125. This was a hint that the family could make no strong claim to gentility. In fact, the Neasts were a numerous yeoman family from Chaceley, then in Worcestershire, later in Gloucestershire, south west of Tewkesbury. Richard Neast had acquired a messuage there in 1553, and the family was probably settled there long before that.19VCH Worcs. iv. 55. William Neast was the third of that forename, and was probably of the branch of the family that lived at Chaceley Court as tenants. Other branches were settled in Chaceley at farmsteads at Hillend and the Rye. At some point in the 1620s, William Neast’s father removed to Twyning, north east of Tewkesbury, but near enough to the borough for the family to maintain a connection with it: there are examples in the records of Neasts becoming freemen in the 1570s.20Chaceley par. reg.; Glos. RO, TBR/A/1/1, p. 250 (reverse).

William Neast went up to Oxford after his father’s death, and was the first of his family to do so. His sojourn there and at the Middle Temple seemed to fit him for the life of a parish gentleman, and doubtless he would have continued in that life had it not been for the civil war. His first involvement in the conflict came with an appointment by Edward Massie*, military governor for Parliament in Gloucester, to be collector of local rates, presumably in the Tewkesbury area. This developed into a second commission, to be collector of the weekly assessment for Kiftsgate division, the district of Gloucestershire extending from Tewkesbury to Chipping Campden. Of the £846 Neast was required to collect, only £530 was actually brought in, and the reluctance of the populace to pay was compounded by the danger of falling into enemy hands, the fate of Ralph Wallis, ‘the cobbler of Gloucester’, doing a similar job to Neast in the same area in the same period.21SP28/228/759-60; SP28/228/299; Oxford DNB, ‘Ralph Wallis’. His willingness to run these risks on behalf of Parliament soon led to a commission as captain of foot in the garrison of Tewkesbury after Massie had re-taken the town in June 1644.22E113/8; F. Redmond, ‘The Borough of Tewkesbury, 1575-1714’ (Birmingham Univ. MA thesis, 1950), 39. He was given a troop in the Worcestershire regiment formed by an ordinance of September 1644 to reduce the county to the will of Parliament: a colleague commanding another troop in the regiment or brigade was Talbot Badger*.23E113/8.

Neast’s Worcestershire commission lasted until May 1646, but he must have retained some military rank afterwards, probably in the Gloucestershire county force. At any rate, it was as ‘dux pro Parliamento’ that he was sworn a freeman of Tewkesbury in November 1646, and his brother Richard was accorded the same honour in 1653.24Glos. RO, TBR/A1/2, p. 138. Neast seems never to have played an active part in Tewkesbury borough politics, and indeed an agreement was recorded by which ‘he should serve no office in town without his own consent’, exempting him from the usual official duties.25Glos. RO, TBR/A1/2, p. 47. He was elevated to the county magistracy in March 1650, and commissioned as a militia captain in 1651 during the emergency of the Scots invasion.26C231/6, p. 177; CSP Dom. 1651, p. 513. He was noted as godly by the Congregationalist churches of Gloucestershire, when after the dissolution of the Rump, they combined to lobby Oliver Cromwell* and the council of army officers. In their view, the gospel had been advanced through ‘discouragements, threatenings and oppressions’ in ‘places of gross darkness and profaneness’. They had supported the army council’s call for the Rump to implement a programme of religious reform, and now forwarded a list of 17 godly men who could be relied upon as suitable for a ‘council of good and faithful men to the government of the nation’. Neast’s name headed the list. Like the others, he owed his recommendation to his ‘good report for piety and constant adhering to the cause of God and interest of the army’.27Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 125-6.

Neast’s profile in the Nominated Assembly was low. He was named to the Army Committee of this Parliament, naturally enough given his military background. Beyond that, his only appearance in the Commons Journal was when he was given leave to go home (21 Sept. 1653).28CJ vii. 287a, 322a. To judge from the various arrangements for their accommodation in Whitehall during the summer, Neast worked closely with John Croft, his fellow-member for Gloucestershire.29CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 44, 71, 73, 76, 88, 92. Both had been recommended by the Gloucestershire churches, but according to the contemporary analyst of attitudes within Barebones, they stood on opposite sides of the debate on the future of the church. Neast was supposedly for ‘a godly learned ministry’: shorthand for a continuation of the tithe-funded state church. Doubts have been cast on the reliability of this evidence, and Neast’s performance was so desultory that all that can be said is that he certainly proved to be willing to work with the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell: as was John Croft.30Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 195-8, 424-5.

In 1655, Neast was named as a commissioner under Major-general John Disbrowe*, although he later claimed that he handled no decimation money and drew pay for only nine days’ service.31TSP iv. 354; E113/8. Even so, he must have retained the respect of Disbrowe to have been returned again to Parliament in 1656. His name was first on the list of Tewkesbury burgesses who returned first of all Disbrowe’s son, Valentine on 5 August 1656, and then when that election failed for whatever reason, Colonel Francis White*.32Glos. RO, TBR/A/14/2; C219/45, pt. 2. In this respect, at least, Neast was Tewkesbury’s leading citizen, but as he held no town offices, it is hard not to regard him as a tool of the Disbrowe military interest. His own activity in this Parliament was confined to sitting on committees dealing with petitions and local Gloucestershire matters. He was named to the committees on the cases of George Rodney, Samuel Vassall* (the customs refuser) and James Chadwick* (22 Nov. 1656, 2 Feb. 13 Feb. 1657).33CJ vii. 457b, 485a, 490b. He was one of the committee responsible for a bill to settle Gloucester cathedral on the corporation there, which led to the creation of a library, by Thomas Pury II*.34CJ vii. 457a. He contributed to a long-running Gloucester issue, that of its entitlement to Adventure lands in Ireland, by sitting on a committee for an additional bill to secure a compensatory award of estates.35CJ vii. 494a. A committee on the protection of forests for ship-building purposes, and thus his place on it, arose from a local controversy over Forest of Dean timber.36CJ vii. 444b; A Modest Check to Part of a Scandalous Libell (1650).

In August 1658, Neast and Croft were asked by the council of state to investigate the complaint by John Wells, minister of Tewkesbury since 1651, and thus probably a sponsor of Neast and Croft for service in the Nominated Assembly. Wells complained of a ‘malignant’ lecturer foisted on him by the bailiff of the town, Thomas Jeynes, a personal ‘loving friend’ of Neast’s. Like Neast, Wells had an army background, as a former chaplain to Colonels Richard Ingoldsby* and Thomas Kelsey*. Neast is unlikely to have been a neutral arbitrator, and the episode suggests that the solidity of the godly was breaking up in Tewkesbury, as it was in nearby Evesham*.37CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 117; Glos. RO GDR/1670/209; Calamy Revised, 519. Neast played no military part in the final days of the commonwealth, but was named as a civilian militia commissioner for the county during the period of Sir George Boothe’s* rising. He was called upon by General George Monck* in the closing days of 1659 to a commission as major of foot in Gloucestershire. Neast chose later to describe this summons as ‘in order to his majesty’s Restoration’, but it seems doubtful whether it was perceived by him in those terms at the time.38E113/8. Even so, on 2 May 1660, Neast attended the common council of Tewkesbury, probably to resign his office as a justice of the borough. A month later, still as a burgess, he attended again to draft a declaration of joy at the return of the king. He made at this meeting a personal affirmation that he would ‘lay hold upon his majesty’s free and general pardon ... I am and will continue his majesty's loyal and obedient subject’.39Glos. RO, TBR/A1/3, ff. 1, 2; (reverse), p. 133. He attended his last meeting of the council on 25 October, missing by a month the readmission to the council of seven burgesses ejected by Disbrowe in 1655.40Glos. RO, TBR/A1/3, ff. 5, 7.

Neast doubtless hoped to walk away completely from public life in 1660, as his testimonies at Tewkesbury suggest. In November 1661 he nearly came to grief when the hawkish cavalier, Sir John Pakington*, intercepted a letter to Neast from his Tewkesbury friend, Thomas Jeynes. It contained news on the procedure that was to be followed in exchequer on office-holders’ accounting, but contained the millenarian-sounding prophecy that ‘good people are preparing for dark days in order to a glorious appearance’. It led a commentator in government circles to conclude that the missive had ‘a plot in the belly of it’.41CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 148. In February 1663, Neast made his answer at the exchequer to a bill against him as a defaulting accountant, but was able satisfactorily to clear himself.42E113/8. In May 1664 he was granted a licence to travel to London, on condition that he gave an account of his reasons for travel to the government: he was evidently being watched.43CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 586. Neast made his will on 26 May 1670, died probably on 27 May, and was buried the day after that at Twyning. There is a discrepancy of a year between the burial date in the register and the death date on his memorial inscription in Twyning church.44Twyning par. reg.; Glos. RO, GDR/1670/20; Bigland, Collections ed. Frith iii. 1358. None of his descendants is known to have sat in later Parliaments.