LYDDELL, Thomas (1578-1652), of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumb., and Ravensworth Castle, Lamesley, co. Dur.

Lyddell’s family joined Newcastle’s governing elite in the reign of Elizabeth, when his grandfather served as sheriff and mayor of the town.28Surtees, Co. Dur. ii. 212. Their fortunes continued to improve under Lyddell’s father, whose purchase of a large estate and colliery in County Durham in 1607 both reflected and consolidated his position as a leading member of the Hostmen’s Company and the Newcastle Merchant Adventurers.29Recs. of the Co. of Hostmen of Newcastle ed. Dendy, 11. Lyddell was already one of the town’s major coal-shippers when his father died in 1619, having, as he himself declared, ‘great store of mines of coal [on his estate], which are by him and at his costs and charges digged for and won and vented from thence by the ... river of Tyne to masters of ships and mariners, both cross the seas and along the coasts of this kingdom’.30C3/408/197.

Lyddell had joined Newcastle’s municipal elite – the ten aldermen of the town’s common council – by 1625 at the latest.31Recs. of the Co. of Hostmen of Newcastle ed. Dendy, 63, 66. His first term as mayor, in 1625-6, was marked by a generally lenient approach towards local Catholics – although as he complained to his brother-in-law, Sir Henry Anderson*, it was difficult to know what line to take against popery given the inconsistency of central government on this issue.32HMC 3rd Rep. 39; CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 460. When many of the freemen petitioned the crown in 1633, complaining about the restrictive economic and political practices of Newcastle’s governors, Lyddell’s mayoralty was highlighted as a particularly bad year for cronyism.33SP16/245, pp. 67, 68; CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 66, 497; Howell, Newcastle, 57-8. However, he redeemed himself – at least in the eyes of the crown – during his second term as mayor in 1636-7 by assisting in the collection of Ship Money in the town and in agreeing to pay the levy on his colliery in County Durham when most of his fellow colliery owners refused to do so.34CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 461; 1637, p. 40. Moreover, when the crown negotiated a deal with the Hostmen in 1637 for the purchase of coal on favourable terms, Lyddell was one of the parties to the agreement.35E214/49; Recs. of the Co. of Hostmen of Newcastle ed. Dendy, 77-8.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Lyddell and his half-brother and fellow aldermen Sir Peter Riddell were returned for Newcastle, with Lyddell taking the junior place.36Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 1109. He received no appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. He may well have been among the Newcastle grandees who fled the town when it was taken by the Scottish Covenanters in August 1640. That perhaps explains why he did not stand for election to the Long Parliament. He began to agitate for the king’s cause as early as May 1642, when he and other proto-royalists attempted to persuade their fellow townsmen to declare for William Cavendish, 1st earl of Newcastle, as lord lieutenant rather than the parliamentarian peer Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland.37SP23/178, p. 67; Cttees. for Compounding...in Durham and Northumb. ed. Welford, 271. Appointed to the Newcastle commission of array in July, he assisted the earl of Newcastle and Sir William Withrington* in their efforts to raise troops and generally make the Tyne Valley secure for the king.38SP23/178, p. 67; Northants. RO, FH133; Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, pp. 87, 89, 90; A Letter of Lieutenant Colonel John Lilburns (1651), 9 (E.626.19); CCC 1917; Cttees. for Compounding...in Durham and Northumb. ed. Welford, 271-2. The following month, he presented a loyal address to Charles from the royalist faction on the Newcastle common council, desiring inter alia the preservation of his ‘just prerogatives’ and ‘the established government of the church’.39Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 90; Cttees. for Compounding...in Durham and Northumb. ed. Welford, 271-2. Several of Lyddell’s close relations (including his son Francis) were recusants or church papists, and though apparently a sincere Protestant himself, he almost certainly shared their hostility towards militant puritanism.40Cttees. for Compounding...in Durham and Northumb. ed. Welford, 268-70; P.R. Newman, Royalist Officers, 233. He was rewarded for his loyalty with a baronetcy in November 1642.41CB.

Lyddell figured prominently in the royalist government of Newcastle during the civil war. He was one of the signatories to the council order of October 1643 for disenfranchising John Blakiston*, Henry Warmouth* and other leading parliamentarian inhabitants.42Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 113; Newcastle Council Min. Bk. ed. Dodds, 24, 28-9. And he was later accused of trying to raise hands in the town for a declaration pronouncing the parliamentarian lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, a traitor and rebel.43SP23/178, p. 68; Cttees. for Compounding...in Durham and Northumb. ed. Welford, 272. In February 1644, he and other royalist aldermen declared themselves ready to ‘hazard our lives and fortunes for the honour and preservation of the king and the religion and laws of the kingdom’.44A True Relation of the Late Proceedings of the Scottish Army (1644), 11-13 (E.33.17). During the Scots’ siege of the town later that year, he signed several letters from the council in similar vein and bidding defiance to their general, Alexander Leslie, 1st earl of Leven.45The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer, no. 69 (20-7 Aug. 1644), 556-7 (E.7.14); A Particular Relation of the Taking of Newcastle (1644), 12-13 (E.16.5). Commissioned by the earl of Newcastle as a captain in the trained bands, Lyddell reportedly ‘continued in arms’ until the town was stormed by the Scots on 19 October, when he was captured.46Cttees. for Compounding...in Durham and Northumb. ed. Welford, 272. At least one of his sons was also in arms against Parliament.47Surtees, Co. Dur. ii. 214; Newman, Royalist Officers, 233. Lyddell and most of the town’s other ‘notorious delinquents’ were deemed sufficiently dangerous, or culpable, by Parliament to warrant a lengthy spell of imprisonment in London.48CJ iii. 700a; Cttees. for Compounding...in Durham and Northumb. ed. Welford, 271. Lyddell’s petition to compound was accepted in February 1646, but it was apparently not until June, when an ordinance was passed granting him a pardon, that he was released. Parts of his estate had been mortgaged, his personal estate had been sequestered, and he owed debts of £700.49SP23/178, pp. 61, 63, 69-70; CJ iv. 438b, 530b; LJ viii. 370b; CCC 892. He was fined at a third of his estate – that is, £4,000.50CCC 892.

Lyddell died at some point between January and 2 June 1652, when his will was proved.51PROB11/222, f. 240v; CCC 892. His place and date of burial are not known. In his will, he made bequests totalling in excess of £1,000.52PROB11/222, f. 240. His eldest son having predeceased him, the bulk of his estate passed to his grandson, Sir Thomas Lyddell, 2nd bt., who had married a daughter of Sir Henry Vane I*.53C7/407/40; C8/92/135. In marked contrast to his grandfather, the second baronet was a religious Presbyterian and a Baptist sympathiser.54Cttees. for Compounding...in Durham and Northumb. ed. Welford, 271; V. Rowe, Sir Henry Vane the Younger (1970), 90. His son – Lyddell’s grandson Henry Liddell† – sat for County Durham and Newcastle on seven occasions between 1689 and 1708.55HP Commons 1660-1690.