BALL, William (?1601-47), of Barkham, Berks. and Chancery Lane, St Dunstan-in-the-West, London.

The Balls could trace their ancestry at Barkham back to the late fifteenth century, but they were prominent in neither the county nor the wider world.19Wills and Admins. Archdeaconry of Berks. 1508-1652 (1893), 11; Berks. RO, TR 19 (Barkham par. reg.), pp. 6-7, 26-7, 32, 50. William Ball, whose kinsman and namesake maintained a precarious hold on Barkham, belonged to a cadet branch of the family, seated at Wokingham, only a few miles away.20VCH Berks. iii. 201; C54/3244/15; C54/3250/6; C54/3256/45; C54/3492/19; C 54/3642/8; M. Stephenson, ‘MIs in Surr.’, Surr. Arch. Coll. xxx. 95-6; W. Ball, Ball his Vindication (1652, E.674.10); Berks. RO, D/EFO/T76; Longleat, Whitelocke MS XVII, ff. 190-2. Apparently the first to receive a formal university education, Ball went from Wadham College, Oxford, to Lincoln’s Inn. His friends at the latter included one of the benchers, Richard Waltham, whose daughter Ball married in 1627, and for whose son, Francis (d. 1641), Ball acted as manucaptor in May 1637. 21LIL, Admiss. bk. 5, f. 85; 6, f. 126; Bodl. Rawl. B35, ff. 12v-13; PROB11/188/388 (Francis Waltham). Ball was called to the bar in June 1634, and soon after became one of the four attorneys of the pleas in the exchequer, a position perhaps secured with the help of William Lenthall*, who (with another Lincoln’s Inn barrister, Nicholas Love*) leased the manors of Arborfield and Barkham from Ball’s kinsman William Standen.22C54/3329/32. Ball appears among the group of prominent ‘godly’ lawyers at the inn whose interests included colonial adventures in New England. In December 1633 he joined the Providence Island Company, purchasing shares previously owned by a prominent bencher, Christopher Sherland† (d. 1632), the company’s founder and a prominent supporter of the Feoffees for Impropriations.23CSP Col. 1574–1660, pp. 173, 178.

Despite such associations, Ball’s religious and political opinions before the outbreak of the civil war are obscure. He was almost certainly not the William Ball who wrote A Caveat for Subjects, a conventional piece of royalist polemic issued in September 1642 in response to Henry Parker’s Observations.24W. Ball, A Caveat for Subjects (1642, E.118.7). That April he had subscribed £250 towards the Irish Adventure, and by July 1643 he had been appointed an assessment commissioner for Middlesex.25CSP Ire. (Adv.) 1642-59, pp. 281, 345; SP19/90, f. 11. In January 1644 Ball was nominated to help prepare Worcester House for the use of the Scottish commissioners, possibly through the influence of Cornelius Holland*, who was also chosen, and whose parliamentary seat at Windsor was only a few miles from Wokingham.26LJ vi. 404a. With both Holland and William Lenthall, now Speaker of the Commons, in June 1644 he was appointed to the committee for Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire.27A. and O.

In the mid-1640s Ball was one of its most active members. He liaised between it and the Committee of Both Kingdoms (CBK) in organising the defence of the garrisons at Reading and Abingdon, the two most effective buffers between the forces of the king at Oxford and the Parliament in Westminster.28CSP Dom. 1644, p. 419; 1644-5, pp. 13, 35, 59. This was a role for which Ball was eminently qualified, as a Londoner with Berkshire roots, and because of his personal knowledge of the governor of Abingdon, Major-general Richard Browne II*, a neighbour from the London parish of St Dunstan’s in the West, where Ball was a prominent parishioner.29GL, MSS 10344 unfol; 3016/1, p. 235. In the autumn of 1644 Ball was also involved in overseeing the purge of royalists from the Reading corporation, and in organizing sequestrations.30SP28/255. On 23 July 1645 he was added to the committee for Westminster charged with raising £20,000 for the defence of the three counties.31LJ vii. 508a. Ball’s contacts with the CBK enabled him to present (1 Oct. 1645) a paper concerning the payment of reformadoes (former army officers), which the committee ordered to be reported to the Commons.32CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 169.

By the autumn of 1645 Ball was aligned with the ‘war party’ in Parliament and the county. This allegiance was expressed in his Tractatus de Jure Regnandi et Regni, or the Sphere of Government, published in the last week of October, and dedicated to Major-general Philip Skippon*, to whom he had first presented it at Reading in May 1644. Ball outlined what was in many ways a conventional contractualist parliamentarian theory, in which liberties were conceived to pre-date the conquest rather than to spring from the king’s grace, and in which the people were understood to have placed themselves under the law, rather than having been compelled to submit to it. The king was a steward by inheritance, bound in conscience to ratify Parliament’s decisions, and to do anything for the good of the kingdom, so long as it was not destructive of his right. Ball granted the king prerogative power, ‘a power residing, or being in the king whereby he may do good to himself and people, in things wherein the laws do not sufficiently extend’. Upon a sudden invasion, for example, the king could raise forces and impose taxes, but should thereafter call a Parliament as soon as possible. Ball claimed, however, that the king’s dissent ‘doth not nor cannot frustrate, or make void, an ordinance concluded of and avouched by both Houses of Parliament’. Resistance to the king was ultimately permissible. Diverging from other parliamentarian theorists, he asserted that neither ‘the king’s … prerogative power’ nor ‘the Parliament’s great sea of judicial power’ were ‘unlimited or boundless’. English government was a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy, but democracy prevailed, and there were rights against both king and Parliament: ‘for if the representative body of the kingdom may in the behalf of the kingdom, raise arms for the defence of themselves and the kingdom, may not the essential?’; the people, ‘by reposing or granting such trust ... do not disinvest themselves of their right natural’. Representation need not imply the existence of an absolute judge or umpire. While government could have power over things disputable (for example, religion), it had no jurisdiction over ‘indisputables’, such as the fundamental liberty and propriety of the subjects grounded in the law of nature.33W. Ball, Tractatus de Jure Regnandi (1645), sig. A2, pp. 2-5, 7, 9-10, 12-13, 15.

Ball’s views suggest the influence of another Berkshire MP with whom he worked on the committee of the three counties, Henry Marten*, whose republicanism had resulted in his expulsion from the Commons in 1643. Ball’s radical friends also appear to have included John Barkstead*, who in November 1645 sought to use Ball to influence the CBK, in the hope of securing the governorship of Reading.34HMC Portland, i. 314. It was possibly with Marten’s support that Ball sought election to the Long Parliament in 1645. Initially he tried at Reading, where a writ had been issued to choose a replacement for Sir Francis Knollys II*. Ball faced opposition from more moderate forces in the county, who ensured that his request to be made a burgess or freeman of the borough was rejected. In the election itself, held on 13 October, Ball was defeated (13 votes to nine) by another member of the county committee, Tanfield Vachell*, a local man whose family was prominent in the borough, and who had stood unsuccessfully for the seat in October 1640. When Ball demanded a poll of the entire corporation, this too was rejected.35Reading Recs. iv. 167-8. He had exposed an ambiguity in the franchise, however, and tapped into a growing sentiment in favour of a wider franchise. There had not been a poll for elections to Short Parliament, but evidently the consent of the commonalty had been solicited in both the by-election on 29 April 1640 and in October 1640.36Reading Recs. iii. 488-507. The dispute soon reached the Commons, which concluded (17 Nov. 1645) that the election was void because the poll, once demanded, ought not to have been refused.37CJ iv. 346b.

A fresh election took place on 1 December, but Ball was no more successful, even in the poll of the commonalty, where he received only 309 votes to Vachell’s 560.38Reading Recs. iv. 170-2. Nevertheless his supporters, in collusion with the mayor (George Wooldridge), attempted to prevent Vachell from taking his seat by delaying the return of the election indenture, and even by completing an indenture for Ball’s election.39Reading Recs. iv. 172-3. The corporation then petitioned Parliament, complaining that, ‘by the persuasion of a discontented party in the town’, the mayor had kept the first indenture

in his hands, protracting time on purpose (as we are informed) till Mr Ball can take some exceptions against Mr Vachell’s party, although there are more exceptions, or as many, as we conceive, to be taken against Mr Ball’s, insomuch that the division in the town grows so high, that we fear the consequence thereof will be very sad.40Reading Recs. iv. 173-5.

Unable to effect his election at Reading, Ball was eventually returned for Abingdon, where a seat was vacant following the removal from the House of Sir George Stonhouse*.41CJ iv. 288a. The vacancy had been filled initially by Henry Marten on 25 October 1645, but when he was readmitted to the Commons (6 Jan. 1646) he resumed his place as a knight of the shire, and another election was ordered at Abingdon.42Berks. RO, TF41, f. 169; CJ iv. 397b. In the meantime, Ball had continued to take an active interest in the town’s defence.43SP28/255, unfol.; CJ iv. 374a. Through his own connections in the town, and doubtless through Marten’s influence, Ball was returned as MP on 31 January.44Berks. RO, TF41, f. 169v.

Between taking his seat and the end of the first civil war, Ball concentrated on county affairs, and on organising the defence of parliamentary garrisons, working with both the CBK and the Committee of Accounts.45CJ iv. 481b; SP28/256, unfol. He had taken his seat by 13 February, when he was ordered to go to Reading to oversee the forces, with power to direct the deputy treasurer-at-war to pay soldiers and assign them quarters, as well as to organise arms and ammunition.46CJ iv. 438b, 445b. From there, on 1 March Ball wrote to his old Lincoln’s Inn colleague Lenthall, describing the state of the garrison. He noted ‘the continual clamour of the soldiers of Newbury’ and alleged that ‘the soldiers having almost starved the people where they quarter ... every day begetteth new instances of their outrages’; even ‘under the most tyrannical times of the enemy was nothing so bad’.47Bodl. Tanner 60, f. 491. Ball’s letter echoed the accusations levelled by the Berkshire Clubmen the previous August, and indeed highlighted the plight of Mr Ilsley, one of their leaders. The Clubmen had told the county committee that local people had been ‘for a long time over-pressed with the insupportable burdens and contrary commands of the many garrisons and several armies both of the king and of the Parliament’, and that they sought peace and accommodation, and the ‘mutual defence of our laws, liberties, and properties against all plunderers’.48HMC Portland, i. 246-7.

Ball’s sympathy towards the ‘militant conservatism’ of the Clubmen was expressed in Constitutio Liberi Populi. Or the Rule of the Freeborn People (1646), in which the political radicalism of his earlier work became much more marked. This pamphlet emphasised the ‘intensive power’ of the people, claiming that Englishmen had never assented to any form of arbitrary power, least of all the unlimited power of Parliament. The people could reassert their primitive intensive power when their fundamental liberties and properties were violated or destroyed: ‘it is destructive to the very essence of their freedom not to be able to determine themselves to that which they conceive to be bonum commune’ [for the common good]. Parliament was the highest court ‘extensive’, but could not go beyond its trust; the people were the highest power ‘intensive’, the efficient and final cause of political authority.49W. Ball, Constitutio Liberi Populi (1646), 5, 7, 12, 15, 17 (E.341.1).

Ball continued to be involved in the organisation of the Abingdon garrison until the external threat was removed by Oxford’s surrender in June 1646.50CJ iv. 580b. Increasingly, however, his career centred on Parliament, where he emerged as a reliable ally of the Independent faction. Ball played an active part, both in the Commons and in his London parish, in undermining moves towards the establishment of a Presbyterian settlement, and in voicing objections to the religious demands of the Scots. His ideal was an Erastian settlement determined by Parliament, the view expressed most clearly at Westminster by William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, and his son Nathaniel Fiennes I*.51Ball, Tractatus, 15-6; Constitutio, 17. Following the petition from the city of London in favour of Presbyterianism, Ball was nominated to a committee to consider the preaching ministry (7 Apr. 1646).52CJ iv. 502a. With Francis Allein* (a colleague from St Dunstan-in-the-West), Sir Arthur Hesilrige* and Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire*, he was ordered to print a declaration ‘for taking off misrepresentations of Parliament and their proceedings’ (17 Apr.). This statement, drafted by Nathaniel Fiennes, provided one of the clearest expositions of the views of the Erastian Independents, and had been opposed by the Presbyterians because it objected to ‘the granting of an arbitrary and unlimited power and jurisdiction to near ten thousand judicatories’ of the Presbyterian church, and because it asserted the ‘power of the Parliament of England in the exercise of that jurisdiction’.53CJ iv. 512b-514b.

Ball subsequently joined Fiennes on a committee nominated to consider the revenue of St Paul’s, and to investigate its lecturer Cornelius Burges, one of the most prominent Presbyterians both in the City and the Westminster Assembly (7 May).54CJ iv. 538b-539a. Ball’s resistance to Presbyterian pressure was also reflected in his appointment to committees to prepare an answer to the Scottish commissioners (1 June), to investigate scandalous offences (3 June), and to inquire into the second Presbyterian London remonstrance (11 July).55CJ iv. 560b, 562b, 616a; A. and O. On 25 August Ball was ordered to invite Thomas Goodwin, a prominent Independent divine with close ties to the Fiennes family, to preach before the House.56CJ iv. 652a. Later in the year Ball was named to the committee investigating the pamphlet Jus Divinum, which represented the most forthright statement of Presbyterian demands.57CJ v. 11a. In what was recognised as parishioners’ expression of preference for parliamentary authority over the forms proposed in the pamphlet, on 3 August Ball and Allein were chosen as elders of St Dunstan’s in the West.58GL, MS 3016/1, p. 280; Moderate Intelligencer, 74 (30 July-6 Aug. 1646), [p. 586] (E.349.12).

Ball also served the interests of the Independents in other respects. On 1 July 1646 he was named to the committee for the regulation of the University of Oxford, while on 6 July he was working on a committee regarding delinquents with Evelyn of Wiltshire.59CJ iv. 595b, 603a. He was appointed (23 July) to investigate reports that London was filling up with royalists, on a committee headed by Hesilige and Oliver Cromwell*.60CJ iv. 625b. He was also nominated to committees (28 Apr. 1646, 4 Feb. 1647) settling the estate of the late delinquent and recusant Henry Somerset, 1st marquess of Worcester, the prime beneficiaries of which were Cromwell and Hugh Peters.61CJ iv. 525a; v. 74a.

Ball’s personal interest in Ireland may underlie his inclusion on the committee to raise money for the Irish campaign under Philip Sidney*, Viscount Lisle (11 Aug. 1646).62CJ iv. 641b. His contacts in London probably explain why he and Francis Allein were among those sent to the City to try and secure £200,000 to pay off the Scots (5 Sept.).63CJ iv. 663a. Ball’s interest in money-raising schemes was also reflected in appointments to committees for the sale of delinquents’ and papists’ estates (29 Oct.), and considering the ordinance for the sale of bishops’ lands (2 Dec.).64CJ iv. 708a; A. and O. He almost certainly represented the Independent viewpoint in consideration of the Newcastle propositions for peace (22 Sept.), which it was feared the Presbyterians might persuade the king to accept.65CJ iv. 673b. Following the death of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, on 10 October Ball was appointed to the committee to review the commissions of the major-generals, which resulted in the disbandment of the brigade of the Presbyterian governor of Gloucester, Edward Massie* (22 Oct.).66CJ iv. 689b.

During the Presbyterian resurgence in late 1646 and early 1647 Ball’s appearances in Parliament reduced drastically. Between mid-December and early April he was named to only four committees, all but one of little significance. On 27 March Ball was included on the committee to consider the controversial army petition, the presentation of which outraged many Presbyterians, and prompted Denzil Holles to draft the famous ‘declaration of dislike’.67CJ v. 127b. At the end of April Ball was ordered to deliver the thanks of the Commons for his fast sermon given by William Strong, the Erastian Independent lecturer at St Dunstan-in-the-West, whose ministry was consistently supported by Ball and Francis Allein. Later in 1647 Strong replaced the Presbyterian Andrew Perne as incumbent.68CJ v. 155a, 454; GL, MS 3016/1, pp. 238, 240-1, 291-2; ‘William Strong’, Oxford DNB; W. Strong, The Trust and Account of a Steward (1647).

By the spring of 1647 Ball was a reliable ally of the Independents in the Commons. He was evidently a prime mover of plans to suppress scandalous pamphlets, and in May was appointed to a committee to consider works by royalists Judge David Jenkins, who was imprisoned in the Tower, and Dudley Digges, whose books were republished that year.69CJ v. 167b. At least since a committee appointment of October 1646, he had been engaged in the thorny question of control of the London militia.70CJ iv. 679b. He evidently represented the minority opinion on the committee which produced the ordinance awarding that to the City (16 Apr.) and opening the door for a Presbyterian-led purge of Independents from the militia.71CJ v. 132b. Ball participated in plans to counteract the assembly of Presbyterian troops in the capital in June, following the impeachment of the Eleven Members.72CJ v. 217b.

Having received two nominations to committees related to meeting the financial claims of soldiers and their dependents (21 July), Ball disappeared from the Journal during the Presbyterian coup at Westminster of late July and early August 1647.73CJ v. 272a, 274a. That he sympathised with the army in this crisis is suggested by his appearance on one of the lists of those Members who took refuge with Sir Thomas Fairfax* and his men.74HMC Egmont, i. 440. Once the army had taken control of London early in August, he returned to help repeal measures passed during the Speakers’ absence (11 Aug.).75CJ v. 272a. Appointed on 3 September to the committee for the posting of Colonel Robert Hammond* as governor of the Isle of Wight, three days later Ball took the resulting ordinance to the Lords. 76CJ v. 291a, 292b. On the other hand, the three ministers he recruited or thanked for their sermons to the House in around this time included Presbyterians Christopher Fowler of St Mary’s Reading (25 Aug.), and Thomas Horton, professor of divinity at Gresham College and preacher at Gray’s Inn (29 Sept.), suggesting that his religious position was more nuanced than might have been expected.77CJ v. 283b, 287b, 305a, 320b.

In other respects, Ball’s position was unequivocal. His most important achievement was the system of press control imposed by Parliament in the autumn of 1647 and the reform of the London militia, which underpinned it. Added to the Westminster militia committee and, on a temporary basis, to Robert Scawen’s* Army Committee on 9 September, a week later Ball collected appointments to consider both the ordinance regulating the press, and a related letter from General Sir Thomas Fairfax, which called for the army’s secretary, Gilbert Mabbott, to be appointed licenser of the newspapers.78CJ v. 298b, 299a, 306a. His pamphlet A Brief Treatise Concerning the Regulating of Printing, based on his notes and published posthumously, reveals his substantial role in drafting the ordinance: while some of his ideas were not included – most notably a public registry of published books – its innovatory elements, that half of the profits of fines should go to those responsible for discovering illicit books and that press control should be supervised by the militia, were his.79W. Ball, A Brief Treatise Concerning the Regulating of Printing (1651, E.1295.3). Ball guided the ordinance through the Houses until it was passed on 30 September.80CJ v. 309a, 311b, 316a; LJ ix. 440b; A. and O. With Gabriel Becke*, he was given the responsibility of organising the indictment of Captain John Musgrave for his scandalous pamphlets (25 Sept.).81CJ v. 316b. Meanwhile, he brought in the militia ordinance which Parliament passed in October.82CJ v. 330b, 334b.

Ball was at the height of his political power. He was involved in attempts to reform the Committee of Accounts – hitherto a bastion of Presbyterian power – and to remove the franchise from all delinquents (both 28 Sept.).83CJ v. 320a. During October he reported several times from the standing committee for absent members and attended the Committee for Indemnity (to which he had been nominated by the House on 6 Oct.), even though the Lords did not ratify his appointment to this body before his death in November.84CJ v. 327b, 329a, 333b, 335a, 337a; SP24/1, ff. 41v-49. More importantly, he was involved in the ‘projected settlement’, and in the formulation of the ‘Heads of the Proposals’ into propositions to be sent to the king, particularly those sections dealing with the religious settlement and the exemption of tender consciences (30 Sept., 6 Oct.).85CJ v. 321b, 327b. He was also appointed to the committee to consider the ‘sixteen papers’ prepared by the House of Lords, before their despatch to the king.86CJ v. 336a.

However, having made a final report in the Commons on 20 October, within a few weeks Ball died.87CJ v. 337a. He was buried at St Dunstan-in-the-West on 21 November.88St Dunstan-in-the-West par. reg. His funeral sermon was preached by his friend William Strong, and subsequently published as The Just Man’s End.89W. Strong, XXXI Select Sermons (1656), 209-30 (E.874.1). A writ for a by-election at Abingdon was issued on 8 May 1648, although no Member was returned until after the execution of the king.90CJ v. 552b; vi. 235b. Ball’s son and namesake was probably responsible for the publication of a string of works assembled from his father’s notes – some closely connected to parliamentary business of the late 1640s, some reworkings of his old ideas on political theory.91W. Ball, The Power of Kings Discussed (1649, E.540.21); Power Juridicent and Juritenent (1650, E.612.18); A Brief Treatise Concerning the Regulating of Printing (1651, E.1295.3); State Maxims (1656, E.586.6); Law and State Proposals (1659), 3-7; A Digest of Government (1659). Aside from these papers, Ball bequeathed property in Chancery Lane, Southampton and Wokingham to his seven children, who each received a cash sum of £500.92Bodl. Rawl. B35, ff. 11v-12. Ball’s widow lived until at least 1656.93Bodl. Rawl. B35, f. 11. No further members of the family appear to have sat in Parliament.