DICKINSON, Thomas (1610-71), of St Martin, Micklegate, York, and Kirkby Hall, Little Ouseburn, Yorks.

Dickinson was descended from a yeoman family that had settled at Kirkby (or Kirby) Hall, about 13 miles north west of York, by the 1520s. Having moved to York in the late sixteenth century, his father, Christopher Dickinson, had established himself as one of the city’s wealthiest merchants and a leading member of its godly community. In 1618, he had purchased the lordship of Kirkby Hall, and in 1620 he had been elected an alderman of York.41Keele Univ. Lib. Raymond Richards collection, Meysey Thompson muniments, MT 194, 204; York City Lib. Skaife mss, SKA/1, ff. 212v, 213; VCH York, 202; Wilson, ‘York’, 262, 265, 313-21.

Following his father’s death in 1634, Dickinson took over his mercantile business – Dickinson’s elder brother being an invalid – and strengthened the family’s ties with the city’s puritan interest, marrying Elizabeth, a daughter of Alderman Thomas Hoyle*, who had been a close friend of Christopher Dickinson.42Infra, ‘Thomas Hoyle’; Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 42, ff. 373v-374; York City Lib. Skaife mss, SKA/1, f. 212v; Wilson, ‘York’, 262, 265, 324-5. A week or so before Hoyle was returned for York to the Long Parliament on 28 September 1640, Dickinson was elected city sheriff.43Supra, ‘York’; York City Archives, York House Bk. 36, f. 49. On 5 October, he was among the signatories to the indenture returning Lord Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*) and Henry Belasyse as knights of the shire for the county.44C219/43/3/89. In May 1641, he was appointed a parliamentary commissioner to take answers from several York prebends in relation to the impeachment of the prominent Laudian cleric John Cosin and other churchmen.45HMC Lords, n.s. xi. 255. And in January 1642, he signed a petition to the king from a group of prominent Yorkshire gentry – most of whom would become parliamentarians – protesting at the attempted arrest of the Five Members and expressing support for a ‘perfect reformation in matters of religion’.46Eg. 2546, ff. 23-4. The following month (Feb.), he signed a Yorkshire petition to the Lords, asking that they work more closely with the Commons for the relief of the Protestants in Ireland.47PA, Main Pprs. 15 Feb. 1642, f. 55; LJ iv. 587a.

Dickinson continued to attend meetings of the corporation until September 1642 – a few months before the city became a royalist garrison.48York City Archives, York House Bk. 36, f. 76. Following the royalists’ seizure early in 1643 of all his property in the city and county, including rents and goods to the value of £2,000, he felt obliged, in order to ‘secure himself’, to move to Hull, where he remained until after York had surrendered to Parliament in July 1644.49CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 389. Dickinson and John Geldart* were among the senior office-holders who were appointed aldermen by the corporation in January 1645 following Parliament’s removal of six royalists from the municipal bench.50York City Archives, York House Bk. 36, f. 119; D. Scott, ‘Politics and government in York 1640-62’, in Town and Countryside in the English Revolution ed. R.C. Richardson, 50-1.

Dickinson was an active member of the York and West Riding committees of the Northern Association and signed at least five of their letters to Parliament in 1645-6, complaining about the abuses committed by the Scottish army in the northern counties and pleading that it be removed from the region.51York City Archives, Y/ORD/4/2, E/63, f. 1 and passim; W. Yorks. Archives (Leeds), WYL230/2973; SP28/189, pt. 2, unfol.; SC6/CHASI/1190; Bodl. Nalson IV, ff. 212-13; Nalson V, f. 16; Nalson XII, f. 295; Tanner 59, ff. 218, 266; LJ vii. 640b. During his first term as lord mayor of York, in 1647-8, he successfully exploited the quarrel between Sednham Poynts, the commander of the Northern Association army, and troops under him anxious to join political forces with the New Model and the adjutators, to seize command of Clifford’s Tower, which housed York’s garrison. With the help of Hoyle and the city’s other MP, Sir William Allanson, Dickinson secured a parliamentary order in mid-July 1647 appointing him governor of the tower – a decision that Sir Thomas Fairfax* endorsed even though Dickinson did not have an army commission (by 1650, at the latest, Dickinson was part of Fairfax’s circle in the West Riding).52CJ v. 99a; LJ ix. 332b; Clarke Pprs. i. 165-7; Bodl. Fairfax 32, f. 179. In September, Dickinson reportedly defied an attempt by Poynts’s successor, Major-general John Lambert*, to have the tower returned to the hands of the northern army.53Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 1 (14-21 Sept. 1647), 5-6 (E.407.39). He was sufficiently trusted by the Army Committee to serve as its assignee for large sums towards payment of Parliament’s forces in the north.54Bodl. Tanner 57, f. 109; Add. 36996, f. 15.

During the second civil war, Dickinson was active on the Yorkshire county and militia committees and raised a troop of citizen volunteers to defend York against the threat of royalist insurrection.55Bodl. Nalson VII, f. 203; SP28/250, pt. 1, f. 132; Clarke Pprs. ii 10. He continued to serve as a magistrate and committeeman under the Rump and, with Matthew Alured* and John Geldart*, was a prominent member of the Yorkshire sequestration commission set up early in 1650.56SP28/215, pts. 4 and 5, passim; SP28/250, pt. 1, f. 68; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 328, 490; 1651, pp. 119, 149, 247. Stung by accusations in 1650 that he had appropriated money assigned by the Army Committee to the northern regiments, he wrote to Captain Adam Baynes*, insisting that

I have put forward anything for the public good that was ever in my power and [was] never looked upon as a hinderer of the public. I hope to make it appear at all times ... that I have laid out much, lost much for the public and got nothing. I desire to be looked upon as a friend still [to the army]... I desire you let the soldiers understand things right and write them I have no way obstructed the business [of their pay] as they are informed.57Add. 21418, f. 252.

Dickinson was one eight men selected by the council of officers to represent Yorkshire in the 1653 Nominated Parliament. He was one of 19, generally obscure, figures who appear to have been nominated at a later stage than the majority of MPs, which may well indicate that they were chosen because some of the original nominees had been considered politically unreliable, or, more likely, because they had refused to sit.58Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 139-40. He was named to only two committees in this Parliament – those ‘for the business of trade and corporations’ and to consider a petition from the City of London.59CJ vii. 287a, 339b. An anonymous pamphleteer listed him among those members of the Nominated Parliament who favoured a publicly-maintained ministry – a claim supported by his appointment in August 1654 as a Cromwellian ejector for York and the West Riding.60Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 416. He was certainly hostile to Friends, combining with the Yorkshire Presbyterian divine, and close friend of the Fairfaxes, Edward Bowles in 1654 to have a prominent Quaker evangelist indicted at the county assizes for ‘dispersing principles prejudicial to the truth of the gospel’.61J. Besse, A Collection of the Sufferings of the People called Quakers (1753), ii. 91-4; D.A. Scott, ‘Politics and Dissent and Quakerism in York, 1640-1700’ (York Univ. D.Phil. thesis, 1990), 32. Dickinson probably shared Bowles’s Presbyterian convictions and his esteem for ‘orthodox’ Congregationalists. The moderate puritan minister of Great and Little Ouseburn during the 1650s, Josiah Hunter, regarded Dickinson as his patron.62J. Hunter, Loves Companion, or a Short Treatise of the Nature, Necessity, and Advantages of Moderation (1656), epistle dedicatory. And it is likely that another godly minister, Joshua Smith, served as Dickinson’s household chaplain at Kirkby Hall.63Matthews, Calamy Revised, 448.

In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, Dickinson was returned for York in second place behind the city’s recorder Sir Thomas Widdrington. He was named to four committees in this Parliament, including that set up of 14 December in response to a petition from York, requesting the establishment in the city of a court of justice for the northern counties.64CJ vii. 373b, 374b, 375b, 400b-401a. Appointed late in 1655 to the Yorkshire commission for assisting the major-generals, he was commended by Deputy Major-general Robert Lilburne* to Oliver Cromwell* as ‘not only more resolute and active then many named, but indeed knows more against the late designs [Penruddock’s rising] then any country gentlemen in these parts and has divers examinations in his custody that will be very useful’.65TSP iv. 294. In January and July 1656, he joined Lilburne and the Yorkshire commissioners in letters to the protector, requesting more repressive measures against the county’s malignants.66TSP iv. 402, 614; v. 185.

Returned for York again in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Dickinson was named to ten committees between October 1656 and the end of January 1657, of which the most important was a standing committee ‘to take into consideration the matter of trade’ (20 October).67CJ vii. 434b, 442a, 442b, 444a, 446a, 456a, 470b, 472a, 473b, 482b. On 1 November, he was added to the protectoral council’s standing committee for trade.68CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 1. On 11 February, he was granted extended leave of absence by the House so that he could serve his second term as lord mayor of York.69CJ vii. 489b. On 3 March, he was knighted by the protector – presumably for services rendered to the government in the northern counties.70Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 223. He was returned for York a third time in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659. He received only two, minor, committee appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate.71CJ vii. 622b, 627b.

Dickinson’s last recorded appearance at York corporation was on 28 March 1660, shortly after which he retired from civic affairs and took up permanent residence at Kirkby Hall.72York City Archives, York House Bk. 37, ff. 137v, 151. His knighthood was not recognised by the restored monarchy, and during the course of 1660 he was omitted from all county commissions. When, in February 1661, the king ordered the corporation to remove the aldermen installed in 1645, the mayor described two of them as ‘well-affected to the king and his government’ and claimed that Dickinson ‘hath declared his disaffection in nothing more then in accepting of the pretended honour of knighthood from Oliver late protector’.73York City Archives, York House Bk. 37, f. 149v. Dickinson was removed from the bench by the corporation commissioners in September 1662.74York City Archives, York House Bk. 37, f. 177. His brief imprisonment early in 1663 was largely a precautionary measure, it seems; the information against him and other alleged conspirators being deemed malicious.75CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 16. In 1669, he was declared liable to pay £1,136 to the dean and chapter of York by way of arrears of a fee farm rent on his estate at Kirkby Hall.76HMC 8th Rep. i. 162; W. Yorks. Archives (Leeds), WYL5013/2954b.

Dickinson died, intestate, ‘on the road in his journey to London’ on 9 October 1671.77Little Ouseburn par. reg. His place of burial is not known. The administration of his estate was granted in January 1672 to one of his creditors.78Borthwick, Prob. Act Bk. Prerogative, 20 Jan. 1672. He was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.