SINGLETON, Lawrence (1606-91), of St Nicholas parish, Gloucester.

Like his elder brother, William, Lawrence Singleton spent his entire life and career in the city of Gloucester, and also like his brother, served two terms as mayor. The careers of the two men were remarkably similar, and both were woollen-drapers.8Glos. RO, P316/IN3/1. In July 1638, Lawrence was one of a working party set by the city corporation to consider a scheme for ‘setting the poor on work’, and in the following December, was chosen to deliver a petition to the privy council requesting relief for the city from Ship Money.9Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, pp. 86, 92. In 1641 he was again elected sheriff, but paid a fine of £20 to avoid service a second time: the chamber recorded that future fines for avoidance of that office were to be no lower than the levy on Singleton.10Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 199.

Singleton was completely in sympathy with the city’s resistance to Charles I during the civil war. In February 1643, he gave £30 to support the army of Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford, £20 less than his brother William (who seems consistently to have been somewhat more powerful a figure than Lawrence) and he lent a further £5 a month later.11Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 242, 246. There is no record of Lawrence Singleton having served in the Gloucester militia; instead he was named to a city committee to examine the accounts of all who lent money or gave other support to the troops of the earl of Stamford or Sir John Meyrick*.12Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 250. In this role as a city committeeman, he was named receiver of the poor rate, doubled in August 1643 as a result of the prolonged siege by the royalists.13Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 273. He was given responsibility for keeping the city’s stock of coal in May 1644, a duty he was still discharging in May 1661.14Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 302; B3/3, p. 180. Among similar wartime civic duties he undertook were to be treasurer of hospitals, overseer of the records of the sheriff’s court – the ‘law-day books’ – and auditor of the accounts of Thomas Pury I* for the assessment.15Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, pp. 303, 312, 318.

Singleton served his first term as mayor in 1645-6, and played a small part as an ex officio member of the county committee in that year.16A.R. Warmington, Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration in Glos. (Woodbridge, 1997), 92. When he handed over to his successors in October 1646, the town clerk, John Dorney, made the customary speech surveying the condition of the city. He remarked on the destruction of the city suburbs, the depressed condition of the cloth industry, and asserted that a recovery of ‘merchandising trade’ was the best means ‘to make this a flourishing city’. He commented on the religious changes in the city during Singleton’s mayoralty: ‘instead of episcopacy (which seems to lie in the dust) a presbytery is expected and preachers instead of readers’. 17Dorney, Certain Speeches, 20-3.

Through the later 1640s and 1650s, Singleton maintained his profile as an alderman and civic activist. He was president or treasurer of the city hospitals on several occasions. He investigated how much the chamber had spent on fortifying the city at the start of the civil war, and served on the committee haggling over the relative proportions that should be contributed by county and city for the assessment. In 1654, he was among a committee that opposed the planting of tobacco in the county as prejudicial to the commonwealth. Like his brother, Singleton was in favour of the city’s ownership of the cathedral, and was a collector for contributions towards its repair.18Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2, pp. 474, 481, 499, 502, 527, 761, 845, 873-4, 878.

When Singleton was returned to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in 1659, it was as a senior alderman of 16 years’ standing who had served in a range of other important city offices. He made a very slight contribution to the assembly, serving on one committee only, considering the question of parliamentary representation for Durham.19CJ vii. 622b. Back in Gloucester, he weathered the Restoration well enough, retaining his offices; and in May 1662, helped set up the portrait of Charles II at the Wheatmarket.20Glos. RO, GBR/B3/3, p. 230. This may have reflected his perception of how the political tide was running, because he escaped the first round of expulsions from the chamber by the commissioners for corporations when they visited the city on 21 July 1662. His fate was only postponed, however, as he was removed on 2 October that year.21Glos. RO, GBR/B3/3, pp. 235-6; Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. lviii. 263-4. He retained his leases of corporation property, and acquired a new lease of 18 acres of land in July 1669, but his main occupation was with his woollen-drapery business.22Glos. RO, GBR/B3/3, p. 417. On 3 June 1675 he recorded in his memorandum book how he had that day handed over to a city official some articles in his possession relating to the claim by the city of Gloucester on forfeited lands in Ireland. In the same volume he recorded titles of books he was prepared to lend from his personal library: did some of the titles have a former connection with the library endowed by the corporation in 1648?23Glos. RO, P316/IN3/1, pp. 33, 36. He was regarded by the government as innocuous enough to be allowed to serve as a tax commissioner, and made his will in August 1687, ‘expecting a joyful resurrection to eternal life’: among his bequests were a lease of tenements held of the dean and chapter of Gloucester.24Glos. RO, GDR/1691/174. He lived on until 1691, dying in April of that year. None of his descendants served in any later Parliaments.