GELL, Thomas (1594-1657), of the Inner Temple, London.

The Gells had been settled in Derbyshire since the fourteenth century and by the reign of Elizabeth were firmly established among the county’s gentry.16Waldo, ‘Gells of Hopton’, 147-9. Like many younger sons, Gell was put to a career in the law, securing admission to the Inner Temple in 1612. Called to the bar there in 1620, he seems to have built up a thriving legal practice with a clientele that included John Manners*, 8th earl of Rutland, and possibly William Cavendish†, 1st earl of Newcastle and the countess of Peterborough.17Derbys. RO, D258/23/20/17; D258/27/14; [H. Neville*], Newes from the New Exchange, or The Commonvvealth of Ladies (1650), 3, 7-8 (E.590.10). Gell’s chambers in the Inner Temple constituted his main residence.18Derbys. RO, D258/9/2/6; D258/9/3/1; D258/17/31/6, 8; D258/23/19/12; D258/40/20/5-6. There is no evidence that he acquired an estate in his native Derbyshire, or that he was active in the county’s affairs before the 1640s. On those occasions when he had business in Derbyshire, he probably stayed with his elder brother (Sir) John Gell, father of John Gell*, at Hopton Hall.19Derbys. RO, D258/23/20/17.

Gell probably exploited his brother’s considerable reputation in the county, and perhaps also his own local influence as receiver of the honour of Tutbury, to vie for a place at Derby in the elections to the Long Parliament. His electoral partner was his fellow lawyer Christopher Fulwoode, a future royalist. The two men evidently enjoyed a strong interest among the freemen, and it required some sharp practice by the mayor to ensure the return of the municipal candidates William Allestrye (the town’s recorder) and Alderman Nathaniel Hallowes. Gell and Fulwoode petitioned the Commons against their rivals’ return, and the committee of privileges seems to have declared in their favour. But instead of then confirming Gell and Fulwoode as the rightfully-elected Members for Derby, the House ordered a new election, which gave the corporation an opportunity to strengthen the municipal interest. In April 1641, Allestrye and Hallowes were returned again, this time without serious opposition.20Supra, ‘Derby’; Glover, Derbys. i. 75.

Although Gell was identified with the nascent parliamentarian interest in Derbyshire in the spring of 1642, he failed to sign any of its petitions to king and Parliament and probably spent much of the first half of that year in London.21Derbys. RO, D258/30/25/2; D258/32/18/7; CITR ii. 267. He was well regarded at Westminster nonetheless, for he was among those appointed by the Commons on 3 August to put the militia ordinance into execution in Derbyshire.22CJ ii. 701a, 702b; LJ v. 260b. This group formed the nucleus of the county committee. Furthermore, Gell was named as a parliamentary deputy lieutenant for Derbyshire, probably on the recommendation of its new lord lieutenant, the earl of Rutland.23CJ ii. 828a; LJ v. 428a. But the main determinant of his allegiance was almost certainly Sir John Gell’s decision that autumn to raise troops for Parliament. In October, Gell accompanied his elder brother to Hull, where they recruited the nucleus of Sir John’s regiment of foot – the force that was to defend Derby and its outlying garrisons during the early years of the war.24The Severall Accompts of Sir John Gell...and of his Brother Thomas Gell (1645), 4 (E.273.15). On 10 November, Sir John commissioned Thomas as his lieutenant-colonel.25Derbys. RO, D258/9/3/2; HMC 9th Rep. ii. 391.

Gell was apparently a competent officer and played a leading role in the parliamentarian war-effort in Derbyshire, particularly during 1642-3. There is no reason to doubt his assertion in 1645 that he had ‘laid out many hundred pounds of my own estate in the raising, arming and paying of soldiers’ and that he had received no pay or recompense.26SP28/128, pt. 15, ff. 24v, 26v; Harl. 164, ff. 375v, 378v; Harl. 165, f. 95; Bodl., Nalson II, f. 225; HMC Cowper, ii. 328; HMC Portland, i. 78, 103; Theeves, Theeves, or a Relation of Sir John Gell’s Proceedings (1643), 5-6 (E.100.13); The Severall Accompts of Sir John Gell, 5; Brereton Letter Bks. iii. 136. What moved him to take up arms for Parliament, besides fraternal loyalty, is something of a mystery. As crown receiver for the honour of Tutbury, he had a stronger financial inducement to side with the king than with Parliament. Similarly, there is no evidence that he fought for Parliament to advance the cause of godly reformation. Indeed, both he and his brother were denounced by their enemies within the parliamentarian interest as ungodly and corrupt – although Sir John seems to have been a firm, if morally somewhat wayward, puritan.27Supra, ‘John Gell’.

During the winter of 1644, the Gells looked to strengthen their already considerable influence in Derby by securing Thomas’s election as the town’s recorder – Allestrye having been removed from office as a delinquent. When the corporation declared itself reluctant to proceed to election on the grounds that it needed more time, it was allegedly forced to make choice of Gell by Sir John, who was the town’s military governor. Gell’s election was certainly resented by some of the townsmen as an infringement of municipal liberties.28Supra, ‘Derby’; Derbys. RO, D258/12/16, pp. 36-7, 39, 40. Nor did it sit well with those among the Derbyshire parliamentarians who thought the Gells had too much power in their hands already.29Derbys. RO, D1232/O/9a. By 1644, the Gells and their friends and kinsmen certainly dominated the county’s parliamentarian administration and military forces.30Beats, ‘Derbys.’, 181, 183-4. Gell himself was a leading member of the county committee and allegedly used his offices as a committeeman and deputy lieutenant to threaten, mulct and imprison opponents of the Gell faction.31SP28/226, unfol.; SP28/256, pt. 2, unfol. (letter dated 25 Oct. 1646); Derbys. RO, D258/7/13/17; D258/34/7; D258/12/16, pp. 20-1, 29, 35, 37, 41, 47, 51, 55-6; D1232/O/11, 25, 32; Derby Local Studies Lib. Deeds, nos. 4980, 4982-3, 4985, 4987, 4995. It was Gell who early in 1645 exhibited charges at Westminster against the man who had emerged as the Gell faction’s leading opponent, Major Thomas Sanders*.32Derbys. RO, D1232/O/24-6. Sanders had not endeared himself to Gell, having declared him

an unfit [man] for the place [of recorder]... in respect of his mean estate, want of learning, law and honesty; his conversation being so scandalous for uncleanness, swearing and hating all honest [men]... those that promised [him] votes [for the recordership] before were foresworn, and to go about to beg or command per threats, argued want of worth. It was fitter [the] place should seek [the man] than [the man the] place.33Derbys. RO, D1232/O/9a-b.

Sanders’s words were echoed by some of the townsmen, who thought Gell ‘a man that wanted both learning, law and honesty and that he was ... given to uncleanness and a swearer’.34Derbys. RO, D258/12/16, p. 40.

Gell attracted such a barrage of criticism partly because of his close association with Sir John, whose ‘pride and policy’ threatened to undermine parliamentarian authority in Derbyshire.35Derbys. RO, D1232/O/32. ‘I know no man living that hath more enemies nor fewer friends than you have’, Thomas Gell told his brother

and all your enemies are yet mine and merely for sticking to you, and how well I have been requited, judge yourself. Therefore, pray let me have under your hand what you will do for me. If I die all I have goes to your son ... if I had been as careless of you as it seems you are of me, you had been either a scorn to your enemies or fetched to London, much to their rejoicing. Yet I have prevented it and may make them to repent it.36Derbys. RO, D258/56/2/1/14; HMC 9th Rep. ii. 396.

Gell’s patience with his brother finally snapped in August 1645 as a result of Sir John’s mishandling of the first siege of Tutbury. Gell openly declared that his brother was unfit for command and that he had ‘dishonoured himself and undone the country; and had it not been for him [i.e. Gell himself] and his brother Curzon [Sir John Curzon*], he [Sir John] had not continued in his place’.37Derbys. RO, D258/12/16, pp. 33, 48, 52; D1232/O/56. With two of his brother’s leading critics, Sir Samuel Sleigh* and Hallowes, Gell hatched a scheme to procure a parliamentary order for replacing Sir John as overall commander with a ‘select committee’.38Derbys. RO, D258/12/16, p. 64. He was confident that he could persuade his half-brother Curzon of the need to diminish Sir John’s power. However, he was apparently worried that in curbing his brother he would advance Sanders, and it was partly for this reason that the scheme came to nothing.

The factional quarrel between the Gells and their opponents had a major bearing on the ‘recruiter’ election at Derby in the autumn of 1645, which was contested by Gell and one of the town’s aldermen, Robert Mellor. There was a national political dimension to this contest inasmuch as the Gell faction was broadly aligned with Presbyterian interest of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex – Gell himself was a personal friend of one of the earl’s most trusted allies, Sir Henry Cholmley* – whereas the Gells’ leading opponents in town and county looked to the Fairfaxes for support and would emerge as Independents.39Derbys. RO, D258/56/2/1/14. However, the fact that both Gell and Mellor had taken up arms for Parliament suggests that the election partook more of a local power-struggle than a clash over national political issues. Gell’s opponents attacked him on personal rather than political grounds, insisting that ‘he that stands for Mr Gell stands for the devil, for he is a worthless man and a man of no trust, and they that give their voice for him do damn themselves’.40Supra, ‘Derby’; Derbys. RO, D258/9/5/1, 2.

Although Gell attended the Derby recruiter election, it was Sir John who marshalled his interest among the freemen and applied a modicum of military pressure on his behalf. Evidently by this stage Gell had patched up his differences with his brother – doubtless appreciating that only Sir John could secure him the seat at Westminster he so coveted. In the event, the contest went to a poll, which Gell won. However, the mayor, Gervase Bennett*, refused to accept the result and made a return of Mellor. Gell’s supporters drew up an indenture returning their man, which was conveyed speedily to the crown office by the county sheriff Sir George Gresley, Gell’s kinsman. By the time the indenture returning Mellor had been delivered, Gell had reportedly taken his seat, and Mellor’s only option was to petition the committee of privileges against his rival’s return.41Supra, ‘Derby’; Derbys. RO, D258/9/5/11, 14; Perfect Occurrences no. 48 (14-21 Nov. 1645), sig. Bb3 (E.266.20). Although the committee devoted many hours to the Derby election dispute – indeed, the case was still ongoing in June 1647 – it apparently failed to report its findings to the House.42Supra, ‘Derby’; Derbys. RO, D258/17/31/6. Presumably Gell’s majority on the poll proved impossible to gainsay and Mellor withdrew his petition. At any rate, Gell was allowed to retain his seat.

Gell’s parliamentary career began slowly. His name was mentioned only once in the Commons Journal before he was granted leave of absence on 9 April 1646 – and that was on 31 December 1645, when he took the Covenant.43CJ iv. 393a, 504a. After returning to the House in May 1646, he was named to six committees before taking further leave of absence on 16 December.44CJ iv. 555b, 576a, 612b, 618a, 650b, 653a; v. 14b. Two of these committees related closely to Anglo-Scottish relations – the first, to render the Newcastle Propositions less offensive to the Scots (13 June); the second, to prepare an estimate of the money the Scots army owed in plunder and free quarter (21 Aug.).45CJ iv. 576a, 650b. He had returned to the House by 28 December, when he was a messenger to the Lords, and helped to manage a conference, concerning the nominees for the shrievalty in Derbyshire and other counties.46CJ v. 31a, 31b; LJ viii. 632b. His committee appointments over the next seven months reveal little about his political allegiances or priorities.47CJ v. 35a, 87a, 205a, 221b. And although he claimed to have powerful friends as well as enemies at Westminster, it was only in the aftermath of the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster in late July 1647 that he clearly demonstrated where his political loyalties lay.48Derbys. RO, D3287/43/27/20. For rather than flee to the army as most of the Independent Members did, he stayed at Westminster and was appointed on 2 August to the revived ‘committee of safety’, which had been set up on 11 June to join with the City militia for mobilising London against the New Model.49CJ v. 265a, 265b; LJ ix. 370b.

Although Gell’s involvement in the Presbyterian coup of July 1647 would be remembered by the army, it apparently had no immediate impact on his position at Westminster. Indeed, between September 1647 and his third leave of absence, on 7 January 1648, he was named to several important committees, including the committee for absent Members, from which he reported the case of Sir John Barrington on 28 October. He was also included on a committee to examine the king’s flight from Hampton Court and to the 4 January 1648 committee to prepare ordinances for the redress of the people’s grievances ‘in relation to their burdens, their freedoms and liberties and of reforming of courts of justice and proceedings at law’.50CJ v. 295b, 329a, 344a, 347b, 357a, 365b, 417a, 422b. That he was active on the committee for absent Members is particularly revealing, for this committee was used by the Independents to harry their Presbyterian opponents. Gell’s apparent co-operation with the Independents may have been linked to a Commons order of 22 October 1647 for payment of £1,200 out of the Derbyshire assessment money towards his arrears of army pay.51CJ v. 339a. It is not impossible that this grant, and the promise of more to come, was used to detach him from his Presbyterian friends. He had certainly been in great financial difficulty earlier in the year and had been reduced to appropriating ‘the king’s money’ – that is, rents from his receivership – for his basic necessities. In February 1647, he had warned Sir John Gell that unless he was properly recompensed for having repeatedly thwarted his brother’s many enemies at Westminster, he would heed their interests instead: ‘I can have their love as well as my arrears [of army pay] if I desert your business’.52Derbys. RO, D258/39/36.

Gell apparently contributed little to Parliament’s proceedings during 1648. Having returned to the House by mid-February, he was named to only five committees thereafter.53CJ v. 460b, 616a, 624a, 641b; vi. 60a. If he made any notable contribution to the parliamentarian war effort that summer it was probably as part of a Commons delegation to persuade the earl of Rutland to garrison his house at Belvoir.54CJ v. 590a. Following the army’s triumph at Colchester late in August, it was reported that Gell and Curzon intended to return to Derbyshire and to defy an order for the call of the House at the end of the month.55Derbys. RO, D258/30/14/3. Gell was apparently still at Westminster on 23 September, however, when he was appointed to sign and send down a letter for quickening the collection of the assessment in Derbyshire.56CJ vi. 30a. Three days later (26 Sept.), he was declared absent and excused at the call of the House.57CJ vi. 34b.

Gell’s last Commons appointment was on 24 October; six weeks later, he and Curzon were among those secluded at Pride’s Purge.58CJ vi. 60a. How exactly Gell had offended against the army, beyond supporting the July 1647 Presbyterian coup, is not clear. In May 1649, his fortunes took another blow, when the Rump ordered the committee for public revenue to proceed against him for non-payment of £6,000 as receiver for the honour of Tutbury – part of the duchy of Lancaster estate – an office of which he was subsequently deprived by the sale of crown lands.59CJ vi. 220b; HMC 9th Rep. ii. 395. And things grew even worse for the Gells the following year, when Sir John was tried and imprisoned for concealing a royalist plot. At this point, Gell may have redeemed himself in the eyes of some Rumpers by helping to expose the financial malfeasance of Edward Howard, Lord Howard of Escrick*. Howard of Escrick had been trying to force the earl and countess of Rutland out of their London residence of Wallingford house, and in July 1650 the countess retaliated by using Gell, her ‘great servant’, to present evidence to the House of Howard’s venal practices as chairman of the Committee for Advance of Money.60Infra, ‘Edward Howard, Lord Howard of Escrick’; ‘John Manners’; Derbys. RO, D258/33/37/25-32; CJ vi. 448b; Ludlow, Mems. i. 258; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 482; HMC 9th Rep. ii. 397. Gell subsequently petitioned the Rump, claiming that he had been ‘at exceeding great trouble and cost and procured to himself many enemies’ in exposing Howard, and asking to be recompensed out of the guilty man’s £10,000 fine.61Derbys. RO, D258/9/13. His request was put to the vote but passed in the negative.62CJ vii. 154a.

Gell died in the spring of 1657 and was buried at Wirksworth on 3 April.63Wirksworth par. reg. He never married, and in his will he left all his estate to his brother and the latter’s son John Gell*. His only other legatees were two servants, to whom he bequeathed £180 between them.64PROB11/277, f. 292. His nephew John represented Derbyshire on four occasions between 1656 and 1689.