DELL, William (1603-48), of St Paul’s Churchyard, London, and Downe, Kent.

William Dell should not be confused with his namesake, the puritan minister and New Model chaplain.9H.R. Trevor-Roper, ‘William Dell’, EHR lxii. 377-8. In his will, written in 1647, the MP left money to the poor of the parish of Wroughton in Wiltshire, ‘where I was born’, but there is no obvious connection between him and the others of that surname known to have been resident there.10PROB11/204/213; Wilts. RO, P3/D/17; VCH Wilts. xi. 235, 239, 251. Given his later career, it is probable that he was the grandson of William Dell of Reading, a friend of the father of Archbishop William Laud.11Biog. Reg. St John’s College, Oxf. 253-4. The younger William Dell was almost certainly Laud’s protégé. He entered Laud’s old college, St John’s, Oxford, in November 1619 at the age of 16, graduated BA in 1623 and proceeded MA in 1626.12Al. Ox. He became Laud’s personal secretary by the beginning of 1631.13CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 477 Dell continued to serve Laud after his patron’s elevation to the archbishopric of Canterbury, and remained in his employment even after his arrest and imprisonment in 1640. Laud obviously thought highly of his secretary, and sought, albeit without success, to secure him lucrative positions in the Caroline administration. On 29 September 1631, Laud wrote to Secretary Dorchester (Dudley Carleton†) nominating Dell as clerk of the signet in reversion, to replace Thomas Windebanke* (son of Sir Francis Windebanke*).14Laud’s Works, vii. 41. In May 1635 Dell was granted a reversionary interest in the office of register of the court of high commission.15Coventry Docquets, 192. In November 1638 he was promised the clerkship of the signet once it had become void.16Coventry Docquets, 207. Though such offices eluded him, by the mid-1630s Dell had extended his existing role, to become the archbishop’s close adviser, confidant and minder. A note from Dell to the dean of the arches, Sir John Lambe, of 1635, is revealing, as Dell confessed that the accompanying petition had ‘some touches … which make me forbear to show it to my lord’, and he asked Lambe’s advice.17CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 517. In June 1637 he was able to ask Laud’s intervention on behalf of a former neighbour at Wroughton, whose daughter was accused of bigamy.18CSP Dom. 1637, p. 197.

By this time Dell was also becoming involved in some of Laud’s more controversial policies. Between 1634 and 1636 he masterminded the visitations of Canterbury as well as other dioceses, and in April 1637 he sympathised with Lambe, whom he described as living among nettles, telling him that ‘his father taught him to grasp them hard, and they would do him no harm’.19From the Reformation to the Permissive Society ed. M. Barber, S. Taylor and G. Sewell (C. of E. Rec. Soc. xviii), 83, 94, 101; Wilts. N and Q, i. 10; CSP Dom. 1635-6, pp. 87, 557. Dell shared Laud’s suspicion of the Scots, telling Lambe in September 1638 of his disapproval of one Livingstone, a minister appointed to an English living by the king, adding ‘I hope you will find him an honest man, and heartily wish there were no worse in Scotland’.20CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 5. In April 1639 he wrote a paper on Scottish affairs, presumably for Laud’s perusal, and a year later he was receiving information about Scottish agents in London.21CSP Dom. 1639, pp. 53-4; 1640, p. 27. Dell also had to act as go-between with other great officers of state, usually by correspondence with their own secretaries. Thus, on 22 May 1637, Dell wrote to the lord keeper’s secretary on Laud’s behalf, ‘to desire you to remember his service to your lord, and to give him humble thanks for his honourable care’ in a business of mutual benefit.22Coventry Docquets, 762-3. In October 1639 Windebanke’s secretary and nephew, Robert Reade*, asked for advice as to how his master should win Laud’s support for a proposal.23CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 18. This made Dell a man of some influence. In 1635-6, Bulstrode Whitelocke* hoped that Laud might stay with him on his way to Oxford, and ‘therefore wrote to his old friend, Mr Dell’.24Whitelocke, Diary, 108. Between 1637 and 1639, Dell was very much in demand, receiving requests for him to intercede with Laud from a variety of supplicants, including the deans of Hereford and Peterborough, the archdeacon of Gloucester and the duke of Würtemburg.25CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 345, 416; 1637-8, p. 142; 1639, p. 125.

In the elections for the Short Parliament, Dell was initially put forwards for one of the Canterbury seats, relying on Laud’s status within the city. Dell was made a freeman of the city in anticipation on 3 March 1640, and in the election held the next day enjoyed the support of many within the corporation, perhaps influenced by public recommendations by both Laud and the lord keeper; but this was more than offset by the furious reaction of the ordinary citizens, who ‘hissed him down, and presently cried up others, whom they then chose burgesses for that city’.26Canterbury Cathedral Archives, A/C4, f. 151v; R. Culmer, Cathedrall Newes from Canterbury (1644), 18-19 (E.52.10); Antidotum Culmerianum (1645), 28-9 (E.279.13). Dell’s election for the Cornish borough of St Ives on 20 March 1640 was thus a consolation prize. He was presumably returned on the court interest, though not that of the duchy of Cornwall, which had nominated Edward Nicholas†.27DCO, ‘letters and warrants 1639-43’, f. 44v.

During the parliamentary session, the widespread unpopularity of the archbishop did not disconcert Dell, who used the debate on the church on 22 April to go on the offensive, defending ‘innovations’ and accusing ‘a Member of this House’ of saying that ‘the churches beyond the seas were about to fall from us, because we were about to leave our religion’ and join the Roman Catholic Church.28Procs. Short Parl. 168; CJ ii. 9a. Unsurprisingly, ‘there was great exception taken at this’, and under pressure Dell named the MP in question as John Pym*. Whether or not Pym had uttered words to that effect, Dell had breached privilege, and was forced to retract, agreeing to ‘rest upon the sense of the House than his own’.29CJ ii. 9a. The Commons had been intent on calling Dell to the bar of the House, and some called for him to be ‘turned out of the House’, but he was defended by Pym himself, who ‘did intercede for him’, and said he was satisfied with an apology, ‘desiring him to acquaint his lord also of his mistake, for he said he doubted not but he had misinformed him herein’.30Procs. Short Parl. 169, 236. According to other sources, Dell’s champion was John Hampden, described as ‘his friend’, who argued that ‘in respect he was never here before’, his breach of the rules should be overlooked.31Procs. Short Parl. 246; Aston’s Diary, 32.

After the dissolution of the Short Parliament, Dell returned to his tasks as Laud’s secretary, keeping the archbishop informed of an attack on altar rails in Surrey, and advising on the choice of a new clerk at St Vedast’s in London.32CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 486, 560. The arrest of Laud at the beginning of the Long Parliament brought Dell’s day-to-day duties to an abrupt end, but did not end either his position as secretary or the friendship between the two men. In December 1640, for example, Dell arranged for the archbishop to receive a copy of the petition against Dr John Cosin.33CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 299. In later months, Dell was subjected to occasional personal attacks. On 27 May 1641 Thomas Bourchier complained to the Lords that Dell had been appointed as register of the Canterbury consistory court, even though he had held the reversion of the post.34HMC 4th Rep. 69. In 1643 Dell was accused of taking bribes, and arranging for bribes to be passed onto the archbishop.35CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 524. As yet, he was apparently left alone by the parliamentarian authorities, and it was only the decision to bring Laud to trial in the late autumn of 1643 that brought Dell into any kind of danger. On 24 October 1643 Dell was given leave to attend Laud in the Tower, and, on the archbishop’s request, he was appointed as his solicitor four days later.36Laud’s Works, iv. 35n, 36. On 3 November the Committee for Advance of Money assessed Dell at £400, and on 2 December ordered that he be taken into custody until this sum was paid.37CCAM 275. There is little doubt that this was an attempt to disrupt Laud’s defence team, which responded with an attempt to delay the start of the trial. On 4 January the committee finally responded to Dell’s petition, in which he pointed out that he had already paid a fine in Kent, and on 11 January it was agreed that he could be discharged for a lesser sum.38CCAM 275. It was only on Dell’s release that Laud’s trial began, on 16 January.

During the trial, Dell apparently agreed to take some of the heat from his patron, and on several occasions the archbishop countered the prosecution charges by blaming his secretary. ‘It will be a hard business with men of honour’, claimed Laud, ‘when any lord shall command his secretary to write, and give him directions for that matter, he shall afterwards be answerable for every slip of his secretary’s pen’.39Laud’s Works, iv. 134. Allegations that Dell arranged bribes led to the riposte from Laud that ‘I remember nothing of this business, and it is wholly upon my secretary; who being my solicitor is here present in this court, and desires he may answer scandal’, allowing Dell to deny the charge.40Laud’s Works, iv. 146. Equally, when it was alleged that Jesuits had tried to visit Laud at Lambeth, only to be put off by Dell, Laud responded that ‘Mr Dell must give the account for it, not I’.41Laud’s Works, iv. 342-3, 345. The repeated attempts to suggest that Dell, rather than Laud, was at fault, suggest that this was deliberate tactic, perhaps suggested by Dell himself. Certainly there is no hint of animosity between the two men. Laud left £20 to Dell in his will, and Dell arranged for a brass plaque to be erected in Laud’s memory in the chapel of St John’s College, shortly after his patron’s execution in January 1645.42Laud’s Works, iv. 440n, 445. Dell was also determined to obstruct William Prynne’s* attempt to discredit Laud posthumously. In 1646, Prynne recorded that he had ‘used all the means I could to his secretary Mr Dell his counsel’ to get hold of Laud’s legal papers

yet could neither by my own entreaties, nor warrants from authority procure them, or any copies thereof; Mr Dell returning me this answer, that he believed the archbishop himself had burned all his notes and answers in his lifetime, to prevent their publications after his death.43W. Prynne, Canterburies Doome (1646), 461.

In his will, written in April 1647, Dell made it clear that he was still a staunch Laudian. He left £10 ‘towards the repair of the church where my body shall rest’, and, paraphrasing the Prayer Book, expressed the hope that God would ‘settle the miserable distractions of this church and kingdom, and grant that as many as do confess his name may agree in the truth of his holy word, and live like Christians in all godliness and brotherly charity’. The details of Dell’s marriage are uncertain, but a bequest in his will to ‘my brother-in-law, Sir Andrew Jenour, bt.’ is probably destined for his wife’s brother; another brother, Henry Jenour, was a member of St John’s College, Oxford. Dell left his property in Kent, and his house in St Paul’s Churchyard, to his wife, ‘and afterwards to my children, if it shall please God to bless me with any by her’, but as he died within the year, it is unlikely that his hope of progeny was fulfilled.44PROB11/204/213; Biog. Reg. St John’s College, 253-4.