DREWRY, William (1594-1678), of Vault Hall, Low Pavement, St Peter, Nottingham, Notts.

Drewry, like his father, was a successful Nottingham cordwainer. However, the fact that he did not establish himself as one of the town’s leading inhabitants until he was into his forties, suggests that he began his public career from a relatively low base, both socially and financially, compared with some of his rivals for civic office. In 1629, he served as a churchwarden in his native parish of St Peter’s, and by October 1631 he had been elected to the municipal common council.22Notts RO, M/416, f. 197; CA 3406, pp. 1, 41. His progress through the civic hierarchy was more rapid thereafter, and by 1640 he had risen to the rank of alderman. As one of the corporation’s senior figures, he was able to secure numerous leases of municipal property at what were probably favourable rates.23Notts. RO, CA 3415, pp. 56, 58; CA 3419, pp. 42, 43; CA 3424, pp. 44, 48; CA 3434, f. 21.

During the course of 1642, Parliament came to regard Drewry as one of its most trusted adherents in Nottinghamshire, appointing him a deputy lieutenant and a member of the county committee.24LJ v. 173a, 275b; CJ ii. 905a. Drewry, as deputy mayor in 1642, refused to publish the king’s declaration proclaiming Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, a traitor.25Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 238. Nevertheless, his motives for siding with Parliament remain obscure. Indeed, according to Lucy Hutchinson – wife of the governor of the town’s parliamentarian garrison, Colonel John Hutchinson* – he was ‘ill affected to the Parliament’, and in the summer of 1643 he led a ‘great mutiny’ when the governor decided to prioritise defence of the castle over that of the town generally: ‘whereupon the governor ... sent Alderman Drury, with 14 more that were heads of this mutiny, prisoners to Derby’.26Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 84. Evidently Drewry did not remain imprisoned at Derby for very long, for by the end of 1643 he ‘and two or three that followed him’ opposed the governor’s plans to fortify Nottingham against the royalist army of William Cavendish, 1st marquess of Newcastle.27Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 111.

Whether Drewry was indeed ill-affected to Parliament seems unlikely given his career during the 1640s and 1650s. If he was indeed removed from the Nottinghamshire county committee in 1643, as one source has stated, he seems to have been re-instated, and he would remain active on the Nottingham committee into the spring of 1649.28SP28/213, pt. 2, unfol.; SP28/241, unfol.; Bodl. Nalson VII, f. 122; Tanner 57, ff. 233, 263; M. Bennett, ‘The Royalist War Effort in the N. Midlands 1642-6’ (Loughborough Univ. PhD thesis, 1986), 93. What Lucy Hutchinson took for disaffection was probably Drewry putting what he saw as the town’s best interests before those of the parliamentarian garrison. He certainly retained the trust of his fellow municipal office-holders, who early in 1644 appointed him to a civic delegation to liaise with Hutchinson and the county committee for the ‘public safety’ of the town.29Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 222. Occasionally, however, there are indeed grounds for suspecting that his localist convictions compromised his commitment to the parliamentarian cause – as in March 1645, when he was the only municipal office-holder to vote against imposing a weekly assessment on the inhabitants for the maintenance of the ‘poorer sort’ of soldiers in the garrison.30Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 234. And it was probably his civic-mindedness, more than any godly sympathies he may have held, that accounts for his appointment by the corporation in 1646 to lobby in London for the maintenance of the town’s ministry.31Notts. RO, CA 3420, p. 22. He was sent on a similar mission in 1650.32Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 265.

In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, Drewry was at the forefront of efforts by the Nottingham elite to restrict the selection of candidates to the inhabitants and thereby to preclude outside interference in the town’s electoral affairs.33Supra, ‘Nottingham’; P.R. Seddon, ‘The Nottingham elections to the protectorate Parliaments of 1654 and 1656’, Trans. Thoroton Soc. cii. 95. In keeping with this resolve, he backed the return of the town’s deputy recorder James Chadwicke; and it is also possible that Drewry himself stood for the town on this occasion.34Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ne D 3759/25. On 11 July, the corporation voted to return Chadwicke and the man who had commanded Nottingham’s militia forces during the civil war, John Mason. Of those present, only Chadwicke, Mason and Drewry did not vote, and the most likely explanation for Drewry’s abstention is that he too was a candidate. Drewry was a friend of Chadwicke and also seems to have had connections with the town’s recorder, John Holles, 2nd earl of Clare, which may explain why the corporation rejected him in favour of Mason. There is no sign that this contest – if such it was – turned on national political issues, for all three candidates were well disposed towards the protectorate.35Supra, ‘Nottingham’; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Ne D 3759/25.

Drewry stood for the town again in the elections to second protectoral Parliament two years later and was duly returned – although only, it seems, because Major-general Edward Whalley* had refused the corporation’s offer of one of the seats (the other being reserved for Chadwicke).36Supra, ‘Nottingham’. Drewry was named to nine committees in this Parliament, including those for Scottish affairs (23 Sept. 1656) and to consider a petition from Nottinghamshire against Chadwicke (13 Feb.1657).37CJ vii. 427a, 430a, 444b, 463b, 472a, 476b, 483a, 490b, 491b. On 21 February 1657, he was granted leave of absence and made no further impact upon the House’s proceedings.38CJ vii. 494b. He made only one recorded contribution to debate – on 4 December 1656, when he proposed an amendment to a bill for confirming the privileges of Scottish corporations to the effect that English soldiers might be allowed to set up as traders in Scotland, without serving apprenticeships, as they were in England.39Burton’s Diary, i. 13. He was supported by the radical pro-army MP Thomas Margetts.40Burton’s Diary, i. 14.

Very little is known about where Drewry stood on the major political and religious issues of the 1650s. His support for Nottingham corporation’s petition to the protector of July 1658, requesting stricter enforcement of laws relating to religious observance, suggests that he was no great friend of the sects; and indeed, the Quakers listed him in 1659 among those Nottingham magistrates who persecuted Friends.41Nottingham Borough Recs. v. 297; Extracts from State Pprs. rel. to Friends ed. N. Penney (1910), 113. At the same time, he seems to have had no sympathy for the Rump’s royalist opponents.42Mercurius Politicus no. 583 (11-18 Aug. 1659), 664-5 (E.766.34). Despite organising lavish celebrations in Nottingham to mark the restoration of monarchy, he was omitted from all county offices in 1660, and in the summer of 1662 he was among the six or so Nottingham aldermen removed from the bench by the corporation commissioners.43Notts. RO, CA 3434, ff. 31-3; P.A. Lloyd, ‘Politics, Religion, and the Personnel of Politics in Nottingham, 1642-88’ (Nottingham Univ. MPhil. thesis, 1983), 203. Under Charles II, his residence at Vault Hall became a venue for nonconformist conventicles.44C. Deering, Nottinghamia Vetus et Nova (1751), 4-5.

Drewry died in the spring of 1678 and was buried at St Peter’s Nottingham on 6 March.45St Peter, Nottingham par. reg. In his will, he left the bulk of his estate to his two sons William and Thomas.46Notts. RO, PR/NW, will of William Drury snr. 1678. None of his immediate family sat in Parliament.