HYLAND, Samuel (d. 1679), of St Saviour, Southwark, Surr.

Nothing conclusive is known about Hyland’s background. Hylands and Highlands were found in Southwark in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century and more widely in Kent, Surrey and (especially) Sussex in the early modern period.14St Saviour, Southwark, par. reg. This MP might have been Samuel, a younger son of Thomas Highland, a yeoman of Waldron, Sussex, and his wife Agnes Woodman, who was baptized in that parish on 8 November 1606, and left £60 in Thomas’s will, made in January 1630.15T.A. Glenn, Hyland Family (1929), 4, 7, 9; PROB11/159/23. One of this Samuel’s five brothers, another Thomas, has been identified as a resident of the coastal township of Scituate, Massachusetts, listed there in 1643 as able to bear arms.16N.B. Schurtleff, ‘List of those able to bear arms’, New Eng. Hist. and Gen. Reg.iv. 257; E. French, ‘Genealogical Research in England’, New Eng. Hist. and Gen. Reg. lxvi. 61-7; New Eng. Hist. and Gen. Reg. vii. 236.

Nonconformist and Leveller

The first certain sighting of the MP is in 1638, when with his wife he was presented by the churchwardens of St Saviour’s, Southwark, ‘for not coming to receive communion this year’.17N. and Q. 7th ser. v. 456. This did not presage a total breach with this church: four of the couple’s children were baptized there between November 1640 and November 1647, Samuel’s occupation being recorded in the register as distiller. However, it is suggestive of ongoing alienation that the first two baptism entries are evidently later additions to the listing.18St Saviour, Southwark, par. reg. Meanwhile, Hyland’s contributions to parliamentary debate in the 1650s indicate that he had wide commercial experience and that, like others in his circle, he had acquired an education.

In May 1640 Hyland was one of many Southwark residents who refused to pay coat and conduct money.19SP16/453, f. 251. A neighbour and perhaps even a business associate of John Lilburne, who had set up as a brewer, by 1647 Hyland was involved with Lilburne in the Leveller movement. On 20 May he headed the list of those recorded in the Commons Journal as presenting The Humble Petition of many Thousands, which by a fairly narrow vote was ordered to be burnt publicly.20CJ v. 179b. In the summer ‘Mr’ Hyland was one of two signatories to information proffered that the Presbyterian-dominated City militia had ‘put forth’ from the Southwark sub-committee ‘divers persons of approved fidelity and trust, only for difference in judgement’, and substituted ‘malignants’.21Clarke Pprs. i. 154. Following the failure of the Presbyterian coup he was himself appointed to the Surrey militia committee (9 Sept.) and was the most readily identifiable among petitioners to Parliament for a purge of those Members who had continued to sit while others fled to the army (26 Sept.; 5 Oct.).22CJ v. 299b; Walker, Hist. Independency, i. 40; M. Tolmie, Triumph of the Saints (1977), 169. Three days after a Leveller assembly at Smithfield on 17 January 1648 the Commons referred to the Derby House Committee the investigation of whether Hyland or others on local militia committees had promoted the Petition of the Freeborn People of England.23CJ v. 438b. Suspicions were almost certainly justified. On Lilburne’s own telling, it was Hyland who that September conveyed The Agreement of the People to army headquarters at Saffron Walden, and in May 1649 he was among those who ‘continually plied the House’ for consideration of its latest manifestation.24Clarke Pprs. ii. 258; Leveller Tracts, ed. Haller and Davies, 356.

From remarks he made in Parliament in 1657, it is clear that Hyland supported the execution of Charles I.25Burton’s Diary, ii. 90, 244. From April 1649 he served as an assessment commissioner and the same month he was placed on the commission of the peace for Surrey; after a brief period of omission in the last months of the Rump, he was reinstated and also appointed for Middlesex in July 1653.26A. and O.; C231/6, pp. 230, 258, 261; C193/13/4. A continuing reforming agenda is revealed by his appointment by the council of state in May 1653 to suppress sports and bear-baiting, and by his solemnizing marriages from then until 1659.27CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 307; N. and Q. 7th ser. v. 456. In June 1653 he led prayers for the imprisoned John Lilburne at a separatist meeting in Blackfriars, evidently well-established among its leadership.28Bodl. Clarendon 46, f. 132; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 142, 226-8.

Nominated Parliament and ‘An Exact Relation’

Although his precise relationship with the churches of Kent is unknown, Hyland was recommended by them for membership of the Nominated Parliament.29Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 128. He has been generally accepted as the author, under the pseudonym L. D. (perhaps referring to the last letters of his names), of the only extant account of proceedings written by an MP.30Gardiner, Commonwealth and Protectorate, ii. 289; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 120. Taking as his text Matthew 5, verse 11, ‘Blessed are ye when men revile ye’, he offered a ‘vindication’ of an assembly scorned by many as ineffectual. He emphasized its interim nature – participants ‘knew well that their call was not according to ancient formality, and the way of the nation’ – but they understood their providential selection and

the necessity of ... having some act to carry on affairs in way of government, till there might be an attainer to a better way of settlement, by the choice of the good people of this nation, which was not denied to be their just right, and dearly purchased liberty.31An Exact Relation (1654) (E.729.6), ‘To the reader’, 1.

However, although Hyland painted a picture of earnest intention and conscientious industry, his narrative revealed an overwhelming burden of business, a tendency to become mired in the detail of prospective legislation, and above all, vehement and paralysing divisions. His own reforming stance was clear: ‘Canaan the land of rest’ had not been reached; he invited his reader to judge that ‘God intended greater and more high things than yet thou hast seen, in way of removing wickedness and oppression, and advancing justice and righteousness’.32Exact Relation,‘To the reader’. Nonetheless, he was moderate in his criticism of the Long Parliament – ‘a council that God did highly honour in making them instruments of very great things’, but that through ‘long sitting contracted dullness, and a kind of indisposition to go on any farther to perfect the work’.33Exact Relation, 1.

Hyland singled out for particular attention four ‘great votes’ in the Parliament, relating to the two ‘great grievances’ in law and religion.34Exact Relation, title page, 11-12. A teller on 15 October for the narrow majority who advocated an adjournment of proceedings in chancery pending its replacement by something better, he recounted the case for abolition.35CJ vii. 335a. ‘Many horrible things were affirmed of it by Members’; there was ‘[dilatoriness], chargeableness, and a faculty of letting blood [of] the people in the purse-vein, even to their utter perishing and undoing’. ‘After such appearances of God in the land’, it was lamentable that ‘such a way or court, in such a way or practice, should be continued to greaten the retainers of it, and the practisers in it, but the ruin of others, eating the fat and sweat of other men’s labours and estates’. Those on the other side ‘had little to say’ in response. Nonetheless, because no workable alternative was produced, the reform was eventually ‘laid aside’.36Exact Relation, 12-13.

At an earlier stage (19 Aug.), Hyland had been nominated to the committee to ‘consider a new body of the law’ (the second of his ‘great votes’).37CJ vii. 304b. Although he was simultaneously granted a few days’ leave, he was committed to the task, as were ‘many very sober and moderate gentlemen’. Bulky law reports were ‘very ill guides to go by’; old laws arose from particular, unknown circumstances

and many times some musty old statute of a hundred years old, and more imprinted, is found and made use of by some crafty lawyer, to the undoing of an honest man that meant no hurt, nor knew any thing at all of the danger.

Moreover, laws which put men to death for theft but spared the lives of murderers were contrary both to reason and the law of God. Reformers did not intend to destroy law, ‘but the reducing of the wholesome, just, and good laws into a body’. The parliamentary committee went about work ‘which must needs be elaborate’ in a methodical manner and its effort, though cut short by the obstructive tactics of lawyers and others with vested interests in maintaining the status quo, had been worthwhile.38 Exact Relation, 15-18. The act passed for abolishing fines on original writs, by which the state lost £12,000 a year in revenue, ‘as some knowing gentlemen of worth in the House affirmed’, saved ‘the people of this commonwealth’ ten times as much.39Exact Relation, 7. On the other hand, the act establishing a high court of justice was, on the false premise of imminent danger, hastily pushed through in one day in order to avoid the possibility that some MPs (doubtless including Hyland) ‘that were perceived that day absent, being praying at the Blackfriars, might be present and hinder’. This was regrettable, ‘for to wise men it seemed a very weak piece’.40Exact Relation, 8-9.

A third great initiative had been the attempt to remove the right of patrons to present to ecclesiastical benefices. Effectively simony, this was ‘one of the strongholds of Satan’. Whoever exercised the right might

open the door to whom he pleaseth, and be sure he let in such a one as will comply and serve his interest, and wink at his vicious courses, and not vex and disquiet his greatness by telling him of his faults, as sometime John Baptist did Herod; or as those, which prophanely they call puritans, and sectarian ministers use to do.41Exact Relation, 18-19.

The practice resulted in the appointment of young graduates in logic and philosophy, by implication with no particular training or calling, who were ‘beholden’ to the patron and subsumed into his family, perhaps marrying ‘his kinswoman, or his wife’s gentlewoman, or his chambermaid’. ‘Can this work of darkness and root of iniquity’, asked Hyland, ‘abide the light, or look in the face, without blushing the glorious light of the gospel that now shineth in this our horizon?’ It was ‘a relic of the great whore (Revelation 18: 13) that buyeth and selleth amongst other wares the souls of men’. Positioning this perspective as moderate and distancing himself somewhat from his former associates, he claimed that in the drive to remove it ‘very sober gentlemen concurred, such as are not blemished, as sectaries or Levellers’. He denied they were ‘such as would destroy all property, as if they had none themselves’ – while they might have had ‘not very bulky estates, yet they had free estates’ – but they did consider that ‘Parliament may for the common good meddle with, and take away propriety’ [i.e. property] in this and other contexts. After all, it had sequestered and sold dean and chapter lands.42Exact Relation, 18-21. Once again, however, Hyland and his like were thwarted. When on 30 August he was a teller in favour of a clause in an additional act for the sale of delinquents’ lands vesting confiscated rectory and glebe lands in trustees, he was defeated by almost two to one.43CJ vii. 310b.

Consistently with this, the fourth major issue for Hyland was appropriate provision for the appointment, regulation and maintenance of godly ministers. Nominated on 19 July to the committee reviewing incumbents’ right to tithes, he identified this as another ‘great grievance’.44CJ vii. 286a; Exact Relation, 4, 24. Initial debates had ‘little success’: most MPs, he claimed, acknowledged the problem, but as with law reform, there were those who would abolish tithes until ‘some other thing were provided to be set in the room of it’, while others – including Hyland himself, experienced in the management of self-financing gathered congregations – were content to go ahead and then make provision ‘as God should direct’. Their motives were grossly misrepresented by critics, who seized on this measure to condemn the Parliament wholesale. Hyland condemned those who ‘would be esteemed godly orthodox divines, ministers of Christ and preachers of the gospel’ but were ‘of spirit and strain so unlike Christ and the gospel’ that from the pulpit and elsewhere they proclaimed that opponents of tithes ‘would have destroyed magistracy and ministry, the law and the government’ or even ‘would have destroyed all ministers, good as well as bad, and overthrown the gospel’.45Exact Relation, 21, 23.

As previously indicated, Hyland considered that progress in this and other areas was hampered by the sheer weight of business, some of which prospered and some of which did not. Committees set to work ‘so as none might be idle’; they sat ‘daily, and took great pains, morning and evening, almost every day in the week, to despatch business, and make things ready for the House’.46 Exact Relation, 4. Reports then ‘came on so fast’ that this ‘did cause striving which should be first heard, and much time lost thereby’.47Exact Relation, 6. Appointed on 20 July to the committee for prisoners, he expressed great satisfaction at its ‘fruit’: the passing of the act for creditors and debtors ‘freed’ ‘300 poor starving souls ... in and about London’. It was ‘a law so just and honourable, as England hath seen few better’, but ‘it passed not without serious debate’.48CJ vii. 287b; Exact Relation, 8. Similarly time-consuming had been the act for settling Ireland. In September Hyland himself promoted additional clauses. He was twice a teller against Colonel Henry Cromwell*, first in favour of providing £10,000 worth of lands there to compensate citizens of Gloucester who had voluntarily allowed the destruction of their property to counter the royalist siege (22 Sept.), and secondly in favour of a levy on those awarded Irish lands for the maintenance of poor refugees from the late rebellion (24 Sept.). On the first occasion the motion carried with the Speaker’s casting vote; on the second Hyland was narrowly defeated.49CJ vii. 323a, 323b.

Among other matters to which the House and Hyland devoted an ‘expense of time’ were dealing with foreign ambassadors – Hyland did duty in saying farewell to the Swedish envoy, Lagerfeldt, on 26 October – and with money.50Exact Relation, 6; CJ vii. 282a, 328a, 339b, 340a. On 23 August he was added to the committee for excise, evidently on the basis of his commercial experience as well as of his zeal.51CJ vii. 307a. Once its recommendations finally reached the Commons, the bill setting out the rates ‘was very large of about eighty sheets of paper’ and took ‘one whole day’ to read; three days were spent voting through rates one by one. Despite this

there appeared so many snares and difficulties in it as to trade, as was judged no way fit to be put on a people that expected freedom as the price of their blood and treasure, by them spent in the late war: whereupon it was by general consent waived and laid aside.52Exact Relation, 6-7.

Meanwhile, the act for assessments occasioned ‘very sharp’ debates owing to its ‘great inequality’.53Exact Relation, 9. Hyland received a belated chance to influence financial policy on 28 October, when he was added to the House’s committee for ‘the advancement and best managing of the treasure of the commonwealth’.54CJ vii. 341b.

According to Hyland, it was the assault on tithes which above all brought down the Parliament, although law reform appeared to run it a close second

those gentlemen that missed of their expectations, and were crossed of having their wills, greatly fearing, as it seemeth, it would go ill with those corrupt interests of the lawyers and clergy, which they endeavoured to support: they took the pet and were exceeding wroth.

Forming ‘cabals’, they plotted to overthrow the House; ‘following their own wills, nay, their own lusts’, they made Members like Hyland the scapegoats for failure. The Nominated Parliament resigned on 12 December, six weeks after Hyland’s last committee appointment – he and his like having been, it seemed, marginalized. ‘If the foundations be destroyed’, he asked, ‘what can the righteous do?’55Exact Relation, 24-7.

Preacher and parliamentary candidate 1654

Over the next few months Hyland and his associates were under some suspicion, a factor which may itself have contributed to his publication of the Exact Relation. In February 1654 newsbook editor Marchamont Nedham reported to the newly-installed protector that, following the imprisonment of their leaders, Fifth Monarchists John Simpson and Christopher Feake, the congregation at All Hallows by the Tower was ‘as crowded as ever’ but had become more subdued. ‘The principal men’ Hyland, Henry Jessey and John Spencer ‘are (your Highness knows) no Boanerges, [they are] men that carry no thunderbolts’. However

though the bellows seem (comparatively) to blow but very gently, yet I perceive it keeps the coals alive, and the humours boiling, which were first heated by others; and as much scum comes off as ever, but more closely and warily.

Hyland – conceivably a long-standing associate of Jessey, who had begun an Independent ministry in Southwark before 1640 – seemed to Nedham ‘the more crafty’. He preached on the eight Beatitudes (Matthew v. 3-11), ‘but chiefly enlarged on the two last, which relate to persecution’ (as also highlighted in An Exact Relation). He prayed for Simpson and Feake

prophesied their deliverance and the assured carrying on of their cause, to the confutation of all enemies; and he quoted the apocalypse [Revelation], telling the people the time was at hand when they should have the will of their enemies, and should feed on the flesh of kings and great men, and of the chiefest and greatest captains. This he very cunningly inculcated, and insinuated over and over, placing a great part of his rhetoric in this kind of tautology.56‘Simpson, John’, ‘Jessey, Henry’, Oxford DNB; SP18/66, f. 38.

It was doubtless with a sense of work still to be accomplished that on 27 June 1654 Hyland offered himself for election for Southwark to the first protectorate Parliament with Robert Warcupp*, nephew of the former Speaker, William Lenthall*. Rival candidates Colonel Hardwick and Peter De Lannoy* represented a Presbyterian or at least a less radical ticket. According to allegations subsequently made to Oliver Cromwell’s* council, ‘unbiased people’ considered voices for Hardwick and De Lannoy were likely to have been ‘greater by a third’, but Warcupp’s father, who was the bailiff, first postponed proceedings, then took the votes of ‘dangerous’ persons on his son’s side and finally took advantage of the fact that heavy rain had sent rival supporters (‘persons of quality’) to seek shelter inside, to close the poll and declare for the Warcupp and Hyland.57SP18/74, f. 122. The latter, it was argued, were neither duly elected nor qualified to be burgesses. Hyland had made ‘a glossing speech ... thereby to wind himself into the people’s affections’; it was ‘full of self commendation’ and emphasized ‘how faithfully he had discharged all his places of trust, and that if he had wronged any man a penny, he would give fourfold’.58SP18/74, f. 124. Another petition, accused him of ‘patronage of whoredom and adultery’, inappropriate use of a magistrate’s powers of imprisonment and release, ‘receiving bribes’ including two lobsters, ‘sordid and sinful indulgence to profaners of the sabbath’ and granting warrants to carriers to travel on fast days. Especially damning was

his eminent compliance with Levellers and affections to Levell[er]ism, as hath appeared by his respects to Lilburne, several discharges from his justiceship thereupon, [and] declarations of himself at Blackfriars and All Hallows against the powers of the earth.

His associates had come from London and from surrounding parishes for the election and were ‘very active for him’, while Hyland himself made ‘no conscience of speaking falsely, when it tends to the advantage of his design’.59SP18/74, f. 132.

According to government servant John Milton, the election dispute was at first given prompt attention, although a decision was then postponed.60Clarke Pprs. v. 203; SP18/75, f. 71. It may not have been resolved until some time after the start of the parliamentary session on 3 September, when the choice of William Lenthall as Speaker may well have contributed to the eventual confirmation of his nephew Warcupp, who received his first committee nominations on 3 November.61CJ vii. 381a, 381b. On the other hand, Hyland’s election was apparently upheld only for him then to be excluded, along with others considered to have ‘manifested a constant affection to the commonwealth’ and thus to be a danger to the protectorate.62Ludlow, Mems. i. 390. There is no sign of him in the Journal during this Parliament.

Yet it seems that Hyland also had friends who were insiders to the protectorate regime and that in time these associations dispelled suspicions of his radicalism. From January 1656 at the latest, with a regularity that suggests hope of success, he advanced to Thomas Kelsey* (major-general of Kent and Surrey), John Clarke II (a former colleague on the committee for advancing and managing the treasure of the commonwealth and a regular opponent in divisions) and other admiralty commissioners recommendations of candidates for posts in the navy.63SP18/92, f. 51; SP18/161, f. 57; SP18/169, f. 177; SP18/172, f. 162; SP18/190, f. 44; SP46/117, f. 222; CJ vii. 323b, 335a. When Hyland was again returned for Southwark to the second protectorate Parliament, there appears to have been no objection.

Second protectorate Parliament

As befitted the author of An Exact Relation, Hyland was once again a vocal and radical Member. A continuing commitment to law reform was apparent in his first appointment, to address abuses in writs (25 Sept. 1656), and in subsequent nominations to committees dealing with the bill against customary oaths (7 Oct.) and the case of George and Sarah Rodney versus Cole, which exposed shortcomings in the procedures of the court of chancery (22 Nov.); he presented a petition related to the latter (26 May 1657).64CJ vii. 428a, 435b, 457b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 130. He was involved in a bill to improve arrangements for collecting small debts (1 Nov. 1656) and, describing himself as someone who lived ‘amongst prisoners’, with three prisons in his neighbourhood containing ‘above one thousand’ inmates, was a promoter of legislation for further relief (6 June 1657).65CJ vii. 449a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 191. He joined leading Surrey Member Sir Richard Onslow* in opposing a wider definition of vagabonds ‘other than ever our ancestors knew’ and probably spoke ironically when he suggested that those who proposed to include harpers and pipers should ‘add singing as well as playing’ to the list of outlawed activities (5 Dec. 1656).66Burton’s Diary, i. 22-3. Engagement with the concerns of those outside the élite was evident also in his membership of committees regulating cloth-making in Norfolk (25 Nov. 1656) and (especially) drafting a proviso allowing mariners and those in related occupations to build dwellings close to their work in areas where new building was otherwise restricted (11, 19 June 1657).67CJ vii. 459a, 555a, 564a.

Hyland had a keen eye for commerce. When a thanksgiving day was proposed in January 1657, he proposed that it be on the same day throughout the country so that ‘countrymen that come with their cloth, and other things, to London ... knowing nothing’ should not be caught out unexpectedly by locally cancelled markets.68Burton’s Diary, i. 357. He got another thanksgiving moved forward one day to accommodate the Thursday cloth market at Blackwell Hall (28 May).69Burton’s Diary, ii. 143. Reprising activity of 1653, Hyland was a restraining member of the committee to improve the excise on ale and beer (25 Oct. 1656).70CJ vii. 445b. When it was discussed in grand committee on 8 January, he objected to proposals which would have placed an heavy burden on vintners, perceived by others to be prospering unduly. ‘This is not just’ and ‘will not advance your excise’. Raising duties would simply ‘carry your merchants to another place’ and it was ‘against the liberties of the people of England to double charge one with duty’; searching their cellars to check for undeclared goods was a further violation. There were merchants who ‘gained excessively’ but ‘time was when the excise was thought an odious thing in this nation: let us not give occasion to the people to call it odious still’.71Burton’s Diary, i. 326-7, 329.

It seems evident that Hyland’s experiences of the 1640s had left him with an antipathy to the governors of the City of London. Placed on the committee debating a petition from the Common Council related to the preservation of its privileges, he argued for rejecting it: contrary to the claims made in it, the City had not been the loser at Parliament’s hands (19 Dec. 1656).72CJ vii. 470b; Burton’s Diary, i. 178, 343. Nonetheless, he was happy to countenance a reasonable abatement in the assessments placed upon it (23 Dec.).73Burton’s Diary, i. 213-14.

Belatedly nominated, as in 1653, to financial committees (bill for establishing the state of public debt, 19 June 1657; committee for public revenue, 26 June), Hyland consistently advocated just apportionment of taxation, based on full information.74CJ vii. 563a, 576a. On the slender basis of a couple of committee appointments related to Irish land settlements (31 Dec. 1656; 19 Feb. 1657), he may have overestimated (10 June) the revenue that could be raised from Ireland and been over-confident (5 June) in dismissing the Irish assessment bill as ‘a nose of wax’, but he counselled against overburdening new colonists, dismissed irrational faith in tapping hitherto undiscovered wealth (13 June), and was among those who expressed a reasonable concern that the financial pitch there should not be queered by promising a large gratuity to Roger Boyle*, Baron Broghill, or anyone else (30 May).75CJ vii. 477a, 494a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 162, 175, 179, 209, 225, 239, 246. Time, care and a methodical approach was needed to lay down equitable rates in England. The ‘ugly rule of Ship Money’ should not be resurrected and, ‘lest the House run upon the same rock that the Long Parliament did, in passing things in a thin House’, Members should wait for full attendance to sanction any measure (10, 12 June).76Burton’s Diary, ii. 208, 215, 218, 227. When considering claims for compensation out of the public purse – such as that made by the city of Gloucester for its sufferings in time of siege – he called for independent arbitrators, so that ‘one [might not] clash with another’: ‘other persons and places, as the city of Chichester, deserve as much of your justice and pity’ (5 May).77Burton’s Diary, ii. 110. On the other hand, he was prepared to burden delinquents, acting with Major Lewis Audley* as a teller for the minority who supported Major-general John Disbrowe*’s bill for a decimation tax on royalists in order to maintain a permanent militia (29 Jan.).78CJ vii. 483b. Although he confessed to having bought confiscated lands only to sell them again, ‘being suspicious lest the tide should turn’, he considered that purchasers of the lands of William Craven, Baron Craven, who had been ‘in the very front of the bill of traitors’, had ‘the best title under heaven’ (26 May) and was disinclined to spend further parliamentary time on elaborating their rights (29 May).79Burton’s Diary, ii. 130, 158.

One notable purchaser of confiscated lands was the Leveller turned separatist leader Samuel Chidley.80‘Chidley, Samuel’, Oxford DNB. On 20 October 1656 Hyland was named to the committee which investigated the ‘obnoxious’ re-issue of Chidley’s diatribe against abuses, Thunder from the Throne of God against the Temples of Idols, first published in 1653.81CJ vii. 442b. But perhaps a reputation for heterodoxy precluded his appointment that autumn to the committee addressing the more alarming and perplexing case of James Naylor and his intent in processing into Bristol in parallel manner to Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. In debate Hyland was vocal in opposing a summary condemnation. He was prepared to concede that Naylor was accused of ‘horrid things’, that he was ‘much filled with spiritual pride’, that, if guilty, he was liable to ‘infect’ others with undesirable opinions, and that ‘we ought to vindicate God’s honour’, but Hyland advocated ‘a fair trial’, reclamation and (as on other matters) careful consideration by a full House; it might be ‘a great and horrid crime’, but he could not judge it blasphemy (6, 8, 15 Dec.).82Burton’s Diary, i. 39, 67, 147. In this approach, however, he differed little from other opponents of the proceedings, and in passing he exposed the limits of his radicalism. As discussion turned to where the Yorkshire-born Naylor might be exiled with least harm to the surrounding community (16 Dec.), Hyland observed that ‘those that come out of the north are the greatest pests of the nation: the diggers came thence’, provoking several northern MPs to retort that, on the contrary, this subversive movement originated in Surrey.83Burton’s Diary, i. 155-6. Uncowed, Hyland, often in company with Surrey Member Lewis Audley, pursued to the end the right of Naylor and his supporters to be heard. When MPs received an appeal against the sentence, he expressed the hope that ‘the people may petition against any of your laws, much more against your vote, which they find to be grievous’ for ‘it is the common right of Englishmen to petition against grievances in general’ (17, 23 Dec.).84Burton’s Diary, i. 163, 219. When complaints were aired about Naylor’s treatment in Bridewell prison, Hyland was nominated to the examining committee (28 Feb. 1657).85CJ vii. 497b.

The Naylor debates raised for Hyland fundamental issues about government. In the midst of other business on 30 December he made a long and evidently passionate speech revealing his disquiet about the manner of proceeding. He underlined

how much the lives and liberties and estates of the people of England were concerned in our late judgement against Naylor. Better we had never been born than have taken that liberty to ourselves, to exercise such a power over the liberties of the people. We had better deny ourselves, than let such a thing.86Burton’s Diary, i. 269.

Yet, while Parliament had a profound responsibility to the people – expressed, for example, in an obligation on Members to attend regularly: Hyland was hard on absentees (20 Dec. 1656; 20 June 1657) – it was the ultimate authority and should act accordingly.87Burton’s Diary, i. 192 He regretted that Members were ‘at so great a loss’ as to feel obliged to justify their decision on Naylor to the protector and hesitant about proclaiming it generally (26 Dec.). ‘If you assert not your own power, you will be a matter of laughter, both to wise men and fools ... assert your judgement, so far as it may stand with law and satisfaction of your own consciences.’88Burton’s Diary, i. 246, 257-8.

Although appointed to the committee to attend Oliver Cromwell* with the Humble Petition and Advice (7 Apr. 1657), Hyland was a consistent critic of moves to elevate the power of the protector or offer him the crown.89CJ vii. 521a.. As the House reflected (19 Jan.) on the abortive plot against him by Richard Overton, Hyland was prepared to acknowledge its discovery as ‘a universal mercy’, but he did not want to see it as the occasion of fawning to the protector.90Burton’s Diary, i. 357, 361. He vehemently resisted those who reacted by advocating reversion to a traditional mode of government. ‘King, Lords and Commons’ was ‘a constitution which we have pulled down with our blood and treasure’. Placing Cromwell in a position which works of God had demonstrated to be iniquitous was to make him ‘the greatest hypocrite in the world’. Could they really contemplate setting ‘up kingly government, which, for these thousand years, has persecuted the people of God’? Did they ‘expect a better consequence’ this time? It was ‘a crime it is to offer such a motion as this’ and he desired it would ‘die, as abominable’. It would ‘set all the honest people of this nation to weeping and mourning’. ‘I hope’, he concluded, ‘we have gotten from our former bondage, blindness and superstition, that great persecution we and our ancestors groaned under’.91Burton’s Diary, i. 364.

Hyland did not condone those who rebelled against an increasingly conservative regime. When Thomas Venner and a group of militant Fifth Monarchists attempted an armed uprising in April 1657, he agreed that ‘they should not go without their deserved punishment: it proceeds from a diabolical spirit’. But he did point out in mitigation that those involved were of low rank and operated openly, and he argued that the laws were already ‘full enough to try such wicked designs’ (15 Apr.).92Burton’s Diary, ii. 4. He fought to preserve all that had been achieved, being keen that the Humble Petition and Advice should not compromise or negate ‘the best’ of the statutory changes made since 1640, ‘as all those laws that were made in the name of the commonwealth, and that for cutting off the king’s head’ (30 Apr.).93Burton’s Diary, ii. 90-1. As the Commons discussed the revised version of the Petition, which dropped references to kingship, he affirmed that Parliament and not the protector, who was more susceptible to misinformation, should choose central and local government officials, that it should countenance ‘only sufferers in your service, and not mercenary men’ and that it should exclude sitting MPs and those with a vested interest (30 May).94Burton’s Diary, ii. 160-1. Perhaps because he feared the destabilising effect of repetition, he opposed the imposition of any new oath on the protector, asserting that ‘his Highness is under as great an obligation as you can tie him to’ (23 June), but he was prepared to accept an oath for MPs, provided it should be simply to maintain the privileges of Parliament rather than also (as with the protector) to defend the Protestant religion.95Burton’s Diary, ii. 276-7, 296.

Parliament, although potentially flawed, evidently remained for Hyland the best available guarantor of the interests of the people. When at the opening of this Parliament’s second session on 20 January 1658 the Commons were summoned by Black Rod to attend the protector in the Other House, he reminded MPs of their resolution to assert their dignity in appearing before what some provocatively called ‘the Lords’ by carrying the traditional mace rather than adopting a more submissive attitude.96Burton’s Diary, ii. 322. Ultimately, however, he manifested himself as less concerned with constitutional nicety than with practical action. Two days later he moved to adjourn debate on the political settlement and the Other House in favour of discussing practical matters.97Burton’s Diary, ii. 342.

By the same token, Hyland was less interested in theology and the institutional church than he was in social morality. His only committee appointment on a strictly religious matter related to the bill for better observation of the sabbath, on which he is likely to have been undogmatic (18 Feb. 1657).98CJ vii. 493b. When in April 1657 the Commons discussed public maintenance for preachers, he reflected his personal experience when he argued against the exclusion from consideration of the unordained, those members of a congregation who, ‘in doing their duty, do speak in their turns to the edification of the rest of the body’, those who ‘be not parsons by way of office’ – a standpoint which effectively rendered the provisions unworkable.99Burton’s Diary, ii. 14-15. The proposal of Presbyterian MP Thomas Gewen* on 21 January 1658 that there be an assembly of divines, particularly in order to address the decay of church buildings, drew from Hyland a rejoinder which pinpointed what was likely to have been his stance throughout his parliamentary career. He began with a courteous dismissal – revealing perhaps a moderate edge which potentially made him more effective than some other radicals: he was ‘glad to see such care of religion, but there is not that necessity at this time for an assembly; ‘this is but calling them [i.e. the divines] from feeding their flocks’. However, he continued with an emphasis which may have shocked some of the godly. ‘Moral things are as necessary as religious, [for example] to feed and clothe the naked and oppressed; it is religion to pay your debts.’ His hearers should remember that ‘superstition is banished’: they should take a lesson from the first chapter of Isaiah, where the Israelites were ‘full of sacrifices’ – the outward formalities of religious ritual – ‘but did not relieve the oppressed’, and thus earned God’s judgment.100Burton’s Diary, ii. 333.

Hyland received no committee nominations in the short second session of the Parliament. His four recorded contributions to debate came on each of the first four days, so it is possible that he then withdrew from the chamber and joined other civilians and disaffected officers in fruitless petitioning for the restoration of the commonwealth.101Burton’s Diary, ii. 322, 333, 342, 345.

Final years

Although he did not sit in Parliament again, Hyland did not disappear altogether from public life. He was still making recommendations to the military in July 1659 and he continued as a militia and assessment commissioner and a justice of the peace into 1660 and beyond.102SP25/128, f. 131; A. and O.; SR.

Hyland’s final years are only a little less obscure than his youth. In 1663 he was among trustees gathered to build a new church, Christ Church, in Southwark in order to cater for an expanding population, which suggests that he had retreated from his earlier separatism.103Dictionary of British Radicals. He continued to operate as a distiller in Southwark and evidently prospered, since in 1678 he had £1,000 available to invest for his wife Mary’s jointure.104N. and Q. ser. vii, v. 456; E. Suss. RO, DUN18/2, 10; Kreitzer, William Kiffen…Part 7, 34-5, 40, 58. But following his death, intestate, in June 1679, disagreements between his children led to extended litigation, which cumulatively supplies a few details of his last months and pinpoints family relationships.105Kreitzer, William Kiffen…Part 7, chapter 69. His burial does not appear in Southwark registers, letters of administration were not obtained and his widow Mary was alleged to have been cheated of at least part of her jointure. The apparent culprit was their elder son, Samuel Hyland the younger (1640-1693), admitted to the Middle Temple in 1657 and called to the bar in 1664, who had established himself at Bodiam in Sussex.106M. Temple Admiss. i. 159; PROB11/415/208; E. Suss. RO, FRE4468, 4592, 4595, 4643, 5216 ; DUN18/3-11; AMS46/17. Their younger son, John Hyland, pursued the distillery business in St Saviour’s. Among the beneficiaries of his 1694 will was his sister Sarah Kiffen, third wife of the Baptist leader, Benjamin Kiffen.107PROB11/419/426.