LISTER, Christopher (1620-aft. 1667), of Warcop, Westmld.

Lister’s appointment as a Cromwellian ejector in 1654 suggests that he inherited his father’s godly convictions. These may have given rise to a period of study at the Academy of Geneva.27Le Livre du Recteur, i. 181.  The powerful network of northern parliamentarian officers to which he belonged certainly included men of strongly puritan stamp. His sister Frances was the wife of Major-general John Lambert*, who was the most influential figure in the West Riding of Yorkshire by 1654 and one of the trustees of the Lister family estate.28Supra, ‘John Lambert’; infra, ‘Martin Lister’; C10/9/53. He was a ‘cousin’ of two of Lambert’s most trusted subordinates – Colonel Robert Lilburne* and Captain Adam Baynes*.29Add. 21419, ff. 41, 331. And his elder brother’s widow, Catherine, had married Colonel John Bright*, who was himself a close friend of Lambert’s.30Supra, ‘John Bright’. It was probably one of these men who at some point in the mid-1640s secured Lister a captaincy in the northern parliamentarian army, which Lambert commanded from August 1647.31Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 264. Lister’s service record is obscure, and it is not known whether he fought in the first civil war. By July 1648, he had transferred from the regiment of Hugh Bethell* to that of Robert Lilburne and was sent by Lambert down to London to make a report on the northern army’s material deficiencies to the Derby House Committee*. On completing this mission, the committee sent him back to Lambert with its orders.32CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 202, 204; Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, ii. 56. It seems likely that he fought under Lambert at the battle of Preston in August 1648, and he was certainly part of the army that Oliver Cromwell took into Scotland in 1650.33Add. 21419, ff. 41, 331; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 266-7.

Lister married the widow of two northern gentlemen, and it was very probably through her that he acquired property at Warcop, in Westmorland.34C6/113/80; Vis. Cumb. and Westmld. ed. Foster, 49. He had settled at Warcop by the spring of 1653 at the latest, and with the assistance of Lambert and Captain Baynes he obtained the registrarship of his adopted county.35Add. 21421, f. 232; Add. 21422, ff. 20, 62, 85, 113. Lambert’s authorship of the Instrument of Government (upon which the protectorate was established late in 1653) raised his stock even higher, and it was almost certainly his brother-in-law’s influence that secured Lister a tellership in the exchequer the following year and appointment to several conciliar committees.36CSP Dom. 1654, p. 367; 1656-7, pp. 10, 66.

As a close relative of Lambert and one of the few gentlemen in Westmorland untainted by association with the king’s party, Lister was an unsurprising choice as one of the county’s two representatives in the first protectoral Parliament of 1654. The clerk of the House’s failure to distinguish between the four Listers in this Parliament (Christopher, his brother Martin, Thomas and William), referring repeatedly simply to ‘Mr Lister’, makes it impossible to catalogue his activities and appointments precisely. But assuming that the clerk would refer to him as ‘Captain Lister’, he received no appointments in this Parliament at all. He was returned for Westmorland again in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, although his selection was contested by his fellow knight of the shire in the previous Parliament, Jeremiah Baines (no relation of Captain Adam Baynes). In a petition to the committee of privileges, Baines alleged that although he had come second on a poll of the four candidates, the sheriff had instead returned Lister, who had come last.37HMC 7th Rep. 687. Baines’s petition was apparently unsuccessful, however, for Lister was allowed to take his seat and continued to attend the House until at least the summer of 1657.

Lister appears to have been one of the less active Members of the second protectoral Parliament. However, the fact that there were two Listers present in the House during the first session – the other being the MP for Hull, William Lister – again makes it difficult to determine the true number of his appointments. Although ‘Captain Lister’ or ‘Christopher Lister’ was named to less than a dozen committees, the clerk of the House may occasionally have labelled him ‘Mr Lister’ as well as the Member for Hull. On the other hand, Lister was well known to the parliamentary diarist, Thomas Burton, his fellow Member for Westmorland, and it is likely that Burton was careful to distinguish between Christopher, whom he referred to as ‘Captain Lister’, and the Hull MP, ‘Mr Lister’. Assuming that the clerk and Burton were accurate in their appellations, Lister was named to at least 10 committees in this Parliament, one of which – concerning the estate of a minor northern gentleman – he chaired. However, he made no significant contribution to debate.38CJ vii. 427a, 430a, 438a, 456a, 470b, 472a, 483a, 489a, 540b; Burton’s Diary, i. 168, 227, 307, 344. His most important appointments in this Parliament were his first – to the committee for Scottish affairs (23 Sept. 1656) – and what appears to have been his last – to a committee set up on 27 May 1657 to draw up legislation relating to the Humble Petition and Advice.39CJ vii. 427a, 540b. Like Baynes and several other members of ‘Lambert’s party’, he may well have withdrawn from the House soon after the adoption of the new constitution, and certainly the Commons Journal contains no reference to Captain or Christopher Lister after 27 May.

Very little is known about Lister after 1657. Having been appointed to the Middlesex and Westminster benches early in 1657 – possibly in connection with his office as a teller of the exchequer – he was removed from both early in April 1659, and by March 1660 he had been omitted from all local offices.40C231/6, pp. 356, 430. He is mentioned in the will of his nephew and namesake – with whom he has repeatedly been confused – in October 1667, and he was possibly the ‘great uncle’ Lister living at Enfield, Middlesex, who is mentioned in the will of his nephew’s son in 1700.41Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 48, f. 604; PROB11/462, f. 93; Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. ii. 136; HP Commons 1690-1715, ‘Christopher Lister’. Lister’s time of death and place of burial are a mystery, and no will is recorded.