HARRISON, William (1619-43), of St Olave, Hart Street, London and Balls Park, Herts.

Harrison’s brief parliamentary career, begun when he had barely reached maturity, seems to have been undertaken primarily in order to protect the family interest, and to defend his father from prosecution as a monopolist. John Harrison had risen from humble origins, through employment as clerk to the customs farmer, Sir John Wolstenholme†, and like his master had married into the Fanshawe family, before himself becoming a farmer of the petty and great farms of the customs after 1632.6The Memoirs of Anne Lady Fanshawe ed. H.C. Fanshawe (1907), 21; R. Ashton, Crown and the Money Market, (1960), 104-5, 108, 110-12. The political climate in 1640, however, ensured that such men were the focus for opposition to methods of crown finance, and that they would face hostility from leading members of the Long Parliament.

Born in 1619, and baptised at St Olave, Hart Street, London, Harrison only matriculated at Cambridge in 1637, the year in which he also entered Gray’s Inn.7Reg. St Olave Hart Street, 32. Although it is uncertain whether he intended to practise the law, it is certainly possible that his training was curtailed by the need to seek a seat at Westminster. Technically too young to stand for the Short Parliament, Harrison obtained a seat at Queenborough in the Long Parliament, which assembled less than two months after his twenty-first birthday. Although he had no personal interest in the borough, he was made a freeman on 19 October, and elected alongside Sir Edward Hales*, possibly with backing from the most powerful local magnate, Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke.8Cent. Kent. Stud. Qb/JMS4, f. 144. It is almost certain that Harrison benefitted from support within the court, just as his father had done to secure the seat in the Short Parliament, and just as another crown financier, Sir John Wolstenholme* the younger had done to take the seat when John Harrison opted to sit for Lancaster.9Cent. Kent. Stud. Qb/JMS4, f. 138v. The connection between the Harrisons and the Wolstenholmes was clearly still strong.10HMC Hatfield, xxii. 360.

Harrison’s inexperience, and his connection with the crown and its financiers, ensured that he played only a small part in the proceedings of the House. His intention became apparent within weeks of Parliament opening, when he sought to defend his father during debates on monopolies (23 Nov.).11Procs. LP i. 254. Moreover, by offering to loan £50,000 to assist in paying the Scots, on his father’s behalf but without his knowledge, Harrison was able to forestall prosecution, and enable his father to take his seat in the House (25 Nov.).12Procs. LP i. 290, 292-6; CJ ii. 36; Stowe 326, ff. 90v-91. The latter ‘made good his son’s offer’, reporting to the House confidently the next day that the money would be forthcoming ‘with all convenient speed’.13Procs. LP i. 307, 309, 311, 317, 321. As young Harrison’s own relatives recognised, this gesture was his only significant contribution to the Long Parliament, but it also ensured that both he and his father (by this time knighted and thereby more readily distinguishable in diaries) were proposed for inclusion in the subsidy bill in January 1641, in order to oversee the receipt of money.14Mems. Halkett and Fanshawe ed. Loftis, 111; D’Ewes (N), 214. ‘Mr Harrison’ made little further impression on proceedings. He subscribed the Protestation (3 May), but having been granted leave to go to the country on 30 June, and having paid his poll money, he does not reappear in the Journals.15CJ ii. 133a, 193a.

Harrison joined the king at Nottingham in the summer of 1642 and subsequently entered the royalist quarters at Oxford, as did his father. He was disabled from sitting in Parliament on 24 June 1643.16CJ iii. 143a; Harl. 164, f. 241. Shortly afterwards he was killed in a skirmish with parliamentarian forces. He apparently died ‘with a bruise on his side caused by the fall of his horse, which was shot under him as he went out with a party of horse against a party of [Robert Devereux] the [3rd] earl of Essex’, and was buried in Exeter College chapel. The king, upon hearing of Harrison’s death, was said to have described him as ‘a very good and gallant young man’.17Mems. Halkett and Fanshawe ed. Loftis, 109, 111. His father, who had also been expelled from the Commons, returned to sit there after the Restoration.18HP Commons 1660-1690.