SHAFTO, Mark (1602-60), of St John, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumb. and Whitworth, co. Dur.

Shafto belonged to a junior branch of the Shafto family of Bavington, which had joined the ranks of the Northumberland gentry in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century.27Surtees, Co. Dur. iii. 294; Watts, Northumb. 252. His great-grandfather and grandfather had served as mayors of Newcastle in 1548 and 1578 respectively, and his father had been elected sheriff of the town in 1607.28Surtees, Co. Dur. iii. 294; Brand, Newcastle, ii. 240, 441, 446. Although Shafto was admitted to his freedom as a mercer and evidently joined the Newcastle Merchant Adventurers Company, it was his elder brother Robert who took over their father’s business as a Hostman (coal-shipper), while Mark concentrated on a career in the legal profession.29Freemen of Newcastle upon Tyne ed. Dodds, 18. As a student and barrister at Gray’s Inn during the 1620s he would have been part of a network of north country lawyers that included Francis Thorpe* and (Sir) Thomas Widdrington*, whose daughter would later marry Shafto’s eldest son.30Cttees. for Compounding...in Durham and Northumb. ed. Welford, 336. Shafto apparently returned to the north to begin his legal practice, and by 1634 he was acting as counsel to the future secretary of state and parliamentarian grandee Sir Henry Vane I* of Raby Castle, County Durham.31CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 247. By 1640, he was steward of Vane’s manorial courts and would remain in his employ until at least 1645.32SP19/104, ff. 1v, 4; CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 392, 527; 1640, p. 70; Cttees. for Compounding ... in Durham and Northumb. ed. Welford, 337.

Although Shafto would emerge in the late 1640s as a trusted servant of Parliament and of Newcastle’s parliamentarian governors, his allegiance during the civil war seems to have lain more with the king’s party. It is significant that neither he nor his elder brother Robert were named to local parliamentary committees during the war years. Nor were they among those inhabitants who withdrew from Newcastle after it was garrisoned for the king in the summer of 1642. Indeed, Robert Shafto was a senior figure in the town’s royalist administration, and as late as 15 October 1644 – four days before the Scots stormed Newcastle – he was signing letters from the mayor and aldermen declaring loyalty to the king and bidding defiance to the Scottish general, Alexander Leslie, 1st earl of Leven.33A True Relation of the Late Proceedings of the Scottish Army (1644), 11-13 (E.33.17); The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 69 (20-7 Aug. 1644), 556-7 (E.7.14); A Particular Relation of the Taking of Newcastle (1644), 12-13 (E.16.5). Mark himself served on a royal commission of oyer and terminer and gaol delivery for Newcastle in May 1643. It is hardly surprising therefore that when a Scottish army under James Livingston, 1st earl of Callander, entered County Durham in the summer of 1644, he was imprisoned on charges of collaborating with the royalists. One of the English parliamentary commissioners with the Scottish forces, Henry Darley* (Shafto’s ‘ancient acquaintance in Gray’s Inn’) quickly secured his release on condition that he pledge obedience to Parliament and provide a horse for its service. But doubts about Shafto’s loyalty persisted, and it required repeated intercession by Sir George Vane (the elder Vane’s son and himself a probable royalist collaborator) and James Clavering* with the commissioners to prevent further action being taken against him.34SP19/104, ff. 1v-5; V. Rowe, Sir Henry Vane the Younger, 90.

Shafto’s links with the Vanes were probably key to his subsequent political rehabilitation. In December 1644, he and a number of men closely associated with the Vanes and their friend and ally Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, were named to a parliamentary commission of oyer and terminer for Northumberland.35C181/5, ff. 245v-246. Several of the commissioners, and in particular Sir John Fenwick*, were deeply compromised, like Shafto, by their involvement with the royalists.36Supra, ‘Sir John Fenwick’. But what most of them had in common was a strong antipathy towards the Scots – and it was perhaps anti-Scottish feeling on Shafto’s part that may partly explain his complicity with the king’s party during 1642-4.

Shafto’s royalist past caught up with him again in December 1645, when formal charges were presented against him to the Durham county committee (charges which were later copied into the records of the Committee for Advance of Money*).37CCAM 650; Cttees. for Compounding...in Durham and Northumb. ed. Welford, 336-7. His unnamed accuser(s) alleged, among other things, that he had given legal advice to Newcastle’s royalist mayor Sir John Marley† ‘in many of his projects and designs against the Parliament’. Shafto denied this accusation, but given his elder brother’s willingness to serve under Marley it is not entirely without credibility. Most of the charges were more general or trifling in nature, and Shafto had little difficulty denying them or giving plausible explanations for his conduct. The impression remains, however, that he had enjoyed cordial links with the royalist governors in the region. The Vanes, Clavering and his other friends on the Durham county committee ensured that these charges and all proceedings against him were dropped on payment of what was, in effect, a £20 fine – a derisory sum in relation to what someone less well-connected might have had to pay during composition. Nevertheless, there is no reason to doubt Shafto’s claim that his landed estate was ‘greatly indebted’ and that his legal practice, ‘which formerly was my chief support’, had suffered badly during the war.38SP19/104, ff. 1v-6.

Newcastle common council had begun consulting Shafto on legal matters by June 1646, and within 18 months he had been appointed the town’s recorder.39Tyne and Wear Archives, 543/28, f. 126; 543/29, unfol. (entry for Oct. 1647); MD.NC/2/1, pp. 74, 95; 574/94, p. 269. One of his likely patrons in securing this prestigious office was his brother-in-law Thomas Ledgard. As well as being an alderman, Ledgard was one of the grandees of the town’s dominant Independent faction.40Howell, Newcastle, 175, 187. In addition, Shafto’s brother Robert had survived the purge of the town’s royalist aldermen in 1644-5 and remained an influential figure in municipal affairs. It is also possible that Vane I and the town’s MP John Blakiston – both members of the Westminster Independent interest – put in a good word for Shafto. During 1648, Blakiston and Shafto worked together in London prosecuting the town’s affairs – Blakiston praising his colleague for his ‘great pains and good service’ on the council’s behalf.41Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 271; MD.NC/2/1, p. 276.

It was probably Shafto’s connections with this grandee Independent network that attracted the unwelcome attention of the Leveller leader John Lilburne in 1651. Lilburne, supported by his brother Colonel Robert Lilburne*, revived the charges of delinquency against Shafto – almost certainly as part of the Lilburnes’ bitter feud with Newcastle’s governor Sir Arthur Hesilrige*.42Supra, ‘George Lilburne’; SP19/104, ff. 8, 9, 17; CCAM 650. With Hesilrige and the Vanes in his corner, and the experienced lawyer Thomas Wharton* as his counsel, Shafto was able to see off his accusers for a second time; although before the case was dropped he had to enter bond for £1,000 to prevent his estate being sequestered.43SP19/104, ff. 13, 17, 17v; CCAM 650. Besides his apparent hostility towards the Scots, it is not clear what Shafto had in common with godly Independents like Hesilrige and Sir Henry Vane II*. The only evidence of puritan sympathies on his part derives from his role as either a vestryman or elder of the parochial Presbyterian congregation of St John’s, Newcastle. Thus in January 1653, he and the religious Independent Henry Dawson* were among the ‘referees’ for approving a new Presbyterian minister for the parish. The committee urged the common council to ensure that the person nominated ‘be satisfied in his judgement concerning the Engagement [abjuring monarchy and the Lords] and affected to the present government’.44Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, pp. 107, 113.

From the mid-1640s until his death in 1660, Shafto was one of Newcastle common council’s most important men-of-business in London. He probably handled most of the council’s legal affairs at Westminster and Whitehall, and by 1653 he was receiving an annual gratuity of £40 (over and above his salary of £14 a year) for his ‘extraordinary pains’ in the town’s service.45Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 162; MD.NC/2/1, p. 74; MD.NC/2/2, pp. 14, 23, 102, 105; 543/29, unfol.; 543/31, f. 6v; 543/32, f. 198v; 543/33, ff. 142v, 164v, 172v. He also represented the legal interests of the Newcastle Merchant Adventurers and the Hostmen’s Company in London.46Tyne and Wear Archives, GU.MA/3/3, f. 104, p. 164; Merchant Adventurers of Newcastle-upon-Tyne ed. Dendy, i. 199; Extracts from the Recs. of the Merchant Adventurers of Newcastle-upon-Tyne ed. F. W. Dendy (Surt. Soc. ci), ii. 71; Extracts from the Recs. of the Co. of Hostmen of Newcastle-upon-Tyne ed. F. W. Dendy (Surt. Soc. cv), 87, 248, 250. All three groups – council, Adventurers and Hostmen – were vitally concerned to maintain the town’s monopoly on the River Tyne coal trade, and here, too, Shafto played a key role. When Ralph Gardner challenged the restrictive commercial practices on the Tyne in the autumn of 1653, Shafto, Robert Ellison* and John Rushworth* were among those who presented the town’s case to the council of trade.47Monopoly on the Tyne, 1650-8 ed. R. Howell, 110. Shafto seems to have masterminded one of the council’s strategies for undermining Gardner and his allies – that is, the appointment of a sewers commission for the Tyne.48Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, pp. 348, 429; 543/34, ff. 212, 226. This scheme seems to have backfired on the council, however, for when a commission was established in 1659 it was the Hostmen’s opponents who dominated its proceedings.49Howell, Newcastle, 313. Shafto and most of the other townsmen appointed to this ‘court of sewers’ refused to attend its meetings.50C181/6, p. 35; Tyne and Wear Archives, IC.TS/1, p. 7.

Shafto was one of at least four candidates who stood for Newcastle in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659. The contest went to a poll, on 18 January, in which Shafto recorded over 100 votes more than his nearest rival, Thomas Lilburne, and duly claimed the senior place.51Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’. Shafto almost certainly owed his return to the backing of the council and to his prominence in municipal affairs. He was named to four committees in this Parliament, including the committee on a bill for enfranchising County Durham, which he chaired on at least one occasion.52CJ vii. 614b, 622b, 623b, 632a; Burton’s Diary, iv. 327. In debate, he seems to have confined himself largely to clarifying points of law.53Burton’s Diary, iv. 158, 309, 422, 430. His failure to secure nomination to the Newcastle militia commission under the restored Rump, and his omission in June from the commission of oyer and terminer for the Northern circuit, suggests that he had fallen out of favour with Vane II, Hesilrige and the grandees of the republican interest. Another possibility is that he had retired from public life by the summer of 1659, for nothing is heard of him between April 1659 and his death early the following year.

Shafto died on 25 February 1660 and was buried that same day in St Andrew, Holborn – the parish church for Gray’s Inn.54St Andrew, Holborn par. reg. He died intestate, but the administration of his estate, though entered in the Durham probate registry, is no longer extant.55Durham UL, Entry in index to Durham probate registry. His final illness may have been drink related, for he was known to contemporaries as ‘Six-bottle-Mark’, in reference to his fondness for port wine. His memorial tablet in Whitworth church (he had purchased a country residence in this parish in 1652) certainly suggests a very sociable nature:

He was a most estimable man, in all his life amiable, and an example of piety towards God, liberality towards the poor, hilarity among friends, humanity toward all, easier to be praised than imitated.56J. J. Dodd, Hist. of Spennymoor, 35.

Two of Shafto’s great-grandsons, John Shafto† and Robert Shafto†, sat for the city of Durham between 1712 and 1742, and another of his lineal descendants, Robert Shafto† – the ‘Bonny Bobby Shafto’ of nursery rhyme fame – sat for County Durham in the 1760s.57HP Commons, 1715-1754; HP Commons, 1754-1790; ‘Robert Shafto’, Oxford DNB.