REEVE, William (fl.1643-60), of Wigginton, Herts.

This William Reeve was not the Wiltshire-born London tailor and former Ranter whose younger brother, John Reeve, co-founded the Muggletonian sect.13C. Hill, B. Reay and W. Lamont, The World of the Muggletonians (1983), 47, 65, 67, 171. Nor does he seem to have been the Irish-born army officer who served first as a royalist in Somerset under Sir John Stawell* and who later, as a colonel, took part in the Cromwellian re-conquest of Ireland.14Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 657-8. The Hertfordshire MP’s background was probably somewhat more prosaic, as he is much more likely to have been the son of William Reeve senior, an illiterate brickmaker from Wigginton on the outskirts of Tring in the far west of Hertfordshire.15PROB11/268/41. The father may well have been the constable of Wigginton in 1620 who was called a ‘rogue and rascal’ by a drunken weaver.16Herts. County Recs. ii. 6. William senior may also have been the man of that name from Wigginton who was given permission to dig for clay and sand at Tring in 1615, 1621 and 1622.17‘Tring manor court rolls’, Herts Genealogist and Antiquary, iii. 68, 70, 71. However, to complicate matters, these were not the only inhabitants of Wigginton with that name. William, son of George Reeve, was baptised there in 1610, while William, son of John Reeve, was baptised in 1615. Any of these could have been the man married to a wife, Susan, by 1640, when their daughter, Susan, was christened at Wigginton.18‘Trans. from Wigginton par. regs.’, Herts. Genealogist and Antiquary, ii.112, 163.

Even if he was not from Wigginton, the future MP was most probably the man who in late 1643 was serving in the army of the Eastern Association as a captain in the foot regiment of Sir John Wittewronge*.19SP28/11, ff. 147, 153. (The person who at about the same time was carrying messages for the parliamentarian army in the Northamptonshire area was more probably another man, William Reeve of Grafton Regis.20SP28/10, ff. 53, 116; SP28/11, f. 20; Luke Letter Bks. 130, 207; B. Burke, Geneal. and Heraldic Hist. of the Colonial Gentry (1891-5), i. 6.) By the autumn of 1644 he was serving under Lieutenant-Colonel Sadler at Aylesbury.21SP28/18, f. 159. In January 1645 he received one month’s pay.22SP28/27, f. 133. He was not commissioned in the New Model army, however. Having returned to civilian life, he was probably the man appointed as the constable of Wigginton in January 1648.23Herts. County Recs. ii. 381. In August 1650 he was commissioned as a major in the Hertfordshire county militia.24CSP Dom. 1650, p. 510.

Reeve was summoned to the Nominated Parliament of 1653 as one of the Hertfordshire representatives, presumably on account of his military record and religious convictions. His sole committee appointment concerned the public debts (20 July).25CJ vii. 287a. He was also marked as being opposed to the public maintenance of a preaching ministry.26Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 426.

Under the protectorate he held a number of local offices in Hertfordshire. By the spring of 1656 he had been appointed one of the commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth, and a few months later he was added to the commissions of the peace for the county and for St Albans.27TSP iv. 573; C231/6, p. 340; C181/6, pp. 180, 182. In 1657 Parliament also named him as one of the assessments commissioners.28A. and O. By 1659 he seems to have been promoted to become the lieutenant-colonel in the Hertfordshire militia, as he is likely to have been the man listed in July 1659 assessment commission as ‘Lieut. Colonel Reeve’.29A. and O. On his father’s death in the autumn of 1657 he inherited some land at Northchurch, the neighbouring parish to Wigginton.30PROB11/268/41. He lost all his local offices at the Restoration.

In the early 1660s Reeve was probably the inhabitant of Wilstone at Tring who was assessed to contribute towards a horse for the local militia. He was then said to be worth £160 a year.31HMC Verulam, 104. This was probably the same William Reeve who, along with the London financier, Edward Backwell†, was involved in the attempts in 1665 by Sir John Pakington* to sell or lease some of his lands at Bierton, Buckinghamshire.32Worcs. RO, 705:349/478415; 705:349/502718; 705:349/502735. That William Reeve was said to be of Gubblecote, which was the hamlet immediately to the north of Wilstone. Bierton was only a few miles away across the county border. The civil war had left Pakington with heavy financial losses, so these transactions were presumably a means of paying off or servicing some of his debts. By 1670 this William Reeve, his wife Sarah, and Backwell together held a lease on some of those lands, part of the manor of Broughton Magna.33VCH Bucks. ii. 324. Moreover, this William Reeve had in 1663 endowed a charity for the relief of the poor at Bierton.34Bucks. RO, D/HJ/6/32; VCH Bucks. ii. 327. That charity still exists. The founder of the charity was presumably not the same William Reeve of Tring who in 1681 was prosecuted for trading as an unlicensed pedlar at Hertford.35Herts. County Recs. i. 311, vi. 344.