MARGETTS, Thomas (1620-91), of St Peter Martin, Bedford.

Margetts’s lineage is obscure, and he was evidently the first (and last) of his line to make any appreciable impact upon public affairs. His family may have been resident in Bedfordshire since at least the 1530s, when one John Margetts was listed in the county’s militia roll as a pikeman.22Beds. Muster Rolls ed. N. Lutt (Beds. Hist. Rec. Soc. lxxi), 14. Margetts’s father, Thomas Margetts, was a tanner and freeman of the borough of Bedford and was assessed on goods in the town worth £3 by the 1628-9 subsidy commissioners.23E115/277/51, 79; Min. Bk. of Bedford Corp. 99.

In about 1640, Margetts senior and his wife petitioned Archbishop William Laud, complaining that they had been falsely charged with accusing the parish minister of St Mary’s, Bedford of maintaining ‘ill-vices or unlawful recreations [such] as Whitsun ales, maypoles and dancing’, and of praying and reciting the psalms at too great a length. These kind of charges – of attacking traditional festivities such as Whitsun ales and maypoles and of denouncing ministers who relied too heavily upon the set prayers and psalms in the Book of Common Prayer – were often levelled against people of puritan sympathies. The petitioners claimed that they had lived in Bedford for 37 years and had ‘nine small children and nothing but their daily labours to sustain them’.24SP16/474/40, f. 77; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 341. In their defence, they produced a certificate signed by almost 80 inhabitants of the town, including the mayor and one of Bedford’s leading puritans, John Eston senior, testifying that they had always been of ‘honest behaviour ... being always diligent observers of the church and causing their children and servants to do the same’.25SP16/474/40, f. 78; Mins. of the First Independent Church at Bedford 1656-1766 ed. H.G. Tibbutt (Beds. Hist. Rec. Soc. lv), 15.

With the death of Margetts’s elder brother Henry (also a tanner) in 1639 and of their father in 1642, he inherited the family residence on Cauldwell Street, Bedford, with its ‘backside, tan-yard, malthouse, outhouse, garden, orchard and holme [riparian land] thereunto belonging’ in reversion after the death of his mother (who died in about 1653). Margetts senior died a relatively wealthy man, charging his estate with bequests totalling approximately £350.26Beds. RO, ABP W 1639/83; ABP W 1643/75.

In a petition presented to the restored Rump’s committee of safety in June 1659, Margetts claimed that his public employments had commenced 17 years earlier as clerk to the ‘Irish committee’.27SP25/127, p. 13; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 378. From this evidence, it would appear that he had entered Parliament’s service as clerk to the select Committee for Irish Affairs*, which was established at Westminster in September 1642.28Supra, ‘Irish Committees’. It is likely that he owed this appointment to his connections with the circle around Philip Sidney, Viscount Lisle* and his father the earl of Leicester, who was appointed lord lieutenant of Ireland in the summer of 1641.29HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 328. Margetts’s decision to side with Parliament in the civil war was doubtless linked to his religious convictions, for, as his later career reveals, he was a zealous puritan. Indeed, it is probable that he had connections with one of the separated congregations that emerged in Bedford during the 1640s and 1650s, of which John Bunyan was the most prominent member. By the late 1640s, Margetts’s religious ideas had come to resemble Bunyan’s in many respects – in particular, his strongly millenarian outlook and his dislike of formalism in religious practice. Although there is no evidence that Margetts was a member of Bunyan’s church, his friend John Eston junior, had close links with this congregation.30PROB11/404, f. 283v; Mins. of the First Independent Church at Bedford ed. Tibbutt, 121.

With the creation of the New Model army in 1645, Margetts secured the post of clerk, or deputy, to John Mylles*, the army’s newly-appointed judge-advocate.31SP28/45, f. 439; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 378. He evidently accompanied the army on its campaign in the west country in 1645-6 and dipped into commissary funds on several occasions to help ‘poor lazard people [lepers]’ and other unfortunates who had suffered at the hands of New Model troopers.32SP28/140, pt. 2, ff. 36v, 46v. Margetts continued to serve under Sir Thomas Fairfax* until the second half of 1647, when he was appointed judge-advocate to the Northern Brigade, under the command of Colonel John Lambert*, at a salary of £159 12s a year.33SP28/52, f. 308. How he had acquired the knowledge of law necessary to practise as a judge in cases of military law is unclear, as he is not listed as having been trained as a civil lawyer (the branch of the legal profession from which military and admiralty judges were usually recruited), nor was admitted to any of the inns of court.34B.P. Levack, The Civil Lawyers in England 1603-41 (Oxford, 1973), 205-82. It is possible that he had learnt his trade assisting Mylles in the numerous cases that were determined during the civil war. Margetts probably remained on Lambert’s staff until his appointment as deputy to Judge-advocate Henry Whalley* at some point in 1649.35CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 378. By November 1650, he seems to have been working at Westminster under the council of war.36HMC Leyborne-Popham, 77-9; CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 64.

A significant amount of Margetts’s apparently voluminous correspondence for the period 1648-50 has survived, and his letters reveal much about his ideas and outlook. On questions of church government he was an Independent of fairly radical hue. He referred to the first signs of an Independent party (both religious and political) in Scotland as the ‘gleaning of the harvest, and in their tender and budding state but thriving and growing apace’.37HMC 10th Rep. VI, 170. He was impatient of ‘formality’ in religion, detested any hint of clericalism among the ‘black tribe’ of the ministry and favoured toleration for tender godly consciences.38Clarke Pprs. ii. 45-6, 251; HMC 10th Rep. VI, 170. He approved of the stance taken by the radical preacher and chaplain to the New Model, John Saltmarshe, when the latter informed Fairfax in December 1647 that the army had departed from God and was no longer serving the interests of the Saints (among whom Margetts evidently numbered himself).39Clarke Pprs. ii. 249; L.F. Solt, ‘John Saltmarshe: New Model Army chaplain’, JEH ii. 69-80. Margetts discerned ‘flesh and blood’ – his phrase for worldly considerations – on both sides in this confrontation, but he sympathised more with Saltmarshe ‘because he is nearest humility, the mortification of flesh and the spirit of meekness’.40Clarke Pprs. ii. 249. Margetts’s sense of the violent antithesis between the fallen world of the flesh and the glorious world of the spirit, led him to admire Saltmarshe’s symbolic denial of the legitimacy of earthly powers – his refusal to remove his hat before his social superiors (one of the hallmarks of the Quakers during the 1650s).

Margetts’s letters are replete with biblical allusions and reveal a strongly millenarian sense that the conflicts of the 1640s were not merely a political contest between royalist and parliamentarian but a cosmic struggle between the forces of Christ and Antichrist. He referred frequently to scriptural passages foretelling the second coming of Christ and the war in heaven, described in the book of Revelation, between the dragon of Antichrist and the Lamb of God: ‘Episcopacy was the root of the former war [of 1642-6]’, he wrote in April 1648, ‘Presbyterianism you will find to be the root of the succeeding. The Lamb and the dragon cannot be reconciled’.41Clarke Pprs. ii. 2. Running through his letters during this period is a powerful belief in providence and the divinely ordained triumph of the army’s cause.42Clarke Pprs. ii. 45. To Margetts, providence was the lodestar of political action, the justification for measures that, if necessary, rode rough-shod over established laws. During the trial of Charles I in January 1649, he urged Captain Adam Baynes* not to be too dilatory in responding to providence’s demands: ‘Strive to answer the providence of God in this thing [the trial]. ’Tis good indeed to follow or come after providence; but ’tis as good to keep close to it as not to lag’.43Add. 21417, f. 24.

In political terms Margetts was one of the most radical members of the army. He probably sympathised with many aspects of the Levellers’ reform programme and certainly with their perceived attack on worldly degrees of rank: ‘though I think the time of Levelling is not come’, he wrote in December 1647, ‘yet the time will come that all the enemies of Christ (and I think all flesh and blood will be found in that number) shall be made his footstool’.44Clarke Pprs. ii. 249. Similarly, he was pleased to learn that the prayer meeting of the army’s officers at Windsor Castle in December 1647 had brought about a reconciliation between Cromwell and the army’s leading Leveller-sympathiser Colonel Thomas Rainborowe*. On the other hand, he thought the behaviour of the Leveller soldier Corporal William Thompson, who had attempted to stir up the army to mutiny at Ware, proceeded ‘from an evil spirit such as I would have discouraged and destroyed’.45Clarke Pprs. ii. 250.

During the army’s campaign in northern England and Scotland in the autumn and early winter of 1648, Margetts penned a series of news bulletins from Lambert’s headquarters which found their way (almost certainly with Margetts’s approval) into the pro-Leveller newsbook The Moderate, edited by Gilbert Mabbott.46Clarke Pprs. ii. 46. Predictably, Margetts had little time for the Presbyterian Scots, dismissing their claims to have any interest in determining the settlement of England: ‘though they pretend something of joint interest, yet it is no older than the treaties [of 1641 and 1643], and I think there is nothing there to bind this kingdom to do nothing without them’.47Clarke Pprs. ii. 250. If the Scots ever prevailed against the army, he suggested, then there would be ‘not a bit of toleration or favour [to non-Presbyterians], I’ll warrant you’.48Clarke Pprs. ii. 251.

Like many of the more radical officers in the New Model, Margetts had become deeply disillusioned with Parliament by the autumn of 1648. The ‘misery’ of the civil war, he wrote in October, was that it had seen ‘the pulling down of one power and party by our countenance and the setting up of another that may be as bad or worse than the other’.49Clarke Pprs. ii. 45. He almost certainly approved of Pride’s Purge, and there can be no doubt that he supported the army’s decision to bring the king to trial.50Add. 21426, f. 216; Clarke Pprs. ii. 70. Early in January 1649, he informed Baynes that ‘the well-affected in these parts [Yorkshire] do greatly rejoice ... against [i.e. at] your gallant proceedings against Charles Stuart’.51Add. 21417, f. 24. A few weeks later, he joined George Smithson* and another officer in Lambert’s brigade in assuring Baynes that they were ‘sensible of the hopeful and forward proceedings of the Parliament and army for the settling the kingdom upon that only desired and long expected foundation of justice’.52Add. 21427, f. 40. He was also instrumental in organising a letter from the Northern Brigade’s council of officers to Fairfax and the general council of the army at Westminster, ‘congratulating their happy proceedings’.53Add. 21427, ff. 40, 65. Such was his keenness that the king should be brought to trial that he was incensed that no officer of the Northern Brigade had been nominated as a member of the high court of justice.54Add. 21417, f. 24. And when, in the first week of February, he learnt that the king had been beheaded, he was pleased to observe that ‘the well-affected are well satisfied’ at the news.55Add. 21417, f. 43. He was more circumspect, however, when it came to embracing the Levellers’ blueprint for constitutional reform, The Agreement of the People. The Agreement needed more time for consideration, he argued, for while the king’s trial ‘is as the pulling down of an old house, the other [is] as the building of a new’.56Add. 21417, f. 24. He clearly considered the rule of the Rump as merely a stop-gap, for ‘until all injustice be broken down and a righteous government established, void of self end and private advantage, I bid adieu to all external peace and greatness in the nation’.57Add. 21417, f. 134.

Margetts’s correspondence reveals a wide circle of friends and acquaintances. These included John Rushworth*, the northern regicides Colonel Robert Lilburne* and Sir William Constable*, the clerk of the Parliament, John Browne, and the secretary of the New Model, William Clarke.58Add. 21417, ff. 65, 71; Add. 21418, f. 142; Add. 24475, ff. 144-5; HMC 10th Rep. VI, 168-73. Most important of all, was Margetts’s relationship with Captain Adam Baynes, Lambert’s man of affairs in London. Margetts had lodgings in the same London house as Baynes by the early 1650s and relied on the captain to handle his affairs in the metropolis when he himself was away on duty. On at least one occasion, Baynes acted as Margetts’s attorney in the purchase of former crown property.59Add. 21417, f. 134; Add. 21418, ff. 185, 223; Add. 21419, f. 74; SP28/288, f. 11. Margetts may well have received preferential treatment from Baynes, prompting one northern officer to complain that ‘if Mr Margetts can get his money so easily, without either pains or charge, it’s more then other man can do’.60Add. 21417, f. 338.

It is likely that Margetts was also on close terms with Lambert himself. In October 1648, he confided to Browne that although Cromwell had gained most of the honour in invading Scotland, ‘Lambert’s discreet, humble, ingenious, sweet and civil deportment gains him more hugs and ingenious respect and interest from the general parties. I could give you a large character of that man’s great wisdom and valour, of which this kingdom reaps no little benefit’.61Clarke Pprs. ii. 70; HMC 10th Rep. VI, 172. In May 1649, he feared that a proposal to transfer Lambert from the Northern Brigade to the forces intended for Ireland was part of a design by Cromwell to advance Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, the governor of Newcastle.62Add. 21417, f. 129; Add. 21426, f. 215. Margetts’s distrust of Hesilrige proved fully justified, when, in January 1650, Hesilrige accused him of improper conduct in investigating accusations that Colonel Francis Hacker* – a friend and military subordinate of Hesilirige – had quartered troops illegally in County Durham. By the end of that month, Margetts had received a summons from Fairfax to answer charges concerning that ‘great complaint which is made against me by [Sir Arthur] to his Excellency about that business’.63Add. 21418, f. 301; J. Musgrave, A True and Exact Relation (1650), 12 (E.619.10). Margetts evidently satisfied the authorities of his innocence, however, for during the later years of the commonwealth he was occasionally employed by the council of state to serve on investigative commissions.64CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 300, 302, 310; 1653-4, p. 1.

Margetts’s links with Lambert, the author of the Instrument of Government, ensured that he had little difficulty making the transition from commonwealth to protectorate, and in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656 he was returned for his home town of Bedford. He had applied to the corporation to be admitted as a freeman in April 1653, but his request was not granted until 11 August 1656 – very probably the day of the parliamentary election. Given that he was probably not a permanent resident of the town at the time, he almost certainly owed his return to the backing of the corporation, which was doubtless mindful of his links with the highly influential Lambert and with leading figures in local government, including one of the town’s former MPs Sir William Boteler.65Supra, ‘Bedford’; Add. 21417, f. 122; Min. Bk. of Bedford Corp. 99.

Margetts seems to have taken his parliamentary duties seriously and in December 1656 sent a letter to Bedford intimating ‘his zeal to promote in Parliament what shall be reasonably desired for the good of the corporation’ (in August 1657 the corporation repaid him his 14 shillings franchise money as a token of its gratitude for his services at Westminster).66Min. Bk. of Bedford Corp. 108. He was named to 34 committees in this Parliament, mostly of minor importance.67CJ vii. 446a, 449b, 456a, 462b, 463b, 464b, 465a, 466a, 469a, 472a, 476b, 477a, 477b, 484a, 488b, 493a, 493b, 494a, 497b, 504a, 505a, 505b, 532a, 534a, 538a, 542a, 543b, 559b, 580b, 581a, 591a. Several of these committees addressed the issues of godly reformation, the maintenance of the ministry and settling lands in Ireland upon Sir Hardress Waller* and others, but they reveal little or nothing about his views on any of these areas of business.68CJ vii. 463b, 476b, 477b, 488b, 493a, 493b, 494a, 505b, 543b. In debate, he supported the interests of the adventurers in Irish land, seconding a motion of Charles Fleetwood that a committee might consider how best to remove obstructions in the way of further plantation in Ireland.69Burton’s Diary i. 203. Likewise, during consideration of a bill concerning the privileges of Scottish borough corporations, he supported a move to amend the bill to give soldiers in Scotland the right to set up in trade without having to undergo the usual apprenticeships.70Burton’s Diary, i. 13-14.

In general, his contributions on the floor of the House were brief and, on several occasions, show a distinct lack of patience at the meandering processes of parliamentary debate. Late in December 1656, when the House became bogged down on whether the Quaker and former soldier in the Northern Brigade, James Naylor, had been guilty of blasphemy or of ‘horrid blasphemy’, Margetts, clearly exasperated, moved that the difference of opinion be resolved by a vote.71Burton’s Diary, i. 75. Similarly, when the presentation of a petition from Yorkshire sparked off a tedious debate about whether or not it should be read, Margetts intervened sharply that ‘You might have read this petition in half the time you have been debating it’.72Burton’s Diary, i. 85.

The case of James Naylor perhaps reveals the limits of Margetts’s tolerance towards the radical sects. His only effort to mitigate the penalty imposed upon him occurred on 20 December 1656 after a report that Naylor was ill, when Margetts moved successfully that his punishment might be deferred for a week.73Burton’s Diary, i. 183. It was possibly a concern for Naylor’s welfare that prompted Margetts’s appointment on 28 February 1657 to a committee for receiving an account of Naylor’s condition and treatment from the governors of Bridewell prison.74CJ vii. 497b.

Margetts received only one committee appointment in relation to the Humble Petition and Advice – to draw up a clause in the Petition concerning the liberty and property of the people (16 Mar. 1657) – and was almost certainly opposed to Cromwell accepting the office and title of king.75CJ vii. 505a. This impression is reinforced by the fact that Margetts received no committee appointments, and was perhaps absent from the House, between 17 March and 9 May 1657 – the day after Cromwell’s second, and final, refusal of the crown. He was among those Members who feared that Parliament’s legislative enactments would be lost if they now required ratification by the second chamber created under the terms of the new constitution, and on 25 May he seconded a motion that the protector should state a time when he might be attended about the passing of these bills.76Burton’s Diary, ii. 122. The cause of preserving the liberties of the subject moved him to support Bulstrode Whitelocke in a debate on 20 June concerning the enforcement of observance of the sabbath. Whitelocke insisted that officers enforcing this law should not have the right to enter, or demand entry to, private houses.77Burton’s Diary, ii. 263. Margetts acted as a majority teller with Colonel Richard Holland in support of Whitelocke’s motion.78CJ vii. 567b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 264. Margetts was apparently content to serve under the protector so long as he eschewed the title of king. In the spring of 1658, he joined John Disbrowe*, Edward Whalley* and other senior officers in an address to Cromwell in which they expressed their support for him ‘as our general and chief magistrate’ and their confidence in the Humble Petition and Advice as a means of securing ‘the great ends of all our former engagements – our civil and spiritual liberty’.79A Further Narrative of the Passages of These Times (1658), 51-2.

Margetts made several small purchases of former crown lands and seems to have prospered modestly until about mid-1657, when the increasing fiscal problems of the protectorate caused the withholding of his pay.80C54/3570/17; SP28/288, ff. 11, 56; SP26/8, p. 41; CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 342. By November, he was importuning Major-general Thomas Kelsey* and Major Richard Beake*, asking that he might be paid money he was owed by officers of the fleet or have liberty to proceed against them in law.81CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 468. In March 1658, he complained to the council of state that although his charges as deputy judge-advocate had been great and his salary small he had not been paid for eight months and was so short of money that he could not properly maintain his family.82CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 342.

Margetts’s money problems do not appear to have undermined his loyalty to the protectorate. In September 1658, he was among those officers who signed a loyal address to Protector Richard Cromwell*, requesting that he maintain the army under men of ‘honest, godly principles’, with liberty of conscience to ‘all persons that profess godliness that are not of turbulent spirits as to the peace of these nations’. The officers pledged to stand by Richard against ‘all that shall oppose you...or make it their design to change or alter the present government established in a single person and two Houses of Parliament, according to the Humble Petition and Advice’.83Bodl. Rawl. A.61; Mercurius Politicus no. 434 (16-23 Sept. 1658), 844-7; G. Davies, The Restoration of Charles II (San Marino, 1955), 8-10. In October, the corporation of Bedford asked Margetts to present its address of ‘congratulation and submission’ to Richard Cromwell, and in November he took part in Oliver Cromwell’s funeral procession.84Min. Bk. of Bedford Corp. 124; TSP vi. 853; Burton’s Diary, ii. 523.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Margetts was returned again for Bedford.85Supra, ‘Bedford’. He was named to four committees in this Parliament, including those to examine Lambert’s title to the rents of Hatfield Chase and to consider petitions from divers reduced officers who had formerly served under Ferdinando Fairfax, 2nd Baron Fairfax* – a group that included Captain Baynes.86CJ vii. 600a, 622b, 627b, 638a. Margetts made no recorded contribution to debate. On exchanging offices with the judge-advocate of Ireland in March 1659, Judge-advocate Whalley proposed that Margetts serve as his deputy in Scotland. But Margetts protested that his health was not sufficiently strong to undertake this employment and he was apparently relieved of his office. When Whalley was then removed from office in England by the restored Rump, Margetts petitioned the committee of safety in June, requesting that he succeed his ousted superior, claiming that he had served as Whalley’s deputy for 12 years and had shouldered ‘the whole pains and charge of the business’.87Infra, ‘Henry Whalley’; SP25/127, p. 14; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 378; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 482. The committee initially agreed to recommend him to Parliament as judge-advocate for England, but then ten days later it rescinded this order and recommended that he should serve for Scotland.88CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 378, 389; CJ vii. 696b. It seems unlikely that Margetts ever took up this post in Edinburgh.

Beyond being obliged to return some or all of the crown lands he had acquired during the 1650s, Margetts does not seem to have suffered any notable ill-consequences as a result of the Restoration. By the summer of 1660, at the latest, he had taken up residence in the parish of St Martin, Bedford, and in 1663 he was described as one of the town’s ‘traders’.89Min. Bk. of Bedford Corp. 180. His involvement in local commerce is further suggested by the fact that he successfully petitioned the crown in the early 1660s for the alteration of Biggleswade market-day.90CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 423, 498; VCH Beds. ii. 212. However, the nature of his commercial activities remains obscure. In 1687, Margetts and John Bunyan were referred to as the ‘heads of the Dissenters’ in Bedford and were thought to be willing to elect ‘only such Members of Parliament as will certainly vote for repealing all the tests and penal laws touching religion’.91W.M. Wigfield, ‘Recusancy and nonconformity in Beds.’ (Beds. Hist. Rec. Soc. xx), 198.

Margetts died early in 1691 and was buried in St Peter Martin on 8 February.92Genealogica Bedfordiensis, 42. In his will, he charged his estate with annuities of £30 and a bequest to his youngest daughter of £300 as her portion (he had already laid out £700 in portions for his three older daughters).93PROB11/404, ff. 283v-284. His personal estate was valued at £638.94PROB4/2161. None of his immediate descendants sat in Parliament.