CROWTHER, William (1591-c.1658), of London and Wormsley Grange, Herefs.

The Crowthers were a minor armigerous Shropshire family. The heralds recorded various of their name in their visitation of Shropshire in 1623, in cases where a Crowther had married into a more illustrious line, and a William Crowther had migrated to London to establish himself there by 1633.11Vis. Salop 1633 (Harl. Soc. xxviii), 22, 84, 192, 251, 437, 488; Vis. London 1623, 1634, 1635 (Harl. Soc. xv), 208. None of the Crowthers noted in these visitations was closely related to the MP, however. Our William Crowther’s father was a Ludlow gentleman who married Ann Beale from the same town in 1571; presumably other children were born to them before a daughter of theirs was baptized in Ludlow in 1581. William was the last of Edward Crowther’s children, born probably at the turn of 1590-91. Edward Crowther was churchwarden at Ludlow in 1577, and held property in Brand Lane in the town in the 1620s, but also had some estate in nearby Bromfield, from whence his eldest daughter was married in 1612 and where his eldest son was living in the 1650s.12Salop Par. Regs. Ludlow, 6, 9, 83, 86, 92, 95, 98, 104; Salop Par. Regs. Bromfield, 18, 28.

William Crowther, the second son, was apprenticed to Matthew Brome, a London haberdasher, in 1605. Brome may have been related to Crowther at this stage, which would explain how the transaction between the two came to be arranged. When Crowther came nearly 50 years later to make his will, he acknowledged two nephews called Brome, and there is no evidence that Crowther himself ever married. Crowther became free of the Company of Haberdashers in 1612, and must have set himself up as a master of that trade in his own right. He never involved himself in the affairs of his livery company, however, to judge from the records of the court of assistants.13GL, MS 15842. There were others of his name in London before the civil war, including one with Shropshire ancestry who married a daughter of the goldsmith, Richard Fox, but the future MP must not be confused with him.14Vis. London 1623, 1634, 1635, 208; London Vis. Pedigrees, 1664 (Harl. Soc. xcii), 66. Another William Crowther, substantial enough to enjoy £30 in rents a year, lived in St Martin Outwich parish.15Inhabs. of London, 1638, 131. This one was a churchwarden there before 1639, who found himself in the court of high commission as a result of a dispute arising from his stewardship. A joiner had refitted the church for £227 after having agreed the price would be £134. Summonsed by the joiner, Crowther and his colleagues insisted that they were unable to levy the special rate acknowledged as necessary by the court, and were imprisoned for their refusal to comply.16CSP Dom. 1639, p. 265; 1639-40, pp. 74, 274, 279, 286; 1640, pp. 392, 393, 400, 405, 409, 413, 419, 424, 429, 434; 1640-1, pp. 382, 383, 388. There are no parish records to cast further light on this dispute. It carries some of the flavour of an anti-Arminian protest, but if our William Crowther was the one involved, he must have left the parish afterwards, or at least refused to acknowledge any association with it when he came to put his affairs in order.

It was certainly the future MP who bought Wormsley priory in Herefordshire in 1629, in the parish adjacent to Weobley. Crowther bought the property from an Inner Temple lawyer, thus utilizing both his London contacts and the knowledge that must have come to him from his family in the marches.17Robinson, Mansions and Manors, 314. Soon after he had bought his country estate, he was called upon to compound for the knighthood for which he was considered technically eligible. Crowther was uncooperative, and there is no evidence he ever contributed towards this expedient devised to raise revenue.18Add. 11050, ff. 137, 176. In 1635, with John Clarke of the Charterhouse, he sold a modest property in Little Hereford, suggesting that he kept an active interest in the area, despite his London residency.19Glam RO, CL/Deeds I/5231. Meanwhile, William Crowther’s brother, Thomas, had moved from Ludlow, first to Lady Halton in Bromfield, where his daughter was baptized in 1638, and soon after that to Wormsley Grange.20Salop Par. Regs. Bromfield, 43. Thomas Crowther was a sympathiser with the puritan group associated with Sir Robert Harley*. In June 1642, the vicar of Leominster, John Tombes, wrote to Sir Robert conveying Crowther’s views on the need for the lay authorities to restrain a manner of preaching in the district which, if continued, would mean that ‘no honest man [would dare] show his face in their streets’.21Add. 70106, f. 164. That summer, the term ‘roundhead’ was used against the Harleys and their sympathizers in Leominster and the surrounding towns, so it is highly likely that Tombes was reporting Thomas Crowther’s critique of Laudian preaching.22J. Eales, Puritans and Roundheads. The Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1990), 144. The hostility towards the puritans spilled over into violence in August. At the assizes in Hereford, a crowd broke into the court, shouting ‘King Charles, King Charles, God save King Charles, we are for the king, for the king, and down with the roundheads, a pox take them all’.23Harl. 7189, f. 241v. ‘Mr Crowther of the Grange’ was one of the gentry intimidated by this disorder, said to have been encouraged by the royalist-inclined ‘Nine Worthies’. During the civil war itself, Brilliana Harley sent a message to ‘Mr Crowder that is a justice of peace’, probably Thomas Crowther, that he might note the theft of Brampton Bryan oxen by royalist soldiers.24Add. 70110, f. 82.

What exactly William Crowther did during the war is unclear, but it seems likely that he stayed in London. His name was on a list kept by Sir Robert Harley around 1645 of Herefordshire men in the capital. It is possible that this was a list compiled for the purposes of selecting men for appointments in the service of Parliament, including as Members of the Commons.25Add. 70005, f. 31 (2nd foliation). At any rate, it was certainly a list that had been constructed from Herefordshire men content to reside in the heartland of support for Parliament. When the recruiter election was held for Weobley, on 12 November 1646 according to the treasurer of the county sequestration committee, Miles Hill, William Crowther was well placed to secure election.26SP28/257, unfol. The Harley family was in the ascendancy in the county, Crowther and his brother were known to them, and he had a local interest of his own in the shape of his Wormsley estate. Weobley was a seat in the control of the Tomkins family, with the earls of Essex claiming an interest, but as Thomas Tomkins was a sequestered royalist and Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex had recently died, the seat was available to the strongest local power, that of the county committee dominated by the Harleys. Once in the House, Crowther identified himself with the Presbyterian interest championed by Sir Robert Harley. He took the Covenant on 9 December, but not until the following March was he named to a committee, on the topic of excluding royalist clergy from their livings. When the ordinance for controlling the London militia was debated, Crowther was part of a solid bloc of Herefordshire Members named to the committee set up during the tide running in favour of the Presbyterians (2 April 1647).27CJ v. 7b, 119b, 132b.

In the spring of 1647, the most contentious issue in Herefordshire was the billeting of the soldiers of Colonel John Birch* on the county. Part of the animosity that Birch provoked undoubtedly derived from resentment towards him as an outsider. The Herefordshire committee and Edward Harley* wrote to Members sitting for seats in the county to complain about Birch and his brother, and to ask for indemnity in their purchase of Hereford castle for the county. Crowther signed an order confirming Parliament’s grant of over £6,000 in order to disband Birch’s troops.28Add. 70005, f. 30 (4th foliation); Add. 70105, unbound: Edward Harley to Sir Robert Harley et al. 12 Apr. 1647; Add. 70061, bdle. 1, undated order of 1647. By June, Crowther, Birch and Sir Robert Harley were working together sufficiently for the three of them to be named to a committee to examine the cases of MPs excluded from sitting because of their royalist records.29CJ v. 205a. It was probably Crowther’s closeness to Sir Robert Harley, restored to the office of master of the mint, that accounted for his being named to a committee on clipped coinage.30CJ v. 289b. Harley conferred with Crowther on the nominations for sheriffs in the autumn, when they came up with the names of Richard Reed*, John James* and John Pateshall, all firmly within the Harley sphere of influence.31Add. 70005, f. 75 (4th foliation). Crowther was also nominated by the Commons to the Committee for Indemnity (6 Oct.), and here again his closeness to Sir Robert Harley is the likely explanation for this preferment (although the Lords did not ratify his appointment until January 1648).32CJ v. 327b; LJ ix. 669a. But he was not simply a client of Harley’s; bridges were by this time being built between Harley’s group and John Birch; the rapprochement between Birch and the Herefordshire men explains why Birch was also named to nearly all the committees on which Crowther served. These included the bodies set up to present a scheme of Presbyterian religion to the king, an attempt to keep alive the correspondence between Charles and the Parliament that was overshadowed by debates taking place among the officers of the New Model army as to the future governance of the country.33CJ v. 321b, 327b.

Crowther’s London business experience recommended him as an appointee to a number of committees concerned with taxation. These included the excise committee (5 Jan. 1648) on which he and Birch served alongside the stalwarts of the various committees on the customs, such as Richard Aldworth and John Nelthorpe; and initiatives to address the grievances arising from the heavy tax burden and to ensure a fair distribution of the tax burden between counties (4 and 15 Jan.).34CJ v. 416b, 417a, 434a; LJ ix. 639b. Early in 1648, his committee activities were confined to religion – specifically the ordinance for better observing the Lord’s day – and settling the local militias, a Presbyterian project to create alternatives to the New Model.35CJ v. 471a, 522b, 597b. They were also relatively infrequent. In late July 1648, Crowther was deputed to hear a petition from the London Company of Weavers, and was one of those delegated to attend the City on behalf of Parliament, both tasks for which his London background fitted him.36CJ v. 652b, 654b. Only three further committee appointments followed between August and October, on the suppression of pamphlets (a Presbyterian preoccupation), the recovery of arrears of the assessment from the counties (23 Sept.) and compensation for Dr Henry Bastwick, a puritan martyr during the personal rule of the king.37CJ v. 695b; vi. 60a. After 24 October, there is no further record of Crowther’s having attended the House, and he probably withdrew out of disgust at the political gains made by the Independents and their allies in the army. Had he still been in attendance in December, he would doubtless have been purged along with the Harleys and their allies.

There is nothing to suggest that Crowther played any further part in public life after the trial and execution of the king. He drew up his will in 1653, noting that he was ‘somewhat sick in body’. Among his bequests was an annuity to establish a school in Weobley, for ‘teaching, educating and catechizing’ the children there, with a hereditary right of selecting the schoolmaster vested in Crowther’s nephew and his heirs. His personal bequests were to friends in a number of towns and cities, and to various Presbyterian ministers. A number of London parishes benefited from his donations, but when he died at some time before May 1658, neither of the two which he nominated as alternative places of burial was where his interment took place. The implication of his will is that he was never settled permanently or for long in any particular London house. He seems never to have married.38PROB11/276/760.