MARSHALL, William (1603-72), of St Peter at Arches, Lincoln, Lincs.

William Marshall was the younger brother of probably the most influential figure in Lincoln corporation during the civil war period, Alderman Robert Marshall*. William Marshall followed closely in his elder brother’s footsteps, serving his apprenticeship as a mercer, obtaining his freedom in 1624 and then rising rapidly in the civic hierarchy.20Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/4, f. 211. In 1628, he married the daughter of the godly Boston draper and future parliamentarian Edward Tillson.21Boston Par. Regs. ed. Foster, 131; ‘The royalist clergy of Lincs.’ ed. Hill, 37-8 and passim. Both Robert and William Marshall were active on the 1633 Lincoln commission for collecting donations for the repair of St Paul’s Cathedral – a project much favoured by the king and Archbishop Laud.22LMA, CLC/313/I/B/004/MS25474/001, p. 31. By the late 1630s, Marshall had served as a chamberlain, homager, sheriff and chief constable of the city and was a leading member of the municipal common council.23Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/4, ff. 223v, 230v, 239, 250v. He was promoted to the aldermanic bench at some point between October 1640 – when he was a party to the Lincoln election indenture returning Thomas Grantham and John Broxolme to the Long Parliament – and February 1642, when he was involved in tendering the Protestation to the city’s inhabitants.24C219/43/2/32; Protestation Returns for Lincs. ed. Cole, Atkin, returns for Lincoln. That autumn he was appointed mayor.25Lincs. RO, Lincoln City Officials, f. 16. He sided with Parliament during the civil war – a decision that was probably linked to his religious convictions, for he was involved (like his brother Robert and his father-in-law) in the work of the parliamentary commission for removing ‘idle, ill-affected, scandalous and insolent [i.e. royalist] clergy’ in Lincolnshire.26‘The royalist clergy of Lincs.’ ed. Hill, 37-8, 53, 70, 71, 105. When the earl of Newcastle’s forces seized Lincoln for the king in August 1643, Marshall was replaced as mayor by a royalist alderman.27Lincs. RO, Lincoln City Officials, f. 16; Anon., Names of the Mayors, Bailiffs, Sheriffs, and Chamberlains of Lincoln (c.1787), 40, 114. In August 1644, Marshall was appointed receiver of sequestration revenue for Lincoln and would retain that office until November 1649.28E113/9. He was also named to numerous local parliamentarian committees during the 1640s and 1650s.29A. and O.

The Marshalls’ standing in Lincoln by the mid-1650s was such that the city returned William Marshall in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654.30Supra, ‘Lincoln’. He received no appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. He was possibly the William Marshall who stood, or was nominated, as a candidate in the Lincolnshire elections to the second protectoral Parliament in 1656 – but if so, he received just one vote.31Lincs. RO, MM6/10/6/4. His inclusion in the restored Rump’s militia commission of 1659, but omission from the January 1660 assessment and March militia commissions, may indicate that he was seen as a man of republican sympathies.32A. and O. It may also be significant that he was one of several parliamentarian aldermen whom the city’s royalists sought to have prosecuted after the Restoration for embezzlement. On 28 October 1661, he was called on by the corporation to account, within two weeks, for £800 he had received for the use of the city – apparently in the hope that he would not be able to comply and could then be sued. In the event, he produced his account on 9 November.33Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/6, p. 107. The corporation commissioners were certainly distrustful of his loyalty to the restored monarchy, removing him from office in August 1662, along with his elder brother and five other aldermen.34Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/6, p. 111. He then withdrew from civic affairs, and almost nothing is heard of him until his death in June 1672. His place of burial is not known. In his will, he made no reference to his landed estate – his largest bequest being of a bond of £4,000 owed to him by his son-in-law, a Norwich merchant. On this showing, Marshall was a man of some wealth and enjoyed extensive commercial contacts. He did without surviving male issue, it seems, leaving his personal estate to his two daughters.35Lincs. RO, LCC wills, W1672/i/65. Apart from his elder brother Robert, who represented Lincoln in 1659, none of Marshall’s immediate family sat in Parliament.