WARMOUTH, Henry (1594-1654), of St Nicholas, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumb.

Warmouth’s mother was a daughter of the celebrated Marian exile and translator of the Geneva Bible, William Whittingham, and the sister of John Calvin’s wife.25Oxford DNB, ‘William Whittingham’. His father, William Warmouth, was a leading member of the Newcastle merchant adventurers and served three terms as the town’s mayor.26Welford, Men of Mark, iii. 569-74; CSP Dom. 1634-5, pp. 292, 342, 362; 1638-9, p. 250. Warmouth senior, though a cloth merchant, shared the concern of the Newcastle Hostmen to maintain their monopoly on the River Tyne coal trade.27Extracts from the Recs. of the Co. of Hostmen of Newcastle-upon-Tyne ed. F.W. Dendy (Surt. Soc. cv), 71; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 250. In 1632, he ‘protested much’ against the appointment of an ‘Arminian’ lecturer for the town, but was reluctant to support the cause of the Arminians’ main local opponent and his own parish minister Robert Jennison.28Bodl. Tanner 71, f. 143.

Warmouth was elected an alderman a few months before his father’s death in July 1642, having served as town sheriff in 1631-2 and as a common councillor since at least 1639.29Newcastle Council Min. Bk. ed. Dodds, 1, 7; Brand, Newcastle, ii. 454. On 7 September 1642, he signed a common council order making the king’s commander-in-chief in the northern counties, William Cavendish 1st earl of Newcastle, a freeman of the town.30Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 92. But shortly thereafter he withdrew from Newcastle, and by February 1643 he was being named to parliamentary commissions for County Durham.31A. and O. His decision to side with Parliament was probably linked to his godly religious sympathies. In April 1643, the royalist controlled common council removed him from the aldermanic bench for ignoring repeated summons to attend his place, and that autumn he was among those the council disenfranchised for their ‘disaffection to the king and the present government of Newcastle’.32Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 113; Newcastle Council Min. Bk. ed. Dodds, 21, 28.

After John Blakiston*, Warmouth was Newcastle’s foremost parliamentarian – a fact acknowledged by the earl of Northumberland in October 1644 when he nominated him one of his deputy lieutenants.33CJ iii. 657b. On 5 December, seven weeks after the Scots had seized Newcastle, the Commons issued a series of orders for removing the town’s royalist governors and installing Warmouth and other leading Puritan townsmen in their place.34CJ iii. 714b-715a. That Warmouth was selected as mayor in the remodelled corporation is further evidence of his fidelity to the parliamentarian cause. The Newcastle royalists continued to pose a threat to the town’s new governors, however, particularly given their dominance of the region’s coal trade; and in April 1645, Warmouth, Robert Ellison*, Henry Dawson* and other parliamentarian office-holders wrote to Speaker William Lenthall requesting that their royalist opponents be detained in London ‘till they have cleared themselves of those high crimes we charge them with’.35Bodl. Tanner 60, f. 117; Howell, Newcastle, 171. The writers also implied that they could manage the region’s collieries to greater advantage to the state than their royalist rivals.

Warmouth was closely involved during the mid-1640s in settling a godly ministry in Newcastle and generally consolidating the parliamentarian interest in the town.36Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, pp. 130, 133, 144, 155, 164, 171. But in 1646 the new municipal elite began to split along broadly national political lines, and although Warmouth seems to have been absent from Newcastle for much of that year, he aligned with Henry Dawson and his allies in the town’s Independent interest.37Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/1, pp. 63, 93-4. Warmouth’s political patron was the Independent and friend of the earl of Northumberland, Sir Henry Vane I*.38CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 93-4. Warmouth made his political position clear on 24 March 1647, when he signed the council order for removing the leading Presbyterian John Cosins from the aldermanic bench.39Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 216.

The conflict between the town’s rival interests came to a head a week later (31 Mar. 1647) in the recruiter election at Newcastle. In what was a bitterly contested affair, Warmouth stood against the leading Presbyterian Robert Ellison*. According to the newsbooks, Ellison had the backing of about 600 of the freemen whereas Warmouth received only about 80 voices. Nevertheless, Dawson (who was then mayor), the town sheriff and the aldermen returned Warmouth’s name on the indenture. Outraged at this sharp practice, the town’s Presbyterians swiftly dispatched a delegation to Westminster to petition against Warmouth’s return.40Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’. On 6 April, the Commons referred the dispute to a committee, to which the Dawson group dispatched a delegation of its own to ‘justify and avow’ Warmouth’s ‘free and lawful election’.41CJ v. 133a; Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 239; MD.NC/2/1, pp. 143-4. Shortly before departing for Westminster, Warmouth moved the common council that ‘as a burgess freely chosen for this town... and duly returned by Mr Sheriff, in which place he did promise to be a faithful servant to this town according to his best ability’, he desired to know what particular service his fellow townsmen would command of him.42Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/1, p. 142. The council requested that he work with Newcastle’s sitting MP John Blakiston ‘in a loving and respective way’ for the good of the town.

Despite the disputed nature of his return, Warmouth took his seat at Westminster in the spring of 1647 and quickly made his political views clear by defending the army agitators. His comments were angrily recalled by the Presbyterian grandee Denzil Holles:

the worthy burgess of Newcastle, Mr Warmworth [sic], stood up and said he would have them [the agitators] committed, indeed, but it should be to the best inn of the town and with good sack and sugar provided them; which was as ridiculous as ‘twas a bold and insolent scorn put upon the Parliament.43Holles Mems. (1699), 84.

Warmouth’s nomination to the 7 May committee on the first indemnity ordinance may also have reflected his concern for the soldiers’ well-being.44CJ v. 166a. But this was to be his only appointment in the Long Parliament. On 23 July 1647, the committee on the Newcastle election delivered its report, whereupon the House voted that Warmouth’s election was illegal and that a new writ be issued.45CJ v. 133a. After suffering this indignity, Warmouth evidently had no desire for a re-match with Ellison, who was duly returned for Newcastle in December. Warmouth remained active on the Newcastle common council until the spring of 1648 and on the Tyne River Court until the summer of 1649.46Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, pp. 245, 257, 260; MD.NC/2/1, pp. 201, 206-7, 243; BC.RV/1/2, River Ct. Bk. Newcastle, ff. 13, 120. But by early 1650, when the common council wrote to him requesting his attendance, he had evidently retired from municipal politics.47Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/1, p. 401. In July 1652, he formally resigned his offices as alderman and common councillor.48Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 75.

Warmouth wrote his will from his sickbed in lodgings on Fleet Street in April 1654.49PROB11/235, ff. 51v-2. He died shortly thereafter, for his will was proved on 10 June. His place of burial is not known, but it was probably somewhere in London. In his will, he requested that his body be buried ‘in homely manner, with as little charge as can be devised’. He made bequests totalling over £1,000 – including £20 towards the building of the new church at Berwick-upon-Tweed, £100 to the poor of St Nicholas, Newcastle, and £100 to the town’s decayed merchants. But his largest bequest was that of an annuity of £200, which he requested be sold and the proceeds put towards the repair of Newcastle’s town court. He left all his books and papers to his friend John Rushworth*, whom he made his executor. Among these papers were recognizances amounting to £3,200 for which Warmouth had stood bond, and Rushworth refused to pay any legacies to Newcastle corporation until it had indemnified him against possible law suits to recover the sums involved.50Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/2, p. 249. That Warmouth’s will made no reference to a wife, children, or grandchildren raises the likelihood that he had never married. Warmouth was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.