NICCOLLS (NICHOLLS), Thomas (1596-1662), of Boycott, Pontesbury, Salop; Garth, Guilsford, Mont. and Bushey, Herts.

The MP’s grandfather, Thomas Niccolls, had been a yeoman farmer at Asterley, a village in the parish of Pontesbury, seven miles to the south west of Shrewsbury. At some point the family acquired Newnham, one of the local farms.29H.E. Forrest, ‘Some old Shropshire houses and their owners’, Trans. Salop Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. 4th ser. ix. 233-4. The MP’s father, John Niccolls, was prominent in the municipal life of Shrewsbury. He married Anne Heylyn, a sister of Rowland Heylyn (1562-1632), the philanthropic London alderman who was largely responsible for funding the first easily portable Welsh Bible and who served as the president of the feoffees for impropriations.30Oxford DNB, ‘Rowland Heylyn’. Following Heylyn’s death in 1632, the future MP and his cousin Thomas Hunt* were among the members of the family between whom his estates were divided.31PROB11/161/220.

The younger Thomas Niccolls, who thus spelled his name, had bought his own farmland at Pontesbury in 1621, when he had acquired Boycott Hall.32SP16/491, f. 305; VCH Salop, viii. 260. Five years later he married. His relatives through that marriage included Orlando Bridgeman*, who was married to another of the daughters of John Kynaston of Kinnerley. Three of Niccolls’s children were baptised at Pontesbury between 1632 and 1639.33Salop Par. Regs. xii. 123, 134, 136.

By the 1630s Niccolls had, like his father, become a member of the Shrewsbury corporation. In 1636 he served as one of the two bailiffs, the town’s senior civic officers.34Owen, Blakeway, Hist. Shrewsbury, i. 534; CSP Dom. 1637, p. 110, 155-6, 412. This placed him at the epicentre of the bitter factional disputes then dividing the corporation. These were partly a split along religious lines, with Humphrey Mackworth I*, Thomas Hunt* and Niccolls leading those with more puritan sympathies. Ranged against them were the Laudians, led by the town clerk, Thomas Owen*.35VCH Salop, vi. pt. 1, 153. The flashpoint was over the town’s tithes which had been impropriated to support the schoolmaster of the local grammar school. The upshot was that Niccolls’s year as bailiff saw the attorney-general launch quo warranto proceedings against the town’s charter. In June 1637 Niccolls sought to take advantage of this development by writing to the king, setting out what he saw as the deficiencies of the corporation’s existing structure. According to him, the corporation was weakened by its factions, and in particular, the more junior members, the burgesses, had too much say in its business.36CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 194-5. The government took on board that advice when it issued the town with a new charter the following year. Niccolls was named in it as one of the new aldermen.37Owen, Blakeway, Hist. Shrewsbury, i. 408. However, this did not resolve all the differences. Niccolls and Owen subsequently found that arguing over who should pay the fees for the charter was one way of continuing these intrigues by other means.38CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 161; 1640, pp. 239-40.

Between 1640 and 1642 Niccolls had the bad luck to be appointed as sheriff of two different counties, Shropshire and Montgomeryshire, in two successive years.39List of Sheriffs, 120, 263; W.V. Lloyd, ‘Sheriffs of Mont.’, Mont. Colls. xxvii. 156. In both cases he succeeded Roger Kynaston, a distant cousin of his wife. He was still in office as sheriff of Montgomeryshire in the summer of 1642 when the kingdom descended into civil war. This made it difficult for him to avoid taking sides. He chose Parliament. Like other sheriffs, one of the first big tests of his allegiance was whether to publish Parliament’s Militia Ordinance. When the king issued counter-orders to all of the sheriffs, Niccolls presumably passed his to Sir Robert Harley*, as the latter produced it in the Commons on 7 June. This prompted the appointment of a committee to prepare a declaration against those orders.40PJ iii. 37-8; CJ ii. 611a. Two months later the council in the marches of Wales ordered Niccolls to publish further proclamations on behalf of the king. Instead, he sought guidance from Parliament, writing to the Speaker, William Lenthall*, on 26 August:

I would not willingly be wanting in loyalty to my king, in duty to the Parliament, nor in faithfulness to my country. Neither would I run into contempt of the just authority of either, nor entrench any way upon my late solemn vow and protestation.41SP16/491, f. 305.

The latter comment indicates that he must have taken the Protestation. Four days later the Commons asked the Shrewsbury MP William Spurstowe* to thank Niccolls and to promise that they would protect him from any repercussions.42CJ ii. 743b-744a. Yet something then happened which evidently created doubts about Niccolls’s loyalties. On 22 September the Commons summoned him to London and ordered that the next judge sent on circuit to Montgomeryshire should instead deal with the under-sheriff.43CJ ii. 777b. But this was evidently just a misunderstanding.

Niccolls’s position was rendered even more difficult in late September by the arrival of the king in Shrewsbury. Niccolls’s shrieval duties in the neighbouring county gave him the perfect excuse not to attend on the king in person, but his absence worked to his disadvantage. In the days that followed his house was plundered by royalist soldiers who ‘burned his writings, spoiled his house, sold his furnace and the iron of his carts’.44A Continuation of The late proceedings of His Majesties Army (1642), 6 (E.121.38). Moreover, when on 14 October the king issued a proclamation addressed to his subjects in Shropshire, Charles singled out Niccolls, Hunt and Mackworth for special condemnation. The three of them had

not only refused to give us assistance, as in duty, and according to their allegiance they are bound, to the evil example of others, but also have assisted our adversaries in a deep measure, and have encouraged others to the like.45An Exact Collection of all Remonstrances…and other Remarkable Passages (1642), 626.

Charles ordered that Niccolls, Hunt and Mackworth were to be apprehended and charged with treason. The following month they were dismissed from the Shrewsbury corporation.46Owen, Blakeway, Hist. Shrewsbury, i. 431; VCH Salop, vi. pt. 1, 181. Thereafter the Shropshire royalists considered Niccolls to be a delinquent.47W. Phillips, ‘The Ottley pprs. relating to the civil war’, Trans. Salop Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. 2nd ser. vii. 251.

Niccolls’s uncle, Abraham Puller, also named as a Shrewsbury delinquent, went to join his son Isaac Puller* in Hertford. It was presumably through this connection that the Hertfordshire committee were then induced to offer Niccolls refuge and employment. The circumstances were described in a letter that Niccolls wrote in May 1644 to a contact in London, Mr Millard, in the hope that the recently created Committee of Accounts would treat him sympathetically.

The committee of Hertford invited me hither to be one of their committee to assist them in these public employments. And because [they] understood that I was destitute of a house and household necessaries (my whole personal estate being long since plundered and my real estate wholly seized upon by the enemy), they have accommodated me with the house of Sir John Harrison and such necessary furniture as are requisite for myself and servants I keep for managing of the demesne belonging to the said house which they have committed to my care and oversight to husband for the best benefit to the state.48Impact of the First Civil War, ed. Thomson, 181.

On 24 August 1643 the Commons had ordered the sequestration of the estates of the very wealthy financier, (Sir) John Harrison*, who had abandoned Parliament and joined the king at Oxford.49CJ iii. 217b. As early as October Niccolls had probably been granted the use of Balls Park, Harrison’s house on the outskirts of Hertford.50Impact of the First Civil War, ed. Thomson, 184. His role may have been more akin to that of caretaker while its fate was unresolved.

It was not quite true that Niccolls had nowhere else to stay, however. As early as the summer of 1643, when he was an assessment collector there, he seems to have been living at Bushey in the southern reaches of the county.51Impact of the First Civil War, ed. Thomson, 85. The following spring one of his horses was requisitioned from there.52Impact of the First Civil War, ed. Thomson, 123. By 1650 he was the joint patron of the local rectory.53Clutterbuck, Herts. i. 340. Moreover, on 7 October 1643 he was one of several gentlemen added by the Commons to the county committee at Hertford.54CJ iii. 265a. Over the next year or so he seems to have been a keen participant in its proceedings.55Impact of the First Civil War, ed. Thomson, 13, 46, 51, 78, 100, 111, 135. By the spring of 1644 he had become its chairman.56Impact of the First Civil War, ed. Thomson, 182.

This prominence was resented. Niccolls was closely associated with the county’s more uncompromising parliamentarian supporters led by Gabriel Barbor. Another former feoffee for impropriations, Barbor also counted as a distant relative, as he was Isaac Puller’s father-in-law. Opposing them were more moderate figures, such as Sir Thomas Dacres*, Sir William Lytton* and Edward Wingate*. Niccolls’s possession of Balls Park became the issue those opponents sought to use to undermine him. As revealed by his letter to Millard, this prompted his concern that the Committee of Accounts might cause him trouble. His accounts setting out what rents and produce he had received from Harrison’s properties were submitted to the Hertfordshire sequestration commission in early September 1644.57Impact of the First Civil War, ed. Thomson, 184-8. His enemies on the commission quickly compiled accusations that he had systematically under-reported what he had received. On 11 September the Committee for Sequestrations at Westminster asked four members of the Committee of Accounts (including William Prynne* and John Stephens*) to investigate.58Impact of the First Civil War, ed. Thomson, 182-4. Seen from Westminster, claims that Niccolls was abusing his possession of these sequestered lands appeared a useful way by which some prominent Presbyterian MPs could attack the local allies of their Independent opponents. But the investigation seems nevertheless to have soon fizzled out.

In January 1645 the Eastern Association’s central committee at Cambridge appointed Niccolls solicitor for the association’s affairs in London with a salary of 10s a day.59SP28/27, f. 163. This was a potentially important role at a time when moves to create the New Model army threatened to undermine the association’s autonomy. But on 22 February Niccolls’s home town, Shrewsbury, fell to Parliament and with Hunt and Mackworth, he was readmitted to the town’s corporation on 2 June.60Owen, Blakeway, Hist. Shrewsbury, i. 458-9. Soon after he was appointed mayor.61‘The orders of the corp. of Shrewsbury, 1511-1735’, Trans. Salop Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. xi. 182; Owen, Blakeway, Hist. Shrewsbury, i. 534; VCH Salop, vi. pt. 1, 181. The most important decision during his mayoralty was the dismissal on 17 November of Owen, the town clerk, and of Timothy Tourneure, the recorder. Their replacements were Thomas Hunt’s younger brother, Rowland, and Mackworth.62Owen, Blakeway, Hist. Shrewsbury, i. 538, 543. In April 1648 the corporation appointed Niccolls as their steward for life.63Owen, Blakeway, Hist. Shrewsbury, i. 539.

One important local issue in the aftermath of the war was the fate of the sequestered estates of the leading Shropshire royalists. Niccolls was busy as a Shropshire sequestration commissioner. In October 1648 he, Mackworth and Samuel More*, wrote to the sequestration treasurers in London to remind them that any revenues from delinquents’ estates in Shropshire had already been allocated to pay the arrears due to the forces raised within the county.64Add. 5508, f. 125. Almost a year later Niccolls, Mackworth and John Corbett* wrote in very similar terms to the Committee for Compounding.65CCC 157. Moreover, Niccolls and Mackworth informed the Committee for Compounding in May 1650 that they had obeyed their instructions that they should not collect the delinquents’ rents.66CCC 223.

Niccolls had a direct interest in one unresolved Shropshire sequestration case. His kinsman, Dr William Erskine, had been a prebendary of St Asaph and chaplain to Prince Rupert.67Walker Revised, 38. During the civil war, when Niccolls had been absent from Shropshire, Erskine had entered into a bond with another royalist, Sir William Owen† of Condover, for money he claimed Owen owed him. However, Niccolls subsequently disputed this, arguing that this was money owed not to Erskine but to him as the executor to Erskine’s late sister-in-law, Anne Kynaston. He therefore sued Erskine and Owen in chancery. Uncertain as to who was rightfully owed this money, Niccolls’s fellow Shropshire sequestration commissioners referred the matter to the Committee for Compounding in March 1649.68CCC 1500, 3282-3.

Niccolls’s Welsh ties were reinforced in August 1650 when he was appointed as a lieutenant of horse in the north Wales militia.69CSP Dom. 1650, p. 508. As a justice of the peace, he attended several meetings of the Shropshire quarter sessions during 1652 and 1653.70Salop County Records, i. pt. 2, pp. 2, 5, 7, 8. In October 1653, however, he was removed as a Shropshire justice. That coincided with a purge of the moderates, but since Niccolls was simultaneously confirmed on the Montgomeryshire commission the removal probably signified that he had settled instead on his lands at Guilsford.71C231/6, p. 271. In March 1655, during Penruddock’s rising, he was among Montgomeryshire justices who gathered evidence of a royalist plot to seize Shrewsbury.72TSP iii. 210, 245, 317.

Meanwhile, Niccolls had retained some connections with Hertfordshire. From 1650 he was a member of its commission of the peace.73C231/6, pp. 192, 212. In January 1652 he wrote to Alban Coxe* concerning the dispute over the assessment rating for the liberty of St Albans.74Herts. RO, 70559. He was named as a judge for the relief of poor prisoners in the county in October 1653.75A. and O. So his election as an MP for the county in July 1654 does not come out of the blue. Some local gentlemen, headed by the 2nd earl of Salisbury (William Cecil*), were well organised and secured most of the five seats. Niccolls seems not to have been part of this group, but as had been the case a decade earlier, his links with the Pullers doubtless helped. Also useful may have been the fact that Sir John Wittewronge*, an established figure in Hertfordshire and one of the other successful candidates, had since inherited substantial interests of his own in Montgomeryshire. Perhaps the real puzzle is why the Mackworths did not try to get him elected for a Shropshire seat. Once elected, Niccolls left no trace on the records of the first protectorate Parliament. He seems not to have stood in 1656 or 1659. Niccolls was present at the dinner at St Albans in 1657 at which Alban Coxe was alleged to have made seditious remarks but he later told those investigating the incident that he had heard nothing of relevance.76Museum Eng. Rural Life, Reading, FR HERT 5/1/1, f. 21.

In March 1660 Niccolls was appointed by the returned Long Parliament as a militia commissioner for both Hertfordshire and Shropshire.77A. and O. But, with events moving rapidly towards the restoration of the monarchy, others viewed him with suspicion. In April, shortly before the Convention met, he was among a number of persons thought to be ‘dangerous to the peace of the nation’ who were arrested in Montgomeryshire, although they were released several weeks later.78HMC Portland, iii. 221. He attended the May meeting of the Shropshire quarter sessions.79Salop County Records, i. pt. 1, p. 9. In late June Lord Newport (Francis Newport*) obtained an order from the House of Lords giving him permission to search for goods which he claimed had been seized from his house at High Ercall by Niccolls and Andrew Lloyd* ‘during the late troubles’.80LJ xi. 79b.

Niccolls died on 16 April 1662.81Salop County Records, i. pt. 2, p. vi. He was buried at Pontesbury three days later.82Salop Par. Regs. xii. 174. His will, proved on 9 March 1663, mentioned property in Shropshire, Staffordshire and Montgomeryshire, besides Ireland and New England, but none in Hertfordshire.83PROB11/310/379. He left three sons, Charles, Rowland and Thomas, and four daughters, Mary, Anne, Margaret and Martha, but no other member of the family entered Parliament. Niccolls’s descendants continued to live at Newnham until 1922.84Forrest, ‘Some old Shropshire houses’, 235-7.