HATSELL, Henry (1609-67), of Minehead, Som.; Plymouth and Saltram, Plympton St Mary, Devon.

Despite Henry Hatsell’s honour of the freedom of Plymouth and his marriage to a woman from nearby Plympton St Mary, which both suggest a connexion with the important naval town earlier than 1641, no ancestral links can in fact be traced. The Hatsell family was instead rooted in Minehead, Somerset, on the Bristol Channel coast. A number of Hatsells were enfranchised there in the early seventeenth century, two of them testifying at a star chamber hearing over the 1601 parliamentary election, which had been brought by Conrad Prowse† against the Luttrell interest there.24STAC5/P 31/30; HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘Conrad Prowse’. One of these electors, William Hatsell, then aged 23, was probably Henry Hatsell’s father. He was a clothier, as was the older Hatsell to testify, Simon. He might well have been Henry’s grandfather. Both Simon and William Hatsell were well established as clothiers in Minehead, and in the first quarter of the seventeenth century occupied the local offices such as juror, tithing-man and constable with regularity.25Som. RO, DD/L(P), 30/47. There were two Minehead men with the name Henry Hatsell in the period, and care is needed to disentangle them. The one presented at the manorial court in 1616 for affray and who was presented at quarter sessions in 1624 for engrossing wool was an older man than the future MP, and died in 1652.26Som. RO, DD/L(P), 3/13; Q/SR/49/6; Minehead par. reg. Henry Hatsell’s great-grandson believed that Henry’s father had been ‘a considerable clothier in Devonshire’, but seems to have been correct on only one count.27HEHL, HM 60694.

The subject of this biography was the second son of William Hatsell. The Hatsells were customary tenants of the manor of Minehead, whose proprietor was the litigious George Luttrell. William Hatsell had his sons’ names inserted in a lease in 1610, soon after Henry was born.28Som. RO, DD/L(P), 30/47. It seems likely that Henry would have been apprenticed locally, perhaps as a clothier, as he was to supply cloth to the Plymouth parliamentary garrison.29SP28/128 (Devon), pt. 19, accts. of Philip Francis, f. 3. His later career strongly suggests a background in maritime trade, and he was probably the Henry Hatsell who served as a purser in 1638 on a London ship bound for the West Indies. He was at one time in the employ of one William Jones, whose name suggests Welsh origins. Maritime traffic between Minehead and the south Wales ports was of course regular and significant in volume.30High Ct. of Admiralty Examinations 1637-8 ed. D.O. Shilton, R. Holworthy, 269, 290. The only other clues as to Hatsell’s career before the civil war lead us into possible confusion with his Minehead contemporary of the same name. A Henry Hatsell was imprisoned in Dunster Castle for debt to a Limerick man at some point in the later 1630s. A Minehead merchant testifying in a resulting chancery case had known both Hatsell and the plaintiff for 12 years, and the episode is suggestive of a cloth trade deal gone wrong.31C22/749/27. A business career in difficulty would supply a motive for Hatsell’s leaving Minehead probably before the start of the civil war. His marriage in 1637 to Margaret Dawe of Plympton St Mary, near Plymouth, provided him with a destination. If this construction is accurate, the Henry Hatsell who remained in Minehead to become an overseer of the poor in 1641 was the older contemporary who two decades earlier had been a much less respectable figure in local society.32Som. RO, D/P/m.st.m.4/1/1.

Sea-port soldier and administrator, 1642-53

The first solid indication of Hatsell’s appearance in Plymouth comes with the award to him of the freedom of the town. This took place in the mayoral year 1641-2, but unfortunately cannot be dated more precisely. He took the Parliament’s Protestation in the town when it was imposed on Plymouth before October 1642, was there when the civil war broke out, and immediately enlisted on the side of Parliament, serving as ensign in the company of Captain Arthur Gray in the Plymouth garrison.33Devon Protestation Returns ed. A. J. Howard, ii. 392. He was promoted lieutenant in December, and in October 1643 was advanced again, to the rank of captain. He was given charge of St Nicholas island, on which stood a fort that guarded Plymouth Sound. Hatsell supplied cloth to the garrison on the mainland during the long siege, and probably brought it in on a ship of his own, Morning Star, of London.34SP28/128 (Devon), pt. 19, accts. of Philip Francis, f. 3; E190/1036/18. After the death of the governor of Plymouth, William Gould, in March 1644, Hatsell kept his command during the reshuffle of military appointments, earning the plaudits of a propagandist as

a captain of such known integrity, that though envious stomachs may rail against him, yet they cannot draw off the affections of the well-affected in Plymouth, from a high esteem of his approved valour and fidelity.35A Continuation of the True Narration (1644), 4 (E.47.1).

He lent £50 to the garrison in 1645, in bills to be drawn on a merchant of Sandwich in Kent, suggesting that Hatsell maintained links with trade in the south east.36Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/168.

After the end of the civil war, Hatsell remained in Plymouth as a captain in the garrison. He never advanced in the cursus honorum of the town beyond the status of a simple freeman, but made himself useful to the corporation by journeying to London in 1648 to lobby for money for the garrison.37SP28/128 (Devon), pt. 26, accts. of Justinian Peard; Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/132, f. 271. His career took a significant turn when in 1649, following the execution of Charles I, he sailed to the Scilly Isles in an attempt to suppress a revolt there in favour of the late king’s son, Charles Stuart. Encountering unexpected resistance, he was imprisoned, first in the Scillies and then in staunchly royalist Jersey.38CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 35. He was among the first to be freed in July, but the Rump’s council of state recognized his merits in an award of £300 for Hatsell and his family.39CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 40, 57, 247, 253. On his release he seems to have been given fresh employment in the commonwealth navy, acting as press-master in his home town of Minehead in November. He was soon back in Plymouth, however, administering the Engagement to the townspeople in September 1650.40CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 394; 1650, p. 348. It must have given him significant personal satisfaction when he returned to the Scillies in 1651 to quell the revolt there. Robert Blake* selected Hatsell to make the report to Parliament of the success of the expedition, which he did on 13 June, accompanied by a commendatory letter from Blake.41CJ vi. 587a. By January 1652, Hatsell’s vigour and commitment to the republican regime had earned him the post of agent or commissioner for the navy at Plymouth.42CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 106. He held the post in tandem with an appointment as check of customs. The navy post was of greater importance than the title suggested, as it gave Hatsell responsibility for naval matters in the south west as a whole, and he was able to exercise a great deal of personal initiative in the way he managed his responsibilities.43J.D. Davies, ‘Devon and the navy in the civil war and the Dutch wars’, New Maritime Hist. of Devon ed. M. Duffy, S. Fisher, B. Greenhill, D. J. Starkey, J. Youings (Exeter, 1992), 175.

Hatsell’s regular and copious reports to his masters at Whitehall speak volubly of his vigour and efficiency as a naval administrator, whether on matters of the press gang, on questions of procurement or the problems in maintaining the fleet at sea.44CSP Dom. 1651-2, 1652-3, 1653-4, 1654, 1655; B. Capp. Cromwell’s Navy (Oxford, 1989), 202, 284. When the wars with the Dutch broke out, Hatsell and his Plymouth colleague George Strelley were ‘sensible of a divine hand in the business, but [were] assured the event will prove glorious’.45CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 558. Hatsell redoubled his efforts at pressing men for the navy, and by January 1654 was a little more circumspect in his assessment of the prospects of victory. He wrote to Robert Blackborne, secretary to the admiralty and navy commissioners, that although peace with the Dutch was desirable, God’s will would prevail, ‘though we may be laid in the dust’.46CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 571; 1653-4, pp. 350, 503, 504, 513, 514. He remained bellicose enough to feel outrage and ‘burdened in spirit’ at the freedom which the Dutch ambassadors were allowed on their visit to England.47CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 346, 350. The modern authority on the Cromwellian navy is persuaded that Hatsell should be considered a religious radical, and the language of his correspondence with Blackborne is often informed by religious sentiment. There were limits to his radicalism, however, and he seems to have been an active supporter of the Plymouth minister, George Hughes, and the curate of Plympton Maurice, James Birdwood or Burdwood, both Presbyterians.48CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 208; 1658-9, p. 313; Calamy Revised, p. 58. In this broadly Presbyterian outlook, Hatsell was typical of the gentry who ruled in Devon and its corporate towns during the interregnum. He himself, after writing to London to urge that the magistrates be made to summon the country to impressment meetings, was added to the Devon commission of the peace soon afterwards.49CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 514.

Member for Devon and government enforcer, 1654-8

Hatsell had transferred his loyalty from the commonwealth to the Cromwellian protectorate without demur. By the summer of 1654, he was the most important figure in maritime affairs in the south west and his energy alone would have recommended itself to his peers in the efforts to secure reliable supporters of the government to the first protectorate Parliament. Hatsell entertained hopes that the western Members would be of sufficient capability for the ‘great work’ ahead of them.50CSP Dom. 1654, p. 524. He was returned with 10 others, his name listed in the indenture tenth, ahead only of John Quicke. He made a notable if not outstanding contribution to the proceedings of the House. With Robert Shapcote he was named to the committee reviewing the law on indebtedness, specifically on the jurisdiction of the judges sitting at Salters’ Hall, brought into being by the Nominated Assembly (15 Sept.). He was named to the important committee on privileges, a mark of his esteem among his colleagues for one new to Parliament.51CJ vii. 368a, 373b. He was also appointed to the committee on the reform of chancery and perhaps more typically for one with a background in trade and commerce, to a committee on the export of grain (6 Oct.). He made this committee his own, and reported it from it on 27 October its view that exports should be permitted when the price of wheat fell below 32s a bushel. Former statutes had set the price at 36s, so Hatsell’s committee was protectionist in its intention to make low prices a precondition of wheat exports. On the other hand, the proposed reforms would also have permitted a range of activities manipulative of the market at home, such as ‘forestalling’ and ‘regrating’, which had traditionally been stamped upon by early modern governments.52CJ vii. 374b, 379a. In January 1655 he sat on two further committees, on public revenue and on the cost of the military establishment, before the Parliament was dissolved with nothing recorded in statute.53CJ vii. 415b, 419a. His contribution on trade matters in this Parliament may account for his inclusion on the committee for trade formed by the lord protector’s council in July 1655.54CSP Dom. 1655, p. 240.

On his return to Devon, Hatsell was soon involved in helping suppress Penruddock’s rising, travelling out of Devon to Wincanton in Somerset with a troop of soldiers to participate in the campaign which culminated in the arrest of John Penruddock at South Molton, north Devon. He recorded the record of the first interrogations of some of the prisoners after their arrest. In March he served for the first time on the commission of oyer and terminer at Exeter, and worked with the high sheriff of Devon, John Copleston*, to secure juries that would be hostile to the rebels. He provided his superiors in London with an account of the Penruddock trials, which he had to attend regardless of his position as a commissioner, because some of the prisoners repudiated the confessions they had first made.55CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 84, 114, 120, 131. As a consequence of the Penruddock affair, Hatsell became more involved in matters of state security than he had been before the 1654 Parliament. He was an advocate of transportation or indentured servitude, proposing in October 1655 that some Irish prisoners be made ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’ in the West Indies.56CSP Dom. 1655, p. 393. He viewed the arrival of three Quakers at Plymouth in May 1655 as a challenge to social harmony, and was content that two of them were in prison, ‘stiff in their folly’. He wrote darkly to Blackborne of how he detected ‘the workings of Satan’ in the Quakers.57CSP Dom. 1655, p. 183.

He took issue with the brewing interest in Plymouth, blaming them for befuddling the sailors there with their ‘abominable strong drink’, in his typically vigorous way suggesting that the brewers be sent off to Barbados or Hispaniola, ‘if it were not against the law’.58CSP Dom. 1653-4, 2; 1655, pp. 135, 145; Capp, Cromwell’s Navy, 249. In this ‘reformation of manners’ he was a principal support to John Disbrowe*, with whom he had co-operated on security matters in the south west since the early 1650s. He could be touchy, and was stung by suggestions that his monitoring of shipping was not all it should be: ‘that part of my reputation is of highest value to me’.59Add. 38848, f. 44. Hatsell served as a commissioner under Disbrowe when he was major-general of the western counties, and filed reports to the registry in London on the movement of government suspects. In June 1656, the registrar wrote to Hatsell to congratulate him on his methods, but asking for more information on the social rank of those whose movements were monitored.60Add. 19516, f. 64. To add to the responsibilities he managed as naval agent, customs officer, magistrate and major-general’s commissioner, he was confirmed in 1655 as vice-admiral of Devon and as captain in the county militia.61SP25/77, pp. 867, 890. By this time, Hatsell was installed at Saltram, a substantial house in Plympton St Mary, as tenant to the government, paying £28 rent. Disbrowe kept court there on his visits to Plymouth, and just before the restoration of the monarchy Hatsell bought the freehold of the house.62SP24/1, f. 84v; Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 1/132, f. 290v; E372/500; C54/4038/22.

During the interval between the two parliaments of Oliver Cromwell, therefore, Hatsell had seen his powers and duties in the south west enhanced very considerably, and he was returned to the 1656 Parliament as one of the government’s most staunch supporters. He was named to a total of 49 committees in this assembly. In the opening days of the Parliament he was appointed to the privileges committee, the committee on Irish affairs and a committee on the security of the lord protector.63CJ vii. 419a, 424a, 427a. Committees on timber supplies (27 Sept.) were natural territory for a naval administrator, as were those on the excise (17 Oct.).64CJ vii. 429b, 440b. Hatsell brought to the committee on abuses in licensing laws (29 Sept.) and in the setting of wine prices (9 Oct.) his own personal experiences of reform in Plymouth.65CJ vii. 430a, 436b. During this Parliament, he consistently spoke out against drink retailers, arguing in a debate on the excise (8 Jan. 1657) that ‘merchants have been oppressed, the vintners have got the riches’.66Burton’s Diary, i. 327.

On religious affairs, Hatsell was named to a number of committees that worked on local schemes to augment the livings of settled ministers. These included initiatives for Great Yarmouth (14 Nov. 1656), the Isle of Wight (26 Dec.) and Exeter (9 Feb. 1657). The last named, which produced a bill that municipalized the city’s churches, naturally drew on the talents of another eight Devon Members.67CJ vii. 453b, 475b, 488a. He was doubtless a supporter of Thomas Bampfylde’s bill for the better observation of the Lord’s Day, on which he was named to a committee with John Disbrowe.68CJ vii. 493b. On the notorious case of James Naylor, Hatsell intervened on a number of occasions in favour of adjournments, probably acting in the interests of the government. With Major-general William Goffe he successfully sought the charge of being an ‘impostor and a great seducer of the people’ to be added to the charges against the Quaker, and wanted a bill of attainder brought in.69Burton’s Diary, i. 45, 53, 79, 104. He was not in favour of capital punishment for Naylor.70Burton’s Diary, i. 146.

Hatsell’s reputation as one seriously interested in trade, recognised in his appointment to the government committee on trade in 1655, was enhanced further in this Parliament. He was named to a special committee on trade (20 Oct. 1656), and to one on a dispute between clothworkers and the Merchant Adventurers. His family background in retailing cloth gave him special knowledge in this committee. He declared himself an advocate of free trade, at least when it came to undermining the privileges of the Merchant Adventurers. In this attack on the ancient company he was probably voicing the general opinion of provincial overseas merchants.71CJ vii. 442a, Burton’s Diary, i. 175, 309. As a representative of specifically western trading interests, he was sceptical about the war with Spain. In September 1655 he had said that the war ‘made many a sad heart in the west’, and in April 1656 pointed out the consequent losses in customs revenue.72CSP Dom. 1655, p. 353; 1655-6, p. 276. With another Devon MP, Edmund Fowell, he sought liberty in January 1657 to re-establish exports of fish to Spain, a trade traditionally important in the seaports of the south west.73Burton’s Diary, i. 296. He lobbied vigorously for a bill on this topic, producing three petitions in favour of the bill that was passed in June, and as late as January 1658 was calling for a well attended House to debate another fishing bill, which fell when Parliament was dissolved.74Burton’s Diary, ii. 204, 345.

On constitutional matters, Hatsell was named to various committees as the Humble Petition and Advice crawled through the parliamentary timetable. He was named to the committee dealing with the place of Scotland in Ireland in the draft (6 Mar. 1657) and others dealing with the lord protector’s responses to the proposals put to him (27 Mar., 24 Apr.).75CJ vii. 499b, 501b, 514a, 524a. With Bampfylde and Disbrowe he was named to another committee charged with clarifying the judicial role of the Other House.76CJ vii. 502a. His recorded pronouncements on the constitution were relatively few and guarded. He wanted clarity in the titles of bills which would be brought under the proposed new constitution, pointing out that it was unclear as to whether they would be brought in in the name of the lord protector.77Burton’s Diary, ii. 140. With his interventions in favour of adjournments, which must have been prompted for concern for the passage of government business, he was a reliable supporter of the protector’s council. Generally, he was in favour of allowing existing legislation to stand. With Disbrowe he supported the retention of the 1653 act on marriages and the existing legislation allowing ejections of ministers, and dug his heels in against criticisms by Philip Jones*, who thought both laws flawed and deserving replacement.78Burton’s Diary, ii. 59, 72. He was more outspoken on abuses which affected his part of the country. One such was the ‘oppression’ of the 13 knights of the Windsor almshouse, who held property in Plympton St Mary. In pressing the case that this was an oppression of local people in the interests of a pampered few he was joined by Robert Shapcote*, whose estate was in Bradninch, another place where the knights’ interest was extensive.79Burton’s Diary, ii. 61; St George’s Chapel, Windsor Archives, SGC xv. 60. 152, 162; xvi.5.1.

Hatsell served on the committee for reforming the post office and voiced the interest of merchants in seeing an efficient service established.80CJ vii. 542a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 156. In a rare disagreement with Disbrowe, he called on 1 June 1657 for the bill on tithes to be laid aside for a period, while his boss argued for an immediate second reading, the difference between them apparently over the rights of lay impropriators.81Burton’s Diary, ii. 166. In the closing days of the session, he was mindful of time running out and restricting discussion of the proportions on counties laid out in the bill for the monthly assessments and, named to a committee on public debt (19 June), opposed the selling of confiscated lands in Ireland, originally set aside to satisfy soldiers owed arrears of pay. The lands were an attractive target for a government seeking to reduce its debts, but Hatsell declared the lands an unappealing prospect for those living in the west, and threw in for good measure his pessimistic view of a land tax as an alternative strategy.82CJ vii. 563a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 218, 243.

1659 Parliament and final years

After the dissolution of this Parliament, Hatsell returned to his duties in Plymouth. He was one of a number of Devonians commissioned in July 1658 to investigate allegations by the merchants of Exeter that illegal wool imports were flourishing in the south west. He evidently maintained commercial interests of his own, as a ship of his was wrecked in the Irish Sea in December, with loss of life.83CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 100, 490. In his capacity as a naval commissioner, he attended the state funeral of Oliver Cromwell in November 1658.84Burton’s Diary, ii. 524; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 143. With the revival of the pre-1654 constituencies, Hatsell stood no chance of securing one of the two seats for the county of Devon, but he found a place in Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament at Plympton Erle, near his home at Saltram. He was also returned for Tavistock, a seat he waived, indicating the influence he wielded in south-west Devon.85CJ vii. 613a. He was one of the trusted protectorians chosen to administer to MPs the oath of loyalty to the protector as they assembled for the new Parliament on 27 January 1659.86CJ vii. 593a, b, 594a. In the third of his three Parliaments, Hatsell was once again named to the privileges committee, and found a place on the important committee for Scottish affairs.87CJ vii. 623b. He was named to at least 9 committees altogether, the most significant to the well being of the country probably that on mariners, which he himself chaired (11 Apr.).88Burton’s Diary, iv. 403.

In the backlash against the protectorate and against the heavy military presence during the mid-1650s, Major-general William Boteler* was censored, and Hatsell sat on the committee which managed the impeachment. 89CJ vii. 637b. This tide washed at his own door when two men shipped from Plymouth to Barbados for their part in Penruddock’s rising petitioned against their treatment, one of them alleging he had never been tried and both recounting their hardships as indentured servants. It was probably in connection with this petition that Hatsell received detailed advice from the Devonian clerk of the Parliament, Henry Scobell, whose own authority was becoming subject to question. Scobell advised Hatsell to challenge the petition on procedural grounds. Hatsell managed to face down his critics, asserting of the men’s transportation that he ‘never saw any go with more cheerfulness’ and reminding the House that the petitioners were royalists and their sentences indentured servitude, not slavery.90Burton’s Diary, iv. 255-6; Bodl. Rawl. A.62, p. 471; HMC 7th Rep. 117.

Hatsell’s importance as a government supporter is evident in his moving the settling of the Parliament’s standing committees (2 Feb.), his defence of Parliament as grounded in the Humble Petition and Advice and its amendments and his impatience with the endless wrangling over the constitution.91Burton’s Diary, iii. 33, 73, 453. He strongly resisted the notion that the Cromwellian Other House was in reality a thinly disguised House of Lords, fearing that such a concept would provide ‘a pair of stairs’ for Charles Stuart. Similarly he feared the consequences of allowing the pre-1649 peers back into the country, let alone into the Other House: ‘I am not ashamed to say I am afraid when I am afraid’.92Burton’s Diary, iii. 408, 421; iv. 391. As a naval administrator he spoke with authority on foreign affairs, warning of the need for vigilance over developments in the Baltic, and offering (24 Feb.) an analysis of the manoeuvrings of the European powers there that seemed to favour an alliance with Sweden.93Burton’s Diary, iii. 316, 476.

The collapse of the protectorate left Hatsell with nowhere to go politically other than into support for the various attempts to save the republic. In the emergency of the summer of 1659 he gave sterling service to the beleaguered regime. From Plymouth he despatched part of the western squadron of the navy to blockade the approaches to Chester to prevent any help reaching Sir George Boothe* by sea, and he commanded a troop of the augmented Devon militia, in which he was mobilized in a tour of duty.94SP18/204/2; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 119; Capp, Cromwell’s Navy, 339. Despite his military background, he was apparently opposed to the interruption of the revived Rump Parliament by the army in October 1659, and was an agent in Devon for subscriptions to a petition in favour of the Parliament.95The Remonstrance and Protestation (Edinburgh, 1660), 24. The restoration of the monarchy was bound not to bode well for him, and he lost most of his local offices during 1660. Despite recommendations to George Monck* that he be replaced in his naval appointment, he continued in office for a while, doubtless initially kept on because of his naval expertise. In March, even as the restoration was being inaugurated in London, he travelled to London to see what could be achieved to assuage the sufferings in Plymouth caused by the shrivelling of credit and the collapse of trade.96CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp.383-5, 402. He reported to Blackborne on the course of elections to the Convention, and expressed the hope that ‘the Lord will own his poor people, and continue their peace, and the peace of the Gospel’.97CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 406. In June, he wrote to the admiralty commissioners in an attempt to recover advances for the navy’s use made by Plymouth people which they were owed from the excise, and in October secured a warrant to enjoy the arrears of fee farm rents in Plympton, but by November informers were active against him. 98SP29/5/11; CRES6/1, f. 255; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 327.

In January 1661, Hatsell was arrested and taken to Exeter castle. He was freed the following month, and returned to his navy job at Plymouth.99CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 476, 516, 527. He lost his job later that year, and found himself in increasingly uncomfortable circumstances.100J.D. Davies, ‘The naval agents at Plymouth, 1652-88’, New Maritime Hist. of Devon, 179. Shilston Calmady, a Cromwellian conformist, described to a relative the preparations he was making to attend the king’s coronation, and gloated ‘I suppose your friend Hatsell that threatened to make you stink smells ugly himself now’, conceding as an afterthought that ‘such knaves commonly have better fortune than honest men’.101Add. 11314, f. 27. Hatsell suffered the humiliation in September 1661 of selling Saltram and part of Plympton manor to Sir George Carteret, his gaoler on Jersey back in 1649, but continued to live there as tenant.102Plymouth and W. Devon RO, 69/M/2/671. The sale came soon after his marriage into the Braddon family. The marriage with Susanna Braddon consolidated an existing close family relationship between the Hatsells and the Braddons, as in 1656 Hatsell was describing William Braddon* as his ‘brother’, confirmed as his ‘beloved brother’ towards the end of his life.103CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 164; PROB11/324, f. 52. In what seemed suspiciously like a politically-motivated investigation he was accused in September 1662 of peculation in the naval stores at Plymouth. He defended himself robustly and demanded a trial at common law. Even his enemies had to concede that the grounds for a prosecution were thin, and the case seems to have been quietly dropped.104CSP Dom. 1661-2, pp. 475, 482, 483.

Hatsell was high on the list of government suspects in Devon for the remainder of his life, but in fact seems never to involved himself in any plotting against the monarchy.105SP29/88/60; SP29/449/90. He drew up his will in March 1667, and left small sums of money to three ejected Presbyterian ministers, final confirmation that he was a conservative puritan in religion, not a radical. His will also reveals that in his last years he maintained trading interests in Portugal and New England.106PROB11/324, f. 52. He died shortly after making his will, and was buried on 19 March 1667 at Plympton St Mary. Some confusion surrounds the career of his son Henry. That he had an eldest son of that name is clear from Hatsell’s will. He became baron of the exchequer, a fact confirmed by the great-grandson of Hatsell the MP.107Oxford DNB; HEHL, HM 60694. This great-grandson, John Hatsell, was clerk of the Commons from 1768 to 1820.108Papers of John Hatsell ed. P.J. Aschenbrenner, C. Lee (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. l). However, an alternative, though apparently incorrect, pedigree gives Henry the eminent lawyer as the son of a London scrivener, Lawrence Hatsell, which was the name of the MP’s older brother.109Le Neve’s Pedigrees (Harl. Soc. viii), 460.