FARINGTON, William (d. 1658), of Worden, Leyland, Lancs.

Farington’s family had settled in Lancashire by the end of the thirteenth century, acquiring Worden – a few miles south of Preston, in the parish of Leyland – in the mid-sixteenth century.19Baines, Lancs. iv. 169-70; Foster, Lancs. Peds.; VCH Lancs. vi. 62. His grandfather, William Farington, served as steward of the household to three successive earls of Derby between the 1570s and his death in 1610.20VCH Lancs. vi. 12; Stanley Pprs. ed. F. R. Raines (Chetham Soc. o.s xxxi), pp. xxxviii, xcvii; Long, ‘Lancs.’, 164. Having worked and saved hard to add to the family estate, William Farington was not prepared to entrust it to his spendthrift eldest son Thomas, especially after the latter had taken as his second and third wives women of a ‘base and beggarly parentage’.21C2/JasI/F3/57; VCH Lancs. vi. 12-13; Farington Pprs. ed. Farington, iii; Stanley Pprs. ed. Raines, pp. lxxxviii, xciii; Long, ‘Lancs.’, 11-12, 47, 48-9, 57-8, 156-7, 228-9. Consequently, a few years before his death in 1610, William Farington he settled his estate on his grandson (the future MP), who also obtained a deed of release from his father relinquishing all interest in the lands thus settled. 22Lancs. RO, DDF/2432; Lancs. IPM ed. Rylands, 181, 183, 184. Relations between William and his father do not appear to have recovered thereafter, with Thomas Farington bringing legal action against his son for allegedly conspiring to prolong his incarceration in the Fleet for debt.23C2/JasI/F3/57.

Farington’s name was initially included on the 1627 Lancashire Forced Loan commission, but was then removed for some reason.24C193/12/2, f. 30. Nevertheless, he was evidently regarded as trustworthy by the crown, for he retained his place on the county bench throughout the early Stuart period, and in 1631 he was appointed a commissioner for levying knighthood fines.25Earwaker, ‘Obligatory knighthood’, 199. Like his father and grandfather, he was closely associated with the Stanleys, earls of Derby, although it is not clear that he was a member of their household or served them in any formal capacity.26Lancs. RO, DDF/505, 1006, 1010; QDD/48/5. The influence of the Stanleys was not sufficient to prevent his being pricked as Lancashire’s first ship-money sheriff in 1635, nor to deter the assize judges from fining him £700 for various alleged infringements while in office – and this despite his collecting the county’s full ship-money quota. His proceedings as sheriff were supported in a petition from the Lancashire gentry (including Sir Gilbert Hoghton*, Thomas Standish*, Richard Holland* and Roger Kirkbye*) to the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster.27Farington Pprs. ed. Farington, iv-v, 28-9, 49-50; M.D. Gordon, ‘The collection of ship money in the reign of Charles I’, TRHS ser. 3, iv. 159. And it is possible that James Stanley†, Lord Strange (who succeeded as 7th earl of Derby in 1642) had a hand in securing the abatement of Farington’s fine to £160.28Stanley Pprs. ed. F.R. Raines (Chetham Soc. o.s. lxvi), pp. lvi-lvii; Farington Pprs. ed. Farington, v. Having served as a captain of horse in the Lancashire militia since at least 1628, Farington was commissioned a deputy lieutenant by Lord Strange early in 1638.29Lancs. RO, DDN/1/64, ff. 46-7, 112; DDF/388. He proved highly diligent in his new job and supported Lord Strange’s efforts to raise men and money in Lancashire towards the king’s war effort against the Scottish Covenanters in 1639-40.30Lancs. RO, DDN/1/64, ff. 129, 130, 131, 136, 145v, 150, 164, 174, 176v, 177, 177v; Farington Pprs. ed. Farington, 58-9, 67-8.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Farington was returned for Lancashire, taking the junior place. He probably owed his election to his high-profile role in the county’s affairs and possibly also to the support of Lord Strange.31Supra, ‘Lancashire’. He received no appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. His standing in the county and among his fellow gentry may have been adversely affected by his support for Lord Strange’s efforts to raise ‘many and great taxes’ upon Lancashire for the king’s doomed and controversial attempt to mobilise another army against his rebellious Scottish subjects in the summer of 1640. As late as 7 September, Lord Strange and several of his deputy lieutenants, including Hoghton and Farington, were trying to impose a levy of £3,000 upon Lancashire for the king’s service. According to the future parliamentarian John Holcrofte*, Lord Strange and his ‘agents’ justified their proceedings ‘by virtue of his Majesty’s prerogative and a commission granted from his Majesty to tax and levy any and what sums of money he pleased and as often and upon whom he pleased, without giving an accompt to any how he disposed of the same’.32Lancs. RO, DDN/1/64, f. 176v; PA, Main Pprs. 14 Sept. 1642 (depositions of Sir Thomas Stanley, John Holcrofte).

Perhaps by way of preparation to secure another seat should he lose his place as knight of the shire, Farington obtained his freedom of Liverpool on 1 October 1640.33Chandler, Liverpool, 269. Sure enough, in the Lancashire elections to the Long Parliament a few weeks later, Hoghton and Farington were replaced by the future royalist Kirkbye and the future parliamentarian Raphe Assheton II. In the spring of 1642, Farington and Hoghton carried out parliamentary orders for tendering the Protestation to the inhabitants of Lancashire.34Bodl. Tanner 66, f. 284. Nevertheless, both men had moved into or towards the king’s camp by the summer and were appointed to the Lancashire commission of array on 11 June.35Farington Pprs. ed. Farington, 76-7; Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 327. The king wrote to Farington and his heir and namesake on 1 July, commending them for having performed ‘divers services tending to the putting in execution of the said commission, for which you are threatened to be arrested and carried out of the said county [Lancashire], although we have still especial occasion to use your service therein’.36Lancs. RO, DDF/1282; Farington Pprs. ed. Farington, 77-8.

Farington was an active member of Lancashire’s fledgling royalist interest, although there is no firm evidence that he ever bore arms against Parliament.37Cheshire RO, DCC/47/42; Newton, House of Lyme, 180; Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 32, 51, 67, 329; Farington Pprs. ed. Farington, 90; Gratton, Lancs. 69, 74, 254. It was probably William Farington junior who was commissioned on 3 September as a captain in the regiment of foot that Lord Strange subsequently deployed in his assault on the parliamentarian stronghold of Manchester.38Lancs. RO, DDF/2437, f. 97a; Gratton, Lancs. 305-6. The Lancashire Presbyterian minister Isaac Ambrose deposed in 1647 that ‘in the beginning of these times [i.e. at the outbreak of civil war] he [Farington senior] was a man of peaceable disposition, bending all his counsels to accommodation and quiet of the country’ – and indeed Farington was closely involved in abortive attempts by the Lancashire gentry, early in October 1642, to broker a treaty of neutrality between the county’s parliamentarians and royalists.39Farington Pprs. ed. Farington, 107; Lancs. Lieutenancy under the Tudors and Stuarts ed. J. Harland (Chetham Soc. o.s. l), 282-7; Broxap, Lancs. 55-6. On 24 October, Parliament ordered the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster to remove Farington and other royalists from the Lancashire commission of peace, but the next commission, issued on 17 November (the last before 1646) did not recognise this order, and technically, therefore, Farington remained a magistrate until 1646.40CJ ii. 821a; LJ v. 421a; Lancs. RO, QSC/38.

Farington’s decision to take the king’s side in the civil war was consistent not only with his loyalty to the Stanleys, but also with his deep commitment to episcopacy and the Prayer Book. Ambrose claimed that Farington was ‘well-affected in religion’ and that before the civil war he had been ‘a constant frequenter of our weekly lectures and other ordinances of Christ’.41Farington Pprs. ed. Farington, 107. Nevertheless, in a letter to another local Presbyterian minister, probably written in 1648, Farington lamented that the parliamentarians had

destroyed all forms of ecclesiastical government, discountenanced an excellent liturgy ... disgraced the articles of religion, polluted public assemblies, [and] taken away all cognizance of schism by mingling all sects ... I do heartily wish that men would be brought once more to worship the God of Israel after the manner of their forefathers, for never did the excellency of the episcopal government appear so demonstratively as now. Under their [the bishops’] authority we had a church so united, so orderly, so well governed ... devotions so regular and constant and the circumstances of religion so grave and prudent ... that the schismatical enemies of our church ... do despair of prevailing against us and truth.42Farington Pprs. ed. Farington, 108-111.

Following the collapse of the royalist cause in Lancashire in mid-1643, £428 of Farington’s personal estate at Worden was sequestered, and he took refuge in the Stanleys’ fortified house at Lathom, where he became the countess of Derby’s chief adviser in her defiance of the besieging parliamentarian forces.43Farington Pprs. ed. Farington, 93-5; Lancs. Civil War Tracts, 184; Broxap, Lancs. 104. He left Lancashire at some point in the mid-1640s – possibly accompanying the countess to the Isle of Man – returning in July 1646, when he was promptly imprisoned. In 1647, he was allowed to go to London to make his composition, but his petition was not entertained by the Committee for Compounding* until May 1649.44‘Charlotte Stanley, countess of Derby’, Oxford DNB; Farington Pprs. ed. Farington, 105-8; CCC 2024. He was fined £511 – that is, at one sixth of his estate, which he had valued at £221 a year, although it was probably worth at least four times that amount.45Lancs. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. Stanning, 287; J.T. Cliffe, ‘The Cromwellian decimation tax of 1655’ (Camden Soc. ser. 5, vii), 489; Blackwood, ‘Lancs. gentry’, 55. A life of quiet retirement in Lancashire from the late 1640s did not prevent him being assessed at £20 for the decimation tax in 1655.46Cliffe, ‘Cromwellian decimation tax of 1655’, 452.

Farington died in the spring of 1658 and was buried at Leyland on 20 April.47Reg. Bk. of Leyland ed. White, 181. In his will, he charged his estate with an annuity of £40 and bequests worth about £150.48Lancs. RO, DDF/Box/24. None of Farington’s immediate descendants sat in Parliament.