DARLEY, Richard (c.1603-1681), of Bishop Wilton, Yorks.

Darley was the scion of one of Yorkshire’s most godly gentry families, the Darleys of Buttercrambe. A younger son, he was apprenticed to a London Merchant Taylor, Simon Wood, and obtained his freedom of the Merchant Taylors’ Company in 1624.28GL, Merchant Taylors’ Co., Presentment Bk. 1. Residing in the London parish of St Michael, Wood Street – where his first two children were baptized – he set up in business as a draper, but does not appear to have joined the livery of the Merchant Taylors’ Company.29St Michael, Wood Street par. reg. (entries for 4 July 1634, 18 Aug. 1635); C54/3007/28; Hull Hist. Cent. U DDSY/80/5; Vis. London, 216. He was later described – albeit by an anonymous and particularly scurrilous pamphleteer – as a mere ‘tradesman (if not broke) ... a cracked draper’, which may indicate that his commercial dealings were not altogether successful.30The Countrey Committees Laid Open, 6. Certainly by the mid-1630s, his family appears to have moved from London to the Darley family seat at Buttercrambe and from there to nearby Bishop Wilton, where he had acquired an estate by marriage in 1632.31Buttercrambe par. reg.; Bishop Wilton par. reg.

Darley evidently shared the puritan convictions of his father and of his elder brother Henry. In 1631, the three men persuaded the godly lecturer Thomas Shepard (later an eminent New England divine) to serve as household chaplain at Buttercrambe – Shepherd having been driven from his cure in Essex by Archbishop Laud.32Marchant, Puritans, 123-4; God’s Plot: the Autobiog. and Jnl. of Thomas Shepard, ed. M. McGiffert (Amherst, MA, 1972), 53-5. In contrast to Henry Darley, however, and also to another of their siblings who participated in privateering expeditions in the Caribbean, Richard took no apparent interest in the various puritan colonizing ventures of the 1630s – notably, the Providence Island Company and the Saybrook plantation.33Supra, ‘Henry Darley’; K.O. Kupperman, Providence Is. 1630-41 (Cambridge, 1993), 211. And it was not until the autumn of 1640, in the aftermath of the second bishops’ war, that he joined his father and brother Henry in protesting at the heavy burden that the king’s policies had imposed upon the county. Thus he appears to have signed only the third and last of the petitions that the ‘disaffected’ Yorkshire gentry presented to the king during the summer and autumn of 1640, in which they complained of numerous grievances, including Ship Money, and concluded by re-iterating a request made by a group of dissident English peers that the king summon Parliament.34Cumb. RO (Kendal), Strickland Ms vol. 1608-1700, N38 Car. I. Henry Darley had been closely involved in the machinations of these peers and their allies that had contributed significantly to the success of the Covenanters’ invasion of northern England that summer and thus to the downfall of the personal rule of Charles I.35Supra, ‘Henry Darley’. Within a few weeks of the Long Parliament convening, Richard Darley was obliged to present a petition to the Commons for the release of his elder brother, who had been imprisoned by the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) on suspicion of conspiring with the Covenanters.36CJ ii. 28a; LJ iv. 102; HMC 4th Rep. 30; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 45.

Darley had joined the nascent parliamentarian interest in Yorkshire by the summer of 1642, signing this group’s petition to the king of 6 June, protesting at his abandoning Parliament and drawing together the county’s trained bands – ‘illegally’ as the petitioners conceived it.37PA, Main Pprs. 6 June 1642, ff. 84-5. At the outbreak of civil war, he sided with Parliament, as did his father and his brothers Henry and William – the latter of whom commanded a small garrison at Stamford Bridge, north west of York, in the early months of the war.38Slingsby Diary ed. D. Parsons (1836), 93; Jones, ‘War in north’, 378. But although the royalists sacked the family residence at Buttercrambe, there is no record that Darley’s estate at Bishop Wilton was similarly molested. Indeed, his family appear to have resided in the parish throughout the war, and it was later claimed that his wife had held correspondence with the commander of the king’s northern army, the earl of Newcastle.39Bishop Wilton par. reg.; The Countrey Committees Laid Open, 6. Darley’s most important contribution to the parliamentarian war effort was not as a soldier but as a committeeman. He was named to every parliamentary committee for the East Riding from 1643 onwards and, by the mid-1640s, was treasurer of the East Riding sequestration committee – a position that he used (it was later alleged) to divert ‘great sums into his own hands of the public’s [money]’, although one anti-Leveller pamphleteer was at pains to affirm Darley’s probity in office.40SP28/215, pt. 2; Hull Hist. Cent. C BRL/354, 364, 381; The Countrey Committees Laid Open, 5-6; A Declaration of Some Proceedings of Lt. Col. Iohn Lilburn (1648), 59 (E.427.6). In October and November 1645, Darley signed several letters to Parliament from the Yorkshire parliamentary committees, complaining about the ‘infinite oppressions and extortions’ of the Scots army and pleading that it be removed from the county.41Bodl. Nalson IV, ff. 212-13, 244; Nalson V, f. 16; LJ vii. 640b, 642b.

At some point in the autumn of 1645, Darley was returned as a ‘recruiter’ for the borough of Malton, about six miles north of Buttercrambe.42CJ iv. 277a, 393a. It is possible that he was elected on his own interest as the son of a prominent local landowner and as treasurer for the East Riding committee. But according to the author of the 1649 pamphlet, The Countrey Committees Laid Open, he owed his return primarily to his ‘associate’, a Mr. Blackwell, who was the leaseholder of the sequestered estate of the town’s principal landowner, the Catholic peer William 4th Lord Eure.43The Countrey Committees Laid Open, 6; CCC 2242. Darley’s alleged electoral patron was almost certainly John Blackwell senior, a prosperous London grocer and probable religious Independent, who invested heavily in bishops’ lands and apparently in sequestered property also.44Aylmer, State’s Servants, 242-3. Darley had taken his seat by 31 December 1645, when he took the Solemn League and Covenant.45CJ iv. 393a. On becoming an MP, he was obliged to surrender his office as treasurer for the East Riding committee, although ‘loath to part with so sweet a profit’ (as the author of the Countrey Committees put it), he secured the post for his kinsman, Francis Darley.46The Countrey Committees Laid Open, 5.

Darley appears to have been a relatively insignificant figure at Westminster before Pride’s Purge. However, it is difficult to gain a clear impression of his parliamentary activities from the Journal because the clerk failed to distinguish between Henry Darley (MP for the Yorkshire borough of Northallerton) and Richard, referring to both men as ‘Mr Darley’. It is clear, nonetheless, that Richard Darley was less involved in the House’s proceedings than his elder brother during the period 1645-8 and spent more time in the north attending to his duties as a committeeman.47SP28/250, ff. 65, 146, 148, 159; Bodl. Nalson VII, ff. 22, 203; Tanner 51, f. 21; Tanner 59, f. 399; Yorks. Comp. Pprs. ed. J.W. Clay (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. xviii), 58, 100, 145. His first significant appointment in the House was not until 15 May 1646, when he was added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers*.48CJ iv. 545b. However, he is known to have attended only three meetings of this committee, all of them in the early 1650s.49SP22/2B, ff. 37, 146; SP22/3, f. 508. A week after his addition to the Committee for Plundered Ministers, he was granted leave of absence (22 May).50CJ iv. 552b. Before departing Westminster, he was added to the so-called ‘northern committee’, which had been set up in March to consider and forward Parliament’s various grievances against the Scots, particularly regarding the abuses committed by their forces in the north.51CJ iv. 560b. He received one, possibly two, committee appointments during the autumn of 1646, only to be granted another leave of absence on 8 January 1647.52CJ iv. 682b, 718a; v. 45b. Whether he returned to the House before the autumn of that year is not clear. He was apparently not among those Members who fled to the army after the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at the end of July. Moreover, he was declared absent at the call of the House on 9 October.53CJ v. 330a. He had resumed his seat by 28 October, however, when he was named to a committee on an ordinance for the removal of obstructions upon the sale of bishops’ lands.54CJ v. 344b. And on 4 January 1648, he was named to a committee for preparing ordinances to redress the people’s grievances ‘in relation to their burdens, their freedoms and liberties and of reforming of courts of justice and proceedings at law’.55CJ v. 417a.

Darley was named to nine committees, at most, between January and December 1648 and was away from the House for much of the summer and autumn, helping to secure the north for Parliament during, and in the aftermath of, the second civil war.56CJ v. 417a, 421a, 447b, 501a, 640b, 643b, 683b; vi. 41a, 79a; SP28/250, ff. 65, 146, 300; Add. 35332, ff. 108, 113v; Add. 36996, f. 76; Bodl. Nalson VII, ff. 22, 203; Tanner 57, f. 109v; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 160, 221. Having reportedly assisted his brother Henry that August in securing a parliamentary grant of £5,000 to recompense the family for its losses in Parliament’s service, Darley signed the order of the East Riding sequestration committee, authorising its treasurer, Francis Darley (Richard’s kinsman), to pay £666 of this sum to Sir Richard Darley.57Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 24 (5-12 Sept. 1648), sig. Gg2v (E.462.34); SP28/250, ff. 147-8.

Darley seems to have looked more favourably on the army’s proceedings over the winter of 1648-9 than did his elder brother, who stayed away from Westminster during this period.58Supra, ‘Henry Darley’. Richard retained his seat at Pride’s Purge on 6 December and entered his dissent to the 5 December 1648 vote (that the king’s answers at Newport were sufficient grounds for a settlement) on 20 December, the day on which the dissent was introduced as a test of the Rump’s membership.59A Full Declaration of the true State of the Secluded Members Case (1660), 21 (E.1013.22). Most of those who entered their dissents that day were keen to see the king put on trial, but whether this was also true of Darley is not clear. Moreover, his presence in the House on 20 December is difficult to reconcile with his signature on an order of the Yorkshire militia commissioners dated 21 December (the signature is clearly his and not his father’s).60SP28/250, f. 309. Similarly, he signed an order of the Yorkshire assessment commissioner on 28 December – the day before he was named to a committee at Westminster on an ordinance establishing a court to try the king.61CJ vi. 106a; SP28/250, f. 36. Either the clerk of the Commons was naming him in absentia, or, more plausibly, Darley signed the Yorkshire orders several weeks or more after they were drafted. He was named on 6 January 1649 as one of the king’s judges, and according to the author of The Countrey Committees Laid Open, his behaviour at the king’s trial, ‘being in town [London] all the time ... is very notorious’.62A. and O. i. 1254; The Countrey Committees Laid Open, 6. In fact, Darley attended neither the trial commission nor the trial itself and received only one committee appointment in the Rump itself that month, on 1 January.63CJ vi. 107b. His first appointment after the regicide was to a committee set up on 3 February for suppressing any sermons or publications denouncing the king’s trial and execution.64CJ vi. 131b. At local level, he apparently had no qualms about serving the commonwealth, attending the Yorkshire spring assizes in March 1649 – the first to be held in the county after the regicide – and continuing his role as one of the most ‘predominant’ men in the affairs of the East Riding.65The Petition and Presentment of the Grand-Juries of the County of York (1649), 3 (E.548.26); The Countrey Committees Laid Open, 5-6 SP28/250, ff. 6, 159, 186, 309; CCC 379; CJ vii. 5b, 18b.

Darley was apparently far more active in the Rump than he had been before Pride’s Purge, receiving somewhere between 28 and 83 committee appointments between mid-December 1648 and April 1653, when the Rump was dissolved. His brother Henry, by way of comparison, received a minimum of 17 such appointments during the same period. On 18 December 1648, Richard was added the Committee for Compounding*, which both he and his brother attended on a fairly regular basis until the appointment of non-parliamentary commissioners in the spring of 1650.66CJ vi. 99a; SP23/6, p. 30; SP23/7, pp. 13, 107; SP23/9, ff. 14v, 41; SP23/10, f. 11v. He was also, like his brother, an active member of the committee for regulating the universities, to which he was added in March 1650 and again in May 1651.67CJ vi. 388b, 577b; LPL, Sion L40.2/E16, passim; Peterhouse Archives, Misc. vol. 3, p. 25; C. Hotham, Corporations Vindicated in Their Fundamental Liberties (1651), 104. Given his background as a City businessman, he was almost certainly the ‘Mr. Darley’ who was named to a committee set up on 16 March 1650 for nominating commissioners to the Rump’s new think-tank on commercial matters, the council of trade.68CJ vi. 383b. He may also have been the Darley appointed to committees on mercantile affairs, the public accounts, the establishment of town markets and the retrenchment of state finances.69CJ vi. 216a, 274a, 360a, 467a; vii. 134a, 138b. Certainly many of his known duties in the Rump concerned the management of its commercial and financial affairs. Thus he was named to committees for removing anticipations on composition fines, the excise and other treasuries (1 Jan. 1649); reforming the Mint and redesigning the coinage (13 Feb.); the manufacture of salt and soap (30 Mar., 29 May 1650); improving the excise revenues (15 Apr.); prohibiting the export of bullion and excessive interest rates (25 Apr., 16 May); and for meeting the costs of military expenditure (28 Apr. 1652).70CJ vi. 107b, 138b, 389a, 399a, 403b, 574b, 581a; vii. 128a. At least three of the 11 committees concerning the sale and administration of crown, church and forfeited estates to which one or other of the Darleys was named in the Rump were Richard’s appointments.71CJ vi. 225a, 254a, 393b, 556a, 576b, 598b; vii. 104a, 112a, 115a, 158b, 250b. One of the Darleys was added on 10 April 1651 to the committee for removing obstructions on the sale of bishops’ lands.72CJ vi. 558a. Eight days later, on 18 April, the House referred the task of investigating the contractors for the sale of the king’s goods specifically to the care of Richard and his fellow Yorkshire Rumper, Luke Robinson.73CJ vi. 564a. That same week, a bill for the impressment of soldiers to serve in Ireland was referred to the care of Darley and Edmund West – which suggests that he may have been the ‘Mr Darley’ named to several other committees in the Rump concerning Irish affairs.74CJ vi. 512b, 563a; vii. 162a. Both Darley brothers were regularly recruited by the House to committees for the propagation of the gospel and the maintenance of a godly preaching ministry.75Supra, ‘Henry Darley’; CJ vi. 231a, 245b, 336b, 365b, 382b, 416a, 420b.

Darley’s political career apparently flourished under the commonwealth, and it is therefore unlikely that he looked approvingly on Cromwell’s forcible dissolution of the Rump in April 1653. He certainly found it difficult to reconcile himself to the protectorate, although he was thought sufficiently committed to the Cromwellian religious settlement and to the maintenance of a publicly-maintained ministry to be named an ejector for the East Riding in August 1654 (he was determined to enforce payment of tithes as a magistrate).76A. and O. ii. 970; R. Hubberthorne, The Record of Sufferings for Tythes in England (1658), 12, 13. Nevertheless, by the summer of 1656, he was implicated in the plans of leading Rumpers to frustrate the return of government supporters to the forthcoming Parliament. Major-general Robert Lilburne* reported to Secretary John Thurloe* in August that Darley had been scheming with Sir Henry Vane II*, Henry Neville* and with various ‘discontented persons’ in Yorkshire, their rallying cry being ‘no swordsmen, no decimators’ and no Cromwellian placemen.77TSP v. 296. In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament that month, Richard and Henry Darley were returned for the East Riding, along with Sir William Strickland and Colonel Hugh Bethell. The Darleys probably owed their election to the strength of their interest as two of the East Riding’s leading politicians and also, perhaps, as vocal opponents of the rule of the major-generals. However, while Strickland and Bethell were allowed to take their seats, the Darleys were excluded from the House by the protectoral council as opponents of the government.78CJ vii. 452b. When the excluded Members were admitted to the House at the beginning of the second session, in January 1658, Henry duly took his seat but not Richard, it seems. The Journal and the parliamentary diarist Thomas Burton* refer specifically to Henry Darley on several occasions in January and February 1658 – as opposed to simply ‘Mr Darley’ – but not to Richard.79CJ vii. 592a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 372.

Darley, like his brother Henry, resumed his seat in the Commons following the restoration of the Rump in May 1659, although he was listed on 2 June among those Rumpers ‘that do not yet sit’.80A Catalogue of the Names of This Present Parliament (1659, 669 f.21.43). There is no firm evidence of his attendance in the House until 22 June, when he was named to a committee for ‘the present supply of the state’.81CJ vii. 691a. Between then and mid-October, when the army dissolved the Rump a second time, he received somewhere between 13 and 27 committee appointments.82CJ vii. 691a, 691b, 694b, 706a, 721a, 722a, 731a, 751b, 761b, 762a, 766a, 767b, 786b. As in the period 1649-53, he was named to several committees for managing and improving the commonwealth’s finances and was possibly appointed to committees on 8 and 14 June and 1 September for levying and collecting the excise and the monthly assessment.83CJ vii. 691a, 731a, 761b, 762a, 772a, 786b. The security of the commonwealth was a theme in several of his assignments, for he was named to committees concerning the impressment of seamen, settling the militia and for sequestering the estates of those involved in Sir George Boothe’s* rebellion.84CJ vii. 691b, 694b, 766a, 767b. Both Darleys were included on a committee set up on 18 July for the release of poor debtors – a reform much favoured by the more radical Rumpers.85CJ vii. 722a. It may be significant that Darley was regularly appointed to committees in the restored Rump whose chairman, or first named member, was his fellow Yorkshire MP Luke Robinson, who was a staunch republican.86CJ vii. 691b, 694b, 722a, 766a, 767b. As army pressure mounted during the autumn, the Rump grew increasingly desperate and, on 11 October, established a committee – to which one of the brothers was named – for making it treason to levy a tax not imposed by Parliament, which was clearly an attempt to keep the army without pay should it again decide to dissolve Parliament.87CJ vii. 795a. Both Darleys were among those Members listed in a pamphlet in November as having defied the army in the days before it had dissolved the Rump a few weeks earlier.88The Lord General Fleetwoods Answer to the Humble Representation of Collonel Morley (1659), 11 (E.1010.6).

Both Darley brothers resumed their seats following the final restoration of the Rump late in December 1659, and on 17 January 1660, Richard was a majority teller with Colonel Edmund Harvey I in favour of sending Major Richard Salwey to the Tower for assisting the army and the committee of safety during the final months of 1659.89CJ vii. 814a. Darley was named to no more than six committees between 23 January and 15 February; and although he was reportedly still sitting on 16 March, when the Long Parliament was finally dissolved, there is no evidence that he attended the House after the re-admission of the secluded Members on 21 February.90CJ vii. 818b, 821a, 822b, 833b, 843b, 844a; The Grand Memorandum, or a True and Perfect Catalogue of the Secluded Members of the House of Commons Sitting 16 March 1659 (1660, 669 f.24.37).

Very little is known about Darley after 1660. He was implicated in the 1663 Farnley Wood Plot – an abortive rising by a group of northern sectarians and ex-soldiers in support of toleration and lower taxes – and was imprisoned on the orders of the lord lieutenant of Yorkshire.91SP29/86/68, f. 104; Doncaster Archives, DD/CROM/11/73. But the case against him, if indeed there was one, never went to trial. He died on 2 February 1681 and was buried at Bishop Wilton.92Familiae Minorum Gentium, 994. In his will, he left the bulk of his estate to his three surviving children.93Hull Hist. Cent. U DDSY/4/179. None of his immediate family sat in Parliament.