TRENCHARD, Sir Thomas, (1582-c.1652), of Wolveton, Charminster, Dorset.

Trenchard’s ancestors had come to Dorset from Hampshire in the reign of Edward IV, when they acquired the estate of Wolveton near Dorchester. By the early seventeenth century they had amassed considerable land holdings in the county, including the manors of Warmwell, also near Dorchester, and Lytchett Matravers, near Wareham. Sir Thomas’s father, Sir George Trenchard, who sat as an MP under Elizabeth and was recorder of Dorchester until 1611, was famed throughout the county as ‘a man of great courage’.28Coker’s Survey of Dorset, 1623 (1732 ed.), 64. The family’s wealth had begun to decline during the reign of James I, partly due to Sir Thomas’s elder brother, who had, by the time of his death in 1611, brought a considerable burden of debt to the family estates.29Harl. 1579, f. 132; Brunton and Pennington, Long Parliament, 160. Nevertheless, the Trenchards’ local connection continued to expand through a series of marriages with important Dorset families. Sir Thomas's sisters, Grace and Anna, married the brothers Sir John* and Nicholas Strangways respectively, while another sister, Elizabeth, married John Browne I* of Frampton. Sir Thomas’s younger brother, John*, was later to marry his daughters to the parliamentarians William Sydenham*, John Bingham* and John Sadler*.30Vis. Dorset 1623, 94; Add. 4224, ff. 3-4. The coherence of the extended family can be seen in the marriage of William Sydenham and John Trenchard’s daughter in March 1640, when the feoffees for the marriage settlement included John Trenchard, Sir Thomas Trenchard and Sir John Strangways.31Dorset RO, D616/T1. Other connections included the family of John Trenchard’s wife, Elizabeth Rodney, which had kinship ties with the 2nd earl of Hertford, and Grace Trenchard’s daughter, Howarda Strangways, married Sir Lewis Dyve†, step-son of the 1st earl of Bristol. These marriages were to cause tensions for Sir Thomas Trenchard later, as the Digbys, Seymours, Strangways and Dyves, who had all been opponents of the crown in the 1630s, joined the king in 1642.32Vis. Dorset 1623, 93-4; Vis. Dorset 1677, 63-5; Add. 4224, ff. 3-4.

Trenchard’s religious views were influenced by the Protestant conviction of his father. Sir George Trenchard’s† fervent Calvinism is apparent from his will, which looked forward to the ‘heavenly mansion purchased for me and all the elect of God’.33PROB11/159/112. Sir Thomas seems to have shared his father’s views, later being described by Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper* as ‘a very honest, well-natured, worthy man, a favourer of the puritans’.34Christie, Shaftesbury, i, appx. I, p. xix. Although direct evidence of his religious beliefs is fragmentary, it is significant that in 1649 he was recorded as attending a weekday sermon at Dorchester in the company of his Presbyterian cousin, John Fitzjames*.35Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, f. 74v. Likewise, what can be gleaned of Trenchard’s ecclesiastical patronage during this period suggests that he had godly leanings. His chaplain, Jerome Turner, described as a ‘fluent preacher, but too much addicted to Calvinism’, was instrumental in inciting an already hysterical crowd during the execution of a Roman Catholic priest in Dorchester in 1642.36Wood, Ath. Ox. iii. 404-5, D. Underdown, Fire from Heaven (1992), 156, 198.

Trenchard’s social status, family alliances and puritan sympathies of the Trenchards no doubt helped him to secure election as knight of the shire for Dorset in the 1621 Parliament. He was, however, inactive in this Parliament, apart from the management of a conference on recusancy in February 1621, and he was not re-elected in the Parliaments that followed.37HP Commons 1604-1629. His involvement in Dorset affairs was also slight. He had been named to the commission of the peace since 1614, and was named to a number of other local commissions during the 1620s, but only on his father’s death in 1630 did he assume a major role in local politics, from 1632 becoming a regular member of the more prestigious western circuit commission for oyer and terminer.38Som. and Dorset N. and Q. i. 156; C181/3, f. 212; C181/4, f. 111v. He was appointed as sheriff of Dorset in November 1634, and, whatever private reservations he might have had, cooperated with the crown in the collection of Ship Money, raising about four-fifths of the required total by the end of his term of office.39CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 502, 525; 1635-6, pp. 211-2, 356. Trenchard’s methods of collecting ship-money reveal something of his place within county society. In 1634, Dorchester was heavily rated at £200, as a result of successful lobbying by local dignitaries such as the Bankes family and their agent, Giles Grene*, who sought to reduce the burden on the Isle of Purbeck.40Whiteway Diary, 154. The new rate was reluctantly collected by Trenchard, ‘who confessed it to be unreasonable, but that he durst not do otherwise, for fear lest Mr Grene should complain of him’.41Whiteway Diary, 156. But Trenchard was able to redress the balance in future assessments. The privy council’s instructions of 12 August 1635 had already given the sheriff permission to modify the proportions as he saw fit, and in Trenchard's account, Poole, Shaftesbury, and Bankes’s local borough of Corfe Castle, had increased rates.42CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 330-1, 502. By contrast, Dorchester, the centre of Trenchard influence, had its assessment cut from the £100 suggested by the privy council to £45.43CSP Dom. 1635, p. 502. The partiality of this change led to a petition from the mayor of Corfe to the privy council in June 1637, requesting redress.44PC Regs. i. 51. Trenchard also seemed less than eager to pursue defaulting friends: the list of outstanding debtors of April 1636 includes his brother-in-law John Browne I and his friend Sir Walter Erle*.45CSP Dom. 1635-6, pp. 395-6.

The overall impression of Trenchard which the pre-1640 evidence presents is that of a man with puritan sympathies but little interest in affairs outside his home county. This may help to explain Trenchard’s absence from Parliament in the early 1640s: even though his son, Thomas*, sat for Bridport in the Short Parliament, and his brother, John, sat in both Short and Long Parliaments as Member for Wareham, Sir Thomas himself remained aloof from Westminster until recruited in 1645, even though his standing in the county would have doubtless secured him an earlier seat. As well as suggesting a desire to avoid controversy, perhaps this reluctance to sit at Westminster is indicative of an intentional division of labour, with John leading the Trenchard interest in Parliament, while Sir Thomas safeguarded the county position and local estates of the family in Dorset.

Before the first civil war, Trenchard’s involvement with opposition to Charles I was implicit rather than explicit. An assessment commissioner for Dorset in 1641, he was appointed with Sir Walter Erle as commissioner to disarm Dorset recusants in August 1641, in the aftermath of the first army plot.46SR; LJ iv. 385. The spring and summer of 1642 saw rifts the Trenchard family network, as Strangways, the Digbys and Seymours defected to the king’s side. Trenchard’s own position was deeply ambiguous. He was appointed one of the king’s commissioners of array in late June 1642, but a month later Parliament instructed him to raise forces in Dorset under the Militia Ordinance.47Northants. RO, FH133, unfol.; CJ ii. 694b. Trenchard, perhaps mindful of the prevailing mood within the county, joined Parliament. While executing the Militia Ordinance, Trenchard and Erle were fired on by the orders of the town clerk of Weymouth, who had ‘hired a gunner there to discharge a small piece laden with murdering shot’.48CJ ii. 742b-743a. In August 1642 Trenchard was brought further into the parliamentary fold when he and others were appointed to suppress the royalist build-up in the western counties, and to raise troops, and this provision was extended in October.49CJ ii. 805b. In the same period Trenchard put his remaining wealth at the disposal of the local parliamentarians. In August and September 1642 he joined John Browne I in raising a £2,600 loan at 8 per cent interest to fund the assault by William Russell*, 5th earl of Bedford on the royalist strong-hold of Sherborne Castle.50Bayly, Dorset, 48; CJ iii. 987b. In doing so, he went against his royalist relatives, including Sir Lewis Dyve and the Digbys at Sherborne.51Gardiner, Hist. Civil War ii. 304. As well as providing a substantial contribution from his own pocket, Trenchard stood surety for the loans of others, including £1,300 granted by John Fitzjames* and £500 by John Michell in August 1642.52Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 82.

Yet, for all his willingness to fund the local parliamentarians, and his consequent material investment in military action against the king, in the early months of the civil war Trenchard was looking for ways to bring the conflict to an end. In March 1643 he joined John Browne I in making a neutralist pact with various local gentry, including his brother-in-law Sir John Strangways, for ‘the disbanding of all forces of all sides in their county’, and opposing all troops entering Dorset ‘to the disturbance of the peace’. Unsurprisingly, this unauthorised agreement prompted censure in the Commons.53CJ ii. 987b, 992a, CJ iii. 142b; Harl. 164, f. 311; Bayly, Dorset, 63. Trenchard, Browne and Fitzjames later journeyed into Devon to meet neutrals from Cornwall and Somerset, but the mayor of Exeter refused to open the gates to them.54HMC Portland i. 103. Trenchard’s attempt to broker a local truce, and subsequent unpopularity at Westminster, had a disastrous effect on his financial security. Although in April 1643 Parliament had issued an ordinance ordering the repayment to Trenchard and others of the moneys lent in September 1642, in June 1643 harsh financial moves were made against Trenchard over the repayment of a loan of £2,500 which he owed to the delinquent Sir William Poole.55CJ iii. 36a, 142b. The order to call in this debt can only be seen as Parliament’s punishment of Trenchard for flirting with neutralism.

Trenchard’s position amongst the local parliamentarian gentry continued to be fairly secure, despite being under a cloud at Westminster. The accounts of Richard Burie, treasurer of the Dorset Standing Committee, for late 1642 and early 1643 show Trenchard in contact with Sir Walter Erle and other leaders of the parliamentarian party in the county,56Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, ff. 97v, 101v, 111v. and during 1643 Trenchard joined Erle in conducting the first siege of Corfe Castle.57G. Bankes, The Story of Corfe Castle (1853), 59, 182. On 31 March 1643 he was appointed to the county sequestrations committee, and on 7 May and 3 August 1643 to the committees for fifth and twentieth parts, and for the weekly assessment.58A. and O. There is no sign that Trenchard was tempted to join the king when royalist forces overran Dorset in the summer of 1643, although his eldest son, Thomas, was thought by some to be wavering in his allegiance.59Bodl. Tanner 62, f. 170v. A year later the advance of the 3rd earl of Essex into the west effectively ended royalist hegemony in Dorset. The appointment of a county committee for Dorset on 1 July 1644 naturally included Trenchard in its membership, and the surviving committee orders show Trenchard as present at meetings from September 1644.60Dorset Standing Cttee, ed. Mayo, pp. x-xii; Add. 29319, ff. 17-18. In August 1645 Trenchard appointed new feoffees for his estate, including John Browne I, John Fitzjames, his brother John Trenchard, William Sydenham, Richard Brodrepp (of the Dorset committee) and John Stephens* of Gloucestershire.61Dorset RO, D/HIL/T1. This document testifies that, despite the strains of the previous two years, Trenchard’s local network had remained intact.

Trenchard was elected as recruiter knight of the shire for Dorset on 24 November 1645, and in this he may have received support from his brother, John, who would soon become an important member of the Independent interest at Westminster. Yet Trenchard’s activities at Westminster indicate that he was sympathetic towards the rival Presbyterian faction. He took the Covenant on 31 December 1645; on 21 January 1646 he was named to a committee to impose Presbyterian discipline on the ecclesiastical peculiars of the province of London; and in June of the same year he was named to the committee of both Houses to adjudge and determine the scandalous offences that would bar people from Communion.62CJ iv. 393a, 413b, 563a. Other evidence in the summer and autumn of 1646 confirms that Trenchard was close to the Presbyterians of the south west at this time. He had been given formal leave of absence ‘to go into the country’ on 15 June, and on 17 July, during his absence, the leading Presbyterian and doyen of the western committee, Anthony Nicoll*, was ordered to bring in an ordinance to secure him from any damage from the money owed to him by Sir William Poole.63CJ iv. 576a, 620b. Furthermore, in the disputed election at Shaftesbury in November Trenchard joined Fitzjames in backing George Starre*, whose candidacy was opposed by the Independent peers, the 4th earl of Pembroke (Philip Herbert*) and 2nd earl of Salisbury (William Cecil*).64Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 64-5. Whatever company Trenchard was keeping, it was not sufficient to compromise his relations with his more radical brother. In April 1646 Sir Thomas had joined John on the committee on the ordinance to drain the Great Level, a matter than concerned John personally, as he had been involved in the 4th earl of Bedford’s fen-draining schemes in the 1630s.65CJ iv. 521a, 525b. It may have been through his brother’s influence with the Russells that Trenchard acquired lodgings in the Piazza at Covent Garden in the summer of 1647.66WPL, MS H433, unfol.

Trenchard had been given leave to return to Dorset in June 1646, and it is doubtful that he ever returned to Westminster. He was again given leave on 27 February 1647, was excused his absence from the House on 9 October of that year, and on 23 December the Commons named him as one of the MPs to enforce the assessment ordinance in the county.67CJ v. 100b, 329b, 400b. He was again excused on 24 April and 26 September.68CJ v. 543b; vi. 34b. The minute books of the Dorset county committee confirm that Trenchard attended regularly during September and October 1646, March 1647, and December 1647 to March 1648, and from June to September 1648.69Dorset Standing Cttee, ed. Mayo, passim. John Fitzjames’s letterbooks show Trenchard was in Dorset in September and November 1646 and at the very beginning of December 1648.70Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 44v, 64; 548, f. 38v. Trenchard’s almost constant presence in the county brought him immediate financial benefits. Between the end of the first civil war and the beginning of the second, Trenchard, in conjunction with John Browne I, tried to wrest valuable properties from the sequestered royalists.71Brunton and Pennington, Long Parliament, 170-1. There was also a rumour circulating that Trenchard had married one of his daughters to a delinquent, only to betray his new son-in-law to the sequestrators, and regain the £1,200 portion as a reward.72Bankes, Corfe Castle, 231. Another of Trenchard’s local goals in the later 1640s was the disbandment of the troops quartered in the county. In July 1648 Trenchard asked to be excused his duties at Westminster as he was occupied with settling the Dorset militia, and in November he was listed as one of those who had contributed a £250 loan for disbanding troops.73HMC Portland i. 482; Dorset Standing Cttee, ed. Mayo, 471. The accounts of the new Dorset treasurer, Samuel Bull, show that Trenchard gave money to pay off Edward Massie’s* troops in October 1648 and January 1649.74Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, ff. 53, 57.

Trenchard’s influence locally also allowed him to make discreet efforts on behalf of his less fortunate, royalist, relatives. This is particularly apparent in the case of the Strangways family, whose connection with the Trenchards was re-established even before the end of the first civil war. On 7 February 1646 the Trenchard brothers were granted permission to visit Sir John Strangways, who had been incarcerated in the Tower for his royalism.75CJ iv. 431b. At about the same time, Strangways’s daughter-in-law, Susanna (wife of Giles Strangways*), petitioned the county committee and her brother, Thomas Trenchard, for the return of a fifth of the sequestered estate, to preserve her children from destitution.76Dorset RO, D/FSI/233(ii), unfol. In the following year, requests came from Grace Strangways, Sir Thomas Trenchard’s sister, that her husband, Sir John, be allowed to compound, and she later thanked Lady Trenchard for the intervention, at county-level, of Sir Thomas, and ‘the rest of my friends which joined with him in the letter which was sent in my behalf to the committee’.77Dorset RO, D/FSI/233, unfol.

At the beginning of December 1648, Trenchard had probably been absent from Westminster for nearly two and a half years. A mangled version of his name appears on one of the published lists of Members secluded at Pride’s Purge, though whether he can meaningfully be included among them seems doubtful.78CJ v. 543b; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 307-8. He seems to have greeted the end of his political career with equanimity. Over the next few months he maintained links with county figures such as John Fitzjames (whom he met at Dorchester in September 1649), and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper (who dined at Wolveton in January 1650), but he seems to have abdicated his local influence to his son and heir, Thomas.79Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, f. 74v; Christie, Shaftesbury, i, appx., p. liv. In March 1650 Trenchard was retired from the commission of the peace, to die, apparently intestate, two years later.80C231/6, p. 176. Trenchard’s retirement had little impact on Dorset politics: the standing committee continued to be a family affair, for although Trenchard and the Erles had been removed, the early 1650s saw the rise of John Trenchard and his sons-in-law, John Bingham and William Sydenham, in national as well as local politics.