SCOT, Thomas II (d. 1648), of London

One of a handful of Commons-men who openly espoused the cause of the Levellers in 1647, Scot was among the most radical figures in the Long Parliament. Unfortunately, he also represents one of its greatest biographical challenges, for his family background and upbringing remain shrouded in obscurity. It has been suggested that he was the son of Joshua Scott of Hull, although this identification may well rest on mistaking Aldborough in the East Riding, where the Hull family owned property, for Aldborough in the West Riding, where Scot was returned as a ‘recruiter’ in 1645.4Poulson, Holderness, ii. 18; Bolton, ‘Yorks.’, 75. As there was no gentry or prominent family of the name Scot or Scott associated with the Aldborough area, it seems safe to assume that he was a carpetbagger. And his election becomes even easier to account for if the ‘Col. Thomas Scot’ who married Grace, daughter of the MP for the neighbouring constituency of Boroughbridge, Sir Thomas Mauleverer, was not, as if often supposed, the Buckinghamshire MP and future regicide Thomas Scot I (who never held military rank) but the Yorkshire recruiter. This Member was often styled ‘Major Scott’ by the clerk of the Commons – although he was also referred to as a colonel on at least one occasion – and the fact that he presented a petition to the Commons in October 1647 on Mauleverer’s behalf would tend to confirm that it was he, and not the Buckinghamshire MP, who had married Sir Thomas’s daughter.5CJ v. 301b, 323a, 330b.

The Yorkshire recruiter can be tentatively identified with the London merchant Thomas Scott, who was either a friend or business acquaintance of Samuel Gosse, a City grocer with ties to the future Leveller leader John Lilburne.6HMC 6th Rep. 39; CJ iv. 212b; K. Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London, 327. How a London merchant had succeeded in marrying into one of Yorkshire’s wealthiest and most ancient families is another mystery, although perhaps not as puzzling as it might first appear. Scott’s coat of arms, as featured on his wife’s memorial tablet in Westminster Abbey, reveal that he traced his descent from the Essex gentry family the Scotts of Stapleford Tawney – of which Thomas Scot I’s family was apparently a cadet branch.7Mural monument of Grace Mauleverer; Vis. Essex ed. W. C. Metcalfe (Harl. Soc. xiii), 287; Bucks. Vis. ed. W. H. Rylands (Harl. Soc. lviii), 111; C. Russell, Three Generations of Fascinating Women (2nd edn.), 261. Scott may therefore have been of gentlemanly status himself – and he was certainly described as a gentleman at his burial in 1648.8St Giles, Cripplegate par. reg. It is also worth noting that by late 1643 there was a ‘Serjeant Major’ or ‘Major Scott’ serving in or with Parliament’s northern army under Ferdinando 2nd Lord Fairfax*.9CJ iii. 353b, 359a, 365b, 369a. This may have been a Scottish officer – or it may have been the London merchant, who was described in 1644 as a ‘serjeant major in the Parliament service’.10HMC 6th Rep. 39. If it was the latter, then he would have been well known to Mauleverer, who was himself an officer under Fairfax and a prominent member of the Fairfaxes’ circle in the West Riding.11Supra, ‘Thomas Mauleverer’.

Returned for Aldborough in the autumn of 1645, Scot II had taken his seat in the House by mid-November at the latest and was probably the ‘Thomas Scott’ who took the Covenant on 31 December in a group that included eight other Yorkshire recruiters.12CJ iv. 393a; Perfect Occurrences no. 48 (14-21 Nov. 1645), sigs. Bb4r-v (E.266.20). But acquiring something like an accurate picture of his appointments in the House is complicated by the election that same autumn of Scot I. Although the Yorkshire recruiter was an army officer, the clerks of the House were not always careful in using his military rank to distinguish him from his civilian namesake.13CJ iv. 562b; v. 195a. Consequently, it cannot automatically be assumed that references in the Journals to ‘Mr Scott’ – as distinct from ‘Major’ or ‘Colonel Scott’ – relate entirely to Scot I. Nevertheless, it is significant that between the autumn of 1645 and Scot II’s death early in 1648, the two men were named to the same committee on only four occasions.14CJ v. 35a, 89a, 195a, 301b, 302a. Either their appointments did not overlap to any great extent – which seems unlikely, given the large number of committee nominations for ‘Mr Scott’ – or one Member was much more active than the other. And in the light of the fact that there was no noticeable drop in the frequency with which ‘Mr Scott’ was nominated to committees after Scot II’s death, that more active MP was almost certainly Scot I.

If it is assumed, therefore, that the majority of references to ‘Mr Scott’ before early 1648 relate to Scot I, Scot II was named to a minimum of eight Commons committees during his relatively brief parliamentary career.15CJ iv. 703a; v. 89a, 195a, 237b, 302a, 332a, 336a, 357a. He was probably the ‘Mr Scott’ who was active during the summer of 1646 on the House’s Northern Association Committee*, which was dominated by friends of the Fairfaxes and men sympathetic to the New Model army – among them, Sir Thomas Mauleverer.16CJ vi. 421b. And he may have been the Member who had been added on 30 May to the so-called ‘northern committee’, chaired by Lord Fairfax’s man-of-business Thomas Stockdale, which became the principal clearing house in the Commons for evidence of the ‘abuses’ committed by the Scottish army in Yorkshire and adjacent counties.17CJ iv. 559a. But Scot’s interest and involvement in the House’s proceedings may well have been relatively limited, for on 5 October his likely friend and fellow Yorkshire recruiter Thomas Chaloner was ordered by the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs to move the Commons that ‘Major Scot, one of the Members of the House, may ... be employed in the wars of Ireland’.18SP63/262, f. 125; CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 525. On 17 October, the Commons gave him leave to serve in Ireland and recommended him to the Star Chamber Committee ‘for employment there according to his quality’.19CJ iv. 697b. In the event, he remained in London – his intention perhaps being to leave for Ireland at the start of the new campaigning season in the spring – receiving committee appointments in October 1646 and February 1647.20CJ iv. 703a; v. 89a. With the Presbyterians in control at Westminster by the spring of 1647 and intent on using the Irish service as a means of dismembering the New Model army, Scot seems to have shelved his desire for military command in Ireland.

Scot was named to at least two committees during the summer of 1647 and, like Scot I, was among those Parliament-men who fled to the army following the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster on 26 July.21CJ v. 195a, 237b. Both men signed the ‘engagement’ of the fugitive Members on 4 August, in which Fairfax and his men were eulogised for their ‘Christian, noble and public affection to the good, peace and prosperity of this kingdom and...faithfulness to the true interest of the English nation’.22LJ ix. 385b. Scot II had become a sufficiently prominent opponent of the Presbyterians by this point to feature in an anti-army newsletter

Major Scot, an Independent Member ... lately, and in the presence of the king, being asked by Major General [Richard] Browne* what good end they would make in the House, made a desperate sudden resolution: they could never make a good end till they took off the king’s heads [sic] that stood there. To whom Major General Browne replied, I had thought, sir, you had come to have kissed the king’s hand; sir, said Major Scot, I had rather follow him to the gallows ...23The Intentions of the Army Plainly Discovered (1647), 1-2, (E.400.37).

This encounter had evidently taken place in the two months after the army had seized the king on 3 June. On 21 June, (Sir) Edward Hyde* had been informed by one of his agents that Scot had gone to Fairfax’s headquarters at Uxbridge, from where he had relayed news to his friends that ‘all goes very well in the army for the king’.24Bodl. Clarendon 29, f. 244.

Scot returned to Westminster with the other fugitive Members, and on 11 August 1647 he was appointed to request the rector of Fulham, Isaac Knight, to preach the next fast sermon.25CJ v. 272b. On 17 September, the House set a date for consideration of a petition in Scot’s hands and recommended by Sir Thomas Fairfax*, the commander of the New Model – this was probably the petition from Mauleverer, requesting recompense for his losses in Parliament’s service, that was read on 12 October.26CJ v. 306b, 323a, 330b. When the Independent interest divided on 22 September over the issue of whether to pursue a personal treaty with the king, Scot sided with the more radical element under Henry Marten and Thomas Rainborowe, which demanded that the House have no further dealings with Charles. In debate, Scot clashed with Oliver Cromwell, Henry Ireton, Nathaniel Fiennes I, Oliver St John and Sir Henry Vane II, who were said to have ‘spoken much in the king’s behalf’.27Clarke Pprs. i. 231. According to a newsletter sent to the royalist Sir Richard Levenson* late in September

There has been some snapping lately in the House between some of the root-and-branch men and the officers of the army that are Members. Ireton, moving that the army’s proposals [the Heads of the Proposals] might be considered there and sent to the king, gave occasion to one Scot (an insolent fellow and enemy to the proposals, as all of that spirit are) to let the House know there had been underhand treaties between the officers of the army and the king ... which he desired might be examined, to which Cromwell, by way of reply, took occasion to vindicate his own innocency ...28HMC 5th Rep. 173.

The House granted Scot leave of absence on 25 September 1647 ‘for the recovery of his health’, but he evidently decided to remain at Westminster.29CJ v. 317b. Thus on 1 and 18 October he was added to committees for determining the army’s accounts and to consider the great officers of state and how to recompense those who had been removed from office for adhering to Parliament.30CJ v. 322a, 336a. Deeply suspicious of the king, he may have been the ‘Mr Scott’ named to a committee set up on 6 November for prefacing Parliament’s peace propositions with a declaration that Charles was ‘bound in justice’ to assent to any laws the two Houses should tender him.31CJ v. 351b. It was certainly Scot who was named to a committee on 12 November for investigating the king’s flight the previous day from Hampton Court.32CJ v. 357a.

In typically insolent fashion, Scot attended the army rendezvous at Corkbush Field on 15 November and, with Rainborowe and several other pro-Leveller officers, attempted to incite the soldiers to mutiny in support of the Agreement of the People.33A Full Relation of the Proceedings at the Rendezvous...Held in Corkbush (1647), 4-5 (E414.13); Rushworth, Hist. Collns. viii. 875; Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 234. Military discipline was quickly restored by Fairfax, however, who had Scot sent up under guard to Parliament.34Rushworth, Hist. Collns. viii. 875; J. Lilburne, The Second Part of Englands New-Chaines Discovered (1649), 7 (E.548.16). In a covering letter to Parliament, Fairfax stated that Scot had behaved ‘very factiously, not only testifying his own discontent but stirring up others also to the same’.35LJ ix. 528a. In response to a request from the Lords that Scot should be proceeded against, the Commons resolved on 18 November that his case be referred to a committee appointed two days earlier for investigating Leveller agitation in the army.36LJ ix. 526b; CJ v. 363a; Moderate Intelligencer no. 139 (11-18 Nov. 1647), 1379-80 (E.416.8). Several royalist sources reported that Scot and Rainborowe were suspended from sitting on 18 November and committed to safe custody – although there is no record to this effect in the Journals.37Bodl. Clarendon 30, f. 189; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 10 (16-23 Nov. 1647), 73 (E.416.19); 10 [sic] (16-23 Nov. 1647), 2 (E.416.26). Nothing more is heard of Scot until his death, early in January 1648.38CCSP i. 408. He was buried at St Giles, Cripplegate on 8 January.39St Giles, Cripplegate par. reg. No will is recorded. His obituary was supplied by one of Hyde’s agents: ‘Scot the prime Leveller that mutinied in the army and was most violent against the king is lately dead’.40Bodl. Clarendon 30, f. 261.