PACKER, William (fl.1644-63), of Theobalds, Cheshunt, Herts.

According to John Lilburne, writing in 1653, it was only Packer’s military career that ‘raised him from the dunghill, or a mean condition, to be one of the arbitrary and cruel lords or taskmasters of the people of England’.22J. Lilburne, The Upright Mans Vindication (1653), 2 (E.708.22). Unfortunately the location of this metaphorical dunghill is a mystery. Nothing whatsoever is known about Packer’s family background or early life. That he was first recorded in early 1644 serving under Oliver Cromwell* might indicate that he was from the Cambridgeshire or Huntingdonshire area. One suggestion is that he was related in some way to Humphrey Packer, a successful brewer from Ware, Hertfordshire. In 1634 Humphrey Packer got into trouble with the court of high commission for refusing to take communion after altar rails were installed in his local church and he later became treasurer of the Hertfordshire county standing committee during the civil war.23The Impact of the Civil War on Herts. ed. A. Thomson (Herts. Rec. Soc. xxiii.), 123n, 226; CSP Dom. 1634-5, pp. 122, 261, 266, 270, 318, 324, 543; 1635, pp. 179, 181, 188, 190, 210, 212, 215, 221; 1635-6, pp. 83, 109, 123-6, 470, 483. But a connection between the two men is pure speculation. The MP should not be confused with the William Packer (or Parker) who held various local offices in Monmouthshire during the 1640s and 1650s.24CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 699; A. and O., i. 970, 1136, ii. 34, 39, 304, 472, 669, 973, 1074, 1328; Justices of the Peace ed. Phillips, 359-61. That man may have been William Packer of Rogiet, who died in late 1672 or early 1673.25PROB11/341/241.

Serving under Cromwell, 1642-53

In 1659 in a speech in the House of Commons, Packer recalled that he had served under Cromwell when the latter had been only a captain of horse.26Burton’s Diary, iii. 165-6. That would have been between the outbreak of the civil war in the autumn of 1642 and Cromwell’s promotion to become a colonel the following spring. That seems entirely plausible. It is also consistent with his first appearance in the records. In March 1644 he was a lieutenant in Cromwell’s regiment serving in the troop commanded by Cromwell’s nephew, Valentine Wauton junior, son of Valentine Wauton*.27Firth, ‘Raising of the Ironsides’, 29. On about 8 March Cromwell travelled from Buckinghamshire (where he had helped take Hillesden House) to Cambridge. In Cromwell’s absence, Packer, who was at Bedford, refused to obey orders from Lawrence Crawford, the Scot who had only recently been appointed as the Eastern Association’s sergeant-major-general. Crawford, who thought him ‘a notorious anabaptist’, therefore had Packer arrested. Cromwell then sent Nathaniel Rich* to tell Crawford that Packer was ‘a godly man’.28Manchester Quarrel, 59. After the younger Wauton was killed at Marston Moor (2 July 1644), Parker was promoted to his place as captain.29Firth, ‘Raising of the Ironsides’, 29; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 8. Several weeks later his troop was quartered at Godmanchester, Huntingdonshire.30SP28/25, f. 538. In early 1645 he and his men were stationed at Digswell, Hertfordshire.31Impact of the Civil War ed. Thomson, 123. That February James Berry* received pay on behalf of Packer’s troop.32SP28/26, f. 77.

Packer was just the sort of religious radical who made many fearful of the army’s influence. He was already acquiring enemies. When the parliamentarian armies were reorganised in early 1645, it was originally proposed that he should become one of the captains in the ninth regiment of horse under Edward Whalley*. This encountered opposition from the Lords, who viewed him as a potential troublemaker, but in the end Packer got his commission, being appointed instead to the regiment of horse of the lord general, Sir Thomas Fairfax*.33Temple, ‘Original officer list’, 62n, 67 and n; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 58.

In late April 1647 Packer was one of the 151 officers who signed the Vindication, their address to Parliament defending the previous attempts by the soldiers of the New Model army to petition Parliament with their grievances.34Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 471. But before long he began to take a more sceptical view of such agitation. A year later, on 24 April 1648, he was one of a number of officers who prevented a gathering of soldiers at St. Albans called to prepare a petition in support of the Agreement of the People.35I. Gentles, The New Model Army (Oxford, 1992), 245. His main contribution during the second civil war in 1648 was to assist at the siege of Colchester. After the royalists’ surrender (27 Aug.), it was Packer who broke the news to Sir Charles Lucas that he was to be executed by firing squad.36Clarke Pprs. ii. 33. His role during the debates among the officers towards the end of that year may have been limited, as he attended only one of the meetings of the council of officers during November and December 1648. At the one meeting he did attend, on 28 November, he was one of the six officers who drafted the declaration by which the army called for an immediate dissolution of the Long Parliament.37Clarke Pprs. ii. 61, 276-7. It is sometimes said that Packer was present on the scaffold at the execution of Charles I, but that is a confusion with Francis Hacker*.

Packer presumably welcomed the advent of the republic. But his military duties continued much as before. On 22 February 1649 the council of officers considered a Leveller-inspired petition from the soldiers in Fairfax’s regiment on the subject of free quarter. Packer was among the officers then appointed to prepare a petition to the Rump on the subject.38Clarke Pprs. ii. 190. But that April, some of his men helped Fairfax suppress the Leveller mutiny at Burford.39A Full Narative of All the Proceedings (1649), 3 (E.555.7). In the summer of 1650 he was one of a number of army officers who arrested several preachers at Manchester on the grounds that their preaching was seditious.40CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 187-8.

In August 1650 he accompanied Cromwell in the invasion of Scotland. During the battle of Dunbar (3 Sept.) he took part in the decisive flanking attack by which the left wing of the English army circled Broxburn House to fall on the Scottish right flank.41H. Slingsby and J. Hodgson, Original Mems. (Edinburgh, 1806), 147. Several weeks later he informed Cromwell of the profane comments being made by Captain Covell, who denied that Jesus had been human. As a result, Covell was cashiered.42Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 69-70. The following spring Packer raised 100 men for Cromwell’s regiment in Scotland.43CSP Dom. 1651, p. 558. When Edward Sexby was tried by court martial at Edinburgh in June 1651 for various military misdemeanours, Packer was one of the officers who sat in judgment on him. Cromwell’s secretary, William Clarke, was surprised that Sexby did not challenge the presence of either Packer or Salomon Saffrey, as they were his ‘grand enemies’ and thought to be the ‘contrivers of the charge against him’.44Clarke Pprs. v. 28, 31, 34. Later that same year Packer was one of several army officers included on the commission for law reform, chaired by Matthew Hale*, probably to ensure that the more radical opinions in some sections of the army were heard during its deliberations.45Cotterell, ‘Interregnum law reform’, 692-3. In early 1652, on the retirement of Major John Browne, Packer was promoted to Browne’s rank and position.46CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 209; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 70.

Packer’s social and financial position was transformed at about this time when he and a number of other soldiers were granted the former royal palace of Theobalds at Cheshunt in the south-east corner of Hertfordshire. This was their compensation for their military arrears of pay.47VCH Herts. iii. 449; Gentles, ‘Debenture market’, 318; I. Gentles, ‘The management of the crown lands, 1649-60’, Agricultural Hist. Review, xix. 36. The house, a very large Elizabethan mansion, had originally belonged to the Cecils and, after being presented with it by the 1st earl of Salisbury (Sir Robert Cecil†), James I had appointed the future 2nd earl (William Cecil*) as its keeper. Now that it was to be included in the sale of the royal lands, the 2nd earl had lobbied hard for compensation for the loss of his pasture rights, with the result that he had been awarded £5,360 18s 4d by the Rump in December 1651.48CJ vii. 56a-58a; HMC Hatfield, xxii. 423. This matter however did not end there. A concern that Salisbury might revive these claims was probably the reason that Packer and his colleagues petitioned the council of state in April 1652, immediately following the passage of the act for the removal of obstructions to the sale of royal and ecclesiastical lands.49CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 209, 214, 218. Seven months later the Rump rejected the attempt to add a proviso to the bill for the sale of forfeited estates confirming Salisbury’s compensation deal.50CJ vii. 217b-218a.

Packer demolished the house.51VCH Herts. iii. 449. The surrounding estate was then divided between the various members of his syndicate and several of them built their own houses on those plots.52Gentles, ‘Management of the crown lands’, 36. The royalist clergyman Thomas Fuller dubbed this ‘a little commonwealth’.53T. Fuller, The Hist. of the Worthies of Eng. ed. P.A. Nuttall (1840), ii. 38. Although this did not make Packer a great landowner, it was enough to make him a figure of some consequence in the immediate area. One result was that he soon joined the Hertfordshire commission of the peace.54Herts. County Recs. vi. 524. Another was that, with his backing, an important Baptist congregation established itself at Theobalds.55‘Theobalds and Colonel Packer’, Trans. of the Baptist Hist. Soc. iv. 58-63. Packer probably led some of the services himself, which would be why in July 1653 the council of state granted him a licence to preach.56CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 13.

In the weeks following Cromwell’s dismissal of the Rump on 20 April 1653, the new council of state appointed Packer to a number of its committees. The first was when he and four other army officers were asked to ascertain whether prisoner exchanges could be arranged with the Dutch. Others included those on the treatment of wounded soldiers and the postal service.57CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 328, 332, 333, 338, 363, 393. Meanwhile, in late April, Cromwell had sent him to restore order at Swaffham and Bottisham in Cambridgeshire where the locals had been protesting against the fen drainage works of the Bedford Level Adventurers.58Cambs. RO, R.59.31.9.6, f. 76v; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 10.

Defending the protectorate, 1653-8

When in April 1653 Cromwell dismissed the Rump and a new council of state was created, Packer joined with the army officers in writing to the commanders in Scotland and Ireland, Robert Lilburne* and Charles Fleetwood*, welcoming these developments.59The Fifth Monarchy (1659), 24 (E.993.31); Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 112n. He was on the face of things just as accepting of the creation of the protectorate later that same year. Indeed, in December 1654 he was among the officers who declared themselves in favour of the Instrument of Government against the criticism being mounted against it in the first protectoral Parliament.60Clarke Pprs. iii. 11; v. 228-9. Other evidence also shows him working as a loyal servant of the protectorate. In June 1654 he and Adrian Scrope* were sent to suppress the disorders in Gloucestershire over the ban on the growing of tobacco.61CSP Dom. 1654, p. 212. That same month he was one of the Hertfordshire justices of the peace asked by the council to mediate in a dispute among the parishioners of Graveley-cum-Chisfield.62CSP Dom. 1654, p. 227. In March 1655 he was one of the army officers to whom the council turned for advice on disbanding several of the mounted regiments.63CSP Dom. 1655, p. 89. In January 1656 he was included on the council’s committee for the collections in aid of the Piedmontese Waldensians.64CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 100.

During these years Packer began to acquire a reputation as a critic of the Quakers. Or at least that was what George Fox subsequently claimed. In early 1654 Fox was arrested and brought to London. Packer and some of the other army officers visited him, seemingly with the intention of taunting him. Fox was unimpressed.

And then Colonel Packer he began to talk with a light, chaffy [frivolous] mind of God and Christ and the scriptures: and that was a great grief to my soul and spirit when I heard them talk so lightly, so I told him he was too light to talk of the things of God and he did not know the solidity of a man: upon which the officers raged and said would I say so to their colonel: and then Packer and the ranters bowed and scraped on to another: and this Packer was a Baptist.65Jnl. of George Fox, i. 165.

Subsequently, Packer threatened to re-arrest Fox if he tried to preach in the Theobalds area. This was not the sort of threat to deter Fox. When he visited the neighbouring town, Waltham Abbey, some of the locals attempted to break up the meeting.66Jnl. of George Fox i. 166. There were nevertheless already indications that Packer could be considerate towards individual Quakers. In March 1655 another Quaker, Thomas Aldam, was attacked by a crowd when he tried to distribute some of his pamphlets at Whitehall. Packer intervened to save him from the mob.67K. Peters, Print Culture and the Early Quakers (Cambridge, 2005), 69-70.

Packer’s career reached its zenith when Cromwell appointed a number of his most trusted army officers, the major-generals, to act as regional governors. When these appointments were originally made in August 1655, Tobias Bridge* was appointed to deputise for Charles Fleetwood* as the major-general for Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire. Bridge had his doubts about Packer; in December 1655 he told the secretary of state, John Thurloe*, that Packer was ‘not so firm as is pretended’.68CCSP, iii. 5. That warning was disregarded. In February 1656 the council decided to remove Bridge. Packer then replaced him as the deputy major-general in all three counties, exercising his duties jointly with George Fleetwood* in Buckinghamshire.69CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 164; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 102.

On taking up this position, one of Packer’s priorities was to implement the new decimation tax. Almost immediately however he was ordered to drop the proceedings in Buckinghamshire against the newly-rehabilitated Edmund Waller*.70CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 214. As with his colleagues elsewhere, he was also ordered to reduce the size of militias in each of his counties.71CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 235. In May 1656 he, Alban Coxe* and Isaac Puller* were asked to investigate the complaints against Richard Farrer, a preacher at Ware.72CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 305. When he raised a new militia regiment in Hertfordshire in September 1656, he advised Cromwell to appoint Coxe as its colonel.73TSP v. 409.

In early July 1656 Packer pointed out to Thurloe that there were ‘some bad men in corporations under my power, as such as hath been decimated and under bond’ and that others were ‘drunkards and profane swearers’. He therefore sought guidance as to whether he could remove them from their positions.74TSP v. 187. What he did not need to explain to Thurloe was that this would work to their advantage in the forthcoming parliamentary elections. But he did then imply that the two matters were connected in his mind, as he also asked Thurloe as to when those elections were likely to be held.75TSP v. 187. Thurloe’s reply evidently pleased Packer. As he then pointed out to Thurloe, he was not the only person making plans for those elections.

People do begin to ripen in their thoughts towards the election to the Parliament, but with some difference as to persons; yet not so much by far as at some other times. The Lord, in whose hands alone is the great work, I hope will order and dispose thereof, for the refreshment of the hearts of his own dear children, for the perfecting the work of reformation and for exalting his own great name in the earth.76TSP v. 222.

Yet when these elections took place during August 1656, any efforts by Packer to influence the results in Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Oxfordshire left few obvious traces. His inexperience showed. It was especially embarrassing for him that all five of the Hertfordshire county MPs were subsequently excluded, although in two cases, those of William Cecil, 2nd earl of Salisbury and Sir Richard Lucy*, those decisions were quickly reversed. In quite a few of the boroughs, those candidates well-disposed towards the protectorate were elected or re-elected more on the basis of their own influence. In Buckinghamshire Packer may have left matters to George Fleetwood, who probably proved himself to be an even less effective election manager.

Unlike George Fleetwood, Packer did at least manage to secure a seat for himself, but only with some difficulty. He first targeted Oxford. When the Oxford corporation met on 4 August for its election, they granted him the freedom of the city and then nominated him as a candidate. But he was then defeated by the recorder and previous MP, Richard Croke*.77Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 213. There was then talk that he and George Fleetwood, together with two of their associates, John Biscoe* and Cornelius Holland*, might get elected for Buckinghamshire.78Whitelocke, Diary, 445. That came to nothing, however. Packer then thought of challenging the Oxford result. But on being told on 9 September that Packer had asked to see their charter, the Oxford corporation refused, telling him that he could only see it if he first took his oath as a freeman, which involved promising to maintain their privileges.79Oxford Council Acts 1626-65, 214. Eventually Packer secured a seat at New Woodstock, where the corporation was in the process of negotiating a new charter from the government. Picking Packer was an unsubtle signal of their trustworthiness. Later comments by Packer implied that he thought that too many MPs were excluded by the council in the weeks before this Parliament assembled.80Burton’s Diary, iii. 160.

Packer, as a deputy major-general, entered the 1656 Parliament as a powerful figure obviously connected to the lord protector. Recognising this, MPs quickly found work for him to do. His early committee appointments included the privileges committee (18 Sept.), on writs of certiorari (25 Sept.), on the bill for the security of the lord protector’s person (26 Sept.), on the regulation of alehouses (29 Sept.), to control the price of wine (9 Oct.), on the prize office (17 Oct.), on the law of wrecks (28 Oct.) and on the bills to confirm the abolition of the court of wards (29 Oct.) and the privileges of the Isle of Ely (28 Nov.).81CJ vii. 424a, 428a, 429a, 430a, 436b, 440b, 446b, 447a, 460b. When the House created a committee on 22 October to review the administration of recusants’ estates, Packer was the second MP named to it.82CJ vii. 443b.

He spoke for the first time on 3 December during the debate on the bill against popish recusants. The proposed bill gave justices of the peace extensive powers to confiscate property from recusants. Packer doubtless supported the measure but spoke to suggest that the local officials involved should receive fees for their work.83Burton’s Diary, i. 8. He was then added to the committee on the bill.84CJ vii. 463b. During the following day’s debate on the bill to confirm the privileges of the Scottish burghs, he seems to have thought that the fears of some MPs that this would inadvertently confirm anti-English by-laws were probably unfounded.85Burton’s Diary, i. 13. On 5 December he agreed with the claim by Sir Richard Lucy that the private bill being promoted by Hezekiah Haynes* on behalf of the 2nd earl of Carlisle was supported by the earl’s tenants.86Burton’s Diary, i. 20. This would have been based on first-hand knowledge as the lands in question were at Nazing, Essex, just across the county border from Cheshunt. Five days later he also took an interest in another piece of business with a Hertfordshire link when he was included on the committee to consider the petition from the earl of Salisbury.87CJ vii. 466b. Another bill discussed on 5 December also had Packer’s support. The bill against vagabonds and beggars included a clause restricting the distance they could travel from their home parish. Packer thought that they should be restricted as much as possible and proposed that the permitted distance could be as little as one or two miles.88Burton’s Diary, i. 21, 22. He seems to have considered vagabonds to be a particular problem.89Herts. County Recs. vi. 2.

It was also on 5 December that he made his first comments on the case of James Naylor. His attitude was surprisingly supportive. As with Adham, he seems to have been able to put to one side his misgivings about Quakers in general to assist an individual in trouble. Packer’s view at this stage was that MPs should hear from Naylor first before deciding how to proceed against him.90Burton’s Diary, i. 30. He then supported the motion that the matter be adjourned until the following day.91Burton’s Diary, i. 35. When the House moved on from procedural issues and addressed directly the accusations against Naylor, Packer became one of his more eloquent supporters. On 10 December he delivered a long speech in Naylor’s defence. He played down the offensiveness of Naylor’s beliefs, arguing that his views about Jesus were mostly rather orthodox. He then criticised the attempts by some to apply Judaic law to the case. To him this was as inappropriate as applying martial law to civilians or one country’s laws to another. Citing the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew 13: 14-20), he went on to argue in favour of liberty of conscience on a Dutch or Polish model.92Burton’s Diary, i. 99-101.

On 17 December, after Naylor’s punishment had been agreed, MPs debated whether he should be allowed to speak when he appeared at the bar of the House to hear his sentence. As before, Packer took Naylor’s side, declaring that he hoped that Naylor would be granted ‘the liberty of an Englishman to speak for himself’. Repeating a point he had made a week earlier, he also thought it possible that Naylor might yet repent.93Burton’s Diary, i. 166. On 26 December he thought that Cromwell’s letter about the Naylor case would be better considered by a full debate on the floor of the House rather than in committee.94Burton’s Diary, i. 257. He again argued for a debate on this letter four days later.95Burton’s Diary, i. 270.

Present on 25 December, Packer supported the reading the bill against the observance of Christmas Day, as well as speaking in favour of the decimation tax.96Burton’s Diary, i. 229, 236. Two days later he may have been responsible for introducing the bill for the draining of King’s Sedgemoor in the Somerset Levels. That failed to secure a second reading, however.97Burton’s Diary, i. 259; CJ vii. 476a. That he was named to the relevant committee on 18 February 1657 probably indicates that he supported the bill for the better observation of the sabbath.98CJ vii. 493b. But the business he followed with the greatest interest must have been the progress of the decimation bill in January 1657. Its defeat was a conscious rejection by Parliament of the rule of the major-generals. Like the major-generals themselves, Packer’s powers as Fleetwood’s deputy were left without statutory legitimacy and so dissolved almost overnight.

With hindsight, Packer presented himself as an opponent of the Humble Petition and Advice. Speaking two years later in the 1659 Parliament, he seemed to imply that Parliament had been bounced into accepting it. He would also criticise the fact that it was a petition rather than a proper statute and that, instead of granting him it directly, it had called on Cromwell to ‘assume’ the title of king.99Burton’s Diary, iii. 160-1. But these were concerns that at the time he may have kept mostly to himself. His involvement in its passage does seem to have been very limited. On 5 March 1657 he was named to the committee appointed to redraft one of the clauses.100CJ vii. 499b. A fortnight later the House considered the proposal that a clause be included to protect the rights of Protestant nonconformists. Packer, who presumably agreed with this, was one of the MPs then asked to consider the proposed clause in more detail.101CJ vii. 507b. He was also included in the delegation of MPs who waited on the lord protector on 3 April to hear him decline the offer of the kingship.102CJ vii. 519b.

His involvement in the debates on the Additional Humble Petition and Advice was equally limited. On 25 June the House discussed whether to amend the clause in the Humble Petition on who was barred from sitting in Parliament so that it did not extend to any member of the Scottish council. When the question was put for this proviso to be read a second time, the Speaker, Sir Thomas Widdrington*, called it for the yeas. Packer however challenged this, forcing a division which revealed a narrow majority against the proviso. So thanks to Packer, the exemption was not extended to the Scottish councillors.103Burton’s Diary, ii. 308-9; CJ vii. 575a. He also managed to make one final contribution the following day in the last few hours before the adjournment, as he and John Geldart* were the tellers for those who wanted Thomas Bampfylde* to be named as one of the commissioners in the customs and excise bill.104CJ vii. 576a.

Rejecting the protectorate, 1658-9

The second Protectoral Parliament reconvened on 20 January 1658. Three days later Packer was added to the committee on the maintenance of ministers.105CJ vii. 581b. But this second session lasted barely a fortnight and Packer played an indirect but pivotal role in bringing it to an end. First, he spoke out in the Commons against the Other House. This was probably during the debate on 2 February and later that day, on meeting him, Cromwell was said to have challenged him over those comments. Packer allegedly replied that he had spoken ‘in behalf of his country’.106Cal. of the Charters, Rolls and Other Docs. (dating from A.D. 1182), as contained in the Muniment Room at Sherborne House (1900), 141. Adding to Cromwell’s displeasure, some of the London republicans had been collecting signatures for a petition calling for a reform of the militia, for abolition of the protector’s veto and for army officers to dismissed only by a court martial. These were demands to which several of the Baptist officers in Packer’s regiment, including Packer himself, were known to be sympathetic.107C.H. Firth, ‘Letters concerning the dissolution of Cromwell’s last Parliament’, EHR vii. (1892), 107. A meeting between those officers and Cromwell on 3 February failed to resolve these differences.108Cal. of the Charters, Rolls and Other Docs. 141. A still furious Cromwell dissolved Parliament the following day.

However, Cromwell was not prepared to leave the matter at that. Packer and his colleagues would not go unpunished. They were apparently summoned to see Cromwell shortly before or shortly after the dissolution. Thurloe would later tell George Monck* that Packer and the others had ‘all declared their dislike of the present government and made several objections to it, and seemed to speak of the goodness of a commonwealth’.109Clarke Pprs. iii. 140. It is true that as late as 8 February Charles Fleetwood thought there was a chance that Packer might still be saved.110TSP vi. 786. The following day Packer had a private meeting with the lord protector.111TSP vi. 789. At what was probably a subsequent meeting, Cromwell met with the other five officers as well. According to notes by Robert Bennett*, Packer on that occasion ‘dealt plainly with him [Cromwell] which raised his spirits into his old infirmity of passion’.112D. Underdown, ‘Cromwell and the officers, February 1658’, EHR lxxxiii. 105. The most cutting jibe he made against the lord protector was that ‘his voice was the voice of Jacob but his hands the hands of Esau’, implying that Cromwell’s temper had got the better of him.113Underdown, ‘Cromwell and the officers’, 107. All six of them also bluntly told Cromwell that ‘he had left them and not they him’.114Underdown, ‘Cromwell and the officers’, 106. Thurloe’s account of what was probably the same meeting was that

they all said that they were willing still to continue in the army and follow his highness upon the grounds of the old cause, but [they] would not express what they meant by the old cause.115Clarke Pprs. iii. 140.

This did not satisfy Cromwell. All six were dismissed from their commissions. They promised that they would return home and keep out of trouble. John Biscoe, as one of the other officers present, then dared to tell Cromwell that he had just dismissed ‘six as honest officers as any were in his army’.116Underdown, ‘Cromwell and the officers’, 106. After Major John Browne (whom Packer had succeeded) and Major Robert Swallow refused the position, William Boteler* was eventually appointed as Packer’s replacement.117Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 73.

A year later Packer would claim that it had been his opposition to the Other House that had caused his dismissal.118Burton’s Diary, iii. 165-6. Thurloe implied something slightly different when he told both Monck and Sir William Lockhart* that those dismissed were ‘anabaptists’.119Clarke Pprs. iii. 141; TSP vi. 793; CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 288. That was true, in that all six of them were Baptists. Henry Cromwell*, watching from Dublin, thought that Packer and the other dismissed officers were ‘only angry for being disappointed’.120TSP vi. 819. Yet another view was taken by Edmund Ludlowe II*, who subsequently claimed that Packer had refused to promise to Cromwell that he would undertake the defence of the protectorate against anyone except royalists.121Ludlow, Mems. ii. 34. Whatever the immediate reason, Packer clearly disagreed with the direction the protectorate was now taking. This also cost him his friendship with Cromwell.122Burton’s Diary, iii. 166. The two were still unreconciled when Cromwell died seven months later.

There may thus have been a personal element in Packer’s decision to stand for the 1659 Parliament. This would give him a platform from which to reassert his republican convictions. He therefore sought election at Hertford. The outcome of that contest depended on whether the MP needed to be a resident freeman. It would later be claimed that Packer had acquired a house in the town only a month before and that he had been admitted as a freeman only on the evening prior to the poll.123Burton’s Diary, iv. 251-2. On the day itself he was outpolled by James Cowper*, but persuaded the mayor, against the advice of the borough steward, Edward Turnour*, to return him on the grounds of his opponent’s ineligibility. He took his seat and was named to the elections committee (28 Jan.).124CJ vii. 594b.

The most urgent issue facing the new Parliament was whether to legislate to recognise Richard Cromwell* as the new lord protector. During the debate on the subject on 9 February Packer spoke at great length on the many different constitutional issues on which this touched.125Burton’s Diary, iii. 159-69. As he began by acknowledging, he had been directly involved in the protectorate and so apologised for having been one of those ‘guilty of the errors of these latter times and of irruptions of the privileges of this House’.126Burton’s Diary, iii. 159. Among his mistakes, he now thought, was that he had assumed that ‘the great work of reformation’ would not be achieved through Parliament. In particular, he had thought that Parliament would never grant liberty of conscience. The recent election results had, in that respect, been encouraging and so he was now persuaded that Parliament offered the best route by which this could be achieved.

On the specific provisions of the bill before them, he had several serious reservations. One was that ‘recognising’ Richard Cromwell implied that he was already the lord protector. Then there was the question of qualifications for membership of the Commons laid down in the Instrument of Government. Packer had agreed with those, even if he thought that the number excluded in 1656 had been excessive. Even more problematically, he had at the time thought that the Humble Petition was flawed and so now thought it a bad basis on which to accept Richard as his father’s successor. It was all too much like a revival of the hereditary monarchy. That Richard had been widely proclaimed did not impress him. He even put it to them that some of the addresses in Richard’s favour had been more blasphemous than anything Naylor had said. He was equally scathing of the argument that the international military situation required a swift resolution of Richard’s status. More useful in that respect would be the payment of arrears to keep the army happy. It was not necessarily that Packer was unwilling to accept Richard as lord protector. He thought him ‘a good man’. But was that enough?

Give us good laws rather than good men. I will trust more to good laws than to the best men. These are snares. We had a good man before; we all thought so; but he had his temptations. God hath left it upon record that he did not answer all the trust that was put in him.127Burton’s Diary, iii. 165.

He was also exercised by the issue of the Other House. He was no more keen on that now than he had been 12 months before. He used his own dismissal as an example of how a single ruler could decide military appointments merely on a whim. The judges could not be trusted to be much of a check against that and the financial settlement gave the lord protector control over the army. For Packer, the chances that any lord protector would misuse his powers were just too great.

The case of Robert Danvers* or Villiers served as a minor diversion from these elevated themes. It was argued that Danvers should be excluded as MP for Westbury because his estates had been sequestered for royalism and that he had subsequently compounded for them. In the debate of 12 February Robert Jenkinson* mentioned that Packer knew something of this.128Burton’s Diary, iii. 243. That was indeed the case. As the deputy major-general for that region, Packer had helped deal with Danvers’s composition case in 1656.129CCC 1076. Packer now told the House that, having questioned the former governor of Oxford, William Legge†, he had been satisfied that Danvers, although under-aged, had served in the royalist army.130Burton’s Diary, iii. 243-4. Later in that same debate he confirmed that Danvers had dropped his previous surname of Villiers.131Burton’s Diary, iii. 247. When the debate concluded, Packer and Thomas Beaumont* were the tellers for those who succeeded in preventing Danvers being sent to the Tower.132CJ vii. 603a.

On 15 February 1659 a group of Londoners, led by Samuel Moyer*, presented another version of the February 1658 petition to the Commons.133Burton’s Diary, iii. 288-9. Packer was doubtless now even more well-disposed to their demand that army officers could only be dismissed by a court martial. Indeed, the new version of the petition apparently included a postscript alluding to the fact that Packer and others had been dismissed for supporting the earlier version.134Clarke Pprs. iii. 180. MPs debated how warmly to thank the petitioners. The disagreement was over whether the House should acknowledge that they ‘take notice of their good affections’. Those, like Packer, who sympathised with the petitioners, wanted this to remain in the text of their resolutions. But they were defeated in a division in which Packer and Sir Thomas Style* were their tellers.135CJ vii. 604a.

On 23 February the Speaker, Chaloner Chute I*, informed the Commons that Packer had been publicly insulted and threatened, a serious breach of parliamentary privilege. Packer was present in the House and so was able to give full details. On 19 February he and a former officer in his regiment, Capt. John Gladman (another of those dismissed in February 1658), had been returning home when they had been drunkenly abused on the road at Tottenham by a royalist, Sir Henry Wroth of Enfield. The Commons summoned Wroth to appear before them.136Burton’s Diary, iii. 436-7; CJ vii. 606b. Wroth obeyed that order on 4 March. Packer immediately asked that the matter be dropped, on the grounds that Wroth had not known who he was. Those MPs who spoke next, Edward Turnour and Sir Henry’s distant relative, Sir Thomas Wroth*, praised Packer’s fairness, but at least 20 speakers followed them and they expressed a wider range of views. Some thought that this was not a good enough excuse. There was, however, an unexpected twist when Sir Henry was finally allowed to speak. His account of what had happened was rather different from Packer’s. According to him, Packer and Gladman had been riding on either side of the road and had refused to allow him to overtake them. When they had then drawn their swords against him, Wroth had managed to disarm them. He had returned their swords to them when they reached the next town. An embarrassed Packer had then lied to onlookers, telling them that Wroth was returning to him a sword that he had lost. Challenged on his honesty, Packer now asked the House to investigate so that he could call Gladman to testify. The Commons agreed to appoint a committee but released Wroth on bail.137Burton’s Diary, iv. 2-7; CJ vii. 610a-b. Recording all this in his diary, Thomas Burton* thought that Wroth came out of this ‘with a great deal of honour’ and assumed the committee would quietly let the matter drop.138Burton’s Diary, iv. 7.

However, Packer soon faced an even bigger problem. Cowper had petitioned against Packer’s election and on 24 March the committee of privileges and elections finally reported on this to the House. Their recommendation was that Cowper rather than Packer had been rightly elected.139CJ vii. 619b; Burton’s Diary, iv. 249-50. Packer’s speech to the Commons in response to this managed to be both defiant and magnanimous. On the one hand, he asserted in some detail the reasons for thinking that Cowper’s return had been invalid, as well as claiming that many of Cowper’s supporters had not been entitled to vote. He also took the opportunity to state that Wroth’s claims in the unrelated privilege case had been untrue. But, on the other hand, he intimated that he expected the election case to go against him.140Burton’s Diary, iv. 250-1. He was therefore able to be philosophical about his fate

I have spent my blood publicly. I shall go home and plough for it, and plead your cause, however you do in it. I hope I stand right before God, before the Church and before you. I hope I have been faithful to your cause.141Burton’s Diary, iv. 251.

He was right to be pessimistic about his chances. The Commons voted to seat Cowper instead.142CJ vii. 619b, 621b; Burton’s Diary, iv. 251-3; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 488.

The Rump and the Restoration

Packer was one of the immediate beneficiaries of the forced dissolution of the 1659 Parliament and of the collapse of the protectorate. The council of officers that stepped in to take control lost no time in purging the army. Packer was one of the former officers recalled to serve in late April 1659.143Clarke Pprs. iii. 195, 196, 215. Then on 6 May he and some of the other officers waited on the former Speaker, William Lenthall*, with their declaration calling on the Rump to resume its sittings.144Whitelocke, Diary, 513-14; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 344-5. Several weeks later he was warned by the new council of state to prepare for possible royalist uprisings.145CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 353. Given the prevailing instability, the comment attributed to him by George Fox that ‘before the Quakers should have their liberty, he would draw his sword to bring in King Charles’, which he allegedly uttered at about this time, would have been especially provocative.146Jnl. of George Fox, i. 334-5. Not that Fox’s accusation need be true. It oddly reverses what Ludlowe claimed Packer had told Cromwell the year before. In reality Packer was as committed as anyone to seeing the republic succeed. That loyalty was soon rewarded. On reassembling, the Rump had begun its own purge of the army. Among those removed was Boteler. On 25 June, acting on the advice of the committee of safety, the Commons reinstated Packer to his old regiment, this time with the rank of regimental colonel. He and his fellow officers were called in to the House five days later to receive those commissions.147CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 375, 376, 378; CJ vii. 695a, 698a, 699b; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 510; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 71; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 74.

Packer was then posted to Dunkirk.148CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 589. Some weeks previously, the garrison there had mutinied, so Packer’s mission was to restore order and to assess the soldiers’ complaints. He was accompanied by two other officers, Richard Ashfield and John Pearson. The report they sent back to London recommended that a resident governor be appointed, that godly preachers be sent out to minister to the town and that the financing of the garrison be improved.149TSP vii. 712-19; HMC Leyborne-Popham, 118-19. On the latter point, they organised their own short-term remedy, as by September Packer, Ashfield and Pearson had borrowed money from the London goldsmith, Edward Backwell†, to pay the troops.150CCSP iv. 257; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 177-8.

Having supported the resumption of the Rump’s sitting, Packer subsequently supported its termination. In early October he signed the Humble Representation from the army officers.151TSP vii. 755; Clarke Pprs. v. 313. This unambiguously rejected rule by a single person, called on the Rump to prepare a new constitutional settlement and asserted the right of soldiers to petition Parliament. It also revived the old demand that officers only be cashiered by a court martial.152R. Baker, A Chronicle of the Kings of Eng. (1665), 714-16. This petition was presented to the Rump on 5 October. The result, a week later, was that John Lambert*, Packer and the other signatories were dismissed from their commands by the Rump. Packer’s position was taken by Sir Arthur Hesilrige*.153CJ vii. 796a-796b; Diary of Sir Archibald Johnston, ed. J.D. Ogilvie (Scottish Hist. Soc. 3rd ser. xxxiv.), iii. 143; Clarke Pprs. iv. 60; CCSP, iv. 410; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 76. Those dismissed retaliated immediately. The next day the army, led by Lambert, prevented the Rump from sitting.

Over the following weeks it was the group of officers headed by Lambert and including Packer who could most plausibly claim to be in control. On 20 October they declared their loyalty to Charles Fleetwood as commander-in-chief.154Clarke Pprs. iv. 67-8. On 27 October Packer also signed their declaration creating a committee of safety.155Whitelocke, Diary, 537-8; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 367. But that solved nothing. When the Rump resumed its sittings in late December, some of Packer’s troops came out in support of it.156Clarke Pprs. iv. 216. It was now the turn of the Rump to turn out Lambert and his friends. On 9 January 1660 Packer was among the officers ordered out of London.157CJ vii. 806b, 812b; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 305, 306, 309. Lambert’s escape from the Tower in early April offered one last hope to the republicans. Packer was unable to help, however, as he was arrested as soon as the news of Lambert’s breakout became known.158Whitelocke, Diary, 580; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 78.

At the Restoration Theobalds was reclaimed by the crown. Packer nevertheless stayed on in the Cheshunt area.159Herts. County Recs. vi. 59. In February 1661, following Thomas Venner’s uprising, Packer and the other members of the Theobalds Baptist congregation submitted an address to Charles II assuring him of their loyalty.160‘Theobalds and Colonel Packer’, 61-2. That was not enough to prevent Packer being arrested the following autumn. His wife, Elizabeth, joined with the other wives of those arrested in petitioning the privy council for their release.161The Humble Addresses of Several Close Prisoners in the Gatehouse, Westminster (1662), 4. She was granted permission on 30 October to visit him in the Gatehouse prison at Westminster.162CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 128; PC2/55, f. 216v. Some months later she wrote to the secretary of state, Sir Edward Nicholas†, insisting that her husband had kept himself out of trouble since the passage of the Act of Indemnity in 1660.163CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 457. It was perhaps not too surprising that Packer was included in a list compiled by the Hertfordshire justices of the peace in December 1661 of local residents who were not attending church.164Herts. County Recs. vi. 59. On 7 May 1662 the council ordered that he and John Gladman were to be transferred to the Fleet prison.165PC2/55, f. 320. On 2 September the keeper of the King’s Bench prison in Southwark was ordered to deliver the pair to the captain of the Colchester.166CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 476. They were then transferred to Dublin, where Packer was still being held as a prisoner in February 1663.167Bodl. Carte 165, f. 72v. Something is known of Gladman’s subsequent fate. He was in England in 1664, when he was re-arrested, and he survived to become a suspect in the Rye House plot of 1683.168C.H. Firth, ‘The later hist. of the Ironsides’, TRHS n.s. xv. 44; BDBR ii. 11. But of Packer nothing further is known. Whatever his exact fate, George Fox thought it fully deserved, viewing it as ‘the reward of his envy and wickedness’.169Jnl. of George Fox, i. 166. The Baptist congregation at Cheshunt continued in existence for several decades, with later members including Henry Lawrence I* and possibly Richard Cromwell.170‘Theobalds and Colonel Packer’, 62-3.