CARTWRIGHT, William (1610-59), of Normanton, Southwell, Notts.

The Cartwrights of Normanton in the parish of Southwell were a junior branch of the well-established Nottinghamshire family the Cartwrights of Ossington.11Thoroton, Notts. iii. 173. Cartwright’s father, in his will, stipulated that William be raised and educated ‘in the true religion and fear of God, and in civility, learning and good letters according to his degree and calling, as well in some grammar school as also in one of the universities’.12Notts. RO, PR/SW/39/12. Cartwright was duly educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge, and at Lincoln’s Inn, where he was called to the bar just a few weeks before the outbreak of civil war.13LI Black Bks. ii. 362, 363. He made little appreciable impact on Nottinghamshire affairs during the 1640s, and it therefore seems likely that he spent most of the war practising law in London. He should not be confused with William Cartwright of Annesley, who was added to the Nottinghamshire bench in 1647, or the Nottinghamshire royalist officer George Cartwright.14St. 577, f. 41v; C231/6, p. 81; C193/13/4, f. 76; O. Barron, ‘The Cartwrights’, The Ancestor x. 2-3.

Cartwright’s appointment as steward of East Retford in 1647 suggests that he was regarded as well-affected to Parliament. Nevertheless, several of his close relations were committed royalists.15CCC 1350, 1415; P.R. Newman, Royalist Officers (1981), 62-3; Wood, Notts. 175; Barron, ‘The Cartwrights’, 2-3. And one of his clients during the later 1640s was the Rutland royalist peer Baptist Noel*, 3rd Viscount Campden.16SP23/183, p. 77. Cartwright’s legal practice was evidently thriving by 1652, when he, Francis Goodricke* and Lislebone Long* petitioned Lincoln’s Inn for permission to build new chambers at their own expense.17LI Black Bks. ii. 395. During the mid-1650s, Cartwright was party to several deeds relating to the estate affairs of Charles Cavendish, Viscount Mansfield*, and was probably a friend of the Cavendishes or at least of their principal man-of-business – and Cartwright’s fellow Southwell lawyer – Robert Butler.18Notts. RO, DD/P/7/9; DD/P/121/7.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659, Cartwright was returned for East Retford. He probably owed his election to his interest as the town’s steward. He was named to only one committee in this Parliament – to consider judicial proceedings against Major-general William Boteler* – but was more active on the floor of the House, where his contributions to debate suggest that he supported the Cromwellian settlement – at least insofar as it was a bulwark against the ‘commonwealthsmen’ (the republican interest) and the army.19CJ vii. 637a. On 9 February, in a debate on the bill of recognition (the bill confirming Richard Cromwell as protector), he spoke against imposing any qualifications on the protector’s powers not already stipulated in the Humble Petition and Advice.20Burton’s Diary, iii. 170. Similarly, on 22 February, he voiced arguments against binding the Cromwellian Other House – whose members most republican MPs regarded as mere dependents of the protector – although he implied that he was not in favour of restoring a de facto House of Lords.21Burton’s Diary, iii. 413. What appears to have been his longest speech in support of the protectoral constitution came on 17 March, when he defended the right of Members elected for Scottish (and Irish) constituencies to sit in the Commons: ‘consider whether you be a Parliament. You are either a Parliament of England, Scotland and Ireland, or you are no Parliament. Your Act of Union says you shall have 30 [Scottish Members]. If you want [i.e. lack] those 30, you are not a Parliament’.22Burton’s Diary, iv. 166. The republicans saw these Members as Cromwellian placemen, whose right to sit in the Commons was grounded solely upon the will of the protector. Cartwright would have further alienated the republicans and their army allies by urging leniency in the case of Robert Danvers or Villiers* – a Wiltshire MP who had allegedly borne arms against Parliament.23Burton’s Diary, iii. 245. Cartwright made his antipathy towards the army plain on 9 April, when he moved ‘to examine what lands have been bought by the officers, trustees etc., whether in their own or other’s names, contrary to their trusts’.24Burton’s Diary, iv. 385. He was seconded on this occasion by his fellow Lincoln’s Inn lawyer Francis Goodricke. Cartwright and Goodricke teamed up again on 15 April to move that a declaration for the continuance of the excise – a major source of army pay – be read again because of the thinness of the House.25Burton’s Diary, iv. 434. It was provocative actions such as these by the army’s opponents at Westminster that led a group of leading officers to dissolve Parliament a week later.

Cartwright’s speeches in the House were among his last acts upon the public stage. He died in London on 14 May 1659 and was probably buried somewhere in the capital.26Southwell par. reg. No will is recorded. It is likely that he died a wealthy man, for his personal estate during the late 1650s included a mortgage loan of £3,000 that was owed him by the Nottinghamshire gentleman Edward Neville*.27Notts. RO, PR/NW, will of Edward Neville, 1662. Cartwright was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.