WALLER, Sir Hardress (1604-66), of Castletown, co. Limerick.

In the words of one critic in late 1648, Sir Hardress Waller was ‘sometimes [a] cavalier, then a violent Presbyterian, and now a tyrannical Independent’; and in the years that followed he might have added to that list regicide, Cromwellian and commonwealthsman.24C. Walker, Anarchia Anglicana (1661), 30 (E.1052.2). Yet there is little in Waller’s background to explain this apparently erratic behaviour. The Wallers were a solid gentry family, which had been established in Kent since the early fifteenth century. The family’s fortunes had been founded by Richard Waller (d. 1462), who captured the French royal prince, the duke of Orleans, at the battle of Agincourt, and ransomed him for a vast sum (allegedly 400,000 crowns). This he used to buy land, and to build a ‘goodly house’ at Groombridge in Kent.25Harl. 5800, f. 41. Richard’s great-grandson, Sir Walter Waller, had two sons: Sir Thomas, the father of the parliamentarian general, Sir William Waller*; and George, the father of Sir Hardress Waller.

Despite the prominence of his family, little is known of Sir Hardress Waller’s early life. Born and raised in Kent, both of his parents had died by 1622, leaving Waller as sole heir. But Waller’s interests were soon to move from Kent to Ireland. In June 1629 he married the daughter of Sir John Dowdall, an Old English (but nevertheless Protestant) landowner from co. Limerick, and acquired an interest in extensive estates centred on the Castletown seignory, on the Shannon estuary.26M. Maccarthy-Morrogh, The Munster Plantation (Oxford, 1986), 245. Waller soon became closely involved with his new Irish relatives and neighbours. In 1634 he was elected to the Irish Parliament for the co. Limerick borough of Askeaton, presumably on his own interest as a local landowner but also with the support of the 1st earl of Cork.27McGrath, Biographical Dict. Through his wife, Waller was connected with a wide range of local families, including the Southwells, Roches, Piggotts and Caseys, as well as the Dowdalls.28McGrath, Biographical Dict. His involvement in the affairs of his wife’s family is demonstrated by his attempts to protect the infant children of his brother-in-law, Thomas Casey of Rathcannan, using another Munster planter, Sir Philip Percivalle*, as his agent in Dublin.29HMC Egmont, i. 99-100, 103-4. He also had business dealings with the 12th earl of Ormond, from whom he leased land in co. Tipperary, and with George Butler of Kilmacow.30NLI, D.3819; NAI, Lodge’s MSS 1.A.53.55, ‘wardships and liveries’, f. 277.

Waller’s other local contacts included the lord president of Munster, Sir William St Leger, whom Waller would later praise as ‘so dear a friend, and I may say, a father’; and, on a less intimate level, the earl of Cork, who was involved in the Dowdall/Waller finances from the late 1620s, and Waller was apparently acting as the earl’s local agent in 1634-5.31Bodl. Carte 3, f. 498; Lismore Pprs. ser. 1, ii. 312; iv. 13, 38, 124-5; v. 173. His wife’s substantial inheritance was encumbered by debts and mortgages, and Waller encountered severe financial difficulties by the end of the 1630s. In 1636 the earl of Cork lent him £1,000, with lands in Limerick as security, and by 1642 payments had lapsed, the mortgage was foreclosed, and Waller was forced to lease back the same land from the earl for a rent of £80 per annum.32Lismore Pprs. ser.1, iv. 143, 145, 152, 159, 188; D. Townshend, Life and Letters of the Great Earl of Cork (1904), 473, 482.

This mixture of family connections in Ireland, and the pressures of indebtedness, may have encouraged Waller to side with the critics of Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford in 1640-1. He was elected for the 1640 Irish Parliament for co. Limerick, and became one of the half-dozen most influential Protestant MPs in the second and third sessions of the Irish Parliament of 1640.33McGrath, Biographical Dict.; M. Perceval-Maxwell, Outbreak of the Irish Rebellion of 1641 (Dublin, 1994), 74. He signed the ‘November Petition’ of the Irish Houses to the king, objecting to Strafford’s abuses of power, and served as one of the delegates who travelled to England to present this document to the king.34H. F. Kearney, Strafford in Ireland (2nd edn., Cambridge 1989), 193. Waller’s continuing contacts with the Catholic Old English are particularly striking. On 8 April 1641 he was the only Protestant to join a petition of the inhabitants of Connaught and northern Munster offering composition money and royal rents to the crown, in an attempt to avoid further plantation in the west of Ireland.35CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 269-70.

Rebellion in Ireland, 1641-4

The outbreak of the Irish rebellion in October 1641 must have come as a shock to Waller, as many of his former friends and allies among the Old English gentry joined the insurgents. When rebellion reached Munster in late November, Lord President St Leger appointed Waller governor of the castle at Askeaton, on the recommendation of the earl of Cork.36Chatsworth, CM/22, no. 88. His own estate at nearby Castletown was robbed by the rebels in January 1642 and a few weeks later fell into enemy hands, with Waller losing (by his own estimate) goods, livestock and lands worth over £11,000.371641 Depositions website; Irish Rebellion ed. Hogan, 24-5. By February of the same year Waller had joined the provincial council, where he served under St Leger and alongside Cork’s eldest son, Viscount Dungarvan (Sir Richard Boyle*).38Bodl. Carte 2, f. 334. From the beginning of the rebellion, factional divisions threatened to split the Munster Protestants, with St Leger and the earl of Cork heading rival parties in the province. Waller was forced to make a choice, and despite Cork’s continuing favour to the young man, he threw in his lot with the party led by St Leger and his son-in-law, Lord Inchiquin. In early 1642 St Leger made Waller lieutenant-colonel of his own regiment, and in May of that year recommended him to the Commissioners of Irish Affairs in Westminster, for his ‘extraordinary forwardness and zeal to his Majesty’s service’.39Irish Rebelllion ed. Hogan, 33-4. When St Leger fell sick in June he delegated his authority as president to a council of war dominated by an anti-Boyle element which included Inchiquin, Waller and William Jephson*, and after the president’s death, Inchiquin and his allies wrote to Westminster, asking that Waller be granted the command of his regiment.40Bodl. Carte 3, f. 259; Irish Rebellion ed. Hogan, 62, 65. When Waller travelled to England in September 1642, it was as Inchiquin’s agent, and the earl of Cork suspected that his main aim was to gain the presidency for Inchiquin.41Bodl. Carte 3, f. 498.

Despite Cork’s suspicions, Waller’s primary role in England does not seem to have been narrowly factional: rather he intended to monitor the first steps towards war in England, and lobby for peace talks between king and Parliament which, it was hoped, would be the precursor a united expedition against the rebels in Ireland.42Bodl. Carte 7, f. 160. In early December 1642 Inchiquin told the earl of Ormond in Dublin that he had received bad news from Waller in London, ‘that they are there so involved in their own danger that a word of Ireland will not be heard’.43Bodl. Carte 4, f. 83. It was at this time that Waller, accompanied by his fellow Irish colonels, Sir James Montgomery, Audley Mervyn and Arthur Hill*, attended the king at Oxford, to present a petition calling for ‘some speedy remedy’ for the situation in Ireland.44Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 533; Add. 31116, p. 27. The 1st earl of Clarendon (Edward Hyde*) recorded the cool reaction of the monarch: ‘who well knew this petition was sent by the permission of those at Westminster, and that the agents employed were men of notorious disaffection to him, who looked for some such answer as might improve the envy of the people’.45Clarendon, Hist. ii. 491-2. Irish Protestant hopes were dashed by the failure of the Oxford peace negotiations by the beginning of April 1643. Waller was in London at this time, and seems to have remained in England throughout the spring and summer, returning to Oxford before the cessation of arms between the king and the Irish rebels was signed in September.46CJ iii. 35b. On 1 October the king wrote to Ormond, recommending Waller, and ‘to intimate unto you that we are well satisfied of his loyalty and fidelity to us... [and that] he suffer no prejudice by occasion of his attendance on us, and the time he hath spent here in England’.47Bodl. Carte 7, f. 3. Despite the king’s confidence in his loyalty, Waller seems to have made influential enemies among the royalist ranks during his brief sojourn at Oxford, and Ormond warned Inchiquin that: ‘he hath lain under some suspicion for a good while at court’.48Bodl. Carte 7, f. 525. It seems likely that Waller had attracted such animosity by openly questioning the cessation, as after his return to Munster in December 1643 he told Ormond plainly that he thought the cessation had effectively ruined the province.49Bodl. Carte 8, f. 147.

Waller’s concern about the local impact of cessation of arms was confirmed in the early months of 1644. Inchiquin, fearful of the influence that his enemies (including Viscount Muskerry, president of the Confederate council) enjoyed with the king, resolved to travel to Oxford in January 1644, leaving military affairs in Munster under Waller’s control.50Bodl. Carte 9, f. 50v. Over the next few weeks, Waller sent a volley of complaints to Ormond and others about the weakness of the Protestant army in Munster and the hostility of the Confederates, who threatened the cut off supplies to the Protestant garrisons completely.51Bodl. Carte 9, ff. 125, 163, 357; HMC Egmont, i. 199, 202. The Confederates, in turn, voiced their suspicions of the Munster Protestants, and especially Waller, ‘whom most men do believe to be a roundhead’.52Hist. of the Irish Confederation ed. J.T. Gilbert (7 vols. Dublin, 1882-91), iii. 134. The Irish agents in Oxford told the king of their fears for the security of ‘the city of Cork, commanded by Sir Hardress Waller, cousin german to Sir William Waller and always devoted and affected to the Parliament’.53Bodl. Carte 10, f. 536. Inchiquin returned from court with worse news. The Irish Catholic agents had been well received by the king, and Inchiquin had himself been refused the presidency of Munster. His immediate response was to send Waller to wait on the king, ‘to set forth to his royal view the straits this province is in’.54Bodl. Carte 10, f. 531. Waller’s second mission to Oxford may have been the last attempt by Inchiquin’s party to alert the king to the dangerous situation in Munster: another group of Protestant agents (led by Sir Charles Coote*) had been dismissed from the king’s presence, and had immediately travelled to Westminster in May 1644. The details of Waller’s own brief attendance at court are obscure. George Lord Digby* later sent Ormond copies of papers ‘which were the subject of Sir Hardress Waller’s employment hither’; but Inchiquin’s sudden defection to Parliament in mid-July brought an end to any such discussion, and the prominence of Waller’s regiment in expelling the Catholics from Cork city made their colonel unwelcome at Oxford.55Bodl. Carte 12, f. 99; Gilbert, History of the Irish Confederation iii. 240. Waller had returned to London by the end of August, and in September he attended the Committee of Accounts.56CSP Dom. 1644, p. 450; SP28/252, ff. 99-100.

New Model army, 1645-9

1645 saw a sea-change in Sir Hardress Waller’s political career. In January, he was still an integral member of Inchiquin’s party in Munster, although he seems to have had friends in the Committee of Both Kingdoms, which ordered that his regiment should be maintained at full strength, despite Waller’s extended absence in England. The committee also recommended that Waller’s governorship of Cork city should be continued, under a lieutenant-governor if necessary, and allowed him to recruit a troop of horse.57CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 237, 255. Yet Waller’s focus of attention soon switched from Ireland to England. From March 1645 he served under his cousin, Sir William Waller, in the west, where he joined Oliver Cromwell* in defeating royalist forces in Wiltshire.58Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 333; Add. 31116, p. 387; Harl. 166, f. 188v. Shortly afterwards, he took the Solemn League and Covenant, and was appointed colonel of a New Model regiment of foot originally allocated to a Scottish officer, James Holborne.59Bodl. Carte 14, f. 425. In early June Waller was authorised to recruit his regiment and to join the army; and he led his regiment in the front rank of the New Model army at Naseby on 14 June.60CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 563, 592; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 42-3.

Service with the New Model seems to have had a profound impact on Waller, religiously as well as politically. His zealous enthusiasm for Parliament’s cause was noted at the siege of the Catholic stronghold of Basing House in October 1645: his regiment assaulted the most heavily defended outworks, and it was reported that Waller, ‘performing his duty with honour and diligence, was shot in the arm, but not dangerously’.61Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 93. The change in Waller’s mental attitude is apparent in his letter of 4 December 1645 to his old Munster friend, Sir Philip Percivalle. Waller recounted that had been visited by their neighbour, Sir William Fenton, ‘who surprised me like one of Job’s messengers’, and had encouraged him ‘to try the affections of some of the prime movers of this army [the New Model], wherein God’s spirit wrought so powerfully with them that beyond their power they extended themselves for our instant relief’. Waller added that ‘tis certain our greatest hopes for Ireland is from this army, about which I have had many free and serious discourses with Lieutenant-general Cromwell, whose spirit leads much that way’.62HMC Egmont, i. 264-5. Waller’s prose style, unremarkable before this time, had acquired an overtly religious quality, and his approval of Oliver Cromwell* and the New Model as the solution to Ireland’s ills marked a break-down in his relations with Inchiquin, who was himself engaged in the three-way competition for the lieutenancy of Ireland with Cromwell and Viscount Lisle (Philip Sidney*).63HMC Egmont, i. 268-9.

During the winter of 1645 and the spring of 1646, Waller was in the south west of England, assisting (and from February 1646 commanding) Parliament’s forces besieging Exeter.64Clarendon, Hist. iv. 108; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 99, 262. In April he treated for the surrender of the town, before joining the rest of the army before Oxford.65Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 443. Waller’s pride in the military successes of the New Model was offset by the increasingly parlous state of his personal finances. In February 1646, he was profuse in his thanks to Percivalle for his efforts in Munster to raise ‘a sum so inconsiderable that, not long since, neither you nor I would have had our servants to travail for it’.66HMC Egmont, i. 280. The servicing of debts swallowed any sums received from the government. Thus, a payment of £300 authorised by the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs in April and May 1646 was reassigned to the commissary, John Davies*; and £800 granted to Waller under a parliamentary ordinance in January 1647 was redirected to the Irish Committee’s secretary, and speculator, William Hawkins, even before it had been issued.67CSP Dom. 1625-49, pp. 694, 705; 1645-7, pp. 468, 519; CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 446.

Financial worries combined with Waller’s new political and religious zeal, making him impatient for a re-conquest of Ireland in 1646. The appointment of Viscount Lisle as lord lieutenant did little to assuage Waller’s disappointment that Cromwell had been rejected for the job, and in February 1646 he complained that ‘I do not hear the work is like to be carried on by such as carry a two-edged sword in their hearts as well as their hands’.68HMC Egmont, i. 280. In June Waller again brought the sufferings of Munster to the attention of the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs, and shortly afterwards asked the committee to allow him to raise 500-600 men in England to recruit his existing regiment in Ireland.69CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 465-6, 469-70. Authorisation was only granted on 28 August, when Waller was allowed to take 1,200 recruits from the western forces now disbanding, and further delays may have prompted him to submit detailed propositions to the committee on 11 September, suggesting ways to fund and transport the new troops efficiently.70CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 501, 511. When December brought no relief, Waller joined Sir William Parsons, Sir John Temple*, Arthur Annesley* and Sir Arthur Loftus – all men with Irish interests and Independent sympathies – in presenting further propositions, centred around the immediate dispatch of Lord Lisle and his army to Munster, and the need to wrest control of Ulster from the Scots.71Bodl. Carte 19, ff. 604-6.

Lisle’s expeditionary force arrived in Munster at the end of February 1647, and the lord lieutenant was accompanied by Waller as major-general of the army. The target was not merely the Irish rebels, as Percivalle was warned, for ‘doubtless they mean much ill to Inchiquin’, and Waller and Sir Arthur Loftus were soon active in preventing the lord president’s attendance on Lisle and his inclusion in strategic discussions.72HMC Egmont, i. 362, 372-3. This attack on Inchiquin’s authority was to fail when Lisle’s year as lieutenant expired in April 1647, but before admitting defeat, Waller joined Algernon Sydney* in petitioning the council board for permission to take over the command of the Munster army.73HMC Portland, i. 419. The failure of this plan brought another scheme, to intrude Waller, Sydney and Roger Boyle*, Lord Broghill, alongside Inchiquin, as commissioners for the government of Munster: thus giving the Independents a three to one majority in any decision-making. On the expiry of Lisle’s own commission, Inchiquin put an end to such plans, by staging a military show of force in Cork city, and the government of Munster reverted to his charge as lord president. The defeat of the Independents left Waller very isolated, and he seems (momentarily) to have lost his nerve. On 22 April, after Lisle’s departure for England, he attended Inchiquin, ‘and after a fawning manner made great professions of good intentions’, begged to be retained as major-general in the province, and enlisted the support of Sir William Waller to persuade Inchiquin to employ him.74HMC Egmont, i. 392, 393, 395. Inchiquin’s response was scornful:

I cannot think him a fit man to be employed in reducing people to obedience to some ordinance of Parliament, and I conclude that whosoever accounts them a yoke, want nothing but power and conveniency to shake them off, wherefore I confess I would not willingly be joined here with any Independent. Besides, I desire Will Jephson may have that command.75HMC Egmont, i. 395.

By denying Waller his command, Inchiquin had removed not only his military influence in Munster, ‘his fortune engaging him there’, but also the salary which allowed him to prop up his already shaky finances.76HMC Egmont, i. 405-6. The appointment of Inchiquin’s right-hand man, William Jephson, in his stead, added to the insult, and the whole humiliating experience may have influenced Waller’s increasing involvement with the New Model army in the following weeks.

The last days of the Lisle lieutenancy in Ireland coincided with the mustering of regiments at Saffron Walden, which marked the beginning of the New Model’s involvement in the political process. Waller’s regiment marched from the north of England in early April, and was soon joined by its colonel, who reached London in Lisle’s entourage on 1 May 1647.77Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 447, 476. The army feared that the Presbyterians, now in the ascendancy at Westminster, would disband the New Model and send its former members, including Waller’s regiment, to Ireland.78Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 493; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 749, 750, 754, 756. In response, Waller’s regiment took a leading part in the Saffron Walden debates from the very beginning. On 6 May, one of Waller’s captains, John Clarke*, presented a petition to the parliamentary commissioners denying that the army had any enthusiasm for the proposed expedition, and complaining of leading MPs ‘who by false informers are much deceived and the relief of Ireland obstructed and retarded’.79Clarke Pprs. i. 31-2. On 14 May Clarke was joined by Captain Thomas Smith and Lieutenant-colonel Edward Salmon* in presenting the regiment’s grievances in full. They distrusted the Irish service, and suspected that Parliament wanted to disband the army without paying its arrears; in an article unique to this regiment. The officers also complained that ‘tender consciences’ were now ‘laid upon the rack’, and that ‘faithful, cordial godly men’ had been passed over in favour of ‘ambidexters and neuters’.80Worcester College, Oxford, Clarke MS XLI, ff. 117-118v. On 19 May the army agitators, including Robert Mason of Waller’s regiment, wrote to their fellow soldiers warning them that ‘the destroying designs are in hand’, and urged them not to join the Irish service.81Clarke Pprs. i. 87-8. At first, the driving force for this radicalism seemed to come from within the regiment itself. Waller was slow to become involved in the army’s discussions – on 29 May he declined to vote in the council of war because ‘of his long absence’ – but at the beginning of June he represented the army in meetings with the parliamentary commissioners and the City of London, and joined Colonel Nathaniel Rich* and Major Matthew Thomlinson* in presenting the army Remonstrance to Parliament on 23 June.82Clarke Pprs. i. 110; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 545, 554-5, 591, 592. Waller was active at council of war meetings from the beginning of July, and was one of the officers appointed to meet the 12 agitators to perfect the army’s proposals on 18 July.83Clarke Pprs. i. 148, 176, 183, 217. But his primary importance in the summer of 1647 was in his involvement in another aspect of the campaign against the Presbyterians: the attack on Inchiquin.

The attempt to impeach Inchiquin in the summer of 1647 was led by Loftus and Broghill. On 14 June, Percivalle, also under attack, begged Waller not to heed the reports of ‘some malicious persons [who] have tried to render odious’ the name of his old friend.84HMC Egmont, i. 417. Percivalle was alarmed by the departure of Jephson in late July, and told Inchiquin (in a ciphered letter) that ‘Broghill, Sir Arthur Loftus [and] Hardress Waller will be doing what they intended, and therefore some wish Inchiquin had written to him [Jephson] to stay till something passed’.85HMC Egmont, i. 436. The withdrawal of the Eleven Members on 26 July further weakened the Presbyterian interest in Parliament, and on 28 July Ormond departed from Dublin. On the very next day, Waller and Sir John Temple drew up proposals for the relief of Ireland. Although practical in content, the proposals signalled the Independents’ renewed interest in an Irish expedition, and formed a symbolic riposte to similar propositions published by Jephson on Lisle’s fall from power in the previous April.86Add. 34253, f. 82; OPH, xvi. 186-7. The hegemony of the Independents was restored at the beginning of August, when the army’s march on London brought an end to Presbyterian control of Parliament. Irish affairs were considered by the new ruling party in early September, and Waller was suggested as the commander of a new army of 6,000 foot and 2,000 horse.87Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 795. The control enjoyed by Waller and his friends over Irish affairs may have helped to push Inchiquin’s party further towards the royalist camp: by the end of September the British forces in Ireland had resolved ‘to admit of no other commander-in-chief more than what they have already’, because they feared the new expeditionary force would be under Waller’s command.88HMC 5th Rep. 179.

With the Presbyterians discomfited, Waller returned to the deliberations of the army. In late August 1647 he was appointed to the general committee of officers that Sir Thomas Fairfax* established to consider all army affairs, and he was made part of its three-man quorum with Charles Fleetwood* and Nathaniel Rich.89Clarke Pprs. i. 223-5. On 20 October Waller was named to a committee of officers to consider the The Case of the Army, and eight days later he was chosen as part of the officers’ committee which would discuss the army’s ‘agreement’ with the agitators appointed by the soldiery.90Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 849; Clarke Pprs. i. 279. The records of the ensuing ‘Putney debates’ shed much light on Waller’s personal views. He seems to have been very reluctant to allow religious issues to be discussed at all, because of the divisions they caused, and then ‘we shall needlessly discover our dividing opinion’.91Clarke Pprs. i. 339. In other areas his approach was also pragmatic. He urged the general council to find some way to ‘ease the burden’ which a standing army put on the country, adding that ‘otherwise, if the four Evangelists were here, and lay free quarter upon them, they will not believe you’.92Clarke Pprs. i. 345. Although sensitive to the image the army must present to the populace, Waller was fully prepared to use the threat of force to bargain with the king or the Parliament, and advised the army ‘to let them know that these are our rights, and if we have them not, we must get them the best way we can’.93Clarke Pprs. i. 344.

Waller’s strong line may have helped to bring his own regiment under control. The regiment was well represented among the ranks of the agitators, sending four agents, including John Clarke and the future Quaker, John Hodden, to meetings; but in November 1647 the regiment sent a ‘unanimous’ representation of their loyalty to Fairfax, denouncing all internal divisions and factions, with Waller and Salmon heading the list of signatories.94Clarke Pprs. i. 436; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 878-9. Waller continued to act as spokesman for the army officers. He was a member of the committee which drafted the army’s ‘engagement’ at the beginning of November 1647, and signed the statement denying there had been an attempt to prevent Parliament making peace with the king.95Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 413, 416. On 7 December he joined Colonel Edward Whalley* in presenting the army’s ‘representation’ to Parliament on Fairfax’s orders, and he was one of the seven colonels who attended the house to present the army council’s ‘declaration’ concerning the king on 11 January 1648.96Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 923, 961; CJ v. 426b.

The army debates had proved Waller’s loyalty to Fairfax and the commanders of the New Model, and he was rewarded with the command of the forces stationed in Cornwall and Devon. He had arrived at Exeter by the beginning of March 1648, and immediately sent out commissions for listing and raising troops, apparently without Parliament’s authority, causing Clement Walker* to denounce him as ‘that one-eyed Polyphemus of Pasteboard’, who ‘styleth himself (untruly) commander in chief of all forces of the five western associated counties’.97C. Walker, Mysterie of the Two Junctoes (1661), 106 (E.1052.1). In reality, Waller seems to have been eager to implement his ideas expressed at Putney, to pacify the locals and create stability. On 14 March he published a declaration to Devon and Cornwall ‘to prevent mistakes’, promising to end free quarter, and to disband some units, if the local contributions were paid in full.98Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1027-8. These overtures had little time to take effect, however, as the south west was soon caught up in the second civil war, and Waller assisted by the Cornish colonel, Robert Bennett*, was engaged in putting down the western royalists.99Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/2/162; FSL, X.d.483 (16, 17, 23-6). By the end of May they had crushed the rising, killing 100 men and arresting 200 others. At Exeter, a stand-off developed between Waller’s officers and the corporation of Exeter, sympathetic towards Presbyterianism, which had encouraged the citizens to refuse quarters for Waller’s men.100Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1130-1; OPH, xvii. 159-67; HMC Exeter, 212; S. K. Roberts, Recovery and Restoration in an English County (Exeter, 1985), 12; ‘Exeter’, above.

In the aftermath, Waller’s radicalism alienated potential supporters. John Moyle II* told Francis Buller* that the soldiers in Cornwall were ‘mere mercenaries’ whose religious radicalism had caused great offence. A fast day had been organised at Helston, ‘but Sir Hardress Waller and [Colonel] Bennett with the rest of our military janissaries… absented themselves and would not join us’.101Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/2/170. There was also trouble from Westminster. On receiving a petition from Exeter complaining about Waller’s behaviour, the Commons resolved that his forces should withdraw from the city; and in June they refused point-blank to allow him to levy more troops.102OPH, xvii. 167; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1156. At the end of June, Waller faced multiple threats. He wrote to Speaker Lenthall in desperation, asking that money be sent to pay the troops, who could then pay for their quarters and reduce the animosity of the locals.103HMC Portland, i. 466. At the same time he told Sir John Temple that he feared his old adversary, Lord Inchiquin (who had recently defected to the king) would attack Cornwall across the Irish Sea.104Bodl. Carte 67, f. 160. He received some support from Whitehall. In August, the Derby House Committee, supported by the Commons, exerted its influence to keep Waller’s troops together in case of further risings, despite Fairfax’s plans to march them into eastern England.105CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 206, 233-4; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1218.

In September and October the royalist occupation of the Scilly Isles became Waller’s primary military concern, and the Commons finally agreed to send him reinforcements.106CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 279, 281, 297, 300, 314-5; HMC Portland, i. 499. But events in Westminster soon brought Waller back from the west, and he had rejoined the army’s headquarters by the beginning of December.107Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 444. Despite his absence for much of the previous year, Waller still enjoyed great influence among the New Model officers. In early December he carried to the Commons Fairfax’s refusal of the Speaker’s demand that the army should halt its march towards London, and he was a member of the sub-committee of six officers which planned direct action against the House.108Moderate Intelligencer no. 194 (30 Nov.-7 Dec. 1648, E.475.26). The plan was executed on 6 December, when Waller joined Colonels John Hewson* and Thomas Pride* in arresting ‘malignant’ MPs as they entered the House. William Prynne*, a particular enemy of the army, protested, and was treated roughly on the steps of the Commons:

Colonel Pride thrusting him down before, Sir Hardress Waller and others laying hands on, and pulling him down forcibly behind, to the court of requests’ great door. Mr Prynne thereupon demanded by what authority and commission and for what cause they did thus violently seize on, and pull him down from the House. To which Pride and Waller, showing him their armed soldiers standing round about him with their swords, muskets, and matches lighted, told him, that there was their commission.109OPH xviii. 448-9.

Commonwealth soldier. 1649-53

Pride’s Purge of the Commons was followed by further debates by the army as to the next move. In mid-December Waller was involved in the army’s discussion of a new constitution, the ‘Agreement of the People’, and (as in Putney a year before) he tried to keep the soldiers united by putting aside questions of faith, and concentrating on settling the government, in order to ‘let the world know you will bring them into their civil quiet’.110Clarke Pprs. ii. 87, 103. Waller remained determined that a solution should be reached in the new year of 1649, for ‘if there be not need of an agreement now, there never was since the sons of men were upon earth’, and he pressed for a document to be drawn up.111Clarke Pprs. ii. 180-1. On 19 January Waller was nominated as one of 16 officers who were to present the final version of the ‘Agreement’ to the Commons.112Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1395. By this time Waller had been selected as a commissioner for the high court of justice to try the king, under the ordinance of 6 January.113A. and O. In the following weeks, Waller attended the trial proceedings 21 times – as many as Hewson or Cromwell – and he was present on 27 January, when sentence was passed.114Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1395, 1416; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 728n. On 29 January Waller signed the king’s death warrant.

Waller’s involvement in the regicide marks the completion of his political metamorphosis, from ‘cavalier’ to ‘tyrannical Independent’.115Walker, Anarchia Anglicana, 30. This political change was related to (and possibly caused by) Waller’s religious conversion, from the moderate Presbyterianism typical of Irish Protestants, and shared by his cousin, Sir William Waller, to the hard-nosed Independency characteristic of the New Model officer corps. Sir Hardress Waller’s religious views are revealed in various ways. His writing style had become more ‘godly’ in tone by the winter of 1645-6, and by the end of the decade he had become very close to army radicals such as Hewson and Pride. Waller’s regiment in the New Model was notably sectarian, and its chaplain from 1646-7, Thomas Larkham, was an uncompromising Independent in religion, who would be excommunicated for nonconformity in 1665.116The Diary of Thomas Larkham, 1647-1669 ed. S. Hardman Moore (Church of Eng. Rec. Soc. xvii); Oxford DNB. In the circumstances, Waller’s repeated attempts to take the religious angle out of the army debates in 1647-9 were probably not only to retain unity, but also to promote liberty of conscience, which was swiftly becoming the watchword of Cromwell’s army. By the end of the 1640s Waller’s conversion to Independency was complete, and by the mid-1650s he was a leading member of the congregation of Dr Samuel Winter in Dublin, and was ‘very well esteemed by the godly’.117TSP vi. 774.

With the king dead and opposition in Parliament destroyed, Waller’s attentions turned again to Ireland; indeed, there may have been some question of Waller, instead of Cromwell, commanding the projected expedition against the Irish.118Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 46. On 22 March 1649, however, the council of state replied to a representation of Waller and Colonel Whalley, confirming that Cromwell had been chosen as the new general for Ireland.119CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 49. Waller’s involvement continued, but on an advisory level. The council’s sub-committee for Irish affairs was instructed to consult with Waller, Sir Robert King*, Colonel Arthur Hill* and other Irish landowners.120CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 62. In April, Waller was in close consultation with Cromwell about sending a spy to Munster, to encourage the garrisons there to defect from Waller’s old enemy, Lord Inchiquin.121Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 53. Despite the council’s acknowledgement of Waller’s expertise in Irish affairs, his regiment was not chosen to join Cromwell’s expedition, and he was soon called back to his command in the south west of England.122Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 445.

There had been sporadic disturbances in Devon and Cornwall since the execution of the king. In early February 1649, Thomas Saunders* warned Waller of the ‘malignants’ in Exeter, who had ‘some design in hand, for they begin already to speak great words’.123Bodl. Tanner 57/2, f. 507. Reports of subversion continued throughout the year.124CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 263, 303, 370. Before returning to the south west, Waller corresponded with some his old friends there, including Robert Bennett, and in May he lent his support to Bennett’s campaign to become recruiter MP for West Looe, saying that he was motivated not only by his concern for the ‘common good’, but also by religious fervour, for ‘it seems that Providence hath placed you there for such a time as this’.125FSL, X.d.483 (37). Waller, determined not to repeat the mistakes of 1648, ruled the west with a firm hand. Calling on the help and advice of Alexander Popham*, John Pyne* (Somerset men) and other well-affected local gentlemen, Waller packed the commissions of the peace in Cornwall, and hand-picked officers for the proposed voluntary regiments in other counties.126CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 106, 229, 256. His tough line on quartering troops in Exeter in September 1649 contrasted with his attempt at appeasement in the previous year: now he bluntly told the mayor that the soldiers were but ‘friends and guests for defence and benefit of your city’, and required compliance.127HMC Exeter, 212-13.

Waller was still eager to join the Irish service, however. Already in October 1649, he was active in recruiting soldiers for Ireland, and by the end of November the council of state had offered him the command of a new regiment of reinforcements, ordering him to make haste ‘in regard of the state of Munster’.128CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 351, 399, 403. On 26 November the Commons resolved that Waller’s regiment should be divided to form two separate regiments, under Waller and his former subordinate, John Clerke II*: both were to serve in Ireland.129CJ vii. 43b. Once news arrived that the southern ports had declared for Parliament, the Council told Waller to take his men to Cork immediately.130HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 463. Promoted to the rank of major-general, Waller left Colonel John Disbrowe* in charge of the west, and embarked for Ireland.131CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 422, 439. The later stages of the Irish war did much to enhance Waller’s military reputation. He accompanied Lord Deputy Henry Ireton* to co. Wicklow in the summer of 1650, and commanded the forces which besieged the town of Carlow, before marching into co. Limerick in September and Kerry in December.132Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 445; HMC Portland, i. 534; SP28/73, f. 151. In June 1651 Ireton appointed Waller as one of the six commissioners to negotiate the surrender of the city of Limerick.133Ludlow, Mems. i. 275. Waller was not the most flexible of negotiators: in September he told Bennett that the Irish defenders of Limerick ‘would deliver it up, if we would spare those whom we judge God would not have spared, and therefore dare we not do it’.134FSL, X.d.483 (100). Limerick finally capitulated at the end of October, and by December Waller had moved into the Burren region of co. Clare, where he had ‘been obliged to lay the country waste, and to seize what he could find, that it might be no longer useful to the enemy’, before returning to his headquarters at Limerick, where he became governor in January 1652.135Ludlow, Mems. i. 302; CJ vii. 63b; Eg. 1762, f. 202v. Using the city as a base, in the summer of 1652 Waller joined Lieutenant-general Edmund Ludlowe II* and Lord Broghill in subduing co. Kerry, and he forced the surrender of Lord Muskerry at Ross Castle, near Killarney, in a daring amphibious operation.136Ludlow, Mems. i. 320; A Great and Bloudy Fight in Ireland (1652), 3-4 (E.668.3).

The conquest of Ireland freed Waller to return to the political stage, and from 1652-3 he became an advocate of the army’s interests in England. The army in Ireland had been angered by the harsh line taken against sectaries by one of parliamentary commissioners, John Weaver*, who had contacts with the Presbyterians. On 11 November 1652 Waller, Dr Philip Carteret and Colonel Richard Lawrence attended the Commons, where they delivered various papers and proposals from the army.137CJ vii. 213a. They remained in England over the winter, and drew up detailed proposals for coastal defence and the convoy of goods, which were presented to Parliament on 27 December.138Add. 22546, f. 80. But the real business was delayed until February 1653, when Waller and his colleagues presented the ‘humble representation of the officers of Ireland’, which accused Weaver of spreading false rumours of a Baptist plot within the army, in order to discredit the officer corps.139HMC Portland, i. 671-2. Shortly afterwards Waller gave in a further petition from the army, which forced Weaver to resign as commissioner on 18 February.140CJ vii. 260b, 261b.

Waller, who was later said to be in league with the Baptists of Limerick, no doubt sympathised with the sectaries, but his prime role in England at this time was as the mouthpiece of a wider army interest which was beginning to take a leading role in political affairs.141Ludlow, Mems. i. 373n. Thus, in March and April 1653, he remained in England, intent on safeguarding the army’s interests in the Irish land settlement, and on 7 April he secured an important amendment to the Adventurers’ Act, allowing soldiers to sell their allotted lands immediately on taking possession, rather than having to wait three years.142HMC Egmont, i. 516; CJ vii. 276b. In March and April, Waller presented a variety of other matters to the council on behalf of the army, and secured much-needed supplies of gunpowder for the coastal garrisons.143CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 200, 204, 231, 260. By the end of April both the Rump and the council of state had been abolished by Cromwell, and the new council (appointed 29 April 1653) included a number of senior army officers. Perhaps confident that the army’s interests would be safe in the hands of the new regime, Waller returned to Dublin on 7 May.144CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 579.

In the spring of 1653 one commentator feared the political motives of Waller, Ludlowe and Sir Charles Coote*, who were thought to have ‘a great interest in the soldiery’.145HMC 5th Rep. 193. There was much truth in this, and in the next few years Waller’s political influence was still thoroughly entwined with his position in the army. During the summer and autumn of 1654, Waller was involved in the transplantation of the Irish from Leinster, in order to free land for the soldiers.146The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland ed. J.P. Prendergast (1865), 134, 225-6. In June 1655 he joined Lord Deputy Charles Fleetwood, Jerome Sankey* and other officers in urging Cromwell to help the oppressed Protestants of Piedmont; and in January 1656 he signed another letter asking for Fleetwood’s appointment as lord lieutenant.147TSP iii. 466-7; iv. 421-2. But Waller’s hard-line attitude seems to have been gradually softening during this period. In February 1656, he told the commissioners of the navy that money was urgently needed to pay the troops, as ‘want is like to be the most dangerous enemy that we have to encounter’, and this was more of a warning than a justification of the soldier’s position.148Add. 29960, f. 12. Although Waller’s close association with the army was made him locally influential, it also limited his political activities, by keeping him away from Westminster, on active service. Thus, although he was elected (on his own and the army’s interest) for counties Kerry, Limerick and Clare in the first protectorate Parliament in 1654, he was prevented from taking his seat because he was needed to command the forces in the south west of Ireland.149TSP ii. 445; Burton’s Diary, i. 288. Fleetwood, who had selected the MPs to remain in Ireland, may also have suspected Waller’s ultimate loyalty. By choosing to keep Waller in Limerick he ensured that, when the focus of attention shifted to Westminster, he was unable to participate.150TSP ii. 558.

Cromwellian, 1654-9

In the mid-1650s Waller’s almost instinctive loyalty to the army was becoming increasingly difficult to reconcile with his close relationship with his old colleague, Oliver Cromwell. Before 1654 Waller had reinforced this friendship when he married his daughter to Colonel Henry Ingoldsby*, his fellow MP for cos. Limerick Kerry and Clare, who was related to the Cromwells.151HMC Egmont, i. 556. The appointment of Cromwell as lord protector was greeted by Waller with an enthusiasm notably lacking in his fellow officers: when Cromwell was proclaimed in Dublin on 30 January 1654, it was said that ‘at this ceremony there was but a thin appearance, some captains and inferior officers, but no colonel nor general officer except Sir Hardress Waller and one Colonel Moore were present’.152Ludlow, Mems. i. 375. The appointment of Henry Cromwell* as general of the Irish army further strengthened Waller’s connection with the ruling dynasty. In August 1655 Waller was awarded an honorary degree at Dublin University when Henry Cromwell became chancellor of the same, and in January 1656 it was thought he might support a move to have Henry appointed lord deputy of Ireland under the absentee Fleetwood as lord lieutenant.153TSP iv. 421-2, Clarke Pprs. iii. 50. In the following April, Waller’s petition for a settlement of his arrears was sponsored by Henry, who enlisted the support of Secretary John Thurloe*.154TSP iv. 672, 698. This association with the Cromwells may also have drawn Waller closer to his fellow Irish Protestants, and especially to Lord Broghill. One factor drawing Waller close to Broghill was the marriage (in October 1653) of his daughter, Elizabeth, to Maurice Fenton*, the son of Sir William Fenton, and Broghill’s cousin.155CB iii. 313-14. It may also have been at this time that Waller’s second son, James, married the daughter of another Boyle relative, Colonel Randall Clayton of Mallow, co. Cork.156Burke’s Landed Gentry of Ire. (1904), 628.

Relations between Waller and the Boyles were not straightforward, however. One potential difficulty was Waller’s reputation as a patron of the religious Independents led by Samuel Winter. In early 1655 he joined Winter in examining candidates for the ministry; later in the year he imported four suitable ministers to Limerick and investigated reports of Episcopalians operating secretly in Dublin; and in April 1656 he was appointed to the committee for the approbation of ministers.157St J.D. Seymour, The Puritans in Ireland (1921), 89, 112, 116, 118. Waller was also an associate of the Independent minister of Limerick, Claudius Gilbert.158Cal. Baxter Corresp. i. 351. Nevertheless, from July 1656 Waller was a frequent visitor to the Munster houses of Broghill’s brother, the 2nd earl of Cork, and he advised the Boyles on their long-running dispute with the Tynt family.159Ludlow, Mems. ii. 5; Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 26 July, 23, 27 Sept., 10, 18, 20, 22, 26 Nov. 1656, 24 Apr. 1657, 12 May 1658. It is also likely that Waller lent his support to acceptable candidates in the parliamentary elections in August 1656: his son, Walter Waller*, was returned for Limerick and Kilmallock, and his son-in-law, Henry Ingoldsby, was again his partner for cos. Limerick, Kerry and Clare. Although Waller was once more prevented from taking his seat because of his military duties, he seems to have been broadly sympathetic to Broghill’s political aims, and his son voted in favour of kingship in March 1657.160Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 23 (E.935.5). It is also telling that a few weeks previously, Waller was recommended to Henry Cromwell by another supporter of kingship, Sir Charles Wolseley*.161Henry Cromwell Corresp. 199.

Another factor that drew Waller closer to the Cromwellians and the Old Protestants, and away from his fellow officers in the Irish army, was the critical state of his personal finances. In the early 1650s, Oliver Cromwell had interceded with Parliament, in the hope of securing for Waller lands which he had previously leased from the earl of Ormond.162Ludlow, Mems. i. 256. In January 1651 Parliament had agreed to continue Waller as tenant on the land, without rent, but a final agreement had not been made by August 1652, when a survey of the land was ordered.163CJ vi. 433b; vii. 166a. In the following October the parliamentary commissioners in Ireland reported that the lands in question were now no better than waste ground, and were in any case subject of a legal claim by the earl of Middlesex. They went on to recommend that Waller be rewarded for his ‘great diligence and fidelity’ another way.164Bodl. Tanner 53, f. 139. Following this exchange, Waller petitioned Parliament when he was in London in March 1653, stating his losses in Ireland and the delay in giving him relief had ‘reduced [him] from a flourishing condition to a low one’, and that he had been forced to subsist for 38 months of active service in Ireland on nothing more than a colonel’s salary.165Bodl. Tanner 53, f. 231. (This was no exaggeration: in September 1651 Waller was issued with a warrant for his pay as major-general dating back to December 1649, and the money was not actually paid until February 1652.)166SP28/80, f. 573D. On 22 March 1653 the Commons resolved that Waller should enjoy £1,200 per annum from Irish lands to pay his arrears, and referred the matter back to the parliamentary commissioners.167CJ vii. 270a-b. Although this grant marked a success in the short-term, the permanent settlement of Waller’s estates remained unattained, as the allocated land was also claimed by two Dorset Adventurers, Richard Burie and John Whiteway*, and the commissioners withheld the grant by an order of 9 January 1654, until the dispute could be settled.168CJ vii. 492a-b. There the case seemed to stall. In 1656 the protectoral council was reluctant to intervene, and referred another of Waller’s petition to the lord deputy and council in Ireland, in spite of the support of Henry Cromwell and Secretary Thurloe.169CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 302, 387; TSP iv. 672, 698. In its painfully slow procedure, the state had treated Waller little better than the rest of the Old Protestants.

During the 1656-7 session of Parliament Waller joined the Old Protestants in hoping for a favourable solution to the Irish land settlement. On 22 December 1656 Parliament considered Waller’s petition, with its complaints that land already settled on him in Ireland had been threatened by the Adventurers’ claims, and the case was referred to the general committee on such questions.170CJ vii. 472b; Burton’s Diary, i. 203, 245. The Commons did not return to the issue until 16 February 1657, when they tried to resolve the co. Limerick dispute by endorsing a private agreement worked out between Waller and the Adventurers earlier in the month.171CJ vii. 492a-b. The resulting bill received its first reading on 6 March, and on 17 March was referred to a committee which included Waller’s son, Walter, his son-in-law, Henry Ingoldsby, and allies of Henry Cromwell, such as Broghill and Sir John Reynolds.172CJ vii. 499a, 505b. Amendments were passed on 1 April, and at the end of the month Waller’s former colleague in the New Model, John Disbrowe, introduced a proviso exempting the estates of Waller and others from the new act for forfeited estates.173CJ vii. 526b. The third reading of the bill was passed on 30 May, and the act settling £1,200 p.a. on Waller, and reallocating the claims in Limerick of Burie, Whiteway and other Adventurers was given the protector’s assent on 9 June.174CJ vii. 542b, 553a.

In June 1657, over four years after the original grant was passed by the Commons, Waller finally got what he wanted; but the delay had undermined his trust in the regime. In the following winter Henry Cromwell (now lord deputy of Ireland) was becoming increasingly worried. He told his father on 7 January 1658 that ‘your old servant Sir Hardress Waller thinks himself forgotten, forasmuch as he hath not been made partaker of those favours, which your highness has been pleased to confer upon others. I have written very often about money, but see no relief’.175TSP vi. 734. In the following month, Henry repeated his worries about Waller: ‘even that grant of lands, which was long since made him in satisfaction of his arrears, though intended for an advantage, proving otherwise, hath been somewhat melancholy’. He added that Waller remained loyal to the protector, but needed encouragement, and recommended that he be made an Irish councillor.176TSP vi. 773-4. Waller’s financial crisis was real enough, and by 1658 his creditors were beginning to drag him through the Irish courts.177HMC 7th Rep. 96. Further efforts by Cromwell to placate Waller – including grants of baronetcies to his two sons-in-law, Sir Maurice Fenton and Sir Henry Ingoldsby – seemed to have little effect, and in November 1658, the lord deputy wanted to recall Waller to England, along with other untrustworthy officers.178TSP vii. 56, 493. By then Henry Cromwell had every reason to worry, as the death of Oliver Cromwell had severed the main link which ensured Waller’s loyalty to the protectoral regime.

Although again elected for Kerry, Limerick and Clare for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659, there is no evidence that Waller attended Westminster. Indeed, Waller seems to have remained close to his command in Ireland, while awaiting political developments in England, and when the protectorate failed, he jumped ship with alacrity. On 22 June 1659 Waller wrote to Lenthall to deny accusations that he remained a staunch Cromwellian and similar ‘misrepresentations as well of my principles as my practices’, and to assert his support for ‘that good old cause’ – the restoration of the commonwealth.179Bodl. Tanner 51, f. 87. To prove the point, Waller readily obeyed orders to seize Henry Cromwell at Phoenix Park, and in mid-July he was duly rewarded by Parliament, which appointed him as one of the loyal officers who would retain their commands in Ireland.180Ludlow, Mems. ii. 101; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 12-13. Waller’s activities lend credence to Ludlowe’s wry comment that his motives were entirely self-interested, ‘finding the power of Colonel Cromwell to decline, and that of the Parliament to increase’.181Ludlow, Mems. ii. 101. Ludlowe, while welcoming Waller’s support in Ireland, did not trust him either, ‘he having complied with every party that was uppermost’, and was reluctant to leave him in command of the Irish army in his absence.182Ludlow, Mems. ii. 122.

Gambling and losing, 1659-66

Ludlowe was wise to be suspicious. In October and November 1659 Waller, eager to bring Ludlowe back to Ireland, was a signatory of a letter sent to John Lambert’s* English army, in which ‘all that are inclinable to Anabaptism do declare against the Parliament’.183Ludlow, Mems. ii. 142; Clarke Pprs. iv. 95. He maintained the pretence as late as January 1660, when Ludlowe (despite his earlier scepticism) was hopeful of the major-general’s support in Dublin.184CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 706, 710. But it is likely that by this time Waller had decided to change sides once again. On 16 December he wrote to George Monck*, telling him to disregard his earlier activities, which were merely ‘manifesting my desire to intercede for a peace’, and trusting that Monck would not give way to the Presbyterians nor ‘betray this good old cause to the cavaliers’ party’.185Clarke Pprs. iv. 202-3. Monck accepted Waller’s overtures because he desperately needed allies with influence over the Irish army, and he thanked him for ‘this noble act of yours and of the officers with you’ in joining Parliament’s cause.186Clarke Pprs. iv. 225-6. In January 1660 Waller wrote to Lenthall, congratulating Parliament on its success, and assuring him of the Irish army’s loyalty.187Ludlow, Mems. ii. 186n. Parliament resolved to thank Waller for his efforts, and included him in their list of senior officers who were to govern the army through a commission.188CJ vii. 804a, 811b, 815b. Thus, when Ludlowe arrived in Dublin Bay, he was prevented from landing by the officers under Waller’s command, and on 12 January complained bitterly that ‘Sir Hardress Waller is unjust to me and treats me as a highwayman treats an honest man’.189A Letter from Sir Hardress Waller (1660, E.774.6); CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 710-11, 715.

Yet, as some commentators had suspected, Waller’s support for the Old Protestants was itself ephemeral.190Mordaunt Letterbk. 151. The moves of Monck to restore the ‘secluded’ Members at Westminster and to suppress radical opposition may have gained the support of the likes of Lord Broghill and Sir Charles Coote*, but Waller, as a regicide, began to fear for his safety.191Whitelocke, Diary, 572. Barricading himself and his supporters in Dublin Castle, he resolved ‘to seize Sir Charles Coote and his adherents’, but was soon forced to surrender by another senior officer, Sir Theophilus Jones*, who raised the citizenry in support of the ‘free Parliament’.192Ludlow, Mems. ii. 229-30; Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 157, 160-3. By mid-March Waller had been incarcerated, ignominiously, at Athlone, although his cousin, Sir William Waller, prevailed on the council of state to force Coote to release him on promises of good behaviour.193CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 398; Ludlow, Voyce, 87.

On the restoration of Charles II in May 1660, Waller fled to France, but after the proclamation promising leniency to regicides who gave themselves up, he returned to England, and ‘rendered himself’ on 20 June.194Whitelocke, Diary, 607. On 10 October, Waller petitioned the oyer and terminer commissioners at the Old Bailey, begging for pardon, asking them to make a distinction between ‘weakness and malice’. He claimed that he had defended the king during the Putney debates, and that he was unwillingly involved in the regicide, ‘finding that no dissent of his could have prevented it’, and denied any involvement in the offer of the crown to Cromwell.195Eg. 2549, f. 93. The lies and half-truths of this petition seem to accord with Ludlowe’s cynical comment that Waller was ‘known to be one who would say anything to save his life’.196Ludlow, Voyce, 209. Yet Waller seemed confident that the crown would abide by its promise of leniency, and he pleaded guilty at his trial – the only regicide except Fleetwood to do so.197HMC 5th Rep. 157. This confidence was well placed, for the death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in Mont Orgeuil Castle, on the island of Jersey, where he died in 1666.

The demise of Sir Hardress Waller created a power-vacuum in northern co. Limerick, and there ensued a rather undignified scramble to take over his landed possessions and local influence. The properties which he had accumulated during the interregnum were reclaimed by their original owners or by speculators hoping to wrest control from them.198CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 54, 182-3, 211, 261. The main beneficiary was Waller’s old rival, Lord Broghill, newly created 1st earl of Orrery, who in February 1661 was trying to secure a grant of Waller’s inherited properties and other forfeited land in Limerick, worth around £1,500.199Cal. of Orrery Pprs. ed. E. MacLysaght (Dublin, 1941), 10. Ironically, it was probably thanks to Orrery’s influence that Waller’s heirs were eventually restored to the Castletown estates, which had returned to the family by the end of the century. The links between the Boyles and the Wallers were strengthened after 1660. Sir Hardress’s surviving son, James, had married into the Clayton family, and would sit for the Boyle-controlled seat of Kinsale in the Irish Parliament; Waller’s daughter, Elizabeth Fenton, would remarry in 1667 another Orrery associate, Sir William Petty*. Sir Hardress Waller’s descendants included the earls of Shelburne and Cadogan. The main branch of the Waller family continued to represent Munster constituencies in the Irish Parliament until the nineteenth century, and they held the Castletown estate into the twentieth century.200Burke’s Landed Gentry of Ire. 628.