LECHMERE, Nicholas (1613-1701), of Hanley Castle, Worcs.

It was a tradition that Lechmere Place or Lechmere Field, later to be renamed as Severn End, had been given by William I to the Lechmere family. Whether or not this was so, the family was installed there by the time of Edward I, and Nicholas Lechmere himself traced the family at Hanley and at Fanhope, Herefordshire, to his father’s great-grandfather. Nicholas’s grandfather, Edmund, had been a Roman Catholic, and under his stewardship the fortunes of the family slumped, their estates reduced ‘(partly) by their religion, (partly) by tedious suits in law ... but chiefly by their superfluous housekeeping’.47Shirley, Hanley, 9, 10, 13, 15-16. Nicholas’s father, Edmund, was more cautious: according to his son he was ‘exceeding temperate in all things (but tobacco)’ but was of the status of gentleman, rather than of esquire.48Lechmere’s MS acct. of his life, n.p. Despite that, he was of sufficient standing to contract a marriage with a daughter of Sir Nicholas Overbury of Bourton-on-the-Hill, Gloucestershire. Penelope Lechmere’s brother was Sir Thomas Overbury, a follower of Robert Carr, 1st earl of Somerset, who was poisoned in the Tower of London, probably on the orders of the countess of Essex, Somerset’s lover, and later his wife. However tragic or lurid these events, there was no questioning the connections of the Overbury family at court.49Cal. QS Pprs. ed. J.W. Willis Bund, i. 163; Shirley, Hanley, 17; A. Somerset, Unnatural Murder. Poison in the Court of James I (1997).

Altogether, 15 children were born to Edmund and Penelope Lechmere, but of the eight sons, only three lived beyond 1632, Nicholas and his younger brothers, Thomas and Edmund. After their father had been forced to sell off parts of the Lechmere estate at Hanley Castle to provide portions for his many daughters, what was left was insufficient to support the Lechmere sons. Thomas became a London merchant, Edmund a soldier, while Nicholas, through the good offices of the Overbury family, after taking his degree at Oxford was bound in October 1634 at the Middle Temple to his uncle, Walter Overbury†.50Hanley Castle par. reg.; Lechmere’s MS acct. of his life, n.p.; Al. Ox.; MTR ii. 826. Lechmere was involved in a fracas at the Middle Temple at Christmas 1640, when he and a number of other students broke down the buttery doors, but it would be straining the evidence to suggest a political motive for the affair, which came after a series of unruly Christmas celebrations and which did nothing to impede his progress to being called to the bar in June 1641.51MTR ii. 888, 908. It does suggest, however, that Lechmere was no puritan at this point in his life.

Civil war committeeman

At the outbreak of civil war, Lechmere quickly attached himself to those in Worcestershire who objected to the royalist commissions of array, and who formed an association with three neighbouring counties to submit themselves to the directions of Parliament’s lord general, the 3rd earl of Essex (Robert Devereux).52Add. 70004, f. 68. Lechmere’s youngest brother, Edmund, was active in the army of Parliament, first as an ensign and then as an officer, seeing service with Col. Leonard Lytcott, a kinsman through the Overbury family, in Jersey before dying in February 1645 of consumption contracted through his military service.53Lechmere’s MS acct. of his life, n.p.; Shirley, Hanley, 18. Another family tie was forged with the cause of Parliament in November 1642, when Nicholas Lechmere married into the Sandys family of Northbourne, Kent; only two months earlier his new wife’s brother, Edwin Sandys, had died of wounds after fighting at Worcester against Prince Rupert.54Clarendon, Hist. ii. 324, 336. Sandys was zealous in support of Parliament, and played a decisive part in securing Kent for its cause.55Vis. Kent, 1619-21 (Harl. Soc. xlii), 148; Vis. Kent 1663-68 (Harl. Soc. xliii), 144; Hasted, Kent ix. 589-90; A. Everitt, The Community of Kent and the Great Rebellion (Leicester 1973), 63, 111-16. Lechmere’s own account of his life, written retrospectively, is silent on this period. He was fined for absence from a reading at his inn in November 1642, a fortnight after his wedding, and then disappears from view; it is likely that either he was practising in London as a lawyer between 1642 and 1645, or that he was directing locally-raised forces of Parliament in Worcestershire.56MTR ii. 928.

In September 1644, Lechmere was named to the parliamentary committee for Worcester, his first nomination to such a body, but could not act, as the city was at that time firmly under the control of the royalist commissioners.57A. and O. The committee was an expression of intent only, but it codified support for Parliament in that region. His brother’s commitment, his residence and family connections with the parliamentarian branch of the Sandys family would have been enough to qualify him for inclusion. In January 1645 he was living in London at the Friday Street house of his younger brother, Thomas, where the first of his children were born. Lechmere’s choice of godparents is revealing. At the baptism of his first child, they were the wife of Sir John Finch†, the former lord keeper, who had slipped away to exile in December 1642 as one of Charles’s ‘evil counsellors’ and Lettice, Lady Paget (mother of William Paget, 6th Baron Paget), who had come under suspicion of royalism; counterbalanced by Sir Henry Heyman*, a staunch parliamentarian who absented himself from Parliament in 1647-8.58Shirley, Hanley, 23; CCC 2923, 2939; CCAM 193, 270. A few months later, as a member of a parliamentarian commission of the peace for Worcestershire, unable to act, Lechmere was reported to be at Warwick, attempting to thwart the plans of the royalist commissioners for his county.59Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 186.

From early April 1645, Lechmere was able to act energetically in the cause of Parliament, when the county committee was able to set up at Evesham. As its treasurer, Lechmere supervised the accounts of the committee, and was kept busy monitoring and authorizing payments to military and civilian servants of the garrison, and receiving payments from local families sequestered for their royalism. No fewer than 311 Worcestershire individuals were made to pay upon the Propositions between April 1645 and July 1646, when the committee moved to Worcester.60SP28/138, pt. 16. By March 1646, Lechmere was working actively as an agent of the Committee of Both Kingdoms, with responsibility for taking its letters to Col. Thomas Morgan, governor of Gloucester garrison, Col. John Birch* of Hereford and the committee for Worcestershire at Evesham. Lechmere was evidently trusted in the task of reducing Worcestershire to the control of Parliament.61Add. 5508, f. 180; CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 361-2, 363, 368.

By the time his second child was baptized, in April 1646, Lechmere was bestowing the honour of naming the infant on a group of people more representative of the parliamentary cause. Sir Edward Massie* and Sir John Glynne* were both among the most conservative, Presbyterian, elements in support of Parliament, although this was no decisive social conversion on Lechmere’s part. Indeed, from some time in 1646 to August 1655, Lechmere lived when in London at the house of Lady Paget in Dean’s Yard, Westminster, and was thus quite probably in her service as her solicitor. She had escaped the attention of the Committee for Advance of Money only by lending money to Parliament. Her son was less lucky, and was fined by the Committee for Compounding, but Lechmere was on hand to argue for leniency: a service he was to perform for at least four others under suspicion for royalism.62Shirley, Hanley, 23-4; CCAM 193; CCC 872-3, 2299, 2867, 2870, 3056.

These royalist and crypto-royalist connections cannot be taken as evidence that Lechmere was not himself committed to the cause of Parliament or indeed to the cause of godly reform of the church. He was among those at Worcester calling on the royalist garrison to surrender to Parliament.63Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 226, 229, 234, 265. When eventually it did so, in July 1646, Lechmere was able to play a fuller part in the activities of the Worcester county committee.64Worcester Chamber Order Book, 414. He resigned, or was replaced, that month as treasurer, and may have decided that he could play a greater role in London. He certainly spent much time travelling between the county and London, apologising in one letter for his haste, with ‘one foot in the stirrup for a dirty London-journey’. Even so, he was effective in a number of issues before the county committee. He was uncompromising in his defence of his rough handling of the royalist mayor of Worcester in an account of it to the Herefordshire county committee: ‘It may be [it] were not regular, I am sure we were not nice, we always observing our rule with such kind of people to handle them without mittens’.65HMC Portland, ii. 146.

He was probably the ‘Mr Lechmere’ who brought supporters and tenants over to Herefordshire in November 1646 to support the election of Edward Harley as knight of the shire for Herefordshire.66HMC Portland, ii. 147. He was at the meeting of the Worcestershire county committee on 9 October 1647 which, in response to a request from the parishioners, appointed Richard Baxter to be minister of Kidderminster, subject to the approval of the Westminster Assembly.67DWL, MS 59, Baxter Treatises iv. 122A, 122B, Cal. Baxter Corresp. i. 214. Lechmere was also, through his membership of the committee, able to replace the vicar of Hanley Castle with a minister more to his liking. Hanley Castle was a living held by the bishop of Worcester; it was sequestered with other episcopal estates and Richard Wheeler was ejected from there for delinquency in 1647. He was replaced by James Warwick, of whom Lechmere evidently approved: not only did Lechmere make notes on Warwick’s sermons; in 1651 he ensured that his stipend was augmented by the Worcester committee from the surplus of sales of cathedral lead.68Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 265; Add. 5508 f. 180; Bodl. Rawl. B.240 ff. 18v-19r; Add. 39942, ff. 16, 126v, 141; Worcester Cathedral Lib. MS D223; Walker Revised, 387.

These local activities notwithstanding, Lechmere’s base remained in London. By the end of 1646 he was resuming a full part in the life of his inn. The sons of two MPs, Bennett Hoskins and Denzil Holles, were bound with him in July 1647 and February 1648; Hoskins was a colleague of Lechmere’s at the Middle Temple.69MTR 953, 960. These were inauspicious times for the Presbyterians. Holles headed the list of MPs impeached by the army in June 1647, and the godfather he had chosen for his second son, Recorder John Glynne*, was impeached along with Holles. Hoskins, too, was a political Presbyterian. These connections and the patronage of Lady Paget were a clear indication of Lechmere’s political stamp and also of his ambitions, in check while the cause of the conservatives was in eclipse. In the summer of 1648, however, things were different. It was the aftermath of the second civil war, when provincial discontent against the army and county committees was at its height. The Eleven Members were back in the House, and it seemed an opportune time to move the writ for an election at Bewdley, the Worcestershire borough for which Sir Henry Herbert had been disabled from sitting in 1642. Lechmere was elected without a contest on 4 July.70C219/43/3/75.

Legislator in the Rump Parliament

As a London resident, a practised agent of parliamentary committees and an associate of an ascendant political group, it is unsurprising that Lechmere made an immediate mark on the Commons. Between 10 July, when he took his seat, and the 26th, he was named to one committee considering the returning of London militias into local hands, and three investigating disturbances and revolts against parliamentary rule.71CJ v. 630b, 631b, 632a, 640b, 648a. On 31 July, with another Presbyterian, William Wheler, he was given primary responsibility for bringing in an ordinance for the sequestration of papists’ and delinquents’ estates. The same day he was added to the committee building the rapprochement with the City of London in favour of negotiations with the king, and reported to the House on the letters and papers of the prince of Wales recently taken in a frigate, which seemed to show that the prince had personally ordered the seizure of merchants’ goods as prize.72CJ v. 653b, 654b. Mercurius Pragmaticus reported this last as a deliberate distortion and suppression of evidence by Lechmere to bring the prince into bad odour with the Presbyterians.73Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 18 (25 July-1 Aug. 1648) [p.6] (E.456.7). Less than two weeks later, Lechmere was informing the Derby House Committee of another plot: one by the reformadoes or disbanded soldiers to seize Speaker William Lenthall.74CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 240. This plan had emerged either during Lechmere’s chairing of a committee to investigate escapes by prisoners in London, or possibly while he was working with the committee required to consider petitions of disbanded officers.75CJ v. 664b, 665a, 666a.

The themes of the security of the state against its enemies, liaison with the City of London and the plans for the future exercising and control of the militia (all of them prime concerns of the Presbyterians) ran through Lechmere’s busy schedule of committee responsibilities that summer.76CJ v. 656b, 662a, 664a, 669a, 676a, 678a, 681b, 689a. By early August he had achieved sufficient standing to be entrusted with taking 18 orders to the Lords for their approval.77CJ v. 659a. On 29 August he was granted leave to go the country, probably to Worcestershire, where his involvement with the county committee had led to some interesting opportunities for him to extend his estates. In May 1648 he bought for £110 the confiscated episcopal manor of Welland, near his patrimony at Hanley Castle, and during the 1650s acquired the nearby manor of Ryall’s Court from the royalist heirs of Lord Keeper Coventry (Sir Thomas Coventry†) for £780.78CJ v. 659a,689b; Bodl. Rawl. B.236 p.12; Church End House, Hanley Castle, Nicholas Lechmere’s MS acct. of his life, n.p.; Shirley, Hanley, 25.

On his return to Westminster by late October 1648, Lechmere had limited scope to resume his busy career as a parliamentary committeeman before the crisis of December. As a recruiter Member who had been returned to Parliament on the high tide of the Presbyterian revival, Lechmere might have been expected to be among those victims of the army’s purge. There are signs that Lechmere had again been hedging his bets. His fourth child, Edmund, was baptized in London on 5 November 1648. Among the godparents on this occasion was lord chief baron John Wylde*, accompanied at the font, seemingly oddly, by Lady Paget and Leicester Devereux, soon to become 6th Viscount Hereford.79Shirley, Hanley, 24. Until this point there is nothing to connect Lechmere with the more consistently radical Wylde, but this new friendship, his absence from the House for at least a month and his relatively low profile on committees that autumn all helped secure his future in the House, and may even point to a genuine shift towards radicalism on his part. Far from being secluded, Lechmere was instead one of the earliest MPs to conform to the new republican government.

During his parliamentary career in the Rump, Lechmere served on a wide range of committees, but 53 of them involved introducing new legislation. Fourteen of these were called between January and June 1649. He chaired 31 committees in total.80CJ vi. vii. The naming of the committee of 64 charged on 8 February 1649 with reviewing the commissions of the peace marked the start of a busy period for Lechmere.81CJ vi. 134a. The same day he was added to the Committee of Navy and Customs, a strategically vital committee at the point where the new government needed to ensure that its servants were well affected and reliable. His only attendance at the committee came on 14 February, when the meeting resolved to sit again the following day, with the so-called ‘Regulators’ and the navy commissioners.82CJ vi. 134b, Bodl. Rawl. A.224, f. 18. It seems likely that he had been called to provide some organisational stiffening to the committee. In the early months of the Rump, it was evidently his legal expertise that recommended him to the House for many nominations to committees dealing with legal matters. By this time he had become a justice of the peace and commissioner of oyer and terminer, and in this capacity in February 1649 he was given leave from Parliament to ride the Oxford circuit.83CJ vi. 148b.

On his return, Lechmere was asked to take special care of committees to consider restricting the export of coin and a measure to reform the laws on debt (20 Apr. 1649). On 26 May he reported amendments to a bill for releasing debtors from prison, and the bill was re-committed.84CJ vi. 186a, 190b, 217b. On the 29th, he was added to a committee charged with considering the petitions for relief of individual debtors. The act of 4 September which finally emerged, clarified and expanded by further legislation published on 21 December and 6 April 1650, relieved the most insubstantial debtors, those whose estates were worth less than £5 a year.85CJ vi. 219a; A. and O. ii. 240-1, 321-4, 378-9. It represented a considerable watering-down of an original suggestion that the beneficiaries would be those with property of less value than £10. Lobbyists outside the House detected Lechmere’s influence in dissipating the radical impulse behind the bill.86Worden, Rump Parl. 202-4. At the end of the year (21 Dec.), he was added to a committee to consider the relief of creditors, and was with four others asked to bring in a bill to this effect in May 1650.87CJ vi. 337a, 416a. Nothing seems to have come of this particular proposal. As a specialist in legal matters, Lechmere was evidently a conservative, and he found no place - probably did not seek one - on the commission headed by Matthew Hale*, the reforming body of lawyers from within the House and beyond it, which aimed to codify and simplify common law procedure.

Lechmere had acquired a knowledge of the issues involved in sales of confiscated lands from his dealings with the Worcestershire county committee and episcopal estates there in 1648. On 20 February 1649 he was named to two committees considering the selling of capitular lands: one charged with introducing an act for the sales, the other with appointing trustees and those who would issue contracts to buyers.88CJ vi. 147b. The pressing requirements of the government for liquidity ensured that sales of bishops’ lands needed to be speeded up, and Lechmere was on 16 June asked to bring in a bill to ensure that powers were granted the trustees to sell the lands at 10 years’ purchase, rather than the original 12. The same day the House resolved to sell dean and chapter lands at a similarly discounted rate - 13 not 15 years’ purchase - and Lechmere was to bring in a bill to that effect. As a result, he was named as a commissioner to remove obstructions to the sales of both bodies of church lands.89CJ vi. 235a, 238b; A. and O. ii. 153. He was confirmed as a member of another committee of the House to consider this matter in October 1650.90CJ vi. 485a. His interests in this area were further exploited in January 1651, when his help was enlisted in making amendments to the bill for the sale of estates forfeit to the state for treason. In debate on these amendments, a motion that the committee to hear claims to estates under this act should be the committee for obstructions was defeated by only one vote. A new committee to receive claims was appointed (24 Jan.); Lechmere was on both.91CJ vi. 527a, 528a.

Further appointments to committees concerned with sales of confiscated assets followed: in April 1651 to a committee hearing complaints against the contractors for the sale of the goods of Charles I; in May to one for discovering concealed property of the royal family; and a committee of 3 December charged with introducing new legislation for further sales of forfeited estates. The act for the sale of forfeited estates of 16 July 1651 included provision for a committee for removing obstructions to the sales: Lechmere was a natural candidate for membership.92CJ vi. 563b, 576b; vii. 46b; A. and O. ii, 520-45. By January 1652 Lechmere was reporting to the House on the position of copyholders and leaseholders in the further legislation his committee was preparing, which finally emerged as a second act for sales of forfeited estates in November 1652.93CJ vii. 68a, 138b; A. and O. ii. 623-52. Given his wealth of experience in this area, and the apparent drying-up of further categories of property which might be sold in the interests of the state, it is unsurprising that in June 1652 Lechmere should be given the primary responsibility for steering a committee on future revenue sources.94CJ vii. 138b. Up to the forced dissolution of the Rump, Lechmere was in demand as safe pair of hands to chair committees on the sales of goods of the royal family (25 Jan. 1653) and a further bill to sell traitors’ lands (1 Mar.).95CJ vii. 250b, 263a,b. He was of sufficient standing in the House to be able to assure John Harington I*, secluded in December 1648, that an order could bring him back into Parliament.96Harington’s Diary, 73.

As well as providing expert commentary on legal matters and helping frame the means by which the state could improve its finances, Lechmere was active in committee discussions on religious reform. In April 1649 he and 34 others were added to a committee working on an act to settle £20,000 on preaching ministers, and in January 1650 was added to the committee preparing, in its last stages, what became soon afterwards the act for the propagation of the gospel in Wales (22 Feb. 1650).97CJ vi. 196a, 352a. In June that year, he transferred his interests in propagating the gospel to a committee considering York as the locus of such a campaign.98CJ vi. 420b. At this time the aim of producing a comprehensive act for propagating the gospel was mooted, and a year later (23 May 1651) Lechmere was with Gilbert Millington, regicide and chairman of the Plundered Ministers Committee, asked to bring in a bill to this purpose.99CJ vi. 578b. This may have conferred membership of the Committee of Plundered Ministers on Lechmere, who reported from it the amendments to the bill. It was, however, committed to a committee of the whole House for consideration (15 Oct. 1651), and fizzled out in the stalemate among the Members on the future of state religious provision.100CJ vii. 28a.

The problem of the continued state funding of a ministry in the absence of tithes exercised several committees on which Lechmere sat. He reported amendments from a committee on the augmentation of ministers’ stipends just before it became law on 31 May 1650. An act on maintenance of ministers had been passed the previous month (5 April), which included a clause which allowed him to consolidate and enclose his holdings among the glebe of Hanley Castle.101CJ vi. 418a; A. and O. ii. 377, 391. The act of 5 April 1650 empowered the committee for regulating the universities to authorise the augmentations which would be made by trustees. On 9 April 1651, Lechmere was added to that committee, but only seems to have attended two meetings, thus repeating his performance at another executive committee, that of the Navy and Customs.102CJ vi. 557b; LPL, Sion L40.2/E16, ff. 22, 378, 680.

Lechmere’s own religious convictions and ministerial preferences are illuminated by the notes he made on sermons from the late 1640s to the Restoration. Many of the sermons were on public occasions - fast days of Parliament, for example - but others were on normal Sundays in parish churches. The 44 ministers and 113 sermon notes cover a range of theological outlooks which might be labelled ‘orthodox puritan’. There were both Presbyterians and Independents among these preachers. Most were close to the state in some way. His favourite seems to have been Stephen Marshall (23 sermons); the most exotic, John Tombes, a Baptist, but one who was to be certainly acceptable to Oliver Cromwell*.103Add. 39940-39942. Lechmere made notes on sermons by his own minister at Hanley, James Warwick: and in 1650 a free school was in operation at Hanley with Lechmere’s approval.104Worcs. Archives, 705:134/BA 1531/62.

In 1650, Lechmere inherited his patrimony at Hanley Castle, but continued to live in the house of Lady Paget. He nevertheless remained very influential in Worcestershire, furnishing the council of state in December 1650 with a list of suitable appointments for the militia. It was subject to the approval only of Serjeant John Wylde, who remained the county’s most powerful government figure. Lechmere played a major role in building up the county militia.105CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 488, 1651, 94, 96, 332. His family continued to grow, and it is noticeable that by this time he was choosing godparents more from within his extended family group – Sandys and Overbury names being prominent – than from celebrity colleagues. A few days after the baptism of his son Sandys Lechmere in London in August 1651, he went down to Worcestershire to meet the threat from the invading Scots army, and to see tested the quality of the militia in which he had taken such an interest. Charles Stuart himself, with 130 Scots horse, joined two days later by a further 150 troops, occupied Lechmere’s house, Severn End. Among his entourage was Lechmere’s former friend, Massie, once godfather to his child but now his enemy. Lechmere recorded that ‘he treated my people civilly enough, but threatened extirpation to me and my posterity because I was joined to the army of the Parliament.’106Lechmere’s MS acct. of his life, n.p.

Lechmere was able to get away in order to write to Parliament two days before the battle of Worcester, and was present at the battle itself, presumably with colleagues of the county committee; but details of his activities on 3 September were later carefully and completely expunged from his manuscript autobiography.107Shirley, Hanley, 22; CJ vii. 10a; Lechmere’s MS acct. of his life, n.p. In the immediate aftermath of the battle he was named to a parliamentary committee to consider the plight of those well-affected people plundered during its course (10 Sept.), but stayed on in Worcester long enough to attend at least one meeting of the county committee, when augmentations to the salaries of two godly ministers were made from the surplus arising from the sales of lead from the cathedral.108CJ vii. 15a; Worcester Cathedral Library MSS D223, D224a. His legal career continued to develop, despite his heavy commitments in Parliament. He was called to the bench of his inn in June 1652, together with William Say, a fellow parliament-man and colleague on the committee which framed the act for the propagation of the gospel in Wales.109MTR ii. 1038.

By the closing months of the Rump, Lechmere had become a highly experienced legal draftsman. In January 1653 alone, Lechmere was asked to chair, or was first-named to, four parliamentary legislative committees. Among them was a committee to consider reviving the jurisdiction of the county palatine of Lancaster (1 Jan. 1653). Lechmere had been involved in duchy administration previously, having in June 1649 been one of a committee considering an assize to be held at Lancaster in place of the duchy court.110CJ vi. 239b, vii. 241b, 244ab, 245ab. Also in January 1653, Lechmere played an important role in the work of building a rapprochement with the Scots: in Bulstrode Whitelocke*’s absence through ill health, he reported to Parliament on the progress of a bill to provide indemnity and oblivion to Scots formerly in arms.111CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 127. Thus Lechmere’s legal expertise was employed in committees where technical detail, rather than political sensitivity, was the dominant theme.

Office-holder under the protectorate

After the Rump was forcibly dissolved, Lechmere found no place in the Nominated Assembly, probably because he was too prominent among those perceived as a conservative check to the radical aspirations of godly millenarians. He retained his place in local commissions, however, and in September 1654 he was back at Westminster, as a Member for Worcestershire in the first protectorate Parliament, having been elected on 12 July.112Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 270; Shirley, Hanley, 22. He was named to some important standing committees: privileges, and the committees for Scottish and Irish affairs.113CJ vii. 366b, 371b. Although his total of more than 20 committee nominations covered a range of subjects, his parliamentary interests seem to have narrowed further during this period to focus on legal affairs. Thus in this Parliament he chaired committees on regulating chancery (5 Oct.1654) and on abuses in the administration of certain writs (3 Nov.), and became involved in modifying the law of debt: as in the Rump, on the side of caution.114CJ vii. 374a, 378ab, 381b. He was closely involved in the attempt to review the constitution, but there is no evidence that he sought to damage the government.

Lechmere had no difficulty in navigating the weeding out of Members by the lord protector’s council (12 Sept. 1654), and when the House re-assembled was named to the committee to bring in the bill to revise the constitution in a limited way. He was involved in this topic throughout the session, and led a committee working on a clause of what was intended to be chapter 35 (chapter 33 in its final draft version) of the revised Instrument of Government.115CJ vii. 369ab, 370a, 398a, 403a, 411a, 415ab. In the last week of this short-lived assembly, he reported (13 Jan. 1655) from a committee which had proposed a clause that those found guilty of corruption in public office should find no exemption from scrutiny by Parliament.116CJ vii. 415a.

No legislation had been passed when Parliament was dissolved in January 1655, but this proved no brake on Lechmere’s career. His experience and interest in the affairs of the duchy of Lancaster and his legal eminence and skill as a draftsman secured him the position of attorney-general to the duchy, which he took first in June 1655, with later confirmations.117Worcs. Archives, BA 2411/ 2 (ii); Duchy of Lancaster Office-Holders ed. Somerville, 22. The following month he was granted a licence to practise in the Westminster courts, allowing him to move freely in exalted legal circles on behalf of the government.118Worcs. Archives, 705:134/ BA 1531/ 65 (vi). On the death of Lady Paget in June 1655, Lechmere removed finally to Hanley, but in March that year he was writing from Worcester, where he still evidently played a decisive role in directing the militia. By this time he had become a reliable and energetic supporter of the protectorate, and wrote to John Thurloe* of his work in rounding up those suspected of active plotting, and of his hopes for ‘the preservation of the honest interest’.119TSP iii. 390. A Worcestershire magistrate and militia commissioner, Lechmere was also a commissioner for scandalous ministers, where his godly credentials could be put to good use.

Lechmere secured a seat in the second protectorate Parliament, after an election on 20 August 1656.120Diary and Pprs of Henry Townshend, 274. He was busier than ever as a committeeman, being named to 14 committees between 27 September and 31 October.121CJ vii. 427a-448a. Matters relating to the operation of the law courts and to legal offices were a major theme in these nominations, and the Journal records his nominations not by his name but by his office of attorney-general of the duchy. His position did not inhibit his being named to committees on a rather wider range of topics than had previously been the case.122CJ vii. 429b, 435b, 438a, 441b, 448a, 449a, 456a, 460b, 494a, 528a, 538a. Among the economic affairs he was invited to consider were the statutes governing labourers’ wages and lifestyles (7 Oct. 1656) and the prices of wines (9 Oct.).123CJ vii. 435ab, 436b. An earlier interest, in the procedures governing sales of confiscated lands, was sustained in his appointment to committees on this subject (17, 21 Oct.).124CJ vii. 440b, 443a. He was one of the hundred Members who on 9 April 1657 waited on the protector to receive his answer to the Humble Petition and Advice, but as a government office-holder, played no part in the framing of it.125CJ vii. 521b. He spoke in the House on the problems of legal continuity thrown up by the acceptance of the Humble Petition (29 Apr. 1657), and acted as teller in a division against accepting the advice of the committee discussing the detail of the agreement with the protector. He was doubtless motivated by concern for legal niceties rather than any dislike of the Humble Petition itself.126Burton’s Diary ii. 68; CJ vii, 537b. He was involved in re-drafting amendments to the Petition, and considered it ‘to us now ... a Magna Charta’.127CJ vii. 537b; Burton’s Diary ii. 138.

His interventions on the floor of the House were on points of legislative detail and procedure. Thus, among the issues he spoke to were the problem of continuity of legislation before and after the Humble Petition and Advice (29 Apr., 25 May 1657), the need for a better bill on marriage to replace that of 1653 (26 May); the value of suspending private business for 14 days to allow the growing volume of public business preference (26 May); and on the best course for preserving public records (25 Jan. 1658).128Burton’s Diary ii. 68, 122, 130, 131, 350. He could generally be relied upon to support the government or its draftsmen: on the bill for union with Scotland, on the value of printing the Humble Petition and Advice.129Burton’s Diary, ii. 135, 136, 138. On another major concern of this Parliament, the case of James Naylor, it is probable that he backed those who sought to clamp down on religious antinomians. In the first protectorate Parliament he had been named to committees to enumerate heresies, to consider books by John Biddle and to contemplate a response to the supposed Quaker who had burnt a Bible and caused an affray in the lobby.130CJ vii. 399b, 400a, 410a. In this one, Lechmere sat on the committee investigating the ‘obnoxious’ publication, Thunder from the Throne of Gods.131CJ vii. 442b. Before that, of course, he had striven for a national ministry and was a known supporter of orthodox godly ministers, the usual targets for Quaker disruption.

From this time, he was busy rebuilding Severn End and acquiring lands adjacent to his estate at Hanley, doubtless partly financed through the profits of his office as attorney-general of the duchy.132Lechmere’s MS acct. of his life, n.p.; Shirley, Hanley, 25, 28; VCH Worcs. iii. 488, 490; iv. 116, 140. The author of A Narrative of the Late Parliament could not provide a figure, but was content to note of his office that ‘his advantage thereby is not well known’.133A Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 10 (E.935.5). He drew close to John Thurloe, whose second wife was his cousin on the Overbury side of the family, and received from him a detailed account of the transition of power on the death of Oliver Cromwell. As a state officeholder, Lechmere walked in the lord protector’s funeral procession.134Worcs. Archives, 905:134/BA 2411/2; Shirley, Hanley, 27; Lechmere’s MS acct. of his life, funeral ticket attached; P. Aubrey, Mr Secretary Thurloe (1990), pp. xiv, 137. There was no question of his loyalty to Richard Cromwell*: in October 1658 he helped frame a loyal address from the justices and grand jury of Worcestershire, confident that Richard would be a ‘true protector, not only of these nations but of the people of God all the world over.’135The Publick Intelligencer no. 147 (11-18 Oct. 1658), copy in Worcs. Archives, 705/134/BA 1531/65 (vi).

Lechmere was elected to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, on 19 January 1659. This election was sharply contested, Lechmere admitting to having spent with Thomas Foley* £614 on hospitality in Worcester to secure the defeat of John Talbot of Salwarpe and John Nanfan* of Birtsmorton.136Shirley, Hanley, 28. He kept his post of attorney-general to the duchy of Lancaster, and at Westminster was entrusted with tendering the oath of loyalty to all MPs (27 Jan.), while at the same time sat on the parliamentary committee of privileges (28 Jan.).137CJ vii. 593a, 594b. He intervened on a number of occasions in debates of the whole House, supporting the government and attempting to clarify points of law and precedent. When Lewis Audley*, a former army agitator and an unsuccessful candidate at the election, was brought to the bar of the House for contumacious words against the two Members returned for Gatton (2 Feb.), Lechmere argued that his apology should be accepted, against the implacable hostility of Sir Arthur Hesilrige. When John Manley stood to speak, Hesilrige complained, in a stage whisper, ‘another lawyer’, to which Lechmere took strong exception.138Burton’s Diary, iii. 37-9. He argued against debating the basis of authority in the state piecemeal, and urged an end to the republicans’ destructive tactics (19 Feb.): ‘I know not where you will end, till you recognize Charles Stuart for king’.139Burton’s Diary, iii. 331, 353.

On 2 March 1659, Lechmere delivered a long speech, first declaring how extraordinary it was that a head of state in possession should have his title questioned in Parliament. He insisted that he approved of the abolition of the House of Lords in 1649 – ‘I admit that Parliament did prudently. I would have the memory of them famous to their last breath’ – and characterised the Humble Petition and Advice as having restored liberties encroached upon by the lord protector, a view adumbrated in his speech of 27 May 1657. There was now no need for Parliament to name a successor to Protector Richard, as precedent revealed ‘a hundred acts’ where none was named. The Other House was an honourable body, to which men should be removed by their virtue rather than birth. The constitution should be made to work by the House of Commons co-operating with the Other House, and by abandoning mechanisms to exclude Members: ‘set both your doors open.’140Burton’s Diary, ii. 135, 136, 138; iii. 583-5. In his other contributions, Lechmere generally took a line that was cautious and conservative, referring frequently to precedent. Thus he pointed out what he thought was an irregularity in the election indenture for Tavistock (13 Apr.), argued that the debates of the House should not be made public, and thought, with John Swynfen*, that petitioning Quakers should go back to work and apply to the law for remedy for their grievances.141Burton’s Diary, iv. 414, 415, 443. His views on the farmers of the excise were those of a country Member: ‘you had delivered up the country too often a prey to such persons, if justices of peace were not persons of discretion and conscience’.142Burton’s Diary, iv. 418. At the committee formed to discuss the better payment of excise, which Lechmere chaired, he allowed proceedings to drift into another discussion of constitutional wording: ‘this debate happily fell asleep’, noted Thomas Burton*.143Burton’s Diary, iv. 422, 428; CJ vii. 639a.

In March 1659, doubtless because of his growing professional eminence, Lechmere was shortlisted by Bristol corporation for the post of recorder there, but John Stephens* was selected instead.144Bristol RO, 04264/6, p. 184. After the collapse of the Cromwellian protectorate, Lechmere returned to Westminster in the restored Rump. Unencumbered by high office, he resumed his career as a reliable draftsman and parliamentary committeeman. He was named on 7 May to important committees on the standing of Members and the authority of Parliament over the administration of justice; and on the form of government (21 May).145CJ vii. 645b, 646a, 661b. On 14 and 18 May he was first named to committees on a proposed new act of indemnity and on the jurisdictions of admiralty and probate.146CJ vii. 654b, 655a, 657a, 662a. Naturally, there were continuities with his interests in former assemblies. Thus he took up again the issues of continuing the excise, restructuring the militia, and sat on the re-formed Committee for Plundered Ministers.147CJ vii. 665b, 676b, 689a (excise), 668a (militia), 689b, 693b (plundered ministers). After having been asked to convey Parliament’s thanks to the city of Worcester for its loyalty in July, however, he seems to have left Westminster to ride the assize circuit, narrowly avoiding being fined for absence at a call of the House on 8 August.148CJ vii. 706a, 751b. According to this own account he broke his shoulder on 25 August, while riding between the assizes at Worcester and Monmouth.149Shirley, Hanley, 29. He had recovered in time to return to Westminster once more when the Rump Parliament re-assembled for the last time in December 1659, attending certainly by 12 January 1660. Between then and 15 March, Lechmere was named to no fewer than 22 committees, covering the topics in which had long interested him: excise, the technical aspects of law reform, the maintenance of ministers, militia.150CJ vii. 848a (excise), 818a, 851b, 854a, 860b, 863b (law), 856a, 877a (ministers), 856a, 860a, 867b, 868b (militia). He recovered his post of attorney-general to the duchy of Lancaster, and was named as legal counsel to the state.151CJ vii. 814b, 875b; Duchy of Lancaster Office-Holders ed. Somerville, 22.

Restoration and later years

By this time his natural conservatism was inclining him towards those who sought a restoration of the monarchy, to judge from his involvement in plans to call a Parliament on 25 April.152CJ vii. 868a. In any large-scale return of the older Worcestershire gentry families to the electoral process, Lechmere’s interest would have dissipated, and he seems not to have sought election to the Convention. The obituary he wrote on the Rump suggests that he never repudiated his part in it completely; he noted ‘the many wonderful changes by them made upon church and state’.153Shirley, Hanley, 30. Even so, Lechmere needed to act quickly to make his peace with the restored Charles II. A political enemy from Worcestershire, the chronicler Henry Townshend, wrote that Lechmere was considered for omission from the act of indemnity and oblivion because he had been counsel for the state in trials of high-ranking royalists or those regarded as martyrs for the cause of Charles I. The nearest Lechmere had come to that characterization was as prosecuting counsel against those charged with causing the Christmas disturbances in London in 1647, as a lawyer charged with justifying the actions of Parliament in November 1648, or as a member of the high court of justice against royalists in June 1651.154Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 288; CJ v. 534b; vi. 79a, 591b. There was also his appointment as counsel to the state in 1659, but none of these made him as vulnerable as involvement in the trial of the king would have done. As it was, he was able to persuade his lawyer friend, Thomas Beverley (master of requests from 1662), to ask Viscount Mordaunt (John Mordaunt) to plead on his behalf for a pardon, citing Lechmere’s attempts to exempt royalists from the scrutiny of the court of justice, and conveying his client’s description of himself as an ‘unhappy member’ of the Rump. The strategy succeeded: Lechmere paid £200, and received his pardon on 4 April 1660.155Shirley, Hanley, 31; CCSP iv. 618. He was named as a ‘decimator’ in a list of Worcestershire committeemen presented at the Worcester assizes in 1661, but the clerk of assize assured Sir Philip Warwick* that ‘it is absolutely denied by Mr Lechmere and I conceive (upon inquiry made) that he never sat among them’.156LR9/105.

Thereafter his career was that of a senior lawyer at the Middle Temple, largely excluded from public office until the Revolution of 1688-9. As his land purchases had largely been of properties willingly offered for sale, he lost only Welland manor, which reverted to the bishop of Worcester and of which Sir John Pakington* contemplated taking a lease, only to decide it was beyond his means.157Worcs. Archives, Coventry of Croome Court papers cxix, f. 29. Lechmere continued to play a leading role in the life of his inn, and managed the rebuilding and extension of Severn End and the augmentation of his estates.158MTR ii. 1160-1396, many refs.; Shirley, Hanley, 28, 33, 34, 44, 47. There seems little doubt of his Country or whig sympathies and anti-Catholic outlook. He was prepared to believe that ‘the hand of Joab’ was in the Great Fire of 1665, although he was willing to be persuaded otherwise, and believed in the veracity of the Popish Plot of 1678.159Shirley, Hanley, 37; Worcs. Archives, 705:134/BA 1531/16. His steady accumulation of landed wealth and reputation was punctuated unpleasantly when in 1686 his cousin and former client, Sir Edward Dineley, sued him for illegal enclosure and at the same time accused him of violence towards political opponents. Lechmere had abused his position as ‘a man of power in the unhappy civil wars of England and in great authority with the then usurper, and having a covetous eye to his own interest and to oppress his neighbours’. Witnesses heard Dineley say that all enclosures made in the ‘late rebellious time’ should be thrown down; Lechmere’s own comment on Dineley, ‘king of the bumpkins’, was that this was a fine reward for his having raised his cousin ‘out of the dirt’.160Worcs. Archives, 705:134/BA 1531/61; Shirley, Hanley, 48.

Dineley’s was primarily a tory-inspired attack, but Lechmere did not have long to wait before his public career took off again in spectacular fashion. At the Revolution Lechmere’s local whig credentials and valued legal expertise were sought after, and 1689 turned out to be his late-appearing annus mirabilis. He was admitted to the order of serjeant-at-law, supported by the 4th earl of Coventry (Gilbert Coventry) and the 12th earl of Shrewsbury (Charles Talbot), knighted and made second baron of the exchequer and deputy lieutenant of his county. He resigned from his exchequer post in 1700, pleading extreme old age.161Baker, Serjeants at Law, 202-3, 450, 523; Add. 34690, f. 65; Shirley, Hanley, 49; CSP Dom. 1700-1702, p. 72. Lechmere died on 30 April 1701, and was buried on 2 May at Hanley Castle, without a coffin. Two of his grandsons sat as whigs in Parliament between 1708 and 1721; his great-grandson sat for Worcestershire between 1734 and 1747 as a tory.162Shirley, Hanley, 50; HP Commons 1715-1754.