WELBY, William (1604-57), of Denton, Lincs.

Welby belonged to what seems to have been a junior branch of a family that had held lands in Lincolnshire since the thirteenth century. The Welbys had settled at Denton, a few miles south west of Grantham, by the early sixteenth century, but do not appear to have risen much above the ranks of the yeomanry before the mid-seventeenth century and the emergence of Welby himself in county affairs.15Lincs. RO, INV/113/459; INV/137/120; 1-PG/2/1/2/1, 4, 8; 1-PG/2/1/3/7; Lincs. Peds. 1053; Anon., Notices of the Fam. of Welby, 5-6. Welby was the first of his line to be appointed a justice of the peace or to sit in Parliament. His father, who styled himself ‘yeoman’, bequeathed Welby three tenements, several cottages and a farm and land in Denton; his brothers were left property in Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire.16PROB11/151, f. 428v.

There is no evidence that Welby attended university or the inns of court, and his life and career remain largely obscure before the 1640s. Nevertheless, he had evidently improved considerably upon his modest inheritance by the early 1640s, when he seems to have considered standing as a candidate in the March 1641 by-election at Grantham. On 18 March, the town corporation resolved that Welby, John Brownlow (the elder brother of Sir William Brownlow*) and a third gentleman could be made freemen so long as they appeared in person according to ‘ancient custom’. It is likely that they had requested their freedom of the town in order to render themselves eligible for election.17Lincs. RO, Grantham borough min. bk. 1, f. 92v. Welby was certainly in good standing with the corporation, having lent it £300 (he would be one of four gentlemen from whom the corporation borrowed £2,000 in 1650 to pay off its debts).18Grantham during the Interregnum: the Hall Bk. of Grantham 1641-9 ed. B. Couth (Lincoln Rec. Soc. lxxxiii), 11, 13, 14, 18, 70, 96, 106, 137; Borough Government in Newton’s Grantham: the Hall Bk. of Grantham, 1649-62 ed. J.B. Manterfield (Lincoln Rec. Soc. cvi), 10. But there is no evidence that he appeared in person to obtain his freedom; and, in the event, the town returned the godly Lincolnshire knight Sir William Armyne.19Supra, ‘Grantham’.

Welby signed the Lincolnshire declaration of June 1642 ‘against all such as shall attempt to separate his majesty from his great and faithful council of Parliament’, and he was among the county’s parliamentarians whom the royalists indicted for high treason at the Grantham quarter sessions in 1643.20PA, Main Pprs. 4 July 1642; A Declaration of the Commons Assembled in Parliament upon Two Letters sent by Sir John Brooks (1643), 11 (E.101.13). Nevertheless, he failed to secure nomination to any local parliamentary commission before 1647. Moreover, his pattern of appointments – as a Kesteven magistrate in July 1646 (when the Presbyterian politician Colonel Edward King was endeavouring to use the bench as a counter-weight to the authority of the Lincolnshire county committee) and to the December 1648 militia commission – may indicate that he belonged to the more pacific, Presbyterian wing of the parliamentary interest. Apart from his indictment in 1643, there is no evidence to suggest that he contributed to the parliamentarian war effort; although he does seem to have been involved in sequestering the estates of royalists, allegedly for his own profit.21CCC 1530.

A letter that Welby’s brother-in-law, William Williams, wrote to him on 30 January 1649, the day of the king’s execution, may be further evidence of Welby’s Presbyterian sympathies. Williams apologized for his failure to acquire a copy for Welby of the ‘ordinances for Presbyterian [church] government’. In addition, Williams’s comments on the events in London – that the king had died resolutely and that his death greatly discontented the citizens – suggests that his correspondent was not a man who welcomed the regicide.22Anon., Notices of the Fam. of Welby, 61. The Rump seems to have come to much the same conclusion – if somewhat belatedly – removing Welby from the Kesteven bench in July 1652.23C193/13/4, f. 56. However, he continued to be named to local commissions throughout the commonwealth period.

Welby’s political fortunes improved with the establishment of the protectorate late in 1653. In January 1654, he was added to the Lincolnshire assessment commission; and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654 he was returned for the ninth of the county’s ten places.24Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 371. His estate in the Grantham area, which he had augmented considerably – notably with his purchase in 1648 of the manor of Denton – would have given him at least some electoral footing in the county.25Lincs. RO, Misc. Dep. 178/1/43, 68, 71; [Anon.], Notices of the Fam. of Welby, 64. And he probably enjoyed the backing of Grantham corporation, to which he had made a ‘free gift’ of 12 ceremonial halberds in 1651.26The Hall Bk. of Grantham, 1649-62 ed. Manterfield, 48. But perhaps of greater significance was the fact that he was a major creditor of the parliamentarian peer John Manners*, 8th earl of Rutland, who was one of south-west Lincolnshire’s greatest and most influential landowners.27PROB11/270, f. 69v; Belvoir, Misc. lttrs. 1646-50, unfol. The earl may have owned property in Welby’s home parish of Denton.28Lincs. RO, 1-PG/2/1/2/8. Welby received only one appointment in this Parliament – to the committee of privileges – and made no recorded contribution to debate.29CJ vii. 366b. Having been added to all three Lincolnshire benches in March 1656, he was returned for the county again that summer, coming seventh on a poll with 522 votes.30Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’; C231/6, p. 328. Of the ten successful candidates, however, Welby and five others were excluded by the protectoral council as enemies of the government.31Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’; CJ vii. 425b. Perhaps the most likely explanation for his exclusion is that he was accounted hostile to the rule of the major-generals.

Welby died in the summer of 1657 and was buried on 30 July in the vault he ‘caused to be made for a burying place’ in Denton parish church.32PROB11/270, f. 69; Betham, Baronetage of Eng. v. app. p. 22. In his will, he left the bulk of his property – which included lands in Huntingdonshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire, as well as in Lincolnshire – to his eldest son William and charged his estate with legacies in excess of £10,300 (mainly in the form of debts he was owed) and an annuity of £250. Besides the earl of Rutland, who owed him £3,000, and Grantham corporation, his debtors included the Leicestershire parliamentarian Colonel Francis Hacker*.33Supra, ‘Geoffrey Palmer’; PROB11/270, ff. 69-70. Welby’s personal estate was reckoned to be worth ‘£10,000 and upwards’.34C6/17/127. An anonymous elegist portrayed him as a man who eschewed extreme opinion and was of ‘discreet zeal’ in religion.35Anon., Notices of the Fam. of Welby, 72-3. None of Welby’s immediate descendants sat in Parliament.