WALTER, Robert (bef. 1623-c.1671), of Cundall, Yorks.

Walter’s grandfather, the son of a cook, had served as lord mayor of York in 1620. His grandfather’s elder brother – lord mayor of York in 1591 and 1603 – had purchased the manor of Cundall in the North Riding, about five miles north east of Boroughbridge, in 1597, and it had become the family’s principal residence.1York City Lib. Skaife mss, SKA/3, ff. 816-18; Whitaker, Richmondshire, ii. 196; VCH N. Riding, i. 364. Walter received a gentleman’s education at Cambridge and Gray’s Inn, and by the autumn of 1645 he was an active member of the North Riding committee of the Northern Association.2Bodl. Nalson IV, f. 309; Yorks. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. J.W. Clay (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. xv), 44, 132, 192; (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. xviii), 127. His career in public life received a significant boost in 1647 with his marriage to the eldest daughter of Thomas Stockdale*, who was a close ally of the Fairfaxes and one of the West Riding’s most prominent parliamentarian gentlemen.3Supra, ‘Thomas Stockdale’; Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. i. 278.

By the spring of 1648, Walter had secured a captain’s commission in the Northern Brigade under Major-general John Lambert* and was involved in efforts to mobilise Parliament’s forces in Yorkshire during the second civil war.4Bodl. Nalson VII, f. 22; Add. 36996, f. 12; A. and O. i. 1141. As an officer in the Northern Brigade, where he served with his brother William, he may have been part of the force that Lambert commanded at the battle of Preston in August 1648. By mid-1649, Walter had attained the rank of lieutenant-colonel (he should not be confused with the Yorkshire royalist officer and conspirator Major Robert Walters of Little Ouseburn) and was active on the North Riding bench and assessment commission under the Rump.5Add. 21417, f. 240; Add. 21426, f. 362; Quarter Sessions Recs. ed. Atkinson (N. Riding Rec. Soc. v), passim; Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. M.Y. Ashcroft (N. Yorks. RO publications xlix), 137; Yorks. Royalist Composition Pprs. ed. Clay (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. xx), 165-6; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 106, 118, 139-41, 276. Appointed late in 1655 to the Yorkshire commission for assisting Deputy Major-general Robert Lilburne*, he signed a letter from the commissioners to the protector in January 1656, requesting more repressive measures against the county’s malignants.6TSP iv. 402; R. Brathwaite, An Excellent Piece of Conceipted Poesy (1658), 314-15.

Walter probably owed his return for Knaresborough to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659 to his brother-in-law William Stockdale† (the son of Walter’s deceased father-in-law Thomas Stockdale) of nearby Bilton Park.7Supra, ‘Knaresborough’. Walter made no recorded contribution to debate in this Parliament and received only three committee appointments.8CJ vii. 595a, 622b, 638a. It was reported, late in 1659, that his militia troop had aligned with Lord Fairfax (Sir Thomas Fairfax*) and the forces in Yorkshire opposed to Lambert and Robert Lilburne.9Narrative of the Northern Affairs, 4. And, as sheriff of Yorkshire, Walter headed the group of gentlemen who met General George Monck* on his entry into the county in January 1660.10Baker, Chronicle, 678; Clarke Pprs. v. 356. However, he was removed from all local commissions at the Restoration, and late in 1661 he was included on a list of Yorkshiremen ‘disaffected to his Majesty’.11HMC Var. ii. 117. He was one of the ringleaders of the Farnley Wood Plot in Yorkshire in 1663, for which he was arrested, interrogated and imprisoned in the Tower. In April 1665, he petitioned the king, confessing his ‘heinous offence in concealing the late horrid treason in the northern parts’ and pleading that he had ‘witnessed against the conspirators ... omitting not the least thing against any of them’. He was released soon afterwards.12Add. 33770, passim; CSP Dom. 1663-4, pp. 284, 303, 323, 521; 1664-5, pp. 17, 213; A. Hopper, ‘The Farnley Wood Plot and the memory of the civil wars in Yorks.’, HJ xlv. 286-7, 289, 295.

Walter was dead by March 1671, when the administration of his estate was granted to his widow.13Borthwick, Prerogative Act Bk. f. 192. His place and date of burial are not known. No other member of his family sat in Parliament.