WHITGREAVE, Thomas (c.1625-95), of Great Bridgeford, Seighford, Staffs.

Whitgreave’s family had acquired Great Bridgeford in the mid-fifteenth century, but had settled in the nearby parish of Castle Church, just south-west of Stafford, by Elizabeth’s reign.19St. 878, f. 22; Vis. Staffs. ed. Grazebrook, 307-9. Both his father and grandfather signed the Staffordshire petition to the Lords of May 1642, requesting their lordships to urge the king to accept the Militia Ordinance and to ‘lean upon the hand and be graciously pleased to follow the counsels ... of Parliament, that the bleeding wounds of our brethren of Ireland be bound up’.20PA, Main Pprs. 16 Feb. 1642, f. 131. None of the family, however, appears to have played a significant part in the civil war.

Whitgreave’s emergence as one of Staffordshire’s leading men during the 1650s was almost certainly down to the patronage of his uncle Colonel Thomas Crompton*, who had represented the county in the Long Parliament.21Supra, ‘Thomas Crompton’. It was at the request of Crompton and his fellow Staffordshire militia commissioners that Whitgreave was added to the commission in 1650.22CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 254, 613. And it was probably Crompton who, as a colonel of horse in the Staffordshire militia, secured Whitgreave his commission as a captain in the early 1650s.23Supra, ‘Thomas Crompton’; SP28/242, f. 380. Added to the Staffordshire bench in 1651, Whitgreave was a diligent magistrate, attending over 20 quarter sessions meetings between April 1652 and July 1659.24Staffs. RO, Q/SO 5, pp. 189, 455, 491; QS/O 6, ff. 1, 119.

Whitgreave apparently had no trouble negotiating the transition from commonwealth to protectorate, and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in July 1654 he was returned for Staffordshire, taking third place behind Sir Charles Wolseley and Crompton.25C219/44/2/14. Again, it seems likely that his uncle’s influence was key to his advancement. Whitgreave’s estate was worth £600 a year by the 1660s, making him one of Staffordshire’s wealthier gentlemen.26Wm. Salt. Lib. S.MS.209. Nevertheless, the Whitgreaves had not figured prominently in county affairs before the civil war, and nor had they distinguished themselves in Parliament’s service as the Cromptons had. Whitgreave was named to four committees in this Parliament, and on 30 November 1654 he was a minority teller with Wolseley in favour of proceeding with a debate on whether the protectoral council – of which Wolseley was a member – should comprise those nominated by the protector and approved by Parliament.27CJ vii. 368b, 387a, 387b, 393b, 397b. Evidently Whitgreave was a firm supporter of the protectoral settlement.

Whitgreave was an equally enthusiastic Cromwellian back in Staffordshire. He was apparently regarded as one of the more trustworthy of the county’s ejectors and was active as a Staffordshire commissioner under Major-general Charles Worsley*.28Staffs. RO, D593/P/8/1/50; D793/94; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 144. It may also be significant that he was among the county’s justices of the peace who attended the January 1656 quarter sessions meeting at which Worsley presided.29Staffs. RO, QS/O 6, f. 38. In a further mark of the government’s favour, he was added that same month (Jan. 1656) to the committee for trade at Whitehall.30CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 141.

In the summer of 1656, he was re-elected for Staffordshire and once again took the third place behind Wolseley and Crompton.31C219/45/1, unfol. He was named to 17 committees in this Parliament – including those for Irish affairs (23 Sept. 1656), for trade (20 Oct.) and to report the condition of the imprisoned Quaker evangelist James Naylor following his punishment for blasphemy (28 Feb. 1657).32CJ vii. 427a, 442a, 497b. His only tellership in this Parliament occurred on 16 February 1657, when he and the Leicestershire MP Thomas Beaumont were majority tellers on a bill for settling an estate in Scotland and Devon upon General George Monck*.33CJ vii. 492a. The winning side in this division represented a coming together of Cromwellian courtiers and army grandees against the Presbyterian interest.34Supra, ‘George Monck’.

Whitgreave’s most revealing appointments in the second protectoral Parliament related to the introduction of the new Cromwellian constitution, the Humble Petition and Advice. He was named to committees for making the arrangements to present the Humble Petition to the protector (27 Mar. 1656), to satisfy Cromwell’s ‘doubts and scruples’ regarding it (9 Apr.) and for preparing bills to fine-tune the new constitution (27 May).35CJ vii. 514a, 521b, 540b. Like Wolseley, he would be listed among the ‘kinglings’ in the House – that is, those Members who supported the offer of the crown to Oliver Cromwell.36[Wharton], Narrative, 22. He seems to have made only one major speech in the Commons – at the beginning of the second session on 30 January 1658 – and he made it tell, venting his frustration at republican opposition to the Humble Petition, particularly as expressed in a lengthy speech by the leading commonwealthsman Thomas Scot I the day before.

The long oration made yesterday I heard most of it in [16]54 directed against the supreme magistrate [the protector], now against the House of Lords. It wholly tends to a commonwealth [republic], so I hope it will need no answer ... We have sad experience of what treasure it cost us when we were a commonwealth; more than in five hundred years before. Let us consider the condition we are in – Scotland scarce recovered; Ireland wants but swords to return again to be our enemy. His Highness has called the Other House a House of Lords, and my motion is that you would address your answer to them by that title.37Burton’s Diary, ii. 395-6.

This speech would have gone down well with Cromwell, who at some point during the early months of 1658 made Whitgreave a knight.38Staffs. RO, QS/O 6, f. 97. Whitgreave’s patron in securing this honour may well have been highly influential Wolseley, who was a member of the Other House. Whitgreave was returned for Staffordshire again in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, and on this occasion, as a result of his knighthood, took the senior seat to his uncle Crompton.39A Perfect List [of MPs in 1659] (1659). But the zeal he had shown in defending the protectorate a year earlier had apparently waned, for he received only one appointment in this Parliament – to the committee of privileges on 28 January 1659 – and made only one (minor) contribution to debate.40CJ vii. 594b; Burton’s Diary, iv. 293.

Whitgreave seems to have come through the Restoration relatively unscathed. His Cromwellian knighthood was, of course, not recognised by the crown, but he had evidently been restored to this honour by October 1660 and was for the remainder of his life styled ‘Sir Thomas Whitgreave’ – by which he can be distinguished from his cousin, the Staffordshire royalist Thomas Whitgreave.41CSP Dom. 1665-6, pp. 415, 504; Wedgwood, Staffs. Parlty. Hist. ii. 98. He also retained his place as a Staffordshire magistrate and assessment commissioner. He was accused during the Popish Plot controversy of 1679 of using his position as a magistrate to favour and protect Staffordshire’s Catholics and of being ‘popishly affected’ himself, ‘for that he was acquainted with the secrets of the papists, and particularly with the orders and degrees of the popish priests in and about the said county’.42Bodl. Rawl. A.136, p. 484; The Whole Series of All that hath been Transacted in the House of Peers, Concerning the Popish Plot (1681), 163-4. These allegations were the work of an informer and were probably for the most part false.43The Tryal of William Viscount Stafford for High Treason (1681), 115-16. Nevertheless, they probably explain Whitgreave’s removal from the Staffordshire magistracy by 1680. That he was then restored to the bench in May of that year, removed again in December and restored once more in 1683, suggests that the crown was uncertain of his loyalties during the Exclusion Crisis but inclined by 1683 to give him the benefit of the doubt.44C231/8, pp. 29, 40, 84. He was regarded as a supporter of James II’s proposed repeal of the test and penal laws and was listed in 1688 among those suitable for appointment as deputy lieutenants for Staffordshire.45SP31/4, ff. 15-16; Penal Laws and Test Act ed. G. F. Duckett (1882-3), ii. 206, 290. His compliance with James’s policies may explain why he was summoned to Parliament in 1689 ‘to answer the matters to be objected against him’.46CJ x. 210a.

Whitgreave died in mid-1695 and was buried in Seighford church on 3 June.47Seighford Par. Regs. ed. Tildesley, 104. No will is recorded. He died childless and was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.48St. 878, f. 22.