SMITHE, Sir Thomas (c.1595-1668), of Hatherton, Wybunbury, Cheshire.

Having moved from Lancashire to Chester at some point in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth centuries, Smithe’s family had afforded the city a regular supply of municipal officeholders and benefactors and had also acquired a sizeable landed estate in Cheshire (mostly in the vicinity of Chester and Nantwich).29Vis. Cheshire, 213; Ormerod, Cheshire, i. pt. 1, p. 341; iii. pt. 1, p. 502; HP Commons, 1509-58, ‘Sir Lawrence Smith’. His great-grandfather, Sir Lawrence Smith†, who had served as mayor of Chester on four occasions during the mid-sixteenth century, had been returned for Cheshire in 1545 and 1555 and for Chester in 1558 and 1559.30HP Commons, 1509-58; HP Commons, 1558-1603. Smithe’s grandfather had likewise served as mayor of the city, and in his will of 1614 he had bequeathed his extensive estate – which included 100 tenements and cottages in and around Chester and five manors in the Nantwich area – to his grandson rather than to his immediate heir (Smithe’s father) Laurence.31Ormerod, Cheshire, i. pt. 1, p. 341; The Palatine Note-Bk. ii. 83-4; Cheshire IPMs ed. Stewart-Brown, 57-60.

Two days after his grandfather’s death on 23 December 1614, Smithe requested Chester corporation – ‘through his friends then present’ – to be admitted a freeman and to succeed to his grandfather’s place as an alderman, ‘as his family had often served the corporation in the past’.32Cal. Chester City Mins. ed. Groombridge, 77. It is a measure of the respect that his name commanded in the city that the corporation acceded to his request despite his relative youth – he was probably in his late teens or early twenties – and the fact that he had served neither as a common councillor nor as a sheriff. He quickly became embroiled in the factional infighting among the officeholders between the supporters and opponents of the city’s recorder Edward Whitby† and his family; and, with his brother-in-law and fellow alderman Sir Randal Mainwaring, he was involved in securing the removal of Whitby’s father and brother from the clerkship of the Pentice and their replacement by Robert Brerewood*.33HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Chester’; A. M. Johnson, ‘Some Aspects of the Political, Constitutional, Social and Economic History of the City of Chester 1550-1662’ (Oxford Univ. DPhil. thesis, 1971), 88. The Whitby faction retaliated in 1627 by having Brerewood removed from office, provoking a bitter contest in the Chester election to the 1628 Parliament, with Smithe and Mainwaring standing against Whitby and his ally John Ratcliffe† (father of John Ratcliffe*). It was alleged that during the contest many of the voters were ‘threatened [that] unless they gave their voices to Sir Randal and Sir Thomas they should lose their houses’. On election day, however, Smithe and Mainwaring were roundly beaten on a poll, receiving about half the number of votes cast for their two competitors, who were duly returned.34Harl. 2125, f. 59v; HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Chester’. It is likely that Smithe’s contribution to the corporation’s struggle against Sir Thomas Aston* – sheriff of Cheshire in the mid-1630s – over the city’s Ship Money quota helped to restore at least some of the credit he had lost as a result of his humiliating defeat in the 1628 election.35Harl. 2093, ff. 90, 102, 135.

With the calling of a new Parliament, late in 1639, the mayor of Chester and his colleagues convened and chose Smithe and Brerewood (by this time, recorder) as their candidates in the forthcoming elections.36CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 168, 341; VCH Cheshire, ii. 113. Smithe seems to have made fairly regular visits to his in-laws at Long Ashton, near Bristol, and felt confident enough of his interest in Chester to remain in Somerset for much of early 1640.37Cheshire RO, ZAF/11/37; CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 412; 1639-40, pp. 341, 353. A few days before the election, his partner, Brerewood, felt the need to remind him of the ‘inconstant disposition’ of the Chester voters and advised him to prime his tenants and friends in the city accordingly. In the event, Smithe and Brerewood were returned (in that order) for the city on 23 March 1640 in what was described as ‘a very free election’, although a handful of ‘dissentients’ apparently objected to Brerewood.38Supra, ‘Chester’; CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 538, 564, 590. Smithe clearly enjoyed the backing of the corporation, but as one of the city’s greatest landlords and wealthiest inhabitants he also had a strong proprietorial interest in the borough.39SP28/224, f. 158; Cheshire IPMs ed. Stewart-Brown, 58; Johnson, ‘City of Chester’, 122, 124. Among those also elected to the Short Parliament was his brother-in-law Thomas Smyth I of Long Ashton, who sat for Somerset. Smithe received no committee appointments in this Parliament and made only one recorded contribution to debate, and that of apparently little note.40Aston’s Diary, 45.

In the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, Smithe was returned for Chester again – on this occasion, with Alderman Francis Gamul.41Cheshire RO, ZMF/65/156b. Again, Smithe was not a particularly commanding figure at Westminster – at least, on the floor of the House – receiving 11 committee appointments between November 1640 and June 1642 and making few contributions to debate.42CJ ii. 31b, 39b, 84b, 164a, 165b, 197a, 340b, 381b, 423b, 563a, 589a. Several of his early committee appointments suggest that he was concerned to reform the perceived ‘abuses’ of the personal rule of Charles I. He was named to committees on the prosecution of the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) and for abolishing superstition and idolatry and advancing the true worship of God.43CJ ii. 39b, 84b, 165b. But keen as he may have been to abolish Laudian ‘innovations’ and to strengthen measures against popery, there is no evidence that he supported further reformation in religion.

In the spring of 1641, Sir Thomas Aston, having presented a pro-episcopacy petition from Cheshire to the Lords in February, consulted Smithe, Gamul and the Cheshire MP Peter Venables about presenting another petition in the name of the county, this time denouncing a root-and-branch petition purportedly from Cheshire, but probably the work of London anti-episcopal polemicists.44Add. 36913, f. 64; P. Lake, ‘Puritans, popularity and petitions’, in Politics, Religion and Popularity in Early Stuart Britain ed. T. Cogswell, R. Cust, P. Lake (Cambridge, 2002), 265-6; J.R. Mawdesley, ‘Clerical Politics in Lancs. and Cheshire during the Reign of Charles I, 1625-49 (Sheffield Univ. PhD thesis, 2014), 173-4. According to Aston, the three men approved of his counter-petition ‘as fit to be done [i.e. presented to Parliament], though they conceived not by them, seeing the first petition was in the Lords’ House and not in theirs and it was questionable whether, being of the lower House, they might join in a petition to the Lords’.45Add. 36913, f. 64; Lake, ‘Popularity and petitions’, 271-2. Smithe’s apparent sympathy with Aston’s defence of the established church did not prevent him expediting a case that ‘divers merchants and citizens of Chester’ brought against Aston in the Commons that summer, for which the corporation thanked Smithe and desired a ‘continuance of your care to us and our business’.46Procs. LP vi. 25; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 79; Lake, ‘Popularity and petitions’, 269.

Smithe’s closest connections before the civil war were generally with men hostile to puritanism and who would side with the king against Parliament. He was on friendly terms with one of Aston’s staunchest allies in the pro-episcopacy campaign, John Werden.47J. Maltby, Prayer Book and People in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England (Cambridge, 1998), 135-6. And another of his Cheshire friends wrote to him in August 1641, complaining that the local churches were ‘full of exercises for thanksgiving (this is the word of art)’ and that several preachers ‘railed most damnably against all church government as it is established’.48CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 77. In Cheshire Smithe often socialised with Robert Cholmondeley†, 1st Viscount Cholmondeley of Kells [I], and other prominent future royalists.49Bristol RO, AC/C/53/10, 15. Moreover, he seems to have spent part of the autumn 1641 recess at the Chiswick residence of the Somerset peer John Pulett, 1st Baron Poulett† – a future royalist commander.50SP16/485/12, f. 31v.

The issue that seems to have dominated Smithe’s activities at Westminster during the winter of 1641-2 – and indeed well into the following spring – was the Irish rebellion and the problems it posed for Chester’s economic well-being and security. On 13 December, he was named to a committee for supplying Parliament’s soldiers in Ireland (in which the port of Chester played a key role), and on 15 January 1642, he was added to a committee for collecting donations from MPs for the relief of Irish Protestant refugees.51CJ ii. 340b, 381b. He and Gamul were also diligent in addressing the corporation’s concern to preserve order in the city amidst the military preparations against the ‘popish faction and league’ in Ireland.52Cheshire RO, DCC/14/29, 35; CJ ii. 415b, 443a; PJ i. 295, 389, 423; HMC 5th Rep. 350. Smithe’s familiarity with the logistical problems posed by the Irish rebellion may help to explain his inclusion on a committee of both Houses set up on 27 May to consider the defence of the kingdom.53CJ ii. 589a.

Smithe evidently retained the trust of the Commons’ leadership well into 1642, for on 9 June, the House ordered him to assist his kinsman Sir William Brereton* in executing the Militia Ordinance in Cheshire – passing over Venables, Brereton’s fellow knight of the shire.54CJ ii. 615b. According to Brereton, Smithe wrote to him in Cheshire to inform him of his willingness to obey this order.55SP23/187, p. 561. The next day (10 June), Smithe offered to lend £100 towards the war effort in Ireland on the understanding that he would make payment at Chester.56CJ ii. 618a. His grant by the Commons on 11 June of leave to take the waters at Bath was post-dated two weeks, presumably to allow him opportunity to assist Brereton in executing the Militia Ordinance in Cheshire.57CJ ii. 621a. Smithe later claimed that being ‘very infirm’ at that time he had returned to his house in Chester to recuperate – his implication being that he had not deserted the Commons, merely taken extended leave on health grounds.58SP23/187, pp. 556, 578. The king’s party saw the matter somewhat differently and named him to both the June and October 1642 Cheshire commissions of array.59Northants. RO, FH133; Cheshire RO, DLT/B11, pp. 76, 83. When Brereton tried to execute the Militia Ordinance in Chester in August it was Alderman William Edwardes* who assisted him, not Smithe.60Supra, ‘William Edwardes’.

Smithe remained in Chester when it became a royalist garrison in the autumn of 1642, and his eldest son Thomas served as a captain in the city regiment.61SP23/187, p. 579; CCC 1319; Cal. Chester City Mins. ed. Groombridge, 212. Defending Chester required the demolition of Smithe’s mansion house at nearby Flookersbrook.62Cheshire RO, DCC/3, unfol. His decision to side with the king was probably linked to his episcopalian sympathies. Early in 1644, he attended the Oxford Parliament, signing its letter to the earl of Essex on 27 January, requesting that he arrange a peace treaty.63Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. And it was in response to his attendance at Oxford that the Commons at Westminster disabled him from sitting.64CJ iii. 374a.

Although Smithe seems to have played little part in Chester’s royalist administration, some of the Cheshire parliamentarians believed that he was ‘a great furtherer of the enemy’s party by his purse and counsel against the Parliament’.65SP23/187, pp. 563, 579, 587. In the 1644 mayoral elections, Smithe and Gamul were the preferred candidates of the senior officeholders but were passed over by the citizens in favour of Charles Walley* – a humiliation that in Gamul’s case has been seen as evidence of his unpopularity for identifying too closely with the king’s cause to the detriment of the city’s interests.66Supra, ‘Francis Gamul’; Harl. 2125, f. 147. After Chester’s surrender early in 1646, Smithe, like Gamul, would be among the royalists that Parliament ordered to be purged from the corporation.67LJ viii. 506. Brereton, however, would assure the Committee for Compounding* that Smithe had not acted as a commissioner of array and had been ‘no ways active against the Parliament’.68SP23/187, pp. 549, 551, 561; Brereton Lttr. Bks. iii. 111-12. He would also endorse Smithe’s claim that he had tried to surrender to Parliament in mid-1645, but because Chester had been so ‘strictly garrisoned’ and ‘straightly besieged’, and because of his ill-health, he had been forced to ‘keep [to] his house two months together’.69SP23/187, pp. 549, 551, 556.

On Chester’s surrender, Smithe immediately submitted himself to Brereton and petitioned to compound.70SP23/187, pp. 549, 551, 554. He claimed losses during the war amounting to £3,150 and debts of £2,500.71SP23/187, pp. 557, 576. Perhaps because of his initial failure to disclose that he had attended the Oxford Parliament, the Committee for Compounding set his fine at a swingeing £6,700.72SP23/187, pp. 556, 578; CCC 1319. After receiving assurances from Brereton of his lack of malignancy, however, the committee reduced this fine to a third of his estate – that is, £3,350.73SP23/187, pp. 549-50, 551, 561; SP19/109, f. 143; Brereton Lttr. Bks. iii. 111-12; CCC 1319. In June 1649, Smithe petitioned Goldsmiths’ Hall again, requesting that his fine be reduced even further, but the committee would make no further concessions.74CCC 1320. It was not until May 1650 that he finally paid the last installment of his fine and his estate was discharged from sequestration.

Smithe played no discernible role in public life during the interregnum, although he may have had some small influence on local affairs through his parliamentarian kinsman Thomas Mainwaring.75Morrill, Cheshire, 261. At some point in the late 1650s, he was named for Cheshire on a list of possible leaders of a projected royalist uprising, but there is no evidence that he was involved in cavalier conspiracies during the 1650s.76Bodl. Eng. hist. e. 309, p. 19. In April 1660, he joined many royalist nobility and gentry in London in a declaration thanking General George Monck* for his courage in asserting ‘the public liberty’. The signatories also renounced any intention to take revenge upon their parliamentarian enemies and declared their loyalty ‘to the present power, as it now resides in the council of state’.77A Declaration of the Nobility and Gentry that Adhered to the Late King (1660, 669 f.24.69). A few weeks later, Smithe and his son Thomas signed a loyal address to Charles II from the Cheshire and Lancashire gentry residing in and about London.78SP29/1/35, f. 68. Thomas Smithe junior was created a baronet at the Restoration, and in 1662, Smithe senior was restored to his place on Chester’s aldermanic bench.79Cheshire RO, ZAB/2, f. 135; CB.

Smithe died in about May 1668 while visiting his son-in-law, Sir Robert Holte†, at Aston near Birmingham.80PROB11/328, f. 261; Cheshire RO, ZAB/2, f. 160v; Prerogative Ct. of Canterbury Wills 1661-70 ed. J. H. Morrison (1935), 226. His place of burial is not known – it may well have been at Aston; it was certainly not in his home parish of Wybunbury. In his will, he declared that he had ‘always been an enemy to the vain pomp too usual at funeral obsequies’, and he therefore asked to be buried ‘in as private a way as decency and civility will permit’. He charged his estate with a bequest of £1,000 to one of his daughters and an annuity of £100 a year.81PROB11/328, f. 260v. His eldest son Sir Thomas Smith†, 1st bt., sat for Chester in the Cavalier Parliament.82HP Commons, 1660-90.