MAIDSTONE, John (1606-67), of Pond House, Boxted, Essex and Whitehall, Westminster.

John Maidstone is best known for the lengthy letter he wrote on 24 March 1660 to the governor of Connecticut, John Winthrop junior.17TSP i. 763-8; ‘Letter of John Maidstone to John Winthrop’, Collns. of the Massachusetts Hist. Soc. 3rd ser. i. 185-98. They were kinsmen as Maidstone’s maternal aunt, the late Thomasine Clopton, had been Winthrop’s stepmother.18Vis. Suff. 1561, 1577 and 1612 (Harl. Soc. n.s. ii-iii) 126. In the letter Maidstone gave an account of the political events of the previous 20 years, careful throughout to maintain an impression of balance. The mention in passing of his membership of the 1654 Parliament is a rare example of direct autobiography and it may be that he was retrospectively glossing over his own role. Even so, the letter still provides the best guide to his political career.

Despite their kinship with the Winthrops, the Maidstones were among the more minor gentry families of Essex. Several owned lands at Boxted and Great Horkesley on the northern border of the county along the River Stour and the MP’s grandmother Elizabeth Chambers had inherited property at Framlingham in Suffolk.19Essex RO, D/ACW 13/78; D/ACW 15/78. Maidstone’s mother’s family, the Cloptons of Groton in Suffolk, were more prominent and it was at Groton that the future MP was baptised in 1606.20Groton par. reg.

His initial involvement in local religious politics was precocious. In 1629, as John Winthrop senior was planning a plantation in New England on behalf of the Massachusetts Bay Company, Maidstone, then aged only 23, recommended that he take with him the Boxted curate, George Phillips, as his pastor. Describing himself as ‘a poor yet a faithful well wisher to your intended voyage’, Maidstone made no secret of the fact that many at Boxted opposed Phillips’s wish to join Winthrop.21Winthrop Pprs. ii. 164-5. Winthrop followed Maidstone’s advice and Phillips left for America. Remaining at Boxted, in 1637 Maidstone opposed the installation of altar rails in the local church.22Essex RO, D/ACA 52, ff. 137, 165v. Other members of the family were prosecuted for failing to receive communion.23Essex RO, D/ACA 52, ff. 234. 246v; D/ACA 53, f. 203; D/ACA, ff. 12, 26v. At the Michaelmas quarter sessions in 1641 Maidstone was a member and possibly foreman of the Essex grand jury which refused to bring true bills against those accused of non-attendance at church and of non-compliance with the Book of Common Prayer.24J. Walter, ‘Confessional politics in pre-civil war Essex’, HJ, xliv. 691-5.

By the early 1640s Maidstone and his young family were living at Terling, Essex.25Terling par. reg.; K. Wrightson and D. Levine, Poverty and Piety in an English Village (Oxford, 1995), 74. There he came under the influence of the local vicar and future congregationalist, John Stalham. When in 1647 Stalham published Vindiciae Redemptionis, his attack on the anabaptist preacher, Samuel Oates, Maidstone contributed a foreword paying tribute to him. He thought Stalham ‘a man of many lovely and desirable parts, naturally fitted to do much good’ and he thanked him for dissuading him from his former opposition to infant baptism.26J. Stalham, Vindiciae Redemptionis (1647), sig. b-b2v, E.384.10.

Maidstone later told John Winthrop junior that the dispute between the king and Parliament in the 1640s had at first centred on the conflict between the royal prerogative and parliamentary privilege, with the issue of religion only becoming important later as a result of the factional infighting within Parliament.27‘Letter of John Maidstone’, 186. When he described the rivalry between the Presbyterians and the Independents, Maidstone seems to have been anxious to avoid any hint of bias, although he made it clear that the actions of the Independents from late 1648 onwards were unpopular.28‘Letter of John Maidstone’, 186-7.

What Maidstone himself was doing during those years remains uncertain. It was more probably his father who took the Vow and Covenant at Boxted in July 1643 and who was appointed an elder of the Lexden classis.29Boxted par. reg., f. 37v; T.W. Davids, Annals of Evangelical Nonconformity in the Co. of Essex (1863), 293. The future MP was probably instead involved as a sequestrations official, as in August 1644 the treasurer for sequestrations in northern Essex paid him £130 to pass on to the 2nd earl of Manchester.30Add. 5494, f. 101. By 1648 he held a commission as a captain in the Essex militia and this remained his most important local office until the early 1650s.31Josselin, Diary, 127. His later comments on the regicide imply that he thought the king’s execution had been wrong or, at the very least, unwise, although he acknowledged that England had enjoyed peace as its consequence.32‘Letter of John Maidstone’, 187. Maidstone was probably willing to serve under the new regime with a clear conscience and the council of state confirmed his militia appointment in early 1650.33CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 499; 1650, p. 508. At about the same time, with Abraham Barrington and John Mann, he took over the work of the sequestration commissioners within Essex.34CCC 204, 396, 504, 514, 519, 565. In January 1652 he led complaints by some residents of Boxted to the Essex justices of the peace about their poor rates assessments.35Essex QSOB ed. Allen, 1. Several weeks later he arranged for Ralph Josselin, the vicar of Earls Colne, to preach the assize sermon at Colchester.36Josselin, Diary, 273. Looking back from early 1660 he would agree that the complaints against the Rump which had been used to justify its dissolution by Oliver Cromwell* in 1653 had carried some weight and that the dissolution created long-lasting bitterness. He had little time for the Nominated Parliament.37‘Letter of John Maidstone’, 190. But in the autumn he was appointed to the Essex commission of the peace, a sure indication of his growing local importance.38Essex QSOB ed. Allen, pp. xxxvii, 65-129.

Following Oliver Cromwell’s acceptance of the Instrument of Government, one of his first appointments was to make Maidstone steward of the protector’s new household. Maidstone had taken up the post by the end of 1653.39CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 457. Why he was chosen is not known. It seems plausible, perhaps even likely, that he had some existing connection with Cromwell. His pen portrait of Cromwell, which has often been quoted, shows that he viewed the lord protector with some affection and much respect.40‘Letter of John Maidstone’, 193.

As steward, Maidstone was in sole charge of the administration of the belowstairs departments of the household.41R. Sherwood, The court of Oliver Cromwell (1977), 33-53. All the money to maintain it – until 1657 supposedly £70,000 a year – was paid to him as its accounting officer.42CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 457; 1654, pp. 254, 396, 403, 444, 446, 447, 450, 452, 453, 457, 458; 1655, pp. 76, 100, 139; 1656-7, pp. 98, 140, 149, 168, 193, 237, 262, 304, 331, 362, 427; 1657-8, pp. 33, 51, 83, 94, 100, 128; Add. 4196, ff. 9, 86, 154, 160, 195, 255; HMC Laing, i. 298; DKR v. app. ii. 248, 250, 258, 563, 564, 570; Sherwood, Court, 36-40. Manifold routine tasks required the steward’s attention, whether it was evicting squatters from the former royal mews at Charing Cross or organising the importation of wine for the protector’s table.43CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 92-3; 1655, p. 191; 1655-6, pp. 14, 28, 581; 1656-7, pp. 66, 128, 165, 586; 1657-8, p. 290. These duties often required him to work in conjunction with Nathaniel Waterhouse*, the steward of Cromwell’s lands. Maidstone was well placed to gain favours for himself and his friends.44CSP Dom. 1654, p. 482; 1657-8, pp. 277-8; TSP iv. 344. In September 1654, after the Committee for Sequestrations had refused to pass their accounts, Maidstone, Abraham Barrington and John Mann petitioned Cromwell and got some redress from the Committee.45CCC 703, 728. Maidstone managed to get Barrington appointed as the auditor of the protector’s household. Two other Cromwellian courtiers with whom Maidstone can be linked were the Bacon brothers, Nathaniel* and Francis*, who served Cromwell as his masters of requests. Nathaniel Bacon’s first wife, Elizabeth Maidstone, had been one of Maidstone’s cousins and the two families had kept in touch since her death. Maidstone was one of the two attorneys the Bacons appointed in 1657 to receive their official pensions.46Essex RO, D/ACW 15/78; Add. 4196, f. 245. Later he acted as a clerk to Nathaniel, whose 1660 will he would witness.47E. Anglian, n.s. vi. 62; PROB11/305/77.

Maidstone’s election to Parliament for Colchester in July 1654 was no doubt aided by his court position, which gave the town a useful ally at Whitehall. But there was more to the election than this. On the face of it, Maidstone had much to recommend him, for he was a local man and a friend of the dominant figure on the corporation, Henry Barrington*, Abraham Barrington’s father. However, factional divisions within the corporation almost denied Maidstone the seat: he only narrowly defeated the regicide William Goffe*.48Essex RO, D/B 5/Gb4, ff. 112v-114v.

Maidstone was not a high-profile MP. He rarely spoke and, when used at all, was more often employed to undertake some of the more mundane types of parliamentary business. However, he was always identifiable as one of the protector’s more loyal men in the House. Acknowledgment of his official role was perhaps most evident in his first committee appointment: the Commons were no doubt mindful that a sizable share of the public revenues passed through his hands when it appointed him to the committee on the public accounts in November 1654.49CJ vii. 387b. During December 1654 and January 1655 he took a close interest in the bill to settle the government, which sought to redefine his master’s powers. He clearly viewed this with suspicion, later writing that it was organised by ‘many disobliged persons’ who variously supported the king, disapproved of the dissolution of the Rump or, mindful of Cromwell’s possible successors, wanted the powers conferred by the Instrument of Government to be reduced.50‘Letter of John Maidstone’, 191. Maidstone’s actions at the time reveal that he was concerned to protect the protector’s authority and that, like Cromwell, he may have been uneasy about the bill’s religious agenda. On 5 December 1654 he and Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*), probably proposing any further limitation, acted together as tellers in the division on whether to postpone debate on the proposed proviso to the clause concerning the protector’s powers to levy troops.51CJ vii. 395b. Three days later Maidstone and Walter Strickland were tellers for those who wished to drop the requirement that the worship be ‘approved of by the magistrate’ from the clause requiring everyone to attend religious services on Sundays.52CJ vii. 398b. However, he may not have been quite as tolerant as this implied. On 12 December he was named to the committees appointed to enumerate damnable heresies and thank those clergymen who had helped prepare the articles of faith, as well as being added to the committee of printing when the two heretical works by the Socinian John Biddle were referred to it.53CJ vii. 399b, 400a. In a division on 3 January 1655, he acted as teller for those who got the phrase ‘damnable heresies’ qualified to mean those which had been ‘particularly enumerated by Parliament’, rather than leaving it open-ended, and, a similar stance was probably behind his previous tellership on 13 December 1654.54CJ vii. 400b, 412a. He was again a teller on 16 January when he supported the unsuccessful attempt to spell out the protector’s control over the militia.55CJ vii. 418; Burton’s Diary, i. p. cxxxi. His subsequent comment on the abrupt dissolution of Parliament was that it had been ‘ungrateful to English spirits, who deify their representatives’.56‘Letter of John Maidstone’, 191.

Maidstone was re-elected as MP for Colchester in September 1656 immediately following a convenient purge of the corporation. Both candidates nominated by the new body were men close to Cromwell, the other nominee being the president of the council of state, Henry Lawrence I*. The result was challenged by the candidates favoured by the free burgesses of the town, John Shaw* and William Briscoe*, but Maidstone and Lawrence were nevertheless permitted to sit.57Essex RO, D/B 5/Gb4, ff. 145v-146; CJ vii. 618a. On taking his seat Maidstone was named to a number of committees, including those on abuses in alehouses (29 Sept. 1656) and on the bill to prevent new buildings in London (9 May 1657).58CJ vii. 430a, 435b, 477b, 488b, 528a, 532a. He was the person used to inform Joseph Caryl, the Independent preacher who had been Cromwell’s chaplain in Scotland, that he was to take part in the day of humiliation on 9 January 1657.59CJ vii. 477b, 480b; Burton’s Diary, i. 340-1, 359. Maidstone and Walter Waller* would have been the tellers for those who were willing to give Cromwell powers to improve the collection of the assessments had not its opponents backed down. He was then named as a commissioner in that bill.60Burton’s Diary, ii. 173; A. and O.

It is not known whether Maidstone supported the kingship proposals. He was a teller during one of the divisions on the Additional Petition and Advice, but the precise significance of that vote is now unclear – all it can establish is that he opposed an immediate decision on whether the restrictions on supporters of the 1648 Engagement becoming MPs should be extended to all public offices.61CJ vii. 557b. What is known is that he later accepted that Cromwell’s motives in considering whether to accept the crown had been honourable. As someone who had been in a position to observe Cromwell at close range during the crucial weeks, he would state that the supporters of the proposals had succeeded in persuading Cromwell that this was the best way to settle the country but that his closest friends had then dissuaded him. Maidstone knew that the solution adopted was ‘dissatisfactory to a greater number’.62‘Letter of John Maidstone’, 191. He was among those who, once the decision had been taken, were required to organise the second installation ceremony.63CJ vii. 573b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 302.

Over the following months every effort was made to increase the scale and splendour of the protector’s household. Maidstone was a direct beneficiary of this policy. That October the budget for his department was increased to £100,000 a year.64CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 130, 132; Add. 4196, ff. 195, 271, 280, 295, 343, 349; Add. 4197, ff. 31, 46, 80, 95, 103; Sherwood, Court, 40-1. By the end of the year he had been given the title of cofferer as part of the trend by which offices which had existed in the old royal household were revived.65TSP vi. 722; CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 278. Although Philip Jones*, the new comptroller of the household, was technically his superior, Maidstone’s responsibilities probably remained much the same and he continued to be referred to as steward in some official documents.66Add. 4196, ff. 195, 343, 349; Add. 4197, ff. 31, 46, 80, 95, 103.

In Maidstone’s eyes, the Other House was an experiment which failed. The quality of the men nominated to it was sub-standard and disputes over its powers wrecked the second session of the 1656 Parliament. He portrayed Cromwell as resuming the burden of governing alone with great reluctance, with the result that he was sent to an early grave.67‘Letter of John Maidstone’, 192. Maidstone’s own contribution to the brief second session in early 1658 was more prominent than most. On its second day he helped move that all the committees for public business be revived; he spoke in the debate on the bill for the registration of births, marriages and deaths, pointing out that it made no provision for a minimum age of marriage; and he was second on the list of those appointed to consider the bill against non-residence by heads of university colleges.68Burton’s Diary, ii. 333, 338, 345; CJ vii. 581a, 581b. On the evening of 3 February 1658, with John Thurloe* too ill to do so, it was Maidstone who dared to enter Cromwell’s apartments to deliver the anonymous letters which had been received by John Jenkins* and which may have prompted the following day’s dissolution of Parliament.69C.H. Firth, ‘Lttrs. concerning the dissolution of Cromwell’s last Parliament’, EHR vii. 108.

Maidstone described Cromwell’s death as ‘the seedtime of his glory and England’s calamity’.70‘Letter of John Maidstone’, 192. He helped to organise the funeral.71PRO31/17/33, ff. 30, 78-9, 118, 196; DKR v. app. ii. 274, 275. However, he would acknowledge to Winthrop that his fears that Cromwell’s passing would create a political crisis had initially proved to be unfounded. The crisis only developed once the new Parliament had shown itself to be divided.72‘Letter of John Maidstone’, 193-4. This was a Parliament in which he himself sat only very briefly. When the Colchester corporation met in January 1659, it nominated Maidstone and his colleague, Abraham Barrington, as their MPs.73Essex RO, D/B 5/Gb4, ff. 186v-187v. As in 1656, this result was then challenged. Maidstone seem to have taken his seat in the Commons initially but, along with several other MPs who faced challenges to their elections, he agreed to withdraw from the House on 1 February 1659.74Burton’s Diary, ii. 405-6. The Commons ruled in favour of the other candidates, John Shaw and Abraham Johnston*, seven weeks later.75Burton’s Diary, iii. 65, iv. 223-4; CJ vii. 617b-618a.

Maidstone had probably retained his court position under the new lord protector, but the abdication of Richard Cromwell on 24 May 1659 terminated the existence of the protectoral household. He thus had no reason to support the actions by the army which had brought about that abdication. He also knew that the army’s meddlesome involvement in politics throughout 1659 was deeply unpopular. By the end of that year he seems to have been working for Nathaniel Bacon as a mere clerk.76E. Anglian, n.s. vi. 62. He gave a cautious welcome to the intervention by George Monck* in early 1660, even although he knew that this would probably result in the return of the exiled king.77‘Letter of John Maidstone’, 194-7. In late March, when everyone was waiting the first results from the elections for the Convention, he viewed the future with great pessimism: the past two decades had been wasted. As he explained to Winthrop

The interest of religion lies dreadfully in the dust; for the eminent professors of it, having formerly great victories in the war, and thereby great powers in the army, made use of it to make great variety of changes in government, and every of those changes hazardous, pernicious and dissatisfactory in one considerable respect or other. These were all charged upon the principles of the authors of them, who, being congregational men, have not only made men of that persuasion cheap, but rendered them odious to the generality of the nation … It is not to be expressed what reproach is brought upon profession of religion by this means, and what a foundation laid to persecute it out of England, if that party prevails … For demonstration is made by experience, that professors were not more troublesome and factious in time of peace, before the wars of England began, and the great instruments of them, than they have been imperious, self-seeking, trust-breaking and covenant-violating, since they were invested with power.78‘Letter of John Maidstone’, 197.

Maidstone was right to think that the experience of godly rule had set back the cause of further reformation and that persecution would soon follow.

When he wrote to Winthrop, Maidstone suggested that any correspondence for him should be sent to Pond House at Boxted but implied that he was not living there.79‘Letter of John Maidstone’, 198. This fits with other evidence. His mother had retained a life interest in the house at Boxted until her death in 1657.80Essex RO, D/ACW 15/78; Boxted par. reg., f. 58. It seems likely that Maidstone had then allowed his brother, Robert, to occupy it in his absence. Moreover, a letter written by Maidstone to Edward Montagu II* several weeks earlier, recommending someone for a position in the navy, indicates that he was then still living in Whitehall.81CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 531. He must, however, have realised that he could not expect to remain there for much longer. In March 1660 he asked Winthrop for information on what arrangements could be made to provide a refuge in New England for those unhappy with the direction of events in England.82‘Letter of John Maidstone’, 198. As it turned out, he seems never to have felt the need to resort to that option. The policy of political clemency adopted by the returning king allowed men such as Maidstone to retire quietly from public life.

Whether he returned permanently to Boxted is less certain, but he and his family were key players in the dispute which divided the parish in the years which followed. Their leading opponent was the local vicar, Edmund Hickeringill, who was just embarking on a clerical career in which he would become a perpetual nuisance to the episcopal authorities.83Oxford DNB, ‘Edmund Hickeringill’. In 1664 Hickeringill found himself in the unusual position of being the defender of conformity in the face of the Maidstones’ disobedience. The dispute centred on one of the junior members of the family, a young John Maidstone who was probably the son of the MP and who was seen urinating on some men from the belfry of the local church.84Essex RO, Q/SR 400/140. Several weeks later, on 17 February, Hickeringill was accused of assaulting him in the churchyard, leaving him badly bruised on the face and legs.85Essex RO, Q/SR 400/136; Q/SR 400/138-9. Hickeringill’s version of events was that he had gone to stop a group of boys playing with the church bells and that Maidstone was the one whom he had managed to catch. On being accused by Hickeringill of never coming to services and of urinating in the church, the boy had brazenly replied, ‘You [e]piscopal priest, I have as much to do here as you’ and then threatened him with the words, ‘You bishops brat, I will have a course taken with you’.86Essex RO, Q/SR 400/137; Q/SR 400/142. The Maidstones were indeed able to take action against Hickeringill. John Shaw, Maidstone’s opponent in the 1656 and 1659 elections, was called in to investigate and the case was heard at the next quarter sessions.87Essex RO, Q/SR 400/73-7; Q/SR 400/101; Q/SR 400/136-42. Hickeringill retaliated by getting John Maidstone senior and his brother Robert indicted for their failure to attend any of the church services at Boxted since May 1663.88Essex RO, Q/SR 400/30; Q/SR 400/100. The outcome of these cases is not known but Hickeringill left the parish later that year to concentrate on his other living in Colchester.

The implication of the testimony given by Robert Maidstone to Shaw was that the young John Maidstone was only staying temporarily (‘sojourning’) at his house at Boxted, implying that John senior was then living elsewhere.89Essex RO, Q/SR 400/141. It was nevertheless at Boxted that the former MP was buried when he died in 1667. He was interred in the chancel of the church which had been the scene of such troubles since the 1630s.90Boxted par. reg. f. 59; RCHME Essex, iii. 10 He left behind an adult daughter, Dorothy, from his first marriage and three minors, John, Anne and Mary, from his second. His friend Henry Mildmay* was appointed as his executor and as the trustee for the two younger daughters, while his brother Robert became the guardian for the three children. Pond House was to pass to his son when he came of age.91PROB11/325/338. Whether John junior ever inherited is unclear and it was his uncle who remained the leading resident in the parish. Robert Maidstone continued the tradition of nonconformity. In 1672 Richard Rand was granted a licence to hold a congregational meeting at Robert Maidstone’s house at Boxted.92CSP Dom. 1672, pp. 149, 196. By 1675 Robert, with Sir John Hewley*, was acting as a trustee for the daughters of Benjamin, 17th Baron Fitzwalter.93Essex RO, D/Dmy/15M50/50-1. He probably died in 1684 and his sister-in-law, the MP’s widow, lived on until 1717, having since married Timothy Felton.94RCHME Essex, iii. 10. Otherwise, the later fate of the family is obscure. By the early eighteenth century Hickeringill was living in Pond House.95Lttrs. of Eminent Men, addressed to Ralph Thoresby (1832), i. 447-8.