WALL, Daniel (c.1601-67), of Stratford St Mary, Suff.

Daniel Wall was a newcomer to Suffolk. His father, Nicholas Wall, had settled at Langham, a village just inside Essex on the main road between Colchester and Ipswich. Earlier generations of the family had lived at Feering, closer to the centre of the county.13Vis. Suff. 1664-8, 3. Wall’s father was a yeoman, which was why in 1672 the Clarenceux king-of-arms, (Sir) Edward Bysshe II*, was able to rule that the former MP (or possibly his grandson) was among those in Suffolk who had ‘usurped the arms, name and title of gentleman contrary to all right’.14Vis. Suff. 1664-8, 213. By the time of his death in the late 1640s, Nicholas Wall was living in Langham Hall and his land holdings included estates at Kirby and Thorpe Le Soken in the north-east corner of Essex.15PROB11/205/92. Daniel was probably the second of his four sons who reached maturity. The area around Langham had long prospered as a result of the wealth generated by the manufacture of cloth, and, although the influx of the ‘new draperies’ from the continent had hit that trade hard, there was still money to be earned. Several members of the Wall family had become clothiers, among them Daniel Wall, who was apparently able to earn a good living from his business.16PROB11/325/381.

It was probably at about the time of Wall’s marriage (which had taken place by 1628) that his father settled lands on him at Stratford St Mary, which was separated from Langham only by the River Stour (which formed the county boundary). Four of Daniel’s five children were baptized there between 1628 and 1636.17PROB11/205/92; Frag. Gen. ix. 47; PROB11/166/227; Stratford St Mary par. reg.; Suff. RO (Bury), Stratford St Mary par. reg. transcript, pp. 111, 115, 117. In 1633 he acted as the executor for one of his Stratford neighbours, John Barrett.18Wills from the Archdeaconry of Suff. 1629-1636 ed. M.E. Allen and N.R. Evans (1986), 296-7. It was also at Stratford that he was assessed for Ship Money (£1 4s) in early 1640.19Suff. Ship-Money Returns, 209. By the early 1640s his neighbours at Stratford would have included the future iconoclast, William Dowsing.20Jnl. of William Dowsing ed. T. Cooper (Woodbridge, 2001), 31-2.

There is no evidence to suggest that Wall played any part, direct or indirect, in the civil war. However, he was involved in efforts to promote ‘further reformation’ in the Suffolk ministry. In the spring of 1644 he was one of two witnesses who testified to the Suffolk committee for scandalous ministers concerning allegations that the rector of Stratford St Mary, Samuel Lindsell, had refused to take the Solemn League and Covenant. This and other accusations led the committee to eject Lindsell from this living in April 1644.21Suff. Cttees. for Scandalous Ministers ed. Holmes, 37-8. Just as revealing, Wall was one of those named in November 1645 as an elder of the Presbyterian classis which was to oversee the churches in that part of Suffolk around East Bergholt.22Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 423. This suggests that Wall was a man of godly sympathies and had sided with Parliament during the civil war.

By 1656 Wall cannot be said to have enjoyed a high public profile in county affairs. He had not served on the Suffolk standing committee during the 1640s, nor was he a justice of the peace, a militia commissioner or, as yet, an assessment commissioner. He does not seem to have been a member of any town corporation. His apparent obscurity, however, did not prevent him from being elected an MP for the county in 1656. Even in an election in which there was something of a backlash against the protectorate, those candidates for the Suffolk seats who had been returned to the first protectoral Parliament of 1654 still had the greatest success rate, while those, like Wall, who were without any parliamentary experience at all, generally fared badly at the polls. What is more, Wall was probably the most obscure of the ten men who came top of the poll. The explanation for his success may lie in the similarity in the number of votes polled by Wall, William Bloys*, William Gibbs* and Sir Henry Felton*. According to the notes made by Bloys, the four of them each gained between 1,393 and 1,362 votes, with Wall gaining 1,363.23Suff. RO (Ipswich), GC17/755, f. 140v. It cannot be discounted that these four, and possibly some of the other candidates as well, had been standing together, or at least acting in concert, in order to maximise their chances. If so, Wall’s success was not a true measure of his personal electoral interest.

Once at Westminster, he played only a minor part in the events of this Parliament. In all, he was named or added to just seven committees, of which a few, notably those relating to the manufacture of Norfolk stuffs (25 Nov. 1656) and the rationalizing of resources of two Suffolk parishes (3 Feb. 1657), were matters of professional or local interest to him. His appointment to the committees on trade (20 Oct. 1656) and the bill for the recovery of small debts (1 Nov.) presumably reflected his commercial experience.24CJ vii. 442a, 449a, 459a, 465a, 477b, 485b, 528a. His time at Westminster was probably interrupted by a short absence from the capital in late November 1656.25CJ vii. 449a. By the courtesy usually extended to MPs, Wall was named for his home county in the June 1657 assessment commission, and he was added in December to the Suffolk commission for ejecting scandalous ministers.26A. and O.; SP25/78, p. 334. There is no record of his attending this Parliament’s second session in early 1658.

Unusually, Wall had allowed his eldest son to enter the church. Daniel junior was educated at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, between 1645 and 1652 and he went on to become rector of Hintlesham in 1655. The following year he married Anne Bourne of Bury St Edmunds (the niece by marriage of John Clarke*). In January 1661 he was appointed rector of Stratford St Mary, but his refusal to conform to the Act of Uniformity caused him to resign this benefice in 1662 and he then retired to his father’s estates at Langham.27Al. Cant.; Calamy Revised, 507; Essex RO, D/DHt/T158/4; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 68; Frag. Gen. ix. 47. Whether or not Wall approved of his son’s unwillingness to accept the terms of the Restoration religious settlement cannot be established.

Wall made out his will on 10 June 1667. A codicil was added later that day to clarify his intentions concerning the scattered properties he had inherited or acquired. Lands to the south of Sudbury at Assington, Little Cornard and Bures St Mary had already been granted to his eldest son, upon the latter’s marriage in 1656. Under the terms of Wall’s will, Daniel Wall junior now received some of his father’s lands at Langham and property Wall had acquired at Tottenham on the outskirts of London. The estate at Stratford and the rest of the lands at Langham were to pass first to Wall’s wife and then to his other son, John, who was also to inherit his lands at East Bergholt and Higham, and in south-east Essex at St Lawrence Stansgate. The lands at Ardleigh, the neighbouring parish to Langham, were left to both sons. Despite Wall’s claim that ‘you my said dear and loving sons have lived lovingly and brotherly together to my comfort and joy’, there is more than a hint that family relations were strained in his plea to them that ‘you and your wives would continue in loving one another in the fear of God, as there hath been many weaknesses found upon me in my life in my carriages to you and others which I desire may be forgot’. He even went so far as to tell them that ‘if you or either of you shall dislike anything in this my will let it be imputed as my weakness and let it be buried with me’.28PROB11/325/381. He survived a further four months, dying on 27 October.29MI, Stratford St Mary. His widow did not long outlive him and when she died the following year, nine local clergymen each received legacies of 15s from her as a testament to her piety.30PROB11/328/189. She was then buried alongside him in the churchyard at Stratford St Mary.31MI, Stratford St Mary. Little is known of the later history of the family. Both Daniel junior, who died in 1670, and John Wall’s son, also Daniel and vicar of Bromfield from 1663 to 1685, left children.32Vis. Suff. 1664-8, 3; Al. Cant.; Frag. Gen. ix. 47; Morant, Essex, i. 434. Wall was the only one of his line ever to sit in Parliament.