SALUSBURY, Sir Thomas, 2nd bt. (1612-1643), of Lleweni, Denb.

Having settled in the vale of Clwyd in the lordship of Denbigh by the 1330s, the Salusburys of Lleweni had established themselves, two centuries later, ‘among the handful of really great families in north Wales’.21Salusbury Corresp. 1. Several members of the family had served as MP for Denbighshire in the decades following the county’s creation in the 1530s, but Salusbury would be the first to do so since his grandfather, Sir John Salusbury, had sat as knight of the shire in 1601.22HP Commons 1509-58, ‘Denbighshire’; HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘John Salesbury’; ‘Sir John Salusbury’. Salusbury’s father, Sir Henry Salusbury, failed to pay his share of the Forced Loan in 1626, in what may have been a calculated act of non-compliance.23L. Bowen, The Politics of the Principality: Wales, c.1603-42, 138.

On Sir Henry’s death in 1632, Salusbury succeeded to an estate in north Wales that would have been worth about £1,500 a year were it not for a legacy of £6,000 or so in debts that Sir John had run up before his death in 1612.24Salusbury Corresp. 10, 11, 13. Sir John Maynard*, Salusbury’s uncle, advised him to have an eye to the main chance, particularly when choosing a wife: ‘you have felt the misery of want and bondage, I hope [you] will keep yourself free [from pecuniary problems]...You have reason to value yourself, for you have fortune, person, birth and wit enough ... cast not yourself away wilfully [on an imprudent match], for then you will both lose yourself and friends’.25Salusbury Corresp. 76; N. Tucker, Denb. Officers in the Civil War, 93 Salusbury would inherit not only his grandfather’s baleful financial legacy, but also his literary tastes. Sir John Salusbury had been a patron of bards, a writer of indifferent verse and had enjoyed the acquaintance of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson. Salusbury, too, was a keen poet and dramatist, although only one of his pieces was published during his lifetime – a poem in 13 parts, written in decasyllabic couplets, entitled The History of Joseph (1636).26HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘Sir John Salusbury’; C.C. Brown, ‘The Chirk Castle entertainment of 1634’, Milton Quarterly, xi. 78-80.

Salusbury was elected for Denbighshire to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, apparently without a contest. He received no appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. He does not appear to have stood for the county in the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn, when the shire place was taken by his uncle, Sir Thomas Myddelton. When it then emerged that Myddelton’s return was technically invalid, as the county court had met after the first day of Parliament, Salusbury was advised by a friend against challenging his uncle should a new election be called: ‘it would breed an everlasting feud betwixt you, and perhaps the Parliament may not last long’.27Salusbury Corresp. 113. In the event, Myddelton was allowed to retain his seat.

Salusbury thought sufficiently well of the episcopate to have John Owen, bishop of St. Asaph, stand as a godparent to his son John in October 1641.28Y Cwtta Cyfarwydd ed. Thomas, 199. And in the summer of 1642, he attended the king’s court at York and, after returning to Denbighshire in late June, wrote a long letter to his sister, declaring his resolution to follow the dictates of ‘conscience and reason’ in adhering to Charles: ‘I and my household will serve the Lord, which I cannot do truly unless I serve His anointed [i.e. the king] also’. He justified his loyalty to Charles with reference to scriptural injunctions, for both Testaments, he argued, ‘are full of positive precepts to this purpose, howsoever the filthy dreamers of these times, that defile the flesh, despise dominion and speak evil of dignities are willing to misunderstand’. As for his argument from reason, he cited the ‘multitude of schisms’ that had overwhelmed the church under parliamentary rule, which

give us too just a cause to fear what an Amsterdam or pantheon of all religions we are like to make in a little more time. Nor is it to be hoped that ever the cracked peace of this kingdom may be soldered or pieced together if the regal power be rent and divided into so many pieces. In one man’s breast can be no faction.29NLW, MS 5390D, pp. 251-3; Tucker, Denb. Officers, 96-8.

In July 1642, Salusbury helped to promote a loyalist petition from Denbighshire, pledging troops and money for the king’s cause, and on 3 August he was named to both the Denbighshire and Flintshire commissions of array.30NLW, Lleweni MS 652; Northants. RO, FH133, unfol.; Salusbury Corresp. 124; Tucker, Denb. Officers, 99. That same day (3 Aug.), Salusbury, Sir Thomas Hanmer* and several other gentlemen in north-east Wales received a royal commission to raise a company of archers.31NLW, Bettisfield MS 588. On 5 August, he was appointed custos rotulorum for Denbighshire.32Justices of the Peace ed. Phillips, 74. And by 6 August, the royalist gentry of Denbighshire and Flintshire had ‘elected’ him the colonel of a regiment of foot to be raised in the two counties ‘to defend his Majesty’s person, honour and legal prerogative, together with the Protestant religion, the liberty of the subject and known privilege of Parliament against all powers and persons that shall oppose ...’.33Cal. Wynn Pprs. 277-8; Tucker, Denb. Officers, 99-101. He worked hard, and reportedly spent £2,000, in recruiting 1,200 men for this regiment, prompting the Commons, on 27 September, to vote that he be sent for as a delinquent and impeached of high treason ‘for actually levying forces against the king and Parliament and marching in the head of those forces against the Parliament’.34CJ ii. 783b; Add. 18777, f. 12v; Salusbury Corresp. 125-6; Tucker, Denb. Officers, 101-4, 105, 114.

Salusbury and his regiment fought at the battle of Edgehill in October 1642, and a week or so later he received the honorary degree of DCL from the University of Oxford, and his chaplain, Jonathan Edwards, was awarded his BD.35Al. Ox.; Tucker, Denb. Officers, 105-6. Salusbury’s regiment was in the vanguard of the royalist assault upon Brentford in November.36Tucker, Denb. Officers, 105-6. By the end of that month, he was back at Lleweni, and though still recovering from a ‘desperate sickness’ he was at the forefront of efforts to raise money and troops for the king in Denbighshire and Flintshire.37Flints. RO, D/DE271, f. 52; Cal. Lttrs. relating to N. Wales, 186; Tucker, Denb. Officers, 107-9. In the spring of 1643, he led his troop of horse to join Prince Maurice at Worcester, provoking great discontent among his regiment of foot (the largest in the king’s army), which formed part of the royalist garrison at Reading.38Tucker, Denb. Officers, 109-12.

Salusbury died, apparently of natural causes, in the summer of 1643 and was buried in the family vault at Whitchurch, just outside Denbigh, on 13 July.39Y Cwtta Cyfarwydd ed. Thomas, 208; Oxford DNB, ‘Sir Thomas Salusbury [Salisbury]’. He died intestate, the administration of his estate being granted to his widow in 1646.40PROB6/21, f. 114. His youngest son, the last of the Salusbury of Lleweni male line, sat for Denbigh Boroughs in the Cavalier Parliament and the three Exclusion Parliaments of 1679-81.41HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Sir John Salusbury’.