WATKINS, William (c.1601-62), of St Margaret’s, Westminster and Frognal, Chislehurst, Kent.

The origins of William Watkins have proved impossible to ascertain with any confidence. In the absence of corroborative evidence it is hard to accept the suggestion that he was the son of a yeoman aspiring to be a gentleman, of How Caple in Herefordshire.8Keeler, Long Parl. 381. It is likely, however, that he came from south-east Wales or from one of the bordering English counties. He was certainly from a region where salmon fishing was prevalent; in 1634 his brother Thomas sent a fish on behalf of his widowed mother and her family to a patron or potential patron, possibly a son of Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke.9SP16/540/1 f. 175. By March 1626 he was working in the privy seal office. He may have been introduced to central government office in Westminster, where he was a servant to James Mills, clerk of the privy seal, by Edward, 4th earl of Worcester, during the earl’s lax later years of tenure as lord privy seal.10CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 286; Aylmer, King’s Servants, 13-15. In the Commons debate of 6 February 1629, Watkins was named in his capacity as a deputy privy seal clerk as one who played an administrative, but probably not political, role in granting pardons to four controversial Arminian higher clergy.11CD 1629, 130, 174. His brother Thomas was granted the reversion of both the clerkship of the privy seal and the registry of the court of requests in 1633 for life, which could only have entrenched William’s interest in the privy seal office.12Coventry Docquets, 186.

He took other opportunities that came his way by virtue of contacts at Westminster. In October 1628 he was given the first nibble at a monopoly of playing-cards within a ten-mile radius of London, by which he was empowered to take a shilling on every gross of cards sold.13CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 354. By the summer of 1631, he had become embroiled in a dispute with the Cardmakers’ Company and the farmer of the duties that arose from the monopoly.14APC 1630-1, pp. 389, 394. In 1635 he was included among those granted a commission to compound with those who offended against the monopoly on gold and silver thread, and the following year was empowered with another group to enforce the laws against exporting salt butter.15CSP Dom. 1635-6, pp. 4, 240; 1639-40, p. 39. By 1633 he lived at Twickenham, in the manor of Isleworth Syon, and at some point acquired an interest in the estate of Frognal, in Chislehurst, Kent, and is said to have developed that property.16LMA, ACC/0276/476, 477; Keeler, Long. Parl. 381; CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 495; 1625-49, p. 738; Hasted, Kent, ii. 11; Webb, Miller, Beckwith, Hist. Chislehurst, 274, 279. He also lived in Westminster, but from 1641 was paying tax only in Kent.17E115/434/40. He may also have been the person of his name who bought and sold property in nearby Plumstead.18Coventry Docquets, 563, 637. In May 1638, an earlier grant to him to collect arrears of privy seal loans in five English and Welsh counties was extended to cover the whole country, the receipts to be deployed to the rebuilding of St Paul’s cathedral.19CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 442. In March 1639, Watkins was appointed receiver-general of royal revenues in south Wales, with an annual salary or fee of £70 plus a one per cent fee on values of cargoes at the south Wales ports, and in September 1640 he was granted a warrant to call on support from magistrates in the execution of his duties.20CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 540, 1640-1, p. 66; Coventry Docquets, 208.

Watkins’s return for Monmouth Boroughs, a single seat constituency, to the Short Parliament, in which he was described as ‘of Westminster’, was an unresolved double return involving Charles Jones*. His receivership, and the probable patronage of the earl of Worcester would have given him a footing, if not his own local connections. He made no mark in the House’s records, but when he came in again for the same seat in November 1640 he was all of a sudden a marked man. On 16 November, he was ordered to withdraw as a monopolist, and on his reluctance to do so was commanded to kneel at the bar to be reprimanded, and to stay away from the House until the matter was resolved.21CJ ii. 29b; Procs. LP i. 155. John Glynne* identified his monopolies, and others evidently found more, so that they listed wine, wire, butter, bread, any part he may have played in the Forced Loan, and tiles, the last-named as part of the sea-coal patent.22Procs. LP i. 157, 158, 159. The resulting committee was a large one, to which all merchants in the House were added in due course.23SP16/471, f. 142. On the 16th, Sir John Hotham also identified irregularities in Watkins’s election as well as his monopolizing, and on the 26th, the Monmouth election was referred to the privileges committee.24Procs. LP i. 321.

Watkins seems not to have returned to take his seat, even if no proceedings in the case of the Monmouth election produced any immediate results. As a royal office-holder and one held in bad odour in the Commons, he was doubtless pre-disposed to throw in his lot with that of the king during the civil war. In October 1643 the Watkins brothers obtained the dismissal of John Packer and William Hawkins, the other two privy seal clerks, by petitioning the king about their adherence to Parliament. The following month, Sir Edward Hyde* admitted them at Oxford to perform their duties there for the king, while Hawkins and Packer duly petitioned Parliament for recognition that they were loyal to the parliamentary commissioners.25HMC 6th Rep. 90; Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, xxviii-ix. Both brothers went to Oxford to act as privy seal clerks in the royal administration, and William continued to act as receiver-general for the king and queen in south Wales. He obeyed the summons of the king to the Oxford Parliament, and subscribed the letter of 27 January 1644 to the 3rd earl of Essex (27 Jan. 1644) calling on him to cease fighting.26LJ viii. 714b; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 108; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. Only five days before the House had once again referred the disputed election for Monmouth to the committee of privileges, describing Watkins as ‘of Ludlow’ and naming his antagonist as Sir Thomas Trevor*.27CJ iii. 374a. No order was made in respect of Watkins on that occasion but on 29 November following, Sir Robert Harley reported that Trevor’s election had not been made good and that ‘the whole election of burgesses to serve for the town of Monmouth is void’.28CJ iii. 708b. When a new writ was at length issued on 18 November 1646, it was Watkins, not Trevor, whose replacement was warranted, but the cause was omitted.29CJ iv. 724b.

Watkins was among the commissioners who on behalf of the marquess of Worcester negotiated the capitulation of Raglan castle to Parliament (28 Aug. 1646), and was among the procession of defeated royalists who left the castle at the surrender.30LJ viii. 476b; A Perfect Diurnall (17-24 Aug. 1646), 1286 (E.513.4); A Letter from his Excellencies Quarters (1646), 6 (E.351.13). However, the assertion that he was the individual who then changed sides to become an associate of Col. Philip Jones* in managing estates in south Wales is erroneous: the pioneer Dissenter colleague of Jones, William Watkins of Llanigon, Breconshire, was still alive in 1681 to give assurances to Jones’s son about his father’s public career.31Dodd, Studies in Stuart Wales, 120, 122; P. Davies, ‘Episodes in the History of Brecknockshire Dissent’, Brycheiniog, iii. 19, 28; Glam. Archives, D/DF F/41. It was Watkins the former MP and his brother who were subject to an ordinance of February 1647 removing from them their privy seal office clerkships.32CJ v. 84a; LJ viii. 714b, 718a. Watkins’s estate at Frogpool (Frognal) was sequestered by the Kent committee by mid-1648, producing an income to the committee of £316 in a period of no more than a year.33SP28/210A. Watkins had mortgaged the property for £2,500 to Philip Warwick before the civil war, and in 1642 had helped convey to him a messuage in The Sanctuary, Westminster.34Bristol RO, HA/D/13. In 1650, Warwick petitioned the Committee for Compounding for relief from penal taxation on the mortgage.35CCC 2533. A re-opening of Watkins’ case at Haberdashers’ Hall before the Committee for Advance of Money in 1649 was superfluous, merely producing confirmation that Warwick held the mortgage.36CCAM 1144.

Watkins was restored to the privy seal office at the Restoration, but was evidently discomfited by the appointment of Samuel Pepys† to be a colleague.37Eg. 2542, f. 366; Pepys, Diary, i. 206. He was successful in procuring a lease of ground near St James’s Park, Westminster, and married a wife 36 years his junior, who was to survive him by 50 years.38CTB i. 144, 268, 281; Mar. Lics. Faculty Office (Harl. Soc. xxiv), 57; CP iii. 49-50. Pepys reported him dead by 3 May 1662, and added six days later that by Watkins’ ‘late sudden death we are like to lose money’, implying that Watkins had remained an important conduit for business at the privy seal office.39Pepys, Diary, iii. 76, 80. He was replaced very quickly after his death.40CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 409. Watkins died intestate, and even the grant of administration is lost. There seems no record of his having children from either of his marriages.