READING, Nathaniel (d.1716), of Hatfield, Yorks.

Reading is among the most obscure figures to have sat in Parliament during the 1650s. Nothing is known about his lineage or background beyond the details recounted in an equally obscure eighteenth-century manuscript, in which it is claimed that he was born in London – a fact later contradicted by the same source – and ‘brought up in the Inns of Court’, and that he was more than 100 years old when he died in 1716.12Jackson, ‘Stovin ms.’, 210, 212, 224-5.

In 1644, Reading seems to have transferred from one of the colleges at Oxford – possibly Merton, from where he proceeded MA in 1646 – to the godly Cambridge college of Emmanuel.13Al. Cant.; Al. Ox. After obtaining his MA he left England for the continent and was said to have been at Naples at the time of Massaniello’s short-lived revolt in the summer of 1647. Indeed, according to one authority he was Massaniello’s secretary and only escaped execution with his master by making ‘so fine a Latin oration’ upon the scaffold that he was pardoned.14Jackson, ‘Stovin ms.’, 210, 225. However, there is no mention of Reading in the fullest contemporary account of the revolt, and the only reason for lending any credence to the story of his involvement is his evident familiarity with Italy and its people.15A. Giraffi, An Exact Historie of the Late Revolutions in Naples and of Their Monstrous Successes (1650, E.1342.1). In the early 1650s, he was commissioned by one of the commonwealth’s naval captains to treat with the grand duke of Tuscany on matters relating to English shipping in Livorno, but he left Italy for England late in 1652 after his authority had been questioned by the Rump’s accredited representative to the Florentine republic.16CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 58; 1653-4, p. 247; A Remonstrance of the Fight in Legorn-road between the English and the Dutch (1653), 4, 25-8 (E.1068.5). In February 1653, Reading wrote to Oliver Cromwell* and the council of state concerning a proposal to raise men in Venice and other parts of Italy to work the guns on English armed merchantmen – the Italians, in his opinion, being more skilled at handling ordnance than English sailors.17Stowe 427, ff. 5-9v; CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 158.

Between his travels on the continent and his proceedings in Tuscany, Reading returned to England, and in May 1651 he was admitted to the Inner Temple.18I. Temple database. As an aspiring lawyer and one ‘pretending to religion and great integrity’, he was sent by the commonwealth authorities into the Hatfield Level to help collect the rents due to the state for the delinquency of George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham.19C7/113/28; Jackson, ‘Stovin ms.’, 210; Lindley, Fenland Riots, 214. By the mid-1650s, he was closely involved in the long-running feud between the Hatfield Level commoners and the participants in the project to drain the level, serving as legal adviser to either party as self-interest and the machinations of his respective clients dictated.20Harl. 5176, f. 143; Eg. 3518, f. 88; CCC 2191; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 259; Lindley, Fenland Riots, 214-15. In April 1655, he reached an agreement with the sewers commissioners to subdue the commoners and to collect the taxes (or to distrain for non-payment) for maintaining the drainage works, in return for a salary of £200 a year.21CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 80-1; Lindley, Fenland Riots, 215.

It was in the midst of this hazardous employment – which involved Reading and his men in violent affrays with the commoners – that he was elected to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659 for the Westmorland constituency of Appleby. Reading was evidently a carpetbagger, for his main residence at the time of his election was either in Westminster or at Hatfield, Yorkshire.22WYAS (Wakefield), QS4/6, f. 190v; Jackson, ‘Stovin ms.’, 225. He almost certainly owed his return for Appleby to the patronage of the owner of Appleby Castle, the dowager countess of Pembroke (otherwise known as Lady Anne Clifford). She was certainly responsible for the election of the borough’s other Member, the Yorkshire republican Adam Baynes.23Infra, ‘Appleby’. The most plausible explanation for Reading’s likely connection with the countess is that he was one of her legal advisers (he had been called to bar at the Inner Temple a few months prior to his election).24CITR ii. 327.

Reading was named to four committees in this Parliament, including that established on 2 March 1659 to consider a petition from the inhabitants of Spalding and other townships in Lincolnshire that were in danger of being flooded by fen-drainage works in the area.25CJ vii. 595a, 609a, 627a, 637a; Burton’s Diary, iii. 578-9. On 8 March, he was a majority teller in support of a question backed by the court interest for ensuring that any future admission of the pre-Cromwellian peers to the Other House would be under the terms of the Humble Petition and Advice, thereby precluding their ancient right.26CJ vii. 612b; J. Fitzgibbons, Cromwell’s House of Lords (Woodbridge, 2018), 187-8. He was subsequently named, on 6 April, to a committee for considering how the Commons was to transact business with the Other House.27CJ vii. 627a. His only recorded contribution to debate on the floor of the House was on 11 February 1659, when he moved to adjourn for the day in an attempt to prevent Sir Arthur Hesilrige launching into a filibustering critique of the Cromwellian settlement.28Burton’s Diary, iii. 231. Most of his activity in the Commons was probably confined to the committee of privileges, where, in a speech on 3 February, he referred to the protector as ‘Richard the Fourth’.29Burton’s Diary, iii. 65. He would later be described as ‘a lawyer that oft pleads before the Commons in case of controverted elections’.30HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 31.

Much of Reading’s time from the mid-1650s until the late 1690s was taken up with his long and violent war of attrition against the Hatfield Level commoners. As a result of his frequent levies and distraints upon the commoners, he and his men were said to have been involved in 31 ‘set battles’ in which many on both sides were injured and a few even killed. When he was not fighting the commoners or pursuing them through the law courts he was engaged in legal battles with the fen-drainers over payment of his arrears as their agent. But while his employers confined themselves to accusing him of embezzlement and launching counter suits, the commoners generally preferred more direct methods, including assaulting his family, destroying his livestock and crops and, on several occasions, burning down his house.31C7/296/52; Doncaster Archives, DD/CROM/202, bdle. 4; Jackson, ‘Stovin ms.’, 211-13, 224-6; W.B. Stonehouse, Hist. and Topography of the I. of Axholme (1839), 99-110; Lindley, Fenland Riots, 215-222, 233-52.

Somehow, in the midst of all this mayhem, Reading found the time to build a successful legal practice, becoming counsellor-at-law to at least three of the peers who were implicated in the Popish Plot and imprisoned in the Tower.32HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 31. His efforts to secure his clients’ release were construed, possibly maliciously, as an attempt to suborn one of the witnesses against them, and in April 1679 he found himself in the dock on charges of attempting to pervert the course of justice.33HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 68; Tryal of Nathaniel Reading, 4. He conducted his own defence, but to no avail, being fined £1,000 and sentenced to a year in prison.34Tryal of Nathaniel Reading, 71.

Reading died in the summer of 1716 and was buried at Belton on 4 June.35Belton par. reg. He was said to have been reduced to ‘poverty and extreme want’ by the time of his death, although given the reputable standing of his sons – one of whom was a Lincolnshire magistrate – this seems unlikely. He was later described as ‘a man of excellent parts, both natural and acquired, and one of the finest orators of the age he lived in’.36Jackson, ‘Stovin ms.’, 226. No will is recorded. He was the first and last of his immediate family to sit in Parliament.