PALMES, Brian (1599-1654), of Ashwell, Rutland; later of Stapleford, Notts., and Lindley, nr. Otley, Yorks.

Palmes belonged to a cadet branch of a family that had settled at Naburn, near York, in the early thirteenth century.19Foster, Yorks. Peds.; VCH E. Riding, iii. 77. During Henry VIII’s reign, his ancestors had acquired the manor of Ashwell, in Rutland – which had become the family’s principal residence – and, by marriage, an estate at Lindley, in the West Riding.20VCH Rutland, ii. 109; HP Commons,1558-1603, ‘Francis Palmes’. By the time Palmes’s grandfather had been returned for Knaresborough to the Parliament of 1586, the family had also acquired an estate within the forest of Knaresborough.21HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘Francis Palmes’. Palmes’s father was a magistrate for both Rutland and the West Riding and served as sheriff of Rutland three times and once as sheriff of Yorkshire. He represented Rutland in every Parliament called between 1614 and late 1640, except that of 1626, when, as an outspoken critic of the duke of Buckingham, he was pricked for sheriff.22Infra, ‘Sir Guy Palmes’; HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Sir Guy Palmes’.

Returned for Stamford in 1626 through the influence of his father, Palmes made very little impact at Westminster and was not re-elected in 1628.23HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Brian Palmes’. He seems to have been on familiar terms with the Fairfaxes of Denton – which lay a few miles to the west of Lindley – and by the mid-1630s had been commissioned as a captain in the regiment of militia horse commanded by Thomas 1st Lord Fairfax†, the father of Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*.24Add. 28082, f. 80; Bodl. Fairfax 31, f. 53; Yorks. Stuart Fines ed. W. Brigg (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. lviii), 232-3. Like the Fairfaxes, Palmes and his father were well known to Yorkshire’s most powerful figure during the 1630s, Viscount Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†, the future earl of Strafford) – not least through their mutual friend, the Nottinghamshire grandee, Sir Gervase Clifton*.25HMC Var. vii. 291, 292, 403; HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Sir Gervase Clifton’; ‘Sir Guy Palmes’. However, their relations with the Fairfaxes had soured by 1637 as a result of a lawsuit between the two families.26Bodl. Fairfax 31, f. 102.

It was possibly through Strafford’s influence that Palmes was returned for Aldborough – a borough some seven miles north east of Knaresborough – in the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640.27Supra, ‘Aldborough’. Palmes received no committee appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. He is not known to have signed any of the Yorkshire petitions to the king that summer and autumn, complaining of the military burdens imposed upon the county as a result of the second bishops’ war. In the elections to the Long Parliament, his place at Aldborough was taken by (Sir) Robert Stryckland. Whether Palmes gave way to Stryckland or did not seek re-election is not clear, but in December 1641 it was rumoured that he intended to stand for Knaresborough in place of William Dearlove*, whose return was disputed, and that he had written to another prospective candidate to stand aside. Thomas Stockdale*, who reported this rumour to Sir Ferdinando (now Lord) Fairfax, conjectured that if Palmes were to stand, Henry Benson*, Knaresborough’s leading inhabitant, would side with Palmes against Fairfax’s brother-in-law, Sir William Constable*. In the event, Palmes did not stand, and Dearlove’s place was taken by Constable.28Supra, ‘Knaresborough; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 217.

Palmes attended the king at York in the spring of 1642 and was knighted on 21 April.29Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 212. The next day (22 Apr.), he signed a petition to Charles from a group of Yorkshire royalists, requesting that the magazine at Hull remain there for the defence of the northern parts – a deliberate challenge to Parliament’s order that it be transported to London. He evidently ignored a parliamentary order summoning him and others associated with this petition to Westminster as delinquents.30CJ ii. 540b; LJ v. 15a, 86b; PJ ii. 213, 217. Appointed to the Yorkshire (and Rutland) commission of array in July, he signed orders to the county’s constables that summer, requiring them to muster all able-bodied men for the defence of the king and for resisting the Scots.31Northants. RO, FH133, unfol.; E. Peacock, ‘On some civil war docs. relating to Yorks.’, YAJ i. 95. There is no evidence for the claim that Palmes raised a regiment for the king at the outbreak of the war.32Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. iii. 293. He would certainly have had little time to spare as a field commander, being appointed an ordnance commissioner by the royalist council of war at Oxford in about August 1642.33Royalist Ordnance Pprs. ed. Roy, 17. He should not be confused with his younger brother, Captain Francis Palmes – a professional soldier who served in the king’s army during the bishops’ wars and against the Irish rebels in the 1640s.34E351/293; CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 492, 577; 1649-50, p. 80; HMC Ormonde, i. 124, 138; ii. 8; PJ i. 181, 210, 243; Private Corresp. of Jane Lady Cornwallis Bacon, 1613-44 ed. J. Moody, 257, 258.

Little is known about Palmes’s conduct during the civil war. His name disappears from the ordnance papers after March 1643, and he was not among those Members listed as being active in the king’s cause when the Oxford Parliament sent its letter to the earl of Essex in January 1644, urging him to compose a peace.35Royalist Ordnance Pprs. ed. Roy, 17. With royalist control of Yorkshire threatened by the Fairfaxes and the Scots in the spring of 1644, Palmes, Sir Paul Neile*, Sir Edward Osborne*, Sir Henry Slingesby*, Sir Robert Stryckland* and other gentlemen wrote to Prince Rupert late in March, imploring him to come to the county’s defence.36Bodl. Firth c.7, f. 8; Add. 18981, f. 121. In May 1646, Palmes was one of the king’s commissioners that negotiated terms for the surrender of royalist-held Newark.37LJ viii. 296a, 311a. But otherwise his activities remain obscure. Certainly the charge levelled against him by the Committee for Compounding* – that he had ‘assisted the forces against Parliament and was in the garrison of Newark when it surrendered’ – does not suggest a high degree of military involvement during the war. Palmes petitioned to compound in October 1646 on the Newark articles, and his case was included in his father’s composition proceedings.38SP23/211, p. 469; CCC 1316. In October 1647, he was fined at one sixth of his estate – that is, £681.39CCC 1316.

Palmes appears to have lived quietly on his estates after the war. He survived his father by little over a year, dying intestate in Yorkshire in the spring of 1654. He was buried at Otley on 25 May.40Otley Par. Regs. ed. Brigg, 263. He probably left substantial debts, having borrowed £4,000 (from Sir Paul Neile and another gentleman) by statute staple in 1649 and a further £1,500 in 1653.41LC4/203, ff. 89, 170v. Palmes’s son William represented Malton in 14 Parliaments between 1668 and 1713.42HP Commons, 1660-90, ‘William Palmes’.