SAWRY, Roger (d.1699), of Broughton Tower, Broughton in Furness, Westmorland.

The Sawry (or Sawrey) family had held land in the Furness region of Cumberland since the reign of Henry VIII: their main seat was at Plumpton in the parish of Ulverston.18Armorial for Westmorland and Lonsdale, 265. Roger Sawry was the youngest of three sons of Anthony Sawrey – the eldest being the MP for Lancashire in 1653, John Sawrey* - and he was probably born shortly before his father’s death in 1620.19Dugdale’s Vis. Lancs. 1664-5, 255. In December 1636 Sawry was apprenticed to Thomas Fleetwood, a London Grocer, but by the later 1640s he was serving as captain in the Lancashire regiment commanded by Richard Standish, and by February 1651 he was being referred to as major of Cromwell’s own regiment of foot, then serving in Scotland.20London Apprenticeship Abstracts, 1442-1850; BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database; SP28/74, f. 465; SP28/76, ff. 121, 127. A few months later Sawry was listed as lieutenant-colonel in the short-lived foot regiment of Francis West, and he retained that rank when the unit was incorporated into Thomas Cooper II’s regiment in October 1651.21SP28//80, f. 444; Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. ii. 477-8; Wanklyn, New Model Army, ii. 78-9. Under Cooper, Sawry was at first posted to Orkney and Shetland, where he served as deputy-governor, with responsibility for ensuring the security of the islands during the first Dutch war.22Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLV, unfol.: 12 May, 8 June 1653. In July 1653, for example, Robert Lilburne* ordered Sawry to garrison Scalloway Castle on the mainland of Shetland with 100 men, in order to prevent nearby Bressay Sound from being used as a base by the Dutch navy.23Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS LXXXVI, f. 74v; Scot. and Commonwealth ed. Firth, 186. In October, Cooper was made governor of the burgh of Ayr, where the government was constructing a citadel to overawe the whole of the south west of Scotland, and Sawry was withdrawn from the northern isles, arriving at Ayr with his company in December.24Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLV, unfol.: 12 Oct., 8 Nov., 16 Dec. 1653.

Sawry’s duties as deputy-governor of Ayr were as much administrative as military. In September 1654 he was appointed to regulate the assessments in Ayrshire; in October he brought together the heritors of Ayrshire and Renfrewshire to settle their differences; and in November he was ordered to put pressure on local ministers ‘that pray for the king’.25Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLIII, f. 27; xlvi, unfol.: 5 Oct., 3 Nov. 1654. From December 1655, Sawry was included on the assessment commissions and the commission of the peace for Ayrshire, and he took care of the arrangements for the assize circuits in 1658.26Acts Parl. Scot. vi. pt. 2, p. 838; A. and O.; Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 309, 382. The recalcitrance of the local gentry made Sawry’s task much more difficult, and in the summer of 1655 General George Monck* ordered him to threaten to impose a settlement if the Ayrshire gentry refused to co-operate with setting assessment rates.27Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVII, unfol.: 2 July 1655. Sawry’s area of influence extended to the neighbouring shires: in February 1655 he joined Sir James McDowall* and others to consider a valuation dispute in Wigtownshire.28Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVI, unfol.: 5 Feb. 1655. From 1655 onwards, Sawry was left in effective charge of the Ayr garrison, as Colonel Cooper was absent, serving as a Scottish councillor and (from January 1656) as regional commander in Ulster.29TSP iv. 343. Throughout the later 1650s, the regiment’s pay was routinely directed to Sawry.30Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS LXII, unfol.: 6 July, 26 Oct. 1655, 24 Mar. 1657, 16 Apr. 1658. When there were fears of unrest in the garrison following the Overton plot in January 1655, and when a serious mutiny broke out in May 1656, Sawry was on hand to deal with it.31Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVI, unfol.: 3 Jan. 1655; Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 323-7. In Cooper’s absence, Sawry received the surrender of the earl of Loudon at Ayr in August 1655, and he also took over the building work at the citadel, which was completed in the spring of 1656.32CSP Dom. 1655, p. 269; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVII, unfol.: 16 July 1655, 29 Apr. 1656. Throughout the second half of the decade Sawry, although only a lieutenant-colonel, was in effective command of eight companies based in the citadel, a force which matched the garrisons of the other major citadels at Leith and Inverness.33Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. ii. 479. Monck granted Sawry two periods of leave, in the summers of 1657 and 1658, and it was at this time that he negotiated the purchase of the Broughton Tower estate in Westmorland.34Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVIII, unfol.: 30 July 1657, 20 May 1658; Armorial for Westmorland and Lonsdale, 265; Cumbria Archive, Barrow, BD TB 13/7/2.

Sawry’s importance in the civilian and military government of the south west of Scotland no doubt explains his return as MP for Ayrshire and Renfrewshire for the third protectorate Parliament in 1659. He played no recorded part in the Parliament, although he was in London at the beginning of May 1659, when he wrote to Monck justifying the officers’ coup against Richard Cromwell*. According to Sawry, ‘the army here in England is very unanimous in this late action, which is demonstrated by the several addresses which have come both from regiments and garrisons’; and he himself signed the letter to Monck, defending the army’s intervention as a move to uphold ‘the good old cause’.35HMC Leyborne-Popham, 116; Clarke Pprs. iv. 6. Sawry’s political stance made him friends in London – in July 1659 the army commanders made him colonel of his regiment in place of Cooper – but it threatened to alienate Monck, who felt he could no longer trust him.36Clarke Pprs. iv. 25. Before Monck could move against John Lambert* and the army radicals in England in the closing weeks of 1659, he needed to secure the Scottish garrisons, especially those in the citadels. Instead of relying on Sawry, he ordered a senior captain, Yaxley Robson, to take control of Ayr at the end of November 1659. All the officers, ‘except the colonel and lieutenant-colonel, agreed to comply with the general’, and Sawry was forced to flee across the border, followed by a handful of soldiers and corporals ‘of the most violent, turbulent and dangerous spirit’ who joined their old commander at Carlisle. In return for his loyalty to Monck, Robson was made colonel in Sawry’s place.37Clarke Pprs. iv. 160-1; Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. ii. 480.

After his dismissal from the army, Sawry retired to his house at Broughton. There he became a patron of non-conformity, helping to form the church at Tottlebank, and supporting the gathered congregation at Cockermouth. He was presented ‘for not coming to Morning Prayer’ in October 1663; and was bound over with other ‘fanatics’ for attending conventicles in May 1664.38Nightingale, Lancs. Non-conformity, 255n; B. Nightingale, Early Stages of the Quaker Movement in Lancs. (1921), 112; CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 586. ‘Praying Sawry’ (as he became known) remained suspect in the eyes of the government, and when a plot among the former Cromwellian officers was discovered in the winter of 1663-4, he was one of those accused of involvement.39CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 486. Despite his numerous enemies, Sawry managed to keep hold of the estate at Broughton, repulsing efforts by the original owners, the earls of Derby, to reclaim it. In 1696 Sawry and his son Jeremiah fought the case through the House of Lords, and appear to have retained control of the lands through a technicality.40HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 251-3. Roger Sawry died in August 1699, and was succeeded by Jeremiah, who had married a daughter of the rector of Greystoke, Richard Gilpin.41Nightingale, Lancs. Non-conformity, 255n. Their son, Richard Gilpin Sawry, died without heirs, and the family estate passed to a cousin, who took the surname Gilpin-Sawry.42Armorial for Westmorland and Lonsdale, 265.