BLAKISTON, John (1603-49), of St Nicholas, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumb.

Background and early career

Blakiston belonged to a junior branch of a family that had settled at Blakiston, near Durham, in the fourteenth century.35Surtees, Co. Dur. iii. 162. Although he would emerge as one of Newcastle’s leading puritans, his father was in fact a distinguished Anglican cleric, who ended his career as a prebend of Durham Cathedral and the target of puritan attacks as an Arminian and pluralist (his church livings were allegedly worth £600 a year).36Surtees, Co. Dur. iii. 163; Welford, Men of Mark, i. 334; R. Howell, Puritans and Radicals in North Eng. 50. In addition, three of Blakiston’s brothers became churchmen, and one of his sisters married another prominent Arminian cleric, John Cosin.37Welford, Men of Mark, i. 334. Blakiston’s advancement in Newcastle’s mercantile community, assisted by his marriage to a widow of one of the town’s merchant adventurers, may well have contributed to his religious estrangement from his family. Several of his friends and fellow mercers were puritans, including Henry Dawson*, with whom he collaborated in bringing William Morton to Newcastle in 1634 as lecturer to the town’s godly community.38SP16/540/pt. 4, ff. 279, 281, 283, 287, 288, 296, 303, 308; Howell, Newcastle, 89, 91. And the fact that Blakiston spent a considerable amount of time in London – where he had at least one godly friend in Sir John Fenner – and ‘abroad, by reason of his trading and special and important affairs’ probably increased his exposure to puritan influences.39PRO30/5/6, pp. 303-4; PROB11/165, f. 64; Acts of the High Commission Court within the Diocese of Durham ed. W.H.D. Longstaffe (Surt. Soc. xxxiv), 161. By 1635, he clearly saw himself as part of a nationwide godly network, referring to ‘these evil days’ and to how ‘the hearts of the best in all places are set for N[ew] E[ngland] ... It is in all the best men’s opinion a place likeliest for the people of God to escape unto’.40SP16/540/pt. 4, f. 303. He experienced Laudian harassment at first hand in 1636, when he was summoned before the Durham court of high commission on charges of, among other things, failing to kneel at prayers during divine service and of verbally abusing Newcastle’s Arminian vicar.41Acts of the Durham High Commission Court ed. Longstaffe, 155-67.

The Scots’ occupation of Newcastle in August 1640 created a temporary power-vacuum in the town – most of the aldermen having fled – that allowed Blakiston and two other candidates from outside the municipal oligarchy (Sir Henry Anderson* and Sir John Melton*) to stand as candidates for the borough in the elections to the Long Parliament. The election was held on 14 October and – according to one Scottish observer – was a confused affair in which there was a ‘great contest’ for the junior place (Anderson having secured the senior) ‘betwixt those that voiced for … Mr. Blackstone … and Sir John Myltonn’. The Scots, and presumably the town’s puritan community, favoured Blakiston, ‘who these five or six years hath been tossed through the high commission and other courts’. In the event, however, Melton carried the contest by 60 voices and was duly returned with Anderson.42Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’; Princeton Univ. Lib. C0938, no. 224, John Nevay to Lady Loudoun, 14 Oct. 1640. Blakiston’s supporters petitioned Parliament against Melton’s election, and the dispute was referred to the committee of privileges.43Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’. By mid-November, Blakiston was at Westminster, from where he sent a series of letters to the Newcastle godly or the Scots, or both, reporting on ‘the Lord’s great work at London’.44Princeton Univ. Lib. C0938, no. 224, Nevay to Lady Loudoun, 16 Nov. 1640; same to the presbytery at Irvine, 16 Nov. 1640. In mid-December, Melton died, and a month later the Scots at Newcastle were informed that ‘Blakiston, for whom all good people here stood, is find [sic] by the Parliament to be the burgess lawfully chosen and admitted a Member of the Parliament’.45Princeton Univ. Lib. C0938, no. 224, Nevay to Lady Loudoun, 18 Jan. 1641. However, it was not until 30 January 1641 that the House resolved that Blakiston was ‘well elected’ for Newcastle and ordered the town’s sheriff to amend the indenture accordingly.46CJ ii. 76a.

Parliamentary career, 1641-2

Blakiston’s career in the Long Parliament began slowly. He was named to just 15 committees between April 1641 – when he appears to have taken his seat in the House – and the outbreak of civil war. The reform of Laudian ‘abuses’ and the settling of a godly ministry accounted for several of his early appointments – including his first and only tellership, which was on 7 March 1642, when he and Oliver Cromwell were minority tellers in favour of appointing the Erastian Presbyterian Stephen Coleman as lecturer at St Giles-in-the-Fields.47CJ ii. 128b, 467b, 470b, 530a. On 24 April 1641, Blakiston presented a petition from some of Newcastle’s freemen, complaining that godly ministers there had been suppressed and replaced by clerics who were ‘very scandalous and popishly affected’.48PJ iv. 84, 89. And he subsequently delivered similar petitions to the House from the godly of Northumberland and County Durham.49CJ ii. 496b. He also played a leading role in securing a Commons order for re-installing the former puritan lecturers at Newcastle, William Morton and Robert Jenison, and in agitating for the prosecution of their Laudian opponents.50PJ i. 411; iii. 69. Blakiston’s trenchant Protestantism probably accounts in large part for his investment of £750 as an Irish Adventurer.51CSP Ire. Adv. 76; Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 177.

One of Blakiston’s priorities at Westminster during 1641 was the welfare of Northumberland and County Durham, where the Scottish army had been quartered since the end of the second bishops’ war. On 6 April, he suggested that the number of Scottish troops encamped in Northumberland – to the great charge of its inhabitants – exceeded the number agreed by treaty.52Procs. LP iii. 417. And a month later (5 May), he ‘spoke touching the miserable condition of Northumberland’, although on this occasion he seems to have emphasised not excessive Scottish troop numbers but rather the ‘extreme necessity’ of their army.53Procs. LP iv. 213-14, 217. However, on 7 August he again sounded a more critical (of the Scots) note, insisting that the £28,000 that the parliamentary leadership conceived was owed by the Scottish army to the inhabitants of Newcastle and County Durham was ‘very prejudicial to the said bishopric [of Durham] and town, for there was due near upon £7,000 from the Scots to the town of Newcastle not at all comprised within this sum’.54Procs. LP vi. 269. Four days later (11 Aug.), he and the future royalist Sir William Withrington repeatedly moved for payment of the money owed to County Durham, Northumberland and Newcastle by the Scots ‘over and above the monies already agreed upon’. Blakiston also moved that the Scots be ordered to return the 600 arms they had taken from Newcastle’s magazine.55Procs. LP vi. 355, 359. His godly connections and the influence he wielded in Newcastle and County Durham may well account for his appointment on 9 September to the Recess Committee* – the body of MPs and peers charged with overseeing the disbandment of the armies and other parliamentary business while the Houses were in recess.56CJ ii. 288b.

From late 1641, Blakiston’s concern for the welfare of the northern counties began to assume a more partisan form and to merge with his fears of a growing threat to the House’s interests from papists and ‘malignants’. In mid-December, he related concerns in Newcastle about perceived popish plotting in the region.57D’Ewes (C), 300. And in March 1642, he delivered in information of words spoken against ‘King Pym’ (John Pym) and other MPs (that same month, he championed the cause of a group of ‘poor men’ in County Durham who had rioted against enclosures).58CJ ii. 469a, 478b; PJ ii. 1. Much of the information he relayed to the House, particularly from the summer of 1642, concerned the activities of the king’s supporters in the northern counties.59PJ ii. 312; iii. 106, 107, 140; CJ ii. 570b, 653a. On 9 June, he was appointed a manager of a conference to apprise the Lords of royalist military preparations in the region, and on 20 June he informed the House of the appointment of William Cavendish, 1st earl of Newcastle, as royal governor of Newcastle and of the king’s intention to garrison the town.60CJ ii. 615a; PJ iii. 106, 107. Blakiston was named to a committee set up that day to consider Parliament’s response to this alarming news.61CJ ii. 634a. He was named to a similar committee a week later (27 June), having relayed yet more information of the royalists’ activities in the Tyne valley.62CJ ii. 642b; PJ iii. 140. That same month, he pledged to bring in £50 towards Parliament’s own military preparations.63PJ iii. 474. The royalist occupation of Newcastle in June did nothing to weaken his support for the parliamentarian cause – a commitment that doubtless owed much to his godly piety. Indeed, at some point that summer, he joined the Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick, William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele and 37 other godly Parliament-men in a letter to John Cotton and two other puritan divines in New England, requesting they return home to attend the Westminster Assembly and assist in the great work of church reform.64J. Winthrop, Hist. of New England ed. J. Savage, ii. 91-2; T. Hutchinson, Hist. of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay ed. L.S. Mayo, i. 100-1.

Blakiston among the ‘fiery spirits’, 1642-4

Blakiston was apparently an almost constant presence in the Commons from the outbreak of civil war to his appointment as mayor of Newcastle in the autumn of 1645. He was named to well over 100 committees during this period and chaired at least two of them – a committee set up in May 1643 for the reduction of Newcastle; and the committee for petitions, which the Commons established in October 1644.65CJ iii. 104b, 146a, 315a, 649b, 723b. The chairmanship of the committee for petitions was an important position, but Blakiston seems to have performed rather poorly in the role, and Peregrine Pelham*, for one, was pleased when Blakiston’s appointment as mayor of Newcastle prompted the Commons to replace him as chairman with John Goodwyn.66D. Scott, ‘‘Particular businesses’ in the Long Parliament: the Hull letters 1644-8’, in Parliament, Politics and Elections, 1604-48 ed. C. Kyle (Cam. Soc. ser. 5, xvii), 295, 300, 301, 302, 304. Yet although Blakiston was one of the more influential of the ‘northern gentlemen’ in the Commons, he was never part of the parliamentary leadership or a framer of policy. He apparently had no hand in any of Parliament’s major policy initiative during the war – the Covenant, new-modelling and self-denial to name but three – and received only one appointment to a conference-management team and one as a messenger to the Lords after 1642.67CJ iii. 694a; iv. 307a. Similarly, in Commons’ debates he cut a very minor figure, at least until the later 1640s, and it is largely on the basis of his appointments that he can be placed with some confidence among the ‘fiery spirits’ in the House – the group of MPs wholly committed to the vigorous prosecution of the war. The loss of virtually all of his estate to the northern royalists probably tied him even more closely to the parliamentarian interest, for he clearly looked to the generosity of the Commons rather than a swift peace for redress – and he was not to be disappointed.68CJ ii. 907b; iii. 31a, 37b; iv. 161a, 363a; SP20/1, p. 14. By March 1646, he had received over £1,000 from the treasurers of the Committee for Sequestrations* in recompense of his losses.69Add. 5508, f. 204; Bodl. Nalson XIV, f. 215v.

Blakiston threw himself enthusiastically into the task of advancing the parliamentarian war effort. Besides his nomination to the first committee for the sequestration of delinquents’ estates (3 Feb. 1643) and his addition to the Committee for Compounding* (23 Dec.), he was appointed to a whole series of committees for managing, improving and collecting the excise, composition fines, customs revenues and generally any source of money that could be channelled into Parliament’s war machine.70CJ ii. 882a, 953b; iii. 18b, 29b, 211a, 243b, 245b, 248b, 250a, 257b, 282b, 286a, 350b, 351a, 391a, 457a, 489a, 508b, 601a, 606a; iv. 107a, 178b; Add. 18778, f. 43. These appointments were entirely consistent with his political alignment in the House – which he made abundantly clear on 26 January 1643, when he brought in an ordinance for raising a volunteer army, financed by mulcting Catholics, royalists and neuters and under commanders that would ‘have power to lead their forces where they seem fit and to fight and kill any such as shall plunder and spoil, and put them to death’. He further proposed the establishment of a ‘committee of association, who shall associate themselves with all [the well-affected] in England, Scotland and Ireland, and [that it shall] have power to tender an oath of association and keep a book of their names’. These highly radical proposals were cried up by Blakiston’s fellow fiery spirit Alexander Rigby I, whereupon the House referred them to the consideration of a committee to which Rigby was named in first place and Blakiston in third.71Add. 18777, f. 133; CJ ii. 943b. Two months later (31 Mar.), Blakiston ‘spake very impertinently to justify my Lord of Essex his doings and shewed what great taxations the earl of Newcastle had laid upon the bishopric of Durham and other northern counties’.72Harl. 164, f. 349v. In other words, Blakiston was boldly endorsing military action (by the lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex) and taxation at a time when the more peace-minded Members were anxiously awaiting the outcome of treaty negotiations at Oxford.

Blakiston’s willingness to consider radical solutions for winning the war was highlighted by his appointment on 20 July 1643 to the committee for the ‘general rising’. Established in response to a petition from a group of ardent ‘war party’ supporters in London, this committee was given the task of realising a design that was very similar to the one that Blakiston had floated back in February – that is, of mobilising and maintaining an army of citizen volunteers under a commander who would largely be independent of the earl of Essex. In flagrant violation of the Commons’ privileges, the petitioners had presumed to name the committee’s membership, and the result was a body made up almost exclusively of prominent hardliners, among them Denis Bond, John Gurdon, Henry Marten, Harbert Morley, Isaac Penington and William Strode I. Two days later, on 22 July, Blakiston, Marten and another member of the committee, Edward Bayntun, licensed the publication of the petition for the general rising.73Infra, ‘Henry Marten’; CJ iii. 176a; A Transcript of the Regs. of the Worshipful Company of Stationers, i. 64; D. Como, Radical Parliamentarians and the English Civil War, 188. The man the committee lighted upon to command the new army was Sir William Waller*, the darling of the London militants. In the event, the idea of a general rising proved unworkable. Nevertheless, Blakiston’s subsequent involvement in raising money for Waller’s Southern Association army suggests that by late 1643 he had little faith in Essex’s military leadership and resolve.74CJ iii. 240b, 242a, 258a; CCAM 147. This can also be inferred from Blakiston’s nomination on 26 February 1644 to the committee for ‘the reformation of the lord general’s army’, chaired by Zouche Tate.75CJ iii. 408b. This committee’s primary task was to nominate and thus reconstitute Essex’s officer corps – and the parliamentary diarist Sir Simonds D’Ewes described its members as ‘all violent spirits’ and enemies to Essex’s army.76Harl. 166, f. 18.

On those rare occasions that Blakiston spoke in debate in 1643-4 it was to attack the lord general’s interest or measures it favoured.77Harl. 166, ff. 98v, 121, 168v. His distrust of Parliament’s irenic aristocratic commanders may well account for his extraordinary outburst in the Commons in July 1644 – as Essex marched defiantly and disastrously into the west country – ‘that the Lords had been suffered too long to domineer, and we see ... how often they have been defective’ (although given that this was reported in Mercurius Aulicus, which was keen to play up anti-aristocratic sentiment in the Commons, it may be apocryphal).78Mercurius Aulicus no. 29 (14-20 July 1644), 1088-9 (E.4.12). Yet despite Blakiston’s strong war-party credentials, he apparently did little to help advance its main strategy – a military alliance with the Scots. His only known contribution to this endeavour consisted of attending a handful of meetings of the Committee for Compounding during the winter of 1643-4.79SP23/1A, pp. 12, 13, 16. This body had been established to raise money for the Scottish army that entered northern England early in 1644; and Blakiston would subsequently be named to several ad hoc committees for supplying the Scots’ forces.80CJ iii. 408a, 602b. He took the vow and covenant that John Pym and his allies introduced in June 1643 and the Solemn League and Covenant in September.81CJ iii. 118a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 481. But if his later career is any guide, his enthusiasm for the Scots’ programme of a ‘covenanted uniformity’ between the three kingdoms was lukewarm at best.

Inevitably it was Parliament’s ‘northern occasions’ that took up most of Blakiston’s time during the first two years of the war.82CJ ii. 856a, The task of financing the war effort in the north dominated his parliamentary workload during 1643.83CJ ii. 825a, 856a, 891b, 981a, 994a; iii. 46a, 76a, 86a, 174b, 257b, 333a, 508b, 679b. Indeed, between December 1642 and December 1643 he was named to no fewer than six committees for supplying Parliament’s northern army under Ferdinando 2nd Baron Fairfax* – one of which seems to have formed the nucleus of the Commons’ main forum on the region’s affairs, the Northern Committee*.84Supra, ‘Northern Committee’; CJ ii. 891b, 981a, 994a; iii. 76a, 174b, 333a. Likewise, he was an important figure in all business relating to Northumberland, County Durham and Newcastle.85CJ ii. 772b, 802a, 916a, 923b, 965a, 992b; iii. 104b, 116a, 501a, 511b, 515b, 593a, 690a, 694a, 700a, 705b, 714b; iv. 52b, 90a, 125b, 252b, 263b; v. 21b, 274a; vi. 138a, 148b. It may have been Blakiston who first drew the House’s attention to the commissioning of Catholics by the commander of the royalist northern army the earl of Newcastle – information that the Commons, with Blakiston’s help, turned into a potent propaganda weapon.86Harl. 164, f. 38; Add. 18777, ff. 31v, 45, 96, 113v; CJ ii. 812b, 891b. Much of the Commons’ knowledge concerning the royalist military build-up in the Tyne Valley probably came from Blakiston and his correspondents (who evidently included parliamentarian sympathisers in Holland).87CJ ii. 899b, 963b; LJ v. 495b-496a; Harl. 164, f. 264; Add. 31116, p. 29. He also played a leading role in implementing Parliament’s embargo on the Newcastle and Sunderland coal trade, which was a major source of revenue for the earl of Newcastle’s forces.88CJ ii. 916a, 923b, 965a. A committee set up on 26 May 1643 to consider propositions for reducing Newcastle and thus restoring the coal supply to London was specially referred to Blakiston’s care, and in the resulting ordinance he was named second to a committee ‘to manage all affairs touching this adventure’.89CJ iii. 104b, 116a; A. and O, i. 171-4. Blakiston’s committee may well have instigated or been otherwise complicit in an abortive attempt by his brother George and other Newcastle ‘puritans’ to seize the town for Parliament in 1643.90Bodl. Clarendon 26, f. 119v. Following the Scots’ re-occupation of the Tyne Valley during 1644, much of the work at Westminster associated with the resumption of coal shipping to London – including the vetting of colliery owners, many of whom were royalists – was handled by Blakiston.91CJ iii. 501a, 515b, 690a, 694a, 705b; iv. 90a; Howell, Puritans and Radicals, 57.

As a merchant himself, with an interest in preserving England’s North Sea commerce, Blakiston received numerous appointments during his parliamentary career relating to maritime trade and the supply and management of the navy.92CJ iii. 16b, 44a, 243b, 245b, 356a, 551a, 601a, 772a; iv. 57a, 722a; v. 352a, 480a, 505b. His involvement in naval affairs may also have owed something to his close association with Sir Henry Vane I* and Sir Henry Vane II*, who were both leading figures in Parliament’s naval administration.93Infra, ‘Sir Henry Vane I’; ‘Sir Henry Vane II’. The origins of Blakiston’s relationship with the Vanes – the most powerful family in civil-war County Durham – are not clear. But by 1644, he and the Vanes, sometimes in conjunction with Sir Thomas Widdrington, formed a regular Commons’ team when it came to raising money for the war effort in County Durham or promoting a godly ministry in the region.94Add. 18777, f. 45; CJ ii. 802a; iii. 408a, 511b, 515b, 522b, 593a, 617b, 645b, 690a; iv. 97a; v. 473b; CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 155, 222. The Vanes looked to Blakiston to protect their interests at Westminster, while Blakiston looked to the Vanes to protect his family and friends in the north.95CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 124, 155, 166, 183. Blakiston’s office as auditor of the revenues for the north parts of the duchy of Lancaster (which came with a salary of £74 19s 4d), a place in the gift of the Committee for Revenue*, was very likely secured for him by the committee’s chairman, Vane I.96Supra, ‘Committee for the Revenue’; SC6/CHASI/1662, m. 11d. Relations between the two men may have become strained in 1646 as a result of Blakiston’s prosecution of the Newcastle common council’s dispute with Vane I over a ballast shore on the Tyne.97Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 200; MD.NC/2/1, pp. 58, 65, 77, 78; Howell, Puritans and Radicals, 59. Nevertheless, Blakiston seems to have retained the family’s favour. In 1649, the Leveller leader John Lilburne referred to him as one of Vane I’s ‘creatures, for the many thousand pounds’ sake of the commonwealth’s money he hath help[ed] him to’.98J. Lilburne, The Legall Fundamental Liberties of the People of England Revived, Asserted, and Vindicated (1649), 19 (E.560.14).

Resisting the Covenanters, 1644-6

Blakiston figured prominently in the Long Parliament’s rolling programme of godly reform. Between 1643 and 1647, he received almost 20 appointments for settling godly ministers (mainly in the northern counties), liaising with the Westminster Assembly and promoting reformation of manners.99CJ iii. 271b, 340b, 408a, 470b, 579b, 597b, 645b, 682a, 699b, 705b; iv. 97b, 211b, 218a, 275b, 276a, 502a, 608a, 625b, 719b; Add. 4276, f. 166; Howell, Puritans and Radicals, 60-1. And on 19 November 1644, he and 13 other Members were added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers*.100CJ iii. 699b. When the radical lawyer John Musgrave and his ‘friends of the separation’ in Cumberland and Westmorland sought to petition the Commons late in 1644 against Richard Barwis* and his ungodly clique, they addressed themselves to Blakiston.101[J. Musgrave], Another Word to the Wise (1646), sig. Bv (E.323.6); A Fourth Word to the Wise (1647), 14 (E.391.9). Yet though the royalist newsbook editor Marchamont Nedham lumped Blakiston among the ‘Anabaptistical sectaries’ in the House in 1648, all the evidence suggests that the Newcastle MP favoured a more orthodox brand of puritanism.102Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 35 (21-8 Nov. 1648), sig. Bbb3v (E.473.35). Perhaps the clearest indicator of his religious sympathies are his appointments either to request ministers to deliver sermons to the House, or to thank them for doing so. The ministers in question were Jeremiah Burroughes, Joseph Caryl, Walter Cradock, Thomas Gataker, Thomas Goodwin, William Greenhill, Thomas Hill, John Lightfoot, John Maynard, Philip Nye, Henry Scudder, Sidrach Simpson (twice), Joseph Symmonds, Thomas Temple and Francis Woodcock.103CJ iii. 182b, 639a, 642a; iv. 36b, 224b, 226b, 229a, 604b, 653a, 664a; v. 287b, 545b. The majority of these men – Burroughes, Caryl, Cradock, Goodwin, Greenhill, Nye, Scuder, Simpson, Symmonds – were ‘orthodox’ Independents and opponents of a ‘rigid’ Scottish-style Presbyterianism (several were among the Dissenting Brethren in the Westminster Assembly).104R.S. Paul, The Assembly of the Lord, 124; Tai Liu, Puritan London, 111-12; A. Laurence, Parliamentary Army Chaplains, 117; Oxford DNB. Thus Blakiston’s religious views apparently chimed with those of the majority of parliamentary Independents, who favoured toleration for orthodox Independent congregations within a Presbyterian parish framework. His support for a national Presbyterian church was evidently not questioned by the House, which selected him in September 1645 to ensure that the northern counties were supplied with the Directory for Worship.105CJ iv. 275b. It was doubtless as a godly zealot as well as an Adventurer that he attended the Committee for Irish Affairs* in 1643 and 1644 and was regularly named committees for advancing the war effort in Ireland and relieving its beleaguered Protestants.106SP16/539/127, pp. 47, 53; Add. 4771, f. 26v; CJ ii. 571b, 713a; iii. 574a, 599b, 640b; iv. 516b, 521a; v. 538b.

Despite Blakiston’s likely opposition to a covenanted uniformity in religion, it was the Scots’ attempts late in 1644 to gain control of the River Tyne coal trade that brought him into open conflict with them. The Committee for Compounding, supported by Blakiston, objected to a proposal from the Scots commissioners that Edinburgh, rather than Newcastle or London, should have the last word in managing royalist-owned collieries in the Tyne Valley.107CJ iv. 12a; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 241; Corresp. of the Scots Commrs. ed. H.W. Meikle, 54-7. In the wake of the Scot’s capture of Newcastle in October 1644, the Commons had passed a series of orders for imprisoning and sequestering the town’s royalist governors and coal magnates and for installing Blakiston (who was made an alderman) and other leading puritans in their place.108CJ iii. 700a, 714b-715a. A large slice of the Tyne coal trade was now up for grabs, and the Committee for Compounding, the Scots and Newcastle’s new governors all had their sights on it. But whereas the Scots were prepared to allow ‘malignant’ colliery owners and merchants to operate under their aegis, Newcastle’s new rulers (as represented by Blakiston) and the Committee for Compounding had apparently formed an understanding that the former should take over the management of all sequestered collieries while the latter should receive a slice of the profits.109Bodl. Tanner 60, f. 117; Corresp. of the Scots Commrs. ed. Meikle, 54-7; Howell, Newcastle, 171. The dispute was debated in the Committee of Both Kingdoms* on 21 January 1645 and seems to have ended in a bitter stalemate.110CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 265-6; CJ iv. 90a; Corresp. of the Scots Commrs. ed. Meikle, 58-9.

So suspicious was Blakiston of the Scots’ intentions by the spring of 1645 that he washed his hands of John Musgrave’s separatist group and tacitly made common cause with the Barwis faction, which shared his desire to restrict Scottish influence in the northern counties.111[Musgrave], Another Word to the Wise, sig. Bv; A Fourth Word to the Wise, 14-15; CJ iv. 180a, 210a; D. Scott, ‘The Barwis affair: political allegiance and the Scots during the British civil wars’, EHR cxv. 851-2. As late as April 1645, Thomas Cholmley* wrote to Blakiston, thanking him for his services to God’s church and people and asking for his further assistance.112[J. Musgrave], A Word to the Wise (1646), 4-6 (E.318.5). But by this stage Blakiston and other parliamentary Independents were convinced that in attacking Barwis, Musgrave and his friends were helping the Scots ‘to drive on some wicked design of theirs, tending to the prejudice of the state’.113Scott, ‘Barwis affair’, 852. Musgrave accused Blakiston of spreading ‘misinformation’ at Westminster against him, ‘making our friends believe Mr Barwis was Independent and [I] Scottish, and that I carried one [sic] the Scottish design’.114[Musgrave], A Fourth Word to the Wise, 2. On 31 July, the Commons set up a committee, to which Blakiston was named, for examining the charges against Barwis.115CJ iv. 226a. But it succeeded only in interrogating and imprisoning Musgrave and further aggravating the Scots.116Scott, ‘Barwis affair’, 853. The following month, Blakiston was selected to carry parliamentary commissions into the northern counties for taking account of the money, free quarter and provisions that the Scottish forces had exacted in the region.117CJ iv. 248a; A. and O. He sided with the Scots’ enemies again on 1 October, when he and the Independent grandee Sir Arthur Hesilrige tried to persuade the Commons to hand effective control of the Northern Association army to the Fairfaxes or their Westminster allies, in what looks very much like a design to turn Sednham Poynts’s command into a regional defence force against the Scots. Faced with objections to this proposal from Sir Philip Stapilton and other MPs, Blakiston successfully moved for the reading of captured royalist correspondence implicating Stapilton’s allies in the House in the attempted defection of the Hothams in 1643. The debate concluded with a division in which Stapilton and Sir Christopher Wray defeated Vane II and Hesilrige.118Supra, ‘Northern Committee’; Harl. 166, f. 267. On 14 October, Blakiston helped to manage a conference concerning a series of Commons’ resolutions condemning the Scots for their failure to engage the enemy and for their plundering in the north.119CJ iv. 307a; LJ vii. 642a. That same day (14 Oct.), he was granted leave to return to Newcastle following his election as the town’s mayor.120CJ iv. 306b.

Blakiston’s term as mayor of Newcastle was marked by growing factional unrest among the town’s governing elite.121Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’. The immediate cause of contention centred on the timing of the parliamentary election to replace Sir Henry Anderson, who had been disabled by the Commons in 1643. In September 1645, a writ for electing a new Member for Newcastle had been issued by order of the Commons, but it had then been detained by Blakiston.122CJ iv. 262b; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 124. The Newcastle Independents were anxious not to hold the election while the town was still under Scottish occupation, whereas the Presbyterians were eager to proceed for precisely that reason. In January 1646, it was reported that Newcastle was

much divided [between] Presb[yterian] and Indep[endent], and many side with the garrison against their friends ... No burgess chosen, but the mayor [Blakiston] fears he shall not prevail, and he hath no more discretion then to make that the ground of not proceeding to election.123Mercurius Academicus no. 12 (2-7 Mar. 1646), 115, 116 (E.325.16).

By late February, Blakiston had apparently had enough and had returned to Westminster.124Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 190; CJ iv. 472b. To retain power in his absence, the Newcastle Independents had Henry Dawson installed as deputy-mayor.125Infra, ‘Henry Dawson’.

Blakiston was named to approximately 65 committees between his return to the House early in 1646 and Pride’s Purge in December 1648. He received several appointments during 1646 relating to the Commons’ grievances against the Scots.126CJ iv. 481b, 731a, 731b. But it was in challenging the Scots’ estimate of the money that Parliament owed their army that he distinguished himself in the anti-Scottish cause. According to the Presbyterian grandee Denzil Holles*, the Independent grandees

thrust on some of their little northern Beagles, as Mr. Blaxton and others, to inform the Parliament what high sums of money they [the Scots] had rais’d upon the country; upon which they conclude the Scottish army was in their debt, and therefore they would come to an account with them.127Holles, Mems. (1699), 65.

After much wrangling, Parliament agreed to pay £200,000 (later increased to £400,000) in full of the Scots’ demands, and Blakiston was named to a committee set up on 5 September to consider ways of raising this sum.128CJ iv. 663a. It was decided that most of this money should be raised through the sale of church lands – a policy that Blakiston evidently favoured and did much to promote.129CJ iv. 276a; v. 602a; vi. 81b, 116a, 147b; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 28 (3-10 Oct. 1648), sig. Pp2 (E.466.11). He himself purchased several former church properties, including Durham Castle (although there is no official record of his purchase of the castle, Hesilrige asserted in 1650 that it belonged to Blakiston’s widow).130LR2/266, f. 4v; A Letter from Sir Arthur Hesilrige (1650), 4 (E.615.18); List of the Names of the Members of the House of Commons; Coll. Top. et Gen. i. 4; Howell, Puritans and Radicals, 63, 75. On 10 September, with municipal elections at Newcastle looming, Blakiston obtained leave of absence for a month.131CJ iv. 663b. The next day (11 Sept.), however, he was ‘vehemently charged’ in the Commons for withholding the Newcastle parliamentary election writ, and a committee was set up to investigate the matter.132Harington’s Diary, 36; CJ iv. 666b. He defended himself on the grounds that the town was full of ‘malignants’; and it was generally agreed that no election should be held while the king was at Newcastle (where the Scots had taken him after he had fled to their army in May).133Harington’s Diary, 36. Blakiston was present at the Newcastle municipal elections early in October, which saw Dawson appointed mayor and the replacement of several leading Presbyterians.134Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’; Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, pp. 197, 199, 200, 203. Before he returned to Westminster, Blakiston signed a council order for settling the ‘non-doctrinaire’ Presbyterian minister Richard Prideaux as one of the town’s lecturers.135Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 203; Howell, Newcastle, 229. And when doubts arose in February 1647 as to Prideaux continuing his ministry in the town, Blakiston succeeded in obtaining a Commons’ order confirming him in his place.136CJ v. 97a.

Blakiston the radical Independent, 1647-8

Blakiston continued to attend the House during the Presbyterian ascendancy of early 1647, and on 6 February he was appointed to the commission for compounding with delinquents (which he seems to have attended on just three occasions).137CJ v. 78a; SP23/4, f. 19v; SP23/5, f. 27v, 77. In all, he was named to 12 committees during the first seven months of 1647, most of them concerning relatively uncontentious issues.138CJ v. 72b, 74a, 84b, 134a, 147b, 151b, 167a, 170b, 187a, 236b, 253a, 254a. However, on 22 July he was named to an Independent-dominated committee to investigate the Presbyterian ‘engagement’ of the London apprentices and watermen, which Parliament condemned as ‘tending to the embroiling the kingdom in a new war’.139CJ v. 254a; LJ ix. 354b; Juxon Jnl. 161. He was among those MPs (mostly Independents) who fled to the protection of the army following the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster on 26 July and who signed their ‘engagement’ of 4 August, in which Fairfax and his men were eulogised for their ‘Christian, noble and public affection to the good, peace and prosperity of this kingdom and ... faithfulness to the true interest of the English nation’.140LJ ix. 385b. Having resumed his seat following the army’s triumphal entry into London early in August, he joined Hesilrige, Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire* and other Independents on 9 August in insisting that those Members complicit in the riots ought not to sit or vote.141HMC Egmont, 443. Although granted leave of absence on 1 September – once again, in order to attend the Newcastle municipal elections – he was still at Westminster on 9 September, when he was added to the Army Committee* in order to prepare an ordinance for appointing its successor body.142CJ v. 286b, 298b, 330a, 348b; Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, pp. 245, 247, 249. Having returned to Westminster by late December, he wrote a letter to Newcastle common council – almost certainly in recommendation of the town’s newly-appointed governor, Sir Arthur Hesilrige.143Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/1, p. 209.

Blakiston moved steadily towards the more radical wing of the Independents during the course of 1648. He was included on the 4 January committee, headed by Rigby and Thomas Scot I, to prepare ordinances for redressing the people’s grievances ‘in relation to their burdens, their freedoms and liberties and of reforming of courts of justice and proceedings at law’.144CJ v. 417a. And it was very probably at Blakiston’s and Hesilrige’s prompting that the vote of no addresses and the parliamentary declaration justifying it were publicly read at Newcastle by order of the town council.145Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/1, pp. 212, 227. As in 1647, Blakiston’s Commons appointments reveal relatively little about his political alignment at Westminster. During the spring and summer he worked closely with his fellow Newcastle MP Robert Ellison (a Presbyterian) and the town council in strengthening Parliament’s military establishment in the Tyne Valley.146CJ v. 544b, 549a, 554b, 638b, 673b, 678a; Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/2/1, pp. 230, 261, 264, 266, 270. However, in debate he emerged as one of the most hard-line figures in the House and was consistently identified with Scot, John Weaver and other Members ‘down-right for the army’.147A Letter from an Ejected Member of the House of Commons to Sir Jo: Evelyn (1648), 24-5 (E.463.18); [C. Walker*], Hist. of Independency (1648), 101, 120, 122, 126 (E.463.19); A Brief Discourse of the Present Miseries of the Kingdome (1648), 24 (E.467.24); Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 29 (10-17 Oct. 1648), sig. Sf2 (E.467.38); no. 38 (12-19 Dec. 1648), sig. Ddd4v (E.476.35); Mercurius Elencticus no. 55 (5-12 Dec. 1648), 532 (E.476.4). And although Nedham referred to Blakiston on one occasion as a ‘creature’ of the grandees, in fact he took a much tougher stance against the king than would have pleased the Derby House junto.148Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 24 (5-12 Sept. 1648), sig. Gg2 (E.462.34). Late in May, when the Commons debated whether to have a personal treaty, Blakiston, Scot and Weaver were alleged to have ‘barbarously aspersed the king’.149NAS, GD 406/1/2467. In July, Blakiston seconded Scot and Weaver in attacking a personal treaty.150Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 18 (25 July-1 Aug. 1648), sig. S3v (E.456.7). In August, he supported calls for the prince of Wales to be declared a ‘rebel and a traitor’.151[Walker], Hist. of Independency, 126. In September, he joined Scot and Weaver in crying up a Leveller petition demanding justice against the ‘the capital authors’ of the civil wars.152Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 25 (12-19 Sept. 1648), sig. Ii2v (E.464.12). Marchamont Nedham was slightly nearer the mark in describing Blakiston as one of the ‘more Levelling sort’ in the Commons – although if he was implying that the Newcastle MP shared the Levellers’ broader political objectives then this too was inaccurate. Blakiston supported their September petition largely for tactical reasons, it seems. In general, he appears to have backed the Commons’ efforts to clamp down on ‘scandalous’ publications such as the 1646 proto-Leveller pamphlet A Remonstrance of Many Thousand Citizens.153CJ iv. 616a; v. 72b, 292b. Moreover, by 1648, he and Hesilrige were engaged in a bitter dispute with the Leveller leader John Lilburne and his family and friends in County Durham over control of several lucrative collieries. George Lilburne*, John’s uncle, later claimed that this feud had begun after he had tried to expose Blakiston’s ‘unjust’ expropriation of sequestered property in County Durham and protection of his royalist kinsmen there, whereupon Blakiston had used his ‘power and interest’ at Westminster (and especially in the Northern Committee) to crush Lilburne and his friends.154Infra, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; ‘George Lilburne’; Bodl. Tanner 56, f. 22; CJ vi. 155b; G. Lilburne, To Every Individuall Member, 1, 4-8; A Letter of Lieutenant Colonel John Lilburns (1651), 3, 4 (E.626.19); J. Lilburne, A Just Reproof to Haberdashers-Hall (1651), 4-5 (E.638.12); Howell, Puritans and Radicals, 62-3. Granted leave of absence on 13 September – as usual, it seems, to attend the Newcastle municipal elections – Blakiston had returned to the Commons by late October 1648, when he attacked the king for refusing to abjure episcopacy.155CJ vi. 20b, 34b; Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 277; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 31 (24-31 Oct. 1648), sig. Yy (E.469.10).

Career in the Rump

There is every sign that Blakiston warmly supported both Pride’s Purge and bringing the king to trial. In the lengthy Commons debate of 5 December on whether to accept the king’s answers at Newport as an acceptable basis for settlement, Blakiston spoke, and almost certainly voted, against the motion.156Mercurius Pragmaticus nos. 36 and 37 (5-12 Dec. 1648), sig. Ccc3 (E.476.2). He retained his seat at Pride’s Purge, and on 13 December he was named to two committees for repealing all the legislation connected with the Newport Treaty.157CJ vi. 96a, 96b. The next day (14 Dec.), he voted against re-admitting those MPs who had been secluded at Pride’s Purge but against whom there was no charge.158Mercurius Elencticus no. 56 (12-19 Dec. 1648), 539 (E.476.36). He entered his dissent to the 5 December vote (that the king’s answers at Newport were an acceptable basis for settlement) on 20 December – the day on which the dissent was introduced as a test of the Rump’s membership.159Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 39 (19-26 Dec. 1648), sig. Eee3 (E.477.30).

Like most of those who made their dissents at the first time of asking, Blakiston was keen to see the king brought to account, and on 29 December 1648 he was named first to a committee on an ordinance establishing a ‘special court’ to try him.160CJ vi. 106a. Having learnt from Blakiston and Gilbert Millington that the Lords had rejected this ordinance, the Commons set up a committee on 3 January 1649, to which Blakiston was named, to bring in a second ordinance for erecting a high court of justice.161CJ vi. 109a, 110b. That same day (3 Jan.), Blakiston was named second to a committee for framing a new great seal – a task specially referred to Henry Marten, although it was Blakiston who oversaw the seal’s engraving with the words ‘in the first year of freedom, by God’s blessing restored’ (Blakiston had also been involved in making Parliament’s first great seal, back in 1643).162CJ iii. 226a; vi. 112b, 115b; Add. 18778, f. 28v; Stowe 184, f. 58; S. Kelsey, ‘Staging the trial of Charles I’, in The Regicides and the Execution of Charles I ed. J. Peacey, 80-1. Named as a commissioner in the second ordinance for a high court of justice (6 Jan. 1649), he was one of the most zealous of the king’s judges, attending all but one of the 19 meetings of the trial commission, all four sessions of the trial itself and then signing the royal death warrant.163Add. 35332, f. 119; Muddiman, Trial, 76, 228.

It is not entirely clear what drove Blakiston to regicide, although one likely motive was the fear that while Charles lived and refused to abjure the Scots, then Newcastle and the north would remain under the shadow of yet another Scottish invasion and occupation.164D. Scott, ‘Motives for king killing’, in The Regicides ed. Peacey, 149-50. In October, the mayor of Newcastle and about 80 of the freemen had petitioned the Commons, requesting that ‘full and exemplary justice be done upon the great incendiaries of the kingdom, the fomenters of, and actors in, the first and second war and the late bringing in of the Scots’.165The Moderate no. 14 (10-17 Oct. 1648), 115-16, 120 (E.468.2). After the regicide, a letter from the town expressed the view that Charles had ‘died like a desperate ignorant Roman; nothing we can see in him tending to a true Christian, or the power of godliness’.166The Moderate no. 30 (30 Jan.-6 Feb. 1649), 295-6 (E.541.15).

During the king’s trial and in the weeks following the regicide, Blakiston was named to a series of committees for improving the Rump’s revenues (particularly by the sale of crown lands) and generally consolidating its authority.167CJ vi. 124a, 131b, 134a, 137b, 150b, 160b, 161b, 178b, 186b, 187b; Howell, Puritans and Radicals, 62. His ideological investment in the new regime is suggested by his nomination to a committee set up on 1 February 1649 for taking the dissent of MPs seeking admission to the House – from which he reported the case of Abraham Burrell on 28 February.168CJ vi. 152a; W. Prynne*, A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case (1660), 25 (E.1013.22). This body, which operated like a committee for absent Members, was obviously important in determining the Rump’s membership and therefore its political complexion. An active member of the committee for removing obstructions on the sale of bishops’ lands, the Army Committee and the Committee of Navy and Customs* during the early months of 1649, Blakiston seemed destined for a busy career in the newly-created republic.169SP28/58, ff. 118, 360, 382; Bodl. Rawl. A.224, ff. 24v, 25, 30; LPL, COMM Add 1, ff. 54, 56, 60v.

But then in May, Blakiston apparently ceased attending the House – he received no appointments at all that month – on 1 June he made his will, and by 6 June he was dead.170PROB11/215, f. 342; CJ vi. 225b. His place of burial is not known. With Blakiston’s demise, Nedham commented sourly, ‘Tom Scot hath lost a second in the House upon all knavish occasions’.171Mercurius Pragmaticus (For King Charls II) no. 8 (5-12 June 1649), 69 (E.559.14). John Lilburne later claimed that he and John Wildman* had mounted such a damning case against Blakiston at a committee set up in April to hear the dispute between Hesilrige and George Lilburne that thereafter the Newcastle MP had ‘never stirred out of his chamber till he was carried to his grave’.172A Letter of Colonel John Lilburns, 4. Certainly the publication that spring of a pamphlet by George Lilburne denouncing his northern enemies, and Blakiston in particular, had caused a stir in the region. Early in May, Dawson, Jenison and other leading Newcastle inhabitants had complained to the Speaker about Lilburne’s ‘many unjust and scandalous reflections’ upon Blakiston and had insisted upon their MP’s ‘faithfulness to the commonwealth, and how unapt he is to cram himself with the riches of a ruined country, or seek after great things, notwithstanding his many losses...’.173Bodl. Tanner 56, f. 22.

In his will, Blakiston described himself as of Newton, near Durham, which was where his father had resided.174PROB11/215, f. 342; Surtees, Co. Dur. iii. 163. He died owing over £2,800 to a large group of creditors, among them Thomas Hoyle*, John Venn* and the northern Independent grandee Philip, 4th Baron Wharton.175PROB11/215, f. 342; CSP Ire. Adv. 77. On the credit side of the ledger, he was owed £300 in ‘Irish bills’ and £395 by the committee for arrears at Weavers’ Hall. He made bequests totalling over £1,000, including one of £50 to his brother George – ‘a great sharer with me in my public sufferings’.176PROB11/215, f. 342. Opinion was divided as to the true state of Blakiston’s finances at his death. Clement Walker* and other hostile commentators claimed that he had amassed £14,000 by way of perquisites and parliamentary grants, and there is certainly evidence that Blakiston had received his fair share of the spoils of war.177Bodl. Nalson XIV, f. 215v; [Walker], Hist. of Independency, 169; Anarchia Anglicana (1649), 196 (E.570.4); The Devils Cabinet-Councell Discovered (1660), sigs. A5r-v (E.2111.2); Holles, Mems. 132. But his friends and family believed that his losses outweighed his gains, and the Rump evidently agreed, passing a bill for paying £3,000 to Blakiston’s widow and children out of the sequestered estates of the marquess of Newcastle and Sir William Withrington.178Bodl. Tanner 56, f. 22; CJ vi. 225b, 231b, 280a, 403a; CCC 2124. Newcastle common council paid Blakiston’s widow an additional £740 to cover the ‘great sums of money’ he had disbursed ‘concerning the suits, businesses and affairs of this corporation’.179Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, pp. 305, 327, 339; MD.NC/2/1, pp. 360, 398; MD.NC/2/2, p. 67; Extracts from the Newcastle upon Tyne Council Min. Bk. 1639-56 ed. M. H. Dodds (Newcastle upon Tyne Recs. Cttee. i), 107-8. This was in addition to the seven hundred pounds or more that Blakiston had received from the council to meet his expenses at Westminster and his salary of 10 shillings a day as the town’s MP.180Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, pp. 181, 197, 268; MD.NC/2/1, pp. 61, 67, 141, 262, 273; MD.NC/2/2, p. 67; 543/28, ff. 116, 125v, 128v; 543/29, unfol. (entry for June 1647). Finally, in March 1652, the Newcastle council assigned £200 in trust to Blakiston’s infant son Nehemiah in recognition that Blakiston had disbursed

many great and large sums of money in and for the managing and carrying on of the affairs and businesses of this town and spent not only his pains and care therein but even himself and his own monies (much more than formerly was imagined) for the good and welfare of the same, for which as yet neither he nor any in relation to him had considerable satisfaction.181Newcastle Council Min. Bk. ed. Dodds, 133.

Blakiston’s eldest son John contested the 1659 election at Newcastle, though without success, and his cousin, the civil-war royalist William Blakiston†, was returned for Durham in 1679.182Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne; HP Commons 1660-1690.