LISTER, Sir Martin (c.1602-1670), of Thorpe Arnold, Leics., Radclive, Bucks., and Burwell, Lincs.

Lister belonged to a junior branch of a family that had settled in the Pennine parish of Gisburn, Yorkshire, by the early fourteenth century.33Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. ii. 134-5; Denny, Ancient House, 3-4. The senior branch of the family would be headed for much of the early Stuart period by Lister’s cousin: the godly Yorkshire knight Sir William Lister*. Michael Lister, the future MP’s father, had married into the Kebles of Newbottle, near Brackley, Northamptonshire, who may well have been relations of his mother’s family, the Pigotts of Aston Rowant in Oxfordshire.34Baker, Northants. i. 659; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Martin Lister’; ‘Sir Richard Wenman’. He died while Lister was still a minor, and in his will he appointed his brother (Lister’s uncle) Martin Lister – who had represented the Lancashire borough of Clitheroe in 1604 – as Lister’s guardian.35Denny, Ancient House, 205. One of Lister’s manucaptors on his admission to Lincoln’s Inn in 1621 was his uncle (through marriage into the Keble family) Thomas Wentworth†, the recorder of Oxford.36L. Inn Lib. Admiss. Bk. 5, f. 60; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Thomas Wentworth I’ Lister may have owed his knighthood in 1625 to the influence of yet another uncle, Matthew Lister – a physician in ordinary to both James I and Charles I, with a thriving practice at court.37Oxford DNB, ‘Sir Matthew Lister’; Yorks. Arch. Soc. Archives, Leeds, MD335/1/1/33/1.

Lister seems to have spent most of the 1620s and 1630s residing with or near his uncle and one-time guardian Martin Lister, whose main estates lay in Buckinghamshire and (from 1627) at Thorpe Arnold, Leicestershire.38Yorks. Arch. Soc. Archives, Leeds, MD335/1/1/33/1; VCH Bucks. iv. 33; Northants. N. and Q, iii. 120; Denny, Ancient House, 205, 218; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Martin Lister’. Lister’s first marriage was to a daughter of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire peer Viscount Wenman (father of Sir Thomas Wenman*), whose fourth, and last, wife would be none other than Lister’s mother.39HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir Richard Wenman’. That the Wenmans owned a house and property in Brackley and the tithes of Brackley rectory would have strengthened Lister’s connections with the Northamptonshire borough.40Infra, ‘Sir Thomas Wenman’; Northants. RO, E(B) 672. Two years after his first wife’s death in 1631, Lister married a daughter of Sir Alexander Temple (father of the future regicide James Temple*), who was a scion of the Temples of Stowe, Buckinghamshire.41Infra, ‘James Temple’; Denny, Ancient House, 215; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir Alexander Temple’. Lister’s uncles Martin and Matthew Lister and his cousin Sir William Lister were parties to the marriage settlement, in which he was described as of Thorpe Arnold.42Yorks. Arch. Soc. Archives, Leeds, MD335/1/1/33/1. By the late 1630s, however, he and his family had settled very close to Stowe in the Buckinghamshire village of Radclive, just over the county border from Brackley.43Denny, Ancient House, 218; A.M. Roos, Web of Nature: Martin Lister (1638-1712, the First Arachnologist (Leiden, 2011), 15, 18, 32, 71.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Lister and his brother-in-law Sir Thomas Wenman were returned for Brackley on the strength of their overlapping proprietorial and family interests in the borough.44Supra, ‘Brackley’. Lister received no committee appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. He was returned for Brackley again in the elections to the Long Parliament, but on this occasion with John Crewe I*, who took the senior seat.45C219/43/2/70. His first appointment was on 23 December, when he was named to a committee to investigate the council of the north and the council of Wales and the Marches.46CJ ii. 57a. However, he made no further impact upon the House’s proceedings until he took the Protestation, on 3 May 1641.47CJ ii. 133b. He was named to four, minor, committees between mid-May and early July – one of which concerned his wife’s kinsman, the Buckinghamshire MP Sir Alexander Denton – after which his name disappears from the Journals for another five months or so.48CJ ii. 149a, 164b, 198b, 200a; Roos, Web of Nature, 15. Late in December, he was named to a committee for inquiring into Ship Money arrears; and on 28 January 1642 he was included on a seven man committee for providing the trained bands guarding Parliament with ammunition.49CJ ii. 357b, 400a. When, on 2 February, the House began to debate the ‘scandalous’ publication by Sir Edward Dering of his speeches, Lister moved that the Kent MP first withdraw from the House.50CJ ii. 411a; PJ i. 261. He spoke again on 11 February, this time in favour of nominating John Mordaunt, 1st earl of Peterborough, as lord lieutenant of Rutland in the Militia Ordinance, but he could not prevail against the objections of Zouche Tate.51Add. 64807, f. 47; PJ i. 350. A week later (18 Feb.) he presented a petition for bail from one of the men who had accompanied the king to Westminster during the attempted arrest of the Five Members.52PJ i. 410. His tally of four appointments in February and March included nomination to several committees relating to the war effort in Ireland and to investigate and suggest suitable punishment for those Members who had absented themselves without leave.53CJ ii. 461a, 486a, 493b, 496b. Nothing seems to have come of a Commons resolution of 17 March that he be recommended to the new lord lieutenant of Leicester as one of his deputy lieutenants.54CJ ii. 483b.

At some point in the spring of 1642, Lister seems to have gone absent without leave, for there is no evidence of his attendance in the House between early April 1642 and March 1643.55PJ ii. 143; CJ ii. 997a. By August 1642 he – or at least his family – had taken up residence at Thorpe Arnold once more; perhaps because his uncle Martin’s house offered a safer haven from the war than did Radclive, just 20 miles or so from Oxford.56Denny, Ancient House, 217. Although the king may have resided, briefly, in a ‘spacious mansion’ that Lister was renting in Lincoln, it is very unlikely that Lister joined his uncle Sir Matthew in attending Charles on his visit to the city in July 1642.57Denny, Ancient House, 206.

Lister had returned to Westminster by 10 March 1643, when he was named to a committee concerning the court of common pleas.58CJ ii. 997a. Over the next two months he was named to committees for examining the arms raised and issued to the army, for the provision of horses in the City and for the supply of Parliament’s northern army under 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*), in which Sir William Lister’s eldest son had been killed in action.59CJ iii. 12a, 56b, 89a. He apparently had no qualms about taking the vow and covenant – introduced by the war party grandees in June 1643 upon discovery of the Waller plot.60CJ iii. 118b. On 29 July, however, he was named to a committee dominated by Members who favoured a swift, negotiated settlement, for investigating the proceedings of Parliament’s money committees, which were suspected by the peace interest of endeavouring to prolong the war for private gain.61CJ iii. 186a. In September he took the Solemn League and Covenant, again without apparent reservation.62Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 480. That autumn he was named to committees on Parliament’s new great seal, to advance the war effort in Ireland in response to the king’s cessation with the Irish rebels and for supplying Parliament’s main field army under Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.63CJ iii. 269a, 276b, 285a, 286b, 336b. In October, he made his only recorded appearance at the Committee for Sequestrations.64SP20/1, f. 58v. His rate of appointments increased in 1644, which seems to have been his busiest years at Westminster (by the spring of that year, he was residing close to the House on Canon Row, where his neighbours included Sir John Trevor* and William Wheler*).65SP28/167, pt. 4, unfol. Of his 16 appointments in 1644, perhaps the most important was to the committee set up on 25 March under Robert Scawen to prepare an establishment of pay for Parliament’s forces – the first attempt to standardise rates of pay within the various parliamentary field armies since the beginning of the war.66Infra, ‘Robert Scawen’; CJ iii. 387b, 437a, 440b, 502b, 507b, 551b, 568b, 586a, 591b, 592a, 602b, 618a, 647b, 679b, 695b, 728b. A few days later, on 30 March, he made a rare intervention on the floor of the House when he moved that a delinquent’s estate ‘which is not yet discovered’ be sequestered and the proceeds paid to Lister’s Yorkshire kinsman Colonel John Lambert*, ‘who hath done special service for the Parliament’ in Lord Fairfax’s northern army.67CJ iii. 441b-442a; Harl. 166, f. 41.

Strong evidence of Lister’s alignment with the peace interest at Westminster emerged in May 1644 with his inclusion on a draft ordinance prepared by the Essexian interest in the Lords prepared for adding five peers and ten Commons-men to the Committee of Both Kingdoms* (CBK). The great majority of these nominees – Lister presumably included – were allies of the earl of Essex or opponents of the war party, or both.68Supra, ‘Committee of Both Kingdoms’; CJ vi. 542b. When the ordinance was sent down to the Commons on 7 May it was rejected by 82 votes to 69.69CJ iii. 483b. Lister clashed with the war party more directly on 27 May, when he spoke against an ordinance brought in by Sir Arthur Hesilrige for settling the Leicestershire county committee, whose members were either inactive or prone to quarrelling with local military commanders. ‘Most of the said committee’, declared Lister – meaning, it seems, its active core – ‘were mean men in birth and fortune, and some also [were] strangers in that county and unfit to have such a power there’. At the end of this debate the ordinance was referred to a committee, to which Lister, Hesilrige and others were named, but the Commons also voted to accept all of the men that Hesilrige had nominated for membership of the county committee.70CJ iii. 507b; Harl. 166, ff. 65v, 67; J. Richards, Aristocrat and Regicide: the Life and Times of Thomas, Lord Grey of Groby (2000), 141-3, 148-50. When the Lords debated the ordinance as sent up by the Commons in June, it voted to add Lister’s name and that of another Leicestershire gentleman – evidently both men had been passed over by Hesilrige – which the Commons accepted on 10 July (in December, Lister and Hesilrige would be reprimanded by the House for ‘some words of heat’ that had passed between them, ‘tending to a quarrel’).71LJ vi. 621b, 627b-628a; CJ iii. 557b, 716b-717a. On 8 July, Lister joined Richard Knightley in speaking against an order of the Northamptonshire county committee – which the CBK had approved – for raising horse to mount 1,000 of Sir William Waller’s* musketeers.72CJ iii. 554a; Harl. 166, f. 80v.

In July 1644, Lister presented a petition to the House from the Rutland county committee, which was embroiled in what would prove a long running and bitter dispute with the future regicide Colonel Thomas Waite*, who was a close ally of the commander of the east midlands association Thomas Lord Grey of Groby* (also a future regicide).73Supra, ‘Rutland’; CJ iii. 569a. After Grey of Groby had presented information to the CBK concerning his fractious dealings that summer with the Leicestershire militia committee, Lister was named to the committee that the Commons set up on 16 August to examine the quarrel.74CJ iii. 592a; Richards, Grey of Groby, 157-8. He was named in second place to a committee on 4 September for reconciling the competing authorities of the east midlands association, under Grey of Groby, and the Leicestershire county committee.75CJ iii. 618a. Lister may have been a friend or political ally of Grey of Groby, who was aligned until 1647 with the Essexians.76Supra, ‘Thomas Grey of Groby’; Luke Letter Bks. 513. On 14 November, Lister was included on a committee dominated by Essexians, for inquiring into the profits of parliamentary office – an issue of particular concern to the more peace-minded Members, who suspected their opponents of spinning out the war for their own profit.77CJ iii. 695b.

Lister received no appointments and no mention in the Journals between mid-December 1644 and mid-April 1645 – a strong indication that he was unsympathetic to the cause of new modelling Parliament’s armies, which triumphed during that period. In all, he was named to just six committees in 1645 – among them the Westminster committee of the Northern Association, chaired by Widdrington, to which he was added on 5 July.78CJ iv. 112a, 155b, 163a, 166a, 196b, 263b, But none of these appointments are particularly revealing of factional bias on his part. Between early September 1645 and the autumn of 1647 he virtually disappears from the Journal, once again, but he was not granted official leave of absence until 31 July 1646.79CJ iv. 630b. He took further leave of absence on 13 February 1647, but may have returned to Westminster, briefly, in May to present a petition, complaining that his son had been inveigled into marrying the daughter of a prominent royalist.80CJ v. 181a; Harington’s Diary, 53. Declared absent at the call of the House on 9 October, he was back at Westminster the following month and being named, sporadically, to committees, including that to investigate the king’s flight from Hampton Court.81CJ v. 330a, 356a, 357a, 366b, 383a, 425a. On 24 February 1648, he was granted further leave of absence; and ill health seems to have kept him away from the House until the autumn.82CJ v. 543b; vi. 34a; HMC Portland, i. 450. In July, at the height of the second civil war, the Leicestershire lord lieutenant, Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford, nominated Lister as one of his deputy lieutenants, but the Commons failed to ratify the appointment.83LJ x. 356b.

Having returned to Westminster in the autumn of 1648, Lister was named to committees in November for sequestering the estates of royalists in Essex and to consider which castles and strongholds should be maintained and which slighted.84CJ vi. 67a, 87a. However, at Pride’s Purge he was not only excluded from the House, but was also among those 45 or so Members who were imprisoned as notorious enemies of the army and its supporters.85Mercurius Pragmaticus nos. 36-37 (5-12 Dec. 1648), sig. Ccc3v (E.476.2). Released on 20 December, he withdrew from national politics.86Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1369. Although he was party to landed transactions during the 1650s that involved Lambert, John Bright*, Roger Coates* and other members of the Lister-Lambert connection, this seems to have been the closest he came to political circles under the Rump and protectorate.87Infra, ‘John Lambert’; Yorks. Arch. Soc. Lib. Leeds, MD234/43, 45, 74-5, 77-80, 216, 219; Sheffield Archives, OD/1124, 1125.

In the early 1650s the Committee for Advance of Money* investigated allegations that Lister’s uncle Sir Matthew Lister had supported the king during the first civil war and had temporarily made over his estate in Lincolnshire to Lister in order to avoid sequestration. In the event, however, no action was taken against either man.88CCAM, 1280. Sir Matthew died in late 1656, leaving his estate at Thorpe Arnold, Leicestershire, and Burwell, Lincolnshire, to his ‘loving nephew’, whom he appointed his sole executor.89PROB11/261, f. 65. Lister was prominent in Lincolnshire county government during the early Restoration period, but there is no evidence that he sought to revive his parliamentary career.

Lister died in the summer of 1670 and was buried at Burwell on 29 August.90Denny, Ancient House, 208. No will is recorded. Lister was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament. His third son, Martin, became a renowned physician and naturalist.91Oxford DNB, ‘Martin Lister’.