WALLER, Thomas (1605-82), of Gray’s Inn, Mdx.

Waller’s father, also Thomas Waller, was a senior member of Gray’s Inn and prothonotary of the common pleas; and his mother’s family, the Gerards of Middlesex, included an Elizabethan master of the rolls and various prominent Gray’s Inn lawyers. Waller was destined to follow in their footsteps. After attending Eton and Oxford he was admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1622, and two years later took his father’s chambers.25Add. 36076, ff. 295-6; GI Admiss. i. 167; PBG Inn, 267. He was called to the bar in 1631.26PBG Inn, 308. In the following decades, he worked as a successful London barrister, being called to the Grand Company of Gray’s Inn in November 1645.27PBG Inn, 354. Among his legal contacts, perhaps the most important was the future MP for Bury St Edmunds, John Godbold*, who had married Waller’s elder sister in 1618, and became his mentor, and partner, in the 1620s.28GL, MS 6668/1 (St Andrew, Holborn, par. regs.); Baker, Serjeants at Law, 439. It may have been through the Godbolds that Waller secured a lucrative match with the sister of Thomas Townshend of Norfolk, whose dowry included property in Norwich. Waller acted as a local commissioner in the area in the 1640s, and in 1648 he succeeded Godbold as chief justice of Ely. Waller was also intimate with the Doughtys of Norfolk and the Bacons of Ipswich – the latter another prominent Gray’s Inn family.29PROB11/370/384; CJ vi. 84a, 86b; A. and O. These connections with East Anglia would prove an important influence on Waller’s later career.

Thomas Waller’s political attitudes became clear only at the end of the 1640s. Waller’s election as recruiter (and carpet-bagger) MP for the Cornish borough of Bodmin in April 1648 seems to have been part of the general back-lash against the growing political dominance of the New Model army.30C219/43/8. This impression is reinforced by Waller’s service as an MP. In May and June 1648 he was named to a series of committees to consult with the common council of London about the City militia, and to bring in an ordinance settling the militia of the whole country – appointments which show not only Waller’s involvement in London politics and his desire to protect Parliament during the second civil war but also his willingness to set up an alternative military system to the New Model.31CJ v. 561b, 565a, 574a, 597b. Waller’s Presbyterian sympathies were again obvious in the late summer of 1648: although he supported moves against the royalist revolt – being appointed to committees to raise money and to examine and condemn the insurgents – at the same time supported Parliament’s last-ditch attempts to make a lasting peace with Charles I.32CJ v. 604b, 605b, 606b, 631b, 640b; vi. 67a, 77b. On 10 July Waller reported a conference which removed the ‘three propositions’ as a pre-requisite to a full treaty with the king, and his involvement in Parliament’s moves to make a deal with the king in late November and early December meant that he was one of the first MPs prevented from entering the House by the New Model in Pride’s Purge on 6 December.33CJ v. 631a; vi. 94b; A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); A Vindication (1649), 29 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5). He was turned away again, six days later.34Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 38 (12-19 Dec. 1648), sig. Dd2(i) (E.476.35).

Subsequently, Waller became an outspoken critic of the new regime. In early January 1649 when the Presbyterian pamphleteer, William Prynne*, was indicted for attacking the high court of justice and the proceedings against the king, he was defended by Waller. Joining William Ellys and John Maynard – two other ‘distinguished lawyer-MPs’ – on 10 January Waller successfully procured a writ of habeas corpus, and secured Prynne’s freedom.35Whitelocke, Diary, 228; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 194. Soon afterwards Waller, like his brother eight years before, was drawn into royalist plots. In April 1651, the royalist informant, Thomas Coke, revealed ‘the design of the Presbyterians’ to restore the secluded Members and restart negotiations with the king. He added that ‘since the late king’s death he had once had a debate with Mr Waller of Gray’s Inn... who did upon the like grounds and argument maintain the same opinion’.36HMC Portland, i. 596. This incident suggests that Waller’s views had not changed since 1648, when he had also supported a negotiated peace with the king, but, in response to the newly created republic, he was now willing to make contact with royalist agents.

Although Waller showed no further interest in royalist intrigues after 1651, he did not become reconciled to the commonwealth. It was only with the formation of the protectorate in December 1653 that Waller was enticed out of retirement. On 17 November 1654 he was called to the bench at Gray’s Inn, and in the following years became active in the running of the society, being admitted to the ‘pension’ in November 1657.37PBG Inn, 409, 417, 421. His son and heir, also Thomas Waller, studied at the same inn during the late 1650s.38Al. Ox. After the death of Oliver Cromwell* in September 1658 Waller was encouraged to seek election to the third protectorate Parliament by Secretary John Thurloe*, who was eager to recruit Members sympathetic to the government. In mid-December Thurloe ‘recommended’ Waller to the commander of the army in Scotland, George Monck*, and Waller was duly chosen, ‘freely and indifferently’, by the commissioners for Linlithgow burghs on 6 January 1659.39TSP, vii. 572; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS LI, f. 61v. As an insurance policy, Waller was also put forward as a candidate for the Irish constituency of cos. Sligo, Leitirm and Roscommon, where he was elected on 13 January, having been ‘recommended’ to the presiding sheriff by Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*) and a local grandee, Sir John King of Boyle Abbey.40TSP, vii. 593. A later letter from Broghill to Secretary Thurloe makes it clear that Waller had been returned on instructions from Thurloe, and that Broghill had prevailed on King to withdraw his own candidate and put Waller in his place.41TSP, vii. 597, 600. With both seats won, it seems that Waller chose to sit for Linlithgow, although he never made a formal choice before the House.42Burton’s Diary, iii. 45.

Waller’s position as an important ally of the protectorate was confirmed on 23 January 1659, when he was appointed serjeant-at-law by Richard Cromwell*; and he was admitted to Serjeants’ Inn on 3 February.43C231/6, p. 422; Burton’s Diary, iii. 45, 50; Baker, Serjeants at Law, 191, 402-3, 542. In the Commons, Waller’s principal role was as chairman, and legal expert, in the committee of privileges, which spent much of the first two months of the Parliament determining irregular elections.44CJ vii. 594b, 595b; Burton’s Diary, iii. 22-3, 50, 348, 501-2, 549, 578; iv. 42, 202, 223. Waller reported to the Commons from the committee on seven occasions, relaying advice on elections for the boroughs of Petersfield, Horsham, Malton, Colchester, Worcester, Hertford and Reading, and for Oxfordshire.45CJ vii. 596a-b, 601a, 605b, 611a, 617a-b, 619a-b, 620a. He probably acted as the government’s manager in debates on such cases, and he also introduced into the House the question of the validity of the Scottish elections.46Burton’s Diary, iii. 238; iv. 42-5, 143. Waller seemed destined to play a leading role in other business in the House, and on 1 April he was appointed to the committee for Scottish affairs, but seven days later he was forced to apply for leave of absence ‘in regard of his indisposition of health’, and played no further part in parliamentary proceedings for the remainder of the session.47CJ vii. 623b, 631b.

As a man with such close connections with the Presbyterian and Cromwellian parties, Waller prudently lay low during the upheavals in the remainder of 1659, and did not return to politics until the spring of 1660, by which time the power of the army had been checked by his patron in the Linlithgow election, George Monck. When the secluded Members of the Rump were returned to their seats in February 1660, Waller joined them, and was soon acting as reporter on the bill to rescind the appointment of army commissioners and of Charles Fleetwood* as general (24 Feb.), and he was also named to committees to consider provision for widows, orphans and maimed soldiers (1 Mar.), and the revival of the counties palatine of Lancashire and Cheshire (3 Mar.).48CJ vii. 851b, 857a, 860b. Waller also returned to administrative duties, being appointed to the militia commission for Middlesex on 12 March, and two days he was appointed chief justice of Chester.49A. and O.; CJ vii. 875b.

Waller’s family and legal connections, and his public opposition to the regicide, no doubt eased his passage through the Restoration settlement. On 23 June 1660 he was re-appointed as serjeant-at-law, one of a number of servants of the old regime continued in office by the new king.50Whitelocke, Diary, 608. He remained as a serjeant, listed in the king’s legal establishment, until his death.51Chamberlayne, Present State of England, 198. He also served as treasurer of Serjeants’ Inn between 1668 and 1673, and defended the inn’s interests in court and in arbitration at least until 1671.52Baker, Serjeants at Law, 112-3, 488-9, 542; PRO30/23/2/1, ff. 106-111v, 114v, 116, 124, 126v, 128. Waller used his position to protect his extended family. Soon after the Restoration, for example, he was defending the estates of his cousin, Sir Gilbert Gerard* against the claims of another former parliamentarian, William Pierrepont*.53Baker, Serjeants at Law, 403-4, 443; Add. 36076, ff. 297v-302v. He also seems to have become increasingly involved in financial speculation: in 1670, for example, he joined Nicholas Smith of London in paying over £22,000 for lands in Leicestershire confiscated by the government; as they do not appear among the properties listed in Waller’s will, it can be assumed that the acquired estate was sold off soon afterwards.54CSP Dom. 1670, p. 372; PROB11/370/384. Aside from any capital gains, by the time Waller came to make his will in 1680 he had accumulated land in Oxfordshire and London, as well as the Norfolk and Norwich lands which came to him on his marriage. His individual bequests show that he remained close to the Wallers of Buckinghamshire, the Townshends of Norfolk, the Gerards of Middlesex, and his daughter’s family, the Bacons of Ipswich.55PROB11/370/384. Waller died in June 1682 and was buried at Earlham, Norfolk.56Baker, Serjeants at Law, 542.