SMITHSON, George (1615-92), of Moulton, Middleton Tyas, and Kiplin, Catterick, Yorks.

Smithson belonged to a cadet branch of a family that had settled in north Yorkshire by the 1260s and at Moulton, near Richmond, by the early fifteenth century. His father, Christopher Smithson, married into a Catholic family, the Calverts of Kiplin, and was a brother-in-law of one of James I’s secretaries of state – and founder of the colony of Maryland – George Calvert†, Lord Baltimore.27Smithson, Smithson Fam. 4-7, 24-6. While his brother-in-law’s career prospered at the Jacobean court, Christopher Smithson was apparently thriving at local level, acquiring several properties at Moulton and at Scorton, also near Richmond, including the manor of Moulton.28VCH N. Riding, i. 195; Smithson, Smithson Fam. 25; Yorks. Stuart Fines ed. W. Brigg (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. liii), 35, 69, 124; (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. lviii), 192.

Very little is known about Smithson himself until after the outbreak of civil war, when he joined Parliament’s northern army under the command of Lord Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*). By the autumn of 1643, he was an officer in Sir William Fairfax’s regiment of horse and was part of the cavalry force that Sir Thomas Fairfax* took into Lincolnshire in October to assist the earl of Manchester and Oliver Cromwell* in driving the royalists out of the Eastern Association.29Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 66-7; SC6/CHAS1/1190; E121/5/7/2. Deprived of adequate maintenance, the Yorkshire forces soon tired of service south of the Humber, and in mid-December, Smithson and 15 other Yorkshire officers, including Thomas Talbot II*, signed a petition to Sir Thomas Fairfax, asking that

if there be no hopes of any recompense [from the people of Lincolnshire] and that we must hazard our lives and fortunes, we rather desire that you would lead us into our own country ... where we, for the regaining of our estates, the freedom of our country, the flourishing of the gospel and the enjoyment of our liberties, will be content with our former unwearied diligence to submit ourselves to your honour’s commands.30Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 66-7.

In April 1644, Colonel Matthew Alured* took over the command of Sir William Fairfax’s regiment, with Smithson being promoted to the rank of major. The regiment subsequently fought at the battles of Selby, Marston Moor and Ormskirk and at the sieges of Liverpool and Montgomery Castle in Wales.31Jones, ‘War in north’, 367-8. By April 1645, Smithson and his men were back in Yorkshire, mopping up royalist resistance in the North Riding.32A Diary, or an Exact Journall no. 47 (3-10 Apr. 1645), sig. Uuu3v (E.277.13); Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 203. That summer, after the New Model had been ordered into the west country, Smithson and Talbot signed a petition from Alured’s officers to Sir Thomas Fairfax, the army’s commander, requesting that he ‘accept the service of this regiment, who are ready to wait upon you and hazard their lives with you wheresoever you shall be called’. The petitioners declared that if the regiment could not serve under Fairfax, that they would be willing to ‘quit our present commands and in our persons to venture our lives with you in this expedition’.33Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 214-5. In effect, they were asking to join the New Model army. It is not known whether Smithson did indeed take part in the campaign in the west, although he appears to have retained his commission as a major after Alured’s regiment was disbanded in January 1646.34Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 981; Jones, ‘War in north’, 367.

At some point during late 1640s, probably in 1648, Smithson’s troop was incorporated into the regiment of horse commanded by Colonel Robert Lilburne*.35E121/3/3/24; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 264-6. This regiment, which was part of Northern Brigade under Major-general John Lambert*, fought at numerous engagements during the second civil war, including the battle of Preston, where Smithson commanded the forlorn hope (vanguard) of horse.36Leics. RO, DG21/275/j; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 266-7; Autobiog. of Capt. John Hodgson ed. J. H. Turner, 32; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 634. On 1 September, Parliament awarded him £500 towards his arrears of pay and in recognition of his ‘very faithful and gallant service ever since these wars [began], and more particularly in this late great utter defeat of the Scots’ whole army …’.37CJ vi. 688b; LJ x. 482a.

Smithson was apparently sympathetic to the army’s proceedings over the winter of 1648-9. He supported the Northern Brigade’s declaration in favour of the army’s Remonstrance of November 1648.38York Minster Lib. BB53, p. 33. Moreover, in January 1649, whilst serving at the parliamentarian siege of Pontefract Castle, Smithson, Thomas Margetts* and another officer, wrote to Captain Adam Baynes* – the London agent of the Northern Brigade and Lambert’s principal man-of-business – declaring themselves ‘sensible of the hopeful and forward proceedings of the Parliament and army for the settling the kingdom upon that only desired and long expected foundation of justice’.39Add. 21427, f. 4. This can only be a reference to the trial of the king, of which Smithson evidently approved. Nevertheless, there is little in Smithson’s later career to suggest that he was wedded to the notion either of the sovereignty of the Commons or of the rule of the Saints. His animosity towards Charles probably derived from his experiences during the second civil war, rather than from a principled opposition to monarchy and the established order.

Whatever Smithson’s political views, he had no compunction about profiting from the sale of the crown estates after Charles I’s execution. During the early 1650s, Smithson and a group of his fellow soldiers purchased (by debenture) numerous crown lands in Bedfordshire, Cumberland, Hampshire, Lincolnshire, Surrey, Wiltshire, Yorkshire and elsewhere. Some of these lands they acquired for their own use, some they purchased on behalf of their regiments and some they sold on to other army officers.40E121/5/7/2, 27; E 113/7, pt. 1, unfol.; Add. 21419, f. 183; Add. 21422, ff. 65, 126, 186; Add. 21427, ff. 125-6; S.J. Madge, Domesday of Crown Lands, 223, 224; I. Gentles, ‘The Debentures Market and Military Purchases of Crown Land, 1649-1660’ (London Univ. PhD thesis, 1969), 242, 262, 290, 294, 309, 319, 320, 335, 336, 340, 351, 353, 356. The only such properties that Smithson is known to have retained until 1660 were fee farm rents and tithes at Moulton and Kiplin worth a mere £23 a year.41CRES6/1, p. 250; LR2/266, f. 76.

In July 1650, Lilburne’s regiment was despatched to Scotland, where it remained for over three years.42Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 267-7. Smithson, however, was in London in January 1653, when he married a daughter of Colonel Charles Fairfax, the uncle of Sir Thomas (by then 3rd Baron) Fairfax.43St Helen, Bishopgate, London par reg. Smithson had served alongside Colonel Charles Fairfax during the second civil war and at the siege of Pontefract during the winter of 1648-9.44W. Yorks. Archives (Leeds), WYL100/PO/2/A/I/43; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 501. Despite his marriage into the Fairfax family, the evidence suggests that Smithson was closer to Baynes and his republican circle during the mid-1650s than he was to Lord Fairfax and his Presbyterian friends in the West Riding. When Smithson purchased manors in Dorset, Somerset and Wiltshire from the treason trustees in May 1653, he employed Baynes as his attorney and referred to him as his ‘trusty and well-beloved friend’.45Add. 21422, f. 65. In June 1653, Smithson wrote to Baynes expressing his willingness to assist Baynes’s own patron, Major-general Lambert.46Add. 21422, f. 96. But for all his friendship with Baynes, there is no evidence that Smithson shared his radical views.

In the elections to first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, Smithson was returned for the North Riding, taking the fourth and last place behind George Lord Eure, Francis Lascelles and Thomas Harrison II. As one of the Riding’s middle-ranking gentry landowners (at best), and therefore lacking a strong proprietorial interest, he may have owed his election to the strength of his reputations in defence of the county – most notably against the invading Scots in 1648. He and two of the other successful candidates – Eure and Lascelles – were either former or serving officers in the Northern Association army and the Northern Brigade, and therefore they may also have enjoyed the backing of Lambert and the northern military establishment.47Supra, ‘Yorkshire’. Smithson was, in any event, entirely inactive at Westminster. His only mention in the Journals for this Parliament was on 27 October 1654, when he was granted leave of absence.48CJ vii. 379a. His lack of appointments at Westminster was paralleled at local level. Smithson received relatively few local offices during the 1650s, possibly because he remained a full-time soldier. His first, and perhaps most important, local charge came on 18 March 1653, only a month before the army dissolved the Rump, when he was named to the North Riding bench.49C231/6, p. 255. Either from political choice or military necessity, he did not sit on the North Riding quarter sessions until April 1654 – but thereafter he attended regularly until January 1659.50N. Riding QS Recs. ed. J. C. Atkinson (N. Riding Rec. Soc. v), 153, 247; (N. Riding Rec. Soc. vi), 1, 17.

Smithson’s appointment to the County Durham commission for securing the peace of the commonwealth in November 1656 was almost certainly with the approval – and quite possibly on the recommendation – of Lilburne, Lambert’s deputy as major-general of Yorkshire and County Durham, who was determined to tighten military control in the region.51TSP iv. 402; v. 564; CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 168. But whereas Lilburne and other radical officers became disillusioned with Cromwell after his flirtation with kingship in 1657, Smithson appears to have remained entirely conformable to the protectorate, implying that he was not averse to some form of single person government. His apparently moderate views found favour with General George Monck*, who recommended him for his judgement to Cromwell in February 1658.52TSP vi. 772. How Smithson and Monck had become acquainted is not clear, for although Lilburne’s regiment was sent to Scotland in May 1657 (where it was to be stationed for the next two years), Smithson himself appears to have remained in Yorkshire.53Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 272, 274.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in the winter of 1658-9, Smithson was returned for Northallerton along with James Danby, who was a kinsman of the borough’s principal electoral patron John Wastell*. Smithson probably owed his return, at least in part, to the strength of his interest as a local landowner (Kiplin lay about eight miles west of Northallerton) and army commander. However, like Danby, he may also have enjoyed the backing of Wastell, whose brother had married Smithson’s sister.54Supra, ‘Northallerton’; Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. iii. 254. Again, Smithson seems to have been entirely inactive at Westminster, receiving no appointments and making no recorded contribution to debate. Indeed, it is possible that he never took his seat. His reaction to the fall of the protectorate in April 1659 is not known, although he appears to have enjoyed the trust of the restored Rump, which on 28 May 1659 approved his commission in Lilburne’s regiment.55CJ vii. 669a. In June 1659, the committee for the nomination of officers proposed to transfer Smithson and his troop to another regiment, but in the event the House resolved that Smithson and his men should remain under Lilburne’s command.56CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 383, 389; CJ vii. 709b.

But whereas Smithson was apparently willing to recognise the restored Rump, he was strongly opposed to the committee of safety – the interim government set up in the wake of the army’s dissolution of the Rump in October 1659.57[J. Strangways], A Letter From a Captain of the Army To an Honourable Member of Parliament (1660), 3 (E.1013.9). As early as 16 November, it was reported that Smithson and several other officers in Lilburne’s regiment had declared that they would not fight against Monck, who had come out openly against the committee.58A Narrative of the Northern Affairs (1659), 4 (E.1010.19). A month later, in mid-December, Smithson made his views known to Lambert, who had been sent north to deal with Monck. Unable to bring Smithson to obedience, Lambert simply left him to his own devices, whereupon Smithson proceeded to sound out the soldiers of Lilburne’s regiment about securing York for the Rump.59[Strangways], A Letter From a Captain of the Army, 3-4. By this stage, Smithson had almost certainly decided to join forces with Lord Fairfax, who was now planning a rising in Yorkshire in support of Monck.60Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, iv. 152. But while Lord Fairfax and his circle (which included Henry Arthington* and Sir Henry Cholmeley*) were probably motivated by a desire to restore the Stuart monarchy, Smithson participated in the rising primarily, it seems, in an effort to restore the Rump.61A. H. Woolrych, ‘Yorks. and the Restoration’, YAJ xxxix, 485, 499; Parl. Intelligencer no. 1 (19-26 Dec. 1659), 1 (E.182.15). Late in December, Smithson and the three troops he had detached from Lilburne’s regiment linked up with the Irish Brigade (then at Wetherby), and both forces immediately declared for the Rump. Indeed, the Irish Brigade had already resolved that Lord Fairfax ‘shall adhere to the present Parliament [i.e. the Rump], ere we admit a conjunction with him’.62CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 288; [Strangways], A Letter From a Captain of the Army, 5. At the final rendezvous of Lord Fairfax’s forces on 1 January 1660, a declaration of fidelity to the recently re-restored Rump was read at the head of Smithson’s troops and the Irish Brigade and offered to all present to subscribe. Smithson, Colonel Hugh Bethell* and most of the regular army officers signed it, but Fairfax and his closest supporters declined.63Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 275; [Strangways], A Letter From a Captain of the Army, 5-6. Lilburne, who held York for Lambert, attempted to exploit this division by insisting that he would only admit those of Fairfax’s forces who would subscribe to a declaration adhering to the Rump and ‘against a king or any single person whatsoever’.64Publick Intelligencer no. 210 (2-9 Jan. 1660), 1003 (BL, E.773.41). Smithson and about 19 other officers signed the declaration, but it was vehemently opposed by Lord Fairfax and most of the gentry.65Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, ii. 166-7. However, a compromise was eventually reached in which Smithson’s troops and the other units which had subscribed the declaration occupied York, whilst Fairfax and his followers quartered their men in the surrounding villages.66[Strangways], A Letter From a Captain of the Army, 6.

Smithson’s support for the Rump in opposition to Fairfax is a clear indication that, despite their relation by marriage, the two men were not close in political terms. But whether Smithson was as devoted to the Rump as his actions during the rising would seem to suggest is unlikely. There is no evidence that he was a committed republican, and the fact that he seems to have purged his troop of religious radicals during the late 1650s suggests that he was no great friend of the sects, who numbered among the Rump’s firmest supporters.67Add. 33770, f. 11v. It is probable that he supported the Rump merely because it represented, in his view, the only viable alternative to a return to monarchy. As the owner of former crown property, and one who had fought hard against the royalists for much of his adult life, Smithson had little reason to welcome a restoration of the Stuarts.

On 3 January 1660, the Rump ordered Smithson to take command of Lilburne’s regiment, and two days later (5 Jan.) the council of state put all the forces in York under his command. The council also thanked him for his ‘good services in remaining faithful to Parliament in the late time of great defection’.68CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 295, 301. By mid-January, the Rump had rewarded Smithson by making him colonel of Lilburne’s regiment.69Parl. Intelligencer no. 4 (9-16 Jan. 1660), 46 (E.182.18). His promotion to colonel was supported by Monck, who wrote to the Speaker on 12 January, declaring that ‘Major Smithson is very honest and deserves the regiment, for which I shall become a humble suitor to you’.70Z. Grey, An Impartial Examination of the Fourth Volume of...Neal’s History of the Puritans (1739), 161-2. Smithson, for his part, was described as ‘a great lover of Monck’, and during January and February, he endeavoured to enforce the general’s policy of clamping down on both the royalists and the ‘fanatics’, i.e. religious radicals.71Baker, Chronicle, 677. Early in February, Smithson and his father-in-law, Colonel Charles Fairfax, helped to frustrate the plans of the Fifth Monarchist governor of Hull, Colonel Robert Overton, to rouse the soldiery in support of a commonwealth.72HMC Leyborne-Popham, 170. Similarly, they attempted to enforce the council of state’s orders against the Yorkshire Presbyterian gentry, who were agitating for the re-admission of the secluded Members, or a free Parliament (either of which would have made a restoration of monarchy almost inevitable).73CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 355, 370. That Smithson remained quite so devoted to Monck after the general’s re-admission of the secluded Members on 21 February seems unlikely. Nevertheless, on becoming commander-in-chief late in February, Monck confirmed Smithson in his command of Lilburne’s old regiment. However, on 13 July, Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, was made colonel of the regiment, and Smithson was returned to the rank of major.74Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 276. In November, the regiment was disbanded and Smithson’s long military career came to an end.75Mercurius Publicus no. 47 (15-22 Nov. 1660), 746 (E.189.26).

Despite Smithson’s support for the Rump during the winter of 1659-60, his role in the Yorkshire rising earned him at least some favour with the restored monarchy. Thus during 1660-1, he was allowed to receive, ‘according to his Majesty’s good pleasure’, the arrears of the fee farm rent and tithes he had purchased in Moulton and Kiplin.76E113/7, pt. 1; CRES6/1, p. 250. However, by November 1661 he was regarded by the Yorkshire royalists as a person ‘disaffected to his majesty’.77HMC Var. ii. 117. Smithson reportedly enjoyed ‘great credit’ among the king’s enemies in Yorkshire and was offered command of a troop of horse by the conspirators in the Farnley Wood Plot, in Yorkshire, in 1663.78Add. 33770, ff. 10v, 11v. However, when the government learned of the intended rising it approached Smithson and another ex-army officer, Joshua Greathead, to join the conspirators and spy on them.79CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 296; Reresby Mems. 47; R.L. Greaves, Deliver Us From Evil, 181, 185, 189, 199, 206, 261. Smithson and Greathead ‘discovered it [the conspiracy] from the first to Sir Thomas Gower [the sheriff of Yorkshire], who advised them still to dissemble till they had drawn in all the friends they could to join with them and then to give evidence against them’.80Reresby Mems. 47; CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 326. After the trial of the Yorkshire rebels in the autumn of 1663, Greathead was given £100 by the government, and Smithson, ‘in reward of faithful service’, was granted the fee farm rent and tithes in Moulton and Kiplin which he had ‘formerly enjoyed’.81Reresby Mems. 47; CSP Dom. 1661-62, p. 629; 1663-4, pp. 494, 510, 570; CTB i. 606. Yet in June 1664, it was reported that the ‘fanatics’ were ‘almost assured’ of winning back Smithson, who had apparently expressed ‘much sorrow’ at having been a witness against the Yorkshire conspirators.82CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 624. Whether Smithson was genuinely contrite or was once again dissembling is not known, but there is no evidence that the ‘fanatics’ had any further truck with him, or he with them, after 1664. In August 1665, after a six year break, he resumed his attendance at the North Riding quarter sessions and remained active on the bench until 1688.83N. Riding QS Recs. ed. J. C. Atkinson (N. Riding Rec. Soc. vi), 90, 279; (N. Riding Rec. Soc. vi), 1, 89. There is no evidence to substantiate claims in the early 1660s that he favoured or helped maintain nonconformist ministers after the Restoration.84Add. 33770, f. 28v.

Smithson died in the autumn of 1692 and was buried at Middleton Tyas on 18 October.85Middleton Tyas par. reg. In his will, he left his capital messuage of Moulton and property in High and Low Gatherley, in Moulton, to his wife.86W. Yorks. Archives (Leeds), Archdeaconry of Richmond Wills, RD/AP1/89. That he made bequests of only £4 does not suggest that he died a wealthy man. None of his immediate family sat in Parliament.87CP.