EDWARDES, William (d. 1677), of St Peter, Chester, Cheshire.

In common with a number of Flintshire gentry families, the Edwards of Rhual claimed descent from the eleventh century Lord of Tegeingl, Edwin ap Goronwy.32Dwnn, Vis. Wales. ii. 322-3; Cal. Lttrs. relating to N.Wales, 24. Edwardes’ elder brother Evan Edwards† served as secretary to the 3rd and 4th earls of Dorset successively from about 1612 until the early 1630s, when he returned to north Wales to assume the post of a baron of the Chester exchequer.33HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Evan Edwards’. Edwardes himself was apprenticed to a Chester ironmonger (William Sparke, a future mayor of Chester) in 1607, and by April 1615, a few months after becoming a freeman, he had set up shop and was selling his wares, contravening the rules of the city’s Mercers, Ironmongers, Grocers and Apothecaries Company against trading by non-members.34Cheshire RO, ZMAB/1, f. 82v; ZG 16/6582/2, p. 437.Freemen of Chester ed. Bennett, 101. He acknowledged his offence, however, and was allowed to join the company.35Cheshire RO, ZG 16/6582/2, pp. 70, 448.

Having petitioned Chester corporation in 1617 for permission to extend his shop-front into the street, Edwardes then sought to expand his commercial operations yet further by trying to break into Chester’s mercantile business, and in particular its lucrative wine-import trade.36Cal. Chester City Mins. ed. Groombridge, 84-5. In so doing, however, he came him into conflict with a clique of prominent merchants, headed by the future royalist William Gamull† (uncle of another future royalist Francis Gamul*), that had obtained exclusive rights from the crown to import wine.37Cal. Chester City Mins. ed. Groombridge, 169; VCH Cheshire, v. pt. 1, 105; HP Commons 1604-29, ‘William Gamull’; A.M. Johnson, ‘Politics in Chester during the civil wars and Interregnum 1640-62’, in Crisis and Order in English Towns ed. P. Clark, P. Slack (1972), 205-7. For several years the Gamull group succeeded in blocking Edwardes’ admission to the city’s merchant company; and in 1624, the corporation imprisoned Edwardes for his ‘insolent language to William Gamull’.38Cal. Chester City Mins. ed. Groombridge, 126, 127, 128-9; APC 1627-8, p. 165; 1629-30, p. 381; Johnson, ‘Politics in Chester’, 206. Edwardes’ campaign against the monopolistic activities of the Gamull group apparently garnered more general support in 1629, after his rivals secured (by devious means) another exclusive grant, this time over the exporting of calf-skins.39CSP Dom. 1629-31, pp. 119, 190; APC 1629-30, pp. 207, 209, 294; VCH Cheshire, v. pt. 1, 105-6; Johnson, ‘Politics in Chester’, 206.

Despite the opposition of the Gamull group, Edwardes had emerged by the late 1630s as a leading figure in Chester’s various mercantile syndicates importing iron and wine and exporting calfskins and other domestic commodities.40Cheshire RO, ZTCB, ff. 2, 5v, 13, 16, 19v, 20, 47; Cal. Chester City Mins. ed. Groombridge, 169, 170. One of his trading partners in these ventures was his fellow merchant Edward Bradshaw*. Edwardes’ defiance of the Gamull group may have made him popular with many of his fellow traders, and it was perhaps this as much as his commercial success that accounted for his relatively rapid progress up the civic hierarchy, propelling him to the aldermanic bench a mere 16 years after becoming a freeman.41Cal. Chester City Mins. ed. Groombridge, 166. His diligence in representing the corporation’s case against Sir Thomas Aston* to the king and the privy council, in a dispute over Ship Money quotas, may have contributed to his success in the 1636 mayoral elections at Chester.42Harl. 2093, ff. 90, 92; A.M. Johnson, ‘Some Aspects of the Political, Constitutional, Social and Economic History of the City of Chester 1550-1662’ (Oxford Univ. DPhil. thesis, 1971), 127.

It was during Edwardes’ first term as mayor, in 1636-7, that the celebrated puritan ‘martyr’ William Prynne* passed through Chester on his way to confinement in Caernarfon Castle. Several leading members of the city’s ‘puritanical faction’ were observed to show Prynne ‘the greatest veneration and respect’, but Edwardes was not listed among their number and either did not share their religious sympathies or was too cautious to show himself.43Cheshire RO, ZP/Cowper/1, pp. 227-8. Shortly after Prynne’s visit, in October 1637, Edwardes and his brother Evan reported to the privy council that they had searched the premises of one of the city’s stationers for ‘unlawful’ publications – probably a reference to puritan or anti-court literature.44CSP Dom. 1637, p. 492. Rather than fête the court’s enemies, Edwardes was apparently keener to solicit offices or other favours from court patrons, notably William Cavendish, 1st earl of Newcastle.45Cal. Lttrs. relating to N.Wales, 226. He was much less emollient in his dealings with his peers in Chester – as his dispute with Gamull and his clique had already demonstrated – and in March 1642, he caused uproar in the city by publicly accusing the mayor of having ‘abused’ Parliament and neglected its commands.46Cheshire RO, DCC/14/61, 65, 93, 94; DCC/47/38; HMC 5th Rep. 350, 352; Johnson, ‘Politics in Chester’, 207-8. His intention, it seems, was to exploit Parliament’s increasing authority and ‘the interest he claims to have in Sir William Brereton*’ (the godly MP for Cheshire) to settle old scores, particularly with William Gamull and his circle.47Cheshire RO, DCC/14/94. At least one of his targets, however, the city’s recorder Robert Brerewood*, had fallen out with the Gamull interest himself in previous decades.48Supra, ‘Robert Brerewood’. What most of Edwardes’ opponents did have in common was that they went on to become royalists, suggesting that there was more to his quarrel with them by 1642 than merely local rivalries. Although nothing seems to have come of his attempt to discredit them, they were clearly very nervous of him, describing him as ‘an active man and full of spleen’ and ‘apt to challenge to himself more than is fitting’.49Cheshire RO, DCC/14/94.

Edwardes emerged as a leading figure in Cheshire’s nascent parliamentarian interest during 1642. Appointed one of Parliament’s deputy lieutenants for Chester late in May, he was involved that summer in unsuccessful attempts by Brereton and his municipal allies to execute the Militia Ordinance in the city and to frustrate the proceedings of the commissioners of array.50Harl. 2125, ff. 65v, 133v; HEHL, EL 7764; LJ v. 84b; R. H. Morris, ‘The siege of Chester’ ed. P.H. Lawson, Jnl. Chester and N. Wales. Arch. and Historic Soc. n.s. xxv. 215; R. Cust, P. Lake, Gentry Culture, and the Politics of Religion: Cheshire on the Eve of the Civil War (Manchester, 2020), 338, 341. By mid-December, he had raised a troop of horse that Brereton then incorporated into his own cavalry regiment in his fledgling army in Cheshire.51SP28/262, f. 180; SP28/196, ff. 487, 489; Harl. 2125, f. 134; CJ ii. 875a; HMC Portland, i. 94; Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 201; Civil War in Cheshire, 243. Although Edwardes remained a mere captain for most of the war, he was evidently a dedicated officer and soldiered on despite the loss of his estate and business in Chester and the death of wife at Nantwich – Brereton’s wartime headquarters.52Harl. 2125, f. 134v; Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 192, 194, 241; Civil War in Cheshire, 154-5, 259; HMC 5th Rep. 344. In May 1644, the two Houses, probably at Brereton’s prompting, took measures to recompense Edwardes for his ‘good service’ and the fact that he had ‘suffered much in his estate for his fidelity to the Parliament’.53LJ vi. 572a. When Chester surrendered to Parliament in February 1646, the two Houses – again, probably on Brereton’s recommendation – appointed him colonel of the city’s regiment of foot.54CJ iv. 429b; LJ viii. 71a, 146b.

Yet apart from his personal quarrel with the leaders of the Chester royalist faction, Edwardes’ motives in taking up arms against the king are obscure. If he was a puritan it has left little trace in the records. Moreover, his brother Evan signed the Cheshire petition to Parliament of February 1641 in support of episcopacy and went on to become a firm royalist.55PA, Main Pprs. 27 Feb. 1641. It is likely that his modest composition fine – a mere £157 – was more a measure of Edwardes’ influence at Westminster than the size of the family estate or the depth of Evan’s commitment to the king’s cause.56HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Evan Edwards’; Cal. Lttrs. relating to N.Wales, 27-8, 231-2, 233.

Edwardes’ emergence by 1646 as Chester’s most powerful inhabitant owed much to his commanding officer, Brereton. Even before the city fell to Parliament, Brereton had been lining up Edwardes for one of the city’s two vacant parliamentary seats – the previous incumbents, Sir Thomas Smithe and Francis Gamul, having both been disabled by the Commons.57Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 378, 440, 557. In December 1645, Brereton wrote to Edwardes in admiring terms, describing him ‘as a man of resolution and courage’ and promising him recompense for his ‘great sufferings and losses’. His larger purpose in writing was to inform Edwardes that it was the opinion of many of his friends that

unless you accept the place of mayor of the city, the same cannot otherwise be so well moulded and settled in a comfortable condition, which though it may be a work and task of great trouble which you might expect to be exempted from, yet seeing there is an unavoidable necessity, it is hoped you will excuse your friends if they press you for that which will be as much for your honour as the public advantage.58Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 457-8.

Edwardes accepted this call to duty, and in the summer of 1646 Brereton arranged funds for him to attend Parliament ‘about the business of settling the city and county of Chester’.59SP28/152, unfol. It was doubtless Brereton and his allies at Westminster who were the prime movers behind an ordinance that passed both Houses in October 1646 for remodelling Chester corporation and appointing Edwardes the new mayor.60LJ viii. 506. As regards his great losses, the ordinance awarded him the lease of the highly profitable Dee mills in Chester (formerly the property of Francis Gamul), which he retained until at least the summer of 1648.61CJ v. 141b, 518a; Cheshire RO, ZML/2/308, 310, 314, 317.

Edwardes left his mark upon Chester as its first parliamentarian mayor. On returning to the city after its surrender in February 1646 – or so one hostile commentator claimed – he had been greeted by ‘divers citizens of the faction, but few or none [sic] royalists’; and his subsequent election as mayor had been ‘more for fear than love … by reason of his letters [from Parliament] to that end’.62Harl. 2158, f. 8v. Another account referred to him as ‘a stout [i.e. resolute] man and severe, which made him obeyed more for fear than love’.63Harl. 2125, f. 131v. It may have been during Edwardes’ mayoralty in 1646-7 that the high cross in Chester was pulled down, the fonts removed from all the city’s churches and ‘divers other churches’ windows broken etc.’.64Harl. 2125, f. 69; Cheshire RO, ZP/Cowper/1, p. 240. The high point of Edwardes’ (and Brereton’s) influence in Chester came with the ‘recruiter’ election for the city on 14 December 1646, when he and the recorder John Ratcliffe were returned to Parliament, with Edwardes taking the senior place.65Supra, ‘Chester’.

An ‘active man’ in local politics, Edwardes was somewhat less conspicuous on the national political stage. The clerk of the Commons’ habit of referring simply to ‘Colonel Edwards’, rather than distinguishing between the Cheshire MP and the Hampshire recruiter Colonel Richard Edwards, makes it impossible to detail his parliamentary career with any great precision. It is clear that Edwardes took the Covenant on 24 February 1647.66CJ v. 97a. Moreover, his full name was used on two committee appointments, while a further three relating to affairs in Cheshire, Wales and the northern counties can reasonably be assigned to him rather than to the Hampshire MP.67CJ v. 90a, 132b, 195a, 265b, 669b. By the same reckoning, he was almost certainly the man appointed on 20 October 1647 as a messenger to carry up a draft ordinance to the Lords relating to the election of a new mayor for Chester.68CJ v. 337b. From his correspondence with his brother in 1648, it emerges that he was included on the 11 July committee for conferring with the London Common Council.69Cal. Lttrs. relating to N.Wales, 233-4. But this still leaves 1 committees where the identity of the nominee ‘Colonel Edwards’ is problematic.70CJ v. 86a, 87a, 194b, 320a, 322a, 383a, 447b, 480a, 593a, 599a, 624a, 630a. Given that Colonel Richard Edwards was not particularly active at Westminster, however, it is likely that most of these appointments were the Chester MP’s – although because they relate to a wide range of issues, from the accounts of the army and the customs commissioners, to delinquent landlords and monopolists, they reveal little about his political alignment in the House.

Given that Edwardes would be secluded at Pride’s Purge – unlike Colonel Richard Edwards – it seems safe to assume he was the Member who acted as a majority teller with the Presbyterian grandee Denzil Holles on 14 May 1647 in what seems to have been a factionally-charged division concerning payments to the army commissioners. The losing tellers were the prominent Independent MPs Sir Michael Livesay and Henry Marten.71CJ v. 175a. Edwardes continued to attend the House during the Presbyterian counter-revolution of late July-early August.72CJ v. 265b. There are hints in his private correspondence during the summer of 1648 that he favoured bringing the king to London for a personal treaty, which would place him on the pro-Engager wing of the Presbyterian interest.73Cal. Lttrs. relating to N.Wales, 233-4. Even so, his loyalty to Parliament was apparently not questioned, for in June 1648 the Commons nominated him to a commission of oyer and terminer for trying those involved in an attempt to betray Chester to the royalists during the second civil war.74CJ v. 616b. Early in July, Edwardes and Ratcliffe informed the corporation that they had engaged the Presbyterian grandee John Glynne* to help vindicate the corporation from charges of complicity in the plot.75Cheshire RO, ZML/2/320.

If anyone had lost faith in Edwardes, or at least his capacity to keep Chester loyal to Parliament, it was Brereton, who attempted during the summer of 1648 to bring the city under the authority of the county militia commissioners.76Cheshire RO, ZML/2/320. Edwardes and Ratcliffe succeeded in retaining a separate militia commission for the city, but could not prevent the addition of Brereton, the city’s governor Colonel Robert Duckenfeild* and three other non-citizens. In general, however, Edwardes’ letters to Chester corporation, and those of the city’s agents at Westminster, suggest that he was more interested in serving his own interests than those of the corporation.77Cheshire RO, ZML/2/308, 310, 314, 317. According to one report, he insisted on reserving the profits of Dee mills entirely to himself, despite the corporation’s efforts to have this money diverted to the city’s use.78Cheshire RO, ZML/2/310.

Edwardes’ last appointment in the Long Parliament came on 26 August 1648, when he was ordered to write a letter of thanks to the sheriff of Cheshire concerning the disposal of prisoners in the county.79CJ v. 684b. Both Edwardes and Ratcliffe were secluded at Pride’s Purge, presumably for their Presbyterian sympathies; although crossing swords with Brereton in the summer of 1648 would not have helped their cause.80A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); A Vindication (1649), 28 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5). Unlike Ratcliffe, Edwardes was not removed from municipal office by the commonwealth authorities. However, he more or less retired from civic affairs after 1648, attending only one corporation meeting thereafter (in December 1649).81Johnson, ‘Politics in Chester’, 219-20. There is no evidence that he stood for re-election at Chester or indeed anywhere else; and he was reportedly in Ireland (presumably on business) when the secluded Members were re-admitted to the House in February 1660.82HMC Portland, i. 697. In August 1662, the corporation commissioners removed him from Chester’s aldermanic bench for refusing to take the oath abjuring the Covenant.83Cheshire RO, ZAB/2, f. 135. He seems to have received no public offices thereafter, nor busied himself in any affairs but his own and those of his family.84Cal. Lttrs. relating to N.Wales, 244, 247-8. He died in about August 1677, but his place of burial is not known.85Cheshire RO, inventory of William Edwards, 31 Aug. 1677. No will is recorded. He was the last of his line to sit in Parliament.