TALBOT, Thomas II (1615-?82), of Appleton Wiske, Yorks.

Talbot (or, as he signed himself by the 1660s, Talbott) belonged to a collateral branch of the Lancashire gentry family, the Talbots of Bashall. As his post-Restoration dealings with William Dugdale reveal, he was immensely proud of his pedigree and its many quarterings, and he confidently traced his lineage back to the Conquest.24Bodl. Top. Yorks. c.36, f. 69; Coll. of Arms, Visitation pprs. Yorks., co. Dur., Northumb. 1672, unfol.; Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. iii. 8-10; Vis. London (Harl. Soc. xvii), 275. His ancestors had moved to Wood End, in the parish of Thornton-le-Street, near Thirsk, in Yorkshire, after purchasing the manor there in the early sixteenth century.25Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. iii. 8; VCH N. Riding, i. 455-6; W. Grainge, The Vale of Mowbray (1859), 293. Talbot’s father settled in the parish of Appleton Wiske, about 20 miles north of Thirsk, but he also owned property much closer to the town, at Angram Grange.26E134/6CHAS1/MICH5; Coventry Docquets, 615. Whether their title to Angram Grange, or their relation to the Talbots of Wood End, afforded the Appleton branch of the family any influence in the Thirsk area is not clear. There is no record that they were active in local affairs, or that they were closely connected with neigbouring gentry families such as the Belasyses.

Almost nothing is known about Talbot until after the outbreak of the civil war, when he and his elder brother Francis became officers in the northern parliamentarian army commanded by Lord Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*).27E121/3/3/117; Jones, ‘War in north’, 404. Talbot probably fought at the battle of Adwalton Moor in June 1643 (where Francis was killed) and, as a lieutenant in Sir William Fairfax’s regiment of horse, was part of the cavalry force that Sir Thomas Fairfax* took into Lincolnshire, in October 1643, to assist the earl of Manchester and Oliver Cromwell* in driving the royalists out of the Eastern Association.28SC6/CHAS1/1190; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 66-7. Deprived of adequate maintenance, the Yorkshire forces soon tired of service south of the Humber, and in mid-December, Talbot and 15 other Yorkshire officers, including George Smithson*, 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.29Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 66-7.

In April 1644, Colonel Matthew Alured* took over the command of Sir William’s regiment, which subsequently fought at the battles of Selby, Marston Moor and Ormskirk and at the sieges of Liverpool and Montgomery Castle in Wales.30Jones, ‘War in north’, 367-8. In the summer of 1645, after the New Model had been ordered into the west country, 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’.31Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 214-5. In the event, Alured’s regiment was incorporated into the Northern Association army, rather than into the New Model, and was disbanded in January 1646.32Jones, ‘War in north’, 367.

But if Talbot joined the swelling ranks of parliamentarian reformadoes in 1646, he had found a way back onto the army pay roll by early 1648, when he was serving as a captain in Colonel Robert Overton’s regiment of foot in the Hull garrison.33York Minster Lib. BB53, p. 16; Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS LXVII, f. 125r. The extent of his purchases (by debenture) of crown lands during the early 1650s suggests that he was owed a sum in arrears of pay consistent with more or less continuous military service. Although he was almost certainly acting as an attorney, or agent, for other soldiers in some of these purchases, he retained at least two properties, the manors of Furness and Rosedale, for himself.34CP25/2/614/1655/EAST; CRES6/1, p. 252; E121/3/3/117; E121/5/5/37; E121/5/7/26, 29; E121/5/7/109; I. Gentles, ‘The Debentures Market and Military Purchases of Crown Lands, 1649-60’ (London Univ. PhD thesis, 1969), 342. On two occasions, he purchased land in partnership with the deputy governor of Hull from May 1649, Lieutenant-colonel Edward Salmon*.35E121/5/7/109.

By the autumn of 1651, at the latest, Talbot was a major in the regiment of foot belonging to his former commanding officer, Matthew Alured.36Letters from Roundhead Officers ed. Akerman, 32; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 463-5. In fact, it is likely that he was serving with the regiment when it was posted to Scotland in the autumn 1650 to bolster the Scottish invasion force under Cromwell. At the battle of Worcester, in September 1651, Talbot was reportedly decorated for his ‘faithful service’ in the office of adjutant-general.37[P. Fisher] Irenodia Gratuloria sive Oliveri Cromwelli Epinicion (1652) sig. H4 (E.796.30). Talbot spent most of the next eight years in Scotland, where the regiment was employed in garrison duty.38Add. 15858, f. 168; Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS LI, f. 19; CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 412. By March 1653, he had been appointed lieutenant-colonel of Alured’s regiment and had married Anna Lilburne, who was a sister of John Rushworth*, secretary to the army and the widow of a brother of Colonel Robert Lilburne*.39Letters from Roundhead Officers ed. Akerman, 53. Talbot’s marriage and his service in Scotland strengthened his links with the Northern Brigade’s London agent, and right-hand man of Major-general John Lambert*, Captain Adam Baynes*, who was on close terms with Talbot’s wife.40Add. 21426, f. 336; Add. 21427, f. 289; Letters from Roundhead Officers ed. Akerman, 53, 56, 57, 58, 59, 66, 72. Lambert may have helped to persuade Cromwell, if he needed any persuading, to give Talbot command of Alured’s regiment in June 1655 – Cromwell having cashiered Alured for republican opposition to the protectorate.41Supra, ‘Matthew Alured’; Clarke Pprs. iii. 42; Letters from Roundhead Officers ed. Akerman, 109.

Talbot was returned for Dumfries Burghs, Scotland, in December 1656 in place of Salmon, who had been chosen for both Dumfries and Scarborough and had opted to sit for the latter.42Lochmaben Court and Council Bk. 1612-1721 ed. J.B. Wilson (Edinburgh, 2001), 73. Talbot almost certainly owed his return to local army influence and to his standing with Cromwell and General George Monck*, the commander of the forces in Scotland. Talbot was named to only six committees in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate.43CJ vii. 478a, 490b, 513b, 519b, 540b, 591a. Apart from his addition to the committee for Scotland, on 2 January 1657, his only appointment of any significance was on 3 April, when he was added to a committee set up a week earlier for persuading Cromwell to accept the Humble Petition and Advice, complete with an offer of the crown.44CJ vii. 478a, 519b. His nomination to this committee suggests that he was seen as a supporter of kingship, although he quickly proved himself otherwise, for when the House debated, on 4 April, whether to adhere to the Petition and Advice – in other words, to ignore Cromwell’s initial refusal to accept the crown – Talbot was a teller with Major-general Edward Whalley against putting the question, with the leading ‘kinglings’ Charles Howard and William Jephson acting as tellers for the yeas.45CJ vii. 520b. Whalley and Talbot lost this division, and on the main question, John Disbrowe and John Hewson were defeated by two more kinglings. Although opposed to Cromwell’s acceptance of the crown, Talbot and at least some of the anti-kinglings, including Disbrowe, were willing to concede him power to nominate members of the Other House constituted under the Petition and Advice – probably because a sizeable proportion of this new upper chamber were to consist of army officers. Thus on 24 June, Talbot acted as a majority teller with Captain John Blackwell in support of a motion to add the words ‘without further approbation [by the Commons]’ to a clause in the Petition and Advice concerning nomination to the Other House.46CJ vii. 573a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 299-301. Two days later (26 June), Talbot acted as a minority teller on a minor division on whether a bill for convicting and repressing recusants should be carried up to the Other House.47CJ vii. 577a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 310. His next, and last, appointment in this Parliament was on 3 February 1658, when he was added to the committee on the bill for marriages.48CJ vii. 591a.

Cromwell’s willingness to consider a return to monarchy left many leading army officers – Talbot apparently among them – suspicious of the protectorate and its civilian supporters. On 11 February 1658, Cromwell dismissed Major William Packer* and five of his captains for expressing ‘dissatisfaction ... touching the present government’.49TSP vi. 806. Talbot, however, was not prepared to follow Packer and Lambert (whom Cromwell had stripped of his commissions in July 1657) into outright opposition, and soon after Packer’s dismissal – at which Talbot had been present – he attended Cromwell and ‘declared satisfaction both in himself [Cromwell] and the government’ and that he would ‘live and die with his highness’.50TSP vi. 806; Clarke Pprs. iii. 141. Talbot was apparently content to serve under the protector so long as he eschewed the title of king. In the spring of 1658, he joined Disbrowe, Whalley and other senior officers in an address to Cromwell in which they expressed their support for him ‘as our general and chief magistrate’ and their confidence in the Petition and Advice as a means of securing ‘the great ends of all our former engagements: our civil and spiritual liberty’.51A Further Narrative of the Passages of These Times (1658), 51-2. Similarly, in September, Talbot was among those officers who signed a loyal address to Protector Richard Cromwell*, requesting that he maintain the army under men of ‘honest, godly principles’, with liberty of conscience to ‘all persons that profess godliness that are not of turbulent spirits as to the peace of these nations’. The officers pledged to stand by Richard against ‘all that shall oppose you ... or make it their design to change or alter the present government established in a single person and two Houses of Parliament, according to the Humble Petition and Advice’.52Bodl. Rawl. A.61; Mercurius Politicus no. 434 (16-23 Sept. 1658), 844-7; G. Davies, Restoration of Charles II (San Marino, CA, 1955), 8-10.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Talbot was returned for Thirsk, along with Major William Goodrick, an officer in Lambert’s old regiment of horse, now commanded by the protector’s brother-in-law, Thomas Belasyse*, 2nd Viscount Fauconberg. The Belasyses were the principal landowners in the Thirsk area, and Goodrick, for one, was almost certainly returned on Fauconberg’s interest. Whether Talbot was also Fauconberg’s nominee is not clear. If he was a sincere supporter of the protectorate as re-constituted in 1657, as his professions in 1658 would suggest, then Fauconberg may well have been willing to support his candidature. As the owner of property near Thirsk, he may have enjoyed a proprietorial interest of his own in the borough, although this would have been negligible compared with that of Fauconberg. Talbot was named to only four, minor, committees in this Parliament and, again, made no known contribution to debate.53CJ vii. 600a, 600b, 622b, 632a. His first, and most important, appointment was on 26 January 1659, when he was named to the commission for tendering Members the oath of allegiance to the protector.54CJ vii. 593a. In a letter that March, he referred to his fellow MP John Hewley as ‘my very good friend and old acquaintance’.55Bodl. Top. Yorks. c.36, f. 69.

Although he was soon to emerge as an ally of Lambert, Talbot was not, it seems, as hostile to the protectorate as was the major-general; it was a return to monarchy, or at least to a Stuart monarchy, that Talbot consistently opposed. His moderate political sympathies recommended him to General Monck; Talbot, for his part, was said to have had great respect for the general.56Clarke Pprs. iv. 70-1. On 2 June, Monck asked the restored Rump not to make any changes in the officers of his own regiments or that of Talbot, ‘being the regiments that have lain nearest me, and the officers more particularly known to me than the rest’.57Clarke Pprs. iv. 17. The Rump ignored this request, however, and removed several of Talbot’s officers and was reportedly keen to replace Talbot himself. The fact that he retained his colonelcy was attributed solely to Monck’s intervention.58TSP vii. 687; Clarke Pprs. iv. 39; Clarke Pprs. v. 297; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 467; Davies, Restoration, 111.

Yet despite his high regard for Monck, Talbot sided with Lambert, against his commanding officer, following the general’s refusal to countenance the army’s forcible dissolution of the Rump on 13 October 1659. Talbot, who happened to be in London during October, was an eye-witness to the coup and within a week, at most, had thrown in his lot with Lambert and the army in England.59Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS LII, f. 5. On 19 October, he signed an order from the council of officers at Whitehall, enjoining the army’s assent to the setting up of an interim government under the committee of safety.60Add. 4165, f. 34; TSP vii. 766. The following day (20 Oct.), he joined Lambert and nine other officers, including Colonel Edward Salmon, in a letter to Monck urging him to recognize the committee.61Clarke Pprs. iv. 67-8. That same day, however, Monck wrote to Speaker Lenthall, Lieutenant-general Charles Fleetwood* and Lambert, rebuking the army for its dissolution of the Rump.62Clarke Pprs. iv. 67-8. Worried by Monck’s response, Lambert and Fleetwood decided to dispatch Talbot and (Sir) Thomas Clarges*, Monck’s brother-in-law, to Edinburgh, to persuade the general of the necessity of the army’s actions. Talbot was chosen as ‘a gentleman whose conversation was acceptable’ to Monck; and in his reply to Monck’s letter, Lambert claimed that Talbot had a ‘true respect for you’, a point that Fleetwood reiterated: ‘I have sent this bearer, Colonel Talbot, unto you’, he wrote to Monck on 25 October, ‘knowing him to be a hearty lover of your lordship, as well as a friend to myself, and by him I shall deal plainly and freely with you ...’.63Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS LII, ff. 2v, 5; Clarke Pprs. iv. 70-1; Select Tracts ed. F. Maseres (1815), 735. Lambert’s and Fleetwood’s expressed aim in sending Talbot and Clarges to Edinburgh was ‘to prevail with Monck for a treaty of mediation, [and] to prevent effusion of blood’.64Clarke Pprs. iv. 70-1; Baker, Chronicle, 663. However, it was generally thought that the two men, and in particular Talbot, were sent to ‘cajole Monck out of his arms and reason’, by appealing to his loyalty as a fellow officer and as a supposed adherent of the ‘good old cause’.65Select Tracts ed. F. Maseres, 735.

Talbot and Clarges arrived in Edinburgh on 2 November 1659. Both men were well received by Monck, but the general reserved his confidence for Clarges. Unlike Clarges, who had probably intended to play Lambert and Fleetwood false right from the beginning, Talbot knew nothing of Monck’s secret dealings with Thomas 3rd Baron Fairfax, which would result in the Yorkshire rising of January 1660.66Baker, Chronicle, 666, 668. But while Talbot remained loyal to Lambert and to the army in England, he proved to be a singularly ineffective spokesman on their behalf. He was unable to convince Monck – the general’s chaplain later recalled – neither of the ‘sincerity of Lambert’s friendship’, nor of the ‘reality of his [Lambert’s] proffers of advantage’.67Select Tracts ed. F. Maseres, 735. Indeed, after conversing with Talbot, Monck was more than ever convinced of the impropriety of the army’s actions. On 3 November, Monck informed Fleetwood that he had ‘discoursed with Colonel Talbot about the whole matter, but am sorry to find your lordship so much mistaken in your apprehensions of things ...’.68Clarke Pprs. v. 325. In a letter to Lambert the same day, Monck wrote that he ‘should have been glad to have found that satisfaction from Colonel Talbot of the forces at London in their late actings, as your lordship gave me hopes of’.69Clarke Pprs. iv. 87. Despite their differences, Talbot remained on friendly terms with Monck and ‘carried himself with much moderation all the time of his stay, and with so much profession of respect to the general, that he [Monck] assured him, if he would go to London and be a neuter, he would preserve his regiment, which he [Talbot] promised to do’. According to an account of this episode published after the Restoration, Talbot had been willing to do as Monck had requested, but, on returning to London, had been prevailed upon by Lambert ‘to act contrary to that engagement’. If this account can be credited, Talbot’s support for Lambert ran counter to his political inclinations, which were thought to be rather conservative in nature: ‘for he [Talbot] was esteemed by all that knew him to be a person not averse to a better and more just government than he, at that time, lived under and was obliging to all the gentry where he lived that needed his assistance and help’.70Baker, Chronicle, 668.

His mission to Monck a failure, Talbot left Edinburgh on 8 November.71Clarke Pprs. iv. 70-1. On returning to England, he joined the forces that Lambert had led northwards to oppose Monck, and on 29 November he signed a petition from Lambert’s officers to their Scottish counterparts, urging them to cease their warlike preparations and to unite against the ‘common enemy’, i.e. the royalists.72Clarke Pprs. iv. 143-6. The petitioners also pleaded their concern to defend the liberties of the people and to maintain magistracy and ministry. How Talbot fared during December, as Lambert’s army slowly disintegrated, is not known. From 20 December, when Monck gave command of Talbot’s regiment to one of his own supporters, Talbot’s military career was finished.73Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 469-70.

Very little is known about Talbot after the Restoration. As an opponent of monarchy and ally of Lambert, he could expect few favours from the restored royalists. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that he faced persecution during the early 1660s – indeed, quite the opposite, for in October 1660 he somehow managed to secure a royal warrant authorising him to receive, for his own use, the arrears of the king’s rents within the manor of Furness, which was one of the properties he had purchased by debenture in the early 1650s.74CRES6/1, p. 252. He was probably the ‘Thomas Talbott a colonel’ who died in the Pewter Platter inn, Clerkenwell, in the autumn of 1682 and was buried at St James, Clerkenwell on 12 November.75St James, Clerkenwell par. reg. No will is recorded. He died childless and was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.