MACKWORTH, Thomas (1627-96), of Betton Strange, Shrewsbury.

Thomas Mackworth played a very minor part in the life of Parliament, and was a mere adjunct to his energetic and famous father, the commander of Shrewsbury garrison, and later stalwart member of Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell’s* council. His nineteenth-century biographer overlooked his service in the Long Parliament entirely.14J.B. Blakeway, Sheriffs of Shropshire (Shrewsbury, 1831), 138. Humphrey Mackworth I propelled his eldest son into public life in June 1646, when he wrote to the bailiffs of Ludlow, promoting the candidature of his son for one of the vacant seats there

And though he be young, yet I assure you he has been so well seasoned with the breeding bestowed upon him that I am content the disgrace light upon me if he prove not fit for the employment I desire he may now be entrusted withal. I have ever dedicated him in my thoughts to the service of the commonwealth, and shall be glad he may grow up therein.15Salop Archives, LB7/1942; Trans. Salop Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. ser. 2, xi. 142.

Thomas Mackworth was aged 19 at the time, and until then had played no part in public affairs at all. His education at university and Gray’s Inn had only just been completed at the time of the election, but his father’s assurances to Ludlow corporation reveal Humphrey’s parental ambition as well as his ethos of public service.

The day after Humphrey Mackworth wrote to the Ludlow burgesses, they admitted his son to be one of their number. Thomas Mackworth took the Covenant on 26 August, having been elected on the 8th.16Salop Archives, LB2/1/1 ff. 233v, 234v; CJ iv. 653a. Despite his father’s portentous letter to the Ludlow corporation, Thomas’s contribution to the work of Parliament was slight. On 19 July 1647 Mackworth was given leave to go to the country, was absent at a call of the House in September, and was given further leave in June 1648. Humphrey Mackworth I himself was not elected to Parliament until 1654; his power base was in Shropshire and to a lesser extent in Coventry. One can only surmise that during this time Thomas was helping his father and the Shropshire committee in Shrewsbury, but wherever he was, he served on no committees in the House.17CJ v. 250a, 330a, 608a. He was appointed regularly to Shropshire local government commissions, however, which tends to confirm that he was more active there.

Mackworth may not have been at Westminster when Parliament was purged by the army in December 1648, but he was there on the eve of the trial and execution of the king. On 2 January 1649 he was nominated to his first committee, the politically important Committee for Indemnity – an appointment the Commons confirmed four days later. In the light of the army’s dominance of Parliament at the time, this was a sudden elevation.18CJ vi. 109a, 113b. He took the dissent to the treaty of Newport on 1 February.19PA, Ms CJ xxxiii, p. 625; [W. Prynne], A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case (1660), 23 (E.1013.22). Thereafter, despite his appearance in the House at a time when the Rump needed all the friends it could muster, Mackworth retreated once again into the shadows and becomes difficult to trace, so fully was he in the shadow of his illustrious parent. The ‘Colonel Mackworth’ of Shrewsbury, much mentioned in the State Papers, was of course his father, who became a hero of the Rump after seeing off the forces of Charles Stuart in the summer of 1651. It must have been soon after this episode that Humphrey Mackworth I and ‘Mr Mackworth junior’ were fêted by the Ludlow corporation: the father with sugar sent to Shrewsbury, the son with wine probably in Ludlow.20Salop Archives, LB8/1/171/1.

Thomas Mackworth was on two committees, one in August 1650 on extending the powers of the high court of justice to deal with rebels in Wales, and another in January 1651 on taking the accounts of soldiers.21CJ vi. 456a, 524a. One area of work in which he took considerable interest in the early 1650s was the presentation to church livings, when the powers of patronage of commissioners of the great seal were assumed by the Rump. James Smith, a minister who had signed the Presbyterian Testimony of the Ministers in 1648, and thus should hardly have been regarded as worthy by the commonwealth, was one of the six beneficiaries of his approval.22Add. 36792, ff. 18v, 29, 58v, 63v, 68, 80. Mackworth appeared in the House again in the latter days of the Rump, when the radicals in the army were re-grouping in order to effect political change. He was on two committees in January 1653, both on the sale of royal goods, suggesting that he remained committed to the republican cause.23CJ vii. 245b, 250b. His last known appearance in this Parliament was on 18 February, when he sat on a committee dealing with the private business of Lady Hungerford’s difficulties as executrix of her husband.24CJ vii. 260a. It was also in this period that Mackworth made a first appearance in the Shropshire commission of the peace. In July 1652, the settlement drawn up at the time of his marriage to Anne Bulkeley included properties in Chester brought to the Mackworths from the family of Mary Venables, his step-mother, and bestowed £2,000 on any only daughter born to him: an increase of 100 per cent on the sum allocated in an identical clause in the settlement that had attended the second marriage of Mackworth’s father.25W. Glam. RO, NAS/Gn/E 19/124.

Mackworth found no place in either the Nominated Assembly or the first of the protectorate Parliaments, but continued to be named to local commissions, and doubtless continued to endorse his father’s willingness to accept the Cromwellian regime. His name appears as an elector on the indentures for both the county election and that for Shrewsbury in July 1654.26C219/44. By the time that Mackworth appeared at Westminster again, for the second Protectorate Parliament of 1656, Humphrey Mackworth was dead. It was entirely through the father’s sterling service for interregnum governments of different hues that the son found himself a credible candidate for one of the knight’s seats for Shropshire. He was named to the committee charged with improving the personal security of the lord protector (26 Sept.), and on the following day a committee for improving timber supplies to meet the needs of the navy.27CJ vii. 429a. A month later he sat on a committee for making new arrangements for the probate of wills, a topic that had doubtless become dear to him since the recent death, intestate, of his father.28CJ vii. 446a. To make identification of him potentially problematical, he was accompanied in this Parliament and that of 1659 by his younger brother, Humphrey Mackworth II, but as the latter had inherited the governorship of Shrewsbury from his late father, he usually carried the title of colonel. If the indication of military rank is a reliable guide, only Thomas Mackworth was named to any committees in the second protectorate Parliament, but it is possible that one or more of the references in the Journal to ‘Mr Mackworth’ are to his brother.

June 1657 saw Mackworth at his busiest in this Parliament. He was added to a committee for the bill on popish recusants (1 June), and towards the end of the month was a teller in three unrelated divisions. The first was on a concession in the bill to restrain building in London, by which some named individuals who had already begun to build houses in brick would be allowed to continue, on paying a licence to the government. Mackworth opposed this, but the motion to approve the proviso was approved by a majority of 33.29CJ vii. 566a. With either Henry or Robert Williams – the identity remains inconclusive – he supported an unsuccessful attempt to allow an immediate hearing of a petition from Westmorland, and helped Thomas Bampfylde, an outspoken critic of the government, secure relief from attending a revenue committee.30CJ vii. 576a. It is hard to discern any consistent political orientation in any of these appearances, and the bursts of moderate activity, interspersed with long periods when Mackworth was invisible, can only suggest that he attended the House intermittently.

Mackworth was returned once again as knight for Shropshire in 1659, but maintained his low profile at Westminster. No speeches of his were recorded by the parliamentary diarists, and he seems to have been appointed only to one committee, albeit the important one of privileges or elections.31CJ vii. 594b. In this assembly, his brother was much more active. It was inevitable that one with his parentage would not prosper at the Restoration of the monarchy. The remains of his late father were disinterred from Westminster Abbey on 12 September, a most graphic reminder to the living Mackworths of where they stood in relation to the new regime. Thomas Mackworth lost all his offices, including his place in the commission of the peace, and seems not to have recovered them. In August 1665, a warrant was issued for his arrest as one suspected of acting against the monarchy, but there is no record of any legal proceedings against him.32Trans. Salop Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. ser. 4, i. 315. Three years later he was sufficiently acceptable to the monarchical government to be pricked sheriff; another old Shropshire committeeman, Robert Clive*, was given the same office in 1673. After the death of his first wife, Mackworth married the daughter of the parliamentarian conquerer of north Wales and the marches, Thomas Mytton, in 1674. He died in 1696, and was buried in Shrewsbury.33Trans. Salop Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. ser. 4, xi. 142.