CRAISTER, Thomas (c.1620-81), of Carlisle, Cumb.

Craister belonged to a junior branch of the venerable Northumberland family, the Crasters of Craster.25Hedley, Northumb. Fams. ii. 263-4. His father, a younger son, was a Carlisle merchant, and he himself became a woollen draper and had secured appointment to the city’s common council by the early 1640s.26Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DGC 4/1, ff. 14v, 99v; CA/2/1; Hedley, Northumb. Fams. ii. 264, 268. He sided with Parliament during the civil war – a decision perhaps influenced by his religious views, for if his later career is any indication he was a man of godly convictions. After the war, he claimed that he, Thomas Cholmley*, William Brisco* and two others had advanced £30 for the service of Parliament in 1642, and that he and Cholmley had been sent for by the commissioners of array in January 1643, ‘who charged them with countenancing nonconformable ministers and factious men, dangerous and seducers of the people from their loyalty to their king, for which they were all committed to prison [in Carlisle]’.27SP23/171, p. 157. Craister had been released by April or May 1643, when he joined Richard Barwis*, Sir Wilfrid Lawson* and Cholmley in an abortive rising to seize Carlisle for Parliament.28SP23/171, p. 157; I. Tullie, Siege of Carlisle ed. S. Jefferson (Whitehaven, 1988), 1. It seems that he was then imprisoned for a second time, briefly, and on being released early in May he fled to Scotland, prompting Carlisle corporation to threaten him with prosecution if he failed to ‘come and reside amongst us’.29SP23/171, p. 157; Cumb. RO (Carlisle), CA/2/1. After the war, the radical Cumberland lawyer and pamphleteer John Musgrave alleged that during his own exile in Scotland ‘I was threatened by Thomas Craister for my non-conformity to the Scottish Presbytery; that he would inform against me if I did not withdraw [from the country]’.30J. Musgrave, A Cry of Bloud of an Innocent Abel Against Two Bloudy Cains (1655), 8 (E731.8).

Little is known about Craister’s activities between 1643 and December 1647, when he and another townsman petitioned the Committee for Indemnity*, complaining that all the aldermen of Carlisle (apart from Barwis) and most of the common councilmen were delinquents.31SP24/38 (petition of Craister and Cuthbert Studholme). Following the committee’s purge of these royalist office-holders early in 1648, Craister, on Barwis’s recommendation, was appointed an alderman.32SP24/1, f. 161; SP18/123, f. 101. Imprisoned by the royalists when they seized Carlisle in the spring of 1648, he wrote a long entry in the corporation audit book after the city’s re-capture by Parliament in October, describing how the Scots had ‘perfidiously’ invaded England and then been driven out ‘with disgrace’.33E134/1653/MICH17; Cumb. RO (Carlisle), CA/4/139, f. 92; Musgrave, A True and Exact Relation, 23. Craister’s apparent animosity towards the Scots may partly explain his willingness to hold office under the Rump. Indeed, he was one of the most active figures in Cumberland’s civil and military administration during the commonwealth period. He served as the county’s receiver general, or treasurer of public money, from early 1649 until the Restoration, was a leading figure in the Cumberland sequestration machinery and, as a commissioner for propagating the gospel in the northern counties, was closely involved in settling godly ministers across the entire region.34E113/5; SP28/240, f. 25; SP28/226, unfol.; SP28/351, unfol; CCC 287, 304, 333, 405, 510, 811, 812, 3025; Musgrave, A True and Exact Relation, 14; Nightingale, Ejected of Cumb. and Westmld. 147, 426, 442, 661, 687, 710, 929, 961. He was also commissioned by Sir Arthur Hesilrige* as a captain in the Carlisle garrison in 1649.35Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DLONS/L/13/1/9; Musgrave, A True and Exact Relation, 10.

Craister’s appointments under the commonwealth are difficult to reconcile with allegations made by Musgrave and his supporters that he was disaffected to the Rump, persecuted sectaries and religious Independents, protected ministers of the ‘Scottish faction’, and resigned his commission in 1650 on the grounds that it was against his conscience to fight the Scots.36Musgrave, A True and Exact Relation, 10, 14, 20, 22, 23-4; Musgrave, A Cry of Bloud, 27; Musgrave’s Musle Broken, or Truth Pleading Against Falshood (1651), 6, 10-11 (E.626.26). Musgrave further claimed that Craister had enriched himself to the tune of almost £10,000 out of delinquents’ estates.37Musgrave, Musgrave’s Musle Broken, 2-3, 5; Musgrave, A Cry of Bloud, 27. Such allegations were vigorously refuted by Hesilrige’s supporters in the north, who commended Craister for his ‘piety and religion’.38Musgrave Muzl’d, or the Mouth of Iniquitie Stoped (1651), 11 (E.625.11).

Craister seems to have been well regarded by the Nominated Parliament and had little difficulty accommodating himself to the protectorate.39CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 259. In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, he backed the return of Charles Howard – a prominent northern Cromwellian – for Cumberland.40C217/44/1, unfol. Craister was also active as a Cromwellian ejector for the northern counties – further evidence that he favoured a godly, parochial ministry.41SP28/216, unfol; E377/61, mm. 1-2; Nightingale, Ejected of Cumb. and Westmld. 164, 169, 203, 204, 256, 309, 444, 597, 607, 772, 811, 1028, 1103, 1192, 1213, 1403-6. He played a particularly prominent role in the affairs of Carlisle during the interregnum, serving as mayor for two years running under the commonwealth and again for several months following the death of Thomas Cholmley* in 1654.42Cumb. RO (Carlisle), CA/2/124, 127; CA/2/21/9; CA/4/2. During this last spell as mayor, Craister attempted to have Carlisle’s alehouse-keepers bound over to keep good order, but he was frustrated by the opponents of ‘reformation’ in the city.43SP18/123, f. 103. In December 1655, he and the ‘well-affected’ party in the corporation petitioned the protector, requesting a purge of ‘malignant’ office-holders, but they were again unsuccessful.44SP18/123, ff. 101-4; SP18/126, f. 12.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Craister was returned for the city – almost certainly with the backing of the corporation and Carlisle’s ‘well-affected’ interest.45Supra, ‘Carlisle’. Although he received no committee appointments at Westminster and made no recorded contribution to debate on the floor of the House, he was paid £123 by the corporation for 116 days service as the city’s MP.46Cumb. RO (Carlisle), CA/4/2; CA/4/207. He was cited by the Quakers in 1659 as a persecutor of Friends in Cumberland.47E. Burrough, A Declaration of the Present Sufferings of above 140...Quakers (1659), sig. C4 (E.977.7); First Publishers of Truth ed. N. Penny (1907), 30-1.

By the spring of 1662, Craister had moved to Leeds – where his wife’s family resided – having very probably resigned his place as an alderman of Carlisle.48Cumb. RO (Carlisle), CA/2/384. Whether he left Cumberland for political or commercial reasons is not clear. Although he was living at Morley, about eight miles south of Leeds, by the late 1670s, he seems to have remained a member of the Carlisle merchants’ guild.49Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DGC 4/1, f. 131; Heywood Diaries ed. Turner, ii. 79. On his way to hear a godly sermon in May 1681 he ‘fell into an apoplexy’ and died. He was buried at Morley old chapel (of which he was one of the trustees) on 16 May. His death was recorded by the nonconformist minister and diarist Oliver Heywood, who referred to him as ‘an holy gentleman’.50Heywood Diaries ed. Turner, ii. 144; Topcliffe and Morley Regs. ed. Smith, 51. Craister died intestate, and the administration of his estate was granted to his widow.51Borthwick, Pontefract Deanery act bk. 5B, f. 28. None of his immediate descendants sat in Parliament.