STANLEY, William (1598-1665), of St Martin’s, Leicester.

Descended from Sir John Stanley, who had served as lieutenant of Ireland in the early fifteenth century, Stanley was distantly related to the Stanleys, earls of Derby.21Nichols, Leics. iv. 152; Oxford DNB, ‘Sir John Stanley’; ‘Thomas Stanley, 1st Baron Stanley’. Stanley’s grandfather had moved from Derbyshire to Nottinghamshire in the mid-sixteenth century, and his father, a younger son, had taken up residence in Leicester, where he had established himself as a mercer and a member of the town’s common council.22Nichols, Leics. iv. 152; Leicester Bor. Recs. iii. 361, 462. In his will of 1607, Stanley’s father made bequests totalling approximately £600.23PROB11/110, f. 210. Stanley, too, became a mercer, and by the mid-1630s he had prospered sufficiently to secure entry to the municipal governing elite, known as the twenty-four.24Leics. RO, BRII/1/3, f. 534; Hartopp, Mayors, 96-6.

Stanley’s correspondence during the personal rule (and later) reveals him as a man of intense godly piety, who was convinced that he was living through ‘the latter days of the world, foretold by the spirit of truth’, and who counted among his social and religious circle the puritan divines John Angell, William Morton and Jeremiah Whitaker and the Newcastle merchants and future parliamentarians John Blakiston* and Henry Dawson*.25SP16/540, pt. 4, ff. 291, 304, 311, 319; CSP Dom. 1625-49, pp. 760-1; Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 434; Oxford DNB, ‘John Angell’; Jeremiah Whitaker’. In 1639, Stanley and another Leicester alderman were sent by the corporation to entreat the lord lieutenant of Leicestershire, Henry Hastings, 5th earl of Huntingdon, not to compel the mayor to provide a list of municipal officeholders and ‘other [men] of worth’ in the town – probably a reference to the levying of military charges for the king’s war against the Scottish Covenanters.26Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 298. As mayor himself by November 1640, Stanley requested the earl to spare the town from payment of a £50 military levy.27Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 301.

In the summer of 1642, Stanley was branded a traitor by the king for having assisted Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford in securing the town’s magazine for Parliament.28Nichols, Leics. iii. app. iv. 30. His decision to side with Parliament in the civil war doubtless owed much to godly religious convictions. A prominent member of Leicestershire’s parliamentarian interest, he aligned with the group on the county committee that backed Sir Arthur Hesilrige* in his power-struggle with Thomas Lord Grey of Groby*.29Supra, ‘Thomas Lord Grey of Groby’; ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; ‘Henry Smyth’; infra, ‘Peter Temple’; SP16/501/56, ff. 96-7; SP16/501/92, f. 149; Bodl. Tanner 59, ff. 139, 555; Nichols, Leics. iii. app. iv. 32, 42, 44; An Examination Examined, 15, 16; Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 336. During the second civil war, he helped secure Leicestershire for Parliament, and he remained active in local government under the Rump.30SP28/161, pt. 3, unfol.; Add. 36996, f. 157; Bodl. Nalson VII, ff. 32, 88; Tanner 57, f. 74; Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 381.

In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, Stanley stood as a candidate at Leicester – presumably on the corporation interest – and was returned in first place on a poll. He himself cast his vote for Hesilrige – who came second – and Grey of Groby.31Supra, ‘Leicester’; Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 419-21. Both he and Hesilrige were included on the list of Members approved by the council early in September, but Stanley received no appointments in this Parliament, and it is not clear that he ever took his seat.32Severall Procs. of State Affaires no. 258 (31 Aug.-7 Sept. 1654), 4093 (E.233.22). In November, the town’s leaders wrote to the earl of Stamford and to Thomas Beaumont*, requesting that they represent the town’s interests at Westminster ‘in regard we have not burgesses present in Parliament’.33Leics. RO, BRII/18/27, ff. 761, 777. It would appear that Stanley, like Hesilrige, had preferred to withdraw from Parliament rather than subscribe the Recognition, acknowledging the validity of the protectoral settlement. Nevertheless, Stanley’s support for the protectorate can be inferred from his willingness to serve as a Cromwellian ejector and as militia commissioner for Leicestershire – in which office he assisted Major-general Edward Whalley* in administering the decimation tax.34SP25/76A, f. 16v; TSP iv. 335; CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 145, 323. In June 1656, he signed a petition to the protector from Leicester’s leading townsmen, requesting assistance in augmenting the town’s parish ministry and thereby preventing a ‘famine of the Word’ that would lead to ‘extreme ignorance and profaneness’.35SP18/128/79, f. 222; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 380.

In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament a few months later, Stanley was returned for Leicester again, having come second to Hesilrige on a poll.36Supra, ‘Leicester’; Leics. RO, BRII/18/28, ff. 193-5. On this occasion, he attended Parliament and maintained a regular correspondence with the corporation.37Leics. RO, BRII/18/28, ff. 215, 251, 253, 254; Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 433-4, 434, 435, 437-8. In his first letter home, however, he revealed that had been on the point of withdrawing from the House, following the exclusion of Hesilrige and other ‘worthy Members’ as opponents of the protectorate. Being ‘very sensible of my own inability to answer your expectations’, he told the corporation

I was purposed to withdraw and come down. But some worthy friends and Members that are both within and out of the House adviseth me yet to stay and continue in hoping there will be an expedient tendered to incite all, or most, of those eminent Members to come in.38Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 433-4.

He was named to 14 committees in this Parliament, including those on ‘the matter of trade’ (20 Oct.); for suppressing Samuel Chidley’s Thunder from the Throne of God and other ‘scandalous books and pamphlets (20 Oct.); for stating the public debt (1 Jan. 1657); and to prepare a bill for the better observation of the Lord’s Day (18 Feb.).39CJ vii. 435a, 442a, 442b, 453b, 459a, 461a, 466a, 470b, 477b, 483a, 485a, 488b, 493b, 538b.

Stanley’s main concern at Westminster was the promotion of a bill to reform the governing body of Wyggeston’s hospital in Leicester. Early in November, he informed the corporation that although their petition to that effect had been deferred, ‘there is that spirit and life in the House that they will at length give a remedy to keep up that good old charity provided for poor indigent people to succeeding generations’.40Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 434. On 18 November, the House gave a reading to the corporation’s petition, and Stanley was ordered to bring in the requested bill.41CJ vii. 456b. But as he informed the corporation on 29 November, public business in the House had obstructed the bill’s progress, and he added that ‘the opposition [to it] appears stronger than at the first’.42Leics. RO, BRII/18/28, f. 251. Stanley’s bill had its first reading on 2 December and its second reading a week later (9 Dec.), when it occasioned a ‘sharp’ debate as to the relative merits of the corporation’s desire to reform the hospital and the rights of the hospital’s master, Richard Lee.43CJ vii. 462b, 465a, 466a; Leics. RO, BRII/18/28, f. 253. In response to Major-general William Packer’s assertion that Lee had ‘as good a right to be master as any man has to his lands’, Stanley alleged that ‘instead of reforming, he [Lee] goes his own track, and for £40 land per annum he has reserved but £3 per annum [for the hospital]... so that if speedy course be not taken in it, the revenue will be wholly lost’.44Burton’s Diary, ii. 82-3. This was Stanley’s own recorded contributed to debate in the House, and it was evidently not convincing, for the majority of those who spoke after him objected that his bill would ‘not do the regulation you intend’, but was merely a device to ‘take away his Highness’s [Cromwell’s] right in disposing of the master’s place and giv[ing] it to the town of Leicester’.45Burton’s Diary, ii. 83-4. The debate concluded with the appointment of Stanley and 20 or so others to a committee, chaired by Thomas Clarges, to consider the bill as well as petitions from Lee and other interested parties.46CJ vii. 466a; Leics. RO, BRII/18/28, ff. 253, 254. Despite struggling to ensure that the committee remained quorate, and to overcome Lee’s delaying tactics, Stanley assured the corporation that the committee was ‘expressing much patience and love to further justice’. He also reminded his colleagues in Leicester that it was money that made the parliamentary machinery ‘stir and work to effect’, at which the corporation disbursed at least £32 to cover his and the town recorder’s expenses and pains in procuring the legislation.47Leics. RO, BRII/18/28, f. 254; Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 446-7. Reported by Clarges on 6 February 1657, the bill was given its third reading and passed the House on 16 February, receiving the protector’s assent on 9 June.48CJ vii. 487a, 492a; Nichols, Leics. i. 488. The bill represented a qualified victory for the corporation. The new governors of the hospital – who included Major-general Whalley, Sir Christopher Packe*, Thomas Beaumont*, Francis Hacker*, Thomas Pochin*, William Quarles* and Henry Smyth*, as well as Stanley and several of his fellow Leicester aldermen – were authorised to appoint a new master ‘for the time being’, so long as it was not one of the governors. But the right to appoint masters for the future was vested in Cromwell and his successors.49Nichols, Leics. i. 488-90; VCH Leics. iv. 402.

On 19 February 1657 – three days after the Wyggeston’s hospital bill had passed the House – Stanley was granted leave of absence, and there is no evidence that he resumed his seat before 23 May, when he was named to a committee on a private bill.50CJ vii. 494b, 538b; Leics. RO, BRII/18/28, f. 322. He was granted leave again on 23 June and left no further trace on the records of this or the second session that commenced in January 1658, although the corporation resolved that he should be ‘desired to think of [some] course at London’ concerning the renewal of the town’s charter and for procuring ‘the act formerly drawn’ for the maintenance of Leicester’s ministers.51CJ vii. 570a; Leics. RO, BRII/18/29, f. 520.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Stanley was returned for Leicester again, coming first on a poll, with Hesilrige in second place.52Leics. RO, BRII/18/29, f. 687. Although he received no appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate, he evidently attended the House and kept Leicester corporation informed about events at Westminster. Early in February, he sent the mayor a copy of Protector Richard’s speech at the opening of Parliament and opined that ‘this great, honourable assembly is forward to promote God’s glory and public good’. He also informed his colleagues that he had attended – on the town’s behalf – the noted benefactor Erasmus Smith (uncle of Edward Smith*), ‘who hath a large heart to advance piety and charity’.53Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 453-4; Oxford DNB, ‘Erasmus Smith’. In March, he detailed his dealings with the excise commissioners in their dispute with the Leicester brewers and described the appointment of a new deputy Speaker, Thomas Bampfylde, whom he referrred to as ‘a young, solid gentleman...well experienced in parliamentary affairs’. Stanley’s fellow Leicester MP, Hesilrige, had brought Bampfylde to the Speaker’s chair, suggesting that he was acceptable to the republican interest in the House. Stanley commented approvingly that the first business Bampfylde undertook on taking the chair was to review the imprisonment without trial of the republican officer Robert Overton, which the House then voted (in Stanley’s words) ‘unjust and illegal because done by the warrant of a single person [i.e. Oliver Cromwell] and the cause not therein declared’.54Supra, ‘Thomas Bampfylde’; Leicester Bor. Recs. iv. 454-5. The corporation sent Stanley £10 as a present for his work in London on its behalf.55Leics. RO, BRII/18/29, f. 719.

Stanley stood for Leicester again in the elections to the 1660 Convention, but received only two votes on a poll, coming fourth behind Hesilrige. Stanley himself voted for Hesilrige and one of the successful candidates, John Grey, the earl of Stamford’s youngest son.56Leics. RO, BRII/18/29, ff. 896-8; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Leicester’. In an effort to ingratiate themselves with the Restoration government, Stanley and several other leading members of the corporation wrote to the new lord lieutenant of Leicestershire, Henry Hastings, 1st Baron Loughborough, in September 1660, requesting that he present the corporation’s gift to the king of £300, along with its surrender of the fee farm rents that it had purchased during the interregnum. In their letter to Loughborough they were at pains ‘to express our duty unto our most gracious king to the utmost we can and in all things to signify our loyalty to his sacred Majesty’.57Nichols, Leics. i. 432-3. Nevertheless, Stanley either retired from municipal government in the autumn of 1662 or, more likely, was removed from office by the corporation commissioners.58Leics. Bor. Recs. iv. 606.

Stanley died in the summer of 1665 and was buried at St Martin’s, Leicester on 25 August.59St Martin’s, Leicester par. reg. In his will, he praised God for His ‘infinite love and glorious grace’ in showing mercy ‘to such a poor, sinful wretch as I have ever been’. He made personal bequests of over £400 and left £100 to the corporation with which to purchase land as an endowment for ‘pious and charitable uses’, including 30 shillings a year to the ‘vicar and preaching minister of St Martin’s’.60Leics. RO, Probate 1665/76; Leics. Bor. Recs. iv. 504. His personal estate was inventoried at £221, including stock in trade worth £63.61Leics. RO, Inv. 1665/96. No other member of the family entered Parliament.