WASTELL, John (c.1593-1659), of Scorton, Bolton-on-Swale, Yorks.

Wastell was descended from a Westmorland family, a branch of which had settled in the North Riding by the late sixteenth century.42F.H.M. Parker, ‘The ped. of Wastell of Wastell Head’, Cumb. and Westmld. Antiquarian and Arch. Soc., n.s. i. 147. Little is known about his immediate family background or upbringing. The fact that he was sent to one of the most godly of the Cambridge colleges, Sidney Sussex, suggests that he belonged to a puritan family. It is also evident that the Wastells were relatively minor gentry – Wastell would be the first of his line to become a magistrate or to enter Parliament. Wastell’s father was styled a yeoman on several occasions in the early seventeenth century; and, in his will, he charged his estate with bequests of only £220 and annuities worth a mere £20 a year.43N. Yorks. RO, ZBL I/1/1/108, 115; Abstracts of Yorks. Wills ed. Clay, 143-4. Nevertheless, Wastell senior was sufficiently wealthy by 1616 to purchase the manor of Scorton (a few miles east of Richmond), which he made the family’s principal residence.44N. Yorks. RO, ZBL I/1/1/114; VCH N. Riding, i. 308. It is likely that he was also responsible for acquiring the lands in and around Northallerton that he mentioned in his will.45Abstracts of Yorks. Wills ed. Clay, 143-4. After Wastell senior’s death in 1630, Wastell continued to build up the family’s estate, purchasing lands in Burneston, Exelby and Theakston, about five miles to the south west of the borough.46C54/2837/5, 8; C54/2880/31. His election at Northallerton in 1641 probably owed much to the proprietorial interest established by these purchases.

Admitted to Gray’s Inn in 1613, Wastell pursued a career as a lawyer. But rather than work as a barrister in London, he set up practice as a provincial attorney in Yorkshire and was apparently highly successful. By 1625, Thomas Morton, the Calvinist bishop of Durham and lord of the manor of Northallerton, had appointed him steward of the manorial courts of Northallerton.47Saywell, Hist. and Annals of Northallerton, app. xxxi. And within a few years he had also obtained the recorderships of Ripon and Richmond.48N. Yorks. RO, DC/RIC II 1/1/2, p. 220; CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 26. His most active sphere in local government was not in the corporation courts, however, but on the North Riding bench. Appointed a magistrate in 1632, he attended the North Riding quarter sessions with commendable frequency until 1641, when regular meetings ceased.49C231/5, p. 78; N. Riding QS Recs. ed. J.C. Atkinson (N. Riding Rec. Soc. iii), 331, 358; (N. Riding Rec. Soc. iv), 12, 207. In addition to his work as a magistrate and recorder, he also appears to have practised in the court of chancery. In 1637, Christopher Wandesford†, master of the rolls in Ireland and a close friend of Lord Deputy Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†, the future earl of Strafford), sent Wastell details of a chancery case he was involved in, presumably for legal advice.50N. Yorks. RO, ZS, Swinton estate mss, Danby fam. letters and pprs. (mic. 2087): Wandesford to Sir Thomas Danbie*, 26 June 1637. In the spring of 1642, Wastell would be appointed a master in chancery extraordinary.51C231/5, p. 516.

Wastell’s diligence as a magistrate during the 1630s suggests that he remained generally conformable to the crown throughout the personal rule of Charles I. Even during the bishops’ wars, when many of the Yorkshire gentry voiced concern at the local impact of royal policies, he appears to have remained – outwardly at least – a loyal king’s man. He did not, for example, join the ‘disaffected’ Yorkshire gentry in their petitions to the king during the summer and autumn of 1640 in which they complained about the cost of military charges and pleaded poverty in the face of royal efforts to mobilize the trained bands against the invading Scots. Nevertheless, he was among the signatories to the Yorkshire county indenture of 5 October 1640, returning two of the leading petitioners – the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*) and Henry Belasyse – to the Long Parliament.52C219/43/3/89.

Wastell was elected for Northallerton on 15 January 1641, after the town’s franchise – which had lapsed in the thirteenth century – had been restored by the Long Parliament. He was returned on his own interest as the town’s manorial steward and one of the area’s principal landowners. His fellow Member for Northallerton was the godly North Riding gentleman Henry Darley; and it was probably Darley’s friends and allies at Westminster – who included Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke and John Pym* – who were responsible for securing the town’s re-enfranchisement.53Supra, ‘Northallerton’, ‘Henry Darley’. Wastell appears to have been a friend of Darley (it was on Darley’s motion that Wastell was granted leave of absence on 24 July 1641) and may well have shared his godly sympathies.54Procs. LP vi. 81. Unlike Darley, however, he had no links with the Providence Island Company, nor, it seems, with Pym’s ‘junto’ in the Long Parliament. Indeed, the extent of his commitment to the reform process or to the defence of parliamentarian authority during the early 1640s is unclear. Before the outbreak of civil war he was named to only four committees and made no recorded contribution to debate.55CJ ii. 100b, 151b, 196a, 215a. Nor did he make any public declaration of political faith beyond taking the Protestation, on 3 May 1641.56CJ ii. 133a. His only identifiable concern in Parliament during 1641 was the relief of the northern counties, where the quartering of the king’s and the Scots’ armies had caused considerable hardship. Appointed to a committee on 2 July on a bill for securing the billet money due to the inhabitants of the northern counties, he reported a draft of this legislation on 17 July and was then named to a committee to consider further amendments.57CJ ii. 196a, 215a.

Wastell’s activities and whereabouts between July 1641 and July 1642 remain largely obscure. His failure to sign any of the Yorkshire petitions to the king or to Parliament in the eight months or so preceding the outbreak of civil war suggests that he may have been out of the county during that period, possibly pursuing career opportunities in London. In April 1642, he took the oaths of office as a master in chancery extraordinary, although these were to be administered by three of his fellow Yorkshiremen.58C231/5, p. 516. At some point in the summer of 1642, he joined Darley and 40 or so other godly Parliament-men in a letter to John Cotton and two other puritan divines in New England, requesting they return home to attend the Westminster Assembly and assist in the great work of church reform.59J. Winthrop, Hist. of New England ed. J. Savage (New York, 1972), ii. pp. 91-2; T. Hutchinson, Hist. of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay ed. L.S. Mayo (Cambridge, MA, 1936), i. pp. 100-1. But there is no evidence that Wastell resumed his seat before early July 1642 – when he made a minor motion in the Commons – or that he was active in promoting the parliamentarian war effort thereafter.60PJ iii. 162. Indeed, in September he backed moves by Lord Fairfax and a group of West Riding gentry to negotiate a treaty of neutrality for Yorkshire. On 24 September, Wastell and several other North Riding gentlemen, including his friend, the future royalist Sir Henry Anderson*, wrote to Lord Fairfax asking to meet with him to arrange some means of securing the county against the onset of war.61Add. 15858, f. 215; Bodl. Nalson II, f. 154; HMC Portland, i. 63.

Only, it seems, after the collapse of this treaty in October did Wastell become closely involved in the parliamentarian war effort. He was one of a number of leading Yorkshire parliamentarians whom the royalist commander in Yorkshire, the earl of Cumberland, denounced as traitors early in December for their efforts in raising men and arms for Parliament.62Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 132. And on 16 December, having returned to Westminster, he was named to a ten-man committee (which included the prominent northern MPs Sir Henry Vane II, Sir William Armyne, Sir Philip Stapilton, Sir William Strickland, Henry Darley and John Blakiston) for raising money to supply Lord Fairfax’s northern Army.63CJ ii. 891b. That same day (16 Dec.), the House ordered Wastell and Blakiston to compile a list, for publication, of the papists serving under the royalist commander in the north, the earl of Newcastle.64CJ ii. 891b. Evidently, Wastell subscribed to the view held by Pym and most other puritan MPs that the king’s northern army ‘consisted for the most part of papists and was raised for the extirpation of the true religion [i.e. Protestantism]’ – a claim questioned by more peace-minded Members such as Sir Simonds D’Ewes.65Harl. 164, f. 264. In all, Wastell was named to 12 committees between mid-December 1642 and late July 1643, the majority of which related to the maintenance of Lord Fairfax’s army and northern affairs more generally.66CJ ii. 891b, 953b, 981a; iii. 9b, 56b, 92b, 105a, 125a, 174b, 175b, 181a. The House also enlisted his services to prepare letters and orders concerning the war in the north.67CJ ii. 966b; iii. 29b, 30a. On 5 June 1643, he took the vow and covenant devised by Pym and his war-party allies in response to the Waller plot.68CJ iii. 118a. Granted leave of absence on 26 August, he did not return to Westminster until the autumn of 1645.69CJ iii. 220a. His withdrawal from the House late in August, just a month before the introduction of the Solemn League and Covenant, is perhaps revealing. He had contributed little, if anything, to initiatives for securing Scottish military support, and he would emerge in 1645 as an opponent of continuing Scottish invention in English affairs.

Wastell spent most of this prolonged period of absence in Yorkshire, where his work as a county committeeman obliged the Commons to pass several resolutions in August 1644 to indemnify him against prosecution.70CJ iii. 586a, 606a. By late 1644, he had also assumed command of a regiment under Lord Fairfax, and he would retain his colonelcy in spite of the Self-Denying Ordinance. Indeed, Wastell, his kinsman Colonel George Smithson* and Colonel Francis Lascelles* played an important part in mopping up royalist resistance in Yorkshire during the first half of 1645.71A Diary, or an Exact Journall no. 44 (13-20 Mar. 1645), sig. Rrr2 (E.274.11); no. 47 (3-10 Apr. 1645), sig. Uuu3v (E.277.13); The Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 107 (1-8 July 1645), 856 (E.292.15); no. 109 (15-23 July 1645), 872 (E.293.21); CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 537, 542; J. Binns, Yorks. in the Civil Wars (Pickering, 2004), 119, 121, 122. Late in July, he and several other Yorkshire committeemen, among them Darley, assisted Richard Barwis* and his brother-in-law Sir Wilfrid Lawson* in presenting evidence to the Commons of the Scots’ ‘imperious carriage’ in Cumberland.72Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 428. In response, the Scots accused Wastell, Darley and several other Yorkshire committeemen of colluding with Barwis in spreading ‘calumnies against them’.73Bodl. Nalson IV, f. 60. Wastell signed many of the numerous letters from the Yorkshire parliamentary committees to Parliament in 1645-6, complaining about the ‘infinite oppressions and extortions’ of the Scottish army and pleading that it be removed from the region.74Bodl. Tanner 59, ff. 216, 366, 389, 428, 473; Nalson IV, ff. 212, 214, 240, 244, 246, 261, 282, 288, 294, 309, 317; LJ vii. 640b, 642b.

Wastell had returned to Westminster by 1 December 1645, when he was named with three other lawyers – Oliver St John, Sir Thomas Widdrington and Francis Thorpe – to prepare a bill on three of what would become the Newcastle peace propositions, vesting control of the armed forces in England and Ireland exclusively in Parliament.75CJ iv. 359b. These controversial new terms for settlement had begun life as an Independent initiative to limit not only the king’s powers in the post-war political order but also the confederal ambitions of the Scottish Covenanters.76D. Scott, ‘The ‘northern gentlemen’, the parlty. Independents, and Anglo-Scottish relations in the Long Parliament’, HJ xlii. 365-70. But though Wastell was almost certainly aligned with the Independent interest at Westminster, he apparently had no qualms taking the Solemn League and Covenant, on 31 December.77CJ iv. 393a. He was granted leave on 24 February 1646, 16 June and again on 4 January 1647 and was largely absent from the House between February 1646 and February 1647.78CJ iv. 452b, 578b; v. 40a. His only significant appointment during 1646 was on 30 May, when he was added to the so-called ‘northern committee’, chaired by Lord Fairfax’s man-of-business Thomas Stockdale.79CJ iv. 559a. This committee, which was dominated by the Scots’ enemies, was set up to prosecute Parliament’s various grievances against the Scots, many of which concerned the abuses committed by their army in northern England. It was Wastell and several other Yorkshire MPs who supplied Stockdale’s committee with much of this evidence.80Bodl. Nalson XIX, f. 396.

It seems very likely that Wastell was opposed to the aims of the Presbyterian interest and its efforts in the spring of 1647 to disband the New Model army. Nevertheless, on 22 June, the House referred the task of bringing in an ordinance for paying the Northern Association forces especially to his care, in what was seen as an attempt by the Presbyterians to win over the cash-starved northern army for possible deployment against the New Model.81CJ v. 219b; Clarke Pprs. i. 168-9. It is not clear why Wastell should have lent himself to such a design, and it can only be assumed that he was acting in what he thought was the best interests of his fellow officers in the north. Wastell remained at Westminster until at least mid-July, receiving several appointments which highlight his role as one of the Commons’ most trusted lawyers. On 8 July, he was assigned the task of preparing instructions for the judges on circuit.82CJ v. 236b. And on 16 July, he was appointed with Widdrington and one of the Vanes (probably Sir Henry Vane I) to bring in an ordinance for extending the exercise of ‘common justice’ to County Durham. Like several northern lawyers, he would receive a number of appointments during the later 1640s relating to the enfranchisement and legal administration of the county palatine of Durham.83CJ v. 21b, 246a, 274a, 544b; vi. 236b. That same day (16 July), he was granted leave and was probably absent from the House during the Presbyterian counter-revolution of 26 July-3 August.84CJ v. 245b. His absence probably explains why he was not among those Members who fled to the army after the forcing of the Houses on 26 July. He was back at Westminster by 14 August (just over a week after the army had entered London), when he was named to another committee on the administration of justice in County Durham.85CJ v. 274a.

Wastell seems to have attended the House rarely, if at all, during the autumn and winter of 1647, preferring his seat on the North Riding bench to that in the Commons.86N. Riding QS Recs. ed. J.C. Atkinson (N. Riding Rec. Soc. v), 1, 8. His appointment on 23 December to a committee headed by Lord Fairfax for collecting assessment revenues in Yorkshire was almost certainly made in absentia.87CJ v. 400b. There is no sign that he attended the House during 1648, although he remained a loyal servant of Parliament in Yorkshire, where he helped to raise and supply forces during the second civil war.88Bodl. Tanner 57, f. 109v. As colonels in the North Riding militia raised that summer, he and Lascelles may well have fought at the battle of Preston, in August, and were certainly involved in harrying the defeated Scots back to the border.89Packets of Letters no. 12 (6-12 June 1648), 6; HMC Portland, i. 489; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 264; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 637, 643. After the Preston campaign, Wastell and his regiment joined the parliamentarian siege of Pontefract Castle, which would last until March 1649.90Add. 36996, f. 76. On 26 September 1648, he was declared absent and excused at the call of the House.91CJ vi. 34b.

Wastell remained in Yorkshire during the winter of 1648-9 and was thus absent from the House during the tumultuous events of December and January.92Add. 36996, f. 80; N. Riding QS Recs. ed. Atkinson (N. Riding Rec. Soc. v), 22. Despite his army connections, he probably derived little satisfaction from the king’s trial and execution. Nor did he demonstrate much enthusiasm for taking his seat in the Rump. It was not until 14 May 1649 that he registered his dissent to the 5 December 1648 vote – that the king’s answer to the Newport propositions were an acceptable basis for settlement.93CJ vi. 208b. He attended the Rump only briefly, between May and September 1649, and most of his seven appointments during this period reflect his legal expertise and northern connections rather than any great commitment to shaping the new regime’s priorities or consolidating its authority.94CJ vi. 209b, 210a, 236b, 239b, 245b, 290b, 295b. On 19 and 22 June, for example, he was named to committees for the holding of assizes within the county palatines of Durham and Lancaster respectively.95CJ vi. 236b, 239b. And the task of preparing instructions for county committees for the relief of parliamentarian tenants oppressed by their royalist landlords was specially referred to his care on 27 June.96CJ vi. 245a. His last appointment in the Rump was on 13 September 1649, when he was ordered to bring in a bill for empowering the civic authorities at Norwich against royalist insurgents.97CJ vi. 295b.

Wastell’s reason for abandoning his seat after September 1649 is unclear. Nevertheless, he remained active locally as a justice and as a Yorkshire militia commissioner throughout the early 1650s.98Doncaster Archives, DD/CROM/11/30; N. Riding QS Recs. ed. Atkinson (N. Riding Rec. Soc. v), 48, 129. If the vitriolic, pro-commonwealth pamphlet, The Countrey Committees Laid Open, is to be credited, he was one of the North Riding’s most active and influential figures by mid-1649, but also no great friend of the Rump.99The Countrey Committees Laid Open (1649), 4. Its anonymous author asserted that ‘none can be more properly called a neuter [than Wastell], or rather a dangerous actor on all sides’, and made numerous accusations against him – that he had sought to compound with the royalists in 1643; had protected papists and delinquents; had shown the Scots ‘assurings and affections...since our victory [in 1648]’; and had enriched himself to the tune of thousands of pounds (principally, it was claimed, by securing the lead mines at Marrick, near Richmond, which were apparently worth £1,500 a year). ‘As [a] Parliament man’, the writer went on, ‘he seldom appears, for his gainful trade is in the country as a committeeman, lawyer and justice – and what he pleases to conclude, is law’. In conclusion, the writer denounced Wastell as ‘a person dangerous to the state, [who] hath got much by the aforesaid ways, which hath much increased his estate, and one [who], if further trusted, will most assuredly betray the commonwealth’.

That Wastell had little relish for republican rule is probably true. But this portrayal of him as a grasping and unscrupulous trimmer is a piece of political caricature. The pamphlet’s author was strongly prejudiced against any whom he thought were not solidly behind the commonwealth, and some of his claims against Wastell – for example, that he had never fought for Parliament – were manifestly untrue. And while it is likely that Wastell had indeed profited from his activities as a committeeman and lawyer, it is worth noting that he showed no enthusiasm for purchasing crown lands. Even his purchases of former church lands were relatively modest: in May 1648, he and his kinsman James Danby* had acquired lands in Northallerton; and in May 1651, Wastell and Henry Darley purchased the demesne rights of the borough of Northallerton.100Coll. Top. et Gen. i. 8, 291. This last purchase would at least appear to confirm the view of the author of The Countrey Committees Laid Open that Wastell and Darley were close political allies. But although both men were unhappy about certain aspects of the commonwealth, not least the events which had led to its establishment, Wastell’s willingness to serve the protectorate would not have found sympathy with the strongly anti-Cromwellian Darley.

In political terms, Wastell probably felt more at ease under the protectorate than he had under the Rump, and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654 he was returned for Richmond – probably on his own interest as the town’s recorder and a local landowner.101Supra, ‘Richmond’. He was named to seven committees in this Parliament – all of them between 22 September and 12 October – including those for suppressing newsbooks and diurnals; to review the armed forces; for Scottish affairs; and on an ordinance for regulating the court of chancery, where he continued to hold office.102CJ vii. 369b, 370a, 370b, 371b, 373b, 374a, 375b. His only appointment in the House during his entire parliamentary career that related directly to ecclesiastical issues was on 25 September, when he was named to a committee for assessing the powers of the commissioners for ejecting scandalous ministers.103CJ vii. 370a. He had himself had been named as a commissioner for the North Riding that August, and it is clear that he favoured some form of godly, publicly-maintained ministry.104A. and O ii. 971. In October 1656, he and several other North Riding magistrates, including William Ayscoughe* and Thomas Harrison II*, wrote to the protector in support of a parish minister who had been threatened with legal proceedings by his ejected predecessor.105CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 144.

Although Wastell remained active in local government under the protectorate, he does not appear to have sought election to the second and third protectoral Parliaments.106N. Riding QS Recs. ed. Atkinson (N. Riding Rec. Soc. v), 150, 250; N. Riding QS Recs. ed. Atkinson (N. Riding Rec. Soc. vi), 1, 13. In poor health by September 1659, he died a few months later and was buried at Bolton-on-Swale on 12 December.107N. Yorks. RO, DC/RMB II/1/1 (entry for 14 Sept. 1659); Bolton-on-Swale par. reg. In his will, he charged his estate with bequests totalling about £1,900 and annuities of £40 a year. His legatees included his ‘cousin’ James Danby.108Abstracts of Yorks. Wills ed. Clay, 166. Wastell’s success in enhancing his family’s wealth and standing was such that his eldest son and widow were able to marry into established gentry families – namely, the Saviles of Methley and the Tanckreds of Whixley respectively.109Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. iii. 255. None of Wastell’s immediate family sat in Parliament.