MACKWORTH, Humphrey II (1631-81), of Shrewsbury.

Humphrey Mackworth II was a child when the civil war broke out, and probably spent the first 20 years of his life in Shrewsbury. He was admitted to Gray’s Inn, the inn where in the early 1650s his father was an increasingly distinguished member. This legal training combined with the powerful patronage of his father in post-civil war Shrewsbury secured him the post of town clerk there, but he played no other part in local government affairs in Shropshire until Humphrey Mackworth I was called from his governorship of Shrewsbury to serve in the lord protector’s council. Shrewsbury garrison was one of those retained on Oliver Cromwell’s* advice in a review of 1654, and Humphrey seems to have taken over from his father, initially with the rank of lieutenant-colonel.9Burton’s Diary, i. pp. lxxviii, xcii; CJ vii. 371b. As the son of a local man who enjoyed something of a heroic reputation for his defiance of the Scots in 1651, Mackworth did not have to strive to secure his Shrewsbury seat in the first protectorate Parliament, which met in September 1654.

In the 1654 Parliament, Mackworth was elected to the committee on the army and navy (26 Sept.), assuming he and not his busy and eminent father was the ‘Mr Mackworth’ identified by the clerk, and with his father was named to the committee for Irish affairs. A related appointment to the committee on parliamentary elections in Ireland and on the same day (5 Oct.) a place on a committee where his father exercised an important influence, on chancery reform, completed his contribution to this assembly. He is not known to have spoken in it.10CJ vii. 370b, 371b, 373b, 374a.

On his return to Shrewsbury after the closure of the Parliament, Mackworth was busy as security chief in the Shropshire region. In March 1655, he reported intelligence he had gathered on insurrections allegedly being planned not only in Shropshire but all over England, and in the strategy for quashing the revolt, the lord protector’s council wrote both to him and to his brother, Thomas Mackworth*. The ringleaders were arrested, and troops were sent from the garrison at Hereford under Wroth Rogers*.11TSP iii. 208; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 94. Mackworth sought access to Cromwell, in order to convey confidential intelligence, through Colonel Philip Jones*, an ally of his late father’s.12TSP iii. 218. Through March and into early April, Shrewsbury castle provided the venue for interrogations of suspects, under the direction of Mackworth and his kinsman, William Crowne*, who forwarded the examinations to John Thurloe*.13TSP iii. 219, 230, 244, 245, 254, 258, 266, 285, 289, 303, 310, 316, 326, 353-4, 355. A warrant to local government officers in Shrewsbury signed by Mackworth in May 1655 contains the names of 131 suspects.14Salop Archives, 3365/2440. In July 1655, he experienced difficulties in maintaining his complement of soldiers at Shrewsbury, and had to petition on his own behalf for troops, and on behalf of Crowne for expenses incurred by him during the security operation.15CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 255, 257, 259, 334; 1656-7, p. 300. The following month, a rueful Mackworth had to report to the council how one of his royalist prisoners had escaped.16TSP iii. 706.

Mackworth, like his father and brother, was a stalwart among the Shropshire justices at quarter sessions, and attended particularly frequently during the period of the major-generals’ superintendency, but his contribution to the work of Parliament remained slight.17Salop County Records, i. 19, 20, 21, 23, 26, 53. He was again returned for Shrewsbury to the second of the protectorate Parliaments, but only one committee in that assembly, on managing timber supplies for the navy, can be safely identified as including him among its number (27 Sept. 1656).18CJ vii. 429b. He seems to have enjoyed a good standing with the government as a reliable agent, however. It was probably he, rather than his father, who looked into the excise commissioners’ claim that Thomas Pride* owed them arrears for his farm. Later, the lord protector’s council employed him to investigate the petition of Sir John Temple*, who in turn had recently been appointed to settle claims among the adventurers in Ireland of 1642: Humphrey Mackworth I had been one such. In February 1657, Mackworth conducted an enquiry into the petition by the son of the farmer of the prisage of wines, an ancient right of the crown in wine-importing ports which had been enjoyed by Sir William Waller*.19CSP Dom. 1654, p. 426; 1656-7, pp. 236, 269.

It may have been this previous knowledge of the excise, together with Mackworth’s general reputation as a safe pair of hands, that commended him to Parliament and council as a farmer of that revenue stream. On 22 October 1657, Mackworth was given a commission under the great seal for the farm of the excise on beer in Lancashire for three and a half years, for which he had to pay £4,650 a year.20CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 135. The work evidently took him away from Shrewsbury, as he seems to have made his last appearance at quarter sessions in January 1658, although he kept his governorship of the town, and maintained a presence sufficient for him to report in October 1658 on disaffected elements at work there.21CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 166-7. He was returned once again to Parliament in Richard Cromwell’s* only assembly, but his commitments as an excise farmer ensured that his participation in parliamentary activity was minimal. His brother was named to a few committees, but Humphrey’s only certain attendance in the House was on 11 April 1659, when he stood up to inform his colleagues that the arrears of £822 on his excise farm with which he had been charged would be cleared within two weeks.22CJ vii. 635; Burton’s Diary, iv. 401.

Mackworth kept the Lancashire excise farm for the rest of 1659, despite a statement on 21 September, during the restored Rump Parliament, that £1162 was still owing, but he surrendered it on 31 December.23CJ vii. 783. It was probably he, rather than his brother, who was asked to attend the council of state on 10 January 1660, and it was more likely to have been security in Shropshire than the state of the excise on which his expertise was sought, but his public career came to an abrupt end when the king returned.24CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 307. Thereafter, the bachelor Mackworth retired completely from public life, and died in 1681.25St Chad Shrewsbury par. reg.