STANLEY, Sir Thomas (aft. 1621-1674), of Tickencor, co. Waterford, Ireland

Sir Thomas Stanley of Tickencor should not be confused with his Cheshire namesake, who served, in turn, Parliament, protector and king with equanimity; nor does he seem to have been closely related to the Stanleys, earls of Derby.16CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 750; CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 130, 132-3, 364, 409. Indeed, the Waterford MP was of fairly lowly stock, and seems to have been born and brought up in Ireland. Stanley’s father served as a Church of Ireland minister, initially having a living near Maryborough in the Irish midlands, where his eldest son, Stephen, was born in 1621.17Al. Dubl. Although Stephen was admitted to Trinity College, Dublin, in 1639, this was not a luxury extended to the second son, Thomas, who seems to have received no formal education. In the months after the Irish rebellion of 1641, Rev. Thomas Stanley, then vicar of Kinnitty in King’s County, was ‘robbed and despoiled of sundry goods and cattle’ and had his horses stolen by the Catholic Irish.181641 Depositions website. The younger Thomas Stanley no doubt joined the Protestant forces soon afterwards, although the details of his military career during the Confederate wars are obscure. He was mentioned in a list compiled by Colonel Michael Jones as captain in Colonel Fenwick’s regiment at Kildare in 1648, albeit ‘in England by licence’.19TCD, MS 844, f. 44. He was sufficiently prominent by April 1649 to secure a grant of arms from the Ulster king of arms, choosing a design which resembled that of the earls of Derby, and which he was proudly using on his seal a decade later.20CB iv. 177; Lansd. 823, f. 317v.

By December 1649, Stanley had been promoted to the rank of major, and given command of the garrison town of Trim, co. Meath. In that month he was praised by Attorney-general William Basill for his service in taking the Irish stronghold of Drumcree, 12 miles from the town.21Tanner Lttrs, 323. After the suppression of the rebellion, Stanley played a minor role in the politics of the Irish army, serving on the general council in 1653 which discussed disbandment and the problems relating to arrears of pay.22Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 365-6. By this time he had also became involved in the administration, in December 1652 being appointed both as revenue commissioner at Clonmel and as a commissioner in the high court of justice sitting in Dublin.23Eg. 1762, f. 204v; TCD, MS 844, f. 136. He served as justice of the peace for Leinster in the early 1650s and for co. Meath from 1656, as assessment commissioner for cos. Meath and Louth from October 1654, and in September 1656 he was given jurisdiction over the two counties as part of a country-wide move against sedition.24TCD, MS 844, f. 110; Cromwellian Settlement of Ire. ed. Prendergast, 126; An Assessment for Ire.; Ireland under the Commonwealth, ii. 622. At the end of September 1656, Stanley was active in suppressing the Irish tories in Munster, in conjunction with Sir Hardress Waller*, and at around this time he was appointed governor of Clonmel, co. Tipperary – a post he held until the Restoration.25Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 27 Sept. 1656, 3 Sept. 1657.

It was while serving as governor of Clonmel in the later 1650s that Stanley became involved with Henry Cromwell* and his political ally, Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*), the champion of the ‘Old Protestant’ interest in Ireland. In September 1657 Henry Cromwell visited Clonmel, and on the same occasion Stanley (as governor of the town) played host to Broghill’s brother, the 2nd earl of Cork (Sir Richard Boyle*).26Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 3 Sept. 1657. In August 1658, Stanley joined Henry Cromwell’s entourage during his official visit to Cork’s castle at Lismore in co. Waterford, and the combined influence of the Cromwells and the Boyles may have prompted Stanley’s appointment as sheriff of Waterford and Tipperary in the same year.27NLI, MS 6259, endpapers; Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 2 Aug. 1658; CB iv. 177. Certainly his return for the same counties in the elections for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament was on the interest of the earl of Cork, who had extensive estates in the region: on 6 January 1659, the earl visited Tallow and noted that he had ‘conferred with some of the inhabitants there about electing Major Stanley’.28Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 6 Jan. 1659. Henry Cromwell made his own support for the new MP clear on 24 January, when he knighted Stanley at Dublin Castle, just before his departure for England.29Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 224.

Stanley’s loyalty to the Cromwellian state underpinned his activities in the Commons. On 18 March he intervened in the debate on the right of Scottish MPs to sit at Westminster, arguing that ‘they have a right to sit here … they are Members of the Parliament of the commonwealth, and neither danger nor compliments will cause them to withdraw’. He also dismissed those who opposed them on the grounds that they would sway votes: ‘they in themselves are not considerable, but only in conjunction with others’ who, logically ‘must withdraw with them’.30Schilling thesis, 234-5; Burton’s Diary, iv. 174. On 23 March Stanley defended the right of Irish MPs, claiming ‘not to speak for Ireland, but for the English of Ireland’. He drew parallels with the Scots, but was careful to base the Irish case on right of kinship, not legal measures

the only difference is that they had an act of Union; Ireland, being more naturally united, and inseparably, in the substance, needs not so much formality of a law. Language, habit, laws, interest, in every respect the same in kind. They differ only in degrees, as a child does from a man. Ireland may say they are born free. The Members for Ireland, and the electors, are all Englishmen, who naturally claim a right to have votes in making laws by which they must be governed. They have fought your battles, obtained and preserved your interest, designed by the famous Long Parliament, obtained by blood, fought for by prayer solemnly.31Burton’s Diary, iv. 239; Derbys. RO, D238/10/9/2, ff. 3v-4.

Once the Union bills had been voted through, Stanley put his weight behind the Other House, established under the Humble Petition and Advice. On 28 March 1659, he was a teller in favour of deferring the vote on accepting the legitimacy of the Other House until absent members were brought back to the chamber. This seems to have been a ploy to prevent the radical opponents of the measure from gaining a majority in a depleted House of Commons, and the legislation was passed by a fuller House soon afterwards.32CJ vii. 621b. On 6 April, Stanley was named to the committee which considered the relationship between the two Houses – an appointment which confirms his support of the Other House.33CJ vii. 627a.

The 1659 Parliament was dissolved on 21 April, and Stanley remained in London for a short time, acting as the eyes and ears of Henry Cromwell. On 11 May, having returned to Ireland, Stanley wrote to Henry that he had attended Protector Richard ‘since my Lord of Broghill left London, and did receive his commands to give your excellency his kind respects with such an account of affairs at London as I was able to take notice of’.34Henry Cromwell Corresp. 514. Stanley’s role as intermediary between Richard and Henry Cromwell in Broghill’s absence confirms his attachment to the Old Protestant cause in the last days of the protectorate. With the re-establishment of the commonwealth, Stanley lost his position as governor of Clonmel, although he continued to live in the area; and when Broghill and Sir Charles Coote* seized control of the Dublin administration in December of that year, Stanley took control of Clonmel, and moved against the radical sectary, Colonel Robert Phaier, at Cork City.35Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 116; Irish Census, 1659, 343; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 189; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 708. Yet the Old Protestant party was far from united, and in the confusion, Stanley came under the influence of the most senior officer remaining in Ireland, his former colleague, Sir Hardress Waller, who opposed the re-introduction of the MPs excluded from Parliament in 1648. In the early weeks of 1660, when Waller seized Dublin Castle in an attempted coup, he gained the support of Stanley and a handful of other officers. Waller’s rising was soon crushed, and Stanley was one of several ring-leaders imprisoned by Coote as an enemy of the Westminster Parliament.36Ludlow, Mems. ii. 230.

Coote continued to be suspicious of Stanley’s motives after the Restoration, and in October 1660 he warned Secretary Nicholas of ‘underhand working’, by Stanley and others in Munster, to disturb the king’s peace.37CSP Ire. 1660-2, p. 45. But others accepted that Stanley’s flirtation with the radicals was a temporary lapse, and he seems to have returned to the Boyle constellation by the end of 1660. In February 1661 Charles II recommended Stanley’s case to the lord justices, and recommended that his lands be restored; in the same year Stanley was elected to sit for co. Louth in the Irish Parliament; and he continued to enjoy the patronage of Lord Broghill (now 1st earl of Orrery), who recommended him as fit to receive a royal pardon in April 1661.38CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 223, 316; CJI i. 592. In January 1662 Orrery was advised to support a bill granting compensation to his political rival, the duke of Ormond, and ‘to send for Colonel [Robert] Shapcote*, Sir Thomas Stanley, Sir Anthony Morgan* and some others of the discreetest of that gang, and cause them to move the House in it’.39Cal. Orrery Pprs. ed. E. MacLysaght (Dublin, 1941), 16. Stanley’s political influence in Ireland was acknowledged in March 1674, when he was appointed to the Irish privy council, the king claiming to have ‘a particular esteem of the prudence, loyalty and good affection of our trusty and well beloved Sir Thomas Stanley’.40Stowe 204, f. 300. On his death, later in the same year, Stanley left a modest landed estate and three young sons, two of whom were to have important political careers in the early eighteenth century: John, created baronet in 1699, and Stephen, MP for Waterford 1717-25.41CB iv. 177.