ARMYNE, William (1622-58), of Osgodby, Lenton, Lincs.

Most of Armyne’s parliamentary career was spent in the shadow of his father, the eminent Lincolnshire Parliament-man Sir William Armyne 1st bt. His return for Cumberland in March 1646 (at the age of just 23) was secured as a favour to Sir William from one of his principal allies in the region, Sir Wilfrid Lawson*. The radical Cumberland lawyer John Musgrave alleged (almost certainly correctly) that Armyne junior, ‘a beardless boy’, had been elected through the machinations of Lawson – the sheriff of Cumberland at the time – and his under-sheriff.23J. Musgrave, A Fourth Word to the Wise (1647), 8 (E.391.9). Sir William Armyne had been intimately involved in Cumberland politics since his appointment as a parliamentary commissioner to Scotland (and subsequently to accompany the Scottish army in England) in the summer of 1643 and had helped to protect Lawson from charges of treachery and delinquency levelled against him by the Scots commissioners in 1645.24Infra, ‘Sir William Armyne’, ‘Sir Wilfrid Lawson’. Sir William had also worked closely with one of Cumberland’s leading parliamentarian figures, Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton.25Musgrave, A Fourth Word to the Wise, 3.

Armyne was apparently one of the less active of the northern ‘recruiters’. He was named to only seven committees before Pride’s Purge and was granted leave of absence on three occasions between August 1646 and September 1648.26CJ iv. 555b, 612b, 616a, 625b, 656a, 712a; v. 112a, 238a, 330a, 599b, 696a; vi. 34b. In public life, he seems to have taken an interest in ecclesiastical issues and godly reform, securing nomination to committees concerning the Westminster Assembly, the removal of malignant ministers and to consider a fitting maintenance for the bishops following the sale of church lands in the autumn of 1646.27CJ iv. 555b, 625b, 712a. He was also appointed to the June 1646 and August 1648 commissions for excluding scandalous offenders from the sacrament.28A. and O. In his private life, however, he was apparently given to ‘violent and over-ruling’ storms of passion that led him to commit ‘many sins’.29C. Shute, Ars Piè Moriendi (1658), 24, 25. Politically, his addition on 8 July 1647 to the committee chaired by John Bulkeley for receiving complaints against MPs for taking bribes may indicate that he was broadly aligned with the Independents, who sought to use this committee to put pressure on their Presbyterian opponents.30CJ v. 238a.

Declared absent at the call of the House on 9 October 1647, Armyne received only one committee appointment before being declared absent again on 26 September 1648.31CJ v. 330a, 599b; vi. 34b. He was almost certainly away from Westminster between September 1648 and 2 February 1649, when he registered his dissent to the 5 December 1648 vote – that the king’s answers to the Newport propositions were a sufficient grounds for a settlement.32CJ vi. 129a. He received six committee appointments in the Rump – the first on 3 February 1649, when he was named to a committee for preventing the preaching or printing of any material denouncing the trial and execution of the king. 33CJ vi. 131b, 382b; vii. 222b, 244a, 245b, 257b. During the trial of the Leveller leader John Lilburne – an ally of Musgrave’s – in October 1649, Armyne reportedly declared that ‘unless this fellow (meaning Lilburne) were removed, and that for opposing their [i.e. the Rump’s] authority, the people would never submit to it’.34Mercurius Pragmaticus (for King Charls II) no. 27 (23-30 Oct. 1649), sig. Dd4v (E.575.40). Armyne’s next appointment in the House was to a committee set up on 14 March 1650 on a bill for establishing a high court of justice in London.35CJ vi. 382b. He probably supported the commonwealth’s godly latitudinarianism, for on 6 January 1653 he was named to a committee on a bill relating to relief for tender consciences and the suppression of popery.36CJ vii. 244a. He was also involved in presenting godly ministers to sequestered or former crown and church livings during the 1650s.37Add. 36792, ff. 33, 61, 64, 82v.

Armyne continued to be named to local commissions after the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653 and seems to have been favourably disposed towards the protectorate.38TSP iii. 311. He died in London on 2 January 1658 and was buried at Lenton on 17 January.39PROB11/273, f. 9; Lincs. Peds. 42. At his funeral sermon, the preacher referred to his ‘holy abhorrency and detestation ... of his sins’ and to his desire that ‘all vain pomp and ostentation’ be omitted at his interment.40Shute, Ars Piè Moriendi, epistle dedicatory, 29. Armyne himself, in the preface to his will, acknowledged his ‘sins and offences’ and asked God that ‘if He please to add any more days to my life, He may add repentance to those days that they may be spent more to the glory of His holy name and the eternal comfort of my own poor immortal soul’. He assigned the bulk of his estate to trustees to pay off his debts, which amounted to over £8,000, and to provide portions of £8,000 and £6,000 for his two surviving daughters. His legatees included his brother-in-law, the godly Essex knight Sir Thomas Barnardiston*, and among his trustees was his uncle (and one of his principal creditors), the prominent Lincolnshire parliamentarian Thomas Lister*, and his cousin, the Nottinghamshire gentleman Thomas Bristowe*.41PROB11/273, f. 9; Lincs. RO, RED/1/2/3. None of Armyne’s immediate descendants sat in Parliament.