DALSTON, William (c.1613-83), of Dalston Hall, Dalston, Cumb.

Dalston was returned for Carlisle to the Short Parliament on 17 March 1640. He was elected on the interest of his father, Sir George Dalston, who was returned that same day as a knight of the shire for Cumberland. William Dalston received no committee appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. He and his father were again returned for Carlisle and Cumberland respectively in the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn.31Supra, ‘Carlisle’; ‘Cumberland’. The grant of a baronetcy to Dalston in February 1641 (with the creation fee waived), his knighthood in July, and his appointment to the Cumberland bench in August, suggest that the king regarded him as a potential supporter at Westminster.32C231/5, p. 477; SO3/12, f. 135v; CB; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 210. But apart from taking the Protestation on 6 May 1641, Dalston seems to have been entirely inactive in the Commons during the first 18 months of the Long Parliament.33CJ ii. 136b. He was granted leave of absence on 1 May, 6 August and 14 August 1641, and his first parliamentary appointment was not until 28 March 1642, when he was named to a committee for the redress of grievances in Northumberland.34CJ ii. 131a, 239b, 256b, 591b.

Dalston was among the last royalists to quit his place in the Commons in 1642. When he was named to the Cumberland commission of array on 18 June 1642 he was apparently still attending the House, for on 9 July he was appointed to a committee for ordering the militia.35Northants. RO, FH133; CJ ii. 663b. He was granted leave of absence that day on the motion of the leading ‘fiery spirit’, William Strode I.36PJ iii. 190. Dalston seems to have abandoned his seat shortly thereafter and withdrawn to Cumberland, although there are signs that he shared his father’s initial reluctance to contribute to the king’s service in the region. He was evidently removed from the Cumberland bench by the king at some point during the early 1640s – probably with his father in the autumn of 1642 for refusing to serve as a commissioner of array.37Supra, ‘Sir George Dalston’. In March 1643, however, he was named with several leading Cumberland and Westmorland royalists as a commissioner for disarming parliamentarians in the two counties. Furthermore, by July 1643 he had accepted a commission from William Cavendish, 1st earl of Newcastle – the commander of the king’s army in the north – as a colonel of horse and foot and was serving as an officer under Sir Philip Musgrave*, the commander of the region’s royalist forces.38SP23/150, p. 439; SP23/192, p. 523; Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DMUS/5/5/1/7; DMUS/5/5/2/9; DMUS/5/5/4/27; CBME, Box 32/1. On 28 September, the Commons ordered that Dalston’s estate be sequestered for his ‘long and willful neglecting and deserting the service of the commonwealth in not attending ... the House’.39CJ iii. 256a.

Dalston’s decision to side with the king, like that of his father, probably arose from a mixture of expediency – a desire to preserve his estate and retain his local offices – and an apparent attachment to Prayer-Book Protestantism.40Supra, ‘Sir George Dalston’. Although both Dalston and his father were labelled as papists by a local parliamentarian in 1648, there is no firm evidence that they were anything other than loyal members of the Church of England.41CCC 99.

Dalston attended the Oxford Parliament and concurred with the other Members in their letter to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex of 22 January 1644 urging him to compose a peace.42Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DMUS/5/5/4/24; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 575. That same day, he was disabled from sitting by the Commons.43CJ iii. 374a. He had returned to the borders by September 1644, when his regiment was probably part of the force routed by the Scots upon entering the region. He subsequently took refuge in the royalist garrison at Carlisle, where he remained until the city’s surrender in June 1645.44Mercurius Britannicus no. 42 (1-8 July 1644), 328-9 (E.54.6); I. Tullie, Siege of Carlisle ed. S. Jefferson (Whitehaven, 1988), 3-5, 7.

Dalston petitioned to compound on 20 November 1645, admitting that he had been in arms against Parliament ‘but never in service out of his own county ... nor did ever oppose the Parliament’s forces in the field’.45SP23/192, pp. 519, 523. He claimed to have debts of £560, that his estate was chargeable for £2,400 for his sisters’ portions, and that his personal estate had been ‘wholly plundered and his house defaced’.46SP23/79, p. 659; SP23/192, p. 523; CCC 960. He and two other royalist MPs, William Allestrye and John Whistler, were paraded at the bar of the House on 28 November, before being discharged to perfect their compositions.47CJ iv. 358a, 365a. Unmoved by his plea for clemency, the Committee for Compounding* fined him at a third of his estate, that is £3,600 – a sum subsequently reduced, on petition, to £3,000.48SP23/192, p. 521; SP23/79, p. 656; CCC 960. He fared slightly better with the Committee for Advance of Money*, which, in August 1646, reduced his assessment from £1,000 to £200, ‘he having suffered by the armies on both sides’.49CCAM 424. Dalston was forced to sell some of his property in Hampshire (to his father’s creditor, William Wheler*) and Dorset in order to pay his various fines, which he had succeeded in doing by June 1649.50SP23/4, f. 167v; C54/3589/12; LC4/202, f. 337; CCC 961.

Dalston seems to have lived quietly on his estates between 1646 and 1660. He was rewarded for his loyalty at the Restoration by appointment as captain of Carlisle Castle – an office enjoyed by his father – and he also regained his place on the Cumberland bench.51C220/9/4; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 281. He was a candidate for knight of the shire in the county by-election of 1665, but he was defeated by Sir John Lowther of Whitehaven.52HMC Lonsdale, 93; HP Commons, 1660-90, ‘Cumberland’. By 1667, Dalston and his family had moved to Heath Hall in Warmfield, near Wakefield, Yorkshire, where his eldest son George had inherited an estate from a cousin – a grandson of Dalston’s mother-in-law – in 1664.53College of Arms, Item 890: Visitation pprs. Yorks., co. Dur., Northumb. 1672, unfol.; Haswell, ‘Fam. of Dalston’, 221-2.

Dalston died early in 1683 and was buried at Warmfield on 17 January.54CB; Haswell, ‘Fam. of Dalston’, 224. In the preface to his will, he hoped to obtain salvation ‘by a lively faith’ in Jesus and to be numbered among ‘His people and elect’. He bequeathed the bulk of his estate to his eldest surviving son Sir John Dalston and made bequests totalling about £1,200.55Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 60, f. 266. Aside from his father, none of Dalston’s immediate family sat in Parliament.