PLAYTERS, Sir William, 2nd bt. (1590-1668), of Sotterley, Suff. and Westminster, Mdx.

Responding to Anthony Wood’s comments on his notes on Sir William Playters’s life, John Aubrey thought it necessary to defend his interest in him. Acknowledging that Playters did not really merit inclusion on the basis of importance in his collection of ‘brief lives’, Aubrey insisted that he was of note because ‘he was a merry man in the reign of the Saints’.40Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. Bennett, 473.

The Playters had owned land at Sotterley in the north-eastern corner of Suffolk since the 1460s. The purchaser of the manor there, Thomas Playter, was a country attorney who had been retained by Sir John Fastolf and the Pastons.41Suckling, Suff. i. 82; Copinger, Manors of Suff. vii. 216; Add. 5524, f. 18; Vis. Suff. 1561, 1577 and 1612, 56-7; C. Richmond, ‘The expenses of Thomas Playter’, Proc. Suff. Inst. Arch, xxxv. 41-52. The family had since obtained additional lands in the adjacent parishes of Uggeshall, Willingham and Ellough.42Copinger, Manors of Suff. ii. 176, vii. 168, 223; CUL, MS Plans 904. By the early years of the seventeenth century Playters’s father, Thomas, was worth about £2,000 a year and was ‘reputed a worthy commonwealth man that studied the good of his country’.43Suckling, Suff. i. 83; Soc. Antiq. MS 667, p. 549.

William Playters was the third child and first son of the marriage between Thomas Playters (later Sir Thomas 1st bt.) and Ann, the daughter of William Swan of Southfleet, Kent. By the time William’s mother died in October 1594, she had produced another son. Thomas Playters then remarried, and by his second wife, Anne, daughter of Sir Anthony Browne of Elsing, Norfolk, he had another 18 children.44Wadley, ‘Notes’, 45-7, 250; Partridge, ‘Playters of Sotterley’, 75, 78; N. Pevsner and E. Radcliffe, Suff. (1975), 425. Nothing is known about William Playters’ education. Aubrey did say that ‘he was a very well bred gentleman’, that he ‘had travelled France, Italy, etc., and understood well those languages’ and that he was ‘a good linguist and a good antiquary’.45Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. Bennett, 472-3. Moreover, in dedicating a translation of Artemidorus’s Oneirocritica to him in 1644, its publisher, Bernard Alsop, would imply that Playters had travelled abroad at least twice, once on his own and later with his son.46Artemidorus, The Interpretation of Dreames (1644), sig. A4. He was evidently abroad in 1621 when Sir George Wright† sought permission on his behalf for him to extend that absence.47SP77/14/547. So it would seem that his continental trips took place only after he was already married. That marriage to Frances Le Grys in 1615 had brought Playters lands at Billingford and Dickleburgh in the most southern part of Norfolk, for her father, Christopher Le Grys, had died in 1601 and she was his only child.48Wadley, ‘Notes’, 47; University of Chicago, Bacon coll. 2765-6; Blomefield, Norf. v. 320-1. In August 1623 Playters’ father became a baronet and William was himself knighted by the king at Wanstead, Essex, the following month.49CB, i. 220; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 182.

During the early years of their marriage, the Playters lived at Ditchingfield, a village just inside Norfolk but only about eight miles from Sotterley.50University of Chicago, Bacon coll. 2765. Later their principal residence appears to have been on the Le Grys estates at Billingford.51Blomefield, Norf. v. 178; Essex RO, D/DBy C22, f. 112. It would have been for this reason that he came to know William Le Neve, the antiquary and York herald, whose family lived at Aslacton, a short distance from Billingford.52Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA53/407/77; HA53/359/280/5. In 1631 Playters was acting as one of Le Neve’s trustees when they bought Aslacton manor on Le Neve’s behalf from Edward Duke*.53Blomefield, Norf. v. 178-9.

Playters’ life, however, was not confined to the immediate locality of his country seat. He is known to have visited London, for he sought permission in 1632 to remain there, citing his wife’s ill-health as a reason.54CSP Dom. 1631-33, p. 380. This particular visit to London is unlikely to have been an isolated example. Indeed, he was (again according to Aubrey) part of the fast-living circle around Henry Marten*, being ‘a great admirer and lover of handsome women, and kept several’.55Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. Bennett, 472. These were also the years when he visited the continent again with his son, Thomas. In February 1635 the two of them were given permission to travel abroad for three years.56PC2/44, p. 420. By July of that year he was in Florence.57Warws. RO, CR2017/C94.

Sir William’s family connections were widespread. Through the marriage of his half-sister Elizabeth, to Sir Stephen Soame in 1619, he became a brother-in-law of Thomas Soame*, a leading London merchant and his future colleague in the Long Parliament.58Wadley, ‘Notes’, 47; Copinger, Manors of Suff. i. 55-6, v. 207; Suff. RO (Bury), Acc. 613/54. He acted as executor for his uncle, Drake William Playters, in 1632 and was granted wardship of the eldest son, Tollemache Playters, a grandson of Sir Lionel Tollemache of Helmingham, Suffolk; through him, Playters gained a useful link with the Tollemache family.59Wadley, ‘Notes’, 176; Eg. 2410, f. 13. In 1637 (presumably on their return from the continent) Sir William agreed to marry his only son, Thomas, to Rebecca, the daughter of the late Thomas Chapman of Wormley, Hertfordshire. The bride’s elder sister, Rhoda, would in 1646 marry Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*, 2nd Lord Fairfax of Cameron.60Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA53/407/77; Le Neve’s Peds. of the Knights ed. G.W. Marshall (Harl. Soc. viii), 82; K.W. Murray, ‘Chapman of Herts. and London’, The Gen. n.s. xxxiv. 4-5. On the death of his father in May 1638 Sir William inherited the family estates in Suffolk and the baronetcy.61C142/588/87; WARD7/92/144; PROB11/177/176; Wadley, ‘Notes’, 250. Later that year there was a misunderstanding between him and his neighbour, Sir Frederick Cornwallis*, over the presentation to the living at Oakley, but this was resolved amicably.62Essex RO, D/Dby C22, ff. 112, 114. Through the Cornwallis family, he was on friendly terms with the clerk of the privy council, Thomas Meautys*.63Essex RO, D/Dby C18, f. 41.

It was probably in late 1638 or early 1639 that the 2nd earl of Suffolk appointed Playters as one of his deputy lieutenants in Suffolk, perhaps in succession to Sir Lionel Tollemache† (Tollemache Playters’s uncle). As part of the duties of this office, it fell to him to help organize the musters of the Suffolk trained bands for the Scottish campaigns.64Add. 15084, ff. 1, 4, 25v; Bodl. Tanner 67, f. 112v. In the case of the latter muster, he reported to one of his fellow deputy lieutenants, Sir Robert Crane*, on the disorderly state of the Suffolk troops.65Bodl. Tanner 69, f. 47.

It is likely that, in the elections held in the autumn of 1640 for the Long Parliament, Playters planned to be elected, not at Orford, but at Dunwich. Six days before the general assembly of Dunwich met to choose its MPs, the corporation admitted Playters as a freeman. As Dunwich was only about ten miles from Sotterley, less than half the distance to Orford, Playters may have thought he stood a better chance of success there than at the more distant borough. In the event, however, on 22 October, the day before the election was held at Dunwich, the Orford corporation selected Playters and Sir Charles Le Gros as their MPs.66Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE6/3/3, f. 118; EE5/8/5. His nomination may have owed something to the local influence of the Tollemache family. It may also have been assisted by the fact that his half-brother, Lionel, already owned some land in the town.67Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE5/5/25: rates assess., 1654-68; EE5/9/2. A more substantial backer could have been the lord admiral, the 4th earl of Northumberland (Algernon Percy†), who at about this time appointed Sir William as his deputy in Suffolk.68Vice Admirals comp. Sainty and Thrush, 44. Playters’s success at Orford offset the humiliation of his defeat by Henry Coke* and Anthony Bedingfield* at Dunwich on 23 October.69Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE6/3/3, ff. 118v-119.

On entering the Commons Playters kept a low profile. In the third week of the new session he was one of the many MPs who offered bonds for £1,000 each to secure the first parliamentary loan.70Procs. LP, i. 228, 231, 235. Four months later, on 4 March 1641, he offered a further £500 for the second loan.71Procs. LP, ii. 628, 654. He took the Protestation on 3 May 1641, the earliest possible date, but the impression that he had made little discernible impact is hardly altered by the fact that there are three passing glimpses of his activities in the following months.72CJ ii. 133b. A case in the court of wards between him and his brother-in-law, George Gent, was, by order of the Commons, allowed to proceed after he agreed to waive his rights as an MP to block civil litigation brought against him.73CJ ii. 154b; Procs. LP, iv. 531; Wadley, ‘Notes’, 47. In early July 1641 he was named to his first committee, which was that on the bill to prevent sheriffs charging excessive fees.74CJ ii. 200a. Later that month he agreed to extend the loan he had made in March 1641.75Procs. LP, vi. 142. It was probably sometime during the following year that he subscribed £600 to the expedition to suppress the rebellion in Ireland.76J.R. MacCormack, ‘The Irish Adventurers’, Irish Hist. Studies, x, 53. More significantly, on 7 March 1642 he was one of eight MPs appointed to the delegation to take the declaration of fears and jealousies to the king at Newmarket. This declaration, drawn up during the attempts to pass the militia ordinance, outlined Parliament’s reasons for believing that there was a conspiracy to overthrow Protestantism and went so far as to hint that the king was implicated in it. The other seven MPs on this delegation were among those most suspicious of royal intentions.77CJ ii. 469b; LJ iv. 629b-631b.

Assuming that Playters shared these suspicions, it was probably anticipated in both London and Suffolk that, when events escalated into armed conflict, he would play a leading part in the Suffolk resistance to the king. That he was included by the king in both the Suffolk commissions of array in June and August 1642 was probably just because he was already a deputy lieutenant.78Northants. RO FH133, unfol. It was also in that capacity that he wrote to the corporation of Dunwich in the spring of 1642, ordering them to look out for the escaped army plotter, Daniel O’Neill.79Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE6/3/3, f. 140. On 13 June Playters promised two horses to Parliament.80PJ iii. 476.

In early February 1643 he was one of the MPs ordered to travel to Suffolk to ensure that the deputy lieutenants acted on Parliament’s behalf.81CJ ii. 956b. The Suffolk sequestration commission set up in March 1643 included him, as did the additional committee for the county.82A. and O. On 8 June he pledged his loyalty to Parliament by taking the oath introduced in the wake of Edmund Waller’s* plot.83CJ iii. 120a. The following month he was one of the ten members of the Suffolk county committee who wrote to their counterparts in Essex to inform them of a planned meeting in Cambridge of the committee of the Eastern Association and of the arrangements to assemble the latest levy of troop there.84Suff. ed. Everitt, 79. That autumn he became one of the commissioners within Suffolk for the Eastern Association, as well as one of those appointed to levy money there. Being the senior baronet, his name headed the list of the first of the three standing committees to serve in weekly rota formed by the county committee that October.85A. and O.; Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE1/O2/1, f. 87v. Most importantly, during the early stages of the war he appears to have played some sort of military role. The most likely possibility is that he was still commanding one of the Suffolk militia troops.86Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE1/O2/1, f. 90; SP28/176: acc. of Samuel Moody, 1643-4, f. 4v; P. Fisher, For the...Committees for the County of Suffolke (1648), 21 (E.448.13).

What complicated his support for Parliament was that his son, Thomas, was strongly royalist. In early April 1642 Playters had obtained permission from the Commons for Thomas to take four horses with him to France. This journey was to be undertaken, Playters explained, for the sake of his son’s health.87CJ ii. 512a. This may have been connected with the death of Playters’s daughter-in-law from the plague, which resulted in Sir William’s being granted permission to return home on 30 April.88CJ ii. 549a; PJ ii. 248. Thomas Playters did not remain abroad for long and in late 1642 the king appointed him as the sheriff for Suffolk for 1643. The Commons queried this appointment, attempting in January 1643 to order him to attend the House to explain himself.89CJ ii. 939a. Sir William was subsequently accused by Miles Corbett* and John Gurdon* of having then ridden post-haste to Thomas’s house in Cambridgeshire to tell him of this order, thus allowing Thomas to disappear before some soldiers sent by Oliver Cromwell* arrived to take him into custody. Sir Simonds D’Ewes* defended Playters by arguing that Sir William had advised Thomas to go up to London to surrender his commission to Parliament, but that Thomas had decided to go to Oxford to surrender it to the king.90Harl. 164, f. 332. Sir William was himself summoned by the Commons on 16 March 1643 to answer Corbett’s and Gurdon’s allegations.91CJ iii. 4b. Unable to secure his appointment as sheriff, Charles I instead authorized Thomas in July 1643 to raise a regiment on his behalf. By August 1644 Thomas had probably fled abroad.92CCC 9, 864; Le Neve, Mon. Angl. iv. 42; Blomefield, Norf. i. 198-9; Suckling, Suff. i. 84; Copinger, Manors of Suff. ii. 177; CB, i. 220n; P.R. Newman, Royalist Officers in Eng. and Wales (New York and London, 1981), 298-9. In December Sir William thus found himself having to pay his son’s delinquency fine.93CCC 864; CJ iii. 709b, iv. 3a; Harl. 166, f. 168; HMC 6th Rep. 39; LJ vii. 118b-119a. Other members of the family appear to have shared Thomas Playters’s views. Earlier in 1644, Lionel Playters, Sir William’s clergyman half-brother, had been ejected as the rector of Uggeshall, partly because he was a royalist supporter.94Suff. Cttees. for Scandalous Mimisters ed. Holmes, 80; Walker Revised, 340-1. In September 1645 Sir William paid the delinquency fine of Henry Warner, the late husband of his half-sister, Lydia.95CCC 885; Wadley, ‘Notes’, 47; Partridge, ‘Playters of Sotterley’, 78; Copinger, Manors of Suff. iv. 185.

Playters himself seems not to have escaped suspicion. In particular, a loan by him of £150 to Parliament had been deemed insufficient and, on 25 November 1643, the Commons resolved that the Committee for Advance of Money should proceed against him. The Committee settled on £1,200 as the appropriate figure for his assessment and, taking into account the existing loan, demanded £450. In January 1644, with Playters having paid up, the demand was reduced and £50 was returned to him.96CJ iii. 319b; CCAM 302. Meanwhile, the new lord admiral, the 2nd earl of Warwick (Sir Robert Rich†), removed him as the vice-admiral of Suffolk in order to make way for Sir Henry Mildmay*.97Vice Admirals comp. Sainty and Thrush, 45. But some associated with Playters would have appeared less suspect in the eyes of the hard-liners in Parliament. During 1644 his servant, Francis Verdon, acted as the deputy to William Dowsing in north-east Suffolk on his mission to rid the local churches of all ‘popish’ images.98The Jnl. of William Dowsing ed. T. Cooper (Woodbridge, 2001), 76-80.

Developments on the battlefield may have been causing Playters to waiver. It was probably later that year that the corporation of Aldeburgh wrote to the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†) to suggest local alternatives to Charles Fleetwood* as the proposed commander of a garrison to be stationed near Lowestoft. In doing so, they added that the ‘well affected’ from the ‘broken bands’ of Playters and Sir John Wentworth should be placed under the command of Wentworth alone.99Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE1/O2/1, f. 90. Ordering Playters up to London would have had the effect of testing the extent to which absence indicated unreliability. Whether or not it was absence which had prevented him from doing so before, his belated adherence to the Solemn League and Covenant on 22 December was one way of silencing doubts held against him.100CJ iii. 349b.

By this period he and Sir Richard Onslow* were much involved in protecting the interests of the 21st earl of Arundel. This was a tricky role, given that the estates of the earl, who had been living abroad since 1642 and who was widely (and correctly) suspected of being a crypto-Catholic, had been sequestered by Parliament. In February 1646 Playters and Onslow were among the trustees to whom the heavily indebted earl transferred lands worth £200,000.101CCC, 2471. Two months later the two of them also sought permission to petition the Lords to recover goods belonging to Arundel and 14th Lord Dacre (Francis Lennard*) which had been seized by the garrison at Chester.102CJ iv. 521b. That September Arundel died at Padua. On 23 November administration of his estate was granted to Lord Howard of Escrick (Edward Howard*), Playters, Onslow and Chaloner Chute I*.103PROB6/21, ff. 130, 133. A year later the executors, the 4th earl of Dorset (Sir Edward Sackville†) and the 5th earl of Bath, on proving Arundel’s will, were given permission to appoint commissioners to act of their behalf.104PROB11/202/189. Dorset and Bath presumably just nominated the four existing administrators. Meanwhile, in November 1646, Playters and Onslow had together nominated Samuel Eburne as rector of Acle in Norfolk.105LJ viii. 565b. Years later the two of them were still working to pay off Arundel’s debts.106CCC, 2462, 2467-9; Norf. RO, PTR 1/142; Essex RO, D/DU 812/6-8; Blomefield, Norf. ix. 283, xi. 105

It may be that any impression of reluctance on Playters’s part during the mid-1640s had been misleading. For the time being there was no real indication that Parliament believed he could not be trusted. From late 1644 he was regularly appointed to the local assessment commissions and in February 1645 became one of the Suffolk commissioners for the New Model ordinance.107A. and O. He was one of the group of MPs from east coast counties who were ordered in April 1645 to organize the raising of £1,000 to pay for the protection of the Isle of Ely.108CJ iv. 120a. When the Presbyterian classes were set up in Suffolk that year he was one of those named as an elder.109Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 426. He was still at least an occasional presence at Westminster, because one of the minor committees appointed by the Commons in September 1646 to consider a petition included him among its members.110CJ iv. 658b. In May 1647 he subscribed £201 17s. 10d. towards the £200,000 loan to Parliament.111SP28/350/2A, f. 71v; CJ viii. 240a. The following year, in March 1648, he was named to another committee, that on the bill reorganizing the court of admiralty (20 Mar.).112CJ v. 505b. Along with Sir Thomas Barnardiston*, he was the person thought by the Derby House Committee to be the most appropriate to send to Bury St. Edmunds in May 1648 when the erection of a maypole by anti-puritan demonstrators developed into an attempt to seize control of the town. He and Barnardiston were instructed to persuade the rebels to capitulate and, failing that, to organize the use of army detachments to suppress the problem.113The Parliament-kite (1648), 8 (E.443.6); A Declaration of the Counties of Kent and Essex (1648, E.443.9); CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 65-7; HMC 7th Rep. 26; The Moderate Intelligencer (11-18 May 1648), 1319 (E.443.21). The autumn of 1648 saw him included on only his fourth Commons committee, for he was among 17 MPs added to the committee tackling the problems caused by disbanded soldiers (8 Sept.).114CJ vi. 10a. In December 1648 he was named as one of the militia commissioners for Suffolk.115A. and O. The purge of the Commons four days later brought his parliamentary career to an abrupt end.116A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); A Vindication (1649), 29 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5).

In June 1649 Playters was among the vice-admirals to whom the council of state sent letters demanding that they submit their annual accounts. It is unclear whether the council was unaware that he no longer held that position or if they were instead chasing him for accounts from the period when he had held it.117CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 203. The epitaph he would place on his wife’s tomb would state that he had been dismissed from his various local positions ‘by the then rebellious Parliament’.118Le Neve, Mon. Angl. iv. 42. Some certainly assumed that he had become disaffected towards the government. The Committee for Compounding felt it necessary in March 1650 to seek out evidence to substantiate his possible delinquency. Two years later he sought to block moves against him by the committee and in February 1653 it was still conducting investigations against him.119CCC, 2228. Later in the decade he was identified by one anonymous source as a suspected royalist plotter; a suspicion borne out by the 1658 list, compiled by Roger Whitley†, of potential ringleaders for a royalist conspiracy.120TSP i. 750; Bodl. Eng. hist. e. 309, p. 43.

By the 1650s Sir William was in serious financial difficulties. This was despite the fact, as claimed by Aubrey, that, his pursuit of women excepted, he was ‘temperate and thrifty’.121Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. Bennett, 472-3. The most likely explanation is the one later given by his half-brother, Lionel, which was that Sir William had ‘by reason of his son’s actual service to his majesty in his wars contracted several vast debts’.122Bodl. Tanner 44, f. 261. A list of the debts he and his son owed by the autumn of 1649 amounted to over £9,000. The two largest single debts were £1,600 borrowed from his half-brother and £1,350 borrowed from Anthony Bedingfield*. Among his smaller debts were £100 owed to Lady Fairfax and £100 owed to ‘Widow Godbold’, possibly the widow of John Godbold*.123Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA53/407/78. This indebtedness (perhaps combined with a fear that he would be sequestered) forced him in August 1649 to transfer much of the family estates around Uggeshall to a trust headed by one of his brothers-in-law, John Harborne.124Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA53/407/78. The previous month he had also transferred part of the manor of Willingham into the name of Sir Richard Lucy*, the husband of Thomas Playters’s sister-in-law.125Norf. RO, MS 15338; Fragmenta Geneal. i. 40. At various points over the next seven years Sir William and his trustees sold off parcels of lands to keep his creditors satisfied.126Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA53/359/280/14 ; HA53/407/37; HA53/359/257. One consideration affecting these decisions was the death of his son, Thomas, in 1651, while he was serving as an admiral with the Habsburg fleet off Sicily, leaving Sir William without any legitimate descendants.127Le Neve, Mon. Angl. iv. 42; Suckling, Suff. i. 84; Blomefield, Norf. i. 198-9; PROB11/218/344; Wadley, ‘Notes’, 251. (Thomas’s widow remarried twice, the second time to Sir Rowland Lytton*.) Sir William’s half-brother, Lionel, now became his heir and he thus provided Sir William with further financial assistance in order to protect that inheritance. Lionel would subsequently claim that he paid his brother £21,000 for lands worth only £1,100 a year.128Bodl. Tanner 44, f. 261. It was probably in connection with this agreement that in October 1656 Sir William transferred to him possession of Sotterley manor, along with the obligation to clear debts worth over £3,000.129Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA53/407/79; WAM 11740; PROB11/327/170. Other pieces of land were sold off to a cousin, another Lionel Playters.130Wadley, ‘Notes’, 244. Several individuals, including Sir William Coney and James Harrington, the author of Oceana, agreed to act as trustees for his lands at Billingford after his death.131PROB11/327/170.

Part of the 1656 deal was that Lionel Playters would erect (at the cost of £100) a monument to Thomas Playters in the church at Sotterley. This was never done. However, in 1659, Sir William’s wife died and he placed a monument to her and their son in the church at Dickleburgh where she was buried. This work was probably commissioned from the sculptor, Edward Marshall, and at the same time Playters had Marshall produced a large monument to his father at Sotterley.132Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA53/407/79; N. Pevsner, N-W. and S. Norf. (1962), 131; Le Neve, Mon. Angl. iv. 42; Blomefield, Norf. i. 198-9; Suckling, Suff. i. 83-4; C.L.S. Linnell, ‘Suff. church monuments’, Procs. of the Suff. Inst. of Arch., xxvii. 10, 20, plate xiv; Pevsner and Radcliffe, Suff. 425.

Now that the family seat was no longer under his direct control, Sir William probably took up permanent residence in London. From early 1656 he was an active member of the vestry of St Margaret’s, Westminster and in 1660 Lionel Playters (the cousin) mentioned Sir William in his will as being ‘late of Sotterley’.133Westminster Archives Centre, E2413, f. 71; Wadley, ‘Notes’, 244. It is also known that, at some point, Sir William took out 40-year leases with the chapter of Westminster Abbey on three properties in Dean’s Yard, Westminster. One of these properties, the Little Ambry, he in turn let to Harrington.134WAM 43518; PROB11/327/170; Oxford DNB, ‘James Harrington’. In March 1660 Playters was named as a militia commissioner in Westminster and Middlesex, as well as in Suffolk and Norfolk, and was added to the Westminster bench.135A. and O.; A Perfect List, 61. He also served as treasurer of the corporation for the poor of Westminster, in which capacity he helped organize the building of a workhouse at Tothill Fields.136HMC 8th Rep. 126-7; PROB11/327/170. He and Sir William Pulteney organized the abortive poll which (Sir) Thomas Clarges* demanded during the 1661 Westminster by-election.137CJ viii. 280b; HP Commons, 1660-1690, i. 316. In 1662 he paid for the monument in St Margaret’s, Westminster, commemorating the charity of James Palmer, who, having been ejected as the vicar of St Bride’s, Fleet Street, had gone on to found an almshouse and school, also at Tothill Fields.138Palmer MI (badly damaged), St. Margaret’s, Westminster; ‘St Margaret’s, Westminster: Rev. James Palmer’, N&Q, 6th ser. vi. 83-4; Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. Bennett, 548; M.E.C. Walcott, The Hist. of the Par. Church of St Margaret, in Westminster (1847), 22; Walker Revised, 55; W.K. Jordan, The Charities of London 1480-1660 (1960), 163, 219; Oxford DNB, ‘James Palmer’. At about the same time Playters erected a ‘triumphal-like arch’ at the entrance to the chancel of St. Margaret’s in celebration of the Restoration.139Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. Bennett, 473; W. Thornbury and E. Walford, Old and New London (1873-8), iii. 574. This replaced the carved royal arms, which had only recently been installed above the communion table. In May 1661 the vestry gave those arms to Playters who then presented them to the New Chapel in Tothill Fields.140Westminster Archives Centre, E2413, f. 91v.

He meanwhile continued to act on behalf of the Howard family. Arundel’s late son, the 22nd earl (Henry Frederick Howard*), had in the 1630s invested in the scheme to drain the Great Level. In 1660 and 1661 Parliament considered proposals to revive that scheme. Playters, representing the estate of the 22nd earl, joined with the surviving members of the original consortium to seek shares in the new apportionment of the lands. They therefore promoted a rival bill.141CJ viii. 150a, 164a, 195a, 335a; A Relation of the business now in hand concerning Bedford Levell (1661), 4-5, 6, 8-9, 12; S. Wells, The Hist. of the Drainage of the Great Level (1830), 353-5. As a compromise, they were then included in the new consortium, with Playters being named in the bill as the late earl’s assignee. But in April 1662 the bill was amended to substitute Playters’s name with that of Sir Richard Onslow. It was enacted in that form the following year.142CJ viii. 416a; SR v. 499-512.

Playters died at Westminster on 19 April 1668. His body was returned to Sotterley for burial.143Aubrey, Brief Lives ed. Bennett, 473; Wadley, ‘Notes’, 48. Sir William’s successor in the baronetcy, his half-brother, was disappointed with the terms of his will. Sir Lionel was confirmed in his possession of the estate at Sotterley but he considered that Sir William, by granting away lands worth up to £500 per annum which he had expected would come to him, had reneged on their previous agreements.144PROB11/327/170; Wadley, ‘Notes’, 253-5; Bodl. Tanner 44, f. 261. The source of Sir Lionel’s annoyance was that the other main beneficiary of the will was Elizabeth, Thomas Playters’s illegitimate daughter, who had been brought up in the Playters household. She inherited the property at Westminster and it was to her that his land at Billingford would ultimately revert.145PROB11/327/170; Wadley, ‘Notes’, 253-4; Blomefield, Norf. v. 321; The Reg. of St Margaret’s, Westminster ed. H.F. Westlake and L.E. Tanner (Harl. Soc. lxiv), 182; Le Neve’s Peds. of the Knights, 248. The baronetcy eventually died out in 1832. The last of the baronets, the 8th, was survived by his own illegitimate daughter, Elizabeth Wright, who married the notorious Cromwellian forger, William Squire. It was probably in all innocence that Squire told Thomas Carlyle that he was married to ‘the last of the name of as bold a cavalier family as Suffolk produced’.146W.A. Wright, ‘The Squire pprs.’, EHR i. 312, 318.