PALMER, Geoffrey (1598-1670), of East Carlton, Northants.

Palmer’s family acquired the manor of East Carlton, Northamptonshire, in the early fifteenth century and made it their principal residence.48Bodl. Carte 130, f. 317; Bridges, Northants. ii. 291, 292; VCH Northants. Fams. 241. His father had married well – to a sister of Lewis Watson†, 1st Baron Rockingham – but was not among Northamptonshire’s wealthiest gentlemen, and this may have had some bearing on Palmer’s pursuit of a legal career despite his being the eldest son. In 1616, he was admitted to the Middle Temple, where his contemporaries included (Sir) Simonds D’Ewes*, Edward Hyde*, (Sir) Edward Nicholas† and Bulstrode Whitelocke*.49Whitelocke, Diary, 49. He became a close friend of Whitelocke and Hyde, and he enjoyed the esteem, and probably the friendship, of D’Ewes.50Add. 37343, f. 162v; Whitelocke, Diary, 49, 86, 132; Clarendon, Hist. i. 423; D’Ewes (C), 193, 194.

After being called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1623 (in the company of D’Ewes and Challoner Chute*), Palmer seems to have entered private legal practice in London, and during vacation time in 1628 he socialised with Hyde, Harbottle Grimston*, James Chaloner* and Whitelocke in lodgings on Fleet Street, ‘where they exercised their wits and learning in the imitation of star chamber proceedings and sentencing with ingenious speeches those of their company who transgressed their orders by swearing, ill speaking, or the like’. In 1636, Palmer and Hyde were among a group of Middle Temple lawyers who temporarily abandoned London for Whitelocke’s family residence in Buckinghamshire. Palmer returned this hospitality in 1638, when he entertained Whitelocke at East Carlton with ‘great intimacy of friendship and kindness’.51Whitelocke, Diary, 58, 107, 115-16.

Besides his connections in the legal profession, Palmer enjoyed the acquaintanceship and trust of several of the east midlands’ most eminent residents. By the mid-1630s, he was on familiar terms with kinsman George Manners†, 7th earl of Rutland (Palmer’s uncle had married a sister of John Manners*, 8th earl of Rutland), and was a legal adviser to the future royalist peer Edward Mountagu†, 1st Baron Montagu of Boughton, whose residence lay only a few miles from East Carlton.52HMC Rutland, i. 500; HMC Buccleuch, iii. 371, 372, 377. Palmer may also have been a kinsman of the Montagus – William Montagu*, Lord Montagu’s son, referred to Palmer as his ‘cousin’.53HMC Buccleuch, i. 286, 290. It was probably as a favour either to Rutland or the Montagus that David Cecil*, 3rd earl of Exeter, secured the appointment of Palmer as deputy-recorder of Stamford – about 15 miles from East Carlton, across the Lincolnshire border – in September 1640.54Stamford Town Hall, Hall Bk. 1, f. 404. The Cecils and Manners were certainly on close terms, and the 2nd earl of Exeter had secured the return of Rutland’s stepson, Sir Edward Baeshe*, for Stamford in 1628.55Supra, ‘Sir Edward Baeshe’; CP v. 218-19. Moreover, there is no evidence linking Palmer directly with the Cecils before 1640, although he seems to have been legal advisor to the 3rd earl’s aunt, Lady Elizabeth Hatton.56Add. 29550, ff. 52, 64.

Palmer was returned for Stamford – almost certainly on Exeter’s interest – in the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640.57Supra, ‘Stamford’. Palmer’s diary of the Commons’ proceedings from 3 November 1640 until 4 January 1641 may have been written partly for the benefit of Exeter or another of Palmer’s aristocratic patrons.58CUL, Kk.6.38, ff. 2-126; Procs. LP i. pp. xlii-xliii. Another possibility is that his diary-keeping was connected with his duties as one of the queen’s legal counsellors – an office which he had obtained at some point during the late 1630s.59NLW, Wynnstay ms 166, p. 8.

Palmer was evidently one of the more active MPs during the early months of the Long Parliament, and by the summer of 1642 he had been named to 61 committees and six conference management teams and had served as a messenger to the Lords on one occasion.60CJ ii. 32b, 45a, 65a, 73a, 83b, 93a, 216a. The majority of these appointments occurred between the opening of the Long Parliament and 5 August 1641, when he was granted leave of absence.61CJ ii. 237b. Thereafter, he was named to committees irregularly and never regained the prominence he appears to have enjoyed before the autumn 1641 recess. He probably owed a number of his early appointments to the House’s appreciation of his legal knowledge – which was particularly strong, it seems, on canon law.62D’Ewes (N), 162. This probably accounts for his nomination to several committees concerning disputed elections. One such committee – set up on 14 November 1640 to investigate irregularities in the return of Members for Bossiney, Cornwall – he reported from and probably chaired.63CJ ii. 29a, 32a, 40b; Procs. LP i. 206-7, 213, 489. But a number of his early appointments are also consistent with a genuine desire on his part to reform the perceived abuses of the personal rule – such as monopolies, military charges, Ship Money and the crown’s failure to hold regular Parliaments.64CJ ii. 31a, 38a, 50b, 53b, 60a, 75a, 83b, 195a.

Palmer’s contributions on the floor of the House confirm his support the reform process, but not where it appeared to threaten or undermine the established legal framework or what he perceived as the fundamentals of the ancient constitution. Thus his criticism of the policies and architects of the personal rule was often tempered by a regard for ‘the point of law’ and preserving the traditional constitutional balance. He denounced the lord keeper, John Finch*, on 8 December 1640 for having declared that Ship Money was ‘so inherent in [the] king, that [an] act of Parliament could not take it away’ – which suggests that Palmer was a firm believer in the sovereignty of the king-in-Parliament.65Northcote Note Bk. 43. And on 23 February 1641, he argued that the entire privy council should compensate Sir John Corbet*, who had been imprisoned on the council’s warrant for ‘a pretended affront to the muster master’s office’.66Two Diaries of Long Parl. 8. Neither of these contributions would have found favour with the more hard-line reformers in the House. However, on 12 February, he took issue with Denzil Holles and Robert Nicholas as to whether Justice Berkeley had committed high treason in declaring for the crown in the Ship Money case. His argument, as reported by D’Ewes, is revealing of his moderate, legal-minded approach to political issues.

Mr Palmer did think it best not to impeach Mr Justice Berkeley of high treason but deliver the articles against him in the Lords’ House and there collect the quality of his offence from the substance of the articles. And for the judgement of Ship Money, he did believe the judges did intend no more than a bare judgement and not all the consequences ... that may be drawn from it etc. That Justice Berkeley’s offence was not treason within the [statute of] 25 Edw. III, but whether it was parliamentary treason or not, he left [to the two Houses to determine].67Procs. LP ii. 433.

Also revealing is his objection to what he mistakenly thought was a request by one of the commanders of the king’s army in the north, Sir John Conyers, to exercise martial law. ‘While [the] courts of justice [are] open’, declared Palmer, ‘no martial law’.68Northcote Note Bk. 71; Procs. LP ii. 34.

Palmer’s efforts to tread a middle way between the reform of ‘abuses’ and the preservation of the ancient constitution, including the crown’s just prerogatives, were complicated by his office as legal counsel to the queen. On 15 March 1641, in a debate on whether to remove the queen’s four Catholic servants, including her secretary, Sir John Winter, Palmer joined George Lord Digby in defending the terms of the marriage treaty. He desired that a committee be established to consider ‘the vast and uncertain power’ of the prerogative in this respect, that it may be ‘limited to a certainty’ – a proposal probably intended to head off Nathaniel Fiennes I, John Hampden and others who were clearly against making any concessions to the queen on this issue. The next day (16 Mar.), Palmer moved that the removal of the four servants be deferred ‘until the point of law be cleared’, which put him at odds with John Pym and his allies who ‘saw law, in the first instance, as a force for guaranteeing religion’.69Two Diaries of Long Parl. 20-1; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 267. Palmer’s chairmanship of a committee for reducing the royal forests to their ‘ancient limits and bounds’ – or in other words, to outlaw the crown’s questionable exploitation of its forest rights during the personal rule – was also rendered more difficult as a result of his ties with the queen’s household. In May 1641, for example, he was obliged to defend Winter’s patent to sell timber from the Forest of Dean – a concession which upset George Peard and other MPs. In June and July he reported a bill for ‘the limitation of the bounds of the [royal] forest’, which, having passed the Lords, received the royal assent on 7 August.70CJ ii. 47b, 205b, 211a, 216a; Two Diaries of Long Parl. 39; Procs. LP i. 497; iv. 160, 163; v. 105, 632, 636, 644; D’Ewes (C), 198; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 348.

Palmer’s views on the vexed question of religious reform were broadly consistent with his standpoint on most other issues before the Commons. He apparently supported moderate reform in accordance with the established laws and the institutions and practices of the pre-Laudian church. A number of early appointments suggest that he favoured the eradication of Laudian innovations, the punishment of their authors and the suppression of popery. He was named to committees for countering the recusant threat; to gather evidence on the new Canons and the etc. oath; to draw up a charge against Archbishop William Laud and other actors in the ‘great design of the subversion of the laws of the realm and religion’; to prepare charges against William Piers, Laudian bishop of Bath and Wells; on a bill for punishing the members of Convocation; and for removing clerics from temporal affairs.71CJ ii. 39a, 42b, 44b, 48a, 52a, 56b, 84a, 129a, 136b, 165b, 169a. Doubtless alarmed, like many other Commons-men, at the king’s reprieval of the priest, John Goodman, Palmer was a reporter of a conference with the Lords concerning this issue on 25 January 1641.72CJ ii. 73a.

Palmer’s evident hostility to popery was mirrored by his approval of initiatives for strengthening the parish ministry and enforcing observance of the sabbath.73CJ ii. 101a, 165b; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 338, 339. In debate, he emerged as a firm opponent of the Laudian new Canons, which he denounced on 16 December 1640 as part of a popish conspiracy to undermine law and property.74Northcote Note Bk. 71; Procs LP i. 622, 624, 625. But although he was prepared to follow the godly interest in the House in conflating Laudianism and popery, the debates on the root and branch petition on 8 and 9 February 1641 reveal only a qualified support on his part for the cause of further reformation in religion. Indeed, he initially seems to have followed Edward Hyde and several other future royalists in their efforts to have the petition thrown out of the House without a hearing.75Procs LP ii. 390-2. However, on the second day of the debate (9 Feb.), he attempted to steer a middle course, conceding that the petition should be referred to a committee, but only insofar as this would facilitate reform of the ‘corollaries of episcopacy’. There should be ‘no total extirpation’ of episcopacy as some of the more godly speakers were urging.76Two Diaries of Long Parl. 3, 52; D’Ewes (N), 342. In the event, the House decided that the petition should indeed be referred to a committee but that the question of episcopacy should be deferred. It was then resolved, after a division, that Palmer and five other Members – including both supporters and opponents of episcopacy – should be added to the committee for the state of the kingdom (or the ‘committee of twenty-four’ as it was known) to which consideration of the petition was referred.77CJ ii. 81a; Procs. LP ii. 401; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 195. When the issue of the bishops’ exclusion from the Lords was debated on 10 March, Palmer sided with the majority of Members against Hyde, Culpeper and several other future royalists in arguing that ‘the legislative and judicial power of bishops in the Lords’ House is a grievance and fit to be removed from the Lords’ House by a bill’.78Procs. LP ii. 703; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 277-8.

Palmer’s willingness to participate in the prosecution of the earl of Strafford probably reflected the importance he attached to defending the rule of law against perceived encroachment by the king’s prerogative – a development that he evidently believed Strafford had done much to encourage. Between November 1640 and March 1641, Palmer was named (often in the company of other leading Commons’ lawyers) to a series of committees for preparing Parliament’s case against the earl, and he joined Pym and others on 25 February 1641 as a reporter of a conference with the Lords concerning the earl’s answer to the charges on which he was to be tried.79CJ ii. 27b, 31b, 39a, 39b, 64a, 65b, 72a, 88b, 93b, 98a; Procs. LP ii. 548-52. The next day (26 Feb.), Palmer and his fellow lawyers Whitelocke, John Selden and John Maynard were added to a ‘select committee’ consisting of Pym, Hampden, Holles, George Lord Digby, Sir Walter Erle, John Glynne, Oliver St John and William Strode I for preparing the prosecution case at Strafford’s trial.80CJ ii. 93b; Procs. LP ii. 565; Whitelocke, Diary, 124. This appointment is a measure of the confidence that the House and the Commons’ leadership had in Palmer’s legal skills and commitment to the reform of government.

Palmer managed the 15th and 16th articles against Strafford, which related to his rule in Ireland.81LJ iv. 204, 205. In his opening addresses and summations at the trial, on 1 and 3 April 1641, he accused the earl of exercising a ‘regal’, ‘tyrannical’ and ‘exorbitant’ power as lord deputy, of subverting the established laws and government of Ireland and of usurping the king’s authority by taking ‘the reins of rule into his own hands’.82Procs. LP iii. 285-6, 289, 292, 294-5, 296, 299, 300, 305, 308, 326-8, 329, 331, 334-5, 344-5, 350; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. viii. 426, 427, 460, 461. The sweeping nature of this language belies the fact that Palmer treated the earl with more respect and moderation than most of his fellow prosecutors. The Scottish minister Robert Baillie, who was eager to see Strafford punished, described Palmer as ‘a material man but not eloquent, nor quick, nor vehement’.83Baillie Lttrs. and Jnls. i. 334. Whitelocke, on the other hand, claimed that Strafford had told a friend that ‘Glynne and Maynard used him like advocates, but Palmer and Whitelocke used him like gentlemen and yet left out nothing material to be urged against him’.84Whitelocke, Diary, 126. According to Hyde, Palmer ‘lost all his credit and interest’ with Pym’s ‘junto’, and never recovered it, ‘for using a decency and modesty in his carriage and language towards him [Strafford]; though the weight of his arguments pressed more upon the earl than all the noise of the rest’.85Clarendon, Hist. i. 290.

Palmer’s gentlemanly treatment of Strafford is not the only evidence that his outlook differed from that of the Commons’ leadership. For example, his involvement with measures to improve the financial state of the kingdom may have been based in part on a desire to secure the swift removal of the Scots. Besides being named second to a committee on 19 November 1640 to prepare a bill for raising £100,000 and to committees for paying the king’s army and amending a subsidy bill, he was apparently among a group of MPs who were willing to stand surety on 4 March 1641 for a City loan to pay off the Scots.86CJ ii. 31b, 66a, 80a. Palmer claimed that he was ‘one of the meanest [i.e. poorest] of them that offered to engage myself for £1,000’, although his name does not appear on D’Ewes’s list of subscribers.87Two Diaries of Long Parl. 20. This proposal to use City money to pay the Scots has been seen as an attempt by a proto-royalist element in the Commons to relieve the pressure on Charles from the ‘factious party’ by securing the withdrawal of the Scottish army.88R. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution (2003), 334. Palmer may also have sought appointment as a reporter of conferences concerning the treaty with the Scots and a ‘cessation’ of arms’ with Scotland from a concern to hasten the Covenanters’ departure.89CJ ii. 32b, 45a.

But it was his endeavours to put the queen’s revenues on a firmer footing that represented his most conspicuous service at Westminster in the royal interest. On 17 February 1641, he was named to a committee for confirming several royal grants for the queen’s use – which he probably chaired. And on 21 July, he reported a bill for Henrietta Maria’s jointure, which included the establishment of a new court to be presided over by her chancellor.90CJ ii. 87b, 173a, 218b-219a; Procs. LP vi. 41, 44. However, some ‘exceptions’ were made to this proposal, and the bill – one of the few that enjoyed royal sponsorship – was recommitted, never to be seen again.91Harl. 479, f. 81; Harl. 163, f. 411v; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 224.

Palmer’s appointment to the Northamptonshire bench on 10 August 1641 may have been a reward from the crown for his services at Westminster.92C231/5, p. 469. He had apparently lost the confidence of the Commons’ leadership by the autumn or become alienated from its proceedings, receiving relatively few appointments after the recess and only two of any importance before December – that is, to the committee of both Houses for Irish affairs (2 Nov.) and to a committee set up on 17 November to consider the examinations of the principal army plotters and present them to the Commons.93CJ ii. 302a, 318a; CUL, Kk.6.38, ff. 171-173v. His only notable contribution on the floor of the House came in the final debate over the Grand Remonstrance late in November. On 22 November, he joined Hyde, Culpeper and other future royalists in opposing the Remonstrance as a novel and improper means of securing redress for grievances: ‘The best way for this House to answer a scandal is to neglect it. This House cannot declare without [the] Lord[s] and king, nor never did it’.94Verney, Notes, 125; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 427-8. After voting narrowly in favour of the Remonstrance, the Members then debated whether it should be printed. The notion that the House should (in the words of Sir Edward Dering) ‘remonstrate downwards, tell tales to the people’, so appalled Hyde, Culpeper and other future royalists that they requested permission to ‘enter their protestations against [the] printing of it’.95D’Ewes (C), 186. When the House rejected this proposal, Palmer could no longer contain himself, and although Whitelocke, who sat next to him, tried to prevent him, he stood up ‘in passion’ and requested the Speaker that a protestation be entered ‘in the name of himself and all the rest’.96Add. 37343, ff. 234v-235; D’Ewes (C), 186, 197; Clarendon, Hist. i. 420, 423. ‘I do protest’, he is reported to have declared, and he may have encouraged others to take up this refrain.97D’Ewes (C), 186-7; Clarendon, Hist. i. 420, 423; Verney, Notes, 126, 127. Certainly this ‘new motion’, to quote D’Ewes, ‘did ... raise the flame to such a height as if God had not prevented it, murder and calamity might have followed thereupon’.98D’Ewes (C), 186, 197. Even so, Palmer refused to back down, and the question of whether to print the Remonstrance was left undecided.99D’Ewes (C), 187. According to Hyde, it was he himself who had angered the junto most, having been the first Member to demand the right to enter a protestation. However, his friends among the northern MPs refused to countenance any attack on him, and thus on 24 November the junto and its allies picked upon Palmer as the principal offender, claiming that his words ‘did tend to draw on a mutiny, and that if this were permitted in the House that anyone might make himself the head of a faction here’. Once again, the debate became heated, with some Members demanding that Palmer be censured, and Hyde (‘who loved him much’), Culpeper and others speaking vehemently in his defence.100D’Ewes (C), 192-3, 195; Verney, Notes, 126-7; Clarendon, Hist. i. 423. Following two divisions in which Hyde and another future royalist Sir Frederick Cornwallis lost out to the godly pairing of Sir Thomas Barrington and Sir Martin Lumley, Palmer was ordered to answer the charge made against him and admitted that he had requested that the names of those who had protested might be entered in the Journal but not that he had used inflammatory language.101CJ ii. 324; D’Ewes (C), 195-6. The next day (25 Nov.), the House discussed his punishment, and after ‘many hours’ debate’ and another division – which this time saw Barrington and Sir John Clotworthy triumph over Lord Falkland and Sir John Strangways – it was ordered that Palmer be sent to the Tower. A further division with the same tellers on whether he should also be disabled from sitting was defeated by 163 vote to 131.102CJ ii. 324b, 325a; D’Ewes (C), 197-9, 200; Verney, Notes, 127-8; Clarendon, Hist. i. 423. That Palmer’s old Middle Temple colleague, D’Ewes, voted in favour of his expulsion – ‘which his offence had deserved in high measure’ – is an indication of just how divisive the debate on the Remonstrance had been.103D’Ewes (C), 199. Hyde later claimed that the ‘angry men’ of the House had tried hard to have Palmer expelled, ‘having borne him a long grudge for the civility he shewed in the prosecution of the earl of Strafford’.104Clarendon, Hist. i. 423.

Palmer remained in the Tower for a few weeks and apparently received a ‘multitude of visitants’.105HMC Buccleuch, i. 286; Add. 37343, f. 235. On 8 December 1641, Whitelocke presented a petition to the House from Palmer, acknowledging his offence, whereupon it was resolved that he be discharged from the Tower.106CJ ii. 335a; D’Ewes (C), 249. He was back in the Commons by 16 December at the latest, when he was added to a committee of both Houses to present the Remonstrance to the king.107CJ ii. 346b. Yet for all its brevity, Palmer’s imprisonment made a deep impression on some of his contemporaries both inside and outside Parliament, convincing them that the Commons was dominated by a faction intent on stifling all opposition.108D’Ewes (C), 212, 232-4; HMC Buccleuch, i. 286. It also seems to have pushed Palmer further into the arms of the emerging royalist party, and by early 1642 it was reported that he had joined Hyde, Falkland and Culpeper as Charles’s ‘counsellors’.109Bramston, Autobiog. 83; Clarendon, Hist. i. 456-63, 481. In fact, Palmer was not among those promoted to court office – unlike his three Commons’ confederates. Palmer’s drift towards the king’s camp was probably halted, at least temporarily, by Charles’s attempted arrest of the Five Members on 5 January 1642. On 17 January 1642, he was named to committees concerning a petition in defence of Parliament’s privileges and to hear the answer of the 12 bishops impeached of high treason for protesting at their exclusion from the Lords by mob intimidation.110CJ ii. 384a, 385b; Bramston, Autobiog. 83.

Palmer remained at Westminster during the first half of 1642 but contributed very little in debate and was named to only a handful of committees.111CJ ii. 588a, 613a, 637a, 638b; PJ i. 84, 238. Early in May, he received a letter from the king requesting his attendance at York, ‘but durst not go, being a Parliament-man’.112HMC Buccleuch, i. 300. The increasingly bellicose stance of the Commons over the summer, however, together with Hyde’s largely successful re-branding of Charles as a law-abiding monarch, probably did much to erode Palmer’s confidence in the continued legality of serving Parliament. His last Commons’ appointments were on 23 and 24 June, when he was named to committees for preparing an answer to the king’s reply (drawn up by Falkland and Culpeper) to the Nineteen Propositions and for preparing a declaration against Charles’s proclamation forbidding the raising of troops without royal warrant.113CJ ii. 637a, 638b. Thereafter, Whitelocke was able to make excuses for Palmer’s absence until 20 August, when the House demanded his attendance, ‘all excuses laid aside’.114CJ ii. 729a; Whitelocke, Diary, 132; PJ iii. 311. On 7 September, five days after suspending him from sitting, the House was informed that Palmer, Sir Christopher Hatton*, Sir Robert Hatton* and Sir Robert Napier* were raising horse for the king in Northamptonshire, where Palmer was probably active as a commissioner of array.115PJ iii. 336; Northants. RO, FH133. There was ‘much dispute’ as to whether Palmer should be expelled from the Commons, with Robert Reynolds, John White and other lawyers earning him a few hours respite until the ‘fiery spirits’ carried it that Palmer be disabled from sitting for refusing to appear upon summons and neglecting the service of the House.116CJ ii. 750a, 755b; PJ iii. 336. Sir Guy Palmes moved the next day that Palmer be re-admitted, but to no avail.117PJ iii. 359. Given his commitment to retaining episcopacy and to the rule of law, it was always likely that Palmer would be drawn into the king’s camp.

Relatively little is known about Palmer’s career between his expulsion from the Commons in 1642 and the Restoration in 1660. In October 1642, he and his wife seem to have been residing in the house of Sir Thomas Fanshawe, the king’s remembrancer, in Ivy Lane, London, which Palmer rented upon a ‘joint stock’ basis with Whitelocke and Matthew Hale*.118Whitelocke, Diary, 138. Whitelocke recorded having ‘good conversation and friendship’ with his housemates that autumn. But by the winter of 1643-4 at the latest, Palmer had joined Hyde at Oxford.119Whitelocke, Diary, 138, 149. He attended the Oxford Parliament in January 1644 and signed its letter to the earl of Essex, urging him to compose a peace.120Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. If a parliamentarian report of this Parliament’s proceedings can be credited, Palmer made a speech urging the king to dismiss known Catholics from his counsels and to forbear acting ‘by private advice but refer all matters of concernment’ to the consideration of the Members assembled at Oxford.121The Spie, Communicating Intelligence from Oxford no. 3 (5-13 Feb. 1644), 19, 24 (E.33.2). A year later, Palmer was appointed one of the king’s commissioners for the negotiations held at Uxbridge – he and other crown lawyers making a strong case that by law the militia was vested solely in the king.122LJ vii. 150a, 166b; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 486. He was named as one of the king’s commissioners again in December 1645, as part of Charles’s unsuccessful attempt to open a personal treaty with Parliament.123LJ viii. 31a, 36b, 64b. By this stage, Palmer was taking Whitelocke’s advice about making his peace with Parliament but chose to remain at Oxford for the duration of the siege and was one of the royalist commissioners who negotiated the town’s surrender in June 1646.124Whitelocke, Diary, 181; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 279.

Palmer petitioned to compound on the Oxford articles and was fined at a tenth – that is, £580.125CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 486; CCC 1433. Although he resumed fraternising with Whitelocke – and probably with other moderate parliamentarians – from the mid-1640s, he retained the trust of Hyde, who committed the care of his family to Palmer, Secretary Edward Nicholas and other royalists in 1647 in the event of his death.126Whitelocke, Diary, 181, 203, 221; Clarendon SP ii. 357, 361; CCSP i. 445. Palmer also remained high in royal esteem, and late in August 1648, at Charles’s request, he was allowed to serve as one of the king’s legal team during the Newport negotiations.127LJ x. 474b, 484b; CJ v. 694b. Perhaps as a conciliatory gesture to the king, Parliament pardoned Palmer in September and lifted the sequestration order on his estate.128CJ vi. 21b; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 26 (19-26 Sept. 1648), sig. Llv (E.464.15). In private circles, his services as a legal counsellor seem to have remained much in demand during the 1640s and 1650s.129Belvoir, Misc. lttrs. 1640-5: S. Ogar to W. Browne, 5 June 1647; Northants. RO, IC/276, 277; Lancs. RO, DDK/1602/4; ‘Sir Geoffrey Palmer’, Oxford DNB.

Although Palmer was imprisoned in the summer of 1655 on suspicion of plotting against the protector, he was quickly released, and there is little to support claims by Secretary John Thurloe’s* agents that he was part of a royalist council in London that advised Hyde and ‘design[ed] all things’.130CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 204, 309, 588; TSP iii. 428, 457, 537. In fact, he appears to have remained aloof from politics until the spring of 1660, when he joined many royalist nobility and gentry ‘now residing in and about the city of London’, in a declaration thanking General George Monck* for his courage in asserting ‘the public liberty’. The signatories also renounced any intention to take revenge upon their parliamentarian enemies and declared their loyalty ‘to the present power, as it now resides in the council of state’.131A Declaration of the Nobility and Gentry that Adhered to the Late King (1660, 669 f.24.69). On 29 May 1660, Palmer was on hand to greet Charles II on the latter’s return to London and was knighted and made attorney-general for his loyalty.132HMC 5th Rep. 153. He was created a baronet shortly afterwards, but he was not appointed a serjeant-at-law that autumn – as one authority has stated.133CB; ‘Sir Geoffrey Palmer’, Oxford DNB. One of his first assignments as attorney-general was to persuade Colonel John Hutchinson* to turn king’s evidence against his fellow regicides, but though he used ‘all art and flatteries that could be’ he was not successful.134Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 235. Palmer figured prominently in the trial of the regicides, for which he was denounced by Edmund Ludlowe II* as one of the ‘tyrant’s bloodhounds’.135Ludlow, Voyce, 310-11, 315.

Palmer died on 5 May 1670 at his house in Hampstead. His body was then carried to his chambers in the Middle Temple, where it remained until 26 May, when it was conveyed by hearse out of London ‘followed by a great train of coaches of the nobility, the judges and others through the town’. He was buried at East Carlton on 28 May.136Bodl. Carte 130, f. 317; VCH Northants. Fams. 246. In his will, he referred to a settlement in trust of his estate to Sir Abel Barker* and two others to establish a hospital in Carlton for five persons. He bequeathed portions and legacies totalling more than £10,500.137PROB11/333, ff. 119-20. Three of his sons – Lewis†, Geoffrey† and Edward† – sat for Higham Ferrers, Ludgershall and Peterborough respectively in the Cavalier Parliament.138HP Commons, 1660-90.