BALDWIN, Charles (1598-1675), of Elsich, Diddlebury, Salop.

The Baldwins were a gentry family seated at Diddlebury since at least the mid-fourteenth century.14Vis. Salop 1623, i. (Harl Soc. xxviii), 23. Even before Roger Baldwin’s death in 1398, however, the family was of great regional importance. The Welsh name for Montgomery, Trefaldwyn, was owed to Baldwin de Bollers, granted that place by Henry I in 1102.15Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 4, ii. 137, 138. In the fifteenth century John Baldwin had been a yeoman to the crown under Henry VII, and William Baldwin a cup-bearer to Elizabeth I.16Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 4, ii. 142. By the mid-seventeenth century, the Baldwins had dwindled in their power and authority. William Baldwin, Charles Baldwin’s father, described himself in his will of 1613 as nothing more exalted than a ‘gentleman’, and had lands in Llanbister, Radnorshire, which he stipulated should be sold to pay his debts.17PROB11/127/404. Charles Baldwin is not known to have attended a university or inn of court, and seems to have been appointed to no commissions out of chancery until the eve of the civil war. The family was well regarded in Ludlow, however. William Baldwin was entertained by the corporation in 1604; Charles was admitted a burgess over thirty years later.18Salop Archives, LB8/1/128/4, unfol. Despite having achieved this honour, he did not take a seat for the borough in the Short Parliament without some effort on his part. Although he was better liked than Ralph Goodwin*, it was noted how Baldwin ‘importunately’ had to work with ‘his friends and purse’ to win the confidence of the burgesses.19NLW, Gwysaney transcripts, 26. He was made a common councillor in December 1639, and the following month he was busying himself acquiring the support of his colleagues. This suggests that his admission as a councillor was the springboard from which he was able to launch his campaign; he was not able to promote himself solely on his social status.

In the first Parliament of 1640, Baldwin sat on a committee working on a bill on the granting of administrations in probate, but this never reached the statute book, and was his only known contribution.20CJ ii. 17b. He had pleased the Ludlow corporation well enough for them to return him again to the Long Parliament, however, but he achieved the unusual distinction of being less active in this assembly than in the Short Parliament. He served on no committees. He took the Protestation on 8 May 1641, but a month later was given the first of a series of permissions to absent himself from the House. One of these, on 26 February 1642, was on a motion of Richard More of Bishops’ Castle.21CJ ii. 139a, 173a, 457a, 596b; PJ i. 475. Baldwin’s last appearance in the Commons, when he was granted absence again, was on 31 May 1642. During some of these absences, Baldwin returned to Ludlow. He participated in the corporation election day on 28 October 1641, and was listed among the councillors every year up to and including 1645.22Salop Archives, LB2/1/1 ff. 221, 223v, 226v, 229, 231v - 232.

Baldwin also went to the Oxford Parliament, and signed the letter to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex requesting a peace treaty.23The Names of the Lords and Commons Assembled (1646), 2; A Copy of a Letter from the Members (1644), 5 (E.32.3). This brought down upon him the wrath of the Commons at Westminster, which on 5 February 1644 disabled him and Ralph Goodwin from sitting in the House.24CJ iii. 389b. In August 1645, Baldwin was added as a commissioner for the west midland counties in the royalist association. The Shropshire men invited activity by the commissioners in their county, and proclaimed themselves intent on ‘preserving our own rights, our people’s liberties and properties [and] resettling the peace of our kingdoms ...’25CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 80. Baldwin’s career as a royalist committeeman ended before the fall of Ludlow to Parliament on 29 May 1646. On 30 April, he compounded with the Committee at Goldsmiths’ Hall for the offences of living in the king’s headquarters at Oxford and signing money warrants. On 23 June, he was fined £880, reduced in September to £586. John Birch* certified that as a member of the corporation, Baldwin was comprehended within the scope of the articles of surrender of Ludlow. This was contested in January 1647, when it was disclosed that in fact Baldwin had not been in Ludlow when the town surrendered. Baldwin did not abandon his claim to relief under Ludlow articles; as late as 1653 it was still being contested, but no further order was made in his case.26CCC 1227; CJ v. 52b.

In the last months of Ludlow’s identity as an important royalist garrison, Baldwin was proposed as bailiff (mayor) of the borough. He was absent on election day, however, and in any case there were objections to his candidacy on grounds of precedence. Whether he wanted either the honour or the duties attached to the position is doubtful, as he craved exemption when he turned up on 4 November 1645 to discuss his standing.27Salop Archives, LB2/1/1 ff. 231v-32, 232v-33. With the change of regime, he attended no further corporation meetings, and seems have retired into obscurity from which he emerged in 1640. He was not subject to the decimation tax or rounded up by the commissioners of the major-generals in the mid-1650s.28Bodl. Rawl. A.34, p. 901. As the career of his son, Samuel Baldwyn*, took off from the late 1650s, he was rehabilitated as a county magistrate when the king returned. He made his will in 1674, leaving cash bequests of a modest £280. He presented silver plate and a church tower clock to the parish of Diddlebury, and a large silver cup to Ludlow corporation. Baldwin died on 14 February 1675 and was buried in the chancel of Diddlebury church.29Trans. Salop Arch. Soc. ser. 4, ii. 332-3.