WAITE, Thomas (1615-88), of Market Overton, Rutland.

Waite (who rendered his name thus) belonged to a family that had settled at Wymondham by the end of Elizabeth’s reign at the latest.32Bodl. Tanner 62, f. 459. In 1633 his uncle John, who was a tenant and friend of the godly Leicestershire lawyer Roger Smith of Edmondthorpe, bequeathed him lands and tenements in and around Wymondham.33PROB11/164, f. 236v. And in 1638 he inherited the estate of his father, Henry Waite ‘gentleman’, at Market Overton, Rutland, and in nearby South Witham, Lincolnshire. Relations between Waite and his father may have been strained by 1638. Henry Waite bequeathed legacies totalling £300 to his younger children, but all that he left Waite, besides his property at Market Overton and South Witham ‘and not elsewhere’, was a single shilling.34Leics. RO, Leics. wills 1638-59, Henry Waite 17 May 1638; G. Inn Admiss. The future MP should not be confused with Thomas Wayte of Keythorpe, Leicestershire, and St John’s Lane, Middlesex, who held the office of royal receiver for Leicestershire and Warwickshire in the early 1640s.35Leics. RO, DG11/791; HMC 5th Rep. 387, 388; G. Inn Admiss. 214; S. Johnson, A Collection of Epitaphs and MIs (1806), i. 225; G.F. Farnham ‘Prestwold and its hamlets in medieval times’, Trans. Leics. Arch. and Hist. Soc. xvii. 84; Oxford DNB, ‘Thomas Waite’; Hopper, ‘Reluctant regicide’, 38.

When the king passed through Rutland in March 1642 on his way to York, Waite – who had been appointed county sheriff in 1641 – presented a petition to him from the leading inhabitants, pleading in very loyal terms that he return to Parliament. On 29 March, however, Sir James Harington* presented petitions from the county to both the Lords and the Commons, calling for (among other things) the removal of ‘popish’ peers from the Lords; the imprisonment of ‘the greatest and most active papists’; the ‘speedy and powerful relief of our persecuted brethren in Ireland’; the ‘utter quelling the pride, insolency and tyranny of the prelates’; the ‘abolishing of all unfitting and unnecessary dignities out of the church’; and the ‘stricter sanctification of the Lord’s day’. Among the 550 or so signatories to these last two petitions were Waite, Harington and Edward Horsman*.36LJ iv. 680b-681a; A Copie of the Petition Presented to the Kings Majesty by the High Sheriffe...of Rutland (1642, 669 f.6/1); VCH Rutland, i. 186-7; PA, Main Pprs. 29 Mar. 1642.

With the outbreak of civil war, Waite sided with Parliament, and by the spring of 1643 he was serving as a captain under Thomas Lord Grey of Groby*, the commander of the East Midlands Association.37HMC 5th Rep. 79. In September and October 1643, the Commons empowered Waite to oversee the implementation of the sequestration and assessment ordinances in Rutland and to raise and disburse money for the county’s military forces on his own authority.38CJ iii. 257a, 289b. In November, Grey of Groby commissioned him as a colonel of horse.39SP28/133, pt. 5, f. 14. And in December, the Commons nominated him as sheriff of Rutland – the post having apparently remained vacant since the end of his term in 1641-2 – but the Lords named another man in his place.40CJ iii. 354b, 370b; LJ vi. 381b. That same month, Grey of Groby appointed him governor of the parliamentarian garrison at Burley House, near Rutland’s county town, Oakham, having already tried, but failed, to install him as governor of Rockingham Castle in place of Captain Robert Horsman (brother of Edward Horsman* and friend of Sir Gilbert Pykeringe*).41SP28/133, pt. 5, f. 14; Bodl. Tanner 62, f. 636. The chaplain of Waite’s garrison at Burley House was the ‘Presbyterian-inclined’ Rutland cleric John Rowell, who would conform to the Church of England after the Restoration.42A. Laurence, Parliamentary Army Chaplains (1990), 169-70; Hopper, ‘Reluctant regicide’, 40.

Waite seems to have been a competent and energetic military commander, but he had no scruples about collecting money and supplies for his troops regardless of any consideration for the county committee or Captain Horsman.43CJ iii. 351a, 353b, 381a, 429b-430a; HMC Portland, i. 165; Perfect Diurnall no. 33 (11-18 Mar. 1644), 262 (E.252.24); 107 (11-18 Aug. 1645), 848 (E.262.45); Mercurius Civicus no. 138 (8-15 Jan. 1646), 2000 (E.316.9); S. Osborne, ‘The war, the people and the absence of the Clubmen in the Midlands, 1642-6, MH xix. 89, 92; Hopper, ‘Reluctant regicide’, 40-1. A steward for the parliamentarian grandees Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke and Sir Robert Pye I* – who were trustees of the Rutland estate of George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham – also alleged that Waite ‘spoiled and made havoc of timber and woods and ... found out naughty tenants to plough up the old pastures’.44Infra, ‘Sir Robert Pye I’; Leics. RO, DE1797/3/130. Waite’s high-handed proceedings as governor of Burley House provoked a bitter feud with leading members of Rutland’s county committee. Within a few weeks of his appointment as governor he was complaining to Grey of Groby about the committee’s efforts to undermine their military authority, and passing on news he had received from Roger Smith that Sir Arthur Hesilrige* was acting as the committee’s ‘agent’ at Westminster.45Bodl. Tanner 62, f. 459. In the spring of 1644, Waite and Grey of Groby attempted to have Horsman court martialled and put under investigation by the Committee of Accounts*; and Waite and another of Grey of Groby’s officers petitioned the Commons against Horsman and some of his fellow committeemen, alleging that they had embezzled public money and protected malignants.46CJ iii. 429b-430a; SP28/255, pt. 3: Waite to Cttee. of Accts. 10 Apr. 1644; Bodl. Tanner 62, ff. 635-6. Horsman and the county committee hit back at Waite in June, lobbying their friends at Westminster and petitioning the Commons against him.47CJ iii. 548a; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 251; HMC 6th Rep. 15; Hopper, ‘Reluctant regicide’, 41. On 3 July, the House ordered Grey of Groby to suspend Waite as governor of Burley House, which at first he refused to comply with and had to be reprimanded by the Committee of Both Kingdoms*.48CJ iii. 550b, 558b, 569a; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 361. That autumn, the Commons rejected attempts by the Lords to add Waite’s name to a list of proposed new deputy lieutenants for Rutland and to set up a bicameral committee to consider a petition from the county requesting his re-instatement as governor of Burley House.49LJ vi. 696a; vii. 27a; CJ iii. 617a. Disagreement between the two Houses over an ordinance that the Commons drafted in October for a new commission to manage the war effort in Rutland – in which neither Grey of Groby nor Waite were named – meant that the final choice of commissioners and the passage of the legislation through both Houses was delayed until June 1645.50CJ iii. 655b, 656; iv. 181a, 312b; LJ vii. 17b, 443b; VCH Rutland, i. 193. Steered by Grey of Groby’s father, Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford, the Lords added Grey of Groby, Waite and at least four of their supporters to this commission, and the new ordinance was seen in the county as a victory for his interest.51CJ iv. 181a, 236a; LJ vii. 39a, 307b; Perfect Diurnall no. 106 (4-11 Aug. 1645), 900 (E.262.41). In August 1645 the Commons reinstated Waite as governor of Burley House.52CJ iv. 236a. But he soon resumed his quarrel with the county committee, and in November the Rutland parliamentarian grandee Sir James Harington* presented a petition to the House from ‘divers gentlemen of the county’, complaining that Waite ‘did so oppress the inhabitants there, and especially the persons of the best quality, that unless they might have redress against him they must be forced to forsake their habitations’.53CJ iv. 356a; Add. 31116, p. 489; CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 188, 193; CCC 193. The Commons responded by reviving the committee it had established in the summer of 1644 to investigate Waite and the feuding in Rutland, which promptly summoned him to Westminster to answer the charges against him.54CJ iv. 356a; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 246.

Waite’s quarrel with the Rutland county committee became entangled with the holding of recruiter elections in the county to replace the disabled royalist MPs Sir Guy Palmes and Baptist Noel.55Supra, ‘Rutland’. On 15 January 1646, the House received petitions from rival groups in the county: the first, from ‘divers gentlemen and ministers’ – presumably supporters of Waite – requesting that the writ be sent down forthwith; the second – which Harington presented – from the county committee and ‘divers others’, asking that election proceedings be postponed until the dispute between Waite and the committee had been heard.56CJ iv. 408a; VCH Rutland, i. 192. On 5 June the Commons re-revived the committee to examine the dispute, and that same day the Committee of Both Kingdoms ordered Waite and one of his local supporters (either Samuel or Abel Barker*) to attend Derby House to explain ‘the disorders reported to have lately happened in Rutland’. In addition, the county committee was ordered to prepare evidence of Waite’s alleged ‘miscarriages’.57CJ iv. 565b; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 440.

Held at Oakham on 2 July 1646, the Rutland recruiter election was heavily influenced not only by the feud between Waite and the county committee, but also, it seems, by the largely personal rivalry between Waite and Harington – both of whom would emerge as prominent Independents at Westminster. Four of the candidates were leading county committeemen – Waite, Harington, Harington’s brother-in-law Christopher Browne and Evers Armyn – and a fifth, Richard Halford, would be added to the committee in 1648. The contest went to a poll in which Grey of Groby headed the lists of those who voted for Waite and Halford. Harington emerged the clear winner with 241 votes; but a dispute between Waite (who had received 174 votes) and Browne (who had received 82) regarding who had polled in second place led to a double return.58Supra, ‘Rutland’; Leics. RO, DE730/3, ff. 54v-55. The Commons debated the Rutland election on 15 July and upheld the return of Harington and Waite.59Kingdomes Weekly Intelligencer no. 157 (14-21 July 1646), 173 (E.345.10). The two men took their seats on 17 July.60Scotish Dove no. 143 (15-22 July 1646), 733-4 (E.345.11). Waite lost little time in seeking payment of his army arrears, for on 18 August his case was referred to the Committee of Accounts.61CJ iv. 648a.

Waite took the Covenant with other recruiter MPs on 9 December 1646, and the next day he was named to a committee for satisfying army arrears of pay.62CJ v. 7b, 9b. After receiving a petition from him and a certificate of his accounts on 9 January 1647, the House granted him £2,166 from the composition fines of such Rutland royalists as he should nominate to the Committee for Compounding*.63CJ v. 48a. Among the royalists he named were Sir Guy Palmes and his son Sir Brian Palmes*.64CCC 801, 1643. Appointed to a minor committee in February, he was granted leave of absence on 20 March, and by May, at the latest, he was back in Rutland, signing orders of the county sequestrations committee.65CJ v. 90a, 119a; Eg. 2978, ff. 219, 221, 222. On 9 October he was declared absent without excuse at the call of the House, for which he was fined £20.66CJ v. 330a. A week later (16 Oct.) the House accepted his excuse and returned him the money.67CJ v. 335a. On 8 March 1648 he was named to another minor committee and was granted further leave of absence a week later (15 Mar.).68CJ v. 486a, 500a. By June of that year the young duke of Buckingham, a prominent royalist, had engaged Waite’s services as an agent or overseer of his estate in Rutland, apparently without the knowledge of the earl of Pembroke or of Sir Robert Pye.69Leics. RO, DE1797/3/130.

During the second civil war, Waite acted to secure the magazine at Burley and, after conferring with Grey of Groby and members of the Leicestershire county committee – including Francis Hacker*, John Pratt*, William Stanley* and Peter Temple* – he joined forces with William Boteler* to crush several parties of insurgents in Northamptonshire. During one of these engagements the royalist chaplain Michael Hudson was brutally killed. The two Houses approved Waite’s actions and returned him their ‘hearty thanks, esteeming it a business of very great importance and concernment to suppress such insurrections and rebellions in the beginnings’.70LJ x. 313b-314b; CJ v. 589a; HMC Portland, i. 455-6; Hopper, ‘Reluctant regicide’, 43-4. The earl of Stamford, lord lieutenant of Leicestershire, nominated Waite as one of his deputy lieutenants in July, but the Commons failed to ratify the appointment.71LJ x. 356b.

Waite commanded part of the force with which Grey of Groby pursued the Scottish troops defeated at the battle of Preston, and it was Waite who, on 22 August, took the surrender of the Scottish commander-in-chief James 1st duke of Hamilton at Uttoxeter. The two officer-MPs had returned to Westminster by 28 August, when they received the thanks of the Commons for their ‘great good service’ and were named in first and second place to a small committee for interrogating Hamilton and other Scottish prisoners.72CJ v. 688b, 689a; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 22 (22-29 Aug. 1648), sig. Dd2v (E.461.17); Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS LXX, ff. 127v-131; Ludlow, Mems. i. 202. In recounting to the House the details of the duke’s surrender, Waite reportedly described him as a ‘politique, subtle lord, and that when he begins to consider the danger now attending him, if he be proceeded against with severity, he will discover enough [concerning his English confederates] to save his own head’.73Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 23 (29 Aug.-5 Sept. 1648), sig. Eev (E.462.8). On 4 September the Houses passed an ordinance to shift payment of the outstanding £2,010 of his pay arrears from composition fines to the Leicestershire and Rutland sequestration revenues – and by July 1650 he had received all but £421 of what he was owed.74CJ v. 689b; vi. 449b; LJ x. 487a; CCC 163, 2033. He was declared absent and excused at the call of the House on 26 September 1648, but had returned to Westminster by 25 November, when he was named to a committee for deciding which garrisons and strongholds should be maintained and which dismantled.75CJ vi. 34a, 87b.

Waite was not among those excluded at Pride’s Purge on 6 December 1648, but nor did he follow Grey of Groby in enthusiastically endorsing the army’s proceedings.76Supra, ‘Thomas Lord Grey of Groby’. According to the several accounts of that winter’s events he would give in 1660-2, under threat of death as a regicide, he was ‘much troubled’ by Pride’s Purge, repeatedly moved the army to know what charge there was against the excluded Members and even visited some of them in prison.77State Trials, v. 1218; HMC 7th Rep. 156. He was reportedly present in the House on 12 and 13 December, but retired to the midlands shortly thereafter and was ‘at his house in Rutlandshire when that court of judicature was voted and erected for bringing his sacred Majesty to a trial’.78Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 38 (12-19 Dec. 1648), sig. Ddd4v (E.476.35); SP29/16/139, f. 208; State Trials, v. 1218; HMC 7th Rep. 156, 157; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 166. The only reference to him in the Commons Journal between 25 November 1648 and 1 February 1649 concerns his addition to the Committee for Compounding early in January.79CJ vi. 107b, 113b.

Waite would claim after the Restoration that he had acted to suppress a petition in Rutland for trying the king, but that on receiving ‘many menacing letters to command his attendance in Parliament’ on pain of sequestration, he had returned to London on 26 January 1649 and had there learnt that he had been named to the trial commission and that Oliver Cromwell* and Henry Ireton* had sent for him accordingly.80SP29/16/139, f. 208; State Trials, v. 1218; HMC 7th Rep. 156. In fact, he had returned to London by 25 January, when he attended a meeting of the commission, and he would attend further meetings on 26 and 27 January.81Muddiman, Trial, 222, 224, 225, 226 Evidence that he attended four of the commission sessions in all is not easy to reconcile with his later claims that he had protested against the trial proceedings to Cromwell and Ireton, but that they had ‘trepanned’ him out of the House and had then forced him to attend ‘the detestable court’.82State Trials, v. 1218; HMC 7th Rep. 156. He certainly attended the last day of the trial, on 27 January, when sentence was passed.83Muddiman, Trial, 105. Furthermore, his claim in 1660-1 that he had seconded a motion by his fellow judge John Downes* to adjourn the court in order to discuss the king’s proposal to address Parliament was supported by just one purported eye-witness, who contradicted other details of Waite’s own version of events. Downes himself did not corroborate Waite’s story and nor did any other account of that day’s trial proceedings. Waite himself admitted that once the court had adjourned to debate the king’s proposal he had said nothing because he had been too intimidated by Cromwell. Downes’s published account in 1660 named Waite among those of the king’s judges who were ‘much unsatisfied, yet durst not speak’.84SP29/16/139, f. 208; HMC 7th Rep. 156, 157; J. Downes, A True and Humble Representation of Iohn Downes Esq (1660); Muddiman, Trial, 111; C. Holmes, ‘The trial and execution of Charles I’, HJ liii. 304; Hopper, ‘Reluctant regicide’, 51. At his trial in 1660, Waite testified that having been assured by Grey of Groby that the king would not be executed he had attended the Commons on 29 January, whereupon Cromwell had forced him to sign the death warrant.85State Trials, v. 1219. That he signed the warrant later than the majority of the regicides is clear from the position of his signature on the document. But he undermined his credibility on this point with the further, implausible, claim that he had been forced to sign the warrant, though ‘not knowing what was contained therein’, only some days after the king’s execution.86SP29/16/139, f. 208; HMC 7th Rep. 157; Hopper, ‘Reluctant regicide’, 50.

Yet despite the contradictions and inconsistencies in the various versions Waite gave of his actions in 1648-9, his failure to return to the Rump or attend the trial until the last few days of Charles’s life tends to support his later insistence that he had been a reluctant regicide.87Oxford DNB, ‘Thomas Waite’. Though his military career suggests he was a man of courage and conviction, the likely persuasions of Grey of Groby and the menaces of Cromwell were apparently enough to overcome his better judgement and scruples. Either willingly or otherwise, Waite observed Grey of Groby’s and Cromwell’s wishes again a few weeks later when he appeared as a witness for the prosecution at the duke of Hamilton’s trial for high treason. Waite affirmed earlier testimony by Colonel Robert Lilburne* that the articles on which the duke had surrendered had been intended to preserve him from the enraged English soldiery, not from the justice of Parliament.88G. Burnet, The Memoires of the Lives and Actions of James and William, Dukes of Hamilton (1677), 388, 389; Gardiner, Hist. Commonwealth and Protectorate, i. 10-11; Hopper, ‘Reluctant regicide’, 46. But Hamilton challenged, indeed ridiculed, Waite’s claim that he had taken his surrender almost single-handledly and in a manner that all parties had regarded as unconditional and conclusive. The duke insisted that he had formally surrendered not to Waite but to Major-general John Lambert*. The Independent divine Hugh Peters also refuted Waite’s testimony. Indeed, according to Gilbert Burnet, Peters accused Waite of lying in open court.89Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS LXX, ff. 131v, 221-2; Burnet, Hamilton Memoires, 389.

Waite entered his dissent to the 5 December vote – that the king’s answer to the Newport propositions were an acceptable basis for settlement – on 1 February, when he was named to a committee on a bill concerning the London Weavers’ Company.90CJ vi. 127b; [W. Prynne], A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case (1660), 23 (E.1013.22). In all, he was named to 22 committees between the regicide and the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653: ten in 1649; six in 1650; three in 1651; and three in 1652.91CJ vi. 127b, 134a, 137b, 206b, 207b, 217a, 319b, 325a, 325b, 330b, 416a, 436b, 437a, 438a, 448b, 513a; vii. 49a, 49b, 55b, 139a, 157b, 162a. But his appointments in the Rump generally reveal very little as to his alignments and interests at Westminster. His assignment with his fellow regicide Colonel John Jones I on 11 May 1649 to inform General Lord Fairfax (Sir Thomas Fairfax*) of ‘divers hostile acts against the Parliament’ by Leveller insurgents suggests that he was seen as no friend to John Lilburne and his confederates.92CJ vi. 207b. Similarly, his addition to the Committee of Plundered Ministers (CPM) on 4 July 1650 may well indicate that he was considered a man of godly convictions.93CJ vi. 437a. Early in 1651, he and his fellow regicide and associate of Grey of Groby’s, Peter Temple, testified in the CPM against the anti-Trinitarian controversialist John Fry*.94CJ vi. 537a. But his attendance at the CPM and the Committee for Compounding seems to have been highly infrequent.95SP22/2B, ff. 227v, 229; SP23/5, f. 61v; SP23/231, f. 204. That he was trusted by the commonwealth is evident from his appointment in March 1650 as commander-in-chief of the Rutland militia forces.96CSP Dom. 1650, p. 505. In mid-September, however, the council of state saw fit to place operational command in Rutland in the hands of another officer, ‘in regard that the said Colonel [Waite] is to attend the service of the commonwealth in Parliament’ and that he had managed to raise but a single troop of horse in the county.97SP25/10, p. 10; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 340. In the event, Waite’s next Commons’ appointment after the council had issued this order was not until 20 December.98CJ vi. 513a. On 3 June 1652 the House referred the care of a petition from the inhabitants of Loddington, Leicestershire, specifically to Waite, Pykeringe and Augustine Garland, but there is no evidence that any report was made from this committee.99CJ vii. 139a. Waite’s last appointment in the Rump was on 6 August, when he was named to a committee on a bill for satisfying the claims of the Irish Adventurers and encouraging Protestants to settle in Ireland.100CJ vii. 162a.

Waite was dropped from the Rutland and Leicestershire benches during the mid-1650s; and although he was named to successive Rutland assessment commissions during this period (by virtue of his appointment to the November 1653 commission), he does not seem to have sought election to any of the protectoral Parliaments.101An Act for an Assessment, 293. Rather than trying to prolong his political career beyond 1652, he contented himself with maximising rents and generally oppressing the tenants of the estate he had acquired in Rutland from the trustees for the sale of delinquents’ estates in the early 1650s.102SP29/390/14x, f. 41; Leics. RO, DE1797/3/131-46, 160; CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 28, 159, 330; 1654, pp. 24, 83; Hopper, ‘Reluctant regicide’, 47. He was encouraged and supported in this struggle with his ‘opposing tenants’ by his gentry neighbour and fellow enclosing landlord Abel Barker*.103Leics. RO, DG11/416-18, 421-3; DE730/4, ff. 42-45v; HMC 5th Rep. 393-4. Waite’s friends in Rutland during the mid-1650s also included the two men who represented the county in the Nominated Parliament, Henry D’Anvers and Edward Horsman.104Leics. RO, DE730/4, f. 43v. His friendship with Grey of Groby endured to the extent that the latter appointed him one of the overseers of his will and guardians of his children in 1657 and bequeathed him £200.105PROB11/263, f. 378.

Waite resumed his parliamentary career following the restoration of the Rump in May 1659. He was named to 17 committees between mid-May and early September, including those to bring in a new act of indemnity (14 May); to punish Quakers for disturbing church services (1 July); and to consider the introduction of a new engagement ‘to be true, faithful and constant to this commonwealth, against any king, single person and House of Peers and every of them’ (6 September).106CJ vii. 655a, 663a, 676b, 691b, 697b, 700b, 702a, 704b, 705b, 707b, 710b, 756b, 767a, 774a, 774b. At the end of August the council of state assigned him lodgings ‘near the ducking pond in St James’s Park’.107CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 160. On 30 September the Rump fined him £20 when he was found to be absent without excuse at the call of the House.108CJ vii. 790a. On 2 January 1660, in response to a letter from the recently re-restored Rump (presumably requiring his attendance at Westminster), he wrote to the Speaker in congratulatory vein: ‘I am very glad that the Lord hath, in His due time, restored you to your just place again, and, according to my duty ... I intend to set forward tomorrow morning to wait upon you and the Parliament to contribute my weak assistance’.109Bodl. Nalson VIII, f. 234; HMC Portland, i. 692. The last of his seven committee appointments in the re-restored Rump was on 15 February, which suggests that he absented himself following the re-admission on 21 February of the Members secluded at Pride’s Purge.110CJ vii. 808b, 818a, 821a, 822b, 833b, 838b, 843b.

In April and May 1660, Waite attempted to have the Convention hear his case as a regicide on the grounds that it was ‘different from the rest’, but despite his ‘daily attendance’ upon the Commons he was ignored, and in June he turned himself in to the authorities in accordance with the royal proclamation for the surrender of the regicides on pain of exemption from pardon or indemnity.111CJ viii. 63b; LJ xi. 32b, 52b; SP29/16/139, f. 208; State Trials, v. 1006. He was exempted from the Act of Indemnity nonetheless and was among those regicides tried at the Old Bailey on 16 October 1660 for high treason.112CJ viii. 61a; LJ xi. 101b, 102a. Having entered a plea of not guilty, he claimed that he had been intimidated and duped by Cromwell into signing the king’s death warrant. The court was not convinced and he was duly convicted of high treason.113State Trials, v. 1006-7, 1217-18, 1222. He was one of 18 regicides who were brought from the Tower to the Commons on 25 November 1661 and ‘humbly craved the benefit’ of the 1660 royal proclamation ‘and the mercy of this House and their mediation to his Majesty’.114CJ viii. 319a. After the Commons had then passed a bill for executing the 18 men, they had been brought before the Lords on 7 February 1662 to plead for their lives again. In his petition to the Lords on this occasion, he claimed (implausibly) that he had been ‘put out of all authority for being serviceable to his Majesty’s friends’ and had only narrowly avoided decimation under the major-generals; and that in 1659, ‘when he was in power, he would not suffer any of his Majesty’s friends to be imprisoned or their houses searched, believing nothing could ever make this nation happy but the restoration of his Majesty’.115HMC 7th Rep. 156-7; Hopper, ‘Reluctant regicide’, 49. In the event, the Lords rejected the bill and thus spared the 18 men’s lives – but their estates remained forfeit to the crown.116LJ xi. 380b.

Waite continued a prisoner in the Tower of London until the spring of 1664, when he was transferred to Gorey Castle on Jersey, where he died in the autumn of 1688 – not in 1668 as one authority has stated.117CSP Dom. 1667-8, p. 229; Hopper, ‘Reluctant regicide’, 51, 52. He was buried on 18 October 1688 in St Saviour, Jersey, where his wife was also interred the following year.118Balleine’s History of Jersey ed. Syvret, Stevens, 148. He was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.