PEART, Original (1605-57), of St Mark, and the High Street, St Peter at Gowts, Lincoln, Lincs.

Peart was the scion of a sub-gentry family that had settled in the Nottinghamshire parish of Sutton-cum-Lound – about 15 miles north west of Lincoln – by the early seventeenth century. His father had married the daughter of a prosperous local yeoman whose eldest son (Peart’s uncle) was the renowned puritan theologian and separatist minister John Robinson.21Burgess, Pastor of the Pilgrims, 15-16, 345; Oxford DNB, ‘John Robinson’. Peart’s elder brother William was apprenticed to a Lincoln glover in 1612, and he himself was bound apprentice to another of the city’s master tradesmen, Henry Berron (also rendered as Burren or Buryn), in 1620. The Original Berron who was married at Newton on Trent, Lincolnshire, in 1604 was possibly a kinsman of both Peart and Henry Berron (Henry Berron would christen one of his sons Original in 1630). Berron, whose trade is not known, served as one of the city’s chamberlains in 1623, but rose no higher in the municipal hierarchy.22Newton on Trent par reg.; St Mary le Wigford, Lincoln par. reg. (bap. 19 May 1630); Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/4, ff. 90v, 169v, 222. Peart obtained his freedom in 1627, and whatever his trade or profession he seems to have prospered in it, attaining sufficient wealth and standing to render him eligible to serve as homager, chamberlain and city sheriff and eventually to be elected an alderman.23Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/4, ff. 222, 225v, 263; Stark, Hist. of Lincoln, app. i, 14. By the mid-1630s, he had also been appointed one of the feoffees of lands belonging to the parish of St Mark’s, Lincoln – a group that included (or would come to include) the future parliamentarians Alderman Robert Marshall* and Humphrey Walcott*.24Lincs. RO, FL/Lincoln St Marks Deeds/2/9, 3/4. As one of the city’s two sheriffs in 1640, Peart was among the signatories to the indenture that returned Thomas Grantham and John Broxolme to the Long Parliament.25C219/43/2/32.

Peart sided with Parliament during the civil war, and by December 1643 he was serving as a lieutenant in Captain John Disney’s troop in the Eastern Association regiment of horse commanded by Francis 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham.26E121/3/3/113, f. 40v; SP28/161, unfol.; SP28/144, pt. 3, f. 7. Evidently a ‘gallant’ and successful officer, Peart had been commissioned a captain by March 1645, and the following month he was selected for a captaincy in the fifth regiment of horse in the New Model army.27Mercurius Civicus no. 128 (30 Oct.-6 Nov1645), 1121 (E.308.15); Perfect Passages no. 20 (5-11 Mar. 1645), 160; Wanklyn, New Model Army, i. 52. This regiment, which was commanded by the Lincolnshire Presbyterian gentleman Colonel Edward Rosseter*, was initially detached from the New Model and was intended for ‘special service ... in Lincolnshire and parts adjacent’.28CJ vii. 121a; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 164. Rosseter’s regiment fought at the battle of Naseby in June 1645, but spent most of the final year of the first civil war guarding the Eastern Association.29The City Scout no. 15 (28 Oct.-4 Nov. 1645), 8 (E.308.10); Mercurius Civicus no. 128 (30 Oct.-6 Nov. 1645), 1121; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 164.

A staunch Presbyterian, Rosseter supported the Stapilton-Holles faction in its efforts to disband the New Model during the first half of 1647. Consequently, after the army’s triumphal march into London early in August, Sir Thomas Fairfax* replaced him as colonel with Major Philip Twistleton.30Infra, ‘Edward Rosseter’; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 752. At the same time, James Berry*, an officer in Fairfax’s regiment, was made major of the regiment.31Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 165. According to one authority, Peart was ‘intimately associated’ with Berry (who was later to serve as a Cromwellian major-general), although there is no firm evidence to substantiate this claim.32J. Berry, S.G. Lee, A Cromwellian Major-General, 110.

Peart was almost certainly an alderman of Lincoln by May 1647 – he was referred to as such in June – when he signed the indenture returning Thomas Lister as a ‘recruiter’ Member for the city.33C219/43/2/34; A. and O. i. 969. Nevertheless, he remained in the army, and in June 1648, when his house was among those in Lincoln plundered by a royalist raiding party, he was reportedly ‘in arms in Northumberland for the Parliament’.34The Moderate Intelligencer no. 172 (29 June-6 July 1648), sig. L1111111 (E.451.15). Twistleton’s regiment – and presumably Peart himself – fought at the battle of Preston in August and was subsequently employed by Oliver Cromwell* in eradicating Engager influence in Edinburgh and lowland Scotland.35Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 164-5. Peart seems to have resigned his captaincy at some point during the first half of 1650 – possibly to avoid participation in the projected invasion of Scotland – and that autumn he was elected mayor of Lincoln.36Wanklyn, New Model Army, ii. 51.

Peart was one of Lincoln’s most influential inhabitants by the early 1650s. Local legend has it that at some point during the civil war period, probably in the early 1650s, Peart intervened with Cromwell to save Lincoln cathedral from demolition, arguing that ‘if the minster was pull’d down, Lincoln would soon be one of the worst towns in the county’.37Diary of Abraham de la Pryme ed. Jackson, 158; J.G. Williams, ‘Lincoln civic insignia’, Lincs. N and Q, viii. 176-7. Although this story is probably apocryphal, Peart, as a former cavalry officer in both the Eastern Association and the New Model army, was probably well known to Cromwell. In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, Peart and his fellow alderman William Marshall were returned for Lincoln – Peart taking the junior place.38Supra, ‘Lincoln’. He probably owed his election to the strength of his interest as a prominent member of the corporation and as the city’s most distinguished military figure. He received no appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. In the autumn of 1655, he was appointed to the Lincolnshire commission for securing the peace of the commonwealth, signing its letter to Secretary John Thurloe*, reporting progress in levying the decimation tax. The other signatories included Major-general Edward Whalley*, Berry, Walcott and Peart’s old regimental commander, John Disney.39TSP iv. 185.

In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Peart was re-elected for Lincoln, this time taking the senior place – the junior place going to Humphrey Walcott. Their election may have represented a victory for the city’s godly, pro-Cromwellian faction, which had been locked in a ‘long and hot difference’ with a powerful group of royalist sympathisers among the senior office-holders and common councilmen.40Supra, ‘Lincoln’. But while the two Lincoln MPs were allowed to take their seats, about 100 other Members were excluded from the House by the protectoral council as opponents of the government. On 22 September, Peart and Walcott were among the 29 MPs who voted against a motion that the excluded Members apply to the council for approbation to sit, which was interpreted as support for ‘the bringing in of the excluded Members into the House’ and was comprehensively defeated.41Bodl. Tanner 52, f. 166; CJ vii. 426b. Most of these 29 MPs have been accounted Presbyterians.42M.J. Tibbetts, ‘Parliamentary Parties under Oliver Cromwell’ (Bryn Mawr Univ. PhD thesis, 1944), 127-9. Peart took little part in the subsequent proceedings of this Parliament, receiving only two appointments (in November 1656 and February 1657), both to minor committees, and again making no known contribution to debate.43CJ vii. 455a, 494a; Burton’s Diary, i. 285.

Peart died in the autumn of 1657 and was buried on 31 October at St Peter at Gowts.44St Peter at Gowts Par. Regs. ed. Dudding, 49. In his will, he left the bulk of his property to his wife and their two children Robert and Mary. A significant proportion of his estate was made up of lands and messuages which he had either leased from the corporation or ‘lately purchased’ – reinforcing the impression that he was very much a self-made man. His estate included a ‘new built brick house’ of nine hearths (which reportedly cost him £900 to build) on the High Street in St Peter at Gowts and a ‘great house’ next to it, which he had purchased from one of John Broxolme’s brothers. All his property was confined to the city – he seems to have had no country residence. His personal estate included a ‘new oval table which I bought at London’ and a ‘chimney piece which came from Boston’ He appointed as his supervisors the parliamentarian Alderman John Becke and Lincoln’s town clerk, the royalist sympathiser William South.45PROB11/271, ff. 48-50v; Diary of Abraham de la Pryme ed. Jackson, 158-9; F. Hill, Tudor and Stuart Lincoln, 163, 171, 173, 165. There is no evidence for the claim made later in the century that Peart had ‘got great part of the bishop’s lands’ in Lincoln.46Diary of Abraham de la Pryme, 158. None of Peart’s immediate descendants sat in Parliament.