MICHELL or MITCHELL, William (d. 1663), of Wingerworth, Derbys.

William Michell was the son of a minor landowner in the Yorkshire parish of Whiston, near Rotherham, who served as captain in the Hull garrison during the first civil war.17BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database. In the summer of 1647 he transferred to Robert Lilburne’s regiment and, a year later, to that of John Mauleverer. After Mauleverer’s death in December 1650 the regiment was commanded by Richard Deane, and by early January 1651 Michell had been promoted to major.18Wanklyn, New Model Army, i. 89, 103; ii. 54. He was with the regiment in Scotland, taking part in the defence of Linlithgow against a royalist attack, and in the autumn of 1651, as lieutenant colonel, he joined the expeditionary force sent to subdue the Isle of Man.19SP28/74, ff. 13, 18; Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. ii. 240; HMC 5th Rep. 342. From the spring of 1652 Michell was in England, arranging the recruitment of his regiment, but was back in Scotland by the beginning of 1654, and in April of that year was ordered to join Colonels Thomas Morgan and Thomas Fitch* in negotiating terms with the earl of Seaforth in the region north of Inverness.20CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 352, 559; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLV, unfol.: 17 Apr. 1654. The support of these two senior officers may have influenced Michell’s election for Inverness-shire for the first protectorate Parliament, which met in September 1654.21Cromwellian Union ed. Terry, p. lv.

In his political career, Michell was a member of the army interest. Apart from Deane, Morgan and Fitch, from early 1651 Michell had been a regular correspondent with Captain Adam Baynes* (of John Lambert’s* regiment), and he was ready to act on behalf of Baynes’s brothers when he went to London in September 1654.22Roundhead Officers ed. Akerman, 7-8, 15, 29, 43, 96. His connection with Lambert was also well-developed, as George Monck* acknowledged in September 1654, when he instructed Colonels Twistleton and John Okey* ‘to be assisting to Major [Ralph] Knight* and Lieutenant-colonel Michell in moving his highness and the Lord Lambert earnestly for a constant way of supplying the forces here’.23Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVI, unfol.: 2, 6 Sept. 1654. This extra-parliamentary negotiation seems to have been the main purpose of Michell’s journey south: he played no recorded part in the business of the Commons, and the only other surviving references to his activities in London are to his gift of a goshawk to Bulstrode Whitelocke* on 12 October 1654 and to his marriage at St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe in May 1655.24Whitelocke, Diary, 396; St Andrew-by-the-Wardrobe par. reg. Michell certainly made a good impression on the protector, and in March 1655 he was given the command of Morgan’s regiment in Scotland, being described by a London newsletter-writer as ‘a very ingenuous and deserving person’.25Clarke Pprs. iii. 30. Michell also received favours from Monck, and his return to Scotland in August 1655 was greeted with a further promotion, to command the forces around Dumbarton.26Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVII, unfol.: 24 Aug. 1655; Roundhead Officers ed. Akerman, 117. In September 1655 he was ordered to take his regiment north to garrison Aberdeen, and his position as governor presumably ensured his return for the shire in the elections of August 1656.27Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVII, unfol.: 3 Sept. 1655; Cromwellian Union ed. Terry, p. lxii.

In the second protectorate Parliament, Michell was once again closely associated with the army interest led by John Lambert. He was one of the Scottish colonels sent to attend the protector before the parliamentary session began, and in November and December he was seen as a man capable of influencing Lambert over individual petitions.28Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLVIII, unfol.: 19 Aug. 1656; Roundhead Officers ed. Akerman, 130, 133. Yet Mitchell’s activity in Parliament was relatively modest. He was added to the committee for Scottish affairs on 26 September, but over the next four months he was named to only five committees, and only one of these – to consider the revenues to be extracted from papists’ estates (22 Oct.) – was of any importance.29CJ vii. 428b, 429b, 444a, 462b, 472a, 478a. He was given leave of absence on 16 March 1657, a few days before the crucial vote on whether to include the offer of the crown in the Humble Petition and Advice, possibly because Monck’s continuing security fears in Scotland required loyal officers to command their units in person.30CJ vii. 504b. Soon after his return, Michell’s regiment was moved from Aberdeen to Dundee.31Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS LI, f. 19.

Despite continuing to enjoy Monck’s favour, by the winter of 1657-8 Michell had grown disillusioned with the protectorate. In February he joined a delegation of officers who attended the protector to voice their dissatisfaction with the present government. Cromwell’s refusal to bow to pressure caused a general climb-down, with Michell and two colleagues being noted for their sycophantic abasement: ‘and declared to him their satisfaction both in himself and the government, and that they would live and die with his highness’.32TSP vi. 806; Clarke Pprs. iii. 141. Monck was relieved that Michell and his friends had ‘given his highness such satisfaction of their faithfulness to him’, but his trust in his subordinate had been shaken.33TSP vi. 807. The death of Oliver Cromwell and the accession of Richard Cromwell* as protector raised further concerns. Despite Michell’s protestation to John Thurloe* on 29 September 1658 that he had readily subscribed the ‘address’ recognising the new protector, and had persuaded his regiment to do the same, it seems likely that Michell’s failure to secure a seat in the 1659 Parliament was due, at least in part, to Monck’s continuing suspicions about his loyalty.34TSP vii. 416.

The fall of the protectorate in May 1659 brought Lambert and the army interest back into power, and Michell was a beneficiary of the reorganisation of the army which followed. He was originally ordered to take over Fitch’s regiment at Inverness, but this command was eventually given to Robert Overton, and Michell was given leave to recruit a new regiment at the end of July.35Clarke Pprs. iv. 24; Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. ii. 556-7; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 57. He had gathered only three companies by the outbreak of Sir George Boothe’s* rebellion, but he commanded these to support Lambert in his suppression of the insurgents of Derbyshire.36Firth and Davis, Regimental Hist. ii. 557. In late September he was involved in the assembly at Derby of 50 officers, who met Lambert to discuss a ‘petition and address’ drafted by Colonel Jerome Sankey*, Major Richard Creed and Michell himself. This included a demand to punish the royalist rebels, purge corporations and local magistrates, and to put the army into the hands of Lambert and his friends.37HMC Leyborne-Popham, 122-3; Clarke Pprs. iv. 58. This document precipitated the crisis which brought Lambert into direct conflict with parliament, and encouraged Monck to march south and occupy London. Michell’s role in the events of the winter of 1659-60 is unknown, and he may have retired from public life long before the restoration.

During the 1650s Michell had taken every opportunity to improve his financial position, acquiring the leadmines at Wirksworth and property at Scarsdale in Derbyshire.38CCC 1849; Scarsdale Misc. 51. In May 1655 he married Mariana, sister of Thomas Hickman-Windsor, who had distinguished himself as a royalist at the battle of Naseby and who later became Baron Windsor and 1st earl of Plymouth, and the widow of Sir Henry Hunloke, whose family had been established at Wingerworth, near Chesterfield, since the fifteenth century.39Derbs. RO, Wingerworth par. regs.; C7/220/27, 30. Michell entertained Lambert at Wingerworth in September 1659, and after 1660 he returned there, keeping in touch with the London news through his former lieutenant-colonel, John Ward.40Derbs. RO, Wingerworth par. regs.; HMC Leyborne-Popham, 122; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 537; CJ vii. 742b. His attempt to set himself up as a country gentleman was, however, short-lived. In May 1662 he drew up his will, leaving half his property to his wife and the other half – worth £1,500 – to his only child, a daughter, who was to be ‘brought up in the reformed Protestant religion in the most reformed purity of its worship and discipline’. Michell’s hopes for a son and heir, expressed in his will, were unfulfilled by the time of his death, in the summer of 1663.41PROB11/311/524.