HALLOWES, Nathaniel (1582-1661), of St Werburgh, Derby, and Dethick Hall, Hartshorne, Derbys.

Hallowes’s father was the younger son of a labourer from the High Peak village of Youlgreave.46Youlgreave par. reg. At some point before 1582, when Hallowes was born, he moved to Derby, where he worked as a carpenter. In his will, he referred to his leases of two houses in Derby, his ‘poor kinsfolk at Youlgreave’ and his ‘good and loving friend’ Gervase Sleigh – father of the future parliamentarian Sir Samuel Sleigh*. One of Hallowes’s daughters had married Stephen Sleigh, who was either Gervase’s son or nephew.47Staffs. RO, B/C/11, will of Thomas Hallowes, 1622; Cox, ‘Nathaniel Hallowes’, 5. The future MP was also linked, through his first marriage, to several of the town’s leading inhabitants – including another future parliamentarian Gervase Bennett* – and by 1622 had prospered sufficiently as a woollen draper to be elected one of the town’s governing bailiffs.48Add. 6705, f. 97; Cox, ‘Nathaniel Hallowes’, 7, 8. By the late 1630s, he was an alderman with a country estate on a par with that of most gentry.49Add. 6705, f. 97; Derbys. RO, D1088/MT/16; D187/6/9-10. In 1647, he would be granted a coat of arms as Nathaniel Hallowes of Dethick Hall, Derbyshire, where he had purchased an estate in 1636.50Derbys. RO, D187/14/1; D1088/MT/16.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Hallowes was returned for Derby, taking the junior place to the town’s recorder William Allestrye. He received no appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. In the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn, he and Allestrye stood for Derby again, but on this occasion they faced competition from two local gentlemen, Thomas Gell* and Christopher Fulwoode. On election day, 19 October, Gell and Fulwoode commanded sufficient support among the Derby freemen to demand a poll. But their request was refused by the mayor, who returned the two corporation candidates. When Gell and Fulwoode protested to the Commons that the mayor’s refusal of a poll was an infringement of the town’s charter, Allestrye (a lawyer) conceded the point, informing Fulwoode that he would yield to any ‘indifferent motion’ in order to preserve the mayor and corporation from legal action and the censure of the House. Hallowes, on the other hand, stated that ‘he would conclude nothing without the consent of the mayor and aldermen’.51Supra, ‘Derby. Nevertheless, although he and Allestrye apparently took their seats in the Commons, they avoided making any contribution to the House’s proceedings while the committee of privileges considered the case.52Procs. LP iii. 134; Derbys. RO, D258/17/31/8. This conciliatory approach seems to have paid off, for on 25 March 1641, the House passed over the mayor’s indiscretion and resolved simply that a new election be held for the town.53CJ ii. 113a. According to Sir Simonds D’Ewes*, Allestrye and Hallowes ‘were both contented without any further dispute of the House to depart out of the same’ and to acknowledge their return void. Before leaving the House, Hallowes asked the Speaker to grant a warrant for a new electoral writ, but was sharply reproved on the grounds that he was no longer an MP.54Procs. LP iii. 134. In the new election, on 14 April, Allestrye and Hallowes were returned again, this time without serious opposition.55Supra, ‘Derby’.

After this inauspicious start to his career in the Long Parliament, Hallowes took several years to make any appreciable impact at Westminster. He evidently spent a good deal of time between April 1641 and the outbreak of civil war in Derby.56Derby Local Studies Lib. DBR/E/1, Derby Chamberlains’ Accts. 1641, unfol.; CJ ii. 505a. However, he was apparently present in the House on 11 June, when he pledged £50 towards the parliamentarian war-effort.57PJ iii. 474. On 3 August, he was one of a group of Derbyshire parliamentarians that was ordered to put the Militia Ordinance into execution in the county.58CJ ii. 701a, 702b; LJ v. 260b. This group formed the nucleus of the Derbyshire county committee. A week later, he received his first committee appointment (and his last for almost two years), when he was added to the committee for contributions to the distressed Protestants of Ireland.59CJ ii. 713a. Hallowes advanced £300 for himself and £1,100 for other (unnamed) parties as an Irish Adventurer.60CSP Ire. Adv. 105, 149; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 565. His decision to side with Parliament at the outbreak of civil war was almost certainly linked to his godly religious convictions. In Derbyshire, he quickly established himself as a leading member of the county committee, of which he was appointed treasurer in November 1642.61Harl. 164, ff. 375v, 378v; Harl. 165, f. 95; Bodl. Nalson II, f. 225; Derbys. RO, D258/34/40; D803/MZ/9, pp. xx, xxii; HMC 9th Rep. ii. 392; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 28, 29. He was closely involved in efforts to raise money and arms for Sir John Gell’s parliamentarian forces in the county and, in the summer of 1643, accompanied Sir Thomas Fairfax* on his march from Derby to Chesterfield.62Belvoir, Mss Historical etc. 1641-52, QZ.24, f. 24; HMC Cowper, ii. 328; HMC Portland, i. 78, 103; CJ iii. 454b; Theeves, Theeves, or a Relation of Sir John Gell’s Proceedings (1643), 5-6 (E.100.13); Glover, Derbys. ii. 381.

Hallowes returned to Westminster in the spring of 1644, receiving several appointments in April and May of that year relating to military affairs in the north midlands.63CJ iii. 470a, 506b, 507b. He subscribed the Solemn League and Covenant on 26 June.64CJ iii. 543a. In the four and half years between resuming his seat and Pride’s Purge, he was granted leave of absence on seven occasions – usually, it seems, to return to Derbyshire and his duties as a member of the county committee.65CJ iv. 154b, 511a, 616a; v. 188b, 282b, 330a, 511b, 543b, 693b; vi. 34b; SP28/226, unfol. His Commons track record during the period 1644-8, either as a committeeman or a speaker, is correspondingly poor. He was named to only 28 committees – most of them of relatively minor importance – and contributed very little in debate.66CJ iii. 627a; Harl. 166, f. 203. He helped to draft or to execute Commons’ directives for the maintenance and ordering of Parliament’s forces in Derbyshire during the mid-1640s.67CJ iv. 102a, 118b, 463a, 633a. And a wider commitment to sustaining the war-effort is at least suggested by his appointment to half a dozen committees for the pay of Parliament’s troops in England and Ireland and for sequestering and fining its enemies.68CJ iii. 602b, 609a; iv. 613a; v. 8b, 434a, 557b. His probable alignment with the Independents by mid-1647 is suggested by his appearance on one of the lists of those Members who took refuge with the army following the Presbyterian coup at Westminster of late July.69HMC Egmont, i. 440. But because he generally kept a low political profile it is impossible to gauge his position on most of the major issues of the day.

Nevertheless, it is clear from Hallowes’s appointments that he favoured a godly preaching ministry and perhaps also a Presbyterian church settlement. On 31 July 1644, for example, he and the Presbyterian MPs Sir Robert Harley and William Ashhurst were ordered to thank the Presbyterian ministers Stanley Gower and William Rathband (or Rathbone) for their recent sermons to the House.70CJ iii. 574b; Tai Liu, Puritan London (1986), 58. Similarly, he was selected on 26 November 1645 to request fast sermons from William Strong and John Foxcroft, who were either Presbyterians or very ‘orthodox’ Independents.71CJ iv. 355b; Tai Liu, Puritan London, 114. It may also be significant that his addition to the Committee for Plundered Ministers* on 19 November 1644 was in reference to a paper that the Westminster Assembly had presented to the House concerning the case of John Robinson, a London separatist minister who had refused to accept ordination as a presbyter.72Supra, ‘Committee for Plundered Ministers’; CJ iii. 699b. Although Hallowes was appointed to relatively few ad hoc committees for promoting a godly ministry, he was named on both the 1646 and 1648 commissions for excluding scandalous persons from the sacrament.73CJ iv. 97b; v. 119b. He was active during the winter of 1646-7 on the first of these commissions, which had apparently assumed responsibility for establishing Presbyterian classes in the provinces.74Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 432.

In terms of Derbyshire politics during the 1640s, Hallowes is easier to pin down. Despite having worked closely with Sir John Gell in the early years of the civil war, he backed Major Thomas Sanders* in his quarrel with Gell and attended the Committee for Examinations* when it heard evidence against Sir John in December 1645.75Infra, ‘Thomas Sanders’; Derbys. RO, D258/12/16, pp. 9, 13, 19, 29, 47, 49, 53, 64; D1232/O/22, 32, 59; Beats, ‘Derbys.’, 211, 400. This factional dispute had a national political dimension inasmuch as Gell looked to the leader of the parliamentary Presbyterians, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, for support, and Sanders to the Fairfaxes and their Independent allies. But in general, it was Gell’s high-handed proceedings in the county that his opponents objected to, not his politics or religion.

Hallowes spent most of the second half of 1648 in Derbyshire, where he was active on the county committee.76SP28/226, unfol. He was reportedly present in the House late in November 1648, when he objected to the men pricked for sheriff of Derbyshire as ‘malignants’ and nominated German Pole* and two other gentlemen in their place.77Derbys. RO, D5557/2/8/1. However, there is no evidence that he sat in the Commons between then and 17 January 1649, when he was added to the committee for removing obstructions on the sale of bishops’ lands.78CJ vi. 120b. It is not clear whether he was at Derby or Westminster when, on 15 January, he endorsed a certificate from the town’s ministers to the Assembly of Divines, recommending one Robert Gee for the living of St Peter’s, Derby.79PA, Main Pprs. 18 Jan. 1649. Given that Hallowes’s name virtually disappears from the Journal between September 1648 and February 1649, it is unlikely that he made his dissent to the 5 December 1648 vote (that the king’s answers at Newport were an acceptable basis for settlement) until after the regicide – although exactly when is not recorded.80Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 218. His avoidance of political commitment during the winter of 1648-9 suggests that had reservations about the purge and its aftermath. It is therefore surprising that he was more active in the Rump than he had been before the purge. The fact that he took up residence in Westminster during the early 1650s may well reflect his increased involvement in parliamentary affairs.81Derbys. RO, D187/9/3/3; CJ vi. 562a.

In all, Hallowes was named to approximately 70 committees in the Rump, including the Committee of Navy and Customs, the committee for excise and the Committee for the Army, and he was active on all three.82CJ vi. 219b, 357b; Add. 18986, f. 17; CUST109/14, p. 18; SP18/5, f. 60; SP18/17, f. 142; SP18/30, ff. 167, 170, 171, 172; SP18/50, f. 1; SP28/68-91; SP46/97, f. 21; Bodl. Rawl. C.386, unfol.; Belvoir, Original Letters, English Regicides of 1649, QZ.5, f. 114. He evidently shared the concern of many Rumpers to ensure proper maintenance for the Commonwealth’s armed forces, and this may also explain several other aspects of his career in the Rump – for example, his nomination to a series of committees relating to public finances and the sale of crown and forfeited estates and his role in the committee for removing obstructions on the sale of bishops’ lands, much of the proceeds of which ended up in the pockets of the soldiery.83CJ vi. 161b, 207b, 250a, 265b, 290a, 358b, 459b, 563b; vii. 154b, 222b, 250b, 263a; Add. 37682, f. 26; LPL, COMM Add 1, ff. 49v, 54, 55v, 57, 62, 68v, 93. But whether he regarded the army as a threat to be appeased or as a force for good in the commonwealth is impossible to say. What his appointments and activities in the Rump do establish is his abiding commitment to godly reformation and the suppression of vice and unorthodoxy. He was an active member of the Committee for Plundered Ministers and the committee for regulating the universities – to which he was added in September 1650 – both of which played a central role in settling a godly ministry.84CJ vi. 469b; SP22/2B, f. 37 and passim; LPL, Sion L40.2/E16, passim. He was also named to several ad hoc committees in the Rump for advancing the gospel and a preaching ministry.85Add. 36792, ff. 53, 57v, 74; CJ vi. 231a, 416a; vii. 12b, 86b. Equally revealing of his religious priorities was his nomination to committees for suppressing ‘obscene and licentious practices under pretence of liberty of conscience’ (14 June 1650), for suppressing ‘atheistical, blasphemous and execrable opinions and unlawful meetings and assemblies’ (24 June) and for the relief of tender consciences in matters of religion (6 Jan. 1653).86CJ vi. 423b, 430b; vii. 244a. If his assignments as a committeeman are any guide, he was also interested in legislation for setting the poor on work, improving the lot of debtors (in October 1653, he would be named as a judge for the relief of poor prisoners) and in making proceedings at law less burdensome to the people.87CJ vi. 171a, 284a, 330b, 481a; vii. 215a, 253b; A. and O. ii. 753. The war in Ireland and related issues also accounted for several of his appointments in the Rump – notably, his addition on 20 July 1649 to the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs*.88CJ vi. 249b, 266b, 512b; vii. 278b. The Rump acknowledged his loyalty by granting him a 21 year lease of a farm in Hartington, Derbyshire, and in taking the unusual step of inserting in the July 1651 act for forfeited estates a clause assigning property to him worth £100 a year for satisfying the debts and losses of £1,000 that he had incurred in Parliament’s service.89CJ vi. 291a, 596b, 598a; A. and O. ii. 541-2.

At the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653, Hallowes quit national politics for the next six years. There is no evidence that he stood for election to any of the protectoral Parliaments, although his appointment as an ejector for Derbyshire in August 1654 underlines his support for the Cromwellian church settlement and a publicly-maintained, parochial ministry.90A. and O. ii. 969. However, he was sceptical as to the constitutional safeguards against tyranny under the protectorate – as he hinted in a letter to Lady Millicent Pole (the mother of German Pole) in October 1654.

Here is little news, only this Parliament [the first protectoral Parliament] hath been all this week in debate for the settling my lord protector and for [the] succession – whether hereditary or elective. But after three days debate ... the major part voted his successor to be elective; nowhere considering where the power shall be placed for the electing [of his successor] if Parliament be not sitting.91Derbys. RO, D5557/2/29.

With the re-convening of the Rump in May 1659, Hallowes resumed his seat and was named to 19 committees, including several for improving the commonwealth’s finances and security.92CJ vii. 664a, 676b, 684b, 691a, 694b, 786b. As a Derbyshire militia commissioner, he was involved in the mopping up operation following Sir George Boothe’s* royalist uprising in July and August.93SP28/226, unfol. But when the army called time on the Rump that October, he again withdrew from national politics – this time permanently.94The Grand Memorandum (1660, 669 f.24.37).

Hallowes died intestate in the spring of 1661 and was buried at All Saints, Derby, on 12 March.95All Saints, Derby par. reg.; C6/39/229. The administration of his estate was granted to his widow.96PROB6/37, f. 38. Hallowes was the first and last of his family to sit in Parliament.