LISTER, Thomas (c.1597-1668), of Coleby, Lincs., and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, St Giles-in-the-Fields, Mdx.

The Listers had joined the ranks of the Lincolnshire gentry by the Elizabethan period, and they purchased the manor of Rippingale in 1591 for £1,800. Lister’s father, who served as sheriff of the county in 1625, made numerous additions to his estate, including the manor and mansion house of Coleby, about five miles south of Lincoln, which would become Thomas Lister’s principal residence.52Gibbons, Notes, 23-5. The marriage in 1622 between Thomas and the daughter of another future parliamentarian, Sir William Armyne* – who was one of Lincolnshire’s wealthiest gentlemen and leading patrons of godly ministers – is testament to the Listers’ growing prosperity and perhaps also to their religious sympathies. It was possibly Armyne who recommended Lister to the new lord lieutenant of Lincolnshire, Robert Bertie, 1st earl of Lindsey, as a militia captain in July 1629.53Gibbons, Notes, 27. Lister’s appointment to the Kesteven bench in March of that year may also be linked to Lindsey’s elevation to the lord lieutenancy two months earlier and his commissioning of Armyne as one of his deputy lieutenants.54C231/4, ff. 263, 265v; Lincs. RO, YARB/8/2/3.

Little is known about Lister’s activities during the personal rule of Charles I beyond his involvement with Armyne as sewers commissioners in surveying and approving for drainage the Lincolnshire fenlands granted to the earl of Lindsey and his associates – a project backed by the crown.55W. Killigrew, Whereas it Hath Often Been Said at the Committee for the Earle of Lindsey’s Fenns (?1650). Nevertheless, Lister’s removal from the magistracy in September 1639, during military preparations for the second bishops’ war, may well indicate that he was regarded by that point as an opponent of royal policies.56C231/5, p. 355. Likewise, his re-appointment to the bench in June 1641 was possibly an attempt by the crown to curry favour with Lister and his father-in-law.57C231/5, p. 450.

Lister was aligned with the nascent parliamentarian faction in Lincolnshire by the summer of 1642, signing a petition to the parliamentary lord lieutenant of the county, Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham, in June, declaring a resolution to defend the king and ‘the true Protestant religion’ against ‘all such as shall attempt to separate his Majesty from his great and faithful council of Parliament’.58PA, Main Pprs. 4 July 1642. Lister’s zeal in the parliamentarian cause was such that the king himself ordered his arrest in August 1642, whereupon the royalists broke into Coleby Hall and carried ‘Captain Lister’ prisoner before the king’s council at Nottingham.59CJ ii. 770b, 801a. His crime in royalist eyes was probably that of raising troops for Parliament. The Commons demanded his release on a writ of habeas corpus, and he had probably been freed by the time the House received a petition from him (its contents are unknown) on 8 October 1642.60CJ ii. 801a. Having secured his release, the Commons sent him back into Lincolnshire on 2 December ‘upon the service of Parliament’.61CJ ii. 872b. Similarly, in May 1643 the Commons ordered him to assist Colonel Oliver Cromwell* in the defence of the east midlands.62CJ iii. 67b. The trust that Parliament evidently reposed in Lister was demonstrated by its appointment of him as Lincolnshire’s sheriff in December 1644.63LJ vii. 81b. Lister’s reasons for siding with Parliament were almost certainly linked to his religious convictions, for if his later career is any guide he was a zealous puritan.

Lister had emerged as a leading member of the Lincolnshire county committee by the mid-1640s and, as such, was closely involved in its protracted dispute with the Presbyterian and anti-army campaigner Colonel Edward King.64Bodl. Nalson VI, f. 72; Tanner 58, f. 39; C. Holmes, ‘Col. King and Lincs. politics, 1642-6’, HJ xvi. 451-84. King alleged that the committee, and Lister in particular, had ‘imprisoned, spoiled and destroyed the poor inhabitants’ of Lincolnshire. He further claimed that Lister had colluded with Sir Christopher Wray* in frustrating his election at Grimsby in October 1645 – a charge that Lister denied when giving evidence against King to the committee of privileges in the summer of 1646.65Supra, ‘Great Grimsby’; E. King, To the Honourable the House of Commons, the Humble Petition of Colonell Edward King (1646, 669 f.10.56); A Discovery of the Arbitrary, Tyrannical and Illegal Actions of Some of the Committee of the County of Lincoln (1647), 1, 3, 6-7, 8-9, 10, 26-7 (E.373.3). Lister’s status as one of Lincolnshire’s most active and influential governors was underlined on 24 May 1647, when he was returned for Lincoln in place of the recently deceased John Broxolme.66Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’. Lister’s residence at Coleby lay just a few miles south of Lincoln, and it is likely that he enjoyed at least some proprietorial interest in the area. However, his election probably owed more to his prominence on the county committee and perhaps – if he had secured it by this point – his office as Lincoln’s deputy governor.67The Second Centurie.

Although Lister took the Covenant within a few weeks of entering the House (9 June 1647), he quickly made his political sympathies clear by seeking the safety of the army after the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster of 26 July. On 4 August, he signed the ‘engagement’ of the fugitive Members in which Sir Thomas Fairfax* and his men were eulogised for their ‘Christian, noble and public affection to the good, peace and prosperity of this kingdom and ... faithfulness to the true interest of the English nation’.68LJ ix. 385b. Lister was named to 21 committees between taking his seat and Pride’s Purge in December 1648, and several of these appointments also suggest his alignment with the friends of the New Model army.69CJ v. 200a, 237b, 295b, 302a, 322a, 329a, 460b, 471a, 538a, 585a, 589b, 597b, 599b, 630a; vi. 10b, 27b, 30b, 47a, 87a, 87b; LJ x. 303a, 313a. On 15 September 1647, he was included on a committee to consider grievances associated with the tithe system.70CJ v. 302a. And in October, he was among the MPs tasked with investigating the ‘frauds and abuses’ surrounding the Presbyterians’ payments to reformado officers and was nominated to a new committee for absent Members, which was set up primarily for the purpose of hounding those Presbyterians who had withdrawn from the House after the City’s capitulation to the army in August.71CJ v. 322a, 329a. He was granted leave of absence on 4 November, and his name then disappears from the Commons’ Journal until 9 February 1648, when he was appointed to a committee on an additional ordinance for the sale of bishops’ lands.72CJ v. 349b, 460b. Later that same month, he was named to a committee for stricter observance of the sabbath.73CJ v. 471a. These appointments, along with his earlier nomination to the committee for the redress of grievances over tithes, presage his emergence as a leading figure in the parliamentary programme for augmenting the ministry and reforming manners.74CJ v. 302a.

Having been granted further leave of absence on 24 February 1648, Lister had returned to Westminster by mid-April and was named to a series of committees for advancing the war effort and punishing royalist insurgents.75CJ v. 538a, 585a, 589b, 597a, 599b, 630a; vi. 10b. A number of these appointments concerned the raising and ordering of troops in the east midlands and in and around London.76CJ v. 538a, 585a, 597b, 630a; vi. 10b. Lister’s connection with the capital, which is reflected in many of his parliamentary appointments, flowed naturally from his purchase of town-houses in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Covent Garden in 1647 and 1650.77A. and O. ii. 257, 1290; CJ vi. 151a, 171a, 206b, 397b, 515a, 616b, 191a; vii. 664a, 705b, 709a, 710b, 717a, 754b, 757a, 838b, 843b; Survey of London, iii. pt. 1, 53; xxxvi, 231. But he remained first and foremost a Lincolnshire man, and the Commons granted him and Armyne leave on 25 November to go into the county to supervise the bringing in of its assessment money for the army.78CJ vi. 87b. This order lends credence to Lister’s claim after the Restoration that he had been 100 miles from Westminster (presumably he meant in Lincolnshire) at the time of Pride’s Purge.79HMC 7th Rep. 121.

Lister retained his seat at the purge and was named on 3 January 1649 to a committee on the ordinance for erecting a high court of justice to try the king.80CJ vi. 110b. Three days later (6 Jan.), he was named as one of the trial commissioners.81A. and O. i. 1254. He attended just two meetings of the trial commission – those of 10 and 17 January – and the opening session of the trial itself on 20 January.82Muddiman, Trial, 76, 197, 203. His presence at two meetings of the trial commission does not quite tally with his insistence in 1660 that he had been ignorant of any serious intention to try the king until, on returning from Lincolnshire, he had been summoned to attend the court ‘and went thither to understand the cause, where finding it was for the trial of the king he altogether disliked the same and came away, leaving the court sitting’. Moreover, although there is no disputing his assertion that he had attended the trial itself ‘but that one time’, the fact that he made his dissent to the 5 December 1648 vote – that the king’s answers at Newport were a sufficient ground for a settlement – on 29 January, the day before the king’s execution, suggests that he was willing to condone the regicide.83HMC 7th Rep. 121; CJ vi. 124b.

Lister was one of the most active members of the Rump. Between Pride’s Purge and the Rump’s dissolution in April 1653 he was named to 104 committees and served as teller in eighteen divisions.84CJ vi. 442a, 499a, 524a, 529b, 599a; vii. 71b, 78b, 85b, 86a, 92b, 191a, 212b, 218b, 234b, 258a, 260a, 274a. His tellerships offer no reliable guide to his political alignment in the Rump, although it may be significant that his most frequent partner (on four divisions) was Armyne’s long-time parliamentary collaborator Sir Henry Vane II, who in 1650 purchased a large part of the Lincolnshire estate of Montague Bertie, 2nd earl of Lindsey.85Infra, ‘Sir Henry Vane II’; CJ vi. 524a, 529b; vii. 78b, 92b; V.A. Rowe, Sir Henry Vane the Younger (1970), 172, 198. Lister and Armyne were parties to at least one indenture concerning this transaction – Armyne as a trustee of the earl’s sister.86Lincs. RO, 5-ANC/1/2/3/19; Rowe, Vane, 172. Several of Lister’s parliamentary assignments point to some kind of connection between him and Vane. On 16 July 1650, for example, he was named to a committee for settling lands worth £1,200 upon Vane; and on 1 June 1652 the House appointed the two men to receive a petition from Lincolnshire.87CJ vi. 441a; vii. 137b; CCC 1503, 1504. That Lister may at least have shared Vane’s commitment to wide-ranging toleration can be inferred from his tellership with him on 31 January 1651 against having extracts of a book by the religious controversialist and bugbear of the Presbyterian interest John Fry* questioned by the House.88CJ vi. 529b; Worden, Rump Parl. 241. The tellers in favour, Armyne and Sir Arthur Hesilrige, won this division, but Vane and Bulstrode Whitelocke were then majority tellers against having the book judged scandalous.89CJ vi. 529b.

On certain issues, however, Lister seems to have been closer to Vane’s rival, Henry Marten. Lister was included on a committee set up in June 1649 to recompense Marten for his losses in the parliamentarian cause, and he served as a teller with Marten on three occasions – on one occasion, in opposition to Vane.90CJ vi. 241b, 442a; vii. 71b, 212b. On 15 January 1652, Lister was a teller with Marten on a vote relating to Joseph Primatt – an ally of the Leveller leader John Lilburne in his long-running feud with Hesilrige.91Supra, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; CJ vii. 71b; Worden, Rump Parl. 282-4. Lister and Marten were apparently representing those inclined to show leniency towards Primatt and Lilburne – although six days later (21 Jan.), Lister was named to a committee for implementing the Commons’ judgement against the Leveller.92CJ vii. 75b. Certainly Marten and Lister seem to have been broadly of one mind when it came to the treatment of delinquents. In partnership with both Marten and Sir John Danvers, Lister was a teller in favour of removing certain names from bills for the sale of delinquents’ estates.93CJ vi. 442a, 212b, 218b. But whereas his tellerships with Vane and Cromwell in February 1652 suggest that he supported making the terms of the Rump’s bill for a general pardon and oblivion more generous, he also partnered Thomas Chaloner in favour of retaining a clause to exactly the opposite effect.94CJ vii. 78b, 85b, 86a, 92b; Worden, Rump Parl. 268-9. And although he was named to several committees for improving the lot of the common people, his commitment to social reform is open to question given his majority tellership with Hesilrige on 11 February 1653 in favour of laying aside a bill for poor relief.95CJ vi. 171a, 262a, 284a, 432b; vii. 215a, 253b, 258a; Worden, Rump Parl. 338.

Like Lister’s tellerships, his committee appointments in the Rump provide a less than clear picture of his political priorities. His nomination in the early months of 1649 to committees for suppressing Presbyterian and royalist propaganda, remodelling the commissions of peace and for abolishing kingship and the House of Lords, convey the impression that he was broadly sympathetic to the establishment of a republic.96CJ vi. 131b, 134a, 158a, 166b. Harder to fathom is his attitude towards the army. He was named to numerous committees for redressing the soldiers’ grievances and raising money for their pay.97CJ vi. 154a, 160b, 300a, 325b, 357b, 368a, 369b, 524a; vii. 14a. He was likewise an active member of the Army Committee* (and its regional equivalent, the House Eastern Association Committee*), to which he was added by the Rump on 4 February 1650 and re-appointed by ordinance in January and December 1652.98SP28/66-91, passim; SP28/251, pt. 3, unfol. Several of his nominations to committees for the sale of royal and other sequestered estates and for improving public finances may also have reflected a concern on his part with ensuring a regular supply for the army.99A. and O.; CJ vi. 127b, 274a, 330b, 369b, 393b, 400a, 403b, 427a, 436b, 528a, 556a; vii. 112a, 222b, 245a, 263a, 263b. He was closely involved, for example, in the sale of church lands, much of the proceeds of which ended up in the pockets of the soldiery. He was an active member of the commission established in June 1649 for removing obstructions on the sale of bishops’ lands and was named to several ad hoc committees on this issue.100A. and O.; Add. 37682, ff. 26, 30; LPL, Comm Add 1, ff. 82, 89v; CJ vi. 201a, 305a; vii. 112a, 115a. But it is impossible to gauge from these appointments whether he regarded the army as a threat to be appeased or as a force for good in the commonwealth.

What Lister’s committee appointments and attendance record in the Rump do establish beyond doubt is his commitment to godly reformation. He was named to numerous committees for the maintenance of a godly ministry, propagating the gospel, the suppression of profanity and superstition and for defining the acceptable bounds of Protestant orthodoxy.101CJ vi. 196a, 245b, 263b, 275b, 336a, 365b, 382a, 416a, 420b, 423b, 430b; vii. 86b, 244a. And on 4 July 1650, he was added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers*, which he attended on a regular basis.102SP22/2B, ff. 4, 283; SP22/3, ff. 49, 396. He was particularly diligent when it came to presenting ministers to vacant or sequestered livings and was active in this capacity on the committee for regulating the universities.103Add. 36792, ff. 26, 31, 33, 34, 44v, 54v, 64; LPL, Sion L40.2/E16, pp. 10, 282; CJ vi. 201a, 577b.

Lister had established a sufficient presence and reputation in the Rump by the winter of 1650-1 to secure election to the third council of state on 10 February 1651.104CJ vi. 532b, 533a. He attended 160 of the council’s 239 sittings between February and November 1651 and was nominated to conciliar committees for Scotland and Ireland, the army and the management of the militia.105CSP Dom. 1651, pp. xxxv, 67, 118, 168, 239; Add. 22546, f. 39. His attendance on the conciliar admiralty committee – of which Vane II was the dominant member under the Rump – seems to have preceded his election to the council.106Infra, ‘Sir Henry Vane II’; Add. 22546, f. 29; Bodl. Rawl. A.226, ff. 3, 12v. And Lister was also active on the council’s standing committee for trade and foreign affairs.107SP25/132, pp. 1, 6, 76, 77, 83; SP25/133, pp. 28, 34. He did his bit to resist the Scottish invaders in the summer of 1651 by drawing up and reporting to the House several bills for maintaining the militia in Lincolnshire and other counties.108CJ vi. 593b; vii. 7b, 9b. He was elected to the fifth council of state on 25 December 1652, attending 24 of its 121 sittings and receiving appointment to numerous conciliar committees.109CJ vii. 221a; CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. xxxiii, 2, 8, 16, 18, 22, 23, 190. With political preferment went financial gain. On 13 September 1649, a petition from Lister was read in the House, after which it was ordered that the Committee for Compounding* assign him £1,000 from the Lincolnshire sequestration revenues, with a further £2,000 from the estates of any delinquents he might discover who had not yet compounded.110CJ vi. 295a. By February 1650, Lister had ‘discovered’ several such estates to the committee and within two years had received all but £550 of the sum allotted him.111CCC 178, 544; CJ vi. 444b.

Despite his high profile in the Rump, Lister continued to be named to local commissions under the protectorate; and in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654 he was returned (apparently in fourth place) for one of Lincolnshire’s ten county seats.112Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’. His electoral interest was probably based in large part on his status as one of the county’s parliamentarian grandees. He was named to the committee of privileges in this Parliament and was almost certainly the ‘Mr Lister’ included on a committee to consider a petition from the adventurers on the earl of Lindsey’s fen-drainage project.113CJ vii. 366b, 380a. But the clerk of the House’s failure to distinguish between the four Listers in this Parliament (Christopher, Martin, Thomas and William), referring repeatedly simply to ‘Mr Lister’, makes it impossible to catalogue his activities and appointments precisely. Although he seems to have steered clear of republican plotting against the protectorate, his regular attendance at meetings of the governors of Westminster school during the mid-1650s ensured that he kept in touch with many of his colleagues in the Rump, among them John Bradshawe, Edmund Ludlowe II, Thomas Chaloner and John Weaver.114SP28/292, unfol.

Lister was returned for Lincolnshire again in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, coming fourth on a poll for the ten successful candidates.115Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’. However, while four of these ten were allowed to take their seats, the remaining six, among them Lister, were excluded from the House by the protectoral council as opponents of the government.116CJ vii. 425b. Having taken his seat at the beginning of the second session, in January 1658, he joined the commonwealthsmen in attacking the protectoral settlement. He was probably the ‘Mr. Lister’ who moved on 22 January that the Commons should debate whether it concurred with the self-appellation of the Cromwellian Other House as ‘Lords’.117Burton’s Diary, ii. 341. His motion was seconded by the republican leader Thomas Scot I. On 28 January, Lister was a majority teller with Hesilrige against the House taking any private business into consideration for a month – the commonwealthsmen hoping to use that time to mount a sustained attack upon the Humble Petition and Advice.118CJ vii. 589a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 375, 377. On 2 February, after Thomas St Nicholas had opened the day’s debate by probing ‘in the very bowels of the whole Petition and Advice’, Lister seconded a motion of Hesilrige’s for a committee of the whole House to investigate the merits or otherwise of the Other House, which the republicans likened to the ‘useless and pernicious’ House of Lords.119Burton’s Diary, ii. 406-7.

Lister did not return to Westminster until May 1659, when he took his seat in the restored Rump. Once again, he seems to have been an active participant in the Rump’s proceedings, serving as teller on six occasions between May and October 1659 and securing nomination to 51 committees.120CJ vii. 652b, 672b, 754b, 787a, 790a, 796a. His first appointment was on 13 May, when he and Carew Ralegh were majority tellers in favour of appointing ten non-MPs as councillors of state.121CJ vii. 652b. Three days later (16 May), he was named to a committee on the bill for establishing the new council.122CJ vii. 656a, 658a. He evidently took the issue of the council’s membership seriously, for the Scottish Presbyterian grandee Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston* learnt from Vane on 19 May that Lister had objected to him as ‘a spy, a stranger and a rigid man in my opinions of church government and so unfit in this ticklish time to be on their council – but that no heed was given to it [by the House]’.123Wariston Diary, 114. A large number of Lister’s appointments in the restored Rump concerned the collection and improvement of the public revenue and, in particular, the customs and excise.124CJ vii. 676b, 684b, 690a, 691b, 711a, 758a, 772a, 786b, 787a, 791b. He made several reports from the committee for inspecting the treasuries, to which he was added on 11 June, and he was named in second place on 20 July to a committee for empowering the treasury commissioners to bring the revenue into the exchequer.125CJ vii. 681b, 724a, 726a, 764b; Add. 4197, f. 229. His concern with the state of public finances may have reflected a desire to secure the army’s arrears of pay. He was certainly named to several committees relating to army grievances and the care of maimed soldiers.126CJ vii. 678a, 682a, 707b. His committee appointments also suggest that he was closely involved in remodelling and managing the militia in England and Wales.127CJ vii. 664a, 694b, 717a, 727a, 729a, 754b. On 13 July, with the threat of royalist insurrection looming, the council of state ordered that Lister be appointed a captain of militia horse in Lincolnshire in place of William Thompson*.128CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 24, 38; CJ vii. 772b. A week or so later the council granted him lodgings in Whitehall.129Bodl. Rawl. C.179, p. 203; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 35. In the wake of Sir George Boothe’s* rebellion, he was named to several committees for punishing the insurgents.130CJ vii. 742a, 751b, 767b. However, when the simmering quarrel between the Rump and a powerful group in the army (led by Major-general John Lambert*) over pay and the pace of political and religious reform came to a head in October, Lister came out conspicuously on the side of the civilian interest.131C. Fleetwood*, The Lord General Fleetwoods Answer to the Humble Representation of Collonel Morley (1659), 11 (E.1010.6). On 12 October, he was a majority teller with Sir Henry Mildmay in favour of putting the question that Lambert and several other senior officers be cashiered from the army for what most MPs perceived as an attempt to stage a military coup.132CJ vii. 796a; R. Hutton, The Restoration, 64-5. That same day, Lister was named to a committee on a bill for appointing a commission of ‘loyal’ officers to command the army.133CJ vii. 796b. The next day (13 Oct.), Lambert and troops loyal to him dissolved the House.134Hutton, Restoration, 65-6.

Lister sided with Hesilrige’s republican interest against Lambert, Vane II and the army-dominated committee of safety during the final months of 1659.135Clarke Pprs. iv. 217. Following the re-assembly of the Rump late in December, he was named to a committee for examining the case of Richard Overton and others who had been ‘illegally’ committed since the army’s coup.136CJ vii. 800a. Several of Lister’s appointments during January and February 1660 suggest that he supported Hesilrige’s efforts to strengthen the Rump’s grip on power. He was named to committees to determine the qualifications for parliamentary membership in proposed fresh elections, to remodel the commissions of peace, to bring in a bill for electing a new common council for London, and to secure the Commonwealth’s revenues.137CJ vii. 807a, 818a, 821a, 822a, 828b, 838b, 843b, 848a. Furthermore, he was named first to a committee set up on 13 January to bring in a bill establishing a new Army Committee – a body to which he himself was appointed on 27 January.138CJ vii. 811a, 824a. On 17 January, he was a teller with Henry Darley in favour of having Richard Salwey – a confederate of Sir Henry Vane II, the leader of the republican faction that had backed the army and the committee of safety – disabled from sitting.139CJ vii. 813b. But having lost this division, Lister was then a minority teller with Colonel John Fagge against sending Salwey to the Tower.140CJ vii. 814a. Why Lister should support having Salwey expelled from the House but oppose the lesser punishment of imprisonment in the Tower is a mystery.

Lister continued to sit after the re-admission of the secluded Members on 21 February 1660 and was named to a committee on 9 March on the bill for holding the Convention.141CJ vii. 868b. His last parliamentary appointment was on 10 March, when he was a minority teller with Arthur Annesley in favour of adding Sir Henry Mildmay to the Middlesex militia commission.142CJ vii. 869b. Although he had not signed the king’s death warrant, Lister felt compelled to petition the House of Lords in July 1660, craving mercy for his ‘weakness and inadvertency’ in attending the opening session of the trial.143HMC 7th Rep. 121. Summoned to attend the Lords on 6 August, he declared on his knees at the bar of the House ‘his sorrow for offending his Majesty ... and his promise to be faithful to his Majesty’s kingly government for the future’.144LJ xi. 118a, 118b. The Lords thereupon ordered that Lister not be exempted from the Act of Oblivion – a decision that Ludlowe attributed to the influence of the former Independent grandee William Pierrepont*.145Ludlow, Voyce, 175.

Lister died late in 1668 and was buried adjacent to his wife in St Paul’s church, Covent Garden, on 10 November.146Regs. of St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden ed. Hunt, iv. 48. In his will, in which he styled himself ‘of Lincoln’s Inn Fields’, he asked to be buried ‘in the night without any solemnity’.147PROB11/328, f. 230v. His legatees included several members of the Armyne family and one ‘Mr Silvester’ – possibly the Lincolnshire ejected minister, Matthew Sylvester.148Calamy Revised, 473. Dying without children, the bulk of his estate passed to his nephew, William Lister. None of Lister’s immediate family sat in Parliament.