TEMPEST, Henry (1621-59), of Tong, Yorks.

Tempest was descended from an old northern gentry family, the Tempests of Bracewell, in Lancashire, and of Bolling, near Bradford.31Add. 21421, ff. 277-81. His family, a collateral branch of the Bolling Tempests, had settled in Tong, just to the south east of Bradford, in the early sixteenth century.32Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. i. 42; Robertshaw, ‘The manor of Tong’, 119. Although possessed of ‘a goodly heritage’ [i.e. inheritance], consisting principally of the manor of Tong, the Tempests were only minor gentry.33W. Yorks. Archives (Bradford), Tong/5f/5. Indeed, Tempest was the first of his line to serve as a magistrate or to sit in Parliament and would probably have done neither had it not been for the death of his father in 1623 and his mother’s subsequent re-marriage to Henry Fairfax, rector of Newton Kyme in Yorkshire, who was the brother of the future parliamentarian general Sir Ferdinando Fairfax* (subsequently 2nd Baron Fairfax). Only 20 months old when his father died, Tempest was made a ward of his stepfather and, as such, was well placed to profit from the rise of the Fairfaxes to national prominence in the 1640s.34C142/400/26; WARD9/207, f. 35.

In contrast to his stepfather, who remained neutral during the civil war, Tempest sided with Parliament.35Oxford DNB ‘Henry Fairfax’. In May 1642, he signed a petition from a group of Yorkshire gentry to the king, asking him to place his trust in Parliament and the parliamentary commissioners at York (who included Ferdinando Lord Fairfax) and to forbear raising any troops in the county.36A Letter from the...Committees of the Commons...at Yorke (1642), pp. 7-9 (E.148.4). There is no evidence that Tempest took up arms against the king, or to substantiate the claim that he succeeded his friend and kinsman Sir Henry Cholmley* in command of a Yorkshire trained bands regiment in 1645.37A. Gooder, The Parliamentary Representation of Yorks. (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. xcvi), 72. However, as an active member of the Northern Association committee, he was closely involved in recruiting and supplying Parliament’s northern army in the summer and autumn of 1645.38SC6/CHAS1/1190, unfol. (entry for 13 Feb. 1647); SP28/215, pt. 2, ff. 34-6; Bodl. Nalson IV, ff. 49, 317; W. Yorks. Archives (Leeds), WYL230/2973. By April 1648, he had been made a captain – either in the northern brigade under Major-general John Lambert* or, more probably, in a local militia unit – and was involved during the second civil war in providing arms and provisions for Lambert’s forces in Yorkshire.39Add. 36996, f. 121; SP28/215, pt. 2, f. 106; W. Yorks. Archives (Bradford), Tong/2/7.

Tempest’s appointment to the benches of the North and West Ridings late in November 1648 – despite already being a member of the West Riding magistracy – may have owed something to his kinship, via his stepfather, to the army’s commander-in-chief the 3rd Baron Fairfax (Sir Thomas Fairfax*), whose goodwill Parliament was anxious to cultivate.40C231/6, pp. 79, 127, 128. Tempest continued to serve on the West Riding bench throughout the late 1640s, when many Presbyterian magistrates withdrew from local government.41W. Yorks. Archives (Wakefield), QS 10/2, pp. 24, 299; The Petition and Presentment of the Grand-Juries of the County of York (1649), 3 (E.548.26). He was also active during the early 1650s on local commissions for charitable uses – alongside John Stanhope* and Henry Arthington* – and, more significantly, as a commissioner for tendering the Engagement, working closely with Jeremiah Bentley*, who was a friend of Lambert and Captain Adam Baynes*.42C93/21/29; W. Yorks. Archives (Calderdale), HAS/B:22/27, ff. 2, 4-6; Kendall, ‘The civil war as affecting Halifax’, 81. However, it is noticeable that the number of his appointments declined after Fairfax’s resignation as commander-in-chief in 1650 and that he received no new appointments between the spring of 1651 and late 1653.

Although Tempest was willing to serve the Rump, at least at local level, he probably had strong reservations about the king’s trial and execution. At the very least it may have prompted him to consider his own mortality, for on 16 February 1649, little more than a fortnight after the regicide, he wrote down some advice for his son to ponder ‘when I am gone hence and shall be no more seen’. He had been given a good inheritance ‘in a plentiful country’ and had

delighted in building and what pleased my fancy that I did under the sun. God gave me a wife after my own heart, a fruitfull vine that brought me forth both sons and daughters; neither was men servants, nor maid servants, nor cattle of all sorts wanting unto me, for I had gold and silver in great plenty, so that the thing my heart desired I kept not from it.43W. Yorks. Archives (Bradford), Tong/5f/5.

But like the preacher in Ecclesiastes, whose words he echoed, he professed to set little store by earthly possessions: ‘when seriously I considered these things’, he continued, ‘I found them to be vanity and vexation of spirit, for in the time of my affliction and trouble, when God laid his hand upon me, miserable comforters were they all’. The nature of this ‘affliction and trouble’ he did not make clear. He went on in conventional fashion to urge his son to honour his mother, to marry a virtuous woman and, ‘if God do continue unto thee the inheritance which thy predecessors have successively enjoyed this four hundred years’, not to oppress his tenants. He was also insistent that his son ‘inquire and search out diligently for a godly minister to preach the gospel to thy people that they may be thereby reproved, instructed and comforted, that they perish not out of the right way. And let it be thy care that such a minister want not a sufficient maintenance’. Clearly, Tempest favoured a godly, preaching ministry; and, in his will, he would bequeath £5 a year (during his son’s minority) to the curate of Tong, Richard Coore, who would be ejected at the Restoration. Probably a Presbyterian of some description during the 1650s, Coore would describe himself by the early 1670s as an Antinomian.44PROB11/291, f. 281v; Calamy Revised, 135.

For all Tempest’s advice to his son about the vain pursuit of earthly treasures, he did not always practise what he preached where his own material interests were concerned. During the early 1650s, he brought several suits in chancery against his stepfather, whom he accused of having neglected the Tempest estate.45C10/11/122; C22/829/12; W. Yorks. Archives (Bradford), Tong/2/9-10; Tong/4b/3; Tong/7b/1-5. In February 1652, both parties agreed to refer their dispute to the arbitration of the West Riding gentleman and civil-war royalist Francis Nevile* and the parliamentarian magistrates Henry Arthington and John Stanhope.46W. Yorks. Archives (Bradford), Tong/7b/2, 5. Both Arthington and Stanhope were friends of Tempest, but at the same time were political allies of Lord Fairfax, Henry Fairfax’s nephew. The dispute centred around Tempest’s claim for damages from Fairfax for his alleged poor stewardship. During his time as Tempest’s guardian, Fairfax had received £1,965 from the profits of Tempest’s estate, disbursing £1,518 in maintenance, rent and for sundry other charges. The shortfall of £445 was acknowledged by Fairfax, but Tempest demanded an additional £550 by way of interest on the £445 and in compensation for the ‘decay’ to his woods and ‘ruin’ of his houses which he alleged had occurred during his minority. On investigating Tempest’s allegations, however, Nevile found no evidence of waste or ruin and therefore ruled that Fairfax should pay the £445 and no more. He also reminded Tempest of the agreement he had signed on 1 July 1639, discharging Fairfax from all accounts and demands arising from the wardship. In fact, Tempest had signed a similar agreement with his stepfather and Ferdinando Lord Fairfax on 17 December 1644, whereby he had agreed to drop all claims arising from his wardship in return for a payment of £200.47W. Yorks. Archives (Bradford), Tong/3/213. Nevile’s ruling was accepted by Tempest, and in September 1652 he renounced all claims or actions against his stepfather.48W. Yorks. Archives (Bradford), Tong/3/242.

Tempest, despite his quarrel with Henry Fairfax, remained on close terms with members of the Fairfax interest in the West Riding. In May 1654, Arthington, Sir Thomas Widdrington* (both brothers-in-law of Thomas Lord Fairfax), Stanhope and Sir Henry Cholmley were parties to a deed confirming Tempest’s title to his estate at Tong.49W. Yorks. Archives (Bradford), Tong/3/248. Two years later, he would assign a portion of his property to the same four men to hold in trust for his children.50W. Yorks. Archives (Bradford), Tong/3/253. In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, he was returned for the newly created constituency of the West Riding, taking the third of the six places, behind Fairfax and Lambert. On election day, a number of his supporters had joined with those of the Presbyterian gentlemen Sir Edward Rodes* and Edward Gill* in an unsuccessful attempt to block the return of the republican candidate, and friend of Lambert and Baynes, Martin Lister. Although one of the West Riding’s leading parliamentarian landowners, Tempest may well have owed his election, in part at least, to his association with the Fairfax interest.51Supra, ‘Yorkshire’. He was named to only three committees in this Parliament – on an ordinance for ejecting scandalous ministers (25 Sept.); to examine the commonwealth’s armed forces (26 Sept.); and to consider petitions from Yorkshire for erecting a court of justice at York (14 Dec.).52CJ vii. 370a, 370b, 401a.

Although the 1654 elections had exposed Tempest’s close political connection with Fairfax’s Presbyterian circle, he seems to have remained on friendly terms with Baynes. In August 1654, the Leeds clothiers, who generally supported Baynes against the town’s Presbyterian aldermen, had consulted Tempest and Stanhope on whether to petition Parliament for a corporate trading charter and had been given ‘good encouragement to proceed’.53Add. 21422, f. 388. And despite his support for a godly and ‘orthodox’ divines, Tempest gave assurances to Captain William Siddall, a leading West Riding Quaker, late in 1654 that he would join with Baynes in trying to secure the release of Siddall’s wife, who had been imprisoned by a Presbyterian magistrate for ‘speaking to a priest [i.e. a church minister]’.54Add. 21422, f. 524. As late as September 1657, when Tempest and Baynes stood on opposite sides of the political divide created by the Humble Petition and Advice, Baynes was described – although possibly sarcastically – as Tempest’s ‘kind friend’.55W. Yorks. Archives (Bradford), Tong/2/15.

In the summer of 1656, Tempest was re-elected for the West Riding to the second protectoral Parliament, apparently taking the third place once again, although this time, it seems, behind Lambert and Francis Thorpe. But while Lambert and another of the successful candidates, Edward Gill, duly took their seats, Tempest, Arthington, Stanhope and Thorpe were among the 100 or so MPs who were excluded from the House by the protectoral council as opponents of the protectorate.56Supra, ‘Yorkshire’; CJ vii. 425b. Government suspicions that members of Fairfax’s circle had been approached by the cavaliers before the 1655 rebellions, or were themselves crypto-royalists, may have contributed to their exclusion.57Add. 21424, f. 65; Carroll, ‘Yorks.’, 362; C.S. Egloff, ‘The search for a Cromwellian settlement: exclusions from the second protectorate Parliament’, PH xvii. 315. But the main reason in the case of Tempest, Arthington and Stanhope was almost certainly their alignment with the Presbyterian and anti-army opponents of Lambert’s interest in the West Riding. After the election, Baynes received a report from one of his friends that Tempest had declared that ‘we must have a king again in this land or else we never should have peace’ and that he had threatened to put out his tenants unless they voted for him.58Add. 21424, f. 65. In October, when the excluded West Riding Members returned home, a correspondent of Baynes observed that ‘the return of these Members is not so much resented by the country as we expected, except by some very rigid ones, and the common body of people look upon them not with a good eye, as disobliging the present power’.59Add. 21424, f. 85v. This alleged ill-feeling towards the excluded Members was not shared by the Presbyterian alderman at Leeds, who looked to Tempest, Rodes, Stanhope and Widdrington (among others) to foil efforts by Baynes and his adherents to remodel the town’s government – a design eventually defeated by Fairfax’s intervention at Whitehall.60Supra, ‘Leeds’; Add. 21424, ff. 132, 165. Having been removed from the West Riding bench in the spring of 1657, he was restored in August and Baynes was omitted.61C231/6, pp. 361, 374; W. Yorks. Archives (Bradford), Tong/2/15. In January 1658, two prominent members of Leeds’s Presbyterian faction wrote to Tempest, Arthington and Stanhope, urging them to return to Westminster, where the balance of power had shifted away from the army and its supporters:

It’s true, and cannot be denied, the last time you came up to serve your country, you met with discouragements. There is not any question but now you will find it contrary. Experience will tell you it every day in case you were at Westminster ... the way not only to be accounted, but really to be a friend, is now to appear and take your places.62W. Yorks. Archives (Bradford), Tong/2/14.

There is no evidence that the three men followed this advice. Despite his exclusion from Parliament in 1656, Tempest continued to serve the protectorate at local level and remained, until his death, one of the more diligent members of the West Riding bench.63W. Yorks. Archives (Wakefield), QS 10/3, pp. 7, 319.

Tempest died some time between 3 March 1659, when he wrote his will, and 20 May, when it was proved. His place and date of burial are not known. He entrusted the education of his children to his ‘dear friend and kinsman’ Sir Henry Cholmley.64PROB11/291, f. 281v. He was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.