WOOLLMER, Ralph (?1623-81), of Wymondham, Norf.

The identification of this MP is not entirely secure. There were several families of that name in Norfolk in this period, most notably at Earsham and Denton on the Norfolk-Suffolk border. The most plausible candidate for the future MP is the man born at Earsham in 1623. His father, John, was a younger son of Ralph Woollmer (1564-1638) of Earsham.19Earsham par. reg. When Ralph senior died in 1638, he left his lands at Bracon Ash and Hethel, a few miles to the east of Wymondham, to John, with instructions that they were subsequently to pass to John’s son, Ralph.20Norf. RO, ANF original will 1638, no. 41. Ralph senior had another grandson called Ralph, a younger son of William Woollmer of Denton, but he had been baptised only in 1636 and so was too young to be the MP.21Earsham par. reg.; PROB11/251/542.

The MP is first sighted with certainty in June 1648 when he was serving as the lieutenant of the troop of militia horse guarding Norwich. He was mentioned as such because he was then appointed as an honorary freeman by the Norwich corporation.22Norf. RO, Norwich assembly bk. 1642-68, f. 65. In February 1650 he was promoted to become a major under Robert Jermy*.23CSP Dom. 1650, p. 504. When, during the summer of 1651, Charles Stuart and the Scots invaded England, Woollmer was commissioned as the captain of one of the troops of horse raised in Norfolk to counter the invaders.24CSP Dom. 1651, p. 516. The following year he was included on the Norfolk assessment commission for the first time.25A. and O.

In 1653 Woollmer was one of five men recommended by the representatives of seven of the Norfolk congregations for appointment to the Nominated Assembly (subsequently the Nominated Parliament).26Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 124-5. The seven congregations included the one at Wymondham, which had been founded the previous year by John Money and of which Woollmer was probably already a member. Of those five nominations, three, including Woollmer, were accepted. Woollmer then seems to have played a full part in this Parliament’s opening weeks. On 12 July he was appointed to the public revenue committee and two days later to the committee to consider how to deal with the proliferation of committees.27CJ vii. 283b, 285a. On 19 July, following the debate on tithes, he was appointed to the committee to consider the rights of existing holders of benefices.28CJ vii. 286a. The next day he was named to the committees on the army and for the inspection of the public revenues.29CJ vii. 287a. This burst of activity however came to an end on 11 August when he was given leave to go to the country.30CJ vii. 298b. Although this Parliament continued to sit for another four months, he left no further trace on its records. He was said to be one of those MPs who supported the public maintenance of a godly ministry.31Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 430.

By late 1654 Woollmer had been added to the Norfolk commission of the peace and over the next few years he sat regularly on the bench when the justices met at Norwich.32Norf. QSOB, pp. 71-96. Some of the cases he dealt with during that time were noteworthy. In October 1654 he ordered the imprisonment of the Quaker preacher, Richard Hubberthorn, in Norwich Castle, after Hubberthorn had tried to preach at Wymondham.33R. Hubberthorn, Collection of the Several Bks. and Writings (1663), 37. He was also one of the Norfolk justices who in November 1655 approved the arrest of John Cleveland, the poet, as a suspected royalist.34TSP iv. 185. In April 1656 he was one of those, ‘eminent in the churches in these parts’, with whom Hezekiah Haynes* met at Harleston in the hope of dissuading them from becoming involved in Fifth Monarchy agitation.35TSP iv. 727. Woollmer had apparently previously written to the secretary of state, John Thurloe*, on that subject.36TSP iv. 687. That May the council of state authorised payment from army contingencies of £9 6s 8d each to Woollmer and other members of the committee of officers.37CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 341.

In early August 1656 Woollmer and other members of the county committee informed Haynes when Thomas Weld* handed in a seditious book (possibly Englands Remembrancers).38TSP v. 298. In the weeks that followed Woollmer was an informant for Haynes, advising the government on the suitability of men elected to sit in the new Parliament. He had discovered that few local men supportive of the government were willing to stand for the Norfolk seats.39TSP v. 365, 370, 371. Just as tellingly, he seems not to have put his own name forward.

He had meanwhile been one of the commissioners who had considered the decimation case against Thomas Knyvett of Ashwellthorpe.40TSP iv. 705. He was not sympathetic. In August Knyvett’s agent, William Harrison, told him that, ‘Major Woollmer promised me that he would not do you any hurt, but for to do you any good I could obtain no promise from him.’41Knyvett Lttrs. 48. In early July 1659 Woollmer was one of the three officers in that county ordered by the council of state to make preparations against possible royalist uprisings.42CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 16. Several weeks later he arrested one suspected plotter, Nicholas Rookwood.43CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 83-4, 224. On 15 August Parliament confirmed him as a major in the Norfolk militia. He was now serving under Brampton Gurdon*.44CJ vii. 760a.

Woollmer was too closely associated with the republican government in Norfolk to be continued in public office after the Restoration. Only a few details are known of his life over the next two decades. He may have been the man of that name assessed for six hearths at Ketteringham in 1664.45Norf. Hearth Tax Assessment Mich. 1664 (Norf. and Norwich Geneal. Soc. xv.), 51. In April 1669 he informed John Hobart* that it had been agreed that Hobart and Charles George Cock* were to adjudicate in a dispute concerning the ownership of some crown lands.46Bodl. Tanner 284, f. 36. By 1673, when he held the manorial court, Woollmer was leasing Stanfield Hall, a substantial country house between Wymondham and Hethel owned by 2nd Baron Cramond (Thomas Richardson†).47Norf. RO, MC 1827/114, f. 38; ANF will reg. 1681-3, f. 350, no. 222. However his finances were probably overstretched. When he died in 1681, he owed £1,000 to Nicholas Poynter of Norwich, whom he therefore appointed as one of his executors. He left instructions that the rest of his assets were to be divided between his widow, Elizabeth, and his son, John. After Elizabeth’s death, her share was to be divided between their three daughters.48ANF will reg. 1681-3, f. 350, no. 222. He was buried at Wymondham.49Wymondham par. reg.