YALDEN, William (1615-74), of Blackdown House, Lodsworth, Suss.

Yaldens had resided in the parish of Lodsworth, a few miles north west of Petworth, since the sixteenth century, but they were recorded only as yeoman.15W. Suss. RO, Goodwood MSS, E3494. Although the family owned Blackdown House by 1594, and parcels of land in Hollington and Wittington by the time of the death of this MP’s grandfather in 1607, it was his father’s iron business and connection with the Catholic viscounts Montagu of Cowdray that led to an appreciable rise in wealth and status.16W. Suss. RO, Add. 8822; Notes IPMs Suss. 246. William Yalden senior served in an unspecified position in the household of Anthony Browne, 2nd Viscount Montagu, from around 1611, only six years after Montagu had been imprisoned for suspected complicity in the Gunpowder Plot.17CCC, 2543–4; SP23/105, p. 515. In 1627 Yalden senior was assessed at £4 for the lay subsidy, and in 1630 he compounded for a knighthood fine, paying £10.18E179/191/377a; E407/35, f. 164. The same year he bought land from Francis Browne, 3rd Viscount Montagu, and by 1634 he also owned land in Midhurst, the parish in which Cowdray was situated.19E. Suss. RO, SAS/BA/81; W. Suss. RO, Add. 14461. Thereafter, Yalden’s name appeared on numerous Browne family deeds.20W. Sus. RO, Cowdray MSS, 86, 4468–72; E. Suss. RO, SAS/BA/95; C54/2946/3. Viscount Montagu’s circle included other prominent local Catholics, including Sir Henry Compton* and Sir William Forde, with whom Yalden was granted licences to alienate the advowsons of Brightling (1632) and Beckley (1637).21Add. 39476, ff. 6, 196.

Alongside this, Yalden senior developed an interest in the local iron industry, through which he entered the orbit of Henry Percy, 3rd earl of Northumberland, another nobleman who had retired to his estates after the Gunpowder Plot. From 1627 Yalden became the sole buyer of the iron ore from Northumberland’s Petworth estate, processing it in his own smelting works.22H.A. Wyndham, Petworth Manor in the Seventeenth Century (1954), 100. In 1640 Yalden was granted a pardon for all offences committed prior to April 1636 relating to the destruction of woodlands for smelting iron in Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire.23CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 605; SO3/12, f. 88. His new-found wealth and social standing were reflected in his appointment in 1638 as commissioner for charitable uses in Sussex, and represented in the reconstruction of Blackdown House, completed in 1640.24C192/1, unfol.; VCH Suss. iv. 72.

Yalden’s wealth also enabled him to act as a creditor to the 4th earl of Northumberland (Algernon Percy†), who borrowed £1,000-£2,000 between 1634 and 1648, when the loan was repaid.25Alnwick Castle, Northumberland MSS, U.I.5, U.I.6. Having been sole purchaser of Northumberland’s iron ore since 1627, Yalden extended his interest in 1641, with the lease of both a forge and a furnace in Petworth, at an annual rent of £100.26Wyndham, Petworth, 98, 101. He continued to purchase Northumberland’s ore until his son took over the business in 1651, and evidently profited by the civil wars: the amount of ore purchased rose from 80 loads in 1639-40 to a peak of 874 loads in 1645-6.27Wyndham, Petworth, 102. During the 1640s Yalden, now styled ‘gentleman’, used the proceeds of this successful business to extend the family estate with purchases, but kept clear of political conflict.28W. Suss. RO, Mitford MSS, 484.

The early life of William Yalden junior is obscure; there is no evidence of any formal education. It is possible that he was brought up the household of Viscount Montagu. In June 1634, aged 18, he joined his father in signing a lease made by Montagu.29W. Suss. RO, Cowdray MSS, 4471. In July 1639 he married a daughter of Nicholas Alwyn or Aylinge, whose family’s origins are even more obscure than Yalden’s.30Vis. Suss. 116; Lurgashall par. reg. Yalden and his father both took the Protestation at Lodsworth in 1641, and in the same year contributed to the relief of Irish Protestants, Yalden junior donating 10 shillings.31West Suss. Protestation Returns, 117; E179/191/390/4.

Given the dominance of parliamentarians in Sussex, the inactivity of father and son during the civil wars may indicate royalist sympathies. Yalden junior first appeared in local administration in 1647, at a time of strong royalist resurgence in the county. On 27 April a number of gentry, including Nathaniel Powell* (an employee of another leading Catholic, the 2nd earl of Thanet), wrote to the Committee of Accounts in London proposing reform of the Sussex sub-committee. Their list of nominees, which included Yalden, also contained the names of Sir William Morley*, Henry Peckham*, and Thomas Middleton*, all of whose royalist sympathies were either proven or suspected.32SP28/257, unfol. The same men may have secured Yalden’s appointment as treasurer for charitable uses in Sussex in April 1648.33Suss. QSOB 1642-1649, 149. Shortly before the royalist uprising that summer, Yalden expressed his support for the insurgents’ aims by signing the county petition, presented to Parliament on 9 June and subscribed by many known as at best lukewarm in their support for Parliament, including George Parker*, John Pelham* and John Stapley*.34PA, Parchment coll. Box 11; CJ v. 591. The petition, which expressed opposition to excessive taxation and the impositions of military garrisons, sought a peace settlement with the king on lenient terms.

Both Yalden and his father probably opposed the execution of Charles I in 1649. In the early years of the republic they concentrated their efforts on managing their own estates, and salvaging those of those of Viscount Montagu, sequestered by Parliament on account of his Catholicism. As long-standing tenants, they had paid £33 to the sequestrators in 1643, and later secured from them leases on Montagu’s properties, evidently to keep them in safe hands.35SP28/214, unfol. Yalden senior was a trustee of Montagu’s estates.36E. Suss. RO, SAS/BA/105. In 1650 an agreement was reached whereby Yalden and his associates contracted for two thirds of Montagu’s estate, for a rent of over £1,800 per annum payable to the state, but it soon became apparent that the local sequestrators were planning to let the property to others. Both Yaldens were engaged in petitioning over the matter, which remained unresolved until at least 1655.37CCC, 2543, 2633; SP23/11, f. 148; SP23/105, pp. 515, 517, 521; SP23/135, pp. 9, 12, 19, 23, 41, 43.

By the time Yalden senior drafted his will in 1651, describing himself as ‘aged’, most of the family estate appears to have been settled on Yalden junior.38PROB11/293/180. He also took over the lease on the forge at Petworth for a term of seven years, which he would subsequently renew (for a further ten years) in 1658.39Wyndham, Petworth, 103. In March 1652 the family was granted armigerous status.40Grantees of Arms ed. W. H. Rylands (Harl. Soc. lxvi), 289. Yalden junior sought to extend and improve his holdings in the county, with the acquisition of Diddlesford manor in 1653, and the building of Goffes Farm, in Petworth, in 1654.41Suss. Manors, i. 128; Wyndham, Petworth, 81. His attitude to the new government is opaque, however. When in August 1653 Anthony Stapley I* attempted to treat with the Sussex iron masters in order to obtain supplies of shot for the state, Yalden professed his willingness to send supplies to Portsmouth, but added that a shortage of men to work his mills made this impossible.42CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 80. It is unclear whether this was the truth or simply an excuse.

The evidence of Yalden’s clerical patronage is similarly equivocal. Job Mander, his appointee in 1654 to the vicarage of Bodiam, conformed to the Cromwellian church, and was unmolested by the authorities.43Dunkin, ‘Admissions to Suss. Benefices’, 215; Add. 39530, f. 76. Yalden also held the advowsons of Battle and Lurgashall, but during the 1650s presentations to these livings were evidently made by Cromwell rather than Yalden himself. In November 1657 a local man, Nehemiah Beaton (ejected after the Restoration) was presented to Lurgashall, probably on the basis of his connections to Harbert Morley*, and his friends John Fagge* and William Hay*.44Dunkin, ‘Admissions to Suss. Benefices’, 219; Add. 39531, f. 2; Add. 39530, f. 135v; Al. Cant.; Matthews, Calamy Revised, 42. Henry Fisher, presented to the vicarage at Battle, was one of Cromwell’s own chaplains.45Dunkin, ‘Admissions to Suss. benefices’, 214; Add. 39531, f. 3; Sawyer, ‘Procs. CPM Suss.’, Suss. Arch. Coll. xxx. 116-17.

From June 1655, when he was appointed a sewers commissioner, Yalden began to reappear in public office.46C181/6, p. 107. A willingness to accommodate himself to the protectorate is also indicated by his nomination as sheriff in 1656, and his appointment to the commission of the peace in 1657.47C231/6, p. 370; C193/13/5, 6; ASSI35/98/10; ASSI35/99/9, 10; ASSI35/100/6; E. Suss. RO, QO/EW3, ff. 49, 59, 70v. His loyalty to the government apparently assumed, he was not singled out as a supporter of the royalist conspirators in Sussex in 1658.48Bodl. Eng. hist. e. 309, p. 40. It could either have been as a ‘court’ candidate, or alternatively the choice of covert royalists, that Yalden was elected for Midhurst to the Parliament which met between January and April 1659. He left no impression on the records of the assembly, however. Following the return of the Rump in May 1659, he returned to local administration, and duties as executor of his father’s will, proved in June.49ASSI35/99/9, 10; ASSI35/100/6; E. Suss. RO, QO/EW3, ff. 49, 59, 70v; PROB11/293/180.

Yalden’s political and administrative career ceased at the Restoration, and he was removed from the county bench sometime before July 1661.50ASSI35/102/7. This was probably a reflection not so much of his having been associated with the Cromwellian regime, as the need to make way for men more prominent than himself, both in Parliament and local administration. Yalden lived until 1674, during which time he maintained the family’s connection with the Montagus.51W. Suss. RO, Add. 14858. In April 1674 he drew up his will, in which he left £800 to each of his three youngest sons. The will was proved on 17 November 1674.52PROB11/346/363. No further member of the family appears to have sat in Parliament.