WAREING, Edmund (1621-83), of Humphreston Hall, Donington, Salop.

The Wareing family were minor Staffordshire gentry seated at The Lea, near Wolverhampton by the middle of the sixteenth century.21Frag. Gen. n.s. i. 80-3. Edmund Wareing’s grandfather also held property further afield, in Llandinam, Montgomeryshire, which was still retained by the Wareings in the 1650s. Some of their Welsh holdings had been leased them by the Herbert family of Powis Castle.22Frag. Gen. n.s. i. 54-5; NLW, Coleman Deeds, DD 1119; Powis Castle Deeds, 9349-55; Sweeney Hall 1, 2, 4. The estates of the family in Staffordshire and Wales were not extensive enough to put the option of a professional calling beyond consideration, even for the eldest sons. Edmund Wareing of Lea Croft, the MP’s uncle, was a barrister of Staple Inn, and his brothers left Staffordshire to establish themselves elsewhere. Richard Wareing, father of this Member, became a freeman of London after serving an apprenticeship in the London Company of Grocers. Edmund Wareing’s mother was the daughter of a London citizen, so that on both sides of his family he was an unalloyed product of the London mercantile environment.

By the 1630s, Richard Wareing was prosperous enough to buy the Suffolk manor of Groton. He bought it from John Gurdon*, who in turn had only recently acquired it from the Winthrop family, who had sold up to emigrate to Massachusetts.23Wolverhampton Archives, DX55/42. Wareing was assisted in his purchase by two men who later became significant in the parliamentarian administrative machine. Stephen Estwick was a fellow merchant of Wareing’s in the City and an associate of ‘interloping’ overseas traders like Samuel Moyer* and George Thomson*; in May 1643 he became a commissioner for the customs under parliamentary control.24A. and O. William Webb was presumably the man who later became surveyor-general for Parliament during the later 1640s and the interregnum. The purchase of Groton illuminates the links between puritan mercantile families in East Anglia, London and New England, a network which shaped the upbringing of Edmund Wareing.

Even with a Suffolk manor to his name, Richard Wareing was reckoned among the second rank of London citizens in 1640.25List of the Principal Inhabitants of the City of London, 1640 ed. W.J. Harvey (1886), 4. He was a radical activist in City government. He was a common councillor from 1636, and on the eve of the civil war helped gather support in his ward, Bridge Within, for the second root and branch petition against episcopal rule in the church.26K. Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London (1997), 141, 153. In July 1642 he was among the petitioners seeking to prevent the lord mayor, Sir Richard Gurney, from restricting the common council’s powers over its own sittings. He was named as a commissioner in the ‘sea adventure’ – the punitive naval expedition – to Ireland in June 1642, and invested £660 in the enterprise.27A. and O. i. 9-10; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 407n. After the civil war broke out, further appointments followed, beginning in November with a commission to assess those in London who had not yet contributed on the ‘Propositions’ of Parliament. Richard Wareing was evidently regarded as a safe pair of hands in financial matters, and in October 1643 was made co-treasurer for the loans to Parliament to maintain the Scots army. His office was at Goldsmiths’ Hall, in the City, and in February 1647, after political support for the Scots had drained away, the same place served as headquarters of the Committee for Compounding with royalist delinquents, and Richard Wareing stayed on there to serve as its co-treasurer.28A. and O. i. 38, 315, 914. The treasurership of the compounding committee must have taken up most of Wareing senior’s time, but between 1642 and 1646 he served on seven City committees, including one that adjudicated in a dispute over control of the London militia. In October 1645 he supported the appointment of lay ‘triers’ who were to scrutinise appointments as elders in the proto-Presbyterian London parishes, suggesting that he sympathised with Erastian approaches to church government questions.29Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion, 191, 312n, 358n.

Nothing can be discovered of Edmund Wareing’s education; he cannot be traced in surviving records of the inns of court or the universities. By the custom of the City of London, Wareing followed his father into the Grocers’ Company by patrimony, aged 23, without serving an apprenticeship. He was still paying ‘brotherhood money’, a small annual membership fee, in 1651, suggesting that his membership of the livery company was meaningful to him. His father’s occupations shaped his marriage probably in May 1646 to Elizabeth Ashe, daughter of John Ashe*, ‘the greatest clothier of his time’ and chairman of the Committee for Compounding*, to which Richard Wareing was treasurer. Whether any lasting affection for Edmund Wareing was evinced by his father-in-law seems doubtful, however, as there is mention of neither Elizabeth nor Edmund Wareing in Ashe’s will.30PROB11/293/280. Certainly John Ashe, who was secluded at Pride’s Purge, had good reason to be suspicious of political radicals, and may have cooled towards the Wareings as their political paths diverged in the later 1640s. Politically, and probably personally, Wareing’s relationship with his brother-in-law, Richard Salwey*, was much more fruitful. Salwey had been Richard Wareing’s apprentice, and later married his daughter, so Edmund and Richard must have spent much time together in the Wareing household from their teenage years. In 1648, the brothers-in-law collaborated in a speculative purchase of former episcopal property in Herefordshire, and were linked in a property transaction in 1652.31Bodl. Rawl. B.236, p. 9; Salop Archives, 1623/36.

Edmund Wareing must have served in the military somewhere, and is probably the Captain Wareing named among the additions to the London militia committee in February 1649. His first significant public appointment was also his most important, and it later nearly cost him his life. He was named as a commissioner in the high court of justice to try James Hamilton, 1st duke of Hamilton and 1st earl of Cambridge, Henry Rich†, 1st earl of Holland, George Goring†, 1st earl of Norwich, Arthur Capell*, 1st Baron Capell, and Sir John Owen, royalists who had played a leading part in the second civil war of 1648. The commission was issued shortly after the execution of the king; Wareing’s brother-in-law Richard Salwey had been named to the high court of justice which led to the regicide, but had not acted in it. Salwey was not called upon for the second high court, but a number of associates of the Wareings, among them Maurice Thomson, Stephen Estwick and William Webb, appeared on this commission, which reads like a roll-call of the new republic’s second rank of politicians.32List of the Names of the Judges. One might have expected to see Richard Wareing rather than Edmund at the court, but he was probably considered indispensable at Goldsmiths’ Hall, having fined off becoming a London alderman.33Frag. Gen. n.s. i. 82. Wareing was active as a commissioner in the trials of the royalists, which rolled on through February and March, apparently attending every sitting. The trials ended predictably with guilty verdicts; all but Owen were executed.34Worcs. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS LXX, unfol.; ‘Sir John Owen’, Oxford DNB.

Wareing sat on other high courts of justice in 1650, during the Nominated Assembly and under the Cromwellian protectorate, appointments that recognized his dependability during the February 1649 trials. In 1651 he acquired the rank of major in the horse regiment that guarded London and Kent, and he was thus by military rank and civilian experience a natural choice as a commissioner at a court martial.35CSP Dom. 1651, p. 479. But his service of the state was not widened significantly: in September 1651 he seems to have been acting on behalf of his father in the chain of army supply.36CSP Dom. 1651, p. 586. The most significant event in Wareing’s personal life at this time was his removal to Shropshire. By October 1651, he had acquired the manor of Humphreston, in the parish of Donington, which he may have acquired through the good offices of his Wareing cousins, who lived at Oldbury.37Salop Archives, 513/2/4/9. They were royalists during the civil war, however, so this can by no means be assumed. Humphreston Hall lay in Donington, the parish to which Wareing appointed George Reves as minister in 1655 in place of a sequestered rector: in 1660 Reves was presented at Bridgnorth assizes for refusing to read the Book of Common Prayer and in the same year left his living.38Calamy Revised, 406.

Richard Wareing lost his office at Goldsmiths’ Hall with the dismissal of the Rump by Oliver Cromwell* in 1653.39CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 351; Clarke Pprs. iii. 7. Richard Salwey was not in sympathy with the Cromwellian regime, so the Wareings were marginalised during the early years of the protectorate. Edmund Wareing retired to Shropshire, sufficiently well-disposed to the government to become one of its most reliable local props. He served on the bench of magistrates, acted as a commissioner under Major-general James Berry* in the quasi-military dispensation of 1655-6, and came to the attention of the Bridgnorth electors as a local gentleman. In the 1656 Parliament he was named to the important committee for privileges (8 Sept.) and to the committee working on the bill for the lord protector’s security. While certainly no placeman or client of the Cromwellian household, Wareing was nevertheless at this point probably a Member that the government could rely upon for support. A number of other important committees claimed his attendance: the committee charged with reviewing the laws on alehouse licensing and brewing (29 Sept.) and the committee for Irish affairs (27 Oct.).40CJ vii. 424a, 429a, 430a, 446a.

Wareing’s interest in Ireland was doubtless enhanced because of his father’s land interests there as an Adventurer. Early in December, he was named to a committee on a petition by claimants for Irish lands, but spoke against special provisions for petitioners who complained about their allocations in Ireland. He argued that older and greater claims had not been addressed, and that there should be a general settlement of Irish lands.41CJ vii. 463b; Burton’s Diary, i.4. Later that month, Wareing’s contribution to this Parliament was abruptly curtailed because, oddly, he was chosen sheriff even after he had been elected to serve in the House. At this time, he could count on James Ashe*, his brother-in-law, to help him out of his difficulty. Wareing was given leave to attend to his shrieval business, but only after Sir William Strickland had denounced Wareing’s reasons for requesting absence as ‘the worst excuse in the world’.42Burton’s Diary, i. 285, 286.

The House saw no more of Wareing as a speaker or a committee member during that Parliament, but in May 1657 he came to the notice of MPs because of his anomalous position as both sheriff and sitting Member. On 5 May he was arrested in the City by the serjeant to the sheriffs of London. The exchequer writ was filed against Wareing not as a debtor or as party to an action involving him personally, but because he was sheriff of Shropshire: more specifically because of the sheriff’s responsibilities as an officer accountable in exchequer. The affair ended with apologies at the bar of the House by the parties who had assailed Wareing, and a committee enquiry.43CJ vii. 530a, 531b, 533b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 106. A few months later, in August, Wareing nipped in the bud a potential plot by younger sons of Shropshire royalist families, whom he interrupted while they were recruiting a horse troop, allegedly on the strength of a commission from Charles Stuart.44Clarke Pprs. iii. 115. In January 1658 he informed Secretary John Thurloe* of intelligence he had acquired locally in Shrewsbury about the threat to security from the ‘rude and violent’ gentry who had run through their estates, but reassured Cromwell’s chief minister that the leading gentry by contrast were living quietly and threatening no harm, though ‘I have many more in my eye’.45TSP vi. 727.

In January 1659, Wareing was returned again on the old franchise to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament. He was returned by the sheriff, his cousin, another Edmund Wareing, later the Member for Bishop’s Castle, from whom Wareing must be distinguished.46Salop Archives, BB/B/6/3/1/9. He was once again named to the privileges or elections committee, but seems to have made no further contribution to this assembly.47CJ vii. 594b. Once again, he was soon to be more prominent in maintaining security than as a legislator. The demise of the Cromwellian regime and the revival of the Rump Parliament caused Wareing no problems of loyalty. He was commissioned by the restored Rump to garrison Shrewsbury with a militia troop, and in the emergency of summer 1659, was an energetic defender of the Shropshire county town against the royalist forces led by Sir George Boothe* and Sir Thomas Myddelton*.48CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 16, 77, 96, 101, 107-8, 563.

Shrewsbury was a gateway to the west, to north Wales and to Chester and sea routes to Ireland, so Wareing’s stout defence was considered exemplary.49Ludlow, Mems. ii. 109. On 23 July, Wareing was in Bridgnorth, preventing meetings of the disaffected in and around the town, patrolling fairs and generally revisiting the security role he had performed during the episode of the major generals.50CCSP iv. 295. But soon the unrest deepened into a full-scale royalist rising, and he was forced back to defend Shrewsbury with soldiers he had raised on his own initiative.51CCSP iv. 306, 309; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 145. On 5 August, the president of the council of state, Bulstrode Whitelocke*, thanked Wareing for his ‘faithful services’ to Parliament, and within days he was commissioned to raise a whole regiment to fend off the royalist threat.52CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 77, 563. On the 13th, Wareing’s commission was extended to include the defence of Ludlow, but essentially his role remained a supportive one, offering back-up to John Lambert* and writing accounts of the defeat of Boothe for Parliament to pass on to the London press for publication.53CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 95-6, 101, 107-8, 139, 578; A Second, and a Third Letter from the Lord Lambert (1659), 6-7. Later that month, his troop was scheduled by Parliament for incorporation into the county militia, a stage on the road towards recognition as part of the army establishment.54CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 145, 223; CJ vii. 757a, b, 772b.

Early in September 1659, Wareing was continuing to seek out those who might have threatened the government in the recent rising:

I am as yet daily employed in securing persons that have been in the late rebellion, that are of this county, and are now lurking in holes.55HMC Portland, i. 685.

He took up to London as a prisoner Charles Stanley, eldest son of James Stanley, 7th earl of Derby, who had been executed in 1651 for high treason after his part in Charles Stuart’s incursion into England.56CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 185, 190, 193. Stanley had been captured after Boothe’s rising, while Edward Vaughan*, another of Wareing’s detainees, had been arrested on suspicion of complicity in it. He retained his command of Shrewsbury garrison for the rest of the year, and was awarded support from the excise for that purpose.57HMC Portland, i. 688. The restoration of the monarchy could hold in prospect nothing but trouble for Wareing, although his father quickly accommodated himself to the king’s government: in May 1660 the lord mayor of London guaranteed Richard Wareing’s loyalty.58CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 2.

Wareing’s participation in the second high court of justice of 1649 now nearly proved fatal to him. He was identified in the Lords with others who had sat in the court and had signed the death warrants of the three peers. According to Edmund Ludlowe II* it was Arthur Capel, son of the executed baron, who singled out Wareing for retribution.59Ludlow, Mems. ii. 285; Ludlow, Voyce, 170. On 7 August it was reported by royalists in the west midlands that Wareing was to be executed for his part in the trials, and a week later the Lords resisted suggestions from the Commons that their proviso excepting Wareing and the others from the bill of indemnity and oblivion be dropped.60Staffs. RO, D868/8; LJ xi. 129b; CJ viii. 118b. On the 24th, the Commons declined to support the Lords’ insistence on Wareing’s exemption from mercy, sending a message to the peers that ‘Major Wareing is a person that never sat but once, and hath since done good offices for honest men’. More than simply a case of loyalty to a minor figure, it was an illustration of the principle the Commons sought to uphold, that they were ‘not willing to mix any blood with those that are to suffer for the murder’ of Charles I.61LJ xi. 143b. Only on 28 August, was the proviso against Wareing laid aside.62CJ viii. 139b.

Thereafter, Wareing lived in retirement, intermittently harassed by the monarchical government. In January 1661 he was released from confinement in Shrewsbury, against the wishes of Francis Newport*, 2nd Baron Newport, the lord lieutenant of Shropshire, who regarded him as ‘the most dangerous man in the county of Salop’ while the millenarian rising of Thomas Venner was taking place in London.63Trans. Salop Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. ser. 4, i. 290, 292, 298. In July 1662, when Newport arrested Richard Salwey, he urged Secretary Sir Edward Nicholas† to consider his brother-in-law Wareing to be equally dangerous. Either Richard or Edmund Wareing was given permission to visit Salwey in prison in November 1663, when Wareing junior was himself arrested, and in 1665 yet another warrant against Wareing was issued by Newport.64CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 449; 1662-3, pp. 325, 327, 334; Trans. Salop Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. ser. 4, i. 315, 316. In between these episodes, Wareing must have tried to lead the life of a secluded country gentleman. He continued to enjoy the Donington tithes, and when his daughter married William Colmore in 1677, he settled Humphreston on her.65Salop Archives, P7/F/3/1; Birmingham Archives, MS 3375/406563. Because of the longevity of his father, who died in 1669, Wareing renounced his entitlement to Groton.66PROB11/330/202; Wolverhampton Archives, DX55/42. Edmund Wareing made his will in January 1683 and died soon afterwards. He was buried at Donington. In the inventory made of his property, only the mention of silver plate worth £80 marked him out as different from the average minor country gentleman.67Staffs. RO, B/C/11. His wife lived on until 1703. None of his descendants is known to have sat in later Parliaments.