PAYLER, George (1607-78), of Nun Monkton, Yorks.

Payler was a grandson of Queen Elizabeth’s attorney in the north, William Paler† – who had represented the Yorkshire borough of Hedon in 1571 – although his uncle, the Yorkshire royalist Sir Edward Payler, 1st bt., would refer to him in his will as ‘cousin’.29G. Inn Admiss. 77, 80; Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. iii. 15; Abstracts of Yorks. Wills ed. J. W. Clay (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. ix), 8-9; HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘William Paler’. Little is known about his background or upbringing, and nor is it clear how he entered the crown’s employ in the late 1630s as a messenger between the king’s secretariat and the exchequer and ordnance office.30CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 605, 630. The likeliest point of contact between Payler and the court was through Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland – lord admiral during the bishops’ wars. Northumberland employed as a gentleman-servant one Edward Payler, who may well have been George’s elder brother of that name.31E407/80/4; SC6/CHASI/1664, m. 8d; SC6/CHASI/1665, mm. 12, 12d; SC6/CHASI/1666, mm. 10, 10d; Household Pprs. of Henry 9th Earl of Northumb. ed. G.R. Batho (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, xciii), 159. This would explain how George came to be one of the earl’s main creditors during the early 1640s, lending at least £2,500 to the parliamentarian peer.32Alnwick, U.I.6, Accts. of Henry Tayler 1642-3. The Percys owned a considerable amount of property in Nun Monkton, near York, where William Paler had lived and where George was to establish his main residence.33Alnwick, X.II.6, box 11, bdle. g: acquittances signed at York, May-June 1647; Payler to Potter, 10 Apr. 1649; box 12, bdle. l: same to same, 3 Nov. 1649; It was probably on Northumberland’s recommendation that Payler was appointed paymaster of Berwick garrison in the spring of 1639.34CSP Dom. 1639, pp. 6-7.

Despite serving the king diligently during the bishops’ wars, Payler evidently enjoyed the trust of Parliament, which retained him as paymaster at Berwick until the summer of 1642.35CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 114, 125, 178, 292, 314, 361, 454, 489, 576; 1640, pp. 14, 265, 434, 460, 546; CJ ii. 128a, 141a, 639a. His correspondence in this period shows him to have been a man of some means – he was able to pay off the garrison on his own credit – and an assured parliamentary lobbyist.36Add. 33223, ff. 49, 54; HMC 5th Rep. 40. He also managed to retain the goodwill of Berwick corporation, which in November 1641 made him a freeman of the borough.37Berwick RO, B1/9, f. 218v. He consolidated his links with the town in the early 1640s by lending the corporation approximately £250 and by marrying a daughter of its most prominent inhabitant Sir Robert Jackson.38Berwick RO, B1/9, f. 234; B1/10, ff. 9, 165v; Berwick-upon-Tweed Par. Regs. ed. Dodds, ii. 36.

Although resident at Berwick for most of the period 1639-46, Payler was appointed to the London post of surveyor-general of the parliamentarian ordnance office in August 1642, with a salary of £56 a year.39WO54/16, unfol.; Berwick RO, B1/10, ff. 9, 16, 48; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 385; CJ ii. 639a; iii. 272a; LJ viii. 127b. Again, his likely patron was the earl of Northumberland. On 20 August 1642, Parliament had given the Committee of Safety*, of which Northumberland was a leading member, power to remodel the ordnance office, and within five days Payler had been appointed surveyor general of the ordnance.40WO55/457, 1937, unfol.; LJ v. 308b. Payler’s commission was issued by the Committee for Revenue*, of which Northumberland’s friend and ally Sir Henry Vane I* was chairman.41Infra, ‘Sir Henry Vane I’; LJ x. 388b. Payler’s decision to serve Parliament rather than the king may have been linked to his religious sympathies. There are hints in the Berwick municipal records that he was on familiar terms with godly ministers, among them the Congregationalist divine Philip Nye.42Berwick RO, B1/10, f. 65v; B9/1, f. 27. It was to Payler that the corporation turned in 1647 to find a minister for the town.43Berwick RO, B1/10, f. 65v; B9/1, ff. 1, 3. His wife, a poet and author of autobiographical meditations, had been converted to a life of godly piety in her teens and believed that her husband would join her among ‘God’s people’: ‘deservedly, God hath begun a work in thee, which He will perform ... I partly know the change which God hath made in thee, both inwardly and outwardly, from what and to what. I see much in thee and praise God for it’.44Bodl. Rawl. D.1308, p. 6 and passim; ‘Lady Mary Carey’, Oxford DNB. It is also worth noting that Paylor’s residence at Nun Monkton would be licensed as a Presbyterian meeting house in 1673.45CSP Dom. 1672-3, p. 514.

Politically, Payler was probably broadly aligned with the parliamentary Independents. Northumberland was an Independent grandee, and as a senior figure at the ordnance office, Payler would have had frequent occasion to work with the earl’s clients Francis Allein* and Robert Scawen* in supplying the New Model army.46SP28/46/1, ff. 248, 252, 256; CJ v. 473b; LJ x. 129a. He was also on close terms, it seems, with the earl’s retained legal counsel Sir Thomas Widdrington*, who assisted Payler financially in the late 1640s – probably in connection with Payler’s purchase of Nun Monkton.47C54/3491/276. However, Payler decided against following Northumberland into political retirement after the regicide, serving diligently as surveyor-general of the ordnance until 1656, when he sold the office for £730.48CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 454, 496; 1651, pp. 48, 68, 72, 76, 163, 172, 392; 1651-2, pp. 359, 593, 600; 1652-3, pp. 533, 576; 1654, pp. 76, 581; 1655, pp. 39, 490; 1660-1, p. 100. It was reported in June 1649 that he could be found ‘at his office in the Tower, Tuesdays and Fridays’.49Berwick RO, B9/1, f. 29v. In 1654, he was added to the Cromwellian navy commission, with a combined salary for both his old office as surveyor general and this new one of £250 a year.50CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 351; 1654, p. 76. In the wake of Penruddock’s rising early in 1655, and the heightened fears of royalist plotting, he was named to the oyer and terminer commission for trying the northern conspirators.51C181/6, p. 102. And in 1656, he joined Deputy Major-general Robert Lilburne* and the Yorkshire commissioners for securing the commonwealth in letters to the protector, requesting more repressive measures against the county’s malignants.52TSP iv. 402; v. 185. Payler’s London residence for much of the 1650s was in St Katherine by the Tower, but his duties and social commitments took him and his wife as far afield as Edinburgh and to numerous locations in and around London, including Isleworth, where Northumberland’s mansion of Syon House was situated.53Bodl. Rawl. D.1308, pp. 195-6; ‘Lady Mary Carey’, Oxford DNB.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Payler was returned for Berwick as ‘one known to most of the town, who [has] lived amongst us and hath born the office of a bailiff’.54Supra, ‘Berwick-upon-Tweed’; Berwick RO, B1/11, Berwick Guild Bk., f. 192. Surprisingly for one whose contacts at Westminster must have been extensive, he made very little impression on the proceedings of this, his only Parliament. He was named to just one committee – for sick and maimed soldiers – and made no recorded contribution to debate.55CJ vii. 627b. He remained at the corporation’s disposal for several months after the fall of the protectorate in April, but only in an advisory and support role to the town’s principal men-of-business – Widdrington and John Rushworth*.56Berwick RO, B1/11, ff. 200v, 203, 203v. He evidently withdrew from public life after 1659, for almost nothing is known about him from 1660 until his death in October 1678. He was buried at Nun Monkton.57Poole et al. Churches of Yorks. ii. 98. He died intestate, and the administration of his estate was granted to his widow and eldest son.58Borthwick, Prerogative Court Act Bk. 1624-79, ii. f. 271. None of his immediate family sat in Parliament.