SALMON, Edward (c.1616-aft. 1670), of St Bartholomew the Great, London.

Salmon appears to have belonged to one of the yeoman and minor gentry families of that name that resided in and around the Lincolnshire Wolds.28Hagworthingham, Lincs. par. reg.; Horncastle, Lincs. par. reg. He may have been the ‘Mr Edward Sammon’ whose daughter, Dorothy, was baptised at Legsby, in Lincolnshire, in February 1636.29Legsby par. reg. Another possibility is that he was the Edward Salmon who married Dorothy Allsop (the widow of Thomas Arnold, yeoman) of Lincoln in 1638.30St Mary le Wigford, Lincoln par. reg.; Lincoln Marr. Licences ed. A. Gibbons, 90. An Edward Salmon took the Protestation at Lincoln in February 1642 – his name listed immediately after that of the future parliamentarian officer Original Peart*.31Protestation Returns for Lincs. 1641-2 ed. A. Cole, W. Atkin (CD, Lincs. Fam. Hist. Soc. 1996), returns for St Mark, Lincoln. Salmon’s correspondence during 1649-51 reveals that he had a daughter named Dorothy and suggests that he had close connections with Lincoln and the county.32Add. 21418, f. 85; Add. 21419, f. 180; Add. 21420, f. 5. His career as a parliamentarian officer seems to have begun in Yorkshire, however, and his second wife, whom he married in the early 1650s, was the daughter of a minor East Riding gentleman, Christopher Appleyard of Burstwick, near Hull. She was baptized in 1632 at Easington (near Burstwick), the family seat of Christopher Appleyard’s kinsman and future comrade-in-arms in Parliament’s northern army Colonel Robert Overton, who was Salmon’s commanding officer at Hull under the Rump.33Easington, Yorks. bishop’s transcript (bap. entry for 8 Jan. 1632); Lincs. Peds. 34; Oxford DNB, ‘Robert Overton’; Jones, ‘War in north’, 368. Salmon’s allegiance to Parliament was consistent with his religious convictions, for, as his later career demonstrates, he was a staunch puritan.

Salmon was commissioned by June 1643 as a captain in the infantry regiment of Ferdinando 2nd Lord Fairfax*, the commander of Parliament’s northern army. His brother Robert served as his ensign and, subsequently, his lieutenant. Salmon was part of the parliamentarian vanguard at the battle of Adwalton Moor that month and distinguished himself in the defence of Hull during the third royalist siege of the town. It is also likely that he fought at Marston Moor.34E121/3/3/117; Add. 21418, f. 158; HMC Portland, i. 139, 717; Jones, ‘War in north’, 400, 409, 412. He ended the war in Yorkshire having served as a major under Colonel (later Major-general) John Lambert* and Colonel Robert Lilburne*.35E121/5/5/37; SP28/134, pt. 6, f. 5. His service in the northern army seems to have earned him some influential friends, for early in 1646 he was commissioned as a captain of horse in the New Model regiment commanded by Henry Ireton*. And a few months later, in May, he was appointed lieutenant-colonel of the New Model regiment of foot commanded by Sir Hardress Waller*.36E121/5/7/26; Wanklyn, New Model Army, i. 54, 66, 77.

During the spring of 1647, Salmon sided with the majority of the army’s officers against the Presbyterian interest, which had presented the soldiers with the stark choice of disbandment with only six weeks’ arrears, or service under new commanders in Ireland.37Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLI, f. 103; The Petition and Vindication of the Officers of the Armie under His Excellencie Sir Thomas Fairfax (1647), sig. A4 (E.385.19); An Humble Remonstrance from His Excellency Sir Thomas Fairfax (1647), 15. In May, having mustered Waller’s regiment, Salmon made no attempt to exhort the soldiers to enlist for Ireland, but urged them instead to draw up their grievances.38Clarke Pprs. i. 55-6. Salmon, Captain John Clerke II* and another of Waller’s officers signed the regiment’s list of grievances, which included the complaint that ‘tender consciences’ had been ‘denied the liberty which Christ had purchased for us, and abridged of our freedom to serve God according to our proportion of faith, and like to be imprisoned, yea, beaten and persecuted to enforce us to a humane conformity never enjoined by Christ’.39Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLI, ff. 117v-118.

Salmon’s involvement in army politicking had evidently deepened considerably by 2 November 1647, when he was added to the committee of officers set up on the second day’s debate at Putney (29 Oct.) to draw up a constitutional settlement in accordance with the Levellers’ Agreement of the People and the declarations of the army. This committee recommended biennial Parliaments, the redistribution of constituencies and the continuance of monarchy and the Lords, but with drastically reduced powers.40Clarke Pprs. i. 363-7, 407-11. But although he may have sympathized with some aspects of the Levellers’ programme, Salmon repudiated the agitators’ attempts to sow discontent among the troops that autumn, signing an address from Waller’s regiment pledging obedience to Sir Thomas Fairfax* ‘as the chief head of this army’.41Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 878-9.

Late in December 1647, Fairfax despatched Salmon, Sir William Constable* and William Goffe* to tighten security around the king in Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight.42Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 952. The island’s governor, Colonel Robert Hammond*, had been growing increasingly disenchanted with the radical course the army was taking, and it is likely that Salmon, Constable and Goffe were sent to Carisbrooke as much to keep him under surveillance as to assist in guarding the king. As second in command to Sir Hardress Waller, Salmon was involved in suppressing royalist insurgency in the west country during the second civil war and in the events surrounding Pride’s Purge and the king’s trial during the winter of 1648-9.43Infra, ‘Sir Hardress Waller’; LJ x. 270b, 271a, 271b; OPH xvii. 160-5.

Salmon attended the debates of the council of officers on the Agreement of the People in December 1648, where his voting pattern indicates that he opposed the attempt by Ireton to give the legislature final judgment in moral as well as civil matters. On each of the five occasions when both Salmon and Waller cast their votes during the debates they were at odds.44Clarke Pprs. ii. 278-9; B. Taft, ‘Voting lists of the council of officers, Dec. 1648’, BIHR lii. 142-3, 146, 147, 148, 149. On 29 December, Salmon was named to a ten-man committee to produce a final draft of the Agreement for presentation to Parliament.45Clarke Pprs. ii. 156. This committee appears to have been more or less balanced between radicals – of whom Salmon was apparently one – and more conservative officers, including Ireton and Waller.46D.P. Massarella, ‘The Politics of the Army 1647-60’ (York Univ. DPhil. thesis, 1977), 180. Salmon was included on the council of officers’ committee set up in mid-February 1649 ‘for the well ordering of field forces and garrisons’.47Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS LXXII, unfol.; Massarella, ‘Politics of the Army’, 198.

Evidently trusted by the Rump’s leaders, Salmon was appointed deputy governor of Hull in May 1649 after the council of state became suspicious of the town’s governor, Colonel Robert Overton.48CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 160. Overton was unhappy at the prospect of perpetuating the ‘corrupted party’ at Westminster in power – a feeling that Salmon himself seems to have shared.49Oxford DNB, ‘Robert Overton’. He certainly had strong reservations about taking the Engagement (the oath abjuring monarchy and the House of Lords), as he informed the Northern Brigade’s London agent, and client of John Lambert, Captain Adam Baynes* in October 1649, declaring himself ‘not free to set my hand to anything that may perpetuate persons in power, but am free to engage both hand and heart to oppose both kings and Lords’.50Add. 21418, f. 97. He wrote to Baynes again in November on the same subject

As for the Engagement, I know not what to say to it, being not able to apprehend what construction is or may be put upon those words, viz. ‘as it is now established’. Touching that part of it which relates to the king, I think there is few that knows me, but knows that I have signed an engagement with my blood against him; and for the House of Lords, I do not know of any good this nation has received by them and therefore could willingly engage against their coming in again. But I am altogether unwilling to sign anything that should tend to the perpetuating either of this Parliament or the council of state, for I am altogether for elective statesmen and successive Parliaments.51Add. 21418, f. 123.

Salmon seems to have favoured a constitutional settlement along the lines of the version of the Agreement of the People that he had helped formulate in December 1648 and which the army had presented to the Rump the following month.52Oxford DNB, ‘Robert Overton’. This incorporated the essence of the Levellers’ demands, but proposed slightly more restrictions on religious liberty and acknowledged an obligation to consult with the Rump about the settlement of the government.

Salmon’s correspondence with Baynes reveals that he was on close terms with him as well as with Lambert and Colonel Robert Lilburne.53Add. 21417, f. 286: Add. 21418, f. 123; Add. 21419, f. 169v; Add. 21420, f. 5; Add. 21422, f. 32. With Baynes’s help, Salmon purchased several former crown estates in the early 1650s, including the manor of Egham in Surrey, the manors of Cartmel and Furness in Lancashire, the manor of Epworth in Lincolnshire and the manor of Rosedale in Yorkshire. Salmon contracted for most of these properties as an agent for other soldiers, acting on two occasions in this capacity with one of his subordinates in the Hull garrison, Captain Thomas Talbot II*.54E121/5/7/26, 109, 116; I. Gentles, ‘The Debentures Market and Military Purchases of Crown Lands, 1649-60’ (London Univ. PhD thesis, 1969), 316, 330, 342. However, he also acquired lands in Yorkshire to cover his own substantial arrears of pay.55C54/3751/8; E121/5/5/37; E121/5/7/26; Gentles, ‘Debentures Market’, 279, 330.

With Overton soldiering in Scotland from the summer of 1650, Salmon was de facto governor of Hull, and, as such, he became embroiled in a dispute between the town’s Presbyterian clergy and the Independent minister John Canne, the garrison preacher.56VCH E. Riding, i. 108; J. F. Wilson, ‘Another look at John Canne’, Church History, xxxiii. 43. Salmon’s sympathies clearly lay with Canne, and he was scandalized that the preacher’s Presbyterian opponent, John Shawe, was able to slander him from the pulpit with apparent impunity. As he informed Baynes: ‘by this you may see that parsons are men of large liberty, for they may say what they please in the pulpit whether true or false and not be accountable for it’.57Add. 21419, f. 169. Canne’s supporters pronounced Salmon ‘faithful and religious’, but his role in this dispute was largely determined by the council of state, which ordered him to expel two moderate Puritan ministers from the town in October 1650 for their refusal to take the Engagement.58Hull Hist. Cent. C BRL/511-15; Merc. Politicus, 20 (17-24 Oct. 1650), 335 (E.615.6); CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 385, 452.

Given Salmon’s aversion to ‘perpetuating of this Parliament’, he probably welcomed the army’s dissolution of the Rump in April 1653 and was one of the first to profit by it, being appointed one of the commissioners for admiralty in July on the recommendation of the new council of state.59CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 19; CJ vii. 285a. The commissioners were charged with the task of managing the affairs of the navy and admiralty – a role that would already have been familiar to Salmon as deputy governor of Hull and, by early 1653, governor of Scarborough Castle (Scarborough, on the Yorkshire coast, being a busy port of great strategic importance).60E351/3601; Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 208, 210. His close connection with the world of naval administration is clearly illustrated by his marriage at St. Bartholomew the Great, London, in January 1655, to Mary Deane, the widow of General-at-Sea and regicide Richard Deane (both Salmon and his bride were described as residents of St. Bartholomew’s). Salmon had been part of the three-man conciliar committee that had organised Deane’s funeral arrangements in June 1653, and he had succeeded to the command of Deane’s regiment of foot that autumn.61CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 402, 479, 491; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 110. He and his third wife apparently resided during the second half of the 1650s on or near Deane’s estate at Hornchurch, Essex.62C181/6, pp. 105, 272; PROB11/239, f. 339; Her. and Gen. vii. 61-2; CJ vii. 504b. Despite his preference for ‘elective statesmen and successive Parliaments’, Salmon apparently had little difficulty conforming to the protectorate, and in November 1655 he was appointed to the first protectoral admiralty commission at a salary of £400 a year.63CSP Dom. 1655, p. 402; 1656-7, p. 98; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 14.

In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Salmon was returned for Scarborough – probably through a combination of army and admiralty influence and his own interest as governor of the castle.64Supra, ‘Scarborough’. He was also returned for the Scottish borough of Dumfries Burghs, where he enjoyed the backing of Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*) and probably also of the town’s governor, John Grimsditch, who was very likely Salmon’s brother-in-law.65Supra, ‘Dumfries Burghs’. After Parliament convened, Salmon elected to sit for Scarborough.66CJ vii. 432a. He was named to 16 committees – of which the majority were of minor importance and were set up during the first six months of Parliament’s sitting – and made no recorded contribution to debate.67CJ vii. 435b, 441b, 447a, 452a, 456a, 457b, 462b, 463b, 472a, 472b, 483a, 488b, 504b, 528a, 570b, 589a. With the introduction in 1657 of the Humble Petition and Advice and the attendant offer of the kingship to Cromwell, Salmon joined his friends Lambert, Baynes and Lilburne in opposition to the new constitution.68Massarella, ‘Politics of the Army’, 459. His most important appointment in the House was on 25 March 1657, when he was a minority teller with Major-general William Boteler against including a clause in the Humble Petition urging Cromwell to assume the title and office of king.69CJ vii. 511a. The majority tellers were the Cromwellian court grandees Sir John Reynolds and Charles Howard. In contrast to Lambert and Baynes, however, Salmon was apparently able to reconcile himself to the reconstituted government and continued to play a limited role in parliamentary proceedings. On 23 June, he was named to a committee for preparing the protector’s new oath of office and drawing up proposals for the ‘solemnisation’ of Cromwell’s acceptance of the Humble Petition.70CJ vii. 570b. Two days later (25 June), he was a teller with Colonel Thomas Cooper II in an apparently minor division concerning Westmorland.71CJ vii. 575a. His last appointment in the House was on 28 January 1658, when he was named to a committee to attend the protector in response to his speech at the Banqueting House a few days earlier.72CJ vii. 589a.

In the spring of 1658, Salmon joined John Disbrowe*, Edward Whalley* and other senior officers in an address to Cromwell in which they expressed their support for him ‘as our general and chief magistrate’ and their confidence in the Petition and Advice as a means of securing ‘the great ends of all our former engagements: our civil and spiritual liberty’.73A Further Narrative of the Passages of These Times (1658), 51-2. Similarly, in September, he signed the proclamation declaring Richard Cromwell* as protector; and served as a standard-bearer at Oliver Cromwell’s funeral procession two months later.74OPH xxi. 228-9; Burton’s Diary, ii. 524. Although Salmon had been replaced as deputy governor of Hull by March 1655, he remained active as an admiralty commissioner throughout the latter half of the 1650s, signing his last warrant as such on 20 December 1659.75ADM 2/1731, ff. 44, 125; St. 185, f. 114; Add. 22546, ff. 144, 154, 219, 225; Bodl. Rawl. C.179, p. 2 and passim; TSP iii. 239-40; CSP Dom. 1657-8, pp. 85, 403, 449, 491, 545; W. B. Cogar, ‘The politics of naval administration, 1649-1660’ (Oxford Univ. DPhil. thesis, 1983), 223, 224, 236, 237.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Salmon was again returned for Scarborough, on this occasion with the arch-commonwealthsman and regicide, Thomas Chaloner. The election seems to have been a hard fought affair, with Salmon and Chaloner having to fend off challenges from at least four other candidates. Although Salmon had been replaced as governor of Scarborough Castle by this point, he retained a powerful interest in the port as an admiralty commissioner.76Supra, ‘Scarborough’. His first appointment in this Parliament was on 27 January 1659, when he was named as a commissioner for tendering MPs the oath of allegiance to the protector.77CJ vii. 593a. However, the next day (28 Jan.) the House ordered the committee of privileges to examine the ‘mistake’ concerning Salmon’s return.78CJ vii. 595a. The nature of this ‘mistake’ was not spelled out; but doubts over the validity of his return may have kept him out of the House for well over a month. There is certainly no mention of him either in the Journals or Burton’s diary before mid-March 1659. On the other hand, he may simply have been inactive during this period. Even after mid-March he appears to have taken little part in the House’s proceedings. He was named to only three committees – all of them on the same day, 1 April – and made only two known contributions to debate.79CJ vii. 623a. The first of these, on 12 March, was a motion for printing an order for the speedy supply of the army and navy (which was supported by Baynes and other friends of the army); the second was on 21 March, when he sided with the republican interest in trying to delay a vote confirming the right of the Members for Scotland to sit in the House. The republicans regarded the Scottish and Irish MPs as little better than Cromwellian placemen.80Burton’s Diary, iv. 143; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 478. The ‘E. S.’ who helped to keep the army secretary, William Clarke, informed of the Commons’ proceedings during March was probably either Salmon or Captain Edward Scotten, MP for Devizes – although Scotten seems to have been entirely inactive in the House.81Infra, ‘Edward Scotten’; Clarke Pprs. iii. 185-6.

Following the army’s dissolution of Parliament in April 1659, Salmon joined Lambert and other senior army officers at Wallingford House to discuss the settlement of the government – the majority of the officers, including Salmon, favouring the restoration of the Rump.82Clarke Pprs. iii. 196; Clarke Pprs. v. 290; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 345; Baker, Chronicle, 642. He was one of the signatories to the 13 May petition from a group of senior officers, headed by Lambert, pledging their loyalty to the restored Rump. However, one of the petitioners’ proposals for securing the ‘fundamentals of our Good Old Cause’ was the establishment of a ‘select senate, coordinate in power’ with a unicameral Parliament – a scheme favoured by Lambert and Sir Henry Vane II*, but firmly opposed by Hesilrige and his closest parliamentary allies.83The Humble Petition and Addresse of the Officers of the Army (13 May 1659, E.983.7); Prose Works of Milton ed. Ayers, vii. 71-3. Salmon’s fidelity to the restored Rump was rewarded in May with his appointment as governor of Hull – although he was quickly replaced in this office by Overton – and to the new admiralty commission.84CJ vii. 669b, 670b; Massarella, ‘Politics of the Army’, 573.

In yet another, and final, shift of allegiance, Salmon sided with Lambert and the English army leaders in their expulsion of the Rump and establishment of the army-dominated committee of safety in mid-October 1659.85Whitelocke, Diary, 538. On 19 October, he signed an order from the council of officers at Whitehall, enjoining the army’s assent to the setting up of an interim government under the committee of safety.86Add. 4165, f. 34; TSP vii. 766. The following day (20 Oct.), he joined Lambert and nine other officers in a letter to General George Monck*, urging him to recognize the committee.87Clarke Pprs. iv. 67-8. Salmon remained loyal to Lambert and the committee of safety to the end. In mid-December, he was made lieutenant of the Tower after the discovery of a plot by his predecessor, Colonel Thomas Fitch*, to surrender it to forces loyal to the Rump.88Supra, ‘Thomas Fitch’; Clarke Pprs. iv. 186; CCSP iv. 481. And shortly afterwards, Salmon and two of the army’s leading civilian allies, Vane II and Richard Salwey*, were sent to the fleet in an unsuccessful bid to win over Vice-Admiral John Lawson (a native of Scarborough), who had declared for the Rump.89Parl. Intelligencer, 1 (19-26 Dec. 1659), 2 (E.182.15); Ludlow, Mems. ii. 180-1; G. Penn, Memorials of Sir William Penn, ii. 186-91. Having then gone north to inform Lambert about ‘the state of business’, Salmon had arrived at Newcastle by 28 December, when he wrote to a friend in London that Lambert’s officers appeared to be ‘unanimous and very courageous’.90Parl. Intelligencer, 2 (26 Dec. 1659-2 Jan. 1660), 11 (E.182.16); HMC Portland, i. 690; CCSP iv. 492; T. Gumble, The life of General Monck (1671), 194; H. Reece, The Cromwellian Army in Eng. 1649-60, 213. A few days later, Lambert’s army disintegrated and General Monck entered England unopposed.

With the restoration of the Rump on 26 December 1659, and Monck’s bloodless victory in the north, Salmon finally found himself out in the political cold. On 13 January 1660, he was effectively cashiered from the army, and the new council of state ordered him to repair to his residence furthest from London.91Add. 21425, ff. 193-4; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 328. As a prominent adherent of Lambert he was arrested and briefly imprisoned in the wake of the latter’s rising in April 1660.92Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 412; CSP Dom. 1676-7, p. 177. It was later alleged that Salmon had organised a war-chest of £40,000 among the ‘separate[d] churches’ to help fund Lambert’s design.93Add. 33770, f. 34v. Salmon was arrested again in November 1660, along with Overton and other ex-army officers, on suspicion of plotting against the crown and was consigned to house-arrest in Essex.94Ludlow, Mems. ii. 328; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 484. In December 1661, he was imprisoned a third time, on this occasion for his alleged involvement in the supposedly seditious proceedings of the ‘Commonwealth Club’ – a republican circle that met at a victualling establishment in Covent Garden called Nonsuch House.95SP29/41/32, f. 98; SP29/46/33, f. 63; CSP Dom. 1671, p. 503. This group, which apparently included the inveterate commonwealthsmen Henry Marten*, Henry Neville* and John Wildman*, was suspected by the government of plotting to restore the Long Parliament.96SP29/41/32, f. 98; SP29/46/33, f. 63; R. L. Greaves, Deliver Us From Evil, 78-80. The evidence against the Nonsuch House ‘plotters’, if by no means cast-iron, was sufficiently substantial for the earl of Clarendon (Sir Edward Hyde*) to have them incarcerated for years. The crown had a relatively strong case against Salmon, who had been arrested in possession of a list of 160 disbanded officers.97Greaves, Deliver Us From Evil, 80.

After six months or so in the Tower, Salmon was transported to Jersey, where he was kept in close confinement until February 1670, when he was then transferred to Guernsey.98HMC 11th Rep. vii. 4; CSP Dom. 1670, p. 63. In about September 1671, he petitioned the king for his release, but Charles would only grant him the freedom of the island.99CSP Dom. 1671, p. 503. Salmon then disappears from the records – although according to one authority he was subsequently pardoned and drifted into the circle of the whig leader, the earl of Shaftesbury (Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*).100M. Ashley, John Wildman, 215. He was possibly the Edward Salmon buried at Holy Trinity, Hull on 16 December 1681.101Holy Trinity, Hull bishop’s transcript. No will is recorded. None of his immediate descendants sat in Parliament.