WALKER, Clement (?1595-1651), of Charterhouse, Som. and St Margaret’s, Westminster

Clement Walker was born into a ‘civil service’ elite, and as the son of Thomas Walker was heir to one of the most well-established heritable offices in the early Stuart administration: the chief ushership of the exchequer. Thomas Walker’s marriage into the Madocks family connected him with a line of descent which dated back to 1233, while he was working within the exchequer by 1603, and was chief usher from 1608 until his death in 1613.27E159/434 Easter rec. 22; Trin. rec. 56; E403/1706, 1715; Exchequer Officeholders (L. and I. Soc. spec. ser. xviii), 142-7; Som. RO, DD/WHb/220. That position (with four subordinate ushers and six messengers) entailed custody of exchequer records and the exchequer chamber, and entailed waiting upon the lord chancellor and lord treasurer.28SP16/493, f. 132v; SP16/488, f. 195. Clement Walker was admitted to the Middle Temple in October 1611, bound with Richard Lane and Thomas Knyvett, and remained in chambers until 1617, although he does not appear to have been called to the bar, perhaps because he inherited his father’s office in 1613.29MTR ii. 540, 578. Walker was admitted as chief usher on 23 October that year, and held the post at least to the outbreak of civil war, although he leased the office to others between 1617 and 1638.30E159/445 Hil. rec. 492; E159/452 Easter rec. 139; E403/1716, 1722, 1725, 1728, 1751, 1753; Som. RO, DD/WHb/140-2. In February 1615 he married a daughter of Sir William Pitt†, teller of the exchequer, and he lived within the parish of St Margaret’s Westminster until at least March 1623.31Aylmer, King’s Servants, 89-90; Mems. of St Margaret’s Westminster, 97, 106, 112. Thereafter, Walker may have travelled on the continent, on a three year pass granted on 9 May 1624, before returning to England to settle at Cliffe, near Tincleton in Dorset, where three sons were born between 1626 and 1631.32APC 1623-5, p. 214; Ath. Ox. iii. 295; Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 630.

It was at Cliffe in June 1629 that Walker, suspecting his wife’s fidelity, stabbed her with a dinner knife during a family meal.33Whiteway Diary, 104; Eg. 784, f. 75. On 8 June Edward Pitt† wrote to Sir William Pitt of ‘this late desperate and villainous attempt of him who is unworthy the name of son or brother’, observing that ‘no doubt the whole shire of Dorset doth ring with the infamous fame hereof’.34Add. 29974, f. 118. Although seriously wounded, Walker’s wife survived the attack, thanks to the fact that there was a surgeon staying nearby, and Walker immediately expressed remorse for his actions. Although he was resigned to imprisonment, no charges appear to have been brought against him. Nevertheless, he apparently took action to protect his estates and to prevent his wife from speaking of the matter without his knowledge.35Add. 29974, f. 169v. Sir William Pitt complained that his daughter was ‘kept in by her husband from conference with her friends’, and sought legal advice as to ‘whether and by what means such a wife may be sequestered out of her husband’s keeping and custody to be freed from fear of her life and set at liberty to speak freely for excusing herself or for avowing or disavowing of suits brought on her behalf’. Yet Pitt realised that the rumours of infidelity were potentially damaging, and evidently feared the consequences if his daughter should ‘through severity confess any disloyalty against herself towards her husband by writing under her hand or before witnesses soever’. He enquired ‘whether disloyalty to a husband so confessed doth lose or forfeit her jointure or dower’, and ‘if the husband seek[s] a divorce whether may he marry again whiles his wife liveth’.36Add. 29974, f. 168. The immediate outcome of the case is unclear, but Walker was eventually reconciled with his wife, and the couple had more children before 13 November 1631, when Frances Walker died still professing her innocence and bemoaning the fact that her husband had believed her accusers. Walker evidently honoured her deathbed wish that he should repair relations with her friends and family, not least because of an illness which was thought to threaten his own life.37Whiteway Diary, 119; Eg. 784, f. 85v; Add. 29974, ff. 170, 172-4, 176, 177, 179, 224, 227.

Walker then sold Cliffe for £2,000, and probably resided in Westminster for the next few years.38Add. 29974, ff. 174, 176; Dorset RO, 873. In the spring of 1634, having on the one hand reassured the Pitt family that the position of his children would be safeguarded, and on the other hand allayed the fears of his new family by alleging that his first wife was ‘the sole cause of what she suffered’, Walker married Mary, daughter of Sir William Button†.39C2/Chas 1/B123/3; LC4/201, ff. 237, 283v; Add 29974, ff. 220, 221, 222; C66/2635/31; Som. RO, DD/WHb/144. Walker’s association with future royalists like Button may help to explain Anthony Wood’s comment that before the civil wars Walker ‘was always taken to be, as really he was, an enemy to the puritans’.40Ath. Ox. iii. 292. There is little other indication of his political attitudes during this period, and he was a relatively minor figure in Somerset, where he settled in 1635, although he was added to the commission of the peace in 1638.41Coventry Docquets, 74, 674; C54/3058/38; C54/3100/6; C54/3110/10.

In contrast, Wood claimed that during the civil wars Walker ‘closed’ with the puritans and became a ‘zealous Covenanter’.42Ath. Ox. iii. 292. Walker certainly served the parliamentarian cause in the west country from the summer of 1642. In late August he was in Bath organising military matters, and by mid-September he was with leading local parliamentarians in Dorchester, from where he signed a letter relating to the parliamentarian troops under William Russell, 5th earl of Bedford.43Som. RO, DD/HI/466, unfol.; A Relation of the Parliament’s Forces (1642), 6 (E.116.42). By mid-December he was in Bristol, as advocate to the parliamentarian council of war.44Bristol RO, 5139/216. In this capacity the following spring he took the examinations of conspirators Robert Yeomans and George Bowcher.45Bodl. Nalson XIII, ff. 334-67, 370, 373, 374, 376, 378, 399-400; The Several Examinations and Confessions of the Treacherous Conspirators (1643, E.104.4). The royalists’ account of the ‘murder’ of these two men emphasised Walker’s role, noting that he ‘had his hands stained with his own wife’s blood before he dipped them so deep in these martyrs’, and talked of a ‘contrived confession of Master Yeomans’.46The Two State Martyrs (1643), 11. The king’s wrath was apparent in Walker’s exclusion from the pardon granted to the inhabitants of Bristol on 24 February 1644.47Bristol Charters 1509-1899, ed. R.C. Latham (Bristol Rec. Soc. xii), 166-75. Meanwhile Walker’s role also included corresponding with grandees on both sides, including William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Say and Sele, and the lord lieutenant of the royalist forces, Patrick Ruthven, 1st earl of Forth, with whom Walker and the parliamentarian governor, Saye’s son Nathaniel Fiennes I*, negotiated with menaces relating to their respective prisoners.48N. Fiennes, A Relation Made in the House of Commons (1643), 13-15 (E.64.12); Bodl. Nalson XII, f. 102; Clarendon 22, ff. 24, 43, 97; Two State Martyrs, 16-17.

When Bristol fell to the royalists in the summer of 1643 Walker avoided capture. On 1 August Thomas Knyvett noted that ‘our friend Clement Walker made an escape and is here in town’.49Knyvett Lettrs. 123. On 25 September, however, his arrest was ordered by the House of Lords, for having published a book in which he questioned the honour of Viscount Saye and challenged Nathaniel Fiennes’ account of the fall of Bristol.50LJ vi. 232b; C. Walker, An Answer to Col. Nathaniel Fiennes (1643, E.67.36). It was reported on 2 October that Walker had described Saye as a ‘base beggarly lord’ and Nathaniel as a coward, boasting that ‘he would maintain it with his blood, and he would bastinado them, if he could find them’. Walker confessed to having said that Saye had prosecuted him out of malice, and to having accused Fiennes of cowardice, and he was ordered to declare publicly in print ‘that he did not mean to reflect upon’ Saye, ‘and that he is sorry that there is any expression in his book which may reflect upon the Lord Saye’. Walker was also fined £100, ordered to pay £500 to Saye and to make a submission at the bar of the Lords, and imprisoned in the Fleet.51LJ vi. 240b-241a; HMC 5th Rep. 108; PA, Main pprs. 2 Oct. 1643, 21 Sept. 1647.

When he was called before the Lords on 7 October to hear the judgment against him, however, Walker professed that as a commoner he could not submit to the Lords without a hearing, and as a consequence he was committed to the Tower.52LJ vi. 247a-b. On 12 October Sir Henry Cholmley* delivered a petition from Walker to the Commons, and Samuel Browne* lent his support, complaining about Saye being a judge in his own cause, and suggesting that

such a heavy sentence thus laid upon a commoner would give the world cause to say that the Parliament had put down the exorbitant power of the council table and of the star chamber and had given way to a third place to lay heavier burdens upon the subject than either of the other two.53CJ iii. 274b; Add. 31116, pp. 165-6.

The matter was referred to a committee of lawyers, and within days Walker secured a promise of release from prison, in order to participate in the legal proceedings against Nathaniel Fiennes. On 17 October, the Lords granted Walker bail to attend the council of war, to which he had been summoned.54LJ vi. 260a. Nevertheless, he faced further obstructions, and with William Prynne* petitioned the Commons on 18 October seeking a delay in the proceedings against Fiennes because they had not had time to prepare their case.55CJ iii. 280b; Add. 31116, p. 169. A petition on 20 October to the parliamentarian commander, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, indicated that Walker was still in the Tower, despite having offered security for his temporary release.56HMC 5th Rep. 110; PA, Main pprs. 20 Oct. 1643. A further petition on 26 October reveals that the lieutenant of the Tower (Isaac Penington*) had obstructed the release of Walker, who complained that his poor treatment was a deliberate ploy ‘to disable him to prosecute the said business’.57HMC 5th Rep. 111; PA, Main pprs. 6 Oct. 1643, 28 Oct. 1643; LJ vi. 282a. The Lords ordered Penington to take security from Walker, but it took at least one further petition to secure his release.58CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 493; HMC 5th Rep. 112; PA, Main pprs. 7 Oct. 1643; LJ vi. 273b, 278b.

On 15 November Edward Bayntun* delivered to the Commons the petition of Walker and Prynne with the articles of impeachment against Fiennes, evidently in the hope of securing a trial before Parliament, although the House censured the accusations as being ‘malicious’, and declared the petition to be ‘full of scandal both against the lord general and Mr Fiennes’. Sir Simonds D’Ewes* blamed Walker and Prynne

for bringing in so scandalous an impeachment against a Member of the House without direction of the House, it being alleged that by this example all the Members of the House might be impeached one after another by any that should be maliciously disposed against them’.59CJ iii. 311a-b; Harl. 165, f. 209; Add. 31116, p. 183.

It having been resolved that the trial was to take place before a council of war, on 25 November Walker and Prynne were granted access to official records.60Add. 18779, f. 14v. Walker proceeded to take examinations of officers who had been at Bristol, and between 14 and 23 December participated in what proved a successful prosecution of Fiennes.61Weekly Account no. 14 (29 Nov.-6 Dec. 1643), 4-5 (E.77.31); State Trials, iv. 185-316. Later Walker helped to produce an account of the trial for the press which ostensibly reveals his ruthlessness (Aug. 1644).62C. Walker and W. Prynne, A True and Full Relation (1644, E.255.1). Once the trial had ended, Walker faced the prospect of return to prison, but he remained at liberty once the Lords approved his petition of 3 January 1644, in which he explained that articles of impeachment were still pending against Sergeant-major Hercules Langrishe, and there is no evidence that he was ever re-committed to the Tower.63PA, Main pprs. 3 Jan. 1644; LJ vi. 362b; ‘Hercules Langrishe’, Oxford DNB. He may have been targeted by his enemies in other ways, however. In February 1645 Walker was called before the Committee of Accounts* in his capacity as receiver of the bishop of Salisbury’s tenths, and was forced to admit that some of his accounts had been lost at Bristol, and to pay around £700.64SP28/252i, ff. 125,131; SP28/253B, part II, Bk. of Depositions, p. 25.

Walker was returned to Parliament in February 1646 for the Somerset borough of Wells, some six or seven miles from his seat at Charterhouse. He was not noticed in the House before 24 June 1646, when he subscribed the Solemn League and Covenant.65Supra, ‘Wells’; CJ iv. 586a. He was added to the committee to consider the petition and papers of John Lilburne (3 July), but made little immediate impression on the proceedings of the House, although this may have been caused by his involvement in the prosecution of Sir John Stawell*.66CJ iv. 601b; Som. RO, DD/HI/466, unfol. As factional tensions increased within Parliament during the spring of 1647, however, Walker had a higher profile. His appointment to a committee regarding the sale of bishops’ lands probably reflected personal expertise and interest (27 Feb.), but he was also involved in intensely political issues.67CJ v. 99b. He was named to the committee to consider the proceedings relating to Major Alexander Tulidah, arrested for circulating radical petitions within the army (26 Mar.), and to a committee relating to plans to raise troops for Ireland (27 Mar.).68CJ v. 125b, 127b. Furthermore, he was nominated to the committee to consider the London militia ordinance, following the Presbyterians’ defeat of a move to refer the matter to a committee of the whole House (2 Apr.).69CJ v. 132b. Such appointments, together with his membership of the committee considering the ordinance for removal of disbanded officers and reformados from London in early July, indicate that Walker’s sympathies lay with the Presbyterians in the Commons.70CJ v. 229a, 237b.

However, Walker probably considered himself to have been an unaligned and free-thinking Member, to judge from his comments in The Mystery of the Two Juntos, published on 24 June 1647 and subtitled ‘the serpent in the bosom unfolded’. Walker addressed his preface to the ‘unbiased’ reader, and attacked the power of the ‘grandees’, the emergence of religious schism, and the way in which English laws had been turned into ‘arbitrary, emergent and upstart orders and ordinances of Parliament’; ‘we are now governed jure vago et incerto [by unstable and uncertain law]’, with liberties and properties threatened. Walker called the Self-Denying Ordinance

a mere delusory order, for who can believe that such self-seeking men, as all men know them to be, will execute these offices for nothing, and pay into the use of the state their profits. Besides, it is apparent how subservient to these grandees, their own creatures, the committee of accounts are.71C. Walker, Mysterie of the Two Juntos (1647), sigs. A2-2v (E.393.29).

He then laid out his most important criticisms of the parliamentary and political system of the Long Parliament, asserting that ‘this war occasioned extraordinary taxes and levies of money, such as were never heard of by our ancestors’, and adding that they were ‘irritamenta malorum [provocations of evil], the nurse of our corruptions’.72Walker, Mysterie, 1. In addition to the vast sums raised, the Long Parliament had produced a small core of grandees who succumbed to the ‘human frailty’ of speaking and leading in the Houses, and who began to ‘interweave their particular interests and ambitions with the public, and lastly, to prefer them before the public’, and who divided into two factions.73Walker, Mysterie, 1-2. These factions (he asserted) were followed by the majority of the Members, although the latter did so ‘with more seriousness than their leaders, as not perceiving anything of design therein’, and ‘studied the upholding of their parties with earnestness, whilst the grandees of each party [connived] in private close together for their own advancement, serving one anothers’ turns’.74Walker, Mysterie, 2. Meanwhile, the grandees had come to monopolise profits, preferment and power, and had replaced traditional county government with the tyranny of county committees. They had devised new parliamentary methods by which to influence the substance and timing of political measures and initiatives, including secretive committees, and money committees which controlled enormous revenues without the proper accounting procedures previously exercised by the exchequer, about which Walker knew so much.75Walker, Mysterie, 2, 4-16. Walker probably placed himself among the ‘honest middlemen of the House (whose consciences will not let them join in any faction to rend the commonwealth in sunder)’, whom he sought to rally to ‘become moderators and umpires between both parties’.76Walker, Mysterie, 4, 17.

Although Walker’s hostility to the parliamentarian grandees may have been exacerbated by their hijacking of traditional channels of financial management in which he was personally interested, he cannot be accused of being driven entirely by a selfish agenda. He did not suffer financially under the parliamentarian system, for on 23 July 1647 an order was issued to pay him as chief usher of the exchequer for the period since 1643.77SC6/Chas. 1/1665 m. 20d.; SC6/Chas. 1/1666 m. 16d. On the other hand, notwithstanding his profession of non-alignment, it was later claimed that Walker played a conspicuous part in causing the Presbyterian-led riots in and around Westminster on 26 July. During the investigation launched in September, Miles Corbett* alleged that

he had a witness (but named him not, because they were but preparatory examinations) who deposed, that an elderly gentleman of low stature, in a grey suit, with a little stick in his hand, came forth of the House into the lobby when the tumult was at the Parliament door, and whispered some of the apprentices in the ear, and encouraged them (supposed to be Mr Walker).

Walker denied having spoken to anyone in the lobby, but Corbett moved that Walker should be subject to an identity parade, arguing that he was the man seen there, ‘for that the deponent said, the gentleman was a lean meagre man’. In response, Walker likened Corbett’s committee for investigating the July riots to the court of star chamber, and asserted that he had served Parliament

faithfully from the beginning and have taken as much pains, and run as many hazards as most men in your service, wherein I have lost my health and above £7,000 of my estate, without one penny compensation.

Furthermore, he had ‘contented myself to serve my country gratis, and with some little honour I had gotten thereby, whereof you have now robbed me, by a roving accusation shot at random at me’.78C. Walker, Hist. of Independency (1648), 55-57 (E.473.19-21); Bodl. Clarendon 30, f. 120.

Whatever the truth of Corbett’s claims regarding his role in the forcing of the Houses, it is clear that Walker remained in the Commons during the absence of the Independent Members. On 30 July he was among MPs ordered to prepare a letter to Sir Thomas Fairfax* in an attempt to prevent the army approaching London, and on 1 August he was entrusted with drafting a declaration justifying the decision to elect a new Speaker and explaining the ‘designs and carriages’ of the army towards Parliament and the city; he reported it to the House on the 3rd.79CJ v. 259b, 263a, 267b. It may have been this work which was later seized and burnt, according to the diarist John Harington*.80Harington’s Diary, 58. Furthermore, Walker became a great deal less conspicuous at Westminster after the army’s march on London in early August and the ending of the Presbyterian coup. Although he was named to the committee appointed to consider the ordinance against all measures taken during the absence of the Speaker and the Independent MPs (18 Aug), he may have kept away from Westminster for much of the remainder of the year.81CJ v. 278a. He was absent at the call of the House on 9 October, although the fine imposed upon him was subsequently rescinded, and on 3 November his absence was excused, although not without opposition from Charles Cecil*, Viscount Cranborne, and James Fiennes*.82CJ v. 330a, 337a, 348b. It is not clear when Walker returned to the Commons, but on 15 January 1648 he was named to a committee for assessments.83CJ v. 434a. During this period there appeared An Eye-Salve for the Armie, another tract criticising parliamentary financial management, both at Westminster and in the localities; Walker may have been responsible.84An Eye-Salve for the Armie (1647, E.407.16).

Walker returned to prominence in the House during the second civil war. In particular, he played a part in important issues relating to the army and the City of London. On 27 April he helped deliver information about an alleged plan for the army to disarm the city and force it to contribute money.85CJ v. 546a. Amid ongoing fears for the security of London in mid-May, and in what represented an attempt by the crypto-royalist faction to block a measure supported by the Derby House junto Walker was also a teller against the insertion of a clause into the London militia bill naming Philip Skippon* as its commander (16 May).86CJ v. 561b On the following day Walker was appointed to the committee to investigate the disorders around Westminster which accompanied the presentation of the Surrey petition for accommodation with the king.87CJ v. 562b.

In late May 1648 Walker published the first part of his History of Independency, another attack upon ‘the grandees, the junto-men, the hocus pocusses, the state-mountebanks, with their zanies and jack-puddings, committee men, sequestrators, treasurers and agitators’, and upon the grandees of the Derby House committee and army, as well as a statement of opposition to the declaration of no further addresses to the king, and of support for the Surrey petition.88C. Walker, Hist. of Independency (1648), sigs. A2-4 (E.445.1). In the main body of the text, Walker recounted the rise of the Independents from their undermining of the authority of the earls of Essex and Manchester through to the creation of the New Model Army and their increasing dominance of Parliament, not least by purging Presbyterians. He detailed their attempts to erode the City’s capacity for self-government, over issues such as the militia, and the Independents’ intimidatory and underhand parliamentary tactics, stating explicitly that they were more tyrannous than the king had been. He recounted his own treatment at the hands of Corbett’s committee the previous year, and defended his reputation, denying again the accusations then levelled against him. ‘Mr Walker’, he proclaimed disingenuously

hath always been opposite to all parties and factions, both Presbyterian and Independent, upon whom he looks as the common disturbers both of church and commonwealth, and enemies of peace. Nor could he ever be persuaded to be at any of their juntos or secret meetings, and therefore it is not probable he should suddenly and in the open view of the House go forth and engage with a company of silly unarmed apprentice boys.89Walker, Hist. of Independency, 25-32, at 30.

Walker also reported in detail the debates on the king’s answer and the declaration of No Further Addresses, explained the latter’s implications for Charles, and outlined how in January 1648 the Independents had modified the membership of the Committee of Both Kingdoms.90Walker, Hist. of Independency, 42-4, 46-7. He concluded that the grandees had subverted the fundamental government and ‘laid the axe to the very root of monarchy and Parliaments’, and that they had

cast all the mysteries and secrets of government, both by kings and Parliaments, before the vulgar… and have taught both the soldiery and people to look so far into them, as to ravel back all governments to the first principles of nature … they have made the people thereby so curious and so arrogant that they will never find humility enough to submit to a civil rule.91Walker, Hist. of Independency, 64.

At the same time, the ‘reverend mysteries’, pulpits, and holy sacraments of the church had been subverted ‘by the clouted shoe; the basest and lowest of the people making themselves priests’, and by the neglect of the Lord’s Supper.92Walker, Hist. of Independency, 65. Furthermore, the grandees governed by power of arms and through control of money. Walker reasserted his claim that the ‘vulgar Independents’ were nothing more than the ‘props and properties to the grandees’, who ruled Parliament through the Derby House Committee and by continually ‘winnowing’ Parliament in order to remove opponents. Parliament was in wardship to the army and thus no ‘free’ Parliament, while the Committee for Revenue contained the greatest zealots against the king.93Walker, Hist. of Independency, 67-70. Alongside this Walker may also have published on 29 May An Eye-Salve for the City of London, another endorsement of the Surrey petition, and a call to ‘join speedily with the kingdom for the restoring of His Majesty’.94An Eye-Salve for the City of London (1648), 3 (E.445.7).

Walker’s writings shed light upon his parliamentary career during the late spring of 1648, when he was involved in a number of clashes with leading Independents. On 30 May he was a teller against the nomination to the Derby House Committee of Sir John Danvers*, a future regicide.95CJ v. 579a. In early June he stood alongside Thomas Gewen* in a vigorous debate with Thomas Scot I* and John Gurdon* in response to a petition regarding imprisoned London aldermen and the impeached Members of Parliament.96Walker, Hist. of Independency (2nd ed.), 98-9. On 17 June, furthermore, Walker objected to Independent plans to bury, rather than investigate, information of a plot to kill the king. When Robert Scawen* sought to move onto other business, Walker argued for a full enquiry, and was supported by Sir Simonds D’Ewes*, Henry Hungerford* and Edward Stephens*, provoking in turn speeches by Independents like Thomas Scot I and Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire*.97Walker, Hist. of Independency (2nd ed.), 104-10. During the second half of 1648 Walker was named to a handful of committees on issues such as the abolition of deans and chapters (16 June ), and the ordinance for raising horse by the London militia committee (22 Aug.), as well as to minor committees relating to the financial claims of Henry Peck* and reparations for John Bastwick, and the case of those imprisoned on charges of having forged an act of Parliament.98CJ v. 602, 678a; vi. 10, 60a, 87a. On 4 November Walker was named to the committee to attend the Common Council regarding provision of guards for the palace of Westminster, and on the 25th to a committee to consider which castles were to be maintained.99CJ vi. 69b, 87a. However, during this period he probably devoted most of his attention to the production of tracts and pamphlets, most notably an updated edition of The History of Independency, which appeared on 14 September.100Walker, Hist. of Independency (2nd ed.).

Walker’s parliamentary record, printing activity, and ability to make enemies, together with his having spoken in favour of accepting the king’s concessions at Newport on 4 December, ensured that he was imprisoned at Pride’s Purge.101Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 36-7 (5-12 Dec. 1648), sig. Ccc3 (E.476.2); Parliament under the Power of the Sword (1648, 669.f.13.52). On 25 December he was linked with William Prynne, Edward Stephens and Thomas Gewen among the prisoners who were considered to be the ‘assertors’ who would ‘stand out to the utmost’.102Bodl. Clarendon 34, f. 17; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 39 (19-26 Dec. 1648), Sig. Eee4 (E.477.30). In mid-January 1649 Walker and Prynne published a broadside protestation about their treatment and the behaviour of the army, and Walker was evidently still incarcerated on 2 May, when he presented a petition on behalf of himself and others.103C. Walker and W. Prynne, A Declaration and Protestation (1649, 669.f.13.72); CJ vi. 200a. But, as is evident, imprisonment did not prevent Walker’s literary and polemical activities. He may have been responsible for Independency Stript and Whipt and for Rebellion Stript and Whipt, which appeared respectively on 12 and 16 December 1648.104Independency Stript and Whipt (1648, E.476.11); Rebellion Stript and Whipt (1648, E.476.28). He certainly penned Six Serious Quaeries Concerning the King’s Trial at the New High Court of Justice, which appeared on 9 February 1649.105[C. Walker], Six Serious Quaeries Concerning the King’s Trial (1649, 669.f.13.85). More important was a further update of his history of Independency, published as Anarchia Anglicana that August.106[C. Walker], Anarchia Anglicana (1649, E.570.1-4) Furthermore, probably in late October or early November, he published an account of John Lilburne’s trial and acquittal, in which he offered a verbatim account of the proceedings, with marginal annotations in support of the defendant.107The Triall of Lieut. Collonell John Lilburne (1649, E.584.9).

On 24 October the council of state ordered Walker’s arrest and the seizure of his papers, which were to be perused and reported upon by the Latin secretary, John Milton.108CJ vi. 312a; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 550. His enemies may have orchestrated the appearance in 1650 of George Wither’s Respublica Anglicana, and in December 1651 the council sought to prevent the reprinting of Walker’s history.109G. Wither, Respublica Anglicana (1650, E.780.25); CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 80. On 13 November 1649 the Commons ordered the attorney general to instigate proceedings against Walker for high treason, although he would die before any trial could be held.110CJ vi. 322a. In the spring of 1650 Walker published a broadside petition against the sequestration of his office by the Committee for Revenue, and its grant to, and forcible seizure by, Humphrey Edwardes* (1 Feb. 1650), and in order to justify the attempt by Walker’s son to regain control. Walker accused Edwardes of having been returned to Parliament on the basis of an ‘undue election’, and of being a ‘half-faced cavalier’ who was ‘greedy of an office’. He not only protested his superior parliamentarian credentials – by virtue of having lost £10,000 to the king and having been owed £3,000 – but also alleged that the existence of a long-standing deputy usher meant that his own imprisonment did not preclude him from executing his duties. Indeed, his hereditary ownership of the ‘freehold’ to the ushership made it illegal for the committee to sequester him, especially without parliamentary ratification.111The Case Between Clement Walker and Humphrey Edwards (1650, 669.f.15.38). In another broadside, published in June 1650, Walker also justified his position on the grounds that the title to the office had formed part of his wife’s jointure.112The Case of Mrs Mary Walker (1650, 669.f.15.39).

Walker lived long enough to publish in 1651 The High Court of Justice, styled the third part of his History of Independency, as well as to write a continuation of his history down to the battle of Worcester, although the latter was subsequently lost.113[C. Walker], The High Court of Justice (1651, E.802.3); Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 273. He died sometime between writing his will on 6 October 1651 and it being proved on 17 December, and he was buried at All Hallows Barking by the Tower.114PROB11/219/740. In the years which followed his family sought to recover money owing to Walker from his role as usher of the exchequer, while in 1656-7 the Commons sought to indemnify him and other former parliamentarians in relation to their activity in Bristol during the civil war.115SP18/38, f. 141v; CJ vii. 476b, 499a. The ushership of the exchequer passed to Walker’s widow, Mary, who surrendered it to her son, John Walker, in June 1662. The latter launched a successful legal challenge to recover the positions when they were seized in 1667 by his elder half-brother, William Walker, and retained the position until his death in 1703. The office remained in the hands of his descendents until 1852.116E159/501 Trin. rec. 52; Exchequer Officeholders, 147-9; Som. RO, DD/WHb/144, 146-8; DD/GB/148/50, p. 57. The three parts of Walker’s History of Independency were reprinted in 1661, with an additional section dealing with the period up to the Restoration written by T.M.117C. Walker, The Compleat Hist. of Independency (1661, E.1052.1-4). No other member of his family sat in Parliament.