VACHELL, Tanfield (1602-58), of Reading, Berks.

The Vachells were a prominent, well-established Reading family who had been associated with the town since the thirteenth century.17Vis. Berks. i. 12, 56, 136; Crawfurd, ‘Vachell of Coley’, 4; Vachell, ‘Vachells of Coley’, 83. By the fourteenth century they had acquired the manor of Coley to the south west of the town.18VCH Berks. iii. 364. Over the centuries several family members had sat in Parliament, including this MP’s great-grandfather, Thomas Vachell†, who had represented Reading in at least five Parliaments between 1529 and his death in 1553. In the late sixteenth century the family’s influence had been weakened by the fact that Thomas’s eldest son, Thomas†, Member for Reading in the 1553 Parliament, remained a Roman Catholic recusant throughout Elizabeth I’s reign, but on his death in 1610 the family estates passed to his Protestant nephew, Sir Thomas Vachell. Although Sir Thomas married three times, he produced no surviving children (two sons predeceased him), so by the 1630s it was clear that his lands would go to other members of the family.19VCH Berks. iii. 364. His nephew, the future MP, was in effect adopted as his heir.

Tanfield Vachell was the eldest son of Sir Thomas’s Catholic youngest brother, John Vachell. He had presumably been named after one of the Tanfield in-laws of his other uncle, Francis Vachell.20Vis. Berks. i. 136. His mother, Maria Vincent, was a Protestant and it was her faith that Vachell embraced.21Ashmole, Antiquities, ii. 436. As result, he had been able to attend Oxford University.22Al. Ox. It was his marriage in 1633 that seems to have persuaded his uncle to adopt him as his heir, entailing on him the family estates.23Crawfurd, ‘Vachell of Coley’, 35-6; Vachell, ‘Vachells of Coley’, 84-5. Tanfield’s father was, at this date, still alive.24Ashmole, Antiquities, ii. 436-7. However, when Sir Thomas’s cousin, Thomas Vachell, son of his uncle Francis, also married, Sir Thomas seems to have revised the settlement in order to divide the inheritance between them. Tanfield was probably allocated the Coley lands, with Thomas Vachell being assigned the lands at Upton. On his death in 1638, Sir Thomas’s will simply confirmed these existing arrangements.25Crawfurd, ‘Vachell of Coley’, 36-9. Not that Tanfield Vachell inherited all the Coley lands immediately. About two-thirds of the estate, including the house, were left to Sir Thomas’s third wife, Letitia Knollys, daughter of Sir Francis Knollys I*, as her jointure lands.26Reading Recs. iii. 480-1. Tanfield never inherited them as Lady Vachell would outlive him. She went on to marry John Hampden*.

Incomplete though this inheritance was, Tanfield Vachell was now one of the leading landowners in Reading. On that basis, he stood in October 1640 as one of the five candidates in the parliamentary election for that constituency. He lost out however to the even more powerful interest of the Knollys family, being defeated by Sir Francis Knollys I and his son, Sir Francis Knollys II*.27Reading Recs. iii. 507. His appointment as the sheriff of Berkshire in 1641 could be taken as evidence confirming his position among the leading gentry of the county.28List of Sheriffs, 6; Reading Recs. iv. 42. But it also placed him in an exposed political position when civil war between the king and Parliament broke out the following year. His loyalties were soon tested. As sheriff, he could hardly be omitted from the pro-parliamentarian standing committee for Berkshire created in the late summer of 1642 and he seems to have been only too willing to serve.29LJ v. 311a. His next test came in the aftermath of Edgehill. After the king had arrived at Oxford on 29 October, Daniel O’Neill†, as Prince Rupert’s serjeant-major, ordered Vachell to raise the Berkshire trained bands to provide an escort for the king through the county. Vachell refused.30England’s Memorable Accidents (31 Oct.-7 Nov. 1642), 68 (E.242.6). Days later the royalist army had occupied Reading. Even although his estates were now in enemy hands, Vachell remained firmly committed to the parliamentarian cause and Parliament continued to include him on all the local commissions throughout the period when Reading was regularly changing hands between the two armies.31A. and O.; LJ vi. 29a, 165b. When in May 1644 Parliament and its army gained a permanent hold over the town, Vachell was an obvious choice to be appointed to the commission to secure control of the county.32LJ vi. 605b; A. and O. In that capacity, he was one of the commissioners who in July 1644 ordered the Reading corporation to levy a rate on the inhabitants to pay for repairing and fortifying Caversham Bridge, the important crossing point over the Thames on the outskirts of the town.33Reading Recs. iv. 117.

Vachell’s second attempt to get elected as the MP for Reading in the Long Parliament was more successful than the first. But his eventual victory in the 1645 Reading by-election was gained only after much in-fighting. Vachell was already well-known to the Reading corporation, quite apart from being one of the town’s leading residents and someone who was already a substantial county figure. One of Sir Thomas Vachell’s main legacies had been to found a set of almshouses in the town. Since Sir Thomas’s death, the corporation had taken care to consult with Tanfield Vachell over any appointments to places in those almshouses.34Reading Recs. iv. 150, 154, 199. Moreover, in June 1645 Vachell and Daniel Blagrave* had been asked by the corporation to adjudicate in a dispute over some money owed to the town.35Reading Recs. iv. 151. Vachell probably stood in the 1645 election knowing that he had the support of many of the senior members of the corporation. But he was not unopposed. When the election was held on 13 October 1645, William Ball* stood against him. On the day Vachell was declared the winner.36Reading Recs. iv. 168. But, after Ball appealed against it, this result was overturned by the Commons on 17 November. A new election was called.37CJ iv. 346b. Vachell again defeated Ball in the poll on 1 December, and by a substantial margin. Ball’s supporters, however, included the mayor, George Woldridge, who made it clear that his return would nevertheless name Ball as the victor. The rest of the corporation responded by preparing a petition to Parliament supporting Vachell.38Reading Recs. iv. 170-5. Ball abandoned this second attempt to overturn Vachell’s election and the latter claimed his seat at Westminster. He took the Covenant as a new MP on 31 December.39CJ iv. 393a.

While the royalist high command remained based in Oxford, Reading retained its considerable military significance for Parliament. With that in mind, Vachell and Ball (since been elected at Abingdon) were ordered by the Commons in mid-February 1646 to ensure that supplies of gunpowder and match were sent to the garrison there.40CJ iv. 445b. Military necessities evidently outweighed any hard feelings between the two men. Several weeks later Vachell was given permission to go into the country.41CJ iv. 499b. But the surrender of Oxford in July 1646 seemed to some to remove much of the need for a military presence in Reading. By October the corporation was writing to Vachell to ask that he press for the town to be relieved of their requirement to provide free quarter for soldiers, arguing that the risk of plague was too great.42Reading Recs. iv. 211. The next month the Reading corporation turned to Vachell for assistance in their dispute with a local resident, Thomas Harrison. Harrison had lent £600 to the king, but had bound the Reading corporation for the repayment and, now that the king was in no position to honour the debt, Harrison was suing them. After consulting with Vachell, the corporation prepared a petition, which was presented to the Commons, presumably by Vachell, on 13 January 1647.43Reading Recs. iv. 227; CJ v. 51b. This resulted in the Commons referring the matter to the Committee for Compounding.44CJ v. 64b. The corporation then sent thanks to Vachell and to Ball.45Reading Recs. iv. 235.

While Vachell was proving himself to be a conscientious constituency MP, his known parliamentary activities were otherwise rather patchy. He was named to only a handful of Commons’ committees, although those included the Committee for Privileges (16 Dec. 1646) and the committee on the bill to award estates to Sir Thomas Fairfax* (11 May 1647).46CJ v. 14b, 52a, 167a. According to Sir Philip Percivalle*, Vachell was one of the MPs who took refuge with the army, although he did not sign those MPs’ declaration of 4 August.47HMC Egmont, i. 440; LJ ix. 385b. He is the person most likely to have suggested the vicar of St Mary’s, Reading, Christopher Fowler, as a suitable preacher for the fast day on 25 August; he and Ball were later asked to convey thanks.48CJ v. 274a, 283b. Vachell was absent when the House was called on 9 October 1647.49CJ v. 329b. A couple of further committee appointments in early 1648 tend to imply that he was still attending at least occasionally.50CJ v. 417a, 486a. Whether he was the Mr Vachell involved in a debt case considered by the Commons in March 1648 is less clear.51CJ v. 494b. In May 1648 he was included on the committee appointed to settle the militia.52CJ v. 551a.

The death of the other Reading MP, Sir Francis Knollys I, occasioned another Reading by-election in June 1648, which threatened to reopen the arguments about the franchise which had arisen during Vachell’s election. In advance of this latest poll he was therefore asked by the corporation to find out whether the Commons intended to act on their petition requesting guidance on the issue.53Reading Recs. iv. 296. If Vachell did seek this clarification, this seems not to have elicited a response before the election took place on 19 June. He and Sir Francis Pile* were the two Berkshire MPs asked in September 1648 to sign the letters to be sent to the county to encourage the assessment collection there.54CJ vi. 30a. On 18 October he was granted further leave of absence, and thus may not have been at Westminster when the House was purged in early December 1648.55CJ v. 55a.

Pride’s Purge ended Vachell’s parliamentary career. Although he was not among those MPs secluded, he seems never to have accepted the regicide and thereafter withdrew from public life. With Vachell no longer representing its interests at Westminster, the Reading corporation now began to pursue him for rent arrears he owed. In 1651, after Vachell had asked them to bear in mind ‘his sufferings in these troublesome times’, the corporation finally agreed to write off some of the debt.56Reading Recs. iv. 322, 342, 386-7, 392, 397, 403. His only other known involvement in the town’s civic affairs in the 1650s was to refuse the terms offered by the corporation for the renewal of a lease on land he held from them.57Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/6, f. 40v; R/AC 1/1/7, f. 63v.

In any case, Vachell had other interests with which to occupy his time. His will referred to

my several paintings and books of prints, my collection of medals in gold, silver and brass, all my rare turnings of ivory and guaiacum with my press of books and my chest of drawers with the perspective in it.58PROB11/324/204.

Several decades later the will of his distant relative and heir, Thomas Vachell, also mentioned these ‘pictures and curiosities’.59PROB11/373/213. The paintings owned by the MP are said to have included a family portrait commissioned from Peter Lely, although this remains untraced. Other paintings may have once belonged to Charles I, including Van Dyck’s portrait of George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, and Lord Francis Villiers.60HMC 7th Rep. 89. Vachell’s friends from this period seem to have included Elias Ashmole. The pair had probably first met in 1647 and by the 1650s Vachell was the recipient of one of the presentation copies of Ashmole’s Fasciculus Chemicus (1650), while Ashmole evidently collected plants from Vachell’s garden at Reading.61Elias Ashmole, ed. C.H. Josten (Oxford, 1966), ii. 447, 479n, 521.

Neither of Vachell’s marriages produced children. In his will drawn up in March 1653 he named Thomas Vachell, the other beneficiary of Sir Thomas’s inheritance, as his heir. He and Vachell’s former brother-in-law, Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire*, were named as the executors. But Thomas Vachell died shortly before Vachell himself in 1658. Thomas’s son, also Thomas, Tanfield Vachell’s second cousin, therefore became the new heir. Vachell had time to revise his will to appoint his father-in-law, William Leman*, as the other executor.62PROB11/324/204; Crawfurd, ‘Vachell of Coley’, 66-7. In accordance with his instructions, Vachell was buried in St Mary’s, Reading, on 1 June 1658 close to the grave of Sir Thomas Vachell.63Reg. of the Par. of St Mary, Reading, ii. 121. His funeral cost £403.64Vachell, ‘Vachells of Coley’, 86. Vachell’s widow subsequently disputed his will, challenging the right of Thomas Vachell junior to inherit, but the will was upheld and was finally proved in 1667.65PROB11/324/204. A ruling in chancery two years later established that the provision in the will for his widow to retain his collection of curiosities during her lifetime did not apply.66Cases Argued and Decreed in the High Court of Chancery (1697), 129-31. Thomas junior had meanwhile married one of the daughters of William Tayleur alias Domville*. Their son, Tanfield Vachell†, sat for Reading in 1701.67HP Commons 1690-1715.