TAYLEUR alias DOMVILLE, William (c.1612-aft. 1676), of New Windsor, Berks.

The two William Tayleurs, father and son, were both controversial surveyors of Windsor Castle and both stood for the local constituency in 1640. William senior was only ever the acting surveyor, performing the duties of maintaining the fabric of the castle on behalf of the nominal surveyor, Sir John Trevor†, from about 1619.11Colvin, Hist. of the King’s Works, iii. 329. He held that office in conjunction with a number of other positions in and around the castle, including those of clerk and receiver of the works, keeper of the storeyard and steward of the honour of Windsor.12W.H. St John Hope, Windsor Castle (1913), i. 295. Probably originally from Essex, he settled in Windsor to enable him to pursue those duties.13Vis. Berks. ii. 291. There was presumably a kinship link with the future MPs Silvanus and Silas Taylor, as they too claimed to be ‘alias Domville’.14Oxford DNB.

By 1629 the conduct of Tayleur senior as surveyor had become the subject of official investigation. The commission of inquiry into the abuses at Windsor Castle, headed by the surveyor of the king’s works, Inigo Jones†, was probably specifically directed against him. Concerns about his use of the money passing through his hands led to his dismissal as the clerk and receiver of the works and his replacement by Sir Robert Bennett†.15St John Hope, Windsor Castle, i. 295-8; Colvin, Hist. of the King’s Works, iii. 329-30; Windsor Castle ed. S. Brindle (2018), 191-2; CSP Dom. Add. 1629-49, p. 413. In September 1638 the privy council ordered that he appear before them for non-payment of Ship Money, a move that quickly persuaded him to pay up.16CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 2, 9. It was this William Tayleur who then stood with Cornelius Holland* in the New Windsor election in October 1640. They did so with the support of the inhabitants at large, whereas their opponents, Sir Thomas Rowe* and Thomas Waller, were backed by the corporation. In adjudicating on the resulting double return, the Commons found in favour of the inhabitants. But by then Tayleur was dead. His funeral had taken place at Windsor on 27 October.17New Windsor par. reg.; CJ ii. 47a-b.

It was his eldest son, William junior, who stood in his place in the ensuing by-election and was returned. He was still a relatively young man, probably only in his late twenties, and had only recently called to the bar at the Middle Temple.18Vis. Berks. ii. 292; MTR ii. 895. When William junior took his seat in Parliament, he took the precaution of getting Henry Marten* to persuade the Commons to order that the Middle Temple allow him to take the oaths of supremacy and allegiance and that he should be dispensed from keeping the inn’s vacations. It fell to Sir Simonds D’Ewes* to query whether discussing this was really the best use of the Commons’ time.19CJ ii. 82b; Procs. LP ii. 416, 421. Even so, Tayleur was subsequently fined, while still an MP, for failing to attend the Middle Temple readings.20MTR ii. 906. On 7 May 1641 he also took the Protestation.21CJ ii. 137b.

But his youth and inexperience soon counted against him. It may not have been a coincidence that he had obtained a leave of absence on 15 April, when he needed to go into the country because ‘possession of some part of his estate had been taken from him’, but also when the Commons was preparing the bill of attainder against the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†).22CJ ii. 121b; Procs. LP iii. 569, 573. He was one of the ‘Straffordians’ who had voted against that bill.23Verney, Notes, 58; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 248; Procs. LP iv. 42, 51. Then on 27 May the Commons heard evidence that he had said that passing an attainder against Strafford would be ‘to commit murder with the sword of justice’. Several members of the Windsor corporation, including Waller, testified to confirm the claim. The Commons’ judgment against him was harsh. Tayleur was expelled from the Commons, barred from ever becoming an MP again, sent to the Tower and required to do public penance for his offence at the bar of the Commons and in Windsor. Marten, who had helped him just three months before, spoke in favour of expulsion and Sir Henry Mildmay* suggested imprisonment in the Tower.24CJ ii. 158b-159a; Procs. LP iv. 605, 610-13. Tayleur’s parliamentary career was thus brought to an abrupt end. However, this was not the last time he played a central role in its proceedings.

Tayleur’s imprisonment in the Tower ended on 11 June 1641 when the Commons decided to release him.25CJ ii. 172b, 173b; Procs. LP v. 78, 82, 110, 113. It doubtless helped that Mildmay had presented his petition requesting this, telling the House that Tayleur was ‘heartily sorry for his fault’. Either Mildmay himself or the Speaker, William Lenthall*, then added that, following the death of his father, Tayleur had ‘some five of his brothers and sisters left upon his hands and all like to be utterly undone by this unfortunate accident’.26Procs. LP v. 78. Thomas Fountaine* also spoke in his favour.27Procs. LP v. 113.

Evidence regarding Tayleur’s role in the civil war consists mostly in later comments of questionable accuracy. In 1660 he claimed that he had raised a troop of horse that had served under Sir Thomas Glemham†.28Eg. 2549, f. 38. By 1665 he was saying that he had been a royalist colonel of foot.29Vis. Berks. ii. 292. The following year, the Commons, which by then had political reasons for presenting him as a dedicated royalist, claimed that Tayleur had ‘served his late Majesty King Charles the First in his wars, and been a great sufferer for his loyalty to him’.30CJ viii. 666b. That claim was then disputed.31LJ xii. 77b. Moreover, Tayleur later asserted that his court appointments after the Restoration dated back to the 1640s and had been a reward: ‘the late king granted him several places there [at Windsor] usually held by the same person, for his losses and services in the wars’.32CSP Dom. 1667-8, p. 468. This is less likely and, in any case, with Windsor Castle in parliamentarian hands, the surveyorship was actually held during the 1640s by George Starkey senior, father of George Starkey*.33Colvin, Hist. of the King’s Works, iv. 330, 414. What is more certain is that Tayleur compounded for his royalism in June 1646, paying a fine set at £700.34CCC 1369. That year William Gawen petitioned the Committee for Sequestrations to be discharged from paying any fine on a house at Westminster which he had been leasing to Tayleur.35CCC 1088. It is most likely that Tayleur then spent the late 1640s and the 1650s practising as a barrister, although in 1657 he surrendered the chambers he had been occupying in Inner Temple Lane.36MTR iii. 1036, 1112. He complied with the restrictions on the movements of royalists under the major-generals, notifying the register office on three separate occasions in 1656 of his intention of travelling from London to Windsor.37Add. 19516, ff. 7, 16v, 44v; Add. 34013, f. 48v; Add. 34014, ff. 16, 26v, 45, 68. Otherwise his activities during these years remain obscure.

His career comes sharply back into focus after the Restoration. On 2 June 1660 Lady Monck, the wife of (Sir) George Monck*, wrote to the secretary of state, Sir Edward Nicholas†, recommending Tayleur for one of his father’s old jobs, that of steward of the Windsor honour, as one who had been ‘a great sufferer for loyalty’.38CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 35. Tayleur himself petitioned to be appointed as steward, receiver, surveyor and clerk of the castle. On 7 June the king issued orders to that effect.39Eg. 2549, f. 38. Within weeks Tayleur had been formally appointed as steward, as well as clerk to the governor and constable of the castle, John Mordaunt, 1st Viscount Mordaunt.40CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 72. At about the same time, he became surveyor and receiver of the Windsor works, thereby regaining all the offices his father had once held.41Colvin, Hist. of the King’s Works, v. 478; CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 348; CTB i. 396, 409, 492, 672; E351/3427.

However, this was not the end of his troubles. Tayleur and his family had taken up residence in the Chancellor’s Tower (now the Salisbury Tower) in the Lower Ward of the castle, but this was claimed as official lodgings by the chancellor of the order of the Garter and in February 1661 the king granted it to the deputy chancellor, Sir Richard Fanshawe†. Tayleur had to be forcibly evicted.42CJ viii. 666b, LJ xii. 77b-78a; P.J. Begent and H. Chesshyre, The Most Noble Order of the Garter 650 Years (1999), 113, 383n. Within weeks he was being held as a debtor in the town prison, and then briefly transferred to even more uncomfortable imprisonment within the castle. Tayleur later claimed that this was a dirty trick to wreck his chances in the forthcoming election for the Cavalier Parliament.43CJ viii. 666b. If so, it did not deter him. With Alexander Baker†, he stood for the New Windsor seat in early April. It may be that, with his court offices in jeopardy, he saw a seat in Parliament as a way of reinforcing his immunity from his creditors, but he was to be disappointed. Following a disputed return, the Commons found in favour of his opponents, Sir Richard Braham† and Thomas Higgons*.

Relations between Tayleur and Mordaunt worsened. Suspicions about Tayleur’s probity also grew. In May 1665 the king suspended Tayleur from his various court offices.44CSP Dom. 1664-5, pp. 362-3; Colvin, Hist. of the King’s Works, v. 119; CTB i. 672. Six months later Tayleur was instructed to vacate rooms he was occupying within the castle’s timber yard. Also noting complaints that Tayleur had refused to pay his share of the levy to fund Windsor’s pesthouse for victims of the plague, the king ordered that Tayleur was to be confined within the castle until further notice.45CSP Dom. 1665-6, p. 79. Mordaunt had Tayleur arrested on 9 December. He was kept in custody in the castle for the next 20 weeks, being released only on a writ of habeas corpus.46Lansd. 1069, f. 85; T. Siderfin, Les Reports des divers special Cases (1683), 278; Lincoln’s Inn, Misc. 497, p. 300; Misc. 499, p. 223; CJ viii. 667a. By September 1666 the surveyor-general, Sir John Denham†, had heard that the king was minded to dismiss Tayleur on the grounds of exceptional corruption.47CSP Dom. 1666-7, p. 220.

On 2 November 1666 Tayleur petitioned the Commons alleging ill-treatment. Convinced by a committee of grievances investigation that his evictions and imprisonments had been illegal, by 18 December the Commons decided to impeach Mordaunt.48CJ viii. 645b, 646a, 665a, 665b; CSP Dom. 1666-7, p. 248. For some MPs, this would be a trial run for the impeachment of the lord chancellor, the 1st earl of Clarendon (Edward Hyde*).49P. Seaward, Cavalier Parl. (Cambridge, 1989), 250, 273, 287. The articles of impeachment, probably mainly drafted by William Prynne*, were ready by 21 December. These detailed Tayleur’s version of recent events, and included the allegations that since his release he had had to go into hiding and, most sensationally, that Mordaunt had made ‘sundry uncivil addresses’ to Tayleur’s daughter Ann, which she had virtuously resisted.50CJ viii. 666b-667b; LJ xii. 60b-62a; Allegations for Marr. Lics. issued by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster ed. J.L. Chester and G.J. Armytage (Harl. Soc. xxiii), 91-2. The Commons approved these articles and proceeded with the impeachment.51CJ viii. 667a, 668b, 669a-b; LJ xii. 60a-62a, 70a.

On 17 January 1667 Mordaunt counter-attacked, citing Tayleur’s ‘insolent and provoking deportment towards his majesty’, disobedience in office, local complaints ‘for his oppression’, and his abuses ‘in misspending the revenue of the … castle, and defrauding the artificers, as also clandestinely and fraudulently to pass accompts without control’.52LJ xii. 77b. He denied all the details of Tayleur’s story.53LJ xii. 77a-79a. Because Mordaunt had only ever been acting on the direct orders of the king, it would be difficult for the Commons to make those charges stick without calling into question the king’s own judgment. The trial began on 27 January, but had made no real progress by the time Parliament was prorogued on 8 February.54LJ xii. 81b, 83b, 84b, 85a, 92a, 94a, 96b-97a, 98b, 99b, 100a-b, 101b, 103b, 104b, 105b, 106a-107b; CJ viii. 678b, 680a, 681b, 684a, 685a-691a. Perhaps more concerned with proceedings against Clarendon, MPs may have been exploiting Tayleur’s case for their own ends.

That summer government officials investigated further Tayleur’s conduct at Windsor, but in July he was granted a royal pardon under the great seal.55CSP Dom. 1667, p. 88; CTB ii. 21, 23, 26, 76, 183. Another attempt to petition Parliament in October 1667 got nowhere.56CJ ix. 8a, 17a, 27a, 33a, 36a, 37b, 38b. A dispute with Dudley Rouse, acting receiver of Windsor during Tayleur’s suspension, rumbled on in the treasury and the exchequer from 1668 into the mid-1670s, worsening Tayleur’s relations with the Windsor corporation.57CTB ii. 235, 241, 246, 345, 374, 375, 381, 402, 408, 409, 410, 435; iii. 10, 26, 883; iv. 63, 155, 237, 242, 327, 425, 675; v. 21, 24, 158; CSP Dom. 1667-8, p. 468; 1670, p. 635; First Hall Bk. 12, 21. Although he clung on determinedly to his various works positions, in July 1669 Charles II intimated that he expected him to resign.58CTB ii. 413, 615; PC2/61, ff. 153v, 154v, 187v. A few months later Tayleur sold his surveyorship to John Ball and the receivership to Richard Marriott*.59CSP Dom. 1668-9, p, 531; 1670, p. 736; Royal Archives, GEO/ADD/52/1, p. 57. However, he remained steward of the honour until August 1671.60Royal Archives, GEO/ADD/52/1, pp. 66, 69, 73, 74, 78; CSP Dom. 1671, p. 442. In October 1673 the corporation dismissed him as their counsel on the grounds that he was no longer living in the borough.61First Hall Bk. 26; The MSS of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle ed. J.N. Dalton (Windsor, 1957), 217-18. He may have moved to Cookham, where he leased crown lands which had once been held by Sir Henry Vane I*.62CTB iv. 45, 435, 477-8. His daughter Mary had married a Cookham man, George Welden.63Vis. Berks. ii. 305. Only in March 1676 was Tayleur’s argument with the government resolved, when Lord Treasurer Danby (Sir Thomas Osborne†) instructed the new receiver of the honour to pay £253 8s 9d to Tayleur for his accumulated arrears from all his offices in return for Tayleur surrendering any claims to them.64CTB iv. 675; v. 21, 24, 158.

Thereafter it is impossible to trace Tayleur with any certainty. His father-in-law, Sir William Parkhurst, had been the warden of the mint until his death in 1667, so Tayleur’s elder son, also called William, may well have been the assistant to the weigher and teller of the mint who claimed in 1679 to have a reversion of the chief clerkship.65Money Received and Paid for Secret Services of Charles II and James II, ed. J.Y. Akerman (Cam. Soc. lii), 13; CTB vi. 14, 244, 423, 469, 512-13, 664, 718, 747, 768; vii. 86, 472, 1222, 1283, 1362, 1383, 1514; viii. 656-7, 733, 755. One of them might have been the London surveyor of that name active between 1668 and 1689.66H. Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 (New Haven and London, 1995), 968-9. The former MP may also have been the ‘Mr Tayler’ who in the spring of 1689, following another disputed parliamentary election at Windsor, appeared before the committee of privileges claiming that as a boy he had seen the election at Windsor in 1625 or 1628.67CJ x. 118a. His grandson Tanfield Vachell†, son of his daughter Ann and Tanfield Vachell*, was elected as MP for Reading in 1701.