DAWSON, Henry (1596-1653), of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Northumb.

Dawson’s earliest identifiable ancestor is his grandfather, who was a draper and resident of Durham.21Merchant Adventurers of Newcastle-upon-Tyne ed. Dendy, ii. 215. In 1583, his father was apprenticed to the Newcastle mercer and merchant adventurer Thomas Liddell (father of Thomas Lyddell*), and in 1594 he married Isabel Carr, who was almost certainly a scion of the prominent Newcastle merchant family of Carr.22Merchant Adventurers of Newcastle-upon-Tyne ed. Dendy, ii. 215; St Nicholas Regs. ed. Wood, 9; Howell, Newcastle, 180, 185, 190. Henry Dawson, the future MP, may also have married into a locally influential family – his wife, Elizabeth Selby, was probably related to the Selbys who had supplied Newcastle and Northumberland with several of their MPs during the early Jacobean period.23HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir George Selby’; ‘Sir William Selby II’. Dawson became a mercer and merchant adventurer like his father and seems to have specialised in the wholesale supply of groceries and household items.24Selections from the Household Bks. of Lord William Howard of Naworth Castle ed. W. Howard (Surt. Soc. lxviii), 329.

Dawson was exceptional among Newcastle’s merchant community for the strength of his commitment to the advancement of godly religion. He and his ‘kind and Christian friend’ John Blakiston* were leading figures among the town’s puritans. It was probably Dawson who was instrumental in bringing William Morton to Newcastle in 1634 as lecturer to the town’s godly community.25SP16/540, pt. 4, ff. 279, 281; Howell, Newcastle, 91. Morton certainly lived in Dawson’s house, where ‘divers people’ resorted every Sunday night to hear him give ‘repetitions of sermons’.26CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 358, 359, 360. The members of this congregation were thought by the mayor and others of being ‘not so well affected to the [established] church government as they could wish, in respect that none of them ordinarily resort to their parish church’. In January 1639, with war against the Scottish Covenanters looming, Dawson and his puritan circle came under investigation by the privy council for alleged collaboration with the Scots. But though he admitted that his house was a gathering place for the town’s godly, he claimed that he had had ‘no intercourse with any Scotchman these seven years’.27CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 358, 359. He also admitted to knowing two preachers, one Thomas Abernathy and a ‘Mr Simpson’, who may well be the future Independent divine Sidrach Simpson, of whose congregation Dawson would become a member.

In keeping with his puritan sympathies, Dawson sided with Parliament at the outbreak of civil war, and, like Robert Ellison*, Thomas Lilburne* and Henry Warmouth* he withdrew from Newcastle following its establishment as a royalist garrison in the autumn of 1642.28Newcastle Council Min. Bk. ed. Dodds, 28. A year later he was among those the town’s common council disenfranchised for their ‘disaffection to the king and the present government of Newcastle’.29Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, p. 113; Newcastle Council Min. Bk. ed. Dodds, 28. On 5 December 1644, seven weeks after the Scots had stormed Newcastle, the Commons issued a series of orders for removing the town’s royalist governors and installing Dawson and other leading puritan townsmen in their place.30CJ iii. 714b-715a. The Commons also made Dawson customer for Newcastle and his brother George customs collector. Despite this remodelling of municipal government, the Newcastle parliamentarians continued to feel vulnerable, particularly given the prominence of ‘malignants’ in the River Tyne coal trade. Consequently, in April 1645 they wrote to Speaker William Lenthall, requesting that their royalist opponents be detained in London ‘till they have cleared themselves of those high crimes we charge them with’.31Bodl. Tanner 60, f. 117; Howell, Newcastle, 171. The writers also implied that they could manage the region’s collieries to greater advantage to the state than their royalist rivals. In fact, Dawson seems to have had little experience in the coal trade. He was probably a key figure in the town’s purchase a few years later of the manor and collieries of Whickham and Gateshead – the so-called ‘grand lease’.32Tyne and Wear Archives, GU.MA/3/3, f. 37. Nevertheless, he did not join the Newcastle Hostmen (coal-shippers) until 1649 and never held office in the company as he did on several occasions in the Newcastle Merchant Adventurers.33Recs. of the Co. of Hostmen of Newcastle ed. Dendy, 269.

During 1645 and 1646, Dawson was active in settling a godly ministry in Newcastle and generally consolidating the parliamentarian interest in the town.34Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, pp. 130, 133, 164, 166, 171. But in the spring of 1646, he was at the centre of a dispute among the new municipal elite that signalled its break up into rival Presbyterian and Independent factions. The election in October 1645 of John Blakiston as the town’s mayor had effectively given executive control of the common council to the Independents, and they were anxious to retain that advantage when Blakiston returned to his duties at Westminster the following spring.35Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’. In March 1646, therefore, they procured a Commons resolution appointing Dawson deputy-mayor in Blakiston’s absence.36Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’; CJ iv. 495b. It was only after this resolution had been turned into an ordinance of both Houses that Robert Ellison and other leading Newcastle Presbyterians accepted it, and then with manifest ill grace.37Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’; LJ viii. 257b.

In Blakiston’s absence, Dawson emerged as de facto leader of Newcastle’s Independent faction, which also included his younger brothers George and William. In October 1646, he was elected mayor – allegedly through intimidation – and although some observers thought he performed his office ‘like an honest man’, the Presbyterians accused him of using the mayoralty for partisan ends.38Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’; Perfect Occurrences no. 52 (18-25 Dec. 1646), sig. Eee3 (E.368.2). The dispute between the two factions came to a head in March 1647 with the election of a recruiter MP for the town. Mayor Dawson and his friends on the common council used their authority as senior office-holders to overrule the wishes of the freemen and to return their own candidate, Alderman Henry Warmouth.39Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’. Although Warmouth’s election was subsequently overturned by the Commons and Ellison was returned in his place, the appointment of the Independent grandee Sir Arthur Hesilrige* as Newcastle’s governor late in 1647 allowed Dawson and his ruling clique to consolidate their grip on municipal government.

Although Dawson did not sign the town’s petition to Parliament in October 1648 demanding justice against ‘the great incendiaries of the kingdom’, he continued to play a leading role in municipal affairs after the regicide.40Supra, ‘Newcastle-upon-Tyne’; Tyne and Wear Archives, MD.NC/1/1, pp. 288, 321; BC.RV/1/2, ff. 13, 45. In terms of his political alignment under the commonwealth, he was apparently an ally of Hesilrige and Blakiston and certainly backed them in their factional struggle with George Lilburne*.41Infra, ‘George Lilburne’; Bodl. Tanner 56, f. 22. Like a number of Hesilrige’s confederates in the north, Dawson was active on 1650 commission for propagating the gospel in the northern counties, as were his brothers George and William.42LPL, COMM VIII/I, p. 335 and passim. And having inherited or purchased lands south of the Tyne, he was appointed to the County Durham bench in July 1652.43C231/6, p. 243. It was with specific reference to County Durham that he was selected by the council of officers to represent the four northern counties in the Nominated Parliament of 1653.44Supra, ‘Northern counties’; Tyne and Wear Archives, MD/NC/2/2, p. 135. He probably owed this honour to his championing of the Independent cause in the region. However, he may have won additional favour with the council of officers through his membership of Sidrach Simpson’s Independent congregation in London. Although not the most high-profile gathered congregation in London, it evidently had a number of influential members.45PROB11/230, ff. 397v-398; K. Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London, 284.

Dawson was named to only two committees in the Nominated Parliament before his death on 2 August 1653.46CJ vii. 285a, 287a; Anon. ‘Alderman Henry Dawson’s monument’, 291. He was buried on 5 August in St Mary’s Kensington, which may offer a clue as to the general location of his London residence.47Par. Reg. of Kensington 1539-1675 ed. F.N. MacNamara, A. Story-Maskelyne (Harl. Soc. regs. xvi), 123. In his will, he asked to be buried in a decent manner, ‘but without any great solemnity or calling together many people, only friends and godly acquaintance’. He charged his estate (of which he gave no particulars) with bequests totalling about £330 and an annuity of £20. His legatees included Sidrach Simpson and the ‘godly poor’ of Newcastle.48PROB11/230, ff. 397v-398. Having died without surviving issue, he left the bulk of his estate to his wife and one of his nieces. He probably died a wealthy man, for his widow’s personal estate, including ‘goods in the shop’, was inventoried in 1666 at £1,629.49Durham UL, DPRI/1/1666/D2/1.