WALCOTT, Humphrey (1596-1672), of Walcot, and St Mark, Lincoln, Lincs.

The Walcots had been resident in Lincolnshire since at least the mid-fifteenth century and by the reign of Henry VIII had established their seat at Walcot, about 20 miles south of Lincoln.31M.E.C. Walcott, ‘Ralph Walcott’, N and Q, ser. 2, xii. 463; Lincs. Peds. 1032. They owned or leased considerable property in Walcot, including the ‘mansion house’ of Walcot Hall.32WARD5/124, pt. 1, unfol. Walcott’s father was a magistrate for Kesteven for about four years in the early 1620s, but was otherwise a minor figure in county government.33C193/13/1, f. 58. In his will, written in 1633, he bequeathed legacies in excess of £500 and left the bulk of his personal estate to his two sons, William and Humphrey (the future MP), on condition that William did not raise ‘any suits or controversies against my other executor [Humphrey] by pretence of breach of any covenants or for any lands conveyed away during my life time’.34Lincs. RO, LCC wills, 1634/ii/189. William Walcot senior had evidently divided his lands between his two sons prior to making his will, although not, it seems, entirely to the satisfaction of his eldest son William. As well as inheriting part of his father’s estate, Humphrey Walcott acquired various properties as a result of his first marriage, which was to the wealthy Boston widow Elizabeth Purie. Elizabeth died in about 1630, and in her will she assigned the management of her estate to Walcott and a group of trustees that included the godly Boston minister and future New England divine John Cotton. Her closeness to Cotton, who she described as her ‘loving friend’, suggests that she was a woman of strongly puritan convictions.35Lincs. RO, LCC wills, 1630/406-7. Walcott’s own career, particularly after the outbreak of civil war, indicates that he too was one of the godly. His elder brother, William, who died in 1645, stipulated in his will that his son was to be ‘carefully and religiously educated’ and then married into ‘some godly and religious family’.36Lincs. RO, LCC wills, 1645-6/446.

Walcott had apparently quit Boston by March 1642, when he and his brother William took the Protestation at Walcot.37Protestation Returns for Lincs. 1641-2 ed. A. Cole, W. Atkin (CD, Lincs. Fam. Hist. Soc. 1996), returns for Walcot. The following month, Walcott contributed ten shillings to the parish’s donation for the relief of Ireland’s Protestants.38SP28/193, pt. 2, f. 34. He sided with Parliament during the civil war – a decision probably linked to his religious sympathies – and was active as an Eastern Association commissioner during 1643-5 in raising money and men for the maintenance of the earl of Manchester’s army.39Add. 5494, f. 148; SP28/10, ff. 75, 326; SP28/26, passim; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 38; Holmes, Eastern Assoc. 125. He was also closely involved in the work of removing ‘idle, ill-affected, scandalous and insolent [i.e. royalist] clergy’ in Lincolnshire and elsewhere in the Eastern Association and settling godly ministers in their place.40SP22/3, pt. 3, unfol. (lttr. dated 3 July 1644); Peterhouse Archives, Misc. vol. 3, pp. 62, 63; Plundered Ministers of Lincs. ed. Foster, 83, 94; ‘The royalist clergy of Lincs.’ ed. Hill, 116-17. His appointment as clerk of the peace for Lincolnshire in 1646 was possibly connected with Colonel Edward King’s heated dispute with the county committee during 1645-6. Walcott signed several of the committee’s letters to Parliament, denouncing King as a delinquent.41Bodl. Tanner 58, f. 39; Nalson VI, f. 72; E. King, A Discovery of the Arbitrary, Tyrannical and Illegal Actions of Some of the Committee of the County of Lincoln (1647, E.373.3); C. Holmes, ‘Col. King and Lincs. politics, 1642-6’, HJ xvi. 451-84. At some point during the later 1640s, Walcott moved to Lincoln, acquiring a house of seven hearths in St Mark’s and becoming one of the feoffees of the parish’s lands – a group that included Alderman Original Peart*.42Lincs. RO, FL/Lincoln St Marks Deeds/3/4; BROG1/1/1, p. 116.

Walcott’s godly reputation may explain his selection in the summer of 1653 as one of Lincolnshire’s representatives in the Nominated Parliament.43Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 430-1. He may also have recommended his son-in-law, Richard Cust*, for one of the county places.44Supra, ‘Richard Cust’. However, Walcott made no recorded impact upon this Parliament’s proceedings. He may have stood as a candidate for Lincoln in 1654, securing his freedom of the city on 10 July, just a few days before the elections to the first protectoral Parliament. But if he did stand, he was not successful.45Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/5, f. 4.

Walcott was named as a Cromwellian ejector in August 1654, and the following November he was one of several Lincolnshire magistrates that the protectoral council appointed to investigate the arrest of three Baptists while on their way to a prayer meeting.46CSP Dom. 1654, p. 395. A year later, Walcott and this same group endorsed complaints against the arresting magistrate for frequenting and licencing alehouses.47CSP Dom. 1655, p. 398; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 194. But although Walcott appears to have supported the Cromwellian religious compromise of maintaining a godly public ministry while allowing freedom of worship to the sects, he was an admirer of one of Lincoln’s leading Presbyterian ministers during the 1650s, George Scortreth, and was not prepared to tolerate Quaker disruption of the ‘public assemblies’.48Lincs. RO, LCC wills, W1671/ii/668; 2 BRACE 3/20, p. 2,000; M. Mason, A Check to the Loftie Linguist (1655), 3-4 (E.857.5); Calamy Revised, 429. In the autumn of 1655, Walcott was appointed to the Lincolnshire commission for securing the peace of the commonwealth, signing several of its letters to Secretary John Thurloe*, reporting progress in levying the decimation tax. The other signatories included Major-general Edward Whalley*, James Berry*, Peart and Walcott’s brother-in-law, Francis Clinton alias Fines*.49TSP iv. 185, 212.

In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Walcott secured the junior place at Lincoln – the senior place going to Peart. Their election may have represented a victory for the city’s godly, pro-Cromwellian faction, which had been locked in a ‘long and hot difference’ with a powerful group of royalist sympathisers among the senior office-holders and common councilmen.50Supra, ‘Lincoln’. But while the two Lincoln MPs were allowed to take their seats, about 100 other Members were excluded from the House by the protectoral council as opponents of the government. On 22 September, Walcott and Peart were among the 29 MPs who voted against a motion that the excluded Members apply to the council for approbation to sit, which was interpreted as support for ‘the bringing in of the excluded Members into the House’ and was comprehensively defeated.51Bodl. Tanner 52, f. 166; CJ vii. 426b. Most of these 29 MPs have been accounted Presbyterians.52M.J. Tibbetts, ‘Parlty. Parties under Oliver Cromwell’ (Bryn Mawr Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1944), 127-9. Walcott received just one appointment in this Parliament – he was added on 23 January 1658 to a committee for the maintenance of ministers – and made no recorded contribution to debate.53CJ vii. 581b.

Walcott continued to serve as a Lincolnshire magistrate until the early months of 1660, but had been removed or omitted from all county commissions by 1661.54Lincs. RO, LQS/A/1/16, nos. 28-9, 57, 59-62, 185; LQS/A/1/18, nos. 24, 33-7, 43. He remained active in civic affairs until at least October 1660, when he and the town’s royalist recorder, Sir Charles Dallison, recommended the re-instatement of the man whom Whalley had removed as town clerk in the mid-1650s.55Lincs. RO, L1/1/1/6, pp. 95-6. After 1660, however, little is heard of Walcott until his death early in 1672. He was buried at St Mark’s, Lincoln on 25 January.56St Mark, Lincoln par. reg. In his will, he made minor bequests to his nephews (having died without surviving issue) and charged his lands in Walcot with a 7 year annuity of £40.57Lincs. RO, LCC wills, W1671/ii/668. He left his Latin books, his law books and half of his ‘divinity’ books (except Foxe’s Book of Martyrs) to one of his nephews, but forbade anyone to meddle with the books he had bought from the daughters of George Scortreth, until some of his nephews could make use of them. None of Walcott’s immediate family sat in Parliament.