HARINGTON, Sir James (1607-80), of Ridlington, Rutland; Merton, Oxon. and Swakeleys, Ickenham, Mdx.

Background and early career

The Haringtons had settled at Fleet, in Lincolnshire, by the late fourteenth century.55Grimble, Harington Fam. 62-3. In the fifteenth century, they had acquired the manor of Exton, in Rutland, by marriage; and members of the family had served as knights of the shire for that county on numerous occasions since the 1520s.56VCH Rutland, ii. 129; HP Commons 1509-1558, ‘James Harington’; ‘John Harington I’; HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘James Harington I’; ‘John Harington II’. Harington belonged to a cadet branch founded by his grandfather, Sir James Harington† (a third son) – who appears to have been a man of godly convictions – and was a cousin of the political theorist and author of Oceana, James Harrington.57Grimble, Harington Fam. 177; J. T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry (1984), 80, 125, 132. Sir James had acquired part of the manor of Ridlington from his elder brother, as well as the manor of Merton, Oxfordshire, by his second marriage and had represented Rutland in the Parliaments of 1597 and 1604. The family divided their time between Merton, where Harington was born, and Ridlington.58VCH Rutland, ii. 93; VCH Oxon. v. 223; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir James Harington’.

Harington’s father, though apparently a friend of the future royalist secretary of state Sir Edward Nicholas†, and diligent in collecting Ship Money as sheriff of Rutland in 1636-7, was an alumnus of that puritan seminary in all but name, Emmanuel, Cambridge, and would side with Parliament during the civil war.59CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 445, 478, 499-500, 530-1; HMC 5th Rep. 402; Grimble, Harington Fam. 183-5; Cliffe, Puritan Gentry, 92, 98. Why Harington himself was apparently denied a university education is a mystery. In 1625, in his mid mid-teens, he went to London, where he encountered a ‘multitude of temptations and incitations to sin and vanity ... yet the law and word of God ... caus’d me diligently to attend upon some living oracles of God in those times’ – notably, the eminent puritan ministers William Gouge, Richard Holdsworth, Josias Shute and Thomas Taylor – ‘by whose holy wooings and love-tokens, my first love to my spouse [i.e. Christ] (begun about a year before in the country) was now renewed, increased and confirmed’.60Harington, Holy Oyl, 367, 369.

In 1632, Harington married the eldest daughter and coheir of a wealthy London alderman Edmund Wright, who would serve as mayor of the City in 1640-1. Although he would incline strongly towards the king’s party in the civil war, Wright, too, was an admirer of the ‘moderate Calvinist’ minister Richard Holdsworth.61Harington, Holy Oyl, 373; Oxford DNB, ‘Sir Edmund Wright’. Harington’s wife, who evidently shared his puritan sensibilities, willingly parted with her jointure and the land she inherited from her father in 1643, ‘yielding a considerable revenue and an unparallel’d house and seat’ – namely, Swakeleys in the Middlesex parish of Ickenham.62Harington, Holy Oyl, 373; WARD2/64/242/10. The couple raised their 16 children in approved godly fashion – as he would later remind them

What my continued pains and frequent watching over you have been, whilst I was present with you, yourselves and the rest of my family will witness, as to weekly catechising, morning and evening expounding the Holy Scriptures and praying with you; besides my constant repetition of sermons, preparation and particular examination of you on the Lord’s day and monthly sacraments; and often remembrance of you to your daily exercise of private prayers, reading of the Scriptures and the works of God’s faithful ministers.63Harington, Holy Oyl, 259.

There is no evidence that Harington openly opposed royal policies during the personal rule of Charles I. The assertion that he was the ‘James Harrington Esq.’ who was listed among the ‘defaulters at musters’ in Lincolnshire during the first bishops’ war is manifestly wrong – this was probably his cousin, the political theorist.64SP16/413/104, ff. 203-4; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 510; Grimble, Harington Fam. 196; Oxford DNB, ‘James Harrington (1607-80)’. Indeed, Harington served in the summer of 1639 in a troop of gentleman volunteers in the royal army.65SP16/427/38, ff. 71v, 73v. He tried to secure election for Stamford (which lay about eight miles east of Ridlington) to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640 but without success.66Supra, ‘Stamford’.

Harington’s first known gesture of defiance against the king was on 29 March 1642, when he presented petitions from Rutland to both the Lords and the Commons, calling for (among other things) the removal of ‘popish’ peers from the Lords, the imprisonment of ‘the greatest and most active papists’, the ‘speedy and powerful relief of our persecuted brethren in Ireland’, the ‘utter quelling the pride, insolency and tyranny of the prelates’, the ‘abolishing of all unfitting and unnecessary dignities out of the church’, and the ‘stricter sanctification of the Lord’s day’. The leading signatories to these petitions were the county sheriff Thomas Waite*, Sir Edward Harington and Harington himself.67CJ ii. 503b; LJ iv. 680b-681a; PA, Main Pprs. 29 Mar. 1642; A Copie of the Petition Presented to the Kings Majesty by the High Sheriffe...of Rutland (1642), 669 f.6.1.

Civil-war career, 1642-6

Having sided with Parliament at the outbreak of civil war, Harington’s zeal in the cause, and doubtless his family connections in London, secured him command of the red regiment of the Westminster trained bands (not to be confused with the red regiment of the London trained bands under Thomas Atkin*), which mustered 1,900 strong.68Archaeologia, lii.141; Mercurius Civicus no. 72 (3-10 Oct. 1644), 673 (E.12.11). His sergeant-major, Silvanus Taylor, would emerge in 1644 as one of London’s leading critics of the parliamentarian commander-in-chief, Robert 3rd earl of Essex.69K. Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London, 321-2. The Westminster red regiment was part of the force that Sir William Waller* commanded in his abortive attack upon Basing House, in Hampshire, late in 1643 – a defeat that Waller and others blamed largely upon poor leadership by Harington and his officers and cowardice among the ‘Westminsterians’. However, Harington and his men redeemed themselves by fighting bravely in Waller’s victory at Alton in December.70E. Archer, A True Relation of the Marchings of the Red Trained Bonds [sic] of Westminster (1643); L.C. Nagel, ‘The Militia of London, 1641-9’ (London Univ. PhD thesis, 1982), 135, 138, 141-51. When Harington petitioned the Commons in May 1644, requesting an office in Parliament’s wartime administration – possibly that of lieutenant of the ordnance – the House referred to him as one who had ‘lost so much and hazarded himself so far for his affections to the Parliament’.71CJ iii. 486a. He served under Waller again that summer and autumn as commander of the ‘City brigade’ – a 4,000 strong force made up of five London and Westminster trained bands regiments. Harington and his brigade reportedly ‘behaved themselves very gallantly’ at the second battle of Newbury in October 1644, and in 1653 he would have a medal struck, commemorating his part in this victory.72CJ iv. 79a; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 301, 326, 364, 369, 384, 419, 421; 1644-5, pp. 30, 49, 56; Juxon Jnl. 59; Nagel, ‘Militia of London’, 183, 199-200, 209, 211-13, 216-17, 221; Kelsey, Inventing a Republic, 216; Oxford DNB, ‘James Harrington (1607-80)’. His testimony in late November 1644 to the committee for investigating the Newbury campaign supported the allegations of Waller, Sir Arthur Hesilrige* and Oliver Cromwell* concerning the earl of Manchester’s pusillanimous generalship.73CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 148, 160.

In 1645, Harington published a pamphlet in which he urged religious Presbyterians and Independents to ‘be meek and lowly and love one another; so shall the plots of Rome and hell be prevented and all malignants shut their mouths’. However, his preferred solution for reconciling differences between the two groups, and regulating that ‘over-much extended liberty of conscience’, gave greater authority to Presbyterian church structures than most Congregationalists would have thought desirable. Disputes should be settled, he proposed, through appeal to a ‘general assembly’, where the

question may be decided and concluded by the major vote, both of churches and members; which Scripture-way will … give full satisfaction to all (unless to obstinate heretics) as being the judgement and vote (even by the poll) of all the visible and individual Christians of the kingdom politically united, as in one congregation. Yea, the disobedient will be left without excuse and justly liable to their sentence of excommunication.74J. Harington, Noah’s Dove (1645).

In 1645, Harington found himself aligned with Hesilrige again, this time in opposition to a military faction in Leicestershire and Rutland headed by Thomas Lord Grey of Groby* and his subordinate Colonel Thomas Waite (both future regicides). In November, Harington presented a petition to the House from ‘divers gentlemen’ in Rutland, complaining of Waite’s oppressions in the county.75Supra, ‘Rutland’; infra, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; ‘Thomas Waite’; CJ iv. 356a; Add. 31116, p. 489; CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 188, 193; CCC 193. On 15 January 1646, following the issue of a writ for electing new knights of the shire, Harington presented a petition from the Rutland county committee and ‘divers others’, asking that election proceedings be postponed until their dispute with Waite had been resolved – to which the Commons consented.76CJ iv. 408a; VCH Rutland, i. 192. Harington was himself the subject of a petition the following month, when the militia sub-committees of Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Westminster – whose regiments had formed part of his City brigade – requested the Commons to appoint him lieutenant of the ordnance. He also petitioned both Houses on his own behalf, requesting ‘subsistence and retaliation’ in response to what he claimed was the royalists’ wholesale plundering of his estate at Merton.77PA, Main Pprs. 12 Feb. 1646. He would later claim that he had been deprived of his estate in both Rutland and Oxfordshire during the war, losing almost £5,000 as a result, and that he had not taken possession of his wife’s inheritance in Middlesex until 1646 – that is, three years after the death of her father.78Harington, Holy Oyl, 431; Bodl. Carte 74, f. 316. The Commons resolved to continue the office of lieutenant in commission, but he was deemed eligible for the £4 weekly allowance that the House had previously granted to MPs whose income had suffered during the war.79CJ iv. 434b; LJ viii. 162b. He was at Westminster again on 14 and 16 February to present a petition to both Houses from the militia sub-committees of Southwark, Tower Hamlets and Westminster, pleading against the inclusion of a clause in the Newcastle peace propositions that would give control over the London and Westminster trained bands to the City’s Presbyterian-dominated common council.80CJ iv. 430b, 441a; LJ viii. 170; Add. 31116, p. 509; Juxon Jnl. 102; Whitelocke, Mems. i. 570.

By contrast, the Rutland ‘recruiter’ election, on 2 July 1646, was largely untouched by national political divisions and turned instead upon the feud between Waite and the county committee and what seems to have been the personal rivalry between Harington and Waite. The contest went to a poll in which Harington emerged the clear winner; but a dispute between Waite and another candidate (Harington’s brother-in-law) regarding who had polled in second place led to a double return. Having been returned on both indentures, Harington duly took his seat in the Commons, with the junior place falling (apparently by default) to Waite. 81Supra, ‘Rutland’.

Parliamentary career, 1646-8

Harington was named to ten committees between July 1646 and his addition early in January 1647 to Parliament’s delegation to attend the king at Holdenby House, in Northamptonshire. The majority of these committees were set up to address either ecclesiastical issues (the maintenance of the ministry; the suppression of unordained preachers) or London’s increasingly fraught relationship with the army. Thus on 4 December he was named to a committee for pressing the common council to pay the City’s arrears of assessment money. 82CJ iv. 625a, 641b, 671b, 679b, 681b, 694b, 719b, 738a; v. 9b, 35a. He took the Solemn League and Covenant on 9 December.83CJ v. 7b. On 7 January 1647, the Commons added him to the bicameral committee for receiving Charles from the Scots and conveying him to Holdenby House. The House had divided twice on the question of whether Harington should replace Sir William Armyne (who had excused himself on grounds of ill health) on this committee, with the prominent Independents Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire, Henry Marten, Hesilrige and Oliver Cromwell serving as majority tellers for the yeas. Evidently Harington was regarded, and doubtless regarded himself, as a firm adherent of the Independent interest at Westminster.84CJ v. 45a. As it was this committee that drew up a list of the king’s bedchamber men and other attendants while he resided at Holdenby, it is likely that Harington had a hand in nominating his republican cousin James Harington as one of Charles’s grooms of the bedchamber – which calls into question the view that ‘there is no suggestion of any personal closeness between them’.85CJ v. 49b, 50b; Oxford DNB, ‘James Harrington (1611-77)’.

Sir James’s appointment on 7 January 1647 would keep him away from the House for the next ten months or so, although he signed very few of the committee’s letters and does not appear to have worked closely with its members, who were mostly men of political Presbyterian sympathies.86Supra, ‘John Crewe I’; CJ v. 330a; Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 710v; A Letter from the Kings Majesties Court (1647), 3 (E.404.16). Indeed, it was reported in March that he had angered his colleagues at Holdenby by insisting that it was not evil counsellors that Parliament now had to contend with but the king’s own obduracy. Harington had been moved to make this observation, it seems, after the king had ‘worsted [him]... in his own argument, which was from the precedent of [the Old Testament kings] Rehoboam and Jeroboam to prove the people’s power to depose kings’, alluding to the time when rebellion had divided the united monarchy of Israel under Rehoboam into the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah.87Clarendon SP ii. app. p. xxxvii. Nevertheless, Harington’s fellow committee members chose him to respond to Charles’s asking them in April for the reason ‘why the new reformers discharge the keeping of Easter’. ‘For the observation of Easter to be an annual festival to Christians’, Harington informed the king

I find not anything in the holy Scriptures. And your Majesty is pleased to place it only upon the church’s authority. And … I suppose I may boldly assert that such things as are only instituted by ecclesiastical authority, having no footstep in the Scripture, may by ecclesiastical authority be laid aside.88Certaine Queries, Proposed by the King (1647), 6 (E.385.5).

The committee’s attendance upon the king was officially terminated with Charles’s flight from Hampton Court on 11 November 1647, when its members were thanked by the Commons for the ‘faithful discharge of their trust’.89CJ v. 357a. On 15 November, Harington was named to a committee of both Houses for securing Charles on the Isle of Wight; and three days later (18 Nov.), after being granted leave of absence, he was a minority teller with Evelyn of Wiltshire against a motion for preparing a declaration on the mutinous proceedings of the ‘Levellers’ Colonel Thomas Rainborowe* and Major Thomas Scot II* at the army’s rendezvous at Corkbush Field.90CJ v. 359a, 363a, 363b.

Harington had returned to the House by 2 February 1648, when he was appointed to prepare an instruction to Colonel Robert Hammond, the governor of the Isle of Wight, for preventing the king from receiving any letters and papers.91CJ v. 452b. Between mid-February 1648 and Pride’s Purge on 6 December, Harington was named to 22 committees – almost a quarter of which concerned church-related issues.92CJ v. 460b, 471a, 519a, 556a, 562b, 574a, 581b, 593a, 599b, 601b, 602a, 614a, 614b, 624a, 631b, 640b, 641b; vi. 69b, 72a, 79a. Thus he was included on committees for the due payment of tithes in London (9 Feb.); for expediting the sale of bishops’ lands (9 Feb.); for the stricter observance of the sabbath (23 Feb.); for reviving the feoffees for impropriations (28 Mar.); and on an ordinance for the sale of dean and chapter lands (16 June).93CJ v. 460b, 471a, 519a, 602a. His two tellerships during this period, both on 26 February, saw him partner the Sir Thomas Dacres and Sir John Franklyn against repudiating the Scots commissioners’ desire for the establishment in England of a strong ‘Presbyterial government’. The opposing tellers were the Independent grandee Hesilrige and the non-partisan Robert Reynolds, who favoured merely ‘a loose state-sponsored Protestantism’.94Infra, ‘Robert Reynolds’; CJ v. 472b; ‘Boys Diary’, 162-3. These divisions indicate Harington’s membership of a group of MPs who successfully reconciled adherence to the Independent interest with zeal for a thorough-going Presbyterian settlement that would limit toleration outside of the established church to ‘orthodox’ Congregationalists. To describe him as an upholder of ‘non-separating Independency’ is probably to under-estimate his enthusiasm for Presbyterian church structures above the level of individual parish congregations.95Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 18.

Almost all of Harington’s appointments from May until mid-July 1648 were to committees for securing London during the second civil war and for suppressing and punishing royalist insurgents.96CJ v. 562b, 574a, 593a, 599b, 601b, 614a, 614b, 624a, 631b, 640b. On 27 June, he was named to a bicameral committee for considering the terms of the treaty with the king – a body whose membership reflected the informal alliance established earlier that year between the Independent grandees and those Members zealous for a strong Presbyterian settlement.97CJ v. 614a. Treating with the king remained a highly divisive issue, however, and when, on 2 August, the ‘Presbyterian party’ nominated Thomas Povey as a commissioner to inform the king that Parliament had agreed to the holding of unconditional peace talks, ‘the Independents immediately took up the cudgels in debate and tugg’d hard’ for Harington’s appointment instead. However, he was excepted against by the Presbyterian MP Sir Harbottle Grimston, who recalled that ‘when a motion was made heretofore in this House, that an impeachment might be drawn up against his majesty, he was the only man that did second it, and therefore certainly he could be no welcome messenger unto his majesty’.98CJ v. 658b; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 19 (1-8 Aug. 1648), sig. T3v (E.457.11). Grimston was probably referring here to a motion for impeaching the king reportedly made by Sir Thomas Wroth on 3 January 1648, during a debate that had concluded with the Commons passing the vote of no addresses.99[C. Walker*], Hist. of Independency (1648), 72 (E.463.19). However, Harington is not recorded as participating in this debate and seems to have been absent from the House during December and January 1647-8.

Harington received no appointments in the Commons between 20 July and 4 November 1648 and may well have been absent for much of that period.100CJ v. 641b; vi. 69b. On 7 and 8 November, he was among a group Independents that demanded the drafting of additional propositions to be presented to the king at Newport for exempting from pardon the leading royalist actors in the second civil war.101Mercurius Pragmaticus nos. 32&33 (31 Oct.-14 Nov. 1648), sig. Yy2 (E.470.33). Having served as a messenger to the Lords, on 16 November, to desire a conference concerning those royalists to be exempted from pardon, he was then named as one of this conference’s managers.102CJ vi. 78a; LJ x. 592b. The next day (17 Nov.), he was included on a committee on a bill for justifying Parliament’s proceedings during the civil war and for declaring all royalist declarations against them void.103CJ vi. 79a. Although this would be his last committee appointment before 23 December, he was present in the Commons on 30 November to support a motion that the House proceed to consider the army’s Remonstrance, which demanded an end to the Newport treaty and justice against the king. Harington reportedly ‘made many impious deductions out of Scripture touching the approbation of king killing, but was handsomely put to silence by resolute Mr [William] Prynne’.104CJ vi. 91b; Add. 78221, f. 26.

Serving the Rump, 1648-53

After the Restoration, Harington claimed that he had been ‘no ways privy to the design for the seclusion of the Members ... in 1648 [i.e. Pride’s Purge]’ and that he had ‘frequently moved the House to remove that force, until the votes for their seclusion commanded his acquiescence’.105Bodl. Carte 74, f. 316. Nevertheless, a royalist newsbook included him among the 18 Members who voted on 14 December against re-admitting those secluded MPs against whom there was no charge.106Mercurius Elencticus no. 56 (12-19 Dec. 1648), 539 (E.476.36). And on 15 December, he was alleged to have joined Sir Henry Mildmay, John Blakiston and other Rumpers in denouncing the Solemn Protestation – a pamphlet, probably written by Prynne, calling for legal proceedings against the army and its supporters.107Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 38 (12-19 Dec. 1648), sig. Ddd4 (E.476.35). Moreover, he declared his dissent to the 5 December vote – that the king’s answer to the Newport propositions were an acceptable basis for settlement – on 21 December, the day after this test of the Rump’s membership had been introduced.108CJ vi. 102a; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 161. He received his first committee appointment in the Rump on 23 December and was named to a further ten committees between then and the regicide, on 30 January 1649, including the Committee for Advance of Money, the Committee for Plundered Ministers and the Committee for Sequestrations.109CJ vi. 103a, 112a, 112b, 116a, 117b, 120a, 120b. Of these committees, however, only one – that set up on 23 December to bring in an ordinance for erecting a high court of justice to try the king – could be considered a powerful instrument of revolutionary intent.110CJ vi. 103a.

Harington would later claim that he had stood up in the House several times to voice his opposition to the king’s trial.111Bodl. Carte 74, f. 316. Yet according to one royalist newsbook, he joined Sir Peter Wentworth, Thomas Scot I and other Rumpers on 4 January 1649 in moving that those peers who obstructed the trial legislation should ‘be impeached of high treason as friends and well-wishers to the grand delinquent of the kingdom [i.e. the king], enemies to public justice and the liberty of the people’.112Mercurius Pragmaticus nos. 40&41 (26 Dec. 1648-9 Jan. 1649), sig. Fff4 (E.537.20). That he had begun to have serious misgivings about the trial by mid-January – and possibly before – can be inferred from his failure to receive any Commons appointments between 17 January and the king’s execution. Equally, although he was named to the 6 January trial commission, he attended only one of its meetings and only one session of the trial itself (both on 23 January) and did not sign Charles’s death warrant.113Muddiman, Trial, 96, 210. In 1660, he was adamant that after being nominated to the trial commission without his consent

he left the House and went into the country. He being twice summoned to appear [by the trial commission] he refused to come. Being summoned a third time, and threatened with the great fine, he came to see what they would do; and when he saw they would proceed against the king, he went out of town that very day and came no more to the House till after the king’s death.114SP29/47/124, f. 226.

Harington’s wife would later claim that the trial commission’s order of 23 January, prohibiting any commissioner to depart without its leave, was issued specifically in response to his abrupt withdrawal from the high court.115Somers Tracts, vii. 453; Muddiman, Trial, 211.

It was probably Harington’s evident support for the Rump but unwillingness to embroil himself in the king’s trial and execution that recommended him to many of his fellow Rumpers for election to the first council of state, on 14 February 1649.116CJ vi. 141a. Given his lack of regicidal zeal, it is no surprise that he was among those councillors who refused to take an oath of office registering approval of ‘all that was done concerning the king and kingship and for taking away the House of Lords and against the Scots’ invasion [in 1648]’. Harington declared that he could not ‘fully approve’ the proceedings referred to in this ‘engagement’, although he excepted only against the word ‘fully’, which it is not clear was ever included in the oath.117SP25/1, unfol. (19 Feb. 1649); CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 9; S. Barber, ‘The engagement for the council of state’, HR lxiii. 45, 47. Harington’s loyalty to the Rump was never in doubt, however, and in recognition of this fact, and of his family’s high social ranking, the council proposed in April to entrust the maintenance and education of two of the king’s younger children to Sir Edward Harington – a trust he declined on grounds of ill health.118CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 107, 109; CJ vi. 196b. The House acknowledged Sir James’s commitment to its service more directly in October, by granting him a lease of sequestered property in Rutland for payment of £1,000 he claimed he was owed upon the public faith – presumably for his military service during the civil war.119CJ vi. 308b; CCC 496. And he would add at least £500 a year to his landed income over the next few years by purchasing former royal estates and fee farm rents worth over £15,000.120E121/4/1/89; SP28/288, ff. 5, 55, 62.

Elected to the Rump’s first five councils of state, Harington was not among the leading councillors in terms of his attendance and is known to have made only eight reports to the House from Whitehall during the period 1649-53 – four of them during his term as council president in September-October 1652.121CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. lxxv; 1650, p. xli; 1651, p. xxxv; 1651-2, pp. xlvii, 393; 1652-3, p. xxxiii; CJ vi. 196b, 247a; vii. 12a, 175a, 178b, 182b, 187a, 189a. His appointments to conciliar committees suggest that he was active in several areas of government – most notably, the oversight of state revenues (particularly relating to military supply), receiving ambassadors and other foreign dignitaries (including envoys from the Scots) and the licensing and, where necessary, suppression of printed material.122CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 14, 18, 22, 59, 63, 183, 208, 221, 224, 239, 302, 307, 329, 336, 340; 1650, pp. 2, 76, 205, 273, 279, 303, 434, 454; 1651, pp. 43, 46, 67, 155; 1651-2, pp. 85, 122, 132, 288; 1652-3, p. 2. It was Harington who saved the printer William Dugard from trial for publishing Eikon Basilike and other royalist works, although on condition that he place his presses at the Rump’s disposal.123CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 132; J. Peacey, Politicians and Pamphleteers, 283. In March 1651, Harington was named to the council’s committee for Scottish and Irish affairs, which was entrusted with a wide variety of tasks and became the Rump’s ‘maid of all work’, whether it be supplying its armed forces, defraying the council’s expenses, handling conciliar correspondence and the influx of private petitions and propositions, or ordering the nation’s militia.124CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 66-7, and passim; V.A. Rowe, Sir Henry Vane the Younger (1970), 141-3. Regarded as an expert in matters relating to currency, monetary exchange rates and measures for restricting the export of bullion, he chaired the council committee for managing the Mint.125CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 173, 284, 307, 343, 430, 462, 474, 475, 491; 1650, p. 483; 1651, pp. 67, 186-7, 280, 288, 489; 1651-2, pp. 43, 154, 156-7, 214, 231, 243, 474, 487, 498; 1652-3, pp. 20, 48, 88, 130, 140, 260, 275, 280, 311; Anon., To the Parliament of the Common-wealth of England (1650, 669 f.15.33); The Answer of the Corporation of Moniers in the Mint (1653), 1 and passim (E.1070.2); Violet, Proposals Humbly Presented to His Highness, 105, 106, 107; Violet, A True Narrative of the Procs. in the Court of Admiraltie (1659), 92-7. Contrary to general belief, however, he was not joint master of the Mint under the Rump.126CB; Grimble, Harington Fam. 213; Oxford DNB, ‘James Harrington (1607-80)’; C.E. Challis, ‘Lord Hastings to the great silver recoinage’ in A New Hist. of the Royal Mint ed. Challis, 325-6. He also chaired the committee responsible for the upkeep and running of the Palace of Whitehall and for the council of state’s internal affairs, such as the payment of its servants and the provision of prayers before council meetings.127CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 477; 1650, pp. 199, 467, 472-3; 1651, pp. 15, 46, 200, 209, 246, 288, 466, 472; 1651-2, pp. 72, 251. His failure to secure a place on the council’s standing committee for foreign affairs (although he attended at least one of its meetings) suggests that his contribution in this area of policy was limited.128SP25/132, pp. 12, 90.

Harington was among the most prominent and active members of the Rump, receiving approximately 133 committee appointments between Pride’s Purge and the House’s forced dissolution in April 1653 and serving as a teller in 25 divisions. On 13 occasions, the Rump selected him either to draft pieces of (mostly minor) legislation or, with one or two other MPs, to assume charge of a particular committee.129CJ vi. 158b, 309a, 327a, 336a, 374b, 397a, 432b, 481a, 543a; vii. 86b, 97a, 121b. He was named in first place to a further eight committees.130CJ vi. 152a, 179b, 225a, 275b, 403b, 412b, 463b, 563a. However, he reported from – and therefore can reasonably be presumed to have chaired – only two committees: those to draft an order declaring a day of public thanksgiving for the success of the Rump’s fleet (25 June 1649) and on a bill against incest, adultery and fornication (12 Apr. 1650).131CJ vi. 225a, 397a, 404b. His appointments clearly reveal that his principal area of interest and activity in the House was that of advancing godly religion in England and its dependencies. His name is often to be found on committees in the Rump for the maintenance of a preaching ministry, for moral reform and the suppression of ‘obscene and licentious practices under pretence of liberty of conscience’, for propagating the Gospel at home and abroad, and on legislation decreeing days of public thanksgiving and humiliation.132CJ vi. 116a, 152a, 158b, 180b, 190b, 196a, 213a, 225a, 231a, 275b, 327b, 336a, 388b, 397a, 404b, 412b, 423b, 458b, 543a; vii. 12b, 20a, 86b, 244a. The task of bringing in a bill for the ‘due payment of tithes’ was referred specially to his care on 27 February 1651.133CJ vi. 643a. When John Owen* and his clerical allies presented a petition to the Rump a year later (Feb. 1652), urging tougher action against radical sectarian and heterodox beliefs, and the more effective propagation of the gospel, the care of this matter was specifically referred to the godly triumvirate of Harington, Gilbert Millington and Francis Rous.134CJ vii. 86b; Oxford DNB, ‘John Owen’. Similarly, Harington was named to a council committee to investigate one of the ministers’ principal causes of complaint – the recent publication of the Socinian text the Racovian Catechism.135CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 132.

A number of Harington’s tellerships in the Rump are likewise revealing of his priorities and concerns in ecclesiastical and religious matters. On 6 August 1649, he was a teller with the equally godly Sir William Strickland in favour of inserting in a parliamentary declaration on church government a clause enjoining the payment of tithes and other duties to ministers.136CJ vi. 275a. The next day (7 Aug.), he was named in first place to a committee to consider this declaration and to reconcile the retention of Presbyterian church government with toleration for tender consciences.137CJ vi. 275b. The House having set aside a day in June 1651 ‘for the solemn seeking the Lord for His blessing upon our forces by land and sea’, Harington and another godly knight Sir William Masham were tellers in favour of having three ministers officiate proceedings at Westminster as opposed to only one.138CJ v. 581b. Harington’s reverence for godly preaching ministers probably informed his decision to serve as a teller with Sir William Brereton and Sir Gilbert Pykeringe on 15 July and 16 August 1651 in favour of respiting the execution of the Presbyterian divine Christopher Love.139CJ vi. 604a; vii. 2a. Harington also showed sympathy for the plight of another of the Rump’s prisoners, his former sparring partner in the House, William Prynne.140W. Prynne, A New Discovery of Free-state Tyranny (1655), 16-17 (E.488.2). Determined to prevent the wholesale asset-stripping of the church, Harington was a majority teller on 9 October 1650 and 9 July 1652 against selling off ecclesiastical buildings, collegiate churches and cathedral bells and applying the proceeds to secular uses.141CJ vi. 481b; vii. 152b. He defied the opponents of the national church establishment again on 23 January 1653, acting as a majority teller with John Fielder against a proposal that the next fast sermon be delivered by the ‘outrageously radical’ minister William Dell, who had published against state interference in ecclesiastical and theological matters.142CJ vii. 252a; Worden, Rump Parl. 319; Oxford DNB, ‘William Dell’. Surprisingly, Harington received only one appointment to thank a minister (the rector of Fulham, Isaac Knight) for preaching before the House; and even more puzzling is his apparent failure to participate in the proceedings of the Committee for Plundered Ministers.143CJ vi. 200a; Calamy Revised, 311.

Harington’s puritan piety was allied to a godly patrician’s sense of duty towards the poor and needy. He was regularly included on committees in the Rump for the relief and employment of the poor and for reducing the price of corn, coal and other necessities.144CJ vi. 137a, 171a, 179b, 187b, 190b, 284a, 374b, 432b, 441b, 569b. The oversight of two such committees – for setting the poor on work and to regulate or remove public offices that were burdensome to the people – was specially assigned to his care.145CJ vi. 374b, 432b. And he seems to have taken at least a passing interest in initiatives for legal reform, though he apparently sided with the more conservative Rumpers on this issue. Thus on 17 January 1652 he was a majority teller (with Masham) in favour of nominating his brother-in-law, the ex-royalist and future Cromwellian John Fountaine, to the Hale Commission. The minority tellers were the more radical pairing of Sir Henry Mildmay and Henry Marten.146CJ vii. 74a, 253b; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 120; Worden, Rump Parl. 110, 260; Oxford DNB, ‘John Fountaine’. In the spring of 1652, with pressure from the army growing for the Rump to honour debts contracted in the state’s service, and particularly to the government’s poorer creditors, he was made responsible by the House for a report from the committee for public faith, which was chaired by Marten.147CJ vii. 121b; Worden, Rump Parl. 318. But he doubtless earned the enmity of radical campaigners on this issue by opposing Marten’s scheme for satisfying the state’s creditors – that is, by selling off cathedral property.148CJ vii. 152b; Worden, Rump Parl. 318.

The Rump’s dealings with the City, mercantile affairs, and the efficient exploitation of the excise and forfeited estates, constituted Harington’s other main fields of activity in the House, after religious affairs – at least, if his committee appointments are any guide.149CJ vi. 116a, 117b, 120b, 129b, 132a, 150b, 171a, 178b, 183a, 198a, 199a, 216a, 227b, 246a, 265b, 275a, 325a, 330b, 335a, 358b, 382a, 382b, 400b, 458a, 538a; vii. 46b, 51b, 100a, 104a, 154b, 222b. Like the council of state, the Rump enlisted his services on currency matters and measures for prohibiting the export of bullion.150CJ vi. 154a, 385a, 403b; vii. 97a. Several of the divisions in which he acted as teller also concerned financial issues, although none of them appears to have had a strong partisan dimension.151CJ vi. 333a, 349b; vii. 236b, 239b. He was identified as a supporter of the general subscription of the Engagement – which several of his committee appointments also suggest – although he would later insist that he had taken it not out of ‘an implacable dislike of the king’s person or family’, but ‘only in affirmance of several Acts of that Parliament [the Rump] for declaring a new government and the king’s title to these kingdoms void, which by those of the long robe he was advised had the force of law’.152CJ vi. 307b, 312b, 321b; J. Drew, The Northern Subscribers Plea (1651), sig. A2 (E.638.11); Bodl. Carte 74, f. 316.

Harington seems to have responded with considerable enthusiasm to Cromwell’s victory at Worcester early in September 1651. After reporting news about the battle (probably from the council of state) to the Rump on 5 September, he partnered Pykeringe as a majority teller in favour of the House sitting the next day to hear more reports of Cromwell’s exploits and of ‘the great things the Lord hath done for this commonwealth and for His people’. Again, the minority tellers were Mildmay and Marten, neither of whom were noted for the intensity of their godliness.153CJ vii. 12b; Whitelocke, Mems. iii. 346. On 19 September, Harington was named to a committee for declaring a day of public thanksgiving for the victory.154CJ vii. 20a.

But Harington’s apparent elation at the army’s providential triumph did not extend to supporting Cromwell and his allies in their post-Worcester drive to bring in legislation for replacing the Rump with a ‘New Representative’.155Worden, Rump Parl. 266. On 25 September 1651, Harington and Mildmay were minority tellers against bringing in a bill ‘for setting a time certain for the sitting of this Parliament and for calling a new Parliament’. The majority tellers were Cromwell and Scot I.156CJ vii. 20b. On 18 November, the Commons resolved not to sit beyond 3 November 1654, and the next day (19 Nov. 1651), Harington was named to a committee for determining what business should be expedited before the Rump’s dissolution.157CJ vii. 37a, 37b. But his lack of enthusiasm for the army’s programme of ‘healing and settling’ (of which the New Representative formed the centre-piece) re-surfaced early in 1652, when he twice acted as a teller for those Rumpers opposed to the endeavours of Cromwell and his allies, as well as of Marten and elements of the radical press, to make the terms of an act of general pardon and oblivion as generous as possible to the royalists.158CJ vii. 78b, 95a. Similarly, he was a teller on 22 September with Major-general Thomas Harrison I against an amendment to an act for the sale of forfeited estates that would exempt those who claimed benefit of any articles of war.159CJ vii. 183b. Why Harrison should have opposed this amendment is not clear, for it touched the army in point of conscience and honour that its promises of amnesty to surrendering royalists were not violated. No less hard to interpret is Harington’s minority tellership during a debate on the same act, in mid-November, for giving a second reading to an extended version of the amendment that he had opposed in September.160CJ vii. 217a. In March 1653, he was a teller in two apparently minor, non-partisan divisions on the bill for the New Representative.161CJ vii. 263b, 270b.

Harington’s final appointment in the Rump occurred on 15 April 1653, when he was added to a committee for satisfying the claims of the Irish Adventurers.162CJ vii. 278b. He was doubtless dismayed at Cromwell’s forcible dissolution of Parliament five days later, on 20 April, but not to the extent that he made any noteworthy protest against the army’s proceedings. In June, the council of officers deprived him of his rooms in the Stone Gallery at Whitehall, and he was obliged to move to the house of his recently deceased father on Aldersgate Street.163CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 394; HMC 5th Rep. 392, 394, 397.

Later career, 1654-60

In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, Harington was returned for Middlesex, apparently taking either the second or third of the county’s four places.164A List of Knights & Burgesses for Several Counties (1654), 4 (E.805.6); Perfect List of the Members Returned (1654, 669 f.19.8). He probably owed his election to the strength of his interest as one of Middlesex’s godly grandees and the owner of Swakeleys. Listed among those Members approved by the council, he was named to a Commons committee on 4 September to prepare a declaration announcing a day of public fasting and humiliation.165Severall Procs. of State Affaires no. 258 (31 Aug.-7 Sept. 1654), 4093 (E.233.22); CJ vii. 366a. But as this would be his only appointment in this Parliament, it seems very likely that he was among those ‘eminent assertors of the liberty of their country’ – i.e. republican Members – who withdrew from the House in mid-September in conscientious refusal to sign the Recognition pledging to be true and faithful to Cromwell and the protectoral government.166Ludlow, Mems. i. 392; Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 86.

In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Harington reportedly stood for Middlesex again – this time, it was alleged, as part of an anti-government group under the direction of the Fifth Monarchist, Edmund Chillenden.167TSP v. 286. But if Harington did stand for the county on this occasion, he was not among the successful candidates. Late in August, he joined Hesilrige, Scot I, Edmund Ludlowe II* and other former Rumpers in lending moral support to Henry Neville* in his lawsuit against the pro-Cromwellian sheriff of Berkshire for ‘foul practices’ during the county’s election.168Ludlow, Mems. ii. 35. Having stood for Middlesex again in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659, Harington suffered another defeat – despite predictions that he would prevail on a poll.169Clarke Pprs. iii. 174.

It was only with the restoration of the Rump in May 1659 that Harington was finally able to resume his parliamentary career. Between 7 May – the first day of the restored Rump’s sitting – and 7 October, he was named to 34 committees and served as a teller on one, minor, division.170CJ vii. 790a. A significant proportion of these appointments were to committees for remodelling London’s and the nation’s militia, managing the armed forces and for raising assessment and other revenues.171CJ vii. 647a, 647b, 656b, 672b, 678b, 684b, 691a, 709a, 729a, 734a, 757b, 762a, 769a, 772a, 791b. On 9 May, for example, he was named to a seven-man committee for inspecting the state’s treasuries, collecting customs and excise and for improving public finances.172CJ vii. 647b. And having been named that same day (9 May) to a committee for settling the militia of London, Westminster, Tower Hamlets and Southwark, he assumed what was apparently a leading role in re-organising the capital’s trained bands – culminating in his appointment on 2 August to bring in a commission for restoring Philip Skippon* as commander-in-chief of London’s militia forces.173CJ vii. 647a, 739a, 745b. Harington was an active member of the Westminster militia commission that summer and was commissioned in August as a colonel of foot in the Middlesex trained bands.174CJ vii. 739a, 756a; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 97. He also reported from, and may have chaired, a committee set up on 19 July for bringing in legislation, that the militia commissioners would enforce, for requiring London’s householders to give an account of lodgers, horses and arms on their premises.175CJ vii. 725a, 728a, 728b. His only appointment relating to religious affairs was to a committee set up on 1 July for punishing Quakers and other persons who disturbed public worship.176CJ vii. 700b.

Harington was elected to the restored Rump’s council of state on 14 May 1659 and served as its president from 20 May to 3 June and again for a few days in late August.177CJ vii. 654a; Bodl. Rawl. C.179, pp. 2, 25, 45; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 143, 156. But neither his attendance record at Whitehall nor his tally of conciliar committee appointments were particularly impressive.178Bodl. Rawl. C.179, passim; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. xxiii-xxiv. He was added to the committee of safety – the council’s own executive body – on 9 August in response to reports of a Presbyterian-royalist conspiracy to seize London; and he was named in August, September and October to committees for Scottish and Irish affairs, for plantations, for conferring with the Portuguese ambassador and to receive the French ambassador. The majority of his conciliar appointments, however, were to committees of relatively minor significance.179Bodl. Rawl. C.179, pp. 60, 63, 80, 87, 146, 217, 218, 220, 223, 400-2; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 155, 157, 163, 184, 215, 230, 236, 254, 256. Of his six reports from the council to the House – all but one of which he delivered in August – three represented advice from Whitehall on measures for countering the threat of royalist insurrection in the wake of Sir George Boothe’s* rebellion and to encourage the ‘good people of these nations and in the city of London ... to show their good affections to this Commonwealth in suppressing the same’.180CJ vii. 747a, 749a, 752a, 753b, 755a, 773b; Bodl. Rawl. C.179, pp. 286, 402.

In the days following the army’s dissolution of the Rump on 13 October 1659, Harington was involved in the sometimes heated political discussions between Hesilrige, Scot I, Richard Salwey*, Sir Henry Vane II* and Bulstrode Whitelocke*.181Diary of Sir Archibald Johnston of Wariston ed. J.D. Ogilvie (Scottish Hist. Soc. ser. 3, xxxiv), 146. That he either supported or acquiesced in the army’s coup is evident from his appointment by the council of officers on 15 October to a ten-man committee that included Major-general John Lambert*, Vane and Salwey to consider ‘fit ways and means to carry on the affairs and government of the commonwealth’.182A True Narrative of the Proceedings in Parliament (1659), 21 (E.1010.24); Wariston Diary ed. Ogilvie, 146, 147; Complete Prose Works of John Milton ed. R.W. Ayers, vii. 119. By 22 October, the committee of ten and the council of officers had agreed on an interim government under a new executive, the ‘committee of safety’, to which Harington, Lambert, Vane, Salwey, Whitelocke and 18 others were appointed on 26 October.183True Narrative, 41; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 131. The committee seems to have regarded Harington as one of its more reliable members, appointing him to its sub-committees for settling the government of the three nations and to negotiate with commissioners sent from Scotland by General George Monck*.184True Narrative, 63; Clarke Pprs. iv. 136; Whitelocke, Diary, 543. However, by late November it was reported that he had joined Scot I, Neville and their republican allies in defiance of the committee’s authority, for which he was removed from the Westminster militia commission.185Clarke Pprs. iv. 301.

If Harington did indeed fall off from the committee of safety, it would explain why he seems to have encountered no hostility from his parliamentary colleagues on taking his seat in the re-restored Rump late in December 1659. Moreover, on 31 December he was elected to what would be the Rump’s final council of state, from which he made at least two reports to the House, and served as president from late January to mid-February 1660.186CJ vii. 800b, 823b, 830b; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. xxv, 338, 358. In the Commons, he was named to 15 committees between 28 December and 9 February – including those to investigate threats to the safety of London and Parliament; to bring in qualifications for new MPs and those electing them; to remodel the county benches and the commissions for managing the army and admiralty; and to re-draft Hesilrige’s bill for an oath renouncing the ‘pretended title of Charles Stewart and the whole line of the late King James and of every other person as a single person, pretending ... to the crown of these nations’.187CJ vii. 798b, 800a, 801a, 802a, 803a, 806b, 807a, 808b, 811a, 813a, 818a, 821a, 822a, 838b. On 4 January, the Rump appointed Harington and Nicholas Love to thank the Presbyterian divines Cornelius Burgess and William Jenkyn for their sermons to the House that day.188CJ vii. 803b. Harington’s last appointment in the Commons was on 9 February, when he was named in second place, after Hesilrige, to a committee for remodelling the common council after its recent defiance of Parliament.189CJ vii. 838b; Prose Works of Milton ed. Ayers, vii. 167-9. When a new council of state was elected a few days after the re-admission of the secluded Members on 21 February, Hesilrige, Harington ‘and others of that faction’ were voted out of Whitehall.190CJ vii. 849; CCSP iv. 572. In early March, it was reported that Henry Neville, Harington ‘and that gang’ had withdrawn from the Commons.191CCSP iv. 589. Nevertheless, Harington was listed among those present in the House when the Long Parliament was finally dissolved in mid-March.192The Grand Memorandum, or a True and Perfect Catalogue of the Secluded Members of the House of Commons sitting 16 March 1659 (1660, 669 f.24.37). In the elections to the 1660 Convention, he and former Cromwellian Sir William Roberts* stood jointly – and, as it proved, unsuccessfully – for Middlesex against the Presbyterian pairing of Sir Gilbert Gerard* and Sir William Waller*, as well as two royalist candidates.193CCSP iv. 644.

Exile and death

At the Restoration, Harington’s brief appearance at the king’s trial in 1649 was sufficient to ensure his exemption from the act of pardon and oblivion.194CJ viii. 60a, 60b, , His request to his kinsman Edward Montagu II* to employ his ‘great interest’ in both Houses on his behalf, or to secure a pardon from the king, apparently had little effect.195Bodl. Carte 73, f. 443. Although Harington did not face prosecution in 1660, he evidently felt under threat of arrest and imprisonment, and by December he had adopted an assumed name and gone into hiding in Dugard’s house.196CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 413; 1661-2, p. 132. Writing to his wife in March 1661, he professed to ground his hopes for pardon upon the king’s ‘gracious mercy and compassion towards an ancient family’ and the intercession of the Scottish courtier Charles Maitland, 3rd earl of Lauderdale.197Add. 23206, f. 30. What seems to have excited his enemies and pursuers was not so much his republican zeal, and far less his negligible participation in the king’s trial, but rather the prospect of laying hands upon his sizeable estate. Harington certainly believed that he was the victim of such a design and tried to make clear that his estate was ‘much short of that value which common fame gives it’.198Bodl. Carte 73, f. 443; Add. 23206, f. 30.

Summoned before the Commons in June 1661 to suffer the ‘pains, penalties and forfeitures’ of those excepted from pardon, Harington was nowhere to be found, whereupon the House voted that his estate be confiscated, that he be imprisoned for life and stripped of his knighthood and baronetcy and that he suffer the pain and indignity of being drawn on a sledge to Tyburn with a halter round his neck before being conveyed back to the Tower.199CJ viii. 285b, 286b. According to one royalist pamphleteer, in failing to appear before the House, Harington had skipped bail (granted him by him the Commons’ serjeant-at-arms) and ‘unworthily left’ his surety ‘in the lurch’.200W. Winstanley, The Loyall Martyrology (1665), 152. Harington’s wife petitioned both the crown and the Commons in 1661, pleading (among other things) that he be ‘freed from the imprisonment and riding on the sledge’ and allowed to return home. The solicitor-general pronounced him ‘a person of the least malice of any’ of those involved in the trial and a worthy object of pity. It was also stated that Charles II had promised him a pardon and that the Lords had interceded on his behalf, although there is no record to this effect. However, her petition was denied on the rather technical grounds that Harington was not in government custody at the time.201HMC 7th Rep. 151; CBT i. 298; Somers Tracts, vii. 453-4; SP29/47/124, f. 226; CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 213. He was apparently staying at Dugard’s House in October 1661, and the following month a warrant was issued for his close imprisonment ‘for treasonable designs and practices’.202CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 132; HMC 11th Rep. vii. 3. The crown issued a search warrant for him in June 1663.203CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 161. But by this point he had probably decided to flee to the continent, and by January 1666 he was living at Antwerp.204Harington, Holy Oyl, 324; CSP Dom. 1665-6, p. 342. Harington’s wife managed to retain Merton, at considerable cost, but was obliged to sell Swakeleys in 1665, and Ridlington was granted to the duke of York.205CSP Dom. 1661-2, pp. 301, 408; Dunkin, Oxon. ii. 37-9; VCH Oxon. v. 224; Godfrey, Swakeleys, 13.

Harington spent most of the second half of the 1660s, and probably longer, in exile on the continent, where he wrote a lengthy treatise that mingled poetry, ‘divine meditations upon the great mysteries of our faith and salvation’, and ‘a Scripture-catechism dedicated to the service of his wife and children’. This work was published in 1669 and again in 1682.206Harington, Holy Oyl; Horae Consecratae (1682). In his poem ‘The Royal Exchange’, he lamented his fall from a place

...Of honour in three nations’ state;

To be the object of this world’s disgrace,

Of obloquy and highest hate.

That after twenty years, hard service done,

(Upon my country’s call) wherein

I lost five thousand pounds; yet asked no boon,

Nor wages, whilst I sat therein,

Should now a prisoner be for life; and dead,

As to the world, to children, wife,

From saints, and public worship, separated:

(My food and comfort, joy and life.)

That after divers thousand pounds a year

Possession, in a moment’s time,

I should deprived be of all, and fear,

A starving both of me and mine...207Harington, Holy Oyl, 433.

When his wife died in 1675, the Oxfordshire estate passed to the eldest son who, on Harington’s own death in April 1680, also regained the baronetcy.208CB. According to family tradition, Harington was still in hiding when he died, whereupon his body was secretly buried in Merton church.209Dunkin, Oxon. ii. 39; VCH Oxon. v. 224; Davis, Parochial Colls. 207; Oxford DNB, ‘James Harrington (1607-80)’. No will is recorded. Harington was the last of his line to sit in Parliament.