MAINWARING, Sir Philip (c.1589-1661), of London and Dublin.

Mainwaring’s family had settled at Over Peover, in Cheshire, by the reign of Henry III.23Ormerod, Cheshire, i. 477. As the youngest of seven sons he had no fortune or estate to recommend him. However, his ‘sweetness of ... disposition and other great parts’ won him the favour of James I or one of his courtiers, for in 1609, at the age of just 20, he was granted the office of surveyor and comptroller of victuals for the royal army in Ireland, with a salary of £182 10s a year.24SO3/4, unfol. (entries May 1609, Jan. 1610); SP77/14, p. 552; Strafforde Letters, ii. 360. He should not be confused with Arthur Mainwaring, purse bearer and servant to the lord chancellor, 1st Baron Ellesmere (Thomas Egerton I†).25J. Davies, The Scourge of Folly (1610), 202; Oxford DNB, ‘Sir Philip Mainwaring’. One of Mainwaring’s colleagues on the Brussels embassy of 1621 referred to Mainwaring as the king’s cupbearer, but his name does not feature on the surviving lists of the royal household under James and Charles.26Loseley Manuscripts ed. Kempe, 424. Nevertheless, Charles would later describe Mainwaring as ‘having had his breeding in the court and in foreign parts ... ourself having certain knowledge of his long and diligent attendance upon our dear father ... and upon ourself ever since our access to the crown’.27Strafforde Letters, i. 263.

By 1618, Mainwaring had attached himself to Thomas Howard, earl of Arundel, who tried on several occasions to interest the voters of Steyning, Sussex, in his client, but without success.28Add. 15970, f. 14; CSP Dom. 1623-5, p. 54; E. Lodge, Portraits of Illustrious Personages of Great Britain, iii. 293; M.F.S. Hervey, The Life, Corresp. and Collns. Of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (Camb. 1921), 248-9; H.A. Mereweather, A.J. Stephens, Hist. of the Boroughs and Municipal Corporations (1835), iii. 1513-14; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Philip Mainwaring’. When Mainwaring did secure his first seat in Parliament it was for the Yorkshire constituency of Boroughbridge on the interest of his uncle by marriage Thomas Tanckred.29HP Commons 1604-1629. His return for Derby in 1628 has been credited to the influence of William Herbert, 3rd earl of Pembroke.30HP Commons 1604-1629; J.K. Gruenfelder, Influence in Early Stuart Elections (Columbus, Ohio, 1981), 128. It was perhaps at Westminster that Mainwaring first became acquainted with another Yorkshire MP, Sir Thomas Wentworth†, the future earl of Strafford. As well as serving as MPs together, the two men shared friends or – in Mainwaring’s case – patrons in the earl of Arundel and Sir George Calvert†.31HP Commons 1604-1629; Oxford DNB, ‘Sir Philip Mainwaring’; C.K. Brownhill, ‘The Personal and Professional Relationships between Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford and His Closest Advisors’ (Sheffield Univ. PhD thesis, 2004), 147-8. By 1628, Mainwaring was acting as Wentworth’s intelligencer and man-of-business at court, and in 1630 he assured the now Viscount Wentworth that both he and his brother were ‘so much your lordship’s servants that is not possible to be more’.32Sheffield City Achives, WWM/Str P12/95, 149, 181; Strafforde Letters, i. 54; The Wentworth Pprs. ed. J.P. Cooper (Cam. Soc. ser. 4, xii), 281, 301; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Philip Mainwaring’; Brownhill, ‘Strafford and His Closest Advisors’, 146-7.

Wentworth’s appointment as lord deputy of Ireland in 1632 gave him ample opportunity to reward his followers, and in 1634 he appointed Mainwaring secretary of state for Ireland.33Strafforde Letters, i. 263. News of this appointment was greeted with apprehension at court. Archbishop William Laud evidently had a good opinion of Mainwaring and supported his promotion to the secretaryship. But he felt bound to inform Wentworth that his friends at court considered the appointment ill-advised, and he cited the lord treasurer (Francis Cottington, 1st Baron Cottington) who said that if Wentworth ‘meddled with making him secretary’ he would burn his fingers.34Strafforde Letters, i. 211, 329; W. Laud, Works ed. J. Bliss, W. Scott (Oxford, 1847), vii. 71, 77, 92, 93, 238, 524; Brownhill, ‘Strafford and His Closest Advisors’, 144-5. It is not known what inspired these dark forebodings, which apparently proved groundless. Mainwaring’s friendly relationship with Laud and his sarcastic remarks in a letter to Secretary Francis Windebanke* about the writings of a Calvinist minister in Geneva suggest that he was no admirer of the puritans.35CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 539. In 1637, he contributed £50 towards the re-edification of St Paul’s Cathedral – an endeavour much favoured by the king and Laud.36LMA, CLC/313/I/B/004/MS25474/004, p. 13. But whether he shared Wentworth’s enthusiasm for the Laudian church reforms is impossible to say.

In the elections to the Irish Parliament of 1634, Mainwaring was returned for the county Cork constituency of Clonakilty.37CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 63. He owed his election to Wentworth, who had evidently recommended him to the borough’s patron, Richard Boyle, 1st earl of Cork.38H.F. Kearney, Strafford in Ire. (Manchester, 1959), 46-7. Mainwaring proved so useful to Wentworth in the Irish House of Commons that six years later the now lord lieutenant was determined to secure him a seat in the Short Parliament in England.39Strafforde Letters, i. 352; Brownhill, ‘Strafford and His Closest Advisors’, 182, 184-6, 189-90. The constituency that Wentworth selected for this purpose was the Northumberland borough of Morpeth, where he enjoyed an interest either as commander of the king’s army in the second bishops’ war or through his principal northern ally, Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland. The Morpeth voters duly returned Mainwaring on 16 March 1640.40Supra, ‘Morpeth’. Although Mainwaring received no committee appointments in this Parliament, he took an active part in debate.41Aston’s Diary, 35, 42, 52, 53, 65, 120, 139, 140. Perhaps his most important contribution came on 23 April during a debate on supply, when he drew the House’s attention to the exemplary speed with which subsidies had been granted by the Irish Parliament then in session.42Aston’s Diary, 42; Procs. 1640. 173. This was the precisely the line that Wentworth (now the earl of Strafford) was plugging in the Lords. On several occasions in debate, Mainwaring took issue with those Members more concerned with the redress of grievances than satisfying the king. On 24 April, he urged the House not to jump to groundless conclusions (‘maybes’) about Convocation’s drawing up of new Canons.43Aston’s Diary, 52, 53. On 4 May, he questioned whether John Pym’s wish to frame the vote on Ship Money in terms of the tax’s legality or illegality would constitute a fitting answer to the king’s offer to trade it for subsidies.44Aston’s Diary, 140.

The king’s defeat in the second bishops’ war undermined Strafford’s influence in the north and thus denied Mainwaring any chance of a seat in the Long Parliament. He returned to London during the winter of 1640-1 to attend the king and secure royal warrants for the administration in Dublin.45SO3/12, ff. 129r-v, 130, 131, 132v, 137v, 141v, 144. As a witness for the defence at Strafford’s trial in the spring of 1641, Mainwaring testified on the eight and nineteenth articles, which related to the earl’s rule in Ireland, and on both occasions roundly vindicated his conduct.46LJ iv. 190b, 202a; Procs. LP iii. 222-3, 226, 231, 344, 353, 354; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. viii. 232-3, 507. Early in June, the king granted a patent to Mainwaring, Sir William Savile*, Sir William Pennyman*, Sir George Wentworth I* and other gentlemen to serve as trustees of all Strafford’s property, from which they were to provide for his widow’s jointure, pay off his debts (which amounted to £107,000) and raise portions for his children.47Infra, ‘Sir William Savile’; SO3/12, ff. 154v, 155, 157. Mainwaring attended the king that summer and procured more royal warrants relating to Irish affairs, including orders to the lords justices of Ireland and the bishop of Derry, requiring them to find benefices for ‘divers ... poor ministers of Scotland’ who had fled their native country in opposition to Presbyterianism and the Covenanters.48SO3/12, ff. 161v, 162, 166v, 168, 168v, 169, 171.

Mainwaring was reportedly at York (the site of the royal court) in June 1642 when the Lords summoned him as a delinquent for refusing to obey a parliamentary order concerning the estate of the Irish peer Edward Viscount Loftus, of which he was trustee.49CSP Ire. 1660-2, p. 578; LJ v. 158b-159a; HMC Var. iii. 224-5. According to Mainwaring’s subsequent version of events, he was taken into custody on the Lords’ order, but escaped and joined the king at Oxford.50HMC Var. iii. 215. He then served as treasurer-at-war for the king (for how long he does not state) until he left Oxford and ‘obscured himself’.51HMC Var. iii. 215, 216, 220. He was evidently living in London by 1649, when he was imprisoned upon an action brought against him by the heir of Viscount Loftus. In June the following year, the council of state continued his imprisonment, citing his delinquency in serving the king at Oxford.52CSP Dom. 1650, p. 203. Mainwaring was adamant that he had never been in arms against Parliament and that he had no estate on which to compound.53HMC Var. iii. 220. However, it was not until October 1651 that the council ordered his discharge.54CSP Dom. 1651, p. 496. Moreover, the lawsuit brought against him by Loftus’s heir rumbled on for years.55HMC Var. iii. 224-5; Oxford DNB, ‘Sir Philip Mainwaring’; Brownhill, ‘Strafford and His Closest Advisors’, 334-5.

At the Restoration, Mainwaring wrote to Secretary Sir Edward Nicholas, pleading his devotion to Charles II’s cause ‘in what has been most useful – constant prayer for him’.56CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 441. His subsequent re-instatement to his Irish offices was evidently not his first choice as a reward for loyal service, and by March 1661 he had agreed to surrender his secretaryship (for a suitable fee) in regard of his old age and infirmity.57CSP Ire. 1660-2, pp. 142, 250; CSP Dom. 1666-7, p. 239. He was returned to the Cavalier Parliament in a by-election at Newton, Lancashire, on the interest of the Legh family of Lyme, but died, intestate, in London on 2 August 1661 just a few weeks after taking his seat.58PROB6/37, f. 68v; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Newton’; ‘Sir Philip Mainwaring’; Ormerod, Cheshire, i. 483. His place of burial is not known. His great-nephew Thomas Mainwaring† sat for Cheshire in the 1660 Convention.59HP Commons 1660-1690.