WALLER, Edmund (1606-87), of Hall Barn, Beaconsfield, Bucks.

To his contemporaries, Waller was the man widely regarded as the author of the finest English lyric poems. Some would even have gone further and called him the most accomplished poet to have written in English. His friend, the seigneur de Saint-Évremond, assured Pierre Corneille that Waller was ‘one of the greatest wits of the age’.41The Letters of Saint Evremond ed. J. Hayward (1930), 75. However, while he lived, Waller was almost as famous for his parallel career in politics and it may well have been the case that he saw that as being more important than his poetry. Indeed, his fame as a poet was undoubtedly offset in his lifetime by his notoriety as a politician. That same wit and polished refinement that so impressed his contemporaries when they encountered it on the page and in Parliament found equal expression in the charming and dexterous perfidiousness which was what also made him so distrusted. Waller, the poet’s poet, was also a politician’s politician.

Early career

From the outset Waller was wealthy and well-connected. His father had died while Waller was still a boy, so he inherited the substantial family estates in Buckinghamshire as soon as he came of age.42PROB11/129/135. He later made a good marriage to a wealthy City heiress, although the wedding in 1631 got him into trouble with the London authorities as his wife, Anne Banckes, was a ward of the court of aldermen and they married without permission.43Analytical Index to...Remembrancia, 319-20. She was a niece of Katherine, Lady Barnardiston, the stepmother of Sir Nathaniel Barnardiston*.44PROB11/158/330; Bucks. RO, AR 93/2006/109. Through his close friend, Viscount Falkland (Lucius Cary*), Waller was by the 1630s part of the group of ambitious young intellectuals usually known as ‘the Great Tew circle’ (after the Oxfordshire village where Falkland lived). Although most of those in that group did not yet hold court office (and Waller never would) and the world of Great Tew should not simply be equated with that of the Caroline court, this was a prestigious and fashionable milieu. Another of his useful connections at that time was with the Northumberlands. When the countess of Northumberland died in December 1637, he penned a verse tribute to her, while, when the 4th earl (Algernon Percy†) fell ill the following year, he wrote another poem welcoming his recovery.45The Poems of Edmund Waller ed. G.T. Drury (London and New York, 1893), 31-5. He and Northumberland would become political allies as well as friends in the 1640s. Moreover, during the late 1630s Waller attempted to woo Lady Dorothy Sydney, daughter of the 2nd earl of Leicester (Sir Robert Sidney†).46Poems of Edmund Waller, pp. xxi-xxx; CSP Dom. 1639, p. 262; Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 275. As ‘Sacharissa’, she inspired some of his most famous poems.47Poems of Edmund Waller, 43-54, 60-5. His hopes of marrying her were finally dashed in July 1639 when she married Henry Spencer, 3rd Baron Spencer of Wormleighton.

The 1630s was also the decade in which Waller established his reputation as a leading poet. In fact, he had not begun writing poetry seriously until he was in his late twenties, but he was then quick to demonstrate his flair for the form. In doing so, he followed the conventional course of a courtier poet by writing poems in praise of the king’s policies. The idea of Charles I as a strong monarch defending British interests abroad was set out in his poem on the 1637 Sallee expedition (commanded by William Rainborowe*), while he portrayed the controversial restoration of St Paul’s Cathedral entirely positively in another poem from that period.48Poems of Edmund Waller, 13-14, 16-18. Writing about the part played by Falkland in the first bishops’ war of 1639, he presented that conflict in more upbeat terms than some of his contemporaries would have done. To him, it was mainly a chance to restore the nation’s martial prowess.

Heaven sends, quoth I, this discord for our good,
To warm, perhaps, but not to waste our blood;
To raise our drooping spirits, grown the scorn
Of our proud neighbours, who ere long shall mourn
(Though now they joy in our expected harms)
We had occasion to resume our arms.49Poems of Edmund Waller, 76.

Already, however, Waller’s public stances were not entirely sincere. It was all very well to celebrate the Sallee expedition, but Waller had failed to pay his share of the Ship Money contribution that had financed it and subsequent events do rather suggest that his failure to pay reflected his opposition to the tax.50Ship Money Pprs. and Richard Grenville’s Note-Bk. ed. C.G. Bonsey and J.G. Jenkins (Bucks. Rec. Soc. xiii), 78, 88. He would later claim to have been present in the court of exchequer when the judgments in the Hampden case were handed down, recalling the great groans from the spectators which had greeted them and the contrasting cheers for Justice Sir John Croke’s† dissenting verdict.51Northcote Note Bk. 85. The likelihood must be that he was there to give moral support to John Hampden*, his kinsman and a close friend. Nor should it be supposed that, in reality, Waller supported the king’s religious policies. Some years earlier he had assisted the feoffees for impropriations in their acquisition of the livings at Chipping Wycombe and Aylesbury.52Lttrs. and Pprs. of the Verney Family, ed. J. Bruce (Cam. Soc. lvi), 179-80. He would later make plain his dislike of the archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, and the other bishops.

Short Parliament, 1640

Waller had first been elected to Parliament in early 1624 several weeks short of his eighteenth birthday. As he would point out to the Commons in 1643, he had been ‘almost from my childhood in this House’.53Mr Wallers Speech in the House of Commons on Tuesday the fourth of July 1643 (1643), 4. Given that he had since sat in the 1626 and 1628 Parliaments, he already had more experience as an MP than most of his contemporaries when he stood for election to the Short Parliament in 1640. The inhabitants of Amersham, the constituency closest to his estates at Beaconsfield, then elected him, just as they had done 12 years before. Later that year Sir Simonds D’Ewes* would complain that Waller was ‘a young man and scarce known in the House’.54Procs. LP ii. 21. This was unfair and Waller would quickly make his mark. There was never any doubt about his abilities as a politician. Even D’Ewes would change his mind, judging that he had ‘admirable parts of nature both of wit and elocution and no small abilities in respect of learning and acquisited knowledge’, and D’Ewes had ‘often heard him speak with great judgment and applause in the House’.55Harl. 164, f. 396. After his death, his friend, (Sir) Thomas Higgons*, would pay tribute to Waller’s abilities as a parliamentary orator.

He seem’d by nature made for everything,
And could harangue, and talk, as well as sing;
Persuade in council, and assemblies lead;
Now make them bold, and then as much afraid:
Give them his passions, make them of his mind;

And their opinion change, as he inclin’d.56Poems to the Memory of that Incomparable Poet Edmond Waller Esquire (1688), 3.

John Aubrey spoke of his ‘admirable and graceful elocution’ and the 1st earl of Clarendon (Edward Hyde*) of his ‘admirable parts and faculties of wit and eloquence’.57Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 276; Clarendon, Hist. iii. 38. This was not mere flattery. Difficult though it is to judge such matters from this distance, Waller has a strong claim to having been one of the best in the strong field of fine orators who sat in the Parliaments of the 1640s.

In the Short Parliament Waller lined up with the king’s critics in the Commons, although already he showed himself capable of taking an independent line of his own. His willingness to complain was offset by his view that any complaints needed to be precise and focused. His first speeches supported those who wished to make an issue of the dissolution of the previous Parliament in 1629.58Aston’s Diary, 14, 16, 19. (This was something that he would still be raising as a concern 18 months later.59CJ ii. 298a; D’Ewes (C), 48.) He may also have spoken in the debates responding to the speech by the lord keeper, John Finch†, 1st Baron Finch, on 21 April to both Houses requesting supply. Or at least, a speech by him purporting to have been delivered during those debates later circulated in manuscript and print.60An honorable, and learned speech made by Mr Waller in Parliament (1641, E.199.42); A Worthy Speech Made in the House of Commons (1641, E.198.11); Procs. Short Parl. 221, 306-8. In it he appeared to adopt a clear stance. He warned that the king was being corrupted by ambitious clergymen and therefore concluded that ‘the restoring of this nation in general, to the fundamental and vital liberties’ was far more urgent than any need for supply.61Honorable, and learned speech, 5; Worthy Speech, 6. Even if the speech was not actually given, his opposition to the influence of the Laudian bishops could not have been made plainer. Then on 27 April he objected to the attempts by the Lords to sway their views on the urgency of supply.62Aston’s Diary, 70-1. But, when they got down to discussing specific grievances, he became more awkward. In opposing the Laudian view that communion tables must be placed at the east end of chancels, some MPs took an equally strict opposing view and believed that they should never be placed there; Waller, on the other hand, argued that some latitude should be permitted.63Aston’s Diary, 90, 91. In the debate on religious worship at the universities, he tried to make a distinction between practices that could be considered grievances and those that were actually illegal. John Pym*, who probably felt that Waller was trying to muddy the issue, responded that this was irrelevant.64Aston’s Diary, 97. This is the earliest hint of the ill feeling that would soon develop between these two men. On the matter of Ship Money, Waller may have made the provocative suggestion that one of the judges had implied that not even Parliament could overrule the king on the matter.65The Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend 1640-1663, ed. S. Porter, S.K. Roberts and I. Roy (Worcs. Hist. Soc. n.s. xxv.), 54. He also made the more helpful suggestion that Ship Money should be treated as a grievance of the whole country, not just of individual shires or boroughs; had he not secured agreement on this point, the Commons might well have become bogged down in attempts by local petitioners to outdo each others’ claims of hardship when general legal arguments were always going to be more effective.66Aston’s Diary, 157. Similarly, on 2 May he wanted MPs to stick strictly to the issue of parliamentary privilege when that was what they were supposed to be debating.67Aston’s Diary, 122. He was impatient two days later when the king’s spokesmen failed to turn up in time.68Aston’s Diary, 157. He cannot have welcomed the king’s decision to dissolve this Parliament when he did.

Reluctant critic of the king, 1640-1

It is unclear whether Waller intended to stand in the Long Parliament election at Amersham. The presumption must be that he did assume he would be re-elected there, but then decided to take advantage of the chance to stand for the Cornish constituency of St Ives. That option only became available in late October when Philip Sidney, Viscount Lisle (Lady Dorothy Sydney’s brother), decided to sit instead for Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight. It is likely that Waller was nominated by the Godolphins, for they had the dominant electoral interest in the town and Sidney Godolphin* was another member of the Great Tew circle.

On taking his seat in this Parliament Waller resumed his support for the attacks on the king’s policies. His first committee appointments, which came on 12 December 1640, were to the committees to receive the petitions against Lord Keeper Finch, the other Ship Money judges and the bishop of Bath and Wells, William Piers.69CJ ii. 50a; Procs. LP i. 581. Two days later he contributed his personal recollections of Finch’s behaviour as the presiding judge in the Hampden case to the debate on the lord keeper.70Northcote Note Bk. 85-6. After arguing on 22 December that the Ship Money judges should be imprisoned to prevent them tampering with witnesses, he was sent as the messenger to ask the House of Lords to obtain recognizances for their good behaviour from the said judges. This was the occasion of the complaint about his inexperience by D’Ewes, who then suggested that Waller had carried out this task incorrectly, but no one seems to have paid much attention to D’Ewes’s view. The Lords agreed to the request immediately.71CJ ii. 56a, 56b; LJ iv. 114b-115a; Procs. LP ii. 21, 22, 24; Northcote Note Bk. 102, 103. This was not the end of Waller’s interest in the matter. The following spring he was given the task of preparing the case against one particular judge, Sir Francis Crawley.72CJ ii. 154a; Procs. LP iv. 526, 534, 536. Moreover, a speech would later be printed purporting to be one which Waller had made against Crawley at the joint conference with the Lords concerning the Ship Money judges on 6 July 1641. As there is no independent confirmation that Waller had spoken on that occasion and as it was printed without permission, there can be no certainty that the speech is genuine, although, given his existing interest, it was quite possible that Waller spoke on that occasion. If he did make this speech, the printed version shows that he concentrated on condemning Crawley’s claim that it would not be within Parliament’s power to revoke the crown’s prerogative of levying Ship Money.73Mr Wallers Speech in Parliament (1641, E.198.37). It is a measure of his prominence in the proceedings against Ship Money that he headed the list of MPs named to the committee appointed on 19 June 1641 to consider the bill to declare Ship Money to have been illegal.74CJ ii. 181b. There may have been a sense in which Waller was seen as acting on behalf of Hampden over this issue.

With regard to religion, Waller’s views were more qualified. As his speech to the previous Parliament had already indicated, he felt that firm action was required against the bishops. When John Selden* warned that the Lords might object on the grounds of privilege to their complaints about the bishop of Durham, John Cosin, and his Laudian innovations at Durham Cathedral, Waller suggested that MPs perhaps ought to advise their lordships that Cosin would not be the last peer whom they would wish to exclude from Parliament.75Procs. LP ii. 252. Then, speaking in the debate about Laud on 25 February 1641, he made clear his view that the archbishop should be held responsible for the actions of the court of star chamber.76Two Diaries of Long Parl. 9. This was in line with his support for the moves to prevent the bishops from holding secular offices; he suggested that allowing them to sit in Parliament only encouraged their pride.77CJ ii. 165b; Procs. LP iv. 728. Yet he was uncomfortable with the implications of the root and branch petition, speaking against the motion that it be committed.78Procs. LP ii. 391. A speech on the subject purportedly by him was printed in July 1641. This argued that Parliament had already introduced the necessary limits on the bishops’ power and that giving in to popular pressure for further reforms would be unwise.79A Speech Made By Master Waller (1641, E.198.30). This may well have been Waller’s view and even if that speech is discounted, he should be counted among those MPs who pressed for modified episcopacy but who would subsequently oppose its outright abolition.

The calls for the disbandment of the Irish army in early 1641 were all about getting the king to earn their trust. Waller shared that concern to the extent of acting as joint manager at the joint conference with the Lords on the subject in late February.80Procs. LP ii. 442; CJ ii. 84b, 85a, 91b, 93b. Playing on the fears of Catholic influence at court, he cleverly persuaded the Commons to link this to a demand that prominent Roman Catholics, like Walter Montagu, Sir Kenelm Digby, Sir Tobie Matthew† and Sir John Winter, be removed from around the queen.81CJ ii. 85a; Procs. LP ii. 444, 767; Two Diaries of Long Parl. 86. In the minds of many of his colleagues, these issues were also linked to the need to remove the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) from the ambit of the king. Quite possibly for that reason, Waller was then named to the committee appointed to meet with the Lords on 6 March to discuss Strafford’s trial.82CJ ii. 98a. Several days earlier he had argued that Strafford should not be allowed legal representation in matters of fact.83Procs. LP ii. 578. But, as with the future of episcopacy, Waller soon developed doubts. Speaking in the debate on 14 April on the proposed attainder against the earl, he tried to draw a distinction between merely breaking the law and subverting it.84Two Diaries of Long Parl. 39; Procs. LP iii. 556. In other words, he was suggesting that whatever Strafford may have done, it may still have fallen short of the precise charge against him in the bill. Speaking five days later, he may have argued that the earl was not guilty of treason.85Procs. LP iv. 9. When the Commons finally voted on the third reading of the attainder bill on 21 April, Waller was absent.86Harl. 4931, f. 126.

His later comments on the fate of those involved in the army plot help explain why. In August 1641 he defended Henry Percy* and Henry Jermyn* on the grounds that, as with Strafford, there was insufficient evidence to justify the charge of treason. He also warned that exaggerating their guilt would only make it easier for them to get acquitted.87Procs. LP vi. 382, 385. Such scruples were not a way to gain popularity in the Commons in 1641. He stood by another of the plotters, William Davenant, presenting his petition to the Commons on 8 July and offering to stand bail for him. This was enough to secure Davenant’s release.88Procs. LP v. 558; CJ ii. 203b.

It was not just the Irish army that Waller was keen to see disbanded. He saw a deal to enable the English and Scottish armies in the north to disband as being equally urgent.89Procs. LP iv. 462, v. 242; CJ ii. 152a. This was the best guarantee that the hostilities which he had so glibly celebrated just two years before would not recur. By the summer of 1641 he was as willing as any MP to vote money to the king, but only if it was used to pay off these soldiers.90CJ ii. 164b; Procs. LP v. 85. And he did have his doubts about the Scots. He even suggested that they should retain some English soldiers in arms in case the Scots did not disband.91Procs. LP vi. 492. When Viscount Lisle wanted leave to visit his troop of horse, Waller obtained the necessary permission, probably in the hope that thus would assist the disbandment.92Procs. LP vi. 194, 199. His suggestion on 18 August that £3,000 be sent at once to the garrison at Portsmouth is likely to have been made for the same reason.93Procs. LP vi. 472, 476. One unintended consequence of these disbandments was that the French and the Spanish government began to try to recruit some of these men. Waller was one of the four MPs sent on 8 September to raise these concerns with the French and Spanish ambassadors and he also liaised with the Lords on the subject.94CJ ii. 254a, 282b, 284a, 285b; LJ iv. 393a; Procs. LP vi. 684, 691.

In late June 1641 Waller sat on the committee to consider the king’s planned visit to Scotland and several weeks later took a leading role in the discussions between the Lords and the Commons on whether commissioners should be appointed with powers to grant the royal assent during Charles’s absence.95CJ ii. 189b, 247a. Then, on 9 September, having helped with the preliminary arrangements from the brief recess, he was named to the Recess Committee.96CJ ii. 284a, 284a, 288b; LJ iv. 392b; Procs. LP vi. 710. Hyde would later exaggerate when he wrote that Waller ‘had from the beginning of the Parliament been looked upon by all men as a person of very entire affections to the king’s service, and to the established government of church and state’.97Clarendon, Hist. iii. 38. The king is unlikely to have been quite so complimentary. During this first year of the Long Parliament Waller had been his own man and had failed to follow the court line on several major issues. Even so, it was already evident that those driving policy in the Commons wanted to go in directions in which Waller would be reluctant to follow. It certainly did not help that he and Pym now disliked each other. But it would be wrong to see this as no more than a matter of personalities. There were huge issues at stake and Waller very much had his own views about them. He was not going to keep quiet.

Growing doubts, 1641-2

On reconvening in October 1641 after the recess, the Commons began to consider proposals that would have forced the king to seek parliamentary approval for any official appointment. This worried Waller. Although he was included on the committee appointed to draft the petition to the king on the subject (28 Oct.), he was, according to Sir Edward Nicholas†, one of those MPs who opposed the idea.98CJ ii. 297b; Evelyn Diary ed. Wheatley, iv. 115-16. He would have preferred it if they had dwelt instead on the need to preserve the peace of the kingdom.99D’Ewes (C) 26. In any case, he probably viewed all the talk of evil counsellors with some cynicism. On 5 November Pym proposed that Parliament should seek Scottish assistance for the suppression of the Irish rebellion only if the king agreed to remove the said evil counsellors. Waller then mischievously pointed out that Strafford had allegedly told Charles that he would be absolved from all rules of government if Parliament refused to help him against an earlier rebellion. He may even have been hinting that what Parliament now wanted to do in suppressing the Irish rebellion was little different than Strafford’s supposed offence of seeking Irish assistance against the Scottish rebels. Pym objected and Waller was forced to apologise, doing so ‘ingenuously’.100D’Ewes (C) 95.

This was not the only occasion on which he could be accused of treating the rebellion in Ireland with insufficient seriousness. When John Denham’s† play The Sophy was a hit on the London stage at about this time, Waller joked that ‘he broke-out like the Irish rebellion – threescore thousand strong, before anybody was aware’.101Aubrey, Brief Lives, i. 217. Moreover, the attempt by Sir Edward Partheriche* to have the theatres closed down because of events in Ireland failed after Waller objected that the theatre was a trade and should not be penalised. For once, Pym agreed with him.102PJ ii. 182. Yet, in fact, Waller was as concerned as anyone. He backed the bills for Irish impressment, for disarming popish recusants and for the relief of the Irish Protestants.103CJ ii. 305b, 349b, 350a. Later, he probably supported the idea that the fines levied on persons who had been impeached should be used to aid the war in Ireland.104CJ ii. 563a.

Several times he now found himself defending others who were out of step with Parliament. He objected to the dismissal of the 2nd earl of Portland (Jerome Weston†) from the governorship of the Isle of Wight, for, as he told the Commons, he knew Portland well and could assure them that the earl had ‘a true English heart’.105D’Ewes (C) 64. As a teller, he helped get Sir John Berkeley*, who was accused of involvement in the army plot, released on bail.106CJ ii. 347a; D’Ewes (C) 304. In January 1642 he took offence at the petition from the London trained bands on the ground that it libelled his friends Sir John Culpeper* and Falkland.107PJ i. 33. He also defended James Stuart, 1st duke of Richmond, when he was accused of saying that Parliament should be adjourned for six months, with the implication being that it was Parliament that was causing all the trouble. Waller rather implausibly claimed that Richmond had meant only that the House of Lords should be adjourned for that period.108PJ i. 189. Some would also have seen his role in the division on 15 February 1642 as attempting to assist another suspect figure, Endymion Porter*.109CJ ii. 433b; PJ ii. 391.

Waller’s doubts about Parliament’s policies were multiplying. When he suggested in late October 1641 that the bill for the abolition of episcopacy would be defeated, he evidently thought that this would be a good thing.110D’Ewes (C) 53. He certainly disapproved several weeks later when those petitioning against the 4th earl of Dorset (Sir Edward Sackville†) began chanting, ‘No bishop, no bishop’.111D’Ewes (C) 225. Nor was he enthusiastic about the Grand Remonstrance. On 15 December 1641, he argued that it should not be put to a vote, while the following day he and Orlando Bridgeman* tried to oppose the suggestion that the king should not be able to use what was said in the debates on that subject against individual MPs.112D’Ewes (C) 295, 298. His selection by the Commons on 19 February 1642 to accompany the earl of Leicester on his mission to inform the king of the letters which had recently been received from Lord Digby (George Digby*) was probably intended as a conciliatory gesture. However, Waller got himself excused because of his ‘indisposition of health’ and Culpeper was sent in his place.113CJ ii. 441b, 443a; PJ i. 417, 423. It may not have been with any great enthusiasm that he was later named to the committee to prepare the Commons’ declaration defending the militia bill.114CJ ii. 478b.

As tensions mounted in Yorkshire, Waller was keen that neither side acted precipitately. On 13 May 1642 he probably took the lead in drafting the letter of thanks to the Yorkshire gentlemen who were calling on the king to resist the suggestions that he seize the Hull magazine.115CJ ii. 570b; LJ v. 64a-b; PJ ii. 314. Three days later he drafted a further letter instructing them to stop the planned meeting of the gentlemen of the county which the king had ordered.116CJ ii. 573b, 574a; PJ ii. 327. Yet equally, he objected to parts of the declaration issued by Parliament on 19 May which, in the context of events at Hull, called on the king to accept their counsel but which could also be read as providing a justification for rebellion. He took particular offence at the passage about the king’s duty to obey his coronation oath.117PJ ii. 340. Appointed to the joint Lords-Commons committee to consider the defence of the kingdom on 27 May, he was able to get its remit extended to include consideration of how a civil war could be avoided.118CJ ii. 589a-590a; LJ v. 88b; PJ ii. 376-8. This was almost certainly a coordinated move to allow Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland to use that committee to promote what became the Nineteen Propositions. Waller’s interest in the proposed treaty with the Scots at this time may have been motivated by the hope that the Scots could be persuaded into backing a settlement on that basis.119CJ ii. 601a, 603a. More overtly hostile measures were opposed by him. He felt that a promise that any loans of arms and horse raised by Parliament would be repaid was irresponsible as that would only encourage the outbreak of armed conflict.120PJ iii. 44. Following the king’s uncooperative response to the Propositions, Waller was one of those who tried to salvage something from them.121CJ ii. 635b, 637a, 643a; PJ ii. 121.

Everyone was aware of the potential international dimension to any civil war. When Sir Thomas Rowe*, absent in Vienna as the English ambassador, wished to deny the accusation that he had offered an alliance to the emperor, Ferdinand III, without consulting Charles I, he addressed his letter on the subject to Waller. In accordance with Rowe’s wishes, Waller laid the letter before the Commons on 8 July and then helped secure the agreement of the Lords to their decision that it should be forwarded to the French ambassador.122A Letter from the Right Honourable Sir Thomas Row (1642, 669.f.6.46); CJ ii. 659b-660b; LJ v. 191a; PJ iii. 187, 188. In such an atmosphere of widespread distrust, any misunderstanding might have far-reaching consequences and was therefore to be avoided.

During the debate on 15 July on the powers to be granted to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, as lord general, Waller deployed the conventional distinction between the king’s natural and artificial bodies, probably to imply that Essex was seeking vice-regal powers.123PJ iii. 217. At this time, in the summer of 1642, this was all-too-topical, for such ideas were at the heart of the constitutional case for resistance that Parliament was seeking to construct. Exactly what point Waller was making is unclear, although he may have been trying to turn those constitutional arguments around in an attempt to limit Essex’s powers. The king’s reply on 19 July to the latest message from Parliament was little more than a demand that they loyally submit to him. While many in Parliament had already lost patience with the king, Waller for one felt that both sides needed to keep talking, however fruitless those talks might seem. On 25 July he implored the Commons to continue the search for some sort of agreement with the king. Any reply to him was now better than none and it was Waller who carried the draft of that reply up to the Lords the next day.124CJ ii. 692a, 694b; LJ v. 242a. On 28 July he acted as teller for the defeated minority in the division on the tonnage and poundage bill.125CJ ii. 694a.

This was the last occasion on which Waller’s presence in the Commons was recorded until late October. On 2 September he was one of the MPs suspended for non-attendance.126CJ ii. 750a. Clarendon in writing his History would mention this period of absence, but would then explain why Waller decided to return:

… at the time the standard was set up, having intimacy and friendship with some persons now of nearness about the king, with the king’s approbation he [Waller] returned again to London, where he spake upon all occasions with great sharpness and freedom; which (now there were so few there that used it, and there was no danger of being overvoted) was not restrained, and therefore used as an argument against those who were gone upon pretence that they were not suffered to declare their opinions freely in the House; which could not be believed when all men knew what liberty Mr Waller took, and spake every day with impunity against the sense and proceedings of the House. This won him a great reputation with all the people who wished well to the king, and he was looked upon as the boldest champion the crown had in both Houses…127Clarendon, Hist. iii. 38-9.

Of course, foremost among his friends ‘now of nearness about the king’ was Falkland.

Speaking for the king, 1642-3

Waller reappeared at Westminster on 29 October 1642, just six days after the battle of Edgehill. It was now clear that there would be no quick victory for either side. His return was made possible by his promise to donate £450 to Parliament over three months.128CJ ii. 827a. But within two days he was already indicating that any commitment on his part to the war was slight. The Commons was debating the king’s letter from Edgehill instructing his subjects not to assist Essex. Waller warned that civil disorder was now a real possibility, that London would be attacked next, that both the armies would disregard the law and that therefore they should resume their efforts for peace.129Add. 18777, f. 47. He made an unholy alliance with Henry Marten* on 23 November, when he and Alexander Rigby I* seconded Marten’s motion calling for the disbandment of the Committee of Safety.130Harl. 164, f. 131. Waller doubtless regarded the Committee as one of the main obstacles to any peace, which indeed it was. On 31 December he tried to block the idea that all MPs and peers should subscribe money to Parliament. Having lost that point, he then showed himself to be most reluctant to subscribe any money himself.131Add. 18777, f. 109.

Unsurprisingly, Waller was one of the leading figures in the first serious attempt since the fighting had begun to negotiate a peace. In late December 1642, after the draft peace proposals had been sent down from the Lords, he pressed for the Commons to set aside time to debate them.132Harl. 164, f. 273v. He was then named to the committee to consider the preamble.133CJ ii. 903a. A key issue in those proposals was how many named individuals should be exempted from them. Digby was the one obvious name. It was decided that others should be proceeded against only after a division in which Waller and William Pierrepont* were the tellers for the losing side.134CJ ii. 905b. The following day (30 Dec.) Waller acted as teller in a related division. On that occasion those he was counting were those who did not want the demands to include the removal of the 1st earl of Bristol from court.135CJ ii. 907b. He then sat on the committee to consider other specific propositions.136CJ ii. 911a. All this meant that he was an obvious choice to be included on the delegation to deliver the completed propositions to the king at Oxford.137CJ ii. 945a; LJ v. 575a, 577b; Add. 18777, f. 135.

The meeting with the king took place on 1 February 1643. The king’s welcome was most notable for the fact that Charles greeted Waller, who may have been bringing up the rear, with the words, ‘though you are the last, yet you are not the worst, nor the least in my favour’.138Whitelocke, Diary, 142. Although some might have seen this as a tactless remark, implying as it did that Waller was close to the king, it might also have worked in his favour, for what influence he had at Westminster did rather depend on the king listening to him. That Charles only responded with a separate set of propositions of his own was definitely a setback for those, like Waller, who had wanted these talks.

Once back at Westminster Waller’s instinct was to accept what the king had offered. He agreed with the Lords when they argued that the king was right to say that there should be a cessation of the fighting but not a disbandment of the armies before any treaty was agreed.139CJ ii. 959a; Add. 18777, f. 148v. He and Denzil Holles* acted on 10 February as the tellers for those who wanted to agree with the Lords. They were defeated.140CJ ii. 961b. It must be assumed that Waller subsequently supported the Lords’ compromise of a limited cessation which paved the way for the Oxford negotiations later that month. Once those talks had started, he was certainly keen to see them succeed. He had no time for Henry Marten’s view that Parliament’s negotiators should be recalled if they did not secure an immediate disbandment.141Harl. 164, f. 352. On 7 April he was among those who wanted to remove the last clause from the new instructions to be sent to the negotiators as being needlessly provocative. It fell to Waller and Sir Guy Palmes* as the tellers to establish that they were in a minority. He seems to have shared D’Ewes’s view that the vote was lost only because they were the ones who had to leave the chamber to be counted.142CJ iii. 34a; Harl. 164, f. 360.

This was just one of eight occasions during the early months of 1643 when Waller acted as a teller.143CJ ii. 947a, 961b, 976a, 979a, 992b, 993a; iii. 8a, 34a. This reflected his enhanced role as the leading voice for the embattled minority in the Commons. But that did not mean that he was always on the losing side. Divisions tended to occur only when Waller and his friends thought that they might win. In an echo of their unlikely alliance the previous November, he and Marten were able on 23 February to reduce the Committee of Safety to its original membership.144CJ ii. 976a. The cause of the queen’s Capuchin priests who served the Catholic chapel at Somerset House was never going to be a popular one in the Commons, but, rather unexpectedly, the result of another division which Waller won was that the French diplomatic representative in London was at least consulted before action was taken against them.145CJ iii. 8a. Waller was less successful when he tried to obtain permission for Sir Kenelm Digby to leave the country or in persuading the House to re-commit the bill for seizing delinquents’ estates.146CJ ii. 979a, 993a.

The failure of the Oxford negotiations in mid-April 1643 was the worst possible outcome for Waller. In the months that followed he was still active in the Commons, but, with so many of his colleagues now more interested in ending the war only through military victory, he was probably spending most of his time trying to ameliorate the war’s side-effects.147CJ iii. 65b, 68b, 80b, 93b, 100b, 108b; Harl. 164, f. 388v. Even the resumption of the proceedings against the Ship Money judges must have given him less pleasure than it would once have done.148CJ iii. 64a-b; LJ vi. 22b. He had come to realise that debating with his colleagues would not be enough.

Treachery, 1643-4

What became known as ‘Waller’s plot’ arose out of the efforts by his brother-in-law, the clerk of the queen’s council, Nathaniel Tompkins, to organise royalist resistance in London. Waller’s contacts with Falkland at Oxford, strengthened by the recent peace overtures, ensured that they had the king’s backing. They were then joined in their plans by a London linen draper, Richard Chaloner, and by another of Waller’s kinsmen, Alexander Hambden. (Hambden had previously been the subject of Waller’s poem, To a Friend, in which he had contrasted his own amorous misfortunes – he had still not forgotten Lady Dorothy – with the ease with which Hambden had found love.)149Poems of Edmund Waller, 102-3. Also involved was Sir Nicholas Crisp*, who hoped to organise various members of the corporation of London into a council of war. It was later alleged that they had planned to raise 25,000 men and that William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, Pym, John Hampden, Sir Philip Stapilton* and William Strode I* were to be seized. Waller’s specific role was to seek support among his colleagues at Westminster, although whether he made much progress with this never became clear. He would claim that he had in very general terms sounded out Selden, Pierrepont and Bulstrode Whitelocke*, but that he had abandoned this approach as soon as it became clear that they were hostile to any such plan.150Whitelocke, Diary, 147. Clarendon may have had a point when he argued that the main aim of the conspirators was not an uprising as such, only the encouragement of discontent in London so as to persuade Parliament to sue for peace.151Clarendon, Hist. iii. 40-1.

Whatever their exact plans, the plot began to unravel on 22 May 1643. A letter written from the earl of Dorset to his wife was intercepted, which led to Hambden being detained for questioning.152Harl. 164, f. 396; CJ iii. 97a. But exactly what was afoot was still vague. On 30 May Waller was sufficiently confident to attend the Commons, even speaking in the debates, and that evening he was said to have boasted to Tompkins on going to bed, ‘By God, if we can bring to pass this business, we will have anything’.153Harl. 164, f. 397. In fact, it was already too late. What Waller did not know was that Tompkins’s clerk had given the Committee of Safety crucial details about the conspiracy under questioning on 28 May. Later on the evening of 30 May they had Waller’s house in Holborn raided. Waller was arrested in his bed. The following day Pym was able to brief the Commons and obtained permission for the Committee of Safety to conduct further investigations.154CJ iii. 110a; Harl. 164, f. 210. The reaction of John Glynne* – that this was ‘one of the most horrid and dangerous plots that ever was in this kingdom’ – may have been intended mainly to whip up panic, but much of the alarm at Westminster was genuine enough.155Harl. 165, f. 95 By 6 June Pym was ready to make a set piece statement to the Commons.156CJ iii. 117a-b. The opportunity to damn such an infuriating opponent, especially one he so heartily disliked, was not one Pym was ever going to waste. What he had to say, which included evidence from Waller’s interrogation, made the extent of Waller’s involvement indisputable.157Harl. 165, ff. 396-397v. Those MPs present in the House immediately took a vow denouncing the plot.158CJ iii. 117b-118b. On 14 June the Commons authorised the printing of an account of the conspiracy and appointed the next day as a day of thanksgiving in London for their deliverance.159CJ iii. 128b-129a, 130a, 130b; Harl. 165, ff. 112, 113; A Brief Narrative of the Late Treacherous and Horrid Design (1643).

Waller’s prospects now looked very bleak. Only one course of action, betrayal, could possibly save him. If nothing else, he understood the logic of his predicament. Coldly and cynically, he now set out to incriminate as many people as possible. He told his captors everything he knew and possibly a bit more. On 12 June the earl of Portland and 2nd Viscount Conway (Sir Edward Conway†) were taken into custody on the basis of his statements and by 29 June he had managed to implicate another of his friends, the earl of Northumberland. As he knew all three men well, it is entirely possible that he had told them something about what was being planned. But the specific allegations he made in an attempt to incriminate them did not stand up to detailed scrutiny and the proceedings against the three peers would eventually be dropped.160CJ iii. 126b, 149a, 150a, 151b; LJ vi. 90b, 115a, 116a-117a; Harl. 164, ff. 100-105v. On the other hand, Waller’s testimony did help convict the non-noble conspirators. This would give Parliament its excuse to save him from the block.

On 4 July Waller was brought before the Commons.161CJ iii. 154a-b. According to D’Ewes, he was dressed all in black ‘as if he had been going to execution itself’ and had the look of ‘despairing dejectedness’. D’Ewes also claimed that some MPs wept at this sight .162Harl. 165, f. 144. That Tompkins and Chaloner were to be executed the following day no doubt concentrated Waller’s mind. He confirmed his full involvement in the plot and asked that he be tried by the Commons rather than by a military court.163CJ iii. 154a; Mr Wallers Speech in the House of Commons (1643, E.60.11); Harl. 165, ff. 143v-145. Asked to give more details about the origins of the conspiracy, he claimed that Chaloner and Sir Hugh Pollarde* had been the instigators.164CJ iii. 154b. Ten days later the Commons voted to bar him from ever sitting in Parliament again.165CJ iii. 166b. From that moment he ceased to be the MP for St Ives. On 6 September it was agreed that he should be sent to the Tower.166CJ iii. 230b, 240b.

It took over a year before Waller’s fate was confirmed. In May 1644 his distant kinsman, Sir William Waller*, submitted a petition from him to the Commons asking that, as his possessions had all been sold and his estate ‘ruined’, he be given permission to go into exile.167Harl. 166, f. 61v; Harl. 483, f. 68. But three months later the assumption still seems to have been that he would stand trial.168CJ iii. 281b, 284b, 493b, 610a. Only on 23 September 1644 did the Commons decide that he should instead be fined £10,000 and banished abroad. The money was to be used to pay those troops to be recruited in London for service in the west country, where the king had recently won his major victory at Lostwithiel. Sir Robert Harley* and John White II* were given the job of getting the money from Waller.169CJ iii. 637a, 639b; Harl. 166, f. 124; Harl. 483, f. 123. Waller raised it within days.170Harl. 166, ff. 127, 129v. In anticipation of such an eventuality, he had already in June sold his lands in Bedfordshire for £5,700.171Bucks. RO, AR 93/2006/121-2. That October he raised a further £1,000 by mortgaging his mother’s lands at Beaconsfield to John Godbold*.172Bucks. RO, AR 93/2006/123.

Harley and White meanwhile oversaw the passage of the bill to enforce Waller’s banishment. That bill seems to have encountered little, if any, opposition in either House. It became law on 4 November 1644.173CJ iii. 643b, 647a, 678b-679b; LJ vii. 47a-b; A. and O. It has always been clear that Waller had been saved for the most sordid of reasons – he had first betrayed his co-conspirators and then found that Parliament could be bought, albeit at a staggeringly large price. What is less obvious is that he still had friends in the right places. Some in the Commons probably did let him escape execution because they still saw him as one of their own.

Exile, 1644-52

Waller made a reluctant exile. On leaving the country, his main concern became planning his return. When Thomas Hobbes, ‘his great friend’ from their days at Great Tew, wrote to him at Calais in August 1645, he assumed that Waller would be spending his time ‘meditating how you may to your contentment and without blame pass the seas’.174Aubrey, Brief Lives, i. 369; T. Hobbes, The Corresp. ed. N. Malcolm (Oxford, 1994), i. 124. One way of occupying his time which had been considered was for him to translate Hobbes’s De Cive from Latin into English and Hobbes encouraged him to do so, but nothing ever came of this.175Hobbes, Corresp. i. 124; Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 277 What Waller did publish at about this time was his first printed collection of poems.176E. Waller, Poems (1645). His publisher may have hoped to profit from his notoriety.

Much of what is known about Waller’s time in exile comes from the diary of his good friend and fellow exile, John Evelyn. He joined Evelyn in northern Italy in early 1646 and the two of them visited Padua, Venice and Vicenza. During part of this period they were accompanied by William Wray*.177Brown, Inglese e Scozzesi, 154; Evelyn Diary ed. de Beer, ii. 478-80. At Padua they met the most notable of the English exiles in Italy, Thomas Howard, 21st earl of Arundel.178A. Grey, Debates of the House of Commons (1769), ii. 387-8. Later that year Waller had moved to France – he is known to have been living at one point at Rouen, partly because two of his daughters, Margaret and Mary, were born there – and by the autumn of 1648, when Evelyn visited him, he had moved the short distance to Saint-Valéry.179E.T. Riske, ‘Waller in exile’, Times Literary Supplement (1932), 734; Lipscomb, Buckingham, iii. 182; Evelyn Diary ed. de Beer, ii. 536-7. In late 1648 or early 1649 his wife made a return visit to England accompanied by Lady Fanshawe, the wife of Sir Richard Fanshawe†.180The Mems. of Anne, Lady Halkett and Ann, Lady Fanshawe ed. J. Loftis (Oxford, 1979), 122.

The identity of this second wife is something of a mystery. The firmest piece of evidence is that their epitaph would describe her as ‘Maria ex Bressyorum Familia’.181Waller, Poems (8th edn. 1711), p. lxxxi. It has also often been said that she was from Thame in Oxfordshire.182Poems of Edmund Waller, p. lviii; ‘Edmund Waller’, Oxford DNB. One possibility could therefore be that she was Mary Danderidge, whose husband, Richard Brasey of Thame, died sometime between 1643 and 1647.183Vis. Oxon. 1566, 1574 and 1634 (Harl. Soc. v), 273; PROB11/201/346. The counter-argument to that would be that Richard Brasey’s widow already had an adult daughter and yet Waller’s second wife went on to produce 13 children.

By late 1649 Waller was living in Paris.184Evelyn Diary ed. de Beer, ii. 567. The time he spent in the French capital allowed him to renew his friendship with Hobbes and he got to know those other philosophers René Descartes and Pierre Gassendi.185Aubrey, Brief Lives, i. 366, 369. The birth of a daughter in September 1650 was the cause of some confusion after the Catholic midwife baptised her without the parents’ knowledge. Waller had her re-baptised, with Evelyn’s wife, Mary, standing as her godmother.186Evelyn Diary ed. de Beer, iii. 19; Mems. of Anne, Lady Halkett and Ann, Lady Fanshawe, 133. The Wallers were living at Saint Germain-en-Laye, close to Henrietta Maria and the community of royalist exiles around her, when this child died in August 1651.187Evelyn Diary ed. de Beer, iii. 39-40.

On the surface Waller shared the hopes and fears of those other exiles. His poem addressed to Lady Morton at the Louvre on New Years Day 1650 may have expressed his optimism that they would see Charles Stuart restored to his throne.188Poems of Edmund Waller, 134-5. (The doubt is that those particular lines may have only been added after the Restoration.189G.W. Morton, ‘A note on Edmund Waller’s “To my Lady Morton, on New Year’s Day, 1650”, N and Q ccxlvi. 18-19.) But, unlike most of the exiles, Waller was not there by choice and, unlike the select few who were formally barred from returning, he was still keen to go back to England, with or without a restoration of the monarchy. In November 1651 this became clear when he petitioned the Rump for permission to return. On considering the petition on 27 November, Parliament agreed to revoke the sentence of banishment and gave permission for him to live again in England.190CJ vii. 44a. It is possible that his brother-in-law, the regicide and army officer Adrian Scrope*, played some part in securing this decision.191Lipscomb, Buckingham, iii. 188. Waller said farewell to Evelyn in Paris in January 1652, although within weeks the two of them were able to dine together in London.192Evelyn Diary ed. de Beer, iii. 53, 57.

Turncoat, 1652-60

In allowing him back into the country, Parliament was assuming only that Waller would live quietly as a private citizen. Nor, as such, need his return have been seen by his royalist friends as a betrayal of their principles. Yet, once his cousin, Oliver Cromwell*, became lord protector, Waller found himself willing to go much further and, in the end, he went the full way of endorsing him. That endorsement when it came could not have been more public, for in 1655 Waller resumed his career as a public poet with his notorious printed panegyric on Cromwell. His theme was Cromwell as the statesman who had unified the nation in the aftermath of civil war and who had made Britain feared abroad.

Your drooping country, torn with civil hate,
Restored by you, is made a glorious state;
The seat of empire, where the Irish come,
And the unwilling Scotch, to fetch their doom.

The sea’s our own; and now all nations greet,
With bending sails, each vessel of our fleet;
Your power extends as far as winds can blow,
Or swelling sails upon the globe may go.

Heaven, (that has placed this island to give law,
To balance Europe, and her states to awe)
In this conjunction does on Britain smile;
The greatest leader, and the greatest isle!193Poems of Edmund Waller, 138-9.

There can be no doubt that Waller put the best possible gloss on Cromwell’s achievements. Whatever else might be said about him, there was no dispute that Cromwell had indeed united the three kingdoms (albeit by force of arms) and even his enemies acknowledged that he had enhanced England’s international standing. But Waller’s comments were so flattering that it was never enough for him to claim that he had deliberately played up only Cromwell’s strong points. It was this and other such poems that his friend Katherine Jones, Viscountess Ranelagh, had in mind when she suspected him of being deliberately outrageous for poetic effect.194The Corresp. of Robert Boyle, ed. M. Hunter, A. Clericuzio and L.M. Principe (2001), i. 209. Even more than John Dryden, that other poet who praised Cromwell in the 1650s and who lived through the Restoration to be embarrassed by such supposed lack of judgment, Waller was never allowed to forget this poem. Dryden at least had the excuse of youthful indiscretion; Waller seemed doubly hypocritical because he was a royalist both before and after this Cromwellian interlude.

Moreover, Waller’s appointment by the protectoral council as one of the commissioners for trade in December 1655 only seemed to confirm that he was an opportunistic turncoat who had changed sides with the sole aim of resuming his political career.195CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 54. Even if he was acting for the highest of motives (which does seem unlikely), this appointment was still remarkable as evidence for how far the protectoral government was prepared to trust him, despite all the obvious reasons for caution. Any doubts about his integrity may have been suppressed by Cromwell’s willingness to trust him on the basis of their kinship. In March 1656 Cromwell and the council ordered the deputy-major-general for Buckinghamshire, William Packer*, to drop any attempt to require Waller to pay the decimation tax.196CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 214.

Waller continued to reciprocate that trust. Writing to Hobbes in the summer of 1656, he complimented Cromwell as someone ‘who sees a good way before him’ and described the rule of the major-generals as ‘a perfect foundation of government’. Only the setbacks abroad and the financial crisis threatened the success of the protectorate. He also assumed the next Parliament would a nominated one, without giving any hint that he thought that this would be a bad thing.197Hobbes, Corresp. i. 296. At about this time, Josias Berners* told John Hobart* that Waller was ‘forward for my lord protector’, although he had also heard Waller argue that the war with Spain was damaging the economy.198Bodl. Tanner 52, f. 154.

Waller again chose to eulogise the lord protector several months later when he wrote verses to mark the return of Edward Montagu II* with the captured bullion from the Spanish plate fleet in October 1656:

Let the brave generals divide that bough,
Our great protector hath such wreaths enow;
His conquering head has no more room for bays;
Then let it be as the glad nation prays;
Let the rich ore forthwith be melted down,
And the state fixed by making him a crown;
With ermine clad, and purple, let him hold
A royal sceptre, made of Spanish gold.199Poems of Edmund Waller, 155.

This was all too topical, for by the time Waller wrote these lines, the new Parliament was probably already debating whether to offer the crown to Cromwell. The conclusion must therefore be that Waller was one of those who wanted Cromwell to be transformed from protector into king. Cromwell’s death in September 1658 provided Waller with a third occasion on which to pay poetic tribute to him. That poem once again concentrated on the protector’s achievements in maintaining order at home and in making Britain feared abroad.200Poems of Edmund Waller, 162-3.

Turning again, 1660-87

It might be thought that, as a declared supporter of the protectorate, Waller would have little to gain from the Restoration. It is a testimony to his adaptability and, more interestingly, to his ability to inspire continuing confidence in his old friends of whatever opinion that he still had much of his political career ahead of him. Charles II was sufficiently forgiving that he reappointed him as a trade commissioner, recognising that he could be as useful in that role to him as he had been to Cromwell. Waller’s election to the Cavalier Parliament in 1661, on the nomination of James, duke of York, also meant that he would spend much of this reign as an MP. As such, he helped bring down Clarendon, he distanced himself from the earl of Danby (Sir Thomas Osborne†) and, perhaps as a legacy of his time at Great Tew, he consistently opposed his colleagues’ enthusiasm for religious intolerance. He lived on into the reign of James II, whose desire for toleration he welcomed, and, by being elected to the 1685 Parliament, he achieved the unique distinction of being an MP under James I, Charles I, Charles II and James II. Indeed, he could claim the even more remarkable distinction of having published poems in praise of Charles I, Charles II, James II and Cromwell. This most eventful of seventeenth-century lives finally ended in 1687.