WALLOP, Robert (1601-67), of Farleigh Wallop, Hants, and Covent Garden, Westminster.

Robert Wallop belonged to one of the wealthiest and most influential Hampshire gentry families, with a long tradition of parliamentary service, distinct puritan leanings, and a strong landowning interest in Ireland. Thus it was perhaps unsurprising that he should rise to prominence during the 1640s as a leading supporter of Parliament in Hampshire and (sometimes) as an actor in Irish affairs. His extensive estates around county Wexford, built up over the previous 60 years, were threatened by the Irish rebellion of 1641, while the Shropshire inheritance from his mother suffered greatly from royalist depredations.50Goff, ‘English conquest of an Irish barony’, 131-2, 142, 146-7. But although he played a not inconsequential role in dealings with the Scots and may be identified at certain points as an Independent, active in a few important committees, his attendance at Westminster – while constant in terms of the regularity of his re-election – was actually very intermittent. Moreover, his re-elections to the council of state under the commonwealth are difficult to explain apart from a role as a representative of his locality. Direct evidence as to his motivation is almost non-existent, although a case can be made that he was often inspired by personal interest. He participated in a few meetings related to the king’s trial, but did not sign the death warrant. Perhaps more damningly, in 1659-60 he briefly had a high profile among the commonwealthsmen. It is an irony that the consequence was the financial disaster that he had been seeking to avert – and worse.

Early career

By 1640 Wallop was an experienced Member of Parliament, having sat in the previous five assemblies, albeit without making any noticeable impression on their proceedings. He was first returned for Andover in a by-election, while still under age, and in the first two Parliaments of the reign of Charles I he sat for one of the county seats, despite only being in his mid-twenties.51HP Commons 1604-1629. While his family’s high standing was undoubtedly important in this, the fact that his wife was a daughter of the lord lieutenant, Henry Wriothesley, 3rd earl of Southampton, doubtless also helped. In 1622 Wallop’s father gave him permission to ‘enjoy the full liberty and freedom in making choice of such a companion from whom he must derive a great deal of happiness or infelicity’.52HMC Portland, iii. 15. Such confidence was clearly not misplaced. His marriage, which took place some time before July 1626, when his eldest daughter Elizabeth was baptised, enhanced his social position: between 1625 and 1628, he was assessed at £20 for the purposes of the subsidy, despite not having yet inherited the family estate.53St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, par. reg.; Sheffield City Archives, Wentworth-Woodhouse Muniments, Strafford pprs. 22(160); Hants RO, 44M69/G4/1/27, 34, 99. It also gave him in his brother-in-law Thomas Wriothesley, who succeeded as 4th earl in 1624, an associate of particular significance nearly 40 years later.

Like his father, in the late 1620s and 1630s Wallop was an active local administrator and justice of the peace, named to the majority of commissions. He participated in organising collections for St Paul’s Cathedral in 1634 and delayed, rather than refused, payment of the Forced Loan.54HMC Var. Coll. iv. 174; SP16/52, f. 115. On the other hand, he was one of the most important figures in the county to refuse to compound for knighthood, denying both that he had received a particular summons to appear at the king’s coronation, and that he held freehold land worth £40.55Add. 21922, f. 178. In April 1631 Wallop was ordered to appear before the privy council, although it is not clear whether he eventually compounded.56Cornwall RO, ME2891; Add. 21922, f. 183. Like his father, he refused to contribute to the first bishops’ war in 1639; like both Sir Henry and the earl of Southampton, by the end of the personal rule he would have been perceived as an opponent of the court.57Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 914.

Wallop was returned to both the Short and Long Parliaments for Andover, the borough which he had represented on three previous occasions.58Hants RO, 37M85/11/PE/22, unfol. His local influence ensured the acceptance of his recommendation of Southampton’s cousin Henry Vernon* to replace Sir Henry Rainsford* when the town needed a new MP in 1641.59Hants RO, 37M85/11/PE/41. He made no recorded impression on the proceedings in the spring of 1640.

Likewise, in the opening months of the Long Parliament there was little overt sign of Wallop’s activity, although he may have been more engaged than is immediately apparent. Of his (mere) two committee appointments in the first 12 months, that on 19 December 1640 to the committee for preaching ministers may have entailed substantial activity as it evolved into the Committee for Scandalous or Plundered Ministers, and it certainly indicates that he was identified at that point with religious reform.60CJ ii. 54b. Since he had not been personally affected, his nomination to the committee considering the court of wards suggests he had a known position on this grievance (16 Feb. 1641).61CJ ii. 87a. He took the Protestation promptly on 3 May, but is not known to have contributed to debates before the outbreak of civil war.62CJ ii. 133b. An acknowledged continuing interest in religious issues is suggested by his inclusion on a committee investigating the methods of those charged with seeking out Catholic priests (13 Nov. 1641), but what was perhaps his major preoccupation was revealed four days earlier when he was among those nominated to consider the propositions of merchants relating to trade with Ireland (9 Nov.).63CJ ii. 309a, 314a. Nominated a commissioner for Ireland in February 1642, Wallop appears to have been active in that regard in the ensuing months.64CJ ii. 453b, 536b; PJ iii. 438; CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 366.

Hampshire parliamentarian activist

As war approached, Wallop became more visible. Having already proved a zealous promoter of parliamentary orders in Hampshire, in late May Wallop was one of the deputy lieutenants dispatched to muster the county militia, ensure the security of the region, and prevent supplies from reaching the royalist garrison at Portsmouth; on 12 August he was a signatory to a letter from the county committee to Speaker William Lenthall*.65I.o.W. RO, OG/AA/30; OG/BB/463; NBC45/16a, pp. 437-8; PJ ii. 394; HMC Portland, i. 51. He and Sir Thomas Jervoise* were ordered to go to Hampshire again on parliamentary service on 27 October, although this may have simply have constituted an affirmation of work they were already doing there for the cause.66CJ ii. 824a; Bodl. Nalson II, ff. 104-5. In any case, Wallop probably needed to stay there for a prolonged period to settle the affairs of his father, who died intestate in November.67PROB6/29, f. 174v.

In 1643 a majority of Wallop’s intermittent appearances in the Commons related to forwarding the interests of his locality. He surfaced first in the Journal on 15 March, when he was named to a committee to consider a petition from the Isle of Wight.68CJ iii. 1a. Two nominations in mid-April related to raising money preceded a Commons’ order of the 18th that Wallop ‘and others’ be repaid money they had advanced for the parliamentarian cause in Hampshire.69CJ iii. 41a, 44a, 50b. He then vanished again from the Journal until 1 August, when he reappeared briefly to take the Covenant, but in the meantime he was evidently busy at the forefront of the county committee and other local commissions.70Add. 24860, ff. 42, 53, 65, 68, 72, 80, 83, 139, 145; Bodl. Nalson IV, ff. 267, 269; V, ff. 73, 81, 83, 87, 105. Once again in evidence at Westminster from mid-October, he was present to consider a petition from Southampton (26 Oct.) and to promote the adequate maintenance of the Portsmouth garrison (28, 30 Oct.).71CJ iii. 289a, 293a, 294a; CCAM 28, 1488. But an unprecedented clutch of mentions in the Journal also indicated an emerging interest in wider issues relating to the war. Named on 12 October to a committee to consider supply for the army, on the 27th he was placed on a committee charged with the security of the western counties.72CJ iii. 274a, 291b, 383b, 409b, 418b, 448a. His stake in a parliamentarian recovery in an area where he had received a substantial inheritance from his mother was considerable. Hopton Castle in Shropshire had been seriously damaged after a successful siege by royalists, while the king had ordered the seizure of Wallop’s lands in Herefordshire.73HMC 7th Rep. 446b; C115/64/5623.

By late 1643 Wallop, who judging by the spread of his appointments was at this point a more regular attender in the chamber, was emerging as a figure of some stature at Westminster.74CJ iii. 329b. On 4 November he was named to the committee to constitute what became the Committee for Taking the Accounts of the Kingdom.75CJ iii. 302a. Most of his visible activity continued to be regionally-directed, however, and it may be that it was precisely his local significance which gained him notice on the national stage. He was named to several committees to manage the defence of the southern counties (30 Jan., 8 and 27 Feb., 9 May 1644).76CJ iii. 383b, 393b, 409b, 486a. But that was at least partly conducted through the Committee of Both Kingdoms* (CBK), of which he was a founder member (7 Feb.), to which he was reappointed (22 May), and at which he was an assiduous attender in February and March, and then a moderately regular one until mid-June.77CJ iii. 391b, 392b, 504a; SP21/7, f. 3; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 21-255. He was recorded in the Journal as reporting from the CBK to the House twice that spring about supplying the army of Sir William Waller* (6 Mar., 4 Apr.), and was also directed by it to liaise with his lord lieutenant, Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, over the military situation in Hampshire (25 Apr.).78CJ iii. 418b, 448a; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 135. On a majority of occasions when the CBK itself recorded delegating him to report to this House in this period, it was also on regional business, while his other work on the Committee reflected this or (to a lesser extent) his interest in the financial and logistical side of the wider war effort. 79CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 34, 64, 92, 93, 102, 136-7, 139, 141, 153, 154, 181, 185, 197, 202, 244, 269, 280.

Yet after 22 May Wallop made no further appearance in the Journal that year. Although he lingered in London another four weeks to attend the CBK, thereafter he was absent from its meetings for a full three months. He had evidently returned to Hampshire: a letter of 26 June from the Committee to him and three other parliamentarian stalwarts in the county implies that all had dissented from the Committee’s order to divert resources expeditiously to assist Waller to take on royalist forces elsewhere, although it is impossible to interpret with confidence Wallop’s personal part in this.80SP21/18, f. 167. He was still noted to be ‘in the country’ in mid-September, when the Committee for Advance of Money* appeared to need his presence in town before it could finally resolve the case of Lady Spencer.81CCAM 364. Pleading the problem of maintaining a quorum, on 20 October the CBK summoned Wallop to return.82CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 56, 61. He responded by attending its meeting on the 28th, and remained active on it until the beginning of September 1645.83CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 76 seq.

The Committee of Both Kingdoms

It was not until January 1645, however, that Wallop reappeared in the Commons Journal, and even then his record there appears relatively modest. This might have been attributed to the alarming presence in Sussex at this juncture of royalist forces under George Goring*, but there was no let-up in his attendance at the CBK, where he could pursue local and national concerns simultaneously.84CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 181-275, esp. 204, 205, 314, 357, 406, 497, 510, 584. For the first time, the latter were evidently a priority for Wallop as representing the CBK’s policies became the main focus of his activity in the chamber. As early as February 1644 Wallop had been appointed to a CBK sub-committee dealing with intelligence matters in relation to the Scots, and that May had been delegated to report to the Commons a petition from Scottish reformado officers.85CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 25, 185. Among those named on 2 January 1645 to meet the Swedish ambassador and on 21 February to discuss the elector palatine, in the meantime he was again involved in talks with the Scots and with the royalists.86CJ iv. 8a, 58a. In late January he had a part in preparations for the Uxbridge negotiations, and before 19 February he had obtained ‘information’ from Oxford to bring to Parliament: the fact that he needed a pass implies that he had gone there personally, but his CBK attendance record reveals that, if he made such a trip, it was exceedingly brief or involved a rendezvous at a place en route.87CJ iv. 33a, 34b, 54b; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 274-313. On 17 March he reported from the CBK to the Commons about the money to be raised to pay off the Scottish army, while in May and June he presented further updates from the CBK on the Scottish commissioners’ proposals.88CJ iv. 82a, 131b, 140b, 178b; CCC 18, 20; HMC Portland, i. 228.

Meanwhile, Wallop’s personal political stance begins to emerge from the complex intersection of his activity on the CBK, in the Commons, and as a leading member of the county committee. In February Oliver St John* perceived that Wallop was amongst those in Hampshire working for the interests of Oliver Cromwell*.89TSP i. 75. That he was named to the committees to confer with the City over raising money for the proposed New Model army under Sir Thomas Fairfax* (6 Mar.) and to prepare the Self-Denying Ordinance (24 Mar.) does not by itself confirm him as a nascent Independent: fellow Hampshire activist, fellow CBK member and Presbyterian leader Sir William Lewis* was also named to the latter.90CJ iv. 71a, 88a. But that there were – as together they pursued compensation for their financial contributions to the Hampshire war chest (3 Apr.) – political differences between the two such as would colour their attitude to potential political settlement, is indicated by Wallop’s first outing as a teller.91CJ iv. 98b. On 28 April he partnered Sir Edward Bayntun* against a majority led by Lewis and Sir Philip Stapilton* in a division over the command of the fleet.92CJ iv. 125a. Wallop’s reports from the CBK of a petition from the Eastern Association (7 Apr.) and proposals for the defence of the Isle of Ely (3 May) probably served the ends of Oliver Cromwell* and his friends.93CJ iv. 102a, 131a.

Over the summer of 1645 Wallop participated in Independent-led projects including the declaration against the activities of the Dutch ambassadors (CBK, 21 May 1645) and the publication of the royal correspondence captured at Naseby (26 June).94CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 510; CJ iv. 174a, 187a. Reporting from the CBK continued to constitute a major part of his contribution to the Commons.95CJ iv. 199b, 230a, 238b, 263b. On 21 July, in what was perhaps a move by Independents to gain more time, he was a minority teller for an hour’s postponement of a debate on the alleged treacherous correspondence with the Scots of Thomas Savile† (1st earl of Sussex).96CJ iv. 214b. On 14 August he was a teller with Hampshire MP and long-standing family friend William Jephson*, for the small majority in favour of an imminent hearing for a petition from Southwark which challenged the Presbyterian control of the militia in and around London.97CJ iv. 241b.

A teller on the opposing side on this occasion was Sir John Clotworthy*, who like both Wallop and Jephson was active in Irish affairs, but from a different perspective. In March 1644 Wallop had been appointed to the CBK’s sub-committee on Irish affairs, established as a ‘war party’ initiative to take control of policy there, and he had remained he remained a prominent member of it.98CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 62, 538. While in Wallop’s case this did not directly translate into visible activity in the Commons, it probably influenced his conduct. He was engaged in further Irish business for the CBK in January 1645, but Derby’s House’s role here began to decline that summer with the establishment by the Presbyterians of a new bicameral executive for Ireland, the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs.99Supra, ‘Irish Committees’; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 230, 257.

Elusive Independent, 1646-8

Having attended the CBK on 1 and 2 September 1645, Wallop was not again among those recorded at its meetings before the last such listing was given on 11 December that year. His reports from it to the Commons on 4 September were his last appearances in the Journal until mid-January 1646. Evidence to account for his absence is not extant, although it might be attributed partly to party strife.

Wallop’s brief reappearance in the Journal in January 1646 may be testament to an Independent resurgence. On the 13th he reported from the CBK a letter to be sent to the king, for which he then promptly obtained approval from the Lords.100CJ iv. 405b. Four days later, in the context of the net slowly closing on royalist Oxford, he was ordered to report on Abingdon.101CJ iv. 409b. On the 23rd he was among those delegated to bring in an ordinance for settling Hampshire lands of several sequestered peers on Lieutenant-general Cromwell.102CJ iv. 416a. He then disappeared again from the record to surface even more briefly on 6 April, when the Commons left to him the responsibility of taking care of the child of his brother-in-law Southampton who had left Oxford in the stream of royalist refugees.103CJ iv. 501b.

It was probably as part of the Independents’ successful bid to take control of the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs in the wake of the king’s flight to the Scots, that on 18 May Wallop was added to its membership; this was confirmed by the Lords on 2 June.104Supra, ‘Irish Committees’; CJ iv. 549a, 554a, 578a-b, 579a; HMC 6th Rep. 119; LJ viii. 351. All the same, his first recorded attendance was not until 22 July, and on a body notable for Hampshire members, he does not stand out in the next few months.105CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 476-516; CSP Dom. 1625-49, p. 700. In the interim he was rather more visible than previously in the Commons, where his committee appointments had a somewhat wider scope than heretofore: he was named chair of the committee addressing landlord/tenant issues in sequestrations (10 June), and was among those considering maintenance for the reformer Samuel Hartlib (25 June).106CJ iv. 571a, 587b. However, once again his chief concern – and the main pointer to his political allegiance apart from his membership of the committee to enquire into the Presbyterian ‘contrivers’ City remonstrance (11 July) – was relations with the Scots.107CJ iv. 615b. On 10 June he was named to a committee to formulate the House’s complaint against them.108CJ iv. 570b. Later he reported to the Commons papers from the Scots commissioners (10 Sept.) and was appointed to a joint committee to confer with the Scots concerning the ‘disposal’ of the king (24 Sept.).109CJ iv. 665a, 675a.

It is perhaps no coincidence that, as the Presbyterians sought to reassert control of the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs in the last three months of 1646, Wallop should fade out of its proceedings and appear only once in the Journal – as a participant in talks with the Lords over arrangements for the great seal (3 Nov.).110CJ iv. 714a. But in this time he also appeared only once (17 Nov.) on the rival committee set up by the Independents, the Derby House Committee of Irish Affairs, which included those who were members of the Committee of Both Kingdoms.111CSP Ire. 1647-1660, pp. 726-7. Perhaps, somewhat surprisingly, as a continuing and publicly-identified member of the latter, he remained more absorbed in relations with Scotland than with Ireland.112[E. Forde], Wine and Women (1646), sig. A2 (E.1189.12). In only two appearances in the Journal in the first nine months of 1647, he was mentioned on 1 January, as a signatory to the treaty with the Scots whereby Charles I was handed over to the English, and on 4 March, when he reported from the CBK further correspondence from the Scots commissioners regarding propositions to the king.113CJ v. 38a, 105b. From January to March he was also present at more than half the recorded meetings of the Derby House committee of Irish Affairs.114CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 728-38.

Another Presbyterian resurgence, culminating in the counter-revolution of the summer of 1647 seems to have deterred Wallop from attending both the House and attendant bodies. Although he was at the Derby House Irish committee on 8 and 9 July, when the Independents had temporarily forced the withdrawal of leading Presbyterians from Parliament, there is no evidence that he joined those who fled to the army during the equally short-lived Presbyterian coup soon afterwards.115CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 759-60; HMC Egmont, i. 440; LJ ix. 385. It seems likely that he retreated to Hampshire. He was listed as absent, but excused, at the call of the House on 9 October.116CJ v. 330. Although he re-appeared in the record on 14 December, when he was named to consider punishment for soap monopolist Sir Henry Compton, and was at the Derby House committee two days later, on the 23rd, that he was directed back to his county to deal with assessments.117CJ v. 383a, 400b; Stowe 184, f. 142.

Wallop’s profile in the Commons was no higher in 1648, perhaps partly on account of local preoccupations. On 24 January he was among commissioners of oyer and terminer thanked by the Commons for their part in the trial of Isle of Wight insurgent leader Captain Burley.118CJ v. 442a. Having appeared at only one of the Derby House committee meetings in the first three months of the year for which attendance was recorded (22 Mar.), it may be no coincidence that his next mention in the Commons Journal was in the middle of another isolated surfacing at Derby House (17, 19, 20 Apr.).119CSP Dom. 1648, pp. 33, 40, 47, 49. On 18 April he and fellow Hampshire Members John Lisle and Nicholas Love were instructed to convey parliamentary orders replacing an alderman at Winchester, where Wallop was a freeman.120CJ v. 535a. Six days later his absence was excused at a call of the House.121CJ v. 543b. He next appeared in the Journal on 13 June as a nominee to the committee to consider the Militia Ordinance.122CJ v. 597b. The context was widespread royalist insurrection and his own – surely connected – unprecedented spell of service at Derby House, where he surfaced at least 16 times between 1 June and 20 July, when he was granted leave by the Commons to go into the country.123CSP Dom. 1648, pp. 90-201; CJ v. 641b. The catalyst for that was doubtless a letter to him on 19 July from the mayor of Winchester alerting him to the danger to Southampton and the Isle of Wight from mutineering ships.124HMC Portland, i. 487; Bodl. Nalson VII, f. 84. On 11 August he was named by Parliament to the committee for the defence of the county, and probably consequently, his absence from the Commons was again excused on 26 September.125CJ v. 667a; vi. 34b. A week earlier the Derby House committee had written to Wallop and others on the Hampshire committee exhorting them to expedite the collection of money for Irish service.126CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 28. Wallop was not seen again in the record at Westminster before 6 December.

Rump Parliament

Following Pride’s Purge, Wallop first visibly surfaced in the Commons on 15 January 1649, when he was appointed to a committee to receive a petition from London.127CJ vi. 117a. The same day he was present at a meeting of commissioners for the high court of justice; he attended another such meeting a week later and two days of the trial itself (22, 23 Jan.), but was not present for the sentencing on 27 January, and did not sign Charles I’s death warrant.128Howells, State Trials, iv. 1060, 1078, 1080, 1094. He is among a number of MPs apparently sitting in the House in January and February for whom the date of registering the dissent from the vote of 4 December is unknown, and his motives are obscure.129Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 218n. There are hints of religious zeal – he had been named an elder in Hampshire in December 1645 and he had twice been appointed a commissioner for exclusion from the sacrament – but Richard Perrinchief, whom he presented to Middleton prebend in September 1649, was ejected from his Cambridge college fellowship in 1650 and became an archdeacon after the Restoration.130King, Bor. and Par. Lymington, 262; A. and O.; LPL, COMM/2/497; Al. Cant. There is no extant expression of political opinion. However, Wallop, whose political career, interests and financial fragility were not dissimilar to that of his somewhat more visibly active cousin William Monson*, 1st Viscount Monson of Castlemaine, was evidently perceived as an enthusiastic supporter of the new republican regime.

On 14 February Wallop was named to the first council of state, ahead of some ostensibly more eminent men; he took the Engagement five days later.131CJ vi. 141a, 146b. He attended the council six times that month, including on the 23rd, when he was named to a sub-committee to consider how the republic was to deal with ambassadors, but not at all from March to May, when he was also absent from the Commons Journal.132CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. xlviii-lv, 14. Instead he was in Hampshire, from where he signed a letter of the county committee to Sir Henry Mildmay* relating to a petition concerning the abuses of soldiers (19 Apr.).133Clarke Pprs. ii. 213. Much more active on the council over from mid-June to late September, and placed on a number of its minor committees, on 4 July he was named to a Commons committee to treat with the City of London for loans.134CJ vi. 250a; CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. lvi-lxiii, 185, 188, 208, 241, 243. On 30 August came the moment for which he had perhaps been preparing, when the House ordered the consideration of financial claims made by Wallop and Sir Thomas Jervoise.135CJ vi. 288a. After amendments, on 14 September the Commons approved the recommendation relayed by Augustine Garland* that, having lost £50,000 in the wars, he was to be compensated to the tune of £10,000 out of the sequestered estate of Catholic delinquent John Paulet†, 5th marquess of Winchester.136CJ vi. 290b, 294a, 295a, 296a; SP46/95, ff. 168-83. Suspicion that Wallop’s recent activity with the council of state might have had a mercenary motive receives some confirmation from the fact that he did not attend it between 27 September and 13 December.137CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. lxiii-lxviii; Worden, Rump Parliament, 100.

On the face of it, Wallop did little to commend himself as a useful servant of the republic at Westminster. Yet, despite only six appearances at the council from mid-December (also involving sub-committee work to do with Hampshire affairs), and absence from the parliamentary record since July 1649, he was re-elected to the council on 12 February 1650.138CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. lxviii-lxxiii, 449, 466, 474, 476; CJ vi. 362a. In the year that followed he was named to only three Commons committees – on the militia bill (28 May), to convey thanks to General Sir Thomas Fairfax* following his resignation (25 June), and to prepare an act for the sale of the estate of royalist delinquent Thomas Pope, 2nd earl of Downe (15 Aug.).139CJ vi. 417a, 431b, 455b. Once again, the clustering of these around the time that the House was considering a further petition from Wallop and Jervoise (relating to realising their grant) is suggestive.140CCC 348, 439, 2372. However, that there was more to Wallop than pure self-interest is indicated by his conciliar activity. In parallel with Parliament, mid-May to mid-August 1650 saw his most concentrated attendance during this year of office (in what was overall a relatively meagre, although not the worst record), but his rare sub-committee nominations were either important – the interim committee for the admiralty and navy (19 Feb.), and the committee for Ireland (2 Mar.) and the committee for Irish and Scottish affairs (29 Jan. 1651) – or imply wider interests – considering propositions about Barbados (16 Aug.).141CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 3, 18, 290; 1651, p. 28. In mid-December, when the council sent him a letter about the militia, he was evidently in Hampshire.142CSP Dom. 1650, p. 471.

Wallop was not named to the third council of state, although he was present in Parliament for the election on 7 February 1651.143CJ vi. 532a. His only recorded activity in the Commons that year occurred on 20 May, when he was a teller with his cousin John Goodwyn*, and against Sir Arthur Hesilrige* and Bulstrode Whitelocke*, for the minority who endorsed an amendment to the bill for the reduction of the rate of interest.144CJ vi. 575b. Again, he may have spent much of his time in Hampshire: on 16 April the council wrote to him and to Richard Cromwell* there about the need to preserve New Forest timber; in the summer and early autumn the Committee for Advance of Money, in correspondence over his failure to honour the proviso to pay off some third-party debts out of his grant of the Winchester estate, found him frustratingly elusive.145CSP Dom. 1651, p. 151; CCAM 461-3.

Yet in the election held on 25 November 1651 for the second half of the next council of state, Wallop polled 81 votes, securing second place behind the prominent Sussex activist Harbert Morley*.146CJ vii. 42b. Given the wave of republican enthusiasm after the battle of Worcester which attended the election and which returned Morley after a similar period in the wilderness, Wallop’s remarkable showing appears to indicate that he had commended himself to that constituency. Once again, however, he was among the least assiduous attenders.147CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. xlvii. Once again he had a very limited, but not completely inconspicuous role on sub-committees, being singled out for his expertise on Wexford as member of that for Scotland and Ireland (20 Sept. 1652).148CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 43, 408, 417. This was mirrored in his even more limited visible participation in the Commons over this period. It was during his more regular appearances at the council (mid-May to early October) that Wallop surfaced in the House, where he was named to the quite significant committees for petitions (27 Aug.) and to review the declaration uniting England and Scotland (7 Oct.), as well as to develop a policy on conforming recusants (30 June) and to that deliberate on the estate of earl of Huntingdon (15 Sept.).149CJ vii. 147a, 171b, 182b, 189a. He was seemingly on hand to assist the passage of legislation on his own account, enabling him to sell land to meet debts and to resettle his wife’s jointure (9, 15 Sept.; 12 Oct.).150CJ vii. 177b, 182a, 190b. On 24 November Wallop was re-elected to the council of state, albeit with only one more vote than a trio tied at the bottom of the poll.151CJ vii. 220a. He proved to be the least frequent attender, and had only one sub-committee nomination, concerning Hampshire business (8 Feb. 1653).152CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. xxxiii, 154. He failed to surface at all in the Commons Journal, perhaps because he shared republican disillusionment with the Rump, perhaps because of continuing financial preoccupations.153CCC 2112, 2426.

Protectorate 1653-8

After the dissolution of the Rump Wallop seems to have lost his place temporarily or permanently on some of the many local commissions to which he had been appointed four years earlier, but he continued to play a prominent part in his Hampshire heartland, including as a commissioner of oyer and terminer trying those engaged in plots against the regime.154A. and O.; TSP iii. 296; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 114. The wills of his sisters Theodosia Wallop and Anne Dodington (widow of John Dodington*), who both died in the latter half of 1656, imply close relations between Wallop, his brothers-in-law William Heveningham* and Sir Henry Worsley*, and their neighbour Sir John Barrington*, all of whom reached a some sort of accommodation with the regime.155PROB11/258/289; PROB11/261/72. Despite steadily selling off lands there and elsewhere, Wallop secured election as a knight of the shire to both the 1654 and 1656 Parliaments.156VCH Hants. iii. 261, 365; iv. 253, 358, 472, 516, 532; VCH Salop, x. 30, 91; VCH Beds. iii. 405; Wallop Fam. p. xlix; E. Suss. RO, DYK/1036; TSP v. 329. He made no recorded impression on the proceedings of either, however, other than when his absence was noted on 31 December 1656, the excuse being the illness of his wife.157Burton Diary i. 286. Rumours had circulated the previous summer of his involvement in a plot against Cromwell, but nothing was substantiated, and no attempt was made to exclude him from the House under the terms of the Instrument of Government.158TSP v. 396-7

Wallop was returned a third time as a knight of the shire to the Parliament of Richard Cromwell in 1659. By this stage his allegiance was to the commonwealthsmen, although how long, how seriously and in what respects this had been his stance is a mystery. He is reported to have helped secure the election at for the Shropshire seat of Whitchurch of Sir Henry Vane II*, at some risk to his own prospects. Wallop’s kinsman Edmund Ludlowe II* later claimed that Cromwell’s court was so enraged by Wallop’s actions

that they had sent a menacing letter to him, which was subscribed by most justices of the peace for the county, to let him know, that they would oppose his election for the shire, if he persisted to recommend Sir Henry Vane to the choice of the people.

Wallop, however, ‘despising their threatenings, continued to assist Sir Henry Vane, and was chosen for the county in spite of them’.159Ludlow, Mems. ii. 51. Once at Westminster he made one characteristically isolated but significant appearance in the Journal. On 5 April he was a teller in favour of a unsuccessful proviso to give the Commons power to add ‘bounds and limitations’ upon either a protector or an ‘other’ House.160CJ vii. 626a.

Commonwealth 1658-9

After the dissolution of the Parliament, later in April Wallop was involved in meetings with the army hierarchy at Wallingford House, apparently attending with Ludlowe in order to mediate between the military and civilian republicans.161Ludlow, Mems. ii. 66. Once the Rump was restored, Wallop was for a while more visibly active at Westminster. On 13 May, in a reflection of his newly politicised incarnation, he was named to the committee for the relief of prisoners of conscience, as well as to that for forests.162CJ vii. 650b. The next day he was again elected to the council of state.163CJ vii. 654a.

Although the limitations of the evidence of conciliar proceedings make it impossible to be certain, it seems that in May and June at least Wallop was uncharacteristically more active in the House than in the council. In this period he appeared at the ill-attended council only once (26 May), but received six mentions in the Journal.164CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. xxiv. He seems to have been the conduit for a petition from Portsmouth (9 June) and his committee nominations partially reflected his Hampshire and his Irish interests – the bills for granting subsistence to Richard Cromwell* (25 May) and for Irish commissioners (9 June) – but they also indicated wider preoccupations – customs (8 June) and calling in debts due to the commonwealth (20 June).165CJ vii. 665a, 676b, 678a, 678b, 690a. In demonstration of the complexities of radical alignments at Westminster, and in apparent contradiction to his recent political identity, on 4 June Wallop was a majority teller with Sir John Trevor* in a division over the long-running complaint of commonwealthsman Henry Neville* against William Strowde, the sheriff who had blocked his election to the 1656 Parliament, thereby opposing Neville’s associates.166CJ vii. 672b.

Perhaps it was the growing threat of royalist insurgency, or factional interest, or both, which prompted Wallop to appear more regularly at the council board in July and the first half of August.167CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. xxiii; Add. 4197, f. 204. On 9 July he was granted the lodgings in Whitehall formerly held by John Lisle.168CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 14. In a further perplexing turn, on 26 July Wallop aligned with commonwealthsman John Weaver* against radical Henry Marten* over the wording of the militia bill, and lost by one vote.169CJ vii. 734a. A small cluster of committee appointments two weeks later included that to consider the Isle of Wight militia (12 Aug.).170CJ vii. 752b, 755a, 757b.

Despite his lack of previous experience, on 15 August, in the aftermath of the rising of Sir George Boothe*, Wallop was appointed a colonel of regiments of both horse and foot in Hampshire and dispatched to take charge of them.171CJ vii. 759b. There is no further sign of him at Westminster until the end of the year, and the re-convening of the Rump after the defeat of the army coup launched in October. While there is no direct evidence of his participation in the civilian republicans’ seizure of Portsmouth, which helped precipitate the end of the ‘interruption’ of parliamentary proceedings, Wallop seems to played a significant part in marshalling local forces to that end. On 29 December the Commons’ vote of thanks named him, Love and Neville alongside republican leaders Harbert Morley, Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Valentine Wauton*.172CJ vii. 799a. Wallop was then named to the committee investigating the cases of those imprisoned by the army (30 Dec.) and elected to the new council of state (31 Dec.).173CJ vii. 800a, 800b. Again assigned lodgings at Whitehall (9 Jan. 1660), he was until 18 February more active as a councillor then he had ever been before.174CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. xxv, 305, 348; Add. 4197, f. 122. Meanwhile, in the Commons he was nominated to a small number of important committees, including those preparing for new elections to Parliament (3, 11 Jan.) and to the City council 9 Feb.), and considering a new Engagement to the commonwealth (10 Jan.).175CJ vii. 801a, 803a, 806b, 807a, 838b.

Briefly, Wallop was at the heart of the government. Ludlowe’s retrospective lens probably did not distort when he depicted Wallop dining in King Street in January or February with Hesilrige, Neville, Love and the others who dominated the council of state for these few weeks.176Ludlow, Voyce, 89. But by the time the secluded Members were readmitted to the Commons on 21 February, Wallop had probably withdrawn from the House.

Restoration and retribution

As the political situation rapidly evolved, Wallop retired to his estates but seems to have had no conception of danger to himself. Nevertheless, he was both alert and sympathetic to the fears of his associates who had been among the regicides. Wallop disregarded the risks pointed out to him, claimed Ludlowe, harbouring him and Nicholas Love at Farleigh Wallop for two nights in March: ‘according to his wonted bounty and unparalleled generosity, [he] received us with much civility, expressing no less zeal for the public interest than when it was in its highest prosperity’.177Ludlow, Voyce, 102-3. Wallop went on to secure election to the Convention for the Shropshire seat of Whitchurch and, again according to Ludlowe, like Hesilrige and unlike Love, at the last moment passed up the opportunity to take ship into exile.178HP Commons 1660-1690; Ludlow, Voyce, 281. However, when following Charles II’s return Parliament decided that all who had been present in the high court of justice were to suffer some penalty (to be determined), he was discharged and made incapable of sitting, excluded as to property (although not capitally) from the Act of Indemnity, and committed to the custody of the serjeant-at-arms (11 June).179CJ viii. 60a, 61b; Whitelocke, Diary, 605; Ludlow, Voyce, 166-7, 180. He was never to be free again. Following the issue of a writ ordered the next day, his son Henry Wallop† was rapidly elected to succeed him at Whitchurch.180CJ viii. 62a; HP Commons 1660-1690.

Relations between father and son may hold a vital key both to some of what had passed and to much of what followed. Moves to return the lands granted to Robert Wallop by the Rump to their original owner the marquess of Winchester began as early as May 1660, but encountered a series of checks into the summer of 1661.181HMC 7th Rep. 117b, 142b, 147b-148a; LJ xi. 91a, 254b, 295b. Since, not having signed Charles I’s death warrant, Wallop was not subject to trial, he sought to secure a pardon, but in March 1661 it was reported that it he had not yet effected it: ‘they ask high, and besides his son and he differ about settlement of the estate and paying of debts’.182SP29/32, f. 168. On 1 July the Commons called him in with Sir Henry Mildmay and, having heard submissions from counsel, deprived them of their estates and sentenced them to perpetual imprisonment.183CJ viii. 256b, 286b, 295b; CSP Ire. 1660-62, pp. 13, 680. They were not the only non-regicides to suffer in this manner, but in Wallop’s case it seems plausible that his ill fortune owed at least something to perceptions of his great wealth and to the manoeuvrings of kin who privileged his son’s inheritance over his own well-being. On 25 July Wallop petitioned from prison, protesting that he ‘ever did and doth from his soul abhor and detest that most horrid and execrable murder’ of Charles I, and claiming, as did some others, that he had attended ‘that pretended court’ purely ‘that he might gain an advantage thereby of being instrumental in the uprightness of his heart to preserve the life of his late majesty.’ This he could have proved had he not been ‘surprised with the suddenness’ of his summons to the Commons and thereby deprived of the opportunity to gather evidence beyond his own personal testimony, which he now sought leave to do.184HMC 7th Rep. 151. This was not given: instead, his estates in England and Ireland were granted to his brother-in-law Southampton, a former royalist who was now lord treasurer, and to other trustees including Henry Vernon, to use at their discretion for the benefit of the Wallop family (23 Aug., 20 Sept.).185CSP Dom. 1661-2, pp. 70, 94.

The outcome could have been very much worse, but whatever Southampton’s intention, Wallop junior was the chief beneficiary and Wallop senior felt, and had reason to feel, ill-used. In January 1662 he petitioned again from the Tower as ‘an old man, most injuriously dealt with and ungratefully forsaken by his nearest relations’, protesting again his honourable intentions in 1649 at the ‘importuning’ of ‘some of the king’s greatest friends’. At the Restoration, he had been ‘in treaty with some great persons for the procuring of my pardon’, and indeed the warrant for such a pardon had been signed, but ‘at the last cast when I thought all had been well’, he had been told that obtaining it was conditional on his providing an extra £4,000 for the payment of his son’s debts. As he hesitated, ‘my pretending friends forsook me who had undertaken to present my case’, the Act of Oblivion was ‘pressed to a despatch’, and Parliament ‘merely for want of a right information passed that sentence upon me which hath made me so miserable many times as to want necessaries for food and clothing’. He had received no pardon yet ‘in pretence of it some persons received the benefit of £5,000 out of my estate’.186SP29/49, ff. 101-2.

Although Wallop highlighted his weak state and appended a medical certificate that he had for many months suffered from ‘a fever, the stone, scurvy and other diseases’, it was to no avail.187SP29/49, ff. 99-100. Later that January, on the anniversary of the regicide, Wallop endured with Mildmay the physically gruelling and publicly humiliating punishment of being drawn on a hurdle to Tyburn – ‘that eminent patriot’ and his companion, according to Ludlowe, ‘deporting themselves with much patience and Christian resolution’.188HMC 11th Rep. VII, 4; Ludlow, Voyce, 293. While interested parties continued to fight over his estate, however, there is some evidence that Southampton’s exhortation to his gaolers to ‘use him with all kindness’ was heeded.189HMC 15th Rep. VII, 92; SP29/56, ff. 155, 157; SP29/85, f. 150. Eleven months after the death of his first wife in March 1662, he was licensed to marry Mary, the 21-year-old daughter of John Lambert*, who had written to him in the Tower.190London Marr. Lics. ed. Foster, 1405. In May 1666 he married one Elizabeth Thompson, who was granted permission to accompany him in prison.191CSP Dom. 1665-6, p. 515. Following his death on 19 November 1667, Wallop’s body was embalmed, and released for private burial at Farleigh on 7 January 1668.192CSP Dom. 1667-8, pp. 42, 49; PRO30/24/5, ff. 257-62. However Wallop might have chosen to demur, as far as Ludlowe was concerned, glorifying from afar the sufferers for the commonwealth, it had pleased the Lord

to release out of the Tower Mr Robert Wallop who was there prisoner, for that in his day he had appeared an hearty well-wisher to that eminent act of justice on the late king, and for the liberty of his country, by putting an end to his pilgrimage and taking him to himself’.193Bodl. Eng. hist. c. 487, p. 1165.

Wallop’s widow, who married Robert Needham in May 1669, obtained a financial settlement on herself and her new husband, being awarded £100 a year from the English estate, and one third of the Irish estate, although there was evidently some dispute with the trustees of the estate, including Vernon.194CSP Dom. 1667-8, p. 471; 1668-9, pp. 111, 338; 1670, pp. 34-5. Meanwhile, Henry Wallop had sat again for Whitchurch in the Cavalier Parliament, and the family’s fortunes were restored sufficiently during the following generations to enable his great grandson to become the 1st earl of Portsmouth in 1743.