WYLDE, John (1591-1669), of the Harriots, Droitwich, Worcs., Inner Temple and Serjeants’ Inn, Chancery Lane, and Hampstead, Mdx.

The senior branch of the Wylde family were Worcester citizens, and held the large property of the Commandery, outside Sidbury Gate. The properties of the Worcester Wyldes and those of the Droitwich branch, to which John Wylde belonged, became separated in the time of John Wylde’s great-grandfather. Even though John Wylde continued to hold property in Worcester, his family was more closely involved in the civic life of Droitwich, where John’s father, George Wylde, inherited salt-pits and other holdings from his mother, one of the Wall family of that town.76Nash, Collections, ii. 330; VCH Worcs. iii. 62. George Wylde was a distinguished serjeant-at-law, and was held in high esteem in Droitwich by those who recognised his devotion to the interests of the borough.77Worcs. Archives, 261.4/BA 1006/box 33, 500. His legal advice was sought by the Worcester corporation, and he was an active committee-man in the three Parliaments in which he represented Droitwich.78HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘George Wylde I’. George Wylde played a prominent part in the life of the Inner Temple, and his eldest son was equally committed to the corporate life of the inn. In 1611 a seniority in the inn was bestowed on John Wylde through the eminence of his father; the following year he was called to the bar, and in 1616 he took part in the mock tournament held at the Whitehall banqueting house to mark the installation of Charles as prince of Wales.79CITR i. pp. xlv, 55, 65. He continued to progress through the offices of the inn, and retained a particular affection for it, producing in 1633 an account of the duties of its various officers.80I. Temple Lib. I. Temple recs. misc. 31. The year of the tournament for Prince Charles was also the year he succeeded to his father’s estate, and within three or four years he had begun a long career as a magistrate in Worcestershire.

Some uncertainty surrounds John Wylde’s family life. A daughter of his, Frances, seems to have been baptized in Droitwich in 1613, but the only recorded marriage he contracted was with Anne Harris, who died in childbirth in 1624 at the age of 16.81Droitwich par. reg.; Griffiths, Hist. of Tong, 79-80. It was the daughter of this union who outlived Wylde, leaving the possibility that he made an early first marriage. In September 1648, at the height of his career, a hostile commentator urged ‘Widow Towes’ (presumably the widow of London radical merchant, John Towse) to reconsider whether Wylde was fit to be her husband, but no second (or perhaps third) marriage has been traced.82Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 34 (5-12 Sept. 1648), sig. Hhi (E.462.34). The balance of probability is that after being widowed at the age of 33, Wylde brought up his only surviving daughter alone and remained celibate until his death. He inherited his father’s mantle as leading citizen of Droitwich, and also assumed his father’s electoral interest, sitting for the borough in every Parliament of the 1620s.

Government critic and serjeant-at-law, 1621-40

His career in Parliament began conventionally enough. In his wider political outlook, Wylde was in support of a robustly Protestant foreign policy, in favour of military intervention on behalf of the elector palatine. He was not always able to catch the mood of the House, and in November 1621 may have been shouted down for speaking ‘too liberally’ (i.e. at too great a length or with excessive vehemence) about the Habsburgs.83CD 1621, iv. 441. Wylde was opposed to the foreign policy of the 1st duke of Buckingham (George Villiers), and was selected in May 1626 to help draw up articles of impeachment against him. In the 1628 assembly, Wylde consistently argued against crown encroachments on the liberties of the subject. He spoke against extensions of purveyance, and took a leading part in collaborating with the Lords on proposals intended to persuade the king to confirm fundamental liberties enshrined in Magna Carta.84CD 1628, iii. 99, 103-4, 109, 181. Wylde defended the Commons’ wording of the Petition of Right against the suggested softening amendments of the Lords, and with other Members who were in no mood to yield to the Lords, secured a final form of words which retained much of the sense of the original.85CD 1628, iii. 210, 498. He supported a bill which would have subjected scandalous ministers to the jurisdiction of lay courts, indicating his early leanings towards Erastian views of the church.86CD 1628 iii. 431.

During the 1630s, Wylde combined his activities as a Worcestershire justice with a successful legal career in London. He continued to be active in his inn as reader, auditor and on various committees, and in May 1636 the writ was issued for him to follow his father’s path into the serjeantcy. At the initiation ceremonies, his supporters were John Thornborough, bishop of Worcester, John Talbot, 10th earl of Shrewsbury and 1st Baron Cottington (Francis Cottington†), a trinity which at once embodied the most exalted elements of west midlands society, and also indicated his own acceptability to the government.87Baker, Serjeants at Law, 186, 439. Indeed, in 1631 Wylde had enthusiastically promoted his nephew, Walter Blount, for special admission to the Inner Temple, and evidently saw that family’s Catholic recusancy as no obstacle.88CITR i. 188, 229. These aspects of his career need to be set against his opposition stance in Parliaments of the 1620s, and his being numbered in 1631 among those knighthood refusers in Worcestershire who were not to be allowed to compound anywhere but in London.89Worcs. Archives, 899:38/BA 1802, privy council to Worcs. commrs. for knighthood, 24 Mar. 1631. It was Wylde’s promotion to serjeant that transformed his status in the eyes of the Worcester corporation: from one who simply paid chief rents in the city rather infrequently, to one who was on the list of dignitaries to be sent sugar and other choice edibles.90Worcs. Archives, 496.5/BA 9360, A10, box 3, vol. 2, city acct. bk. ff. 192v. 203v. 204v.

Wylde was certainly useful to the city of Worcester, and soon after his elevation represented the corporation in submissions to the privy council against the scheme of William Sandys* to make the Avon navigable.91Worcs. Archives, 496.5/BA 9360, A10, box 3, vol. 2, city acct. bk. f. 193r. If his promotion was an attempt by the government to buy him off, it was not notably successful; in 1638 another group of local clients of his were the tenants of King’s Norton manor, who were contesting the scheme of Queen Henrietta Maria, whose manor King’s Norton was, to enclose it on terms the tenants considered disadvantageous. Among the aspects of the enclosure in dispute was the tenants’ campaign to ensure that the queen’s enclosed estate should be parcelled across the best and worst lands of the manor as had traditionally been the case in the open field system. The case was still unsettled in 1640, when hedges were thrown down by the tenants.92BRL, 252466, 252469, Z5, Z6, Z7. That year was, in purely local terms, the apogee of Wylde’s career: on 2 March the city of Worcester, thinking no doubt of its continuing conflicts with the privy council and the cathedral authorities, selected the able lawyer as its recorder.93Worcester Chamber Order Bk. 337. Twelve days later, with the consent of electors who included Sir John Pakington* and the future organizer of the king’s commission of array in the county, Shervington Talbot, Wylde was returned to Parliament for Droitwich for the sixth consecutive time.94C219/42/2/83.

Wylde was named to no committees during the Short Parliament, but brought to the proceedings his experience of previous assemblies. He spoke on matters touching parliamentary privilege and the redress of grievances. On 18 April 1640 he reminded the House that he had witnessed the dissolution of the Parliament of 1628-9, and recalled the imperious message to attend the Lords, one of whom had torn a Commons draft protestation. Wylde argued that if the Speaker adjourned the House without leave of the House itself, it constituted a breach of privilege.95Procs. 1640, 160; Aston’s Diary, 15. On the 20th, he contributed to a debate on whether to determine the life of the parliament itself were one of the privileges of the institution, noting the differences between the Houses, which included the right of the Lords to nominate proxies because they sat in their own right.96Aston’s Diary, 21. Developing a theme of his in the 1626 Parliament that common fame was enough to initiate impeachment proceedings, Wylde argued that unspecified action could be taken against the Convocation which had recently been summoned by the king, even though there had been no sight of the commission. On the 27th, following a report on the conference with the Lords two days previously, when the Upper House had voted that supply should precede redress of grievances, Wylde reminded them that a similar infringement of the Commons’ liberties had been discussed on the 18th, and was determined that the Commons should not take ‘the least intimation’ (sic) from the Lords.97Aston’s Diary, 33, 74. On 30 April, in ‘a great debate’ about whether or not Ship Money were illegal, Wylde spoke to the Petition of Right again: it was not an act of Parliament, but had the status of one in that it was as binding as a statute on the judges. The law should be expounded by the law-makers, in this case Parliament, and the Petition of Right, with its assertion of the principle of consent in Parliament to taxation, was sufficient repudiation of Ship Money. On 4 May, Wylde spoke out further against Ship Money, and insisted that no question of granting supply should precede a vote on its illegality. He sought to put the question that Ship Money was an illegal tax. Because of the protracted debate on the matter in the House, in the event the question was not put. The following day the king dissolved Parliament.98Aston’s Diary, 106, 137.

Wylde’s contribution to the proceedings of this Parliament was that of the old campaigner who could draw on his experiences of opposition, particularly in 1628, to bolster those who would resist the encroachments of the crown. Indeed, he contributed nothing else, so far as it can be ascertained; offering none of his legal expertise to the drafting of legislation in committee, and refraining even from comment on the floor of the House upon drafts of bills in progress. In this Parliament, at least, Wylde was a thorough-paced member of the opposition, and it did him no harm in Worcestershire. In August 1640 he ‘dined the company’ of the corporation of Worcester, when the civic chamber paid for the wine.99Worcs. Archives, 496.5/BA 9360, A10, box 3, city acct. bk. 1640-69, unfol. 1640. His high standing there as recorder, and perhaps the reputation he had acquired in the Short Parliament, enabled him to set his cap at a more prestigious seat than Droitwich. Worcester itself consistently returned leading burgesses, but the county was a more open constituency, and he was elected on 21 October as knight of the shire.100C219/43/3/66.

Loner to impeachment specialist, 1640-1

Given his regular and uncompromising interventions in the previous Parliament, Wylde might have been expected to make a flying start when the new assembly opened on 3 November. For the first month, however, his contribution was quite modest. He pledged £1,000 towards the army in the north, and spoke on technical points in a debate on whether to send for members of the family of Lord Keeper Finch (John Finch†) as delinquents.101Procs. LP, i. 228, 250. He was named to two committees, in neither case first on the list of nominees.102CJ ii. 30a, 31b. This low profile on committees, which had been even more evident in the Short Parliament, may suggest a certain distance between himself and the workaday Members of the House, and might also imply that he was not among the most popular MPs. He was able to return to familiar themes on 7 December, when he argued that the Ship Money verdicts should be in effect overturned by taking them off the file.103Northcote Note Bk. 37. But he could misjudge the mood of the House, as on 14 December, when he spoke ‘long to little purpose’ in defending Sir William Russell. A petition against Russell, a Worcestershire deputy lieutenant, had been promoted in the county, and held him responsible for abuses in raising soldiers for the king’s northern expedition. Russell had allegedly oppressed his enemies and favoured his friends in levying rates, and had taken bribes. Furthermore, he was thought to be a Catholic. Russell had enemies in the House, notably Sir Henry Herbert, who refuted everything Wylde, before he was ‘cried down’, had said in Russell’s defence.104Procs. LP, i. 589; Northcote Note Bk. 58. Russell had in fact opposed the privy council-sponsored scheme of William Sandys* to make the Avon navigable; to the point in which he had declared to Sandys that he would not betray his country, and had accused Sandys of setting out ‘to entitle the king to men’s inheritances’.105Add. 15857, f. 211. It was probably these sentiments which commended Russell to Wylde, who had acted for the city of Worcester against Sandys, but the impression created in the Commons was different, and it was late February 1641 before Wylde was named to another committee, or made any further impression on the House.106CJ ii. 94a.

On 2 March 1641, Wylde successfully moved that lawyers should be added to the committee investigating the case of Sir Lewis Dives, a Roman Catholic candidate in the autumn election in Bedfordshire.107Procs. LP, ii. 595. This was a pre-emptive strike on Wylde’s part, because two days later the same committee turned its attention to the Worcestershire election, and specifically to the complaint of Sir Thomas Lyttelton* that he had been denied justice as a candidate by the connivance of Wylde and his supporter, Sir William Russell. On the way into the meeting of the committee, Wylde and Sir Henry Herbert, who in December had repudiated Wylde’s vindication of Russell’s character, got into a scuffle. The business then widened into a hearing of the personal animosity between Herbert and Wylde, in which again the serjeant backed the wrong side when he argued that the whole House, not the arbitrators finally selected, should settle the quarrel. Speaker William Lenthall evidently thought that Herbert had begun the spat, but it was a distraction which only served to marginalize Wylde.108Procs. LP, ii. 626, 676, 684-5; Two Diaries of Long Parl. 18.

On 20 March Wylde reported to the House from the committee which had been given the brief of considering a grant of tonnage and poundage to the king. His report was on the financial needs of the navy, and demonstrated the belief, widespread among MPs, that the customs should be hypothecated to it. The lack of any obvious means of funding the navy was referred back to the same committee to consider: it was the start of what was to be Wylde’s important involvement with matters of public finance.109CJ ii. 107a, 110a; Procs. LP, ii. 833. In the same month he and his fellow-knight of the shire, Humphrey Salwey, brought in £500 from Worcestershire for the relief of the northern counties from the Scots.110SP28/1d, f.500. In April and May he served on a number of committees concerned with customs matters and with the levying of subsidies on taxpayers.111CJ ii. 130b, 131b, 154b, 159b. On 19 April, Wylde contributed to the debate on the means of proceeding against the earl of Strafford (Thomas Wentworth†), highlighting statutes that made all treasons subject to common law procedure. He ‘argued long’ on 20 April that in point of law Strafford’s offence was levying war against the king, through his subverting the common law. Beyond offering an opinion, however, Wylde was not called upon to play a part in managing Strafford’s trial, and indeed, called for a delay in proceedings so that speakers could prepare themselves better.112Procs. LP, iv. 7, 8, 11, 12, 13. 29. Perhaps because of his remarks in the Short Parliament about the illegality of the summons to the Convocation, on 27 April he was named to a committee for the second reading of a bill to punish its members.113CJ ii. 129a. He was active in May in preparing and seeing through both Houses a bill for pressing mariners, and offered an opinion to the effect that the Protestation of 3 May could lawfully be taken in the country at large.114Procs. LP, iv. 196, 272, 280, 294, 306; CJ ii. 138b, 139b, 140b, 142a. Perhaps because Wylde seemed during April and May to be more active and more successful in his parliamentary activities, Lucius Cary*, 2nd Viscount Falkland [S], himself at this time no supporter of the government, attempted on 20 May to reopen the case of the Worcestershire election, but Wylde was able to prevent the move from bearing fruit.115Procs. LP, iv. 485, 491-2.

During June 1641, Wylde began to work with the Lords in steering through legislation. First, on 3 June, he was one of a committee charged with answering the objections of the Upper House to a bill restraining the clergy from interfering in secular affairs; the following day the committee produced its reasons for excluding bishops from the House of Lords. The bill was rejected by the Lords on the 8th.116CJ ii. 167a; Gardiner, Hist. Eng. 1603-42, ix. 382-3. Some three weeks later (26 June) he was one of 17 MPs selected to manage a conference with the Lords on bills to abolish the courts of star chamber and high commission. That he had by this time redeemed himself with his colleagues, or at least had now won their confidence and respect, is suggested by his chairing a committee of the whole House on 23 June, when it considered provisos for the counties of north-east England.117Procs. LP, v. 295. On 1 July, Wylde and Bulstrode Whitelocke* were appointed to draw up a bill for the liberties of the subject ‘in a large manner’; on the 5th, Wylde undertook to persuade members of his inn of court to pay in the tax approved by Parliament, and on the 23rd committed himself to lending Parliament £1,000.118Procs. LP, vi. 500; vii. 70; CJ ii. 195b, 199a, 222a. With this high profile in the House and declared interest in punishing those who had assembled in what he held to be the unlawful Convocation to produce the Canons of the previous year, it was perhaps natural that he should be named to the committee to prepare impeachment proceedings against the bishops, although his name was eighth on the list, and he contributed nothing to the debates on the matter in December 1640.119CJ ii. 230b; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 231-4. Once the committee met, however, Wylde was able to make the matter his own. Unsurprisingly, from one who had argued in previous cases that ‘common fame’ was good grounds for impeachment, he reported on 3 August that the bishops were to be charged with ‘heinous’ (but unspecified) crimes. The House preferred a more specific charge – treason – and the following day, Wylde stood at the bar of the Lords, without notes, to deliver the impeachment: the Canons were contrary to the king’s prerogative, the fundamental laws of the kingdom, the privileges of Parliament and the liberties of the subject.120Procs. LP, vi. 181-2, 183, 184; CJ ii. 233ab, 235b.

On 8 August, Wylde gave the House his opinion that the offence of which the bishops were guilty was praemunire, an offence punishable at common law, and which carried the penalties of forfeiture of goods, loss of liberty and no hope of reparations. On the 11th, at a conference with the Lords which Wylde helped manage for the Commons, Viscount Saye and Sele (William Fiennes) took a different view from Wylde’s on the bishops’ crimes. Against the peer’s belief that they should be charged with particular offences, Wylde supported John Pym* in arguing that both Houses’ declaration that the Canons were illegal had clarified the matter of fact, and what remained was the matter of law.121Procs. LP, vi. 293-4, 354-5. He was still inclined to persist in speaking when the mood of the House was against him; in that debate he was forced to finish when Members interrupted him with determination.122Procs. LP, vi. 358. But on 13 August, Wylde took up to the Lords the successfully-revised impeachment, which now specified their offences in detail.123Procs. LP, vi. 400, 403; CJ ii. 254b, 255b, 256a. The role of go-between was one in which Wylde was from this point to become greatly experienced, and from the summer of 1641 Wylde was one of the leaders of negotiations with the second chamber. In 1642 he was a member of 16 committees with the Lords and managed another 14; in 1643 he reported from 14 conferences, and managed another 12.124CJ ii, iii.

The impeachment of the bishops was by no means the only topic which attracted Wylde’s attention in the summer of 1641. He had previously been involved in discussions about funding the navy, and on 10 August 1641 chaired a committee of the whole House on a bill to settle tonnage and poundage in a permanent way, and to consolidate the principles of the recently-passed act vesting control of the main customs duties in Parliament.125Procs. LP, vi. 335, 340; CJ ii. 250a; Gardiner, Constitutional Docs. (1906), 159-62. The chairing of the House in this way was another skill Wylde was given regular opportunities to develop. He chaired ten such committees between December 1641 and the following February alone.126CJ ii. 342a, 352a, 356a, 440b, 446b, 449a, 452b, 454b. Another theme of these months which recurred in his committee activity was that of curtailing public and business activity by Catholics, although compared with Members such as his collaborator and fellow knight Humphrey Salwey, Wylde was moderate in his tone, and had been willing to speak up for those, like Sir William Russell, accused of popery.127Harl. 164, ff. 62, 67v. 78v; CJ ii. 254a, 255b, 258a, 268a. His appointment on 9 September to the Recess Committee was further evidence that Wylde had successfully shaken off his reputation as a long-winded and rather ineffective loner, to become an important figure in the Commons.128CJ ii. 288a.

In pursuit of evil counsellors, 1641-2

When the Commons reassembled after the recess in October 1641, Wylde was immediately back in the thick of the action against the king’s ‘evil counsellors’. He was one of the managers of a conference with the Lords on the intended sequestering of the property of the bishops, and on a committee headed by John Pym, worked to draft heads of a petition to the king against his evil ministers. As news of the Irish rebellion broke in early November, Wylde became prominent in Parliament’s response. He was among those named to the joint committee with the Lords on Irish affairs, and on 3 November reported to the Commons the proposal to send £20,000 to Ireland and to assemble an invading force. At the committee, Wylde had read out each of the propositions on Ireland, and Pym had commented on each. It fell to Wylde to prepare and see through the House a bill to press men for that service. When he read it in the House, Henry Marten commented that it was against the liberties of the subject; Sir Simonds D’Ewes retorted in support of Wylde that the bill was necessary to protect those very liberties.129CJ ii. 302a, 304a, 305a, 305b; D’Ewes (C) , 75, 83.

On 13 November, Wylde returned to the issue of the bishops’ impeachment, which had run into procedural obstacles thrown up in the Lords. Many MPs thought these frivolous, but Wylde exposed confusion as to whether the Lords were proceeding as a court of equity or as a court of law.130D’Ewes (C), 136-7, 139; CJ ii. 314b, 315a. A week later, his work on removing recusants from public life bore fruit when after chairing a committee of the whole House, he reported persons to be omitted from various commissions in the counties and in some cases arrested.131D’Ewes (C), 173-4; CJ ii. 321a. In late November, a further bill for pressing, this time soldiers, was initiated by Wylde, and he continued to manage the evolution of the first bill on the subject, with its amendments. On 30 November he reported a conference with the Lords on security for loans made to Parliament by the city of London, suggesting that he had some standing there, and was part of another conference with them to discuss a response to the increasingly tumultuous scenes outside Parliament, as crowds flocked to Westminster.132CJ ii. 322a, 326b, 327b, 328b; D’Ewes (C), 207, 217n. The following day he reported the Lords’ wish for a joint declaration to forbid crowds to gather there: the same day, the Grand Remonstrance, which encouraged the crowds, rather than quietened them, was presented to the king.133CJ ii. 329b; D’Ewes (C), 222; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 437; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 433.

For the first half of December, Wylde was busy in the House managing important and controversial pieces of legislation in progress, such as bills for disarming recusants and pressing soldiers; and continuing patiently to liaise with an evidently reluctant House of Lords on the bishops’ impeachment.134CJ ii. 330a, 331a, 333a, 337b, 338a, 338b, 341a, 341b. By the midway point of the month, it was becoming evident that plans to fund an expeditionary force to Ireland were hampered by lack of funds. Wylde chaired an important committee of the whole House on the 14th, at which it was resolved that a further £200,000 was necessary to augment an identical sum already agreed upon, and a week later, the same procedure was followed to produce a bill on the raising of this money, with due regard for the necessities of Protestant refugees from Ireland.135CJ ii. 342a, 342b, 352a. It is quite possible that Wylde’s role in progressing this fiscal matter was primarily as a chairman and reporter; it was Giles Grene who on the 14th proposed various options for raising money, and according at least to his own testimony it was D’Ewes who hit on the levying of a further £200,000. Nevertheless, Wylde must be given credit for bringing the matter to a fruitful outcome.136D’Ewes (C), 284-5, 331.

Wylde’s expertise in chairing, and his knowledge of impeachment procedures made him a natural choice for action against the leaders of the first army plot. His old targets, the bishops, had been implicated in the plot as long ago as June, but it was in mid-December that Wylde reported from a committee set up to consider proceeding against the MPs involved. His committee had drawn up both an impeachment and a bill of attainder, and ‘so left it free to the House to go either way’. A bill was produced to comprehend within its scope not only the original army plotters, but also Sir Francis Windebanke*, the former secretary of state. In his report, Wylde included only a limited statement of Daniel O’Neill’s† offences, but the impeachment was returned to the committee to be enlarged, a further suggestion that Wylde was more the servant of the House in these matters than one of the ‘fiery spirits’.137D’Ewes (C), 303, 310; CJ ii. 332b, 333a, 343a. In the last few days of the year, when the 1st earl of Bristol (John Digby†) and his son, Lord Digby (George Digby*) were proposed as new targets of the Commons, Wylde’s contribution was to repeat his view, stated over many years by this time, that historical precedents confirmed the idea that common fame was good enough grounds for impeachment.138D’Ewes (C), 361. On the day of the report against the army plotters, he was asked, on a motion of Sir Edward Partheriche, to consider a measure to suppress swearing, whoring and other vices; on the 24th, Wylde brought in an order to enforce existing laws, to a mixed response. D’Ewes, on whom we are heavily reliant for this period, gave himself credit for the suggestion that there should be a new bill: and thus it was, with Wylde and John Glynne given responsibility for drafting it.139D’Ewes (C), 308, 343; CJ ii. 348a, 356a. The bill was a diversion from Wylde’s main role in late December, that of chair of committees of the whole House and mediator between the Lords and the Commons on the issues of punishing ‘evil counsellors’, the protracted attempt to try the bishops, and securing of recusants. The 12 bishops were accused at the bar of the Lords by John Glynne on 31 December, but Wylde had done as much as anyone to bring this about. 140D’Ewes (C), 324, 340, 371; CJ ii. 349b, 355a, 364b; An Exact Collection of all Remonstrances (1643), 43 (Wing E1532).

As the atmosphere of crisis had deepened in London and Westminster, the pace of Wylde’s parliamentary activity had quickened. Between January and March 1642, taking mentions in the Journal as a measure, he was the sixth most active member of the House.141PJ i. p. xxii. After the king blundered into an ill-advised and incompetent coup against those he considered his most bitter enemies in Parliament, Wylde was one of the committee of safety appointed on 4 January in the absence of the Five Members and Lord Mandeville (Edward Montagu†).142CJ ii. 368b. When it first convened he was appointed to the chair. In its meetings at Grocers’ Hall and Guildhall, safe in the City of London from the king’s men, the committee turned its wrath on those who had engineered the failed attempt on them. On 6 January, after many speeches by Members still enraged and alarmed, Wylde ‘at length’ propounded the question finally resolved that it was treason to attempt an arrest on a Member.143PJ i. 20. The following day, Wylde signed the warrant to command the presence of the two sheriffs implicated, and when they arrived asked for the authority on which they had acted. He appealed to his colleagues to say whether they should be required to provide them, but they were dismissed lightly after their pleas of duress were accepted.144D’Ewes (C), 394, 395. The next day, Wylde drafted heads of propositions to provide the agenda for negotiations with the common council of the City. His committee was encouraged by the main committee of both Houses for Irish affairs, which was active in finding ways to extinguish the rebellion. The propositions clarified MPs’ thinking on the need for an armed defensive response to the king’s recent show of force. A strong guard was needed to defend the king, the country and Parliament; failing that, every good citizen, according to the text of the Protestation of 3 May 1641, should defend the persons of the king and Members of Parliament, entrusted as they were with the defence of ‘lives, liberties and fortunes’. The propositions declared illegal the military authority of the lord mayor (a sympathiser of the king’s) when exercised unilaterally, and reasserted that the control of the militia was vested in the lord mayor, aldermen and common council.145CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 247-8. On the 10th, it was Wylde who spoke to the apprentices who came to offer their services as guards of Parliament; he stood them down, and, D’Ewes reported, promised that ‘whensoever we had occasion to use them they should have notice from us’.146D’Ewes (C), 400. Wylde was impressed by the scale of popular support for Parliament, from seamen, trained bands and apprentices, and in his report from the committee of safety on the 12th, evinced no unease at their association with defence measures. Indeed, he himself moved that 100 of the trained bands of east London, the Tower Hamletters, should watch the Tower.147PJ i. 34, 36-7, 48-9.

Back in Westminster on 12 January 1642, the Commons ratified declarations made by the committee of safety, and Wylde was among those charged with preparing them for publication. They declared it treason to have advised the attempt on the Members; a breach of privilege to have published articles of treason against Kimbolton and the Five Members and denounced those who had tried to set division between king and Parliament as ‘public enemies of the state and peace of this kingdom’. Wylde was first named to a committee to draw into one order the votes taken during the week in the City.148CJ ii. 374b, 376b; Exact Collection of all Remonstrances, 38-41. He was evidently playing a leading part in getting the Commons back to business: Wylde prepared the heads for a conference with the Lords on the arrest of the Members, and managed it when it took place. He also resurrected the matter of the bishops’ impeachment, formerly postponed sine die.149PJ i. 53-4, 55-6. On 15 January, as a result of the conference with the Lords, Wylde and John Glynne led a committee to draw up an impeachment of Sir Edward Herbert I*, the attorney-general, for allegedly instigating the attempt on the Five Members, and the same day Wylde reported his examination of Herbert, then copied verbatim into the Journal of the House. These impeachments must have taken up a good deal of Wylde’s time during the following weeks, but on the 20th, it was he who presented from his committee at Grocers’ Hall a letter to be circulated to sheriffs to attract signatures to the Protestation of May 1641, a further sign that Wylde approved of the appeals to the people that were now so much part of the atmosphere of panic in London.150CJ ii. 381b, 382a, 382b, 389a; PJ i. 116, 245-6; A. Fletcher, Outbreak of the English Civil War (1981), 182-9.

The committee at Grocers’ Hall continued to meet even though Parliament had reconvened at Westminster, and under Wylde’s chairmanship began to discuss matters other than the immediate political crisis in London. On 22 January 1642 a possible national synod was discussed, taking up matters incorporated in the Grand Remonstrance, and the same day Wylde briefed the members on the latest development in the rebellion in Ireland. The common council of London was being encouraged by the Grocers’ Hall committee to lend money for the suppression of the Irish rebellion, and Wylde made several reports to the Commons on plans to recruit men and raise money for that service.151PJ i. 135, 138-9, 159, 164, 166; CJ ii. 393a. In this an ally of John Pym, Wylde offered legal opinion to the House, that a bill could not be re-introduced in the same session, to stave off another attempt to grant the king tonnage and poundage for life.152PJ i. 186. In the Commons, Wylde acted as lieutenant to Pym in pursuit of new targets, adding to the attorney-general, the bishops and the army plotters three men involved in the attempt on the Five Members, the 1st duke of Richmond (James Stuart) (for moving an adjournment when the Commons leaders sought to petition the king to heed the counsel of trustworthy men and to place the militia in their hands) and Sir Edward Dering*, for publishing his collected speeches. Wylde’s role was to manage the proceedings rather than to initiate them, and produce the paperwork, after others had made the verbal denunciations. Early in January it was even rumoured that impeachment proceedings were in hand against the queen in Wylde’s Grocers’ Hall committee.153PJ i. 193, 262; CJ ii. 402a; CP x. 832; Russell, Fall of British Monarchies, 447.

Wylde was a prime mover in securing a new and more powerful committee of Irish affairs – what would become the Commission for the Affairs of Ireland. On 4 February, he reported suggested names of Members to serve on it; the nominations had been made in committee the previous day. D’Ewes, in his first implicit criticism of the serjeant, noted that they had been made when there were only 14 Members left to approve them. For that reason, he and 73 others voted against Wylde’s motion, which was amended to propose a larger number of commissioners, and thus, presumably, a wider spread of opinion in the Commons.154CJ ii. 414a; PJ i. 268, 274-5, 276. Wylde was making progress with his bill for pressing soldiers for service in Ireland, and was able on 12 February to take on the task of drawing a bill in the spirit of earlier Commons’ denunciations of innovations in religion. Although Wylde was also successful in framing the impeachment against Herbert and in bringing to fruition that against the 12 bishops, his reports and plans were not received uncritically, however. On 18 February, the bill to raise £400,000, another of Wylde’s pets which had been a casualty of the January 1642 occurrences, was resurrected after work had been done on it in committee at Merchant Taylors’ Hall. On this occasion it was Wylde himself who objected to the use of the committee of the whole House. He refused to make his report to the committee of the whole, which had presumably been preferred for the report because it would speed procedure through the Houses. It was left to D’Ewes to make an eirenic and successful plea that if there were any doubt, the report should be made in the House rather than the committee. On 22 February, the names of commissioners for the counties were inserted into the bill in a committee of the whole House, chaired by Wylde.155PJ i. 412, 440; CJ ii. 440b. The tax in its final form was fiscally a half-way house between the traditional subsidy and that later mainstay of Parliament’s revenue, the assessment. It specified a quota, extended liability to copyholders and corporations, but allowed local discretion in rating. Its precedent as a quota tax, ironically enough, was Ship Money.156M. Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation in Seventeenth-Century England (1994), 127-8.

In February and March 1642, Wylde could take satisfaction from seeing some long-developing business come to fruition. He took up the bill for £400,000 to the Lords on 12 March; a few days earlier there had been reports by Wylde on the process of Herbert’s impeachment. On two consecutive days, Wylde asked the House whether Herbert’s counsel should be heard on matters of law, the House having resolved that it would not hear representations on matters of fact or privilege. He seems genuinely to have asked for guidance on the point.157PJ ii. 11, 19. The complexities of managing proceedings against so many individuals ensured that between March and June, Wylde’s profile in the Commons was even more pronounced than it had been in the previous quarter: there are more references in the Journal only to Pym and Denzil Holles.158PJ ii. p. xvii. There were new enemies of the Parliament to pursue. There was Benion, the London mercer, for trying to thwart the Grocers’ Hall committee’s efforts to get money from the citizens: his impeachment was taken to the Lords by Wylde on 6 April after he had made four reports to the Commons, managed two conferences with the Lords and run the trial itself in the Lords on behalf of the Commons.159PJ ii. 78, 82, 90, 101, 111, 131, 133, 134; CJ ii. 492a, 495a, 499a, 501b, 502b, 505b, 512a. The Benion case was, by comparison with the impeachments of the bishops and Herbert, a light workload for the serjeant. There were the impeachments of Sir Edward Dering, begun in earnest in April on articles co-drafted by Sir Robert Cooke*, which included a conference with the Lords ‘wholly managed’ by Wylde; of Sir Thomas Gardiner, recorder of London and enemy of the Grocers’ Hall committee; of O’Neill the army plotter, another revival; and of Lord Digby, a problem in that he had fled the country.160PJ ii. 53, 70, 91, 184, 189, 198, 203; CJ ii. 511b, 533b, 535a. All of these cases were directed or managed by Wylde.

Perhaps the best-reported impeachment was that against Attorney-general Herbert, in which Wylde was principal prosecutor. He argued that in Herbert ‘falsehood, scandal malice etc.’ were so mixed that ‘they could not be more separated than blackness from the Ethopian’. The excuse of the king’s command for what he had done was ‘a foul aspersion’ on the king. No impeachment, such as that intended against the Five Members, was legal unless cause was given to the appropriate House, and Herbert’s offence was all the more heinous because of his knowledge of the law and his long experience in Parliament. Wylde’s peroration was bitter and unrestrained: ‘All the evils, dangers, troubles and distractions which have happened since, and what now the houses lie under, may be imputed to this act of Mr Attorney’.161LJ iv. 635a-636b.

In matters more political than legal, public finance was a subject commanding Wylde’s attention. He, above all others, had been instrumental in patiently easing the bill for £400,000, through many setbacks and stumbling blocks in the House, and long before it did eventually reach the statute book, it was clear that it was inadequate to meet the needs of Parliament. Wylde’s particular concern was to fund an expeditionary force to Ireland, and he was a leader figure on a number of committees addressing the problem, including the bicameral committee of Irish affairs, the Grocers’ Hall committee and ad hoc committees processing legislation. In the spring of 1642, Wylde was evidently casting about for further fiscal expedients. To encourage more enthusiastic collection of taxes, he prepared bills to lighten the administrative burden on sheriffs and to reverse the principle that the office of sheriff was one of personal loss rather than profit. He introduced a bill to hypothecate all fines for Ireland and other public service, and this experience made him the natural choice to manage a conference with the Lords in May on Ireland.162CJ ii. 497a, 504a, 591a, 595a, 601a; PJ ii. 289; PJ iii. 1. Three months earlier, both Houses had voted Propositions for dealing with Ireland, assigning 2,500,000 acres there against subscriptions. On 29 March, Wylde, with Thomas Lane*, subscribed £1,000 for the service, although later accounts of the Adventurers suggest the more modest contribution of £200, and he seems never to have received an allocation of land.163An Exact Collection, 84-6, 136; Names of such Members...as have already subscribed (1642, 669.f.5.3); J.P. Prendergast, Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland (1875), 403; Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 194, 212. He raised £800 in June by a 99-year lease of 19 messuages in Worcester and 6 salt bullaries or salt-pits in Droitwich. There seems little doubt that this transaction was intended to raise money for Ireland, as the lessees were all Adventurers from London.164Worcs. Archives, 705:232/BA 5955/7/8; Prendergast, Cromwellian Settlement, 403. Wylde contributed his expertise in drafting bills when there was an apparent need for subscriptions to be more plentiful and more quickly forthcoming.165CJ ii. 595a, 601a.

Except for perhaps a period during the recess of September and October 1641, Wylde had been continuously at Westminster since the opening of this Parliament, and so much in the thick of political activity there, that he could hardly have had an opportunity to contribute much to affairs in Worcestershire. His own position as recorder of Worcester and leading citizen of Droitwich was secure enough, but in the county there was something of a vacuum of power at the top of the social pyramid, with the death on 6 December 1641 of 6th Baron Windsor (Thomas Windsor). As knights of the shire, Wylde and Salwey had in January 1642 urged the sheriff to secure signatures to the Protestation, by forwarding a circular letter from Speaker Lenthall.166Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend ed. Porter, Roberts, Roy (Worcs. Hist. Soc. n.s. xxv), 77-8. In February 1642, when names of peers who were acceptable to the Commons as lords lieutenants were compiled, Worcestershire was allocated to Lord Howard of Escrick (Edward Howard*), a choice which can only be explained by the absence of anyone more acceptable, since he had no estate or interest in the county. His name was confirmed in the Militia Ordinance of 5 March. Wylde’s influence probably accounts for the appointment. He himself was named as a deputy lieutenant, and in May was active in trying to secure Windsor’s arms collection, confiscated from the executors as belonging to a Catholic recusant, for the county.167An Exact Collection, 74; LJ iv. 588; CJ ii. 485b, 591a.

Wylde was not completely out of touch with Worcestershire, however. On 6 June 1642 he presented information to the Commons on the activities of Shervington Talbot, who had published the king’s Declaration in the county. Talbot was summoned to the House, although there is no evidence he attended. It was the start of a contest between rival supporters of the Militia Ordinance and the commission of array. It boiled over into naked attempts to use quarter sessions and assizes for propaganda purposes, in which Wylde and Humphrey Salwey led for Parliament.168CJ ii. 608b; ‘Humphrey Salwey’ supra. The success of Wylde and Salwey in a pre-emptive strike at quarter sessions on 18 July in capturing the mechanism of county government for Parliament, and driving off Shervington Talbot, was temporary. On 20 July, Wylde drew up an order by which the judges were to declare the commission of array illegal when on circuit, and on 21 July the sheriff was able to satisfy the House that he had tried to execute the Militia Ordinance and had sat on the commission of array after receiving it. But on 3 August, the assize grand jury produced a counter-declaration, repudiating the sessions declaration as ‘contrived by a few persons’ and asserting a readiness to attend the king and put the county in a posture of defence. Among the signatories were Sir Henry Herbert, Wylde’s enemy, and Sir William Russell, over whose reputation Herbert and Wylde had come to blows but who was now irrevocably estranged from the serjeant.169A Letter sent from Mr Serjeant Wylde (1642, E.107.14); Three Declarations (1642), 3 (BL, G3808.10); Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend ed. Porter, Roberts, Roy, 88, 90; PJ iii. 223, 225, 239, 246. Two days later, the commissioners of array wrote to Wylde, demanding that he should bring in horse and arms for the king.170HMC Portland, i. 47. On 9 August, Wylde and Salwey were ordered to hasten to Worcestershire, where in Droitwich, Wylde’s fiefdom, the civic leaders had obeyed orders from the 10th earl of Shrewsbury (John Talbot) to mobilize arms. The MPs’ journey was too late.171CJ ii. 711a. In the high summer of 1642, Wylde was involved in further impeachment proceedings, against sheriffs who had countenanced the commission of array. In Wylde’s own county, the denouement of the attempts by both sides to pack Worcestershire quarter sessions and assize meetings came when Wylde, on a deposition by Humphrey Salwey, succeeded on 20 August in having Sir Henry Herbert, Sir John Pakington and Samuel Sandys disabled from sitting in the House of Commons. Some in the House thought they needed only to be summoned to explain themselves, but D’Ewes disapprovingly noted that Wylde contributed ‘a bold and rash information’ and was supported by ‘violent spirits’, including Henry Marten.172CJ ii. 652a, 653a, 654b, 656a, 662a, 729a, 743a; PJ iii. 155, 173, 180, 182, 235, 236, 290, 310-11.

Wylde’s religious outlook was that of a godly Protestant anti-episcopalian. His most noticeable activity was managing the prosecution of bishops, identifying and punishing recusants, and removing ‘innovations’.173CJ ii. 278b, 281a, 427a, 438a, 476b, 489b, 903a, 904a. He was also interested in the positive aspects of church reform, particularly in matters of organization. He was on a committee to reorganize churches in Plymouth in May 1641, presumably because of legal advice he could offer.174CJ ii. 151a. He was interested in promoting a godly reformation of manners among the populace at large.175CJ ii. 348a, 356a, 427. His first contribution towards improving the quality of the ministry came in February 1642, when his committee at Merchant Taylors’ Hall considered the names of godly ministers fit to help settle the affairs of the church. On 19 April he was on a committee to produce a bill for a better preaching ministry, and on 25 April, he was appointed to a committee to consider the best ways to consult divines.176CJ ii. 427a, 535a, 541b. Some three weeks later, Wylde reported a bill and amendments for an assembly of divines.177CJ ii. 571a, 575b. This bill evidently failed, because in September, Wylde was again charged with bringing in legislation for an assembly. By December, however, the momentum for it had been lost, its drafting in the meantime having passed to Alexander Rigby I.178CJ ii. 767b, 781b. All of this activity confirms that at the beginning of the civil war Wylde was firmly Erastian in his outlook.

Taxation and the great seal, 1642-3

The start of the civil war marked something of a change in the pattern of Wylde’s parliamentary career. A few days after the king had raised his standard at Nottingham on 22 August 1642, Wylde headed a committee to begin impeachment proceedings against no fewer than 13 lords and gentlemen, but there was a noticeable decline in his business with the Lords: doubtless a result of many peers leaving Westminster to join the king.179CJ ii. 745b. January to September 1642 was the period when his impeaching activity reached a peak; altogether, between July 1641 and the end of 1645, Wylde was involved in a leading capacity with at least 62 impeachments, judging from evidence in the Commons Journal alone. As many of his victims were bound to be seen as scapegoats, his record was perhaps not an enviable one, and must have contributed much to royalist views of him as arbitrary and unfair in his dealings. Archbishop William Laud and the author of Mercurius Pragmaticus, otherwise strange bedfellows, would have endorsed the view of the 1st earl of Clarendon (Edward Hyde*) that Wylde was ‘infamous’.180Clarendon, Hist. iv. 280. He could be shrill and intemperate, as in his treatment of Attorney-general Herbert, and as in his serious suggestion that those impeached who subsequently did not appear should be subjected to peine forte et dure.181Add 18777, f. 16.

Wylde was in Worcester in October, obeying his instructions from Parliament to implement the Militia Ordinance, and while he wrote back to Parliament that the country was ready to support Parliament, he must have realised that the earlier brief occupation of Worcester by forces of the 3rd earl of Essex (Robert Devereux) was not to be easily repeated once they left later that month. He had lost his recordership of the city as long ago as 28 August. On 8 October he joined with other gentry, some of whom were quite obscure, to call for an association of Worcestershire and its neighbours, and on the 29th, Wylde won for himself an order of the Commons that plate of his that was seized was to be restored, but it was until 1646 to be a hollow promise.182PA, Main Pprs. 30 Sept. 1642; Add 18777, f. 33v; CJ ii. 826b; HMC Portland, iii. 100. A recognition of his prominence came in December, when he was proposed by the Commons, in what were to become the Oxford peace propositions, for the office of lord chief baron of the exchequer, which had traditionally been given to a serjeant-at-law.183CJ ii. 908a; Gardiner, Constitutional Docs. 262-7; Bryson, Equity Side of the Exchequer, 46-52.

Wylde was back in the House in early November. On the 14th, he spoke in the House for the need to compel malignants to pay parliamentary rates by distraint of goods. He argued that if most enemies of the Parliament refused to pay, then an ordinance of penal taxation should be introduced. On the 16th, he was first-named to a committee to prepare an ordinance for sequestering the rents of bishops, deans and chapters, and a week later, when reporting it, denounced the higher clergy as ‘fomentors of these differences’ whose properties should be applied to heal ‘the bleeding estates of the commonwealth’.184Add. 18777, ff. 57v. 69; CJ ii. 852b, 856b. This was to be the beginning of Wylde’s major contribution to the development of penal taxation by Parliament. He had been involved in earlier moves to sequester the property of named impeached individuals, such as Lord Capell (Arthur Capell*), but there was now a recognition of a general principle that enemies of the state should pay. Wylde produced an ordinance for sequestering the estates of ‘delinquents’ which was read on 22 December and recommitted to a group which he led. In its original draft it specified that the receivers of this source of revenue should be the traditional county leaders, the deputy lieutenants; but on its first reading it was moved that the task should be allocated to assessors of rates for Parliament.

On 3 February 1643, Wylde’s work on the estates of delinquents bore fruit with the appointment of a sequestration committee, with powers to appoint local sequestration officials. This was ahead of the ordinance confirming the scope of sequestration. Gilbert Millington* was entrusted with special care of the committee, but it was Wylde who by 6 February brought in the draft ordinance and reported progress, and who was asked to bring in names of reliable local commissioners.185Add. 18777, ff. 144; Harl. 164, ff. 316v, 330; CJ ii. 953b, 993a. On 7 March, objections were raised by some Members to the principle of the ordinance, which defined ‘delinquent’ as anyone who had contributed to the king’s cause. Wylde in reply pleaded necessity: ‘We must do something for the common wealth and not lie all upon the good subject’. He got the ordinance successfully through a division, and on 27 March took it to the Lords with a successful outcome. The names of impeached bishops who were to be sequestered were included in the text of the ordinance, a sure sign of Wylde’s handiwork.186Add. 18777, ff. 165, 166, 169, 176; Add. 31116, p. 61; CJ iii. 21b; A. and O. i. 106-17. Unsurprisingly, he was among those named by the Commons to the bicameral Committee for Sequestrations that the two Houses established that same day (27 Mar.).187CJ iii. 21b. An ordinance of 18 August, which clarified and codified sequestration procedure, and imposed an oath which would root out Catholics and subject them to the penal taxation, was a further product of his labours.188CJ iii. 111b, 112a, 129a, 164a, 169a, 175b, 208a, 209a; A. and O. i. 255-60.

Wylde was active in new moves towards the levying of rates on the populace at large. He was in the chair of committees of the whole House on 26, 27 and 28 January 1643 which voted a monthly rate of 12d in the pound, and commended it to the Committee for Advance of Money, which had been established by ordinances of 26 and 29 November 1642. The aim was to tax those who had not responded to the invitation to contribute on the ‘public faith’ and thereby at some future date receive 8 per cent interest.189Add. 18777, ff. 100, 100v. 134; CJ ii. 899a, 943b, 944a, 945a, 946a; A. and O. i. 38-41. The Committee for Advance of Money seems not to have responded positively to these proposals for a shift in its modus operandi. Ordinances were passed instead for counties in the west of England, but Wylde evidently sought something more satisfactory than piecemeal regional legislation. On 4 February he was reporting an ordinance for taxing those who had not lent on the Propositions, but three days later he reported an ordinance which his committee had drawn up for weekly assessments from counties under the control of Parliament, which would raise £80,000 per month, with sums set on towns and cities, and nothing said about rates on individuals. This was the principle enshrined in the final ordinance of 24 February, and thus Wylde should be given much of the credit for Parliament’s abandoning the principle of individual rates enshrined in the subsidy.190Add. 18777, ff. 142v. 145; A. and O. i. 85-100. It should at the same time be noted, however, that the assessment was the product of a developing fiscal logic towards efficient, locally-raised direct taxation which had started with the £400,000 subsidy and was a response to the limitations of the ‘fifth and twentieth’ tax.191Braddick, Parliamentary Taxation, 129-32.

While he was not involved initially in the creation of the excise tax, Wylde became involved in amendments, proposed by the commissioners, to the original ordinance. From mid-August, he was given special care of a revising ordinance which in fact repealed the earlier one of 22 July. On 29 August, Wylde chaired a committee of the whole House which examined the excise ordinance: its importance as the Parliament’s most potentially profitable indirect tax was appreciated. The main ordinance was published on 8 September. Wylde’s drafting committee reported five days later on allowances to be allowed the commissioners. Wylde proposed an allowance to them of 6d. in the pound. The commissioners demurred, hoping to hold out for more, and D’Ewes noted that they were supported by some ‘violent spirits’ (Wylde on this occasion not among them). Wylde talked to the commissioners, and was able to report the following day that they had accepted his offer out of their sense of public duty.192Harl. 165, ff. 191, 193; Add. 31116, p. 152; CJ iii. 207b, 222a, 239b, 240a, 243a; A. and O. i. 274-83, 287-9. He retained an interest in the development of the excise, chairing a committee assembled in October 1643 to set the rates on wines; it was merged in January 1644 with another committee looking at the use of excise revenue for Parliament’s main field army under the earl of Essex.193CJ iii. 263b, 265b, 371b.

It was the casting around for sources of revenue in the spring of 1643 that led Wylde, on 29 May, to bring in an ordinance for the disposal of the income of the court of wards. Two months later, Wylde was second-named to a committee to abolish the custom of wardship, and to allocate a sum to the suggested Parliament-approved budget that would be put to the king for his approval in peace negotiations.194CJ ii. 109a, 179b. When the matter resurfaced in November, a new ordinance, suggesting an audit of the offices of the court of wards, was committed to a group including Wylde, and in January and February 1644, Wylde was asked to report ‘peremptorily’ on progress to an impatient House.195Harl. 166, f. 17; CJ iii. 317a, 381a, 395b, 403b. He worked closely on this matter with Samuel Browne*, agent of the 4th earl of Northumberland (Algernon Percy†).196Add. 18779, f. 66v. In August, the court had still not been abolished, no doubt because of implications for tenure, and the scope of the attack was widened to include feudal tenures. A new ordinance for abolition of the court of wards was proposed, with Wylde given special care, in March 1645; he was still reporting on such an ordinance in October 1646; and again in October 1647.197CJ iii. 526b, 592a; iv. 70a, 538b, 687a; v. 39b, 339a.

Very early in the civil war, Parliament had to face a practical problem of authority caused by the king’s removal of the great seal. On 26 November 1642, Wylde was first asked to report on the matter, but it was not until 10 May 1643 that the subject again came up for discussion in the House.198CJ ii. 866a; iii. 79a. Wylde’s committee reported an ordinance on the topic the following day, when he got the Commons to take four votes, to the effect that the great seal should attend the Parliament, that the lord keeper had abandoned his post, that the absence of the great seal was the cause of many ‘mischiefs’, and that it was the duty of both Houses to provide a speedy remedy.199Add. 31116, pp. 97-8, 102. On 14 June, Wylde prepared the heads of a conference about the great seal, and he, Pym and two others reported on it. There was evidently some reluctance in the Lords to create a new great seal of Parliament, because it did violence to tradition and precedent, and on 26 June Wylde attended the Lords to try to overcome their unease.200CJ iii. 129a, 130a, 145a. It was not until October, that the Commons was able to put to the Lords a proposal that there should be a new great seal, and Wylde still managed the Commons’ approaches. By 17 October, it was at least agreed by both Houses that the old great seal was invalid, and that acts passed under it since its removal from Westminster should be declared illegal.201CJ iii. 269a, 271b, 278ab, 283b. Two weeks later, the text of an ordinance for the great seal was read, but it languished in the Lords, so that Wylde had to attend them on 10 November to ask for it to be expedited. He was successful: later that day, he himself was named as one of the new commissioners of the great seal.202CJ iii. 296a, 296b, 306b, 307b; Add. 31116, pp. 102, 164, 175, 180. In March 1644 he reported on behalf of all the commissioners their need for a secretariat.203CJ iii. 414b, 415b.

During 1642 and 1643, Wylde was certainly an ally of John Pym’s, but so close was their working relationship, towards the same ends, that Wylde’s contribution has been rather overlooked. Indeed, until a revaluation in the 1990s it was usual to attribute to Pym the hard work involved in bringing Parliament’s revenue machinery into being.204Hexter, Reign of King Pym, 23-4; J.S. Morrill, ‘The Unweariableness of Mr Pym’, in Political Culture and Cultural Politics in early Modern Eng. ed. S.D. Amussen, M.A. Kishlansky (Manchester, 1995), 35. This was undoubtedly Wylde’s greatest achievement outside the realm of the judicature. Wylde left few papers, the parliamentary diarists offer relatively few assessments of his character or personality, and it is difficult to re-create much of a sense of his political alliances, beyond noting his role as collaborator with, if not lieutenant to, John Pym. Through the hectic summer of 1643 he continued as chairman of the Committee for Sequestrations, corresponding with Sir Thomas Barrington* on an ordinance they were developing ‘as far as time would permit.’205Eg. 2647 f. 14. Like Pym, Wylde was involved in preparing peace terms to put before the king, but also like Pym, he was he was no advocate of concessions. In August 1643 he brought in another ordinance for impressment, drafted proposals for the management of the London militia, which D’Ewes dismissed as impossible for the king to accept; and sought to extend sequestration to Members absent from the House without leave.206Harl. 165, ff. 132v, 151, 159.

Trial manager and religious Presbyterian, 1643-5

The death of Pym in December 1643 coincided with another shift in the direction of Wylde’s career. He moved increasingly back into the judicial arena, tackling his two most notable targets for impeachment, Queen Henrietta Maria and Archbishop Laud. Laud’s trial was unfinished business from the earlier impeachments of the bishops and the sequestration ordinance. On 20 October 1643, Wylde, as the Commons’ chief manager of impeachments, led a committee to manage that part of a conference with the Lords on the charge against the archbishop.207CJ iii. 283b. Probably because of the pressure of business he had to deal with, it was not until 11 December that Wylde’s Commons committee met to prepare evidence and summon witnesses for the trial. A separate committee was named on 3 January 1644 to manage the trial, with John Maynard* and Wylde given special responsibility for it, and Wylde went from thence to the Lords to discuss witnesses, probably a first move in the effort to ensure that some peers appeared against Laud at the hearing.208CJ iii. 336a, 357b, 358b, 373b. Later that month, the first articles in the charge against Laud were sent to the Upper House, and the archbishop’s answers were returned to Wylde’s committee. On 4 March, as part of a bundle of 11 orders and ordinances for which he sought their approval, Wylde took to the Lords a request to fix a date for the trial.209Harl. 166, f. 22; CJ iii. 415b, 416a. It opened on 12 March, with D’Ewes noting that Wylde’s charge and Laud’s response were in general terms, ‘and little else done that afternoon’.210Harl. 166, f. 31v. Wylde gave as reasons for the delay in bringing the case to trial, the ‘distractions of the times’ and the deaths of some MPs, by which he meant principally John Pym; despite these difficulties, ‘the truth survives’. As in earlier impeachments, Wylde denounced his victim’s offences as ‘comprehensive of all the evils and miseries which we now suffer’, and employed his usual ad hominem personal bitterness. The archbishop, endowed with many gifts of nature and favours from the king, had perverted them ‘even to the destruction of the public and the ruin of the womb that bare him’. The trampling of the subjects’ liberties and the rights of Parliament, and the interference in secular government were given due weight in the charge, but Wylde devoted most of his words to a violent attack on the popery in Laud’s doctrine and church polity. For his part, Laud noted of Wylde in his own account: ‘I had a character given me before of this gentleman, which I will forbear to express; but in this speech of his and his future proceedings with me, I found it exactly true’.211State Trials ed. Howell iv. cols. 353-6.

There were 20 days of Laud’s trial, lasting until 29 July 1644. The impression created by the range of evidence Wylde marshalled against him is overwhelmingly one of exhaustive attention to detail. Wylde dwelt on Laud’s attempt to elevate the privy council over Parliament and the archbishop’s animus against those he thought the king’s enemies, whom he would ‘crush ... to pieces’. The fifth article of the charge focussed on the Canons of 1640. By the tenth day Wylde was descanting on the ‘innovations’ in religion, which he described as ‘a tide that came in not all at once’. As evidence he cited the popish pictures in Laud’s gallery, and the windows in Lambeth Palace chapel. Sir Henry Mildmay* was brought in to swear that bowing to the altar was the custom there. By this time, William Prynne* and Samuel Browne* were helping Wylde and John Maynard. On the twelfth day, Laud noted that Wylde’s long-winded response to his answers was weak, and Prynne ‘was often at his ear, but the serjeant was little less than angry and would on.’ The next day, Wylde went sick and did not attend the trial again until the court convened for the last time, leaving in charge William Prynne, not yet a member of the Commons and even more indefatigable than he was.212State Trials ed. Howell iv. cols. 364, 418, 453, 459, 461, 464, 474, 484.

Wylde had been keen to involve peers in the trial, having successfully asked on 9 March that five named Members of the Lords should attend. Two days later, on the eve of the trial Wylde sent a message to the Lords to request the attendance of the earl of Northumberland, whose man-of-business, Samuel Browne, was an important figure in the management of the proceedings. On the last day, the 4th earl of Pembroke (Philip Herbert*) was produced as a witness and spoke to Laud’s alleged dream of greater preferment, which Laud had discussed with him only in the context of the prelate’s complaint against Prynne for publishing it. Laud was genuinely shocked – ‘Now God forgive his lordship!’ – and the archbishop’s own counsel landed a telling blow against Wylde’s doctrine that none of Laud’s offences singly were treason, but all were, by way of accumulation: ‘I crave your mercy, good Mr Serjeant; I never understood before this time that two hundred couple of black rabbits would make a black horse’.213CJ iii. 422b, 423b, 424a, 424b; State Trials ed. Howell iv. cols. 564, 586. The trial had evidently not gone well for Wylde, and in the coda to it, in December 1644, when an ordinance was introduced in the Commons to declare Laud attainted of high treason, Wylde railed against the Lords, who had voiced their reservations in a paper in September: ‘He wondered the lords should so much distrust their judgments as to desire a conference about it’. Laud drew the opposite conclusion from the conferences, and thought Wylde and the earl of Pembroke were colluding, ‘they jumped so together’.214CJ iii. 628a, 682b, 694b, 734b; iv. 2b, 7a; State Trials ed. Howell iv. col. 598. Wylde and the earl were colleagues on the Committee for Sequestrations, and may well have been associates.215Add. 18779, f. 81.

Between the summer and the closing months of 1644, Wylde was able to give some attention to Worcestershire. He was reporting an ordinance for the raising of a county force in August. A petition from the parliamentarian minor gentry on 7 September urged the Lords to speedy approval, cataloguing the outrages of the royalists, and pointing out the strategic importance of the county, a corridor for the king’s access to the west.216CJ iii. 604b, 605a; PA, Main Pprs. 7 Sept. 1644. The ordinance passed the Lords on 21 September, and was published on the 23rd.217A. and O.; LJ vi. 711ab. Wylde was active in commissioning officers for the new force in the following months, and was consulted fully by the Committee of Both Kingdoms on the establishment of the garrison at Evesham for Parliament in the spring of 1645.218SP28/138, pt. 9; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 190, 195, 379, 609; CJ iv. 156b. He could hardly have given local affairs his full attention, however. He had retained the chair of the Sequestrations Committee from its inception, and was still a commissioner of the great seal: the combined duties of both posts made him a full-time administrator. These posts and attendant fees and salaries did not restrain him from claiming the £4 weekly allowance voted by the Commons in June 1645 for members whose property had been damaged or destroyed by the king’s forces.219Belvoir Castle mss, Original Letters, Members of the Long Parliament II. He was also at this time active in moves towards reforming the church along Presbyterian lines. Back in May 1642, Wylde had reported a bill to establish an assembly of divines, and in September of that year, had brought an amended version to the House.220CJ ii. 571a, 575b, 767b, 781b. Progress was slow, but when the ordinance finally passed the Lords, Wylde was named as a lay commissioner of the new body. He was less active in its proceedings than Humphrey Salwey*, but sat on a joint committee of Parliament and the assembly to examine proscribed texts.221CJ ii. 903a; iii. 68a, 119b, 124a, 201a..

In the light of this activity it was natural that in October 1645 Wylde should have been named to a committee of the Commons to produce an ordinance to bar scandalous persons from the sacrament, and the following summer that he should play a part in arrangements to implement it. 222CJ iv. 300b, 553b, 562b. The work of this committee was profoundly theological, as well as having an inevitable political tinge. It grew out of the grand committee for religion, where, on 8 September, Wylde had spoken on Romans 14 and other Pauline texts on those that took the bread and wine to their damnation.223Add. 18780 f. 114a; CJ iv. 266a. Linked with these discussions was his work on moves to settle a preaching ministry throughout the country. The committee for judging scandalous offences met in January 1647 (Wylde’s name headed the list of those in attendance) and divided Surrey into six presbyteries or classes. In the winter of 1646-47, Wylde’s hand is discernible behind moves to reorganize parishes in the city of Worcester, and to bring in orders for parishes in Herefordshire.224Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 432; Worcs. Archives, St Helen’s par. reg.; Add. 16178, end of vol. copied orders. In May 1647, he was reporting on a revived ordinance against moral offences; this topic had first attracted his interest in 1641, and again in 1645; but with moves towards ecclesiastical reconstruction now stood in some prospect of being brought to fruition. In the event, however, it was only after the execution of the king that an act was passed.225CJ ii. 356a; v. 184a, 188a, 189a, 302b; Add. 31116, p. 620; A. and O. ii. 387-9.

Political Independent and chief baron, 1646-53

With the surrender of Worcester to Parliament in July 1646, Wylde recovered his position as recorder of Worcester, and went down to the county as judge of oyer and terminer to try those considered enemies of Parliament. Once there he received deputations from Bewdley, whose civic leaders seemed to treat him as recorder.226Worcester Chamber Order Bk. 414; Worcs. Archives, 498/BA 8681/236 pp. 611, 615. Probably during the same tour he gave the charge at a Gloucester meeting of oyer and terminer, describing the citizens as ‘conservators of the Parliament of England’, an interesting adumbration of the phrase ‘keepers of the liberties of England’ later employed by the Commonwealth government.227Dorney, Certain Speeches, 23. En route to Worcestershire he met his friend Whitelocke in an Oxfordshire garrison. The soldier-lawyer offered Wylde a chance to fire some cannon, which he nervously refused, and Whitelocke accompanied the ‘much frighted’ judge beyond Wallingford, a town still in royalist hands.228Whitelocke, Diary, 187-8.

Wylde was evidently not a military man, but his talents as a spokesman for the victorious Parliament were appreciated. In January 1647, Wylde resumed his career as a circuit judge for the first time since the start of the civil war. The reasons for this move are unclear, although evidently there was a need for some high profile politicians to act in the provinces as apologists for Parliament during a period of reaction against county committees. Wylde’s appointment to the Oxford circuit was not without controversy; a vote on whether he should ride the Lincolnshire circuit had the Presbyterians Denzil Holles and John Glynne as tellers for the ayes.229CJ v. 76ab. They may have been seeking to weaken the grip of the Independents and the army on Oxfordshire and adjacent counties, after the surrenders of Oxford and Worcester, by posting Wylde far away. Their defeat kept Wylde in western territory where he already had an important interest. Erastian Presbyterian though he was in religion, in politics Wylde never significantly deviated from his early war party allegiance, and was by this time a political Independent in outlook. In the summer, another motion to send Wylde on circuit to Lincolnshire was defeated, and this time he went to Hampshire, where his daughter lived. There was certainly no question of his loyalty to the Independents. On 15 October, the House thanked him for vindicating the actions of Parliament during the assizes, and the same day he was added to a committee to bring in impeachments against the Presbyterian leaders.230CJ v. 236ab, 330a, 334b.

In January 1648, Wylde was sent to Hampshire to try Captain John Burley, who had tried to raise a force on the Isle of Wight to rescue the king from Carisbrooke Castle. Burley was found guilty of treason and executed.231CJ v. 425b, 441b; R. Ashton, Counter-Revolution: the Second Civil War and its Origins (1994), 361-2. The incident provided royalist propagandists with marvellous source material. According to an early reporter of the trial, Wylde had ‘just enough law for a hanging business’. With his ‘little head and great ruff’, he presided over a trial whose outcome had been decided at Westminster.232Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 20 (25 Jan.-1 Feb. 1648), sig. v3iii (E.424.7); 21 (1-8 Feb. 1648), sig. x2i (E.426.6); Mercurius Aulicus 25 Jan.-3 Feb. 1648, sig. A3ii (E.425.8). In October 1646, Wylde and other commissioners of the great seal were allowed £1,000 each from the estates of delinquents whom they were to name. Royalist writers now linked this award with the death of Burley to assert that Wylde had been bribed to find him guilty.233CJ iv. 708a; CCC 47; The Second Centurie (1648), 5 (E.465.13). Their hatred of Wylde was fuelled further by another case later that year when Major Edmund Rolfe was tried for having urged Charles to escape from Carisbrooke: according to royalists, with the intention of his shooting the fleeing king. Wylde not only played a major part in parliamentary discussions on how to proceed in the case, but also went down to Hampshire to try Rolfe. On this occasion the prisoner was acquitted, and much was made of the contrast between his fate and that of Burley.234CJ v. 636b, 657a; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 23 (29 Aug.-5 Sept. 1648), sig. Ff2; no. 34 (5-12 Sept. 1648), sig. Hhi (E.462.34).

Wylde was also active elsewhere in suppressing opposition to Parliament and massaging local opinion. In May 1648, he had gone with Richard Cresheld*, like Wylde a serjeant-at-law and a Worcestershire man, to try cavalier rebels in Maidstone, Kent. Wylde’s intemperate tone and uncompromising approach helped provoke the revolt there.235CJ v. 534a, 559b; Everitt, Community of Kent, 236-40. In July and August, Wylde was involved in discussions to quell unrest in Worcester, and in Hampshire received an official petition offering a commentary on an ordinance about free quarter and ignored a petition calling for the disbanding of the army and the restoration of the king to his full position on the throne. In October, he encouraged a Somerset grand inquest petition urging the breaking off of negotiations with the king and condign punishment on those who had fomented the second civil war.236CJ v. 631b, 665a; vi. 49a; OPH xviii. 31-2; HMC Portland, i. 475; Ashton, Counter Revolution, 117-8, 148. All this earned Wylde attention he had only slightly attracted in his earlier, behind-the-scenes work in Parliament. Royalist satirists had in 1645 invented speeches he had supposedly given in Parliament; now the inventions were bitter, making Wylde justify his bloodthirsty actions on the bench.237A Speech made by Sergeant Wild (1645) (W2164; TCD Library Gall. 3. c.27 no.20); The Grave and Learned Speech of Serjeant-Wilde (1648, E.461.25).

Wylde’s work on behalf of Parliament also earned him the office for which he had been suggested in 1643, that of chief baron of the exchequer. On 14 November 1648, Wylde took leave of the House; the swearing-in took place on the following day. At the ceremony, in reply to Whitelocke’s platitudes, Wylde stressed the great work God to which had called the Parliament: rescuing religion from popery; restoring the courts of justice to their full splendour, and the king to his just rights and sovereignty.238CJ vi. 50b, 64b, 65b, 76a; Add. 46500, f. 56; Whitelocke, Diary, 224. The last remark provoked a royalist satirist to report that Wylde had sworn his oath of loyalty to King James.239Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 47 (14-21 Nov. 1648), sig. L113ii (E.548.22). The post ended Wylde’s parliamentary career, and he gave up his committee appointments. Less than two months after his swearing-in affirmation of his view of the king’s rights, he was named as one of his judges at his trial. Two days after this nomination, it was being made clear that Wylde and the other judges would not be present, the trial instead going before lay commissioners. The reasons advanced for this change were that the judges, being Members of the Lords, might find themselves embroiled in delays and opposition there; and that they had taken particular oaths of loyalty.240A. and O.; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 577-8. Wylde’s relative, Edmund Wylde*, attended two meetings of the king’s trial as a commissioner; his Worcestershire parliamentary colleagues, Humphrey Salwey and Richard Salwey, also named as commissioners, declined to act. These men were certainly associates of Wylde, Richard Salwey indeed replacing him as chairman of the Sequestrations Committee.241CJ vi. 99a. It is possible that Wylde, and those whom he influenced, may have had a crisis of conscience or confidence over the matter.

Whatever Wylde’s view of the trial and execution of the king, he continued to represent the new government with as much vigour as he had previously devoted to the cause of Parliament. He went on circuit to Exeter in March 1649, and rode the western circuit again in the summer, while he was later thanked by the House for his efforts there, it was evident that for once his difficulties reported by the royalist press were all too real.242CJ vi. 170a; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 45; CCAM 1080; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 47 (20-27 Mar. 1649), sig. L113ii (E.548.22); S.K. Roberts, Recovery and Restoration in an English County: Devon Local Administration 1646-70 (Exeter, 1985), 24. His importance as a senior Rumper was confirmed by his performance in the elections to the new council of state, coming seventh in the list.243CJ vi. 141a. As a councillor and as one with formidable experience in the field of penal taxation, Wylde was frequently called upon for advice about the workings of local sequestration committees in the early years of the Rump.244CCC 149, 169, 180, 221, 519. In these cases he was willing to give Roman Catholics the benefit of the doubt in questions about their loyalty.245CCC 2856, 2644. His role as a councillor of state in 1649 and from February 1650, when he came third in the list of successful nominations, was as something of a legal factotum, covering matters as diverse as the coinage, law and order, security, and matters of law in general. His drafting skills were employed on acts to prohibit correspondence with Charles Stuart, to ban the export of bullion, and to regulate recusancy. 246CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 362, 370, 374, 376, 406, 413, 417; 1650, pp. 18, 413-4, 435.

As a militia commissioner, Wylde was in Worcester during September 1651, when the city was the backdrop for the final days of the campaign against Charles Stuart. He was given much latitude in how he marshalled the militia forces, and after the battle, stayed on to supervise demolition of the city defences and preside at the Droitwich quarter sessions.247CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 356, 433; ‘Henry Townshend’s “Notes of the Office of a Justice of Peace”, 1661-3’, ed. R.D. Hunt, Miscellany II (Worcs. Hist. Soc. n.s. v), 83. He was active against another notorious enemy of the government. In his capacity as one of the senior judges, Wylde was involved in the two trials of John Lilburne. In the first, he provided counsel for the prosecution, at the request of other judges and of the council of state; in the second, during the sitting of the Nominated Assembly in 1653, he was one of the presiding judges. The outcome was in the Leveller’s favour, the jury returning the verdict that he was ‘not guilty of any crime worthy of death’. Wylde had not brushed with the Levellers before; the ‘Mr Wilde’ who argued with them on 14 December 1650 in the City of London was almost certainly not the lord chief baron, who was always described as such, but his nephew, Edmund Wylde*.248CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 341; State Trials ed. Howell v. cols. 407- 43; London’s Liberties (1650, The Rota ed., Exeter, 1972), bibliographical note; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 258.

Eclipse and final years, 1653-69

At the inception of the protectorate, Wylde’s patent as lord chief baron was not renewed. His friend Whitelocke tried to persuade Oliver Cromwell* of the serjeant’s merits, ‘but to no effect, the protector having a dislike to the serjeant, but the ground thereof I could not learn’. We remain as ignorant as Whitelocke; but among the possible reasons must have been Wylde’s spectacular failure to secure the conviction of Lilburne in July 1653, by which in the words of a modern authority, ‘Barebone’s Parliament ... saddled itself with its first political prisoner’.249Whitelocke, Diary, 390; B. Whitelocke, Journal of the Swedish Embassy ed. H Reeve (2 vols. 1855) ii. 231; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 250-8. Wylde remained out of high office under Oliver Cromwell. He retained his position in the commission of the peace, however, and as a serjeant, still rode the assize circuit in the city of Worcester and the surrounding county. He was also still an active recorder of Droitwich and Worcester. In 1659, he allowed the city a sum equivalent to his fees, which the chamber invested in firefighting equipment. The grateful citizens went over to Droitwich, where he was living or at least staying, with a gift of wine. It all gave him a strong local judicial presence.250Worcs. Archives, 496.5/BA 9360, A10, box 3, vol. 2 city acct. bk. 1640-69, n.p.; 705:962/BA 8965/7/7/2. There is evidence that whatever gifts had been showered on him during his heyday had not put him beyond money worries. In 1657, he was keen for his Droitwich steward to chase up arrears of rents there and in Worcester: ‘I cannot live without my rents’, he complained.251Soc. of Antiquaries, Prattinton Coll. Top. xii. p. 9.

In Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament, Wylde recovered his seat at re-enfranchised Droitwich. He was named only to two committees in this assembly, one on the representation of Durham, and the other on relations with the Other House, but used the opportunity to petition for his old office of lord chief baron. He was aligned with the commonwealthsmen, and was consistently critical of the second chamber, arguing that if a second House were allowed, ‘you must in justice and right restore the old lords’. Not that he wanted the traditional House of Lords either; his point was that the Humble Petition and Advice should be reviewed ‘to the bottom’, to test its legality.252Burton’s Diary, iii. 574; iv. 58, 338-9, 374. On 11 March he made clear his own pride in the Long Parliament, ‘the most famous memorable Parliament that ever was, since Magna Carta.’253Burton’s Diary, iv. 131. His attempts to recover his former high judicial office were only partially successful. He argued that he had been displaced by the lord protector without a hearing, but the lawyers in the House concluded that he had never before sought redress, that his office was anyway during the life of the sovereign, thus during that of the protector, and that the place was satisfactorily occupied.254Burton’s Diary, iv. 390, 421, 429. For them to have argued thus implies that he had few sympathisers, a suggestion confirmed by Thomas Burton*, who noted on various occasions that the serjeant ‘mumbled on’; ‘made a long chattering’, ‘made a long speech ... not much heard and less regarded’; and who recorded disrespectfully a story told him about Wylde: ‘It seems in the time of the Long Parliament, he was always left speaking, and members went to dinner and found him speaking when they came again’.255Burton’s Diary, iv. 131, 184.

There was a serious discrepancy between Wylde’s view of his own standing and the opinion his colleagues had of him. When he petitioned for his own office in the committee in the exchequer chamber, ‘he was scandalised to stand at that bar where he had been judge of the court and many of the committee had pleaded for him’. It was noted that while Wylde availed himself of the opportunity ‘highly to magnify himself’, he said nothing about the current lord chief baron. In the circumstances, he did well to retrieve the arrears of salary, even if he failed to secure the office, but it was all a sad decline from his heyday in the Long Parliament.256CJ vii. 622b, 627a, 634b; Burton’s Diary, iv. 390, 429, 438.

During the revivals of the Rump, he made more progress with his quest to recover his judicial status. From the outset, in May 1659, he was described as Lord Chief Baron Wylde, which may have been no more than a courtesy, but may equally have betokened a real recovery of office, as he was being described in these terms in Worcester in October.257CJ vii. 646a, 668a, 686b, 687b, 690a, 694b; Worcs. Archives, 496.5/BA 9360, A14, chamber order bk. 1650-68, f. 37v. In September, he was riding the assize circuit again, in Staffordshire, and advised the militia commissioners there against proceeding with their plan to disband the county troop in the face of mutiny by the soldiers.258HMC Portland, i. 686. During this incident he was described as lord chief baron, and so although it was not until 18 January 1660 that the Commons resolved that the title was his, the resolution was probably to ratify an appointment which Wylde had claimed ten months previously.259CJ vii. 814b. In November he was reported to have been bearded by some Quakers, taking advantage of the times to press their case.260The Fanatick History, or an Exact Relation of the Old Anabaptists and New Quakers (1660), 119 (E.1832.2). As appropriate for a leading judge, Wylde took little part in the proceedings of Parliament that were not legal matters; one of the few bills he played a major part in drafting was on the revenue of recusants’ estates, a topic which had interested him back in the early 1640s.261CJ vii. 798b, 867a.

It is unlikely that Wylde in any active way worked against the recall of the monarchy. But he was bound to lose office by it, and was out of the commission of the peace in March, forfeited the post of lord chief baron in May, and managed to cling on to the recordership of Worcester only until September. He was in a very vulnerable position at the return of Charles II, as he had done so much to create the parliamentary war machine, and was so notorious for his conduct at what had been seen as the show trials of Burley and Rolfe. He was nearly excepted from the Act of Oblivion for having been involved in these trials and having been nominated for that of Charles I, and managed to win favourable treatment by co-operating with the Lords on work to nullify some of the impeachments he had brought to completion in the 1640s.262Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend ed. Porter, Roberts, Roy, 288. Having thus helped to dismantle his own achievements, he was allowed to retire to his impressive house in Hampstead. He died in 1669, and is said to have been buried at Wherwell, Hampshire, home of his heiress and only surviving daughter, who had married Charles West, 5th Baron De La Warr. There is no record of any such burial at Wherwell, but it must be considered plausible. Wylde’s grandson was John West, 6th Baron De La Warr. He was groom of the stool to Prince George of Denmark, teller of the exchequer 1714-15 and treasurer of the excise 1715-17.263Collins, Peerage, i. 287; ii. 166; CP iv. 161.