TRENCHARD, John (c.1586-1662), of Warmwell, Dorset.

John Trenchard was a younger son of the Dorset landowner and noted puritan, Sir George Trenchard senior, whose family had resided at Wolveton near Dorchester since the fifteenth century. Trenchard’s political career was founded on his family network, which was extensive. Two of his brothers (Sir George junior and Sir Thomas) sat as MPs; his sisters’ husbands included John Browne I* and Sir John Strangways*; and his own marriage, into the Rodneys of Somerset, brought him into contact with other western gentlemen, including Sir Amias Bampfylde of Poltimore, Devon, and Sir John Rogers of Bryanston, who were trustees for the marriage settlement. The Rodneys and Rogerses were also related to the Seymours, earls of Hertford. In later years, Trenchard was able to marry his three daughters to two rising local gentlemen, John Bingham* and William Sydenham*, and a lawyer, John Sadler*.45Hutchins, Dorset, i. 415-6, 430; iii. 326; Dorset RO, D616/T1.

Outside the family circle, Trenchard was intent on cultivating other useful contacts from an early age. He sat for the borough of Wareham in 1621, 1624 and 1625 on his own interest as a local landowner, but he also enjoyed the support of the powerful east Dorset landowner, Sir Francis Ashley†.46HP Commons 1604-1629. By the mid-1630s Trenchard had entered the service of Francis Russell, 4th earl of Bedford, perhaps through the good offices of Sir John Strangways (who was acting as the earl’s agent in 1634), and he was involved in the earl’s development of Covent Garden in Westminster.47Dorset RO, D/FSI/233/9, unfol. Under the earl’s patent, Trenchard was able to commission his own buildings in the scheme – a venture that received the grudging approval of the privy council in March 1638.48PC2/49, p. 49. He was also an adventurer in the earl’s project to drain the Great Level in the east of England, allegedly having an interest that promised to bring him 1,000 acres of reclaimed fenland.49An Answer to a Printed Paper Distributed by Sir John Maynard (1653), p. 1.

Trenchard was again returned for Wareham in March 1640, but apparently played no part in the brief session that followed.50C219/42/90. He was re-elected for Wareham in October 1640.51C219/43/172. During the first six months of the Long Parliament, Trenchard was only moderately active as an MP. In December he was named to committees on three petitions: against Ship Money (5 Dec.); against the bishop of Bath and Wells (12 Dec.); and for giving relief to one of Archbishop William Laud’s victims, Dr John Bastwick (17 Dec.).52CJ ii. 45b, 50a, 52b. On 13 February 1641 Trenchard was appointed to the committee on a bill to abolish superstition and idolatry, and to introduce more godly forms of worship.53CJ ii. 84b. The membership of these committees included a mixture of local contacts (like Strangways and Denzil Holles*) and Bedford associates (including John Pym*) and it is unclear which had the greater influence over Trenchard at this stage. His apparent lack of involvement in the trial of Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford, or in the efforts led by Bedford and his allies to forge an agreement between king and Parliament through so-called ‘bridge appointments’, reinforces the impression that Trenchard was a mere bit player in Westminster politics in the opening stages of the Long Parliament. The death of the 4th earl of Bedford in early May 1641 brought an end to the ‘bridge appointments’ scheme, and it also effectively ended Trenchard’s involvement in Westminster affairs for the rest of the year, as he became receiver-general of the estates of William Russell*, the 5th earl. In May and June Trenchard he was busy advising the new earl in London.54Bedford Estates Office, acct. bk. of 5th earl, unfol. On 17 July he was named to the Commons committee to settle the estates of the late earl, and in September he went into the west country with Strangways and others, to raise money to pay his father’s debts.55CJ ii. 215a. On 30 September he was in Devon, where (as he told Bedford) he had ‘had the good fortune to make a good market by estating divers livings upon as good conditions as we had done in any of our former surveys’, as well as selling two manors, to raise over £18,000.56Bedford Estates Office, 5th earl’s corresp., unfol.

Revenues and accounts, 1642-3

Trenchard did not return to active service in the Commons until 5 March 1642.57CJ ii. 467b. During the course of the year that followed he maintained his connection with Bedford, and he was added to the committee for Covent Garden on 25 March; but his success as the earl’s receiver-general had evidently been noted by leading MPs, who were eager to involve him in managing Parliament’s financial affairs.58CJ ii. 496b. As a result, on 10 March Trenchard was named to the Committee for the public accounts of the revenue, where he joined his Dorset colleagues, Sir Walter Erle* and Denis Bond*.59CJ ii. 474a. The immediate problem facing this committee was securing the payment of the taxes voted in the previous eighteen months: the subsidies and the poll money. On 6 May Trenchard reported from the committee for the arrears of the poll money, recommending measures to pursue defaulters, and on 24 May he gave the House a statement of what had been collected from the different taxes.60PJ, ii. 284; CJ ii. 561a, 584a. By 3 June, when the Commons ordered that the committee pass the accounts of the 2nd earl of Warwick (Sir Robert Rich†), Trenchard had become its chairman.61CJ ii. 602a. On 21 June he reported from the committee on the arrears of the poll money and subsidies, detailing the receipts and how they had been ‘laid out for the defence of the public’.62PJ, iii. 110; CJ ii. 633b, 634b. On 30 June he again reported from the committee for accounts, with the preamble of a general statement, and the detailed accounts themselves, which were to be published once Trenchard had approved them.63PJ, iii. 153; CJ ii. 644b.

Alongside his involvement in the accounts of the revenue, Trenchard also played a role in the raising of new sources of money, especially through negotiation with merchants in London. On 26 March he was named to a committee to consider a petition from the merchant strangers, and this paved the way for negotiations in early June, conducted by a standing committee which included senior parliamentarians like John Pym, Sir Robert Harley* and Sir Walter Erle, as well as Trenchard.64CJ ii. 499a, 601b. On 19 April Trenchard joined John Hampden*, Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, Erle, Harley and Holles on a committee to consider ways to raise a stock of money for Parliament’s use.65CJ ii. 534b. On 1 June he was named with Holles, Pym and the Dorset MP Giles Grene*, to a committee to attend the City of London to raise a loan.66CJ ii. 598b. These activities were not separate from those of the committee for accounts, and this can be seen in Trenchard’s inclusion in a committee of 22 July, to attend the merchant adventurers to secure an extension of their loan on the previous year’s subsidy.67CJ ii. 685b. Four days later, Trenchard reported to the Commons the propositions of various gentlemen for the bringing in of subsidy arrears; and on 1 August he was named to another committee, to draw up a scheme whereby the merchant adventurers would receive some of the money up front, while the rest was secured as a new loan.68CJ ii. 691b, 698b.

At the beginning of August 1642, as phoney war became civil war, Trenchard was briefly distracted from his financial duties. On 1 August he was named to a committee to consider news from the north west sent by Sir William Brereton*; on 4 August he was named to committees to increase public observation of fast days and to receive information concerning the defence of the kingdom.69CJ ii. 699b, 702b, 703a. The situation in Dorset was also deteriorating, and on 16 August Trenchard was given leave of absence to return home. He appears to have left almost immediately, joining the earl of Bedford in his siege of the royalist-held Sherborne Castle.70PJ iii. 455; CJ ii. 723a; iii. 30b. He was away from Westminster at least until 5 October, when he was summoned to return to resume the chair of the committee for accounts.71CJ ii. 795a. On his return, Trenchard was again mainly involved in financial business. He was added to the committee to attend the City to negotiate a further loan on 22 October, and a week later he was named to a committee to treat with the merchant strangers for the repayment of part of the money advanced earlier in the year.72CJ ii. 819b, 826b. On 17 October he was named to a committee to consider the revenues from the ecclesiastical courts and tithes, and on 8 November he told the Commons that Laud’s agents were receiving the archbishop’s rents at Lambeth Palace – prompting the sending of a delegation, backed with military force, to seize the same.73CJ ii. 811a; Add. 18777, f. 52.

During the autumn and winter, Trenchard also became involved in extracting money from his colleagues. On 8 November he reported the names of various MPs who had refused to contribute money.74Add. 18777, f. 52v. On 9 December he reported on those MPs excluded from sitting until they had explained their behaviour to the committee, with the individual cases of William Allestrye, Sir Thomas Fanshawe, and Thomas Coke and Sir John Coke.75Harl. 164, f. 244v. On 19 December the Commons ordered that the committee for propositions, now chaired by Trenchard, would rate and assess MPs for contributions.76CJ ii. 894b. On 31 December he moved that there should be a separate committee to consider what contributions had been made by MPs, and to assess those who did not respond, but the Comnmons instead referred the matter to the committee for propositions.77Add. 18777, f. 110; CJ ii. 909b. Trenchard’s own track record in this respect was decidedly mixed. Despite being listed as having promised £600 to the parliamentarian cause, when the contributions were paid in June 1642 he could manage only a single horse, and when loans and gifts were levied for support of the army in December, he offered the modest sum of £30.78The Names of such Members... as have already Subscribed (1642, 669.f.21.3); PJ, iii. 476; Add. 18777, f. 109v.

During the winter of 1642-3 the raising of revenue continued to be secondary to Trenchard’s main concern: the committee for accounts. On his return from Dorset in October 1642, he was named to a series of committees concerned with bringing in the arrears of taxation, including those to encourage payment by various counties (28 Oct.), to consider whether a new commission was needed for the second instalment of the subsidy (19 Nov.), and on 9 December the Commons ordered that Trenchard’s committee would have the power to monitor local collectors and demand accounts from them.79CJ ii. 825b, 856a, 882b. The problem of raising money locally was again addressed by the Commons on 15 December, on 23 December it was ordered that the committee for accounts would enquire once again into subsidy arrears, and on 26 December Trenchard was ordered to report the matter of money.80CJ ii. 889b, 900a, 903a. The obvious conclusion, that the older sources of revenue were drying up, and other measures were needed, had not yet been fully acknowledged by Parliament, and there were further drives to enforce payment during the early months of 1643. On 10 January there was another order that Trenchard’s committee would call in the arrears of the subsidy; on 27 January a new committee was created (including Trenchard) to investigate collections and whether money was being siphoned off for local forces; and on 2 February, in what amounted to an admission of defeat, he was ordered to allow the remainder of the subsidy money to be paid directly to local committees.81CJ ii. 920a, 945b, 951a. The new weekly assessments, introduced in the same month, made the subsidy obsolete, but Trenchard continued to receive orders from Parliament on unpaid arrears as late as June.82CJ ii. 15b, 16a, 28b, 32a, 128a.

The extraction of contributions from MPs continued to take up a significant amount of Trenchard’s time in the early months of 1643. On 5 January he reported that ‘divers of great estates have not contributed’ and proceeded to name a number of MPs, including the suspected west country royalists, Sir Gerard Naper* and Piers Edgcumbe*; and on the same day the Commons ordered that Trenchard’s committee should work with the local committees to enforce contributions.83Add. 18777, f. 116v; CJ ii. 916a. On 16 February the Commons ordered that any MP who had contributed to local funds must give proof to Trenchard within eight days, and on 20 February it was further stipulated that Trenchard, as chair of the committee on contributions, would draw up a list of every MP, ‘and what sum he thought him fit to advance by the advice of the said committee’.84CJ ii. 968a; Harl. 164, f. 303. On the latter day it was also ordered that Trenchard’s committee would investigate the possibility of raising a loan of £20,000 from members of Parliament.85CJ ii. 972b. As with the subsidy arrears, the amount of money that could be levied from contributions soon began to decline, although it was not until the late spring that Trenchard’s activity in this area tailed off. On 28 March the Commons ordered him to write to the London MP, Sir Thomas Soame,* for his contribution; on 28 April he was instructed to bring in the names of those MPs who had not yet paid up.86CJ iii. 23a, 63a, 64a. Despite repeated requests, this report apparently did not appear, and instead, on 15 May, the Commons ordered that Trenchard would bear personal responsibility, under the ordinance, for the assessment of MPs.87CJ iii. 75b, 82b, 86a.

As 1643 continued, Trenchard became involved in devising new financial measures. On 20 March 1643 he was named to a committee to consider the raising and disbursing of money collected for the army under the new assessment tax.88CJ iii. 9b. Soon afterwards, he became chairman of this committee, and he remained in this role perhaps until the summer.89CJ iii. 21a, 23a, 134b. On 26 June he was ordered to report the state of the accounts of the assessments, and although his involvement was less in later months, on 13 November he was named to a committee to arrange the assessment collections in London.90CJ iii. 146a, 309b. Trenchard’s committee for accounts survived, in a reduced form, and through it he was charged with securing arrears of rent owed by the corporation of starch makers (31 Mar., 6 Apr.), and with vetting the accounts of Lord Forbes and the ‘sea adventure’ mounted against the Irish rebels the previous year (21 Apr.), which he reported to the Commons on 25 May, and he was also called upon to organise the payment of what was owed on 17 June.91CJ iii. 26a, 32a, 55a, 103b, 133b. This was followed on 3 June with an order of the Commons that Trenchard’s committee would bring in the arrears of money promised for the Irish service by the London companies.92CJ iii. 114a. Through the committee for accounts, Trenchard was involved in the seizure of the assets of the wealthy East India merchant, Sir Peter Richaut – a matter that required delicate negotiations with the Company, during June and September.93CJ iii. 139a, 141a., 143a, 240b, 242a. As the year drew on, the accounts committee became less important, and in November it was effectively sidelined by the ordinance to create a new committee for accounts.94CJ iii. 302a.

During the same period, Trenchard was also involved in the sequestration of royalist estates. This scheme had been proposed in January 1643, and the matter referred to Trenchard’s committee for contributions.95CJ ii. 910a. On 27 March Trenchard was named, with Pym, St John, Bond and others to a bicameral Committee for Sequestrations to put the new sequestrations ordinance into effect.96CJ iii. 21b. On 24 May he was named to the committee on an ordinance to prevent the concealment of delinquents’ estates, and on 2 June he was added to the committee on the additional ordinance on sequestrations.97CJ iii. 100a, 112a. Later in the same month he was appointed to a committee to raise funds for the Scots in Ulster from the sequestration revenues, and he and Cornelius Holland were ordered to take care of the sale of goods sequestered in London, with the proceeds being shared by the Scottish and English armies.98CJ iii. 132a, 135a. Trenchard is known to have attended the Committee for Sequestrations in May and June, but thereafter his appearances were infrequent.99SP20/1, ff. 37v, 43, 47. This may have been the result of a snub he received in the Commons on 20 June, when his report of additions to the sequestration ordinance was greeted with hostility. As Sir Simonds D’Ewes* recorded, the changes ‘much exceeding the said ordinance itself in the severity of them… made many of us wonder, who rather expected a mitigation of the former ordinance’, and MPs soon voted to lay aside the ordinance, fearing that the amendments would ‘entrap and ensnare honest innocent men’.100Harl. 165, f. 113v. Despite this reverse, Trenchard continued to have some involvement in the business of sequestrations when it was considered by the Commons later in the year. On 11 August he joined John Ashe and Robert Jenner in seizing £20,000 belonging to a papist, which it was feared was about to be smuggled to Oxford.101CJ iii. 201b. On 16 August he was named to the committee to consider the Lords’ amendments to the additional sequestration ordinance, and on 28 August he was appointed to a committee to execute an order for the sequestration of delinquent MPs.102CJ iii. 207a, 220a. A month later, on 28 September, he was named to the committee for Scottish affairs, which would evolve in 1644 into the Committee for Compounding.103Supra, ‘Committee for Compounding’; CJ iii. 258a. The next day (29 Sept.) the Commons ordered that Trenchard and John Wylde prepare an order ensuring that the local sequestration collectors paid their money to the treasurers at the Guildhall, rather than disbursing it locally.104CJ iii. 258b; Add. 18778, f. 58.

Trenchard’s activity in the Committee for Sequestrations and the committee for accounts was less intense in the autumn of 1643, but by this time he had become involved in other ventures. He was a founder member of the Committee for the Revenue, which took over the management of the royal estates from September 1643.105Supra, ‘Committee for the Revenue’. As an expert on revenue and accounting, Trenchard had already been involved in receiving and disbursing the revenue from royal property in Parliament’s hands. In November 1642, he had been teller in favour of allowing one of the king’s servants to take stockings and other personal items to his master at Oxford; and in the same month he was ordered to take care that all officials of royal lands would account for their receipts and disbursements with the parliamentary authorities.106CJ ii. 862b, 866a. In March 1643 he was added to the committee which took the money in the hands of the king’s receivers of the duchy of Lancaster and used it to fund the parliamentarian troops in Yorkshire.107CJ ii. 994b. A month later he was named alongside Pym, Bond and Sir Henry Mildmay, to a committee that considered how the royal revenues might be received and improved.108CJ iii. 59a. In the weeks after the Committee for Revenue was established, Trenchard was not regular in his attendance, although he signed warrants in September and December.109SP28/269, f. 68; E404/235, unfol. He was also named to associated committees of the Commons, including, on 12 October, that to consider the costs of garrisons, and whether the king’s revenues could pay for their upkeep.110CJ iii. 274a.

Alongside his wide ranging financial activities, Trenchard managed to pursue other parliamentary causes during 1643. In the previous December he had been put in charge of raising money from the sequestered living of St Martin-in-the-Fields, and by mid-December he was chairing the committee on the same.111CJ ii. 870a, 889a. This led, in January 1643, to his appointment as one of the sequestrators of the parish, with instructions to provide for a curate for St Paul’s, Covent Garden.112CJ ii. 924b; LJ v. 557a. In December 1642 Trenchard had also become chairman of the committee for ordering prisons, and in January he took charge of preparing an ordinance to turn the houses of Lord Petre and the dean of St Paul’s into overspill gaols.113CJ ii. 903a, 910a. This involvement continued in the spring of 1643. On 13 March Trenchard was added to a committee to consider the escape of prisoners from the Gatehouse, and on 18 March the Commons ordered that the petition of one prisoner, Sir Edward Berkeley, would be referred to the committee of prisons, with Trenchard taking care of the matter.114CJ ii. 1001a; CJ iii. 8b. By this time he had stopped being the regular chairman of this committee, but he retained an interest in prisons, and was added to the committee for the Tower on 4 July, when the failings of the keepers of gaols was referred to it, and on 14 August he was named to the committee to compound with prisoners of war.115CJ iii. 154b, 203b. Trenchard remained loyal to the earl of Bedford, despite the latter’s dalliance with royalism. On 5 April Trenchard was named to the committee on an ordinance to repay the money spent by Bedford, Holles and others during the siege of Sherborne the previous autumn.116CJ iii. 30b. On 14 August the Commons debated news that ‘eight trunks of the countess of Banbury are sent by the Lord Bedford unto Mr Trenchard’s house to be protected’, which was scandalous, as ‘she is a recusant and a woman that hath done much mischief to this House’.117Add. 18778, f. 14v. Out of respect for Trenchard, the trunks were opened in his own house, and once the contents had been examined it was decided to that they should remain in his custody, with the caveat that he must not deliver the keys to anyone without express permission.118CJ iii. 204b, 206a. Suspicions of Bedford’s allegiance in September led to a further order that the earl’s goods should be sold, but with the concession that £500 of the proceeds would be kept in Trenchard’s safekeeping.119CJ iii. 244a.

Waller’s man, 1643-5

There was a sea change in Trenchard’s career in the late summer of 1643, as the situation in Dorset, and in the south west in general, became increasingly alarming. Prince Rupert’s capture of Bristol in July was followed by a rapid advance into Dorset, which swept away the forces led by Sir Walter Erle, and left only the ports of Poole, Wareham and Lyme in parliamentarian hands. This disaster brought the Dorset MPs together on 7 August, when Trenchard, John Browne I, Holles, Prideaux I, Grene and others were named to a committee to consider Erle’s letters, and to decide how to safeguard the ports.120CJ iii. 196b; Add. 18778, f. 10v. Thereafter, Trenchard was involved in raising money for the beleaguered Dorset parliamentarians. In August he was assigned £300 from the Committee for Advance of Money to send to Poole, and Bond was ordered to take of the matter.121CJ iii. 211a-b, 233a. In September the Commons gave another £200 to Trenchard for Poole.122CJ iii. 258a. In November the Committee for Advance of Money ordered that Trenchard and Browne I be lent a further £200 for provisions for Poole, on security of repayment by 6 December.123CCAM 28. More money was granted for Poole via Trenchard later in December, and again in January 1644.124LJ vi. 398a; Add. 18779, f. 47v.

The royalist conquest of the west country was probably the most important factor in encouraging Trenchard to put his weight behind Parliament’s general in the region, Sir William Waller*. The connection between the two men was apparent even before the fall of Bristol. In early June, Trenchard was ordered to work with one of Waller’s senior officers, Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, in searching for concealed money, which was then to be sent to Waller.125CJ iii. 119b, 121b. On 9 June the Commons instructed Trenchard and Serjeant Wylde to receive any money that might be assigned to Waller either by Parliament or the Committee of Safety, and from then on the two became, in effect, the general’s receivers-general.126CJ iii. 122a. At first, the money came in fits and starts. In June the proceeds of the sale of goods sequestered from the 1st earl of Bristol and Lord Digby (George Digby*), a debt owed to another royalist, and the fine paid by Sir Norton Knatchbull* for the lifting of the sequestration of his estate, were paid to Trenchard and Wylde.127CJ iii. 125a, 140a, 144a, 149a. In late July and August, as the situation in the west worsened, greater sums were secured, with Bond and others being ordered to provide money to Trenchard from Haberdashers’ Hall, while the sequestration treasurers at the Guildhall were ordered to send money to Trenchard for Waller’s army ‘and for no other use’.128CJ iii. 186b, 198a. The money raised from Richaut’s investments in the East India Company was also assigned to Trenchard and Wylde.129CJ iii. 198b. On 12 September Trenchard was named to a committee to receive the accounts of Waller’s officers, and on 14 September the Commons ordered that Waller was to request money only through Trenchard, who would be his sole agent in negotiations with the Commons.130CJ iii. 238a, 241a.

Trenchard’s connection with Waller was reinforced still further on 27 October, when the Commons ordered that he would join Bond, Prideaux I and others in a new committee for the western counties, with the responsibility to ‘take course for [the] setting out of Sir William Waller’.131Add. 18778, f. 77; CJ iii. 291b. The appointment of a new governor of Portsmouth caused an open rift between the supporters of Waller and the adherents of the lord general, the 3rd earl of Essex, on 30 October, with ‘the western men, viz. [Richard] Whithed and Trenchard especially, and Sir Arthur Hesilrige, violently for Sir William Waller’.132Harl. 165, f. 199. On 10 November a letter from Waller detailing his difficulties in Hampshire, and his failure to take the royalist stronghold of Basing Castle, prompted Trenchard to move ‘that some course might be taken if Sir William Waller’s business miscarried for the repayment of him those sums which he had engaged himself for’, and this received the agreement of the House.133Harl. 165, ff. 225-226v; Add. 18778, f. 86v. Waller’s difficulties were seized on by his enemies at Westminster. On 15 November the Commons put Trenchard and Hesilrige in an awkward position when it ordered that they should write to Waller to persuade him to assign up to 1,000 men to the relief of Plymouth, in spite of the affect this would have on his army.134CJ iii. 312a. Three days later the House changed its tune, instructing Trenchard to send further money to Waller, accompanied with a letter of encouragement.135CJ iii. 314b, 316b. Other sums followed. On 21 November the Committee for Sequestrations ordered that Trenchard be paid £5,000 for Waller, to be repaid from the excise; on 25 November Trenchard and Hesilrige were ordered to speed the sending of money and men to the army; and in early December this was followed by a vote in the Commons to furnish Waller with a further £10,000, again payable to Trenchard.136Add. 5497, f. 97; CJ ii. 319b; Harl. 165, ff. 215v, 231v; Add. 18779, f. 7v.

An additional problem was the unwillingness of the London trained bands to stay with Waller’s army, and this led to some delicate negotiations in late November and early December, with Trenchard being named to a committee to attend the lord mayor and the City’s militia committee and also arranging payments to the London regiments.137CJ iii. 323a, 328b. Nor had the wider political factionalism died down. On 6 December D’Ewes characterised the situation at Westminster as tripartite, with the supporters of Essex and the allies of the Scots being at odds with those who backed Waller, and in particular his ‘expedition into the west for the reducing of those parts,… and of this party the chief leaders were Mr Trenchard and Mr Prideaux, being western men’.138Harl. 165, f. 233. For the time being, Trenchard and his friends were able to ensure Waller received both money and new recruits, although the quality of some of the latter was questionable. On 18 December the Commons ordered that Trenchard and others should again attend the London militia committee, to ask that the City regiments be retained or replaced; on the same day Trenchard arranged for powder and match to be sent to Waller from the Tower and the navy stores; and on 23 and 25 December Trenchard was again funds for the general – this time from the coffers of the sequestration treasurers.139CJ iii. 344a, 350b, 353a; LJ vi. 342a.

During 1644 Trenchard’s parliamentary career continued to be dominated by his role as Waller’s agent at Westminster. In January he was ordered to join Hesilrige in taking care of £4,000 assigned to Waller; he arranged the payment of money for footwear and clothing for the army and rewards for the troops that escorted prisoners back to London; and he was named to a committee on the ordinance to improve the supply of money from the four associated counties of the south east.140CJ iii. 360a, 368a, 371a, 371b, 372b, 383b. In February, Trenchard received £500 for Hesilrige’s regiment and others sums for the regiment of Colonel Turner, and in March it was ordered that the proceeds of the tin trade in the south west should be paid to Trenchard for Waller’s army.141CJ iii. 403b, 414a; Add. 18779, f. 70. At the beginning of April Parliament ordered that £5,000 from the excise should be paid to Trenchard for Waller.142CJ iii. 443b; LJ vi. 495b, 496b. In May the Commons stipulated that all the money to be paid to Waller was to pass through Trenchard’s hands, and in the next few weeks further orders followed, ensuring that funds raised by the associated counties would be paid to Trenchard, now styled ‘treasurer for Sir William Waller’s army’.143CJ iii. 487a, 520a, 538b. The most important source of money was advances made from the excise commissioners. Trenchard was named to the committee to raise money for Waller and Essex from the excise on 18 June, and by 27 June he had secured £10,000 for the western command.144CJ iii. 534a, 543b. In August he was again attending the excise commissioners, and on 9 August he brought in a further ordinance to raise £10,000 for Waller on the excise, secured on money from the merchant adventurers.145Harl. 166, f. 106; CJ iii. 577a, 585b, 588b, 590b, 600b; LJ vi. 667b, 684a. In September and October, following the destruction of Essex’s army at Lostwithiel, Trenchard was able to secure money from the assessments as well as the excise, and he was involved in re-equipping and Waller’s army ready for a new campaign.146CJ iii. 635b, 643b, 654b, 668b, 671b. He remained busy raising money in December, and on 13 December both Houses issued an order to give Trenchard the money needed to satisfy the members of Waller’s wagon train, and this was eventually disbursed from the funds of the Committee for Compounding.147CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 187; CCC 16, 28; CJ iii. 716b, 719a; LJ vii. 89b, 98a, 99b. On 22 December Parliament passed an ordinance which assigned £3,500 to Trenchard for the use of Waller, with the money once again coming from the excise commissioners.148Add. 31116, p. 362; CJ iii. 734a.

The personal relationship between Trenchard and Waller was obviously a close one. On 7 June Waller specifically requested that the Committee of Both Kingdoms pay the money raised for his artillery train to Trenchard.149CSP Dom. 1644, p. 214. On 6 September Waller wrote to the committee from Farnham that he considered it ‘a great happiness that Mr Trenchard came down to be an eye-witness of my condition’ and left it to the MP to be his advocate with the House.150CSP Dom. 1644, p. 476. In the same month, Trenchard became involved in attempts to heal the divisions between Waller’s commander at Farnham, Colonel Samuel Jones*, and the Surrey county committee led by Sir Richard Onslow*. Trenchard was one of the MPs chosen to attend the Lords to discuss the problem on 3 September; he was named to a Commons committee to discuss the same on 24 September; and on 18 October he joined Erle, Prideaux I and John Maynard on a committee to investigate a petition by officers in support of Jones.151CJ iii. 617a, 637b, 669b. There are also hints, in the same period, that Trenchard was receiving private information from Waller and his allies, as on 16 October, when he reported to the Commons a letter from Waller and Hesilrige in Wiltshire, and then supplied the addition information that ‘he understood that Sir William Waller would be at Salisbury tomorrow night’.152Harl. 166, f. 149v.

Trenchard’s fervent activity on behalf of Waller was in large part motivated by his concern for the safety of Dorset. On 25 February he reported to the Commons the interception of Prince Rupert’s own troop of horse near Dorchester by a force led by Trenchard’s sons-in-law, Sydenham and Bingham, and the capture of correspondence showing the king’s attempts to bring arms from France and Germany into Newcastle.153Add. 31116, p. 237. On 14 April the Committee of Both Kingdoms wrote to Waller with information Trenchard had received from Sydenham concerning the taking of Wareham by the royalists and the consequent threat to Poole.154CSP Dom. 1644, p. 118. On 1 July Trenchard was made a member of the new county committee for Dorset.155A. and O. On 22 July he went to Portsmouth to meet William Jephson* to discuss the need to send supplies to Sydenham, newly appointed as governor of Weymouth, and he may also have encouraged Jephson to negotiate the surrender of Wareham the next month, after an unsuccessful assault by local forces supported by Waller’s cavalry.156CSP Dom. 1644, p. 367. Dorset could not be separated from the fate of the western counties more generally, and Trenchard was involved with committees on the security of the Isle of Wight (8 Feb., 21 Sept.), to raise local forces to protect Wiltshire (17 June), and to reduce the royalists in Worcestershire (5 Aug.).157CJ iii. 393b, 532b, 579b, 635b. Trenchard worked very closely with other western MPs. He collaborated with his colleagues on the Committee for the West to arrange money for Waller in April, May and June.158CJ iii. 443b, 477b, 546a. On 17 June Trenchard and Erle were summoned to the Committee of Both Kingdoms concerning Waller’s wagon train, and on 22 June he joined the Cornish MP, Anthony Nicoll, in attending the committee when the excise commissioners – who were key to financing Waller’s army – were also present.159CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 244, 264. This high level of cooperation can also be seen in the Commons. On 24 September Trenchard, Grene, Bond and Prideaux I formed a delegation to persuade the excise commissioners to release more funds for Waller; and on 8 October the same group retraced their steps, to arrange for money to be paid to the Dorset garrisons.160CJ iii. 638b, 655b. Similar deputations on 26 November and 10 December saw Trenchard alongside Prideaux I, Bond and Nicoll.161CJ iii. 706a, 720a.

Trenchard’s concern for Waller dovetailed with his involvement in financial affairs during 1644. This is most obvious in his dealings with the excise, which was a major source of military funding. Waller was named to the excise committee, alongside other supporters of Waller, such as Prideaux I, Maynard and John Rolle, on 8 January.162CJ iii. 360a. On 20 January he was messenger to the Lords with an ordinance to raise £10,000 for the army from the excise; on 7 February he was named to a committee to consider whether the tax should be extended to cover other goods; on 30 March he was named to a committee on the auditing of the accounts of the same; and on 30 April he was named to the committee stage of the ordinance for regulating the excise.163CJ iii. 371a, 391a, 442a, 473b. Other committee appointments also fitted with Trenchard’s position as Waller’s treasurer, including those for the muster and payment of the army (24 Jan.), and to consider raising a stock of money for the war (11 Apr.).164CJ iii. 375b, 457a. A parallel case is that of the Committee for Revenue. Trenchard is known to have attended meetings of the committee in February, April, June and November.165Add. 32476, f. 23; E404/235, unfol.; SP28/269, f. 120. Again, his involvement seems to have benefited Waller, as in February, March and August, when the Committee for Revenue assigned money to Trenchard to disburse to the forces in the west.166SC6/ChasI/1661, m. 6r; CJ iii. 414a. Trenchard’s other financial business had less direct relevance to Waller, and it is telling that his involvement in it was, at best, fitful. In May the old committee for accounts briefly resurfaced, with Trenchard in the chair, and in the same month the committee for MPs’ contributions, again chaired by Trenchard, was also revived, to consider money owed to Lord Grey of Groby.167CJ iii. 487b, 493b, 502b, 505a, 506b, 519b. Such matters were mere distractions, however, in Trenchard’s concerted drive to ensure the success of Waller in the west.

Towards Independency, 1645-6

The new year of 1645 saw the dismantling of the old armies and their reformulation into the New Model Army, and this necessarily had a dramatic effect on Trenchard’s career. He was involved, at least in part, in the reforms. On 17 February he was appointed commissioner for the New Model ordinance in Middlesex, and on 6 March he was named to a committee to confer with the City authorities to raise £80,000 to fund the new army.168A. and O.; CJ iv. 71a. On 24 March Trenchard was named to the committee stage of the Self-Denying Ordinance, and on 21 April he was appointed to a committee to attend the London militia committee to encourage them to hasten the sending of pressed men to the army’s rendezvous.169CJ iv. 88a, 118b. Yet the disbandment of the old field armies did not bring Trenchard’s involvement with Waller to an end. The payment of Waller’s wagon train remained unresolved, and in the spring of 1645 Trenchard was paid sums from the Commons and the Committee for Compounding to satisfy their demands, as well as being charged with paying the arrears owed to surgeons and other supernumeraries.170CCC 16; CJ iv. 15b, 86b, 112a, 139a. The demise of Waller’s army left the security of the western counties largely in the hands of the Committee for the West, and Trenchard’s involvement in its activities increased accordingly. On 1 March the Commons ordered that the business of the west would be considered by the Committee of Both Kingdoms, and Trenchard and Nicoll would raise money for the immediate needs of the forces there.171CJ iv. 65a. On 11 March the Committee of Both Kingdoms assigned 25 horsemen to Trenchard to assist in the convoying of money to Portsmouth for the use of the western parts.172CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 341. In April Trenchard joined old allies such as Prideaux I, Browne I and Nicoll in signing the committee’s warrants, and on 10 June he reported from the committee to Parliament the plan to recruit reformado officers to assist in the relief of Taunton.173SP28/266/2, ff. 44-5; CJ iv. 172b. On 28 July Trenchard again reported from the Committee for the West the need for money to pay for the officers and troopers who had marched on Taunton, and on 12 August he was named to the committee to certify their debentures.174CJ iv. 223a, 238a. In the same month Trenchard was messenger to the Lords on three occasions, in order to secure their agreement to the payment of £500 to Sydenham for the garrison at Weymouth.175CJ iv. 234a, 237b, 239a; LJ vii. 532b. The New Model’s advance into the south west after Naseby relieved the pressure on Dorset, but there remained pockets and resistance, and the growth of a pro-royalist clubman movement. In November 1645 Colonel John Fitzjames* wrote to Captain Fox at Tiverton to say that he was hopeful that the brigade of Edward Massie*, stationed in northern Dorset, would be strengthened, and that he had called on Bond and Thomas Erle* for assistance. Revealingly, he thought writing to Trenchard directly ‘will be to little purpose’ but added ‘you know Sir William Waller can do sufficiently there’.176Alnwick, Northumberland 547, f. 7v. It seems that Trenchard was still seen as Waller’s man, despite the closeness of his links with the Dorset parliamentarians.

During 1645 and 1646 Trenchard was brought back into the financial affairs of Parliament, but not at the same level of intensity as before. On 16 March 1645 he was named to the committee to consider the state of the money allocated to the Scots in Ireland and what had been raised from the Irish adventurers.177CJ iv. 78a. With the defeat of the king’s field armies, deciding the fate of royalist estates became more urgent. On 6 June Trenchard was named to the committee on an ordinance to facilitate the sale of the estate of Sir John Byron; on 18 June he was named to the committee on an ordinance for the better regulation of sequestrations; and on 16 August he was appointed to a committee to consider the abuses in the sequestration system.178CJ iv. 166a, 178b, 244b. After a long absence, Trenchard once again attended meetings of the Committee for Sequestrations in the winter of 1645-6.179SP20/2, ff. 12, 48. During 1646 he became involved in a variety of financial measures. On 28 April he was named to the committee on the ordinance for draining the Great Level.180CJ iv. 525a. On 13 May 1646 he was appointed to a sub-committee of the committee on fen drainage, to examine the interest and title of the earl of Bedford - a matter that would materially affect Trenchard’s own investments in the project, as well as those of his former patron.181Cambs. RO, R.59.31.9.1, p. ii. On 11 August he was named to a committee to raise money for Ireland, and on 30 October he was appointed to the committee on an ordinance for the sale of lands of notorious royalists, including the marquess of Winchester and the marquess of Worcester, to fund a renewed Irish campaign.182CJ iv. 64ab, 710b.

Trenchard had attended meetings of the Committee for Revenue in the spring of 1645, but his involvement seems to have intensified in the autumn, when he working closely with his old friend, Denis Bond.183SP28/269, ff. 131-2, 148; E404/235, unfol. In the following August, Trenchard was named to the committee on an ordinance to enforce warrants issued by the Committee for Revenue.184CJ iv. 653a. In parallel with this, Trenchard played a prominent role in attempts to raise a suitable allowance for the king’s nephew, the Elector Palatine. Trenchard had been added to the committee on the elector on 11 March 1645, and he had become its chair by 6 September, when the Commons asked for a report, based on Trenchard’s own recommendations of which sequestered estates could provide the money.185CJ iv. 76a, 265b. On 9 September Sir Henry Vane I* was told by Sir Robert Honywood* that when the report was made, ‘they were forced to take it out of Mr Trenchard’s hands’.186CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 126. On 22 September Trenchard was named to the committee on the subsequent ordinance, and on 8 October he was included in the committee of both Houses to settle £8,000 per annum on the elector.187CJ iv. 281a; LJ vii. 629b. On 18 November Trenchard signed a paper from the committee on the elector to the Committee for Compounding for the payment of sums owed from sequestered estates.188CCC 28. Trenchard continued to be involved in the elector’s business in 1646. On 4 April, for example, he was named to a committee to investigate an attempt by a silk merchant, Isaac Tully, to arrest the elector for debt.189CJ iv. 500b. Trenchard’s involvement with the Committee for Revenue and with the Elector Palatine were also politically charged, as these were causes favoured by the Independent party, which now included many of his former allies among Waller’s supporters, including Hesilrige.

Despite his duties at Westminster, during 1646 Trenchard continued to keep in contact with Dorset affairs. On 7 February he and his brother, Sir Thomas Trenchard, were given permission to visit their royalist brother-in-law, Sir John Strangways, in the Tower of London.190CJ iv. 431b. On 17 July Trenchard was allowed leave to go into the country, although he did not leave at once, and was still in Westminster in mid-August, when the Committee for the West recommended that he should join Erle, Grene, Sydenham and Bingham as a delegation to attend the reducing of Massie’s brigade.191CJ iv. 620a, 640a. Trenchard’s visit to Dorset, which lasted until the end of October, allowed him to strengthen his local position.192CJ iv. 710b. His allies on the Dorset county committee were keen to court him. In August 1646 he was paid £20 by the county treasurer, and in November the committee allowed him compensation on the public faith for the spoiling of his woods at Warmwell and Bestwall, with interest at 8%.193Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 29; Dorset Standing Cttee ed. Mayo, 79-80. Trenchard was content to leave the intricacies of Dorset local politics to others, as can be seen in the disputed recruiter election at Shaftesbury in November 1646. Fitzjames, who was one of the candidates, was concerned at the support gained by George Starr*, and told Nathaniel Stephens* that the backing of the Trenchard extended family was crucial to his success: ‘methinks Sir Thomas Trenchard and my cousin John, his brother, may effectually persuade Colonel Bingham and Colonel Sydenham to take off Starr, considering how near a relation I have to them all’.194Alnwick, Northumberland 547, f. 65. On this occasion, Trenchard and his sons-in-law were not to be persuaded by claims of kinship, especially when made by a political Presbyterian such as Fitzjames. This was another indication that Trenchard was by this time gravitating towards the Independent party at Westminster.

It should be emphasised that even as late as the autumn of 1646 Trenchard’s attachment to the Independents was fairly loose. During the closing stages of the civil war he no doubt sympathised with their desire to win a decisive victory and to deny the rival Presbyterian faction too great a say in the settlement that followed. There is, however, no evidence that he favoured a radical religious agenda, still less the sort of liberty of conscience demanded by some leading Independents. Trenchard’s involvement in religious matters in Parliament had been almost non-existent during the war years, and afterwards his few appointments suggest a thoroughly conservative Protestant approach. In June 1646 he was named to the committee to determine the scandalous offences that would bar people from Holy Communion; and on 11 November he was appointed to the committee on an ordinance for the maintenance of ministers.195CJ iv. 563a, 719b. This was a pattern that would be repeated in the future years. On 15 September 1647 Trenchard was named to a committee to consider grievances against the existing tithe ordinances; on 20 December he and Zouche Tate* were ordered to bring in an ordinance for making St Paul’s, Covent Garden, a separate parish; on 28 March 1648 he was included in the committee on the ordinance for compensating the trustees for impropriations; and on 16 October 1648 he was named to a committee to consider a petition from London, concerning its ministers.196CJ v. 302a, 393b, 519a; vi. 53a. The emphasis was on order and discipline, without any hint of radicalism that characterised some leading Independents.

The reluctant Independent, 1646-8

In the winter of 1646-7, Trenchard’s parliamentary activity was dominated by the need to deal with the defeated royalists. On 10 December he was named to the committee on an ordinance for appointing a committee of both Houses to consider compounding with delinquents, and on 6 February, when the ordinance was passed, he joined Sir Henry Vane II, Oliver St John and Hesilrige as commissioners for compounding.197CJ v. 8b, 74a. Trenchard’s inclusion in this roll-call of leading Independents again hints at his political leanings. This can also be seen in two other appointments: to the committee on an ordinance for the sale of the marquess of Worcester’s lands (which would benefit Oliver Cromwell*) on 4 February; and to a committee to consider information against a newly-elected Presbyterian MP, Edward Vaughan*, on 17 February.198CJ v. 74a, 90a. Any strengthening of Trenchard’s ties with the Independents was undermined on 22 February 1647, when he was given leave of absence.199CJ v. 93a. He was away from Westminster for at least two months, spending much of April in Dorset, where he attended meetings of the county committee at Blandford and Dorchester.200CJ v. 167a; Dorset Standing Cttee ed. Mayo, 226, 244, 245, 248. This absence removed him from the Commons during the initial period of tension between the Presbyterian interest and the New Model army, and even on his return in May his activity was sporadic and equivocal. On 11 May he was named to the committee on an ordinance to settle lands on Sir Thomas Fairfax*, in an attempt to heal the rift between the Westminster politicians and the military, but he appears not to have engaged with politics in the weeks that followed, being named to only a handful of minor committees.201CJ v. 167a, 181b, 221b. On 2 July the Commons ordered Trenchard to write to the Elector Palatine with permission for a visit to the king at Holdenby.202CJ v. 232a.

During the Presbyterian coup in late July and early August, Trenchard withdrew from Westminster, seeking sanctuary with the New Model army.203LJ ix. 385a. The triumph of the Independents, backed by the New Model, in early August 1647 allowed Trenchard to return to his administrative duties over the next nine months. From September he again became a regular member of the Committee for Revenue, signing warrants in almost every month from then until April 1648 and (after a period of absence in Dorset during the summer) from September 1648 onwards.204E404/236, unfol.; Add. 33924, ff. 38-9; SP28/269, ff. 300-1, 304-5. He continued to be a member of the Committee for Compounding, attending meetings in November 1647, March, October and November 1648.205SP23/4, ff. 235v, 186v; SP23/5, ff. 10, 17v, 28. In November 1647 Trenchard was one of the members of the committee for the fens ordered to prepare amendments to the ordinance, and to view the maps of the project and set out boundaries; and in December he joined Nathaniel and Francis Bacon, John Maynard and Robert Reynolds in drawing up the heads to report to the Commons, and he was named to the committee to which the ordinance was recommitted.206Cambs. RO, R.59.31.9.1. In Parliament, Trenchard was again drawn into financial affairs, being named to committees to raise money for Ireland (1 Sept.), to prevent the clipping of coins (2 Sept.), and to consider the ordinance for the sale of bishops’ lands (28 Oct., 9 Feb.).207CJ v. 287a, 289b, 344b, 460b. In a return to his earlier role, in March he was named to committees to consider the state of the accounts of the customs commissioners and to tidy up such outstanding problems as a petition of Lord Forbes and debentures for some of the troops which served under Waller.208CJ v. 480a, 499b, 500a. Trenchard reported the state of the lands allocated to the Elector Palatine on 30 October, and was named to the committee on the ordinance allocating him £8,000 per annum on 16 March.209CJ v. 346a, 500a.

Trenchard was briefly involved in political affairs in November and December 1647, when he was included in a committee to consider the security of the king after his flight to the Isle of Wight (15 November), and in committees to investigate intelligence of a plot against Parliament (13 December).210CJ v. 359a, 380a. As a result of the latter, on 15 December Trenchard, Miles Corbett, Sir Henry Mildmay and William Wheler were ordered to bring in an ordinance for removing papists and royalist malignants from London.211CJ v. 386a. Trenchard played little part in Parliament’s response to the second civil war, although he was named to committees to reform the Southwark militia and to punish defaulters from the musters in Kent in April, and in July he was named to a committee on an ordinance for uniting the militias of London and its suburbs and to investigate the insurrection in Surrey.212CJ v. 527b, 538a, 630b, 631b. The main impact of the uprising on Trenchard was to encourage his to return to Dorset. He was granted leave to go into the country on 18 July 1648.213CJ v. 639a. He was in Dorset by the end of July, when he joined Sir Thomas Trenchard, John Browne I, Thomas Erle, William Sydenham and Denis Bond in signing a letter from Dorchester to Westminster, explaining that the settlement of the militia would take longer than expected, and asking to be excused for their absence from the Commons.214Bodl. Nalson VII, ff. 208-9. From the records of the county committee it is clear that Trenchard attended its meetings from 27 July until 5 September, and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper* encountered him at a meeting of the militia commission on 10 August.215Dorset Standing Cttee ed. Mayo, 464, 420-1, 432-3; Bayley, Dorset, 315-6. While in Dorset, Trenchard was able to pursue private business, paying in money owed to the county treasurer, and receiving part of his compensation money for the woods ruined at Bestwall.216Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, ff. 48, 52.

Trenchard’s time in Dorset coincided with another change in his political leanings, away from the more radical Independents who supported the army and towards those Presbyterians and ‘royal’ Independents who favoured new negotiations with the king. Trenchard’s religious moderation may have been important long term factor in this; another was his compassion towards the defeated. Despite his involvement in sequestration and forfeiture, Trenchard had been willing to help former friends, of whatever political hue, since the end of the first civil war. On 31 January 1647 Sir Ralph Verney told his mother that there was some hope of securing the return of part of their estate through the good offices of the earl of Bedford, who had promised to ‘engage Trenchard’ to further the business.217BL, M636/8, unfol. (Claydon House Pprs. microfilm). In December 1647 Fitzjames also hoped to get support from Trenchard on behalf of his sister in a legal suit. Her ‘last and only hope’ was an appeal to Parliament, and, as he reminded Trenchard, ‘her and our greatest confidence depends very much on your former promises and future directions’.218Alnwick, Northumberland 548, f. 7. In the spring of 1648 Trenchard joined his brother, Sir Thomas, in his efforts on behalf of Sir John Strangways. On 16 March he was the intermediary between the Commons and Strangways, and after trying to persuade his brother-in-law to agree to pay the full fine of £10,000 in two instalments, on 22 March he reported, to an unsympathetic Commons, his offer to pay a lesser amount.219CJ v. 500b, 510a. By the autumn of 1648, Trenchard appears to have acquired the reputation of being an honest broker, with contacts across a range of political persuasions. Fitzjames advised his mother in September that her hopes of buying some of the dean and chapter lands rested on the family’s contacts: ‘let me beg you to advise with my Cousin Trenchard, Mr [John] Ashe and my father[-in-law, Nathaniel Stephens*] when he comes up to town’.220Alnwick, Northumberland 548, f. 26.

Trenchard’s moderate stance can also be seen in his activity on his return to Westminster in the autumn of 1648. On 9 October he was named to the committee on an ordinance to raise £5,000 for a guard of Parliament independent of the New Model. This was a controversial committee, dominated by opponents of the army, and it included moderate friends of Trenchard such as Erle, Stephens and Browne I.221CJ vi. 47a. On 22 November Trenchard was added to the Army Committee when it considered another controversial measure – an ordinance to force the New Model to disperse into winter quarters by 10 December. Those chosen alongside Trenchard were all critics of the army.222CJ vi. 83b. The challenge to the army represented by these, and other, moves, did much to provoke Colonel Thomas Pride’s* purge of the Commons on 6 December. Despite his recent wavering, Trenchard was among those allowed to take his seat. He was reported to have sat in the Commons on 12 and 13 December; he was probably added to the committee on the dissent on 18 December; he was named to a committee to consider a letter from the Elector Palatine on 23 December; and he was added to a series of important committees, including those for the Army and Indemnity, in the first few days of January 1649.223Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 38 (12-19 Dec. 1648), 46 (E.802.3); PA, Ms CJ xxxiii, p. 462; CJ vi. 102b, 107b, 109a, 113b. Trenchard also signed warrants of the Committee for Revenue on 15 December, 2 and 9 January.224E404/236-7, unfol.

Reluctant revolutionary, 1649

Unsurprisingly, Trenchard was not wedded to the English Revolution. Like Prideaux I, he managed to avoid taking the dissent, by which he would have renounced Parliament’s dealings with the king in the previous autumn, until February 1649, and although named as a commissioner for the trial of the king, he declined to serve.225Worden, Rump Parl. 62. During this period his part in the great affairs of state was minimal. On 31 January he was named to the committee to consider how to dispose of the late king’s body and what to do with his personal effects, including his private papers, and on 3 February he was named to a committee to consider ‘obnoxious’ publications, attacking Parliament.226CJ vi. 127a, 131b. Otherwise, he managed the embarrassing business of the Elector Palatine’s swift departure, reporting the arrears due to the late king’s nephew on 19 February and his formal request to leave the country on 9 March, and he was one of the MPs ordered to accompany the prince to Gravesend on 14 March.227CJ vi. 145b, 155b,

Instead of becoming involved in politics or state-building, during 1649 Trenchard gradually returned to his old role as financial expert. On 1 January 1649 he was named to a committee, alongside Miles Corbett and Sir Henry Mildmay, to consider the charges on the treasuries, and how to improve the state’s income.228CJ vi. 107b. This was followed by a variety of appointments. In February he joined Mildmay, Holland and Bond as a member of the committee on the minting of coins, and in July he was named to the committee on a bill for new money and coinage.229CJ vi. 138b, 251b. In March and May he was appointed to committees on bills to establish a new committee for accounts, with old colleagues such as Holland, Mildmay and Hesilrige, and in August he was named to a committee on yet another bill for accounts, this time concerning the navy, ordnance, customs and prize money.230CJ vi. 154a, 204b, 274a. In March Trenchard was named to the committee to consider the sale of fee farm rents, and in early April he was appointed to the committee on the bill for the same, along with Mildmay, Hesilrige and Prideaux I.231CJ vi. 160b, 178b. He was involved in the sale or management of other lands that had been acquired by the state. In May he was named to the committee on a bill to charge all army arrears on the sale of crown lands rather than the excise; in June he was added to the committee for removing obstructions to the sale of the lands of bishops and deans and chapters; and in December he was ordered to take care of a bill for managing the estates of papists and delinquents forfeited by the state.232CJ vi. 205b, 238b, 330b. In April he was again active in raising loans for Parliament, being ordered to take care of treating with the common council for £120,000 on 13 April, and reporting the result immediately afterwards.233CJ vi. 185b, 186b, 187b. On 4 July he was appointed to a committee to arrange a loan of £50,000 from the City of London for Ireland.234CJ vi. 250a. Trenchard apparently supported the giving of rewards to important figures in the commonwealth. On 6 June he was named to the committee on a bill to settle £3,000 on Fairfax, and on 21 December he was appointed to the committee to consider the ordinance granting lands to Oliver Cromwell, to see how the mistakes in it might be rectified.235CJ vi. 225b, 336a.

Trenchard was also involved in the executive committees during 1649. From January he became one of the most active members of the Committee for Revenue, signing warrants almost every month of the following year.236SP28/269, ff. 267, 313-4; E404/237, unfol. On 21 June he joined Bond in signing an order from the committee to recoup the fee farm rents owed by Dorchester for 1646-8, but waiving those during the years of royalist dominance in Dorset, 1643-5.237Recs. of Dorchester ed. Mayo, 89. Trenchard was also an active member of the Committee for Compounding, attending meetings regularly from 22 February, and he was involved in committees on a new bill for the compounding of delinquents and to consider appeals against sequestration in February and March.238SP23/5, ff. 63v, 75, 77, 84, 84v and passim; CJ vi. 127b, 137b, 167b. On 1 October the committee ordered that Trenchard and Edward Ashe would report to Parliament that the account of Colonel Sanderson’s regiment had been approved and should be paid, and Trenchard reported the business of this regiment and Colonel Potter’s on 16 October, 21 and 27 November.239CCC 158, 163; CJ vi. 308a, 325b, 326a. On 18 October Parliament ordered that the Committee for Compounding would meet to prepare a true account of their treasury, and Trenchard was to take care of the business.240CCC 159. He twice reported from the committee to Parliament, on 23 October and 6 November, with the state of their revenue and treasury.241CJ vi. 311a, 318b. On 27 November he was ordered by the committee to report the bill for settling sequestrations, and a month later he was instructed to present the amendments of the bill to the Commons, with his report being delivered on 3 January 1650.242CCC 163, 165; CJ vi. 342b.

Trenchard was among those Rumpers eager to advance learning. In February 1649 John Durie told Oliver St John that Trenchard and his son-in-law, John Sadler*, intended to go ahead with establishing an ‘Office of Address’ to coordinate the advancement of learning.243C. Webster, The Great Instauration (1975), 74. Trenchard’s support of the intellectual circle of Samuel Hartlib can be seen on 2 May, when he was ordered by Parliament to bring in a bill for settling a regular income on Hartlib, Theodore Haak and Pierre du Moulin.244CJ vi. 199b. In July Trenchard, Sadler, John Milton and John Bradshaw* were said to be supporters of Benjamin Worsley’s schemes in Virginia, and in the same month Trenchard was named to a committee on a bill to encourage adventurers to settle the Eleutherian Islands in the Caribbean.245Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation ed. M. Greengrass, M. Leslie and T. Raylor (Cambridge, 1994), 229. On 29 May he was made a commissioner for draining the Great Level in the fens, a project in which he had a vested interest.246A. and O. Trenchard is only known to have attended the commission once in the next few months, and according to a later account, this was deliberate, Trenchard having ‘declared he was a party interested, and refused to act as a judge’.247Cambs. RO, R.59.31.9.1, f. 1; Answer to a Printed Paper, 1. He was, however, involved in drainage matters in other ways. On 14 November, for example, the council of state ordered the members of the common sewer commission to meet Trenchard and other interested parties, and try to resolve a difference among them.248CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 391.

Dorset continued to be one of Trenchard’s primary concerns. His decision to sit in the Rump may have raised eyebrows in the county, but the benefit of having a local man at the centre of power soon became apparent. By March 1649 he had take on the case of a local widow, Mrs Joan Fitzjames, the kinswoman of John Fitzjames. He was repeatedly ordered to report on the case, and when he eventually did so, on 5 May, he persuaded the Commons that the lady, who was owed £1,100 by Lord Digby, should be given possession of one of Digby’s farms in Dorset until the debt was repaid.249CJ vi. 162b, 164a, 198b. Trenchard saw the local situation for himself in the late summer, when he left Parliament and travelled to Dorset. He attended the county committee on 5 September, and lent his weight to an order, signed that day, allowing the money owed to his brother-in-law, John Browne I, to be transferred to the public faith.250Dorset Standing Cttee ed. Mayo, 548-9. Even before Trenchard had returned to Westminster in October, John Fitzjames began bombarding him with further requests that he use his influence in committee and in Parliament on behalf of his extended family.251Alnwick, Northumberland 548, ff. 64v, 75, 87v; 549, ff. 1, 3v. In November there are indications that Trenchard was involved in efforts to improve local government generally, as he was named to committees to consider easing the burdens on sheriffs and allowing them to appoint deputies.252CJ vi. 319b, 327a.

Commonwealth administrator, 1650-3

From the beginning of 1650 until the dissolution of the Rump in April 1653, Trenchard’s activity fell into a regular pattern that changed only very slowly, if at all. As a result, it can best be appreciated thematically. As before, the bulk of Trenchard’s work in Parliament concerned the public revenues, in their various forms. He continued to liaise between the Committee for Compounding and the House of Commons. On 4 March 1650 he reported the state of the treasury at Goldsmiths’ Hall, and on 25 March he reported from the committee the case of Sir Roger Palmer*.253CJ vi. 376a, 387a. On 27 July 1652 he was named to a committee to consider the queries of the Compounding Commissioners about the act of general pardon.254CJ vii. 158b. Trenchard was also involved in the Committee for Advance of Money. On 4 June 1650 he was named to a committee to receive money from the committee to pay for the transport of new recruits to Ireland; on 3 July he was appointed to the committee on a bill to give the committee powers over the ‘discovery’ of lands; and on 30 July he was named to the committee to investigate allegations of corruption against Lord Howard of Escrick (Edward Howard*).255CJ vi. 418b, 436b, 448b. The sale of forfeited estates was also a matter of concern for Trenchard, and in January 1651 he was teller in favour of an amendment to the bill for the sale of delinquents’ estates, and was subsequently named to the committee to receive claims under the same bill.256CJ vi. 527b, 528a. On 16 July 1651 he was appointed a commissioner for removing obstructions to the sale of forfeited estates, and in December of the same year he was named to the committee on the additional bill for sale of the same.257A. and O.; CJ vii. 46b. On 1 March 1653 he was named to the committee on the additional bill for the sale of forfeited lands.258CJ vii. 263a.

Trenchard was involved in the discussion of financial policy in general. On 28 August 1650 he was named to a committee to consider the best was to raise further money for the public service.259CJ vi. 459b. On 2 June 1652 he was named to a committee to consider how the costs of the commonwealth might be reduced and its income increased, and on 27 July he was appointed to a similar committee, to consider how the treasuries might be brought ‘into one channel’.260CJ vii. 138b, 159a. Trenchard was also drawn into the Irish land settlement, being named to committees to consider the future of the Londonderry plantation (20 Dec. 1650), to satisfy the rival claims of soldiers and adventurers (6 Aug. 1652), and to amend the land settlement bill (15 Apr. 1653).261CJ vi. 512b; CJ vii. 162a, 268b. Trenchard played an important role in the Committee for Revenue during the same period. His attendance at the committee had been irregular during 1650, but from January 1651 he again became an active member, signing warrants in January, February and March, August, October, November and December.262E404/238, unfol.; SP28/269, ff. 325, 335-6, 337-8; Add. 21482, ff. 15-22. Trenchard was an assiduous member during 1652, signing warrants every month until August and from October onwards, usually in the company of his old friend, Denis Bond.263E404/238, unfol.; SP28/269, ff. 330, 346; Add. 32476, ff. 38-9. This activity continued in the early months of 1653, and he was active at least until 25 March.264E404/238, unfol.; SP28/269, ff. 366-7. In Parliament, he was involved in various matters of concern to the Committee for Revenue: he was named to the committee on the additional bill for the sale of the late king’s goods (3 Apr. 1651); the committee to investigate who still held royal property (21 May); the committee on a bill for the sale of royal palaces and parks (27 Nov. 1652); and the committee to consider the proceedings of the trustees for the sale of the late king’s goods (25 Jan. 1653). In these committees he was joined by other stalwarts of the committee, including Bond, Mildmay, Corbett, and Humphrey Edwardes.265CJ vi. 556a, 576b

With financial administration taking up most of his time, Trenchard’s involvement in other areas declined. He is only known to have returned to Dorset only once during this period, in April 1650, when he met Fitzjames and other commissioners at Dorchester.266Alnwick, Northumberland 549, ff. 39v, 42. Once again, Fitzjames was hopeful that Trenchard would secure favours at Westminster for his family and friends, and in the spring of 1651 he wrote to thank Trenchard for his help.267Alnwick, Northumberland 549, ff. 45v, 57, 96v. In August 1651 Fitzjames seems to have been on good terms with Trenchard, telling his wife that he had given his cousin a cheddar cheese, and asking his sister to ask for Trenchard’s letter ‘to procure me a buck either at Sir John Rivers or my lord of Leicester or my lord president’s park’.268Alnwick, Northumberland 549, ff. 115, 118v. Other than these contacts with friends and relatives, the impact of the west country on Trenchard’s career was less during the commonwealth than at any other time in his career. Very few of his committee appointments were concerned with the region, with the only obvious examples being those on bills to maintain ministers in Bristol (15 Feb. 1650), to bring the Somerset royalist, Sir John Stawell*, to trial (5 July 1650), and to change the jointure of the Hampshire MP, Robert Wallop* (15 Sept. 1652).269CJ vi. 365b, 437b; CJ vii. 182a.

Trenchard’s other personal interests were also changing. His involvement in the fens was coming to an end during this period, and on 1 July 1651 he sold his interest, amounting to 1,014 acres, to John Sadler.270Cambs. RO, R.59.31.1A, ff. 225-6. Trenchard’s experience in the business remained valuable, however, and in July 1652 the committee on the Isle of Axholme in Lincolnshire referred a report on its inhabitants to him and other MPs, who would form a sub-committee.271CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 341. By this time Trenchard was involved in another scheme, this time on behalf of the Hartlib circle, to acquire the old royal ordnance factory at Vauxhall as the home for a new college for inventions.272Webster, Great Instauration, 366. On 15 September 1652 the Commons passed an order, on Trenchard’s petition, that that council of state consider granting him Vauxhall.273CJ vii. 182a. A week later, the council of state appointed a committee to meet with Trenchard concerning the sale of lease or the property.274CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 413. On 1 March 1653 the Commons instructed the trustees at Worcester House to facilitate the sale of Vauxhall to Trenchard, who had ‘undertaken to set up a manufacture there for the advantage of the commonwealth’; a bill for the sale was passed on 1 March and a week later the conveyance was completed, and he purchased Vauxhall for £750.275CJ vii. 263a, 264a; E121/4/8/120.

The acquisition of Vauxhall, and other purchases, including, in September 1652, the acquisition of the manor of Witham Friary in Somerset (part of the forfeited estate of Sir Ralph Hopton*), helped to make Trenchard a controversial figure.276CCC 2304. As early as 1651 Clement Walker* had accused Trenchard of being in collusion with men such as Bradshaw, Mildmay and Holland, ‘that packed a committee (in which he was member) and voted himself £2,000’.277C. Walker, The High Court of Justice (1651), 46 (E.802.3). It was probably at this time that rumours began circulating in Dorset that Trenchard had used his influence to promote Sydenham and Bingham in the army and secured them seats in Parliament, ‘and so makes them free of his own trade by their father’s copy’.278G. Bankes, Story of Corfe Castle (1853), 231. The truth behind such allegations is hard to determine, but it is clear that those within the commonwealth regime also had their doubts as to his probity. In January 1651, Trenchard found himself under investigation by the Committee for Compounding during its scrutiny of the dealings of his neighbour in Covent Garden, Sir Robert Holborne*. According to Holborne’s widow, Trenchard had in his safekeeping jewels and other goods worth £150, which the committee now demanded. Trenchard replied in February, saying he would do so when the identity of the real owner was known, but this did not satisfy the committee, which in March required him to hand over the goods.279CCC 1586.

The Holborne allegations seem to have been a case of charity to a neighbour, rather than attempting to gain from another’s misfortune. The same could not be said of another case, first raised by the Committee for Advance of Money in December 1651. According to this committee, in 1644 Trenchard and John Browne I had been involved in the illegal sequestration of personal goods belonging to William Weare of Portsham, Dorset, on the pretence that Weare owed arrears of rent to the late William Pawlett and his heir, Essex Pawlett, and that Trenchard and Browne I were trustees for paying the family’s debts. The committee was aware of the awkwardness of accusing Trenchard, and in May 1651 they instead wrote to him privately, warning that proceedings would soon begin against him. In June, Trenchard reacted angrily, saying that the committee should have waited for his explanation, and the committee responded by offering to suspend the case for six weeks, giving him time to assemble witnesses and prepare a case. In December, after six months delay, the committee again wrote to Trenchard and Browne, demanding a reply. In January 1652 Trenchard and Browne put in a formal statement, asserting that the arrangement had been authorised by the county committee, then accounted and discharged by them.280CCAM 1290-1. The minute books of the county committee show that this was indeed above board, and the arrangement had been confirmed by them as recently as October 1648.281Dorset Standing Cttee ed. Mayo, 452. The Committee for Advance of Money was unconvinced, requiring proof of this to be sent by the following June. In January 1653 the committee admitted that Trenchard and Browne were indeed trustees for Pawlett, but wanted more proofs concerning rents and money received. The demise of the Rump presumably put the case into abeyance.282CCAM 1290-1.

The controvery surrounding some of Trenchard’s dealings in the latter stages of the Rump does not seem to have been politically motivated. In terms of the public affairs of state, Trenchard seems to have kept a low profile during the early 1650s. Once again his involvement in religious issues was sparse, and suggests an attachment to orthodoxy and good order. He was named to the committee on a bill for the maintenance of ministers in Bristol in February 1650, and in the following June he was appointed to a committee to consider suppressing the obscene and licentious behaviour of the Ranters.283CJ vi. 365b, 423b. Nor did he have any truck with political radicalism, as suggested by his appointment on 23 December 1651, with Bond, Ashe, and other conservatives, to a committee on John Lilburne’s associate, Josiah Prymatt.284CJ vii. 55b. Trenchard’s political activities were decidedly main stream. He favoured the granting of rewards to leading figures in the regime, including Cromwell (30 May 1650), Philip Skippon* (31 Dec. 1650) and Lord Grey (7 Aug. 1651).285CJ vi. 417b, 516b, 618b. After the battle of Worcester he was named to committees to consider a reward to Cromwell (6 Sept.), to assert the commonwealth’s right over Scotland (9 Sept.) and to compensate the ‘well-affected’ who had suffered as a result of the campaign (10 Sept.).286CJ vii. 13b, 14a, 15a. Such committee appointments do not indicate that Trenchard was a supporter of Cromwell and the army, rather that he joined the majority of MPs in wanting to reward Parliament’s lord general. Indeed, in later months there are signs that Trenchard was more in sympathy with the commonwealthsmen whose prevarication so angered Cromwell. During 1652 and early 1653 he was named to numerous committees alongside his old friend, Sir Arthur Hesilrige, and by March 1653 he was apparently on good terms with Sir Henry Vane II.287CJ vii. 46b, 80b, 138b, 158b, 159a, 250b; HMC 7th Rep. ii. 442.

Critic of the protectorate, 1653-9

With the dissolution of the Rump, Trenchard went into retirement. He did not sit in the Nominated Assembly (although his sons-in-law, Sydenham, Bingham and Sadler, did), and he played no part in national affairs throughout 1653. Locally, he had become active again by the autumn. On 5 October he was appointed as commissioner for the relief of poor prisoners in Dorset and Poole; on 14 October the council of state wrote to Trenchard, Bingham and others in Dorset to arrest suspected royalist conspirators in the county, and on 20 November Trenchard was one of those ordered to arrange an oyer and terminer commission against pirates operating off the Dorset coast.288A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 202, 275. With the creation of the protectorate in December 1653 – and the appointment of Sydenham as one of the protectoral councillors – Trenchard became more willing to work with the Cromwellian regime. He was a regular member of the western circuit of the oyer and terminer commission from February 1654; in May of that year he was appointed to the Dorset piracy commission; and in August he was included in the local commission for the ejection of scandalous ministers.289C181/6, pp. 8-9, 33; A. and O. On 12 July 1654 Trenchard was elected to the first protectorate Parliament as MP for Dorset, alongside Sydenham, Bingham, and his old friends, Sir Walter Erle and John Fitzjames.290C219/43/172. His activity in the session began on 29 September, when he was named to the committee for Scottish affairs, and at the beginning of October he was appointed to committees for retrenching the armed forces, for considering irregularities in Irish elections, for regulating Chancery and to encourage trade in corn and dairy products.291CJ vii. 371b, 373a, 373b, 374a, 374b. On 27 October he was granted leave to go into the country, and he was absent until the beginning of December, when he was named to a committee to consider the ‘damnable heresies’ that would appear in the Government Bill.292CJ vii. 399b. As befitted the father-in-law of a councillor, Trenchard played no other role in the attempt to modify (and undermine) the Instrument of Government, and his only other appointment, on 14 December, was to a committee to consider petitions from Yorkshire.293CJ vii. 401a. In another sign of reticence, Trenchard’s committee appointments suggest that he was working with his Dorset colleagues - Bond, Fitzjames, John Whiteway and occasionally Ashley Cooper - rather than with his former allies from the Independent faction or the commonwealth.

After the closure of Parliament in January 1655, Trenchard busied himself with Dorset affairs. In March he was one of those Dorset gentlemen appointed to the commission for oyer and terminer to try those captured after the abortive Penruddock rising in the south west.294TSP iii. 296; C181/6, pp. 98-100. In May he was appointed to administer the oath to new JPs in Dorset.295C231/6, p. 309. On 20 June Trenchard, Sydenham, Bingham, Bond and Fitzjames were ordered to give information to the council in the case of the Dorset village of Stoborough, which had been destroyed to protect the approaches to Wareham in 1643.296CSP Dom. 1655, p. 211. On 31 July the council received a letter from Trenchard at Dorchester, on behalf of the Dorset committee for ejecting scandalous ministers, concerning the minister at Sherborne.297CSP Dom. 1655, p. 265. In August 1655 Fitzjames was hopeful that Trenchard would help to adjudicate a dispute involving his royalist relatives, the Strangways family.298Alnwick, Northumberland 551, f. 30. During 1656 Trenchard was less in evidence, but he was still a moderate supporter of the regime. Although he had sold some of his interests in the Great Level, he remained involved in the company, being one of those entrusted to ‘manage the whole affair’, and in 1656 he was made a lord of the Level.299‘Jonas Moore’s Mapp’, ed. Willmoth and Stazicker, 108. In June of the same year a petition to the council, asking for a patent for a new way of road mending, was referred to Trenchard, Bond and Sir John Trevor* with the request that the method was to be tested.300CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 354. In early August Trenchard was involved in the round of meetings that preceded the Dorset elections for the second protectorate Parliament, and he was duly returned for the county along with Sydenham, Bingham and Fitzjames.301Alnwick, Northumberland 551, f. 89v.

Trenchard’s activity in the early months of the 1656-8 Parliament was again, perhaps deliberately, low profile. On 13 October he was named to a committee to consider abuses by lawyers and others employed by landowners, alongside Fitzjames and Bingham and Dorset’s major-general, John Disbrowe*; and on 22 November he was appointed to the committee on a petition of his Somerset kinsman, George Rodney, in the company of Sydenham, Prideaux, Bond, Disbrowe and the 2nd earl of Salisbury (William Cecil*).302CJ vii. 438a, 457b. During December, Trenchard was named to committees on petitions from the lord mayor and corporation of London and the earl of Derby, and he was added to a committee for the maintenance of a minister at Newport, Isle of Wight.303CJ vii. 470b, 472a, 477b. There is no evidence that Trenchard took part in any of the long debates on the fate of the Quaker, James Naylor, in December 1656; nor was he engaged in the controversy surrounding the Militia Bill in January 1657. In January, he returned instead to his concern for the state of the roads, being named with Prideaux I, Bond and Fitzjames to the committee on a bill to amend highways, and he was added to the committee on a petition from Oxford University.304CJ vii. 478a, 483a. The introduction of the new constitution, later known as the Humble Petition and Advice, and with it the offer of the crown to Cromwell, made Trenchard’s ambivalent position less tenable. Sydenham was bitterly opposed, withdrawing from both Parliament and the council in protest, and Trenchard appears to have shared his opposition to the changes. On 16 March Trenchard was named to a committee to consider additions to the constitution for safeguarding the liberty and property of the people; he does not appear on the list of those who voted for kingship on 25 March; and on 27 May he joined Sydenham, Disbrowe and other critics of the changes on a committee to bring in a bill to modify the new constitution, in what would become the Additional Petition and Advice.305CJ vii. 505a, 540b; Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 22-3 (E.935.5).

The spring and summer of 1657 were dominated by the constitutional crisis, but Trenchard was able to devote some time to other matters. He retained his business and personal ties with the earl of Bedford. He was named to the committee on a bill to prevent the multiplicity of building in London on 9 May, and when the matter was debated on 30 May his interest, as an investor in the Covent Garden project, led him to intervene.306CJ vii. 532a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 162. He urged the committee on the matter to broaden its scope to include ‘the nuisance of keeping pigs in a pound, one hundred together, and feeding them with garbage’ – a practice he described as ‘very noisome to the neighbours, and is much used in this town’.307Burton’s Diary, ii. 162. On 5 June a report proposed fining Bedford for infringements to the rules on new buildings, but the earl was defended by Sydenham – who called for an abatement – and by Trenchard, who urged that ‘it was always the method of Parliaments to mix mercy with justice’.308Burton’s Diary, ii. 181. During this period, Trenchard was also named to two other committees: that to consider a breach of privilege in the arrest of Edward Waring* (13 May); and that on a bill for the better choosing of persons for ‘places of trust’ in the commonwealth (15 June).309CJ vii. 534a, 557b. In the brief second sitting of this Parliament, Trenchard appears in the records only once. On 20 January 1658 he joined Major-general Thomas Kelsey in proposing that the Independent divine, George Griffith, would be one of the preachers for the forthcoming day of humiliation.310Burton’s Diary, ii. 321. On the same day, Trenchard was asked to visit Griffith with the invitation, and a week later he gave him the thanks of the House.311CJ vii. 579a, 588b. This public association with a leading Independent minister reinforces the impression that Trenchard, like Sydenham, was now a critic of the Cromwellian regime.

Criticism was not to become opposition until after the death of Oliver Cromwell and the accession of Richard Cromwell* in September 1658. The growing discontent of Trenchard can be seen in his involvement in the third protectorate Parliament from January 1659, during which he represented Weymouth and Melcombe Regis. In the early weeks of the Parliament, Trenchard joined other veteran MPs, notably Bond and Erle, who provided a curmudgeonly commentary on the proceedings. On the first day of sitting, 27 January, Trenchard told the Commons, after a move to appoint a committee of privileges, that, ‘I never knew a Speaker and a committee appointed both in one day’.312Burton’s Diary, iii. 6. On 2 February, Erle’s motion to settle the standing committees was seconded by Trenchard, who also intervened in a case of breach of privilege.313Burton’s Diary, iii. 33, 42. In the same period, there are also signs that Trenchard was siding with opponents of the regime. With the appointment of Sydenham to the Other House, Trenchard had lost his main support in the Commons, and he worked instead with his old allies, and bitter opponents of the protectorate, Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Sir Henry Vane II. On 5 February Trenchard and Hesilrige supported Edmund Ludlowe II’s refusal to take the oath.314Burton’s Diary, iii. 71. On the same day, both men were named to the committee on the petition of Elizabeth Lilburne, widow of the famous victim of the Cromwellian regime, John Lilburne.315CJ vii. 600a. When the bill for the recognition of the protector was debated on 10 February, Trenchard joined Hesilrige and Vane II in their attempts to drag it out, arguing for a ‘previous vote’ before the bill itself was considered.316Burton’s Diary, iii. 194.

In March, Trenchard became a leading opponent of the Other House as constituted under the Humble Petition and Advice. He was not opposed to an upper chamber per se, rather his objections seem to have been based on two entwined factors: he was critical of Richard Cromwell and the constitution upon which his power rested, and he was concerned that the status of the Commons should not be eroded. These strands can be seen in his interventions in debate. On 5 March, when it was moved that the Commons should vote to transact with the new upper chamber, he raised the question in debate ‘whether the House shall be constitutive or restitutive?’, warning MPs against allowing the old peers to return wholesale:

Restitutive is dangerous, constitutive hath its conveniences. It is exceeding dangerous to restore the old peers at one blow. When that is done, you have done with bounding. They will bound you. It is of settlement I look after. By the same ground you may bring kingship, bishop and all that. Nay, I know not but they, in conclusion, will put you out, if you put them in.317Schilling, ‘Gell Diary’, 167; Burton’s Diary, iii. 26-7.

The only way through this minefield was for the upper chamber to be severely restricted in its scope – and its authority vis-à-vis the Commons reduced. A ‘constitutive’ chamber, even including some of the old peers, might work, but it was up to the Commons to set the parameters: ‘It is fit that you should add some powers to them. I would have you constitute a House rather. It will make way to restore the old lords that are capable’.318Burton’s Diary, iii. 27

On 8 March Trenchard returned to the theme, using his experience in earlier Parliaments to emphasise his point: ‘I have been forty years a Parliament-man, and never saw us in a worse condition. You are, by this vote, giving all away’, and rendering the Commons a mere ‘grand jury’.319Burton’s Diary, iv. 82. ‘We have lost now all by treating with them’, he continued, ‘you confirm all in the Petition and Advice, and so part with the purse forever. What helps can you have for grievances? You are without remedy, if you are not masters of your purse. Repeal therefore so much of the Petition and Advice as concerns the £1,300,000 before you transact with them, so that the purse may be yours. The Commons, in the worst of times, had their purse’.320Schilling, ‘Gell Diary’, 185. Trenchard again signalled that he was not fundamentally opposed to a new upper chamber, adding ‘I would have them enjoy all the rights of the Lords, so we might but enjoy all our rights. Otherwise I cannot consent to this question’.321Burton’s Diary, iv. 82. On 28 March, when the Other House was again debated, Trenchard argued that it must be restricted before the Commons agreed to transact with it, in case ‘you give away all, consent to the Petition and Advice and have nothing left but prayers and tears’.322Derbs. RO, D258/10/9/2, f. 7; Burton’s Diary, iv. 279. He went on to be named to the committee that considered transacting with the Other House on 6 April, joining Hesilrige and Vane II, as well as Dorset connections such as Prideaux I and Erle.323CJ vii. 627a.

Trenchard’s opposition to the protectorate is also suggested by his activity in other areas. He was suspicious of the Irish and Scottish MPs, who were generally perceived as government placemen, and on 8 March he questioned their right to vote on the Other House when their own status was in doubt, arguing that the House must ‘command those persons to withdraw, that they do not sit upon a foot of law. They have no right’.324Burton’s Diary, iv. 87. Nor was Trenchard satisfied with the way the Commons was conducting itself, on 21 March, during the debate on the future of the Scottish Members, he complained at the confusion over who could speak, saying ‘I have heard that now which I never in my life heard in Parliament’.325Burton’s Diary, iv. 216. From the end of March, Trenchard was named to a variety of committees dealing with Scottish and Irish affairs (1 Apr.), the plight of soldiers maimed in the wars (7 Apr.), the petition of the heirs of bankrupt Scottish financier, Sir William Dick (13 Apr.) and to ensure the protection of the protector and Parliament (18 Apr.).326CJ vii. 623b, 627b, 637b, 641b. Trenchard’s involvement with the commonwealthsmen also became more apparent. On 31 March he was named, with Hesilrige and others, to a committee to consider the claims of John Lambert* over Hatfield Chase in Essex, and on the same day he was named to a committee, alongside Hesilrige, Vane II and Lambert on a petition from the city and county of Durham asking for representation – a cause championed by Lambert and his friends in the north.327CJ vii. 622b. On 15 April Trenchard was teller with Lambert against a government-sponsored motion to recommit the declaration on the excise; and on 21 April he and Hesilrige were tellers in favour of putting the question to adjourn the House until the next day, to continued the debate on the politically-charged dispute between Jerome Sankey* and Dr William Petty*.328CJ vii. 640a, 644a.

The restored commonwealth and after, 1659-62

The forced closure of the third protectorate Parliament, and the subsequent demise of the protectorate, was doubtless welcomed by Trenchard, who resumed his seat in the restored Rump with alacrity.329A Catalogue of the Names of this Present Parliament (1659, 669.f21.43). The bulk of his involvement in parliamentary business during the next five months was administrative in nature and very similar to his work in the Rump before April 1653. The management of public revenues was of particular concern. On 14 June he was named to the committee on the new assessment bill, and on 20 June he was appointed to a committee on a bill for bringing in money owed to the commonwealth.330CJ vii. 684b, 690a. Further committee appointments followed during the next few weeks, including those to raise money from officials in the central law courts (22 June), to enforce the payment of money owed by purchasers of delinquents’ estates (11 July), and to scrutinise the bill to choose treasury commissioners (20 July).331CJ vii. 691a, 711a, 726b. In September Trenchard was named to three more financial committees: on the bill for assessments (1 Sept.), and concerning the receipt of customs and excise (19 and 26 Sept.).332CJ vii. 772a, 780b, 786b. In a new departure, Trenchard was also brought into the administration of the navy and shipping. On 18 May he was named to the committee on a bill to appoint commissioners for the admiralty and navy, and on 26 May he was teller in favour of nominating nine MPs to this body.333CJ vii. 656b, 666a. On 9 June he was appointed to a committee to consider abuses in the ballasting practices used by ships in the Thames, and he reported from this committee on 30 July.334CJ vii. 673b, 735a, 740a. On 22 June Trenchard was also named to a committee on the bill for impressing sailors.335CJ vii. 691b. As before, there is little sign of Trenchard involving himself in factional politics. His hard line against former Cromwellians is perhaps suggested by his addition, on 14 June, to the committee to consider corruption charges against Colonel Philip Jones*.336CJ vii. 684b. On 24 August he was included in the committee on a bill for seizing the estates of those implicated in the rebellion of Sir George Boothe*, but this was also revenue-raising measure.337CJ vii. 767b. His attitude to former royalists was otherwise benign, as seen in his appointment to two other committees in the same month, to consider the pleas of Lord Craven to be allowed subsistence from his estate, and of the countess of Worcester for the return of her London house.338CJ vii. 756b, 763b. Otherwise, the only hint that Trenchard was active politically was his appointment, with Vane II, Hesilrige, Sydenham, St John and Thomas Scot I, to a committee to prepare something for debate on the future settlement of the government, on 8 September.339CJ vii. 775b.

Amid this activity, Trenchard was able to return to business that affected him personally, or revived his earlier interests and commitments. On 20 May he was asked to invite his old friend, George Griffiths, to preach; on 23 May he was named to a committee to consider who owned the furnishings left in the palaces, working with former colleagues from the Committee for Revenue, Holland and Mildmay; and on 30 June he was appointed to a committee to consider a petition from the Lincolnshire fens. 340CJ vii. 659b, 663a, 697b, 714b. Although he had little time to devote to Dorset, Trenchard continued to be appointed to local commissions, including the Poole gaol delivery in May, the western circuit of the oyer and terminer in June, and the militia commission for Dorset and Surrey in July.341C181/6, pp. 357, 377-8. He was named to committees alongside Sydenham in June, July, August and September.342CJ vii. 684b, 726b, 757b, 775b. Trenchard’s closeness to his sons-in-law can also be seen in August 1659, when the council of state ordered that Sydenham was to have grander apartments in St James’s Palace, while his old lodgings in Whitehall were to be assigned to Trenchard and Bingham.343CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 79. Whether this personal relationship survived the crisis of October, when Trenchard remained wedded to the Rump, while Sydenham sided with the army, is uncertain. Typically, Trenchard’s own attitudes at this time can only be inferred. His last appearance in the Journals was on 4 October, and he played no part in politics until the revival of Parliament at the very end of December.344CJ vii. 791b, 800a.

The new year of 1660 saw a brief resurgence of Trenchard’s parliamentary fortunes. He was named with Hesilrige and other allies to committees on the bill for the Engagement (10 Jan.), on a new bill appointing admiralty and navy commissioners (12 Jan.), to recommend JPs (24 Jan.), and to consider ways to raise money for the militia (25 Jan.).345CJ vii. 806b, 808b, 821a, 822a. In the same month Trenchard was signing warrants as a treasury commissioner for the payment of regiments in the army.346Add. 4197, ff. 123-4. With the ascendancy of George Monck*, Trenchard quickly lost favour in the Commons, and was assigned only secondary business, especially the care of maimed soldiers at Ely House and the Savoy. On 25 February the Commons ordered Trenchard and Sir William Wheler to consider a petition from the old soldiers, Trenchard reported their opinion on 1 March; he was named to the committee to provide for them the same day, and reported from it on 13 March.347CJ vii. 853a, 856b, 857a, 872b. Two days later Trenchard made his last appearance in the House, as reporter of the case of Mrs Christian Balfour, who marriage portion had been unjustly confiscated.348CJ vii. 878b.

Trenchard was not penalised after the Restoration, but he was required to return property seized from the crown. In 1660 he was included among those former MPs who had the late king’s goods in their possession, and his enjoyment of the ordnance buildings and equipment at Vauxhall was also investigated.349HMC 7th Rep. 91-2; A. and O. Trenchard died in 1662. His properties were divided between his three daughters, with the Warmwell estate passing to Jane, wife of John Sadler, although Trenchard’s widow continued to live in the house itself.350Hutchins, Dorset, i. 430; ii. 326; Dorset Hearth Tax, 80.

Conclusion

John Trenchard was first and foremost an administrator. Beginning his career as an agent and receiver-general of the 4th and 5th earls of Bedford, he became a key figure in the management of Parliament’s finances in the early years of the civil war, and, as the war continued, served as treasurer of the army of Sir William Waller. He was a stalwart of the executive committees that emerged during the civil wars – the Committee for Revenue, the Committee for Compounding and the Committee for Advance of Money – and after the creation of the republic in 1649, his financial expertise remained in demand. Trenchard’s political career was secondary, and throughout this period he was content to support others, rather than taking a leading role himself. He was a loyal subordinate of Sir William Waller from 1643 until 1645; during the final years of the commonwealth he was influenced by Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Sir Henry Vane II; and in the later 1650s his growing opposition to the protectorate was apparently encouraged by his son-in-law, William Sydenham. Trenchard’s relationship with Sydenham is revealing. Despite the close family ties between the two men, Trenchard would not follow his son-in-law into an alliance with the army radicals in the autumn of 1659, instead siding with Hesilrige, Vane II, and other allies in the Rump. A similar unwillingness to identify himself too closely with the military helps to explain Trenchard’s somewhat semi-detached relationship with the Independent faction from 1646, and his support of new negotiations with the king in 1648. Another important factor in Trenchard’s moderate political attitude was his religious conservatism. Throughout his parliamentary career, Trenchard was rarely involved in religious issues, and his few committee appointments suggest that he was sober and orthodox in his own views, and suspicious of radicalism of any kind. His conservatism may also have been influenced by his strong connection with Dorset, which was dominated during the 1640s and 1650s by a moderate gentry clique. A mixture of circumstance, locality and temperament thus made Trenchard a perfect bureaucrat, but a reluctant politician.