CHOLMELEY, Sir Hugh (1600-57), of Whitby, Yorks.

Cholmeley’s family, a cadet branch of the Cheshire Cholmondeleys, had settled in Yorkshire at the beginning of the sixteenth century.32Cholmley Mems. 1-2, 61-2. His great-grandfather, Sir Richard Cholmley†, had acquired an extensive estate at Whitby, on the Yorkshire coast, in the mid-1550s, which became the family’s principal residence.33Cholmley Mems. 2, 62; Yorks. Tudor Fines ed. F. Collins (Yorks. Arch. Soc. Rec. Ser. ii), 205; VCH N. Riding, ii. 503-4. Cholmeley’s father, Sir Richard Cholmley†, despite his and his family’s Catholic leanings, was a consistent supporter of Yorkshire’s leading ‘country’ politician Sir Thomas Wentworth† (the future earl of Strafford), and Cholmeley’s own advancement in county government owed much to Wentworth’s patronage as lord president of the council of the north and lord lieutenant of Yorkshire.34H. Aveling, Northern Catholics (1966), 72, 118, 121, 182-3, 194; Cholmley Mems. 11, 15, 74, 93, 100; Wentworth Pprs. ed. J.P. Cooper (Cam. Soc. ser. 4, xii), 289; HP Commons 1604-29.

Cholmeley’s rise to prominence among the North Riding gentry was probably made easier by his sincere attachment to the Church of England – a trait he seems to have acquired largely from his mother and his wife. The latter, in particular, was strongly wedded to the doctrine and liturgy of the established church – Cholmeley describing her in his Memoirs as ‘a true daughter of the Church of England, dying in profession of [that] faith’.35Cholmley Mems. 78, 120-1. His own reverence for the church, which was shared by his younger brother Henry*, was not of the Laudian variety, however, for according to one seventeenth-century antiquary, ‘both these brothers were kind and friendly to the puritans or professors of religion’.36DWL, Morrice ms J, vol. iii (entry for 1640); Cholmley Mems. 19. Cholmeley was an admirer and patron of Whitby’s godly curate Robert Remmington, who was disciplined by the church authorities in the 1620s for nonconformist offences.37Cholmley Mems. 19, 91, 108; Marchant, Puritans, 45-7, 271; J. Binns, Yorks. in the Civil Wars (Preston, 1996), 48. On the other hand, his private chaplain as governor of Scarborough during the civil war was the town’s minister William Simpson, ‘an inveterate enemy to the Parliament’, who was removed from his living by the parliamentarian authorities in 1645.38Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. M. Y. Ashcroft (N. Yorks. RO Publications xlix), 75; Walker Revised, 398; Binns, Yorks. in the Civil Wars, 79.

Cholmeley was returned for Scarborough (15 miles down the coast from Whitby) to the 1624, 1625 and 1626 Parliaments on his father’s interest.39HP Commons 1604-29. Sir Richard had represented the town in the 1621 Parliament, but his mounting debts as a result of his passion for horse-breeding and ‘being addicted to study the philosopher stone [i.e. alchemy]’ apparently deterred him from the expense incurred in re-election.40Cholmley Mems. 75-6; HP Commons 1604-29. Hugh Cholmeley made little impact at Westminster, and having taken over the family estate in 1626 he seems to have channelled his energies into paying off his father’s debts, which amounted to more than £11,000. The onerous responsibility of clearing the family estate from his father’s and his own (mounting) debts finally quelled his youthful predilection for gaming and drinking, which he had indulged to excess both at Cambridge and at Gray’s Inn.41Cholmley Mems. 7, 82-3, 85-6; HP Commons 1604-29. Thus preoccupied, he was replaced at Scarborough by Sir William Constable* in the 1628 elections.42HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Scarborough’.

With the help of his uncle, John Legard† and his ‘dear friend’ and second cousin Sir John Hotham*, Cholmeley quickly succeeded in putting the family’s finances on a secure footing, and although he was forced to sell or assign to trustees a number of his properties in the 1630s, he also managed to refurbish his house at Whitby and to purchase several small estates.43C54/2966/16; C54/2967/6, 10; C54/2971/13; C54/3012/19; Cholmley Mems. 7, 10-11, 75-6, 80, 85-90, 92, 94; VCH N. Riding, ii. 510, 534, 536; HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Hugh Cholmley’. By the mid-1630s, he was living ‘in as handsome and plentiful fashion at home as [any] gentleman of my rank in all the country [i.e. county]’, with a 40-strong household at Whitby. Having put his own affairs in order, Cholmeley was ready to assume a more active role in county government, and by 1636 he had been appointed a deputy lieutenant and militia colonel for the North Riding.44Cholmley Mems. 96. After the death of his father in 1631, his main point of contact with Wentworth was probably Sir John Hotham, who was among the lord president’s most loyal Yorkshire adherents.45Infra, ‘Sir John Hotham’. Cholmeley’s own correspondence with Wentworth, although apparently not voluminous, suggests that he was anxious to retain the lord president’s goodwill and was – until 1639 – diligent in executing his commands.46Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P10a/214, 15/76; Strafforde Letters, ii. 193-4, 218; CSP Dom. 1639, p. 89; Cholmley Mems. 15, 190. In his Memoirs, Cholmeley records that during the personal rule he had ‘professed much service and love to his [Wentworth’s] person and ... had received divers favours and respect from him’.47Cholmley Mems. 100.

It was not until the last year or so of Charles I’s personal rule that cracks began to appear in Cholmeley’s support for Wentworth’s administration in the north. In January 1639, following a royal order that the county’s trained bands muster for possible deployment against the Scots, Cholmeley joined Sir John Hotham in a petition to the king from the Yorkshire deputy lieutenants and militia commanders, expressing their readiness to march to any rendezvous but reminding Charles that their troops were ‘never ... once employed out of our county upon any remote service whatsoever’.48SP16/409/53, f. 141; SP16/409/67, f. 167; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, i. 353-4. Cholmeley and Hotham also signed the petitions from the county’s deputy lieutenants to the king and Sir Jacob Astley (sergeant-major-general of the king’s infantry) in March, asking that their men be paid a month prior to mobilisation.49SP16/414/92, ff. 217, 219. Yet the crown does not appear to have questioned Cholmeley’s loyalty at this stage, for he and Hotham were among the Yorkshire militia colonels whose regiments were included in the royal army that faced the Covenanters that summer.50Cholmley Mems. 98-9; Cliffe, Yorks. 314. It was only after Yorkshire had seen its military resources squandered in the first bishops’ war that Cholmeley chose to make a stand against the policy of ‘Thorough’ by emulating Hotham in heading opposition to Ship Money in his locality.51Infra, ‘Sir John Hotham’; Cholmley Mems. 15, 100.

In the elections to the Short Parliament, Cholmeley and Sir John Hotham’s eldest son, John Hotham, were returned for Scarborough on 20 March 1640.52Supra, ‘Scarborough’. Three days later, on 23 March, Cholmeley joined Sir John and other Yorkshire deputy lieutenants and militia officers in a letter to the privy council in which they refused to send reinforcements to Berwick until the necessary money had been provided and due consideration had been given to ‘the last year’s past and great charge of this county’.53SP16/448/66i, f. 133; CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 573. Strafford regarded this letter as an act of ‘insolence’ and vowed to give those responsible ‘something to remember it by hereafter’.54Strafforde Letters, ii. 408-9. Nevertheless, in April, Cholmeley and Hotham were again among the Yorkshire colonels whose regiments were ordered to mobilise against the Scots – although it was left to Cholmeley’s lieutenant-colonel, his brother Henry, to march his regiment northwards, getting as far as Durham before the order was countermanded.55Cumb. RO (Kendal), Strickland ms vol. 1608-1700, N33 Car. I: king to Sir Edward Osborne*, 4 Apr. 1640; Cholmley Mems. 99.

Cholmeley was one of the most active Yorkshire Members in the Short Parliament. Although named to only three committees, he made numerous contributions to debate, most notably on the subject of Ship Money.56CJ ii. 4a, 12a, 18b; Aston’s Diary, 16, 17, 18, 53, 56, 91, 107, 129, 132, 140. On 18 April, he declared that the House’s main concern should be ‘to lay a brand upon Ship Money’ – for which he was rebuked by the solicitor-general, Edward Herbert – and subsequently argued that if the levy should be voted illegal, ‘he knew no reason to buy it out [by granting the king supply]’.57Aston’s Diary, 17, 56, 129, 132; Procs. Short Parl. 162, 194, 208. He also spoke out against the new Canons, but he declared himself indifferent as to the placing of the altar in the church, although he objected to the Laudian practice of bowing to it.58Aston’s Diary, 53, 91. By questioning the legality of Ship Money, Cholmeley, like Henry Belasyse and Sir John Hotham (who insisted on the removal of military charges as well as Ship Money before the granting of supply), was partly to blame for the Commons’ rejection of the king’s compromise proposal, that, in return for an immediate vote of 12 subsidies, he would surrender Ship Money and prolong the session to hear other grievances. The king and Strafford certainly suspected the worst of the three Yorkshiremen and soon after Parliament was dissolved had them brought before the privy council to answer for their speeches in the Commons – Hotham and Belasyse responding in such an ‘undutifull’ manner that they were imprisoned. Cholmeley was probably under less suspicion, having refrained from denouncing military charges, and after answering the council’s questions ‘directly’ he was released on bail.59CSP Dom. 1640, pp. 154-5; Cholmley Mems. 100. At some point early in 1640 – very probably after Cholmeley’s attack on Ship Money in the Short Parliament – Strafford had him removed from all commissions, or so Cholmeley would claim in his Memoirs.60Infra, ‘Sir John Hotham’; Cholmley Mems. 16, 100, 101. In fact, while Cholmeley seems to have lost his offices as a deputy lieutenant and militia colonel, he apparently retained his place on the North Riding commission of the peace and as an oyer and terminer commissioner for the Northern circuit.61C181/5, f. 175; Cholmley Mems. 100; N. Riding QS Recs. ed. Atkinson, 181.

With Yorkshire feeling the burden of military charges during the second bishops’ war, Cholmeley and his circle played a leading role in presenting the county’s grievances to the king. Late in July 1640, Cholmeley, Hotham, Belasyse and the future parliamentarian peer Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, organised a petition to Charles from the county’s ‘disaffected’ gentry, denouncing enforced billeting as contrary to the Petition of Right. When it was presented at the council board, Strafford exclaimed that ‘for them at such a time as this is, thus to complain when an invasion is threatened by the Scots, it seemed to be a mutinous petition’.62Cholmley Mems. 100; Rushworth, Historical Collns. iii. 1214-15; D. Scott, ‘”Hannibal at our gates”’, HR lxx. 274-6. On 24 August, Cholmeley signed the county’s second petition to the king, in which the petitioners insisted that the trained bands could not be mobilised for service against the Scots without two weeks pay in advance.63Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 1231; Scott, ‘Hannibal at our gates’, 283. On 12 September, he signed the county’s third such petition, in which, after complaining about Ship Money, illegal billeting and various other ills, the petitioners reiterated the demand made by a group of dissident English peers, late in August, that Charles should summon a Parliament. When this third Yorkshire petition was shown to Strafford, he refused to present it to the king, delivering instead a revised address of his own which made no mention of Parliament.64Cumb. RO (Kendal), Strickland Ms vol. 1608-1700, N38 Car. I; Cholmley Mems. 102; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 1264-5; viii. 601-3; Cliffe, Yorks. 321; Scott, ‘Hannibal at our gates’, 287-8. Angered by Strafford’s proceedings, Cholmeley, Hotham and Belasyse and several more of the ‘principal and most active gentlemen’ drew up another petition, in protest, which they intended to present to the king themselves. However, one of their number informed the court, and Cholmeley, Hotham, Belasyse and Lord Wharton were reprimanded by Charles in person. The king accused Cholmeley and Hotham of having been the chief instigators of the Yorkshire petitions, and he threatened that if they meddled in such matters again he would have them hanged.65Cholmley Mems. 102; Cliffe, Yorks. 321-2.

Charles had strong grounds for suspecting that at least some of the leading Yorkshire petitioners had covertly assisted the dissident English peers in inviting in the Scots over the summer. Part of the dissident peers’ plan had involved weakening the king’s army in the north – a process towards which the ‘disaffected’ Yorkshire gentry, by retarding the mobilisation of the county’s trained bands, had certainly contributed. Cholmeley’s role in the petitioning campaign can probably be explained by his concern to relieve the county of the heavy burden of military charges, and although the petitions had the effect of encouraging a Covenanter invasion (as Cholmeley conceded in his Memoirs), there is little evidence that he sympathised with the Scots’ cause. Indeed, at one point in his Memoirs he admitted to disliking the Scottish nation.66Cholmley Mems. 101, 103.

In the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, Cholmeley and John Hotham were returned for Scarborough again – the town ignoring Strafford’s nomination of Sir George Wentworth II* for one of its places.67Supra, ‘Scarborough’. Cholmeley’s hard usage by Strafford and the king since April seems to have strengthened the reformist convictions he had revealed in the Short Parliament, and he soon emerged as one of the most active men in the House. Between November 1640 and September 1642, he was named to approximately 56 committees and eight teams for managing or reporting conferences, and he served as a teller in four divisions and four times as a messenger to the Lords.68CJ ii. 110a, 138b, 153a, 220a, 228a, 235b, 301a, 317b, 410a, 414a, 489a, 509b, 540b, 547a, 710a; LJ iv. 193a, 241b, 560b, 658a.

According to Edward Hyde*, the most influential figures among the more reform-minded northern MPs – a group known as the ‘northern gentlemen’ – were Hotham, Cholmeley and Sir Philip Stapilton (Hotham’s former son-in-law and Henry Cholmley’s brother-in-law), who between them possessed ‘a numerous train which attended their motions’. Hyde further maintained that the three men ‘observed and pursued the dictates’ of Pym, John Hampden and other members of the ‘governing party’ at Westminster – known as ‘the junto’ – particularly when it came to the prosecution of Strafford.69Clarendon, Hist. i. 250, 263, 309, 315, 421; D. Scott, ‘The “northern gentlemen”, HJ xlii. 349. Cholmeley himself claimed that he had ‘a great esteem and interest amongst them in the Parliament’.70Cholmley Mems. 103. However, there is little evidence that either he or Hotham were consistent supporters of the parliamentary leadership during the early months of the Long Parliament. Certainly Cholmeley’s squeamishness about infringing ‘public liberties’ did not make him a natural ally of Pym and his confederates. On 20 February 1641, for example, Cholmeley, Hotham and other Members opposed a motion of Pym that threatened to put the demands of financial necessity before ‘the fundamental liberty of the subject’; Cholmeley, it was noted, ‘disliked the motion exceedingly and said that every poor man and every rich man had equal power and right in the laws of the land’.71Procs. LP ii. 502.

As with Hotham, Cholmeley’s lack of sympathy with most aspects of ‘further reformation’ in religion also prevented him from moving too closely into Pym’s orbit. He was willing to support the Commons’ attack on Archbishop William Laud and to urge the suppression of papists, particularly in Yorkshire.72Add. 64807, f. 12; CJ ii. 52a, 136b, 302a, 371b; Procs. LP i. 106; ii. 679; PJ i. 38, 193, 240. But it is revealing that he was named to only four committees concerning ecclesiastical issues – one to investigate the new Canons and to prepare charges against the Laudian episcopate, two on legislation for the reform of pluralism, and one to prepare a declaration vindicating the doctrine of the Church of England.73CJ ii. 52a, 101a, 431b, 510b; PJ ii. 126. Moreover, on 16 November 1641, during debate on the Grand Remonstrance, he was a teller with another future parliamentarian turncoat, Sir Edward Dering, against the inclusion of a clause in the Remonstrance that the bishops had introduced idolatry.74CJ ii. 317b. Cholmeley and Dering lost the division to the godly pairing of Sir Thomas Barrington and Sir Martin Lumley, prompting the parliamentary diarist Sir Simonds D’Ewes to observe that the ‘episcopal party failed of their expectation’.75D’Ewes (C), 152. It was Hyde’s view that Cholmeley cooperated with the junto largely out of a concern to deflect attention from his conduct during the personal rule – which was precisely the claim that Cholmeley made about Hotham.76Clarendon, Hist. i. 250. Indeed, Cholmeley’s description of Hotham’s political motivation could as easily be applied to Cholmeley himself.

He was a man that loved liberty, which was an occasion to make him join at first with the puritan party [Pym and his allies], to whom after he became nearer linked merely for his own interest and security, for in more than concerned the civil liberty he did not approve of their ways.77Cholmley Mems. 131.

Hyde’s belief that Cholmeley supported the parliamentary leadership for his own security reinforces the impression that Cholmeley, like Hotham, had a been a loyal supporter of Strafford and ‘Thorough’ prior to the bishops’ wars. It is also evident that while Cholmeley may have been keen to distance himself from Strafford, he played a relatively minor role in his former patron’s downfall.78Clarendon, Hist. i. 250. He was named to only two committees (and those of minor importance) relating to Strafford’s prosecution, and while he referred in debate to the lord lieutenant’s ‘unjust dealing and oppression’, he seemed keener to incriminate his neighbour and local rival Sir William Pennyman*, who was one of Strafford’s few remaining supporters in Yorkshire.79CJ ii. 39b, 79b; Procs. LP i. 459-60, 464, 602; Northcote Note Bk. 30; Binns, Yorks. in the Civil Wars, 21. Nevertheless, Cholmeley’s testimony at Strafford’s trial on 7 April 1641 – giving testimony on the 27th article: that the earl had levied an illegal tax upon Yorkshire the previous autumn for maintenance of the trained bands – was no less damning than that of the other prosecution witnesses, who included his brother Henry. Indeed, he went further than most in alleging (falsely) that the earl’s interest in Yorkshire had included a strong Catholic contingent.80Procs. LP iii. 431, 432, 437, 438, 441, 447, 449; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. viii. 603, 613. Nevertheless, on 14 April he joined Strafford’s kinsman Denzil Holles in speaking against the penalisation of the earl’s descendants, ‘that his blood may not be attainted, that his ancient inheritance may descend’.81Procs. LP iii. 553. Similarly, although Clarendon claimed that Cholmeley worked closely with Hotham and Stapilton in securing the abolition of the council of the north, there is no evidence to this effect in either the Commons Journal or in any of the parliamentary diaries.82Clarendon, Hist. i. 315-16, 421.

Cholmeley’s nomination to committees for investigating monopolists and the collection of Ship Money and military charges, and on a bill for holding Parliaments annually, suggests a concern on his part to reform the perceived abuses of the personal rule.83CJ ii. 31a, 45b, 47b, 50b, 60a, 60b, 82a, 92a. His main priority at Westminster, however, seems to have been the relief of Yorkshire and the northern counties, where the quartering of the English and Scottish armies had caused greatest hardship. Beginning on 26 November 1640, when he was added to the committee for the king’s army, Cholmeley received a series of appointments – including several for the managing or reporting of conferences – concerning the regulation, supply and disbandment of the two armies in the north and the compensation of the northern counties for military charges.84CJ ii. 37a, 66a, 110a, 131b, 152a, 153a, 185b, 196a, 223a, 228a, 235b, 294b; LJ iv. 193a. In November 1640, and again the following March, he pledged £1,000 as security on loans to pay off the armies, while in debate he supported those members such as Hotham who were pushing for the speedy raising of money for the relief of the troops and the northern counties.85CJ ii. 37a; Procs. LP i. 131, 132, 138, 141, 305; ii. 628, 629, 788; iv. 179. He was also active on the bicameral commissions for disbursing the proceeds of the subsidies Parliament voted in 1641 – the bulk of which went towards paying the soldiery.86SP28/1C, ff. 11, 44-5. Having related, on 3 May 1641, ‘the great necessity that our English army [was in], how that they neither had clothes nor money’, he was named second to a committee set up later that day for re-assuring the army of the House’s efforts towards its maintenance.87CJ ii. 131b; Procs. LP iv. 179.

In response to revelations concerning the army plots, the House resolved on 7 May 1641 to send Hotham and Cholmeley to Yorkshire ‘for satisfying the army and to discover the plot’.88CJ ii. 138a, 138b. However, the ‘committee of seven’ (the House’s newly-appointed executive committee, of which Stapilton was a member) decided that neither man could be spared, whereupon Henry Cholmley, Sir Arthur Ingram junior and John Mallory* were sent in their place.89Procs. LP iv. 247, 251, 253, 256, 276. The next day (8 May), Cholmeley was sent as a messenger to the Lords – ‘which he did, and [he] performed more largely than ordinarily messages are done’ – to desire their lordships to move the king for the appointment of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, as lord lieutenant of Yorkshire as ‘a man well-esteemed of in the kingdom and one whom the gentry of Yorkshire do very much desire to be commanded by’.90CJ ii. 138b; LJ iv. 241b; Procs. LP iv. 249, 277, 278, 283. Although Cholmeley was not directly involved in drawing up the Ten Propositions, with their controversial clause calling for the removal of evil counsellors, he may have been testing the waters for the junto on 15 June by moving that the 1st earl of Newcastle (Sir William Cavendish†), who had been implicated in the army plot, be replaced as tutor to the prince of Wales by the innocuous figure of Thomas Howard, 1st earl of Berkshire.91Procs. LP v. 171-2, 173-4, 177. He took a more lenient view of some of the more junior officers implicated in the plots, lending his assistance in the House to Henry Wilmot* and speaking in defence of Henry Percy*, arguing that he had not conspired to deploy the army against Parliament.92Procs. LP iv. 643; v. 84. Similarly, he was prepared to defend the king’s attorney-general, Sir John Bankes, claiming that he had been ‘compelled to do what he did’ – an argument that did not persuade the ‘fiery spirit’ Henry Marten, for one.93Procs. LP iv. 590.

Cholmeley’s creation as a baronet in August 1641, and the crown’s waiving of the customary fee involved, suggests that he was perceived by the king as a potential ally given the right inducements.94SO3/12, f. 163. Equally, the junto may have been trying to bind him more closely to their interest by nominating him as a commissioner to accompany the king on his journey to Scotland that month. Cholmeley declined this appointment, however, ‘neither affecting the nation nor the employment’.95Cholmley Mems. 103.

Cholmeley seems to have played relatively little part in the House’s proceedings during the last three months of 1641. He received only eight appointments during this period, although these included nomination to committees for petitioning the king to rid himself of evil counsellors (28 Oct.) and for Irish affairs (2 Nov.), and as a reporter of a conference on 1 November, with Holles, Pym and four other leading Members, in response to news of the outbreak of the Irish rebellion.96CJ ii. 294b, 297b, 298a, 301a, 302a, 317b, 338b, 343b. His only notable contribution in debate, it seems, was on 7 December, when he backed the return for Knaresborough of the future regicide Sir William Constable* over that of the court-connected William Dearlove* (earlier in the year, Cholmeley had performed a similar service for his brother-in-law and close friend Sir Christopher Yelverton*, who had been involved in a disputed election at Bossiney, Cornwall).97Supra, ‘Knaresborough’; Procs LP ii. 199; D’Ewes (C), 242.

The king’s flight from London early in January 1642 exposed the difference in thinking between Cholmeley and the junto, for while Cholmeley evidently remained hopeful that the breach between Charles and Parliament could be repaired, Pym and his confederates had gone beyond the point of compromise. When, on 13 January, Cholmeley moved that the House ‘might send to his Majesty to express our grief for his absenting himself from us, and to desire him to return and to conceive that we are his best and surest guard’, he was immediately opposed by Holles, who argued that no such offer should be made until the Five Members had been cleared and Parliament’s privileges vindicated.98PJ i. 53-4. The next day (14 Jan.), Cholmeley ‘moved that he understood there were divers jealousies and fears put into the king’s head and the queen’s, as if we meant to diminish his authority and impeach the queen of high crimes, and therefore [he] desired that we might think of some speedy way of removing those jealousies’. Once again, however, this moderate motion came to nothing when subsequent speakers – but not, it seems, Cholmeley, as the parliamentary diarist John Moore reported – moved that the prince of Wales be taken into parliamentary custody, which was a proposal that, as Sir John Northcote pointed out, was likely to increase jealousies between king and Parliament rather than diminish them. Cholmeley moved, more moderately, that the king be requested not to permit the prince’s removal abroad, and he also sought to deny reports that Parliament intended to prefer charges against the queen.99PJ i. 63, 65, 69, 74 He may well have clashed with the junto again by serving as a majority teller on 4 February against an initiative for vesting the management of Irish affairs in a 15-man commission that would have been dominated by Pym and his confederates.100PJ i. 266, 268-9, 274-5.

Cholmeley’s desire for an accommodation probably explains his appointment to a number of committees during the early months of 1642 to consider letters from the king or to frame replies.101CJ ii. 384a, 489a, 508b, 525b. At the same time, he was involved in the Commons’ efforts to secure the Yorkshire and its militia for Parliament and to encourage its supporters in the county.102CJ ii. 433a, 479b; PJ i. 240. He also helped to manage and report conferences for vindicating Sir John Hotham’s refusal to admit the king into Hull late in April 1642, and he was included on several committees on this issue.103CJ ii. 540b, 547a, 548b, 550b; PJ ii. 213-14, 215, 218. Despite his differences with the junto, Cholmeley was evidently alarmed at the king’s attempt to build a party for himself in Yorkshire, and early in May he agreed to join Edward Howard, 1st Baron Howard of Escrick*, Ferdinando Fairfax, 2nd Baron Fairfax*, Stapilton and his brother Sir Henry Cholmley as parliamentary commissioners to attend the king at York.104CJ ii. 553a; PJ ii. 246, 265; Cholmley Mems. 103-4. In his Memoirs, Cholmeley claimed that the commissioners were sent ostensibly to give the king and the county ‘a right understanding of the sincerity of the Parliament’s intentions’, whereas in fact their role was to gather military support for Parliament.

...when I came to receive the instructions from Pym, who had orders to give them, we were plainly enjoined to draw the trained bands together and to oppose the king in all things ... This I refused to accept, saying “it were to begin the war, which I intended not”, whereupon Pym bid me draw the instructions to my own mind, which I did, but the Lord Fairfax and I departing in a coach before they could be finished, they were brought to us by the Lord Howard and Stapilton, and though not so large as at first, yet otherwise than I did assent to or could approve of.105Cholmley Mems. 103.

The king clearly suspected that the commissioners were there to hinder and spy on his military preparations and ordered them to return to Westminster. When they refused, he advised them not to make any party for themselves or to obstruct his plans on pain of imprisonment.106LJ v. 61; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 615. The commissioners remained at York for most of May and June and sent several letters to Parliament relating the king’s proceedings and their own efforts to prevent him exploiting the county’s military resources.107Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 616, 620-1; PJ ii. 307, 343-4, 359, 386; PJ iii. 86; CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 322-3, 330. It was Cholmeley and his colleagues who presented Charles with the Nineteen Propositions – which Cholmeley, in his Memoirs, professed to find the ‘most unjust and unreasonable as ever ... was made to [a] king’.108CJ ii. 599a; LJ v. 97b; Cholmley Mems. 104. With hindsight, Cholmeley believed that the slide into war was the work of zealots on both sides who ‘concurred in fomenting distractions’.109Cholmley Mems. 104.

Cholmeley had returned to Westminster (bringing the king’s answer to the Nineteen Propositions with him) by 28 June 1642, when he moved that the king be requested to suspend the commission of array in return for Parliament laying aside its Militia Ordinance.110PJ iii. 145. While this proposal fell on deaf ears, his suggestion on 9 July that the House might ‘read the bill for the militia that so we might go on with the peace of the kingdom as well as with providing force’ provoked ‘much debate pro and con’.111PJ iii. 192. The result was the establishment of a committee, to which Cholmeley was named in second place, to forward an initiative by the more irenic Commons-men to have the two Houses pass a royally-approved militia bill that would supersede the Militia Ordinance. That same day (9 July), however, he was also named to a committee for preparing a declaration that the two Houses intended to proceed with the Ordinance ‘in case it [the bill] doth not pass’ – a clear indication that Parliament intended to take control of the kingdom’s military resources whether or not the king granted his assent.112CJ ii. 663b; PJ iii. 192, 194. In the following two months he was named to committees for denouncing the proceedings of the Yorkshire royalists and to prepare heads for a conference with the Lords concerning peace overtures from the king – which Parliament rejected.113CJ ii. 734a, 752a, 754a.

Late in August 1642, Cholmeley was requested by the earl of Essex to resume command of his militia regiment and secure Scarborough for Parliament. At first he refused (or so he later claimed), still hoping that the military preparations would end in a treaty, but he finally accepted this employment on the grounds that he would be better placed to advance a settlement ‘with my sword in my hand ... then by sitting in the House of Commons, where I had but a bare vote’.114Cholmley Mems. 104-5, 140, 142. His decision to take up arms against the king was doubtless influenced by his hostility towards Catholics and his desire to defend his kinsmen and friends in east Yorkshire, most of whom were aligned with Parliament.115Cholmley Mems. 20-1; Binns, Yorks. in the Civil Wars, 49-51. He quickly secured and fortified Scarborough, and from there he launched a series of attacks on royalist forces in the East and North Ridings.116Beinecke Lib. Osborn fb94, folder 12: Cholmeley to Pym, 3 Nov. 1642; Harl. 164, ff. 285, 298, 330v, 337; CJ ii. 831b; iii. 1a; HMC Portland, i. 90; LJ v. 597b; Hotham Pprs. 66, 86; Cholmley Mems. 22, 23; Binns, Yorks. in the Civil Wars, 56-7, 61-2.

Cholmeley’s concern to defend his own region led him to join the Hothams in disobeying orders from Lord Fairfax, the commander of Parliament’s northern army, to march their forces to his assistance in the West Riding.117Infra, ‘Sir John Hotham’; ‘John Hotham’; CJ ii. 891a; LJ v. 494b, 527b; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 26. The Commons, through Essex, ordered Cholmeley to obey Fairfax but then relented when Cholmeley pleaded his inability to march west without leaving Scarborough dangerously exposed.118CJ ii. 891a, 893a, 926b. In a letter to Parliament late in December, justifying his conduct, Cholmeley intimated that he was unhappy with the course of the war both locally and nationally and resentful of the way his failure to obey Fairfax had been represented at London.119CJ ii. 926b; HMC Portland, i. 90. Like the Hothams, he professed to know of no authority that Fairfax had over him (apparently regarding Essex as his commanding officer rather than Fairfax) and criticised him for his failure to attack York when he had the opportunity.120Add. 18777, f. 125; Newes from Yorke (1643), sigs. A2-A2v (E.85.17); HMC Portland, i. 90-1; CJ ii. 994a. He ended his letter by requesting that Parliament seek an accommodation with the king.

It grieves my heart to see how these calamities increase and how I am forced to draw my sword not only against my countrymen but many near friends and allies, some of which I know both to be well affected in religion and lovers of their liberties. And therefore I most humbly beseech the House that they will be pleased to lay hold of all occasions that may produce an accommodation ... as that the circumstance of time may be considered when his Majesty began to withdraw himself at so great a distance from the Parliament, and what person may be conceived to have the greatest power and interest to persuade him to condescend to such propositions as may conduce best to the quieting of these troubles, and if our religion be but firmly settled, whether it be not better to let go some things that in right belong to the subject, than by insisting upon them have the king and so great a party in the kingdom so unsatisfied as it must produce a civil war.121HMC Portland, i. 90-1.

Cholmeley’s dissatisfaction with Parliament’s handling of the war was compounded by its failure to supply his garrison.122Add. 18777, ff. 95v, 125v; Harl. 164, f. 317; CJ ii. 994a.

Neglected by his supposed friends at Westminster, mindful (or so he later claimed) of the king’s ‘inclinations to treaty’, and with the royalists pressing hard upon his quarters in the North Riding, Cholmeley attended the queen at York on 20 March 1643 and offered himself, his men and Scarborough Castle in the king’s service.123CJ ii. 994a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 264-5; A True and Exact Relation of all the Proceedings of Sir Hugh Cholmley’s Revolt (1643), 4-5 (E.95.9); Cholmley Mems. 24-5, 143; Binns, Yorks. in the Civil Wars, 63-4. He was then commissioned by the earl of Newcastle as a colonel of horse and dragoons, governor of Scarborough and vice-admiral of the Yorkshire coast.124Cholmley Mems. 105. The Commons, on being informed of his defection by Sir John Hotham (who would himself attempt to defect to the king in June), disabled him from sitting and resolved to impeach him for high treason.125CJ iii. 27b-28a, 30a. The royalists were exuberant at his return to ‘duty and obedience ... not so much in regard of the men and arms which he brought with him, as in respect of his authority in that county and his being privy to the counsels and designs of the chief actors in this rebellion’.126Mercurius Aulicus no. 13 (26 Mar.-2 Apr. 1643), 153-4 (E.96.5).

In his Memoirs, Cholmeley justified his change of allegiance in terms of Parliament’s disloyalty to himself and to the cause for which it had first defied the king: ‘I did not forsake the Parliament till they did fail in performing those particulars they made the grounds of the war when I was first engaged, viz. the preservation of religion, protection of the king’s person and the liberties of the subject’.127Cholmley Mems. 105. His idea of ‘the preservation of religion’ probably entailed the retention of the Book of Common Prayer and at least the vestiges of the traditional episcopal order, rather than a thoroughgoing godly reformation.

Cholmeley held Scarborough Castle for the king until July 1645, when he surrendered to the besieging parliamentarian forces and was allowed to take ship for Holland.128Cholmley Mems. 108-9; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 118. He spent most of the next four years in France, leaving the management of his affairs in England to his son William and his brother Sir Henry Cholmley.129Cholmley Mems. 109-11. In June 1649, he returned to England to compound and was fined at the modest rate of £850, having assigned the bulk of his estate to his brother Henry, his brother-in-law Sir Roger Twysden* and his former brother-in-law Sir William Strickland* in June 1639 for raising portions for his younger children.130Cholmley Mems. 13, 111; C54/2966/16; SP23/214, pp. 291, 295, 297; CCC 2062. Within months of his return, Cholmeley entered into an agreement with Sir Nicholas Crispe* for erecting alum works at Whitby, and he later claimed that he and his brother Henry had laid out over £10,000 to get the enterprise up and running.131C5/18/22; C6/41/151; Cholmley Mems. 111.

Cholmeley spent most of the remainder of his life living quietly either at Whitby or with his wife’s family in London and Kent.132Cholmley Mems. 113-16. During the 1651 Scottish invasion, he and Sir Roger Twysden were imprisoned in Leeds Castle, Kent, as a precautionary measure but were released within a few months.133Bodl. Rawl. A.27, p. 383; Cholmley Mems. 113. After the death of his wife in April 1655, Cholmeley ‘resided amongst her friends’ and principally, it seems, with the Twysdens at Peckham, where he wrote his Memoirs.134Cholmley Mems. 39, 116.

Cholmeley died in the London residence of his brother-in-law Thomas Twisden* on 30 November 1657 and was buried on 3 December next to his wife in the Twysden family vault in St Michael’s church, East Peckham.135Add. 34163, f. 110v; St Michael, East Peckham par. reg.; Cholmley Mems. 41, 194. In his will, in which he asked to be buried ‘without pomp or more than necessary charge’, he charged his estate with bequests totalling approximately £3,300 and made his brother Henry one of his executors and his four Twysden brothers-in-law his supervisors.136PROB11/300, ff. 359-360v; Cholmley Mems. 192-4. Cholmeley’s son Sir Hugh Cholmley†, 4th bt., sat for Northampton in the first Exclusion Parliament and for Thirsk in 1685.137HP Commons 1660-90.