INGRAM, Sir Thomas (1614-72), of Sheriff Hutton, Yorks. and Isleworth, Mdx.

Ingram was one of the first of his family to be born into the ranks of the landed gentry. His grandfather had been a London tallow-chandler of relatively modest fortune and his father, Sir Arthur Ingram, had started out as a merchant and customs official, before establishing himself as a major land speculator and the business partner of Lord Treasurer Salisbury (Robert Cecil†), Thomas Howard, 1st earl of Suffolk and several other leading Jacobean courtiers.36PROB11/123, f. 173; Upton, Ingram, 1-78; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir Arthur Ingram’; Oxford DNB, ‘Sir Arthur Ingram’. It is a measure of Sir Arthur’s phenomenal success in the service of his own and his patrons’ interests that when Thomas (the future MP) was christened in 1614, his godparents were the 1st earl of Suffolk, the royal favourite the earl of Somerset and the countess of Nottingham (wife of Charles Howard, 1st earl of Nottingham).37Chamberlain Letters ed. McClure, i. 545.

The family’s standing is likewise reflected in its marriage connections. In 1637, Sir Thomas married a daughter of Thomas Belasyse†, Lord Fauconberg (father of the future royalists Henry* and John Belasyse*), the head of one of Yorkshire’s oldest and wealthiest families. Probably as part of the marriage settlement, Sir Arthur (who enjoyed an income of approximately £9,000 a year by the 1630s) settled lands in Yorkshire and Suffolk upon Sir Thomas worth £2,000 a year.38W. Yorks. Archives (Leeds), WYL100 (former Temple Newsam ms TN/F/18/1); Upton, Ingram, 209-10. That the Belasyses were the North Riding’s most prominent Catholic family apparently proved no impediment to the match, despite Sir Arthur’s trenchant Protestantism. And although Sir Thomas was later accused of popish leanings, there is no firm evidence to question his loyalty to the Church of England.39Mercurius Britanicus no. 32 (15-22 Apr. 1644), 253 (E.43.19).

Although Ingram’s father was aligned with the court faction opposed to Yorkshire’s most powerful figure during the personal rule of Charles I, Lord Deputy Wentworth (Sir Thomas Wentworth†, the future earl of Strafford), Ingram himself appears to have been among Wentworth allies in the county. He declined to join the ‘disaffected’ Yorkshire gentry in their several petitions to the king during the summer and early autumn of 1640 in which they complained about the local impact of the king’s Scottish policy – petitions that Strafford denounced as ‘mutinous’.40Upton, Ingram, 233-4, 236-8; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 1215, 1231. Moreover, in August 1640, at the height of the second bishops’ war, he and other ‘loyalist’ gentry were named to a commission of array for Yorkshire, which was drawn up by the king and Strafford in an attempt to mobilize the county’s trained bands against the invading Covenanters.41Add. 28088, f. 94.

In the elections to the Long Parliament, Sir Arthur Ingram’s court patron Henry Rich†, 1st earl of Holland, recommended Sir Thomas to the mayor of Colchester for one of the borough seats, but the corporation announced that it preferred to choose local gentlemen.42Supra, ‘Colchester’; Essex RO, D/Y 2/4, pp. 35, 39. Three days after Holland wrote to Colchester (1 October 1640), Ingram was returned for Thirsk along with his brother-in-law, John Belasyse. He owed his election to the Belasyses, who enjoyed a powerful proprietorial interest in the area.43Supra, ‘Thirsk’. Ingram took very little part in the Long Parliament’s proceedings. He was named to only two committees and made no recorded contribution to debate.44CJ ii. 152a, 423b. He was not among the seven Yorkshire MPs who voted against the bill for Strafford’s attainder, on 21 April 1641, and he apparently had no qualms about taking the Protestation (3 May).45CJ ii. 133b. There is no basis for the claim that ‘young Sir Arthur Ingram’, whom the House appointed early in May 1641 to accompany Sir Henry Cholmeley* on his mission into Yorkshire ‘for satisfying the army and to discover the [army] plot’, was Sir Thomas as opposed to Sir Arthur’s eldest son and namesake.46CJ ii. 138; Keeler, Long Parl. 229. On 20 May, Ingram was named to a committee to attend a conference between the Houses concerning the disbanding of the English and Scottish armies encamped in northern England.47CJ ii. 152a. His only other significant appointment was on 24 December, when he was sent as a messenger to the Lords to request that they prolong their sitting that day.48CJ ii. 356a; D’Ewes (C), 345. His last appointment in the House – to a minor committee – was on 10 February 1642.49CJ ii. 423b.

Ingram was declared absent at the call of the House on 16 June 1642, by which time he had probably joined the king at York.50CJ ii. 626. Appointed to the Yorkshire commission of array in June, he was busily mustering troops for the king by mid-August.51Northants. RO, FH133; E. Peacock, ‘On some civil war docs. rel. to Yorks.’, YAJ i. 95. On 6 September, the Commons disabled him from sitting for neglecting the service of the House and for signing a recent petition to Parliament from the Yorkshire royalists, protesting at Sir John Hotham’s* proceedings as governor of Hull.52CJ ii. 754b; LJ v. 273b-274a. Ingram’s decision to side with the king was possibly linked to his religious convictions. His career reveals no trace of any puritan influence, nor indeed of the earnest Protestant sensibility of his father, who seems to have inclined towards Parliament in the months before his death in August 1642.53Upton, Ingram, 253-8.

Ingram was among the group of prominent Yorkshire royalists that invited the commander of the king’s northern army, the earl of Newcastle, into the county in the autumn of 1642 in order to secure it against Hotham and his confederates.54Newcastle Mems. ed. Firth, 189. And he was closely involved in efforts to raise money for Newcastle’s forces, signing the so-called Yorkshire ‘engagement’ in February 1643, by which the signatories pledged their estates as security on loans for the maintenance of the earl’s troops.55CCAM 908. He himself lent £300 and signed bonds on the engagement for large sums of money.56Add. 15858, f. 237; Bodl. Tanner 62, ff. 655-6; CCAM 923. With royalist control of Yorkshire threatened by the Fairfaxes and the Scots in the spring of 1644, Ingram, Sir Edward Osborne*, Sir Brian Palmes*, Sir Robert Stryckland* and other gentlemen wrote to Prince Rupert late in March, imploring him to come to the county’s defence.57Bodl. Firth c.7, f. 8; Add. 18981, f. 121. Although it was later alleged that Ingram had been in arms against Parliament, he does not seem to have held a commission under Newcastle.58SP23/192, p. 235. Nevertheless, he had apparently joined the staff of his brother-in-law Colonel John Belasyse (Newcastle’s second-in-command in Yorkshire) by April, when he only narrowly avoided capture following Belasyse’s defeat at Selby by the Fairfaxes. His escape was reported in the parliamentarian newsbook Mercurius Britanicus, which took occasion to cast doubt upon his religion as well as his courage

Sir Thomas Ingram (taken [at Selby], if by swimming he escaped not), a plump, fat, young malignant and of late very much larded with the popery of his old father-in-law, bald Falconbridge [Fauconberg], the popish baron. Yet I must confess, I never counted your fat and greasy malignants so dangerous as your lean and raw-boned.59Mercurius Britanicus no.32 (15-22 Apr. 1644), 253.

Ingram continued to adhere to the king even after the defeats at Marston Moor and Naseby, and in February 1646, Charles granted him Sir Arthur’s former property of Sheriff Hutton Park ‘in consideration of [his] service’.60SO3/13, unfol. By May 1646, Ingram was a member of the royalist garrison at Newark, again under the command of John Belasyse, who appointed him one of his commissioners to treat with the Committee of Both Kingdoms concerning the town’s surrender.61LJ viii. 303b, 311a.

Ingram petitioned to compound on the Newark articles in June 1646, insisting that he had never attended the Oxford Parliament. He claimed to have debts of £5,000 and to have sustained damages as a result of plundering to the tune of another £5,000. His fine was set at a half of his estate – a sum reckoned at £3,649 – although in 1649 this was reduced on appeal to £2,933, or a third.62SP23/192, pp. 235, 239, 245, 248; CCC 1342-3. No sooner had Ingram reached a final settlement with the Committee for Compounding, than he was faced with further financial demands from the Committee for Advance of Money. In May 1650, he was summoned by the committee to show cause why he should not pay his proportion of the Yorkshire engagement, which, like all debts due to royalists, was deemed payable to the state.63CCAM 896. When more money was demanded of him in December 1655, he claimed that he had already paid the committee more than £600.64SP19/20, f. 165; CCAM 923. It was probably at about this time that several Yorkshire royalists, including Sir George Wentworth I* and Francis Nevile*, wrote to him, requesting that he act as their agent and intermediary with the commissioners at Haberdashers’ Hall – a role he was well placed to perform, for by the mid-1650s he had taken up more or less permanent residence near London in the house that he had acquired by marriage at Isleworth, Middlesex.65Notts. RO, DD/SR/221/94/43; Add. 34014, f. 32. Ingram, in turn, looked for financial assistance to his kinsman by marriage Major-general John Lambert*, who purchased the Ingrams’ forfeited estate at Sherriff Hutton in 1651 and sold it to Sir Thomas at what seems to have been a favourable price.66Infra, ‘John Lambert’; D. Farr, John Lambert, Parliamentary Soldier and Cromwellian Major-General (Woodbridge, 2003), 159-62.

Ingram remained on close terms with John (now Lord) Belasyse after the civil war and may have been peripherally involved in his brother-in-law’s activities as a member of the Sealed Knot.67Supra, ‘John Belasyse’; PROB11/338, f. 127; N. Yorks. RO, ZDU2, Marwood of Busby mss, Estate title deeds (mic. 1306); CCC 2230. However, apart from a brief period of imprisonment in April 1651 on the orders of a nervous council of state in April 1651, he was apparently left unmolested during the interregnum.68CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 147, 154. Only in the late 1650s did he become active on the king’s behalf, sending £1,000 to the exiled court in June 1659. In February 1660, it was reported that Ingram, Belasyse and other leading royalist intriguers had resolved to attend the king’s arrival in England with as many men and horses as they could muster, and in the meantime that they were making overtures to General George Monck*. The following month, Ingram informed the king that he was attempting to gain an interest with the ‘chief Presbyterians’ and opined that ‘moderating the members of the next Parliament [the 1660 Convention] is now the only work for the king’s friends’.69CCSP iv. 250, 579, 599. However, it is likely that he was hindered in these negotiations by suspicions among some of his fellow royalists that he was among those ‘employed by the queen [mother] here and pretend to great power from the king ... [but] do great hurt’.70Clarendon, Life ed. Lister, iii. 98; CCSP iv. 625; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 306.

Ingram’s loyalty was rewarded at the Restoration with appointment as a gentleman of the privy chamber and a seat on the Middlesex bench.71Carlisle, Privy Chamber, 170. He was also commissioned as a deputy lieutenant for the North Riding by his kinsman, Thomas Belasyse, 2nd Viscount Fauconberg.72N. Yorks. RO, ZDV, Lieutenancy apptmts. 1660-75 (mic. 1370). In the elections to the Cavalier Parliament in 1661, Ingram regained his seat at Thirsk – again, almost certainly through the influence of the Belasyses. Consistently identified as a court dependent or supporter, Ingram was a political ally of Lord Chancellor Clarendon (Sir Edward Hyde*), who was probably responsible for his appointment as a privy councillor and chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster in 1664.73Add. 36916, f. 118; CSP Dom. 1663-4, pp. 644, 674; Browning, Danby, iii. 36; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Sir Thomas Ingram’.

Ingram died on 13 February 1672 and was buried four days later in Westminster Abbey.74Westminster Abbey Regs. ed. Chester, 175. He died without surviving issue, and in his will he left the bulk of his estate to his wife and his great-nephew Arthur Ingram. He charged his estate with annuities of £100 per annum and the upkeep of an almshouse which he had established at Isleworth for six poor women.75PROB11/338, ff. 126v-128. His legatees included his household chaplain – one Richard Clarke – John Lord Belasyse and Thomas 2nd Viscount Fauconberg. Ingram’s great-nephew Arthur Ingram was returned for Scarborough in 1693 and Yorkshire in 1701.76HP Commons 1690-1715, ‘Arthur Ingram, 3rd Visct. Irwin’.