LASCELLES, Francis (1612-67), of Stank Hall, Kirby Sigston, Yorks.

Lascelles belonged to what was probably a cadet branch of one of Yorkshire’s oldest gentry families, the Lascelles of Breckenbrough – although the precise line of descent is unclear – who had settled in the county by the early 1200s.32Vis. Yorks. ed. Foster, 61, 185; Jones, Hist. and Antiquities of Harewood, 280-1, 287. It was Lascelles’ grandfather who acquired the bulk of the property that his grandson would inherit, purchasing Stank Hall and the manor of Stank, near Northallerton, and the manor of Thormanby, about five miles south east of Thirsk.33WARD5/49; Yorks. Stuart Fines ed. W. Brigg (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. liii), 79, 190; VCH N. Riding, i. 407; ii. 297. Lascelles’ return to Parliament for Thirsk and Northallerton, in 1645 and 1660 respectively, owed much to the proprietorial interests established by these purchases.

Lascelles was still a minor when his father died, and his wardship seems to have been purchased by his mother.34WARD9/678, f. 181. Nothing is known about his upbringing or education prior to his admission to Gray’s Inn in 1629, or about his activities in Yorkshire during the personal rule of Charles I. He failed to sign the first two petitions to the king from Yorkshire’s ‘disaffected’ gentry during the summer of 1640, at the height of the second bishops’ war, complaining about the military burdens upon the county. However, he did sign the third such petition, of mid-September, which repeated the demand made by a group of dissident English peers that Charles should summon a new Parliament.35Cumb. RO (Kendal), Strickland Ms vol. 1608-1700, N38 Car. I. Lascelles was also among the signatories to the Yorkshire county indenture of 5 October 1640, returning two of the leading petitioners, the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*) and Henry Belasyse, to the Long Parliament.36C219/43/3/89.

Lascelles emerged during the first half of 1642 as a prominent member of Yorkshire’s parliamentarian interest. In January, he signed a petition to the king from a group of Yorkshire gentry – most of whom would support Parliament in the civil war – protesting at the attempted arrest of the Five Members and expressing support for a ‘perfect reformation in matters of religion’.37Eg. 2546, ff. 23-4. The following month he signed a petition from the county’s gentry to the Lords, asking the peers to work more closely with the Commons for the relief of Ireland’s Protestants.38PA, Main Pprs. 15 Feb. 1642, f. 55; LJ iv. 587a. And with the king raising troops in Yorkshire by the summer of 1642, Lascelles signed another Yorkshire petition, complaining about Charles’s abandoning Parliament and drawing together the county’s trained bands – illegally, as the petitioners conceived it.39PA, Main Pprs. 6 June 1642, ff. 84-5. At some point that summer he was commissioned as an officer (probably a captain) in the parliamentarian army raised under Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex; and by October, he had gravitated towards what was (initially at least) the more aggressive and militarily active wing of the Yorkshire parliamentarian party – a faction headed by Sir John Hotham* and his son Captain John Hotham*.40E113/7, pt. 2. On 8 October 1642, he signed a declaration organized by the Hothams, denouncing the Yorkshire treaty of pacification – an abortive attempt by a group of West Riding gentry, led on the parliamentarian side by the Hothams’ rival Lord Fairfax, to keep the county neutral.41A True and Exact Relation of...the Siege of Manchester (1642), 13-14 (E.121.45); A. Woolrych, ‘Yorkshire’s treaty of neutrality’, HT, vi. 696-704. Hotham and his allies attacked the treaty as being contrary to the privileges of Parliament and an attempt to sever Yorkshire from ‘the common cause’. The 20 signatories to the declaration, who were mostly from the East Riding, included John Anlaby* and the religious Independent Sir Matthew Boynton*.

Lascelles appears to have been on particularly close terms with Boynton, serving as a captain in his regiment of foot by November 1642.42E113/7, pt. 2, unfol. If his later career is any guide, Lascelles shared Boynton’s godly zeal and firm commitment to the vigorous prosecution of the war. Like him, he showed no inclination to support the Hothams in their attempted defection to the king in the summer of 1643. By this stage, if not earlier, Lascelles had transferred his allegiance to Ferdinando Lord Fairfax, the commander of Parliament’s northern army. Serving first as a captain and then as colonel of foot under Lord Fairfax, he fought in numerous engagements, including the battles of Selby (April 1644) and Marston Moor, in July.43SP18/71/55v, viii, ff. 136, 140; Jones, ‘War in north’, 388-9. After Marston Moor, he and his regiment helped to mop up royalist resistance in the county, taking part in the sieges of Helmsley Castle, Knaresborough Castle, Bolton Castle, Skipton Castle and Scarborough Castle.44SP18/71/55, f. 137; The London Post (1644), 4 (E.20.3); A Diary, or an Exact Journall no. 44 (13-20 Mar. 1645), sig. Rrr2 (E.274.11); An Exact Relation of the Surrender of Scarborough Castle (1645), 5 (E.294.15); Four Great Victories Obtained by Major Generall Poyntz (1645), 4-5 (E.309.7); J. Binns, Yorks. in the Civil War, 116, 119, 122. The castles at Helmsley and Bolton were committed to Lascelles’ charge after their reduction, although he was never granted a commission to govern either place.45SP18/71/55, ff. 142, 145. His military career suggests he was a relatively wealthy man as well as a talented soldier, for not only did he raise and arm most of his troops at his own expense, he also received almost no pay for his service until the late 1640s. In 1654, he and George Lord Eure* petitioned Protector Oliver Cromwell*, declaring that they had ‘not only suffered very much by the enemy in their estates, but have exhausted themselves and friends to promote the good concernments of the nation’.46SP18/71/55, ff. 130, 136, 139-40; SP28/257.

With the scaling down of the northern war effort during the second half of 1645, Lascelles decided to trade in his military career for a seat at Westminster. On 6 October, he and William Ayscoughe were returned for Thirsk as ‘recruiters’ in place of the royalists John Belasyse and Sir Thomas Ingram. He secured election largely, it seems, on the strength of his own interest as a local landowner and military commander, although he may also have received help from his former commander, Lord Fairfax – Yorkshire’s most powerful electoral patron by 1645 – and possibly from Sir Matthew Boynton, high sheriff of Yorkshire in 1644 and 1645. At the time of his election, Lascelles was commander of the forces besieging Bolton Castle, in north Yorkshire, and he remained in the field until after the castle’s surrender early in November 1645. He resigned his colonelcy on 14 November, at ‘the time of his going to serve in Parliament’.47SP18/71/55, f. 137; SP28/257.

Parliamentary politics does not seem to have held the same appeal for Lascelles as soldiering had done. His name does not appear in the Journals until 1 January 1646, when he took the Solemn League and Covenant, and he is not mentioned again until he was granted leave on 31 March.48CJ iv. 393a, 495b. Between July 1646 – when he received his first appointment in the House – and Pride’s Purge in December 1648, he was named to only nine committees, which does not suggest that he politically very active at Westminster.49CJ iv. 625b; v. 21b, 35a, 119b, 167a, 187a, 238a, 274a, 486a. That he favoured some form of godly, learned ministry is suggested by his appointment to committees set up on 31 December 1646 to investigate complaints regarding unordained preachers and, on 22 March 1647, on an ordinance for preventing malignant ministers from serving in parish churches or in the universities.50CJ v. 35a, 119b. In political terms, he may have been aligned with the Independent interest at Westminster, as were most Yorkshire recruiters and friends of the Fairfaxes. He was certainly an active member of the Commons Committee of the Northern Association, which was dominated by men sympathetic to the New Model army – notably, Lord Fairfax, Sir Thomas Widdrington, Francis Thorpe and Thomas Stockdale.51CJ vi. 421b; Bodl. Tanner 60, f. 575v; PA, Main Pprs. 15 July 1647. That he, too, sympathised with the army is suggested by his appearance on one of the lists of those Members who took refuge with Fairfax and his men following the Presbyterian coup at Westminster of late July.52HMC Egmont, i. 440. On 14 August – just over a week after the army had entered London – he was named to a committee concerning the administration of justice in County Durham, but this would be his last appointment in 1647.53CJ v. 274a. Declared absent at the call of the House on 9 October 1647, he appears to have remained away from the House for the next six months, probably spending his time in Yorkshire.54CJ v. 330a.

Lascelles’ first and only Commons appointment of 1648 was on 8 March, when he was named to a committee to consider a number of petitions to the House for satisfaction of arrears of army pay.55CJ v. 486a. Yet despite his absence from the House for much of 1648, he remained a loyal servant of Parliament in Yorkshire, where he helped to raise and supply forces during the second civil war.56Bodl. Nalson VII, f. 22. As colonels in the North Riding militia raised that summer, he and John Wastell* may well have fought at the battle of Preston, in August, and were certainly involved in harrying the defeated Scots back to the border.57Packets of Letters no. 12 (6-12 June 1648), 6 (E.446.3); HMC Portland, i. 489; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 264; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 637, 643. After the Preston campaign, Lascelles and his regiment were sent by Cromwell to reinforce the parliamentary forces besieging Scarborough, where Sir Matthew Boynton’s son had declared for the king. Lascelles concluded a letter to Cromwell from the leaguer at Scarborough by declaring ‘I must ever acknowledge how much I stand obliged to you...’.58Packets of Letters no. 28 (1648), 3-4 (E.465.2); Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1259. Declared absent and excused at the call of the House on 26 September, Lascelles remained in Yorkshire for the next three months, although he appears to have left the siege of Scarborough by the time the castle surrendered late in December 1648.59CJ vi. 34b; Whitelocke Mems. ii. 409, 480.

Lascelles evidently favoured pressuring and intimidating the king during the winter of 1648-9, but not executing him. Having been named on 6 January 1649 to the high court of justice for trying Charles, he had returned to Westminster by 8 January, when he attended the first session of the trial commission. In all, he attended ten of the 18 sessions of the trial commission, as well as the first and second sessions of the trial itself (on 20 and 22 January).60Muddiman, Trial, 76, 89, 195, 213. However, he did not attend the third session, or the fourth, when sentence was pronounced, nor did he sign the king’s death warrant. At the Restoration, he claimed that he had been in Yorkshire during the ‘making of the act for the trial of the king [i.e. late December 1648 and early January 1649]’ and that

at his coming to town and finding there was such an act, he being nominated one [of the trial commissioners], he sat with intention to serve the king with his negative voice, which he gave then. But finding the greater number against him, he sat no more and refused to sign the sentence as abhorring so horrid an act.61SP18/220/69, f. 107.

Although Edmund Ludlowe II*, for one, thought that Lascelles had been ‘as far engaged in the death of the king as others’, Lascelles’ claim that he had opposed Charles’s trial is probably true.62Ludlowe, Voyce, 175. There is very little in his career, either before or after the regicide, to suggest that he was a principled opponent of monarchy and the established order, or that he was in any way associated with the radical sects. Thus he made his dissent to the 5 December 1648 vote – that the king’s answer to the Newport propositions were an acceptable basis for settlement – on 1 February, two days after the king’s execution.63[W. Prynne], A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case (1660), 23, 25 (E.1013.22). Lascelles was named to 17 committees in the Rump – the majority of these appointments falling between February and July 1649.64CJ vi. 118a, 127b, 132a, 134a, 158a, 219b, 229b, 239b, 251b, 254a; vii. 37b, 46b, 49b, 58a, 244a, 257b, 260b. He was added to two standing committees in this period: the Committee of Navy and Customs and the committee for excise.65CJ vi. 219b, 229b. His only politically sensitive appointment in the months after the regicide was to the 7 March committee on the bill for abolishing monarchy.66CJ vi. 158a.

Lascelles received no appointments in the Rump between July 1649 and November 1651 and was probably absent from the House during this period. Why he abandoned his seat is not clear. He remained in favour at Westminster, despite his absence, for on 3 May 1650 and again a year later, in March 1651, the council of state ordered him to raise forces for possible deployment against the Scots.67CSP Dom. 1650, p. 138; 1651, pp. 87, 513. The first of these orders, in March 1650, was rescinded for some reason.68CSP Dom. 1650, p. 163. However, in the spring of 1651, with the threat of a Scottish invasion again looming, Lascelles raised a regiment of foot in Yorkshire, although he later claimed that he had commanded this force for only about two weeks.69E113/7, pt. 2. That September, Lascelles, Eure and Luke Robinson* were thanked by the council for their ‘great diligence and ready appearance’ against the invading Scots.70CSP Dom. 1651, p. 434. He also served the Rump diligently as a magistrate, attending the North Riding quarter sessions regularly between 1649 and 1653, in a group of magistrates that included Eure, Robinson, Sir William Strickland* and John Wastell*.71N. Riding QS Recs. ed. J.C. Atkinson (N. Riding Rec. Soc. v), 25, 129.

Lascelles returned to the House, apparently briefly, late in 1651 and was named to four committees – the last of which, on 26 December, was on a bill for appointing a new Army Committee and treasurers at war.72CJ vii. 37b, 46b, 49b, 58a. But thereafter, he received no further appointments in the Rump until 6 January 1653, when he was named to a committee on legislation for giving relief to tender consciences in matters of religion.73CJ vii. 244a. For a few weeks before and after his nomination to this committee, he was also active on the Committee for Plundered Ministers – although he was never formally added to this body – particularly, it seems, when it came to the provision of a godly ministry in Yorkshire parishes.74SP22/2B, ff. 77, 332, 334v; W. Yorks. Archives (Calderdale), HAS/B:22/27, f. 43. He was named to two more ad hoc committees in the House, in February, but these would be his last appointments in the Rump before its dissolution by the army in April.75CJ vii. 257b, 260b.

Why Lascelles was selected as one of Yorkshire’s eight representatives in the Nominated Parliament is not entirely clear. His record as an able and committed soldier in the parliamentarian cause had probably won him the respect and trust of Cromwell, John Lambert* and other senior officers.76Supra, ‘Yorkshire’. But he seems to have done little to distinguish himself as one of Yorkshire’s more visible ‘saints’ and of the county’s representatives in this Parliament, he was probably the least active. He was named to only one committee – to consider public debts and to receive accusations of corruption (20 July) – and may well have remained absent after being granted leave on 3 September.77CJ vii. 287a, 314a. He can almost certainly be numbered among those Members who supported a national ministry and the retention of tithes; and in August 1654, he would be appointed an ejector of scandalous ministers in the North Riding.78A. and O ii. 971.

Lascelles probably welcomed the establishment of the protectorate and was apparently confident of receiving a favourable hearing from the new regime, joining Eure in May 1654 to petition Cromwell for satisfaction of their arrears of army pay.79CSP Dom. 1654, p. 163. Lascelles claimed arrears of £2,066 and Eure of £1,042, although between them they were granted only £1,650.80CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 163-4, 267. The two men were evidently friends, and their careers during the mid-1650s followed a very similar trajectory. As well as working together on the North Riding bench and in recommending ministers for vacant livings, they were both selected to represent Yorkshire in the Nominated Parliament, they were added to the East Riding bench on the same day in October 1653, and they were both appointed ejectors for the North Riding in 1654.81Add. 36792, f. 80v; C231/6, p. 270. Moreover, in the elections to the first protectoral Parliament that summer, Lascelles was returned for the North Riding, taking the second of the four places behind Eure. As one of the Riding’s middle-ranking gentry landowners (at best), and therefore lacking a strong proprietorial interest, he may have owed his election to the strength of his reputations in defence of the county – most notably against the invading Scots in 1648 and 1651. He and two of the other successful candidates – Eure and George Smithson – were either former or serving officers in the Northern Association army and the Northern Brigade, and therefore they may also have enjoyed the backing of Lambert and the northern military establishment.82Supra, ‘Yorkshire’. Lascelles was named to only three committees in this Parliament – all within a month of the House assembling early in September – the committee of privileges, to consider the powers and composition of the Cromwellian commission for ejecting scandalous ministers, and for Scottish affairs.83CJ vii. 366b, 370a, 371b. His request, in November, for leave of absence was denied for some reason.84CJ vii. 388a. In January 1656, he joined Major-general Robert Lilburne*, Eure, Robinson and other Yorkshire commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth in a letter to the protector, requesting the removal of malignant officeholders.85TSP iv. 402.

Lascelles’ increasingly close identification with the Cromwellian regime was consolidated in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, when he was again returned for the North Riding – on this occasion taking the fourth and last place behind Eure, Lilburne and Robinson.86Supra, ‘Yorkshire’. All but one of his eight committee appointments in this Parliament occurred during the final three months of 1656.87CJ vii. 445b, 446a, 447a, 448b, 456a, 469a, 472a, 477b. On 31 October, he was named to a committee for maintaining a godly ministry, with specific reference to the northern counties; and on 20 November, he was named first to a committee on a bill for erecting a court of law at York along the lines of the defunct council of the north.88CJ vii. 448b, 456a. His participation in this Parliament came to an end early in 1657. On 8 January, Eure, seconded by Sir William Strickland, moved that Lascelles be granted leave, and the House passed a resolution accordingly.89CJ vii. 480a; Burton’s Diary, i. 323-4. It is therefore likely that Lascelles left Westminster at least a month before the beginning of the debate on the Remonstrance and on whether Cromwell should accept the crown. Where Lascelles stood on this issue, which divided some of his closest associates in Yorkshire, is not known. Certainly at local level, as a North Riding magistrate, he continued to serve the protectorate.90N. Riding QS Recs. ed. J.C. Atkinson (N. Riding Rec. Soc. vi), 3, 22.

Lascelles did not take his seat in the restored Rump during 1659, although he was willing to serve the commonwealth as a Yorkshire militia commissioner that summer.91Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. M.Y. Ashcroft (N. Yorks. RO publns. xlix), 256-7. By late 1659, or early 1660, however, he had apparently lost faith in the Good Old Cause to the extent that he sent his eldest son – a royalist – to Flanders and Holland on several occasions to sue for a royal pardon.92C10/87/52. He seems to have eschewed involvement in the restored Rump until after General George Monck* had defeated Lambert and the army radicals late in December 1659. Thus his first appointment in the Commons was not until 23 January 1660, when he was added to a committee concerning the qualifications for Members to sit in Parliament.93CJ vii. 818b. He was named to a further three committees during the last days of the Rump, including that set up on 21 February on a bill for establishing a new council of state.94CJ vii. 822b, 843b, 847b. By this time, he was reportedly agitating for the return of the Members secluded at Pride’s Purge – a measure which would very likely result in the restoration of the Stuart monarchy.95Ludlow Mems. ii. 217. Nevertheless, there is no firm evidence that he attended Parliament after 21 February – the day on which the secluded Members were allowed to take their seats.

Early in April 1660, Lascelles’ son carried a petition from him to Charles II at Breda, which the duke of Ormond then presented to the king, pleading for mercy and indemnity.96C10/87/52; Bodl. Carte 30, f. 617; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 408-9. Lascelles expressed regret at having been ‘so far led aside into some actings in England in the late ungodly wars’ and declared that he now desired nothing ‘more dearly... than your majesty’s establishment in those just rights which by the laws of God and man are due unto you’.97SP18/220/69, f. 106. He claimed that he had opposed the regicide, had acted with moderation towards Yorkshire’s royalists and that after 1648 he had held no military command (which was untrue) and had forborne purchasing any crown or forfeited lands, ‘but only acted as a justice of peace in the country’.98SP18/220/69, f. 107; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 409. His petition having been favourably received at court, he wrote to the king in May, expressing his willingness ‘to lay forth all that is dearest to me in this world for your majesty’s honour, service and glorious arrival here’.99SP18/220/69, f. 106; Bodl. Carte 30, f. 613. He was granted a royal pardon in August.100SO3/13, unfol.

Lascelles and his younger brother Thomas were returned for Northallerton in the elections to the 1660 Convention.101HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Northallerton’. Both men were included on Philip, 4th Baron Wharton’s list of Members deemed likely to support a Presbyterian church settlement, but Francis was noted as being ‘abroad’, which raises the possibility that he had attended the royal court himself at some point that spring.102G.T.F. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 345. In the event, he took no part in the Convention’s proceedings, being disabled by the House on 9 June for his part in Charles I’s trial. The House further resolved that he be incapacitated from bearing public office. Some Members also favoured confiscating his estate; but, after the House divided on the question, it was resolved that he should have the benefit of the Act of Oblivion, paying a fine to the crown of a year’s income from his estate.103CJ viii. 60b. The tellers in his favour were the Presbyterians, Sir Henry Cholmley and Sir William Lewis; those against were the royalists, Lords Falkland and Herbert. According to Ludlowe, Lascelles escaped more serious punishment only because his eldest son had married a sister of Sir Roger Talbot, ‘an Irish papist in arms’, whose family was in favour at court.104C10/87/52; Ludlow, Voyce, 175.

After his removal from the Convention, Lascelles played no further part in national politics, although he and his brother remained influential in Northallerton’s affairs.105Durham Univ. Lib. Mickleton and Spearman ms 46, ff. 139, 151, 165. Regarded by the Yorkshire royalists as a person ‘disaffected to his majesty’, he was implicated by an informer early in 1663 in a fictitious conspiracy against the government and was briefly imprisoned.106HMC Var. ii. 117; CSP Dom. 1663-4, pp. 16, 18; A. Hopper, ‘The Farnley Wood Plot and the memory of the civil wars in Yorks.’, HJ xlv. 287-8. When he was approached later that year by the ringleaders of the Farnley Wood plot, in Yorkshire, they found him ‘not to be dealt with’.107SP29/86/68, f. 104. His brother Thomas, on the other hand, may well have been party to this design.108SP29/86/68, f. 104; CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 391; 1664-5, p. 201.

Lascelles died in the autumn of 1667 and was buried at Kirby Sigston on 28 November.109Whitaker, Loidis and Elmete, 168. In his will, he left the bulk of his estate to his sons William, Francis and Daniel. He charged his estate with annuities worth about £70 a year and made bequests totalling approximately £1,020.110Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 48B, f. 487. He failed to mention the beneficiary of his largest bequest, for £500, possibly because the money was be employed as a stock for the maintenance of nonconformist ministers – a cause Lascelles was known to favour.111Add. 33770, f. 28v. The Lascelles family retained an electoral foothold at Northallerton after his death, with his son Daniel and his brother Thomas representing the borough on four occasions between 1689 and 1702.112HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Northallerton’; HP Commons 1690-1715, ‘Northallerton’.