LENTHALL, John (1625-81), of Burford Priory, Burford, Oxon. and Besselsleigh, Berks.

John Lenthall’s place in Parliament, and indeed his whole political career, was a reflection of the standing of his father, William Lenthall, Speaker of the Long Parliament. As he was aged only 17 at the start of the civil war, it was inevitable that John Lenthall should benefit from his father’s eminence. He followed his father to Lincoln’s Inn, and like him was duly called and became a bencher. In December 1643, he acquired office as one of the six clerks in chancery, a little over a month after his father had become master of the rolls, the pre-eminent position in that court. His appointment was attributed directly to William Lenthall.29Hardy, Principal Officers, 109-11; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 102. Lenthall senior had sought a seat in the Commons as burgess for Gloucester, and had been elected as recorder there on 12 February 1638.30Berks. RO, D/EL1/0.5/12; Glos. RO, GBR/B3/2. When the writ was moved for a successor to Henry Brett, disabled for his royalism on 1 February 1644 , it was not surprising that the city corporation fixed upon John Lenthall, son of one who was both its recorder and holder of the highest parliamentary office. The corporation paved the way for his election by creating him a burgess on 17 November, and the indenture was returned eight days later.31Glos, RO, GBR/B3/2, p. 358; C219/43/192.

Lenthall took the Covenant on 28 January 1646, which marked his first mention in the Commons Journal.32CJ iv. 420b. It was not until 2 July following that he served on his first committee, that for regulation of the University of Oxford. His recommendations for this appointment were his residence at nearby Woodstock, (surely less so his undistinguished career as an undergraduate at Corpus Christi College) and the prior involvement of his father and uncle in attempts by Parliament to intervene in the finances of the royalist university.33CJ iv. 273a. In March and June 1647, Lenthall was named to further committees to regulate the university, including one to appoint the orator, Dr Edward Corbett, and to intervene in the preferments of two Christ Church prebendaries.34CJ v. 121a, 603b. It was probably his resented interference in the affairs of the university that earned him the hatred of the Oxford gossip, Anthony Wood, who judged Lenthall to be ‘the grand braggadocio and liar of the age he lived in ‘.35Ath. Ox. iii. 609. After leave was granted him from the House on 10 July, Lenthall disappeared from view until October, when he was named to a committee for an ordinance empowering the sale of the estates of leading delinquents, including Henry Somerset, the late (1st) marquess of Worcester. Lenthall sat on this probably because Gloucester was within the former sphere of influence of the marquess.36CJ iv. 710b. Local interests doubtless lay behind his selection for a committee on woollen cloth, important to Gloucester, that was formed on 14 November.37CJ iv. 722a.

On 7 May 1647, Lenthall was named to the important committee to bring in an ordinance for indemnity, and on 5 June was one the list of those empowered to receive the delegation of Scottish commissioners, with whom the English Parliament now had a most uneasy relationship.38CJ v. 200b, 630a. After June 1647, however, Lenthall disappears from the parliamentary record for over a year, and he was presumably occupied with the duties of his office in chancery. On 10 July 1648, he was named to a committee to join the militias of Westminster and the city of London, but on 26 September was excused at a call of the House.39CJ v. 630a; vi. 34b. Given his evidently half-hearted interest in political matters, it is unsurprising that although named as a commissioner for the trial of the king, he did not attend any of their meetings. Like his father, John Lenthall remained silent throughout the proceedings leading up to the regicide, but he is unlikely to have been an enthusiast for it. William Lenthall was never asked formally to dissent from the vote to continue treating with the king, but his son was evidently required to state where he stood. John Lenthall stayed away from Parliament for a long time after January 1649, but on 21 June, his interlocutor, Cornelius Holland, was able to report that Lenthall had satisfied his committee. This paved the way for his appointment two days later to a committee dealing with the claims of Henry Marten*, but it was his first and last committee that year. His rehabilitation with the Rump did not mark a new beginning as a parliamentary activist. 40CJ vi. 239a, 241b.

A year elapsed before Lenthall served again on a parliamentary committee. He was named to 13 committees between August 1650 and April 1653: hardly an impressive total. A number of these appointments can be attributed to personal or local interests of his. Among these were for an act to enable Thomas Pope, 2nd earl of Down [I] to sell his estate (a Gloucestershire connection), for an act putting the estates of Sir Richard Temple* in trust; and a committee on the sufferings of Worcester after the 1651 battle (Gloucester and Worcester corporations often collaborated).41CJ vi. 455b; vii. 5a, 50a. He was asked to consider another petition from the heads of houses at Oxford, a subject area where he had previous experience.42CJ vii. 141a. His involvement with a committee for the satisfaction of those who had ‘adventured’ funds for the reduction of Ireland after the rebellion there in 1641 is explained by the enthusiastic investment of the Gloucester corporation in this cause. The city fathers mounted a prolonged campaign, which persisted into the 1660s, to achieve redress of its grievances over the Irish Adventure.43CJ vii. 162a; Glos. RO, GBR/B3/3, p. 179. Lenthall evidently enjoyed good relations with Thomas Pury I*, whose dominance of the Army Committee is sufficient to account for his co-option to a legislative committee on 18 June 1652 charged with ensuring that the Army Committee continued.44CJ vii. 143b. Lenthall served on a committee dealing with the estate of Sir James Stonehouse; he was later to marry Stonehouse’s widow.45CJ vii. 178b. The impression created by the pattern of all these appointments was that Lenthall was brought into the House on specific business where he was thought to have an interest; otherwise his energies were directed elsewhere. As the eldest son of the Speaker, whose own standing and dignity had been enhanced by the creation of the commonwealth, Lenthall might have been expected to play a significant part in state ceremonial. In fact, he did so on only occasion, in December 1652, when he accompanied Philip Herbert*, 5th earl of Pembroke and William Cecil*, 2nd earl of Salisbury when they provided the escort for the visit to Parliament of the Spanish ambassador.46CJ vii. 228b, 229a.

Despite this modest record of parliamentary activity, the demise of the Rump was a disaster for Lenthall. His father was out of office, and in October 1654 he himself lost his clerkship in chancery. He petitioned the protectoral council, claiming the post was his only source of income. Lenthall argued that his freehold in the office was protected by the law of God, Magna Carta, parliamentary statute and the protector’s oath of office. He even cited the Biblical King Josiah, who compensated those who lost office in his reformation. This impressive range of reference was to no avail. The council referred the petition to the treasury commissioners, who reported simply on the facts in July 1655; on 8 January 1656, the council ordered its clerk to inform Lenthall that it knew of no suitable alternative employment for him.47CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 230, 231; 1655-6, p. 102. Thereafter, he remained out of office, and it is hard to see precisely what prompted Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell* to bestow a knighthood - not a baronetcy, as recorded in some sources - upon him in March 1657.48Newsbooks: Mercurius Politicus, xvii. 84; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 224, 252; CB iii. 8. As with so much else in John Lenthall’s career, the reconciliation between his father and the protectorate regime was probably the decisive factor. He sat for Abingdon in Richard Cromwell's* Parliament, and was elected to the important committee for privileges, but in February 1659 was given leave of absence.49CJ vii. 595a, 604a.

Lenthall’s lack of involvement with the committees of this Parliament did not prevent him from making notable and effective contributions in speeches on the floor of the House, where he proved a cautious supporter of the protectoral regime. On 8 February, he spoke in favour of the Humble Petition and Advice, supporting the single person and the Other House against the republicans who sought to snipe at the lord protector. Although he acknowledged its flaws, he argued that the existing arrangements were better than ‘a glorious palace in the air’, and asserted that the lord protector should be ‘as great as ever was king in England, that he may defend the Protestant religion’.50Burton’s Diary, iii. 122, 272. Generally, Lenthall was sympathetic to those who were accused of various kinds of delinquency before the House, although he was inclined to rate a Member’s reputation for military oppressions as more deplorable than another’s crypto-royalist past.51Burton’s Diary, iii. 40, 44, 235, 238, 245, 301-2. By 18 February, Lenthall was arguing that a unicameral Commons supremacy (i.e. along the lines of the Rump) was unwarranted: history taught that the traditional constitution was the only precedent, although Lenthall was clear that he did not want that to return.52Burton’s Diary, iii. 338. But he wanted the Scots and Irish Members included, those peers who had not been disloyal, and spoke fondly of the merits of the old Lords. On 1 March he asserted that before the Humble Petition and Advice there had been no free Parliaments.53Burton’s Diary, iii. 346, 411, 569. In March, he spoke in debates on various petitioners. He criticised the imprisonment of the former Leveller, Richard Overton, as ‘against the rights and liberties of the people’, and spoke in support of some prisoners in Barbados: ‘I so much love my own liberty as to part with aught to redeem these people out of captivity’. Others, including John Disbrowe*, counselled caution: among the transportees had been dangerous royalists. Lenthall’s instincts were to criticise solutions proposed by the military.54Burton’s Diary, iv. 159, 270, 308.

During the revival of the Rump in 1659, Lenthall played a larger role in public life. There is no evidence that he ever recovered his chancery office, but instead – and extraordinarily, in the light of his performance in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament - became an apologist for the commonwealth. On 10 May he was named to a committee to consider sufferings for the sake of conscience, and the following day was appointed to the committee charged with safeguarding the important timber resources of the Forest of Dean.55CJ vii. 648a, 648b. Perhaps building on his modest experience on the Army Committee, he became involved with reconstructing the militia, both nationally, and in the wake of Sir George Boothe’s* rising, in particular regions.56CJ vii. 694b, 757b He was active as an agent of the council of state in pursuing rebels.57CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 59, 87, 96. Lenthall opposed sending Thomas Belasyse*, 2nd Viscount Fauconberg to the Tower for his part in the rebellion: his side lost the division by one vote. He was in the majority in voting that the City of London should choose its mayor according to the charter rather than according to Commons votes.58CJ vii. 786a, 788a. His sympathy with the City stood him in good stead as a member of a committee appointed to confer with the lord mayor on the safety of London, after the Rump had been restored for a second time in 1659.59CJ vii. 801a. Earlier in December, there had been rioting by apprentices in favour of a free Parliament. Later in the month, Lenthall made a speech during one of the meetings at the Guildhall, afterwards published with the aim of shoring up support for the existing republican government. Lenthall mildly remonstrated with the citizens for erecting posts and chains, as if a civil emergency was threatened, and assured them of the safety of the commonwealth. He argued that the first period of rule by Parliament (presumably he meant 1649-53) was ‘a season wherein trade so flourished, and the merchant made so successful returns, that I believe most of you can date the begettings of your wealth from the time you were under that authority’; by contrast the protectorate had been ‘unfortunate to this nation, and most unhappy to this City’.60A Copy of the Speech made by Sir John Lenthall (1659), 3-6. Having reviewed alternative forms of government, he concluded that the only alternative form for England to emulate might be that of the Dutch, ‘who have now mastered the trade in this part of the world’, but judged their polity to be not ‘generous enough for so magnanimous a people’. The dangers of the citizens’ fomenting ‘causeless jealousies’ was ‘the bringing in of the king’, which would be the ultimate disaster.61Copy of the Speech, 6-8.; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 177, 203.

Lenthall was by this time a pugnacious defender of the Rump. He was named on 3 January 1660 to a committee that intended to determine the conduct of future parliamentary elections.62CJ vii. 803a. In similar confident vein, he was among those who confronted the clerk of the House, Henry Scobell, for having written in the Journal that Oliver Cromwell dissolved Parliament on 20 April 1653: ‘interrupted’ or ‘broke’ would have been more justifiable words.63CJ vii. 805a. Further committee appointments on qualifications of candidates for election, and on high appointments of state followed.64CJ vii. 806a, 807a. For the first time, Lenthall was entrusted with military office. On 18 January, he was recommended for the governorship of Windsor castle and a colonelcy of foot: the same day he was given care of the great seal being brought to Parliament. On the 24th, he was named to the committee making appointments to the commission of the peace, and on the 28th, attained an apotheosis of high office when he became a commissioner for the admiralty and navy.65CJ vii. 814a, 815a, 821a, 825b. He opposed the commission of Nathaniel Rich*, who had defected to the Wallingford House group of officers the previous month; appointments of junior officers to his own regiment, which he took over from William Sydenham, another Wallingford House officer, were debated in February.66CJ vii. 817b, 829b, 830b, 834a, 834b, 836a, 837b, 838b, 839b, 842b. There seems little doubt that Lenthall was approved of by General George Monck*, whose relationship with Speaker Lenthall was cordial. Lenthall opposed Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Henry Marten in a division on 11 February on the settling of army commissioners, suggesting that he was drifting with the tide towards readmission of the ‘secluded Members’, and hence monarchy.67CJ vii. 841a. After the secluded Members were admitted on 21 February, Lenthall’s committee appointments were few, and included one to settle lands at Hampton Court on Monck.68CJ vii. 855a, 857a, 860b, 877a.

Lenthall was returned again for Abingdon at the general election of 1660, albeit after a double return. He was also active in canvassing the electors of Oxford University on behalf of his father, treating them to ale and roast beef. According to Anthony Wood, he threatened heads of houses who would not vote for the former Speaker.69Wood, Life and Times, 311-2. The campaign was fruitless, as William Lenthall was not returned, despite the support of Monck. John Lenthall caused great offence by pronouncing in the House on 12 May that all who had borne arms against the king were as guilty as those who had cut off the king’s head. He intended to ‘throw a bone of contention’ among the Members, but his attempt to minimise the offence of the regicides went badly wrong. He was called to the bar, and made to confess his error. Some accounts mention the stripping of his knighthood, but this had been forfeited as null and void at the Restoration in any case.70HMC 5th Rep. 150, 207; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 438; Pepys’s Diary, i. 151. On 23 May, he lost his seat. In September, more scandal attached to him when it was rumoured that he had two wives, and in November he was sent to the Tower after apparently getting a tobacco-clay pipemaker to produce a counterfeit of the great seal.71HMC 5th Rep. 158, 169, 196, 201; Mdx. County Records III ed. J.C. Jeaffreson (1888), 307. He was released, but re-arrested and returned to the Tower on suspicion of fomenting insurrection. He was out on parole by October 1662, but was forced to ask leave to come to London in 1664.72CSP Dom. 1661-2, pp. 170, 265, 279, 379, 499; 1663-4, pp. 334, 544. Lenthall had recovered the king’s favour by 1672 enough to be pricked as sheriff of Oxfordshire, and Charles II visited his house on a day at the races in 1681, eight months before Lenthall’s death.73Wood, Life and Times, ii. 530. He is not to be confused with Sir John Lenthall, the Speaker’s brother, who was considered an oppressive custodian of the king’s bench prison.