MINORS, Thomas (1609-77), of Sadler Street, Lichfield, Staffs.

Minors belonged to the Lichfield branch of a family that was already well-established at Uttoxeter and other parts of Staffordshire by the late fourteenth century.18Staffs. RO, D786 (Recs. of the Mynors of Uttoxeter); S. Erdeswick, Survey of Staffs. ed. T. Harwood (1820), 386-7. His father seems to have set up business as a chandler in Shoreditch, London, where he was buried late in 1633.19St Leonard, Shoreditch par. reg.; Staffs. RO, D786/20/16. Variously described as a draper or mercer, Minors had prospered sufficiently by 1642 to merit election as Lichfield city sheriff.20Staffs. RO, D786/20/16-18; Harwood, Lichfield, 363; Sutton, ‘Cromwell’s commrs. for preserving the peace of the Commonwealth’, in Soldiers, Writers, and Statesmen of the English Revolution ed. I. Gentles, J. Morrill, B. Worden (1998), 160, 161. There is no evidence that he was among the royalist defenders of Lichfield Close in 1643, or indeed that he assisted the parliamentarian besiegers. In fact, he seems to have played no active part in the civil war at all – although he would claim, in 1649, that he had adhered to Parliament in ‘all these late wars’.21SP24/74, unfol. (Saxon et al. v. Finney). In 1647-8, he was named to several parliamentary assessment commissions for Lichfield. However, all such appointments ceased for the duration of the Rump, suggesting that his support for Presbyterianism – which is much in evidence after the Restoration – had its origins in the 1640s. Nevertheless, he was listed in 1650 among ‘the most eminent of the well-affected persons in that place [Lichfield] to the Parliament’.22Staffs. RO, D661/1/35.

In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in 1654, Minors was returned for Lichfield – probably on his own interest as one of the city’s leading inhabitants. He was named to nine committees – including those for privileges, for Scottish affairs and for allowing cities and towns to raise taxes for maintaining the ministry – but made no recorded contribution to debate.23CJ vii. 371b, 373b, 374a, 374b, 375b, 381a, 381b, 397b, 419a. He was active on the Staffordshire commission of the peace under the protectorate and attended the January 1656 quarter sessions meeting at which Major-general Sir Charles Wolseley* presided.24Staffs. RO, Q/SO/6, ff. 1, 38, 107.

Returned for Lichfield again to the second protectoral Parliament in 1656, he was among those excluded by the protectoral council for disaffection to the government. It can only be assumed that the army interest objected to his Presbyterian sympathies.25OPH xxi. 37. At the beginning of the second session, in January 1658, he was allowed to take his seat (along with the rest of the excluded Members) and was added to three committees – among them the committee for uniting parishes, to which was referred a bill for enabling trustees to purchase impropriations for the improvement of ministerial stipends.26CJ vii. 580b, 588a, 591b.

Minors was returned for Lichfield a third time in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659 and on this occasion was named to only three committees.27CJ vii. 633b, 634b, 637b. Again, he took no recorded part in debate. When he stood for Lichfield in the elections to the 1660 Convention he lost his seat to Daniel Watson*, but this result was subsequently reversed on petition.28HP Commons 1660-1690. Among the 27 committees to which he was named in the Convention – where he seems to have been more active than in his previous Parliaments – were several concerning the promotion of godly reform and the maintenance of the ministry.

As a Presbyterian, Minors probably welcomed the Restoration. Nevertheless, he was omitted from the Staffordshire bench and other county commissions during the course of 1660; and later reference to him and another Lichfield dissenter as ‘discarded aldermen’ suggests that he was removed from the city’s common council by the corporation commissioners in 1662. In 1669, he fell foul of the privy council for keeping conventicles in his house, which would be licensed for Presbyterian worship under the 1672 Declaration of Indulgence.29The Bulstrode Pprs. ed. A. Morrison (1897), 108; CSP Dom. 1672, p. 238; Matthews, Congregational Churches, 72-8; Sutton, ‘Cromwell’s commrs.’, 173.

According to a note in one of the account books of the Lichfield Conduit Lands trust (which promoted the city’s welfare as well as supervised its water-supply), of which he was a feoffee, Minors died on 7 September 1677.30Staffs RO, LD126/3/1, unfol.; LD126/3/2, unfol. He was buried in St Mary’s Lichfield on 10 September.31St Mary, Lichfield par. reg. In his will, he charged his estate with bequests in excess of £1,300. His legatees included his ‘much honoured friend’ John Swynfen*, the ejected or otherwise persecuted Presbyterian ministers Thomas Bakewell, Richard Chantry, Thomas Ford, William Grace, Obadiah Grew, Thomas Miles, Richard Swynfen and George Wright, and the widow of their recently deceased colleague Joseph Cooper. He also named John Swynfen among the trustees of a free school he endowed at Lichfield to teach 30 poor boys ‘until they can well read chapters in the Bible’. He died childless and therefore left his estate, either outright or in reversion after the death of his wife, to several of his cousins and their children.32PROB11/355, ff. 35-40; Calamy Revised, 24, 109, 134, 206, 231, 236, 350, 473, 548. Minors was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.