PAKINGTON, Sir John, 2nd bt. (1621-80), of Westwood Park, Dodderhill, and Hampton Lovett, Worcs.

The early course of Sir John Pakington’s life was mapped out by the deaths in quick succession of first his father, the first baronet, and then his grandfather, Sir John Pakington knight, who had assumed responsibility for his grandson’s upbringing. In January 1625 the four-year-old John succeeded to an estate in Worcestershire that included the nearby houses of Westwood and Hampton Lovett and an interest in the borough of Droitwich, acquired through the ownership of a salt-producing bullary there. There was another estate in Buckinghamshire, which included the manors of Aylesbury, Broughton Staveley and Burton Abbot, but Pakington seems in his infancy and youth to have resided in Worcestershire.19WARD7/74/67; Bucks RO, D/X/1007/1-3. The family had been settled in that county since the fifteenth century, and purchased estates at the dissolution, so that by the time of his succession to his inheritance his lands were said to be worth £1,500 a year. After his grandfather’s death, in 1624 Pakington became the ward of a group of trustees whose own territorial interests divided evenly between Worcestershire and Buckinghamshire. They included Richard Cresheld* and Sir William Borlase†, but the most important of these was Sir Thomas Coventry†, 1st Baron Coventry.20Worcs. Archives, b705:349/BA 3835/8/iii/19; Bucks. R.O. D/X/1007/1-3. Coventry’s role as guardian of John Pakington had been willed by Pakington’s grandfather, and as a 1626 dispute over the wardship made clear, the intention even when John Pakington was four years old was that he should when of age marry one of Coventry’s daughters.21Worcs. Archives, 705:380/BA 2309/61/iii. According to the antiquary Treadway Russell Nash, before the civil war Pakington lived at Hampton Lovett, and only moved to Westwood Park after post-war rebuilding, but it is now clear that extensive building work, authorised by Pakington’s trustees, was taking place at both residences in the mid-1630s, and that Pakington’s grandfather was living at Westwood when he died. Neither of his Worcestershire homes would have provided the young John Pakington with much physical comfort.22Nash, Collections, i. 351, 539; Worcs. Archives, 705:349/BA 5117/2/x/ 3.

In May 1638 Pakington may have travelled abroad as part of his education, but what is certain is that by December 1639 he had married Dorothy Coventry, the daughter of the lord keeper, thus fulfilling the ambitions of his grandfather.23CSP Dom. 1637-8, pp. 427-8; PC2/49, p. 184; Worcs. Archives, Coventry mss, Box F41A, original will of Ld. Kpr. Coventry, revision of 14 Dec. 1639. The marriage marked his coming of age, and election to the Parliament that met in April 1640 preceded any grants to him of local or central office. He was elected both as knight of the shire for Worcestershire and as burgess for Aylesbury, and chose the former, confirming his primary allegiance to the county as a leading landowner.24CJ ii. 3b; CSP Dom. 1640, p. 42; Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 45.

There is no evidence that the barely twenty-year-old Pakington contributed anything to the proceedings of this Parliament, but the experience must have been useful in sharpening his political perceptions. In November 1640 the county returned as knights of the shire two men, Serjeant John Wylde and Humphrey Salwey, who from the outset were great critics of the government. Pakington mobilized his alternative interest to secure the seat for Aylesbury, and soon afterwards presented to the House a petition of grievances from Worcestershire, which suggests that his low profile at Westminster should not be taken for general political indifference.25Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 21. If his role as the sponsor of a critical petition suggests he was in late 1640 veering towards opposing the monarchy, this was a temporary position only. He was placed in the commission of the peace in March 1641, and was appointed to the king’s commission of array on the eve of civil war in June 1642. He was at this time noted as absent from the House, and must have been back in Worcestershire.26CJ ii. 626ab. The Worcestershire commissioners of array received their instructions on 21 June, and shortly afterwards, at the midsummer quarter sessions for the county, John Wylde* was a leader among those framing a grand jury presentment that the commission was illegal. By 3 August, the assize grand jury had composed a repudiation of their quarter sessions colleagues’ position; Pakington’s name was third on the list of the 66 signatures. On 14 August, with other Worcestershire gentry who were to form the nucleus of the royalist party in the county, he contributed six horses to the king’s defence.27Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 87, 88, 90, 92. A warrant Pakington had sent to Wylde to demand he also provide horse and arms for the king was read in the House (20 Aug.); behind this lay the determination of Wylde and Humphrey Salwey* to destroy the developing royalist party in Worcestershire. They alleged in the Commons that Pakington, Samuel Sandys* and Sir Henry Herbert* intended to seize Wylde and Salwey and take them to York. Sir Simonds D’Ewes’s* gloss on Wylde’s tactic was that it was a ‘bold and rash information’, as it moved radicals like Henry Marten* to demand their expulsion, and indeed the outcome was that the same day Pakington was disabled from sitting further.28CJ ii. 729a; PJ iii. 310-11.

Divisions in Worcestershire, particularly those between John Wylde and the embryonic royalist party, thus led to Pakington’s expulsion from the Commons. Shortly afterwards Pakington was, with other commissioners of array, asked by the king to enrol volunteers for a force in Worcestershire, and according to his own later account he was at the battle of Edgehill on 23 October 1642.29Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 101; CCC 1194. This is the only evidence that Pakington served in a military capacity, and he was never given military command in the county. It is, however, reasonable to assume that he was active in promoting the king’s cause in the county between the autumn of 1642 and March 1643, when he was named to the committee of safety for Worcestershire.30Bodl. Dugdale 19, f. 7v. On 18 March he was present at Worcester town hall with his fellow commissioners for their first recorded meeting, at which the tone was set for the future conduct of the royalist war effort in the region. They composed a letter to Viscount Falkland [S] (Lucius Cary*), the king’s principal secretary of state, explaining that they had not implemented the commission of array because they feared that plans were afoot to remove arms and the magazine from the county. They wrote in the absence of Sir William Russell, sheriff of the county and governor of Worcester, and they hinted heavily at their disapproval of what they saw as his distance from them.31Bodl. Rawl. D.918, f. 145.

Pakington was probably one of Russell’s earliest critics, since he was absent from further meetings of the commissioners at Worcester held in March, all of which Russell attended.32Bodl. Rawl. D.924, ff. 148v, 150, 151, 152v, 153. On 8 April 1643, Pakington did attend a meeting at which Russell was present, and the commissioners dealt with contested rate assessments from a range of parishes.33Bodl. Rawl. D.924, f. 154v. The following week he was working with Russell, Sir Ralph Clare† and other commissioners, calling on high constables to bring in provisions and arms to Worcester.34BRL, Hanley Court mss, box 4, 398281. The financial burden of the local royalist war effort and the imposition of free quarter on an unwilling populace were issues on which the commissioners found it difficult to maintain a show of unity. During the summer of 1643 the king’s field army demanded men and money of the county. Russell was commissioned to raise 500 horse and 1,500 foot, and Samuel Sandys* was also building a regiment.35Bodl. Dugdale 19, f. 16v; R. Hutton, Royalist War Effort 1642-46 (1982), 78-9. Pakington’s role in this process is unclear. In order to overturn every stone in the search for funds, in September a commission was issued, with Pakington’s name included, to investigate the estates of rebels, but by October there had developed in the county a dispute between Russell and the leading royalist gentry which served only to damage their cause.36Bodl. Dugdale 19, f. 29v.

The central allegation at the heart of this dispute was that Russell had falsified accounts, and Pakington was cited as a witness that Russell had allegedly ‘dealt unfaithfully with his majesty and the country in his accounts’, but the charges and counter-charges ranged much more widely. Clare seems to have taken a leading part in attacking Russell for plundering, favouring delinquents, returning recusants to the grand jury and detaining soldiers’ pay; additionally and perhaps most significantly, Russell stood accused of ignoring the civilian commissioners of array.37Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 131-4. Technically, the charges remained unproven, but Russell’s position was damaged and he henceforth played much less of a part in the local administration of the king’s cause. Pakington had been prominent among his critics, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with those who supported civilian and localist sensibilities over those advocating a more dirigiste approach to the conduct of the war effort.

Pakington was later to acquire a reputation as an all-out cavalier, but in 1643-4 he was if anything a peacemaker. In January 1644 he was at the Oxford Parliament, and with Sir Henry Herbert, Endymion Porter and Samuel Sandys, who also had seats in Worcestershire, signed the letter to the 3rd earl of Essex (Robert Devereux) suing for peace.38Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. What further part he played at Oxford cannot yet be ascertained, but by the end of 1644 he was back in the county, actively promoting the cause of lessening the military burden. To this end, he took a petition drafted at quarter sessions to the king at Oxford, again in association with Clare and Samuel Sandys. A manuscript rebuttal of the legitimacy of the Solemn League and Covenant, among Pakington’s papers, suggests that by this time he had become a thoughtful opponent of Parliament’s position and a defender of the principles of episcopacy. The author saw the Covenant as incompatible with the Petition of Right of 1628 and the Protestation of 3 May 1641, as well as a challenge to the supreme magistrate and ‘a snare upon men’s consciences’.39Worcs. Archives, 705:349/BA 5117/2/v/2.

There is no record of his movements during 1645, but in March 1646, with the royalist military position becoming increasingly untenable, Pakington was summoned to a meeting of the commissioners at Worcester, chaired by his former adversary, Russell, called to resolve a property dispute between him and fellow-commissioner Henry Townshend of Elmley Lovett.40Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 203-5. This dispute was further evidence of the Worcestershire royalists’ seemingly incorrigible tendency to faction, and may have been instigated by his local enemies, who perhaps had got wind of the fact that he was about to surrender himself to the Speaker of the House of Commons. Perhaps Pakington had seen the writing on the wall. When on 23 March he presented himself to the Committee for Compounding, an order to seize him was given to the serjeant-at-arms. The final nemesis of the Worcestershire royalists came in the summer of 1646, when Worcester was besieged by the advancing army of Col. Edward Whalley*. The city surrendered to Col. Thomas Rainborowe* on 23 July.41CJ iv. 486b, 557a; Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 264-5.

For the rest of the 1640s, Pakington’s relationship with the Committee for Compounding was a dominant theme. His initial fine was set at £13,595, which by July 1647 he had managed to get reduced to £7,670, by claiming prior incumbrances on his estate, such as his annuity to his sister.42CCC 1194-5. In March 1649, when things seemed to be progressing his way, the tenants of his Aylesbury estate saw their opportunity to profit from the misfortunes of their absentee landlord. Relations between the tenants of Heydon Hill in Aylesbury and the Pakington family had long been strained. A chancery case in 1603 between the tenants and Pakington’s grandfather over agistements they claimed on the grazing land of the hill had ended with victory for the landlord, but at the cost of some of the most eminent lawyers in the land taking the view that Pakington was severe towards his tenants. Now the tenants refused him entry to his estate, preferring contracts under the hands of the sequestrators. The Buckinghamshire county committee, meeting at Aylesbury, was behind their revolt, according to commentators friendly towards Pakington. When on the initiative of the Committee for Compounding Pakington’s old enemy, Humphrey Salwey*, investigated the case, it was almost inevitable that the outcome would not favour Pakington. The estate at Aylesbury was bestowed on the tenants, in lieu of a substantial portion of his delinquency fine. This was a bittersweet conclusion to his petitioning Parliament for relief.43PA, Main Pprs. 9 May 1649. As late as 1664, when he was trying to recover his estates there, correspondents of Pakington’s from Buckinghamshire spoke of the ‘Aylesbury knaves’.44CCC 1195; Worcs. Archives, 705:380/ BA 2309/58; b705:349/BA 4657/i/50.

Pakington also attracted the attention of the Committee for Advance of Money, but his alleged complicity in the 1651 campaign of Charles Stuart marked him irredeemably in the eyes of the republican government. To some extent he was victim of unfavourable circumstances, living as he was near Worcester, the epicentre of the armed conflict. In August 1651, he was arrested, brought to the city and kept under house arrest. As Charles’s Scots army approached, Pakington’s gaolers withdrew from the city, leaving him to his own devices. He returned to Westwood, where he was visited by James Livingston, viscount of Newburgh [S], lieutenant-colonel of the king’s horse guard, who took him back to Worcester. Here, according to his enemies, he joined the muster at Pitchcroft bearing arms and at the head of a troop of 40 horse. Others held that he was under duress and that he had declared

Be they what they will, or what number they will, I am resolved not to engage; for I have already burnt my fingers, I will not thrust them again into the fire.45Worcs. Archives, 705:349/BA 5117/2/v/8, 15; 705:380/BA 2309/iii, deposition of Thomas Higgens.

No-one was able to marshal any convincing evidence that he was active during the battle of Worcester, but simply being in the city, with his record, was enough to attract once again the attention of the compounders. The animus against him seems in this period to have lain with the local sequestration committee, who after the battle, brought at the Worcester assizes an indictment against him as a rebel, which was forwarded to the Compounding Commissioners in London. Another round of sequestration followed, but Pakington seems to have sought a trial in the summer of 1652 in order to vindicate himself. The outcome of this move was inconclusive, except that he spent seven months in custody waiting for his acquittal. He managed also to escape the list of delinquents whose estates were to be sold. During the rest of the period of the commonwealth and in the early days of the protectorate, his friends were working for him in London, optimistic that he would escape further attention from the authorities.46Worcs. Archives, 705:349/BA 5117/2/v/15; b705:349/BA 4657/i/162, 167; CCC 1195; CCAM 866-67. He and Lady Dorothy, in turn, were helping the broken cause of the episcopal Church of England by turning Westwood into a refuge for distinguished dispossessed clergy, notably Henry Hammond, chaplain of Charles I, who died at Westwood in May 1660.47Worcs. Archives, b705:349/BA 4657/i /42, 160, 161.

However uncertainly Pakington had begun the civil war he was now, as the victim of repeated summonses by those responsible for penal taxation, acquiring a powerful motive for opposition to the government. His debts were mounting, as revealed through evidence in his private papers, not simply through his own petitions for relief. His wife’s post-Restoration estimate of losses of £20,858 may contain some exaggeration, but it was a calculation based on detailed and inclusive consideration of the range of his ‘sufferings and expenses’.48Worcs. Archives, 705:349/ BA 5117/1/viii/43, 51; b705:349/BA 4657/i/9.

In a move calculated to inflame local hostility towards Pakington, in August 1654 the Compounding Commissioners ordered the fine received from him to be paid to the dependents of William Guise of Worcester, who had been hanged by Charles Stuart for informing on the royalists to Parliament. By the following December, Pakington’s name was being mentioned in the exposure of a plot against Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell*, apparently hatched in Worcestershire. What were seemingly hampers of wine directed from London to Pakington at Westwood and to members of the Lyttelton family at Hagley were thought by agents of Secretary John Thurloe* to be arms caches. It is not clear whether any arms were discovered at Westwood, but Pakington was arrested. In the summer of 1655 another plot was exposed in the county, again Pakington’s name was mentioned and he spent time in the Tower as a result.49CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 371, 1655, 207; TSP iii. 70-5; 78, 82, 98, 107, 211-2; iv. 485; Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 271. That there was a strong local dynamic to the apparent harassment of Pakington is suggested by a petition to the lord protector in 1655 or 1656 by officers and soldiers of the city and county of Worcester demanding reparations from neighbouring royalists for destruction to their property during the 1651 battle.50Worcs. Archives, 705:349/BA 5117/2/v/1.

In 1659, Pakington was implicated by the revived Rump Parliament in the rising of Sir George Boothe*, and his estate was ordered to be seized as a consequence, but with the expulsion of the Parliament in October that year, proceedings were halted, and Pakington was left to contemplate the Restoration and reflect on over a decade of attention from compounders and sequestrators.51CCC 1196; Worcs. Archives, 705:349/BA 5117/2/v/11, 12. Unsurprisingly, therefore, he used the midsummer Worcestershire quarter sessions of 1660 as the vehicle for a loyal address to the king, in which he and other leading cavaliers vowed that they sought no revenge against their detractors, who had accused them of recusancy.52Diary and Pprs. of Henry Townshend, 276, 317. He was awarded the collection of up to £4,000 from defaulting accountants to the crown via Edward Gregory, a servant of his who had helped him manage his debts in the 1650s and was now helping him recover his Buckinghamshire estates.53CSP Dom. 1660-1, 369; Worcs. Archives, b705:349/BA 4657/i/34; 705:349/BA 5117/2/iv/1.

In 1661 assuming once again the role of knight of the shire, Pakington was again less active in Parliament than in the county, his experience of rebuilding Westwood making him a useful adviser to the borough of Evesham on improvements to its main line of communication, the bridge. Like William Sandys* he invested significantly in river navigation schemes, and like Sandys he did not make the return on his investments he had hoped for.54Longleat House, Coventry Papers, cxix. ff. 165, 172. He was active as a commissioner under the Corporation Act.55Evesham Borough Records ed. S.K. Roberts (Worcs. Hist. Soc. n.s. xiv), xxi, 66, 68-9. In local politics, the hunted now turned hunter. In November 1661 he thought he had uncovered a plot against the king involving the entrepreneur Andrew Yarranton, and implicating the Presbyterian minister Richard Baxter.56Reliquiae Baxterianae (1696), 2nd pag. 383; CSP Dom. 1661-2, pp. 143, 148-9. Personal animosity and lingering feuds may have been behind this, as Yarranton sued Pakington in 1662 over the estate promised the dependents of William Guise in 1654.57Worcs. Archives, 705:349/BA 5117/2/v/13, 14. He was unable to re-establish his political interest at Aylesbury, where the spirit of independence fostered by his sequestration, and resentment engendered by his (failed) private bill to recover his property there, persisted.58Worcs. Archives, 705:380/BA 2309/58; b705:349/BA 4657/i/50; PA, Main Pprs. 19 Apr. 1664. Towards the end of the Cavalier Parliament, Pakington moved into opposition against the crown. He died on 1 January1680, and was buried at Hampton Lovett two days later.59Hampton Lovett par. reg. His son, Sir John Pakington 3rd bt., sat for Worcestershire in 1685; his grandson, the 4th baronet, represented the county in 11 Parliaments as a tory.