RATCLIFFE, John (1611-73), of Northgate Street, St Oswald, Chester, Cheshire, and the Middle Temple, London.

Ratcliffe’s family had resided in Lancashire until some time in the Tudor period, when his grandfather, John Ratcliffe senior, moved to Chester.33Vis. Cheshire, 201. Ratcliffe senior made his fortune as a brewer – his commercial success driving his progress up the civic hierarchy, culminating in his election as mayor in 1601. A contemporary description of him as a ‘very worthy good man and religious, careful and painful in his profession’, suggests that he was a godly Calvinist.34Harl. 2125, f. 46. His son (Ratcliffe’s father), John Ratcliffe junior, evidently prospered in his calling as well, consolidating the family’s brewing business and holding the office of master of the Chester Brewers Company from 1611 until his death in 1633. He, too, rose to the very top of the corporation hierarchy, serving as mayor in 1611-12 and again in 1628-9.35Cheshire RO, ZG 3/2; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘John Ratcliffe’.

Ratcliffe junior (the MP’s father) emulated his father not only commercially but also in his religious life. As a patron of the city’s godly ministers Nicholas Byfield and John Ley he was part of a national puritan network that included Sir Robert Harley* of Brampton Bryan.36HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘John Ratcliffe’; Richardson, Puritanism, 133; N. Alldridge, ‘Loyalty and identity in Chester parishes 1540-1640’, in Parish, Church and People ed. S.J. Wright (1988), 115-17; ‘Nicholas Byfield’; ‘John Ley’, Oxford DNB. He married the equally godly Jane Brerewood, whose life as one of Chester’s ‘elect ladies’ inspired Ley to write what became a celebrated puritan conversion text, dedicated to Brilliana Harley.37Ley, A Pattern of Pietie, sig. A3; Richardson, Puritanism, 82-3, 134-5. Ratcliffe junior’s puritanism contributed to the bitter disputes that attended his return for Chester to the 1621 and 1628 Parliaments.38HP Commons 1604-29, ‘Chester’. One of his opponents, the future royalist William Gamull† (uncle of another future royalist, Francis Gamul*), described him as ‘a man whose only profession is a beerbrewer, a man never employed in any public affairs but ever noted for the chief countenancer of ... puritans, a countenancer of factions, and hath been convented before the ordinary [diocesan authorities] for his inconformity.’39Harl. 2105, ff. 277r-v.

Although Ratcliffe would serve as master of the Brewers Company himself after the Restoration, he received a gentleman’s education at Oxford and the Middle Temple and trained to become a lawyer.40Cheshire RO, ZCL/122/(c)/30. His principal patron at the Middle Temple was his cousin Robert Brerewood*, who was appointed recorder of Chester in 1639.41Supra, ‘Robert Brerewood’; MTR ii. 757, 841. Despite Ratcliffe’s own appointment as counsellor-at-law to the corporation in 1639, he probably spent most of the civil war in London pursuing his legal career, having been called to the bar in 1637.42Cal. Chester City Mins. ed. Groombridge, 202. His godly religious sympathies would certainly have precluded staying in Chester, which was garrisoned for the king from late 1642. But after Parliament remodelled the corporation in October 1646, purging leading royalist officeholders (including Brerewood), Ratcliffe was an obvious choice as the city’s new recorder.43LJ viii. 506; Cheshire RO, ZAB/2, f. 79v.

With Ratcliffe’s appointment as recorder went a place on Chester’s aldermanic bench and a tradition of almost automatic selection as one of the city’s MPs; since 1604, there had been only one general election in which Chester’s voters had not returned their recorder.44HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Chester’. In the ‘recruiter’ election at Chester, late in 1646, the city duly returned Ratcliffe, who took the junior place behind its most prominent parliamentarian son, William Edwardes.45Supra, ‘Chester’. Ratcliffe’s career in the Long Parliament probably began on 24 February 1647, when he took the Covenant – and would end in December 1648 with his seclusion at Pride’s Purge.46CJ v. 97a. In between, he was named to a mere eight committees and was apparently a peripheral figure on the national political stage.47CJ v. 265b, 274a, 334a, 352a, 407a, 471a, 581b, 618a. Granted leave of absence on 24 March 1647, his first Commons appointment did not materialize until his nomination in first place to a committee set up on 3 August for the relief of plague-infested Chester.48CJ v. 123a, 265b. The date of this committee appointment is more significant than its subject matter, for it confirms that Ratcliffe, like Edwardes, continued to attend the House during the Presbyterian counter-revolution of late July-early August 1647. Almost as revealing are his addition to the committee for plundered ministers on 27 December 1647 and his appointment to the 23 February 1648 committee for the stricter enforcement of the sabbath.49CJ v. 407a, 471a. Evidently the cause of further reformation and the provision of a godly preaching ministry were as important to him as they had been to his father and grandfather.

There is no evidence that Ratcliffe’s Presbyterian leanings inclined him towards the king’s party during the second civil war. Indeed, in a letter to Chester corporation on 9 May 1648, he referred to his ‘late attendance at a committee this night appointed for the settling of the kingdom in a posture of defence, wherein Chester is more concerned than many places’.50Cheshire RO, ZML/2/312. This was almost certainly a reference to the committee for the militia – chaired by an ally of the Independent grandees, John Bulkeley – which the House had ordered to address what Ratcliffe termed ‘the general danger’ from the ‘malignant party’.51CJ v. 553b; Cheshire RO, ZML/2/312, 313. In subsequent letters during the spring and summer, he repeatedly assured a clearly frustrated corporation that he had used his ‘utmost endeavours’ to solicit its business at Westminster, having ‘constantly attended the House from morning till night’, but the Commons’ agenda was almost entirely taken up with countering the ‘bloody’ and ‘destructive’ designs of the royalists.52Cheshire RO, ZML/2/313, 314, 315, 316, 319, 320; ZML/6/180. Despite his conscientious attendance in the House, the corporation suspected him of slacking – partly it seems because one of its agents at Westminster believed that both the city’s MPs (Edwardes in particular) were more concerned with their own affairs, although he conceded that ‘Mr Recorder has been, and still is, willing and ready to do the city good according to his abilities’.53Cheshire RO, ZML/2/315, 317. On 4 July, Ratcliffe and Edwardes informed the corporation that they had engaged the Presbyterian grandee John Glynne* to help vindicate the corporation from charges of complicity in a recent royalist plot to seize the city, and that they had managed to foil an attempt by Sir William Brereton* to merge the city and county militia commission, ‘and thereby the county would bring the city under their power’. However, they could not prevent Brereton, the city’s governor Colonel Robert Duckenfeild* and three other non-citizens being added to the city’s commission.54Cheshire RO, ZML/2/320.

Both Ratcliffe and Edwardes were secluded at Pride’s Purge, presumably for their Presbyterian sympathies, although crossing swords with Brereton in the summer of 1648 would not have helped their cause.55A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 383. True to his Presbyterian sympathies, Ratcliffe was evidently among the large contingent on the corporation that refused or neglected to take the Engagement abjuring monarchy and Lords, and on 5 September 1651, the Rump ordered his removal as recorder.56CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 20-1; CJ vii. 8b, 12b; G.C.F. Forster, ‘Civic government in Chester, 1642-60, NH xxxvii. 94. Reluctant to dispense with his services, the corporation re-appointed him one of its retained counsellors-at-law in June 1652.57Cheshire RO, ZAB/2, f. 99. In fact, Ratcliffe continued to provide counsel and draft legal documents for the corporation throughout the 1650s.58Cheshire RO, ZML/3/351, 361, 366, 368, 374, 375; ZTAR/3/52 (entry for May 1656). Moreover, in 1656, he acted as defence counsel to Sir George Middleton and other Lancashire royalists accused of plotting against the protectorate.59Cheshire RO, DSS/1/7/66/19. The following year, Chester corporation restored him to his place as recorder.60Cheshire RO, ZAB/2, f. 113. He also seems to have enjoyed a healthy private practice during the 1650s, numbering among his clients the Cheshire parliamentarian John Crewe II* and the clerk to the protectoral council William Jessop*.61Cheshire RO, ZCR 469/390; DAR/C/4; DAR/D/74; Lancs. RO, DDHU/33/2-4, 7. In December 1658, he was appointed an attorney and serjeant for the duchy of Lancaster under its new chancellor, John Bradshawe*, the man who had presided over the high court of justice that had condemned Charles I.62Duchy of Lancaster Office-Holders ed. Somerville, 101. Bradshawe seems to have trusted Ratcliffe, for in the spring of 1659, with his health deteriorating, he approved Ratcliffe’s appointment as his deputy in the office of chief justice of Chester.63Great Sessions in Wales ed. Williams, 101. Ratcliffe was also among those justices nominated by the the council of state to ride the 1659 summer assize circuit in Wales.64Bodl. Rawl. C.179, p. 73.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659, Ratcliffe and the Cromwellian diplomat Richard Bradshaw (brother of Edward Bradshaw*) stood as candidates for Chester and enjoyed the backing of the senior officeholders. The citizen electorate, however, was ‘wholly’ for Jonathan Ridge* and John Griffith III*, and it was they who were duly returned, despite an impassioned speech by Ratcliffe to the voters in which he accused Ridge of seeking to destroy the city’s ancient privileges.65Supra, ‘Chester’. Ratcliffe’s Presbyterian sympathies landed him in serious trouble in the autumn of 1659 after he and other leading members of the corporation had effectively opened the city gates to Sir George Boothe* and his rebel forces.66CCC 751-2. Evidence of his complicity in Boothe’s rebellion was compelling, and his excuses and explanations for his conduct were less than convincing.67SP23/263, ff. 98, 99, 100, 102, 113-114, 122. Undaunted, he set the Cheshire sequestration commissioners ‘at defiance’ when they began proceedings against him in mid-September, ‘bidding them do it at their peril’.68Harl. 1929, f. 22v. The commissioners, or some other authority, stripped him of his office as recorder, while the Rump removed him as chief justice of Merionethshire, Caernarfonshire and Anglesey.69CJ vii. 788b; SP23/263, ff. 98, 118. Five months later, he had apparently regained his recordership, and the restored Long Parliament appointed him a justice for Glamorgan, Breconshire and Radnorshire.70CJ vii. 876b.

Ratcliffe almost certainly welcomed the Restoration; and in the elections to the 1660 Convention he was returned for Chester, taking the senior place.71HP Commons 1660-90, ‘John Ratcliffe’. He was listed by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, as a likely supporter of a Presbyterian church settlement, but apparently did little to help resist the rising Anglican tide at Westminster.72G.F.T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 332. In the elections to the Cavalier Parliament, he was encouraged by Sir George Boothe to stand for Chester again; and having regained his seat, he was again listed by Lord Wharton as a friend.73CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 538; Jones, ‘Presbyterian party’, 350. His refusal to compromise his godly religious principles resulted in his removal as recorder of Chester in August 1662 for refusing to take the oath abjuring the Covenant.74Cheshire RO, ZAB/2, f. 135. One Cheshire royalist described him in 1667 as ‘a Presbyterian and a great favourer of nonconformity’.75CSP Dom. 1667, p. 14; D.R. Lacey, Dissent and Parliamentary Politics in England (New Brunswick, NJ, 1969), 437.

Ratcliffe died on 13 January 1673 and was buried at St Oswald, Chester, three days later.76CSP Dom. 1672-3, p. 424; St Oswald, Chester par. reg. He evidently left a will, but it has not survived.77Cheshire RO, ZAB/2, f. 178. According to his executors, he had spent ‘a great part of his time and estate’ in the service of the city and had contracted such considerable debts in the process that he had not been able to leave a competent maintenance for his five surviving children.78Cheshire RO, ZAB/2, f. 178; ZAB/3, f. 43v. Certainly Ratcliffe’s correspondence as an MP during the Restoration period suggests that he was extremely diligent at Westminster and Whitehall on the corporation’s behalf.79Cheshire RO, ZML/3, 415, 416, 421, 436, 440, 443, 446, 451, 453, 458, 459, 461, 463, 466. Having paid Ratcliffe £70 for his ‘care and charges’ in London, the corporation granted his executors a further £50.80Cheshire RO, ZAB/2, ff. 157v, 171. No subsequent member of the family sat in Parliament.