ROBINSON, Luke (1610-69), of Thornton Riseborough, Normanby, Yorks.

Background and early career

Robinson’s family, which was of Staffordshire extraction, owed much of its prosperity to his grandfather, who became a London merchant tailor and alderman in the Elizabethan period. Robinson’s father, Sir Arthur Robinson, married the daughter of a London mercer (and later alderman), but he evidently preferred the life of a country squire to that of a City tradesman, for in about 1620 he moved his family to Deighton, near York, in the East Riding (not Deighton near Northallerton, as some authorities have stated).48Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. iii. 167-8; Beaven, Aldermen of London, i. 158; ii. 44; Al Cant.; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Luke Robinson’. Robinson probably received a godly education. His second school was that of the vicar of Aughton, William Alder, who was later removed from his benefice for nonconformist offences.49Cliffe, Yorks. 266; The Puritan Gentry, 166. Furthermore, in 1627 Robinson was admitted to Christ’s, Cambridge, which was one of the university’s more godly colleges.50Al. Cant.; Cliffe, Puritan Gentry, 97-8. In 1632 Robinson and his father purchased the manor of Thornton Riseborough, near Pickering in the North Riding, which Robinson was to make his principal residence.51VCH N. Riding, i. 543. Until Sir Arthur’s death in 1642, however, he seems to have resided in or around York.52C54/2976/1; C54/3158/15; LPL, COMM.XIIa/18, f. 82.

Neither Robinson nor his father (an East Riding justice of the peace) figured prominently in the opposition to Ship Money and military charges that convulsed Yorkshire in the last years of the personal rule of Charles I. Only two pieces of evidence suggest Robinson’s alignment with the county’s ‘disaffected’ gentry. In mid-September 1640, he signed the third (and last) of the Yorkshire petitions to the king during the second bishops’ war, which repeated the demand made by a group of dissident English peers that Charles summon a new Parliament.53Cumb. RO (Kendal), Strickland ms vol. 1608-1700, N38 Car. I. And on 5 October, he was a signatory to the indenture returning two of the county’s leading petitioners, Ferdinando Fairfax, 2nd Baron Fairfax, and Henry Belasyse, as knights of the shire to the Long Parliament.54C219/43/3/89. Robinson would also be late in taking his place among Yorkshire’s parliamentarian leadership, receiving no appointment to local parliamentary commissions until the autumn of 1644. His reasons for siding with Parliament are not clear, although his strenuously godly piety was probably an important factor.

Robinson had emerged by the spring of 1645 as an active member of the North Riding bench and of the Northern Association committee at York, and in October of that year he stood as a candidate in the ‘recruiter’ elections at Scarborough.55Hull History Centre, C BRL/364; N. Riding QS Recs. ed. Atkinson, 237. Although he would come to have many friends among the town’s ‘well-affected’ – including Captain John Lawson, who was an important figure in Scarborough by the mid-1640s – his influence in that part of the North Riding, in which he enjoyed no proprietorial interest, probably derived from his reputation as one of the region’s few active justices of the peace.56T. Hinderwell, Hist. and Antiquities of Scarborough (1798), 106-7; Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 53-4, 57, 63-4, 66-7, 68-9, 71-2, 75. However, he had made an effort to render himself serviceable to the borough, writing to Sir Philip Stapilton* in the late summer or autumn of 1645 desiring him to present a petition from the town to the Commons.57Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 42. Robinson’s main rival at Scarborough was James Chaloner*, who sought to capitalise on his connection with Ferdinando Lord Fairfax – the head of Yorkshire’s most illustrious parliamentarian family. But Robinson was not to be intimidated and wrote in blunt terms to the corporation, urging it not to be ‘biased by the favour of great men’. Lord Fairfax took this as an affront to his honour and asked the corporation to send him a copy of Robinson’s letter. A third candidate had emerged by mid-October in the person of Sir Matthew Boynton*, and it is possible that he and Robinson stood together. Both men were zealous puritans and evidently shared a strong desire to have the Scottish army removed from the region – which may well have been an electoral issue at Scarborough. The corporation, with ‘one will and mind’, elected Boynton and Robinson on 25 October.58Supra, ‘Scarborough’; infra, ‘Sir Matthew Boynton’.

Parliamentary career, 1646-8

From the spring of 1646, when he began to pick up appointments on a regular basis, Robinson emerged as one of the most active Yorkshire recruiters. He was named to almost 60 committees in the three years before Pride’s Purge, including the Committee of Navy and Customs* (7 Feb. 1646), of which he was an active member.59CJ iv. 431a; Add. 35332, ff. 41, 43v. His appointments offer clues as to his priorities in the House, which appear to have centred upon the cleansing of public life by the removal of royalist and other corrupting influences. He was named to numerous committees to investigate MPs’ political records and financial probity, to reform ‘burdensome’ institutions such as the courts of chancery and exchequer, to purge the ill-affected from public office and to improve the machinery of sequestration and composition.60CJ iv. 409b, 452a, 477a, 491a, 512a, 551b, 661b, 689b, 701a, 701b, 702b, 703b, 708b, 712b, 718a; v. 8b, 86b, 87a, 205a. The advancement of godly religion and the reformation of manners probably took up some of his time at Westminster.61CJ iv. 502a, 714b; v. 119b. Another area of parliamentary business that seems to have interested him during the later 1640s was the advancement of England’s domestic and overseas trade.62CJ iv. 671a, 722a; v. 105b, 187a, 383a. He and Boynton were diligent in lobbying the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports*, the Committee for Revenue* and several other standing committees on Scarborough’s behalf and were thanked by the corporation for their ‘extraordinary’ and ‘unwearied’ pains about the town’s various businesses at Westminster.63Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 57, 58-9, 59, 62, 66, 68, 73, 75, 76-7, 90; CJ iv. 547a, 611b.

Although Robinson was evidently on close terms with Boynton, who was both a religious and a political Independent, his own factional alignment is difficult to pin down, although like most northern recruiters he was keen to see the back of the Scots. He was relatively late in taking the Covenant (27 May 1646), and there is evidence that he supported the Independents’ campaign to have the Scottish army sent home.64CJ iv. 556a. In the summer of 1646, for example, he seems to have furnished Thomas Stockdale’s ‘northern committee’ (of which he himself was a member) with information concerning abuses committed by the Scottish army in the North Riding.65Bodl. Nalson XIX, f. 396; Tanner 59, f. 245; CJ iv. 481b.

Robinson’s avoidance of close party entanglements may account for his most important appointment prior to Pride’s Purge – that of parliamentary commissioner to present the Newcastle Propositions to Charles in July 1646.66CJ iv. 604a, b, 606b. His fellow Commons commissioners – Sir Walter Erle, Sir John Hippisley and Robert Goodwin – were similarly untrammelled by strong factional ties, at least at this stage in their careers. Robinson was named to a handful of committees on issues that had the potential to divide the House – for example, the 12 December 1646 committee to consider a tract from the London Presbyterian ministers calling for the establishment of a Scottish-style clericalist church; and the committee set up on 26 March 1647 to examine the Commons’ imprisonment of Major Alexander Tulidah for promoting the Levellers’ ‘Large Petition’.67CJ v. 11a, 125b. But generally he seems to have steered clear of the factional fray. The same day, that he was appointed to the committee concerning Tulidah (26 Mar.) he carried up to the Lords an ordinance concerning the sequestration of delinquents in the five northern counties.68CJ v. 125b, 126b; LJ ix. 105b. This kind of legislation was very much his stock in trade at Westminster.

Robinson continued to attend the House during the Presbyterian ascendancy of early 1647, and although he was granted leave of absence on 2 June it was not until 19 July, when the Independents had regained the initiative, that he seems to have left the House.69CJ v. 84a, 86a, 86b, 87a, 105b, 119b, 125b, 134a, 166a, 170b, 171b, 187a, 195a, 195b, 205a, 249b. It is therefore likely that he was absent from the Commons at the time of the Presbyterian ‘riots’ a week later. Declared absent at the call of the House on 9 October, he does not appear to have returned to Westminster until much before 6 November, when he was appointed to a committee for the advancement of trade.70CJ v. 330a, 352a. He was named to only one more committee before his appointment with Lord Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*) and several other MPs on 23 December as commissioners to oversee the collection of Yorkshire’s assessment money.71CJ v. 383a, 400b. Robinson seems to have remained in the north for the next year and was employed with John Anlaby* and Richard Darley* in the Derby House Committee’s* unsuccessful attempt to prevent Scarborough’s governor Colonel Boynton (Sir Matthew’s son) defecting to the royalists during the second civil war.72CJ vi. 32a, 34b; Bodl. Nalson VII, f. 126; Tanner 57, f. 167; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 170, 172; J. Binns, Yorks. in the Civil Wars, 136. Robinson was almost certainly still in Yorkshire on 25 November 1648, when the Commons re-appointed him as a commissioner to bring in Yorkshire’s assessment money.73CJ vi. 87b.

Regicide and republic, 1648-51

Robinson retained his seat at Pride’s Purge, and late in December 1648 he was named as a commissioner in the first ordinance for erecting a court to try the king.74Bodl. Carte 16, f. 168; Mercurius Pragmaticus nos. 40 and 41 (26 Dec. 1648-9 Jan. 1649), sig. Fff4 (E.537.20). This nomination suggests that he was deemed sympathetic to the notion of bringing Charles to justice. But if this was the case, he was forced to watch the drama unfold from the wings, for the Lords, in one of their last acts, rejected the first ordinance, and when the Commons unilaterally passed a second, early in January 1649, Robinson was not included among the trial commissioners. The reason for his exclusion is something of a mystery. It is possible that whoever drew up the commission was anxious to surround the wavering Sir Thomas (now 3rd Baron) Fairfax*, the commander of the New Model, with as many friends and allies as possible – and that as someone who had questioned the old Lord Fairfax’s political probity in the Scarborough recruiter elections, Robinson was considered a liability in this respect. Or perhaps the commission’s draftsmen had simply remembered that Robinson was otherwise occupied in the north. In the event, he either stayed away from Westminster, or kept a very low profile there, until 27 January – the day the high court of justice pronounced sentence against Charles – when he was named to a committee prohibiting anyone proclaiming the king’s successor without the consent of Parliament.75CJ vi. 124a. Two days later (29 Jan.), he joined Oliver Cromwell and several other men who would shortly sign the death warrant in making his dissent to the 5 December 1648 vote – that the king’s answers at Newport were a sufficient ground for a settlement.76CJ vi. 124b. On the day of the king’s execution itself (30 Jan.), he was named to committees for justifying the regicide to the Dutch ambassador and for repealing several acts concerning the law of treason and the authority of the monarch.77CJ vi. 125a, 126a.

Robinson was one of the most committed members of the Rump, although his time at Westminster under the commonwealth was punctuated by lengthy spells in the North Riding. Indeed, as early as March 1649 he was informing his friends in Scarborough of his desire to settle in the town in order to look after his ‘long neglected estate’, adding that his ‘occasions’ in London were ‘restless’ and his health ‘not good’.78Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 129. Almost all of his appointments in the Rump fell within three periods – January to December 1649, December 1650 to May 1651 and April to August 1652. During these months he accumulated over 90 committee appointments and served as teller in ten divisions.79CJ vi. 159b, 287b, 294a, 506b, 512a, 522a, 536a; vii. 135a, 143b, 152b.

Robinson was a member of several committees in the early months of the Rump that had a major bearing upon the character of the new regime. On 7 February 1649, Robinson was named with Edmund Ludlowe II, Cornelius Holland, John Lisle and Thomas Scot I to draw up operational instructions for the Rump’s projected council of state and to nominate persons whom they conceived fit to serve as councillors.80CJ vi. 133a. The House approved the committee’s instructions and, in the elections to the council the next day (14 Feb.), all of its 35 nominees. The House then elected Scot and his fellow nominating committeemen Lisle and Ludlowe to three of the remaining six places on the council. But when an attempt to insert the radical army officers Henry Ireton* and Thomas Harrison I* failed, the House elected the remaining two nominating committeemen Robinson and Holland instead.81CJ vi. 140b-141a, 143a; Ludlow, Mems. i. 223; S. Kelsey, ‘Constructing the council of state’, PH xxii. 223-4. Two days later (17 Feb.), Robinson was among 13 councillors who made no scruple about taking the conciliar ‘engagement’, which required the subscriber to assent to ‘all that was done concerning the king [i.e. the king’s trial and execution] and kingship and for taking away the House of Lords and against the Scots’ invasion [in 1648]’.82CJ vi. 146b; SP25/1, unfol. (17, 19 Feb. 1649); Worden, Rump Parl. 181. Robinson attended 95 of the first Council’s 319 meetings and was named to numerous conciliar committees, the majority of which were on matters relating to the supply of the army and navy, overseas trade and the disposal of the king’s goods.83CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. lxxiv-lxxv, 14, 18, 22, 26, 28, 36, 56, 158, 297, 300, 302, 329, 336, 343, 346, 368, 373, 385, 413. The work of a conciliar committee set up on 24 February to consider how to maintain the commonwealth’s treasuries while at the same time easing the people’s burdens was specially referred to Robinson and Scot.84CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 18.

The same five Members who had comprised the committee for nominating the council of state were appointed on 5 March 1649 to supervise the taking of the dissent to the 5 December 1648 vote.85CJ vi. 157a. This body operated like a committee for absent Members and played in important role in determining the complexion of the Rump’s membership.86CJ vi. 187a, 190a, 224a, 287a, 287b; [C. Walker*], Anarchia Anglicana (1649), 210 (E.570.4). Robinson was also involved in introducing and applying the Rump’s principal test of political participation – the Engagement abjuring monarchy and the House of Lords.87CJ vi. 307b, 321b, 326b; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 385. In January 1650, back in the North Riding, he took a lead in organising general subscription to the Engagement.88Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 151. He was evidently regarded as willing proselytizer of the virtues of republican rule, for that same month the council ordered that he be sent ‘a sufficient number of the public acts and [John] Milton’s books to spread in those parts where he is’.89CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 481. He remained in Yorkshire for at least six months after his election to the second council of state in February 1650 and thus managed to attend only 63 of its 295 sittings.90CJ vi. 363a; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. xl-xli. Nevertheless, as the council’s main agent for maritime affairs between Hull and Newcastle, he was named to the conciliar admiralty and navy committees, and in January 1651 he was appointed vice-admiral of Yorkshire under the earl of Mulgrave.91CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 18, 248, 332, 468; 1651, pp. 10, 35.

Godly reform, 1649-55

Robinson’s enthusiasm for the commonwealth, like that of Milton, probably did not concern itself too closely with constitutional forms. His appointment to several committees – one of which, set up in April 1651, he probably chaired – for abolishing the office and trappings of monarchy, suggests that he was hostile to the notion of single-person rule. And it was doubtless no accident that in August 1649 he was selected with the regicides Henry Marten and Augustine Garland to bring in a bill for taking down the king’s arms in all public places.92CJ vi. 158a, 274a, 562b; vii. 118b. He certainly had no love for the person of Charles Stuart, referring to him in 1651 as ‘a declared traitor to this commonwealth’.93Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 190. Bulstrode Whitelocke* would later describe Robinson as ‘a most fierce man against the king [i.e. Charles II]’.94Whitelocke, Diary, 583.

But Robinson’s main objective as a Rumper was apparently the same as it had been since his election in 1645 – the creation of a just and godly polity. He received a series of appointments to committees for regulating the organs of government and law, for reforming public office and for removing the ill-affected from positions of trust both locally and nationally.95CJ vi. 127b, 130a, 141b, 273b, 301a, 319b, 327a, 513a. He was named first to committees for the better regulation of juries (2 Oct. 1649) and to strengthen accountability in the Rump’s issuing of money grants to individuals (20 Dec. 1650).96CJ vi. 301a, 513a. And the task of bringing in a bill for reforming the shrievalty and for ensuring the empanelment of impartial juries was specially referred to his care (7 Nov. 1649).97CJ vi. 319b. Robinson’s willingness to champion the causes of individuals who had suffered injustice at the hands of powerful vested interests earned him the admiration of the Leveller leader John Lilburne, who accounted Robinson ‘his noble and honoured friend’.98G. Gill, Innocency Cleared (1651), 14; J. Hedworth, The Oppressed Man’s Out-Cry (1651), 9. Like Lilburne, Robinson was no respecter of rank for its own sake and served as a teller in June 1652 against receiving a petition from Lord Howard of Escrick*, who had been thrown out of the Rump for corruption.99CJ vii. 143b. Whether he shared Lilburne’s enthusiasm for radical constitutional and social reform is harder to gauge. For Robinson, the alleviation of poverty was probably more an issue of moral reform than of social justice. And although he was named to several committees for the relief and employment of the poor and for discharging poor debtors from prison, his involvement in these areas of parliamentary business was not sufficiently important to justify labelling him one of Henry Marten’s ‘closest allies’ in the House.100Supra, ‘Henry Marten’; CJ vi. 171a, 284a, 327a; Worden, Rump Parl. 256. His two tellerships with Marten in the Rump were in minor divisions.101CJ vi. 287b, 294a.

Robinson’s reformist zeal translated into a tough stance against the enemies of the commonwealth. If his Commons and conciliar committee appointments are any guide, one of his primary concerns in the Rump was the punishment and financial exploitation of delinquents, including the late king. He was included on numerous committees relating to the trial, sequestration and fining of delinquents, the efficient running of the composition machinery and the management and sale of crown lands.102CJ vi. 126b, 127b, 131a, 150b, 162a, 167b, 172a, 528a, 538a, 544b, 555a, 556a, 563b, 564a; vii. 154a, 154b; CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 158, 300. Committees for preparing bills on improving the yield from compositions and for reforming the sale of crown lands were specially referred to his care.103CJ vi. 555a, 563b, 564a. In addition, one of the committees he chaired (it is not entirely clear which) was entrusted on 20 November 1649 with the task of bringing in a bill for the speedy sale of all crown lands.104CJ vi. 324a. Yet despite his close involvement in the sale of royal assets, Robinson is known to have acquired only one piece of sequestered property – Burgh Grange in the former diocese of Lincoln.105Col. Top. et Gen. i. 287. A number of his tellerships related to the punishment of delinquents and the sale of their estates, and in most instances he represented the more hard-line element in the House. There is certainly nothing to suggest that he shared Marten’s desire by 1652 to show leniency towards Parliament’s vanquished opponents.106Supra, ‘Henry Marten’; CJ vi. 159b, 294a, 512a, 522a, 536a; Worden, Rump Parl. 269. The way Robinson’s mind worked on this issue is clear from his description of Yorkshire’s former royalist leaders as ‘fat persons … who ought to pay their fines towards the public charge’.107CCC 449.

Robinson was evidently a major figure in managing the excise and other sources of revenue and in improving and streamlining the Rump’s financial system.108Bodl. Rawl. C.386, unfol.; CJ vi. 161b, 274a, 290b, 325a; vii. 128a, 138b, 159a; CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 18, 302, 336, 373. On 20 March 1651 and again on 27 March and 2 April, he chaired and reported from a committee of the whole House for regulating the treasuries concerning a bill for the proper issuing of money and taking of receipts.109CJ vi. 551a, 553b, 555a. And it was to Robinson and Nicholas Lechmere that the Rump entrusted the task of reducing the charges of the commonwealth and improving its revenue (2 June 1652).110CJ vii. 138b. His interest in financial retrenchment and in maximising the return on the sale of crown and other forfeited property was closely linked to the Rump’s efforts to ensure the adequate maintenance of the armed forces. His addition to the Committee for Compounding* on 2 November 1649, for example, was with regard to army pay.111CJ vi. 318a; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 373. He chaired a committee set up on 4 October 1649 to consider a petition from the council of officers that probably related to the pay and conditions of the army.112CJ vi. 302b, 324a. And on 28 April 1652, he chaired a committee to consider how soldiers’ arrears could be made good out of the commonwealth’s treasuries.113CJ vii. 128a. However, he was named to only one committee for rewarding the republic’s senior military men, and that was on a bill for settling £300 a year upon the commander of the Northern Brigade, Major-general John Lambert*.114CJ vi. 299b; Add. 21422, f. 101. Robinson probably knew Lambert well and was certainly on friendly terms with his right-hand man, Captain Adam Baynes*.115Add. 21418, f. 228; Add. 21422, f. 101. As MP for Scarborough, a port notoriously vulnerable to the predations of pirates and privateers, Robinson was also involved in naval administration under the Rump.116Bodl. Rawl. A.224, ff. 43, 43v; CJ vii. 123a; CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 28, 346; 1650, pp. 18, 468, 488. His family’s mercantile background and his own familiarity with maritime affairs probably account for his nomination to several committees for the advancement of England’s overseas trade.117CJ vi. 281a, 284b; vii. 123a; CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 14, 297, 343, 368.

The cause of godly reformation was another of Robinson’s priorities in the Rump. On 27 March 1649, he was ordered to bring in a bill appointing commissioners for Yorkshire to replace ignorant and scandalous ministers with godly and ‘painful’ men.118CJ vi. 174b. Later the same year he was named to committees for confirming Presbyterian church government – although with lenity to tender consciences – and for drafting a bill against swearing and cursing.119CJ vi. 275b, 317b. When the House determined on 12 March 1651 to bring in a bill for propagating the gospel throughout the nation, it entrusted the task specifically to Robinson and Carew Ralegh.120CJ vi. 548a. Robinson attended at least a handful of meetings of the Committee for Plundered Ministers* – despite never being formally added to this body – and was keen to present ministers to incumbencies formerly in the gift of the crown or the church.121SP22/2B, ff. 181, 223v; Add. 36792, ff. 26v, 29v, 42v, 47, 49. Much of his work for godly reform was undertaken in the North Riding, where he used his position on the bench to have a house of correction established at Pickering ‘to punish and cause to work persons wandering idle’.122N. Riding QS Recs. ed. Atkinson (N. Riding Rec. Soc. v), 106-8. One of his first acts as Scarborough’s bailiff in 1651-2 was to order the town’s churchwardens to levy fines for offending against the laws ‘to reform tippling, inns, taverns or alehouses’ – the proceeds to go to the poor.123Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 189; Binns, Yorks. in the Civil Wars, 166.

Although Robinson clearly shared many of the traditional concerns of the godly, he was also receptive to some of the more radical puritan ideas that were then in circulation. In the spring of 1651, he had a private meeting with the Quaker evangelist George Fox, at Pickering and – if Fox is to believed – was ‘opened with the Truth’, encouraged Fox to exercise his spiritual gifts and showed him much ‘love and kindness’. Robinson’s chaplain, one Boyes, accompanied Fox on his travels through the Vale of Pickering and took him to his own church on the Yorkshire Moors. It was common currency by the following year that Robinson had commended Fox to his fellow MPs at Westminster and had declared that ‘all the priests and professors in the nation was [sic] nothing to him’. Fox believed that Robinson had been ‘convinced in his judgement by the Spirit’ and ‘did see over the priests of the nation so that he and many others now came to be wiser than their teachers…’. When Fox encountered Robinson again in 1666, he was still ‘very loving’ to Friends.124Jnl. of George Fox, i. 26-7, 52; ii. 108; W. C. Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Qaukerism to 1660, 68-9, 103. Robinson’s receptivity to Quaker ideas, together with the anti-clerical views he aired in the protectoral Parliaments, confirm that he shared some of the hostility towards formal religion and the professional ministry of his ‘ancient kind friend’ Captain Baynes.125Supra, ‘Adam Baynes’; Add. 21422, f. 101; Worden, Rump Parl. 134. He made his distaste for the worldly trappings of the church and ministry clear on 9 July 1652, when he was a teller with Cornelius Holland in favour of widening the debate on whether to pull down the cathedrals for financial gain (the proceeds to go towards payment of public debts) to include the collegiate churches.126CJ vii. 152b.

Robinson’s failure to secure election to the third council of state, in February 1651, has been attributed to resentment among more conservative elements in the Rump at his support for the Greenland adventurers’ attempts to break the monopoly of the Greenland Company.127Worden, Rump Parl. 39; To the Supreme Authority the Parliament of the Common-wealth of England (1651, 669 f.15.71). But perhaps a more likely explanation for his omission was simply the fact that he spent too much time away from the House. Robinson was one of the North Riding’s most active justices of the peace during the early 1650s.128N. Riding QS Recs. ed. Atkinson (N. Riding Rec. Soc. v), 42, 48, 52, 58, 75, 82, 89, 115, 122; C93/21/13. Fox described him as the ‘chief’ magistrate in the region, while Robinson himself acknowledged that the ‘country’ usually came to consult with him about pressing local matters.129Jnl. of George Fox, i. 26; Add. 21422, f. 101. He continued to attend the North Riding quarter sessions after the dissolution of the Rump and, indeed, throughout the rest of the decade. But his refusal to sit in the Nominated Parliament after his nomination by the council of officers in mid-1653 suggests that he had misgivings about the new regime’s constitutional validity.130A. Woolrych, ‘The calling of Barebone’s Parliament’, EHR lxxx. 508. His contact with the council of state also tailed off after 1652.131CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 55, 74, 194, 244, 282, 297-8, 367, 434; 1651-2, pp. 121, 142, 225; 1652-3, pp. 101, 405; 1655, p. 115; 1656-7, p. 318. The protectoral council apparently had to think twice before appointing him a Yorkshire oyer and terminer commissioner in 1655, but he could certainly be relied upon when it came to suppressing royalists and levying the decimation tax.132CSP Dom. 1655, p. 115; TSP v. 185. Having either not sought or not secured a seat in the first protectoral Parliament in 1654, he was returned for the North Riding in the elections to the second in the summer of 1656.133Supra, ‘Yorkshire’. He almost certainly owed his return to the strength of his interest as one of the North Riding’s most active and hard-working local governors.

The good old interest, 1656-7

Robinson received 74 committee appointments in the second protectoral Parliament – all of them between September 1656 and late February 1657. He was named in first place to 12 committees and chaired or reported from at least three of these, including the committee for confirming the abolition of the court of wards.134CJ vii. 446a, 448b, 450a, 452a, 453a, 453b, 456a, 462b, 464a, 466b, 468a, 469a, 472b, 480b, 491a, 491b, 494b. He also chaired the committee of the whole House on the Irish union bill.135CJ vii. 459b, 480b; Burton’s Diary, i. 352-3. His eight tellerships were mostly in minor divisions – with the notable exception of his final two, which related to the Humble Petition and Advice.136CJ vii. 433a, 449a, 450a, 454a, 458a, 466b, 496a, 496b. A high proportion of his committee appointments were consistent with his familiar political preoccupations – moral reform, the provision of a godly ministry, the punishment of delinquents, the eradication of abuses in public and private office, the improvement of public revenue and the advancement of trade.137CJ vii. 430a, 434a, 440a, 442a, 442b, 443b, 445b, 448a, 450a, 459a, 461a, 463b, 469a, 482b, 485b, 488b, 493b.

Robinson contributed frequently in debate – indeed, he seems to have been uncommonly fond of the sound of his own voice. On 22 December 1656, after Robinson had tried to have other English towns included in a bill for compensating the citizens of Gloucester with Irish lands, Colonel Henry Markham got ‘very angry’ with him, claiming ‘he took more liberty to speak than any other man and had spoke two or three times to this business’.138Burton’s Diary, i. 204, 205, 207. The two men were ‘at very high words both in their seats and at the door [of the House]’. Robinson’s long-windedness also annoyed the parliamentary diarist Thomas Burton, who recorded attending the committee for erecting a court of justice in the north, which was making good progress, having ‘passed through a great part of the bill, till Mr. Robinson came in and held us upon the debate about an hour … When he was gone we passed a good part further …’.139Burton’s Diary, i. 19.

Prolix Robinson may have been, but his speeches reveal the depth of his commitment to the ‘good old interest’. He was particularly concerned to maintain the ‘justice and credit’ of the parliamentarian cause and to keep faith with ‘such as have been faithful from the beginning’.140Burton’s Diary, i. 3, 93, 94-5. Even an innocuous bill on the Forest of Dean produced an impassioned diatribe on the need to stay true to first principles.

We promised Englishmen freedom, equal freedom … Did we not make the people believe that we fought for their liberty? Let us not deceive them of their expectation. Is it not by their hands and successes that our interest remains, that we sit here? Let us not forget it, lest we be laid aside ourselves, upon the same account that former powers were laid aside.141Burton’s Diary, i. 228.

Only two Members (one of them presumably Robinson) voted against having the bill engrossed.142Burton’s Diary, i. 229. Determined to bear up the honest party and ordinary working people, he was equally committed to tearing down what he termed ‘the ‘engrossing of trade’.143Burton’s Diary, i. 15, 309. Although a friend and political ally of Lambert and Baynes, he attacked their bill (introduced on 13 December 1656) for establishing a corporation to regulate cloth manufacture in the West Riding as ‘a mere monopoly, which will not only destroy the wool grower but the poor clothier, for it seems that none shall buy or sell wool but such as are free of this corporation’.144Burton’s Diary, i. 126-7; ii. 372. He clashed with Baynes again in debates on 1 and 8 January 1657 on a bill for improving the receipts of the excise and duties on wine. As a major figure in administering the excise, Baynes had a strong vested interest in this legislation.145Supra, ‘Adam Baynes’. Yet although Robinson was probably as keen as Baynes was to strengthen state revenues, he was more of a stickler for protecting the rights of householders and retailers against what he regarded as the ‘arbitrary power’ of customs and excise officials to enter premises and to distrain private property as they saw fit. His solution to these abuses (as he thought them) was to strengthen Parliament’s power over the appointment and supervision of local tax officials.146Burton’s Diary, i. 292-4, 328, 330.

With this concern to succour the parliamentarian faithful and the ‘poor people’ of the nation went a keen desire to identify and mulct ‘neuters’ and ‘malignants’.147Burton’s Diary, i. 93, 94-5. On 23 December 1656, he joined Lambert, Baynes, Robert Lilburne and other prominent Yorkshire Cromwellians in supporting a petition from the ‘well-affected’ of the North Riding, proposing that the burden of maintaining the army be laid entirely upon the royalists – in other words, a widening of the decimation tax.148CJ vii. 473; Burton’s Diary, i. 208-9. Robinson was at his most expansive when highlighting the continuing threat from the Cavaliers and the importance of maintaining and policing the line that divided Parliament’s friends from its enemies. He spoke strongly in favour of a militia bill – introduced by Major-general John Disbrowe on 25 December – that would make the decimation tax permanent. Without such legislation, the rule of the major-generals could not continue. Robinson was in no doubt as to the bill’s virtues

It is equal that they [the Cavaliers] that occasion the trouble [the 1655 royalist risings] should bear the burden of it. They are your only enemies … Will you make no distinction between your friends and your enemies? … The honest party look upon it as a great favour that there is a distinction made, a character set upon him, that you may know a Cavalier from a Roundhead … If you bear your witness to that distinction, it will encourage your friends, though it be but a small tax.149Burton’s Diary, i. 230-2.

The protector’s shift towards those Members eager to demolish the rule of major-generals and to introduce more traditional forms of government was to push Robinson into opposition. Perhaps an early indication of his political re-alignment can be seen on 27 December, when he and Major-general Lambert’s deputy, Robert Lilburne, were the only men in the House to vote against a motion for adding 2,000 acres to the estate settled upon Henry Cromwell* in Ireland.150Burton’s Diary, i. 260. When the militia bill was debated again on 7 January 1657, Robinson urged it be given a second reading, arguing that there could be no compromising with the cavaliers: ‘they are a false people. They distinguish themselves. I would have you to distinguish them’.151Burton’s Diary, i. 313.

Robinson emerges from the debates in this Parliament as the archetypal puritan killjoy. When the subject of fiddlers and minstrels came up in the House on 5 December 1656, he opined that ‘these minstrels do corrupt the manners of the people and inflame their debauchery by their lewd and obscene songs’.152Burton’s Diary, i. 23. And he clearly wished to ban the celebration of Christmas, complaining on 25 December ‘I could get no rest all night for the preparations for this foolish day’s solemnity’.153Burton’s Diary, i. 229. Nevertheless, his attitude towards the crime and punishment of the Quaker leaders and alleged blasphemer James Naylor was more ambivalent than that of many other zealous puritans in the House. He conceded that Naylor’s principles were ‘noxious’, but he repeatedly raised points that were aimed at mitigating his punishment. He questioned whether it might not be best for Naylor to be tried under common law rather than directly by the House, he objected to describing his crime as ‘horrid’ blasphemy (‘I do not find the scripture so clear in what it is’) and he preferred a sentence of hard labour to either capital or corporal punishment.154Burton’s Diary, i. 77, 92, 119, 162. On the subject of Quakerism itself he again took a somewhat ambiguous line: ‘I am against referring it to a committee to bring in a law against them under the name of Quakers. Some may be called Quakers that are not so’. He argued that Quakers should be punished only insofar as they threatened to disturb the peace or challenged the ‘superintendency’ of the church by the magistrate.155Burton’s Diary, i. 171-2. He also showed flashes of the anticlericalism that Fox had detected in him six years earlier.156Burton’s Diary, i. 359. That he was opposed to tithes, or at least to coercive measures against those who had opted out of the parochial ministry, can perhaps be inferred from his tellership with Lambert on 24 November 1656 against imprisonment for refusal to pay for the maintenance of ministers.157CJ vii. 458a.

The manner of Naylor’s punishment raised another important issue in Robinson’s eyes, and that was the locus of sovereignty in the protectorate. He sought not only to maintain the authority of Parliament against the ‘inferior courts’ but also against the protector himself.158Burton’s Diary, i. 162. When Cromwell wrote to the Commons late in December 1656, asking to know its grounds and reasons for giving sentence without his consent, Robinson was adamant that the House’s proceedings with regard to Naylor could not be gainsaid, even though he personally had been ‘as much against this business as any man’

If this House have no judicatory power, I doubt not we have no foundation. This is the essence, the life of our being … This demurrer to your jurisdiction puts all your business to a stop … I am against the thing [Naylor’s trial], yet cannot admit any dispute upon the judgement, but that we ought to assert it. I would have a committee appointed to seek out the precedents and give his Highness satisfaction ...159Burton’s Diary, i. 251-2.

Later in the same debate, he asserted that if the House did not preserve its jurisdiction and privileges, ‘which is salus populi [the good of the people] … you overthrow all the people’s liberties … The supreme judicatory is originally in the people. The Instrument [of Government] says that the legislative power shall be in a Parliament and a single person, but it says not the supreme judicatory of the nation’.160 Burton’s Diary, i. 261. Although Robinson was careful to speak in support of the constitutional arrangements established under the Instrument, he could not conceal his belief in the sovereignty of Parliament: ‘it is not practicable, nor good neither, for a Parliament to make laws and execute them themselves; yet they may do it, if they please. These are arcana republicae [state secrets]. What is above the jurisdiction of a Parliament?’.161Burton’s Diary, i. 271-3.

Commonwealthsman, 1657-9

As a confirmed Commons supremacist, Robinson would have no truck with the Humble Petition and Advice. When it was first mooted in the House, on 19 January 1657, that Cromwell should ‘take upon him the government according to the ancient constitution’, Robinson was one of the first to attack the idea: ‘the old constitution is Charles Stuart’s interest. I hope we are not calling him in again’.162Burton’s Diary, i. 363. On 23 February, he was a minority teller against having the Humble Petition read, and two days later (25 Feb.), he was a minority teller in favour of having it referred to a committee of the whole House – the Humble Petition’s opponents probably calculating that they had more chance of scuppering it on the floor of the House, by filibustering and similar tactics, than they could in committee.163CJ vii. 496a, 496b. The Venetian ambassador labelled Robinson ‘a member of Lambert’s party’ and related a speech by him early in March in which he had called for the Humble Petition to be burned by the common hangman.164CSP Ven. 1657-9, p. 22. So disgusted was Robinson at what he perceived as the royalist drift in parliamentary politics that he took advantage of the leave of absence granted to him on 19 February to withdraw to Yorkshire. In mid-May, Deputy Major-general Lilburne wrote to Robinson, asking him to prevent pro-kingship officers corrupting the views of their colleagues in the north, and particularly in Lambert’s regiment.165TSP vi. 292. Relating the strength of support for the Humble Petition at Westminster, Lilburne urged Robinson to return to the House: ‘You are much desired here, and it is believed you might be very helpful at this time …’.166TSP vi. 293. In the event, Robinson does not appear to have resumed his seat until the beginning of the second session, early in 1658, when he joined the rest of the commonwealthsmen in attacking the Cromwellian Other House as an infringement of the sovereignty of the Commons.167Burton’s Diary, ii. 439-40.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Robinson stood with Robert Lilburne for the North Riding borough of Malton. Their years of service to the ‘good old interest’, combined with Robinson’s clout as the area’s chief magistrate, were enough to secure them the support of New Malton, but the inhabitants of Old Malton preferred the Cromwellian – or possibly crypto-royalist – Philip Howard* and another opponent of the army and the sects, George Marwood*, and the result was a double return. The dispute sparked off a long-running battle at Westminster between the opponents of the protectorate (led by the commonwealthsmen), who backed Robinson and Lilburne, and the opponents of the republican and army interest (led by the court interest), who favoured their rivals. After ‘much labour and sweat’, the Cromwellians on the committee of privileges swung the verdict in Howard and Marwood’s favour.168Supra, ‘Malton’. But when the committee reported its decision on 7 March, the commonwealthsmen forced a division on the issue, with Adam Baynes and his fellow Yorkshire republican Colonel Matthew Alured acting as tellers for the Robinson-Lilburne camp. Once again, however, the commonwealthsmen found themselves outnumbered, and Howard and Marwood’s return was duly upheld.169CJ vii. 611a.

Robinson doubtless welcomed the army’s dissolution of Protector Richard’s Parliament in April 1659, and he was one of the most active members of the restored Rump. Between May and mid-October 1659, he was appointed to 73 committees and served as a teller in nine divisions.170CJ vii. 672b, 704b, 714b, 727a, 744a, 754b, 775a, 786a, 787a. Among his first allotted tasks in the House was repealing legislation passed since the dissolving of the Rump in April 1653 and arranging the release or recompense of victims of Cromwellian ‘tyranny’.171CJ vii. 659b, 661a, 661b. He chaired a committee set up on 9 June to consider a petition from one such victim – his fellow republican and likely friend, Colonel Matthew Alured – and reported the next day (10 June) that Alured had witnessed against the ‘corruptions’ of single-person rule and that Cromwell’s treatment of him had been unjust.172CJ vii. 678a, 678b-679a. His distaste for all things Cromwellian prompted his tellership with Henry Marten on 4 July against the commonwealth picking up the tab for Oliver Cromwell’s funeral expenses.173CJ vii. 704b. The experience of Cromwellian rule seems, if anything, to have strengthened his resolve to exclude backsliders from office and to punish delinquents.174CJ vii. 689b, 705b, 742a, 744b, 748b, 769a, 791b; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 58, 192. The House enlisted his services regularly that summer in initiatives for suppressing Sir George Boothe’s* royalist-Presbyterian rising and sequestering the estates of those involved.175CJ vii. 751b, 754a, 764b, 765b, 766a, 767b. Similarly, the council of state sought his assistance late in July in ‘examining of such persons as have been lately secured upon suspicion that they are dangerous to the peace of the commonwealth’.176Bodl. Rawl. C.179, p. 255. On 10 August, he was a majority teller in favour of having a declaration against the rebels read in every church in addition to every market town.177CJ vii. 754b. And he was a majority teller again on 24 September for sending one of those implicated in the rebellion, Viscount Fauconberg (Thomas Belasyse*), to the Tower.178CJ vii. 786a. Concern for the security of the commonwealth probably explains the unusual (for him) number of appointments he received to committees for settling the militia, at least one of which he may have chaired.179CJ vii. 663b, 668a, 694a, 727a, 729a, 757b, 772b. On 21 July, he was a teller with his fellow North Riding radical John Anlaby against appointing a well-known Yorkshire Presbyterian and persecutor of the Quakers to the county’s militia commission.180CJ vii. 727a. Robinson himself, in his capacity as a magistrate, tried to protect Friends from persecution.181Friends House Lib. Ms 354 (Swarthmore mss), item 41. Another of his likely areas of interest in the restored Rump was trade and maritime affairs.182CJ vii. 673b, 691b, 702a, 757a, And once again, he was assigned the task of reforming the shrievalty.183CJ vii. 766b.

But it was sorting out the commonwealth’s finances that probably took up most of Robinson’s time in the restored Rump. Included on numerous committees for the collection of the customs, excise and other levies, he was also added to the committee for inspecting the treasuries on three occasions as to specific items of financial business.184CJ vii. 662a, 665b, 666b, 676b, 684b, 685a, 689a, 690a, 691b, 711a, 726a, 762a, 763b, 772a, 780b, 781b, 786a. In addition, he was appointed to the May and September 1659 commissions for bringing in the customs and excise. The Rump’s concern to put its finances in order was fuelled by anxiety at army unrest over pay and related grievances. When the council of officers tried to pressure the House early in October by demanding payment of arrears and the censure of their critics at Westminster, the House responded by cashiering Lambert and his allies and placing the army under ‘loyal’ commissioners. Robinson, once an ally of Lambert, came out conspicuously on the side of the civilian interest. On 12 October, he was named to a committee for appointing the new commissioners, and the same day he was named in first place to a committee for rebutting the army’s petition.185CJ vii. 796b; The Lord General Fleetwoods Answer to the Humble Representation of Collonel Morley (1659), 11 (E.1010.6). The next day (13 Oct.), Lambert and troops loyal to him dissolved the House.186Hutton, The Restoration, 65-6.

Negotiating the Restoration, 1659-69

Robinson sided with Sir Arthur Hesilrige’s civilian republican faction during the last months of 1659 and was among several of Sir Arthur’s allies who were returned the thanks of the House on 29 December – following the Rump’s final restoration – for having ‘acted in the service of Parliament during the time of its late interruption’.187CJ vii. 799a. Robinson’s popularity with the restored Members was sufficient on 31 December to win him a place on what was to prove the commonwealth’s last council of state, although he garnered the least number of votes of the successful candidates.188CJ vii. 800b; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. xxv; TSP vii. 809. In the House itself, he again figured prominently in efforts to manage the commonwealth’s finances and to exclude malignants from public life. Ordinances for introducing political qualifications on parliamentary membership in proposed fresh election and for appointing commissioners to manage the army and navy may also have benefited from his industry.189CJ vii. 797b, 799a, 800a, 806b, 807a, 808b, 811a, 846a. Both of his tellerships in these last few weeks of the Rump concerned army appointments.190CJ vii. 805b, 842b.

Anxious to shore up their faction’s fragile ascendancy, Hesilrige and his friends arranged for the appointment of Thomas Scot I and Robinson on 16 January 1660 to attend General George Monck* on his march southwards from Scotland. Publicly, their mission was to offer him the thanks and congratulations of Parliament, but they also had ‘private directions’ to ‘draw the general to their party’.191CJ vii. 813a; Baker, Chronicle, 678. The two men joined Monck near Leicester and were shown the ‘height of respect’ by the general, who pretended to be wholly directed by their counsel, while at the same doing his best to ‘dissemble his inclinations’. For their part, Scot and Robinson effectively acted as ‘strict spies’ upon their charge and tried to obstruct his discussions with county gentry calling for an end to the Rump.192CCSP iv. 537, 538, 548; HMC Leyborne-Popham, 210; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 209; Whitelocke, Diary, 564; Baker, Chronicle, 680-1; T. Gumble, Life of General Monck (1671), 224, 225-6; J. Price, The Mystery and Method of His Majesty’s Happy Restauration (1680), 83-6; G. Davies, The Restoration of Charles II, 271. On 6 February, they accompanied Monck to the House, where the general gave a speech that reportedly troubled and offended his would-be political mentors. The general, they complained, ‘gave the Cavaliers a possibility of being received into the exercise of trust, with a total exclusion of the more strict Parliament party under the notion of fanatics’.193CJ vii. 834b, 835a; Gumble, Monck, 229, 234; Baker, Chronicle, 682, 684; Price, Mystery and Method, 91; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 216; Whitelocke, Diary, 566-7; Prose Works of Milton ed. Ayers, vii. 166-7. In response to Monck’s call for fresh elections to fill up the House, Scot and Robinson were dispatched on 11 February to fob him off with assurances that the matter was in hand.194CJ vii. 841a; Gumble, Monck, 248; Baker, Chronicle, 686; Price, Mystery and Method, 105-6; Whitelocke, Diary, 569. But having boasted of their ‘intimacy and favour’ with Monck, the two commissioners and other members of Hesilrige’s faction now came under criticism from the general and his officers for favouring ‘fanatics’ – notably, Praise-God Barbon* – and Edmund Ludlowe’s republican interest in Ireland.195Whitelocke, Diary, 569; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 222; Davies, Restoration, 282; Prose Works of Milton ed. Ayers, vii. 170-1. A week later (18 Feb.), Hesilrige and other leading commonwealthsmen – there are conflicting reports as to whether Scot and Robinson were among them – met with Monck and tried to persuade him not to allow the secluded Members back into the House, but to no avail.196Ludlow, Mems. ii. 228; Whitelocke, Diary, 570; Baker, Chronicle, 687; Clarke Pprs. iv. 264. One of the Commons’ first acts after the re-admission of the secluded Members on 21 February was to remove Robinson as a customs and excise commissioner.197CJ vii. 851a. He received only two more committee appointments before the Long Parliament was finally dissolved in mid-March.198CJ vii. 868b, 877a.

In the elections to the 1660 Convention, Robinson was returned for Scarborough on the interest of his friend and fellow republican Vice-admiral John Lawson.199HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Scarborough’. Robinson was still championing the ‘good old interest’ as late as 28 April, when he questioned the legitimacy of the House of Lords, and it was therefore a cause of some amazement to contemporaries that when the king’s offer to ‘forgive all offenders that seek for pardon’ was read to the Commons on 1 May, he was the first man to stand up and promise obedience to Charles.200CCSP iv. 678, 681; HMC 5th Rep. 146, 149, 206. The former ‘fierce man against the king did now magnify his grace and goodness’.201Whitelocke, Diary, 583. The reason for this sudden volte-face is not clear. Perhaps he had got wind of the intention of one of Baynes’s brothers-in-law to complain to the House about him ‘in reference to some things said to be acted by me in the late differences’ and thereby obstruct his indemnity under an act of oblivion. Anxious to protect himself and his family, Robinson wrote to Baynes in mid-May, asking him to call off his brother-in-law and pleading his own sufferings

It is well known I have had no respect to my own advantage in what I did – that I have been a great loser by the times; have wasted my estate and have contracted debts upon it; have suffered much from others and have had no reparation … and a damage fallen upon me which I shall never recover; have not added one penny to my estate by any man’s damage. What I have over-acted as to the party I joined with out of too much zeal of [sic] mistake, I hope will find oblivion in the general case, many thousands having acted more than I, and some perhaps more to their own profit.202Add. 21425, f. 222.

This last comment was a veiled threat to Baynes himself, who was notorious for the profits he had made by dealing in sequestered property.203Supra, ‘Adam Baynes’. Robinson looked to Baynes’s uncle, Sir Christopher Clapham*, to speak for him in the Convention, but it was Robinson himself who pleaded his cause most effectively. When his exemption from the act of oblivion was debated on 11 June, he made a ‘recanting speech at the bar of very near half an hour, all bathed in tears …’, at which the House confined itself merely to disabling him from sitting.204HMC 5th Rep. 154, 199. His recantation was parodied in the popular press as an act of shameless expediency.205A Private Conference Between Mr L. Robinson and Mr T. Scott (1660), 9 (E.1025.1).

Despite repeated calls for his imprisonment during 1660 as an ‘inveterate rebel’, Robinson seems to have emerged from the Restoration largely unscathed.206CCSP iv. 628; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 122. The authorities suspected him of involvement in the Farnley Wood plot of 1663, but the ringleaders had not trusted him sufficiently to take him into their confidence.207Add. 33770, ff. 5v, 28v, 35v. Robinson died in the summer of 1669 and was buried in Pickering church choir on 16 July.208Pickering par. reg. In his will, he asked to be buried without a funeral service, and he charged his estate with legacies totalling £1,800.209Borthwick, Prob. Reg. 50, f. 461. None of his immediate family sat in Parliament.