ROSSETER, Edward (1618-69), of Somerby, Lincs.

Rosseter’s family had settled in Lincolnshire by the early Tudor period, acquiring their estate at Somerby, near Grimsby, in the mid-sixteenth century.45Lincs. Peds. 833; A.C. Wood, ‘Col. Sir Edward Rossiter’, Reps. and Pprs. Assoc. Architectural Socs. xli. 219-20. Rosseter would be the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament, although both his father and uncle had been of sufficient rank to secure appointment to the Lincolnshire sewers commission.46C181/2, f. 49; C181/4, ff. 85, 156; C181/5, ff. 89, 150v. As a pupil of the godly ministers Edward Rainbowe and John Pomroy, he was probably exposed to puritan influences in his youth, and certainly his later career indicates that he was a man of strongly godly convictions.47Calamy Revised, 394; ‘Edward Rainbowe’, Oxford DNB. He was probably the ‘Edmund Rosseter’ who was listed as a signatory to the petition of the Lincolnshire gentry to Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham (the parliamentary lord lieutenant of the county) in June 1642, declaring their resolution to defend the ‘true Protestant religion’ and protesting ‘against all such as shall attempt to separate his Majesty from his great and faithful council of Parliament’.48PA, Main Pprs. 4 July 1642.

At the outbreak of civil war, Rosseter sided with Parliament – a decision almost certainly linked to his religious sympathies. Commissioned as a captain of dragoons under the godly Lincolnshire peer Theophilus Clinton, 4th earl of Lincoln, he took command of the earl’s regiment in the spring of 1643, although he retained the rank of captain and then major until at least mid-1644. He and his troops were attached to Willoughby of Parham’s brigade and subsequently became part of the Eastern Association army.49SP28/139, pt. 1, f. 23; SP28/161, pt. 2; SP28/298, f. 369; Add. 18779, f. 37; L. Spring, Regts. of the Eastern Assoc. (Bristol, 1998) ii. 91. Rosseter probably fought in many of the engagements in the East Midlands during the early years of the war and was certainly present at the second siege of Newark in February 1644, where he and Francis Thornhagh* were among the few parliamentarian officers to emerge with any credit following Prince Rupert’s defeat of Willoughby’s forces.50Luke Letter Bks. passim; Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 122-3; Wood, ‘Col. Rossiter’, 221-2.

Evidently regarded as an able soldier, Rosseter was commissioned as a colonel of horse at the establishment of the New Model army early in 1645. His regiment was detached from the main body of Sir Thomas Fairfax’s* army, however, as it was needed in Lincolnshire to guard against incursion by the royalist garrisons of Newark and Belvoir.51PA, Main Pprs. 15 Aug. 1645; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 163-4. In May 1645, he took over from Thomas Hatcher* as commander-in-chief of Lincolnshire, and the following month he contrived to bring his regiment to Naseby just in time to take part in the decisive battle of the first civil war.52Harl. 166, f. 208; LJ vii. 365a; J. Sprigg, Anglia Rediviva (1647), 36. He spend much of the second half of 1645 commanding the cavalry in the force that harried the king and his remaining forces in the west Midlands and northern England.53LJ vii. 566b, 572b, 595b, 608b, 678b. Rosseter was identified in 1646-7 as part of the Presbyterian or Essexian contingent in the army, and his regimental chaplain was the Presbyterian divine Robert Ram, who was a noted opponent of the sects.54J. Bastwick, The Utter Routing of the Whole Army of All the Independents and Sectaries (1646), 625; The Army Anatomized (1647), 3 (E.419.6); A. Laurence, Parliamentary Army Chaplains (Woodbridge, 1990), 168; ‘Robert Ram’, Oxford DNB.

Rosseter was returned as a ‘recruiter’ for Great Grimsby in March 1646 and entered bond to serve the town free of charge.55Supra, ‘Great Grimsby’; N. E. Lincs. RO, Gt. Grimsby Mayor’s Ct. Bks. 1/102/8, ff. 167, 168. His residence at Somerby lay about 12 miles west of the borough, and he may therefore have enjoyed some degree of local influence. But he probably owed his return largely to his reputation as Lincolnshire’s most renowned soldier and the likely support he received from the Wrays – the Grimsby area’s leading gentry family.56Supra, ‘Great Grimsby’. His duties as one of the commanders of the third and final parliamentarian siege of Newark detained him in the midlands for some months longer, but on or about 4 June 1646 he took his seat in the Commons and was returned the thanks of the House for his ‘many faithful and good services’.57CJ iv. 564a; Wood, ‘Col. Rossiter’, 227-8.

Rosseter does not seem to have attended the Commons with any great regularity – or if he did, was not one of the most active Members. He was named to only six committees before April 1647 and did not take the Covenant until 9 December 1646.58CJ iv. 570b, 625a, 632a; v. 7b, 8b, 9b, 117b. Although first and foremost a professional soldier, he sided with the Presbyterian grandees in their confrontation with the New Model army in the spring of 1647. Late in March, he presented to the House a letter from one of his officers, informing him that senior figures in the army – including Henry Ireton* and Robert Lilburne* – were endeavouring to collect signatures among the soldiery to a petition of grievances; a petition that the Presbyterians regarded as an affront to parliamentary authority.59CJ v. 129a; LJ ix. 115a; Bodl. Tanner 58, f. 18; Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 37. Rosseter was thanked by the House for ‘these timely informations’, but he had forfeited the trust of the army grandees and their friends, who claimed that the letter had been written with his connivance and that it contained ‘false aspersions’.60Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 447; A New Found Stratagem (1647), 11 (E.384.11).

That Rosseter was recognised by the Presbyterians as one of their staunchest supporters is confirmed by his addition, along with that of several other leading opponents of the army, to the Committee for Irish Affairs at Derby House* on 9 April 1647.61CJ v. 138a. This committee had emerged as the main executive body at Westminster by the spring of 1647 and was used by the Presbyterians to push through their plans for dismembering the New Model. After the army’s seizure of the king in June, the Commons ordered Fairfax to return Charles to parliamentary custody and appointed Rosseter and his regiment to act as the royal guard.62CJ v. 211a, 215a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 575. But the army grandees had other ideas, assigning Colonel Edward Whalley* to guard the king, while ordering Rosseter to march his regiment to army headquarters, where he could be kept under close surveillance.63LJ ix. 283b, 296b. This was too much for Rosseter, and at some point in late June or early July he retired from the army, and the Lincolnshire horse was given to his major, Philip Twisleton.64Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 752; Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, i. 83.

Rosseter was declared absent at the call of the House on 9 October 1647 but had returned to Westminster by 12 November, when he was named to a committee set up to investigate the king’s flight from Hampton Court contrary to the terms of his parole.65CJ v. 330a, 357a. Between November 1647 and June 1648, he was named to only five more committees, which suggests that he was not in regular attendance.66CJ v. 364b, 383a, 557b, 562b, 574a. With the resurgence of the Presbyterian interest during the first half of 1648, he came back into favour at Westminster, and on 1 June he was added to the Derby House Committee* – the body that had replaced the Committee of Both Kingdoms*.67CJ v. 578b. Two days later (3 June), on a recommendation from Derby House, he was ordered by the Commons to assemble a force of 120 horse to guard Parliament against royalist insurgents.68CJ v. 584a, b, 591b; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 92, 93. News of the royalists’ seizure of Pontefract persuaded the Commons to entrust him with an even greater responsibility on 5 June, when he was ordered to take command of the supernumerary forces that had been assembled to secure the midlands.69CJ v. 585b, 587b; LJ x. 308; HMC Portland, i. 467.

Back in the field, Rosseter quickly returned to winning ways, inflicting a crushing defeat on the Pontefract royalists at Willoughby Fields, in Nottinghamshire, on 5 July 1648.70CJ v. 628b; Wood, ‘Col. Rossiter’, 230-1. He was wounded in the thigh during this battle, and in recognition of his ‘valorous and gallant service’ the Commons awarded him £2,000 out of the sequestrations revenue and dispatched a surgeon, a physician and an apothecary from London to speed his recovery.71CJ v. 628b, 629a; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 177; HMC Portland, i. 477. In August, he helped to implement a Commons order confirming Francis Clinton alias Fines* as governor of Tattershall Castle in defiance of the will of the Lords, who wanted the stronghold returned to its owner – and Rosseter’s former commanding officer – the Presbyterian peer the earl of Lincoln.72CJ v. 655b; LJ x. 421b, 460b. According to a correspondent of the royalist grandee Sir Edward Hyde*, Rosseter and other prominent Presbyterian officers – including Hugh Bethell*, John Bright*, Sir Henry Cholmley*, Sir Edward Rodes* and Charles White* – had ‘obliged themselves ... as much as words and oaths could do’ not to raise forces against the king during the second civil war

and not only so but had promised to raise men for the king when they should see any visible force to secure them. And I believe at that time when they promised they really intended to perform it. But I am confident the design was new formed above, and they was [sic] to receive commissions from the Parliament and not subordinate to Cromwell’s but in the meantime to suppress the king’s party and afterwards, if Cromwell had been beaten, to have joined with [the duke of] Hamilton. The reasons that make me believe this are not only drawn from their oaths and promises which they gave severally to those that treated with them but also their refusing to march with Cromwell to that battle [Preston] which must necessarily decide the business of the kingdom.73Bodl. Clarendon 34, f. 26.

Although Rosseter was named to a committee on 28 August 1648, it is far from clear that he had actually returned to Westminster.74CJ v. 689a. That same day, the Commons ordered that a letter of thanks be sent to him, and on 26 September he was declared absent at the call of the House.75CJ v. 689a; vi. 34a. He was thanked by the Commons again on 15 November ‘in testimony of the House’s acceptance of his very faithful services, performed with much courage to the Parliament and kingdom, to the great hazard of his life and effusion of much of his blood’.76CJ vi. 76b. He was probably absent from the House at the time of Pride’s Purge, and although he was not among those secluded by the army, he did not take his seat in the Rump and almost certainly disapproved strongly of the trial and execution of the king. Nevertheless, he was apparently regarded favourably by the new regime. His troop of militia horse was not ordered to be disbanded until April 1649, he was added to the Lindsey commission of the peace in 1650, and he was named to every Lincolnshire assessment commission under the Rump.77CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 86, 187, 189-90.

Rosseter probably welcomed the establishment of the protectorate late in 1653, and his appointment in August 1654 as an ejector for Lincolnshire suggests that he supported the Cromwellian religious settlement. In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament that summer, he capitalised on his standing as Lincolnshire’s foremost military figure to secure return – apparently in first place – for one of the county’s ten seats. He received no committee appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, he was returned for Lincolnshire again, coming third on a poll with 561 votes.78Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’. Of the ten successful candidates, four, including Rosseter, were allowed to take their seats – the remaining six were excluded by the protectoral council as opponents of the government.79CJ vii. 425b. However, according to a royalist newsletter, Rosseter refused to accept his ticket from the council granting him admission to the House, and there is certainly no evidence that he was present during the first session.80CCSP iii. 189. It seems that the exclusions had stripped this Parliament of any legitimacy in Rosseter’s eyes, just as Pride’s Purge had apparently led him to turn his back on the Long Parliament. Only when the excluded Members were allowed admission to the House, at the beginning of the second session in January 1658, did Rosseter take his own seat, receiving appointment to two minor committees before Parliament’s dissolution in February.81CJ vii. 588a, 591a.

Rosseter was returned for Lincolnshire again in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament of 1659 (the claim that he was excluded from the House as a suspected royalist is completely bogus).82Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’; HP Commons, 1660-90, ‘Edward Rossiter’. He was named to only two committees in this Parliament but served as a teller in two important divisions.83CJ vii. 609a, 639a. On 18 March, he partnered Arthur Annesley in support of continuing a debate on whether the Members elected for Scottish constituencies should withdraw from the House.84CJ vii. 615b. The two opposing tellers were the leading republican Sir Arthur Hesilrige and the likely crypto-royalist William Brereton, who were united only, it seems, in a desire to undermine the protectoral settlement. Rosseter and Annesley won this division, and when the main question was put – that the Members for Scotland should withdraw – the anti-Cromwellians were again defeated. Exactly a month later (18 Apr.), Rosseter was a majority teller with Hugh Boscawen in favour of putting the question that the general council of officers should not be allowed to sit without the protector’s permission.85CJ vii. 641b. When the main question was put it was again won by Richard Cromwell’s supporters. With the army full of unrest over pay and related issues, any move to restrict the meeting of the general council was bound to be highly contentious, and the victories obtained by Rosseter and the Cromwellians on 18 April contributed significantly to the army’s dissolution of Parliament four days later.

Although Rosseter had aligned with the Cromwellians in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, it seems that the royalists had contacted him by early 1659 and obtained some assurance of his willingness to serve the king’s interests.86CCSP iv. 15, 128, 137, 157. He was included that summer on Gervase Holles’s* list of leading Lincolnshire Presbyterians ‘who have heretofore disserved his Majesty’ but ‘pretend now to be better disposed, either out of a sense of what they have done ill or hatred of the now governing faction’.87Eg. 2541, f. 362v. The royalists evidently expected him to rise in support of Sir George Boothe* in August, but Rosseter claimed that he had heard nothing of Boothe’s rebellion ‘until the instant’, and he criticised the Lincolnshire royalist John Lord Belasyse (John Belasyse*) for his dilatory leadership.88CCSP iv. 235-6, 458. The council of state also expected Rosseter to appear for the king and sought to obtain his engagement that he would not act against Parliament.89CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 107. Indeed, it was reported on 6 August that the authorities had placed him under house arrest.90Clarke Pprs. iv. 38. Undaunted, Rosseter informed the royalist spy-master John Mordaunt in September that he would attempt anything for the king in order to prevent the ruin of the nation.91Original Lttrs. and Pprs. ed. T. Carte (1739), ii. 215. A few months later, he gave his backing to General George Monck’s* invasion plans, and it was duly reported in January 1660 that he had risen in Lincolnshire in support of Monck and of Lord Fairfax in Yorkshire.92Baker, Chronicle, 698; CCSP iv. 508. His ties to the Presbyterian grandee Denzil Holles* – whose niece he married in April – made him an even more valuable ally in the eyes of the royalists, who conceived that if he and Fairfax stood firm to their interest then ‘the game will be a fair one, however obstinate Monck may prove’.93HMC Bath, ii. 144; CCSP iv. 589; Wood, ‘Col. Rossiter’, 233-4. The royalists’ faith in Rosseter was confirmed on 16 February, when he was part of a delegation of Lincolnshire gentry that presented a petition to Monck demanding a ‘free, full Parliament’ – a measure likely to result in the restoration of monarchy.94A Letter from Divers of the Gentry of the County of Lincolne to...General Monck (1660, 669 f.23.51); The Declaration of the Gentry, Ministers, Freeholders of the County and City of Lincoln (1660, 669 f.23.45).

Rosseter resumed his seat in the Long Parliament on 21 February 1660, when the secluded Members were re-admitted, and two days later (23 Feb.) he was nominated to the new council of state, receiving the third highest number of votes behind William Pierrepont and John Crewe I.95CJ vii. 847b, 849b; Add. 70059, unfol. He was named to nine committees during February and March, including two relating to the calling of the Convention.96CJ vii. 847b, 848b, 849a, 856a, 856b, 860b, 868b, 871a, 872b. That he did not favour an unconditional restoration of the king is perhaps suggested by his appointment to a committee set up on 10 March for requiring the new militia commissioners to subscribe in writing that ‘the war undertaken by the Parliament against the forces raised by the late king and his adherents was just and lawful’.97CJ vii. 871a. Monck rewarded Rosseter for his support by giving him command of John Okey’s* regiment of horse.98Bodl. Carte 103, f. 652; CCSP iv. 623; Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, ii. 175.

Rosseter was returned for Lincolnshire to the 1660 Convention and was listed by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton as a likely supporter of a Presbyterian church settlement.99G.F.T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 338 He was one of the first men to be knighted at the Restoration – the king being anxious to conciliate leading Presbyterians – he signed the loyal address of the Lincolnshire gentry in June 1660, and he retained his place on all three Lincolnshire benches.100The Humble Congratulation of the Nobility and Gentry of the County of Lincolne (1660). Rumours in 1662 that he was involved in a ‘great design’ for restoring the commonwealth were almost certainly false.101CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 614.

Rosseter died on 9 January 1669, after a long and painful battle with cancer of the mouth, and was buried at Somerby on 30 January.102Eg. 2539, f. 311; Somerby par. reg. In his will, he charged his estate with legacies worth about £6,500 and annuities of over £500 a year. One of his trustees and ‘worthy friends’ was the Lincolnshire civil-war parliamentarian John Nelthorpe*.103PROB11/329, ff. 170v-173. According to his inventory, Rosseter died in possession of £351 in ready money and was owed £1,816 in rent and debts.104Lincs. RO, INV/169/429. None of his immediate family sat in Parliament.