SKIPWITH, Thomas (1619-94), of Gray’s Inn, Mdx., and Metheringham, Lincs.

Skipwith was descended from a companion of the Conqueror who had settled at Skipwith, in Yorkshire, and whose descendants had built up an extensive estate in south Lincolnshire by the mid-fourteenth century.29Lincs. Peds. 893-5; Skipwith, Skipwiths, 1, 12-23; HP Commons 1386-1421, ‘John Skipwith’. The family had supplied knights of the shire and borough Members for the county since the reign of Henry V, but by the early seventeenth century its wealth and importance had been eroded by debt, and the Skipwiths were represented by ‘comparatively obscure junior branches’.30HP Commons, 1386-1421, ‘John Skipwith’; HP Commons 1509-58, ‘Sir William Skipwith’; HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘Edward Skipwith’; Lincs. Wills 1600-17 ed. A. R. Maddison (Lincoln, 1891), p. xviii; Holmes, Lincs. 67.

The scion of what was apparently an illegimate branch of the family, Skipwith would be the first of his particular line to enter Parliament.31Add. 38139, f. 140; SP14/33, f. 39v; C193/12/2, f. 33. He was probably the ‘Mr Skipwith’ who was imprisoned in the Fleet in 1639 as one of the ringleaders of a student revolt at Gray’s Inn (where he had been admitted the previous year) following the suspension of six students who had not paid their commons debts.32PGB Inn, i. 337; W. Prest, Inns of Ct. (1972), 104. If so, he repented his misdemeanour and was allowed to resume his studies at the Inn, for in 1645 he was called to the bar there. Although it is likely that Skipwith remained in London during the civil war, pursuing his legal studies, it is not clear where his political allegiance lay. His father, Edward Skipwith, was added to the Kesteven bench in 1647 and was nominated to several parliamentary commissions for Lincolnshire between 1643 and 1648 and again in 1659-60.33C231/5, p. 510; C231/6, pp. 79, 81, 370; A. and O. i. 294, 539, 696, 1086; ii. 1327, 1372, 1435.

Skipwith’s father was one of Grantham’s leading inhabitants and patrons, and it was almost certainly on his interest that Thomas was returned for the borough in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659.34Grantham during the Interregnum: the Hall Bk. of Grantham 1641-9 ed. B. Couth (Lincoln Rec. Soc. lxxxiii), 12-13, 18, 21, 127; Hall Bk. of Grantham 1649-62 ed. Manterfield, 69, 94, 173, 248. Skipwith himself does not appear to have resided in the town during the 1650s and would continue to style himself as ‘of Gray’s Inn’ until at least 1664.35C6/46/182; C6/159/124; C6/159/125; Salop Archives, 1037/14/39. He received no committee appointments in this Parliament and made only two recorded contributions to debate. On 8 February 1659, during a debate on the bill of recognition, he declared firmly in favour of the traditional constitution of king, Lords and Commons and for recognising Richard Cromwell as lord protector

Let it be examined by what authority the ancient constitution was taken away by a handful of the House of Commons [the Rump in 1648-9]. I would, in the first place, acknowledge his highness, as is moved. He, we, are called by the law and chosen so. I know no law to take away the House of Lords.36Burton’s Diary, iii. 131.

Many years later, Skipwith claimed that at the first reading of the bill, he had ‘moved to lay it aside and to betake ourselves to better counsels and to consult the peace of the nation by calling in the then king’s majesty [Charles II] and restoring him to his crown and dignity, wherein he [Skipwith] enlarged himself as [much] as that subject would well bear’; and that at the bill’s second reading ‘he took exceptions to the several paragraphs ... as they came to be read ...’.37Bodl. Carte 77, f. 659. At the time, however, his only recorded criticism of the protectorate was the doubt he expressed on 11 March as to whether some of those returned for Scottish constituencies (who were mostly English army officers and members of the Scottish Cromwellian administration) had ever seen Scotland except on a map. But in contrast to the republicans in the House, who argued that the Scottish Members had no right to sit, Skipwith questioned whether 30 Members were enough to represent the Scots and urged that the Cromwellian union be put on a firmer legal footing.38Burton’s Diary, iv. 128-9.

Skipwith almost certainly welcomed the Restoration, signing the loyal address of the Lincolnshire gentry in June 1660 and retaining his place on the Kesteven bench.39The Humble Congratulation of the Nobility and Gentry of the County of Lincolne (1660); C220/9/4, f. 45v. Returned for Grantham to the 1660 Convention, he was listed by Philip, 4th Baron Wharton as a likely supporter of a Presbyterian church settlement.40G.F.T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 338. Once at Westminster, he seems to have favoured measures for the prompt payment of tithes and for confirming, if only temporarily, serving incumbents in sequestered livings.41CJ viii. 47a, 66b, 72a, 177b; HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Thomas Skipwith’. Whereas he proposed that the prominent republican Edmund Ludlowe II* be totally excepted from the indemnity bill – but failed to find a seconder – he opposed excepting the protector’s lawyers.42Ludlow, Voyce, 159; HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Thomas Skipwith’.

After 1660, Skipwith appears to have concentrated on his legal career. By August 1662, he had been appointed deputy to John Manners*, 8th earl of Rutland as recorder of Grantham; and in 1675 he was appointed a serjeant-at-law.43Hall Bk. of Grantham 1649-62 ed. Manterfield, 334, 343; Baker, Serjeants at Law, 446. His sponsors on this latter occasion were Rutland and another former parliamentarian peer, Edward 2nd Baron Montagu. Although made a king’s serjeant on the accession of James II, Skipwith apparently disapproved of the king’s ecclesiastical policies.44Baker, Serjeants at Law, 537; HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Thomas Skipwith’.

Skipwith died at his house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields on 28 May 1694 and was buried at Upminster, Essex, on 2 June.45PROB11/421, f. 46; Upminster par reg. In his will, he bequeathed the bulk of his estate to his only son Thomas, who was to represent the Wiltshire borough of Malmesbury in 1696.46PROB11/421, ff. 45v-46v; HP Commons 1660-1715, ‘Sir Thomas Skipwith’.