SWYNFEN, John (1613-94), of Swinfen, Weeford, Staffs.

Background and early career

Although the Swinfens had been established at Swinfen since the thirteenth century, they had made little impact beyond their own neighbourhood before John Swynfen emerged as one of Staffordshire’s, and indeed the kingdom’s, leading politicians during the 1640s.28Shaw, Staffs. ii. 29. None of his immediate forebears had been appointed to the county bench, for example, or had sat as MPs, even though the parliamentary boroughs of Lichfield and Tamworth lay within a few miles of Swinfen. Swynfen, too, seemed destined for a life of gentlemanly mediocrity – his only distinguishing mark, although an important one, being his appointment as steward to the godly Staffordshire peer William, 6th Baron Paget. However, it is not clear when Swynfen acquired this position (although he and Paget were certainly acting together in Staffordshire by August 1648).29SP28/257, unfol. If it was before 1640, then he may well have profited from Paget’s exalted political connections, for as one of the 12 peers who signed the August 1640 petition requesting that Charles summon Parliament, Swynfen’s employer was one of the puritan grandees who brought down the personal rule and spearheaded the reformist cause in the Long Parliament.30‘William Paget, 6th Baron Paget’, Oxford DNB.

Swynfen and his father signed the Staffordshire petition to the Lords of May 1642, requesting that the peers urge the king to accept the Militia Ordinance and to ‘lean upon the hand and be graciously pleased to follow the counsels ... of Parliament, that the bleeding wounds of our brethren of Ireland be bound up’.31PA, Main Pprs. 16 May 1642, f. 131. Whereas several of the county’s leading men, among them (to much surprise) Paget, fell away from Parliament during the course of 1642, Swynfen remained firm in the parliamentarian cause. His strongly puritan piety almost certainly influenced his decision to side with Parliament, as it did his character and deportment generally. According to one (hostile) commentator, he was ‘usually named russet-coat, from his affected plainness and pretences to sincerity’.32Shaw, Staffs. ii. 27. Added to the Staffordshire county committee in June 1643, he played an active part in its proceedings, gaining ‘such an influence that many affairs of the county were chiefly determined by him’.33CJ iii. 110a; LJ vi. 70a; CCC 26-7; Staffs. Co. Cttee. 21, 57, 122, 148, 255; Shaw, Staffs. ii. 27.

Swynfen was committed to the rigorous prosecution of the war against the king, and as such he became aligned with a faction within the parliamentary west midlands association that regarded its commander, Basil Feilding, 2nd earl of Denbigh, as lukewarm against the king and generally politically suspect.34CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 445-7. Swynfen’s principal local ally in the struggle against Denbigh and his supporters on the Staffordshire county committee was Parliament’s commander in Cheshire, Sir William Brereton*.35Supra, ‘Sir William Brereton’; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 194, 273. Having garrisoned Eccleshall castle in north Staffordshire, Brereton had earned the enmity of this pro-Denbigh group – led by colonels Simon Rugeley and Edward Leigh* – which claimed that his actions ‘much eclipseth the earl of Denbigh our lord general’s power and doth lessen his commission’.36Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 18; LJ vi. 654b. In the summer and autumn of 1644, Denbigh hit back at his detractors, prompting Swynfen, Sir Richard Skeffington* and the earl’s other opponents in the region to petition Parliament in October, complaining that his command was incompatible with ‘the peace and safety of the well-affected party’ and requesting a hearing ‘of such things as they are, and long have been, ready to remonstrate against his lordship and his officers’.37PA, Main Pprs. 1 Oct. 1644, ff. 146-8, 154-6; A. Hughes, Politics, Society and Civil War in Warws. (Cambridge, 1987), 233-6. Despite being removed from command late in 1644, Denbigh presented a list of charges against Swynfen and the other petitioners in January 1645, accusing them, among other things, of protecting delinquents, embezzlement, cowardice and insubordination.38LJ vii. 123b-124a; PA, Main Pprs. 3 Jan. 1645, ff. 19-21. The petitioners were duly summoned by the Lords to answer Denbigh’s charges, and while witnesses were assembled and depositions taken the main protagonists continued to sling mud at each other – Swynfen and Denbigh each accusing the other of showing favouritism towards delinquents and disaffection to the cause.39LJ vii. 216a; PA, Main Pprs. 2 May 1645, ff. 9v, 10, 10v, 11v; Main Pprs. 27 June 1645, f. 162; Main Pprs. 18 July 1645, f. 100. Meanwhile, Brereton paid for the maintenance of Swynfen’s wife in Stafford while her husband was ‘in London, soliciting the occasions of Cheshire and Staffordshire’.40SP28/196, f. 508.

Frustrated at the secrecy and slowness of the trial proceedings, Swynfen and his colleagues petitioned the Lords in June 1645, arguing that ‘now that the House of Commons is possessed of this charge [Denbigh’s charges], we being commoners, cannot ... answer before this honourable House in this cause actually depending before the House of Commons without violating the privileges of that House’.41PA, Main Pprs. 27 June 1645, f. 162. While languishing at Westminster, Swynfen wrote to Brereton in terms that reveal a high degree of trust and respect between the two men. Indeed, Brereton ordered the treasurer of the Cheshire county committee to pay Swynfen £40 for his ‘very good service’ to the ‘state’ and the county.42SP28/224, f. 51. Evidently, Brereton relied heavily on Swynfen not only for intelligence from London but also military advice.43Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 59-61, 117, 403; ii. 439-40; CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 414-15. For his part, Swynfen looked for support to his ‘good friend’ William Ashhurst ‘and others’ in the Commons, as well as to Brereton.44Brereton Lttr. Bks. i. 61, 293, 403. He also enjoyed the confidence of the Committee of Both Kingdoms*.45CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 194, 273, 361, 482, 527. Although the case in the Lords against Swynfen and his colleagues was allowed to lapse, the feud in Staffordshire between the pro- and anti-Denbigh factions on the committee and among the region’s parliamentarian officers continued until at least the autumn of 1645.

Parliamentary career, 1645-6

In October 1645, Swynfen emerged as one the candidates in the ‘recruiter’ election at Stafford, where he stood in partnership with another anti-Denbigh stalwart, Sir Richard Skeffington.46Supra, ‘Stafford’. The two men enjoyed the tacit support of the mayor, but their principal backers were Brereton and the officer he had installed as the town’s governor, Captain Henry Stone. In the opposite corner were the pro-Denbigh committeeman Colonel Edward Leigh and Sir Charles Shirley, a nephew of the Westminster Presbyterian grandee the earl of Essex. On election day, 30 October, the contest went to a series of polls in which Swynfen and Leigh gained the most votes and were duly returned. Writing to inform Edmund Prideaux I* of the result, Brereton referred to Swynfen as a ‘very choice, able man, who will be very serviceable to the kingdom’. Leigh worried him, however, not least because he might be ‘engaged in opposition to Mr Swynfen by those who may conceive displeasure at his carrying it [in the first poll] against Sir Charles Shirley’.47Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 216, 218.

Immediately after the Stafford election, Shirley’s supporters petitioned the committee of privileges against Swynfen’s return, but to no avail; and in any case, by the spring of 1647, Swynfen was allied with the very men whom Brereton feared would do him mischief at Westminster – namely, the Presbyterians. However, for the first year or so of Swynfen’s crowded parliamentary career he was regarded by Brereton as one of his leading friends and advocates in the Commons, a group made up almost exclusively of prominent Independents, including Prideaux, Miles Corbett, William Ellys, John Gurdon, John Lisle, William Purefoy I, Oliver St John, Sir Henry Vane II and Sir Peter Wentworth.48Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 281, 433, 439-40, 469, 528; iii. 24, 100, 102, 138, 163, 176, 199, 239, 247, 273. At least a fifth of Swynfen’s 50 or so appointments between December 1645 – when he took his seat – and January 1647 concerned the maintenance of Brereton’s forces and the military, political and religious affairs of Staffordshire and Cheshire.49CJ iv. 384b, 419b, 429a, 512a, 572a, 586b, 612a, 621b, 633b, 635a, 674b; Brereton Lttr. Bks. iii. 94, 127. His very first assignment in the Commons saw him teamed with Ashhurst on 24 December 1645, when they were tasked with preparing an ordinance for supplying £5,000 to the forces besieging the royalist garrison in Chester.50CJ iv. 384b. His first appointment as a messenger to the Lords, on 9 July 1646, was to carry up an order for payment of £5,000 to the parliamentary committee overseeing the siege of Lichfield.51CJ iv. 612a. Having lost the greater part of his estate during the war – largely, no doubt, because of its proximity to the royalist garrison at Lichfield – he presented a petition to the House on 17 July (via Sir Peter Wentworth) for recompense, whereupon the Commons ordered that a £200 a year subsistence be paid to him out of the estate of a Staffordshire papist, ‘without anyone [in the House] gainsaying’.52PA, Main Pprs. 2 May 1645, f. 11v; CJ iv. 619b. The Commons could not have chosen better in appointing Swynfen that same day (17 July) to oversee the raising of money assigned to the parliamentarian forces besieging Lichfield.53CJ iv. 621b.

With Staffordshire cleared of royalist garrisons by August 1646, Swynfen’s name headed a committee set up on 4 August, and which he probably chaired, for ensuring that any surplus of arms in the county be sent to Parliament’s forces in Ireland.54CJ iv. 633b, 737b. On 11 September, he reported from a committee, which again he may have chaired, on an ordinance for settling the municipal government of Chester.55CJ iv. 666a. He appears to have chaired, or been a leading member of, four other committees set up in 1646 – for the relief of well-affected tenants of royalist landlords; to recompense the officers of the defunct court of wards; for placing the great seal in the hands of parliamentary commissioners; and to present names of men fit to serve as county sheriffs.56CJ iv. 452a, 571a, 709b, 714a, 727a, 732a; v. 33b, 117b, 119a, 171b, 301b, 331a, 344a, 447b, 515a. After the House had voted on Swynfen’s nominees for sheriff, he was appointed a messenger, on 2 December, to carry these votes up to the Lords.57CJ iv. 734b; LJ viii. 587a.

Swynfen would be described after the Restoration as a ‘rigid Presbyterian’, and his career in the Long Parliament bears out this assessment.58‘Gentry of Staffs.’ ed. Kidson, 29. Beginning on 21 January 1646, when he was made a committeeman for placing the now defunct metropolitan diocese under the jurisdiction of the London classis, he was regularly selected for assignments to advance the cause of godly reformation and the establishment of a national Presbyterian church.59CJ iv. 413b, 553b, 632a, 635a, 719b; A. and O. i. 853, 1209. He probably had few if any reservations about taking the Covenant, which he did on 28 January, and his appointments further suggest that he approved of the sale of church lands – a measure that was thought to raise an insurmountable barrier to the re-establishment of episcopacy.60CJ iv. 420b; v. 99b, 344a, 460b, 602a. His nomination in second place to a committee set up on 5 August 1646 to prepare an ordinance for appointing Daniel Evance as a lecturer in Lichfield cathedral is also revealing, for Evance was one of Essex’s chaplains and a supporter of Scottish-style Presbyterianism on the grounds of ‘better a tyranny than no [church] government’.61CJ iv. 635a; D. Evance, The Noble Order (1646), 41 (E.319.10). In one of Swynfen’s few recorded contributions to debate, on 27 August 1646, he and Sir Robert Harley defended an ordinance for the ordination of ministers – drawn up on the basis of proposals from the Westminster Assembly – against the leading Independent MPs Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Henry Marten.62Harington’s Diary, 34.

But although Swynfen clearly favoured a ‘rigid’ Presbyterian church, probably with only limited toleration for tender puritan consciences, it is not clear whether he fully endorsed the claims of the Scottish and London Presbyterian ministry that Presbyterianism was jure divino. Besides Evance, the only minister with whom Swynfen can be linked at Westminster is Stephen Marshall – on 22 July 1648, Swynfen was ordered to request Marshall to preach before the Commons – who belonged to the more moderate wing of the Presbyterian ministry.63CJ v. 644b; ‘Stephen Marshall’, Oxford DNB. Something of the complexity of Swynfen’s position on church government can be gleaned from several of his committee appointments in December 1646. On 12 December, he was named in second place to a committee for examining the preacher William Dell for the unauthorized publication of a sermon he had delivered to Commons on the morning of 25 November and for his criticism of a sermon delivered that afternoon by Christopher Love, who had preached strongly in favour of a Presbyterian reformation.64CJ v. 10b. Dell was a fervent anti-formalist, and it was perhaps his opposition to all fixed church structures, as much as his printing of his sermon without permission, that landed him in trouble with the House and with Swynfen in particular. That same day (12 Dec.), Swynfen was named to a committee for examining a work by the Presbyterian ministers of London in favour of jure divino Presbyterianism.65CJ v. 11a. The majority of MPs were insistent that Parliament should remain the final arbiter on questions of church government; and the fact that Swynfen was again nominated in second place suggests that he shared the House’s fundamental Erastianism. His last appointment of 1646, on 31 December, was to a committee for handling complaints about unordained preachers – a breed that Swynfen was undoubtedly keen to suppress.66CJ v. 35a.

Swynfen among the Presbyterians, 1647

The withdrawal of the Scottish army from England early in 1647 brought about a shift in Swynfen’s political orientation. With the war won and the Scots off the scene, he would probably have seen little point in maintaining the army – on which the Independents relied for much of their political strength – especially if it represented an obstacle to the establishment of a strong Presbyterian national church. Several of his appointments during the early months of 1647 suggest that he, like Ashhurst, was moving into closer alignment with Presbyterian grandees like Denzil Holles and Sir Philip Stapilton and that he now sympathised with their programme of dispatching a downsized New Model to Ireland. He was closely involved in the Commons’ efforts late in January to assure the Scots that the king would be received in accordance with their wishes and the terms of the Covenant.67CJ v. 65a, 66a, 66b. More revealingly, however, he was named on 11 February with Stapilton and another leading Presbyterian MP, Sir William Lewis, as reporters of a conference with the Lords concerning the scrapping of the county committees (a role he reprised on 11 June).68CJ v. 85a, 206b. As Swynfen would have been only too aware, the county committees were a vital part of the administrative machinery that maintained the New Model as well as local forces such as Brereton’s.69Supra, ‘Committee for the Army’.

Swynfen’s new-found stringency towards the army emerged even more clearly in the spring of 1647. On 9 March, he was a teller against securing payment of the arrears due to the radical army officer Sir William Constable* on the public faith.70CJ v. 108b. On 26 March, he was named first to a committee for examining Major Alexander Tulidah, who had been imprisoned by the Commons for promoting the Levellers’ ‘Large Petition’.71CJ v. 125b. The Presbyterian grandees had been outraged by the petition and its implicit support for the New Model and had threatened to draw their swords upon the petitioners.72The Writings of William Walwyn ed. J.R. McMichael, B. Taft (Athens, GA, 1989), 289-91. The next day (27 Mar.), Swynfen was included on a committee to consider a report from the Presbyterian grandees Sir John Clotworthy and Sir William Waller concerning the growing opposition among the soldiery to service in Ireland.73CJ v. 127b. After receiving further reports of political agitation in the army, the House set up a committee on 29 March comprising Holles, Zouche Tate, Swynfen and Colonel John Birch, to prepare a declaration condemning the soldiers’ proceedings.74CJ v. 129a. Penned by Holles, this ‘declaration of dislike’ branded the army enemies of the state; and although Swynfen had no hand in its composition, the mere fact that he had been named to the drafting committee indicates where his sympathies now lay. He was implicated in another Presbyterian initiative on 2 April, when he was made a committeeman on an ordinance that effectively handed control of the London trained bands to the Presbyterians’ allies in the City.75CJ v. 132b. The Independents had tried, unsuccessfully, to have this ordinance referred to a committee of the whole House, where they evidently felt more confident of impeding its progress. Confirmation that Swynfen was recognised by the Presbyterian grandees as a useful ally at Westminster came with his addition to the Committee for Irish Affairs at Derby House* on 9 April 1647.76CJ 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 remodelling and disbanding the New Model. In the event, Swynfen does not seem to have attended the committee before the summer of 1648.77SP21/26, p. 169; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 32, 33, 36, 39.

The Presbyterians’ realization in May 1647 that they could not browbeat the army into submission prompted a focus instead on appeasing and buying off the soldiery – and during that spring, Swynfen featured on several committees to raise money for those soldiers willing either to engage for Ireland or to disband without full arrears of pay.78CJ v. 148a, 168b. More importantly, he was a leading member of the Commons team that drafted, reported and steered through the House several ordinances for indemnifying the soldiers against prosecution for acts of war.79CJ v. 166a, 174a, 198b, 199a, 200a. On 14 May, he was named to the committee of both Houses for indemnity; and he seems to have chaired a committee set up on 5 June – just days after news had reached Westminster that the army had seized the king – on an additional ordinance for ‘the more full indemnity of the soldiers’ and for expunging the declaration of dislike.80CJ v. 174a, 199a. That same day (5 June), he reported this ordinance to the House and was then appointed a messenger to carry it up to the Lords.81CJ v. 200a; LJ ix. 242b. But these measures came too late to satisfy the army, which presented charges for impeachment against 11 leading Presbyterian MPs and began to move threateningly towards London. Again, Swynfen was at the centre of efforts to keep the army at a safe political and geographical distance from Parliament. On 11 June, he reported the draft of a letter to General Sir Thomas Fairfax*, requesting that the army pull back beyond 40 miles of London; and during the next six weeks he was closely involved in drafting letters and declarations, informing the soldiers of the House’s efforts to pay their arrears and of its proceedings against the Eleven Members and other MPs guilty of any ‘delinquency’.82CJ v. 207a, 208a, 210a, 215a, 218b, 227a, 227b, 232a, 253a. At the same time, however, the Presbyterians intensified their military preparations against the army – a process in which Swynfen may also have been complicit. He was named to the ‘committee of safety’ that both Houses established on 11 June to join with the City militia for mobilising London against the New Model.83CJ v. 207b; Juxon Jnl. 159; Clarke Pprs. i. 132. On 14 June, he was among the MPs assigned to raise money for the reformadoes – the reduced soldiers whom the Presbyterians hoped to recruit for the defence of the City.84CJ v. 210b. One of his correspondents, writing to him on 25 June, almost certainly echoed his own sentiments in insisting that ‘the army hath no kind of right as an army to do anything but obey the commands of the Parliament, and the soldiers to obey their officers under the Parliament’.85Wm. Salt. Lib. S.MS.454/4.

Swynfen’s alignment with the army’s opponents became even more apparent following the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster on 26 July 1647. It was probably no coincidence that on the very day of the riots (26 July), the Presbyterian grandee Sir Robert Harley reported a resolution of the committee of privileges, confirming Swynfen’s return for Stafford notwithstanding the complaints of Shirley’s supporters.86CJ v. 258a. In contrast to many of Brereton’s friends in the Commons, Swynfen and Ashhurst remained at Westminster after the 26 July riots; and on 30 July, Swynfen was named to a committee for warning the army not to come within 30 miles of London and then carried up to the Lords a series of votes for ‘the keeping in safety the king, kingdom, Parliament and City, according to the Covenant’.87CJ v. 259b, 260b; LJ ix. 358b. On 2 August, he was added to a committee for giving additional powers to the Presbyterian-controlled London militia and to the committee of safety.88CJ v. 265. But with the army closing in on London the Presbyterians’ nerve broke, and on 3 August he was appointed with Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, and Ashhurst to attend Fairfax ‘to see if they [the army] could be stopped from coming in that manner, to endanger putting all into blood’.89CJ v. 266a, 267b; D. Holles, Mems. (1699), 162. Undeterred, the army tightened its grip on the capital, entering London unopposed a few days later.

Swynfen and the quest for settlement, Aug.-Dec. 1647

Yet the army’s occupation of London apparently did little to cool Swynfen’s Presbyterian ardour. He saw no reason to make a politic withdrawal from the House, as some of those who had been implicated in the Presbyterian ‘coup’ of July-August did. Indeed, the second half of 1647 was one of the busiest times in his parliamentary career. Between early August 1647 and early January 1648, when he returned to Staffordshire on leave, he was named to 40 committees – at least two of which he chaired.90CJ v. 295b, 328a, 336a, 336b. He was also included on seven conference management or reporting teams, served as a messenger to the Lords on four occasionsand was a teller in three divisions.91CJ v. 271a, 277a, 286a, 333a, 337a, 341b, 343b, 345b, 346b, 348a, 348b, 352b, 403a, 410a; LJ ix. 491b, 507a, 509b, 605a. Despite his complicity in the Presbyterian counter-revolution of late July, he was named to several committees for repealing the votes passed after the ‘forcing’ of the Houses and to one conference-reporting team ‘concerning the outrage committed against the Parliament on the 26th of July’.92CJ v. 269a, 271b, 277a, 279b, 322a, 366b. However, his tellership on 11 August against concurring with the Lords in vindicating the army and approving its recent actions paints a truer picture of his political sympathies. Swynfen and the Presbyterian MP Edward Bayntun won this division from the Independent grandees Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire.93CJ v. 271a.

The piece of parliamentary business that seems to have occupied most of Swynfen’s time during the second half of 1647, and in which he again demonstrated a marked Presbyterian bias, was that of drawing up and dispatching peace propositions to the king. On 27 August, he was part of a conference-management team concerning the presentation of the Newcastle Propositions to the king.94CJ v. 286a. When the king rejected these propositions – as everyone, bar the Scots, had expected – Swynfen received a series of appointments for drawing up a new raft of peace terms.95J.S.A. Adamson, ‘The English nobility and the projected settlement of 1647’, HJ xxx. 582-3; CJ v. 321b, 327b, 336a, 336b, 337a, 343b, 345b, 346b, 348a, 348b, 351b, 352b. Predictably, it was the question of what form of church government and worship would be enshrined in this projected settlement that most interested Swynfen. He was selected on 30 September to consider a proposition ‘touching religion, in the points of government and doctrine’; and on 6 October, he was among those MPs tasked with preparing a proposition ‘concerning the settlement of the Presbyterian government; and concerning the exemption of such tender consciences as cannot conform to that government’.96CJ v. 321b, 327b. It was on this issue of exempting tender consciences that Swynfen clearly parted company with the Independents. Thus, he was a teller on 14 October with Michael Oldisworth against the inclusion of a clause in the proposition on church government that would allow individuals to absent themselves from public worship if they could show ‘reasonable cause ... or that they were present elsewhere to hear the word of God preached or expounded unto them’.97CJ v. 333a. The victorious tellers on this occasion were Hesilrige and Evelyn of Wiltshire.

The Commons’ deliberations on the peace propositions were complicated in mid-October 1647 when the Lords sent down their own set of terms for settlement, which were a revised version of the army’s Heads of the Proposals. Swynfen chaired a committee set up on 16 October for comparing and reconciling the two sets of propositions, reporting the bulk of the Lords’ propositions to the House two days later (18 Oct.).98CJ v. 336a, 336b. On 20 October, he reported a compromise proposition concerning those delinquents to be exempted from pardon under the new peace terms, and he then served as a teller with Richard Knightley in favour of limiting the number of royalists that would receive no pardon as to life to no more than seven.99CJ v. 337a. During late October and early November, he was closely involved – as a committeeman, member of conference-management and reporting teams and as a messenger – in the wrangling with the Lords that attended the process of ‘reducing the propositions into form’ for dispatch to the king.100CJ v. 343b, 345b, 346b, 348a, 348b; LJ ix. 507a, 509b. When the propositions had been amended to the satisfaction of both Houses, it fell to Swynfen, on 5 November, to report them to the Commons before they were sent up to the Lords for final approval.101CJ v. 350b-351b. His patience with the king may well have been wearing thin by this point, for he was named to a committee on 5 November and a conference-management team the next day (6 Nov.) for inserting in the propositions the demand that Charles was ‘bound in justice and by the duty of his office to give his assent to all such laws as by the Lords and Commons, in Parliament, shall be adjudged to be for the good of the kingdom and by them tendered unto him for his assent’.102CJ v. 351b, 352b.

Charles’s flight from Hampton Court on 11 November 1647 extinguished any immediate hopes of a settlement; and the fact that Swynfen received only one committee appointment in relation to the Four Bills suggests that he saw little prospect of re-opening a dialogue with the king.103CJ v. 357a, 359a, 385a. To judge by his appointments from mid-November until the end of the year, he was more concerned with satisfying the army’s grievances and by the impact of Leveller agitation among the soldiery than with making further overtures to Charles.104CJ v. 359a, 363b, 376b, 396a, 400a, 403a, 410a. Clearly anxious to avoid further political meddling by the army, he insisted on 19 November that it was ‘unsafe for the kingdom that any outside power intervene to be mediators between people and Parliament, since that would be to give to them [i.e. the soldiers] an authority at least equal to that of Parliament’. This speech was not well received by Oliver Cromwell*, who thought that Swynfen was seeking to limit the soldiers’ right to petition the House for the redress of their grievances.105D. Underdown, ‘The parliamentary diary of John Boys, 1647-8’, BIHR xxxix. 151-2. Granted leave on 24 December for six weeks, Swynfen seems to have remained at Westminster until at least 4 January 1648.106CJ v. 403b, 417a. However, he had returned to Staffordshire by 6 January, when he and Colonel John Bowyer* wrote to the Speaker about problems with the collection of assessment arrears in the county.107Bodl. Tanner 58, f. 655.

The Presbyterian-Independent alliance, 1648

The king’s Engagement with the Hamiltonian Scots late in 1647 prompted moves by the Independents and all those who feared another Scottish invasion to bolster the clericalist Presbyterian faction in Scotland of Archibald Campbell*, marquess of Argyll. Two of Swynfen’s close friends at Westminster, William Ashhurst and Colonel John Birch, were part of a Commons’ delegation to the Scottish Parliament in January 1648 and were closely involved in efforts to strengthen the anti-Engagement interest in Scotland.108Supra, ‘William Ashhurst’; ‘John Birch’. Birch sent Swynfen several reports from Edinburgh during the early months of 1648, assuring him that ‘you [at Westminster] have fully and surely gained the honest party in Scotland, both lords, ministers and commons’, and that Argyll laboured ‘day and night to preserve the union and ... hath the most power of any man in this kingdom’. However, he warned Swynfen that Argyll’s party would be hard-pushed to keep the Engagers in check ‘except that somewhat be done speedily by the Parliament of England to hold up their hearts and stop their enemies’ mouths’.109Wm. Salt. Lib. Parker-Jervis ms 49/83/44; Stoke on Trent City Archives, SD4842/30/1. The surest way of succouring the honest party in Scotland, argued Birch, would be for Parliament to take action to suppress heresy, to introduce a confession of faith, to pass legislation promoting a ‘godly [i.e. Presbyterian] ministry’ and to send money to Argyll’s party.110Stoke on Trent City Archives, SD4842/30/1.

Swynfen evidently took Birch’s advice on board, working hard during the first half of 1648 to encourage and support those in both kingdoms anxious to preserve the union or at least to prevent the Engagers destroying it. The first of his eight appointments in 1648 as a messenger to the Lords, on 25 February, was to carry up Ashhurst’s appointment – secured for him by the Independent grandees – as clerk of the crown for Lancashire.111Supra, ‘Ashhurst’; CJ v. 472a, 474a, 580b, 680a, 680b; vi. 50b, 79a; LJ x. 79b, 293b, 346a, 452a, 543a, 595b. One of his main briefs during the early months of 1648 was to organise payment of the arrears due to the Scottish officers who had served in Parliament’s armies – the majority of whom were probably associated with Argyll’s party.112CJ v. 405a, 462a, 504b. Swynfen also championed the cause of a Presbyterian church settlement in debates during February over the wording of a declaration from the two Houses, justifying their proceedings to the Scottish Parliament. On 24 February, he was a teller against including the words ‘we could never yet find that it [Presbyterian church government] is made necessary by any divine right’.113CJ v. 471b; A Declaration of the Lords and Commons Assembled in Parliament Concerning the Papers of the Scots Commissioners (1648), 29-30 (E.432.1). The winning tellers were the familiar pairing of Hesilrige and Evelyn of Wiltshire. Whether Swynfen favoured excluding this clause because he was convinced that Presbyterianism was indeed divinely ordained, or merely in order to avoid antagonising Argyll’s party, is impossible to say. A similar uncertainty surrounds his minority tellership four days later (28 Feb.) against including a clause defending Parliament’s policy on toleration.114CJ v. 473a; LJ ix. 593b. In a more obviously partisan vein, he was a teller with the Presbyterian grandee Sir Walter Erle on 9 March against two motions approving the ‘engagement’ of 4 August 1647 – that is, the pro-army declaration of the Members who had fled the Houses after the ‘riots’ of 26 July.115CJ v. 489a, 489b. Similarly, on 13 March, he was a teller with another supporter of Scottish-style Presbyterianism, John Boys, against continuing a debate on the impeachment of Alderman John Bunce and the other civic leaders implicated in the July-August 1647 Presbyterian counter-revolution.116CJ v. 494b. Swynfen’s identification with the Presbyterian church interest at Westminster was underlined again on 17 March, when he and three other noted Presbyterians – Erle, Boys and Francis Rous – were appointed to manage a conference on a confession of faith drawn up by the Westminster Assembly.117CJ v. 502b.

It may well have been Swynfen’s Presbyterian credentials that recommended him to the House late in March 1648 as a commissioner to Munster, where the commander of Parliament’s army in the province, the earl of Inchiquin, was on the verge of defecting to the royalist cause.118CJ v. 522a; LJ x. 167a. The hope at Westminster was that Swynfen and the other two commissioners, William Jephson* and Richard Salwey*, could win over the troops of Murrough O’Brien, 1st earl of Inchiquin – the majority of whom were Presbyterian in sympathy – by offers from Parliament of indemnity and arrears of pay.119CJ v. 522a; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 775, 776. In the event, Jephson (an old hand in Anglo-Irish politics) crossed to Ireland, but news of Inchiquin’s defection early in April seems to have persuaded the Commons that Swynfen and Salwey would be better employed at Westminster, and on 14 April they were ordered to resume their seats in the House.120CJ v. 530b.

The events of the spring and summer of 1648 – the period covered by the second civil war – pushed Swynfen to the centre of affairs at Westminster. He was among a small but invaluable (to the Independent grandees especially) group of MPs whose support for a strong Presbyterian settlement ensured that they were credible front-men in Parliament’s dealings with the City’s Presbyterian fathers and the Scots and yet, at the same time, were committed to defeating royalist insurgency and the Scottish invasion under James Hamilton, 1st duke of Hamilton. Swynfen’s importance in this respect was recognised on 1 June with his appointment to the Derby House Committee* – Parliament’s main executive body.121CJ v. 578b; LJ x. 295b. He worked closely with the committee’s leading members during the summer and autumn and made several reports from it to the House.122CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 90, 210, 241, 325, 332; CJ v. 625a, 646a; vi. 24a, 59a; [C. Walker*], Hist. of Independency (1648), 113-14 (E.463.19) His movement towards the Independent grandees during the early months of 1648 (or their movement towards him) is suggested by the trust that William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, placed in Swynfen that spring to defend his interests in the Commons.123Senate House Lib. GB 0096 AL316. The emergence of this new political configuration was recognised by Argyll and his confederates, who were in regular correspondence by May not only with Swynfen and other hard-line Presbyterians, but also with Saye and his fellow Independent grandees.124Hamilton Pprs. ed. Gardiner, 202, 205.

Swynfen featured prominently in the House’s efforts from early May 1648 to suppress the provincial petitioning campaign for a personal treaty with the king, bolster Parliament’s armed forces, direct and succour its commanders in the field and to investigate and punish its enemies.125CJ v. 551a, 553b, 566b, 567a, 571a, 571b, 585a, 620b, 633b, 640b, 670b, 678b, 680a, 680b, 683a, 692a; vi. 6a. When the Commons divided on 25 May on whether to grant the Derby House Committee authority to appoint local commanders on the basis of recommendations from the well-affected gentleman of the region in question, in what seems to have been an attempt to remodel the county militia along conservative lines, Swynfen and the Independent MP Denis Bond were majority tellers for the noes.126Supra, ‘Derby House Committee’; CJ v. 573b. The minority tellers were Erle and another anti-army MP, Colonel Richard Whithed I. Swynfen was also prominent in Parliament’s transactions with the Scots during the spring and summer, helping to draft letters to the Scottish Parliament and to the General Assembly, assuring them of Parliament’s commitment to Presbyterianism and to preserving the union between the two kingdoms.127CJ v. 555b, 558b, 565a, 626a, 643a, 643b, 659a.

But Swynfen’s most important role in Parliament’s efforts to retain the loyalty of the Presbyterian interest was as part of the Commons’ team that treated with and cajoled London’s city fathers. The rising tide of royalist feeling during 1648 was particularly strong in London, and Parliament needed to appease the City Presbyterians if it were not to lose control of the capital. Named to successive committees to liaise with the Common Council on the security of the City and the redress of its various grievances, Swynfen was at the forefront of Parliament’s attempts to convince Londoners of its Presbyterian bona fides and its willingness to seek a treaty with the king.128CJ v. 546a, 558a, 565a, 571a, 574a, 574b, 585a, 624a. This desire to placate the City is manifest in an answer to a London petition that Swynfen and Harbottle Grimston prepared on 27 June in which they assured the Common Council that MPs had ‘the same fellow-feeling with the City and kingdom by their sufferings by war and the same desires with them to attain to a safe and well-grounded peace ... and they doubt not but what they have done, and speedily shall do herein, will be fully satisfactory to the City’.129CJ v. 614a. Named in first place to a five-man committee set up on 5 August to expedite the settling of Presbyterian church government, Swynfen then chaired a committee to prepare an answer to a City petition seeking further assurances on this issue and progress towards a treaty.130CJ v. 662a, 664a. Probably penned by Swynfen himself, the answer to the petitioners lambasted the Hamiltonian Scots as ‘enemies to this kingdom’ and ‘agents of the popish and malignant party’.131CJ v. 665b-666a. According to Marchamont Nedham, the editor of the royalist newsbook Mercurius Pragmaticus, Swynfen and Prideaux were the lead actors when this ‘piece of jugglery’ was presented to the Common Council on 10 August.132Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 20 (8-15 Aug. 1648), sig. Y4 (E.458.25).

The delicate political balancing act that the Independent grandees and their Presbyterian allies were attempting during the spring and summer of 1648 – on the one hand, trying to reach a settlement with the king; on the other, to contain pressure for an unconditional treaty – is nowhere more evident than in Swynfen’s role in overturning the vote of no addresses and initiating negotiations for a ‘well-grounded peace’. It was apparently Swynfen who moved early in April that Parliament should be ready to treat with the Scottish Parliament on the matter of the Hampton Court propositions (a slightly amended version of the Newcastle Propositions that had been presented to the king in September 1647) and ‘for the making such further proceedings thereupon as shall be thought fit for the settlement of the peace of both kingdoms and preservation of the union according to the Covenant’.133CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 56. In other words, he was urging that Parliament set aside the vote of no addresses – a step that the two Houses duly took late in April. However, there were fears at Westminster that an unconditional treaty with the king would lead to the sacrifice of everything that Parliament had fought for, including a godly church settlement. On 29 May, therefore, a committee was set up – to which Swynfen was named – for drawing up preconditions to which Charles must consent before Parliament would agree to a personal treaty. These ‘three propositions’ included the settlement of Presbyterianism in England for three years – which was the very minimum that the likes of Swynfen, Ashhurst and Harley would accept.134CJ v. 577b. The task of preparing a declaration explaining and justifying the three propositions was specifically referred to Swynfen on 10 June.135CJ v. 593a. He was also a leading member of the committee of both Houses set up on 27 June for determining ‘the circumstances of time and place, where to make convenient addresses to the king’.136CJ v. 614a; Bodl. Tanner 57, f. 146. Commenting on the membership of this committee, Nedham lumped Swynfen in with the ‘elders of Independency’ – an understandable jibe given the alliance that had formed between the Independent grandees and hard-line Presbyterians in opposition to an unconditional treaty – but referred to him dismissively as Prideaux’s ‘spaniel’.137Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 14 (27 June-4 July 1648), sig. O3 (E.450.27).

After the Lords voted late in June 1648 to dispense with the three propositions, Swynfen was named to a conference-reporting team on 8 July to receive the peers’ reasons for this decision.138CJ v. 627b. Unconvinced by what they heard, the Commons appointed a committee on 15 July, which Swynfen chaired, for insisting upon the retention of the three propositions.139CJ v. 637a, 640a. Five days later (20 July), he headed a conference-management team to put the Commons’ case to the Lords, informing the peers that

these three propositions are essentially necessary to the present peace and safety of the Parliament and those that have engaged with them; and in these [propositions], the Parliament hath gone so low already that they cannot further recede, unless they should resolve beforehand to treat away all that which they have endeavoured to preserve with the loss of so much blood and treasure.140CJ v. 640b, 641b; LJ x. 386b-387a; Mercurius Elencticus no. 36 (26 July-2 Aug.1648), 272 (E.456.14).

But pressure for an unconditional treaty was so intense by late July that it was proving very difficult for Parliament to retain the three propositions without jeopardising its hold on the City. In a crucial division on 28 July, Swynfen and the radical Independent MP Harbert Morley were minority tellers against dispensing with the three propositions; the victorious tellers were the Independent grandee Evelyn of Wiltshire and another member of the Derby House ‘junto’ Sir Thomas Dacres.141CJ v. 650a. Temporarily sundered by this vote, the Independent grandees and hard-line Presbyterians were quickly re-united in insisting that Hamilton’s invasion ruled out Scottish participation in the treaty, with Swynfen securing appointment to a conference-management team on 24 August to justify this position to the Lords.142CJ v. 681b; LJ x. 453a; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 103. He was named to another such team and to several committees in September for explaining to the Lords and to the king why the Commons could not permit certain Scots to attend the peace talks.143CJ vi. 12a, 19b, 26a.

Treaty and Purge, 1648-9

Swynfen was a leading member of the Commons team that handled the Westminster end of the Newport treaty during the autumn of 1648. As in the summer, he was determined that Parliament should not recede from what he saw as its core principles – which meant that while the treaty was underway he helped to oversee initiatives for providing a strong guard for Parliament, for keeping its lord admiral, Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick, focused on pursuing the royalist fleet (rather than on the sniping of his critics at Westminster) and for insisting that the establishment of Presbyterianism in some form was effectively non-negotiable.144CJ vi. 47a, 69b, 79a; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 28 (3-10 Oct. 1648), sig. Pp5 (E.466.11). He was named to five committees (chairing three of them) set up to draft propositions or to reply to the king’s treaty papers, and he was involved as a committeeman and conference-reporter in providing the necessary money and political coordination between the two Houses to expedite the negotiations.145CJ vi. 29b, 51a, 54b, 62a, 63b, 67b, 75b, 76b, 82a. In addition, his correspondence with one of Parliament’s treaty commissioners, John Crewe I, formed an important link in the chain of communication between Newport and Westminster.146CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 296, 300, 302-3, 306-7, 309, 319; CJ vi. 49b. The primary consideration for both men was how to reconcile Parliament’s commitment to a godly church settlement with the king’s abiding reluctance to abandon episcopacy. As the treaty dragged on, Crewe urged greater flexibility in this area, but Swynfen’s Calvinist perspective did not allow much room for compromise. Parliament’s declarations for abolishing episcopacy, he argued

have not only raised the minds of many in England, hold[ing] out this as a main point of reformation, but they are gone into all parts of the Reformed churches, to draw their eyes and prayers to us, who look upon that discipline [episcopacy] as the wall of disunion and the abolition of it the means of union with them.147CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 302.

On two occasions in October when the House wished to pressure the king into accepting a Presbyterian church settlement it turned to Swynfen to draw up the necessary letters and instructions to Parliament’s treaty commissioners.148CJ vi. 49b, 50b, 62a.

Swynfen’s eagerness to secure a firm Presbyterian church settlement at Newport put him back on collision course with the army, where opposition to the treaty was growing. During a debate early in November 1648 on whether to transfer responsibility for guarding Parliament from the City militia to Fairfax’s troops, ‘Journeyman Swynfen’ – as one newsbook editor styled him – ‘hath now had his wages paid again from Denzil Holles’s tribe, and he cast contempt upon the army’.149Mercurius Militaris no. 4 (31 Oct.-8 Nov. 1648), 32 (E.470.14). Swynfen’s fear of the army’s intentions is clear from his appointment with William White later that month to urge Fairfax to countermand orders for replacing Colonel Robert Hammond* with the radical officer Colonel Ewer as the king’s custodian on the Isle of Wight.150CJ vi. 91b; Gentles, New Model Army, 276-7. The army, determined to stop the treaty taking effect, moved menacingly towards London late in November, whereupon the Commons established a committee on 1 December – headed by Swynfen – for drawing up a letter to Fairfax, forbidding the army moving any closer to the City.151CJ vi. 92b; Mercurius Pragmaticus nos. 36-7 (1-12 Dec. 1648), sig. Ccc2 (E.476.2). This would be Swynfen’s last appointment before Pride’s Purge. Secluded from the House on 6 December, he was among those Members imprisoned by the army in ‘Master Duke’s alehouse in Hell’.152The Parliament under the Power of the Sword (1648, 669 f.13.52). He was still a prisoner on 20 December – the army categorising him as one of the ‘prudential men’ among their captives – and was not released until some point in January 1649.153Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 168 n. 71, 195; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 39 (19-26 Dec. 1648), sig. Eee4 (E.477.30). As a diehard Presbyterian and a chief promoter of the Newport treaty, Swynfen was an obvious target of the army’s wrath. The regicide would have shocked him deeply, and to the end of his life he was regarded as being ‘always against the king’s death’.154J. T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry Besieged (2002), 188.

Career during the Interregnum, 1649-60

Swynfen was omitted from the Staffordshire bench and all local commissions under the Rump, and in the spring of 1651 the council of state ordered his imprisonment at Stafford as a precaution in light of ‘the designs now on foot there’.155CSP Dom. 1651, p. 114. Although he was very quickly released, his bail was set at £1,500.156CSP Dom. 1651, p. 132. During the 1650s, he received anguished letters from his fellow Presbyterian Samuel Gott* on whether to subscribe to the Engagement, abjuring monarchy and Lords, but there is nothing to suggest that Swynfen himself took this step.157Wm. Salt. Lib. S.MS.454/7, 10; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 264-5. Another of Swynfen’s Presbyterian correspondents during the early 1650s was John Trevor*, who kept him up-to-date on parliamentary and international developments.158Wm. Salt. Lib. S.MS.454/6, 8.

The establishment of the protectorate late in 1653 could not tempt Swynfen out of political retirement – even when, in June 1654, Sir Charles Wolseley*, who esteemed Swynfen’s ‘abilities for the management of public affairs’, and Nathaniel Fiennes I* offered him the post of ambassador to the Dutch republic, thinking him well suited to the task of promoting ‘not only the civil good of these nations ... but the Protestant interest throughout Christendom’.159Wm. Salt. Lib. S.MS.608. Restored to the bench in the mid-1650s, Swynfen did not attend a single quarter sessions meeting. Instead, he seems to have busied himself rebuilding his estate after the ravages of the civil war and also in attending to his duties as Lord Paget’s steward, for which he received a salary of £100 a year. It was reported soon after the Restoration that Paget was ‘governed’ by Swynfen.160Add. 29910, f. 20; ‘Gentry of Staffs.’ ed. Kidson, 40.

Swynfen’s return to the national stage came early in January 1659, when he was elected for Tamworth to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament.161Supra, ‘Tamworth’. With most of his estates lying just a few miles from Tamworth, he probably enjoyed a strong proprietorial interest in the borough. He was named to 14 committees in this Parliament, including those on Scottish and Irish affairs.162CJ vii. 594b, 600b, 608b, 614b, 622a, 622b, 623a, 623b, 627a, 632a, 633b, 637a, 639a, 641b. But it was as a disputant on the floor of the House rather than as a committeeman that he probably made his greatest impact on proceedings. As one of the more experienced Parliament-men, with a strong grasp both of procedure and the wider political picture, it is perhaps not surprising that the majority of his contributions to debate were intended ‘to drive the business home to a point’.163Burton’s Diary, iii. 192, 230, 263-4, 327, 328-9, 330, 337, 341, 419, 445, 564; iv. 3, 17, 18, 83, 120, 195, 288, 291-2, 297, 312, 313, 346, 348, 356-7, 386. In factional terms, Swynfen can be identified with those Presbyterians who gave only qualified support to Richard’s regime. He was particularly concerned to prevent the protectorate’s radical opponents, the commonwealthsmen, ‘putting of mists before the question’ and generally seeking to undermine the protectoral constitution: ‘their mind is to let us come to no settlement’.164Burton’s Diary, iv. 83, 297. On several occasions, he voiced his fear and distrust of the army and its sectarian allies. When a group of London sectaries delivered a petition to the Commons on 15 February in support of the army, Swynfen cautioned the House that such seekers after ‘boundless liberty might not destroy liberty; that unlimited liberty has been the source of all mischief’.165Burton’s Diary, iii. 290. One of his principal concerns during the prolonged wrangling over the protectoral settlement was that it threatened to bring the nation ‘absolutely under a military power’. ‘If you [the two Houses] be no Parliament [as the commonwealthsmen contended]’, he declared on 9 March, ‘I know not that there is any civil power. Then the army does enslave us’.166Burton’s Diary, iv. 102. He probably derived a certain grim satisfaction from his appointment on 18 April to a committee for drawing up an impeachment against Major-general William Boteler* on charges of abusing his authority as an officer.167CJ vii. 637a.

Yet despite Swynfen’s frustration at the commonwealthsmen’s spoiling tactics, he was by no means an uncritical supporter of the Humble Petition and Advice. Indeed, it was perhaps his ambivalence towards the protectoral settlement that prompted the Presbyterian divine Richard Baxter to write to him in February 1659, urging him to stand firm on the necessity of electoral qualifications: ‘stand for the liberties of the wicked rabble ... and your reward shall be to perish with your brethren, or weep over the ejected practice of religion’.168Cal. of the Corresp. of Richard Baxter ed. N.H. Keeble, G.F. Nuttall (Oxford, 1991), i. 381. On 8 and 11 February, Swynfen spoke in favour of the swift passage of the bill of recognition, confirming Richard Cromwell as lord protector.169Burton’s Diary, iv. 139-40, 230; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 450. However, at the height of this debate, on 18 February, he aligned with the commonwealthsmen in denying the protector a negative voice in the legislative process. ‘To have a negative in the single person, were to reduce us to the power of a single person, for he will be able to have a negative voice as to his own preservation’.170Burton’s Diary, iii. 329. But in contrast to the commonwealthsmen, he favoured vesting a legislative veto in both Houses – the Commons and the Cromwellian Other House – and therefore moved that the issue of ‘the Lords’ House’, as he termed it, be settled before determining where the negative voice lay. On this question of the Other House, therefore, he was at odds not only with the commonwealthsmen but also the Cromwellian court party and joined other Presbyterians in championing the admission of hereditary peers. On 22 February, he declared roundly that he was for ‘the old peerage’ rather than a Lords composed of protectoral nominees, and he moved that the question be put ‘who shall be members of the Other House’?171Burton’s Diary, iii. 420. Similarly, on 1 March, he moved whether the Commons should transact business with the Other House ‘as with a House of Peers, with some proviso to summon the old nobility’.172Burton’s Diary, iii. 563-4. He returned to this theme on 4 March and again on 7 March, when he conceded that the majority of MPs were against restoring the House of Lords, but that it would be unwise to ignore the ‘interest of the old peers’ altogether.

If you will not restore them will you then exclude them out of the legislature? They have faithfully and thoroughly served you. Their interest is so great that it is not for the service of the nation to leave them out ... My motion is ... not to exclude the rights of the old peers that have been faithful.173Burton’s Diary, iv. 17, 49, 50, 83.

Above all, Swynfen was insistent that the House should agree on some form of Parliament-based constitution. To fail on this count, he warned, would be to ‘go back again’ – he presumably meant, to return to the Instrument of Government – and lose this ‘civil foot, our free election here ... a negative voice upon the legislature and that no money can be levied without our consent nor the single person rule but according to the laws’. On another day he might have added parliamentary oversight of the militia and foreign policy to this list.174Burton’s Diary, iii. 464-5; iv. 450. Evidently, his ideal constitution was something akin to the projected settlement of the autumn of 1647 in which sovereignty and the negative voice were effectively vested in the two Houses. But his fear of a return to the Instrument and what he saw as de facto army rule was such that he was obliged to join with the court party in defending the Petition and Advice. When the commonwealthsmen turned to questioning the right to sit of the Scottish and Irish Members, whom they regarded as little more than Cromwellian placemen, Swynfen again raised the spectre of a return to unparliamentary government if this picking at the (by now) ravelled edges of the protectoral settlement continued: ‘if you be not a Parliament of the commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland, you are not a Parliament at all’.175Burton’s Diary, iv. 102-3, 195. The wording of a declaration early in April 1659 for a day of fasting and public humiliation re-ignited the debate on transacting with the Other House, prompting an exasperated Swynfen to insist that the phrase ‘both Houses of Parliament’ be used in the declaration: ‘you have voted two Houses. It is fit you should transact in this with them. It is a law’.176Burton’s Diary, iv. 339. That same day (5 Apr.), he was a majority teller with John Trevor in favour of including the words ‘both Houses of’ in the declaration.177CJ vii. 626a.

As the army grew increasingly agitated during the early weeks of April 1659 over the Commons’ failure to remedy its grievances, particularly regarding pay, Swynfen grew more outspoken in defence of the ‘civil power’, particularly as represented by Parliament. On 18 April, he sarcastically disected a speech of the republican grandee Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, implying (correctly, as it proved) that the commonwealthsmen were working in conjunction with elements in the army to bring down the protectorate.178Burton’s Diary, iv. 450. Mindful perhaps of the events of November and December 1648, he urged that no army council be allowed to sit without the leave of Parliament. If army agitation continued, he warned, ‘the danger is a great deal. It fills the people with fear. People talk, what will become of the Parliament? It weakens the reputation of the Parliament. After the meeting of the officers, the next may be that of the common soldiers’.179Burton’s Diary, iv. 451. Later the same day (18 Apr.), he moved to put the question that ‘none be capable of command in the army until they have subscribed not to give any disturbance to the free meeting and sitting of Parliament’.180Burton’s Diary, iv. 460. But such motions merely gave ammunition to the protectorate’s enemies, and on 21-2 April the army grandees compelled Richard to dissolve Parliament.

Post-Restoration career and death

Having resumed his seat in the Commons following the re-admission of the secluded Members on 21 February 1660, Swynfen was elected on 23 February to a new council of state.181CJ vii. 849b. In the last few weeks of the Long Parliament he was named to five committees, including those for settling ‘all matters concerning religion and the confession of faith’ and for confirming incumbents in their benefices.182CJ vii. 855b, 860b, 872b, 877a. Returned for Stafford to the 1660 Convention, he was listed by Philip, 4th Baron Wharton as a supporter of a Presbyterian church settlement.183G.F.T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 342. Presbyterianism was certainly Swynfen’s preferred form of church government, but in the debates on settling religion he seemed willing to accept a ‘circumscribed’ form of episcopacy and religious comprehension in accordance with the Worcester House declaration of 25 October 1660.184OPH, xxii. 386-7; HP Common, 1660-1690; Cliffe, Puritan Gentry Besieged, 41. At the Restoration, he had sued for a royal pardon, which was granted on 31 December 1660.185Staffs. RO, D(W)1738/A/2/6.

In the elections to the Cavalier Parliament in 1661, Swynfen was returned for Tamworth on the interest of Lord Paget. He was, again, a major presence in the House and a prominent spokesman for the non-separating, Calvinist dissenters, whom he referred to as ‘a people in communion with us in doctrine, though not in ceremonies’. As the wording of this statement suggests, Swynfen himself was a conforming member of the Church of England. Moreover, he declared himself against ‘toleration as to parties, but to indulge tender consciences that dissent only in ceremonies’.186HP Commons 1660-1690; Cliffe, Puritan Gentry Besieged, 114, 177. His leadership of the small puritan interest in the Cavalier Parliament, and his role as steward to the ‘Presbyterian’ 6th Baron Paget – and, after the latter’s death in 1678, to the equally godly 7th Baron Paget – enabled him to consolidate his links with the country’s foremost godly families, and in particular the Crewes, Hampdens and Harleys.187C6/207/36; C8/252/27; Staffs. RO, D603/K/3/1-2, 4; Cliffe, Puritan Gentry Besieged, 76-7, 102, 106, 135, 143, 150, 170, 176, 181-2; D.R. Lacey, Dissent and Parliamentary Politics in England (New Brunswick, NJ, 1969), 444-7. A consistent critic of the court, he became an outspoken member of the whig interest in the first and third Exclusion Parliaments.188HP Commons 1660-1690; ‘John Swynfen’, Oxford DNB. In 1690, he was returned for the Devon constituency of Bere Alston as a court whig on the interest of his long-time friend (Sir) John Maynard*.189HP Commons 1690-1715.

Swynfen died on 12 April 1694 and was buried in Weeford church the next day.190Add. 29911, f. 64; PROB11/420, f. 147v; Weeford Par. Reg. ed. Tildesley, 55. In his will, he charged his estate with legacies of approximately £850 and expressed the hope that God would ‘bless all my children and grandchildren that they may live in the fear of God and die in his favour’.191PROB11/420, f. 149. His grandson Richard Swynfen† was returned for Tamworth as a whig in 1708 and 1723.192HP Commons 1690-1715.