WHELER, William (c.1601-66), of Rogers, Canon Row, Westminster

From the spring of 1641 until he was excluded at the purge of December 1648, Wheler – who like some others in his family rendered the name thus – was among the most visible Members.35Add. 34195, f. 20; ‘Charles Wheler’, HP Commons 1660-1690. A local resident and justice of the peace, he was an assiduous attender of the Commons and played a key role in ensuring the security of the Parliament buildings. As a leading parishioner of St Margaret’s Westminster, Parliament’s church, he oversaw official occasions and issued invitations to preachers, while in the House he was a prominent promoter of religious reform. Above all, as a receiver of first fruits in the exchequer, he became first a treasurer of funds related to the campaigns in Scotland and Ireland and later of monies raised for Parliament’s armies in England, as well as an administrator of relief for refugees, maimed soldiers and widows. Wheler was at the centre of the war effort. Yet from June 1643 his wife, already listed as royal laundress in 1641, was spending at least part of her time serving the king, and by 1648 the couple appear to have been involved in a web of royalist intrigue.

Early career

Much of Wheler’s early life is obscure. He was born abroad, almost certainly in the United Provinces, where his father, John Wheler, a member of a wealthy London mercantile family, had longstanding business interests and a base in Middleburg. Nothing is known of the future MP’s education, but it is clear that he had one: his heir remarked that the books left at his death showed ‘he was a man of study and learning, curious and inquisitive ... for they consisted of Greek and Latin, Italian, French and Spanish, and some divinity’.36The Gen. n.s. ii. 206. Although John Wheler was in London when he made his will in November 1617, two years later his second wife and their three children were living in Dort, and one of the four daughters of his first wife married a Dutchman, so it seems quite possible that William did not immediately fix his country of residence.37The Gen. n.s. xxv. 211-13; PROB11/134/489 (Nicholas Wheeler); PROB11/324/367. Indeed, he was not naturalised until February 1639.38CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 425; Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization (Hug. Soc. quarto ser. xviii), 59. He probably had ample opportunity to be influenced by alternative forms of Protestantism practised in the Netherlands, especially if his sister Mary Ainsworth had married into the family of the late separatist preacher at Amsterdam, Henry Ainsworth. He almost certainly imbibed Dutch culture: his kinship network included artist Marcus Garrett; his brother-in-law van der Velde was perhaps a relative of the celebrated maritime painters of that name; and by the 1660s he had a respectable picture collection.39PROB11/134/489; PROB11/179/528; PROB11/324/367.

Wheler was no outsider, however. His kinsmen also included leading London merchants, among them James Rudyerd, brother of Sir Benjamin Rudyerd*; as heir of his cousin Nicholas Wheler (d. 1639) he acquired family property in London and perhaps in Hampshire.40PROB11/134/489; PROB11/179/528. His chief patron appears to have been his maternal uncle Sir William Hervey, created successively Baron Hervey of Ross in Ireland (1620) and of Kidbrook in Kent (1628) after a distinguished career in the navy and promotion at court. It must have been to Hervey, from 1603 a remembrancer of first fruits in the exchequer, that Wheler owed his own position there.41HP Commons 1604-1629; ‘William Hervey’, Oxford DNB; PROB11/206/10. He was in place and domiciled in Westminster by July 1630, when he thanked Sir Edward Dering* for recommending Thomas Baker as his clerk, and expressed his good will to the dean of the abbey.42Add. 34195, f. 20; Aylmer, State’s Servants, 292. He was also on hand in December 1637 and January 1638 to witness clauses in the will of his uncle, a long-term resident of St Martin-in-the-Fields.43PROB11/206/10.

Wheler’s office, which involved receiving revenues from ecclesiastical lands, both widened his contacts and offered opportunities for enrichment. In 1633 he bought property in Lincolnshire from his uncle Hervey.44Coventry Docquets, 645; C111/191. By November 1636, and perhaps before 1630, he married Elizabeth, prospective heiress of a colleague in the exchequer, Michael Cole of Kensington and Westminster, a speculator whose many projects had included improving navigation on the river Medway.45PROB11/179/528; The Gen. n.s. xxv, 212; E214/1494; VCH Worcs. iv. 132; Sheffield Archives, SpSt/55/23; SY/NCB154; E. Riding Archives, DDHV/21/14; DDCC/111/24; DDKI/5/20; zDDX85/1/2; DDSE(2)/4/2; DDSE(2)/34/7; Lincs. RO, Holywell 72/19; CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 305; 1637, p. 467; CJ i. 930b. Among the various kinsmen and friends to whom he was a trustee and or executor from this period onwards was goldsmith and Mint official William Wheler (d.1649) of Datchett, Buckinghamshire, who married a daughter of another exchequer officer, Sir Edward Wardour, and who named Wheler of Westminster as his reversionary heir (giving rise to some confusion).46Vis. Bucks. 1634 (Harl. Soc. lviii), 126; Vis. London 1633, 1634, 1635 pt. ii (Harl. Soc. xvii), 341; The Gen. n.s. ii. 206; Year Bks. of Probates iv. 504; Warws. RO, CR 457/10/24. Some time between the death in 1635 of Wheler of Datchett’s father, goldsmith Sir Edmund Wheler, and July 1644, the future MP acquired from his namesake a share in the Mineral and Battery Company, which owned a metal-working monopoly; he also replaced him as a deputy governor at a date which is unclear.47BL, Loan 16 pt. ii, ff. 70v, 71v, 93v, 99v. In the late 1630s he began to establish a country estate in Wiltshire, buying a manor at Westbury and leasing another from the dean and chapter of Westminster (probably on favourable terms, to which his office gave him access).48VCH Wilts. viii. 154, 158-9. Wheler’s naturalisation in 1639 (as of Westbury) was thus the seal of success rather than the foundation of it.49CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 425; Letters of Denization, 59.

Lord Hervey had served as an MP in 1601 and 1604 and been an active member of the Lords in 1628.50HP Commons 1604-1629. Wheler’s candidature in October 1640 at Westbury may represent a long-contemplated intention to enter Parliament. His property acquisitions locally should have given him control of some of the burgages in a constituency apparently not yet as fully under control of the new lord of the manor, Henry Danvers, 1st earl of Danby, as it had been under his predecessors the Leys, earls of Marlborough. The identities of his chief supporters are unknown, but there is a hint of local opposition and also of an ulterior motive of gaining parliamentary immunity from legal or financial difficulties. Within weeks of the Parliament’s opening John Gawen, a Westbury tanner, was summoned to the Commons to answer for contempt in serving Wheler with a subpoena (24 Dec.), while on 1 February 1641 Cornelius de Neue, perhaps from the stranger merchant community, was sent for in connection with a parallel breach of privilege.51CJ ii. 58b, 76b.

Resident committee-man, 1640-2

In the early months of the Parliament Wheler’s visible contribution was spasmodic, but not insignificant. His first committee nomination, to investigate an attack at Whitehall on a Commons employee which raised fears of security, reflected his knowledge of the locality (23 Nov.).52CJ ii. 34b. Four nominations around the third week in December saw him included with exchequer colleague Sir Robert Pye I* on committees for the Virginia trade and for customs abuses (18, 21 Dec.) and engaged on investigation of the clergy (12, 19 Dec.).53CJ ii. 50a, 54a, 54b, 55a.

Religious matters then dominated Wheler’s service as it gathered pace into the early summer. He was twice added to the committee which, in addition to addressing the misdemeanours of the fugitive secretary of state Sir Francis Windebanke* (defined in terms of his promotion of popery), investigated wider questions of inappropriate preferments and idolatry (23, 28 Jan.1641).54CJ ii. 72a, 74b. As issues became more precisely articulated he was named to discuss legislation for abolishing superstition (13 Feb.) and pluralism (10 Mar.), disabling the clergy from temporal office (8 Mar.), promoting preaching (12 Apr.), punishing members of the late Convocation (27 Apr.), tightening regulations against recusants (8 May), and reorganising numerous individual parishes (20, 24, 25 May; 17 June).55CJ ii. 84b, 99a, 100b, 119a, 129a, 139a, 151a, 156a, 177b. According to one diarist he had initiated the bill against pluralism (on which he reported 29 May); he also reported that on Convocation (promptly, 27 Apr.).56Procs. LP ii. 698; iv. 114, 640, 645, 646, 647. His emergence as a leading activist, and as a frequent attender familiar with his colleagues, was further signalled on 4 May when he was named with Pye, Sir Edward Hungerford* and George Peard* to identify which Members had failed to take the Protestation and on 29 May when he reported the bill against pluralism.57CJ ii. 133a, 133b, 161a. Doubtless drawing on professional knowledge he proffered a proviso designed to strengthen the bill for the abolition of deans and chapters (15 June) and was one of a trio ordered to draft a proviso on episcopal taxation (28 June).58Procs. LP v. 174; CJ ii. 191a. Made a commissioner for inquiring after recusants’ arrears (2 July), he was vigilant in surveillance of Catholic priests in the queen’s service (12 Aug.).59CJ ii. 197a; Procs. LP vi. 379. With Peard and Thomas Pury I* he was sent to search the registers of Convocation; having reported the same day (3 Aug.), he was added to the committee preparing the impeachment of bishops who had devised the controversial ecclesiastical Canons.60CJ ii. 233b, 234b. Ten days later he seems to have revealed that the searchers had been fobbed off with edited or incomplete material: an order on 13 August required that ‘authentic copies’ of Convocation documents be delivered to him for the committee’s use.61Procs. LP vi. 403; CJ ii. 256a.

Over this period Wheler was named to committees dealing with a variety of private petitions and bills, including one for naturalisation (clearly of personal interest, 25 June) and another addressing the feud between fellow Wiltshire Member Sir James Thynne and his half-brother (20 July).62CJ ii. 85b, 149a, 160b, 164a, 187b, 215a, 217a, 263a, 276a. Occasionally he was also nominated in connection with educational charities and trade, and his first experience as a teller was in support of the payment of duty on tobacco imported from the English plantations (13 Aug.).63CJ ii. 164b, 196a, 219b, 215a, 255b He was evidently an astute assessor of his fellow Members – for example moving successfully for leave of absence for the unpopular John Coventry* (14 June) – and appeared to be gaining a reputation for effective nosing out of relevant documents: on 5 July he was instructed to bring ‘such writings as may conduce to the business’ to the committee investigating lack of progress and the apportionment of blame in the matter of the restoration of the elector palatine to his rights and possessions (5 July).64Procs. LP v. 95, 129, 142; CJ ii. 199b.

However, a large proportion of his employment by the Commons arose either from his knowledge of the environs of the House or his financial office and expertise, or both. Armed with the former, he was (with Pye) among the group delegated to arrange the location and disposition of the trial of the lord deputy of Ireland, the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†, 19 Mar.), while as the army plot was revealed in May he was one of five MPs ordered to carry out pre-emptive searches of Parliament and of the houses of his neighbours surrounding it.65CJ ii. 107b, 141a. Having requested Lord Keeper Thomas Coventry† that Wheler be placed on (or restored to) the Westminster commission of the peace (28 Aug.), the Commons named him manager of orders regulating local plague victims (6, 8, 9 Sept.).66CJ ii. 275b, 280a, 283a, 286b. Meanwhile he was on committees for tonnage and poundage (18 Mar.), for levying money (18 June; 16, 28 July), for paying officers of the House (2 July) and for the army and navy (18 Mar, 29 July, 25 Aug.).67CJ ii. 107a, 180a, 196a, 214a, 228a, 229a, 271b. As the leading receiver of monies raised from Members and, with Pye, a treasurer paying out, he was increasingly the subject of parliamentary orders and a regular reporter of accounts.68CJ ii. 139a, 198b, 222a, 223b, 230a, 236b, 252a, 263a, 265a, 266a, 274a, 276b, 277a, 278b; Procs. LP vi. 70, 490-1; SP28/1d/389; SP28/2a/10.

By late June 1641 the recurrence of Wheler’s name in the Journal indicates he had attained a high profile. It occurred on 14 occasions in July and 18 in August. On 1 September he was for the first time nominated to a committee for Irish affairs, while on the 8th, in the midst of regulating plague cases, he accompanied Pym and Sir Henry Vane II* in reporting from a conference with the Lords, was a teller in a division on payments, and was added to the committee addressing the vexed issue of men levied for service with the Catholic kings of France and Spain; his comments in debate on the last were characteristically informed by knowledge of the activities of the French ambassador in this connection.69CJ ii. 280a, 283a, 284a; Procs. LP vi. 691. When on the 9th the House resolved on a recess, Wheler was high on the list of Members deputed to meet in the meantime to prosecute urgent business.70CJ ii. 288b.

Following the resumption of proceedings in late October he was as visible as ever, although the focus of his activity shifted somewhat. For several months, as before, a significant proportion of his appearances in the Journal related to religion. Added (27 Oct.) to the committee preparing reasons for disenfranchising bishops, he ‘spoke once or twice’ in debate upon it and at the suggestion of Arthur Goodwin* was proposed to the Lords for examination tapping his knowledge of the making of the Canons (28 Oct.).71CJ ii. 296a, 297b; D’Ewes (C), 44. He was still active in gathering evidence against the episcopate in December and he was later nominated to the committee charged with the punishment of John Williams, archbishop of York (22 Feb. 1642).72CJ ii. 239a, 448b; D’Ewes (C), 282. Delegated to examine Catholic priests (10 Dec. 1641), he promoted the committee for disarming recusants (established 20 Dec.; revived 25 Jan. 1642 on his motion) and was engaged with it as late as June.73CJ ii. 337b, 349b; PJ i. 165; iii. 140. A core member, as previously, of the committee working on legislation against clerical pluralism (14, 17 Feb.), he was again nominated in connection with the suppression of innovations (17 Feb.), the maintenance of a preaching ministry (25 Mar.; 19 Apr.) and reorganisation of parish boundaries (Westminster, 8 Apr.).74CJ ii. 431b, 437b, 438a, 496b, 517a, 535a. With Pye and a handful of others he continued to supervise arrangements for fast days at St Margaret’s, liaise with preachers (leading anti-episcopalians Edmund Calamy and Stephen Marshall) and oversee the Protestation (16 Apr.).75CJ ii. 299a, 348a, 422a, 449a, 452b, 530b; D’Ewes (C), 309.

As the months went on, however, other preoccupations increasingly crowded out such activity. As tension mounted in the capital, he had with Pye a key role in the organisation, arming and payment of the guard about Westminster (25 Oct.; 2, 6, 10, 29, 30 Nov.; 13, 30 Dec. 1641; 28 Jan. 1642); he moved for the revival of the relevant committee in the spring, when he was also entrusted with the guard at the Tower (17 Mar; 8 Apr.) and made a commissioner for taxation for fortification in London generally.76CJ ii. 294a, 303a, 306b, 309b, 310b, 326b, 328a, 340a, 364a, 400a, 507b, 518a; D’Ewes (C), 113, 115, 219, 369; PJ ii. 53, 118; Harl. 164, f. 310. During this period he was often called on for security matters such as the conduct of searches, examination of suspect persons, and investigation of the disturbances in the City at the end of December 1641.77CJ ii. 308b, 309b, 319a, 324b, 325b, 358b, 361a, 365a, 375b, 447a, 511b; D’Ewes (C), 111, 148, 152, 181. Nominated to the committees to consider the safety of the kingdom set up on 31 December and 17 January 1642, he moved an amendment to the resulting declaration agreed on 27 January.78CJ ii. 365b, 385a; PJ i. 188.

Meanwhile, Wheler’s financial responsibilities widened. Placed on the committee to review the collection of poll tax (29 Oct.), sometimes with Pye or with Westminster MP William Bell* (both long-term associates), sometimes alone, but often with considerable freedom of action, he received a succession of orders to pay out the proceeds of this and other subsidies (especially for military and naval purposes), to oversee other treasurers and to liaise with officers of the exchequer.79CJ ii. 294a, 297b, 298a, 306b, 336b, 340a, 341b, 375b, 497a. On 21 December he reported in detail on receipts and payments undertaken by the orders of the House, while on the 29th he reported from the committee considering accounts for sea transport of ordnance to the garrison at Berwick, having already steered the debate surrounding it.80CJ ii. 352b, 360b; D’Ewes (C), 340, 343. In due course this led to such related committee work as devising measures for the recruitment of mariners (29 Jan. 1642), payment of soldiers in Hull (5 Mar.), provision for the royal children (2 Apr.) and regulations for the carriage of goods (8 Apr.), as well as raising money (19 Apr.; tonnage and poundage, 27 June) and treating for loans (10 May; 3, 14 June).81CJ ii. 402b, 468a, 509a, 517a, 534b, 565b, 601b, 623a, 641b.

Especially time-consuming were Wheler’s Irish engagements. Nominated to the committee for the defence of Ireland (4 Nov.), he tried unsuccessfully (presumably in the interests of efficiency) to keep discussion within that forum; he was re-appointed when the committee was revived on 5 January 1642 and later to prepare the act for reducing the Irish rebels to obedience (5 Mar.).82CJ ii. 305b, 311b, 369a, 468b. In the meantime (16 Dec. 1641) he had been made a collector of Members’ contributions to the relief of Irish Protestant refugees, a project in which he came to take a leading part and from which flowed much decision-making about the disposition of funds to wider Irish causes, as well as patronage of the refugees themselves.83CJ ii. 344b, 403b, 409a, 425b, 432b, 469a, 470a, 478a, 482a, 486a, 506b, 534b, 664a; PJ i. 77, 119; ii. 24; SP28/2b/683. Parliamentary diarists reveal glimpses of a man who in this, as in other matters, was not only a financial executive but also a shaper of policy, committed beyond the discharge of duty. Thus, for example, he successfully requested an investigation of unlawful fees taken by officers of the forces to be sent to Ireland (7 Feb. 1642) and argued ‘for taxing the better sort of people’ to finance the war there (20 May), while he appears to have been added to committees specifically to expedite their business (9, 10 May).84PJ i. 301; ii. 214, 300, 313, 351; CJ ii. 564b, 631b.

Issuing payments and taking accounts had continued to occupy him and he was periodically involved in miscellaneous other matters.85CJ ii. 340a, 423b, 491a, 492a, 505b, 519a, 519b, 523b, 524a, 537a; PJ ii. 360. From late April to late July 1642, however, while he received notably fewer committee nominations the familiar near daily references to him in the Journal relate almost exclusively to his role as treasurer handling loans and subsidies, and in particular dealing with Sir John Hotham I*, the forces in Hull and the ships which supplied them.86CJ ii. 539b, 542a, 551a, 551b, 559a, 561b, 564b, 569b, 580b, 584b, 585a, 585b, 588a, 594a, 595a, 599a, 607b, 617a, 634b, 635a, 635b, 636b, 645a, 652a, 653b, 657a, 657b, 676b; e.g. also SP28/1d/388; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 351. In this capacity he was occasionally a reporter of conferences with the Lords; he was a teller when fiscal propositions prompted a division (26 July).87CJ ii. 538a, 547a, 565b, 641b, 691b. None the less, he was not completely preoccupied. Named on 4 May – perhaps on account of his Netherlandish connections and experience – to a committee to confirm Sir Cornelius Vermuyden’s fen drainage patent, two months later when the House received representations from Lincolnshire residents, Wheler was accorded an opportunity to put his own views before MPs (12 July).88CJ ii. 557b, 668a. Well placed to receive and assess intelligence from abroad, he was deputed on 9 June to examine a Dutchman who had given information of an impending invasion from a fleet at Dunkirk.89CJ ii. 614b; PJ ii. 200. The few miscellaneous but not unimportant duties that came his way included paying the printers of Parliament’s declarations and authorised publications (7, 9 June and at intervals over the rest of his time in the House), serving (with John Hampden* and Oliver Cromwell* on the small committee communicating orders to the House’s employees (13 June), and drawing a declaration safeguarding the independence of Bristol from Somerset (17 July).90CJ ii. 576b, 591a, 611a, 616b, 622a, 623b, 681b, 698b, 784a, 791b, 922b; iii. 81a, 130a, 181b, 296a, 394a/b, 396b; iv. 392b; v. 112b, 599a.. He was still called on to investigate persons and petitions (with one or two others or even on his own) and was again on the committee to review affairs in Ireland (5 July).91CJ ii. 633a, 652b, 685b, 694b.

Stalwart of the war effort, 1642-3?

On 29 July Wheler obtained leave to go into the country for ten days, perhaps with the intention of making what must have been a rare visit to Westbury.92CJ ii. 696a Such were his continued appearances in the Journal and his evident indispensability from financial affairs that his absence would have been scarcely detectable but for the recognition on 10 August that the committee for the Irish contribution temporarily required a new chairman.93CJ ii. 697a, 698b, 699b, 706a, 713a. He appears to have been back in harness by the 16th, and before the end of the month he had accumulated several tasks, including meeting with the Lords to discuss letters from Hamburg and joining the committee for Shropshire.94CJ ii. 722b, 728b, 736b, 741b. Like most of his exchequer colleagues, while the king called supporters to Nottingham he seems to have slipped easily into remaining in London and associating with the parliamentary cause. Apart from his palpable religious commitment, there are no obvious indicators of his ideological position at this juncture, but while his wife’s court employment may have induced some sympathy for Charles, the balance not just of his day-to-day commitments but also of the political and religious priorities demonstrated in practice seemed to swing – perhaps even strongly – in favour of making the best of the situation at Westminster. It was, after all, his main home.

Somewhat surprisingly, accelerating preparations for war did not simply swamp him again with orders about money: instead the autumn saw him take on the variety of tasks characteristic of his early service in the Commons. Over the next year he was again involved in important business concerning religion. Among others, he was named to committees drafting a response to the general assembly of the Church of Scotland and an declaration against episcopacy (1 Sep.), an order enjoining ecclesiastical courts to enforce tithes (17 Oct.), and a bill to abolish deans and chapters (22 Nov.); he sat on the first manifestation of the Committee for Plundered Ministers (31 Dec.) and was ordered to report on progress on the bill suppressing pluralism (26 Dec.).95CJ ii. 748a, 808a, 811a, 858b, 903a, 909a. Later he was part of a small group (including Pye) responsible for managing the observance of public fast days (29 Mar. 1643), added to the committee for demolishing superstitious pictures (25 Apr.), one of the trio delegated to prepare an ordinance removing from the sequestered bishops power of ecclesiastical promotions (16 May) and among those entrusted with the removal of papists and disaffected ministers from attendance on the royal children at St James’s (26 June).96CJ iii. 23b, 60a, 88a, 145b. Closely involved from an early stage (13 Oct. 1642) in setting up the Westminster Assembly of divines, he was named as a lay member of it (7 June 1643, the day after he had taken the Covenant) and with Pye and three others he was ordered to organise the meeting place and the lodgings for participants (26 June).97CJ ii. 806b; iii. 118b, 119b, 144a. He may have acted as the Assembly’s financial agent.98Mins. of the Westminster Assembly ed. C. van Dixhoorn, D.F. Wright (Oxford, 2012), i. 177.

Throughout this year Wheler discharged obligations arising from the treasurership of the contribution money, and undertook sundry financial and other tasks relating to Irish affairs (such as the examination of prisoners).99CJ ii. 756b, 766a, 783a, 783a, 795a, 803b, 804a, 804b, 817a, 831a, 973b, 985b, 996a; iii. 8a, 53b, 143a; LJ v. 421b. He also became a receiver of weekly assessments (24 Feb. 1643) and later a commissioner for sequestrations and for raising money in Westminster, Middlesex and Wiltshire.100A. and O. While still paying out arrears through Sir William Uvedale* to those who had served in the former army in the north, he now sat on committees negotiating new loans and imposing assessments for Parliament’s forces. He presented and examined accounts (gaining appointment to select committees of accounts on 5 Oct. 1642 and 6 Apr. 1643), periodically reviewed receipts and new financial expedients, and gave occasional advice on specific fiscal problems, acting with Pye as one of the handful of key managers of Westminster funds.101CJ ii. 762b, 772a, 780a, 784a, 795a, 814b, 815b, 825b, 826a, 826b, 827a, 834a, 845a, 878a, 897a, 926b, 930b, 945b, 979b; iii. 15b, 16a, 28b, 29b, 30b, 32a, 36b, 42a, 53a, 73a, 109b, 133a, 181a. On 11 May 1643 he and John Trenchard* were ordered to attend Haberdashers’ Hall twice a week to give acquittances to the Committee for Advance of Money for receipts from weekly assessments.102CJ iii. 80b. Perhaps inevitably, in committee and as an individual he handled contributions in kind as well as cash: he worked on proposals for raising horse and plate (13 Sept. 1642) and was accountable for seized arms (7 Nov.).103CJ ii. 763b, 838a

In tandem with this Wheler was involved more directly in military matters. He took to the Lords orders regarding the militia of London (20 Sept.) and was on deputations to persuade City fathers to maintain an association with Parliament (20, 27 Oct.; 9 Nov.).104CJ ii. 774b, 777a, 817b, 825a, 842a. With Pye he was ordered to oversee and supply trained bands and soldiers in Westminster (12 Nov.), and he was given power to seize local provender for Parliament’s armies (14 Nov.) and detain persons and supplies destined for the king’s (21 Nov.); his grip on his responsibilities was demonstrated, for instance, on 29 November when he supplied detail to the House on the provenance of oats.105CJ ii. 846a, 850a, 898a; iii. 196b; Add. 18777, f. 75v. He dealt with the guard at Lambeth (21 Feb. 1643) and listed horse in London for potential service (22 Oct. 1642, 17 May 1643).106CJ ii. 819b, 974b; iii. 89a. Nominated to various committees concerned with security and commissions of the peace in London and its environs, he was among those authorised from time to time to search premises and trunks for suspect persons and materials, and to examine prisoners.107CJ ii. 782b, 787b, 799a, 818b, 832a, 846b, 899b He also investigated petitioning and intelligence, considered local grievances, policed hostile propaganda, and (with Pye) disseminated Parliament’s version of the army plot to churches and chapels in London and Westminster (14 June 1643).108CJ ii. 884b; iii. 20a, 24b, 26b, 113b, 130a Better acquainted than most with MPs and their finances, he was an unsurprising nominee to committees to investigate Members alleged to have adhered to the king and initiate sequestration proceedings, although he was evidently not a hardliner, being a teller against the disablement of Sir Sidney Montagu* (3 Dec. 1642).109CJ ii. 769a, 785b, 808b, 810a, 874b

Notwithstanding his relative indulgence towards Montagu and at least one other royalist – he also supported bail for Sir John Lucas (30 Sept.) – for a while Wheler appeared to occupy securely his position of trust.110CJ ii. 788b. On 24 November he acted as guarantor that a messenger to the king would carry nothing else with him.111CJ ii. 862b. He managed a conference with the Lords over Parliament’s response to the king’s convoking of the central law courts to Oxford (21 Jan. 1643) and was on the committee considering the petition of parliamentarian prisoners against their maltreatment in Oxford Castle (7 Mar.).112CJ ii. 932b, 938a, 992a. Yet in April the suspicions which surfaced regarding the loyalty of his fellow officeholders Pye and Rudyerd extended also to him: on the 17th (despite in his case no obvious sign of avoiding the chamber) all three were enjoined to attend the House and not to depart without leave.113CJ iii. 48b. Wheler clearly obeyed, but his allegiance may have been strained by this stage. For one thing, it would have been surprising if he had not shared in at least some of his colleagues’ involvement with the steward of Westminster and former lord chamberlain Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke; for another, on 6 July his wife Elizabeth was given leave to go to Oxford, probably to resume her pre-war duties as laundress to the king.114CJ iii. 158a. Presumably all this time her post had presented William with a potential line of communication with the enemy, and a hint that he saw no incompatibility with his own position is given by his motion a few weeks earlier to exempt royal servants from penalties for refusal to participate in parliamentary assessment commissions.115Harl. 164, f. 365. On 19 August Wheler too obtained permission to go into the country.116CJ iii. 211b. He went not to Wiltshire, which following the battle of Roundway Down was dominated by royalist troops, but to Surrey. However, on the 24th the Commons heard a report that his host Sir John Evelyn of Surrey* was about to defect to Oxford with his nephew and namesake the Wiltshire MP, and when it was noted that his houseguests included Wheler the latter was summoned with them back to London to account for himself. 117Harl. 165, f. 157.

Religious Presbyterian and war finance, 1643-6

Wheler was back in the chamber by 30 August.118Harl. 165, f. 160. If he had indeed toyed with deserting Westminster, or at least with conducting clandestine negotiations with the king, then he rapidly convinced fellow Members of his innocence. Nominated on 9 September to the committee investigating charges that Wiltshire Member Sir Edward Bayntun* had criticised in strong language the conduct of Parliament’s war effort in the west and north, Wheler was sufficiently confident of his own standing to act as a teller against Bayntun’s being sent to the Tower.119CJ iii. 235b-236a. Until and beyond the fall of Oxford in the summer of 1646 he then gave every indication of wholehearted service to Parliament, or at least of a mixture of idealism, pragmatism and efficiency which sustained him more or less consistently at the heart of Westminster politics. An analysis of occurrences of his name in the Journal in years from September to August reveals that he was mentioned over 80 times in 1643-4, about 70 in 1644-5 and a relatively modest 40 in 1645-6, but nearly 90 in 1646-7 and about 95 in 1647-8; from 1 September 1648 to 27 November that year, his last appearance before falling victim to Pride’s Purge, he was mentioned 49 times. In the first three years he sought leave to go into the country less than once a year (13 June 1644, 29 Aug. 1645, 6 Oct 1646) and was absent only briefly; there was rarely more than a fortnight between successive appearances in the Journal, although they tended to cluster, with days of apparently intense activity.120CJ iii. 527a; iv. 256a. 685a. During this period a greater proportion of his visible service than previously came in the form of committee nominations.

Wheler took the Covenant on 30 September 1643 and continued to play a prominent role in religious matters pertaining to Westminster, including: maintenance of premises for the Assembly (10 Oct.); supply of godly preachers for St Margaret’s (25 Oct., 29 Nov. 1643; 28 Aug., 30 Oct., 26 Dec. 1644; 31 Dec. 1645; 2 Jan. 1646); supervising fast days there (4 Nov. 1644); regulation of the collegiate church (13 Jan. 1644; 7 July 1645); and subdivision of the parish to provide for a second congregation at Tuthill Fields (7 June 1644, 4 Aug. 1646).121CJ iii. 259a, 272b, 288a, 324a, 365a, 521a, 610a, 682a, 686b; iv. 1a, 198b, 392b, 394b, 632a. He examined Catholic priests in custody (3 Oct. 1643; 20 Oct. 1645) and managed discussions with the Lords over the discovery of popish plots (11, 18, 19 Oct. 1643).122CJ iii. 262a, 273a, 280b, 282b; iv. 315a. He was nominated to various committees promoting godly preaching and presentation of approved men to livings (6 Nov., 12 Dec. 1643; 3 Apr., 22 Dec. 1645, 10 July 1646), reported from the Committee for Plundered Ministers (23 Aug. 1645) and chaired a grand committee on ordination (6, 8 Aug. 1644).123CJ iii. 302b, 338b; iv. 97b, 250a, 381b, 614a; Harl. 166, f. 105. Precise evidence for Wheler’s theological preferences is lacking, but it was through him that the leading Presbyterian minister Stephen Marshall was invited to preach to the House and the Assembly in January 1646 as they came to settle the question of church government.124CJ iv. 394b. He was associated with the preparation of various ordinances to impose or bolster a Presbyterian order on the church: the imposition of the Covenant on chancery officers and barristers (12 Jan. 1644); the regulation of tithes (22 July); the establishment of classical presbyteries (25 July 1645); sabbath observance (20 Jan. 1646); and the disposal of the revenue of (St) Paul’s cathedral (7 May).125CJ iii. 364b, 566b; iv. 218a, 412a, 538b. In June 1646 he was named a commissioner for exclusion from the sacrament.126CJ iv. 562b.

Significant though this was, however, it constituted a rather small part of Wheler’s parliamentary service in these years. A scattering of committee nominations and orders related to the prosecution of the war in Ireland, and he was still active as treasurer for the contribution money in September 1646, but many more nominations and orders related to raising, maintaining and financing local forces and itinerant armies in England, suggesting that his employment as an army treasurer had become semi-formal.127CJ iii. 236a, 574a, 609a, 674a; iv. 345b, 368b, 516b, 521a, 641b, 671b. Often with Robert Scawen* or Pye, as well as receiving accounts he was prominently listed for large committees and frequently delegated for small working parties on such matters as: supply of stores and regulating the office of ordnance; arrears and pensions; militia in London; garrisons in Surrey, the Thames valley and Hurst Castle; larger-scale forces for north Wales, Cheshire, the west, the midlands and Lincolnshire.128CJ iii. 3b, 41b, 238a, 298b, 345b, 347a, 383b, 393b, 418b, 475a, 478b, 486a, 507b, 527b, 568b, 580b, 676a, 699a; iv. 75a, 104a, 132a, 178b, 183b, 184b, 197a, 207a, 252a, 365a, 452a, 616b. Closely involved in the formalisation and funding of pay for all armies undertaken in spring 1644, he was one of the handful of Members who on 6 July 1644 withdrew to prepare an ordinance for raising a standing army.129CJ iii. 419b, 437a, 457a, 466a, 552b. Over the next six months he was associated with a variety of military matters including communication with the lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex (29 Aug.), investigation of charges against those in charge of the parliamentarian garrison on the Isle of Wight (21 Sept.), officers’ petitions (18 Oct.), Scawen’s committee preparing regulations for army accounts (19 Oct.), and dealing with disorder in the ranks (24 Jan. 1645), while he took to the Lords (also 24 Jan) the Commons’ agreement to a safe conduct for Prince Rupert.130CJ iii. 611a, 635b, 669b, 670a, 679b, 700a; iv. 28b, 29b. Appointed to committees for the New Model army (17 Feb., 6 Mar., 7 Oct.; 11 Mar. 1646), for the navy commissioners (21 Feb. 1645), for the militia (21 Apr. 1645, 13 June 1646), for deserters (19 Apr. 1645) and for martial law (1 Jan. 1646), he had the opportunity to wield influence over the spectrum of martial policy.131CJ iv. 51a, 57a, 71b, 117a, 118b, 299a, 394a, 576a, 674b. A rare indication of his personal opinions is the support he expressed in April 1644 for the conduct on the Isle of Wight of Colonel Thomas Carne, known to him for some time as the agent of the earl of Pembroke, when both Carne and the earl were enmeshed in Presbyterian-Independent conflicts on the island.132Harl. 166, f. 50; CJ ii. 633a, 728b; 235b, 236a, 635b.

Meanwhile, Wheler was made treasurer of the committee for the supply of wood, established in September 1643, and reported the ordinance for provision of turf and peat for the metropolis (8 July 1644).133CJ iii. 257b, 546b, 554b, 619b; CCAM 185. His duties for the former involved receiving sequestrated property, increasing his dealings with the committee at Haberdashers’ Hall; still accountable to it, in January 1644 he was on the Commons committee which in turn regulated the Haberdashers’ Hall accounts, while later he was nominated to committees regulating sequestration and the sale of delinquents’ estates.134CCAM 190, 195, 196, 375; CJ iii. 363b, 473b, 678a; iv. 115b, 166a, 176a, 178b, 215b, 244b, 536a, 539b, 571a, 603a, 613a, 625a. In addition to handling money raised from MPs, a man of his experience was evidently indispensable to committees considering loans, weekly assessments, the excise, customs, and by extension trade, plantations, beer prices, not to speak of raising revenue by the abolition of archaic practices.135CJ iii. 272a, 283a, 304a, 309a, 390a, 390b, 391a, 393a, 428b, 434a, 442a, 469b, 526a, 592a, 597a, 601a, 612b, 614b, 625a, 668b, 701b; iv. 107a, 146a, 155b, 263b, 335b, 671b. On at least one occasion (Apr. 1645) the Committee of Both Kingdoms actually requested that he pull back from negotiating for money.136CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 401. Among those delegated to tighten up procedures in the Committee of Accounts (18, 25 Apr. 1645), he was first named to discuss settling the revenue of the court of wards (22 Nov. 1643), and he was regularly a reporter of financial deliberations and accounts, a negotiator of loans, and a conveyer of related messages to the Lords.137CJ iii. 317a; iv. 1661, 123b, 127a, 128b. If discharged diligently – and the sheer repetition of references suggests that contemporaries thought that it was – such a workload might be considered sufficient for one man, even for a professional administrator whose normal duties had been somewhat overtaken by the disruption of war and religious legislation.

Yet Wheler’s contribution to the House did not stop there. He may not have acted on all his nominations to large committees on privilege, procedural, legal, local, social and individual matters – from elections, verbal abuse of MPs, prioritising petitions to the House and investigating offices bestowed by Parliament to ordinances for wardships, heralds, charities, the settlement of provincial administration and disputes, and examination of seized correspondence.138CJ iii. 269a, 319a, 389a, 429a, 490b, 649b, 688a, 690a, 695b; iv. 70a, 112a, 183b, 256b, 351b, 551b, 574b, 678b. But that left service where he had a personal or local interest which he was likely to pursue or where he was specifically assigned to join existing groups: security around Westminster (20 Sept. 1643), finding suitable lodgings for scholars from Oxford (5 Dec.), examination of the two Sir John Evelyns (7 Feb. 1644), maintaining good relations with London and Middlesex inhabitants (21 Mar. 1644), committees for the north (13 Sept.) and for Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire (2 June 1645), and excluding delinquents from the lines of communication (4 May 1646).139CJ iii. 248a, 329b, 390b, 434a, 625b; iv. 160b, 532a. He still undertook other commissions from the House, and occasionally took messages to the Lords, while his upbringing abroad underpinned his inclusion in groups receiving foreign ambassadors, whose visits he reported on several occasions; he organised audiences with envoys from the United Provinces and Russia (8 Dec. 1644; 12 June 1646).140CJ iii. 296a, 390a, 394a, 394b, 396b, 552b, 557a, 637a, 649b, 712b, 718a, 718b; iv. 8a, 574a. He also reported on a proposed allowance from Parliament to Charles Louis, elector palatine (6 May 1645).141CJ iv. 58a, 130a; Harl. 166, f. 207.

In all, notwithstanding the undeniable reduction in Wheler’s appointments in late 1645 and early 1646, he was extremely active throughout the period just discussed. He was, moreover, involved at certain key political moments, although there is no direct evidence of his standpoint. He was named to work on the Self-Denying Ordinance (24 Mar. 1645) and sometimes participated in the formulation of peace proposals (2 May, 18 Nov., 3 Dec. 1645; 31 Jan., 7 July 1646).142CJ iv. 88a, 130a, 347b, 364a, 424b, 606b. Inevitably, not all Wheler’s colleagues in the House appreciated him: Bulstrode Whitelocke* recorded that when in November 1645 the earl of Pembroke sought for Whitelocke the stewardship of Westminster College, it was ‘consented to by all but Mr Hill and Mr Wheler his usual adversaries’.143Whitelocke, Diary, 183. But for many, of varied persuasions, the breadth of Wheler’s experience probably made him a valuable adviser. When Oliver St John* wrote to Oliver Cromwell* in February 1646 of the lands formerly belonging to the sequestered earl of Worcester which were to be settled on the lieutenant-general by the grateful Commons, he quoted an annual value supplied by Colonel Richard Norton* and Wheler, ‘who know the lands’.144TSP i. 75.

Piety and discretion, 1646-8

Aside from modest periods of official leave, between autumn 1646 and December 1648 Wheler seems normally to have been an assiduous attender of the House. His prominence as a reporter, chairman, manager of conferences with the Lords and executor of sundry financial and other orders is palpable, while the scale and periodically relentless pace of his committee nominations hints at a dynamic person of prodigious stamina. In the absence of published speeches or references in the press or correspondence, however, his priorities and sympathies can only be surmised by a process of deduction. It is conceivable that, especially given the relationship of service in which his wife stood to the king (a factor that became potentially of immense significance some time between late 1647 and late 1648), while devoting considerable energy both to causes that engaged him and to routine administration, Wheler exercised an unusual degree of prudence and discretion in public utterance.

As previously, it is in religion that his stance emerges most clearly. There is no evidence of a substantial contribution to the proceedings of the Westminster Assembly, but he continued to be its chief facilitator; in February 1647 he was reimbursed for fitting up the Henry VII chapel and the Jerusalem chamber.145CCC 802. There seems little doubt of his interest in its outcome or of his wide acquaintance among its clerical personnel. Among the 11 ministers he was ordered to invite to preach or pray, or to thank for their sermons, during this period were Assembly men as eminent and as varied as Stephen Marshall, the pro-Scottish Presbyterian Lazarus Seaman, the Erastian-inclined Presbyterian John Lightfoot, and the Independent-inclined Thomas Goodwin.146CJ v. 66a, 200b, 270b, 320b, 368a, 615a; vi. 35a. Likewise, Wheler was evidently regarded as an authority on or enthusiast for the further reformation of the church. He was nominated to three committees making specific appointments to livings (11 Nov. 1646; 13 Jan., 10 Feb. 1647) and others for ordinances for repair of churches (6 Nov. 1646), maintenance of ministers (first-named, 11 Nov.), regulation of admissions to livings (22 Mar. 1647), tithes (15 Sept. 1647; 9 Feb. 1648), and provision of ministers for London (16 Oct. 1648).147CJ iv. 714b, 719b; v. 52a, 84b, 119b, 302a, 460b; vi. 53a. He almost certainly chaired (28 Mar. 1648) a committee for the revival of the feoffees for impropriations, suppressed by Laud because of its agenda to supply godly preachers to vacant benefices: he was later a teller when the subject came to question and brought in the resulting ordinance (13 Sept.).148CJ v. 519a, 696b; vi. 19a. He was among MPs chosen (12 Dec. 1646) to examine Jus Divinum Regiminis Ecclesiastici, a contentious attempt by some London ministers to promote divine right Presbyterianism, and to draft a declaration to be read in churches and chapels on the 10 March 1647 fast day.149CJ v. 11a, 66a. Placed on committees considering successive stages of plans for the sale of episcopal and later also dean and chapter lands, his familiarity with ecclesiastical revenues must have made him valuable far beyond his visible role in managing related conferences with the Lords (2, 13 Nov. 1646; 27 Feb., 19 Aug., 28 Oct. 1647; 9 Feb., 16 and 20 June, 21 Nov. 1648).150CJ iv. 712a, 721b; v. 99b, 278b, 344a, 460b, 602a, 608a; vi. 81b. Above all, he demonstrated a commitment to changing church order. He apparently took charge of the deliberations of the committee for the establishment of Presbyterian government to which he was nominated on 6 October 1647: on 23 December he informed the Commons that, as instructed by Parliament’s commissioners negotiating with the king, he had despatched to them the resulting ordinance.151CJ v. 327b, 399a. This was followed through: he was one of the five MPs given on 5 August 1648 the task of smoothing the passage through the Lords of the ordinance settling Presbyterian government.152CJ v. 662a.

That Wheler’s religion was informed by study is suggested by his heir’s description of his reading.153The Gen. n.s. ii. 206. Beyond his link with the court, recognised intellectual tastes must also underlie the choice of Wheler, along with the well-known antiquary D’Ewes and the celebrated jurist John Selden*, to assist the king’s librarian Patrick Young in removing royal books, manuscripts and antiquities from Whitehall to St James’s (18 Jan. 1648), as also to ensure the preservation of material at Lambeth Palace (30 Sept.).154CJ v. 436b; vi. 39a. They must also have contributed to his credibility (and his agenda) as a visitor of the University of Oxford and a reporter of conferences with the Lords on the enabling ordinance (13 Jan., 10 Feb., 14 and 15 Apr. 1647).155CJ v. 51b, 83a, 142a, 142b, 143a; Add. 31116, p. 614. He was still involved in making new appointments at Oxford in June 1648.156CJ v. 603b.

Meanwhile, Wheler’s service in the Commons continued to comprehend social, legal and charitable business, suggesting a wider commitment to reform or orderly local administration. He took care of measures for the relief of plague victims in Chester and in Westminster (Aug. 1647) and with Pye distributed the proceeds of fast day collections to necessitous widows.157CJ v. 265b, 266a, 271a, 280a, 582b. Added to the committee for maimed soldiers to deal with particular problems (11 Nov. 1647, 9 Nov. 1648), he was also named to prepare an ordinance for the poor and vagrants (23 Nov. 1647) and reported on trustees for charitable uses (4 Oct. 1648).158CJ v. 356a, 366b; vi. 42b, 72a. Other nominations related to such matters as vetting sheriffs and justices of the peace (30 Oct. 1646), issuing instructions to judges (21 Jan. 1647), reviewing fees in chancery (13 Feb. 1647) and regulating monopolies.159CJ iv. 709b, 727a; v. 60a, 87a, 106a, 187a, 220b, 383a; vi. 27b.

Notwithstanding his wife’s position, Wheler was heavily involved in the imposition of financial penalties on royalist delinquents. Named to committees preparing orders for the valuation and sale of the estates of papists and those excepted from pardon (29, 30 Oct. 1646), he was also on those pursuing individual cases, although he did later carry to the Lords the ordinance pardoning Sir John Glanville* (7 Aug. 1648).160CJ iv. 708a, 710b, 712b; v. 74a, 295b, 663b; vi. 60b, 61a. Assigned to discuss the ordinance establishing the arrangements for compounding at Goldsmiths’ Hall (10 Dec. 1646), he was given later charge of moves to improve procedures (3 Feb. 1647; 31 July 1648).161CJ v. 8b, 73b, 653b. Before 6 January 1647 he became chairman of the committee addressing the complicated and ongoing issue of debts due by sequestered persons (which gave third parties an interest in their confiscated or fined estates); he remained in that role through the winter of 1647–1648 and among other related business pressed the claims of his colleague Pye and of Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, on the revenue of the earl of St Albans and Clanricarde.162CJ v. 43a, 391a, 426b, 442b, 454b, 459b, 494b, 681b; vi. 67a. He also worked on sequestrations in particular localities and reported an ordinance for south Wales (10 June 1648).163CJ v. 592b; vi. 10b.

All this activity entailed interaction with the Committee for Compounding once it was operational. Although the Commons clearly expected Wheler to carry weight within it – as when he was chosen (4 Sept. 1647) to ‘press [the] business at Goldsmiths’ Hall’ to obtain sums promised to James Butler, marquess of Ormond – as with the Committee for Advance of Money there is no direct evidence of his relationship with its collective membership.164CJ v. 291b; CCC 71. Some delinquents called before the committee testified in passing that he had taken advantage of his position to acquire property or lease at high rents, however.165CCAM 195, 196, 226, 227, 375. His multiple and intersecting financial roles gave both ample opportunity for profit and a vested interest in driving on the novel administrative processes which he had helped devise. Although he still wielded control over the contribution money as late as March 1648, when the affairs of Irish refugees had become entangled with those of English delinquents, he was probably detained more by his other major treasurership.166CJ v. 309b, 403a, 504a.

By late 1646, if not earlier, the functions that he and Pye had acquired with William Bell under the 1641 Act for the Speedy Disbandment of Armies and Settling the Two Kingdoms had been reinvigorated and incorporated in a manner that is somewhat difficult to pinpoint in their more general role as holders of the parliamentary purse, at the fulcrum of many transactions.167CCC 55; CJ v. 61b, 62a. Included on the reorganised committee of accounts (25 Jan. 1647) and involved in an ordinance for defraying the expenses of this committee and its subsidiaries (20 Nov.), Wheler was with Pye periodically the subject of accounting orders.168CJ v. 62b, 364b. The pair remained associated in such tasks as receiving MPs’ contributions towards servants employed by the House, but over time Wheler seems to have become the more prominent in effecting individual orders, in taking money-related resolutions to the Lords, in addressing longstanding debt and in the major financial preoccupation of this period – paying the army.169CJ v. 43b, 93b, 198a, 238b, 390a, 655a; vi. 7a, 8b. Unlike Pye, following Parliament’s vote in October 1646 to retain the New Model he was on a committee set up to establish rates of pay and expenses for commissioned officers.170CJ iv. 690a. With Edmund Ludlowe II* he was appointed to expedite the collection of assessments and arrears of army pay in Wiltshire (23 Sept. 1648), with Bell he was chosen to bring in assessments for Westminster (25 Nov.), and he was added to the Committee for Advance of Money for the purpose of raising money for Parliament’s horse guards (4 Nov.).171CJ vi. 30b, 69b, 88a. On 17 November he was added (with a number of notable Presbyterians) and named with William Prynne* to take care of the committee easing the financial obligations to the state of those who had suffered for their allegiance to Parliament.172CJ vi. 78b.

Political Presbyterianism and Carisbrooke, 1647-8

Cumulatively, Wheler’s many appearances in the Journal for 1647 and 1648 reveal a political as well as a religious Presbyterian. He was evidently committed to a negotiated settlement which would prioritise civilian over army agendas, and to that end to the maintenance of local militias and the reduction or dissolution of the New Model. Furthermore, his control of money and of buildings in the Westminster precinct, his knowledge of MPs (through listings of their absences and their allegiances over the years) and his role in the regulation of print made him potentially a powerful and influential figure in the Presbyterian grouping.173CJ iv. 709a; v. 15a, 112b, 134a, 167b, 181a, 329a, However, there are no signs that he habitually associated with recognised Presbyterian leaders of this period like Denzil Holles* or Sir Philip Stapilton*; instead, perhaps not least because of his officeholding, his companions on committees and in commissions were men who occupied a more subtle or complex position – Pye, Richard Knightley*, Henry Hungerford* and even Evelyn of Wiltshire. Outside the House it is tempting to surmise that his associates included the vicar of Westbury and political controversialist, Philip Hunton, whose theory of mixed monarchy, with its practical flexibility and its adhesion to the inviolable person of the king, appears to sit well with Wheeler’s parliamentary career.174‘Philip Hunton’, Oxford DNB.

From December 1646 Wheler was as prominent as he had been early in his career in the House in addressing security, dissension and disaffection in and beyond London. Among other business he was in a party of MPs and peers present at the questioning of James, duke of York, over his attempt to escape to the continent (24 Dec.) and on the committee which investigated the army radical Major Alexander Tulidah.175CJ v. 4a, 6b, 27a, 28a, 90a, 125b. Wheler was a member, with Pye and the Evelyns, of the committee which considered the response from the army at Saffron Walden to parliamentary proposals to despatch companies of volunteers to Ireland (27 Mar. 1647): his subsequent role in taking to the Lords lists of officers to be paid off strongly suggests that he was a supporter of the move.176CJ v. 127b, 216a, 225b, 226a, 599a. In company with other Presbyterians he reported conferences with peers over the treaty with Scotland and the disposition of the king (22 Dec. 1646; 23 Mar. 1647), while on 14 April he was named to a committee to prepare instructions for commissioners to Charles at Newcastle.177CJ v. 25b, 121a, 142b.

That day, as agitators gained ground in the army and Presbyterians gained the upper hand in the London militia, Wheler was given leave to go into the country.178CJ v. 142a Even if, as seems likely, he delayed his departure a little in order to put in further work on the ordinance for the visitation of Oxford University which he reported on the 15 April, he had the opportunity before his unusually few committee nominations the next month (11, 21 and 27 May) – or even during them, for none were certainly predicated on his presence – for an uncharacteristically long break from the House.179CJ v. 143a, 167b, 181a, 187a. It is not implausible that he used the time to consort with other Presbyterians seeking a settlement with the king, or indeed to cultivate his own links with the royal entourage. Whether or not Elizabeth Wheler was with Charles at Holdenby Hall before or after 1 June 1647 when Cornet George Joyce arrived to seize him for the army, and thus able to report first-hand to her husband, Wheler’s experience may have given him a perspective on the prospects for negotiation independent of that of the Presbyterian grandees.

Wheler must have been back in the Commons at the latest by 5 June 1647, when he was ordered to ask Stephen Marshall to pray there the next afternoon, as well as listed among MPs to go to the Painted Chamber that day to hear the Scottish commissioners’ complaints at the army’s action.180CJ v. 200b. From 18 June, when the commissioners and Presbyterian MPs voted to accept the king’s offer to come to London and ratify a version of the Newcastle Propositions, his appearances in the Journal resumed their previous frequency. His efforts were apparently directed towards defusing a perceived army threat. On the 18th he prepared and reported the ordinance for paying off army officers, conveyed it to the Lords as soon as it was passed, and returned with peers’ agreement.181CJ v. 216a, 217b. He was one of a Presbyterian-dominated group which on 21 June, in the face of army requests to remove their leaders from the Commons, prepared a declaration justifying Parliament’s severe action against delinquent Members.182CJ v. 218b. As the army marched to Uxbridge, Wheler and Pye were given responsibility for the protection of Westminster from riotous persons ‘or otherwise’ (25 June), although an impending crisis was averted when the Eleven Members who had been impeached withdrew from the chamber and the soldiers retreated to Richmond.183CJ v. 224a. The next day Wheler reported an ordinance for days of recreation designed to placate restive London apprentices, and on the 28th took it to the Lords along with a further order for reducing officers and soldiers.184CJ v. 221b, 222a, 225a, 225b, 226b. While the army marshalled its case against the Members, Wheler was on 1 July added to the committee preparing an ordinance for its disbandment.185CJ v. 229a. With Knightley he had charge of the committee which perused the record in order to supply commissioners to the army with a compelling presentation of Parliament’s opinions (3 July) and he twice (8, 9 July) took to the Lords further orders about disbandment.186CJ v. 232a, 237b, 238a, 238b.

In these tense circumstances, control of the City militia, which during Wheler’s leave had passed into Presbyterian hands, became especially contentious. On 10 July, with Evelyn of Wiltshire, Wheler was one of five MPs deputed to prepare an ordinance bolstering its authority, but his colleagues in the group then and following its recommittal on the 13th had other ideas.187CJ v. 240b, 243a. On the 22nd, as a teller for the noes, he failed to prevent a vote for restoring the militia directly into Parliament’s control and the next day was ordered to go with Independent John Gurdon* to communicate the disagreeable result to those ousted.188CJ v. 254b, 256b. It is not clear what role, if any, Wheler had in encouraging the petitioning for peace negotiations and the mob violence which erupted in the Westminster precinct on the 26th, but he was visible in managing its aftermath. When the Commons reassembled following the flight of some Independents to the army, Wheler was listed first on a committee to investigate the ‘late tumult’ and included on another for augmenting the powers of the Presbyterian-dominated ‘committee of safety’, which had been set up in June to mobilise London against the army (2 Aug.).189CJ v. 265a, 265b. The next day, when he was also in charge of plague relief for Chester, he took to the Lords the votes for additions to the committee of safety (being himself added to this body that day) and for the king’s coming to London (3 Aug.).190CJ v. 265b, 266a.

Wheler’s part in the brief Presbyterian ascendancy was unmistakeable. Yet apart from a possible brief hiccough, there is no sign that his standing suffered after 6 August when the army arrived in Westminster and the Independents returned. On the 10th he was chosen to convey another preaching request and on the 11th he was included on the committee discussing the ordinance to repeal all votes passed over the period of the coup.191CJ v. 270b, 271a, 271b. He had only two further mentions in the Journal that month – relating to the sale of bishops’ lands (19 Aug.) and to the charitable provision in Chester which had detained him even at the height of the crisis (20 Aug.) – so there is a possibility that he withdrew temporarily when Presbyterian leaders fled, but it is unlikely.192CJ v. 278b, 280a. From the beginning of September he was apparently back in his stride, and in a manner incompatible with solidarity with Holles and his fellow fugitives. In a month of varied activity which took in delinquents, tithes, Irish contributions and orders relating to Margaret’s church Westminster, he co-ordinated the closing of political ranks (through the drafting of an ordinance suppressing publication of news of recent parliamentary proceedings: 3, 6, 7 and 16 Sept.), joined leading Independents on a committee to investigate petitioning from Essex (15 Sept.) and, in the context of further divisions in Parliament over how to proceed with the king, reported from a grand committee what became a resolution that a proposition on the militia should be sent to him (22 Sept.).193CJ v. 290b, 291b, 292b, 294a, 295b, 301b, 302a, 305b, 309b, 312a, 314a, 320b. Perhaps, like others, he had concluded that at this juncture the army offered a reasonable chance of negotiating an attractive settlement; perhaps, with Charles and his household now at Hampton Court, former adversaries had concluded that Wheler was a man worth cultivation.

Of its nature such an alliance would be unstable, but in the meantime Wheler remained prominent in the chamber. In October alongside committees on religion he was nominated to investigate absent Members and the case of John Lilburne, confined to the Tower but still influencing radical agitation in the army.194CJ v. 327b, 329a, 334a, 344a. He was also added with a selection of leading Members which included Henry Marten*, Bulstrode Whitelocke*, Oliver Cromwell* and Henry Ireton* to a committee reviewing the appointment of the principal officials in public service (18 Oct.).195CJ v. 336a. He received no mentions in the Journal between 28 October and 11 November; a subsequent flurry of activity hints at possible absence from Parliament and it is noteworthy that he resurfaced on the day the king escaped from Hampton Court. Placed on committees to investigate the escape and arrangements for Charles’s reception on the Isle of Wight (12, 15 Sept.), he was also named to examine divisions within the army in London and to discuss ordinances for empowering a militia committee for Tower Hamlets, for defraying the expenses of the committees for accounts, and for vagrants (16, 19, 20, 23 Nov.).196CJ v. 357a, 359a, 360a, 363b, 364b, 366b.Added on the 23rd to a committee looking into the role of Edward Stephens* and Thomas Gewen* in the force on the Houses during the Presbyterian coup, Wheler was on the same day included in a smaller but diverse group of MPs entrusted with drafting a letter to the Scots commissioners, who were at this point engaged on their own separate talks with the king.197CJ v. 367a.

It was presumably a measure of some trust in Wheler and his wife that when the Commons (20 Nov.) and Lords (25 Nov.) approved the list of servants to be sent to serve Charles at Carisbrooke Castle, Mistress Wheler the laundress was among them.198CJ v. 365a; LJ ix. 543a. Unless she was deliberately placed as a spy for Parliament, that trust proved then or later misplaced. As the only gentlewoman among the king’s entourage and as one who had charge of maids handling baskets and garments among which correspondence and packages might be concealed, Elizabeth Wheler had peculiar opportunities for smuggling during the two periods (?December 1647 to ?March 1648; September to November 1648) when she was in attendance. On 20 January 1648 the Derby House Committee (which met hard by her Canon Row home) informed the castle’s governor, Colonel Robert Hammond, ‘that the king hath constant intelligence given him of all things, which he receives by the hands of a woman, who bringeth it to him, when she bringeth his clean linen’.199Letters between Col. Robert Hammond and the Committee at Derby House (1764), 27. The thrust of royalist correspondence around this date is that, especially when the messages concerned escape plans, the bearer was a subordinate and not ‘H’, Mistress Wheler herself. Indeed it is not absolutely out of the question that at least at first she was the Committee’s source.200Cf. Letters between Col. Robert Hammond, 33, 36, 40–2; C.W. Firebrace, Honest Harry (1932), esp. 302; S. Poynting, ‘Deciphering the King: Charles I’s Letters to Jane Whorwood’, The Seventeenth Century xxi. 130. If so, however, at some point she had a change of heart.

For much of the winter and early spring Wheler was a regular presence in the Journal. A gap between the order of 25 November 1647 that he liaise with Westminster preachers and his nomination on 14 December to the committee on the soap monopoly might be explained by unofficial absence from London or by subterfuge or by illness, but equally he might have been busy with existing commitments.201CJ v. 368a, 383a. The latter day saw the passing of peace propositions to be sent to Charles, a development which he should have found encouraging, but he experienced a setback on 15 December when the amendments he reported to the ordinance for the Tower Hamlets militia were soundly rejected; sent back for further tinkering, they were finally steered through by Wheler on the 31st. 202CJ v. 386a, 413a. His fellow teller for the yeas on the 15th was Sir Henry Mildmay*, another MP with a close family member (his brother) in attendance on the king. On the strength of his inside information Mildmay at this point entertained doubts on the prospects for achieving peace, and later that day the pair worked together on an ordinance putting papists and delinquents out of the lines of communication.203CJ v. 386a. But Wheler gave every indication of putting his weight behind negotiation, working further on the propositions (20 Dec.) and telling the Commons that he had sent the ordinance on church government to Carisbrooke (23 Dec.).204CJ v. 393b, 399a.

Having addressed Tower Hamlets, on the last day of the year Wheler was assigned to the committee to enlarge the power of the Westminster militia; he reported on the bill a fortnight later.205CJ v. 413a, 433a. Given that he was also nominated to committees to discuss free quarter for the army (1 Jan. 1648) and to redress the grievances of the people (4 Jan.), it seems evident that he was in the House for the Vote of No Addresses on the 3rd.206CJ v. 414b, 417a. Whether or not he had had faith that the last propositions could realistically persuade the king to a settlement, Wheler was doubtless among the dissenting voices who wished to persevere with negotiations. Perhaps for that very reason he seems still to have been active at Westminster until at least 9 February (just before a declaration on the Vote was passed) and again in the last two weeks of March, relaying messages to the Lords and dealing with delinquents and religion.207CJ v. 459b, 460b, 494b, 504a, 519a. However, between 28 March and 12 April, when he almost certainly chaired a committee on the Southwark militia in the wake of pro-royalist riots in London, and between then and 27 May, he was absent from the Journal.208CJ v. 519a, 527b, 575b.

It is likely that during this period he had come under suspicion in some quarters, while among those keen for imminent peace (Presbyterians or Independents sharing the inclinations of William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele) he may have been regarded as a useful conduit. On 19 April the Commons referred for examination a warrant from the king to deliver his ivory cabinet to Mistress Wheler (who was evidently back in London); the contents were to be inventoried and she was to be questioned ‘upon this business’.209CJ v. 536b. Since nothing more is heard of the matter, it would seem that publicly at least MPs were satisfied that no subterfuge was involved, yet it is clear that by this time Elizabeth not only enjoyed Charles’s confidence but was also conducting correspondence with him which ran the risk of interception. About 5 May he asked trusted servants to desire that she ‘would no more write to him by uncertain messengers’.210Honest Harry, 286. It would be surprising if her husband were completely unaware of this.

Wheler resumed regular appearances in the Journal after the king made another abortive attempt to escape from Carisbrooke and as pro-royalist unrest escalated. Probably the Presbyterian resurgence, but perhaps also backing from middle ground Independents, underlay his nomination on 27 May (with Pye, Bell and four others) to investigate the Westminster militia and appointment to the committee responding to pro-royalist petitioning from Sussex, whose discussions he reported on 10 June.211CJ v. 575b, 591b, 592a. That day he was included on a committee working on a declaration expressing Parliament’s peace-making intentions and disapprobation of recent disorder, while shortly after he was appointed with Hungerford, Grimston and others to devise an ordinance for establishing a militia for the whole kingdom, a cornerstone of future settlement (13 June), and to expedite the paying off of army officers (14 June).212CJ v. 593a, 597b, 599a. He was also joint chairman of a committee dealing with the rebellion in Kent (14 June).213CJ v. 599b, 600a. A measure of his renewed prominence was that he had 11 further mentions in the Journal that month: in addition to religious and Oxford University matters he went at least four times with messages to the Lords, mainly on militia and security matters, and with Grimston, Hungerford, Evelyn of Wiltshire and others participated in a conference with peers (27 June).214CJ v. 602a, 603b, 607b, 608a, 609b, 611a, 614a, 615a.

Through July and August Wheler was a recurrent member of committees dealing with local militias (being made a commissioner for Middlesex on 1 August) and with insurrection.215CJ v. 630a, 631b, 637a, 640b, 655b, 672a, 673b, 678a He was involved (sometimes as a manager of talks with the Lords or the City) in successive stages of the formulation of the prospective Newport peace treaty and was on committees investigating (20 July) the circumstances of the invasion by the Scottish Engager army under James Hamilton, 1st duke of Hamilton, and (22 July) preparing a declaration explaining Parliament’s policy towards Scotland.216CJ v. 624a, 635b, 640b, 643b, 651a, 654b, 658a, 659b, 660a, 681b. Meanwhile, Charles hoped enthusiasm for the treaty might also signal the restoration to him of his household servants: ‘it would please the king well’, he wrote on 21 July, if Mistress Wheler and her subordinate were to get ‘leave to wait’.217Honest Harry, 291. It took nearly six weeks for Parliament to agree that they and others could attend ‘during the time of the treaty’; in the interval Elizabeth despatched ‘advertisements’ and boots to her master, although ‘such is the rigidness of the governor [Hammond]’ he claimed, ‘that as yet no use can be made of them’.218Honest Harry, 298; LJ x. 474b, 484a; CJ v. 694b.

While Mistress Wheler went to Carisbrooke her husband’s profile in the Commons increased. His name occurred 26 times in the Journal for September, the only significant gap being between the 13th and the 20th, being six times sent as a messenger to the Lords (with a far greater number of orders). Among these occurrences were what had become relatively routine nominations associated with sequestrations, Parliament guards and army pay, as well as religious activity and a request for making an unidentified John Wheler a receiver of first fruits.219CJ v. 696b; vi. 7a, 8b, 10b, 19a, 19b, 30b, 31b, 34a, 35a, 39a, 39b. With Pye, Wheler was again required to receive fines from absent Members (5 Sept.), with Pye, Knightley and others he prepared an ordinance for indemnity for navy mutineers (13 Sept.), and with Knightley he was added to a committee to raise support for the elector palatine (20 Sept.).220CJ vi. 7a, 21a, 25b. But his main focus was peace negotiations. He prepared the ordinance authorising a committee of both Houses to treat with the king and took it to the Lords, later reporting on a conference with peers on misunderstandings between the two chambers (2, 4 Sept.).221CJ vi. 2a, 6a, 6b. Disagreement stemmed partly from the Commons’ refusal to endorse the Lords’ willingness to grant blank safe conducts for Scottish commissioners to participate in the peace talks. Wheler was involved in justifying MPs’ position and then, when specific commissioners were agreed, to draft the passport (11, 21 Sept.); he subsequently worked on formulations related to the declaration of both kingdoms (23 Sept.) and carried to the Lords a safe conduct and votes regarding clauses of the treaty (28 Sept.).222CJ vi. 18a, 26b, 29b, 37a, 38a.

All this suggests that Wheler had close contact with some peers. It is possible that these included Saye and Sele, present on the Isle of Wight as an increasingly enthusiastic peacemaker. While the viscount had opportunities to speak with Mistress Wheler, Wheler himself worked with Nathaniel Fiennes I* on cataloguing at Lambeth Palace (30 Sept.).223CJ vi. 39a. Previously Wheler’s Presbyterianism might have ranged him against the Fienneses, but his piety, though pronounced, was not evidently rigid or clericalist, and they were adopting unaccustomed company in the cause of peace; besides, the Evelyns conceivably provided a bridge. At any rate, there was at least one hint of collaboration in succeeding weeks.

Wheler was somewhat less noticeable in the Commons in October and November, and was twice absent from the Journal for a week (7 to 12 and 17 to 23 Oct. inclusive), but when he was named it was more often than not to important work. Alongside miscellaneous religious, charitable, financial and security business, he was working as hard as ever for a settlement, although ostensibly not one achieved at any price.224CJ vi. 42b, 53a, 60a, 67a, 69b, 72a, 81b, 87a, 88a. When MPs unanimously rejected the king’s compromise proposal to establish Presbyterianism for only three years, Wheler took to the Lords the further instructions to be sent to Parliament’s negotiators (2 Oct.).225CJ vi. 41b, 42a. He was one of a trio of MPs who on 6 October, as Parliament proceeded towards a trial of royalist leaders George Goring†, 1st earl of Norwich, and Arthur Capell, 1st Baron Capell, captured by Sir Thomas Fairfax* at Colchester, were ordered to write to the lord general seeking explanation of the quarter he had given to those who had surrendered to mercy.226CJ vi. 45b. By this stage the king had publicly signalled preparedness to compromise on the religious terms of the treaty, but was secretly laying plans for escape from the Isle of Wight. It is not clear whether Wheler was party to these, though the answer affects the interpretation of his next actions. In prosecution of the treaty, he was ordered to spend the afternoon of 13 October devising funding; to draft (alone) a letter to the parliamentary commissioners extending the negotiation period to allow for sabbath and fast days (24 Oct. – a ploy to gain time?); to analyse differences between Charles’s religious concessions and Parliament’s stance, and to consider how to frame the Covenant in a form which the king could subscribe (both 27 Oct.).227CJ vi. 51a, 60b, 62b, 63a. On the 30th he appeared to be working in tandem with Nathaniel Fiennes to reconcile peers’ and MPs’ different perspectives on clauses concerning the sale of episcopal lands, before taking responsibility for a letter to commissioners to report the outcome.228CJ vi. 65a, 65b. He drafted another letter (with Presbyterian Sir William Lewis*) on 3 November updating them on parliamentary votes.229CJ vi. 68a.

As elements in the army grew increasingly restive and critical of Parliament’s peacemaking efforts, visible action against recent royalist insurgents and to support army veterans was required. Among other measures, Wheler drew a bill enabling committees to take security from undischarged delinquents (9 Nov.) and reported a conference with the Lords over those (including Norwich and Capell) who were to be banished (14 Nov.).230CJ vi. 67a, 69b, 72a, 76b. Once the Commons had voted to accept the king’s offer to come to London on completion of the treaty, Wheler was given the chair, with Lislebone Long* and newly-elected Member William Prynne*, of the committee revising compensation for those who had suffered for their support of Parliament, and was nominated with Fiennes and Knightley, to Prynne’s committee for justifying Parliament’s proceedings since 1642 (both 17 Nov.).231CJ vi. 78b, 79b. Apparently as busy as ever, on 27 November, the day that parliamentary commissioners left Newport with Charles’s final answers, Wheler reported and carried to the Lords a letter to Hammond, who had queried his replacement at Carisbrooke.232CJ vi. 89a, 89b. Precisely what this reveals of Wheler’s role at this point is opaque, but it was to be his last recorded contribution to Commons proceedings before he fell victim to the purge on 6 December, although he was almost certainly among the majority who voted on the 5th to continue negotiations with the king.

It is likely, however, that Wheler already considered that this cause was well nigh hopeless. Royalist propaganda claimed later that ‘a little after the treaty was ended’, that is presumably in the latter part of November, Charles’s chaplain George Morley showed him ‘a billet he had received by the Lady Wheler the king's laundress (who often conveyed much intelligence) from an officer of the army, that the king's death was resolved on...’.233Basiliká the works of King Charles the martyr (1687), 66 Even if this is not entirely accurate, it is evident that Elizabeth Wheler went with the king on 1 December when he was transferred by the army to Hurst castle on the mainland, and that she took a letter of Charles written on 5 December from there to his friend Firebrace, with knowledge of how other supporters might reply.234Honest Harry, 299. Either at this point by means of her conveying a concealed ceremonial sword as a proxy, or at some earlier clandestine personal meeting when Wheler absented himself briefly and unofficially from Parliament to mingle with the commissioners on the Isle of Wight, or on an even earlier occasion which cannot be reconstructed, Wheler was knighted by the king. This can only have been for services rendered, by him alone or jointly with his wife; Wheler’s 1665 will, the one unequivocal source for the bestowal of the honour, does not specify time or place but bequeaths the sword used by ‘the late king’.235PROB11/324/367.

Westminster officeholder, 1649-58

Wheler was among the Members most odious to the army. He was arrested and imprisoned during Pride’s Purge, and on 26 December was among the 16 prisoners still remaining confined.236The Parliament under the Power of the Sword (1648, 669.f.13.52); W. Prynne, A True and Full Relation (1648), 11 (E.476.14); Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 168n. Once released, he remained active in and around London. In April 1649 there were moves to pay him and Bell for more repairs to Margaret’s, Westminster.237CJ vi. 192a. In May he proved the will of his kinsman William Wheler of Datchett and inherited land promised much earlier.238Year Bks. of Probates, iv. 504 This included land in Spitalfields, which he proceeded to expand and to fill from the 1650s with highly profitable housing development, alongside property speculation in other parts of London, assisted partly by enabling legislation passed in the second protectorate Parliament.239Survey of London xxvii. 1-13, 39-51, 123; The Gen. n.s. ii . 206; CCAM 226, 227; CJ vii. 571a.. Meanwhile he kept his place in the exchequer and presumably, like his clerk Thomas Baker, who in 1655 complained of difficulties, collected first fruits where he could.240CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 160; Aylmer, State’s Servants, 292. His wider financial experience was still considered useful, as when former royal household servants petitioned in July 1654 that he, Michael Oldisworth* and others examine accounts of the dispersal of the goods of the late king and queen.241CSP Dom. 1654, p. 255. Even though intelligence was given to the council of state in May 1651 that Elizabeth Wheler ‘laundress to the late king, was wont to bring letters to him to the Isle of Wight’, the revelation, from a witness who professed ignorance of the letters’ authors, appeared to have no destructive impact.242HMC Portland i. 606.

By April 1655 Wheler was landlord to secretary of state Gualter Frost, who leased a passage into Canon Row.243CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 603, 608; 1656-7, p. 594; 1658-9, p. 584. That year, in company with councillors and navy commissioners, he was made a freeman of Portsmouth.244Portsmouth Recs. ed East, 355. Appointed a commissioner for trade in December, he made several reports in the following eight months, including on the transportation of corn and cattle from Ireland and merchants trading to Holland.245CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 54, 192; 1656-7, pp. 10, 88. He continued as deputy governor of the Mineral and Battery Company and was also still a Westminster justice of the peace, heading a group of magistrates who certified in July 1656 violations of the protector’s ordinances by overseers who laid off honest hackney coachmen.246CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 27; 1658-9, p. 77. In 1657 he was once again named an assessment commissioner for Middlesex.247A. and O. His wealth and commercial expertise, combined with an outward conformity to the regime readily apparent at Whitehall, probably accounts for the bestowal of a knighthood there in August.

1659 Parliament

No evidence has emerged to link Wheler with royalist plots, but an involvement cannot be discounted altogether. His election to the 1659 Parliament as Member for a Scottish constituency suggests that an association with General George Monck*, apparent later, may already have been operative. He had no known links with Scotland and was probably promoted by those who thought he would support the protectorate against radicals in the army, or even facilitate a return to monarchical government. It is possible that this seat was his second choice, having been squeezed out at Westbury by the new lord of the manor, Robert Danvers* alias Villiers.

Once Parliament was in session, Wheler’s loyalties to that institution were generally even more apparent than those to the executive. Taking on an elder statesman’s mantle, he argued for caution, due procedure, and a long-term budget. One pointer to his attitude to the political circumstances in which he found himself is provided by his choice to supply the chair in the absence of the Speaker on 16 March. Wheler unsuccessfully proposed Nathaniel Bacon*, a staunch Presbyterian who had advanced in print compelling arguments for the primacy of Parliament and the contractual obligations of the magistrate but who had none the less come to terms with successive forms of government in the 1650s and been accepted as persona grata.248Burton’s Diary, iv. 149. Such a stance entailed critical analysis but also pragmatic accommodation. Wheler exhibited both, apparently making more impression as a speaker and certainly collecting fewer committee nominations (relative to his habitually regular attendance) than he had in the 1640s

His concern for precedent and legitimacy was evident from the outset, and in time reflected in his first committee nomination, to peruse the Journal weekly to check that entries were made appropriately (28 Feb.).249CJ vii. 608b. When the bill for the recognition of Richard Cromwell* as protector was introduced, he moved for a second reading the next day, allowing MPs an opportunity to study the text (1 Feb.). ‘This has been in all times since Henry I’, Thomas Burton* heard him insist. ‘Copies ought to be given. It was done in the Long Parliament; yet the clerk cannot without your order.’250Burton’s Diary, iii. 31. The next day he called for a committee ‘to prepare the bills under consideration for the people, as the law for marriages and probate of wills’, while on the 3rd he invited MPs to pause and reflect on the potentially negative implications for parliamentary privilege before giving judges the last say in election disputes.251Burton’s Diary, iii. 37, 54. Jealous of the honour and security of the House, he was a prime mover in examining a ‘gentleman in grey clothes’ who had slipped into the chamber unobtrusively with subversive pamphlets in his pocket (5 Feb.) and was a teller for the minority who tried to have Robert Danvers alias Villiers* committed to the Tower for lying to Members about his delinquent past.252Burton’s Diary, iii. 76, 79; CJ vii. 603a. On the other hand, having advocated sending Major Lewis Audley* to the Gatehouse prison for breaching the rules when presenting his case in a disputed election (2 Feb.), Wheler soon preferred Audley’s petition for release from the Tower, to which he had been eventually committed (7 Feb.).253Burton’s Diary, iii. 42, 85. In this case Wheler probably had prior acquaintance with the malefactor as a colleague on the Middlesex commission of the peace, and could thus make allowances. Equally, he could entertain departure from precedent when there was legislation (and self-interest) to sustain it, asserting in response to those who questioned the extension of the franchise to Scottish and Irish seats that ‘we are united and have equal right with England to sit by the Petition and Advice’ (10 Mar.).254Burton’s Diary, iv. 117.

As MPs continued to debate the structure of government, Wheler appeared to argue for a settlement which would be speedily concluded but carefully considered, prudentially limited and workable in practice. He was keen for debates to be well-attended.255Burton’s Diary iv. 86, 231, 312. He spoke out against people and petitions which threatened to waste time (8, 9 Feb.); he expressed himself ‘sorry to see time spent about words’ (16 Feb.) and desired, in a tone of seeming irritation at murmurs of approbation or dissent, ‘that humming be forborne, which is not parliamentary, nor ever used but at orations and in schools’ (7 Mar.).256Burton’s Diary, iii. 151, 153, 302; iv. 63. He sought to resolve the long-running argument surrounding whether the protectorate should be recognised (implying for some MPs a legal right) or simply acknowledged (implying acceptance of the status quo) in favour of the latter, more readily palatable alternative (14 Feb.).257Burton’s Diary, iii. 278. Presumably because of positive experience, he moved (23 Feb.) to delegate to the protector and the council control of the navy, adding reassuringly à propos fears as to its cost and the use to which it might be put, that he had ‘always observed that these jealousies have been easily passed over’.258Burton’s Diary, iii. 445 On the other hand, he rejected the proposal of Robert Jenkinson that discussion of the nature of the Other House be referred to committee, asserting that it was ‘too great a work to be done by any but the House itself’ (and, as he later insisted, by anything short of a full House). Since Edward Coke† had stated that peers could not be excluded from the former House of Lords through poverty or incapacity, it behoved MPs now to consider first whether its replacement should be hereditary. On the grounds of ‘the safety of the nation’ he advised that it should not. To do otherwise would ‘draw after it all inconveniencies and dependencies that formerly attended them [the Lords]. Three parts in four deserted in the last war.’259Burton’s Diary, iii. 411; iv. 86. Such negative sentiments sit tellingly on the lips of a man who had worked with the Lords in the later 1640s and whose wife had experienced court life; they give some insight into the frame of mind in which he combined a personal loyalty to a monarchical peace with collecting money from royalist delinquents.

Wheler remained prominent in debates on money, sometimes clashing sharply with other Members. When in the early days of the Parliament republican leader Sir Arthur Hesilrige* called for committees to deal with the major aspects of government in the interests of public transparency, Wheler conceded that ‘the people is the purse of the nation’ (or, as another auditor heard it, ‘the Commons are the power of the nation’). But he considered that ‘committees are tedious’. Accounts were ‘always’ given by commissioners, so he would have them summoned to deliver them ‘and swear they keep their books in good method’ (3 Feb.). His motion that they do so within the following ten days was duly adopted.260Burton’s Diary, iii. 61. A fortnight later, following presentations from various departments, Wheler ‘was moving something in relation to the business of the accounts’ when Hesilrige interrupted him, diverting attention to the contents of a letter from Protector Richard Cromwell*; each in turn ‘took down’ the other (17 Feb.).261Burton’s Diary, iii. 308. Once MPs turned to consider the mechanism and timetable for future taxation, Wheler seemed for a while to be swimming against the tide. As his colleagues raised suspicions that a catch-all bill on taxation tied to the life of the protector would run the risk of reviving unpopular old expedients rather than settling needful revenues, Wheler stuck his neck out to commend it on the basis that ‘it brings back our purses again into the Commons’ (29 Mar.).262Burton’s Diary, iv. 297. However, he was soon prepared to argue for a piecemeal solution instead, moving ‘to continue the excise for ten years and to debate this in a grand committee’ while addressing tonnage and poundage in another bill (1 Apr.).263Burton’s Diary, iv. 319.

Wheler’s experience generally made him cautious but hard-headed. When Fairfax presented a petition on behalf of lame soldiers and army widows for the payment of pensions (7 Apr.), Wheler (who was among those nominated to investigate it) recommended that Members ‘see the state of your money first, and have Mr Scawen’s report from the committee of inspections’.264Burton’s Diary, iv. 361-2; CJ vii. 627b. Persons called before this body, which oversaw all government accounts, were supposed to have protection from arrest while they gave evidence, but when one Joseph Drew was imprisoned in Newgate before he could testify Wheler was quick to endorse the view of Colonel John Birch*, another expert on public finance, that ‘it is ordinary to [blank, ?tie] men up with actions, to prevent their evidence against them’. Burton reported Wheler as condemning such legal procedures: ‘bills of Middlesex are commonly pieces of knavery and feigned actions, usually vexatious’; his robust advice was to ‘first release the prisoner and then punish the bailiff [ie the perpetrator], when he can be taken’.265Burton’s Diary, iv. 1, 368, 381.

Financial matters underlay sundry other committee nominations (31 Mar., 13 Apr., 14 Apr.) and contributions to debate (28 Feb.), but without the administrative functions which had been his during the Long Parliament his importance in that particular area looks to have been reduced.266Burton’s Diary, iii. 509; CJ vii. 622b, 637b, 639a. He was placed on the fairly large committees for Irish and for Scottish affairs (1 Apr.), but while these may have taken up some of his time in the three weeks before the Parliament was dissolved they probably did not detain him greatly.267CJ vii. 623b. On the other hand, he remained a confident, visible presence in the House to the end of the session. As the Commons returned to the contentious issue of relations with the Other House, he intervened in discussions several times in a manner that served to bolster the government. He reprimanded William Brisco* when the usually pro-Cromwellian Member quibbled over the wording of the declaration for a May fast day and thus opened the door to further republican criticisms of the bi-cameral structure (5 Apr.).268Burton’s Diary, iv. 341. Having argued for seeking the concurrence of the Other House in the declaration, three days later, with Irish Member Sir Charles Coote* (a supporter of Henry Cromwell*), Wheler was a teller in favour of returning to the traditional forms when sending messages between the Houses; the resolution passed, thus helping to legitimise the position of the Other House.269CJ vii. 632b; Burton’s Diary, iv. 348, 375. He also joined John Thurloe* in seeking mitigation of penalties imposed on an advocate of such policies in the previous Parliament, William Boteler*, for abuses he had allegedly committed when acting as a major-general in Northamptonshire (12 Apr.).270Burton’s Diary, iv. 408. Wheler’s final nomination of the Parliament saw him in the familiar role of local magistrate, in this case executing orders regarding bills of mortality in Margaret’s Westminster and surrounding parishes (15 Apr.).271CJ vii. 640a.

Returned Long Parliament

Unlike his former associates Sir John Evelyn of Surrey, Henry Hungerford and Sir Robert Pye, Wheler was not among the MPs excluded at Pride’s Purge who joined William Prynne in an attempt to re-enter the Commons soon after the Rump was recalled in May 1659. Instead, as the protectorate collapsed and the army divided he appeared to be cultivating private contacts. On 8 February 1660, as he made his way home through a London occupied by Monck’s troops, Samuel Pepys† delivered to Wheler a letter from his master, Edward Montagu II* (later 1st earl of Sandwich), the naval commander who had supported the protectorate but some months before opened correspondence with royalists – perhaps an indication that Wheler was also involved in this.272Pepys, Diary, i. 45-6. He certainly looks to have been close to Monck. He reappeared in the Commons Journal the day after Monck had secured the reinstatement of those excluded at the purge, when he was nominated to work on the bill for prolonging customs and excise legislation (22 Feb.). Later that day he brought in the bill to constitute Monck captain-general of land forces in England, Scotland and Ireland.273CJ vii. 848a, 848b. He reported amendments on the 24th and, once it was passed on the 25th, carried the commission to the general.274CJ vii. 850b, 851b, 852b.

He then returned to more familiar territory in some familiar company. Once again he took a leading part in devising means for the provision of pensions to war widows and maimed soldiers at Ely House and the Savoy (25 Feb., 1 Mar.).275CJ vii. 853a, 857a. He was named to discuss an act for securing loans from the City of London and as an assessment commissioner for Westminster (29 Feb., 2 Mar.).276CJ vii. 856a, 858b. He was included with Grimston, Prynne and Evelyn of Surrey on the committee addressing ‘all matters’ to do with religion (29 Feb.) and later given (with Prynne, Oldisworth and others) a particular brief to take accounts and redress grievances regarding tithes and church livings in Wales (9 Mar.).277CJ vii. 856a, 868a. With Prynne and Hungerford he worked on a piece of reconstruction – the bill for the revival of the jurisdiction of the counties palatine (3 Mar.).278CJ vii. 860b. Having been made a militia commissioner for Middlesex on 8 March, his last nomination was to work (with Prynne) on the bill for settling the militia of London and its liberties (10 Mar.).279CJ vii. 868b.

Restoration

At the elections in April Wheler was returned to the Convention as a Member for Queenborough, probably with Montagu’s support.280HP Commons 1660-1690. On the 9th he wrote to the latter, stationed in the Downs, relating a conversation at St James’s, almost certainly with Monck, about the candidature of Sir William Penn at Weymouth, another admiralty-controlled borough.281Bodl. Carte 73, f. 376. Named to 42 committees, he made only one recorded speech, but was otherwise active, especially with regard to money and religion.282HP Commons 1660-1690. As a justice of the peace from the earliest days of the Restoration he was a keen prosecutor of those who spoke against the king and was soon rewarded with a baronetcy (11 Aug.), although in December 1661 one of his servants fell under suspicion of subversive intent in the royal closet.283Mdx. Co. Recs. iii. 302-9; CSP Dom. 1660-1, pp. 183, 186, 574; CB.

Unsuccessful in his attempt to re-enter Parliament in 1661 as a Member for Westbury, Wheler remained active on local commissions. He was still a receiver of first fruits in June 1662, when he delivered an account, and his business portfolio included moneylending as well as further property development.284PRO30/24/4/109; LMA, WCS; Pepys’s Diary, iii. 43-6. Despite lameness from gout he was sociable, dining often with the earl of Sandwich, Pepys and others.285Pepys’s Diary, iii. 43-4 55, 57, 68-9, 185; iv. 179. George Wheler, who first encountered him at this period, remembered him as ‘a comely old gentleman with a round plump face, a ruddy cheerful countenance, adorned with curled grey hair’.286The Gen. n.s. ii 206.

Fleeing the plague, in 1665 he went to Derby, where his wife’s adopted daughter had relatives, but he died there on 6 August 1666, in his 66th year.287The Gen. n.s. ii 207. His will, made on 20 June 1665 when he enjoyed ‘some measure of health’, revealed a surprising side to the former Presbyterian parliamentarian. In addition to the Cambridge bible given to his friend Dr Alexander Denton and the bequests to the poor of St Margaret’s Westminster parish and hospital were less austere and more politically-charged gifts. Besides the ‘six of my best pictures’ for the earl of Sandwich and the ‘best hatband of emeralds and diamonds’ for his son Sidney, Wheler’s widow and executrix was desired to

present unto the king’s most excellent majesty as a token of my sincere loyalty and thankfulness for his most gracious favours bestowed on my and my wife a jewel in a red velvet case, a picture of the Virgin Mary with Christ on her knee in water colour and a silver candlestick.

To Charles Wheler of Charing, Kent, Dame Elizabeth was to give ‘the sword wherewith the late king of glorious memory knighted me’. Wheler revoked previous intentions to settle his lands on Charles Wheler† of Birdingbury, to whom his baronetcy had been remaindered at its creation, and instead granted the bulk of his extensive estates (after the death of his widow) to Wheler of Charing’s son, George Wheler.288PROB11/324/367. The change of heart gave rise to litigation, but Wheler’s final disposition was upheld.289The Gen. n.s. iii. 42-4. The second baronet was elected to Parliament for Cambridge University in a 1667 contest with Sir Christopher Wren, but George Wheler – botanist, traveller and man of many parts – became a clergyman and, although knighted in 1682, never sat in Parliament.290HP Commons 1660-1690; ‘Sir George Wheler’, Oxford DNB.