WHITELOCKE (WHITLOCK), William (1636-1717), of Fawley Court, Bucks.

William Whitelocke was the first son of the second marriage of the lawyer and statesman, Bulstrode Whitelocke*, and his early career was conditioned by his father’s importance during the civil war and interregnum. He is first mentioned in his father’s diary before the age of six, when in October 1642 he and his younger siblings were entrusted to the tenant of the family home at Fawley Court in Buckinghamshire while his father moved to London after the battle of Edgehill.13Whitelocke, Diary, 138n. With his elder half-brother James*, William was educated at Mr Shilborne’s school at Grendon in Northamptonshire in the mid-1640s, and they were there in September 1645 when one Captain Guy rescued them ‘from the king’s soldiers marching that way, being informed that they should be seized by the soldiers’.14Whitelocke, Diary, 180. The two boys may also have enrolled at Oxford University later in the decade, although there is no official record of this.15Spalding, Contemporaries, 429; Whitelocke, Diary, 215. They were certainly admitted to their father’s inn of court, the Middle Temple, on 4 June 1647; both were bound with their father and his friend, the Dorset bencher, Bartholomew Hall, and they were assigned the family chamber in Essex Court.16MTR ii. 951-2; Whitelocke, Diary, 201. Only William was to train as a professional lawyer, however, being called to the bar in February 1655, and retaining chambers in Essex Court until June 1653, and then in the ‘new buildings’ in Brick Court, built by Bartholomew Hall’s son, Thomas, until June 1657, when he resigned them to another of his father’s associates from Dorset, James Dewy I*.17MTR iii. 1052, 1076, 1102, 1111; Spalding, Contemporaries, 73-4.

William’s legal career did not tie him to London, however. In October 1653, when Bulstrode Whitelocke left for Sweden as ambassador to Queen Christina, he took both William and James as members of his entourage. In December they waited on the queen, and kissed her hand; in the spring of 1654 William impressed his father with his ability to hold his own in semi-serious ‘disputations in Latin’; and before they left Sweden William and James were presented with medals inlaid with the queen’s portrait.18Whitelocke, Diary, 296, 317, 344n, 359, 365. The return journey was beset with storms at sea, and Bulstrode Whitelocke recorded in his diary his attempts to keep up his sons’ spirits. He ‘encouraged [them]… to a submission to the will of God, and told them that if they must die together he doubted not but they should shortly meet in heaven’, and added, less helpfully, that ‘he lamented not so much his own condition, being old, as their untimely being snatched away’.19Whitelocke, Diary, 385. The suffocating presence of his father may have encouraged William to leave London for much of 1656 and 1657, when he stayed as a guest of his sister, the wife of Sir Richard Pryse*, in Wales. During this period he fell in with ‘Mr Vaughan’ (Edward Vaughan*), who was a friend of the Pryses, and in July 1657 ‘this gentleman promised so much kindness to … William that some believed he would make him his heir, having no children of his own’. In the late summer of 1657 William moved to Bath, ‘to find some ease by it, of a distemper then upon him’.20Whitelocke, Diary, 451-2, 461, 473, 475. He had recovered by the summer of 1658, and from then on he was in search of a suitable wife, finally settling on Mary Overbury, the daughter of Sir Giles Overbury of Bourton on the Hill, Gloucestershire, whom he considered his ‘mistress’ by January 1659, when there was every prospect that ‘the treaty of marriage… was likely to take effect’.21Whitelocke, Diary, 494, 504-5.

While William Whitelocke was busy in Gloucestershire, his father was using his influence to secure him a seat in Richard Cromwell*’s Parliament. As soon as news came of the forthcoming session on 4 December 1658, Bulstrode had ‘thoughts of getting his sons … to be chosen Parliament men’, and within a week he had sent letters ‘to several of his friends in the country, about procuring his sons to be chosen’.22Whitelocke, Diary, 501-2. William was returned for two seats. The first was Reading in Berkshire, where he stood as a candidate although it was well known that ‘there was a great faction before for Mr Henry Neville*, and little probability of bringing in Whitelocke’s son because of former engagements by the townsmen’. On 4 January 1659 there was news ‘that the mayor and aldermen there had chosen Whitelocke’s son, William, and Captain Thornhill, for their burgesses’. There were still doubts, however, and on 6 January Bulstrode ‘judged it fit … to waive the election at Reading for his son William, because there would be a question upon it by Mr Neville’, but the sheriff filed the return anyway, leaving the matter to be settled by Parliament itself.23Whitelocke, Diary, 502, 504-5. Bulstrode Whitelocke’s willingness to withdraw from the Reading contest was conditioned by William’s election for another seat, the borough of West Looe in Cornwall. The key figure here was Thomas Povey*, ‘who did friendly assist Whitelocke to procure his son William to be chosen’, using his influence with the patron of the borough, Francis Buller I*. On 6 January, Bulstrode received confirmation that William had been elected, with the blessing not only of Francis Buller, but also of his uncle, Colonel Anthony Buller*, who did ‘endeavour and procure it to be done’.24Whitelocke, Diary, 504-5.

William Whitelocke attended Parliament at the opening of the session, and was named to the committee of elections on 28 January.25CJ vii. 594a. The next day, the father gave his sons ‘his best advice for their carriage’, expecting them to be loyal pawns in his own interest.26Whitelocke, Diary, 505. On 1 February, however, there came a rebuff, when the committee of elections reported the disputed Reading election, and found that Neville and Daniel Blagrave had been returned before Whitelocke and Thornhill, and the indenture of the other two was withdrawn.27CJ vii. 596a-b. His father saw this as politically motivated, saying that the committee had been nobbled by ‘Henry Neville’s interest’.28Whitelocke, Diary, 506. William Whitelocke remained in the House as MP for West Looe, but his attendance seems to have ceased soon afterwards. His father was bitterly disappointed, complaining on 22 March that ‘though … his sons James and William were by his means returned Members of this Parliament, and though the great business wherein [he] was concerned of transacting with the Other House were now in debate, yet [his] sons were both absent from the Parliament’.29Whitelocke, Diary, 509. William’s desertion was more justifiable than his brother’s, however, as he had gone to Gloucestershire to finalise his match with Mary Overbury, writing to his father in March that negotiations were well advanced, and adding, less than tactfully, ‘that in the country the news was that the Parliament should be dissolved, and that he met troops of horse marching to London’.30Whitelocke, Diary, 509. The Parliament was still in existence in early April, when he sent a letter announcing that ‘his marriage day was appointed’, and asking his father to arrange a financial settlement quickly; but when the wedding took place, on 19 May, the third protectorate Parliament had been dead for nearly a month.31Whitelocke, Diary, 510, 516.

Whitelocke continued to be on good terms with his father during the brief return of the commonwealth. On 25 June 1659, Bulstrode received letters from ‘Mr Starkey, that he had resigned his place of steward of Windsor Castle Court unto Whitelocke’s son, William’, although it is doubtful that the appointment was made. William and his bride returned to London at the end of June, and stayed with his father at Chelsea. In September, William asked his father to intervene ‘in the behalf of Mr [Edward] Vaughan his friend, suspected to be in the Cheshire insurrection’; by November he was acting as his father’s lawyer, and ‘got money by practising before him’ in the business of the great seal.32Whitelocke, Diary, 521-2, 530, 543. After the Restoration, despite his father’s disgrace, William Whitelocke continued to practise as a lawyer, and rose to be bencher of the Middle Temple in 1671, and king’s council in 1689. Thereafter he served as MP for the neighbouring constituency of Great Marlow, and then for Oxford University. He died in 1717, and was the last of his family to sit in Parliament.33HP Commons 1660-90.