WILDMAN, John (1622-93), of Beckett House, Shrivenham, Bucks. and Westminster.

Described by Disraeli as ‘the soul of English politics from 1640 to 1688’, Wildman was one of the greatest political writers and fixers of his age, with a career that spanned the heights of Leveller leader to postmaster-general and London alderman. His achievements were all the more remarkable in that his family ranked no higher than the parish ‘better sort’. In his will of 1670, he would refer to his father as a yeoman.28PROB11/527, f. 92. But Jeffrey Wildman’s trade during the 1620s and 1630s was that of a butcher – and a purveyor of ‘unwholesome flesh’ at that.29Wymondham par. reg.; Mins. Norwich Ct. of Mayoralty, 1630-1, 157; Mins. Norwich Ct. of Mayoralty, 1632-5, 178.

Like his elder brother Francis, Wildman was a sizar at Corpus Christi, Cambridge, and attained the degrees of BA and MA.30Al. Cant.; Clarendon, Hist. v. 303. An opponent later styled him ‘curate of Windham [Wymondham]’ – the Norfolk parish in which he was born – although this can no more be verified than the facts of his military career, supposing he had one. Clarendon (Edward Hyde*) claimed that

being young and of a pregnant wit, in the beginning of the rebellion [Wildman] meant to make his fortune in the war and chose to depend upon Cromwell’s countenance and advice when he [Oliver Cromwell*] was not above the degree of a captain of a troop of horse himself, and [Wildman] was much esteemed and valued by him [Cromwell] and made an officer, and [he] was so active in contriving and fomenting jealousies and discontents and so dexterous in composing or improving any disgusts and so inspired by the spirit of praying and preaching, when those gifts came into request and became thriving arts, that [he] ... grew to be one of the principal adjutators and was most relied upon by Cromwell to infuse those things into the minds of the soldiers and to conduct them in the managery of their discontents as might most advance those designs he then had.31Masterson, Triumph Stain’d, title page; Clarendon, Hist. v. 303.

However, there is no documentary support for any of these assertions or to indicate that Wildman was ever attached to the lifeguard of the commander of the New Model army, Sir Thomas Fairfax*, as another contemporary claimed.32Masterson, Triumph Stain’d, title page. At most, it might reasonably be conjectured that Wildman served in the Eastern Association army – indeed, he may have been the John Wildman who was a soldier in Captain Samuel Moody’s troop of horse in Huntingdonshire in March 1645.33SP28/301, f. 478.

Confusion also surrounds the identity of Wildman’s two wives. The generally held view that his first wife was the daughter of Sir Francis Englefield, a Wiltshire Catholic baronet, is inherently implausible.34‘John Wildman’, Oxford DNB; CB, i. 91. How could a low-born Protestant with little or no estate and no connection to Wiltshire have secured such a match? In fact, Wildman married into a prosperous and godly Norfolk family, the Whitefoots of Hapton.35PROB11/133, ff. 508v-513v; PROB11/225, f. 129; PROB11/527, f. 92. The John Wildman, or Wileman, who married into the Englefields was a Leicestershire Catholic squire.36HMC 14th Rep. VI, 256; J. Shaw, P. Shaw, ‘John Wildman of Burton?’, Leics. Historian, xxxiv. 13-15. Wildman’s second wife has also been misidentified – as a daughter of the Berkshire royalist peer John, 2nd Baron Lovelace. Yet Lovelace was only seven years older than Wildman, at most; Wildman would have had to marry ‘Lucy Lovelace’ (there is no evidence that Lord Lovelace had a daughter of that name) when she was no more than 14 years old.37‘John Wildman’, Oxford DNB; CP, viii. 231-2. Wildman did indeed marry into a Berkshire family at some point between December 1649 and October 1653, but it was not the exalted Lovelaces but the relatively obscure Richmonds of Ashbury, where Wildman’s friend Henry Marten* owned the rectory and advowson.38Supra, ‘Henry Marten’; PROB6/43, f. 153; Richmond Fam. Recs. ed. Richmond, iii. 134-5. Wildman’s supposed marital connection with the Lovelaces is probably traceable to a letter that Lord Lovelace wrote to a neighbour in 1657, in which he referred to ‘my brother Marten and my son Wildman’.39Brotherton Lib. ML mss, vol. 88 (Henry Marten lttrs. 1626-58), f. 29; HMC 13th Rep. IV, 391. Marten’s first wife had been Lovelace’s sister, but why Lovelace should refer to Wildman as his ‘son’ is a mystery – unless it was an in-joke among Marten’s circle at the time.

Wildman’s connection with Berkshire almost certainly originated in his friendship with Marten and their involvement in London’s radical politics during the later 1640s.40Supra, ‘Henry Marten’; E. Vernon, P. Baker, ‘What was the first Agreement of the People?’, HJ liii. 44-5, 56. Clarendon suggested that Wildman ‘quickly got the reputation of a man of parts and, having a smooth pen, drew most of the papers which first kindled that fire between the Parliament and the army that was after extinguished but in the ruin of both’.41Clarendon, Hist. v. 303. Yet agitation in London and in the army against Parliament was well under way by the time Wildman made his first appearance on the political stage early in July 1647, when he turned up at army headquarters at Reading to present Fairfax with a paper from the ‘well-affected of London’, calling for a revival of the Independents’ domination of the capital’s militia committee. This paper formed part of the adjutators’ platform during the army’s debates at Reading over the Heads of Proposals later in the month, which Wildman attended.42Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XLI, ff. 167r-v, 185; Clarke Pprs. i. 170-5, 356-7; Vernon, Baker, ‘What was the first Agreement of the People?’, 44, 45. Subsequently, in early September, ‘Mr Wildman’ was recommended by the general committee of officers as governor of Poole and Brownsea Castle, although there is no evidence that he was ever commissioned as such.43Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS LXVI, f. 6; Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 204.

It was not as a soldier or a Leveller that Wildman became involved in army agitation in the weeks before the Putney debates but rather as a member of ‘an Independent alliance that consisted of the politically and religiously ‘well-affected’ of the City of London and their parliamentary allies’.44Vernon, Baker, ‘What was the first Agreement of the People?’, 46. It is unclear at what stage he joined forces with the so-called ‘new agents’ – the unofficial adjutators of half a dozen or so horse regiments – and began drafting their papers. But it now seems unlikely that he had a hand in preparing their Case of the Armie (9 Oct.), and he himself denied all involvement in its production.45Two Letters from the Agents of the Five Regiments (1647, E.412.6); The Case of the Armie (1647, E.411.9); Clarke Pprs. i. xlvii, 347, 362; Leveller Manifestoes of the Puritan Revolution ed. D.M. Woolf (New York, 1944), 218, 221, 231, 234; Ashley, John Wildman, 29; Woolrych, Soldiers and Statesmen, 204, 207; J. Morrill, P. Baker, ‘The case of the armie truly re-stated’, in The Putney Debates of 1647 ed. M. Mendle (Cambridge, 2001), 103-24. However, he certainly attended the meeting of the new agents on 27 October from which emerged the Agreement of the People, and he was asked to ‘be their mouth and in their names to represent their sense’ – a role he duly performed in the Putney debates.46Clarke Pprs. i. 240, 269-70, 356; An Agreement of the People (1647, E.412.21); Vernon, Baker, ‘What was the first Agreement of the People?’, 55-6. Wildman may well have been the principal author of this first (and arguably the most radical) Agreement, which was envisaged by its backers as the basis for a fundamental reconfiguration of political society; a new constitutional blueprint that would settle the ‘native rights’ of the people ‘unalterably’ and would ensure that any future Parliament would ‘receive the extent of their power and trust from those that betrust them [i.e. the people]’.47J. Peacey, ‘The people of the Agreements: the Levellers, civil war radicalism and political participation’, in The Agreements of the People, the Levellers and the Constitutional Crisis of the English Revolution ed. P. Baker, E. Vernon (Basingstoke, 2012), 56, 58, 67.

Wildman was one of the foremost radical spokesmen at Putney and, as such, frequently clashed with Cromwell’s son-in-law Henry Ireton*. In the debate on 28 October, Wildman denied that previous engagements prevented the army from seeking to impose its will upon an unjust Parliament, particularly in view of the danger of ‘the destruction of the people’. His position was underpinned by fear that there was little time to prevent Parliament from restoring the king ‘in such a way as he may be in a capacity to destroy the people’.48Clarke Pprs. i. 241, 260, 267. Wildman then added fuel to the fire ignited by the agents by publishing A Call to all the Souldiers (29 Oct.), which attacked the ‘juggling, falsehood and double-dealing’ of ‘crafty politicians and subtle Machiavellians’ and which castigated Cromwell and Ireton for pursing the same ‘pernicious courses’ as the impeached Presbyterians and for carrying on ‘the king’s design’.49[J. Wildman], A Cal to all the Souldiers (1647), sigs. A2v-3, A4 (E.412.10). Stressing the futility of further negotiations with the grandees and the need to punish Charles I as a ‘man of blood’, Wildman urged the army to ‘create new officers’ and to ‘establish a free Parliament by expulsion of the usurpers’.50Wildman, A Cal, sigs. A, A3, A4.

The distance between the agents and grandees became abundantly clear at Putney on 29 October 1647, when Wildman echoed Thomas Rainborowe* by asserting that ‘every person in England hath as clear a right to elect his representative as the greatest person in England’. He further insisted that ‘all government is in the free consent of the people’ and hence that ‘there is never a person in England but ought to have a voice in elections’.51Clarke Pprs. i. 318. He attacked the Heads of Proposals as a ‘foundation of slavery’ and dismissed notions of restoring the militia to the king and the monarch’s negative voice.52Clarke Pprs. i. 352-6. He also defended the building of ‘foundations of freedom’ and the need for ‘an agreement with the people’ in order that ‘Parliament should know what they were entrusted to and what they were not’.53Clarke Pprs. i. 354, 355, 362. On 1 November, he challenged those who spoke according to ‘what is given in to his spirit’, rather than according to ‘what is justice … and what is good’, and he cast doubt upon ‘whether there be a way left for mercy’ for the king, who was ‘the great contriver of all’.54Clarke Pprs. i. 384. He rejected both the king and the House of Lords as being inconsistent with ‘the safety of the people’ and with ‘principles and maxims of just government’.55Clarke Pprs. i. 385, 386-7, 394, 398-9, 403, 406.

Although Wildman was named by the general council to the committee for summarising the army’s political commitments (9 Nov.), he was thoroughly disillusioned with the grandees by this stage, and he emerged in the wake of the Putney debates as a prominent Leveller.56Clarke Pprs. i. 414-5. He made his disdain for England’s new military masters clear in Putney Projects (30 Dec.), in which he accused the army, like the king and Parliament, of having become tyrannical.57J. Lawmind [Wildman], Putney Projects, or the Old Serpent in a New Forme (1647), 1 (E.421.19). Describing the grandees as ‘broken reeds’, he sought to ‘present them naked in their actions’.58Wildman, Putney Projects, 2. He chided them for failing to prosecute the Eleven Members and accused them of merely seeking to usurp the Presbyterian ‘monopoly of the king’s favour’, of having succumbed to ‘those cursed tares and court principles’ and of planning to revive the royal ‘enslaving power’.59Wildman, Putney Projects, 4, 5, 7, 8-9, 10-11, 12, 14. He then catalogued evidence that the principal elements of royal authority – the ‘glittering pearls of the crown’ – were being revived by the grandees. He concluded by arguing that the people should not ‘trifle away their precious time’ electing powerless MPs, and he encouraged them instead to purge Parliament.60Wildman, Putney Projects, 14, 15, 17, 19-21, 22, 32, sig. F4v.

Wildman attended Leveller meetings in Shoreditch early in 1648 to discuss plans for petitioning campaigns and money-raising schemes, and when details of these proceedings were revealed to Parliament by a local minister, George Masterson, he and John Lilburne were arrested. Brought before the Commons in mid-January, Wildman delivered ‘a salvo of his right as an Englishman’, whereupon he was committed to the Fleet prison.61CJ v. 437a-438a; HMC 13th Rep. IV, 401-2. Wildman quickly penned a pamphlet defence, Truth’s Triumph (1 Feb.), outlining his statement before the House and defending the petitioning campaign with which he was associated.62J. Wildman, Truths Triumph (1648), 3-10 (E.520.33). Masterson duly responded in The Triumph Stain’d (10 Feb.), which publicised Leveller tactics and alleged that Wildman had advocated the assassination of Cromwell.63Masterson, Triumph Stain’d, 9-10, 12-14, 20-24. Such accusations resurfaced in an official tract by the secretary of the Derby House Committee*, Gualter Frost.64W. Frost, A Declararion of Some Proceedings (1648), 13-18, 20-23 (E.427.6).

Wildman remained in prison until the summer of 1648 – his petition to Parliament for bail having been refused in February – despite apparently receiving support from the influential Bulstrode Whitelocke*.65CJ v. 469b; Whitelocke, Diary, 204. His imprisonment created a bond of sympathy with former enemies, and he published a pamphlet defence of a prominent Presbyterian sufferer, Sir John Maynard*, The Lawes Subversion (Mar. 1648), in which he railed against ‘the dangerous and destructive infringement of our native liberties and ... the arbitrary government now introduced by an aspiring faction over-awing the Parliament’.66J. Howldin, The Lawes Subversion, or Sir John Maynards Case Truly Stated (1648), 4 (E.432.2). Maynard would later address the Commons on behalf of Wildman and Lilburne, and it was this speech, together with the assistance of Whitelocke, that secured an order for their release (2 Aug.).67CJ v. 658b; Whitelocke, Diary, 220.

By this stage, Levellers such as Wildman had reversed their earlier position regarding the king, whom they now considered a bulwark against the overweening power of the Independent grandees. At a meeting called by Cromwell in September 1648 at the Nag’s Head tavern in London – where, according to Lilburne, ‘the just ends of the war were as exactly laid open by Mr Wildman as ever I heard in my life’ – the Levellers were bluntly informed of the army’s plans ‘to cut off the king’s head ... and and force and thoroughly purge, if not dissolve, the Parliament’. By way of compromise, it was agreed to set up a committee, to which Wildman was named, for framing a new ‘agreement of the people’. After another highly-charged meeting between the army grandees and the Levellers in mid-November, another committee was established – this one comprising Levellers (including Wildman), soldiers, London Independents and ‘honest’ MPs – to produce the draft constitution, or ‘agreement of the people’, that would be submitted to the council of officers on 11 December. Much of this committee’s work was apparently performed by Wildman and his fellow Levellers.68J. Lilburne, The Legall Fundamentall Liberties (1649, E.560.14).

A forceful if irregular contributor to the Whitehall debates late in 1648, Wildman attended the session on 14 December concerning toleration, when he argued forcefully against granting the civil magistrate power over religious beliefs.69Clarke Pprs. ii. 72, 76, 91-2, 112. ‘Matters of religion or the worship of God are not a thing trustable’, he insisted; the civil magistrate ‘must be conceived to be as erroneous as the people by whom he is restrained and more probable to err than the people’.70Clarke Pprs. ii. 120-1. Thereafter, however, his participation in the debates seems to have been patchy, and he was certainly absent on 16, 21 and 26 December, although he attended the debate regarding proposals to prevent the representative from meddling in the execution of laws (18 Dec.).71B. Taft, ‘Voting lists of the council of officers, December 1648’, BIHR lii. 146-9. By late December, he and the other Levellers were clearly frustrated by the protracted nature of proceedings and may have begun to distrust the motives of the officers.72Worc. Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS XVI, f. 64v.

The Whitehall debates may also have caused tensions within the Leveller movement, for it was probably at this around this time that Wildman split with the other leaders and ceased to sign their published statements.73J. Lilburne, A Plea for Common-Right and Freedom (1648, E.536.22). Richard Overton would inquire in July 1649 as to the whereabouts of ‘my old fellow rebel Johnee Wildman’.74R. Overton, Overton’s Defyance of the Act of Pardon (1649), 7 (E.562.26); J. Lilburne, Impeachment of High Treason (1649, E.568.20); Lilburne, Legall Fundamentall Liberties, 11. Like his former confederates, Wildman probably opposed the trial and execution of the king, and claims made after the Restoration that he had been present on the scaffold, and that he may even have been the executioner, can be dismissed as malicious.75CSP Dom. 1668-9, pp. 424-6. Nevertheless, he acquiesced in the rule of the Rump sufficiently to merit consideration by the council of state in May 1649 for appointment as a parliamentary commissioner for Guernsey.76CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 154. He was certainly well-regarded enough by the commonwealth to write a letter of recommendation to the Committee of Accounts* (Nov. 1649) and to petition the Rump for office in the reformed prerogative court of Canterbury.77SP28/258, f. 440; CJ vi. 505b, 608a. Moreover, it was at some point in the late 1640s or early 1650s that he began to be styled ‘Major Wildman’, although the duration of his military service and whether it was in a local militia unit or in the regular army remain obscure.78CJ vi. 505b; Whitelocke, Diary, 220. The assertion that he was an officer in Sir John Reynolds’s* regiment of horse cannot be substantiated in any of the sources.79Ashley, John Wildman, 9, 70.

But although Wildman distanced himself from the Leveller leadership in 1649, he did not foresake the cause of radical reform more generally. In December 1650, he acted as legal counsel for those London freemen who sought, unsuccessfully, to democratise City government.80London’s Liberties (1651), 2-3, 7-12, 23-35 (E.620.7). Moreover, at about the same time he rejoined Lilburne as a front-man and political strategist for the freeholders and commoners of the Isle of Axholme in their often violent struggle against the fen-drainage adventurers. The commoners’ case accorded well with Leveller notions of upholding the people’s property rights against the arbitrary power of the state and its ‘great coached and feasted friends’. A subsequent investigation by the Rump revealed that Lilburne and Wildman had agreed to support the freeholders’ legal challenge against the adventurers in return for 2,000 acres of land, and that they had promised to secure election to the next Parliament as their representatives.81SP18/37, ff. 14-86; SP18/74, ff. 164, 166; CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 373-6; 1654, pp. 309-10; To the Parliament of the Commonwealth…The Declaration of Daniel Noddel (1653), 17-19; K. Lindley, Fenland Riots and the English Revolution (1982), 188, 193-5, 204-7, 212-13. Wildman’s motives, in other words, were not entirely high-minded, and his involvement with the fenlanders reflected, in part at least, his attempt to establish himself as a professional man-of-business, as Clarendon recognised.82Clarendon, Hist. v. 303-4.

Wildman and Lilburne also joined forces at Westminster late in 1651 to help draft and publish a petition to the Rump, accusing Sir Arthur Hesilrige* of ‘oppression and tyranny’ as governor of the four northern counties.83Supra, ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; J. Peacey, Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution (Cambridge, 2103), 291. That same month (Dec.), Wildman sought substantial fees as part of a consortium that proposed to lobby Parliament on behalf of the corporation at Gloucester in order to secure reparations for the city’s losses in the civil war.84HMC 12th Rep. IX, 506-7. But most of his work as an agent and man-of-business during the early 1650s was concerned with the purchase of forfeited lands, often on behalf of prominent recusants and royalists.85CCC 1118, 1449, 1602, 1625, 1715, 1722, 1769, 1835, 1876, 1896, 1955, 2140, 2194, 2201, 2203, 2247, 2258, 2282, 2293, 2321, 2405, 2573, 2590, 2637, 2662, 2807, 2859, 3028, 3032, 3100, 3127, 3130, 3151, 3298. Indeed, he acquired a reputation in the 1650s as ‘a great manager of papists’ interests’.86Hutchinson Mems. ed. Sutherland, 198-9. That said, he also acted as an agent for the widow of the leading pro-Leveller MP Thomas Rainborowe.87CCC 1118, 1430.

In keeping with his promise to the Lincolnshire fenlanders in the early 1650s, Wildman sought election to the first protectoral Parliament in summer of 1654. He initially stood for Westminster, but despite reports early in July of his likely success there, he was defeated in a poll on election day.88Supra, ‘Westminster’; HMC Egmont, i. 546; Severall Proceedings no. 250 (6-13 July 1654), 3968 (E.230.10). With the backing of his friend and fellow republican Vice-admiral John Lawson, he secured return for the Yorkshire port-town of Scarborough.89Supra, ‘Scarborough’; TSP iii. 147-8; CCSP iii. 257. But once his election was reported in the press, his enemies in Lincolnshire presented a petition the council, requesting that ‘a person guilty of such crimes’ be refused admission to Parliament.90SP18/74, ff. 164, 166; CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 309-10; Peacey, Print and Public Politics, 382. The council probably needed little encouragement to exclude Wildman under article XVII of the Instrument of Government, which stipulated that MPs must be ‘persons of known integrity, fearing God and of good conversation’.91Supra, ‘Scarborough’; P. Gaunt, ‘Cromwell’s purge?: exclusions and the first protectorate Parliament’, History, vi. 3, 11.

Wildman took his exclusion from the 1654 Parliament particularly badly, becoming an active opponent of Cromwell and endeavouring to ‘make such a schism in the army as would give an opportunity to other enraged persons to take vengeance upon him’.92Clarendon, Hist. v. 304. That autumn, he attended meetings of disaffected army officers and republicans, including Marten, Lawson, Thomas Lord Grey of Groby*, Alexander Popham* and the Independent minister George Cockayne, and he assisted in formulating, publishing and dispersing the petition of the three colonels John Okey*, Matthew Alured* and Thomas Sanders* (Oct. 1654).93TSP iii. 147-8; vi. 832-3, 829-30; The Humble Petition of Several Colonels (1654, 669 f.19.21). It was later reported that Wildman had been heard to justify the murder of ‘such a tyrant’ as Cromwell, ‘if there be (or might be) two Feltons to be found’ – a reference to the assassin of George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham.94TSP vi. 830.

Although Wildman’s role in republican plotting against the protectorate was known to the authorities, no action was taken against him until February 1655, when he was arrested near Faringdon in Oxfordshire while apparently dictating The Declaration of the Free and Well Affected People of England, Now in Arms Against Oliver Cromwell. This pamphlet called for the abolition of ‘assumed’ and ‘usurped’ powers, the establishment of ‘due bonds and limits’ upon civil magistrates, the holding of free and successive Parliaments and for parliamentary control over the militia. Clearly regarded as a threat to the government, and probably to Cromwell personally, Wildman was committed to the Tower and then transferred to Chepstow Castle. The escape of his servant, who had also been in custody, prompted Wildman’s swift return to the Tower – a move that was widely predicted would result in his execution.95Ludlow, Mems. i. 418; Whitelocke, Diary, 400-401; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 183-7; TSP i. 147; vi. 832-3; Clarke Pprs. iii. 23-5; Clarendon, Hist. v. 305. He certainly provoked considerable apprehension at Whitehall, to the extent that the government referred to him in several of its declarations, and Cromwell reportedly argued in favour of having him hanged.96CSP Dom. 1655, p. 407; Ludlow, Mems. i. 418. In addition, the major-generals kept a close eye upon his associates and sought to sequester property that had been acquired in his name.97TSP iv. 161, 179, 215, 333, 340.

Given the government’s perception of Wildman as a danger to the state, it is surprising that he was released at the end of June 1656 – ostensibly as a result of a petition from his creditors – although on security for the hefty sum of £10,000.98CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 387. Not long after his release the sequestration of his estates was lifted.99TSP v. 241. This show of leniency towards Wildman perplexed contemporaries, and Clarendon later suggested that the protectorate ‘found that there were more engaged with him than could be brought to justice or were fit to be discovered’, although he also thought it possible that Wildman had agreed to work as a spy for the regime, ‘as others at that time suspected and had reason for it afterwards’.100Clarendon, Hist. v. 305. Wildman was undoubtedly well-placed for this role, having established contact with leading royalists while also becoming involved with the Leveller officer Edward Sexby in fomenting dissent in the army.101CCSP iii. 40, 51, 55, 135; TSP v. 37; CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 244, 372, 395; 1656-7, p. 67. There is evidence that Wildman was using his clerical friend George Cockayne to supply Secretary John Thurloe* with information regarding Sexby and other radicals, and he probably had few, if any, scruples about compromising the royalists in similar fashion.102TSP v. 37, 393; vi. 822. In serving Thurloe and the state, Wildman probably intended to baffle both the royalists and the Cromwellians in the wider cause of securing free and regular Parliaments and religious toleration.

The possibility that Wildman was a double agent was not seriously entertained by the royalists for over a year.103Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 193-4. Having maintained his interest among the old Levellers, Wildman was apparently involved in plans to foment petitioning campaigns in England in order to distract Cromwell while the royalists plotted his overthrow. Indeed, leading royalists, including Charles II, felt confident that Wildman was sincere in his support for their cause and that he would not seek to tie the king ‘too strictly in particulars’.104CCSP iii. 139, 142. Their confidence in him would have grown with the appearance in July 1656 of a Leveller address to Charles, signed by Wildman, setting out terms for an alliance – notably, religious toleration and the abolition of tithes, the restoration of the Long Parliament (including the House of Lords) and ratification of the Newport Treaty.105Clarendon, Hist. vi. 67-74; CCSP iii. 145; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 193. For the remainder of 1656, Wildman was mentioned frequently in both royal and royalist correspondence and was considered worthy of substantial financial rewards.106CCSP iii. 153, 173, 192, 193, 203, 215. He became involved in planning Sindercombe’s assassination plot against Cromwell, and he continued to foment opposition after its failure, not least through his influence with Vice-admiral Lawson.107CCSP iii. 241, 247, 257. He apparently developed a ‘good understanding’ with the leading royalist conspirator Sir William Compton, and in August 1657 he was mentioned by the exiled royalist grandee James Butler, 1st marquess of Ormond in association with impending ‘commotions’.108CCSP iii. 269, 303, 316, 333, 335, 342.

It was in the summer of 1657, however, that royalist suspicions regarding Wildman began to emerge in earnest as a result of his release, on Cromwell’s orders, from custody in Gravesend, where he had been detained while attempting to cross the Channel on a false passport.109CCSP iii. 375; Nicholas Pprs. iv. 16. Yet Wildman managed to secure testimonies confirming his fidelity to the king’s cause, and he was thus able to maintain his contacts among the royalists plotting against Cromwell’s life and for a Stuart restoration.110CCSP iii. 383, 384, 388, 391, 403; iv. 1, 3. After the failure of the Hewitt plot in early 1658, however, the royalists clearly suspected him of holding secret correspondence with Cromwell and of having helped to secure Mardyke for the regime.111TSP i. 708, 711; vii. 20, 80. The royalists also linked him with the betrayal of Compton and his fellow conspirator William Howard later that year, and their support for him began to diminish accordingly.112CCSP iv. 73, 87, 98, 109, 115; Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 198. By January 1659, at the very latest, Hyde had concluded that the king’s party had been outwitted by Wildman and that he was working to persuade his friends and associates among the English Catholic community to support the republican interest. He was also believed to have established an unhealthy influence over Fairfax’s royalist son-in-law, the 2nd duke of Buckingham.113CCSP iv. 136, 149, 162, 164, 169, 172, 205. There were even rumours that Wildman had sought to advance the cause of the duke of York against the interest of Charles II.114CCSP iv. 172, 178, 179, 186, 206, 215; HMC 10th Rep. VI, 197.

The re-assembly of the Rump in May 1659 revealed Wildman in his true colours as a committed commonwealthsman.115CCSP iv. 195, 231. Some royalists, unable to accept that he had forsaken them entirely, took heart from the news that he was involved in an army petition to the Rump in July, ‘which may breed ill-blood’.116CCSP iii. 232, 257, 262. But in fact, he was chairing meetings with fellow republicans in Covent Garden that summer for devising ‘a commonwealth model’, and he was also involved with Whitelocke in preparing ‘a form of government of a free state’ for General Charles Fleetwood*.117CCSP iv. 264; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, ii. 174; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 385; Whitelocke, Diary, 555-6; Longleat, Whitelocke Pprs. xxiv, pp. 399-400. After the Restoration, it was alleged that Wildman had set up a ‘great club ... called the Commonwealth Club’ in a ‘victualling house’ in Bow Street, Covent Garden, where Hesilrige, Marten, Okey, Francis Hacker* and other prominent republicans ‘to the number of 80 constantly met’ during the late 1650s.118SP29/41/32, f. 98; CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 86.

Following the army’s interruption of the Rump in mid-October 1659, Wildman sided with the civilian republican interest associated with Hesilrige and Thomas Scot I*, securing Windsor Castle for their party in late December.119CJ vii. 798b; A Letter…Concerning the Securing of Windsor Castle (1659), 3-5; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 385; Whitelocke, Diary, 555-6; CCSP iv. 500. After the Rump reconvened a few days later, Wildman received the thanks of the House, but he was not granted the governorship of Windsor, as some had expected, and had to settle instead for a colonelcy in the Berkshire militia.120CCSP iv. 500; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 321. It was not until March 1660 that royalists such as Edward Massie* finally conceded defeat in their attempts to ‘reclaim’ Wildman for the Stuart cause.121CCSP iv. 583, 614; TSP vii. 866.

Wildman was linked with republican plotting in the spring of 1660, and information was presented against shortly him after the Restoration.122CCSP iv. 661, 671; CJ viii. 66b. But although he took steps in June to protect his estate from sequestration, he was initially unmolested by Stuart regime – perhaps he was shielded by his friend Whitelocke – and he was able to assume a position of influence in the post office.123Brotherton Lib. ML mss, box 75/999; Longleat, Whitelocke Pprs. xix, f. 126; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 409; 1661-2, p. 55; Whitelocke, Diary, 633; M. Ashley, ‘John Wildman and the post office’, in For Veronica Wedgwood These ed. R. Ollard, P. Tudor-Craig (1986), 207-9. However, he was kept under close surveillance, and in November 1661 he was arrested with other republicans and interrogated about secret meetings, attempts to influence elections and plans to revive the Long Parliament.124Eg. 2543, ff. 65-6; SP29/46, f. 63; HMC 11th Rep. VII, 3. Imprisoned in the Tower, on St Mary’s in the Scilly Isles and in Pendennis Castle, he was not able to secure release until 1667 – probably through Buckingham’s influence.125SP29/46, f. 64; Brotherton Lib. ML mss, box 69/973; box 75/1033; HMC 11th Rep. VII, 4; Whitelocke, Diary, 675, 707n, 709, 739, 744, 793, 824; ‘John Wildman’, Oxford DNB. When he drew up his will in 1670, Wildman complained that his ‘oppressors’ had ‘much encumbered’ his estate with debts. Nevertheless, he was able to charge his properties in Berkshire, Hampshire and Norfolk with bequests totalling approximately £3,500 and to ensure that a pound a week was available to ‘sustain and comfort’ his old friend Henry Marten. In the event that his only son John died without issue during his life time, Wildman bequeathed his Berkshire properties in reversion (after the death of his widow) to his ‘adopted’ heir Thomas Vane†, the son of the deceased republican grandee Sir Henry Vane II*. Wildman also requested that upon his death there should be

some stone of small price set near my ashes that may without foolish flattery signify to posterity that in this age a man lived that spent the best of his age in prisons, without crime, being conscious to himself of no offences towards man, save that he so loved his God that he could serve no man’s will and wished the liberty and happiness of his country and all mankind … that occasionally some good reflections upon it may be excited in some excellent minds by their reading such an inscription.126PROB11/527, ff. 91-4.

In fact, Wildman was to live for more than 20 years after making his will, and as an intimate friend of the duke of Buckingham and Algernon Sydney* he became involved in political intrigues again during the Restoration period. He sought election to the Exclusion Parliaments of 1679, secured a seat in 1681 and was briefly imprisoned in 1683 for his part in the Rye House Plot. He subsequently acted as agent for James Scot, 1st duke of Monmouth, and although he refused to join the rebellion against James II, was forced to flee to Holland. Having returned to England with William of Orange at the Glorious Revolution in 1688, he resumed his trade as a pamphleteer, was returned to Parliament for a third time and secured the offices of deputy postmaster-general and alderman of London. In 1692, Wildman the former Leveller leader was knighted.127‘John Wildman’, Oxford DNB; HP Commons 1660-90; Ashley, ‘Wildman and the post office’, 211-12.

Wildman died on 1 June 1693 and was buried at Shrivenham.128MI Shrivenham. His failure to write a will since 1670 meant that he was deemed to have died intestate, and the administration of the estate was not settled until 1712 after the death of his son John† (MP for Wootton Bassett between 1689 and 1695). It was also then that a monument was finally erected in Wildman’s honour, reciting the eulogy he had written in his will.129PROB11/527, f. 91; Wood, Life and Times, iii. 424; HP Commons 1690-1715; VCH Berks. iv. 540.