BARWIS, Richard (1602-49), of Ilekirk Grange, Westward, Cumb.

Known as ‘Great Barwis’ or ‘Great Richard’ because of his formidable stature and strength, Barwis cut a large figure in early Stuart Cumberland both physically and politically.37MacDonald, ‘Fam. of Barwis’, 117-18; Swift, ‘Barwis of Cumb. pt. II’, 119. He was descended from a family that had held land in Cumberland and Westmorland and had figured prominently in the affairs of the two counties since the thirteenth century.38F. B. Swift, ‘Barwis of Cumb. pt. I’, Trans. Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. ser. 2, l. 136-7. By the early sixteenth century, the Cumberland branch of the family had settled at Ilekirk Grange (part of Holme Cultram Abbey, about ten miles from Carlisle), which they purchased from the crown at the dissolution of the monasteries and made their principal residence.39MacDonald, ‘Fam. of Barwis’, 115-16.

Barwis was orphaned at the age of 14, and his wardship was bought by his paternal grandfather, who resold it to Sir John Dalston†, the father of Sir George Dalston*.40WARD9/205, f. 10v; Cumb. RO (Kendal), WDRY/1/3/26/29-30; WDRY/5/129; Phillips, ‘Gentry in Cumb. and Westmld.’, 234-5. The day-to-day guardianship of the young Barwis was exercised by his maternal grandfather, John Fleming of Rydal, who neglected the upkeep of his ward’s estate and married him into one of Cumberland’s leading recusant families, the Musgraves of Hayton Castle – although there is no evidence that Barwis himself was anything but a firm Protestant.41Phillips, ‘Gentry in Cumb. and Westmld.’, 70, 234-5. After he came of age, Barwis set about improving his estate, and there appears to be little basis for the claim made by one Cumberland writer after the Restoration that he had inherited a ‘fair estate’ but had then ‘trifled it away’.42C8/38/113; C78/432/10; Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DLAW/3/2/4; A Cursory Relation of all the Antiquities and Familyes in Cumberland. By Edmund Sandford ed. R. S. Ferguson (Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. tract ser. iv), 27. Appointed to the Cumberland bench in 1626 and as a commissioner for collecting the Forced Loan in 1627, he was among the more diligent and trusted of the county’s governors.43C231/4, f. 207; HCA30/840/58; SP16/56/34, f. 48; SP16/152/46, ff. 95, 96; Municipal Recs. Carlisle ed. R. S. Ferguson (Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. extra ser. iv), 108. He was also politically astute, taking care to cultivate close links with the leading men of Carlisle, becoming a freeman and member of the city’s merchant guild in 1624.44Cumb. RO (Carlisle), CA/2/27; DGC 4/1, f. 14v. His interest among the Carlisle freemen by the late 1620s was strong enough to secure his return for the city to the 1628 Parliament.45‘Richard Barwis’, HP Commons, 1604-29. As sheriff of Cumberland in 1634-5, he sympathised with the city’s efforts to secure exemption from the first writ for Ship Money, but he was nevertheless diligent in collecting the levy.46Cumb. RO (Carlisle), CA/2/109, 110, 112; CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 13; 1637, p. 288; M.D. Gordon, ‘The collection of ship-money in the reign of Charles I’, TRHS ser. 3, iv. 156. In the royal charter of incorporation that he played a leading role in obtaining for Carlisle in 1637, he was named as the city’s mayor.47Cumb. RO (Carlisle), CA/2/120/5, 8, 12; CA/4/139, f. 86v.

Barwis was among the ten men who signed the indenture returning his friend Sir Patricius Curwen and Sir George Dalston as knights of the shire for Cumberland to the Short Parliament.48Supra, ‘Cumberland’. That same day, 17 March 1640, he and Sir George’s son, William, were returned for Carlisle. Barwis received no appointments in this Parliament and made no recorded contribution to debate. In the elections to the Long Parliament that autumn, he and Dalston were returned for Carlisle again.49Supra, ‘Carlisle’.

Although Barwis would emerge during the civil war as Cumberland’s most prominent parliamentarian, his career in the Long Parliament began slowly. Indeed, there is no evidence that he attended the Commons before 3 May 1641, when he took the Protestation.50CJ ii. 133a. He was named (very probably in absentia) as a commissioner for disarming recusants in Cumberland in August 1641, and in April 1642 he presented a petition to the House about establishing a postal service between Scotland, Carlisle and Yorkshire.51LJ iv. 385a; PJ ii. 203. But he received no committee appointments before 1643 and was apparently silent on the floor of the House. In June, he pledged to contribute £50 for the defence of Parliament.52PJ iii. 473. However, he may well have spent the second half of 1642 in Cumberland, endeavouring to preserve his estate from sequestration by the royalists. Certainly after the war it was alleged that his property had been protected by the county’s royalist leaders – which given that the latter included a number of his friends and kinsmen is by no means implausible.53J. Musgrave, A Word to the Wise (1646), 9 (E.318.5); Musgrave, Yet Another Word to the Wise (1646), 3 (E.355.25).

Barwis had returned to Westminster by 9 January 1643, when he was added to a committee for maimed soldiers.54CJ ii. 919a. During the next eight months, he was named to several committees for sequestering the estates of delinquents and of those MPs in the king’s service.55CJ ii. 957b; iii. 197b, 220a, 250a. On 29 July, however, he was named to a committee ‘to take an accompt of the close committee [the Committee of Safety*] and of all others which were trusted with receipts or disbursements of money and [to ensure] that none of the close committee, nor any which had fingered any of the public monies, was to have a voice in it’.56CJ iii. 186a; Mercurius Aulicus no. 32 (6-12 Aug. 1643), 424-5 (E.65.26). This committee for ‘public money’ was indeed dominated by peace-minded MPs and those not compromised by close involvement with the war-party grandees. Barwis probably belonged to the second group rather than the first, for on 7 August he was among ten MPs (mostly men committed to the vigorous prosecution of the war) who were added to a committee for assisting the London militants in raising a new army under Sir William Waller* that would fight for outright victory.57CJ iii. 197b; SP28/172, pt. 3, unfol.

That Barwis was trusted by the war-party grandees is clear from his nomination in October 1643 as an additional commissioner to Scotland for ratifying the treaties between the two kingdoms.58CJ iii. 279a; LJ vi. 288a-289a. Evidently Barwis supported John Pym’s policy of a military alliance with the Scots. Moreover, there had been reports in Cumberland in the spring of 1643 that he had tried to organise a Scottish invasion of the county.59Phillips, ‘Gentry in Cumb. and Westmld.’, 295. He and his brother-in-law Sir Wilfrid Lawson* had been behind an unsuccessful attempt to seize Carlisle for Parliament that may well have been timed to link up with a projected Scottish invasion.60I. Tullie, Siege of Carlisle ed. S. Jefferson (Whitehaven, 1988), 1. It was reported in the parliamentarian press in September that Barwis and William Brisco* were ‘two gentlemen of worth in Cumberland that stand for the Parliament and Protestant religion against the papists, but [they] dare not shew it by reason they have no forces to join with them’.61Mercurius Britanicus no. 2 (29 Aug.-5 Sept. 1643), 13.

Most of Barwis’s time between January 1644 and July 1645 was spent working with Sir William Armyne*, Robert Fenwick* and the other commissioners in their efforts to remodel the civil administration of the northern counties and to obtain quarter and provisions for the Scottish forces.62Harl. 7001, f. 177; SP46/106, f. 91 and passim; LJ vi. 365b, 366a, 400; vii. 59-60a. He seems to remained on friendly terms with the Scots until at least September 1644, when he was instrumental in persuading the Scottish commander Major-general David Leslie to invade Cumberland and Westmorland.63Tullie, Siege of Carlisle, ed. Jefferson, 1-3; [E. Bowles], Manifest Truths, or an Inversion of Truths Manifest (1646), 33, 55 (E.343.1). But soon thereafter, he became involved in an acrimonious and long-running dispute with the commanders of the Scottish army over who had overall military command in the region, particularly in relation to the siege of Carlisle. Barwis’s quarrel with the Scots was exacerbated by his work as one of the parliamentary commissioners. By the autumn of 1644, the commissioners were beginning to alert Parliament that the Scottish forces were levying money illegally and taking free quarter, which in turn prompted the Scots to accuse them of spreading calumnies against their army. The quarrel escalated in the spring of 1645 when the Scots became convinced that Barwis, or his friends and kinsmen, had been behind an insurrection in Cumberland and Westmorland against the Scottish forces.64Bodl. Nalson XIX, ff. 266r-v; Corresp. of the Scots Commrs. ed. H.W. Meikle (Edinburgh, 1917), 47; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 542-3, 558-9, 596, 605, 614; D. Scott, ‘The Barwis affair: political allegiance and the Scots during the British civil wars’, EHR cxv. 849-50. The Commons, on the other hand, continued to repose the utmost trust in Barwis, appointing him on 10 May to the interim committee to manage the Northern Association army.65CJ iv. 138b; LJ vii. 364a, 367b. The following month, Barwis and some of his fellow Cumberland committeemen presented a petition to Parliament from the county complaining about the ‘insupportable burden’ of the Scots army.66SP16/507, ff. 170-v; Bodl. Nalson XIX, f. 266; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 575-6. Barwis was also at the forefront of the Commons’ protest to the Scots at their garrisoning of Carlisle contrary to the treaties between the two kingdoms.67Bodl. Nalson IV, f. 35; CJ iv. 194a, 216a; LJ vii. 279-82; Corresp. of the Scots Commrs. ed. Meikle, 92; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 614, 618-19. The Scots riposted on 24 June, submitting a lengthy paper to Parliament accusing Barwis, Lawson and their allies of protecting and rewarding delinquents, corresponding with the enemy and of starving the Scottish forces of supplies.68Harl. 166, f. 222; Bodl. Nalson XIX, ff. 265-7; LJ vii. 452a, 453b-455a, 465; CJ iv. 189a. The Commons ignored these accusations, and on 14 July and again on 23 July, Barwis and Armyne were returned the thanks of the House for their ‘many and great services to the Parliament’.69CJ iv. 206a, 216a.

At the Scots commissioners’ insistence, the Commons set up a committee in July 1645 to investigate their charges against Barwis, but practically this body’s first and only action was to imprison the Scots’ principal informants, John Musgrave and John Osmotherly.70Bodl. Nalson XIX, f. 287; CJ iv. 226a, 264a, 301a, 322a. In a series of pamphlets written during his imprisonment, Musgrave reiterated the allegations that Barwis, Lawson and their allies were in league with the royalists.71Musgrave, A Word to the Wise; Musgrave, Another Word to the Wise (1646, E.323.6); Musgrave, Yet Another Word to the Wise; Musgrave, A Fourth Word to the Wise (1647, E.391.9). He also claimed that although Barwis ‘pretends to be an Independent’, he had in fact ‘held up and countenanced the Book of Common Prayer (that English mass)’, while at the same time persecuting Cumberland’s religious Independents.72Musgrave, Another Word to the Wise, unpag.; Musgrave, Yet Another Word to the Wise, 31 This claim that Barwis favoured the Prayer Book is contradicted by his concern to promote a godly ministry in the northern counties.73Add. 4276, f. 166; CJ iv. 211b; HMC Portland, i. 186. However, Musgrave was correct in alleging that Barwis was the linchpin of a de facto alliance of Cumberland committeemen and officers – some of whom had sided with and even fought for the king during the early 1640s – and parliamentary Independents which had formed in common opposition to continuing Scottish intervention in English affairs. There is certainly little doubt that Barwis and his friends received protection from a powerful group of Westminster Independents, which included Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, Sir Arthur Hesilrige, John Lisle (who chaired the committee to examine the charges against Barwis), John Blakiston and Armyne.74Musgrave, A Word to the Wise, 12, 14, 16, 17, 18; Musgrave, Another Word to the Wise; Musgrave, Yet Another Word to the Wise, 33, 39; Musgrave, A Fourth Word to the Wise, 2-4, 14-16, 18; Scott, ‘The Barwis affair’, 851-5. Barwis may also have been on friendly terms with the north’s greatest Independent peer, Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland. Barwis’s family had leased land in Cumberland from the Percys since Tudor times, and he had been a correspondent of the earl’s northern steward, Hugh Potter*, during the 1630s.75PROB11/207, f. 264v; Cumb. RO (Whitehaven), DLEC (Patents rel. to estate officials); DLEC, Cumb. estate leases, lease bk. 1 (1606-15), unfol.; DLEC/169/1591, 1606, 1615, 1638; Alnwick, X.II.3, box 10, g.

Barwis was involved in the Commons’ efforts during the autumn and winter of 1645 to force the Scots to reduce the size of their army and hand over their northern garrisons.76CJ iv. 317a, 340a, 403a, 417a. The House seems to have relied upon Barwis to supply it with information regarding the Scots’ ‘oppressions’ in the north, and he was further rewarded by Parliament in December, when he was appointed a deputy lieutenant for Cumberland, along with Lawson, Brisco and other members of his regional faction.77CJ iv. 368a, 403a. His appointments in the Commons dried up after January 1646, although it was not until April 1647 that he took formal leave of absence.78CJ v. 152b. On 9 October, he was declared absent and excused at the call of the House.79CJ v. 329b.

Barwis and Thomas Craister* were instrumental in securing orders from the Commons and the Committee for Indemnity* during the winter of 1647-8 for purging Sir George Dalston and other perceived delinquents from the corporation of Carlisle.80SP24/1, ff. 119, 161-2; SP24/38 (petition of Craister and Cuthbert Studholme); SP18/123, f. 101; Bodl. Clarendon 30, f. 292v. On 18 February, the Commons approved of the remodelled corporation’s choice of Barwis as the city’s new mayor and gave him leave to attend his mayoral duties in the north.81CJ v. 467a. When Carlisle was seized by the royalists in April, Barwis was imprisoned, and – despite protests to the Scots from the Derby House Committee* at what it conceived was his unlawful detention – he was probably not released until Carlisle was re-captured by Parliament in October.82Bodl. Tanner 57, f. 206; Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DMH/10/5/17, p. 310; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 130, 133; Swift, ‘Barwis of Cumb. pt. II’, 120-1.

Having probably suffered in his health as a result of his imprisonment in 1648, Barwis had fallen ill by January 1649, and on 13 February he died and was buried the same day in Westward church near Carlisle.83PROB11/207, f. 264; Swift, ‘Barwis of Cumb. pt. II’, 121. He was described on his memorial as ‘excellently accomplished’ and of ‘saintly soul’; Carlisle’s ‘wise guide’ and his county’s ‘chief ornament’.84MacDonald, ‘Fam. of Barwis’, 119. Having died childless, he bequeathed his estate to his wife for life, having sold the reversion to his uncle and cousin. His appointed his royalist kinsman Richard Musgrave and Sir Wilfrid Lawson trustees in his will, and his supervisors included the Cumberland royalists Sir Patricius Curwen and another kinsman, Sir John Lowther.85PROB11/207, ff. 264-5; Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DLAW/6/1; CCC 1670; Swift, ‘Barwis of Cumb. pt. II’, 121-2. Barwis was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.