DALSTON, Sir George (1581-1657), of Dalston Hall, Dalston, Cumb.

The Dalstons had settled in Cumberland by 1300, and members of the family had represented the county regularly from the late fourteenth century.35Haswell, ‘Fam. of Dalston’, 204. Dalston’s father, Sir John Dalston†, sat for Carlisle in 1589, and by the end of Elizabeth’s reign he had been appointed deputy warden of the West March on the Anglo-Scottish border.36HP Commons, 1558-1603. Sir George Dalston made equally good progress in the region’s cursus honorum, acquiring an impressive array of local offices, including those of captain of Carlisle Castle (with a salary of £176 a year) and deputy lieutenant for Cumberland. His status as one of Cumberland’s leading gentlemen was confirmed by his return as knight of the shire in 1621 and to every succeeding Parliament called by James and Charles I.37HP Commons, 1604-29.

Dalston probably owed his strong electoral interest, in part, to his family’s hospitality and largesse. He and his father were remembered as ‘great gamesters, always ready to venture £100 freely on a race’, and as ‘brave housekeepers … bravely attended’.38A Cursory Relation of all the Antiquities and Familyes in Cumberland ed. R.S. Ferguson (Cumb. and Westmld. Antiq. and Arch. Soc. tract ser. iv), 29. Their wealth derived from their estate, which had been considerably enlarged through several fortunate marriages (including Dalston’s own) and was possibly worth in excess of £1,000 a year by the 1620s.39WARD9/417, f. 157; Phillips, ‘Gentry in Cumb. and Westmld.’, 188; Haswell, ‘Fam. of Dalston’, 218. He does not seem to have been a particularly active Member of the Commons, although after his death it was claimed that

he gave such probation of his love of justice, popular regards of his country’s good and abilities to serve them that for almost 40 years together [sic] his country chose him for their knight to serve in all the intervening Parliaments, where he was a leading man, prevailing there by his great reputation of justice and integrity; and yet he was not unpleasant and hated at court, for he had well understood that the interests of court and Parliaments were one ... He so comported himself that he was respected by Parliaments and loved by kings.40Hutchinson, Cumb. ii. 454-5.

This encomium overlooked the fact that Dalston, like his nephew Sir Patricius Curwen*, had been a supporter of George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham during the 1620s.41Supra, ‘Sir Patricius Curwen’; HP Commons, 1604-29. Dalston appears to have remained a loyal and trusted servant of the crown during the personal rule of Charles I, and in the months preceding the first bishops’ war he and Sir Philip Musgrave* were reported to be ‘very busy about their muster and training’.42CSP Dom. 1635, p. 510; 1636-7, p. 358; 1638-9, p. 312.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Dalston and Sir Patricius Curwen were returned as knights of the shire for Cumberland.43Supra, ‘Cumberland’. Dalston also secured the return of his son William for Carlisle.44Supra, ‘Carlisle’. Neither Sir George nor Curwen received any appointments in this Parliament or made any recorded contribution to debate. In mid-August 1640, with the Covenanters poised to invade England, Dalston and Curwen wrote to the Westmorland deputy lieutenants giving them notice ‘that so those enemies of our country may not find us unprepared but ready to defend ourselves ... we intend with all speed to make ready our trained bands, both horse and foot, to march at three hours’ warning’.45Chatsworth, Bolton Abbey mss, box 2, II.164.

Dalston and Curwen were returned for Cumberland again in the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, and William Dalston was re-elected for Carlisle.46Supra, ‘Cumberland’; ‘Carlisle’. Sir George was named to 22 committees between the opening of the Long Parliament and the September 1641 recess, but none of them addressed the major grievances associated with the personal rule such as Ship Money and Laudian innovations.47CJ ii. 51a, 59b, 61b, 66a, 75a, 77b, 82a, 86a, 95a, 101a, 102b, 103b, 128b, 130b, 152a, 157a, 191b, 196a, 200a, 226b, 239b, 279b. Like Curwen, his main concern at Westminster seems to have been the relief of the northern counties, where the quartering of the English and Scottish armies since the second bishops’ war had been causing considerable hardship. In November 1640 and again the following March, he pledged £1,000 towards securing a City loan for paying the soldiery.48Procs. LP i. 229; ii. 628. He was also named to several committees for the supply and disbanding of the armies and the relief of the north’s inhabitants.49CJ ii. 66a, 86a, 152a, 196a. In debate on 12 May 1641, he and Sir Philip Musgrave conceded that Cumberland and Westmorland should be taxed at the proportion of other counties, but on 28 June he successfully moved that Carlisle, like Berwick and Newcastle, be exempted as a garrison town.50Procs. LP iv. 342; v. 385.

Dalston returned to Cumberland during the recess and was entrusted by the Recess Committee* with the care of the arms and ammunition at Carlisle.51CJ ii. 289b. He was evidently still in the north on 9 March 1642, when the House ordered the Speaker to write to him concerning the redeployment of the Carlisle magazine to the British regiments in Ireland.52CJ ii. 473a. PJ i. 17. Dalston’s appointment as a commissioner of array for Cumberland in June suggests that the king’s party regarded him as sympathetic to their cause, even though he had not yet withdrawn from Parliament.53Northants. RO, FH133. His last Commons’ appointment was on 30 June, when he and Curwen were majority tellers against the committee of privileges examining witnesses concerning the disputed return for Cockermouth of Dalston’s son-in-law, the future royalist Sir Thomas Sandford*. The defeated tellers were the leading ‘fiery spirits’ William Strode I and Denzil Holles.54Supra, ‘Cockermouth’; CJ ii. 643b, 645b. This vote was effectively overturned the very next day (1 July), however, when the Commons ordered that a petition from the inhabitants of Cockermouth be referred for further consideration to the committee of privileges.55CJ ii. 648b. It was probably shortly thereafter that Dalston abandoned his seat at Westminster and returned to Cumberland.

Dalston was initially reluctant to contribute to the king’s service in the north west, and he was removed by Charles from the Cumberland and Westmorland benches in October 1642.56Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DMUS/5/5/4/16. His eldest son, now Sir William Dalston, may have shared his father’s reservations.57Infra, ‘William Dalston’. On 23 October, Sir Philip Musgrave, the royalist commander in the region, informed Endymion Porter* that Sir George, ‘who had [the] honour to be made of the quorum in the commis[sion] of array, hath never hitherto appeared amon[g us] nor given us any assistance in the king’s se[rvice]’. Musgrave claimed that it would ‘much encourage the gentry in these parts’ if Dalston’s office of captain of Carlisle Castle were bestowed upon someone ‘more worthy of it’ – meaning himself.58Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DMUS/5/5/4/16. Nevertheless, Dalston was socialising with Musgrave, Curwen and other local royalist commanders at Carlisle by early 1643, when he and other Cumberland magistrates were alleged to have examined Thomas Cholmley* and charged him with ‘disaffection and disloyalty to the king’.59Cumb. RO (Carlisle), CA/4/2; SP23/171, p. 157. In March, Dalston was named with several leading Cumberland and Westmorland royalists as a commissioner for disarming parliamentarians in the two counties.60SP23/150, p. 439. Having received information that Dalston had been lending assistance to the commissioners of array, the Commons, on 15 March, disabled him from sitting.61CJ iii. 1b. His nomination to the February and May 1643 parliamentary assessment commissions for Cumberland was perhaps intended to make his reconsider his allegiance to the royalist cause, but if so it failed.62A. and O. i. 90, 147. By that summer, he was apparently playing an active part in mustering and maintaining Musgrave’s forces, and on 11 October the crown restored him to the Cumberland and Westmorland benches.63Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DMUS/5/5/1/7-8; Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 85.

Dalston’s belated decision to side with the king probably owed much to simple expediency – a desire to preserve his estate and retain his local offices. But he may also have been swayed by questions of piety and conscience. His wife’s mother, Lady Dorothy Wharton, was a recusant, and he and his father had been on close terms with the region’s leading Catholic family, the Howards of Naworth.64Naworth Household Bks. ed. G. Ornsby (Surt. Soc. lxviii), 8; Lowther Fam. Estate Bks. ed. C.B. Phillips (Surt. Soc. cxci), 222; HP Commons, 1604-29, ‘Sir George Dalston’; Phillips, ‘Gentry in Cumb. and Westmld.’, 58. Though Dalston himself was listed as a papist by a local parliamentarian in 1648, he seems to have been a loyal member of the Church of England who appreciated Prayer Book liturgy.65CCC 99. In his funeral sermon for Dalston in 1657, the eminent clergyman Jeremy Taylor claimed that Sir George had been ‘a great lover of the Church, a constant attender to the sermons of the Church, a diligent hearer of the prayers of the Church and an obedient son to perform the commands of the Church’.66Hutchinson, Cumb. ii. 454-5. The preface to Dalston’s will, in which he trusted to be saved by the merits of Jesus alone, suggest that he was, at the very least, a Protestant.67PROB11/270, f. 37v.

Dalston responded loyally to the king’s proclamation of 20 June 1643, requiring all MPs to attend the Oxford Parliament.68Cumb. RO (Carlisle), D/Mus/Corr/4/24. He was listed among those MPs who had been ‘disabled by several accidents to appear [at Oxford] sooner’, but having since ‘attended the service’ they had concurred with the other Members of the Oxford Parliament in their letter to the earl of Essex of 22 January 1644, urging him to compose a peace.69Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 575. In response, the Commons disabled him from sitting for a second time.70CJ iii. 374a. According to a report in one of the parliamentarian newsbooks, Dalston had returned to Cumberland by July and was involved in the military deliberations of the region’s leading royalists.71Mercurius Britannicus no. 42 (1-8 July 1644), 328-9 (E.54.6). But during composition proceedings it was stated that he had ‘sat in the assembly at Oxford [the Oxford Parliament] and there continued till the rendition of the said garrison’, which was in June 1646.72SP23/192, p. 509.

In mid-July 1646, Dalston petitioned to compound on the Oxford articles and was fined at a tenth of his estate – that is, £700. His son William, who had been in arms against Parliament, was fined £3,000.73SP23/192, pp. 509, 510, 516; CCC 960. It was presumably to help pay these fines that Dalston borrowed £1,500 from William Wheler* by statute staple that autumn.74LC4/202, f. 337. The two Dalstons were fined a further, if negligible, sum in November 1647, after John Weaver* had accused the two men of concealing and under-valuing their estates.75CJ v. 432a; SP23/4, ff. 167v-173; CCC 961. Both men had paid their full composition fines by June 1649, when the sequestration of their estates was removed.76CCC 961. Sir George was deemed liable to pay the decimation tax in 1655, when his estates in Cumberland and Westmorland were assessed at £48.77J.T. Cliffe, ‘The Cromwellian decimation tax of 1655: the assessment lists’ (Cam. Soc. ser. 5, vii), 432, 451.

Dalston died in the autumn of 1657 and was buried at Dalston on 28 September.78Hutchinson, Cumb. ii. 454. His will, dated 9 September 1657, is brief and contains few details concerning his estate. His only significant bequest was that of £1,000 for one of his daughter’s marriage portions.79PROB11/270, f. 37v. Aside from his son William, none of Dalston’s immediate family sat in Parliament.