DARLEY, Henry (c.1596-1671), of Sand Hutton and Buttercrambe, Bossall, Yorks.

Background and early career

The Darleys had settled in Yorkshire by the early Tudor period, purchasing the manor of Buttercrambe, near York, in the North Riding in 1557.55Vis. Yorks. ed. Foster, 87; VCH N. Riding, ii. 93. Darley – who would be the first of his line to enter Parliament – stood for Scarborough in the elections to the 1625, 1626 and 1628 Parliaments, but though supported by his father, his cousin Sir William Sheffield† and his godly kinsmen the Alureds (he was the second cousin and brother-in-law of John* and Matthew Alured*) he was rejected on each occasion.56HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Scarborough’; Scarborough Recs. 1600-40 ed. M.Y. Ashcroft (N. Yorks. RO publications xlvii), 145, 159, 188. He finally secured election for the West Riding constituency of Aldborough in 1628 – possibly on Sheffield’s interest, although he also seems to have been a friend or business associate of the borough’s pre-civil war electoral patrons, the Aldburghes.57C10/34/23; C33/210, f. 261v; Procs. LP. vi. 171; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Aldborough’. Darley’s determination to obtain a seat at Westminster was possibly linked to his puritan convictions and the importance that the godly attached to Parliament as a bulwark against popery.

The Darleys were one of Yorkshire’s leading godly families and gave shelter and support to the Essex lecturer (and future New England divine) Thomas Shepard in the early 1630s and to several other ministers silenced by the Laudian church authorities.58Marchant, Puritans, 123-4; God’s Plot: the Autobiog. and Jnl. of Thomas Shepard, ed. M. McGiffert (Amherst, MA, 1972), 53-5. It was at Darley’s invitation that the Scottish minister, and post-Restoration Congregationalist, Thomas Lowry preached at Sand Hutton (near Buttercrambe) – the location of Darley’s principal residence during the 1630s – until he fell foul of the church authorities in 1639 for unlicenced preaching and fled back to Scotland.59Marchant, Puritans, 260-1; Calamy Revised, 329. Darley and his family also possessed a wide network of friends and contacts among the puritan gentry. Their trustees or business partners before the civil war included the godly Yorkshire gentlemen and future parliamentarians Sir John Bourchier*, Sir William Strickland*, Godfrey Bossevile* and Thomas Anlaby (father of John Anlaby*).60C54/3007/28; C54/3289/30; N. Yorks. RO, ZDA, DDDA/3/8; DDDA/6/1; DDDA/28/2; DAR.S.1; Yorks. Stuart Fines ed. Brigg, 235. Darley himself was a close friend of the future regicide John Alured and of another future parliamentarian, the Yorkshire knight Sir Matthew Boynton*, who had become a Congregationalist by the late 1630s.61Supra, ‘John Alured’; ‘Sir Matthew Boynton’; CP25/2/523/13CHASIMICH/3; PROB11/177, f. 32; Winthrop Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc.), iii. 226-7. Besides the Yorkshire godly, the Darleys were on close terms with the Staffordshire Calvinist (Darley’s cousin) Sir Charles Egerton* and the leading Essex puritans Nathaniel Bacon* and Richard Harlakenden.62Infra, ‘Sir Charles Egerton’; C54/3041/5; C54/3150/38; N. Yorks. RO, ZDA, DDDA/28/2; Coventry Docquets, 645; God’s Plot ed. McGiffert, 50; 163. Darley was also linked with Bacon, Bossevile and Harlakenden through their common involvement in a clandestine network of godly gentlemen (set up in the early 1630s) for promoting the writing, printing and distribution of puritan treatises. Other members of this circle included (Sir) John Clotworthy* and Brampton Gurdon*.63J. Peacey, ‘Seasonable treatises: a godly project of the 1630s’, EHR cxiii. 667-679.

Darley’s godly zeal prompted his involvement in the three principal colonising ventures of the Caroline period – the Massachusetts Bay Company, the Providence Island Company and the Saybrook plantation. He was one of the original investors in the Massachusetts Bay Company, purchasing £50 of stock;64Rose-Troup, The Massachusetts Bay Co. and its Predecessors, 20. and in November 1632, he was admitted to the Providence Island Company.65CO124/2, ff. 38, 41. Founded in 1629-30, this company brought together many of the nation’s foremost godly figures, including the earls of Holland and Warwick, Viscount Saye and Sele, Lord Brooke, Sir Thomas Barrington*, Sir Gilbert Gerard*, John Gurdon*, John Pym*, Benjamin Rudyerd* and Oliver St John*.66CO124/1, p. 2; CO124/2, p. 1; CSP Col. 1574-1660, p. 123. Darley was one of the most committed members of the company, serving twice as its deputy-governor and investing several hundred pounds in its ventures and persuading Boynton and Alured to do likewise.67CO124/2, ff. 72, 77v, 98, 115, 120, 122v, 139v, 140v, 148v, 152v, 154v. Early in 1638, Darley, Warwick, Saye and Brooke announced their intention to emigrate to Providence Island (in the Caribbean) in the hope that their presence would revive the colony’s flagging fortunes.68CO124/2, f. 159. But the logistical problems involved, and possibly the unfolding events in Scotland, persuaded them against the idea.

Darley was also intimately involved in the most uncompromisingly puritan of the Caroline colonial ventures, the Saybrook venture.69A.P. Newton, The Colonising Activities of the English Puritans (New Haven, 1914), 82-3. It cannot be assumed that Darley was among these original Saybrook patentees, as one authority has claimed.70K.O. Kupperman, Providence Is. 1630-41 (Cambridge, 1993), 325. By mid-1635, however, he was a member of the Saybrook company in London, along with Saye, Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, Henry Lawrence I* and George Fenwick*.71Winthrop Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc.), iii. 198-9; Newton, Colonising Activities, 177. Among the godly notables also involved in the venture were Boynton, Sir William Constable*, Sir Henry Vane II* and the Congregationalist divines Philip Nye and Hugh Peters.72Supra, ‘Sir William Boynton’; ‘Sir William Constable’; infra, ‘Sir Henry Vane II’; Newton, Colonising Activities, 178, 180. Through involvement in the Providence Island Company and the Saybrook venture, Darley became either a friend or close acquaintance of Pym – and it was probably through Pym that he came to know the prominent puritan cleric Cornelius Burges.73Add. 11692, f. 1; CO124/2, f. 84; Hartlib Pprs. Online, 29/2/60A; Oxford DNB, ‘Cornelius Burges’. Likewise, he was almost certainly an intimate of Viscount Saye, and he may well have been involved in securing a match between one of Saye’s daughters and Boynton’s heir, Francis, in 1637.74Supra, ‘Sir Matthew Boynton’; Hull Hist. Cent. U DDWB/1/24/5. But his closest friend among the puritan adventurers was apparently Lord Brooke.75Warws. RO, John Halford accts. 1640-2, i. ‘Moneys to my Lord’; John Wallis, Truth Tried: Or, Animadversions on a Treatise published by...Robert Lord Brook (1643), sigs. Ar-v (E.93.21); D. Scott, ‘Yorkshire’s godly incendiary: the career of Henry Darley during the reign of Charles I’ in Life and Thought in the Northern Church c.1100-c.1700 ed. D. Wood (Oxford, 1999), 441-2.

Apart from his refusal in 1630 to pay his knighthood fine, and his patronage of nonconformist ministers, Darley appears to have remained outwardly conformable to the Caroline regime.76Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P16c; APC, 1630-1, p. 93; Cliffe, Yorks. 296. However, it was alleged that his ‘ordinary talk’ by the late 1630s was in support of the Covenanters, and he was complicit in 1640 in the design of Saye, Brooke, Pym and a group of leading English dissidents – many of them members of the Providence Island Company and the Saybrook venture – to invite the Scots into England and thus compel the king to summon Parliament.77CUL, Mm.1.45, p. 107; Warws. RO, John Halford accts. 1640-2, i. ‘Guifts’ (entry for Aug. 1640); LJ iv. 102; J. Oldmixon, Hist. of England during the Reigns of the Royal House of Stuart (1730), 142-3; Adamson, Noble Revolt, 45, 60; Scott, ‘Yorkshire’s godly incendiary’, 444. He was acting in concert with this group, it seems, when he joined Yorkshire’s ‘disaffected’ gentry in their petitions to the king of July, August and September 1640, complaining about illegal billeting and pleading poverty in the face of royal efforts to mobilize the trained bands against the Scots. The September petition also re-iterated the demand of the dissident peers and their allies that the king summon Parliament.78Cumb. RO (Kendal), Strickland Ms vol. 1608-1700, N38 Car. I; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 1215, 1231; D. Scott, ‘‘Hannibal at our gates’: loyalists and fifth-columnists during the bishops’ wars – the the case of Yorkshire’, HR lxx. 278-9, 283-4, 287. Darley’s lèse-majesté finally caught up with him on 20 September, when the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†) had him imprisoned in York Castle on suspicion of conspiring with the Scots.79HMC 4th Rep. 30; LJ iv. 102. Darley petitioned the Long Parliament against his imprisonment and, on 30 November 1640, the Lords ordered his release.80CJ ii. 28a; LJ iv. 100b; Northcote Note Bk. 14; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 45.

Parliament-man and emissary to Scotland, 1641-4

Darley was elected for the North Riding borough of Northallerton in January 1641, after the town’s franchise, which had lapsed in the thirteenth century, had been restored by the Long Parliament late in 1640. It is not clear who was responsible for Northallerton’s re-enfranchisement, although it may well have been the work of Saye, Pym and Darley’s other friends at Westminster – their aim being to secure the return of men friendly to the reform process and specifically, in this case, Darley. This would explain how he was elected for a borough where he apparently enjoyed no proprietorial interest.81Supra, ‘Northallerton’.

Despite having influential friends in both Houses, Darley cut a relatively insignificant figure during his first 18 months at Westminster. He made no notable contribution to debate and was named to only a dozen committees before September 1642 and to only three relating specifically to the reform of the perceived abuses of the personal rule of Charles I.82CJ ii. 87a, 99a, 105b, 222b, 365a, 390b, 533b, 609b, 725a, 737b, 741b. He took no part in the prosecution of Strafford, nor of any other of Charles’s ‘evil counsellors’. That he was at least broadly aligned with Pym’s ‘junto’ is evident from his addition in May 1642 to a seven-man committee for assisting and monitoring Sir John Hotham* as governor of Hull.83CJ ii. 585b; PJ ii. 341. The composition of this committee was apparently determined by Pym and his allies and reflected their desire to surround Hotham with men they trusted.84Infra, ‘Sir John Hotham’; CJ ii. 584b-585a; Clarendon, Hist. i. 523-4. In the event, Darley remained at Westminster, where he made common cause with those pushing for an aggressive stance toward Charles. On 10 June, he pledged £200 on the propositions for supplying the proposed parliamentary army under Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex – changing this offer ten days later (20 June), on Oliver Cromwell’s motion, to the maintenance of four horses for the service of Parliament.85PJ iii. 106, 467, 477. On 26 July, he duly supplied the earl’s commissary with four horses, complete with riders, their armour and equipment, worth an estimated £108 (he was described on this occasion as the ‘agent for Gray’s Inn’ – presumably to receive contributions on the propositions).86SP28/131, pt. 3, f. 24. He was also named to committees on 6 June and 26 and 29 August for countering the spread of royalist influence in Yorkshire and the Welsh Marches.87CJ ii. 609b, 737b, 741b. By late August, he seems to have been identified with a policy of arming the ‘well-affected’ and sequestering the estates of ‘malignants’.88LJ v. 301a, 301b-303a. At some point that summer, he joined Warwick, Saye and Sele and 37 other godly Parliament-men in a letter to John Cotton and two other puritan divines in New England, requesting they return home to attend the Westminster Assembly and assist in the great work of church reform.89J. Winthrop, Hist. of New England ed. J. Savage (New York, 1972), ii. pp. 91-2; T. Hutchinson, Hist. of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay ed. L.S. Mayo (Cambridge, MA, 1936), i. pp. 100-1.

Between September 1642 and his departure from London as a parliamentary commissioner to Scotland in July 1643, Darley was named to over 30 committees and served once as a messenger to the Lords and as a teller (in an apparently minor division on 19 November).90CJ ii. 802a, 856a. A great many of these appointments concerned measures for the vigorous prosecution of the war – and particularly for sustaining Parliament’s northern army under the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*).91CJ ii. 774b, 802a, 817b, 825a, 850a, 869a, 882a, 888a, 890b, 947b, 951b, 957b, 994a; iii. 46a, 56b, 58b, 76a, 78a, 86a, 106b, 167a. Raising money, preferably by seizing the assets of royalists, was one of Darley’s main priorities at Westminster.92Add. 18777, f. 54. He was also one of the standard-bearers in the House for Pym’s policy of a military alliance with the Covenanters, and, as such, he and the godly Lincolnshire knight Sir William Armyne were ordered on 7 November to ensure the speedy despatch of a declaration for ‘calling in the Scots’.93CJ ii. 839a; LJ v. 437a. Three days later (10 Nov.), Darley, Armyne, John Glynne and John Wylde were ordered to prepare ‘instructions’ to accompany this declaration and to make choice of a ‘convenient person’ to carry it to Scotland.94CJ ii. 842b.

Like many of the ‘fiery spirits’, Darley was probably impatient of Essex’s cautious generalship, and he and Harbert Morley were ordered on 19 November 1642 to attend the lord general and urge him to ‘take all advantages in prosecuting of the war’.95CJ ii. 857a. A committee established on 16 December for raising troops and money for Fairfax’s army, and to which Darley was named in second place, appears to have formed the nucleus of the Northern Committee* – the Commons’ first standing committee for northern affairs.96Supra, ‘Northern Committee’; CJ ii. 891b. Darley was an important figure on this committee and was closely involved in initiatives for the supply of Fairfax’s forces.97CJ ii. 975b, 994a; iii. 56b, 76a, 78a, 86a, 106b, 112b, 167a; Harl. 165, f. 109. In February 1643, he was added to committees for raising money on the propositions and for sequestering the estates of delinquents.98CJ ii. 951b, 957b. He shocked Sir Simonds D’Ewes* in April by announcing that he would rather have no peace at all than one brokered by the queen – who had overseen a tightening of the royalists’ grip on the area around Buttercrambe since her landing at Bridlington a few months earlier.99Harl. 165, f. 353v; Slingsby Diary ed. D. Parsons (1836), 93 In mid-May, he was associated with efforts by the Commons for proscribing six Scottish peers who had written to the queen.100CJ iii. 78a, 82b. On 23 May, he seconded Humphrey Salwey in demanding that she be impeached of high treason as ‘the principal papist now in arms against us’; Pym subsequently went to the bar of the Lords to initiate impeachment proceedings. ‘This doubtless was before-plotted by some of the hot spirits’, thought D’Ewes.101CJ iii. 98a; Harl. 165, f. 390v; Add. 31116, p. 103. The next day (24 May), Darley was named to a committee for preparing charges of treason against Henrietta Maria.102CJ iii. 100b. The disclosure, a few days later, of the Waller plot – a royalist conspiracy to deliver up London to the king – allowed the war-party grandees to push the two House several steps closer to a military alliance with the Scots: a stratagem in which Darley was probably complicit. He took the vow and covenant on 6 June – the day that it was brought into the House – and on 12 June, he was named to a committee for requesting the Lords to secure two peers who had been implicated in the plot.103CJ iii. 118b, 126a.

Darley’s support for all-out war against the king emerged clearly with his nomination, with Armyne, on 30 May 1643 to the parliamentary commission for negotiating a military alliance with Scotland.104CJ iii. 110a. One of the ministers chosen to accompany the commissioners was Darley’s Saybrook associate Philip Nye.105Baillie Lttrs. and Jnls. ii. 81. Darley was very close to members of Nye’s religious circle, notably Saye, Brooke and Boynton, and was probably, like them, a religious Independent by 1643.106A Copy of a Letter written to a Private Friend touching the Lord Say (1643), 4 (E.72.5); T. Edwards, Antapologia (1644), 217; M. Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints (Cambridge, 1977), 106. His ecclesiological preferences were probably a factor in his appointment by the Commons on 28 June to request Nye’s associate, the prominent Independent divine Sidrach Simpson, to preach the next fast sermon.107CJ iii. 148a; Oxford DNB, ‘Sidrach Simpson’. On 15 July, he was part of a conference reporting team concerning the instructions for the commissioners to Scotland.108CJ iii. 168a.

Darley and his fellow commissioners arrived at Edinburgh early in August 1643, charged with the task of negotiating a military alliance with the Scots and promoting ‘a nearer conjunction betwixt both churches’.109LJ vi. 139a, 140a-142a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 466. By mid-September, the two sides had reached an understanding in the form of the Solemn League and Covenant, although if Darley subscribed the new oath, as was reportedly the commissioners’ intention, then he was obliged to take it again at Westminster in June 1646.110Bodl. Nalson III, f. 94v; HMC Portland, i. 136-7; CJ iv. 586a. Like his fellow commissioner Vane II, Darley favoured toleration whilst apparently accepting ‘not so much ... the form and words of the Covenant [a major concession to Presbyterianism], as the righteous and holy ends therein expressed’.111Infra, ‘Sir Henry Vane II’. While the negotiations at Edinburgh were underway, he was instrumental in persuading Berwick-upon-Tweed to accept a Scottish garrison – and for a short period that autumn he served as the town’s governor.112Berwick RO, B1/9, f. 261; B1/10, Berwick Guild Bk. f. 2v; B9/1, Berwick Guild letter bk. f. 73; Bodl. Nalson III, f. 50; HMC Portland, i. 129, 136-7; CCC 1662; The Scotch Intelligencer (13-17 Oct. 1643), 7. His governorship won plaudits from at least one newsbook

Mr Darley, governor, is very merry, blithe … and loves our countrymen and they him. But he hath a company to rule that makes him sweat. You know he is a gross [fat] man, but give him his due, he takes great pains and wakes and watches and is stirring about at every alarm.113The Scotch Intelligencer (13-17 Oct. 1643), 7.

Late in October 1643, Parliament entrusted Darley and Armyne with the task of ‘perfecting’ the treaty and smoothing its implementation, and they were among the signatories to an additional treaty with the Scots on 29 November, allowing them overall command of the Protestant forces (English and Scots) in Ulster.114CJ iii. 289b, 291b; LJ vi. 277b, 365b, 366b. Darley entered England with the earl of Leven’s forces in January 1644 and would remain in the north for most of the next ten months.115LJ vi. 400, 461b-463b; SP46/106, ff. 91, 93; Bodl. Nalson III, f. 221; HMC Portland, i. 169. In June, while attending the leaguer at York, he was snatched at night from Buttercrambe and carried to Scarborough on the orders of the town’s royalist governor, the turncoat Sir Hugh Cholmeley*, who exploited his prisoner’s alleged ambition to be governor of the town himself – once it had fallen to Parliament – to further designs for re-supplying the garrison under pretence of negotiating for its surrender. Whether duped or not by Cholmeley, Darley was quickly released.116CJ iii. 532b; Cholmley Mems. ed. J. Binns (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. cliii), 107, 147, 149, 151, 152, 153; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 622.

Darley and the Independents, 1644-8

Darley briefly resumed his seat in the Commons in the autumn of 1644 and was a majority teller with Sir William Strickland on 20 November in favour of putting the question that the earl of Denbigh, commander of Parliament’s forces in the west midlands, was innocent of disaffection to the public service. The tellers against both this and the main question were closely associated with the cause of laying aside dilatory aristocratic generals, such as Denbigh and the earl of Essex, and replacing them with men determined to fight for all-out victory.117CJ iii. 690a, 700b. Darley supported Denbigh on this occasion probably as a favour to Saye, who was the earl’s kinsman. Darley’s continued intimacy with Saye is suggested by several grants to him from the court of wards (of which Saye was master) during 1644-5, including that of the wardship of Charles Howard*.118Infra, ‘Charles Howard’; C7/100/45; SP20/2, f. 141v; WARD9/556, pp. 693, 877, 951; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 38.

Shortly after his 20 November tellership, Darley seems to have returned to his duties as a commissioner in the north, receiving no appointments to Commons committees between November 1644 and October 1645.119CJ iii. 690a, 708b; iv. 298b. His apparent absence from the House during this period meant that he contributed little, if anything, to the process of new modelling Parliament’s armies. That he was at least seen as a well-wisher to the New Model army can be inferred from his appointment with Sir Henry Vane I* and Thomas Hatcher* in April 1645 as commissioners to the Scottish army – their principal task being to persuade the Scots to bring their forces south in defence of Yorkshire and the Eastern Association until Sir Thomas Fairfax’s* army could take to the field.120CJ iv. 105b; LJ vii. 326b; Harl. 166, f. 199v; Add. 31116, p. 407. In May, Darley was named with Lord Fairfax, Sir Thomas Fairfax, Boynton, Vane I and II, Sir William Constable* and their allies to a committee for directing the war effort within the Northern Association – a body made up exclusively of men who were closely associated with the Independents at Westminster.121CJ iv. 138b; LJ vii. 367b. As members of this committee, Darley and his colleagues wrote to General Leven, pleading with him to bring his army south, but without success.122CJ iv. 138b; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 523, 528, 532, 542, 551. The Scots’ refusal to march south and their garrisoning of Carlisle in June without parliamentary consent – which Darley and his fellow commissioners took as a personal affront as well as a breach of the alliance – helped to push Darley into the Independents’ camp and their campaign against continuing Scottish intervention in English affairs.123CJ iv. 216a; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 614; Scot, ‘Yorkshire’s godly incendiary’, 454-7. The following month, he assisted Richard Barwis* and Sir Wilfrid Lawson* in presenting evidence to the Commons of the Scots’ ‘imperious carriage’ in Cumberland; the Scots responded by accusing Darley and Barwis of spreading ‘calumnies’ against their army.124Harl. 166, f. 222; Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 428; Nalson IV, f. 60; [E. Bowles], Manifest Truths, or an inversion of Truths Manifest (1646), 34 (E.343.1). Darley’s hostility towards the Scots emerged clearly during the recruiter elections at Scarborough that October, when he urged the voters to return men opposed to continuing Scottish involvement in English affairs and specifically, in this instance, his friend Sir Matthew Boynton.125Supra, ‘Scarborough’.

Having returned to the House by late September 1645, Darley supported the Commons’ efforts to have the Scots forces besiege Newark and thus to rid Yorkshire of their burdensome presence.126CJ iv. 293b, 298b. On 14 October, he was appointed a manager of a conference for communicating to the Lords a series of Commons resolutions condemning the Scots for their failure to engage the enemy and their plunderings in the north.127CJ iv. 307a. Darley’s own estate may well have suffered at the hands of the Scots (the royalists having already burnt the family residence at Buttercrambe), and on 12 November he was granted the £4 weekly allowance for his maintenance.128CCC 3215; CJ iv. 340a. He was named to approximately 13 ad hoc committees between the autumn of 1645 and early 1647 – the precise number is irrecoverable due to the clerk of the House’s occasional failure to distinguish between Darley and his younger brother Richard, who had been returned as a Yorkshire ‘recruiter’ in the autumn of 1645.129CJ iv. 311a, 350b, 403b, 409b, 481b, 512a, 525b, 682b, 696b, 701b, 712b, 719b; v. 35a. It is clear, nonetheless, that Richard Darley was less involved in the House’s proceedings than Henry during the period 1645-8 and spent more time in the north attending to his duties as a committeeman.130Infra, ‘Richard Darley’.

Henry was evidently the ‘Mr Darley’ who was named to the so-called ‘northern committee’ on 20 March 1646 to forward Parliament’s various complaints against the Scots (Richard was added at a later date).131CJ iv. 481b. Darley was probably responsible for supplying this committee with evidence of Scottish oppressions in Berwick.132Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 250. His appointment to several key executive committees during the later 1640s probably owed at least something to his close alignment with the anti-Scottish, Independent interest at Westminster. On 31 October 1645, he was added to the Committee for Advance of Money* (CAM), replacing Saye’s factional ally William Strode I, who had died the previous month.133Infra, ‘William Strode I’; CJ iv. 314a; LJ vii. 670b; J. Adamson, ‘Parlty. management, men-of-business and the House of Lords, 1640-9’ in A Pillar of the Constitution: the House of Lords in British Politics, 1640-1784 ed. C Jones (1989), 32-3. Darley was on familiar terms with two of the leading figures at Haberdashers’ Hall during the mid-1640s – Saye and the man who replaced Strode as chairman of the CAM, the Independent peer Edward, Lord Howard of Escrick*.134Supra, ‘Committee for Advance of Money’; ‘Edward Howard, Lord Howard of Escrick’; SP20/2, f. 141v; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 125, 127. In the three years following his appointment, Darley was part of the CAM’s active core, along with Howard of Escrick, John Gurdon and Roger Hill I.135Supra, ‘Committee for Advance of Money’; SP19/4, pp. 313, 454; SP19/5, pp. 3, 409; SP 19/6, pp. 19, 56. Darley was also active on the Committee for Compounding* and the Committee for Indemnity*.136CJ v. 78a, 174a; SP23/3, pp. 52, 331; SP23/4, ff. 8, 18, 121; SP23/5, f. 3; SP24/1, ff. 32v, 177v; SP24/2, ff. 10, 22v.

The Presbyterian ascendancy at Westminster during the early months of 1647 may have affected Darley’s attendance in the House, for he was named to a maximum of two ad hoc committees between January and July of that year.137CJ v. 170b, 200a. He did, however, remain active at Goldsmiths’ Hall and Haberdashers’ Hall throughout the first half of 1647 and was among those Members who fled to the army after the Presbyterian ‘riots’ of 26 July.138SP23/4, ff. 8, 109; SP19/5, p. 282; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 755. He was very probably the ‘Mr Darley’ named to a committee on 6 August for investigating the instigators of the disorders.139CJ v. 269a. And he was certainly appointed to the new committee for absent Members, set up on 9 October 1647, to examine the cases of MPs whose excuses for absence had been disallowed – principally those Commons-men who had condoned or were implicated in the events of 26 July-4 August.140CJ v. 329a. In total, however, he was included on no more than five committees between September 1647 and mid-July 1648.141CJ v. 295b, 329a, 421a, 447b, 493a.

Darley’s only significant appointment during the first half of 1648 was on 13 March, when the House tasked him with preparing and reporting an ordinance for paying Sir Thomas Fairfax, the commander of the New Model, £10,000 out of the Committee for Compounding revenues.142CJ v. 493a, 515b. Although pilloried in the royalist press as an opponent of a personal treaty with the king and the promoter of clandestine measures for creating a reversionary interest under the king’s third son the duke of Gloucester, his handful of appointments that summer do little more than confirm his support for the army and his predictably hostile stance towards the Scottish Engagers.143CJ v. 640b, 641b, 643b, 683b, 692a; Mercurius Elencticus no. 31 (21-8 June 1648), 240 (E.450.2); Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 16 (11-18 July), sigs. Q3v-Q4 (E.453.11). More revealing of his political position is the Commons’ vote of 31 August bestowing £5,000 upon Sir Richard Darley in compensation for his losses in the public service.144CJ v. 693a. According to one newsbook writer, this award was actually intended not for Sir Richard but for sons Henry and Richard

The two brothers ... procured some friends to make a begging motion [in the Commons] for a child’s portion out of the public [revenue] in consideration of unknown losses, which being done in a plotted nick of time, and all the wheels of the state-clockwork being oiled before with sweet entreaty, at length the clock struck in convenient season no less than £5,000 for the two brothers.145Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 24 (5-12 Sept. 1648), sig. Gg2v (E.462.34).

Such a large grant required adroit manipulation of the ‘state-clockwork’ by the Darleys, which suggests that they remained on good terms with the Independent grandees and their network and therefore either supported, or did not openly oppose, some kind of settlement with the king at Newport. Nevertheless, Darley may well have stayed away from Westminster during the Newport negotiations. His attendance at the CAM ceased for eight months or so after 21 September; he was declared absent at the call of the House on 26 September; and he received only one committee appointment, at most, between then and Pride’s Purge on 6 December.146CJ vi. 34b, 79a; SP19/6, p. 56; SP19/7, p. 7. Having attended the parliamentarian siege of Pontefract Castle at some point that autumn, he was ordered by Cromwell to assist in ‘the great work’ of disbanding Yorkshire’s militia forces. His services were also engaged by Saye’s ally, the Independent peer Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, to ‘press the House’ against demolishing Bolton Castle (which was apparently in Wharton’s charge) in north Yorkshire.147Bodl. Carte 103, f. 78. However, there is no evidence that the Commons debated this matter before Pride’s Purge.

Career in the Rump, 1649-53

Although Darley was not among those secluded at Pride’s Purge, he remained absent from the House until May 1649.148CJ vi. 208a. In Yorkshire, he seems to have withdrawn from local affairs, refusing to attend the county’s spring assizes or to explain his absence (although he was active on the Yorkshire assessment committee in March 1649).149The Countrey Committees Laid Open (1649), 5 (E.558.11); Scarborough Recs. 1600-40 ed. M.Y. Ashcroft (N. Yorks. RO publications xlix), 129. His evident misgivings about the army’s proceedings were apparently not shared by his brother Richard, who attended the Rump during the winter of 1648-9.150Infra, ‘Richard Darley’. Darley, on the other hand, did not enter his dissent to the 5 December 1648 vote – that the king’s answers at Newport were a sufficient grounds for a settlement – until May 1649, which was very late indeed and places him firmly among those Rumpers least sympathetic to the regicide and the establishment of a commonwealth.151CJ vi. 208a. It seems likely that he remained committed to the more conservative programme of constitutional reform favoured by the Saye and the Independent grandees, and thus his willingness to resume his seat can probably be read in terms of a desire to preserve as much of the traditional order as possible, while restraining the radical tendencies of the revolutionary hard-core. In this cause he was allied, as before the purge, with Sir William Armyne and Sir William Strickland.

Re-admitted to the House on 11 May 1649, having given suitable ‘satisfaction’ to the committee for absent Members, Darley resumed his attendance at Haberdashers’ Hall later that month.152CJ vi. 208a, 213b; SP19/7, p. 7. However, he seems to have played a less commanding role on the CAM after 1648 than he had in the period 1645-8. Conversely, his influence at Goldsmiths’ Hall may have increased slightly after 1648, possibly because his colleagues there now included his brother Richard, his long-time friend Sir John Bourchier, and Darley’s co-lessee of sequestered properties, Colonel James Temple*.153Supra, ‘Sir John Bourchier’; Eg. 2978, f. 255; SP23/6, pp. 30, 145, 159, 254; SP23/7, pp. 12, 13, 16, 107; C6/134/184; E134/1652/MICH13. He was also named to at least 17 ad hoc committees in the Rump – and probably well over twice that number in all – and reported from (though he apparently did not chair) a committee set up in April 1651 on a bill for making void all ‘pretended honours’ conferred by Charles I after 1641.154CJ vi. 562b; vii. 83b. However, the clerk’s continuing failure to distinguish between Darley and his brother Richard makes it difficult to catalogue his activities and appointments precisely. His duties as a committeeman in the Rump may well have commenced on 6 June 1649, when he was probably the ‘Mr Darley’ named first to a committee for settling an estate of £3,000 a year upon Sir Thomas (now 3rd Lord) Fairfax.155CJ vi. 225b. Darley, who had handled similar legislation in the spring of 1648, was a joint patron of godly ministers in Yorkshire with Fairfax and others of his circle – notably, the lord general’s brother-in-law Sir Thomas Widdrington*.156Leeds Univ. Lib. YAS/DD149, f. 84v; VCH E. Riding, iv. 79; J.C. Cox, ‘Parlty. survey of the benefices of the E. Riding’, E. Riding Antiquarian Soc. ii. 33. On 25 June 1650, it was Henry who was named to a committee to persuade Fairfax to lead the forces which were to invade Scotland – a doomed mission, as Fairfax resigned his command the next day.157CJ vi. 431b. Darley was also appointed to a committee for settling an estate upon Oliver Cromwell* (30 May 1650) and possibly to similar committees in relation to John Bradshawe* and Vane II.158CJ vi. 237a, 417b, 441a.

The cause of godly reform seems to have claimed more of Darley’s time in the Rump than it had before Pride’s Purge. At least two of the half dozen or so committees to which one or other of the Darleys were named in 1649-50 for the maintenance of the ministry and the propagation of the gospel were his appointments; he was added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers* on 4 July 1650; and he involved in settling ministers in Yorkshire and other counties.159CJ vi. 231a, 245b, 336b, 382b, 416a, 420b, 437a; SP23/6, p. 145; E214/997; Add. 36792, ff. 26v, 29v, 37v, 65v; Leeds Univ. Lib. YAS/DD149, f. 84v; Cox, ‘Parlty. survey’, 33. Added to the committee for regulating the universities on 29 March 1650, Darley, like his brother, was involved in promoting godly reform at both Oxford and Cambridge.160CJ vi. 388b; HMC 4th Rep. 456; LPL, Sion L40.2/E16, pp. 19, 491, 635, 687; Peterhouse Archives, Misc. vol. 3, pp. 16, 18. In the Commons, he continued to be identified with Independent ministers. Thus on 10 June 1652, he was appointed to return the thanks of the House to the Independent divine William Strong for his sermon of the previous day.161CJ vii. 140b. Similarly, on 5 April 1653 he was ordered to request Nye to preach to the House.162CJ vii. 274b.

Darley’s attitude towards the army during the commonwealth period appears to have been ambivalent. Although he probably regarded its assault on parliamentary sovereignty in December 1648 with distaste and alarm, he appears to have remained on friendly terms with several high-ranking officers, not least Fairfax and Cromwell. And it was possibly his influence in senior military circles, along with that of his fellow Yorkshire Rumpers, Bourchier and Sir William Allanson, that was instrumental in obtaining a colonelcy for John Alured’s younger brother Matthew Alured in 1650.163G. Gill, Innocency Cleared (1651), 10, 12, 14. Darley’s addition to the Army Committee* – of which he became an active member – on 17 December 1652, in a group of new appointees that included Cromwell, certainly implies that he was well insinuated into army counsels and had some interest or expertise in military matters.164CJ vii. 230b; SP28/90, ff. 188, 520. And although Henry seems to have been less closely involved in managing the Rump’s finances than was Richard, he had at least a share of the Darleys’ assignments relating to army pay and the improvement of public revenues (which mostly went to maintain the armed forces).165Infra, ‘Richard Darley’; CJ vi. 368a, 459b, 569b, 576b; vii. 58a, 128a, 138b. In addition, his connections with Vane II (the treasurer for the navy until late 1650) and his appointment early in 1660 as an admiralty commissioner suggest that he may have been the ‘Mr Darley’ named to several committees relating to naval administration in the early years of the Rump.166CJ vi. 274a, 379b, 534a. He was certainly the Darley active from October 1652 on the committees for renewing borough charters and for negotiating with representatives from Scotland over the terms of the new Anglo-Scottish commonwealth.167CJ vii. 190a; SP25/138, p. 54 and passim; CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 156; A New-Yeers-Gift for England, and All Her Cities, Ports, and Corporations (1652), 5 (E.684.19).

Darley was thus conspicuous in several areas of parliamentary business under the Rump, although his services to the state were not entirely disinterested, it seems. According to one republican pamphleteer, Darley maintained a lively trade on the committees for Compounding and Advance of Money ‘by his readiness to serve delinquents’ – a charge repeated by one of Darley’s Yorkshire enemies.168The Countrey Committees Laid Open, 5; Gill, Innocency Cleared, 14. Indeed, the former writer alleged that Darley had amassed £15,000 ‘for a purchase’ by 1649.169The Countrey Committees Laid Open, 5. Darley clearly profited from his position at Goldsmiths’ Hall during the late 1640s – as, for example, when he and Colonel James Temple paid part of the earl of Newport’s composition fine in return for a lease of several of his manors.170CCC 1245. And the favours that Darley showed Viscount Savile, principally in purchasing his sequestered goods ‘with purpose to dispose of them to his [Savile’s] own advantage’, lend substance to the allegation that he countenanced delinquents.171CCC 523, 724. In addition, both Darley brothers seem to have been involved in the sale of delinquents’ and church lands, where there was also ample opportunity for ‘gains and frauds’.172Infra, ‘Richard Darley’; CJ vi. 225a, 393b, 457b, 558a; vii. 112a, 115a, 250b. Darley himself acquired several former church properties in Yorkshire during the early 1650s, and his two tellerships in the Rump (in November and December 1652) related to the sale of royalist and crown lands.173CJ vii. 206b, 237a; Coll. Top. et Gen. i. 8, 290-1; C10/32/42. Darley was also active in several other areas of parliamentary business where the pecuniary rewards were potentially considerable – the management of affairs relating to the defunct court of wards and as a commissioner for fen drainage.174CJ vi. 260a, 409a, 413b; A. and O. ii. 139. In 1652-3, he and William Say drew up a report from a committee to consider the fen drainage dispute at Axholme in Lincolnshire – a document that was critical of the anti-drainage protesters and their radical leaders John Wildman* and John Lilburne and which was roundly condemned by them as ‘a most partial, wicked and erroneous report’.175CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 341; CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 373-6; J. Tomlinson, The Level of Hatfield Chase (Doncaster, 1882), 258, 266-7, 274; Lindley, Fenland Riots, 191-2.

By 1651, it seems, Darley had successfully adapted to political life in the Rump. His apparent reconciliation to the idea of a republic, though probably never complete, was sufficient to prompt his active participation in the third council of state, to which he was elected on 10 February 1651.176CJ vi. 532b, 533a. A diligent councillor, Darley attended 200 of the council’s 249 sessions and served as one of its reporters to the Rump on military affairs.177CSP Dom. 1651, p. xxxv; CJ vi. 551b; vii. 18a. He was also named to more than a dozen conciliar committees, including the committee for Scottish and Irish affairs established in March 1651, which became the Rump’s ‘maid of all work’.178CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 63, 64, 66-7, 67, 118, 158, 219, 239, 267, 315, 426, 431, 454, 466; CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 4; V.A. Rowe, Sir Henry Vane the Younger (1970), 141-2, 143. His career in local politics also flourished under the Rump. Active on several Yorkshire parliamentarian committees since the mid-1640s, he had emerged by 1649 as one of the North Riding’s most influential figures. His success, according to the author of the pamphlet, The Countrey Committees Laid Open, was founded upon peculation and his ‘power in sequestration and privilege as a Parliament-man’. Some of this writer’s claims, however – for example, that Darley had corresponded by cipher with Sir Hugh Cholmeley after 1644 – seem highly implausible.179The Countrey Committees Laid Open, 5. In fact, Darley’s closest confederates at local level appear to have been his fellow Yorkshire Rumpers – and in particular Bourchier, John Anlaby, Sir William Strickland, Francis Thorpe and John Wastell.180CCC 615; E134/1652/MICH13; Add. 36792, ff. 37v, 65v; C6/134/184; C10/32/42. The only remarkable feature of Darley’s career in local politics was his consistent failure to attend the North Riding quarter sessions. Apparently the role of the godly magistrate held little appeal for him.

Protectorate to Restoration

Given Darley’s distaste for the army’s proceedings in the winter of 1648-9, it is unlikely that he looked approvingly on Cromwell’s forcible dissolution of the Rump in April 1653. He was not invited to attend the Nominated Parliament and subsequently proved unable to reconcile himself to the protectorate. By the summer of 1656, he was implicated, through his brother Richard, in the plans of leading ex-Rumpers to frustrate the return of government supporters to the forthcoming Parliament.181Infra, ‘Richard Darley’; TSP v. 296. In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament that summer, Henry and Richard were returned for the East Riding, along with Sir William Strickland and Colonel Hugh Bethell. The Darleys probably owed their election to the strength of their interest as two of the East Riding’s leading politicians and also, perhaps, as vocal opponents of the rule of the major-generals. However, while Strickland and Bethell were allowed to take their seats, the Darleys were excluded from the House by the protectoral council as opponents of the government.182CJ vii. 452b.

When the excluded Members were admitted to the Commons at the beginning of the second session, in January 1658, Henry took his seat – it is not clear that Richard did – and was probably the ‘Mr Darley’ who joined the commonwealthsmen (republican MPs) in attacking the protectoral settlement and particularly the Cromwellian Other House, which he described as ‘at best your [i.e. the Commons’] younger brother’.183Burton’s Diary, ii. 339, 343, 429, 442. Yet while the commonwealthsmen’s objective was the re-investment of sovereignty in the Commons, Darley was ultimately more concerned with the propagation of the gospel and upholding the principle of toleration for tender consciences. On 20 January, he ‘heartily’ seconded Nathaniel Bacon’s motion for a day of humiliation, declaring that ‘religion is the first of the four pillars of a commonwealth’.184Burton’s Diary, ii. 320. And during a debate the following day (21 Jan.) on a bill for the maintenance of ministers, he moved for the establishment of a committee for religion, after the example of the Long Parliament.185Burton’s Diary, ii. 332. At the conclusion of this debate, he was added to the committee for drafting a bill for the general maintenance of the ministry.186CJ vii. 580b. Later the same day, he took issue with calls by two leading Presbyterian MPs, Thomas Gewen and Major Robert Beake, for an assembly of divines (which, it was proposed, would include Scottish ministers) to settle differences in church government.187Burton, Diary, ii. 333-4. Significantly, the grievances he regarded as most urgently in need of redress were not those complained of by the commonwealthsmen – namely, the erosion of parliamentary sovereignty under the Humble Petition and Advice – but ‘the probate of wills and matters of religion’.188Burton, Diary, ii. 374. Darley was named to seven committees during the second session, chairing a committee set up on 26 January for the safe storage of parliamentary records.189CJ vii. 580b, 581a, 588a, 589a, 592a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 404.

Like his brother, Darley resumed his seat in the Commons following the restoration of the Rump in May 1659 – although Richard did not return to the House until after 2 June – and received somewhere between 8 and 23 committee appointments between then and mid-October, when the army dissolved the House a second time.190CJ vii. 659b, 661b, 664a, 670b, 694b, 706a, 772a, 786a; A Catalogue of the Names of This Present Parliament (1659, 669 f.21.43). He was also a teller on 1 August, partnering Luke Robinson in a minor division concerning the duchy of Lancaster.191CJ vii. 744a. Added on 20 May to a committee for discharging Cromwellian prisoners of conscience, he was possibly the ‘Mr Darley’ named to committees on 9 and 18 June to consider the claims of two such detainees – the republican officers Matthew Alured and Robert Overton.192CJ vii. 659b, 678a, 688a. He was certainly the Darley appointed to committees for bringing in a bill of indemnity and oblivion (21 May), remodelling the militia (25 May, 27 June) and for continuing the excise and related duties (26 Sept.).193CJ vii. 661b, 664a, 694b, . Both Darleys were included on a committee set up on 18 July for the release of poor debtors – a reform much favoured by the more radical Rumpers.194CJ vii. 722a. As army pressure mounted during the autumn, the Rump grew increasingly desperate and, on 11 October, established a committee – to which one of the brothers was named – for making it treason to levy a tax not imposed by Parliament, which was clearly an attempt to keep the army without pay should it again decide to dissolve Parliament.195CJ vii. 795a. Both Darleys were among those Members listed in a pamphlet in November as having defied the army in the days before it had dissolved the Rump a few weeks earlier.196The Lord General Fleetwoods Answer to the Humble Representation of Collonel Morley (1659), 11 (E.1010.6).

Darley returned to Westminster following the final restoration of the Rump late in December 1659 and was a minority teller with Colonel Thomas Lister on 17 January 1660 in favour of having Richard Salwey – a confederate of Sir Henry Vane II, the leader of the republican faction that had backed the army and the committee of safety – disabled from sitting.197CJ vii. 813b. On 23 January, Darley was added to the committee to determine qualifications for parliamentary membership in the proposed fresh elections to the Rump.198CJ vii. 818b. And on 28 January, he was elected to a commission for managing the admiralty and navy, of which he was an active member.199CJ vii. 825b; Add. 63788B, f. 135; ADM2/1731, ff. 125v, 146v. He received no further parliamentary appointments after 15 February at the latest.200CJ vii. 844a. With the re-admission of the secluded Members on 21 February, he seems to have withdrawn from the House, although he was still signing admiralty commission warrants as late as 2 May 1660.201ADM2/1731, f. 146v.

Darley seems to have come through the initial stages of the Restoration largely unscathed. His estate, minus the church lands he had acquired, was ‘restored’ to him under the terms of the act of oblivion – Charles I having granted his lands to a Yorkshire royalist.202CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 421; CJ viii. 84a. In 1663, however, he was implicated, probably falsely, in the abortive Farnley Wood Plot, in Yorkshire, and his estate was temporarily forfeited to the crown.203SP29/86/68, f. 104; CSP Dom. 1663-4, p. 421. In August 1665, he was briefly imprisoned on suspicion of ‘turbulent and seditious practices and designs against his majesty’s government’.204HMC Var. ii. 120; CSP Dom. 1664-5, pp. 534, 542. He is known to have retained contact with at least one of his civil-war acquaintances, Matthew Alured, who became one of the East Riding’s more prominent dissenters (whether Darley was also part of a nonconformist congregation is not known).205Infra, ‘Matthew Alured’; N. Yorks. RO, ZDA, DDDA/31/5. Moreover, his only son, Richard, had married a daughter of the parliamentarian officer and regicide Thomas Waite* in 1661.206N. Yorks. RO, ZDA, DAR.S.10.

Darley died in the summer of 1671 and was buried at Buttercrambe on 6 August.207Buttercrambe par. reg. He died intestate, the administration of his estate being granted to his daughter Sarah.208Borthwick, Prob. Act Bk., Bulmer Deanery 1669-86, f. 15. No immediate member of his family sat in Parliament.