CONSTABLE, Sir William (1591-1655), of Flamborough and Holme on Spalding Moor, Yorks.

Descended from one of the Conqueror’s baronial followers who had acquired an estate at Flamborough by 1086, members of the Constable family had represented Yorkshire and other constituencies in a dozen or so Parliaments since the 1380s.70Oxford DNB, ‘Constable family’; ‘Hugh d’Avranches, first earl of Chester’; Vis. Yorks. ed. Foster, 197; VCH Yorks. (E. Riding), ii. 154; HP Commons 1386-1421, ‘Sir Robert Constable’; HP Commons, 1509-58, ‘Sir Marmaduke Constable I’; ‘Sir Robert Constable’; ‘Thomas Constable’. Constable has often been confused with his great-uncle, a professional soldier, who took part in Essex’s rebellion in 1601, and with the Sir William Constable of Lambton who was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1605.71I. Temple Admiss. database; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 224, 370; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir William Constable’; Bradley, ‘Constable’s regt.’, 215-16. In fact, Constable was only nine at the time of Essex’s rebellion and (his father having died the previous year) was a ward of the Yorkshire knight Sir Henry Slingsby†. It was probably Slingsby who arranged Constable’s marriage in 1608 to a daughter of his colleague on the council of the north and the West Riding bench, Sir Thomas Fairfax† of Denton (father of Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*).72WARD8/79, f. 22v; WARD9/348, ff. 146v-147; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir William Constable’. Nothing is known about Constable’s education and there is no evidence for the claim that he attended Gray’s Inn.73Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 34.

Constable’s appointment as custos of the East Riding bench while still in his early twenties attests as much to the strength of his connections among Yorkshire’s leading gentry as to his own family’s standing in the county.74C66/1988. At the 1626 general election, Sir Thomas Fairfax, who had represented the county in the previous Parliament, stood aside in favour of Constable – an arrangement that Fairfax’s ally Sir Thomas Wentworth† (the future earl of Strafford) exploited in an effort to secure the East Riding against his great electoral rival Sir John Savile†. In the event, the contending factions arranged a last-minute compromise whereby the county seats went to Savile and Constable, in that order.75HP Commons, 1604-29, ‘Yorkshire’; ‘Sir Thomas Fairfax I’; ‘Sir Thomas Wentworth’. Like most of Wentworth’s associates, Constable took a sceptical view of the war against Spain, and in September 1626 he was removed from the East Riding bench, and hence his office as custos, as an opponent of Savile and of his patron, George Villiers, duke of Buckingham.76C231/4, f. 209v; SP16/37/28, f. 42; R. Cust, Forced Loan, 195-6; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir William Constable’. The following year, Constable and another noted opponent of the duke’s Yorkshire clients, Sir John Hotham*, spearheaded opposition to the Forced Loan in the East Riding and were imprisoned by the privy council for several months late in 1627.77Infra, ‘Sir John Hotham’; APC 1627, pp. 382, 418; 1627-8, pp. 17, 75, 217; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, i. 68-9; Cliffe, Yorks. 291, 293; Cust, Forced Loan, 227, 289; HP Commons, 1604-29, ‘Sir William Constable’.

In the elections to the 1628 Parliament, Wentworth apparently used his connections to secure Constable’s nomination for Callington, Cornwall. In addition, the vice-admiral of Yorkshire, and Constable’s ‘good friend’, Edmund, earl of Mulgrave – one of whose daughters had married Sir Ferdinando Fairfax – recommended him to Scarborough corporation.78Scarborough Recs. ed. M.Y. Ashcroft (N. Yorks. RO, xlvii), 187; HP Commons, 1604-1629, ‘Sir William Constable’. Returned for both boroughs, he opted to sit for Scarborough. With his imprisonment as a loan refuser still fresh in his memory, he was among the Common’s more vocal critics of prerogative power.79HP Commons, 1604-29, ‘Sir William Constable’. Wentworth’s elevation to the lord lieutenancy of Yorkshire in 1628 brought its inevitable rewards for his supporters. In December 1628, Constable was restored the East Riding bench, and he and Sir Matthew Boynton* were appointed deputy lieutenants for the East Riding in 1629 – Hotham having recommended them to Wentworth as ‘the ablest and best affected to do his majesty service in respect of their undoubted affection to religion, which...in these parts is not easy to find in gentlemen of prime rank...’.80C231/4, f. 262; Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P12/50; Cliffe, Yorks. 238, 295. In 1630, he was summoned before the privy council again – this time to explain his failure to compound for distraint of knighthood.81APC 1630-1, p. 93; Cliffe, Yorks. 296.

Constable was a man of firmly Calvinist convictions. He was ‘fully persuaded’, he informed his brother-in-law Charles Fairfax in 1635

that you are in the Ark...The bond is already made and sealed to save you harmless, there only needs some further impression upon the seal...The work which my own heart more needs, and which I am oftenest put to, is to fasten upon my own spirit whatever may tend to humble me...82Belvoir, PZ 1, f. 28.

One manifestation of his struggle against worldly pride may well have been his evident inability to live within his means – an un-Calvinist trait that obliged him to sell most of his estate to cover his debts.83Cliffe, Yorks. 123, 280. Having re-mortgaged Holme in 1630, he sold his entire estate there, except the manor house, to the future royalist Sir Marmaduke Langdale in 1634, although he purchased a lease on the property for £1,200 and paying £300 a year in rent.84C54/3010/31; C54/3117/7; Hull Hist. Cent. U DDHA/4/10-11, 12, 56, 57, 62, 64, 65; Add. 40135, ff. 23v-24; HP Commons 1604-16, ‘Sir William Constable’. In 1636, he sold the manor of Flamborough, which had been in his family since the twelfth century.85VCH Yorks. (E. Riding), ii. 154. One of his sureties in these various property transactions was the Yorkshire gentleman and future parliamentarian officer under the Fairfaxes, Robert Overton, who became a ‘great Independent’ and a close friend of John Milton.86C54/3074/21; Oxford DNB, ‘Robert Overton’.

It may well have been Constable’s declining fortunes as much as the increasing harassment of godly clergy and their patrons by the Laudian church authorities that persuaded him to join Boynton in 1635 in making preparations to emigrate to New England. Probably at the suggestion of Boynton’s friend and fellow puritan, Henry Darley*, the two men resolved to settle at Saybrook, Connecticut, where the godly peers Viscount Saye and Sele and Lord Brooke had obtained a grant of land.87Winthrop Pprs. (Massachusetts Hist. Soc. iii.), 211, 226-7; Newton, Colonising Activities, 179; Cliffe, Yorks. 306. Among the puritan notables involved in this venture were Darley, Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, Sir Henry Vane II*, George Fenwick*, Henry Lawrence I* and the Congregationalist ministers Philip Nye and Hugh Peters.88Supra, ‘Sir William Boynton’; infra, ‘George Fenwick’; ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; ‘Sir Henry Vane II’; Winthrop Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc. iii.), 198-9, 209; Newton, Colonising Activities, 177-8; Oxford DNB, ‘Hugh Peter [Peters]’. However, the practical difficulties involved in transplanting to the New World, together with the authorities’ growing determination to restrict puritan emigration across the Atlantic, persuaded Constable and Boynton to abandon their plans to settle in Connecticut.89Supra, ‘Sir Matthew Boynton’; Winthrop Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc. iii.), 388-9; J. T. Cliffe, Puritan Gentry, 202-3. In April 1637, having obtained permission from the crown to transport himself and his family to the continent for three years, Constable assigned his remaining interest at Holme to Sir Ferdinando Fairfax and Fairfax’s son-in-law, Thomas Widdrington*.90SO3/11, unfol. (17 Apr. 1637); C54/3117/7; C54/3118/16.

In the two years before leaving England, Constable was also occupied as Sir Ferdinando’s agent in arranging a match between his eldest son Thomas Fairfax* (the future commander of the New Model army) and a daughter of the Protestant hero of the Thirty Years’ War, Horace, Lord Vere of Tilbury. One of the intermediaries that Constable employed in these negotiations was the godly London divine William Gouge, a clerical protégé of the Essex puritan grandee, Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick (another godly minister with strong Essex connections who was apparently well known to Constable was Ezekiel Rogers).91Bodl. Fairfax 31, f. 78; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, i. 296-300, 302-3; Barrington Fam. Letters ed. A. Searle (Cam. Soc. ser. 4, xxviii), 168; Oxford DNB, ‘William Gouge’; ‘Ezekial Rogers’

Constable crossed over to Holland in June 1637, where he was joined the following year by Boynton.92Cliffe, Yorks. 308. By 1640, the two gentlemen were leading members of the gathered church established at Arnhem by John Archer, under the ministry of Nye and another Congregationalist divine Thomas Goodwin.93Bodl. Tanner 65, f. 24; M. Tolmie, The Triumph of the Saints, 44-5; Oxford DNB, ‘John Archer’. This church had its own, Calvinist, form of service consisting of ‘sermon, prayer and psalm’, in which ‘the chiefest sit and take notes, not a gentlewoman that thinks her hand too fair to use pen and ink’.94Bodl. Tanner 65, f. 24.

Constable had returned to England by March 1641, when he joined Sir Ferdinando (now 2nd baron) Fairfax and several other Yorkshire MPs in a petition to Parliament for a statute establishing a court of justice in the north, in place of the proscribed council of the north.95Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 181; HMC Lords, n.s. xi. 255-6. Encouraged by the Fairfaxes, he stood as a candidate in the by-election at Knaresborough in November 1641, but was beaten on a poll by the town’s bailiff and deputy steward William Dearlove. Constable’s supporters – prominent among whom were George Marwood* and Fairfax’s man-of-business Thomas Stockdale* – protested that the poll was illegal because Dearlove was deputy steward and bailiff, ‘and therefore the burghers durst not give their voices for fear of him’. When Stockdale’s demand that Constable be returned was refused, he and Constable’s supporters drew up their own indenture with the signatures of 26 townsmen which they sent to the sheriff. Constable’s indignation at being worsted by ‘a man of no estate’ was heightened by the conviction that Dearlove and his step-father Henry Benson* were the ‘chief countenancers’ and suppliers of parliamentary intelligence to prominent Catholics in the area.96Supra, ‘Knaresborough’; Bodl. Fairfax 32, ff. 35, 37, 45, 47, 51, 53; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 216-17, 260-3; D’Ewes (C), 242. For their part, Dearlove’s supporters branded Constable a puritan and alleged that he spoke against the Book of Common Prayer.97Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 266. On 7 December, the godly Lincolnshire MP Sir William Armyne presented a petition to the Commons from Constable, denouncing Dearlove’s return. But though Sir Hugh Cholmeley and other Members moved for Constable’s return and admission to the House, the Commons confined itself to voting that Dearlove should forbear to take his seat pending investigation of his ‘misdemeanours and offences’ by the committee for protections.98CJ ii. 334b; D’Ewes (C), 242-3. With Stockdale’s help, Constable presented evidence against Dearlove to the committee, which informed the House in mid-March 1642 that Dearlove, ‘a man of very mean or no fortune or condition’, had used his office to intimidate the voters. The House accepted the committee’s verdict that Dearlove’s return was ‘undue and void’, but it was not until 17 August, when most of the royalist Members had left Westminster, that Constable’s return was declared valid.99Infra, ‘William Dearlove’; CJ ii. 488b, 725a; PJ ii. 61, 63; Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 295-6, 345, 349, 376; A Continuation of the True Diurnall of Passages in Parliament, 7 (21-8 Feb. 1642), 54 (E.201.19).

Of the seven or so petitions from Yorkshire to Parliament or the king during 1642, Constable is known to have signed only that of May, asking Charles to put his trust in the two Houses and to refrain from raising any troops in the county.100A Letter from the...Committees of the Commons...at Yorke (1642), 9 (E.148.4). Early in June, however, in accordance with a request from Boynton, Sir Thomas Fairfax and their fellow parliamentary commissioners in Yorkshire, Constable presented a petition to the House that they had tried, unsuccessfully, to give to the king. It complained about his abandoning Parliament and drawing together the county’s trained bands – illegally, as the petitioners conceived it.101PA, Main Pprs. 6 June 1642, ff. 84-5; CJ ii. 607b; LJ v. 107a; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 334; Cliffe, Yorks. 332. Constable was one of the first Yorkshire gentlemen to take up arms for Parliament. By late July 1642, he had been commissioned as a colonel of foot in the parliamentarian army under Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, and by mid-August he was drawing pay for 1,200 men.102SP28/1A, f. 150; SP28/143, pt. 6, f. 11. The chaplain to his regiment was the godly millenarian William Sedgwick, who would emerge in the late 1640s as a critic of the army and the Levellers.103SP28/261, f. 137; The List of the Army Raised under the Command of His Excellency, Robert Earle of Essex (1642), sig. B4v (E.117.3); Laurence, Parliamentary Army Chaplains, 172-3; Oxford DNB, ‘William Sedgwick’. Essex evidently thought highly of Constable, appointing him to his seven-man council of war.104The List of the Army, sig. B5v. Constable’s 800 or so ‘bluecoats’ fought bravely at the battle of Edgehill in October.105SP28/261, f. 37; Speciall Newes from the Army at Warwicke (1642), sig. A2 (E.124.33); Bradley, ‘Constable’s regt.’, 221-2.

On 8 November 1642, the House had the Knaresborough election indenture formally amended in accordance with its orders of 17 August, and next day (9 Nov.), Constable was named to a committee for raising a body of horse for the safety of the kingdom.106CJ ii. 839b, 841a. Shortly thereafter he seems to have returned to active service in Essex’s army and does not appear to have returned to the House much before 7 February 1643, when he declared his willingness to live and die with the earl in support of the parliamentarian cause.107CJ ii. 958b. In July and August 1643, with the parliamentarian war effort in the north foundering, the Commons passed a series of orders and resolutions for appointing Constable a lieutenant general under Fairfax and empowering him to raise troops in East Anglia and march them to Fairfax’s relief in Hull.108CJ iii. 154b, 174b, 175b, 187a, 209. Before embarking on this mission, Constable was named to committees on 19 and 20 July for supplying Fairfax with arms and encouraging the townsmen of Hull in their defiance of the royalists.109CJ iii. 174b, 175b. And on 3 August, he was added to a committee that sat at Grocers’ Hall for supplying the army of Sir William Waller*, which the Commons also charged with raising money for Fairfax’s forces.110CJ iii. 165b, 192b, 197b.

The claim that Constable commanded his regiment in person during the Gloucester and Newbury campaign of 1643 is groundless, for he spent most of that autumn in the Eastern Association.111J. Binns, Yorks. in the Civil Wars, 78; Bradley, ‘Constable’s regt.’, 227. With the help of Sir Thomas Barrington* and other East Anglian parliamentarians, Constable succeeded in raising troops and ‘considerable sums of money and plate, besides some horse and ammunition’ for Fairfax’s northern army, which he had joined in Hull by late November.112CJ iii. 263b, 374b-375a; Eg. 2647, ff. 177, 180, 199, 211; Add. 18779, f. 24v; Jones, ‘War in north’, 179, 376. During the early months of 1644, he led successful raids against Bridlington and Scarborough and won several engagements against the East Riding royalists, thereby contributing significantly to the northern army’s important victory at Selby in April.113Add. 18779, ff. 64, 66, 74; Binns, Yorks. in the Civil Wars, 78-80, 81, 90; Jones, ‘War in north’, 376; Bradley, ‘Constable’s regt.’, 228-34. He was probably at Hull – where Lord Fairfax had made him deputy governor – when his regiment fought at Marston Moor in July.114HMC Portland, i. 178; CCC 843; Binns, Yorks. in the Civil Wars, 90; Bradley, ‘Constable’s regt.’, 235. Like the Fairfaxes, he would emerge that autumn as an opponent of continuing Scottish involvement in the region’s affairs, signing a letter in November from Lord Fairfax, Sir Thomas Fairfax, Boynton, Francis Pierrepont* and other leading northern parliamentarians to the Committee of Both Kingdoms*, denouncing the Scots as a military liability.115CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 104-5; Hopper, Fairfax, 62. Constable relinquished active command in the northern army early in 1645, and in February he was among the small group of officers that accompanied Sir Thomas Fairfax, the newly-appointed commander of the New Model army, to London.116Perfect Diurnall no. 82 (17-24 Feb. 1645), 649 (E.258.27); Jones, ‘War in north’, 376. In recognition of Constable’s ‘great and faithful services’ and his ‘great losses’, Parliament granted him £1,000 in April out of Langdale’s sequestered estate at Holme.117CJ iv. 88b; LJ vii. 301a.

His military career laid aside, Constable was able to devote more time to his duties at Westminster. Apart from several months in Yorkshire in mid-1645, helping to establish the Northern Association army and persuade the Scots forces to move southwards to protect the midlands, he seems to have based himself in London; and between February 1645 and the summer of 1647 he was named to 30 committees.118CJ iv. 130b, 138b, 189a; LJ vii. 367b; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 523, 532, 542, 551. During 1645, he was named to committees for promoting a preaching ministry in the northern counties and (in first place) for settling an estate of £5,000 a year on Sir Thomas Fairfax.119CJ iv. 97b, 211b, 360a. And on 21 August, he moved, unsuccessfully, for the holding of a ‘recruiter’ election at Beverley, where it was doubtless expected that the voters would return MPs friendly to the Fairfaxes.120Add. 31116, p. 453. Even more revealing of his political alignment at Westminster was his involvement in the Independents’ efforts to probe at the weak points in the Anglo-Scottish alliance. In May 1645, he joined Lord Fairfax, Darley and Pierrepont in a letter to the Lords that was deeply critical of the Scots for leaving Yorkshire ruined by their army’s ‘excessive burdens’ and yet exposed to royalist attack.121LJ vii. 397b-398a. On 6 and 21 October, he was included on committees for pressing the Scots to march to the siege of Newark or be left without parliamentary supply.122CJ iv. 298b, 317a. And on 20 March 1646, the particular care of a committee to prepare a declaration concerning Scottish oppressions in northern England was assigned to Constable and Stockdale, who had been returned for Knaresborough as a ‘recruiter’.123CJ iv. 481b. In June, Constable supplied information to the House of the Scots’ dealings with the royalists following the king’s flight to their army the previous month.124CJ iv. 580a.

Constable’s undoubted hostility to the establishment of a coercive, Scottish-style church may well explain his appointment on 12 December to a committee for examining a work by the Presbyterian ministers of London in favour of jure divino Presbyterianism.125CJ v. 11a. Equally telling, perhaps, is his omission from a committee set up earlier that same day (12 Dec.) to investigate the radical minister William Dell for criticising a sermon by the Presbyterian divine Christopher Love.126CJ v. 10b. On 29 December, he was a minority teller with Sir Henry Heyman in favour of retaining a clause in Parliament’s votes for receiving the king (from the Scots) that Charles abolish the court of wards. The majority tellers were the Presbyterian grandees Denzil Holles and Sir Philip Stapilton.127CJ v. 33a.

Sir Thomas Fairfax wrote to the Speaker late in February 1647, commending his uncle’s exploits and constancy in Parliament’s service and emphasising the ‘losses and disadvantages’ incurred thereby to his ‘now narrowed fortune’ and ‘small estate’.128Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 784. The following month the two Houses awarded Constable £1,984 out of the sequestration revenues for payment of his army arrears.129CJ v. 108a-b; LJ ix. 95a. He was named to six committees during the first half of 1647, all in April and May, including those for settling an estate on Sir Thomas Fairfax and to investigate the earl of Mulgrave’s losses in supplying alum to the crown.130CJ v. 134a, 153a, 167a, 168b, 170b, 181a. Writing to Lord Fairfax on 24 May, Constable accepted the need to disband the New Model, but lamented the ‘provocations’ that Presbyterian Members had offered to the army, and particularly their unwillingness to declare that ‘we parted with them [Sir Thomas Fairfax’s troops] as friends, being satisfied of their good affection to the Parliament’.131Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 347-8. Granted leave of absence on 28 May, he was allegedly one of the officers employed by Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell* as unofficial emissaries to Sednham Points, the commander of the Northern Association army, in a vain attempt to detach him from the Presbyterian interest.132CJ v. 190b; The Vindication of Colonell Generall Points (1648), 8 (E.469.23).

Constable had returned to the Commons by 26 July 1647 to witness the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster. Indeed, according to his wife, his escape from the House that day was ‘not without danger’.133Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 378. Taking refuge with the army, he was among the signatories to the 4 August ‘engagement’ of the fugitive Members in which Fairfax and his men were eulogised for their ‘Christian, noble and public affection to the good, peace and prosperity of this kingdom and ... faithfulness to the true interest of the English nation’.134LJ ix. 385b. Constable returned to Westminster with the other fugitive Members, and he was a minority teller with the Independent grandee Sir Arthur Hesilrige on 6 August in favour of enlarging Sir Thomas Fairfax’s power as the new lieutenant of the Tower.135CJ v. 269a. On 18 August, he partnered another Independent grandee, Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire, as a majority teller in favour of giving a reading to an ordinance for repealing all legislation passed during the Presbyterian counter-revolution of July-August.136CJ v. 278a. In November, he was named to committees for investigating the perpetrators of the Presbyterian counter-revolution and of Leveller agitation in the army.137CJ v. 360a, 367a. But his tally of just five committee appointments between early August 1647 and January 1648 was hardly that of a busy Commons-man.138CJ v. 289b, 301b, 329a, 360a, 367a.

Constable’s involvement with the House’s proceedings diminished even further following his appointment in December 1647 as a colonel of foot in place of John Lambert*, who had been assigned command of the Northern Brigade.139Clarke Pprs. ii. 252; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 254; ii. 399. Moreover, within a few days of Constable receiving this new commission, Fairfax sent him, William Goffe* and Edward Salmon* to tighten security around the king on the Isle of Wight.140Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 952. On 5 January 1648, Parliament authorised Constable and Colonel Robert Hammond*, the island’s governor, to remove anyone attending the king whom they regarded as a security risk – i.e. royalists and Scots.141CJ v. 419b; LJ ix. 642a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 955. Constable’s addition, possibly in absentia, to the Committee for the Revenue* on 22 January to consider a petition from Charles’s attendants would be his last appointment at Westminster before Pride’s Purge.142CJ v. 440b; CCSP i. 410. That same month (January), he was made governor of Gloucester after his ‘regiment of Independents’ had been sent by Fairfax to quell unrest in the city.143Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 979; Mercurius Elencticus no. 18 (23 Feb.-1 Mar. 1648), 106 (E.430.3); R. Ashton, Counter Revolution, 348. Constable may have resumed his seat that spring, for on 1 May the Commons gave him leave to repair to his charge at Gloucester.144CJ v. 548a. He and his regiment remained in Gloucestershire for the duration of the second civil war, and on 26 September he was declared absent and excused at the call of the House.145CJ vi. 34b; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 69, 228, 321.

In the month preceding Pride’s Purge, Constable played a prominent role in the council of officers as it moved towards open confrontation with Parliament. He was named to the council’s steering committee, headed by Henry Ireton*, and to committees for finalising and justifying the army’s Remonstrance, and he was also among the officers chosen late in November to work with leading Levellers and radical MPs on redrafting the Agreement of the People.146Clarke Pprs. ii. 54, 56, 61; J. Lilburne, The Legall Fundamentall Liberties of the People of England Revived (1649), 33 (E.560.14); Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 128, 129, 131. Early in December – if John Lilburne can be believed – Constable, Thomas Harrison I* and Sir Hardress Waller* ‘laboured to get me to be, and to engage my pen, for them [the army]...[in] those great things they intended, as the breaking the House and taking off the king’s head’.147Lilburne, A Preparative to an Hue and Cry after Sir Arthur Haslerig (1649), 31 (E.573.16). Constable may well have been a member of the committee of army officers and radical Commons-men that met at Whitehall on 5 December to discuss arrangements for purging the House the next day.148Ludlow, Mems. i. 210; Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 141. And he was certainly complicit in the army’s decisions concerning the Members imprisoned during the purge.149OPH xviii. 453.

Yet there were limits to Constable’s enthusiasm for rending and amending the ancient constitution. For example, he seems to have attended only one of the debates in the council of officers concerning the Agreement – that of 21 December 1648, when he supported the vain attempt by Ireton to give the legislature final judgement in moral as well as civil matters.150B. Taft, ‘Voting lists of the council of officers, Dec. 1648’, BIHR lii. 142, 144, 148; B. Taft, ‘The council of officers’ Agreement of the People, 1648-9’, HJ xxviii. 176, 183. His first known appearance in the Rump was on 16 December, when the Commons chose him to carry up legislation to the Lords – although it was William Purefoy I who actually performed this task.151CJ vi. 98b; LJ x. 632a. And while Constable was named to the committee set up on 29 December to perfect an ordinance for a high court of justice to try the king, he was not named to its successor after the Lords had rejected this legislation.152CJ vi. 106a. Indeed, apart from his addition to the Committee for the Army* and three other standing executive committees early in January 1649, he received only one more appointment in the House – to a committee for receiving petitions from the well-effected in the west country – before the king’s execution.153CJ vi. 107b, 109a, 112b, 113b, 120b. Nevertheless, he was one of the more active members of the high court of justice, attending 11 of the 18 meetings of the trial commission and all four days of the trial itself.154Muddiman, Trial, 76, 227. On 29 January, he signed the king’s death warrant, and that same day he made his dissent to the 5 December 1648 vote – that the king’s answer to the Newport propositions were an acceptable basis for settlement – in the company, among others, of Ireton, Cromwell and his fellow Yorkshiremen John Alured, John Anlaby and Luke Robinson.155CJ vi. 124b; Muddiman, Trial, 227. It is not clear what moved Constable to condemn Charles. A conviction of the king’s blood-guilt was perhaps part of the story. But in addition, like other northern regicides, Constable may have come to the view that Charles’s obduracy signalled not only that God had marked him for destruction, but also the political necessity of killing him before he could invite the Scots to heap yet more misery on their region.156D. Scott, ‘Motives for king-killing’ in The Regicides and the Execution of Charles I ed. J. Peacey, 148-53.

Constable’s experience as a Parliament-man and his intimacy with Fairfax and the army’s counsels left him potentially well-placed to assume a leading role in the Rump. His five appointments between late January and mid-February 1649 included nomination to a committee set up on 1 February for taking the dissent of MPs seeking admission to the House – an important body in defining the Rump’s membership and political complexion.157CJ vi. 126b, 131b, 134a, 138b, 142a; [W. Prynne], A Full Declaration of the True State of the Secluded Members Case (1660), 25 (E.1013.22). Moreover, on 15 February he was elected to the Rump’s first council of state.158CJ vi. 141a. Two days later (17 Feb.), he was among 13 councillors who made no scruple about taking the conciliar ‘engagement’, which required the subscriber to assent to ‘all that was done concerning the king [i.e. the king’s trial and execution] and kingship and for taking away the House of Lords and against the Scots’ invasion [in 1648]’.159CJ vi. 146b; SP25/1, unfol. (17, 19 Feb. 1649); Worden, Rump Parl. 181. However, his duties as governor of Gloucester kept him away from Westminster for much of 1649, and consequently he attended less than a third of the first council’s meetings and was named to less than a dozen of its committees.160CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. lxxv, 25, 36, 66, 119, 232, 283, 284, 381, 401, 491, 507, 510, 511; CSP Col. 1547-1660, pp. 331, 347. Elected to the second council of state in February 1650, he attended more than half of its meetings, made at least one report from Whitehall to the House, and seems to have shouldered a slightly heavier workload than had in 1649, most of which related to military affairs and liaising between the council and Fairfax.161CJ vi. 362b, 504b; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. xli, 13, 18, 19, 37, 60, 67, 73, 162, 194, 198, 379, 399, 422, 426, 449, 453,

In marked contrast to Fairfax, Constable rejoiced at the prospect of invading Scotland in 1650. Addressing his fellow officers that May, he felt sure that ‘we are used as a rod of iron in Christ’s hand to dash His enemies in pieces ... in a time when His work is to establish His own kingdom in the ruin of Babylon, as – in the apprehension of many of His people – it is this day’.162The Fifth Monarchy, or Kingdom of Christ (1659), 9-12 (E.993.31). He was angered, however, by what he regarded as ‘the underhand, unreasonable and indefatigable workings and designings’ upon Fairfax following his resignation as lord general in June, ‘to put a stumbling block in his way and then breaking a bruised reed’.163Belvoir, QZ.30, f. 112. Cromwell’s replacement of Fairfax did no permanent damage, if any, to what seems to have been Constable’s friendly relations with the new lord general. In trying to secure a match for Charles Fairfax’s daughter that autumn, Constable informed him that he was ‘not a little obliged to my Lord General Cromwell, who before his going into Ireland [in 1649], did very affectionately and seriously treat with Colonel [John] Reynolds* upon that point’. Although nothing had come of that particular overture, Constable was confident that if his brother-in-law asked Cromwell ‘to negotiate for you, it can do no harm and may occasion some thoughts in him to ally you with some considerable officer by his countenance’ (in the event, Charles Fairfax’s daughter married George Smithson*).164Belvoir, PZ 1, f. 29.

Lord Fairfax’s resignation may have lessened Constable’s standing in the eyes of his fellow Rumpers. But the likeliest reason for his omission from the third council of state in February 1651 was simply that he was spending more of his time in Gloucester than he was at Westminster.165CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 59, 133, 157, 175, 178, 240, 312. The need to retain this strategically vital city kept him at his post for long periods, and therefore he was unable to participate directly in Cromwell’s victory at Worcester in September.166CJ vii. 7b; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 316, 346, 365, 368, 382. Perhaps with the lord general’s backing, he secured re-election to the council in November 1651 and would attend over half of its meetings, although his haul of conciliar committee appointments was meagre.167CJ vii. 42b; CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. xlvii, 43, 46, 91, 150, 219. He very occasionally attended the council’s standing committees for the admiralty and foreign affairs during 1652, despite not being formally admitted to either body.168Bodl. Rawl. A.226, unfol. (meetings on 25 Mar., 5 July 1652); SP25/131, pp. 10, 44 (meetings on 14 July, 20 Oct. 1652). He also served as the council’s president for much of October 1652 and again in late November, and during that time he delivered at least two reports from Whitehall to the House – both of which concerned the Rump’s diplomatic transactions with Denmark.169CJ vii. 191a, 192a; CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 430, 438, 441, 448, 454, 501. He was dropped from the fifth council of state in December.

Constable’s military career restricted him to a relatively minor role in the Rump itself. After mid-February 1649, he was named to a mere ten committees before Parliament’s dissolution in April 1653. The most important of these committees were those for the advancement of godly religion in Wales (29 Jan. 1650); the sale of delinquents’ estates (6 Apr., 24 Jan 1651); removing public offices that were burdensome to the people (27 June 1650); and to consider petitions from John Lilburne (27 June) and from John Owen* – a minister favoured by Cromwell – and his clerical allies, urging tougher action against radical sectarian and heterodox beliefs and the more effective propagation of the gospel (10 Feb. 1652).170CJ vi. 352a, 363b, 393b, 432b, 433a, 528a; vii. 62a, 86b, 100a, 276b. Constable’s appearances at the Army Committee – the only one of the Rump’s standing committees he is known to have attended – were apparently few and far between until the week before Parliament’s dissolution, when they became much more frequent.171SP28/91, ff. 432, 494, 518, 528 and passim; SP28/92, f. 96 and passim.

Three of Constable’s four tellerships in the Rump occurred during the wrangling in July 1652 over a bill for the sale of forfeited estates, and twice in these debates he represented those in favour of exempting particular delinquents – although one of these was a kinsman of his.172CJ vii. 151b, 153a, 154b. He was perhaps more faithful to his professed dislike of ‘interests and ends not purely holy or public’ in serving as a teller on 22 October in favour of limiting Sir John Hippisley’s* custody of former crown lands in Hampton Court.173CJ vii. 193a; Belvoir, QZ.30, f. 112. Constable himself profited from his membership of the Rump when he secured an Act in May 1650 for restoring his inheritance at Holme, which had been sequestered from Langdale. The Rump justified this legislation with reference to the £1,750 or so that was owed to Constable from the parliamentary grants of April 1645 and March 1647.174CJ vi. 343b, 407a. Shortly before this Act was passed, he purchased the fee farm rent of Holme for £1,047 with what appear to have been forged debentures.175SP28/288, f. 2; SP29/390/14vii, f. 38; Worden, Rump Parl. 94-5. His last appointment in the Rump was to committee set up on 8 April 1653 for receiving the Swedish ambassador.176CJ vii. 276b. However, he and other Rumpers were still signing Army Committee warrants as late as 5 July 1653 – over two months after the Rump’s dissolution.177SP28/94, f. 150.

Constable evidently approved of the Rump’s dissolution, signing letters in May 1653 from the council of officers to army commanders in Scotland and Ireland, explaining the change of government and insisting that the Rump had been incapable of ‘perfecting the work of the Lord’.178The Fifth Monarchy, 21-4; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 112. Although the Gloucestershire Independent churches recommended Constable to the council of officers ‘for his tenderness to God’s people’ during his term as governor of Gloucester (which had ended when the garrison had been disbanded in January), he was not among those selected for the Nominated Parliament.179Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 125. Appointed sheriff of Yorkshire in November 1653, he presided over the elections in the county to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654.180CJ vii. 348a. When a member of Lambert’s interest in the West Riding approached Constable about delaying the elections at Halifax and Leeds as a favour to Adam Baynes*, he refused to do so without a special order from the protectoral council.181Add. 21422, ff. 328, 331.

According to an entry in the parish register of St Mary Bishophill, York, where his wife would be buried in 1656, Constable died at Westminster on 10 June 1655.182St Mary Bishophill Sen., York par. reg. Despite a request in his will that he be buried ‘without ostentation’, he was given an elaborate state funeral on 21 June in which his hearse was attended ‘by the officers of the army, his highness [Cromwell] and gentlemen and many other persons of honour and quality, with horse and foot, from The Strand to Westminster [Abbey]’, where he was interred in the Henry VII chapel.183PROB11/248, f. 316v; Mercurius Politicus no. 263 (21-8 June 1655), 5435; Clarke Pprs. iii. 44. In his will, he referred to an indenture drawn up in 1652 where he had settled his estate at Holme upon trustees. The witnesses to his will included George Smithson.184PROB11/248, f. 316v. At the Restoration, his estate, like those of other regicides, was forfeited to the crown, and his remains were disinterred and thrown into a pit in St Margaret’s churchyard, Westminster.185Ath. Ox. ii. 371-2. Constable died without surviving children and was therefore the last of his line to sit in Parliament.