GREY, William (c. 1593-1674) | History of Parliament

GREY, William (c. 1593–1674)

cr. 11 Feb. 1624 Bar. GREY of Warke

First sat 25 Feb. 1624; first sat after 1660, 25 Apr. 1660; last sat 24 Feb. 1674

MP, Northumb. 1621

b. c. Aug. 1593, 1st s. of Sir Ralph Grey^‡ of Chillingham, Northumb., and 1st w. Jane, da. of William Ardington of Ardington, Berks; half-bro. of Edward Grey^‡. educ. Univ. Coll., Oxf., B.A. 11 Nov. 1611; G. Inn 1613; travelled abroad 1614-17?. m. 16 June 1619, Cecilia (bur. 1 Feb. 1668), da. of Sir John Wentworth, of Gosfield, Essex, 9s. (8 d.v.p.), 8da. (7 d.v.p.).1 cr. bt 15 June 1619. suc. fa. 7 Sept. 1623. d. 29 July 1674; will 4 Jan. 1669-23 May 1674, pr. 11 Aug. 1674.2

Jt. kpr. seal of duchy of Lancaster 1644-8; commr., excise 1645, excommunication 1646, sale of bishops’ lands 1646, cttee. for compounding 1647, appeals, Oxford Univ. visitation 1647, indemnity 1647, Navy and Customs 1647, Great Seal 1648, scandalous offences 1648, removing obstructions in sales of bishops’ lands 1648.3

Speaker, House of Lords, 13 Sept.-24 Nov. 1642, 24 Aug. 1643-26 Jan. 1646.

J.p., Northumb. 1628-at least 1640, by 1650-at least 1666, Essex by 1644-53, by 1656-at least 1670,4 Mdx. by 1650-53, 1660-at least 1666, ld.-lt. Cumb. 1642-?46; commr., court martial, London and Westminster 1644, Northern Assoc. 1645, militia, northern counties 1648, Essex Mar. 1660, assessment, Essex 1657;5 elder of classis, Epping, Essex 1648.6

Maj.-gen., Eastern Association, 20 Dec. 1642-10 Aug. 1643.7

Associated with: Chillingham, Northumb.; Epping Place, Essex; Gosfield Hall, Essex; Charterhouse Yard, Mdx.8

William Grey, Baron Grey of Warke, came from a long-established Northumbrian family which had distinguished itself militarily and from the mid-sixteenth century was becoming increasingly important as the influence of the Percys, earls of Northumberland, waned. William Grey’s father, Sir Ralph Grey, inherited substantial estates in Northumberland, first Horton from his maternal grandfather Sir Thomas Grey^‡ in 1570 and then Chillingham and surrounding estates from his childless elder brother, also Sir Thomas Grey^‡, in 1590, which together may well have made Sir Ralph Northumberland’s wealthiest resident. William Grey was thus born into a wealthy and powerful family, as evidenced by the godfathers chosen for him, William Cecil^†, Baron Burghley, and Henry Carey^†, Baron Hunsdon. On 15 June 1619 he was created a baronet, and the following day he entered into an advantageous marriage to Cecilia Wentworth, daughter of the impecunious Sir John Wentworth of Gosfield, which brought him within the circles of landed society in Essex. He began his long parliamentary career in January 1621, sitting in the Commons as senior Member for Northumberland. Two years later he inherited his patrimony, with almost 250,000 acres of land in Northumberland, on his father’s death on 7 Sept. 1623. Grey was returned for Northumberland again on 12 Feb. 1624 for the following Parliament, but unbeknownst to his electors and perhaps even to himself, the previous day he had been created a baron by patent, Baron Grey of Warke. His election as a Member of the Commons having immediately become moot, the new Baron Grey of Warke first sat in the House of Lords on 25 Feb. 1624.

By the mid-1630s Grey was a major landowner in Essex as well, and from that time garnered the commissions and offices associated with his new position, which are set out in more detail in his biography in the volumes on the Commons 1604-29. His wife Cecilia Wentworth was a grand-daughter of Elizabeth Heneage, suo jure countess of Winchilsea from 1629 and Sir Moyle Finch^†, bt, who owned the manor of Epping in Essex. Grey had been a trustee of the manor for several years after Sir Moyle’s death before he was able to buy it outright from his uncle by marriage (two times over) Thomas Finch^†, 2nd earl of Winchilsea, in July 1636 for £21,500. Through this family connection with the Finches, earls of Winchilsea, Grey was also able to acquire a large London townhouse among their property on the east side of Charterhouse Yard, which he occupied from at least 1643 and which served as his base in the capital during those important years. Furthermore his wife inherited part of the Gosfield property in Essex at the death of her improvident father Sir John Wentworth in 1631 and from 1653 Grey of Warke’s money also acquired the rest of his late father-in-law’s estate, including the grand Gosfield Hall, although the lands were actually formally purchased in the name of his eldest son and heir presumptive Thomas Grey^‡, an arrangement which was to cause many problems in later years.

Grey sided firmly with Parliament during the Civil War and was one of the small number of peers who remained in the House of Lords in Westminster throughout the 1640s. He was a prominent member of the group intent on prosecuting the war and establishing an erastian presbyterian church settlement. He served as Speaker of the wartime House from 13 Sept. to 24 Nov. 1642. He stepped down from this role when he was appointed major-general of the Eastern Association on 20 Dec. 1642, but was largely ineffective in this role and was replaced on 10 Aug. 1643 by Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester. His dismissal may also have come about through his refusal to travel to Scotland as part of the parliamentary commission of late July 1643 assigned to arrange the military alliance with the Scots, and he was briefly imprisoned in the Tower for his disobedience. On 24 Aug. 1643, no longer in the field as leader of the Eastern Association, he was again made Speaker of the House of Lords, and remained in that position for close to three years, before having to cede this office as well to Manchester, who replaced him on 26 Jan. 1646, after he too had been relieved of his military command.9 From the time of the defeat of the king Grey voted consistently with the group centred around Algernon Percy, 4th earl of Northumberland, William Fiennes, Viscount Saye and Sele, Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, and Edward Howard, Baron Howard of Escrick in measures supporting the New Model Army and against the Scots and the king. Although he supported a Presbyterian church settlement, Grey of Warke opposed the clericalist aspirations of the Scottish commissioners, voting consistently for lay, and ultimately parliamentary, control of the church. When in 1647 Essex was provisionally created a Presbyterian ‘province’, divided into fourteen classes, Grey of Warke was named as one of the potential elders for the classis of Epping.10 On 26 Dec. 1646 Parliament resolved to pay him £5,000 for his military service and his other losses in the parliamentary cause and in early February 1647 the Committee for Compounding decided that this amount would be paid out of the fine levied on the royalist Robert Sutton, Baron Lexinton, and the income from Lexinton’s sequestered estates. It was not until Mar. 1649 that Lexinton had fully paid this fine and was formally acquitted by Grey of Warke and the Committee. 11 On 15 Mar. 1648 he was appointed a commissioner of the Great Seal, and in January 1649 he was named to the commission for the king’s trial, although it is doubtful if he took part – he was never accused of complicity in the king’s death thereafter. He last sat in the House on 1 Feb. and a week later he resigned as commissioner of the Great Seal. After the abolition of the House of Lords on 19 Mar. 1649 he was nominated to be a member of the Council of State, but he did not take up the appointment, unwilling, he claimed, to serve only one house of parliament, and he largely retired from public life during the Interregnum.12

As predicted by both his old presbyterian colleague Wharton and the royalist John Mordaunt, Viscount Mordaunt, Grey of Warke was one of a small band of ten old parliamentarians who took their seats on the first day of the Convention on 25 Apr. 1660 to push through some of the measures they had espoused in the 1640s.13 In the first weeks of the Convention he was closely involved in business concerned with the re-establishment of the House of Lords and Restoration of the king. On the first day of sitting he was assigned to help draft an order for Henry Scobell to restore the House’s records which he had kept in his custody and he also accompanied a delegation of the lords to thank George Monck, later duke of Albemarle, for his actions in preserving the country. The following day he was ordered to draw up an ordinance to make Monck captain-general. On 27 Apr. he was placed on the committee to frame an ordinance to constitute a committee of safety comprised of members of both houses and was also named to the drafting committee to devise heads for a conference concerning ways ‘to make up the breaches and distractions of this kingdom’. In the first weeks of May he was nominated to committees entrusted with drawing up a letter of thanks to Charles II for the Declaration of Breda (1 May), re-establishing the county militias (2 May and re-committed on 9 May), investigating the whereabouts of the late king’s jewels (9 May), determining which ordinances passed since 1649 should be retained (15 May), and drafting an ordinance to levy an assessment of £70,000 p.m. for the returning king (21 May). He was named to 14 committees of the Convention between 25 Apr. and 30 May 1660 and was active in the House’s proceedings throughout all that time, only missing three sittings during that period.

On 1 June effective control of the House passed from Grey of Warke’s old colleague Manchester to the returning lord chancellor Sir Edward Hyde, later earl of Clarendon, who replaced Manchester as Speaker of the House. With the arrival of the king and many old royalists, Grey of Warke’s activity in the House, as least as indicated by his nominations to committees, noticeably decreased; from 1 June for the remainder of the Convention he was only appointed to 12, although he continued to be a regular attender and overall came to 85 per cent of its sitting days. Nevertheless his committees included some important legislation of this period, such as the bills to confirm the judicial proceedings of the Interregnum (19 July 1660), to encourage shipping and navigation (6 Sept.), to disband the New Model Army (7 Sept.), and to confirm ministers in their parishes (8 Sept.). On 13 Dec. 1660 he also subscribed to the dissent against the decision to vacate the fines of Sir Edward Powell, an attempt to reverse a judicial decision concerning property handed down during the Protectorate.

On 4 June 1660 Grey of Warke asked for and duly received the king’s pardon.14 Nevertheless, with his past at the forefront of the Independents in Parliament during the Civil War, Grey could not expect, and did not receive, any major offices or commissions from the crown after the Restoration. However he remained involved in local administration and continued to be placed on commissions of the peace for Middlesex, Essex and Northumberland. Similarly in the House, where he was named to 76 committees in the Cavalier Parliament until his death on 29 July 1674, he was often assigned to consider legislation affecting his territorial bases in London and Middlesex, Essex and Northumberland. In the 1661-2 session of the Cavalier Parliament, of which he attended 81 per cent of the sittings, he was placed on committees considering legislation for repairing and cleaning the streets of Westminster on both 25 May and 28 June 1661. On 1 July he was named to the committee to consider the petitions calling for the re-establishment of the Council of the North and court of York. He may also have had a hand in framing the Corporation Act, to whose committee he was named on 18 July 1661; this would have had an effect on the borough of Berwick-upon-Tweed, close to his northern base of Chillingham Castle. Grey of Warke was opposed to a renewed court of York and on 15 Feb. 1662 was part of a delegation to the lord chancellor, the earl of Clarendon, led by Northumberland, and containing Wharton, Richard Boyle, Baron Clifford of Lanesborough (later earl of Burlington), Marmaduke Langdale, 2nd Baron Langdale, George Eure, 6th Baron Eure and other northern peers and gentry. They made clear their belief that a revived Council of the North, especially one presided over by George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, was ‘not for the service of the king or good of the country’15 Concerning the borough of Berwick-upon-Tweed, on 20 Feb. 1662 he was placed on the committee considering a bill to establish a corporation for the relief and employment of the poor there, as well as similar establishments in London and Westminster. On 26 Apr. 1662, he was also assigned to help consider the bill for the prevention of theft and rapine on the Anglo-Scottish border. In the session of spring and summer 1663, where he had an attendance of 70 per cent, he became involved in matters of transport between these two widely-dispersed areas of his interest. He was on 14 Mar. 1663 placed on the committee to consider the legislation concerning highways passed in the previous session and to report its defects and, perhaps in consequence of this committee, was further placed, on 12 May 1663, on the committee for the bill to repair highways in Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, all close to his principal county of Essex. Reflecting Grey of Warke’s continuing, though perhaps waning, interest in the far north-east, in December 1664 Grey’s heir Thomas, by then a well-placed merchant and a confidant of Samuel Pepys^‡, assumed, incorrectly as it transpired, that his father’s interest would win him a seat in a by-election held on 10 Jan. 1665 in Berwick-upon-Tweed.16 Grey of Warke’s northern experience was still called upon in 1666-7 as on 17 Dec. 1666 he was placed on the committee for the bill to improve the lead mines in co. Durham granted to Humphrey Wharton^‡ and early in the following session, he was, on 16 Nov. 1667, nominated to the committee for the bill to enable John Cosin, bishop of Durham, to make leases of his lead mines in that county.

Grey of Warke maintained a high attendance in the early sessions of the Cavalier Parliament, except for the sessions of October 1665 in Oxford and of winter 1669, none of whose sittings he attended. He came to 86 per cent of the sittings in spring 1664; 81 per cent in 1664-5; 76 per cent in 1666-7; 73 per cent in 1667-9; 75 per cent in 1670-71; 83 per cent in early 1673; 75 per cent in the four-day session of autumn 1673; but only 42 per cent in early 1674, the last session he was able to attend before his death that summer. Throughout these sessions continued to be nominated to committees. It is difficult to distinguish a particular political stance from what extremely limited evidence there is of his activity and voting in the House, although some of his conduct might demonstrate continued loyalty to his parliamentarian and presbyterian past. On 11 July 1661 Grey of Warke was recorded as voting against the claim of the former royalist Aubrey de Vere, 20th earl of Oxford, to the office of lord great chamberlain. A Captain Gilbert Swinhoe, perhaps the playwright of that name and of a royalist family, may have intended to show his contempt for the former parliamentarian peer by insisting on quartering his soldiers on Grey of Warke’s Northumberland estates in January 1661, but the House strongly resented this breach of privilege of peerage and, upon consideration of the matter on 7 Dec. 1661, would have levied ‘exemplary’ punishment on the contumacious Swinhoe if Grey of Warke himself had not pleaded for clemency. On 6 Feb. 1662 Grey signed the protest in the manuscript journal against the passage of the bill restoring to Charles Stanley, 8th earl of Derby, the lands he had conveyed by legal instruments during the interregnum. This protest was signed by a large number of both former royalists, such as Clarendon, and former parliamentarians, such as Manchester, as both groups saw it as a breach of the recently-passed Act for the Confirmation of Judicial Proceedings and of the Act of Indemnity. Interestingly, although Grey of Warke’s name is clearly written in the page of the protest in the manuscript journal, he is not listed in any of the contemporary manuscript lists of the opponents and protesters against this bill.17 Grey’s Presbyterian loyalties seem to have been qualified or conditional upon circumstance: when in July 1663 Grey’s old colleague Wharton drew up his list of those who were likely to support George Digby 2nd earl of Bristol, in his attempt to impeach Clarendon, he tentatively and uncertainly placed Grey among those against the impeachment, while most of Grey’s former presbyterian allies—including Saye and Sele and Wharton himself—were listed as opponents to the lord chancellor and to the intolerant church settlement which they associated with him.

Grey was deemed significant enough to be named initially to the court of the lord high steward as a member of the jury in the trial for murder of Thomas Parker, 15th Baron Morley, held outside time of Parliament, on 30 Apr. 1666. However Grey of Warke was the only peer so summoned who did not appear on the day ‘and therefore was not any more called during the trial’.18

Grey of Warke’s family became closely connected with that of his former colleague in the Civil War House of Lords, Dudley North, 3rd Baron North, through the person of North’s grandson, Charles North, later 5th Baron North and Baron Grey of Rolleston. On 3 Apr. 1667 was agreed a settlement for the marriage of Charles North to Katherine, Grey of Warke’s only surviving daughter, and already the recipient of about £1,200 p.a. in dower lands from lands in Staffordshire that were part of her marriage settlement with her late first husband Sir Edward Mosley^‡, 2nd bt. Ten days after the articles of marriage were signed, Charles North wrote to his father, Dudley North, 4th Baron North (as he had recently become on 6 Jan. 1667), to inform him that he and his bride had already proceeded with the marriage ceremony, without either set of parents being informed.19 He became closely connected with the Grey family, living with his wife’s father and brothers at their London residence in Charterhouse Yard. The ageing Grey of Warke was clearly fond of his son-in-law and found him ‘so good company that were it not his nearness to me would deserve his living here … I suppose we shall not be weary of one another’s company’, as he wrote to North. Charles North was not as well greeted by his other in-laws, Katherine’s siblings, who appear to have been resentful of the favoured intruder whom they perceived as a ‘pensioner’ living on his wife’s fortunes.20 From this base in the capital, Charles North was able to inform his father of court and political gossip in a series of newsletters.21

Following the marriage of Charles North and Katherine Grey, North and Grey of Warke frequently exchanged proxies. It was usually the 4th Baron North who entrusted his vote with his new kinsman. On 27 Nov. 1667 North first assigned his proxy to Grey of Warke, who held it until the prorogation of that session on 1 Mar. 1669. In his turn Grey of Warke relied on his son-in-law Charles to ensure that his proxy with North was registered on 16 Oct. 1669, just before the short session of autumn 1669, one of the few sessions from which Grey was entirely absent, probably as he was suffering from ‘a little defluxion of rheum in his head’.22 North himself did not attend this session until 6 Nov. and it was prorogued on 11 December. North again placed his proxy with Grey on 21 Oct. 1670, where it remained until 22 Apr. 1671. North stopped attending the House entirely after 27 Mar. 1673, but registered his proxy with Grey on 5 Jan. 1674, two days before the start of the 1674 session.

Grey of Warke’s favour towards his son-in-law Charles North led to North being created Baron Grey of Rolleston by writ of summons on 24 Oct. 1673. Grey of Warke formally introduced his son-in-law to the House three days later. Grey of Warke’s heir apparent, Thomas Grey, had died on 16 Feb. 1672 and the old man appears to have been devastated by this loss, even though he had another son, Ralph Grey, later 2nd Baron Grey of Warke, to inherit the title and estate.23 According to later accounts Grey held a deep affection for his daughter, and may have seen her, and by extension her husband, as his preferred heir rather than Ralph.24 Charles North’s title did not celebrate his own family name or estates, but those of his wife, whose principal estate given to her in her jointure lay in Rolleston in Staffordshire. The title was, in effect, an indirect ennoblement of the old baron’s daughter and perhaps indicates the continuing influence of the former parliamentarian lord at court even as late as the early 1670s.

Grey of Warke died on 29 July 1674, at the age of eighty-one. His own will, written on 4 Jan. 1669, demonstrates an intense personal religiosity: it is not so much a list of bequests as a long and pious meditation on human sinfulness and reliance on God’s unmerited grace, written in the fervent and emotional language of a tortured puritan. Subsequent codicils of 2 Mar. 1672 and of 23 May 1674 distributed annuities to his closest servants and donated £10 each to the parishes closest associated with him and gave £100 to the poor orphans of London. It also constituted his only surviving son Ralph Grey, now 2nd Baron Grey of Warke as his principal legatee and executor.25

In his own piously morose will, first written on 11 Jan. 1655, Grey’s eldest son Thomas had constituted his father sole executor and bequeathed to him the Gosfield property in Essex, including Gosfield Hall.26 After Thomas’s death, Grey, in a settlement of July 1672, had vested the Gosfield property in trustees to provide for maintenance of his children and grandchildren, while he entailed the Epping estate on his heirs. The dispositions made by both Thomas and his father led to many long years of conflict and suits within the family, particularly after the early death on 15 June 1675 of the 2nd Baron. At dispute was whether Thomas Grey had bought the property for himself with money supplied by his father as a gift, or whether his father had intended Thomas to purchase the property in trust for himself. When the 2nd Baron began to charge the estate with debts and legacies to his younger children, and then settled it on different trustees in his will, his brother-in-law Grey of Rolleston initiated an action in Chancery, to protect what he saw as his wife Katherine’s interests. He alleged, in a complicated case that included conflicting testimonies about locked strong-boxes and the manner in which the old baron habitually signed his name, that the second baron had destroyed the first baron’s original will and had forged a new one to deprive his sister Katherine of the Gosfield estates promised by her father. By 1680 Grey of Rolleston, now the 5th Baron North, was still accusing the 2nd Baron’s widow and son Ford Grey, 3rd Baron Grey of Warke (later earl of Tankerville), of trying to defraud his wife of the lands due to her by her father’s intended settlement.27

C.G.D.L.

1 Bodl. North c.4, ff. 283-4, Grey of Warke's own reckoning; but see Northumb. Co. Hist. Cttee, Hist. of Northumb. xiv (1935), 328-9; both agree on number of surviving children.
2 TNA, PROB 11/345.
3 A. and O. i. 691, 853, 905, 914, 927, 937, 1047, 1106-7, 1208, 1227.
4 HMC 10th Rep. IV, 506-10; Essex RO, T/A 418/143/33, T/A 418/159/41, T/A 418/171/111; Essex Quarter Sess. Order Book 1652-61 (Essex Edited Texts I), xxvi.
5 A and O. i. 1141; ii. 1068, 1431.
6 Division of Co. of Essex into Several Classes (1648), 11.
7 A. and O. i. 52, 242-4.
8 Essex Arch. Trans. n.s. iii. 213-17, n.s. xxv. 329-33; VCH Essex, v. 119; LCC Survey of London, xlvi. 250.
9 A. and O. i. 52, 242-4; CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 408, 447, 475; CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 226-7, 253, 261, 252, 278, 307.
10 J.S.A. Adamson, ‘The Peerage in Politics, 1645-9’ (Camb. Univ. Ph.D., 1986), Appendices A and B; Division of the Co. of Essex into several classes (1647); VCH Essex, iii. 61.
11 CCC, pp. 1336-7; HMC 7th Rep. 98.
12 A. and O. i. 1106-7, ii. 24; CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 6, 9.
13 Bodl. Carte 81, f. 63; Bodl. Clarendon 71, ff. 305-6.
14 CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 37.
15 Chatsworth, Cork mss, Burlington diary, 15 Feb. 1662.
16 HP Commons, 1660-90, i. 344-5; Pepys Diary, v. 300, 315, 348.
17 PA, HL/PO/JO/1/49, pp. 532-3; Add. 33589, f. 220; Bodl. Tanner 49, f. 138; Bodl. Carte 77. f. 520; Lancs. RO, DDK/1615/9.
18 HEHL, EL 8398; Stowe 396, f. 178-80.
19 Bodl. North b.26, ff. 133, 141-2; c.4, ff. 137, 146; Mar. Lic. Vicar-Gen. (Harl. Soc. xxiii), 132.
20 Bodl. North c.4, f. 243.
21 Bodl. North adds.c.11, ff. 30; c.4, ff. 164, 207, 243, 260.
22 Bodl. North adds.c.11, ff. 36.
23 Bodl. North c.4, f. 283.
24 Bodl. North adds.c.11, f. 30; TNA, DEL 1/155.
25 TNA, PROB 11/345.
26 TNA, PROB 11/338.
27 North, Lives, iii. 249-51; C. Price, Cold Caleb (1956), 27; TNA, PROB 11/348; C 6/62/53, 54; C 22/788/54; C 6/35/100; A. Elliot, A Modest Vindication of Titus Oates (1682), 21-3, 44-5.