Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 33.djvu/62

Rh direct me whose servant I am here; and humbly beg your Majesty's pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what your Majesty is pleased to demand of me’ (, Collections, iv. 478;, Notes of the Long Parliament, p. 139; , History of England, x. 140). The discretion and dignity of the speaker's conduct gave the parliament great satisfaction, and on 9 April 1642, on his petition representing that his ‘strict and long attendance’ had ‘very much hurt him both in body and estate,’ he was voted a grant of 6,000l. (Commons' Journals, ii. 522; Old Parliamentary History, x. 427). When the parliament raised an army Lenthall promised (10 June 1642) to give fifty pounds and to maintain a horse for its service (Notes and Queries, 1st ser. xii. 358). Parliament rewarded his adherence by appointing him master of the rolls, but he was not sworn in till 22 Nov. 1643 (, p. 404;, Great Civil War, i. 85). He was also appointed one of the two commissioners of the great seal, a post which he held from October 1646 to March 1648 (, Lives of the Chancellors, iii. 13–17). Wood estimates the first of these offices as worth 3,000l. a year, the second at 1,500l. Lenthall was also chamberlain of Chester from 1647 to 1654, and obtained in 1647 the chancellorship of the duchy of Lancaster (, iii. 604). On the other hand, as all Lenthall's estates lay in the king's quarters, his losses were very considerable. On 29 Dec. 1644 the royalists seized and garrisoned his house at Besselsleigh, but a party from Abingdon recaptured it two days later, and rendered it henceforth untenable by breaking down the walls and doors (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1644–5, pp. 204–5).

In 1647 the army and parliament quarrelled. On 26 July a mob of presbyterian apprentices surrounded the house, forced their way in, and obliged the speaker to put and the members to pass resolutions repealing their recent votes (Commons' Journals, v. 259;, Memoirs, ed. 1698, p. 206). After this the house adjourned and the speaker left the chair, but was stopped in the lobby by the mob, obliged to reassume his place, and to put a vote for the king's coming to London. Lenthall complains also that the mob did ‘justle, pull, and hale the speaker all the way he went down to his caroch, and force him (to avoid the violence) to betake himself to the next caroch he could get into for refuge.’ He was told that there would be a far greater gathering at the next meeting of the house, and that after they had made it vote what they pleased they would destroy him (A Declaration of Master William Lenthall, Oxford, 1647, 4to). When the house met again on 30 July the speaker was missing, and Henry Pelham, member for Grantham, was elected in his place (Commons' Journals, v. 259). Lenthall, who had left London on 29 July, betook himself first to Windsor, and thence to the headquarters of Sir Thomas Fairfax. According to Ludlow it was chiefly by the persuasion of Sir Arthur Hesilrige that he took this momentous decision; according to Holles it was contrived by Oliver St. John. The presbyterians asserted that the speaker had solemnly denied any intention of flight, and protested that he would rather die in the house and chair than desert them for fear of any tumults. They said that what finally decided him was the threats of Cromwell and Ireton to prosecute him for embezzlement of public money (, i. 207;, Memoirs, § 144; The Case of the Impeached Lords, &c., truly stated, 1648, p. 8, 4to; , History of Independency, i. 41, ed. 1661). In his declaration Lenthall speaks solely of the fear of further mob violence; in his deathbed confession he explained that he had been deceived by Cromwell and Ireton, that he knew the presbyterians would never restore the king to his just rights, and that those men swore they would (Old Parliamentary History, xvi. 196, xxiii. 372; cf. Clarke Papers, i. 219).

Lenthall was present at the great review of the army on Hounslow Heath on 3 Aug., and signed the engagement taken the next day by those members of the two houses who had joined Fairfax (, vi. 750–5). On 6 Aug. he took his place once more in the chair, and on the 20th an ordinance was passed annulling all votes during his absence (Commons' Journals, v. 268, 280). During the revolutions of 1648 Lenthall continued to side with the army and the independents. The royalists accused him of trying to retard the progress of the Newport treaty by feigning illness, in order to persuade the commons to adjourn for a week (Old Parliamentary History, xvii. 66; Mercurius Pragmaticus, 17–24 Oct. 1648). He made no protest against Pride's Purge, and, after the army came to London, held several conferences with Whitelocke and Cromwell, which were probably connected with the last overtures made by the army leaders to the king (, Great Civil War, iii. 553). Lenthall occupied the chair during the progress of the ordinance for bringing the king to trial, but there can be little doubt that he performed his part with reluctance. ‘Even then,’ he says in his confession, ‘I hoped the very putting the question would have cleared him, because I believed there