Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/55

 during the campaign of 1644, and was employed to deliver the king's offer of pardon to Waller's army after the battle of Cropredy Bridge, and to the army of the Earl of Essex before its defeat in Cornwall (Discourses, pp. 34, 63; Hist. MSS. Comm. 15th Rep. ii. 99–106). Walker was with the king at Naseby and through his wanderings after that battle, and at Oxford during the siege and surrender (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1645–7, p. 147;, Life of Sir W. Dugdale, p. 90). In 1644 Walker was created Norroy king-of-arms, though the patent did not pass the signet till April 1644, nor the great seal till 24 June (ib. p. 21;, p. 239; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1644, p. 140). When Sir Henry St. George [q. v.] died, Walker was appointed to succeed him as Garter king-of-arms (24 Feb. 1645), and was sworn into the chapter of the order on 2 March 1645 (ib. 1644–5, p. 328;, p. 235; , p. 78). The king knighted him on 2 Feb. 1645.

After the fall of Oxford Walker went to France, returning to England in the autumn of 1648, by permission of parliament (2 Sept.), to act as the king's chief secretary in the negotiations at Newport. In 1649 he was at The Hague with Charles II, by whom in February 1649 he was appointed clerk of the council in ordinary, and in September made receiver of the king's moneys (Hist. MSS. Comm. 15th Rep. ii. 112). In June 1650 he accompanied Charles II to Scotland, but immediately after landing his name was included in the list of English royalists whom the Scottish parliament ordered to be banished from the country. Money was ordered for Walker's transportation, but as he got none he lingered on, and his stay was connived at. On 4 Oct. 1650 he was ordered to leave the court at once, and embarked for Holland at the end of the month (Discourses, p. 205; Cal. Clarendon Papers, ii. 69;, Works, iv. 83).

During the early part of this exile Walker was engaged in a constant struggle for the maintenance of his rights and privileges as Garter. Disputes arose over the method of admitting persons to the order of the Garter (as, for instance, in 1650 over the investiture of the Marquis of Ormonde), in consequence of which Walker obtained a royal declaration (28 May 1650) affirming that it was his right always to be sent with the insignia on the election of foreign princes and others. Accordingly on 4 May 1653 Walker was employed to deliver the garter to the future William III, then only two years and a half old, and in 1654 he journeyed to Berlin to invest the great elector (23 March 1654). Speeches at the investiture of the Duke of Gloucester and the Prince of Tarentum, with letters to many other knights, are among his papers (, Original Letters, ii. 369; Cal. Clarendon Papers, ii. 175, 200, 207, 339; Ashmolean MS. 1112).

Walker received none of the annual fees due to him from the knights of the Garter, and it is evident that his office brought him very little profit. His constant grumbling about this and about the invasion of his rights gave great annoyance to Hyde and Nicholas, both of whom held the meanest opinion of his character and capacity. ‘Sir Edward Walker,’ wrote Nicholas in 1653, ‘is a very importunate, ambitious, and foolish man, that studies nothing but his own ends, and every day hath a project for his particular good; and if you do him one kindness and fail him in another, you will lose him as much or more than if you had never done anything for him’ (Nicholas Papers, ii. 11). Hyde replied that Walker was a correspondent not to be endured, always writing impertinent letters either of expostulation or request. ‘Why should you wonder,’ he observes, ‘that a herald, who is naturally made up of embroidery, should adorn all his own services and make them as important as he can? I would you saw some letters he hath heretofore writ to me in discontent, by which a stranger would guess he had merited as much as any general could do, and was not enough rewarded’ (Cal. Clarendon Papers, ii. 222, 346).

In November 1655 Walker joined Charles II at Cologne, and became once more secretary of the council (Nicholas Papers, iii. 116, 138). In the autumn of 1656 Charles got together a small army in the Netherlands, and Walker was again charged with the functions of secretary-at-war, a business which the want of money to pay the soldiers made particularly troublesome (Cal. Clarendon Papers, iii. 186, 208, 226). His salary for the office consisted of four rations a day out of the pay allowed for reformados (Hist. MSS. Comm. 15th Rep. ii. 109).

At the Restoration Walker was made one of the clerks of the council, with John Nicholas and Sir George Lane as his colleagues. His remuneration, at first 50l. per annum, was raised in 1665 to 250l. (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1660–1 p. 139, 1664–5, p. 318). The Long parliament had made Edward Bysshe [q. v.] Garter king-of-arms (20 Oct. 1646), who was now obliged to quit that office in favour of Walker; but Walker could not prevent his being made Clarenceux (Addit. MS. 22883;, Athenæ, iii. 1218). Walker had the arrangement of the ceremonies of the coronation of Charles II, and