Humphrey Mackworth (27 January 1603 – December 1654) was an English lawyer, judge, and politician of Shropshire landed gentry origins who rose to prominence in the Midlands, the Welsh Marches and Wales during the English Civil War. He was the Parliamentarian military governor of Shrewsbury in the later phases of the war and under The Protectorate. He occupied several important legal and judicial posts in Chester and North Wales, presiding over the major trials that followed the Charles Stuart's invasion in 1651. In the last year of his life, he attained national prominence as a member of Oliver Cromwell's Council and as a Member of the House of Commons for Shropshire in the First Protectorate Parliament.
Humphrey Mackworth was born on 27 January 1603. He was the eldest child and only son of
Richard Mackworth of Betton Strange, Shropshire. The Mackworths were a minor gentry family, settled just to the south of Shrewsbury, but with other property in the county. Their name comes from Mackworth, a village in Derbyshire, where Mackworth Castle was at that time home to the Mackworth baronets, although they later relocated to Rutland. Richard's great-great-grandfather, Thomas Mackworth, founded the Shropshire branch of the family, acquiring Meole Brace, just south of Shrewsbury, through marriage to a cousin of Lord Zouche. One of his younger sons, John Mackworth, made his way up through the commerce and politics of Shrewsbury, buying Betton in 1544.
Dorothy Cranage, daughter of Lawrence Cranage of Keele, near Newcastle-under-Lyme, in the neighbouring county of Staffordshire.
Humphrey Mackworth had two younger sisters: Margaret, who married William Juckes, and Agnes, who married William Crowne, proprietor of Nova Scotia.
Richard Mackworth was buried at St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury on 22 May 1617 and his wife Dorothy secured control of his estates. She then married Adam Ottley of London, son of Richard Ottley of Pitchford Hall, Shropshire, by whom she had another son, and, after his death, she married John Gorton.
All three of the educational institutions attended by Mackworth were noted as centres of Calvinist learning. He studied at Shrewsbury School from January 1614. The school had been founded in the reign of Elizabeth I, providing a distinctly Protestant and humanist education, and numbering among its alumni Philip Sidney, as well as sons of the Protestant gentry, like Robert Corbet (died 1583). Mackworth matriculated at Queens' College, Cambridge at Easter 1619 as a Fellow Commoner, a privileged position requiring considerable wealth. At the time the college was popular among some Shropshire gentry circles because of the presence of the puritan preacher John Preston, who was active throughout Mackworth's period of study, leaving to become Master of Emmanuel College in 1622.
Mackworth was admitted for legal training at Gray's Inn on 24 October 1621 and was called to the bar about a decade later. Throughout his period of study the preacher at Gray's Inn was Richard Sibbes, a close associate of Preston. Both promoted a fairly open and inclusive interpretation of Calvinism, which was nevertheless at odds with royal tastes. However, the Inn proved fertile ground and the chapel had to be enlarged to accommodate the audience for Sibbes's sermons in 1624. Mackworth was to achieve eminence in his profession but was clearly not an academic lawyer or jurisprudent and only figures twice in the Pension Book, the records of the presiding council of his Inn of Court: in both cases, he was promoted to a new level of seniority, but only after achieving great offices in the worlds of law and politics. On 24 November 1645 he was called to be an Ancient, a member of the Grand Company of the Inn. On 10 February 1650 the Pension "ordered that Mr. Humphrey Mackworth deputy Cheife Justice of Chester and Vice-Chamberlayne of Chester bee called to the Bench and read in his course before Mr. Fell."
Legal practice and prelude to civil war
Mackworth came into his estates, aged 21, in 1624. He married for the first time, around the same time, to Anne Waller: a son was baptised on 10 September 1629. His family lived at Betton Strange while he practised as a lawyer, dividing his time between Shropshire and London. From 1626 to 1631 he collected reports on cases in the Court of Common Pleas and the Court of King's Bench. In the 1630s he was a lawyer for the town of Shrewsbury itself. In 1633 he was made an alderman of the town, although the position was unconfirmed as the town was awaiting confirmation of its royal charter. During this period of absolute monarchy, known as Thorough, most of the normal political channels for debate and contest were unavailable and both conformity and dissent were vented through ecclesiastical politics.
Betton Strange was in the parish of St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury, then the largest of the town's parishes. There had been a tradition of learned and radically Protestant preaching at St Chad's for some decades. However, Peter Studley, the incumbent (then termed curate) appointed in 1622, although a local man was of the High Church and Arminian persuasion then becoming increasingly influential at Court. Conflict between himself and the congregation escalated as he steadily imposed his views and practices. An episcopal visitation in 1626 found that some parishioners, particularly in St Julian's parish, which Studley also served, objected to his failure to preach and pointed out that, under the Act of Uniformity 1558, they had to attend his services and were not able to hear the preaching provided in neighbouring churches at the same time. Some had begun to gather on Sunday evenings in private houses to hear sermons read: Studley questioned whether these assemblies counted as conventicles. Seven women, including Katherine Chidley, refused to undergo the churching of women: she was later to write polemics in support of Independency and her son Samuel was to become a leading Leveller. However Mackworth's puritan leanings only slowly brought him notoriety. It was during an autumn 1633 visitation by Robert Wright, the Bishop of Lichfield and a close associate of William Laud, that Studley denounced Mackworth among the heads of twenty families. They refused to bow at the name of Jesus or to kneel at the altar rail – a refusal which meant they were "wilful refusers to communicate for the gestures sake." Studley went on to write a bitter polemic against puritanism: The Looking-Glasse of Schisme, published in London in 1634. This focussed on the sensational murder by a young farmer, Enoch ap-Evans of Clun, of his own mother and brother, which Studley claimed was a symptom of his known puritan beliefs. He pointedly referred to what must have been a solid and growing opposition in his own parish, and at the same time conflated puritanism with opposition to monarchy:
Know, good reader, that this towne of Shrewsbury, the place of my birth and residence is greatly troubled with a sect of men and women, with whom I have had much intercourse of concernment, not by way of intimate familiarity approving their ways, but of vexation and trouble of minde, that I could not, in thirteene yeares painfull ministry among them, reclaime them from their wandring fancies, and reduce them to obedience to Supreme majestie, in the persons of two most illustrious and royal kings.
Richard More, a puritan member of the congregation refuted Studley's allegations in A true relation of the Murders committed in the Parish of Clunne, but could not obtain a licence to publish it until 1641.
In the following year Laud initiated a visitation of all the dioceses in the Province of Canterbury, which was overseen in Staffordshire and Shropshire by Nathaniel Brent. This led to a widespread imposition of "Catholic" features, including altars and images. St Chad's was decorated with religious pictures, illustrating Biblical narratives. Studley, in his moment of triumph, was presented with the opportunity to leave the scene by appointment to a living at Pontesbury. Mackworth was closely involved in the issue of his replacement, as the right of appointment was claimed by the town. The bailiffs duly appointed Richard Poole on 29 March 1637. Close enquiry proved this to be unfounded. There was an old tradition, long since discounted, that St Chad's was a royal chapel, giving the Crown an opportunity to claim it as a royal peculiar. Laud challenged the appointment by a successful quo warranto action, and the living was taken back into royal hands. The issue was then subsumed into the town's renegotiation of its charter, in which Mackworth acted for the corporation. In 1638, a compromise engineered by Sir Richard Newport finally renewed the charter and left Poole in place, expanding the council and giving both the "religious party" of Mackworth and their opponents representation. Mackworth's position as an alderman of Shrewsbury was confirmed. In July of that year he married Mary Venables, his first wife having died in 1636.