Sir William Strickland, 1st Baronet

Sir William Strickland, 1st Baronet (c. 1596 – 12 July 1673) was an English Member of Parliament who supported the parliamentary cause during the English Civil War.

Sir William Strickland was the eldest son of Walter Strickland of Boynton, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, inheriting his estate on his death in 1636. He was educated at Queens’ College, Cambridge and Gray’s Inn [A. Gooder (ed.) “The Parliamentary Representation of Yorkshire, 1258-1832” (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Series, 1935)] , though he seems not to have qualified as a barrister. He was knighted in 1630 [Lord Hawkesbury, “Some East Riding Families” (Transactions of the East Riding Antiquarian Society, 1899)] , and in 1640 was elected to Parliament as member for Hedon [G R Park, “The Parliamentary Representation of Yorkshire” (1886)] . Initially he seems to have been a friend and supporter of the Earl of Strafford [C.V. Wedgwood, “Thomas Wentworth, First Earl of Strafford, 1593–1641: A Revaluation” (1961)] , to whom he was distantly related (Strickland’s mother was a Wentworth), although he is not one of the MPs who was listed as voting against Strafford’s attainder. Strickland was a strict Puritan, and after Strafford’s death he moved firmly towards the Parliamentary cause, although the king created him a baronet on 29 July , 1641, perhaps hoping to sway him towards support for the Crown.

Strickland sat for Hedon throughout the Long Parliament, taking a hard line in support of the Commonwealth and later of Cromwell. (An opposition pamphleteer described him as “for settling the Protector anew in all those things for which the king was cut off” [Harleian Miscellany, iii, 486, quoted in the Dictionary of National Biography)] .) He also spoke frequently in favour of the punishment of James Naylor. After the expulsion of the Rump, he sat in the Protectorate Parliaments of 1654 and 1656 as one of the four members for the East Riding [A. Gooder (ed.) “The Parliamentary Representation of Yorkshire, 1258-1832” (Yorkshire Archaeological Society, Record Series, 1935)] , and was subsequently summoned to Cromwell’s House of Peers as Lord Strickland. (His younger brother, Walter Strickland, was also a member, and held a number of other senior offices during the Commonwealth.)Strickland sat in the restored Long Parliament, but apparently took no part in its proceedings and (unlike his brother) seems to have retired entirely from public affairs after the Restoration, though he was not molested by the authorities.

From 1642 to 1646, Strickland was Custos Rotulorum of the East Riding of Yorkshire.

He was married twice – on 18 June, 1622 to Margaret, daughter of Sir Richard Cholmley of Whitby; and, after his first wife’s death in 1629 to Frances Finch, daughter of the Earl of Winchilsea. He had four daughters by his first marriage, and one son, Thomas, by his second, who succeeded him in the baronetcy.

References

ources

*"Dictionary of National Biography"
*J Foster, "Pedigrees of the County Families of Yorkshire" (1874)
*"Victoria County History of the East Riding of Yorkshire"
*"Who’s Who In Yorkshire" (1912)