John Sadler (1615-1674)

John Sadler (of Warmwell) (1615 – 1674) was an English lawyer, academic, Member of Parliament, Hebraist, Neoplatonist [John T. Young, "Faith, Medical Alchemy and Natural Philosophy" (1998), p. 59.] and millennarian thinker, private secretary to Oliver Cromwell, and member of the Parliamentarian Council of State. He was Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge from 1650 to 1660."Concise Dictionary of National Biography".]

In politics

He was nominated for Cambridge for the 1653 Barebones Parliament [ [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=36965 List of members nominated for Parliament of 1653 | British History Online ] ] . In 1659, for the Third Protectorate Parliament, he was MP for Yarmouth, in the Isle of Wight.

Ernestine van der Wall writes [ [https://www.openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/dspace/bitstream/1887/8257/1/3_908_015.pdf PDF] , p. 51.] :

The Hale Commission on law reform, headed from 1652 by Sir Matthew Hale, had Sadler as a leading lawyer, together with William Steele and John Fountain [Mary Cotterell, "Interregnum Law Reform: The Hale Commission of 1652", The English Historical Review, Vol. 83, No. 329 (Oct., 1968), pp. 689-704.] .

He was town clerk of London from 1649d] . He was removed on the Restoration, under the pretext that he had signed the death warrant of Christopher Love [Reginald R. Sharpe, "London and the Kingdom, Volume II", p. 383. [http://www.gutenberg.org/files/20990/20990-h/20990-h.html Gutenberg text] ] .

Political thought

He wrote "The Rights of the Kingdom" (1649), a founding document [ [http://www.mb-soft.com/believe/txn/britisra.htm British Israelitism ] ] of British Israelitism. Tudor Parfitt ["The Lost Tribes of Israel: The History of a Myth" (2002), p. 42.] calls it “one of the first invented expressions of an invented Israelite genealogy for the British”. This was not, however, its overt purpose. Glen Burgess calls it ["The Politics of the Ancient Constitution", p. 98.] “an historical defence of the regicide”. Maurice Vile writes

Hartlib circle

He was a philosemite [ [http://www.olivercromwell.org/jews.pdf PDF] , p. 4.] , on friendly terms with Menasseh ben Israel [van de Wall, p. 53.] , and associate of Samuel Hartlib and John Dury. This interest was not clearly separated from the line taken by Sadler in "The Rights of the Kingdom" ["The year 1649 then shows Durie, Worsley, Sadler, Jessey, Moriaen, Boreel and Menasseh all dealing with the question whether the lost tribes were living in America" [...] . van der Wall, p. 55.] .

Family

He married Jane, daughter of the Dorset MP John Trenchard [ [http://www.weymouth-dorset.co.uk/warmwell.html Weymouth, Dorset History & Heritage - Warmwell Village & Parish inc Warmwell House ] ] . His sister Ann married John Harvard.

Notes