Major Sanderson's War E-Book

P R Hill

• Herausgeber: Spellmount
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 268

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

In 1919 the diary of a parliamentary cavalry officer, written on an interleaved copy of William Lilly's Merlini Anglici Ephemeris, was exhibited at the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne. It was discovered to be that of Major John Sanderson for the year 1648, an officer in Colonel Robert Lilburne's regiment of horse. This was an extremely rare find, as while Civil War memoirs were common, daily accounts were not. Spanning from 11th January to 30th December, Sanderson's diary contained 270 entries that not only recalled well-known events, but also depicted the minutiae of patrol and skirmish. Major Sanderson's War is not merely a transcript of the diary, but an analysis of the role of cavalry and the northern campaign of the Second Civil War. No other book will provide the enthusiast with such a unique glimpse into the life of one of Cromwell's officers.

Leseprobe

Major Sanderson’s War

Fig. 1: Map 1. Overview map of the second Civil War

First published 2008 by Spellmount an imprint of The History Press The Mill, Brimscombe Port Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QGwww.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2016

All rights reserved © P.R. Hill and J.M. Watkinson, 2008

The rights of P.R. Hill and J.M. Watkinson to be identified as the Authors of this work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 8010 4

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Contents

Part I

Chapter One Introduction

Chapter Two The Sanderson Family

Chapter Three Background to the Diary

Part II

Chapter Four His Early Career

Chapter Five Capheaton to Appletreewick: The Diary Year

Chapter Six His Later Career and his End

Part III

Chapter Seven John Sanderson and the Diary

Appendix 1 Julian Style Calender For 1648

Appendix 2 The Diary Volume and Almanacs

Appendix 3 Transcript of Major Sanderson’s Diary

Appendix 3a Sanderson’s Accounts

Appendix 3b Sanderson’s Claim for Expenses

Appendix 4 Letters and Other Documents Written by Major Sanderson

Appendix 5 Seventeenth Century Roads and Maps

Appendix 6 Horses

Appendix 7 Brief Biographies

Appendix 7a The Problem of Major Cholmley

Bibliography

End Notes

PART I

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

In 1919 the manuscript diary of a parliamentary officer, written on an interleaved copy of William Lilly’s Merlini Anglici Ephemeris 1648, was exhibited by Mrs Wynne-Jones at the January meeting of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne. A transcript was produced the following month, and published in the Society’s Proceedings in 1921.1 The diary starts on 11th January and finishes on 30th December. Reference to other accounts of events mentioned show that the year covered is indeed 1648, the period of the Second Civil War.

Nowhere is the name of the diary’s author given but, from the nine references to Hedleyhope, the editor of PSAN was able to deduce that he was one of the Sandersons of that place, an estate some eight miles west of Durham City bought by the Sandersons in or before 1623 (map 1 (1) and plate 2). The identification is backed by other sources which describe the movements of Major John Sanderson in 1648 and confirm details given in the diary. His Will (Appendix 4) places him firmly in the Hedleyhope family.

Much has been written on the better-known campaigns of the English Civil War. Many commanders have left both contemporary and later letters and accounts but fewer of the junior officers have done so. Diaries written by participants in the Civil War in the true sense of a more or less daily account, are very rare. Memoirs are more common, but were usually written after the passage of some years, and tended to concentrate on what hindsight saw as important.

In many ways the most significant account is this diary for 1648 of Major John Sanderson, who was an officer in Colonel Robert Lilburne’s regiment of horse, originally part of the Northern Association of the parliamentary army. Of major importance is the sheer number of entries, all made within a few days at most of the events recorded, and the way in which they can be collated with other accounts to give a narrative thread. It is at times concerned with well-known events, but is also a remarkably detailed record of the endless day-to-day minutiae of patrol and skirmish. There is no other published source which allows the day-by-day reconstruction of a year in the Civil War.

Of other accounts which have been published, Captain Hodgson’s Memoir is not a diary and only occasionally mentions dates. It was probably not written until the 1660s,2 although the details may have been taken from a contemporary diary. He is telling a story, and concentrates very much on Happenings rather than the mundane everyday events. Atkyns Vindication is a document full of points of interest, but was written 25 years after he had served in the army. Gwyn is somewhat similar but is even less reliable as he wrote when advanced in years, some 35 years after the Civil War.3

Prince Rupert’s Journal4 is a simple record of where the prince went with very little detail given. For example, “23. Sunday, the Battle of Edgehill. The armyes all night in the feild” does not add anything to the history of the campaign. Its value, not inconsiderable in itself, lies largely in the detail of distances marched by an army.

The closest parallel to Sanderson’s Diary is that of Captain Birch, a parliamentary infantry officer. This is a genuine diary, which runs from 16th May 1648 to March 1650; it thus covers a longer period but there are only 83 entries in nearly two years, whereas Sanderson has 270 for the one year. He is generally more descriptive than Sanderson, chiefly on the subject of the weather and quarters, and his records of pay are especially useful, as will be seen. It is possible to plot Birch’s progress almost as closely as Sanderson’s, although he spent days and even weeks together in the same quarters and there is nowhere near the same sense of movement and activity.

John Sanderson’s Diary

Major Sanderson did not write his Diary as a history of the campaign in Northumberland and elsewhere. It seems to have been written more as an aide-memoire, very terse notes of where he went to and, sometimes, what he was doing (plate 1). It usually relates where he and his troop were quartered, it occasionally explains the reason for the journeys and, very rarely, tells us what other forces were doing. Sanderson concentrates on where he and his men were going; he has little interest in the activities of others. As Oxberry has commented “We could wish . . . that he had been endowed with just a touch of . . . a Boswell or a Pepys.”5

And yet, the very brevity of the entries, usually written within a day or two at most of the actual events, gives an immediacy and accuracy which would be missing if they were written at leisure much later, reviewing events in the light of history. Frustrating though it is, “today I did this” is in many ways of greater value than “this day ten years ago I did this because . . .” A history would be unlikely to relate what he paid for a yard of hay on 7th March, or that on 15th May “every Soldyer a bottle [a bundle of hay] under him.”

His Diary is not the only information on the Civil War which John Sanderson has left us. Two manuscript letters survive in the Baynes correspondence in the British Library, and his Relation of the battle of Preston was printed in 1648, the only known copy now in the library of Worcester College Oxford. Two letters of his from 1648 have already been published. All these contribute to the picture of the parliamentary major and his view of the war presented in this book, and are reproduced in Appendix 4. Some of the actions in which Major Sanderson was involved are reviewed in detail for the light they shed on the activities of the parliamentary army.

The Diary provides an unrivalled framework for a view of the Second Civil War but, just as it sheds occasional light on known events, so other sources are needed to explore its full potential. Chapter 5 uses the Diary in conjunction with all available sources to give a rounded view of the Civil War in the north in 1648.

This is a book written for the general reader, and can be read without recourse to the notes, which are largely devoted to the sources of information and quoted material.

The weather

The summer of 1648 was said to have been the worst in living memory with frequent rain, cold, storms, and bitter winds.6 In March there was a storm at Sherburn in Elmet with hailstones the size of walnuts and nutmegs, which broke windows, and killed ducks and geese.7 From mid-June to mid-July Capt. Birch complains of “extreame foul weather . . . in extreamity of wet and foul weather . . . Such a wet time this time of the yeare hath not been seen in the memory of man . . . extremely wet as it was.”8 In July Lambert wrote of “miserable marches”, “illness of weather”, and “bad weather.”9 In early August there was an “extraordinary storm, wind at North-East, with abundance of rain.”10 In his description of the battle of Preston, Burnet describes “the Rains which fell continually; for all the while there were such deluges of Rains not only over England, but over all Europe, that every Brook was a River.”

The weather was so bad that Parliament took notice of it: owing to “abundance of Rain and such unseasonable Weather, the like whereof hath scarce been known at this season of the year” the Lords and Commons “set apart a Day for Solemn Humiliation”.11

In the Isle of Wight “from Mayday to 15th September, we had scarce three dry days together. . . . When a dry day came they would reap [wheat] and carry it into the barns although they mowed it wet. . . . I told [the king] that in this 40 years I never knew the like before. . . . The rivers . . . have overflown . . . the rich vales stand knee deep with water . . .”12

There will not have been continuous heavy rain or no campaigning at all would have been possible, and the weather was certainly good enough for haymaking, as Sanderson was able, on 15th May, to obtain 100 country cart loads of hay. Rather, the records sound very like the weather experienced in 2007 as this text was being prepared, when violent storms, which caused serious flooding in June and July with up to two months’ rain falling in 24 hours, could ceased abruptly and give way rapidly to sunshine and scattered white clouds. Likewise, the retreat of the Scots from Preston to Wigan took place in very heavy rain and yet that night there was a full moon (see chapter 5, August). Unlike almost all other contemporary writers Sanderson mentions the weather only once, when rain caused a change of quarters on 20th June.

The calendar

In the middle of the seventeenth century the Julian calendar, in which the year began on 25th March, was still in use in England but the modern Gregorian style was also being used. Dates given in direct quotations are in their original style, which could be either, and sometimes both are used in the same document. Where there is room for doubt the old style is as quoted with the addition of the modern year in brackets: thus 1st January 1647[8]. A calendar for the Julian year 1648 is given in Appendix 1.

The maps

The sketch maps show most of the places listed in the ‘To’ column of the Transcript (Appendix 3), together with a few other towns as a guide to location. The general location of some small places for which there was no space on the maps is given in the Notes column of the Transcript, except where the distance from the previous place is only a few miles. No attempt has been made to differentiate the size of towns.

On small scale maps it is impossible to show but a small indication of where roads may have been in the mid-seventeenth century, and some of those shown may not have existed then. A few modern road numbers are shown, although the routes are not necessarily those followed in Sanderson’s day. Some relevant rivers are also shown.

For readers who wish to follow Sanderson’s travels closely, the relevant map number is given in the Notes column of the Transcript. Where the place is not named on the map, the reference is in brackets.

People

In Appendix 7 are notes on all those mentioned in the Diary and the Relation at Large about whom it is been possible to discover information. For reasons of space most of these biographical notes have been condensed to a few essential details and in general do not go beyond 1648. Information has been taken from Furgol, GEC, Hedley, NCH, Newman, ODNB, Paul, and Welford 1905, and other specialised sources given in the Bibliography.

A few people are discussed only in the text, and appear in the index. Troopers and servants are not listed individually but a few, about whom some information has been found, appear at the end of the alphabetical listing under Soldiers and Servants.

Officers of Lilburne’s are not included as they are briefly discussed in the notes on that regiment, chapter 3. The one exception is Major Cholmley, whose identity is the subject of discussion in Appendix 7a.

Acknowledgments

It proved possible to trace the current owners of the Diary and through their great kindness, and that of a member of their family, the original was made available to the writers for study. The owners prefer to remain anonymous. Sincere thanks are extended to Dr C.D. Watkinson for assistance in locating the Diary and with the pedigree of the Sanderson family. Mr & Mrs D.H. Flintham gave advice on, and much help with, equipment for photography of both the Diary and the illustrations in this book, and Mrs Flintham kindly commented on the text. The writers are grateful to the Provost and Fellows of Worcester College Oxford for permission to reproduce the text of Sanderson’s Relation at Large, and to the Librarian Dr Parker for her assistance. Mr Peter Young, Archivist, York Minster Library kindly made available for study the Record of Council of the Northern Parliamentary Army (Order Book). Sanderson’s letter and Will, from Skirmish in Northumberland, and two sheets of the Quartermasters’ Map are reproduced by permission of Durham University Library which also provided the photographs of the map. The text of the two letters of Sanderson’s from Add. Mss 21,417 are reproduced by permission of the British Library. The Argass family gave ready access to Cartington Castle. Mrs McCreath gave essential guidance to the ford over the Tweed at Twizel. Mr N.M. Croll kindly advised on the use of planetary symbols for days of the week and on some of the obscure place names.

Material was consulted also in the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh Public Library, and Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society, and thanks are accorded to the staff in these institutions. Particular thanks are due to the Special Collections staff in the libraries of Durham, Edinburgh, and St Andrews Universities.

CHAPTER TWO

THE SANDERSON FAMILY

There were at the time several Sanderson families in the Northeast of England, seemingly not directly connected. This particular family came originally from Newcastle, where Thomas Sanderson, a leading hostman (an agent who arranged the shipping of coal from the Tyne), was Sheriff in 1506 and John Sanderson Mayor in 1537. They were related to the Brighams, Chaytors, Lewens and Mitfords, all eminent in Newcastle civic and commercial life. As the century progressed power became concentrated in the hands of families such as the Andersons, Brandlings, Claverings, Jenisons, Liddells, and Selbys, who were involved in the coal mining industry on the south bank of the Tyne. Although the son of a merchant, Henry Sanderson, Major John’s grandfather, became a customs official for Queen Elizabeth and had some success in hunting down priests and recusants in the area.1 He was also leader of the Non Grand Lessees, the group of Newcastle freemen who were excluded from local government in the town by the faction which owned the Grand Lease of the coal mines under the Bishop of Durham’s manor at Gateshead and Whickham.2

In December 1603 Henry and his son Samuel were rewarded for their service to the Crown by being appointed Constables of Brancepeth Castle and Keepers of the Forest for life under James I, and granted an annuity of £200 the following month3, although a letter written by Henry to Lord Burghley in September 1597 suggests that he was already living there, as guardian of the recusants lodged in the Castle.4 His coat of arms (paly of six argent and azure, a bend sable) was augmented by a sword proper, hilted and pommeled or on the bend, granted to him as Constable. A similar coat was used by the Sanderson family of Eggleston, Co. Durham, who were not entitled to it, and no immediate connection between the two families has yet been traced.5

Samuel married Barbara, daughter of Thomas Liddell of Ravensworth and half-sister of Sir Thomas, 1st baronet, in December 1610, and went on to have a large family of sons and daughters (Family Tree, 2). It was through this marriage that the Sandersons of Hedleyhope rejoined the mercantile and land-owning elite of Newcastle.6

No birth or baptismal date is known for John Sanderson, but it is most likely that he was the second son. The Visitation of 1615 records an only son Thomas aged four who was 54 in 1666.7 Surtees includes this information in his pedigree but lists another son, Samuel, baptised on 3rd November 1611,8 and other writers have copied him.9 However the Brancepeth Parish Register clearly shows that Thomas was baptised on that date, with no mention of a son Samuel.10 The first daughter, Ellinor [sic], was baptised on 25th February 1612[3], and a second on 14th June 1614, having been born on 31st May. Surtees names this latter Margaret, and postulates another daughter Mary, birth date unknown. But as one of “Margaret’s” sponsors is given as John Sanderson of London who, in his will dated 30th June 1624, proved 3rd March 1627, bequeathed £100 to his goddaughter Mary on her reaching 18,11 it is suggested that these are one and the same, the name Mary being misread on some occasion as Marg. On 10th May 1615 a third daughter, Barbara, was baptised. The next child of Samuel and Barbara Sanderson listed in the Brancepeth register is Samuel, baptised on 29th June 1623.

Fig. 2: Family Tree of the Sandersons of Hedleyhope

A son Henry was apprenticed to a Newcastle boothman on 11th November 163312, and another, Peter, to John Blakiston of Newcastle on 1st March 163913. Since no-one could be bound apprentice under the age of 16,14 (and Samuel is described on the memorial in the chancel of Lanchester Church as fifth son of Samuel and Barbara15) 1617 and 1622 are the probable years of birth of these two, but as in the case of John, neither birth nor baptismal records have been found for them. It may be that the three were baptised at Lanchester, but the parish register for 1603-1653 is missing. One other son and another daughter are listed in the Brancepeth register: James was baptised 18th April 1626 and died the following January; Elsabeth [sic] was baptised 20th January 1627[8]. The baptisms of three further children are recorded in the register of St Nicholas Church, Newcastle: Charles on 26th March 1629; Hanna on 25th May 1631; and Willya [sic] on 3rd July 1632, one of whose godparents was John Sanderson. This helps to confirm John’s birth in 1616 as it is unlikely that he would have been a godparent before the age of 16.

Thomas inherited £50 from his grandfather, Thomas Liddell, and he and Ellinor are the only two from their generation to be mentioned in their great-aunt’s will, dated 10th August 161916 (Jane, widow of Matthew Johnson of Berwick, was Constable Henry’s sister). John Sanderson of London (see above) left his godson, John, the rent of some land in Ireland and £100 on his coming of age. If, as has been accepted in Foster, Hunter, and the Hodgson Pedigrees, Thomas was the eldest son, and John the second, he must have been born in 1616, with Henry as the third one year later. Henry and Samuel are further discussed below, Army careers of John Sanderson’s brothers.

The family illustrates some of the difficulties experienced in the early Stuart era, with divided loyalties during the Civil War. Constable Henry was short of money and borrowed from Nicholas Salter, an acquaintance of his “cosen” John in London.17 Mary had not received all of her legacy, and two bonds owed by Constable Henry’s son to Robert Jenison were still unpaid when Samuel’s wife Barbara made her will in March 1672.18 In June 1620 Henry petitioned for arrears of fees of £170 15s 10d.19 By 1623 some at least of the family were living at Hedleyhope.20 Complaints were lodged against Henry,21 but in 1635 he stated that he had served as Constable of Brancepeth for 40 years, and claimed money owing to him for repairs to the Castle. John’s Will (Appendix 4) shows that he had lent his father £170, although he did secure a 99 year lease of part of Hedleyhope in return. There is no record of Constable Henry’s death. The suggestion that he was tried and executed for neglect of his duties is improbable;22 it is more likely that he was buried at Lanchester in the period for which there are now no registers.

John’s father Samuel and brother Thomas were admitted to Sidney Sussex College Cambridge in 1603 and 1628 respectively. There is no evidence that any of Samuel’s other sons attended university, but their bequests and inventories suggest that John and Charles were well educated, and their mother Barbara left books worth 40 shillings including her Bible which she “dayly read on”.

Samuel and his sons Thomas, Henry and Samuel took the Protestation (the declaration to “maintain and defend … the true, reformed, Protestant religion” which was to be taken by all males aged 18 or over) at Lanchester on 20th February 1641[2], while John took it three or four days later at Ryton in the company of Toby Dudley father of Sanderson’s “dear friend” Jane Norton whose husband supported the royalist cause.23

Three of John’s sisters married clergymen. Mary’s husband was Josias Dockwray, son of Robert Dockwray, headmaster of Giggleswick School. Josias, having been ejected in 1662, conformed and was curate of Lanchester from 1663 until he succeeded his brother Thomas as Vicar of Newburn, Northumberland, in 1668. He was buried there in July 1683.24 Mary survived him but they had no children.

Barbara was married twice: she was the third wife of the Puritan Dr Robert Jenison (1583-1652), Vicar of Newcastle from 1645 until his death, and her second husband was John Emerson, Sheriff of Newcastle 1639-40 and Mayor 1660-61. Of her two sons, one from each marriage, Thomas Jenison, Sheriff of Newcastle 1661-2 and Mayor 1674-5, married Emerson’s daughter, Alice, by his first wife, and they were grandparents of Elizabeth Newton mentioned in the codicil to the will of Barbara’s nephew Thomas.25

Elizabeth, the youngest surviving sister, married the nonconformist Richard Frankland (1630-1698), who had been a pupil at Giggleswick. He preached at Lanchester and elsewhere in the northeast before being ordained in 1653 by presbyters in Durham, but having refused to conform he was ejected in 1662 and went on to open a dissenting academy at Rathmell near Giggleswick. His first pupil was George, youngest son of Sir Thomas Liddell, Bart, of Ravensworth Castle, great nephew of Elizabeth’s mother, and Elizabeth’s nephew Charles, Peter’s son, is said to have attended the academy.26 The Franklands had four daughters and three sons, only one of whom, John, is mentioned in his grandmother’s will.27 Elizabeth died in 1706.

The eldest Sanderson sister, Ellinor (or Helena), married Thomas Curwen (1590-1653) of Sella Park in 1639[40]. He represented Cumberland on several Committees: for Assessment 23rd June 1647; for Assessment for Ireland 16th February 1647[8]; and for Settling the Militia in the Northern Counties 23rd May 1648.28 They had ten children, of whom four died young, and five are mentioned in Barbara Sanderson’s will, Patrick, Thomas, Barbara, Mary, and Isabel. Thomas (1646-1683[4]) was apprenticed to his uncle, Peter Sanderson in 1661 and became a merchant in Newcastle. Isabel (1641-1693) married, probably in 1665, Edward Stanley of Dalegarth, Cumberland, who, as High Sheriff of that county, proclaimed William III as king in 1688.29

While his younger brothers, John, Henry and Samuel, were in the army during the Civil War, Thomas Sanderson seems to have remained at Hedleyhope, dealing with family matters and serving on local committees. He was appointed, with his father and others, to represent the Bishopric of Durham on the Northern Association Committee set up by ordinance of 20th June 1645,30 and Sir Arthur Hesilrige, in a letter to the Speaker of the House of Commons dated 18th May 1648, requested that Thomas be “added to the committee for sequestrations” together with five other “gentlemen of good quality”.31 Twelve years later Thomas was appointed to the Committee for Settling Militia in Co. Durham while his brother Peter represented Newcastle.32 In November 1653, acting as guardian of the infant Thomas Howard, he put in a claim for Tursdale manor in Co. Durham,33 and a year later petitioned for a reduction in rent on Winlaton Colliery which had been sequestered for the delinquency of his mother’s sister Jane Liddell,34 wife of Sir John Mennes, commander of Charles I’s navy and, after the Restoration, a colleague of Pepys on the Navy Board.

Thomas is said to have rebuilt Hedleyhope Hall in 1646,35 presumably the modest house with two hearths recorded in the Hearth Tax assessment records of 1666.36 On 10th February 1656[7] he married Eleanor, daughter of Francis Barker of Topcliffe Manor in Yorkshire, and died without issue in April 1695, having outlived all his brothers.

Although granted a militia commission as Captain of foot in 1659,37 Peter Sanderson, like his eldest brother, seems to have played a civilian role in the Civil War, not in Durham but in Newcastle, where in 1665 he owned a house with 11 hearths in Pink Tower Ward, at the end of the Tyne bridge.38 He was admitted Freeman of the town at the beginning of March 1649, some ten years after being apprenticed to the regicide John Blakiston, and remained a merchant there until his death in January 1682[3], taking on many apprentices himself, some of whom appear to have caused him trouble. He was fined £100 in August 1658 ‘for certifying the court at Hamburg improperly on behalf of his apprentice, John Shadforth, who was refused his freedom’. In October 1651 he was appointed Sheriff in Newcastle, served as an alderman 1652-55, and was appointed to committees for Assessment and for Settling Militia in July 1659, and in January and March 1660.39 Although he inherited part of the Somborne estate from John, £50 from his mother, and £10 from Charles, and held money for his sister Mary, unlike his brothers he is not a witness to, or executor of, any of the known family wills. But a copy of John’s will now in Durham University Library,40 written before the original was sent for proving at Canterbury, appears to have been made for Peter.

He married, as his first wife, in May 1649, Mary, daughter of Dr Robert Jenison (whom his sister Barbara later married) and they had four children only one of whom, Samuel, survived infancy. After her death in January 1656[7], he married a widow, Rachel Mallet, in September of that year. Four of their sons, Joseph, Thomas, Charles and Henry, are mentioned in their grandmother’s will, and Thomas appears to have lived at Hedleyhope.41

Charles, of the Inner and Middle Temple, became one of the leading London attorneys and a noted pupil-master in the first quarter of the 18th century, acting as legal agent for his friends and relatives among the north eastern coal owners.42

On his death in 1737, his only son Thomas, of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London, admitted to the Middle Temple in 1714, inherited the Hedleyhope estate which he still owned in 1745. He died childless in 1751, seemingly the last male descendant of this branch of the family. The farmer Henry Sanderson, “formerly of Hedleyhope”, mentioned in a copyhold document dated 8th November 1835 (Durham County Archives D/X614/33) will have been a member of one of the later families of that name in the area.

Little is known of John’s youngest brother Charles, apart from his will in Durham University Library, in which he left ‘that Tenement called Dicken house’ at Hedleyhope43 (possibly the house with nine hearths in the 1666 Hearth Tax Assessment44) to his mother. Together with Henry and Samuel, he was named as an executor in John’s will, and was present, with Samuel, when the will was proved at Durham on 19 November 1650. Henry was absent as he was serving in the parliamentary army in Linlithgow.45

Army careers of John Sanderson’s brothers

The family was not untypical of the officers of the parliamentary army, and in accordance with Cromwell’s stated preferences and background. “It had been well that men of honour and birth had entered into these employments, but why do they not appear? . . . But seeing that it was necessary the work must go on, better plain men than none . . .”46 Hence “I had rather have a plain russet-coated captain . . . than that which you call a gentlemen and is nothing else”.47

Two brothers are mentioned in the Diary by name: Peter and Samuel. Henry is not named in the Diary, but some examination of his career is relevant in order to separate references which could be either to him or to John. He may have been in the army by the middle of 1642, if he can be identified with Lieutenant Henry Saderson [sic] in the troop of Captain Francis Dowett.48

The first reasonably certain reference is found in August 1646, when it was ordered that “Colonel Henry Sanderson do forthwith march to London, with his Regiment of Reformadoes . . . for further service or disbanding . . .”49 This reference allows identification with another, one year earlier, approving payment for “. . . reduced officers who marched . . . under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Sanderson . . . for the relief of Taunton.”50 An even earlier reference, November 1644, to Lieutenant-Colonel Sanderson is presumably to the same man. The rank indicates that it was a foot regiment.

As shown above, he was probably born in 1617, and thus achieved his rank by the age of about 27. There are numerous other references to him in the Journals of the Lords and the Commons claiming his arrears of pay as late as March 1650, both as Sanderson and Saunderson (sometimes in the same document51) but always referring to his regiment of reformadoes. Another Colonel Sanderson appears in the same Journals, but he is clearly a colonel of horse and not the same person.52

In May 1647 the Committee at Derby House, which was considering the disbanding of the army, discharged Colonel Lilburne and Major Sanderson from further attendance.53 Robert Lilburne was at that time commanding a regiment of foot, and “Major Sanderson” may be Henry, but the identification is by no means certain.

There is a possible reference to Henry on 10th September 1648 when “Lieut. Gen. Cromwell having received intelligence of a party of Monroes horse that were designed for Berwick, commanded out Major Sanderson a Gentleman of known integrity with a party of horse . . .”54