Richard Salwey

Richard Salwey (1615 – 1685?) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons variously between 1645 and 1659. He was a republican in politics and fought on the Parliamentary side in the English Civil War.

Life

Richard Salwey was the son of Humphrey Salwey of Stanford Court at Stanford-on-Teme, Worcestershire and his wife, Anne Littleton, daughter of Sir Edward Littleton and Mary Fisher of Pillaton Hall, Staffordshire. His father was a lawyer and MP for Worcestershire.{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QisAAAAAQAAJ&q=%22Humphrey+Salwey%22+Worcestershire&pg=PA153 |title=A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain|volume=1 |access-date=2013-06-26|last1=Burke |first1=John |year=1835 |pages=153–154}} Salwey became a grocer and merchant in London.

Salwey's father was active in the parliamentary cause, and Salwey became a major in the Parliamentarian army. In 1645, he was elected Member of Parliament for Appleby.{{Cite Notitia Parliamentaria|converted=1|part=2|pages=229–239}} He made his name in parliamentary affairs as member of the commissions on Irish matters.{{DNB Cite|wstitle=Salwey, Richard}}

In 1647, he travelled with Sir Thomas Wharton, Sir Robert King, Sir John Clotworthy, and Sir Robert Meredith to negotiate with the Duke of Ormond.Toby Christopher Barnard, Jane Fenlon, The Dukes of Ormonde, 1610-1745 (2000), p. 91. He was a commissioner for the Tender of Union in 1651.{{cite web |author=David Plant |url=http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/timelines/1651.htm |title=Timeline 1651 |publisher=British-civil-wars.co.uk |date=7 March 2010 |access-date=26 June 2013 |archive-date=18 February 2012 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120218161543/http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/timelines/1651.htm |url-status=dead }}

The beginning of the First Anglo-Dutch War saw a shake-up of the naval organisation, after defeat at the Battle of Dungeness, and with Henry Vane and George Thomson, Salwey and his ally John Carew made up the group of four effectively overseeing the Navy for Parliament.Blair Worden, The Rump Parliament 1648-1653(1974), p. 314.{{cite web|author=David Plant |url=http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/timelines/1652.htm |title=Timeline 1652 |publisher=British-civil-wars.co.uk |date=17 April 2011|access-date=26 June 2013}}

Salwey was a supporter of Oliver Cromwell, but broke with him at the end of the Rump Parliament, together with Francis Allen.Blair Worden, The Rump Parliament 1648-1653 (1974), p. 336. He was a member of Barebone's Parliament, nominated for Worcestershire.{{cite web|url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=36965 |title=List of members nominated for Parliament of 1653 | Diary of Thomas Burton esq, volume 4 (pp. 499-500) |publisher=British-history.ac.uk |access-date=26 June 2013}} He clashed with Cromwell in April 1653; and he lost his Navy position at the end of the year in a general Admiralty change.E. B. Fryde, D. E. Greenway, S. Porter, I. Roy, Handbook of British Chronology (1996), p. 142. He was appointed to the new Council of State formed after the Rump was dissolved, but boycotted its meetings.Austin Woolrych, p. 156.

Salwey was one of a number of radical puritans who had a house in Clapham, Surrey during the late 1640s and early 1650s. He also returned to Clapham in 1683 for the last two years of his life.{{cite web |url=http://www.claphamhistorian.com/ |title=History |website=claphamhistorian.com|accessdate=28 December 2022}} He was out of the country as English ambassador in Constantinople, appointed by the Lord Protector on 14 August 1654. He begged to excused the duty on 8 February 1655, and never left England.{{cn|date=December 2022}}

In 1659, Salwey was active again in parliament as a member of the restored Rump parliament. He became a member of committee of the Committee of Safety and Council of State, in May of that year, and a commissioner for the Navy. The Committee sent him with Sir Henry Vane as heads of a delegation to John Lawson, a refractory republican Vice-Admiral, without success.{{cite web|author=David Plant |url=http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/biog/vane.htm |title=Sir Henry Vane, the younger, 1613-62 |publisher=British-civil-wars.co.uk |date=26 November 2009|access-date=26 June 2013}}

On 16 January 1660, he with William Sydenham was expelled from Parliament; he was sent to the Tower of London.{{cite web|author=David Plant |url=http://www.british-civil-wars.co.uk/timelines/1660.htm |title=Timeline 1660 |publisher=British-civil-wars.co.uk |date=5 September 2008|access-date=26 June 2013}}

After the Restoration he was suspected of complicity in the Farnley Wood Plot, in 1663–64.

Salwey married, in 1641, to Anne Waring, the daughter of Richard Waring, grocer and a London alderman involved in the Levant Company. He had the resources to build a country house at Haye Park in Shropshire,{{cite web|url=http://www.moorpark.org.uk/estate_history.htm |title=Moor Park School |publisher=Moorpark.org.uk |access-date=26 June 2013}} and his residence is often given as the neighbouring Richard’s Castle, over the county boundary in Herefordshire; his son of the same name then built nearby at Moor Park.J. E. Farnell, The Navigation Act of 1651, the First Dutch War, and the London Merchant Community, The Economic History Review, New Series, Vol. 16, No. 3 (1964), pp. 439–454.

Richard Salwey

Life

Notes

Further reading