Thomas Mackworth

Thomas Mackworth (1627–1696) of Betton Strange was an English politician of Shropshire landed gentry background. After limited military service on the Parliamentarian side in the Third English Civil War, he represented Shropshire in the House of Commons from 1656 to 1659 during the Second and Third Protectorate Parliaments. Background and early life Thomas Mackworth was the eldest son of Humphrey Mackworth of Betton Strange, just south of Shrewsbury. The Mackworths' origins lay in Mackworth, near Derby, and were related to the Mackworth baronets, originally of Mackworth Castle although they moved to Normanton, Rutland in the 17th century. Humphrey's junior branch of the family had held Betton Strange, a manor a few miles south of the town, since 1544 and were deeply involved in the politics and commerce of Shrewsbury. Anne Waller, Mackworth's first wife, who had married him by May 1624. She was the daughter of Thomas Waller of Beaconsfield, who seems to have been the owner of the estate known as Gregory's Manor or Butler's Court in the early 17th century. She was related to the poet Edmund Waller, who belonged to another branch of the family in Beaconsfield. However, the Waller's originated in Kent so the Parliamentarian general William Waller was a very distant kinsman. It is unlikely that Thomas Mackworth was born at Betton Strange. St Chad's Church, Shrewsbury, was the parish church which covered the area and his christening is not included in its parish register. His year of birth is generally given as 1627, although ODNB raises a very slight doubt by giving it as c.1628. Owen and Blakeway's 1825 History of Shrewsbury includes an abstract from an earlier manuscript listing monuments in the old churchyard: important, as the church fell down in 1788 and was replaced by a building on a new site. The monument to Thomas Mackworth and his wife apparently recorded that he was in his 70th year when he died in 1696, tending to validate 1627 as his birth year. His brother, Humphrey Mackworth, was born in 1631 and the first of three sisters, Anne, in 1632 Their mother died in 1636 and was buried at St Chad's on 26 May. Humphrey Mackworth subsequently married and had further children by Mary Venables, the daughter of Thomas Venables of Kinderton in Cheshire.