ABSTRACT
The names of Royalist civilian commissioners in Wales and the West Midlands can be located in the following sources: Northamptonshire RO Finch-Hatton MS 133 Brit. L.Harl. MSS 6804 f 107; 6852 f 10 Bod. L.Dugdale MS 19; Carte MSS 8 f 155; 10 ff 22, 439 NLW Wynn MS 1712; Ll/MB/17 ff 23, 48, 81, Llanfair-Brynodol MS 51; Crosse Of Shawe Hill MS 1112 Worcestershire RO 1714/899/192 ff 329-32 Birmingham RL 351507 UCNW Baron Hill MSS 5364, 5369 TSANHS 1898, pp. 158-9 M.Mahler, A History Of Chirk Castle And Chirkland, pp. 164-5
Put together, these provide the following sample of names:
The following number of these names can be located in the works of biography, topography and genealogy listed in the secondary sources in the Bibliography (pp. 259-64):
Wherever a Commissioner of Array, ‘for the guarding the county’ Impressment or for Taking Accounts can be identified by this process he is a prominent gentleman or the heir of one. Where a name cannot be located in the works of topography or genealogy used it seems invariably to result from the lack of a detailed work to cover the home area of the individual concerned, so that I have had to remain content with national sources in which only the greatest gentry would appear. The Commissioners of the Excise, by contrast, seem to have been genuinely obscure individuals. This is hardly an unexpected discovery, as the King would hardly have been likely to entrust the tasks of the Commissions of Array, Safety or Impressment to men without power in their communities.
