The Interregnum Court of Chancery; a study of the career and writings of John Lisle, Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal (1649-1659)

Abstract

John Lisle was one of the most powerful, yet one of the least well known political personages of the English civil wars and Interregnum. His reputation survives only as one of regicide and unswerving loyalty to the military phase of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate. For these two aspects of his political career from 1640 to 1660, John Lisle has suffered in the works of authors from his day to the present. However, there was considerably more in Lisle's life than regicide and devotion to Cromwell. He was one of the lords commissioners of the great seal during the Interregnum. Yet his precedence in the High Court of Chancery is invariably accompanied by disparagement of his abilities as a lawyer and equity judge. Nevertheless, Lisle presided in Chancery as one of the lords commissioners for the whole of the Interregnum, and his work at the seals does not support the later statements of his detractors.

Lisle was indeed a regicide, and perhaps that fact more than any of his activities accounts for his relative obscurity in the history of the Interregnum. While the present work is primarily a history of the Chancery and equity during the Interregnum, it is related through the writings and career of John Lisle. For this reason, it is necessary to establish firmly Lisle's rise in the state to the highest judicial office for the Interregnum, Lord Commissioner of the Great Seal. For the most part, Lisle's life before election in 1640 to the Long Parliament still remains obscure. Part I of the dissertation will, therefore, attempt to relate what is known of Lisle's life before 1640; his various relatives and associates; his early career in Parliament; the change in his parliamentary career after 1644; his political career as a high executive and judicial officer after 1649; and finally his flight and death after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Lisle's work in the Long Parliament from 1640 to 1649 was the overriding factor in his selection as a commissioner of the seal in 1649. His politics from 1649 to 1659 maintained his appointment to the Chancery bench.