CROMWELL, Oliver (1599-1658). Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.
Document Signed ('Oliver P') at the head, addressed at the foot to Gualter [Walter] Frost, Whitehall, 1 January 1654/55. With a separate second leaf. Rather discoloured and stained but entirely legible and professionally restored and consolidated.

A warrant to the 'Trea[sure]r for the Counsells Contingencies' requiring him 'to pay unto the severall persons, whose names are on the other side endorsed, the severall Summes to their names mentioned, makeing in all the summe of Two hundred fourty two pounds, thirteene shillings and fower pence, being soe much due unto them for their Sallaryes for one Quarter of a yeare from the first of October to the 31th [sic] of December last incl[ud]ed , being 91 dayes. Of which you are not fayle, and for which this shall be sufficient warrant'.

The principal recipient is the serjeant-at-arms, Edward Dendy, who received £91; the ten deputies each received £15 3s 4d. The list is on the reverse, and on the separate sheet, dated 24 February 1654/5, each has signed a receipt for the payment, two of them with their marks. After Dendy they are are Edward Titon [or Tyton], Thomas Baker, John Bradley, Nicholas Hill, Henry Byard, Humphry Holding [or Holden], Anthony Compton, Joshua Leadbeater, Alexander Turner and Thomas Wright. Tyton and Holden had been rewarded with their expenses the previous year for bringing from Norwich the conspirator Thomas Tudor who had escaped early in June (The Writings and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, ed. W.C. Abbott, iii, 1945, p. 398). The present warrant is not listed in the The Writings but an almost identical document of the same date records payments made to John Milton and others (ibid iii p. 564).

Edward Dendy (ca 1613-1674) had inherited his father's position during the civil war, and would appear to have been not unwilling to derive whatever benefit he could from his position. Timothy Venning in ODNB records that 'Willing to act for the purged parliament, on 8 January 1649 Dendy was chosen to proclaim the king's trial in London and thus became implicated in regicide. In reward the council of state made him their serjeant-at-arms on 27 March, in which capacity he supervised running Whitehall Palace and in his ceremonial role proclaimed council edicts such as the establishment of the high court of justice in March 1650 and made search for illegal copies of Lilburne's England's New Chains Discovered. He took custody of the council's prisoners and took fees from them for their maintenance; in June 1650 he was unsuccessfully accused of extortion. In August 1651 he was commissioned captain to raise a troop of horse in Westminster against Charles II's invasion. ... Dendy was kept on when the Rump was dissolved, and in July 1653 was given the management of the Marshalsea prison, replacing Sir John Lenthall ... Dendy proclaimed Cromwell as protector in London on 19 December 'with sound of trumpets and in the most solemn manner'.
[No: 25876]