WARNER, Samuel (?1591-aft. 1653), of St Stephen Walbrook, London, and Downham, Cambs.

Samuel Warner was the rather obscure younger brother of John Warner, lord mayor of London in 1647.10Pearl, London, 325-7. The family was originally from Warwickshire, although their father, John Warner, settled in Oxfordshire.11‘London peds. and coats of arms’, 245; Vis. Warws. 1619, 51; Vis. London 1633, 1634 and 1635, ii. 325; Vis. Warws. 1682-3 ed. W.H. Rylands (1911), 69. The future MP was probably the Samuel, son of John Warner who was baptised in 1591 at Marsh Gibbon, just a few miles from Bucknell.12Marsh Gibbon par. reg. While John senior’s eldest son, Robert, was married off to a Warwickshire heiress, the three surviving younger brothers – John junior, Samuel and Richard – were all apprenticed in London as grocers. John and Samuel set up a shop together selling drugs and herbs amid the apothecaries in Bucklersbury in the City, and this business soon thrived.13Pearl, London, 326-7. This rapid expansion occasionally brought them in to conflict with some of the established City institutions. In January 1628 Warner was accused by the East India Company of circumventing their restrictive practices by purchasing part of a cargo of pepper, cloves, nutmeg, green ginger, sugar candy and ‘dragon’s blood’ (palm resin) which had been landed without their authorisation. The privy council ordered that a search be made for these goods and Warner was placed in custody in Newgate. The dispute took a new turn when Warner’s lawyer, Lewis Marbury, was arrested on suspicion of planning to complain to the new Parliament about these privy council orders. Warner’s petition to the Lords was more cautious, but merely persuaded the Lords to refer the dispute back to the parties themselves. The East India Company then resorted to the court of exchequer in the hope of recovering the goods, while Warner applied to the court of king’s bench for a writ of habeas corpus to force his release. The dispute dragged on until early 1631 when Warner indicated that he was prepared to settle with them in the exchequer case. Even after Warner had been fined £200, the two sides continued to argue over the details of the case.14APC 1627-8, pp. 220, 236, 263, 313; CSP Col. E.I. 1625-9, pp. 449-50, 456-7, 460-2, 464-5, 467, 477, 490-3, 498, 525; 1630-4, pp. 113, 116, 155-6; CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 531. Soon after the completion of this case, Warner turned down the chance to become a liveryman of the Grocers’ Company, evidently because he felt that he and his brother did not both have the time to spare to attend its meetings.15Pearl, London, 327. This did not hinder their trade. By the 1630s Warner, in conjunction with his brother, John, and his son-in-law from 1638, William Thomson*, had become one of the major importers of Virginian tobacco.16R. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution (Cambridge, 1993), 134, 155, 186, 278. At the time of his marriage in 1618 Warner had been living in the parish of St Stephen Walbrook. Nine years later he served as churchwarden of the local church, and by the late 1630s he was still living in that parish.17Regs. of St. Stephen’s, Walbrook, 18, 59, 60, 93; Inhabitants of London, 1638, i. 181; Principal Inhabitants, 1640, 12.

During the 1640s Warner proved to be one of the more radical supporters of Parliament in London. In late 1640 he became involved the campaign by his fellow merchant Joseph Hawes to prevent the customs farmers acting on bonds provided by importers for the duties due on their commodities. This was probably the subject of the petition he submitted to the Commons during the opening weeks of the Long Parliament.18CJ ii. 37b. Warner was so keen that he had refused to supply the farmers with such a bond, forcing them to take action against him. He and Hawes then combined to argue that the customs duty itself was illegal.19Brenner, Merchants, 326-9. When customs officials at Portsmouth detained a consignment of tobacco he was trying to import, Warner obtained an order from the Commons on 25 January 1641 instructing them to release it.20CJ ii. 72b, 77a; Procs. LP ii. 341. A ruling in this dispute was the subject of one of the charges brought by the Commons later that year against one of the barons of the exchequer, Sir Humphrey Davenport.21Procs. LP v. 440, 444-5, 446, 449.

Later that year Warner was probably elected to the common council for the first time.22Pearl, London, 327. Moreover, the various London petitions presented to Parliament in December 1641 – the root and branch petition against episcopacy, the petition calling for the removal of Sir Thomas Lunsford from the lieutenancy of the Tower and the petition in support of the impressment bill – all had his support and carried his signature.23Pearl, London, 223n; Brenner, Merchants, 364, 367. On the day that Charles attempted to arrest the Five Members, Warner was included on the committee of safety that London common council set up to defend the City, to which Parliament then entrusted control of the London militia.24Pearl, London, 140; CJ ii. 428a; LJ iv. 578a; PJ i. 362. Several weeks later he was one of the witnesses in the impeachment proceedings against the recorder of London, Sir Thomas Gardiner*.25Pearl, London, 151n. He further aggravated the City fathers in July 1642 by supporting the petition which complained that the lord mayor, Sir Richard Gurney, was hampering the legitimate attempts by the City to prepare its defences against the prospect of armed conflict.26Brenner, Merchants, 373.

Warner was clearly not acting alone and since the autumn of 1641 a number of attempts had been made by his friends to promote him to the court of aldermen. In March 1642 they had come close to success, only for Warner to be disqualified on the grounds that there were already six members of the Grocers’ Company on the court, the maximum number permitted under an ordinance of 1446. He had therefore to wait a further 11 months before becoming an alderman, and then, having been elected, he refused to accept the appointment. Another night in Newgate changed his mind.27Beaven, Aldermen of London, i. 49, 102, 111, 159, 183, 209, 215, 247; ii. 181.

Like many committed supporters of Parliament, Warner had followed events in Ireland with interest, and, in his case, he and his son-in-law had invested £600 in the Irish Adventure.28J.P. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland (1865), 414. This interest in the suppression of the Irish rebellion became more direct in July 1643, when he was appointed as one of the four treasurers to the Committee for Irish Affairs.29CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 652. Thereafter he was fully involved in the factional struggles which dominated the politics of the City. In early 1645 he and his brother were among the minority within the court of aldermen who opposed its revival of their veto over the decisions of the common council.30Pearl, London, 274. The following November Warner himself came under attack from the Presbyterian majority and was discharged as an alderman for ‘his miscarriages and offences’.31Beaven, Aldermen of London, i. 111. Part of the reason may have been his refusal to submit some of his accounts to the Committee of Accounts for auditing, although his refusal to accept the office of sheriff may have been another.32CJ iv. 98a; Harl. 166, f. 197v; Pearl, London, 245, 327. Either he or his brother presented the City’s petition to Parliament on 2 June 1646.33CJ iv. 561b. His removal from the committee of safety in April 1647 and even more, his appointment to the militia committee for London on 2 September 1647 confirm that he was still part of the Independent party within the corporation.34A. and O. His brother’s appointment as lord mayor (effected with the support of the army) was a major victory for the Independents over the Presbyterians.

Warner’s connections with Cambridgeshire dated only from 1648, when he took the opportunity to buy one of the former episcopal residences. Downham Palace, located a few miles from Ely, had, until its confiscation, been the country seat of the bishops of Ely. By a conveyance of 16 June 1648, Warner agreed to pay £6,416 for it.35Bodl. Rawl. B.239, p. 13; VCH Cambs. iv. 91-2. Following this, he may have re-located to Cambridgeshire, for henceforth he appears to have played no discernible part in London politics. The death of his brother in 1648 may have been one reason for withdrawing from the hectic world of business and politics in the capital. If so, there was no corresponding prominence in Cambridgeshire. Apart from the assessment commission, to which he was appointed by the government in 1650, he held no public office there before his nomination to Parliament in 1653.36A. and O.

Recent arrival in a county was usually a disadvantage for those seeking election as a knight of the shire. Uniquely, however, the 1653 Parliament was selected by the council of state, and so the usual difficulty did not pertain. Warner was nominated as one of the four representatives from Cambridgeshire. During the course of the session Warner seems mainly to have acted as the regular chairman of the important committee for trade and the corporations. His suitability for that role seems to have been recognised from the committee’s inception on 20 July 1653, for he headed the list of those named to it.37CJ vii. 287a. Over the following four months he reported from the committee to the Commons on four occasions. On 15 August he told the House of their deliberations on the petition from the Merchant Adventurers of Bristol, probably recommending that the riot mentioned by the mayor of Bristol in his evidence be investigated.38CJ vii. 301a. The committee’s proposal that a council of trade be created was favourably received by the Commons when he presented it to them on 27 August.39CJ vii. 308b-309a. He also reported from the committee two days later its discussion of the bill for regulating trade.40CJ vii. 340b, 341b. The bill which became the act for regulating the Norfolk stuffs was likewise returned to the House by him on 10 November.41CJ vii. 347b. The rest of his known activity in this Parliament was also linked with matters of trade. On 16 August he and Andrew Broughton* were ordered to assist John Crofts* in the preparation of his bill concerning English tobacco in Gloucestershire and on 25 October Warner was one of those named to consider the petition presented to Parliament by the City of London.42CJ vii. 301b, 339b.

With the ending of the Nominated Parliament, Warner simply disappears from the historical record. No evidence has been found to indicate how or where he spent the remaining years of his life, his date of death is unknown and no will has been traced. This silence may well indicate that he died soon after 1653. If at the Restoration he was still occupying the lands at Downham, they would have automatically reverted to the bishop of Ely. Warner’s fortune almost certainly passed to his only surviving child, Elizabeth, wife of William Thomson, who went on to sit as MP for the City in the Parliaments of 1659 and 1661.