Family and Education

b. c.1621, 3rd s. of William Walsh (d.1645) of Abberley, Worcs. by Elizabeth, da. of Sir George Blount of Sodington, Worcs. m. (1) c.1659, Anne (d. 10 May 1679), da. and coh. of John Collins of Witnesham, Suff., wid. of Robert Vallence, innkeeper, of Clerkenwell, s.p.; (2) lic. 23 Sept. 1679, Mercy, da. of Edward Pytts of Kyre Park, Worcs., wid. of Henry Bromley of Holt Castle, Worcs., s.p.1

Offices Held

Gent. of the privy chamber extraordinary June 1660-?65.2

J.p. Mdx. 1665-76; jt. treas. loyal and indigent officers, Mdx. 1670-1; commr. for assessment, Mdx. 1673-4, 1679-80, Worcs. 1689-90; freeman, Eye 1674; commr. for recusants, Mdx. 1675.3.

Biography

Walsh’s family had held land in Worcestershire since the reign of Richard I, and one of them represented the county in 1593. Walsh was in arms for the King in the Civil War like his eldest brother Joseph, whom he assisted in the abduction of a Warwickshire heiress in 1649. In the following year he compounded for his political delinquency on a nominal fine of £5. Probably his Worcestershire neighbour Charles Cornwallis I introduced him to his first wife, who, by ‘her extraordinary bounty and kindness towards him’, brought him a lease of the Priory manor at Eye as well as considerable London property. After the Restoration the King asked the bishop of Norwich to renew Walsh’s leases of three Norfolk manors without increase of rent ‘in consideration of Walsh’s loyalty and service to the late King’, and to comply with Walsh’s request to vary the terms of another lease ‘on account of his loyalty to our late father and to ourselves’.4

Walsh unsuccessfully contested a by-election at Eye in November 1675. He ‘had a fair estate in the borough in the right of his wife’, but probably relied more on the Cornwallis interest. In the following year he was removed from the Middlesex commission of the peace for ‘abetting an offender and going off the bench’. Nothing further is known of the incident. He was involved in a double return at the second general election of 1679, and seated by order of the House. No speeches of his have been recorded and he was not appointed to any committees; but he probably supported exclusion. He again unsuccessfully contested Eye in 1681. In the same year a warrant was issued for the grant of a baronetcy to George Walsh of Clerkenwell, but it never passed the seals. A strong supporter of the new regime after the Revolution, he died on 12 Nov. 1692 and was buried at Abberley. His nephew William sat for Worcestershire in three Parliaments as a Whig.5

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: John. P. Ferris

Notes

• 1. Nash, Worcs. i. 1-2, 593; PCC 8 Stafford, 114 North; SP23/74/947; Smyth’s Obituary (Cam. Soc. xliv), 45.
• 2. LS3/2; CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 386; 1663-4, p. 134.
• 3. HMC 8th Rep. pt. 1 (1881), 164.
• 4. Townshend’s Diary (Worcs. Rec. Soc.), i. 196; Cal. Comm. Comp. 1516, 2226; PCC 290 Ruthen; Nash, i. 3, 4; Cal. Treas. Bks. ix. 1143; CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 386; 1663-4, p. 134; 1668-9, p. 445; Works of Sir Thomas Browne ed. Wilkin, i. 293.
• 5. CJ, ix. 374, 672, 707; HMC Finch, ii. 44; CSP Dom. 1680-1, p. 209; Rokeby Diary, 21.