Francis Hacker (abt. 1618 - 1660)

Ancestors Descendants

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Civil War 1.2 Regicide 1.3 Commonwealth and Protectorate 1.4 Restoration 1.5 Legacy 2 Research Notes: Parentage 3 Sources

Biography

Francis Hacker was a member of the landed gentry of Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire who fought for Parliament during the English civil war and became notorious as one of the regicides of King Charles I.

Francis was born after 1617 to a father of the same name and became his principal heir after an older, missing son was disinherited in case he might return to claim the estate (he apparently never did).^[1] There were two younger brothers, Thomas and Rowland, as well as two sisters, Anne and Alice (Grococke). It was a strict puritan household, and Francis came to have, in his own words, "too great a prejudice" in matters of religious difference.^[2]

He married quite young (see Note 1) on 5 July 1632 to Isabelle Brunts, and the new family settled at Stathern Hall in Leicestershire,^[3] which was likely bestowed on Francis at his marriage. In that place their children were born, beginning with a son Francis on 26 May 1633. ^[4] A daughter Anne was born 25 March 1634.^[5] A later son Samuel was born about 1646, based on his apprentice record. ^[6]

During an outbreak of plague in 1646, two daughters, Barbara and Isabel, died and were buried the 29th and 30th of April.^[7] At least one other daughter, Mary or another Barbara, also died in childhood. Unfortunately, Parish Registers of Stathern are not available for this period.

On 5 April 1635, Hacker was chosen constable of Stathern.^[8] This post involved more than testing the village ale and collecting fines; he was responsible for the training and equipping of the local militiamen.

"The village armor had to be kept in good condition and all arrangements made as to the training, which generally took place either in Leicester or Loughborough. As a rule, the constable escorted the soldier, providing him with a horse and hiring a waggon to carry the baggage. Then fees had to be paid to the officers and to those who acted as conductors to the place of assembly, while in addition to all this gunpowder had to be made and badges provided to distinguish one set of soldiers from another."

It is clear that this position would have served Hacker well in preparation for his military career, the administrative side in particular.

Civil War

The civil war between King Charles I and Parliament can be said to have started when Charles raised his royal standard in Nottingham,^[9] expecting volunteers to join his unborn army. Nottinghamshire was considered "strongly royalist."^[10] Francis Hacker's brothers Thomas and Rowland did answer the royal summons, but the King was soon forced to move on without the forces he had anticipated. Francis, as a Parliament partisan of Leicestershire, was engaged with the militia in that county. The brothers probably never faced each other in direct combat. County militias^[11] generally preferred to restrict their operations to their own territory, and both royalist brothers appear to have fought solely in Nottinghamshire. Rowland most notably fought in the defense of besieged Newark-on-Trent, as described by Lucy Hutchinson in her Memoir.^[12][10] Although a detachment of Leicestershire horse was sent to the siege of Newark in February 1644, Captain Francis Hacker appears not to have been among them. ^{[13] [14]} Thomas, said to be captain of a troop of horse,^[2] was killed in combat at Colston Basset in May, 1643.^[3]

Francis Hacker was nominally a cavalryman, serving throughout the first phase of the war as Captain of Horse.^[15] He did not take part in the great battles (although he apparently just missed the battle of Melton Mowbray in February 1645), until May 1645, when the King attacked and captured Leicester,^[13] but he was primarily an administrator, a member of the militia committee for the county from 1643.^[16] On November 27 of that year, the committee members were ambushed at Melton Mowbray and taken prisoner in a surprise raid by the governor of Belvoir Castle. Hacker was shortly afterward exchanged. It seems that the practice of parole, whereby an officer swears to refrain from further combat if released, had not yet become commonplace in this war.^[17]

On 28 May 1645, a substantial Royalist force under the direct command of the King and Prince Rupert of the Rhine, invested Leicester. The militia committee, including Captain Hacker, made the decision to defend the city, strengthening the fortifications while the Royalists brought up heavy artillery and created major breaches in the walls.

"But the royalists, who had previously been galled by a discharge of artillery, on pushing forward as far as the trench before the inner breastwork, of the existence of which they were not previously aware, were furiously attacked by the horse stationed at its extremities under the Captain Hacker, and the dismounted dragoons of Major Innes, and again borne back over the breach with the loss of several of their number."^[13]

After the city fell to the Royalists, Captain Hacker was again taken prisoner and again to be exchanged. Afterwards, a pamphlet^[18] was printed by the committee, praising Hacker's character and conduct in the fight, but this has to be discounted as self-serving propaganda.

At the beginning of 1645, the leaders of the Parliamentary forces decided to "new-model" the Army,^[19] not to be dependent on local militias, with Oliver Cromwell soon the chief commander. Discipline was greatly improved. The result was the decisive victory of Naseby^[20] in June. The first phase of the war was concluded early the next year when King Charles surrendered to the Scots (not the English Parliament). However, Royalist uprisings, attempting to restore him to the throne, soon broke the peace. While Francis Hacker did not join the New Model Army at this time, he did raise his own regiment with himself as colonel, and fought in the victorious engagement of Willoughby Field, where he commanded the left wing of the horse.^[15][21] He was slightly wounded in the engagement, in which he was said to have "merited much honour for (his) expressed valour."

Soon afterward, he was given a commission as colonel in a new Regiment of Horse under the New Model Army - in effect, taking up a professional military career.^[22][15]

Regicide

After the Royalist uprisings and plots by King Charles to regain power, the extremists in Parliament, led by Cromwell, determined that there would not be peace until he was killed. Taken into the custody of Parliament from the Scots, the king was brought to London for trial, where he was placed in the custody of three officers, including Colonel Hacker, who served in effect as his jailer. Accounts state that Hacker treated the King with respect.

"It was Hacker who brought his Majesty to the court, and showed him to his seat in a chair opposite the President. When sentence of death had been pronounced, Hacker would have placed two musketeers in the king's bedchamber, with which his Majesty being acquainted he made no reply, only gave a sigh."^[2]

At last, on 30 January 1649, Colonel Hacker conducted the king to the scaffold constructed outside the Banqueting House.^[23]

The Death Warrant ^[24] was issued January 29 , signed and sealed by 59 Commisioners, of whom Oliver Cromwell was the third. It was addressed to the King's three official custodians: "Colonell Ffrancis Hacker, Colonell Huncks and Lieutenant Colonell Phayre and to every of them", and it stated clearly that "for soe doing this shall be yor sufficient warrant".

But at the trial of the regicides, Huncks testified that Cromwell asked him to draw up an order for the executioner, and Huncks refused. Whereupon Cromwell drew up the order himself and gave it to Hacker to sign, which he did, and issued the order. After the execution, Hacker returned to his house in Stathern, taking the warrant with him, which he retained there.^[2] This was to seal his own fate.

Commonwealth and Protectorate

In the decade following the king's execution, while Cromwell, backed by his Army, made himself military dictator of England, Colonel Hacker and his regiment alternated between deployments to Scotland and service at home.^[22] Although the regiment was mostly assigned in Scotland to mopping-up operations and garrison duty, it took part in the victorious Battle of Dunbar^[25] and the decisive Battle of Worcester^[26] on 3 September 1651, which finally brought an end to the last phase of the civil war, when Cromwell defeated Charles II's invading Scottish army.

In England, Colonel Hacker served in a dual capacity of military governor and justice of the peace under a Commission of Cromwell as Lord Protector^[27]], empowered to quash insurrection, which duty he carried out zealously, carrying out searches of the homes of known royalists^[28] and seizing seditious pamphlets.^[29] In 1655 he arrested Lord Grey of Groby on the direct orders of Cromwell, who suspected Grey of plotting against him.^[30]

The Cromwell government was equally determined to enforce puritan orthodoxy in both church and society. In an August 1654 "Ordinance for ejecting Scandalous, Ignorant and insufficient Ministers and Schoolmasters", ^[31] Colonel Hacker was named a Commissioner with broad powers, which gave him scope for exercising his religious intolerance against any dissidents. He had earlier, in 1648, forced out the vicar of Stathern for both royalist sympathies and use of the Book of Common Prayer, replacing him with puritan preachers more to his liking.^[7] In 1654 and 1655, he repeatedly arrested the Quaker preacher George Fox, who replied by convincing Isabelle Hacker to adopt his views.^[32] But the colonel's religious zealotry was often exceeded by the Army's.^[19] When Cromwell gave an officer named Empson a captaincy in his regiment, Hacker wrote to request the commission be rescinded, as he judged Empson "a better preacher than a fighter or a soldier." Cromwell declined.^[2]

Colonel Hacker was loyal to Cromwell until thre Protector's death in 1658, and even served his son Richard,^[28] but Richard could not command the Army, which began to break up in competing factions to seize control of the government. Even some members of Hacker's regiment mutinied.^[22] At last, Hacker decided to swear allegiance to the restored Parliament, the first of the Army's colonels to do so. On 8 June 1659, he received a new commission for his regiment from Parliament.^{[33] [15]} At this time his son Francis also received a commission as Cornet - a rank for which, at the age of 26, he was rather old.

Restoration

Colonel Hacker undoubtedly expected to continue in command of his regiment even after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, as the Indemnity and Oblivion Act of August 1660^[34] had promised indemnity for all but a few regicides, among who he was not named. But Parliament decided it was empowered to add additional names to the list, and they obtained information about Hacker's role in the King's death, deciding to question him, despite the fact that General Monck, in effective temporary control of the government, had apparently assured him of indemnity.^[35] "So that when he came to London, (4 July 1660) he made a visit to Monk, and was received with all the appearances of friendship and affection. But the next day after he had been thus caressed, he was seized, examined, and sent to the Tower."

At first, Parliament was most concerned with the existence of the warrant for the King's death, about which he was questioned on 23 July, and admitted that he had it in his possession.^[36] Accordingly, at their order, he sent his wife to Stathern Hall to retrieve it, in the apparent belief that it would clear him, as he had not signed it. However, it immediately had the opposite effect, especially given that it had been addressed to him by name.

At his trial, he made no real defense, saying only that "he had acted by command of his superiours, and he had always endeavoured to serve his country in all his publick actions; so that his tryal was quickly dispatch'd, and he declared guilty of high treason ."^[35]

He was executed at Tyburn on 19 October. The sentence for treason - being hanged, drawn and quartered - was commuted to simple hanging by the order of King Charles II, on the petition of "his friends", doubtless his brother Rowland, who had lost a hand in the service of the late King. The burial of his body - whole - was conducted secretly at a location yet to be discovered: probably either at the church of St Nicholas Cole Abbey in London, "the avowdson of which was at one time vested in the Hacker family",^[2] or the church of St Guthlake in Stathern.

Legacy

The legacy of Francis Hacker was a stained family name and the ruin of a family fortune accumulated by the two previous generations. His estate being forfeit to the Crown, his elder son Francis was disinherited and his younger son Samuel apprenticed himself as a haberdasher, in which he prospered. His widow Isabelle was allowed to live out the rest of her life at her home of Withcote Hall (until she was arrested as a Quaker and almost transported), and his daughter Anne, whose marriage to Captain Clement Needham is not certain, does not seem to be recorded after that date. Stathern Hall was demolished so thoroughly it was impossible for years to discover where it had been.^[37]

Research Notes: Parentage

Because his father never properly recorded the births of his children, the birthdate of Francis presents problems. If his parents were married 23 December 1617 and his ownmarriage was on 5 July 1632, this would be unusually young. But the Will of Francis I states clearly that his oldest son was the disinherited Richard, leaving Francis to marry at the age of twelve or thirteen, certainly underage. This circumstance leads to speculation that the elder Francis could have had an earlier, unrecorded first wife, as suggested by Lawson-Lowe,^[38] who refers to a daughter buried at St Mary's in Nottingham and claims that the son John, who died young, was his eldest child.

The Will^[1] of the eldest Francis Hacker was written in 1640, granting legacies to the three sons, Francis, Thomas and Rowland. Thomas Hacker was killed in 1643, but old Francis never revised his Will before his death in 1646; it was proved in 1647, as originally written. After Colonel Francis Hacker was attainted, his estate was declared forfeit to the Crown: "Houses, Lands, etc., at Colston Bassett and Bridgford ..."^[28] The Bridgford estate had been originally willed to Thomas Hacker. Rowland Hacker tried to challenge the ruling, but his attempt failed. Rowland finally had to purchase the property, "at an exorbitant price."^[28]

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} Will of Francis Hacker[1]
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5} Brown, Cornelius, Lives of Nottinhamshire Worthies. London: H Sotheran & Co, 1882. [3]
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1} Hubbard, H L, "Colonel Francis Hacker: Parliamentarian and regicide" Nottinghamshire History.[2]
4. ↑ "England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:J3CH-8PP
5. ↑ "England, Leicestershire Parish Registers, 1533-1991," database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QP43-R1ZB
6. ↑ City Of London, Haberdashers, Apprentices And Freemen 1526-1933/ Worshipful Company of Haberdashers - Register of apprentice bindings 1655-1675 - London Metropolitan Archives CLC/L/HA/C/011/MS15860/006 FIndMyPast
7. ↑ ^{7.0 7.1} Hubbard, H L., Colonel Francis Hacker, Parliamentarian and Regicide, 1941.[3]
8. ↑ Guilford, Everard L, "The Accounts of the Constables of the Village of Stathern, Leicestershire, Archaeological Journal, vol 19, p 135-136.[4]
9. ↑ For the history of this conflict, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War
10. ↑ ^{10.0 10.1} Guildford, Everard L, Memorials of Old Nottinghamshire. London, George Allen & Co Ltd, 1912. p 172. [1]
11. ↑ http://bcw-project.org/military/trained-bands
12. ↑ Hutchinson, Lucy, Memoirs of the Life of Colonel Hutchinson, London, Henry G Bohn, 1863.[2]
13. ↑ ^{13.0 13.1 13.2} Hollings, James Francis, The History of Leicester During the Great Civil War, Leicester, 1840[4]
14. ↑ Hubbard, H L, "Colonel Francis Hacker: Parliamentarian and regicide" Nottinghamshire History.[5]
15. ↑ ^{15.0 15.1 15.2 15.3} https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/cromwell-army-officers/surnames-h
16. ↑ https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/acts-ordinances-interregnum/pp470-472
17. ↑ Firth, Charles Harding, "Hacker, Francis" in Dictionary of National Biography 1885-1900, vol 23.[6])
18. ↑ https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Narration_of_the_Siege_of_and_Taking_o.html?id=62uGmQEACAAJ
19. ↑ ^{19.0 19.1} http://bcw-project.org/military/new-model-army
20. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Naseby
21. ↑ Beardsley, W F, "An Account of the Battle of Willoughby Field, in the County of Nottingham", 1908.[7]
22. ↑ ^{22.0 22.1 22.2} http://wiki.bcw-project.org/commonwealth/horse-regiments/francis-hacker
23. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Charles_I
24. ↑ https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Death_warrant_of_King_Charles_I
25. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dunbar_(1650)
26. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Worcester
27. ↑ British History Online[https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/acts-ordinances-interregnum/pp1038-1042
28. ↑ ^{28.0 28.1 28.2 28.3} Hubbard, H L, "Colonel Francis Hacker, parliamentarian and regicide", Nottinghamshire History.[5]
29. ↑ British History Online[6]
30. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Grey,_Lord_Grey_of_Groby
31. ↑ British History Online [7]
32. ↑ Fox, George. The Journal of George Fox, John L Nickalls, ed. Cambridge University Press, 1952.[8]
33. ↑ British History Online [9]
34. ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indemnity_and_Oblivion_Act
35. ↑ ^{35.0 35.1} Ludow, Edmund. The Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, ed C L Firth, vol II. Oxford, at the Clarendon Press, 1894. pp. 321-322. [10]
36. ↑ British History Online [11]
37. ↑ Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust. [12]
38. ↑ Lawson-Lowe, A E, "Some Account of the Hacker Family", in Old Nottinghamshire, John Potter Briscoe, ed. London, 1881-1884. pp 131-138. [13]