Haselrig, Sir Arthur
Haselrig, Sir Arthur (c.1600–61). Haselrig, a Leicestershire baronet, was a leader of the parliamentary cause throughout the civil wars. A staunch puritan, educated at Cambridge and Gray's Inn, he was a close associate of Pym and brother-in-law of Lord Brooke. He served for his native county in the Short and Long Parliaments and his strong opposition to Strafford and Laud led to his being one of the five members ‘named’ by Charles I in January 1642. He was an active cavalry commander during the first civil war, at the head of his regiment of ‘lobsters’, and was made governor of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1647. He refused to serve on the High Court which tried the king and quarrelled with Cromwell when the Rump Parliament was dismissed. He declined to serve in Cromwell's ‘other house’, attacking it as a new House of Lords. In 1659 when the Rump was recalled, Haselrig was briefly influential, serving on the Council of State. But after quarrelling with Lambert, he threw in his lot with Monck. At the Restoration he was stranded and though Monck saved his life, he spent his last months in the Tower. An uncompromising and rigid republican, he was called by Clarendon ‘an absurd bold man’, and by Ludlow, who knew him well, ‘a man of a disobliging carriage, sour and morose of temper’.
J. A. Cannon
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Haselrig, Sir Arthur