Locke, pp. 654–5). As speaker he showed to no great advantage in the house (Burton, ii. 34, 70, 147, 149); but on 31 March 1657 he made a learned speech at Whitehall in support of the ‘petition and advice’ (of which Sir Philip Warwick thought him the true author), and spoke impressively at the inauguration of Cromwell as lord protector (ib. i. 397; Parl. Hist. iii. 1492, 1515; Warwick, Memoirs, p. 381). After the dissolution of this parliament Widdrington was made lord chief baron of the exchequer on 26 June 1658 (Whitelocke, p. 674; Siderfin, Reports, ii. 106); but this office was restored to John Wilde [q. v.] by the Long parliament on 18 Jan. 1660, when Widdrington was for the third time made a commissioner of the great seal (Commons' Journals). He was also elected a member of the council of state on 31 Dec. 1659, and again on 23 Feb. 1660 (ib.) Being elected for both York and Berwick in the Convention parliament, he chose the former; he was on the committee for the reception of Charles II, and also on that for the indemnity bill (ib. 14 and 15 May 1660).
At the Restoration he lost all the offices and honours which he had gained since the civil war; but he was restored to the degree of serjeant on 1 June 1660, and was appointed temporal chancellor of the bishopric of Durham on 21 Dec. (Dugdale, Orig. Jurid., Chronica Ser. p. 115; Hutchinson, Hist. of Durham, i. 553). He was returned for Berwick to the parliament of 1661, but took no active part in its proceedings; he had already resigned the recordership of Berwick, and he resigned that of York in or about January 1662 (Members of Parliament, i. 526; Drake, p. 368; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1661–2, pp. 234, 612). It was probably shortly before the election of 1661 that his offer to dedicate ‘Analecta Eboracensia’ to the mayor and corporation of York was refused, the citizens having looked for a more substantial gift (Caine, pp. viii–xi). In 1663 he founded a free school at Stamfordham (ib. p. xxix; Foss, Judges of England, vi. 518). He died on 13 May 1664, and was buried in the chancel of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, near his wife and daughter Dorothy, both of whom had died in 1649. A monument was erected to his memory in 1674 (Peck, Des. Cur., ed. 1779, p. 543; Maitland, London, ii. 1362; Strype, Survey, iv. 80). His will is dated 1 Sept. 1663 (see abstract in Archæologia Æliana, new ser. i. 18). His only son Thomas died at The Hague in 1660 (Egerton MS. 2146, f. 34). He left four daughters, all married, viz. Frances, to Sir John Legard, bart.; Catherine, to Sir Robert Shaftoe; Mary, to Sir Robert Markham, bart.; and Ursula, to Thomas Windsor, lord Windsor (afterwards Earl of Plymouth) [q. v.] (Caine, p. xxii). The royalist Sir Philip Warwick sums him up as ‘a good lawyer, but naturally a cautious and timorous man’ (Memoirs, p. 381).
Widdrington wrote, in or about 1660, ‘Analecta Eboracensia,’ a description and history of the city of York. In disgust at his treatment by the citizens he withheld it from publication; but it was edited in 1897 by the Rev. Cæsar Caine. His reports of king's bench cases, 1–7 Charles I, are in Hargrave MSS. 38–9, and parts of them are in Lansdowne MSS. 1083, 1092. Rushworth printed from them the arguments in the case of the imprisoned members (App. i. 18–55). Letters from him to Lord Fairfax are in Additional MS. 18979, ff. 174, 178, 182, 184, 245, 249. Some of these, with a few others, are printed in Johnson's ‘Fairfax Correspondence’ (i. 367), Bell's ‘Memorials of the Civil War’ (see refs. in index), and Neill's ‘The Fairfaxes of England and America’ (p. 13). A full list of his extant speeches is given by Caine (introd. to Anal. Ebor. p. xxx). An epitaph on Lord Fairfax has also been attributed to him (ib. p. xxxi).
[Caine, introduction to Analecta Eboracensia; Foss's Judges of England, vi. 513; Commons' Journals, passim; other authorities cited in text.]
WIDDRINGTON, WILLIAM, first Baron Widdrington (1610–1651), was the only son of Sir Henry Widdrington of Swinburne and Widdrington, Northumberland, by his wife Mary, daughter of Sir Henry Curwen of Workington in Cumberland. At the time of his father's death, 4 Sept. 1623, he was thirteen years, one month, and twenty-four days old; he must therefore have been born on 11 July 1610 (Record Office, Court of Wards, Inquis. post mortem, bundle 39, No. 186). He was knighted at Newmarket on 18 March 1642 (Metcalfe, Book of Knights, p. 191). From 1635 to 1640 he took an active part in the administrative work of the county, of which he was sheriff 1636–7, and which he represented in both parliaments of 1640 (Cal. State Papers, Dom.; Hutchinson, View of Northumberland, ii. 461; Members of Parliament, i. 482, 491). He had to apologise to the house on 10 Nov. 1640 for applying the term ‘invading rebels’ in debate to the Scots, whose depredations in the northern counties formed the subject of a petition presented by him on 15 March 1641 to the commissioners for the Scottish treaty (Commons' Journals, ii. 25; Hist.
