in London, being quartered at St. James's (Cal. State Papers, Dom., 1651−2 p. 352, 1652−3 p. 460). Worsley commanded the detachment of it which Cromwell employed in the expulsion of the Long parliament (20 April 1653), helped Colonel Harrison to put Algernon Sidney [q. v.] out of the house, and took the mace into his own charge (Blencowe, Sydney Papers, p. 140; Commons's Journals, vii. 282). In 1654 Worsley was elected the first member for Manchester (Booker, p. 41). In October 1655 he was appointed one of the majorgenerals instituted by the Protector, having Lancashire, Cheshire, and Staffordshire as his province (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1655, pp. 275, 378). Worsley was extremely zealous in carrying out his instructions. ‘The sense of the work, and my unworthiness and insufficiency as to the right management of it, is my only present discouragement,’ he wrote to Thurloe; and in another letter he professed to observe ‘a visible hand of God going along with us in this work’ (Thurloe, State Papers, iv. 149, 340). No one suppressed more alehouses or was more active in sequestering royalists, preventing horse-races, and carrying on the work of reformation. Worsley died at St. James's on 12 June 1656, having been summoned to London to take part in a meeting of the major-generals. He was buried the next day with great pomp in Henry VII's chapel in Westminster Abbey. His name does not appear in the list of burials in the abbey register, and, thanks to this omission or to some other accident, his body was not disinterred at the Restoration. During a search for the body of James I the corpse of a tall man was found in Henry VII's chapel, which Dean Stanley believed to be that of Worsley (Public Intelligencer, 9−16 June 1656; Chester, Westminster Registers, pp. x, 521; Stanley, Westminster Abbey, 3rd ed. pp. 674−7).
Thurloe describes Worsley as ‘a very great loss’ both to the Protector and the nation, he ‘having been a most trusty and diligent man’ (State Payers, v. 122). A portrait now at Platt Hall, is engraved in Booker's ‘History of the Ancient Chapel of Birch.’
Worsley was twice married: first, on 18 Sept. 1644, to Mary, daughter of John Booth of Manchester (she died on 1 April 1649); secondly, on 6 Oct. 1652, to Dorothy, daughter of Roger Kenyon of Park Head, Whalley. By his first marriage he had a son Ralph and two daughters; by his second marriage a son Charles, born 9 July 1653, and two other children who died young (Booker, pp. 35, 38, 49).
In recognition of Worsley's services the council of state ordered a lease of lands worth 100l. per annum to be settled on his family, and a year's salary as major-general, being 660l. 13s. 4d., to be paid to the widow (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1656−7, pp. 28, 97, 171, 199, 226, 266). In 1659 his widow married Lieutenant-colonel Waldine Lagoe of Manchester, and some of her letters are among Lord Kenyon's manuscripts (Hist. MSS. Comm. 14th Rep. pt. iv.)
[Lives of Worsley are contained in Booker's History of the Ancient Chapel of Birch, 1859 (Chetham Soc. vol. xlvii.), and in Espinasse's Lancashire Worthies, 1874, i. 96−114. About thirty of his letters are printed in Thurloe's State Papers, vols. iv−v.]
WORSLEY, EDWARD (1605−1676), Jesuit, born in Lancashire in 1605, is said to have been an Oxford student and a protestant minister, but his name does not occur in the records of that university. He entered the Society of Jesus on 7 Sept. 1626. Having repeated his studies at the college
of Liege, he was made professor of philosophy, logic, and sacred scripture. He was professed of the four vows on 29 Sept. 1641, and in 1655 he was a missioner in London. He was declared rector of the college at Liege on 31 Oct. 1658. In 1662 he was acting as English procurator and missioner at the Professed House, Antwerp, where he died on 2 Sept. 1676, aged seventy-one. He was ‘regarded both by his own community and by externs as an oracle alike of talent, industry, learning, and prudence’ (Foley, Records, iv. 597).
Subjoined is a list of his works, which were all published under the initials ‘E. W.’ 1. ‘Truth will out; or a Discouery of some Untruths, smoothly told by Dr. Jeremy Taylor in his Dissuasiue from Popery; with an Answer to such Arguments as deserve Answer,’ 1665, 4to. 2. ‘Protestancy without Principles; or Sectaries unhappy Fall from Infallibility to Fancy,’ Antwerp, 1668, 4to. At the end are ‘A few Notes upon Mr. Poole's Appendix against Captain Everard’ [see Poole, Matthew]. The book is in reply to Matthew Poole's ‘Nullity of the Romish Faith’ and Bishop Stillingfleet's ‘Account of the Protestant Religion.’ 3. ‘Reason and Religion; or the certain Rule of Faith, where the Infallibility of the Roman Catholick Church is asserted against Atheists, Heathens, Jewes, Turks, and all Sectaries. With a refutation of Mr. Stillingfleet's many gross errors,’ Antwerp, 1672, 4to. 4. ‘The Infallibility of the Roman Catholick Church and her Miracles defended against Dr. Stillingfleets
