verses dedicated to his wife, Marie Oldisworth (7 Feb. 1644), and of 'A Book touching Sir Thomas Overbury,' &c. (Addit. MS. 15476) which, he says, 'I wrote from dictation, and read over to my old grandfather. Sir Nicholas Overbury, on Thursday, 1 Oct. 1637.'
[Welch's Alumni Westmon. pp. 113, 114; Foster's Alumni Oxon. early ser. iii. 1088; Kennet's Register, pp. 385, 636, 646, 855–6; Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, pt. ii. 161–2; Wood's Fasti, ed. Bliss, ii. 95; Registers of Bourton, per the Rev. F. Farrer; Hunter's Chorus Vatum, Addit. MS. 24489, p. 155. For Nicholas Oldisworth: Welch's Alumni Westmon. pp. 100, 101; Cole MSS. xiii. f. 191; manuscript notes in The Father of the Faithful (Brit. Mus. copy).]
OLDISWORTH, MICHAEL (1591–1654?), politician, was second son of Arnold Oldisworth (b. 1661) of Bradley, Gloucestershire, by Lucy, daughter of Francis Barty, a native of Antwerp. The father, who resided in St. Martin's Lane, London, sat in parliament in 1593 as M.P. for Tregony, and was afterwards keeper of the hanaper in chancery and receiver of fines in the king's bench (cf. Cal. State Papers, 1611–8, p. 381; Foster, Alumni Oxon.) On 31 May 1604 the reversion to the keepership of the hanaper was conferred on his eldest son, Edward (ib. 1603–10, p.116; ib. 1611–8, p. 358). Arnold Oldisworth had antiquarian tastes, and as a member of the Society of Antiquaries, founded by Archbishop Parker in 1572, read, on 29 June 1604, a paper on 'The Diversity of the Names of this Island' (Hearne, Antiquarian Discourses, 1771, i. 98). The dates render Hearne's bestowal of this distinction on the son Michael an obvious error (ib. ii. 438).
The son Michael matriculated from Queen's College, Oxford, on 21 Nov. 1606, aged fifteen, and graduated B.A. from Magdalen College on 10 June 1611. He was admitted to a lellowship by the latter society in 1612, and proceeded M.A. on 5 July 1614. He soon afterwards became secretary to William Herbert, third earl of Pembroke, in his capacity as lord chamberlain. To his connection with the earl Oldisworth owed his election as M.P. for Old Sarum in January 1624. He was re-elected for the same constituency in 1625, 1626, and 1628; but the university of Oxford, of which the earl was chancellor, rejected his recommendation that Oldisworth should become the university's parliamentary representative together with Sir Henry Martin, in 1627. On Lord Pembroke's death in 1630, Oldisworth was for a time without employment, but in October he succeeded one Taverner as secretary to Philip Herbert, earl of Pembroke or Montgomery, brother to Oldisworth's earlier patron and his successor in the office of lord chamberlain (Strafford Papers, ii. 115). Thenceforth he completely identified himself with his new master's fortunes. He had always inclined to the popular party. He was in the early part of his parliamentary career a friend and correspondent of Sir John Eliot (Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep.), and when the civil war broke out he was popularly credited with a large responsibility for his master's adherence to the parliamentary cause. In both the Short and Long parliaments of 1640 he sat for Salisbury. 'Tho' in the grand rebellion he was no colonel, yet he was governor of old Pembroke and Montgomery, led him by the nose (as he pleased) to serve both their turns' (Wood, Fasti, i. 356). On 5 July 1644 he appeared as a witness against Laud at the archbishop's trial, and testified to Laud's efforts to deprive his master of the right he claimed as lord chamberlain to appoint the royal chaplains (Laud, Works, iv. 294–5). His services to the parliamentary cause did not go unrewarded, and he was made one of the two masters of the prerogative office.
When in the course of the struggle Lord Pembroke's association with the parliamentarians was confirmed by his election to the House of Commons, Oldisworth, who was popularly regarded as prompting every step in his master's political progress, received much uncomplimentary notice at the hands of royalist pamphleteers (cf. Cal. State Papers, 1645–7, pp. 565–6). Many pasquinades on Pembroke and himself were published, with the object of emphasising the earl's illiterate and vulgar tastes, under the satiric pretence that Oldisworth was their author; and librarians who have not made allowance for the unrestricted boldness of political satire have often accepted literally the anonymous writers' assurances respecting the authorship of the tracts (cf. Brit. Mus. Cat.) 'Newes from Pembroke and Montgomery, or Oxford Manchestered by Michael Oldsworth and his Lord' (1648), which was mockingly signed by Oldisworth, was evoked by Oldisworth's presence at Oxford with his master, when the latter went thither to preside over the parliamentary visitation of the university. In the same year two other tracts professed to report on Oldisworth's authority Pembroke's 'speech to the king concerning the treaty upon the commissioners' arrival at Newport at the Isle of Wight, and the earl's 'farewell to the king' on leaving the Isle of Wight. Both, it was
