Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Wallop, Robert
WALLOP, ROBERT (1601–1667), regicide, born on 20 July 1601, was only son of Sir Henry Wallop of Farleigh-Wallop in Hampshire, and of his wife Elizabeth (d. 1624), daughter and heir of Robert Corbet of Morton Corbet in Shropshire. Sir Henry (1568–1642), who was the eldest son of Sir Henry Wallop (1540?–1599) [q. v.], frequently sat in parliament between 1601 and 1642, acted as his father's deputy at Dublin, where he was knighted in August 1599, was sheriff of Hampshire in 1602 and in 1603, and of Shropshire in 1605, and was one of the council for the marches of Wales in 1617.
Robert matriculated from Hart Hall, Oxford, on 5 May 1615. He entered parliament before he was of full age, and sat in the House of Commons for nearly forty years. He was a zealous supporter of parliament in its struggle with the king. He represented Andover borough in the parliaments of 1621–2 and 1623–4. In those of 1625 and 1625–6 he sat for Hampshire. He was returned for Andover borough in 1627, and retained his seat for that constituency during the Short parliament of the spring of 1640, and through the Long parliament, which first met in October 1640.
Wallop signed the protestation in the House of Commons on 4 May 1641, was a member of the committee for Irish affairs in 1642, and of the committee of both kingdoms in 1644, when he acted on various sub-committees. He was included in the commission of 6 Nov. 1643 for the collection of the Hampshire contingent towards the defence of the associated counties. Wallop was one of the judges at the trial of Charles II, but sat only three times (on 15, 22, and 23 Jan. 1648–9). He was not present when sentence was pronounced, and did not sign the warrant. On 14 Sept. 1649 he was granted 10,000l. out of the confiscated estates of the Marquis of Winchester as compensation for his losses during the war.
Wallop was a member of the first council of state of June 1649, and took the ‘engagement’ at the meeting on the 19th; he was also on the second council, 17 Feb. 1650 to 17 Feb. 1651. He was probably not a member of the third, 17 Feb. to 29 Nov. 1651, but was elected on the fourth, December 1651 to November 1652, as member of which he took the oath of secrecy on 2 Dec. 1651; he was on the fifth council, December 1652 to March 1653, but was absent from the sixth. He sat for Hampshire in Richard Cromwell's parliament of 1658–9. Wallop was a republican at heart, and showed his anti-Cromwellian tendencies in February 1659 by furthering the election of Sir Henry Vane the younger [q. v.] to represent the borough of Whitchurch in parliament. He was chosen a member of the council of state of the restored Rump parliament in May 1659, and of the new council at the second restoration of the Rump to hold office from 1 Jan. till 1 April 1660. On 23 April 1660 he was elected M.P. for Whitchurch.
At the Restoration Wallop was in treaty for his pardon, and the warrant was signed; but matters had not been sufficiently proceeded with before the passing of the Act of Oblivion, when he was discharged from the House of Commons and ‘made incapable of bearing any office or place of public trust’ (Commons' Journals, viii. 61), excepted from the act with pains and penalties not extending to life, and placed in the custody of the sergeant-at-arms (11 June 1660). On 1 July 1661 he appeared at the bar of the house, when evidence against him was heard, and when it was resolved to prepare a bill for the confiscation of his estates and of those of others included in the former act of attainder. The bill was to provide for the imprisonment for life of those then in custody, with the degradation of being ‘drawn from the Tower of London upon sledges and hurdles, through the streets and highways, to and under the gallows at Tyburn, with ropes about their necks,’ on 27 Jan. of each year, being the anniversary of the king's sentence of death. On 23 Aug. a grant was made to Thomas Wriothesley, fourth earl of Southampton [q. v.], lord treasurer, Wallop's brother-in-law, of Wallop's forfeited estates, permitting but not compelling him to dispose of them for the benefit of his sister Lady Anne Wallop and her family. In January 1662 Wallop petitioned in vain for the remission of the penalty to be inflicted on the 27th, and enclosed a certificate from his physician declaring him unfit to be ‘exposed to the air at this season of the year.’ In his petition he professed to have sat at the king's trial ‘only at the request of his majesty's friends, in order to try to moderate the furious proceedings.’
Wallop remained in the Tower till 19 Nov. 1667, when he died. He was buried at Farleigh on 7 Jan. 1668. An anonymous portrait of him belongs to the Earl of Portsmouth.
Wallop married, first, Anne, daughter of Henry Wriothesley, third earl of Southampton [q. v.]; by her he had one son, Henry. Lady Anne died early in 1662, and was buried at Farleigh on 6 March. Wallop married a second time, and at his death his widow petitioned for the enjoyment of her late husband's estates. By May 1669 she was remarried and petitioning under the name of Elizabeth Needham.
The son Henry Wallop, commonly called Colonel Wallop, was enabled, through his uncle's influence, to enjoy the family estates. To his extravagance his father considered that he owed some of his misfortunes. He married Dorothy (d. 1704), daughter and coheir of John Bluet of Holcombe Regis in Devonshire, and became the grandfather of John Wallop, first earl of Portsmouth [q. v.] He died in 1673, and was buried at Farleigh.
[Edmundson's Baronagium Genealogicum, iii. 247; Collins's Peerage (Brydges), iv. 317; Foster's Alumni; Rawdon Papers, p. 409; Woodward's Hampshire, iii. 146; Ludlow's Memoirs (Firth), ii. 51; Commons' Journals, vi. 141, 269, 290, 296, vii. 220, 659, 800, viii. 59, 60, 61, 286; Lords' Journals, xi. 320; Hist. MSS. Comm. 2nd Rep. vi. 4; Pepys's Diary, s.a. 1662, 27 Jan.; Masson's Milton, passim; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1625–70 passim; Noble's Lives of the Regicides; Extracts from registers of Farleigh-Wallop, kindly supplied by the Rev. J. Seymour Allen.]