Charles Worsley

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Maj Gen Charles Worsley

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Charles Worsley, 1622-56, was a Major-General during the English Civil War.

Son of a Ralph Worsley of Platt Hall, a prosperous merchant of Manchester, Worsley was descended from the branch of the Worsley family settled at Booth, in Lancashire. His great great great grandfather was Sir Geoffrey Worsley of Booth. The Worsleys were an ancient family descended from Sir Elias de Workesley, who settled at what is now Worsley, Lancashire (where the family were seated for over five hundred years).^[1] Sir Elias joined Duke Robert II of Normandy (son of King William the Conqueror of England) on the First Crusade and is buried at Rhodes. Branches of the family settled at Appuldurcombe, Isle of Wight (now represented, through the female line, by the Earls of Yarborough) and Hovingham Hall, Yorkshire (including Katharine, Duchess of Kent), as well as at Platt Hall. (See also Worsley Baronets.)

Worsley fought for Parliament and was a captain in a Lancashire infantry regiment by 1644. After the First Civil War, Worsley made a substantial fortune by investing in confiscated Royalist estates in Lancashire. He returned to military service for Oliver Cromwell's invasion of Scotland in 1650 when he took command of a newly-raised infantry regiment. Worsley joined Cromwell at Edinburgh shortly after the battle of Dunbar. In August 1651, he was sent to assist Colonel Robert Lilburne in Lancashire during the Worcester campaign.

By the end of 1652, Worsley's regiment was stationed at St James's in London. He commanded the file of musketeers that accompanied Cromwell when he forcibly dissolved the Rump Parliament on 20 April 1653. Worsley took charge of the key to the House of Commons and the mace. He was elected MP for Manchester in the First Protectorate Parliament (1654) and appointed Major-General for Cheshire, Lancashire and Staffordshire during the Rule of the Major-Generals (1655).

Worsley was extremely zealous in persecuting Royalists, closing alehouses and working to promote a godly reformation in his region. His strenuous efforts exhausted him and brought about his sudden death in June 1656 when he was in London attending a meeting between Cromwell and the Major-Generals.^{[citation needed]} Worsley was buried in Westminster Abbey with full military honours. His burial was not registered – consequently he was one of the few Cromwellians whose remains were left undisturbed at the Restoration.