Farmer and Politician (Wikipedia)
Mentions in Pocketbook: My correspondence
Sir Martin Lister (1602-1670) was Lister’s father. In his pocketbook, Lister noted sending him several letters. Sir Martin Lister had been at Trinity College, Oxford, taking his degree on 15 October 1619, and he was knighted by Charles I in 1625.
After marrying Lister’s mother Susanna in 1636, Sir Martin Lister spent some years as a gentleman-farmer living near Radclive, Buckinghamshire, actively involved in the administration of his estates, and running his own ‘beasts’ [cattle] on his lands. In 1641, he became MP for the market town of Brackley, Northamptonshire, just over the Buckinghamshire border, and he served in the Long Parliament until August 1648.
While in Parliament, Sir Martin was on several financial committees in involved in sequestering funds from imprisoned royalists. In this capacity, Sir Martin often worked with Thomas Widdrington, who would later serve as Cromwell’s Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer and on the Council of State. Like Widdrington, Sir Martin refused to have any role in the trial of the king, though his brother-in-law, James Temple (1604–74), was an Independent and one of the regicides.
Sir Martin himself was also one of the Commissioners for raising troops in the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1645. His son Richard by his first wife Mary Wenman was Colonel of the trained bands of Leicestershire for Parliament during the war, and was the Parliamentary commissioner for militia in the county for 1659/60. Sir Martin settled on his estates in Burwell, Lincolnshire upon his retirement.