Francis Nethersole
Sir Francis Nethersole (1587–1659) was an English diplomat, secretary to the Electress Elizabeth, Member of Parliament for Corfe Castle, and a Civil War political pamphleteer.
[1] In 1619 Nethersole resigned his offices at Cambridge, and accepted the post of secretary to James Hay, viscount Doncaster who had been selected to visit the Elector Palatine with a view to settling on a peaceful basis his relations with his catholic neighbours.
Nethersole was a staunch protestant, and readily became an enthusiastic advocate of the cause of the elector and of his wife, the Princess Elizabeth Stuart.
On his return with Doncaster Nethersole was knighted at Theobalds, Hertfordshire, on 19 September 1619, and was at the same time appointed the English agent to the princes of the Protestant Union, and secretary to the Electress Palatine, in succession to Sir Albertus Morton.
Next year, although still retaining his office as agent to the electress, Nethersole permanently settled in England, in the belief that he might thus influence the English government more effectually in her behalf.
In the opening days of the latter parliament Nethersole spoke against the king's claim to imprison persons without showing cause.
In May 1633, in his capacity of agent to the princess, Nethersole sought and obtained permission from Charles I to raise a voluntary contribution or benevolence for the recovery of the Palatinate.
Before the legal documents authorising the levy of the money were made out, Nethersole's scheme was betrayed to the public.
In December 1633 Nethersole received from the private secretary of Elizabeth an importunate letter entreating him to secure aid for her in England with the utmost speed.
Nethersole forwarded an extract from the letter to the king's secretary, Sir John Coke, and appended a message of his own supporting its appeal, in which he suggested that if no help were sent to the princess her son might be justified in attributing his ruin to her kinsfolk's inaction.
Nethersole was released at the end of April, but not until Charles had obtained a formal promise from his sister, who had done what she could to defend him, never to employ him in her service again (cf.
He used his influence to obtain the vicarage of Polesworth for one Bell, subsequently one of the ejected ministers, and Richard Baxter wrote of Bell 'that he needed no other testimonial of his loyalty than that he was pastor to Sir Francis, and this is equally a proof of his learning also' (Palmer, Nonconformists' Memorial, iii.
Although he fully sympathised with the king's cause, he took no part in the civil wars; but in the autumn of 1648 he endeavoured, in a series of pamphlets, to advocate a peaceful solution of the desperate crisis.
On 11 Jan 1648–9 Nethersole, throwing off the veil of anonymity, openly attacked John Goodwin's defence of the army's resolution to bring the king to the scaffold in 'Ὁ Αὐτοκατάκριτος.
