On 21 Feb. 1660 Monck's influence opened the doors to them all, Waller returned to his place, and two days later he was elected a member of the last council of state of the Commonwealth. In that capacity he promoted the calling of a free parliament, and was useful to Monck in quieting the scruples of Prynne and other presbyterians (Clarendon State Papers, iii. 647, 657; Ludlow, ed. 1894, ii. 235, 249; Kennett, Register, p. 66).
At the Restoration Waller obtained nothing, and, what is more surprising, asked for nothing. He was elected to the Convention as member for Westminster, but did not sit in the next parliament (Old Parliamentary History, xxii. 216). He died on 19 Sept. 1668, and was buried with great pomp on 9 Oct. in the chapel in Tothill Street, Westminster. No monument, however, was erected to him, and the armorial bearings and other funeral decorations were pulled down by the heralds on the ground of certain technical irregularities in them (Wood, Athenæ, iii. 817; cf. letter from Thomas Jekyll to Wood, Wood MS. F. 42, f. 303, and Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1668–9, p. 23).
Of Waller as a general Dr. Gardiner justly observes: ‘If he had not the highest qualities of a commander, he came short of them as much through want of character as through defect of military skill. As a master of defensive tactics he was probably unequalled on either side’ (Great Civil War, ii. 192). Clarendon mentions Waller's skill in choosing his positions, and terms him ‘a right good chooser of vantages’ (Rebellion, vii. 111). During his career as an independent commander he was perpetually hampered by want of money. ‘I never received full 100,000l.,’ he complains, adding that the material of which his army was composed made it impossible for him ‘to improve his successes’ (Vindication, p. 17). He saw the conditions of success clearly, though he could not persuade the parliament to adopt them, and was the first to suggest the formation of the new model (Gardiner, ii. 5). Waller waged war, as he said in his letter to Hopton, ‘without personal animosities,’ and was humane and courteous in his treatment of opponents (cf. Ludlow, Memoirs, ed. 1894, i. 451; Webb, Civil War in Herefordshire, i. 263; Memoirs of Sir Richard Bulstrode, p. 120). He could not restrain his unpaid soldiers from plundering, and regrets in his ‘Recollections’ his allowing them to plunder at Winchester, holding the demolition of his own house at that place by the parliament an appropriate punishment (p. 131). At Winchester, and also at Chichester, he allowed his men to desecrate and deface those cathedrals without any attempt to check them (Mercurius Rusticus, ed. 1685, pp. 133–52). Probably he regarded iconoclasm as a service to religion.
Waller married three times. By his first wife he had one son, who died in infancy (Berry, Kentish Genealogies, p. 296; Recollections of Sir W. Waller, p. 127), and a daughter Margaret, who married Sir William Courtenay of Powderham Castle (Vindication, p. ii; Collins, Peerage, ed. Brydges, vi. 266); he married, secondly, Lady Anne Finch, daughter of the first Earl of Winchilsea (ib. iii. 383; Recollections, pp. 104, 106, 119, 127); thirdly, Anne, daughter of William, lord Paget, and widow of Sir Simon Harcourt (ib. p. 129; Collins, iv. 443). Copious extracts from this lady's diary are given in the ‘Harcourt Papers’ (i. 169), and an account of her character is contained in Edmund Calamy's sermon at her funeral (The Happiness of those who sleep in Jesus, 4to, 1662). By his second wife Waller had two sons—(Sir) William (d. 1699) [q. v.] and Thomas—and a daughter Anne, who married Philip, eldest son of Sir Simon Harcourt, died 23 Aug. 1664, and was the mother of Lord-chancellor Harcourt (Collins, iv. 443).
A certain number of Waller's letters and despatches were published at the time in pamphlet form, but none of his literary or autobiographical productions appeared till after his death. They were three in number:
- ‘Divine Meditations upon several Occasions, with a Daily Directory,’ 1680; a portrait is prefixed.
- ‘Recollections by General Sir William Waller.’ This is printed as an appendix to ‘The Poetry of Anna Matilda,’ 8vo, 1788, pp. 103–39. A manuscript of this work is in the library of Wadham College, Oxford.
- ‘Vindication of the Character and Conduct of Sir William Waller,’ 1797. Prefixed to this is an engraved portrait of Waller from a painting by Robert Walker in the possession of the Earl of Harcourt.
Waller also left, according to Wood, a ‘Military Discourse of the Ordering of Soldiers,’ which has never been printed.
Engraved portraits of Waller are also contained in ‘England's Worthies,’ by John Vicars, and in Josiah Ricraft's ‘Survey of England's Champions,’ both published in 1647. A portrait by Lely, in the possession of the Duke of Richmond, was No. 766 in the National Portrait Exhibition of 1866, and an anonymous portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery, London.
