BENCE, Alexander (1594-c.1662), of Aldeburgh, Suff. and London.

Alexander Bence was the fourth member of his family to be elected to Parliament for the Suffolk constituency of Aldeburgh in just over half a century. His uncle, William Bence†, had sat in two of the Elizabethan Parliaments; his elder brother, John, had sat in 1624; and a younger brother, Squier, was returned to the Short Parliament. What had made the family such favoured candidates in Aldeburgh was their local standing and influence. For several generations the various branches of the family had dominated the commerce and corporation of the town, and, in Alexander’s generation, several of them moved on to the more challenging world of the City of London.28Hill, Thorington, ped.; Bodl. Tanner 226, p. 74; Add. 33857, ff. 18v-19.

The family’s mercantile background determined much in Bence’s career. When he was only 17, he inherited from his father various properties in Aldeburgh and a quarter share in a ship, the Mary and John. Subsequently, earlier bequests from other relatives brought him over £130 in cash.29PROB11/121/224. He was admitted as a freeman of Aldeburgh when he reached the age of 18, and of the Grocers' Company in 1621.30Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE1/C1/1, f. 7; GL, MS 11592A, unf. This allowed him to build up a shipping business in Aldeburgh and London in partnership with his brothers, John and Squier. In time they acquired an impressive merchant fleet. In 1627, as joint owners of the Friendship, the trio were issued with a letter of marque to capture pirates.31CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 296. By 1635, the year in which John died, Alexander and Squier, with their cousin Bence Johnson, owned the Sea Dolphin and the Samuel.32CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 329, 384; SP16/17, f. 110. The following year they and John Hayward of Aldeburgh acquired a new ship, the Elizabeth.33SP16/17, f. 135. Probable heavy involvement in the Newcastle-London coal trade, would partly explain why in May 1639 he was summoned before the privy council, which was attempted to regulate it.34CSP Dom. 1639, pp. 169-70, 186; Privy Council Regs. vi. p. 356. Like many engaged in the shipping trade, by 1638 he had a house at Wapping, renting it from the man who was soon to become his brother’s colleague as MP for Aldeburgh, William Rainborowe*.35PROB11/189/21; CSP Dom. 1639, p. 186; GLRO, St John, Wapping par. reg. trans., f. 166. Eventually Bence moved several miles inland, acquiring a house at Low Leyton just inside the Essex border.36Trinity House ed. Chaplin, 7.

Back in Aldeburgh, his wealth ensured that his status as one of the leading citizens was confirmed through local office-holding. In 1627 he became one of the 24 inferior burgesses of the corporation and, two years later, on becoming a capital burgess, he served the first of his three terms as one of the bailiffs, the highest office in the town.37Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE1/C1/1, ff. 3v, 5, 6; EE1/P1/3/3-4. When the corporation sought donations in December 1641 to pay the salary for the new town preacher, John Grayne of Coddenham, the three highest subscribers – promising £3 a year each - were Bence, his brother (Squier), and their brother-in-law, Thomas Johnson.38Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE1/P1/2/2.

Squier was elected at Aldeburgh in the first of the 1640 parliamentary elections, but seven months later Alexander took his place. Why this switch was made is not clear but Alexander and Rainborowe (who was seeking re-election, presumably with the backing of the Bences) faced a challenge from a nominee of the 21st earl of Arundel, Sir William Le Neve. Later Arundel was told that Bence and Rainborowe were successful in securing the seats because the freemen felt that they, unlike Le Neve, understood the problems of the port.39Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE1/O2/1, f. 85.

A feature of Bence’s parliamentary career during the 1640s was to be his recurring association with Samuel Vassall*, the prominent draper and London MP. The exact basis of their friendship remains elusive, but one possibility is that they were partners in shipping ventures: from 1643, they were certainly joint-owners of another ship known as the Samuel.40Bodl. Rawl. A.220, ff. 81v, 82, 82v, 84; Rawl. A.221, ff. 33v, 142, 143v, 148v; Rawl. A.222, ff. 13v, 54v-55. According to ambiguous notes jotted down by the nineteenth-century Suffolk antiquary, Joseph James Muskett, Bence married one of Vassall's sisters.41Add. 33857, f. 42; Keeler, Long Parl. 106n. However, this may confuse Bence’s third wife, Rachel, with Rachel Vassall, who married Peter Andrews and who became mother-in-law to Bence’s son, John*.42Vis. London 1633, 1634 and 1635, ii. 308. As it did not take place until after 1650, the marriage between John Bence and Judith Andrews was a consequence rather than an explanation of Bence’s friendship with Vassall.43PROB11/213/681; Regs. of Christenings, Marriages and Burials of the Par. of Allhallows London Wall ed. E.B. Jupp and R. Hovenden (1878), 306.

Alexander Bence took time to make his mark in the Commons. He was nominated to only a few committees in 1641, and his first (on the bill to regulate the Thames watermen in May 1641) was of little significance.44CJ ii. 152b. Membership of committees on the funding of the navy (25 Aug.) and on the price of naval victuals (19 Nov.) indicate, if nothing else, recognition of his maritime background. Yet he was one of the 47 MPs named to the Recess Committee in September 1641.45CJ ii. 271b, 288b, 320a.

Throughout 1642, as matters concerning the navy and shipping took on strategic importance, Bence’s workload increased. He was prominent among those named in January 1642 to decide which ships should be assigned to the summer fleet.46CJ ii. 378b. Subsequently he was also among those appointed to reach a deal with a group of merchants who had offered their ships to the navy (25 Jan.) and he was added to the committee for the navy (29 Jan.) when the legislation for the recruitment of sailors came before it (this body was reconstituted in August 1642 as the Committee of Navy and Customs).47Supra, ‘Committee of Navy and Customs’; CJ ii. 393a, 402b. Whether Bence also was named in May 1642 to the committee to study the naval activities of the Danes and Norwegians cannot be known for certain, because by then his brother, Squier, had been elected at Aldeburgh in the by-election caused by Rainborowe’s death.48CJ ii. 596a.

For reasons of commercial self-interest in the coal trade, Bence followed events in Newcastle-upon-Tyne very closely. He was among MPs appointed to receive information from that town in June 1642, after the king had acted without consulting Parliament in naming William Cavendish, 1st earl of Newcastle as its governor.49CJ ii. 634a. When, two months later, the Commons wanted to prevent a ship from sailing to Newcastle, the House sent Bence and his brother, together with 40 musketeers, to enforce their orders.50CJ ii. 731a, 733a. The Journal does not clarify which of them was named to the committee to enforce the blockade against Newcastle (1 Apr. 1643), or to the committee to deal with the resulting disruption to coal supplies (26 May).51CJ ii. 916a, 923b; iii. 26b, 105a. Both brothers were sent in August of that year on behalf of the Committee of Navy and Customs to inform the committee for the reduction of Newcastle that the captain of the Antelope was to be reimbursed for the money he had paid to the garrison on Holy Island to persuade them to change sides.52Bodl. Rawl. A.221, f. 106v. When, during that same month, a Danish ship due to deliver a large load of weapons to royalist-held Newcastle was intercepted, one of the brothers reported the news to the Commons.53CJ iii. 193a; Add. 31116, p. 134; Bodl. Rawl. A.221, f. 111v. Alexander’s role in negotiating a loan from his fellow members of Trinity House was a clear example of his mercantile links being used to advantage by Parliament.54CJ ii. 633b.

The Irish Adventurers’ scheme for the re-conquest of Ireland evidently attracted the interest of both brothers. From the beginning of 1642 Bence was involved in organising the transportation of supplies to the army in Ireland and on 16 April 1642 he subscribed £150 to the Irish Adventurers. He and Squier jointly subscribed a further £450 on 19 July 1642 and in 1647 the pair took advantage of the doubling ordinance by providing another £150.55CJ ii. 391b; PJ iii. 408; J.P. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement of Ireland (Dublin, 1875), 406; Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 176; CSP Ire. Adventurers 1642-1659, p. 231. As both had these stakes in the Adventurers, it is difficult to determine which sat on which of the various Commons committees on Ireland, although it is known that Alexander was appointed to the committee for the Adventurers set up June 1643.56CJ ii. 569b, 571b, 713a, iii. 116a, 142a, 276b. On one occasion in 1644, the brothers exercised their right, as Adventurers, to attend a meeting of the joint Committee for Irish Affairs.57Add. 4771, f. 58v.

When in the late summer of 1642 preparations began for an armed conflict, Bence may have had particular reason to view events as ominous. On the afternoon of 4 August 1642, only 18 days before the royal standard was raised at Nottingham, a meteorite fell to earth on the land of one of the local Members between Woodbridge and Aldeburgh and was presented to him.58A Signe from Heaven (1642, E.111.2). His estates being at Friston and Haslewood, Bence was most plausibly the recipient. This event was inevitably interpreted as a divine warning of the troubles to come.

Throughout 1642 the Bences were involved in matters relating to the ordnance and as war came closer the business became more urgent. Initially, their involvement arose from their interest in shipping.59CJ ii. 442b, 597b, 619b, 731a, 733a, 736b; iii. 186a, 188a, 193a, 356a, 357a, 568a, 629a. Bence and Samuel Vassall were among six MPs who, in February 1642, were sent to inspect a ship with a cargo of saltpetre.60CJ ii. 442b. The following month it is more likely to have been the elder of the brothers (Squier having been elected only days before) who was added to the committee for gunpowder (12 Mar.).61CJ ii. 476a. One of them took part in the two delegations sent in June and July 1642 to oversee the arrival of the ships bringing the ammunition stores from Hull to London.62CJ ii. 597b, 672a. When the Commons feared in July 1642 that stores from the Tower of London might be surreptitiously removed to York to aid the king, one of them (with Miles Corbett* and Thomas Arundell*) was sent to prevent the move. Bence may also have sat on the four-man committee (Vassall, Venn and Rolle being the other members) convened in September 1642 to decide whether arms should be sent to the Scots as replacements for those they had provided for the Irish campaign.63CJ ii. 688a, 777b. He and Squier certainly were included on 3 November on the committee to secure the Tower of London and a year later one of them headed the delegation sent to ask its lieutenant, Sir John Conyers, to hand over control of the fortress to the lord mayor and sheriffs of London during his absence from the capital.64CJ ii. 833a; iii. 195b.

These were not the least of the responsibilities being entrusted to Bence. In addition to his inclusion on the Committee of Navy and Customs, he was appointed a navy commissioners in mid-September 1642.65Supra, ‘Committee of Navy and Customs’; A. and O. Early in December the Commons attempted (unsuccessfully) to add Alexander, his brother Squier and Samuel Vassall to the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports which had been created the previous October to exercise the power of the admiralty following the dismissal of Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland.66CJ ii. 728a, 872b. Alexander may well have benefited commercially from his close involvement in Parliament’s naval administration. Two of the ships in which he had interests, the Blessing and the newly-built Samuel of London, were employed in the summer and winter fleets of 1643 and in January 1644 it fell to him and the marshal of the admiralty to sell coal which had been captured by the Blessing in the course of its duties.67CJ iii. 76a; Bodl. Rawl. A.220, ff. 68v, 81v-82v, 84; Rawl. A.221, ff. 33v, 99, 142, 143, 148v, 182v; Rawl. A.222, ff. 11, 12v, 13v, 31v-32, 54v-55; Civil War Docs. 1642-1648, 83, 245, 252, 275, 407; J.R. Powell, The Navy in the Eng. Civil War (1962), 200, 202. On 8 May 1643 the Commons ordered that the lands of the royalist captain and former MP for Aldeburgh, Marmaduke Rawdon†, be seized to pay off money owed by the navy to Bence and Thomas Cullen.68CJ iii. 76a; CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 468-9. Bence may also have had the chance to act as a victualler supplying the fleet.69HMC Portland, i. 94 That he and his brother were working so hard on Parliament’s behalf made the snobbery of Sir Simonds D’Ewes* towards them all the more unfair. On 28 March 1643 the Commons debated whether those Members who had been reluctant to contribute financially towards the war should be compelled to do so. D’Ewes had one or both the Bence brothers in mind when he pointed out to a colleague that some of those who had supported this proposal were ‘mechanics’ and ‘men of mean fortune’ who had little to lose.70Harl. 164, f. 345v.

A committee to raise money for the navy by persuading the new customs commissioners and the Merchant Adventurers to lend money on the credit of the anticipated customs was set up on 29 August 1643.71CJ iii. 222a. Earlier that year either Alexander or Squier had participated in efforts by the Commons to prevent disruption to the revenues following the dismissal of the customs commissioners for refusing to lend the money demanded by Parliament. In the middle of that particular crisis (16 Jan. 1643), one of them was also added to the committee for trade.72CJ ii. 919b, 928b; iii. 29b, 41a; Add. 18777, f. 121. Alexander was certainly one of the six MPs appointed on 5 June 1643 to the short-lived committee for accounts, which it was hoped would improve the efficiency of revenue collection.73CJ iii. 115b. Both brothers continued to sit on committees dealing with the more routine aspects of commercial policy.74CJ iii. 16b, 26b, 263b.

The lapse of the navy commission in December 1643 still left Bence with plenty to do, for much naval business still came before the Commons and its committees. He was involved in at least some of the committees which oversaw the deployments of the 1643 and 1644 summer fleets.75CJ iii. 431b, 722a; iv. 57a. When the Commons wanted a seized consignment of oats delivered to the army, they turned to Bence, Vassall and Rolle. Bence, or his brother, also undertook to deliver gunpowder to Portsmouth, and he and Vassall evidently made the same commitment regarding some pistols to be sent to the lord general, the 3rd earl of Essex (though they failed to fulfil it). It was again with Vassall that Bence was sent by the Commons in October 1643 to ask the excise commissioners if they intended to provide the £2,000 for the cost of victuals, as required by ordinance.76CJ iii. 592a, 676b; CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 287-8; 1644, p. 501; 1644-5, pp. 49, 55, 137.

The passage of the Self-Denying Ordinance directly benefited Bence. One of the brothers had sat on the committee to consider the second ordinance (24 Mar. 1645).77CJ iv. 88a. By forcing Warwick’s resignation as lord high admiral, it gave Parliament the opportunity to set up another committee for the admiralty, to which Bence was named in April 1645.78CJ iv. 112a; LJ vii. 327a; A. and O. He also figured in abortive attempts by the Commons to create a second body to undertake the actual command of the fleet at sea that summer. Probably conceived of as a way of allowing Warwick to retain effective control while providing potential checks on his authority, this proposal would have created a committee consisting of a peer and two MPs. On 28 April the Commons voted to nominate Warwick and Bence, but the third place proved less easy to fill. Agreement to appoint Peregrine Pelham* was only reached after John Rolle and Squier Bence had been considered and rejected.79CJ iv. 125a, 128b; Harl. 166, ff. 205v, 206v; Add. 31116, pp. 413-14. When the bill effecting these changes was sent up to the Lords, however, it met with a frosty response. Still smarting from the wrangle over self-denial, the Lords chose to use this issue to emphasize that the Self-Denying Ordinance did not create a bar on peers holding new appointments. On 7 May they resolved that the command of the fleet should be placed into the hands of a single individual, thus blocking the appointment of Bence and Pelham. On the 15th, the Commons side-stepped the Lords’ obstructions by ordering the Admiralty Committee to appoint William Batten† as vice-admiral and giving him temporary command of the fleet.80Supra, ‘Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports’; LJ vii. 357b-358a; Harl. 166, f. 209v; Add. 31116, p. 417; CJ iv. 144b; Mercurius Aulicus (4-11 May 1645), 1576-7. However, Bence did not need to go to sea to influence the conduct of the fleet.

The Self-Denying Ordinance brought Bence another position. With the removal of Sir Walter Erle as lieutenant of the ordnance, in June 1645 Parliament created its own committee to exercise the powers of that office and appointed to it Bence and his usual associates, Vassall and Rolle. At some point, he managed to acquire several lodging rooms in the victualling office in the Tower.81CJ iv. 178b; LJ vii. 468a; SP28/350/5, unfol. ; CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 172.

The previously active Bence became far less visible in Parliament throughout late 1645 and almost all of 1646. His single possible committee appointment during the whole first half of 1646 concerned compensation for the heirs of those killed fighting for Parliament (23 Feb.).82CJ iv. 452a. More certain is that he was appointed on 17 September 1646 to the committee to hear a petition from the Levant Company and several weeks earlier he had also attended a meeting of the Committee of Navy and Customs.83CJ iv. 671a; Add. 22546, f. 11. Over the following months he attended the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports regularly (having been added to this body in April 1645) and in December 1646 was delegated the job of deciding whether the list of ships assigned to the winter guard should be altered.84Supra, ‘Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports’; ADM7/673, p. 55. On 21 November one of the Bences was the teller in the Commons with Anthony Nicoll* in favour of the appointment of Edward Vaughan* to the Montgomeryshire county committee.85CJ iv. 726b.

The matter of most immediate concern to Bence during the first half of 1647 was the opposition in the Lords to his own appointment as a commissioner of the navy. On 3 December 1646, following the death of John Morris, the Admiralty Committee recommended Bence as his replacement as someone ‘qualified with very good experience and abilities for executing the place’.86ADM7/673, p. 60. Warwick informed the Lords of this on 11 December and four days later the Commons concurred. The Commons also decided that Bence’s son, John*, should be given Morris’s captaincy in the navy. Although informed of this decision by Sir Gilbert Gerard* on 22 December, the Lords did nothing. Reminders from the Commons transmitted by Robert Reynolds* and Denzil Holles* on 8 February and 13 April 1647 made no difference.87LJ viii. 605a, 621b, 712b; ix. 136b; CJ v. 14a, 79a. Clearly Warwick, Holles and the Presbyterians saw Bence as their man for this job and, for this reason, the Independent interest in the Lords blocked him. When in the summer of 1647 army agitators attempted to topple the Presbyterian leadership of the navy, Bence was one of six members of the Admiralty Committee who issued an order on 12 June for the navy to remain loyal.88ADM7/673, p. 323. The wife of the future regicide, Col. John Moore*, who had dealings with the Bences in connection with the work of the commission during the final weeks of June, warned her husband that they were not to be trusted, probably because of the Bences’ support for the Presbyterian leaders.89HMC 10th Rep. IV, 97-8. Understandably, at about this time, after the Eleven Members withdrew from London, the Bence brothers followed suit.90CJ v. 228a. On 9 September, a week after he had been given permission to go into the country, Alexander was still in London, attending a meeting of the Admiralty Committee, but he then disappeared for six weeks.91CJ v. 288b, 330a; ADM7/673, pp. 375-417. On his return, he again became fairly active on the committee.92ADM7/673; Add. 9305. Not until late March 1648, however, when he was named to a committee for determining the powers of the court of admiralty (a subject of obvious interest to him), is there a clear indication that he had resumed attendance in the Commons.93CJ v. 505b.

Bence’s prospects soon brightened owing to the naval crisis commencing in late May 1648, with the mutiny in support of the king by those ships stationed in the Downs (off the east coast of Kent), and the consequent reappointment of Warwick as lord high admiral. Soon Bence was among those to whom the Derby House Committee turned for assistance. On 8 June Bence was ordered to go to Harwich to deal with the unrest among the crews of the Tiger and the Providence. An initial plan to sail there in a convoy to protect an ammunition ship and then to assess whether it was safe for the convoy to proceed to Hull, was abandoned as the latter was not yet ready.94CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 106, 110, 111, 113, 114, 116. Arriving in Harwich by other means, he recruited sailors to suppress the mutiny, enlisting colliers with the promise that their wages would be paid before their departure on this mission. Confronted with opposition from some less accommodating captains, he imposed an embargo on all their ships leaving the port.95CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 197-8; LJ x. 385b; CJ v. 642b.

When Warwick was dispatched to sea exercising the full authority of lord high admiral, Bence was one of two MPs sent by the Commons to shadow him, indicating that their scheme of April and May 1645 had not been forgotten. The Lords appeared reluctant to agree to the appointments of Bence and Walter Strickland* (the replacement for Edward Popham*, who declined to serve), only tacitly doing so a fortnight later by approving the instructions prepared for them by the Derby House Committee. In the meantime, the Commons were forced to allay criticism of Bence’s actions at Harwich by publically endorsing them.96CJ v. 635a, 639a, 642a, 642b, 646b, 648b; LJ x. 384a, 385b, 397b-398a; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 195, 197-8, 201; Whitelocke, Mems. ii. 362. On 4 August 1644, before leaving London to join Warwick onboard the St George, Bence and Strickland informed the Westminster Assembly that the Commons had accepted their nominations for eight ministers to accompany Warwick to sea.97Mins. and Pprs. of the Westminster Assemby 1643-1652 ed. C. Van Dixhoorn (Oxford, 2012), iv. 778; CJ v. 658a.

Bence was apparently frustrated that a near clash in the Medway on 29 August was followed by a four-month stand-off between Warwick’s fleet and that of the rebels, now commanded by the prince of Wales, during which Warwick lurked in the Channel. According to one of his reports to Speaker Lenthall, at a council of war held on 18 September, he took the lead in persuading the captains of Warwick’s fleet to enter the Goeree estuary on the frontier between the United Provinces and the Spanish Netherlands, where the rebels had taken shelter. While Strickland was then sent ashore to open negotiations, Bence went to Rotterdam to buy supplies. His disappointment when the weather and the shortage of supplies caused Warwick to order a return to England on 21 November is all too evident. Bence informed Lenthall that all this withdrawal would only strengthen the position of the rebel fleet.98Civil War Docs. 1642-1648, 385-6, 391, 396; Bodl. Rawl. A.224, ff. 15v, 30; CJ vi. 80a; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 301. His request to be allowed to return to London (possibly prompted by the ill-health of his brother, Squier, who died two days later) was approved by the Commons on 25 November.99CJ vi. 87b. When the army purged Parliament just over a week later (6 Dec.), his links with the Presbyterians meant that his sympathies lay with the victims, though he himself was not secluded.100Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 368.

Bence had no reason to support those in power after 1648. In early 1649 Parliament legislated to remove politically unsuitable persons from the membership of Trinity House and it may be that at this point Bence withdrew from direct involvement in its affairs.101Harris, Trinity House, 37, 39. Albeit with four months’ notice, he was required to give up his rooms in the Tower when the new navy commissioners took them over in 1649. Control of the naval slaughterhouse in East Smithfield (presumably part of the victualling yard), once held by one of the Bences, also passed to the commissioners.102CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 171, 172, 534, 535. However, perhaps perceiving advantages in co-operation, Bence had frequent dealings during the early 1650s with the council of state and its sub-committees on namaritime matters including the organization of convoys, the transportation of ammunition to Virginia and the release of captured sailors. All this suggests that his main consideration was support for the war against the Dutch, no doubt for commercial reasons.103CSP Dom. 1650, p. 377; 1651-2, pp. 371, 374, 380, 382, 433, 452, 496, 498; 1652-3, pp. 155, 318, 349; 1653-4, p. 266; Add. 4156, f. 17.

In 1648 Bence had been elected for the third time as a bailiff of Aldeburgh, but thereafter his civic ambitions may have expanded to become metropolitan.104Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE1/P7/1, unf. On 17 May 1653 he was elected as an alderman for Walbrook ward in the City, on the nomination of two former lord mayors, Isaac Penington* and Sir John Wollaston. In the world of London politics, Penington could have crossed Bence’s path in any number of ways; as lieutenant of the Tower between 1643 and 1645, as an Irish Adventurer, as governor of the Levant Company or as an associate of Vassall. He did not serve for long as an alderman, however. He was given permission to resign on 1 September that same year on the grounds that his estate was insufficient to sustain the position, a reason somewhat at odds with his known wealth.105Aldermen of London, i. 222, ii. 82-3; Bodl. Tanner 226, p. 74; Grantees of Arms ed. W.H. Rylands (Harl. Soc. lxvi.), 20.

There is no evidence of reluctance to stand once again for Parliament in 1654. Under the terms of the Instrument of Government, Aldeburgh had lost both its parliamentary seats. With the seats at Ipswich and Dunwich claimed by others, Bence’s only option in Suffolk was to seek a county seat. He garnered a respectable 852 votes when the county poll was taken at Ipswich on 12 July 1654. Seven other candidates received more, but, as there were now ten seats available, Bence's service as an MP resumed.106Suff. RO (Ipswich), GC17/755, f. 140v. In this Parliament he was joined for the first time by his former son-in-law, John Upton II*.107‘Upton ped.’, Misc. Gen. et Her., 2nd ser. ii. 113, 162; PROB11/311/477. In the weeks before Parliament assembled Bence was appointed by the council of state to the committee of Adventurers to adjudicate on disputes arising from the division of the Irish lands.108A. and O; CSP Ire. Adventurers 1642-59, p. 383. Membership of a single committee – that on the corn trade (6 Oct. 1654) – was probably the sum of his contribution to the new Parliament.109CJ vii. 374b.

In 1654 the corporation of Great Yarmouth granted Bence a lease on some lands on Cobholm Island on the northern outskirts of that town. This was adjacent to other lands which the corporation had previously mortgaged to William Burton*.110Norf. RO, Y/C 31/5a. The following year, however, the corporation sold all these lands to Bence. By then he was living in London in the parish of All Hallows, London Wall.111Norf. RO, Y/C 31/5b. His son Alexander, who had followed him into commerce, spent three years in the mid-1650s travelling through Spain, Italy and Turkey on business.112Add. 34015, f. 54.

In late February and early March 1660, when Bence sat again after the re-admission to Parliament of the secluded MPs, his principal interest was in the affairs of Trinity House. On 1 March Bence and William Prynne* headed the list of those named to the committee to consider a petition from Trinity House seeking assistance for poor sailors and their families.113CJ vii. 857b. On 12 March, the Commons appointed Bence to Trinity House's highest office, its mastership, which he held until 18 June, when the hero of the hour, (Sir) George Monck*, was elected as his successor. In the new charter granted to Trinity House on 27 November 1660, Bence was named one of the assistants, the rank immediately below that of master.114CJ vii. 871b; Diurnal of Thomas Rugg 1659-1661 ed. W.L. Sachse (Cam. Soc. 3rd ser., xci.), 58; Trinity House ed. Chaplin, 5-7, 12, 50.

The appointment of Bence’s successor as an assistant on 8 November 1662 provides the best available indication of his date of death.115HMC 8th Rep. 251; Trinity House ed. Chaplin, 52-3, 124-5. By the will he had made about three years earlier, his lands in and around Aldeburgh passed to his eldest son, John. His Irish lands, on the other hand, passed to his other son, Alexander, who became a farmer of the Irish revenue.116PROB11/311/477. John had already served once as an MP, in 1659 for his father's old seat at Aldeburgh, and he would do so again from 1669.