BRANDLINGE, John (d. 1667), of Ipswich, Suff.

John Brandlinge was the first member of his family to live in Suffolk. The previous five generations of Brandlings had been residents of Northumberland and he had numerous relatives in there and in Yorkshire and Durham, most of whom would be royalists. Robert Brandling of Leathley, the civil war cavalry colonel of varying allegiancies, was a distant cousin.19Peds. recorded at the Heralds’ Vis. of the Co. of Northumb. ed. J. Foster (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, [1891]), 20; Surtees, Co. Dur. ii. 90-3; Burke, Hist. of the Commoners, ii. 39-40; J. Burke and J.B. Burke, Dictionary of the Landed Gentry (1846-9), i. 136; The Gen., n.s. xviii. 48-9.

Brandlinge probably began his career as a merchant in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He was certainly admitted as a freeman of the corporation and at some point he also joined the town’s company of merchant adventurers.20Bacon, Annalls, 532; Extracts from the Recs. of the Merchants Adventurers of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (Surtees Soc. ci.), 294. However, he was not the individual involved in the law suit brought by the Newcastle corporation in the early 1620s over the levying of coal duties on the River Tyne; that was the eldest son of his second cousin, the Morpeth MP, Robert Brandling†.21Howell, Newcastle, 31-2; Hist. of Newcastle and Gateshead ed. R. Welford (1884-7), iii. 254-6; HP Commons 1604-1629. The future Suffolk MP would instead seek his fortune elsewhere. His decision to sell off the gravestone of one of his relatives in All Saints’ Church for re-use could be seen as symbolic of his decision to erase his links with the town.22T. Sopwith, A Hist. and Descriptive Acc. of All Saints’ Church (Newcastle, 1826), 36.

Brandlinge’s connection with Ipswich presumably developed through the coal trade network along the east coast. By 1628 he had been admitted as an Ipswich freeman.23Suff. RO (Ipswich), C5/14/3, f. 223. His marriage to Mary Carnaby, the daughter of John Carnaby, one of the leading Ipswich merchants, confirmed this connection and was probably undertaken with his commercial interests in mind. When Carnaby died in 1631, he left to his daughter and Brandlinge shares in a ship, the Mayflower of Ipswich. Although attempts have been made to suggest a link between the 1620 voyage and a ship operating from Harwich and Aldeburgh, Carnaby’s legacy can be shown not to have been the particular ship of that name, as this ship had been built only in 1629.24PROB11/160/192; R.G. Marsden, ‘The Mayflower’, EHR xix. 669-80; SP16/16, f. 167; ‘Mayflower of Ipswich’, E. Anglian Misc. (1942), 8-9. Brandlinge’s wife died in 1635 as did a son, also called John, at the beginning of the following year. He then married another Ipswich resident, Abigail, the widow of one of the portmen, Daniel Snow.25St Clement’s, Ipswich par. reg.; Marriage Lics. ed. Crisp, 113; Bacon, Annalls, 526n. One hostile observer would tell Sir Simonds D’Ewes* in 1645 that Brandlinge was ‘of late a mariner till he matched with a rich widow’.26Suff. Cttees. for Scandalous Ministers ed. Holmes, 111, 112. Brandlinge retained his status as a freeman of Newcastle, however, and it was at that town, rather than Ipswich, that he asked to have an apprentice admitted in 1646.27Bacon, Annalls, 532; Surtees, Co. Dur. ii. 93.

The earliest indication of Brandlinge’s involvement in the civic life of his adopted town is his role in the lobbying undertaken by the Ipswich corporation during the opening months of the Long Parliament. Faced with the claim of two prominent courtiers, Henry Jermyn* and George Kirke†, that the town possessed parts of the estate of Cardinal Wolsey which properly belonged to the crown, the corporation sent a delegation comprising Peter Fisher, Robert Dunkon* and Brandlinge to London to assist their MPs, William Cage* and John Gurdon*, in defending their position.28Suff. RO (Ipswich), C1/7A/3; Bacon, Annalls, 526. Another of their concerns was the recent attempt by the government to interfere in the right to make appointments to five of the churches within the town.29CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 223, 529-30; 1637, pp. 144, 160; Bodl. Tanner 220, ff. 7-43. The corporation assumed that Parliament would be sympathetic to their efforts to resist episcopal and royal efforts to challenge a right of parishes to select their own clergymen, in a case where that right had been assumed in an Act of Parliament passed under Elizabeth to provide for the maintenance of these ministers. On that basis, they instructed Fisher, Dunkon and Brandlinge in February 1641 to explore the possibility of getting a new act to confirm the privilege.30Bacon, Annalls, 526; Suff. ed. Everitt, 110.

Shortly after his return from London, Brandlinge was nominated as a portman of the town, but he declined this honour. Perhaps this was because of the same scruple raised in September 1643, when he accepted the position of portman, but took the oath ‘saving his oath as freeman of Newcastle’.31Bacon, Annalls, 527, 532. Multiple civic loyalties did not prevent him agreeing in September 1641 to become both one of the Ipswich bailiffs and a justice of the peace for that year. Unusually, he was re-elected as bailiff the following year, probably because some on the corporation wanted to ensure that the position was held by someone who strongly supported Parliament.32Bacon, Annalls, 526, 528, 529; Heavens, ‘To be Doers’, 187-8. One important duty he performed during the first of those terms was to travel to London with the town’s latest petition to Parliament. He was able to present it in person to the Commons on 12 February 1642. The petition reminded MPs of their earlier complaints about their local clergymen before endorsing the demands which had been made by Parliament in its recent Grand Remonstrance. The Speaker, William Lenthall*, thanked Brandlinge on the House’s behalf. 33CJ ii. 428a; PJ i. 362; The Humble Petitions of the Bailifes, Port-men, and other the Inhabitants of Ipswich (1641, E.135.35). Another task he undertook with his fellow bailiff, Edmund Humphrey, during that first term was to oversee the collections for the Irish contributions from the town, while during the second term he and William Tiler acted as receivers for the money lent on the Propositions by the Ipswich citizens.34SP28/190: abstract of subsidy acc., [c. 1642], pp. 46-7; P. Fisher, For the...Committees for the County of Suffolke (1648), 8 (E.448.13). As bailiff and a coal merchant, Brandlinge was asked by the Navy Committee in June 1643 to organize the sale of the cargo of coal seized, on behalf of Parliament, on board the Susan and James of Ipswich.35Bodl. Rawl. A.221, f. 69v. It also fell to him to warn the Essex county committee that he had heard from Cage and Gurdon and from the Suffolk deputy lieutenants that a landing by three Danish ships was anticipated somewhere along the East Anglian coast.36Eg. 2647, f. 131. His payment of £50 placed him among the more generous of the contributors to the loan organized in Ipswich by Cage in the autumn of 1643 for the benefit of the navy.37Bodl. Rawl. A.221, f. 146.

The conclusion of the second term as bailiff in September 1643 was followed by his admission as a portman. Parliament also marked it by appointing him to the town’s committee for sequestrations and the assessment.38Bacon, Annalls, 532; CJ iii. 257b. When a vacancy occurred on the county commission for scandalous ministers with the death of Nathaniel Bacon of Friston (father of Thomas Bacon*) during the summer of 1644, Brandlinge was appointed to fill it.39Suff. Cttees. for Scandalous Ministers ed. Holmes, 26, 112. Membership of this important commission probably led in October 1644 to his inclusion on the standing committee for the county.40CJ iii. 675b; HMC 6th Rep. 33. It was probably at about that same time that he was also added to the commission of the peace. Surviving warrants of the county committee bear his signature from June 1645 and it was in that month that he was one of the 12 gentlemen assigned by the committee to oversee Landguard Fort.41SP28/243; SP28/251: order of Suff. co. cttee. 10 Oct. 1646; Suff. ed. Everitt, 71. Between then and 1646 he was evidently a regular attender at its meetings. He was also included on at least one delegation which visited London to consult with the Committee of Both Kingdoms on behalf of his colleagues.42Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/1, ff. 64v-65. This involvement in local administration at a county level, especially in the matter of reforming the abuses of the local clergy, made his appointment as an elder of the Ipswich classis an obvious next step.43Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 424. He was among members of the Ipswich corporation appointed to be present in July 1646 when Matthew Lawrence was interviewed to check his suitability to be the new town preacher.44Suff. ed. Everitt, 113. It was an indication of his usefulness to the corporation that for four years running, from 1645 to 1649, he was named as one of their justices of the peace.45Bacon, Annalls, 541, 545, 548. Three days after Charles I’s execution, the town assembly decided to send Brandlinge and Jacob Caley* to London to get their MPs, Gurdon and Francis Bacon*, and their recorder, Nathaniel Bacon*, to raise their concerns about royalist disruption to shipping.46Suff. ed. Everitt, 116-17; Suff. RO (Ipswich), C6/1/6, pp. 70-1.

Parliament appointed him to the militia commission in December 1648 and added him to the assessment commission for the county and for Ipswich in April 1649.47A. and O.; SP28/243. From 1649 onwards he became even more active as a justice of the peace, regularly attending the quarter sessions held at Ipswich and Woodbridge. Such enthusiasm was all the more welcome given the difficulty during these years in finding gentlemen willing to serve as justices at all.48Suff. RO (Ipswich), B105/2/1-5. His activities as a magistrate included the investigation in 1651 into allegation that one of the local ministers, Samuel Goulty, had preached a sermon criticising Parliament and the army, and the dispersal in 1652 of prisoners held in the town.49CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 18-19, 59, 115-16, 296; 1652-3, p. 570; 1653-4, p. 523. In October 1650 Brandlinge and Caley were appointed by the council of state as the captains of the militia companies of foot raised in Ipswich.50SP25/119, p. 66.

The network of associates he had gained through public service also operated at a more personal level. In 1648 his eldest surviving son, Samuel, had gone to Jesus College, Cambridge, with Nathaniel, son of Nathaniel Bacon and three years later they had been admitted together to Gray’s Inn. Samuel subsequently married a daughter of Jacob Caley.51Al. Cant.; GI Admiss. i. 257; Vis. Suff. 1664-1668, 145, 150; Soc. Antiq. MS 667, pp. 14, 20. Brandlinge was, in the meantime, still engaged in commercial activities, some of which he conducted on behalf of the government. He provided victuals worth £200 to the frigate, the Dragon, as early as 1649.52Bodl. Rawl. A.224, f. 108. In July 1652 the council of state ordered the treasurer of the excise to pay £400 to Brandlinge and John Bartram, a London fishmonger, as payment for the transportation of provisions to Limerick.53CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 610. Five years later when a request came from the general-at-sea, Edward Montagu II*, that provisions be supplied by the government to the vicomte de Turenne’s French army at Mardyke in Flanders, the council of state’s response was to turn to Brandlinge and William Burton*, the navy commissioner at Great Yarmouth, to make the necessary arrangements.54CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 106. In 1653 he had some reason for presenting a petition which the council of state thought could be referred to the admiralty commissioners and in April 1656 he was part of a group from Ipswich which asked for naval protection for their ships coming from Newcastle-upon-Tyne.55CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 416; 1655-6, p. 524.

When the position of town preacher again became vacant in 1652, a committee comprising six members of the corporation was created to find a replacement. Brandlinge was one of the six, as were Robert Dunkon and the two Bacon brother. The person they selected was one of the most prominent of all Presbyterian preachers, Stephen Marshall.56E. Anglian, n.s. ii. 80, 99-101. In the summer of 1654 it was also Brandlinge and Nathaniel Bacon who signed the statement returned to the government on the state of the living at Woodbridge.57Original Letters ed. Nickolls, 155.

The only Parliament in which Brandlinge served was that of 1654. Standing for the county seats on 12 July 1654, he secured seventh place. In his notes on the result, William Bloys* was unsure whether his new colleague had polled either 947 or 942 votes but, whatever the exact result, Brandlinge was comfortably above the number needed to get one of the ten available seats.58Suff. RO (Ipswich), GC17/755, f. 140v. His recorded contribution in the Commons consists of him being named to five committees. Of these, the first two are most worthy of comment. When the question of how the whaling industry should be regulated was referred to the committee on corn supplies (12 Oct. 1654), he was added to that committee. That was doubtless because of the involvement by Ipswich merchants in the East Coast whaling fleet. It may also have reflected a personal interest by him in the matter.59CJ vii. 375b. Regarding the bill to allow towns to levy rates to support their local ministers, for which Brandlinge was also added to the relevant committee (7 Dec.), there was another direct Ipswich interest. Such a bill promised to confirm the arrangement specific to Ipswich over which the dispute with Bishop Matthew Wren had been conducted almost 20 years before. This supposition is strengthened by the fact that another Suffolk MP, William Gibbs*, was third person added to this committee and that Francis and Nathaniel Bacon were also among those added.60CJ vii. 397b. The other committees to which he was appointed were those on the abolition of purveyance (22 Dec.), the encouragement of civil law (22 Dec.), and the excise and naval debts (18 Jan. 1655).61CJ vii. 407b, 419a.

Brandlinge stood for the county again in 1656 but was unsuccessful. Although he polled almost exactly the same number of votes as before (954), the increased electorate meant that 14 other people were placed above him; the highest loser, Thomas Bedingfield received 135 votes more than he did.62Suff. RO (Ipswich), GC17/755, f. 140v. Sixteen days earlier, at the election to elect the Ipswich MPs, Brandlinge, as one of the presiding bailiffs, had suppressed an attempt was made to disrupt proceedings. When one of those present objected to the use of the phrase ‘his highness’s Parliament’ in the indenture, Brandlinge moved that it be returned in the way the government had intended. This motion was approved.63TSP v. 297. Despite Brandlinge’s failure to be re-elected, the corporation decided a matter of weeks later that he should work with the two Ipswich MPs, Nathaniel and Francis Bacon, to secure from Parliament a ban on the St George’s and St James’s fairs in the town.64E. Anglian, iii. 267.

In 1655 Brandlinge had been chosen as a bailiff at Ipswich for the third time, but had been prevented by illness from attending the meeting of the great court at Michaelmas and instead sent by letter his nominations for the justices of the peace, among them Robert Dunkon and Jacob Caley. The junior bailiff, Peter Fisher, thereupon objected to Caley.65E. Anglian, n.s. ii. 334, 364-5. At other times Brandlinge continued to contribute to the routine deliberations of the corporation.66E. Anglian, n.s. ii. 137, 175, 243, 262; iii. 320, 382-3; iv. 90; v. 317; vi. 60, 318-19. Following the issuing of the new militia commission for the county in July 1659 (which continued Brandlinge as a commissioner), the corporation sought to have their own town militia reorganized. In August Brandlinge was among those who drafted a letter to Parliament asking that it be restored to its old form. When in April 1661 this issue was still causing problems, he was appointed to the corporation committee to prevent the deputy lieutenants exploiting it to overrate the inhabitants.67A. and O.; Suff. ed. Everitt, 125; E. Anglian, n.s. vii. 79.

After the Restoration Brandlinge may have played a less active part on the corporation. When he was elected bailiff for the fourth time on 8 September 1662, he was not present at the meeting of the great court and, when he was informed of the decision, he announced his intention to refuse the position. The corporation accepted his excuse of old age. He also resigned as one of the portmen.68E. Anglian, n.s. vii. 142-3, 153. But he may have been taking this course to avoid taking the oaths stipulated by the Corporation Act. He had already been removed from the Suffolk commission of the peace in 1660.69C220/9/4, ff. 79v-82v.

Brandlinge continued to live in Ipswich until his death in 1667. In about May 1665 he bought some marshland at Falkenham from Sir William Blois, son of William Bloys*; the steward of this estate was probably John Sicklemor*.70Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA30/787, f. 26a; PROB11/326/619. On 20 October he began drafting his will and finished it four days later. He bequeathed to his son, Samuel, his house in Ipswich, the Blois lands, his third share in land purchased in partnership with Robert Dunkon and Jacob Caley, and his shipping interests. A sum of £20 was to be distributed among poor ministers. His daughter, Abigail, was to receive lands at Stowmarket.71PROB11/326/619; PROB11/335/82. In a codicil a month later he swapped the main bequests, with Samuel getting the lands at Stowmarket and Abigail those at Falkenham. Seven months after that he added a second codicil, instructing that if Samuel failed in his duties as executor to fulfil the legacies provided for his sister, Abigail was take over that role. In the event, probate was granted to Samuel.72PROB11/326/619.

Brandlinge died on 8 March 1667. He was buried in the parish church of St Clement's, Ipswich, where there was already a marble monument to his two wives.73Bacon, Annalls, 526n; Add. 15520, f. 11. Samuel Brandling had one son, John, but neither sat in Parliament. By 1709 John Brandling was dead and, with him, the male line from his grandfather died out.74Vis. Suff. 1664-1668, 145; Procs. of the Soc. of Antiquities of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 3rd ser., viii. 122.