MUSSENDEN, Francis (1604-aft. 1660), of Healing, Lincs.

The Mussendens had moved to Lincolnshire from Buckinghamshire by the early fifteenth century, establishing their principal residence at Healing, near Great Grimsby.27Lincs. Peds. 699-700. Mussenden’s father appears to have resided first at Great Coates in the parish of Healing, then re-located to Alvingham, near Louth, before settling eventually at Burgh-le-Marsh, about 15 miles north-east of Boston.28Lincs. Peds. 699-700; Al. Cant. Mussenden, having entered the legal profession, became a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn in 1636 and had gained sufficient standing locally by July 1637 to secure appointment as recorder of Great Grimsby.29LI Admiss. i. 209; LI Black Bks. ii. 339; N. E. Lincs. RO, Great Grimsby Mayor’s Ct. Bks. 1/102/8, f. 16v. However, he held this office for less than two years, being replaced in April 1639 ‘for his disregard and neglect of the mayor and burgesses’. The exact nature of his offence is unknown.30N. E. Lincs. RO, Great Grimsby Mayor’s Ct. Bks. 1/102/8, f. 35v.

At the outbreak of civil war, Mussenden sided with Parliament, and by the autumn of 1643 the Lincolnshire parliamentarian commander Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham, had appointed him and William Wolley* commissioners ‘for the disposing of the delinquents estates and other money raised by assessment and otherwise for the maintenance of his lordship’s regiment’.31SP28/11, f. 9. In July 1644, the Commons added Mussenden to the Lincolnshire sequestration committee, and by August, at the latest, he was a member of the county committee.32CJ iii. 548b; J. Lilburne, England’s Birthright Justified (1645), 17 (E.304.17). His reasons for siding with Parliament in the war remain unclear; his career profile suggests that he was a man of godly convictions, but there is no firm evidence to this effect.

As part of Willoughby’s military administration, Mussenden became involved in the county committee’s quarrel during the mid-1640s with the Lincolnshire parliamentarian officer Colonel Edward King, who had launched a bitter attack upon Willoughby and his agents in 1643.33C. Holmes, ‘Col. King and Lincs. politics, 1642-6’, HJ xvi. 451-84. In August 1644, Mussenden, Wolley and other members of the county committee presented articles to the Commons, accusing King of acting in a ‘tyrannical and arbitrary’ manner and of imprisoning and feuding with ‘such as in whom the power of religion is most eminent’.34J. Lilburne, The Just Mans Justification (1646), 3, 8, 19-20 (E.340.12). Colonel King hit back in 1646, publishing a lengthy denunciation of the county committee’s proceedings, which included an allegation that Mussenden and Wolley had frustrated the collection of assessments for the army.35Holmes, ‘Col. King’, 479-80; E. King, A Discovery of the Arbitrary, Tyrannical and Illegal Actions of Some of the Committee of the County of Lincoln (1647), 6 (E.373.3). It is puzzling, therefore, that Mussenden failed to sign any of the county committee’s subsequent letters to the Commons, denouncing King as a delinquent.36Bodl. Tanner 50, f. 478; Tanner 58, f. 39; Nalson VI, f. 72.

Mussenden seems to have been acting as a business agent for his fellow Lincolnshire parliamentarian and barrister William Ellys* by 1647, but beyond that nothing is known about his activities between 1646 and 1649.37C54/3386/2. However, under the Rump he emerged as an active member of the Lindsey bench and a leading figure in Lincolnshire’s sequestration machinery.38SP46/105, f. 182; Lincs. RO, LQS/A/1/11, no. 26; LQS/A/1/12, nos. 47, 69, 71-2, 100-6, 108-9; CCC 172. His closest colleague among his fellow magistrates was, once again, William Wolley. Mussenden’s experience in selling and managing delinquents’ estates (his role under Lord Willoughby) and his legal training may help to explain his appointment as a commissioner for removing obstructions on the sale of confiscated estates in April 1652.39A. and O. ii. 581. This office, in which he remained active until at least June 1658, came with a salary of £200 a year, although the government neglected to pay the commissioners for much of the period 1654-8.40LPL, COMM Add 1, f. 47; CSP Dom. 1654, p. 397; 1657-8, p. 320.

The fall of the Rump in April 1653 evidently posed no danger to Mussenden’s budding career in central administration, for in November 1653, the Nominated Parliament, on the recommendation of Sir William Roberts* (one of Mussenden’s fellow commissioners for removing obstructions), appointed him a commissioner for the sale and improvement of royal forests.41CJ vii. 349; A. and O. ii. 581, 783. Similarly, Mussenden seems to have negotiated the transition from commonwealth to protectorate with ease, being named with four of his fellow commissioners for removing obstructions to the August 1654 commission for surveying royal lands.42A. and O. ii. 949. His career received a further boost in September 1655, when William Ellys, the recorder of Boston (and protectoral solicitor-general), appointed him his deputy.43Boston Corporation Mins. ed. Bailey, iii. 250. Mussenden attended Boston corporation meetings infrequently, but was not idle in his office, being awarded £5 by the town in April 1657 ‘as a gratuity ... in respect of his service done as a judge of the admiralty and otherwise’.44Boston Corporation Mins. ed. Bailey, iii. 258, 276, 295, 304, 315.

In the elections for Lincolnshire to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Mussenden voted for Colonel Edward Ayscoghe*, Colonel Edward Rosseter*, Major Thomas Lister*, Francis Clinton alias Fines*, Charles Hall*, Thomas Hall*, Henry Massingberd, William Savile* and William Wolley*.45Lincs. RO, MM6/10/5/13. He had served alongside most of these men on the county committee during the 1640s. Seven of Mussenden’s chosen candidates were duly elected (Ayscoghe and Massingberd were not), although four – Charles Hall, Lister, Savile and Wolley – were excluded by the protectoral council as enemies of the government.

In the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Mussenden was returned for Boston with the veteran Parliament-man Sir Anthony Irby. He almost certainly owed his return to the backing of the corporation, although he did own property at Leverton, about five miles from the borough.46C54/3564/8. He received only one appointment in this Parliament, when he was named to a committee set up on 2 March to consider a petition from Lincolnshire.47CJ vii. 609a. He made more of a mark in debate, where he followed Ellys and other supporters of the protectorate in endorsing the Humble Petition and Advice as a valid basis for settlement. On 1 March, he urged the Commons to recognise the Cromwellian Other House first and then determine what limits to set upon its authority – not vice versa as the republicans were urging.48Burton’s Diary, iii. 550. Six days later (7 Mar.), he re-entered this debate, arguing that the Commons should agree to ‘transact’ with the Other House and that its Members were entirely trustworthy: ‘They have not only been a screen, but a strong wall. They have gone through wet and dry, hot and cold, fire and water; they have not been green timber that will warp against the sun’. He also expressed faith in the Commons’ power to bring the Other House to heel if necessary: ‘I doubt not but that you may recall that trust, when it is abused. The people will stand by you. It is not in the power of those colonels that sit there to change the hearts and hands of the people against you’. His reference to ‘those colonels’ suggests that he had reservations about some Members of the Other House, the military figures in particular. Indeed, in his opening remarks that day he had expressed a preference for an Other House in which ‘the rights of the old peers might have been saved’.49Burton’s Diary, iv. 54-5. His last known contribution on the floor of the House came on 16 March, when he moved that Robert Goodwin be appointed stand-in Speaker for the incapacitated Chaloner Chute I. However, Sir Arthur Hesilrige succeeded in having this honour conferred on John Bampfylde.50Burton’s Diary, iv. 149-50.

Mussenden’s support for the protectorate was not well taken by the restored Rump, for he was dropped from the Midland circuit oyer and terminer commission in June 1659 and omitted from the militia commission the following month. He seems to have come back into favour as the Rumpers’ grip on power began to loosen in the early weeks of 1660, and on 24 January the Commons ordered that his name be added to the Lincolnshire assessment commission.51CJ vii. 821a. Having supported the protectorate it is likely that he welcomed the restoration of monarchy in some form, although he seems to have disappeared from public life entirely after 1 May 1660, when he attended his last meeting of the Boston corporation.52Boston Corporation Mins. ed. Bailey, iii. 315. Nothing is known about his subsequent career (if any), his date of death or his place of burial. No will is recorded and none of his immediate descendants sat in Parliament.