BALDWIN, John (d.1691), of Wendover, Bucks. and Hillingdon, Mdx.

Nothing is known of Baldwin before the Civil War. As secretary to Essex when he laid down his command under the Self-Denying Ordinance, he was compensated with the office of gentleman porter in the Tower. He acquired the manors of Wendover Borough and Wendover Forrens under the Commonwealth, and sat for the borough in Richard Cromwell’s Parliament. Re-elected in 1660, he was marked as a friend by Lord Wharton, to be managed by Edmund Petty. He played no known part in the Convention, but presumably opposed the Court. He was replaced at the Tower by a loyalist, and not reappointed to the commissions of the peace after the Restoration. As head of the prison administration for most of the Civil War he must have been highly obnoxious to many Cavaliers. He sold his Wendover property to Richard Hampden in September, and passed the last 30 years of his life in total obscurity on his small property at Hillingdon. He was buried at Hillingdon on 13 Oct. 1691.Thurloe, vii. 633; Mdx. RO, Acc. 180/650; VCH Bucks. iii. 25; C54/4059/2; Hillingdon par. reg.