BUSBRIDGE, John (c.1611-66), of Haremere, Etchingham, Suss.

Like that of so many lesser Sussex gentry in the seventeenth century, the wealth of the Busbridge family derived from the iron industry. Busbridge’s father migrated from the parish of St Magnus the Martyr near London Bridge, where he had been a skinner, and in 1611 or 1612 purchased the manors of Bugsell and Haremere, including iron mills and a forge, from Sir Robert Walsh.29Notes IPMs Suss., 44; Dunkin, Suss. Manors, i. 202; E. Suss. RO, SAS/RF9/63-5; Add. 39479, f. 205. When Busbridge senior died in December 1614, his eldest son John was less than five years old, but the details of his wardship and education are unclear. His mother remarried, first Robert Bankworth, a London scrivener, and then, by 1623, Sir Alexander Temple†. Temple was the head of the Sussex branch of the Temples of Stowe, and a ‘godly’ Member in the Parliament of 1626. He doubtless arranged for the marriage between his niece, from the Frankton branch of the family, and his step-son Busbridge, which took place only weeks before his death late in 1629.30‘Sir Alexander Temple’, HP Commons 1604-1629.

In the late 1620s and early 1630s, Busbridge lived mainly at Haremere with his wife and his step-brother, the future regicide James Temple*.31Add. 39479, f. 195; Berry, Suss. Pedigrees, 3; Vis. Bucks. (Harl. Soc. lviii), 211-3; Etchingham par. reg. In June 1633 he was in London arranging to take control of what was a sizeable family estate: his ‘cousin’, Richard Tomlyns of the Inner Temple, informed him that, after accounting for debts of over £7,000, the personal estate of John Busbridge senior had amounted to nearly £8,000.32E. Suss. RO, Dunn MS 51/50, 51. Later in the decade the Busbridges appear to have divided their time between Sussex and Warwickshire, where they visited John’s wife’s relatives at Frankton and possibly other kinsmen like her uncle, William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele. Busbridge’s mother-in-law was staying at Broughton Castle, Saye’s seat, in January 1640.33E. Suss. RO, Dunn MS 51/54.

Busbridge does not appear to have stood for election in either the Short or Long Parliaments, possibly in deference to older and more prominent gentlemen. He was, however, an active member in the commission of the peace from his appointment in 1640 until he was removed by the king in July 1642, perhaps because of his association with the Temples and Fiennes.34E. Suss. RO, QR/E51-E56. On the outbreak of civil war most of Busbridge’s kin followed Saye in supporting Parliament.35E. Suss. RO, Dunn MS 51/55, 56. Exceptionally, Busbridge’s younger brother Robert was in arms for the royalists until imprisoned in February 1645 and again in 1648, but even he had sufficient loyalty to the wider family to speak up on behalf of Nathaniel Fiennes I* when the latter was prosecuted late in 1643 for surrendering Bristol to the king’s forces.36[William Fiennes, Viscount Saye], Vindiciae Veritatis (1654), 53.

Meanwhile, it is not clear whether John Busbridge joined his step-brother James Temple in active military service for Parliament, but from at least March 1643, when he was appointed to the Sussex sequestrations committee, he was heavily committed to the parliamentarian cause in the county.37A. and O. In the summer he was named to the county committee, and as a deputy lieutenant.38CJ iii. 156a, 173a, 354a. Although he became an active member of the committee, which was largely the preserve of the ‘war party’ (led by Harbert Morley* and Anthony Stapley I*), by the spring of 1644 he was also restored to the commission of the peace, which was dominated by Sir Thomas Pelham* and the Presbyterians.39SP28/246, unfol; SP28/181, unfol.; Bodl. Tanner 62, f. 493. Like another of Pelham’s friends, Peter Farnden, Busbridge worked hard as a magistrate.40W. Suss. RO, QR/W50; E. Suss. RO, Add. MS 33084, f. 40; QR/E65-89; Suss. QSOB, 1642-1649, 50-174.

It was as a zealous local administrator that Busbridge busied himself for most of the 1640s and early 1650s, apparently untroubled by the factional divisions and political upheavals which affected others’ careers. During the second half of the 1640s he gave reliable assistance to corporations such as Rye in their attempts to secure relief from taxation, while at the same time working with the county committee to organize the local war effort.41E. Suss. RO, Rye 47/137 unfol. (25 Mar., 1 Apr. 1645); E179/191/403; E179/191/405; SP28/39, f. 442. Busbridge was one of the few gentlemen simultaneously serving on the sewers commission.42E. Suss. RO, DAP1/2/4, pp. 90-113. He accommodated himself to the commonwealth after the execution of the king in January 1649, and his level of activity in the county remained remarkably stable into the protectorate. He continued to serve on the bench and the sewers commission, and to assist the corporation of Rye, although he now worked with Independents and Rumpers like Morley and John Fagge* rather than with Presbyterians like Peter Farnden.43E. Suss. RO, DAP1/2/4, pp. 124-93; DAP1/2/5, pp. 1-199; Rye 47/143/3; 47/146/15. Whitehall regarded him as trustworthy: in May 1652 the council of state named him amongst a group of Rumpers to undertake a local investigation.44CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 240.

Busbridge’s political flexibility appears to have come to an end, however, in the summer of 1655 with the inauguration of the new system of local government, in Sussex under Major-general William Goffe*. Appointed a commissioner for securing the peace of the commonwealth that November, he showed himself reluctant to co-operate.45TSP iv. 160-1. An apparent refusal to be involved in the collection of taxes doubtless recommended him to impoverished corporations such as Rye, which turned to him for help more than ever in the ensuing months.46E. Suss. RO, Rye 47/152, unfol: (12 June 1655); 47/154/5; 47/155/5; 47/156/37. By the end of the year, Busbridge had absented himself from the county, and Goffe complained to Secretary John Thurloe* that Busbridge was the only militia officer with whom he had been unable to hold discussions.47TSP iv. 151. Busbridge also tried to avoid public office. In January 1656 Goffe told Thurloe that Busbridge was ‘very much troubled at his being made high sheriff, and that he intends to endeavour to get himself discharged by an application to his highness’. Goffe, who also suspected that ‘he will also desire to be freed from the command of the militia troop’, was willing to work without him. Goffe declared himself ‘persuaded it would be for his highness’ service to let him have his desire in both’, since ‘I could wish the man a great deal better than he is, if all be true that I have heard reported of him’. Busbridge had not even ‘appeared at any of our meetings, being very unapt for business’. Goffe attributed Busbridge’s withdrawal from county administration at least partly to family distractions: ‘his new wife is very much against his being in public employment’.48TSP iv. 394. Although he also revealed opposition to Busbridge from within his own troop of militia, claiming that one of the men had expressed wonder ‘that B[usbridge] was in so much favour with [the] lord protector’, and reporting a virulent speech which Busbridge had delivered against the government, Goffe still felt sure that Mrs Busbridge was principally to blame, styling her ‘a notorious malignant’, whom he feared would have a bad influence on Busbridge and ‘again pervert him’.49TSP iv. 408-9.

At the end of March 1656 Goffe informed Thurloe that he had ‘reduced Colonel Busbridge’s troop at Lewes on Wednesday last, and paid him £500 which is six months pay’. He added that ‘all honest men that I speak with are glad that this troop was pitched upon’. Busbridge had accepted his fate magnanimously, telling Goffe ‘that he took nothing ill from me, [since] he knew I did but as I was commanded, and as he was more willing to be commanded by me than any other that he knew’. Nevertheless, Busbridge was

very much troubled at the thing itself, and suspected some ill-dealing from some of his countrymen, and saith he is now so much disobliged that he will never appear in public business more.50TSP iv. 642.

For a while Busbridge did indeed withdraw somewhat from public life, although he remained active on the county bench until July 1657.51E. Suss. RO, QI/EW2, ff. 28v-29; QO/EW3, f. 37v; QR/E114, 116. However, in January 1659 he was elected to the Parliament of Richard Cromwell*, as one of the members for Winchelsea, alongside another newcomer to Westminster, Robert Fowle*.52C219/48; The Publick Intelligencer no. 161 (24-31 Jan. 1659), 186 (E.761.7). It is unclear what lay behind his return, and neither he nor Fowle made any impression on Commons proceedings, although Busbridge was in attendance in London. Five days after the dissolution of Parliament on 22 April, Busbridge informed his family that he planned to ‘stay in town to see how things go in this unsettled time; it very much concerns me’.53E. Suss. RO, Dunn MS 51/63.

Busbridge was appointed a militia commissioner in both July 1659 and March 1660, and returned to the commission of the peace in January 1660.54A. and O.; E. Suss. RO, QR/E126. While he had some reasons for welcoming the return of Charles II, he was not among the county gentry who dispatched a ‘humble address’ to London in May. There was little opportunity for a relatively minor figure like Busbridge to take a parliamentary seat in the Convention, and he appears to have been removed from the commission of the peace in the purge which followed the Restoration, and indeed to have retired from public life. He died in July 1666 without having made a will; administration of his estate was granted to his son John Busbridge (1642-1703).55Etchingham par. reg; PROB6/41/134. When the former MP’s brother Robert Busbridge of Haremere died the following year he left a notably pious will revealing the enduring links between Busbridges and Temples, and included a £50 bequest to his ‘dear brother James Temple, now a prisoner in Jersey’.56PROB11/325/219. No further Busbridges sat in Parliament.