TAYLOR, John (1584-1645), of Bristol

John Taylor’s was a Lichfield mercantile family, but which seems to have been of no great prominence in the town. He may have been a scion of the family that owned Pool Hall, in Bacon Street, or related to the only man of that name to have held civic office in this period, Edward Taylor, bailiff in 1640.19Lichfield St Mary par. reg.; Harwood, Lichfield, 426. Apprenticeship to a Bristol merchant, who was sheriff of the city during Taylor’s period of servitude, determined his entire future.20Bristol RO, 04352/3, f.120; List of Sheriffs, 168. He was admitted to the Society of Merchant Venturers, the city’s trading elite, in 1619, and in the mid-1620s owned at least one ship on his own account, the seventy-ton Thunder, which preyed on French and Spanish rivals. He was a partner of Richard Longe* in another, Mary Rose, which through the 1630s traded fish caught in the North Atlantic for Spanish wines brought back to Bristol. It was probably his prominence as a merchant that qualified him as a witness before the privy council in 1637, when a case referred by the court of admiralty came before it.21PC2/48, p. 49. In 1639, he and Longe were licensed by the privy council to fit out Mary Rose to convey 120 would-be colonists to New England, after the partners had argued that their trading record was one of financial benefit to the kingdom.22Latimer, Annals of Bristol, 98; PC2/51, pp. 59-60.

Taylor’s business interests were diverse. In 1636, with the Gloucestershire gentleman Sir Baynham Throckmorton†, and the Bristol merchant, John Gonning, he acquired the farm of the king’s ironworks in the Forest of Dean. In this venture, Taylor’s partnership stood against the interests of the Roman Catholic Sir John Winter, who was granted extensive monopoly rights in the Forest. Winter’s concession attracted the wrath of the reformers in the Commons, and duly appeared as a grievance in the Grand Remonstrance of December 1641. In September 1642, the House upheld the bargain the crown had granted to Taylor’s syndicate, which paid its rent to the Gloucestershire receiver-general, at this time Robert Scawen*.23Bodl. Bankes 51/16; 56/8; CSP Dom. 1640, p. 4; CJ ii. 759a; Warmington, Civil War, Interregnum and Restoration, 29-30. Taylor’s marriage to Margaret Yate, daughter of a leading figure in the Bristol soapmakers’ company, brought to him through his wife lands in Winterbourne, six miles outside Bristol, and gave him an interest in supporting soapmaking in city council debates.24Bristol RO, Great Orphan book 2/1; 04264/3, f. 49. By 1629, he was renting from the city council a grain barn in Old Jury.25Bristol RO, 04026/20, p. 296.

Taylor held office in the Merchant Venturers, but its highest honour, the mastership, eluded him. His career in the city corporation was a long slog through the various offices involving supervising charities and hospitals until he reached his apogee in 1640, when he was rewarded with the distinction of becoming alderman and mayor in the same year. Nevertheless, he did his community some service from at least the 1620s, journeying to king at Southampton in 1625 with a petition about the threat to the city’s trade from pirates.26Bristol RO, 04026/20, p. 43. In 1630, he declared himself willing to go to the privy council to argue over purveyance, ‘and do the best service he could for the city’, although in the end it was Humphrey Hooke* who went. In 1634, Taylor was sent to negotiate with the privy council over the first Ship Money writ, and the following year was named to a city committee charged with conducting all Bristol’s business in London.27Bristol RO, 04264/3, ff. 28v, 56-7, 58, 60. When Abel Lovering, the future royalist clergyman, was appointed as vicar of Temple parish in 1639, Taylor, with Richard Aldworth*, Miles Jackson* and Joseph Jackson* voted for another candidate for the post, against Humphrey Hooke* and Richard Longe*.28Bristol RO, 04264/3, f. 91. In the contest between William Chetwyn and Ralph Farmer for the post of chamberlain, Taylor defied the king’s instruction to appoint Farmer, repeatedly voting for Chetwyn and forming part of the delegation to London which achieved an overturning of the ruling.29Bristol RO, 04264/3, ff. 95v - 97, 99. Unlike Humphrey Hooke, who supported the king’s candidate, Taylor stood out consistently for Bristol’s entitlements.

In April 1640, during the Short Parliament, Taylor was named to the committee formed to respond to Hooke’s letter from Westminster encouraging a listing of grievances. He gave up his captaincy of the city trained band when he became mayor in September, but before he did so, made another trip to the capital on city business.30Bristol RO, 04264/3, ff. 102v, 107; 04026/22, p. 27. As mayor, he entertained Lord Admiral Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland, in August 1641, when the protection of Bristol shipping from its outlaw enemies was a topic of serious conversation. In July 1642, Parliament’s Commissioners for the Affairs of Ireland confirmed payment to Taylor for two ships fitted out of Bristol on Northumberland’s authority.31Bristol RO, 04026/22, p. 113; PJ iii. 419. Taylor’s seniority ensured that he was on committees to draft petitions to king and Parliament in the spring of 1642, and in May he travelled up to Westminster as one of the city’s MPs after a by-election. As Bristol’s last mayor, and as one who in any case had had much experience of negotiating with authorities in London, he was an obvious choice.32Bristol RO, 04264/3, pp. 118v, 119v. On 9 August, he was asked to thank the Bristolians active in a skirmish at Chewton in Somerset, and a week later William Strode I revealed to the House a letter detailing the raising of troops in Glamorgan for the king.33CJ ii. 711b, PJ iii. 304.

On 5 September, Taylor was given three weeks leave to go to the country. He was back from Bristol by 24 October, when he promised freely to give £50 to the cause of Parliament, and more if the occasion demanded it and if he had the means.34PJ iii. 479. The previous July he, like Humphrey Hooke*, had been named to the royalist commission of array, but he was at this stage not regarded at Westminster as one of the king’s party. On 24 October, he was asked to take Parliament’s Propositions to Bristol for subscriptions to be taken there by the city authorities, including Luke Hodges*. Though he was named to no committees of the House, and was awarded £60 by the city council for his expenses as an MP in April 1643, he was in the Commons on 6 June that year, when he took the covenant brought in after the discovery of Edmund Waller’s* plot. With other Members, he swore support for Parliament’s forces against the king’s, as long as the king protected Catholics from justice.35Bristol RO, 04026/22, f. 236; CJ ii. 820b; iii. 118a; Gardiner, Great Civil War, i. 149.

Despite his appearance in contemporary lists, it is unlikely that Taylor was in fact in the penumbra of suspects in the plot to betray Bristol to Prince Rupert in March 1643, because the governor, Nathaniel Fiennes I*, would hardly have let him return to the House in time to take the covenant in June.36Seyer, Bristol Memoirs, ii. 362. But after Fiennes voluntarily surrendered to Rupert on 26 July, Taylor returned to the city. In August, a supply train from Bristol to the king’s headquarters at Oxford was organised, and that month a city debt of £50 to Taylor for a consignment of rye from Amsterdam was paid to the king in lieu of a tax assessment.37Bristol RO, 04026/22, pp. 243, 244. The same month, he signed a protestation not to bear arms against the king or contribute to the parliamentary cause, and was part of a delegation to the royalist governor, attempting to ameliorate the martial curfew regime for the citizens.38Bristol RO, 04264/4, pp. 35, 37. Taylor went to Oxford, as a member of the king’s Parliament there. He lodged in Magdalen College, with a contingent of west country men, retainers of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who had helped fortify Bristol for the king. Taylor signed the letter to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex on 27 January 1644, calling on him to use his influence for peace, and on 15 February the council at Bristol considered a letter from him asking for someone to join him at Oxford to progress city business. The councillors resolved to ask Taylor to deal with Bristol’s affairs there by himself. He was back in Bristol by 26 April to claim just £10 for his time at the London and Oxford Parliaments since April 1643.39Magdalen Coll. Oxf. CS40/9/2; Oxford DNB, ‘Sir Ferdinando Gorges’; Rushworth, Hist. Collections, v. 573; Bristol RO, 04264/4, p. 54; 04026/22, p. 302. This represents reimbursement for 30 days of parliamentary activity.

As 1644 wore on, Taylor acted in the interests of securing an alliance between Bristol and the royalist commissioners of array in adjacent counties. In November, he promised to contribute two horses complete with armour to the king’s cause, and served on a committee to raise £150 per week from the citizens (7 Jan. 1645).40Bristol RO, 04264/4, pp. 82, 86. He was naturally on the committee of safety for the city in March, after having resumed his career as a militia officer, this time as colonel of a regiment of auxiliaries. He had begun arming the auxiliaries in June 1644, and in the three months to September 1644 spent £250 building up the force.41Bristol RO, 04026/22, pp. 305, 308. The expenditure on this militia was well justified by the time of the battle of Naseby a year later. The Bristol councillors noted with approval on 3 September 1645 Taylor’s preparations for military action. With Richard Longe*, he participated in the frenetic round of voting on membership of the council on the eve of the New Model army’s storming the city.42Bristol RO, 04264/4, pp. 93, 108, 110. The following day (10 Sept.), he was killed in action during the attack.43Latimer, Annals of Bristol, 205; St John’s Bristol par. reg. Between 1646 and 1648, the corporation made payments to Taylor’s widow, Mary, of interest on money he had lent to the city. He seems to have had one son only, who died as a child in 1648.44Bristol RO, 04026/23, pp. 91, 152, 279; PJ iii. 453.