BOYNTON, Sir Matthew (1592-1647), of Barmston, Yorks.

The Boyntons were one of Yorkshire’s oldest gentry families, having settled in the county by the end of the twelfth century.40Poulson, Holderness, i. 196; Collier, Boynton Fam. 1. Their principal residence was at Barmston – a few miles south of Bridlington on the East Riding coast – which they had acquired by marriage in the fifteenth century.41Collier, Collier, Boynton Fam. 10. By the early Stuart period they were one of the wealthiest families in Yorkshire, with lands in Holderness (the coastal region of the East Riding) and Cleveland worth about £2,000 a year.42C142/367/59; CP25/2/523/13CHASIMICH/3; Hull Hist. Cent. U DDWB/24/7; U DDWB/20/54; Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P17/8. Unusually for a family of ‘prime rank’, they had not been particularly successful in translating their wealth and local standing into parliamentary seats. Boynton was the first member of his family to sit in Parliament since his grandfather, who had represented Boroughbridge in 1571 and Cumberland the following year.43HP Commons 1558-1603, ‘Thomas Boynton’. In the 1621 elections, Boynton was returned for the East Riding borough of Hedon on the interest of his friend and kinsman Henry Alured, father of the future parliamentarian John Alured*, a captain in Boynton’s militia regiment.44HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Hedon’; Add. 28082, f. 80v. Boynton was largely inactive in this Parliament and apparently declined to stand again until the 1640s.

Besides the Alureds, Boynton was closely connected by ties of blood and friendship with several of the East Riding’s leading gentlemen, in particular two other future parliamentarians, Sir John Hotham* of Scorborough and Sir William Constable* of Flamborough. An additional bond between Boynton, Constable and the Alureds was their commitment to the cause of further reformation in religion. Indeed, Boynton and Constable would belong to the handful of puritan gentry who had separated themselves from the Church of England before the outbreak of civil war. Despite his puritan convictions, however, Boynton indulged in at least one ungodly pastime: horse-racing. In about 1617 he and ‘divers’ other gentlemen in the East Riding organised an annual horse race, raising £300 for a piece of plate for the winner. This racing syndicate included Sir John Hotham and another future parliamentarian, Sir Philip Stapilton*, as well as several prominent Catholics, notably Henry Viscount Dunbar [S] and Sir Michael Warton (father of the future royalist Michael Warton*).45C8/89/160.

During the 1620s, Boynton emerged as one of Yorkshire’s leading opponents of the duke of Buckingham and his allies – the Catholic peer Viscount Dunbar, one of the duke’s clients, describing him as ‘one that wholly sides with Hotham and Constable, who in all things are opposed to your grace’.46SP16/37/28, f. 42. His hostility to the royal favourite was encouraged by the champion of the ‘country’ interest in Yorkshire, Sir Thomas Wentworth† (the future earl of Strafford), who flattered Boynton with references to the (entirely fictitious) ‘ancient and near acquaintance’ of their families.47Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P2/53. Like his friends Constable and Hotham, Boynton backed Wentworth in his bitter electoral struggle against Sir John Savile†, Buckingham’s client.48Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P22/67; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir Matthew Boynton’. Wentworth’s elevation to the lord lieutenancy of Yorkshire in 1628 brought its inevitable rewards for his supporters, with Boynton and Constable securing appointment as deputy lieutenants for the East Riding in 1629 – Hotham having recommended them to Wentworth as ‘the ablest and best affected to do his Majesty service in respect of their undoubted affection to religion, which...in these parts is not easy to find in gentlemen of prime rank’.49Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P12/50.

The ‘near acquaintance’ between Boynton and Wentworth began to break down in the mid-1630s. Boynton had little reason to sympathise with ‘Thorough’ – the vigorous implementation of crown policy imposed during the personal rule of Charles I. Indeed, he probably regarded himself as the victim of one of its leading exponents, the Laudian archbishop of York, Richard Neile. As a deputy lieutenant and gentleman of prime rank, Boynton was too prominent for Neile and the church authorities to proceed against directly. Nevertheless, they succeeded in restricting his patronage of godly divines – most notably in 1634, when the church courts put a stop to his practice of allowing unlicensed – i.e. nonconformist – ministers to preach in the churches of Barmston, Rudston and Bridlington, of which he was lay impropriator. Undaunted, Boynton took into his household that same year the ejected minister Henry Jacie, who had been removed from his benefice for rejecting the Laudian ‘new ceremonies’.50Marchant, Puritans, 122-3. A religious Independent by the early 1640s, Jacie was to become the leader of the London Baptists after the civil war.51Winthrop Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc.), ii. 87-8; Oxford DNB, ‘Henry Jessey [Jacie]’. In 1636, the episcopal authorities stepped up the pressure on Boynton, summoning him before the northern court of high commission to give evidence against the puritan minister John Birchall, chaplain of the godly York alderman and future parliamentarian Thomas Hoyle*. Birchall was charged with holding conventicles, some of which Boynton had evidently attended. Boynton refused to answer this summons.52Marchant, Puritans, 88. Given his run-ins with the Laudian authorities, it is somewhat surprising that he was active in 1633-4 on the East Riding commission for collecting donations for the repair of St Paul’s cathedral – a project much favoured by the king and Archbishop Laud.53LMA, CLC/313/I/B/004/MS25474/001, p. 45.

It was against this background of Laudian harassment that Boynton and Sir William Constable began making preparations in 1635 to emigrate to New England. Probably at the suggestion of Boynton’s friend and fellow puritan, Henry Darley*, the two men resolved to settle at Saybrook, Connecticut, where the godly peers Viscount Saye and Sele and Lord Brooke had obtained a grant of land.54Winthrop Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc), iii. 211, 226-7; A.P. Newton, The Colonising Activities of the English Puritans (New Haven, 1914), 179; Cliffe, Yorks. 306. Among the puritan notables involved in this venture were Darley, Sir Arthur Hesilrige*, Sir Henry Vane II*, George Fenwick*, Henry Lawrence I* and the Congregationalist divines Philip Nye and Hugh Peters.55Infra, ‘George Fenwick’; ‘Sir Arthur Hesilrige’; ‘Sir Henry Vane II’; Winthrop Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc.), iii. 198-9, 209; Newton, Colonising Activities, 177-8; Oxford DNB, ‘Hugh Peter [Peters]’. Darley was closely associated with Saye and Brooke in another, more ambitious, colonial venture, the Providence Island Company, whose leading members (notably Saye, Brooke, John Pym* and Oliver St John*) were to spearhead opposition to the king in the final months of his personal rule.56Infra, ‘Henry Darley’. Boynton was to establish close ties with this group during the late 1630s, investing £500 in the Company and securing a match between his heir and one of Saye’s daughters.57CO124/2, f. 153; legal comments on a draft of the Boynton-Fiennes marriage settlement, ms in the possession of Dr. J.T. Cliffe. By early 1636, Boynton had transplanted his entire household to London in readiness for the voyage to America.58Winthrop Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc.), iii. 226-7. With the help of John Winthrop junior, the son of the governor of Boston, Boynton established a forward base in New England, arranging accommodation for his family and sending over servants and livestock.59Winthrop Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc.), iii. 226-7, 247, 248, 269. In the summer of 1636, Boynton and his family moved to Hedgerley House, near Uxbridge, where, under Jacie’s chaplaincy, they enjoyed almost complete freedom of worship.60Winthrop Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc.), iii. 484-5; M. Tolmie, Triumph of the Saints (Cambridge, 1977), 44-5. However, the practical difficulties involved in transplanting to the New World, together with the authorities’ growing determination to restrict puritan emigration across the Atlantic, persuaded Boynton and Constable to abandon their plans to settle in Connecticut.61Winthrop Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc.), iii. 388-9; J.T. Cliffe, Puritan Gentry (1984), 202-3. Writing to Winthrop in April 1637, he referred to the ‘uncertainty of my condition ... by reason of [the] many difficulties which I daily meet withal’.62Winthrop Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc.), iii. 388-9. Within a few months, the unwelcome attention of the authorities was also threatening the Boyntons’ godly refuge at Hedgerley; and by mid-1637, Boynton was preparing to join Constable, who had moved to the more congenial religious environment of Holland.63Infra, ‘Sir William Constable’; Winthrop Pprs. (Mass. Hist. Soc.), iii. 484-5. In the summer of 1637, Boynton sold several of his manors in Cleveland (for £12,000) and his impropriate rectory of Bridlington, and during the autumn he assigned the bulk of his estate to six trustees – Darley, Stapilton, the future royalist Sir Henry Bellingham* (a kinsman of Boynton’s), the future parliamentarian officer Henry Vickerman, and Viscount Saye’s sons James Fiennes* and Nathaniel Fiennes I*.64C54/3119/6; C54/3143/1; CP25/2/523/13CHASIMICH/3; Sheffield City Archives, WWM/Str P17/8; VCH N. Riding, ii. 222, 271; Jones, ‘War in north’, 405-6. In July 1638, he secured a pass allowing him and his family to travel into the Low Countries; and by 1640, he and Constable were leading members of the gathered church established at Arnhem by John Archer and served by Nye and another Congregationalist divine, Thomas Goodwin.65Bodl. Tanner 65, f. 24; Tolmie, Triumph of the Saints, 44-5; Oxford DNB, ‘John Archer’. This church had its own, Calvinist, form of service consisting of ‘sermon, prayer and psalm’, in which ‘the chiefest sit and take notes, not a gentlewoman that thinks her hand too fair to use pen and ink’.66Bodl. Tanner 65, f. 24. Wentworth had not entirely despaired of Boynton even as late as September 1638, when he postponed replacing him as a militia colonel and deputy lieutenant

to see if it may please God to give him better light which may guide him more to his own honour and prosperity of his own affairs than that fanatic way in which he goes now, to the wonder of all that know him or wish him well, in which number I must needs profess myself to be one.67Sheffield City Archives, WWW/Str P10a/200-1.

But on learning that Boynton had emigrated to Holland, Wentworth dismissed him as belonging to ‘a generation of folk ... that have such a sting in their tail, an itch in their ear, a pride in their heart as will not give them rest in any condition. Our Saviour would not be held holy enough for their company were he on earth again’.68Sheffield City Archives, WWW/Str P10a/273-8.

Not until the spring of 1641, when episcopacy had begun to come under concerted attack in the Long Parliament, did Boynton and Constable decide to return to England – Constable to a seat in the Commons, secured for him by his brother-in-law, the 2nd Baron Fairfax (Sir Ferdinando Fairfax*); Boynton to help marshal Yorkshire’s godly behind the cause of further reformation.69Infra, ‘Sir William Constable’; Tolmie, Triumph of the Saints, 105. He signed at least six of the county’s petitions to the king or Parliament during the first half of 1642 – the first, in January, to Charles, protesting at the attempted arrest of the Five Members and expressing support for a ‘perfect reformation in matters of religion’.70Eg. 2546, ff. 23-4. The second petition, in February, from the inhabitants of Cleveland to the Lords, requested that ‘above all things ... that we may be secured a happy reformation [in religion]’. This was the most uncompromisingly godly of the early Yorkshire petitions, focusing almost exclusively on the need to preserve and purify the Protestant religion. It may well have been organised by Boynton himself, whose name headed the signatories.71PA, Main Pprs. 10 Feb. 1642, f. 33. The third and fourth petitions, also in February, were to the Commons and Lords respectively and requested, among other things, that the votes of the papist peers be abolished, that ‘ceremonial burdens’ in religion be removed and that the peers work more closely with the Commons for the relief of Ireland’s Protestants.72Fairfax Corresp. ed. Johnson, ii. 367-72; PA, Main Pprs. 15 Feb. 1642, f. 55; LJ iv. 587a. In April, he invested £1,000 as an Irish Adventurer.73Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 177. And with the king raising troops in Yorkshire, Boynton and many of the county’s future parliamentarians petitioned Charles on 12 May, asking him to place his trust in the two Houses and to forbear raising any troops in the county.74A Letter from the...Committees of the Commons...at Yorke (1642), 9 (E.148.4). Boynton signed another petition to the king from this same group on 6 June, complaining about Charles’s abandoning Parliament and drawing together the county’s trained bands – illegally, as the petitioners conceived it.75PA, Main Pprs. 6 June 1642, ff. 84-5. By this date, Boynton was working closely with the Commons’ committee at York – whose members included Lord Fairfax, Stapilton and Sir Hugh Cholmeley* – and with Constable at Westminster, in a vain attempt to prevent the king raising a party in Yorkshire.76CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 334; Cliffe, Yorks. 333.

At the outbreak of civil war, Boynton aligned with what was initially the more aggressive wing of the Yorkshire parliamentarian party – a group led by his old friend Sir John Hotham and Captain John Hotham*. Early in October 1642, he signed a declaration organised by the Hothams, denouncing the Yorkshire treaty of pacification – an abortive attempt by a group of West Riding gentry, led on the parliamentarian side by the Hothams’ rival Lord Fairfax*, to keep the county neutral. Hotham and his allies attacked the treaty as being contrary to the privileges of Parliament and an attempt to sever Yorkshire from ‘the common cause’.77A True and Exact Relation of...the Siege of Manchester (1642), 13-14 (E.121.45); A. Woolrych, ‘Yorkshire’s treaty of neutrality’, HT vi. 696-704. The 20 signatories to the declaration – mostly East Riding gentlemen – included Boynton’s future son-in-law John Anlaby* and Francis Lascelles*, who was a captain in the regiment of foot which Boynton raised that autumn. Boynton’s military career – which should not be confused with that of his son Sir Francis, who also raised a regiment of foot – was probably brief (although he may have retained the honorary rank of colonel until the end of the war) and began inauspiciously, when his 500-strong regiment fled at the rumour of approaching enemy forces, leaving him with just 80 men.78Infra, ‘Francis Lascelles’; Exact and True Relation, 2; An Exact Relation of the Surrender of Scarborough Castle (1645), 3 (E.294.15); Jones, ‘War in north’, 372. Lord Fairfax informed Parliament in December that Boynton had brought 130 men to join him at Selby, south of York.79Fairfax Corresp. ed. Bell, i. 26. In contrast to the Hothams, Boynton was willing to serve under the Fairfaxes. Indeed, he and his second son, Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Boynton, were instrumental in the seizure of Sir John and Captain Hotham in June 1643 for their treachery to Parliament.80CJ iii. 152a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 275-6; J. Binns, Yorks. in the Civil Wars (Pickering, 2004), 69. In recognition of his services at Hull, Parliament recommended Boynton to Lord Fairfax for appointment as governor of the town in place of Sir John Hotham.81CJ iii. 152a, 154b; LJ vi. 119a. This was quickly blocked by the mayor and aldermen of Hull, however, who managed to have the governorship conferred on Fairfax himself. Their objections to Boynton – who was described in the royalist press as ‘a declared Anabaptist’ – were largely religious in nature, as they explained to Peregrine Pelham*:82Mercurius Aulicus no. 27 (2-8 July 1643), 351.

we much fear the body of this town will not so well affect that course [Boynton’s appointment as governor] as if it had been conferred upon some other persons [sic] of quality, whose disposition might be thought to be more suitable to the people’s inclinations, it being something doubted that he and Mr. [Philip] Nye ... may so comply together about interrupting the form of church government already established, that some factions, if not fractions, may be thereby engendered amongst us.83Hull Hist. Cent. C BRL/314.

The orthodox puritans who dominated Hull corporation were apparently fearful that Boynton, if appointed governor, would use his position to advance the local Independents and undermine their own authority. This fear was well grounded, for just two months earlier, in May, Nye (who had returned to England from Arnhem at about the same time as Boynton) had established an Independent congregation in the town, very probably with Boynton’s support and encouragement.84A.E. Trout, ‘Nonconformity in Hull’, Trans. of the Congregational Hist. Soc. ix. 31. Although denied the governorship, Boynton almost certainly continued to work with Nye for the propagation of the Independent ‘church-way’ in Hull and the East Riding. In 1644, the Presbyterian propagandist Thomas Edwards was to accuse Nye of holding private ‘discourses’ at Hull with various Parliament men, pleading the cause of religious toleration and ‘the prejudice of their parliamentary power if they should admit of the government of the Church of Scotland [i.e. of Scottish-style Presbyterianism]’.85T. Edwards, Antapologia (1644), 217, 222-3. If Nye did indeed hold such meetings it was very probably with Boynton’s approval.

Boynton’s appointment in September 1644 as a commissioner to reside with the Scots army did little to improve his attitude towards Scottish involvement in English affairs.86CJ iii. 618a, 622a. Two months later, in November, he joined Lord Fairfax, Sir Thomas Fairfax* (soon to be appointed commander of the New Model army), Francis Pierrepont*, Constable and other leading northern parliamentarians in a letter to the Committee of Both Kingdoms*, denouncing the Scots as a military liability.87CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 104-5. Boynton, like the rest of the signatories, was to become closely associated that the Independents and the cause of new modelling Parliament’s armies. The leaders of this group at Westminster included Boynton’s old friend Viscount Saye and Sele. In May 1645, Boynton was named with Lord Fairfax, Sir Thomas Fairfax, Constable, Darley, Vane II and their allies to a committee for directing the war effort within the Northern Association – a body made up exclusively of men who were hostile to continuing Scottish intervention in English affairs. Under this ordinance, Boynton was given command of directing the war effort in the East Riding.88CJ iv. 138b; LJ vii. 367b. It was as a member of this committee that Boynton helped to negotiate the surrender of Scarborough Castle in July 1645, although it was not Boynton – as is sometimes supposed – but his second son and namesake who was subsequently appointed governor of the castle.89Exact Relation of the Surrender of Scarborough Castle, 3 (E.294.15); Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 118-19. During the autumn of 1645, Boynton signed several letters to Parliament from the Yorkshire committees complaining about the ‘infinite oppressions and extortions’ of the Scottish army and pleading that it be removed from the region.90Bodl. Nalson IV, ff. 187, 213, 282, 309.

Anti-Scots feeling was a factor in the ‘recruiter’ elections at Scarborough in the autumn of 1645, in which Boynton stood as a candidate. His competitors for the two seats were Luke Robinson*, a zealously godly local gentleman, and James Chaloner*, who owned lands in Cleveland but resided in London. All three men were aligned with the Independent interest at Westminster, and the contest turned not on ideological differences but on the strength of the candidates’ local connections and of their zeal in opposing the Scots.91Supra, ‘Scarborough’. Boynton’s candidacy was backed by Darley, who, in a letter to the townsmen, recommended no one by name, but reminded them that ‘by reason of the neighbourhood of the Scotch army a heavy pressure lies upon you which can only be redressed by the favour of Parliament’ and, more especially, by the diligence of those who ‘by their birth ... cohabitation and subsistence among you are engaged to advance the happiness of that county’. In case the voters needed any further hint, he added that it would be dishonourable for them to elect any man who had not been ‘eminent for acting and suffering in the common cause of religion and liberty both at home and abroad’.92Scarborough Recs. 1641-60, ed. Ashcroft, 46, 48-9. This can only have been a reference to Boynton, whose ‘suffering’ under the Laudians and emigration to Holland were common knowledge. The townsmen took Darley’s advice and returned Boynton and Robinson, both of whom possessed stronger local ties than Chaloner.93Supra, ‘Scarborough’. Boynton had the added advantages that his son was governor of Scarborough Castle and that he himself was sheriff of Yorkshire and was thus able to time the election to his own convenience.

Boynton was one of the least prominent of the Yorkshire recruiters at Westminster. Elected in October 1645, he received no mention in the Journals until 30 April 1646, when he was added, on an ad hoc basis, to the Army Committee* while it considered an ordinance for settling the pay of the garrison at Hull.94CJ iv. 527b. In all, he was named to only three Commons committees during his brief career in the Long Parliament.95CJ iv. 527b; v. 4a, 10b. On 24 June, he took the Solemn League and Covenant, although given his Congregationalist convictions it can hardly have been with much conviction.96CJ iv. 562b. Despite his low profile in the Commons, Boynton appears to have worked hard in support of Scarborough’s interests – the townsmen acknowledging, in July 1646, his and Robinson’s ‘unwearied pains’ on their behalf.97Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 76. The two men spent considerable time lobbying the Northern Association Committee* and the Committee for Revenue*, where, with the help of Darley and the prominent Yorkshire lawyer Francis Thorpe*, they secured a reduction in the town’s fee farm rent arrears.98Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 68, 69, 90, 92. Their success probably owed much to the fact that Boynton and Darley were well insinuated with Viscount Saye and that Thorpe was retained legal counsel to Algernon Percy†, 4th earl of Northumberland – both Saye and Northumberland being prominent members of the Revenue Committee.99Supra, ‘Committee for the Revenue’; infra, ‘Francis Thorpe’. In addition to their ties of kinship and political interest, Boynton and Saye were linked at Westminster as co-defendants in a case before the Lords concerning a disputed court of wards decree.100LJ vii. 387b-388a; ix. 16a. This decree, which favoured Boynton, had presumably been obtained through the good offices of Saye, who was master of the court until its abolition in 1646.

Boynton died at his house in Highgate on 5 March 1647 and was buried at St Andrew’s, Holborn, on 12 March.101Scarborough Recs. 1641-60 ed. Ashcroft, 94; Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. ii. 147. In his will, he referred to an indenture drawn up before the civil war for raising portions totalling £10,200 in portions for his children. He charged his personal estate with about £7,500 in bequests, a sum which included his £1,000 investment as an Irish Adventurer. He made his wife and his second son Matthew his executors and his son-in-law John Anlaby – who was to succeed him as MP for Scarborough – one of his supervisors.102PROB11/200, ff. 97v-8. Boynton’s links with the Independents were maintained, at least for a time, by his son Colonel Matthew Boynton. In 1648, Sednham Poynts, the former commander of the Northern Association army, alleged that Colonel Boynton had tried to detach him from the Presbyterian interest in the spring of 1647, assuring him that ‘Sir Thomas Fairfax and Cromwell [the commanders of the New Model army] were deserving men, were intimate with those that were of a right judgement with the Parliament, and that they had a very good opinion and esteem of me and wondered much that I...should stand so much upon the punctilio of the Covenant’.103S. Poynts, The Vindication of Collonell Generall Points (1648), 8 (E.469.23). But the younger Boynton evidently did not inherit his father’s rigorously puritan outlook, for during the second civil war he defected to the king, taking Scarborough Castle with him. He died at Wigan in August 1651 fighting in the service of Charles II.104Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. ii. 148. Boynton’s grandson, William Boynton, represented Hedon in the second and third Exclusion Parliaments.105HP Commons 1660-90, ‘William Boynton’.