BOTELER, Sir William (1608-56), of Biddenham, Beds.

Members of the Boteler family had been resident at Biddenham, a village just two miles to the west of Bedford, as early as the fourteenth century. In time they became the principal tenants of the parish’s leading landowner, Newnham Priory, and, when that priory was dissolved by Henry VIII, they were able to purchase those lands outright.24VCH Beds. iii. 37; B. Crook, ‘Newham priory: rental of manor of Biddenham, 1505-6’, Publ. Beds. Hist. Rec. Soc. xxv. 82-103. In 1586, William Boteler†, the grandfather of this MP, sat for Bedford in Parliament. When he died in 1601, the lands at Biddenham passed to his son, Thomas.25J.S. Elliott, ‘The windmills of Beds.: past and present’, Publ. Beds. Hist. Rec. Soc. xiv. 9; VCH Beds. iii. 37; HP Commons 1558-1603. Seven years later Thomas’s wife, Anne, one of the Farrars of Harrold, another Bedfordshire gentry family, gave birth to a son, William, the future MP.26VCH Beds. iii. 66; Genealogia Bedfordiensis, 43. He in turn inherited those lands shortly before his eighteenth birthday in early 1626.27Coventry Docquets, 467.

It was Boteler’s bad luck that he was nominated as sheriff of Bedfordshire in October 1637.28List of Sheriffs, 3. It had originally been intended that John Chernock would be appointed, but lobbying by Chernock’s son Robert had got him excused; the younger Chernock at least had the courtesy to apologise to Boteler for inadvertently transferring the burden to him.29F.G. Emmison and M. Emmison, ‘The ship-money pprs. of Henry Chester and Sir. William Boteler, 1637-1639’, Publ. Beds. Hist. Rec. Soc. xviii. 56-7. That burden included organising the collection of Ship Money, but there is some evidence that Boteler attempted to approach the task with sensitivity. Discussing the case of two defaulters, he suggested to the secretary of state, Edward Nicholas†, that he could probably persuade them to cooperate without the need to have them summoned before the privy council.30CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 272. His private papers, which are among the best for a Ship Money sheriff, nevertheless confirm that he faced all the usual problems of defaulters, assessment disputes and local special pleading.31Emmison, ‘Ship-money pprs.’, 55-88; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 574. In May 1638 he warned Nicholas that the collection was falling behind because there had been ‘so sudden and so general a backwardness in the king’s service’.32CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 432. He later made his own excuses. Summoned by the privy council to pay his arrears in May 1639, he asked for more time, claiming that a ‘feverish ague’ would prevent him travelling to London.33CSP Dom. 1639, pp. 106-7. Nine months later he was arguing that he had not received any authorisation to collect the remaining arrears.34CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 419. In the end, just £252 14s 5d of the £3,000 due from Bedfordshire under the 1637 writ remained uncollected, which meant that Boteler’s record was roughly in line with those of the sheriffs in most other counties.35Gordon, ‘Collection of ship-money’, 152. His knighthood may have been recognition from the king that he had done his best.36Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 209.

Given the proximity of Biddenham to the town, Boteler could claim strong local connections with Bedford and he may already have been a freemen. On the basis of those connections he attempted to get elected as one of its MPs in 1640. In both elections that year he found himself challenging Sir Samuel Luke* for the junior seat. Everything turned on the extent of the franchise, with the freemen returning Boteler as a challenge to the rights of the burgesses, who favoured Luke.37HMC 4th Rep. 24. The double return for the Short Parliament election was still unresolved at the dissolution, while later that year, after much delay, the Long Parliament finally found in Luke’s favour.38CJ ii. 17b, 212b, 239b. A relative of the Knightleys and the Hampdens, Luke may have seemed better-connected and more godly.

Boteler probably sided with Parliament from the start of its war with the king. Something of his motivation appears from his address to the Bedfordshire grand jury as chairman of the commission of the peace at the Michaelmas quarter sessions in 1645. Turning, in his overview of cases which might arise, to the definition of treason, he explained that this included levying war against the king, but qualified this by stressing that the recent actions by Parliament were not treasonable. This was because, although control of the militia was a matter reserved to the king, there were circumstances in which Parliament could exercise that control for him. Moreover, those who had received commissions from the king to take up arms could still be levying war against him, while conversely those who took up arms without commissions from him could still be levying war on his behalf.39R. Lee, ‘Sir William Boteler’s charges to the grand jury at quarter sessions 1643-1647’, Publ. Beds. Hist. Rec. Soc. lxv. 93-4. These echoed arguments used by the Long Parliament to validate its actions.

It is therefore surprising that Parliament did not make more use of him in Bedfordshire during the opening stages of the conflict. He was not added to the county committee until June 1644.40CJ iii. 518b. An existing justice of the peace and former sheriff might have expected a larger role. His previous activity as a subsidy and assessment commissioner was not enough to persuade the Commons to reappoint him as an assessment commissioner until 1645.41SR; A. and O; ‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir William Boteler’, 4. Nor was the fact that he lent Parliament £250 in 1643.42‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir William Boteler’, 37. It is true that his younger brother, Francis, was a major in the king’s army and that his brother-in-law, John Kelyng†, and his uncle, Sir Oliver Boteler, had also sided with the king.43‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir William Boteler’, 5, 9-10, 25-6, 32. Even so, there was no reason to suspect Boteler himself of anything other than steadfast adherence to the parliamentarian cause.

Moreover, once he was promoted to the county committee, Boteler immediately established himself as one of its leading members. That is why so many of its papers survive as part of his family archive.44‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir William Boteler’, 1-41; Luke Letter Bks. 342, 345, 350, 368, 511, 512, 538, 544, 548, 554. At times he appears to have been the crucial link between his colleagues on the committee and the governor of Newport Pagnell, his old rival, Sir Samuel Luke. Any bitterness from the 1640 elections had been put behind them. Their relationship proved to be particularly important because Newport Pagnell, just across the border in Buckinghamshire, provided Bedfordshire’s main defence against royalist attack. Much of the money, men and supplies raised in Bedfordshire went to Luke’s garrison. Inevitably Luke rarely believed that the Bedfordshire committee was doing enough, but it was often Boteler who undertook the delicate task of conveying those concerns to them. In turn, he constantly reassured Luke that they were doing all that they could. Faced with the king’s advance westwards in October 1644, he persuaded the standing committee to speed up the collection of taxes for urgent despatch to Newport Pagnell. Reinforcements were also sent.45Luke Letter Bks. 38-9, 356, 358, 385-6; ‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir William Boteler’, 13. Yet within weeks Luke was again complaining that his troops lacked money. Boteler then helped persuade those men to forego those wages for the time being, while also writing to the Committee of Both Kingdoms to press the case for more money.46Luke Letter Bks. 95, 97, 403. But he was not always so successful. When Luke asked him in February 1645 to warn the Bedfordshire committee that he did not have enough to pay his two troops of dragoons, Boteler found himself outvoted on whether to respond.47Luke Letter Bks. 133-4, 435. He had more success the following month when Luke again raised the subject of the arrears; Sir Samuel told his father, Sir Oliver Luke*, that Boteler had been ‘as good as his word’.48Luke Letter Bks. 179, 181, 409. Then, when Luke found himself with more prisoners than he could accommodate, Boteler arranged for them to be transferred to Bedford gaol.49Luke Letter Bks. 211, 487. In 1646, by which time any threat had gone, Boteler appears to have shared Luke’s view that the Newport Pagnell fortifications ought to be slighted.50‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir William Boteler’, 31-2.

Boteler was similarly active on the local sequestration committee, quickly establishing himself as one of the dominant personalities. He kept extensive notes in his own hand on many of the cases he handled.51P. Bell, ‘Minutes of the Beds. cttee. for sequestrations 1646-7’, Publ. Beds. Hist. Rec. Soc. xlix. 81-121; ‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir William Boteler’, 32-7. He was very much a hands-on administrator. Prominent local delinquents whose estates he helped sequester included Thomas Wentworth, 1st earl of Cleveland, Henry Mordaunt, 2nd earl of Peterborough, Sir Lewis Dyve† and the Capell family.52Blundell, ‘The inventory of Toddington manor house’, 130; ‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir William Boteler’, 4, 30, 33, 36; HMC Var. vii. 346. So hard was Boteler working on his public duties that his daughter, Helen, wrote to him during 1645 lamenting his long absences; he then used the letter as scrap paper to make notes about the tax assessments for Bedfordshire.53‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir William Boteler’, 18-19.

How far Boteler supported the actions by the army and the Rump in late 1648 and early 1649 is unclear. In November 1648 he seems not to have been on the initial list of proposed militia commissioners for Bedfordshire, but his name was among those the Commons added later.54CJ vi. 88b. After the regicide the Rump seems to have assumed that he was still willing to serve as a local officeholder, for he was named to successive assessment commissions.55A. and O. Nevertheless, he was one of several Bedfordshire grandees who were removed from the county bench in the summer of 1652.56C193/13/4, f. 1v.

In 1654 Boteler stood for one of the five Bedfordshire seats in the forthcoming Parliament. The claim that the master of Gonville and Caius, Cambridge, William Dell, tried to dissuade two of the voters from supporting Boteler reveals much about Boteler’s politics at this time. According to the two voters (who significantly came from Harrold, a place with which Boteler had strong links), Dell had told them that the lord protector did not want Boteler to be chosen and had specifically warned them not to select him because ‘if they chose such men, their tithes, taxes, and other grievous burdens would be continued’.57CSP Dom. 1654, p. 334. While there is no other evidence that Oliver Cromwell* had ever said anything about Boteler’s election, the notion that he was the candidate who supported the continuation of tithes is plausible enough. His charges to the Bedfordshire grand juries a decade earlier suggest that he was a conventional Presbyterian, keen on enforcing church attendance and opposed to the growth of the sects.58Lee, ‘Sir William Boteler’s charges’, 77-8, 82-4, 89-91. Once elected he would support the bill for ejecting scandalous ministers and schoolmasters.59CJ vii. 370a. Dell’s disapproval proved ineffective and Boteler was duly elected.60Beds. RO, CH 30A, unfol.

The broader implication of Dell’s remarks that Boteler distrusted the new protectorate also seems to have been true. Boteler was among MPs who used their time in the 1654 Parliament to question the terms of the Instrument of Government. His first committee appointment concerned the bill requiring MPs to recognise the government; he presumably had doubts about doing so, although he must have taken the oath in the end.61CJ vii. 370a. He later sat on the committee to consider the validity of the legislation passed by the Nominated Parliament, about which he may also have had some scruples.62CJ vii. 375a. Then, five times between 23 December 1654 and 19 January 1655, he acted as a teller in divisions on the proposed bill to amend the Instrument. Each time he was siding with those who wished to limit the protector’s powers, his fellow tellers including the Presbyterian, Sir Ralph Hare*. In the first of those divisions, on whether the bill should be considered by a grand committee, the Instrument’s principal author, John Lambert*, acted as teller for the other side.63CJ vii. 408a. Boteler was similarly reluctant to see discussion of the revenue clause sidelined to a separate committee.64CJ vii. 415b. His role in the division on 16 January suggests that he opposed the decision to extend the date to which the revenue would be granted from 1656 to 1659.65CJ vii. 418a. In one division on 19 January he wanted the property qualification for parliamentary elections to be defined slightly more generously than was eventually agreed. He then opposed the proposed clause setting out the protector’s control over the military.66CJ vii. 420b.

Boteler’s scepticism about the protectorate may have served him well when he stood for re-election in 1656. Along with Samuel Bedford* and John Hervy* he was again chosen by the Bedfordshire electors to represent them. But that time he did not live to take his seat at Westminster. In accordance with his instructions, he was buried in the parish church at Biddenham on 28 August, 20 days before Parliament assembled.67Genealogia Bedfordiensis, 44.

Boteler died heavily in debt. His second marriage 15 years earlier had also greatly increased the complexity of his affairs, for his second wife was the widow of his late cousin, William Farrar. Indeed these two factors may be related because this may have been the first example of their strategy of intermarriage to preserve the assets of both branches of the family. By this marriage Boteler acquired three stepsons, Thomas, William and Francis Farrar.68‘Notes from old Beds. deeds’, 340-1. The next intermarriage took place in June 1651 when the eldest of these stepsons, Thomas, married Helen, Boteler’s eldest daughter by his first marriage.69‘Notes from old Beds. deeds’, 341-2; Genealogia Bedfordiensis, 44. Soon after, Farrar and his brother William were demanding lands in and around Biddenham from Sir William.70Elliott, ‘Windmills of Beds.’, 11. The extent of Boteler’s difficulties was made clear in December 1652 when he handed his estates over to a team of trustees mostly consisting of his brothers-in-law and his sons-in-law (including Farrar). Heading the trustees was Abraham Burrell*, who just conceivably may have been another of his relatives but who is more likely to have been his major creditor. The will Boteler signed the following day confirms that the trustees’ priority was to pay off his debts.71PROB11/261/308. In time control of the estates passed to his eldest son, William† junior, although in 1680, in a fourth alliance between the Botelers and the Farrars, he married his daughter, Mary, to William Farrar, the son of the 1651 marriage.72VCH Beds. iii. 66. William junior sat as MP for Bedfordshire in the 1685 Parliament.73HP Commons 1660-1690. The male line of the family died with him in 1703.