BENNETT, Gervase (1611-70), of St Werburgh, Derby, and Snelston, Derbys.

Almost nothing is known about Bennett’s family before the early seventeenth century, and there may be some substance to royalist jibes that he was ‘born but to £10 per annum’.39SP29/66/35, f. 52; Newton, ‘The gentry in Derbys.’ 7. By the late 1630s, he was trading as a mercer in Derby and seems to have enjoyed a lucrative business partnership with one of the town’s leading inhabitants, Robert Mellor (they were described as ‘fellow shopkeepers’).40Derbys. RO, D37/MR/T/200; D258/10/9/45; D3155/6807-8; Newton, ‘The gentry in Derbys.’ 13. As Mellor’s friend, Bennett was part of a local clique that included Sir Samuel Sleigh* and Thomas Sanders*.41C6/144/147. In 1639, Bennett and a kinsman of Derby’s serving mayor were indicted by the episcopal authorities for holding a conventicle – presided over by a local nonconforming minister – in response to an outbreak of plague in the town.42R. Clark, The Bailiffs of Derby (Derbys. Rec. Soc. Occasional Ppr. xi), 33. Bennett signed the February 1642 Derbyshire petition to the Commons calling for tougher measures against papists and the advancement of the ‘blessed work of reformation’.43PA, Main Pprs. 26 Feb. 1642. And in November, he contributed £40 in money and plate towards the parliamentarian war-effort.44J.T. Brighton, Royalists and Roundheads in Derbys. (Bakewell and District Hist. Soc. 1981), 77, 79. His decision to side with Parliament was probably linked to his godly religious sympathies.

Bennett was one of the most active members of the Derbyshire parliamentarian interest, serving both as treasurer for the county committee and as a receiver for the forces commanded by Colonel Sir John Gell.45E113/11; SP28/226, unfol.; SP28/128, pt. 15, ff. 19, 20v; E179/94/374. His relationship with the Gells, the leading parliamentarian family in Derbyshire, was cordial until 1645. But the appointment of Sir John’s brother, Lieutenant-colonel Thomas Gell*, as recorder of Derby late in 1644, and Sir John’s increasingly high-handed behaviour as the town’s garrison commander, soured relations between the Gells and some of the leading townsmen – among them, apparently, Bennett.46Infra, ‘Thomas Sanders’; Derbys. RO, D1232/O/9a, 9b. Bennett’s friend Major Thomas Sanders was not alone in regarding Thomas Gell as an ‘unfit man’ for the place of recorder ‘in respect of his mean estate, want of learning, law and honesty’.47Derbys. RO, D1232/O/9a. A proposal by the Derbyshire county committee early in 1645 to co-opt Bennett and John Dallton* – ‘two honest and able burgesses of Derby, whose presence may help to clear and preserve the immunities and privileges of the borough’ – was evidently intended by Sanders and his friends to strengthen their local interest at the expense of the Gells.48Derbys. RO, D1232/O/25, 37.

The faction-fighting between the Gells and the Sanders interest spilled over into the Derby ‘recruiter’ election in November 1645 – and having been chosen mayor of the town just a few weeks earlier, Bennett was at the centre of the dispute. Late in October, he helped to furnish Sir Samuel Sleigh and Nathaniel Hallowes* with information to lay before the Commons against the Gells, including the allegation that Sir John Gell had

lately threatened and, with musketeers, imprisoned divers freemen and burgesses of Derby after a writ was delivered for the election of a burgess there, to the great terror of the town, whereupon the mayor [Bennett] and aldermen repaired to the [county] committee and desired redress touching the same.49Derbys. RO, D1232/O/58-9, 61.

On election day, 12 November, Bennett acted as ex officio returning officer. The two candidates were Thomas Gell and Bennett’s old friend Alderman Robert Mellor. The contest between the two men went to a poll, which Gell won by over 20 votes. However, Bennett used his authority to disqualify some of Gell’s party on the dubious grounds that they were non-residents, and he duly returned Mellor. Gell’s party responded by drawing up an indenture returning their own man, and within a few days of the election he had been formally admitted to the House. Mellor’s party petitioned the Commons against Gell’s return, whereupon the Commons referred the dispute to the committee of privileges. For the next year or so Bennett was involved in efforts to gather evidence against the Gells, but despite spending many hours on the case the committee apparently failed to report its findings to the House, and Gell was allowed to retain his seat.50Supra, ‘Derby’; Add. 28716, ff. 39-49; Derbys. RO, D258/9/5/5-10, 20; D1232/O/71(a).

The election dispute at Derby, or at least the Gell-Sanders rivalry, had a national political dimension inasmuch as Gell looked to the leader of the parliamentary Presbyterians, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, for support while Sanders looked to the Fairfaxes and their Independent allies.51Infra, ‘Thomas Sanders’. Nevertheless, allegations by the Gells that Sanders and his friends were separatists and ‘that they go about to suppress the gentry’ were entirely groundless.52Derbys. D1232/O/25. Similarly, it was Gell’s ‘pride and policy’ that his opponents objected to, not his politics or religion.53Derbys. D1232/O/32. By 1651, Bennett had patched up his quarrel with the Gells to the extent that John Gell* took out a a loan from him of £550.54Derbys. RO, D258/8/45; D258/9/16.

Bennett attended the Derbyshire county committee on a regular basis from the summer of 1647 and continued to do so after the regicide.55SP28/226; Beats, ‘Derbys.’, 272. He was included on the 1650 commission of peace for Derbyshire and was appointed one of three sequestration commissioners for the county – one of the other two being his friend Mellor.56C193/13/3, f. 12v; CCC 171. The commissioners met ‘constantly ... for the transaction of business’ and were committed to increasing the county’s sequestration revenues.57E113/11; CCC 325-6; J. C. Cox, ‘Procs. of the Derbys. cttee. for compounding’, Jnl. of the Derbys. Arch. and Natural Hist. Soc. xiii. 144-64. As a justice of the peace, Bennett enjoyed the distinction of imprisoning George Fox for blasphemy and christening him and his followers ‘Quakers’.58G. Fox, The Great Mistery of the Great Whore Unfolded (1659), 61-2, 110; Jnl. of George Fox, i. 2, 4, 9, 13; W.C. Braithwaite, The Beginnings of Quakerism (2nd edn.), 53-4, 57, 119.

The dissolution of the Rump proved no check to Bennett’s career, for he was almost certainly the ‘Mr Bennett’ who was operating under the council of officers’ direction in April and May 1653 as a commissioner for inspecting the treasuries.59CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 301, 303. His only known qualification for this office was the financial acumen he had acquired as a mercer. At some point over the next few months, he was selected by the council to represent Derbyshire in the Nominated Assembly. The grounds for his selection are not known. However, his friendship with his fellow Derbyshire nominee Colonel Nathaniel Barton* – who may have been selected by Oliver Cromwell* personally – probably weighed in his favour.60Supra, ‘Nathaniel Barton’; The Representation or Defence of Collonel Nathaniell Barton (1654), 14; A Faithfull Searching Home Word (1659), 16 (E.774.1). Like Barton, Bennett seems to have favoured a publicly-maintained, parochial ministry. He was appointed an ejector for Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire under the protectorate; and in 1656, he and Sanders recommended the Presbyterian minister Robert Seddon to Charles Cavendish, Viscount Mansfield* for his vacant living of Kirk Langley.61Add. 70499, ff. 333, 335; Nottingham Univ. Lib. Pw 1/10, 96; A. and O.; Calamy Revised, 431.

Bennett was one of the less active Members of the Nominated Parliament and should not be confused with his more prominent colleague Colonel Robert Bennett. The Derbyshire Member was named to only three committees, although all of them were important bodies – the committee ‘to consider of the right ordering and disposing of business of the House by committees’ (14 July), the committee ‘for the business of the law’ (20 July) and the committee for relieving the poor and regulating the commission of the peace.62CJ vii. 285a, 286b, 287a. He also served as a minority teller with Cromwell’s son, Henry Cromwell, on 15 November against removing the sheriff of Cambridgeshire – the majority tellers being the radicals Thomas St Nicholas and Thomas Blount.63CJ vii. 351a.

Despite his relatively low profile in the Nominated Parliament, Bennett was popular enough with his fellow Members to win a place on the seventh council of state – although only just. In the elections to the council, on 1 November 1653, he and three others tied in last place with 52 votes, and in the subsequent draw to decide who should fill the three remaining seats, his was one of the names that came out of the hat.64CJ vii. 344a, b. His election to the council and automatic appointment to its successor in December, consolidated his reputation as a reliable administrator. He was named to the council committees for Scottish and Irish affairs, chaired its committee for examinations and was paired with Barton on at least eight occasions as to minor items of council business.65CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 229, 231, 236, 237, 241, 251, 252, 256, 272. When the fledgling protectoral council appointed new commissioners for inspecting the treasuries, late in December, Bennett was one of the men it selected.66CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 317; SP28/270, ff. 351-90. Over the next five years, he was named to protectoral commissions for ‘preservation’ (i.e. improvement) of the customs, regulating the excise and to successive Committees for the Army*, and he secured a ‘great place in the wine office’ as an agent for wine import licences.67CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 316, 425; 1654, pp. 342, 343; 1655, p. 51; 1657-8, pp. 76, 282; 1658-9, p. 48; A Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 16 (E.935.5). His official duties required him to spend much of his time in London, and during the mid-1650s he acquired or rented lodgings in the Old Palace Yard, Westminster.68C54/3977/16; St Werburgh par. reg. (bur. entry, 6 May 1655); TSP iv. 211; Derbys. RO, D5557/2/43/3. His salary as a commissioner for regulating the excise was £300 a year, and he received a further £100 a year as a member of the Army Committee.69CSP Dom. 1654, p. 343; 1657-8, p. 334; Narrative, 16.

In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in July 1654, Bennett was returned for Derby – almost certainly with the full backing of his fellow aldermen. However, he received no appointments in this Parliament, and it is far from certain that he took his seat. He was returned for Derby again in the summer of 1656 and was involved in taking the poll in the contested Derbyshire county election.70Derbys. RO, D258/34/5/5-7. He was named to 15 committees in the second protectoral Parliament, including two relating to the arrears of the excise, and may have chaired a committee to investigate the ‘great oppression’ of James Chadwicke* as steward of the honour of Peverel.71CJ vii. 440a, 442b, 443a, 457b, 488a, 488b, 490b, 496b, 507a, 515b, 521a, 528a, 529b, 559a, 589a; Notts. RO, DD/TS/6/5/1. He took no known part in debates on the Remonstrance and the Humble Petition and Advice and was named to only one committee concerning the offer of the crown to Cromwell.72CJ vii. 521a. Nevertheless, the author of the Narrative of the Late Parliament was probably correct in placing him among the ‘kinglings’ in the House.73Narrative, 22. Bennett was certainly a loyal Cromwellian. He attended Cromwell’s funeral in November 1658 (in his capacity as a member of the Army Committee) and, having been returned for Derby in the elections to the third protectoral Parliament, was authorised on 27 January 1659 as a commissioner for tendering MPs the oath of loyalty to Protector Richard Cromwell* prescribed under the Humble Petition.74Burton’s Diary, ii. 524; CJ vii. 593. He was named to only three committees in this Parliament, in which his most important contribution was probably his report from the Army Committee on 17 February on the national military budget.75CJ vii. 604b, 622b, 632a, 639a.

Bennett seems to have welcomed the re-admission of the secluded Members in February 1660, for one of the reconstituted Long Parliament’s first acts was to include him on a new excise commission.76CJ vii. 851a. He was active on the Derbyshire militia commission that spring and took a keen interest in the county elections for the 1660 Convention, providing a very knowledgeable assessment of the candidates involved to his friend German Pole*.77Stowe 185, f. 151v; Derbys. RO, D5557/2/59, 194. Although there is no evidence that he stood for election himself in 1660, or indeed at any time thereafter, he was probably the ‘Mr Bennett’ who helped Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, in attempting to rally those MPs thought likely to support a Presbyterian church settlement.78G.F.T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 323, 346. Bennett was linked to Wharton through his brother Robert Bennett, who was Wharton’s chaplain.79Calamy Revised, 49. In August 1660, according to a royalist informer, Wharton, John Thurloe* and other leading members of the Presbyterian interest held frequent meetings at Bennett’s house in London.80CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 307. The Derbyshire royalists claimed that Bennett was ‘ever against the king [Charles II] until his coming into England’, and that he had used the profits of office during the 1640s and 1650s to amass an estate worth £1,000 a year.81Newton, ‘The gentry in Derbys.’ 7. Despite such allegations, Bennett retained his place on the Derbyshire bench after the Restoration (although with what seems to have been a brief hiatus in the summer of 1660), and from 1667 he was employed by the treasury as a receiver for crown revenues in the county.82CTB ii. 206, 485; iii. 360, 532, 567, 589.

Bennett died in the spring of 1670 and was buried at Snelston on 23 May.83Snelston par. reg. He evidently made a will, but it was never entered in probate, and the administration of his estate was granted to his brother Robert. Bennett’s personal estate at Snelston was inventoried at £200.84C8/217/26; Staffs. RO, B/C/11. He was the first and the last of his family to sit in Parliament.