BOTTERELL, William (d. 1677), of Ludlow, Salop.

The origins of William Botterell (who spelled his name thus) are difficult to trace.10Salop Archives, LB8/1/170/3. At Aston Botterell a gentry family of his name had been seated there since the early fourteenth century, and in 1610 was represented by a William Botterell who lived at Norton.11Vis. Salop 1623, i. (Harl. Soc. xxviii), 61-3; Salop Archives, 1514/358. Aston Botterell is quite near Ludlow, Norton much further away, near Broseley. It does not seem safe to identify the MP with either the long-established Aston Botterell family or with the gentleman at Norton. We are only on sure ground when we encounter William Botterell as a witness to a deed in Ludlow in March 1634.12Salop Archives, 1623/12. He was churchwarden there the following year, placing his first steps on the cursus honorum which in that town included service at the parish church. He was a clothier by trade.13Salop Archives, LB2/1/1, ff. 200, 204. As Botterell cannot be traced in the parish register prior to this, either as the subject of an entry or as an official, it seems likely that he had moved there, a younger son or a minor gentleman, intent on a career in commerce or perhaps living off a small estate. There is nothing to connect him with the council in the marches of Wales. Between 1637 and 1641 Botterell buried his wife, remarried, had the first of his children baptised and served as low bailiff in Ludlow corporation.14Salop Par. Regs. Ludlow, 203, 207, 360.

The civil war took Botterell away from Ludlow. He served in the army of Parliament, but there is plenty of scope for confusion here, as it seems there were two of his name with military commissions. He was probably the clerk of the magazine at King’s Lynn, entrusted with receiving cargoes of arms by sea from London, for the use of the Eastern Association of Edward Montagu, 2nd earl of Manchester. His official title may have been commissary of stores. There are notes of arms consignments handled by Botterell throughout 1644.15SP28/21/49; 22/224; 25/179, 531; HMC 8th Rep. ii. 61; C. Holmes, The Eastern Association in the English Civil War (Cambridge, 1974), 150-1. When the New Model army was established, Botterell seems to have become commissary at the magazine in Reading. In March 1647, he was in correspondence with the Committee for Taking the Accounts of the Kingdom, marshalling various receipts which he hoped would secure him the desired goal of perfecting the accounts for his time in army service.16CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 543. This probably marked the end of Botterell’s career in the commissariat of the national parliamentarian army. But another William Botterell, with the rank of captain, was still in commission from May 1649 to March 1651, and it almost certainly has to be another man.17SP28/60/438; 66/140, 399, 668; SP28/70/60, 469; SP28/75/340, 573.

It was probably Botterell the former commissary, rather than Botterell the captain in the field army, who returned to Ludlow to become governor. The accounts of the corporation for the years 1647-8 include sums spent on entertaining Governor Botterell and his wife, and the modest feasting must have been akin to a homecoming celebration.18Salop Archives, LB8/1/168/3. When appointed governor, Botterell may well have been given the rank of captain, and this would explain why in 1653 he appears in the Commons Journal with that title.19CJ vii. 285b. In May 1649, the corporation admitted him and his wife to the pew in Ludlow church which, in the days when he had been churchwarden, had been allocated to the wife of the lord president of the council in the marches.20Trans. Salop Arch. and Nat. Hist. Soc. ser. 4, xi. 176. He seems to have combined the supervision of Ludlow castle with civic office. He resumed his place on the cursus honorum, serving as low bailiff in 1648-9; he was later elected capital master (chief magistrate) for several years in the 1650s. It my have been in his combined role as governor and bailiff that a former Ludlow man wrote to him from Surrey on town business in November 1648.21Salop Archives, LB7/1706. With John Aston* he travelled to Shrewsbury to try to tempt the minister, Francis Boughey, to the living of Ludlow. Another clergyman, Richard Sadler, served in Ludlow as lecturer during Botterell’s ascendancy. Both Boughey and Sadler signed the Presbyterian Shropshire ministers’ Testimony in 1648, so it can be presumed that Botterell was at this stage at least not a sectary.22Salop Archives, LB8/1/169/1; Calamy Revised, 423, 556. With John Aston*, Botterell set about building a fund to use in a work scheme for the poor of the town. The trial and execution of the king did not deter Botterell from public life; he progressed to be high bailiff in 1651-2, and during his period in office the borough acquired new maces, presumably with some insignia suitable for the new republic.23Salop Archives, LB8/1/171/2. On the other hand, this acquiescence should not be taken as unambiguous enthusiasm for the Rump. While Botterell was high bailiff, the Presbyterian Sir Robert Harley* was given sugar, sack and biscuits by the corporation, even though he was persona non grata to the government at Westminster.24Salop Archives, LB8/1/171/1; 172/3.

It was only after the death of the king that Botterell began to play any part in county government, and even in those days of widespread reluctance to participate in local affairs, it was not until he was an MP that he was considered prominent enough to merit a place in the commission of the peace. The high point of his career in the affairs of the wider region was achieved in the summer of 1651 when he was included among the commissioners for trying rebels in south Wales, and his qualifications for this appointment were doubtless his military governorship rather than his standing with Ludlow corporation. Probably it was the same evidence that he was a dependable military figure in the Shropshire region that was his principal recommendation as an MP for the Nominated Assembly of 1653. His involvement in the work of that body was very slight. He was named only to two committees, within days of each other and on the same topic of treasuries and public finance (16 and 20 July).25CJ vii. 285b, 287a. The aims of this committee – both sets of nominations must have been amalgamated to form one single body – were to reduce various branches of revenue to one treasury, and to pursue accountants who still held public funds.26A New List of all the Members (1653, 669.f.17.57). When recording those who served on one of these committees, the Journal clerk described him as Captain Botterell. His contribution is unlikely to have been significant. On 26 September, he was given leave to go into the country, and probably returned to Ludlow.27CJ vii. 324b. There is nothing to suggest he ever went back to Westminster, nor any evidence to link him with the sectaries who were trying to drive on the business of the assembly.

Botterell was evidently comfortable with the inauguration of the Cromwellian protectorate, at least to the extent that his name appeared as one of the ejectors for Shropshire under the terms of the ordinance of August 1654. In 1657 he corresponded with the trustees for the sales of fee farm rents, complaining of defects in his title to rents in Herefordshire.28Stowe 184, f. 230. He held further civic office in Ludlow, and in June 1658, perhaps still with some military authority at Ludlow Castle, was asked to help the excise sub-commissioners in the district to bring in outstanding revenues.29CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 76. The revived Rump drew more heavily on Botterell’s previous experience as a military governor. In the emergency created by Sir George Boothe’s* rising in the summer of 1659, the council of state commissioned Botterell to raise a company of foot to defend Ludlow, and he was reinstated as governor of the castle. After the alarms of the summer, Botterell retained the captaincy of a militia company, and held the castle. In January 1660, he reported to the council of state on the enthusiasm among the soldiers for the revived Rump Parliament.30CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 52, 92, 108, 130, 145, 150, 567; CJ vii. 772b; HMC Portland, i. 693. After the Restoration of the monarchy, Botterell lost not only his military commission, but also his place in Ludlow corporation, being removed as alderman on 25 August 1662.31Salop Archives, LB2/1/2. His fate after that remains obscure. He must have left Ludlow, and may have followed John Aston into the anonymity of London. One William Botterell, a widower, died there in 1677, with at least one child sharing the forename of a child baptised in Ludlow in 1641, but the will is brief and gives virtually no clues as to the life and background of the testator.32PROB11/354/333.