BAWDEN, John (d. 1685), of Trelask, near Launceston, Cornw.

There were four John Bawdens noted in the 1641 Protestation returns for Cornwall, and it is uncertain which one – if any – might have been the future MP.16Cornw. Protestation Returns, 11, 117, 197. There were also families of the same name holding property in the boroughs of West Looe and Truro, but no mention is made of a John Bawden.17Cornw. RO, B/WLO/32-34; B/WLO/63/1, ff. 30v, 57; B/TRU/65/1/1. However, the MP may have been the John Bawden listed as a tenant of the duchy of Cornwall in the manor of Helston in Trigg to the north of the county before 1649 ‘by surrender of John Bawden his uncle’; and this, in turn, may indicate that he, or perhaps the uncle, was the ‘John Bawdin’ of Advent parish (which included part of Helston in Trigg) listed in 1641.18Parl. Surv. Duchy Cornw. 54, 61; Cornw. Protestation Returns, 197. If this identification is correct, Bawden’s origins were yeoman, rather than gentry, in character, and he probably owed his later local prominence to his conduct during the civil wars. Bawden was an officer in the Plymouth garrison in the mid-1640s, and served at the siege of Pendennis Castle in August 1646, when he was a captain in Colonel Anthony Rous’s* regiment.19Worth, Hist. of Plymouth, 134; Bodl. Walker c.10, f. 139v. In October of that year he was reimbursed £20 by the county committee for bullocks bought by him which ‘proved to be the goods of Mr Anthony Nicoll* and [were] taken from the captain’.20Bodl. Walker c.10, f. 124. In 1649 Bawden was paid £29 5s. in arrears, as part of a series of payments to Rous’s regiment.21Bodl. Walker c.10, f. 110. By November 1650 he had been promoted to the rank of major in the forces commanded by Lieutenant-colonel Joseph Hunkin, and in May 1651, when the Scilly Isles surrendered to Parliament, Hunkin was made the governor, with Bawden as his second in command.22SP28/72/374. In December 1652, the council of state ordered that Hunkin and Bawden were to be made justices of the peace, to allow them to execute civil power in the islands, and on 8 January 1653 they were duly added to the commission of the peace for Cornwall.23CSP Dom. 1652-3, pp. 29, 34; C231/6, p. 249.

Bawden’s selection as one of Cornish members of the Nominated Assembly in the summer of 1653 was probably the result of the patronage of John Carew*, who shared Bawden’s radical religious beliefs.24B.S. Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men (1972), 68; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 209, 210. With Francis Langdon*, Bawden and Carew became notorious as Fifth Monarchists during the Assembly, although Bawden’s activity in its business was slight, and his inclusion in the influential committee for inspecting the treasurers and regulating salaries may have merely reflected the fact that the initial letter of his surname lies towards the beginning of the alphabet.25CJ vii. 287a; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 161. He was appointed to only one other committee, on 1 October 1653.26CJ vii. 328a.

The Nominated Assembly marked the high point of Bawden’s career, and he did not prosper during the protectorate. Having been an assessment commissioner in the early 1650s, he was conspicuous by his absence from the commissions appointed between November 1653 and the summer of 1659.27An Act for An Assessment; A. and O. In January 1654 he and his former commander, Colonel Anthony Rous, were summoned to the Committee for Compounding to defend their position as trustees of the vicarage of Breage, which was claimed back by the former royalist, Sir Thomas Hele*.28CCC 1239. A parallel case saw Bawden’s possession of a copyhold tenement in Cargoll Manor challenged by the former owner, Colonel Nicholas Borlace, under the Truro Articles, and when Borlace made a formal re-entry of the property, the protector intervened to insist that Bawden show his cause before the end of January 1654, or lose the lands. Borlace’s possession was confirmed in March, and he then pursued Bawden for the profits he had made from the land in the previous four years.29CCC 2004-5.

Bawden’s disfavour in the eyes of the government was not helped by his continuing involvement in radical religion. In the spring of 1654 he became one of the supporters of the controversial mystic, Anna Trapnel, when she visited Cornwall. According to Trapnel, ‘Major Bawden and his wife’, although ‘strangers to me then … spake very friend-like to me; and it was not in tongue but in heart’, and with Langdon, Bawden went on to stand surety for Trapnel to secure her release.30Trapnel, Anna Trapnel’s Report and Plea, 13, 19, 25; A Legacy for Saints (1654), 50, 54 (E.806.1). This angered Bawden’s fellow justices of the peace, including the Baptist, Richard Lobb*, and the Presbyterian, Peter Ceely*, with Ceely ‘wondering [that] such a man as he, who had been so well reputed for a judicious, sober, understanding man, should hearken to her’.31Trapnel, Report and Plea, 24-5, 27. Although Bawden remained at odds with the protectoral regime, there is no indication that he joined any of the Fifth Monarchy conspiracies against it, although the ‘Captain Bowden … sent for custody’ by Richard Cromwell’s* council in the spring of 1659 may have been the former MP.32IND1/8908, column 6.

The fall of the protectorate brought Bawden back into local government, as a militia and assessment commissioner, but he was still treated with caution.33A. and O. In July 1659 Bawden was again serving as one of the militia captains in Cornwall, and the next month he was one of those recommended by his former opponent in the Trapnel case, Richard Lobb, to Colonel Robert Bennett* as suitable to be retained in his local command.34CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 16; FSL, X.d.438 (127). By this time Bawden had already been commissioned as major of the Cornish militia horse, taking over from another of his enemies, Peter Ceely, and in this capacity he received letters from the council of state warning of the threat of a royalist rising at the end of July.35CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 50. The latter post did not last long before Bawden was replaced by Captain Gregory Cloake, who may have served in Bennett’s regiment during the 1640s.36CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 564; FSL, X.d.438 (11). With men like Lobb and Bennett in the ascendant, it was hard for Bawden to re-establish his position in Cornwall. There is no evidence for Bawden’s activities after the Restoration, but he was living in Truro before his death in March 1685; his will was proved later in that year.37Reg. St Mary, Truro, 324; Cornw. and Devon Wills, 17. Nothing is known of his descendants, although Daniel and Nicholas Bawden, who shared an interest in the copyhold lease of the Cargoll lands in 1650, may have been his sons.38CCC 2004.