BURTON, Thomas (1627-61), of Brampton, Long Marton, Westmld.

Burton’s family had resided in or near the parish of Long Marton since at least the 1570s. Both his father and grandfather were clergymen and one of his brothers would also enter the ministry.20Nicolson, Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. i. 358, 361; Walker Revised, 368; Nightingale, Ejected of Cumb. and Westmld. 1181-3. Burton himself pursued a career in the law, which commenced with his admission to Gray’s Inn in 1647. One of his most vivid memories prior to his departure for London may have been the rough usage and imprisonment of his father, Richard Burton, by the Westmorland parliamentarians in 1644 on charges of having taken up arms for the king, lent ‘great sums of money’ for his service and having preached against Parliament. Not only did the soldiers make free of his houses, horses and goods, they also ‘sequestered’ wool and plate to the value, or so he claimed, of £1,600.21LPL, Ms 1753, ff. 18-24. Richard Burton had certainly contributed £2 towards the maintenance of Carlisle’s royalist garrison that year.22Nightingale, Ejected of Cumb. and Westmld. 229. But the local parliamentarians were probably interested primarily in his wealth rather than his politics. A few years later, he was deemed sufficiently well-affected by the Committee for Compounding* to be allowed to retain one of his two church livings.23Nightingale, Ejected of Cumb. and Westmld. 229, 1138-9.

The Burton family’s ordeal at the hands of the region’s parliamentarians did not end in 1644, for Burton would face similar charges to those that had been levelled against his father. In 1651, the Westmorland committee for sequestrations received depositions that Burton had been in arms against Parliament at Carlisle and elsewhere in the region.24CCC 521. Likewise, in March 1653, the radical Cumberland pamphleteer John Musgrave presented charges against Burton to the Committee for Indemnity*.25SP24/13, f. 80. He claimed that Burton had been fined and imprisoned for having been ‘in actual arms under Sir Philip Musgrave*’ during the second civil war and yet had continued to serve as a Westmorland justice of the peace (having been appointed to the bench in March 1652) contrary to the ordinance of October 1652 against delinquents holding public office.26SP24/65 (Musgrave v. Cholmley et al.). In print, Musgrave further alleged that Burton’s ‘gross misdemeanors in executing of his office while he was justice of peace, the many quarrelsome and troublesome suits, his oppressions and unwarrantable and illegal commitments, his daily frequenting ranting cavaliers company, are all proved before the commissioners for compounding’. Musgrave also claimed that Burton’s father had voluntarily ‘lent Sir Philip large sums of money ... to carry on the war’.27J. Musgrave, A Cry of Bloud of an Innocent Abel against Two Bloudy Cains (1654), 28 (E.731.8). The mention of Sir Philip Musgrave, Westmorland’s leading royalist, may be significant here, for the Burtons had been on familiar terms with him since at least 1639, when he had mortgaged his manor of Soulby to Burton’s father for £1,000.28SP23/71, pp. 651, 654-5, 657; Cumb. RO (Carlisle), DMUS/5/5/2/5. Burton denied the charges, but not to the satisfaction of the Committee for Indemnity, which concluded that ‘it clearly appears by the evidence … that the said Mr Thomas Burton hath been aiding and assisting to the late king by being actually in arms for him’.29SP24/14, f. 5; SP24/15, ff. 20, 27, 50, 180. The committee ordered his removal from the Westmorland commission of peace and fined him £50, half of which went to Musgrave. Yet if Burton was removed from the bench – and there is no firm evidence to this effect – he had been restored by 1654, when he was responsible for imprisoning a Quaker evangelist for witnessing against the minister of Brampton. The imprisoned Quaker referred to Burton as a ‘bloody persecutor of the servants of the living God’.30[C. Taylor], The Whirl-Wind of the Lord Gone Forth (1655), 10 (E.853.6). In 1652, Burton had imprisoned the Quaker evangelist James Naylor, whose alleged blasphemy would excite his indignation as an MP in 1656-7.31Nightingale, Ejected of Cumb. and Westmld. 1081. Burton was involved in settling ‘godly and orthodox’ ministers and schoolteachers in Westmorland during the mid-1650s.32Nightingale, Ejected of Cumb. and Westmld. 1133-4, 1182, 1186, 1300-2, 1307, 1311-12. But his marriage by 1657 to a daughter of the arch-Laudian prelate John Cosin, the future bishop of Durham, may be evidence of sympathies on his part for the Prayer Book and episcopacy.

Called to the bar in 1655 on the same day as his fellow Westmorland lawyer Thomas Wharton*, Burton should not be confused with his Shropshire namesake and fellow Gray’s Inn barrister.33Supra, ‘Thomas Wharton’; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 101. A year later, in the elections to the second protectoral Parliament, Burton was returned for his native Westmorland, taking first place on a poll ahead of at least three other candidates – Jeremy Baines*, Christopher Lister* and John Archer.34Supra, ‘Westmorland’. The basis of his popularity with the Westmorland voters is something of a mystery; certainly his relatively small estate would not have given him a strong proprietorial interest. There is evidence that he enjoyed the favour of the region’s most powerful politician, Major-general Charles Howard*.35Cumb. RO (Kendal), WDHOTH/3/44/6/108. But there is also the possibility that John Musgrave’s campaign against him had raised his profile in the county, particularly among those who secretly yearned for a restoration of the monarchy.

If Burton’s royalist past was indeed a factor in his election, it might partly explain why he was confronted with it so soon after taking his seat. On 16 October 1656, the Speaker informed the House that he had received articles against Burton from one Anthony Hillary, a professional informer employed by Major-general Robert Lilburne*. Burton presented certificates in his defence from ‘divers’ well-affected ministers and gentry in Westmorland and then withdrew from the House.36CJ vii. 439a-b, 440b-441a. A committee was set up to investigate the articles against him, and on 18 October it reported that neither Hillary nor his information could be trusted. Indeed, Lilburne himself had called him ‘a very loose fellow’. After hearing the evidence, the House cleared Burton of all charges and committed Hillary to Newgate.37CJ vii. 440b-441a. But Burton’s royalist past threatened to catch up with him again later that same month, when Richard Clapham, a steward of Lady Anne Clifford, countess of Pembroke, Dorset and Montgomery – the owner of an extensive estate in Westmorland – told Major-general Charles Howard that if Burton continued to act as a spokesman at Westminster for the countess’s aggrieved tenants, he would ‘prove every word of the information’ against him. Howard asked Clapham to ‘forbear’ and promised that he would ensure that ‘Burton should not meddle’.38Cumb. RO (Kendal), WDHOTH/3/44/6/108. Perhaps sensing Burton’s political vulnerability in the winter of 1656-7, his old adversary John Musgrave re-entered the lists against him. In January, Parliament’s serjeant-at-arms informed Burton that Musgrave had been at his house on Saturday, ‘railing two hours together against me and Major-general Howard. He [Musgrave] showed him a petition of a mile long against me and a letter to the House, which he intended to present shortly ... He ranted highly what he would do’.39Burton’s Diary, i. 299. In the event, nothing seems to have come of Musgrave’s ranting, or his petition.

Burton was named to 27 committees in this Parliament and was evidently active on several others – making two of his four reports to the House from committees to which there is no record that he was ever appointed.40CJ vii. 442a, 456a, 483a, 484a, 485b, 491b, 494b, 496b, 507a, 514a, 514b, 515a, 515b, 516a, 520b, 521a, 521b, 528a, 529a, 529b, 542a, 542a, 542b, 543a, 543b, 544a, 557b, 580b. His committee appointments suggest that he was more concerned with the bread-and-butter affairs, the ‘little businesses’, at Westminster than engaging publicly with the great issues of the moment – an impression confirmed by the voluminous diary he kept of the 1656-8 and 1659 Parliaments. Edited by J. T. Rutt and published in 1828, Burton’s diary is without doubt the most important source for parliamentary politics during the protectorate. Burton seems to have taken down the speeches as they were delivered in the House and more or less verbatim, and indeed there is some internal evidence to this effect.41Burton’s Diary, i. 296, 299, 341-2; ii. 7, 169. He apparently made no effort to disguise his diary-keeping activities, for on 25 January 1658, the Speaker asked him to take notes of the protector’s speech, and he conferred with John Rushworth* to that end.42Burton’s Diary, ii. 351. Unfortunately, the diary offers no clue as to its likely purpose – whether Burton wrote it for himself or for someone not privy to the House’s proceedings. The diary is also frustratingly short on details about its author or his politics. We glimpse enough of him in its pages to deduce that he was one of the more conscientious of the ‘northern Members’. He took a keen interest in the bill for the suppression of theft upon the northern borders, for example, put up with Luke Robinson’s long-winded interventions in the committee to establish a court of equity at York, and played a leading role in steering the River Ouse navigation bill through the House.43Burton’s Diary, i. 19, 117, 148, 175, 221; ii. 169; Oxford DNB, ‘Thomas Burton’. What also emerges clearly is his hatred of James Naylor, whose sentence he went to see executed.44Burton’s Diary, i. 115, 265-6; ii. 132. But we learn little from the diary of his attitude toward the important questions in debate. In fact, some of his committee appointments are more revealing here. His appointment to committees set up on 27 March and on 6, 7 and 9 April to present the Humble Petition and Advice to Cromwell and to satisfy the latter’s ‘doubts and scruples’ about accepting the crown, strongly suggests that he favoured the adoption of a more monarchical form of government.45CJ vii. 514a, 520b, 521a,

Burton was returned for Westmorland again in the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659. He was named to just four committees in this Parliament, although it is clear from his diary that he attended the House regularly.46CJ vii. 594b, 600b, 623b, 627b. Unlike some of his former electoral rivals, Burton had little reason to fear the resurgence of royalist feeling in Westmorland by early 1660, and in April he was one of six men (including Thomas Wharton and Jeremiah Baines) who challenged for Westmorland’s two county seats in the elections to the 1660 Convention.47Lowther Fam. Estate Bks. ed. C.B. Phillips (Surt. Soc. cxci), 164-5. On election day, Burton pressed for a poll and would probably have secured the junior seat if Sir John Lowther, a royalist county grandee and the most popular of the candidates, had not given his second votes to his running partner, Sir Thomas Wharton.

Although there is no evidence that Burton actively promoted the king’s restoration, his appointment as recorder of Appleby in June 1660 suggests that he was regarded locally as a man likely to prosper under the new regime.48Cumb. RO (Kendal), WSMBA/2/1, f. 182 Appleby corporation soon had confirmation that its choice of recorder had been a shrewd one, for at some point between June and December 1660 Burton was knighted – reportedly ‘for divers services he had performed (though an Oliverian) to the royal party’.49Nicolson, Burn, Westmld. and Cumb. i. 363. Burton’s enjoyment of his new honour was cut short, however, by his untimely death (he was only 33) late in 1660, or early in 1661. He was buried at Long Marton on 3 January 1661.50Nightingale, Ejected of Cumb. and Westmld. 1149. He died intestate, the administration of his estate being granted to his widow.51C5/425/36; Borthwick, Wills in York Registry, Prerogative Act Bk. 2/2, f. 85v. Burton was the only one of his line to sit in Parliament.