BALDWIN, George (1582-1656), of Amersham, Bucks.

The Baldwins had been living at Aston Clinton in Buckinghamshire since the early sixteenth century, but this MP was one of four younger sons of a younger son.14Chester, Investigations, 26-7. His eldest brother, Samuel, inherited most of the estates of their father, Thomas Baldwin, when he died in 1620. When Samuel died ten years later, he left George the lease on the house in which he was living, but only on condition that the latter surrender any claim to other family properties.15PROB11/158/461. George is known to have owned land at Wendover, just three miles to the south of Aston Clinton, and three of his children were baptised there between 1638 and 1649.16Wendover par. reg. In 1642 Baldwin was assessed there for £1 in 1642 for the contributions for Ireland levied by Parliament. The following year he provided a horse for the cavalry troop commanded by Richard Grenville* in the parliamentarian army.17Bucks. Contributions for Ireland, 80, 131. All this suggests that by the 1640s Baldwin, although of gentry descent, was only on the margins of gentility.

By the autumn of 1643 Baldwin was serving as a captain in the infantry regiment which had been raised in Buckinghamshire for Parliament by one of the local gentlemen, Thomas Tyrrell*.18CJ iii. 265a. Little is known about Baldwin’s military career, which might have been very brief, perhaps because he was now in his early sixties. At about this time he was added to the Buckinghamshire assessment and sequestration commissions.19CJ iii. 233a, 265a. He also acted as high collector in Buckinghamshire for two of the subsidies raised by Parliament.20SP28/151: answers of Bucks. parishes, 1646-7. In April 1645 he was among those authorised by the Committee of Both Kingdoms to recruit soldiers throughout Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire.21CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 386. In May 1647 he received the arrears due to Lieutenant Daniel Aldridge and Ensign Francis Russell.22SP28/126, f. 268. Later that year he briefly re-joined the army as a captain in the infantry regiment of Sir Thomas Fairfax*.23Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, i. 76, 85, 97, 128. At some point between 1649 and 1652 he settled at Amersham.24Amersham par. reg. f. 42.

Baldwin continued to serve as a local officeholder under the commonwealth. In early 1650 he became a captain of foot in the Buckinghamshire militia and it was probably through the militia that he then acquired the title ‘lieutenant-colonel’.25CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 521; 1653-4, p. 3. About this time he was added to the commission of the peace and appointed to the commission to impose the Engagement.26National Art Lib. Forster MS 58, no. 32. His perceived fidelity to the republic presumably explains why he was selected to sit as one of the two Buckinghamshire MPs in the Nominated Parliament.

His main contribution in this Parliament was no doubt as a member of the committee for the poor and for regulating the commissions of the peace, to which he was first-named on 20 July 1653, strongly suggesting a declared interest in those subjects.27CJ vii. 287a. He was said to have been among MPs who supported the maintenance of a preaching ministry.28Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 410. Subsequently he was sufficiently supportive of the protectorate to be appointed a Buckinghamshire commissioner to assist Charles Fleetwood* as major-general for the region.29TSP iv. 583.

Baldwin died in 1656 leaving eight children, most of whom were still minors. The eldest son, Thomas, who was not yet 21, inherited most of his father’s property at Amersham and Wendover.30PROB11/258/251. The fate of his descendants is obscure.31Chester, Investigations, 27.