BEDINGFIELD, Philip (c.1588-1661), of Ditchingham, Norf.

The three Bedingfield brothers who were MPs during this period were descended from a cadet branch of one of the major Norfolk families. This branch had been established at Fleming’s Hall in the Suffolk village of Bedingfield, three miles to the south of Eye, since the middle of the fourteenth century; they were only remotely connected with the Catholic Bedingfields of Oxburgh, Norfolk.22Pollen, ‘Bedingfield pprs.’, 430; Copinger, Manors of Suff. iv. 20. Their father, Thomas, a lawyer who probably sat for Eye in 1586, acquired an estate at Darsham, three miles inland from Dunwich, some time before 1609, and served as steward of the duchy of Lancaster lands in East Anglia from 1603.23Chorography of Suff. ed. D. MacCulloch (Suff. Rec. Soc. xix. 1976), 29; Duchy of Lancaster Office-Holders, ed. Somerville, 198. This MP, his eldest son, must have been born in about 1588, as he was aged 73 when he died in 1661.24MI, Hedenham par. church. In 1621 Philip inherited an estate at Ditchingham, just across the Norfolk border, from his second cousin, Sir Philip Bedingfield.25Pollen, ‘Bedingfield pprs.’, 429. This became his principal seat. On his father’s death in 1636, Philip also inherited Fleming’s Hall, while the lands at Darsham, which had been assigned to her as her jointure estate, subsequently passed to him on the death of his mother in 1646.26PROB11/172, f. 149v. Later, when their brother, Anthony*, died in 1652, his lands at Gislingham, Suffolk, passed to the second brother, Sir Thomas*. In 1655 Sir Thomas swapped those lands with Philip for the estates at Darsham.27Add. 19089, ff. 259v, 261v; Soc. Antiq., MS 667, pp. 248, 452; Copinger, Manors of Suff. ii. 56; Suckling, Suff. ii. 222.

Bedingfield was sufficiently prominent among the ranks of the Norfolk gentry to be named by Parliament as a subsidy commissioner in 1641.28SR. When the civil war broke out the following year, he sided with Parliament and sat on the county standing committee.29Add. 15903, f. 24; Add. 22620, f. 31. From 1643 he was acting on Parliament’s behalf as an assessment commissioner and as a sequestrations commissioner.30A. and O. As the former, he and Thomas Sotherton* wrote to the mayor of Norwich, John Tolye*, in November 1644 concerning the dispute as to whether the parish of Thorpe next Norwich fell with Norwich for taxation purposes.31Add. 23006, f. 43. Eight months later he was one of the members of the county committee who wrote to Tolye about the mounted forces to be supplied by Norwich.32Add. 22620, f. 31. Added to the commission of the peace for Suffolk in the spring of 1647, Bedingfield was more than likely by then already a justice on the Norfolk commission of the peace and he was certainly active as a Norfolk justice of the peace throughout the 1650s.33C231/6, p. 76; Norf. QSOB, 46-96.

Bedingfield came seventh, with 1,378 votes, in the Norfolk county poll held on 12 July 1654 in the elections for the first Protectorate Parliament.34R. Temple, ‘A 1654 protectorate parliamentary election return’, Cromwelliana, ser. II, iii. 58. His younger brother, Sir Thomas*, was returned to the same Parliament for Suffolk, as were his brothers-in-law, Nathaniel* and Francis Bacon*, and his son-in-law, John Sicklemor*. Along with most of the other Norfolk MPs, Philip may initially have hesitated to take the oath not to alter the government which was demanded by Oliver Cromwell* at the start of the Parliament. If so, he quickly relented.35Burton’s Diary, i. pp. xxxv-xxxvi. He was granted leave of absence on 3 November, but otherwise left no trace in the records of this Parliament.36CJ vii. 381a. He seems not to have stood for re-election in 1656.

In October 1657 Bedingfield and his eldest son, Philip junior, were among the six Norfolk and Suffolk gentlemen appointed by the council of state to investigate those who had been collecting money for the relief of the inhabitants of Bungay.37CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 120. He signed the Norfolk address for a free Parliament in January 1660.38Address from Gentry of Norf. ed. Rye, 37. Bedingfield was buried at Hedenham, the neighbouring parish to Ditchingham, on 6 March 1661.39MI, Hedenham par. church;Blomefield, Norf. x. 146; Add. 19117, f. 351. Most of his lands were left to Philip junior, who had married Ursula, daughter of (Sir) John Potts*.40Norf. RO, NCC, will reg. Tennant, 299; Blomefield, Norf. x. 142, 146; W. Vaughan-Lewis and M. Vaughan-Lewis, See You in Court (Lavenham, 2009), 328, 368. The Bedingfields continued to live at Ditchingham Hall until the nineteenth century and the male line survived into the twentieth century.41Pollen, ‘Bedingfield pprs.’ 434; Burke LG (1906), 102-3. However, none of those descendants sat in Parliament.