BULLER, George (c.1607-46), of the Middle Temple, London.

George Buller was a younger son of the Bullers of Shillingham, and followed his father, Sir Richard Buller, into a legal career. When he was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1627, his father joined another prominent west country lawyer, Alexander Maynard, as his surety or manucaptor. Over the next 19 years, George Buller was a well-known figure at the Middle Temple, having a chamber adjoining the east end of the hall, then (after he had been called to the bar in 1637) in ‘Mr Hannam’s buildings’ on Middle Temple Lane, and finally (from 1642) in the Pump Court. Although he was not chosen as an officer for his inn of court, Buller appears frequently in its records, as manucaptor to a number of young men from Devon and Cornwall, including John Coplestone of Coplestone, Francis Wills of St Stephens, William Trevill of Plymouth and Thomas Gater of Blotus Fleming.8MTR ii. 775, 807, 855, 883, 891, 893, 925, 939. Although he appears to have had a thriving legal practice, Buller was also a political agent, and he served his family and friends in this capacity throughout the late 1630s and early 1640s. When his father, as sheriff of Cornwall, sent Ship Money payments to Whitehall in 1637, he entrusted them to George.9CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 490, 512; 1637, pp. 70, 577. In 1639 his cousin, the Devon sheriff, Thomas Wise*, sent Buller to attend Secretary of state Edward Nicholas to explain the difficulty in raising arrears of Ship Money for the previous year.10CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 306. In December of the same year, Wise was again sending all his correspondence with Nicholas through the hands of ‘my friend and kinsman, George Buller’.11CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 147.

In the elections for the Short and Long Parliaments in 1640, Buller was an agent for various hopeful candidates, including Thomas Wise. Wise told Francis Buller I in December 1639 of his efforts to manage Devon elections, which depended in part on George Buller’s willingness, ‘as occasion serves, to pursue my designs’.12Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/26/18/10. In November 1640, when Richard Trevill advised Sir Richard Buller on the latter’s election at Fowey, he used George Buller as an intermediary; and in December John Moyle II* sent Sir Richard ‘and your sons [presumably Francis I and George] many and infinite thanks for the courtesy which you showed’ in attempting to secure a seat at St Germans for his son, John Moyle I*.13Cornw. RO, BU/1230; Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/2, no. 60.

George Buller was elected for the Cornish borough of Saltash, which was controlled by his family, in both Parliaments in 1640. His activities, when they can be distinguished from those of Francis Buller I, show that he was a critic of the crown. He took the Protestation on 3 May 1641, and in the winter of 1641-2 was involved in moves to bring charges against the controversial lieutenant of the Tower of London, Colonel Thomas Lunsford, and was named to the committee to examine him on 25 January 1642.14CJ ii. 133b, 394a; D’Ewes (C), 339. In the spring and summer of 1642 Buller invested £600 in the Irish adventurers’ scheme, and in June he promised to provide a horse for the parliamentary cause.15CSP Ire. Adventurers, p. 12; PJ iii. 473. He did not go back to Cornwall in July 1642, when a parliamentary committee, including his father and brother, was ordered to prevent the publication of the commission of array, but instead reverted to his old role of London agent, acting as messenger to the House of Lords with the letters sent from Cornwall.16LJ v. 275a; CJ ii. 711b. At the beginning of October, he was again messenger to the Lords, desiring a conference on the defence of Cornwall against royalist incursions, and later in the same month he was named to the committee on the ecclesiastical courts, and those to confer with the Lords about the battle of Edgehill and to receive dispatches from MPs concerning the campaign.17LJ v. 388a; CJ ii. 811a, 825a. During the winter of 1642-3 Buller was appointed to committees to require newly created sheriffs to attend the Commons, to handle trade matters, and to attend the London authorities, ‘to acquaint them with the state of the western parts’, and ask for more money to fight the war.18CJ ii. 867b, 886b, 928b.

Buller remained at Westminster during 1643. He was one of those chosen to attend Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, in his camp before Reading on 19 April, and he was named to a committee for Irish affairs, with a remit to work in conjunction with the investors in the Irish Adventure, on 29 May.19Harl. 164, f. 373; Add. 31116, p. 89; CJ iii. 109b. He took the oath and protestation on 8 June and the Solemn League and Covenant on 31 September.20CJ iii. 120a, 259a; Add. 18778, f. 58v. On 18 December he was appointed to the committee to take information against the royalist judges in the west country, who had threatened to prosecute MPs and others who supported Parliament – a problem with immediate relevance to the Buller family.21CJ iii. 344b. From the beginning of 1644 George Buller’s parliamentary activities become more difficult to distinguish from those of his brother, Francis Buller I, but it is likely that nominations to committees on legal matters in January 1644 and April 1645, and those involving Irish affairs, pertain to George.22CJ iii. 371a, 498b, 609a, 688a; iv. 115b; Add. 18780, f. 10. On 1 July 1644, Buller was appointed to the newly-formed county committee for Cornwall, and two days later he was named to the parliamentary committee to consider a bill to create courts to try papists and delinquents.23A. and O.; CJ iii. 550b. In October 1644 he was appointed as an assessment commissioner for Cornwall.24A. and O. This was the last of Buller’s public appointments, and he may have already begun to suffer from the illness that killed him in April 1646.

In April 1643, Buller, then in his mid-thirties, had married Mary Hanger, the 14-year-old daughter of a London merchant.25London Mar. Lics. Ed. Foster, 214. By the time he made his will, on 29 March 1646, the couple had one daughter, Mary.26PROB11/196/156. Buller probably died in April, and certainly before 8 May, when the Middle Temple set about reallocating his chamber.27MTR, ii. 939. Little is known of Buller’s descendants, although his daughter, Mary, was owed an inheritance of £1,000 (under her father’s will?) by Francis Buller I in 1654, and by then her ‘uncle’, John Hervey of the Middle Temple, had secured on her behalf 1,333 acres in the liberties of Waterford, as the proceeds of George Buller’s investment under the Irish Adventurers’ Act.28Antony House, Carew-Pole BA/20/4; CSP Ire. 1647-60, p. 394; Bottigheimer, English Money and Irish Land (Oxford, 1971), 178, 200.