BYSSE, John (1602-80), of Castle Street, St Werburgh’s Parish, Dublin.

John Bysse’s father, Christopher, had come to prominence through the Irish administration, where he served as second remembrancer of the exchequer. On his death in 1615, Christopher Bysse not only left his son property in King’s County, co. Meath and the county and city of Dublin, but also gave him an equally important legacy – a wide range of contacts with important figures within the Irish government.28NAI, Lodge’s MSS 1.A.53.55, f. 130. The future vice-treasurer of Ireland, Sir Francis Annesley† (Lord Mountnorris) was granted John Bysse’s wardship in 1615.29NAI, Lodge’s MSS 1.A.53.55, f. 19. A few years afterwards Bysse married the daughter of Francis Edgeworth and widow of John King, both men who had been his father’s colleagues in the exchequer.30CSP Ire. 1603-6, p. 429. Bysse’s first steps in his legal career were probably guided by Mountnorris and Edgeworth. Once he had been granted his livery in 1623, he attended Trinity College Dublin and in 1624 was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn, before returning to Ireland to take a place at King’s Inns in November 1632.31King’s Inns Adm. Pprs. 70. Bysse’s election to the co. Armagh constituency of Charlemont in the Irish Parliament of 1634 was probably thanks to the patronage of William Lord Caulfield, to whom he was related by marriage, but he may also have been supported by Mountnorris, who had substantial landholdings in the county.32H. Mayo, ‘Robert Molesworth’s Account of Denmark: it roots and its impact’ (Univ. of Odense, PhD 2000), 173. Mountnorris’s patronage may also have secured Bysse’s election as recorder of Dublin in the following October, when he was no more than 32 years of age.33Cal. Anc. Recs. Dublin III, 295-6, 301. Through the 1630s, Bysse represented Dublin and defended its legal privileges.34Cal. Anc. Recs. Dublin III, 350, 371, 388. In recognition of his efforts, he was granted a 99 year lease of a house in St Catherine’s parish and other property inside the city walls in 1639.35Cal. Anc. Recs. Dublin III, 359-60. As a further sign of his standing in the capital, in 1640 Bysse was elected as Member for Dublin in the Irish Parliament. During the sessions that followed, he became a key member of the ‘constitutionalist’ group which formed a part of the wider opposition the 1st earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth†), and in the Irish Commons worked closely with his brother, Robert Bysse, who sat for co. Roscommon.36McGrath, Biographical Dict.; M. Perceval-Maxwell, Outbreak of Rebellion in Ire. (Dublin, 1994), 74, 88, 130, 133-4, 156.

Bysse remained in Dublin throughout the Irish wars of the 1640s and early 1650s, and had little choice but to follow whoever controlled the Irish capital, whether the royalist marquess of Ormond, the parliamentarian Michael Jones, or the Cromwellian John Hewson*.37CSP Ire. 1633-47, p. 784; HMC Egmont, i. 460. As recorder, Bysse continued to give legal advice to the Dublin corporation, and was granted the lease of a house in Oxmantown as a reward in April 1643; but there are signs that his finances were becoming increasingly strained during this period, as he was forced to petition the corporation for the waiving of his rent-arrears in 1644, and in 1646 he was given a rebate for a house in St Thomas Street ‘partly burned and ruined by soldiers’.38Cal. Anc. Recs. Dublin III, 401, 403, 421, 443. In June 1651 he was still unable to pay even the rebated rents for St Thomas Street, and was excused seven years of arrears.39Cal. Anc. Recs. Dublin IV, 5. By this time, Bysse’s political fortunes were slowly improving, as the commonwealth administration began to call on his legal expertise. In 1651 and 1652 he was appointed j.p. for Leinster and Dublin, commissioner to enquire into murders, and (in November 1652) as justice of the high court of justice.40Ire. under the Commonwealth, ii. 296; Eg. 1762, f. 52. In October 1654 he was appointed as commissioner for assessment in the city and county of Dublin, and by 1655 he was acting as justice of the assizes in Ulster.41An Assessment for Ire.; Judges in Ire. i. 344. In 1654 he married his daughter, Judith, to the son of a ‘very eminent merchant’, Robert Molesworth, a recent arrival in Dublin who had bought up adventurer lands.42Lodge, Peerage, iii. 207-8, Mayo, ‘Robert Molesworth’, 131-2, 143. Bysse also enjoyed good relations with the Old Protestant community. In 1654 he was retained as counsel by the 2nd earl of Cork (Sir Richard Boyle*) in the Dublin courts.43Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 2, 9 and 19 Oct. 1654. In January 1655 he was appointed, alongside Mountnorris’s son, Arthur Annesley*, to an Irish council committee to consider a petition from the Old Protestants ‘for moderating the way of raising the contribution’. From his remarks to Sir Paul Davies* it is clear he disagreed with the government’s inflexible stance, not least because he was expected to pay 26s. tax on properties in Dublin which were yielding only 40s. in rent.44HMC Egmont, i. 565. Bysse’s strong connection with the Old Protestants and his concern for his own financial position may have influenced his political activities later in the decade.

The parliamentary elections for co. Dublin took place on 20 August 1656. Bysse was opposed by two well-connected English soldiers, John Hewson and John Jones I*, but seems to have won quite easily, despite his rivals’ claims to have the support of the acting-governor of Ireland, Henry Cromwell*.45TSP v. 327. Perhaps in retaliation, the protectoral council excluded Bysse from Parliament, but after Henry Cromwell’s letter to Secretary John Thurloe*, insisting that he had never heard any reports of his disloyalty, he was reinstated and had taken his seat on 25 October.46TSP v. 478; CJ vii. 445b. In Parliament, Bysse came out strongly against religious radicalism, arguing for a vote on the highest punishment in the case of the Quaker, James Naylor, for fear that the defendant might escape through disagreements among the godly.47Burton’s Diary, i. 131. Bysse’s chief role in Parliament was in Irish affairs. He was added to the committee of Irish affairs on 25 October, and a surviving resolution of the committee, signed by Bysse on 23 December, suggests that he was one of its more active members.48CJ vii. 445b; HMC 7th Rep. 570. This suggestion is consistent with Bysse’s involvement with individual Irish land cases. In the winter of 1656-7 he was named to committees on the lands of Henry Whalley* and Erasmus Smith, John Blackwell, the citizens of Gloucester, and Sir Hardress Waller*, and he was appointed to the committee-stage of the Irish attainder bill, which underpinned all the land grants, on 30 March 1657.49CJ vii. 463b, 477b, 494a, 505b, 515a. Throughout this period, Bysse seems to have worked closely with the leading Irish politicians in the Commons, including Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*), Sir Theophilus Jones, William Aston, Anthony Morgan, and his colleague on the Dublin corporation, Richard Tighe. Bysse’s alignment with these MPs may have influenced his decision to vote for including the offer of the crown in the Humble Petition and Advice on 25 March, although there is no other evidence of his involvement in re-modelling the constitution.50Narrative of Late Parliament (1657), 14, 23 (E.935.5).

Bysse had returned to Ireland by early July 1657, where he resumed his legal duties in Munster.51Chatsworth, CM/29, unfol.: 13 July 1657. In December 1658 he was mooted as a candidate as MP for the City of Dublin, but withdrew after Henry Cromwell was advised that ‘he will scarcely come to sit; so that it were better some other came in his place’.52TSP vii. 553. His place was filled by his old friend, Arthur Annesley. In recompense, Henry Cromwell put Bysse forward as a judge of the upper bench in Ireland, recommending him to Whitehall as ‘very fit and deserving’ of the position, and adding that ‘I know him well’.53TSP vii. 593. In the following spring, Bysse attended the assizes at Clonmel in co. Tipperary, where he adjudicated disputes over land allocation.54Henry Cromwell Corresp. 463. Bysse’s close association with Henry Cromwell’s government made him vulnerable after the fall of the protectorate in May 1659. He joined a group of former Irish royalists, including Viscount Ranelagh (Arthur Jones*), the earl of Cork, Sir Paul Davies* and Sir William Ussher, who paid Arthur Annesley to act as their agent in London from July 1659.55HMC Egmont, i. 610. The next year, Bysse asked Dublin to compensate him for £20 paid on their behalf to Annesley on ‘his agency in England’.56Cal. Anc. Recs. Dublin IV, 193. By December 1659 such lobbying efforts had been abandoned in favour of a coup by the officers in Dublin, which paved the way for the establishment of the General Convention in March 1660. Bysse was elected for the city of Dublin in this assembly, with other friends, including his brother-in-law, John Edgeworth, who sat for co. Longford. His involvement in the Convention included membership of the fast committee, where he joined Broghill and Aston and a number of important Old Protestant politicians.57Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 199-200, 247n. At the Restoration, Bysse was pardoned by Charles II on the recommendation of Sir Charles Coote* (now earl of Mountrath).58NAI, Lodge’s MSS 1.A.53.55, f. 60; CSP Ire. 1660-2, p. 188.

In January 1661, soon after the return of the king, Bysse lost his position as recorder of Dublin. This was not, however, a sign of disgrace. His replacement was William Davies, son of Bysse’s ally, Sir Paul Davies, and Bysse resigned the post only because he had recently been appointed to high office in the Irish administration - as chief baron of the court of exchequer and privy councilor, possibly though the influence of Arthur Annesley (now earl of Anglesey) as vice-treasurer.59Cal. Anc. Recs. Dublin IV, 197; Mayo, ‘Robert Molesworth’, 171-2. Bysse’s relations with the Dublin corporation do not seem to have deteriorated thereafter: he still lived in the city, and in April 1662 he was re-granted the lease of his existing properties on preferential terms.60Cal. Anc. Recs. Dublin IV, 227. The new administrative positions brought material reward. In April 1661 Charles II ordered that Bysse’s salary as chief baron should be increased to £600 a year to compensate for the larger sums he could have earned in his ‘ordinary practice at the bar’.61CSP Ire. 1660-2, p. 321. In 1662 his fees, and other perquisites, amounted to over £760.62HMC Ormonde, n.s. iii. 374, 378-9, 404. In March 1667 the king granted Bysse the castle and £100 a year in lands at Philipstown, King’s County, in recognition of his work in improving the Irish finances.63CSP Ire. 1666-9, p. 336. Bysse continued to enjoy the favour of a number of patrons, including Anglesey, and when faced by charges of incompetence during the late 1660s and 1670s he was defended by the duke of Ormond, who praised his ‘industry and honesty’.64Bodl. Carte 196, f. 125; HMC Ormonde, n.s. v. 266, 269-70. Of his 21 children, all but one predeceased him. On his death in January 1680, his estates passed to his daughter, Judith. Through her, Bysse’s descendants included the Viscounts Molesworth and the Lords Ferrard.65DIB; Lodge, Peerage, iii. 207-8.