BOWTELL, Barnaby (1609-85), of Parham Hall, Parham, Suff.

Bowtell’s father was probably the Francis, son of Barnaby Bowtell, who was baptized at Boston in 1586.22Boston Par. Regs. ed. C.W. Foster (Lincoln Rec. Soc. par. reg. section i), 19, 70. By 1609, he had moved to Ipswich – where Bowtell was baptized – having married the daughter of a minor Suffolk gentleman, Anthony Gosnold of Grundisburgh.23Add. 19133, ff. 9v-10; Vis. Suff. ed. W.C. Metcalfe, 36. Bowtell was living at Burwell, in Lincolnshire, by the time of his own marriage in 1640 to Magdalen, daughter of the future royalist Sir John Leedes*.24Infra, ‘Sir John Leedes’; Scampton, Lincs. par. reg. Magdalen’s maternal grandfather had been the leading Lincolnshire gentleman Sir Thomas Monson†, and she herself was the widow of another member of the Lincolnshire gentry, Francis Hamby of Tathwell.25Lloyd, ‘Leeds of Wappingthorne’, 51, 54. Bowtell and one Francis Bowtell, possibly his father, were residing in Tathwell when they took the Protestation in March 1642.26Protestation Returns for Lincs. 1641-2 ed. A. Cole, W. Atkin (CD, Lincs. Fam. Hist. Soc. 1996), returns for Tathwell.

It was alleged in a legal case after the Restoration that in 1642-3, Bowtell had encouraged ‘the poor people and other discontented persons to tear down the banks and hedges’ of enclosed property in the Tathwell area and to make ‘entries and disturbances in several … men’s estates’.27C8/145/19; C8/147/8. But although Bowtell was named to several Lincolnshire parliamentary committees during the 1640s, his only known contribution to the county’s affairs was to sign a letter from the Lincolnshire committee to Parliament in March 1647, denouncing the proceedings of its Presbyterian opponent Colonel Edward King.28Bodl. Nalson VI, f. 72; C. Holmes, ‘Col. King and Lincs. politics, 1642-6’, HJ xvi. 451-84. In June 1649, he purchased Parham Hall, Suffolk, from the parliamentarian peer Francis Willoughby, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham for £4,920.29C54/3486/6.

Although there is no evidence that Bowtell was in any way involved in the trial and execution of the king, a story told to the diarist and antiquary Richard Symonds by the Lincolnshire parliamentarian Colonel Edward Rosseter*, places him at the side of Oliver Cromwell* in the days after the regicide.

When the king was beheaded and the body and head put in a coffin and set in the Banqueting House, Oliver Cromwell came with one Bowtell of Suffolk, near Framlingham, and tried to open the lid with his staff but could not. Then he took Bowtell’s sword and with the pommel knocked up the lid and looked upon the king, showing him to Bowtell. Then at that time this Bowtell asked him what government we should have. He [Cromwell] said, “the same as is now”.30Harl. 991, ff. 13v-14.

This story may well be apocryphal, but it is certainly accurate when it comes to Bowtell’s personal details – he was indeed a Suffolk man, and Parham lay just two miles from Framlingham. Moreover, a connection with Cromwell would help to explain Bowtell’s selection to the Nominated Parliament in 1653, although why he was chosen for his adopted county of Lincolnshire rather than his native Suffolk, where he had been a justice of the peace since at least 1650, is not clear.

Bowtell was named only two committees in the Nominated Parliament, but served as a teller in three divisions.31CJ vii. 287a, 304b, 325a, 325b, 336b. On 19 August, he was a teller with the Fifth Monarchist, Arthur Squibb, in favour of appointing a committee to ‘consider of a new body of the law’ – that is, for wholesale legal reform.32CJ vii. 304b; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 268-9. Bowtell and Squibb won the division from Major-general John Disbrowe and Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper, and on 20 October, Bowtell and the Kent separatist Andrew Broughton were added to the committee itself.33CJ vii. 336b. On 27 September, Bowtell and Alderman John Ireton were minority tellers against a motion for allowing the royalist noblewoman the countess dowager of Derby to compound for her estate.34CJ vii. 325a. His third and last tellership came the next day (28 Sept.), when he and Broughton were minority tellers in favour of having a bill that Broughton had drawn up – for establishing a high court of justice for the discovery and trial of royalist conspirators – reported the following morning.35CJ vii. 325b; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 300-1. Although Bowtell’s tellerships suggest that he was aligned with the more radical elements in the House, there is no firm evidence to indicate that he was a sectary or supported the abolition of tithes. According to the anonymous author of the 1654 broadsheet A Catalogue of the Names of the Members of the Last Parliament, Bowtell favoured a ‘godly, learned ministry’ (that is, some form of national, publicly-maintained ministry), and this assessment is consistent with Bowtell’s subsequent appointment as a Cromwellian ejector.36A Catalogue of the Names of the Members of the Last Parliament (1654, 699 f.19.3); A. and O ii. 975.

With the dissolution of the Nominated Parliament, Bowtell fades once again into near obscurity. He continued to be appointed to Suffolk parliamentary commissions under the protectorate and the restored Rump, but he evidently fell out of favour following the re-admission of the secluded Members in February 1660 and was omitted from both the March 1660 militia and peace commissions. Thereafter, he seems to have lived quietly and unmolested at Parham.

Bowtell died early in 1685 and was buried at Parham on 17 February.37Parham par. reg. In his will, he divided the bulk of his estate between his seven sons and two youngest daughters and left legacies of £860.38PROB11/380, f. 406. His personal estate was valued at £4,220, which included £3,500 from the bishop of Lichfield and Coventry ‘upon the sale of the estate at Parham Hall’.39PROB5/3784. One of his younger sons married the celebrated Restoration-period actress Elizabeth Davenport.40Oxford DNB, ‘Elizabeth Bowtell [Boutel; née Davenport]’. None of Bowtell’s immediate descendants sat in Parliament.