BLISSETT, Joseph (1618?-73), of Eye, Suff.

There is nothing to connect Joseph Blissett with the town of Eye -- the borough he represented in Richard Cromwell’s 1659 Parliament – or indeed anywhere else in Suffolk, before 1653. The reason for this abrupt appearance in the town is probably to be found in the rapid social mobility made possible by the civil war. Blissett is an example of someone whose local reputation was based on service in the parliamentarian armies and whose public career reached its height when he was elected to one of the Parliaments of the 1650s.

The only facts known for certain about Blissett’s family background are that he had a brother, William, who was dead by 1673, and a ‘half sister’, Ruth Blissett.12PROB11/342/241. On this basis it may be tentatively proposed that Joseph Blissett was born at Marlborough in Wiltshire in 1618. His father, William Blissett, had at least three children from a previous marriage – Abigail (b. 1606), Ruth (b. 1608) and William (b. 1609). He also had at least two other daughters, Hester (b. 1614) and Dorcas (b. 1616) with his second wife, Margaret Walker.13St Mary, Marlborough par. reg. When he died in late 1642, William senior left to that Joseph Blissett his two butchers’ shops in the High Street at Marlborough.14PROB11/198/540. If this was the future MP, he must subsequently have moved away from his home town and joined the army. During the 1650s his half-brother, William, served as a Wiltshire justice of the peace and assessment commissioner.15C231/6, p. 254; Wilts. Quarter Sessions Order Bk. 1642-1654 ed. I. Slocombe (Wilts. Rec. Soc. lxvii.), 299, 303, 306, 309, 314, 322; A. and O.

Blissett was serving as the captain lieutenant in the horse regiment commanded by Col. Charles Fleetwood* by the summer of 1646. On 22 July the Commons heard his petition seeking compensation for losses he had suffered at the hands of the royalists. This was referred to the Commons’ Worcester committee with instructions that Blissett be paid from the estates of the former mayor of Worcester, Daniel Tyas.16CJ iv. 622b. The obvious inference would be that he had taken part in the recent siege of Worcester. Three years later, in October 1649, he was promoted to the rank of captain in that same regiment.17Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 95-6. He then held that position through most of the 1650s, for he was still a member of this regiment in 1657, and it was possibly only when new commissions were issued in 1659 that his military service came to an end.18PROB11/265/601; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 98; A. and O.

Blissett was associated with Eye even before he had left the army. His second wife, Abigail, was probably the sister of one of the leading citizens of the borough, Thomas Deye.19PROB11/342/241; Vis. Suff. 1664-1668 (Harl. Soc. lxi.), 89; Vis. Norf. 1664, ii. 257-8. However, as a date of the marriage is lacking, it is unclear whether it was this which encouraged him to take up residence in the town. An alternative possibility is that he had some link with Edward Dendy*, who had also served as an officer in the parliamentarian army and who, having bought the local manor in 1650, was another newcomer there. At some stage, Blissett made his own land purchases in the immediate vicinity of Eye, buying the manor of Great Ashfield from William Little and lands at Langton and Stuston from John Bennynge.20PROB11/342/241.

By September 1653 at the latest, Blissett had been appointed one of the ten principal burgesses of Eye, and from then until 1660 he attended most of the meetings of the corporation on the infrequent occasions on which it met.21Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE2/I/1, ff. 13v-21. His two appointments at a county level before 1659, as a commissioner to secure the peace of the commonwealth and for ejecting scandalous ministers, suggests that he was a loyal supporter of the protectorate.22TSP iv. 225; PRO30/11/268, f. 7. In a community as small as Eye, Blissett had little difficulty in becoming a major local figure and, when Eye was re-enfranchised in 1658 (the 1653 Instrument of Government having deprived it of its two seats), the freemen chose him for the second of the town’s two places in the last of the protectoral Parliaments. The senior seat was given to Dendy, who was briefly able to exercise the electoral interest traditionally controlled by the crown and the Cornwallis family. It is possible that Dendy’s interest was also used to support Blissett’s candidature.23Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE2/O3/1/9. During the three months in which this Parliament sat, Blissett was neither recorded as speaking in any of the debates nor as being named to any committees.

His military experience, combined with his new-found status as an MP, seems to have prompted his inclusion on the Suffolk militia commission issued in July 1659.24A and O. This was to be his last chance to serve on any of the county commissions, as the return of the Stuarts in 1660 put paid to any further preferment. His willingness to pay £10 towards Eye’s donation to the king as the town’s voluntary subscription does not mean that he had gladly accepted the restoration of the king.25Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE2/I/1, f. 20v. In March 1661, eight months before the passage of the corporation act (which would have forced his resignation), he wrote to the corporation of Eye indicating that he wished to step down as one of the principal burgesses. This request was immediately granted.26Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE2/I/1, f. 22. In religion, Blissett appears to have been an Independent. In 1659 he had signed a report to the council of state outlining the limited accommodation available to the gathered congregations at Bury St. Edmunds.27CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 225. These convictions were left unaltered by the Restoration. He lived to see the 1672 declaration of indulgence, and so was able to apply for a licence so that his house could become a dissenting meeting house.28CSP Dom. 1672, p. 299. Blissett died before this royal dispensation had to be withdrawn and so did not have to face the frustration of discovering that the declaration was, for his fellow nonconformists, only a temporary relief from the disappointments of the Restoration.

Blissett made his will in early January 1673 and within weeks he was dead.29PROB11/342/241. The funeral took place at Eye on 25 January.30Eye par. reg. Most of the lands he had accumulated were bequeathed first to his second wife and then, after her death, to the children of the second marriage. Under these arrangements his only son, Joseph, was ultimately to receive his house at Eye, while the lands at Langton Hamlet, Langton Green and Stuston were to be divided between the five daughters. In addition, Joseph was to receive the lands at Great Ashfield when he came of age. Sarah, Blissett’s daughter by his first marriage, received a bequest of £250 rather than a share of the estates.31PROB11/342/241. No other member of the family sat in Parliament and after the 1660s the family seems to have returned to its former obscurity.