SALUSBURY, John (?1616-?76), of Bachegraig, Tremeirchion, Flint.

The genealogy of the Salusbury family of Bachegraig is difficult to disentangle. The senior branch of the Salusburys, seated at Llewenni in the vale of Clwyd, were the dominant force in Denbighshire parliamentary politics in the mid-sixteenth century, but disaster overtook them when Thomas Salusbury, elder brother of Sir John Salusbury†, was executed for his part in Babington’s plot of 1586. It was Roger Salusbury, the uncle of these two brothers, who married the daughter of a factor to Sir Thomas Gresham, founder of the Royal Exchange, and established a junior branch of the Salusburys at Bachegraig. John Salusbury the elder, father of the subject of this biography, was married as a child of seven or so in 1599 to Elizabeth Ravenscroft, whose father’s household had been home to Sir Thomas Egerton†, lord keeper between 1596 and 1617. The egregiously premature marriage may have been born of a determination at Bachegraig to join together dynastically the Salusburys and the well-connected Ravenscrofts, especially in the light of the disgrace of the Babington plot. The birth date of John Salusbury junior, son of John Salusbury and Elizabeth Ravenscroft, has not been established beyond doubt, but one of his name, son of a John Salusbury, ‘gentleman’, was baptized at Bodfari, the next parish to Tremeirchion, in 1616, and is certainly plausible.

Again, nothing is known of the younger Salusbury’s early life. His marriage preceded his enrolment at Gray’s Inn, however, as children of his were baptized in Tremeirchion from August 1636.8Tremeirchion par. reg. The statement that his wife was the daughter of Sir William Norreys of Speke, Lancashire, is incorrect. She was Sir William’s grand-daughter. 9HP Commons 1604-29, ‘John Salusbury’; Ormerod, Miscellanea Palatina, 36.. Evidence from the late 1630s reveals Salusbury to have been a typical country gentleman, keen on field sports, confessing his ‘too much zeal to hawking’ to Sir Thomas Salusbury* of Llewenni, his kinsman.10Cal. Salusbury Corresp. 89, 97. By October 1637 he was set to take up the law, but not until August 1640 was he enrolled at Gray’s Inn, and may not have pursued legal studies further.11Cal. Salusbury Corresp. 97; G. Inn Admiss. 227. He had already served in the first Parliament to meet in 1640 by then. He owed his election to the interest of his father, who had become a freeman of Denbigh in 1635, and a common councillor three years later.12Williams, Denbigh Recs. 131. He made way at Denbigh in the autumn election for Simon Thelwall, like himself a young heir. Thelwall was elected with the evident approval of the Salusburys, and John Salusbury took the seat of Flint Boroughs. The north-east Wales gentry had considered him a likely candidate for that seat when elections for the Short Parliament were announced.13NLW Facs. 371 (Gwysaney ms 36). It seems impossible to establish whether it was he or his father who was named to a number of Flintshire tax commissions in 1641 and 1642.

The record suggests that Salusbury’s service in the Long Parliament was slight. He was certainly present in December 1640, because he reported back to north-east Wales, presciently, that the election of Sir Thomas Myddelton* would be considered good.14Cal. Salusbury Corresp. 112-3. His first appearance in the Journal came on 3 May 1641, when his name was wrongly recorded as ‘Sir John Salisbury’ as he took the Protestation.15CJ ii. 133a. On 14 August, he was included in a committee on government commissions in Montgomeryshire, behind which lay concern in the Commons about popish influences there. The committee was driven by his neighbour and kinsman, Thelwall.16CJ ii. 257b. On 30 August, as John Salusbury junior, he was named among the commissioners for disarming popish recusants in Flintshire. Salusbury then disappeared from view, only to reappear at the Oxford Parliament in January 1644, as one of those who signed the address to the 3rd earl of Essex canvassing a peaceful end to the civil war.17A Declaration of the Lords and Commons (Oxford, 1644), 22; The Names of the Lords and Commons (1646), 3. Still at Oxford in March, he was required by George Lord Digby* to carry money to Thomas Bulkeley, 1st Viscount Bulkeley [I], governor of Beaumaris castle, who was to fit out two ships for the king’s service in Ireland.18Arch. Cambr. 1st ser. i. 328. His presence at Oxford earned him a place on the list of members disabled from sitting further at Westminster.19CJ iii. 389b. He had a friend in Simon Thelwall, who seems to have acted to turn away wrath against not only Salusbury, but also Sir John Price, another who attended the Oxford Parliament.20Mont. Collns. xxxi. 110; ‘Sir John Price’, supra.

Salusbury was probably assessed for a delinquency fine in July 1644, and who in October 1646 was the man ordered to be brought to London in custody to pay. He may have been the royalist delinquent living at Lillingston Dayrell, Buckinghamshire, in 1647. One of his debtors was Captain Peter Dayrell of that place, who was with the king in Oxford in 1644, and who therefore may have been a friend of Salusbury’s.21CCAM 432, 822; Lipscomb, Buckingham, iii. 33. Exactly what else Salusbury did during the years of the civil war remain unclear. He was not named to the king’s commission of array when sides were first taken, and Digby’s description of him in March 1644 as ‘Mr’ Salusbury does not suggest that he joined the royalist army. A man of his name was a captain in Prince Maurice’s horse regiment, claiming a pension after 1660, and another, or perhaps the same individual, served in Col. William Salesbury’s regiment of foot.22N. Tucker, Royalist Officers of N. Wales (?Denbigh, 1961), 55, 56. On balance, it seems more likely that he assisted the king’s cause in a civilian capacity. From 1647 his father’s name, as John Salusbury senior, began to appear in parliamentary assessment commissions for Flintshire, and either he or his father had become a reliable supporter of Parliament by May 1648, when ‘John Salisbury of Bathgrage’ was named as a commissioner to receive subscriptions in north-east Wales from any willing to declare themselves engaged for Parliament in the second civil war.23A. and O. i. 979, 1097; A Declaration and Resolution (1648), 3 (E.443.16).

The Salusburys kept out of local administration during the interregnum. John Salusbury’s mother’s family, the Ravenscrofts of Bretton, were implicated in a reported plot against the protectorate in the summer of 1655, although his own name was not mentioned.24TSP iii. 677, 701. When the Flintshire grand jury met to recommend new entrants to the commission of the peace, Salusbury, or perhaps his father, headed the list of suggested names, but there is no evidence that the initiative made any impression on the government.25TSP v. 491. Salusbury never became a justice of the peace, either before or after 1660. His most elevated local position was that of common councillor in Denbigh, achieved when his father made way for him in 1657. Either he, or more plausibly his son of the same name, was involved in the royalist rising of Sir George Boothe* in 1659, although it was reported he was treated leniently.26Cal. Wynn Pprs. 353. When the king returned the following year, Salusbury found no special favour, although he was on the list to be included in the abortive new order of knights of the royal oak. With an estimated income of £600 a year, his wealth was thought to be less than half that of any of the other six Flintshire men listed to be so honoured.27P. Jenkins, ‘Wales and the Order of the Royal Oak’, NLWJ xxiv. 345. Doubts surround his date of death. His father, who is said to have died in 1685, has been described as leaving no records of probate.28HP Commons 1604-29, ‘John Salusbury’. In fact, after 1660 at least, the family preferred to deal with the local probate court, St Asaph, rather than the prerogative court of Canterbury. Salusbury senior would appear to have died before August 1681, when his grandson, John Salusbury of Bachegraig, was party to a probate bond. This would imply that his son, the subject of this biography, was already dead by then, and it seems likely that he died in 1676, when his own son succeeded him as a burgess of Denbigh. The third John Salusbury was himself dead by February 1684, when his will was proved.29NLW, SA/1681/194, SA/1683/213; Williams, Denbigh Recs. 138.