BOND, Denis (1588-1658), of Lutton, Steeple, Dorset.

The Bonds of Lutton in Purbeck had only recently established themselves as minor gentry, but were nevertheless keen to trace their ancestry back to one Robert Bond of Somerset who had married into a Dorset family in the 1430s, and, even more optimistically, to ‘Bond a Norman, [who] came with the Conqueror’.41Dorset RO, D/BOC/22, f. 31; D/BOC, Box 22, Bond family pedigree. Denis Bond’s father, John Bond, was a Weymouth merchant, who had travelled to Spain and France in the 1570s and 1580s, and had narrowly avoided death during the St Bartholomew’s day massacre of 1572.42Dorset RO, D/BOC/22, ff. 34-5. Business was brisk, and by the end of the century John Bond was able to acquire landed interests in the Isle of Purbeck, leasing lands at Carrans Court, Swanage, from the Weld family, and at Lutton in Steeple parish from Edward Seymour, 1st earl of Hertford – eventually buying the freehold of the latter farm in 1616.43Dorset RO, D/BOC/22, ff. 36, 39, 41. He was also able to set up Denis with his own business, as a clothier in the neighbouring town of Dorchester, which had strong commercial links with Weymouth. As part of his training, Bond was sent to France for six weeks in 1603, and to Cadiz for a longer stay in 1605-7, and his ability to speak Spanish is also suggested by the presence of books in that language in his library.44Underdown, Fire from Heaven, 54. By 1610 Bond was well established in Dorchester, and in that year he married a daughter of a prominent burgess, John Gould. He soon climbed the civic ladder, becoming constable of Dorchester for the first time in 1617, capital burgess in 1621, bailiff in 1623 and 1630, and mayor in 1635.45Dorset RO, D/BOC/22, ff. 42, 47, 48; DOB/16/1, f. 12. In March 1636, when Bond drew up a schedule of his finances, he held properties in both Dorchester and Weymouth, as well as the two farms he had inherited from his father, and his stock in clothing and other goods was nearly £2,000.46Dorset RO, D/BOC/22, ff. 10-16.

In his 1636 schedule Bond also listed the books that made up his library. Apart from Spanish texts, they included practical manuals, such as Michael Dalton’s Country Justice, and Gervase Markham’s ‘Horse Book’ (probably his Discourse on Horsemanship), but there were also the complete works of the puritan divine William Perkins, an English translation of Calvin’s Institutes, no fewer than 98 books of sermons, and Thomas Brightman’s Revelation of the Apocalypse.47Dorset RO, D/BOC/22, f. 17; Underdown, Fire from Heaven, 54. Bond’s ‘chronology’ of his life, which he probably started in 1640-1, gives further evidence of his godliness, and in particular his belief in providence. He recounted in detail how his father was ‘miraculously preserved’ in 1572, and attached significance to his own year of birth, 1588, when ‘the invincible Armada’ was defeated. He also notes ‘the opening of the sky’ after sunset on 15 December 1638, and the fatal and near-fatal accidents that accompanied an attempt to raise a maypole at Wilton in Wiltshire in 1640.48Dorset RO, D/BOC/22, ff. 34, 36, 52. The exact meaning of such events was not explored, but Bond clearly thought he was living in interesting times. Such beliefs also influenced his political activity during the 1620s and 1630s. In the late 1620s Bond contributed to the ‘Dorchester Company’, which planned to create a new colony in New England, alongside men like Sir Walter Erle* and John Browne I* of Frampton; he was regarded as a ‘disciple’ of the Dorchester minister, John White; he resented the fact that he, and others, were ‘forced to give’ to the rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral in 1632; and he praised the bravery of Henry Burton, John Bastwick and William Prynne*, persecuted by Archbishop William Laud and the church courts in 1637.49Underdown, Fire from Heaven, 132-3; Rose-Troup, John White, 305, 449; Dorset RO, D/BOC/22, ff. 47, 48. Bond was also prepared to take calculated risks. In 1635-6 he was listed among those who had refused to pay ship money, and he still owed arrears in 1637; and when men were pressed for the second bishops’ war in 1640, he proudly recorded, ‘for my part I paid not a penny to the taxes, nor would I furnish a man’.50SP16/319/89; E179/272/54; Dorset RO, D/BOC/22, f. 53.

The early years of the Long Parliament, 1640-2

Bond’s status changed during the course of 1640, when he was twice elected as MP for Dorchester, as the junior partner to the veteran opponent of the crown, Denzil Holles*. The elections had been anticipated in Dorchester as early as 24 January 1640, when the ‘most part’ of the corporation declared Bond and Holles to be the fittest candidates when a Parliament should be called; and after rejecting the nominee of the lord lieutenant, Theophilus Howard†, 2nd earl of Suffolk, on 13 March the two men were duly returned.51Dorset RO, B/2/16/4, pp. 17, 21; Recs. of Dorchester ed. Mayo, 435-6. Nothing is known of Bond’s activity in the Short Parliament, but in the elections for the Long Parliament, held at Dorchester on 22 October, he was again returned as a suitable running-mate for Holles.52Dorset RO, DOB/16/2, f. 72. Once again, he seems to have played a very minor part in the parliamentary proceedings of the next few weeks. On 13 November he was added to the committee on another of Archbishop Laud’s victims, Dr Leighton, and on 18 December he was named to a committee on a petition of the planters in Virginia.53CJ ii. 28b, 54a. These early contributions may reflect Bond’s religious views and his mercantile interests: themes that would re-emerge throughout his later career. In 1641 he also showed some concern for the reform of certain aspects of the legal and financial apparatus of government. He was named to committees to draft a bill to correct abuses in the postal system (10 Feb.), to challenge a chancery case (15 Feb.), to consider a bill against unjust exactions by sheriffs (6 July) and to review the collection of the poll money tax (29 Oct.).54CJ ii. 82a, 85b, 200a, 298a. Alongside this, on 23 February he was added to the committee to consider the breach of privilege against Parliament in 1628; on 27 April he was named to a number of religious committees, including that against abuses in ecclesiastical courts; and after the outbreak of the Irish rebellion in late October he was able to use his specialist knowledge on two committees: to allow the transport of Spanish money there, and to consider how recruits to the expeditionary force might be clothed.55CJ ii. 91a, 128b, 129b, 356b, 308b, 340b.

As yet, Bond’s contribution to the Long Parliament was run-of-the-mill. He did not play a part in the downfall of Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford, and his involvement in the reversal of royal policies, whether in church or state, was minimal. Nor is there any indication that he was working with MPs beyond his immediate circle in Dorset. In committees he is frequently listed with Sir Walter Erle, occasionally with Giles Grene*, and once with his cousin, John Ashe*.56CJ ii. 54a, 85b, 128b, 200a, 298a, 308b, 340b. It was only in early November that there was any sign that Bond might be capable of more. On 1 November he was added to the committee to consider the king’s intention to appoint five new bishops.57CJ ii. 300a. Bond’s opposition was noted by Edward Hyde*, who remembered that not only was he ‘very severe and resolved against the church and the courts’; but also that his challenge to Hyde and others, who had declined to join the committee on the bishops, was risible:

with much trouble and passion [Bond] said to them, ‘for God’s sake be of the committee: you know none of our side can give reasons’, which made those that overheard him smile, though he spake it suddenly, and upon observation that their leaders were not then in the House.58Clarendon, Hist. i. 403.

During the first half of 1642, Bond was still only occasionally involved with great matters of state. On 28 February he was named to the committee of both Houses to consider the king’s reply to the militia bill, alongside such luminaries as John Pym* and John Hampden*.59CJ ii. 461a. On 12 May he was appointed to the committee to peruse a vote to give indemnity for all those putting the Militia Ordinance into operation in the localities – a body that also included Hampden and Holles.60CJ ii. 568b. Bond’s primary role was in the developing parliamentary administration, and especially in matters concerning the navy and trade. On 14 and 29 January he was appointed to the navy committee (which would be reconstituted in August as the Committee of Navy and Customs) to consider setting out ships for the defence of the kingdom and a bill for raising sailors to serve in the fleet; on 16 May he was named to a committee to encourage the Irish adventurers and merchant adventurers and others to raise money for the Irish war; on 14 June he was appointed to a committee to ask the merchant strangers for a loan; and on 12 July he was one of those appointed to discuss the advancement of trade with the merchant adventurers.61CJ ii. 378b, 402b, 572b, 623a, 666b. These appointments evidently reflected Bond’s mercantile expertise, and his contacts within the maritime and trading communities, and they may also have allowed him to cement his links with his fellow Dorset MP, Giles Grene, and another west countryman, John Rolle*, who also appear on these committee lists.62CJ ii. 378b, 623a, 666b.

On 24 March 1642 Bond had been given leave to go into the country, but he did not leave Westminster until early August.63PJ ii. 77. In the month that followed, Bond was an important influence over the parliamentarian war effort in Dorset. On 10 August he joined Erle, Browne I and Sir Thomas Trenchard* in lending £1,300 to the local forces.64Bayley, Dorset, 98. On 17 August the Commons received a letter from Bond, then at Bristol, urging Holles to join him in the west, to rally the local forces against William Seymour†, 1st marquess of Hertford, at Sherborne Castle.65PJ iii. 304, 312. On 22 August the Commons read a further letter from Bond, now at Dorchester, addressed to Thomas Erle*, in which he recounted Hertford’s attempt to take the town of Poole.66CJ ii. 730b. Having returned to Parliament, Bond was named to the committee to consider MPs who had joined the king on 16 September.67CJ ii. 769a. On 19 September Bond responded to the call for subscriptions for the war from MPs by saying that he had already paid £100, and lost his horse in the Parliament’s service, but he had relented by the end of the year, when he offered ‘his plate’.68CJ ii. 772b. PJ iii. 477; Add. 18777, f. 109v.

In the closing months of 1642, as skirmishing gave way to pitched battles, Bond continued to be involved in maritime and trading affairs – on 19 October, for example, he was named to the committee on a petition of the merchant strangers, asking for exemption from the subsidy – but his main task was the more immediate one of organising the defence of Parliament.69CJ ii. 814b. He was named to committees for requisitioning horses (22 Oct., 25 Nov.), for dealing with maimed soldiers and prisoners (19 Nov., 21 Dec.), for raising more troops (5 Dec.), and for bringing in money from various sources (28 Oct., 6 Dec., 9 Dec.).70CJ ii. 819b, 825b, 856b, 863b, 876b, 878a, 881b, 898a. In these matters he was again working with a group of MPs from the west, including Rolle, Grene, Edmund Prideaux I* and John Trenchard*. On 2 December the Commons ordered that Bond and Holles take care of sending instructions to Southampton, to ensure the port was better fortified.71CJ ii. 872b. These men encouraged Bond to become more outspoken, to the concern of more moderate MPs. Sir Simonds D’Ewes* found the activities of this ‘former tradesman of Dorchester’ hard to stomach.72Harl. 164, f. 265. On 17 December, when the Commons debated a motion by D’Ewes calling for action to curb the excesses of Sir John Gell’s* men in Derbyshire, he was opposed by Bond ‘and two or three other fiery spirits’, much to the disgust of D’Ewes.73Harl. 164, f. 265. Again, on 24 December D’Ewes noted Bond’s involvement with ‘some other violent spirits’, who put forward the provocative idea that instead of paying the Scots for their troops in Ulster, they should be invited to extract money from the royalists and Catholics of the north of England.74Harl. 164, f. 273.

One of the ‘Fiery Spirits’, 1642-3

That Bond’s religious views were an important influence on his political activities in the final months of 1642 is suggested by his appointment to the committee to draft a declaration on ecclesiastical courts (with Prideaux and Trenchard) on 17 October, and his addition to the committee for St Martin in the Fields, chaired by Trenchard, on 14 December.75CJ ii. 811a, 889a. His religious zeal became all the more apparent in the early months of 1643. On 18 March he joined Sir John Clotworthy*, Henry Marten*, John Gurdon* and others as a committee charged with investigating the Capuchins in the queen’s entourage, and ‘to see all their altars at Somerset House, and all their massing defaced, which accordingly they did’.76CJ iii. 8a; Add. 31116, p. 76. This ‘rash act’ was opposed by some MPs, as it did not have the sanction of the Lords.77Harl. 164, f. 348v. The royalist newsbook Mercurius Aulicus scoffed that ‘this worthy search’ found little enough, for ‘the costliest furnitures’ of the Capuchins had been spirited away; and the only result was ‘breach with France, and disrespect of her majesty’.78Mercurius Aulicus, no. 14 (8 Apr. 1643), 172 (E.97.10). The attack on Somerset House was only the beginning of a general scheme of reform. On 24 April Bond was named to a committee to receive information on the superstitious and idolatrous monuments in all the churches of London and Westminster.79CJ iii. 57b. As Bond’s zealotry became more pronounced, D’Ewes’s constant reminders to himself that Bond was ‘formerly a trader in Dorchester’ begin to look fearful rather than forgetful.80Harl. 164, ff. 286v, 321v, 332. This is confirmed by his note of a conversation on 28 March in which he said that Bond and others, ‘having been mechanics and being men of mean fortune, were not so sensible of the destruction of the kingdom as we who had estates to lose, and besides were so silly as for the most part they followed Mr Pym and some others which way soever they went, as if they had voted by an implicit faith’.81Harl. 164, f. 346. Bond retaliated in April by supporting a rival claimant to some of D’Ewes’s lands in Dorset, and in June he supported another attack on D’Ewes by his ally, John Gurdon.82Harl. 164, f. 370; Harl. 165, f. 96v. There was clearly no love lost between the two men; but D’Ewes was not alone in his dislike of Bond. Endymion Porter* was ejected from the Commons on 10 March for denouncing Bond as ‘one of the burgesses of Dorchester and formerly a tradesman or merchant there, and now one of the most violent fiery spirits in the House’.83Harl. 164, f. 320v. The royalists linked Bond’s lack of social status with his religious zealotry, describing him ironically in November as ‘an elegant sermon-noter’.84Mercurius Aulicus, no. 45 (11 Nov. 1643), 634 (E.75.28).

Bond’s politics were as radical as his religion. He was opposed to the Oxford negotiations with the king in the early months of 1643, and did his best to undermine them. On 17 January he revealed to the Commons intelligence concerning royalist plots.85CJ ii. 931a. On 31 January 1643 he was among those insisting that the king’s letter, concerning the peace treaty, should be printed, despite the ‘prudent desire of the Lords’ against it.86Harl. 164, f. 286v. On 3 April Bond was said to have supported Henry Marten’s call for the peace negotiations with the king to come to an immediate end.87Harl. 164, f. 352. Bond saw conspirators lurking in every corner. On 16 March he ‘was very urgent’ in his demands to have William Whitaker* disabled to sit in the Commons, but this was not carried by the House, thanks to a rearguard action by Whitaker’s colleagues from the Middle Temple.88Harl. 164, f. 332. On 27 March Speaker William Lenthall issued a warrant for the arrest of two unnamed persons in London, on information supplied by Bond, and he was charged with drafting an ordinance for searching for suspects on 4 April.89CJ iii. 21a, 28b. On 9 May Bond was named, along with Pym and Clotworthy and other ‘hawks’, to a committee to consider revelations that royalists lords in Scotland acted as ‘incendiaries’ between the king and the English Parliament; and he was one of those selected to prepare a letter to that effect on 12 May.90CJ iii. 78a, 82b. In this atmosphere of suspicion, it was appropriate that Bond should be involved in the Oath and Covenant. He was named to the committee to consider the proposal in April, he took the oath on 6 June, and chaired the subsequent committee that enforced the taking of the same by MPs.91CJ iii. 37b, 118b, 166a. Bond remained opposed to peace in August, when in response to a request from the Lords for a conference on propositions from the king, he joined Cornelius Holland* ‘and other violent spirits’ in arguing that ‘by the king’s late proclamation which made us no Parliament, we were incapable of sending to him’.92Harl. 165, f. 135v. Bond’s implacable opposition to the king made him an enthusiastic supporter of the moves to ally with the Scots in the autumn of 1643, which culminated in the Solemn League and Covenant. On 19 September the Commons ordered that Pym, Bond and Holland bring in a declaration to ensure all military commanders would take the Covenant; on 25 September a further order made Bond one of two MPs responsible for ensuring MPs took the Covenant on their arrival in the chamber; and on 30 September he was one of those who arranged for the subscription of all the officers and gentlemen attending the sermon at St Margaret’s, Westminster.93CJ iii. 247b, 254b, 259b. On 28 September he was named to the Committee for Scottish Affairs, which was tasked with raising money for the Scots’ forces in Ulster and those soon to enter England. This body would evolve in 1644 into the Committee for Compounding.94Supra, ‘Committee for Compounding’; CJ iii. 258a.

Administration and politics, 1643-5

Bond was clearly a figure of some controversy, but the bulk of his parliamentary activity during 1643 was in financial administration. He was an obvious nominee for Sir Henry Vane I’s ‘committee for trade’, to which he was added on 16 January.95CJ ii. 928b. Bond’s other committee appointments suggest that his commercial interests were very wide ranging, including the regulation of customs and the searching for prohibited goods (9 Jan., 4 Apr., 30 May, 7 and 15 Aug.), the trade in coal (5 Jan., 26 May), and dealings with the traders to the East Indies, the Baltic, New England (3 Feb., 24 and 30 Mar.), as well as with the merchant adventurers (14 Apr., 7 Oct.).96CJ ii. 916a, 919b, 954b; iii. 16b, 24a, 29b, 44a, 104b, 109b, 196b, 205a, 265b. These committees saw him working alongside such familiar faces as Grene, Rolle and Trenchard. On 20 October Bond was named to a committee to consider the government of Barbados, and he took its findings to the Lords for their approval on 31 October.97CJ iii. 283a, 296a. On 2 November he was appointed to Parliament’s new executive committee for transatlantic affairs, the Committee for Foreign Plantations.98A. and O.

The increasingly complex financial administration that underlay Parliament’s war effort was also an area where Bond’s business acumen was in great demand. In the early months of the year he was appointed to ad hoc committees on various aspects of tax raising (1 Feb., 1 Mar., 12 May), the issuing of pay warrants (8 Mar.), and the taking of public accounts (20 Mar., 21 Apr.).99CJ ii. 951a, 985b, 994b; iii. 9b, 55a, 81a. He was also heavily involved in the new executive committees established in the same period. Bond was a member of the Committee for Sequestrations at Westminster from its inception in March, and although his attendance at its meetings tailed off after May and June 1643, he continued to sign warrants at least until the end of November.100CJ iii. 21b; SP20/1, ff. 37v, 43, 47; Add. 5497, ff. 48, 61, 75-6, 97-8. In an important move, he was appointed to one of the precursors of the Committee for the Revenue on 25 April, joining Trenchard, Pym and Vane II, and he signed its warrants and orders concerning the royal household and its estates in September, October and November.101Supra, ‘Committee for the Revenue’; CJ ii. 59a; SP28/269, ff. 98-9; E404/235, unfol. It was presumably in his capacity as a leading member of this committee that on 2 December he moved the Commons ‘on behalf of the king’s children, which are in danger of being carried away’.102Add. 18779, f. 19v. Bond was also added to the Committee for Advance of Money on 2 May.103CJ iii. 67b; CCAM 19. On 8 September he defended the committee in the Commons, ‘and with much heat and passion said that if the House would call into question the actions of their committee, they might do it, and he desired them to sift them to the very bran’.104Harl. 165, f. 173.

Amidst all this activity, there was little time for the west country in Bond’s schedule in the first half of 1643. On 18 March he was named to the committee that considered the local truce between the forces in Devon and Cornwall; on 8 April Parliament passed an ordinance for the repayment of the loan advanced by Bond and his friends in Dorset in the previous September; and on 2 May he was appointed to a committee to consider an ordinance on rioting in the same county.105CJ iii. 8a, 36a, 67b. Bond’s attitude towards the region changed dramatically in July, with the taking of Bristol by the royalists, and the rapid defeat of the Dorset forces under Sir Walter Erle, which threatened not only Parliament’s position but also the future of the Bond family, whose lands were now in enemy hands. In his response to the crisis, Bond worked closely with the other Dorset MPs. On 29 July the Commons ordered that Bond and others arrange for money to be paid to Trenchard for the use of the forces of Sir William Waller* in the west.106CJ iii. 186b. On 3 August Bond was named to a committee to treat for the speedy relief of Exeter and other parts of the south west, alongside other concerned MPs like Edmund Prideaux I.107CJ iii. 192b. Four days later, when Parliament received news of the complete defeat of Erle’s troops, and his flight to Southampton, Bond, Holles, Grene, Prideaux, Trenchard and other local MPs were named to a committee to consider the disaster.108CJ iii. 196b. On 19 August Bond was ordered to arrange for money to be borrowed from the Committee for Advance of Money to be issued to Trenchard for the support of Poole, which was one of the few Dorset towns still held by Parliament.109CJ iii. 211b. The state of Dorset became less desperate in later months, but Bond continued to monitor the situation. In a collection of money for Waller’s forces on 14 September, he gave £100.110Add. 18778, f. 43. On 27 October the Commons proposed the formation of a new Committee for the Western Parts, including Bond, Erle, Prideaux, Trenchard and other leading MPs from the region.111Add. 18778, f. 77; CJ iii. 291b.

The death of John Pym in December 1643 was no doubt a serious blow to Bond, who as a friend of the great man was included among the MPs on a committee to settle Pym’s debts and ensure the prosperity of his family.112CJ iii. 355a. Yet the death did not leave him bereft politically. Although D’Ewes and others had characterised Pym as Bond’s political master, by the end of 1643 Bond was already identified with a west-country group that included Trenchard, Prideaux, Grene, Rolle and William Strode I, and he also had strong links with those who would become the successors to Pym in the leadership of the Commons, notably Sir Henry Vane II.

Bond’s reliance on this group is a thread running throughout his parliamentary activity until his death in 1658. It can certainly be seen in his administrative role in 1644. On 8 February he was added to the committee for the excise; on 30 March he was named to the committee to consider how to audit the excise, joining Grene, Rolle, Prideaux and Trenchard; and on 17 April he was among those instructed to attend the excise commissioners to raise a loan for the army of Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.113CJ iii. 393a, 442a, 462b. The latter was the start of a series of visits by Bond and others, to secure advances from the excise for immediate military needs. On 31 April Bond, Grene and Prideaux were ordered to make sure the commissioners paid money already agreed to Essex’s army; the same men undertook a similar mission, to secure a loan for clothes and army for the troops, on 11 September; and three days later they visited the excise commissioners again, this time with Prideaux in tow.114CJ iii. 473a, 624a, 638b. Bond and Prideaux were again sent to the excise commissioners, for money for the army, on 4 November, and on 10 December Bond, Prideaux and Trenchard were ordered to visit the commissioners for a loan for Waller.115CJ iii. 686a, 720a.

Bond continued to be involved in the executive committees during this period. He signed warrants of the Committee for Revenue in January, February and September 1644.116SP28/269, ff. 104, 119; Add. 32476, f. 23. His activity in this and other committees is obscure during this period, but it can be surmised from his appointments in the Commons. On 12 January he was named, along with Trenchard, Strode and Ashe, to a committee for taking the accounts of the Committee for Advance of Money.117CJ iii. 363a. On 7 February he was named to a committee to work with the Committee for Revenue to consider the business of alum mines.118CJ iii. 390a. On 7 March Bond and Strode were ordered to secure money for the army from the Committee for Advance of Money.119CJ iii. 420b. Although he does not seem to have attended meetings of the Sequestrations Committee, Bond was occasionally named to ad hoc committees on the matter, as on 31 April, when he was appointed to that on the ordinance for the better paying and bringing in of sequestration monies.120CJ iii. 473b, 655b. Although Bond’s role in commercial and financial affairs seems to have decreased during 1644, he remained a useful ally for Grene and Rolle. On 8 January he was teller in favour of a motion on a report by Grene on the rates imposed on currants, and on 20 April he was appointed to a committee to receive petitions from merchants – a body that included Grene, Rolle and Prideaux.121CJ iii. 361a, 465b. On 7 September he was also named to a committee to treat with William Pennoyer for clothing contracted for Ulster.122CJ iii. 620b. Bond apparently played little part in naval affairs, but he was a useful ally for Grene and Rolle in the House, being named to the committee to draw up the list of officers for the summer fleet on 19 March.123CJ iii. 431b. Likewise, on 21 August he was named to a committee on reducing the costs of the armed forces which followed a report on the navy by Grene.124CJ iii. 601a.

Bond remained chair of the committee on absent MPs, and its investigations occasioned numerous interventions in the Commons, especially in the cases of MPs from the south west. On 1 August Bond spoke in favour of Sir Samuel Rolle (brother of John Rolle), ‘and desired to be admitted into the House in respect of his having been so long absent’.125Harl. 166, f. 101. On 11 October he reported the case of another absent MP, Sir William Drake, recommending that he had been overseas, and should be readmitted to the House.126CJ iii. 659a. On 16 October he reported the cases of Thomas Heblethwayte, whose absence was as yet unexplained, and Sir John Northcote, who was currently a prisoner in the royalist stronghold of Exeter.127CJ iii. 666a. On 31 October he reported the case of Sir William Uvedale, who was to be readmitted.128CJ iii. 682a. On 29 November Bond again reported to the Commons the case of Heblethwayte, who had been absent for two years, and was said to be a secret supporter of the king, and he was disabled from sitting.129Add. 31116, p. 352; CJ iii. 708b. Bond’s activity in this area coincided with his wider concern for the south west, and especially for Dorset. His direct involvement in Dorset affairs can be seen on 6 May, when the Commons brought proceedings for contempt against those who had arrested Bond’s servant, John Arthur of Weymouth, presumably at the behest of the MP.130CJ iii. 481a. On 1 July Bond was appointed to the county committee for Dorset.131A. and O. In October Bond took an order to the Lords for money for the Dorset garrisons, and in the same month produced an account for the Committee of the West for money issued by him and Thomas Waltham for the same.132CJ iii. 668b; LJ vii. 27a; CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 87. On 19 December Bond joined a host of west country MPs, including Trenchard and Prideaux, on a committee to consider giving allowances to MPs whose estates were in enemy hands.133CJ iii. 729a.

Bond’s membership of this west country grouping also influenced his approach to the war effort, and in particular his attitude towards the lord general, the earl of Essex. In the growing rivalry between the earl and his subordinate commander and rival, Sir William Waller, Bond sided with the latter. On 26 February he was named to the committee to approve the names of new officers for Essex’s army, and in the debate that followed he was among the ‘violent spirits’ who sought to purge Essex’s army of officers suspected of royalist leanings.134Harl. 166, f. 18. The next day Bond, with Prideaux, Rolle, Grene and others, was named to a committee to consider raising money to allow the army of Waller to march out.135CJ iii. 409b. On 6 April he was named to a committee to persuade the London militia committee to send more forces to reinforce Waller, who was threatened with the king’s main field army.136CJ iii. 451a. Bond was encouraged in his support for Waller by the general plight of the south west. On 17 April – the same day that a new loan for Essex’s army was considered – he reported to the Commons ‘that the strong town of Wareham was in great possibility of taking Poole’, although he may not have agreed with the subsequent attack on Waller by Sir Walter Erle, who said he had left the region vulnerable to royalist incursions.137CJ iii. 462b; Harl. 166, f. 49v. On 10 June Bond was again implicated in attempts to undermine Essex, encouraging Sir Arthur Hesilrige* in his accusations that the earl had not supported Waller in the west, and thus lost opportunities to recapture the area.138Harl. 166, f. 71v. On 28 June he was named to a committee for recruiting Waller’s army and paying Essex’s, but this was not a sign of rapprochement between the supporters of the two generals.139CJ iii. 544b. On 17 July, as Essex marched into the west, there was an open row in the chamber over the actions of Waller, who had declined to follow the king’s army, which was shadowing the earl’s force. In the spat, Waller was criticised by Holles and Erle, but supported by Vane II and ‘Strode, Bond and some other western men’.140Harl. 166, f. 98v. The disastrous defeat of Essex at the Cornish town of Lostwithiel in early September ruined the reputation of the lord general. Waller’s friends were able to push for greater resources to be devoted to their man. On 24 September Bond was among those who arranged a loan for Waller’s forces, and on 1 October the Commons ordered that Bond, Strode and others attend the militia committee to hasten the march of the City regiments to reinforce Waller.141CJ iii. 638b, 647a.

Bond’s concern that the war should be fought with greater vigour can also be seen in two intemperate interventions in debate, both concerning the king’s nephews. On 17 August, in response to the decision of the Oxford Parliament to refuse to pardon leading Westminster MPs, Bond tabled a motion that ‘the Prince Rupert and Prince Maurice should have no pardon’, and, to the consternation of D’Ewes, this was passed ‘without one man’s speaking on their behalf’, even though it meant that ‘if taken, [they were] like to be executed, although free princes of Germany’.142Harl. 166, f. 108. Bond’s hatred of the princes was seen again on 26 September, when exceptions to pardons were again discussed, and he stated ‘that if we could get them, we would hang them up’.143Harl. 166, f. 125. Bond’s animosity here was the counterpart of his frustration with Parliament’s own generals. By the autumn of 1644 it was clear that only a complete reorganisation of the armies could bring victory over the king, and there are signs that Bond was among those who supported change. On 14 November he was named to the committee to consider what offices and places were held by MPs – a move prefiguring the Self-Denying Ordinance; and on 19 December he was ordered to go with Strode and Samuel Browne to visit another discredited parliamentarian general, Edward Montagu†, 2nd earl of Manchester, to question him on the protection he had extended to a notorious Catholic.144CJ iii. 695b, 728b.

Bond played a supporting role in the creation of the New Model army in the spring of 1645. On 18 February he was named to a committee to consider how to raise £80,000 for the new army; on 6 March he was appointed to a committee to ask the common council of London if it would arrange the loan; and on 10 March Bond was one of those chosen to revisit the common council with assurances that the money would be repaid if the assessment fell short.145CJ iv. 52a, 71a, 73b. On 31 March he was appointed to the New Model’s financial executive, the Independent-dominated Committee for the Army.146Supra, ‘Committee for the Army’; A. and O.; LJ vii. 294a At the same time, Bond was also involved in the final stages of the Self-Denying Ordinance, being named to the committee stage of the ordinance for MPs to lay down their commands on 24 March.147CJ iv. 88a. In all these national developments, Bond was working closely with men like Prideaux, Trenchard, Grene and Rolle; and the closeness of the alliance between them can also be seen in their continuing involvement in raising money from the excise commissioners. On 18 February the Commons ordered that Bond, Rolle and Nicoll attend the commissioners to secure money for the garrison at Abingdon, and on 4 March Bond again went, this time with Grene, to secure £2,000 for Weymouth – with the resultant ordinance being taken to the Lords by Thomas Erle.148CJ iv. 52b, 67b, 71a. On 14 April Bond, Prideaux and Nicoll were sent to the excise commissioners to see what could be spared for the service of the west.149CJ iv. 111a.

Loans from the excise were vital in keeping the parliamentarian cause alive in the south west, and this became all the more important as spring turned to summer. In April 1645 Bond was attending the Committee of the West, and on 17 May 1645 he joined Holles, Anthony Nicoll and Thomas Erle in signing an order of the committee instructing Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper* to blockade Corfe Castle.150Add. 29319, f. 29; Bayley, Dorset, 295-6. On 2 June he was added to the committee for Plymouth, Lyme Regis and Poole; and on 30 June the Commons ordered Bond, Prideaux and Francis Rous* to attend the Westminster Assembly and ask for a public blessing to be arranged for the success of the New Model as it marched into the west after the battle of Naseby.151CJ iv. 160b, 189b. Bond’s willingness to help in individual cases shows his personal commitment to the western gentry. On 13 May the Commons ordered that he should receive £100 voted to the widow of Sir Richard Strode; and on 21 June he pressed the Committee for Advance of Money to provide suitable accommodation in London for Sir John Northcote, now released from captivity.152CJ iv. 141a; LJ vii. 374b; CCAM 45. On 10 September the Commons ordered that Bond, Prideaux and others take care of the arrangements for the funeral of William Strode I, who was to be buried near Pym in Westminster Abbey.153CJ iv. 268b. Bond’s importance in local affairs brought tangible benefits. On 18 October his eldest son, Dr John Bond, was elected recorder of Weymouth, and less than a month later as recruiter MP for the same borough.154Weymouth Min. Bks. 55; Alnwick, Northumberland 547, f. 6. On 17 November the Commons finally passed an order absolving Bond, Holles and Browne as guarantors of any debts contracted in Dorset in 1642.155CJ iv. 346a.

Administrating victory, 1645-6

During 1645 Bond’s administrative role continued to develop. He attended meetings of the Committee for Revenue in February, March, July, September and December, and on 22 September was named to an ordinance to maintain the elector palatine from the king’s revenues.156SP28/269, ff. 127, 129, 135, 144; Eg. 2159, f. 6; Add. 34274, f. 66; CJ iv. 281a. Bond was active in the Committee for Advance of Money, reporting to the Commons on 16 September the committee’s opinion on the case of Basil Feilding, 1st earl of Denbigh.157CJ iv. 275b. He was also named to the committee to consider the powers of the Committee of Accounts on 26 April; to the committee for regulating the excise on 6 June; and on 13 September he and Prideaux were instructed to take care of an enquiry into the state of the excise.158CJ iv. 123b, 273a; A. and O. During 1645 Bond had continued to play a fairly modest role in naval matters, for example being included in the committee on an ordinance to allow the navy commissioners to take a greater role in controlling the fleet on 21 February.159CJ iv. 57a. It was presumably his connection with Vane II, Grene and Prideaux, rather than any expertise in naval affairs that led, on 4 October, to Bond being added to the Committee for the Admiralty and Cinque Ports.160A. and O.; CJ iv. 297a; LJ vii. 624a. The parliamentarian victories of the summer and autumn also involved Bond in moves to punish royalists, and, as before, he proved an unforgiving enemy. On 19 August he joined Hesilrige as teller against a motion to increase the allowance for the imprisoned 1st Lord Powis (William Herbert†); and on 2 September he was named to a committee on an ordinance allowing the county committees in the west to redress local grievances in the newly liberated shires.161CJ iv. 247b, 262a. On 4 October he was teller in favour of imposing a time limit for royalists to compound on easy terms; on 17 October he was messenger to the Lords with an ordinance to impose the assessment on Lady Bankes (widow of Sir John Bankes†), with the proceeds of her composition being allocated to Poole; and the next day he was named to a committee to consider what should be done with John Paulet, 5th marquess of Winchester, a prisoner in the Tower.162CJ iv. 297b, 312b, 313b; LJ vii. 647b. On 26 December the Commons ordered that Bond report from the committee on absent Members the case of the Bedfordshire neutral, Sir Robert Napier.163CJ iv. 385b. The only hint of moderation can be seen on 1 November, when, despite his blood-curdling threats the previous year, Bond joined Vane II and Prideaux on a committee to consider a letter from Prince Rupert, requesting a pass to leave the country unmolested.164CJ iv. 330a.

During 1646 Bond’s career continued much as it had in the previous two years. He remained chairman of the committee to consider absent members, considering the case of Sir John Fenwick in January; and he still played an important role in the excise: he went with Nicoll and Prideaux to raise money for Ireland from the commissioners on 7 August, and served as manager of a conference on the raising of excise money for the western counties on 11 September.165CJ iv. 409b, 640b, 667a. Bond signed warrants of the Committee for Revenue in March, April, September and December.166SP28/269, ff. 160a, 168, 176, 187. His membership of this committee may have influenced his selection for ad hoc committees to consider royal goods (9 Mar.) and plots to kidnap James, duke of York (23 Dec.), and he was reporter from the committee to consider the entertainment of the same (17 July).167CJ iv. 468a, 620b; v. 27a. Bond’s expertise made him a useful member of a wide range of committees dealing with sheriffs and local government, assessments, the rights of landlords and tenants, Irish affairs, the regulating of Oxford University, and legal matters such as the reform of the probate and chancery courts.168CJ iv. 491a, 521a, 571a, 595b, 641b, 696b, 699b, 701a. Alongside these, Bond continued his active pursuit of delinquents, being named to committees to consider those owed money by royalists (6 July), for the sale of the estates of delinquents (23 July), and to consider former royalists now living in London (23 July).169CJ iv. 603a, 625a. On 21 August he was appointed to a committee to confer with the Lords on speeding measures for the sale of the lands of delinquents.170CJ iv. 651a. On 29 October he was appointed to the committee to consider the valuing of the estates of royalists excepted from pardon, and a day later he was on the committee for the ordinance for the sale of the lands of the Edward Somerset, 2nd marquess of Worcester and other leading supporters of the king.171CJ iv. 708a, 710b. Bond was also involved in decisions on individual cases, including those of Lord Cottington (Sir Francis Cottington†) and Sir Robert Napier; and in October he was named to the committee that investigated the seizure of goods from Essex House (by the earl of Essex’s brother-in-law, the marquess of Hertford) and subsequently served as teller in favour of excluding Hertford and other royalists from Essex’s funeral.172CJ iv. 687b, 696b, 697a, 712b.

The end of the fighting saw an increase in Bond’s involvement in two areas that he had neglected since the beginning of the civil war. The first was religious affairs. On 21 January he was named to a committee to consider extending the Presbyterian system in London to churches previously exempt; on 6 April he was appointed to a committee to establish a preaching ministry throughout the country.173CJ iv. 413b, 502a. This was followed by his appointment, on 23 May, to a committee to consider the proposal that presbyteries report direct to Parliament rather than through the commissioners for scandalous ministers, and on 5 June he was made a member of the committee to determine the scandalous offences that would bar a person from participating in holy communion.174CJ iv. 553b, 562b; A. and O. On 11 November Bond was named to the committee for the maintenance of ministers, with Prideaux, Trenchard and Rous, and on 2 December he was appointed to the committee for the sale of bishops’ lands.175CJ iv. 719b; A. and O. The second neglected area was commerce. Bond’s involvement in this seems to have diminished in earlier years as the weight of administrative affairs increased. On 14 April Bond acted as teller in favour of stopping proceedings against Alderman John Warner for the non-payment of tobacco customs; on 17 September he was named to a committee on a petition of the Levant Company; and on 14 November he was appointed to a committee on a petition of cloth manufacturers.176CJ iv. 508b, 671a.

Bond’s involvement in the west country deepened during 1646. On 27 February he was named to a committee to prepare objections to the Lords’ attempt to alter the instructions to MPs sent to take charge of Cornwall and Devon in the wake of the New Model’s advance, and on 13 April he was appointed to a committee to consider the reward due to the messenger who had brought news of the surrender of Exeter.177CJ iv. 456a, 506b. Bond was an important Westminster contact for local administrators. On 14 March John Fitzjames*, as sheriff of Dorset, complained to Bond that the impressment of troops ‘which lately caused such a distraction and insurrection of the rascality little less than another club business’. Another problem, which was a principal cause of the unhappiness of the population, was the undisciplined state of Edward Massie’s* brigade, and Fitzjames, who commanded one of the regiments concerned, asked Bond and Thomas Erle to do their best to ensure the troops were paid before the situation got out of hand.178Alnwick, Northumberland 547, ff. 24, 26. Bond was able to send ‘news of money’ by 28 March, and Fitzjames asked his father-in-law, Nathaniel Stephens*, on 14 April, ‘if you speak much with Denis Bond … you will more engage him that is your affectionate son’.179Alnwick, Northumberland 547, ff. 30, 35v-6. Bond’s appointment on 1 July to the committee to consider officers’ arrears may have raised the hopes of Fitzjames, and, in a further hopeful sign, on 11 July Bond, Prideaux, Holles and others were ordered by the Commons to attend the excise commissioners for securing money owed to Massie’s men.180CJ iv. 596a, 615b.

Massie’s brigade was still causing concern in August, by which time the supporters of the New Model were working to have it disbanded altogether, as a potential threat. Fitzjames insisted to Bond that those who attacked the brigade were wrong, as there was ‘not a cavalier nor an outlandish man amongst them’.181Alnwick, Northumberland 547, f. 42-3. By the autumn Fitzjames had revised his opinion, complaining to Stephens on 31 October that Bond had refused to support him as a candidate in the Shaftesbury election, unlike Thomas Erle and others. ‘The fewer [who] know of my likelihood of prevailing the better’, he continued, ‘especially Denis Bond or any that have engaged for others’.182Alnwick, Northumberland 547, f. 59. Bond may have supported another local candidate, William Hussey, who also had the backing of Philip Herbert*, 4th earl of Pembroke, and William Cecil*, 2nd earl of Salisbury, and this confirms the impression from elsewhere that Bond was now publicly committed to the Independent faction at Westminster. This development is not immediately obvious from his parliamentary career during 1646, although there may be another hint of his allegiance in his inclusion in two committees to attend the common council of London: the first, on 5 September, was to raise a loan of £200,000 to remove the Scots from English soil; and the second was to secure the payment of assessment arrears for the New Model, on 4 December.183CJ iv. 663a, 738a.

Independency, 1647-8

Bond’s support for the Independents may have been behind his increased activity in the Commons in the early weeks of 1647. His involvement with the Committee for Revenue appears to have intensified. On 25 January the Commons ordered that Bond report from the Committee for Revenue on the personal estate of the marquess of Worcester, and on 4 February he was named to the committee on the ordinance for the sale of the Worcester estates (with Oliver Cromwell* as one of the beneficiaries).184CJ v. 63b, 77a. On 6 February Bond was appointed to a committee to write to the commissioners with the king at Holdenby, a business managed by the Committee for Revenue.185CJ v. 77b. He went on to sign warrants of the Committee for Revenue in May, June and July.186SP28/269, f. 241; Add. 20778, f. 11; Add. 32476, ff. 24, 26. Bond was also named to the committee to consider reports of the Committee of Accounts on 25 January, he reported from the Admiralty Committee on 6 February, and two days later was made a Commissioner for Compounding.187CJ v. 62b, 77a, 78a; A. and O. There was also a brief surge in his activity on behalf of the west country. In February he was named to committees on the appointing of a rector to a Cornish living and to investigate charges of killing in ‘cold blood’ against Warwick Mohun, 2nd Baron Mohun, and he was teller in favour of maintaining a strong garrison in Plymouth.188CJ v. 84b, 89a, 98a. In early March the Commons ordered that Bond should finally be discharged from the money he had received for Lyme Regis in 1644.189CJ v. 106b; CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 529.

This sudden rush of activity came to an equally sudden end in March, as the Independent hegemony faltered, and the rival Presbyterian faction gained ground in the Commons. Although between March and May Bond was apparently involved in measures to benefit the Independent earls of Salisbury and Mulgrave (Edmund Sheffield, 2nd earl), and minor matters concerning the west country or religion, this was small beer.190LJ ix. 103b; CJ v. 146b, 153a, 156a, 170b. His main role – if he ever attended the meetings at all – was as one of a small number of Independents named to committees associated with the Presbyterian attempt to browbeat the New Model. On 27 March he was named to the committee to consider the response of the army to the parliamentary commissioners who had demanded that several regiments be shipped to Ireland.191CJ v. 127b. On 2 April he was named to the committee on an ordinance to reform the London militia, which was opposed by the Independents.192CJ v. 132b. On 14 April he was named to another pro-Presbyterian committee, to prepare instructions for commissioners to attend the king and ask for his answer to the Newcastle Propositions.193CJ v. 142b. Bond’s discomfiture can also be seen in his subsequent activity as teller. On 25 May he joined Algernon Sydney as teller in favour of delaying consideration of the case of a royalist delinquent, and they were opposed by Sir William Lewis and Sir John Clotworthy.194CJ v. 182b. On 27 May he was teller against granting money to Robert Kerr, 1st earl of Ancram, at the behest of the Scottish commissioners, and he was opposed in this by Holles and Clotworthy.195CJ v. 187b. On 7 June Bond told against excusing the Presbyterian William Jephson from going as a commissioner to the army, with the opposing tellers being Sir Philip Stapilton and Sir Thomas Dacres.196CJ v. 202a. These were minor issues, but it is interesting that Bond was in each case standing against leading Presbyterians. After a few more frustrating weeks with little to show for it, Bond was granted leave to go into the country on 16 July.197CJ v. 225b, 236a, 245b.

Bond does not seem to have joined the army at its headquarters after withdrawing from Parliament, but following the New Model’s march on London in early August he was swift to return. On 11 August he joined Vane II, Grene, Hesilrige, Rolle, Erle, Rous and his son, Dr John Bond, in being named to the committee on the ordinance repealing all the votes passed during the ‘forcing of the Houses’ between 26 July and 6 August, and a week later he was named to the committee on the same ordinance, as amended by the Lords.198CJ v. 272a, 278a. He also returned to his administrative duties, signing a Committee for Revenue warrant on 19 August.199Add. 32476, f. 28. There followed the first major gap in Bond’s attendance in the Commons, which may have been the result of ill health. He was sitting once again by 9 October, when he was named to a committee to examine MPs absent at the recent call of the House, but his appearances were intermittent until November, and it was only then that he began signing Committee for Revenue warrants.200CJ v. 329a, 344b, 347b; Add. 21506, f. 49. In the final weeks of 1647 Bond showed his support for the Independent position more overtly. On 6 November he was teller against reading a letter from the general council of the army at Putney, perhaps to prevent embarrassing revelations; and on the same day he was teller in favour of toughening the language used in Parliament’s request that the king agree to the latest peace propositions. In both cases he was partnered by Robert Reynolds.201CJ v. 352a-b. On 20 November Bond was named to a committee to attend the City of London to demand the payment of assessment arrears, with the warning from Sir Thomas Fairfax* of the ‘inconveniencies’ that might arise if the army remained unpaid.202CJ v. 365a. Three days later he was added to the committee investigating the ‘forcing of the Houses’, when it considered the behaviour of two leading west country Presbyterians, Edward Stephens and Thomas Gewen.203CJ v. 366b. On 7 December Bond was named to a committee to consider a representation from the army, calling for their pay and arrears.204CJ v. 376b. On 20 December Bond showed that he had lost none of his religious radicalism, when he was teller against allowing the Calvinist archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher, to be appointed as preacher at Lincoln’s Inn without taking the ‘negative oath’.205CJ v. 393b. Whether influenced by the ‘forcing of the Houses’, his illness, or both, by the end of 1647 Bond appears to have been willing to associate with the more radical politicians at Westminster.

During the spring of 1648, Bond’s parliamentary activity was similar to previous years. He played only a minor part in local affairs, and was named to the committee to rate counties for the assessment on 15 January, and was messenger to the Lords with the order to give Sir Hardress Waller* command of Pendennis Castle in Cornwall.206CJ v. 434a, 534a; LJ x. 204b. It was probably in this period that the Dorset county committee sent messages to Bond ‘about business he was desired to agitate in London’ on their behalf, perhaps in connection with the assessment rates.207Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 52. He was named to the committee to consider the accounts of the customs commissioners on 4 March, and on 23 March he was ordered to report to the Commons on the coal supply.208CJ v. 480a, 510a. On 21 March he reported from the Committee for Revenue, the allowances to be provided to the king on the Isle of Wight, and in May he made reports on the dukes of York and Gloucester, who were also the responsibility of that committee.209CJ v. 507b, 559b, 567b. He continued to be a zealous opponent of delinquents, being named to a committee to indemnify tenants against claims by their royalist or Catholic landlords (29 Jan.); he was teller on a motion to allow Catholics to compound under the Oxford Articles (16 Mar.); and teller on including a clause on sequestration in the ordinance against delinquents (21 Apr.).210CJ v. 447b, 501b, 539b. The outbreak of unrest in April, in what would become a renewal of civil war by the early summer, brought increased activity for Bond. He was named to the committee on the ordinance for punishing rioters in Kent on 20 April; on 12 May he was added to the committee to consider rewards for Colonel Horton and his officers in their victory at St Fagans in south Wales; and on 25 May he was teller against commissioning the raising of further local forces, perhaps in support of the New Model.211CJ v. 538a, 557b, 573b.

On 23 May Bond was granted leave to go into the country, but he may not have left for Dorset until the beginning of July. On 5 and 14 July Bond was present at meetings of the county committee at Dorchester, and he was one of those chosen to go to Shaftesbury, to hold a meeting of the committee in that pro-royalist town on 18 July.212Dorset Standing Cttee ed. Mayo, 407, 410-1. By 29 July he had returned to Dorchester, as on that day he joined other members of the county committee, including John and Thomas Trenchard*, John Browne I, Thomas Erle and William Sydenham*, in signing a letter to the Speaker asking for further leave of absence as the settling of the militia ordinance would take time in a county ‘more exposed to dangers than others’.213Bodl. Nalson VII, f. 208. Bond was still in Dorchester on 10 August, where he attended a meeting of the militia commission, and he was still in the west on 15 August, when the Derby House Committee sent a warning to Bond, Sydenham and Sir Hardress Waller of a ‘dangerous design’ in the west.214Bayley, Dorset, 316; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 245. He had returned to Westminster by 17 August, when he was named to a committee to investigate a plot to subvert the London militia, and he attended a meeting of the Committee for Revenue on 22 August.215CJ v. 673b; SP28/269, f. 261. In the next few days he was named to two more committees on ordinances concerned with security, to raise horse in London and Surrey.216CJ v. 678a, 681b. The experience of civil war had confirmed Bond’s uncompromising stance towards royalists, and in early September he was attacked by the newsbook Mercurius Pragmaticus for his support – with ‘his companion Prideaux’ - of a motion that Fairfax should decide the fate of royalist prisoners after the siege of Colchester. The editor explained Bond’s pugnacity with reference to his vested interests, as ‘one that hath preferred at least a dozen of his sons and kindred into offices and employments depending upon this war’.217Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 23 (29 Aug.-5 Sept. 1648), Sig. Eee4v (E.462.8). This was an exaggeration rather than a fabrication.

Such jibes did nothing to deter Bond in his pursuit of royalists in the autumn. On 20 September he was teller in favour of committing an ordinance on the delinquency of Sir Henry Spiller; on 1 November he was named to a committee for sequestering delinquents in Essex; and on 6 November he joined Sir Peter Wentworth as teller in favour of excepting James Stanley†, 7th earl of Derby, from pardon.218CJ vi. 24a, 67a, 70b. In mid-October Pragmaticus again criticised Bond for his hard line on pardoning royalists, for ‘the busy-headed booby’ claimed as thorough a knowledge of the law as any professional when it came to condemning George Goring†, 1st earl of Norwich, and allegedly told the Speaker that ‘I trust ere long… to see the day when we may have power to hang the greatest lord of them all (if he deserves it) without trial by his peers’.219Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 29 (10-17 Oct. 1648), Sig. Rr3 (E.467.38). Whether this was a true account of Bond’s words (as seems unlikely), there is no doubting Bond’s determination to bring Parliament’s enemies to justice. His role in the peace treaty with the king at Newport was correspondingly equivocal. On 26 October he was appointed to the committee to prepare the Commons’ formal ‘dissatisfaction’ at the king’s refusal to countenance the abolition of bishops, and on 1 November he was teller against accepting as ‘satisfactory’ the king’s reply to the proposition for paying public debts, in opposition to Erle and Clotworthy.220CJ vi. 62a, 67b.

As in the spring of 1647, in the dying days of 1648 Bond appeared reluctant to abandon Parliament, even though he had little sympathy with its policies. He was named to a committee on 4 November to attend the common council concerning the provision of guards for Parliament, and on 21 November he was named to another committee to prepare a proposition for the king, concerning the relationship between England and Scotland, although it is unlikely that he was in favour of either proposal.221CJ vi. 69b, 82a. In general, however, his activity in the Commons began to reduce in both quantity and quality. In late October and early November he busied himself with ensuring that John Rolle’s brother, Henry Rolle, was appointed lord chief justice of the court of king’s bench.222CJ vi. 64b, 65b, 69a; LJ x. 569b, 578b. On 14 November he was a reporter from the committee of accounts, concerning the settlement of the governor of Plymouth, Colonel William Gould.223CJ vi. 75b. On 23 November he was teller, with Erle, in favour of the appointment of Henry Henley* as sheriff of Dorset.224CJ vi. 84b. Thereafter he appears to have taken up his grant of leave of absence, passed by the Commons on 10 November, and he was not in the Commons in the days leading up to the purge of the House by Colonel Thomas Pride*.225CJ vi. 73a.

Revolution and commonwealth, 1649

Bond was not a victim of the army’s latest intervention on 6 December, but he seems to have been wary of showing too much enthusiasm for the revolution that followed. In mid-December he was reportedly sitting in the Commons and was said to have signed the dissent to the vote of 5 December, although such reports are probably not accurate.226Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 38 (12-19 Dec. 1648), sig. Ddd4v (E.476.35); no. 39 (19-26 Dec. 1648), sig. Eee3 (E.477.30); Worden, Rump Parl. 35. He was certainly involved in the parliamentary administration, however, as he signed a Committee for Revenue warrant on 12 December.227Add. 21482, f. 11. Bond was appointed as one of the commissioners for the trial of the king on 6 January 1649, but he did not attend the proceedings or sign the death warrant.228A. and O. Bond had certainly returned to the Commons by 8 February, when he was named to a committee to view the names of possible justices of the peace, alongside old associates like Prideaux and Gurdon, and on 13 February he joined Holland, Trenchard and others in being appointed to the committee for the mint.229CJ vi. 134a, 138b. On 15 February Bond was named, with Hesilrige and Trenchard, to a committee to consider the disputed election for Cirencester.230CJ vi. 142a. The core of Bond’s western group from the 1640s had survived the revolution, as had his associates among the more radical Independents, and it was presumably with the support of his friends that Bond was elected a councillor of state on 13 February.231A. and O.; CJ vi. 141a. He was also returning to his administrative duties in the next few months. On 17 April he was included on the re-established Army Committee.232A. and O. He is known to have attended the Committee for Revenue in February, June, July, and he attended the Committee for Compounding in early July.233E404/237, unfol.; Add. 21506, f. 58; Eg. 2978, f. 250; SP28/269, ff. 280, 315; Eg. 2978, f. 255.

Yet Bond was still hesitant. He did not sit in the council of state until August, when he was appointed to the committee to consider establishing a mint and the business of the corn trade, and his attendance did not become regular until November.234CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 284, 374ff. His parliamentary career also faltered in the spring, and he does not seem to have attended the House between mid-February and mid-June. From then onwards he became as busy as ever, with June, July and August seeing his nomination or addition to 24 committees, including those on religion (13 June, 29 June, 18 July, 9 Aug.), composition (27 June), trade (7 Aug.) and the mint (6 July).235CJ vi. 231a, 244a, 245b, 251b, 263b, 275a, 276a. These were all issues that had excited Bond’s interest in the past, and in similar vein he joined his cousin, John Ashe, as teller against appointing new commissioners in the new excise on 14 August.236CJ vi. 278b. Bond was also teller on 26 June in favour of rejecting a petition by the former customs farmers, which may have been a settling of old scores, and was named to the committee on a bill to take the accounts of the customs, prizes and the navy on 3 August.237CJ vi. 243b, 244a, 274a. Bond’s inclusion in committees to pay money owed to his old colleague, Henry Marten (23 June), to advise on a bill to grant land to John Bradshawe*, the president of the council of state (27 July), and to settle land on Sir Thomas Fairfax (24 Aug.) may also suggest a personal interest – in this case the need to reward key members of the commonwealth regime.238CJ vi. 241b, 271a, 285b. In a new departure, the summer of 1649 saw Bond’s involvement in changes to the legal system. As a non-lawyer, Bond was an unusual choice in such matters, and thus also as teller in motions concerning the duchy of Lancaster (16 July), and the reading of the bill on probate (4 Aug.).239CJ vi. 262a, 275a. His appointment to committees on poor prisoners, probate of wills and a petition of the doctors of civil law (17, 18, 25 July) are also noteworthy.240CJ vi. 263b, 270a. Such interests brought Bond into contact with MPs with whom he had had few previous dealings, including Bulstrode Whitelocke, Sir William Armyne and Harbert Morley.

Bond appears to have been inactive during September and October 1649, but from early November he became an active member of the council of state. He was re-appointed to the committee for the mint on 2 November, and he was added to the committee for Irish affairs on 9 November, and to the committee to decide how the new Engagement oath should be enforced on 12 November.241CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 374, 384, 387. On 18 December he was appointed to a committee on the postal system and on 31 December he was sent to the Commons to report matters concerning the sale of the royal land and the navy commissioners.242CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 441, 461. This council activity overlaps with Bond’s parliamentary career at this time. For example, he was also named to Commons’ committees to ensure the general subscription of the Engagement on 9 and 27 November, these dovetail neatly with his appointment to the council committee on the same matter on 12 November.243CJ vi. 321b, 326b. It was in the same month that Bond was given the lucrative post of clerk of the pells in the receipt of the exchequer.244SC6/ChasI/1668, m. 14d. In Parliament, Bond continued to be involved in religious committees, to consider swearing and other moral failings, and to advance the Gospel in Ireland, during November; and in November and December he was named to the committee to consider how the numerous charges upon the excise might be satisfied, and acted as teller on a motion concerning the excise on pepper.245CJ vi. 317b, 325a, 327b, 334a. His role in law reform also continued, and on 28 November he was named to two committees on ordinances for poor debtors and to allow sheriffs to appoint deputies.246CJ vi. 327a. He also continued to support rewards to high profile figures in the commonwealth, as suggested by his inclusion, with Trenchard and Whitelocke, in a committee on the bill to settle the lands already granted to Oliver Cromwell*, appointed on 21 December.247CJ vi. 336a.

As one of the few remaining Dorset MPs in Parliament, Bond’s local influence increased from the beginning of 1649. Apart from his role as reporter on a petition of the governor of Weymouth in November, there is very little trace of his local interests in his recorded activity in the Commons, but from other sources it is clear that he was very much involved in Dorset affairs.248CJ vi. 372a. John Fitzjames swallowed his pride, and tried to re-establish contact with his radical cousin as early as 8 January, and in August he asked his sister to ‘let me know… whether my cousins John Browne, John Trenchard and Denis Bond be in the town, and how long they continue there, because I have occasion to write to all’.249Alnwick, Northumberland 548, ff. 46v, 64v. A month later Fitzjames asked Robert Stephens to lobby Bond for the payment of debentures, adding ‘if you chance to see Denis Bond again, let me entreat you to try whether he will be willing to assist me in that’.250Alnwick, Northumberland 548, f. 70v. Bond also retained the support of the Dorchester corporation, which on 9 April resolved ‘to take into consideration what further to allow Mr Denis Bond for his charges and service in Parliament’.251Dorset RO, B/2/16/4, p. 102. The following September the Dorchester burgesses presented six sugar loaves to Bond ‘as a testimony of our respects to him and for his favours manifested to the town’.252Recs. of Dorchester ed. Mayo, 436. In October Bond was paid compensation by the Dorset county committee for his property in Melcombe Regis ‘ruined by means of the line and forts built upon it for defence of the garrison’ during the first civil war.253Dorset Standing Cttee ed. Mayo, 556-7.

Rump administrator, 1650-1

In January and February 1650 Bond was briefly involved in army affairs through his work as a councillor of state. He was a member of the council committee that attended Fairfax to ask him to refute reports that he had refused the Engagement, and he was also appointed to committees to consider the London militia ordinances and to confer with John Lambert* and others about the artillery train and garrisons.254CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 495, 506, 514. Bond was chosen as a member of the new council of state on 12 February 1650, and was named to a committee to add four more members to the council the same day.255CJ vi. 362a, 363b. He was formally appointed as a councillor on 13 February.256A. and O. Bond’s importance in the council is suggested in a series of appointments to major committees, including the committees for Irish affairs (18 Feb.), the admiralty (9 Apr.), the receipts of dean and chapter lands (10 Apr.), and the ordnance (27 Apr.).257CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 2, 18, 90, 92, 128, Bond was also an important link between the council of Parliament in the second half of the year. He reported from the council on merchants in Rotterdam who had not taken the Engagement on 27 June, and the next day he reported letters concerning the attempted assassination of Anthony Ascham in Spain.258CJ vi. 432b, 434a; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 212, 220. On 31 July he was instructed to report the council’s findings in the case of Colonel Fox.259CSP Dom. 1650, p. 260. In the autumn he reported from the council Charles Stuart’s declaration (13 Sept.), letters from Cromwell on indemnity of officers serving in Scotland (4 Oct.), the petition of the commissioners for the £50,000 ordinance for Ireland (19 Oct.), and letters from Portugal (6 Nov.).260CJ vi. 468b, 479a, 491a; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 337, 367, 394, 412. This pattern continued later, with Bond reporting to the Commons on the need to vet ministers in garrisons (27 Nov.), the directions to be issued to the Irish commissioners (3 Dec.), and letters from Spain and the raising of dragoons (24 Dec.).261CJ vi. 501b, 513b, 514b; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 427, 454.

Bond performed a similar function for the executive committees of which he was a member. In January and February 1650 Bond was involved in the proceedings of the Committee for Advance of Money against Captain Thomas Hugford, and was instructed to present the case to Parliament.262CCAM 1151-2. In the same period he reported from the same committee the business of Sir Jacob Garrett, who was suspected of being a delinquent, and he again reported the case in August.263CJ vi. 352a, 354b, 355a-b, 454b. On 18 September he was added to the committee to consider allegations of bribery made against one of the leading figures of the committee, Lord Howard of Escrick (Edward Howard*).264CJ vi. 469a. Bond reported letters concerning the supply of timber from the Committee of Navy and Customs on 1 January, and he was added to this body (although already a member) on 6 June in order to consider the satisfying of the king’s creditors.265CJ vi. 342a, 420a. Bond’s involvement with other executive committees can be glimpsed from occasional mentions in official sources. On 21 February he reported a bill concerning the commissioners for compounding, and was named to the subsequent committee.266CJ vi. 369b. On 16 May he was appointed to the council committee to confer with the commissioners for compounding for the provision of money for the public service.267CSP Dom. 1650, p. 165. He was also present at the Committee for Revenue in April, and he was involved in business within the remit of that committee in Parliament on 14 March, 15 April and 6 June, and in the council on 30 March and 14 August.268Add. 21506, f. 67; CJ vi. 382a, 398b, 420a; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 67, 286.

In other respects, Bonds career continued much as before. He also continued to support the rewarding of other leading politicians, as on 15 April, when he was named to a committee to consider the interest of the earl of Salisbury in Theobalds, Cheshunt and other royal parks.269CJ vi. 398b. On 30 May he was named, alongside allies like Whitelocke, Trenchard, Armyne and Prideaux, to the committee on a bill to settle lands on Cromwell.270CJ vi. 417b. On 22 June he was named to a committee on a petition of Sir John Danvers*, who was becoming his political associate, and on 16 July he was appointed to the committee stage of a bill to settle dean and chapter lands on his old friend Sir Henry Vane II.271CJ vi. 429a, 441a. On 31 December he was named to the committee on a bill to grant lands as a reward to Philip Skippon*.272CJ vi. 516b. On the other hand, Bond was also keen to bring delinquents to book, both through the Committees for Advance of Money and Compounding, and ad hoc committees, such as that on 25 April, on a bill to sell the lands of Francis Leak, 1st Baron Deincourt, and on 30 May he was teller with Armyne against considering the claim of George Brydges, 6th Baron Chandos, for compensation for the destruction of Sudeley Castle.273CJ vi. 403b, 417b. Law reform bulked large in 1650 as it had in 1649. On 4 February Bond joined Danvers as teller against including equity courts in a new bill for redressing abuses in writs of error.274CJ vi. 357b. On 7 May he was named to the committee on a bill to allow wardships granted before 1645, and on 6 June he was teller against appointing Sir Thomas Widdrington* as serjeant at law.275CJ vi. 409a, 420b. On 10 December Bond reported to the Commons the council’s recommendations concerning the high courts of justice.276CJ vi. 506b.

Amid the humdrum business there are signs of a shift in Bond’s priorities during this period. His involvement in western affairs appears to have been very slight. In May 1650 John Ashe wrote to Bond from Somerset, asking for his assistance against both the local bigwig, John Pyne*, who was trying to conceal his own ‘foul proceedings’ by accusing of Ashe of sedition and also the Committee for Compounding, who were intent on ‘promoting those that will destroy the work of sequestration’.277CCC 226. There is no evidence that Bond intervened in this affair. In May Bond was one of the councillors of state involved in repairing the fortifications at Bristol, and in June he presented the council with information against ‘malignant’ preachers in Exeter.278CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 162, 214. In August Bond intervened in Dorchester politics to remove an unacceptable schoolmaster from his post.279Dorset RO, B/2/16/4, p. 136.

Bond’s engagement with religious affairs appears to have increased, however. He was named to bill for extending preaching in Wales (29 Jan.), Colchester (24 May) and Yorkshire (7 June).280CJ vi. 352a, 416a, 420b. His own conservative attitudes can perhaps be seen in his appointment to the committee on a bill for the presentation of livings (8 Feb.) and that to consider the suppression of Ranters (14 June).281CJ vi. 359a, 423b. Bond was also more active in trade and commerce than in previous years, especially in the first half of the year. He was named to committees on wool manufacture in Norwich and corruption in supplies for the Irish war in February, the regulation of trade and a patent for a new salt making process in March, and the transport of coinage in April.282CJ vi. 358a, 360a, 383b, 389a. 403b. On 27 June he was teller in a motion to resolve a case involving the East India Company.283CJ vi. 433b. In July he was named to committees on bills for reducing grain prices and preventing trade with Scotland.284CJ vi. 441b, 444b. Business concerning the excise took up much of Bond’s time, both in Parliament and in the council, where he was involved in negotiations with the excise commissioners for a loan in April.285CSP Dom. 1650, p. 73. He was named to a parliamentary committee on excise arrears in the same month, and was twice teller on motions concerning the appointment of new commissioners in July.286CJ vi. 399a, 438b, 439a. On 18 July the Commons ordered that Bond, with Vane II, Armyne and Danvers, would count the papers on the ballot to choose the new commissioners.287CJ vi. 443a. This in turn encouraged Bond’s greater involvement with government finance. On 18 April he was named to a committee to consider a bill for a new treasury, and on 28 August he was named to a committee to consider the best way to raise money for the public service.288CJ vi. 400a, 459b. Bond’s position as clerk of the pells was also of relevance to parliamentary business, and he was a natural choice for committees concerning oaths before exchequer (12 September) and to prepare instructions for the barons of the exchequer on the collection of outstanding taxes (15 Nov.).289CJ vi. 467a, 498a.

During 1650 Bond had played very little part in the affairs of the admiralty or the navy in the Commons, although he was a member of the council’s admiralty committee, and was involved in setting out the ships to patrol the western coast in May and the winter guard in August.290CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 90, 158, 303. In 1651 Bond’s involvement in maritime affairs in the council of state increased dramatically. On 7 January he reported from the council letters of Admiral Robert Blake* off Cadiz; he reported to Parliament on the state of Guernsey on 9 April, and on reports from various British ambassadors abroad on 14 April; and on 11 April he was one of those MPs who signed an admiralty committee order to Colonel Edward Popham* for the release or exchange of pirates held at Colchester.291CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 5, 136, 147; CJ vi. 557b; HMC Leyborne-Popham, 98. On 2 May he reported to Parliament the suggestion that the ships supplying the army in Scotland should be commissioned as privateers.292CSP Dom. 1651, p. 175. On 26 June he was teller with Vane II in favour of vesting the powers of the lord admiral in a separate commission rather than the council of state - a vote narrowly defeated.293CJ vi. 592a. On 5 June and 11 July he reported the council decision that Captain Robert Moulton should be made a navy commissioner, and on 23 July he made a report on the state of shipping.294CSP Dom. 1651, p. 237; CJ vi. 603a, 608a. Bond was also reporter from the committee on the bill for navigation on 26 September.295CJ vii. 21a. On 18 and 30 October he reported to Parliament on the ships in the Irish Sea and the winter guard respectively; on 20 October he was present at the Committee of Navy and Customs; and on 29 October he reported letters from Blake and James Heane concerning the successful capture of Guernsey.296Add. 22546, f. 37; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 481, 492, 502; CJ vii. 31b, 32b.

Naval and commercial affairs went hand in hand with diplomacy, and in the winter of 1650-1 Bond was brought into this area for the first time, perhaps because of his youthful experience of the continent and his knowledge of the Spanish language. On 24 December he reported to Parliament a letter received by the council from the king of Spain; he was named to the committee to prepare an answer to it on 31 December; and on 8 January he reported a letter from Blake of his own negotiations with the Spanish.297CJ vi. 513b, 517a, 520b. Soon afterwards, Bond was involved in treating with the Portuguese ambassador. He was named to a committee to give an audience on 10 January, he took Parliament’s answer to the ambassador on 29 January; and on 9 and 10 April he was named to committees to consider printing an account of the talks with the Portuguese and to review the votes on the treaty.298CJ vi. 522b, 529a, 558a, 560a. He was also involved in the parallel negotiations conducted by the council on 4 March and 21 April, and he was able to report to Parliament the answer of the Portuguese minister on 22 April.299CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 69, 158; CJ vi. 565a. On 15 April Bond reported to Parliament from the council letters received from the Dutch ambassadors, and he reported a further letter three days later.300CJ vi. 561b, 564a. He was also named to a parliamentary committee to meet the resident of the duke of Tuscany on 21 May.301CJ vi. 576b. Bond joined other councillors in discussions with the representative of the duke of Oldenburg on 15 October.302CSP Dom. 1651, p. 477. On 10 November he was appointed to the council committee for the reception of ambassadors; on 10 and 31 December he was among the councillors responding to a complaint by the Tuscan minister; and on 17 December he was appointed to the committee for trade and foreign affairs.303CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 11, 54, 67, 85.

Bond’s activity in naval and diplomatic affairs contrasts with his record in other areas. His involvement in the legal matters was lacklustre compared to the year before, suggesting that he had drawn back from supporting radical reform.304Worden, Rump Parl. 116. On 17 January he was teller with Thomas Harrison I* against committing a bill for regulating proceedings at law, in order to prevent any delay in passing the reforms.305CJ vi. 525a. On 1 March he was appointed to the council committee to investigate abuses by those in charge of the prisons of the Upper Bench and Marshalsea.306CSP Dom. 1651, p. 66. On 26 December he was named, along with Whitelocke, Hesilrige and others, to the parliamentary committee to consider fit persons to propose a programme of law reform.307CJ vii. 58b. Other areas also declined. Bond was again appointed to the council of state on 13 February, and a few days later was re-appointed to the council’s committees on the ordinance and the admiralty, and was included in the new joint committee for Irish and Scottish affairs.308A. and O; CSP Dom. 1651, p. 66. Otherwise, his record is decidedly patchy. He continued to be involved with minor business pertaining to the Committee for Revenue through Parliament and the council of state in January, March, April and September, and on 15 April he signed a warrant of the committee.309CJ vi. 534b, 576b; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 15, 118, 158, 410; SP28/269, f. 331. On 16 July he was appointed to the committee for the sale of forfeited estates.310A. and O. The work of reorganising government finance also limped along. On 14 January Bond was named to a committee on a bill for stating the accounts of officers and soldiers; on 15 February he was named to the council committee to oversee the making of accounts for all public treasuries; and on 2 May he was named to a committee on a bill to relieve the widows and orphans of soldiers.311CJ vi. 524a, 569b; CSP Dom. 1651, p. 50. Thereafter he seems to have had little involvement in financial affairs until 26 December when he was named to a committee on a petition of the treasurer at war.312CJ vii. 58a. The west country was also a low priority for Bond. A letter received by Bond from William Hussey in Shaftesbury was referred to the council’s committee on Irish and Scottish affairs on 15 April, and on 20 May he was given care of a petition from the Scilly Isles.313CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 148, 209. On 17 June he was named to the committee on a bill to pay off the remaining debts of John Pym; and he reported the recommendation of the council on the Scilly garrison to Parliament on 11 July.314CJ vi. 589a, 602b. Otherwise there is little indication that Bond was in close contact with Dorset or its neighbouring counties.

Bond had not lost his appetite for pursuing delinquents, however. On 24 January he was teller with Armyne against allowing for a court of claims in the new bill for the sale of delinquents’ estates, and he was named to the subsequent committee on the bill, along with Marten, Trenchard, Prideaux and other allies.315CJ vi. 528a. On 23 April he was teller in favour of omitting Thomas Leuson from the same bill, but on 5 June he joined Hesilrige in opposing a motion that those lands of George Villiers, 2nd duke of Buckingham, assigned to charities should also be excluded.316CJ vi. 566a, 585a. On 16 July he was again teller against including a delinquent’s lands in the bill - this time those of Maximilian Mohun.317CJ vi. 604b. He was appointed to the committee for the sale of forfeited estates on the same day.318A. and O. Thereafter, Bond was named on 5 August to committees to consider the refusal of Sir Richard Gurney to pay his fine, and on 14 October he was teller with Harrison against reading the letter and petition of another notorious delinquent, the earl of Derby.319CJ vi. 616b; vii. 27b. The consideration of these individual cases had been time consuming, and it was only on 3 December that the bill for the sale of forfeited estates reached its committee stage, with Bond being named along with Vane II, Marten, Morley, Trenchard, Hesilrige, Danvers and Cromwell.320CJ vii. 46b.

Something of Bond’s political stance during 1651 can be gleaned from his involvement in the navy and diplomacy and the sale of delinquents’ estates – all matters that would bolster the commonwealth regime. His range of associates also suggests that he was a staunch supporter of the Rump, although there is little direct evidence for his political affiliations. After the defeat of the Scots at Worcester on 3 September, Bond shared the general enthusiasm for the victorious Oliver Cromwell. On 6 September he was named to a committee to consider an appropriate reward for Cromwell; on 10 September he was appointed to a committee to consider Cromwell’s request for compensation for the well-affected of Worcester and its hinterland who had suffered during the battle, and on 19 September he was named to a committee on a bill for a day of public thanksgiving.321CJ vii. 13b, 15a, 20a. Bond was also named to a committee to assert the right of the English commonwealth to rule over Scotland (9 Sept.), and in the same month was involved in asserting the rights of the commonwealth over rival nations, and in particular the Dutch, in the navigation act.322CJ vii. 14a, 21a. He was also involved in the investigation of John Lilburne and his associates in December and into the new year of 1652.323CJ vii. 55b, 71b, 75b. Yet there were also tensions between the Rumpers and Cromwell’s party, and these involved Bond on 14 November, when he and Harbert Morley acted as tellers against a vote to declare a terminal date for the Rump, and the calling of new elections. They were opposed in this by Cromwell and Oliver St John, who hoped that a new, more vigorous Parliament, would be among the fruits of victory.324CJ vii. 36b.

Navy and administration, 1651-3

As yet, the prospect of war with the Dutch helped to maintain a fragile unity within the commonwealth regime. Bond was re-elected to the council of state on 24 November 1651, and in the next few days was again made a member of the committees on the ordnance, on Ireland and Scotland, and the admiralty.325CJ vii. 42a; CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 43, 46. He was named on 14 January to the council committee to manage negotiations with the Dutch, and on 3 February he was teller in favour of releasing a Dutch ship that had been seized under the Navigation Act.326CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 102; CJ vii. 81b. On 25 March Cromwell and Bond were ordered to go to Chatham to hasten the ships for the summer guard, and on his return Bond was one of the councillors who liaised with the navy and admiralty commissioners about refitting ships and issuing letters of marque.327CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 203-4, 223. On 18 May Bond was also appointed to the council committee to consider fresh meetings with the Dutch ambassador, and there were hopes on both sides that war could be averted, but the incident the very next day between the English and Dutch fleets in the Downs brought the two countries to the brink of war.328CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 244. Bond and Cromwell were summoned to the council early on the morning of 20 May, and immediately sent to Dover to monitor the situation.329CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 249. They were in Rochester on 25 May, whence they sent a letter to Trinity House asking them to nominate a new master of the Resolution, now ready to put to sea.330Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 553. On the same day Vane II reported to the House the activities of Bond and Cromwell in interviewing English and Dutch captains about the fight in the Downs.331CJ vii. 135b. Bond had returned to Westminster by 27 May, when he was ordered to report to Parliament the good affection of Dover, and a request that the pier might be repaired.332CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 264. On 5 June he was appointed to the parliamentary committee to consider instructions to the fleet, and on 10 June he was appointed to committees to consider new requests from the Dutch ambassadors and to ensure supplies to the fleet.333CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 278, 284-5. On 2 July Bond and Cromwell were again working together, this time arranging the reinforcement of the garrison at Dover.334CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 314. In July 1652 Hugh Peter was of the opinion that Bond agreed with Vane II, Whitelocke and Cromwell in inclining towards a peace deal with the Dutch.335Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 568. This prominence in the management of the war probably contributed to the choice of Bond as president of the council of state for a month on 12 July.336CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. xlii-xlv, 328.

As his appointment as president suggests, in 1652 and early 1653 the council of state was the focus of Bond’s administrative activity, and apart from the management of the Dutch negotiations and the war that followed, he was active in financial matters, raising money for the armed forces and the state, and in negotiating with the diplomats of Spain, Portugal and Sweden.337CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 114, 122, 143, 158, 436; 1652-3, pp. 9, 62, 198. His role in executive committees appears to have shrunk further, although he signed warrants of the Committee for Revenue in January, July and November 1652, and in March 1653, and he was involved with the sale of royal property in October, November and December 1652, and March 1653.338SP28/269, f. 342, 367; E404/238, unfol.; CJ vii. 222b, 236b; CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 435; 1652-3, p. 199. In Parliament, Bond remained involved in legal issues, including the form of the high court of justice (1 Jan.), the rules of copyhold inheritance (6 May), and the setting of salaries for judges (12 Nov.).339CJ vii. 62a, 130b, 215a. Despite this, there are signs that he continued to oppose reforms: he was teller against the second reading of the bill for marriages on 19 March, and almost a year later, on 17 March 1653, he would join Danvers as teller against proceeding with the probate bill.340CJ vii. 107b, 268b. Similarly, Bond was conservative on the matter of tithes, acting as teller on 29 April in favour of continuing the status quo until another scheme for maintaining ministers could be devised.341CJ vii. 128b.

Bond was more enthusiastic when it came to the deciding the fate of delinquents. On 13 February he and Holland were tellers in favour of a proviso in the bill for pardon and oblivion, to safeguard the rights over arrears allowed to the Eastern Association in the 1640s, and on 24 February he and Hesilrige were tellers in favour of excepting the sons of George Goring* from inclusion in the same bill.342CJ vii. 88a, 96a. In March and April Bond was named to two committees relating to the sale of lands of the king, deans and chapters, and bishops.343CJ vii. 112a, 115a. In August he was teller in favour of including William Craven, 1st Baron Craven, in the bill for forfeited estates, and he was teller on other cases in the following November.344CJ vii. 160b, 208a, 209a. Bond was also in favour of reforming the state finances, being named to a committee to consider reforming the treasury on 27 July, and inserted, by order of the House, into the bill for treasuries on 4 December.345CJ vii. 159a, 225b. This reflected his activity in the council over the winter, where he was appointed to committees concerning the treasury commissioners and the inspecting of the treasuries.346CSP Dom., 1652-3, pp. 19, 45, 75. During this period, Bond apparently had little time for the affairs of the west country, although he was still courted by locals seeking favours or advice. In May 1652 the Dorchester corporation resolved that Bond was to be consulted about the purchase of the tithes of the parish of Walterston.347Dorset RO, B/2/16/4, p. 180. In April 1653 the burgesses of Weymouth appointed Bond, with John Browne I, John Trenchard and William Sydenham as trustees for the town common lands.348Weymouth Charters, 117.

Bond continued to enjoy a prominent political position at Whitehall in the autumn and winter of 1652-3, and he was again elected as president of the council of state for the month from 20 October.349CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 447. The council elections on 24 November were dominated by the Dutch war, and Bond was duly re-elected, and subsequently appointed to the committees for the admiralty, Ireland, trade and foreign affairs.350CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 505; 1652-3, p. 2; CJ vii. 220a. On 10 December Bond was appointed to the committee to review the treasuries, and a week later he was included again on the Army Committee.351A. and O. On 7 January 1653 he was made a commissioner to inspect the treasuries.352A. and O. By March 1653 he was said to be in firm alliance with Cromwell’s opponents in the Commons, including Morley, Marten, Sir Peter Wentworth, Edmund Ludlowe II and Algernon Sydney, but this was probably an exaggeration, as Bond seems to have been keen to maintain a low profile.353Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 617. He was involved in the sluggish debates on whether to call a new Parliament, and whether the institution should be reformed. On 2 March he was teller with Hesilrige in favour of including 33 Scottish MPs in a future Parliament, and on 30 March he was teller with Vane II against extending the franchise.354CJ vii. 263b, 273b. On 23 March Bond was again elected as president of the council of state, and he still held this post when Cromwell intervened to bring the Rump administration to an end.355CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 228. He was in the Commons on 20 April, and his ‘chronology’ provides an eye witness account of the entry of the troops with their general, and the actions of Thomas Harrison I, who ‘takes the Speaker by the hand and pulls him out of the chair’. Bond added that ‘Henry Marten sat in his place between Sir Peter Wentworth and Henry Nevill. O[liver] C[romwell] calls out to them “come down you whoremongers”. Henry Marten asked his two neighbours whether the general did not speak to them’.356Dorset RO, D.53/1, p. 36.

Reluctant Cromwellian, 1653-9

The dissolution of the Rump left Bond’s career in tatters. In May 1653 he was sacked from the committee for the inspection of the treasuries, and in July his lodgings in Whitehall were assigned to others.357Clarke Pprs. iii. 6; CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 14. He probably lost the clerkship of the pells in the same period. Yet, unlike such inveterate commonwealthsmen as Vane II and Hesilrige, Bond does not appear to have been ideologically opposed to the creation of the protectorate, and may even have welcomed the development as ensuring a degree of stability notably absent during the summer and autumn of 1653. In any case, it was not long before he had re-established some of his old influence. On 21 August 1654 he was restored to the office of clerk of the pells, with the increased salary of £450 per annum.358Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 417n; Add. 32471, ff. 11v, 20v. Seven days later he was appointed a commissioner for scandalous ministers in Dorset.359A. and O. In the same month, Bond was elected as MP for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis for the first protectorate Parliament, no doubt on his own interest as a merchant and householder in the town, and perhaps with the support of his son Samuel*, who had been recorder of Weymouth since September 1651.360Dorset RO, D.53/1, p.37; Weymouth Min. Bks. 88. In this Parliament, Bond’s committee appointments suggest that he was engaged with a similar range of issues as in the later 1640s and early 1650s. Law reform was again prominent, whether the regulation of Chancery (5 Oct.), the confirmation of earlier legislation to abolish the court of wards (31 Oct.), the petition of doctors of civil law (4 Nov., 22 Dec.), reforms to the office of sheriff (4 Dec.) or probate (14 Dec.).361CJ vii. 374a, 380a, 382a, 394b, 401a, 407b. Bond was named to committees on trade and commerce, including those for the encouragement of the transport of corn on 6 October, and to consider a petition concerning fen drainage on 31 October.362CJ vii. 374b, 380a. Other long-standing interests may have influenced his appointment on 30 December to the committee to bring in a bill on the granting of remaining forfeited estates, and on 18 January 1655 to a committee to consider how to address the public debt.363CJ vii. 409b, 419a.

There is evidence from the committee lists that Bond was again working with his west country allies from the Rump, including Trenchard and Prideaux, and had also become reconciled with others, such as John Fitzjames.364CJ vii. 373a, 374b, 394b, 401a. This is also suggested by a letter from Fitzjames to William Ellesdon at Lyme of 9 December, concerning the assessment rates of the town, in which he added that ‘you’ll do well to let your cousin Denis Bond known that I say; he was very willing to oblige your town’.365Alnwick, Northumberland 551, f. 10v. It says much of his commitment to Dorset that Bond was prepared to work with a former opponent to assist a town with which he had no direct connection. Bond’s stance in national politics also appears to have been very conservative at this time, and his interventions in the debates on the Government Bill suggest that he was not among those trying to reform the protectorate root and branch. On 30 November he joined the councillor (and Dorset landowner) Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper in telling against continuing the debate on the 32nd article, concerning the rules on the election of a new protector.366CJ vii. 393b. On 8 December he was teller with a Presbyterian, Sir John Hobart, in favour of congregations and churches being approved by the magistrate.367CJ vii. 398b. On 1 January 1655 he joined his old ally from the Rump, Sir William Masham, as teller against attempts to property qualification for voters.368CJ vii. 411a. While none of this amounts to a ringing endorsement of the protectorate, it does suggest that Bond was unwilling to overturn what appeared to be a stable regime.

After the dissolution of Parliament in January 1655, Bond appears to have moved closer to the protectoral government. On 12 July 1655 he was appointed to the committee of trade created by the protectoral council, and this was confirmed the following November.369CSP Dom. 1655, p. 240; 1655-6, p. 1. He remained clerk of the pells, and on 23 July wrote to the secretary of state, John Thurloe*, anxious that a new schedule of the fees for the exchequer officers was about to be introduced, and asking that his own case ‘may be speedily despatched’, fearing that ‘it will prove a matter of no small difficulty to certify anything for the future’.370Bodl. Rawl. A.28, f. 718; Aylmer, State’s Servants, 118.

Bond was re-elected for Weymouth and Melcombe Regis in 1656.371Dorset RO, D.53/1, p. 37. As a senior MP, in the early days of the Parliament he was named to important committees as that on the bill to renounce the title of Charles Stuart (19 Sept.), those for Scottish and Irish affairs (23 Sept.), and to consider how to address bills to the lord protector (26 Sept.).372CJ vii. 425a, 427a, 429a. Even at this early stage it is clear that Bond was working with his Dorset colleagues, as before. On 23 September he was teller with Prideaux in favour of a motion banning private business for a month; and on 30 September he was teller with Fitzjames against putting the motion that one Henry Frodsham should be pardoned for treason.373CJ vii. 427b, 430b. Bond can also be seen as collaborating with allies from the Rump, especially Whitelocke and Trenchard, and he retained his connection with the earl of Salisbury, being named to the committee on the earl’s petition on 10 December.374CJ vii. 466b. Bond also forged new relationships with prominent critics of the protectorate, notably Thomas Bampfylde, a Presbyterian, and John Lambert’s ally, Luke Robinson. As a result of this breadth of connections, and his experience as a parliamentarian, Bond soon became regarded as something of an elder statesman. Although he was not included in the committee of privileges, he was named on 16 and 21 October to committees on individual cases of MPs’ rights being infringed.375CJ vii. 439b, 442b. He told MPs on 9 December 1656, when the future of the master of Wyggeston’s Hospital in Leicester, was considered, ‘It is said that this master had done good service in the Long Parliament. I should know surely as much as another’.376Burton’s Diary, i. 83; CJ vii. 466a. On the same day he upbraided the Speaker when he departed from the orders of the House by allowing MPs to speak more than once on a question.377Burton’s Diary, i. 92. On 15 December he moved that business might be adjourned, as ‘I never knew any success of night or afternoon meetings’.378Burton’s Diary, i. 147. On 12 January 1657, when the Speaker was taken ill, it was Bond who suggested adjourning the House for a week and conducting business in grand committees in the meantime, or the appointment of a deputy Speaker.379Burton’s Diary, i. 337.

Bond resumed many of the functions familiar from previous parliaments. Trade played an important part in his activity during the early months of this Parliament. On 7 October he was named to the committee on a bill for repealing the act on corn and meal, and on 20 October he was named to the committee on trade.380CJ vii. 435b, 442a. Other committee appointments followed, including, on 25 November, to the committee on a bill for regulating the cloth industry in Norwich – an issue that had concerned Bond in 1650.381CJ vii. 459a. On 18 December Bond joined Luke Robinson and others in calling for the bill on trade and navigation to be recommitted to the trade committee, taking ‘some exceptions to it’.382Burton’s Diary, i. 168. The commercial might of London was also of concern to Bond, and he was named to a committee on a petition from the City on 19 December.383CJ vii. 470b. Bond was opposed to any move that might strengthen the position of the London merchants at the expense of their provincial rivals. He attacked the petition restricting freedom for non-residents as ‘mischievous’, saying that it would prevent trade in other parts of the nation: ‘If you let this pass, you pull up by the roots all the privileges of the people of England, and put them into the hands of a few men of this City’. He used his own experience as an example, for in 1643-4, he claimed to have been forced to contribute £4 per week when he lived in London, but as ‘my estate was all sequestered, and I was not able to bear it, so [I] left the City’. This intemperate outburst (in itself a throw-back to the early 1640s) was counter-productive, as Bond’s views were immediately dismissed by Alderman Charles Lloyd, who told the chamber ‘this gentleman is angry’.384Burton’s Diary, i. 177. When the London petition was again considered, on 12 January 1657, Bond was again irritable. When the late arrival of Alderman Thomas Foote caused delay, ‘Bond took heavily out, that a committee of Parliament should be so cheap as to wait for any one man in England’, and in the debate he again accused the London corporation of seeking to impose ‘an arbitrary power over men’s estates’.385Burton’s Diary, i. 343.

Bond’s interest in trade and commerce was but one example of how his concerns from earlier Parliaments continued to appear in 1656-7. On 11 November he was added to the committee to consider the arrears of excise, and how other sources of income, including customs, could be improved to assist the war with Spain.386CJ vii. 453a. His concern for both issues can be seen in his intervention in debate on 30 December. Bond resisted moves to postpone the debate on raising money for the Spanish war, which was the order of the day: ‘The Spaniard will not stay till you be provided for him. I desire you would go on with the Spanish business’.387Burton’s Diary, i. 269-70. On 8 January 1657 Bond called for the House to reconvene as a grand committee to consider the excise bill, and in the debate that followed he argued for the exclusion of the Channel Islands by reason of their poverty, although he joined George Downing and Robinson in moving for the inclusion of Ireland and Scotland.388Burton’s Diary, i. 321, 324-5. Bond was drawn into law reform once again, as can be seen in his appointment in October and November 1656 to committees on customary oaths, probate, poor debtors, purveyance and the erection of new courts for Yorkshire and the northern counties.389CJ vii. 435b, 446a, 447a, 449b, 456a. Appointment did not equate with enthusiasm, however. On 1 November he was teller in favour of rejecting the bill for small debts and trespasses, and on 6 November he joined Robinson in telling against recommitting the bill on the abolition of the court of wards.390CJ vii. 449a, 450a.

The affairs of the west, and especially Dorset, also concerned Bond in 1656-7. Although he had long ceased to be their MP, the burgesses of Dorchester still counted on Bond’s willingness to use his influence on their behalf, and on 3 November the corporation sent one of its bailiffs to London ‘to confer with Mr Bond, Mr [John] Whiteway*, and Mr [Richard] Burie’ about the appointment of a third preacher for the town’s churches.391Dorset RO, B2/16/4, p. 249; Recs. of Dorchester ed. Mayo, 608. Bond put his weight behind the petition of his old friend, Captain John Arthur of Weymouth, on 22 December, saying that ‘he is very poor, and hath suffered much for you’, but this was opposed by those who disliked individual cases taking up precious parliamentary time.392Burton’s Diary, i. 204. It was not until May 1657 that a bill on satisfying Arthur from Irish lands was eventually given its second reading and passed to a committee (which included Bond and Fitzjames among its members).393CJ vii. 539a.

Bond’s involvement in religious affairs had waxed and waned during previous Parliaments, but in the 1656-7 sitting it became of greater importance. He was named to eight religious committees in the first three months of the Parliament, including those on sequestered parsonages, the maintenance of ministers, and the suppression of Catholics.394CJ vii. 434a, 444a, 448a, 453b, 463b, 469a, 472b, 475b. Yet he was not invariably uncompromising in his attitudes, and at times his zeal was tempered by a concern for civil liberties. On 3 December, for example, he was concerned at the justice of the bill against popish recusants, which threatened penalties against those whose spouses converted, calling this a ‘desperate clause … [for] if my wife turn papist, I shall suffer sequestration of two-parts of my estate’.395Burton’s Diary, i. 6. In the same month, Bond was closely involved in the debates on the fate of the Quaker James Naylor. He was an active member of the committee to consider the report on Naylor (originally appointed on 31 Oct.) and on 10 December he was among those MPs calling for the extreme penalty: ‘I shall freely give my vote that the fellow should die for this offence’, adding, ‘I know not how you can, with honour and safety to this nation, do anything less’.396CJ vii. 448a; Burton’s Diary, i. 98. If the House insisted on imprisonment, Bond warned that Naylor would remain a threat: ‘send him rather into the Orcades [Orkney Islands], or Scotland, or other remote parts’.397Burton’s Diary, i. 155. On 17 December Bond joined Bampfylde in widening the issue to encompass all Quakers – ‘rid your hands of them all, for they lie at your charge’ – and he urged that the petition against Quakers should be read, and incorporated into the Naylor decision.398Burton’s Diary, i. 167. The next day, Bond railed against Quakers in general, saying ‘they are a generation that begin to lisp already. It will make men wear their swords’.399Burton’s Diary, i. 173. On 23 December Bond opposed the reading of a petition for remitting the punishment against Naylor.400Burton’s Diary, i. 216, 220. His interest in Naylor continued as late as 28 February 1657, when he was named to a committee to receive a report from Bridewell on the condition of the prisoner.401CJ vii. 497b.

Bond had no qualms about the Commons taking judicial proceedings against Naylor. On 5 December he drew a parallel with Parliament’s impeachment of Archbishop Laud: ‘I would have you first vote the matter of fact, that he is guilty of blasphemy, and then send for him’.402Burton’s Diary, i. 28. On 10 December he again asserted the Commons’ right to decide the matter, telling the House that ‘I am not afraid of a precedent in this case’ and again urging that they should ‘go the same way with this man as they did with the archbishop of Canterbury’.403Burton’s Diary, i. 98. In taking this position Bond was deliberately seeking to increase the competency of the unicameral Parliament: ‘resume the power of Parliament in this case’, he insisted, ‘and trouble not the lord protector with it’.404Burton’s Diary, i. 98. On 12 December Bond joined Bampfylde in calling for a motion ‘for drawing up a bill of attainder, and that the person should suffer death’.405Burton’s Diary, i. 118. He expressed anxiety on 17 December that if the case was referred to the law courts, Naylor would be bailed, as John Biddle had been in 1654. What was needed was a legally binding judgement, not a mere order.406Burton’s Diary, i. 161.

Bond’s concern for the status of Parliament can be seen in other areas. On 20 December he told Parliament that as Christmas was approaching, and many Members had left for the country, it was time for a call of the House, ‘lest we be called a rag of a Parliament, as formerly we have been called’. He was also sensitive to accusations that ‘we are now made up of none but soldiers and courtiers, and I know not what friends to my lord protector. This is a scandal to us’. Major-general John Disbrowe countered that it was not a scandal to be any of the things Bond had mentioned, but there was general agreement that the House’s reputation was at risk.407Burton’s Diary, i. 190, 192-3.

Bond’s lukewarm support for the protectorate was also in evidence on 25 December, when Disbrowe introduced the militia bill to continue the decimation tax essential for the survival of the rule of the major-generals. He opposed the new measure on principle, as

it is not wisdom for you to give leave to any person to bring in a bill to lay any charge upon the people, till you have gone through with what you have under consideration concerning it. The gentleman offers it very properly to ask your leave, but I hope you will not give it.408Burton’s Diary, i. 230.

There is no evidence that Bond was an opponent of the major-generals per se, and he apparently played no part in the bitter debates on the militia bill in January 1657; nor does he appear to have been involved in the introduction of the new, monarchical constitution, the Remonstrance, on 23 February, or the faction-fighting that followed it. Instead, during January and February Bond seems to have devoted himself to minor committees on trade, religion and the distribution of Irish lands, and on 19 February, he was teller in favour of reporting from the committee to reform the court of chancery.409CJ vii. 482b, 485b, 488a, 491b, 493b, 494a. In the same period he was also active in securing the Scottish lands granted to General George Monck*, and in return Monck promised to be ‘very careful of his business here’, apparently alluding to money owed to Bond by the earl of Lothian.410Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke MS li, f. 2; Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 346. After this inauspicious start to the year, in March Bond suddenly became active in attempts to modify the new constitution, soon to be renamed the Humble Petition and Advice. On 9 March he was teller in favour of reading a paper by a Presbyterian, Joachim Matthews*, concerning the 4th article, on qualifications for elections, opposing the kinglings, Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle) and Sir Charles Wolseley.411CJ vii. 500b. The next day he joined Matthews and Bampfylde on a committee to consider the qualifications for voting in the 4th article.412CJ vii. 501a. On 12 March he was named to committee to consider the judicial function of the Other House – an issue made all the more relevant by the Naylor case, and on 8 March he was also named to a committee to consider additions to the 8th article on liberty and property rights.413CJ vii. 502a, 505a.

On 25 March Bond was among the four Dorset MPs who voted to retain the offer the crown to Cromwell in the Humble Petition and Advice, and on 27th he was among those MPs selected to attend the protector, to request a meeting to present the new constitution to the protector.414Narrative of the Late Parliament (1657), 22 (E.935.5); CJ vii. 514a. Thereafter, Bond joined the committee on 6 April that prepared reasons why it should be accepted by a reluctant Cromwell; he was named to the committee to receive the protector’s doubts and scruples on 9 April; and on 24 April he was appointed to another committee, to consider Cromwell’s specific criticisms of the Humble Petition.415CJ vii. 520b, 521b, 524a. In debates on revising the constitution, on 23 and 24 April, Bond was genuinely concerned to make it work. He wanted tests of loyalty for former royalists to apply across the three nations; he wanted the clause about preachers in the religious article to be better defined; and he was wary of allowing the protector freedom to appoint members of the Other House without the approval of Parliament – citing Charles I’s abuse of his right to do so in the Strafford trial.416Burton’s Diary, ii. 11, 15, 21-2. When the responses to Cromwell’s scruples were systematised in the Additional Petition and Advice in May, Bond was a member of the committee on its drafting.417CJ vii. 540b.

Bond’s primary concern during the kingship debates was for the establishment of a legitimate government, founded on Parliament. This concern is also evident in the debates on the bill to confirm the ordinances passed by the protector and council. This bill was brought in by Sir John Reynolds on 24 April, and Bond thought the measure highly irregular: ‘for my part I shall never consent to confirm any laws elsewhere, and all in a lump. This is to do it at blind man’s buff.’ Characteristically, he then made an unfavourable comparison with how business was conducted before 1653, as ‘there were more laws made in that Long Parliament than were made since the Conquest’.418Burton’s Diary, ii. 39-40. Later on the same day, Bond returned to the issue, this time with a more measured response: ‘I am as much as friend of settlement as any man, yet I would not, for all the settlements in the world, do an unjust thing. I cannot consent to confirm any thing at a lump, without viewing and examining any particulars’.419Burton’s Diary, ii. 44. In the discussion of individual ordinances that followed, Bond was concerned with the future as well as the past. On 28 April he told the House that to continue the ordinance for the approbation of preachers in perpetuity ‘may be very dangerous, for a popish prince may come in; and we should, when making laws, always suppose that the executioners will be the worst’.420Burton’s Diary, ii. 51. He was also aware of the danger of allowing external bodies excessive powers. The ordinance for regulating the universities, discussed the same day, was opposed by Bond ‘in regard the visitors undertake to make laws against the fundamental laws’.421Burton’s Diary, ii. 63. When, on 30 April, it was suggested that the legislation of earlier period might also be ratified, Bond was incensed: ‘I would have you lay no blemish upon the Long Parliament’, he replied, ‘for certainly their authority was equivalent to yours’.422Burton’s Diary, ii. 87.

From the end of April 1657 Bond devoted his energies to more routine business, intervening regularly on debates on a wide range of topics, to give MPs the benefit of his parliamentary experience. On 29 April he again criticised the lateness of members arriving from Westminster Hall: ‘If the judges would meet at 6 o’ clock in the morning they might do all their business in those three hours, and attend the House at nine… The judges never used to slight the Parliament so much’.423Burton’s Diary, ii. 65. He defended the former Independent peers, the earls of Northumberland (Algernon Percy†, 4th earl) and Salisbury, whose petition for relief from being sureties for public debts contracted by the late earl of Pembroke was read on 30 April, saying that ‘it is against common justice that the lords should suffer in it’, and asserting that ‘had the Long Parliament sat till now, they would have done something in it’.424Burton’s Diary, ii. 83; CJ vii. 528b.

Bond was also involved in other cases of unfinished business. In the debate on the long-running case of Lord Craven, on 26 May, he claimed impartiality, as ‘I am not a purchaser of this or any other delinquent lands’.425Burton’s Diary, ii. 129. The marriage bill – that sought to deal with another unresolved issue from the early 1650s – also attracted Bond’s attention. He was teller against reading yet another report on the business on 29 April, and on 26 May he and Nicholas Lechmere moved that the bill might be read.426CJ vii. 562b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 69, 72, 74-5, 130. On 29 May he returned to another favourite area: the bill against recusancy. Again, Bond was wary of setting precedents, especially when it came to oaths on doctrine: ‘we do not know what times may come. Those things may be asserted for truths and we, under some penalty, may be compelled to swear to them’.427Burton’s Diary, ii. 150. Bond was named on 9 May to the committee on the bill for preventing further building in London; and when, on 30 May, Griffith Bordurda proposed that the protector should name the committee to approve new buildings, Bond was unenthusiastic: ‘In the Long Parliament you and every gentleman can bear witness what contests, discontents and high animosities there were about matters of this nature’.428CJ vii. 531b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 160.

In June Bond reprised his role as a financial expert. On 1 June he was made chairman of the grand committee on the bill for tonnage and poundage, which he had moved should be read. He greeted this appointment with apparently genuine dismay, saying that he was too old, and ‘would come here no more’, as well as protesting ‘that it was an ill requital to call him to the chair for moving what was for the service of the House’.429Burton’s Diary, ii. 167. Despite this, he was as happy as ever to give advice on financial matters, calling on 4 June for the army arrears to be considered as a matter of urgency, and for the consideration of the four money bills already tabled.430Burton’s Diary, ii. 170. The next day he attacked a proviso on strangers’ duties in the customs bill as ‘nonsensical’, as it would penalise all merchants to catch a handful of offenders.431Burton’s Diary, ii. 195. Bond was an important figure in debates on the assessment bills, moving provisos on the Irish and Scottish rates on 8 and 10 June, and on the latter day reacting angrily to the idea of using the old ship money rates, ‘cast of this House with great indignation’ in 1641, for England.432Burton’s Diary, ii. 196, 212, 215. He was also opposed to the ‘pound rate’, suggested on 12 June: ‘I had rather have a double charge upon my county than give way to such a precedent … I have been a week together at this, in the Long Parliament, and we could never make it practicable’.433Burton’s Diary, ii. 236. On 13 June Bond seconded Bampfylde’s motion for a bill to settle public debts, and on the same day he opposed moves to reduce the Irish assessment, alluding to the sturdy donkey among the sheep-pens of Genesis 49, verse 14

If you would make England Issachar’s ass, we shall break down at last … When we come to touch upon any of their [the Irish] lands, as today about the public faith, there is a noli me tangere [do not touch me] presently. Here are such arguments in and out, by the adventurers and soldiers for Ireland.

His final remark – that ‘I never saw Ireland’ – brought an immediate riposte from Thomas Cooper II: ‘if that gentleman had ever been in Ireland, he would have been of another opinion’.434Burton’s Diary, ii. 244, 246. On 19 June Bond was named to a further financial committee, to state to extent of debts that were now guaranteed by the public faith.435CJ vii. 563a. In the final days of the sitting, Bond was involved in less controversial matters. On 24 June he joined Pride, Maidstone and Blackwell in taking care of the ceremony that would attend the taking of the oath of office by the protector under the new constitution; and on 25 June he was named to the committee, largely made up of councillors, to arrange for robes, a sceptre and sword to be made ready for the investiture.436CJ vii. 573b, 575a. Whatever his private misgivings, by this stage Bond was clearly seen by others as a loyal Cromwellian.

Bond returned to the Commons when Parliament reconvened in January 1658, and was appointed one of those MPs to administer the new oath, under the Humble Petition and Advice, at the door of the chamber on 20 January, and he also swore in late-comers (like Hesilrige) on 25 January.437CJ vii. 578a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 347. During the brief sitting, Bond busied himself with committees on a bill to register births, deaths and marriages (22 Jan.), to promote the safe keeping of the records of Parliament (26 Jan.) and for a bill for trustees for impropriations (26 Jan.).438CJ vii. 581a, 588a; Burton’s Diary, ii. 337. On 28 January Bond was named to a committee to attend Cromwell to ask that his speech to Parliament might be printed, and on 30 January he reported recommendations on the housing of the parliamentary records.439CJ vii. 589a, 590a-b. Despite his support for the protectorate, Bond had lost none of his concern to defend the rights of Parliament, and on 30 January he spoke against sending the mace to Westminster Hall to collect absent members, saying that ‘you will make yourselves very cheap, to send your mace every day out for your Members’.440Burton’s Diary, ii. 394. On the same day, as the Commons debated transacting with the Other House, Bond took exception to comments on how expensive the commonwealth regime had been: ‘I do not like the hear reflections upon the Long Parliament, to whose pains and success this nation owes its peace and safety’.441Burton’s Diary, ii. 396. However much of a Cromwellian he had become, Bond was still nostalgic for the days of the Rump.

Last months and conclusion

After the dissolution of Parliament in February 1658, little is known of Bond’s activities. He continued to play some part in Dorset affairs, and was able to use his influence in local disputes, even from afar. John Fitzjames, who shared landed interests with Bond near Wareham, wrote to him on 26 July, promising ‘to empty that little interest I had there in some friends, whom I gave the reasons inserted in your letter, which made them all of your side’.442Alnwick, Northumberland 552, ff. 21, 24v. This local dispute was unresolved when Bond died on 30 August, his seventieth birthday. His death, only four days before that of Cromwell, led some royalists to suggest that the Devil had taken Bond in mistake for the protector. He was buried in Westminster Abbey, but his body was exhumed with those of other Cromwellians in 1661, and thrown into a common grave in St Margaret’s churchyard.443Bayley, Dorset, 28.

Bond had settled his estate in February 1658, and made his will a month later. The will, and the inventory of Bond’s goods made after his death, suggests that his statement to Parliament on 26 May 1657, that he had not used his position to increase his own wealth, was perfectly true.444Burton’s Diary, ii. 129. He had acquired a house at Westminster, and also Bestwall House near Wareham in Dorset, but otherwise his estate appears to have been the same in 1658 as it had been in 1641; and the valuation of his goods in his various properties, at somewhat less than £1,000, suggests that he was not living in luxury either.445PROB11/282/117; Dorset RO, D/BOC, box 19, inventories. Bond was survived by his third wife, Eleanor Kendall, and by one daughter and five sons from his first and second marriages. These included the master of Trinity Hall, vice-chancellor of Cambridge University, and former MP for Weymouth, Dr John Bond, the soon to be MP for Poole, Samuel Bond, and the future MP for Corfe castle and for Dorchester, Nathaniel Bond†.446Dorset RO, D/BOC/22, f. 72; HP Commons 1660-1690.

The success of Bond’s sons suggests that the contemporaries who saw him as building a dynasty rather than promoting himself may have had a point. Mercurius Pragmaticus had made this allegation as early as 1648, and it was repeated by The Mystery of the Good Old Cause shortly after his death: Bond, it was said, was ‘a woollen draper [who] acted by his trustees, his sons and brother; one son he made master of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, another auditor of the excise, worth £500 p.a., and his brother governor of Portland’.447The Mystery of the Good Old Cause (1660), 5 (E1.923.2). All this was undeniable. The careers of John and Samuel depended on their father’s influence, and his brother, Elias* (knight of the shire for Dorset in 1659) also benefited from the connection.

Yet there was more to Bond than that. As well as promoting his family, throughout his parliamentary career he was willing to act with, or through political ‘trustees’, especially his close friends from the west country, notably Edmund Prideaux I and John Trenchard, and a range of colleagues within the administration, including Sir Henry Vane II. Bond was not a politician of the first rank; he was a tireless committeeman and administrator. He also seems to have been a man who naturally avoided controversy. In July 1647 he withdrew from the Commons but did not flee to the New Model; he was absent at Pride’s Purge in 1648, and was wary of engaging with the commonwealth in the months that followed. He opposed the dissolution of the Rump, but was willing to become reconciled with the protectorate; and he voted for kingship in 1657, even though he remained critical of the Cromwellian regime. This was not mere trimming, however. Bond’s belief in the fundamental importance of Parliament, his loyalty to Dorset, and his firm religious views, suggest that he was, however reticently, a man of great integrity.