BEDINGFIELD, Anthony (160252), of Gislingham, Suff. and Cheapside, London.

The careers adopted by the five surviving sons of Thomas Bedingfield† neatly fit the conventional pattern to be expected in a gentry family with numerous male offspring. The eldest son, Philip*, inherited the family estates, the second and the fourth sons, Sir Thomas* and John†, became lawyers, the third son Robert, entered the church, while the fifth son, Anthony, went into commerce. Anthony Bedingfield served his apprenticeship with the London mercer, William Johnson, and in 1628, shortly after his twenty-sixth birthday, he was admitted to the most senior of the City livery companies, the Mercers.18Mercers’ Co., Acts of Court 1625-31, f. 182; PROB11/224/385. Johnson, a member of the select vestry of the notably godly church of St Stephen’s, Coleman Street, is likely to have given his apprentice a strict Protestant upbringing.19D.A. Kirby, ‘The radicals of St Stephen’s, Coleman Street’, Guildhall Misc. iii. 101 and n.

Appropriately for a native of East Anglia (still the centre of English textile production), the other commercial corporation to which Anthony Bedingfield belonged was the Company of Merchant Adventurers of England, which exported undressed cloths to the continent (Hamburg in particular).20Mercers’ Co. Acts of Ct. 1645-51, f. 103v. He was one of several hundred merchants operating abroad who, in 1627, petitioned that Henry Billingsly be appointed as master of the foreign posts.21SP16/47, f. 63.

By the mid-1630s Bedingfield was acting in partnership with Robert Lowther. A brother of Sir John†, the MP for Westmorland between 1624 and 1629, Lowther was both a Draper and a Merchant Adventurer. His son, Anthony Lowther†, who born in 1641, was possibly named after Bedingfield. It may have been through Robert Lowther that Bedingfield first acquired business interests in Yorkshire. The two were involved in 1635 in a dispute between Leeds and the City.22CLRO, Rep. 49, ff. 163v-164. Later Bedingfield bought lands in Yorkshire.23VCH E. Riding, Yorks. vii. 125; PROB11/224/385. One reason for looking northwards was the Newcastle coal trade, in which Bedingfield evidently had some experience. In May 1638 he and another merchant, Thomas Gooch, were asked by the Middlesex justices of the peace to provide an independent valuation of the compensation due to a shipowner who had transported a consignment of poor quality coal from Newcastle.24PC Regs. iii. pp. 189-90; SP16/390, f. 239. A decade later he and John Anderson were together trading coal.25PROB11/224/385.

Bedingfield’s London residence by 1638 was a house at the east end of Cheapside (in the parish of St Vedast), on the south side, on which he was paying a yearly rent of £50.26Inhabitants of London, 1638, i. 60. He also owned land in Suffolk. On the death of his father in 1636, he inherited further lands in Suffolk, at Bruisyard, ten miles inland from Dunwich.27PROB11/172/257. One indication of just how wealthy Bedingfield had become is that, before 1649, he was able to lend at least £1,350 to the noted spendthrift, Sir William Playters*.28Suff. RO (Ipswich), HA53/407/78. At about the same time he lent £260 to one of Lowther’s relatives.29Elias Ashmole ed. C.H. Josten (Oxford, 1966), ii. 429.

The estate at Bruisyard probably did not, of itself, give him much of an electoral interest in Dunwich, but his brother Philip’s estate at Darsham was even closer to Dunwich and his brother John was steward of the borough.30Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE6/3/3, ff. 111v, 117. This Bedingfield influence had already twice secured the election of another sibling, Sir Thomas, and John personally presented Anthony for admission to the ranks of the freemen at the meeting to decide the parliamentary election on 23 March 1640. Anthony was duly returned then and again on 23 October.31Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE6/3/3, ff. 115v, 118v-119.

The first Parliament of 1640 proved to be too short for Bedingfield to make any impact, and during the first year and a half of the Long Parliament he remained almost as unobtrusive. With the most of his fellow MPs, he took the Protestation on 3 May 1641.32CJ ii. 133b. Rather more significant was his inclusion on the Recess Committee in September 1641, perhaps because he did not intend to leave the capital.33CJ ii. 288b. From the spring of 1642 onwards, however, the Commons began turning to Bedingfield with some regularity to handle certain types of business, prompted by the need to begin raising money and the desire to encourage the City to lend as much as possible.

On 10 March he was named to the committee headed by John Trenchard* to receive accounts of money raised for Parliament.34CJ ii. 474a. Bedingfield soon emerged as the Commons’ main contact with the Merchant Adventurers, who in December 1641 had lent £50,000 to Parliament.35CJ ii. 358a, 363b, 384b, 388a-b. On 26 April 1642 the Commons sent Isaac Penington*, William Spurstowe* and Bedingfield to the Merchant Adventurers with the letter they had received from the lord president of Munster, Sir William St Leger, on events in Ireland – a none too subtle hint that they expected the Company to provide more assistance in the suppression of the Irish rebellion. Within hours of the approach the Merchant Adventurers offered a further £20,000.36CJ ii. 542a-b; PJ i. 222. A month later Spurstowe and Bedingfield (together with the London MPs) were again sent to encourage the Merchant Adventurers to contribute. Unsurprisingly, both were also appointed to the committee to consult with the Merchant Adventurers about their foreign treaties – a matter of some importance because the Commons’ suspected that the company’s trading privileges made their support for Parliament less than unconditional.37CJ ii. 590a, 666b. Parliament having concluded that it could not afford the repayment of £40,000 they had promised the Merchant Adventurers, on 22 July Bedingfield, Trenchard and Sir Robert Harley* were sent to ask them to accept the delay. That same day, Spurstowe, John Venn*, Samuel Vassall* and Bedingfield were assigned to ascertain the extent to which the other repayments, to the livery companies, were also being delayed.38CJ ii. 685b-686a.

His support for military action against the Irish rebels also indicated the use of Bedingfield as a go-between with the City companies: that was still, at that stage, the primary reason for this borrowing. Whenever mercantile aspects of the Irish campaign required attention, as when some merchants offered to supply provisions for Ireland or when bullion was needed there (14 and 20 May 1642), Bedingfield was included on the relevant committees.39CJ ii. 571b, 580b. He also subscribed £400 to the Irish Adventurers, making a joint contribution of £700 with William Cage*.40CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-59, pp. 241-2; J.P. Prendergast, The Cromwellian Settlement in Ireland (Dublin, 1875), 406; J.R. MacCormack, ‘Irish Adventurers’, Irish Hist. Studies, x. 45; Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 176.

Once war broke out against the king, Bedingfield remained at Westminster and assisted the parliamentarian cause by undertaking extensive committee work. He was added to the Committee of Navy and Customs in mid-August 1642 and over the next seven years was one of its most assiduous members.41CJ ii. 728a. Otherwise almost all the committees on which he served were concerned with raising the money to fund the war. The customs were one aspect of revenue collection where, if only through his trading activities, he could claim expertise beyond that of most of his parliamentary colleagues. Such knowledge was particularly needed in early 1643 when the customs commissioners were dismissed and action was required to minimise disruption to its collection.42CJ ii. 919b; iii. 29b, 227a. A year later, on 29 February 1644 he, Spurstowe and either Edward or John Ashe, acted as messengers when the Commons wanted to tell the commissions that no wool was to be exported without their permission.43CJ iii. 411b. The controversy in August 1643 over whether John Pym*, Oliver St John* and Sir Gilbert Gerard* had been secretly transporting money and plate through the ports was not strictly an issue of finance but Bedingfield’s prominence on the committee created to investigate the allegation (he was second named to it) would have been for much the same reason.44CJ iii. 196b.

Collection of the excise posed many problems, some due to its novelty, others due to the extraordinary conditions of the times. Between January 1644 and March 1646 Bedingfield was involved in several of the attempts by the Commons to check on the efficiency of the excise commission, most notably when he was appointed to the committee for regulating its operation in June 1645.45CJ iii. 360a, 393a, 442a; iv. 472b; A. and O. He was also employed whenever the Commons wished to cajole the excise commissioners into paying out money at short notice. One such occasion was in late October 1644, when the Commons wanted £3,000 to pay to the reformadoes and the wives of soldiers who had died on active service. It was Bedingfield who had to tell the Commons on 1 November that the commissioners were unable to find enough money to meet that instruction.46CJ iii. 681a, 684a. On some other occasions the money demanded was needed to repay the Merchant Adventurers, making Bedingfield’s involvement all the more natural.47CJ iii. 716a, 728a; iv. 157a, 302b. On 6 December 1644 he was appointed to two delegations which were sent to implement decisions intended to ease the excise commission’s difficulties. One of the delegations (consisting of Miles Corbett*, Samuel Vassall, Edward Ashe* and Bedingfield) was sent to inform the excise commission that none of the receipts from the associated counties were to be diverted before they reached London and that they were to pay £3,000 to the Committee of Both Kingdoms. The other mission was to get the consent of the Merchant Adventurers to the rescheduling of their loan repayments.48CJ iii. 716a.

Arranging repayments strained relations between Parliament and the Merchant Adventurers and so Bedingfield continued to be employed as intermediary. In April 1643 he was an obvious choice for the committee to handle a petition from the Adventurers and he was involved in the efforts in August 1643 to persuade them to lend money on the credit of future customs receipts.49CJ iii. 44a, 222a. Problems persisted. The deal Bedingfield, Bulstrode Whitelocke* and John Rolle* were sent to offer to the Adventurers in December 1644 was that the £10,000 owed to them would remain unpaid for another six months, but that the excise commissioners would pay interest on it. The Adventurers agreed and on 19 December 1644 Bedingfield, Whitelocke and Rolle, along with Giles Grene*, John Trenchard* and Anthony Nicoll*, were appointed to attend on the excise commissioners to arrange the details. Four days later Nicoll, Whitelocke and Bedingfield had to ask the Merchant Adventurers whether they would be willing to accept a delay beyond the six month period they had just agreed. The passage of an ordinance enforcing this deal was immediately arranged.50CJ iii. 716a, 728a, 731a, 733a-b. Towards the end of the six months Bedingfield was one of the six MPs who went to negotiate with the Adventurers for an extension to the agreed delay.51CJ iv. 104b.

The Merchant Adventurers were only one of the City institutions to which Parliament turned when it required money. When Parliament needed to raise loans worth £80,000 for the army in the spring of 1645, to obtain one month’s pay from the City for the Scottish army in June 1645, to borrow a further £30,000 for the Scots from London in October 1645 and to discuss in December 1645 why the corporation of London was unwilling to lend money for Ireland, Bedingfield was involved.52CJ iv. 73b, 164a, 173b, 298b, 368b. He was also among those first named to two of the committees concerning the assessments: that to investigate delays in its collection in London (13 Nov. 1643) and to inform the City that the assessment payments due from them were urgently needed to pay the army, again in the spring of 1645.53CJ iii. 309b, iv. 135a. He may have contributed advice when schemes proposing borrowing based on such assets as future excise revenues, security provided by City companies or sequestered lands were under discussion by the Commons in 1643 and 1644.54CJ iii. 135b, 508b.

Bedingfield was far less involved in parliamentarian expenditure. The few committees concerning military spending to which he was named usually sought to improve efficiency: the January 1643 committee on army pay and the August 1644 committee on army and navy spending were the clearest examples.55CJ ii. 945b, iii. 310a, 385a, 601a. The committee to regulate the ordnance office, to which he was named in June 1645, was another case where what counted was his knowledge of commerce, rather than of warfare.56CJ iv. 178b; LJ vii. 467a, 468a. He was also only rarely one of those to whom financial legislation was committed.57CJ iii. 654b; iv. 123b. Much more frequently, his sphere was commercial. Apart from the committee for trade (to which he was added on 16 January 1643), most of these were of very little note, being created to deal with temporary and minor difficulties, and delegated to those MPs who would deal with them most expeditiously.58CJ ii. 814b, 928b, 968b; iii. 16b, 104b, 186a, 335a, 357a, 546b, 722a.

The collapse of the king’s army by the spring of 1646 left Bedingfield with little to do at Westminster. Twice, in March and August of that year, he was granted leave of absence from the capital.59CJ iv. 489b, 648a. On his return he was included on the occasional committee. Of these, the most significant was that to examine complaints against lay preachers (31 Dec. 1646), which is probably evidence of Presbyterian religious sympathies.60CJ v. 35a. It may be that he was one of those behind the bill regulating the holidays for scholars and apprentices; he was second named when it was committed in June 1647 and, as a master of apprentices, he must have had some opinions on the subject.61CJ v. 221b; Mercers’ Co. Acts of Ct. 1641-5, f. 94; Acts of Ct. 1645-51, f. 103v.

There is no direct evidence that Bedingfield remained in London in the days following the riot at Westminster on 26 July 1647 but it is likely that he did stay. It may be telling that he sought leave to go in the country on 8 September, the day on which the Independents moved to impeach the seven peers who had stayed in London.62CJ v. 296a. More certainly, during November 1647 he was heavily involved in the frantic moves to diffuse the tension by raising money to pay off the army, having reverted to his former role as broker between Parliament and its backers in the City. He was among those added on 1 November to the committee to raise money to send troops to Ireland, and with Nathaniel Stephens* and Giles Grene, he was delegated to speak with the Army Committee about sending supplies there.63CJ v. 347a-b. On 12 November Bedingfield, Grene, Edward Ashe and Miles Corbett were appointed by the Commons to go with the Army Committee to tell the excise commissioners that they must immediately provide a loan of £20,000. Three days later this same group, plus Samuel Vassall and Sir Thomas Soame*, were sent to repeat this message.64CJ v. 358b, 360b. The task of asking the Merchant Adventurers for another loan, to amount to £10,000, was entrusted to them the next day. Predictably, Bedingfield was given particular care of this matter. He was at the centre of these negotiations: when, three months later, the Commons wished to consult with the Adventurers about this loan, Bedingfield was delegated to represent the Commons.65CJ v. 362b, 468b. On 20 November, in the face of the army’s orders to the City enforcing its assessment payments, Parliament included him among 12 MPs sent to the City to request the payment of assessment arrears.66CJ v. 365a.

The few committees to which Bedingfield was named during his final year in the Commons were mainly of an obvious financial or mercantile nature, among them the soap monopoly (14 Dec. 1647), assessment ratings (15 Jan. 1648) and the accounts of the customs commissioners (4 Mar.).67CJ v. 383a, 434a, 480a. He was included on two Commons delegations to the City; that in May 1648 was probably connected with the new militia ordinance for London.68CJ v. 561b, 654b. Several warrants from the Committee of Navy and Customs from this period carry his signature.69SP16/518, ff. 7, 114, 138, 139. On 3 August 1648, for the last time, he relayed a message from the Commons to the Merchant Adventurers, informing them of the Commons prohibition on any contact with the prince of Wales.70CJ v. 660b. Visiting Suffolk in October 1648, he dined with the Barnardistons, the leading Presbyterian family of the county, at their seat at Kedington.71Essex RO, D/DQs.18, f. 56v. Bedingfield had probably done little to endear himself to the most determined opponents of the king in the army and was among those excluded in the purge of 6 December 1648.72A List of the Imprisoned and Secluded Members (1648, 669.f.13.62); Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 367.

Towards the end of his life Bedingfield became more obviously active in the affairs of his livery company. He was attending its meetings regularly and, for the first time, was considered for company office.73Mercers’ Co. Acts of Ct. 1645-51, ff. 194, 195v, 204, 211v, 226v, 227v, 231v, 233v, 235v, 240, 242v, 248v, 252v, 258. In August 1649 he was shortlisted in the annual elections for the positions of second warden and rentwarden. When Andrew Kenrick was chosen for the latter place, he nominated Bedingfield as one of his sureties.74Mercers’ Co. Acts of Ct. 1645-51, ff. 182, 183v. The following year Bedingfield was nominated to these same positions.75Mercers’ Co. Acts of Ct. 1645-51, f. 220v. Several weeks earlier, on 16 July 1650, he had also been selected for the higher office of City alderman for Langbourn ward. It is likely, however, that by the date of his Mercer nominations (23 Aug.), he had already signaled his intention to seek a discharge. His nominal status as an MP (Pride’s Purge had only prevented him from sitting) made the grant of an exemption from aldermanic office to him on 1 October a formality.76Aldermen of London, i. 170. In the meantime, he was again overlooked by his company colleagues, although, despite the usual preference for unanimous elections, he received three of the 16 votes cast for the second wardenship.77Mercers’ Co. Acts of Ct. 1645-51, ff. 220v-221v. During these years he was included on a number of ad hoc committees set up by the Company, most notably that created in December 1650 to consider changing the method of keeping their accounts. His parliamentary experience and involvement in the Irish Adventure explain why he also, with Thomas Chamberlen, represented the Mercers on the City’s committee to lobby Parliament over the Irish lands which had been promised to the 12 great Companies.78Mercers’ Co. Acts of Ct. 1645-51, ff. 201v-202, 234, 237v, 238; Acts of Ct. 1651-7, f. 51. In 1651, for the third year running, Bedingfield was nominated in the Company elections. This time he was successful, being chosen master (or master warden) on 1 September, and taking his place at the court of confirmation held the following day.79Mercers’ Co. Acts of Ct. 1645-51, ff. 253v, 258-259. The duties of master were not onerous, although the meetings of the company's sub-committee for the letting of leases took up much of his time during that winter.80Mercers’ Co. Acts of Ct. 1651-7, ff. 1v, 4, 7, 8v, 9-10v, 11v, 13v, 14v, 15v, 17, 18v, 19, 21, 23v, 24, 25v, 30, 33v, 36-37v. Even less was expected of him as a governor of St Bartholomew’s Hospital. Appointed that December 1651, he played no part in its affairs in the short time before his death.81St Bartholomew’s Hosp. HA1/5, f. 75.

Meanwhile, he was probably preoccupied with sequestration proceedings involving estates in his possession. He had probably exploited fears of sequestration among some of his Suffolk neighbours to expand his land holdings. In December 1649 he bought the manor of Gislingham and Swalshull in the north of the county for £4,000 from Henry Bedingfield (a member of the distant Catholic branch of the family), who may have hoped to minimise the effect of sequestration, his late father having been a convicted recusant. In February 1650 Anthony Bedingfield, as the new owner, petitioned the Committee for Compounding seeking an exemption. This was not granted until April 1652.82CCC 395, 1851-2; Add. 19089, f. 261v; ‘Bedingfield pprs.’, ed. J.H. Pollen, Misc. (Catholic Rec. Soc. vii.), 428; Soc. Antiq. MS 667, p. 248. That July, Bedingfield secured agreement for the sequestration to be lifted from lands at Cockley Cley in Norfolk, which had been seized from the most senior of the Catholic Bedingfields, Sir Henry Bedingfield of Oxborough, and then sold to him.83CCC 2623. In May 1651 Edward Downes, another recusant, had mortgaged the nearby manor of Bodney to him for 99 years as security for a loan of £1,250.84CCC 1852.

Bedingfield presided as master at the Mercers’ court of assistants on 24 June 1652 but failed to attend its next meeting on 23 July.85Mercers’ Co. Acts of Ct. 1651-7, ff. 37v, 40v. He died before 2 August, when his funeral took place at Gislingham.86Gislingham par. reg. He had made out his will in September 1650, witnessed byen his brother’s brother-in-law, Francis Bacon*, and his nephew by marriage, John Sicklemor*. His status as a life-long bachelor, with no widow or offspring to provide for, left him free to dispose of his considerable wealth through numerous charitable bequests. The properties at Bruisyard which he had inherited from his father (and which were now worth £28 a year) were left to the corporation of his old constituency. The profits (after a legacy to a relative had expired) were to be used to pay for ‘an orthodox preaching minister’ and to relieve the poor of Dunwich. The parishes of Bedingfield, Darsham, Yoxford and Halsworth (all in Suffolk) received £50 each a year, while a lump sum of £300 was divided between the towns of Ipswich, Leeds, Kingston-upon-Hull and the London parishes of St Mary Woolnoth and St Stephen’s, Coleman Street, again for the benefit of their poor. A further £200 was left to assist 20 poor widows of clergymen. St Bartholomew’s Hospital received £100.87W. E. Layton, ‘Notices from the great court and assembly books of the borough of Ipswich’, East Anglian, n.s. ii. 139; St Bartholomew’s Hosp. HB5/1, f. 65v; HB1/6, acct. of Oliver Markland, 1652-3, charge, p. 11. The minister of St Matthew’s, Ipswich, William Knights, was given £4 to buy a new gown. Those parts of Bedingfield’s estates remaining after these and numerous family bequests had been paid were left to his two executors, his brother, Sir Thomas, and Robert Lowther.88PROB11/224/385; Eg. 2717, f. 7; Soc. Antiq., MS 667, p. 248.

This will was proved twice, by Lowther alone on 9 August 1652 and then in May 1655 to provide formal recognition to Sir Thomas Bedingfield as an executor.89PROB11/224/385. On 20 May Lowther presented 12 items of silver plate worth over £200 to the Mercers in memory of their late master.90Mercers’ Co. Acts of Ct. 1651-7, f. 70v; J. Watney, Some Acc. of the Hosp. of St Thomas of Acon (1892), 224. Four days later the debt outstanding from Edward Downes was disposed of to Samuel Gott* and John Woods, and, later that year, £400-worth of Bedingfield’s share in the Irish Adventure was assigned by his executors to another London merchant, William Hawkins.91CCC 1852; CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-59, p. 241. The other task which fell to his executors was to erect a large marble memorial to Bedingfield in the chancel of the parish church at Gislingham.92Add. 19089, f. 271; Pevsner, Suff. 230.