BISHOPPE, Sir Edward, 2nd bt. (1602-?50), of Parham, Suss. and Canon Row, Westminster.

Bishoppe (as he usually but not invariably rendered his name) was the scion of a wealthy county family with Catholic connections.18W. Suss. RO, Cap.I/4/10/13/18; SP16/335, f. 127; SP16/111, f. 93. His grandfather, Thomas Bishop† (d. 1560), was a lawyer who settled in Sussex as a servant of Sir William Shelley†, a religious traditionalist and opponent of Thomas Cromwell.19HP Commons 1509-1558. His father, Thomas Bishop† (1553–1626), was a commissioner for recusants in the 1580s. Edward’s mother was from a Catholic family. In 1601 this Thomas purchased the manor of Parham, which became the family seat, for £4,500. He was elected for the third time to Parliament in 1604, sitting for Steyning, and acquired a baronetcy in 1620.20HP Commons 1558-1603; HP Commons 1604-1629.

Like his father and grandfather, Edward Bishoppe was educated at the Inner Temple.21Al. Ox.; I. Temple database. In 1625 he made an advantageous marriage to a daughter of Sir Nicholas Tufton†, later 1st earl of Thanet, a crypto-Catholic.22W. Suss. RO, Wiston MS 3621; Suss. Manors, i. 150; ii. 337. Before his father died, Bishoppe was elected to the 1626 Parliament as a Member for the former’s old seat of Steyning, where the Shirley family of Wiston, close family friends, exerted a great deal of influence.23Arundel Castle Letters 1617-32, no. 279. He made no mark on the records of the Parliament.

In October 1627 Bishoppe ran the playwright Henry Shirley through with a sword when the latter came to collect an annuity which Bishoppe was due to pay from the estate of Shirley’s grandfather, Sir Thomas Shirley I†.24PROB11/151/227. Shirley died, and Bishoppe went into hiding, a fugitive felon facing the seizure of his property. One contemporary commented that following this ‘foul murder’, Bishoppe’s lands, reportedly worth £1,500 to £2,000 a year, were ‘presently begged or given away, but himself not yet found’.25CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 495; 1628-9, p. 3; Shirley, ‘Who was Henry Shirley?’, 26-7; Add. 4177, f. 353v. Bishoppe was subsequently convicted of manslaughter, and sentenced to be burnt in the hand, although he was pardoned (for life, not lands) in October 1628.26C66/2468; CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 356; PSO5/5, unfol.; SO3/9, unfol. The case became notorious, partly thanks to William Prynne*, who alleged that Bishoppe had been drunk and that the murder exemplified ‘the sudden and untimely ends of all those ancient play-poets’.27W. Prynne, Histriomastix (1633), 554. The affair haunted Bishoppe for most of the 1630s, and the dispute with the Shirley family led to appearances before the privy council.28APC 1629-30, pp. 369, 374, 381-2; SP16/166, ff. 100-101; CSP Dom. 1629-31, pp. 257, 461; 1637-8, p. 124.

Bishoppe may have had powerful protectors at court. A close friend of groom of the bedchamber and crypto-Catholic Endymion Porter*, in the late 1620s and 1630s he was probably a strong adherent of the pro-Spanish faction.29CSP Dom. 1628-9, p. 237; SP16/111, f. 93. Bishoppe himself possibly inclined towards Arminianism. In October 1630 he presented to the living at Angmering Dr Laurence Pay, who was to become archdeacon of Chichester during the episcopate of the prominent Laudian divine, Richard Montague.30IND1/17004, p. 6.; Al. Ox. Appointed sheriff of Sussex in 1636, Bishoppe notably collected the entire £5,000 of Ship Money demanded from the county.31CSP Dom. 1636-7, pp. 197, 543; 1637, pp. 107, 123, 254, 375, 403, 557; SP16/335, f. 127; SP16/351, ff. 237-240v; W. Suss. RO, Cap. I/4/10/13/18. At the end of May 1638 he was granted a pass to travel on the continent for three years.32PC2/49, f. 116v; CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 481. But he was evidently back in England by 1639, when he was recorded as having failed to contribute to the first bishops’ war.33Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 914; Nalson, Impartial Colln. i. 206.

Bishoppe was not initially elected to the Short Parliament, but sought a place at Bramber when a new writ was issued on 25 April, following the decision of James Cranfield*, Lord Cranfield, to sit for Liverpool.34C231/5, p. 381. On 2 May he petitioned Parliament claiming that he had elicited a promise from ‘all the inhabitants’ to choose him in this eventuality, but that Sir John Suckling* had threatened, bribed and manipulated his way to being elected.35PA, MP 2 May 1640; Procs. 1640, 288-9; HMC 4th Rep. 25. The same day Suckling delivered a speech in the House arguing for supplying the king before considering grievances, thereby earning himself powerful enemies like Nathaniel Fiennes I* and John Pym*, who moved for his removal on grounds of corruption.36Aston’s Diary, 120. The Commons referred Bishoppe’s petition to a committee, but no decision appears to have been reached before the Parliament was dissolved on 5 May 1640.37CJ ii. 18b.

After the autumn elections Bishoppe himself faced accusations of corruption and bribery. Although he was returned for Bramber, it was reported in the Commons on 16 December that he had offered voters £10, ‘and this was thought to be such a misdemeanour as made him incapable’. Bishoppe was disqualified from being elected again as an MP, and it was moved that he be sent for as a delinquent, while his servant, John Bramsden, was summoned ‘to answer his abusing the committee with many falsities’. Sir Simonds D’Ewes* recorded saying that Bishoppe’s ‘being disabled to be of the House this Parliament was sufficient punishment for his buying of wind and breath’, but he secured the appointment of a select committee to ‘inquire of all others that had bought judicial places that they might be punished’.38CJ ii. 51b; D’Ewes (N), 160. A new writ for Bramber was issued on 17 December.39C231/5, p. 418.

Once civil war had broken out, Bishoppe was implicated in royalist plans to seize Chichester for the king. On 23 November 1642 he was sent for by Parliament as a delinquent, but no action appears to have been taken against him.40HMC Portland, i. 72-4; CJ ii. 860b. He later claimed to have gone to the town in obedience to a summons issued by the county’s sheriff, Sir Edward Forde; when he realised Forde’s partisan intentions, he had ‘deserted and left him, and refused to supply him either with men, money, or horse’.41SP23/186, p. 660. Following the passing of the sequestration ordinance on 27 March 1643, Bishoppe seems to have realised his estates were in danger of seizure. On 7 April he conveyed them to trustees including Cecil Tufton, John Alford* and Henry Goringe*, and made a will, in which he bequeathed portions of £1,500 to each of his three daughters.42W. Suss. RO, Wiston MS 3624. Although all of the trustees were suspected of royalism, none were sufficiently active to attract sequestration.

Bishoppe later claimed that he

never bore arms against the Parliament, or intended it, but when I found myself between two armies, and our country like to be made the seat of war, I conceived it the best and safest way for many respects to leave my house and depart the country for a time.43SP23/186, p. 660.

He went first to Kent and then to London, where he fell ill for a long period. When he returned to Sussex he was threatened by the troops of Colonel Harbert Morley* with arrest and sequestration. Only then, he claimed, did he tender his services to the king; he accepted a colonelcy from Charles ‘thereby to gain maintenance’.44SP23/186, p. 660. Commissioned as a royalist officer on 26 July 1643, he soon became involved in the siege of Arundel Castle and was made governor when it fell to the royalists in early December.45Blaauw, ‘Passages of the Civil War in Suss.’, 57. However, within a few weeks he and Sir Edward Forde surrendered it to parliamentarian troops under Sir William Waller*.46LJ vi. 370a. Writing on 4 January, one Sussex parliamentarian expressed his hope that ‘the Parliament will provide gallows’ for the two men.47The Parliament Scout no. 30 (12-19 Jan. 1644), 251-2 (E.29.13); A Full Relation of the Late Proceedings (1644, E.81.10); E. Suss. RO, Frewen MS 4223, f. 73r-v. Bishoppe was immediately taken to London and committed to the Tower.48A True Relation of the Cruell and Unparallel’d Oppression (1647), 19. Parliamentarian newspaper reports capitalised on Bishoppe’s unedifying past: one journalist wrote that he had ‘some years since imbued his wilful hands in the blood of master Henry Shirley’, while another accused him of being ‘stigmatised with blood, for killing of a man that only demanded his due of him’.49The Weekly Account no. 19 (3-10 Jan. 1644), 5 (E.81.14); Certaine Informations no. 52 (8-15 Jan. 1644), 405 (Worcester Coll. Oxf. copy).

Thereafter Bishoppe was consistently among those singled out in peace proposals to be ‘removed from his majesty’s counsels’ and to be excluded, unless with ‘the advice and consent of both kingdoms’, from all ‘office, or ... employment, concerning the state or commonwealth’.50CJ iii. 657b; LJ vii. 55b. Bishoppe doggedly endeavoured to protect his estates, although his lands in Sussex already seem to have been sequestered.51C54/3318/12; C54/3320/19; SP28/214, unfol. In August 1644 a fine was set at £12,300. The subsequent decision by the Committee for Compounding to allow Bishoppe to compound provoked complaints from the Sussex committee, which claimed to be in dire need both of the money from the estates of such malignants, and of making an example of them so as to deter others and to encourage the better affected. On 1 November the committee formally requested that Bishoppe should be barred from compounding, as a great malignant, while eleven months later they alleged that he was ‘a principal instrument in fomenting and nourishing the calamities and afflictions that befell the county of Sussex’, and that he was ‘a very eminent actor in robbing, spoiling, and plundering of divers persons’.52CCC 12-13, 849; CJ iii. 674a; SP 23/186, p. 654.

Yet Bishoppe was not only allowed to compound, but his fine was actually reduced to £7,500 (28 Oct. 1645), his estate now being valued at £1,500 per annum.53CCC 849. Still in the Tower, Bishoppe immediately took the Covenant, and on 1 November appeared before the Committee for Compounding to justify his past actions, to explain to pay the fine, and to beg that one third of estate be sold. In January 1646 he again pleaded inadequate funds. 54SP23/186, pp. 652, 658, 660; CCC 849. That July, as Parliament re-affirmed his place amongst royalists to be removed from the counsels of the king, and assigned the proceeds of his fine to Waller’s army, Bishoppe obtained a further reduction, to £4,790.55TSP i. 81; CJ iv. 619b; CCC 849.

Bishoppe’s sustained defensive campaign was not undertaken alone, but in association with other prisoners in the Tower. In May 1644 Patrick Ruthven, 1st earl of Forth, had relayed to Parliament’s commander-in-chief Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, complaints from prisoners there, including Bishoppe, that subsistence charges were insupportable and that they were forbidden from conversing with each other. The Lords recommended that conditions be improved, if only to ensure reciprocal improvements for parliamentarian prisoners at Oxford.56LJ vi. 558b. Bishoppe was party to letters from the Tower in late 1646 and early 1647, in which detainees criticised the ‘arbitrary power’ which had ‘become the soul of the commonwealth’, requested release now that the war had ended, and in the meantime sought access to the profits of their estates, or at least an allowance, in order to pay their prison expenses. Enlisting the assistance of John Selden*, Denzil Holles* and Walter Long*, who all had personal experience of the Tower, they got the matter referred to the Committee for Prisoners, but despite repeated appeals, the chairman of the committee, Richard Knightley*, declined to help.57A True Relation of the Cruell and Unparallel’d Oppression (1647), 2-3, 7-15, 19 (E.32.29); Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 738.

Although Bishoppe’s fine was gradually reduced, his assessment was increased in February 1647 (to £2,000), and his property in Westminster was sequestered. However, he paid neither his assessment nor his fine, and Parliament reiterated his exclusion from any pardon. 58CCAM 508; CCC 91, 850; PA, MP 22 Sept. 1648, f. 40; CJ vi. 24b, 27b; LJ x. 507b, 549a. In June 1649 his estate, which had been seized by the committee at Chichester, was ordered to be sequestered for his recalcitrance, a directive repeated in March 1650. On 10 April the Sussex committee was ordered to prevent Bishoppe from enjoying his property, in case he should foment differences in the county and disturb the peace.59CCAM 508.

About this time, however, Bishoppe died. A statement dating his death to April 1649 looks to have been misrecorded; unless the central authorities were misinformed, April 1650 seems much more likely.60CCAM 508; CB. On 3 May 1650 his widow and eldest son Thomas complained that the estate had been re-sequestered, despite having been discharged. Orders were then given to release Dame Mary Bishoppe’s jointure lands, and to confirm the discharge, but the estate was not finally settled until at least 1654. 61CCC 339, 850. By then Bishoppe’s heir had died, probably on the continent, having been granted in October 1651 a pass to travel to Livorno.62CSP Dom. 1651, p. 534. After the Restoration, the next surviving son, Sir Cecil Bishopp† represented Bramber in the Cavalier Parliament.63HP Commons 1660-1690. The baronetcy survived until 1870, with members of the family sitting in Parliament into the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.64CB.