BRESSIE, Benjamin (d. aft. 1670), of Dolphinston, Prestonpans, Haddingtonshire.

Despite his prominence in Cromwellian Scotland, nothing is known of Bressie’s background, although it is possible that he was related to John Bressie, who served as treasurer of the veterans’ hospital at Ely House in London from June 1653.8CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 434. It is clear that Bressie served in the parliamentarian army in the later 1640s. In April 1649 he was listed as a lieutenant in Edward Whalley’s regiment of horse, from the autumn of that year he was routinely described as a ‘captain’, and he probably went on to serve in the Cromwellian invasion of Scotland in 1650-1.9Wanklyn, New Model Army, i. 144; CCC 149. During this period, Bressie also became one of the bounty hunters engaged in ‘discovering’ the concealed estates of former royalists. From September 1649 until April 1650 he pursued a claim to part of the fine owed by Thomas Hull of Godalming in Surrey, eventually being allowed £153 by the compounding commissioners, as part of his military arrears.10CCC 149, 168, 169, 814. Other schemes followed, including the leasing of confiscated parsonage lands belonging to the Weighton Prebend of York Minster, confirmed in February 1653.11CCC 3037. Bressie may have preferred speculation to military service, as by the end of 1651 he had left the army and set himself up as a merchant in Leith, the port for Edinburgh.12C107/25, unfol.: Bressie’s answers to Eldred, c.Apr. 1656.

Despite his apparently modest means, over the next four years Bressie became one of the wealthiest traders north of the border. The basis of his wealth was his success as a privateer during the first Dutch War. During 1652 and 1653 he captured six ships with lucrative cargoes, which he then sold on to the commissioners for prize goods at Leith.13Edinburgh City Archives, Moses’ Bundle 38, no. 1603. Bressie also benefited from demand for provisions and other supplies created by the army of occupation in Scotland. In 1653 he supplied wheat, oats and deal boards to the troops engaged against the royalist insurgents in the highlands led by the earl of Glencairn.14Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xliv, unfol.: 10 Dec. 1653; xlv, unfol.: 3 Aug., 21 Sept., 10 Dec. 1653. He also leased ships to the government - for a handsome return – to transport these and other commodities to the outlying garrisons. In June 1653, for example, ‘a private man of war belonging to Captain Bressie’ was captured by the earl of Seaforth’s men off the Isle of Lewis.15Scot. and Commonwealth ed. Firth, 140n, 148, 157. Such was the scale of Bressie’s operation, that this set-back did not interrupt business: by September 1653 he was paid £532 for supplying three more ships to the government troops who had re-established their control of the Outer Hebrides.16Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xliv, unfol.: 21 Sept., 3 Nov. 1653. In 1654 and 1655 Bressie’s business empire expanded rapidly, with contracts to supply not only biscuit and other provisions to the army, but also coal to the garrisons, and timber for such projects as the building of the citadel at Ayr.17Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xliv 3/6, unfol.: 31 Aug. 1654; xlv, unfol.: 5 July 1654; xlvi, unfol.: 27 Mar. 1655. By March 1654 he was exporting salt from the Firth of Forth saltpans to Danzig, and by 1655 he had founded the ‘Company of the Lewis fishing’ to exploit other markets abroad.18Recs. Burgh Edinburgh, 1642-55, 333; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvii, unfol.: 30 May 1655. In July 1654, at the height of his mercantile success, Bressie made two important land investments, buying the baronies of Dolphinston in Haddingtonshire and Kinneil in Linlithgowshire. These were not just extensive estates (the rents of Kinneil alone was valued at £550 a year), they were also ripe for commercial exploitation.19C107/26, unfol.: indenture, 27 July 1654; C107/25, unfol.: Monck declaration, 27 Aug. 1656; Reg. Gt. Seal Scotl. 1652-9, p. 147. Both baronies had salt workings, and Kinneil was rich in coal deposits. Bressie set about investing ‘a great deal of money’ in restoring the estates and their buildings, digging coal pits and building salt pans.20TSP v. 490. One English visitor to Scotland described the ‘very newly built’ house at Dolphinston as an exemplar of ‘the habitation of their best nobility’.21G. Baker, ‘An Unpublished Account of an English Catholic’s Tour to Edinburgh in 1657’, SHR xc. 139.

Bressie’s political career was built on his financial success. In July 1654, the same month he made his land purchases, he was admitted as a burgess of Edinburgh; and by that autumn he was involved in business dealings with merchants in the city.22Edinburgh Burgesses ed. Watson, 71; Recs. Burgh Edinburgh. 1642-55 ed. Wood, 341; Edinburgh City Archives, Sl1/1/18, f. 125v. The Kinneil estate was of particular significance, as Bressie had purchased it from the commander-in-chief in Scotland, General George Monck, who had been granted the lands (formerly part of the 1st duke of Hamilton’s patrimony) as a reward from Parliament. The purchase created a lasting bond between Bressie and Monck, not least because the general had agreed to guarantee Bressie against any future claim by the Hamiltons to repossess the property. Bressie could thus draw on his connections with Monck and the city of Edinburgh, as well as his business dealings with others in the Cromwellian army, to bolster his new-found local status when standing as MP for Haddingtonshire in the elections of August 1654. Bressie’s role at Westminster was undistinguished. He was named to the committee of Scottish affairs on 29 September, and on 6 October was appointed to the committee to consider trade in corn, butter and cheese, presumably because of his expertise as a merchant.23CJ vii. 371b, 374b. On his return to Scotland, Bressie exploited his close connections with the army to the full. In August and September 1655, Monck made a series of concessions to Bressie which suggest that he had come to trust him implicitly. Six barrels of gunpowder were lent to Bressie on a promise to return them in three months’ time; a state ship was also given to him, on condition that it be returned on demand; and it was ordered that the seizure of one of Bressie’s ships by royalists in Caithness during the previous year was to be investigated – and compensation exacted – by the local garrison under martial law.24Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvii, unfol.: 2, 24 Aug., 27 Sept. 1655. Monck’s acceptance of Bressie no doubt encouraged the new president of the Scottish council, Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*), to do the same. As Broghill told Secretary John Thurloe* in September, he was eager to ‘nominate some merchants, of which Captain Bressie is chief’ to form a committee for trade, fisheries and manufacture to advise the council.25TSP iv. 38, 41. Broghill, like Monck, was impressed by Bressie’s success as a merchant, and sought to harness his expertise for the benefit of the government.

Yet Bressie’s success was by this stage little more than an illusion. By the end of 1655 his finances were almost entirely governed by an intricate web of credit, centred on the nefarious activities of two corrupt officials: the deputy treasurer-at-war, George Bilton, and the commissary for provisions (and former prize commissioner), Nathaniel Eldred. Between them, Bilton and Eldred had lent Bressie at least £6,500 of government money – at 20 per cent interest – sums Bressie could not repay.26TSP iv. 222-3. The first sign of a crisis came on 1 November 1655, when Bressie suddenly granted the Kinneil estate to Bilton and Eldred.27C107/25, unfol.: Monck declaration, 27 Aug. 1656. The Dolphinston estate passed to them at about the same time.28C107/25, unfol.: answers to Bilton’s queries, 13 Dec. 1655. By 10 November the Edinburgh government had learnt the worst. In Broghill’s words, ‘Captain Bressie is broke … the sum he breaks for is but for £29,000’.29TSP iv. 184. The cause of his exposure seems to be two-fold. First, in October Broghill initiated a general audit of accounts, including those of Commissary Eldred, and this investigation may have uncovered the irregularities of Bressie’s own position, or panicked his accomplices into foreclosing on his debts. According to Bressie, Eldred and Bilton had deliberately ruined him, in order to force him to hand over Dolphinston and Kinneil before the other creditors became aware of his impending financial collapse.30C107/25, unfol.: Eldred’s ‘reasons’c.1656. In counter-charges against his former associates in April 1656, Bressie insisted that Eldred had offered to act as his factor, only to use his knowledge of his shaky finances to procure loans at exorbitant rates and then swindle him out of his estates.31C107/25, unfol.: Bressie’s answers to Eldred, c.Apr. 1656. Whatever the truth of such accusations, there is no doubt that throughout the early 1650s Bressie was operating far beyond his means. The number of creditors who lost out in 1655 must have been very large, and there were fears that the collapse ‘will hugely prejudice many of our officers and other honest men’.32TSP iv. 184. Those named specifically were Captain Knowles and Captain Greene (said to be owed £700), and Colonel Lionel Lytcott (£400), and there are indications that other creditors included Colonel Thomas Cooper II*, the Leith commissioner, Richard Saltonstall, and Monck’s secretary, William Clarke.33CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 102-3; Roundhead Officers ed. Akerman, 132-3; Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 320; Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlix, f. 29v. The number of proceedings initiated against Bressie in the Scottish courts in the later 1650s suggests that this was but the tip of the iceberg.34NRS, CS13/1, pp. 63, 74, 82, 105, 239.

The political fall-out was even more serious, especially for George Monck, who had encouraged Bressie, and as head of the Scottish government was ultimately responsible for the irregularities of Bilton and Eldred. As Broghill pointed out (with more than a touch of schadenfreude) ‘we have discovered much foul play’ and other activities ‘which more relish of Whitehall 15 years past, than now’.35TSP iv. 222-3. Monck’s reactions reveal his vulnerability. On 8 November 1655 he hastily ordered that the government’s ship, lent to Bressie in September, was to be returned ‘in as good a condition as he had it’.36Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvii, unfol.: 8 Nov. 1655. On 20 November he tried to defend Bilton, arguing that he had ‘only’ lent £5,000 of the government’s money, and had been unlucky to get caught out.37TSP iv. 221. By February 1656, once the scale of the fraud had become apparent, Monck had abandoned Bilton to a court-martial, with Bressie and Eldred ordered to appear as witnesses.38Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvii, unfol.: 19 Feb. 1656. In the same month Monck wrote a worried letter to Major-general John Lambert* at Whitehall, concerned that the Kinneil estates might be reclaimed by the government to satisfy the Hamilton creditors, thus risking ‘both my own engagements to Captain Bressie to make it good to him and the engagements made to others since’.39Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke l, f. 140v; Scot. and Protectorate ed. Firth, 320.

Monck’s main target was Bilton, not Bressie, and in the years after 1655 there are even signs that the general was attempting to rehabilitate the disgraced merchant. In the spring and summer of 1656 Monck sorted out an outstanding provisioning contract made by Bressie, ‘without which we cannot make a full end of the business in difference’; and in the same period he made a further attempt to gain compensation for the ship seized off Caithness, in the hope of satisfying some of Bressie’s creditors.40Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlvii, unfol.: 16, 17, 26 Apr., 25 June 1656; xlviii, unfol.: 4 July, 6 Aug. 1656; CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 102-3. Monck was still issuing orders concerning the Caithness business a year later.41Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlviii, unfol.: 18 July 1657. Bressie was allowed to resume normal life within a year of his bankruptcy. On 20 August 1656 he turned out with the Haddingtonshire landowners to elect a new MP to go to Westminster.42NRS, GD28/1736. On 4 September 1656 Monck issued a pass for David Bryson of Prestonpans, described as ‘a servant’ of Bressie, to go to Inverness and ‘northern parts’ – perhaps marking the start of a new business venture.43Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlviii, unfol.: 4 Sept. 1656; xlix, f. 20v. In May 1657 Bressie himself reappears, this time in an official role: as sub-commissioner for the excise of native salt, covering the area south of the River Forth.44Worcester Coll. Oxf. Clarke xlviii, unfol.: 27 May 1657. He even raised a £4,000 loan from an Edinburgh merchant in December 1658, on security of money he was owed from the prize commissioners from his heyday.45Edinburgh City Archives, Moses’ Bundle 38, no. 1603. In later years, Bressie returned to obscurity, although he clearly remained in Scotland, and was alive in 1671.46Edinburgh City Archives, Moses’ Bundle 38, no. 1603. The place and date of his death are unknown.