BISCOE, John (1613-aft. 1666), of Little Missenden, Bucks. and West Drayton, Mdx.

The Biscoes of Little Missenden can be traced back to this MP’s great-grandfather, Edward Biscoe, who was living at Little Missenden in the middle years of the sixteenth century. John Biscoe’s ancestors were no more than yeoman, although his uncle, Richard Biscoe, his father’s elder brother, became an alderman of High Wycombe.1Smith, ‘Biscoe’, 3-4, 15. By the early 1640s the future MP and his wife, the daughter of an Uxbridge tanner, were living in the neighbouring parish of Chesham and had a growing family.2Smith, ‘Biscoe’, 16; Par. Reg. of Chesham, ed. Garrett-Pegge, 115, 169; People of Chesham, 6, 8, 117. Biscoe may have been the person who paid 10s towards the Irish contribution at Little Missenden in 1642.3Bucks. Contributions for Ireland, 78. He was not the John Biscoe who was an assistant of the court of burgesses of Westminster in the early 1640s.4CUL, MS Gg.I.9, ff. 62, 64, 66, 67; PROB11/192/496; J.F. Merritt, Westminster 1640-60 (Manchester, 2013), 46n, 158.

Biscoe began his military career as a captain in the infantry regiment commanded by the Buckinghamshire parliamentarian colonel, Thomas Tyrrell*, in early 1644 and in September of that year he was pressing troops at Cambridge.5SP28/14, f. 259; SP28/23, f. 193; BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database. By early 1645 he seems to have been a member of the garrison at Henley-on-Thames serving under the governor, Edward Montagu II*; when a mutiny broke out there on 20 February Biscoe was sent to London to consult with the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†).6CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 314. Under the New Model he became a captain in Montagu’s regiment and remained so after John Lambert* succeeded Montagu.7Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 398; Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, i. 48, 58, 70, 80, 90. In late 1647 he transferred to the regiment commanded by John Barkstead* and was promoted to the rank of major.8Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 338; Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, i. 87, 99. On 16 May 1648, when a crowd of petitioners from Surrey threatened the palace of Westminster, Biscoe was dispatched from Whitehall with a force of over 400 soldiers to protect Parliament. The petitioners forced their way into Westminster Hall with the intention of storming the Commons’ chamber. Led by Biscoe, the soldiers attacked the petitioners and forced them to disperse.9A true relation of the passages between the Surrey petitioners and the souldiers at Westminster (1648), 4 (E.443.5). He doubtless served with the rest of Barkstead’s men at the siege of Colchester later that year. By October 1651, when he was one of a number of army officers who were given the task selecting soldiers for a court martial, he had been promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel.10CSP Dom. 1651, p. 478. This confirms that he was the person appointed as an assessment commissioner a year later.11A. and O. Twice during 1653 the council of state appointed him to some of their sub-committees, once to consider a petition from Francis Anguish and once to review the state of the hospitals at the Savoy and Ely House.12CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 1, 40. By August 1653 he had been transferred to the infantry regiment commanded by Sir William Constable*.13CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 433; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 401; Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, ii. 65. He and his men may have been based at Chester later that year as he submitted a request that the troops there be supplied with an allowance for fuel.14CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 319. They were subsequently sent to Scotland, although late in 1654 they were recalled to England.15Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, ii. 65; CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 113-14. During the summer of 1655 they were stationed at King’s Lynn.16CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 587.

Following Constable’s death in June 1655, Biscoe was named to command the regiment.17Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, ii. 86; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. ii. 401-2. In March 1656 the council of state included him on its committee to consider what supplies should be sent to Landguard Fort, the fortress in south-east Suffolk which defended the approaches to Ipswich and the River Stour.18CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 325. Perhaps Biscoe’s men had already been transferred to Landguard, but if not, they had become the garrison there by the following autumn.19CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 116. By 1658 Biscoe had joined the household of Oliver Cromwell* as the knight marshal: in that role, he led Cromwell’s funeral procession.20Burton’s Diary, ii. 518. Possibly he held this position as early as 1653.

Biscoe stood for Parliament for the first time in the 1656 elections. As early as August Bulstrode Whitelocke* was told that he planned to stand for one of the Buckinghamshire seats.21Whitelocke, Diary, 445. This came to nothing, but before long he was nominated (with John Shawe*) by the freemen of Colchester, who were asserting their traditional right to elect MPs as a protest against a new charter which had restricted the franchise to the corporation.22Essex RO, D/B 5/Gb4, f. 146. The latter, recently purged by the council of state, had chosen the council’s president, Henry Lawrence I*, and the cofferer of the protector’s household, John Maidstone*. Biscoe, as an officer in the army stationed close by who was loyal to the regime, may have seemed a viable alternative candidate; Barkstead, his former commanding officer, had represented the constituency in the previous Parliament. The dispute over the ensuing double return stalled in committee and was never resolved, but it is but there is a slim possibility that Biscoe did take his seat briefly after Lawrence had been called to the Other House.23CJ vii. 532a. On 1 February 1658 Thomas Burton* noted that Maidstone and ‘Colonel Briscoe’ withdrew from the House after the Commons ordered that those MPs whose returns were still in dispute should not sit.24Burton’s Diary, ii. 406. While this is more likely to have been William Briscoe*, there is no other evidence of a double return for that man’s constituency.25‘William Briscoe’, infra. In the weeks following the dissolution of this Parliament, Biscoe was the only army officer who dared to criticise Cromwell to his face over the dismissal of William Packer* and his five Baptist captains.26D. Underdown, ‘Cromwell and the officers, Feb. 1658’, EHR lxxxiii. 106.

By then Biscoe’s regiment had been transferred from Landguard to Great Yarmouth. In December 1657 the council of state had approved a payment of £200 to him to improve the town’s defences.27CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 210. Three months later they wrote to him concerning a prisoner held in custody there.28CSP Dom. 1657-8, p. 295. Throughout this period a recurring concern for the council was the pay for Biscoe’s regiment, which had been less than for the other English regiments ever since they had been stationed in Scotland.29CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 142, 165; 1657-8, pp. 280, 287; PRO31/17/33, ff. 51, 58, 203, 297. Between June 1658 and January 1659 his regiment was based at Dunkirk, defending the continental toehold recently acquired from the French.30CSP Dom. 1658-9, pp. 410, 507; PRO31/17/33, f. 89.

Despite his military duties across the Channel, Biscoe secured a seat in the 1659 Parliament by being elected at Amersham. By now he had probably settled just across the Buckinghamshire-Middlesex border at West Drayton, conveniently close to his wife’s home town of Uxbridge. At some point during the 1650s he acquired the manor of Drayton, a sequestered episcopal estate which had belonged to the bishop of London, and in 1654, as one of the local justices of the peace, he had conducted a marriage service at Uxbridge.31VCH Mdx. iii. 194; Mdx. Par. Regs. Marr. ed. Phillimore and Gurney, ii. 17. However, he clearly retained links in Buckinghamshire, as he had sat on both the Buckinghamshire and the Middlesex assessment commissions since 1652 and had considered standing for Buckinghamshire in 1656.32A. and O. Amersham was the obvious borough constituency for him to choose. Once elected, his responsibilities at Dunkirk may have limited his contribution to this Parliament. He was included on the commission for tendering to MPs the oath of loyalty to the protector, and he was named to only two committees – those for elections and privileges (28 Jan.) and on the proposal to enfranchise Durham (31 Mar.).33CJ vii. 593a, 594b, 622b. Burton records a number of speeches which were delivered by ‘Colonel Briscoe’ but, again, this could have been William Briscoe.34Burton’s Diary, iii. 559-60; iv. 77, 203-4, 288, 310, 330, 341. Equally unhelpfully, John Gell* attributed some of those same speeches to ‘Mr Brisco’ or ‘Mr Bisco’, while Guybon Goddard* atttributed another of them to ‘Biscoe’.35Derbys. RO, D258/10/9/1, unfol.; D258/10/9/2, f. 23; Wilts. RO, 9/34/3, p. 158. The anonymous informant who tipped off John Baldwin* about evidence which might have disqualified Ralph Suckley* from sitting in Parliament suggested that Baldwin or Biscoe should raise the matter in the Commons, but there is nothing to indicate that either of them did so.36TSP vii. 633.

In June 1659 the reassembled Rump confirmed Biscoe’s appointment as colonel of his own regiment of foot.37CJ vii. 682b, 685a, 710a; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 48. The following month he was part of the delegation sent to intercede with Edmund Ludlowe II* for the release of nine soldiers who had been court-martialled.38CJ vii. 721a. During the rebellion of Sir George Boothe* Biscoe’s men helped capture Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford at Leicester and were then sent to secure the castles at Ludlow and Chirke.39CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. 120, 150; HMC Portland, i. 692. These men ended up at Chester.40HMC Portland, i. 692. As a member of the council of officers, Biscoe supported the creation of the committee of safety to replace the council of state on 26 October 1659. He was among the army officers who then persuaded Whitelocke to serve on the new committee.41Whitelocke, Diary, 538. Some of his men were later accused of having raised troops in support of the committee of safety.42HMC Leyborne-Popham, 156-7. They therefore found it necessary to reassure the Rump of their loyalty after it was recalled in late December 1659.43HMC Portland, i. 692. Biscoe himself was dismissed from his command by the Rump in February 1660 to make way for George Fleetwood*.44CJ vii. 829b; Wanklyn, Reconstructing the New Model Army, ii. 135.

Biscoe refused to make his peace with the restored monarchy. At least one of the informants of Charles II’s secretary of state, Sir Edward Nicholas†, believed that he was engaged in republican plots.45CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 356. What is known for certain is that he was one of the group of ex-MPs who joined Edmund Ludlowe at Lausanne in the autumn of 1662, having travelled with William Say* and Edward Dendy* via Bern.46Bodl. Eng. hist. c. 487, p. 964. According to Ludlowe, John Phelps and Biscoe, ‘having furnished themselves with commodities at Geneva, resolved by trafficking into Germany and Holland to spend that summer; and to experience whether in such an undertaking they could improve their money to any considerable advantage’.47Bodl. Eng. hist. c. 487, p. 965. By 1664 Biscoe had re-joined Ludlowe at Vevey, but, like Say, decided that it would be safer to return to Germany.48Bodl. Eng. hist. c. 487, p. 1038. He is last heard of for certain in 1666 when he and Say wrote to Ludlowe advising him to travel to Paris to negotiate with the Dutch.49Bodl. Eng. hist. c. 487, pp. 1112-13.

It is just possible that Biscoe later returned to England and was the John Biscoe who was licensed to hold a congregational meeting at his house at West Wycombe in 1673.50CSP Dom. 1672-3, p. 426. His younger brother Richard was certainly granted a similar licence for an Independent meeting at Uxbridge.51Smith, ‘Biscoe’, 15. By then, John’s eldest son, also called John, was living at West Drayton and by 1676 he held the lease on the lands which had formerly been owned by his father and which had been returned to the bishop of London at the Restoration.52VCH Mdx. iii. 194-5. It seems likely that his father was dead by the time this John died in 1687.53PROB11/388/52; Smith, ‘Biscoe’, 16. There were several lines of descendants from the MP and a great-great-grandson, William Biscoe, was still alive in 1778.54Smith, ‘Biscoe’, 17.