BOUGHTON, Richard (d. aft. 1662), of Chichester and Lewes, Suss.

The origins of this MP are obscure, although he was plausibly native to Sussex, where there were many Boughtons in the Chichester area in the early seventeenth century. He was almost certainly the man who in August 1637 married Mary Bettsworth or Bettesworth at Chithurst, about four miles from Midhurst; this couple’s son Richard was baptised there 12 months later.22IGI. The Bettsworths were an armigerous family with whom the MP was later to do business.23Vis. Suss. 184, 195-6; W. Suss. RO, Add. MS 12,604. Since his career indicates some level of legal training, he might be identified as the Richard Boughton of Clifford’s Inn who in 1646 was acting for Sussex gentlemen in a mortgage deed.24E. Suss. RO, SAS/PN/141. On his own telling, from 1640 Boughton served as treasurer or receiver for subsidies, customs, and assessments in Sussex.25E113/13. In July 1642, when he acquired an interest in Irish lands, he was described as ‘of Chichester, gentleman’.26SP63/296, f. 38.

From the early stages of the civil wars, Boughton aligned himself with Sussex militants. In the spring of 1643 he was appointed solicitor for sequestrations, on the nomination of Anthony Stapley I* and Harbert Morley*.27SP20/1, p. 6; E113/13; CCC 2292. His most important relationship, however, was not with greater gentry grandees of the ‘war party’ like them, but with a more controversial political parvenu, William Cawley I*, who gained a reputation for aggressive sequestration tactics. By the mid-1640s the two men appear to have developed a close partnership in both business and politics. With Cawley, in April 1646 Boughton wrote to local magistrates in support of a petition from the widow of a local soldier from the Chichester garrison.28W. Suss. RO, QR/W56. Through Cawley, Boughton became embroiled in a dispute with the Presbyterian Committee for Taking the Accounts of the Kingdom*, being questioned by the Sussex sub-committee in relation to their attempt to impose a surcharge on Cawley.29SP28/256, unfol. Boughton’s own accounts were investigated, but following an attempt to force him to repay some money that he had received (£496), the sub-committee of accounts informed the central committee in London that Boughton had disappeared from the region. Following their failure to secure Boughton’s arrest, the case was referred in September 1646 to the parliamentary committee for sequestrations.30SP28/256, unfol.; SP28/253A, f. 16v. It seems that Boughton was cleared of financial misdemeanour, however: from 3 December 1647, if not earlier, he resumed previous employment as an agent bringing in assessments from Sussex, and in late November 1648 he was appointed receiver of the rents of Chichester cathedral, a post which he held until October or November 1649.31E113/13; SP28/50, f. 83.

By the early 1650s, Boughton had achieved a position of some prominence among the Sussex gentry. He was added to the commission of the peace after the purge which followed the execution of the king, and became an extremely active justice until the Restoration, often riding from one side of the county to the other in order to attend each term’s sessions in more than one town.32E. Suss. RO, QO/EW2; QO/EW3. He remained an assiduous agent for collecting assessments.33E101/67/11b, m. 7v-8; SP28/181, unfol.; SP28/53-SP28/114, passim. Evidently regarding him as a reliable agent of the commonwealth, on 18 December 1649 the council of state ordered him to assist in the enforcement of the Engagement in Sussex.34CSP Dom. 1649-50, p. 440. By September 1650 he had received a commission as captain of a militia troop of horse, and in August 1651 he received orders to take 30 troopers to Windsor to escort one of the prisoners, the leading Presbyterian Sir William Lewis*, to Arundel Castle.35CSP Dom. 1650, p. 511; 1651, pp. 358, 360, 362, 374.

Meanwhile, Boughton, still living in Chichester, engaged in an extraordinary series of property transactions.36W. Suss. RO, Add. MS 37,582. During 1650, he expended vast sums of money on acquiring large swathes of land and numerous manors which had formerly belonged to the dean and chapter of Chichester. Many of his deals were undertaken in partnership with his old friend William Cawley.37C54/3543/26; C54/3544/26; C54/3479/6; C54/3479/10; C54/3582/5. This was partly speculation: portions of the property were sold on almost immediately.38Suss. Manors, i. 108, 219; C54/3548/5; C54/3553/19; C54/3577/22; C54/3542/13; C54/3578/14; C54/3582/12; C54/3586/30; C54/3676/16; C54/3710/27. Most of the deals were undertaken by 1652, although the two men continued to work together into the mid-1650s.39Suss. Manors, i. 43; C54/3814/46; C54/3856/15; C54/3904/9; C54/3944/22.

Unlike Cawley, after December 1653 Boughton accepted the protectorate and remained active in local administration. In June 1655, he and the prominent Sussex minister Francis Cheynell wrote from Chichester to Robert Tichborne* – a notable ‘creature of Cromwell’ and friend of John Thurloe* – of their fears regarding the danger of both foreign invasion and ‘home-bred conspiracies’, requesting that Thurloe would organise the county militia, without which ‘Portsmouth will be distressed, London endangered, the nation quickly enslaved and ruined’.40TSP iii. 324. In November 1655, by which time he held the rank of colonel, Boughton was appointed by Major-general William Goffe* as one of his commissioners for securing the peace of the commonwealth, and he also worked closely with Goffe on matters such as the assessment.41TSP iv. 161-2; SP28/246 unfol. In January 1657 Boughton reported the activities of royalists in Lewes.42TSP v. 779-80. His conformity to the Cromwellian church is clear from his appointment in 1657 as a commissioner for ejecting scandalous ministers and in the imprisonments which he visited upon those who showed favours to local Quakers, as well as in his action in 1658 against those refusing to pay tithes in the county.43SP25/78, p. 238; W. Figg, ‘Extracts from documents illustrative of the sufferings of the Quakers’, Suss. Arch. Coll. xvi. 74, 77; Sawyer, ‘Procs. CPM Suss.’, Suss. Arch Coll. xxx. 124.

Such loyal service probably ensured that in the elections for the 1659 Parliament, Boughton stood as a ‘court’ candidate. He was elected in January for Lewes, the town to which he had recently moved.44Mercurius Politicus, no. 550 (13-20 Jan. 1659), 176 (E.761.6); C54/3995/11. Boughton was chosen alongside Harbert Morley, although the latter opted to sit for the county, where he had also been returned. Boughton was named to only one committee, on 6 April 1659, which was appointed to consider how to transact business with the Other House.45CJ vii. 627a.

Boughton played no evident part in the events leading to the Restoration, other than as a commissioner for the militia in August 1659.46SP28/335/59. It would be surprising if he welcomed the king’s return, but in November 1660 he received a pardon from Charles II on condition he accept no public office.47C231/7, p. 52. As one who had been accountable for public monies during the interregnum, Boughton was subject to the inquiries sent out by the attorney-general in 1662 or 1663, demanding that he account for his stewardship since 1642. Boughton denied having been a treasurer for subsidies, customs, assessments or sequestrations since January 1643: either he was being remarkably disingenuous or the post he held from the later 1640s differed in some way from his previous position. He detailed the money he had received as solicitor for sequestrations after 1643, and as receiver of the rents of Chichester cathedral after 1648. There is no evidence that any action was taken against him. 48E113/13.

In February 1663 Boughton’s son and heir, also Richard, was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn.49LI Admiss. i. 289. The latter was conceivably the Richard Boughton (d. 1706) who emigrated to Maryland and, as an attorney, became for a while clerk of the court in Charles county.50A Biographical Dictionary of the Maryland Legislature ed. E.C. Papenfuse (1979), i. 149. Meanwhile, the former MP vanished from the record.