BUSHROD, John (1607-c.1670), of Dorchester, Dorset.

Until the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Bushrods had been husbandmen and sheep-farmers. John Bushrod was not allowed to forget his lowly origins easily. In 1632, while acting as constable in Dorchester, he arrested one Lawrence Stafford, and was roundly abused for his pains. Stafford claimed to be ‘a better man than he’, saying that Bushrod was ‘a beggarly Jack and base Jack, and that his father had given more to the town than he was worth’.18Dorset RO, DC/DOB/8/1, f. 126; D. Underdown, Fire from Heaven (1992), 135, 141, 155. John’s father, Richard Bushrod, had in fact been a man of considerable means, and influence, in the borough. He represented the borough at Westminster in 1624 and 1626, and was close to the puritan minister, John White; he invested in the Dorchester Company, and was investigated for his opposition to billeting in the town in 1628.19Vis. Dorset 1623 (Harl. Soc. xx), 3; F. Rose-Troup, John White, the Patriarch of Dorchester (1930), 451; CSP Dom. 1628-9, pp. 101-2, 131; Whiteway Diary, 96. On his death in 1628, Richard Bushrod left £2,000 to his younger children alone, and appointed John White, and corporation stalwarts, William Derby and William Whiteway†, as his trustees.20PROB11/155/7. The Whiteway alliance was further strengthened by the subsequent marriage of John’s elder brother, Thomas, with Wilmot Parkins, William Whiteway’s sister-in-law.21Whiteway Diary, 174; Dorset Nat. Hist. and Antiq. Field Club xvi, 72-3.

John Bushrod’s steady rise through the borough hierarchy was built upon the social and financial foundations laid by his father. In 1626 he was appointed freeman of the town, after a spell as constable he was elected to Dorchester’s common council in 1633, and he went on to be admitted as a capital burgess in 1639.22Recs. of Dorchester ed. Mayo, 370; Whiteway Diary, 118, 125; Dorset RO, D/DOB/16/3, ff. 16, 59. Bushrod apparently assumed his elder brother’s place as head of the family early in the decade: he replaced him on the common council, and served as constable, while Thomas was repeatedly in trouble with the authorities for drunkenness and blasphemy.23Dorset RO, D/DOB/16/3, f. 16; ibid, DC/DOB/8/1, ff. 196, 197, 214v, 235v. At the outbreak of the civil war, Bushrod joined the other burgesses in securing Dorchester for Parliament. In September 1642 he was reimbursed for money he had given to a gunner in the town and for the use of his own horse, and in November he was acting as scout-master.24Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, ff. 98, 100. In February and April 1643 he was involved in providing weapons for the defence of the town he gave his own arms to be used by the soldiers raised to defend the town.25Recs. of Dorchester ed. Mayo, 685; Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 106. Bushrod was also involved in more peaceful civic activities during the early months of the war. In 1642 he was appointed as steward of the brew-house and hospital in Dorchester, and he continued to manage both for more than a decade.26Dorset RO, D/DOB/16/4, pp. 140, 235; D/DOB/16/5, pp. 79, 102, 116. The brew-house stewardship was especially significant, as the brewery had provided money for Dorchester’s charitable foundations before the war, and during the 1640s its produce helped fund the county committee, while the building itself was used as a weapons store.27Dorset RO, D/DOB/16/4, p. 60; Bodl, Gough Dorset 14, f. 37v. Bushrod’s appointment to these posts was a mark of his trustworthiness in the eyes of the other burgesses; his faithfulness in his duties encouraged them to elect him as mayor in the autumn of 1646, immediately after the first civil war.28D/DOB/16/3, f. 34-v.

Bushrod continued to be an influential figure in Dorchester during the later 1640s, but his relationship with the commonwealth was conflicted. In 1649 he took the Engagement, but only in as far as it bound him to ‘obey them in lawful things’, although he was appointed to the county assessment commission from December 1652 and was re-appointed mayor of Dorchester in 1655.29Underdown, Fire from Heaven, 214; A. and O.; D/DOB/16/3, f. 45. In May and July 1654 he petitioned the protectoral council for redress, complaining that from the beginning of the war, he had advanced a large part of his wealth for the service of the commonwealth, and had received no recompense. In return he desired a licence to export wool to Jersey.30CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 174, 272. This claim seems a little dubious, as Bushrod’s financial contribution to county and borough was modest compared with that of others such as James Gould* and John Whiteway*. A mere licence to transport wool would not provide the capital or the goods to do so, and Bushrod was probably taking advantage of ready compensation to advance his existing fortune.31Underdown, Fire from Heaven, 208. Bushrod was appointed as a local commissioner for scandalous ministers in August 1654 and in March 1655 he was among the militia commissioners appointed by Cromwell to prevent royalists meeting together during Penruddock’s rising in neighbouring Wiltshire.32A. and O.; SP25/76A, f. 14. Bushrod’s election as borough MP on 7 January 1659, alongside another former mayor, James Gould, was no doubt a direct result of his importance within the town hierarchy rather than his support for the protectorate.33Dorset RO, D/DOB/16/5, p. 59. He apparently took no part in the session, and he was not re-elected to the Convention in April 1660.

Bushrod continued to be involved in Dorchester affairs in the months following the Restoration of the king. He was appointed one of the feoffees of Trinity parsonage, re-elected steward of the hospital, and in July 1660 he and John Whiteway played a part in choosing a new minister for the town; but his career was cut short when the Dorchester corporation was purged in 1662.34Dorset RO, D/DOB/16/5, pp. 92, 102; Recs. of Dorchester ed. Mayo, 609. Despite the change in political climate, Bushrod was by the 1660s one of the wealthiest men in Dorchester, and allowed the hearth tax receiver, Robert Napper, to draw bills of exchange of up to £200 on his assets.35Dorset Hearth Tax, 106-7. He was still alive in February 1670, when his second wife made her will. She had died by the end of the year, and it is likely that Bushrod did not long outlive her, perhaps succumbing to the plague that afflicted the town in that period, although there is no record of his burial in any of its churches.36PROB11/335/15. His son, John the younger, died in 1671, only a few months after his grandson, John junior, bringing the Bushrod dynasty to a sudden end.37Dorset RO, All Saints Dorchester par. regs.