BARKSTEAD, John (c. 1612-62), of The Strand, Westminster, and Bangor House, St Andrew’s, Holborn, Mdx.

Originally from Germany, the Barkstead family settled in Staffordshire, and only became established in the London area in the late sixteenth century, with the arrival of John's father, Michael, who became a Goldsmith in St Clement Danes, Westminster.36Add. 5533, f. 111. Michael Barkstead died in 1618, leaving £200 and his tools to his elder son, Michael, and £200 to John, then aged six.37PROB11/131, f. 296v. John eventually followed his father and brother into the trade, being apprenticed to Thomas Campe in 1627, elected a freeman of the Company in 1635, and maintaining premises on the Strand thereafter.38Goldsmiths’ Appr. Bk. I, f. 282. In May 1644 he married the step-daughter of another goldsmith, Francis Allein*, whom he had joined in a consortium which invested in the Irish Adventure in March 1642, with a subscription of £100.39St Dunstan-in-the-West par. reg.; PROB11/295, ff. 121-123v; Bottigheimer, Eng. Money and Irish Land, 176. With the outbreak of the civil war, Barkstead became a captain of foot in the London regiment under Colonel Venn, stationed at Windsor. He rose to the rank of major and in July 1644 was appointed governor of Reading, a post he held until January 1647.40CJ vi. 471a; Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. i. 338; Add. 31116, p. 525. In the spring of 1647 he became colonel of the regiment previously under the command of Richard Fortescue - an appointment apparently was made at the request of Allein, who persuaded Oliver Cromwell* to write to Fairfax asking that Barkstead might be ‘remembered’, having lost his command at Reading.41Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 430. Barkstead was present at the council of war at St Albans in June 1647, when he backed the army’s remonstrance to Parliament, and he also attended its meetings in Reading in July.42Clarke Pprs. i. 151, 176; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 591. In November he purchased the Middlesex residence of the bishop of Bangor, and in the following year also acquired the manor of Bitterness in Hampshire.43Bodl. Rawl. B 239, pp. 2, 31. In January 1648 Barkstead’s regiment was sent to guard London, taking up quarters in Whitehall, and putting down riots in April and May.44Clarke Pprs. ii. 3, 12; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 59, 80-4; A True Narrative of the Ground and Manner of the Late Skirmish (1648) (E.443.29). During the summer the regiment was active in Kent and Essex under Fairfax, and fought at the siege of Colchester.45Firth and Davies, Regimental Hist. 339-40; Clarke Pprs ii. 22; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 610; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1149, 1168-9; HMC Portland, i. 456, 458.

At the end of November 1648 the council of war appointed Barkstead to a committee to consider the army’s advance into London, and he led five companies of his regiment to the rendezvous on 1 Dec.46Clarke Pprs. ii. 61, 65; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1341. Barkstead attended the army council later in December, and in January 1649 he was appointed one of the king's judges, attending all but one session of the trial, and signing the death warrant.47Clarke Pprs. ii. 270; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 723, 727, 728n, 742; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1379, 1395, 1416, 1426. In March he was president of the court martial held to try the leaders of a Leveller mutiny, and was attacked in the tract The Hunting of the Foxes, probably written by Robert Overton.48Gentles, New Model Army, 319. Barkstead’s intimacy with the high command is suggested by the scurrilous rumour current in November 1650 that a London prostitute had ‘bragged up and down’ that Barkstead and Cromwell were both her clients.49HMC Leyborne Popham, 79. Whatever the truth behind this, there is little doubt that Cromwell was behind Barkstead’s appointment as lieutenant of the Tower in August 1652.50CJ vii. 163b. Barkstead’s attachment to Cromwell continued in 1653. He was among the colonels who presented a petition for the dissolution of the Rump on 13 August, and in December he was seen as one of the staunchest supporters of the new protector among the senior officers.51Abbott, Writings and Speeches, ii. 571, 615. Barkstead’s connection with Cromwell may have been strengthened by his religious beliefs, which were Independent rather than radical. He later described himself as having followed ‘the congregational way’, and he was hostile to the Fifth Monarchists such as Thomas Harrison I*.52Speeches, Discourses and Prayers of John Barkstead, John Okey and Miles Corbett (1662), 13. There may also have been a grain of truth in the jeers of those who said of Barkstead that he was ‘for sanctuary, gotten in to be a member of Mr [George] Griffith’s church’, which met at the Charterhouse.53A Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 12 (E.935.5); A Second Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 12 (E.977.3).

Barkstead was returned unopposed for Colchester in the first protectorate Parliament of 1654, and in the first few weeks of the session he joined other Cromwellian loyalists in moves to strengthen the regime. On 22 September he was named with John Thurloe*, Bulstrode Whitelocke* and Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*) to a committee to consider abuses in printing, and to suppress unauthorised journals and newsbooks.54CJ vii. 369b. On 25 September he was appointed to the committee on an ordinance for ejecting scandalous ministers, alongside Thurloe, Broghill and John Disbrowe*.55CJ vii. 370a. A day later he was named with Disbrowe and other military men to a committee to consider the forces necessary to defend the commonwealth, with instructions to attend the protector to discuss the issue further.56CJ vii. 370b. On 29 September Barkstead was included in the committee for Irish affairs, and on 10 October he was added to a committee to review all laws made by the Nominated Assembly.57CJ vii. 371a, 375b. Thereafter, his involvement seems to have petered out. He did not engage with those who sought to refashion the protectorate through a new Government Bill, and his last committee appointment came on 3 November, when he was added to the committee on the petition of Lord Craven when it considered the thorny case of the fate of the estate of Sir John Stawell*.58CJ vii. 375b, 381a.

In November 1655 Barkstead was appointed major-general of Westminster and Middlesex, and deputy to Philip Skippon* in London, where he already enjoyed considerable authority thanks to his position at the Tower. Barkstead prosecuted his duties with remarkable vigour. In February 1656 he raided the bear garden on Bankside, where he ordered the bears to be killed ‘and the heads of the game cocks in the several pits wrung off’ by his soldiers.59Clarke Pprs. iii. 64. He also seized the horses exercised on the sabbath, and broke up races held on the Hackney Marshes.60C. Durston, Cromwell’s Major Generals (Manchester, 2001), 157; TSP v. 200 Barkstead was the only one of the major-generals known to have targeted sexual offences. In early 1656, he ordered the arrest of prostitutes in London, intending to transport them to Jamaica, and in June he examined three men suspected of running a brothel in Stepney.61Durston, Major Generals, 156. Barkstead’s role as major-general complemented his existing position as lieutenant of the Tower. He had already played an important role in making investigations and arrests from the very beginning of the protectorate, and he was in regular contact with Thurloe over security matters from January 1655 onwards; he was behind the discovery of potential royalist plots in March and May 1656; and a month later passed on news of the whereabouts of Charles Stuart’s mistress, Lucy Walter.62CSP Dom. 1654, p. 204; Durston, Major Generals, 133; TSP iii. 96; iv. 594; v. 169. Later in 1656, Barkstead became preoccupied by the threat of insurrection by the Fifth Monarchists, and he spent much time examining suspects, passing intelligence of their activities on to Thurloe.63TSP v. 272, 314. Cromwell, who had knighted Barkstead in the previous January, paid tribute to his diligence in a speech to Parliament on 17 Sept. 1656. ‘There was never any design’, he told MPs, ‘but we could hear of it out of the Tower. He that watched over that, would give us an account within a fortnight, or such a time, there would be some stirrings, for there was a great concourse of people come to them [the prisoners], and that they had very great elevations of spirit’.64Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 79, 266.

Barkstead was returned for Reading and Middlesex in the 1656 elections. In the former he was the choice of the corporation, but met violent opposition from the inhabitants, who supported Daniel Blagrave*.65Berks. RO, R/AC 1/1/7, ff. 47-8; C219/45/13; Clarke Pprs. iii. 70. Barkstead eventually chose to represent Middlesex. Despite being Cromwell’s ‘creature’, Barkstead played very little role in the early months of the Parliament.66 CSP Ven. 1655-6, p. 272. He was recorded as absent at the call of the House on 31 December, and was only briefly mentioned in January, when his examinations of Fifth Monarchists were cited as ‘another design’ against the protector, similar to the Sindercombe Plot exposed by Thurloe.67CJ vii. 481a; Burton’s Diary, i. 285, 356. He played no part in the ‘kingship debates’ of February and March, and was not listed among those MPs voting to crown Cromwell. According to Thomas Burton*, Barkstead made his first appearance in the House only on 23 April 1657, when his intervention in the debate on Cromwell’s objections to the provision for preachers in the Humble Petition and Advice ‘was thought as young as the member’.68Burton’s Diary, ii. 15. His contribution to later debates was, in the main, stolid and unexciting. On 26 May he argued that no decision should be made on the petition of purchasers of Lord Craven’s estate until ‘all parties’ had been heard.69Burton’s Diary, ii. 129. On 23 May he was among a large number of MPs (including soldiers such as Disbrowe, Charles Fleetwood* and John Lambert*) chosen to attend the protector to ask when they might present him with the revised Humble Petition and Advice.70CJ vii. 538b. When the grand committee on tonnage and poundage discussed rates for foreigners’ goods on 1 June, he asked that the issue be reconsidered as ‘half of the customs are lost by this means’.71Burton’s Diary, ii. 168. He was teller against the proviso exempting ‘strangers’ from duties for a fixed term on 8 June.72CJ vii. 549b. A series of committee appointments on bills concerning the improvement of the nation followed: for choosing people for ‘places of trust’ in the government (15 June); for punishing those who lived ‘at high rates’ without obvious means of support (17 June), and for stating the debts owed on the public faith (19 June).73CJ vii. 557b, 559b, 563a. Of personal concern to Barkstead was the bill to prohibit building in London and its suburbs, which would affect his property interests. He was named to the committee on the bill on 8 May, and the interests of his regiment over a site adjacent to the state dockyards at Deptford were safeguarded by a proviso on 11 June.74CJ vii. 531b, 555a. On 20 June a proviso in the bill against building in London and its suburbs, which allowed Barkstead to develop the land around Bangor House in Holborn was ‘passed without any debate’.75Burton’s Diary, ii. 527; CJ vii. 564b. On 26 June, the last day of the sitting, he was named as one of those to be added to the committee for public revenue.76CJ vii. 576a. Barkstead was called to Cromwell's Other House in December 1657, and in the second sitting of Parliament in January 1658 he was present in the upper chamber almost every day, being appointed to the committee for privileges (23 Jan.) and the committee to consider penalties for profaning the Lord’s Day (26 Jan.).77HMC Lords,n.s. iv. 504-23.

Barkstead’s position as one of Cromwell’s strongest supporters led to severe criticism. His relatively humble origins were raked over repeatedly. As early as 1653 he was lampooned as a man who should be making thimbles and bodkins rather than having a position of authority (a jibe repeated in 1657 and 1659) and in 1658 he was dismissed as ‘sometime a goldsmith in the Strand, of no great rank’.78CCSP ii. 245; Burton’s Diary, i. 331; Eighteen Court Queries (1659), 5 (E.984.1); Second Narrative, 12. Barkstead was also attacked as ‘a very empty, shallow pated person, therefore the most fit to be cajoled and wrought on, being of a malleable temper’, who had risen to prominence ‘more by fortune than valour’, to become ‘a most active imp of Oliver the Usurper’.79The Mystery of the Good Old Cause (1660), 23-4 (E.1923.2). By the summer of 1656, Barkstead was notorious as ‘a most severe man’, and thereafter he was accused of having committed great cruelty on the prisoners in his charge, while his skill in the intelligence sphere led to stories of his having acquired a magic stone that rendered him invisible.80Bodl., Carte 131, ff. 189-90; TSP vii. 58; Narrative, 12; Invisible John made Visible: or Grand Pimp of Tyranny Portrayed (June 1659, E.985.11). Another critic saw him as ‘one to the life to fulfil the protector’s desires, whether right or wrong; for he will dispute no commands, not make the least demur, but in an officious way will rather do more than his share’.81Second Narrative, 12. So close was Barkstead perceived to be to Cromwell that on Oliver's death in September 1658, rumours abounded that Barkstead had suffered a stroke or even died of the shock.82HMC 5th Rep. 143. Barkstead’s position in Richard Cromwell’s* protectorate seemed secure. A month after Oliver’s demise a second death – that of his wife’s step-father, Francis Allein - brought Barkstead a windfall in the form of the manors of Acton and Ealing in Middlesex.83PROB11/295, ff. 121-123v. He joined the other peers in the lavishly appointed funeral procession for the late protector in November.84Burton’s Diary, ii. 527. He took his seat in the Other House when the third protectorate Parliament sat in January 1659, taking the oath on the 28th, and attending fairly frequently until the middle of February.85HMC Lords, n.s. iv. 525-6, 532.

Nemesis was not far away, however. By the beginning of February Barkstead was aware that the warrants for imprisonment of the 24 prisoners held in the Tower were under investigation, although he told Thurloe that he trusted he would be ‘the more easily excused’ for any irregularities as he had always been a loyal servant of Parliament.86TSP vii. 605-6. On 22 February Barkstead was called before the committee of grievances to answer for the illegal imprisonment of the Fifth Monarchist, John Portman, who had been held in the Tower for a year without trial. On 26 February the Commons decided that Portman’s imprisonment was illegal, and Barkstead was ordered to release him at once, despite producing the original warrant from Oliver Cromwell.87CJ vii. 607b; Burton’s Diary, iii. 448; TSP vi. 775; vii. 620. During these proceedings, the chairman of the committee, Colonel Tyrrell, refused to address Barkstead by his title, saying ‘that it was not fit for a lord of the Other House to be a gaoler’.88Burton’s Diary, iii. 448. Worse than this personal slight, was the implicit attack on his former master. As Barkstead told Thurloe, ‘notwithstanding my producing my lord protector’s letter under his highness’s hand, and a full warrant, (as I apprehended) some seem to dislike my showing that letter; but such was my affection and faithfulness to his highness’s commands, I did not imagine the doing that would have reflected upon his honour, which I esteemed my great encouragement’.89TSP vii. 623. It is telling that when referring to ‘my lord protector’ and ‘his highness’, Barkstead was clearly thinking of Oliver, not Richard. The Portman affair blunted Barkstead’s enthusiasm for the protectorate. He told Thurloe he feared that the other prisoners would now bring cases against him, and that he feared ‘the malice of particular men’ in Parliament.90TSP vii. 623. In March, when Thurloe’s role in the transportation of royalists to the West Indies was also raised in the Commons, Barkstead supplied him with detailed information, knowing that he himself might be implicated in the case.91TSP vii. 639. From mid-February until mid-April Barkstead attended the Other House only twice, and became a regular member only for the last ten days of the session.92HMC House of Lords, n.s. iv. 542, 553, 559, 560-1, 563, 565. The fall of the protectorate was greeted by Barkstead with equanimity. At the end of April and the beginning of May, he attended the army council discussions on a new government, but there were already rumours that he was to lose his position as lieutenant of the Tower.93Clarke Pprs. iii. 196; v. 289; Henry Cromwell Corresp. ed. Gaunt, 509. He was eventually sacked on 10 June, being replaced by Thomas Fitch*, described as ‘[Sir Arthur] Hesilrige’s* creature’.94Clarke Pprs. v. 289n.

Barkstead played no part in politics over the next 12 months, although he does not seem to have been actively opposed to the restored Rump, passing to Thomas Scot I* intelligence of royalist plots in July and August 1659, and playing a role in the mobilisation of militia forces in response to George Boothe’s* rebellion in July.95CCSP iv. 285, 296, 297, 307, 357; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 61. The restoration of the Stuarts in 1660 was the greater threat to Barkstead’s person. A warrant for his arrest as a regicide was issued in May, and he excepted from pardon as to life and estate in June 1660, but by the latter date he had joined Miles Corbett* and John Okey* in fleeing to Germany.96LJ xi. 32b, 52b; Ludlow, Mems. ii. 276, 330; Whitelocke, Diary, 598. The trio first settled at Hanau but were resident at Frankfurt am Main in the autumn of 1661.97M. Noble, Lives of the Regicides (1798) i. 87; Ludlow, Voyce, 297; CCSP iv. 153, 179. By this time, plans were afoot for the capture Barkstead and his companions. George Downing*, the King's resident in Holland, suggested that the simplest solution would be to have all three assassinated, but it was eventually decided instead to lure them to Holland where Downing had secured a warrant from the States General for their arrest. Barkstead was in communication with a Dutch merchant in January, and he and Okey travelled to Delft in March, where they were immediately arrested.98CCSP iv. 179, 184, 196-7. This move was denounced at the time as that of a ‘perfidious rogue’, and Downing admitted to the 1st earl of Clarendon (Sir Edward Hyde*) that the States General would not have co-operated had they known the prisoners would be returned to England.99Pepys’s Diary, iii. 44-5; CCSP iv. 200. Barkstead was brought to the Tower in March 1662.100Eg. 3349, f. 105. He was executed at Tyburn on 19 April 1662, and his head mounted on Traitors’ Gate at the Tower of London.101CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 344. Accounts of his final hours differ widely. Some claimed he reached the gallows clutching ‘a little strong-water bottle’; others said he went to his death with ‘much cheerfulness and satisfaction, declaring himself ready and willing to be offered up’.102The Speeches, Discourses and Prayers of Col. John Barkstead, Col.John Okey and Mr Miles Corbet (1662), 19, 24; Ludlow, Voyce, 301. In his last words, recorded by friends, Barkstead justified his actions on behalf of ‘the Cause’, and in particular to the Cromwells, saying ‘I bless God I was faithful to them whom I served’; but he also distanced himself from the regicide, claiming that he was not present at the signing of the death warrant, and knew nothing of it until he saw his own name on the paper.103Speeches and Prayers, pp. 13, 15. Barkstead continued to haunt his opponents after his death: rumours of treasure hidden by him in the Tower before his flight to Germany kept Samuel Pepys digging in the Tower into 1663. None was ever found.104Pepys’s Diary, iii. 240-1, 250-1.