BOSSEVILE, Godfrey (1596-1658), of Gunthwaite, Peniston, Yorks. Wroxall and Warwick, Warws.

The Bosseviles of Gunthwaite were proprietors of that West Riding estate since 1334, and ancestors of Godfrey Bossevile, who spelled his surname thus, had been there as tenants on the manor earlier than that.29Hunter, S. Yorks. ii. 344; Macdonald, Fortunes of a Fam. 27; signature: Warws. RO, CR 1886/6781. The history of Bossevile’s inheritance was rather more complex than this ancient association would suggest, however. Bossevile’s father only acquired the property through the whim of his first cousin, Francis Bossevile, who in 1586 settled Gunthwaite on male heirs, regardless of daughters.30Hunter, S. Yorks. ii. 347. This ensured that the estate came to Godfrey’s father, Ralph Bossevile, a London-based army captain. He was the third son of a clerk in the court of wards, whose estate and reputation for public-spiritedness lay in Sevenoaks, Kent.31Hunter, S. Yorks. ii. 348, J. Weever, Antient Funeral Monuments (1767), 524. To add to this sense of Godfrey Bossevile’s Yorkshire roots being a little less deep than at first sight they seemed, upon his father’s disappearance and presumed death while on active service in Ireland, his mother’s second marriage was with Fulk Greville of Thorpe Latimer, Sleaford, Lincolnshire. Their son, Robert Greville, Bossevile’s half-brother, was adopted by Fulk Greville, 1st Baron Brooke, at the age of four, in 1611. Thus by the time he was 15 years of age, Bossevile had been educated first with the Grevilles, presumably at Thorpe Latimer, and then begun a long association with Warwickshire, when his half-brother removed there on his adoption.32Hunter, S. Yorks. ii. 348; CP ii. 333. His marriage in 1614 with the daughter of Sir Edward Greville, of Harold Park, Essex, cemented still further his relationship with his adoptive family, and diluted his Yorkshire ties.

Bossevile had returned to Yorkshire by October 1618, as lord of Gunthwaite.33T.W. Hall, Descriptive Catalogue of Charters and Court Rolls from the Bosville...Collection (Sheffield, 1930), 31; Macdonald, Fortunes of a Fam. 62. Very soon after his arrival, he was in conflict with the privy council for his part in allowing papers belonging to the dowager countess of Shrewsbury to be stored at Gunthwaite. Mary Talbot was persona non grata to the council, having been imprisoned on suspicion of aiding the escape of the second in line to the throne at James I’s succession, Arabella Stuart.34Hunter, Hallamshire, 124; Oxford DNB,‘Arabella Stuart’, ‘Gilbert Talbot’. This incident did not prevent Bossevile from slipping naturally into the life of a member of the county gentry, and filling local offices under the direction of West Riding quarter sessions.35SP16/405. Although a magistrate, he seems not to have played any significant part on the bench of the West Riding, which suggests that his territorial interests continued to be diffuse.36West Riding Sessions Recs. ii. Orders 1611-1642, Indictments, 1637-1642 ed. J. Lister (Yorks. Arch. Soc. rec. ser. liv). As early as the 1620s, it is evident that his sympathies lay with puritan views of the ministry, and he was responsible for appointing a succession of puritan incumbents to the new chapelry at Denby, founded under his auspices in 1627.37Hunter, S. Yorks. ii. 352; Cliffe, Yorks. 270-1. Around 1632, Bossevile was a subscriber to a project of godly gentry to produce ‘seasonable treatises’ for public edification, and pledged to pay £3 a year for three years to a fund for the purpose.38J.T. Peacey, 'Seasonable Treatises: a Godly Project of the 1630s', EHR cxiii. 678.

Critic of the government, 1634-June 1642

From 1634, Bossevile began to collaborate with his half-brother, by then 2nd Baron Brooke, in colonizing schemes. At some point after Brooke had inherited his title in 1628, he bestowed an annuity of £100 a year on Bossevile, which was commuted in June 1634 to a lump sum of £1,100.39Warws. RO, CR 1886/6781. The same month, Bossevile became a proprietor of the Providence Island Company, joining Brooke, the 2nd earl of Warwick (Robert Rich†) and Viscount Saye and Sele (William Fiennes), leaders of the venture when it was founded in 1630. This focal point for criticism of the government of Charles I did nothing for Bossevile’s finances, as by August 1642 he owed the company over £200.40CO124/ 2, ff. 38, 77, 85, 140, 153, 154, 197; Warws. RO, CR 1886/box 457; CSP Col. 1574-1660, p. 131. In October 1635, the Warwick schoolmaster Thomas Dugard, first recorded in his diary a dinner at the Bossevile household in Warwickshire.41Add. 23146, ff. 44v, 47. In November 1638 Bossevile was described as of Wroxall, the parish and manor where Sir John Burgoyne* and his son, Sir Roger* Burgoyne, held sway, but there seems to be no contemporary record of his estate there, and it seems likely that Warwick castle was his home when he was in the midlands.42HUL, DDBM/1/7. In December 1638, Dugard recorded a meeting between Brooke, Bossevile and William Purefoy I*, the last-named a future close collaborator with Bossevile, and all of them part of the Warwick castle puritan nexus.43Add. 23146, f. 81. Bossevile was not impervious to wider cultural influences, however, corresponding with Sir Simon Archer*, the antiquary, and lending him a copy of Sphinx Theologica, by Edward Benlowes, hardly a puritan author.44Bodl. MS Eng. Lett. b.1, f. 359; Oxford DNB, ‘Edward Benlowes’.

On 24 March 1640, Bossevile and Purefoy were returned to the Short Parliament for Warwick.45Add 23146, f. 88; Warws. RO, CR 1618/W21/6. Bossevile was named to no committees in this Parliament, an indication that he was a relatively unknown figure. Nevertheless, with a speech on 29 April, he managed to make some impression in the short time the assembly sat. On a report from a committee appointed to arrange a conference with the Lords on religion, the property of subjects and parliamentary privilege, a debate took place in the Commons to define the topics under these heads to be discussed at the conference. Under the heading of religion, the debate ranged over the objections of the Commons to the Canons of 1640, which embodied Laudian innovations and an encroachment on parliamentary prerogatives by Convocation. Bossevile spoke to argue that the terms of reference of the proposed conference between the Houses should be widened to ensure that the railing of altars in chapels of ease and university colleges be included. He is surely likely to have been drawing upon his own experience of conflict at Denby with the ecclesiastical authorities.46Aston’s Diary, 92; Procs. Short Parl. 180-2.

It is not clear whether Bossevile stood in the general election for the Long Parliament, but he was certainly promoted by Brooke in the by-election caused by the death of Sir Thomas Lucy*.47Warws. RO, CR 1618/W 21/6, p. 276. A dispute arose immediately over the validity of the election, there being no fewer than three indentures returned. On 18 February 1641, the House debated the case, and Sir Simonds D’Ewes caught the mood of the House when he professed indignation at the flouting of statute law on the mechanics of the electoral process. Bossevile’s election was allowed to stand because his return was the only one to show no sign of irregularities.48Procs. LP ii. 478; CJ ii. 88a. His first recorded intervention in the House came on 1 April, when after a debate on the terms of disbanding the armies of Scotland and England, he proposed that the army in Ireland be stood down too, before the final terms of disbandment of armies in the north were concluded. He persuaded others of his view, and the vote was postponed.49Procs. LP iii. 310. The Covenanter leadership was inclined to see this as a ploy to encourage a rapid Scots disbandment.50Mems. and Letters relating to the Hist. of Britain in the Reign of Charles I (Glasgow, 1766), 117. On 3 June he urged the House not to postpone a debate on episcopacy in the interests of finalizing the treaty with the Scots, however strongly the northern Members felt: a point of view given some force by the fact of Bossevile’s own northern interests. In his view, bishops ‘had almost brought this commonwealth to dissolution’; before reform could be achieved, it was necessary to ‘cleanse the house of God’.51Procs. LP iv. 707. On matters of public finance, Bossevile was in favour of maximising the revenues approved by Parliament, and acted as a teller in a division (13 Aug.) on whether duties on tobacco should be paid by all importers, including those whose cargoes had been seized. The hawks he led on this occasion lost by 15 votes.52Procs. LP vi. 402; CJ ii. 255b.

It was not until 31 December that Bossevile was named to a committee in the House, when he, Purefoy, and another Brooke relative, Sir Arthur Hesilrige, were among those required in an atmosphere of high tension to investigate the report of Hesilrige’s that a volunteer army was being recruited in London, on behalf of the king.53CJ ii. 365a; A. Fletcher, Outbreak of the English Civil War (1981), 178. He was able to pursue his enthusiasm for reform of episcopacy in March 1642, when the committee for a bill to abolish episcopacy was revived to include him among additional members.54CJ ii. 467b. On 5 April he was named with Purefoy and Oliver Cromwell to a conference with the Lords on the crowd action in London, and in June carried to the Lords the order that Thomas Boughton* should be a deputy lieutenant in Warwickshire.55CJ ii. 512b; 630b. This was the start of a sequence of events in which the Militia Ordinance was implemented in the county by Lord Brooke and his chief supporters. Bossevile was himself commissioned as a deputy lieutenant on 21 June, and by 4 July, it was reported that 2,650 volunteers had been drilled in four musters. A petition was issued by the deputy lieutenants in support of the ordinance.56CJ ii. 635a; LJ v. 165a, 195b, 196a.

MP and soldier, June 1642-June 1645

Nothing is heard of Bossevile at Westminster between June and December 1642, and it is likely that he returned to Warwick, to help Brooke garrison Warwick castle to protect the county’s powder magazine, removed there by Brooke from Coventry. At the outbreak of war, troops loyal to Brooke were active in various skirmishes, Warwick castle was besieged by the 2nd earl of Northampton (Spencer Compton†), and the battle of Edgehill was fought, in a few months of hectic military activity in the Warwick area. But after Warwickshire and Staffordshire formed a military association, on 31 December 1642, Bossevile was back in the House and was named a commissioner; the same day he offered to bring in £20 for the parliamentarian army.57Add 18777, f. 109v.

Bossevile stayed in London through January 1643 and until mid-February at the earliest. He used the time partly to raise money for the Warwickshire and Staffordshire association, going to London merchants for subscriptions.58SP28/5/243, 262; SP28/139/3. He sought the Lords’ concurrence (23 Jan.) in an ordinance for raising money for this cause, but the Lords would only back a form of collection in the Guildhall, not direct despatch to the midlands, fearing that funds raised for other war purposes in London would be prejudiced.59LJ vi. 569b. With Purefoy and the Worcestershire leading parliamentarian, John Wylde, Bossevile sat on a committee to consider an ordinance for a national army for Parliament (26 Jan.). There was a concern in the House that Parliament should remain in control of events, including the distribution of versions of its proceedings, and Bossevile was named to a committee (13 Jan.) to discover who had printed and distributed a version of speeches by Brooke and the 4th earl of Pembroke (Philip Herbert*).60CJ ii. 925a, 943b. In similar vein, he also investigated information (27 Jan.) that a London apprentice had promoted a heretical creed.61CJ ii. 945a.

On 8 February, he and Purefoy voted their support for the 3rd earl of Essex (Robert Devereux), Parliament’s lord general, who had been declared a traitor by the king. Two days later, in a debate on whether a treaty should be made with the king, Bossevile argued against those seeking to reconcile king and Parliament. Contradicting those who ascribed the royalists’ military gains to Parliament’s failure to seize the opportunity for a treaty while Charles was at Nottingham, he attributed the strength of their forces to the plundering by Prince Rupert. An indignant Sir Simonds D’Ewes considered that this kind of remark lost Parliament a chance of a treaty.62CJ ii. 958b; Harl. 163, ff. 294, 294v. On 16 February, Bossevile and Purefoy worked together to ensure that outrages perpetrated by Sir Ralph Hopton*, royalist commander in the west of England, were publicized and punished by his disablement from sitting further in the House.63Harl. 163, ff. 298v, 299.

He had already been commissioned as lieutenant-colonel in Brooke’s regiment of foot, but on the sudden death in military action of his half-brother, on 2 March 1643, Bossevile returned to Warwick, to inherit the regiment and to manage aspects of Brooke’s affairs.64CJ ii. 958b; SP28/136/41; SP28/139/3. It was April 1644 before Bossevile appeared in the House again. In the intervening period, he led the regiment. It was being recruited and augmented between late March and August 1643, and was at one point 250-strong .65SP28/246; SP28/7/178; Warws. RO, CR 1260/C9/42. Among the incidents of the war in Warwickshire and neighbouring counties in which the regiment figured prominently, were the taking of Compton House from the 3rd earl of Northampton (James Compton*, Lord Compton), the beating up of enemy quarters at Campden House, Gloucestershire and most notably, the taking of Beoley House, near Alcester.66SP 28/136/41; Dugdale, Diary and Corresp. 57. Bossevile was still one of Parliament’s most committed partisans in Warwickshire, and on 3 May he and George Abbot II* were required to see the ordinance for the weekly assessment implemented in the county: in effect an appointment to the county committee.67LJ vi. 29a. In August 1643, Bossevile signed a letter to the House of Commons reminding Members that the king’s army ‘went on conquering, and if there were no army to resist or divert them, that they must in time make their peace or be ruined’. D’Ewes, who recorded it, made it sound like a plea for surrender, but the opposite was surely its intention.68Harl. 165, f. 153v.

Bossevile was directly involved in the affairs of the county committee when its protracted dispute with the 2nd earl of Denbigh (Basil Feilding) became public in October 1643. The immediate cause of the conflict, which was played out with full reference to both Houses of Parliament, was the dismissal by the committee of officers appointed by Denbigh, major-general (chief staff officer) of the Staffordshire and Warwickshire association.69Warws. RO, CR 1260/C9/33. The high cost to the city of Coventry of their presence and the fact that the peer’s appointees were outsiders were the stated reasons. Matters worsened when on one watch in Coventry, the alarm was sounded in the dead of night, frightening the citizens. This revealed a dispute over the authority of the governor, with the committee and leading military personnel ranged against Denbigh, By 2 December, letters from the committee, including Bossevile, were before the Houses, demanding that John Barker* be continued as governor of Coventry despite Denbigh’s wish to remove him. The 4th earl of Northumberland (Algernon Percy†), and a majority of the Lords, supported the Coventry radicals against Denbigh.70Harl. 165, f. 231; LJ vi. 321a, b. Throughout the dispute, which culminated in a hearing before a joint committee of Lords and Commons on 18 August 1644, the Coventry committee stuck together behind its de facto leader, William Purefoy I. On that occasion, Purefoy complained that Barker was being slandered by Denbigh, and regretted he had accepted the principle of a joint committee. D’Ewes stood up to argue to his own satisfaction that the joint conference was appropriate and noted in his diary that Purefoy and Bossevile moved only to have the business postponed, not to call for a committee of Commons members only.71Harl. 166 ff. 107, 107v; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 118.

Before the recriminations of August 1644, Bossevile had returned to Westminster. In April, he was named to a committee to confer with London merchants on raising funds for a new army, and on the 17th of that month, was asked to bring in a list of all former deputy lieutenants of Warwickshire: doubtless connected with the simmering dispute with Denbigh.72CJ iii. 457a, 463b. On 20 May, Gilbert Millington moved that £300 be awarded Bossevile out of delinquents’ goods that the latter might discover.73Harl. 166, f. 63v; CJ iii. 500a. It was not until the early 1650s that he was able to benefit from this award, but it was part of a process of rewarding parliamentarians in the west midlands as their grip on the region spread and tightened.74CJ iii. 482a, 515b, 527b, 579b. In these circumstances, Bossevile’s regiment was prey to requests from the Committee of Both Kingdoms, initiated by Denbigh, that detachments of foot be sent from Warwick to augment regiments further west.75CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 55, 118, 253, 254. Bossevile kept his regiment until June 1645, but was less active as a commander than as a Coventry committeeman for the year before he was required under the Self-Denying Ordinance to cede command to John Bridges*.76SP28/246; Add. 61682, f. 6; CJ iv. 184a; Lttr. Bks. of Sir Samuel Luke, 48-9, 459. Bossevile’s contacts in the regiment helped him with raising money from his estate in Yorkshire: in June 1644 he conveyed a capital messuage at Gunthwaite to the treasurer of the Staffordshire and Warwickshire Association.77HUL, DDBM/7/5.

Independent politician, 1645-9

In July 1645, Bossevile provided information that incriminated Denzil Holles*, to a committee investigating charges against the Presbyterian leader. Holles had been under a cloud of suspicion since a royalist deserter, 2nd Baron Savile (Thomas Savile†), alleged that he had negotiated privately with the royal court at Oxford for a peace. Savile was imprisoned for refusing to divulge his source against Holles, but persisted with his claims, alleging that when Holles acted as agent for Parliament at the proposed Oxford treaty of November 1644, he was pursuing his own agenda with the king’s party. Holles’s friends rallied to his defence, but the charges were not dispelled, and in this climate of suspicion, Bossevile’s revelation that in mid-1643 Holles had sent an incriminating letter to a royalist at Oxford, Sir John Monson, was dynamite. He was alleged to have asked Monson to help him to make peace with the king, and Monson replied to reassure Holles that as one who favoured royalists in London, he would surely be well-received at Oxford. When Samuel Browne’s committee came to examine Bossevile’s charge, nothing came of it, since a key witness, Monson’s sister, denied everything, but it revealed Bossevile to be thoroughly supportive of the Independents at this point. One of his relatives, Hesilrige, was on the committee which sought to bring Holles down.78Add. 31116, p. 442; CJ iv. 212b; P. Crawford, Denzil Holles (1979), 114-20; P. Crawford, 'The Savile Affair', EHR cccliv. 85.

Bossevile maintained an interest in Warwickshire military affairs, and was asked in September 1645 to prepare a letter from the House, urging the county horse regiment to obey orders of the Committee of Both Kingdoms. He was regarded as sympathetic by Sir William Brereton*, who in Shropshire commanded detachments from the county. When Brereton was looking for allies in his defence against charges levelled against him by the Staffordshire grand jury, he wrote to a leading Independent naming Bossevile as one who knew that county, and who could be relied upon to help. Bossevile’s knowledge of Staffordshire derived partly from his family links in the county, as well as from military experience.79HUL, DDBM/4/4; Brereton Lttr. Bks. ii. 128, 527-8.

From the evidence of his associations and commitments in the House of Commons, it is clear that Bossevile was committed to the faction known as the political Independents. He was on the committee investigating the misdemeanours of the Scots army in May 1646, and in September had to be reminded that his accounts as an army officer were overdue for audit by William Prynne’s* Committee for Taking the Accounts of the Kingdom.80CJ iv. 559a, 672b. In October, he opposed his former enemy Holles and Sir William Armyne on motions to adjourn the House, and argued that the estates of papists and delinquents should be sold to satisfy arrears of pay due to army officers.81CJ iv. 680b, 721b, 728a; v. 9b. In January 1647, he was able to strike back a little at the accounts committees, when he and a number of prominent Independents, such as Hesilrige and Oliver Cromwell, were added to a committee chaired by Samuel Browne which was to receive complaints about the sub-committees of accounts. Relations between the Warwickshire county committee, based in Coventry, and the sub-committee of auditors, operating from Warwick, were poor, and the appointment of this new committee allowed Bossevile and his Coventry allies to air their grievances.82CJ v. 62b, 63a, 122b.

Bossevile opposed the appointment of Sir William Waller*, a Presbyterian leader, to command a force in Ireland, and was a teller (1 Apr. 1647) for the side which sought, successfully, to put off a vote on his appointment. Sir Martin Lister was another Presbyterian MP whose case would have received short shrift from Bossevile and Purefoy, who were appointed to the committee (21 May) to consider it.83CJ v. 131b, 181b. During 1647, Bossevile’s committee appointments consistently reveal his political Independent sympathies, and his contacts among the ministers of London suggest that he was also well-disposed, though not exclusively devoted, to religious Independents also. Nicholas Lockyer, clearly an Independent, was the one minister whose Fast Day sermon was commissioned solely by Bossevile, but when he acted with other Members to appoint preachers before the Commons, his religious proclivities seemed to encompass godly ministers more sympathetic to the Westminster Assembly, such as Richard Vines (an old Warwickshire friend) and Edmund Calamy.84CJ iv. 326a, 678b, 707b; Calamy Revised, 97-8, 326; 'George Abbott II', supra. There were certainly limits to Bossevile’s religious tolerance, but it stretched further than that of his political opponents. When in December 1646, the Commons ordered that William Dell should be interrogated for having rushed his sermon before the Commons into print without permission, Bossevile was on the committee given the task, and was happy to prolong the debate into the night, unlike the Presbyterians, who presumably sought more summary justice against the Independent minister.85CJ v. 10b; Oxford DNB, ‘William Dell’. In September 1647, Bossevile was appointed messenger to the Lords to ask them to consider the damage done by unlicensed printing, but it was the author of the anti-Independent newspaper Mercurius Pragmaticus that was in his sights.86CJ v. 318a, 371a; LJ ix. 451a.

Bossevile’s allegiance to the Independents was such that he was probably among those who in August 1647 signed the Engagement of those who supported the flight to the army by 58 MPs to escape the forcing of the Houses by the Presbyterian-inspired London mob. While names on the surviving lists vary somewhat, it seems that his associate and relative by marriage, Hesilrige, was a co-signatory, as was his other close collaborator, William Purefoy I.87Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 755; LJ ix. 385b. He was back in the House by 8 September, and was rewarded for his fidelity to the Independent cause, now moving into the ascendant, with nomination by the Commons to the Committee for Indemnity, an important executive body. (His having to wait until the following January for the Lords to ratify his appointment suggests that it was not a universally-approved promotion.) A few days later, he was named to the committee for reviewing the cases of absent Members whose excuses were not accepted by the House, a vehicle for revenge against enemies of the army.88CJ v. 327b, 329a; LJ ix. 669a. Bossevile played a part as teller in a series of divisions on the setting up of Presbyterian church government, on 13 October, but it is difficult to establish precisely what his views were on that topic. He seems to have sided with those who thought a three-year trial period was too short, but who were also unhappy with a seven-year limitation. There seems little doubt that he was not enamoured of the prospect of an indefinite Presbyterian regime, so one can only conclude that the votes were tactical, to put as much pressure as possible on the advocates of the scheme.89CJ v. 332a; Underdown, Pride's Purge, 86 and n. 34.

Through most of 1648, Bossevile engaged in many and varied activities in the House that advanced the cause of the radical Independents: never in a leading capacity, but always in support. He was named to 40 committees in that year, most connected with issues of security, a number dealing with the treatment of delinquents and with petitions from various quarters.90CJ v, vi. He was teller (13 Mar. 1648) in a division on the examination of the Presbyterian City leaders James Bunce and Thomas Adams*, on the side of those who wanted to prolong the hearing.91CJ v. 494b. After the vote on 28 April in support of government by king, Lords and Commons, the Four Bills rejected by the king at Hampton Court were revived as a debating point, and on 24 May a motion was propounded that religion and the militia should first be settled before a treaty with the king was signed. In the division that followed, Bossevile was teller for the noes, who lost by 83 votes.92CJ v. 572b; Underdown, Pride's Purge, 101. He was on the committee for the trial of Sir John Owen, a rebel in the second civil war, and sat on several other committees formed to deal with the aftermath and Parliament’s presentation of events after the risings had been quelled.93CJ v. 593a, 597a, 605b, 631b, 633a. In August, he acted as teller in two divisions on the Commons’ relations with the king and with the Lords. In one (11 Aug.), the issue was a proposed conference on channels of communication with the Lords; in the other (26 Aug.), the question was whether an intercepted letter of the king’s, communicating with the Scots, should be returned to the king. On both issues, Bossevile led the side for a hard line, against co-operation, and in both cases won. 94CJ v. 667b, 684b.

On 17 November 1648, Bossevile was named to a committee to produce an act justifying to the nation the proceedings of Parliament, and as a declared ally of the army he was naturally untouched by Pride’s Purge on 6 December.95CJ vi. 79a. Nevertheless, it seems that Bossevile and Purefoy were not wholly enthusiastic about the army’s action. On 13 December Bossevile reported to the Lords the appointment by the Commons of the ardent Independent Richard Salwey* to the important Navy Committee. This was evidence of his keenness to see the work of Parliament continue despite the disruption. The following day, Purefoy was a teller on a motion for a delegation to demand from Sir Thomas Fairfax*, commander-in-chief of the New Model army, a release of all secluded Members. Only 53 votes were cast, but with a majority of 17, Purefoy and Bossevile were among the delegates selected for the task.96CJ vi. 96a, 97a; LJ x. 627b. When Fairfax sent a message on 20 December that he would reply in due course, and that the Members should trouble him no further about it, Bossevile was a teller for those who wanted to repeat their demand, while Purefoy was a teller in the next division, for those who wanted the original delegation to remain the same.97CJ vi. 101a, b. This put Bossevile and Purefoy firmly among those who held out for a parliamentary, civilian-led form of authority, however radical it might become.

Politician in the Rump Parliament, 1649-53

Bossevile was appointed to a number of important executive bodies during December 1648 and January 1649, no doubt partly because he was a regular attender at a much-diminished Parliament, but also because of his radical sympathies. On 16 December, he was nominated to the Committee for Compounding; unlike his appointment to the Indemnity Committee, this one rushed past the Lords.98CJ vi. 99a; LJ x. 633a; CCC 135. Membership of the Army Committee and the Committee of Navy and Customs followed over the next year.99CJ vi. 107b, 116a, 290a. He played a part in the decisions that led to the trial of the king, and was included in the committee formed on 23 December to identify the means for proceeding against the king and other capital offenders. It was thus unsurprising that he was one of the commissioners for trying Charles I, although like his alter ego, Purefoy, he did not in the event sit among the king’s judges.100CJ vi. 103a; A. and O. His absence from the trial was not because of any loss of confidence on his part in the claims of Parliament to act as a judicial body, since on the day of the execution he was named to a committee to organize the trial of delinquents then in prison.101CJ vi. 126b.

At the outset of the new republic, Bossevile turned out to be one of its most diligent supporters. In 1649, he was named to 38 committees, a total which suggests no discontinuity between that year and the preceding one. Some patterns may be discerned in this activity. He was not particularly busy in legislative committees. Only three might be described as concerned with economic affairs. Twice that number dealt with changes in the law, and a similar number contributed to developing religious provision. If any area of committee activity might be described as Bossevile’s specialism it was that relating to the rewarding of the Rump’s friends and the punishment of its enemies. He sat on ten committees dealing with awards and concessions to those favoured by the regime, ranging from great men like Thomas, 3rd Baron Fairfax [S] (Sir Thomas Fairfax*), John Bradshawe* and Alexander Popham* to his own muster-master from his Warwickshire regiment days and the war widows who petitioned the House in May.102CJ vi. 180b, 196a, 209b, 225b, 236a, 237a, 254a, 260a, 279b. Among those subject to the unsympathetic ministrations of committees of which Bossevile was a member were the Welsh delinquents of the second civil war, prisoners taken in naval engagements, and the general range of those whose cases were under scrutiny by the Goldsmiths’ Hall and Haberdashers’ Hall Committees.103CJ vi. 106b, 107b, 126b, 127b, 128a, 200b, 290a.

In this last category, Bossevile’s own self-interest cannot easily be distinguished from structural change. He was undoubtedly active as a member of the Compounding Committee, and reported its concerns about the changing rules for compounding to the House on 1 February 1649. In May he was one of those named to the committee for reviewing the powers of the Committee for Advance of Money at Haberdashers’ Hall (of which he had been made a member in January), and in July, was one of the committee working on an act for both these bodies to work to similar powers on discoveries of concealed delinquents’ estates.104Bodl. Nalson 16, f. 74; CJ vi. 112a, 127b, 128a, 218b, 236b. Here, Bossevile stood to gain much by a successful outcome to the committee’s endeavours. The inauguration of the Rump was an opportunity for him to make meaningful the award made to him in 1644 that he should benefit from discoveries. On 5 May the House recommended to the Accounts Committee that that order should stand. The Committee of Accounts was required on 13 June to audit promptly the books Bossevile had produced as an army officer, and on 21 August it was confirmed that he should benefit from estates he should discover in the future.105CJ vi. 201b, 231b, 283a. Bossevile brought his first informations to both the main bodies for penal taxation in May and August 1649, with first payments to him in October.106CCAM 1065-6, 1133-4, 1505; CCC 1981-2. Other cases followed in 1650, including that of Alderman Bunce, who had been exposed by Bossevile back in 1648.107CCAM 1182. In 1652, Bossevile was a member of a sub-committee that advocated extending the period in which discoveries could be made.108CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 300. Some of these cases, as was the way, dragged on for years. In 1656, Bossevile’s son was still pursuing some on his father’s behalf.109CCC 181, 946, 947; CCAM 706, 708, 862-3, 1065-6, 1182, 1211, 1224, 1505-6. In a different sense, the renewed attack in December 1649 by Purefoy and his allies, Bossevile among them, against the earl of Denbigh was the pursuit of what amounted to a private grievance.110CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 444-6.

Given Bossevile’s apparent enthusiasm for Parliament’s handling of the crisis of 1648-9, it is surprising how rapid was his disengagement from the work of the commonwealth. He spent time in 1650 pursuing concealed estates, but his committee appointments in 1650 were only half the total for 1649, and in 1651 and 1652 they dropped still further, so that in the last of these years they did not reach double figures.111CJ vi, vii. Although he was active in the Army Committee in 1649 and 1652 – an interesting presence in view of his disapproval of army intervention in Pride’s Purge – some of his committees, including that for Plundered Ministers, saw little of him, and it does not seem likely that his invisibility in committee appointments conceals industriousness behind the scenes.112Add. 21427, f. 46; Add. 61682, f. 178; Bodl. MS Bodl. 328, pp. 164, 372. Throughout the period of the Rump, and indeed through the crisis of late 1648 that led to its inauguration, Bossevile and Purefoy were both named to the same committees with a frequency that is striking. In December and January 1648, only three of Bossevile’s appointments out of his total of 12 were committees where Purefoy had no place. Although the Yorkshireman gained some independence from the latter as the commonwealth got into its stride, where Bossevile’s name was on a list, Purefoy’s was on never much less than 50 per cent of them.113CJ vi, vii. It is possible that he never developed a fully independent perspective on politics, or for that matter, on public service, since he played no part on the Warwickshire bench of magistrates. None of this betokened any return to his Yorkshire patrimony, either, since he visited the young 3rd Baron Brooke at Oxford on various occasions in 1653, travelling from Warwick.114Warws. RO, CR 1886/ box 411/22.

Final years, 1653-8

Bossevile’s last committee appointment was on 8 April 1653, when he was one of a delegation charged with receiving an ambassador from Sweden. This was surely a sign that he was still regarded as a safe pair of hands for the interests of the Commonwealth in a sensitive area.115CJ vii. 276b. He was not nominated to sit in Barebones Parliament, but was reconciled sufficiently to the protectorate to serve as a commissioner for the approbation of public preachers, from September 1654. Furthermore, he was co-opted on to the trade committee of the council of state in January 1656 – with William Purefoy, who sat in all three Cromwellian Parliaments.116A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1655-56, p. 100. Bossevile died in London, and was buried on 9 April 1658 in the chancel of St Martin-in-the-Fields church.117St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster par. reg. His only son, Col. William Bossevile, played a part in the elaborate obsequies for Francis Greville, 3rd Baron Brooke at Warwick on 21 December that year, and quickly made his peace with the restored monarchy in 1660.118SP18/184/60; Macdonald, Fortunes of a Fam. 73-4. At least one of his descendants, Alexander Wentworth Macdonald, later 2nd Baron Macdonald [S], sat in Parliament between 1796 and 1802. James Boswell, Dr Samuel Johnson’s biographer, claimed kinship with the Gunthwaite family.119HP Commons 1790-1820; Macdonald, Fortunes of a Fam. 182-5.