BENNETT, Thomas (1620-41), of Pythouse, Wilts.

One of the younger Members of the Long Parliament, whose career lasted only a few weeks, Bennett came from a well-established Wiltshire family, albeit one which does not seem to have been prominent in the county’s parliamentary affairs.7HP Commons 1558-1603. He is not to be confused with a kinsman and neighbour, Thomas Bennett (d. 1654) of Norton Bavant, a parliamentarian during the 1640s.8Wilts. RO, 413/115-6, 314/340. Born in 1620 – his identity as the son of ‘Mr’ Thomas Bennett baptised in his mother’s native parish that April corroborated by visitation and matriculation evidence – our MP is known to have been a beneficiary of the will of his grandfather, and namesake, in 1635, shortly before he went to Oxford.9East Knoyle par. reg.; Vis. Wilts. 19-20; PROB11/168/244. Bennett can scarcely have completed his studies – he is not known to have taken his degree – before the assembling of the Long Parliament in November 1640.

Bennett was returned to Parliament in the spring of 1641, following the death of Sir Miles Fleetwood*, upon the interest of his own family, who were local landholders. Fleetwood appears to have been recommended by Lord Cottington (Sir Francis Cottington†), to whom the townsmen had offered nomination of both candidates in the spring elections, on the grounds that no local men were ‘fit to discharge the offices of burgesses for our town’.10CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 155-6. By the spring of 1641, however, the electorate probably sought to distance themselves from such a well-known courtier, and to opt instead for a resident member of the gentry, even one who was only just reaching the age of majority.

Elected on 21 April, Bennett may not have taken his seat until 10 May 1641, when he took the Protestation.11C219/43/3, no. 3; CJ ii. 141a; Harl. 477, f. 50v. On the same day he was also appointed to search the cellars of Westminster Palace, a post-Gunpowder Plot ritual which was performed at moments of particular concern regarding the threat from popish conspirators, and which reflected the level of fear among MPs in the wake of the army plot.12Harl. 163, f. 156.

This symbolic action was Bennett’s only recorded contribution to parliamentary proceedings before his death from smallpox, which occurred sometime before 13 August 1641, when a motion was made for the election of his replacement, by the town’s other MP, Robert Reynolds*, and when the burial of a Thomas Bennett ‘esquire’ was recorded at nearby St Clement Danes. It was only at this point that the legality of Bennett’s election was questioned, on the grounds that the return had been challenged by another candidate from the Hindon area, George Howe* of Berwick St Leonard.13Harl. 164, f. 28v; St Clement Danes par. reg. A second call for a new writ, on 18 August, was likewise blocked by a number of MPs, including Sir Simonds D’Ewes*, who denied that Bennett’s having sat meant that he had done so legitimately.14Harl. 164, f. 38v. Although the matter was not resolved, no new writ was issued until October 1645.15C231/6, p. 28; CJ iv. 305a, 431b.

Bennett was outlived by his father, who would later serve the royalist interest in Wiltshire, before becoming one of the county’s ‘great sticklers and ringleaders in the club business’.16CCC 941; SP23/174, pp. 555, 562, 566, 577, 579; Wilts. RO, 413/408. Bennett’s younger brother, John†, represented Shaftesbury from 1667-77, as did the latter’s son, Thomas†, sometime secretary to Prince Rupert.17HP Commons 1660-1690; Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 51.