BURY, William (1605-69), of the Priory, Grantham, and Linwood Grange, Blankney, Lincs.

Bury’s family, which was apparently of West Country extraction, had settled at Grantham in the Elizabethan period.33Lincs. Peds. 213. Little is known about his upbringing or education, and he does not appear to have held local office before 1642. His later career suggests that he was a man of godly sympathies, and this probably had some bearing on his decision to side with Parliament in the civil war. He was a signatory to the Lincolnshire declaration of June 1642 ‘against all such as shall attempt to separate his majesty from his great and faithful council of Parliament’.34PA, Main Pprs. 4 July 1642. In July, the Committee of Safety* paid him £6 ‘for my journey out of Lincolnshire in the service of the Parliament’.35Brotherton Lib. Marten Loder mss, box 67, item 82.

He was almost certainly the William Bury for whom Colonel Oliver Cromwell* used his influence to secure a commission as a lieutenant-colonel in the regiment of the governor of Boston, Colonel Edward King, in the autumn of 1643. Trusting in Bury’s ‘faithfulness’ to him, Cromwell gave secret instructions both to him and to the future Leveller leader John Lilburne, whom he had likewise had commissioned in King’s regiment, to keep a close eye on their colonel, who was a zealous Presbyterian and persecutor of Congregationalists.36Lilburne, Innocency and Truth Justified, 41; The Just Mans Justification, 5; C. Holmes, ‘Col. King and Lincs. politics, 1642-6’, HJ xvi. 462. It was possibly at Cromwell’s prompting that the commander of the Eastern Association army, the earl of Manchester, despatched Bury to Westminster in March 1644 to deliver a report concerning the recent defeat of the parliamentary forces at Newark under Francis, 5th Baron Willoughby of Parham. Speaking before the Committee of Both Kingdoms, Bury implied that Willoughby of Parham’s men had acted disloyally to the parliamentarian cause and that Willoughby of Parham himself had abandoned his command at the first sign of defeat.37A Briefe Relation of the siege at Newark (1644), 4, 6, 7 (E.39.8). Although Bury may well have had a personal grievance against Willoughby of Parham, having served under him at Newark, he was acting principally for Manchester and his two leading supporters, King and Cromwell, in their efforts to wrest command of the Lincolnshire forces from the ineffectual Willoughby of Parham. However, his services to this cause earned him little gratitude from King, who at some point between mid-May and August 1644 – acting, it was alleged under the influence of his Presbyterian chaplains – cashiered him.38SP28/25, f. 188; Lilburne, Innocency and Truth Justified, 42-3; The Just Mans Justification, 5, 42-3; Holmes, ‘Col. King’, 463. Lilburne claimed that King had quarrelled with Bury ‘and such as in whom the power of religion is most eminent ... for exercising the very power of godliness’ – a comment which has been taken to mean that Bury was a religious Independent.39Lilburne, The Just Mans Justification, 20; C. Holmes, ‘Col. King’, 463. In fact, there is no firm evidence that this was the case; and it seems most likely that King cashiered Bury for his links with Cromwell, who was fast emerging as the colonel’s foremost opponent in the Eastern Association army.

Bury’s dismissal from King’s regiment seems to have marked the end of his military career, and from June 1644, when Manchester appointed him treasurer of the assessment money for Lincolnshire, he became the county’s senior financial administrator.40E113/9. Bury served as county treasurer more or less continuously until at least the autumn of 1649 (with a brief interruption late in 1644, when he was captured by the royalists) and as receiver-general for Lincolnshire and Lincoln from February 1645 to March 1649.41E113/9; SP28/211, f. 526; SP28/332, pt. 1; Add. 5058, f. 9. As a leading figure on the Lincolnshire county committee, he was closely involved in the committee’s protracted dispute with his former regimental commander, Colonel King, who accused the committeemen of arbitrary government and financial corruption – a charge that touched closely upon Bury’s role as treasurer.42Bodl. Nalson VI, f. 72; Tanner 50, f. 478; Tanner 58, f. 39: Tanner 59, ff. 585, 667; CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 229, 244; E. King, A Discovery of the Arbitrary, Tyrannical and Illegal Actions of Some of the Committee of the County of Lincoln (1647, E.373.3); Holmes, ‘Col. King’, 451-84. In 1646, King alleged that Bury, Thomas Lister*, William Savile* and several other committeemen had ignored the kingdom’s ‘fundamental laws’ by acting as his ‘accusers and prosecutors’ at Westminster and his ‘prosecutors and judges’ in the county.43King, Discovery, 1, 22, 23, 26-7. In July 1648, at the height of the second civil war, he signed a letter to Parliament from the committee for Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire, requesting that

for the future discouragement of...rebellious practices in the kingdom, some of the chiefest actors in this late design [in the midlands] may be brought to speedy trial at the assizes...and the rest of the prisoners now in custody to be sent over sea [sic], who will otherwise remain here as seeds of new insurrections.44Bodl. Nalson VII, f. 122; HMC Portland, i. 477.

Although the council of state appointed him a commissioner to oversee the demolition of Belvoir Castle in June 1649, Bury seems to have had little sympathy for the Rump and had been removed or omitted from all commissions and offices by the summer of 1650.45CSP Dom. 1649-50, pp. 187, 203. His return to public duties only began, it seems, after the establishment of the protectorate late in 1653.46Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iii. 332. In the elections to the first protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1654, Bury was returned for his home town of Grantham, where he had been an influential figure in municipal affairs for over a decade and had been closely involved in securing the appointment of the Presbyterian divine John Angell as the town’s minister in 1652.47E121/3/3/20; Hall Bk. of Grantham ed. Couth, 54 and passim; Hall Bk. of Grantham ed. Manterfield, xxxi-xxxii and passim. Bury seems to have played little part in this Parliament’s proceedings, receiving appointment to only one committee – to investigate the controversy surrounding the purchase of William, 1st Baron Craven’s estate.48CJ vii. 381a.

Bury’s skills as a financial administrator and his evident willingness to conform to Cromwellian rule recommended him to the protectoral council for appointment to its standing committee of trade in November 1655.49CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 1. In August the following year, on the advice of the council and Secretary John Thurloe*, the protector appointed Bury to the Irish privy council, at a salary in excess of £500 a year.50TSP v. 196; CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 48; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 223. Bury was selected largely, it seems, for his financial experience, and there were plans (which were never realised) that he be made treasurer for Ireland.51TSP v. 587, 612, 697, 710; T. Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 20, 22. Before leaving for Ireland, Bury stood, or was at least nominated, as a candidate in the Lincolnshire elections to the second protectoral Parliament in 1656. Bury received just one vote – tying in last place with Major-general Edward Whalley*.52Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’. Bury’s own candidates were rather more successful. With his son and 30 or so citizens of Grantham, he voted for Colonel Edward Rosseter*, Colonel Thomas Hatcher*, Major Thomas Lister*, Francis Clinton alias Fines*, Charles Hall*, Thomas Hall*, Charles Hussey*, William Welby* and William Wolley*.53Lincs. RO, MM6/10/5 (Nominations for MPs for Lincs. 1656), no. 147. Bury had served alongside most of these men on the Lincolnshire county committee during the 1640s. All nine of his chosen candidates were duly elected, although six – Charles Hall, Hussey, Lister, Savile, Welby and Wolley – were excluded by the council as enemies of the protectorate.54Supra, ‘Lincolnshire’.

Bury spent much of the later 1650s in Ireland, where he was accounted a ‘great Presbyterian’ and sided with Henry Cromwell* and Richard Pepys* against their radical opponents on the Irish council – notably, Miles Corbett*, William Steele* and Colonel Matthew Thomlinson*.55CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 614, 619, 644, 659, 664; TSP v. 587, 612, 697, 710; vi. 96, 201, 446; vii. 383-4; An Account of the Chief Occurrences of Ireland, 12-19 March 1660, p. 38; Barnard, Cromwellian Ireland, 20, 22. Henry Cromwell had a high opinion of Bury, whose position on the council was confirmed when Cromwell was appointed lord deputy of Ireland in 1657.56TSP v. 587, 612, 697, 710; vi. 446; vii. 674; Abbott, Writings and Speeches, iv. 666. It was Henry Cromwell who knighted Bury in July 1658.57Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 224. After the army’s coup of April 1659 and the collapse of the protectorate, Cromwell sent his ‘very good friends’ Bury, Colonel Richard Lawrence and Dr Henry Jones to England to ensure that the Rump validated the legislation upon which the Cromwellian settlement in Ireland had been based.58TSP vii. 674; A. Clarke, Prelude to Restoration in Ireland, 38, 39. This mission was overtaken by events in England, however, and on 7 June the Rump transferred the government of Ireland to commissioners, three of whom were Corbett, Steele and Thomlinson.59CJ vii. 674a.

Despite being removed from office, Bury returned to Ireland, where he supported Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*) and Sir Charles Coote* in their doomed attempt to ensure a settlement with England that would preserve the Planter ascendancy and promote a Presbyterian church establishment. He worked particularly closely with Broghill in this endeavour.60TSP vii. 908; Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 237, 247, 277, 316; P. Little, Lord Broghill and the Cromwellian Union with Ireland and Scotland, 176-7. In the elections to the Irish Convention in January and February 1660, he was returned for the Boyle family borough of Lismore, almost certainly on Broghill’s interest.61Bodl. Carte 31, f. 3; Clarke, Prelude to Restoration, 211, 237, 247. In March, the English council of state appointed Bury, Broghill, Coote and another leading Anglo-Irish Presbyterian, Sir John Clotworthy*, to a commission for managing the affairs of Ireland (Bury would remain active on this commission into the autumn of 1660).62Add. 46938, f. 12; Bodl. Carte 31, ff. 9, 22, 49; Carte 154, ff. 18, 21, 26v-30, 34v; An Acct. of the Chief Occurrences of Ireland, 12-19 March 1660, 40; P. Adair, A True Narrative...of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, ed. W.D. Killen, 236.

In the elections to the English Convention in April, Bury was involved, in absentia, in a double return at Grantham, where he and William Ellys* had been defeated on a poll by Thomas Skipwith* and another royalist candidate. But though Ellys may have taken his seat before the Commons declared his and Bury’s return void in mid-May, there is no evidence that Bury did so.63Infra, ‘William Ellys’; Lincs. RO, MON/7/11/50; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Grantham’; ‘William Ellys (Ellis)’. Although Bury had engaged himself against the unconditional restoration of the king, he was re-knighted by the lords justices of Ireland in January 1661.64Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 232.

Bury probably spent his final years living quietly in Lincolnshire. He died in the summer of 1669 and was buried on 20 July at Blankney.65Blankney par. reg. In his will, he left the bulk of his personal estate to his wife and his youngest son, Thomas, who was to become lord chief baron of the exchequer under George I. Bury’s legacies, which were mainly in the form of debts owed to him and securities, amounted to about £650. He appointed his ‘well-beloved cousin’, William Ellys, his supervisor.66PROB11/331, f. 216v; Lincs. Peds. 214. None of his immediate descendants sat in Parliament.