The Bucklands had lived at West Harptree, between Wells and Bristol, since the reign of Henry VIII, when this MP’s great-grandfather, another John Buckland, had bought the manor, which was a former property of the duchy of Cornwall.20Vis. Som. 1623, 16; Collinson, Som. ii. 141. However, under James I, these lands had been resumed by the duchy and then merely leased back to the MP’s father, Francis Buckland.21CTB i. 142, iv. 635. The family also owned land at Martock.22VCH Som. iv. 87. John, the future MP, was Francis’s only son among his seven children, although only two of his sisters survived to adulthood.23Vis. Som. 1623, 16; Vis. Som. 1672, 64; CTB iv. 635. During the 1630s he trained as a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn in London and was called to the bar in 1640.24LI Admiss. i. 220; Brown, Abstracts of Som. Wills, v. 71; LI Black Bks. ii. 355. A major watershed in his life came in 1642. That year his father died and he married, taking as his wife one of the daughters of Sir Robert Phelips†.25Som. RO, DD/PH/48; DD/PH/175; VCH Som. iv. 87. He also joined with two other Somerset men to invest £40 in the Irish Adventure and he later invested a further £25 in that same project.26CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-59, p. 296. This would result in his gaining lands in East and West Meath in 1654 in the aftermath of the Cromwellian re-conquest.27CSP Ire. Adv. 1642-59, pp. 296, 348; CSP Ire. 1647-60, pp. 478, 491, 514, 519. In the meantime, those investments testified to Buckland’s concern to defend the Protestant cause in Ireland. Probably for similar reasons, he now supported Parliament in England’s civil war.
However, Buckland managed to remain aloof from the intense factional rivalries that divided the Somerset parliamentarians during the latter half of the 1640s. For the next three decades he proved to be a stalwart local administrator who was willing to serve under any regime and who could act as a moderating influence on some of his more zealous colleagues. He had already joined the Somerset commission of the peace by 1646 and that same year he served as the county’s treasurer for maimed soldiers. He then quickly established himself as one of the most hard-working of the Somerset justices of the peace.28Som. Assize Orders ed Cockburn, 9-25; Som. RO, DD/HI/B/462: receipt, 30 Apr. 1647; QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 1-72. Parliament now began adding him to the local assessment commissions and he was one of the elders appointed as part of the creation of Presbyterian hierarchy within the county.29A. and O.; Shaw, Hist. Eng. Church, ii. 415. In late 1648 he was named as sheriff of Somerset.30List of Sheriffs, 125; QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 91-2. He viewed this as a burden, it being, as he told his predecessor, John Preston*, ‘disportionable and therefore unwelcome to me’. As ‘a stranger to this kind of employment’, he sought also Preston’s advice on how to handle all the paperwork, as he hoped that such guidance would be ‘a great light, and of much use unto me, especially in this slippery age, wherein there are so many temptations to fraud’.31Som. RO, DD/HI/B/461/2: Buckland to J. Preston, 18 Dec. 1648. The 12 months witnessed the execution of the king and the establishment of the republic, although whatever his initial reluctance on taking office, neither of those developments seem to have deterred him from performing his shrieval duties.
The only hint that he might have had his doubts about the new republic came in early 1650, after his year as sheriff had ended. In February the Committee for Compounding in London, led by John Ashe*, appointed five sequestrators for Somerset and Bristol. Buckland was one of them. His appointment, along with that of Richard Jones II*, was probably intended to balance the other three sequestrators who were all associates of Ashe. This was not enough for Ashe’s arch-enemy, John Pyne*, and it was Pyne’s influence that finally prevailed. Embarrassed at being drawn into this infighting, Buckland and Jones had been reluctant to serve and so stood aside the following November when Pyne’s nominees were installed.32CCC 173, 221, 226, 264. This however did not affect Buckland’s willingness to serve in other capacities and he remained as active as ever as a justice of the peace.33QS Recs. Som. Commonwealth, 105-223; Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 38; CSP Dom. 1650, p. 196.
Buckland’s election as knight of the shire for Somerset for all three protectoral Parliaments reflected his status as a diligent, well-respected county figure. His election on 12 July 1654 to the first of those Parliaments was probably uncontroversial. His only known contribution to the proceedings of that Parliament was to be named to the committee of privileges.34CJ vii. 366b. There is rather more evidence for his activity back in Somerset at this time, for he was one of those Somerset justices who investigated the complaints of Lord Broghill (Roger Boyle*) about the disafforestation of Selwood Forest.35CSP Dom. 1654, pp. 326, 337-8; 1655, p. 131; Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 68. Also, in the weeks between his election and the opening of the Parliament, he was appointed as one of the Somerset ejectors to remove scandalous ministers.36A. and O.; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 144. Two years later, his actual election to the 1656 Parliament was easy enough, for he came top of the Somerset poll on 20 August 1656 with a convincing 2,374 votes.37Som. Assize Orders ed. Cockburn, 77. The protectoral council, however, was less impressed and added him to the list of those newly-elected MPs who were to be prevented from taking their seats.38CJ vii. 425b. The third of Buckland’s election victories could be considered an even more impressive feat than that in 1656. Two seats rather than the 11 that had been available before made the 1659 contest much tighter, yet Buckland was still re-elected. This time, moreover, he was slightly more in evidence at Westminster, although his record of just two committee appointment – on the enfranchisement of Durham and on the case of Sir William Dick’s heirs – was still much less impressive than it might have been.39CJ vii. 622b, 637b.
The return of Charles II in 1660 made no more difference to Buckland than any of the earlier changes of regime had done. His work as a justice of the peace continued much as before.40QS Recs. Som. Charles II, 3-223. He was still occasionally appointed to other local offices, such as the subsidy commission in 1663 and the commission against recusants in 1675.41SR; CTB iv. 788 On hearing in early 1668 that the king had requested more money from Parliament, he told his brother-in-law, Edward Phelips*, that such money would ‘not be found in the country man’s purse, unless by the sudden reviving of trade’.42Som. RO, DD/PH/224/37. His more immediate concern was to secure the future of the lease he held on the West Harptree estate. In 1661 the crown agreed to extend it.43CTB i. 142, 150, 308. Then, in 1674, when the estate was judged to be worth £120 a year, another lease was granted to him for 99 years, although his only son, John junior, had died in 1668.44CTB iv. 635, 717, v. 585; West Harptree par. reg. p. 70.
Buckland himself was still alive on 25 August 1678, when he updated his will, but he was buried at West Harptree six days later.45PROB11/357/526; West Harptree par. reg. p. 71. As he had only one daughter to inherit his estates, the terms of that will were necessarily complicated. Most of his lands passed, in the first instance, to his wife as her jointure and then to their daughter, Elizabeth, who, since 1664, had been married to John Bluet of Holcombe Rogus, Devon. He also made a small bequest of some land to the poor of West Harptree and of his copy of John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (the ‘Book of Martyrs’) to the parish church.46PROB11/357/526; Brown, Abstracts of Som. Wills, v. 72-3; Collinson, Som. ii. 143; Som. RO, D/PC/w.harp/6/3/3. His will also provided that, in the event of Elizabeth Bluet dying childless, the estates were to pass to his cousin, Charles Buckland of Lewes, Surrey. That is what eventually happened.47VCH Som. iv. 87.