BREWSTER, Francis II (1624-71), of Wrentham, Suff.

Francis Brewster reached maturity during the early 1640s. His family’s enthusiastic support for Parliament would have made service in the parliamentarian armies an obvious option for him and it may well be that he was able to fit in such service between his time at Cambridge and his admission to Gray’s Inn in May 1646 (when the first civil war was clearly drawing to a close). By the time his marriage took place in October 1648, the dispute between the king and Parliament was approaching its conclusion.12Al. Cant.; GI Adm.; E. Anglian Misc. (1908), 65; Norf. RO, NRS 18782. The Brewsters conformed to interregnum governments and over the next few years Francis Brewster joined his father on most of the local Suffolk commissions.13A. and O.; C193/13/4, f. 94; CUL, MS Dd.VIII.1, f. 100; C181/6, pp. 292, 343, 361.

It was the family’s newly established hold over the Dunwich corporation, which was just one element in their high profile in north-east Suffolk during the 1650s, which made it possible for Francis to become an MP in the 1656 Parliament. Attending the county poll on 20 August, the day before the Dunwich corporation met to assign their seat, Francis saw his father elected as one of ten Suffolk MPs and it was his name which headed the list of local notables who then had the honour of signing the county’s election return.14C219/45, no. 3. His father’s success in gaining one of the county seats then left the corporation at Dunwich with a vacancy to fill - that seat having been occupied by Robert Brewster following the two most recent elections in the borough. Francis was the obvious replacement and so gained the seat without a challenge.15Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE6/3/4, f. 66v. There is no doubt that it was this Francis Brewster, not his uncle, Francis Brewster I*, who was elected.16C219/45, no. 3: Dunwich election return, 21 Aug. 1656; Bodl. Tanner 226, p. 45. Once returned, he made little use of his brief period in the Commons. Apart from his appointment to the committee for the bill for St Andrew’s, Holborn (16 Mar. 1657), the possible mentions of Francis Brewster in the Journals are all far more likely to refer to his father.17CJ vii. 450a, 475a, 485a, 488b, 490a, 497b, 504b. Either he or his father was absent in late December 1656.18Burton’s Diary, i. 287. Robert, not Francis, supported the moves to make Oliver Cromwell* king.19A Narrative of the late Parliament (so called) (1657), 22 (E.935.5). In the 1659 Parliament his father obtained official support for the efforts to raise money to assist the inhabitants of Southwold following a fire in the town. Francis then assisted the fund-raising efforts in Suffolk.20E. Anglian, n.s. v. (1893-4), 381.

Like his father, Brewster was removed from all the local offices he held at the Restoration. In early 1660 he transported nine passengers from Ostend shipwrecked near Wrentham to the local gaol, in what was probably one of the last duties he was called upon to perform as a magistrate.21CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 400. Brewster’s exclusion from office could not have come as a surprise. To a family with their Independent traditions, the revival of episcopacy doubtless confirmed to the Brewsters that events after 1660 were moving in the wrong direction. At some point after 1664, however, Brewster seems to have been named once again as a justice of the peace. Part of the thinking behind this appointment is likely to have been that, following the death of his father in February 1663, he was now head of the family. This attempt to give him the benefit of the doubt soon created problems. In January 1669 it was reported that he was the leading opponent among the Suffolk justices of the peace to the indictment for recusancy of certain local nonconformists.22CSP Dom. 1668-9, p. 159. One of the physicians who attended Brewster during his final illness was William Lloyd, who also acted as a nonconformist preacher in Ipswich, and a year after Francis’s death the Brewsters supported the licensing of a dissenting congregation at Wrentham.23Cent. Kent. Stud. U951/F15, unfol.; C.M. Hood, ‘An E. Anglian contemporary of Pepys’, Norf. Arch. xxii. 174; Al. Cant. iii. 96; Orig. Recs. of Early Nonconformity ed. G.L. Turner (1911-14), i. 269. However, whatever his own religious beliefs, Francis had been employed by the dean and chapter of Norwich Cathedral in 1662 to recover rents from a tenant on their lands at Hindolveston which had previously been bought by his father.24Suff. RO (Ipswich), EE2/Z/2.

By the late 1660s one of the regular visitors to Wrentham was Sir Philip Skippon†, whose late father, Philip Skippon*, had been the distinguished parliamentarian general. The outcome of these visits was the marriage in April 1669 of Skippon to Brewster’s eldest daughter, Amy.25‘Skippon fam.’, Misc. Her. et Gen. n.s. i. 39. The diary kept by Skippon during these years recorded little information about these visits: just about the only details he noted down were observations concerning the Brewsters’ pet tortoise.26CKS, U951/F15, unfol.; Hood, ‘E. Anglian contemporary’, 162-72. In 1668 another visitor to Wrentham was Sir John Pettus† and support from the Brewsters may help explain Pettus’ election as MP for Dunwich in March 1670.27CKS, U951/F15, unfol.; Hood, ‘E. Anglian contemporary’, 162.

In the second week of May 1671 Brewster, accompanied by Skippon, travelled up to London. On the return journey Brewster developed a ‘feverish distemper’ and so decided to spend several days recovering in the house of Robert Snelling at Ipswich. Early indications that he was recovering proved to be misleading. He died at Ipswich early in the afternoon of 3 June 1671.28CKS, U951/F15, unfol. The funeral took place at Wrentham three days later.29‘Extracts from the Wrentham regs.’, Misc. Her. et Gen. n.s. ii. 401. Nothing is known of what provisions, if any, Brewster made for the disposal of his estate after his death. The claim on debts owed to him, amounting to £470, passed to his wife.30PROB11/360/536. He had, as yet, no surviving male descendants and the lands at Wrentham passed to his uncle, Humphrey.31E. Anglian Misc. (1907), 69, 70; Copinger, Manors of Suff. ii. 212, 217. Brewster's grandson, Philip Skippon†, who was not born until 1675, twice sat for Sudbury during the reign of Queen Anne.