BABER, John (1594-1644), of Wells, Som. and Lincoln’s Inn, Mdx.

The Wells corporation did not look far when selecting their junior MP for the 1640 Short Parliament. John Baber was their recorder and had represented them in the previous Parliament. The son of a Gloucestershire clergyman and the grandson of an Elizabethan bishop of Exeter, Baber was a Wells-based barrister who had by the late 1620s become one of the leading figures in that city’s affairs. His term as MP in 1628 had been most notable for the fact that the Commons had suspended him over permission he had given for soldiers to be billeted in Wells at the time of the Île de Ré expedition in 1627. Baber refused to apologise after the Commons decided that he had lacked the authority to grant that permission.16Commons Debates, 1628 (New Haven and London, 1977-8), iii. 441, iv. 350, 352; CJ i. 881a, 906b, 914b. This case would be cited as a precedent by William Strode I* in a debate in May 1641 over whether those who collected taxes which had not been authorised by Parliament should be declared delinquents.17Procs. LP iv. 561, 566.

Nor had Baber’s relations with the Wells corporation been any smoother. His feud with one member of the corporation, Bartholomew Cox, who was also the chapter clerk of the cathedral, had brought him into conflict in 1628 with the then-bishop, William Laud. His conflicts with Cox still rumbled on into the early 1630s. He clashed with another colleague, Richard Borne, in 1633. In February of that year Baber reported to the corporation on the plans by Lord Chief Justice Richardson (Thomas Richardson†) to enforce the suppression of alehouses within Somerset, a policy that would soon bring Richardson into conflict with Laud. Baber evidently thought that those plans were a good thing. But other members of the corporation disagreed. Borne denounced Baber on the grounds that ‘you have been a hot gamester you cannot throw but at all’ and that he was ‘but a puny’.18Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 604-5. As a student at Lincoln’s Inn 15 years earlier, Baber had been involved in a stabbing incident with another student (possibly Thomas Webb*), so Borne might have been making some sort of insinuation about Baber’s own boisterousness.19LI Black Bks. ii. 199, 200, 201, 204-5. Baber walked out of the meeting.20Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 605. Over the next year he pursued Borne, petitioning the privy council, twice placing him under arrest and suing him in the court of king’s bench.21Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 634-5. In what may have been an unrelated matter, the corporation publicly distanced themselves from Baber in 1634 when he tried to bring a presentment against Bishop William Piers to the Wells grand jury for blocking up the water gate of the episcopal palace.22Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 640-1. Five years later Baber embarked on a dispute with the Somerset justices of the peace as to whether they had jurisdiction within the city of Wells. At the Chard assizes in March 1639, Lord Chief Justice Finch (John Finch†) ordered Baber to present a summary of his case at the next quarter sessions as a preliminary to hearings before him in the Easter term.23Som. Assize Orders 1629-40, 44. As that case was probably based on an overoptimistic reading of the Wells corporation charter, Baber’s efforts got nowhere.24T.G. Barnes, Som. 1625-1640 (Harvard, 1961), 48n.

Meanwhile Baber was also building up a local practice as a lawyer in and around Wells. Despite the 1634 dispute with Bishop Piers, he was retained as counsel to the cathedral from 1636.25HMC Wells, ii. 417. The following year Sir Philip Percivalle* employed him as the steward of his manor of Burton, having been assured that Baber was ‘willing and diligent’, although by 1639 he had come to doubt this.26HMC Egmont, i. 94, 108. In 1638 Sir Edward Rodeney*, in his capacity as vice-admiral of Somerset, recommended him for appointment as judge of his vice-admiralty court.27CSP Dom. 1637-8. p. 179. In this period Baber also acted from time to time as counsel in cases before the Somerset assizes.28Som. Assize Orders 1629-40, 5, 31, 47.

In mid-December 1639 Baber put himself forward ‘as recorder’ as a candidate at Wells in the forthcoming parliamentary election. The corporation agreed and on 19 March 1640 elected him along with Rodeney.29Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 774, 781. In the meantime, he had been courting political controversy in London. On 24 February 1640 Charles Jones*, as the Lent reader at Lincoln’s Inn, had raised the issue of whether the secretaries of state were entitled to seats in the House of Lords. Given that this was in the middle of a general election and that neither of the current secretaries (Sir Francis Windebanke* and Sir Henry Vane I*) were peers, this was sensitive stuff. Baber and Richard Taylor† had responded to Jones by arguing that the secretaries had no ex officio right to sit and could only do so if they received peerages or were summoned by writs. Unsurprisingly, a report on this was quickly passed on to Windebanke’s secretary, Robert Reade*, by one of his informants.30CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 485-6.

When the Short Parliament met, Baber was included on the committee for privileges (16 Apr.).31CJ ii. 4a. He then took part in the discussion by that committee on 21 April about the Bere Alston election dispute, seemingly supporting the view that John Harris I* had been properly returned. He made the same point when this matter was discussed by the Commons as a whole on 28 April.32Aston’s Diary, 78, 151. His other known contribution was when the Commons was considering the bill to avoid abuses of common recoveries against infants on 21 April. Baber proposed that it should be ‘enlarged for fines’.33Aston’s Diary, 23.

Later that year Baber once again put himself forward as a candidate at Wells. But this time he faced competition from Sir Ralph Hopton*, who proved to be a more appealing choice. The Wells corporation elected Hopton and Rodeney, not Baber, on 17 October.34Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 795-6. Baber reacted badly to this decision. From this point he stopped attending their meetings. Then, on 24 December, he informed the corporation that he wished to resign as one of the chief burgesses. They considered this message on 18 January 1641 and gave the impression of accepting it.35Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 802. But he was still the recorder and they consulted him the following April as to whether some disputed Ship Money payments should be reimbursed. He thought they should.36Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 804. Relations subsequently deteriorated even further. On 15 August the corporation agreed to begin preparing a list of grievances against him. Four days later Baber repeated his request to be allowed to resign as a chief burgess and the decision of the previous January was confirmed.37Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 811-13. However, this was not the only group of colleagues with whom he had fallen out. Earlier that year he had been appointed as Lent reader by the benchers of Lincoln’s Inn. He refused to accept this role and so on 4 February 1641 he had been dismissed from the bench.38LI Black Bks. ii. 357; Baker, Readers and Readings, 141. This cannot have done much for his professional reputation. In contrast, when he was appointed as a subsidy commissioner for Somerset by the Long Parliament that same year, he willingly accepted those duties and so assisted in the collection of that tax.39SR; Som. Protestation Returns, 221, 274, 281.

At that point he was still living in Wells, for he was assessed there to pay £4 for his own subsidy assessment.40Som. Protestation Returns, 273. But soon after he moved away, perhaps to save face. By October 1643, when the king added him to the Somerset commission of the peace, he was living at Newton St Loe, close to Bath and 15 miles from Wells.41QS Recs. Commonwealth, p. xx. That reappointment as a justice of the peace also indicates that he was regarded by the royalists as a friend. He was among local men brought on to the commission at that time to strengthen the royalist position within the county following their recent takeover. Their confidence in his support was well placed. In February 1644 he was among the justices who, headed by Sir Thomas Bridges, the governor of Bath, wrote to the constables of Wells ordering them to impose a rate to pay for gunpowder for the royalist garrison at Bristol.42Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 863-4. Two months later, on 13 April, Baber and Edward Wykes wrote to them again demanding that they raise £100 for the king’s army. Just to make sure that this was obeyed, Baber turned up at the next day’s meeting of the Wells corporation, the first time he had done so since October 1640.43Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 864-5.

His attendance at that meeting is the last record of him alive. Some time before 8 July 1644, when the Wells corporation met to chose a new recorder, Baber died. His replacement as recorder was Wykes.44Wells Convocation Acts Bks. ii. 867. He left no will and it was not until June 1646 that his father-in-law, William Walrond, was able to obtain a grant of administration on his estate. The duty of winding up Baber’s affairs fell to Walrond because Baber’s three children, John, Mary and Elizabeth, were still minors. Baber’s wife was presumably already dead. The grant to Walrond indicates that, at the time of his death, Baber had been living at Bath.45Brown, Abstracts of Som. Wills, v. 106. His son, John (1625-1704), at that stage still a student at Christ Church, Oxford, went on to become one of the most eminent physicians in late-seventeenth century London. In 1661 he was knighted and became one of Charles II’s royal physicians. Those court connections and his own nonconformist religious sympathies allowed him to become a crucial link between Charles II’s government and the dissenting leadership, but did not take him into Parliament.46‘Sir John Baber’, Oxford DNB.