BALDWIN, John (d. 1691), of Wendover, Bucks. and Hillingdon, Mdx.

Uncertainty surrounds John Baldwin’s origins. He might have been the son and heir of the late Thomas Baldwin of Cholesbury, admitted to the Middle Temple in April 1642.22M. Temple Admiss. i. 140; MTR ii. 921; HP Commons 1660-1690. These Baldwins were a long established Buckinghamshire family which produced Sir John Baldwin, chief justice of common pleas under Henry VIII.23C.C. Baldwin, ‘Notes on the ancestry of Sylvester Baldwin’, New Eng. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. xxvi. 295-303. The Baldwins of Aston Clinton, who included George Baldwin*, were another branch of the same family. There was another ‘John Baldwine’ who witnessed the deeds in 1626 by which Henry Cromwell† of Upwood (uncle of John Hampden*) transferred his lands in Huntingdonshire to his nephew, Henry Cromwell of Ramsey (father of Henry Cromwell alias Williams*).24Add. Ch. 53656-53666. But that must have been John Baldwin (d. 1657) of Great Staughton, Huntingdonshire, who could not himself have been the MP.25H.G. Watson, A Hist. of the Par. of Great Staughton, Hunts. (St Neots, 1916), 19.

The latter is first securely recorded as a servant of John Hampden*. When Hampden drew up his will in 1636, he singled Baldwin out for special favour, leaving him £50 and recommending that he should be paid 20 marks a year for as long as he remained in the service of his heir.26PROB11/200/541. Baldwin was still working for Hampden at the outbreak of the civil war, when he received money from Parliament to cover Hampden’s expenses as a colonel in the parliamentarian army.27SP28/1a, ff. 161, 172; SP28/1c, f. 181; CJ ii. 755b. In the same capacity, he helped organise the Buckinghamshire collections for the relief of Irish Protestants, paying in £331 10s on behalf of the sheriff of Buckinghamshire, Richard Grenville*, between April and June 1642.28Bucks. Contributions for Ireland, 108-9; SP28/ 151: answer of Chalfont St. Peter, [?1646]. That he was also the Mr Baldwin who had been acting as clerk to the commissioners who had been negotiating with the Scottish commissioners in London is less certain, but is plausible since Hampden was a leading supporter of those negotiations.29CJ ii. 657a. This would also explain why Sir William Armyne* later consulted Baldwin during the Oxford negotiations between the king and Parliament in 1643 on questions concerning earlier agreements with the Scots.30CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 449.

As Hampden’s servant, Baldwin handled payments to him totalling over £2,200 during the early months of the civil war.31SP28/2a, ff. 277, 296; SP28/2b, ff. 361, 456, 531, 532, 701; SP28/3a, f. 157. However, almost immediately he was recruited by the lord general, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, to act as his secretary. He countersigned one of Essex’s army warrants as early as October 1642.32SP28/2b, f. 456. Later that year he processed the money and plate received under Worcester propositions.33SP28/4, f. 177. Evidently useful now that he was near the heart of the army’s administration, he continued to receive money for Hampden until the latter’s death in June 1643, as well as for other army officers from the Buckinghamshire area, including Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, Arthur Goodwin*, Henry Bulstrode† and Sir Robert Pye II*.34SP28/3b, f. 493; SP28/4, ff. 230, 289, 324, 333; SP28/5, ff. 6, 7, 8, 11; SP28/7, ff. 84, 431, 432, 442, 450.

By the autumn of 1643 Baldwin’s role as Essex’s secretary had been formalised so that he received a salary of 10s a day from Parliament.35SP28/10, f. 148; SP28/11, f. 330; SP28/12, f. 91; SP28/15, ff. 155, 201; SP28/17, ff. 74, 293; SP28/18, f. 135; SP28/19, f. 63; SP28/20, f. 61; SP28/21, f. 170. He employed a clerk of his own, Thomas Cozen, to perform some of those duties.36SP28/15, f. 151. Essex’s own salary was also usually paid via Baldwin.37SP28/8, f. 242; SP28/9, f. 270; SP28/10, f. 149; SP28/11, f. 346; SP28/12, f. 333; SP28/15, ff. 134, 155; SP28/17, ff. 75, 138, 318; SP28/19, ff. 64, 97; SP28/20, f. 79; SP28/21, f. 172. Occasionally, he was able to authorise payments in Essex’s absence.38SP28/10, ff. 264, 277-8; SP28/11, f. 35; SP28/12, f. 130. At other times he was used to chase up payments from the treasurer, Sir Gilbert Gerard*.39CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 667. It seems that Baldwin was usually with Essex when he was in the field. Baldwin’s letter from Chipping Norton on 3 September 1643, read to the Commons three days later, reported that Essex’s soldiers were ‘very cheerful and resolute’.40Harl. 165, f. 169v. His next letter, written on 22 September, brought Parliament the news of the outcome of the first battle of Newbury.41CJ iii. 252b; Harl. 165, f. 197v. He probably also accompanied Essex on the disastrous campaign in the west country in 1644.42Harl. 166, f. 65v; SP28/15, f. 151; SP28/151: Anne Waller and others to John Baldwin, [?Apr. 1647]. By then he was also referred to as the secretary of the council of war, although this probably did not involve any real change to his duties.43SP28/17, f. 74. Sir Oliver Luke* was advised by his son, Sir Samuel Luke* in November 1644 to consult Baldwin about getting his recommendations for appointments to the commission of the peace raised in the Commons.44Luke Letter Bks. 75. The Lukes also knew to go via Baldwin when they wanted to obtain military commissions from Essex for officers under their commands.45Luke Letter Bks. 195, 232, 242, 249, 514. Essex’s resignation as lord general following the passage of the Self-Denying Ordinance in April 1645 terminated Baldwin’s involvement in army administration. The following month he was summoned to appear before the Committee of Both Kingdoms to account for the cost of the army’s trumpeters.46CSP Dom. 1644-5, p. 484; 1645-7, p. 2.

The decision by Parliament to appoint Baldwin as gentleman porter of the Tower in September 1645 was probably intended to recompense him for the loss of his lucrative military role.47CJ iv. 265a, 265b; LJ vii. 571a; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 115. He was now in charge of the 40 yeomen warders and deputised for the lieutenant of the Tower in his absence.48D. Wilson, The Tower 1078-1978 (1978), 79, 176. At Baldwin’s request, the grant was confirmed in 1648 with a patent under the great seal.49CJ v. 459b, 643a, 645a. He continued to hold the position throughout the 1650s.50CSP Dom. 1651-2, p. 489; 1653-4, p. 310; SP18/182, f. 210. In 1649 he was also acting as surveyor of the lands which formerly belonged to the dean and chapter of Westminster Abbey.51SP18/11, ff. 103, 115. In the autumn of 1658 he recommended an ex-soldier, Daniel Mason, who had served under Hampden, for mourning clothing following the death of Oliver Cromwell*.52SP18/183, ff. 115v, 120.

By 1651 Baldwin had probably settled at Hillingdon. He was added to the local commission of the peace in September that year and from 1652 Parliament included him on the Middlesex assessment commission.53C 231/6, p. 224; CJ vii. 228b; A. and O. He was certainly living there in 1654.54J.H. Thomas, ‘Parish regs. in the Uxbridge deanery’, The Antiquary, xviii. 20; Mdx. Par. Regs. Marr. ed. W.P.W. Phillimore and T. Gurney (1910), ii. 17. Two years later he married his first wife, Elizabeth Axtell, there.55Hillingdon par. reg. Also in 1656 he acted as receiver-general for the collection of the decimation tax in Middlesex and Westminster, a role that suggests that he was a loyal supporter of the protectorate.56TSP iv. 406, 771.

However, Baldwin had not broken his ties with Buckinghamshire, which, in any case, was immediately adjacent to Hillingdon. By 1648 he had purchased the manor of Wendover, which had originally belonged to Sir Walter Pye*, from George Gosnold and Robert Style.57Bucks. RO, D/X 986/2; Lipscombe, Buckingham, ii. 475-6; VCH Bucks. iii. 25. (Style was probably related to Baldwin’s sister-in-law, Jane Style.)58PROB11/406/495. He is said to have donated the land for the town’s new Baptist meeting house.59L.H. West, The Hist. of Wendover in the Co. of Buckingham (Aylesbury, [1909]), 46. As lord of the manor, he was well placed to get elected as MP for the borough for Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament in 1659.

On 17 March an anonymous informant passed on to him the evidence that Ralph Suckley*, the MP for Higham Ferrers, had been living at Oxford during the civil war and thus potentially ineligible to sit in Parliament. The informant asked that either Baldwin or his fellow Buckinghamshire MP, John Biscoe*, should raise the matter in the Commons.60TSP vii. 633. If they did do so, nothing came of the matter. Nor can any other activity by Baldwin during the 1659 Parliament be discerned. The various interventions by ‘Mr Baldwin’ were more probably made by Samuel Baldwyn*.61Burton’s Diary, iv. 159, 244, 253, 360-1, 393, 412.

In 1660 Baldwin was again elected as MP for Wendover. In the Convention he was considered to be an ally of the Presbyterians. Out of step with the restored monarchy, he lost his job as gentleman porter and ceased to be appointed to local office. Later that year he sold his manorial rights at Wendover to Hampden’s son, Richard*.62VCH Bucks. iii. 25; Lipscombe, Buckingham, ii. 476. In 1663 an informer reported to the secretary of state that Richard Hampden and his wife had visited Baldwin at Uxbridge, the implication being that they were engaged in anti-government plotting. That source also thought that Baldwin was ‘a profound dunce’.63CSP Ire. 1663-5, p. 79. In later years Baldwin lived at Hillingdon and he was buried there when he died in 1691.64Hillingdon par. reg. Towards the end of his life he sold some of his lands at Harmondsworth and West Drayton and other parts of his estates were mortgaged to Samuel Reynardson. His properties at Hillingdon were left to his wife, Mary, as a life interest, with his only surviving child, Jane, wife of Solomon Parker, as the ultimate beneficiary.65PROB11/406/495.