BAMPFYLDE, Sir Coplestone, 2nd bt. (c.1636-92), of Poltimore, Devon.

Competing alternative dates for Bampfylde’s birth are suggested by modern authorities, but the parish registers for both Poltimore and Tamerton Foliot have not survived.21CB ii. 101; HP Commons 1660-1690; Oxford DNB. John Prince seems confident that Bampfylde was born in 1636, beginning and concluding his memoir of him with compatible dates of birth and death.22Prince, Worthies (1701), 121, 125. Bampfylde went up to Oxford following the death of his father and after he had inherited the baronetcy. He evidently cut a dashing figure at his college, indulging in ‘a very generous and splendid way of living there’.23Prince, Worthies (1701), 122. After going down, apparently without taking a degree, he left a gift of plate to Corpus. The home at Poltimore to which he returned was under the supervision of Bampfylde’s mother, Lady Gertrude, who as late as 1657 was still bringing up four sons and four daughters who were under age. The household was a godly one, and Lady Gertrude favoured the minister of Poltimore, Ambrose Clare, who in 1648 had signed the Presbyterian Joint-Testimonie of the Ministers of Devon.24PROB11/284/454; Calamy Revised, 116-7. John Prince, who had every reason to emphasise Bampfylde’s royalist sympathies, recounts a story that he was forced to hide at Trill, a house of Sir John Drake†, from soldiers or other agents of the government during the 1650s.25Prince, Worthies (1701), 122. There seems no other source for this assertion, and it has to be set against the apparent lack of interest shown in him by Major-general John Disbrowe’s* commissioners during the heightened state of security, 1655-7.26Add. 34012; Add. 19516. Indeed, Bampfylde was included in the Devon commission of the peace at the very time that any doubts about him would have been acted upon. His uncle, the Presbyterian Thomas Bampfylde*, Speaker in 1659, remained close enough to the family at Poltimore to be named with Sir Coplestone as a guardian of the remaining children in minority when Lady Gertrude drew up her will in 1657.27PROB11/284/454.

Bampfylde’s election to the 1659 Parliament for Tiverton has been attributed to the influence of his uncle, then soon to be Speaker. It is just as likely that he was able to mobilize the same interest that had returned (Sir) Peter Balle* as early as 1626 and John Elford* in 1646, which was a shared family history through the ancient Devon family of Coplestone.28Vis. Devon 1620 (Harl. Soc. vi), 70-1. Two competing returns were made from the borough, but both named Bampfylde in the first of the two seats, so his election was never in serious doubt when the House reviewed the case on 10 March.29CJ vii. 612b. On his first coming in, he was named to the committee on elections and privileges (28 Jan.), but this proved to be his only appointment until 14 April. On that day, he was named with Sir John Copleston* to consider how records at Worcester House should be removed and best stored. That day he was also a teller in a motion on communicating with the Other House on the details of a fast day. The republicans sought to instruct the Wiltshire Presbyterian, Thomas Grove, as messenger from their House, to deliver his message and return without waiting for a reply, but Bampfylde and Arthur Annesley told for the majority that still sought to make the Humble Petition work.30CJ vii. 639a, 639b.

After the closure of this Parliament, Bampfylde returned to Devon and seems not to have involved himself in active royalist plotting. However, both he and his uncle, Thomas Bampfylde, were prominent in framing the Devon petition of 13 January 1660 which called for the return of the Members secluded in 1648 to the Long Parliament. The signatories included William Morice*, Sir John Northcote* and John Fowell*, and the petition was presented to the revived Rump Parliament by Thomas Bampfylde.31Prince, Worthies (1701), 123; A Letter from Exeter (1660, 669.f.22); Som. RO, DD Baker/9/3/3. George Thomason picked up his copy of the published version in London on 18 January. On the 23rd, George Monck* replied from Leicester to their letter, denying that monarchical government would ever be practicable in future, because of the diversity of the civil and ecclesiastical interest groups which had to be comprehended within any viable settlement. He urged the Devonians to ‘desist’ from their lobbying.32A Collection of Several Letters and Declarations sent by General Monck (1660), 12-14. This response must have encouraged the leading Rumpers to attack the Devon ringleaders. On 7 February, the Rump issued a warrant for Sir Coplestone, Sir John Northcote and Sir William Courtenay† to be arrested and brought to London. Bampfylde was confined to the Tower. On the same day, the Committee for Plundered Ministers was required to send for the minister of Barnstaple, Martin Blake, to ascertain whether he had spoken against Parliament, as was alleged. The informant was probably Sir John Copleston, a long-standing opponent of Blake’s.33CJ vii. 836a. Bampfylde, Northcote and Courtenay were conspicuously absent from the list of the self-styled ‘king’s party’ who signed a further declaration of the gentry praising Monck as a means of ‘deliverance’ for the country.34The Declaration of the King’s Party (1660).

The exiled royalist court took note of the arrest of Bampfylde, Northcote and Courtenay.35CCSP iv. 551. Monck, meanwhile, maintained a studious indifference to their fate. His apologist soon afterwards characterised his behaviour as motivated by concern for the greater public good: he took ‘no care for the liberty of few imprisoned persons, lest he should lose the opportunity of redeeming an enslaved nation’.36D. Lloyd, Modern Policy Compleated (1660), 31 (2nd pag.). Their period in custody was in any case brief. Having been by this time joined by the secluded Members, on 21 February the Parliament ordered their release.37CJ vii. 847b. By 9 March, Bampfylde, his fellow former prisoners and Robert Rolle* were providing information to Sir Edward Hyde*on the planned dissolution of Parliament, having become openly supportive of the king.38Bodl. Clarendon 70, f. 110. In the autumn, Bampfylde was an obvious choice as a reliable if flamboyant sheriff; he and Sir William Courtenay rode around Devon with a retinue of 120 soldiers disarming ill-affected persons in much the same style as Sir John Copleston had adopted during the Cromwellian regimes.39Prince, Worthies (1701), 124; Polwhele, Devonshire, i. 308. In May 1661, he and his men reasserted their commitment to monarchy and episcopacy.40Mercurius Publicus no. 21 (23-30 May 1661), 325-8.

Barred by his shrieval term from standing in the Cavalier Parliament, Bampfylde had to wait until 1671 to return to the Commons. He generally supported the court interest and was named to 30 committees. Unlike his uncle, Thomas Bampfylde, whose piety took him into theological speculation on the true sabbath, Sir Coplestone was rumoured to be both a heavy drinker and involved in an irregular liaison with a London courtesan.41HP Commons 1660-1690. His tory politics kept him out of the Exclusion Parliaments, but he came into the House again in 1685. He was by this time considered in Devon not only to be a popular figure at court, but also to enjoy a substantial local following. The under sheriff reported to his superior officer that more than ten voters to one were ready to sign the indenture returning Bampfylde.42Devon RO, Pine Coffin MSS, Letter Bk. E, E. Prideaux to R. Coffin, 23 Apr. 1685; Letter Bk. D, T. Northmore to R. Coffin, 8 May 1685. He gave over command of the Devon militia to his son at the time of the Monmouth rebellion, but his Anglican principles prevented him from accepting concessions to Roman Catholics, and he lost office. He was willing to receive William of Orange as a means of protecting the existing dispensation in church and state, but could not accept William and Mary as sovereign, and suffered the indignity of seeing his property distrained for non-payment of taxes.43Prince, Worthies (1701), 124. A modern authority asserts that he died in 1692 intestate and in debt, but his will was proved at the Principal Devon Registry on 2 May that year.44Oxford DNB. Bampfylde’s son was killed in a riding accident, but his grandson, Sir Coplestone Warwick Bampfylde, ‘a drunken country gentleman’, sat for Exeter and Devon from 1710 as a Jacobite.45HP Commons 1715-1754.