BARNHAM, William (d. 1675), of St Peter Hungate, Norwich, Norf.

On his death in 1675 Barnham left money to help poor boys from Thetford become apprentices in Norwich, raising a strong possibility that Thetford was his birthplace.22Norf. RO, Norwich archdeaconry ct. will 1676-7, ff. 96-102. A claim that he was a younger son of Sir Francis Barnham*, born in London in 1613, is spurious.23J. Burke and J.B. Burke, Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies (1838), 42; Reg. of…St Martin in the Fields, ed. T. Mason (Harl. Soc. xxv), 44. Barnham’s own apprenticeship to a Norwich hosier, William Gardner, had been the first step in his business career in Norwich. He was admitted as a freeman of the city on 1 June 1618.24Millican, Reg. Freemen Norwich, 86. During the 1630s he held a number of minor public offices, including that of churchwarden of St Peter Hungate.25Index to Norwich City Officers, 13; Rye, Norwich Rate Bk. 54. His assessment of 1d for the poor rate in 1634 suggests only modest means.26Rye, Norwich Rate Bk. 54.

He joined the Norwich corporation as a common councilman in 1644.27Index to Norwich City Officers, 13. Divisions within it came to the fore in March 1648 when a royalist, Roger Mingay, was elected as an alderman, prompting the Commons to summon the mayor, John Utting, to London to explain himself. A major riot in support of Utting erupted in Norwich on 24 April. Two days later a majority of the common councilmen, including Barnham, voted to expel Mingay.28J.T. Evans, Seventeenth-Century Norwich (Oxford, 1979), 181, 233. The Rump blamed Utting and John Tolye* for the riot and voted on 9 October 1649 to disable both men from holding any public offices.29CJ vi. 304b. In the interim, Barnham, who had since served as joint sheriff and thus become eligible for promotion to the aldermanic bench, succeeded Utting as alderman for the South Conisford ward.30Index to Norwich City Officers, pp. xxv, xxix, 13; Evans, Seventeenth-Century Norwich, 233. However, this seems not to have gone unchallenged. For reasons that remain unclear, Barnham and Thomas Toft were removed as aldermen by 1650, but by April 1651 Barnham had been re-elected as an alderman, this time for the Berstreet ward.31Evans, Seventeenth-Century Norwich, 187n; Index to Norwich City Officers, pp. xxx, 13. The following year he served his turn as mayor.32Index to Norwich City Officers, pp. xxv, 13; Cozens-Hardy and Kent, Mayors of Norwich, 87. A portrait of him in his civic robes survives in the collection of the city council.33Norwich Castle Museum, Civic Portrait 80: F. As a senior member of the corporation, he now began to be routinely included by Parliament on the local commissions for the city and for the county.34A. and O.

Barnham was elected as MP for Norwich along with John Hobart* on 17 January 1659. His only known contribution to this Parliament came on 10 February, when he spoke in the debate on the bill to confirm Richard Cromwell* as lord protector. His support for a vote on whether to commit the bill immediately, suggests that he shared the fears of some that MPs would otherwise become bogged down in debates about the protector’s status and powers.35Burton’s Diary, iii. 198.

In early 1660 Barnham signed the Norfolk address to George Monck* for a free Parliament.36Address from Gentry of Norf. ed. Rye, 30. When that Parliament was summoned, Barnham was re-elected as MP for Norwich, but heavily defeated at the general election of 1661 and ceased to be appointed to any of the local commissions. In 1662 he was purged from the Norwich corporation by the commissioners implementing the Corporations Act. Re-elected as an alderman in 1664 and 1668, he refused the oaths of office.37Evans, Seventeenth-Century Norwich, 238, 246. He was buried at St John Maddermarket, Norwich, on 22 March 1675.38Vis. Norf. 1563, ii. 284. ‘Hoping to be saved only by and through the merits and mediation of Jesus’, he made extensive charitable bequests in his will, including £5 to 12 ‘nonconformist outed ministers’. As his wife had predeceased him and as they had no children, the main beneficiaries were two of his kinsmen, the brothers Thomas and John Barnham, who received his lands at Horsham St Faith and Beeston. Hobart, his ‘faithful friend’, was appointed as one of the supervisors of the will.39Norf. RO, Norwich archdeaconry ct. will 1676-7, ff. 96-102.