BENCE, John (1622-88), of Bevis Marks, London.

As the son of Alexander Bence, MP for Aldeburgh in the Long Parliament, John Bence was born into the most important merchant dynasty in the Suffolk coastal town. Whereas the sons of John Bence†, his father’s eldest brother, had made the transition to minor gentry status, the other branches of the family were still no more than merchants, although, of them, Alexander Bence was the most prosperous.

There being several John Bences in the family, it is difficult to say if the future MP was the merchant of that name active during the 1640s and 1650s, but he was apparently too young to be the naval victualler between 1642 and 1649.22CJ iii. 345a; Harl. 165, f. 245; Bodl. Rawl. A.220, ff. 17v, 53v, 55, 64v, 84; Rawl. A.221, ff. 89v, 98v, 148v, 157v, 165, 176, 180v-181, 191, 199; Rawl. A.222, ff. 24, 37, 44v, 50v, 53; CSP Dom. 1644, p. 553; LJ vii. 452a-453a; HMC 6th Rep. 65; Bodl. Rawl. A.224, ff. 30, 50v, 94. Our MP was just 20 years old in 1642 and he did not become a freeman of the Grocers, his father’s livery company, until 1647.23GL, MS 11592A, unfol.; MS 11588/4, pp. 204-5, 313, 314. The victualler was far more likely to have been the merchant John Bence who served as bailiff of Aldeburgh several times during the 1640s, who may have been a cousin of Bence’s grandfather, and who was still alive in 1647.24Aldeburgh Poll Tax, 1641 ed. A.T. Winn (Colchester, 1926), 10; HMC Var. iv. 308; Hill, Thorington, ped. This man was probably the one named to Aldeburgh commission of gaol delivery in December 1645.25C181/5, f. 265v. However, the future MP can be positively identified as the person appointed by Parliament in December 1646 to the commission (no doubt in the navy) which had become vacant through the death of Capt. John Morris. By the same order, his father, Alexander Bence was appointed to succeed Morris in the navy commission.26CJ v. 14a. It could also well be he who sought permission in 1651 to transport lead to New England and who petitioned the council of state again, on a matter unknown, in February 1653.27CSP Dom. 1651, p. 99; 1652-3, pp. 147, 153. Possibly he was the man who served on successive Aldeburgh assessment commissions between June 1647 and June 1657.28A. and O. His first marriage, to the daughter of a London merchant, which took place some time between October 1650 and November 1653, no doubt brought commercial advantages and it is significant that his bride’s mother was the half-sister of his father’s close friend and political colleague, the leading City draper, Samuel Vassall*.29London Vis. 1664, 19; Vis. London 1633, 1634 and 1635, ii. 308; PROB11/213/681; Regs. Allhallows London Wall, 306. Not until after the Restoration and his father’s death, however, does the evidence begin to provide a clear picture of his business activities.

At the 1659 elections, Aldeburgh’s Long Parliament MP, Alexander Bence, apparently did not stand anywhere, thereby making way for his son. Duly returned to Westminster, the younger Bence made his mark in debates on the composition of this Parliament, the issue which dominated its proceedings. On 2 March he spoke in favour of recognizing the Other House on the grounds of caution, objecting to the idea that ‘the persons that have deserved so well should be excluded from their right. Possession is eleven points of the law. The gentlemen that are in possession, you cannot get them out by force, but by a wile’.30Burton’s Diary, iii. 587-8. However, he argued that there was a case for allowing those former peers who had supported Parliament during the civil war to sit by virtue of their original rights.31Burton’s Diary, iii. 588. On 21 March, during the debate on whether those elected for Scottish constituencies should be allowed to sit, he was ‘taken down’ by the acting Speaker, Thomas Bampfylde, after making remarks relating to the adjournment motion which were probably regarded as derogatory to the Speaker.32Burton’s Diary, iv. 217. His only committee appointment in this Parliament was to inspect the accounts and revenues (20 Apr.), officially as a replacement for Bampfylde, whose involvement had ceased when he became Speaker over four weeks before. It seems more significant that the committee had just been asked to investigate why the excise farmers owed £140,761.33CJ vii. 643a-b.

The Restoration probably weakened Bence’s election prospects in Aldeburgh. In March 1660 he evidently made no attempt to put his name forward and when he stood for the seat in April 1661 he was defeated by Sir John Holland* and Sir Robert Brooke†. In late 1662 he probably failed to take the oaths required by the corporation and so was disqualified from serving as one of the chief burgesses.34HMC Var. iv. 311. Any reservations he may have had on the matters of the oaths did not prevent him taking up office as a London alderman in 1664, although he got himself discharged (at a cost of £720) six months later.35Aldermen of London, i. 41, ii. 97-8. On balance, the man named sheriff of Suffolk in 1664 was probably his cousin, John Bence of Ringsfield, and the same may apply to the 1675 Suffolk recusancy commission.36List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 132; CTB, iv. 791; Hill, Thorington, ped. However, probably some time in the autumn of 1662 our man’s father died and, under the terms of his will, John inherited his Suffolk lands, at Aldeburgh, Haslewood and Friston, as well as two-thirds of his considerable personal estate.37PROB11/311/477. At the next parliamentary election at Aldeburgh, in 1669, on Brooke’s death, he was returned once again. He would go on to represent the borough in three further Parliaments.

During the 1660s Bence’s business interests multiplied. He was a founder member of the Royal Adventurers Company in January 1663 and soon became its secretary.38Select Charters of Trading Co. ed. C.T. Carr (Selden Soc. xxviii), 179; CSP Dom. 1664-5, pp. 541, 573; Docs. ed. Donnan, i. 170. In that capacity he came to know Samuel Pepys who, after one of their mutual drinking sessions, concluded that he was ‘a bold fool’.39Pepys, Diary, i. 323, ii. 220. When the Company surrendered its charter in 1672 to re-create itself as the Royal African Company, Bence invested £1,500 in the new venture and he was among the first of the grantees named in the new patent of incorporation. He went on to serve as one of the assistants of the Company four times between 1672 and his death.40Carr, Select Charters, 187; Woodhead, Rulers of London, 29; Docs. ed. Donnan, i. 179, 180, 183, 353, 360n; Davies, Royal African Co. 378. When the Company, or its subsidiary, the Company of Gambia Adventurers, established a fort in the estuary of the Sierra Leone River, upstream from what is now Freetown, they called it Bence (later Bunce) Island.41Davies, Royal African Co. 215. Bence’s involvement also in the East India Company helps explain why he was chosen by the Royal African Company in 1677 to resolve a dispute in Madagascar between agents of the two rival companies.42Docs. ed. Donnan, i. 94, 172n. In addition to this involvement in the African slave trade, it is known that Bence traded with Portugal and he may have been doing so since the 1650s.43CTB, i. 359; Recs. relating to the Soc. of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol ed. P. McGrath (Bristol Rec. Soc. xvii), 173.

Bence died on 4 March 1688, almost three years after he had sat in his fifth Parliament, and was probably buried in the chancel of the church at Aldeburgh. (His second wife, Joan, had been buried in 1685 in All Hallows, London Wall, where he erected a commemorative wall plaque.44S. Bradley and N. Pevsner, London: The City churches (1998), 53, pl. 48.) Bence was survived by his daughter from his first marriage, Rachel. She received an inheritance which included the various fee farm rents he held. His lands were left to John Bence† of Thorington, his first cousin once removed.45PROB11/392/12; HMC 10th Rep. iv. 48; HMC Lords, n.s. ii. 119, 539. A problem was that vast sums of money were owed to the Irish exchequer as a consequence of the heavy involvement of Bence and his late brother, Sir Alexander Bence, in the farming of the Irish revenues. In 1689 the Treasury moved to seize the estates of both men. To resolve the matter, in 1693 William III granted these estates to the 4th earl of Westmorland (Sir Vere Fane†), who was now married to Rachel Bence, and the following year the Bences’ executors were freed from any obligation to repay the debts.46CTB, viii. 2138; ix. 194, 1621-2; x. 83, 114, 703-4, 842. Through the younger John Bence and the Fanes, the family tradition of parliamentary service was extended into the eighteenth century. The line of Suffolk Bences survived into the twentieth century, while the Irish Bence-Jones family were descended from this other John Bence.47Burke’s Irish Family Records, ed. Montgomery-Massingberd, 639-43.