BERNARD, John (1630-79), of Brampton Park, Hunts.

John Bernard’s father, Robert Bernard*, had worked hard to establish the Bernards as one of the leading gentry families in Huntingdonshire. By the time John came of age, his father was less dependent than he had been on the patronage of the Montagus and, thanks to his friendship with other prominent London lawyers, like Oliver St John* and Bulstrode Whitelocke*, was adjusting well to the changing circumstances of the 1650s. In early 1645, when John, still aged only 14, was ‘now willing to act’, his father had tried to obtain a place for him in the New Model army from his neighbour, Edward Montagu II*, although the vetoing of Montagu’s own appointment scuppered that plan.18Bodl. Carte 74, f. 197. He had entered his inn as a second son, and duly qualified as a barrister like his father, but by the 1650s his elder brother seems to have died and he was thus the heir to the estate.19M. Temple Admiss. i. 142. Standing for Parliament was one way of asserting his new status.

Bernard probably owed his election to the 1654 Parliament mainly to Montagu indifference. The only Montagu to show an interest in these elections, Edward Montagu II, did so in the county contest; had any of the others wanted it, the single Huntingdon seat would have been theirs for the taking. Bernard’s father, as recorder, might himself have stood, but perhaps felt his son had more to gain from the position. There is unlikely to have been any opposition to his nomination. Bernard’s known activity during this Parliament was very much that of a professional lawyer. Most of the committees to which he was named – such as those on bill to regulate chancery (5 Oct.), to consider the powers of the judges for the relief of poor prisoners (25 Oct.), and on the abuses arising from the writs of certiorari and habeas corpus (3 Nov.) – were directly concerned with the workings of the legal system.20CJ vii. 374a, 378b, 381b. Indeed, he was first-named to the committee created on 31 October to prepare a bill to confirm the abolition of the court of wards.21CJ vii. 380a. (The draft of the bill was presented by John Bulkley* on 15 December, but never completed its passage.) Bernard’s interest in the bill to abolish purveyance (which had fallen into abeyance) could be seen as an extension of that concern.22CJ vii. 407b. The Irish elections and the estates of royalist financier William Craven, 1st Baron Craven, were issues which also had strong legal overtones and the same was even true of the bill to enumerate damnable heresies.23CJ vii. 373b, 381a, 399b. This was quite an active record for a novice MP and might have seemed to presage an eminent career in the Commons, but in fact all his subsequent periods in Parliament were notable for their low profile.

It had originally been intended that Bernard should marry the eldest daughter of Bulstrode Whitelocke*, the leading lawyer who had already helped advance the career of his father, but Frances Whitelocke died of smallpox in December 1654 shortly before the wedding.24Whitelocke, Diary, 398. Bernard’s marriage in February 1656 to Elizabeth St John, daughter of his cousin, Oliver St John*, and a niece of the lord protector, can be seen as a revised version of this strategy. Bernard and his new wife seem to have settled at Brampton Park, the estate which his father had probably bought in 1653 with the intention that it should become the family seat.25Hunts. RO, M44A/9: deed, 20 June 1653; Lansd. 921, f. 10v; VCH Hunts. iii. 16. A marriage the previous year had reinforced the Bernards’ links with the Montagus. When Manchester’s heir, Viscount Mandeville (Robert Montagu†) had married a daughter of the late Sir Christopher Yelverton* in 1655, John Bernard was one of the parties to the marriage settlement.26Norris Museum, St Ives, UMS/KIMBN/177.

No information survives about the 1656 election at Huntingdon, but it can safely be assumed that it was for that seat that Bernard was elected. Given his interest in the matter in the previous Parliament, he was an obvious choice for the committee appointed to consider the bill to abolish the court of wards, together with feudal tenures (23 Sept. 1656). His only other nominations were to the committees of privileges (18 Sept. 1656) and on the bill to divide the London parish of St Andrew’s Holborn (4 Mar. 1657).27CJ vii. 424a, 427a, 498a. He left no record in the short second session in January and February 1658, and it was somewhat surprising that he took no obvious interest in the bill promoted by his brother-in-law, Nicholas Pedley*, to unite the various Huntingdon parishes. His re-election at Huntingdon later that year was straightforward enough. Edward Montagu II, now the pro-Cromwellian admiral whose seat at Hinchingbrooke was adjacent to Brampton Park, was keen to promote the election of the secretary of state, John Thurloe*, for one of the two Huntingdon seats, but chose not to block Bernard’s return. Bernard and Thurloe were returned unanimously on 31 December 1658.28TSP vii. 586, 588.

When this Parliament assembled Bernard was included on the committee for elections (28 Jan.) and two of his three known interventions concerned elections to this and the previous Parliament. During the debate on 3 February about the dispute between Henry Neville* and William Strowde over the 1656 Berkshire election, Bernard advised that it would be more convenient for the lawyers if they delayed consideration of this until after Hilary term was over. Nine days later he supported the decision to expel Edmund Jones*.29CJ vii. 595a; Burton’s Diary, iii. 54, 240. On 16 March he helped block the attempt to expand the vote on the release of Major-general Robert Overton to encompass the other political prisoners being held on Jersey.30Burton’s Diary, iv. 159.

The Bernards had risen to prominence in the affairs of Huntingdon as clients of the Montagus. The 1660 elections marked the point at which their interests began to diverge. Relations with the Kimbolton branch, headed by the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†), seem to have remained cordial, but those with the Hinchingbrooke Montagus were more troubled. Edward Montagu II was annoyed that Bernard and Pedley were able to defeat Manchester’s heir, Lord Mandeville (Robert Montagu†), and George Montagu* in the 1660 election at Huntingdon.31Pepys’s Diary, i. 99. Bernard’s record over the previous decade did not prevent his appointment as one of the captains of the Huntingdonshire militia, despite the avowed aim of some of the militia commissioners not to elect anyone who had assisted the protectorate, although the selection was mainly determined by who were the ‘men of greatest interest in the county for estate’.32Bodl. Carte 73, f. 472. Bernard’s kinship with St John had by now become a potential embarrassment, but, despite this, his father-in-law stayed with them at Brampton in October 1662, shortly before he fled to the continent.33Pepys’s Diary, iii. 220. Bernard stood unsuccessfully in the second Huntingdonshire by-election in 1673 and, despite his protests about the sharp practices used by his opponent, Robert Apreece†, then failed to get the result overturned.34Hunts. RO, M16/23: acc. of Hunts. election dispute, 1673. His neighbour at Brampton, Samuel Pepys†, spoke of him in 1678 as ‘a very worthy gentleman, and my honoured friend’.35The Lttrs. of Samuel Pepys, ed. H.T. Heath (Oxford, 1955), 36, 52-3, 55, 56-7, 62.

Bernard died the following summer and was buried in the local church at Brampton.36VCH Hunts. iii. 19. Management of the Bernard estates passed to his brothers-in-law, Sir Walter* and Francis St John*, until his son, Robert†, came of age.37PROB11/362/86. His widow went on to become the wife of the Warwickshire whig Thomas Mariet†, while one of his daughters with his first wife married Richard Bentley, the controversial classicist and master of Trinity College, Cambridge. (Bentley had been chaplain to Bishop Stillingfleet, whose wife, Elizabeth Pedley, was Bernard’s niece.) The 3rd baronet sat for Huntingdonshire in 1689 (probably as a whig), while his great-grandson, the 5th and last baronet, another Sir Robert Bernard, would sit in the 1761 and 1768 Parliaments. The family estates were eventually inherited by the 5th baronet’s great niece and, on her marriage in 1822 to Lord Mandeville (George Montagu†), the future 6th duke of Manchester, they passed into the hands of the Montagus.38HP Commons 1660-1690; HP Commons 1690-1715; HP Commons 1754-1790.