BODURDA, Griffith (c.1621-77), of Lincoln’s Inn, Mdx. and Westminster.

Bodurda’s grandfather Hugh Gwyn adopted the name of his Caernarfonshire estate as his surname. Having supplied sheriffs of their county in four consecutive generations, the family was put on the parliamentary map by Griffith, a younger son named after a great-uncle of bardic fame.21Arch. Cambr. 1956, 154. Like his elder brothers John and Hugh he was sent to St John’s College, Cambridge, of which their uncle William Bodurda was a fellow. There in September 1640 he was awarded a scholarship that a Gwyn kinsman of his had bestowed on St John’s.22T. Baker, Hist. Coll. St John Cambridge (2 vols. Cambridge, 1869), i. 526. He left without taking a degree.

Quite what he did during the civil war remains unclear. He is not known to have served in arms, but at the outbreak of war his father was one of three Caernarfonshire squires taken into custody by the local royalists under suspicion of contrary inclinations. Previously a deputy lieutenant and commissioner of assessment, John Bodurda seems to have gone with the prevailing wind: he was serving by 1644 as a commissioner of array, but by 1647 a member, with Griffith himself, of the county committee, and at his death was described as faithful to Parliament.23Cal. Lttrs. relating to N. Wales, 43, 61; Cal. Wynn Pprs. 298. The first note of Griffith Bodurda’s own faithful service to Parliament appears to date from 1647, when he was apparently instrumental in foiling an attempt to rob the exchequer of receipt.24E407/8/167, m. 26. This implies that he enjoyed some exchequer office by this time, but an annus mirabilis arrived for him the following year when he acquired the agency for wine licences and a place in the office of first fruits and tenths, as well as an advantageous marriage. His patron in this advancement was his fellow north Walian, John Glynne*, recorder of London from 1643 and a powerful figure among the Presbyterians in the Commons. A hostile press was never in any doubt that Bodurda owed his offices to Glynne.25The Mystery of the Good Old Cause (1660), 11-12 (E. 1923.2). From 1648, Glynne and Bodurda were brothers-in-law. Rather late, and doubtless helped along not only by his brothers who preceded him there, but also by Glynne, Bodurda entered Lincoln’s Inn in 1649. Unlike Glynne, however, Bodurda never pursued a legal career and was never called to the bar.

Bodurda’s career doubtless suffered as Glynne’s began to encounter difficulties from 1647. Glynne did not sit in the Commons after the purge of December 1648, and he faced accusations before the Committee of Advance of Money in 1649 of impropriety. It may well have been Griffith Bodurda who was summoned before the Committee to account for objectionable material that had been inserted into the newspaper, Perfect Occurrences, to damage the reputation of a witness at the hearing of Glynne’s case.26CCAM 76. After 1648, when he was both militia commissioner and a commissioner for the north Wales association, he was inconspicuous until he was returned Member for Anglesey in 1656. In January 1649, however, he was living in a house, ‘just under and besides the House of Commons’, that backed on to Westminster Hall, convenient for his government work, and was a spectator of the trial of Charles I.27State Trials ed. Howell, v. 1084,1152.

During the early 1650s, Bodurda was dabbling on his own account in purchases of confiscated properties, both to keep and to sell on.28E308/7 Pt. 2, f. 323; R. Carruthers, Hist. Huntingdon (1824), 106. Later in the decade, he declared he never took the Engagement, perhaps signifying that the wine licence agency was not regarded as a public office.29Burton's Diary, ii. 432. In 1653 he lost that position, but continued voluntarily in collecting the sums due. He was eventually prised away from it by the lord protector’s council in 1655, but not until 11 July 1659 did he surrender his accounts, to the revived Rump.30CJ vii. 711b; CCC 1520; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 36. By November 1656 he had found a new position as keeper of the records in the court of common pleas, or common bench as it was known during the interregnum. Under the protectorate, Glynne’s career resumed its upward trajectory, and Bodurda must surely have owed this office in the courts to his brother-in-law.31CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 147, 199. Bodurda helped with the conveyancing of Hawarden, Flintshire, when Glynne bought the castle in 1654 as estate of the attainted, late 7th earl of Derby, and his name was on the presentation deed for Hawarden rectory in 1657, when Lawrence Fogg, who in 1660 accepted the Book of Common Prayer but in 1662 not the declaration against resisting government, was made rector.32NLW, Bettisfield 1636, Hawarden 337, 342; LPL Comm./2/335; CR, 202-3.

Glynne’s interest must also have returned Bodurda to Parliament in 1656, and Bordurda soon became an important figure in the House, mostly in support of the government but with a growing sympathy with the Presbyterian interest that matched that of his patron. Immediately named to the committee of privileges (18 Sept.), and to the expiring statutes committee (27 Sept.), he was regularly appointed or added to other committees for the rest of the session, 33 of them on public affairs and 27 on individual petitions or private businesses.33CJ vii. 424a, 429b. Regulation of wines and ales, licensing and excise accounted for four of the former, legal arrangements for another five, including chancery reform; a further five involved religion, two the regulation of the universities, three the problems of London’s expansion.34CJ vii. 430a, 436b, 440a, 445b (licensing and excise);438a, 446a, 446b, 449a, 528a (legal); 442b, 448a, 485b, 493b (religion), 466b, 486a (universities); 491a, 498a, 531b (London). He was added to the committee on vagabondage on 13 November and on 5 December, with the protectoral councillor, Sir Gilbert Pykeringe, expressed a fear that too much scope to play the rogue was offered to London vagrants in the bill proposed.35CJ vii. 453b; Burton's Diary, i. 21, 23. Next day he spoke twice, by special permission of the House, on the case of James Naylor, having sat on the committee named on 31 October to investigate the Quaker messiah. He was evidently aware of the procedural difficulties facing Members, as to whether the House could claim judicial authority:

I find the House divided: some would have him called to the bar; others tried at law. I offer an expedient. I would have you first put it to the question, whether to agree with the committee, and whether this be a sufficient charge whereon to arraign this person.36Burton's Diary, i. 39; CJ vii. 465a.

His scepticism persisted. On 8 December he deplored the House’s vote that Naylor was guilty of ‘horrid blasphemy’, finding no justification for describing Naylor’s ‘horrid piece of pageantry and impostery’ as such, and argued that Naylor’s impersonation of Christ deserved immediate punishment, not least as a means towards discouraging ‘millenaries’ (millenarians) whom he saw as allies of the Quakers. Bodurda cited a precedent of 1561 in which the impostor was punished by whipping.37Burton's Diary, i. 72-3. On 10 Dec. it emerged that Richard Cromwell wished Bodurda, with another pro-Presbyterian courtier, Richard Hampden, to be added to the public faith (i.e. credit) committee, but religious matters were still his current topic and procedural questions at all times his forte. Next morning, with Walter Strickland, he favoured the adjournment of the renewed debate on Naylor’s case till next day rather than to that afternoon, as this would ‘spoil committees’.38Burton's Diary, i. 95, 115. Bodurda was a useful agent of the government in these matters.

On 12 December Bodurda spoke eloquently against capital punishment of Naylor, arguing that the power of the civil magistrate in religious matters was debatable, the House could not legislate against the Law, and must observe the rules of justice; neither the Old Testament nor, more pertinently, the Gospel sanctioned death for blasphemy, and if that were the sentence neither repentance nor deterrence were secured, since Naylor’s death would only entrench his followers’ belief in his messianic mission. Excommunication was an inadequate alternative, as Naylor did not deny Christ. He doubted whether the House had inherited all the judicial powers of the abolished House of Lords, and urged that if Members wished to make an example of him, they should legislate on blasphemy.39Burton's Diary, i. 119-21. On the 17th Bodurda seconded a motion that Naylor should be asked by the House what he had to say for himself, as he would have been ‘in all courts, not only in capital, but criminal cases’.40Burton's Diary, i. 164. When Cromwell sent the House his brief querying their authority to try Naylor, Bodurda advised suspension of his punishment until, when ‘weightier matters ... of more concernment to his Highness’ had been dealt with, they had time to consider their reply.41Burton's Diary, i. 255. Throughout the Naylor affair, Bodurda seems to have been articulating opinions that Oliver himself might have endorsed. He was happy to use the indisposition of the Speaker as a cover not only for halting debate on the lord protector’s letter (27 Dec.), but also for suspension of Naylor’s punishment.42Burton's Diary, i. 260.

On 16 December, the House considered the case of James Noble, who had abused them, and Bodurda’s advice, following Sir John Reynolds’ pronouncement that Noble’s offence was ‘civil blasphemy’, was first to vote the words to be scandalous (after a precedent from James I’s reign) and then sentence Noble at the bar of the House. Bodurda’s advice was followed by the vote, but the Speaker said that sentencing at the bar in such a case was not usual.43Burton's Diary, i. 149-50. Perhaps unusually for one who was a supporter of conservative orthodoxy in religion, Bodurda opposed the second reading of the bill to provide for the ministry at Northampton (17 Dec.), arguing that the English clergy ‘had never so large a maintenance ... as they have at this day’, so deserved no extra tax imposition.44Burton's Diary, i. 160.

During the winter, Bodurda also paid great attention to petitions before the House. The London petition which sought to limit the freedom of the City to ratepayers was opposed by him (19 Dec.), as ‘they would have strangers bear the burden’.45Burton's Diary, i. 177. Named to the committee on this petition, he moved that a fellow critic of it, Denis Bond, should join them.46CJ vii. 470b; Burton's Diary, i. 179. Another petition that exercised him was that of the cuckolded Edward Scot of Scot’s Hall (22 Dec.): ‘I hear he is a very weak man, and under some restraint’. Again named to the committee, he and John Carter fell out with their chairman, Thomas Bampfylde, who was ‘very sick of it’, on 10 Jan. following, they being ‘much for the lady, but the greater part against her’.47CJ vii. 473a; Burton's Diary, i.206, 334. The North Riding petition against delinquents, (23 Dec. 1656), found Bodurda in unison with the councillor, Colonel William Sydenham in deprecating its tendency ‘to discourage assessments, and to encourage others to petition for the taking off of assessments’. Here again, Bodurda was at odds with Bampfylde.48Burton's Diary, i. 209. He was one of seven who favoured the clothworkers in their petition against the merchants (23 Dec.), in a minority by two votes.49Burton's Diary, i. 221.

Despite his support for government business, there are signs that in the closing days of 1656 Bodurda was becoming more critical of the status quo. He was decidedly lukewarm in his attitude to John Disbrowe’s ‘short bill’ to continue the so-called decimation tax on delinquents for the benefit of the major generals and their militia; he had some reservations about how it related to matters of ‘public faith’ (debts owed by the state to long-term lenders to the government), and on the whole preferred to adjourn the House doubting whether it was ‘seasonable’ (Christmas Day) to continue.50Burton's Diary, i. 242. He was more outspoken on 7 January 1657, when he challenged the Speaker over the militia bill, which he alleged was ‘not the bill intended to be brought in by the order’, but was overruled.51Burton's Diary, i. 310,352. Bodurda also attempted (19 Jan.) to extract replies from the House to two letters from the protector which had gone without response for some time, and had ready a report on one them, the Cheshire brigade’s affairs, but the Speaker blocked him as cutting across business in hand. On 29 January he was teller for the majority in the decisive vote which saw the militia bill to continue the major-generals rejected.52CJ vii. 483b.

Bodurda also became involved in moves to reform of the protectorate, perhaps influenced by Glynne. After Secretary John Thurloe* unveiled another royalist plot and a planned assassination attempt against Cromwell (19 Jan.), it was moved that the lord protector would take on himself the government by the ancient constitution: a call for him to become king. Bodurda’s response was initially seemingly guarded, but he conceded that ‘if it can be found for the safety of the nation, the alteration of the government, you ought not to omit it, in order to the deliverance which you have appointed to give thanks for’.53Burton's Diary, i. 365. In February, Bodurda became a proponent of the Remonstrance, soon to be re-named the Humble Petition and Advice. He was named to two committees to consider clauses in the Remonstrance (6, 10 Mar.), and to the committee for safeguards against resurgent royalism (20 Mar.) which would form part of it. On 25 March, he voted to include in the first article the offer of the crown to Cromwell.54CJ vii. 499b, 501b, 508b, 511a; A Narrative of the Late Parliament (1658), 23 (E.935.5). Bodurda was further chosen for the committees to ask the protector for an interview, and to consider a reply to him (7, 24 Apr.).55CJ vii. 521a, 524a. No speech is recorded in those two months until 23 April when he seconded a motion of thanks to the Members who waited on Cromwell, had something to say about Anglo-Scottish relations, and criticised as a breach of privilege any bid to restrict regulation by Parliament of its own membership by the imposition of fines upon those unqualified to sit because of past political offences.56Burton's Diary, ii. 9, 11, 16. It was in April 1657 that Bulstrode Whitelocke, a grandee in both Parliament and government, noted his receipt of letters from ‘Mr Bodowardo’ on unspecified parliamentary business, suggesting that he was continuing to be a significant figure in the affairs of the House.57Whitelocke, Diary, 463.

During the period when Cromwell was deliberating or dithering on whether to accept the offer of a crown, tensions in the House between the ‘kinglings’ and the government, and among the ‘kinglings’ themselves, are visible in Bodurda’s interventions. On 24 April, he objected to the term ‘temporary’ in the debate on assessments and called for accountability, in the public revenue bill, for the allocation of revenue. Though respectful of the intentions of his fellow kingling, Sir John Reynolds, he was critical of his proposal to confirm existing statutes ‘in a lump’. Bodurda drew a humorous comparison between this suggestion and a confused curate, who enjoined by law to read the Book of Common Prayer, read all the options in it, intended for differing circumstances. Legislation passed by the Long Parliament, the Rump and the protectorate needed sifting by committee.58Burton's Diary, ii. 26, 37, 40. After Cromwell’s final refusal of the crown on 8 May, Bodurda sought to mitigate the effects, moving that the Commons would ‘vindicate their privilege in respect of the above petition’, in justification of their right to have presented the new constitution in the first place.59Henry Cromwell Corresp. 271.

Bodurda’s involvement with the kingship debates had drawn him closer to the Presbyterian interest, and this can also be seen in a range of religious and charitable matters. In the debate on continuing the March 1654 ordinance for the approbation of preachers (28 Apr. 1657), he chose to make the matter a pointed choice: ‘Either the single person must be trusted before the Parliament, or else the Parliament must be trusted’.60Burton's Diary, ii. 51-2. He meant that either it should be made perpetual, trusting the lord protector, or should be determined in a parliamentary way. For his own part, he made it clear by proposing a terminal date for the ordinance of the end of the next Parliament which side he took. He was decried by Reynolds and others for wanting a special proviso to safeguard the ‘birthright’ of lay patrons of church livings, but the Speaker intervened to allow him to continue. To the proposal from leading government figures such as Philip Jones that defects in the renewed ordinance for ejecting scandalous ministers should be remedied by bill, he was one of a number of Members who thought the House should await the reports of relevant committees before pressing on with legislation.61Burton's Diary, ii. 55, 60. He was also prepared to renew the ordinance for the regulation of the universities for only three months, weakening a government motion by John Thurloe, but supported a proposal by John Disbrowe for the continuation of the practice of paying judges out of the customs revenues (28 Apr.).62Burton's Diary, ii. 60, 64. Bodurda’s increasingly critical stance can also be seen later in the session. When amendments to the Lord’s Day observance bill were being proposed (20 June), Bodurda took a punitive line, proposing a wide, catch-all definition of idling that was opposed by Edward Whalley and William Lenthall, both in military or judicial office under the protector. His wish for an expanded committee, with the widest powers, on clergy maintenance (21 Jan. 1658) could not have been helpful to the government, with an eye on managing parliamentary time.63Burton's Diary, ii. 264, 333.

Bodurda was ever willing to intervene on procedural points. Apropos the donatives in Ireland he warned the House next day against confirmation of anything more than the grants of lands: the title to them might yet be ‘in controversy’ (29 Apr.). On 25 May he contributed to the discussion on how best to preserve the work achieved so far during the parliamentary session, with the prospect of a bill once again altering the constitution. The next day he suggested that the attempts to relieve the royalist delinquent, William, 1st Baron Craven, be referred to lawyers first – ‘counsel can but to do the work of counsel’ – and noted that any concessions to Craven might lose the state up to £300,000.64Burton's Diary, ii. 67, 121, 130. His motion that a fresh body be appointed to control suburban building in London (30 May), this time of salaried members appointed by the government, was intended to improve on the fate of the committee chosen on 9 May, of which he was one, whose members were ‘so solicited that it would beget confusion’. The drift of Bodurda’s meaning was taken by some as too much like an instruction to the protector.65Burton's Diary, ii. 159, 161.

Bodurda and a Presbyterian, Lambarde Godfrey, objected to the basis of assessment for Ireland (8 June), and on the 10th, after moving for a grand committee on fair assessment and for another to review alternatives, Bodurda again pleaded for a more modest imposition on Ireland, which unlike Scotland was not ‘fully planted’, but his concern was not for the Irish but for the deterrent effect a heavy tax burden would have on the process of English plantation in the island.66Burton's Diary, ii. 201, 208, 211-12. On 12 June the burden on his own constituents concerned him: the assessment rates on each county were being fixed in a thin House, unlike those made before 1649. He also objected to a proposal to tax wealth at sixpence in the pound: if personalty were taxed, ‘the chief magistrate ... and his army’ would first apply themselves ‘where money lies’.67Burton's Diary, ii. 226-7, 231. On 24 June he objected to the use of the chancery court for the public solemnities surrounding the proclamation of the Petition and Advice, preferring the choice of Westminster Hall. That day he was teller for the grant to his north Walian friend Col. John Carter* of £3,000, to meet his arrears of salary.68Burton's Diary, ii. 302, 304; CJ vii. 543b, 573b. He reported a bill on the improvement of the customs public revenue (26 June), and was named to the committee to consider it accordingly. Next day his name was recorded among additions to the public revenue committee.69CJ vii. 575a, 576a He was chairman of the customs and excise committee established by an act of 26 June, which was empowered to be an executive committee, along the lines familiar from the days of the Long Parliament. It was tasked with contracting with individuals to secure a steady income of £130,000 from these two branches of the public revenue.70A. and O. Bodurda was an assertive chairman, asking Henry Cromwell* for his opinion on the feasibility of farming the excise in Ireland.71 Henry Cromwell Corresp. 321-2.

In the second session of this Parliament, Bodurda remained a critical friend of the regime. On 22 January 1658, he was named to committees on civil registration of births, marriages and burials, and on absentee heads of university colleges. The same day, the House moved to recover its own records from the clerk of the Parliaments, Henry Scobell, as part of an assertion of the privileges of the House in the newly changed, now bicameral, parliamentary landscape. Soon afterwards (26 Jan.), he was named to the committee on the records, and was part of the delegation that on the 30th called upon Scobell to ask for them, and which went away seemingly ‘satisfied for the present’, even though they departed empty-handed.72CJ vii. 581a, 588a; Burton's Diary, ii. 403-4.

Messengers from the new Other House attended the chamber on 22 January 1658, in the name of the Lords, provoking a debate among MPs on how to respond. While some were insistent on the use of the title ‘Other House’, Bodurda and Sir Thomas Style objected to the adoption of that expression, evidently inclining to the traditional form.73Burton's Diary, ii. 343. A week later (29 Jan.) he opposed submitting the matter of relations between the Houses to a grand committee, and hit out at Sir Arthur Hesilrige by alluding to the latter’s own appointment to the Other House, thereby provoking an indignant defence of Hesilrige from Thomas Scot I. This goaded Bodurda into making a more direct assertion: ‘That it is another House I do not deny; but that excludes them not from being Lords’.74Burton's Diary, ii. 393, 399, 400. Renewing his objection to a grand committee (2 Feb.), he explained that this would ‘destroy the business. I never knew other fruits of it. Certainly we may understand one another as well by once as often speaking. Besides, if any desire to speak twice, it will not be denied’.75Burton's Diary, ii. 423. He spoke at length the next day, in support of the new constitution

Here is a foundation, the Petition and Advice. More is done thereby, than has been done these 60 years for the liberty and privileges of the people. There has not been so free a Parliament these 16 years.76Burton's Diary, ii. 433.

But he once more rejected the expression ‘the other House’, and by this time he was explicit in what he wanted: ‘I move you call them by the old name’.77Burton's Diary, ii. 428. On 4 February when a new writ was being moved, he pointed out that a new form of writ was needed to supersede the old one in the king’s name, after correspondence between the two Houses. This observation was not challenged as had been an allegation of his the day before that a Member involved in a double return had voted in the House, in which he was mistaken.78Burton's Diary, ii. 432, 441, 442.

Bodurda was returned for Beaumaris in 1659, and was named to ten committees, including the committee on elections (28 Jan.).79CJ vii. 594b. He continued to interest himself in procedural matters, and maintained his support for the Humble Petition and Advice, in particular those aspects of it which drew the country closer to the ancient constitution, which was a priority for moderate Presbyterians and ‘country gentlemen’ who lent their support to the protectorate. The session got off to a disputatious beginning over the choice of preacher, and with another Member Bodurda suggested a procedure for the vote on rival nominations.80Burton's Diary, iii. 12. On 1 February he complained of the limitations now placed on the jurisdiction of the Other House, to which he referred openly as ‘the Lords’ House’ which left them powerless to adjudicate the case of the republican Henry Neville* against the conduct of a sheriff in the last Parliament. He was for referring the matter to the Other House, and after further debate ‘moved that the question be put, whether the question shall be put’, which it was.81Burton's Diary, iii. 20, 21. Other procedural issues merited his interventions, as in the previous Parliament. He advised the House against peremptory proceedings on an apparent informality in the election of a mayor (1 Feb.), and rebuked another Member the same day for provoking detailed discussion at a first reading of the bill recognizing Richard Cromwell as protector. He offered procedural advice on the case of Lewis Audley* (2 Feb.), and after moving for a frigate to bring over Major-general Robert Overton from Jersey (3 Feb.), reverted to type in insisting that all reports should be made from the bar of the House, where counsel ought to appear only on private business. The matter in question, the Berkshire election, was public business and ‘I would rather hear the judges’. Confidently citing a precedent from the Short Parliament (held when he himself had not yet reached majority age), he conceded that in the case of ship money ‘it was said’ counsel was appointed, but that assembly had been dissolved before any hearing.82Burton's Diary, iii. 23, 31, 44, 49, 50, 54. He was among the less outraged Members in calling for the case of the mentally-disturbed intruder, William King, to be referred to the London Members (5 Feb.).83Burton's Diary, iii. 82.

On 3 February, Bodurda supported the efforts to put the armed forces on a sound financial footing by asking the House to order the treasury commissioners, with whom he must have had regular dealings as a member of the customs and excise committee, to bring in sums that appeared in their accounts since 1658. He was apprehensive of the deficit the Army Committee would reveal to the House. For that reason, he was hostile towards the excise farmers. Later in the Parliament, in the debate on the excise (12 Mar.), Bodurda moved that the order calling in the excise farmers should be specifically ‘for the speedy pay of the army’. He and the radical MP, Adam Baynes – an unlikely pairing – were for giving the farmers only a fortnight to comply.84Burton's Diary, iv. 141, 142. On 1 April, he argued that a resolution to discontinue excise levies ‘after the end of this Parliament’ was suspect. While denying that he was any kind of courtier, he could see how perpetuation of the levy might be attractive, but this was dangerous and an echo of the circumstances which led to the abrupt end of the Rump in 1653: ‘This Parliament cannot dissolve itself. Then the chief magistrate may keep the excise on foot, for his life at least, and it will be a moot point whether his death dissolves the Parliament’.85Burton's Diary, iv. 326. On 13 April, in a debate on continuing the excise, he remarked that the lord protector might dissolve Parliament at whim, which was ‘ill taken’, and on the 15th, with Henry Hatsell*, he suggested that a time limit should be inserted in the preamble of the bill.86Burton's Diary, iv. 422, 437.

On excise matters, Bodurda spoke in support of George Starkey*, and with Starkey tried in vain to obtain an adjournment for the convenience of the ailing Speaker. 87Burton's Diary, iii. 59, 65. He was a staunch defender of the Humble Petition, complaining insistently (5 Feb.) of radical Members, such as Edmund Ludlowe, sitting without having taken the oath. That day, one of two committees he was named to specifically was on the supply of a godly ministry for Wales, in reality an investigation of the appropriation of Welsh church revenues since 1650.88Burton's Diary, iii. 68, 71; CJ vii. 600b. He rose late on 8 February to make an eloquent defence of the Petition and Advice, in response to a speech by Henry Neville which sought to demote the lord protector to chief magistrate and bring into question the Petition and Advice as the product of an unfree Parliament. Bodurda’s approach was essentially pragmatic, referencing the legislation of the Rump – a forced assembly if ever there was one. He feared for the security of legal transactions, not least involving confiscated lands, were there a return to a commonwealth, and predicted a revived rule by major-generals if a change of government produced disorder. His peroration was a flat rejection of any reversion to a previous form of government: ‘I shall speak while I have breath against a republic’.89Burton's Diary, iii. 135-6. He favoured the bill of recognition for Richard Cromwell and on 10 and 11 February intervened on various occasions in support of it, on occasion willing to bend in the interests of making progress.90Burton's Diary, iii. 192, 194, 200, 231. He was still arguing (14 Feb.) that ‘nothing should be binding till all was passed’, considering that urgency was demanded because ‘Charles Stuart is a competitor’, and that before the bill was committed, the people’s rights and liberties should be guaranteed in another measure. This ‘expedient’ was not accepted.91Burton's Diary, iii. 276, 286

Bodurda was a stickler for those who affronted the dignities of the House. When Matthew Alured claimed that there was a delinquent Mr Jones in the House (12 Feb.), Bodurda invited him to identify him among the three Joneses then sitting, perhaps as a Welshman more aware than most of the problem of surnames. The right Jones, Edmund, was attacked as a former royalist, and Bodurda himself, despite his sympathies towards the Lords, favoured the exclusion of delinquents. It was he who exposed Robert Danvers alias Villiers*, who ‘led a regiment of dragoons against you’. He at first moved that Villiers be expelled, imprisoned during pleasure and fined, but quickly withdrew the idea of the fine.92Burton's Diary, iii. 233, 241, 246, 249. On 16 Feb. he proposed that a formal charge be brought the following week against Henry Neville, accused of atheism and blasphemy. His intervention seems to have been more motivated by procedural considerations than by a sense of outrage, but he was no friend to the commonwealth or commonwealthsmen. Later in the session (4 Mar.) he wanted another ‘delinquent’ to come before them on his knees. Next day he opposed a committee on the army establishment as Members had the army accounts before them, but when the House insisted on one he moved the inclusion of his friend, Sir John Carter. He seconded an inquiry into the cost of refurbishing the fleet for action in the Baltic (17 Feb.), and a week later advocated a committee on naval expenditure, arguing against Sir Arthur Hesilrige that the committee of accounts was too preoccupied to monitor a Baltic campaign, which he supported as the best way ‘to keep out’ the Stuarts. He was teller for the majority in favour of naval rearmament (24 Feb.), on a motion that reserved to the House the control of the militia and the making of peace and war.93Burton's Diary, iii. 303, 310, 316, 444; v., 3; CJ vii. 607b.

Bodurda was keen that debate on the protector’s veto (18 Feb.) should not obstruct clarification of relations between the Houses. The following day, he warned against a duplication of Commons functions, which would lead to ‘two hands in a purse’, and counselled definition of the ‘bounds and powers’ of the Lords, reiterating that word but deflecting critical attention from his choice of epithet by the joke that it was not a House of Ladies.94Burton's Diary, iii. 339, 367. On 22 February, when he raised the question whether hereditary succession would apply to membership of the Other House, a reply in the negative by Edmund Prideaux I did not deter him from repeating it, looking for a seconder. He argued (28 Feb.) that they were not to be awarded positive powers and that the only problem was legislative co-ordination, or as he put it next day, what business the House was prepared to transact with the Lords. He disclaimed any veto by the House on membership of the Lords (4 Mar.): ‘it may happen that you will approve none of them, so that you will have no House to transact with’. Nor could he approve any veto on ‘military persons’ or ‘judges’ in the second chamber: if the former were disqualified, military men in their own chamber would have to depart, and if the latter were excluded, justices of the peace might as well be disqualified. The Other House had no more choice of its eligible membership than the Commons, which originated not ‘from the people’, but from ‘the chief magistrate’s writ’, and even if he might as one who served for a borough prefer that ‘we were upon a more equal constitution than by boroughs’, it was necessary to accept the Humble Petition with its flaws.95Burton's Diary, iii. 413, 414, 542, 577; iv. 13, 37-8. On 6 April when he was named to the committee to consider transactions between the two Houses, he had made it clear that in his view they should be ‘upon equal terms’.96Burton's Diary, iv. 358.

On membership matters, he opposed recommitment of the Malton election report (7 Mar.), and on 9 March deplored the proposal to exclude Scots and Irish Members: ‘if this debate be admitted, where will it end? The next debate will be, about those that have not taken the oath. Then, about those whose elections are questionable’. He evidently perceived these to be deliberate attempts to divide the House from the Other House, and to divide Members one from another. He was impatient about the singling out of a Member ‘chosen burgess who was neither resident nor freeman’, and claimed that over 100 could be found whose cases were similar.97Burton's Diary, iv. 46, 98, 105, 120. He complained of a thin House: ‘I would have all the Members in town to attend’. In this critical vein, as in procedural expedients, he was forceful: ‘one question gigs out another. We shall never end’ (18 Mar.); ‘I move, that the door be shut till you agree on a question’ (21 Mar.). He admitted that he could not ‘speak to order like Sir Henry Vane’ (22 Mar.).98Burton's Diary, iv. 148, 185, 231. He was one of the north Wales Members who spoke in favour of hearing the petition against the elections for Caernarvonshire and Caernarvon Boroughs (22 Mar.), despite its lateness, and on 24 March secured a prior hearing for the report on the election of William Packer*, preferring it as a matter that affected all Members to a further airing of whether to transact with the Other House. He had attended the committee in question and reminded the House that Packer had been made a freeman only on the eve of this election, while his opponent had been denied the freedom of the borough. He agreed that the petition from those transported to Barbados in 1655 was by cavaliers, and sought to have them imprisoned (25 Mar.). He supported the Durham representation bill, and was named to the committee on it (31 Mar.).99Burton's Diary, iv. 224, 249, 251, 273, 310. He was unsympathetic towards Major-general William Boteler*, and rejected the argument put by his defenders that he was merely acting on superior orders. He appealed to those who had known him in the 1656 Parliament to attest that he was ‘no friend to arbitrary government’ (12 Apr.).100Burton's Diary, iv. 406.

He could be mordant if provoked, as on 14 April when he informed Thomas Grove*, the House’s would-be messenger to the Lords who was anxious to know if he should wait for their reply, that he might rationally expect a reply of some sort, as only heralds sent to declare war or apparitors serving a writ did not. He led the successful move (15 Apr.) to block a reading of the Scottish union bill as inappropriate (‘disorderly’) at that point in the Parliament, and on 18 April, with John Trevor, moved that the republican Sir Henry Vane II, explain his inference that the protector was inviting officers to accept their commissions from him. Immediately before the final vote against allowing the general council of the army to sit without direct permission from Parliament and the protector, Bodurda demanded a call of the House, the first of three procedural suggestions made by him that day, suggesting that until the end of this Parliament he was working to preserve the protectorate as a bulwark against military rule.101Burton's Diary, iv. 426, 434, 458, 459, 460, 462; CJ vii. 641b.

On 22 April 1659, four days after Bodurda’s last intervention, the army dissolved Parliament. Despite his professed hostility towards the republic, Bodurda was not removed from office by the restored commonwealth, and was named as a local committeeman in north Wales. His re-election for Beaumaris in April 1660 enabled him quickly to adapt to the restoration of the monarchy. His put his name to the petition from north Wales which in June 1660 called for justice to be visited on the regicides.102Mercurius Publicus no. 24 (7-14 June 1660), 371 (E.186.3). In October 1660, he was a witness against Daniel Axtell*, and with George Starkey, with whom he had co-operated in the 1659 Parliament, he gave evidence against John Cook, prosecuting counsel against Charles I, at their trials for high treason. Bodurda testified briefly about what he had seen of the king’s trial from his vantage-point as a spectator.103State Trials ed. Howell, v. 1083, 1151. He was, however, unfavourable to punitive measures against Cromwellian officers and officials, and remained cool towards the Anglican establishment. Even in this less congenial climate he contrived to find his level in the House, but he did not stand again from 1661. His later years were spent in Dublin as a Treasury official, also involved in property development near the castle. He was alive on [?3] Nov. 1677, but was pitiably dead by 19 July 1679.104A.H. Dodd, Studies in Stuart Wales, 108, 173; Howell, State Trials, v. 1083, 1152; CSP Dom. 1677-8, p. 481; 1679-80, p. 200.