BORLASE, John (1619-72), of Bockmer, Medmenham, Bucks.

The career of Sir John Borlase of Buckinghamshire must not be confused with that of his cousin and namesake, the lord justice of Ireland in the 1640s. A branch of an ancient Cornish family, the Borlases had come to prominence in the home counties in the mid-sixteenth century, when John Borlase† acquired lands in Stratton Audley, Oxfordshire, and Medmenham, near Great Marlow in the south-west corner of Buckinghamshire. By the end of the century the family had added to their estates, and had purchased the manor house of Bockmer in Medmenham parish, which became their principal residence for the next hundred years.18Plaisted, Medmenham, 107-110. John Borlase’s son, Sir William Borlase†, extended the family’s local influence, and founded the grammar school at Great Marlow; his grandson, also Sir William†, further expanded the regional influence of the family through his marriage to the daughter of Sir Francis Popham* of Littlecote in east Wiltshire.19The Genealogist, n.s. ii. 232-4. On his premature death in 1629, Sir William left as heir to the estate his ten-year-old son, John, who became ward of his neighbour, Sir John Backhouse† (on the surety of his uncle, John Popham†) in the following year.20WARD9/163, f. 26.

After spells at Oxford and the Inner Temple, in December 1637 John Borlase married Alice, eldest daughter of Sir John Bankes, Charles I’s attorney-general.21CB. This match may have been promoted by Borlase’s step-father, the courtier, Gabriel Hippisley, his guardian, Sir John Backhouse, and the Popham relations of his mother.22Keeler, Long Parliament, 111. The legal community in London may also have been an important influence on the alliance: Borlase’s Buckinghamshire neighbour, Bulstrode Whitelocke*, was friendly with Sir John Bankes, and probably brokered the sale of the estate of another Middle Templar, Bartholomew Hal, at Kingston Lacy in Dorset, to the attorney-general the following year. The match was reasonably profitable for Borlase, financially and socially: in July 1638 he was paid a £3,000 marriage portion, and his closeness to his in-laws was demonstrated in October 1639, when he became godfather to the attorney-general’s 5th son, Charles Bankes.23Dorset RO, D/BKL, box 8c/64, f. 75v; D/BKL, box 8C/61: ‘Liber Johannis Banckes’, unfol.

Despite his new position in Dorset, Borlase was still tied to Buckinghamshire. He was elected for Great Marlow for the Short Parliament, presumably on his own interest as a neighbouring landowner whose family had long enjoyed political influence over the town; but his extreme youth (in March 1640 he was only 20), may have caused concern at Westminster, and the committee of privileges examined his case, before it was quietly dropped.24CJ ii. 14b. In late October 1640, Borlase and Gabriel Hippisley tried to fix the new Marlow election in their favour, encouraging the sheriff to hold the vote without warning, when many electors were absent at the county election.25Longleat, Whitelocke Pprs. VIII. f. 34. They took ‘many undue courses by terrifying divers who were conceived would give their voices against’ them, and employed ‘many entertainments ... good store of liquor, and great promises and threats ... to procure their voices’.26Longleat, Whitelocke Pprs. VIII, f. 34; Add. 37343, f. 211. Such measures were not entirely successful, however, as there was considerable ill-feeling in Marlow against Borlase, who was considered ‘too high for us’, and the inhabitants also refused a candidate sponsored by the ‘lord of the town’, Lord Paget.27Add. 37343, ff. 208v-9. In the confusion, two election indentures were sent to Westminster, one recording Borlase and Hippisley, the other Borlase and Peregrine Hoby.28Add. 37343, f. 210v. The Commons’ initial reaction was to suspend Hoby’s seat, but to allow Borlase to continue as the borough’s MP until the matter was reviewed.29CJ ii. 23a.

After a complaint by a number of townsmen, this decision was challenged by Bulstrode Whitelocke (who coveted the seat himself). Whitelocke ‘presented his petition to the committee of privileges, where by the kindness of Mr [John] Maynard* his friend, and chairman of the committee, his petition was heard’, and a new election was called by order of the Commons of 19 November 1640.30Whitelocke, Diary, 122-3; CJ ii. 31a. Despite the support of Lord Paget, Borlase lost the new vote, and Hoby was returned first, with Whitelocke gaining ‘about 50 voices more than Mr Borlase had’. As Whitelocke recorded, after the vote Borlase and Hippisley were ‘highly distasted and enraged’ against him,31Add. 37343, f. 212. and he feared that the dispute had ‘occasioned a distaste betwixt him and his great neighbours, Sir John Borlase and the Lord Paget’.32Whitelocke, Diary, 123. Shortly after the Marlow debacle, Borlase at last gained a secure seat as MP for Corfe Castle in Dorset. The vacancy at Corfe, occasioned by the flight abroad of the former secretary of state, Sir Francis Windebanke*, was offered to Borlase by his father-in-law, Sir John Bankes, who controlled the borough’s parliamentary patronage. He was elected, without a contest, on 2 January 1641.33C219/43/162.

In the crisis which preceded the first civil war, Borlase’s allegiances wavered. On 3 May 1641 he was in Westminster, where he took the Protestation; but he returned to his estates soon afterwards, and in May 1642 the king granted him a baronetcy, probably through the intercession of Sir John Bankes.34CJ ii. 133b; CB. Later in 1642 Borlase seems to have been wooed by Parliament. On 3 December he was appointed to the Buckinghamshire committee to raise men, money and horses for Parliament’s service, and on 12 December he declared his support for the cause of Parliament’s lord general, the 3rd earl of Essex.35Northants RO, FH133, unfol.; CJ ii. 884b. The Commons protected three trunks of plate which had been seized from Borlase in the same month, and on 14 December ordered their return, ‘he having contributed to the Parliament, both in monies, and bringing in of horses’.36Add. 18777, f. 87v; CJ ii. 887b. On the following day the Commons took steps to repay £200 which Borlase had contributed to the war effort earlier in the year, and he was named to the committee for the midland Associated Counties.37CJ ii. 889a; A. and O. Yet the shallowness of Borlase’s commitment to Parliament soon became apparent. In late 1643 he was summoned to attend the king at Oxford, and he eventually complied, under pressure from his royalist relatives.38CCC 919-20. Although he did not sit in the Oxford Parliament, he was listed among those MPs who had attended the court and concurred with the king, and in consequence he was summoned by the Westminster Parliament on 22 January 1644, and disabled on 4 March ‘for neglecting the service of this House, and adhering to the adverse party’.39Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 575; CJ iii. 374a, 415a.

Borlase spent but two months with the king before travelling to Shropshire, and he had returned to London by the autumn of 1645.40CCC 919. Apparently eager to conform to Parliament after its victory at Naseby, he took the Covenant, and in October began negotiations to compound with Parliament for the return of his estates. On 4 November the commissioners for Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire were summoned to attend at Westminster, and six days later the case was debated in the Commons, when a fine of £4,000 was suggested. On 6 December Borlase gave security for the fine, which by January 1646 had been increased to £6,800, and he paid (or gave securities) for the whole sum by the end of February, when the sequestration was rescinded.41CCC 919-20; Add. 31116, p. 482. Borlase’s treatment at Parliament’s hands was swift and relatively lenient – especially considering his position as a renegade MP – and this seems to have been due in part to the influence of Whitelocke, who attended the Committee for Compounding and the local commissioners on Borlase’s behalf on 30 September and 10 October, and on 4 October he had ‘spoken on his behalf’ in the Commons.42Whitelocke, Diary, 180-1; Add. 37344, ff. 17-18v. Borlase may also have benefited from the climate of conciliation that prevailed at this time: his old associate, Lord Paget, had recently been welcomed back into the parliamentary fold, and Borlase’s in-laws, the Bankes family, were treated very kindly, perhaps at the instigation of Giles Grene* and other influential friends at Westminster.

For the remainder of the 1640s and the early years of the 1650s, Borlase was left to tend his estates unmolested, perhaps thanks to the efforts of his brother, William*, who sat on the Buckinghamshire bench from 1650. Yet in April 1655 he roused local resentment by joining with Lord Paget to oppose the appointment of a ‘rigid Presbyterian’, Daniel Sutton, as minister of Great Marlow.43Whitelocke, Diary, 403. The attempt was unsuccessful: Sutton, championed by Whitelocke and others, was licensed to the parish in May 1655.44Calamy Revised, 470. Whether or not this incident indicated Borlase’s episcopalian sympathies, it aroused the suspicions of the protectoral regime, and in June 1655 he was among a number of former royalists arrested in Oxfordshire by orders of the government after Penruddock’s abortive western rising.45TSP iii. 521, 537; Verney Mems. ii. 10. In April 1658 Borlase was again arrested, on suspicion of involvement in the royalist plot led by John Stapley and John Hewett, but he was released in May through the efforts of Whitelocke.46Verney Mems. ii. 124; Whitelocke, Diary, 490.

After the Restoration, Borlase regained some of his family’s traditional influence over Buckinghamshire affairs, serving as magistrate and deputy lieutenant for the county from 1660, and representing the borough of Chipping Wycombe from 1661 until his death in 1672.47First Ledger Bk. of High Wycombe ed. R.W. Greaves (Bucks Rec. Soc. xi), 166. Throughout this period, Borlase remained a close associate of Bulstrode Whitelocke. In 1661 he reciprocated Whitelocke’s earlier efforts on his behalf by defending the loyalty of the former parliamentarian; and later in the year proposed Whitelocke’s appointment as a j.p. because, ‘when he and others were in a lower condition, that then Whitelocke was respectful to them, and it was for them now to respect him’.48Whitelocke, Diary, 622, 636. In 1663 Borlase supported a bill for the benefit of Whitelocke’s children, and when he drew up his will in August 1672, the document was witnessed by Bulstrode’s son and heir, William Whitelocke.49HP Commons 1660-1690; PROB11/339/506. In contrast, Borlase’s relationship with the Bankes family seems to have cooled. There is no record of political or social contact between Borlase and his brother-in-law, Sir Ralph Bankes*, after the civil wars. Indeed, in 1661 the Presbyterian leader, Lord Wharton, saw the former as his friend and the latter as his opponent, and in the 1670s Bankes was said to be close to the duke of York.50HP Commons 1660-1690. After Borlase’s death in August 1672, his widow left England to live in France, where she also converted to Catholicism, and after travelling to Rome and Jerusalem, she died in Paris in 1683.51Plaisted, Medmenham, 118-9; HMC 7th Rep. 293-4, 308, 331. Borlase was succeeded by his eldest son, also Sir John†, who served as MP for Chipping Wycombe and Great Marlow from 1673 until his death in 1689, when the baronetcy became extinct.52PROB11/397/212; CB.