BULLER, Anthony (1613-79), of Dean’s Yard, Westminster.

Anthony Buller was a younger son of Sir Richard Buller, and may initially have embarked on a career as a merchant. He could well have been the man of that name apprenticed to Henry Boothby before being made free of the Haberdashers’ Company in 1637.16LMA, Haberdashers’ Co. reg. A letter to his father from London in September 1642 refers to trade, and especially the problems of recovering money invested abroad; and Buller’s comment that ‘now … we have divers debts and wars in Germany, which God knows whether I shall ever see a penny’ suggests that he was in business for himself as well as acting as his father’s agent.17Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/26/13/5. Yet it was only a matter of weeks before the civil war in England drew Buller into a military, rather than a commercial, career.

Buller’s military service during the first civil war is a little confused. Between May and August 1643 he was described as captain-lieutenant, in charge of Major-general Skippon’s own troop, in the army of the 3rd earl of Essex, and on 10 August he was listed as being ‘dangerously wounded’, and awarded £40 compensation.18SP28/7/44; SP28/9/36; SP28/9/188-9; CJ iii. 58b. In October 1643, after his recovery, Buller appears as captain in the horse regiment of Essex’s commissary-general, Hans Behr, and he remained in that unit at least until October 1644, and probably until its disbandment.19SP28/10/336; SP28/11/388; SP28/12/122; SP28/14/280; SP28/15/220; SP28/17/145; SP28/18/41; SP28/19/110. He was probably the ‘Captain Buller’ accused by the Commons for employing Catholics in his troop, and recommended to Essex for punishment on 28 November 1644.20CJ iii. 707b. When Essex’s army was disbanded in April 1645, Buller was promoted to major, and ordered to take his men to support the forces of Major-general Edward Massie in the west.21CSP Dom. 1644-5, pp. 410-1, 414, 553. Thereafter Buller became major and then lieutenant-colonel of Massie’s own regiment, and when that regiment was reduced in 1646, having married in Somerset that January, he returned to Cornwall, where he stayed at the family seat of Shillingham.22SP28/144/10, p. 2; Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/24/1/44; BHO, Cromwell Assoc. database; St Decumans par. reg.

On 12 March 1647 the House of Commons (possibly influenced by his elder brother, Francis Buller I*, who had sided with the ascendant Presbyterian interest) voted that Buller should be made governor of the Scillies, and paid £1,000 towards his arrears.23CJ v. 110b. Although he received a small amount of pay for this new command, he did not receive his formal commission for many weeks, and at the end of June 1647, following a warning from Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick, of the threat to the Scilly Isles, both Houses finally ratified their order and told Buller to go there without further delay.24CJ v. 227b; LJ ix. 301b, 303b; SC6/CHASI/1666, m. 11; HMC Pepys, 274. Buller was in charge of the garrison and castle at Scilly for just over a year. During the second civil war he was ordered to arrest any of the navy ships that had mutinied against Parliament, and there were fears of a royalist attempt on the islands, that prompted him to ask for more money for the garrison; but any money they received had no effect, for on 6 August 1648 the garrison rose against its officers, and Buller was arrested and carted off to Jersey, where he was imprisoned.25HMC Pepys, 230, 273-4; FSL, X.d.438 (22).

There were suspicions that Buller connived with the capture of Scilly, and Parliament certainly seems to have been in no hurry to procure Buller’s release – an attitude that may have worsened after Pride’s Purge of the Commons in December 1648, when Francis Buller I was secluded.26Narrative of General Venables ed. Firth, 93. Local officers tried their best to help Buller, and Colonel Robert Bennett* apparently remained Buller’s friend throughout his incarceration.27FSL, X.d.438 (22, 29). It appears to have been Bennett’s money that ensured that Buller was eventually exchanged (after ‘barbarous and close imprisonment [for] eighty eight weeks’) in February 1650.28CJ vii. 295b; FSL, X.d.438 (51, 118). But this was not the end of the matter, as reports soon circulated that he had ‘publicly said that he would never serve the Parliament again, and did offer to serve the king’. Similar comments were produced in April 1651, when Buller was one of those investigated as potential royalists.29HMC Portland, i. 588. These allegations were apparently baseless, but the government remained suspicious of Buller. In the summer of 1653 he petitioned the council of state and the Nominated Assembly for redress, reminding the latter of ‘his faithful service and the many wounds… which cost him a thousand pounds curing’.30CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 441; CJ vii. 295b. He also claimed £4,780 ‘that he disbursed for the Parliament service, of his own and his wife’s portion’ and £4,000 in arrears for his military pay. The case was referred to the committee for Irish and Scottish affairs, which, unpromisingly, was instructed to consider ‘the whole transaction of that business of Scilly and the carriage of the said Colonel Buller therein’.31CJ vii. 295b. In February 1654 Buller petitioned the new protectoral council, who also referred the matter to a committee.32CSP Dom. 1653-4, p. 401.

The government’s attitude only changed in the spring of 1654, when Buller was approached by a French agent, who offered him money to ‘join with him to cut off the protector’.33TSP ii. 352-3. Buller immediately revealed all to the authorities, who rewarded him by giving him command of a foot regiment in the ‘Western Design’, the expedition against Spanish interests in the West Indies led by General Robert Venables. Buller proved a controversial choice, not least because he and Venables fell out even before the abortive attack on San Domingo, and the general blamed Buller’s insubordination for the debacle. According to Venables, Buller ‘disobeyed’ direct orders, took ‘our only land guide’ with his regiment, and by ‘suffering his men to straggle’ revealed the English positions to the enemy.34Narrative of General Venables ed. Firth, 21-2. The subsequent capture of Jamaica in May 1655 did little to ameliorate the situation. Venables later claimed that Buller had taken advantage of his sickness to influence the other officers, and in June a council of war chose Buller to return to England with complaints about the commander.35Narrative of General Venables ed. Firth, 60-3.

Buller arrived at Portsmouth on 9 September 1655, on board the same ship as General Venables.36CSP Dom. 1655, p. 326. Both men were then grilled by the council. Buller was treated well because he ‘came over by order of the commissioners [at Jamaica]’, whereas Venables, together with William Penn*, was sent to the Tower.37Clarke Pprs. iii. 52-3. Yet the ‘Western Design’ had done little to further Buller’s rehabilitation in the eyes of the government, and comments by Venables and others again raised questions about his loyalty. It was pointed out that he had ‘never yet cleared himself about the loss of Scilly’ in 1648; and (in an echo of 1644) ‘the number of papists in [Buller’s] regiment’ attracted unfavourable remarks.38Narrative of General Venables ed Firth, 93; TSP iii. 159. Despite protestations by one of his own officers that Buller was ‘honest’, and ‘a gentleman of experienced fidelity’ who had stood up to a headstrong general who ‘would do what he pleased’, others said that Buller ‘loves applause and flattery’ and had caused trouble because he thought of himself as ‘the elder colonel’.39TSP iii. 159, 646-7.

In the later 1650s Buller spent most of his time in London, where sought to ingratiate himself with influential men in the protectoral government. In May 1656 he may have been the ‘Colonel Buller’ who tried to arrange a marriage between Colonel Popham’s niece and James Whitelocke*, eldest son of the treasury commissioner, Bulstrode Whitelocke*.40Whitelocke, Diary, 439, 440. In August he advised his brother Francis Buller I on the management of elections in Cornwall, warning him that ‘our letters are looked [at] in Looe’ and he may have been interested to taking a parliamentary seat himself, as he asked to receive ‘your good advice upon the election for me’.41Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/14/14. If that was Buller’s intention, he was to be disappointed. In September Buller tried to persuade the protectoral council to accept a scheme allowing him compensation for his arrears through the importing of 700 tuns of Madeira custom- and excise-free, although the customs commissioners seem to have intervened to prevent this.42CSP Dom. 1656-7, pp. 110-1. Buller was again in contact with the Whitelockes in 1659, when he did his best to ‘endeavour and procure’ the election of another of Bulstrode’s sons, William Whitelocke*, as MP for West Looe.43Whitelocke, Diary, 505; Longleat, Whitelocke Pprs. xix, no. 3. During these elections, Buller was himself returned for the Cornish seat of Callington. He was not a conspicuous presence in the Commons. He was named to the committee for elections and privileges (presumably because of the number of disputed Cornish elections to be decided) on 28 January.44CJ vii. 595a. On 13 April he was one of those chosen to consider the petition of the non-New Model forces from Lancashire, which had been disbanded without pay.45CJ vii. 638a. In the Convention of 1660 Buller sat for the family seat of Saltash, and after the Restoration he continued to trade on his military reputation, becoming an officer under the duke of York and then deputy-governor of the Scilly Isles.46HP Commons 1660-90. He died in 1679, and was succeeded by his son, John.47PROB11/361/163. It was left to his nephews to sit in further Parliaments.