Constituency Dates
Bridport [1621], [1628] – 12 Apr. 1628
Dorset 28 June 1641
Family and Education
b. Dec. 1580, 1st s. of Sir John Browne of Frampton and Jane, da. of Henry Portman of Orchard Portman, Taunton, Somerset; bro. of George†.1C142/439/56; Vis. Dorset Addenda ed. F.T. Colby and J.P. Rylands (1888), 7. educ. Magdalen, Oxf. 13 Oct. 1598; M. Temple 22 June 1599.2Al. Ox.; M. Temple Admiss. m. 18 Nov. 1607, Elizabeth (d. 25 June 1656), da. of Sir George Trenchard† of Wolveton, Dorset, 4s. 6da.3Vis. Dorset Addenda, 7. suc. fa. 10 Oct. 1627. d. 16 Mar. 1659.4Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 298.
Offices Held

Civic: freeman, Lyme Regis 1611.5Dorset RO, B7/B6/11, f. 11. Trustee for common lands, Weymouth 22 Apr. 1653.6Charters of Weymouth ed. Moule, 117.

Mercantile: member, cttee. of Dorchester Co. Mar. 1624–7.7F. Rose-Troup, John White, the Patriarch of Dorchester (1930), 63, 454.

Local: j.p. Dorset 8 July 1628–?, 6 Aug. 1641–15 July 1642, 6 Mar. 1647–d.;8C231/4, f. 249v; C231/5, pp. 223, 475, 530; C231/6, p. 78; C193/13/3, f. 15v; C193/13/5, f. 21v. treas. QS, W. Dorset 1628–9.9Dorset QS Recs. 1625–38 ed. T. Hearing and S. Bridges (Dorset Rec. Soc. xiv), 67. Commr. oyer and terminer for piracy, Dorchester and Weymouth 10 Feb. 1632;10C181/4, f. 104. Dorset 26 Feb. 1642.11C181/5, f. 226v. Sheriff, 1632–3.12List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 39; Whiteway Diary, 125. Commr. sewers, 29 June 1638;13C181/5, f. 113. charitable uses, 1638–9;14C192/1, unfol. subsidy, 1641; further subsidy, 1641; poll tax, 1641; contribs. towards relief of Ireland, 1642;15SR. assessment, 1642, 24 Feb. 1643, 18 Oct. 1644, 23 June 1647, 16 Feb. 1648, 7 Apr., 7 Dec. 1649, 26 Nov. 1650, 10 Dec. 1652, 24 Nov. 1653, 9 June 1657;16SR; A. and O.; An Act for an Assessment (1653, E. 1062.28). loans on Propositions, 20 July 1642;17LJ v. 225b. sequestration, 27 Mar. 1643; levying of money, 7 May, 3 Aug. 1643; commr. for Dorset, 1 July 1644;18A. and O. Dorset militia, 24 July 1648;19LJ x. 393a. militia, 2 Dec. 1648, c. 1650, 14 Mar. 1655.20A. and O.; R. Williams, ‘County and Municipal Government in Cornw., Devon, Dorset and Som. 1649–60’ (Bristol Univ. PhD thesis, 1981), 169; SP25/76A, f. 14. Judge, relief of poor prisoners, 5 Oct. 1653.21A. and O. Commr. oyer and terminer, Western circ. by Feb. 1654-June 1659;22C181/6, pp. 9, 308. piracy, Dorset 22 May 1654;23C181/6, p. 33. securing peace of commonwealth, Dec. 1655.24TSP iv. 305.

Central: member, cttee. for compounding, 28 Sept. 1643,25CJ iii. 258a. 8 Feb. 1647;26A. and O. cttee. for plundered ministers, 21 Oct. 1643;27CJ iii. 283b. cttee. for indemnity, 6 Jan. 1649.28CJ vi. 109a, 113b; SP24/29, f. 248. Commr. high ct. of justice, 6 Jan. 1649;29A. and O. removing obstructions, sale of bishops’ lands, 17 Jan. 1649.30CJ vi. 120b. Member, cttee. of navy and customs by 19 Jan. 1649.31Bodl. Rawl. A.224, f. 3. Trustee, maintenance of preaching ministers, 8 June 1649.32A. and O. Member, cttee. for the army, 4 Feb. 1650, 2 Jan., 17 Dec. 1652.33CJ vi. 357b; A. and O. Commr. removing obstructions, sale of forfeited estates, 16 July 1651.34A. and O.

Household: feoffee for use of Sir Thomas Trenchard* 6 Aug. 1645.35Dorset RO, D/HIL/T1.

Estates
inherited over 5,000 acres in Dorset and Som. including manors and advowsons of Frampton and Bettiscombe, manors of Crochway Notton and Thorpe in Maiden Newton par., 6 burgages in Dorchester, and land at Chard;36C142/439/56. by 1658 the lands in Som. and Dorset were estimated to be worth over £1,000 p.a., and he also possessed houses in Melcombe Regis, Dorchester, and Drury Lane, Westminster.37PROB11/291/4.
Address
: of Frampton, Dorset.
Likenesses

Likenesses: oil on canvas, unknown, 1651.38Dorset County Museum, Dorchester.

Will
1 Nov. 1658, pr. 7 May 1659.39PROB11/291/4.
biography text

From relatively lowly origins, the Browne family had risen to the higher ranks of the Dorset gentry by the early seventeenth century. John Browne (d. 1585), was the first of the family to be awarded a coat of arms, and he was prosperous enough to purchase the estate of Frampton, five miles north west of Dorchester, which the family had rented since the fifteenth century; his son, also John (d. 1627), was the first of the family to be knighted, on James I’s accession in 1603.40Vis. Dorset Addenda, 7; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 116. Sir John Browne was to become a leading figure in Dorset society – holding by his death the offices of deputy lieutenant and vice admiral for the county – and he left his son a substantial estate in Dorset and Somerset, worth £1,000 a year.41C142/439/56; Keeler, Long Parliament, 118-9. Sir John’s son and heir, John, was born in 1580, and after a brief spell at Oxford, joined the Middle Temple in 1599, before returning to the family power-base in Dorset.42Al. Ox.; M. Temple Admiss.

John Browne soon became involved with the most influential of the Dorset families.43Signature: Bodl. Nalson III, ff. 246-7: 10 Aug. 1644. His marriage to the daughter of Sir George Trenchard of Wolveton in 1607, brought a number of important connections among the greater gentry and nobility. His brothers-in-law included Sir Thomas Trenchard* and John Trenchard*, and other contacts included Sir John* and Nicholas Strangways, who had married his wife’s sisters, and, more distantly, the Digbys and the Seymours (through the Dyve, Rogers and Rodney families).44Vis. Dorset 1623 (Harl. Soc. xx), 94. The close-knit nature of this group is shown in Sir George Trenchard’s will of 1630, in which Browne joined Strangways and the Trenchard brothers as overseers of their father-in-law’s estate.45PROB11/159/112. The association of Sir John Strangways and John Trenchard with the 4th earl of Bedford reinforced an existing connection between Browne’s younger brother, George, and the Russell family, which dated from the 1610s. But it was the Trenchards who were Browne’s most important local patrons. Browne served as MP for Bridport in 1621 on the Trenchard interest, and although in 1626 he failed to gain election for a county seat, he again enjoyed the electoral support of the Trenchards and Sir Richard Strode†.46Whiteway Diary, 16, 78. He was elected for Bridport in the following year, only to be disqualified on 12 April 1628, after the commoners of the borough claimed that their rights had been overridden by the town oligarchy, no doubt in collusion with the Trenchards.47HP Commons 1604-1629.

The social cohesion of Browne with the Trenchards was increased by their broadly similar religious attitudes. Sir George Trenchard was renowned as a patron of the godly, and his son Sir Thomas was later characterized as ‘a favourer of the puritans’.48Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx i. p. xix. Browne shared the Trenchards’ religious persuasions, and followed his father’s practice in appointing godly ministers to the family’s two Dorset advowsons of Bettiscombe and Frampton in the 1630s and 1640s.49RR6/91: Institution Bks Ser. A (1556-1660), ii, pp. 2, 15; Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 304; Calamy Revised, 122, 367, 468. He also shared the Trenchard connection with godly Dorchester, where his family had owned property since the reign of Elizabeth I, and he resided in the borough until December 1630.50Recs. of Dorchester ed. Mayo, 379; Whiteway Diary, 114. In 1624 Browne had joined Sir Walter Erle*, Sir Richard Strode, Giles Grene*, James Gould* and John Whiteway* as a member of the ruling committee of the Dorchester Company, an adventuring association with a definite puritan slant.51Whiteway Diary, 61. In 1634 he was in contact with the godly divine, Dr John Stoughton, and bemoaned the activities of the vicar-general in enforcing ceremonies and bowing at the name of Jesus.52CSP Dom. 1634-5, pp. 182, 416. Three years later Browne’s daughter, Jane, married Stoughton at Frampton church, and later in the decade Browne was investigated for supplying money to Stoughton, in collaboration with the notoriously anti-Laudian minister of Dorchester, John White.53Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 298, 303; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 217. By the end of the decade, Browne had also come closer to other godly families in the south west, and in the next few years he married his younger daughters to John Stephens* of Gloucestershire and Robert Coker* of Mappowder, Dorset.54Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 298. Browne’s religious convictions may have encouraged him to join the Trenchards and his other relatives, in opposition to the Caroline regime: in 1632 he refused to compound for knighthood; in 1636 he defaulted on his ship money payments; and by September 1637 had been distrained by the sheriff of Dorset – his own kinsman, Richard Rogers*.55Som. and Dorset N. and Q. iv. 19; SP16/319, f. 89; CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 395; 1637, p. 400.

Browne’s election as Dorset’s knight of the shire in June 1641 was as the replacement for George Lord Digby, who had been elevated to the House of Lords in recognition of his role in defence of the 1st earl of Strafford. The Strafford trial and the political and religious tensions of the first six months of the Long Parliament had caused the Trenchard-Strangways-Digby coalition to split apart, and Browne’s election should perhaps be seen as its last successful collaboration. In addition, Browne’s connections with Dorchester, and with Sir Walter Erle, as well as the Trenchards, no doubt made him an acceptable candidate for the wider county community. Although Browne seems not to have taken up his seat in Westminster until the summer of 1643, he was fully committed to Parliament’s cause from early 1642, investing £450 in the Irish adventurers’ scheme in March, and promising to maintain a horse and give £100 for the defence of the Houses in June.56K. S. Bottigheimer, English Money, Irish Land (Oxford, 1971), 178; PJ, iii. 468. At the outbreak of civil war, Browne’s loyalty to Parliament was recognized by friend and foe alike: in July 1642 he joined Denzil Holles*, Sir Walter Erle and Sir Thomas Trenchard as a commissioner to raise troops under the Militia Ordinance, and in retaliation, in August he was one of the j.p.s dismissed from the bench by the king’s commissioner for array, the marquess of Hertford.57CJ ii. 694b; Bayley, Dorset, 46. Browne was at the centre of Dorset’s resistance to Hertford in the summer and autumn of 1642. In August Richard Burie, the county treasurer, borrowed £1,300 from John Fitzjames*, on a bond for repayment signed by Browne, Sir Thomas Trenchard, Denis Bond* and others, and £500 borrowed from John Michell was secured by Browne, Trenchard, Holles, Erle and the 5th earl of Bedford.58Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 82. The latter loan was to fund Bedford’s expedition against the Digby stronghold of Sherborne Castle in the north of the county. In the same month Browne and his associates were given authority to suppress the ‘rebellion’ of the marquess of Hertford, and after pressure from Erle the commission authorizing them to raise troops was renewed and extended in October.59CJ ii. 805b; Harl. 164, f. 10v.

In the autumn of 1642 Browne took charge of Dorset, in collaboration with his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Trenchard. By September 1642 they were issuing joint orders authorizing payments for horses requisitioned for the local forces, and in December they were in touch with the deputy lieutenants of Somerset.60Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, ff. 97v, 101v. Yet within a few months the inconclusive peace negotiations at Oxford, and the threat of renewed war, encouraged Browne and Trenchard to seek a local armistice. On 1 March 1643 they wrote to the Commons announcing their agreement with other local gentlemen to disband all forces in Dorset, and to oppose any troops trying to enter the county.61CJ ii. 987b; Harl. 164, f. 311; Add. 18777, f. 170. Immediately afterwards they tried to effect a peace across the whole of the south west. Edmund Prideaux I* and Anthony Nicoll*, in Exeter, reported that the men of Somerset and Dorset had planned to join in a peace treaty with those of Devon and Cornwall, but ‘here came only Sir Thomas Trenchard, Mr Browne and Mr [John] Fitzjames, the rest being dispersed by Sir William Waller’s* forces’.62Bodl. Nalson II, ff. 342-3. Parliament’s reaction to this unilateral initiative was surprisingly lenient. Perhaps in recognition that the loyalty of Dorset depended on men such as Trenchard and Browne, they were eager to win them back to the fold: on 8 April an ordinance was passed guaranteeing repayment of the loans which Browne, Trenchard and others had secured in the previous year, and by the end of the month, Browne was involved in a new siege of Sherborne led by Colonel Alexander Popham.63CJ iii. 36a; Bayley, Dorset, 67. In May Browne was working with Sir Walter Erle in ‘the business of settling the affairs of this county’, and by the beginning of June he had returned to Westminster, where he took the ‘oath and covenant’, vowing not to become involved in royalist plots.64Bodl. Tanner 62, f. 100; CJ iii. 118b.

Browne was based at Westminster between June 1643 and July 1644, and became involved in the routine business of the Commons and attended the Committee for Irish Affairs on a regular basis.65SP16/539/127, ff. 28, 30v, 31v, 38; Add. 4771, ff. 16, 32v, 36, 43v, 48v, 58v. He was named to a scattering of committees on sending supplies to Ireland (23 June 1643) and for raising money for the 3rd earl of Essex’s Gloucester expedition (18 Aug. 1643). On 28 September he was named to the Committee for Scottish Affairs, from which would emerge the Committee for Compounding.66Supra, ‘Committee for Compounding; CJ iii. 142a, 210a, 258a. He was also entrusted with the collation of MPs’ signatures for the Solemn League and Covenant in September 1643, and was added to the Committee for Plundered Ministers in October.67CJ iii. 256a, 283b. It is clear from this run of appointments that Browne’s earlier misdemeanour had been forgiven, and it seems that he was now working with the pro-Scottish ‘war party’ – possibly under the influence of John Trenchard. During this period Browne was also brought back into local affairs. With the fall of most of Dorset to the royalists in August 1643 he joined Trenchard and others in advising ‘how to supply Poole with men and money’.68Add. 18778, f. 10v. From October Browne was named to committees dealing the west of England, and he was also working to provision Poole, Lyme and Plymouth, all under threat from royalist forces in the winter of 1643-4.69CJ iii. 294b, 355b; CCAM 28, 1488; Add. 18779, f. 29. Browne’s involvement in parliamentary affairs seems to have tailed off in the first half of 1644, but when the Dorset county committee was appointed on 1 July Browne was an obvious choice as a member, and on 10 July the Commons ordered that he return to Dorset to further Parliament’s cause in the county.70CJ iii. 556b.

For much of the mid- to late-1640s, Browne divided his energies between Westminster and Dorset, and this makes his political career seem rather disjointed. On his arrival in Dorset in early August 1644, Browne joined his old ally, John Fitzjames, and John Trenchard’s sons-in-law, John Bingham* and William Sydenham*, on the county committee, and signed an order giving command of the county forces to Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*, who had recently defected from the king.71PRO30/24/2/43. Browne also became involved in raising money to pay off the troops of the Irish peer, Lord Inchiquin, which had recently surrendered Wareham to Parliament, and he used his influence to procure loans from John Michell and James Gould*.72Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 1. Thereafter, the evidence of Browne’s movements becomes more patchy, although he must have been in Westminster at the end of October, when he was ordered by the House to carry instructions concerning Essex and Waller to the Army Committee.73CJ iii. 682a. Browne was also in Westminster at the beginning of June 1645, when he resumed attendance at the Commons, and was granted a £4 weekly allowance as compensation for the loss of his rental income from estates in royalist hands.74CJ iv. 161a. In the Commons his interests were again mixed, with finance and religion rivalling local concerns for his attention. He was named to committees for the sale of delinquents’ estates (16 June), to set up classical presbyteries in London (25 July) and to receive and consider petitions to the House (2 Aug.).75CJ iv. 176a, 218a, 228b. On 12 August he was appointed to a committee for satisfying money owed to officers laid off after the relief of Taunton, and on 16 September he was ordered to ensure that the return of the body of his first cousin, Sir William Portman*, to his home in Somerset, should not be used as a front for royalist activity.76CJ iv. 238a, 276a. Browne may have travelled west with the corpse, as he disappears from the parliamentary record for the next few weeks.

Browne had returned to Westminster by November 1645. In the same month the Commons ordered the repayment of the 1642 loans guaranteed by Browne, Holles and Bond, as a reward for their loyalty.77CJ iv. 346a. Over the next few months Browne was recorded as attending the Committee for Compounding.78SP23/2, pp. 124, 128. From April to June, however, he was back in Dorset, attending meetings of the quarter sessions and the county committee, lending money to Ashley Cooper, and being reimbursed for these amounts by the county treasurer.79Christie, Shaftesbury, i, appx i. pp. xxxiv, xxxvi; Add. 29319, ff. 36-7; Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 28. On 8 July he was one of the representatives of the Committee of the West who attended the Dorset county committee at Shaftesbury, as it tried to implement the disbandment of Edward Massie’s* unruly western brigade, and he was then sent to Westminster ‘with a fuller account of our condition and desires’ in the business.80Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 392. Browne duly reported the situation three days later, and was named to a committee (alongside Prideaux and Bond) to speed the disbursement of money for the disbandment from the excise commissioners.81CJ iv. 615b. The Massie situation may have prompted Browne’s hasty return to Dorset in late August 1646, and his diligent attendance at the county committee from September to late November.82Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 8-81. On 3 October the Commons appointed Browne as one of those detailed to be present at the disbandment.83CJ iv. 681b.

Browne’s involvement in the Massie affair provides an insight into his affiliations in factional politics at Westminster. Massie was a prominent supporter of the Presbyterian faction, and his troops (as well as being a threat to the peace of Dorset) could provide the nucleus for an army to rival the New Model’s hegemony. Browne’s continuing ties with the Trenchards (and with other Independents such as Prideaux and Bond) also suggests that he may have shared their opposition to the political Presbyterians at this time. His connection with Sir Thomas Trenchard had been reinforced as recently as August 1645, when he joined John Trenchard and John Fitzjames as feoffee of his brother-in-law’s estates.84Dorset RO, D/HIL/T1. Browne’s connection with the Trenchards can also be seen in November 1646, when the recruiter election at Shaftesbury became a local test of strength between the various factions. According to John Fitzjames, in this contest Browne was an ally of the Trenchard brothers, Bingham and Sydenham.85Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 64-5. Browne was close to leading Independents, but he may not have been one himself. His friendship with Fitzjames is itself revealing, and there is no doubting Browne’s commitment to religious Presbyterianism: the previous August he had been chosen to join Sir Gilbert Gerard and others on a committee to settle a dispute over the maintenance of the minister at Tuthill Fields with the elders of the local classis.86CJ iv. 632a. Furthermore, on 17 December he joined Holles and Erle on a Presbyterian-dominated committee to examine allegations that Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire* had advocated bringing the New Model into Westminster.87CJ v. 17b.

Whether or not owing to equivocation, Browne’s involvement in politics in the early months of 1647 was limited. He was appointed as one of the new commissioners for compounding on 6 February, and named to the committee stage of the ordinance for the sale of bishops’ lands on 27 February, but on 5 March he was given leave to return to Dorset.88A. and O.; CJ v. 78a, 99b, 107a. Browne rejoined the county committee on 19 March, and attended until 6 May, and in the following months was engaged in reducing the county forces.89Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 198-278; Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, ff. 14v, 40v. In late May Browne, Sydenham, Whiteway, Coker and others warned the Commons of ‘suspicious meetings and assemblies at several places made up of very disaffected persons’.90Bayley, Dorset, 349-50. Browne delayed his return to Westminster until early September, by which time the New Model had re-imposed the rule of the political Independents at Westminster. In September and early October 1647, Browne sat on six committees, mostly concerned with paying soldiers, settling tithes and raising money for Ireland.91CJ v. 287a-b, 289b, 302a, 320a, 322a. But in November 1647 he had gone back to Dorset once more, attending the county committee regularly until January 1648; thereafter his movements are uncertain.92Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 281-317. The second civil war stirred Browne into renewed activity. Returning to Westminster by the beginning of May 1648, he was named to two committees on the settlement of the militia, but at the end of the month he again left for Dorset.93CJ v. 551a, 556a. Once there, he rejoined the county committee from 22 May until 2 September.94Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 391-431. In July he collaborated with the Committee of the West, and, with the Trenchards, Erle, Sydenham, Bond and Chettell, asked Parliament for further leave of absence while the militia was settled.95Bodl. Nalson VII, f. 208; Dorset RO, DC/LR/D2/1, unfol. In August he was involved in raising money for the defence of the county, and sat as militia commissioner at Dorchester.96Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 48; Christie, Shaftesbury, i, appx i. p. xlviii.

Once the threat of royalist insurrection had passed, Browne travelled to Westminster, and was in attendance at Parliament on 9 October 1648, when he was named to a committee to consider a guard for the Houses of Parliament.97CJ vi. 47a. Browne survived Pride’s Purge of the House on 6 December, and later dissented from the vote calling for renewed attempts to make peace with the king - although it is unclear whether he registered dissent in December or joined Trenchard in doing so in early February 1649.98Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 218n, 369. Browne was certainly attending the Commons by 16 December, when he was named to a committee to draft an ordinance to settle the militia across the country, and over the next few weeks he was involved in committees concerning the elector palatine, the taking of bribes and the sale of church lands.99CJ vi. 98b, 102b, 103a, 116a, 120b. He was added to the Committee for Indemnity on 6 January 1649.100CJ vi. 109a, 113b; SP24/29, f. 248. Browne supported the judicial proceedings against Charles I. He was named to the committees to consider how to bring the king to trial (23 Dec.) and to draft the resultant ordinance (29 Dec., 3 and 6 Jan.), and he was appointed as commissioner for the high court of justice on 6 January 1649.101CJ vi. 103a, 106a, 110b, 112b; A. and O. Thereafter, Browne’s enthusiasm seems to have waned. He attended only 11 meetings of the commission, and the absence of his signature on the death warrant suggests that he was dissatisfied with the way the trial was being handled.102Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 728n. This impression is reinforced by Browne’s return to Dorset immediately after the execution, and the delay in his return to Westminster until July 1649.103Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 494-530; CJ vi. 266a.

Browne’s parliamentary career during the Rump was solid but unexciting, perhaps reflecting his continuing lack of enthusiasm for the republican cause after the winter of 1648-9. In addition, as in earlier years, Browne’s attendance in the Commons was punctuated by long periods in Dorset, usually coinciding with the spring and autumn assizes and the summer recess, when he would attend the local county committee. This set the pattern for the next four years. In July and August 1649 he was appointed to only minor committees at Westminster, and he returned to Dorset for September and October.104CJ vi. 266a, 267a, 267b, 275a, 286b; Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 545-51. Browne again attended Parliament between November 1649 and February 1650, and his committee appointments suggest an interest in the settlement of the religious and civil governments of Wales and Ireland.105CJ vi. 322b, 324b, 327b, 330b, 336a, 352a. His appointment to the Army Committee on 4 February 1650 was followed a fortnight later by his inclusion in the committee on an ordinance to settle the assessments to support the army.106CJ vi. 357b, 368a. Having spent the spring and summer in Dorset, Browne returned to Parliament in late November 1650.107Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 570-2; CJ vi. 502a. His own financial interests predominated in the next few months, in the fulfilment of the Irish adventurers’ land deals, and in the sale of delinquents’ estates.108CJ vi. 512b, 528a. Browne apparently did nothing in the House between February and November 1651, and he was in Dorset during the summer, as his correspondence with John Fitzjames shows.109Alnwick, Northumberland MS 549, ff. 99, 105v. After the rule of the commonwealth had been confirmed by the victory at Worcester, Browne returned to the Commons, being named to committees on a petition from Chester (11 Dec.) and on a bill to consider setting up a new high court of justice (1 Jan. 1652).110CJ vii. 49b, 62a. In the same period he was also involved in moves against the Leveller, John Lilburne, and his associates, and in earl February he was his appointed to a committee to consider a petition of the ‘ministers of the gospel’ presented by the Independent divine, Dr John Owen*.111CJ vii. 55b, 75b, 86b. After another nine-month absence from Parliament from 19 February 1652, Browne again attended the House in November, and during the winter of 1652-3 he was named to committees to sell royal lands and goods, and to secure money secured on the public faith - all measures which affected Browne’s own financial speculations.112CJ vii. 245a, 250b, 254a. There is no record of Browne’s attendance in Parliament after the beginning of February, and he may have been resident in Dorset when the Rump was dissolved by Cromwell in April 1653.

Aside from a desire to promote a traditional constitutional settlement of religion and politics (as opposed to the radicalism of the Levellers, for instance), Browne’s career in the Rump was dominated by the private financial interests which Browne shared with his friends in Dorset – especially his brother-in-law, John Trenchard. In the early years of the first civil war, Browne had been an important financier for the parliamentarian war effort in Dorset, securing loans and lending money to the county committee; he had also made a substantial investment in the Irish adventurers’ scheme. In compensation, Browne was granted considerable sums by the county committee in the late 1640s, including, in 1647, arrears formerly due to him from John Newborough’s land in Purbeck; and in 1648 Browne and Trenchard were granted the farm, tithes and goods of William Weare of Portisham (reputedly worth £1,500).113Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 287-8, 452, 541; CCAM1290. By the end of the decade Browne had become notorious for his treatment of one Mr Wades of Portland, from whom £1,000 had been seized.114G. Bankes, The Story of Corfe Castle (1853), 231. Browne also benefited materially from his support in the financial committees at Westminster: John Trenchard sat on the Committee for Revenue, and had friends in the Committee for Advance of Money; and Browne was himself appointed a commissioner for Compounding in 1647.115CJ v. 78a. His connection with Trenchard, Bond and other prominent Independents appears to have been as strong in the Rump period as before.116Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, f. 64v; 549, f. 39v. With the backing of the local county committee and his friends in Westminster, Browne’s position seemed very secure. But the dismantling of the county committees in 1649-50, and the factional attacks on the Independents in Parliament made his situation suddenly very vulnerable. The final straw may have been the dismissal on corruption charges of Trenchard’s friend, Lord Howard of Escrick*, chairman of the Committee for Advance of Money. By December 1650, Browne and Trenchard were under investigation by the new committee, staffed by non-MPs, which drew information from Dorset men eager to undermine Trenchard family power locally. The injured tone of Trenchard’s correspondence with the committee, and the fact that the case vanished without trace at the dissolution of the Rump in 1653, strongly suggests that this was a factional matter, with Trenchard as the main target.117CCAM 1290-1. Browne was to remain the focus for complaints to the compounding commissioners as late as 1655.118CCC 1067.

Browne, in his mid-seventies and with his reputation dented by the recent controversies, seems to have retired from parliamentary politics at the beginning of 1653. He continued to play an important part in local affairs, and was active in suppressing a conspiracy in Dorset in October 1653, and a royalist plot to surprise Poole in May 1654.119CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 202, 275; 1654, p. 162. In the spring of 1655 Browne was involved in arresting suspects and keeping the peace in the aftermath of Penruddock’s western rising, and he was included in the militia commission appointed in the immediate aftermath.120CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 77, 94, 114; SP25/76A, f. 14. In December he became a commissioner for securing the peace of the commonwealth, working with the local major-general, John Disbrowe*.121TSP iv. 305. Browne continued to sit as a justice of the peace and to serve as oyer and terminer commissioner in the county until 1657 at least.122A. and O. In November 1658 he was deep in negotiation with John Fitzjames about the marriage of his son and heir (also John) to the Goddards of Wiltshire.123Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, ff. 47v, 48v. Yet by then Browne’s health was failing, and, as John Strode reported to Speaker Lenthall in May 1659, ‘John Browne died about the middle of March last past, and was buried at Frampton the 7 April last past’.124Bodl. Nalson VIII, f. 161. In his will, drawn up in November 1658, Browne left a substantial estate to his eldest son, worth over £1,000 a year in demesne lands alone, and made generous financial provision for his remaining sons and unmarried daughters. His executors included his royalist brother-in-law, Sir John Strangways, and his sons-in-law, Robert Coker and John Stephens, but, surprisingly, no members of the Trenchard family.125PROB11/291/4. Browne’s second son, Thomas, served as MP for Dorset and Weymouth before and during the Exclusion Crisis.126HP Commons 1660-1690.

Author
Oxford 1644
No
Notes
  • 1. C142/439/56; Vis. Dorset Addenda ed. F.T. Colby and J.P. Rylands (1888), 7.
  • 2. Al. Ox.; M. Temple Admiss.
  • 3. Vis. Dorset Addenda, 7.
  • 4. Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 298.
  • 5. Dorset RO, B7/B6/11, f. 11.
  • 6. Charters of Weymouth ed. Moule, 117.
  • 7. F. Rose-Troup, John White, the Patriarch of Dorchester (1930), 63, 454.
  • 8. C231/4, f. 249v; C231/5, pp. 223, 475, 530; C231/6, p. 78; C193/13/3, f. 15v; C193/13/5, f. 21v.
  • 9. Dorset QS Recs. 1625–38 ed. T. Hearing and S. Bridges (Dorset Rec. Soc. xiv), 67.
  • 10. C181/4, f. 104.
  • 11. C181/5, f. 226v.
  • 12. List of Sheriffs (L. and I. ix), 39; Whiteway Diary, 125.
  • 13. C181/5, f. 113.
  • 14. C192/1, unfol.
  • 15. SR.
  • 16. SR; A. and O.; An Act for an Assessment (1653, E. 1062.28).
  • 17. LJ v. 225b.
  • 18. A. and O.
  • 19. LJ x. 393a.
  • 20. A. and O.; R. Williams, ‘County and Municipal Government in Cornw., Devon, Dorset and Som. 1649–60’ (Bristol Univ. PhD thesis, 1981), 169; SP25/76A, f. 14.
  • 21. A. and O.
  • 22. C181/6, pp. 9, 308.
  • 23. C181/6, p. 33.
  • 24. TSP iv. 305.
  • 25. CJ iii. 258a.
  • 26. A. and O.
  • 27. CJ iii. 283b.
  • 28. CJ vi. 109a, 113b; SP24/29, f. 248.
  • 29. A. and O.
  • 30. CJ vi. 120b.
  • 31. Bodl. Rawl. A.224, f. 3.
  • 32. A. and O.
  • 33. CJ vi. 357b; A. and O.
  • 34. A. and O.
  • 35. Dorset RO, D/HIL/T1.
  • 36. C142/439/56.
  • 37. PROB11/291/4.
  • 38. Dorset County Museum, Dorchester.
  • 39. PROB11/291/4.
  • 40. Vis. Dorset Addenda, 7; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 116.
  • 41. C142/439/56; Keeler, Long Parliament, 118-9.
  • 42. Al. Ox.; M. Temple Admiss.
  • 43. Signature: Bodl. Nalson III, ff. 246-7: 10 Aug. 1644.
  • 44. Vis. Dorset 1623 (Harl. Soc. xx), 94.
  • 45. PROB11/159/112.
  • 46. Whiteway Diary, 16, 78.
  • 47. HP Commons 1604-1629.
  • 48. Christie, Shaftesbury, i. appx i. p. xix.
  • 49. RR6/91: Institution Bks Ser. A (1556-1660), ii, pp. 2, 15; Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 304; Calamy Revised, 122, 367, 468.
  • 50. Recs. of Dorchester ed. Mayo, 379; Whiteway Diary, 114.
  • 51. Whiteway Diary, 61.
  • 52. CSP Dom. 1634-5, pp. 182, 416.
  • 53. Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 298, 303; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 217.
  • 54. Hutchins, Dorset, ii. 298.
  • 55. Som. and Dorset N. and Q. iv. 19; SP16/319, f. 89; CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 395; 1637, p. 400.
  • 56. K. S. Bottigheimer, English Money, Irish Land (Oxford, 1971), 178; PJ, iii. 468.
  • 57. CJ ii. 694b; Bayley, Dorset, 46.
  • 58. Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 82.
  • 59. CJ ii. 805b; Harl. 164, f. 10v.
  • 60. Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, ff. 97v, 101v.
  • 61. CJ ii. 987b; Harl. 164, f. 311; Add. 18777, f. 170.
  • 62. Bodl. Nalson II, ff. 342-3.
  • 63. CJ iii. 36a; Bayley, Dorset, 67.
  • 64. Bodl. Tanner 62, f. 100; CJ iii. 118b.
  • 65. SP16/539/127, ff. 28, 30v, 31v, 38; Add. 4771, ff. 16, 32v, 36, 43v, 48v, 58v.
  • 66. Supra, ‘Committee for Compounding; CJ iii. 142a, 210a, 258a.
  • 67. CJ iii. 256a, 283b.
  • 68. Add. 18778, f. 10v.
  • 69. CJ iii. 294b, 355b; CCAM 28, 1488; Add. 18779, f. 29.
  • 70. CJ iii. 556b.
  • 71. PRO30/24/2/43.
  • 72. Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 1.
  • 73. CJ iii. 682a.
  • 74. CJ iv. 161a.
  • 75. CJ iv. 176a, 218a, 228b.
  • 76. CJ iv. 238a, 276a.
  • 77. CJ iv. 346a.
  • 78. SP23/2, pp. 124, 128.
  • 79. Christie, Shaftesbury, i, appx i. pp. xxxiv, xxxvi; Add. 29319, ff. 36-7; Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 28.
  • 80. Bodl. Tanner 59, f. 392.
  • 81. CJ iv. 615b.
  • 82. Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 8-81.
  • 83. CJ iv. 681b.
  • 84. Dorset RO, D/HIL/T1.
  • 85. Alnwick, Northumberland MS 547, ff. 64-5.
  • 86. CJ iv. 632a.
  • 87. CJ v. 17b.
  • 88. A. and O.; CJ v. 78a, 99b, 107a.
  • 89. Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 198-278; Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, ff. 14v, 40v.
  • 90. Bayley, Dorset, 349-50.
  • 91. CJ v. 287a-b, 289b, 302a, 320a, 322a.
  • 92. Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 281-317.
  • 93. CJ v. 551a, 556a.
  • 94. Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 391-431.
  • 95. Bodl. Nalson VII, f. 208; Dorset RO, DC/LR/D2/1, unfol.
  • 96. Bodl. Gough Dorset 14, f. 48; Christie, Shaftesbury, i, appx i. p. xlviii.
  • 97. CJ vi. 47a.
  • 98. Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 218n, 369.
  • 99. CJ vi. 98b, 102b, 103a, 116a, 120b.
  • 100. CJ vi. 109a, 113b; SP24/29, f. 248.
  • 101. CJ vi. 103a, 106a, 110b, 112b; A. and O.
  • 102. Abbott, Writings and Speeches, i. 728n.
  • 103. Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 494-530; CJ vi. 266a.
  • 104. CJ vi. 266a, 267a, 267b, 275a, 286b; Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 545-51.
  • 105. CJ vi. 322b, 324b, 327b, 330b, 336a, 352a.
  • 106. CJ vi. 357b, 368a.
  • 107. Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 570-2; CJ vi. 502a.
  • 108. CJ vi. 512b, 528a.
  • 109. Alnwick, Northumberland MS 549, ff. 99, 105v.
  • 110. CJ vii. 49b, 62a.
  • 111. CJ vii. 55b, 75b, 86b.
  • 112. CJ vii. 245a, 250b, 254a.
  • 113. Dorset Standing Cttee. ed. Mayo, 287-8, 452, 541; CCAM1290.
  • 114. G. Bankes, The Story of Corfe Castle (1853), 231.
  • 115. CJ v. 78a.
  • 116. Alnwick, Northumberland MS 548, f. 64v; 549, f. 39v.
  • 117. CCAM 1290-1.
  • 118. CCC 1067.
  • 119. CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 202, 275; 1654, p. 162.
  • 120. CSP Dom. 1655, pp. 77, 94, 114; SP25/76A, f. 14.
  • 121. TSP iv. 305.
  • 122. A. and O.
  • 123. Alnwick, Northumberland MS 552, ff. 47v, 48v.
  • 124. Bodl. Nalson VIII, f. 161.
  • 125. PROB11/291/4.
  • 126. HP Commons 1660-1690.