BYSSHE, Edward I (d. ?1655), of Smallfield Place, Burstow, Surr. and Lincoln’s Inn, Mdx.

Although Bysshe’s ancestors had lived since the fifteenth century at Burstow, just south of Bletchingley, and in the nearby Sussex parish of Worth, the claims of his son, the herald Edward Bysshe II, that the family were descended from the thirteenth century de Burstows, lords of the manor, were probably unfounded. The antiquary John Aubrey claimed that a contrary truth was ‘well-known’ to local inhabitants, ‘who called it a new raised, upstart family of yesterday’s growth’, and that Bysshe I’s ‘father, or grandfather, was a miller’.23Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. lxxxix), 20–1; J. Aubrey, The Natural Hist. and Antiquities of Surr. (1719), 72; VCH Surr. iii. 176-7. Aubrey’s contention that the MP had improved his fortunes as a result of his practice as a lawyer, especially in the court of wards, appears substantiated, although he also made a good marriage to the daughter of a client of the Howard family, John Turner. Turner had sat in Parliament for Bletchingley in 1601 and this fact, together with Bysshe’s patrons from the wards, probably explains his own consistent success in elections for a borough seat from 1624.24‘John Turner’, HP Commons 1558-1603; ‘Edward Bysshe’, HP Commons 1604-1629. Significantly more visible in 1626 and 1628 than in his two earlier parliaments, Bysshe displayed an interest in a variety of issues, but especially matters to do with the law and religion, revealing expectations of high standards among both officeholders and clergy.

Bysshe’s prosperity enabled him to expand his estate in the area in 1629 through purchase of land in Horne from Sir William Culpeper.25VCH Surr. iv. 293; PROB11/293/120. He also commissioned a ‘fair, well-built house of freestone, situated by the common’ at Smallfield.26Aubrey, Natural Hist. Surr. 71. His career remained remunerative: he retired as feodary of Surrey in 1637, citing long public service and his advancing age, but in Easter term 1638 he was the second most active barrister in the court of wards.27CSP Dom. 1637, p. 193; W.R. Prest, Rise of the Barristers (1986), 64. That his sympathies were puritan is suggested by the fact that in Lent 1632, while he was reader at Lincoln’s Inn, he ‘had at his table at dinner and supper ... openly in the hall, flesh served in’. Such ostentatious disregard of the rules of his inn earned him a fine of £10.28LI Black Bks. ii. 303.

As a longstanding local figure he might have anticipated that his election to Parliament in spring 1640 would be plain sailing. He was indeed chosen by all of Bletchingley’s 23 freemen, but he had to withdraw temporarily from the House because of a ruling on 16 April that, if a constituency returned more than two candidates, none were to sit before the matter – here a dispute over the second seat – was resolved. A motion that he might ‘speak in his own case’ was apparently rejected, although the committee for privileges was instructed to ‘expedite this business, and that touching Mr Bisse in particular’29Procs. 1640, 144; CJ ii. 3b. It duly complied: Bysshe’s election was confirmed early the next day and he was then promptly added to the committee.30CJ ii. 4b. However, he made no further recorded contribution to the session.

This was his last appearance in Parliament. He seems not to have been a candidate in the autumn elections which saw his eldest son, Edward Bysshe II*, returned for Bletchingley. However, he continued to be active in local government and at his inn.31A. and O.; C231/6, p. 30; LI Black Bks. ii. 380. A supporter of Parliament in the first civil war, he shared his son’s political, if not necessarily his religious, Presbyterianism and did not visibly serve the commonwealth. In June 1648 he was one of two benchers who recommended that the bills for meals taken at Lincoln’s Inn by the former archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher – ‘seeming excessive’ – should henceforward be paid for by Ussher himself.32LI Black Bks. ii. 378. In 1651 Edward Bysshe II was reported as saying that both men were poised to lead an uprising, although nothing came of this.33HMC Portland, i. 582, 600. If the information was accurate, perhaps the son under-estimated his father’s caution: still active on the bench at his inn, he associated with John Harington* and occasionally with Speaker William Lenthall*, who dined with them both in November 1652.34Harington’s Diary, 62, 65–6, 68–6, 71, 77–8.

Bysshe, describing himself as ‘sick’, drew up his will on 16 June 1655, leaving annuities of £40 each to three younger sons and mentioning £1,000 secured for the portion of one of his daughters. He probably died soon afterwards and certainly before 6 February 1656, when his son Henry was called to the bar and spared the usual fee ‘out of respect to the memory of his father’.35PROB11/293/120; Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. lxxxix), 20; LI Black Books, ii. 411.