BUTTON, John (c.1624-79), of Buckland, nr. Lymington, Hants.

Button came from a junior branch of the Wiltshire family which acquired the manor of Buckland, just outside Lymington, by marriage in the middle of the 16th century. His father sat for the borough in 1625 and in both the Short and Long Parliaments; he fought on the parliamentary side in the Civil War, held a number of local offices, and was secluded in 1648. Button himself was first returned to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament, and re-elected in 1660, when he was listed by Lord Wharton as a friend. He was an inactive Member of the Convention, making no speeches and being appointed only to a committee on an estate bill. His electoral interest at Lymington was considerably weakened by a purge of the Presbyterian freemen in 1663, and he spent the next 15 years trying to re-establish it. He unsuccessfully contested the by-election caused by the death of Sir William Lewis in 1678, but he was returned at both elections in 1679 as an opponent of the Court. Shaftesbury classed him as ‘honest’, although he was absent from the division on the first exclusion bill, and was not appointed to any committees. He was re-elected in August but died in December before the second Exclusion Parliament met. His electoral interest passed to the Burrard family.3VCH Hants, iv. 619, 647; Keeler, Long Parl. 123; C. St. Barbe, Recs. of Lymington, 36; S. Burrard, Annals of Walhampton, 22.