BUTTOCKSHIDE (BUDOXHIDE, BUTSIDE), Roger (by 1515-77), of St. Budeaux, Devon.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1509-1558, ed. S.T. Bindoff, 1982
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Mar. 1553
Oct. 1553
Nov. 1554

Family and Education

b. by 1515, 1st s. of Anthony Buttockshide of St. Budeaux by Elizabeth, da. of William Strode. m. by 1540, Frances, da. of Sir Philip Champernon of Modbury, Devon, 3s. 4da. suc. fa. 8 Nov. 1522.1

Offices Held

Commr. relief, Devon 1550, for price of corn 1551; j.p. 1558/59.2

Biography

Before succeeding to his patrimony Roger Buttockshide was the ward of Henry Courtenay, Earl of Devon. His marriage, doubtless arranged for him during his minority, was to link him with such leading western families as the Carews, Courtenays and Edgecombes, and one of his wife’s sisters married the King’s favourite (Sir) Anthony Denny.3

Buttockshide inherited lands at St. Budeaux and elsewhere on the Tamar estuary as well as extensive property in Bodmin. He probably also had a home in Plymouth where in 1543 he sued his steward in the borough court. He seems to have lived generally as a country gentleman, although his three returns to Parliament suggest wider interests. He appeared on two commissions under Edward VI and was for a short time a justice of the peace under Elizabeth. His omission from subsequent commissions does not seem to have been due to religious dissidence, as in 1564 the bishop of Exeter considered him ‘meet to be placed in authority in the county of Devon’: one of his sons was to be a noted privateer in the Protestant channel fleets of Elizabeth’s reign.4

Buttockshide’s return to three Parliaments for Plymouth is to be ascribed to his local standing and powerful connexions. Living but five miles from the town, he must have been a familiar figure there, and he numbered among his kinsmen the Hawkins family: it was with William Hawkins that he was to sit in the first Marian Parliament. At both that and the previous election the sheriff was (Sir) Richard Edgecombe, who was to appoint Buttockshide a trustee and overseer of his will. Unlike Hawkins, Buttockshide was not among those Members of Mary’s first Parliament who ‘stood for the true religion’, that is, for Protestantism, nor did he join those who a year later withdrew from Parliament before it ended and were prosecuted for this breach of duty. It is likely, therefore, that he accommodated himself to the Catholic restoration with no more difficulty than the Elizabethan settlement was afterwards to give him.5

Buttockshide was buried at St. Budeaux on 3 Feb. 1577. No will or inquisition post mortem has been found.6

Ref Volumes: 1509-1558

Author: Roger Virgoe

Notes

  • 1. Date of birth estimated from family history in fa.’s i.p.m., C142/40/63, from which age has been torn off. Vis. Devon, ed. Vivian, 114.
  • 2. CPR, 1550-3, p. 141; 1553, p. 352.
  • 3. LP Hen. VIII, iv.
  • 4. R. N. Worth, Plymouth Recs. 230; Cam. Misc. ix(3), 69; Camden, Elizabeth (1688), 82.
  • 5. Hasted, Kent: Hundred of Blackheath, ed. Drake, p. xxii; PCC 12 Streat.
  • 6. Vis. Devon, 114.