Family and Education

bap. 8 May 1624, 1st s. of Sir Francis Bindloss^† (d.1629) of Borwick by 2nd w. Cecilia, da. of Thomas West, 3rd Baron de la Warr. educ. Trinity Coll. Camb. 1640; travelled abroad? 1641-5 m. Rebecca (d.1708), da. and coh. of Hugh Perry alias Hunter, Mercer, of London, 1da. suc. gdfa. 1630; cr. Bt. 16 June 1641.2

Offices Held

Commr. for northern assoc., Lancs. 1645, defence 1645, j.p. 1647-50, Mar. 1660-Apr. 1688, Oct. 1688-d.; commr. for militia 1648, Mar. 1660, sheriff 1657-8, 1671-3, commr. for assessment Jan. 1660-80, dep. lt. c. Aug. 1660-d.; steward, Warton manor Dec. 1660-d.; commr. for corporations, Lancs. 1662-3; mayor, Lancaster 1665-6; capt. vol. horse, Lancs. 1666.3

Gent. of privy chamber by June 1660-85.4

Biography

Bindloss’s great-grandfather acquired the manor of Borwick in Elizabethan times. His father was elected for Lancaster in 1628, but died in the following year. Bindloss became the ward of his stepfather, the royalist Sir John Byron, and was created a baronet on the eve of the Civil War. But he was appointed to the committee for the northern association in 1645 and sat for Lancaster as a recruiter until Pride’s Purge. He avoided political involvement during the Interregnum, though it is said that Charles II stayed at Borwick during the Worcester campaign. A staunch Anglican, he appointed as his chaplain in 1652 Richard Sherlock, who was ‘so zealous a man for the Church of England that he was accounted by precise persons Popishly affected and a Papist in masquerade’. When the reading of the Book of Common Prayer was forbidden, Sherlock used to recite it from memory. It was while at Borwick that he wrote his paraphrased catechism for the use of the Bindloss household.5

Bindloss was returned for the county at the general election of 1660, but he was not an active Member of the Convention. He was appointed only to the committee for the queen mother’s jointure, but probably supported the Government, for he was given an appointment at Court and the stewardship of a crown manor adjacent to his estate. His only daughter and heir married a prominent Roman Catholic, the head of the Standish family, and Bindloss appears to have taken no further interest in parliamentary politics, though he remained active locally. He was notably hostile to ‘dangerous fanatics’ and Quakers, and became a government intelligencer in 1666. Sherlock had reproved him for his extravagant hospitality, and in 1678 he was outlawed for debt. When the lord lieutenant inquired about Bindloss’s attitude to the repeal of the Test Act and Penal Laws in November 1687, he ‘was so lame with the gout he could not stir, [but] writ a very loyal and gentle letter to my lord, most freely consenting’. Nevertheless he was removed from the commission of the peace. He died on 6 Nov. 1688 and was buried at Warton, the last of the family to enter Parliament.6

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Authors: M. W. Helms / Irene Cassidy

Notes

• 1. Did not sit after Pride’s Purge 6 Dec. 1648, readmitted 21 Feb. 1660.
• 2. Vis. Lancs. (Chetham Soc. lxxxiv), 31; Wards 7/79/215; Whitaker, Richmondshire, ii. 311, 316-17.
• 3. Cal. Treas. Bks. i. 105; SP29/61/157; Hist. Lancaster (Chetham Soc. n.s. lxi), 61; CSP Dom. 1665-6, p. 582.
• 4. Carlisle, Privy Chamber, 164.
• 5. VCH Lancs. viii. 171-2; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 93; A. G. Matthews, Walker Revised, 31.
• 6. CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 585; 1663-4, p. 431; 1665-6, p. 656; Whitaker, ii. 317; Cal. Treas Bks. v. 924; HMC Le Fleming, 205-6; Warton Reg. (Lancs. Par. Reg. Soc. lxxiii), 307; Estcourt and Payne, Catholic Non-Jurors, 143.