BULKELEY, Bartholomew (d.1679), of Lymington, Hants.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660-1690, ed. B.D. Henning, 1983
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

6 Mar. - May 1679

Family and Education

2nd s. of Bartholomew Bulkeley of Lymington by Elizabeth, da. of one Carrant. m. Grace, da. of one Bugg, 3s.1

Offices Held

Freeman, Lymington 1645; commr. for assessment, Hants 1677-d., capt. of militia ft. by 1679-d.2

Biography

Bulkeley’s father, a second cousin of John Bulkeley, was granted the freedom of Lymington in 1611. The family was apparently neutral in the Civil War. Bulkeley’s elder brother William traded to the Canaries and acquired property in the Isle of Wight and the West Indies. Although Bulkeley himself kept a shop in Lymington all his life, he too prospered and bought estates in the neighbourhood, including the manor of New Lymington in 1665. He was involved in litigation over a legacy left by a third brother, Thomas, and was awarded £1,300 in Chancery; but in 1675 William Bulkeley appealed to the House of Lords. There was apparently no jurisdictional dispute in this case, which consequently never acquired the constitutional or political celebrity of the contemporary case of Shirley v. Fagg. It may however be significant that when it was revived during the 1677 session it was reported that appellant’s counsel had been ‘sent for away’ by the Marquess of Winchester (Charles Powlett I), the local leader of the country party, upon an ‘extraordinary occasion’, and the Lords committee concluded that the petition was ‘merely for delay’. Bulkeley was returned at the first general election of 1679 and marked ‘doubtful’ on Shaftesbury’s list. As ‘Mr William Bulkeley’ he was appointed only to the inquiry into the woollen industry (3 May) in the first Exclusion Parliament. He died in London shortly afterwards, a new writ being authorized a fortnight later. A codicil to his will executed shortly after the election shows that his brother had at last paid over the legacy, thereby enabling him to devote £3,000 to portions for his younger sons, besides leases of farmland in the neighbourhood. His second son Thomas was to inherit his shop, cellar and storehouse with £1,000 in stock provided that he followed the same trade, while £500 was bequeathed to trustees, who were to make it over to his eldest son Bartholomew after five years ‘if he prove a good husband and diligent in his affairs, nor use and practise any lewd, extravagant and idle course of living’. No other member of this branch of the family entered Parliament.3

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: Paula Watson

Notes

  • 1. T. Phillipps, Vis. Hants, 11.
  • 2. E. King, Old Times Revisited, 189; CSP Dom. 1679-80, p. 61.
  • 3. King, 188; PCC 80, 138 King; VCH Hants, iv. 646; HMC 9th Rep. pt. 2, p. 63; CJ, ix. 624.