BURRELL, Abraham (1590-c.1657), of Midloe, Hunts.

Burrell’s father, Richard Burrell, was a Yorkshireman, born at Kilburn in the North Riding, who made his fortune in London trading as a grocer.31PROB11/156/346. He twice served as a warden of the Grocers’ Company and on two occasions was nominated as a London alderman.32List of the Wardens of the Grocers’ Co. (1907), 23; Beaven, Aldermen of London, i. 49, 193. The family was of sufficient standing to be armigerous and Richard Burrell set himself up as a country gentleman by buying an estate at Ryhall in Rutland.33Vis. Surrey 1530, 1572, and 1623, 179; T. Blore, The Hist. and Antiquities of the Co. of Rutland (1811), 50. This probably enabled him to help his brother-in-law, John Jay†, get elected for the neighbouring constituency of Stamford in 1614. The Ryhall estate and all his other lands were to pass to Abraham’s elder brother, John.34PROB11/156/346. The purchase by him and his father of two houses in Cheapside in 1610 was probably intended to provide Abraham with a measure of financial security as he came of age, but otherwise he had to make his own way in the world.35Cust, Recs. of the Cust Fam. 198. At the time of his marriage in 1617, he was described as a merchant, although he had not followed his father and one of his brothers, Daniel, in becoming a Grocer.36London Marriage Lics. ed. Foster, 221; GL, MS 11592A, unfol. It may be that his wife’s inheritance ended any need for him to earn a living.

During the early years of his marriage, Burrell seems to have been living with his wife’s family at Chertsey in Surrey.37Vis. Surrey 1530, 1572, and 1623, 179; Cust, Recs. of the Cust Fam. 188, 197. This arrangement ended in 1620, when, for reasons which remain obscure, he bought the lease on a house at Shapwick in Somerset and settled there. Two years later he spent £4,500 buying up two of the local manors and Shapwick House from the Walton family. At some stage he also acquired the advowsons of Ashcott and Nunney.38Vernacular Buildings of Shapwick, 7; Gerrard and Aston, Shapwick Project, 41, 43, 285; Cust, Recs. of the Cust Fam. 177; F.W. Weaver, Som. Incumbants (Bristol, 1889), 8, 155. During the decade from his appointment in 1629, he was an active member of the Somerset commission of the peace.39Coventry Docquets, 62; QS Recs. Som. Charles I, 104-309. In the Short Parliament election in March 1640 he supported Sir Ralph Hopton* and John Coventry*.40Cal. Corresp. Smyth Fam. 195. But his time in Somerset was to be limited. In 1640 he sold Shapwick House to Sir Samuel* and Henry Rolle† (father of Francis*).41Gerrard and Aston, Shapwick Project, 285.

At the outbreak of the civil war Burrell was a newcomer to Huntingdonshire, having the previous year bought land at Midloe, between Huntingdon and St Neots, from Sir Martin Lumley*.42PROB11/218/557; VCH Hunts. ii. 319. It is thus striking that he should have emerged rapidly as one of the more prominent supporters of Parliament within the county. His inclusion in the first Huntingdonshire commission of array issued by the king was not repeated when the second was issued in August 1642, suggesting that the king had abandoned hope of his support.43Northants. RO, FH 133, unfol. Initially omitted from Parliament’s sequestration and assessment commissions, he was added at the direction of the Commons in June 1643 and six days later was named by them as one of the new deputy lieutenants for Huntingdonshire.44CJ iii. 123a, 131b. The following month he helped prepare the county’s defences when they were threatened by the advance of the king’s forces into Northamptonshire.45Eg. 2647, f. 40; HMC 7th Rep. 555-6. The proceedings surrounding the attempt to sequester Sir Thomas Cotton*, which dragged on throughout late 1643 and much of 1644, confirm that Burrell was then a central figure on the Huntingdonshire standing committee. One report suggested that Burrell and his colleagues on the committee felt that Cotton had been treated too harshly by the sequestrators.46BL, Cotton appendix XLIX, ff. 3, 18, 20, 172, 175, 191, 194, 199.

This was not their only concern. On 6 June 1644 Burrell and other members of the county committee wrote (via Sir Thomas Dacres*) to tell Parliament of ‘the horrible oppression of certain persons of mean rank and strangers in the county who came and assessed men over again’ by which ‘the county is like to be ruined’.47CJ iii. 533a-b; Harl. 166, f. 74v; Add. 31116, p. 290. Four months later they told Sir Samuel Luke* of their concerns about the royalist forces operating in the Stamford area.48Luke Letter Bks. 344. Soon after Burrell admitted to John Ashe* (with whom he had stayed while visiting London earlier that year) that the record-keeping of the Huntingdonshire sequestrators had been less than efficient.49CCC 12. During the course of the war, one faction on the Huntingdonshire standing committee defected to the king, but Burrell remained loyal to Parliament and was thus indemnified by the Commons in August 1644.50CJ iii. 579a-b; Luke Letter Bks. 344, 376. Not all members of the family supported Parliament. His elder brother John was knighted on joining the king in July 1642, while John’s eldest son, Redmayne Burrell, served as a major in the royalist army.51Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 213; P.R. Newman, Royalist Officers in Eng. and Wales New York and London, 1981), 50. (An attempt by Redmayne Burrell in June 1646 to get a reduction in his compounding fine on the grounds that his uncle had a share in his Lincolnshire estates came to nothing.52CCC 1000; Cust, Recs. of the Cust Fam. 197-8.) One relative who did support Parliament was his nephew Richard Cust*, for whom Burrell was acting as a trustee in 1645.53Cust, Recs. of the Cust. Fam. 267, 336.

The divisions between the local parliamentarian officials of the county formed the background to the Huntingdon by-election in the autumn of 1645. As Robert Bernard* explained to the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†) in late September, the excise commissioners had fallen out with the county standing committee and had prepared articles of complaint against Burrell. Bernard considered Burrell ‘would be glad to be a burgess, and be gone from this trouble’, indicating that he hoped to become an MP so that parliamentary immunity could be used to block the commissioners’ proceedings.54Hunts. RO, M28/1/33. If so, the tactic worked. Although he may have faced a challenge from John Pykeringe (younger brother of Sir Gilbert Pykeringe*), Burrell was in due course elected.

Burrell took his place in Parliament soon afterwards, for he was added to the committee of privileges on 16 October 1645.55CJ iv. 311a. He and John Stephens*, the recently elected recruiter MP for Tewkesbury, were then added to the Gloucester committee (25 Oct.), and Burrell took the Covenant on 29 October.56CJ iv. 321b, 326a. He was later named to the committee appointed to investigate the excise accounts (11 Mar. 1646).57CJ iv. 472b. Between then and 1649 there is more evidence for his absences from Westminster than for his attendance. On three occasions (Oct. 1646, Apr. 1647, and May 1647) he was given permission to return to the country. During that time he was named to only one committee, that on the bill cancelling the patents of the clerks of the privy seal, and, as he was first-named, he may have had a special interest in the matter.58CJ iv. 684a; v. 84a, 142a, 553b. In September 1648, when the Commons wanted two MPs to write to the Huntingdonshire assessment commissioners, they turned to Burrell and Sir William Lytton*.59CJ vi. 30b. The picture which emerges is of someone who remained more important in Huntingdonshire than he was at Westminster.

It is thus unsurprising that Burrell seems not to have been present in the Commons throughout most of the final months of 1648. On 10 October he was again given permission to be absent from Westminster on public business, and this was confirmed on 25 November to enable him to return to Huntingdonshire to give further encouragement to the assessment collection.60CJ vi. 48b, 87b. Burrell was thus probably elsewhere when the House was purged on 6 December and he later claimed that he had been absent from the vote the day before on whether negotiations with the king should continue: John Blakiston* informed the Commons on 28 February 1649 that Burrell had told the committee taking the dissents from that vote that, ‘he was not then present; but doth disapprove that vote; and desires his disapproval may be entered’.61CJ vi. 152a. The Commons accepted this explanation and agreed to re-admit him.62CJ vi. 152a. This time-frame indicates that he had probably been absent on 6 January when he had been named among those who were to sit in judgment on the king.63A. and O. He was not present at any of the sessions of the high court of justice and did not sign the death warrant.

Burrell’s activity in the Rump between 1649 and 1651 falls into two distinct periods, namely May 1649 and May-June 1650. It seems clear that Burrell must have spent much of the rest of his time away from Westminster. When he was named to committees, they were often those concerned with matters of public finance.64CJ vi. 154a, 204b, 217a, 218b, 274a, 427a. Other committees of note to which he was appointed included those to remove obstructions to the sale of bishops’ lands (4 May 1649), for Plundered Ministers (24 May 1649), for the propagation of the gospel in Yorkshire (7 June 1650), and on the suppression of obscene and impious practices (14 June). As he sat on the committee to decide how the policy could be implemented, he presumably supported the requirement that everyone take the Engagement.65CJ vi. 201a, 216a, 321b, 420b, 423b. On the face of it, his most important appointment was that to the Committee of Navy and Customs, to which he was added in May 1649, although its surviving records suggest that he attended its meetings infrequently.66CJ vi. 219b; Bodl. Rawl. A.224, ff. 94, 96, 97v, 98.

The high point of Burrell’s career came on 25 November 1651 when he was elected by the Commons to sit on the council of state. The 54 votes cast for Burrell on this second day of balloting suggest that he was ranked 29th in popularity out of the 41 men eventually chosen to form the new council.67CJ vii. 42b. Subsequently he was named to a number of major council committees, such as those on Ireland and Scotland, the admiralty, and trade and foreign affairs, as well as some of the more minor ones, including those to hear the complaints of the London agent of the grand duke of Tuscany and to consider the estimate for the repairs to St James’s Palace.68CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. 43, 46, 54-5, 67, 99. However, once an initial burst of activity passed, there followed the first of two long periods in which Burrell was clearly absent from London; he failed to attend a single council meeting between 13 January and 6 May 1652.69CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. xxxvi-xl. The second period of absence occurred between 14 July and 26 October.70CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. xlii-xlv. In all, Burrell had attended 117 of the 330 Council meetings held during that year, placing him slightly below the average for his colleagues, but it could be argued that, when he was in London, he was among the more regular attenders.71CSP Dom. 1651-2, pp. xxxv-xlvii.

Burrell’s presence on the council seems not to have produced any noticeable increase in his activity in Parliament. Apart from two very minor committee appointments in December 1651 and May 1652, he made no recorded contribution to the Commons’ proceedings during his first 11 months as a member of the council and there is no evidence of his colleagues ever seeking to use him as a spokesman there. It was only in early November 1652, with the new round of council elections looming and with the future of the Parliament uncertain, that Burrell’s name again appears in the Journal. On 2 November he was named to the committee which considered what provision should be made for children in the additional bill to sell off the forfeited estates and ten days later he was named to the committee on the bill to fix the salaries of the judges.72CJ vii. 55b, 134a, 205a, 215a. Perhaps this low profile explains his poor showing in the council elections on 24 and 25 November, when he failed to muster the minimum of 39 votes required to secure a place.73CJ vii. 220a-221a.

Thereafter, he played an occasional part in the business of the House. He sat on the committee for the bill appointing new admiralty commissioners (9 Dec.) and he was asked on 23 December to tell the council of state what he knew about the delay in the delivery of a letter to Parliament from Queen Christina of Sweden. Quite why Burrell he was party to such knowledge is unclear.74CJ vii. 227a, 234a. On 6 January 1653 he was included on the committee considering the explanatory bill clarifying the Act for the relief of tender consciences.75CJ vii. 244a. There was then no further mention of him before the expulsion of the Rump on 20 April.

Having completed a seven-year stint in Parliament, Burrell was probably in no hurry to sit again. In 1656 Edward Montagu II*, who was then absent at sea, suggested to the secretary of state, John Thurloe*, that a seat should be found for him, but it is unclear whether anything came of this.76TSP v. 179. Burrell’s public career was now confined to local commissions in Huntingdonshire, the duties of which he appears to have performed without qualms about the legal status of the protectorate.77A. and O; CSP Dom. 1655, p. 79; TSP iv. 229. When the new county militia was inaugurated in the summer of 1655, he was reported to have declared that ‘the raising of these troops is the best thing [which] hath been done for the quieting the nation this long while’.78Bodl. Carte 74, f. 31. From 1652 he acted as one of the trustees appointed by Sir William Boteler* to manage his heavily indebted estates. The two men had known each other since the mid-1640s, but it is possible that Burrell was now involved in Boteler’s affairs as a creditor.79PROB11/261/308; ‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir William Boteler’, 5-6; ‘Notes from old Beds. deeds’, Beds. N and Q, iii. 341-2.

The exact date of Burrell’s death cannot be determined: it is likely to have taken place soon after he had completed his will on 5 August 1657, although probate was not completed until almost a year later.80PROB11/281/577. The renewal of his appointment as a commissioner for oyer and terminer in February 1658 may well have been a clerical error; his inclusion in the commission of sewers of November 1658 undoubtedly was.81C181/6, pp. 276, 333. He was buried in the church at Little Paxton, one of the parishes adjacent to Midloe.82RCHME Hunts. 203; VCH Hunts. ii. 336. As he had died leaving no male heir, Burrell’s estates were divided between his four daughters, Jane, wife of Bevercotts Cornwallis, Elizabeth, wife of Dreyner Massingberd, Mary, wife of Slingisby Bethell*, and Anne, wife of Thomas Peers.83PROB11/281/577; Lincs. Peds. ed. A.R. Maddison (Harl. Soc. li), ii. 596, 660. His widow later married John Leete, while Anne married as her second husband, Michael, son of Sir Martin Lister*.84Vis. Hunts. 1684, 70; Maddison, Lincs. Peds. ii. 596. Anne’s daughter, Elizabeth Lister, would marry Charles Knollys, who claimed to be the 4th earl of Banbury. Burrell seems to have been unrelated to the dynasty of eighteenth-century MPs, the Burrells of Beckenham, making him the only member of his family to sit in Parliament.