BOROUGH (BURGH, BURROUGHES), John (1583-1643), of Old Palace Yard, Westminster

Borough’s father, a Brabanter by birth, is said to have been a brewer in Sandwich. Ath. Ox. iv. (Fasti), 62. None of the family seems to have achieved local office. By his first marriage, Borough became connected with Sir Robert Cotton*, who described him as ‘cousin’ in 1621. Harl. 6018, f. 149. Cotton may have had a hand in his admission to the Tower record office in 1612, as well as in his subsequent entry into Bacon’s service. It was as ‘a secretary of my lord chancellor’s ... born in Sandwich’ that he was nominated at Sandwich for the junior seat at the general election of 1620, but he was defeated by the lord warden’s candidate, Sir Robert Hatton*, on the narrow franchise. He borrowed ‘a book of records gathered concerning the Cinque Ports, especially Yarmouth and Sandwich’ from Cotton, and successfully petitioned against Hatton’s return, on the ground that the commons had been improperly barred from voting. On 22 Mar. 1621 the House ordered the issue of a new writ, over the protest of Sir Dudley Digges that nothing should be done until Borough had been cleared of the charge of corruption brought against him as one of Bacon’s secretaries. Ibid.; CJ, i. 566a, 568b; CD 1621, iv. 181; v. 315; vi. 386; vii. 568. He was returned at the subsequent by-election, apparently unopposed, but left no further mark on the records of the Parliament, and the charge of corruption seems to have been quietly dropped. He nonetheless maintained some contact with Bacon, serving as his research assistant in the preparation of his History of Henry VII, and explaining as late as January 1622 that he hoped within a few days ‘to be at liberty to wait upon your lordship’. D.R. Woolf, ‘John Selden, John Borough and Francis Bacon’s History of Henry VII 1621’, HLQ, xlvii. 47-53; Works of Francis Bacon ed. J. Spedding, vii. 324.

On Bacon’s fall Borough attracted the patronage of the earl of Arundel, probably through Cotton. His second wife seems to have come from a Gloucestershire recusant family, For this fam., see Vis. Glos. (Harl. Soc. xxi), 244; Trans. Bristol and Glos. Arch. Soc. lxxiv. 128-52. Borough’s 2nd w. is not, however, mentioned. a connection that would have been helpful when he was sent to Venice in February 1622 to fetch home Lady Arundel and her children. He remained in Venice over the summer, where he purchased books and manuscripts on the earl’s behalf. APC, 1621-3, p. 133; M.F.S. Hervey, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, 200; Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, ii. 426; CSP Ven. 1621-3, p. 262; Cott. Julius C.III, ff. 33, 35-6. Although no gentleman by birth, as his rivals were quick to point out, he was granted arms by Sir William Segar, A. Wagner, Heralds of Eng. 235; Add. 12225, f. 19v. and in 1623 was appointed a herald and a clerk of the Privy Council extraordinary ‘upon His Majesty’s pleasure, signified by the earl marshal’. In 1624 he was returned for Horsham on Arundel’s interest. By this time he was Cotton’s neighbour in Old Palace Yard, living in one of ‘the two houses adjoining to the Parliament’ around which Sir John Pakington* reported suspicious nocturnal activities. Both Borough and Cotton spoke to clear themselves, and insisted that their houses should be searched to remove all fears of inadequate security. ‘Nicholas 1624’, f. 57; ‘Earle 1624’, f. 57; R. Ruigh, Parl. of 1624, p. 170. On 6 Apr. they were among the Members appointed by the committee for privileges to find out how many other towns might be affected by the decision to re-enfranchise three Buckinghamshire boroughs. ‘Pym 1624’, i. f. 51v. A week later Borough was ordered to fetch some records from the Lords to the committee for drafting the subsidy bill. He produced precedents in the debate on heraldic abuses. CJ, i. 765b. Knighted in July 1624, he was re-elected in 1625, and again in 1626, when he kept a volume of notes taken mainly in grand committee. These covered a period of ten days between 27 Feb. and 23 Mar., and primarily concerned matters of defence, the Council of War and the king’s financial needs.Procs. 1626, i. 13. The vol. of notes is now Harl. 6445. Despite his later reputation as ‘an admirable note-taker’, they are remembered chiefly for his report of Secretary Coke’s financial statement of 23 Mar., in which he added two noughts to the grand total.Oxford DNB; C. Russell, PEP, 270. The addition of the noughts to the grand total is not apparent from Procs. 1626, ii. 353. For a more accurate transcript, see Sir John Borough’s Notes of Procs. in Cttees. of House of Commons transcribed C. Thompson. It is not clear whether it was the herald or the soldier Sir John Burgh who was granted a pension of £200 later in the year. C66/2374/10. For this man, see Lincs. Peds. (Harl. Soc. l), 209; Chamberlain Letters, ii. 497; R. Lockyer, Buckingham, 384-5, 396-7. Outside Parliament Borough was engaged about this time, at the behest of Sir Julius Caesar*, on a study of the means used by Edward I to raise money, including distraint of knighthood. H.H. Leonard, ‘Distraint of Knighthood: the last phase 1625-41’, History, lxiii. 24. Edmund Bolton counted him among the 84 ‘essentials’ for his proposed Royal Academy. E. Portal, ‘The Academ Roial of James I’, PBA, vii. 207.

In 1633 Borough accompanied the king to Scotland. Northants. RO, IC4313. That same year he wrote The Soveraignty of the British Seas, published in 1651, and his antiquarian knowledge was again called upon for a justification of Ship Money. CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 148; 1633-4, p. 332. As Garter king of arms he revived the controversy with his fellow heralds, visiting a number of counties by deputy; he also secured the grant of a gold crown for the Garter, having observed the Lyon king of arms wear one at Charles’s Scottish coronation. Wagner, 91. He accompanied Arundel on his embassy to the emperor in 1636. He acted as secretary at the meetings of Charles and the Covenanters at Berwick in 1639, of the Great Council at York (concerning the summoning of which he had again been consulted as an historical expert), and of the commissioners for the treaty of Ripon in 1640. CSP Dom. 1639, p. 172; 1640-1, p. 15; Treaty at Ripon ed. J. Bruce (Cam. Soc. c), pp. xxxvii, 3. When the Civil War broke out he joined the Court at Oxford. He died there, intestate, at the Half Moon inn, on 21 Oct. 1643, and was buried at Christ Church. His widow was prepared to swear in May 1646 that she was not worth £100. No other member of the family entered Parliament, though his younger son, a lawyer, was knighted, and appointed to the Kent commission of the peace by James II as a Catholic. Life of Dugdale, 55; CCAM, 695; G. Duckett, Penal Laws, 353.