Like his great-nephew Henry Bulstrode*, Sir William was descended from the Edward Bulstrode, who held lands in Buckinghamshire and Middlesex under Henry VII. Bulstrode’s father, one of Edward’s younger sons, probably received no more than a life annuity, and although he was one of the main beneficiaries of his mother’s will, his inheritance cannot have been large.
Nothing is known about the first 30 years of Bulstrode’s life. He may have spent some time in Spain, as an inventory of his goods in 1599 listed two books in Spanish and one in Portuguese, but on the other hand these volumes could have been plunder acquired on campaign in 1589 and 1596.
Bulstrode presumably returned to Rutland at the end of the campaign, as he played no part in Essex’s abortive rebellion in February 1601. He was probably present at the Rutland election of October 1601, when sheriff Sir Andrew Noell†, unable to secure the election of his 19-year-old son Edward Noell† owing to the objections of the Haringtons, returned himself as one of the knights of the shire.
On the morning of the election Bulstrode, although not a magistrate, was permitted to sit among the county justices. Having read the writ, Noell ‘inveighed much against some of the servants of the said Sir John Harington, who (as he thought) had much laboured and practised against his said son’. James Harington then rose to defend his brother, and was followed by Bulstrode who, with Noell’s permission, produced a letter he had received from Sir John Harington earlier that morning. This exhorted the freeholders ‘to have a care in their election of the knight of the Parliament to equal and consort the said Sir John Harington with a man like unto him in years, gravity and experience’, which was generally perceived as a call for opposition to Edward Noell.
Although Bulstrode urged Noell to ‘let there be no offence taken of either party, nor no revenge’, both sides quickly brought prosecutions in Star Chamber. The cases petered out after a year, but the sudden revival of Noell’s lawsuit in January 1604, when depositions were taken from three dozen local witnesses, suggests that the rivals were jockeying for position in the forthcoming election to the first Stuart Parliament.
Despite his inexperience, Bulstrode played a significant part in his first Parliament. He was involved in few major political issues: he was included on the delegations sent to two of the conferences with the Lords on the Union with Scotland (14 Apr. 1604, 29 Nov. 1606) and was named to the committee which provided the Lords with evidence in support of the Commons’ bill of attainder against Sir Stephen Procter (19 July 1610).
Bulstrode missed the start of the second session in November 1605, as he was then serving out his term as sheriff of Rutland. His replacement, Basil Feilding*, was appointed on 2 Feb. 1606, whereupon Bulstrode quickly resumed his place at Westminster, as he later recalled the debate of 26 Feb. over the precedence of Oxford and Cambridge in the subsidy bill.
Bulstrode was only named to one committee for religious legislation in the spring session of 1610, concerning the tightening of the 1606 Recusancy Act (23 July),
While Bulstrode clearly gave first priority to religious issues, he was involved with a variety of legislation concerning local affairs throughout his time in Parliament. He lived sufficiently close to the East Anglian fens to be named to committees for two drainage bills (12 May 1604, 9 May 1607), a private bill resolving a dispute over the drainage of Deeping Fen in Lincolnshire (2 July 1604), and another for reform of sewer commissions (12 June 1607).
Bulstrode’s interest in other legislation is more difficult to reconstruct. Only a handful of the committees to which he was named concerned legislation for the ‘reformation of manners’: suppression of idleness (19 Apr. 1610), vagrancy (22 Nov. 1621) and the murdering of bastard children (29 Apr. 1624).
Bulstrode’s identification with the interests of his Harington relatives within the Commons is reinforced by what little is known of his activities elsewhere. His first wife may have been the ‘Mrs. Bulstrode’ who was serving in the household of Lord Harington’s daughter Lucy, Countess of Bedford, in 1605. Bulstrode himself acted as an intermediary between Harington and the 1st earl of Salisbury (Robert Cecil†), both for the payment of Princess Elizabeth’s allowance, and over the question of a match between Harington’s son Sir John* and Salisbury’s only daughter in 1606-7. In return, when Harington became lord lieutenant of Rutland in the spring of 1607, he recommended Bulstrode to Salisbury as one of his deputies.
The sudden demise of both Lord Harington and his two younger brothers in the 18 months before the general election of 1614 left the family interest in the hands of Sir John Harington*, who succumbed to smallpox himself only weeks before the election.
The pattern of Bulstrode’s parliamentary activity during the 1620s followed that established a decade earlier: an occasional involvement in secular issues combined with a regular interest in religious affairs. He played no part in the prosecution of monopolists which dominated the spring sitting of 1621, but he offered the practical suggestion that four Members who were Westminster justices should be sent to arrest the alehouse patentees after the inns patentee, (Sir) Giles Mompesson*, escaped from custody.
Bulstrode was not specifically named to the committee appointed on 17 Feb. 1621 to investigate the decline in revenues from recusancy fines, but he was clearly involved in its work, as he was one of those empowered to send for any judicial records deemed necessary. Its chief target was Sir Henry Spiller*, the receiver of recusant revenues, and Bulstrode was a member of the committee belatedly appointed to investigate his activities on 29 Nov. 1621.
Bulstrode’s fears of recusants must have been heightened by the relaxation of the penal laws during negotiations for the Spanish Match in 1623, and when the Commons reassembled in 1624 he took up Sir Edward Cecil’s* proposal for a general fast on behalf of the Protestant cause. He moved that the Commons should observe the day at St. Margaret’s, Westminster, and nominated the incumbent, Dr. Bargrave, to preach. He was one of five MPs appointed to ensure that all Members took communion at this fast (23 February).
The government of the established church occupied relatively little of Bulstrode’s time in 1624. He was named to committees for the simony bill (12 Apr.), to investigate the misdemeanours of Dr. Anyan, President of Corpus Christi, Oxford (1 May) and the bill granting magistrates the right to remove ministers from their livings for scandalous offences (1 May).
Bulstrode played little recorded part in the great political events of the 1624 session, but two incidents in which he was involved had far-reaching implications. After the committee for grievances had been established on 23 Feb., he made what may have been a purely practical suggestion to set up a sub-committee to receive petitions. The motion was quashed by Sir Robert Phelips, who perhaps had an ulterior motive, as he later pressed for the task to be consigned to the committee for courts of justice, as part of the attack he planned to develop against lord keeper Williams.
Bulstrode apparently missed the Westminster sitting of 1625, possibly because he was involved with the mustering of recruits for the Cadiz expedition.
Although apparently present in the Commons throughout the 1626 session, Bulstrode was much less active than on previous occasions. He was named to the select committee for religion (10 Feb.), and three days later, he moved for it to have power to subpoena witnesses and evidence, and called for the compilation of a list of ‘the scandalous lives of ministers’, which was probably intended to open the way for attacks on Arminian clergy.
Bulstrode made his only major speech during the supply debate of 26 Apr. 1626, which centred around the question of whether to increase the earlier grant of three subsidies and three fifteenths. He rejected a motion to raise the subsidy rate above 4s. in the pound, urging that local commissioners should be left to increase the ratings upon individuals, but softened the blow by offering an extra subsidy. He also reminded the House that there were ‘many [Catholics] that have money enough to support seminaries abroad’, and called for the collection of arrears of recusancy revenues.
Unlike Palmes, Bulstrode retained his place in local government in the next two years. He acted as collector of the Privy Seal loans levied during the 1626 session, and served as a commissioner for the Forced Loan which superseded it.
Having found his voice again in June 1628, Bulstrode joined in the attack on the recusant threat during the 1629 session. He prefaced his speech to the committee of religion on 13 Feb. with the defiant assertion that ‘if we now speak not we may forever hold our peace’, and launched into a tirade against Catholic influence at Court. This secured the attention of the House, whereupon he moved to know ‘by what authority the Jesuits that were lately in Newgate were released’; it is likely that the motion was pre-arranged with the committee chairman, John Pym.
Shortly after the dissolution of 1629, Bulstrode married his third wife, the widow of a London Goldsmith, who brought him a life interest in lands in Hackney allegedly worth £400 a year, and £6,000 in goods.