Benjamin Valentine (prob.
bapt. 9 March 1584 - June 1652), was an English politician and
Member of Parliament
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house ...
.
Of obscure origins, he attached himself to various influential politicians and
favourite
A favourite (British English) or favorite (American English) was the intimate companion of a ruler or other important person. In post-classical and early-modern Europe, among other times and places, the term was used of individuals delegated s ...
s and rose to prominence with the support of
William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke
William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke (8 April 158010 April 1630) , of Wilton House in Wiltshire, was an English nobleman, politician and courtier. He served as Chancellor of the University of Oxford and together with King James I founded P ...
and
Sir John Eliot
Sir John Eliot (11 April 1592 – 27 November 1632) was an English statesman who was serially imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he eventually died, by King Charles I for advocating the rights and privileges of Parliament.
Early life
Th ...
. With Eliot he opposed the religious and fiscal innovation taking place in the early period of
King Charles I's reign, and attacked one of his favourites,
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, 28 August 1592 – 23 August 1628), was an English courtier, statesman, and patron of the arts. He was a favourite and possibly also a lover of King James I of England. Buckingham remained at t ...
. He became embroiled in controversy when was one of the members to hold
Speaker John Finch in his chair to prevent him adjourning parliament and preventing Eliot from denouncing such measures as
tonnage and poundage. For this Valentine and his associates were arrested and tried.
The trial revealed the clash between the rights and prerogatives of parliament versus the king, and became a political storm. Valentine refused to admit guilt or comply with orders, and was eventually fined and imprisoned for a number of years. Released prior to the resumption of parliament after eleven years of
Personal Rule
The Personal Rule (also known as the Eleven Years' Tyranny) was the period from 1629 to 1640, when King Charles I of England, Scotland and Ireland ruled without recourse to Parliament. The King claimed that he was entitled to do this under the Roya ...
, Valentine returned to sit as a member, but took little part in the
English Civil War
The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians ("Roundheads") and Royalists led by Charles I ("Cavaliers"), mainly over the manner of Kingdom of England, England's governanc ...
.
Origins
Valentine's early origins are obscure but records of the baptism of a Benjamin Valentine at
St Giles-without-Cripplegate on 9 March 1584 probably refer to the future parliamentarian.
His family may have originated in Suffolk, and his father was perhaps a member of the
Inner Temple
The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple, commonly known as the Inner Temple, is one of the four Inns of Court and is a professional associations for barristers and judges. To be called to the Bar and practise as a barrister in England and W ...
in the early 1570s.
[ Valentine can first be traced with surety in historical records in relation to some business transactions with his future father-in-law, Matthias Springham, in July 1610. He married Springham's daughter, Elizabeth, on 11 November 1610.][
]
Valentine established connections with several powerful figures at court
A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to Adjudication, adjudicate legal disputes between Party (law), parties and carry out the administration of justice in Civil law (common law), civil, C ...
, including by 1613 Robert Carr, 1st Earl of Somerset, a favourite
A favourite (British English) or favorite (American English) was the intimate companion of a ruler or other important person. In post-classical and early-modern Europe, among other times and places, the term was used of individuals delegated s ...
of James I. Somerset's fall from favour in 1615 reduced Valentine's influence, and he was briefly imprisoned for debt in 1619.[ Valentine then attached himself to the retinue of ]William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke
William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke (8 April 158010 April 1630) , of Wilton House in Wiltshire, was an English nobleman, politician and courtier. He served as Chancellor of the University of Oxford and together with King James I founded P ...
and sought to undermine the royal favourite George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham
George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, 28 August 1592 – 23 August 1628), was an English courtier, statesman, and patron of the arts. He was a favourite and possibly also a lover of King James I of England. Buckingham remained at t ...
, with limited success. He became intimate with Sir John Eliot
Sir John Eliot (11 April 1592 – 27 November 1632) was an English statesman who was serially imprisoned in the Tower of London, where he eventually died, by King Charles I for advocating the rights and privileges of Parliament.
Early life
Th ...
through his opposition to Buckingham, and Eliot arranged for him to be elected on 3 March 1628 to represent the borough of St. Germans in the Parliament of 1628–9.[ He used his place in parliament to mount further attacks on Buckingham, and as one biographer has stated, he was "clearly moving in circles hostile to both arbitrary government and High Church innovations".][
]
Confrontation and arrest
He was in the House of Commons on 2 March 1629 when the Speaker, John Finch, would have obeyed King Charles I's direction for adjournment. Valentine, with Denzil Holles, held the Speaker down in his seat while Sir John Eliot read out resolutions questioning the king's proceedings respecting religion and taxation, particularly regarding tonnage and poundage. On 5 March, with John Selden
John Selden (16 December 1584 – 30 November 1654) was an English jurist, a scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution and scholar of Jewish law. He was known as a polymath; John Milton hailed Selden in 1644 as "the chief of learne ...
and William Coryton
William Coryton (1580–1651) of West Newton Ferrers, St Mellion, Cornwall, was a Cornish gentleman who served as MP for Cornwall in 1624, 1626 and 1628, for Liskeard in 1625, for Grampound in 1640 and for Launceston 1640–41. He was expelled ...
, he was under examination at the Privy Council, and was committed to the Tower of London
The Tower of London, officially His Majesty's Royal Palace and Fortress of the Tower of London, is a historic castle on the north bank of the River Thames in central London. It lies within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which is sepa ...
.[
]
On 17 March he was examined before a committee of the council, when he refused to answer any questions respecting acts done in Parliament. On 6 May he, with Selden, Holles, William Strode
William Strode (1598 – 9 September 1645) was an English politician who sat in the House of Commons variously between 1624 and 1645. He was one of the Five Members whose impeachment and attempted unconstitutional arrest by King Charles I i ...
, Miles Hobart, and Walter Long, considering themselves legally entitled to bail, applied to the Court of King's Bench
The King's Bench (), or, during the reign of a female monarch, the Queen's Bench ('), refers to several contemporary and historical courts in some Commonwealth jurisdictions.
* Court of King's Bench (England), a historic court court of common ...
for a writ of habeas corpus
''Habeas corpus'' (; from Medieval Latin, ) is a recourse in law through which a person can report an unlawful detention or imprisonment to a court and request that the court order the custodian of the person, usually a prison official, t ...
.[ Such stringent conditions were, however, imposed that Valentine absolutely declined to comply with them, and refused to accept bail (3 October 1629). On 7 May an information was filed against him and others in the ]Star Chamber
The Star Chamber (Latin: ''Camera stellata'') was an Kingdom of England, English court that sat at the royal Palace of Westminster, from the late to the mid-17th century (c. 1641), and was composed of Privy Council of England, Privy Counsellors ...
by the Attorney-General Robert Heath, but the prisoners were proceeded against in the Court of King's Bench. Valentine's 'plea and demurrer' to the information of the Attorney-General, prepared by his counsel, Robert Mason and Henry Calthorpe, was issued on 22 May, and was followed by a further plea on 1 June in answer to the altered information of 29 May.[
With Selden he should have appeared before the judges of the King's Bench on 24 June, had not the king reversed the order for fear that bail should be granted. On 13 October Heath brought in his information against Eliot, Holles, and Valentine in the Court of King's Bench. On 29 October the three prisoners were transferred from the Tower to the Marshalsea Prison. They appeared in court on 26 January 1630, and again the following day, when Valentine's case was pleaded by Calthorpe. Judgement was pronounced on 12 February, when Valentine was fined £500.][
]
Confinement
During the summer of 1630 Valentine, with Selden and Strode, was removed to the Gatehouse Prison
Gatehouse Prison was a prison in Westminster, built in 1370 as the gatehouse of Westminster Abbey. It was first used as a prison by the Abbot, a powerful churchman who held considerable power over the precincts and sanctuary. It was one of the pri ...
on account of the sickness in the town. Through the leniency of their keeper they were frequently released on short paroles. They visited Eliot in the Tower, and passed whole weeks in the country in their own houses or in those of their friends. Returning to the Gatehouse towards the end of September, they were put into closer confinement, and their keeper fined £100 and committed to the Marshalsea. Valentine continued a prisoner for eleven years, and was finally released in January 1640 to placate public opinion prior to the assembling of the Short Parliament
The Short Parliament was a Parliament of England that was summoned by King Charles I of England on the 20th of February 1640 and sat from 13th of April to the 5th of May 1640. It was so called because of its short life of only three weeks.
Af ...
. He was elected to represent St. Germans in the Long Parliament
The Long Parliament was an English Parliament which lasted from 1640 until 1660. It followed the fiasco of the Short Parliament, which had convened for only three weeks during the spring of 1640 after an 11-year parliamentary absence. In Septem ...
and took the Protestation on 5 May 1641, and the Covenant on 25 September 1643.[ He took little part in the ensuing ]civil war
A civil war or intrastate war is a war between organized groups within the same state (or country).
The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government polic ...
, though he supported the negotiations surrounding the Treaty of Newport in 1649.[
]
Later life
Parliament granted him £5,000 in 1647 in compensation for his losses, but Valentine only received half of the sum. He died in June 1652 and was buried at St Margaret's, Westminster
The Church of St Margaret, Westminster Abbey, is in the grounds of Westminster Abbey on Parliament Square, London, England. It is dedicated to Margaret of Antioch, and forms part of a single World Heritage Site with the Palace of Westminster ...
on 9 June.[ Elizabeth, his wife, had been buried on 18 September 1616. The couple were survived by one son, Matthias, who died in the winter of 1654, and is described in his will as of St. Clement Danes, Middlesex.][P. C. C., Alchin, 319] As one biographer has recorded, Valentine "does not appear to have been ultimately a committed revolutionary ... his place in history rests upon his actions, however factious or ideological, in dissenting from the Caroline regime of the late 1620s."[
]
Notes
a. The ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...
'' suggests that Valentine may also have been a native of Cheshire
Cheshire ( ) is a ceremonial and historic county in North West England, bordered by Wales to the west, Merseyside and Greater Manchester to the north, Derbyshire to the east, and Staffordshire and Shropshire to the south. Cheshire's coun ...
.
Citations
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Valentine, Benjamin
1652 deaths
People from Cheshire
Prisoners in the Tower of London
English MPs 1628–1629
English MPs 1640–1648
English MPs 1648–1653
Members of the pre-1707 English Parliament for constituencies in Cornwall
1584 births