Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 07.djvu/266

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Bulstrode
260
Bulstrode

He remained there till the revolution, when he followed King James to the court at St. Germains, where he died on 3 Oct. 1711 (N.S.) He is said to have ‘enjoyed a wonderful firmness of mind and strength of body to the very last,’ and to have died, not of old age, but of an indigestion, which in all probability would not have ended fatally had his own phvsician not been out of the way. In the reface to his ‘Original Letters] in John Le Neve's ‘Lives of Illustrious Persons who died in 1711,’ and in John Le Neve's ‘Monumenta,' his age is given as 101 years 2 months; but in Peter Le Neve’s ‘Knights’ it is stated to be 105 years, and this is adopted in Lipscombe's 'Buckinghamshire.' This statement is, however, contradicted by another which follows in the ‘Knights,’ that the age of the eldest son at his father's death was seventy-two, while his age in 1683 is given as only thirty-one. Sir Richard Bulstrode was twice married to Jacosa, daughter of Edward Dyneley of Charlton, Worcestershire, by whom he left two sons; and to a daughter of M. Stamford, envoy to the court of England from the Duke of Newbourg, by whom he had three sons and four daughters.

With the exception of the poem printed at Cambridge, all the literary efforts of Sir Richard Bulstrode were published posthumously. In 1712 appeared 'Original letters written to the Earl of Arlington, with a Preface giving an account of the Author’s Life and Family,' edited by E. Bysshe. The letters were written in 1674 from the court at Brussels, all of them except two to the Earl of Arlington, and contain a history of the principal events in the Low Countries, in Alsatia and Burgundy, during the campaign of that year. The editor more especially claims for them that they contain the only true and impartial account of the battle of Seneff. A volume of his essays, with a preface by his son, Whitelocke Bulstrode [q. v.], was published in 1715. Theyaze chiefly of a moral or religious cast. Shortly after his death his ‘Life of James II ’ was printed at Rome, and in 1721 appeared ‘Memoirs and Reflections upon the Reign and Government of King Charles I and Charles II, containing an account of several remarkable facts not mentioned by other historians of those times; wherein the character of the Royal Martyr and of Charles II are vindicated from fanatical aspersions.' When above eighty years of age he composed in Latin verse 85 elegies and epigrams, chiefly on divine subjects. A specimen of them is given in the volume containing 'Original letters.'

[Bysshe's Preface to Original Letters of Sir Richard Bulstrode; Le Neve's Lives of Most Illustrious Persons who died in 1711; Lipscombes Buckinghamshire, iv. 503; Nobles continuation of Granger's Biog. Hist. of England, i. 157–9; Le Neve's Monuments.]

T. F. H.


BULSTRODE, WHITELOCKE (1650–1724), controversialist and mystical writer, was the second son of Sir Richard Bulstrode [q. v.], and Jocosa, daughter of Edward Dyneley of Charlton, Worcestershire. He was born in 1650, and on 27 Nov. 1661 was specially admitted a student of the Inner Temple. Although his father followed King James to St. Germains, he not only remained in England, but became prothonotary of the marshal's court and commissioner of excise. That, latterly at any rate, he had no sympathy with the Jacobite opinions of his father, is moreover made sufficiently clear in his pamphlet, published in 1717 under the pseudonym of Philalethes, and entitled 'A Letter touching the late Rebellion and what means led to it, and of the Pretender's title: showing the duty and interest of all Protestants to be faithful to King George, and oppose the Pretender according to law and conscience.' In 1705 he purchased the manor of Hounslow, Middlesex (Lysons, Environs of London, iii. 38). He was chosen a justice of the peace for the county, and several times acted as chairman of quarter sessions, his charges to the grand jury and other juries in this capacity having been printed by special request in April and October 1718, and in October 1722. He died at Hatton Garden on 27 Nov. 1724 (Histor. Reg. for 1724, p. 50). His tombstone at Hounslow gives his age as seventy-four. By his wife, Elizabeth, daughter and coheiress of Samuel Dyneley of Charlton, Worcestershire, he left one son, Richard, who succeeded him as prothonotary, and two daughters. He was buried against the north wall of the chancel of the old priory chapel at Hounslow, but when this chapel was taken down the coffins of the family were removed to another vault, and the monument of Whitelocke Bulstrode was placed at the east end of the north gallery of the church (Aungier, History of Syon Monastery, p. 502). His portrait, painted by Kneller, has been engraved.

In 1692, Bulstrode published 'A Discourse of Natural Philosophy, Wherein the Pythagorean Doctrine is set in its true light and vindicated.' The aim of the book was to distinguish the Pythagorean from the vulgar doctrine of transmigration, the only transmigration he contends for being that of the sensitive and vegetative spirit necessary to the production of life in the present world. A Latin translation of the book by Oswald Dyke was published in 1725, under the title