Family and Education

b. c.1628, 1st s. of Richard Browne I. educ. L. Inn 1646, called 1653, assoc. bencher 1661. m. by 1656, Frances (d.1684), da. of Edward Atkyns of Hensington, Oxon., 2s. (1 d.v.p.) 1da. Kntd. 30 May 1660; suc. fa. as 2nd Bt. 24 Sept. 1669.1

Offices Held

Common serjeant, London 1661-71; commr. for oyer and terminer, London 1661, assessment, Essex 1677-80.2

Biography

Browne, a lawyer, achieved neither professional nor political eminence. He was returned for Wycombe on his father’s interest at the general election of 1660, largely in order to keep the republican intelligencer Thomas Scott out of the House. There was a double return, decided in his favour on 5 May. He was knighted with his father when the King entered London at the Restoration. In the Convention his only certain committee was to consider the claim of the provost-marshal of Westminster. In the debate on the regicides on 18 Aug. ‘Sir Richard Browne the younger said he was for mercy, but ’twas for all the people of the land and not such horrid murderers’, and moved to agree with the Lords to except them all from the indemnity bill. He did not stand again, but was appointed common serjeant of London during his father’s mayoralty. He continued to practise occasionally as a barrister, but resigned his office in 1671 after succeeding to his father’s property in Essex. He seems never to have become a j.p. He sold Debden in 1680, but was buried there on 23 Sept. 1684. His son became an army officer and was killed in a duel in Flanders in 1689, and the later history of the baronetcy is obscure.3

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Authors: M. W. Helms / Leonard Naylor

Notes

• 1. The Gen. iii. 378.
• 2. London corp. jnl. of common council 41, f. 248; 47; f. 112.
• 3. Cal. Cl. SP , iv. 643; Bowman diary, f. 152v; Fire Court ed. Jones, ii. 114; Morant, Essex, ii. 562; The Gen. iii. 378; Luttrell, i. 571.