BUBB, Jeremiah (d.1692), of Whitehall and Carlisle, Cumb.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660-1690, ed. B.D. Henning, 1983
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1690 - 28 Feb. 1692

Family and Education

m. (1) lic. 14 May 1677, Mary (d. 18 May 1689), da. and h. of George Abrahall, vicar of Foy, Herefs., and wid. of Paul Abrahall of Ingestone, Herefs., 1s. d.v.p. 2da.; (2) by 1691, Alicia, da. of John Dodington of Dodington, Som., 1s.1

Offices Held

Gent. usher ?by 1677-d.2

Commr. for assessment, Herefs. 1679-80, Cumb. and Herefs. 1689-90; j.p. Herefs. 1680-d.; freeman, Carlisle 1689.3

Capt. regt. of Henry Cornewall (later 9 Ft.) 1685-9; lt.-gov. Carlisle Mar. 1689, gov. Dec. 1689-d.4

Biography

Nothing is known of Bubb before his first marriage, when he was living in the parish of St. Martin in the Fields. He may already have held a place at Court, which he presumably owed to Lord Scudamore (John Scudamore), since his son by his first marriage was named Scudamore Bubb. Having acquired an estate through his first wife, he was placed on the Herefordshire commission of the peace. In July 1680, as Lord Scudamore related to Thomas Bruce, Bubb, who appears to have been an Abhorrer, had an altercation with a leading opponent of the Court, John Dutton Colt.

He [Colt] being very foul-mouthed, natural to him, Mr Bubb bid him draw his sword, but he being more tongue-stout, the other told him if he would not, he would run him through. Some charitable person separated them, and Mr Bubb, finding him to be a worthless coward, never pursued him after.

(Sir) Edward Harley naturally had a rather different account of the affair, in which it was Bubb who was guilty of ‘damme oaths’. When the second Exclusion Parliament met, Bubb was summoned to appear at the bar of the House for a breach of privilege, and ‘detained for several months’, presumably until the dissolution. In 1682 he obtained ‘for his own use as royal bounty without account’ the grant of a fine of £50 laid upon an attorney for barratry at the Herefordshire assizes.5

On the Duke of Monmouth’s invasion Bubb was commissioned in a local regiment, and henceforth made the army his career, though he remained on the county bench. He was absent when the lord president asked for the consent of the Herefordshire justices to the repeal of the Test Act and Penal Laws, ‘but by letter promises to do whatever [is] commanded by his Majesty’, though Sir John Lowther III described him as ‘a mortal enemy of the Papists’. As acting commander of the Carlisle garrison, he secured the peaceful withdrawal of the Roman Catholic governor, and handed over control to (Sir) Christopher Musgrave, who secured his election to the Convention as his own colleague for the borough. According to the Ailesbury list, he voted like Musgrave to agree with the Lords that the throne was not vacant. But he did not speak and was not appointed to any committees. In March 1689 he was commissioned as lieutenant-governor, and probably spent the rest of the session at his post. After handling an imprudent demonstration by Lord Preston (Sir Richard Grahme) with exemplary coolness, he was promoted governor, and re-elected in 1690 as a court Tory. He died on 18 Feb. 1692 and was buried in St. Giles in the Fields. His son was the well-known Whig politician, George Bubb Dodington.6

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

  • 1. C. J. Robinson, Mansions and Manors of Herefs. 124; J. H. Matthews, Hundred of Wormelow, i. 122.
  • 2. LS13/231/6.
  • 3. HMC Lords, i. 180.
  • 4. SP44/165/165, 408.
  • 5. Ailesbury Mems. 46-48; BL Loan 29/140, Sir Edward to Robert Harley, 20 July 1680; CJ, ix. 645, 678; CSP Dom. 1680-1, p. 394; Cal. Treas. Bks. vii. 465.
  • 6. Eg. 3336, ff. 99, 115; HMC Lonsdale, 98-99; CSP Dom. 1689-90, p. 40; Browning, Danby, i. 417-18; Luttrell, ii. 372; Soc. of Genealogists, Boyd’s London Burials.