Archaeologia Cantiana Vol. 120 — 2000
THE EXILE OF TWO KENTISH ROYALISTS
DURING THE ENGLISH CIVIL WAR
MICHAEL G. BRENNAN
In the early~summer of 1647 two members of the Bargrave family of
Kent broke off their separate travels abroad to enjoy a two~week
rendezvous at Siena, a city then especially favoured by English
visitors for its architecture, wines, and horseriding, as well as for the
clarity of its spoken Italian. John Bargrave (c. 1610~80), having been
ejected in 1643 from his fellowship at Peterhouse, Cambridge, had
been travelling through France and Italy since May 1645.‘ The
younger man. Robert Bargrave (1628-61), was just beginning an ad-
venturous life of international commerce and travel. The two men
were first cousins and already knew each other well. Robert was the
son of Dean Isaac Bargrave (l586- 1643) of Eastry Court and Canter-
bury Cathedral while John was the son of Isaac’s elder brother, John
Bargrave of Btfrons and Patrixbourne (d. c. 1625)? In April 1647
Robert had left England on board the merchant ship London with his
employer, James Modyford, an experienced Levant trader, and was
bound for Turkey with the party of Sir Thomas Bendish, the new
ambassador to Constantinople (Istanbul). After sailing from the
Downs, the London arrived at Leghorn (Livorno). The young Robert
was determined to cross from there to Sieua in order to meet up with
his cousin John. They were able to spend some two weeks exploring
Siena before moving on to Florence where John devoted five days to
guiding his cousin around the major tourist landmarks. Robert then
travelled on alone for a further three weeks, rapidly acquiring a basic
proficiency in the Italian language, before meeting up again with his
party at Leghorn, from where they sailed on to Smyrna (Izmir) in
Turkey.“
The travels abroad of John and Robert Bargrave are of interest to
historians of the Civil War in Kent for several reasons. Firstly, unlike
most other members of the Kentish gentry who withdrew - either
discreetly or in more perilous flight - from England to the Continent
during the 1640s and 1650s, these two have left unusually extensive
written records of both their experiences abroad and their condemn-
atory views of the political developments in their home county, In
addition to his travels in France (and later in the Low Countries,
Poland, and Germany), John Bargrave also made at least four separ-
ate perambulations through Italy: in 1646-47 as tutor to two young
Kentish men, Alexander Chapman and John Richards (or Rycaut),"
who were also accompanied by Bargrave’s nephew, John Raymond;
in 1650 as tutor to Philip Stanhope (later second Earl of Chester-
field)5 and William Swan;" in 1655 with William Juxon, the nephew
of William Juxon, then Bishop of London and (from 1660) Arch-
bishop of Canterbury; and again in I659-1660 with unknown coin-
panions for a final visit to Ro1ne.7
During this entire period, John Bargrave was an avid collector of
small antiquities and other travel mementoes, which still fortunately
survive along with his manuscripts as an integral collection at
Canterbury Cathedral Archives.“ I-Ie compiled an extensive catalogue
of this cabinet of curiosities (Lit MS E l6), laced through with
various anecdotes of his travels both in Italy and in other locations
such as Leyclen, Utrecht, Paris, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Vienna,
Prague, and Innsbruck. On his last visit to Italy, John also purchased
at Rome ‘The Pope, and Colledge, or Conclave ofCardinalls’ (Lit MS
E 39a-c), an extensive set of prints of Pope Alexander VII and his
cardinals (edited by James Craigie Robertson as The College of
Cardinals in 1867, see note 5). He then heavily annotated these
portraits with his own comments on both the individuals represented
and papal history, as well as numerous incidental and fragmentary
memoirs of his own travels abroad - thus rendering them, in this
respect, as another kind of sporadic and disordered travel diary. In
addition to these surviving manuscript collections, Anthony it Wood
first suggested (and recent scholarship has tended to agree) that John
Bargrave also played a major (and perhaps predominant) role in the
compilation of the most famous English guidebook to Italy of the
Civil War period, An Itinerary Contayning a Voyage Made Through
Italy, in the Yeare 1646, and I647 (1648)? Although this slim
volume bore on its title-page the initials of John Raymond (who was,
as already noted, Bargrave‘s nephew and one of his young charges
during his 1646-47 residence in Italy), it seems likely that Raymond’s
manuscript was compiled with full access to John Bargrave’s own
notes.'° Furthermore, John Bargrave’s own manuscript diary of his
travels through France from May 1645 until February 1646 with John
Raymond and Alexander Chapman, crammed with his incidental
observations,jottings, sketches, and reminiscences, has also recently
surfaced in Canterbury Cathedral Archives (U11/8).
Robert Bargrave’s travels abroad between April 1647 and March
1656 are no less well documented since he compiled a lengthy
autograph diary (now in the Boclleian Library, Oxford) of four
separate voyages undertaken at this period as a merchant trading in
the Levant and other Mediterranean countries. The first account
(April 1647-September 1652) describes his journey by sea from Eng-
land to Constantinople and his often perilous experiences as a mer-
chant in Turkey. The second account (September I652-March 1653)
records his arduous travels home overland from Turkey to England,
Robert’s third voyage (November 1654-February 1656) took him to
Spain and then on to Venice; and his rapid progress home overland
from Venice to England (February-March 1656) is described in the
fourth account, Interspersed with R0bert’s accounts of various
commercial and diplomatic incidents, are also examples of his own
poetry, including a masque with musical settings, and his general
observations as a tourist and exile from his own country."
When drawn together, the various manuscript remains of John and
Robert Bargrave offer an informative insight into the personal
circumstances and political views of two Kentish men, who, like many
others of their generation, were displaced abroad in the mid-1640s by
the developing civil dissent in their home county. Although neither
John or Robert Bargrave was an especially remarkable man in any way,
each was clearly preoccupied with analysing and recording for
posterity the significance of their own experiences as travellers; as
well as asserting - for whatever readership was ultimately envisaged
for their manuscripts - their own unwavering position in the ongoing
struggle between Parliament and the English monarchy, As will be
outlined below, the Bargraves could claim various personal royal
connections, most notably through Robert‘s father, Dean Isaac Bar»
grave, who had served at Westminster from 1622 until 1625 as a per-
sonal chaplain to Prince Charles,” Isaac Bargrave was also on intimate
terms with the prince’s elder sister, Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia,
whom he had visited at Heidelberg in 1616.” Hence, as travellers
abroad on the same continent as the temporarily (at least to their eyes)
displaced royal family and their various entourages, John and Robert
Bargrave found in the concept of the exiled royalist Englishman a
powerful and poignant expression of their nation’s constitutional
dilemma during the 1640s and 1650s.
John and Robert Bargrave as Royalist Emigrés
The way in which both John and Robert Bargrave sought to utilize the
various written memorials of their travels between 1645 and 1660 as
implicit statements of their personal loyalty to the English monarchy
is well illustrated by an example from John Bargrave’s scholarly
annotations in his College of Cardinals to the portrait of Cardinal
John Charles de‘ Medici, whom, by his own account he had often seen
in the flesh at Rome and Florence. In a note jotted down in i679 onto
the portrait, John recalled:
I remember that one of the times that I was at Florence, in the Great Duke’s
most famous gallery, I found Cr0mwell’s picture hanged up amongst the
heroes (which vexed me); and I, after a day or two, having audience of the
Great Duke (father to the present), he asked me how long it was since I was
there last. I told him about 5 years. ‘Then,’ said he, ‘I have added much to
my gallery since you saw it last.’ To which I answered, that there was one
picture added, which was Cromwell‘s. that spoyled all the rest, At which he
stopped, and did not know well how to take it; but, at length, said he, ‘On
occasion it is as easily taken down as it was hanged up’.
Stephen Bann has provided an interesting reading of the techniques
ofliterary self-presentation inherent in this apparently minor scrap of
marginalia added by a then old Canterbury cleric to an ephemeral
collection of ecclesiastical prints, designed over two decades earlier
for the tourist market at Rome:
Several things emerge, and are intended to emerge, from this fragment of
Bargrave‘s biography, penned in 1679. the year before his death. First.
there is the concern  to present himself as a seasoned traveller. familiar
with the sights of Italy, on speaking terms with the great men, and notable
collectors, of his time. But then there is the wish to demonstrate, in his
exchange with the ‘Great Duke’, that he is willing to overstep the
boundaries of conventional politeness in order to defend the political cause
that he holds dear, which indeed is inseparable from his identity as an
English (and Kentish) gentleman.“
When viewed in this light, John Bargrave‘s biographical jotting is
transformed from being a merely incidental travel memoir into a
politicized interpolation on the role and duty of the royalist English
traveller abroad, who, if necessary, should be willing even to correct
Italian princes if the cause of his displaced king so requires.
This anecdote was added to John Bargrave’s College of Cardinals
almost two decades after the restoration of King Charles II; and the
truth of his apparently bold encounter with the Duke of Florence
sometime in the 1650s is now impossible to decipher. But John
Bargrave’s diary of his experiences in France in 1645 and 1646 (Can-
terbury Cathedral Archives, U11/8), is undoubtedly contemporan-
eous with these travels and bears testament to his awareness that
fellow-travellers from other countries would often seek to define an
Englishman abroad during the mid-1640s in relation to his adherence
to either king or parliament. Having crossed from Dover to Calais on
23 May 1645 (or, as John Bargrave himself notes, 2 June 1646 New
Style), with three young companions, John Raymond, Alexander
Chapman, and John Richards (or Rycaut), his party began to make its
way towards Paris. At Beauvais a serious altercation broke out
between John Bargrave and a group of eight Germans with whom he
was travelling, four of whom had crossed the Channel with him on the
same packet boat from Dover. Speaking in Latin (their one common
language), one of the Germans explained that he was a ‘noble mans
sonn’ who had innocently visited England ‘only as a traveler to see
it’. But, as Bargrave learned, officials at London had roughly
confiscated from him various ‘bookes, beads, crosses, and the like’,
fanning his hostility towards the English, of whom John Bargrave
appears to have been little more than a conveniently vulnerable
representative, Seeking retribution, the belligerent German persist-
ently threatened Bargrave, ominously warning him that he was now
‘not in England’. The situation suddenly became much more
dangerous when Bargrave’s own patience finally snapped:
upon which I told them that they shold know thay were not in Germany, and
that I had hands and a weapon as well as he which was violent; and because
he had thretned to be my death on the way to Paris, I desird him to goe
single with mee and encl the quarrell there, which his companions per»
ceiving, thay tooke him from his violence, and desiring to know my af-
fections in the difference that was betweene the King and his subiects: I
told them I was of no party, but by my Oathes I was bound to be obedient
to my Sovereign and all the iourny after thay were my very good freinds,
and Tres humbles Servitures but I had an ey to the shavers pistolles. (fols.
5v_6r)
As with the account of his conversation with the Duke of Florence,
John Bargrave is also clearly concerned in this passage with his own
self-image as a bold and resolute traveller abroad, But, here, the
defining moment in the heated interchange is seen to be Bargrave’s
plainly expressed allegiance to his sovereign, a simple gesture of
such apparent potency that the aggression of the Germans immed~
iately melts away (even though the ever-cautious Bargrave still keeps
a wary eye on their pistols). As it stands, the passage reads as a
striking, if slightly stage-managed, assertion of an essential aspect of
Bargrave’s sense of himself abroad, not only as an Englishman but
also as an exiled royalist,
Such a self-image was firmly founded in reality since from the
second decade of King James I’s reign the fortunes of the Bargrave
family had in no small measure been determined by their personal
involvements with the monarchy and the established Church of
England. In I663 John Bargrave placed in Patrixbourne Church a
large black marble memorial stone to the memory of the Bargrave
family which eloquently records (in Latin): ‘In the Civil War on the
King’s side / The FAMILY stood and fell’ and mournfully concludest
‘John the Heir from ruins / to ruins placed this stone / Year of our
Lord l663’.'5 The cause of this post-Restoration elegiac lament was,
of course, the impact of the Civil War in Kent, the execution of the
king in I649, the loss of the Bargrave family fortunes, and the
resulting dispersal of several members of the family abroad.
Three decades earlier, the Bargrave family had been very much in the
ascendant in their home county. John Bargrave‘s father, John (d.
c.1625) was the eldest son of Robert Bargrave (d. I600), who had
owned a tannery at Bridge in Kent. The financial means for rising
above this respectable but unremarkable trade seems to have come
from John’s fortunate marriage in about I597 to Jane. the daughter and
co-heir of Giles Crouche, a wealthy London haberdasher. John’s
imposing family seat, Bifmns (‘two-faced‘), where our John Bargi-ave
would have spent much of his childhood, gave monumental expression
to the family’s new-found status in county society.“ In l6ll John
Bargrave (d. t". 1625) received his grant of arms from William Camden
(‘Or, on a pale gules a sword erect argent, hilted and pomelled gold. on
a chief azure three bezants. Crest: on a mount vert 21 pheon guleS
between two laurel branches proper‘), marking, as Stephen Bann has
noted, the family's smooth ‘passage from yeoman to gentle status’.”
While travelling abroad John Bargrave was particularly aware of the
public potency of his status as an English gentleman, ensuring that the
family crest was prominently incorporated into two portraits of him
painted at Rome and Siena. In his French travel diary (Canterbury
Cathedral Archives, U11/8) John Bargrave also recorded how in Oct-
ober 1645 at Bourges he and his charges, were then studying under the
language master, Monsieur Mondon:
It is the Coustomc in France for gentlemen to give either theire armes 01'
name, or both, to the severall Masters of excersice. Which Monseiflf
Mondon my Master 01' the language desiring of mee, hee left a handsome
booke with mee wherein were diverse coates and names, in which I writt as
lollowes. (fol. 44r)
The resulting coat of arms, which Bargrave proudly sketched into
Monsieur Mondon’s album - and then took the trouble to copy ililo
his own diary - powerfully states the dual commitments of an exiled
member of the Bargrave family during the mid-l64Os: ‘Fear God-
Honour y° King’ (Fig. 1).

Fig. I: John Bargrave's family coal of arms. Cant:?rb_ur¥" Cathedral
Archives. Ul I/8. fol.-14'. Reproduced by permlwon 0!
Canterbury Dean and Chapter.

While the family of John Bargrave of Bifrons was steadily ascend-
ing into the levels of the wealthiest Kentish gentry during the reign of
King James I, his younger brother, Isaac (the father of our other
traveller, Robert), was enjoying comparable success in securing both
court and church preferment. After studies at Pembroke College and
Clare Hall, Cambridge, Isaac Bargrave was ordained at Peterborough
on 10 May 1612.“ From April 1616 until July 1618 he served as
chaplain to the English ambassador at Venice, Sir Henry Wotton; and
on 1 October 1618 he married Elizabeth Dering, a daughter of
Wotton’s sister, Elizabeth. Wotton’s influence assisted Isaac in 1622
to a prebend’s position at Canterbury and further honours came his
way when he was appointed to the living of St Margaret’s, West-
minster, which involved serving as one of Prince Charles’s personal
chaplains. When his brother»in»laW, Dean John Boys, died in
September 1625, Isaac Bargrave succeeded to his position as Dean of
Canterbury Cathedral on 16 October 1625. Soon after his marriage in
1618 Isaac Bargrave had probably taken up residence at Easrry Court
in the village of Eastry, where his fourth son Robert (b. 1628) would
have spent much of his childhood. With a growing young family to
support during the 1620s and 1630s (Isaac and Elizabeth Bargrave
had ten children, with four dying in infancy), Isaac proved an active,
and sometimes interventionist, Dean of Canterbury but one who
usually sought an essentially pragmatic line in matters of church and
court politics. Above all, he maintained an unwavering public loyalty
to his former royal charge; for example, preaching a sermon from I
Samuel 15:23 before the king on 27 March 1627 which offered a
resolute confirmation of the divine right of kings and (more implic-
itly) seemed also to lend its support to the collection of that year‘s
arbitrary loan.”
However, following the opening of the Long Parliament on 30
November 1640, Isaac Bargrave experienced a series of rapid and
ultimately fatal shifts in his personal fortune. In 1641 the Dean and
Chapter of the Cathedral had agreed to the sale of some church plate
and embroidery ‘for the relief of the poor Irish protestants’. The
phrasing of the order was probably drafted by Isaac Bargrave himself
and its opening statement left no doubt over his own loyalties:
Whereas the bleeding estate of the Kingdom of Ireland together with the
lamentable condicon of this Kingdome of England do call for the help and
assistance of all his Maiesty’s loyall and obedient subjects, We the Dean
and Chapter being willing to expresse ourselves therein according to the
utmost of our power ...2“
Soon afterwards a bill for the abolition of the deans and chapters was
introduced to the Long Parliament by Sir Edward Dering, Elizabeth
Bargrave’s first cousin (once removed), al1d Isaac was eventually
fined £1,000 as a prominent member of convocation. Following the
failure of the Battle of Petitions it seemed probable that Kent would
staunchly support the position of the king. The Commission of Array
was set up in the county before the parliamentarian Militia Ordinance
and on I6 July 1642 a ‘great meeting‘ of several ofthe Kentish gentry
families was held at the Deanery at Chartham, one of Dean Bargrave’s
houses?‘ The consequences of this meeting for Isaac Bar- grave were
catastrophic: in the following month, during the Dean’s absence,
Colonel Edwyn Sandys visited Canterbury and in retribution attacked
the Deanery, grossly threatening Elizabeth Bargrave and other
members of her family, Frustrated at not finding the Dean himself,
Sandys hastened to Gravesend where he caught up with Bargrave,
instigating his confinement in the Fleet Prison for three weeks
without trial before being released without charge.“ Seriously
weakened by these experiences, Isaac Bargrave died in January 1643
and was buried in the Lady Chapel at Canterbury.
Predictably, the Kentish Rebellion of 1643, following the parlia-
mentarian attempt to administer the Covenant in the county, attracted
the support of several members of Isaac Bargrave’s own immediate
circle, Most notably, his nephew, William Jarvis of Sturry, and Sir
Thomas Peyton, whose sister had married in 1635 Robert Bargrave,
the son of lsaac’s eldest brother, John (and brother of our traveller,
John Bargrave). As the situation steadily worsened in August 1643
Sir Thomas Peyton’s three small children were sent to the relative
safety of Bifrons, where Sir Thomas himself joined them in May
1644.“ In the previous year, as already noted, Isaac’s nephew, John
Bargrave, had been ejected from his fellowship at Peterhouse, Cam-
bridge, on account of his high-church beliefs and, very possibly,
simply on account of his kinship with Dean Bargrave. Now bereft of
both his Cambridge fellowship and a secure family home in Kent,
John Bargrave’s decision to absent himself from England in May
1645 was very probably the result of having no other viable options.
It also seems certain that his cousin Robert Bargrave‘s own discreet
departure abroad in April 1647 with the embassy of Sir Thomas
Bendish was primarily motivated by a similar necessity.
The King's Loyal Subjects
Although when he left England in May 1645 John Bargrave knew no
French, the international language of Latin proved an effective means
of communication, especially when inspecting churches and other
notable civic monuments.“ By the mid-1640s there was also the
expectation that an Englishman arriving at the French capital would
be able to make reasonably easy contact with the growing community
of English emigrés and fellow travellers who either already resided
there or were in transit to other destinations.” John Bargrave’s
account of his first few weeks at Paris confirms just how readily such
advice could be found by someone newly arrived in France:
[1’ol.6‘] About 5 at night wee came to Paris, alighted Au Croix de Ferr Rue
Saint Martin (the Iron Cross in S‘ Martins streete) but (being directed by
young M‘ Skinner)“ went to the signe Au Ville Du Venice” in the Foburg
of S‘ Germins, where the first man I met with was M‘ James Newman,“ who
saluted mee by my name: he was then lately come from Rome and the other
parts of Italier On Saturday the last of May I had an opportunity to talke
above an howre with the Marquess of Newcastle,” and after that with the
Earle of [space leftfor name] and the Lord German“ whoe for the memorie
of my uncle the Deane of Canterburie used me exceeding courteously. M‘
Cooly of Trin Coll Camb.“ was the secretarie to the Lord  [f0l. 7‘] On
Sunday I went to S‘ Richard Browns“ lodgings whoe was Agent for his
Maiesty of England, where wee had read the English liturgie, and an Eng-
lish sermon by M’ Crowder, chaplaine to the Lord Germie Earle of Yar-
mouth;“ which being ended, wee received the sacrament in the forme ap-
pointed by the Church of England. On this day I mett with Dr Cosins“ att
the Loover (or Court) whoe is Master of the same Coll; whereof I am a
[member deleted] fellow. viz. S‘ Pet Coll Cantabrig.
On munday the 12 of June I went to visit S’ Thomas Stanly and his Lady“
 [fol. 7"]  In the afternoone S‘ Thomas Stanley and his sonn caryed us to
see the Pallace Roy[all?], the Arsenal] (or towre) the Magazine  [f0l. 8']
The rest of the weeke was spent in seing the English Nunnerie, (whether I
ledd the Lady Stanley to Church and there left her and her daughter) and
other places of the City, as the Loouer, the severall bridges, the Twileries.
some Colleges &c. The Sorbon, Jesuits &c.
On Sunday we had an English sermon at S’ R: Brownes logings. preached
by Dr [space leftfur name] Bishop of Derry“ in Ireland.“
Apart from providing newly arrived English travellers with help in
finding accommodation and local contacts, the emigré community
also circulated among themselves news from back home in England.
By September 1645 John Bargrave had travelled from Paris through
Epernon, Etampes, Artenay, and Pierrefitte, before arriving at
Bourges. There he met:
an English gentleman that attended on the Prince ofC0ndie, whoe came to
Bourges that day: he said his name was M’ Lambrone a Westmorland man,
whoe told mee how his Lord the Prince of Condie had heard the slate Of
England stoode at that time, of which I had not heard a word 10 weeks
before. (fol. 35"”)
The last events recorded in John Bargrave’s French travel diary are
dated February 1646 when he was resident at Orleans, having left
Bourges 011 31 January after a residence there of some eight months
(fol. 64"). Although no written account of his experiences during the
next year is known, it is known from John Raymond’s Itinerary that
their party continued their perambulation southwards through France
before crossing by sea from Antibes to Genoa.“ They must have been
resident at Siena some time before Robert Bargrave met up with them
in the early-summer of 1647 since Robert was certainly aware of their
presence there (although he does not specify how) as soon as he
himself had landed at Leghorn:
Being arrivd, & having a nett Porrent from England touching our health, we
soon had prattick & went to Shoare; but having no acquaintance there of
mine own, his Lordship very kindly ordred me handsom accomodation, as
for one of his ow11 retinue: Yet out of my Ambition for the Language, as to
see my Cousins mr John Bargrave, & mr John Raymond then at Sienna, I
put my Viaticum in my purse; & all alone adventurd thither, which is about
80: miles within the land. (fol. 6')”
While Robert Bargrave was undoubtedly a much less experienced
man than his older cousin John, both self-consciously presented
themselves abroad as members of the dispossessed royalist gentry
forced to earn a living overseas. While John had lost his Cambridge
fellowship, Robert had lost his father and. with him, a previously
secure and prominent position in Kent society. As he sailed out to the
Levant aboard the London, he considered it important enough to note
in the very first sentence of his travel diary that he had joined the
party of ‘Sir Thomas Bendyshe, with a double Commission as well
from K. Charles then reigning as the Parliament then sitting, to suc-
ceed Sir Sackvile Crow in the Embassy at Constantinople‘ ."° Robert’s
pointed reference to Bendish’s ‘double Commission’ implies a clear
awareness of the complexity of an English ambassad0r’s position in
1647. Bendish himself had already suffered greatly for the royalist
cause through his close association with the Kentish Petition of 26
July 1642 that sought to establish a peaceful solution to the disputes
between the Crown and Parliament. Instead, Bendish found himself
serving two years in the Tower and had his estates in Essex
sequestrated.“ When he was released in 1644 he was fined £800 and
banished from his home county, although these restraints were lifted
in 1646 and soon followed by his appointment as English
Ambassador to the Porte. While retaining his credibility with King
Charles I, and ultimately returning to England in honour after the
Restoration of King Charles II, Bendish’s experiences between I642
and 1646 taught him a harsh lesson about the power of Parliament and
the need to be circumspect in how he presented his support for the
monarchy.“ As Robert Bargrave records in his diary, Sir Thomas
Bendish, who travelled out to Turkey with his wife, eldest son, and
five daughters, was himself, in accepting the embassy to Constan-
tinople, also undertaking - like John and Robert Bargrave - a form of
political and personal exile from England.
While at Siena with John Raymond and Alexander Chapman, John
Bargrave commissioned a painting in oils on copper of the three of
them together by a (presumably) local artist, Mattio Bolognini (Fig.
2).“ John Bargrave stands at the centre of the picture with his family
arms clearly hung from a wall behind them and his two young charges
on either side of him. They each hold with one hand a large map of
Italy while John Bargrave, cast in the role of instructor, points to
Siena as the centre of their intellectual and cultural pursuits. On an
obvious level relating to their travels, the portrait endows itself with
a provenance by literally indicating a particular point of geographical
progress. But also, more implicitly, it may be read as a representation
ofthree displaced Kentish exiles coming to terms with their asylum in
a foreign country. In this sense, Bargrave’s finger points not just to a
traveller’s chosen destination but also to an especially peaceful and
provincial Italian location where an English stranger fleeing civil
dissent at home could happily dwell in exile. As John Raymond him-
self notes in his Itinerary, Siena was then renowned for its hospitality
to strangers and its natives were:
very curteous, a great deale suiting to the humours of foreigners, and be-
sides the purity of the Italian language, is here profest, and spoken, these
and the like conveniences make it much frequented by Travellers, and
indeed mov’d us to settle our selves there, for some Moneths  In a word,
Ifound Sienna the most commodious place a stranger could pick out to live
retiredly, and make his time beneficiall.“
Although Robert Bargrave was only in the company of John Bargrave
and John Raymond for some three weeks, it is clear from his own
travel diary, which describes several of the sights and buildings as
detailed by Raymond in his Itinerary, that both the memory of their
meeting and Raymond’s volume were very much in his mind as his
compiled his own accounts of Siena and Florence in Bodleian Library
MS Rawlinson C 799. It is even possible that Robert’s need as a
tourist in 1647 for basic information about such locations as Siena
and Florence first prompted John Bargrave and John Raymond to pen
their invaluable guide for inexperienced English travellers in Italy.”
However, when it reached print in l648 Raymond’s volume no longer
merely presented itself as an innocent handbook for those interested
in Italian geography and culture. It opened with a fulsome dedication
to ‘the Most Illustrious Prince Charles, Prince of Great Britaine’:
It is humbly eonceiv’d the duty of all the youth of ENGLAND to dedicate
themselves and their endeavours to your HIGHNESSE: not only in regard
of your Native but Acquired Greatnesse, which drawes the eyes of all Good
Men upon Your HIGI-INESSE Person and Actions. This Sir Makes me
humbly beg leave to lay my first fruits at Your I-IIGHNESSE feet, which
(without farther Presumption) is the utmost Ambition of
Your Highnesse
most humble and
most faithfully devoted
John Raymond (sigs. A3‘~A4’)‘“’
In his preface immediately following this dedication, Raymond
claimed: ‘My intention was to confine this wanderer to my Closet and
no farther, till the advice of some familiar, and command of Superior
Friends prest mee to exchange a single Manuscript for more Numer-
ous Prints’ (sigs. A4“). It seems particularly strange, then, that the
name of his relative, tutor, and friend, John Bargrave, was not given Ell
least some gracious mention in the preliminaries. Unless, of course, it
was John Bargrave himself who explicitly desired that any referenceS
to the Bargrave family should be suppressed in the printed version. It
seems feasible that Bargrave might have wished to protect his young
charge from any public association with either himself, effectively a
figure banished from Cambridge in disgrace, or his uncle, Dean Isaac
Bargrave, driven from a position of prestige at Canterbury to an early
death on account of his loyalty to the king. Furthermore, as Stephen
Bann has explained, the fact that the Itinerary was ‘prefaced by a
highly inflammatory pro—R0yalist statement, by the Cavalier propa-
gandist and exile John Berkenhead, is sufficient proof that it was n01
simply being published as an innocent travelogue’. Berkenhead.
writing of Amiens, addressed the reader ofRaymond’s Itinerary with
an unequivocal gesture of loyalty to the beleaguered monarchy. H8
began his comments with the quip that such a guidebook was ‘use-
fully done, since now so many of us are doom’d to wander, not like
Cain for drawing blood, but for asking Peace’. He then offered both
actual travellers and the armchair reader of Raymond’s volume £1
memorable dissection of the dislocated state of England in 1648:
Now you are come home, you’l have stranger sights then any abroad; you’!
see Great Brilraine a Floating Island, and the most vertuous Monarch
under Heaven cast into a small Isle as on some plank in a great Ship-wrack
 Sir, when you behold a Kingdome without a King, a Church without
Clergy, a University without Scholars, you‘l grant wee have a thorough
Reformation. But two houres since I saw a better sight then Italy affords;
‘tis His I-lighnesse the Prince of Wales, who for Soule and Body is sure the
most hopeful] Prince in the Christian World; whose comming hether this
afternoone brings a flood of businesse (as well as joy) on all the English in
this Towne. [pp. ll-I2]
Through its printed preliminaries John Raymond’s Itinerary was, in
effect, translated from a mere travelogue to a full-blown statement of
pro-royalist propaganda of especial appeal to those Englishmen
driven abroad by their loyalty to the king.” Furthermore. with hind-
sight there is something disturbingly sombre about the coupling in
the opening pages of the Itinerary of the young Raymond’s hopeful
dedication and the older Birkenhead‘s satiric prefatory address. both
of which insistently depict Prince Charles as the real hope for the
future, a tacit (and perhaps not even entirely conscious) admission of
the impotence ofthe king’s own position in early 1648 (following the
vote of ‘No Addresses’ by Parliament in January and the outbreak of
the Second Civil War in April).
The Kentish Rebellion of l648 was a far more extensive affair than
that of 1643 and is generally regarded as the last great local insur-
rection in English history. Sir Thomas Peyton, along with the
Bargraves of Bifrons, Sir Henry Palmer (who had married Isaac Bar-
grave‘s Widowed daughter, Anne), and several other influential local
families, led support for the petition in their neighbourhood. As
negotiations proceeded at Dover, the fleet then anchored in the
Downs suddenly declared their allegiance to Kent and the king. Their
mutiny had been encouraged by Sir Henry Palmer, a former naval
officer, and by his close associates, Robert and Richard Bargrave, the
elder brothers of Isaac. Palmer and Robert Bargrave were among
those who flatly turned down Pal'Iiament‘s attempts to resolve the
situation peaceably and in the second week ofJune they crossed over
to Holland to secure Dutch support. They returned in July I648,
according to one report with 1,500 Dutchmen, just as the revolt in
Sussex finally erupted.“‘ By December, however, the tide had turned
against them and on ll December 1648 Robert Bargrave and Sir
Henry Palmer. having fled abroad, were obliged to confess their
involvement ‘in the late commotion in Kent’ and sought permission
from the Committee for Compounding to return to England.” Six
weeks later, however, on 30 January 1649 Parliamenfis monu-
mentally dramatic gesture at Whitehall of the execution of King
Charles I confirmed the irrevocable dislocation ofthe Bargraves from
their former world of family prosperity and public patronage. Robert
Bargrave of Blfroris (the elder brother of our John Bargrave the
traveller) also died in 1649 and Sir Thomas Palnler’s estates were
sequested in 1651.5“ One Thomas Bargrave of Eastry, almost cert-
ainly the elder brother of the diarist Robert, had also been involved in
the rebellion of the fleet, as the entry in the Calendar ofthe C0mmit-
ree far Compounding makes clear: ‘[Thomas Bargravez] Compounds
for delinquency, Was captain of a frigate in the Prince’s fleet, in the
last summer’s engagement at sea against Parliament. 9 August 1649,
Fine £5915‘
‘the deplorable Tragedie of our King in England’
When news of the execution of the king finally reached Const-
antinople, Robert Bargrave had been in exceptionally good spirits,
having just been involved, as a break from commercial concerns, in
the staging of ‘two or three Comedies, with the reward of great
Applause: Nor was our whole Conversation other then a various
Scene of Mirth’ (fol. I3"). Suddenly, ‘the Tide of our Joy, turnd into
a Streame of Grief first by the deplorable Tragedie of our King in
England‘ (fol. I4’), compounded by the death by drowning of Sir
Thomas Bendish’s eldest son, Thomas, when his ship, the Talent, on
its way to Jerusalem was attacked by a French boat.“ On his third
voyage, Robert Bargrave’s ship picked up at the Morea another
member of the Raymond family, Thomas (c. l6lO»c. I681), an almost
exact contemporary of John Bargrave, who was either a brother or
cousin of John Raymond. This Thomas Raymond’s autobiography
has fortunately survived (Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson D I150),
and it indicates that he knew well the family of Dean Isaac Bargrave
and had been accustomed during the 16305 to visiting them at
Canterbury.“ Thomas Raymond’s response to the royal execution
was as horrified as Robert Bargrave’s. In his autobiography, most (if
not all) of which was probably penned after the Restoration, Thomas
Raymond recalled, with undisguised delight, one telling incident:
Soone after our most gratious King Charles the First was by hellish mis-
creants sonnes ol’ Belial put to death, it was my chance to be in London at
sermon in St. Mary AIder~Maryes Church, it being death then for any man
and especially ministers to speake in vindication of that good King. The
preacher fell to aggravate the great synnes whereof we were guilty and
haveing instanced in several] greate and crying ones, ‘Nay.’ said he, ‘wee
have put to death our King, our most gracious and good King’ - at which he
made a little pause (the people amazed and gazing aboute expecting the
preacher should be pulled out of the pulpitt) but he added ~ ‘the Lord Jesus
Christ by our sinnes and transgression’.5“
Similarly, in his notes to the portrait of Cardinal Bernardino Spada,
John Bargrave recorded how Dr Gibbs, an English physician at Rome
in the retinue of this cardinal, had given him a Latin hexastichon.
which Bargi-ave pointedly translated and added sometime after 1662
to his College of Cardinals - as one of the very few items of verse
included in this collection:
Of the King of England‘s Death, and the Kingdom Turned into a Republic.
An Epigram of Cardinal Spada’s,
The axe is for the private subjects‘ necks,
And not for kings. O horrid monstrous sects!
The kingdom with the king in sunder’s cut,
As from the other world the island's shut.
That Commonwealth with ill birds doth begin,
Where th‘axe is made by them a common thing.”
Such resolutely condemnatory (but, of course, post-Restoration) com-
ments by the Bargraves and Raymonds also raise the issue of exactly
when Robert Bargrave compiled the Bodleian Library Rawlinson C
799 manuscript of his travels between 1647 and 1656. The metic~
ulously written manuscript \vas clearly intended as a ‘fair copy’,
presumably drawn together from either an earlier draft or compiled
from various notes and diary records jotted down during his four
voyages. If the Bodleian Library polished draft of these memoirs
were written up as a purely private document soon after his return
home to England in March 1656, then Robert‘s frequent gestures of
royalist devotion may simply be regarded as an honest - but also
potentially risky - committing to paper of his personal adherences in.
the period either immediately before or during the second Protect-
orate Parliament (September 1656-June 1657). But if, as is entirely
possible and perhaps more likely, he compiled the manuscript in the
months immediately after the Restoration of King Charles II, then his
account of his travels may also be regarded as an implicit attempt to
document early in the new reign his own personal credentials as a
loyal royalist and man of international affairs.
Whatever the case, one of the most noticeable aspects of Robert
Bargrave’s diary is its insistent commemoration of its author’s
personal contacts with emigre royalists during his travels. Through-
out his European travels, he enjoyed a privileged access to exiled
members of Charles II’s entourage and to fortner supporters of King
Charles I. At Danzig, for example, he was hospitably entertained by
George Cock, formerly treasurer to William Cavendish, later Duke of
Newcastle (fol. 79‘). While at Hamburg he met up with his cousin,
Charles Dering, a member of another staunchly royalist Kentish
family (fol. 86"); and at Madrid he struck up a friendship with ‘Col-
onell Waters’ (fol. 147“) who, from his title and presence in Spain,
was almost certainly another royalist exile. But the first of what were
Robert Bargrave’s two most important meetings with royal emigrés
took place at The Hague in February 1653 where he met Elizabeth,
Queen ofBohemia (the daughter of King James I); the renowned Lady
Jane Lane, who had assisted Charles II in his escape from England,
disguised as her manservant, after the Battle of Worcester in 1651;
and Lady Stanhope, Catherine Kirkhoven (d. 1667), formerly the
governess of Charles 1‘s eldest daughter, Mary, the Princess Royal. In
1641 Princess Mary had married William, son of Frederick Henry,
Prince of Orange, and her court had become an important focus of
support for Charles II and his brother, James, until contact was
forbidden by the Dutch States on the outbreak of the war between
England and Holland in 1652. Lady Stanhope, ‘the greatest Beauty
there’, as Robert Bargrave admiringly calls her, had only recently
returned to The Hague, after being arrested and tried in England on
account of her royalist connections (fols. 94"").
On his fourth and last journey in March 1656 Bargrave arrived at
Heidelberg, where he was warmly welcomed at the court of Elizabeth
of Bohemia‘s son, the Palsgrave Charles Louis, who introduced
Bargrave to various members of his own family, including his re-
nowned brother, Prince Rupert and his sisters, Elizabeth and Sophia
(fols. 185"-186‘). Heidelberg was the capital of the Rhine Palatinate
and, as Bargrave records in his diary, the contact enjoyed by his
father, Isaac, with the court of Frederick and Elizabeth at Heidelberg
in 1616 was fondly recalled by the Palsgrave himself:
After church. the day following our arrival], I was sent for to the Palsgravc,
when having all of us kissed his hands, he honourd me with about an
howres discourse after which the Palsgrave_ with Prince Rupert, and the
Palsgraves Sonn, his Princess (daughter to the Landtgrave van Hess) to-
gether with Princess Elizabeth and Princess Sophia (his Sisters) sate doune
to Dinner: Being sett, by the Palsgraves order I was made sitt at the table
with them; when the Palsgrave soon ask’d me ifl were related to Doctor
Bargrave dean of Canterbury; which having heard from me. he straight
after drank to me, and discoursed with me much of dinner time. (f. 185“)
This conversation, which continued after dinner, provided one of the
highlights of Robert Bargrave’s journey home from Venice to Eng-
land. The Palsgrave Charles Louis freely expressed his affection for
the Bargrave family, and after hearing about Robert’s earlier exper-
iences in Turkey, requested (perhaps somewhat disappointingly for
Robert Bargrave who may have been hoping for a more politically
relevant commission from the Palsgrave) ‘a description of the great
Turkes Seraglio’ (f. I86’). Robert was clearly deeply moved by the
hospitality shown to him at Heidelberg and by how the memory of his
father, Dean Isaac Bargrave, was still honoured within this Anglo-
German royal family. On departing Heidelberg, he neatly expressed
his sentiments in the Latin epithet: ‘Quam Faelix est, virtuoso Pntri
Filius, esse’ (‘How happy it is to be the son to [i.e. of] a virtuous
father’). It was especially poignant that such a patriarchal benefit
could, of course, now only be enjoyed by Robert Bargrave abroad.
The rest of the party’s journey home was largely uneventful.
Leaving Heidelberg on l0 March, they arrived at Frankfurt on the
following day, passed through Mainz on the l2 March, and hoped to
reach Cologne by the next evening. But bad weather restricted
movement on the Rhine and they were forced to put up overnight in
a small unnamed village: ‘where the only enjoyment we had. was to
lodge in the house where the King of England, the Duke of Yorke and
Prince Rupert had all lodged but newly before us’ (fol. 188'). Robert
Bargrave’s pointed emphasis here on naming Charles as ‘the King of
England’, whether written in I656 or 1660, is entirely unequivocal.
Four days later, he visited Henry Stewart, Duke of Gloucester and
Earl of Cambridge (the third surviving son of King Charles I), who
was then resident at Cologne with Sir Gilbert Talbot and Admiral Sir
John Mennes, the commander of Charles l’s navy in 1645 (fols.
189""). Still hampered by bouts of bad weather, they headed on through
Diisseldorf, Wesel, Rheinberg, Rees, Emmerich and Nijmegen,
reaching Dordreeht on 24 March. From there they made rapid prog-
ress to Flushing, where Bargrave agreed terms with a Captain Bun-
ker, the commander of a convoy ship, for his party’s passage to Eng-
land. They reached Thanet on 29 March 1656 and braved mountain-
ous seas in a small landing craft so as to hasten their family reunions.
The Bargraves and the Restoration
On this final journey home, prior to his visit to the court of the
Palsgrave Charles Louis at Heidelberg, Robert Bargrave had visited
Augsburg. He was both surprised and delighted to meet up with his
cousin, John Bargrave, and his young charge, William Juxon, who
were then resident there. Once again acting as Robert’s travel guide,
John Bargrave filled the next three days by taking him to see the great
Fuggerhaus at Augsburg, the city’s watermills and fountains, and
various displays of fine local metalwork. In particular both men were
fascinated by intricate examples of the ‘incomparable watchwork’
produced by the skilled craftsmen of the city. Together they pored
over various mechanical musical boxes, miniature orchestras, and,
most remarkable of all, a mechanical coach ‘which by Engines with-
inside, (governed by those who sitt in it) has been driven round the
Streets of Agosta, so that it seemd to the Spectators to goe of its own
accord’ (fol. 182""). Regretfully leaving ‘the enjoyment of m’ Juxon
& my Cousin mr Bargraves Company’, Robert Bargrave and his party
pressed on to Ulm, which they reached 011 5 March.
Sadly, this may have been the last time that the two men were able to
meet. Between his return to England in March 1656 and the accession
of King Charles II on 29 May 1660, Robert probably spent some time
either at Canterbury or at one of the Bargraves’ Kentish residences,
such as Eastry Court or Bifrans.“ His career prospects were signific-
antly enhanced by his appointment at some point before the Restor-
ation as personal secretary to Heneage Finch, second Earl of Winchil-
sea (1628-89). For several years, Winchilsea had been a powerful force
among Kentish royalists and his loyalty was rapidly rewarded by King
Charles II with the Lord-Lieutenancy of the county, the Wardenship of
the Cinque Ports, and finally the embassy to Constantinople. On 20
October 1660 Winchilsea sailed from the Downs on the Plymouth,
along with two Levant Company ships, the Prosperous and the Smyrna
Factor. Also on board the Plymouth was Winchilsea’s new private
secretary. Paul Rycaut, and Robert Bargrave himself, who at the age of
thirty-two had recently been appointed (probably through Winchil-
sea’s influence) as the new secretary in Constantinople. The holder of
this post, a position of considerable prominence and responsibility in
Turkey, was elected by the general court of the company in London and
received the then considerable salary £150 a year. Bargrave’s major
duty would have been to serve as chancellor of the company’s factory
at Constantinople but his new role was also of no small diplomatic im-
portance since he would have been expected to deputize for Winchil-
sea, in the case of the ambassador’s absence, illness, or death.
Robert Bargrave, as he embarked from the Downs with his wife
Elizabeth, must have held high hopes for a long and distinguished
career in commercial and public service. Through his appointment as
Secretary at the Porte, his branch of the family seemed well on their
way back to a restitution of their former fortunes and privileged royal
connections during the reign of King Charles I. But as the Plymouth
finally arrived at Smyrna for the Christmas and New Year season of
1660-1, Robert Bargrave was laid low by a severe fever and was too
ill to travel on to Constantinople. He was left behind in the care of his
wife but his subsequent death was reported on 9 February 1661 to
Winchilsea, then safely arrived at Constantinople, in a brief note
jotted down among other business and political memoranda from the
English Consul at Smyrna, Richard Baker:
Your servant m‘ Bargrave is dead & buryed at Santa Venfiranda whither
wee all accompanied him; his wife most disconsolate & to be admired for
her love & care of him.”
Paul Rycaut was appointed in June I661 to Bargrave’s Secretaryship
and for the next six years held this post in tandem with his own as
private secretary to the ambassador. The Earl of Winchilsea had come
to Constantinople to take over the embassy from the retiring
ambassador, Sir Thomas Bendish, who boarded the Plymouth on 7
March for his return journey to England. Accompanying him was
Robert Bargrave’s widow, Elizabeth, beginning her sad journey back
home to Kent. If she had with her a copy of her late husband‘s travel
diary and perhaps sometimes browsed through it as a means of occupy-
ing the hours during the long sea voyage home, she would have been
touched by the sad contrast in their respective seajourneys across the
Mediterranean in the company of Sir Thomas Bendish. Just as Robert
in 1647 had first sailed out to Turkey on board the London,
accompanied by the entourage of ambassador Bendish, who was then
on his way out to take up his new embassy at Constantinople, so in
1661 Robert’s widow, returning in mourning, found herself travel-
ling home with Sir Thomas at the end of his long service in Turkey.”
John Bargrave was more fortunate than his cousin, Robert, in having
some two decades after the Restoration during which to enjoy some of
the fruits of the Bargrave family’s unwavering loyalty to the monarchy.
In his College of Cardinals at the bottom of the publisher‘s Latin
dedication to Pope Alexander VII, Bargrave wrote ill 1662:
The College of Cardinalls when I was my fourth and laste tyme at Rome, I
being then there when King Charles the Second was restored to his three
crownes, and to my knowledge to the great greife of that triple crowne and
that college, whoe thought to have binn masters of England, 1660.”
Following this joyful news, he seems to have made his way rapidly
back to England, determined to secure some of the rewards which,
with ample reason, he felt were due to himself and his family name.
By 2 August 1660 his fellowship at Peterhouse had been recovered
and in the following November he was recommended, by royal
mandate, for the degree of Doctor of Divinity. On 23 December he
was ordained to the priesthood by Bishop Sanderson of Lincoln at the
Barbican Chapel, London. Now qualified for preferment in the
Church, and doubtless through Archbishop Juxon’s personal patron-
age, John Bargrave was appointed as a preacher at Canterbury
Cathedral. He was also presented to the rectory of Harbledown in
September 1661 and to Pluckley in July 1662. But one more prefer-
ment still remained in the restoration of the Bargraves to their former
position of pre-eminence at Canterbury Cathedral."°
In May 1662 John Bargrave personally petitioned King Charles II
for the position of a prebend at Canterbury. The exact phrasing ofthis
document, recalling Bargrave’s personal loyalty to the king and
sufferings for his allegiance to the established church, is particularly
evocative of his history as an exiled royalist:
To the King’s Most Excellent Majestic.
The humble petition of John Bargrave, D,D,,
l-lumbly sheweth,
That thcrc being a Prebendaries Place in y° Cathetlrall Church 01' Can-
terbury now voyd by y” death of Doctor Paske, and your petitioner being
of knowne loyalty to your Majestic and a true sone of y“ Church of
England, for which he hath beone a great sufferer,
Most humbly prayes that your Majestic wilbe gratiously pleased to
conferr the said Prebendnries place upon him."
This application, supported by Gilbert Sheldon, Bishop of London,
was successful and on 26 September 1662, in what must have been an
especially poignant moment, John Bargrave was inducted into the
fifth stall which had previously been occupied by his uncle, Isaac
Bargrave, before his elevation to the Deanery.
The Bargrave family’s wealth, however, could not be regained by a
rnere prebend of Canterbury and John Bargrave’s family home,
Bifrons, was sold to Sir Arthur Slingsby towards the end of 1661, as
recorded by Henry Oxinden, a long-time neighbour and friend of the
family: ‘Bifrons, a house that was my brother Bargrave‘s, beside
Bridge hill, was lately sold’.°Z From 1662 John Bargrave’s home,
which he held for life, was his prebendal lodgings at the Cathedral.
Before settling into his new duties he undertook one more major trip
abroad - but this time at the personal request of his king. A petition
had been presented to King Charles II on behalf of some three hun-
dred British subjects held in captivity at Algiers and, following a
widespread appeal, some £10,000 had been raised to pay their ransom
from captivity. John Bargrave and John Selleck, Archdeacon ofBath.
were instructed in a licence dated 16 September 1662, to go to Algiers
and to negotiate the release of as many captives as their gold could
buy. With this mission completed by January 1663, John Bargrave
made his way back to Canterbury. It appears that a significant number
of slaves were released and Bargrave made a gift of a picture, drawn
by an Italian slave, to ‘his Ma"“ Charles the Second, who hanged it in
his private closet’."“ Two years later on 26 March 1665. John Bar-
grave, then aged about 55 years, married a financially well-endowed
Canterbury widow, Frances Osborne. With his personal and eccles-
iastical life now secure, one of John Bargrave’s final acts as the
guardian of the Bargraves’ family history was to set up in 1679 an
imposing memorial to Dean Isaac Bargrave in the Lady Chapel, with
a painted portrait, probably taken during his lifetime, set into the
cartouche, attributed to Cornelius Janssen (Johnson). This memorial,
along with the 1663 memorial slab in Patrixbourne Church, reiterates
John Bargrave’s interpretation of the family’s dual identity as mar-
tyrs through their loyalty to their monarch and the true church?" Less
than a year later, on ll May 1680, John Bargrave died and was buried
in the north-west transept of the Cathedral.
Through their various writings, John and Robert Bargrave both
found a means of recording their pre-occupations with royalist
history and the fate of their own family, along with preserving their
personal reputations as well-travelled men of the world. It is
important to reiterate here that their various written records of travels
and royal service span the period both before and after the Restor-
ation. John Bargrave’s French travel diary was clearly compiled on a
day-to-day basis during his actual travels in 1645 and 1646. John
Rayrnond’s Itinerary was also written and published, almost cert-
ainly using John Bargrave‘s own notes, in late-1647 and 1648. In con-
trast, John Bargrave’s College of Cardinals and the catalogue to his
collections were steadily augmented from the Restoration until 1679,
the year before John Bargrave’ s death. Robert Bargrave’s travel diary
was probably written up from contemporaneous notes just after the
Restoration, perhaps to mark his appointment as Secretary in Con-
stantinople. This was a position of enough seniority, certainly to Rob-
ert Bargrave‘s own eyes at least, to merit the compilation of a bio-
graphical history of the youthful experiences abroad of its holder. At
the same time, Robert was also able to confirm through these mem-
oirs his pedigree as an ultra-loyal royalist and as member of a proud
Kentish family who had suffered greatly for their king during the
English Civil War. If he had not suddenly died at Smyrna in I661, it
seems very likely that Robert would have intended to continue his
activities as a writer and historian. In fact, this role seems to have
been appropriated by the individual who (innocently) gained most
from Robert Bargrave’s death - Paul Rycaut - who was rapidly
appointed to Bargrave’s company secretaryship and for the next six
years held this post in tandem with his own as private secretary to the
ambassador. During the next four decades Rycaut established himself
as one of England’s most important and prolific historians.“ Although
neither John nor Robert Bargrave deserved to be ranked alongside
Paul Rycaut in terms of the academic importance of their historical
writings, their written records remain a full and often moving testa-
ment to the sufferings of the Bargrave family of Kent during the
English Civil War.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author is very grateful to Dr M. M. N. Stansfield, former
Archivist, Canterbury Cathedral Archives, and to Sonia Anderson,
Assistant Keeper, Historical Manuscripts Commission, for their
advice and assistance during his work on the Bargrave family.
NOTES
1 John Bargrave had matriculated from St Peter's College (Peterhouse) on 8 July
1629 and was awarded BA (I633) and MA (1636) before being elected a fellow (1637)-
2 Sec Stephen Bann, Under the Sign. John Bargrave as Collector, Traveler, and Wit-
ne.v.\- [Ann Arbor, 1994), 46, for John Bargrave‘s statement that as a pupil at tlte King's School. Canterbury. he used to spend weekends at the Chartham deanery, one of Dean Isaac Bargrave’s residences.
3 Robert Bargrave’s account ofhis meeting with John Bargrave in Italy is recorded in
The Travel Diary of Robert Bargmve, Levant Merchant 1647-1656, ed. Michael G.
Brennan, The I-Iakluyt Society, 3rd series, no. 3 (London, 1999), 15-18. (>0-5.
4 Chapman mayhave been either theson ornephew of AlexanderChapman (d. 1629).
formerly a prebendary of Canterbury. In his French travel diary (Canterbury Cathedral
Archive, U11/8), John Bargrave describes John Richards as ‘Young Mr Rickad Sr
Peter Rickads sonn Of Kent in England‘ (fol. 26V). This individual was probably, John,
the third surviving son of Sir Peter Rycaut, who was knighted by Charles I in I641 and
held extensive estates in Kent. Another of his sons, Paul (1629-1700), travelled with
Robert Bargrave to the Levant in 1661. See Sonia P. Anderson, All English Consul in
Turkey. Paul Ryraal at Smyrna, I667-1678 (Oxford, 1989), 298; and The Travel Diary
of Rabert Bargrave, ed. Brennan, 35, 42-4, 54. Yet another of his sons, Peter (1615-
35), travelled between 1644 and 1646 with Thomas Denne of Kent and Sir Clippesby
Crewe through France and the Low Countries. Sec British Library. Additional MS
28,010, lols 55-8; and Dorothy Gardiner, ‘Some Travel Notes During the Thirty Years‘
War’. History ns 25 (1940-1), 14-24; and Anderson, An English Consul, 21-4, 248-9.
5 Philip Stanhope (1633-1713) succeeded his grandfather, Philip (1584-I656) as
Earl of Chesterfield. In his Pope Alexander the Seventh and the College of Cartlinah,
ed. by James Craigie Robertson, Camden Society 92 (1867), l 1, 16, Bargrave records
how Queen Henrietta Maria, then in exile at Paris, wrote n letter of recommendation
for him to Cardinal Capponi at Rome and another to her sister, the Duchess of Savoy.
at Turin. who wrote on 13argrave‘s behalf to Cardinal Panzirola.
I’ In his Pope Alexander. ed. Robertson, 11-12. John Bargrave describes this indi-
vidual as ‘now Sir William Swan, baronet' and the son-in-law of Sir Thomas Peyton.
Another of Peyton‘s daughters, Elizabeth, married Robert Bargrave, the eldest brother
of our traveller, John Bargravc.
7 For further details of John Bargrave’s travels, see Pope Alexander, ed, Robertson.
X—Xl, xx-xxii; Joint Stoye, Englirh Travellers Abroad I605-I667. Their Influence in
English Society and Politics (Revised Edition, New 1-laven and London, I989), 135-6.
151, 161-3; Bann, Under the Sign, 63-98; and The Travel Diary vfkahert Bargrave, ed.
Brennan, 15-17, 31, 36, 50-1, 60-5.
3 Sec Bann, Urtzler lhe Sign, 3-7, 74-6, 82-3. and David Sturdy and Martin Henig, The
Gentle Traveller. J0/tn Bargrave, Canon afCanlerbury and his Collection (Canterbury,
1985).
9 Anthony A Wood, Athenae Oxrmienser  Ta Which Are Added, The Fasti 0rAnnal.r.
of the Said University to the Year 1690, 2 vols (London, 1691-2), II, col. 828. Ray-
mond‘s Itinerary is also commonly known as ll tldercuria Imlicr) from the phrase used
on its illustrated frontispiece. After the Restoration its popularity among English
travellers to Italy was superseded by Edmund Warcup’s, Italy, in ilr Original Glu/-_v.
Ruine and Revival (1660).
H) For John Bargrave‘s possible role in compiling the Itinerary, see Pope Alexander,
ed. Robertson, xxi; Sturdy and Henig, The Gentle Traveller, item (b); and Bann, Under
lheSig/1, 107-113, 132.
H The autograph manuscript ofRobert Bargrave‘s travels (MS Rttwlinson C 799) was
deposited in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, as part ofthe bequest of Richard Rawlinson
in 1756. Another, now lost manuscript of these travels was at Ea.rlr_v Court near
Sandwich, Robert Bargrave’s childhood home. until at least the mid-1830s, See The
Travel Diary of Robert Bargrave, ed. Brennan, 43-51.
'2 Isaac Bargrave was presumably in attendance on l4 June 1625 when his
brother-in-law, John Boys, as Dean of Canterbury preached in the cathedral before
Charles I and Henrietta Maria, who had landed only two days previously at Dover.
Bann, Under_the Sign, 30-l, examines the links between the the Boys and Bargrave
families.
'3 The Travel Diary ofRobert Bargrave, ed. Brennan, l, 7-l0.
M Pope Alexander, ed. Robertson, 89. Bann, Under the Sign, l2. g
'5 ‘Stetit et eeeidit FAMILIA  lohan Haeres a ruinis in Ruinas lapide posuit An: Dm
M DC LXIII‘. The memorial is translated and reproduced in Bann, Underthe Sign, 25,
and figure 7.
'5 The early history of the Bargrave family is examined in more detail in Bann, Under
the Sign, 28-45 and The Travel Diary of Robert Bargrave, ed. Brennan, 6-7. See also
Philip H. Blake, ‘The Builder of Bifrons‘, Arcltaeologia Crmtiana, cvm (1990), 270.
'7 Bann, Under the Sign, 34-5.
'8 ln I614 Isaac Bargrave was appointed as rector of Eythorne, a position which he
held until his death in 1643.
'9 This sermon was printed as A Sermon Preached Before King Charles (1627). Isaac
Bargrave‘s dealings with Archbishop Laud and other aspects of his church career are
examined in The Travel Diary ofR0bert Bar-grave, ed. Brennan. 7-l 1. See also Stephen
Bunn's entry on Isaac Bargrave for the New Dictionary of National Biography
(forthcoming). The author is grateful to Professor Bann for allowing him to see the
typescript of this article.
2° See C. Eveleigh Woodruff, 'Church Plate in Kent. Canterbury Cathedral’, Archae-
nlogitl Cantiana, xxvm (1909), 145-55; and idem ‘Some Seventeenth Century Letters
and Petitions from the Muniments of the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury‘, Archae-
ologirt Crtnliana, xm (I930), ll7.
2' Alan Everitt, The Community of Kent and the Great Relzellirm, I640-I660
(Leicester, 1966), 109, citing BL Additional MS 28.000, fol. 213; and M. J. Sparks and
 W. Parkin, ‘The Deanery, Chartham‘, Archheoiogia Cantiana. hxxix (1974),
l 9-82.
22 Bann, Under the Sign, 60, recounts how Thomas Bargrave, the Dean's son, had his
sword broken by Colonel Sandys ‘before his face‘ and was placed in confinement at
Dover Castle. Angela (Bargrave) Boys, the Dean's sister and the widow of Dean Boys,
had some gold coins confiscated. although they were later returned. See also Edward
Hasted, The History and Topographical Survey of the County of Kent, 4 vols (Can-
terbury, i778-99), IV, 593-4; and A History of Canterbury Cathedral, eds. Patrick
Collinson, Nigel Ramsay, and Margaret Sparks (Oxford, 1995), 195-6. In August I642
Colonel Sandys had also arrested Sir Peter Rycaut who ended up in the Tower of
London. See Anderson, A/z English Consul, 2l.
23 Everitt, The Community of Kent, 190-l. The Oxinden and Peyton Letters
I642-1670. Being the correspondence of Henry Oxinden of Bar/mm. Sir Thomas
Zgygan of Knowllon and their circle, ed. Dorothy Gardiner (London, I937), 23-4, 30,
.24).lOhn Bargrave records, for example, that at Calais he visited the convent of the
Mtrnms: ‘Wee being in the Chappell One of the order (an ancient man) being sweeping of it, came to mee and spake french, but l answered him in Latine (having not as yet the french Language) he replyed in Latine that l was welcome‘ (fol. 3V). Bargrave‘s account of his dlspute with the Germans, discussed earlier, was also conducted entirely in Latin. As his proficiency in the French language increased, so Bar-grave often ‘mingled latin and french together‘ (fol. 53") as did many of the Jesuits whom he met on his
truve s.

25 Initial contact with other English visitors was often made with the help of the
landlord of the inn at which the visitors were staying. Such a service was generally
expected and, on one of the rare occasions when it was not forthcoming, at the ‘Bar-
relel‘ at Orléans, Bargrave commented: ‘the Host of the howse saide the English men
were good for nothing but to take Tobacco. and was very surly to us, so that wee cold
not gett him to send a messenger for to spcakc with any English gentlemen to come unto
us or shew us to them‘ (fo1.8").
2° This ‘young Mr Skinner‘ was perhaps a son or relative of Robert Skinner
(1591-1667], Bishop ofl31'isto1 (1636-41) and Oxford (1641-63), who had been com-
tnitted to the Tower of London in 1641. Alternatively, it may have been the physician,
Stephen Skinner (1623-67), who took the degree of MD at Heidelberg in 1654 and
spent much of his youth on the continent; or one of the Skinners, such as Edward
(Jesus, matriculated 1641) or Joseph (Jesus, 1644), who were at Cambridge at about
the same time as John Bargrave. See Aluttmi Curztabtigiettses  _/i‘tmz the Eztrliexi
Times In 1900. Purl I. From the Earliest Times to I751, compiled by John Venn and J.
A. Venn. 4 vols (Cambridge. 1922-7).
27 The Hotel (or Ville) de Venise, near the Pout Ncuf in the rue de Bussy (Buci), was
often recommended to English visitors between 1590 and 1650. See The Dim-_\-<:j'JuI1/1
Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer, 6 vols. (Oxford, 1955), I1. 90; and The Travel Diary (I611-
I6IZ) ofmz Englis/1 Catholic Sir Charles Somerset, ed. Michael G. Brennan (Leeds,
1993). 70,
28 Bargrave does not supply enough detail to identify positively this ‘Mr James New-
tnan‘. However, he may have been one of his contemporaries from Cambridge and/or
Canterbury, perhaps the James Newman of Canterbury who matriculated at St Ca-
tharine‘s (1634), took an LL.B from Trinity Hall (1639), and entered Lincoln‘s Inn
(1641). See /llttmtzt' Czm1abrt'gt'ett.re.r (note Z6).
1“ William Citvetldish <<-. 1593-1076). Earl (1623), Marquis (ma). and Duke t toss)
of Newcastle, was one of King Charles 1'5 most capable military leaders. After the
Battle ofMarston Moor (1644), he fled abroad to Hamburg (July 1644-February 1645).
and then on to Paris (1645-8) and Antwerp (I648-60). He had acted as governor to
Prince Charles from 1638 until 1641 and accompanied him back in triumph to London
in 1660. See The Travel Diary ofRobertBtzrgrz1ve. ed. Brennan. 13, 27. 153 n. 9.
3° Bargrave is referring here to Henry Jermyn (d. 1684), who was created Baron
Jermyn of St Edmundsbury in 1643 and Earl of St Albans in 1660. He was appointed
as vice-chamberlain to the queen in 1628 and escaped to France in 1641 after the ‘First
Army Plot’. He returned to England in 1643 but crossed back to France with the queen
in the following year. His coded letters written on her behalf to Lord Digby, the king‘s
private secretary, were intercepted and published by Parliament. Sec The Lm-zl George
Dt‘gby‘s Cabinet (1646). Henry Jermyn was also informally known as the Earl 01' Yar-
mouth during the 1640s. See The Caletzdarofthe Cummitteefor the/lrlvzmee 0fM0he_v,
Domestic, 1642-I656, Pnrt II. 640, 17 November 1645, recording an assessment of:
‘Hen. Jermyn, now Earl of Yarmouth (sic), £4,000‘. In official terms, Sir Robert
Paston (1631-83) was created first Earl of Yarmouth in 1679.
3' No suitable individual named ‘Coo1y‘ (or Colley, Cooley. Coolie. Coolyi is re-
corded in Alumni Catttabrigienmr as a member of Trinity College, Cambridge. How-
ever, a Mr ‘Poo1y' does appear in Henry Jermyn's correspondence in 1645. See Cal-
endar 0fState Papers, Domestic, I645-7, 31-2 (although no such individual is listed as
a member of Trinity College).
32 Sir Richard Browne (1605-83), was resident at the French court as the representa-
tive of King Charles I and Charles II, 1641-60. At Paris he provided a chapel for
Anglican services, a refuge for displaced Anglican clergyman, and a cemetery for
Protestants. John Evelyn married his daughter. Mary. See Evelyn. Diary, 11.90.

33 Probably Joseph Crowther, who was a fellow of St John‘s College, Oxford, from
1618 until I648. I-le had been ejected as a prebend ol'St Paul's in I642. He later became
Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford. See Evelyn, Di'ar_v, II. 564, Ill. 19. 37-8.
34 John Cosin (I594-1672]. a friend of Archbishop Laud, was the Master of Peter-
house, Cambridge. I-le became Vice-chancellor of Cambridge in I639 and Dean of
Peterborough in I640. He was deprived of his benefices by tlie Long Parliament in the
same year. After sending Peterhouse plate to Charles I in I642 he was ejected from his
Mastership. I-le served as chaplain to the Anglican royalists at Paris from I642 until the
Restoration.
35 This was possibly Sir Thomas Stanley of Cumberlow. I-Iertfordshire, and Leyton~
stone, Essex, an ardent royalist, whose son, Thomas Stanley ( I625-78) was certainly in
France at this period and later gained some renown for his Poems (1647). In the Cal-
endar of the Committee for the Advance 0fMoney, Domestic. 1642-I656, Part I, 389,
15 May 1644, this Sir Thomas Stanley is described as wishing to ‘stir abroad‘. See also
Partlll, I439.
3° Dr John Brarnhall (I594-1663) was consecrated as Bishop of Derry on Z6 May
I634, later transferring to become Archbishop of Armagh on IS January I661. I-Ie was
impeached by the Irish Commons for his opposition to the Covenanters and imprisoned
but liberated through the influence of Archbishop James Ussher in I641. He crossed to
England in 1644 and lent his support to the royalists but later in the saine year was
forced to retire to the Continent.
37 Elsewhere in his French travel diary, John Bargrave also records meeting ‘Mr Ja:
Brockman of Kent in England and Mr Wll. Johnson of Micllesex or Suffolke. my very
worthy friends’ (fols. 31V, 40', 66V); and ‘Mr  Richot [i.c. Rycaut] an English gen-
tleman‘ (fol. 31").
38 Ra)/m°"d'S llillerziry notes: ‘There are but two ordinary passages out OfFI'll7lCP inw
Italy. the one over the Alpcs, the other by the Mediterranean Sea, those commonl)’
which goe by the first, returnc by the second, and so contrary. We (November being
quite expired ere we left France) for our owne convenience preferred a boate'.
3) The Travel Diary 0fRobert Bargrave, ed. Brennan, 60.
“°1biu., 53.
_ 41 Peter Rycaut the younger was also imprisoned for his part in drawing up this peti-
tion. See Anderson, An English Consul, 21.
42 Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for Compounding, 1643-I660
//64-7~6]._847. Bendish‘s diplomatic position is discussed in more detail in Mark
Charles Ftssel and Daniel Goffman, ‘Viewing the Scaffold from lstaiibiil: The Ben-
tlyslr Hyde Affair. 1647-1651". Albion, 22 (1990), 421-48. See also The Travel Dior)’
ofR0berrBargr(1ve, ed. Brennan. 14-15, I8-22, I04.
"3 Canterbury Cathedral Archives, MS Lit E16, r. 77', described in John Bat'grave'S
QW" cmfllflguei '67. To hang upon my Cabanet. iny/Ownc picture upon Coppflll in
little/and in Seculo, between my Nephe/and my neighebor, draw‘e at Siena, 1647. by
the hand of Sig‘r Mattio/Bolognini as written on the/back-side’. Bargrave commis-
sioned another portrait of himself at Rome in I650, again giving prominence to his
family arms. See Bann, Under the Sign, 65-9, 113.15,
‘M Raymond, Illnerrtry, 50, 56-7. Raymond may have had Robert Bargi-ave in mind
WPB" he W1'01_B (SlB5- B4r'v)l ‘One of my Contemporaries [tit Florence] discoursinll
with a Fryar, in a Complement protested he did reverence Clergy incnfnr lhnt he was
the runne ofa Prt'e.r/ in England: which the Monkc could not conster but either an Iron)’
to order, or Infamous to the Gciitleinans owne descent’.
The Travel Diary of Robert Bargrnve, ed. Brennan, I7.
M‘ The following leaf is also signed as ‘A4’, pcrliaps indicating that the preliminaries

to the Itinerary, which were clearly intended to be controversial, had been censored in
some way before publication. The volume was published by Humphrey Moseley (who
had published the i645 edition ofMilton‘s Poems); and its licence had been granted by
Nathaniel Brent, the Warden of Merton College, who in 1647 had presided over the
notorious parliamentary visitation of Oxford University.
‘*7 Bann, Under the Sign, 107-111.
43 Everitt, C01nmur1it_v0fKenI, 240-44, 249-50, 268-9. Bztntt, Urtzler the Sign, 134,
note lS_
49 Calendar of the Colrtmittee for Camjwurtzling, D01n€SIit‘, I643-I660, Par! Ill,
I878, ll December I648.
5° The Travel Diary ofR0beri Bzzrgruve, ed, Brennan, 13, note 3.
5‘ Calendar of the Comlnitree for Compounding, Dmnesric, 1643-I660, Port III,
2109,18 July 1649,
52 The Travel Diary 0_[Rr)bert Bargrave, ed. Brennan, 78.
53 lb1'd., 232, 235, Autohlagraplty ufTh0mas Raymund and Memoirs oft/10 Faml/_t' of
Guise 0fElm0re, Glaucesrerrhire, ed. G. Davies, Camden Society, 3rd series, vol, 28
(I917), 30, 46.
5“ Ibid.. 59-60.
55 Pope Alexander, ed. Robertson, 23-4.
51’ John Bargrave was back in England in the spring of 1658 when he left London for
the Continent in April, but it is not known if he was able to meet up with Robert before
his dcpztrture. Pope Ale.rumleI', ed. Robertson, xii.
57 I~1MC Finch MSS, I. 93; now at Leicestershirc Record Office DG.7 [Box 4982).
Robert l3argrave‘s eldest son, Robert, had died in August l659, before his appointment
as Secretary in Constantinople; and his only other son, Isaac, died in July i663. See
The Travel Diary afR0llerr Bargrave, ed. Brennan, 5-6.
53 The Travel Diary of Robert Burgrave. ed. Brennan, 2-5.
5° Pope Alexander, ed. Robertson, 6.
°°1bid., xii-xm.
6' This petition is printed in Pope Alcmrlder, ed. Robertson, xm, from Culenzlur of
Stale Papers, DOIHL’SllL‘, I66]-2, 394.
62 The Oxinden and Peyton L12[l8!'.\', ed. Gardiner, 258, 9 December 1001. See The
Travel Diary of Robert Bargrave, ed. Brennan, 12, for thc later history oi'Bif1'on.t'.
('3 Pope/Hexurtder, ed. Robertson, xiv~Xvii. l38. Culenclnr0fSra!e Prlperx, D0me.\'1i<',
I661-2, 488-901
('4 See A History 0fCamerb14ry Cathedral, ed. Collinson, 0! (IL, 524. for this inter-
pretation of Isaac Bargrz1vc‘s memorial.
65 A preliminary bibliography of Rycaut's published works is given in Anderson, An
Er1gli.rh Consul, 294-6.
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