# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Whitelocke, Bulstrode

​WHITELOCKE, BULSTRODE (1605–1675), keeper of the great seal, eldest son of Sir James Whitelocke [q. v.] and Elizabeth, daughter of Edward Bulstrode of Hedgerley Bulstrode, Buckinghamshire, was born at his uncle Sir George Croke's house in Fleet Street on 6 Aug. 1605, and christened at St. Dunstan's-in-the-East on 19 Aug. (Sir James Whitelocke, Liber Famelicus, p. 15; Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica, v. 369). He was admitted to Merchant Taylors' school in 1615, and matriculated at Oxford on 8 Dec. 1620 as a member of St. John's College (Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, i. 1620). Dr. Parsons was Whitelocke's tutor, and Laud, who was then president of St. John's and was his father's friend, took great interest in his education, which Whitelocke subsequently requited by refusing to take part in the prosecution of the archbishop (Memorials, i. 219). He recreated himself with music and field sports, joining other members of the college to maintain a pack of beagles (R. H. Whitelocke, Memoirs of Bulstrode Whitelocke, pp. 6–11). Whitelocke left Oxford without a degree, and was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1626. He represented Stafford in the parliament of 1626. At Christmas 1628 he was chosen master of the revels and treasurer of the Middle Temple, and in 1633, when the four inns of court joined together to perform a masque before the king and queen, he and his friend Edward Hyde represented the Middle Temple on the committee (ib. pp. 56–62; Memorials, i. 31, 53–62). Whitelocke had ‘the whole care and charge of all the music for this great masque, which was so performed that it excelled any music that ever before that time had been heard in England.’ But while distinguishing himself socially he did not forget his professional studies, as to which Selden gave him valuable advice. He became about 1631 recorder of Abingdon and counsel for the corporation of Henley. In 1632 he earned by fees no less than 310l., which dropped, however, to 46l. in the following year, when he was no longer backed by his father's influence (Whitelocke, Memoirs of Whitelocke, pp. 74, 90).
Whitelocke had married in 1630, but his wife became insane shortly afterwards, and in 1634 he placed her under the care of a doctor, and travelled to alleviate his melancholy. At Paris he was received with great favour by Cardinal Richelieu, and offered the command of a troop of horse in the French service. Returning to England in June 1634, he resumed his practice, earned some local reputation by a speech as chairman of the Oxfordshire quarter sessions, in which he vindicated the jurisdiction of the civil against the ecclesiastical courts, and more by opposing the extension of Wychwood Forest in the interest of the gentlemen of the county (ib. pp. 102–9; Memorials, i. 67, 70). Having thus become popular, he was elected to the Long parliament as member for Marlow, and took from the first a prominent part in its ​proceedings. He was chairman of the committee which managed the prosecution of Strafford, and was specially entrusted with the conduct of articles nineteen to twenty-four of the charge (Rushworth, Trial of the Earl of Strafford, pp. 490, 520, 572; Baillie, Letters, i. 337). Strafford told a friend, speaking of the committee that managed the evidence against him, that Glyn and Maynard used him like advocates, but Palmer and Whitelocke used him like gentlemen, and yet left out nothing material to be urged against him (Memorials, i. 113, 124, 126). Whitelocke also prepared the bill against the dissolution of the Long parliament without its own consent, supported and added an amendment to the ‘grand remonstrance,’ and took part in the proceedings against the illegal canons drawn up by convocation (Verney, Notes of the Long Parliament, pp. 72, 84; Forster, Grand Remonstrance, pp. 230, 342).
In February 1642 Whitelocke made a trimming speech on the militia question, asserting the authority over it to be jointly in king and parliament, following up this by a speech against raising an army in July (Memorials, i. 160, 177). But this did not prevent him from becoming a deputy lieutenant both of Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, from finally preventing the execution of the king's commission of array, and from raising troops to occupy Oxford. He urged Lord Saye to make that city a parliamentary garrison, and was himself proposed as governor as being one whom ‘the city, the university, and the country thereabouts did well know and would be pleased with.’ Saye, however, declined to fortify Oxford (ib. i. 171, 180, 183). Whitelocke's subsequent military services were slight. At Brentford, in November 1642, he marched with Hampden's regiment (ib. i. 192). In 1644, when the association of the three counties of Oxford, Buckingham, and Berks was established, Whitelocke was one of its governing committee, and was proposed to command its forces, but declined (ib. i. 254, 260, 306, 511, 516; Rushworth, v. 673). He became instead governor of Henley and of his own house at Phyllis Court, which was made a garrison. As his house at Fawley had been occupied and plundered by Prince Rupert in the autumn of 1642, the damage caused by the war to his property was very considerable (Memorials, i. 188, 244, 407, ii. 54, 60, 62; Whitelocke, Memoirs of Whitelocke, p. 230). Whitelocke was on tolerably intimate terms both with Essex and Fairfax. Essex, whom he frequently praises, consulted him in December 1644 on the feasibility of accusing Cromwell as an incendiary, a course which Whitelocke deprecated (Memorials, i. 320, 343). Whitelocke spoke against the self-denying ordinance, but Clarendon describes him as instrumental in getting it passed (ib. i. 353; Rebellion, viii. 261). He claimed kinship with the Fairfax family, was present in Sir Thomas Fairfax's army during the siege of Oxford in 1646, and was admitted by Sir Thomas to his council of war (Memorials, ii. 19, 48).
Throughout the first civil war Whitelocke describes himself as ‘industriously labouring to promote all overtures for peace.’ He was one of the eight commissioners sent by parliament to the king at Oxford in January and March 1643. In the spring of 1644 he made a speech urging that fresh overtures should be made to the king. In November 1644 he was again sent to Oxford to arrange the preliminaries of a treaty, and he was one of the parliamentary commissioners at Uxbridge in January 1645, where he gained great honour among his friends by successfully combating Hyde's arguments about the militia (Memorials, i. 194, 199, 246, 331, 382). Hyde, in his narrative of this treaty, describes Whitelocke as one who had from the beginning concurred with the presbyterian leaders ‘without any inclination to their persons or principles,’ the reason being that ‘all his estate was in their quarters, and he had a nature that could not bear or submit to be undone.’ Yet he sincerely desired peace, and ‘to his old friends who were commissioners for the king he used his old openness, and professed his detestation of all their proceedings yet could not leave them’ (Rebellion, viii. 248). Whitelocke's intimacy with Hyde excited suspicion, and in July 1645 Lord Savile accused Whitelocke and Holles to the parliament of treasonable communications with the king and his counsellors during the negotiations of 1644. But parliament acquitted both (21 July 1645), and gave them permission to prosecute their accuser (Memorials, i. 336, 385, 457–81; Baillie, Letters, ii. 303; Commons' Journals, iv. 214). Whitelocke was one of the thirty lay members of the assembly of divines (12 June 1643), and both in the assembly itself and in the House of Commons persistently combated the view that the presbyterian form of church government existed jure divino. For that reason he says ‘I did not pass uncensured by the rigid presbyterians, against whose design I was held to be one, and they were pleased to term me a disciple of Selden and an Erastian’ (Memorials, i. 209, 292, 327, 504, ​508). He also incurred the displeasure of the same party by his arguments in favour of toleration (ib. ii. 88, 118). In May 1647, when the disbanding of the army was under discussion, Whitelocke opposed the rash policy of Holles and the presbyterian leaders, and separated himself from them in the debates on the subject, which, he adds, ‘took very well, and created an interest for me with the other party’ (ib. ii. 146). He was consequently ‘courted’ by Cromwell, and escaped impeachment in June 1647 when the army impeached the eleven members, although one of the chief charges against Holles was that which Lord Savile had brought against Whitelocke also (ib. ii. 162, 171, 178; Old Parl. Hist. xvi. 70). During the troubled summer of 1647 Whitelocke stayed away from the House of Commons as much as possible, and avoided committing himself to either party (Memorials, ii. 172). His rapidly increasing legal business, carefully recorded in his ‘Memorials,’ supplied him with an excuse for his absence. On 15 March 1648 Whitelocke was appointed by parliament one of the four commissioners of the great seal for one year with a salary of 1,000l. In that capacity he swore in the newly appointed serjeants-at-law in November 1648, delivering then and at the swearing-in of Chief-baron Wilde long speeches on judicial antiquities (Memorials, ii. 278, 283, 296, 299, 341, 428, 440, 449). Throughout the military revolution of December 1648 he continued to act in his judicial capacity, ‘glad of an honest pretence to be excused from appearing in the house.’ At the end of the month he and his colleague, Sir Thomas Widdrington [q. v.], discussed with Cromwell the settlement of the nation, and endeavoured to frame some compromise between parliament and army. When it was decided to bring the king to a public trial, Whitelocke was one of the committee appointed to draw up a charge and consider the method of the trial, but declined to take any part in the proceedings, and purposely left London till the trial had begun. He sat in the House of Commons during the progress of the trial, but on the day of the king's execution he says, ‘I went not to the House, but stayed all day at home in my study and at my prayers, in the hopes that this day's work might not so displease God as to bring prejudice to this poor afflicted nation’ (Memorials, ii. 467, 477, 484, 487, 498, 516).
Whitelocke was elected a member of the council of state of the republic, though declining the retrospective approval of the late proceedings which its members were originally required to express. He was obliged, however, to declare his disapprobation of the vote of 5 Dec. 1648 declaring the king's concessions sufficient, in order to retain his seat in the House of Commons (ib. ii. 519, 527, 555). He opposed, but in vain, the abolition of the House of Lords, and had the duty of drawing the act for that purpose imposed upon him (ib. ii. 521). A new great seal was made, and Whitelocke was appointed one of the three commissioners with Lisle and Keble as his colleagues (8 Feb. 1649). He justified his conduct by the consideration that the business to be undertaken was ‘the execution of law and justice, without which men could not live one by another’ (ib. ii. 523). In this office he did considerable service to the republic by procuring an alteration in the oath of the judges which enabled them to act under the new government, drawing up a new treason law, and attempting some reforms in chancery procedure. But he felt continually called upon to defend the law and its practitioners against popular prejudice, succeeded in defeating a proposal to exclude lawyers from parliament, and promoted the act for conducting all legal proceedings in English (ib. ii. 528, iii. 31, 49, 89, 118, 260).
In June 1650 Whitelocke was one of the committee appointed to remove Fairfax's scruples about the invasion of Scotland, and in September 1651 he was similarly selected by parliament to congratulate Cromwell on his victory at Worcester (ib. iii. 209, 350). Cromwell gave him a captured horse and two Scottish prisoners as ‘a token of his thankful reception of the parliament's congratulations.’ Whitelocke records two long conferences between himself and Cromwell, one soon after Worcester and another in November 1652, in the first of which he urged the restoration of the monarchy, and in the second recommended Cromwell to make terms with Charles II, in preference to taking upon himself to be king. In consequence of this Cromwell, according to Whitelocke, wishing to get him out of the way, proposed to make him chief commissioner for the government of Ireland, and finally sent him as ambassador to Sweden (ib. iii. 372, 431, 474). In April 1653 Whitelocke opposed Cromwell's scheme for the dissolution of the Long parliament and the devolution of its authority upon a provisional council created for the purpose (ib. iv. 4). When Cromwell dissolved the Long parliament Whitelocke was one of the persons he specially attacked in his speech to the house. He is described as ‘looking sometimes and pointing upon particular persons, as Sir B. Whitelocke, &c., to whom he ​gave very sharp language though he named them not, but by his gestures it was well known that he meant them’ (Blencowe, Sydney Papers, p. 140).
For a few months Whitelocke remained in complete retirement, but in August 1653 he heard that the council of state intended to nominate him as ambassador to Sweden in place of Lord Lisle, who had been originally appointed. In the most flattering terms Cromwell pressed Whitelocke to accept the post, and, more from fear of the consequences of refusing than from any desire for the distinction, he finally accepted. On 14 Sept. his nomination was approved by parliament (Reeve, Journal of Whitelocke's Swedish Embassy, i. 15, 32, 37). His instructions authorised him not only to make a general treaty of amity, but to come to an agreement with Sweden for securing the freedom of the Sound against Denmark and the united provinces (ib. i. 85–90). Whitelocke sailed on 6 Nov. with a large retinue and a squadron of six ships, reaching Gothenburg on 15 Nov. He returned through Germany, landing again in England on 1 July 1654. The treaty he negotiated, which was long delayed by the desire of the Swedes to await the upshot of the peace negotiations between England and Holland, and by the difficulties which the impending resignation of Queen Christina threw in its way, was signed on 28 April 1654, though dated 11 April (ib. ii. 168). In substance it was little more than a general expression of friendship between the two states. Questions such as the trade relations of England and Sweden, and the suggested alliance for the freedom of the Sound, were discussed but postponed, and it was understood that a Swedish ambassador was to be sent to England to settle them. During his mission Whitelocke showed considerable diplomatic skill, and succeeded in gaining the queen's favour. She freely discussed with him the affairs of Europe, the revolutions of England, and her own intending abdication, and he plumed himself on proving to the Swedish court that a puritan could possess all the graces of a cavalier. His self-satisfaction is amusingly evident throughout his narrative, but its portraits of Christina, Oxenstierna, and other notable persons, and its description of Sweden and the Swedes render it an authority of permanent value, and it has been translated into Swedish.
Whitelocke landed in England again on 1 July 1654, and gave an account of his embassy to the council of state on 6 July (Memorials, iv. 115). During his absence from England a new commission for the custody of the great seal had been issued (April 1654), and Whitelocke, who was first named of the three commissioners, was sworn into his office on 14 July 1654 (Reeve, Swedish Embassy, ii. 463). At the opening of the parliament of 1654, to which he was returned by three several constituencies—Buckinghamshire, Bedford, and the city of Oxford—Whitelocke carried the purse before the Protector, and in his opening speech dwelt on the importance of the treaty with Sweden, ‘an honourable peace, through the endeavours of an honourable person here present as the instrument’ (Carlyle, Cromwell, Speech ii.). On 6 Sept. Whitelocke gave a narrative of his negotiations to the house, and was voted 2,000l. for his services (Memorials, iv. 137). In 1655 the Protector and his council passed an ordinance for the reform of the procedure of the court of chancery which seemed objectionable both to Whitelocke and to his colleague Widdrington. ‘It would be of great prejudice to the public,’ argued Whitelocke on behalf of both, and he had also private objections as to the authority making the law. As their scruples could not be overcome by argument, both were deprived of their office on 6 June 1655 (Memorials, iv. 191–206; Carte MSS. lxxiv. 50; cf. Inderwick, The Interregnum, pp. 224–9). Whitelocke had, however, been appointed one of the commissioners of the treasury (2 Aug. 1654), and was permanently continued in that post with a salary of 1,000l. per annum (Memorials, iv. 207; Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1654, p. 284).
On 2 Nov. 1655 Whitelocke was named one of the committee for trade and navigation, and he was frequently consulted by the Protector on foreign affairs. The negotiation of the commercial treaty with Sweden, concluded on 17 July 1656, was mainly trusted to his hands, and in January 1656 he was much pressed by Cromwell to undertake a second mission to Sweden (Memorials, iv. 215, 219, 223–70; Guernsey Jones, The Diplomatic Relations between Cromwell and Charles Gustavus of Sweden, 1897, pp. 28–47). In the parliament called in 1656 he again represented Buckinghamshire, and during the illness of Thomas Widdrington he filled the place of speaker for three weeks, to the great satisfaction of the house (Burton, Parl. Diary, ii. 369, 375; Memorials, iv. 285). When the humble petition and advice was brought in, and parliament invited the Protector to take the title of king, Whitelocke was chairman of the committee appointed to confer with Cromwell, in which capacity he made frequent reports to the house and ​several speeches urging Cromwell to accept the crown. It was about this time, according to his own statement, that Whitelocke was most intimate with the Protector, who would be familiar with him in private, lay aside his greatness, and make verses by way of diversion (Memorials, iv. 287–91; Old Parl. Hist. xxi. 66, 71, 118). In the ceremonial of the Protector's second inauguration Whitelocke played a conspicuous part; he was summoned to the new House of Lords (11 Dec. 1657), and it was generally reported that he was to be made baron of Henley. He states that Cromwell actually signed a patent to make him a viscount, which he refused (Memorials, iv. 309, 313, 335).
When Richard Cromwell succeeded his father, Whitelocke presented the congratulatory address of Buckinghamshire to the new Protector. Richard, he adds, ‘had a particular respect for me,’ as the result of which, without any solicitations of his own, Whitelocke was again made a commissioner of the great seal (22 Jan. 1659). In April 1659 Richard consulted him on the question of dissolving the parliament then sitting, which Whitelocke ineffectually opposed. He considered that the young Protector was betrayed by his near relations and by those of his own council. ‘I was wary,’ he concludes, ‘what to advise in this matter, but declared my judgment honestly, and for the good of Richard, when my advice was required’ (ib. iv. 337, 339, 343). The fall of Richard did not necessarily imply the fall of Whitelocke. As a member of the Long parliament he took his place again in that assembly when it was restored, and was elected by it a member of the new council of state (14 May). He lost, however, the commissionership of the great seal, which was placed in new hands (14 May). Parliament charged him to bring in a bill for the union of England and Scotland, which it was held necessary to re-enact, and offered him the post of ambassador to Sweden, which he refused (ib. iv. 351, 355). His enemy, Thomas Scott (d. 1660) [q. v.], accused him of being in correspondence with Charles II, but the charge was discredited (ib. iv. 349). In August 1659 Whitelocke was elected president of the council of state, and, holding that post at the time of Sir George Booth's insurrection, was enabled to show favour to Booth and other royalists, which stood him in good stead at the Restoration (ib. iv. 357). When the army turned out the Long parliament again (11 Oct.), Whitelocke was one of the committee of safety appointed by the officers to succeed the council of state. According to his own account he accepted the post offered him solely to prevent Vane and his party from compassing the overthrow of magistracy and ministry which the officers were too much inclined to do (ib. iv. 367; cf. Ludlow, Memoirs, ii. 161, ed. 1894). He was appointed one of the committee to draw up a scheme for a new constitution (ib. ii. 149; cf. Memorials, iv. 385). On 1 Nov. 1659 the great seal was again committed to his keeping, and in December he consented to issue writs for a new parliament (ib. iv. 369, 373, 375, 379, 383). When Monck declared for the restoration of the Long parliament, Whitelocke, in company of Fleetwood and Desborough, made a speech to the lord mayor and common council warning them against his designs (Old Parl. Hist. xxii. 10). According to his own account he distrusted Monck throughout, urged Lambert to attack him at once instead of allowing him to gain time by negotiating, and, finally perceiving that he meant to restore Charles II unconditionally, urged Fleetwood to anticipate him by offering to restore the king upon terms. Whitelocke offered to be Fleetwood's emissary to Charles II himself, but, after at first consenting, Fleetwood drew back, and Whitelocke's plan was frustrated (Memorial, iv. 373, 377, 381).
When the military revolution collapsed and the Long parliament was a second time restored, Whitelocke found himself in danger for acting on the committee of safety. His enemy Scot threatened to have him hanged with the great seal about his neck, there was a report that he would be sent to the Tower, and evident signs of impending prosecution. To be out of the way he retired to the country, while his wife prepared for the worst by burning many of his papers (ib. iv. 384, 386; cf. Commons' Journals, vii. 820, 833; Clarendon State Papers, iii. 639, 648). He escaped, however, all punishment, and at the restoration of Charles II he was equally fortunate. Clarendon classes together Whitelocke and John Maynard as men who, though they ‘did bow their knees to Baal and so swerve from their allegiance, had yet acted with less rancour and malice than other men; they never led but followed, and were rather carried away with the torrent than swam with the stream’ (Life of Clarendon, i. 63). This view was general, and hence, when Prynne moved that Whitelocke should be excepted from the Act of Indemnity, the motion was not carried (14 June 1660). Sir Robert Howard, Sir George Booth, and other royalists who were under obligation to him, spoke in his favour, and it was also urged that he had sent 500l. ​to the king, and that his son James, who had been governor of Lynn in August 1659, had undertaken to secure it for Charles II (Old Parl. Hist. xii. 347, 352; cf. Clarendon State Papers, iii. 473). According to family tradition the king demanded 90,000l. from Whitelocke for his pardon, and Whitelocke actually paid 50,000l. This, however, is contradicted by the dedication of Whitelocke's book. ‘When it was in the power of your majesty and the purpose of men,’ writes the author, ‘to have taken my small fortune, liberty, and life from me, you were pleased most graciously to bestow them on me, and to restore me to a wife and sixteen children’ (Whitelocke, Memoirs of Whitelocke, pp. 451–3). No doubt, however, he paid something to the king, and in his ‘Annals’ he also mentions having paid 500l. to the Earl of Berkshire as compensation for the imprisonment of Lady Mary Howard in 1659, and 250l. to Sir Robert Howard for the benefit of the lord chancellor in order to get his pardon passed under the great seal. During the rest of his life Whitelocke lived in retirement at Chilton Park, near Hungerford in Wiltshire, which had been purchased with his third wife's fortune. He died on 28 July 1675, and was buried at Fawley, Buckinghamshire, or, according to other accounts, at Chilton (Wood, Athenæ, iii. 1041; Whitelocke, Memoirs of Whitelocke, pp. 446, 464).
Whitelocke married three times: first, in June 1630, Rebecca, daughter of Thomas Bennet, alderman of London (Memoirs of Bulstrode Whitelocke, p. 65); she became insane and died on 9 May 1634 (ib. p. 107). Their eldest son, James, born on 13 July 1631, served in Cromwell's guard in Ireland, was chosen colonel of an Oxfordshire militia regiment in 1651, was knighted by the Protector on 6 Jan. 1657, represented Aylesbury in the parliament of 1659, and died in 1701 (ib. p. 69; Memorials, iii. 75, 135, 311, 342, 413, iv. 338; Le Neve, Knights, p. 422). Whitelocke married, secondly, on 9 Nov. 1635, Frances, sister of Francis, lord Willoughby of Parham [q. v.], by whom he had nine children (Memoirs, p. 123). His eldest son by his second marriage, William Whitelocke, entertained William III on his journey to London, and was knighted by him on 10 April 1689 (Le Neve, p. 421). She died in 1649, and Whitelocke married, thirdly, about 1651, Mary, daughter of one Carleton, and widow of Rowland Wilson [q. v.] (Memoirs, p. 282), by whom he had four sons and several daughters (Le Neve, p. 422). An account of the distribution of his property among these different sons is given in R. H. Whitelocke's ‘Life of Whitelocke’ (Memoirs, pp. 457–64).
An anonymous portrait of Whitelocke was lent by Mr. George Whitelocke Lloyd to the first loan exhibition at South Kensington in 1866 (Cat. No. 626); it was purchased by the trustees of the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 1867. There are engraved portraits by Stent and Faithorne.
Whitelocke was a very voluminous writer. His best known work,
* ‘Memorials of the English Affairs from the beginning of the Reign of Charles I to the happy Restoration of King Charles II,’ was first published in 1682. A second edition, with additions, was published in 1732. The first edition was edited by Arthur Annesley, earl of Anglesea, who was the author of the preface. A reprint of the second edition in four volumes was published at Oxford by the Clarendon Press in 1853. The value of Whitelocke's work was greatly overestimated by whig writers of the next generation, who opposed it to Clarendon's ‘History of the Rebellion’ as being more truthful and impartial. With this object Oldmixon published his ‘Clarendon and Whitelocke compared,’ 1727, 8vo. In reality Whitelocke's ‘Memorials’ is a compilation put together after the Restoration, consisting partly of extracts from newspapers, partly of extracts from Whitelocke's autobiographical writings, and swarms with inaccuracies and anachronisms (cf. Sanford, Studies and Illustrations of the Great Rebellion, p. 324).
* Whitelocke's Annals of his Life. Only portions of this work have been published. Manuscripts of it are in the possession of the Marquis of Bute and Earl De la Warr (Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. pp. 202–17). The British Museum possesses Whitelocke's history of the forty-eighth year of his age, interspersed with Scripture lectures addressed to his children (Bibl. Egerton 997, Plut.), and annals of his life from 1653 to 1656 (No. 4992). These are described in the preface to Reeve's edition of Whitelocke's ‘Swedish Embassy.’ Extracts from the annals and other autobiographical writings are printed in R. H. Whitelocke's ‘Life of Whitelocke,’ 1860 (pp. 114, 124).
* ‘Journal of the Swedish Embassy in the Years 1653 and 1654.’ This was first published by Dr. Charles Morton in 1772 and re-edited by Mr. Henry Reeve in 1855. It was translated into Swedish in 1777 (Upsala, 8vo). Manuscripts of this journal and other papers relating to the embassy are in the British Museum (Nos. 4902 and 4991 A. Plut. cxxiii. H). Other manuscripts are in the possession of the Marquis of Bath and the Earl De la Warr (Hist. MSS. Comm. ​3rd Rep. pp. 190–217).
* ‘Notes on the King's Writ for choosing Members of Parliament, 13 Charles II, being Disquisitions on the Government of England by King, Lords, and Commons,’ published by Dr. Charles Morton in 1766 (2 vols. 4to).
* ‘Memorials of English Affairs from the supposed Expedition of Brute to this Island to the end of the Reign of James I. By Sir Bulstrode Whitelocke, with some Account of his Life and Writings by W. Penn, and a Preface by J. Welwood,’ 1709, fol.
* ‘Essays Ecclesiastical and Civil, to which is subjoined a Treatise of the Work of the Sessions of the Peace,’ 1706, 8vo.
* ‘Quench not the Spirit, or Several Discourses, &c., with an Epistle to the Reader by W. Penn,’ 1711, 8vo. Other unpublished theological works are mentioned by Mr. R. H. Whitelocke in his ‘Life of Whitelocke’ (p. 447).
The following are attributed to Whitelocke: ‘Monarchy asserted to be the best Form of Government,’ 1660, 8vo; ‘A Proposal humbly offered for raising considerable Sums of Money yearly to His Majesty, by James Lord Mordington, Bulstrode Whitelocke,’ 1670?, folio; two tracts on the benefit of registering deeds in England: ‘The Draft of an Act for a County Register by the Lords Commissioners, Whitelocke and Lisle,’ 1756, 8vo; and ‘A Proposal for preventing effectually the Export of Wool,’ 1695, fol. ‘My Lord Whitelocke's Reports on Machiavel,’ 1659, 4to, is a satirical pamphlet against him.
[R. H. Whitelocke's Memoirs Biographical and Historical of Bulstrode Whitelocke, 1860; Lives of all the Lord Chancellors, 1708, 8vo; Morton's preface to Whitelocke's Swedish Embassy, also reprinted in Reeve's edition of the same work; Foss's Judges of England, 1848–64, and Biographical Dictionary of the Judges of England, 1870; Campbell's Lives of the Lord Chancellors and Keepers of the Great Seal; about fifty of Whitelocke's letters are printed in the Thurloe State Papers; Hist. MSS. Comm., 5th Rep. pp. 312–13. Twenty-eight folio volumes of papers collected by Whitelocke are in the possession of the Marquis of Bath, Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. p. 190.]
C. H. F.