page_title: Samuel Backhouse
section_title: Merchant and country gentleman
hierarchical_section_title: Samuel Backhouse / Merchant and country gentleman
caption_attribution_description: English: The house at Swallowfield Park
context_page_description: Samuel Backhouse was an English merchant who later became a country gentleman based in the county of Berkshire. He was a member of Parliament twice early in James I's reign, first for New Windsor in 1604 and then for Aylesbury in 1614.
  Backhouse was brought up in the prominent Backhouse family of the North of England, son of a wealthy London Alderman and Grocer. Educated at Oxford, he first came into a sum of land upon his father's death, in 1580. The next sum came after marrying Elizabeth Borlase, member of the Buckinghamshire gentry, as he purchased the manor of Swallowfield in order to reside closer to his new affinial relatives. Here Backhouse lived the life of a country gentleman, fulfilling several minor municipal duties and, in 1600, entertaining the Queen as Sheriff of Berkshire.
  Perhaps emboldened by his successes as a country gentleman in Berkshire, Backhouse entered parliament. His first stint in parliament, during the Blessed Parliament of 1604–10, saw him nominated to fifty committees, though he was not recorded as giving any speeches. In the much shorter Addled Parliament of 1614, Backhouse was nominated to another nine committees, but again remained a silent MP.
context_section_description: Backhouse's first large sum of property came upon his father's death in June 1580, when he inherited his father's Hampshire lands. The next came after Backhouse married Elizabeth, daughter of John Borlase of Little Marlow, on 6 September 1581, thus ingratiating himself into the Buckinghamshire gentry. That year, he proceeded to acquire the Berkshire manor of Swallowfield, a purchase which ensured his proximity to his new affinial relatives. Backhouse grew into "a man of considerable wealth" who, alongside his property in Swallowfield, held over 70 acres in Clerkenwell and Islington.
  In Swallowfield, Backhouse abandoned his father's mercantile lifestyle for that of a country gentleman. His brother Rowland took up the family's commercial helm. He did, however, make an investment of £240 into the East India Company in 1600, following his brother's example. Backhouse did not immediately accustom himself to this new way of life. His Oxford peer John Chamberlain wryly reported that in 1600-01 Backhouse, as the county's newly made sheriff, was "almost out of heart" after being informed Queen Elizabeth I was visiting, as he felt himself "altogether unacquainted with courting", though he ultimately performed "very well".
  In Berkshire, Backhouse occupied minor several municipal offices. He was justice of the peace in the county from 1593 until his death; sheriff of Berkshire, in 1600-01; commissioner of recusants in Berkshire, 1602; joint collector of aid in Berkshire, 1613; and commissioner of sewers in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, 1622.
caption: Swallowfield Park, the Backhouse family estate, which Samuel Backhouse purchased in 1581.
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