Family and Education

2nd s. of Peter Bulteel, merchant, of London by Hester, da. of Hugh Herbert of Norwich, Norf. unm.2

Offices Held

Sec. to Sir Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon, c.1658-67.3

Biography

Bulteel was the grandson of a Protestant refugee from Tournai and the nephew of a prominent pastor to the Walloon church in Kent. He has to be distinguished from his cousin, a writer and translator, who was still living in 1683. Bulteel’s father, a deacon of the French church in Threadneedle Street, was one of the wealthiest inhabitants of Broad Street ward in 1640; although English-born, he described himself as a merchant stranger, perhaps preferring to incur double taxation rather than civic responsibility or political commitment. Bulteel himself was presumably an Anglican, although nothing is known of his career until he entered Hyde’s service on the Continent circa 1658, when he was probably about 40. He had relatives in Ireland, where he obtained a modest grant at the Restoration, and in the west of England, but it was doubtless on the government interest that he was returned for Lostwithiel at the general election of 1661. A moderately active Member of the Cavalier Parliament, he was appointed to 59 committees, including the committee of elections and privileges in three sessions. In the opening session his committees included those for restoring the bishops to the House of Lords and inquiring into the shortfall in the revenue. He was also among those entrusted with the corporations bill, the bill to prevent tumultuary petitioning, the uniformity bill and the bill of pains and penalties. After the recess he was named to the committees for the execution of those under attainder, the regulation of printing and the additional corporations bill. It was assumed by a Roman Catholic correspondent of his employer’s son that he voted against the Declaration of Indulgence in 1663, and he was also among those instructed to devise remedies for sectaries’ meetings. Listed as a court dependent in 1664, he was added to the committee for attainting English officers in the Dutch service during the Oxford session. He lived in Clarendon’s household, and was satirized by Andrew Marvell as one of the lord chancellor’s underlings employed to count his ill-gotten gains; but ‘his life’s desire’ was to retire to a little cottage near his friend, Sir Richard Fanshawe. After Clarendon’s fall he was listed by Sir Thomas Osborne among the Members to be gained for the Court by his employer’s son-in-law, the Duke of York. His last important committee was for the second conventicles bill (10 Nov. 1669); but on 7 Dec. he was buried in St. Martin in the Fields. He died intestate, and no other member of his family entered Parliament.4

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

• 1. New writ.
• 2. Vis. London (Harl. Soc. xv), 118.
• 3. Cal. Cl. SP, iv. 44; CSP Dom. 1664-5, p. 263.
• 4. DNB; Aliens in London (Huguenot Soc. x), 197; Misc. Gen. et Her. (n.s.), iv. 421-2; (ser. 2), ii. 52; (ser. 5), iii. 18; Threadneedle Street Reg. (Huguenot Soc. ix), 11, 89; Eg. 2551, f. 67; HMC Heathcote, 217; Bodl. Tanner mss 47, f. 7; CSP Ire. 1660-2, p. 203; 1663-5, p. 253; Cal. Cl. SP, v. 305; Marvell ed. Margoliouth, i. 139; Westminster City Lib. St. Martin in the Fields par. reg.; Prob. 6/44.