Family and Education

b. c.1558, ?4th s. of William Bond (d.1576) of Aldgate, Haberdasher and w. Margaret.1 educ. ?St. Alban Hall, Oxf. c.1572.2 unm. bur. 11 May 1643.3

Offices Held

Merchant Adventurer;4 freeman, Haberdashers’ Co. 1580,5 liveryman 1589, renter warden 1601-2, 2nd warden 1606-7, 1st warden 1608-9, master 1624-5;6 asst. Spanish Co. 1605-6;7 dep. gov. Irish Soc. 1613-14,8 auditor 1613;9 pres. Art. Co. 1616-18;10 freeman, Virg. Co. by ?1620, Somers Is. Co. by 1622;11 commr. govt. of Virg. plantation 1624.12

Capt. (later lt.-col.) of militia ft., London by 1588-d.;13 collector subsidy, London 1589, 1621,14 Palatinate Benevolence, Aldgate ward 1622;15 common councilman, London by 1606,16 auditor 1609-11, 1623-5,17 dep. alderman and j.p. by 1626-at least 1640;18 gov. St. Bart.’s hosp., London 1607, auditor 1617-19, treas. 1620-42;19 commr. assurance, London 1612-13,20 charitable uses 1626.21

Treas. (jt.), subsidy 1624;22 commr. i.p.m. Thomas Howard, 1st earl of Suffolk 1628.23

Biography

According to an heraldic visitation of 1633, the Bond family originated in Cornwall. Bond’s paternal grandfather, however, lived in Somerset while his father, the London alderman William Bond, resided in Aldgate and was a leading member of the Haberdashers’ Company. William was granted arms in 1567, when he served as a sheriff of London.24 Following his death in 1576 one third of his estate was shared equally between his four sons, in accordance with City custom.25

Bond may have been educated at St. Alban Hall, Oxford. However, he was probably not the Martin Bond who became free of the Ironmongers’ Company in 1607 and asked to borrow £50 from that Company in 1615.26 Like his father, Bond became a member of the Haberdashers’ Company, being admitted to the livery in 1589 at the same time that his older brother William was elected renter warden. Although he subsequently objected that his entry fine of 20 marks was excessive,27 Bond became an active liveryman,28 whose efforts were rewarded in 1601 when he was elected renter warden himself.

Bond probably made his fortune as a Merchant Adventurer rather than as a Haberdasher. By 1590 he and his brother Nicholas were in Stade, dispatching English cloth to their factor at Lübeck, who in return shipped leather, hemp and flax to England.29 The brothers’ business was clearly well capitalized, for by 1597 Bond owned a packing press.30 During the Jacobean period Bond modestly extended his mercantile interests, for as well as joining the revitalized Spanish Company he bought two shares in the Somers Island Company, in which he was counted among the supporters of Sir Thomas Smythe* and the 2nd earl of Warwick (Sir Robert Rich*).31 He also adventured £12 10s. in the Virginia Company,32 attending a meeting of its quarter court in 1622.33 Trade evidently made Bond wealthy. In 1622 he contributed £20 to the Palatine Benevolence, and in 1627 he and his nephew, the London alderman Sir George Whitmore, bought the wardship of Bond’s great-nephew, Sir William Craven, for £8,000.34 He was also one of the creditors of Sir Thomas Hardres of Hardres Court, Kent, who owed him £200.35

Bond became the first president of the Honourable Artillery Company and was twice named to City committees for mustering and training the militia.36 He was also a prominent figure in Aldgate ward, being a captain in the East Regiment of the London Trained Band from at least 1588 and a deputy alderman by 1626. In 1607 he laid the first foundation stone of the new Aldgate, having been appointed to the City’s committee for restoring the fabric of the capital in the previous year. As ‘one of the surveyors of this work’, he had the gateway decorated in imitation of two Roman coins that he had found in the rubble of the old foundations, which suggests that he shared an enthusiasm for the fashionable antiquarianism of the period.37 Despite his local importance, Bond never achieved high office in City government: a London auditor on two separate occasions and briefly deputy-governor of the Irish Society, he failed in several elections during the mid-1620s to unseat Cornelius Fish as the City’s chamberlain.38 Nevertheless, he was frequently appointed to important City committees. In July 1606, for instance, he helped oversee the preparations for the visit of James I and his brother-in-law, the king of Denmark.39

Bond was clearly regarded as a safe pair of financial hands. After serving as a City auditor he was treasurer of St. Bartholomew’s hospital for 22 years. His financial expertise and trustworthiness meant that in 1624 the Commons appointed him one of the eight treasurers for the subsidy. He nevertheless played only a minor role in the parliaments of which he was a Member, being named to just seven committees in 1624 and none at all in 1625. Like the rest of London’s Members, he was appointed to help consider a bill concerned with brewing on 19 May 1624, and as an officer of the London Trained Band he was a natural choice for the committee appointed to draft a bill for arming the militia and curbing the abuses of muster-masters (16 Apr. 1624).40 However, the reasons for appointing him to consider bills concerning Beaminster manor (13 Apr. 1624), the George Morgan Chancery case and the complaint against Dr. Anyan, the president of Corpus Christi (both 1 May 1624) are obscure.41

The remaining two committees to which Bond was named reflected his mercantile interests. The first was for a bill to relieve London’s artisan clothworkers (15 Apr. 1624).42 Of the 29 Members named to the committee, only Bond and his fellow London burgess Robert Bateman attended all four of its meetings, which were held between 19 Apr. and 4 May. The reason for his assiduous attendance almost certainly lies in an order issued by London’s Court of Aldermen, which had concluded that the measure would prove ‘hurtful and prejudicial’ to the City’s interests. London’s Members were instructed ‘to use their endeavour and best intents to suppress the said Act’. It seems likely that Bond and Bateman, aided by their colleague Sir Thomas Middelton, were responsible for the repeated adjournment of the committee, a tactic undoubtedly responsible for stifling the bill by ensuring that it ran out of parliamentary time.43 The last of the committees to which Bond was named concerned a bill to overturn a Chancery judgment against the Feltmakers’ Company (30 Apr. 1624).44 As a leading Haberdasher - he was elected master of the Company shortly after the 1624 Parliament was dissolved - Bond’s interest in this bill may have owed a good deal to company politics: the Haberdashers had refused to recognize the Feltmakers ever since the latter’s incorporation in 1604, claiming that individual Feltmakers were properly to be governed from Haberdashers’ Hall.45 Bond’s interest may also have stemmed from the fact that the Feltmakers’ were trying to reverse a judgment awarded to the 2nd earl of Warwick, who had been supported by Bond in his struggle for control of the Virginia Company. Once again Bond and his allies on the committee, who included Bateman and Middelton, evidently employed wrecking tactics, as they succeeded in having the committee adjourned no less than five times. However, on this occasion they failed to prevent the bill from receiving a third reading.46

Given his mercantile interests it is not surprising that the theme of Bond’s only speech to the House should have been trade. During a debate on 26 Feb. 1624 he responded to criticisms of the Merchant Adventurers’ monopoly of the export of cloth levelled by a number of Devon Members, who favoured free trade, by pointing out that ‘there are 1,500 Merchant Adventurers that trade not at all, and if there were good to be done by the liberties of trading they would not give over to [sic] trade’.47 Bond seems to have seated himself in the chamber next to his fellow London Member Robert Bateman, for on 6 Mar. 1624 Edward Alford demanded that Bond be called to the bar for whispering in the ear of Bateman when the latter was called to give an account of how much money there was in four ships of the East India Company.48 Bond figures in the Parliament’s records only once more, on 28 May 1624, when he was among those named to attend the king with the House’s grievances.49

Little is known about Bond after the mid-1620s. In November 1630 he led the inhabitants of his parish of St. Katherine Creechurch in petitioning the East India Company for a contribution towards the cost of repairing their church,50 while during the latter part of the decade he was involved in some land transactions with his relatives, the Whitmores.51 Shortly before his death in 1643 he resigned as treasurer of St. Bartholomew’s hospital due to ‘his great years and weakness of body’. In his will, a complete copy of which does not survive, he bequeathed £50 to St. Bartholomew’s and a further £50 to be ‘lent to a young man’ of the Haberdashers’ Company without interest every three years.52 He also left £25 to the poor of St. Katherine Creechurch.53 The precise date of his death is unknown, but he was buried on 11 May in the neighbouring church of St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate, where his father lay interred. His nephew William subsequently erected an impressive stone monument in the church to his uncle’s ‘piety, prudence, courage and honesty’, in which Bond is shown as a young captain sitting in his tent at Tilbury in 1588, flanked by musketeers.54 An anonymous portrait of Bond, painted in about 1602, hangs in the committee room of St. Bartholomew’s hospital

Ref Volumes: 1604-1629

Author: Andrew Thrush

Notes

CLRO, City Cash Accts. 1/1, ff. 27, 120v, 211v; 1/2, ff. 25, 113v, 193; 1/3, ff. 26, 118.

• 1. Vis. London (Harl. Soc. xv), 86; IPM London ed. E.A. Fry, iii. 133-4.
• 2. Al. Ox.
• 3. St. Helen’s, Bishopsgate (Harl. Soc. Reg. xxxi), 295.
• 4. Annals of St. Helen’s Bishopsgate ed. J.E. Cox, 63.
• 5. GL, ms 15857/1, f. 118v. We owe this ref. to Helen Bradley.
• 6. GL, ms 15842/1, ff. 43v-4, 120, 155, 166, 239v.
• 7. Spanish Co. ed. P. Croft (London Rec. Soc. ix), 35, 74.
• 8. CLRO, Jors. 29, ff. 16v, 180v; Research Pprs. box 1.26.
• 9. CLRO, Jors. 29, f. 118v.
• 10. Ancient Vellum Bk. ed. G.A. Raikes, 21.
• 11. Recs. Virg. Co. ed. S.R. Kingsbury, iv. 157, 318; Rich Pprs.: Letters from Bermuda ed. V.A. Ives, 354.
• 12. Recs. Virg. Co. iv. 491.
• 13. HMC Foljambe, 39; G. Goold Walker, ‘Trained Bands of London’, Jnl. of Hon. Art. Co. xvi. no. 181, p. 3; Lansd. 255, f. 493; CLRO, Letter Bk. FF, f. 80; Jors. 30, f. 128v; Annals of St. Helen’s, 63.
• 14. CLRO, Jors. 22, f. 335; E115/146/5.
• 15. SP14/156/14.
• 16. CLRO, Jors. 27, ff. 35v, 73v.
• 17. A.B. Beaven, Aldermen of London, i. 290.
• 18. C193/12/2, f. 90; CSP Col. E.I. 1630-4, p. 80; GL, ms 7706, ff. 3v, 12v.
• 19. N. Moore, Hist. St. Bart.’s Hosp. ii. 228, 470; St. Bart.’s Hosp., HA1/4, ff. 269v-70.
• 20. C181/2, ff. 174, 194.
• 21. C93/10/21.
• 22. ‘Nicholas 1624’, f. 279.
• 23. C142/466/63.
• 24. I. Archer, The Haberdashers’ Co. 237; Vis. London (Harl. Soc. xv), 86; List of Sheriffs comp. A. Hughes (PRO, L. and I. ix), 205.
• 25. PROB 11/58, f. 183.
• 26. GL, ms 16978, f. 25; ms 16967/3, f. 71.
• 27. GL, ms 15842/1, f. 46.
• 28. E.g. ibid. ff. 104v, 111.
• 29. W-R. Baumann, Merchant Adventurers and Continental Cloth Trade, 335.
• 30. Lansd. 83, f. 27.
• 31. Rich Pprs.: Letters from Bermuda ed. V.A. Ives, 365.
• 32. Complete Works of Capt. John Smith ed. P.L. Barbour, ii. 274, 371.
• 33. Recs. Virg. Co. iv. 157 (misdated 1623); Abstract of Procs. of Virg. Co. ed. R.A. Brock, i. 210.
• 34. SP14/156/15; WARD 5/44/776. For Bond’s jt. wardship of Craven, see C66/2447/14 and C54/2834/20.
• 35. C2/Chas.I/A19/1. For further evidence of his money-lending activity, see GL, ms 30708/2, f. 380v.
• 36. CLRO, Letter Bk. FF, f. 34v; Letter Bk. GG, f. 97v.
• 37. J. Stow, Survey of London ed. J. Strype, i. 15; CLRO, Jors. 27, f. 35v.
• 38. CLRO, Letter Bk. II, ff. 1, 71, 246.
• 39. CLRO, Jors. 27, f. 73v. We are grateful to Helen Bradley for this ref.
• 40. CJ, i. 768a.
• 41. Ibid. 695b, 764b, 781b.
• 42. HLRO main pprs. 9, 20 Apr. 1624.
• 43. Kyle thesis, 129-31.
• 44. CJ, i. 695a.
• 45. I. Archer, Haberdashers’ Co. 68-9.
• 46. Kyle, 454-6. Kyle concludes that the London Members did not oppose the bill, but overlooks the Haberdashers’ rivalry with the Feltmakers and Bond’s connections with Warwick.
• 47. ‘Nicholas 1624’, f. 28.
• 48. Holles 1624, p. 88.
• 49. CJ, i. 714a.
• 50. CSP Col. E.I. 1630-4, p. 80.
• 51. C54/3184/26, 32.
• 52. St. Bart.’s Hosp. HB5/1, f. 55; GL, ms 15873, f. 30v; ms 15866, pp. 494-5.
• 53. GL, ms 6836, p. 185.
• 54. Annals of St. Helen’s, 63; Archer, 148.