Family and Education

b. c.1607, s. of Richard Bosworth of Woolhope, Herefs. educ. Brasenose, Oxf. matric, 20 Oct. 1626, aged 19, BA 1629, MD 1643. m. at least 1s.

Offices Held

Commr. for assessment, Herefs. and Hereford 1652, Jan. 1660-d., j.p. Herefs. Mar. 1660-d.

Biography

Bosworth, a popular local physician, came of a family so obscure that his name is frequently wrongly given as Boswood or Boswell. His father appears to have been a tenant farmer of the dean and chapter of Hereford; his uncle William was a moneylender of royalist sympathies. But Bosworth’s own political views are obscure: he was given an honorary medical degree at Oxford during the first winter of the Civil War, but he would hardly have been named to two assessment commissions by the Rump if he had been of notoriously royalist inclinations. He was first returned to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament for Hereford, and reelected in 1660. His name appeared in both commissions of the peace, and was only struck off at his death. In the Convention he was named to the committees to consider the state of the queen mother’s jointure on 8 June and to take accounts of public moneys received during the Interregnum on 1 Aug. Nothing further is heard of him till the issue of a new writ after his death.

W. R Williams, Parl. Hist. Herefs. 91; C8/182/19; Duncumb, Herefs. iii. 236.

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Authors: M. W. Helms / Edward Rowlands

Notes

• 1. New writ.