William Buggin, MP

Family and Education 1st s. of Edward Buggin by Elizabeth, da. of Sir Philip Butler† of Watton at Stone, Herts., wid. of John Gale†. educ. Merchant Taylors’; Trinity Coll. Camb. 1572, perhaps BA from Christ’s 1573-4, MA 1578; Basle Univ. 1581; L. Inn 1577, called 1586/7. m. Elizabeth, da. and coh. of William Bowes of St. John Street, Mdx., 3s. 3da. suc. fa. 1590.1

Offices Held

J.p. Mdx. aft. 1594.

Biography Buggin was no doubt related to John Buggin, the first of the Totnes family to settle in Cornwall, mayor of Helston when the election return for the 1589 Parliament was signed. Several Williams appear in the Buggin pedigrees, but as the election return styles the 1589 Member ‘esquire, of London’, it seems that he was the lawyer of that name, son of the revels official. Buggin would seem to have obtained his seat in Parliament in the same way as his father: a small borough distant from London choosing as its parliamentary representative someone already resident in the capital and ready, as a lawyer, to undertake its business there.2

Buggin died 21 Dec. 1618. Little is known of his career. He apparently made enough money to buy considerable property in London and Middlesex, in addition to what he inherited from his father. His will mentions houses he had recently acquired on the site of the hospital of St. John of Jerusalem, and lands and tenements in the parishes of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, St. Andrew Undershaft and St. Sepulchre; besides these, and several houses in St. John’s Lane, Clerkenwell, he had a lease of the manor of Little Stukeley, Huntingdonshire, a farm in Yateley, Hampshire, and property in Norfolk. His heir was his son William, then aged 14. Between 1602 and 1609 five of his children were baptized at St. James’s, Clerkenwell, where he was buried 27 Dec.3

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603 Author: J.C.H. Notes 1. Mdx. Peds. (Harl. Soc. lxv), 176. 2. C219/31/28; Mdx. Peds.; Vis. Cornw. (Harl. Soc. ix), 14; see also BUGGIN, Christopher. 3. PCC 4 Parker; Reg. St. James, Clerkenwell (Harl. Soc. xvii), 143; (ix), 40-55; C142/374/107