Thomas Bampfield was the eighth son of John Bampfield of Poltimore and his wife Elizabeth, members of the Devon gentry. Like most of their contemporaries, he and his brothers supported Parliament during the 1638 to 1651 Wars of the Three Kingdoms, although there is no record of his military service. His elder brother Sir John Bampfylde, MP for Penryn until his death in 1650, was one of those excluded by Pride's Purge in December 1648. Another, Francis Bampfield, was a Seventh Day Baptist, who spent nine years in prison for his religious convictions.
Career
Bampfield attended Exeter College, Oxford, followed by legal training at Middle Temple in 1642; the First English Civil War meant he did not qualify as a lawyer until 1649. In 1654, he was appointed Recorder of Exeter; an important legal position, it led to his election as Member of Parliament for Exeter in the First Protectorate Parliament. It is not clear whether he attended; like many others, he refused to accept Oliver Cromwell's insistence all MPs 'recognise' constitutional limits set out in the Instrument of Government. In 1656, he was re-elected to the Second Protectorate Parliament, and was an active participant; in the Third, he acted as Speaker from 14 April 1659 until it was dissolved on 22 April. He backed the restoration of MPs excluded in 1648, and sat in the Convention Parliament that invited Charles II to resume the throne. However, his opposition to the restoration of Episcopacy in the Church of England, and support for regulations prohibiting drunkenness and profanity were out of step with the public mood. He lost his position as Recorder in October 1660, and did not stand again for election as an MP. His brother Francis, a former Royalist and Prebendary of Exeter Cathedral, rejected his conservative religious beliefs, and became an advocate of Saturday Sabbatarianism. Evicted from his living after the 1662 Act of Uniformity, he spent the next nine years in Dorchester gaol. By 1667 Thomas was converted to Sabbatarianism by Francis, who set up a Seventh Day Baptist community in prison. Removed as a JP in 1665, Thomas regained some of his former positions in 1688, as the Catholic James II tried to build support among Nonconformists. However, he relinquished them after the 1688 Glorious Revolution. In his last years, he published several works on Sabbatarianism, which elicited responses from mathematician and theologian John Wallis, as well as Baptist minister Isaac Marlow. He died on 8 October 1693, and was buried at St Stephen's, Exeter.
Published works
"An Enquiry Whether the Lord Jesus Christ made the World, and be Jehovah, and gave the Moral Law? And Whether the Fourth Command be Repealed or Altered?"
