John Rushworth - Later Years

Later Years

In September 1667, when Sir Orlando Bridgeman was made lord-keeper, he appointed Rushworth his secretary. The colony of Massachusetts also employed him as its agent at a salary of twelve guineas a year and his expenses, but it was scoffingly said in 1674 that all he had done for the colony was 'not worth a rush'.

Rushworth was elected MP for Berwick again in March 1679 for the First Exclusion Parliament and in October 1679 for the Second Exclusion Parliament. He was retuend again in March 1681, Rushworth and seems to have supported the Whig leaders. Though he had held lucrative posts and had inherited an estate from his cousin, Sir Richard Tempest, Rushworth's affairs were greatly embarrassed. He spent the last six years of his life in the king's bench prison in Southwark, "where, being reduced to his second childship, for his memory was quite decayed by taking too much brandy to keep up his spirits, he quietly gave up the ghost in his lodging in a certain alley there, called Rules Court, on 12 May 1690". He was buried in St. George's Church, Southwark. Wood states that Rushworth died at the age of eighty-three, but in a letter written in 1675 Rushworth describes himself as sixty-three at that date.