John Bramhall - Exile

Exile

In 1642, he returned to England, and was in Yorkshire until the battle of Marston Moor (2 July 1644); he supported the royalist cause by preaching and writing, and sent his plate to the king. With the Marquess of Newcastle, and others, he hurried abroad, landing at Hamburg on 8 July 1644. The treaty of Uxbridge, in January 1645, excepted him, with Laud, from the proposed general pardon.

In Paris he met Hobbes (prior to 1646), and argued with him on liberty and necessity. This led to controversies with Hobbes in after years. Up to 1648 he was mainly at Brussels, preaching at the English embassy, and to the English merchants of Antwerp monthly. He then went back to Ireland, but not to Ulster, in 1648; at Limerick he received in 1649 the profession of the dying James Dillon, 3rd Earl of Roscommon. While he was in Cork, the city declared for the parliament (October 1649); he had a narrow escape, and returned to foreign parts. He corresponded with Montrose, and disputed and wrote in defence of the Church of England. He went to Spain around 1650. He was excluded from the Act of Indemnity of 1652; subsequently he occasionally adopted in correspondence the pseudonym 'John Pierson.'