John Maynard (MP) - Parliamentarian

Parliamentarian

He represented Totnes in both the Short Parliament of 1640 and the Long Parliament, and from the first took an active part in the business of the house. In December 1640 he was placed on the committee of scrutiny into the conduct of lords-lieutenant of counties, and on that for the discovery of the "prime promoters" of the new "canons ecclesiastical" passed in the recent irregular session of convocation. He was also one of the framers of the articles upon which Strafford was impeached, and one of the principal speakers at the trial. He threw himself with great zeal into the affair, and on the passing of the bill of attainder said joyfully to Sir John Bramston, "Now we have done our work. If we could not have effected this we could have done nothing". A strong Presbyterian, he subscribed and administered to the house the protestation of 3 May 1641 in defence of the Protestant religion, and drafted the bill making subscription thereto obligatory on all subjects.

In the committee, which sat at Guildhall after the adjournment of the House of Commons which followed the king's attempt to arrest the five members (4 January 1641/2), he made an eloquent speech in defence of parliamentary privilege. In the following May he accepted a deputy-lieutenancy of militia under the parliament, and on 12 June 1643 was nominated a member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines. He took the covenant on 25 September following, and was one of the managers of the impeachment of William Laud in January–March 1643/4. With his friend Bulstrode Whitelocke, Maynard attended, by Essex's invitation, a meeting of the anti-Cromwellian faction, held at Essex House in December 1644, to discuss the expediency of taking public action against Cromwell as an ‘incendiary.' The idea, which seems to have originated with the Lord Chancellor of Scotland Loudon, met with no favour from the English lawyers, and was in consequence abandoned.

A curious testimony to Maynard's reputation at this time is afforded by a grant made in his favour by parliament in October 1645 of the books and manuscripts of the late Lord Chief Justice Bankes, with liberty to seize them wherever he might find them. In the House of Commons he was heard with the profoundest respect, while he advocated the abolition of feudal wardships and other salutary legal reforms. He also prospered mightily in his profession, making in the course of the summer circuit of 1647 the unprecedentedly large sum of £700. As a politician he was a strict constitutionalist, protested against the first steps taken towards the deposition of the king, and on the adoption of that policy withdrew from the house as no longer a lawful assembly (November 1648).