Samuel# Brunsell D.D.

  Notes:

Rector of Bingham, Notts

The Reliquary 1882 contains "Grant of Arms and Crest to Henry Brunsell LLD 1660" ; "In Ashmole MS 858 fo 155 is copy of grant by Sir Edward Walker, Knt Garter to Henry Brunsell LL.D., Rector of Claworth, Co. Notts and Prebendary of Ely and Southwell, and to Samuel Brunsell D.D., both sons of Oliver Brunsell, of Wroughton, co.Wilts, clerk, by Elizabeth his wife, dau of Henry Martin of Upham Esq. of these arms and crest ..... "

http://www.midlandhistory.bham.ac.uk/issues/2006/Davies.pdf
Samuel followed his father to Oxford, entering the distinctly Puritan Magdalen Hall in 1636, aged 16. Before finishing his undergraduate course he was enrolled in the medical faculty of the University of Leiden on 29 November, 1640, as the servant (‘famulus’) of Dr Leonard van Hogendorp, of Rotterdam. Hogendorp, a member of a prominent Rotterdam family, had himself been admitted, aged 25, to the Law Faculty in 1634. Leiden was in the habit of conferring academic qualifications rather freely on visiting dignitaries, and their entourages. Samuel, however, returned to Oxford, possibly after the death of his father, and took his B.A. early in 1642. His taking six years over what was normally a four-year course suggests he had been away for some time. In July 1642 Samuel again enrolled at Leiden, this time in the Theology Faculty and in his own right. Anthony Wood suggested he went abroad to escape the imminent civil war. Probably he had already had some contact with the Dutch diplomat, John van Kerkhove, lord of Heenvliet, and with Katherine Wotton, Lady Stanhope, Heenvliet’s English wife. "
and "Samuel was employed in the Heenvliet household, although it is unclear when he joined. There is routine order to ‘Mr Brunsool’ about minor financial transactions dated 7 August, 1648. His literary talents were also put to use.He wrote an English poem (printed) congratulating the elder Polyander on being chosen, for the eighth time, as rector magnificus of Leiden. In February 1646 he produced an English funeral elegy in his honour. The following September Heenvliet’s daughter Waulberg married Thomas Howard, brother of the Earl of Suffolk and master of the horse to the Princess. Brunsell produced for the occasion a substantial Latin history of the Howard family and their Mowbray predecessors, from the reign of Richard II on, to celebrate the occasion and to feed Heenvliet’s overweening obsession with noble descent. Samuel seems to have owed both his living and his marriage to Katherine Stanhope. In 1648 she presented him to the Nottinghamshire living of Bingham. On 20 December 1648 the House of Lords, as one of its last acts before abolition, approved Brunsell’s appointment. It is not clear how this situation came about. The patronage of Bingham had been with the Crown, and the living had been held between 1624 and 1634 by the future Bishop Matthew Wren.
Samuel married, presumably about this time, Mary, eldest daughter of John Boughton, of Lifferton in Kent. The Boughtons were Kentishmen associated with Katherine Stanhope (by birth and inheritance a Wootton). In 1652 Katherine sold a Kentish manor of her inheritance to a John Boughton, who sold it on. A John Boughton, presumably Samuel’s brother in- law, matriculated at Leiden in 1649, aged 22. He was the servant of Katherine’s sons, Philip Stanhope, and her son by Heenvliet, Charles Henry. John Boughton appears in the Heenvliet papers in 1650-1, as a servant to Philip
Stanhope, reporting back to Heenvliet on his master’s doings." LOTS MORE inc
""The honours bestowed on Henry and Samuel in 1660-1 suggest that they had rendered important services to church and king. Both were given doctorates on the same day (16 January, 1661) at Oxford, Henry, rather surprisingly, in Law (D.C.L.), Samuel in Divinity (D.D.). The case for Henry had been submitted on 23 August 1660, with the bald statement that his removal from Magdalen Hall twenty years earlier had impeded his progress to a higher degree, and mentioned his recent laying aside of divinity for medicine. It was supported by the restored royalist chancellor of the University, the Marquis of Hertford. Samuel's case was submitted on 28 November, along with that for Henry's brother-in-law William Holder. The recommendation in this case was by the new university chancellor, Sir Edward Hyde; the reason given, the hindrances to natural academic progress by the iniquity of recent times. Interestingly, M.A. degrees were given at about the same time to Charles and William Wren, sons of Bishop Wren, and to Edward Hyde's eldest son Henry; a medical doctorate to Thomas Wren, another son of Bishop Wren, and a D.D. to Nicholas Monck, General Monck's clerical brother, and to William Holder. The Brunsells were in distinguished company. Shortly after, on 10 March 1661, Henry and Samuel were granted 'arms and a crest' by Garter King-at- Arms; an unusual honour for clergymen below episcopal level. The citations are significant. Henry is said to have 'with singular constancy and fidelity served his Majesty, and also the late King Charles [my emphasis]'. Samuel 'hath been ever a person of constant and known loyalty to his Majesty'. Henry's services, however well concealed at the time and from the historian, had clearly been substantial."

M Blagg, Brunsell Hall, Car Colston, Transactions of the Thoroton Society, 12 (1908)
This house, or rather what is left of it, is known by the name of Brunsell Hall, and is so marked on the Ordnance Survey maps of the district. It is named from the man .who built it, and whose family lived in it, Samuel Brunsell, Doctor of Divinity. About the years 1660 and 1664, Dr. Brunsell bought lands from the Thoroton family, as appears by the title deeds which have been shown to you, and he also bought a messuage and certain lands from William Kirke, which in the time of Richard II. were Robert Chaworth’s, and upon this land, as Thoroton records, “the said Doctor hath built a brick house, being very near Screveton Church, of which he was also Rector.” In the portion which remains of that house we are now standing. The house which occupied this site previously belonged to Richard Kirke, who, being a Roman Catholic, was forced to convey it to his brother William, and died in prison. As there is a legend that treasure is buried in the garden it may be speculated whether Richard may not have hidden his money and plate, and handed over only his real estate.
The Brunsell family came out of Wiltshire, and the Doctor’s brother Henry had married the daughter of Christopher Wren, Dean of Windsor, but I’m afraid we cannot prove that her relative, the great architect, designed the room in which we now are! Dr. Samuel Brunsell was born in 1619, and was a wealthy and powerful dignitary of the church. In 1660 he was Prebendary of Nassington in the Cathedral Church of Lincoln, and in 1664 succeeded his brother Henry Brunsell, who became a Prebendary in the Cathedral of Ely, to the Prebend of Norwell Tertia Pars in the Collegiate Church of Southwell. He had held the incumbency of Bingham during the Commonwealth, but was not formally instituted to that rich rectory until 1662. He became Rector of Screveton also in 1663, but resigned the living in 1671, and was instituted Vicar of Upton, but resigned in 1683. He was appointed Vicar-General to the Chapter of Southwell in 1669. He died in residence at Southwell, 17th January, 1687-8, and was buried in Bingham church two days later. The documents relating to his various appointments I have brought for your inspection, as also the printed copy of a sermon which he preached in Newark church on the day of the happy Restoration of the Monarchy. His son, Henry Brunsell, succeeded him as Rector of Bingham.
Dr. Brunsell, in his capacity as Rector of Bingham, is said to have been one of the last men to officially “lay” a ghost. The said ghost frequented Chapel Lane, at Bingham, and much annoyed and perturbed the good folk of the town. One cause why ghosts “walk” is supposed to be this,—that the material body has not received Christian burial. A grave was accordingly dug in Bingham churchyard and a coffin prepared. Whether the coffin, with the lid invitingly open was left overnight in Chapel Lane, or whether by cunning incantations the graveless sprite was coaxed to enter it, I do not know; or whether in the morning or at the dread hour of midnight the ghostly cortege moved; but this has been told to me by an old man whose grandmother heard it from her grandmother (all Bingham folk), that Dr. Brunsell, majestic in wig and gown, with the populace in procession, escorted that coffin, borne on bier shoulder high, from Chapel Lane to the churchyard, where the solemn burial service was read and the coffin lowered into the grave. Thenceforth that restless spirit troubled no more the good people of Bingham, as he who doubts my story may prove, by keeping vigil by himself in Chapel Lane, any night he likes!
The members of the Brunsell family who continued to reside at Car-Colston led very scandalous lives and came to a bad end, and the property passed into the possession of my own ancestors, the Sampeys, in 1759.”

Samuel# married Mary# Boughton, daughter of John# Boughton and Unknown.