Henry Brunsell LL.D.

  Notes:

Rector of Claworth, Co. Notts and Prebendary of Ely and Southwell.
At one time rector of STREATHAM in the ISLE OF ELY - where the Outlaw's were from.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=amEEAAAAYAAJ&q=%22oliver+brunsell%22&dq=%22oliver+brunsell%22&lr=&pgis=1 says "Mr.H.Brunsell founded three exhibitions at Magdalen College, Oxford and three at Jesus College, Cambridge. He died in 1679".

http://www.midlandhistory.bham.ac.uk/issues/2006/Davies.pdf
On 18 February 1654 there was a report of a secret meeting at Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire, just across the border from Nottinghamshire, at which 'a private sacrament was administered'. It involved several well-known royalists, including Colonel Anthony Gilby, Sir William Hickman, the widow of Sir William Savile, and 'Mrs Holder whose husband is exempted from Composition and is now in France'. Although the meeting was at Hickman's house, the instigator was one Dr.Brunsole, who formerly hath been a resident in Gainsborough, but (for the most part) since Worcester business hath resided beyond the seas, or very privately within the limits of this commonwealth; which doctor hath ever been a grand incendiary in the late risings about Pontefract, Lincoln, Gainsborough, and divers other places, to the involving of divers hot spirits in the said war; and also as a great fermentor and contriver of the rising of many with the Scottish Army under Charles Stuart [1651]; and is at this very instant returned from France to Gainsborough; the very sight of whom assures me that a storm is at hand….He was to return immediately to France but that (as he said) he stayed till the money came in that was to defray his charges, which he expected within two days, and that between Easter and Whitsuntide he was to return again into England, and that he would let them know what the design was, but till then he would say nothing'. ........ his seems unlikely to refer to Samuel Brunsell, ensconced in his Bingham rectory. The more likely candidate is his elder brother Henry.
Henry was two years older than Samuel. He had entered Magdalen Hall in 1634, aged 16. He took his B.A. in 1638, and his M.A. in 1642. The rest of his career seems a blank until the Gainsborough incident, although the evidence there would suggest strenuous involvement in royalist activity, at home and abroad. As we shall see he was also credited with services to Charles I. He vanishes again from the record until 1659. On 21 May John Wilkins, warden of Wadham College, Oxford, wrote to his nephew the lord protector Richard Cromwell (he was to abdicate three days later), who was also chancellor of the University, asking that Henry Brunsell, an M.A. of twenty years standing, should be granted dispensation for a licence to practise medicine. Wilkins asked for Brunsell's dispensation to be 'interspersed' in a more general dispensation, to shorten on this occasion the time required to take an M.A. It was clearly a special favour. Wilkins had taken his M.A. from Magdalen Hall in 1634, and was a tutor there briefly, so Henry Brunsell may have been one of his pupils. The next mention of Brunsell is on 10 January 1660 when John Barwick, who was responsible for secret communication between the royal court and its supporters in England, especially the remaining bishops (and notably Bishop Matthew Wren, imprisoned in the Tower) remarked in a letter to an unknown correspondent (Wren?) 'Mr Brunsell hath your letter'. Barwick lived with his brother in St Paul's churchyard in London. His brother was a physician. That profession was a useful cover for secret agents, which perhaps explains Henry Brunsell's attempt to become a licensed physician in 1659. At the Restoration Brunsell petitioned for a vacant benefice, Clayworth (or Chaworth) in Nottinghamshire, with the support, rather unspecific, of Gilbert Sheldon who wrote, 'I know the Petitioner to be capable of His Majesty's favour in this particular'. There was a similar petition by Tobias Swinden which drew a more fulsome encomium from Sheldon and Barwick. Swinden, however, got a York prebend, and Henry Brunsell was duly appointed to Clayworth."
and
"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.
Just before acquiring his degree Henry Brunsell married, on 15 November 1660, Anne Wren, at Bletchingdon in Oxfordshire.30 Anne was the daughter of Christopher Wren, the late dean of Windsor. After being dispossessed of the deanery and of his livings in the 1640's, the Dean had made his home, with his family, at the rectory at Bletchingdon, held by William Holder, married to Wren's daughter Susan. Bletchingdon remained the Wren family home after the Dean's death in 1658; indeed in 1663 Holder was succeeded as rector there by yet another Wren son-in-law, John Hooke. The younger Christopher Wren, still an academic at Oxford, was very much a protégé of John Wilkins, who had recommended Henry Brunsell for the medical licence in 1659. Matthew Wren, son of Bishop Matthew, Christopher's cousin, was also part of Wilkins's circle. He dedicated to Wilkins both his Considerations on Mr Harrington's Oceana??(1657), and his Monarchy Asserted (January
1659), both of them arguments in favour of monarchy in principle which avoid the contentious issue of whether the actual monarch should be a Stuart or a Cromwell. Wilkins himself, close as he was to Richard Cromwell, may have been in contact with the royal court in 1659.32 Matthew Wren was in touch with Sir Edward Hyde and the exiled court and at the Restoration immediately became Hyde's secretary. I would suggest that Henry Brunsell's marriage into the Wren family was the result of his involvement in royalist conspiracy in 1659-60, and probably before that, and specifically of his involvement with Matthew Wren, leading to connections with two of the most influential Restoration patrons, Bishop Wren and Sir Edward Hyde."
and
"It was the Wren marriage which was to give Henry Brunsell an even more profitable clerical career than his brother Samuel. He was canon of Ely from 1660 until his death in 1679, prebendary of Southwell, 1660 to 1664, and of Lincoln, 1660 to 1668. He resigned Clayworth in 1662 to take up the rectory of Stretham in the Isle of Ely, which he also held until his death. He was a man 'of a contentious and cantankerous temper' who, in 1662-3 had to be replaced while negotiating with the royal commissioners on behalf of Ely cathedral by his brother-in-law William Holder, and his cousin by marriage Thomas Wren. On a later occasion he refused to deliver a key to the chapter chest, which had to be broken open. His wife Anne died on 27 February 1668, being buried with her two infant sons (a daughter was to die the following year). Henry returned to Bletchingdon to marry Sarah Barry, daughter of a neighbouring gentleman, on 7 December 1669. Sarah survived him to leave
a substantial will in 1693. Henry was sufficiently wealthy at his death on 23 February 1679 to found three scholarships at Magdalen Hall, and three at Jesus College, Cambridge. He had no formal connection with Jesus, and the bequest may reflect earlier royalist contacts in the Netherlands.."

Henry married Anne Wren on 15 Nov 1660. (Anne Wren was born in 1634 in Knoyle, Wilts and died in 1667 in Streatham, Isle of Ely.)