Whitelocke

Whitelocke, BULSTRODE, was born in London 2d August 1605, and educated at Eton, Merchant Taylors' School, and St John's College, Oxford. The son of a judge, he studied at the Middle Temple, sat in the Long Parliament for Great Marlow, and took a half-hearted part on the popular side in the great struggle. In 1648 he was appointed one of the commissioners of the Great Seal. He would take no part in the king's trial, but he accepted a seat in the council of state, and was sent by Cromwell ambassador to Sweden (1653). He declined Cromwell's title of viscount, was nominated by Richard keeper of the Great Seal, but again steered prudently enough through that intricate period to be included in the Act of Oblivion. He died in 1676 at his house at Chilton in Wiltshire. Whitelocke's Memorials was first published in 1682 in a mutilated and falsified form, the anonymous editor, according to Wood, being Arthur, Earl of Annesley. A more satisfactory edition was that of 1732. The book is reliable, but Mr Gardiner thinks the earlier part to have been written from memory, and so defective with the inevitable defects of such a method. His Journal of the Embassy to Sweden was edited by H. Reeve (1855). See his Memoirs by R. H. Whitelocke (1860).