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Barnardiston (, Memorials, ii. 392). But according to other accounts the actor in this episode was Giles Barnardiston, a son of Sir Thomas Barnardiston, Sir Nathaniel's grandfather, by a second marriage. Other sons of Sir Nathaniel, Nathaniel, Pelatiah, William, and Arthur, were well-known oriental merchants. In 1649–50 Nathaniel, who married a daughter of Nathaniel Bacon in 1648, was acting at Smyrna as agent for the Levant company (Cal. State Papers, 1649–51). Arthur was one of the commissioners for ejecting scandalous and inefficient ministers in Suffolk under Cromwell's order in 1654. Jane, one of Sir Nathaniel's two daughters, was, by her second marriage with Sir William Blois, the grandmother of the eighth, ninth, and tenth Lords St. John of Bletsoe, through her daughter Jane, the wife of Sir St. Andrew St. John, baronet.

A fine engraved portrait by Van Houe of Sir Nathaniel, whose features resembled those of Oliver Cromwell, is given in Clark's ‘Lives,’ p. 105.

[Davy's Suffolk Collections, xl. 353 et seq., in Brit. Mus. (Addit. MS. 19116); Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archæology, iv. 123–82; Corser's Collectanea; Granger's Biographical History; Fairclough's memoir in Samuel Clark's Lives, as above, whence quotations in the article have been taken.] 

BARNARDISTON, SAMUEL (1620–1707), whig politician and deputy governor of the East India Company, born 23 June 1620, was the third son of Sir Nathaniel Barnardiston [q. v.] Like other members of his family, he showed himself early in life strongly opposed to Charles I's arbitrary government, and he joined the London apprentices in 1640 in the rioting that took place at Westminster on the appointment of Colonel Lumsford as constable of the Tower. According to Rapin, Barnardiston's prominence in the crowd on this occasion gave rise to the political use of the word Roundhead. ‘The apprentices, it seems, wore the hair of their head cut round, and the queen, observing out of a window Samuel Barnardiston among them, cryed out: “See what a handsome young Roundhead is there!” And the name came from thence’ ( History, ed. Tindal, iv. 403). Barnardiston appears to have become while still young a Levant merchant, and in 1649 and 1650 he was residing at Smyrna as agent for the Levant company, in whose service he laid the foundations of a very gigantic fortune. He took no active part in the civil wars, and passed much time during the protectorate in Suffolk, with which his family was intimately connected. At Brightwell, near Ipswich, he purchased a large estate, which he carefully improved, and built upon it a large house known as Brightwell Hall (, Beauties of England, xiv. 265). One of its characteristics, which gave it a wide local fame, was the erection ‘on the top of it’ of ‘a reservoir of water which not only might supply the domestic purposes for which it was wanted, but which was so large as to serve as a stew for fish which were always kept in it ready for consumption.’ Barnardiston's household was a strictly puritan one, and a puritan chaplain usually lived with him. In 1663 he engaged in this capacity the services of Robert Franklyn, who had experienced an unusual share of persecution (Nonconform. Memor. iii. 293). He endeavoured to repress the influence of the high-church party in his neighbourhood, and in June 1667 reported to the council that Captain Nathaniel Daryll, commanding a regiment stationed at Ipswich, was a suspected papist (Cal. State Papers, 1667, p. 246).

In 1660 Barnardiston welcomed the return of Charles II, and was rewarded for his acquiescence at first by a knighthood, and in 1663 by a baronetcy, the patent of which described him as a person of ‘irreproachable loyalty.’ Soon afterwards he entered into active political life. In 1661 he was on the committee of the East India Company; from 1668 to 1670 he was deputy-governor, and in that office came prominently before the public. The company had been forced into a serious struggle with the House of Lords. Thomas Skinner, an independent English merchant, had had his ships confiscated by the company's agents for infringing its trading monopolies in India. Skinner had straightway appealed for redress to the House of Lords, which had awarded him 5,000l. damages against the company. Sir Samuel, on behalf of the East India corporation, thereupon presented a petition to the House of Commons against the action of the lords, and the lower house voted (2 May 1668) Skinner's complaint and the proceedings of the lords illegal. On 8 May Barnardiston was summoned to the bar of the upper house and invited to admit himself guilty of having contrived ‘a scandalous libel against the house.’ In a short dignified speech Sir Samuel declined to ‘own his fault,’ and, in the result, was ordered upon his knees, and sentenced to a fine of 300l., and to be imprisoned till the money was paid. Parliament was adjourned the same day. Sir Samuel refused to comply with the judgment, and was straightway committed to the custody of the usher of the black rod, in whose hands he remained until 10 Aug. following,