Bushel, Thomas

, a man once of considerable eminence for his philosophical pursuits, was born about 1594, of a good family at Cleve Prior, in Worcestershire, and was educated at Oxford, as Wood thinks, in Baliol college. He was afterwards taken into the service of sir Francis Bacon, who, when lord chancellor, made him seal-bearer, and in other respects patronized him liberally. He afterwards travelled, directing his attention chiefly to mineralogy, some curious experiments in which he made at Enston in Oxfordshire, where he constructed a curious cistern, erected a banquetting house, &c. which in 1636, he exhibited to king Charles 1. and his queen, who gave orders that the place should be called after her, Henrietta. Here likewise he entertained the royal visitors with a kind of mask, poetical addresses, &c. which were afterwards published under the title of “The several Speeches and Songs at the presentment of the Rock at Enston, to the queen’s most excellent majesty,” Oxon. 1636, 4to. Soon after Mr. Bushel became farmer of his majesty’s mines in Wales, which he worked with great skill and indefatigable labour; and having obtained his majesty’s grant to coin silver, he supplied the army at Oxford, when the parliament had got possession 6f the Tower mint. When the parliament army reached Wales, he was obliged to make his escape with other men of known loyalty. Aubrey informs us that about the time Cromwell was made protector, Mr. Bushel concealed himself in a house in Lambeth marsh, and he constantly lay in a long garret, hung with | black baize; at one end was painted a skeleton extended on a mattress; at the other, was a small pallet bed; and the walls were covered with various emblems of mortality. Here he continued above a year, till his friends had made his peace with the protector. After the restoration he obtained an act of parliament for working certain mines in Somersetshire, but what progress he made we are not told. He died in 1674. Besides the pamphlet already noticed, he published “A just and true remonstrance of his Majesty’s Mines Royal in Wales,” Lond. 1642, 4to; and an “Extract, or Abstract of the lord chancellor Bacon’s Philosophical Theory of Mineral Prosecutions,” Lond. 1660. ¹