Benjamin Valentine

Benjamin Valentine (prob. bapt. 9 March 1584 – June 1652), was an English politician and Member of Parliament.

Of obscure origins, he attached himself to various influential politicians and favourites and rose to prominence with the support of William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke and Sir John Eliot. With Eliot he opposed the religious and fiscal innovation taking place in the early period of King Charles I's reign, and attacked one of his favourites, George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. He became embroiled in controversy as he was one of the members to hold Speaker John Finch in his chair to prevent him adjourning parliament and preventing Eliot from denouncing such measures as tonnage and poundage. For this Valentine and his associates were arrested and tried.

The trial revealed the clash between the rights and prerogatives of parliament versus the king, and became a political storm. Valentine refused to admit guilt or comply with orders, and was eventually fined and imprisoned for a number of years. Released prior to the resumption of parliament after eleven years of Personal Rule, Valentine returned to sit as a member, but took little part in the English Civil War.

Origins Valentine's early origins are obscure but records of the baptism of a Benjamin Valentine at St Giles-without-Cripplegate on 9 March 1584 probably refer to the future parliamentarian. His family may have originated in Suffolk, and his father was perhaps a member of the Inner Temple in the early 1570s. As one biographer has recorded, Valentine "does not appear to have been ultimately a committed revolutionary ... his place in history rests upon his actions, however factious or ideological, in dissenting from the Caroline regime of the late 1620s."