Sir William Spring, 1st Baronet

Sir William Spring, 1st Baronet (13 March 1613 – 17 December 1654) was an English landowner and politician. During the English Civil War, he was one of the leading Parliamentarian officials in East Anglia. He was the Member of Parliament for Bury St Edmunds before being removed during Pride's Purge in 1648, but was returned to the House of Commons as the MP for Suffolk shortly before his death in 1654.

Early life Spring was born into the Spring family in Pakenham, Suffolk in 1613, a descendant of the clothier Thomas Spring of Lavenham.

In October 1640 Spring stood for election in Bury St Edmunds, but was defeated in the face of the superior influence of his relations, the Jermyns. In 1641 he served as High Sheriff of Suffolk, during which time he was knighted by Charles I. Towards the end of his year in office, the king also granted Spring a hereditary title, creating him a baronet, of Pakenham in the Baronetage of England, on 11 August 1641. At some point in the early 1640s he purchased Newe House from Sir Robert Bright. In April 1642 he was made a justice of the peace for Suffolk and he was a deputy lieutenant of the county by September that year. Cromwell intervened, telling Spring that he did not care which social class his soldiers came from, as long as they believed in Parliament's cause. In September 1643, Cromwell wrote to Spring, saying: "I had rather have a plain russet-coated captain that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a gentleman and is nothing else".

In February 1644, he was appointed a joint-treasurer and receiver-general of the Eastern Association by the Earl of Manchester. Following the Bury Conference in January 1645, Spring was sent by the Eastern Association to lobby the Committee of Both Kingdoms regarding the introduction of the New Model Army.

Member of Parliament In October 1645, Spring was elected to the Long Parliament as Member of Parliament for Bury St Edmunds in a recruiter election. While his name remained on the commission of the peace, he played no further part in the work of the local commissions after the purge. The debts were dealt with by the sale of some lands at Cockfield. Spring was succeeded in his title and estates by his eldest son, William Spring, who also served as an MP for Suffolk. Sir William Spring, 2nd Baronet (1642–1684), married first Mary, daughter of Dudley North, 4th Baron North (no issue) and married second Sarah, daughter of Sir Robert Cordell, 1st Baronet of Melford Hall, Suffolk, with whom he had three children. Thomas Spring, died unmarried in 1677, Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge John Spring, became a politician in Watertown MA Elizabeth Spring, died unmarried Catherine Spring, married (1st) Capt. Laurence, (2nd) John Palgrave Dorothy Spring (1648–1714/15), married Sir Christopher Calthorpe in 1664

Ancestry