Thomas Bushell (mining engineer)

Thomas Bushell (c. 1593 – 1674) was a servant of Francis Bacon who went on to become a mining engineer and defender of Lundy Island for the Royalist cause during the Civil War. He had an interest in solitary and penitential living which has led him to be identified as a forerunner of the secular hermits of the Georgian period.

Thomas Bushell was born around 1593 and was a servant of Bacon's from around 1608 until Bacon's impeachment (when he was a cause of charges of corruption being brought against Bacon). After Bacon's death Bushell moved to the south west of England becoming a mining engineer and master of the mint. He took up residence in Lundy which he defended for the Royalists during the Civil War. Lundy was the last place to surrender at the end of the Civil War.

He was a younger son of a family living at Cleve Prior in Worcestershire. At the age of 15 he entered the service of Sir Francis Bacon, and later acted as his seal-bearer or secretary. When Bacon became lord chancellor, Bushell accompanied him to court.

Bacon instructed Bushell on minerals, by his account; Bacon also paid off his debts. On Bacon's disgrace Bushell adopted an ascetic vegetarian diet and retired to the Isle of Wight, where he lived for some time disguised as a fisherman. He returned to London; but on his master's death in 1626 he lived for three years in a hut on the Calf of Man.

Bushell came to live in Oxfordshire, where he had an estate at Road Enstone, near . There he found a spring and rock formation, which he made into an attraction as a grotto. Charles I paid Bushell an unexpected visit there. On a subsequent royal visit in 1636 the rock was presented to Queen Henrietta Maria in a kind of masque, for which Bushell himself provided some verse (see The Several Speeches and Songs at the Presentment of the Rock at Enston, Oxon. 1636). In 1635 Bushell's was granted a soap monopoly; in January 1637 he had the grant of the royal mines in Wales.

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