Augustine Skinner

Augustine Skinner (c. 1594-11 June 1672), of Tutsham Hall at West Farleigh in Kent, was an English Member of Parliament. Elected to the Long Parliament as member for Kent in 1642, he took the Parliamentary side during the Civil War, and was sufficiently orthodox in his support to survive Pride's Purge, but he refused to accept appointment as a Commissioner in the trial of the King. After the expulsion of the Long Parliament he represented Kent again in the Parliament of 1654, and in the restored Rump in 1659. He was an active Justice of the Peace throughout the Commonwealth period, and it was said that Cromwell had great confidence in him as a magistrate.

Skinner, unusually for a county member, belonged to a newly-arrived rather than established Kent family (his ancestors being from Devon. He made two good marriages, to Elizabeth Twisden, daughter of Serjeant-at-Law Richard Braithwaite, and to Ann Franklin, daughter of Thomas Franklin, an Alderman of the City of London; but his only son, also called Augustine (born 1618), lived less than a year, so that his heir was his brother, William. He had borrowed money to buy two manors which had been confiscated from the Bishop of Rochester; when these were restored to their original ownership at the Restoration, he found himself heavily in debt. His brother was in similar difficulties, and together they procured a private Act of Parliament in 1660 to allow them to sell other lands to raise funds, Skinner's seat at Tutsham Hall being sold to one Edward Goulston. But he was still unable to meet his obligations and, being arrested for debt, he eventually died in the Fleet Prison in 1672, aged 78. He was buried at West Farleigh.

References

*D Brunton & D H Pennington, "Members of the Long Parliament" (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954)
*"Cobbett's Parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803" (London: Thomas Hansard, 1808) [http://www2.odl.ox.ac.uk/gsdl/cgi-bin/library?e=p-000-00---0modhis06--00-0-0-0prompt-10---4------0-1l--1-en-50---20-about---00001-001-1-1isoZz-8859Zz-1-0&a=d&cl=CL1]
* Mark Noble, "Lives of the English Regicides" (London: John Stockdale, 1798) [http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=NAtIAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA232&lpg=PA232&dq=augustine+skinner&source=web&ots=zVA6js_vY6&sig=_03HkeSeqt5foJ4N5SZIeEtNzhw&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=3&ct=result#PPA232,M1]