ABSTRACT
Sir Richard Browne, who had begun his career as a wood merchant, had been a staunch Parliamentary soldier, in command of two regiments and instrumental in the Parliamentary victory at Alresford. Browne’s religious opinions proving insufficiently radical, he was imprisoned in various places for five years and was harshly treated. Released at last, he was excluded from Parliament and lived quietly till the Restoration, when he was knighted along with others who greeted Charles II at Blackheath. Anyone who had money and energy for rebuilding was able to make an excellent bargain for themselves with the Company. Nathaniel Withers, who had been Master of the Company in the year of the Fire, had taken the volumes for safe-keeping into his house, which stood unscathed in Seething Lane, where Samuel Pepys, whose father had been a merchant taylor, was his neighbour.
