Benjamin Valentine
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.
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.
[1][a] Valentine can first be traced with surety in historical records in relation to some business transactions with his future father-in-law, Matthias Springham, in July 1610.
[1] Valentine then attached himself to the retinue of William Herbert, 3rd Earl of Pembroke and sought to undermine the royal favourite George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, with limited success.
[2] He used his place in parliament to mount further attacks on Buckingham, and as one biographer has stated, he was "clearly moving in circles hostile to both arbitrary government and High Church innovations".
Valentine, with Denzil Holles, held the Speaker down in his seat while Sir John Eliot read out resolutions questioning the king's proceedings respecting religion and taxation, particularly regarding tonnage and poundage.
On 6 May he, with Selden, Holles, William Strode, Miles Hobart, and Walter Long, considering themselves legally entitled to bail, applied to the Court of King's Bench for a writ of habeas corpus.
Valentine continued a prisoner for eleven years, and was finally released in January 1640 to placate public opinion prior to the assembling of the Short Parliament.
[1][2][3] 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.
