John Barkstead

[3] The date of Barkstead's birth is unknown, was originally a goldsmith in the Strand, and was often taunted by Robert Lilburne (a leveller) and the royalist pamphleteers with selling thimbles and bodkins.

[8] During the year 1649 he acted as governor of Yarmouth, but by a vote of 11 April 1650 his regiment was selected for the guard of parliament and the city, and on 12 August 1652 he was also appointed Lieutenant of the Tower of London.

In November 1655, during the Rule of the Major Generals he was appointed major-general of the county of Middlesex and the assistant of Sir Philip Skippon in the charge of London.

"[13] In 1662, however, he ventured into Holland to see some friends, and Sir George Downing, the king's agent in the United Provinces, having obtained from the states a warrant for his apprehension, seized him in his lodgings with John Okey and Miles Corbet.

He showed great courage, thanked God he had been faithful to the powers he had served, and commended to the bystanders "the congregational way, in which he had found much comfort.

"[11] At the end of 1662 Samuel Pepys was commissioned by Earl of Sandwich and Sir Henry Bennet, Secretary of State, to search the Tower of London for £7,000, supposed to have been the proceeds of Barkstead's corrupt Governorship and hidden by him in or near the Governor's Lodgings.