Sir Samuel Barnardiston, 1st Baronet

Sir Samuel Barnardiston, 1st Baronet (23 June 1620 – 8 November 1707) was an English Whig Member of Parliament and deputy governor of the East India Company.

He opposed the high-church party in his neighbourhood, and in June 1667 reported to the council that Captain Nathaniel Daryll, commanding a regiment stationed at Ipswich, was a suspected papist.

Thomas Skinner, an independent English merchant, had had his ships confiscated by the company's agents for infringing its trading monopolies in India.

He refused to comply and was committed to the custody of the usher of the black rod, in whose hands he remained until 10 August following, when he was suddenly released without any explanation of the step being given.

On 19 October 1669, at the first meeting of a new session of parliament, Barnardiston was called to the bar of the House of Commons, and there invited to describe the indignities which the lords had put upon him.

In 1672 the death of Sir Henry North, 1st Baronet created a vacancy in the representation of Suffolk, and Barnardiston was the candidate chosen by the Whigs.

The election was viewed as a trial of strength; Dissenters and the commercial classes supported Sir Samuel, and he gained seventy-eight votes more than his opponent, Lord Huntingtower.

The lords heard the arguments of both parties in the middle of June, but they finally resolved to affirm the judgment of the Exchequer Chamber.

The case was popularly viewed at the time as a political trial, and is given partisan commentary by Roger North, the Tory historian, in his Examen.

North declares that Barnardiston throughout the proceedings sought the support of "the rabble", and pursued Soame with vindictiveness, in the first instance by making him bankrupt after the trial in the King's Bench, and in the second by sending the case to the House of Lords after his death.

In 1683 he openly expressed his dissatisfaction with the proceedings that had followed the discovery of the Rye House Plot; but on 28 February 1684 he was summoned to take his trial for libel as 'being of a factious, seditious, and disaffected temper,' and having 'caused several letters to be written and published' reflecting on the king and officers of state.

In 1691 a quarrel with Sir Josiah Child, governor of the East India Company, caused him to retire from the management, and afterwards to withdraw the money he had invested in its stocks.