GRIMSTON, SIR HARBOTTLE English politician, born at Bradfield Hall, near Manningtree on Jan. 27, 1603, and educated at Emmanuel college, Cambridge, he became a barrister of Lincoln's Inn, recorder of Harwich in 1634, and recorder of Colchester (1638) . As member for Colchester he sat in the Short and the Long parliaments, and in 1642 he was made deputy-lieutenant of Essex. Though of royalist sympathies, he remained a nominal adherent of the parliamentary party during the Civil War, but was later excluded from the House of Commons and, for a short time, imprisoned. In 1648 he succeeded his father as 2nd baronet, and in .the Convention Parliament of 1660 he was chosen speaker. This office he lost at the dissolution of the parlia ment, but he was a member of the commission which tried the regicides, and in Nov. 1660 he was appointed master of the rolls. He died on Jan. 2, 1685. Grimston translated from Norman French the law reports of the judge, Sir George Coke (1560 1642).
On the death of his son Samuel in 1700, the baronetcy became extinct. The grandson of Sir Harbottle's eldest daughter Mary succeeded to the estates of his great uncle.
See G. Burnet, History of My Own Time, edit. O. Airy (1900).