“I1IHilt5I]ir2 Iivrnrh iinrirtg (formerly the Records Branch of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society) VOLUME XXIII FOR THE YEAR 1967 Impression of 400 copies THE EARL OF HERTFORD’S LIEUTENANCY PAPERS I603 - I6I2 EDITED HY W. P. D. MURPHY DEVIZES 1969 © Wiltshire Record Society (formerly Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, Records Branch), 1969 THIS VOLUME IS PUBLISHED WITH THE HELP OF A GRANT FROM THE LATE MISS ISOBEL THORNLEY’S BEQUEST TO THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON Set in Times New Roman IO/11 pt. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY THE GLEVUM PRESS LTD. GLOUCESTER CONTENTS PAGE Frontispiece PREFACE . vii INTRODUCTION . The Lord Lieutenant .. The Office of Lord Lieutenant Government Policy . ~o4>—-- The Deputy Lieutenants 9 Colonels and Captains ll Muster-Masters . ll The Performance of Martial Service 13 Civic and Clerical Forces 14 The Manuscripts . 15 Note on Transcription 16 THE EARL OF I-IERTEoRo’s LIEUTENANCY PAPERS, 1603-1612 17 GENERAL INDEX 199 L1sT o1= MEMBERS 229 PUBLICATIONS OF THE SOCIETY 234 V PREFACE The present volume, which is issued for the year 1967, is the first to be published under the imprint of the Wiltshire Record Society. It continues, without any break in the enumeration of volumes, the series published by the Records Branch of the Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Society, since by a modification to its rules in June I967 the Branch changed its name to the Wiltshire Record Society. The correspondence that forms the text of the volume is contained in two separate manuscript books. The Society gratefully acknowledges the kind permission of His Grace the Duke of Northumberland and of The Trustees of the British Museum for the publication of, respectively, Alnwick Castle MS. 100.23/2 and British Museum Additional MS. 5496. The Society is also most grateful to the Trustees of the late Miss Isobel Thornley’s Bequest to the University of London for a generous grant towards the cost of publication. The editor of the text would like to express his indebtedness to Professor Joel I-Iurstfield, who first drew his attention to the manuscripts and supervised his work towards a Master’s thesis largely based upon them. Mr. Murphy wishes in addition to acknowledge the valuable help given him by Professor and Mrs. S. T. Bindofi'. CHRISTOPHER ELRINGTON Marc/1 1969 V11 INTRODUCTION Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford (1539 ?—l62l), was lord lieutenant of Somerset, Wiltshire, and Bristol from 1601 to 1621. Two of his entry—books of letters relating to his lieutenancy have survived, for the years 1603-61 and 1608-12,2 and are printed below. They provide copies of letters and other items sent or received by the lord lieutenant. The Lord Lieutenant ‘l will have no rascal's son in my seat, but one worthy to be a king." The statement is alleged to be the death-bed response of Elizabeth I to the sugges- tion that the Earl of Hertford's son, Lord Beauchamp, should succeed her.“ Hertford had caused anxiety in the early, perilous years of the queen‘s reign by virtue of his birth and marriage. He was the son and heir of Protector Somerset; it was to Elizabeth that he owed the restoration of estates and titles after his father’s downfall, but he undertook a marriage which could end only in disaster and might well have led him to the block. Sometime in 1560 the young earl. who was probably born on 25 May 1539. secretly married Lady Catherine Grey.-1 She was the great-granddaughter of Henry VII and, after the execution of her elder sister Jane, stood next in suc- cession to Elizabeth. Catherine was soon placed in the Tower. Hertford followed in September 1561, a few days before the birth there of his son Edward. The birth there of a second son, Thomas, in February 1563'" aggra- vated their offence and reduced their chances of lenient treatment. In 1563 Archbishop Parker, at the head of a commission, declared that no marriage had taken place since no witnesses had been produced within a prescribed time. In the Star Chamber Hertford was found guilty of deflowering a virgin of the blood royal in the queen’s house, of breaking prison, and of ravishing Catherine a second time. He was fined £15,000,“ and although the fine was considerably reduced his manors were still being distrained for the balance of the debt in 1579.’ Catherine never achieved her freedom before her death in 1568. Hertford never saw his bride again after 1563,“ and suffered confinement of various sorts until 1571.9 Catherine's death marks the point at which k Castle MS. 100.23/2. dd. MS. 5496. F";,6' =1-22:‘€.__ cw-Palate-* SEDFZiary of Henry Machyn, Citizen and Merchant-Taylor of London, 7550-63, ed. J. G. Nichols (Camden Soc. [Ist ser.], xlii), 266-8, 300. 9 W. Camden, Hist. afE1:'zabeth, Late Queen 0fEng. (I683 edn.) 58-59; Hist. MSS. Com. 9, Salisbury, i, p. 272. 7 Hist. MSS. Com. 58, Bath, iv, pp. xiv-xv, 185. E‘ Alillmzad, Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth, 278. 2 LIEUTENANCY PAIPERS Hertford began to fade into the background of Elizabethan politics. From about that time Hertford’s ambitions became the building up of his estates, the legitimation of his heirs, and a respectable position in the magnate class. Though the rest of his life showed him pursuing those basic aims, he was never entirely free from the rumours and shadows of plots. A royal proclama- tion of 1569 declared rumours emanating from Mary, Queen of Scots, to be ‘malicious invention’, rumours which contained allegations that Hertford was planning to marry Cecil’s daughter and obtain the throne of England.1 In 1595-6 he was again in the Tower for a short period. In 1595 he had re- newed a petition to have the declaration on his first marriage set aside, with the purpose of safeguarding his inheritance for his heirs, but the fact that his action would also revive his son's claim to the throne roused the suspicion of the government? His third marriage,“ to the daughter of Viscount Howard of Bindon in 1600, was a clandestine ceremony, without banns or licence, and not in the parish church. The clergyman involved was suspended for three years? Since Hertford was one of a group of noblemen to receive the French envoy at court in 1601.-1 he had presumably not been disgraced. In 1602 rumours were circulating that Arbella Stuart was planning to marry into the Seymour family, but the government appears to have accepted Hertford’s protestation of innocence in the matter.“ By 1605 he had achieved complete respectability, for between 19 April and 20 May he headed an embassy to Brussels to ratify the peace treaties of the previous year. That was an expensive honour if the contemporary assertion that his personal expenses amounted to £12,000 was at all accurate? He was still an active man, for the expenses included jewellery for the ‘two ladies wherewith his lordship danced’.'1 Before he went to Brussels, the earl used his appointment as ambas- sador to present a suit to James I for the legitimation of his issue.1‘ In 1608 Lord Beauchamp obtained letters patent granting that he and the heirs male of his body should be barons of parliament and enjoy the title of Earl of Hertford after his father’s death." Within two years the dark clouds returned, for in the summer of 1610 Arbella Stuart married Hertford's grandson William. The Earl protested his innocence and there is no evidence to connect him with the plan of marriage. About 1613 James I gave Hertford leave to correspond with him," perhaps to show that the Crown had acquitted him. Shortly after 1572 Hertford wrote a book on one of his father’s victories in 1 Hist. MSS. Com. 9, Salisbury, i, pp. 386, 391, 393. 2 D.N.B. s.vv. Seymour, Edward; Seymour, Thomas; Hist. MSS. Com. 9, Salisbury, v, pp. 251-4. 3 His second marriage, before 1582, was to Frances, daughter of Lord Howard of Effing- ham, who died without issue in 1598. 4 D.N.B.; Letters oflolzn Chamberlain, ed. N. E. McClure, i. l13n. 5 Acts ofP.C. 1601-4, 189-90. '1 E. T. Bradley, Life ofthe Lady Arabella Stuart, i. 99, 108-9; ii. 149; Hist. MSS. Com. 9, Salisbury, xii, pp. 627-30, 690-1. 1' Hist. MSS. Com. 9, Salisbury, xvii, pp. xxiv, 5, 118, 204-5; 23, 12th Rep. I, Cowper, p. 62. 11 Hist. MSS. Com. 58, Bath, iv, p. 201. 9 Hist. MSS. Com. 9, Salisbury, xvii, p. 113. 1° G.E.C. Complete Peerage, vi. 507. 11 Fortescue Papers, ed. S. R. Gardiner (Camden Soc. N.S. i), 140-1. INTRODUCTION 3 Scotland. In 1582 he received a letter giving detailed and technical comments on a campaign in the Netherlands, a letter which could have been written only to a student of such matters.1 There is no evidence to show that he ever participated in a military campaign, but his clear interest may have influenced his activities in local government. In 1578 he was placed on the commission of the peace for Wiltshire and in the following year he was one of the com- missioners of musters in that county. In 1584 the Earl of Pembroke wrote to him as a fellow commissioner of musters, and shortly afterwards Hertford was given detailed information on Wiltshire’s negotiations with the council to reduce the numbers in the militia.2 On 25 July 1588 he was one of seventeen men, mostly peers, ordered to be at court in three days with such personal forces as he could muster.1 He was among those chosen to administer the oath to all county magistrates in Hampshire and Wiltshire in 1592,4 which confirms the other evidence that his religious views were unimpeachably protestant.