Part 3.2 The Ancestors of Henry Irvin DeGraw Sharing Common Great Grandparents The Herrick Family
The
Ancestors of Henry Irvin DeGraw
Sharing
Common Great Grandparents
The
Herrick Family
When Mary Bond married John
Herrick, one wonders what they would have thought, if some 600 years after they
were born, two of their descendants who were connected by marriage, would have
been able, with the assistance of very advanced technology, prove they both
share Mary and John as their great grandparents.
It gives
rise to perhaps more and more families finding they share common grandparents!
The front cover photo is of Mary
Bond, painted when she was 90, and housed in a Gallery. Not long ago an art expert from Germany
enlisted my help in authenticating Mary.
How nice, and also rather special that they were able to find me in
order to ask the questions.
The
power of a technological world.
Mary Bond was the mother of my
11th Great Grandmother. She herself was
a direct descendant of King William. My
lineage is then through the marriage Herrick and Rogers. This then becomes my Isaacson line, and that
is just so interesting, and earns itself a place in history.
While my Isaacson research found
all these connections a few years ago, for Randy DeGraw it was a total shock.
Well
perhaps for both of us it was a shock, but quite exciting as well.
For the DeGraws, the introduction
to these great grandparents, also becomes a story with very modern day
connotations.
It all began when some
archaeologists decided to dig up a car park in the town of Leicester in
England. They were on a mission to find
the burial place of a King.
Armed with all sorts of
information, they began to dig, and low and behold the excavation revealed a
coffin, and the bones of King Richard III.
The world was stunned. How could they find a body in a carpark? Well the truth is that they knew exactly
where to dig, and they have never publicly mentioned that the spot had been
marked by a family who lived on the land in 1660's.
Nor did they mention that the
spot was recorded in the diaries of Sir Christopher Wren's father, who was a
friend of the Herricks, and who taught the children.
That same Christopher Wren is
also mentioned within the diaries of John Herrick. The exact same diaries that can be downloaded
and read.
My initial research of the
Herrick grandparents, was rather sparse with information. That all changed when we travelled to England
and spent 3 months touring the places our different great grandparents lived or
worked. The exact same places that
Randy's great grandparents worked.
In Chester, a lovely old town, I
sat in the chairs that Mary Bond's father and grandfather used, when they were
Lord Mayors, and treasurers of the city coffers.
To be able to discover what an
impact our ancestors had on history, was simply amazing.
There is no better way of
learning history, than by learning it through the eyes of those whose DNA
contributes to our being.
But Mary was not the only common
ancestor .
Countess of Mercia
 |
| Lady Godiva Statue in Coventry |
There are some very interesting
great grandparents within our Family Lineage, but possibly one would be totally
unexpected. The Countess of Mercia was
born c 990 and died 1069. Quite some
years ago.
The Beatles wrote a song about her, we sang it when we were teenagers. One guess! Lady Godiva!
If she is the same Godiva who appears in the history of Ely Abbey, the Liber Eliensis, written at the end of the 12th century, then she was a widow when Leofric married her. Both Leofric and Godiva were generous benefactors to religious houses. In 1043 Leofric founded and endowed a Benedictine monastery at Coventry on the site of a nunnery destroyed by the Danes in 1016. Writing in the 12th century, Roger of Wendover credits Godiva as the persuasive force behind this act. In the 1050s, her name is coupled with that of her husband on a grant of land to the monastery of St. Mary, Worcester and the endowment of the minster at Stow St Mary, Lincolnshire. She and her husband are commemorated as benefactors of other monasteries at Leominster, Chester, Much Wenlock, and Evesham. She gave Coventry a number of works in precious metal by the famous goldsmith Mannig and bequeathed a necklace valued at 100 marks of silver.
Another necklace went to Evesham, to be hung around the figure of the Virgin accompanying the life-size gold and silver rood she and her husband gave, and St Paul's Cathedral in the City of London received a gold-fringed chasuble. She and her husband were among the most munificent of the several large Anglo-Saxon donors of the last decades before the Norman Conquest; the early Norman bishops made short work of their gifts, carrying them off to Normandy or melting them down for bullion.
The manor of Woolhope in Herefordshire, along with four others, was given to the cathedral at Hereford before the Norman Conquest by the benefactresses Wulviva and Godiva – usually held to be this Godiva and her sister. The church there has a 20th-century stained glass window representing them.
Her signature, Ego Godiva Comitissa diu istud desideravi [I, The Countess Godiva, have desired this for a long time], appears on a charter purportedly given by Thorold of Bucknall to the Benedictine monastery of Spalding. However, this charter is considered spurious by many historians. Even so, it is possible that Thorold, who appears in the Domesday Book as sheriff of Lincolnshire, was her brother. (See Lucy of Bolingbroke.)
After Leofric's death in 1057, his widow lived on until sometime between the Norman Conquest of 1066 and 1086. She is mentioned in the Domesday survey as one of the few Anglo-Saxons and the only woman to remain a major landholder shortly after the conquest. By the time of this great survey in 1086, Godiva had died, but her former lands are listed, although now held by others. Thus, Godiva apparently died between 1066 and 1086.
The place where Godiva was buried has been a matter of debate. According to the Chronicon Abbatiae de Evesham, or Evesham Chronicle, she was buried at the Church of the Blessed Trinity at Evesham, which is no longer standing. According to the account in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, "There is no reason to doubt that she was buried with her husband at Coventry, despite the assertion of the Evesham chronicle that she lay in Holy Trinity, Evesham."
William Dugdale (1656) says that a window with representations of Leofric and Godiva was placed in Trinity Church, Coventry, about the time of Richard II.
The legend of the nude ride is first recorded in the 13th century, in the Flores Historiarum and the adaptation of it by Roger of Wendover. Despite its considerable age, it is not regarded as plausible by modern historians nor is it mentioned in the two centuries intervening between Godiva's death and its first appearance, while her generous donations to the church receive various mentions.
According to the typical version of the story, Lady Godiva took pity on the people of Coventry, who were suffering grievously under her husband's oppressive taxation. Lady Godiva appealed again and again to her husband, who obstinately refused to remit the tolls. At last, weary of her entreaties, he said he would grant her request if she would strip naked and ride on a horse through the streets of the town. Lady Godiva took him at his word, and after issuing a proclamation that all persons should stay indoors and shut their windows, she rode through the town, clothed only in her long hair. Just one person in the town, a tailor ever afterwards known as Peeping Tom, disobeyed her proclamation in one of the most famous instances of voyeurism.
Some historians have discerned elements of pagan fertility rituals in the Godiva story, whereby a young "May Queen" was led to the sacred Cofa's tree, perhaps to celebrate the renewal of spring. The oldest form of the legend has Godiva passing through Coventry market from one end to the other while the people were assembled, attended only by two knights. This version is given in Flores Historiarum by Roger of Wendover (died 1236), a somewhat gullible collector of anecdotes, who quoted from unnamed earlier writers.
You
never know who you will meet when you walk through the Market Square in
Coventry!
The Herrick Family from
Leicester
This
is another of those family stories involving members of our family who were
merchants. It doesn't matter whether the
merchants were in London, nor Ireland, nor Newcastle, they had a code of
conduct. Throughout these family stories
mention will be made about the different people in the Merchant's Guild.
John
Herrick, married Elizabeth Bond, 500 years or so ago, in Leicester Cathedral.
Elizabeth herself came from a
good pedigree.
Her father and her grandfather
were influential merchants, and land owners in Coventry. They held Court in the Coventry Guild
Hall. A beautiful building which stands
intact besides the bombed out Coventry Cathedral. It was extremely lucky to survive the bombings
of World War 2. The ceiling is amazing,
high above the hall, are the coats of arms of the merchants who were members of
the Guild.
On an upper level are the meeting
rooms, and the treasury. Stained glass windows reflect our ancestors
 |
| Lord Mayor's Chair |
Inside the Guild Hall is the most
amazing tapestry.
The 'Coventry Tapestry' is the highlight of the historic collections at St. Mary's Guildhall, and is widely recognised as one of the rarest and most important examples of this art in the country.
Manufactured around the years 1495 to 1500, its rarity lies not just in its age and remarkable state of preservation, but also in the fact that, incredibly, it remains hanging on the very wall for which it was created more than five hundred years ago.
At more than nine metres wide and three metres high, this magnificent artwork dominates the north wall of the Great Hall, and displays both the skill of its Flemish weavers, and the wealth of the city of Coventry at the end of the fifteenth century.
The scene depicts the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, and includes seventy five individual characters, including members of a Royal court, angels, saints and apostles, together with assorted dogs, mice, demons and dragons! Most likely commissioned by the Guild of the Holy Trinity, the tapestry incorporates numerous hidden references to people and events of the time, although much of the symbolism remains unexplained to this day.
It has even been observed that light from the
west windows specifically illuminates the head of the Virgin Mary at certain
times of the year, either a strange co-incidence or an inspired feature of the
original design.[1]
At the time of our visit, the
tapestry had been taken down ready to have repairs done. I had never seen anything like this
before. Within Hampton Court, home of
King Henry VIII are walls and walls of tapestry, but none so large.
These Merchants were very influential
and prosperous men. They married their
own kind, and they then arranged marriages between the sons and daughters of
their fellow Guild members.
The following pages are from the
Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society, and they provide some
background information to the Herrick family.
The Guild Hall and the
Leicester Cathedral
The Council traces its roots to the Corporation
of Leicester, and before then to the Merchant Gild and the Portmanmoot.
The Portmanmoot consisted of 24 Jurats, elected from the burgesses (members of
the Gild Merchant, or freemen), along with two bailiffs, and a clerk. It appears to
have existed before the Norman Conquest in
1066. In 1209, the lead member of the Portmanmoot, the Alderman, became known
as a mayor. The Gild Merchant and the Moot overlapped in membership and had
probably become effectively merged in the 14th century. Membership of the
Twenty-Four appears to have been by co-option, chosen by
themselves.Traditionally, the general populace attended some meetings of the Moot and Guild, but this was restricted to burgesses in 1467. Later, in 1489, this changed to a system where the Mayor and the Twenty-Four chose Forty-Eight burgesses to represent the others, and the Twenty-Four and the Forty-Eight would govern jointly.
After doubts as to the ability of the Moot and Gild to hold property arose in the 16th century, the Corporation was formed, replacing the Gild and Portmanmoot, in 1589. A second charter was granted in 1599, reconfirming this, to The Mayor, Bailiffs and Burgesses of the Borough of Leicester. The 24 Jurats became known as the Aldermen of the Corporation, and the 48 other Burgesses as the Common Council. The members of the Corporation chose the burgesses to send to the House of Commons.
Understanding the structure of how the Merchants became the representatives provides a better understanding when researching the family history.
The Great Hall was built around 1390 as the meeting place of the Guild of Corpus Christi; the guild was a group of businessmen and gentry who had religious connections.[1] The Guildhall was used for banquets, festivals, and as a home for a priest who prayed for the souls of Guild members in the nearby St Martin's Church. The Corporation of Leicester bought the Guildhall by the end of the 14th century.
During the English Civil War the Mayor and corporation received a demand from Prince Rupert for £2000. The decision was made at the Guildhall to offer a loan of £500 and made an appeal to King Charles I. In May 1645 the King in attempt to divert attention away from Oxford positioned an army of 6,000 men outside the city walls on 29 May 1645. Again important decisions regarding the fate of the city were to be decided in the Guildhall. On 30 May 1645 the Royalist Army made demand after demand to the city, who played for time. In the end Prince Rupert attacked at 3:00 pm. The City walls were breached, and the last stand made by the defenders outside the Guildhall and St Martins. The Royalists then entered the Guildhall looting the town's archives, and mace and seal. The Royalist victory was reversed a couple of weeks later with the defeat at Naseby.
Records also show that entertainment expenses were paid for such items as wine, beer for Oliver Cromwell. Although this does not prove Oliver Cromwell stayed at the Guildhall, it is highly probable that he visited several times. The coat of arms of King Charles I can be seen today inside the Mayor's Parlour.
The Herrick Family
Researching
this branch of the family tree was nothing short of some amazing finds.
Who were
the Herricks?
To follow
their story and to have a glimpse of life as it was in the 1500 - 1600's was
rather special, thanks to the efforts of one of the ancestors in arranging a
collection of the papers of the family, compiled in 1858, and held at the
Oxford Library Special Collections.
But who
transcribed it? As ancestors we really should appreciate the digitising
of the records.
One rainy
day I started to read the papers, online, then printed them, all 125
pages of them.
The
papers chronicled events over a couple of centuries, and delving into them
painted a picture of just who the Herricks were.
The
Herricks were a Leicestershire family of considerable antiquity and standing.
The family is found at Great Stretton in the thirteenth century and at Houghton
on the Hill in the fifteenth century; Thomas Herrick, son of Robert Herrick of
Houghton on the Hill, established the family in Leicester, becoming Borough
Chamberlain in 1511 - 12.
Both his
sons became Mayor of Leicester; Nicholas in 1552 and John in 1557 and again in
1572. John had five sons and seven daughters and it was his youngest son,
William, who purchased Beaumanor in 1595.
William
was a goldsmith in London, having been apprenticed to his brother, Nicholas,
father of the poet, Robert; he undertook a diplomatic mission to the Grand Turk
in 1580 - 81 on behalf of Elizabeth I; he was appointed royal jeweller to James
I in 1603; knighted in 1605 and made a Teller of the Exchequer in 1616.
In
1832 on the death of William Herrick (1745 - 1832) the family estates passed to
his nephew, William Herrick, son of Thomas Bainbrigge Herrick and his wife
Mary, who was the daughter and heiress of James Perry of Wolverhampton.
William
assumed the name of Perry in addition to Herrick in 1853. It was through the
Perry connections that the Herricks acquired their estates in Staffordshire,
Herefordshire and Wales. William Perry Herrick died, without issue, in 1876 as
a result of a hunting accident; his widow, Mrs. Sophia Herrick, remained at
Beaumanor until her death in 1915 when the estates passed by will to William
Curzon, son of the Hon. Montagu Curzon, a younger son of Earl Howe of Gopsall,
Leicestershire. William Curzon assumed the name of Herrick in 1915.
There is
a wealth of information regarding the English family, to be found on an
internet search.
Herrick comes from the Old Norse name Eirikr, comprising the
elements eir meeaning "mercy" and rik meaning
"power." The "H" got added later as the name was more
and more used in England.
The name was first found in Leicestershire, which had been an area of
intense Danish settlement, and with one family there. DNA analysis points to a single
family origin.
Reading
through the papers it seems that the Irish branch of the family were descended
from Nicholas Herrick.
Family lore relates the Herricks to Erick the Forester at the
time of William the Conqueror. Herrick first surfaced as a name in
Leicestershire in the 13th century when Henry Eyrick witnessed charters at
Wigston Magna. The Herricks remained in Wigston until the 20th
century. Other members of the family were recorded nearby, at Great
Stretton in the 13th century and at Houghton–on-the-Hill two hundred years
later.
Thomas Herrick, son of Robert Herrick of Houghton, moved to Leicester where he was borough chamberlain in 1511. His sons Nicholas and John both became mayors of Leicester, while Sir William Herrick - the youngest of the five sons - became a goldsmith in London and such a prominent figure that he was knighted in 1605 and granted estates at Beaumanor. His cousin Robert Herrick, born in London, was the well-known poet.
Thomas Herrick, son of Robert Herrick of Houghton, moved to Leicester where he was borough chamberlain in 1511. His sons Nicholas and John both became mayors of Leicester, while Sir William Herrick - the youngest of the five sons - became a goldsmith in London and such a prominent figure that he was knighted in 1605 and granted estates at Beaumanor. His cousin Robert Herrick, born in London, was the well-known poet.
Reading a great grandfather's papers was an experience. Here and there he divulged information that would not be otherwise known.
He
arranged suitable marriages for his daughters.
One in particular, simply refused to marry the person he selected! Generally though the family did what every
other well heeled merchant family of the time did, they married into their own
class of people.
Another
rather interesting passage, related to the fact that King James I had not paid
his jewellery account! They waited 18
months before taking the matter up with the Chamberlain!
Our
family begins with John Herrick born 1513 and died 1589. He was the son of Thomas Herrick.
He
married Mary Bond 1514 to 1611. She was
the daughter of John Bond.
John
Bond’s grandfather had settled in Coventry where he prospered as a draper. His
father achieved the mayoralty, purchased an estate and provided in his will of
18 Mar. 1506 for the foundation of the Bablake almshouse in the city. Bond’s
inheritance made him one of the wealthiest men in Coventry and, although he
continued in the family trade and became, like his father, a merchant of the
staple, he was able to marry into a cadet branch of the Molyneux family of
Sefton, Lancashire, and by his death had himself obtained arms: his
brother-in-law Sir Edmund Molyneux became a justice of the common pleas in
1550.
At some
time before 1515 Bond bought land at Little Bromwich, near Coventry, where he
imparked some 30 acres and, with the consent of the bishop and the rector,
endowed a chapel so that his tenants might attend mass when floods prevented
their reaching the parish church. He also acquired some interest in his wife’s
ancestral home, for in his will he was to style himself of Sefton.
Their
children included
1. Ursula Herrick 1536
- 1614 James
Hawes Lord Mayor of London
2. Mary Herrick 1540 1561 Lord
John Bennett Lord Mayor of London
3. Robert Herrick 1540 1618 Elizabeth
Manby 1540 - 1626
4. Nicholas Herrick 1545 1592 Julia Stone
1542 - 1596
5. Ellen Herrick 1549 1574 m Holden who was a merchant
6. Christiana Herrick 1552 1579 George Brookes
7. Sir William Herrick 1557 1652 Joan May 1578 - 1645
8. John Herrick 1559 1633 Susanna
Oliver 1559 - 1623
9. Alice Herrick 1564 1591 Richard
Hinde 1559
10. Elizabeth Herrick 1611 John Stanford 1537 - 1602
Transcription and dialect are
responsible for the way the name has been spelt.
Thomas Eyrick , of Houghton , who
settled at Leicester , and is the first of the name that appears in the
corporation books, where he is mentioned as a member of that body, in 1511 . He
died about six years after, leaving two sons and a daughter Thomas Eyrick , of
Houghton , who settled at Leicester , and is the first of the name that appears
in the corporation books, where he is mentioned as a member of that body, in
1511 . He died about six years after, leaving two sons and a daughter
It should be noted that the Herrick family appear NOT to be descendants of King William, the
lineage to the Royal Family is through Mary Bond. However many of the children and her brother
and sister in laws, were people of substance, and there could also be more
linkages through their ancestors
The Children
1. Ursula Herrick married James Dawes in 1561 in
St Peter's Westheap London
Sir James Hawes he was a Merchant in
London. The Third Clothworker Lord Mayor, in 1574-5, was Sir James Hawes, who had been Master of The Clothworkers Company in 1560-1Hawes entered the Company through apprenticeship and rose to became a great City merchant, importing luxury goods from overseas. His wealth was such that he was able to loan 30,000 to the Crown in 1575. He died in 1582 and was buried in St Mary Abchurch.
The Hawes family was firmly woven into the City hierarchy: Sir James's brother John, another Clothworker, was Sheriff in 1558-9. It was at his house on Mincing Lane in 1559 that the Marian (and therefore Roman Catholic) Bishops of Winchester and Lincoln were deprived of their sees by Queen Elizabeth. John Hawes was a Clothworker benefactor, establishing a loan trust worth 100 a year and giving the Company a silver gilt rosewater dish and ewer, presumably sold in 1643.
Another younger relation, Humphrey Hawes, also a Clothworker, was one of the early investors in the Virginia Company of London in 1609.
Sir James had four children: a son, John, and three daughters. Two of his daughters married future Lord Mayors. Mary was the wife of Sir Robert Lee, Merchant Taylor, Lord Mayor 1602-3; Margaret married Sir John Watts, Clothworker, Lord Mayor in 1606-7, with whom James I dined on the day he became Free of the Company. Elizabeth wed Sir Thomas Wilford, Chamberlain of the City.
2. Mary
Herrick married Sir Thomas Bennett.
A leading London mercer, on 7 February 1594, Bennet was elected an Alderman of the City of London for Vintry Ward. He was Sheriff of London for 1594-95 and Master of the Mercers' Company in 1595-96. He became Master Mercer again in 1602 and, in 1603, Bennet was elected Lord Mayor of London.
Bennet was knighted by King James I on 26 July 1603 and, in 1604, he was elected Alderman of Lime Street Ward, serving until 1612. He was President of the Royal Bethlem and Bridewell Hospitals from 1606 to 1613 and in 1610 became Master Mercer again. In 1612 he transferred as Alderman for Bassishaw Ward which he represented until 1627. He was also President of St Bartholomew's Hospital from 1623 until his death on 20 February 1627.
His elder surviving son, Sir Simon Bennet was created a baronet upon his death in 1627. His younger son, Richard Bennet and his wife Elizabeth daughter of Sir Matthew Cradock, are ancestors of the Marquesses of Salisbury; Richard Bennet's widow married secondly Sir Heneage Finch, Speaker of the House of Commons.
3. Robert Herrick married Elizabeth Manby
Elizabeth was the daughter of WILLIAM MANBY, (171) (Grocer). Descended from
an ancient family of Manby and Worlabye, Lincs., whose Pedigree was entered at
the Visitation of that county in 1562. He was born about 1515, came to Leic. at
an early age, admitted a free burgess in 1536-7, elected one of the borough
chamberlains 1543-4 and rapidly rose to prominence. He was again mayor in 1568.
5. Christina Herrick married George Brookes.
Sir William Herrick (1562 – 2 March 1653) was an English jeweller, courtier, diplomat and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1601 and 1622.
Herrick was the son of John Heyrick of Leicester and was baptised on 9 December 1562. His father was an ironmonger at Leicester. He was sent to London in about 1574 to be apprenticed to his elder brother Nicholas Herrick, a goldsmith in Cheapside. After six years he set up a business on his own in Wood Street on premises leased from the Goldsmith’s Company. He also became a moneylender and in a few years he had made himself a fortune and was able to purchase Beau Manor Park from the Earl of Essex, and obtained a right to arms. He came to the notice of Queen Elizabeth, who sent him on a mission to the Ottoman Porte and on his return he was rewarded with a lucrative appointment in the Exchequer. He was made a freeman of Leicester in 1601 when he presented the corporation with a dozen silver spoons in lieu of a fee.
In 1601, Herrick was elected Member of Parliament for Leicester. He became principal jeweller to the King, Queen and Prince of Wales in 1603 and held the post until 1625. He became a freeman of the City of London in May 1605 and was knighted in the same year. He served as MP for Leicester for part of the 1604–1611 parliament. He was prime warden of the Goldsmiths’ Company from 1605 to 1606. In 1607 he took as apprentice his nephew Robert the future poet. In 1621 he was elected MP for Leicester again.
Herrick died at the age of about 90 and was buried at St Martin’s Church, Leicester.
Herrick was the uncle, and later guardian, of the poet Robert Herrick and supported him financially during his time at Cambridge.
Herrick married Joan May, daughter of Richard May of London and of Mayfield Place, Sussex on 6 May 1596, and had at least one son, Henry Herrick, born 1604. His brother Robert was also an MP
William was born in Leicester, removed to London in 1574 to reside with his brother Nicholas, then an eminent banker in Cheapside. He attached himself to the court and was known as a man of great abilitis and remarkably handsome. He was high in the confidence of Queen Elizabeth, as well as of King James, and by honourable service to both, acquired large properties. He was a member of Parliament between 1601 and 1630, knighted in 1605. Beau Manor Park was purchased by Sir William and has been in the possession of his descendants for over 275 years. It is the "headquarters" for the Herrick race. (Wikipedia)
William's picture at Beau Manor exhibits him with a picked beard, a large ruff, and in a white satin doublet, which he used on Christmas day, attending Queen Elizabeth. He wears a sword and over his dress hangs loosely a large black cloak. In one hand are his gloves, the other, elevated to his breast, holds the stump and tassells of his ruff. Under the photo is His motto "Sola supereminet virtus" Anno Dom. 1628, Aetatis suae 66.
Lady Herrick was the daughter
of Richard May, Esquire and unknown, of London. She was an attendant at court
to Queen Elizabeth I. She married William in London in 1596. Her picture at the
Herrick home Beau Manor shows her dressed in a close black gown richly
ornamented with lace and fine ruffles turned up close over the sleeves, a watch
in one hand, in the other a prayer book, and at her side a feathered fan. The
portrait is dated July 27th, 1632, her age 54. Below the photo: "Art may
hir outsid thus present to view, How faire within no art or tongue can
show."
Sir William Herrick (Heyricke);
Joan Herrick (née May), Lady Herrick
Purchased with help from the Friends of the National Libraries and the Pilgrim Trust, 1966 NPG D35712
Their children were
Rev
Tobias Herrick
Christian
Herrick
Mary
Herrick 1592 m Thomas
Sachrevell 1584 - 1614
Nicholas
Herrick 1589 - 1664 m
Susnnah Slater
Robert
Herrick
William
Herrick 1593 - 1630
The
National Archives advises:
Thomas
Sacheverill thanks his uncle for a recent kindness performed on his behalf and
asks him to deliver a letter to be enclosed in this one. And other material is held at the Oxford
University
·
161 - Oxford University: Bodleian Library, Special Collections
·
MS.Eng.hist.b.216 and c.474-484 - HERRICK Family Papers
·
B. SIR WILLIAM HEYRICKE.
·
1. Correspondence.
·
iii. Letters from Robert Heyricke's children and sons-in-law, mainly from
Leicester.
8. John Herrick married Susannah Oliver. She was the daughter of Alexander Oliver.
John was
an Alderman of Leicester. He and
Susannah had 3 children.
9. Alice Herrick married Richard Hinde.
10. Elizabeth Herrick married John Stanford.
John Stanford was a butcher and a grazier, and was
Mayor of Leicester in 1576 and 1592. He was the son of Thomas Stanford. He was John Herrick's godson. He married as his second wife Elizabeth.
He served as an Alderman in the area that served
the old High Street, from the Cross to the Southern Gate.
He was made a Freeman of Leicester in 1558, chamberlain in 1565, coroner in 1573-4 and mayor in 1576-77 and 1592-93. He was elected a Member (MP) of the Parliament of England for Leicester in 1572 and 1593. He married as his second wife Elizabeth, the daughter of John Heyrick, with whom he had 4 sons and a daughter. He was succeeded by his son John. Family and Education
b. 1537, 1st s. of Thomas Stanford,
mayor of Leicester. m. (2) Elizabeth, da. of John Heyrick, sis. of Robert and William
Heyrick, 4s.
inc. John II 1da. suc. fa. 1583.
Freeman, Leicester 1558,
chamberlain 1565, coroner 1573-4, mayor 1576-7, 1592-3.
Stanford was a butcher who inherited property
in the parish of St. Nicholas, Leicester, and the manors of Barkby, Elmesthorpe
and Hamilton. He contributed £25 towards the Armada fund and was assessed at
£14 14s. in goods for the second payment of the subsidy in 1590. For at least
the second and third sessions of the 1572 Parliament he received wages at 2s. a day and his
charges. This amounted to £7 14s. in 1576 and £6 6s. in 1581. The common council jibbed at the latter payment because Stanford had promised to take no payment or charges ‘except he did good to the town’ and this, they said, he had not done. Certainly his name has not been found in the known surviving records of either of his Parliaments. Still, he was instrumental in preserving Leicester’s independence during his second mayoralty when Thomas Heneage, newly made chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, tried to get both nominations to Parliament ‘as heretofore it hath been to my predecessors’. This was a reference to 1584 when Sir Ralph Sadler had asked for both seats and received one. Stanford and the majority of the common hall ‘agreed to have no stranger’ and elected two townsmen, including Stanford himself, before presenting Heneage with the fait accompli and telling him that the concession to Sadler in 1584 was unique.
Towards the end of his life, Stanford returned to Elmesthorpe, where he died, 17 Mar. 1603. He was buried three days later in Barkby church. His will, made on 31 Aug. 1600 and proved 18 May 1603, expressed his confidence in redemption ‘from sin, hell and death’.
Inquisition Post Mortem taken after his death, filed at the Public Record Office, London. Will, dated at Elmesthorpe 31 August 1602, was proved in the P.C.C., London, 17 May 1603. The following inscriptions on separate alabaster slabs were formerly to be seen in the chancel floor of Barkby church.
:- "Here lieth the body of John Stanford, gent., owner of the manor and rectory of Barkby, Thorpe and Hamilton. He departed this life 17 March 1602. Think it not strange that man doth life resign This day his lot was drawn, tomorrow thine.
5. Robert Herrick and Elizabeth
Manby had many children
Many are buried at Leicester
Cathedral in Leicester. This is the headstone
of Samuel Herrick, who was the son of Rev Samuel Herrick, and he died in 1774.
The Life of Robert
Herrick Poet
Born in Cheapside, London, he was the seventh
child and fourth son of Julia Stone and Nicholas Herrick, a prosperous
goldsmith.[2] He was named for his uncle,
Robert Herrick (or Heyrick), a prosperous MP for Leicester, who had bought the land Greyfriars
Abbey stood on
after its dissolution. Nicholas Herrick died in a fall
from a fourth-floor window in November 1592, when Robert was a year old
(whether this was suicide remains unclear). The tradition that Herrick received
his education at Westminster is based on the words
"beloved Westminster" in his poem "Tears to Thamesis", but
the allusion is to the city, not the school. It is more likely that (like his
uncle's children) he attended The Merchant
Taylors' School.
In
1607 he became apprenticed to his other uncle, Sir
William Herrick,
a goldsmith and jeweler to the king. The apprenticeship ended after only six
years when Herrick, at age twenty-two, matriculated at St
John's College,
Cambridge. He later migrated to Trinity
Hall graduating
in 1617. Robert Herrick became a member of the Sons
of Ben, a group
centered upon an admiration for the works of Ben Jonson Herrick wrote at least five
poems to Jonson. Herrick was ordained in 1623 and in 1629 became the vicar of Dean Prior in Devonshire.
Title
page of Hesperides (1648)
Robert Herrick was born in ‘the
Golden-cheap-side’ (Poetical Works, ed. L.C. Martin, 316.1) in 1591.
This was Goldsmith’s Row on the
south of Cheapside, between Bread Street and the Eleanor Cross, ‘the most
beautiful frame of fayre houses and shoppes that bee within the Walles of
London, or elsewhere in England’ (Stow, Survey, I, p. 345). The fifth surviving
child of Nicholas Heryck or Herrick (1542-92) and Julia Stone (1561-1629), he
was christened in St Vedast’s, Foster Lane on 24 August 1591.
The Herricks were wealthy
Leicester ironmongers, but Nicholas had been apprenticed in London as a
goldsmith to his uncle, Edward Gilbert. Julian’s father was a London mercer,
William Stone. At Robert’s birth, Nicholas was a successful jeweller and
money-lender, but before he was two Robert was effectively deprived of both parents.
On 9 November 1592, two days after making his will ‘of perfecte memorie in
soule but sicke in Bodie’ (Herrick Family Papers, Leicestershire Record Office,
DG9/2406), his father allegedly ‘did throwe himself forthe of a garret
windowe…whereby he did kill and destroye himself’ (Almoner’s deed poll,
DG9/2410).
Harsh laws against suicide,
including burial outside hallowed ground, were then strictly enforced, and it
was probably through the influence in the City of Julian’s family in particular
(her brother-in-law Stephen Soame was sherriff in 1593, Lord Mayor in 1598)
that Nicholas was hurriedly buried in St Vedast’s next day, apparently in an
unmarked grave.
The Almoner, Richard Fletcher, Bishop of Bristol (father of John, whose ‘Incomparable Playes’ Herrick was to praise over fifty years later) settled for the relatively small sum of £220 ‘whither the death … be found by the Coroners enquest to have been casuall & accidentall or ells a wilfull murdering & making away of himself.’ (23 Nov 1592; DG9/2410). The Coroner’s verdict is lost, but Fletcher’s decision freed an estate worth £4,677, less £1,255 of debts (Sir William Heyrick’s Papers, Bodleian MSS Eng. Hist., c.474, f. 106), of which Nicholas left one third to his wife, and two thirds to be divided amongst his six children, with his brothers Robert and William as overseers. The will was challenged by Julian: the elder Robert noted in 1602 ‘a suite … concerninge the validitie of the testator’s will and revokinge an administration of the testators goodes formerly Comitted to Julian Hericke … upon supposition that he died intestate’ (DG9/2415). In March 1593 an agreement was reached between Robert and William, on behalf of the children, and Julian, who accepted £1,300, rather more than a third of the residual estate, in full settlement. Nicholas’s brothers agreed to ‘have fowre childeren of the said Nicholas and Julian with their portions’ while ‘the sayd Julian shall have tow other of the childeren with theire portions as shee shall best like’ (DG9/2413). Julian kept the newly-born William, and her only surviving daughter, Mercy. She lived initially with her sister Christian Campion at Hampton, and subsequently with another sister, Anne Soame, at Little Thurlow, Suffolk.
Robert, still only 19 months, and his elder brothers Nicholas and Thomas were thus henceforth brought up by their uncles, in practice by the London-based William Heyrick. The effective loss of both parents may have been less traumatic since Robert had already been boarded out with a wet nurse, a normal course in wealthy London families, and one indicated in his case by an undated note from Julian asking William to ‘send for the courall from Robardes nource and send it me for Will’ (Bodleian MSS Eng. Hist. c.474, f. 110). William Heyrick, having been apprenticed to Nicholas, had by 1593 begun his own immensely successful business as goldsmith, jeweller and money-lender. In 1596 he married Joan May, a lady of strong Presbyterian leanings. Through her, Robert acquired the future Privy Councillor, Humphrey May, as an adoptive uncle, and the poet Tom May as adoptive cousin.
Robert’s childhood in this household must have had a pious Presbyterian slant. He later wrote of the law’s intent ‘To free the Orphan from that Wolfe-like-man, /Who is his Butcher more then Guardian’ (201.3), but, though the birth of William and Joan’s own twelve children between 1598 and 1615 must have diverted attention from their nephews, these lines are not necessarily autobiographical. William did, however, put all three nephews to apprenticeships, while designing more gentlemanly careers for most of his own sons. This suggests some inequality of treatment, as does the fact that the nephews are rarely mentioned in surviving family documents. It is significant in a poet so conscious of family relationships that Herrick never addresses poems to William, the elder Robert, or any member of their families, while addressing several to his mother’s relatives.
Herrick did nevertheless receive a sophisticated education before being apprenticed to William in September, 1607. A poem written around 1611-12 to his brother Thomas (34.3), some time before he went to Cambridge, bears witness to this. It invokes a wide range of classical authors, and imitates Jonson’s then-unpublished ‘To Sir Robert Wroth’, suggesting that he knew Jonson before his presumed contact with the latter’s circle in the mid-1620s. The tradition that Herrick received this education at Westminster is groundless, as is one that he lived at Hampton. It is more likely that, like William’s own sons, he went to the nearby Merchant Taylors’ School, but no registers survive for the years 1598-1603 when Herrick is most likely to have been there. All that is certain is that his reading was wide, and his characteristically easy use of intertextuality well-established, by the time he was twenty.
Apprenticeship and Cambridge
If Herrick did leave school in 1602-3 he may, like his father and William, have worked in his uncle’s shop before his apprenticeship began. Since William records payments to Herrick’s cousin, William Pearson, for his ‘apparill’ and diet in 1611-12 (Bodleian MSS Eng. Hist. c.474, f. 117), it seems that by the time he was nineteen, and perhaps earlier, Herrick was lodging with Pearson, who worked for William. Bound for ten years, he had served only five when, in the early summer of 1613, he entered St. John’s College, Cambridge as a fellow-commoner. At least two of his Soame uncles had been students there, one, Robert, twice becoming Vice-Chancellor. The change of career had clearly not been planned; most students matriculated at Oxford and Cambridge in their teens, whereas Herrick was twenty-one. The move was almost certainly related to his coming of age, and access to both legal and financial independence . In March, 1613 the City’s Orphan Court (chaired by Sir Stephen Soame) had recognised his majority, and Robert acknowledged his inheritance of £424.8s., which William immediately borrowed back, paying Robert a quarterly allowance of £10 as interest during his time at Cambridge.
In return for higher fees and a gift of silver plate, fellow-commoners shared dining privileges and other marks of status with the fellows. Sir William’s accounts Robert, no longer an apprentice, was establishing his gentlemanly rank at one of the most expensive colleges in Cambridge. His cousin Richard Stone (185.3) followed him to John’s as a fellow-commoner in 1614, as over the next two years did the future Earl of Northumberland, Algernon Percy, and Sir Clipseby Crewe, son of the Lord Chief Justice, who became a patron and friend. A still more important patron, Mildmay Fane, later the second Earl of Westmorland, was at Emmanuel in 1618. Other Cambridge friends or patrons included Thomas Southwell (53.2), George Parry (322.3), William Alabaster (256.2), and perhaps Edward Sackville, Earl of Dorset (187.5). George Herbert, Oliver Cromwell, Hugh Peters, Oliver St John, James Shirley, John Cosin and Gilbert Sheldon were also contemporaries. Herrick’s tutor was probably one William Beeston, but more significant was another fellow near his own age, the Devonian John Weekes, who had graduated in 1612. They were to remain close friends at least until the publication of Hesperides in 1648 (132.3, 321.2). Still connected with St. John’s was another fellow, John Williams, whom Herrick later accused of being ‘unkind’ in some unspecified way (52.2, 413), and who was in 1613 just beginning his upward climb at Court.
Herrick’s only surviving prose dates from these years: fifteen letters to Sir William Heyrick (Poetical Works, pp. 445-453) request money in a tone reflecting the deferential attitude of nephews to guardians in early modern England. Their obsequiousness obscures the fact that they are mainly reminders of the interest due on his inheritance. Although an income of £40 a year made Herrick a relatively wealthy student, it was not enough to keep him in style at St. John’s. Simonds D’Ewes, a fellow-commoner there in 1618, found that £50 a year caused him ‘much want and discontent’ (Autobiography, I, 118-9). In 1616 Herrick asked Sir William ‘whether it were better for me to direct my study towards the lawe or not’ (Poetical Works, p. 452) and migrated to the smaller and cheaper Trinity Hall, apparently not as a fellow-commoner. Here again his career intersected with that of an upwardly-mobile courtier politician, Sir Robert Naunton, who resigned his fellowship that year.
Herrick may have intended to move on to an Inn of Court, but instead, after graduating BA on 10 April, 1617, he stayed on to take his MA in July, 1620, although residence for the MA was no longer necessary. He may have stayed still longer: he was described as a fellow of Trinity Hall at his ordination in 1623. He was not a fellow, but possibly kept a room there after graduation, like his friend Sir Simeon Steward (126.1). He is still listed in the college steward’s accounts as owing over £10 in 1630.
Few poems can be dated to these years (only a tiny proportion of the 1,400 poems in Hesperides can be dated), but the beginnings of a reputation are detectable. In 1619 Herrick contributed a poem on behalf of Trinity Hall (his only surviving holograph poem, BL Harley MS 367, f. 154) to a memorial collection for John Browne, a fellow of Caius. Manuscript miscellanies belonging to the Spelman, Alston, St. John and Daniell families, all of which have Cambridge connections, contain a substantial number of his poems (Beal, Literary Manuscripts, pp. 532-3). Another manuscript miscellany from this period, the ‘Herrick Commonplace Book’ (Texas MS), contains, along with two Herrick poems, entries in a hand which may be his. There are, however, further entries in many other hands, suggesting it was widely circulated. The case for Herrick’s association with the miscellany, if not ownership of it, however, is strengthened by the fact that it contains common material with the Alston manuscript (Yale, Osborn Collection, b 197). The Alstons were a Suffolk family, connected to St. John’s and Trinity Hall. The Soames also owned a number of estates in Suffolk, the main one at Little Thurlow, from where Herrick’s sister Mercy (269.5) married John Wingfield (131.1) in 1611. The Wingfields, and Herrick’s mother, subsequently lived at Brantham, a few miles away, and Robert must have visited both places in the 1620s, in touch also with the Crofts at Saxham (267.1) and the Alstons at Sudbury. In 1622 he wrote on the death of a Cambridge contemporary, Thomas Parkinson, formerly Vicar of Babraham, relating his death to the patronage of Tobias Pallavicino of Babraham.
Ordination and the Ré expedition
It was in Peterborough, the nearest cathedral city to Cambridge, that the next documented step took place when Herrick and Weekes were ordained deacon on the 24th and priest on 25th of April, 1623 by Bishop Thomas Dove . Such ordinations as deacon and priest on the same or consecutive days were much less common during this period than in the sixteenth century and those of the two friends at the same time implies that some common opportunity had opened for them. Both were in their early thirties, suggesting a career in the church was not their first choice, though Herrick’s farwell unto Poetrie (410) implies he took his vows seriously. Since neither man seems to have been presented to a living, they probably became domestic chaplains. Weekes later described himself and his wife as combining to form an ‘epicene chaplain’ to Endymion Porter (Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 3rd Oct. 1633, p. 230), and it is reasonable to infer that both men were going to the same, or to closely related, households. Herrick does dedicate a number of poems to Porter, but in April 1623 the latter was in Spain.
Though both he and Weekes could have been appointed to his household during Porter’s absence, the influence of Herrick’s family, or of such Cambridge contemporaries as Crewe, Fane, Sackville, Naunton or Williams, may have helped him to a chaplaincy elsewhere.
All that is clear is that he was in London in January 1624, when he sent A New- yeares gift (126.3) to Sir Simeon Steward, and in July 1625, when he wrote the Nuptiall song (112.3) for Crewe’s marriage to Jane Pulteney in Westminster. In 1625 Richard James, in The Muses Dirge, gave the yet-unpublished Herrick his first recorded praise: he lamented that James I had not been celebrated by ‘Some Jonson, Drayton, or some Herick’. In 1626 Mildmay Fane addressed two friendly poems to him, one of which places him in London (Fane, Poems, pp. 58-9, 61).
Herrick was presented to the Vicarage of Dean Prior, on the southern edge of Dartmoor, in September 1629 (Signet Office Docquetts, SP 38, Public Record Office). A previous vicar, Scipio Stukeley, had been Weekes’s uncle, while the patron of the living, Sir Edward Giles, was also related to Weekes (Herrick was himself distantly related to Giles, through the marriage of his cousin Tobias to Elizabeth Yarde). In 1629, however, Dean Prior was in the King’s gift, its incumbent, the Calvinist Barnaby Potter, having become Bishop of Carlisle. Charles approved Herrick’s appointment on 1st October, and he was instituted by Joseph Hall, Bishop of Exeter, on 26th October 1629, in the London house of Hall’s patron, the Earl of Norwich.
Since Potter held the Vicarage in commendam until Michaelmas 1630 (SP 16/173/93), Herrick did not move there until late that year. The ‘Mr Robbert Hyrick’ who was meanwhile recommended to Lady Vere by the puritan John Davenport in January 1629 (Letters ed. I. Calder, (1939), pp. 29, 31) is more likely to have been his cousin, the same who married Jane Gibbons at St Clement Danes in June, 1632. In autumn 1629 Julian Herrick died at Brantham, leaving most of her estate to the two children she had brought up, William and Mercy. Robert and Nicholas (Thomas presumably having died) received only a token ring each. Herrick was probably at Whitehall in May, 1630, when his pastoral on the birth of Prince Charles was ‘Presented to the King, and Set by Mr. Nic: Laniere’ (85.3). Around June 1630 he wrote an epitaph on the death of his niece Elizabeth (145.2), which, placed in St Margaret’s Westminster, appeared as his first published poem in the 1633 continuation of Stow’s Survey (p. 812). A poem on the approaching death of his younger brother William (73.1), dating from early November 1630 (William was buried on the 8th), implies Herrick was then still in London, and probably living with William in Westminster. William’s death prompted a poem to Porter (72.2) describing William as ‘The staffe, The Elme, the prop, the shelt’ring wall’ of Herrick’s vine, a role he hoped Porter would now take on.
When Herrick left for Devon in or after November 1630, William’s widow Elizabeth may have travelled with him. It seems that at least two of her surviving children accompanied her, since a William Herrick and a second Robert Herrick are found in the Devon Protestation returns twelve years later (see below). The route to Devon via Salisbury and Yeovil would have taken them just south of the vicarage at Bemerton of Herrick’s Cambridge contemporary George Herbert. Elizabeth was to keep house for Herrick until her death in 1643 (13.4, 23.4). His other known female company in Dean Prior was his maid, Prudence Baldwin (151.3), who outlived him, dying in 1678, but for whom he nevertheless wrote a graceful epitaph at least thirty years premature (262.1).
His Grange, or private wealth (246.1) adds details of a number of pets and fowls, but fails to mention his curate, William Greene. Greene was 27, recently graduated from Oxford, but his family home was in nearby Totnes. His hand, confusingly similar to Herrick’s, first appears in the Parish Register recording a baptism of March 1630, but the uniformity of subsequent entries confirms that, as was normal, he copied entries in at the end of that year. He kept the register until September, 1636, when the hand that takes over appears to be not Herrick’s, but that of one of his parishioners, Thomas Mudge. Greene also signed the Bishop’s Transcripts for 1630, 1632 and 1634, and appeared with Herrick before the Bishop’s Visitation of 22nd March 1631, the earliest date at which Herrick can definitely be placed in Dean Prior. At the 1638 visitation, however, Herrick was alone, with Greene’s name deleted.
Valued at £21 a year in the Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1535, Dean Prior would probably have brought Herrick an income in the region of £100 by 1630. It was a good living, just in the top 25% nationally, though comparing poorly with nearby Dartington, valued at £36 in 1535, or with Weekes’s parish at Shirwell, valued at over £30. Compared to the income, variously estimated between £70 and £700 a year which Robert’s Presbyterian cousin Richard Herrick later received as Warden of Manchester Collegiate church, Dean Prior did not represent worldly success for the thirty-eight-year-old poet. It did, however, represent security, and Herrick, typically Romanising his experience, was to celebrate the ‘beloved privacie’ of his ‘poore Tenement’ (200.2), as well as more realistically cursing ‘the dull confines of the drooping West’ (242.1; rainfall is particularly high in this area of Devon). The Ré expedition, Buckingham’s assassination, Weekes’s move to Shirwell, and perhaps his mother’s impending death, may all have contributed to the move, which in any case he may not have seen, even at the then advanced age of thirty-nine, as permanent. His new vicarage was at the eastern end of a parish which extended five miles north-west onto Dartmoor. Extrapolating from the one hundred and forty-five male adults listed in the 1642 Protestation return, Dean Prior’s population must have been in the region of four hundred. They lived in a number of small, scattered hamlets, only one of which was around the church, and in isolated farms. Sheep rearing, and a declining wool and cloth industry, were the main sources of income for Herrick’s parishioners. The tin mining and processing which had gone on in the sixteenth century had almost collapsed by this date. There were nevertheless almost eighty landholders able to pay a poor rate which raised between £12 and £15 a year in the 1630s, money which went to help the old and sick with rent, maintenance and clothing, often for years at a time.
This relative prosperity was reflected in Herrick’s home. The vicarage itself, next to the church, was not in fact a ‘poore Tenement’. A glebe terrier of 1680, six years after his death, described it as a ‘Dwelling house consisting of one Hall one Parlour one Kitchin one Cellar one Brewhouse fower Chambers one Studij, the walls of Stone’. This was a typical parsonage house of the period, retaining the medieval hall (soon to give way to the parlour), with bedrooms (chambers) and study on the first floor. Outside were a barn, a stable, two gardens and an orchard. When Herrick arrived there, he would have shared this house with his sister-in-law and her children, with Prudence Baldwin and other servants, and perhaps with William Greene. There were also glebe lands of ‘about Seaventy Acres’ (DRO, Glebe Terriers 104, Dean Prior), but the Overseers of the Poor accounts for Dean Prior indicate that the former city dweller did not farm the glebe himself. Whereas the accounts assess his predecessors, Scipio Stukeley and Barnaby Potter, and his usurper, John Syms, for the poor rate by name, during the years of Herrick’s presence the rate is invariably levied on ‘The occupiers of the Gleibe land’ or ‘the occupiers of the Glebe’, ‘occupiers’ here meaning ‘tenants’.
Though he mentions poultry and ‘a lamb’ in “His Grange”, these would have been accommodated in the courtyard and gardens surrounding the vicarage. A farming clergyman (and Herrick could hardly have resisted celebrating the Horatian parallels had he been a farmer) would typically have added sheep, pigs and cattle, and a pair of horses or oxen for ploughing the arable which formed the major proportion of the glebe (only two acres were meadow land). In addition to the rent he received from the lease of the glebe, Herrick would have received the ‘small tithes’ (cf. ‘Upon Much-more’) to which the vicar was entitled from the produce of all the farms in his parish (other than hay and corn).
Together, these would have made him wealthier than the normal farmer of sixty or seventy acres. There were also fees for marriages, burials and churchings in St George the Martyr, just across the lane from the vicarage.
In front of the church was the Church House, used for church ales, and rented out for celebrations following weddings and baptisms or, indeed, any festive occasion. In 1682, the first year for which churchwardens’ records survive, these rentals brought in £2.1s.6d. Management of many routine parish affairs was in the hands of the churchwardens and overseers of the poor. It was the churchwardens who levied rates which paid for a parish clerk (6s 8d a quarter in the 1680s), and also for an annual dinner for the vicar.
They paid for the bread and wine used at the four communion services of Christmas, Easter, Whitsun and Michaelmas, for the maintenance of the church, and for the expenses of the visitation.
A comfortable income from tithes and rent for the glebe may have made for less dependence on patrons than hitherto. Herrick now supplemented his courtly and London supporters by more modest local ones. Apart from Giles and his relatives at nearby Dean Court, such lawyers as John Weare of Silverton (201.3), John Merrifield of Crewkerne (90.2), Thomas Shapcot of Exeter (119.1) and George Parry of Exeter (322.3) were ‘Writ in the Poets Endlesse-Kalendar: / Whose velome, and whose volumne is the Skie’ (168.1). Herrick would have met these men at the Exeter assizes and quarter sessions. Also in Exeter on at least one occasion, and probably many more, was John Weekes, who married Grace Cary in the cathedral in 1636. Another friend was James Smith, who became rector of King’s Nympton in north Devon in 1639, and who, like Weekes, managed to avoid sequestration in the following years. All these were Herrick’s social equals, and despite their relative wealth, more likely to have been simply friends than patrons. Less fortunate parishioners like Mudge (301.4) and Scobble (44.3), were recorded by name in epigrams which imitate Martial and Jonson. Greene and his successors made visits to London possible, and it was probably from there that he wrote on the imprisonment of John Williams (52.2) in or about 1637. If so, he was back in Dean Prior for the Bishop’s Visitation of 1638, and in September, 1639, when he married Lettice Yarde, the great niece of Sir Edward Giles, to Henry Northleigh, a ceremony followed, perhaps uniquely, by a second, more classical one, composed and conducted by Herrick in the porch of the house, presumably Dean Court, where the marriage was consummated (124.3).
An undated note in the Domestic State Papers (SP 474/77) from ‘Mr Delles man’ (Laud’s secretary, William Dell) endorsed ‘abt mr Henrique: a minister’ suggests that a long and eventful visit to London followed this wedding. The informer’s report that ‘Thomsen Parsons hath had a Bastard lately shee was brought to bedd at Greenwch.’ is followed by a statement whose contiguity implies Herrick played some part in this event: ‘Mr Herrique a Minister possest of a very good Living in Devonshire hath not resided thereon having noe Lycence for his non-residence & not being Chapline to any Noble man or man qualifyed by Law as I heare, his Lodging is at Westminster in the little Amrie at Nicholas Weilkes his house where the said Thomsen Parsons lives’. A further implication is that Herrick had been living in the Little Almonry for some time. Born in 1618, Thomasin was the daughter of John Parsons (d. 1623), organist at Westminster Abbey. Herrick had written on Thomasin’s beauty as a child (304.4), and, more amorously, to her elder sister Dorothy (186.3).
It was probably on this visit that Herrick began moves to publish his poems. Though they had achieved considerable manuscript currency, apart from the adventitious publication of the epithaph on Elizabeth, only four had appeared in print, all probably unauthorised: in 1635 Oberon’s Feast (119) was in A Description of the King and Queen of Fayries, and in 1640 Benson added three poems, along with those of other ‘excellent gentlemen’, to his edition of Shakespeare’s Poems. Then in April 1640 Andrew Crooke entered for publication ‘The severall Poems written by Master ROBERT HERRICK’ (Arber, Registers 4, 483).
It may have been Crooke’s publication of Jonson, Shirley, Fletcher and Killigrew that same year that led Herrick to him, or him to Herrick, and the installation of Prince Charles, to whom Hesperides was to be dedicated, as Prince of Wales would have made the moment timely. The edition never appeared, perhaps because of the information given to Dell. Herrick must have returned to Dean Prior, probably before the opening of the Long Parliament in November, and witnessed from there the movement towards Civil War.
On March 6th, 1642 Herrick signed the Protestation produced by the Commons in his bold italic signature, and it may be his secretary hand that lists the 404 other men ‘of the age of eighteen yeres and upwards’ in his parish who have also taken the oath. Among them is a ‘William Hericke gent.’, while at nearby Highweek, his namesake Robert Herrick also signed. Both were probably sons of Elizabeth, coming with her to Dean Prior after their father William’s death in 1630.
Highweek was home of the Yardes at Bradley Manor, closely related to the Giles family, and this would explain the younger Robert’s presence there.
The Protestation had been adopted by the Commons during the dangerous weeks of Strafford’s attainder, and imitated the Scottish Covenant in asking all male adults to swear to defend ‘the true reformed Protestant Religion expressed in the doctrine of the Church of England’ and ‘the power and privilege of Parliaments’. This was not too difficult to subscribe to, but the preamble spoke more controversially of unspecified ‘indeavours to subvert the fundamentall Laws of England and Ireland, and to introduce the exercise of an Arbitrary and Tyrannicall Government’, and many Catholics, and some Anglican Royalists refused to swear to it. Even though the Protestation’s ideological origins were fundamentally hostile to the King, however, moderate royalist MPs like Digby and Falkland signed, and Herrick’s signature, and his apparent willingness to deliver his whole parish as acquiescing, need not mean that he was any less of a Royalist than them. Edward Giles had been critical of the king in the Addled Parliament of 1614, but was now dead, and most of Herrick’s local friends and patrons were ardent Royalists: Thomas Shapcot, Clerk of the Peace for Devon, was captured at Modbury in 1642, but apparently released; John Weare ‘was a Commissioner of Array, and adhered unto, and assisted the Forces raised against the Parliament’, as did John Merrifield.
These three surrendered under the Exeter Articles of 1646, and were fined as delinquents between 1646 and 1648. George Parry, Recorder of Exeter and MP for St. Mawes, defected to the royalist parliament at Oxford in 1644, and was knighted there. Herrick’s addresses to these men in Hesperides may be read as statements of support for their loyalism, though only the poem to Parry, which mentions his knighthood in May 1644, can be dated to the Civil War period. Herrick’s royalism was not unquestioning, however: poems such as Liberty (153.2) show that he understood what was at stake, and a number of poems witness that ‘Sick is the Land to’th’ heart; and doth endure/ More dangerous faintings by her desp’rate cure’ (214.2), a metaphor which when unpacked suggests that he was far from being a simple royalist. Other poems, however, do offer comfort to and misplaced confidence in the King and Queen, and it is just possible that Herrick may have joined the king in the field, as his friend John Weekes did.
Apart from Weekes’s example, the only evidence for this is in two poems. In A Vow to Mars, Herrick is anxious about having ‘turn’d a combatant’:
Store of courage to me grant,
Now I'm turn'd a combatant:
Helpe me so, that I my shield,
(Fighting) lose not in the field.
That's the greatest shame of all,
That in warfare can befall.
Do but this; and there shall be
Offer'd up a Wolfe to thee.
While in His Age he prays that if he and Weekes ‘must part (sweet mercy blesse / Us both I’th’Sea, Camp, Wildernesse) (lines 65-6). The orthodox warning that early modern poets should not be read autobiographically is often misplaced as far as Herrick is concerned, but if this is autobiography it can more plausibly be applied to the Rhe expedition than to the Civil War. Whatever the truth, Herrick was still in Dean Prior when in April, 1643 family sickness counterpoised that of the land: three months after he congratulated ‘brave Hopton’ on the first Royalist victory in the Southwest at Braddock Down (310.1), he buried his sister-in-law Elizabeth (23.4). Hopton’s subsequent victory at Stratton (May, 1643) left parliament without an effective field army in Devon, and Exeter and Dartmouth were captured by Royalist forces in autumn.
Herrick could have taken refuge in Exeter at this point: some local Royalists appear to have done so, and visits to Exeter by Henrietta Maria in April, 1644, followed by King Charles in July, 1644 and the Prince of Wales in August, 1645, might have attracted him as to a transient version of the court he had known at Westminster. But though he wrote poems to celebrate these latter visits (25.2, 254.3), poems which he may well have presented in person, there was no obvious parliamentary threat in South Devon during 1644 and most of 1645, and it seems likely that he remained in his vicarage. Danger came closer with the arrival of the New Model Army in Devon late in 1645. Fairfax took Tiverton, and set up his winter quarters to lay siege to Exeter, while in January 1646 Cromwell made a typically daring and successful raid to destroy the Royalist cavalry at Bovey Tracey, just ten miles north of Dean Prior.
While Cromwell moved on to take Totnes, Fairfax advanced to relieve Plymouth, which would have taken the main body of the army right through Dean Prior. This advance, early in January, 1646, is the most likely occasion for Herrick’s departure, driven out, like many loyalist clergy, by the New Model Army. This is partly corroborated in the account given by one of his successors, William Pearse, who became vicar in the 1680s, and who could therefore draw on the memory of those who knew the circumstances. In 1704 Pearse told the historian of Royalist sequestrations, John Walker, that Herrick had been turned out in times of 'Rebellion and confusion' by 'rebellious power', a phrase that better describes an army than a disgruntled parish or a vindictive County Committee.
Whatever the actual date or circumstances of Herrick’s ejection, the County Commissioners replaced him sometime before 6th August 1646 with a Presbyterian minister, John Syms, who records in his ‘Daybook’ that ‘ I came to Deane pryor, where I was settled by the committees order the 6th day [August, 1646], but began my tyme from the 25th of March before.’ His appointment, that is to say, was backdated to the beginning of the year. Syms first appears in the Dean Prior Overseers’ Book for the year ended April, 1647, and remained in place until 1660. Pearse reported, presumably from parishioners, that he did not know whether Syms had been to university, but that he had the 'manner of a Presbyterian'.
Ejection may have saved Herrick’s life, since in the summer of 1646 the area was hit by plague (though only six deaths are recorded in Dean Prior). Homeless and without income, his first move was to John Weekes at Shirwell in ‘To whose glad threshold, and free door / I may a Poet come, though poor’ (321.2). However hurriedly he had to leave Dean Prior, he must have taken with him to Shirwell a substantial amount of manuscript poetry, which was to become the copy for most of the 1,400 poems of Hesperides. By 1647 he had reached London, which he greeted enthusiastically as his true home, from which he had been ‘by hard fate sent / Into a long and irksome banishment’ (242.1), a sentiment which suggests that, even with curates to support him, he had not spent a great deal of time in London in the 1630s and 40s. By the time his welcome to the King was sung at Hampton Court in August 1647 (300.1) printing of the copy he had brought with him from Devon, with a few more recent poems, was well under way as Hesperides: Or, The Works Both Humane & Divine of Robert Herrick Esq. It was published in 1648, probably early in that year, and sold by John Williams at the Crown and Francis Eglesfield at the Marigold, both in St Pauls’ Churchyard.
Copies were also printed for Thomas Hunt at Exeter, suggesting a local market. Though Herrick spent some time at the last minute composing epigrams to fatten the religious part of his collection, His Noble Numbers, he presented himself on the main title-page as a lay gentleman, ‘Robert Herrick Esq.’, and presumably lived thus in London, unlike the large number of ejected ministers who were able to find new livings during these years. The only known portrait, the striking bust engraved by Marshall as frontispiece to Hesperides, also denies any clerical connections: placed in profile on a classical altar, it shows a heavy, thick-set man wearing a toga, with a strong neck, thin moustache, prominent hooked nose and a mass of curly hair which is suspiciously full for a man of fifty-six.
Though it may have pointedly fashionable ‘cavalier’ connotations, it is also possible that the hair is intended to suggest Ovid, who is presented with similarly flowing locks in the most common contemporary portrait of him. Oddly, given Ovid’s cognomen of Naso, the prominent nose is not found in Renaissance portraits of Ovid, and in this and other respects the image is sufficiently idiosyncratic to suggest that it is an authentic likeness of Herrick.
1648-1674
Walker implies that Herrick remained in London from 1647 to 1660, and writes that ‘having no Fifths paid him [he] was subsisted by Charity’ (Sufferings of the Clergy, p. 263). This is again based on the information provided by Pearse, who, having noted that Syms did not pay any allowance to the sequestered minister, wrote that Herrick having 'little or nothing to subsist on, here, he went from hence to London (from whence he came) and then lived (as I am well inform'd) upon ye charity of some friends.' Some of this charity came from Fane, to whom Herrick addressed a ‘Christmas Carroll’ in 1647. Fane sent £5 that November, and apparently paid £2 quarterly until 1660 (Cain, ‘Herrick’s ‘Christmas Carol’, pp. 149-50). To this was added an ‘Annual Charity’ from Viscount Scudamore (Gibson, Church of Door, p. 112). There are in fact three recorded payments from Scudamore, of £5 each in 1656, on 13 December 1658, and 6 June 1660. There may also have been help from Henry Pierrepoint, the ‘gallant Newark’ bracketed with ‘Noble Westmorland’ (Fane) as having a ‘large heart and long hand’ (218.6; cf 301.1 and 2). Thomas Stanley may also have helped: Stanley’s kinsman, Edward Sherburne, with whom he had a’ double Ty of Sympathy and Blood’ told Antony Wood that he had known Herrick.
It is likely that Stanley provided financial assistance to some of his fellow royalist poets from 1646 onwards, as James Shirley and John Hall (whom Herrick addresses as ‘his worthy friend’ in a poem written in or after June, 1647) both acknowledge.
Herrick’s only surviving brother Nicholas, a Levant merchant in London, whose travels are celebrated in (330.4), is a probable host, more so than Sir William Heyrick, long retired to Leicestershire, whose sympathies were no longer Royalist.
Those of the Soame and Stone families were also mixed, but Sir William Soame (131.1) at Little Thurlow and Sir Richard Stone at Stukeley are also possible supporters of their cousin. Two earlier patrons could not have helped him much: Crewe, with whom Herrick seems in any case to have quarrelled (161.3), died in 1648, and Porter in 1649.
Even though he saw Hesperides as a definitive life’s work, it is unlikely that Herrick stopped writing after its publication. Very little has survived, however: apart from the ‘Christmas Carroll’, he contributed to the Beaumont and Fletcher folio of 1647 (415), and to the elegies on Hastings in Lachrymae Musarum of 1649 (416). When this, his last known poem, was written he still had twenty-five years to live. Despite having sworn never to return to Dean Prior until ‘Rockes turn to Rivers, Rivers turn to Men’ (29.1), he was one of the 570 clergy who petitioned the House of Lords in 1660 to secure the revenues of their livings while awaiting restitution. That came in September with the Act for Settling Ministers. Aged sixty-nine, Herrick returned to Dean Prior, where he was, somewhat surprisingly, to share his vicarage with Robert Mudge (cf. ‘Upon Mudge’), as the Hearth Tax returns for 1662 show:
‘Robert Herricke vicar for the parte of his howse in his [hands] beinge three fierr hearths --- [£]3. Robert Mudge for that parte of the vicarage howse wch he holdeth ffower fier hearths --- [£]4’(DRO, Devon QS 79/1/11). Mudge had been churchwarden just before Herrick’s ejection. Although described here as ‘vicar’, Herrick now signs himself as ‘Rector of Dean Prior’ in subscribing to the Act of Conformity in August, 1662 (Chanter 151, p. 43). Another signatory to the Act, David Mole, signs as ‘Lecturer at Dean Prior’ (DRO, Chanter 151, p. 41). Mole was, like Greene, a local Devon man, from Chudleigh, and like Greene had graduated from Oxford in the late 1620s.
He had been curate at nearby South Brent since 1633. Herrick, Mole and others had signed a certificate of orthodoxy for an Edward Goswell on 12th October 1661 (DRO, Basket D/17/99).
He did not appear at Totnes before the Bishop’s Visitation of November of that year, when the bishop excused him, but he signed the Bishop’s Transcript for Dean Prior in April, 1663 as ‘Robert Herrick Minister’. In August 1665 (when he is again described as ‘Rector’) he was represented at the visitation by David Mole ‘ejus Curatus’, and Mole again went in his place in 1668. In 1671, apparently without a curate, he was excused as ‘extremely aged’ (valde senex). Finally, in August 1674 a new curate, ‘Mr Colwell’, represented him. This was Robert Colwell, who was to succeed him as vicar. and it must have been Colwell who buried him two months later, when the Parish register records ‘Robert Herrick Vicker was buried the 15th day of October’. If, as seems likely, his will was proved in the Archdeaconry Court of Totnes, it would have been destroyed by the bombing of Exeter in World War II.
Reputation
It has been argued that in 1648, aged fifty-six, and with publication probably coinciding with the Second Civil War, Herrick launched Hesperides at an inauspicious time, his poetry too old-fashioned and too harmonious for ‘the untuneable Times’ (84.3). The evidence does not wholly support this. Wood remembered that Hesperides made some impact, and that Herrick’s poems ‘made him much admired in the time when they were published, especially by the generous and boon loyalists’ (Athenae, II, 122-3). The dedication to Prince Charles and the explicitly Royalist poems suggest why Hesperides was timely for such readers, as less obviously does Herrick’s emphasis on the continuity and shaping powers of ceremony, ritual and tradition, and on the importance of friendship and family loyalty. Even the harmonies of the well-tuned lyric must have had a powerful nostalgic impact on readers whose world had been turned disharmoniously upside down.
Seventy-five poems from Hesperides were included in the 1650 edition of Witt’s Recreations, with ten more in 1663, and Herrick continued to appear in anthologies and song books throughout the century. He was praised as ‘Yong Herric’ in Musarum Deliciae (1655, p.2), and in Naps upon Parnassus (1658) as the only English lyric poet comparable to Horace (f. A3v).
But Hesperides did not establish him as the distinctive master of lyric that he undoubtedly was, and he was largely unknown throughout the eighteenth century. Herrick was willing to wait, however, making clear that Hesperides was aimed more at a future than a present audience, ‘That each Lyrick here shall be / Of my love a Legacie, / Left to all posterity’ (88.2). Posterity has not always known how to take the legacy: critics have found Herrick’s characteristic virtues of playfulness, generosity, gracefulness, self-mockery, the very ease of his verse, difficult to deal with. A similar anxiety about such ‘trivial’ qualities informs both Edward Phillips’s description, ‘now and then a pretty Floury and Pastoral gale of Fancy’ interrupted by ‘trivial passages’ (Theatrum Poetarum, 1675, p. 62), and F.R. Leavis’s judgement that Herrick is merely ‘trivially charming’ (Revaluation, 1936, p. 36). His high reputation in Victorian times was, conversely, all too often based on a view of him as a simple poet of an innocent world of daffodils, quaint customs and blossoming village beauties which itself trivialised his achievement.
Containing almost fourteen-hundred poems, probably almost all that he could find to print in 1647, Hesperides was and remains the only effort by an important English poet to publish his entire ouevre in one organised collection. For despite the appearance of being a ‘heterogeneous mass’ (Nichols, Leicester, II.ii, p. 634) Hesperides is organised: with its versified Argument (5.1), and even its versified errata, and bounded by addresses To his Booke, it consciously imitates that enclosed garden, outside of time, after which it was named. In this and other respects the struggle with ‘Times trans-shifting’ (The Argument of his Book, 5.1) is Herrick’s most characteristic and most profound preoccupation.
Not only does he explore all the ways in which Poetry perpetuates the Poet (265.1), but his lyrics typically pin down a transient moment, as in The comming of good luck (100.2), or, most unusually at this date, transplant the material of biography -- family, friends, his maid, his parishioners, his dog -- into his timeless garden.
Consequent upon this latter process is a fictionalising of ‘Herrick’ as a character whose Anacreontic, genial and self-mocking persona dominates Hesperides. Other poets, notably his greatest mentors, Horace and Jonson, had projected versions of themselves in their work, but Herrick was the first English poet to do so in such a thoroughgoing way. He was deeply original too in the ways he deployed his strategies against ‘Times trans-shifting’. His awareness of the importance and continuity of ceremony, and of the ways in which rituals and calendar customs order inchoate experience, inform poems like Corinna's going a Maying (67.1), The Hock-Cart (101) or Ceremonies for Candlemasse Eve (285.1). These three poems also display his almost pantheistic insight into the interpenetration of human and natural worlds, and of the time-defeating forces of regeneration at work in both of them. The last lines of each also display, in their very different ways, his acceptance that in the end age and death cannot be defeated, that both human and natural worlds must ‘glide / Into the Grave’ (To Blossoms, 176.2).
Tom Cain.
Bibliography
1 R. Herrick, The Poetical Works of Robert Herrick, ed. L.C. Martin (1956)
2. Herrick Family Papers,
DG9/2405-2439, Leicester County Records Office.
3. *Bishop’s Visitations,
Chanter 218, Devon Record Office
4. *Sir William Heyrick’s
papers, MS Eng. Hist. b.216, c. 474-484, Bodleian Library, Oxford
5. *F. Delattre, Robert Herrick. Contribution à l'étude de la poeésie
lyrique en Angleterre au dix-septième siècle (1912)
6. J. Nichols, The history and antiquities of the County of Leicester, 4 vols. (1795-1815)
7. Texas MS, University
of Texas at Austin, MS File (Herrick, R) Works B
8. J. and J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses,
Part I From the Earliest Times to 1751, 4 vols. (1922)
9. P. Beal, Index of English Literary Manuscripts, vol. 2, pt. 1, pp. 527-566
10. A.G. Matthews, Walker Revised (1948)
11. Visitation of London, 1633, 1634, and 1635 ed. J.J. Howard and J.L. Chester , Publications of the Harleian Society 15 and 17 (1880, 1883)
12. The Registers of St. Vedast’s Foster Lane, and of St. Michael le
Quern, London, Harleian Society
Registers, 29 (1902).
13. J. Tuckett, Devonshire Pedigrees Recorded in the Herald’s Visitation of 1620 (1859-61)
14. Visitation of the County of Leicester 1619 ed. J. Fetherston, Publications
of the Harleian Society 2 (1870)
15. Church of Jesus
Christ of the Latter Day Saints, Family Search Website www.familysearch.org
16. J.Walker, The Sufferings of the Clergy during the Grand Rebellion (1714)
17. M. Fane, Earl of
Westmorland, The Poetry of Mildmay
Fane ed. Tom Cain (2001)
18. J.
Stow, A Survey of
London (1603) with
Introduction and Notes by C.L. Kingsford (1908).
19. W. Warren, Warren’s Book (Collectanea ad Collegium sive Aulam Sanctae
Trinitatis) ed. A. Dale (1911)
20. Bishop Joseph Hall’s
Register, 1627-37, Chanter 22, Devon Record Office
21. Parish Register,
Church of St George the Martyr, Dean Prior (DRO)
22. Exeter Diocese
Subscriptions Book, Chanter 131, Devon Record Office.
23. Bishop’s Transcripts
(Dean Prior), Microfilm reel 12, Devon Record Office
24. Subscriptions Book,
I, 1613-38, Cambridge University Archives
25. Main Papers, H.L., 23
June, 1660, House of Lords Record Office.
26. Ordination Register,
Diocese of Peterborough, Northamptonshire Record Office
27. A. Wood, Athenae Oxoniensis,
1721
28. T. Cain, ‘Herrick’s
‘Christmas Carol’: A New Poem and its Implications for Patronage’, English Literary Renaissance 29 (1999), 131-53
29. M. Eccles, ‘Herrick’s
Inheritance’, Notes and Queries 230 (March 1985), 74-8
30. H. Clifford, ‘The
Inventory of Nicholas Herrick, goldsmith’, Apollo 147 (Jan. 1998), 19-24
31. E. Arber, ed., A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of
London, 1554-1640 A.D. 5 vols.
1875-94.
32. W. Pole, Collections towards a description of the County of Devon, ed. Sir
J. W. De La Pole (1791)
33. M. Gibson, A View of the Anccient and Present State of the Churches of
Door, Home-Lacy, and Hempsted (1727)
34. S. D’Ewes, The Autobiography of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, ed. J.O. Halliwell 2 vols. (1845)
35. R. Rollin, ‘Robert
Herrick’, Dictionary of Literary
Biography, Volume 126, Seventeenth-Century British Nondramatic Poets, ed. M.T. Hester (1993), pp.168-181.
36. W. Copinger, The Manors of Suffolk,
vol. 5 (1909).
37. E. Hageman, Robert Herrick: A Reference guide (1983) [bibliography]
38. M. Moroney, ‘Recent
Studies in Herrick’, English Literary
Renaissance, 29 (1999) 154-76
[bibliography]
ARCHIVAL DEPOSITS
Letters to Sir William
Heyrick, MS Eng.c.2278, Bodleian Library, Oxford
( Printed in Poetical Works, ed.
L.C. Martin, pp. 445-453. )
OTHER IMPORTANT
DEPOSITS
Herrick Family Papers,
DG9/2405-2439, Leicester County Records Office
Exeter Diocesan Records
(Chanter 22, 131, 218) Devon Record Office
Sir William Heyrick’s
papers, MS Eng. Hist. b.216, c. 474-484, Bodleian Library, Oxford
Texas MS, University of
Texas at Austin, MS File (Herrick, R) Works B
‘Chorus’, Harley MS
367, f. 154, British Library
·
Source:
http://herrick.ncl.ac.uk/Biography%20of%20Robert%20Herrick%20by%20Tom%20Cain.htm
NICHOLAS
HEYRICK,
Eldest
son of Thomas Heyrick of Leic. 1517 and descended from the ancient family of
Eyrick or Heyrick of Stretton Magna and Houghton,on,the,Hill, co. Leic., one of
whose members was bishop of Lichfield in the fourteenth century. He was born
about 1512, enrolled a freeman of the borough 1534-5, was one of the joint
chamberlains 1539-40, died leaving issue in 1562, buried at St. Martin's 8
April.
There is
no M.l. to him, and his will, if he made one, has not been found.
Ancient
arms of Eyrick or Heyrick :-Argent, a fess vair or and gules. The crest was
added later in 1598.
(King Edward VI died 6 July 1553. Lady Jane Grey
proclaimed Queen 10 July, who, after wearing the vain pageantry of a crown
for ten days, returned to private life, and was shortly afterwards consigned
to the block by the order of Queen Mary. Queen Mary, proclaimed 20 July
1553). Interesting times in the lives of this branch!
ROBERT
HEYRICK, (Ironmonger).
Eldest son of AId. John Heyrick, mayor in 1557; born
at Leic. in 1540, was one of the forty-eight councillors 1567, M.P. for Leic.
1588, a J.P. and alderman, and again mayor 1593 and 1605.
There were 5000 residents for all these councillors!
Ald.
Robert Heyrick married at St. Martin's 11 November 1567 Elizabeth, daughter of
Ald. Wm. Manby of Leic., by whom he had a numerous family (vide St. Martin's
registers). For some years prior to his death, he resided in a mansion house
within the precincts and grounds of the dissolved Grey Friars monastery, nearly
opposite St. Martin's church.
Here
he died 14 June 1618 aged seventy-eight, and was buried at St. Martin's two
days later. M.I. there. Will dated 26 March 1617, was proved in the P.C.C.,
London, 30 July 1618. His portrait, with that of his younger brother Sir
William Heyrick of Beaumanor Park, is still preserved in the Guildhall.
A
townsman of note, and one of the most influential and active members of the
corporate body of his time. In 1598, in conjunction with his younger brother
Sir William Heyrick of London, goldsmith, later of Beaumanor, he obtained a
confirmation of the ancient family arms, with the addition of this crest :-A
bull's head argent, the muzzle ears and horns tipped sable, gorged with a
chaplet of roses leaved vert. The family motto VIRTUS NOBILlTAT being adopted
by later members of the family.
Second son of Thomas Heyrick of Leic., and brother of
AId. Nicholas Heyrick (No. 167). He was born in 1513, enrolled a freeman
1534-5, elected a chamberlain 1543-4, and again mayor 1572. He resided in the
Saturday market at the corner of Cheapside ; married Mary, daughter of John
Bond of Ward End, co. Warwick, who died in 1611, by whom he had five sons and
seven daughters.
All flesh is grasse both young and old must die : and
so we passe to judgment by and by.
Leicester - Home of the
Herricks
As part
of our 3 moth trip around the UK, to walk in our ancestors footsteps, we
arrived, one cold wet Friday in the town of Leicester. The 12th great
grandparents Robert and Mary Herrick were buried there.
By chance
we were able to get a park and slushing around in the wet puddles we found the
Cathedral. All around workmen were constructing buildings and doing
landscaping. We had no idea what for.
The guide
at the Cathedral was an elderly lady and she was most impressed that we had
come to see the great grandparents graves. We had spent 10 weeks doing
this in different places, and didn't quite know what to expect.
She was quite excited, and told me, that in
all the years she had worked in the Cathedral, no-body had asked to see their
great grandparents Herricks.
"It's
just up here in St Catherine's Chapel" she told me. Well that
was a surprise and a half, then she showed us where King Richard III was to be
re-buried, right outside that chapel.
The
chapel was beautiful, with impressive stain glass windows and an altar. I
thought it must be rather special when the sun was shining.
And there
it was, so many Herrick family tombs. I was a bit overwhelmed, as I
didn't know all the different names I was finding. It was a bit of a
thrill to once again be standing next to my ancestor's, in the church that they
married and possibly were baptised, and were then buried.
Made it
all sort of seem real and come to life. One thing for sure, a lot more research
has to be done on the Herrick family!
Then we
found the tombstone for King Richard III. Well he is not buried in the
tomb, rather his bones which were discovered when some rebuilding was being
carried out, are currently stored at the University.
Of all
things this new tomb is directly beside St Catherine's Chapel, so here will lie
King Richard, buried for 500 years on the Herrick's lands with a marker
indicating he was buried there, and is to be re-interred next to the Herrick's
graves in the Cathedral. I thought that a bit ironic.
Here lyeth the bodie of Robert
Herick Ironmonger and Alderman of Leicester who had beene thrice Maire thereof.
He was eldest sonne to John Herick and Marie, and had 2 sonnes and 9 daughters
by one wife with whom he lived 51 years. At his death he gave away 16 pounds 10
shillings a year to good uses. He lived 78 years; and after dyed very godly the
14th of June 1618.
Within
the Leicester Cathedral is St Katherine's Chapel, and it is in this chapel that
the graves and memorials for numerous Herricks can be found.
Robert and Elizabeth's
home and its place in history!
Sir Robert Catlyn,
Chief Justice to Elizabeth I, acquired the site from Bellowe and
Broxholme, and it was later bought by Robert Herrick (Heyrick),
three-times mayor of Leicester. Herrick built a mansion fronting onto
Friar Lane,with extensive gardens over the east end of the Friary grounds.
These
gardens were visited by Christopher Wren Sr. (1589–1658) in 1611, who recorded
being shown a handsome stone pillar with an inscription, "Here lies the
body of Richard III, some time King of England".
The
Herrick family, who also owned the country estate of Beaumanor, near Loughborough, sold the mansion to Thomas Noble in 1711,who,
like Herrick 130 years before him, represented Leicester in Parliament.
He
was also a Justice of the Peace and at various times the town’s Chamberlain,
Coroner and MP.
The
Mayoral Roll records: “For some years prior to his death, he resided in a
mansion house within the precincts and grounds of the dissolved Grey Friars
monastery, nearly opposite St Martin's church.”
Herrick
built a house on the eastern part of the grounds, visited in 1612 by a young
man named Christopher Wren, who was tutor to Herrick’s nephew at Oxford. (This
was not the famous architect but his father, later Dean of Windsor.)
Wren
wrote in his diary that Herrick showed him a stone pillar with an inscription
‘here lies the body of Richard III, some time King of England’. This was the
last recorded location of Richard’s body.
Herrick’s
daughter Frances married Thomas Noble and one of their descendants (also Thomas
Noble, c.1656-1730, later the town’s MP) bought the Greyfriars land in 1711.
His
son, yet another Thomas, divided the site into two in 1740 with the
appropriately named New Street, along which houses were built, with numerous
burials discovered during the building work. Herrick’s house and garden passed
in 1743 to Roger Ruding of Westcotes, in 1752 to hosier Richard Garle, and in
1759 to banker William Bentley who built a fine house with the address ‘17
Friar Lane’.
Lost Garden of Robert Herrick
Found
Archaeologists from the
University of Leicester who are leading the search for the lost grave of King
Richard III announced today that they have made a new advance in their quest.
They
have uncovered evidence of the lost garden of Robert Herrick – where,
historically, it is recorded there was a memorial to Richard III.
Now
the ‘time tomb team’ as they have become to be known has discovered paving
stones which they believe belong to the garden.
The
University of Leicester is leading the archaeological search for the burial
place of King Richard III with Leicester City Council, in association with the
Richard III Society.
In
1485 King Richard III was defeated at the battle of Bosworth. His body,
stripped and despoiled, was brought to Leicester where he was buried in the
church of the Franciscan Friary, known as the Grey Friars. Over time the exact
whereabouts of the Grey Friars became lost.
-
See more at: http://fossilhd.com/lost-garden-of-robert-herrick-found/#sthash.VnJ91gT1.dpuf
Robert's
brother William Herrick became a goldsmith in London, and ran the family
affairs in London. He married Joan May and was a very powerful person.
He was goldsmith to King James I and made pieces for him. From the
papers it is his letters that give an insight into just how life was for the
Herrick family.
He
speaks of the diseases and hopes people are well, he speaks also of arranging
marriages with important merchants and others for his children. He was
knighted and eventually was able to purchase Beaumanor a most beautiful
property outside Leicester. King James I asked him to quote to restore
Leicester Castle, he was approached by the councillors to arrange for the
Newarke hospital to be built.
Leicester Castle was built over the Roman town
walls.
According
to Leicester Museums, the castle was probably built around 1070 (soon after
the Norman Conquest in 1066). The remains now consist of
a mound, along with ruins. Originally the mound was
40 ft (12.2 m) high. Kings sometimes stayed at the castle (Edward I in 1300, and Edward II in 1310 and 1311), and John of Gaunt and his
second wife Constance
of Castile both died here in
1399 and 1394 respectively.
Eventually,
however, it was used mainly as a courthouse (sessions being held in the Great
Hall), rather than a residence. Apart from being used for Assize Courts (J. M. Barrie visited
regularly and spent many hours inside as reporter for a newspaper when the hall
was used as a court house), the Great Hall was also used for sessions of
the Parliament of
England most notably the Parliament of Bats in 1426, when the conditions in London were not
suitable and its connections with the Plantagenet family.
The
Castle, the Turret Gateway, the Great Hall and "John of Gaunt's
Cellar" (erroneously called a dungeon) are all Scheduled
Ancient Monuments, and are
variously listed buildings also. St Mary de Castro is a Grade I listed
building.
A
section of the castle wall, adjacent to the Turret Gateway, has gun loops
(holes) that were poked through the medieval wall to use as firing ports by the
city's residents when parliamentarian Leicester was besieged, captured, and
ransacked, by the royalist army in the 1640s during the English civil war. The third storey of the Turret Gateway was destroyed in an election
riot in 1832
We learnt an amazing fact. The Herricks had a bit of a mansion in the area
across from the cathedral, called Greyfriers, and that was where Richard was
buried after the battle. In fact, the Herricks had a monument in their
garden signifying that the King was buried there! Unfortunately the mansion
and the monument have disappeared.
She told
us to go into the Guildhall next door, as John Herrick was a Mayor, and she
thought his painting was there. But unfortunately one was in the British
Museum, and the other stored for safe keeping.
The Guildhall is a very old building, but the
Mayor's chair remains. John Herrick was an ironmonger, and his brother
was a goldsmith to the King, so they were well connected in Royal circles
The lady
there explained that when Richard, who was not well liked, lost the battle, his
body was bought back to Leicester, and they decided to bury him somewhere where
the ordinary folk could not get access to him, and then put the slab in the
Cathedral about 30 years ago.
Out of
sight, out of mind!
Outside
into torrential rain, and we came across all the works being done, and realised
it was all for new buildings to house a Richard III visitor attraction.
It was nothing short of a mess.
One of
the workmen asked me if it look rather nice, as I struggled to hold
umbrella and take a photo. I told him it looked a "bloody"
mess, but I guess that they would be making heaps of money from my cousin.
He was a bit taken back, really he said, yep 18th cousin. But that
is quite interesting cause Henry VII also is my 18th cousin.
Then he
told me how the remains were discovered, but he was missing his feet.
Our next port of call was the Boswell Battle fields where the famous battle was
won/lost depending on whom you are barracking for.
Mind you
King Richard went off to war with 24000 troops, and Henry IV had 2000.
Now they might not have known it at the time, but these two were related,
and are cousins. And Richard was killed and lost the battle. So the
Red roses won over the White roses! And everyone was happy.
With all
this Royal History we then went to see just where King Richard met his death!
Now King
Richard is a 18th Cousin. And so is
King Henry! We just need to work out
which colour rose we want to support.
All the red and blue lines have Ancestry so confused as there were
countless intermarriages. So we decided to visit Bosworth Field.
I found
it interesting that many of Richard's loyal supporters where his family
members, including the La Zouche family. I guess all the noble people had
a limited number of suitors to choose from especially when they often had 4 or
5 wives or husbands.
The
display was rather good, and once again the focus was on making history easy to
learn and understand for school kids. Mind you I don't know how much they
retain, cause there sure is a lot of history.
Poor
Richard, when they uncovered the skeleton, they were able to distinguish how he
died, copped a few arrows in the head, but the look of it, and his horse had
got bogged in the mud.
On the
way back we passed through Woodhouse, and I remembered it was the home of the
Herricks, now this one really impressed us.
All
around our driving route today we have passed some amazing country homes.
The country side is so beautiful and the lifestyle seems idyllic, I
wonder how it would have been all those centuries ago?
Beaumanor
Hall, ancestral home of the Herrick family, was used as a listening station
during the war. The Hall is now owned by Leicestershire County Council and is
used as an educational base with outdoor activities.The oldest part of the
village is the church, which is believed to date back to the 17th century. This
is evident on the side of the church near to where the Herrick family are
buried, as a large number of indentations show where arrows were sharpened for
hunting. The village was originally linear; however, the army barracks created
a more nucleated village with more modern housing than the typical Georgian
architecture seen throughout.
At
this point in our family history, there were many changes to the social
structure of England. Our family have to this point been members of the
Royal family, members of the Royal Court, Knights and landowners.
With the Herricks, our lineage becomes removed from the Royal lines, and from this point onwards our great grandfathers were important members of the town community. They were merchants, adventurers, mayors, aldermen in various towns, including London, Leicester, Newcastle, and in Dublin
When
King Henry VIII came to power he set about destruction of the Roman Catholic
Church, and he was responsible for the tearing down of many buildings, castles,
priories throughout the country.
While he is a cousin of ours, as he was the son of King Henry VII who defeated King Richard at Bosworth, perhaps his most famous claim to fame is his many marriages. In Leicester he ordered the removal of the building known as the Greyfriers Priory. Later another King granted the lands to the Herrick family. King Henry VIII was King during the time that the Herricks lived in Leicester.
Henry VIII (28 June 1491 –
28 January 1547) was King of England from 21 April 1509
until his death. He was Lord,
and later assumed the Kingship, of Ireland, and continued
the nominal claim by English monarchs to the Kingdom of France.
Henry was the second monarch of the Tudor dynasty, succeeding his
father, Henry VII.
Besides his six marriages, Henry VIII is known for his role in the separation of the Church of England from the pope and the Roman Catholic Church. His struggles with Rome led to the separation of the Church of England from papal authority, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and his own establishment as the Supreme Head of the Church of England. Yet he remained a believer in core Catholic theological teachings, even after his excommunication from the Roman Catholic Church. Henry oversaw the legal union of England and Wales with the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. He is also well known for a long personal rivalry with both Francis I of France and the Habsburg monarch Emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire (King Charles I of Spain), his contemporaries with whom he frequently warred. Domestically, he is known for his radical changes to the English Constitution, ushering in the theory of the divine right of kings to England. Besides asserting supremacy over the Church of England in its break from Rome in initiating the English Reformation, he also greatly expanded royal power. Charges of treason and heresy were commonly used to quash dissent, those accused were often executed without a formal trial, by means of bills of attainder instead. He achieved much of his political aims through the work of his chief ministers, many of whom were banished or executed when they fell out of his favour. Figures such as Thomas Wolsey, Thomas More, Thomas Cromwell, Richard Rich, and Thomas Cranmer figured prominently in Henry's administration. An extravagant spender, he depended on spoils from the Dissolution of the Monasteries as well as various acts of the Reformation Parliament to divert money formerly bound for Rome to greatly increase the royal income. Despite the massive influx of money from these acts, Henry was always on the verge of financial ruin, due to his personal extravagance, as well as his numerous costly, and ultimately fruitless, continental wars.
His contemporaries
considered Henry in his prime to be an attractive, educated and accomplished
king, and he has been described as "one of the most charismatic rulers to
sit on the English throne". Besides ruling with considerable power,
he also engaged himself as an author and composer. His desire to provide
England with a male heir – which stemmed partly from personal vanity and partly
because he believed a daughter would be unable to consolidate the Tudor dynasty
and the fragile peace that existed following the Wars of the Roses – led to the two
things for which Henry is most remembered: his six marriages and his break with Rome (which would not allow a annulment), leading to the English Reformation. Henry became severely obese and his health suffered, contributing to
his death in 1547. He is frequently characterised in his later life as a
lustful, egotistical, harsh, and insecure king. He was succeeded by his
son Edward
VI.
Robert Herrick and Mary Manby were married in 1567 in Leicester. A new era had commenced.
A New Queen was on the throne.
Elizabethan Era
The Elizabethan period in England had a daily life based on social order: the monarch as the highest, the nobility as second rank, the gentry as third, merchants as fourth, yeomanry as fifth and labourers as sixth. The queen was believed to be God’s representation here on Earth. It was also believed that God had formed these social ranks and showered blessings on each rank. The Parliament regulated the clothes that can only be worn by each rank and it was considered a defiance of the order if a labourer wore clothes of the rich. Sumptuary laws were imposed by rulers to curb the expenditure of the people. These laws applied to food, beverages, furniture, jewellery and clothing. They were used to control behaviour and ensure that a specific class structure was maintained. Elizabethan Sumptuary Laws dictated what colour and type of clothing individuals were allowed to own and wear. This allowed an easy and immediate way to identify rank and privilege.
Western Europe Map Society began
to form along new lines during the Tudor years and it was an age of
individuality. Nobility and knights were still at the top of the social ladder.
These men were rich and powerful, and they have large households.
The real growth in society was in the merchant class.
Within the nobility class there was a distinction between old families and new.
Most of the old families were Catholic, and the new families were Protestant.
During Shakespeare’s time there were only about 55 noble families in
England.
At the head of each noble family is a duke, a baron or an earl. This class is the lords and ladies of the land. A person becomes a member of nobility by birth, or by a grant from the queen or king. Noble titles were hereditary, passing from father to oldest son. It took a crime such as treason for a nobleman to lose his title. Many nobles died during the War of the Roses, a series of civil wars fought during the 15th century. The Tudor monarchy, Elizabeth, her father Henry VIII, and her grandfather Henry VII rarely appointed new nobles to replace those who died. They viewed the nobility class as a threat to their power and preferred to keep the number of them small. Being a member of the nobility class often brought debt rather than profit. The expectations of the class and the non paying honorific offices could bring terrible financial burdens. They maintained huge households, and conspicuous consumption and lavish entertainment was expected. Visiting nobles to England were the responsibility of the English nobility to house and entertain at their own expense. Appointment to a post as a foreign ambassador required the ambassador to maintain a household of as many 100 attendants. Most of Queen Elizabeth’s council, chief officers in the counties came from the noble families. They were expected to serve in an office, such as being an ambassador to a foreign country, at their own expense of course.
The Gentry class included knights, squires, gentlemen,
and gentlewomen who did not work with their hands for a living. Their numbers
grew during Queen Elizabeth’s reign and became the most important social class
in England. Wealth was the key to becoming a part of the gentry class. This
class was made of people not born of noble birth who by acquiring large amounts
of property became wealthy landowners.
The rise of the gentry was the dominant feature of Elizabethan society. They essentially changed things, which launched out new paths whether at home or overseas, provided leadership and spirit of the age, who gave it character and did its work during this era. The gentry were the solid citizens of Elizabethan England. Francis Drake, the famous explorer and Sir Walter Raleigh, who led the way to the English colonization of America were of the gentry class. Two of the queen’s chief ministers, Burgley and Walsingham were products of the gentry. Francis Bacon, the great essayer and philosopher also came from this class. The gentry were the backbone of Elizabethan England. They went to Parliament and served as justices of the Peace. They combined the wealth of the nobility with the energy of the sturdy peasants from whom they had sprung.
The Tudor era saw the rise of modern commerce with
cloth and weaving leading the way. The prosperous merchant class emerged from
the ashes of the Wars of the Roses. The prosperity of the wool trade led to a
surge in building and the importance cannot be overstated. Shipping products
from England to various ports in Europe and to the New World also became a
profitable business for the merchants. Prices for everyday food and household
items that came from other countries increased as the merchants gained a
monopoly on the sales of all goods under the pretence it would benefit the
country where it really benefited the pocket of the merchants.
This was the “middling” class who saved enough to live
comfortably but who at any moment, through illness or bad luck be plunged into
poverty. This class included the farmers, tradesmen and craft workers. They
took their religion very seriously and could read and write. This class of
people was prosperous and sometimes their wealth could exceed those of the
gentry, but the difference was how they spent their wealth. The yeoman’s were
content to live more simply, using their wealth to improve their land and
expand it.
The last class of Elizabethan England was the day labourers,
poor husbandmen, and some retailers who did not own their own land. Artisans,
shoemakers, carpenters, brick masons and all those who worked with their hands
belonged to this class of society. In this class we can also put our great
swarms of idle serving-men and beggars. Under Queen Elizabeth I, the government
undertook the job of assisting the laboirers class and the result was the
famous Elizabethan Poor Laws which resulted in one of the world’s first
government sponsored welfare programs. This era was generally peaceful as the
battles between the Protestants and the Catholics and those between the
Parliament and the Monarchy had subsided.
For more information visit http://thelostcolony.org/education/elizabethan-era/ or a wikipedia search!
In 1603 again during the lives of the Herrick family
King James I was crowned the King.
During her reign, Queen Elizabeth encouraged trade with overseas countries, and in the Herrick papers are several references to letters received from the Queen in regard to merchants from Leicester, going to Turkey.
Robert's brother William Herrick:
He shortly after that event married Miss Joan May, the
'daughter of Richd. May, Esq., a citizen of London, and sister of Sir Humphrey
May, sometime Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Mr. Wm. Heyricke soon
became a freeman of Leicester, presenting the Mayor with a 'dozen of silver
spoons' as his fee.
In 1601 he was elected one of the members of
Parliament for the Borough: about that time he was • ambassador from Queen
Elizabeth to the Porte.'t
In 1605 he was knighted by James I., and in that
year was again returned to Parliament: he held an office In the royal jewel
house, being called by the Chamberlains of the Borough 'The King's Master
Jeweller' in their accounts for 1603-4, when they presented him with a
complimentary present of white and claret wine with sugar and nutmeg: he was a
Teller of the Exchequer at about the same period: in fact he had then become a
most important personage in London--~me of the: many influential men who met
daily in the nave of S. Paul's Cathedral to transact their business one of the
great capitalists and the court banker of the day, whose monetary transactions
were large, and extended far and near.
Sir William Herrick (1562 – 2 March 1653) was an English jeweller, courtier, diplomat
and politician who sat in the House of
Commons at various times between
1601 and 1622.
Herrick was the son of John Heyrick of Leicester and
was baptised on 9 December 1562. His father was an ironmonger at Leicester. He
was sent to London in about 1574 to be apprenticed to his elder brother
Nicholas Herrick, a goldsmith in Cheapside. After six years he set up in
business on his own in Wood Street on premises leased from the Goldsmith’s
Company. He also became a moneylender
and in a few years he had made himself a fortune and was able to purchase Beau Manor Park from
the Earl of Essex, and obtained a right to arms. He came to the notice of Queen
Elizabeth, who sent him on a mission to the Ottoman Porte and on his return he
was rewarded with a lucrative appointment in the Exchequer. He was made a
freeman of Leicester in 1601 when he presented the corporation with a dozen
silver spoons in lieu of a fee.
In 1601, Herrick was elected Member of Parliament for Leicester. He became principal jeweller to the King, Queen and Prince of Wales in 1603 and held the post until 1625. He became a freeman of the City of London in May 1605 and was knighted in the same year. He served as MP for Leicester for part of the 1604–1611 parliament. He was prime warden of the Goldsmiths’ Company from 1605 to 1606. In 1607 he took as apprentice his nephew Robert the future poet. In 1621 he was elected MP for Leicester again.
Herrick died at the age of about 90 and was buried
at St
Martin’s Church, Leicester.
Herrick married Joan May, daughter of Richard May of
London and of Mayfield Place, Sussex on 6 May 1596, and had at least one son.
His brother Robert was also an MP
The Herrick Papers have been digitised from a collection which is held at the Oxford University.
The papers give an insight into the life of the family
in those days. It was rather common to make arranged marriages.
Most of the husbands were from respected merchant families, as were the
wives.
The following is condensed from" The
letters of Alderman Robert Heyricke of Leicester, 1590-1617. A Contribution to
the Transactions of the Leicestelshire :Architectural and Archieological
Society. (Vol. V,-Part II, 1880). By Thomas North, F. S. A." It was
received after the English Family, in this
book, was printed, and hence contains some items which
were given (though
incorrectly, perhaps), there.
. "During an inspection by a visitor of the
numerous memorials of the dead in St. Martin's Church, Leicester, the upright
slabs arranged within the north chapel, or Herrick's chancel, will not be
overlooked; one at least, by the ancient form of its characters and the
quaintness of its diction, will certainly challenge observation.
(See Epitaph of John Heyricke, on page 5.)*
Several were ministers, others were Aldermen, and
Mayor of the town. In this light it seems that our Ruth Herrick must have
married a man of standing!
In 1603 a new King was on the throne. King James I.
King James had his favourite citizens and some of our
ancestors were among his chosen few!
James VI and I (19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I
from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 until his death. The kingdoms of Scotland and England were individual
sovereign states, with their own parliaments, judiciary, and laws, though both
were ruled by James in personal
union.
He succeeded to the Scottish throne at the age of thirteen months, after his mother Mary, Queen of Scots, was compelled to abdicate in his favour. Four different regents governed during his minority, which ended officially in 1578, though he did not gain full control of his government until 1583. In 1603, he succeeded the last Tudor monarch of England and Ireland, Elizabeth I, who died without issue. He continued to reign in all three kingdoms for 22 years, a period known as the Jacobean era after him, until his death in 1625 at the age of 58. After the Union of the Crowns, he based himself in England (the largest of the three realms) from 1603, only returning to Scotland once in 1617, and styled himself "King of Great Britain and Ireland". He was a major advocate of a single parliament for both England and Scotland. In his reign, the Plantation of Ulster and British colonisation of the Americas began. At 57 years and 246 days, his reign in Scotland was longer than those of any of his predecessors. He achieved most of his aims in Scotland but faced great difficulties in England, including the Gunpowder Plot in 1605 and repeated conflicts with the English Parliament. Under James, the "Golden Age" of Elizabethan literature and drama continued, with writers such as William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Sir Francis Bacon contributing to a flourishing literary culture.
James
himself was a talented scholar, the author of works such as Daemonologie (1597), True Law of Free Monarchies (1598),
and Basilikon Doron (1599).
He sponsored the translation of the Bible that was named after him: the Authorised King James Version. Sir Anthony
Weldon claimed that James had been termed "the wisest fool in Christendom",
an epithet associated with his character ever since. Since the latter half
of the 20th century, historians have tended to revise James's reputation and
treat him as a serious and thoughtful monarch.
Despite the smoothness of the
succession and the warmth of his welcome, James survived two conspiracies in
the first year of his reign, the Bye Plot and Main Plot, which led to the arrest, among
others, of Lord
Cobham and
Sir Walter
Raleigh.Those
hoping for governmental change from James were at first disappointed when he
maintained Elizabeth's Privy Councillors in office, as secretly
planned with Cecil, but James shortly added long-time supporter Henry
Howard and
his nephew Thomas
Howard to
the Privy Council, as well as five Scottish nobles.
In the early years of James's reign, the day-to-day running of the government was tightly managed by the shrewd Robert Cecil, later Earl of Salisbury, ably assisted by the experienced Thomas Egerton, whom James made Baron Ellesmere and Lord Chancellor, and by Thomas Sackville, soon Earl of Dorset, who continued as Lord Treasurer.As a consequence, James was free to concentrate on bigger issues, such as a scheme for a closer union between England and Scotland and matters of foreign policy, as well as to enjoy his leisure pursuits, particularly hunting. James was ambitious to build on the personal union of the Crowns of Scotland and England to establish a single country under one monarch, one parliament and one law, a plan which met opposition in both realms. "Hath He not made us all in one island," James told the English parliament, "compassed with one sea and of itself by nature indivisible?" In April 1604, however, the Commons refused on legal grounds his request to be titled "King of Great Britain". In October 1604, he assumed the title "King of Great Britain" by proclamation rather than statute, though Sir Francis Bacon told him he could not use the style in "any legal proceeding, instrument or assurance". In foreign policy, James achieved more success. Never having been at war with Spain, he devoted his efforts to bringing the long Anglo–Spanish War to an end, and in August 1604, thanks to skilled diplomacy on the part of Robert Cecil and Henry Howard, now Earl of Northampton, a peace treaty was signed between the two countries, which James celebrated by hosting a great banquet. Freedom of worship for Catholics in England continued, however, to be a major objective of Spanish policy, causing constant dilemmas for James, distrusted abroad for repression of Catholics while at home being encouraged by the Privy Council to show even less tolerance towards them.
Gunpowder Plot
On the
night of 4–5 November 1605, the eve of the state opening of the second session
of James's first English Parliament, Catholic Guy
Fawkes was discovered in the cellars of the parliament
buildings. He was guarding a pile of wood not far from 36 barrels of gunpowder
with which Fawkes intended to blow up Parliament House the following day and
cause the destruction, as James put it, "not only ... of my person,
nor of my wife and posterity also, but of the whole body of the State in
general". The discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, as it quickly
became known, aroused a mood of national relief at the delivery of the king and
his sons which Salisbury exploited to extract higher subsidies from the ensuing
Parliament than any but one granted to Elizabeth. Fawkes and others
implicated in the unsuccessful conspiracy were executed.
Mary Manby was the
daughter of Alderman William Manby and his wife Joan Burton
He
married Elizabeth Manby, a neighbour's daughter, and in due time succeeded to
his father's business, occupying the. house and shop already referred to as
standing in the Market Place at the corner of Cheapside. He had a large
family-two sons and nine daughters. He was thrice Mayor of his native town (in
1584. '593. and 1605), and at all times took an active and disinterested part
in public matters. Much of this will be gleaned from his letters in the
collections which follow these remarks.
He
was during the latter part of his life the constant correspondent and agent of
ms brother Sir Wm. Heyricke, for whom he had a strong brotherly affection, and
to whom he delighted to communicate the news of passing events in the town of
their early home-a habit doubtless thoroughly appreciated and enjoyed by the
younger man amidst the din and turmoil of city life. Alderman Robert Heyricke
died in 1618. and the following quaint inscription on an upright slab is to be
found near to that of his father's In S. Martin's Church, Leicester:
1556 WILLIAM MANBY,
(171) (Grocer).
Descended from an ancient family of Manby and
Worlabye, Lincs., whose Pedigree was entered at the Visitation of that county
in 1562. He was born about 1515, came to Leic. at an early age, admitted a free
burgess in 1536-7, elected one of the borough chamberlains 1543-4 and rapidly
rose to prominence. He was again mayor in 1568. His wife Joan, by whom he had
issue, appears to have been a daughter of Edward Burton of Branston, co.
Rutland.
AId. William Manby was buried in St. Martin's church
26 January 1585-6 "on the north side of the clock house." His will,
bearing date 20 February 1584, was proved at Leic. by his widow, 7 February
1585-6.
Arms of Manby :-Argent, a lion rampant sable within an
orle of eight escallops gules. (The Lincs. Pedigree of the family says
"eight martlets azure") Crest :-An arm couped at the elbow and erect,
vested per pale crenelltée or and argent, holding in the gauntlet a sword
pomelled of the first. Plate 2
.
1568 WILLIAM MANBY.(2)
William Manbie, a grocer, dealt in hats, mercery, haberdashery,
grocery, linens, hemp, soap, packthread, honey, and other goods. He had in
addition considerable stocks of malt, rye, and barley, and leased a close at
Abbey Gate for his dairy and stables, leaving goods and chattels valued at
£359. (fn. 71) Thus grocers developed into mercers.
Robert and Mary had a large family:
Elizabeth b 1565 m.
Robert Orpwood (Goldsmith) of London
Mary b
1569 m Rev Thomas Sacheverill
Nathaniel b 1570
Tobias b 1572
m Elizabeth Yard
Ruth b
1573 m George Rogers
Our
lineage
Frances b 1575
m Thomas Noble
Sarah b
1575 m James Andrew
Hester b 1576
m William Walker
Martha b 1585
m John Wheeler
Susanna b 1587
Dorcas b 1590
m John Collier
1608 JAMES
ANDREW, (Mercer).
(207) Probably a
son of Thomas Andrew of Leic. 1560 ; was born in 1552, admitted a freeman of
the borough 1580~1, and elected a chamberlain in 1593, a coroner in 1605, again
mayor in 1621 and signed the memorial, already referred to, for Sunday shop
closing in 1606. He died leaving issue in 1627, aged seventy~five, and was
buried at St. Martin's 25 July. M.I. was formerly to be seen on an old blue
stone stript of its brasses in the north aisle of the church. Will, dated 8 May
1627. was proved at Leic. 9 November following.
Elizabeth's brother was also an Alderman and Mayor.
1613 THOMAS MANBY, (Gentleman). (211)
Third son of AId. William Manby, mayor in 1556; was
baptized at St. Martin's 4 June 1560, admitted a freeman 1584,5, a member of
the company of the forty, eight 1591, one of the borough chamberlains 1592 and
an alderman 1593. Originally a grocer by trade but had retired from business
activities by the time of his mayoralty. His daughter Joan, married her
kinsman, Robert Manby of Worlabye,
co. Lincoln.
AId. Manby was an energetic mayor. He was seriously
ill during his term of office, but had sufficiently recovered and was able to
welcome, on behalf of the borough, King James I who came to Leic. 18 August
1614. His name disappears from the list of aldermen after 29 September 1618. He
left Leic. shortly afterwards and settled at Wragby, co. Lincoln, where he died
a few weeks later. The parish register of Wragby thus records his burial
"Thomas Manby, gent., was buried at Wragby 2nd February 1618(,9)." By
his will, bearing date 14 December 1618 and proved in the P.C.C., London, 24
February 1618,9, he desired to be buried in Wragby church near the grave of his
daughter and made bequests to Wigston's hospital and to the poor of Leic.
The following is a google translated will of Robert
Orpwill, the language is very interesting.
Robert Orpwood
Robert Orpwood,· citizen and goldsmith of London. Will
dat. 18 Aug. 7 Jac.I.; proved 7 Sept. 1609 by Elizth Orpwoodt the relict. My
father-in-law Mr Robert Heirick £40. My mother-in-law MrI' Eliz. Heirick £20.
My brother Mr Tho· Orpwood of Abington £50' My brother wm Orpwood '£50. My brother
Richd Orpwood £20. My brother Francis Orpwood £100. My broiherin-law Mr Tobias
Heirick of Houghton, co. Leic., £13 6s. Sd. My brother-inlaw Thomas Sacheverell
of Leicester £40. My sister Ruth Rogers £10. My sister Frances Noble £5. My
sister Wheeler in London £6 13s. 4d. My sister Susanna, Heirick, who dwelt with
me, £13 6s. 8d. My sister Dorcas Heirick £5. My sister Hester Walker of
Stanford.5 marks. My Aunt Houlden in London £10. My Aunt Cowell of London £6
13s. 4d. Poor of the Hospital in Abington, Berks, £50' Poor of the old Hospital
in the New Worke by Leicester
£7. Poor of Wigston's Hospital in Leicester £3.
Residue to my wife Elizth, sole Ex'trix. My father-in-law Mr Robt Heirick and
my brother Sr Wm Heirick of London, Overseers. Goldsmiths' Company £10 for a
dinner. Richd Hudson of Leicester 40s. Witn. Tho. Sacheverell, Robt Stoke, Wm
Harry, Robt
Marsham, John Whatton. (84, Dorsett.)
This is an excerpt from Leicestershire Archaeological
and Historical Society regarding John and Robert Herrick's
wills.
"The two Herrick wills are, of course, the gems.
John's the shorter introduces us to the household of a well-to-do tradesman who
has worked hard, served twice as the civic head of his community and raised a
numerous family - the inscription on his tombstone in the cathedral testifies
that he and Mary his wife lived together in the same house for more than
52years "and in all that tyme never buried man, woman nor childe, though
they were sometimes 20 in the household" a- a proud boast, surely, and a
rare one, in those days of large-scale infant mortality and frequent
visitations of the plague.
Incidentally, one wonders how a copy of Calvin's
translation of the Bible into French came his way, as he is unlikely to have
had much, if any acquaintance with that tongue, though he certainly used the
book to good purpose, after his own fashion, by stripping off the covers and
utilising them to rebind his New Testament, doubtless by that time somewhat the
worse for wear. His possession of the book De Proprietatibus Rerum seems
to indicate some interest in the natural sciences.
More important still is the very detailed will of
Robert his son, himself thrice mayor, a clear and admirably drafted document,
registering, albeit incidentally, the considerable rise in the family fortune
effected in less than 30 years by his skill and exertion. The items of
clothing, plate and furnishings bequeathed afford lively glimpses of the good
house he kept and the state and dignity in which he must have gone to church
and about his civic functions. His lodestone and crystal suggest that he
inherited his father's scientific interests.
One would like to have seen his collection of
pictures, of which one alone can now be identified, his own splendid
three-quarter portrait that hangs in the Guildhall. It is perhaps to be
deplored that he is displayed in the severe black of his churchgoing attire, in
which, indeed, he makes a most becoming figure, but one longs for the
"grograine gowne with the tuftaffatie cape"
Robert Herrick, like his father, was buried in St.
Martin's. The tombstone now exposed to view on the floor at th West end
of St. Catherine's chapel is only a copy of the original slab, which Mr Colin
Ellis found recently under the carpet just to the E of it. This slab, of
dark slate (approximate dimensions 80 in by 34 in) is very badly perished, and
the inscription in places almost obliterated.
And a copy of Robert Herrick's will
Robert Heyrick [32] of Leicester, Alderman. Will dat.
26 March 1617; pr.30 July 1618 by Eliz. Heyricke and Eliz. Orpwood,
Ex'trices.
To my WIfe
Elizth my now dwelling house for life, and my da.
Orpwood to live with her,and my Said wife to have the Gray fJ'ryers etc. for
life, and my da. Orpwood to have her key and walks for her recreation for life,
remr to my son Tobias. Also to my Said wife the Tenter close and other lands,
and certain plate, etc.
To my son Tobias Heyricke, parson of Houghton, land
sometime Mr Dannett's, as appears by a deed between my brother Yarde* and me.(Son
in law Yarde) Also to my said son my great signet, my seal with my grandfather
Bond's arms, my watch, etc. To his wife a tent in Goswell Gate
To my da. Dorcas my Inn called the White Hartand also
her Cithern and a chair which was the Duchess of Suffolk's.
My brother Sir Wm Heyrick, Knt.; and his son Robert,
my godson. My godson Robt Heyrick, son of my brother Nicholas. My son Hills of
London and his wife. My cousin Mrs Kynnersley, widow, and her son Mr John
Kynnersley.
My godson Robert Noble, son of my son Noble. My
goddau. Kath. Noble.
My godson John Wheeler. Elizth Walker £10 at marriage.
Vincent Norrington and Symon Norrington. My sister Holden. My brother Tho'
Heyrick.
My brother John. My brother Manbye. My son Sachevere
and his son Joseph and dau. Susanna. John Whatton. Robt Billers.
John Williams,
my --;s;,t~ Robert Orp.,,,od and Elizabeth hi. widow (she subsequently married
John Whatton) were buried ill"
My son-in-law M' George Rogers, clerk, and my
dau. Ruth his wife. My son-in-law M' John Wheeler and Martha his wife. My
son-in-law M' Tho' Noble and Frances his wife. My wife Elizabeth and my da.
Eliz. Orpwood to be Ex'trices. My son-in-law Mr Tho'Sacheverell, my son-in-law
Mr James Andrewe, and 111y cousin wm Davye, Overseers. My brother-in-law Geo.
Brookes. My son Andrewe and his son James Andrewe.
To the Hospital of the Holy Trinity in Newarke, near
Leicester, a yearly rent of £5 10S. out of the land called the Grey ffryars.
Witn. Tho· Sacheverill, John Whatton, wm Allatt. (73, Meat/e.)
Mary Eyrick [wid. of 151 of Leycester the Elder
Iornemonger. Will dat. 5 Feb. 1611. To be buried in Sent Martin's chirch in
Lester in the N. side of the liberary neare to the grave of my husband. My
goods to son Thomas Erick & my dau. Mary Erick between them. To Sir William
my youngist sone aston pote covered with silver. To his wife my lady Eyrick one
pay' of blankites of linsy wolsy of my one makinge. To my doughter Master
Robert Ericke's wyfe my best gowne. Executor: my son Thomas Eyrick.
Proved at Leicester 4 August 1612 by the
exor. (u;cesler Wills, 16, 2, No. 26.)
Trying to find the family of George Rogers who married
Ruth Herrick had been very difficult!
He is where my lineage separates.
Trinity Hospital, Leicester
The Duchy of Lancaster is
responsible for appointing the Chaplain of Trinity Hospital in Leicester, a foundation
which provides almshouse-type accommodation for elderly residents.
In 1331 Henry Grosmont, 3rd
Earl of Lancaster and Leicester, founded an almshouse for fifty poor and infirm
persons, in the Newarke, Leicester. His son Henry, also Duke of Lancaster,
established a chantry college in 1354-56. The Hospital was linked with the
College, and the number of poor people increased to 100. One penny a day was
allowed for the maintenance of each poor person. Further benefactions were made
later by John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.
In 1614, King James I
granted a new Charter, and gave the institution the name “Hospital of the Holy
Trinity”. The Mayor of Leicester was to be the Master during his term of
office, assisted by four senior Aldermen and two Borough Chamberlains, while
the Chaplain was to be appointed by the Duchy of Lancaster.
The medieval building
remained unaltered until it was rebuilt in 1776, largely at the expense of King
George III. The residential portion had to be rebuilt again in 1901-2 when
accommodation for thirty-six residents was provided.
In 1994, the old hospital
premises were sold as it was no longer feasible to maintain them, and a nearby
site on Western Boulevard was purchased. The new building, with self-contained
flats for twenty-two elderly residents and a warden, was formally opened in
1995 and the new Chapel consecrated by the Bishop of Leicester.
The Master of Trinity
Hospital continues to be the Lord Mayor of Leicester during his or her term of
office. The Governors, who meet quarterly, consist of six members nominated by
the Council, the Chaplain, the Master and four co-opted members.
An ancient stipend of £246
per annum has been paid by the Duchy of Lancaster to the Hospital since its
foundation in 1331. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is a Visitor to
Trinity Hospital and appoints the Chaplain by Letters Patent on behalf of Her
Majesty.
The present Chaplain is The
Reverend Canon Barry Naylor who was appointed in October 2009.
The will of Elizabeth (Manbey)
Elizabeth Heyricke of Leicestnr, widow, [J:z.] Will
dat. 3 Feb. 1'623; pro 9 Oct. 1626 by Eliz. Orpwood. To be burd in the Library
of S' Martin's Church, near my husband.
My son Tobias Heyricke, his wife and 5 childD•
The pictures of my husband and Sir Wm Heyricke to my da. Orpwood for life, and
after to the Town of Leicester.
My da. Ruth Rogers, her husbd George Rogers, her eld.
da. Eliz'h Rogers, and her other children under age. Mary and Susanna
Wheeler, under age, children of my da. Martha Wheeler. Children of my da. Wheeler
which she had bv her first husband.
My da. Noble, her husbd Mr Tho' Noble, her son George
Noble (my godson) under age, and her da. Eliz.Noble (my godda.), and the rest
of my da. Noble's children under age.
My da.Susanna Hills and her childn •
My da. Dorcas Collier and her son Rob' Collier, ,under
age. The rest of my da. Collier's children (under age) which she had by her
first husband.
Robt Rogers, under age, eld. son of my son Rogers.
Vincent Norringe ($lt-? Norrington]
and Elizth Walker his sister. Symon Norrington.
I)
My sister Houlden. My cousin Chettle and her da.
Susanna Miller. My goddau. the wife of my cousin Tho' Heyrick. My cousin Wm
Davey. My cousin Anne Jonson. My godda. Eliz. Manbee. My da. Sacheverell and
her son Joseph and her da. Susanna. My cousin James Andrewe. My cousin Tho'
Manbee, my brother Manbee's son.
Men and women of the Hospitals at Leicester ad. each.
Residue to my da. Eliz. Orpwood, Ex'trix. My son-in-law M' Thos Sacheverell, my
son-in-law Mr james Andrewe, and my·cousin Mr
Wm Davy,
Oversers. Witn. Rob' Dawkins, Alex' Juge, Richd
Shippie, ChristianThomas Sacheverill, Of Leicester, clt:rk. Will dat. 2 Sept.
1626.
Some Children's wills.
Mary Ericke,·
[33] of Lester, the doughter of John Ericke Iornemonger.
Willl no date, probably circa 1612]' All ~ly lands
which my father gave between my brother Thomas Eyricke & me, I give to my
said brother Thomas Eyricke & his heires. Also, all my goods. To be buried
in Sent Martine's church of Lester, so near my mother as may he. Exor: my
brother Thomas
Eyrick. Witnesses: Katherne Dod & Thomas Eyrick.
Will proved at Leicester 4 August 1612 by Tho. Eyrick.-(utCester
Wills, 1612, No. 25.
Dorcas Colliar, [52],
of 8t. Martin's Leicester. WiII dat. 29 Uct. 1631. Sons john C., Robert, &
daughter Ann. My sisters Whatton, Gillat, Hall, Heyrick, SacheveH:ll, &
Collier. Ex·or: by brother Mr. John Whatton, esq. Proved 23 ~Nov. 16.11 at
Leicester.-(Reg;stt"l." ROtIk 1628-1631, fo. 256.)
His brother's will
John Ericke of
Marchasiowe aI's Markiowe, co. Cornwall, gent. Will dat.20 Aug. 1621; pro 8
Sep. 1621 by Alexander Oliver, senr. To be burd in the church of S' Illarye, and to the Sd Church
20". All my lands to my eld. son John Erick. All my goods and chattels to
Thomas Ericke my son and Mary
Erick my da. when of full age. My sister-ill-law
Eliz'h Oliver £20 at marrec• Residue to my father-in-law Alex' Oliver the
elder, sole Ex'or, to whome my ri~ht in the lands and livings which I bought of
Tho' Trevnwith, Esq. Witn.Rlchd Baylye, Alex' Simons, Alexr Olives, jun',
The Herrick Ancestors -
They were baptised, married, and buried in Leicester Cathedral, Leicestershire in England The cathedral contains four separate chapels, three of which are dedicated to a different saint. St Katharine's and St Dunstan's Chapels act as side chapels and are used occasionally for smaller services and vigils. St George's Chapel, which is located at the back (or west) of the cathedral commemorates the armed services, and contains memorials to those from Leicestershire who have been killed in past conflicts. The new Chapel of Christ the King adjoins the East Window. St Katharine's Chapel is located on the north side of the Cathedral to the left of the sanctuary. In the window above the altar is St Katharine, who was tied to a wheel and tortured (hence the firework named after her). Below this is a carved panel showing Jesus on the cross with Mary and John on either side of him. St Francis of Assisi and the 17th-century poet Robert Herrick are also pictured — indeed, the chapel is sometimes referred to as the "Herrick Chapel". St Dunstan's Chapel, located on the other side of the chancel to St Katharine's Chapel, is specially put aside for people to pray in. A candle burns in a hanging lamp to show that the sacrament of Christ's body and blood is kept here to take to those who are too ill to come to church. The walls of the chapel are covered with memorials to people who have prayed in the chapel. St Dunstan was Archbishop of Canterbury in the 10th century, and scenes from his life are depicted in the south-east window. St George's Chapel was the chapel of the Guild of St George. The effigy of England's national saint, on a horse, was kept here and borne through the streets annually on 23 April in a procession known as "riding the George". The legend of George killing a dragon is shown in one of the chapel's windows. |
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