HENDEN, Edward (1567-1644), of Gray’s Inn and Biddenden Place, Kent; later of Serjeants’ Inn, Fleet Street, London

Henden’s ancestors were Kent clothiers, who originally settled at Henden, near Woodchurch, but moved to Benenden. E. Foss, ‘Legal Celebrities of Kent’, Arch. Cant. v. 33; E. Hasted, Kent, vii. 175. The first of his family to proceed to higher education, Henden befriended George Abbot, the future archbishop of Canterbury, while at Balliol College, Oxford. PROB 11/164, f. 212. He subsequently entered the inns of court, where he kept detailed reports of Elizabethan cases which survive in manuscript. Harl. 1331. In 1614 the corporation of Rye, about a dozen miles from his birthplace, offered him a seat in the Addled Parliament as an economy measure, since as reader of Gray’s Inn he could be expected to bear his own charges. E. Suss. RO, Rye 47/68 (corp. to Henden, 7 Mar. 1614). On 9 Apr. he was added to the committee for privileges. In his maiden speech on 6 May he supported a bill to reduce the cost of defending title to land against the Crown. In the debate on the highways bill on the next day, he ‘moved to have an addition for mending bridges’. He was among those appointed on 13 May to consider a bill enabling an east Sussex gentleman to pay his debts. On the second reading of the bill to establish a hospital at East Grinstead under the will of the 2nd earl of Dorset (Robert Sackville*), he moved that ‘the lessees and parties interested may attend the committee and be heard’. He agreed with Sir Edward Hoby that Richard Martin* should be reprimanded for his offensive remarks as counsel for the Virginia Company, but disagreed with Sir Roger Owen on requiring all members of the Virginia Council to withdraw. He was also named to committees to consider the repeal of the Fish Packing Act, a matter of interest to his constituency, and to recommend ‘some course concerning the old debts’. Procs. 1614 (Commons), 166, 173, 258, 276.

Henden’s practice was sufficiently lucrative for him to proceed to the dignity of the coif in 1616 ‘for a large sum of money’, and to purchase Biddenden Place, in the next parish to Benenden, from Sir Anthony Mayney*. Order of Sjts.-at-Law, 328; Hasted, vii. 132. He successfully defended the town clerk of Rye and a former mayor in the Exchequer in 1618, Cal. of White and Black Bks. of Cinque Ports ed. F. Hull (Kent Recs. xix), 419-20. and acted as counsel for lord keeper Williams at a parliamentary inquiry in 1624 into a complaint of denial of justice to Lady Darcy over her claim to a Surrey advowson. ‘Nicholas 1624’, f. 262v. In 1626 Archbishop Abbot appointed him steward of his estates in Kent in succession to Sir Robert Hatton*. That same year Sir John Hippisley* believed that Henden was collaborating with Sir Dudley Digges* in setting up Hatton against Buckingham’s henchman Sir Edwin Sandys*, in the Kent county election. Bodl. Rawl. A346, f. 226.

In 1633 Henden was bequeathed the bible kept by in Archbishop Abbot’s study at Lambeth. PROB 11/164, f. 212. He contributed £50 to the expenses of the First Bishops’ War in 1639, SP16/538/84. when he was also appointed an Exchequer baron. At the Somerset assizes in 1642 he refused to read Parliament’s condemnation of the commission of array, and the Commons prepared to impeach him. The committee never reported, however, and he was allowed to retire peacefully to his Kentish estate during the Civil War. W.R. Prest, Rise of the Barristers, 368. In November 1643 the committee for the advancement of money imposed on him the punitive assessment of £2,000. His nephew and heir, Sir John Henden, had paid in half by 11 Jan. 1644, but by this time he may have been dead, for two days later Sir John was given leave to go down to Biddenden to make arrangements for his funeral. The balance was cleared by the end of the following month. CCAM, 301. Henden was buried on 23 Jan. in the chancel of Biddenden church, as requested in his will of 7 June 1643. Cent. Kent. Stud. PRC 31/122, f. 292; Cent. Kent. Stud. CP26/1/2, f. 317. His nephew was appointed sheriff of Kent for 1646-7, but was accused of complicity with the royalists in the Second Civil War. Despite the efforts of John Wildman†, he was cleared. CCAM, 1281-2. No later member of the family served in Parliament.