CALDICOTT, Matthias (d.1647), of Dorset House, Salisbury Court, London and Knole Park, Sevenoaks, Kent; later of Sherrington, Selmeston, Suss.

Caldicott was apparently of Cambridgeshire yeoman stock, but he stated in his will that he was born at Esher in Surrey. PROB 11/202, f. 41. He cannot have been the son of Clement Caldicott and Jane Waller as a pedigree compiled in 1662 claims, as the licence for Clement and Jane’s marriage was not issued until 1618. Clement was presumably his elder brother. Vis. Suss. (Harl. Soc. lxxxix), 22; Mar. Lics. at Lewes ed. E.H.W. Dunkin (Suss. Rec. Soc. i), 110. Caldicott had presumably entered the service of Richard Sackville, subsequently the 3rd earl of Dorset, by 1609, when he witnessed Sackville’s clandestine marriage to the great heiress, Lady Anne Clifford.HMC 4th Rep. 310. He subsequently fell out with Lady Anne, who in 1617 complained to the bishop of London of Caldicott’s ‘ill offices’, and tried to prevent the marriage Dorset arranged for Caldicott with her kinswoman, Anne Apsley, the sister-in-law of Sir Albertus Morton*. Clifford Diary ed. V. Sackville-West, 27, 60, 65, 70; Blaauw, iv. 225. Caldicott acquired a share in the Virginia Company from John Ferrar* in 1623, the transfer being approved at a meeting of the Company’s court attended by Dorset’s brother, Sir Edward Sackville*. Recs. Virg. Co. ii. 295.

Caldicott was returned for East Grinstead on the Sackville interest the following year, when he received two committee appointments, to consider bills against scandalous and unworthy ministers (22 Mar.) and for the relief of creditors (17 April). CJ, i. 746a, 769b. He made no recorded speeches. He was present at Dorset’s deathbed on 28 Mar. 1624, and witnessed his will. Although not himself a beneficiary, he was asked to see to the division of clothing among other servants ‘by his discretion’. PROB 11/143, f. 211. He had evidently been well provided for already, and in 1626 he was able to purchase the manor of Sherrington, near the foot of the South Downs. Suss. Manors and Advowsons ed. H.W. Dunkin (Suss. Rec. Soc. xx.), 392. Four years later he acquired the reversion, after Anne Clifford, to a moiety of Meeching in nearby Newhaven, but the countess outlived him. F. Bentham Stevens, ‘Manors of Meeching and Plompton Piddinghoe’ Suss. N and Q, xv. 40. In 1631 he paid £25 for his knighthood composition. E401/2450, unfol.

Caldicott drew up his will on 5 Apr. 1647, in which he left his son a diamond ring given him by Dorset, and his son-in-law ‘a chest of viols with the arms of my late noble and much honoured lord ... now at my chamber at the sign of The Angel in Cornhill, London’. The will was proved on 9 Oct. following. No later member of the family sat in Parliament. PROB 11/202, f. 41.