HEWETT, Thomas (1605-1662), of The Strand, Westminster and Pishiobury, Sawbridgeworth, Herts.

The eldest son of a prosperous London merchant and moneylender, Hewett received an exceptional education, attending the Merchant Taylors’ school, the Inner Temple, Eton and Cambridge. In 1625 Hewett received a licence to travel for three years, and on his return he secured his election for Windsor to the third Caroline Parliament on his father’s interest, by way of completing his education. He left no mark on the records of the House. In 1635 he bought, for £16,500, the manor of Pishiobury from the earl of Middlesex (Sir Lionel Cranfield*), and settled in Hertfordshire. Clutterbuck, iii. 201; M. Prestwich, Cranfield, 505-6. Prestwich incorrectly states that Pishiobury’s buyer was Sir John Hewett. There, in 1637, he became a trustee for Lady Elizabeth Bevill, the widow of Sir Robert Bevill*. HALS, ms 74967; Vis. Herts. (Harl. Soc. xxii), 64. Shortly after his father’s death he served as sheriff, and complained of the county’s backwardness in paying Ship Money.CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 586. He seems to have taken little part in the Civil War, during which time he and his wife were assessed at £1,500 between them in The Strand, CCAM, 176. but he accepted local office under Parliament. After he had refused to protect the Quakers of Sawbridgeworth from persecution, a pamphleteer observed bitterly that he was ‘wise enough in his generation to keep out of the way of danger from forfeiting his estate’, and at the Restoration he was created a baronet. Further Evidence of the Aforementioned Thomas Hewet his Disaffection (1659), p. 2. He died on 4 Aug. 1662, expecting ‘the resurrection of the just’, and was buried at Sawbridgeworth, where his memorial inscription recorded that he had lived ‘piously, justly, soberly, contentedly, a rare example to others’. He left £13,000 between his five unmarried daughters. His only surviving son was created an Irish peer in 1689, but died unmarried shortly afterwards. VCH Herts. iii. 336; PROB 11/309, f. 157; Clutterbuck, iii. 216.