Established in East Anglia for many centuries, the Hobart family rose to prominence through Sir James Hobart of Hales Hall, attorney-general and privy councillor to Henry VII. Hobart attended Cambridge University before entering Lincoln’s Inn in 1576.
Knighted at James I’s coronation, Hobart continued his swift rise up the legal ranks under the new king, who shortly after his accession confirmed his predecessor’s decision to call him to the coif. Elected to his fourth Parliament in 1604, Hobart, who served for Norwich, was appointed to many of the major committees during the first session, including the privileges committee (22 Mar.) and the committee to examine the grievances identified by Sir Edward Montagu (23 March).
During the first session Hobart was appointed to joint conferences on wardship (26 Mar.) and the Union (20 Apr. and 4 May). In preparation for the second of these Union conferences he was ordered, on 27 Apr., to help examine the differences between the laws of both kingdoms. The conference itself was concerned with drafting a bill to appoint parliamentary commissioners for the Union, a measure which Hobart later helped to review (22 May).
Before the opening of the second session Hobart resigned his serjeantcy and became attorney of the Court of Wards, having been appointed by the 1st earl of Salisbury (Robert Cecil†), to whom the king had given the right of nomination.
Throughout the second session Hobart acted as a government spokesman, taking the lead in the response to the Gunpowder Plot and the problem of recusancy. On 21 Jan. he was named to the committee to consider how to act against Jesuits and prevent further plots, and nine days later moved that the committee for religion should meet that afternoon. On 4 Feb. he reported from the committee on the fourth and fifth articles drawn up against recusants. These dealt with women taking the oath of allegiance and the payment by a husband for his wife’s recusancy. Later that month he announced that some matters still had to be considered regarding the two articles. On 5 Mar. he was appointed to help draft the general recusancy bill,
During the debates on purveyance, Hobart proved to be an impressive defender of the king’s prerogative, while also acknowledging the system’s flaws. On 25 Feb. 1606 he announced that purveyance had been ‘ever enjoyed by former kings’. At this stage he did not think that composition was either fair or practicable, but by 11 Mar. he had changed his opinion, perhaps having been persuaded by Salisbury to argue for a settled agreement. Hobart now called purveyance ‘a stumbling-block between the subject and the king’, and while reaffirming the king’s prerogative, he noted that the Commons must ‘think of some course that we may never hear of this grievance again’. He himself proposed that the House should compound, as by the Magna Carta and other statutes the king was permitted the right to pay fixed prices.
Hobart intervened in the subsidy debate on 14 Mar. after Sir William Skipworth suggested that the wealthy should voluntarily increase their contribution. Hobart ‘despised’ Skipworth’s ‘imputation of flattery’, but went on to explain that James needed more subsidies than had been offered in order to pay off the debts and loans contracted by Elizabeth and to counteract the effect of debasing the coinage. The following day Skipworth ‘cleareth himself of the imputation of flattery yesterday, and returneth it upon Sir Henry Hobart, to be blown into the mouth from whence it came’. On 25 Mar. Hobart again supported the king’s request for additional supply, arguing that, as Elizabeth’s debts had accumulated as a result of war, any subsidy granted now would actually be used to pay off the costs of war rather than meet peacetime needs.
During the second session Hobart was named to 17 committees for private bills or measures of a local nature. Four were particularly significant to his Norwich constituents, namely those to make good the grants and conveyances of corporations (25 Jan.), to explain the 1504 Act for executing ordinances by guilds and corporations (28 Feb.), to confirm lands given to corporations for charitable uses (19 Mar.) and concerning taxes imposed on merchants (19 March).
Shortly after the session ended, (Sir) Francis Gawdy†, chief justice of Common Pleas, died and was succeeded by Sir Edward Coke*. This left vacant the office of attorney-general, which was granted to Hobart on 4 July 1606. Sir Francis Bacon was greatly displeased, as he considered that the solicitor-general, Sir John Doddridge*, should have been promoted to Common Pleas, thereby leaving the position of solicitor-general free for himself. Hobart’s elevation caused Bacon to develop a life-long enmity towards Hobart. Bacon later promised himself to ‘have in mind and use the att[orney’s] weaknesses’. Nevertheless, Bacon envied Hobart’s ability to get on with those around him, reminding himself ‘to have particular occasions ... to maintain private speech w[i]th every the great persons and sometimes drawing more than one of them together, ex imitatione att[orney]’.
At the opening of the 1606-7 session, the question arose whether Hobart should continue to sit in the Commons, for as attorney-general he had been summoned by writ of assistance to the Lords. On 22 Nov. 1606 a specially appointed committee reported that no precedents had been found to enable the attorney-general to sit, though others had been discovered relating to the solicitor-general and queen’s serjeants. The committee was divided over what to do, as was the House. Matters were made worse after the Speaker, who proved unable to determine whether the ayes or the noes had the most voices, called for a division. Members could not decide which side should leave the chamber and so, ‘without concluding anything in the point, a silence followed’. Sir William Maurice attempted to move the reading of a bill, but was overruled and Members remained silent for another half an hour before the Speaker adjourned the House.
From the outset of the third session Hobart was deeply involved in the main business before the Commons, namely the Union. Despite being a leading government spokesman, Hobart retained the confidence of the House and was not afraid to stress the difficulties of achieving the Union. In a long speech on 22 Nov. he argued against proceeding towards a perfect Union, as he thought the commissioners should be allowed to finish their work before there was any further discussion. Hobart also objected to the proposal to approach the king directly, as previously the Commons had proceeded in tandem with the Lords. Finally, he corrected those who had criticized the motto on the coin of the realm, faciam eos in gentum unam, pointing out that as the future tense was employed, a future rather than present Union of the two kingdoms was implied. Hobart was then named to the joint conference on the Union.
In contrast to his attitude towards the hostile laws bill, Hobart supported the government’s position on naturalization. On 18 Feb. he warned the Commons that the Scots ‘are naturalized in France, not with any love to them, but to draw them from us. Beware we leave them not loose, lest they be linked nearer to France than stands with our safety’. Two days later Hobart argued against passing a resolution on naturalization as it would offend the Lords, and on 21 Feb. he again supported the Crown’s position. On 7 Mar. he was named a manager of the joint conference on naturalization and given particular responsibility for examining the matter of wardship. Throughout the debates, both in the House and at the conferences, Hobart remained a staunch supporter of the king, forcibly arguing that the matter of the ante-nati should be left to the judges to decide.
Probably because of his involvement with the Union as well as his duties as attorney-general, Hobart was not appointed to as many legislative committees as before. Of the 11 bill committees to which he was named, four concerned private measures: the relief of Mary Cavendish (4 Dec.), confirmation of Sir Roger Aston’s* purchase of Soham manor, Cambridgeshire (13 Dec.), Robert Bathurst’s right to Lechlade, Gloucestershire (15 Dec.) and John Good’s* conveyance of lands to the king (1 July), which Hobart reported to the House two days later.
In the fourth session, in 1610, Hobart was appointed to the joint conference on the Great Contract which met on 15 Feb., and together with Sir Francis Bacon reported to the House two days later. On 19 Feb., and again nine days later, he argued against insisting upon redress of grievances before supply. Instead, he favoured proceeding with both together, although he first wished the House to approve the provision of subsidies in principle.
During the debates on impositions in late June and early July, Hobart argued that the king was entitled to impose. On 29 June he announced that he would ‘endeavour in this question to speak shortly as fittest in Parliament, and as evenly as I can, walk between the king’s right and the people’s freedom’. First, he reassured his listeners that the king could not make new laws nor change those in existence without Parliament’s approval. However, he added, the question is:
whether the king may impose upon merchandize exported and imported by the Common Law, where there is no restraint to the contrary; secondly, whether the king be restrained by any statute in toto or in tanto, whereby you may perceive it is de mero iure.
Hobart asserted that while the king could not prohibit the carriage of goods or movement of people within the kingdom, he did have the right to forbid and regulate overseas trade and travel, and hence
if he may restrain, then he may impose. For as when the law did forbid the exportation of wools, the king turned that to profit by dispensations with that statute; so when he may restrain, he may impose by way of dispensation for that restraint, and that he may do by Common Law. Therefore he may by Common Law impose; and if he might not by law, yet sure he may by reason of state, in foro mundi if not in foro fori.
Hobart supported this statement with numerous precedents showing that former kings had levied impositions, sometimes with parliamentary approval.
During the same session Hobart led the Commons’ attack on Dr. Cowell’s book, The Interpreter, which offered a ‘presumptuous novelty’ in claiming that the two Houses could only make law in Parliament by the king’s goodwill. His handling of the subject at a joint conference on 2 Mar. won high praise from London’s ambitious recorder, Sir Henry Montagu, who was pleased that ‘a question so tender [was] handled so safely’ and called him a ‘champion for a kingdom’. The Lords accepted Hobart’s arguments, and in the subsequent trial Cowell was prosecuted by Hobart.
Hobart drafted and sponsored the bill for the draining of fenland in Norfolk, and urged Robert Bowyer*, the clerk of the parliaments, to speed its passage through the Lords.
In the summer of 1611 Hobart was taken seriously ill and not expected to live, prompting Bacon to solicit James for his office. However, Hobart recovered during the autumn.
sorteth not so well with his present place [as attorney-general], being a man timid and scrupulous both in Parliament and in other business, and one that in a word was made fit for the late lord treasurer’s bent, which was to do little with much familiarity and protestation.
Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, iv. 381.
Following his appointment as chief justice, Hobart was granted right of access to his former stamping ground of Lincoln’s Inn, to whose governors he had recently lent £500 for building.
The king’s decision to bar judges from riding the circuit of their birth or residence meant that Hobart was allocated the Western circuit in 1614. However, his tenure there was brief, for like most of the judges he had reservations about the guilt of Edward Peacham, whom James wished to have convicted for treason. Hobart was therefore ‘exiled’ to the difficult Home circuit.
did so anatomize the cause and gave so good reasons of every particular that he brought down the one fine to £30,000 ... adding withal that the institution of the court was not to ruin men and their families, that it might fine, but not [to] ransom so far as that salvo contentimento (a phrase of Magna Carta) a man should not have the means to uphold his degree ...
However, Hobart’s success in reducing Suffolk’s punishment was not universally popular. Chamberlain remarked that ‘he hath got no good by it to himself, and shall find little thanks for his labour.
During the course of a long legal career, Hobart accumulated extensive estates throughout Norfolk, including the manor of Ripton Hall, which he bought in 1608, and Cawston manor, which he acquired from the Crown in 1610.
Hobart died on 26 Dec. 1625 and was buried on 4 Jan. 1626 in Blickling parish church. Following his death, Sir Henry Spelman* lamented a ‘great loss to the commonweal’.