HYDE, Lawrence I (c.1562-1642), of the Middle Temple, London; The Close, Salisbury, Wilts. and Heale House, Woodford, Wilts.

Hyde, a younger son, trained as a lawyer at the Middle Temple and was called to the bar shortly before his father died. Although he inherited little property, he prospered sufficiently to purchase Heale House in Wiltshire in 1600, and also a house in the cathedral close at Salisbury, where he was retained as counsel to the dean and chapter. VCH Wilts, vi. 224; Wilts. Arch. Mag. xxxix. 123. He succeeded his father as auditor to the 1st earl of Hertford, who probably recommended him in 1604 for election at Marlborough, where his younger brother Nicholas lived. Add. 5496, f. 104v; VCH Wilts. v. 116; HMC Bath, iv. 181, 336. Hyde was remembered by his nephew Edward Hyde†, later 1st earl of Clarendon, as a barrister ‘of great name and practice’. Clarendon, Life (1827), i. 3.

It is often impossible to distinguish between Hyde and his brother Nicholas in the first Jacobean Parliament. Although only eight speeches are ascribed to Lawrence by full name, it is clear that he was the more active of the two. At the opening of Parliament ‘Mr. Lawrence Hyde’ was named to two standing committees, one for privileges (22 Mar. 1604) and the other for the continuance or repeal of expiring laws (24 March). CJ, i. 150a, 152b. He was also appointed to consider the grievances raised by Sir Robert Wroth I* and Sir Edward Montagu* on 23 March. HMC Hatfield, xvi. 43; CJ, i. 151b; P. Croft, ‘Parl., Purveyance and the City of London 1589-1608’, PH, iv. 13. One such grievance, monopolies, was the subject of a bill Hyde had himself introduced in the 1601 Parliament. Now he drew up a further bill, this time to restrain the purveyance of carriages. On 26 Mar., together with fellow lawyers Lawrence Tanfield, John Hare and Nicholas Fuller, he was ordered to examine this measure and to draft another if necessary. All four men were also instructed to peruse the existing statutes and report back. CJ, i. 153b. However, the progress of this committee, and indeed all other business, was delayed by the Buckinghamshire election controversy, in response to which Hyde, as a lawyer and experienced Member, was called upon to help draft and present the Commons’ justification for the unseating of Sir John Fortescue* and the return of Sir Francis Goodwin* (27, 28 March). Ibid. 156b. Two days later he argued against conferring with the judges, who had been appointed by James to resolve the matter, until the Commons’ claim to adjudicate on disputed elections had first been put into writing and ‘delivered in all humbleness to the king’. CD 1604-7, p. 37; CJ, i. 940a. A drafting committee was immediately appointed, including Hyde (30 March). He was also named to consider a bill, the need for which arose from the same dispute, to disable outlaws from sitting (31 March). CJ, i. 160a, b. On the receipt of the royal command for a conference with the judges on 5 Apr., Hyde was among the ‘grave and learned persons’ chosen to attend, though on his motion it was resolved that they ‘should insist upon the fortification and explaining of the reasons and answers delivered to His Majesty, and not proceed to any other argument or answer, what occasion soever moved in the time of that debate’. Ibid. 166b; Lansd. 486, f. 13.

In the meantime, on 31 Mar. Hyde brought in a purveyance bill ‘drawn and allowed by the committee’ of four lawyers, and it received its first reading. After a second reading on 3 Apr. it was assigned to the great grievances committee for Wroth’s motion; but Hyde reported two days later that they ‘thought fit to speak with some officers of the Greencloth before they return it to the House’. CJ, i. 160a, 162b, 166b. The purveyors had let it be known that James would veto any purveyance bill that could be perceived as an encroachment on the prerogative, leaving the Commons with a dilemma about how to proceed. On 14 Apr. the House debated whether to petition the king for permission to go on with the bill, a course which Hyde strongly opposed. Regardless of what the officers had said, he argued that it would be better for the bill to be vetoed by James than aborted by themselves, as he said ‘rather let us be denied justice, than not to dare ask it’; but he could not carry the majority with him. It was resolved to draw up a petition, and ‘in the meantime the bill to be deferred’. Ibid. 171b-172a, 190b, 946b; E. Lindquist, ‘King, People, and House of Commons: the problem of early Jacobean purveyance’, HJ, xxxi. 557-8, 568. On 18 Apr. reading of the petition was postponed after a division in favour of a debate on the Union with Scotland, and in response Hyde launched into a personal abuse ‘not fit to be noted or remembered’ which the House later resolved ought to have been suppressed by the Speaker (Sir Edward Phelips). CJ, i. 177b. Hyde was one of those appointed on 27 Apr. to present the petition to the king. Ibid. 188a. On 7 May he reported from a conference with the Lords on purveyance, and was immediately appointed to a select committee to investigate and defend the existing statutes at a further conference. Ibid. 202a. He declared himself ‘utterly opposed’ to proposals for an annual ‘composition’ in lieu of purveyance, and instead pleaded on 11 May ‘that the bill might go on, which is now in the House’. Ibid. 969b; Croft, 15-19. He repeated this, with a motion for the bill to be read, on 23 May. CJ, i. 978a. However, despite his efforts it was resolved to let the bill sleep until the next session. Hyde therefore moved on 29 June that the magistrates be ordered to ‘put the laws, already made, in execution; and that the order should contain the reason, why the fore-said bill slept’. Ibid. 249a.

Hyde took responsibility for the bills to restrain forcible entries and writs of error (12 Apr.), and an explanatory bill on letters patent bearing the same title as the monopolies bill he had devised in 1601 (16 April). Ibid. 944b, 948a. He opposed a bill to discharge arrears of recusancy fines, which was rejected on 17 Apr. after he pointed out that the king would thereby lose £100,000. Ibid. 948b. On 27 Apr. he was appointed to help prepare the arguments ‘of honour and reputation’ against changing the name of the kingdom, one of the key points of James’s proposed Union of England and Scotland. Ibid. 189a. When the king chided the Commons for its dilatoriness over the Union, Hyde moved on 2 May to let it be known that they had taken the rebuke to heart, and was named to a committee to consider ways of giving satisfaction. Ibid. 197a, 963a. He was twice named to committees for bills to regulate usury (9 May; 9 June), a subject on which he entertained strong convictions since he regretted having borrowed at interest in order to purchase his own estate. Ibid. 204b, 235b; PROB 11/196, f. 217. He took the chair in committee for a bill to relieve victims of the plague, but reported on 25 May that it was not fit to be retained, and brought in a new bill to the same purpose. CJ, i. 225b. After attending the conference with the Lords on wardship of 25 May, which made little progress, he decided to avoid liability by compounding in advance on his sons’ behalf. Ibid. 222b; WARD 9/159, f. 170v; HMC Hatfield, xxiii. 132, 135; CSP Dom. Addenda 1580-1625, p. 444. Named in full to the committee for the free trade bill (24 Apr.), he denied that it would overthrow the chartered companies, and urged on 6 June that it should pass with the addition of some words and a limitation to 12 years and the next Parliament thereafter. CJ, i. 183b, 987b. On 12 June he intervened in the debate on the Seymour estate bill, doubtless on Hertford’s behalf, and was named to the committee. Ibid. 991a. The following year the earl of Salisbury (Robert Cecil†) recommended Hyde as recorder of Bristol. Bristol RO, common council procs. 1598-1608, p. 100; Croft, 22.

At the opening of the second session Hyde was again named to the privileges committee (5 Nov. 1605). CJ, i. 256b. In response to the king’s request that Fortescue and Goodwin, the protagonists in the Buckinghamshire election dispute, might be returned for vacant seats, Hyde pointed out on 31 Jan. 1606 that they had not been disabled from sitting and so were eligible to seek election; but he added ‘I am a little jealous what may follow if we receive burgesses by His Majesty’s commendations’. Bowyer Diary, 15. In the wake of the Gunpowder Plot he was included on the committee to consider how to prevent popish conspiracies (9 Nov. 1605). CJ, i. 257b. However, he opposed calls for more stringent recusancy laws, arguing on 3 Feb. 1606 that the existing statutes already extended to recusants’ wives. Ibid. 263b. He spoke on 28th Feb. to discouraged further debate about recusancy, which he perhaps saw as a distraction from more pressing business. Ibid. 275b.

Hyde’s main concern, as in 1604, was with purveyance. By all accounts of his position in the purveyance debates of this and the preceding session, Hyde was deeply sympathetic towards a radical new bill to abolish purveyance, proposed by his colleague John Hare. T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 60. At a conference on 14 Feb. this measure met with the disapproval of the Lords. In response to Hare’s report of the Lords’ reaction, Hyde angrily declared that supply should depend upon redress not just of the abuse of purveyance but of many other outstanding grievances. CJ, i. 269a. When it was learned that the Lords had taken offence at Hare’s management of the purveyance conference, Hyde called for an immediate reply, rather than wait for the next conference. To justify this he cited a previous occasion on which a Lords’ messenger had caused similar offence. The Commons had responded by informing the Upper House and leaving the matter to the peers, and so ‘in like sort they ought to deal with us’. Bowyer Diary, 51. He was therefore appointed to help prepare a message (22 February). CJ, i. 273a. On his motion another conference on purveyance was arranged for 3 Mar., at which, as Hyde reported the following day, the Lords maintained that the bill encroached on the prerogative. Hyde concluded plaintively that ‘if neither custom, law, nor love will help, the Lord help us’. Ibid. 273b, 274b, 277a. In further debate on 6 Mar. he steadfastly opposed plans for an annual ‘composition’ to be paid to the king in lieu of purveyance, which he felt would set a dangerous precedent, and urged the Commons to persevere with its bill: ‘if we do our best, though we prevail not yet we are excused. ... If you shall do otherwise and let it sleep we should as it were kill ourselves’. He argued against voting any subsidies until this grievance and others had been settled. Ibid. 278b-279a; Bowyer Diary, 63; Lindquist, xxxi. 565. Instead, he proposed that ‘the king should be aided in another sort’, such as Privy Seal loans, and the annexing to the Crown of lands forfeited by attainder or recusancy. He also suggested legislation to recall all royal gifts made to importunate but undeserving suitors, and professed himself willing to follow any reasonable course to relieve the king’s wants, ‘but not by composition, nor by increase of subsidy, for that I think if they were here for whom we came they would not do it’. Bowyer Diary, 63; Croft, 26.

Hyde was granted leave of absence on 8 Mar. because his mother had died, and he does not seem to have returned until nearly a month later. CJ, i. 280a. On 3 May he introduced another bill for the better execution of statutes against purveyors, which was engrossed, with amendments, five days later. However, the Lords refused to proceed in it, because it was too similar to the measure they had previously rejected. Ibid. 306b; Bowyer Diary, 144; Croft, 30, E. Lindquist, ‘The bills against purveyors’, PH, iv. 35-6, 38. Hyde’s final intervention of the session, on 12 May, was to support the third reading of the bill of attainder against the Gunpowder plotters, which then passed. CJ, i. 308a. The proposed Union with Scotland occupied much of Hyde’s attention in the third session. After attending the preliminary meeting with the Lords on 25 Nov. 1606, he took the chair in the committee of the whole House (1 Dec.), from which he delivered reports on the Instrument of the Union’s implications with regard to hostile laws (3 Dec.), commerce (4 Dec.) and shipping (5 December). Ibid. 327a, b, 328a. He contributed to further debates on 5 Dec. concerning escuage, a form of tenure in the borders. Ibid. 328a, 1008a. He was appointed on 11 Dec. to a select committee to prepare for a conference with the Lords on these matters, from which he reported two days later that escuage was to be included on the agenda. With his Middle Temple colleague Richard Martin, Hyde was ordered to assist Sir Francis Bacon and Sir Henry Montagu in propounding the Commons’ position. Ibid. 330b, 1011a.

After the Christmas break Hyde chaired the committee of a private bill to confirm the grant of Soham manor to Sir Roger Aston*, which he reported on 18 Feb. 1607. Ibid. 337a. Meanwhile the Union continued to dominate proceedings; there were calls for one Member, Sir Christopher Pigott*, to be expelled for uttering an invective against the Scots, but Hyde favoured a more moderate punishment. Ibid. 1014b. He may have sympathized with Pigott’s attitude, if not his outspokenness, for despite professing to support the Union, Hyde evidently found it increasingly difficult to accept the implications of some of the king’s proposals. On the subject of the Scots’ naturalization, Hyde refused to accept that the post-nati were automatically naturalized by Common Law, and on 18 Feb. he argued that he thought it ‘better to declare them not naturalized’. Ibid. 1017b, 1024b. Although he desired to be excused, he was among the lawyers chosen to manage a conference on naturalization on 25 Feb., in advance of which he chaired a preparation committee. Ibid. 340a, 342b, 1021a. He found it convenient at this point to be called away on circuit, and pleaded on 27 Feb. that having taken fees he could not, with conscience, defraud his clients by neglecting legal business any longer. Ibid. 1022a. Leave was refused, but regardless he ‘made known to the House that he would go out of town’. Both Hyde and his brother were reprimanded on 3 Mar. for being absent when the House was called. Ibid. 346a, b. It was proposed to send for them in custody, but the Speaker, Sir Edward Phelips, obtained six days’ grace for their return. On the last of the allotted days Hyde made his ‘excuse’, announcing that he ‘meant to have come at this time, and ... the House should not have known till he had come’. Ibid. 1029a. His resolute refusal to distinguish between those born before and after the Union of the crowns assured him of the continued confidence of the House, and he was entrusted with reporting another conference on naturalization (13 March). Ibid. 352a; Bowyer Diary, 232; B. Galloway, Union of Eng. and Scot. 1603-8, p. 111.

Hyde informed the Commons on 20 Mar. that Phelips was too ill to take the chair, and he was among those appointed to recommend how to proceed in the Speaker’s absence (23 March). Bowyer Diary, 241; CJ, i. 353b, 354a, 1031b. When normal sittings resumed, Hyde came out in full support of Sir Edwin Sandys’s proposal for a ‘perfect Union’, as he announced on 27 March. Requiring the Scots to give up their separate legal system and abolish the quasi-regal privileges of the Highland chiefs, this proposal was so unlikely to be achieved that it operated, in fact, as a wrecking strategy to derail the entire Union debate whilst ostensibly trying to do the ‘best for both kingdoms’. Bowyer Diary, 243-4; CJ, i. 1033b; Galloway, 115. On 30 Apr. Hyde defended the ‘perfect Union’ as ‘no digression ... no diversion, no frustrating of our former labours’. He proposed to proceed with the repeal of the hostile laws, whereby ‘we give [the Scots] presently substantial kindness, all upon hope of a perfect union to follow’. Bowyer Diary, 280; CJ, i. 1038b. Trial of border offences he would leave to the judges’ discretion, he argued on 5 June, since juries were apt to err on the side of clemency. CJ, i. 1049b. He debated this with the earl of Northampton (Henry Howard) at the conference of 10 June, and was appointed the following day to help improve the drafting of the bill in committee. Bowyer Diary, 326, 357, 362; CJ, i. 382a, 1052b. As the session drew to a close, on 2 July Hyde voted against the continuance of the Unlawful Assemblies Act. Bowyer Diary, 367. His appearance in the ‘Parliament Fart’ poem suggests that he was regarded as a notable stickler for privilege and precedent. J. Mennes, Musarum Deliciae, 68. After the end of the session he appeared as counsel in the naturalization test case known as ‘Calvin’s case’, in which it was that ruled a post-nati Scottish minor, Robert Colville, could inherit an English estate. Galloway, 149.

Hyde was among those ordered to attend the supply conference that opened the business of the fourth session (15 Feb. 1610), most improperly in his opinion, since subsidies should always begin in the Lower House. CJ, i. 393b. Not only was it an encroachment on the power of the Commons to initiate business of this sort, as he declared on 19 Feb., but grants should be deferred until the end of the session, and no subsidy might be voted while its predecessor was still not entirely collected. Ibid. 397a; Parl. Debates 1610 ed. S.R. Gardiner, 9, 10; ‘Paulet 1610’, f. 2. He mentioned grievances, such as monopolies, and leniency towards recusants, which he desired to see redressed before talking of subsidies, a point he reiterated on 28 February. His initial response to the Great Contract was therefore that it was ‘not fit to engage our selves’ to pay further subsidies, until the most pressing grievances had been resolved. CJ, i. 402b. On 21 Mar. he opposed the inclusion of purveyance among the grievances, as proposed by Sir William Borlase, because there was a bill already before the House. Procs. 1610 ed. E.R. Foster, ii. 63. He again stressed on 14 June that when it came to supply it was customary and reasonable ‘never to grant new, till the old be paid’, and called for the laws against recusants and Jesuits to be enforced with a proviso in the subsidy bill. CJ, i. 439a. On 2 July he insisted that another grievance, impositions, was unlawful, and moved for a bill to set out the Common Law in this matter. Parl. Debates 1610, 109. A week later he was chosen, with his brother and other lawyers, to ‘peruse the arguments made in the matter of impositions pro et contra and digest the best of them’, so that it might be on record. ‘Paulet 1610’, f. 23. He was among those ordered to consider the seven propositions for the Contract, which he called ‘a matter of great work’, and to prepare for a conference on 16 July, though his speech in the debate is lost. CJ, i. 449b, 450a. His only other contribution, at the conference on the ecclesiastical canons on 6 July, was to complain that offenders might be punished unheard and objected to automatic excommunication for any dissent, ‘though it be but in one of the least ceremonies’. Foster, Procs. 1610 i. 126.

After the recess Hyde’s attitude towards the Contract seems to have softened, for he described it on 3 Nov. 1610 as a good bargain, despite the high price. ‘If we go not on’, he argued, ‘but fail of our part, we hurt our own honour’. Nevertheless he was resolute that impositions, the main sticking point, should be dealt with by declaratory legislation, to be incorporated into the Contract. Ibid. ii. 397, 399. His final intervention, on 16 Nov., was to move unsuccessfully that the Contract be put to the question. Ibid. ii. 336. The failure of the Contract seems to have ended Hyde’s parliamentary ambitions, and with a large family to provide for he could not afford to neglect his legal practice. He continued to act occasionally as an advisor to the earl of Hertford, whom he petitioned on behalf of the city of Bristol for exemption from exactions concerning the county militia in 1612. Earl of Hertford’s Ltcy. Pprs. 1603-12 ed. W.P.D. Murphy (Wilts. Rec. Soc. xxiii), 191.

Bacon, assessing the possible strength of the opposition in a future Parliament, noted that Hyde had hopes of a serjeantcy. Letters and Life of Francis Bacon ed. J. Spedding, iv. 365. This was not forthcoming, but in any case he does not appear to have stood again. He succeeded Robert Hitcham*, who did become a serjeant, as attorney-general to the queen in 1614, and was granted the park and forest of Melchet. VCH Wilts. iv. 431; Lansd. 273, f. 14. In 1615, as counsel for the prosecution in Sir Thomas Overbury’s murder trial, it was Hyde who read out the defendant’s confession implicating the earl and countess of Somerset. Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, v. 211; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 317. Hyde also revealed that the late earl of Northampton had been aware of the conspiracy and regretted that he was dead, ‘but he said that he was at a heavier bar’. HMC Downshire, v. 404-5. In 1621 he appeared before the Commons as counsel for Sir Thomas Beaumont II* in the Leicestershire election dispute, arguing that his opponent George Hastings* was ineligible because of non-residence, although he had to admit he knew no instance of a Member being unseated on these grounds, ‘for so the better part of the House should be put out’. Nicholas, Procs. 1621, i. 23; CD 1621, ii. 49. He was still active as a Wiltshire magistrate in 1637-8 when, true to his principles, he obstructed the purveyance of timber. CSP Dom. 1637, pp. 137-8, 1637-8, p. 480.

Hyde died in his eightieth year, and was buried in Salisbury Cathedral on 5 Jan. 1642. Wilts. N and Q, vi. 344. In his will, dated 13 July 1637 and revised in the weeks before his death, he declared himself ‘a miserable sinful man’, and made charitable bequests totalling £200, half of which was to be used for interest-free loans to Salisbury apprentices. He also left instructions that his children’s portions should not be lent out as usury. Besides his estates in Wiltshire, he owned an inn in Kent, a plantation in the Somers Island (Bermuda), and shares in the New River and East India companies. PROB 11/196, f. 217. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Lawrence II*. Of his younger children, Alexander and Edward had distinguished careers in the Church, and Robert† became a judge.