Naunton’s grandfather entered the service of Charles Brandon, 1st duke of Suffolk, and was elected for Boston in 1547.
Naunton probably met Robert Devereux, 2nd earl of Essex in 1595, and the following year he went to France, ostensibly as tutor to (Sir) Robert Vernon*, but in reality to act as Essex’s intermediary with Antonio Perez, a former secretary of Phillip II of Spain. The mission was a failure and Naunton seems to have acquired an antipathy to the French only outweighed by his profound Hispanophobia. Returning to England, he discovered that his uncle’s assets, some £1,000, had been lost by an incompetent trustee, and was forced, in his own pathetic words, ‘to live a poor scholar in the university, ... so distracted in my state of mind ... as I could not enter or think of any course for my preferment’.
Struggling to reclaim his uncle’s estate, Naunton transferred his allegiance from Essex to Sir Robert Cecil†, a link which would subsequently stand him in good stead. Moreover, by 1603 he was a public orator at Cambridge and in that capacity he greeted James I on his way south from Scotland on behalf of the university. He was promptly rewarded with a diplomatic mission to Copenhagen, accompanying Roger Manners, 5th earl of Rutland, but, according to James Howell*, when called upon to make an oration before the king of Denmark, he became hopelessly tongue-tied. Howell was writing 30 years after the event, but this may explain why Naunton received no immediate advancement on his return.
Despite the debâcle in Denmark, Naunton retained Cecil’s confidence and it was presumably the latter, by now 1st earl of Salisbury, who prompted Sir William Killigrew I* to nominate him at the Helston by-election on 3 May 1606, with less than a month to run before the prorogation: it is not therefore entirely surprising that he left no trace on the records of the second session of the first Jacobean Parliament. During the recess he was granted the benefit of a recusancy forfeiture.
Naunton received 12 committee appointments in the third session, beginning with the conference with the Lords of 25 Nov. 1606 on the Union, but made no recorded speeches. Other matters with which he was concerned in the third session included the naturalization of a Cecil client, Dr. Peter Baro, whose father was the anti-Calvinist Cambridge professor of divinity (6 Dec.), the proposed requirement that ecclesiastical Canons receive parliamentary confirmation (11 Dec.), the maltreatment of English merchants in Spain (28 Feb.), and the extension of the Unlawful Assemblies Act (1 July). He was also named to two further private bill committees, those for settling a Cambridgeshire manor on Sir Roger Aston* (13 Dec.) and for enabling Salisbury to acquire the Crown manor of Hatfield, Hertfordshire in exchange for Theobalds (30 May).
In the fourth session Naunton again made no recorded speeches, but was named to eight committees, the first of which was to attend the conference with the Lords of 15 Feb. 1610 at which the Great Contract was propounded.
Naunton was among those Members ordered to draft the preamble to the grievances on 11 May. Writing again to Coke on 16 May, he stated that he had ‘rhapsodically posted the relation of our Parliament proceedings’ to Coke’s patron, Sir Fulke Greville* and, joking about his bad handwriting, added that he hoped Greville would employ Coke as his interpreter.
By the time Naunton wrote again to Coke on 24 June his attention had turned to the question of impositions. He related that offers to reduce the levy had been rejected because ‘we stand upon the clearing of the question for all future ages, more than on any alleviation for a honeymoon’. He himself appears to have had no fears that these duties would continue very long, because he calculated that they would prove so disastrous to trade and shipping that the Crown would be forced to abandon them. Encouraged by his colleagues’ firm stand on impositions, grievances and the Contract ‘beyond our own hope and expectation’, he still believed that Parliament would result in ‘good contentation’, both for the king and the subject, although he did not dare offer any ‘divinations’. Nevertheless, he stated ‘by the event of this Parliament I will take and make a judgment of the estate of an English subject what it is like to prove for my lifetime’.
By February 1612 Salisbury had appointed Naunton one of his under-secretaries of state, although the latter presumably remained in office only until the death of his patron in May of that year. He continued to angle for a diplomatic post, first through his distant kinsman Sir Ralph Winwood*, then through the Howards and the royal favourite, the earl of Somerset.
One of the first to benefit from the rise of the new favourite, George Villiers, subsequently duke of Buckingham, to whom he was related through his mother, Naunton was knighted in 1615. He was at last able to turn his back on the academic world, although, as Chamberlain remarked, he was ‘in his declining age’, and both his hearing and eyesight were perceptibly impaired. Despite his lack of legal education or experience, in 1616 he was appointed in quick succession master of Requests and surveyor of the Wards, with an annual pension for life of £100, holding both posts concurrently until Winwood’s death in October 1617 brought him further preferment.
Identifying him as the front-runner to succeed Winwood at the end of October, Sir Edward Cecil* described Naunton as Buckingham’s ‘kinsman, his creature, herald and honest man’, and it was no doubt his patron’s influence which secured Naunton the post.
Naunton’s warm support for international Protestantism and his hostility to Spain provided the necessary counter-weight to the crypto-Catholicism of his fellow secretary, Sir Thomas Lake I*.
Naunton was elected for Cambridge University on 10 Jan. 1621 in his absence, and received from his constituents an address commending his prudence and eloquence.
Confinement made it impossible for Naunton to attend the Commons, but he was anxious that the House should not take up his case, as a privilege dispute with the Crown would hamper his rehabilitation at Court. Buckingham appears to have offered his assistance, via his secretary John Packer*, perhaps suggesting to Naunton that he should disclaim his election. However, Naunton, though grateful for his patron’s intervention, was unwilling to disavow his seat. While confessing that ‘I do not hold myself to admit of their choice that elected me, being now none of that body [the University], till I shall receive assurance of His Majesty’s gracious approbation’, he still desired the opportunity to serve James in the Commons ‘when he shall be please to accept thereof’. In the meantime, he had ‘entreated some of my friends to oppose’ any motion in the Commons to summon him.
Naunton’s suspension immediately led to a storm of speculation concerning his replacement. However, by early February it was known that Naunton retained the signet and that Buckingham was continuing to visit him, leading to a further wave of speculation that he would be restored.
At the behest of lord keeper Williams, Naunton was re-elected for Cambridge University to the last Jacobean Parliament, but, writing to Buckingham on 14 Jan. 1624, he stated that he had no wish to appear in the Commons ‘less than formerly I was’. In reality, he had never attended the House in any official capacity, and although he protested his desire to serve in Parliament ‘with a vigorous and a cheerful heart, not with a drooping and a dejected’ one, his attempt to use his meagre parliamentary talents to extort a return to office from his patron was a failure and there is no evidence that he attended the chamber.
Naunton was permitted to resume his place on the Privy Council in January 1625, and in the first Parliament of the new reign again represented his old university.
After a preamble of reasonable length [he] spake first to the manner of our giving, that it should be readily and freely. ... In the second place he delivered divers reasons why we should give. ... He concluded that if all these reasons did not move us he should apprehend it as a sad period of his discourse and a sign of some great judgment hanging over us.
(Sir) John Eliot observed that Naunton had ‘thought it his duty then to render some demonstration of his skill, but found that the cold rhetoric of the schools was not that moving eloquence which does affect a Parliament’, and he made no further recorded speeches.
In 1626, Naunton was the only privy councillor to win a county seat, a remarkable achievement, considering that he had never held office in the county in question, Suffolk. His candidacy was initially suggested by Brampton Gurdon*, who quickly won the backing of John Winthrop, later governor of Massachusetts. Winthrop seems to have supported the proposal for mainly ideological reasons, writing that Naunton ‘is known to be sound for religion, firm to the commonwealth (for which he suffered much)’. However, he also recognized that the master of the Court of Wards was ‘the meetest man to further the affairs of our country for our clothiers’. This view was not universally shared, as the town council of Bury St. Edmunds considered Naunton to be ‘tied in so particular an obligation to His Majesty as if there were occasion to speak for the country he would be silent’. Besides, ‘in general they would give no voice to any courtiers’. Despite these misgivings, Naunton was returned.
The only occasion on which Naunton is known to have spoken in the Commons during the second Caroline Parliament was on 7 Mar., when he reported the response of the Lords to a message he had delivered from the lower House about a proposed conference concerning the defence of the kingdom. He received nine committee appointments, including such important subjects as the inquiry into the detention of the St. Peter (23 Feb.) and the conference of 7 Mar. on defence. He was among those Members instructed to attend the king on 5 Apr. with the Remonstrance rebutting the charge of unparliamentary conduct, drafted a letter to Cambridge about the election of Buckingham as chancellor (6 June), and prepared heads for a Remonstrance against Tunnage and Poundage (8 June).
In November 1626 it was reported that Naunton was threatened with loss of office ‘for speaking his mind freely and honestly’ against the Forced Loan; but in fact he assisted the 2nd earl of Suffolk (Theophilus Howard*) to collect it, both in Dorset and Suffolk. There is no evidence that he sought re-election in 1628.