HEYWOOD, Peter (d.1642), of King Street East, Westminster

Resident in the parish of St. Margaret’s, Westminster by 1580, Heywood has sometimes been confused with his nephew and namesake, who lived there in the 1630s. WCA, E146 (1580 acct.), f. 2v. For the confusion, see e.g. Pvte. Jnls. Jan.-Mar. 1642, 431, n. 18; J.E. Smith, ‘Parlty. Representation of Westminster’ (unpub. 1923), p. 134 (typescript in WCA). By 1609 he was living in King Street, in a house leased from the former abbey of Westminster. WAM, lease bk. x. ff. 239v-241. For evidence that the house was situated in King Street East, see WCA, E150, f. 4v. From the dean and chapter he acquired many leasehold properties in St. Margaret’s, often as part of a syndicate which included his fellow Westminster resident, William Man*, who appointed him an overseer of his will. WAM, lease bk. xii. ff. 409-15; xiv. ff. 170v-2, 175v-80, 369-70; xv. ff. 128-9; PROB 11/169, f. 288. Like Man, Heywood did well out of his abbey leases, and at his death was able to bequeath £1,500 in cash to his children. PROB 11/188, ff. 31v-2. Among his tenants in 1601 was the queen’s physician, Lancelot Browne. E407/127, unnumb. item, 25 Mar. 1601, Browne to Vincent Skinner.

As a member of St. Margaret’s vestry and a city burgess, it is not surprising that Heywood was elected to Parliament for Westminster in 1626. He may also have enjoyed the backing of his landlord, the dean of Westminster, as his sole committee appointment, to consider a bill to prohibit clergymen from being magistrates (10 Mar.), was amended in committee to allow exemptions for deans, among others. Procs. 1626, p. 246; C. Russell, PEP, 277. Once in the Commons Heywood delivered only one recorded speech, in which he complained that the annual cost of poor relief in Westminster amounted to £600 (13 April). Procs. 1626, ii. 438. This heavy financial burden continued to concern him after Parliament was dissolved, for in 1637 he headed the list of petitioners who sought to reduce the city’s Ship Money contribution following an outbreak of plague which had led to a rise in the poor rates. CSP Dom. 1637, p. 341. Heywood never sat in Parliament again, as his enthusiasm for the Forced Loan, of which he was the local collector, meant that he was not nominated for a seat in 1628. T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Chas. I, i. 327.

Heywood was an active Westminster magistrate, who frequently used his position to fine swearers and drunkards. WCA, E153 unfol. (1631 acct.); 154 unfol. (1638-40 accts.). We are grateful to Julia Merritt for the first of these refs. In April 1636 he was appointed governor of the short-lived Company of tradesmen and artificers in London and Westminster. Eight months later the Privy Council agreed to let him have copies of an unspecified complaint against him on the ground that it had ‘formerly received many good testimonies of the care and well deserving of the said Mr. Heywood’. PC2/47, p. 43. For evidence of his industry, see CSP Dom. 1629-31, pp. 302, 355, 485, 498; 1631-3, pp. 298, 435; 1633-4, p. 190; 1634-5, p. 193; 1635-6, 182, 296, 528, 568; 1636-7, pp. 108, 119, 347, 415; 1637, pp. 62, 164. During the Bishops’ Wars Heywood seems to have acted as receiver for coat and conduct money for the Westminster bench. LR9/57, unnumb. item, n.d.

On 21 Nov. 1640, while in Westminster Hall, he was stabbed in the side with a rusty dagger by a Catholic named John James as he was showing a friend ‘a schedule of such suspected and notorious papists as were about Westminster’ which he had prepared on Parliament’s instructions. D’Ewes ed. W. Notestein, 53; Two Diaries of Long Parl. 137. His injury may have contributed to his death 14 months later. In his will, drawn up in September 1641, he left £5 to the poor of St. Margaret’s and made a gift to his wife and son Thomas of any financial penalty incurred by his assailant. PROB 11/188, ff. 31v-2v. He was buried in St. Margaret’s on 18 Jan. 1642. Thomas Heywood later became a page of the bedchamber and keeper of the closet to James, duke of York, but neither he nor any of his descendants sat in Parliament.