SPELMAN, Sir Henry (c.1564-1641), of the Barbican, London and Congham, Norf.

The Spelmans had resided in Norfolk since the fourteenth century. The first to achieve national prominence was Sir John Spelman, who was appointed a justice of King’s Bench by Henry VIII. Sir John built Narborough Hall in Norfolk, which became the home of the senior branch of the family. W. Rye, Norf. Fams. 825; Oxford DNB sub Spelman, Sir John c.1480-1546. Spelman’s father, Sir John’s second son, held no significant local office but with his wife Frances purchased property at Congham, seven miles north-east of King’s Lynn. C2/Eliz/W15/61. In his will he confirmed Frances’ right to this estate after his decease and also bequeathed her the rest of his property. Norf. RO, Norwich consist. ct., 138 Jarnigo. Consequently, Spelman himself had little involvement with the Congham estate. Indeed, in 1631 he stated that he had not lived there for 40 years, C2/Chas.I/S12/65. although he usually described himself as being ‘of Congham’. See for example Vis. London (Harl. Soc. xvii), 257.

Spelman was sent to London to study the law less than a year after he left Cambridge, enrolling at Furnival’s Inn in about 1584 and Lincoln’s Inn two years later. He probably intended to enter the legal profession, but finding his studies arduous he abandoned them after just three years, Spelman, ‘Authoris de se est opere suo, Præfatio’, unpag. during which time he became a founder member of the Society of Antiquaries. In 1590 he married into a junior branch of the L’Estrange family of Hunstanton. Although his wife was co-heir of Sedgeford manor, Spelman seems to have sold his interest in this property to her step-father Richard Stubbe†, who owned the manor by 1602. Hundred of Launditch and Deanery of Brisley ed. G.A. Carthew, i. 144; Blomfield, x. 383; Norf. RO, L’Estrange A68. Following the death in 1591 of his wife’s first cousin Sir Nicholas L’Estrange, head of the senior branch of the L’Estrange family, Spelman moved to Hunstanton. There he evidently acted as the guardian of Sir Nicholas’ son, (Sir) Hamon L’Estrange* and probably also administered his estate. E. Gibson, ‘Life of Sir Henry Spelman Kt.’, in Reliquiæ Spelmannianæ sig. b; Soc. Gen. transcript, Hunstanton par. reg. Norf. (extracts). He may also have arranged Hamon’s marriage to the daughter of Richard Stubbe. During the 1590s he was twice returned to Parliament for Castle Rising on the L’Estrange interest. HP Commons, 1558-1603, iii. 425. In 1602, however, Hamon, then aged 19, obtained a release from his wardship and Spelman probably left Hunstanton not long after, Norf. RO, L’Estrange A73. for by the time of his shrievalty he was living at Narborough. Add. 27457, ff. 49-50.

Spelman was living at Middleton in Norfolk by 1610. Early the following year he purchased the residue of a lease of a former monastic property in and around Middleton for £560 from the widow of Nicholas Harpley, a Congham yeoman who had appointed Spelman supervisor of his will. Harpley had leased the property from Sir Edward Fisher, whose title to the property had been challenged by John Wrenham*. After a lengthy legal battle, in which he employed Francis Moore* as counsel, Spelman’s lease was voided by lord chancellor Ellesmere (Thomas Egerton I†), who awarded the property to Wrenham. This was not the end of the matter, however, as the case was reopened by Ellesmere’s successor, Sir Francis Bacon*. This time the property was awarded to Fisher, who was ordered to pay Spelman £100 in compensation. Wrenham appealed to the 1621 Parliament, as did Spelman, who claimed that he had lost 200 marks a year for the last 14 years, although this was clearly an exaggeration as it was only ten years since he had purchased the lease. Bacon was found guilty of malpractice, having accepted hangings from Fisher worth £160, and in November 1621 the king referred the case to Bacon’s successor, lord keeper Williams, who awarded Spelman a further £300. Although the dispute between Fisher and Wrenham continued until 1626, Spelman had by now had enough. He subsequently wrote that, though he was ‘a great loser’ he was happy to be ‘out of the briars’, for the lawsuit had taught him ‘the infelicity of meddling with consecrated places’. C2/Jas.I/W17/40; Add. 70035, f. 1; C33/142, f. 152; C33/149, ff. 1077-8; Spelman, Hist. and Fate of Sacrilege, 257-9.

Spelman continued to remain active in Norfolk affairs, despite losing control of the L’Estrange estate. He was on good terms with both the county’s lord lieutenant, Henry Howard, earl of Northampton, and several of its prominent gentry families, his eldest son being educated with (Sir) Roger Townshend* under Spelman’s own supervision. CUL, Dd.3.63, f. 19; J. Stephens, ‘To the reader’, in H. Spelman, Larger Treatise Concerning Tithes (1647) ed. J. Stephens, sig. c3. In 1632 the Norfolk bench appointed him to act as their intermediary with the Privy Council, describing him as ‘a grave person well knowing the state of our country and well known to many or most of your lordships’. Norf. State Pprs. 179-80.

Spelman also remained interested in sitting in Parliament, and although he is not known to have sought election to the first Jacobean Parliament, he applied to the corporation of King’s Lynn, seven miles from Congham, for a seat in the Commons in 1614. However, he was rebuffed, indicating that his local importance was relatively slight. Norf. RO (King’s Lynn), KL/C7/9, f. 52. His chief difficulty was that he no longer had the wealth to support his status. When, in 1612, he was assessed towards the Privy Seal loan at £13 6s. 8d. he tried strenuously to be excused, citing the expenses he had incurred as commissioner for the aid for Prince Henry three years earlier. The collector, Sir Charles Cornwallis*, offered to halve his assessment, but in the event Spelman preferred to pay the whole sum than be recorded as lending less than others of his rank. Add. 25384, f. 1. At about this time Spelman, perhaps anxious to reduce his housekeeping expenses, moved to London, H. Spelman, ‘Epistle to Richard Carew’, in Larger Treatise, unpag. and by 1619 he was living in a cramped house in Westminster’s Tothill Street. Bodl. Tanner 74, ff. 49-51v; Cott. Julius C.V, f. 313; L. Campbell, ‘Sir Roger Townshend and his Fam.’ (Univ. E. Anglia Ph.D. thesis, 1990), p. 141. His precarious finances were revealed in 1618, when his eldest son, John, married Sir Roger Townshend’s sister. Townshend seems to have had no objection to the union, but his mother, Lady Anne, believed that her daughter had been deceived into thinking that Spelman’s estate was worth £500 a year, when the real value fell far short of this total. After disparaging the Spelmans’ ‘indebted hands, and encumbered lands’, she argued that any dowry would only go ‘to supply Sir Henry Spelman’s wants’, Add. 63081, f. 133; FSL, L.d. 594. and insisted that Spelman should pay a matching sum which, together with her daughter’s portion, would be used to purchase lands. A settlement along these lines seems eventually to have been agreed, for in June 1622 Spelman paid Townshend £300. Add. 63081, f. 141. It is likely that the Congham property was also made over to John Spelman, for in 1638 the latter presented to the local rectory. C78/409/7; Blomfield, viii. 384, 389. The impact of this marriage settlement on his already strained finances was such that, by 1625, Spelman had abandoned his house in Westminster and moved in with his daughter and her husband, Ralph Whitfield*, at the Barbican. Add. 34599, f. 92.

Spelman is not known to have sought election to Parliament in either 1620/1 or 1624. However, on the latter occasion he urged his son’s brother-in-law Sir Roger Townshend to try for the county, and pledged the support of not only the sheriff, Sir L’Estrange Mordaunt, who had promised to conduct the election in accordance with Spelman’s instructions, but also of Sir Hamon L’Estrange*, the tenants, friends and neighbours of Sir John Hare* and ‘diverse others my particular friends’. FSL, L.d.418. Spelman again tried to persuade Townshend to stand in 1625. FSL, L.d.548. In 1623 Spelman had been appointed an assistant to the commissioners charged with investigating increases in the fees exacted by public officials from the public, which had become a significant grievance. As the commissioners themselves were mainly prominent members of the Privy Council, most of the work fell to their assistants. The investigations of the 1624 Parliament into fees seems to have placed a particularly heavy burden on Spelman for, on 10 Apr., he complained of ‘the laborious business imposed upon me by the king and my daily attendance by commandment and order upon a committee of Parliament thereabout’. Add. 34599, f. 90. Spelman himself sat in Parliament the following year, when he was returned for Worcester. He owed his seat to his connection with the Hares of Stow Bardolph; he was a close friend of Sir Ralph Hare† and his son Sir John*, whose father-in-law was the recorder of Worcester, Sir Thomas Coventry*. Bodl. Tanner 283, f. 58; 289, f. 127. He appears only once in the parliamentary records, on 4 Aug., when he and several other Members were given liberty to enter the House, having apparently not previously taken the Members’ communion. Procs. 1625, p. 385. Nevertheless, among his papers is a copy of the Commons’ draft of the petition on religion delivered to the king on 8 July. Norf. RO, HMN 7/308, ff. 173-4.

Spelman did not seek re-election in 1626, but instead stood aside for his eldest son. FSL, L.d.418. The following year he was appointed to a new commission on exacted fees, the old one having expired on the death of James I. Until the late 1630s he was one of the most regular attenders of this commission, and sometimes was the only one of its members to show up. The commission became, in part, a money-raising device, as officeholders were allowed to keep their increased fees if they compounded, but Spelman himself perhaps believed its chief purpose was to correct a serious grievance. Aylmer, 58-67. During the 1630s he was appointed to other minor government commissions and in 1636 he was granted £300 for his services to the Crown. CSP Dom. 1636-7, p. 210.

Although Spelman had played only a modest role in parliamentary politics he nevertheless engaged with many of the most important political issues of his day through his writings. Towards the end of his life a friend wrote that he was ‘even at home, in your warm study, by your works ... a chief Parliament man’. Add. 34601, f. 28. While still living in Norfolk he had written a tract on the proposed Union with Scotland perhaps composed in the summer of 1604. Spelman had argued against adopting a single name for the two kingdoms, but suggested that if one were to be adopted ‘Albion’ would be preferable to ‘Great Britain’. He had also strongly opposed free trade and naturalization, arguing that the smaller size of their ships would enable the Scots to undercut English merchants. England would be drained of corn and other commodities, while at the same time being flooded by Scots seeking housing and employment. Scotland, too, would suffer, as its nobility would abandon it for England, and any legal union would entail imposing English law on Scotland, which he feared would lead to rebellion. Jacobean Union ed. B. Galloway and B.P. Levack (Scottish Hist. Soc. ser. 4. xxi), lxviii-lxxiii, 159-84.

Spelman’s first major published work was De Non Temerandis Ecclesis printed in 1613. The purpose of this tract was to argue that profits from appropriated rectories should be used for religious or charitable uses rather than private gain, as ecclesiastical property and revenues, including tithes, were sacrosanct and could not be alienated from the church. H. Spelman, De Non Temerandis Ecclesis (1613). According to Jeremiah Stephens, who worked closely with Spelman in the last years of his life, the tract had considerable influence among the gentry of Norfolk and beyond. Stephens, ‘To the reader’, sig. c3. Of Spelman’s works printed in his own lifetime it is the most polemical and attracted considerable attention; Add. 34599, f. 50. a pirated version was issued in Edinburgh three years later leading Spelman to produce an enlarged second edition. An extract also appeared as an appendix to the published version of the speech made, in 1628, by Sir Benjamin Rudyard* concerning the maintenance of the ministry. H. Spelman, De Non Temerandis Ecclesis (1616), sig. A2; Sir Beniamin Rudierd His Speech in Behalf of the Clergie, 13. Spelman wrote several further works defending the church’s property and revenues, which were published after his death. Spelman, Larger Treatise; Spelman, Hist. and Fate of Sacrilege.

Spelman’s views on church property made him a natural ally of the anti-Calvinist faction in the church. Indeed, Richard Montagu referred to Spelman as ‘my every way honoured friend’ and sent him the manuscript of his polemic directed against John Selden’s* History of Tithes before its publication. R. Montagu, Diatribae Upon First Part of Late Hist. of Tithes (1621), p. 89; Add. 34599, f. 138. Spelman was critical of the puritan writer William Perkins for underplaying the role of ceremony in the early church and believed that the Reformation had gone too far. In his view ‘the religion abolished hath somewhat still that is wanting in ours’, and he expressed the hope that ‘His Majesty, our Moses, will still proceed in repairing these breaches of the church’. Spelman, De Non Temerandis Ecclesis (1613), p. 30; Spelman, Larger Treatise, 170-1. He was consequently opposed to puritan attempts to reform the church still further.

Spelman’s objection to puritan legislation in Parliament went beyond criticism of the changes that such measures intended to bring about, for in his view the church was outside Parliament’s jurisdiction: ‘I doubt not but the government of the Church, and of the common-wealth, are not only distinct members, ... but distinct bodies also under their particular heads ... without being subject the one to the other’. On the face of the separation between church and state conflicted with royal supremacy, but Spelman believed that the king was himself a clergyman - indeed that he was ‘chief bishop over all bishops in England’. This was because at the coronation the king was ‘anointed ... by the bishops with the oil of priesthood, as a mark of their ecclesiastical profession and jurisdiction’ and therefore ‘capable of spiritual jurisdiction’. Spelman, who was at pains to trace the king’s spiritual authority back to the Saxons in order to disprove the assertion that it was an innovation of the Reformation, Spelman, Larger Treatise, 174-89; Spelman, De Non Temerandis Ecclesis (1613) pp. 77-8. argued that the task of advising the king in religious matters fell to the bishops and the clergy in Convocation, not Parliament, ‘for as the temporal lords exclude the bishops when it cometh to the decision of a matter of blood, life and member: so by the like reason the Bishops ought to exclude the temporal lords, when it cometh to the decision of the question in theology’. Spelman, Larger Treatise, 155-7. Despite his views on church property and ecclesiastical authority, there is no evidence that Spelman was an anti-Calvinist in any broader sense. On the contrary, he was on friendly terms with the Calvinist Archbishop Abbot until the latter’s death, Spelman, Hist. and Fate of Sacrilege, 286-91. and worked closely with James Ussher, the Calvinist archbishop of Armagh. Add. 34600, ff. 172, 173, 186.

Spelman’s move to London in 1612 enabled him to devote more time to his antiquarian interests and two years later he participated in the abortive attempt to revive the Society of Antiquaries. Spelman, ‘Original of the Four Terms of the Year’, 69-70 In 1626 he published the first part of his Archaeologus, a glossary of terms found in historical records which also charted their changing meanings. This work marked a significant break from the received wisdom concerning England’s past, which was based upon the idea of the ‘ancient constitution’ assuming the law and constitution to be essentially unchanging. Spelman argued that the Normans had introduced a distinctive feudal social system which had gradually eroded during the Middle Ages. Consequently the names of many institutions and practices were those found in historical records but their character had changed fundamentally. Chief among these was Parliament. He argued that, under the Normans, Parliament was a feudal court, to which the barons alone were summoned in order to give homage and advice to the king, in the same way that copyholders gave homage to the lord in a manorial court. However, feudalism gradually began to decay creating

a great multitude of free-holders more than had been. Who by reason of their several interests, and being not so absolutely tied unto their lords as in former times began now to be a more eminent part in the Common-wealth, and more to be respected therefore in making laws.

Consequently the House of Commons emerged to represent the new class of freeholders. Spelman developed these ideas in a paper which was not to be published until after his death. Its date of composition is uncertain, but it may have been written towards the end of the 1620s, for in the introduction he commented that ‘having seen more Parliaments miscarry, yea suffer shipwreck, within these sixteen years last past, than in many hundreds heretofore’, he had been prompted to study the institution more closely. J.G.A. Pocock, Ancient Constitution and Feudal Law, 91-123; H. Spelman, ‘Of Parliaments’, in Reliquiæ Spelmannianæ, 57-63.

Nevertheless, Spelman’s belief that the House of Commons had not existed in the early medieval period, did not turn him into an apologist for the prerogative, probably because he saw the emergence of the Commons as a result of social change rather than as a favour from the Crown. Pocock, 123, 154. In the 1590s he was a leading opponent of compounding for purveyance in Norfolk. A.H. Smith, County and Ct. 311. Moreover, in October 1625 at his request, a friend sent him a copy of the notorious letter by the Wiltshire magistrate, Oliver St. John, concerning the 1614 Benevolence. This not only argued that the Benevolence was against law, reason and religion, but claimed that it contravened the king’s coronation oath. Add. 34599, ff. 93-5; S.R. Gardiner, Hist. of Eng. from Accession of Jas. I, ii. 268-9. Spelman’s interest in these arguments was undoubtedly aroused by the Privy Seal loan of September 1625. The matter continued to exercise him, as he followed closely the progress of the Petition of Right. On 26 May 1628 he wrote to Archbishop Ussher that

all hangeth yet in suspense; but the points touching the right of the subject in the property of their goods, and to be free from imprisonment at the king’s pleasure, or without lawful cause expressed upon the commitment, hath been so seriously and unanswerably proved and concluded by the Lower House, that they have cast their sheet anchor on it, and will not recede from any tittle.

Spelman apologized to Ussher for being able to relate ‘nothing but hear-say, for I am no Parliament-man’, a revealing remark which shows that he regretted being unable to participate in the debates himself. Works of Ussher ed. C.R. Elrington and J.M. Todd, xv. 409-11. However, on 1 July Spelman was able to send Ussher ‘the first printed copy’ of the Petition, with the king’s ‘gracious answer thereto’, which he had ‘by my much instance’ obtained from the printer ahead of its formal publication. This almost certainly refers not to the copy of the Petition which the Lords had ordered to be printed on 10 June, as this had been suppressed by the king, but to the pages taken from the edition of the 1628 sessional statutes, in which were included both the king’s original unsatisfactory answer to the Petition and his speech at the close of the session in which he denied having surrendered any of his prerogative in consenting to that Petition. Spelman does not seem to have felt any of the alarm at these additions which were to exercise the Commons when it reconvened in January 1629. As well as this document, Spelman also sent Ussher copies of speeches made by Sir Henry Marten and John Glanville, which had been printed together, in defence of the Petition at the conference with the Lords on 23 May. Ibid. 417-18; E.R. Foster, ‘Printing the Petition of Right’, HLQ, xxxviii. 81-3.

In the 1630s Spelman turned his attention to his Concilia, a comprehensive edition of the proceedings of the early church councils in Britain, the first volume of which was published in 1639. His decision to set aside the second half of the Archaeologus, which was not finally published until the 1660s, may have been prompted by financial considerations, as printing the first part had proved very expensive. Moreover, Spelman seems to have believed that the Concilia had a better chance of acquiring official patronage, and perhaps funding, Gibson, sig. b3; Harl. 7001, f. 70. as he received encouragement from Archbishops Abbot and Laud. In 1636 he received £300 from Laud, in part to encourage publication, and when printing was postponed by an outbreak of the plague Spelman felt obliged to explain the delay to the archbishop, suggesting that his book had become, in effect, a semi-official publication. Add. 34600, ff. 85, 87. A draft dedicatory epistle to the king ran into trouble with the censors, possibly because it was thought to be critical of Laud’s ecclesiastical policies, and an amended version, that Spelman disliked, was substituted in its place. Like the Archaeologus, the Concilia was not published in its entirety until the 1660s. Add. 34600, ff. 139-44; F.M. Powicke, ‘Sir Henry Spelman and the "Concilia"’, in Studies in Hist. ed. L.S. Sutherland, 218-19; HMC 11th Rep. vii. 238-9.

In 1640 the vice-chancellor of Cambridge, Dr. John Cosin, nominated Spelman for one of the university’s seats in the Long Parliament, as Spelman had recently established a lectureship in Anglo-Saxon, funded from the appropriated rectory of Middleton. However, the bishop of Ely, Matthew Wren, dissuaded Cosin from pursuing Spelman’s candidacy. Some heads of houses nevertheless continued to support Spelman, whose opponents spread a rumour that he had written to Cosin declining the nomination. Add. 34601, ff. 25-6. In the ensuing contest he was defeated, although he managed to attract 70 votes. C.H. Cooper, Annals of Camb. iii. 304.

Spelman died, apparently intestate, at one o’clock in the afternoon on 1 Oct. 1641 at his son-in-law’s house in the Barbican and was buried three weeks later in the former abbey of Westminster. Regs. Westminster Abbey, 135. His estate passed to his eldest son. A portrait of Spelman, painted in about 1628 after Cornelius Johnson, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery. Spelman’s intellectual legacy was to introduce a truly historical approach to the study of England’s political past. In the later seventeenth century his findings, particularly in relation to Parliament, were used by Tory polemicists, most notably Robert Brady, to assert that constitutional sovereignty lay fundamentally with the king; however it is questionable whether Spelman would have agreed with these conclusions. Pocock, 193-210.