HERRYS (HARRIS), Sir Arthur (c.1587-1632), of Creeksea Place and Woodham Mortimer, Essex

Long established in Essex, the Herrys family had achieved gentry status by the dissolution of the monasteries. B.W. Quintrell, ‘Govt. of Essex’ (London Ph.D. thesis, 1965), p. 21. Herrys’s paternal grandfather served twice as sheriff of Essex, owning property at Woodham Mortimer, a few miles south-west of Maldon, and at Creeksea, near the mouth of the river Crouch, where in 1569 he built Creeksea Place, which has been described as ‘a sizeable early Elizabethan mansion’. N. Pevsner (revised E. Radcliffe), Buildings of Eng.: Essex, 152. Herrys’ father, who married one of the six daughters of ‘Customer Smythe’, also served as sheriff of Essex (1598-9), was knighted at James I’s Coronation, List of Sheriffs, 45; Shaw, ii. 125. and was sufficiently prosperous to afford for his son a thorough education and to contribute £60 towards the Privy Seal loan of 1604. E401/2587, unfol., entry of 31 Dec. 1606. In May 1604, two years after entering Cambridge, Herrys was granted a licence to travel abroad for three years, but he returned before his passport expired and was admitted to Gray’s Inn. Knighted on the same day as his cousin-in-law Henry Baker in 1606, he entered Lincoln’s Inn in the following year. In March 1616 he obtained a grant in reversion to the office of rembrancer in the Exchequer at the nomination of his aunt, Lady Fanshawe, the widow of the recently deceased remembrancer, (Sir) Henry Fanshawe II†, in trust for her son. CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 355; Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 615. Fanshawe was the son of the Elizabethan Member for Rye, Arundel and Much Wenlock. He succeeded to his father’s estates in November 1616, and subsequently obtained a royal grant of free warren at Creeksea. C66/2146/17. By 1619 he was seised of Norton Downey manor in Devon. C2/Chas.I/H45/8. Like his father before him he enjoyed a goodly income, donating £50 to the Palatinate Benevolence in 1622 after his arm was twisted by the Privy Council. SP14/156/14; 14/127/82; CSP Dom. Addenda, 1625-49, p. 90 (mis-dated). He also helped to buy the wardship of his second cousin, John Baker, and sent his eldest son Cranmer on a tour of the Continent in 1627. WARD 10/43, pt. i., bdle. labelled ‘Petitions’; APC, 1627, p. 2.

Although unacquainted with most of the members of Maldon’s corporation, Herrys wrote to the town’s bailiffs in November 1619 to recommend the clerk of the Commons, John Wright, following the death of their recorder (Sir) Charles Chiborne*. Essex RO, D/B 3/397/11. Added to the bench in 1620, he was subsequently named to several local commissions, including those for the collection of the subsidy in Maldon, 1621 and 1622. By January 1624 he was sufficiently well acquainted with the leading townsmen to merit election to Maldon’s senior parliamentary seat, despite competition from Sir Henry Mildmay* of Wanstead and the town’s own high steward, Sir Julius Caesar*. Essex RO, D/B 3/3/392/53, 67. His decision to stand for Parliament was undoubtedly prompted by (Sir) Robert Rich*, 2nd earl of Warwick, from whom he leased several Essex properties, Hunts. RO, D/Dm 32/19. We are grateful to Christopher Thompson for this ref. and whose ally in the Virginia Company he may have been.

During the course of his first Parliament, Herrys never addressed the House and played only a minor role in its affairs. On 3 Apr. he was named to attend a joint conference with the Lords concerning recusancy. He was subsequently appointed to six legislative committees, two of which dealt with bills permitting particular landowners to disentail part of their estates (24 Apr. and 19 May). Herrys is not known to have been connected with either of the intended beneficiaries of the legislation, Sir Richard Burneby and Sir Toby Palavicino, but among the properties that Palavicino wished to sell was a 600-acre estate near Ilford, Essex. CJ, i. 705b, 774a; L. Stone, An Elizabethan: Sir Horatio Palavicino, 313. It is unclear why Herrys was named to consider measures to naturalize Philip Jacobson (15 Apr.), and drain Erith and Plumstead marshes, in Kent (28 Apr.), nor is it known whether he had any interest in the bill to enable the king to exchange various Crown lands in Yorkshire for York House, on the Strand (19 May). However, the bill permitting the sale of Abbott’s Hall manor (30 Apr.) concerned an Essex property. CJ, i. 694b, 705a, 754a, 767a, 777a.

Herrys proved the popular choice for Maldon’s first seat in April 1625, but sat as junior knight of the shire for Essex, having received the support of the earl of Warwick, who endorsed him as one ‘whose understanding and integrity well deserves that employment’. Procs. 1625, pp. 205, 683, 692. Once again he made little impact on the Parliament, making no speeches and being named to only two committees. During the Westminster sitting he was appointed to consider a measure to enable sheriffs and escheators to pass their accounts more quickly (9 July), while at Oxford he was named to the committee for the bill to naturalize Sir Daniel Deligne of Harlaxton, Lincolnshire (11 August). Ibid. 358, 457. Pricked as sheriff later that year, he was thereby prevented from seeking election to the 1626 Parliament. Unlike many of Warwick’s supporters, he was not purged from the Essex bench during the summer of 1626, perhaps because of his family connections with the king’s surveyor-general, (Sir) Thomas Fanshawe I*. Herrys and Fanshawe issued a letter of attorney jointly in July 1625: Northants. RO, FH 1185. He subsequently proved an active commissioner for the Forced Loan, in contrast to Warwick’s closest Essex allies, Sir Francis Barrington* and Sir Harbottle Grimston*. R. Cust, Forced Loan, 199; SP16/73/105.

Herrys was relegated to Maldon’s junior seat in 1628, doubtless because his constituents were eager to favour Sir Henry Mildmay of Wanstead, whom they hoped would use his Court connections to rid the town of a company of Irish soldiers which had been billeted upon them. Despite his lack of parliamentary stature, Herrys was named to the committee for privileges (20 March). Maintaining his customary low profile in the House - he is never recorded as having spoken - he was appointed to just two legislative committees, on 6 May 1628 and 12 Feb. 1629, concerning bills to enable Vincent Lowe of Denby, Derbyshire and Edmund Hamond of Essex to sell entailed land. CD 1628, ii. 29; iii. 429; CJ, i. 929a. Herrys received the House’s protection after Warwick’s cousin Sir Nathaniel Rich announced on 10 May 1628 that he had been served with a subpoena by Star Chamber. The unfortunate official who presented Herrys with the writ was himself summoned to the bar of the Commons, where he protested: ‘I did not know he was a Parliament man’. CD 1628, iii. 354, 357, 405, 412. The details of the law suit have not been ascertained.

Following the ending of the third Caroline Parliament, advancing age induced Herrys to retire from active service on the county bench, although he was one of two Essex magistrates who apprehended the ringleaders of a riot at Burrow Hill, near Maldon, for which he was congratulated by the Privy Council. Quintrell, 42; APC, 1629-30, p. 24. He remained closely connected with Warwick, delivering a message on the earl’s behalf in September 1629. Essex RO, D/B 3/3/205/23. In July 1631 he surrendered his reversion to the office of remembrancer of the Exchequer, CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 100. and four months later drew up his will, in which he provided legacies for his five surviving younger sons amounting to £4,200 and portions of £2,000 each for his five daughters. He also bequeathed a total of £7 to the poor of the two Essex parishes where he resided. PROB 11/161, ff. 62v-4v. Like his father before him, PROB 11/128, f. 417v. he left the choice of burial place to his executor. Following his death in January 1632 he was interred at All Saints, Creeksea, where a monument describes him as having been religious and just. Pevsner, 152. Herrys’ fellow Essex j.p., the lawyer and poet Dr. Robert Aylott, marked his passing by composing ‘many English verses which are much applauded, expressing his life beyond sea and here, his two wives and 12 children’ and ‘his faithfulness to the country and king’, but these have not been traced. Winthrop Pprs. (Mass. Historical Soc.), iii. 62-3. No other member of Herrys’ family subsequently sat in Parliament.