GREY, Henry, Lord Grey of Ruthin (1594-1651), of Flitton, Beds.

The Greys, earls of Kent claimed descent from Anchetil de Greye, one of the companions of the Conqueror. Grey’s ancestors had held the barony of Ruthin since the early 14th century and the earldom of Kent since 1465. His father, the rector of Aston Flamville and Burbage, Leicestershire, for 53 years, was the grandson of a younger son of the 2nd earl of Kent.46Nichols, Leics. iv. 245. He was a constant preacher, but fell foul of the Laudian church authorities in the early 1630s for his refusal, and that of his curate at Burbage, to wear the surplice during divine service.47SP16/535/28, f. 75v; Fuller’s Worthies ed. J. Nichols, i. 334; VCH Leics. i. 379. Succeeding unexpectedly at the advanced age of 82 to the earldom on the death of his distant cousin in 1639, he reportedly had ‘divers daughters, some married to farmers and some to mercers, who will be much humbled to know how to carry themselves like ladies’. It was further reported that with the earldom ‘there does descend to him only £500 per annum’.48CSP Dom. 1639-40, pp. 128, 158.

Grey stood as a candidate for Leicestershire in the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640 and was returned in second place on both of the indentures drawn up by the high sheriff of the county. He probably owed his return to his position as the eldest son of a peer who had long resided in Leicestershire, and perhaps also to the fact that he seems to have remained aloof from the factional conflict in what was evidently a bitterly contested county election.49Supra, ‘Leicestershire’. When the session opened on 13 April the earl of Arundel, in his capacity as lord steward of the household, decreed that Grey should not be called by the title of Lord Ruthin, by which he had been styled since his father’s accession to his earldom, but ‘of Lord Grey only’, inasmuch as the barony of Ruthin had devolved on the 8th earl’s nephew, Charles Longueville.50CJ ii. 2; CP iv. 736-8. Nevertheless, Grey was consistently styled Lord Ruthin by the clerks of the Commons, even after the Lords had upheld Longueville’s claim to the title, in February 1641.51LJ iv. 152b. Grey’s only appointment in this Parliament was to a committee set up on 24 April to prepare for a conference with the Lords concerning the redress of grievances in church and state.52CJ ii. 12a. He made no recorded contribution to debate.

Grey was returned for Leicestershire again in the elections to the Long Parliament in the autumn of 1640, and on this occasion he seems to have taken the senior place.53Supra, ‘Leicestershire’. He was named to 22 committees between late 1640 and September 1642 and served as a messenger to the Lords on four occasions.54CJ ii. 167b, 356a, 421b, 422b, 510a; LJ iv. 265a, 488b, 572a. Several of his early appointments suggest his support for the reform of the perceived ‘abuses’ of the personal rule of Charles I. Thus he was named to committees concerning the examination of peers as witnesses in the trial of Thomas Wentworth†, 1st earl of Strafford (30 November 1640); to prepare a bill for regulating the office and conduct of lord and deputy lieutenants, specifically with reference to Leicestershire (14 December); and to examine the ‘irregular proceedings’ of the court of wards (16 February 1641).55CJ ii. 39b, 43a, 50b, 87a. He seems to have inherited his father’s trenchant Protestantism, for he was also named to committees to settle a preaching ministry and to suppress superstition and idolatry.56CJ ii. 54b, 84b, 105b. On 4 June 1641 he carried up a message to the Lords, requesting a conference on the bill for preventing clerics from meddling in secular affairs.57CJ ii. 167b; LJ iv. 265a. It was perhaps not only his rank, but also a perceived zeal on his part for the Protestant cause, that recommended him to the Commons on 12 July for appointment to a committee of both Houses to press the king further regarding his ‘manifesto’, whereby he had declared anew his readiness to seek restitution of the Palatinate, if necessary by force.58CJ ii. 207a; Procs. LP v. 603, 609.

Late in August 1641, Grey obtained leave of absence from the House – probably to prepare for his marriage to the daughter of a wealthy London merchant which took place two months later and by which he acquired the manor of Wingham Barton, Kent.59CJ ii. 278b. He had returned to Westminster by 24 December, when he was sent as a messenger to desire the Lords to join with the Commons in moving the king to refrain from appointing Colonel Lunsford as lieutenant of the Tower and for a national monthly fast ‘while the troubles continue in Ireland’.60CJ ii. 356a; LJ iv. 488b; D’Ewes (C), 343. On 9 February 1642 he was sent to the Lords to desire a conference on the militia ordinance; and a few days later he and the Leicestershire peer Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford were part of the parliamentary delegation that presented a draft of the ordinance to the king.61CJ ii. 421b, 422b, 442b; LJ iv. 572a; PJ i. 378, 422.

Although Grey figured very little in the House’s proceedings during the spring of 1642, his tellership with Sir Gilbert Pykeringe on 3 June clearly reveals his alignment by that stage with the nascent parliamentarian interest at Westminster. After the house had been informed of the king’s attempts to raise money by pawning some of the crown jewels, Grey and Pykeringe were majority tellers in favour of Parliament impounding the proceeds. The minority tellers were the future royalists Sidney Godolphin and Henry Killigrew.62CJ ii. 603a; PJ iii. 6. The next day (4 June), in response to the king’s proclamation against the militia ordinance, Grey and Sir Arthur Hesilrige were sent to Leicestershire to oversee the execution of the ordinance.63CJ ii. 604b. The two men were at the centre of the struggle that summer for control of Leicestershire’s military resources, receiving further instructions from Parliament – along with a war chest of £500 – for securing the county magazine, seizing ‘disaffected persons’ and for mobilising the trained bands.64CJ ii. 630b, 664b, 665b, 668a, 670a; LJ v. 202b-203a, 206a; PJ iii. 98-9, 136, 166, 178, 197; Truths from Leicester and Notingham (1642, 669 f.6.57); Nichols, Leics. iii. app. iv. 22, 27; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 669. At some point that summer, Grey joined a group of 40 or so leading godly Parliament-men in a letter to John Cotton and two other puritan divines in New England, requesting they return home to attend the Westminster Assembly and assist in the great work of church reform.65J. Winthrop, Hist. of New England ed. J. Savage, ii. pp. 91-2; T. Hutchinson, Hist. of the Colony and Province of Massachusetts-Bay ed. L. S. Mayo, i. pp. 100-1.

Having returned to Westminster by early September 1642, Grey became identified with measures for the vigorous prosecution of the war and for securing a military alliance with the Scots. In the period between September 1642 and his accession to the peerage in November 1643, he was named to a further 26 committees, served as a messenger to the Lords on seven occasions and was a teller on four divisions.66CJ ii. 798b, 819a, 838a, 860a, 989a; iii. 83b, 84a, 89a, 177b, 218a, 228b; LJ v. 390a, 415b, 436b; vi. 44b, 49a, 204a. The majority of his appointments during the autumn and winter of 1642 were to committees for sustaining the war effort and for communicating matters of importance to the City.67CJ ii. 754b, 763b, 819b, 825a, 825b, 842a, 856a, 863b, 945b. And he served a similarly belligerent agenda in his role as a messenger to the Lords during this period. Thus on 7 October he was sent up to desire a conference the Lords at which Pym and his allies would justify the Commons’ refusal to compromise on the composition of a parliamentary delegation to present a petition to the king – Charles having made clear his refusal to receive anything from the two Houses by the hands of those whom he had declared traitors.68CJ ii. 795b, 798b; LJ v. 384b, 387b, 390a. After a debate on 22 October concerning John Pym’s proposal for a Scottish-style ‘association of mutual assistance against the common danger’, Grey was sent up to the Lords to request a conference concerning a related initiative to establish an army under Robert Rich, 2nd earl of Warwick to defend London.69CJ ii. 819a; LJ v. 415. That same day (22 October), he was added to a committee of both Houses to inform the City of ‘the necessity of an association at this time’.70CJ ii. 819b. He was also named to the parliamentary delegation sent to the City on 27 October in order to re-assure Londoners that Parliament’s forces had prevailed at the battle of Edgehill.71CJ ii. 825a; Eight Speeches Spoken in Guild-Hall (1642, E.124.32). Early in November he was appointed a messenger to the Lords and to another parliamentary delegation to Guildhall – this one concerning measures for mobilising the army and for assuring the City of Parliament’s willingness to seek an accommodation only on such terms as would secure the subjects’ liberties and the ‘power ... and purity of religion’.72CJ ii. 838a, 842a; LJ v. 436b, 439b-440a; Two Speeches Delivered by the Earl of Holland, and Mr. Io: Pym (1642, E.126.48). His commitment to godly reform was acknowledged at the very end of 1642 with his appointment to the Committee for Plundered Ministers*.73CJ ii. 909a.

Grey seems to have remained aloof from all parliamentary proceedings in relation to the Oxford treaty of early 1643. However, his tellership on 3 March pitted him against the peace party grandee Denzil Holles in support of a motion for entering intercepted – and highly compromising – correspondence from the queen of Bohemia in the Commons Journal.74CJ ii. 989a. He served as a messenger to the Lords on two occasions in May, carrying up important orders and communications for the better supply and command of the army; for strengthening relations with the Scottish Covenanters; and for collecting contributions to the war effort in Ireland.75CJ iii. 83b, 89a; LJ vi. 44b-45a, 49, 50b. Having taken the vow and covenant on 6 June, he was named to a committee on 8 June to update the City concerning Waller’s plot – the occasion of the new oath’s introduction.76CJ iii. 118a, 120a. He remained at Westminster following the failure of the August peace initiative and apparently favoured measures for prosecuting those Commons-men who were perceived to have abandoned the service of the House or acted contrary to the spirit of the vow and covenant.77CJ iii. 216b, 220a. On 25 August was a majority teller against giving the parliamentarian turncoat Captain John Hotham* an opportunity to plead his case in the Commons.78CJ iii. 218a. Perhaps his most revealing appointment of 1643 occurred on 25 September, when he and Denis Bond were appointed to keep the Commons in mind of an order that Members take the Solemn League and Covenant as they entered the House.79CJ iii. 254b. Grey – who had taken the Covenant himself on 22 September – clearly approved of the new alliance with the Scots.80Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 481. His last appointment in the Commons was to a committee for preparing an ordinance constituting a committee of accounts.81CJ iii. 302a.

Grey succeeded to his father’s earldom on 9 November 1643 and took his seat in the Lords on 22 November ‘without a writ from the king’.82LJ vi. 308a. Six days later (28 Nov.), he was appointed a commissioner of Parliament’s newly-created great seal in place of John Manner*, 8th earl of Rutland.83CJ iii. 323b; LJ vi. 315a. The four Commons’ commissioners were the war party stalwarts and future Independents Oliver St John, John Wylde, Samuel Browne and Edmund Prideaux I. Sir Edward Hyde* deemed Kent a man ‘of far meaner parts’ than Rutland; and certainly Kent was not among the grandest of the peers in terms of his landed estate.84Clarendon, Hist. iii. 251. His financial situation improved, however, following his second marriage, in 1644, to the widow of a son of Mildmay Fane, 2nd earl of Westmorland, who brought a ‘great fortune’ with her and ‘restored the lustre’ of Kent’s ‘decayed family’.85Hasted, Kent, i. 166.

Kent aligned consistently with the Independent grandees in the Lords and hence supported the creation of the New Model army and resisted measures for the establishment of a clericalist Presbyterian church.86J. Adamson, ‘The Eng. nobility and the projected settlement of 1647’, HJ xxx. 570, 577, 579, 592; J. Adamson, ‘The triumph of oligarchy’, in Parliament at Work ed. C. Kyle, J. Peacey, 123; idem, ‘The peerage in politics 1645-9’ (Cambridge Univ. PhD thesis, 1986), 113, 290, 293, 295, 297, 300. Kent’s nomination by the Commons in July 1646 as lord lieutenant of Bedfordshire was blocked in the Lords, where the Presbyterian interest had recently achieved a narrow majority.87CJ iv. 597b; LJ viii. 409a. Efforts in the Lords that autumn to replace Kent and his fellow commissioners of the great seal (all but one of whom was an Independent) with non-Parliament-men ended on 23 October with the seal being placed in the custody of the Speakers of both Houses.88LJ viii. 481b, 482a, 530, 531, 533a, 542a, 544b. Kent was one of nine peers (mostly Independents) who fled to the protection of the army following the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster on 26 July 1647.89LJ ix. 385b. In January 1648 he was added with the leading Independents Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire and Nathaniel Fiennes I to Parliament’s principal executive body the Derby House Committee*; and on 17 March he was again appointed a commissioner of the great seal – an office he retained until the appointment of new commissioners on 8 February 1649.90Supra, ‘Committee for the Revenue’; A. and O.; CJ vi. 135a.

Kent continued to sit in the Lords after Pride’s Purge and was one of six peers named in the ordinance establishing a high court of justice to try the king that the Lords rejected early in January 1649.91HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 577. Early in February he was involved in the peers’ last-ditch attempt to forestall the abolition of their House, when he was named to a committee for conferring with the Commons concerning the settlement of government and the exercise of legislative authority, which the Commons had arrogated to itself a month earlier.92LJ x. 649a; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 583-4. His parliamentary and public career ended with the abolition of the Lords the following month.

Kent died on 28 May 1651 and was buried on 19 June in the Grey family mausoleum in Flitton parish church.93CP; Nichols, Leics. iv. 245. Succeeded by his son Anthony, who was still a minor, he bequeathed his estates in Bedfordshire, Essex and Kent to his wife Amabella, with the proviso that she should ‘take special care for ... [their children’s] breeding up in the Protestant religion ... and then so to see them instructed with all civil endowment that they may be serviceable in their place as it shall please almighty God to dispense of them’.94PROB11/217, f. 195v. The 12th earl, Grey’s grandson, was created duke of Kent in 1710.95VCH Beds. ii. 327.