HERRICK Family Papers

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

A. NICOLAS HEYRICKE.

1. Correspondence.

i. Letters from his father, John Eyrick of Leicester.

ii. Letters from other relations.

2. Other papers.

B. SIR WILLIAM HEYRICKE.

1. Family and other personal correspondence.

i. Letters from his parents, John and Mary Eyrick of Leicester.

ii. Letters from his brother, Robert Heyricke, and the Mayor and Aldermen of Leicester.

iii. Letters from Robert Heyricke's children and sons-in-law, mainly from Leicester.

iv. Letters from his brothers, Thomas and John Heyricke of Leicester, and from other members of the family.

v. Letters from friends in Leicester.

vi. Letters from and about his wife and children, with some related papers.

2. Estate papers.

i. Court rolls of the manor of Beaumanor with Woodhouse and Quarndon, Leicestershire.

ii. Letters concerned with the administration of the manor of Beaumanor.

iii. Other papers connected with Beaumanor.

iv. Papers relating to Woodhouse, Barrow and Quarndon, Leicestershire.

v. Letters and other papers connected with Sir William Heyricke's Houses and shop in London.

vi. Papers connected with Sir William Heyricke's property in Richmond, Surrey.

vii. Letters and other papers connected with Sir William Heyricke's other property in Leicestershire.

viii. Letters and papers connected with property in other counties.

3. Professional, official and financial papers.

i. Letters and papers connected with his work as a goldsmith.

ii. Papers connected with the office of Jeweller to the King.

iii. Letters and papers connected with private loans.

iv. Letters and papers connected with commissions undertaken for the Earl of Huntingdon and others.

v. Papers connected with loans to King James I.

vi. Papers connected with the Exchequer.

vii. Papers connected with the Mint.

viii. Papers connected with the Goldsmiths' Company.

ix. Papers connected with the City of London.

x. Papers connected with subsidies, royal rents and taxes.

xi. Papers connected with the farm of the tax on sea-coals.

xii. Letters and papers connected with the executorship of Sir Roger Aston's will.

xiii. Letters and papers connected with the execution of the wills of Sir William Heyricke's brothers and aunt.

xiv. A letter and papers relating to the lands of Sir Germanus Poole.

xv. Miscellaneous letters.

xvi. Miscellaneous papers.

C. WILLIAM HERRICKE II.

1. Correspondence.

2. Other papers.

D. JOHN HEYRICKE II.

1. Correspondence.

2. Other paper.

E. WILLIAM HERRICKE III.

1. Correspondence.

i. Letters written to his son, William Herricke IV.

ii. Other letters written by William Herricke III.

2. Other papers.

F. WILLIAM HERRICKE IV.

1. Correspondence.

i. Letters from his family.

ii. Letters from other correspondents.

iii. Other letters.

2. Other papers.

G. WILLIAM HERRICK V.

1. Correspondence.

2. Other papers.

H. GENEALOGICAL MATERIAL.

1. Correspondence.

i. Letters of John Herrick and John Nichols.

ii. Letters of Colonel Jedediah Herrick.

iii. Correspondence with other Herricks in America.

iv. Correspondence with Herricks in Ireland.

v. Letters from other correspondents.

2. Other papers.

i. Wills and a marriage settlement.

ii. Miscellaneous papers.

I. MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS AND PAPERS.

1. Correspondence.

2. Other papers.

J. NEWSLETTERS.

K. VERSE.

Purchased Oct. 1968 by Bodleian Library, Oxford.

The Herrick Papers purchased by the Bodleian Library, Oxford, in October 1968 consist of a file of court rolls for the manor of Beaumanor, Leicestershire, and eleven volumes of family letters, official, business and estate papers, accumulated by the Herrick family from the sixteenth century to the latter half of the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century papers form only a small part of this collection; the rest were used extensively by John Nichols when writing his History and Antiquities of the County of Leicestershire, published between 1795 and 1811. He used to visit Beaumanor once a year, staying for a week or so to work on the papers, assisted by John Herrick, brother of William Herrick VI who was lord of the manor from 1773 to 1802. Nichols had access to all the papers stored in a number of chests at Beaumanor, but his main interest was in the family letters of which he and John Herrick made many transcripts; these were later printed in the History, though not always completely accurately. When John Gough Nichols was of an age to travel with his grandfather he sometimes accompanied him to Beaumanor and so became acquainted with the family. In 1843 he undertook, at the request of William Perry Herrick, then lord of the manor, to arrange all his collection of papers. By 1858 he had completed the arrangement of the Exchequer papers of Sir William Heyricke, which were bound under his guidance; these, together with other papers relating to the family, including a volume of letters of Robert Herrick the poet, are now on deposit in the Leicestershire Record Office. Four years later John Gough Nichols finished arranging, in its present order, the part of the collection now in the Bodleian Library. He compiled the lists of contents and indexes found in the separate volumes and entrusted them to G. Pym to bind. Herald and Genealogist, Vol. 8, 1874; The Athenaeum, Nos. 2230, July 23, 1870; 2232, August 6, 1870; 2235, August 27, 1870.

In preparing the following calendar of the papers in the Bodleian Library it was found convenient to describe them in a rather different order from that created by John Gough Nichols; a conspectus of his arrangement of each volume is, however, provided on pages 178-87. The papers are described in the calendar under eleven separate headings, seven of which correspond with the name of the member of the family to whom the letters and papers belonged. The eighth section consists chiefly of genealogical material that William Perry Herrick and John Gough Nichols were concerned with during the period in which the collection was being arranged. The ninth heading, Miscellaneous Letters and Papers, refers to the descriptions of the very few letters and papers that did not belong to any of the previous divisions of papers. In eighth of these sections a distinction has been drawn between correspondence and other papers. In the description of Sir William Heyricke's papers, which form by far the largest part of this collection, a further distinction has been made between the papers relating to his property, in Leicestershire and elsewhere, and the papers that arose from his profession as a jeweller, the offices he held and the financial transactions that he pursued, in London. Among his estate papers are the sixteenth century court rolls of the manor of Beaumanor with Quarndon and Woodhouse, Leicestershire, which derive from the manor before it was purchased by Sir William Heyricke, in 1595, from the Earl of Essex. As can be seen in the table of contents there are numerous sub-divisions of the major categories of his papers. The tenth section of the calendar describes the collection of newsletters, most of them dating from the end of the seventeenth century but one from the reign of Elizabeth I. The final section lists the ephemeral verse either addressed to members of the family, written by them or copied for circulation amongst them, none of it attributable to Robert Herrick.

By the late nineteenth century the Herrick family owned an estate of over 5,000 acres in Leicestershire. The family is supposed to have descended from a Dane, called Erik, who settled in Houghton, Leicestershire, at some unspecified date; part of it soon spread to Great Stretton in the same county. In the sixteenth century the sons of Thomas Eyrick of Houghton, Nicholas and John, moved to Leicester, where they played a major part in the affairs of the town. John Eyrick was an ironmonger, with a shop at the corner of the Saturday Market and Cheapside. His eldest son, Robert, and his tenth child, John, followed him in this trade and all three served at several times as mayor of Leicester. His fifth child, Nicolas, was sent to London as an apprentice to a goldsmith in about 1556. After completing his apprenticeship and obtaining the freedom of the City he settled in Cheapside in London and practised his trade at the sign of the Grasshopper. In 1573 his much younger brother, William, was apprenticed to him and in his turn also became a goldsmith of the City of London. Three of their sisters married merchants of considerable standing in London: Ursula became the wife of James Hawes who was Lord Mayor of London in 1574, Mary married Sir John Benet, also Lord Mayor of London in 1603, and Helen married a merchant called Holden. A number of the family letters in this collection are from this period when William was an apprentice and Nicolas establishing his own family in London; members of the family were visiting each other in London and Leicester and John Eyrick and his wife, Mary Bond, were sending gifts of food and clothing to their children and their young families and in return books and other, minor luxuries such as the capital could provide were dispatched to them by their children by means of the Leicester carriers.

Nicolas Heyricke died by falling from a window of his house in Cheapside in 1592 and William, at the age of thirty-five, became head of the family in London; he was responsible not only for the management of the affairs of his brother's family, under the terms of his will, but also for transacting the business affairs of the Leicester members of the family in London. He had already earned considerable wealth and reputation in his profession and probably took over some of the business of his late brother, who had risen to be a Renter Paymaster of the Goldsmiths' Company. In due course Nicolas's son, Robert, became apprenticed to his uncle, but after six years, in 1613, he entered the University of Cambridge, took holy orders and attained fame as Robert Herrick the poet. In 1595 William Heyricke began looking for an estate in the country and, on the advice of his brothers in Leicester, bought the manor of Beaumanor; the following year he married Joan, daughter of Richard May of Mayfield Place, Sussex, and sister of Sir Humphrey May, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster.

With the acquisition of this estate William's correspondence with his brother Robert increased. William Heyricke and his wife lived in London at first, then, with the growth of their family, moved to Richmond in about 1604, though William still lived for much of the week in Wood Street where he had his shop. Robert managed the affairs of William's property in Leicestershire through the bailiff of the manor, Clement Foulds, and was constantly asking for advice and directions about repairs and alterations to the house and reporting on what was being done there and on the management of the livestock, relations with neighbours and local affairs in general. William maintained his interest in the affairs of his native town and was often employed by the mayor and aldermen, of whom Robert was one, in such matters as purchasing land for the site of the Newark Hospital and trying to obtain a charter of incorporation for it. In 1601, 1605 (the year he was knighted) and 1620-1 he served as one of the burgesses for the town of Leicester in the House of Commons. The two brothers often acted the part of bankers in the transfer of money between London and Leicester, for the convenience of both the tradesmen and the aristocracy of the area; there are constant references in Robert's letters to the means by which they performed this service and to the accounts that they kept of these transactions.

Other personal letters of Sir William Heyricke are concerned with the education and apprenticeship of six of his seven sons. William, Robert, Richard and Roger were all educated at Oxford, at St. John's College and at Christ Church; Richard and Roger became fellows of All Souls' College and Richard was elected Warden of Christ College, Manchester, in 1635, under royal patronage, and in 1648 was appointed, with Richard Hollinworth, Moderator of the Synod in Lancashire. Sir William Heyricke's fifth son, Henry, was apprenticed to John Pocock, whose trade is not mentioned in the letters. While in Pocock's care he became involved in some trouble over money and a girl; he is supposed to have emigrated to America, since his father had invested in the Virginia Company, and much interest in his fate was shown by Americans of the same name in the mid-nineteenth century, as can be seen from the letters described in the last, genealogical section of the calendar. The fourth son, Thomas, was apprenticed for a time to an armourer, William Massam, who emigrated to Ireland and whose business affairs seem to have been very suspect. Robert eventually became a soldier and died in the Low Countries in 1639 and William, the eldest, and John, about whose education the papers give no information, settled down to a country life in Leicestershire

The sections of Sir William Heyricke's papers dealing with his property concern not only that which he held in Leicestershire but also his houses in London and Richmond, Surrey. There are some papers that relate to property he held at various times in other counties or in which he was merely interested and about which he was making inquiries. There is an interesting group of letters in this section consisting of the reports from his bailiff, Clement Foulds, from the steward of his household, Thomas Marshall, and from Richard Raby who acted as his attorney in many business matters concerning the estate and Leicestershire affairs.

In his life in London Sir William Heyricke was a man of many interests; these are the source of the material described as his 'Professional, official and financial papers'. By profession he was a goldsmith and some of the letters in this section deal with the way in which he obtained his supplies of pearls and other materials for his work from an agent in the West Country, Rowland Bronsforth, who bought from the prize ships that were brought into Plymouth and Falmouth; some of the papers are concerned with the commissions for jewellery that he received from his customers at Court, and with their accounts. Since there was no established banking system in England at this time, goldsmiths frequently lent money, either on bonds or on the security of jewels pawned to them, and carried out financial transactions for their clients which would today be performed by a banker: quite a large part of these papers deals with such business. On 3 May 1603 Heyricke was appointed Jeweller to James I, his Queen and the Prince of Wales; there are accordingly a number of papers that refer to the work done on the royal jewels by him, in collaboration with Sir John Spilman, and to the jewels supplied by him, to the royal family. James I, like his subjects, raised money from time to time from his Jeweller and there are a number of accounts of money lent to the King, petitions for its repayment and schemes drawn up by which James could recompense Heyricke without actually repaying the money. Sir William Heyricke suffered considerable losses from his loans to the King.

In 1604 Heyricke was granted the reversion of one of the offices of Teller of the Exchequer and on the death of Sir William Bowyer he succeeded him. Although the majority of the papers that he took from his office when he sold the Tellership to Sir Edward Carne are to be found in the volumes deposited in the Leicestershire Record Office, some records of the work he performed in that capacity are to be found among these papers, chiefly in the volume entitled 'Matters of Accompt'. Also in this volume are papers derived from his membership of the Goldsmiths' Company. Like his brother, Nicolas, he was a Renter Paymaster of the Company and there are some accounts connected with the collection of rents, the disbursement of charities and the payment of different expenses arising from the Trial of the Pyx. As a member of the Company he acted as an adviser to the Master of the Mint when steps were being considered to check the drain on bullion in 1619-20; there is a small group of papers relating to this service.

Among Sir William Heyricke's financial papers are those derived from his executarship of the wills of members of his family and of his friend, Sir Roger Aston, Master of the Great Wardrobe, who died in 1612. It was as a result of this last service that Heyricke became involved in administering the farm of the profits of the Green Wax, in his private capacity he received the profits from an assignment of the farm of tax on sea-coals and in his capacity as an officer of the Exchequer he was involved in a distraint on the extended lands of Sir Germanus Poole. As one of the leading landowners in Leicestershire he was much concerned with the collection of subsidies and taxes in the Honour of Leicester, as were his descendants.

Before his father's death at the age of 96, in 1653, William Herricke II was already playing a large part in the public life of the county. He had married, in 1623, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Humphry Fox, Receiver of the King's Rents in the Honour of Leicester, and, as his papers show, was appointed deputy by his father-in-law for the collection of those rents. He also received a commission from Charles I to survey the dilapidations of Leicester Castle and the Castle House in 1633. Most of his papers are concerned with these duties and local ones that he performed while he was lord of the manor between 1653 and 1671. The four items that make up the papers of his brother John include the 1653 letter from Henry Heyricke, presumably from America, in which the American Herricks were so interested later, and the bond by which Richard Heyricke guaranteed his brother's immunity from penalty from an earlier bond drawn up to ensure Richard's appearance before the Council of State. They are, therefore, more important for the light they shed on his brothers' lives than for what they tell us about John himself.

William Herricks III succeeded to his father's estates at the age of 47, in 1671, when his own son William was already about 21. He seems to have been unequal to the task of managing his financial affairs and after six years handed the estate over to his son in return for an annuity, the payment of his own debts and those of his mother, who lived until 1683. His papers are concerned with this arrangement.

The fourth William Herricke to become lord of the manor took his duty as head of the family very seriously and it is from his correspondence that much can be learned of his brother, Benjamin, and his half-sisters, Mary and Christiana. All three followed the drum: Benjamin as a surgeon to the army, in the service of which he died in Ireland; Mary married William Lucas, a major who later retired and settled in Lancashire, not far from the descendants of Richard Heyricke, Warden of Manchester; Christiana married Clifton Tomson, of Colonel Windham's regiment of horse, whom she followed to Ghent, leaving her children in the care of her sister-in-law at Beaumanor on one occasion. With his family so involved in the fluctuations of war in Europe it was natural that William Herricke should have been interested in whatever news could be obtained from London; it was he and his brother, John of the Outwoods, who were the recipients of all but two of the newsletters calendared separately here. They give a vivid picture of current events at home and abroad, particularly the wars in Europe, together with some of the rumours and gossip circulating in London at the time. It is possible that the series of later newsletters was originally much larger as there is a gap of eight years in their dates. William Herricke also maintained a friendship with the Lancashire branch of the family and performed certain services for them; through this connection some of the possessions of Richard Heyricke, their ancestor, found their way to Beaumanor.

There are surprisingly few papers of William Herrick V, who was lord of the manor from 1705 until 1773. His correspondence was mainly with one of his northern cousins, William Holbrook, who practised as a surgeon in Manchester and was a close personal friend. His other papers chiefly concern land tax on Beaumanor.

His son, also called William, succeeded to the manor but there are no papers of his in this collection. William Herrick VI, having no son of his own, was followed by his younger brother Thomas's son, William Perry Herrick, in 1802. His correspondence is to be found in the 'Genealogical' section. He had a considerable correspondence with Herricks in America and Ireland, all anxious to prove their descent from Sir William Heyricke, and with other people who could throw light on family history for him, particularly with John Gough Nichols. There is the correspondence between John Harrick and the elder John Nichols also in this section, together with the pedigrees of the family drawn up by them, copies of the wills of the early Heyrickes of Leicester and the marriage settlement of Martha, Sir William Heyricke's daughter, witnessed by her brothers, Henry and John. Finally there are, in this section, a number of notes on details of family history made at various times, most of them by William Perry Herrick and John Gough Nichols when searching through the papers and preparing them for binding.