HATTON, Sir Thomas (c.1583-1658), of Longstanton, Cambs.

Like several other members of his family, Hatton followed the example of Sir Christopher Hatton†, Elizabeth I’s lord chancellor, and made a career for himself at court, rising to become surveyor-general to Queen Henrietta Maria.1E101/438/7, f. 6v. His first two offices, those of deputy warden of Waltham Forest and joint steward of Barking manor, were in the crown’s gift and were both obtained through the influence of his elder brother Sir Christopher Hatton† of Ilford, Essex, and St Bartholomew-the-Great, London, who was well connected in court circles.2Chamberlain Lttrs. ed. McClure, i. 520; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 430; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir Christopher Hatton’. Sir Thomas’s patrons at court by the mid-1620s apparently included the royal favourite, the duke of Buckingham.3Surrey History Centre, LM/COR/4/57.

Despite his strong links with Cambridgeshire, Hatton was to secure all his parliamentary seats as a carpetbagger in other counties – beginning in 1621, when he was elected for the Dorset borough of Corfe Castle. He was returned on the interest of his second cousin’s widow and the borough’s principal patron, Lady Elizabeth Hatton.4HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Corfe Castle’; ‘Sir Thomas Hatton’. In the elections to the Parliament of 1624 he stood for Boston, but was rejected by the town’s voters and was returned instead for the Wiltshire constituency of Malmesbury, a borough controlled by Thomas Howard, earl of Suffolk.5Boston Corporation Mins. ed. Bailey, ii. 442; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Malmesbury’; ‘Sir Thomas Hatton’. He was returned for Malmesbury again in 1625. In the 1628 elections he moved closer to home, gaining a place at Stamford, Lincolnshire. He was returned on the interest of William Cecil†, 2nd earl of Exeter, who was his wife’s uncle and the brother of Hatton’s patroness, Lady Hatton.6HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Stamford’; ‘Sir Thomas Hatton’.

Hatton’s purchase of the lease of the rectory estate of All Saints, Longstanton in 1624 had strengthened his links with Cambridgeshire.7VCH Cambs. ix. 227. However, he acquired the bulk of his estate in the county in 1633, when he purchased from his nephew, Sir Christopher Hatton*, and Sir Christopher’s mother their manors of Longstanton, Cheyneys, Walwyns and Colvilles.8VCH Cambs. ix. 223-4. With this purchase, Hatton established himself as one of Cambridgeshire’s leading gentry landowners. By April 1634, he had been appointed a deputy lieutenant for the county by Theophilus 2nd earl of Suffolk, and apparently served diligently in this capacity alongside Sir John Cutte*, Sir Dudley North* and Thomas Chicheley*. He was closely involved in training and mustering the county’s militia during the bishops’ wars.9Harl. 4014, ff. 16v, 55v. Having lent the king £1,000 – almost certainly as a contribution to the war effort against the Covenanters – he would be granted, by way of repayment, the office of receiver of fines on licences of alienation.10SO3/12, f. 109v.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, Hatton was returned again for Stamford, on this occasion with the future parliamentarian Thomas Hatcher. As in 1628, he owed his election to the earl of Exeter.11Supra, ‘Stamford’. Hatton made little impact upon the House’s proceedings, receiving only two committee appointments and making no recorded contribution to debate.12CJ ii. 4a, 15b. He does not appear to have stood for re-election that autumn. He retained his principal court office – that of surveyor general to the queen – until at least May 1640; and he was still part of the queen’s circle in the summer of 1641, although by that point he had been replaced by the future royalist Robert Long I*.13Infra, ‘Robert Long I’; E214/314; CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 273; 1640, p. 131; 1640-1, pp. 528, 552, 553, 555; C181/5, f. 181; Aylmer, King’s Servants, 368.

Hatton briefly attracted the attention of the Long Parliament in May 1641 after Denzil Holles* had presented a petition to the Commons from Hatton (representing the queen) and the future parliamentarian peer, Viscount Mandeville (soon to become the earl of Manchester), complaining that the inhabitants of several Huntingdonshire parishes had ‘beaten down’ the earl’s and the queen’s enclosures. In the inhabitants’ defence, Oliver Cromwell* claimed that they had only resorted to this ‘outrage’ because the House of Lords had ordered against them while a petition they had presented to the Commons was still under consideration.14CJ ii. 155a; Procs LP iv. 532-3; Lindley, Fenland Riots, 118-19. Mandeville and Hatton were also connected as principal creditors of the prominent courtiers and future royalists Thomas Jermyn* and Henry Jermyn*.15CJ vi. 444a; CCC 1869.

Hatton probably inclined towards the king during the civil war, although in contrast to both his elder brother Sir Robert Hatton and his nephew Sir Christopher Hatton there is no evidence that he actively assisted the royalist cause.16Infra, ‘Sir Robert Hatton’; ‘Sir Christopher Hatton’. He seems to have spent most of the war in parliamentary quarters, either in Cambridgeshire or at Gray’s Inn, Middlesex, but showed a marked reluctance to contribute to the parliamentarian war effort and had been imprisoned at Cambridge by early 1644 on Manchester’s orders for refusing to pay his £400 assessment towards maintenance of the Eastern Association army.17CCAM 322; Aubrey, Brief Lives, ii. 284. In February 1646, the Cambridgeshire county commissioners charged Hatton with having delinquents’ money in his hands and questioned his claim that he had contributed freely towards the parliamentarian cause.18CCAM 322. They further alleged that he had only paid his assessments under compulsion and had repeatedly refused to take the Covenant. It is not clear whether his evident distaste for the Covenant sprang from opposition to the parliamentarian cause in general, or for bringing the Scots into the conflict in particular. Despite his lukewarm loyalty to Parliament, he appears to have emerged from the upheavals of the 1640s relatively unscathed, and in 1651 he was able to lay out £6,000 (or possibly £10,000) for the purchase of two sequestered manors in Norfolk.19CCC 1342; C33/209, ff. 603-4. He also seems to have purchased Sir Robert Hatton’s Cambridgeshire lands, presumably in order to help his brother pay his composition fine.20Add. 29571, f. 13.

Hatton died on 23 September 1658 and was buried at All Saints, Longstanton.21MIs Cambs. 113. In his will, he instructed his executors to raise £9,000 from his personal estate for the purchase of lands worth £500 a year for his eldest son Thomas. He also ordered them to purchase lands worth £600 or £700 a year out of the ‘surplusage’ of his estate to provide annuities of £100 for each of his two younger sons. He charged his estate with bequests worth approximately £6,000. One of his executors was Henry Wynn*, who had served as solicitor-general to the queen during the civil war.22PROB11/289, ff. 294-296v. Hatton’s funeral monument, erected by his widow, described him as a ‘companion and servant to both kings [James I and Charles I]’ and as ‘genteel without pretence, generous yet not proud, neither fanatical nor precise [religiosa], but sincerely pious’.23MIs Cambs. 114. His son Thomas, the second baronet, was returned for Cambridgeshire in 1674.24HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Sir Thomas Hatton’.