HONYWOOD, Sir Robert (1601-86), of Charing, Kent.

The Honywoods could trace their Kent ancestry to the reign of Henry II, and by the early seventeenth century constituted one of the most prominent gentry families in both Kent and Essex. They were also stalwarts of the godly, and Honywood’s grandfather, Robert Honywood (d.1627) of Markshall, Essex, was a patron of puritan ministers, and a prominent figure in the community of advanced Protestants at Coggeshall and Earls Colne.25PROB11/160/2 (Elizabeth Honywood). Honywood’s father settled in Kent, however, where he inherited the family estate, including property in Sittingbourne and the Isle of Thanet, as well as the manor house at Charing. He had already married the daughter of a prominent London alderman with an estate in Hollingbourne, where our MP was born in 1601.26Add. 16404, ff. 6, 8v, 14; Vis. Essex (Harl. Soc. xiii), 424; (Harl. Soc. xv), 733; PROB 11/152/199 (Robert Honywood); E. Kent RO, NR/AC2, p. 426.

If Honywood’s father was less advanced in his Protestant beliefs than his own parents, he was certainly prepared to resist Caroline policies which were perceived to be innovatory, and refused to contribute to the Forced Loan in 1627.27SP16/73, f. 40v. But he was far from radical in his political outlook, and in the early 1640s would face accusations of delinquency, and the prospect of sequestration, on account of his lukewarm support for Parliament.28CSP Dom. 1640, p. 261; 1645-7, pp. 126-8; CJ iii. 57b, 222a, 257b, 322a, 371a. His son the future MP, however, displayed Protestant zeal from a relatively early age. Having been educated at Hart Hall, Oxford, Robert Honywood was admitted to the Middle Temple (with the assistance of the prominent bencher-MP, John Hoskins*), where he belonged to a godly circle which included Kentish friends like Edward Partheriche* and Cheyney Culpeper.29MTR ii. 650, 669, 682. Their views became apparent in the aftermath of the Habsburg invasion of the Palatinate, and in 1622 Honywood joined a number of legal students in signing an oath to ‘live and die’ in the service and protection of Elizabeth Stuart, queen of Bohemia.30‘The letters of Sir Cheney Culpeper’, ed. M. Braddick and M. Greengrass, in Seventeenth-Century Political and Financial Papers (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. vii), 123. Indeed, it may have been shortly after this that Honywood travelled to the continent in order to fulfill his promise, initially in a military capacity, but eventually as ‘steward’ to the ‘Winter Queen’. Indeed, Honywood’s funeral monument records that he ‘passed all his youth in the court and camp’.31Parsons, Monuments in Kent, 121.

The precise chronology of Honywood’s career is difficult to determine, although he probably left England sometime after November 1624, when he vacated his chamber at the Middle Temple, and by the time of his knighthood in July 1627, he was already in the service of the exiled Palatine court.32MTR ii. 695; Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 192. How such employment came about is unclear, although it is possible that Honywood had heeded his father’s advice to ‘keep some great man your friend’, by securing the favour of Sir Henry Vane I*, cofferer to Charles I. It was to Vane’s family that Honywood looked in order to pursue his father’s recommendation that he should take care in choosing a wife, which was ‘an action like a stratagem of war, wherein a man can err but once’.33Cent. Kent. Stud. U1522/F1, unfol. Honywood married Vane’s daughter in May 1631, and the couple immediately travelled to the Low Countries to rejoin his employer.34APC 1630-1, p. 317.

Honywood’s role in the years which followed appears to have involved diplomatic efforts to secure financial and military assistance for the recovery of the Rhine Palatinate. He was despatched to London in late 1631 with instructions from the queen, as ‘agent for the king of Bohemia’, with the task of lobbying her brother Charles I. Honywood was reported to have had private consultations with that king, and to have been ‘very earnest in persuading His Majesty to a present contribution towards the recovery of the Palatinate, saying that the most direct and honourable way is by the sword’.35SP81/39, ff. 337-39v; T. Birch, Court and Times of Charles the First (1848), ii. 153; M.A.E. Green, Elizabeth, Electress Palatine (1909), 284. Honywood delivered the king’s answer in January 1632, and thereafter his name appears regularly in correspondence relating to the Palatine cause, from Sir Thomas Rowe*, Sir Henry Vane, and the queen herself.36Letters of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia ed. L. M. Baker (1953), 82, 84, 121, 139; Green, Electress Palatine, 285, 293, 338; CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 253, 280, 283, 399; 1635, p. 435; 1635-6, pp. 207, 402; 1638-9, p. 160. Whether or not Honywood had military duties, he certainly provided Secretary of state Sir John Coke† with news from the camp before Rhineberg in May 1633, but his main duty remained missions to England, not least in order to convey the queen’s letters to English dignitaries like Archbishop William Laud and to consult with the queen’s friends.37SP81/41, f. 82; SP81/42, f. 300; SP81/44, ff. 1, 3, 19; SP81/46, ff. 169-70; CSP Dom. 1635, pp. 54, 241; 1637-8, 4p. 81; PC2/49, f. 116v. Indeed, the queen came to value Honywood greatly, and styled him ‘honest and faithful’.38CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 222.

In early 1640 it was rumoured that Honywood, then styled ‘steward’ to the queen of Bohemia, would replace Sir William Boswell† as ambassador to the Low Countries, although this proved to be groundless, and he remained in the queen’s service until at least late October 1640, apprising his employers of the troubles in England.39CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 306; 1640, p. 267; 1640-1, p. 172. That he returned to England shortly after the opening of the Long Parliament, despite being granted a troop of horse in the Low Countries by the prince of Orange, reflected his role as a lobbyist on behalf of the Palatine cause.40CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 248, 460, 468; 1641-3, p. 11. Nevertheless, in July 1641 it was reported that Honywood had been unable to deliver the queen’s letter to Parliament, because ‘there is some doubt how he stands with the Parliament’.41CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 54. Thereafter, Honywood returned to the Low Countries, where he became an indispensable part of the queen’s circle, and where he also played host to his young kinsman John Pelham*, whom he introduced to court life, and to the ecumenical campaigner John Durie.42Letters of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, 159; Add. 33084, ff. 48-50, 53, 73; Sheffield Univ. Lib. Hartlib Pprs. 3/2/114a; CJ iii. 27b.

Honywood resumed his role as agent from the queen to the English Parliament in the summer of 1645, when he stayed at his father-in-law’s house in Charing Cross. Honywood’s task was apparently to lobby for the ‘favourable despatch’ of the £2,000 a year which Parliament awarded to the queen.43Green, Electress Palatine, 364; Bodl. Tanner 60, f. 239. In the autumn he informed Vane of his efforts regarding ‘my mistress’s business’, explaining that he sought to exploit the influence of John Glynne*: ‘we hope to get Mr Recorder into the chair and that by his means we may get through our difficulty with less trouble’. His letters also reveal his political and religious views. He bemoaned the way in which the Scots were working ‘underhand’, in pressurising Parliament for power of excommunication; supported those who sought to restrict the Presbyterian power; and reflected how the Scots had ‘lost affection here, and will do more unless their armies engage more truly for the future, and their counsels and ours [become] more united’.44CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 126-8, 179-80; SP16/511, ff. 11-12v. He reported rumours that the Scots had been seeking a secret deal with the king, but concluded that ‘wiser men do not believe that ever the Scots will separate from the Parliament unless forced by disobligation and neglect, or that the king should be brought to consent to their Presbyterian government’.45CSP Dom. 1645-7, p. 188; SP16/511, ff. 22-23v. Such opinions may also explain why Honywood’s friend, Sir Cheney Culpeper, enlisted his support in order to lobby on behalf of matters of interest to the Hartlib circle at this time. In February 1646 Culpeper promised Hartlib that he would use Honywood, ‘that by his brother’s [Sir Henry Vane II*] interest in Parliament there may be no other conditions concerning the sword or militia save to have it acknowledged to be legally and wholly in the Parliament’.46‘Letters of Sir Cheney Culpeper’, 246-7, 249, 259.

Honywood returned to the Low Countries in summer of 1646, upon a pass granted by Parliament on 3 July, in order to resume his duties as ‘superintendent’ of the queen of Bohemia’s affairs.47LJ viii. 408a; HMC 6th Rep. 124b. However, he continued to serve the interests of friends like Culpeper and Hartlib, and evidently remained on good terms with both the royalist ambassador, Sir William Boswell, and Parliament’s agent, Walter Strickland*.48Sheffield Univ. Lib. Hartlib Pprs. 36/8/2a-b; 61/9; 28/1/81b; ‘Letters of Sir Cheney Culpeper’, 323. After the trial of Charles I in January 1649 his employer naturally refused to deal with the regime which had executed her brother, but Honywood apparently maintained friendly relations with the commonwealth authorities, which raises questions regarding the extent to which he continued to serve the interests of the Palatine court in the 1650s. The evidence is opaque. He remained close to Strickland, and was consequently derided by the royalist grandee Lord Hopton (Sir Ralph Hopton*), as ‘one of the veriest rogues of them all’.49Surr. Hist. Centre, 1287/13, 29. Indeed, he returned to England once or twice during the Rump, serving the commonwealth as a member, and sometime president, of the council of trade, and as a justice of the peace in Kent after March 1652.50HMC 8th Rep. I, 247a; C231/6, p. 232. A pass granted to him by the council of state in June 1651 for return to Holland may have involved a return to the queen’s court, service on behalf of the Rump, or both.51CSP Dom. 1651, p. 529. He was back in England again by June 1655, when he received a pass from Cromwell to travel to the Low Countries, but appears to have used it to rejoin the court of the queen, who referred to him as her sometime ‘master of horse’.52CSP Dom. 1655, p. 591; Letters of Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, 239, 254. Equally inscrutable is Honywood’s brief journey to London in the summer of 1656, for although the protectoral regime granted him a pass to return to Holland in February 1657, they evinced some suspicion of his activity and allegiance.53Sheffield Univ. Lib. Hartlib Pprs. 2/11/2a; TSP vi. 15; CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 587. In succeeding months correspondence intercepted by John Thurloe’s* agents justified this. One letter from December 1657, in particular, revealed his approval of the drift towards monarchical government, particularly ‘if there be a total return to the ancient constitution of the three estates, though those in arms against the commonwealth be excluded the Lords’ House, and such also as have been neutrals’. Honywood was confident that ‘we are near a settlement; and if this session of Parliament succeed well … I do not see but a great step will be made towards it’.54TSP vi. 327, 460, 522, 544, 562, 572, 687 (quotation), 705, 720, 733, 747, 825, 847; vii. 60.

Although granted a troop of horse by the Dutch in the winter of 1657-8, Honywood returned to England in the following spring, perhaps sensing that his relations with the Cromwellian regime would be improved by the elevation of his uncle, Sir Thomas Honywood*, to the ‘Other House’.55TSP vi. 705; Add. 4297, f. 54. In November 1658 he apparently informed the Cromwellian diplomat, George Downing*, about rumours regarding unrest in the army, and he soon afterwards secured election to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament as one of the burgesses for New Romney.56TSP vii. 507. Honywood made little recorded impression on the proceedings, however, and his only appointment was to the committee for elections.57CJ vii. 594b. Nevertheless, his close connections with Sir Henry Vane II* ensured that he was one of those non-MPs who were nominated to the council of state upon the reassembly of the Rump in May.58CCSP iv. 199; CJ vii. 655b; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 346; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 349; C. Walker, Complete Hist. of Independency (1660), iv. 44. He was also reported to have acted as an enthusiastic supporter of the regime in Kent.59CCSP iv. 243.

Honywood rapidly became an active member of the Rump council, although it was apparent that he owed his nomination to his expertise in diplomatic affairs.60Add. 4197, ff. 190-2, 194. He was named to committees to treat with the Dutch ambassador, and it was rumoured that he would replace Downing as envoy to the Low Countries.61TSP vii. 676-7, 691; CCSP iv. 213. Instead, however, apparently through Vane’s influence, Honywood was named on 9 June as one of the plenipotentiaries to Sweden and Denmark in order to effect a peace treaty, alongside Algernon Sydney* and Edward Montagu II*.62CJ vii. 677a-b, 695b, 700a; CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 368; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 351; CCSP iv. 231; Bell, Handlist of Diplomatic Reps. 276. They departed in early July, and remained in Elsinore and Copenhagen for over a year, their commissions being renewed by the recalled Long Parliament, and instructions being sent until shortly before they were recalled upon the Restoration in May 1660. Honywood eventually returned to England in the autumn, when he was apparently responsible for delivering royal plate and household goods to Whitehall, although it remains unclear why such items were in his possession.63CSP Dom. 1658-9, p. 390; 1659-60, pp. 1, 590, 595; 1660-1, p. 201; CJ vii. 768a, 878a; TSP vii. 699, 708-10, 724-7, 732-4, 741-2, 824-5, 837, 884, 888; Add. 4158, ff. 164-67v, 170-73, 193-4v; Add. 18744, f. 25-6; Whitelocke, Mems. iv. 404; Whitelocke, Diary, 577; LJ xi. 213a; HMC 7th Rep. 138a.

Honywood then sought to rebuild his relations with the queen of Bohemia, which had evidently been strained by his employment by the Rump and Cromwellian regimes. Professing himself willing to contribute ‘any service’, Honywood recognised that ‘objections’ had been made to his recent activity. He explained, therefore, that he had been granted an audience by Charles II, and that the latter

had nothing of objection against my person, nor in relation to the employment I had been in, knowing well that I had followed my instructions and believing that having lived so long in your majesty’s service I could not in any thing… be cause to disoblige her family.64Add. 18744, f. 17.

Although this letter evidently elicited a favourable response ‘after so long an interruption’, and although Honywood continued to provide the queen with newsletters, hoping for financial remuneration for his long service, he was not re-employed. The queen, who acknowledged that Honywood was owed £2,500, instead recommended his services to Prince Rupert, and may have supported his petition to the king, although there is no evidence that such assistance proved effective.65Add. 18744, ff. 19, 21, 23, 25-6, 27.

Having ‘passed all his youth in the court and camp, and some of his elder years in the public service of his country’, Honywood spent the years after 1660 ‘in private life’.66Parsons, Monuments of Kent, 121. In part he devoted himself to scholarly pursuits, and in 1673 published an English edition of Battista Nani’s History of the Affairs of Europe, dealing with the republic of Venice from 1613-44. In the dedication to his brother-in-law, Sir Walter Vane, Honywood explained: ‘I began this translation in the circumstance of an uncomfortable old age and ruined fortune, brought upon me rather by public calamity than private vice, or domestic prodigality’, and in order ‘to divert the melancholy hours’.67B. Nani, Hist. of the Affairs of Europe, trans. Sir R. Honywood (1673), sig. a. Honywood died in April 1686 and was buried at Charing, where a monument was erected in his honour.68N. and Q. 3rd ser. iv. 322; Parsons, Monuments of Kent, 121. None of his sons sat in Parliament, but his cousin John Lamotte Honywood† was among other family members who served as MPs.69HP Commons 1660-1690; HP Commons 1690-1715.