HANHAM, Thomas (1577-1652), of Dean’s Court, Wimborne Minster, Dorset.

The identity of this MP has hitherto been the subject of some confusion: was he Thomas Hanham (1577-1652) or his younger son, Thomas Hanham (c.1617-50)?11Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 232; W.D. Pink, ‘Thomas Hanham, M.P. 1642-44’, N and Q 7th ser. vi. 196; Al. Ox.; D. Brunton and D.H. Pennington, Members of the Long Parliament (1954), 165; PJ iii. 449-50. The best indicator that he must be the former is that the MP is known to have attended the Oxford Parliament in 1644, which fits with the father’s claim to have made a brief visit to Oxford during the civil war.12CCC 942.

The Wimborne Minster branch of the Hanham family traced their ancestry back to Exton in north-west Somerset in the fourteenth century.13Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 231. By the late fifteenth century the family was based at Horsington in the south east of the county.14Vis. Dorset 1565, ed. Metcalfe, 18; Vis. Dorset Add. ed. Colby and Rylands, 30. This MP’s grandfather, John Hannam†, as a client of Protector Somerset (Edward Seymour, 1st duke of Somerset), had sat for Poole in 1547 and later, on the Herbert interest, for Melcombe Regis in 1554. It was probably Hannam who first acquired the former monastic property of Dean’s Court at Wimborne Minster in south-east Dorset. John’s son Thomas was a professional barrister who ended his career as a serjeant-at-law.15Baker, Serjeants at Law, 516. Perhaps in order to further that career, he married one of the daughters of a fast-rising lawyer, John Popham†, who subsequently became Speaker of the House of Commons and lord chief justice of king’s bench. This connection with the Pophams would be a recurring theme in his son’s life. When Thomas Hannan died in 1593, most of his lands passed to his eldest son, John†. Thomas, the future MP, received only land at Weston on the Isle of Portland.16PROB11/82/543. This may encouraged him, a decade later, to seek his fortune far from Dorset.

In 1606 Thomas Hanham joined with Sir George Somers†, Richard Hakluyt, Edward Maria Wingfield† and others in applying to the king for permission to establish colonies in North America. The resulting patent, granted on 10 April 1606, created the Virginia Company.17CSP Col. i. 5, ix. 30-4. One of the principal promoters behind the new company was Popham and it was doubtless through his grandfather that Hanham had become involved. The plan adopted involved two parallel projects, a settlement in the south at Jamestown promoted by the London Company and a settlement to the north in what is now Maine promoted by the Plymouth Company. In the late summer of 1606 the Plymouth Company sent two ships to explore the Maine coast. One of these was personally financed by Popham, who appointed his grandson, Hanham, to command it. On reaching America, Hanham explored the area around the mouth of the Kennebec River, where he ‘made some discovery, and found the coasts, havens, and harbours answerable to our desires’.18Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, xix. 270. Samuel Purchas gives a tantalising description of the contents of a lost journal kept by Hanham recording his reactions to the local fauna and to the Eastern Abenaki natives.19Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrimage, 755-6. No attempt was made on this occasion to establish a settlement and, having completed his explorations, Hanham sailed back to England. His positive reports encouraged other investors to join the undertaking.20Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, xix. 270. Hanham seems not to have participated in another expedition to the area the following spring led by Popham’s nephew, George Popham. The Popham colony then founded was abandoned after only a year, however, and the Plymouth Company then ceased its operations.

This was the end of Hanham’s colonial ambitions, although his elder brother, Sir John, subsequently invested in the Virginia Company.21Recs. of the Virginia Co. of London, ed. S.M. Kingsbury (Washington, 1906-35), iii. 84, 325, 338. Thomas spent the rest of his life as a minor Dorset country gentleman. In 1610 he married a widow, Elizabeth Broughton, at Moreton, where she probably held jointure lands from her previous marriage to the late William Frampton, and their first four children were born there.22Moreton par. reg. Following the death of his brother, Sir John Hanham, in 1625 Thomas finally inherited the main family estates at Wimborne Minster, but his role thereafter even in county affairs seems to have been very limited.

Hanham’s principal local office was as one of the ten governors of Wimborne Minster, the collegiate body which had exercised its rights since the Reformation and which performed the functions of a consistory court within the town.23Dorset RO, PE/WM GN2/1/1, pp. 16-19, 448. The governors also controlled the local school and in 1634 Hanham took the lead in the case they brought in the court of high commission against their schoolmaster, William Stone.24CSP Dom. 1634-5, pp. 49, 52, 118, 123, 259; 1635, pp. 137, 215; 1635-6, pp. 93, 100, 477; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 525. Among allegations against Stone were that he had been consorting with ‘factious’ clergymen, so Hanham may have assumed that they would have the support of the pro-Laudian commissioners on the court.25CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 525. However one report, which certainly passed through the hands of Laud’s secretary, William Dell*, was less sympathetic, pointing out that the governors personally pocketed most of the tithes due to the minster.26CSP Dom. 1635, p. 137. On this basis, one of the clergymen attached to the minster, William Hussey, began litigation against the governors. A commission, headed by Sir Walter Erle*, held hearings in June 1636 and found evidence confirming the claims of abuses. When in 1637 the matter was referred to two independent arbitrators (including John Glanville*), Hanham headed the delegation from the governors who presented their case in London. That attempt to negotiate an agreement broke down in June 1637 and in May the following year a scire facias was issued against the governors, challenging their letters patent of 1563 and 1613. However, Lord Keeper Coventry (Thomas Coventry†) instead ruled that the 1636 commission had been invalid.27Dorset RO, PE/WM GN 1/5a-b; PE/WM GN 1/6a-b; PE/WM GN 1/4. Yet this was not quite a full victory for the governors, for they were then required to obtain a new letters patent.

Also unflattering to Hanham had been a case considered by the Dorset quarter sessions several years before. In 1632, 13 of his tenants at Wimborne had appealed to the quarter sessions when Hanham threatened to evict them. Although powerless to do anything directly, the justices clearly thought that Hanham’s stated reasons were unsatisfactory.28Dorset QS Order Bk. 1625-1638, ed. T. Hearing and S. Bridges (Dorset Rec. Soc. xiv), 189-90. His friends may also have found him wanting. His neighbours included Sir John Cooper†, who had married the heiress to the Ashley estates at Wimborne St Giles. Cooper’s vast estates were heavily encumbered with debts, so on 6 March 1631 he transferred the manor of Pawlett in Somerset into the hands of Hanham and two other trustees, Sir Daniel Norton† and Edward Tooker*.29CSP Dom. 1635-6, p. 323. But when Cooper died just over two weeks later, Hanham immediately his trusteeship, leaving Norton and Tooker to pay off Cooper’s debts and to purchase the wardship of Cooper’s son and heir, Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper*.30CSP Dom. 1631-3, pp. 156, 294; 1634-5, pp. 220, 600; 1635-6, p. 323.

Hanham had the option of becoming an MP at Christchurch in 1640. In December 1639 Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Lord Baltimore, the Catholic peer who had recently inherited an electoral interest in the town, recommended Hanham to the corporation for their second seat, as ‘your neighbour and well known unto you’.31Christchurch Bor. Council, Old Letters, no. 31. However, by late February Hanham had withdrawn from the contest on the grounds that, in Baltimore’s words, he

hath had late sickness by which means he doubteth of his ability of body to performance that that service and attendance which belongeth to such a place, and for that cause doth forebear to prosecute his further request.32Christchurch Bor. Council, Old Letters, no. 22.

Two years later he took a different line. The death of Alexander Luttrell* in the spring of 1642 created a vacancy for the Somerset constituency of Minehead. Hanham’s only obvious link with this town was his uncle, Sir Francis Popham*, its other MP. He stood and was elected. He therefore joined the Long Parliament just as it was preparing to make war against the king. His few committee appointments that autumn seemed to indicate that he was a keen supporter of Parliament. On 12 September 1642 he was third on the list of MPs appointed to ensure that Parliament’s requests for horse, money and plate were circulated throughout the land and that the money thus raised was forwarded to London.33CJ ii. 763a. Four days later Miles Corbett* informed the Commons that Hanham himself had paid in £50.34CJ ii. 769a. Hanham later claimed that he had given £70 or £80.35CCC 943; CAM 785. He had meanwhile also been included on the committee to find alternative accommodation for prisoners now that the prisons were already full (14 Sept.).36CJ ii. 766a. This initial flurry of activity was not sustained. His only other committee appointment was to that for dispatches created on 9 November.37CJ ii. 840b.

That Hanham disappears from Westminster records after November 1642 suggests that he soon retired back to Dorset. His subsequent excuse was that he was too sick and too old.38HMC 6th Rep. 150. He had never been a member of the local commission of peace and neither side now recruited him to any of the new commissions, allthough from March 1643 his son and heir, John Hanham, was serving on Parliament’s commission for the sequestration of delinquents for Dorset.39A. and O.

In the late summer of 1643, following their victory at Roundway Down and the fall of Bristol, royalist forces advanced into Dorset and in November Lord Hopton (Sir Ralph Hopton*) attempted to blockade a number of the south coast ports, including Poole, as a preliminary to his advance into Hampshire against Sir William Waller*. This was probably the period when, according to his later version of events, Hanham was taken by royalist troops and forced to travel to Oxford, where he spent only either three or ten days.40CCC 942; HMC 6th Rep. 150. It is questionable if Hanham’s version of these events can be taken at face value, for this happened to coincide with the opening of the Oxford Parliament. Hanham certainly attended some of its meetings and on 27 January 1644 he signed the letter it sent to Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.41Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 574. His journey to Oxford was quite possibly prompted by a genuine desire for peace between the two sides. He then returned home.42HMC 6th Rep. 150.

Back in Dorset Hanham took the line of least resistance. The parliamentarian forces soon regained control of most of the county and by September 1644 he had agreed to co-operate with Parliament’s standing committee.43CCC 943. The £120 which he claimed to have provided to the parliamentarian garrison at Weymouth was probably a contribution towards the improvements to its defences made by William Sydenham* during that autumn.44CCAM 785. A year later he began the long process of compounding for his estates. The Commons agreed on 18 October 1645 that his case should be referred to the Committee for Compounding.45CJ iv. 313b By then, Hanham was already considered an ex-MP, although there is no earlier record of his expulsion from the House.

Coincidentally, the new writ to fill both the Minehead vacancies was moved just nine days later.46CJ iv. 322b. As Hanham was too ill to appear in person, his younger son, Thomas junior, applied to the Committee for Compounding on 1 November on his behalf and his fine was fixed at £968.47CCC 942-3. In November 1646 the Commons passed a number of bills, including one for Hanham, to discharge the delinquencies of a number of individual ex-royalists.48CJ iv. 727a. Once his bill had reached the House of Lords, Hanham petitioned them, asking that his composition fine be no more than the norm.49HMC 6th Rep. 150. When the Lords finally considered the bill on 28 May 1647, they delayed its passage until further evidence was received from Hanham.50LJ ix. 209b; HMC 6th Rep. 178. The bill then disappears from view. In March the Committee for Advance of Money had fined him £250. This was discharged two years later, when, after representations to the Committee from his son, he paid £100.51CAM 785-6.

Hanham died on 1 August 1652. He was buried in the south aisle of Wimborne Minster, where a monument depicting him and his wife would be erected in their memory.52Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 217; D. Popham, The Book of Wimborne (Buckingham, 1983), 106. His younger son, Thomas junior, predeceased him, dying childless in June 1650.53Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 218. Hanham’s will, which he had drawn up on 23 July 1651, left everything to his only surviving son, John.54Dorset RO, WM18. In 1671 John’s son, William, was granted a baronetcy, which their descendants still hold.55CB iv. 42-3.