HENLEY, Sir Robert (c.1624-92), of The Grange, Northington, Hants.

Henley was left £10,000 in his father’s will, together with some houses in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and at the Restoration he was able to enjoy the reversion to the King’s bench office, worth £4,000 a year. On his marriage he purchased an estate in Hampshire, 12 miles from Andover, for which he was returned as a country Member at the second general election of 1679 ‘to his great satisfaction’, which must have been somewhat lessened when he was removed from the commission of the peace a few months later. An active Member, he was probably appointed to 13 committees in the second Exclusion Parliament, including those to receive information about the Popish Plot, and to draft the address urging the King to accept exclusion. On 4 Jan. 1681 he was reprimanded for default in attendance, and he was defeated at the next election. Nothing more is heard of him till the Revolution, but he was twice defeated in attempts to enter the Convention, at Andover at the general election, and for the county in February 1689. He was successful at a by-election for Hampshire in 1691, but died after little more than a year in the House on 15 Dec. 1692, and was buried at Northington. His son Anthony, whose inheritance was said to be worth £3,000 p.a., was elected for Andover as a Whig in 1698.PCC 129 Berkeley; Luttrell, ii. 641; VCH Hants, iii. 395; iv. 196; BL, M636/33, Cary Gardiner to Sir Ralph Verney, 20 Aug. 1679; N. and Q. (ser. 10), ix. 496; R. H. Eden, Northington Mem. 5.