MEAUTYS (MEWTAS), Thomas (aft. 1585-1649), of Gorhambury, Herts. and Angel Court, Charing Cross, Westminster.

Meautys was a direct descendant of John Meautas, a Frenchman who had arrived in England in 1485 with Henry VII and become his French secretary.22Private Corresp. ed. Braybrooke, p. xlviii. The family had been granted monastic lands at Stratford on the outskirts of London by Henry VIII, but by the early seventeenth century they were living at St Albans in Hertfordshire. As Thomas’s eldest brother, Henry†, was aged 22 in 1607, it can assumed that Thomas was born sometime after 1585. It is just possible that the young Thomas was the person who is mentioned as being a servant to Lord Treasurer Salisbury (Robert Cecil†), but this could equally have been his father or, even more likely, his cousin of the same name.23HMC Hatfield, xxiv. 226. The latter, who was knighted in 1611, was a professional soldier who spent most of his career in the service of the Dutch army.24Bunten, Meautys, 105-7.

The key figure in Meautys’s career was a near neighbour of his family, Francis Bacon†. Thomas appears to have been acting as one of Francis Bacon’s secretaries from as early as 1616.25Bunten, Meautys, 12, 16; Letters of John Chamberlain ed. McClure, ii. 216. It was through this patron, who was lord keeper from 1617 and lord chancellor and Baron Verulam from 1618, that Meautys acquired his first court offices. Verulam’s backing, as high steward of the town, was also crucial in securing Meautys’s election as MP for Cambridge in 1621, creating a link between Meautys and that borough which lasted until 1640. In this Parliament Meautys loyally defended his master (by now Viscount St Albans) against the bribery allegations which were soon to bring him down. Meautys himself was also accused of receiving bribes.26Procs. and Debates of the House of Commons in 1620 and 1621 (Oxford, 1766), i. 163-4, 181, 208; Commons Debates 1621, ed. W. Notestein, F.H. Relf and H. Simpson (New Haven and Oxford, 1935), ii. 252; State Trials, ii. 1102, 1112. In the will which St Albans drafted in April 1621, during an ensuing breakdown, he marked his gratitude to Meautys by leaving him £500.27J. Spedding, Lttrs. and Life of Francis Bacon (1861-74), vii. 229.

The dismissal of St Albans that May seemed a major setback for Meautys, who remained in his service. Seriously in debt, the ex-lord chancellor turned to Meautys for assistance. In his final will, dated 19 December 1625, St Albans spoke of a bond ‘now made in my sickness’ to Meautys relating to money he owed him, and instructed his executors to pay it off.28Spedding, Bacon, vii. 542, 545. Shortly after St Albans’s death, Meautys was admitted to Gray’s Inn in order to take possession of his old patron’s chambers.29G. Inn Admiss. 178; Bunten, Meautys, 38. With money owing amounting to £1,200 Meautys was St Albans’s largest single creditor, and when the latter’s executors disclaimed responsibility, he and another creditor, Sir Robert Rich†, were granted powers of administration in their place.30Herts. RO, IX.D.18, unfol.; Spedding, Bacon, vii. 551. After the pair launched a complicated legal case, eventually involving multiple parties, a deal was finally struck.31C. Moor, ‘Bacon deeds at Gorhambury’, Gen. Mag. vii. 567-72; Herts. RO, I.A.21; I.A.18; I.A.23; IX.D.18; IX.D.21; IX.D.30; IX.D.32; Cornwallis Corresp. 177.. In June 1632 Lord Dunsmore (Sir Francis Leigh†), Sir John Boteler† and two of Meautys’s relatives, Thomas* and Robert Coningsby, took over most of the estate, buying out the widowed Viscountess St Albans with an annuity in place of her jointure and agreeing to pay £6,000 to Rich and Meautys as compensation to the creditors.32Herts. RO, I.A.20; I.A. 21; I.A.25; I.A.28; IX.D.29. In fact, the whole deal was an elaborate fiction, because the four purchasers were acting as frontmen for Meautys.33Herts. RO, I.A.31. Once all the various claims had been renounced, Meautys was left as owner of St Albans’s house at Gorhambury and of most of his former lands. Meautys erected the statue of St Albans over his tomb in St Michael’s, Gorhambury. The Latin epitaph by Sir Henry Wotton† says of Meautys’s relationship with St Albans that he ‘honoured him in life,/And admired him in death …’.34Clutterbuck, Herts. i. 101; E. Wigram, ‘The Bacon monument’, Trans. St Albans and Herts. Architectural and Arch. Soc. (1924), 69-75; C.D. Bowen, Francis Bacon (1963), 183-4.

The mansion at Gorhambury was substantial and Meautys probably could not afford to live there himself.35J.C. Rogers, ‘The manor and houses of Gorhambury’, Trans. St Albans and Herts. Architectural and Arch. Soc. (1933), 35-68. After several attempts to sell or lease it, a tenant was found: the 6th earl of Sussex (Sir Edward Radcliffe†), had taken up residence by the autumn of 1637.36Anecdotes and Traditions ed. W. J. Thoms (Cam. Soc. v), 19; Early Stuart Household Accts. ed. L.M. Munby (Herts. Rec. Soc. ii), 79-194. Although a visit by Meautys in July 1639 caused the countess of Sussex to fear that he wanted to reclaim it, this arrangement was continued until 1646 when the countess, by then a widow, married Rich, now 2nd earl of Warwick.37Mems. of the Verney Family, i. 152-3, 156, 158-9, 163, 178, 210, 223, 241, 291-3, 306-7; CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 75.

Meanwhile, in the 1620s and 1630s Meautys’s office as one of the four clerks of the privy council in ordinary placed him close to the centre of English government. Much of his work was routine, but in 1627 the secretary of state, 1st Viscount Conway (Sir Edward Conway†), also gave him the task of preparing weekly summaries of conciliar proceedings.38CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 266. Meautys’s official salary was only £50, but, apart from attendant unofficial profits, much of his income as a royal servant came from other sources. From 1626 (with the backing of George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham), Meautys acquired the position of clerk of writs and processes in the court of star chamber, and enjoyed an annual income of £300 for the next five years.39C66/2382, m. 3; Cornwallis Corresp. 146, 149-50, 153; CSP Dom. 1625-6, p. 344; Add. 1625-49, p. 131; Aylmer, King’s Servants, 294. The collection of the revenues from the sale of licences to sell tobacco was another profitable side-line. During the first 14 months of this concession he paid over £10,000 into the exchequer, probably retaining sizeable fees.40CSP Dom. 1634-5, p. 597; 1635, pp. 114, 160-1; 1636-7, p. 423; Coventry Docquets, 44. In 1639 he and Henry Wentworth applied to the king for permission to act as regulators to prevent butchers casually disposing of offal from their slaughterhouses in the gutters and sewers of London, and thereby rendering waters of the Thames ‘exceedingly annoyed, the current stopped, and the air infected’.41Bodl. Bankes 43, f. 82; CSP Dom. 1639, p. 472. This scheme seems to have come to nothing, but Meautys and Wentworth may have had greater success in 1640 when they reported violations by several butchers of the ancient laws regulating this trade and then sought the profits from the resulting prosecutions.42CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 619; 1637-8, p. 109.

From March 1636 Meautys was also serving, alongside Edward Nicholas†, as muster-master general of England, an office traditionally held by the longest serving of the council clerks.43CSP Dom. 1635-6, pp. 298, 323; 1637, p. 565; 1637-8, pp. 94, 285, 306; C66/2733, m. 8; Coventry Docquets, 196; HMC Var. Coll. 104; Aylmer, King’s Servants, 133-4. He should therefore have played a major part in the mobilisation of the English forces in 1639 when the king decreed a full-scale military expedition against the rebellious Scots. It was thought convenient that Meautys should accompany the king on campaign so that he could combine the roles of muster-master and clerk of the council.44CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 568. However, having failed to get permission to appoint a deputy to take his place and waited on the king as far as York, at the beginning of May Meautys fell ill. When it became clear that the illness was serious, the Garter king-of-arms, Sir John Borough, was appointed to take over from him temporarily.45CSP Dom. 1638-9, p. 635; 1639, pp. 116, 163, 172. Meautys may have resumed some of his duties as early as that summer.46CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 303.

Having served Cambridge as its MP in four of the previous five Parliaments, in 1640 Meautys had some claim to be re-elected. Lord Keeper Finch (John Finch†), high steward of the town, wrote to the corporation on 27 February pointing out that Meautys lacked ‘neither abilities nor affection either for the service of the public or that corporation in particular as there shall be occasion’. On this occasion, Finch’s nomination was enough to secure Meautys’s return for the senior place.47Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, pp. 310-11, 313; Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 296. He appears not to have spoken or been named to any committees in this Parliament. That summer he sent some venison to Cambridge as a gift for the corporation.48Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, p. 319. If his intention was to ease his re-election for the borough, this gift was wasted. That October Finch again wrote to the Cambridge corporation to recommend him and, although he also recommended his brother, Sir Nathaniel, he made it clear that Meautys was his preferred candidate. This did Meautys no good, probably only confirming that Meautys was a courtier. The freemen of the town instead elected Oliver Cromwell* and one of the common councilmen, John Lowry*.49Cambs. RO, Camb. corp. archives, common day bk. 1610-46, pp. 328-9; Cooper, Annals Camb. iii. 303-4. An attempt by John Stansby in early 1641 to complain to Parliament about the way his papers had been seized by Meautys in 1629 came to nothing.50HMC 4th Rep. 54.

Over the years Meautys had conducted a regular correspondence with his cousin Jane, wife of St Albans’s nephew, Sir Nathaniel Bacon (the painter), and, from her first marriage, mother of Sir Frederick Cornwallis*.51Cornwallis Corresp.; Essex RO, D/DBy C18, ff. 37-56. His letters were full of affection for her and he had once gone so far as to assure her that ‘it so happening in my daily account that, next to the service of my God, I reckon that time best spent wherein I am bespeaking, or doing your commands’.52Essex RO, D/DBy C18, f. 51. Meautys was a frequent visitor to her house at Brome in Suffolk, where he must have got to know her daughter, Anne. When exactly he and Anne married is not known. Their daughter, Jane, was born in April 1641.53Bunten, Meautys, 93. As no formal marriage settlement had been concluded, it was several weeks after that event that Meautys granted part of the estate at Gorhambury, including Verulam House, to his wife.54Herts. RO, II.A.9-12, 14.

In January 1642 it was reported that Meautys was seriously ill and not expected to live.55CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 245. He survived, but, although he nominally remained clerk of the privy council until his death, this may well have marked the end of his active career as a government official.56CCSP ii. 63. There is no evidence that, once the civil war had broken out, he joined the royalist court at Oxford. Probably he lived quietly in retirement, first in London and later in Hertfordshire. There was still the task of settling the Bacon estates to preoccupy him. In July 1644 he leased his Hertfordshire estates to the Conningsbys. As Meautys still received the profits, this was probably no more than a means of securing Viscountess St Albans’s annuity in the event of Parliament attempting to penalise him.57Herts. RO, I.A.35; II.A.14. Three months later the Committee for Advance of Money took action against him, but in October 1645, when he paid half of the £300 they had demanded, they agreed to drop proceedings and returned the money.58CCAM 481. It may have helped that his brother, Henry, a member of the Hertfordshire county committee, supported Parliament, and the committee may also have realised that Sir Thomas was in genuine financial difficulties. The loss of his official incomes and the burden of wartime taxes all added to his existing struggle with the insolvency of the Bacon inheritance. In July 1647, when he was probably aware that he did not have long to live and would leave behind a widow and young daughter, he mortgaged his lands to his mother-in-law to raise £1,500.59Herts. RO, I.A.37-39.

Meautys died in October 1649. He was buried later that month at Gorhambury in the same grave as St Albans.60Bunten, Meautys, 99; Clutterbuck, Herts. i. 101; Wigram, ‘Bacon monument’, 70; Elias Ashmole ed. C.H. Josten (Oxford, 1966), ii. 702. The fate of his properties confirms the depth of his financial difficulties. Meautys died intestate and his creditor and former clerk, Joachim Matthews*, was granted administration of his estate.61PROB6/24, f. 147. As his daughter did not long survive him, dying at the age of ten in 1652, Meautys’s lands soon passed to his eldest brother. Quite possibly because they were still encumbered with debt, Henry Meautys immediately sold them on to (Sir) Harbottle Grimston*, who had married Sir Thomas’s widow the previous year.62Lane, ‘Gorhambury’, 210; Moor, ‘Bacon deeds’, 573-4; VCH Herts. ii. 365, 370, 396. The Grimstons were thus the ultimate beneficiaries of the troublesome Bacon inheritance.