HERVEY, Sir William II (1586-1660), of Ickworth, Suff.

Hervey came from a family that had represented Bedfordshire in 1386, and acquired Ickworth by marriage in the mid-fifteenth century.18W. Copinger, Suff. Manors, vii. 72. His first marriage enhanced his local standing and brought him two useful contacts at Court, as he became the brother-in-law of both Sir Thomas Jermyn* and (Sir) Humphrey May*.19Hervey, iii. 389. In 1617 Hervey was granted the third reversion of the governorship of Jersey, after Jermyn and Sir Edward Cecil*.20C66/2135/15. He took over the Ickworth estate in his father’s lifetime, and enlarged it by a purchase from the Jermyns.21Hervey, iii. 380.

Hervey was returned to the last Jacobean Parliament at a by-election for Preston, a duchy of Lancaster borough, on the nomination of his brother-in-law May, the chancellor of the Duchy. However, the Parliament was not in session at the time, and was automatically dissolved by the king’s death before Hervey could take his seat. Re-elected for Preston to the first Caroline Parliament in 1625, his attendance was recorded at both meetings of the bill committee concerning Crown tenants in Macclesfield, Cheshire (23 June), to which he had been appointed as the representative of a Lancashire borough.22Procs. 1625, p. 226; C.R. Kyle, ‘Attendance Lists’, PPE 1604-48 ed. Kyle, 227. In 1628 he was returned for Bury St. Edmunds, three miles from Ickworth, together with Jermyn, the borough’s main patron. His only appearance in the records of the Parliament was on 19 Apr., when he was licensed to go into the country for three weeks.23CD 1628, ii. 564. Hervey’s eldest son John†, a courtier who married the heiress of Sir William Hervey I*, served in the royalist army during the Civil War, but Hervey himself maintained neutrality.24CCAM, 223, 601; CCC, 2777. He died intestate on 30 Sept. 1660 and was buried at Ickworth.25Suff. Inst. Arch. Procs. ii. 381. His son Sir Thomas represented Bury St. Edmunds in the Exclusion Parliaments, and his grandson was raised to the peerage.