JERMY, Robert (1601-77), of Bayfield, Norf.

The Norfolk Jermys were a branch of the Suffolk family who traced their ancestry back to the thirteenth century.23Vis. Norf. 1563, 1589 and 1613 (Harl. Soc. xxxii), 172-4; S. Valdar, Brief Hist. of the Jermy Fam. (1976). Jermy's father, John, a lawyer, purchased the manor of Gunton and owned a house in Norwich.24Blomefield, Norf. viii. 120. By the time of his death in 1630, he was also the steward of Norwich corporation.25Index to Norwich City Officers, pp. xxxviii, 89. The inheritance he left to his younger son was limited. Robert received only some silver drinking bowls and the furniture in his rooms at the Middle Temple.26PROB11/159/428. Robert had followed his father into the law and, for a while, he kept chambers in the Middle Temple with his elder brother, Francis.27MTR ii, 664, 683, 747, 752, 772. Those chambers were adjacent to those of Arthur Turnor† (father of Edward*), who was married to their half-sister, Anne. Another sister, Elizabeth, married Sir John Palgrave*.

Jermy was quick to support Parliament at the beginning of the civil war and he soon became a conscientious member of the county administration. As a member of the county standing committee, he signed the letter to the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†) in November 1644 expressing the hope that Parliament would soon retake Crowland in Lincolnshire.28Suff. ed. Everitt, 82. His brother, Francis, was also an active supporter of Parliament, so either of them could have been ‘Mr Germy’ who attended the conference at Bury St Edmunds on 30 January 1645 to discuss the formation of the New Model army.29Suff. ed. Everitt, 84, 88. In May 1648 Robert was appointed by Parliament to the committee to investigate the recent riots at Norwich.30CJ v. 559b-560a. By this time he was a major in the Norfolk militia. Two months later, at the height of the second civil war, he was sent by Sir Thomas Fairfax* to defend Great Yarmouth after the town was threatened by those naval ships that had joined the prince of Wales. His efforts deterred the rebels from trying to attack the harbour.31LJ x. 399a-b; CSP Dom. 1648-9, pp. 209, 218, 260-1; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1206-7. On 28 July Parliament heard that he was ‘a faithful and stout commander’ whose ‘faithfulness and diligence’ in this operation were to be commended.32Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1206-7.

Successive governments during the 1650s found Jermy a trusty supporter on whom they could rely to assist in keeping Norfolk quiescent. From early 1650 he was one of the sequestration commissioners employed by the Committee for Compounding in Norfolk.33CCC 172, 244, 622; Add. 40630, ff. 249, 250, 274. He was also by now a Norfolk justice of the peace.34Norf. QSOB, 19-55. Appointed a colonel in the local militia that same year, Jermy played a major part in suppressing the threatened royalist revolt in the county in late 1650.35CSP Dom. 1650, p. 504. He was then among those Norfolk officials who in early December wrote to the Speaker, William Lenthall*, recommending that, because of the involvement ‘of the middle ranks of men’, the protagonists should be tried by court martial or a high court of justice, as no local jury would convict.36HMC Portland, i. 544-5; CJ vi. 506a. The following spring he oversaw the transfer of the rebel prisoners to London.37CSP Dom. 1651, p. 223.

By then an invasion of England from Scotland by Charles Stuart threatened. That April Jermy was given the command of one of the cavalry regiments to be raised to protect East Anglia.38CSP Dom. 1651, p. 514. Soon he was advising Charles Fleetwood* on the need to build a fort to protect Great Yarmouth, as well as encouraging the bailiffs of Aldeburgh to be on their guard against any landing by sea.39CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 185, 201; HMC Var. iv. 298. In late July, when the invasion by Charles Stuart was imminent, Jermy was given powers to raise his own troop of volunteers.40CSP Dom. 1651, p. 516. As the Scottish army marched southwards, the council of state wrote to Valentine Wauton* and Jermy, warning them to put the troops stationed in Norfolk and Suffolk into a state of alert.41CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 401, 403. Afterwards, Jermy served as a commissioner for the court martial to try those prisoners captured following the battle of Worcester.42CSP Dom. 1651, p. 479. In January 1652 he was considered by the Rump for appointment to the commission on law reform to be chaired by Matthew Hale* but was not chosen.43CJ vii. 67b. Meanwhile, he had made a dynastic alliance with one of the other major figures in the county when he had married his eldest son, John, to Alice, the sister of Sir John Hobart, 3rd bt.*44Vis. Norf. 1563, ed. G.H. Dashwood and E.E.G. Bulwer (Norwich, 1878-95), ii. 79.

Of the five Norfolk men recommended for membership of the 1653 Nominated Parliament by the congregational churches, only three were eventually nominated and Jermy, with his record of enthusiastic support for the commonwealth, was one of those substituted by the council of officers. His only committee appointments were to the committees for petitions (20 July) and to consider how to raise revenue (13 Aug.).45CJ vii. 287a, 300a. He was listed as opposed to the public maintenance of a godly ministry.46Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 420. While at Westminster, he and another Norfolk MP, Tobias Frere*, were asked by the council of state to advise on a petition they had received concerning the rectory of Blofield.47CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 234, 282. Later, in February 1654, the pair were also among those Norfolk officials asked by the council to investigate accusations that the constable of Lowestoft had disrupted a religious service.48CSP Dom. 1653-4, pp. 381-2.

Jermy retained his prominent position in the county during the protectorate. He continued to serve as a colonel in the militia and was as energetic as ever as a justice of the peace.49TSP iii. 292; Norf. QSOB, 68-97. In 1655, at the time of Penruddock’s rising, he raised another troop of volunteers.50Norf. Lieut. Jnl. 24 and n. That November he wrote to the lord protector on behalf of the other Norfolk commissioners to assure him of their willingness to implement the new decimation tax.51TSP iv. 171, 705. In early 1656 he was among the Norfolk justices of the peace instructed to brief the assize judges on the plight of the Norwich worsted weavers.52CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 201.

But Jermy’s duties as a justice of the peace made him a number of enemies. In 1656 he sued John Armiger of Wells next the Sea for saying, ‘You sit upon the bench as a justice of the peace to maintain roguery and villainy, and I have told you as much to your face upon the bench’.53An Hypocrite Unmasked [1659]. A broadsheet, An Hypocrite Unmasked, probably published in 1659 and most likely written by Armiger, set out the background. The accusations were that Jermy had encouraged a gang who had stolen from a ship in 1650, that he had blocked the prosecution of someone accused of buggery, that he had assisted a local woman, Katherine Fox, in defrauding the future royal physician, Thomas Witherley, only to make sexual advances to her and that he had falsely promoted a petition from several individuals (including members of the 1650 gang) to the indemnity commissioners. Jermy’s case against Armiger was heard in London before the lord chief justice, John Glynne*, on 21 June 1656. Armiger admitted saying the words but argued that they were justified, a line of argument that convinced the jury to find in Armiger’s favour.54Hypocrite Unmasked; HMC 7th Rep. i. 118.

Jermy sought election to Richard Cromwell's Parliament for Castle Rising with his son-in-law, Thomas Toll II*. After a poll on 19 January 1659, which was held in ‘great disorder and confusion’, Jermy was sent up on a double return. He was not allowed to take his seat and a new election was ordered by the Commons on 3 February.55CJ vii. 626b. It may not have been a coincidence that Armiger had meanwhile renewed his legal battle with Jermy. As a result of the latest action brought by Armiger, the keepers of the great seal issued a summons against Jermy on 11 February. Jermy then allegedly ignored that summons.56Hypocrite Unmasked. Armiger would later claim that Jermy arranged from him to be arrested and imprisoned, first in the Tower and later in Dover Castle.57HMC 7th Rep. i. 118. None of this seems to have damaged Jermy’s standing in the eyes of the government and that summer he was, along with all the other militia colonels, ordered to make preparations against the expected royalist uprisings.58CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 16.

Jermy obtained a pass to go overseas on 8 March 1660.59CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 571. A printed verse satire published at about this time claimed that Jermy and Toll had fled to New England. That satire also revived Armiger’s accusations concerning Katherine Fox and asserted that Jermy had been guilty of electoral fraud during the Castle Rising contest.60A Display of the Headpiece and Codpiece Valour of the most renowned Col. Robert Jermy [1660]. Later that year Armiger petitioned the House of Lords arguing that Jermy hoped that the Act of Indemnity would block any further legal proceedings against him.61HMC 7th Rep. i. 118.

Jermy’s absence abroad may well have been very brief. In 1661 he presented John Bond to the livings at Bayfield and Letheringsett.62Blomefield, Norf. ix. 359, 360, 415; B. Cozans Hardy, Hist. of Letheringsett [1957], 60-1. Moreover, he soon tried to make his peace with the restored monarchy. Although he had been removed from all his local offices, someone recommended him for a baronetcy in the autumn of 1663 on the basis that he was ‘of an ancient extract and possessed of a very good estate’.63SP29/84/101. The grant was evidently blocked, however, and the warrant was never signed by the king.

Jermy died in early June 1677.64‘Jermy Family of Norf. and Suff.’ website. His will was proved later that same month.65Norf. RO, Archdeaconry Ct. of Norwich, will register, 1676-7, f. 327. His eldest son, John, who had been ejected as a fellow of All Souls, Oxford, by the parliamentarian visitors in 1650, bitterly attacked the commonwealth in a religious treatise published in 1667, which he dedicated to the former Speaker, (Sir) Harbottle Grimston*.66J. Jermy, Nature Confin’d (1667).