JAQUES, Sir John, 1st bt. (1595-1661), of Haslemere House, Surr., and St Christopher le Stocks, London

Jaques was a grandson (or great-grandson) of John Jaques (d.?1565), a merchant taylor of St Christopher le Stocks, but his father of the same name and parish, the first in the family to be recorded in the heralds’ visitation, described himself only as a gentleman and bequeathed to his eldest son land in London, Essex and Hertfordshire.14PROB11/48/191; PROB11/106/389; Vis. London (Harl. Soc. xv), 197. The MP’s mother brought a dowry of £400.15PROB11/114/90 (John Cowper). Left at her husband’s death with seven small children, she appears to have been dependent on the support of her father (d.1609) and her brothers, living in their houses in Cornhill and at Highgate until her death in 1624.16Reg. of St Christopher le Stocks, i. 36; Survey of London: St Pancras, xvii. 42; Lloyd, Hist. of Highgate, 122. Her brother William Cowper, who had inherited land at Reigate, Surrey, was by 1623 collector of imposts on wines in the port of London and later of tax on the imported goods of merchant strangers; he also became a registrar at the assurance office.17PROB11/114/90; CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 570; 1633-4, p. 316; 1660-1, p. 287.

Evidence for Jaques’s early education is lacking. On 30 June 1619, ‘John Jaques esquire of London’, already 24 years old, was granted a pass to travel abroad for three years.18PC2/30, f. 241. Neither the destination, the duration nor the purpose of his journey are known, although his future office suggests that he gained some military experience. On his return, he was admitted in October 1623 to Gray’s Inn – whether or not with the intention of studying belatedly for the bar is uncertain.19G. Inn Admiss. i. 171. He must have found a high-placed patron for on 7 November 1625 he was sworn as a gentleman pensioner, one of Charles I’s lifeguard.20Beaufort Archives, Badminton, Fm H2/4/1. This office perhaps encouraged him to overstretch himself financially. He was created a baronet in September 1628 but six months later still owed £130 to Captain David Sennott, who claimed in a petition to have lent him the £190 necessary to secure the honour. The matter was referred to the lord chamberlain of the household, William Herbert, 3rd earl of Pembroke, for arbitration.21CB; SP16/139, f. 159.

Having presumably acquired land in Surrey on his own account – perhaps the property at Haslemere that he was occupying in 1640 and perhaps having sold off some of his interests elsewhere to fund the purchase – Jaques was in June 1631 appointed to the commission of the peace for the county.22Bygone Haslemere, 251; Coventry Docquets, 65. Court contacts are likely to have eased the way. At an unknown date after its foundation in 1630, but almost certainly before it became a Presbyterian centre in the 1640s, he studied at Sion College in the City of London.23Reg. of St Christopher le Stocks, ii. 50.

On 11 March 1640 Jaques was elected with fellow gentleman pensioner Sir William Ellyot* to represent the borough of Haslemere, possibly thanks partly to the backing of their commander, George Goring†, 1st Baron Goring.24Surr. Hist. Centre, LM/984. He received no committee nominations and made no recorded speeches.

Jaques was subsequently nominated as a subsidy commissioner for Surrey.25SR. In October 1640 he stood for re-election at Haslemere, but his court associations probably counted against him. An indenture of 17 October returned him singly, but there is no evidence that he seriously contested the declaration for John Goodwyn* and Poynings More*, the latter a disappointed candidate in the spring.26Bygone Haslemere, 182.

For a period after the king’s departure from London in January 1642, Jaques may have followed in his entourage. His uncle William Cowper, who had already been rewarded for his loyalty with a Scottish baronetage, was created an English baronet at Theobalds on 4 March in recognition of his contribution to the war effort in Ireland; in February 1643 he and his son John were imprisoned at Ely House for their activities in the royalist cause.27CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 316; CB. But if Jaques himself associated closely with it, he did not do so for long. On 14 September, as a resident of St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, and a bachelor, he was licensed to marry Jane Dixon, a slightly older widow from St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield.28London Mar. Lics. ed. Foster, 753. By 1644 he appears to have had an unsettled existence. Described as ‘a lodger’, he was assessed at the sizeable sum of £500 on 9 August and ordered to be brought in custody to pay on 18 September, but in October he was respited until the question of his debts was settled.29CCAM 442. Four years later he relinquished the Haslemere house to Poynings More.30Swanton, Bygone Haslemere, 251. Nothing more is known of him until his burial, on 15 January 1661, in the south chapel of St Christopher le Stocks.31Reg. of St Christopher le Stocks, ii. 50. He died childless, but his cousins James Cowper† and (once removed) Sir William Cowper†, 2nd baronet, both sat in Parliament after the Restoration; the latter was the ancestor of the earls Cowper.32HP Commons 1660-1690; CP.