HERVY, John (1610-62), of Thurleigh, Beds.

The Hervys boasted that they were descended from someone who had come over with William the Conquerer, and whatever the truth of this, it was certainly the case that they had long been established as a major gentry family in the county.17F.W. Kuhlicke, ‘A Beds. armorial’, Beds. Mag. ii. 136; Harvey, Hundred of Willey, 505-10. The family had acquired the manor of Thurleigh by the late thirteenth century, and Hervy’s namesake, John Hervy† of Thurleigh (c.1353-c.1411), had sat as knight of the shire in Richard II’s Parliament of 1386.18Vis. Beds. 36-7; HP Commons 1386-1421. In the sixteenth century, Sir George Hervy (this MP’s great-great-grandfather) had left the lands at Thurleigh to his bastard son, Gerard Hervy, and by the seventeenth century the senior legitimate line of the family was represented by John Hervy’s fifth cousin, Sir William Hervey† of Ickworth, Suffolk. More recent testimony to their status within the county was afforded by James I’s decision to visit Thurleigh in August 1605.19J. Nichols, The Progresses, processions, and magnificent festivities of King James the First, (1828), i. 522. This MP’s grandfather, also John Hervy, had married a daughter of Sir John St John of Bletsoe, a connection which linked him to Oliver St John*.20Vis. Beds. 116. When his elder sister, Elizabeth, had been born in October 1606, the witnesses included Sir Gerard Hervy and the countess of Bolingbroke.21Genealogia Bedfordiensis, 289.

In 1626, aged not more than 16, John Hervy was admitted to Christ’s College, Cambridge. The relative seriousness of Hervy’s studies is suggested by the fact that, unlike many of his contemporaries, he stayed to take his bachelor’s degree, before proceeding in 1628 to Gray’s Inn. His marriage to the daughter of a prosperous Turkey merchant was celebrated in London on 22 May 1632, in St James’s, Duke’s Place, by Samuel Baker, the incumbent of St Margaret Pattens (in Roode Lane, London).22Genealogia Bedfordiensis, 289. Hervy seems to have spent a considerable amount of time in London, for the baptism of his first son, John, took place at the house of his father-in-law in St Mary’s Athill on 7 March 1633.23Genealogia Bedfordiensis, 289.

With the outbreak of war in England in 1642, Hervy supported Parliament, and, as befitted his social prominence, became a member of the Bedfordshire county committee by December 1643.24‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir William Boteler’, 37; Luke Letter Bks. 538, 548. A dutiful servant of the parliamentarian regime, he served as an assessment commissioner for the county continuously between October 1644 (at the latest) and 1653.25A. and O. i. 543; ii. 656. He also served on the county’s sequestration committee, though the fragmentary nature of this committee’s records preclude a precise estimate of how active he was. The committee’s one surviving minute book for 1646-47, suggests that investigations of suspected royalists’ estates were referred to him on only three occasions during the nine months between July 1646 and March 1647, and these mostly concerned neighbours; but it is possible that he was involved elsewhere in the day-to-day administration of the committee.26Bell, ‘Mins.’, 93, 103, 115. His signature appears on a number of orders relating to delinquents’ estates signed in December 1647, and it is possible that he was far more active in this routine capacity than the minute book indicates.27‘Civil War Pprs. of Sir William Boteler’, 35. It has been suggested that the wife of William Child, the former organist of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, was a friend of the family by the early 1650s.28Poynter and Bishop, Seventeenth Century Doctor, 82.

Hervy’s role in the 1654 Parliament is unclear. No return for the election of knights of the shire for Bedfordshire has been found, although his name does appear on an unofficial list of the Members of this Parliament.29Return of Members, i. 499; Beds. RO, CH 30A, unfol. There is no sure record in the Journal of his having taken any part in the Parliament’s deliberations, as the references to ‘Colonel Harvey’ probably refer to Edmund Harvy I*.30CJ vii. 370a, 371b, 374b, 381a, 384a, 388a, 400a. If Hervy was returned for the 1654, he appears to have been a particularly inactive member; and this is all the more puzzling since his record for the second protectoral Parliament suggests that he attended regularly. The presence of Francis Harvey in this Parliament makes it difficult to be absolutely certain which Journal entries refer to him, but, as Edmund Harvy did not sit in this Parliament, it would seem that John Hervy was now the MP referred to as ‘Colonel Harvey’. From the beginning of the 1656 Parliament, Hervy seems to have been regarded as a Member on whom the government could rely. He was not among the MPs excluded by the council of state at the opening of the session and on 22 September he was appointed to a delegation from the House that was to wait on the lord protector with a draft declaration setting out the grounds for a public fast.31CJ vii. 426a. He is otherwise unrecorded in the Journal again until February 1657, when he was added to a committee to consider the settlement of the estate of Thomas Gresham, deceased, the son and heir of Sir Edward Gresham (of Titsey, Surrey) – to which Hervy was added with his Bedfordshire colleague Sir William Boteler*.32CJ vii. 484a, 491a. He was named to a series of committees over the following three months: to consider a bill for the better observation of the sabbath (18 Feb. 1657); to investigate the conditions in which the convicted blasphemer, James Naylor, was being imprisoned in Bridewell (28 Feb.); on a bill to limit building in London – a committee which was also empowered to consider a petition from William Russell, 5th earl of Bedford, the heir to the major urban development at Covent Garden begun by his father in the 1630s (9 May); for settling postage in England, Scotland, and Ireland (29 May); to inspect the treasuries of the three kingdoms as part of the measures to raise an annual assessment of £1,300,000 (30 May); and, also on financial matters, to consider a bill to ascertain what debts were due upon the credit of the state (19 June).33CJ vii. 493b, 497b, 531b, 542a, 543a, 563a.

Among the most important committees to which he was appointed, was the large committee established on 9 April 1657 to wait upon Oliver Cromwell* to hear his ‘doubts and scruples’ that were preventing him from acceding to the new proposal for a constitution, the Humble Petition and Advice.34CJ vii. 521b. Hervy was not among those known to have voted in favour of the offer of the kingship to Cromwell. He may well have been among the MPs who accepted the lord protector’s invitation to dine with him in the Banqueting House at Whitehall on Friday 20 February 1657, as he was in London and attending the House two days earlier.35CJ vii. 493b.

He twice acted as teller, in both cases to intervene in matters relating to the property interests of peers. On 9 June 1657, he acted as teller (with Robert Steward*) in a division apparently over when a committee which had earlier been appointed to consider the estate of the Catholic Lord Abergavenny should be revived. A proposal, supported by Hervy and Steward, that it should meet ‘on Friday next’ (12 June) was defeated, whereupon the House ordered that it should meet in more than a week’s time (on 17 June).36CJ vii. 552b. Later in the month, Hervy joined with the former New Model Army officer and major-general Thomas Kelsey* in opposing the issuing of a privy seal warrant by the protector to satisfy the arrears of John Carter*, an army officer and strong supporter of Cromwell. Hervy’s opposition to the grant seems to have been the action of one who thought that Carter had already profited enough from the commonwealth, though his efforts were in vain with the grant being approved by 45 votes to 43.37CJ vii. 573b; Burton’s Diary, ii. 304. On 20 June Hervy seconded Sir William Strickland’s motion that the bill for the better observation of the sabbath be considered that afternoon.38Burton’s Diary, ii. 261.

Hervy attended the brief second session of the Parliament (20 Jan.-4 Feb. 1658), where his only recorded involvement was appointment to a committee considering a new marriages bill, and another on a further piece of legislation to unite several parishes in Huntingdon.39CJ vii. 591a. He accepted the Restoration, serving as a poll tax and assessment commissioner collecting money for the new regime.40SR v.

His will, which he prepared on 2 September 1661, suggests that he died heavily in debt. It did not help that his heir, his eldest son John, was still a minor, so control of most of the estates was handed over to his three brothers-in-law, Thomas Elmes, John Harvey and William Hayes. Under the terms of her jointure, his wife received lands at Thurleigh, Clapham and Bletsoe and provision was made for these to pass to John junior when he came of age, but the clear assumption was that the executors would dispose of his lands at Riseley and the rest of the lands at Thurleigh if required. £100 was promised to Cambridge University for the maintenance of an ‘honest godly scholar’. Hervy’s concern with marking publicly his ancestors’ associations with the parish is attested by his instruction to the executors to spend £20 on a monument to his paternal grandparents, as yet uncommemorated in Thurleigh Church.41Beds. RO, ABP W 1663-4/93. Hervy died a year later and was then also buried at Thurleigh.42Beds. Par. Regs. ed. Emmison, xxviii. A33 His son, John junior, lived until 1715 and, as his funeral monument declares, he was the last male heir in the direct descent after 18 generations.43Harvey, Hundred of Willey, 528. His sixth cousin once removed, the 1st earl of Bristol (John Hervey†) had previously tried to purchase his estates, but they were instead sold to the Holt family.44Harvey, Hundred of Willey, 510-11. Under the terms of Hervy’s will, his father’s bequest to Cambridge University was finally implemented, although after litigation by the executors this was modified to the creation of a scholarship at their old college, Christ’s.45Peile, Biographical Register, ii. 18.