HAY, Harbert (1591-1653), of Glyndebourne, Glynde, Suss.

The Hays claimed descent from Robert de Haia, a kinsman of William I, who was responsible for the foundation of Boxgrove Priory in Sussex in the early twelfth century.31Suss. Arch. Coll. xv. 84; L. Fleming, The Cartulary of Boxgrove (Suss. Rec. Soc. lix). His descendents owned lands in Robertsbridge by the fifteenth century,32C109/17i/190. but they remained a minor gentry family until the late sixteenth century, when Harbert Hay’s grandfather, Thomas (d. 1591), became the first mayor of Hastings.33Lansd. 873, ff. 58v-60. It was Harbert's father, however, who anchored the family firmly within the greater gentry of the eastern rapes of Sussex with a marriage whose financial importance was gradually overtaken by political significance. His alliance with the Morleys of Glynde provides the key to the family’s wealth, and although he remarried after his wife’s death, he maintained his contacts with the Morley family, and was appointed trustee of his brother-in-law’s estates at Glynde. 34C109/16ii; C109/17i/557, p. 8. At his death in 1605, he owned three manors and three rectories.35Notes IPMs Suss. 118; Suss. Inquisitions, 68-9; C109/16ii/158-9.

Harbert Hay was then only 14. His wardship was purchased on 2 Nov. 1605 by his uncle, Herbert Morley† (d. 1610), and his guardianship largely exercised by Morley’s half-brother and heir, Robert Morley†.36C109/16ii/286; WARD 9/159, f. 184. In 1610 Hay was admitted to Gray’s Inn, following in his father’s footsteps, but also joining Anthony Stapley I*, a protégé of Robert Morley’s friend Sir Thomas Pelham*, probably the wealthiest, and certainly the most powerful gentleman in Sussex before the civil war.37G. Inn Admiss. 125. On attaining his majority, he returned to Sussex to manage his estates.38C109/16ii/288; E. Suss. RO, Dunn MSS 14/4-6; E. Suss. RO, AMS 5744/93.

His fortunes were significantly enhanced in 1618 by the terms of his marriage settlement to his cousin (by marriage) Frances Culpepper, by which he received £1,500.39C109/16ii/287; Suss. Arch. Coll. xlvii. 74; Suss. Genealogies Ardingly, 133. The couple lived initially at Folkington, but soon moved to Glyndebourne upon Hay's acquisition of an estate there.40C109/16ii/535-6; Suss. Arch. Coll. cxxv. 256. These years witnessed the consolidation of Hay’s position amongst the wealthy gentry in East Sussex, and the extension of his estate with a host of property transactions, including the re-purchase of the manor of Bugsell, which had been in the Hay family for a hundred years prior to its sale in 1609.41C109/17i/118, 120–1, 160, 163, 166, 171–3, 251; C109/17ii/38, 41-4, 49-51; E. Suss. RO, Sampson MS, SAU/669; SAS/L/89-90; Suss. Manors, i. 32-3, 92, 161-2, 181, 227. Furthermore, the death of his mother-in-law in 1634 brought him further property in St Mary Woolchurch, London.42C109/16ii/283; C54/2983/21. In 1618 his rental income amounted to £163, rising to £400 in 1630, and to over £520 by 1640.43C109/17i/557, pp. 353, 345, 337.

By the 1620s, Hay had both the wealth of a fairly major county gentleman, and the friendships which were to underpin his political career. With a close-knit group including Sir Thomas Pelham, Stapley, Sir Thomas Parker* and James Rivers*, in the middle of the decade he was made a justice of the peace and a commissioner for sewers.44C181/3, ff. 134, 167; E101/589/10 m.3. He had already made himself conspicuous in 1621 by refusing to contribute to the Forced Loan, and by being the only gentleman in Sussex to be summoned twice before the privy council on that account.45SP14/127, ff. 113, 115v. When, following his appointment in November 1625 as lord keeper, Thomas Coventry†, 1st Baron Coventry, undertook a purge of commissions of the peace, Hay was among the victims.46SP16/442, f. 279v. Perhaps duly chastened, Hay evidently paid his loan money (£15) in 1625-6, and appears not to have baulked at the privy seal directed to him for £200.47E401/2586, pp. 36, 460. In 1627, however, he was once again among the Sussex gentlemen who refused to contribute to the Forced Loan, and between 1627 and 1629 he held no local office.48SP16/89 f. 6v; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iii. 914. The period in the wilderness was brief, probably owing to the influence of his friends. Hay was again appointed a commissioner of sewers in March 1630, was restored to the bench – ‘scrambled in again’, according to a hostile observer – sometime before April 1634, and held other local offices.49C231/5, p. 203; C181/4, ff. 47, 74v; C192/1; SP16/442, f. 279v; ASSI35/78/9. He was clearly one of the most active justices of the peace in the county.50E. Suss. RO, QR/E35-48.

By the late 1630s Hay was identified as among the godly trouble-makers of east Sussex. Probable involvement in plans for a puritan lectureship at Lewes, three miles from his home, may be one explanation of why he was not actually pricked, although nominated as sheriff in 1639.51Add. 33145, f. 27v; C227/30. Another may be his refusal that year to contribute to the king's expedition against the Scots.52Nalson, Impartial Colln. i. 206. Reporting to Archbishop William Laud’s chaplain in January 1640, one of the Sussex clergy described how ‘the puritan faction’ had become an irresistible force on the commission of the peace, overwhelming ‘such as are moderately disposed’; the four ‘ringleaders’ included Stapley, Rivers and Hay.53SP16/442, f. 279.

A little surprisingly, Hay does not appear to have stood for election to what became the Short Parliament. However, he clearly assisted in securing the return of Stapley and Rivers at Lewes, and when Stapley, having been double returned, opted to sit for the county, Hay probably helped secure the seat for Harbert Morley*, son of his former guardian.54C219/42ii/30. During the second bishops’ war which erupted over the ensuing summer, royal proclamation against Scottish propaganda ‘and my own bounden duty’ prompted him on 31 August to send Secretary of state Sir Francis Windebanke* the copy of The Intentions of the Army of the Kingdom of Scotland, which had been given to him at Lewes.55SP16/465, f. 119. Hay’s own intentions were plausibly complex and opaque.

Hay was again unusual amongst Pelham's friends in not being returned to the Long Parliament in November 1640; even his younger brother William Hay* was returned at a by-election in 1641. Instead he remained in Sussex, where he was active on the commission of the peace, at least until his removal in the purge undertaken by the king in July 1642.56Suss. QSOB 1642-1649, 8, 10, 15; E. Suss. RO, QR/E49-58; C231/5, p. 532. From early 1643 he was named to a succession of parliamentarian commissions.57A. and O. Notably, in during the summer of military reversals, he was appointed with his brother William Hay* (and alongside Stapley and Harbert Morley) to the county committee (18 July); nominated as early as 5 July, at the end of December he was also appointed a deputy lieutenant.58CJ iii. 156a, 173a, 354a. Surviving papers of the county committee and the sequestrations committee from the mid to later 1640s reveal the dominance of these new bodies by the Hay brothers, together with Morley and Stapley.59SP28/246; SP28/181; SP28/265, f. 34; SP23/223, p. 881. More fragmentary evidence from as early as August 1643 reveals Hay signing important correspondence.60Bodl. Nalson III. 21; Tanner 60, ff. 251-255b. In May 1644 Hay re-appeared on the commission of the peace at the Lewes quarter sessions, as did Stapley and Morley; his re-appointment was confirmed following a major overhaul of the bench that October.61Suss. QSOB 1642-1649, 50; E. Suss. RO, QR/E65. While continuing to work with the county committee, he also served assiduously at quarter sessions during 1644 and 1645.62Suss. QSOB 1642-1649, 54, 61, 66, 72, 76, 85; E. Suss. RO, QR/E65-8, 70, 73, 76, 79; ASSI35/85/1.

On 12 September 1645 a writ was issued for an election at Arundel to replace Sir Edward Alford*, who had been disabled on 22 January 1644 for his allegiance to the king.63CJ iii. 374a; C231/6, p. 19. Arundel had traditionally fallen under the influence of Thomas Howard, 21st (or 14th) earl of Arundel, and latterly under that of Edward Sackville, 4th earl of Dorset, but by 1645 Arundel was in exile and Dorset was with the king at Oxford. The return of Hay for a borough over 30 miles from his home is testament partly to the extent to which a swathe of the leading gentry of west Sussex had fallen under suspicion for their involvement in attempts to secure Chichester for the royalists. In the context of growing fissures in the county between Presbyterian peace-seekers and Independent militants, it may also have been a product of attempts to secure a candidate acceptable to both the former (led by Sir Thomas Pelham) and the latter (led by Morley).

Hay had been elected by 10 October 1645 and had taken his seat by 29 October, when he took the Covenant alongside other recruiter MPs.64Perfect Passages no. 51 (8-15 Oct. 1645), 404 (E.266.2); CJ iv. 326a. Thereafter, the presence in the Commons of his younger brother, and a periodic failure to distinguish between them in the Journal (where ‘Hayes’ was the usual rendering of their name), creates problems for assessing the career of both. Nevertheless, the occasions where precise identification occurs reveal that, while not among the obviously active MPs, Harbert Hay’s contribution to business was neither limited to provincial affairs nor entirely lacking in significance.

In his first few weeks as a Member Hay may have been distracted by preparations for his second marriage, which took place at Lambeth on 2 December.65St Mary, Lambeth, par. reg. On the other hand, a consequence of his match with Rachel, the east-Sussex-born widow of Sir George Paule†, was the acquisition of property in Lambeth, where he was recorded as living in 1646 (apparently to the detriment of his attendance at Lewes quarter sessions), and from where attendance in the House was convenient.66C109/17i/557, pp. 327, 329, 331; Suss. QSOB 1642-1649, 91, 96, 100, 109, 119, 124. In the circumstances, he was perhaps not the Mr Hayes nominated on 4 and 8 December 1645 to committees to confer with City authorities over their propositions for the militia and to the committee considering the reasons of Alderman Fowke for not lending money for Ireland – although his new connections may have conferred a novel interest in such issues.67CJ iv. 365a, 368b.

Hay’s first definite Commons appointment came on 15 May 1646, when he was added after his brother to the Committee for Plundered Ministers.68CJ iv. 545b; Add. 15569, f. 1v. That ten months later Harbert alone was placed on the committee to consider the ordinance for restraining malignant ministers, and malignant fellows of colleges (22 Mar. 1647) – albeit with John Pelham* and Harbert Morley – suggests that in the interim he had made some mark independently on such issues.69CJ v. 119b. Other concerns, and potential connections in the House, are revealed in his nominations to committees reviewing the claims of landlords and tenants in the light of sequestrations (10 June 1646), considering an affront to an MP (9 July, among a small group including not just Pelham and Morley, but heavyweights Denzil Holles* and Sir Arthur Hesilrige*), and reforming the central law courts (21 Oct., listed immediately after eminent Members John Selden*, Holles, Oliver St John*, Sir Philip Stapilton* and William Pierrepont*).70CJ iv. 571a, 612b, 701a. In view of the last appointment, it may more plausibly have been Harbert who on 20 May was named to help prepare an ordinance for collecting arrears of rents payable to the court of wards, and (in line with 10 June) possibly he who was named to consider the ordinance for the sale of papists’ and delinquents’ estates (10 July).71CJ iv. 552a, 613a.

There is no certain reference to Hay in the Journal between 22 March and 9 October 1647. It is thus difficult to judge his stance on the radical agitation in the New Model army during the late spring and his role in the factional fighting, Presbyterian coup and counter-coup at Westminster over the summer, although in the light of their divergent stances later, it is possible that Harbert was somewhat less wedded to the Independent line. He or his brother was among those last-named to the large committee tasked on 23 April with investigating how potentially subversive pamphlets reached the army.72CJ v. 153a. One of the Hays also received a nomination on 8 July, but on 15 and 16 July, as the army appeared poised to march on London, Harbert at least was in Sussex, attending the Lewes quarter sessions (for the first time that year) with Harbert Morley.73CJ v. 237b; Suss. QSOB 1642-1649, 127.

That Harbert Hay returned to the Commons relatively soon after the failure of the Presbyterian coup is suggested by his appointment on 9 October to the committee to consider the cases of absent Members.74CJ v. 329a. The same day William Hay and Morley were recorded absent; their presence at Lewes sessions on the 7th and 8th may have weighed alongside the presence of Harbert Hay among the investigators to ensure the remission of their fines three weeks later.75CJ v. 330b, 344a; Suss. QSOB 1642-1649, 137. It is seems questionable whether any political significance can be read into the brothers’ different behaviours. It was Harbert who – directly interested, as a resident of Lambeth – was nominated on 31 December to the committee considering an ordinance enlarging the power of the militia committee in Westminster, which, like its sister committee south of the river in Southwark, was seeking to assert its independence of the Presbyterian-dominated City militia.76CJ v. 413a. Unfortunately, it is not clear which Mr Hay, in the immediate aftermath of the apparently definitive Vote of No Addresses to the king, was appointed to potentially (but not exclusively) radical committees addressing the grievances of the kingdom (4 Jan. 1648) and the reform of hospitals (6 Jan.).77CJ v. 417a, 421a. Nor does the Journal specify which was named to devise a method of setting assessments in a fairer manner (15 Jan.): possibly at this juncture there was nothing to choose between them.78CJ v. 434a.

In the late spring and early summer, it is perhaps slightly more likely that it was Harbert who, with the burgesses for Surrey and Southwark, investigated the threatening crowds who had surrounded the House expressing their royalist sympathies (17 May 1648).79CJ v. 562b The question of the ordinance for settling the militia of the whole kingdom was fundamental to all (13 June), but it was Harbert, with his local stake in the matter, who was nominated to consider once more the question of command of militias within the lines of communication and petitions from the relevant parishes and liberties, including Lambeth (10 July).80CJ v. 597b, 630a. On 31 August he commanded sufficient confidence from the members of the Derby House Committee sitting that day (dominated by those Independents most committed to peace-making with the king) to be entrusted with the keeping at his house of two prisoners taken in the rising of Henry Rich, 1st earl of Holland, until such time as they were called in for examination.81SP21/10, f. 113.

Judging by the noticeably Presbyterian bias of the committee named on 9 October, it was Harbert, rather than his brother, who was the Mr Hay named to raise money to maintain guards around Parliament, useful against pressures from royalist sympathisers and from the army alike.82CJ vi. 47a. Unlike William, who served during the Rump, Harbert did not sit after December 1648. There is, however, some confusion surrounding his departure from Westminster, and it remains unclear whether he was secluded at Pride’s Purge, or left later that month, after refusing to sign the declaration of dissent from the vote of 5 December for continuing the negotiations with the king at Newport.83A Vindication (1649), 29 (irregular pagination) (E.539.5); Underdown, Pride's Purge, 166n.

Hay’s appearance at Lewes quarter sessions in July 1647 had been his last there, but he was not removed from the bench until the purge which followed the execution of the king.84ASSI35/90/2. His will, drawn up on 28 January 1653, when he was ‘sick and weak of body’, revealed his considerable local influence and general prosperity: he had purchased land in Kent from his son-in-law Edward Woodward, while six sets of mortgages in his possession included one related to the lands of his brother-in-law William Michelborne in Horsted Keynes, West Hoathly and Ditchling. Two of his five surviving daughters were named executors in preference to his son and heir, John, who was apparently still quite young. That his overseers were his brother William and Harbert Morley implies that there had been no serious parting of ways with his closest associates.85PROB11/227/182. He died on 3 February, and the next day was buried, like his first wife Frances, in Glynde parish church.86Add. 5697, ff. 224-6. William Hay’s parliamentary career continued, but neither brother’s descendants in the male line followed them to Westminster.