HAYES, James (?1629-93), of Lincoln’s Inn, Mdx., and Beckington, Som.

Hayes’s father was a Somerset gentleman of unknown antecedents with land at Beckington, north east of Frome near the Wiltshire border, and at Lamyatt and Westcombe, further south near Shepton Mallett. The moderate wealth which allowed him in 1661 to bequeath £500 each to two unmarried daughters and £400 each to his two youngest sons was perhaps principally derived from his activity as a clothier.25PROB11/308/619. He was so described in a joint petition with John Ashe* to the privy council in August 1637 in which they sought to import soap for the manufacture of fine west country cloth.26CSP Dom. 1637, p. 397. One of his daughters married a Bristol merchant venturer and it is possible that he was related to the Hayes family of notable London merchants, at least one of whom was also James.27Vis. Som. 1672 (Harl. Soc. n.s. xi), 30; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 290.

After a brief stay at Oxford the future MP entered Lincoln’s Inn in October 1649.28Al. Ox.; L. Inn Admiss. i. 260. He was drawn into the orbit of James Ashe* of the Inner Temple, with whom he was involved in 1652 in a land transaction with a Dorset clothier.29Dorset RO, D1265/7/1. That June he or his father visited John Harington I* at his Lincoln’s Inn chambers in company with Harbottle Grimston*.30Harington’s Diary, 76. Like Harington, Hayes senior was an active Somerset magistrate; appointed treasurer of hospitals in the eastern division of the county in April 1654, he was named as a subsidy commissioner in 1657.31St John Baptist, Frome, par. reg.; Som. Rec. Soc. xxviii. 234, 237, 261; A. and O.

Usefully connected and perhaps with the talents for which he was later distinguished already apparent, in March 1658 Hayes junior, by this time a barrister, was elected recorder of Marlborough.32LI Black Bks. ii. 414. He replaced one Edward Carter, named to the office in the new charter of the previous May, who had refused to take on the employment.33Wilts. RO, G22/1/22, p. 112. On 23 December 1658 he was elected to Parliament for the junior borough seat by an overwhelming majority of freeholders.34Wilts. RO, G22/1/22, pp. 122-3. Once in the Commons he was not obviously active. He was nominated to only two committees, both on 5 February 1659: those to consider the petition from the widow of Leveller leader John Lilburne and investigate the Rump Parliament’s scheme to supply of able ministers to and fund the church in Wales. That he was named third among the many MPs placed on the latter committee suggests he was thought to have a particular interest in the subject or the area or both.35CJ vii. 600a, 600b.

It looks as though Hayes stayed in post as recorder for the remainder of 1659, but unlike his fellow Member of that year, Thomas Grove*, he was not a candidate in the election of April 1660; nor did he vote.36Wilts RO, G22/1/205/2; 1300/225A and B; Indeed, he never sat in Parliament again, but he soon embarked on a spectacular career in other spheres. Although a justice of the peace in Somerset from 1662 and later in Oxfordshire and (briefly) Kent and Middlesex, that was not where he was especially notable.37C213/4, ff. 162, 477; C213/5, ff. 8, 19; QS Recs. Som. Charles II, 126. Proposed by John Wilkins, in September 1662 he was elected as a founder member of the Royal Society; for the remainder of the decade at least he was engaged by its activities.38Hunter, Royal Soc. and its Fellows, 180-1; A list of the fellows of the Royal Society (1663). From 1663, still as ‘of Lincoln’s Inn’ despite the death of his father late in 1661, he was associated in a series of land transactions with Somerset and Wiltshire grandee Sir Edward Hungerford (Edward Hungerford*), whose sister Rachel, widow of Henry Cary*, 4th Viscount Falkland (d. 1663), he married at some point within the next decade.39Plymouth and W Devon RO, 74/121/11(a-b); 69/M/2/120, 158, 183, 694; 234/13; 552/27; CP. In 1663 he took the lease on half of the water house at Wapping, an interest he and a syndicate later sold on.40LMA, ACC 2558/NR13/229, 241, 243. Such enterprise, together with Royal Society membership, probably account for his ‘sudden’ engagement as secretary to Prince Rupert shortly before 12 February 1666.41LI Black Bks. iii. 49. In that capacity he was involved in naval affairs and conferred with John Evelyn and Samuel Pepys, who found him ‘an ingenious man ... fit to contract some friendship with’ and surrounded by an entourage of ‘little people’.42Evelyn Diary, ed. de Beer, iii. 623; Pepys’s diary, vii. 84, 323-4, 339, 340; viii. 34, 52; Bodl. Rawl. A.176, ff. 207-8; The Letters of Samuel Pepys, ed. G. de la Bédoyère (2006), 57-8. He was also part of a group who in 1669 acquired the farm of the revenues in Ireland for seven years.43CTB iii. 235.

From 1661, if not earlier, Hayes had an interest in colonial affairs. A founder member of the corporation of New England that May, he was also on the committee for the propagation of the gospel there when it was set up the following February; Bristol to Virginia trade also engaged him.44CSP Col. America and W. Indies 1661-8, pp. 31, 71, 491. From at least 1667 he was investing in and collecting money for what was to become the Hudson’s Bay Company. Named to its committee in the charter of incorporation of May 1670, he proved very active into the 1680s and was an assiduous attender during his period of office as deputy governor. Responsible for encouraging the explorers Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médart Chouart, sieur des Grosseilleurs, to work for England rather than France, he was rewarded by having the Hayes river (now in Canada) named after him.45Mins. Hudson’s Bay Co. 1671-1674, 170-1; Mins. Hudson’s Bay Co. 1679-1682, p. xxiv; Mins. Hudson’s Bay Co. 1682-1684, 320-7; CSP Col. America and W. Indies 1681-8, pp. 64-5, 647-8, 658-9.

Knighted in 1670, Hayes seems to have prospered as long as Rupert was alive, continuing the association after ceasing to be the prince’s secretary.46Shaw, Knights of Eng. ii. 244. Having temporarily made his home in Oxfordshire, he then acquired an estate at Bedgebury in Kent, where he built a house.47Hasted, Kent, ii, 73-88. But his speculations were always risky and he parted from the Hudson’s Bay Company owing it money. He also became mired in litigation.48E.E. Rich, The Hist. of the Hudson’s Bay Co. 1670-1870 i. (Hudson’s Bay Rec. Soc. xxi), 229-30; The Entring Book of Roger Morrice ed. M. Goldie (2007), iv. 92; LJ xv. 251b. After his death in 1693 both his son James Hayes† and his brother and protégé John Hayes† sat in Parliament, but both suffered from Sir James’s overstretched finances.49HP Commons 1690-1715.