KINGE, Henry (1601-aft. 1669), of Norwich, Norf.

Kinge’s father, Thomas Kinge, served as town clerk of Norwich for almost a quarter of a century.20Index to Norwich City Officers, pp. xxxviii, 92; Mins. Norwich Ct. of Mayoralty, 1630-1631, 71, 102, 135, 142, 159, 161, 222, 244; Mins. Norwich Ct. of Mayoralty, 1632-1635, 28, 51, 52, 64-5, 89, 99. But by the late 1630s his godly views had brought him into conflict with the bishop of Norwich, Matthew Wren. In 1637, when in his annual report on the state of the Church of England, Archbishop William Laud reviewed conditions in the Norwich diocese, he told Charles I that Kinge was ‘a factious and dangerous man’ who ‘frequently absents himself from the cathedral’. Laud feared that ‘his ill example will make others neglect their duties.’21‘Annual accounts of the Church of Eng.’, ed. K. Fincham, 128, in From the Reformation to Permissive Soc. ed. M. Barber, S. Taylor and G. Sewell (Church of Eng. Rec. Soc. xviii.). In 1638 Kinge resigned as town clerk and the following year he and his wife emigrated to the Low Countries.22CSP Dom. 1639, pp. 221, 235; Transcript of Three Regs. of Passengers from Great Yarmouth, ed. C. B. Jewson (Norf. Rec. Soc. xxv.), 83. There they joined the English church at Rotterdam, where the minister was their fellow exile from Norwich, William Bridge.23DWL, Harmer MS 76.1, f. 2. By 1642 they had returned to England, as they then joined the congregation established by Bridge at Great Yarmouth.24DWL, Harmer MS 76.2, p. 3. Kinge died that same year.25Vis. Norf. i. 115. His eldest son, Thomas, who predeceased him, had meanwhile served as the rector of Bayfield and Letheringsett and later of Salle.

Kinge’s younger son, Henry, the future MP, had followed the father in becoming an attorney. The plan was presumably that Henry would eventually inherit his Norwich practice. He first appears in the records in the early 1630s carrying out legal business in the city, probably as an assistant to his father. Thus, in 1630 the governors of the Norwich children’s hospital transferred lands at Redenhall and Alburgh which had been donated to them into the names of Henry Kinge and Edmund Anguishe.26Mins. Norwich Ct. of Mayoralty, 1630-1, 96, 118, 187. He and Anguishe were soon also working together in connection with the escheator’s accounts of the corporation.27Mins. Norwich Ct. of Mayoralty, 1630-1, 219; Mins. Norwich Ct. of Mayoralty, 1632-5, 38. Over the next few years Kinge was regularly used by the Norwich corporation in various minor legal matters, usually being identified in the corporation minutes as ‘Henry Kinge attorney’.28Mins. Norwich Ct. of Mayoralty, 1632-5, 73, 127, 137, 145, 160, 187, 200.

By 1633 Kinge may have been living in the Norwich parish of St Michael at Plea.29Norwich Rate Bk. ed. W. Rye (1903), 52. His sisters moved to the United Provinces at least two years before their parents, as Henry visited them there in the autumn of 1637.30Transcript of Three Regs. of Passengers, 47. The best indication that Kinge shared his parents’ religious views at about this time is the later accusation that he had embezzled money raised in the late 1630s by Sir Thomas Hoogan and Richard Catelyn* to purchase impropriations in Norwich.31Blomefield, Norf. iii. 410. This was an attempt to continue the earlier project by, among others, Catelyn, Thomas Atkin*, Miles Corbett* and John Tolye* to create a Norfolk version of the feoffees for impropriations.

Kinge may well have been the attorney of that name who enrolled as an attorney of the court of common pleas in February 1641, although that Henry Kinge was said to be from West Rudham, an area of Norfolk with which the future MP seems otherwise not to have been associated.32Admissions Regs. of Barnard’s Inn, ed. C.W. Brooks (Selden Soc. xii.), 92. Kinge certainly visited London several times during 1641 and 1642, usually on legal business.33Bodl. Tanner 66, ff. 199, 238, 291; Tanner 63, f. 64. On one of those visits, in November 1641, he stayed at Furnival’s Inn, one of the inns of chancery.34Bodl. Tanner 66, f. 209. One of his clients was Martin Calthorpe of Hickling, Norfolk, to whom he also wrote regularly with news on current affairs, including developments in Parliament, between the spring of 1641 and late 1642.35Bodl. Tanner 65, ff. 289, 291; Tanner 66, ff. 44, 57, 69, 77, 93, 95, 98, 199, 205, 209, 216, 218, 222, 229, 338, 240, 248, 274, 291, 297; Tanner 63, ff. 7, 20, 27, 31, 33, 37, 64, 69, 71, 91, 96, 101, 111, 113, 128, 144, 164; Tanner 64, ff. 5, 42, 58, 75, 78, 83, 87, 89. Some of that news was information that he had gathered himself while in London; he seems to have visited Westminster on 16 February 1642 mainly in order to pick up the latest political gossip.36Bodl. Tanner 66, f. 274. But some of his letters to Calthorpe were written from Norwich and occasionally he made it clear that he was only passing on what he had read in newsletters from London.37Bodl. Tanner 66, f. 238; Tanner 63, f. 7. His contacts in Norwich included the headmaster of the city’s grammar school, Thomas Lovering.38Bodl. Tanner 66, f. 297. Hints of his own views were rare, although he did welcome the publication of the Grand Remonstrance in December 1641 on the grounds that it would ‘give abundant satisfaction to all that yet know little of what have passed’.39Bodl. Tanner 66, f. 218.

Once civil war had broken out, Kinge strongly supported Parliament and from the summer of 1643 Parliament appointed him to its main local commissions, sometimes specifically for Norwich but also increasingly for the whole county.40A. and O. His support for Parliament must have been heavily influenced by his religious views, for in August 1644, two months after its foundation, he joined the Norwich congregational church. His wife also became a member the following year.41DWL, Harmer MS 76.1, ff. 12, 13. In late May 1648, following the riots there, he was appointed by Parliament as one of the new deputy lieutenants for Norwich.42CJ v. 578b; LJ x. 296b.

Under the Rump, Kinge was added to the Norfolk commission of the peace, where he quickly proved one of its most prominent members.43Norf. QSOB, 21-60. In the spring of 1650 Kinge was appointed with fellow justices Robert Wood I* and Charles George Cock* to consider how to repair Norwich Castle.44Norf. QSOB, 21, 26, 42, 44, 51. Together with Tobias Frere* and Robert Jermy*, he was from early 1650 working as one of the Committee for Compounding’s* sequestrators for Norfolk. Later he was also their steward and treasurer in that county.45CCC 172, 229, 622; Add. 40630, f. 249; HMC Var. iv. 347. In mid-June 1653, having already been summoned to sit in the Nominated Parliament, he was one of a number of local officials asked to investigate disturbances in Norfolk.46CSP Dom. 1652-3, p. 415.

Kinge was among those recommended for membership of the Nominated Parliament by representatives from seven Norfolk churches, and was then accepted by the council of officers.47Original Letters, ed. Nickolls, 124-5. During the first two months of the Parliament he was named to the standing committee for the business of the law (20 July) and to the committee to assign lodgings to MPs (23 Aug.).48CJ vii. 286b, 306b. Later, on 20 September, he was included on the committee on the sale of forests.49CJ vii. 322a. However, he seems to have specialised as a teller. During the five months of the Nominated Parliament, Kinge counted the votes in seven divisions. Initially this was because, given his experience as a sequestrator, he took a close interest in the bill for the sale of recusants’ estates forfeited by Parliament. Apparently sceptical of the need for such a sale, he was a teller for the first time on 13 September, when he opposed giving the bill a second reading.50CJ vii. 317b. With Henry Cromwell*, he was also the teller for those in favour of the amendments to that bill passed on 8 October, while on 21 October he and Praise-God Barbon* counted the votes of the minority against allowing the bill to pass.51CJ vii. 332a, 337b. The previous day he had been the teller with Henry Barton* in the minority in favour of giving a second reading to the bill to abolish the Engagement.52CJ vii. 336b. When the amendments to the bill to abolish chancery came before the House a week later, he was a teller for those who wanted to see the bill re-committed.53CJ vii. 340b. He was again a teller with Barton on 2 November supporting the motion to grant powers to the council of state to set the price of wine.54CJ vii. 345b. On 17 November he was teller with John Hewson* for those attempting to block the proposal that a bill be brought in to abolish lay rights of ecclesiastical patronage.55CJ vii. 352a. Finally, on 24 November, with Andrew Broughton* and Augustine Wingfield*, he was ordered to prepare a proclamation to bring to justice some Portuguese accused of murder.56CJ vii. 355b. He was said to be in favour of the public maintenance of a godly ministry.57Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 420. In April 1654, four months after this Parliament had dissolved itself, he was ordered to relinquish his Whitehall lodgings.58CSP Dom. 1654, p. 70.

On returning to Norfolk, Kinge was as active as a justice of the peace under the protectorate as he had been under the Rump.59Norf. QSOB, 66-96. He was also now a Norfolk commissioner to remove scandalous ministers.60A. and O. Appointed a commissioner for the security of the protector in late 1658, he was unable, probably for reasons of ill health, to attend the meeting of the Norfolk commissioners at Norwich in early November 1655, although he was able to attend their meeting there the following April.61TSP iv. 171, 705. In February 1656 he was among those Norfolk gentlemen from whom the council of state sought advice on the state of the Norwich weaving industry.62CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 201. He may have continued to carry out legal work on behalf of the Norwich corporation, possibly as the steward of some of their estates, although in September 1655 the corporation ordered him to return all the court books in his possession.63Norf. RO, Norwich assembly bk. 1642-68, f. 165. By the late 1650s he may have been acting as steward of the manor of Binham, which at that point was held by the trustees of Clement Paston.64E.B. Burstall, ‘The Pastons and their manor of Binham’, Norf. Arch. xxx., 125.

Kinge ceased to hold local office after the Restoration. He nevertheless subscribed £4 towards the Norwich voluntary gift to Charles II in 1662.65Norwich Subscriptions to the Voluntary Gift of 1662, ed. P.M. Williams (Norf. Rec. Soc. i.), 78. In 1664 he faced accusations that he had embezzled the money raised to buy some of the Norwich impropriations in the late 1630s. The commissioners for charitable uses ordered him to repay £470.66C93/27/23; Blomefield, Norf. iii. 410. In 1666 he may have been fined for supplying the militia with a defective horse.67Norf. Lieut. Jnl. 87. Kinge was still alive and still a religious nonconformist in December 1669 when he dissented from the view of the majority of the Norwich congregational church that they should renew their covenant.68DWL, Harmer MS 76.1, f. 51. It is possible but unlikely that he was the resident of St Ethelred’s parish, Norwich, who was exempted from paying the hearth tax in the early 1670s.69Norf. Hearth Tax Exemption Certificates 1670-1674, ed. P. Seaman (Norf. Rec. Soc. lxv.), 34-5. Nothing further is known of Kinge except that his wife died a widow in 1691. Their only child, Mary, married Francis Hastings of Norwich.70Vis. Norf. i. 115.