JERMYN, Henry (1605-84), of Rushbrooke, Suff. and Whitehall, Westminster.

Henry Jermyn’s father, Sir Thomas Jermyn*, was a Suffolk landowner with a lineage stretching back to at least the thirteenth century and, at about the time Henry was born, he was only just beginning to make his mark as a courtier in the household of James I. Following his father into royal service, in time Henry became a leading figure at the courts of Charles I and Charles II. Henry was perhaps as young as 12 when he was sent abroad by his father in 1618 to spend three years touring the continent, experience that was to be invaluable in his later career.49APC 1618-19, p. 103. He cannot have remained long in England on his return, for by 1623 he was in Madrid as part of the household of the 1st earl of Bristol (John Digby†), the English ambassador extraordinary.50Harl. 1581, f. 352; R. Lockyer, Buckingham (1981), 140.

Jermyn’s lengthy connection with Henrietta Maria dated from his entry into her household as a gentleman usher of her privy chamber, probably during the reorganization of her household in 1627 following the dismissal of her French servants.51CSP Ven. 1626-8, p. 298; E101/438/7; LR5/63, f. 1v. Almost from the outset he seems to have been especially trusted. The illness of her brother, Louis XIII, and the death of the duchesse d’Orléans prompted Henrietta Maria to send Jermyn to the French court in late July 1627, just as Buckingham was renewing the siege of La Rochelle. French hopes that this was a peace overture were disappointed when, in accordance with his strict orders from the king, Jermyn did no more than convey the queen’s sympathies.52CSP Ven. 1626-8, pp. 297-8, 305, 310, 335; CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 328. The success (from the king’s perspective) of his mission to the French court in 1627 made Jermyn an obvious choice when a messenger was needed in September 1632 to go to Paris to congratulate Marie de Medici on her safe survival of a coach accident. The king and queen presented him with jewels worth £2,000 on the completion of this assignment.53CSP Dom. 1631-3, p. 420; C115/M35/8414; C115/M35/8423. Jermyn was becoming the preferred envoy for special missions to France, a role he would retain for the next 40 years.

Nonetheless, a series of scandals intervened in 1633 to blacken Jermyn’s reputation and threaten the rising courtier. While in France as ambassador extraordinary, Jerome Weston† (son of the lord treasurer) had opened some private letters sent by the queen and her high steward, the 1st earl of Holland (Henry Rich†). In March 1633 Holland used his close friend Jermyn to deliver to Weston a challenge to a duel. Lord Weston (as he had been since his father’s creation as earl of Portland the previous February) claimed diplomatic privilege and declined the challenge. The king disapproved of Holland’s actions and Jermyn was put under house arrest.54CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 3, 11-13; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, pp. 453, 454. Questioned by a delegation of privy councillors on 24 March, he backed up Holland’s version of events, although in a manner which was judged ‘irrespective’ and ‘petulant’.55CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 12, 15, 16; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 453. When the affair came before the privy council on 13 April, the king ruled in Weston’s favour. Holland and Jermyn then apologised and were released.56CSP Dom. 1633-4, pp. 14-15; HMC Cowper, ii. 7.

However, within weeks Eleanor Villiers, the unmarried sister of Viscount Grandison and one of the maids of honour, discovered she was pregnant and identified Jermyn as the father. Conception had evidently occurred on either 6 or 10 March, shortly before his arrest, and she claimed that, on his release, Jermyn had refused to make an honest woman of her because ‘he had no fortune’.57CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 50; C115/M31/8164. Jermyn denied this, claiming that she had also been sleeping with Viscount Feilding and with Holland’s stepbrother, the 1st earl of Newport.58HMC Cowper, ii. 40-1. Both the king and the queen were scandalized and immediate action was taken. On 6 May Jermyn and his supposed lover were committed to the Tower, where they remained in custody for four months.59C115/M31/8151; C115/M31/8154; HMC Cowper, ii. 8. Another prisoner there, William Prynne*, saw this as a ‘strange providence’, as he believed that it had been Jermyn who had alerted the king to the subversive content of his Histrio-mastix, leading to his imprisonment.60[W. Prynne], A New Discovery of the Prelates Tyranny (1641), 8 (E.162.1). The lovers were released on 15 September but, after Jermyn refused to obey the king’s wish that he marry Eleanor, he was ordered to leave the country.61C115/M31/8159; PC2/43, f. 244; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, p. 491. Perhaps, as rumoured, he was sent to Jersey, where his father was the governor.62HMC Cowper, ii. 30; CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 206. During his absence Eleanor Villiers gave birth to the child she continued to claim was his.63C115/M31/8164. Jermyn was abroad for almost a year. Only on 30 August 1634 was he formally readmitted to the royal presence and allowed to resume his duties at court.64C115/M36/8432.

Jermyn soon regained the queen’s favour. Archbishop William Laud’s letters to Viscount Wentworth (Thomas Wentworth†) during 1635 make clear that she was listening mainly to Jermyn and Holland, who had probably aided his friend’s return to her affections. That summer, Laud reported how Lord Cottington (Sir Francis Cottington†) had used Jermyn to persuade the queen and Holland to support his appointment as lord treasurer to supersede the treasury commission, of which Laud was first lord.65W. Laud, Works (Oxford, 1847-60), vii. 145, 161, 172. Jermyn also became embroiled in the libel case brought by Wentworth in star chamber against Holland’s client Sir Piers Crosby. In December 1638 Wentworth sought to call Jermyn as a witness, hoping that he and Holland would admit, when questioned under oath, that Crosby had related to them in 1636 or 1637 the alleged slander of Wentworth’s involvement in the death of Robert Esmond.66Strafforde Letters, ii. 258, 282-4, 286; Works of…William Laud, vii. 508, 537; A. Clarke, ‘Sir Piers Crosby’, Irish Historical Studies, xxvi. 145-6. Wentworth couched the decision in April 1639 to withdraw Jermyn’s name from the list of prospective witnesses as a move to please the queen.67Strafforde Letters, ii. 328.

By this time Jermyn’s influence with Henrietta Maria was secure even as Holland’s was being overtaken by that of the 4th earl of Northumberland (Algernon Percy†) and his brother Henry Percy*. Indeed, Jermyn’s standing increased. In September and October 1638 he and Sir William de St Ravy were sent to congratulate Louis XIII and Anne of Austria on the birth of the dauphin (the future Louis XIV) and probably also attempt to avert the imminent arrival in England of the queen dowager, Marie de Medici, Henrietta Maria’s mother.68CSP Dom. 1638-9, pp. 4, 5, 11-12; CSP Ven. 1636-9, pp. 449, 456, 458, 466; Bodl. North c.4, f. 50; Letters and Mems. of State ed. A. Collins (1746), ii. 572-3, 575. Having failed in the latter, four months later Jermyn was sent again to Paris in what proved an unsuccessful mission to persuade the French either to reach a financial agreement with their disaffected queen dowager or to pay for her expensive upkeep in England.69Letters and Mems. of State ed. Collins, ii. 591; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 156, 160; Mems. of Prince Rupert, i. 67; CSP Ven. 1636-9, pp. 500-1, 504-5, 506, 508, 511, 513, 516, 521, 534; HMC Rutland, iv. 505; CSP Dom. 1639, p. 27. Bawdy gossip in England posited Marie de Medici as yet another of Jermyn’s conquests.70The Character of an Oxford-Incendiary [1645], 8 (E.279.6).

In June 1639 Henrietta Maria employed Jermyn as her personal agent in the negotiations with the papal envoy, George Conn, for assistance against the Scots.71CSP Ven. 1636-9, p. 545. Having previously told the 2nd earl of Leicester (Sir Robert Sidney†) that events in Scotland were ‘much too serious for my contemplation’, Jermyn complacently assured George Carteret† that although ‘the affairs there are not so well settled as was to be wished, yet I believe the Scots will in the end rather calm down than break out again to their former extremities’.72HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 156; CSP Dom. 1639, p. 404. That August, the promotion of Lord Goring (Sir George Goring†) to succeed Jermyn’s father as vice-chamberlain of the royal household gave Henrietta Maria the chance to reward Jermyn with the highest office in her gift that could be held by a commoner – the mastership of the horse in her stables.73Letters and Mems. of State ed. Collins, ii. 604; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 180; Dorset RO, D/FSI Box 267, copies of official documents, 1660-4, unfol.; NLW, Wynnstay ms 166, p. 1; Eg. 1048, f. 187. Several months later the king’s master of the horse, James Hamilton, 3rd marquess of Hamilton, repaired his strained relations with the queen by conceding to Jermyn full control of her stables.74Letters and Mems. of State ed. Collins, ii. 621. Jermyn was now ‘more than ever in the favour of the queen and indeed to a strange degree’, according to the countess of Carlisle, and when in February 1640 her brother Henry Percy introduced him to the earl of Strafford (the former Viscount Wentworth), this was understood by all as an unambiguous signal that Strafford was now ‘a person that the queen valued and intended so much to trust’.75HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 204, 232. With elections due for a new Parliament, there was a rumour that Jermyn was about to be created a viscount. Baynham Throckmorton* took this as evidence that ‘it is a mad world’.76Cal. Corresp. Smyth Fam. 152.

Secure in his standing at court, Jermyn took no obvious interest in the Parliament called for April 1640. Although ostensibly a veteran MP, his experience of the Commons may well have been negligible. He had sat three times in the 1620s for two seats, neither of which were in his native county, his father having used the family interest at Bury St Edmunds to get himself elected. Henry had sat for the Cornish constituency of Bodmin in the 1625 and 1626 Parliaments as a result of the efforts of his uncle, Sir Robert Killigrew†, and in 1628 another relative, Sir Humphrey May†, (as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster) had got him elected at Liverpool. There is no evidence of his activity in any of these Parliaments. His election to the Short Parliament was again for a borough far distant from Suffolk – Corfe Castle, secured for him by the attorney-general, Sir John Bankes†.77C219/42/1A, f. 93. This was probably an arrangement from which Bankes, a newcomer to Dorset, had rather more to gain than Jermyn. Once again, Jermyn appears to have said and done nothing in Parliament during this session. He later told Edmund Waller* that if his father had more openly opposed the tactics adopted by the other senior court manager in the Commons, Sir Henry Vane I*, the early dissolution of the Short Parliament might have been averted.78E. Waller, Poems (1711), pp. xx-xxi.

Jermyn is not known to have tried to stand in the parliamentary elections in the autumn of 1640. His powerful influence with the queen led the secretary of state, Sir Francis Windebanke*, to conclude in February 1641 that he would have to approach Jermyn first before he could ask the queen for an office for a kinsman.79HMC Bath, ii. 76-7. But it was thought only a matter of time before the Long Parliament would demand his removal.80Letters and Mems. of State ed. Collins, ii. 663. By this time Jermyn had become a player in court politics at the very highest level, for he had emerged as one of the strongest supporters of some sort of accommodation with the king’s critics. Some believed that the appointment of seven new privy councillors on 19 February, the most obvious move by the king to buy off his opponents, was largely the work of the two masters of the horse, Jermyn and Hamilton.81HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 387. The earl of Leicester had confidence that Jermyn’s lobbying to secure him the lord lieutenancy of Ireland was the most likely route to success.82HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 362-402. In early April Sir John Temple* told Leicester that all appointments were being made by Henrietta Maria, ‘who, in those particulars, is guided by Jermyn, and a strange interest hath gotten now in the king’.83HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 398.

That influence soon proved most embarrassing. Persuaded, at least partly, by Sir John Suckling’s* arguments that it was naïve to believe that Parliament would reach agreement with the king and that, in response, Charles and his wife must act in concert, Jermyn turned to direct action.84The Works of Sir John Suckling: The Non-Dramatic Works ed. T. Clayton (Oxford, 1971), 103-7. Perhaps it was he, more than anyone else, who instigated the idea of a military coup; certainly, he and his associates were in the thick of the intrigues and conspiracies around the king and the queen known as the first army plot.85C. Russell, ‘The First Army Plot of 1641’, TRHS 5th ser. xxxviii. 85-106. In late March 1641, while Henry Percy nurtured a separate intrigue which probably had much more limited objectives, Jermyn and Suckling were put in touch by the poet William Davenant with James Chudleigh, the emissary from some of the discontented officers in the army.86An Exact Collection of all Remonstrances (1643), 220-7; Procs. LP v. 36, 39, 43, 47, 51-3, vi. 71-2; Aubrey, Brief Lives, i. 205; W. Davenant, Madagascar (1638), sig. [A3]. At a meeting arranged by the king to bring together this group with Percy’s conspirators, Jermyn was almost certainly among the more fanatical, fully supporting the plan of bringing the army south, seizing the Tower and releasing Strafford.87An Exact Collection, 215-20; HMC Salisbury, xxii. 356-60; Procs. LP v. 31-4, 36-7, 39-40, 43-5, 47-8, 52-6, 141-2, 258, 259-61, vi. 57, 71-2; CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 8, 17, 18. Plausibly, he was behind the plot by Suckling and Billingsley to storm the Tower in early May 1641.

Revelations about the Army Plot began to break on 4 May when the Commons set up at committee to examine Suckling and Billingsley.88CJ ii. 134a. The following day the Commons sought and obtained the Lords’ agreement to a motion requesting the king to order that no royal servants were to leave the country during their investigations.89CJ ii. 135a-b; LJ iv. 235a-b. Jermyn panicked and fled the capital that same day, carrying a pass signed by the king.90Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 274; D’Ewes (C), 375; PJ i. 501-2, 506-7. Suspicion that Charles issued this in full knowledge of the resolution surfaced during negotiations in March 1642 between Parliament and the king, but the latter denied the allegation in no uncertain terms.91Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 532. Parliament acknowledged in its remonstrance of May 1642 that the pass was dated on 4 May 1641, but observed that ‘it seems strange to those who know how great respect and power Mr Jermyn had in court, that he should begin his journey in such haste, and in apparel so unfit for travel, as a black satin suit, and white boots, if his going away were designed the day before’.92Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 694. He would later be mocked for his Spanish leather boots.93Character of an Oxford-Incendiary, 8. Even if Jermyn’s departure had been planned on 4 May, it is unsurprising that many thought that the king had deliberately connived at it to impede the investigation into the plot.

When on 6 May John Pym* informed the Commons of the disappearance of both Jermyn and Percy, the two Houses immediately ordered that the fleeing suspects be apprehended. Instructions were sent to the lieutenant-governor of Jersey (of which Sir Thomas Jermyn was still governor) to prevent their taking refuge there.94CJ ii. 136b; LJ iv. 236b, 237a; Procs. LP iv. 231, 232, 233; HMC 5th Rep. 413. Jermyn was in fact still in the country and that evening he appeared at Portsmouth to tip off George Goring*. The following morning Jermyn, Robert Dormer, 1st earl of Carnarvon and Suckling slipped across the Channel to safety in France.95Two Diaries of Long Parl. 45; Procs. LP iv. 365, 367; Clarendon, Hist. i. 351. On reaching Dieppe, Carnarvon and Suckling headed for Paris, while on 21 May Jermyn was reported to be at Rouen.96CSP Dom. 1640-1, pp. 578, 584, 585. He had probably joined the others in Paris by the end of the month.97HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 403. Parliament had reacted too slowly. News of the parliamentary order of 6 May did not reach Portsmouth until the evening of 7 May and the proclamation for the arrest of the fugitives was not ready until 8 May.98Procs. LP iv. 273, 276, 279, 283, 362, 367; LJ iv. 238b; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 261-2; Stuart Royal Proclamations II ed. J.F. Larkin (Oxford, 1983), 742-4.

In their wake the conspirators had left a sensation which Parliament was not slow to exploit. In the Lords, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex summed up the danger by referring to Percy, Jermyn and their others as ‘the new juntillio’.99HMC Egmont, i. 134. Sir Henry Vane I (as treasurer of the Household, a close colleague of Jermyn’s father) was initially more favourable, but recognised that the plotters were generally ‘esteemed much more culpable than I hope they are’.100CSP Dom. 1640-1, p. 571. A statement by Sir Philip Stapilton* on 13 May gave MPs their first chance to hear the full details of the escapes.101Procs. LP iv. 358, 362-3, 365, 367-8; Two Diaries of Long Parl. 45. Throughout June and much of July investigations by the Lords’ committee of examinations and the Commons’ committee of seven uncovered most of the story of the plot. The case they built up against Jermyn was damning.102CJ ii. 171a; Procs. LP, v. 31-5, 36-7, 39-40, 42-5, 46-8, 133-6, 138-42, 146-54, 171-2, 184-96, 254-6, 258-61, 354; Verney, Notes, 87-8, 95-6, 98-9; CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 7, 8, 18, 29; HMC Salisbury, xxii. 356-60. Steps were also taken to halt the pension he had been receiving from the queen.103Procs. LP, v. 534; 675; CJ ii. 201a, 212a, 232a; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 58. On 22 July the articles outlining the guilt of the plotters were presented to the Commons by John Glynne* and on the 26th, after several days of debate, the Commons approved the key articles against Jermyn.104Procs. LP, vi. 52-3, 55-7, 66-7, 70, 71-3, 80-1, 83-5, 92-6; Verney, Notes, 110-11; CJ ii. 223a-b, 224b-225a; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 405; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 356.

The momentum of these proceedings then faltered. There were rumours of support for different punishments.105HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, vi. 409; CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 63, 76. Other business prevented the Commons resuming this matter until 12 August when, ‘after long debate’, MPs voted to charge Jermyn, together with Suckling and Percy, with treason.106CJ ii. 231a, 233a, 241a, 244a, 252a, 253a; Procs. LP vi. 371-4, 379-87. Having continued to gather evidence, on 17 December the Commons resolved to impeach the trio rather than proceed by a bill of attainder against them.107CJ ii. 255b-256a, 318a, 332b, 333a, 343a, 346b; D’Ewes (C), 129, 238-9, 303-4. There the matter rested. In January 1642 intercepted letters from Jermyn to the queen and an allegation that an attempt had been made to dissuade George Peard* from supporting the moves against the plotters ensured that the Commons were not allowed to forget Jermyn.108PJ i. 50-1, 53, 58, 195, 199, 202, 206, 214, 222, 224, 225, 226; Add. 64807, ff. 24v, 37v; CJ ii. 403a; LJ iv. 549b-550a. Later that year there were still some who hoped to use this affair against the king.109PJ i. 501-2, 506-7; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. iv. 532, 694, v. 45; CJ ii. 573a; An Exact Collection, 215-35. However, the promised impeachment trials never took place. The accused were all out of reach, the essential propaganda points had already been made and more immediate matters soon occupied Parliament’s attention.

In February 1642, Jermyn and the queen’s Catholic agent on the continent, Walter Montagu, were in Holland to meet Henrietta Maria when she fled her anticipated impeachment in England.110Oxinden Lttrs. ed. Gardiner, 292; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 266. In late June one of Miles Corbett’s* correspondents at Rotterdam reported that Jermyn, Montagu, Percy and Davenant had recently travelled to The Hague in one of the queen’s coaches.111PJ iii. 160. A pamphlet published several weeks later printed what purported to be letter written by Jermyn on 2 July from ‘Bejeare’ in France.112A New Discoverie of Mr Jermyns Conspiracy (1642), 1-3 (E.107.35). A month later Parliament heard that Jermyn had tried to hire a ship at Rotterdam to transport ammunition to the royalist forces in England but had been distracted by a challenge to a duel, although that encounter did not in the end take place.113LJ v. 265a-b; PJ iii. 282-3; HMC 4th Rep. 260. Walter Strickland* confirmed these reports of hired ships, writing to Parliament in September 1642 that Jermyn was being assisted by Sir Frederick Cornwallis* (another Suffolk courtier) and that the queen had despatched Jermyn to persuade the prince of Orange to provide them with ships.114Add. 18777, f. 9v. The Dutch authorities blocked the departure of one ship carrying 200 soldiers and, when another set sail in early October, it was forced ashore at Great Yarmouth.115CSP Ven. 1642-3, p. 157; CJ ii. 796b; Add. 18777, f. 21v. Undeterred by these failures, Jermyn continued to raise men and money.116HMC 10th Rep. v. 89-90. Towards the end of that year he was reported to have informed the States General on the queen’s behalf that she planned to remain in Holland.117LJ v. 495b. By 9 January 1643 he was in Paris, seeking help from the French, who were thought likely to be more supportive now that Richelieu was dead.118A Letter Sent by Mr Henry Jarmin (1643), 3-4 (E.86.12); cf. LJ v. 571a. But in a letter intercepted by Parliament Jermyn explained to gentleman of the bedchamber, William Murray† (who was with the king), that he and the other exiles wanted to be back in England serving the king directly. Waxing sentimental, he observed

I wish with all my heart matters had never proceeded to this unlucky height between his majesty and his Parliament, then had we enjoyed one another’s company in peace at Whitehall and these miseries never been inflicted on our unhappy country, where, so all matters were fairly composed between his majesty and the Parliament, I could heartily wish my self in my former condition, that I might be happy in the society of thy self and all my other friends…119Letter Sent by Mr Henry Jarmin, 8.

It is not clear whether Jermyn was with Henrietta Maria when she landed in Yorkshire on 22 February 1643. As late as 11 March Sir John Hotham* was sending to London intercepted letters which had been addressed to Jermyn on the continent.120HMC Portland, i. 102. By late April Jermyn was almost certainly with the queen at York and in June he was at Newark.121Harl. 163, f. 386; HMC Portland, i. 113-14, 707; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 353; Sloane 1519, f. 121. In July he presumably accompanied her to Oxford, where his credit, particularly with the queen, was widely recognized. It was through him that his old friend, Holland, attempted to make contact with Henrietta Maria and the defection to Oxford by the three parliamentarian earls, Holland, Clare and Bedford, in August 1643 was Jermyn’s most audacious attempt to outmanoeuvre his rivals in the intrigues of the court, although his success in winning over Clare and Bedford was diminished by Holland’s belief that Jermyn had misled him.122Clarendon, Hist. iii. 156. Still master of her horse, Jermyn saw action as colonel of the queen’s cavalry regiment, and, from Oxford, he probably continued to organize the foreign arms shipments for the king.123Newman, Royalist Officers, 211; HMC Portland, i. 707; Add. 18981, ff. 31, 44, 47, 63-4, 113-14. Jermyn remained in favour with Charles, who in September 1643 raised him to the peerage as Baron Jermyn of St Edmundsbury.124SO3/12, f. 238v; C231/3, p. 35; Bodl. Ashmole 832, ff. 188v-190; Letters of Elizabeth Queen of Bohemia ed. L. M. Baker (1953), 161. Within ten days of this grant, he narrowly escaped death in the skirmish at Auburn Chase. A bullet hit him in the arm and he owed ‘the preservation of his life from other shots to the excellent temper of his arms’.125Clarendon, Hist. iii. 173. Although, as the Venetian envoy reported, ‘the grandees cannot tolerate the influence of the queen’s favourite, Jermyn, which causes universal whispering, injurious to the royal honour and prejudicial to the king’s posterity’, in January 1644 Charles promoted Jermyn to become Henrietta Maria’s lord chamberlain.126CSP Ven. 1643-7, p. 67; HMC 4th Rep. 308. As Lord Jermyn, he then attended the Oxford Parliament.127Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 573. Robert Baillie, who believed rumours at this time that Henry was about to receive the dukedom of Norfolk, noted that ‘at court Jermyn is all’.128Baillie Lttrs. and Jnls. ii. 125.

The Long Parliament never recognized the validity of Jermyn’s peerage and consistently excluded him from any proposed settlements.129LJ vi. 354b, vii. 55a, x. 548b; CJ iii. 636a, iv. 356a, 428b-429a, 437a, 472a; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vi. 313; TSP i. 80; CCC 139. It also had no hesitation in sequestering his estates.130CCAM 50, 435-6, 600, 640. This had little impact on Jermyn, who in July 1644 escorted the queen to the continent and began his second, far longer, exile. Thereafter, he rarely left Henrietta Maria’s side and, through her, became a leading player in the politics of the exiled court. It was he who broke the news to her of her husband’s execution. Although the persistent rumours of a clandestine marriage between them can almost certainly be discounted (such rumours invariably surrounded the lord chamberlain to a widowed queen), there can be no doubt that he was the most important man in Henrietta Maria’s life during the 20 years of her widowhood.131CSP Dom. Add. 1660-85, pp. 7-8; Pepys’s Diary, iii. 263, 303, v. 58; HMC 7th Rep. 244; J. Reresby, Memoirs, ed. A. Browning (1936), 29; The Secret History of the Reigns of K. Charles II and K. James II (1690), 22; G. Burnet, Hist. of his Own Time (Oxford, 1833), i. 66n, 309n; CP, vii. 86n; A. Adolph, ‘“…And in my lady’s chamber”: Jermyns and Stuarts: illicit liaisons’, Genealogists’ Magazine, xxvii. 300-5. Rumours of a conversion to Catholicism perhaps deserve to be given somewhat greater credence.132Pepys’s Diary, i. 307; J.P. Kenyon, The Popish Plot (1972), 271; C. Dodd, The Church History of Eng. (Brussels, 1737-42), iii. 241. Comments by Clarendon (Edward Hyde*) imply that he thought Jermyn was motivated less by any consistent faith than by the wish to be thought religious.133Clarendon’s Four Portraits ed. R. Ollard (1989), 126-7; Clarendon, Hist. v. 233. Created earl of St Albans by Charles Stuart in April 1660 on the eve of the Restoration, Jermyn’s return to England was almost as unexpected as that of the queen dowager.134Eg. 2551, f. 16; Add. Ch. 13587; HMC 5th Rep. 156, 168-9; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 200. The earldom expired with him on his death in 1684, but the barony was inherited successively, under the terms of the original grant, by his two nephews, Thomas† and Henry, Lord Dover, the sons of his elder brother.