JERMYN (GERMAINE), Thomas (1604-59), of Rushbrooke, Suff.

When Thomas was born in 1604, the Jermyns were just another family of Suffolk landowners, who owned estates in and around Rushbrooke where they had lived since about the thirteenth century. The royal service of his father, Sir Thomas, transformed the family’s position and for three generations, from the late 1620s, they were closely associated with successive Stuart courts. Yet, paradoxically, the opportunities Sir Thomas obtained for his heir at Whitehall were offset by the very considerable debts incurred in the process.

Jermyn’s career began promisingly enough, serving as a page in the retinue of the prince of Wales on the Spanish excursion in 1623.26HMC 3rd Rep. 284. His subsequent appointment as an equerry in the king’s stables probably stemmed from his father’s friendship with the master of the horse, George Villiers, 1st duke of Buckingham. The backing of Lord Mountjoy and of the chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, Sir Humphrey May† (who was married to one of his cousins) allowed Jermyn to sit in the four Parliaments between 1624 and 1628. In the 1626 session he badly bungled an attempt to play down the allegations that Buckingham had poisoned the late king.27HP Commons 1604-1629, iv. 896-7.

Ambitious for their advancement and conscious of his limited means, Sir Thomas Jermyn was assiduous throughout the 1630s in his efforts to garner profitable offices for his sons in royal service. Thomas’s younger brother, Henry*, was already a gentleman usher to Henrietta Maria and had won a permanent place in her affections, but Thomas lagged behind. The £5,000 which his wife, Rebecca, the daughter of a wealthy Merchant Taylor, had brought with her as her dowry on their marriage in 1629 did not remove his difficulties.28SP23/217, f. 759. However, as vice-chamberlain of the royal household, Sir Thomas was ideally placed to lobby for patronage. He had long held one of the reversions to be governor of Jersey, as did his brother-in-law, Sir William Hervey†, and in 1629 he secured the king’s consent to an arrangement whereby Thomas took over Hervey’s place as the next governor-but-three.29Eg. 2553, f. 77v; CSP Dom. Add. 1625-49, pp. 355, 366; Coventry Docquets, 177; Rymer, Foedera, viii. pt. 3, p. 83. (Sir Thomas succeeded to the place in 1630 and, on the death of the other reversionary, Viscount Wimbledon (Sir Edward Cecil†), in 1638, Thomas became his father’s designated successor.) In 1632 Thomas and Henry were also granted the reversion of the surveyorship of the London customs.30Coventry Docquets, 184, 203. The death of Thomas Carey† in April 1634 allowed Jermyn to entertain for a short time vain hopes of succeeding him as one of the king’s grooms of the bedchamber.31Strafforde Letters, i. 242. The position as keeper of the hare warrens at Hampton Court, which he managed to secure, was very minor.32CSP Dom. 1635, p. 576. Potentially more lucrative was the clerkship of the warrants and enrolments in the court of common pleas. Thomas and Henry were awarded the reversion to this in November 1635, but they soon surrendered it, presumably selling it at a profit to the new reversioners.33Coventry Docquets, 195, 198; C66/2693, mm. 19-20; Rymer, Foedera, ix. pt. 1, p. 76; Aylmer, King’s Servants, 97. Offices of this type seem to have been thought particularly attractive by the Jermyns. The exchequer position of receiver and surveyor of fines and amercements was specially created for Thomas, who was given a 30-year lease on it in June 1637.34CSP Dom. 1637, p. 480; 1661-2, p. 82; Coventry Docquets, 201; CTB, i. 327. However, Thomas Jermyn’s major advance came in 1638, when he was appointed a groom of the bedchamber in the newly-created household of the prince of Wales.35Strafforde Letters, ii. 167; Harl. 7623, f. 9. Although the tangible advantage of this could only come once Prince Charles had succeeded to the throne, the Jermyns now held offices in each of the three royal households.

Over the next few years they accumulated yet more reversions. Patents granted in July 1638 gave the Jermyn brothers those to the offices of coroner and attorney in king’s bench and register in chancery.36Coventry Docquets, 206; C66/2822, mm. 20-22; Northants. RO, FH2075X; Rymer, Foedera, ix. pt. 2, p. 205. The latter, to which they succeeded in about 1640, was held on behalf of their father, and it was Sir Thomas’s trusted agent, Robert Roane, who acted as their deputy.37Bodl. Tanner 98, ff. 16-17; A True State of the Right and Claime of the Lady Jermin to the Registers Office in Chancery [1655]. The exchequer position of clerk of the pipe was also granted in reversion to Thomas and Henry in April 1639, but an existing reversion to Robert Croke* (the son of the incumbent, Sir Henry Croke†) would prevent either of them from ever succeeding to it.38Coventry Docquets, 209; CSP Dom. 1639, p. 1; Exchequer Officeholders (L. and I. Soc. spec. ser. xviii), 66; Aylmer, King’s Servants, 199. A final reversion the clerkship of the liveries in the court of wards was given to the brothers in March 1640.39C66/2842, mm. 34-36. But for the civil war, Thomas would probably have risen to high court office in the same manner as his father and younger brother.

As soon as it became known in 1640 that the king intended to travel northwards to repel the invasion by his rebellious Scottish subjects, Jermyn offered his services, but the king told him that he would be of greater use in London.40Bodl. Tanner 65, ff. 100-101. He had to watch the the second bishops’ war unfold from Whitehall and Hampton Court, but the series of letters he wrote to Sir Robert Crane* (who, as one of his fellow deputy lieutenants, was busy with the military preparations in Suffolk) reveal his reactions to the setbacks of that autumn. Writing before the English army had been defeated at Newburn, he commented sagely that ‘if the king proves victorious the matter will be soon at an end, but, if the other side have the success, what will be the consequences of it I dare not imagine’.41Bodl. Tanner 65, ff. 35-36. On 10 September he reported that the meeting of the Great Council at York would allow negotiations to take place with the Scots and that the king could be trusted when he promised that he would summon a Parliament.42Bodl. Tanner 65, ff. 112-113. He was even more optimistic three weeks later, because ‘the northern sky begins to clear and give great hope of an accommodation’. He hoped that agreement could be reached with the Scots and his faith in the king remained strong. He assured Crane that ‘if I were not a courtier, I would tell you with how much temper and magnanimity too the king has carried himself through these tempestuous times’.43Bodl. Tanner 65, f. 129. Possibly he was protesting too much.

The elections to the new Parliament called to resolve this crisis resulted in Jermyn joining his father as MP for Bury St Edmunds. For the first and only time, the Jermyn interest at Bury gained both seats, Jermyn taking the junior place. He made little impact in the Long Parliament. His single committee appointment came when he and his father were added to the committee on scandalous ministers after a case concerning the dean of Jersey, David Bandinel, had been referred to it (2 Jan. 1641).44CJ ii. 62a. He was quick to take the Protestation on 3 May 1641, which, as it was a response to the first army plot, in which his brother, Henry*, proved to have played a leading part, was a wise precaution.45CJ ii. 133b. Three days later, when the Commons were informed that Henry had fled London, one of the Jermyns’ close friends, Harbottle Grimston*, defended Thomas’s innocence in the House, stressing that Thomas knew nothing about his brother’s disappearance. Thomas himself then made a rare intervention (in what is his only known speech in this Parliament) when he ‘protested he knew nothing of his brother’s going, nor whether he were gone or not, nor in what place he was’.46Procs. LP iv. 231. There was never any suggestion during the subsequent investigations into the army plot that Henry had ever tried to recruit Thomas to the conspiracy. Some letters from Henry to Thomas were intercepted by Parliament in January 1642 but these contained nothing of public interest.47PJ i. 53.

Jermyn probably left London with the prince of Wales in February 1642.48CCC 1869. He was absent from the Commons at the call of the House in June of that year.49CJ ii. 626n. His appointment in the spring as keeper of Oatlands Palace suggests that he was in favour with the queen, who had just returned from the continent and who was then under the spell of Henry Jermyn.50CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 292. That the king named him as one of the Suffolk commissioners of array in June was no more than a formality: as a deputy lieutenant, he was an obvious choice, but he was probably then too far away to be of any assistance.51Northants. RO, FH133, unfol. By early 1643 he was with Prince Charles at the royal court in Oxford, for in January 1643 his wife obtained permission from Parliament to join him there; she returned from Oxford four months later.52LJ v. 561b, vi. 36b; HMC 5th Rep. 84; Letters and Mems. of State ed. A. Collins (1746), ii. 671. It is possible that Jermyn was not merely a civilian servant and that his services to his king extended to the battlefield.53F. Haslewood, ‘The ancient families of Suff.’, Procs. Suff. Inst. Arch. viii. 173. The Commons took the step of declaring him ‘discharged’ as a Member on 14 September 1643.54CJ iii. 241b. Two years later Robert Reynolds* successfully moved the writ for a by-election at Bury St Edmunds on the grounds that Jermyn had ‘gone to the king’.55Add. 31116, p. 453; CJ iv. 249b. Parliament removed Thomas and Henry as the registers in chancery in December 1643, appointing Walter Long* in their stead.56CJ iii. 326b; LJ vi. 330b. Unsurprisingly, Jermyn attended the rival Parliament summoned by the king to Oxford in January 1644 and he signed the letter of 27 January sent by the peers and MPs at Oxford to Parliament’s commander, Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex.57Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 574. That spring his position within the household of the prince of Wales was enhanced when he and Sir David Cuningham were appointed as the prince’s treasurers and receivers-general.58Docquets of Letters Patent ed. Black, 393-4. In late 1645 Jermyn’s wife was living in Paris, and, if he had not already done so, he too probably left the country in 1646, when the prince of Wales withdrew abroad.59HMC Portland, i. 324. It may well have been this which prompted Parliament to begin disposing of the estates they had sequestered from the Jermyns.

The death of Jermyn’s father in January 1645 had made little difference to the disposition of the family’s estates. Crippling indebtedness had forced Sir Thomas to dispose of much of their land and he had transferred the remaining properties into Thomas’s name some time before his death.60C66/2404, m. 9; C66/2523; C66/2608, mm. 26-27; Soc. Antiq. MS 667, p. 144; Bodl. Tanner 226, p. 58; Haslewood, ‘Ancient families’, 173; True State; PROB11/192/274; Hervey, Rushbrook Par. Reg. 155-6. Since Thomas had been far more open in his support for the royalists, this made it easier for Parliament to sequester them. The return to England of his wife in December 1645 is likely to have been an attempt to avert the disposal of these estates.61HMC Portland, i. 324; CSP Dom. 1645-7, pp. 318, 355, 356. Her efforts were unsuccessful. On 6 May 1646 the Commons voted to grant two-thirds of these lands (up to the value of £1,500 a year) to the 1st earl of Stamford (Henry Grey*), with the rest to be allocated to the county committee in Suffolk.62HMC Portland, i. 269; CJ iv. 536a; CCC 38, 96. With permission from Parliament, Jermyn made a short visit to England in December 1646.63LJ viii. 588b. Even after his return to the continent, the parliamentarians in Suffolk remained suspicious of his influence and this was especially true in the summer of 1648 when a major riot at Bury St Edmunds showed that the renewal of hostilities might spread to Suffolk. On 30 May, just 18 days after the Bury riot, a local alderman, John Clarke*, heard that the 2nd duke of Buckingham and other royalist troublemakers had met at Rushbrooke the day before. According to a letter immediately sent to Parliament by Sir Thomas Barnardiston*, these conspirators had been ‘there feasted by the Jermyn family’, though Thomas Jermyn himself was in Holland.64Bodl. Tanner 57, f. 123; LJ x. 302a; CJ v. 583a.

The defeat of the Scottish invasion 11 weeks later soon impelled Jermyn to apply to Parliament for leave to return with a view to compounding. The Commons increased the pressure on him, combining permission for his return with an order that the proceeds from his sequestration should help pay for the cavalry assigned to the protection of the Palace of Westminster.65LJ x. 502b; CJ vi. 38a-b. His application to compound was lodged with the Committee for Compounding by 23 November.66CCC 1869. Several complications prolonged these proceedings. In 1649 John Arthington complained to Parliament that he was owed £280 by Henry Jermyn and that, by a bond from January 1641, he was due £400 from Thomas and Henry for the non-payment of the debt. An attempt by Arthington in July 1650 to obtain a private act granting part of the Jermyn estates failed, probably because most of the estates had already been allocated to the 2nd earl of Manchester (Edward Montagu†) and Sir Thomas Hatton*.67 CCC 1869-70; CJ vi. 444a. In the meantime, the interception of the Jermyns’ mail and claims that Rebecca Jermyn had made false statements concerning the estates prompted further delay.68CJ vi. 386a; CC 1869; CSP Dom. 1650, pp. 67, 111, 533. Finally, in January 1651, it was agreed that Jermyn should be fined £2,800 (later slightly reduced by up to £50). The moiety was paid at once, possibly by means of further land sales.69CCC 1870. While in London at this time, Jermyn also sought confirmation from the Committee for Compounding of a lease for lands he had rented from the prominent Norfolk Catholic family, the Bedingfields of Oxburgh.70CCC 2623. The following month Jermyn asked to be allowed to leave the country to avoid his creditors and the requested passes were certainly issued to his wife and daughter.71CCC 1870; CSP Dom. 1651, pp. 520, 525. Two years later Jermyn was still arguing with the compounding commissioners over the details of his fine.72CCC 1870. Heavily in debt and probably fearful of further confiscations (the decimation commissions charged him £35 on his real estate in early 1655), Jermyn appointed trustees to administer what was left of his properties in Bury St Edmunds.73TSP iv. 427. These were his son and heir, Thomas junior, Martin Folkes, and one of the exiled king’s pages of the bedchamber, William Chiffinch†; Thomas junior subsequently surrendered his interest to the other two.74PROB11/307/54; Hervey, Rushbrook Par. Reg. 156. By the time of his death, Jermyn was probably unable to maintain a household at Rushbrooke and so was living in a smaller house in Bury.

Jermyn did not live to see the Restoration. He died on 11 November 1659 and was buried, as he had instructed, at Rushbrooke.75Hervey, Rushbrook Par. Reg. 57, 246; CUL, Add. 3310, p. 119. His heir and his widow were the main beneficiaries of his will, which, however, asked his trustees to sell off the Bury properties to provide for his youngest son, Charles, and his four daughters. His widow was to be given the option of buying back these properties for £200, if she also raised £300 to pay off a mortgage.76PROB11/307/54; Hervey, Rushbrook Par. Reg. 156-7. Fortuitously, the return of the monarchy resulted in his two eldest sons gaining lucrative offices. His widow quickly remarried, taking in 1661 as her new husband Henry Brouncker†, who in 1684 succeeded as 3rd Viscount Brouncker. The grant of a peerage to Henry Jermyn, in 1643 had made provision for the title of Lord Jermyn to pass to his elder brother’s line should he die childless. As Henry, a life-long bachelor, left no heirs, Thomas’s senior surviving son, Thomas†, became Lord Jermyn in 1684 and on his death in 1703 the peerage passed to his brother, Henry, already Lord Dover (or earl of Dover in the Jacobite peerage). Dover, who was a Catholic, died in 1708 leaving no sons. The family estates descended by female lines first to the Danvers family and then to the earls of Bristol.77CP vii. 87n.