MANNERS, Roger (1576-1612)

The Manners family can be traced back to 1232, when they owned the manor of Etal in Northumberland. Robert Manners^† (d.1354) was probably the first member of the family to enter Parliament, representing Northumberland in 1340. Sir Robert Manners (d.1495) married, in 1469, Eleanor, the sister of Edmund de Ros^†, 10th Lord Ros, and matched his son George Manners^† to a niece of Edward IV, giving the family a useful royal connection. Lord Ros died without issue in 1508, whereupon his lands, including Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire and a large estate around Helmsley Castle in Yorkshire, passed to George Manners, who was summoned to Parliament as Lord Ros in 1512, but died the following year.25 K. H. Vickers, Hist. Northumberland, xi. 442, 444-7; OR; L. Stone, Fam. and Fortune, 165-6; CP, xi. 107-8. George was succeeded as Lord Ros by his son, Thomas Manners^†, who reaped the reward of loyal service to Henry VIII. Created earl of Rutland in 1525, he invested heavily in former monastic estates. At his death in 1543, Rutland owed large sums to the crown, having not completed the payments for some of his acquisitions, forcing his executors to sell £8,000 worth of land. However, the latter succeeded in consolidating an estate which was still large enough to keep the Manners family at the front rank of the English nobility throughout the early modern period. This was despite the fact that the descendants of the 3rd and 4th earls became engaged in a prolonged struggle over land and titles.

Roger Manners succeeded to the earldom of Rutland in February 1588, aged just 11. He had previously been styled Lord Ros, although in fact the Ros barony, having passed to the Manners family through the female line, should properly have descended to his cousin, the daughter and heir of the 3rd earl.26 Stone, 166-75; HMC Rutland, i. 239; North Country Wills ed. J.W. Clay (Surtees Soc. cxxi), 117-18. Like other under-age noblemen in the Elizabethan period, he was placed in the custody of Elizabeth I’s chief minister, William Cecil^†, 1st Lord Burghley, master of the Court of Wards. However he purchased his own wardship for £500 in November 1597, three weeks before his 21st birthday, to obtain control over his marriage.27 Stone, 177; WARD 9/159, f. 43v; J. Hurstfield, ‘Lord Burghley as Master of the Court of Wards’, TRHS (ser. 4), xxxi. 104n.8.

Shortly after he came of age, in 1598, Rutland received a huge windfall, totalling nearly £14,600, as a result of the renewal of leases on his estates. (While he was under-age, leases had been made only for the term of his minority.) This enabled him to go on a gigantic spending spree, his annual expenditure reaching some £12,400 by 1600-1. Even with the money received from the new leases, this level of expenditure was clearly unsustainable, and not surprisingly Rutland quickly ran into debt. It may have come as something of a relief to his relatives and servants when Rutland’s ruinous lifestyle was brought to a halt by the earl’s involvement in the Essex rising of 1601. In March his great uncle, Roger Manners^‡ of Uffington, wrote that he hoped the punishment would make Rutland change his ways. The previous month Thomas Screven, a family servant, suggested that although the fine imposed on the earl would doubtless ‘light heavy for the time, yet patience may wear it out, and he [Rutland], with good guiding hereafter, may leave his house … as well as it was preserved to him’. Rutland was initially fined £30,000 but this sum was subsequently reduced to £18,000. In fact, Rutland never paid a penny, even though part of his land was mortgaged to the crown by way of security, but rather turned the situation to his financial advantage, using the fine as an excuse to levy a benevolence from his tenants, thereby raising £625. He nevertheless seems to have been prompted to put his finances in order, for by 1606 he had freed himself from debt.28 Stone, 180-4; C54/1753; HMC Rutland, i. 366-7, 375.

The accession of James I, Catholic connections, and the 1604 session of Parliament

Rutland was formally pardoned for his part in the Essex rising on 29 July 1601, and was released from the Tower early the following month, when he was confined to Roger Manners’ house in Uffington.29 CPR, 1600-1 ed. S.R. Neal and C. Leighton (L. and I. Soc. cccxxxix), 44; APC, 1601-4, pp. 143-4. Granted full liberty early the following year, he was forbidden to come to court, and his repeated requests for permission to kiss the queen’s hands were denied until just before Elizabeth died in March 1603.30 Recs. of the Eng. Province of the Soc. of Jesus ed. H. Foley, i. 10; HMC Hatfield, xii. 33, 99, 289, 679. On 24 Mar., the day of the queen’s death, Screven wrote advising Rutland to declare his loyalty to James I by hastening to Nottingham to proclaim the new monarch. He also recommended the dispatch of Rutland’s brother, Sir George Manners^† (subsequently 7th earl of Rutland) to Scotland with a ‘message of love and duty’. Rutland certainly followed the former part of this advice, and, on 20 Apr., met the new king at Worksop, the house of his kinsman, Gilbert Talbot^*, 7th earl of Shrewsbury. He then had the honour of entertaining James himself at Belvoir two days later.31 HMC Rutland, i. 389; iv. 443; J. Nichols, Progs. of Jas. I, i. 90.

On 11 May James released Rutland from the obligation to pay the fine imposed on him in 1601, and the mortgage on his estates was discharged two days later.32 C54/1753. Perhaps in return, the earl agreed to undertake a ceremonial diplomatic mission to Denmark to confer the Garter on James’s brother-in-law, Christian IV, and to represent James as godfather at the baptism of Christian’s recently born son. The embassy did not last long; Rutland left England on 28 June and had returned to court by 10 Aug., but featured lavish entertainments, including a ‘sumptuous banquet’ on board the earl’s ship. Among the presents the earl distributed in Denmark were £75 worth of jewels, and six chains for Danish courtiers, for which he paid £53 15s. It has been calculated that the embassy cost Rutland £1,333, considerably more than the £825 he received for his pay and expenses from the Exchequer but, nevertheless, a significant saving on his fine.33 46th DKR, app. ii. 2, 41; E. Howes Annales (1615), 825-6; HMC Rutland, iv. 446-8, 453; Letters of Philip Gawdy ed. I.H. Jeayes, 135; A.V. Danushevskaya, ‘Ideal and Practice: Aspects of Noble Life in Late Elizabethan and Jacobean Eng.’ (Hull Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 2001), 252; Stone, 184.

Rutland was made lord lieutenant of Lincolnshire in September 1603, but there is no evidence that he influenced the election of the county’s knights of the shire to the first Jacobean Parliament the following year. Nevertheless, he secured the election of his brother George for the borough of Grantham, where he was steward of the manor, and was probably also responsible for the return of Sir John Thornhaugh^‡ at East Retford, where he was high steward, Thornhaugh’s father having previously deputized for the earl as warden of Sherwood forest.34 HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 233, 311.

Rutland was recorded as attending 33 of the 71 sittings of the 1604 session, 46 per cent of the total. He was absent between 27 Mar. and 2 Apr. inclusive, missing five sittings, during which time he was with the king at Royston.35 HMC Rutland, i. 394; J. Nichols, Progs. of Jas. I, i. 427. He also missed seven sittings between 26 Apr. and the morning of 7 May, and a further seven sittings between 19 and 30 May; his whereabouts on these occasions has not been established. He last attended on the afternoon of 5 July, and so, missed the last three sittings of the session, although he did not return to the country until mid July. For most of the session, until at least 13 June, he stayed at the house in Charterhouse Yard which he had been renting from Dudley North^*, 3rd Lord North, since at least 1602. However, by the time he left London in July he was using court lodgings borrowed from his wife’s uncle, Robert Sidney^*, Lord Sydney (later 1st earl of Leicester).36 Temple, 177; Add. 12506, f. 193; HMC De L’Isle and Dudley, iii. 128. The king appointed him to the ceremonial post of trier of petitions from Gascony at the start of the sitting and he was named to ten of the 70 committees established by the upper House, including one on the bill to repair Whitby harbour, to which he was appointed, apparently in absentia, on 28 April.37 LJ, ii. 264a, 281a, 286a.

Rutland was the senior lord named, on 2 June, to consider a bill to enable Martin Calthorp, the son of a former lord mayor of London, to make a jointure. He accordingly took delivery of the measure, which he reported without amendment two days later. However, it was recommitted on the recommendation of the attorney general, Sir Edward Coke^‡, acting for the king, which meant that Rutland reported the bill again, together with an addition, on 12 June.38 Ibid. 311a, 312b, 319a; PA, HL/PO/PB/1/1603/1J1n66. The earl was also the senior lord on the committee instructed, on 2 July, to consider bills concerning the estate of Gray Brydges^*, 5th Lord Chandos, and the pawning of stolen goods in London. There were no further proceedings with regard to the first measure, but the second was reported by Rutland, with amendments, on 3 July.39 LJ, ii. 336b, 337a, 338b; SR, iv. 1038-39.

In April 1604 the king referred to the commissioners for the office of the earl marshal a petition from Rutland, contesting the claim of the 3rd earl of Rutland’s grandson, William Cecil^*, 16th Lord Ros, to the Ros barony. However, there is no evidence that the commissioners ever reported.40 Bodl., ms Fairfax 30, f. 124; Coll. of Arms, Heralds VII, p. 777. In July the justices of Common Pleas were instructed to consider a petition from the earl about reforming the attorneys of their court, presumably outlining a project from which he hoped to profit, but nothing further was heard of this proposal either.41 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p, 137. In January 1605 Rutland sent Screven to Secretary of state Robert Cecil^*, Viscount Cranborne (later 1st earl of Salisbury), with proposals for a suit to the king for ‘some reward of my services’. He claimed that others who had ‘neither spent so much or gone so far as I have done, especially seeing the weakness of my estate and greatness of my debts’ had received similar grants. He also claimed that he had already been forced to sell ‘much land’. This was an exaggeration, as his actual land sales were modest. Nevertheless, James proved to be sympathetic, for, by the following May Rutland had been granted the penalties imposed upon ten recusants.42 HMC Hatfield, xvii. 6, 194-5; Stone, 184.

The recusancy grant enabled Rutland to compound with ten wealthy Catholics, allowing them, in effect, religious toleration in return for regular payments. Despite this, Rutland himself was a Protestant. Not only was he an early patron of John Jegon^* (later bishop of Norwich), his old tutor at Cambridge, he also advanced the career of Robert Snowden^*, subsequently bishop of Carlisle. However, he had close family connections with Catholics, as two of his brothers, Sir Oliver Manners^‡ and Sir Francis Manners^*, subsequently 6th earl of Rutland, had converted to Rome. Moreover, he may have been the earl described by the Jesuit John Gerard as being so impressed by the manner in which John Rigby, a Catholic martyr, faced execution in 1600 that ‘from that time [he] held Catholics and their faith in greater esteem, as he showed afterwards in many ways’.43 Stone, 178; Danushevskaya, 222; HMC Hatfield, v. 382; J. Gerard, Autobiog. of an Elizabethan translated P. Caraman, 81, 180, 185-6; ROBERT SNOWDEN, JOHN JEGON.

Rutland enjoyed a good relationship with his brother Sir Francis, who, though Catholic, was willing to take the oath of allegiance and may occasionally have attended Anglican services. In 1608 he agreed to settle additional land, worth £666 a year, on Francis to enable him to remarry.44 Stone, 197; FRANCIS MANNERS. His relationship with Sir Oliver was more complicated, and suggests that there were limits to his sympathy for papists. After his conversion, Sir Oliver came under suspicion, both because of his friendship with the Gunpowder plotter Sir Everard Digby, and because it was reported that he had enrolled in a Jesuit college. In June 1606 Rutland was ordered to stop the rents due to Sir Oliver. He was permitted to resume payments three months later after he forwarded to Salisbury a letter he received from his brother, but in 1610 Sir Oliver complained that Rutland was starving him of funds. Rutland may have been trying to use his control of his brother’s finances to compel Sir Oliver to return to England, having become alarmed by reports that Sir Oliver wanted to be ordained a priest. If so, this tactic failed, as Sir Oliver refused to return, pleading sickness, until after Rutland’s death in 1612.45 CSP Dom. Addenda 1580-1625, p. 468; SO3/3, unfol. (4 June 1606); HMC Hatfield, xviii. 313; xix. 67; CSP Dom. 1603-10, pp. 429, 610; 1611-18, p. 83; HMC Rutland, i. 420, 425-8; iv. 464, 488; Condition of Catholics under Jas. I ed. J. Morris, pp. cciii, cclv; HP Commons, 1558-1603, iii. 8.

The second and third sessions of the first Jacobean Parliament, 1605-7

Rutland was marked as present at only 13 of the 85 sittings of the 1605-6 session, 15 per cent of the total. Payments in his accounts for water to relieve colic and musk for a plaster suggest that Rutland’s lengthy absences were caused by poor health. Illness may explain why he stayed at lodgings in the palace of Whitehall while he attended Parliament, rather than his house in Charterhouse Yard. He certainly required a boat to take him the short distance from Whitehall to Parliament on 4 February.46 HMC Rutland, iv. 457. Rutland was last recorded as attending the Lords on 12 Feb. 1606, and by early April, if not before, he had returned to Belvoir. On his departure, he granted his proxy to the lord chamberlain, Thomas Howard^*, 1st earl of Suffolk, who had, until recently, been brother-in-law to Rutland’s brother, Francis.47 HMC Rutland, i. 402; LJ, ii. 355b; C.E.L. ‘Fun. Certificates of Sir Henry Knevett and his Lady’, Top. and Gen. i. 470; Chamberlain Letters, i. 209. On 25 Mar. Rutland was replaced by his proxy, Suffolk, on the committee for a bill about wills and administrations.48 LJ, ii. 372b, 400a.

Rutland was named to six of the upper House’s 72 committees during the session. As the senior lord appointed to consider the bill against unnecessary delays in executions for debts he evidently chaired the committee: the text was delivered to him (on 28 Jan.), and he reported the measure on 10 Feb., his only recorded speech of the session. However, Rutland’s later absence meant that it was the lord treasurer, Thomas Sackville^*, 1st earl of Dorset, who subsequently guided the measure to enactment.49 LJ, ii. 364a, 371a; SR, iv. 1084. On 9 June, after the session was prorogued, Screven, on Rutland’s behalf, paid 30s. for the fees of the gentleman usher and other officers of Parliament and, ten days later, a further 20s. to the clerk of the parliaments and 10s. to the clerk’s assistant.50 HMC Rutland, iv. 459.

The king of Denmark visited England in the summer of 1606, when Rutland was clearly well enough to participate in the entertainments provided to mark the occasion.51 Ibid. The following October he received the grant of an annual pension of £424, which cancelled out the fee farm due to the crown from his estates.52 SO3/3, unfol. (25 Oct. and 10 Dec. 1606); HMC Rutland, i. 419; Stone, 184. Subsequently, poor health increasingly impaired his activities at court.53 46th DKR, app. ii. 42. Nevertheless, he was listed as attending 51 of the 106 sittings of the 1606-7 session, 48 per cent of the total. His longest absence was between 20 Feb. and 18 Mar. 1607 inclusive, during which time he missed 20 sittings. Writing to Salisbury from his lodgings on 11 Mar., he described himself as ‘a poor lame man’, suggesting that he was suffering from gout. He had certainly complained of pain in one of his feet in May 1605, and he was to purchase a plaster for gout in 1611.54 HMC Hatfield, xvii. 194; xix. 64; HMC Rutland, iv. 490.

Rutland was appointed to nine of the 41 committees established by the Lords, including one for the bill to abolish the hostile laws against the Scots on 8 June, when he was not recorded as attending the House. He was also the senior peer appointed, on 28 Apr., to consider a private measure to enforce a Chancery decree concerning property in London, which he reported on 2 May without amendments, his sole recorded speech of the session.55 LJ, ii. 502a, 504a, 520a; PA, HL/PO/PB/1/1606/4J1n28.

Final years, 1607-12.

Although Rutland was repeatedly appointed a commissioner for proroguing Parliament between 1607 and 1609, he never performed this duty, suggesting that by then he was spending most of his time in the country. Nevertheless, he was present when the fourth session began on 9 Feb. 1610, by which time he had purchased a book by John Donne^‡, probably Pseudo-Martyr, a defence of the oath of allegiance.56 HMC Rutland, iv. 465. Rutland attended 40 of the 95 sittings in this session, 42 per cent of the total. He last attended on 26 June, thereby missing the final 26 sittings. During his absence he appointed, as his proxy, Suffolk’s uncle, the lord privy seal, Henry Howard^*, earl of Northampton, but delayed paying his fee to the clerk of the parliaments for entering the proxy until 16 July. Rutland was evidently keen to secure Northampton’s favour; he had been lavishing expensive New Year’s gift on the latter since Northampton’s appointment as lord privy seal in 1608. Northampton was a crypto-Catholic and proved useful when Rutland lobbied the king about his brother, Sir Oliver. He evidently made no such gifts to Salisbury, by now lord treasurer, perhaps because Salisbury disliked the custom; he did, however, send him small tokens at other times.57 LJ, ii. 548b; HMC Rutland, i. 427-8; iv. 457; 465; L. L. Peck, Northampton, 72; Lansd. 238, f. 139; Danushevskaya, 257.

Rutland was appointed to nine of the 58 committees created by the Lords during the session, one of which concerned the conference at which Salisbury outlined the crisis in the royal finances. He made no recorded speeches but took the oath of allegiance on 8 June. When Prince Henry was invested as prince of Wales on 4 June, it was Rutland who carried the ring, and it was presumably in preparation for that ceremony that he refurbished his parliamentary robes, paying £20 to a skinner for furring them and £33 15s. for crimson velvet needed for the mantle. He also purchased a gold coronet for £23 17s. 6d. After the end of the session he bought the printed edition of the statutes which had been passed, and also books of the king’s speeches, Basilikon Doron, and The True Law of Free Monarchies.58 LJ, ii. 550b, 609b; Procs. 1610 ed. E.R. Foster, i. 96; HMC Rutland, iv. 465.

On 30 Sept. 1610 Rutland wrote to Salisbury from Belvoir seeking a dispensation from attending the forthcoming fifth session because of ‘the weakness in my legs’. The desired licence was granted on 14 Oct., and Rutland again gave Northampton his proxy, dated 16 Oct. (the first day of the session).59 SP14/57/88; SO3/4, unfol. (14 Oct. 1610); LJ, iii. 666a. On 11 Dec., after the session was prorogued, Sir Thomas Lake^‡ wrote informing Rutland that Parliament would probably soon be dissolved. This prediction was confirmed on 2 Jan. 1611, when Screven told Rutland that both Northampton and the lord chancellor, Thomas Egerton^*, Lord Ellesmere (later 1st Viscount Brackley) thought it safe for him to remain in the country.60 HMC Rutland, i. 426-7.

In late April or early May 1612 Rutland put himself in the care of a Cambridge physician ‘to prevent his wonted sickness’, presumably a reference to the chronic problem with his legs. However, soon thereafter he suffered a stroke which reportedly rendered him speechless for a time. He sent for his brother, Francis, and made his will on 8 May, adding a codicil the following day, but by that time he was recovering and it was reported that he was coursing hares in the nearby fields. There were further reports of his improving health towards the end of the month, but in the event he died at Cambridge on 26 June.61 Lansd. 92, f. 177; HMC Downshire, iii. 297, 306; HMC Rutland, iv. 476.

Rutland was buried on 20 July in the parish church of Bottesford, alongside his ancestors, in accordance with his wishes. However, the funeral service was not held for another two days. Rutland had requested a funeral ‘as befitteth my station’, and thus the ceremony held was on a lavish scale: £30 was distributed to the poor, £145 was paid to the heralds and their assistants, 28 extra cooks were hired for the catering and payments were made to choristers of Southwell minster and 16 bell ringers. A tomb, costing £150, was subsequently made as Rutland had requested. Rutland’s will was relatively brief. In it the earl appointed his brother, Francis, as his executor and made a small number of bequests, most notably £1,000, which he left to his niece Katherine, subsequently duchess of Buckingham. The codicil was somewhat longer. He provided for a hospital at Bottesford, begun by his mother, and left money to the two Cambridge colleges he had attended as a student. He gave Henry Wriothesley^*, 3rd and 1st earl of Southampton, another former Essex supporter, his best hawk and ‘Mr Villiers’ (presumably either George Villiers^*, later 1st duke of Buckingham, or one of the latter’s brothers) all his hare hounds. He appointed as assistants to his executor his brother-in-law, William Willoughby^*, 3rd Lord Willoughby of Parham, his ‘good friend’, William Compton^*, 2nd Lord Compton (subsequently 1st earl of Northampton) and his brother, Sir George Manners. Contrary to Catholic reports on the continent, even Sir Oliver Manners was not forgotten; he was bequeathed a lease of property in Pillerton in Warwickshire, of which Sir Oliver already owned the freehold, although the value of the bequest is unknown.62 HMC Rutland, i. 412-13; iv. 476, 478-9, 491, 512, 517; Nichols, County of Leicester, ii. 100; PROB 11/120, ff. 36-7; J. Morris, Life of Father John Gerard (1881), 372.

Rutland’s marriage was childless; Ben Jonson and Francis Beaumont both suggested that the earl had never had sex with his wife, and the former hinted that Rutland had been rendered impotent by a disease he had picked up during his travels.63 C. H. Hereford and E. Simpson, Ben Jonson, i. 138; viii. 224; Works of Beaumont and Fletcher ed. A. Dyce, xi. 508. It is unlikely that there was any truth in such speculation, for in September 1599 it had been reported that the marriage had, in fact, been consummated. However, it was subsequently rumoured that Rutland preferred his mistress to his wife.64 Letters (1595-1608) of Rowland Whyte ed. M.G. Brennan, N.J. Kinnamon and M.P. Hannay, 327; Manningham Diary ed. R.P. Sorlien, 97. Whatever the reason for Rutland’s lack of children, his earldom passed to his brother Francis.