SANDYS, William (1549-1623)

Sandys was descended from an old Hampshire gentry family that rose to national prominence under the early Tudors. His great-grandfather, William Sandys^†, 1st Lord Sandys of the Vyne, received his peerage in 1523 from Henry VIII, whom he served as lord chamberlain; the barony’s territorial suffix referred to Sandys’s newly rebuilt mansion near Basingstoke, Hampshire.16 Dugdale, i. 303; VCH Hants, iv. 160. Sandys himself succeeded to the title in 1559 aged just ten,17 E150/1000/10. and was raised by his mother, who purchased his wardship from the crown. Although now the heir to property in six English counties, comprising more than 30 manors, his estates were heavily encumbered with jointures and inherited debt. Despite a programme of land sales which began shortly after he came of age, he therefore struggled financially throughout Elizabeth’s reign. In 1601 he complained that his annual net income stood at just £737, out of which he was attempting to clear debts of £3,100.18 C142/402/131; CPR, 1558-60, pp. 329-30; L. Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, 485; Hatfield House, CP 186/139 (miscalendared as 1598). Sandys’s impoverished state, along with his failure to achieve more than local office, presumably explains his decision in 1601 to join the abortive insurrection of Robert Devereux^†, 2nd earl of Essex. Now aged 51, Sandys was easily the oldest of Essex’s aristocratic adherents (Edward Cromwell^*, 3rd Lord Cromwell was a decade younger, while Essex’s other noble allies were all aged under 30). He was also the most resolute, reportedly the only man to back the earl’s call for a fight to the death as the rebellion petered out.19 R. Lacey, Robert, Earl of Essex, 270, 272; SP12/278/74. Although he narrowly escaped execution through the intervention of secretary of state Sir Robert Cecil^* (later 1st earl of Salisbury), Sandys was imprisoned and fined £5,000. Formally pardoned in August 1601, he nevertheless remained in disgrace until the queen’s death.20 CSP Dom. 1598-1601, p. 598; APC, 1600-1, pp. 159, 487; HMC Hatfield, xi. 182; CPR, 1600-1 ed. S.R. Neal and C. Leighton (L. and I. Soc. cccxxxix), 133).

Like many of Essex’s associates, Sandys benefited from the accession of James I. In May 1603 he was granted remission of the outstanding balance on his fine, amounting to £4,000. At around the same time he was restored to the magistracy.21 CSP Dom. Addenda, 1580-1625, p. 424; HMC Hatfield, xv. 89. Notwithstanding these marks of favour, Sandys thereafter chose to live in semi-retirement, pleading ill health and continuing financial constraints to justify his habitual absence from court.22 HMC Hatfield, xv. 94; xvii. 259; xix. 207; SP14/14/26. He also failed to attend Parliament for the rest of his life, presumably on the same grounds. Between 1604 and 1610 he invariably handed his proxy to his saviour Salisbury. It is unclear whose patronage he sought after the latter’s death in 1612, as in 1614 his proxy had still not reached Westminster when Parliament was dissolved.23 LJ, ii. 263a, 355a, 361a, 449a, 548a, 666b; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 84; SO3/3, unfol. (3 Nov. 1606); SO3/4, unfol. (27 Jan. 1610); SO3/6, unfol. (9 Mar. 1614); HMC Hastings, iv. 286. In 1604 Sandys still possessed enough local muscle to arrange the election at Stockbridge, Hampshire of Sir Edwin Sandys^‡, a kinsman by marriage of his daughter Elizabeth. However, when he requested a nomination at the same borough ten years later, he was rebuffed.24 HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 160; B. Burke, Hist. of Dormant and Extinct Peerages, 471; Procs. 1614 (Commons), 195.

It is likely that Sandys initially exaggerated his personal difficulties, given that he married twice more during these years, finally fathering a male heir in 1607 at the age of fifty-eight. Nevertheless, by 1610 his sight was failing, and subsequently he withdrew almost entirely from public life.25 C142/402/131; SP14/57/101. In late 1620 he reluctantly contributed £50 towards the relief of the Palatinate, around the same time obtaining permission to absent himself from the 1621 Parliament, ‘by reason of his old age and infirmity’. On this occasion he offered his proxy to the earl marshal, Thomas Howard^*, 21st (or 14th) earl of Arundel, employing as his intermediary Francis Windebank^‡, the future secretary of state. In return, Arundel procured the king’s agreement that, if Sandys died while his son was still a minor, the latter’s wardship would be granted to guardians chosen by Sandys himself.26 SP14/117/2; 14/118/58, 60; SO3/7, unfol. (26 Nov. 1620); CSP Dom. 1619-23, p. 212; LJ, iii. 4a.

Sandys drew up his will on 15 Oct. 1621. The bulk of his property was already entailed, and his freedom of action was further curtailed by the fact that he still owed £2,200 to the executors of his current wife’s previous husband, in payment for goods and chattels which she brought with her at her marriage. Accordingly the will consisted mainly of small bequests to servants, and detailed instructions about his son’s anticipated minority. Sandys’s wife Anne was nominated as guardian, and Windebank and one Dr Gifford, a physician, were appointed to act as her advisers.27 PROB 11/142, ff. 318-21v. In the event, Sandys lived for almost two more years, which gave him enough time to arrange his son’s marriage, thus reducing the value of the wardship. He died in September 1623, and was buried at Basingstoke in a private chapel erected as a family sepulchre by his great-grandfather. He was succeeded by his son William Sandys^*, 4th Lord Sandys, who died barely a year after coming of age.28 WARD 7/83/105; CP, xi. 446; VCH Hants, iv. 137-8.