WINDSOR, Henry (1562-1605)

The Windsors took their surname from Windsor Castle, where an eleventh-century ancestor served as castellan under William I. Their peerage dated from 1529, the 1st Lord Windsor (Andrews Windsor^†) being a soldier and courtier, sometime keeper of the great wardrobe, who also acquired the family’s main seat of Hewell Grange, on the Worcestershire-Warwickshire border.14 Collins, iii. 638, 662-7; Dugdale, ii. 730-1. Religious conservatives, the family adapted themselves to the early upheavals of the English Reformation. However, Windsor’s father, Edward Windsor^†, 3rd Lord Windsor, rejected the Elizabethan Church settlement, latterly going into self-imposed exile, and dying in Venice in 1575.15 Collins, iii. 671-6; J. Strype, Annals of the Reformation, ii. pt. 1, p. 378; Dugdale, 736. Windsor was then still a minor, and Elizabeth I encouraged him to attend court, where he became a familiar face for the rest of the reign, outwardly conforming to the Anglican Church.16 J. Nichols, Progs. of Eliz. I, ii. 336; J. Stowe, Annales (1615), 700; APC, 1588, p. 189; 1601-4, p. 190. When his elder brother died in 1585, he inherited both the barony and lands in six counties, an estate further augmented through his marriage to a Suffolk heiress.17 WARD 7/21/217; 7/32/82; 7/74/71; PROB 11/105, ff. 223v-4v. Windsor duly took his place in local government, and was reputedly popular with the queen, who several times thwarted his plans for military adventures, presumably in order to keep him at court.18 CSP Dom. 1595-7, p. 203; Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 31. In 1598 Elizabeth became godmother to one of his younger sons.19 E351/543, rot. 30. Nevertheless, his continuing ties to the English Catholic community were closely watched by the government, and in 1593 he was accused of helping to shelter a priest.20 HMC Rutland, i. 210-11; CSP Dom. 1591-4, p. 372.

Windsor’s identification as a crypto-Catholic endured into the next reign. Although apparently not in London when Elizabeth died in March 1603, he quickly proclaimed James I’s accession, an event which he evidently welcomed, not least because of the king’s initial willingness to treat recusants more leniently.21 Petition Apologeticall Presented to the Kinges Most Excellent Maiesty by the Lay Catholikes of England (Douai, 1604), 8. In a letter probably dating from the following May, he wrote to his brother-in-law, John Talbot, urging him to come to London to join other Catholics lobbying James for a formal suspension of the fines on recusants. However, this brief honeymoon period ended abruptly with the discovery in July of the Bye and Main plots against the king. Windsor himself was briefly suspected of involvement in the latter conspiracy, and although this proved to be a false alarm, he thereafter maintained a low profile.22 Hatfield House, CP 190/75; Collins, iii. 677; HMC Hatfield, xv. 222; CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 21. The letter is dated 4 May, and endorsed ‘1605’, but that probably indicates when it came into the govt.’s hands; cf. HMC Hatfield, xvii. 494.

When the first Jacobean Parliament was summoned in 1604, Windsor used his position as high steward of Chipping [High] Wycombe to obtain the nomination of at least one of the borough’s seats, which he handed to a conforming Catholic from Shropshire, Sir John Townshend^‡. He also unsuccessfully backed another Catholic, Sir Edmund Harewell, in the county election for Worcestershire.23 HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 25, 455-6; vi. 545. Windsor attended the Lords for just under three-fifths of the 1604 session, his only extended absence falling between mid May and mid June. It was presumably then that he awarded his proxy to Henry Wriothesley^*, 1st (formerly 3rd) earl of Southampton.24 LJ, ii. 263b. No record survives to indicate that Windsor ever spoke in the Lords, but he attracted 13 appointments. These included nominations to attend conferences with the Commons to discuss wardship, purveyance, and the Union.25 Ibid. 266b, 277b, 284a, 290b. He is likely to have taken a personal interest in the bill for restitution in blood of Charles Paget, a distant kinsman of his wife, and also in the measure concerning the estates of Thomas Throckmorton^‡, a prominent Warwickshire recusant.26 Ibid. 267b, 292b; CP, xii. pt. 2, p. 799. Given his doctrinal leanings, it is less clear why he was named to help scrutinize the revised bill to enforce the recusancy laws.27 LJ, ii. 324b.

Windsor drew up his will on 5 Apr. 1605, carefully keeping the religious preamble as brief as possible. He was by now heavily in debt. Three of his manors were mortgaged, as was his mansion house in Monkwell Street, London, and he attached to the will a codicil listing 20 creditors, to whom he owed in total more than £5,500. This group included two London moneylenders, along with one Robert Winter, quite possibly the Gunpowder plotter Robert Wintour, who lived only a few miles from Windsor’s Worcestershire seat. In view of these difficulties, Windsor appointed trustees, including Henry Howard^*, earl of Northampton, to clear these debts using the profits of certain specified properties in Buckinghamshire, Middlesex and Northamptonshire. Other lands were assigned to his wife, in lieu of her jointure, and Windsor entrusted his executors with the task of assessing what maintenance should be allowed for his three infant children. Notwithstanding these constraints, he stated that his two daughters should eventually receive £2,000 dowries, and made other bequests well in excess of £700, including several annuities.28 PROB 11/105, ff. 223v-7. Following the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot, one of Wintour’s servants visited Hewell Grange to collect armour: CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 264.

Windsor died at Hewell Grange the next day, in the same room where he had been born nearly 43 years earlier. His funeral monument in Tardebigg church, now destroyed, described him as ‘vere pio, vere Catholico’. The Windsor barony descended to his only surviving son Thomas^*, a minor.29 Dugdale, ii. 735-6; WARD 7/32/82. It soon emerged that Windsor’s affairs were in an even worse state than he perhaps realized. According to a bill laid before Parliament by his trustees in the 1605-6 session, he actually died at least £15,000 in debt. Much of the land placed in trust was also heavily encumbered, and with Thomas still too young to offer security to potential buyers, it was proving impossible to sell. This bill ‘for the better sale of certain lands of Henry, late Lord Windsor … for payment of his debts’, supplied the necessary legal guarantees. It passed both Houses with minor amendments, and was enacted at the end of the session.30 LJ, ii. 373b, 376b, 382a-b, 384b, 391b, 418b, 419b, 426a; PA, HL/PO/PB/1/1605/3J1n31.