MORDAUNT, Henry (c.1568-1609)

The Mordaunts had been an important Bedfordshire family since the thirteenth century, residing at Turvey near the Buckinghamshire border. They rose to national prominence under the early Tudors through service to the crown. Henry Mordaunt’s great-grandfather, John^†, was raised to the peerage as Lord Mordaunt in 1532, although the exact date and mode of creation are unknown. The family estates were expanded by both judicious marriages to heiresses and the acquisition of former monastic properties. However, the family fell out of favour due to their religious conservatism, except during the reign of Mary Tudor, when Sir John Mordaunt^†, subsequently 2nd Lord Mordaunt, was a member of the Privy Council. Sir John lost office after the accession of Elizabeth and was briefly imprisoned for his Catholicism. His son, Lewis^†, who succeeded as 3rd Lord Mordaunt in 1571, seems to have been more cautious about advertising his religious allegiance, though he was suspected of Catholic sympathies.11 HP Commons, 1509-558, ii. 614-15; HP Commons, 1558-1603, i. 77; Oxford DNB, xxxix. 22-6.

Lewis, who had inherited lands in seven counties, consolidated the family estates by selling peripheral properties in Essex and the West Country, using the proceeds to build up his holdings in Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire. He also made considerable additions to Drayton House, in the parish of Lowick in Northamptonshire, which had been brought to the family by his grandmother. Drayton House became his principal home although the family continued to maintain a household at Turvey, where the parish church remained their favoured place of burial.12 Halstead, 402-3, 622-4; L. Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy, 158; VCH Northants. iii. 238-9; PROB 11/114, f. 185.

On the death of Lewis in June 1601 his son, the subject of this biography, succeeded to the barony. Mordaunt took his seat in the Lords in the Parliament held in the latter part of that year, when he promoted a bill to confirm his father’s land sales. The measure was introduced in the Commons, where it was committed on 3 Dec. but never reported.13 D. Dean, Law-Making and Soc. in Late Elizabethan Eng. 231; Procs. in the Parls. of Eliz. I, ed. T. Hartley, iii. 348, 428. There is no evidence that he tried to reintroduce the measure subsequently.

Mordaunt’s grandson later observed that Mordaunt ‘was of a family wherein it was hard to extinguish their inclination to the old religion’ and his wife ‘had been bred to much strictness and zeal therein’.14 Halstead, 403. Mordaunt did his best to disguise his recusancy and, as a consequence, was appointed to the bench; nevertheless, his religious sympathies were sufficiently well known for him to be one of the Catholic peers summoned to court during the final illness of Elizabeth I, in March 1603. However, he excused himself on grounds of ill-health via his brother-in-law, William Compton^*, 2nd Lord Compton (subsequently 1st earl of Northampton). Following Elizabeth’s death he wrote from Drayton to the secretary of state, Robert Cecil^* (subsequently 1st earl of Salisbury), assuring him of his allegiance to the ‘rightful lord and king that now is’, James I, and stating that the ‘comfort of my heart concurred’ with the proclamation of the accession which, despite illness, he ‘did presently … publish … in all parts about me’.15 CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 281; Hatfield House, CP99/65; CSP Ven. 1592-1603, p. 558. In a tract published the following year, Mordaunt’s readiness to proclaim James’ accession was cited as evidence of the loyalty of the Catholic laity to the new regime.16 Petition Apologeticall, Presented to the Kinges Most Excellent Majesty, by the lay Catholikes of England in July Last (1604), 8. Mordaunt attended the new king at the house of Sir Anthony Mildmay^‡ at Apethorpe, in Northamptonshire, on 27 April.17 HMC Hatfield, xv. 60. He tried to canvass support from the freeholders for Mildmay for the latter’s election for the county to the first Jacobean Parliament, then believed to be imminent, but was unsuccessful, and is not known to have made any further efforts to influence the composition of the lower House.18 HMC Buccleuch, iii. 74.

The first Jacobean Parliament did not convene until March 1604. Mordaunt attended the opening of the session on the 19th of that month, but chose to sit in the chamber in his Parliament robes rather than attend the sermon at Westminster abbey, so making his recusancy public.19 SP14/216/1, f. 150. In all, Mordaunt was marked at present at 18 of the 71 sittings of the upper House, a quarter of the total. He was last recorded as attending on 16 May. Eight days later, the lord chamberlain, Thomas Howard^*, 1st earl of Suffolk, informed the House that Mordaunt had been excused for an unspecified reason; he was ‘to make his return again’, presumably before the end of the session, but does not appear to have done so. It was probably at this date that he granted his proxy to Lord Compton. Before that date he had been appointed to attend conferences with the Commons about the Union on 14th and 21 Apr., and to consider two bills: one concerning the fen drainer Thomas Lovell and another against poaching. He made no recorded speeches.20 LJ, ii. 263b, 278a, 280a, 284a, 292a, 305b.

In August 1604 Mordaunt entertained the king, then on progress, at Drayton. James returned to receive similar hospitality almost exactly a year later. In the intervening period Mordaunt evidently attended James at Royston for Christmas.21 HMC Hatfield, xvi. 208, 210, 220; Carleton to Chamberlain ed. M. Lee, 62; J. Nichols, Progs. of Jas. I, i. 523; Hatfield House, CP108/23. However, he was away from London when the second session of Parliament was due to convene on 5 Nov. 1605. Combined with his religious sympathies, his absence aroused suspicion that he had been forewarned of the Gunpowder Plot. In fact, when the conspirators had discussed warning Mordaunt, Robert Catesby had said he would not ‘acquaint him with the secret’ for a ‘chamber full of diamonds’ because ‘he knew he could not keep it’. However, they learnt that a warning would be unnecessary as Mordaunt intended to miss the start of the session because the king intended to attend. The royal presence made it likely that there would be another sermon at Westminster Abbey, and Mordaunt did not wish to draw attention to himself again by his absence.22 CSP Dom. 1603-10, pp. 258, 281; SP14/216/2, f. 30. Mordaunt himself, though, claimed that he had stayed away because he was searching for documents concerning his assart lands - former parts of royal forests for which the crown was seeking to extract money in return for confirmation of title. Mordaunt certainly possessed assarts in Northamptonshire, and was subsequently prosecuted for failing to compound. Nevertheless, the contradiction between his account and that of Fawkes cannot have allayed the crown’s suspicion of him. Mordaunt also claimed that he had written to Lord Compton asking the latter to obtain for him formal leave of absence. However, this information, of course, had no bearing on his guilt or innocence.23 SP14/216/182; HMC Buccleuch, iii. 76; CSP Dom. 1623-5, pp. 567-8.

Mordaunt was sent to the Tower on 15 November. The following day Sir William Waad^‡, the lieutenant of the Tower, reported that he fell ‘into an extreme pensiveness, not without cause’. Four days later Sir Edward Hoby^‡ wrote that ‘it is thought the Lord Mordaunt will be found very capital’ because Robert Keyes, whom Hoby described as keeper of Mordaunt’s house at Turvey, was one of the plotters.24 Add. 11402, f. 108; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 40; SP14/16/82. Moreover, another source reported a rumour that Mordaunt had been party to an alternative plot to murder James I at a masque to have been held at Mordaunt’s house. This had been ‘countermanded and checked by a Jesuit or priest, who willed forbearance at that time, because said he, there is a course in hand, that will cut up the very root’.25 SP14/17/61. It was the opinion of one commentator that ‘it is like to go hard with Lord Mordaunt, foolish man’.26 SP14/17/62.

Under examination, Mordaunt denied that Keyes was his servant, but admitted that he employed Keyes’s wife to teach his children and that Keyes was often in his household. He also admitted that he had had frequent contact with Catesby and other conspirators in the months leading up to the Plot.27 SP14/216/182. Despite this evidence, on 20 Feb. 1606 it was reported that Mordaunt and other Catholic absentees would not be arraigned for treason, but, instead, prosecuted in Star Chamber. James had concluded that they had not received specific warnings of the Plot, only ‘some general advices in respect of uncertain troubles’. Nevertheless, they would be charged for their absence from Parliament without permission. Mordaunt therefore came to trial on 3 June, when the attorney general, Sir Edward Coke^‡, poured scorn on his excuses, arguing that he had had all summer to look for the documents he needed and yet had waited until 28 Oct. before going to his house for that purpose. He was fined 10,000 marks (£6,666), which sum was never paid. The fine was not formally pardoned until 1620.28 J. Hunter, Hallamshire, 122; J. Hawarde, Les Reportes del Cases in Camera Stellata, 287-92, 438; M. Nicholls, Investigating the Gunpowder Plot, 74-8; Halstead, 641.

On 22 Aug. 1606 Mordaunt was transferred from the Tower to the Fleet.29 Add. 11402, f. 115. It is not clear when, if ever, he was released. Though he failed to attend the Parliament’s third session, he was apparently in London when he died on 13 Feb. 1609.30 Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 285. His grandson later recalled that he was ‘so long kept a prisoner, that by the destruction of his health it brought him finally to his grave’.31 Halstead, 403-4. Indeed, on making his will a week before his death, Mordaunt wrote that he was ‘now summoned by languishing sickness (the messengers of death)’. By then, by a deed of 4 Jan. 1609, he had appointed several trustees to manage his estate. Aside from his brother-in-law, Sir Thomas Compton, these included a balanced mixture of Catholics and Protestants. On the Catholic side were men such as Edward Somerset^*, 4th earl of Worcester and Roger Manners^*, 5th earl of Rutland, while on the Protestant side were Sir Francis Fane^* (subsequently 1st earl of Westmorland) and Sir Edward Radcliffe^† (subsequently 6th earl of Sussex). Mordaunt presumably hoped that this arrangement would hinder his heirs from selling the family estates to pay his fine. Having thus dealt with his property, Mordaunt devoted the larger part of his will to an extended denial of any foreknowledge of the Gunpowder Plot. However, he also appointed Lord Compton as his executor, whom he asked to ensure that the settlement of 4 Jan. was executed, and requested burial ‘amongst my ancestors’ at Turvey. It is not known whether this wish was granted, as Turvey’s parish registers for this period do not survive.32 PROB 11/114, ff. 184v-5; Halstead, 631-8. Mordaunt was succeeded by his ten year-old son John^*.