GREY, Henry (1582/3-1639)

As the 6th earl of Kent did not remarry after the death of his wife in 1580, Henry Grey was heir presumptive to the earldom from his birth in 1582/3. On his marriage in 1601 to one of the co-heiresses of Gilbert Talbot^*, 7th earl of Shrewsbury, the reversion of the family’s 20,000 acre Bedfordshire estates was settled upon him and his heirs, while his wife brought him lands subsequently valued at £1,600 a year, together with a reversionary interest in the enormous Talbot estates in the north Midlands and the Welsh Marches. This dazzling alliance promised to re-establish the prosperity of the earldom of Kent, which had fallen on hard times under the Tudors.11 C142/349/172; C2/Jas.I/G15/53; 2/Jas.I/L16/23. However, the groom was not the brightest of men: at the time of the marriage, Lord Henry Howard^* (later earl of Northampton) quipped that Grey was ‘of my Lord Simple’s house, and as silly as his father-in-law is shrewd’. Moreover, there was an embarrassing interval of ten months before one of Earl Henry’s servants delicately persuaded the couple ‘to lodge in one bed together’.12 Secret Corresp. of Cecil with Jas. VI (1766) ed. D. Dalrymple, 15, misdated to 1607 in HMC Mar and Kellie, i. 53; Illustrations of Brit. Hist. ed. E. Lodge, ii. 571. We owe these refs. to Helen Payne.

In April 1603 Grey was knighted by the new king at Shrewsbury’s house at Worksop, but he was not involved in his uncle’s quest to recover the lordship of Ruthin, long since alienated to the crown.13 Shaw, ii. 101. See also HENRY GREY, 6TH EARL OF KENT. His wife took herself off to court, where, often misidentified at the time as Lady Ruthven - she used her husband’s courtesy title of Grey de Ruthin – she attended the queen, Anne of Denmark, and eventually became first lady of her mistress’s bedchamber. However, there is no evidence that her husband joined her there regularly. In 1614 his uncle had him returned to the Commons as one of the knights for Bedfordshire, but his father, who inherited the earldom of Kent in 1615, did not secure his re-election in 1621, when the seat went instead to his cousin Sir Beauchamp St. John^‡.14 H.M. Payne, ‘Aristocratic Women and the Jacobean Court, 1603-25’ (Univ. London Ph.D. thesis, 2001), 53-5, 59-60, 85-6; HP Commons 1604-29, ii. 5-6; Vis. Hunts. (Cam. Soc. xliii), 2.

The major pitfall of Grey’s marriage manifested itself after the death of his father-in-law in 1616, when his wife, her mother and her sisters – the countesses of Arundel and Pembroke – fought each other bitterly for control of the Talbot inheritance. Shrewsbury had divided the majority of his estates between his three daughters, with a substantial jointure for his wife, and generous provision for his executors, Sir Ralph Winwood^‡ and William Cavendish^* (later 1st duke of Newcastle), to allow them to pay off his debts.15 C142/444/87; PROB 11/127, f. 399; M.F.S. Hervey, Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, 93. Shrewsbury’s daughters unsuccessfully contested probate of the will, and in 1624 the Greys applied further pressure by calling upon Cavendish to account for his disbursements as executor.16 PROB 11/128, ff. 307-8; C2/Chas.I/K8/66. Meanwhile, the dowager countess forfeited her claim after refusing to take the oath of allegiance. This enabled the countesses of Arundel and Pembroke in 1619 to secure a crown lease of their mother’s jointure lands, and to force their sister to yield a disproportionately large share of Shrewsbury’s estate. The dispute dragged on into the 1630s, and was only settled upon the death of two of the sisters without heirs.17 C2/Chas.I/K2/58; 2/Chas.I/K3/3; 2/Chas.I/K8/66; 2/Chas.I/K27/110.

While his wife pursued her inheritance with determination, Grey involved himself in local affairs, taking on the lieutenancy of Bedfordshire in tandem with his father from 1621, and, after the latter’s death in 1623, with Thomas Wentworth^*, 4th Lord Wentworth (later earl of Cleveland).18 Sainty, 11. Unlike his father and uncle, the 8th earl regularly attended parliamentary sessions, usually being present at over three-quarters of the days on which the Lords sat. As his barony of Ruthin was one of the most ancient peerages then extant, he carried the royal cap of maintenance whenever the king addressed Parliament – even on his first appearance in the Lords on 19 Feb. 1624, six days before he was formally introduced to the House. Despite this promising beginning, he is recorded as having spoken only once during the 1624 Parliament, on taking the oath of allegiance.19 PA, HL/PO/JO/5/1/2, f. 7; LJ, iii. 215b, 217b. On the first day of business in 1625, he and Francis Manners^*, 6th earl of Rutland, introduced his relative Oliver St John^*, 4th Lord St. John to the House, in the latter’s new guise as 1st earl of Bolingbroke. Kent departed the session without permission after 1 July, probably because of the plague, and it was doubtless the same fear which kept him from the Oxford sitting in August.20 Procs. 1625, pp. 40, 596. He returned to Westminster for the coronation in February 1626, at which he bore one of the swords of state, and for the opening of the 1626 Parliament. He was once again assiduous in his attendance of the Lords, for, even after being excused on 31 Mar., he was absent for only two days. He made his only recorded speech on 15 May, when he was one of half a dozen peers who insisted that Sir Dudley Digges^‡, while presenting the impeachment charges against George Villiers^*, 1st duke of Buckingham, had not said anything to dishonour the king. At this the duke lost all patience, insisting that Digges’s inflammatory words were ‘confessed by many’.21 Hervey, 239; Procs. 1626, i. 16, 20, 24, 28, 231-2, 477, 484.

Despite the angry dissolution of the 1626 session, Kent played an active part in recruiting the troops sent to the Low Countries, Cadiz and La Rochelle between 1625 and 1627. However, he was briefly removed from the lieutenancy in 1627-8, probably because of his closeness to Bolingbroke, whose family led the opposition to the Forced Loan in Bedfordshire.22 Sainty, 11; HP Commons, 1604-29, ii. 6. When Parliament met again in 1628, he assiduously attended the Lords as usual, but took no recorded part in debate, much of which concerned the legality of the Loan. In the Commons, however, he was mentioned by his wife’s lawyer John Selden^‡, in a debate about whether to impose minimum subsidy ratings on Englishmen who held Irish and Scottish peerages. Selden claimed that Kent held the Irish title of lord of Wexford, and urged that peers with foreign honours in addition to their English titles should be exempted from any such stricture.23 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 34-9; CD 1628, iv. 229. For the claim to the lordship of Wexford, see CP, vii. 165. In 1629 the earl attended two-thirds of the sittings of the Lords, but left no trace on the House’s proceedings.

Kent was restored to the lieutenancy in January 1629, serving diligently thereafter. His wife maintained a presence at court, attending the christening of Prince Charles (Stuart^†, later prince of Wales) in 1630, and bearing the infant Prince James (Stuart^†, later duke of York) at his christening in 1633 – the latter being the only public occasion at which she is known to have been joined by her husband.24 Sainty, 11; CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 297; Ceremonies of Chas. I ed. A.J. Loomie, 88-9, 144-5. In early 1639 Kent, like many older peers, paid £600 in order to be excused service with the royal army in the north.25 CSP Dom. Addenda, 1625-49, p. 605. He died suddenly at London on the night of 20 Nov. 1639; an autopsy revealed the cause of death to be an aneurysm. His widow secured administration of his estate on the following day, and he was buried in Bedfordshire a week later.26 Kent Hist. and Lib. Centre, U269/O267/8; PROB 6/17, f. 82; Flitton, B64. The earldom and most of the estates passed to Anthony Grey^†, rector of Burbage, Leicestershire, a second cousin once removed but, by a Lords’ ruling of February 1641, the barony of Grey de Ruthin descended to the 8th earl’s nephew, Charles Longueville^†.27 Beds. RO, L.31/34; HMC Buccleuch, iii. 390; LJ, iv. 152b. Countess Elizabeth found comfort in the arms of John Selden, and the couple were reputed to have married.28 CSP Dom. 1639-40, p. 158; Ath Ox. iii. 377-8. At her death in 1651 her share of the Talbot estates passed to her surviving sister, the dowager countess of Arundel.29 CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 431; CCAM, iii. 1259.