HARINGTON, John (1592-1614)

Harington was the heir to an immense fortune, and received a first rate education. His family also enjoyed impeccable connections at the Jacobean court: his father was governor to Princess Elizabeth; and his sister Lucy, wife of Edward Russell^*, 3rd earl of Bedford, was a member of Anne of Denmark’s household. Not surprisingly, therefore, he was partly raised at court alongside Prince Henry; a joint portrait survives from their youth. In 1608 Harington left England on an extended tour of many of the diplomatic flashpoints of Europe – Brussels, Heidelberg, Basle, Florence, Venice, Vienna, Prague, Frankfurt and Paris – maintaining an extensive correspondence with the prince during his absence. There was, therefore, some basis to Sir Henry Wotton’s^‡ prediction that, ‘being the right eye of the prince of Wales, this world holds that he [Harington] will one day govern the kingdom’. However, in November 1612 these prospects were dashed upon the death of Prince Henry, whose passing Harington mourned deeply.11 HP Commons 1604-29, iv. 542-3; CSP Ven. 1607-10, p. 216; T. Birch, Life of Henry, Prince of Wales (1760), 371.

Harington remained at court after Henry’s death, sustained by an annuity of £1,000 from his father. He also acquired a reversion to half the profits of the enormously lucrative post of chief clerk of Common Pleas, which he later offered to assign to the holder of the other half of the grant, the royal favourite, Robert Carr^*, Viscount Rochester (later earl of Somerset); his reward for this surrender was to have been the governorship of Guernsey.12 Stock, 92; Liber Famelicus of Sir J. Whitelocke ed. J. Bruce (Cam. Soc. lxx), 29, 46; T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 266-7. Having visited Heidelberg, he was doubtless consulted by Princess Elizabeth about the attributes of her future husband, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, and shortly before her marriage he commissioned a portrait of her for himself. The family played a prominent role in the princess’s nuptials in February 1613, and Harington took part in the Accession Day tilting on 24 March. However, in August the 1st baron, having accompanied his former charge to the Palatinate, died suddenly at Worms on his way home, leaving Harington, who had travelled to Calais to greet his parents, to repatriate the body and obtain administration of his father’s estates.13CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 160; HMC Downshire, iv. 186, 245-6; Birch, Ct. and Times, i. 268; Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 440; Liber Famelicus of Sir J. Whitelocke, 31; PROB 6/8, f. 118.

Under the terms of the family entail, Harington secured immediate possession of lands in Rutland and Leicestershire worth around £4,000 p.a., but he also assumed liability for £30,000 of arrears owing to his father on his account as the princess’s governor.14Chamberlain Letters, i. 434; CSP Dom. 1603-10, pp. 57, 434; 1611-18, p. 134; HMC Hatfield, xvii. 154, 257-8, 600; xviii. 338, 405-6; xix. 104, 299; LS13/280, f. 198; E407/57/2. In April 1613 the 1st baron had secured a patent to strike brass farthings (popularly known as ‘haringtons’) in order to recoup his losses, but this revenue was also coveted by Ludovic Stuart^*, 2nd duke of Lennox [S] (later duke of Richmond), who intervened to have Harington’s share of the profits restricted to £20,000, and secured the rest of the farm for himself.15CSP Dom. 1611-18, pp. 174, 180, 215; Chamberlain Letters, i. 434; CSP Ven. 1610-13, pp. 523-4; C66/1992/17; E214/807. It was perhaps scant consolation that, also in the autumn of 1613, Harington was appointed to succeed his father as lord lieutenant of Rutland.16 Sainty, 30.

For all his early promise, Harington was cut off in his prime, contracting smallpox in February 1614. Richard Stock, who delivered his funeral sermon, claimed that ‘from the first day of his sickness’ Harington ‘apprehended strongly the expectation of death’, and so quickly put his affairs in order. Having never married – he was not yet 22 – Harington, by an indenture dated 18 Feb., assigned his mother the revenues from his estates, which were to be used in the first instance to clear his debts and those of his father. Thereafter two-thirds of his assets were to go to his sister Lucy, the remainder being assigned to his younger sister, Lady Frances Chichester.17Stock, 94-6; C142/356/117. On the following day Harington confirmed this indenture in his will, adding small bequests to his servants and £500 to the soldier Sir Edward Harwood. Though the probate copy of this document lacked any religious preamble, Harington apparently declared on his deathbed ‘his faith and undoubted hope of salvation by Christ, and with great alacrity he professed that he feared not death’. He expired at Kew during the night of 26-7 Feb., whereupon his barony became extinct.18PROB 11/123, ff. 257-8; Stock, 94-6; C142/356/117.

Harington’s demise was widely lamented, particularly in godly circles: Stock’s funeral sermon, preached at Exton on 31 Mar., invited a comparison with the late Prince Henry, in asking, ‘can we not mourn when so many Noahs and Lots ... are taken away and hastened out of our lands and cities?’19Stock, 27-8, 63. His distant relative Sir James Whitelocke^‡ considered him ‘the most complete young gentleman of his age’, while the diplomat Sir Thomas Roe^‡ eulogized him as ‘much and worthily lamented’.20Ibid. unpag. (at rear of volume); Liber Famelicus of Sir J. Whitelocke, 39; HMC Downshire, iv. 341. John Donne^‡ generously speculated that his presence in the House of Lords might have helped to avert the catastrophic collapse of the Addled Parliament, which met only weeks after his death, and neatly summarized his virtues and promise in noting that he was ‘forced to be/ For lack of time, his own epitome’.21J. Donne, Obsequies to the Lord Harington, lines 77-8, 186-92.

Harington’s mother, who secured administration of the family estates on 24 Apr. 1614, quickly sold many minor estates and the manor of Exton, which passed to the London merchant Baptist Hicks^* (later 1st Viscount Campden).22PROB 6/8, f. 142v; VCH Rutland, ii. 129; Leics. RO, DE3214/177/3, DE3214/267/18. She retained her jointure lands at Coombe Abbey, Warwickshire, until her death in 1620. In 1617 Lady Harington and the countess of Bedford donated 245 books from Harington’s library – mainly classics, histories and mathematical works – to Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, while his theological collection was sent to Oakham, Rutland, as the nucleus of a parish library.23 N. Rogers, ‘Early Hist. of Sidney Sussex Coll. Lib.’, Sidney Sussex Coll., Camb.: Historical Essays ed. D.E.D. Beales and H.B. Nisbet, 80-1. Harington’s only surviving sibling, Lucy, countess of Bedford, being herself without heirs, swiftly disposed of the family’s remaining estates after her mother’s death: Coombe Abbey was purchased by the London merchant Sir William Craven; while Burley-on-the-Hill, Rutland went to George Villiers^*, marquess (and later 1st duke) of Buckingham.24PROB 11/135, f. 505; C142/392/133; Grimble, 169-70.