HERVEY, William (c.1565-1642)

Hervey gained considerable naval experience during the later Elizabethan period, although the story subsequently recounted by Henry Peacham, that he and a colleague ‘swam in the night time, and pierced with augers’ the galleons of the 1588 Armada, may be fanciful.27 Peachman’s Compleat Gentleman ed. G.S. Gordon, 217. In 1605 he became remembrancer of the first fruits, which office, almost certainly lucrative, he exercised through a deputy. Two years later, on the death of his first wife, he married a Kentish heiress, who brought with her the lease of a large house in Kidbrook, in the manor of Blackheath; in 1609 he purchased the freehold of the manor for £1,200.28 H.H. Drake, Hundred of Blackheath, 136-7. He also had interests in colonial ventures and commercial shipping, and acquired a baronetcy in 1619 and an Irish peerage the following year, presumably by purchase.29 Lismore Pprs. (ser. 2) ed. A.B. Grosart, ii. 69. According to his daughter, by the time of his death he acquired a personal estate worth £30,000 and enjoyed an income of £1,400 a year in land.30 HMC Lords, i. 264.

Hervey played no part in naval affairs during the Jacobean period. However, in April 1625, shortly after the accession of Charles I, he was added to the council of war, suggesting that, with the outbreak of a fresh war with Spain, his experience was considered valuable. The council had been created the previous year, when its members had been empowered by statute to authorize payments from taxes voted by the fourth Jacobean Parliament.31 SR, iv. 1261. However, as Hervey had not been part of the original council he was not called to account by the Commons in 1626.32 Procs. 1626, ii. 239-40. When the council was reconstituted in May that same year, Hervey was deleted from a draft list of members, but was included in the final version.33 SP16/26/33; S.J. Stearns, ‘Caroline Military System, 1625-7’ (Univ. of California, Berkeley Ph.D. thesis, 1967), p. 376, n. 66.

The following November Hervey was among those nominated to the commission established to investigate failings in the Navy following the unsuccessful expedition led by Robert Bertie^*, 14th Lord Willoughby de Eresby (later 1st earl of Lindsey).34 APC, 1626, pp. 350-1. He helped survey the ships at Chatham in January 1627, reporting the results to the full commission on the 29th.35 SP16/45, ff. 28v, 32, 67. The following month he criticized the plan Capt. Richard Giffard proposed for building a fleet of small warships to combat privateers operating from Dunkirk in the Spanish Netherlands, arguing that such vessels would be dishonourable to the king, being more likely to be captured by the enemy. Instead he submitted a scheme of his own to defend the coasts involving 20 ships of between 200 and 400 tons, to be organized into four squadrons, which he estimated would cost £43,280. Both proposals were debated by the commission, but nothing was done, as by that time the Navy’s resources were stretched by the preparations to relieve La Rochelle.36 SP16/54/13, 46; SP16/45, ff. 75v-7, 105; A. Thrush, ‘In Pursuit of the Frigate’, HR, lxiv. 39-40.

Despite not having held a naval command for 28 years, Hervey was appointed rear admiral of the fleet for the forthcoming expedition. He took a close interest in the provisioning of his ship, and was described as a ‘well disposed gentleman’ by one naval administrator; however, the Venetian ambassador remarked on his advancing age.37 Winthrop Pprs. I: 1498-1628 ed. Mass. Hist. Soc. (1929), 344, 348; CSP Ven. 1626-8, pp. 205, 280. The expedition set sail on 27 June, but Hervey’s squadron became separated from the fleet after the main body chased some Dunkirkers. Consequently, Hervey did not anchor off the Île de Ré until 11 July, the day after the rest of the fleet.38 S.R. Gardiner, Hist. of Eng. vi. 171-2; Journall of all the Proceedings of the Duke of Buckingham his Grace, in the Isle of Ree (1627), 8. The younger John Winthrop (subsequently first governor of Connecticut), who served aboard Hervey’s flagship, reported to his father that ‘our ship hath been generally healthful’.39 Winthrop Pprs. I: 1498-1628, pp. 359-60. In November, the fleet having failed to stop fresh supplies reaching the French besieged in St. Martin, the expedition was abandoned in ignominy.40 Gardiner, vi. 182, 197.

Hervey appears to have escaped any blame for the failure at Ré. Indeed, he was rewarded with a peerage the following February, in time to sit in the third Caroline Parliament, where he was reportedly needed to strengthen the support of George Villiers^*, 1st duke of Buckingham in the upper House.41 Procs. 1628, pp. 121-2. The precise date of his ennoblement is unclear, as the enrolled patent records only the month and year, but the docquet authorizing his creation was drawn up on 7 February.42 Coventry Docquets, 24; 47th DKR, 105. Hervey subsequently attended 75 of the 94 sittings of the 1628 session. On 20 Mar. he was formally introduced to the upper House by Oliver St John^*, Lord Tregoz (Viscount Grandison in the Irish peerage), a fellow member of the council of war, and William Paget^*, 5th Lord Paget.43 Lords Procs. 1628, pp. 73-4. Absent at the call of the House on 22 Mar., when he was recorded as being in town, he returned to the chamber on 28 Mar. but was excused ‘for three or four days’ on 3 Apr., and again the following day, this time ‘for four or five days’. He returned on 14 Apr., after which date he missed only seven more sittings.44 Ibid. 87, 146, 153.

Hervey is only recorded as having spoken once in the upper House, on 28 Apr., when he excused the absence of Lord Tregoz.45 Ibid. 354. He was also appointed to just 11 of the 52 committees established by the House in 1628. As a resident of Kent, these not surprisingly included both the Medway navigation bill and a measure concerning the estates of the Sackville earls of Dorset, who also lived in that county, though he was not recorded as being present in the chamber when the latter committee was established (29 May). He was also absent on 17 Apr., when he was initially nominated to consider the estate bill for another Kentish nobleman, Henry Neville^*, 9th (or 2nd) Lord Abergavenny. (His name was subsequently deleted from the committee list.) His naval and shipping interests may explain why Hervey was named to consider the bill concerning the American fisheries on 28 May, on which day he was also added to the committee for petitions.46 Ibid. 261, 264, 548, 550, 554.

Hervey was one of the commissioners who prorogued the Parliament on 20 Oct 1628. When the Parliament reassembled early the following year, he was present for 17 of the 23 sittings of the session, and was named to four out of 19 committees. Reappointed to the petitions committee at the start of the session, he was subsequently instructed to consider the apparel bill and help present the petition to the king concerning Robert de Vere^*, 19th earl of Oxford. He was also required to consider the proposal, first put forward by Buckingham and now revived by Thomas Howard^*, 21st (or 14th) earl of Arundel, for an academy to educate the children of the nobility.47 LD 1621, 1625 and 1628, p. 229; LJ, iv. 6b, 19b, 34b, 39b. He made no recorded speeches.

In 1631 Hervey was named as one of the judges in the trial of Mervyn Tuchet^*, 2nd earl of Castlehaven [I] and 12th Lord Audley. However, on 23 Apr. the lord keeper, Thomas Coventry^*, 1st Lord Coventry, reported he was not in London ‘nor expected upon any certainty’, and consequently he was replaced.48 SP16/189/19. The following year his only surviving son died, leaving him without an heir to either of his titles.49 HMC Cowper, i. 475. He failed to attend the 1634 Irish Parliament, when he gave his proxy to Edward Conway^*, 2nd Viscount Conway.50 LJ [I], i. 17. On making his will on 16 Dec. 1637, he declared himself to be ‘in perfect health’. However, on 5 Sept. following it was reported that he was dead or dying.51 PROB 11/206, f. 161; C115/109/8822. This was evidently an exaggeration. Nevertheless, when Charles I summoned the English peerage to York in early 1639 to fight the Scots, Hervey and Edmund Sheffield^*, 1st earl of Mulgrave, were listed as wishing ‘to be excused by reason of their age and infirmities and the weakness of their estates’.52 SP16/413/117.

Hervey was only once recorded as attending the Long Parliament, and on being excused on 14 May 1641 was described as ‘very aged’. In June 1642 he was listed among those peers ‘not commonly coming to Parliament’.53 LJ, iv. 249a; A Catalogue of the Right Honorable and Noble Lords (1642), 2. He died soon afterwards, when his peerage became extinct, and was buried in St Edmund’s chapel, Westminster Abbey on 8 July. His will was not proved until 1 Nov. 1648.54 PROB 11/206, f. 161v.