English politician
Sir Edward Lewknor or Lewkenor (1542 – 19 September 1605) was a prominent member of the puritan gentry in East Anglia in the later Elizabethan period, and an important voice on religious matters in the English Parliament.
Origins and young life.
Edward was the eldest son of the courtier Edward Lewknor of Kingston Buci, Sussex, and his wife Dorothy, daughter of Robert Wroth and Jane Hawte, and sister of Sir Thomas Wroth. His father grew up in the wardship of Robert Wroth (an associate of Thomas Cromwell and Richard Rich), who left directions in his will (1536) for the marriage of his ward to his daughter Dorothy. The elder Lewknor's career as a courtier benefited from the high favour in which King Edward VI held his brother-in-law Thomas Wroth, one of the Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, whose wife Mary was a daughter of Richard Rich. However, with King Edward's death and the accession of Queen Mary in 1553, Wroth (a strong favourer of the Protestant reform) went with Sir John Cheke and Sir Anthony Cooke into exile abroad.
The elder Lewknor, who was reputedly Groom Porter to both monarchs, kept his position at court, but became implicated in the "Dudley conspiracy" (of Henry Dudley and Henry Peckham) to depose Queen Mary and install her sister Elizabeth when he used his situation to procure a copy of King Henry VIII's will on their behalf. In 1556 he was found guilty of treason, attainted, and imprisoned in the Tower of London under deferral of execution awaiting a possible pardon. At this time the Queen sought urgently to force Sir Thomas Wroth to return to England, but without success, and after three months in the Tower attended by his wife and one of his daughters Lewknor expired there in September 1556. His son Edward at the age of 14 therefore faced a complete reversal of his childhood status and expectations when his father was buried at the Tower.
Many lands, including the manor and advowson of Hamsey, East Sussex, were restored to his mother in February 1556/57 by Mary's Letters Patent. In the first year of Elizabeth an act was passed, on the petition of Lewknor's four sons (Edward, Thomas, Stephen and William) and six daughters (Jane, Maria, Elizabeth, Anne, Dorothie and Lucrece) to restore them to their blood, lineage and degree. This restored all their ancestral hereditaments excepting those held in use, possession or reversion by their father at the time of his treason and attainder, or any which either Mary or Elizabeth should have found cause to withhold. They were therefore entitled to make their pedigrees as Lewknor's heirs as if he had never been attainted, and to make conveyances thereof, except of lordships, honours and other benefits to which their Majesties were entitled on account of the attainder.
His fortunes so far restored, Edward was educated at St John's College, Cambridge, matriculating a pensioner at Easter 1559 and graduating B.A. in 1561, and was a fellow of the college from 1561 to 1563. He entered the Middle Temple in 1562 to study law. His son recorded in his father's printed epitaph that he next found some service in the royal household of Queen Elizabeth. His next brother Thomas Lewknor (presumably the same who matriculated from Trinity College, Cambridge in Lent term 1557–58 and graduated B.A. in 1562–63) was presented Rector of Hamsey by the Diocesan 'by lapsed authority' in 1563, remaining until 1568.
Marriage and relocation to Suffolk.
Around 1570 Edward married Susan, daughter of Sir Thomas Heigham of Higham Hall, Suffolk and his wife Martha, daughter of Sir Thomas Jermyn of Rushbrooke Hall. While his mother Dorothy Lewknor remained of Kingston Buci, in consequence of his marriage Edward moved to Suffolk, settling at Denham near Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, near to Rushbrooke and Higham, and established his family there, where the male line continued in three generations. This placed him firmly within the kinship of the central East Anglian gentry, and, so far as his immediate Jermyn and Heigham relations were concerned, with a group embodying the radical puritan interest in Suffolk. Lewknor assumed this role naturally and energetically: the twin social pillars of the magistracy and ministry working together under the authority of this particular family group (which had a strong parliamentary presence) form the subject of an oft-quoted case-study by Professor Collinson.
Susan Heigham's father Sir Thomas Heigham was the grandson and senior heir of John Heigham (died c. 1522), whose younger brother Clement Heigham of Lavenham (died 1500) was father of Sir Clement Heigham of Barrow, Suffolk (died 1571) Speaker of the House of Commons in 1554, an open Catholic, and a notable persecutor of Protestants. Speaker Higham's son Sir John Heigham (died 1626), however, with whom Lewknor had more to do, was a central patron of the puritan movement in East Anglia. The Jermyns were similarly bi-partisan. Martha Jermyn's father Sir Thomas died in 1552, and her brother Sir Ambrose Jermyn (died 1577) was reportedly a fervent Roman Catholic and strong persecutor of Protestants in East Anglia during the reign of Queen Mary, but by another account took immediate steps to curb the excesses of commissioners as soon as Elizabeth came to the throne. His son, Sir Robert Jermyn (died 1614), however, was an uncompromising puritan and patron, and the associate of John Heigham.
Martha Heigham held the manor of Denham as her jointure and may have been responsible for building Denham Hall (beside the church), the old fabric of which remains behind its later facade. Strongly puritan in sympathy, she lived down to 1593. Her minister there was Robert Pricke, alias Oldmayne, whose family name was apparently changed to evade persecution during Mary's reign. In 1577 Oldmayne baptized his son Timothy at Denham, and remained minister there for 30 years throughout the time of Edward and Susan Lewknor. In 1581 Robert Jermyn's sister Frances died leaving endowments for Fellowships at St John's and Trinity College, Cambridge, granting Robert the choice of appointments, and she gave copies of the Tremellius bible to several East Anglian ministers including Richard Pricke and John Knewstub. Upon the foundation of Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1584, Sir Robert's heir Thomas Jermyn was at once enrolled, Sir Robert himself endowed a Fellowship there, and a lasting connection was begun in which the Lewknors followed.
Parliament.
Lewkenor was sponsored in a successful Parliamentary career by Puritan sympathisers such as the Earl of Leicester, with whose help in 1571 he was elected MP for Tamworth. In 1572 he was elected MP for New Shoreham, near his ancestral domains. He was then elected for Maldon in 1584 and 1586. Lewknor, Sir John Heigham (knighted 1579, MP for Ipswich in 1584 and for Suffolk in 1586) and Sir Robert Jermyn (MP for Suffolk in the same parliaments) led a strongly Puritan faction in Parliament, often working together in committee, advocating the importance of a learned clergy and the reform of episcopal powers and activities, with which Jermyn in particular came into direct confrontation.
In 1584 Lewkenor was involved with a bill for the more reverent observation of the Sabbath – which, as an intervention in Church affairs, met with royal resistance. Later in that year he served on a committee to consider petitions for the liberties of godly preachers. In 1585 he offered a petition concerning abuses in the ministry on behalf of the people of Sussex, simultaneously overseeing the formulation of an official prayer of thanksgiving to God for the great benefits bestowed upon the realm by Queen Elizabeth, to be used in Parliamentary proceedings. In late 1586, in test or proof of this loyalty, he, Heigham and Jermyn were appointed with others to consider a means by which Mary, Queen of Scots might be brought to the execution of justice.
This, however, did not protect him when, in 1587, a revised Book of Common Prayer and accompanying bill were put before the House by Anthony Cope, M.P. for Banbury, Oxfordshire. It was hoped thereby to reform certain problems in ecclesiastical affairs, and the proposer asked for it to be read and to be approved to replace the existing books in all churches. Lewkenor was among those who spoke, solemnly but unsuccessfully, in favour of its reading. These proceedings caused immediate royal disapproval, and when an issue of freedom of speech was raised the Member doing so (Peter Wentworth) was sent to the Tower of London. On the following day Cope and three others including Edward Lewkenor were also imprisoned there. Sir John Heigham and Sir Robert Jermyn were among those appointed 11 days later to consider their release: their durance lasted about a month.
Later life.
Lewkenor was not in the Parliament of 1588–89. In 1589, when he sat for Maldon again, his mother Dorothy Lewknor died at Kingston Buci, making Edward sole executor responsible for her legacies. In these she and he were bound by a recognizance of two thousand marks made with her kinsman Sir Francis Walsingham in 1570, limiting to £1000 any bequests or payments thereof made to unmarried daughters, with which she exactly complied. In 1594 Lewknor sold the manor and advowson of Hamsey, which in 1563 had been granted to him in reversion to take effect after his mother's death. In the previous year, he once more sitting for Maldon, his mother-in-law Martha Heigham died at Denham, also making Edward her sole executor and leaving him very extensive estates, Denham itself coming to him in Susan's share of the matrilineal inheritance divided between the two Heigham daughters.
Martha by her will established a scholarship at Emmanuel College (which it fell to Edward Lewknor to implement) on condition that it be enjoyed by Timothy Oldmayne when he should be ready to take it up, which Timothy accordingly did in 1595, proceeding to BA in 1598–99 and MA in 1602. Robert Jermyn, the younger son of Sir Robert, matriculated from Emmanuel in 1597 and graduated BA in 1599–1600. The Suffolk preacher Richard Blackerby, meanwhile, of Trinity College (admitted 1587, BA c. 1590), who was greatly influenced by the teaching of William Perkins, on leaving Cambridge lived in the household of Sir Robert Jermyn as his chaplain, and then for two years lived at Denham in the same capacity to the Lewknors, before marrying Timothy Oldmayne's sister. Lewknor's elder son, Edward, was admitted to Emmanuel in 1599.
Edward Lewknor was MP for Newport, Cornwall in 1598. He continued active in parliamentary business of various kinds, including the extended consideration of proposed bills for relief of the poor and prevention of idle beggars in November 1597. Having been knighted by King James I in 1603, he was returned as MP for Maldon in 1604, and resumed his intense involvement in questions of church and religion. In particular he strongly advocated that the requirement of subscription should extend only to the Thirty-nine Articles and not to the Prayer-book, so that the "godly ministers" should not be excluded from the established ministry.
The younger Edward Lewknor (the second of Denham) was admitted pensioner at Emmanuel College in July 1604, and his elder brother graduated BA in 1605. Called home from Cambridge to Denham with a neighbour's son in 1605, to avoid a smallpox outbreak, the friend brought the infection with him which, at the beginning of October 1605, claimed the lives of their mother and father on consecutive days.
Death and exequies.
The dates of death for Dame Susan (who died first) and Sir Edward vary slightly between the tomb inscription (2 and 3 October), the printed epitaph and the funeral certificate (3 and 4 October). They were buried in St Mary's church, Denham on 5 October 1605, and Sir Edward was succeeded as heir by his elder son Edward Lewknor.
The funeral, which was held on 9 January following, was a formal heraldic occasion, his sons, daughters and sons-in-law attending as mourners, the standard being borne by his sister Mary's son John Machell, and the pennon by Edward as Chief Mourner. Robert Prick alias Oldmayne delivered a funeral sermon which was published. Edward the son erected an elaborate canopied table monument featuring painted stone carvings of Sir Edward, his wife and their eight children at prayer, within a chapel in the church recently built for that or another purpose. He also published a Threnody for his father, in which Latin, English, Greek and Hebrew verse tributes from many university theologians