English politician and courtier (1540?1591)
Sir Christopher Hatton
KG
(12 December 1540 ? 20 November 1591) was an English politician,
Lord Chancellor
of
England
and a
favourite
of
Elizabeth I of England
. He was one of the judges who found
Mary, Queen of Scots
guilty of treason.
Early years
[
edit
]
Sir Christopher was the second son of William Hatton (died 28 August 1546)
of
Holdenby
, Northamptonshire, and his second wife, Alice Saunders, daughter of Lawrence Saunders (died 1544) of
Harrington, Northamptonshire
. His wife, Alice Brokesby was the daughter of Robert Brokesby (died 28 March 1531) of Shoby,
Leicestershire
, and of Alice Shirley.
[a]
On his father's side, the Hatton pedigree is said to be "traced beyond records". In the reign of
Henry VII
, Henry Hatton of Quisty Birches in
Cheshire
married Elizabeth, sole heiress of William Holdenby of Holdenby, Northamptonshire. Their son, John Hatton, settled at Holdenby and had three sons, of whom Christopher Hatton's father, William, was the eldest. He is said to have had two brothers, Thomas and William, and a sister Dorothy (died 1569), who married first John Newport (died 1566) of
Hunningham
,
Warwickshire
, then William Underhill (died 1570) of
Idlicote
, Warwickshire, whose son, also William Underhill (died 1597), sold
New Place
to
William Shakespeare
.
In 1567, Hatton's brother Thomas married John Newport's sister, Ursula Newport.
[7]
However Hatton's two brothers appear to have died relatively young and without issue. It was his sister Dorothy's son by John Newport who eventually became Hatton's heir.
Hatton's education is said to have been supervised by his maternal uncle, William Saunders (died c. 1583). Otherwise nothing is known of his life until he entered
St Mary Hall, Oxford
as a
gentleman commoner
at the age of 15 or 16.
He left Oxford without a degree and enrolled in the
Inner Temple
on 26 May 1560.
It is not known whether he was called to the bar.
Career
[
edit
]
In 1561 Hatton played the part of Master of the Game at a
masque
at the Inner Temple,
and on a similar occasion attracted the attention of Queen Elizabeth. Handsome and skilled, Hatton's dancing quickly won him the Queen's favour and the nickname "The Dancing Chancellor".
[11]
[12]
He came to court, according to
Naunton
, "by the
galliard
, for he came thither as a private gentleman of the
Inns of Court
in a masque, and for his activity and person, which was tall and proportionable, taken into the Queen's favour."
In 1564, he became one of the Queen's
gentlemen pensioners
and a gentleman of the privy chamber, and in July 1572 captain of the yeomen of the guard.
On 11 November 1577, he became vice-chamberlain of the royal household and was sworn into the
Privy Council
. That same month he was
knighted
.
In June 1578, the Queen formally granted him the Bishop of
Ely's
house in Ely Place,
Holborn
, despite vigorous protests from the Bishop.
[17]
These appointments, with the valuable grants the Queen showered on him in these early years,
[18]
prompted rumours that he was her lover, a charge specifically made in 1584 by
Mary, Queen of Scots
.
There were certainly close personal relations between them. In correspondence the Queen called him her "Lyddes". He is said to have referred to himself in at least one letter as her "sheep".
Yet Hatton "was probably innocent in the matter."
Hatton represented
Higham Ferrers
in Parliament in 1571 and from May 1572 was a member for
Northamptonshire
.
He was active in Parliament in prosecutions of
John Stubbs
and
William Parry
.
In 1576, he was granted land in
Wellingborough
by the Queen.
[22]
In 1581, he was one of those appointed to arrange a marriage between the Queen and
Francois, Duke of Alencon
,
although he urged the Queen against it.
According to one account, Hatton once assured Mary, Queen of Scots he would fetch her to London if Queen Elizabeth died.
Whatever the truth of this, Hatton's loyalty to his sovereign seems to have remained unquestioned. On one occasion, in December 1584, he led 400 kneeling members of the
House of Commons
in a prayer for the Queen's safety.
Hatton was a member of the law court that tried
Anthony Babington
in 1586 and one of the commissioners who found Mary, Queen of Scots, guilty of treason the following year. He vigorously denounced her in Parliament and advised
William Davison
to forward the warrant for her execution to
Fotheringhay
.
Hatton sent a ring with a letter to
Sir Thomas Smith
, to be presented to Queen Elizabeth. It was to be worn at the breast, and Hatton claimed for it "the virtue to expel infectious airs, and is, as it (the letter) telleth me, to be worn between the sweet duggs, the chaste nest of pure constancy."
[24]
Sir Robert Cecil
reported in August 1591 that the queen, who was at Portsmouth, wore a jewel in the form of bagpipes on her ruff that Hatton had sent her. The device alluded to shepherds and her nickname for him, "her mutton".
[25]
In 1587 Hatton became
Lord Chancellor
. Though he had no great knowledge of the law, he appears to have acted with sense and judgement. He was said to have been a
Roman Catholic
in all but name, but treated religious questions in a moderate and tolerant way.
Hatton was chancellor of the
University of Oxford
. He is reported to have been parsimonious, but he patronized men of letters and
Edmund Spenser
was among his friends. He wrote the fourth act of a tragedy,
Tancred and Gismund
. His death occasioned several
panegyrics
in prose and verse.
Wealth
[
edit
]
Hatton became wealthy through his progressing career and the Queen's fondness for him, and in 1583 he embarked on building at Holdenby, Northamptonshire, what was to be the largest privately owned Elizabethan house in England. It had 123 huge glass windows at a time when glass was very expensive ? window numbers became a way to show wealth. It had two great courts and was as large as
Hampton Court
palace. It was three storeys high and had two large state rooms, one for himself and another for the Queen, should she ever stay, which she never did.
Lord Burghley
, visiting the house in his old age, was impressed with the grand staircase from the hall to the state rooms and proclaimed the house so faultless he forgot the "infirmity of his legs" whilst he walked around. No expense was spared. Hatton even paid to move a village because it spoiled the view from one of his windows. However, the cost of the house drained his purse, so that Hatton was short of money for the rest of his life. No stranger to the financial strain of building, Burghley wrote to Hatton: "God send us both long to enjoy her, for whom we both meant to exceed our purses in these."
To maintain his dwindling wealth, Hatton began investing in some voyages of
Francis Drake
, including Drake's acts of piracy in Spanish America. During Drake's subsequent
circumnavigation
of the globe, when he reached the
Straits of Magellan
, he renamed his ship
The Golden Hind
in honour of Hatton's coat of arms, which contained a golden hind, and of all the
Spanish gold
on board. Hatton made a profit of £2300 from this expedition.
Death
[
edit
]
Despite his successes Hatton died with large debts, a few years after his Holdenby mansion was completed in 1583. Hatton claimed to refuse to sleep there until
Queen Elizabeth I
would do so.
[26]
The remains of the original
Holdenby House
are a room incorporated into a replacement building in the 1870s; part of the pillared doorway with two arches inscribed with the date 1583 in the gardens; and drawings and plans.
[27]
He had begun to build his other country house,
Kirby Hall
, in 1570. It was based on French architectural designs and expanded in
Classical style
over the decades.
Hatton's health declined in 1591. The Queen visited him on 11 November. Nine days later he died at Ely Place and was given a state funeral at
St Paul's Cathedral
on 16 December.
A grand monument to him stood at the high altar of Old St Paul's, "towering above it ? an outrage to the susceptibilities of the devout but an object of marvel to London sightseers ? until the
Great Fire
of 1666 dethroned and destroyed it."
[28]
Hatton is listed on a modern monument in the crypt as one of the important graves lost.
Although he seems to have had an illegitimate daughter, Hatton never married, and his large and valuable estates descended to his nephew, Sir William Newport (1560?1597), son of his sister Ursula Hatton, who took the surname Hatton.
When the latter died without male issue in 1597, the estates passed to Sir Christopher Hatton's first cousin once removed and namesake godson, another Sir
Christopher Hatton
(died 1619), whose son and successor,
Christopher
became
Baron Hatton
of Kirby and his son
Christopher
became Viscount Hatton.
This line still continues with the
Finch-Hattons
.
Commemorations
[
edit
]
Hatton Garden
, heart of the UK's trade in cut
diamonds
, stands on the site of Hatton's London home and grounds.
Sir Christopher Hatton Academy
was founded in 1983 in
Wellingborough
,
Northamptonshire
.
In popular culture
[
edit
]
In the 2007 film
Elizabeth: The Golden Age
,
Sir Christopher Hatton is portrayed by
Laurence Fox
See also
[
edit
]
Notes
[
edit
]
- ^
The date of death of Hatton's mother is not known, nor whether she remarried after William Hatton's death.
- ^
"FINCH HATTON (KIRBY)"
– via National Archive of the UK.
- ^
"Sir Christopher Hatton"
.
Encyclopaedia Britannica
. Retrieved
12 July
2019
.
- ^
Rego Barry, Rebecca (11 June 2012).
"Queen Elizabeth & The Dancing Chancellor"
.
Fine Books Magazine
. Retrieved
12 July
2019
.
- ^
Nicolas 1847
, pp. 36 and 39.
- ^
Nicolas 1847
, pp. 7?9 and 13.
- ^
Salzman, L F.
"Parishes: Wellingborough Pages 135-146 A History of the County of Northampton: Volume 4"
.
www.british-history.ac.uk
. Victoria County History, 1937
. Retrieved
28 May
2023
.
- ^
Francis Grose and Thomas Astle,
The Antiquarian Reportary
, vol. 3 (London, 1808), p. 386.
- ^
Paul E. J. Hammer, 'Letters from Cecil to Hatton',
Religion, Politics and Society in Sixteenth-Century England
(Cambridge, 2003), p. 238.
- ^
Francis Grose & Thomas Astle,
The Antiquarian Reportary
, vol. 3 (London, 1808), p. 386.
- ^
Holdenby Palace website
Archived
1 August 2007 at the
Wayback Machine
- ^
"Memorials of St Paul's Cathedral"
Sinclair, W.
p. 93: London; Chapman & Hall, Ltd; 1909.
References
[
edit
]
- Agutter, Doreen (September 2010).
"Edward Saunders of Harrington and Rothwell, Northamptonshire"
.
Monumental Brass Society Bulletin
.
115
: 288?9. Archived from
the original
on 25 July 2013
. Retrieved
26 August
2013
.
- Deacon, Malcolm (2008).
The Courtier and the Queen
. Welstead Farm,
Milton Malsor
, Northampton: Park Lane Publishing.
ISBN
978-0-9523188-4-2
.
- MacCaffrey, Wallace T. (2004). "Hatton, Sir Christopher (c. 1540-1591)".
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(online ed.). Oxford University Press.
doi
:
10.1093/ref:odnb/12605
.
(Subscription or
UK public library membership
required.)
- Metcalfe, Walter C., ed. (1887).
The Visitations of Northamptonshire Made in 1564 and 1618?19
. London: Mitchell and Hughes. p. 27
. Retrieved
26 August
2013
.
- Nicolas, Harris (1847).
Memoirs of the Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton
. London: Richard Bentley.
- Richardson, Douglas (2011). Everingham, Kimball G. (ed.).
Plantagenet Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families
. Vol. I (2nd ed.). Salt Lake City.
ISBN
978-1-4499-6631-7
.
{{
cite book
}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link
)
- Stopes, Charlotte Carmichael (1907).
Shakespeare's Warwickshire Contemporaries
. Stratford upon Avon: Shakespeare Head Press. pp. 227?32
. Retrieved
20 December
2013
.
Attribution
[
edit
]
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Howard, Joseph Jackson, ed. (1868).
Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica
. Vol. I. London: Hamilton Adams. p. 159.
- Thompson, EM, ed. (1878).
Correspondence of the Family of Hatton, being chiefly Letters addressed to Christopher, first Viscount Hutton, 1601?1704
. London.
{{
cite book
}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (
link
)
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