HAKEWILL (HACKWELL), William (1574-1655), of the Hale, nr. Wendover, Bucks.; Aldersgate Street and Lincoln's Inn, London

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604-1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris, 2010
Available from Cambridge University Press

Constituency

Dates

by 28 May 1624

Family and Education

bap. 30 Oct. 1574, 1st s. of John Hakewill of Exeter, Devon, merchant, and Thomasine, da. of John Peryam† of Exeter. educ. c.1590, Exeter Coll. Oxf., MA 1613; Staple Inn; L. Inn 1598, called 1606. m. May 1617, Elizabeth (d.1652), da. of Sir Henry Woodhouse† of Hickling and Waxham, Norf., at least 2s. suc. fa. 1615.1 d. 31 Oct. 1655. sig. W[illiam] Hakewill.

Offices Held

Dep. att. gen. in the Exch. to Anne of Denmark 1603-17,2 sol.-gen. 1617-19;3 bencher, L. Inn by 1616-d., treas. of the chapel 1622-4, marshal 1624-5, Lent reader 1625, kpr. of the Black Bk. 1634, treas. 1637-8, dean of the chapel, master of the lib. and master of the walks 1650; reader, Thavies Inn bef. 1621;4 master in Chancery 1646-52.5

Register and convenor, Soc. Antiqs. 1604-c.1607.6

J.p. Bucks. 1616-at least 1632, 1634-at least 1638;7 commr. survey, L. Inn Fields, Mdx. 1618,8 charitable uses, Bucks. 1618, 1621,9 subsidy 1621-2, 1624, 1628,10 new buildings, London 1625-at least 1630.11

Commr. trade 1621-2,12 Admlty. causes 1625,13 exacted fees 1627;14 sub-commr. repair of St. Paul’s Cathedral by 1632-at least 1634.15

Biography

A notable lawyer, historian and antiquary, and an acknowledged expert on Commons’ procedure, Hakewill was one of the dominant figures in the early Stuart House of Commons. However, despite his talents, he never achieved high office, perhaps because his opposition to impositions made him unpopular with James I.

I. Early Life

Born at Exeter in 1574, Hakewill was the son of a merchant whose family had long been settled at Totnes. His father, granted arms in 1601, was frequently described as being ‘of Totnes’,16 but lived at Exeter following his marriage to Thomasine, daughter of John Peryam, twice mayor of Exeter and sister of the puritan William Peryam, who represented the city in Parliament in 1563. The Peryams may have played a crucial role in shaping the interests and career of the young Hakewill, whose intellectual abilities were apparent from an early age.17 Through them he doubtless encountered Exeter’s chamberlain, the antiquary John Hooker alias Vowell†, who praised John Peryam as ‘zealous in the true religion of the Gospel’. Hakewill probably acquired from Hooker not only his love of antiquarian learning but also his passion for parliamentary procedure, as Hooker, who twice served in the Commons, was the author of a published treatise on the subject. Perhaps the principal benefit Hakewill derived from the Peryams came via his uncle William Peryam, who was knighted and appointed chief baron of the Exchequer in 1593. Sir William, who had fathered only daughters, nursed paternal feelings towards his academically inclined young nephew, for on leasing a Devon parsonage from the Crown in 1597 he allowed Hakewill and another man the right of remainder.18 Hakewill had previously been admitted to Exeter College, Oxford - Sir William’s alma mater - and it may have been with his uncle’s encouragement that he subsequently trained for the law at Staple Inn and Lincoln’s Inn. Certainly he owed his entry into Parliament in 1601 to Sir William, who controlled the Cornish borough of Bossiney. Peryam’s influence must also help explain Hakewill’s appointment as deputy attorney in the Exchequer to Anne of Denmark in 1603, a permanent position with an annual salary of £5. However, Hakewill may equally have benefited from the favour of the prominent civil lawyer Sir Julius Caesar*, master of St. Katharine’s by the Tower, of which hospital Anne was patron, as he later addressed a fulsome poem of praise to Caesar.19

II. The First Jacobean Parliament

Hakewill was returned to Parliament for the Cornish borough of Mitchell in 1604, probably on the interest of John Arundell* of Trerice, whose land bill he reported from committee on 22 May 1610.20 During the 1604 session he participated in the poorly recorded debate on the name ‘Great Britain’ on 23 Apr. 1604, having earlier attended a conference with the Lords on the same subject, but he exhibited no discernable interest in other key issues, notably purveyance and wardship.21 His most important contribution that year was to lay before the House a short bill to provide redress for plaintiffs who were unable to prosecute their suits because the defendants had been freed by Parliament. Enacted as 1 Jac.1. c.13,22 it was prompted by the refusal of the warden of the Fleet to release Sir Thomas Shirley I, the Member for Steyning, for fear of being prosecuted by Shirley’s creditors. At first sight Hakewill’s bill seemed unnecessary, as a separate measure designed to safeguard the warden and the arresting officer successfully completed all its Commons stages on 21 Apr., the day after Hakewill’s bill received its first reading. However, since it was clear that a law with a wider application was needed Hakewill’s bill was committed. Despite poor attendance of the committee, which forced Hakewill to seek an increase in its membership on 26 Apr., the bill, which was retitled the bill for ‘New Executions’, was reported by its author on the 27th. Sent up to the Lords on 8 May, it was belatedly criticized the following day by Anthony Stoughton, thereby prompting Hakewill to leap to its defence.23

The New Executions bill was not the only measure which Hakewill steered through the Commons in 1604. On 20 June he reported the bill to prohibit married men from residing in college with their wives and families, and on the following day he debated it at its third reading. The measure failed to become law, and consequently when it resurfaced in the second session Hakewill defended it from criticism (3 Mar. 1606).24 Hakewill made his only other significant contribution to the 1604 session during the subsidy debate of 19 June, when he declared his opposition to an immediate grant of supply in view of the recent plague and the fact that money was not usually voted at the beginning of a new reign.25 His opinion was shared by most of his colleagues, who deferred the question to the second session.

In November 1604, shortly after Parliament was prorogued, Hakewill joined the newly revived Society of Antiquaries, being elected its register and ‘convocater’ of assemblies. The society became defunct once again in about 1607, but sometime during the intervening period Hakewill prepared a paper for its members entitled ‘The Antiquity of the laws of this Island’, which challenged chief justice Fortescue’s assertion that the Common Law was essentially unchanged since the time of the ancient Britons. He concluded ‘that the British laws were altered by the Romans, theirs by the Saxons, and theirs again much altered by the Danes which mingled with some points of the Saxon law and fewer of the Roman law’.26

Hakewill’s name is not mentioned in the records when the Parliament briefly reconvened in November 1605. Following the Christmas recess, however, he was named to 11 bill committees, including one on the emerging issue of impositions (19 Mar. 1606), but made no recorded speeches.27 In May, shortly before the session ended, he obtained the reversion to the receivership of the duchy of Lancaster’s revenues in nine southern counties, undoubtedly through the incumbent receiver, the Member for Bossiney, Sir Jerome Horsey, whose mother was a Peryam. When the House reassembled in November Hakewill continued to play only a minor role. Throughout the entire 1606-7 session he was appointed to just three committees: one named commissioners to scutinize the Instrument of Union (added 29 Nov. 1606), while the others dealt with bills on the abuses of the Marshalsea Court (10 Dec.) and the waste of wheat in making starch (26 Feb. 1607).28 However, on 1 May 1607 he apparently supported Sir Edwin Sandys, who two days earlier had mischievously suggested that Parliament should consider how to bring about a ‘perfect’ Union, arguing that this proposal was ‘the only way to hinder a general union for ever’. He returned to the subject of the Union on 28 May 1607, when he considered the remanding of prisoners from one country to the other, but the clerk, who alone recorded his speech, failed to capture the sense of his words.29 His only other recorded intervention of the session followed the third reading of Nicholas Fuller’s bill to prohibit arrests on the Sabbath on 9 May 1607. He described the measure as ‘the absurdest bill that ever passed from a committee’.30

In March 1607 Hakewill, now a barrister of Lincoln’s Inn, was instructed by the king and queen to search the records of the Tower to discover whether previous queen-consorts had enjoyed rights and privileges which had fallen into disuse, there having been no queen-consort in more than 60 years.31 Hakewill’s subsequent labours, which may have been undertaken after Parliament was prorogued in July, culminated in the discovery that, by an ordinance issued under Henry II, Anne was entitled to a revenue known as Aurum Reginae, or Queen’s Gold. Where a man voluntarily entered into a fine with the king worth more than ten marks he was required to pay the queen a premium equivalent to ten per cent of the fine. Hakewill subsequently presented this finding to the queen in a short treatise, which he regarded as merely the first instalment of a larger work.32 However, he never completed this bigger project, and it not known whether the queen benefited from his discovery.

When Parliament reassembled in 1610, Hakewill began to play a more active role in its affairs, chairing five legislative committees. These included the committees for the Dorchester bill, which he twice reported (26 Feb. and 11 June), and the Chelsea College bill, which he reported on 6 July. His position as chairman of the committee for the bill on woods, which he reported on 21 May, is confirmed by the fact that on 1 May Sir Richard Paulet handed him a proviso.33 His chairmanship of the two remaining committees reflected his West Country origins. The first concerned the sea sand bill, a measure of particular interest to the gentry of Devon and Cornwall. He reported it on 2 Apr. and on 4 May offered the House a proviso, which was rejected.34 The second dealt with a bill, proffered by the citizens of his native Exeter, to construct a new weir, which he reported on 11 June. Hakewill’s willingness to promote the interests of his home county is further suggested by his appointment, on 25 June, to the committee for the bill to preserve Devon’s timber.35

Hakewill’s emergence as a committee chairman was indicative of his growing stature at Westminster, which was confirmed on 28 June, when he delivered a brilliantly argued, erudite speech on impositions.36 He began by confessing that he had recently altered his views regarding the legality of impositions. In 1606 he had been ‘much persuaded’ by the arguments of the three judges in the case concerning the Levant merchant John Bate, who had been successfully prosecuted in the Exchequer for refusing to pay the new impost upon currants. Consequently, in April 1610 he had been ‘very sorry’ to see that his colleagues were determined to question impositions, being then ‘confidently persuaded that His Majesty’s right to impose was very clear and not to be disputed’. His misgivings regarding the Commons’ decision to challenge the king’s right remained as late as May, when James promised to forbear laying impositions on both lands and goods and to raise new levies on merchandise only with Parliament’s authority. Not until 16 June, when he and several other Members were ordered to search the Exchequer’s records, did Hakewill begin to doubt the soundness of the Crown’s case. On comparing his findings with those of his colleagues, he discovered to his astonishment that many of the precedents cited by the judges in 1606 ‘were untruly vouched, and many misapplied’. So serious were these errors that he was compelled to conclude not only that the judgment in Bate’s Case was unsound but that the king had no right to impose.37 Before examining these precedents in detail, however, he considered the matter from first principles: was the king entitled to increase customs rates at his pleasure or did he require Parliament’s consent? His answer, of course, was that the sovereign had no right to increase customs duties at pleasure. Whenever the Common Law gave the king a permanent revenue out of the property of his subjects it either established a fixed rate of payment or provided for a legal means to arrive at such a rate, ‘either by Parliament, by judges or jury’. Fines for the purchasing of writs, for example, were set at fixed rates, while ‘fines for misdemeanours are always assessed by the judges’. Moreover, the rate of escuage - the fine imposed on a man for failing to serve the king in his wars - was always assessed in Parliament. There were several reasons why the Common Law required such certainty. First, the entitlement to a previously fixed sum ensured that the king was not reliant upon the goodwill of his subjects for his revenue, as he ‘knows in certainty what to claim as due to him, and may accordingly compel the subject to pay it’. Secondly, a fixed sum afforded the subject protection of his property, for if the king were entitled to demand what he liked the subject might lose the entire value of his goods. Above all, the principle that there should be certainty served to avoid tyranny, ‘because to make any man judge in his own case, especially the mighty over the weak, and that in a point of profit to him that judgeth, were to leave open a way to oppression and bondage’.38 It was partly for this reason that Hakewill disputed the claim of Sir Robert Hitcham, his superior officer in the queen’s Household, that the king was entitled to lay taxes without parliamentary consent in the event of ‘sudden wars’. As Hakewill pointed out, there was no legal way of determining whether the king’s demands were justified, and therefore Hitcham was in effect saying that the king could lay taxes at will, which would ‘bring us into bondage’. Hakewill further undermined Hitcham’s argument by observing that the law already provided for the needs of defence caused by ‘sudden wars’, as in the event of an invasion every man was required to serve the king in person.39

In the remainder of his long speech, Hakewill undermined the Crown’s claim that impositions were warranted by precedent by considering in detail the historical record. Between the Norman Conquest and the end of Mary’s reign, a period of almost five centuries, Hakewill maintained that impositions, properly understood, had only been laid half a dozen times. All were unlawful, he averred, but as each had been moderate, laid in times of great necessity and had been (with one exception) of short duration they were ‘to be borne withal’. By comparison, the new impositions were heavy, permanent and, despite ‘some sparks of rebellion’ in Ireland, had been laid in peacetime. It was not, however, the medieval record which gave colour to the king’s right to levy impositions, argued Hakewill, but the doubtful practices of Queen Mary, who had resurrected impositions ‘after they had been so many years dead and rotten’. Among these Marian levies was one upon cloth, still in force, which had given rise to complaint in Parliament and caused numerous conferences to be had with the judges. Hakewill admitted that he could not discover the outcome of these conferences, but he noted that had judgment been given for the queen the fact would not have been kept quiet.40

Hakewill’s speech was impressive for its clarity and learning, and it earned him immediate recognition. On 10 July he was appointed to the committee for drafting a summary of the chief arguments used by both sides in the impositions debate, which summary was to be kept among the House’s records.41 Six days later he was given the important task of reporting the bill against impositions.42 Interest in Hakewill was also shown outside the chamber. In mid-August, during the summer recess, he was one of six lawyers instructed by the Privy Council to advise the Crown’s law officers and the recorder of London (Sir Henry Montagu*). They were to lay the groundwork for a major overhaul of the Common Law, as many ancient statutes were either obsolete and in need of repeal or so contradicted each other that codification was required.43 Hakewill was delighted with this commission, and he and his colleagues spent a great part of the summer in reviewing the mass of statutes, sometimes sitting ten hours a day. They subsequently found more than 200 Acts in need of repeal.44 However, when Parliament reassembled in October the results of these labours were not presented to either House, even though the Council had required the preliminary work to be completed by the time Parliament met again. Consequently, during the final session of the first Jacobean Parliament, Hakewill was less active than he might otherwise have been. He made his most significant intervention on 21 Nov., when he joined in the chorus of protest against 30 Members who had, without the House’s permission, trooped off to Whitehall following the collapse of the Great Contract to discuss matters with the king. Quite correctly, Hakewill denounced their behaviour as setting a dangerous precedent, as Members were meant to keep secret the deliberations of the House. What was to prevent a future king from sending for Members, 30 at a time, until he had ‘privately understood the minds of the Whole House’? Moreover, what guarantee was there that those whom James had sent for had spoken for the whole House rather than in their own behalf? It would have been better, asserted Hakewill, if the Members summoned by James had conferred with their colleagues first. However, he realized that it was impractical and undesirable to punish so many Members and accordingly he rejected any suggestion that they should be sent to the Tower or called to the bar. Instead he proposed that they be admonished by the House.45

III. The Addled Parliament

Following the dissolution, Hakewill obtained access to the Commons’ Journals, which were in the custody of the clerk of the Commons, Ralph Ewens†, a fellow member of the queen’s Household. He read them all and noted down anything he found regarding procedure, intending to compile a tract more detailed than the one penned by his fellow Exonian and likely former mentor, John Hooker. He subsequently drafted several chapters. Those on the passing of bills, the duties of the Speaker and speaking in the House have survived, but chapters on early procedure, committees, the duties of the clerk, and the conclusion of a Parliament have not. One chapter, on bills, was published in Hakewill’s own lifetime, but most of the manuscript remained unpublished, and the existence of no less than three versions of the chapter on speaking in the House suggests that Hakewill never completed the entire work to his own satisfaction. Nevertheless, he lent out portions of his manuscript to interested colleagues, among them Sir Edward Montagu, in whose papers one version of the chapter on speaking in the House survives.46

In April 1612 Hakewill assisted Recorder Montagu, who was retained by various barons to protect the status of their younger sons against the claims of precedence advanced by the holders of the newly created baronetcies. The issue was determined in the barons’ favour after a hearing before the king, and Hakewill recorded the arguments employed by both sides.47 In the following January he became co-executor of the estate of his lately deceased first cousin once removed, (Sir) Thomas Bodley†. At first sight the duties involved in this appointment were likely to prove onerous, as Bodley had left funds to extend the library he had founded at the University of Oxford, to which Hakewill had himself contributed some printed volumes and an Italian manuscript.48 However, Bodley appears to have envisaged that Hakewill’s fellow executor, Sir John Bennet*, would oversee the new building work. Hakewill’s involvement was nevertheless still required, and the day after Bodley’s funeral the university awarded him an MA.49

During the general election of 1614 Hakewill advised Sir Edward Phelips* on electoral tactics should Phelips’ son, Sir Robert*, be opposed for the county seat.50 He himself was elected for the Cornish borough of Tregony, probably on the interest of John Arundell, who lived about nine miles from the town and probably found him his seat in 1604. As might be expected given his recent extensive reading of the House’s journals, he quickly assumed the air of an expert on Commons’ procedure. When the House questioned the right of the attorney-general to sit in the Commons, Hakewill announced on 8 Apr. that he had ‘searched the precedents’ and found that the attorney had indeed previously been a Member, although he wished ‘it were not so’.51 Five days later he reminded the House that it could make no new order until the matter had first been put to the question, while on 3 May he moved ‘that there might not be so often committees of the Whole House’. He clearly regarded such bodies as an unwelcome recent innovation and may have done his best to limit their activity, for when it was suggested on 8 Apr. that one such committee should meet every Tuesday and Thursday at 2pm he argued that it should be ‘tied to no certain time’ but meet whenever it desired. Though his objection temporarily swayed the House, on 11 May, at Sir Herbert Croft’s suggestion, the committee was assigned to meet thrice weekly at a regular time.52 Hakewill’s procedural expertise meant that he was well equipped to advise the House on electoral matters, both as a member of the committee for privileges, to which he was named on 8 Apr., and in the chamber. During the debate on the Stockbridge election (11 May) he questioned the need for a new writ, as he was certain that one of the defeated candidates had in fact been duly chosen. Two weeks later (24 May) he announced that it was not necessary to allow the sheriff of Northumberland counsel regarding his recent misconduct on the hustings unless he declined to answer on a point of law, advice which was seconded by Heneage Finch.53 Hakewill was clearly exercised by the subject of electoral irregularities, and supported attempts to clarify and improve the existing legislation on the subject. He had been a member of a committee established to consider an elections bill in April 1606, and was appointed to a similar committee in April 1614. Although the new bill was proposed by Sir Francis Goodwin, it was Hakewill who attempted to steer it through the House. On 3 May he reported the committee’s proceedings, and later, when the interest of his fellow committeemen waned, he twice persuaded the House to order the committee to meet.54

It was not merely as a procedural expert that Hakewill contributed to the life of the Commons in 1614. When the issue of impositions resurfaced in mid-April he placed himself at the forefront of the attack. During the second reading debate on the impositions bill he concurred with Hoskins and Whitson that these levies were ‘the chiefest cause of the king’s wants’. Furthermore, whereas Sir Dudley Digges thought that the bill should be committed without discussion, having been fully debated in 1610, Hakewill not only successfully opposed the motion on the grounds that a majority of Members had not served in the last Parliament, but reprised the preamble to his speech of nearly four years earlier.55 In mid-May he suggested that those Members who had been appointed to act as spokesmen at a forthcoming joint conference with the Lords on impositions should first confer among themselves to ensure full coverage of the issues and to avoid any repetition. He also moved that the king’s law officers should be asked whether there was any truth in the rumour that they had uncovered records which ‘cross the opinion of this House’. Interestingly, he was seconded by Sir Robert Phelips, whose election to Parliament he had previously been so keen to ensure. The Commons adopted these motions, and ordered the spokesmen to assemble two days later at Lincoln’s Inn, where Hakewill’s chambers were located. A second speech by Hakewill later that same morning (16 May) was prompted by the intervention of Thomas Hitchcock and Leonard Bawtree, who defended the king’s right to impose. Hakewill suggested that they should be assigned a time to present their evidence, when they would also ‘receive satisfaction’. The House approved of this motion, and on 18 May Hitchcock argued his case before the grand committee. Once again Hakewill was among the respondents, but regrettably no account of his speech appears to survive.56 Finally, when it was learned that Bishop Neile had declared that the Commons had trespassed on the royal prerogative by discussing impositions, Hakewill was not merely named to the committee to consider what action to take (25 May) but reported its proceedings (26 May). The committee recommended that the House should seek redress from the king, but when the Commons debated the matter Hakewill, after listening to his colleagues, declared himself ‘converted’ to the view that it should apply to the Lords instead.57

It was not only Hakewill’s continued opposition to impositions which placed him at centre stage. On 5 May he also announced that he would not support the bill to prevent the waste of gold and silver thread, which had been given a second reading, unless it were made temporary or contained a clause allowing the king to dispense with it. His reason was that he would ‘never consent to any penal law except that which be for the ease of the subject’. Later that same day he intervened near the end of the subsidy debate, after Sir Thomas Lake I demanded to know whether the House intended to supply the king. Like Sir Anthony Cope, Hakewill thought that it was still too soon to put the question. Nevertheless, he realized that it was necessary to reassure the king, and therefore recommended that the privy councillors in the House, of whom Lake was one, should tell James ‘that all those have spoken are united in wishing to relieve the king’. This motion enjoyed the support of Sir Thomas Cheke I and Hakewill’s kinsman, Sir Jerome Horsey.58 On 13 May, during the debate on the fracas in the committee appointed to investigate undertakers, he advised that all those who had tried to pluck Sir Roger Owen out of the chair should be named. Such unruly behaviour, he said, mirrored recent events in the Irish Parliament. Unless the culprits were punished the Speaker would, he predicted, eventually suffer the same indignity. He offered no words of mitigation for the offenders, who had objected to Owen’s dogged pursuit of the so-called undertakers, despite being a kinsman by marriage of the Berkshire Member Sir Henry Neville I, whose ‘Memorial’ and ‘Advice’ of 1612 had sparked off the rumours of a secret undertaking to manage the Commons on behalf of the king.59 On 20 May Hakewill supported the motion to allow the chief baron of the Exchequer, Sir Lawrence Tanfield*, to be heard with his counsel regarding the bill for passing the accounts of escheators. The measure threatened to remove the only office in the chief baron’s gift, and Hakewill, as an Exchequer lawyer himself, was naturally sympathetic.60

During the Parliament Hakewill emerged as a leading advocate of legislation to prevent the export of iron ordnance. This is not altogether surprising, for he had been raised in a maritime community where the consequences of an enemy armed with English guns must have been all too apparent. In the 1601 Parliament he had three times spoken in support of such a bill, on the final occasion (18 Dec.) attempting in vain to rescue it after it had ‘fallen into an everlasting sleep’. Although he had not been so vociferous in the first Jacobean Parliament owing to the 1604 peace with Spain, he had twice been named to committees to consider similar legislation (12 Apr. 1604 and 17 Mar. 1610).61 Speaking on 11 May 1614, during the second reading debate, he described the measure before the House as ‘one of the most necessariest [sic] bills to be considered of’. England, he observed, was alone in manufacturing large quantities of iron ordnance, and was thus well placed to achieve naval supremacy. Instead, she squandered her advantage by arming rivals such as the Dutch, who could equip 1,500 great ships while she could put to sea no more than 500. Previous attempts to prevent illegal exports by taking bonds from the owners of outward-bound ships had failed. Only a complete ban, properly policed, ‘would make us again give law to the world at sea’ within 20 years. Although the bill was committed, few Members appear to have shared Hakewill’s enthusiasm for its contents. Indeed, on 30 May Hakewill requested that the House fix a time for the committee to sit, which suggests that the committee had previously failed to achieve a quorum.62

Hakewill was designated to speak at a joint conference with the Lords on impositions when the king dissolved the Parliament on 7 June. He and the other intended spokesmen were subsequently ordered to attend the Council, where the notes and papers they had prepared were burned.63 His stand against impositions undoubtedly enhanced his reputation in the country at large but it almost certainly blighted his career. Unlike the considerably less able Leonard Bawtree, who had publicly supported the king’s right to impositions and was promoted shortly after the dissolution, he was never called to the coif. His sense of disfavour is likely to have been reinforced that same year when the king prevented Hakewill and a group of fellow antiquarians from reviving the Society of Antiquaries.64

IV. The Search for Office, 1615-19

It was perhaps in the hope of improving his standing with James that Hakewill, at the beginning of 1615, offered an ingenious scheme for augmenting the royal revenue. He had discovered, or so he supposed, that royal pardons had been sold for profit under Edward III, and he suggested that the practice be revived. If each pardon fetched £5 apiece, he calculated that the king might increase his annual revenue by £400,000,65 so eliminating his total debt, which exceeded £680,000, in less than two years.66 He may also have reckoned that, with this new source of revenue, James would be able to dispense with impositions, which were worth only £70,000 p.a., thereby removing a major cause of friction between the king and his parliaments. James was immediately attracted to this proposal, and accordingly laid it before the Council, but it soon became apparent that Hakewill had failed to consider the full implications of his scheme. Most councillors agreed with Sir Thomas Lake I that it would ‘breed an opinion the king mislikes a Parliament’. By tradition the sovereign granted a general pardon at the end of a Parliament in thanks for its aid and advice, but if James now sold pardons it would imply that he had no intention of summoning another assembly, an impression he had already created by demanding a Benevolence following the recent dissolution. Hakewill himself had presumably not intended this, for like many former ‘Parliament-men’ he feared for the future existence of parliaments. Indeed, in December 1621 he warned his colleagues in the Commons that ‘we shall never sit here again’ if the privileges of the House were not maintained.67 He may also have been the author of a widely circulated but unpublished tract which advocated the enforcement of medieval laws requiring Parliament to meet annually. Entitled ‘Motives to induce an Annual Parliament’, and probably written sometime between 1614 and 1620, this extraordinary treatise, written in the form of a dialogue, lambasted many aspects of Jacobean government, including impositions and monopolies, both of which Hakewill strongly opposed.68 However, there are grounds for doubting that Hakewill was the author. It seems unlikely that he would have observed, as the writer of ‘Motives’ did, that a Parliament was not a fit arena to debate foreign policy. When the 1621 Parliament finally broached the subject of the Spanish Match, Hakewill roundly defended the Commons’ right to free speech. A more plausible candidate than Hakewill, perhaps, was his fellow antiquarian, Sir Henry Spelman*.69

A further drawback of Hakewill’s scheme to sell pardons, pointed out by Archbishop Abbot, was its similarity to the sale of papal indulgences.70 This unfortunate comparison briefly earned Hakewill the nickname ‘Pope Hackwell’ among the general public, who quickly learned of the scheme’s existence.71 James was not initially deterred by these criticisms, however, and a Proclamation announcing the intended sales was drafted,72 but by the beginning of March his earlier enthusiasm had evaporated as it had become apparent that there would be few buyers.73 In December 1616, when he was casting around for the means to pay for his planned journey to Scotland, he again contemplated Hakewill’s proposal.74 He did not adopt it, but perhaps as a gesture of thanks he raised its author to the county bench. Hakewill undoubtedly welcomed this advancement, but it was scarcely the serjeantcy for which he was probably hoping.

Hakewill’s career prospects improved markedly in 1617, by which time he had become a bencher of his Inn. He had attracted the attention of the new lord keeper, Sir Francis Bacon*, who included his name on a shortlist presented to James of men capable of serving as a law reporter, a defunct office which he wished to revive.75 In May 1617 Hakewill cemented his relationship with Bacon when he married Bacon’s niece, Elizabeth Woodhouse. The match may have been arranged by Bacon’s immediate subordinate, the master of the Rolls, Sir Julius Caesar, whose friendship Hakewill had previously cultivated, as Caesar had married Elizabeth’s sister two years earlier. At the same time, Hakewill, doubtless through Bacon’s intercession, became the queen’s solicitor-general. However, Anne died in March 1619, leaving Hakewill once again without any immediate prospect of further advancement.

Hakewill’s professional activities required him to live close to the capital rather than at his family home in Exeter, which he inherited in June 1615. He accordingly moved to Buckinghamshire sometime before December 1616, when he became a member of the county bench. He settled near Wendover, close to his kinsman by marriage, Sir Jerome Horsey, who lived a few miles to the south-west at Great Kimble, and whose office as the local receiver of duchy of Lancaster fines he held in reversion. It has been supposed that he lived in Wendover itself, at Bucksbridge House on Heron Path, but there is no direct evidence for this. On the contrary, by 1653 he dwelt at the Hale, a seventeenth-century timber-framed house just outside the town.76 In March 1618 Hakewill acquired a 16-year lease of the nearby manor of Chequers at an annual rent of £80, but he never lived there, preferring to sub-let the fine brick mansion instead. His hopes of making a tidy profit from this property were dashed when he was obliged to destroy his cony warren after his neighbours complained that his rabbits had damaged their crops.77

V. The 1621 Parliament

Following the summoning of James’s third Parliament, Hakewill was again returned for Tregony. He rapidly re-emerged as one of the leaders of the House, but maintained a low profile during the debates which led to the fall of his patron in May 1621. Indeed, only when it became clear that Bacon was doomed did Hakewill participate in the Commons’ investigation of Chancery. On 27 Apr. he was one of four Members appointed to inquire into the irregular manner in which the fees payable to the masters in Chancery had been authorized. The next day he reported that the fault lay with an inexperienced clerk, who had never composed a Privy Seal before and had ‘thought it a warrant to the Great Seal’. Following Bacon’s fall, Hakewill advised his colleagues to consult the Lords to decide whether decrees obtained corruptly under Bacon should be reviewed by auditors appointed by both Houses (28 May).78 If Hakewill was reluctant to become involved in the Bacon investigation he was equally unwilling to be drawn into the Commons’ inquiry concerning the conduct of the ecclesiastical court judge Sir John Bennet, the Member for Oxford University and his fellow executor of the Bodley estate. Indeed, it was not until 21 Apr. that his name was added to the investigating committee. He did what he could to protect Bennet, for when the House debated, on 23 Apr., whether to place a guard on Bennet, he pointed out that Bennet ‘was but barely accused yet’. Moreover, when it was suspected that Bennet was feigning illness in order to escape justice, Hakewill announced that he was satisfied that the sickness was genuine as he had visited Bennet and seen his doctor’s certificate.79 However, an unconvinced Commons had Bennet placed under house arrest.

The House’s anxiety to prevent Bennet from escaping was unsurprising, as the monopolist and Member for Great Bedwyn, (Sir) Giles Mompesson, had only recently fled after his misdeeds had been exposed by the House. Unlike the inquiries into Bacon and Bennet, the investigation into Mompesson involved Hakewill from the outset, for on 19 Feb. he moved to have Mompesson’s patent for the licensing of inns brought before the House for inspection.80 After rapidly examining the relevant papers the following afternoon, he declared that Sir Giles and his associates must have netted around £6,000 over the past three years from this source, by which it might ‘easily be judged’ how much they had ‘robbed the country’. He also suggested that one effect of Mompesson’s patent had been to swell the number of inns, as one lane in London now had six licensed inns where there was ‘wont to be none’.81 However, the scale of Mompesson’s misdemeanours was initially underestimated by Hakewill and his colleagues, for in addition to the inns’ patent Sir Giles was a sharer in two other monopolies. On 1 Mar. Hakewill reported that the committee, of which he was evidently the chairman, had uncovered additional evidence in connection with these grants and consequently he recommended that they should confer with the Lords.82 The first of these additional grants concerned the manufacture of gold and silver thread, which Hakewill described on 6 Mar. as having ‘a sharp sting’, although he admitted that ‘it be not so general a grievance as that of inns’. That same day he catalogued the abuses perpetrated by Mompesson and his fellow patentees, which included extortion, debasement of thread with quicksilver and failure to pay the king his promised share of the profits, a speech which, John Pym records, was delivered ‘with much applause and liking of the House’.83 The second monopoly had granted Mompesson and his associates permission to identify concealed Crown lands and compound with their owners. Investigation of this grant progressed more slowly than the inquiry into the gold and silver thread patent, for on the afternoon of the 6th Hakewill explained that he, Clement Coke and Pym were the only members of the committee who had so far carried out any work.84 However, the next day he was able to report that the committee had now concluded that the patent was a grievance both in its origin and execution. Moreover, at a joint conference with the Lords on 8 Mar., he declared that no man was safe from this grant, not even the king, who was meant to be one of its principal beneficiaries:

The grant itself is so large as there is no landed man but shall be brought under his hand, for there is no land which is not in charge under one of the eight auditors in the Exchequer but is subject to his inquisition. Nay, much of the ancient Crown land is ... subject to his inquisition. Yea, many copyhold manors, forests, parks, castles and other houses of the king are within his compass.85

The next day, Hakewill distanced himself from the failure to name at this conference the referees who had advised the king to issue the patents of monopoly granted to Mompesson and others. He argued that, although one of the conference spokesmen himself, he had been detailed to address solely the grant of concealments, for which there had been no referee. Thus, instead of accepting his share of the blame, he rounded on his fellow spokesmen, all of whom, he asserted, should have raised the subject.86

If Hakewill was unrelenting in his pursuit of Mompesson, he was no less eager to bring to book other monopolists, among them Sir Francis Michell and his associates, who enjoyed a monopoly for licensing alehouses. On 21 Feb. he announced that Michell’s patent was worth more than £150 each year to its holders,87 while on 3 Mar. he advised sending for Michell and his chief associate.88 He was no less concerned about several new lighthouses, whose maintenance was paid for by shipowners at rates agreed between them and various patentees, an arrangement which encouraged the building of lighthouses purely for profit. To prevent unnecessary building, he argued on 21 Mar. that the charges levied for maintaining lighthouses should be regulated by Act of Parliament rather than the merchant community, whose consent ‘ought not to bind the Commons of England’.89 Another patent which troubled Hakewill was one which gave John Lepton an exclusive right to draw up all bills, letters and process in the Council in the North’s court. On 22 Mar. he was appointed to assist in drafting a bill against this patent, which he denounced on 7 May as a grievance ‘by creation and execution’.90 Despite these attacks on named monopolists, Hakewill was concerned that the Commons was dealing only with the tip of the iceberg. On 22 Mar. he complained that some patents had been ignored which were ‘of greater consequence than any yet named’. No attention had been paid to Sackville Crowe*’s right to manufacture iron ordnance, he noted, or Dr. Chambers’s collection of half of certain penalties owing to the Crown since 1589/90, a grant which, he said, had encouraged Chambers to set ‘an infinite number of informers on work’.91 Like many other Members he wished to widen the Commons’ attack, and consequently he supported the monopolies bill, declaring it to be ‘of the greatest consequence for the good of the subject of any in the House’ (14 March). However, the draft presented to the House on 14 Mar. was too unsophisticated, and he therefore suggested certain improvements.92 The drafting of the bill continued to cause difficulties, and it was clear that an agreed version might not be ready before the House adjourned for Easter. Consequently, when Sir Robert Phelips proposed that committees should sit during the recess Hakewill seconded the motion (24 Mar.), arguing that this would provide the time needed ‘for the reformation of patents and monopolies’.93

In its pursuit of individual monopolists the Commons was exploring uncharted waters, for while the House’s right to punish its own Members was undisputed it remained unclear whether it was equally entitled to punish offenders against the state. Hakewill, whose knowledge of medieval precedents was unrivalled, offered guidance from the outset. On 23 Feb. he recommended that the Commons should fine Michell on its own authority, and claimed that there were precedents for doing so which should be followed ‘lest we lose our privileges’.94 The Commons established a committee to investigate whether it could mete out punishment to offenders against the state on 27 Feb., and at Sir Edwin Sandys’s suggestion, Hakewill and Noye, the first-named members of the committee, were detailed to search the Tower records that afternoon. They made ready to report their findings the next day, but Hakewill may have been spared the embarrassment of having to admit that he had been mistaken by Sir Edward Coke, who announced that the Commons were required, by medieval precedent, to act in concert with the Lords.95 Despite his error, Hakewill subsequently played an important role in determining the procedures which governed parliamentary judicature. When the Lords invited the Commons to hear them pronounce sentence against Mompesson on 26 Mar., for instance, he advised Members to take up the offer, as medieval precedents indicated that where the Commons asked the peers to judge an offender their presence was necessary.96 Furthermore, when Sir Dudley Digges inquired on 23 Apr. how they could secure judgment against Bennet, Hakewill replied that the Upper House must be approached in one of three ways - by ‘impeachment, clamour or accusation’. The precise distinction Hakewill drew between each of these methods is unclear, but whatever course of action he intended, he was one of first Members to suggest the revival of impeachment.97 The resurrection of Parliament’s judicial powers was not entirely welcome to the king, and may explain why, after the June adjournment, it was rumoured (falsely) that Hakewill had been placed under arrest.98

Hakewill’s familiarity with the records saved the House from undertaking a pointless search in early May. The Commons sought to join the Lords in punishing the Catholic barrister, Edward Floyd, who had allegedly disparaged the king’s son-in-law and daughter. However, on 2 May Hakewill discouraged a search for precedents, having already scoured the records himself in vain. Instead, he persuaded the House to instruct Floyd’s gaolers to stay their hand until it had been decided what to do.99 On the following day Hakewill used his learning to help prevent the House from overstepping its authority. He confirmed that the king was correct to assert that in 1399 the Lords had acted as sole judges, and he argued that the Commons was wrong to imply in its draft that it had acted as judges with the Lords after this date. Unless Members could provide firm evidence to the contrary, he noted, they would be bound by the precedent of 1399.100

If Hakewill deployed his learning to remind his colleagues of the limits of their power he also used it to summon up precedents to defend their legitimate authority. The king announced that the Commons could not punish Floyd, as it was unjust to condemn a man without first examining witnesses upon oath. James’s assertion implied that the Commons lacked the power to administer an oath and that it was not a court of record, but on 5 May Hakewill pointed to the House’s statutory obligation to keep a Journal as evidence to the contrary. Moreover, he reminded his listeners that in 1593 the Commons had administered the Oath of Supremacy to an intruder, and that James himself had admitted that the Lower House was a court of record during the Buckinghamshire election dispute of 1604.101 Hakewill again took issue with the king in December, when James angrily rejected the House’s right to interfere in the marriage of his son and so denied the Commons the right to free speech, thereby striking at one of its most fundamental privileges. Earlier attempts by monarchs to restrict the Commons’ freedom of speech had always ended in failure, he observed on 5 Dec., and James himself had previously relented after he had forbidden any discussion of religion.102 James would not relent this time, however, and when the Commons declared that its privileges were its inheritance the king retorted that they were held by royal gift. James’s assertion ran directly counter to the view, widely held by common lawyers well versed in the study of English history such as Hakewill, that the Commons’ privileges were the birthright of the subject and that parliaments existed long before there were kings. In an attempt to defuse the crisis, Sir Edward Coke suggested providing the king with a list of the Commons’ privileges in the hope that James would ratify them. However, Hakewill disagreed, as this implied that the Commons owed its privileges to the king, whereas an Act of 1414 affirmed that they were ‘the inheritance of the subject’ and ‘a principal part of the law of England’. He admitted that the Commons traditionally petitioned the monarch for the right to free speech at the beginning of each Parliament, but this was merely an empty ritual which ought to be abandoned. If the House lost the right to free speech it would be rendered incapable of performing the essential function of advising the king, and might never meet again. Few other Members were prepared to adopt such an uncompromising stand, however, and therefore the issue was ultimately resolved by compromise.103

The Commons was not alone in benefiting from Hakewill’s archival expertise. The Lords were well acquainted with Hakewill, who had earlier written to them regarding Mompesson and whose advice they had sought regarding the examination of witnesses in the case of the gold and silver thread monopoly.104 In mid-March they asked Hakewill and a handful of other lawyers in the Lower House to search for precedents on their behalf to justify their proceedings against Mompesson. As the Commons had no objection the required search was carried out. The labours of Hakewill and his colleagues evidently proved fruitful, for on the day on which judgment was given against Mompesson the bishop of Durham recommended that they should be paid.105 It was in the Commons, however, that Hakewill’s learning proved most useful, as by 1621 he was the acknowledged expert on procedure. Indeed, when the House debated a matter of privilege on 1 June, Pym noted in his diary that of all the speakers in the debate it was Hakewill who was the ‘most versed of any therein’.106 He was certainly better acquainted with procedure than the Speaker, Thomas Richardson, who had never sat before. On 24 Mar. Richardson alleged that at an adjournment any bill remaining in committee had to be delivered to the clerk, but Hakewill correctly pointed out that this was only necessary when Parliament was prorogued. He thereby ensured that bill committees were able to meet over the Easter recess.107 Hakewill’s guidance proved useful on other occasions too. On 7 Mar. he helped to calm fears that the session would be ended prematurely if subsidies were voted immediately by revealing that in 1553 a bill had passed, ‘yet the session continued’, and that the Act to enable the warden of the Fleet to release Sir Thomas Shirley I* had not terminated the 1604 session. He repeated this advice at the end of May, when the House fretted that it would lose all its bills if the king brought the session to an end.108 On 12 May he advised that a minor alteration to the arms bill did not require a recommitment of the bill, as the change could be achieved more quickly by ordering the committee responsible to meet in the committee chamber. Four days later, following the second reading of a proviso to the Welsh cloth bill, he advised the Commons to proceed to a third reading immediately, there being no automatic requirement to commit a bill after it had been read twice. In both cases his recommendations were followed.109 Finally, on 29 May, and again on 1 Dec., he explained the correct procedure for engrossing amendments made by the Lords.110

Hakewill’s expertise was not limited to the orders of the House, as he frequently also offered his colleagues guidance on electoral law. During the debate on the Leicestershire election (9 Feb.), for instance, he agreed with many other Members that the sheriff had been ill advised to block the return of the non-resident, Sir George Hastings. Though residence was a requirement of election it was the responsibility of the Commons to judge the validity of returns and not the sheriff, whose duty was limited to expressing the wishes of the freeholders.111 Hakewill’s familiarity with the records made him well qualified to uncover precedents which would help resolve particularly difficult cases. Consequently, the House turned to him in February when it proved unclear whether three Members who had been elected while abroad were entitled to take their seats. After searching the records and consulting Sir Robert Cotton, Hakewill confirmed (15 Feb.) that there were no relevant precedents, ‘so that now we are left to reason’.112

Hakewill’s knowledge of precedent was encyclopaedic, but he was far from infallible, as his unfounded assertion that the Commons were entitled to fine Michell clearly demonstrates. Although probably spared the necessity of admitting his error on that occasion, he was less fortunate on 7 Dec., when he declared that Sir Thomas Hoby was mistaken in believing that the Speaker could not be sent to the king with a message, for in 1566 Speaker Gargrave had delivered a petition concerning the succession. On checking the Journal a little later he was obliged to admit that he ‘found not this precedent fully warranted’.113 This episode may not have been the only occasion when Hakewill, doubtless unintentionally, misrepresented the historical record. On 16 May, when Members were keen to punish the warden of the Fleet for mistreating his prisoners, Hakewill asserted that they could proceed against him unilaterally because it had been resolved in 1561 that the warden was an officer of the Commons. This was welcome news if it were true, as it seemed to provide a way round the problem of jurisdiction over non-Members that the House had previously encountered in dealing with the monopolists. However, Hakewill failed to persuade his colleagues, perhaps because the 1561 ordinances concerning the Fleet nowhere mention that the warden was indeed subordinate to the Commons.114

In general the precedents cited by Hakewill were correct. This did not mean, however, that his advice was always followed. When the attorney-general, Sir Thomas Coventry*, brought a message from the king on 10 Mar., Hakewill recommended that he stand a few feet within the bar, as this was where the chancellor of Scotland had stood on giving evidence to the Commons in 1607. However, the House permitted Coventry to approach the table instead.115 On 28 May Hakewill deplored the growth in the number of bills submitted by opposing parties and advised that such ‘cross bills’ should no longer be admitted as they were contrary to ancient precedent. Though seconded by Edward Alford, his suggestion was not adopted, because Barnaby Gooch reasonably objected that aggrieved parties would be denied redress if their opponents introduced their own bill first. Interestingly, Hakewill’s advice on this occasion was inconsistent with his own support in 1610 for the Arundell land bill, the first cross bill to appear in the Commons under James.116

Hakewill’s advice was not always heeded in electoral matters either. On 17 Feb. he was overruled when he argued that there was no need to amend the Leicestershire return, despite the sheriff’s error in disallowing Hastings. He encountered no more success when he argued, on 26 Feb., that William Man’s return for Westminster was void. The electors of Westminster had originally chosen Edmund Doubleday to be their representative, but Doubleday had died before Parliament met and so the inhabitants had returned Man in his stead. Hakewill pointed out, quite correctly, that Westminster had acted unlawfully in conducting two elections on the same writ, but the House eventually permitted Man to retain his seat. Hakewill was similarly disregarded when he challenged Minehead’s right to return Members on the grounds that it had lost its right to the franchise on forfeiting its charter in 1609.117

As well as providing guidance on procedure and electoral law, Hakewill spearheaded an attempt to overhaul the entire Common Law in 1621. On the king’s instructions he and several other leading lawyers had laid the groundwork for such a project in the summer of 1610, but both in the final session of 1610 and the Parliament of 1614 the intended reform had gone unmentioned. Now, in 1621, the issue was revived in the Commons, whose Members may have hoped thereby to persuade a sceptical James that parliaments could be useful and productive. On 13 Feb. Hakewill’s earlier efforts were praised by Edward Alford, whereupon Hakewill declared that there were so many unrepealed obsolete statutes that the law had become an offender against itself. Moreover, it was not always clear whether statutes remained in force, for while two leading reference works reported one law to have been repealed the judges had concluded the opposite. The resulting disagreement was of considerable significance, as the law in question prescribed hanging as its penalty. He therefore supported the appointment of a committee to review the work already carried out. The House approved of this motion and deputed Hakewill to assist the new committee, but needless to say the running of the committee quickly fell to him. When the House rose for Easter on 27 Mar. it was he who proposed that the committee should meet the following morning, and he who laid the committee’s completed bill before the House on 26 May, having probably drafted much of the measure himself. The bill recommended the repeal of 80 obsolete statutes and the revival of several moribund Acts. However, after receiving a second reading on 29 May, it disappeared from sight.118

Overhauling the Common Law was not Hakewill’s only legislative concern in 1621. During the 1614 Parliament he had steered through a bill to regulate and reform parliamentary elections, and when the issue re-emerged on 8 Feb. 1621 he suggested referring the earlier measure to the privileges committee, of which he was a member.119 However, the Commons preferred instead to establish a separate committee to draw up a fresh bill (10 March). Hakewill played a central role on this committee, as he was its first-named member and it met at Lincoln’s Inn, where he was a bencher. Furthermore, he reported the committee’s progress on 19 Mar., and laid the bill before the House on 18 May. However, despite his standing, the bill was not read before the summer adjournment as the House was overburdened with legislative business. When the Commons reconvened in November the measure was read only once.120 Similar difficulties befell the bill to prohibit the export of iron ordnance, a measure he had keenly promoted since 1601. After Robert Bateman revived the demand for legislation in 1621, the House turned for help to Hakewill, who had retained custody of the 1614 bill. However, this earlier measure was found to be unsatisfactory and therefore either Hakewill or Bateman proposed on 26 Mar. that a fresh bill be drafted.121 In the event the Commons stayed its hand, as the Lords were in the process of drafting a bill themselves, but when Members perused this measure on 17 Apr. they were so unimpressed that Sir Robert Phelips proposed they should draft their own bill after all. Hakewill concurred, declaring that since the matter concerned ‘the jewel of the kingdom’ - a phrase that echoed his speech of 8 Dec. 1601 - it should not be allowed to fall by the wayside by the Lords’ neglect. However, while a bill was subsequently drafted and read twice, it never emerged from the committee appointed on 14 May, of which Hakewill was a member.122

The ordnance bill and the measure to overhaul the Common Law were undoubtedly Hakewill’s chief legislative preoccupations in 1621, but he also took a keen interest in several other bills, among them those concerning the Charities Act (14 Feb.) and Wadham College, Oxford (21 Mar.), both of which he reported. On 21 Apr., during the inquiry into Sir John Bennet, he proposed that a bill regarding the administration of the estates of the deceased be drafted.123 In addition, he twice defended the interests of his sister-in-law, Lady (Anne) Caesar, first when a bill to clarify the purposes of a fine entered into by her former husband, Henry Hogan, came under consideration (12 May), and then on 1 Dec., when he was ordered to take care of the bill regarding a transfer of land involving Lady Anne’s step-son, Sir Charles Caesar*.124 Following the first reading of the bill to confirm a decree regarding some land belonging to the duchy of Cornwall, Hakewill and Sir John Walter declared (24 Mar.) that it was so badly framed a new one should be drafted in its stead. Their advice was duly heeded.125 On 29 May he complained at the third reading of the bill of debts that the clause concerning outlaws had been struck out, but the solicitor-general, Robert Heath, replied that it had been omitted at the request of the committee as a man could be outlawed without his knowledge, ‘and then the Chancery shall sell his land’.126 Only once did Hakewill set himself firmly against a bill, on 17 May, when he declared that he was ‘against the bill for the port towns’.127

Hakewill played an important role in the House’s largely unsuccessful attempts to order its legislative business more efficiently. On 21 Mar. he supported the establishment of a committee to arrange all the bills and grievances in order of priority before the Easter recess. Moreover, when the Commons reconvened after Easter, he proposed that a catalogue of grievances be drawn up as this would enable a 12-strong committee to determine which bills were most necessary to pursue (26 Apr.) and so ‘husband much time’. Following the Whitsun break, he recommended that all legislative committees should cease their work, except those which were ready to report their labours (28 May).128

On 4 Jan. 1622, two days before the 1621 Parliament was formally dissolved, John Chamberlain, a normally well-informed source, reported that Hakewill had been hauled before the Council.129 It has been suggested that his appearance at the Board was prompted by the publication of a small tract condemning the Spanish Match that had been written in the summer of 1621 by his younger brother George, chaplain to Prince Charles,130 but Hakewill himself later recalled that he had been ‘charged with words out of the clerk’s book’. The offending words probably concerned his forthright condemnation in mid-December 1621 of James’s claim that the privileges enjoyed by Parliament stemmed from the Crown. However, Hakewill persuaded the Council to order his release by casting doubt on the accuracy of the wording in the Commons Journal. As he correctly observed, it was the duty of the clerk ‘to take resolutions, not discourses’.131

VI. Reluctance to Serve in Parliament, 1624-6

On 7 Feb. 1622 Hakewill donated £13 6s. 8d. towards the Palatine Benevolence.132 In the following November he was appointed treasurer of the chapel at Lincoln’s Inn. He served in office until mid-June 1624, during which time the old chapel was demolished and a new one constructed. In January 1623 he volunteered to lend £100 to enable the work to be completed more quickly. He failed to make good his offer, but did pay 22s. to have his coat of arms placed in the new chapel’s great west window.133

Hakewill may have been unsettled by his detention following the 1621 Parliament. Certainly he did not seek re-election at the 1624 general election, even though John Arundell of Trerice, who was probably responsible for providing him with a seat on previous occasions, remained an active parliamentary patron. However, he proved unable to avoid the Commons entirely, for in April he was retained as counsel by the boroughs of Amersham, Great Marlow and Wendover, all of which petitioned jointly to be restored to the franchise.134 Although no contemporary record mentions the fact, Hakewill may have been personally responsible for discovering that these boroughs had returned representatives to the Commons during the Middle Ages.135 At any rate, his arguments persuaded the Commons, which ordered the issue of the necessary writs on 4 May despite the king’s objection to any further enlargement of the House. Soon thereafter Amersham’s grateful electors conferred upon Hakewill their newly won parliamentary seat, but by then the Parliament had almost ended. On 28 May, the eve of the prorogation, Hakewill was appointed to help deliver the House’s petition to the king that afternoon. He and Solicitor-General Heath were instructed to report back the next day, but in the event Heath performed this task alone.136

The Buckinghamshire boroughs were not the only clients Hakewill represented in Parliament prior to his own election. On 4 Mar. he and two other lawyers served as advocates for Sir John Cutts* and Toby Palavicino, the defeated candidates in the Cambridgeshire election, and five days later he acted for the 12 burgesses of Chippenham, whose monopoly of the franchise was contested by the borough’s freemen.137 In late April lord treasurer Middlesex (Sir Lionel Cranfield*) sought permission to employ Hakewill as his counsel in his forthcoming impeachment.138 On 3 May Hakewill appeared at the bar of the Commons to represent the citizens of Norwich when they complained of their bishop, Samuel Harsnett.139 Throughout the 1624 Parliament Hakewill was retained as counsel by the Barber-Surgeons’ Company, who renewed their earlier complaints in the Commons against the charter held by the Royal College of Physicians.140

Hakewill served as Lent reader at Lincoln’s Inn in 1625. Later that year he surrendered his reversion to the receivership of the revenues of part of the duchy of Lancaster’s lands, which he had been granted in 1606. On the accession of Charles I he remained reluctant to seek re-election to Parliament, and therefore did not serve in either 1625 or 1626. However, he may once again have made his services available to those who wished to challenge their defeat before the committee for privileges.141 In June 1627 he was appointed a commissioner to inquire into the excessive fees demanded by government officeholders, as were his fellow antiquarians Sir Robert Cotton and Sir Henry Spelman.

VII. The Parliament of 1628-9

Hakewill did not choose to return to the Commons again until 1628, when he once more represented Amersham. He was immediately appointed chairman of the prestigious committee of privileges and returns, a position for which he was eminently well suited.142 Like John Glanville, who had chaired the same committee in 1624, he kept a detailed record of all the cases that came before him, but the only report of his to survive concerns the boroughs of Weobley and Milborne Port, which successfully petitioned to be granted the franchise.143

Hakewill’s resumption of his parliamentary career was almost certainly linked to the Forced Loan of 1626-7. Like impositions, the Loan raised fundamental questions about the king’s right to help himself to private property. Hakewill was not slow to draw comparisons between the two, but would no longer debate the property rights of the subject. On 26 Mar. he declared that anyone who doubted that the subject possessed an absolute right to his property was ‘not worthy of his coat or his life’. He added that some issues, like certain passages of Scripture and impositions, were so clear ‘that had they not been expounded they had never been doubted’.144 Instead, he wished to discuss whether the king had the right to imprison without showing cause, a matter which had been raised by the incarceration of some 70 gentlemen for refusing to subscribe to the Loan and brought to a head by the Five Knights’ Case. On 29 Mar. Hakewill was at pains to point out that the judges had declined to pass judgment in the Five Knights’ Case, and had merely remanded the prisoners to a further hearing. Indeed, ‘There was no word spoken’ by lord chief justice (Sir) Nicholas Hyde*, ‘that the king may commit or detain without cause’. Had the plaintiffs sued out another writ of habeas corpus the following day, there were precedents to suggest that ‘they might have had it’. He deplored the imprisonment of the Loan refusers, describing their plight as ‘a civil death’ and ‘a maceration of the body and a horror of the mind’.145 He stepped up his attack at the beginning of April, when he declared that any man imprisoned by the king without cause shown should be either bailed or released. The next day (2 Apr.) he not only condemned arbitrary imprisonment as being contrary to Magna Carta, but argued that it was lawful to disobey the king if he ordered the imprisonment of a man without cause.146

If Hakewill was alarmed at arbitrary imprisonment he was no less concerned about the billeting of troops. Complaints against billeting were so numerous, he declared on 8 Apr., that if they continued ‘I should doubt whether I were in England or no’. Indeed, he was reminded of Fortescue’s description of fifteenth-century France, so pestered with men-at-arms that it had been almost impossible to find lodgings. However, Hakewill did not doubt that the king would desist from further billeting on receiving a petition from the House, just as Edward III had done three centuries earlier.147 The plight of the soldiery, as well as the householders on whom they were billeted, also concerned him. On 3 Apr. he declared that the king could not compel any man to serve abroad, a statement which, if correct, had serious implications for England’s ability to fight a foreign war.148 The next day Sir Edward Coke, who had been chosen to be a spokesman at the impending joint conference with the Lords for discussing these and other matters regarding the ancient liberties of the subject, chose Hakewill to be one of his assistants.149

Hakewill believed that the law already afforded the subject sufficient protection, both for his goods and his person. This being the case, he saw no need for further legislation except to confirm existing rights. Thus when the House debated whether to legislate in detail or merely to confirm existing laws, Hakewill argued for the latter approach. Speaking on 29 Apr., he denied that a bare confirmation would leave the subject no better off than he was before. Confirmation would put into print several unpublished laws which remained largely unknown, even to many lawyers. These neglected statutes were ‘of as great consequence for the liberty of the subject if not greater than any that are printed’. Besides, he added,

Will not the occasion of making of this law of confirmation, so notoriously known, be transmitted to all posterity ... will not the resolution of this House and all our arguments and reasons against imprisonments without a cause expressed ... be a great means to stay any judge hereafter for declaring any judgment to the contrary, especially if there be likelihood of a Parliament?

There were practical reasons, too, which pointed to confirmation as the most satisfactory approach. The Lords had recently demonstrated that they were unwilling to endorse the Commons’ unequivocal condemnation of the king’s right to imprison without cause shown. This being so, it was hardly likely that the Upper House would consent to a bill on the same subject. Even if they did, it was unrealistic to suppose that the king would permit such a bill to pass into law. For these reasons, Hakewill urged his listeners to be guided ‘by probabilities’ rather than vain hopes.150

Hakewill was entirely correct in his assessment that Charles would do no more than confirm existing laws. However, he was thoroughly misguided in assuming that such a confirmation would provide sufficient protection for the subject’s liberties and goods because the king believed that his actions had been lawful. As Sir John Eliot put it, ‘all the question is what the law is’. This was a question which, as one historian has perceptively observed, ‘would not be answered by a bare confirmation’.151 It was left to others, rather than Hakewill, to come up with a solution that would enable the Commons to recite its privileges in detail and also meet Charles’s demand that there should be no new explanatory legislation. It was suggested that the House should revert to an earlier form of law-making and proceed by a Petition of Right. However, Hakewill had serious misgivings about adopting such a course of action. Speaking on 6 May, he observed that such petitions had been abandoned more than 200 years earlier because they did not amount to law, which had instead to be collected out of the words of the king’s answer. Parliaments now proceeded by bill rather than by petition and answer for the very good reason that this enabled them to pen their own legislation.152

It has been fairly remarked that ‘Hakewill’s misgivings were to be justified by the king’s first answer to the Petition, if not by the second’.153 However, as there was no realistic alternative, Hakewill accepted the decision of the House, and subsequently defended the draft Petition against the Lords’ attempt to dilute it. On 20 May he told his colleagues that they could not safely insert a saving clause regarding the king’s ‘sovereign power’ as the Lords requested since it would undermine the entire Petition and imply that they had encroached upon the royal prerogative. Moreover, he pointed out that none of the existing laws contained within them such a saving, ‘and yet now, after a violation of them, we must add a saving’. To give way to the Lords’ demand would be to ‘darken’ laws which were ‘absolute and clear’.154 When the matter was debated again two days later he subjected the proposed saving clause to further scrutiny:

Either the addition is idle or operative. If it be idle, it is neither worthy of the Lords to give nor for us to receive; if operative, then it must work to strengthen our liberties or to weaken them. Strengthen you are all of opinion it does not, why then it does weaken; if weaken, why is it here? Is not our petition by this means become felo de se?155

Thanks partly to Hakewill the Commons refused to back down, and four days later the Lords withdrew the offending clause. Thereafter, Hakewill was one of the lawyers in the House who provided the Commons with technical advice on the procedures required to enrol the Petition.156

The issues addressed by the Petition continued to occupy Hakewill even after it completed its passage through the Commons. On 31 May he announced that he had received a letter from ‘a good friend in Oxford’ regarding a sermon recently preached there by one of the king’s chaplains, Roger Manwaring. The latter, already notorious for having preached that the king was entitled to levy money without the consent of the subject, had justified his former arguments. In addition, he had claimed that no layman could properly judge matters relating to the Church, a criticism which appeared to relate to the Commons’ recent attacks on Arminianism. This intervention prompted the addition of Hakewill to the committee for drawing up charges of impeachment against Manwaring.157 Shortly after the king’s second answer to the Petition, Hakewill expressed alarm at the existence of the so-called excise commission, which he regarded as posing yet another threat to the subject’s property. The commission had been ‘carried very secretly’, he alleged, and if it were permitted to proceed any further they could say farewell to their liberties (13 June). He was subsequently appointed to be a spokesman on this issue at a forthcoming joint conference with the Lords.158 Throughout the session Hakewill exhibited scant sympathy for the needs of the king, yet if Charles were to observe the rule of law he had to have both money and arms. The only occasion when Hakewill explicitly acknowledged Charles’s financial needs was during the supply debate of 4 Apr., when he proposed that Members should vote either four or five subsidies, although he was also a member of the committee to decide what action to take regarding the bill for Tunnage and Poundage (13 June).159 He is known to have mentioned the issue of arms only once, on 9 June, when he declared that the Commons would have difficulty in drafting the bill of arms by the end of the session.160

Apart from revealing the contents of Manwaring’s Oxford sermon, Hakewill did not join the chorus of protests against the Arminians in 1628, neither did he take any recorded part in the attack on Buckingham, although he did report the bill to confirm the letters patent issued to the duke’s former enemy, Sir John Digby*, earl of Bristol, on 31 May.161 During the 1629 session his profile in the Commons diminished, for though he remained chairman of the privileges committee162 and was named to several committees, he made only one recorded speech in the chamber. On 23 Feb. he argued that the seizure by customs officials of the currants belonging to the MP John Rolle did not constitute a breach of privilege because privilege did not apply during a prorogation. However, on being contradicted by Noye he graciously admitted his error.163 The seizure of Rolle’s goods again raised the vexed question of the subject’s property rights, and it is therefore not surprising that Hakewill was named to the committee appointed to consider the issue on 22 January. It is also understandable that he was one of the handful of Members who were chosen to check that the Petition of Right had been enrolled, both on the Parliament Roll and in the records of the Westminster courts (21 January).164

Following the dissolution, Hakewill retired to relative obscurity. In April 1631 he offered his enthusiastic support for an expedition ‘concerning astronomical observations’ that the professor of astronomy at Merton College, Oxford, Dr. Bainbridge, hoped to send to Alexandria, in Egypt.165 During the early and mid-1630s he was also active as a sub-commissioner in the rebuilding of St. Paul’s Cathedral, despite his low-church inclinations - the puritan divine William Crompton dedicated a sermon to him in 1632, and he was a friend of William Prynne.166 He remained a magistrate until at least 1632, but shortly thereafter was removed from the Buckinghamshire bench. There is no direct evidence that he had refused to compound for knighthood, but it may be significant that his name does not appear in a list of those in the county who had fined.167 He was reinstated in July 1634. He continued to discharge his duties as executor of Sir Thomas Bodley’s estate, and in 1630 he urged the university authorities at Oxford to build a western extension to the Bodleian. A model of the proposed addition was brought up to London in 1634, where it was shown to Hakewill and Archbishop Laud, the university’s chancellor, but nothing further was done.168 Hakewill fined for the office of reader at his Inn in October 1637,169 serving as treasurer instead. In the summer and autumn of 1641 he was employed by the queen to search the records on her behalf regarding the rights of her court, a task for which he was well suited by virtue of his earlier service under Anne of Denmark.170

Hakewill did not seek election to either the Short or the Long Parliaments. However, in December 1640 the House of Lords assigned him as counsel to the earl of Strafford (Sir Thomas Wentworth*) at the latter’s request, and in the following April he appeared at the bar to defend his client from articles of impeachment.171 Early in 1641 Hakewill’s skills as an antiquarian were employed by Algernon Percy*, 10th earl of Northumberland, to justify the re-enfranchisement of the borough of Cockermouth, in Cumberland. Hakewill succeeded in uncovering the relevant medieval documents, and the borough was accordingly restored to the franchise in February.172 At some point in 1641 a chapter of Hakewill’s unpublished treatise on parliamentary procedure was printed without his permission. It contained numerous errors, having been produced from a bad copy of an original circulated by Hakewill among his friends, and the printer had added several errors of his own. The Commons was so concerned at the publication of this corrupt text that Hakewill was persuaded to publish his own authoritative version, which appeared later the same year, as did Hakewill’s translation of the Modus Tenendi Parliamentum.173

On 13 May 1642 the House of Lords appointed Hakewill counsel to Sir George Strode and Richard Spencer who, like Strafford, had articles of impeachment preferred against them by the Commons.174 That same year Hakewill contributed £6 to the relief of Ireland.175 His sympathies lay with Parliament during the Civil War. Appointed a master in Chancery in November 1646, he was sworn a legal assistant to the House of Lords two days later, in which capacity he continued until the abolition of the Upper House in 1649.176 It may have been while serving as a master in Chancery that he penned a treatise, which he did not publish, that argued that plaintiffs in Chancery were in no danger of being charged with praemunire.177 In the later 1640s and early 1650s his dining companions included Lincoln’s Inn’s illustrious preacher, Archbishop Ussher. In May 1652 he sold his chambers,178 and in the following July he was replaced as a master in Chancery. He drew up his will on 26 Sept. 1653, at which time he was still in good health. He appointed as his executors William Fretwell, who had lived under his roof for the past 23 years, and one Henry Harris, and asked them to spend no more than £40 on his funeral. As he had already conveyed most of his estate to his eldest son, William, it remained to provide for his younger son, Robert, who was granted £400 as well as some furnishings and linen. Minor bequests were also granted to his grandson, Gresham Hakewill, and a godson.179 Hakewill died in October 1655, the day after his 81st birthday, and was buried in St. Mary’s, Wendover.180 None of his descendants sat in Parliament.

Ref Volumes: 1604-1629

Author: Andrew Thrush

Notes

  • 1. Vivian, Vis. Devon, 437; Al. Ox.; LI Admiss.; CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 515; VCH Bucks. iii. 29; PROB 11/251, f. 129r-v.
  • 2. LR6/154/9, unfol.; Add. 27404, f. 38; E315/107, f. 24v.
  • 3. CSP Dom. 1611-18, p. 515; LR7/80/2; LC2/5, f. 33.
  • 4. LI Black Bks. ii. 186, 227, 238, 253, 314, 349, 389, 451.
  • 5. T.D. Hardy, Cat. of Lords Chancellors, 90, 92.
  • 6. P. Croft, ‘Annual Parls. and the Long Parl.’, HR, lix. 161.
  • 7. C231/4, f. 30; 231/5, f. 143; SP16/212; CSP Dom. 1637-8, p. 346.
  • 8. T. Rymer, Foedera, vii. pt. 3, p. 83.
  • 9. C93/7/3; 93/8/15.
  • 10. C212/22/20-1, 23; E115/87/44.
  • 11. C193/8/20; Rymer, viii. pt. 3, p. 114.
  • 12. APC, 1621-3, pp. 80, 208.
  • 13. HCA1/32/1, f. 13.
  • 14. CSP Dom. 1627-8, p. 232.
  • 15. Ibid. 1631-3, pp. 288-9; 1633-4, p. 3; 1634-5, p. 16.
  • 16. STAC 5/S24/20; Grantees of Arms ed. W.H. Rylands (Harl. Soc. lxvi), 109.
  • 17. J. Prince, Worthies of Devon, 449.
  • 18. E134/6Jas.I/Mich.33, f. 5; CSP Dom. 1595-7, p. 536.
  • 19. Lansd. 151, f. 88; C. Jamison, Hist. of Roy. Hosp. of St. Katharine by Tower of London, 84.
  • 20. CJ, i. 421b, 430b.
  • 21. Ibid. 182b, 955b.
  • 22. SR, iv. 1029.
  • 23. CJ, i. 952a, 953a, 954a, 956a, 175b, 185a, 187b, 966a, 968a.
  • 24. Ibid. 238b, 243a, 244a, 260b, 276b.
  • 25. Ibid. 995a.
  • 26. Cott. Faustina E.V, ff. 3-4, printed in A Collection of Curious Discourses (1775) ed. T. Hearne, i. 1-8. See also W.R. Prest, Rise of the Barristers, 196-7.
  • 27. CJ, i. 260b, 275b, 279a, 287a, 287a, 292b, 293a, 295a, 295a, 303a, 304a.
  • 28. Ibid. 326b, 329a, 342b.
  • 29. Ibid. 1039a, 1047b.
  • 30. Ibid. 307b.
  • 31. I. Temple Lib., Petyt ms 538/17, f. 321.
  • 32. At least two copies of the treatise are extant: SP14/29/1 and Add. 25255, ff. 1-23.
  • 33. CJ, i. 400a, 430a, 436b, 446b; ‘Paulet 1610’, f. 8v. For his nomination to these cttees., see CJ, i. 394b, 413a, 442b.
  • 34. CJ, i. 418a, 424b. For the interests of the West Country gentry, see also ibid. 409b, 424a.
  • 35. Ibid. 429b, 436b, 443a.
  • 36. The speech is precisely dated by Paulet: ‘Paulet 1610’, f. 18v.
  • 37. State Trials ed. T.B. Howell, ii. 407-11; CJ, i. 440b.
  • 38. State Trials, ii. 415-17.
  • 39. Ibid. 419-20.
  • 40. Ibid. 426-7, 433, 450-1, 453-4.
  • 41. ‘Paulet 1610’, f. 23.
  • 42. CJ, i. 450b.
  • 43. Add. 11402, f. 160.
  • 44. CJ, i. 519b-20a; CD 1621, ii. 72. Accounts of the number of obsolete statutes identified by the cttee. range from 230 to 400.
  • 45. Procs. 1610, ii. 342, n.7; ‘Paulet 1610’, f. 31v; Parl. Debates 1610 ed. Gardiner, 139.
  • 46. C. Strateman-Sims, ‘Speaker of the House of Commons’, AHR, xlv. 90-1; E.R. Foster, ‘Speaking in the House of Commons’, BIHR, xliii. 35-43. Hakewill’s authorship of the chapter on speaking in the House is not absolutely proven, but the case made by Foster for believing him to be responsible is overwhelming.
  • 47. J.H. Baker and J.L. Ringrose, Cat. of English Legal Mss in CUL, 83.
  • 48. W.D. Macray, Annals of the Bod. Lib. Oxf. (2nd edn.), 402, 421.
  • 49. I.G. Philip, ‘Building of the Schools Quadrangle’, Oxoniensia, xiii. 39.
  • 50. M. Kishlansky, Parl. Selection, 98.
  • 51. Procs. 1614 (Commons), 32.
  • 52. Ibid. 36, 127, 206.
  • 53. Ibid. 34, 203, 336.
  • 54. Ibid. 106, 127, 323, 382.
  • 55. Ibid. 96; Wentworth Pprs. ed. J.P. Cooper (Cam. Soc. ser. 4. xii), 68.
  • 56. Procs. 1614 (Commons), 263, 265-6, 287.
  • 57. Ibid. 346, 359.
  • 58. Ibid. 144-5, 154.
  • 59. Ibid. 228-9. Hakewill’s uncle, Sir William Peryam, had married Neville’s stepmother.
  • 60. Ibid. 295.
  • 61. Procs. in Parls. of Eliz. ed. T.E. Hartley, iii. 444-5, 488; CJ, i. 169b, 412b.
  • 62. Procs. 1614 (Commons), 201-2, 207, 382. For England’s near monopoly of iron ordnance manufacture, see N.A.M. Rodger, Safeguard of the Seas, i. 214.
  • 63. Chamberlain Letters ed. N.E. McClure, i. 539.
  • 64. Croft, ‘Annual Parls. and the Long Parl.’, 159.
  • 65. Chamberlain Letters, i. 567-8; Bodl. Carte 121, f. 15.
  • 66. Lansd. 165, f. 257.
  • 67. CD 1621, ii. 533.
  • 68. Croft, ‘Annual Parls. and the Long Parl.’, 155-71; P. Croft, ‘Debate on Annual Parls. in the Early Seventeenth Cent.’, PER, xvi. 170. Croft identifies five surviving copies of the tract. Two more can be found at Harvard Univ. Lib., fMS Eng 919(7), and I. Temple Lib., Petyt 538/5, ff. 32-49.
  • 69. Croft, ‘Annual Parls. and the Long Parl.’ 160-1, 170. For Hakewill on free speech, see below.
  • 70. Bodl. Carte 121, ff. 5-8; HEHL, EL445.
  • 71. Chamberlain Letters, i. 581.
  • 72. Bodl. Carte 121, f. 1.
  • 73. Chamberlain Letters, i. 583.
  • 74. Bodl. Carte 121, ff. 3-4, 13-14v.
  • 75. Letters and Life of Francis Bacon ed. J. Spedding, vi. 208.
  • 76. J.J. Sheahan, Hist. and Topog. of Bucks. 206; N. Pevsner et al. Buildings. of Eng.: Bucks. 722; PROB 11/251, f. 129.
  • 77. C3/404/127.
  • 78. CJ, i. 594b, 596a, 629b; CD 1621, iii. 102-3, 328; iv. 273; v. 111; Nicholas, Procs. 1621, i. 350.
  • 79. CJ, i. 586a, 587b; CD 1621, iii. 55.
  • 80. CD 1621, vi. 252.
  • 81. Ibid. ii. 106; Nicholas, i. 72.
  • 82. CJ, i. 533a.
  • 83. Ibid. 540b-541a; Nicholas, i. 124-7; CD 1621, iv. 126-8.
  • 84. CJ, i. 541b, 544b.
  • 85. CD 1621, ii. 190.
  • 86. CJ, i. 547a; CD 1621, ii. 200; Nicholas, i. 136. Holland reports that Hakewill said that he ‘did not think fit the referees should be touched’, which is implausible: CD 1621, vi. 46.
  • 87. CD 1621, vi. 261.
  • 88. CJ, i. 536a.
  • 89. Ibid. 568a.
  • 90. Ibid. 569a; CD 1621, iii. 194.
  • 91. CJ, i. 569b; Nicholas, i. 214.
  • 92. CJ, i. 553b; CD 1621, ii. 218.
  • 93. Nicholas, i. 220. For the difficulties of drafting the bill, see R. Zaller, Parl. of 1621, p. 126.
  • 94. Nicholas, i. 83; CD 1621, ii. 131.
  • 95. CJ, i. 530b, 531b; C.G.C. Tite, Impeachment and Parliamentary Judicature in Early Stuart Eng. 95; Zaller, 59. Phelips moved that Hakewill and Noye should retire to the cttee. chamber to prepare their report, but no more was heard of the matter.
  • 96. CJ, i. 576a.
  • 97. CD 1621, ii. 314; Tite, 48.
  • 98. T. Birch, Ct. and Times of Jas. I, i. 260, n. 1, 266. Zaller says that unexecuted warrants were drawn up against Hakewill, Noye and Sir Edward Coke: Zaller, 140.
  • 99. CJ, i. 604a; Nicholas, ii. 6-7.
  • 100. CD 1621, iii. 153; Nicholas, ii. 14.
  • 101. CJ, i. 610b; Nicholas, ii. 28; CD 1621, ii. 348; iii. 177; Zaller, 109.
  • 102. CJ, i. 659a.
  • 103. Ibid. 667b; Nicholas, ii. 345-6; CD 1621, ii. 533; vi. 243; Zaller, 173-4.
  • 104. CD 1621, ii. 221; LD 1621 and 1628, p. 25.
  • 105. CJ, i. 558a; LD 1621 and 1628, p. 48.
  • 106. CD 1621, v. 391. The issue was protections issued by MPs to their servants.
  • 107. Ibid. iv. 190; CJ, i. 572a.
  • 108. CJ, i. 544a, 633a; Nicholas, ii. 114.
  • 109. Nicholas, ii. 79-80; CD 1621, iii. 237.
  • 110. CD 1621, iii. 341-2; CJ, i. 654a.
  • 111. CJ, i. 516a; CD 1621, ii. 50.
  • 112. CJ, i. 522a.
  • 113. CD 1621, iii. 298.
  • 114. Ibid. ii. 375; iii. 275; A. Jessopp, Oeconomy of the Fleet (Cam. Soc. xxii), 157-9.
  • 115. CD 1621, iv. 143. For the precedent, see Bowyer, 295.
  • 116. Nicholas, ii. 108; ‘Paulet 1610’, f. 8.
  • 117. Nicholas, i. 74.
  • 118. CJ, i. 518b, 519b, 520a, 577b, 627b, 630a; CD 1621, ii. 391-2; iii. 308-17.
  • 119. In error he was named to the cttee. twice: CJ, i. 507b, 513b.
  • 120. CJ, i. 513b, 537a, 548a, 563a, 624b, 641a; CD 1621, ii. 380; iii. 286; vi. 193.
  • 121. CJ, i. 517a, 572b; CD 1621, iv. 191. Pym says it was Hakewill; the clerk says it was Bateman.
  • 122. CJ, i. 578b, 605b, 621b; Nicholas, i. 262.
  • 123. CJ, i. 521b, 565b; CD 1621, ii. 280.
  • 124. CD 1621, iii. 241-2; CJ, i. 654a.
  • 125. CJ, i. 572a.
  • 126. CD 1621, iii. 342-3.
  • 127. Ibid. 282.
  • 128. CJ, i. 568a, 592b, 629b; CD 1621, ii. 322, 399; iii. 87, 331.
  • 129. Chamberlain Letters, ii. 418.
  • 130. Prince, 450.
  • 131. CD 1628, ii. 513.
  • 132. SP14/156/14.
  • 133. LI Black Bks. ii. 238, 450-1.
  • 134. J. Glanville, Reps. of Certain Cases (1775), p. 88. He may also have been retained by the borough of Hertford at the same time.
  • 135. The first to claim that Hakewill was behind the discovery was Browne Willis at the beginning of the eighteenth century: B. Willis, Notitia Parliamentaria (2nd edn., 1730), i. 138.
  • 136. CJ, i. 714a, 782b.
  • 137. ‘Hawarde 1624’, p. 175; ‘Holland 1624’, i. f. 26; ‘Earle 1624’, f. 154.
  • 138. LJ, iii. 323a.
  • 139. ‘Earle 1624’, f. 167.
  • 140. GL, ms 5255/1, unfol.
  • 141. J.R. Scott, Scott, of Scot’s-Hall, p. xxvii.
  • 142. CJ, i. 873a, 875b, 876b, 877a, 879a, 880b, 882a-b, 883a, 884b, 887a, 890a-91a, 893b, 902a, 907b.
  • 143. Glanville, 91n. He possessed a copy of Glanville’s own reports: ibid. lxxxvii. For the report concerning the two boroughs, see Procs. 1628, vi. 107-9.
  • 144. CD 1628, ii. 125, 131, 138, 142.
  • 145. Ibid. 190, 200.
  • 146. Ibid. 233, 235, 238, 240, 252, 259, 267, 272.
  • 147. Ibid. 362, 366-7.
  • 148. Ibid. 279.
  • 149. Ibid. 296.
  • 150. W. Cobbett, Parl. Hist. ii. 336-8. The original separate is dated 1 May: see Lansd. 494, ff. 176v-9. The correct date is established by reference to the brief versions of the speech given in CD 1628, iii. 153, 158, 164, 166.
  • 151. C. Russell, PEP, 368.
  • 152. CD 1628, iii. 273, 278, 284, 287, 290, 293, 296.
  • 153. Russell, 369.
  • 154. CD 1628, iii. 494, 496-7, 502, 506.
  • 155. Ibid. 537.
  • 156. Ibid. iv. 281, 364.
  • 157. Ibid. 39; CJ, i. 907b.
  • 158. CD 1628, iv. 294, 300; CJ, i. 912b.
  • 159. CD 1628, ii. 307; CJ, i. 912a.
  • 160. CD 1628, iv. 205; Russell, 386.
  • 161. CJ, i. 907a.
  • 162. Ibid. 927b, 931a.
  • 163. CD 1629, pp. 92-3, 233.
  • 164. CJ, i. 920b, 921a.
  • 165. TCD, ms 382, f. 98.
  • 166. STC; CSP Dom. 1631-3, pp. 288-9; 1633-4, p. 3; W.R. Prest, The Inns of Court under Elizabeth and the Early Stuarts: 1590-1640, p. 228. Crompton was acquainted with Hakewill’s yr. bro., George: Oxford DNB sub Crompton, William.
  • 167. E178/5165.
  • 168. Bodl. Lib. Acct. Bk. ed. G. Hampshire (Oxf. Bibliographical Soc. n.s. xxi), 86; Philip, 47-8.
  • 169. LI Black Bks. ii. 344.
  • 170. CSP Dom. 1641-3, pp. 85, 191.
  • 171. Procs. in Opening Session of Long Parl. ed. M. Jansson, iii. 593.
  • 172. HP Commons 1640-60 (forthcoming); COCKERMOUTH.
  • 173. For both texts, see W. Hakewill, Modus Tenendi Parliamentum (1671). Hakewill’s reasons for publishing his chapter on bills are at sig. G2v-G3 of The Manner How Statutes are Enacted in Parliament.
  • 174. LJ, v. 62b.
  • 175. Bucks. Contributions for Ire. in 1642 ed. J. Wilson (Bucks. Rec. Soc. xxi), 80.
  • 176. LJ, viii. 575b, 588b, 591a; ix. 494a, 522a; x. 630a.
  • 177. Lansd. 174, ff. 226-35v.
  • 178. Diary of John Harington, MP 1646-53 ed. M.F. Stieg (Som. Rec. Soc. lxxiv), 61, 67, 74.
  • 179. PROB 11/251, f. 129.
  • 180. Oxford DNB sub Hakewill, William.