William Honnyng

Infobox Person
name = William Honnyng
birth_date = 1520
death_date = 1569
burial_place = Eye, Suffolk
occupation = MP, Clerk of Privy Council
spouse = Frances Cutler
parents = Roger Honing and Margaret Owle

William Honnyng (1520 – 1569) English Member of Parliament and Tudor Court official. Clerk of the Privy Council under Henry VIII and Edward VI. Clerk of the Signet from 1543 till death.

Biography

Family Origins

The Honnyng (or Honing, Honning, Hunnings) family came originally from the Holland district of South Lincolnshire. [Foster, W (1912), 'Hunnings Families'. Publisher: Pollard & Co, Exeter]

Early life

The eldest child of Roger Honnyng and Margaret née Owle, William was born in 1520, most probably in London. Roger was a member of the Fishmongers' Company, [Haskett-Smith, 'Fishmongers Apprentices and Freemen. London, 1916] with houses and shops in Oldefisshestrete in the City of London.

ecretary to Bonner

In 1538 William Honnyng obtained the post of secretary to Bishop Edmund Bonner on his appointment as Ambassador to Paris. Honnyng owed this appointment to the influence of Thomas Wriothesley. When Bonner was recalled to London, Honnyng also returned, during the summer of 1540. [Alexander, G M V, 'Edmund Bonner', PhD Thesis, London University 1960]

Clerk of the Signet

On his return to London, Honnyng was appointed a clerk of the Signet, and took up the office some time after October 1541, when he was granted the next vacancy [Letters & Papers of Henry VIII, vol xvi, item 1308 (28)] . He had, by 1542, become the servant of Thomas Wriothesley [Letters & Papers of Henry VIII, vol xvii, item 901] .

Clerk of the Privy Council

On 23 April 1543 Honnyng was appointed one of the two clerks of the Privy Council [Letters & Papers of Henry VIII, vol xviii, item 450] . The Council at that time included, inter alia, Thomas Cranmer, Thomas Howard, John Russell, 1st Earl of Bedford, Edward Seymour, Stephen Gardiner, Sir Anthony Wingfield, Thomas Wriothesley, Sir John Dudley and William Paget.

Member of Parliament

Honnyng was elected to the first Parliament of the young king Edward VI, convened on 4 November 1547. Honnyng served as MP for Winchester, and may have owed this appointment to the influence of Wriothesley. Honnyng was also elected as MP for Orford, Suffolk, in Edward VI's second and last parliament, in March 1553. [Bindoff, S (editor), 'History of Parliament', London 1982]

Court Turbulence

Half way through the reign of Edward VI, competition for power between the leading Councillors, as "Protestant" and "Catholic" factions vied for control over the boy king. Honnyng played a peripheral role in these clashes, for example helping with the arrest and subsequent prosecution of Bishop Gardiner [Foxe, John, 'Actes and Monuments', vol 6 pp 71, 153, 260] , and acting as the Privy Council's messenger during the coup that toppled the Lord Protector Somerset in October 1549 [Tytler, Patrick, 'England under the Reigns of Edward VI and Mary', London, 1839] . For a brief period, after Somerset's fall, Wriothesley filled the power vacuum [Skidmore, Chris, 'Edward VI', London 2007, p148] until he too was out-manoevered by John Dudley, by then earl of Warwick [Hoak, Dale, 'The King's Council in the Reign of Edward VI' Cambridge, 1976, p257] .

Marshalsea

With the fall of Wriothesley, Honnyng was unprotected, and was arrested by Sir Anthony Wingfield on 30 January 1550 for seeking to embezzle away the judicial papers relating to Gardiner's case [Skidmore, p 157] [Scudamore Letters, 'Camden Miscellany XXX' (4th Series vol 39, letter 13 (p116)] . Honnyng was imprisoned in the Marshalsea prison, but eventually released, at the end of June 1550, on £200 bail ['Acts of the Privy Council', vol iii, p59] . But a month later his old patron Wriothesley was dead, "amidst rumours of suicide" [Skidmore p154] , and Honnyng had lost his job on the Privy Council. He retained his clerkship of the Signet, and even remained in office during the transition to the reign of Mary in July 1553 [History of Parliament] and into the reign of Elizabeth I [Calendar of Patent Rolls, Eliz I, 1560-63, p. 100] .

Radclyffe

By the Summer of 1560, in addition to remaining clerk of the Signet, Honnyng was taken on by Thomas Radclyffe, 3rd Earl of Sussex, 3rd earl of Sussex, as his Court Correspondent [Cotton Manuscripts, Vespasian F XII, 90, 102] [Stypes Annals, i, p199] , while Radclyffe was on campaign in Ireland.

Legal Profession

in 1561 Honnyng entered Gray's Inn, in the same intake as Thomas Radcliffe, Roger, Lord North, and Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk [Register of Gray's Inn lists 'William Humings' (sic) - a not infrequent mis-transcription of Hunnings] . At that time Gray's Inn was a fashionable place for noblemen and country gentlemen to send their sons, even though some 90% would not actually be called to the Bar. Along with legal traiing, the Inn provided a good venue for 'masques and revels' [ [www.graysinn.info] ] . The following year, in 1562, Honnyng was appointed a Justice of the Peace for Suffolk, and by 1564 was 'of the Quorum' [Calendar of Patent Rolls, Eliz I, 1560-63, p. 442; 1563-66 p. 27] . In 1566 Honnyng was apointed to the Suffolk Commission of Sewers (responsible for sea and river defences, and maintaining the Fennland drainage system) [Calendar of Patent Rolls, Eliz I, 1569-72, p 217] .

Marriage and children

Honnyng married Frances Cutler, the daughter of Nicholas Cutler, MP, by Eleanor Mynne (daughter of John Mynne and a first cousin of Thomas Wriothesley). They had fourteen children:

*Jane (1542 - 1557)
*Elzabethe
*Frannces
*Catterin
*Anne (born 1548)
*Edward (21 May 1550 - ), heir, and MP for Dunwich, Suffolk in 1589, and MP for Eye in 1593 - 1604 [Bindoff, S (editor), 'History of Parliament', London 1982] . Edward married Ursula Wingfield, a granddaughter of Sir Anthony Wingfield PC KG.
*William (1552 - c.1610), clerk of the Office of the Revels during the time William Shakespeare was putting on plays at Court [The Suspected Revels Books, Wood, Review of English Studies.1925; os-I: 166-172] .
*Henry (11 February 1553 - 22 January 1635) a leading participant in the Jacobean Plantation of Fermanagh [The East Anglian, April 1867 (vol III page 83) gives Henry's petition to Charles I, which describes his ultimately failed Ulster venture] .
*Nicholas (born 13 May 1555)
*Joan (born 8 August 1556)
*John (19 January 1558 (ns) - 1585) a sea captain who served in Elizabeth's war against Spain in the Netherlands [HMC77 - De L'Isle & Dudley mss at Penhurst Place, vol 3 page xxxiii ] , dying at the Battle of Arnhem in 1558. Four portraits of John survive, at the V&A, at the Wellcome Library, at Queens' College Cambridge, and one in a private collection [Barry, T p188] .
*Thomas
*Franccis, Receiver of Crown Rents for Suffolk and Cambridgeshire [CT&G and BL Add. MS 19136, vol LX, ff75-83] .
*James (born 1562) servant of Henry Wriothesley, 3rd Earl of Southampton whom James accompanied to Ireland in 1599 [The East Anglian, April 1867 (vol III page 83) for Henry's petition to Charles I, which describes his brother James's action in Ireland] .
*Charles, captain in the expeditionary forces of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester in December 1585 [HMC77 - De L'Isle & Dudley mss at Penhurst Place, vol 3 page xxxv] , and Lord Willoughby's campaign into France in September 1589, during which he died [Camden's "Annales"] .
*Roger
*Robert

Death

Honnyng died on 11 November 1569 and was buried in an 'alter tomb' within the parish church of Eye, Suffolk. In his 1566 will, Honnyng left extensive lands in Suffolk, London and Gloucestershire [PCC: 25 Sheffelde (PROB11/51, f 182 L) ] . Most of the property went to his heir, Edward, who left it to his son Wingfield Honning. A lengthy court battle arose, as Edward Honning had left no will, and his son Wingfield Honning was mentally disabled; most of the wealth was gradually lost as the family fought moves by the unscrupulous lawyer John Cusacke and Baron Sotherton [Beyond The Pale: John Cusacke And The Language Of Absolutism In Early Stuart Britain by Linda Levy Peck, George Washington University. The Historical Journal, 41, I (1998) pp 121-149] [Barry p96] .

References

Notes/Further reading

*Barry, T. "Life and Family History of William Honnyng", London, 2008
*Foster, W E, "Hunnings Families", Pollard & Co, Exeter, 1912
*Collectanea Topographica et Genealogica (CT&G), vol vii, [
*Archdale, Henry Blackwood: "Memoirs of the Archdales", Enniskillen, 1925, p11-12

Persondata
NAME= William Honnyng
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Honning, Honnings, Hunnings etc
SHORT DESCRIPTION=
DATE OF BIRTH=1520
PLACE OF BIRTH=?London
DATE OF DEATH=1569
PLACE OF DEATH=Suffolk, England