Christopher Hatton
Sir Christopher Hatton
Early years
Sir Christopher was the second son of William Hatton (died 28 August 1546)[1] of Holdenby, Northamptonshire, and his second wife, Alice Saunders, daughter of Lawrence Saunders (died 1544) of Harrington, Northamptonshire. His wife, Alice Brokesby was the daughter of Robert Brokesby (died 28 March 1531) of Shoby, Leicestershire, and of Alice Shirley.[2][3][4][5][a]
On his father's side, the Hatton pedigree is said to be "traced beyond records". In the reign of Henry VII, Henry Hatton of Quisty Birches in Cheshire married Elizabeth, sole heiress of William Holdenby of Holdenby, Northamptonshire. Their son, John Hatton, settled at Holdenby and had three sons, of whom Christopher Hatton's father, William, was the eldest. He is said to have had two brothers, Thomas and William, and a sister Dorothy (died 1569), who married first John Newport (died 1566) of Hunningham, Warwickshire, then William Underhill (died 1570) of Idlicote, Warwickshire, whose son, also William Underhill (died 1597), sold New Place to William Shakespeare.[6]
In 1567, Hatton's brother Thomas married John Newport's sister, Ursula Newport.[7] However Hatton's two brothers appear to have died relatively young and without issue. It was his sister Dorothy's son by John Newport who eventually became Hatton's heir.[8][3]
Hatton's education is said to have been supervised by his maternal uncle, William Saunders (died c. 1583). Otherwise nothing is known of his life until he entered
Career
In 1561 Hatton played the part of Master of the Game at a masque at the Inner Temple,[10] and on a similar occasion attracted the attention of Queen Elizabeth. Handsome and skilled, Hatton's dancing quickly won him the Queen's favour and the nickname "The Dancing Chancellor".[11][12] He came to court, according to Naunton, "by the galliard, for he came thither as a private gentleman of the Inns of Court in a masque, and for his activity and person, which was tall and proportionable, taken into the Queen's favour."[13]
In 1564, he became one of the Queen's
There were certainly close personal relations between them. In correspondence the Queen called him her "Lyddes". He is said to have referred to himself in at least one letter as her "sheep".[20] Yet Hatton "was probably innocent in the matter."[14]
Hatton represented Higham Ferrers in Parliament in 1571 and from May 1572 was a member for Northamptonshire.[14][21] He was active in Parliament in prosecutions of John Stubbs and William Parry.[14] In 1576, he was granted land in Wellingborough by the Queen.[22]
In 1581, he was one of those appointed to arrange a marriage between the Queen and
According to one account, Hatton once assured Mary, Queen of Scots he would fetch her to London if Queen Elizabeth died.
Hatton was a member of the law court that tried Anthony Babington in 1586 and one of the commissioners who found Mary, Queen of Scots, guilty of treason the following year. He vigorously denounced her in Parliament and advised William Davison to forward the warrant for her execution to Fotheringhay.[23]
Hatton sent a ring with a letter to
In 1587 Hatton became
Hatton was chancellor of the University of Oxford. He is reported to have been parsimonious, but he patronized men of letters and Edmund Spenser was among his friends. He wrote the fourth act of a tragedy, Tancred and Gismund. His death occasioned several panegyrics in prose and verse.[23]
Wealth
Hatton became wealthy through his progressing career and the Queen's fondness for him, and in 1583 he embarked on building at Holdenby, Northamptonshire, what was to be the largest privately owned Elizabethan house in England. It had 123 huge glass windows at a time when glass was very expensive – window numbers became a way to show wealth. It had two great courts and was as large as
Lord Burghley, visiting the house in his old age, was impressed with the grand staircase from the hall to the state rooms and proclaimed the house so faultless he forgot the "infirmity of his legs" whilst he walked around. No expense was spared. Hatton even paid to move a village because it spoiled the view from one of his windows. However, the cost of the house drained his purse, so that Hatton was short of money for the rest of his life. No stranger to the financial strain of building, Burghley wrote to Hatton: "God send us both long to enjoy her, for whom we both meant to exceed our purses in these."
To maintain his dwindling wealth, Hatton began investing in some voyages of
Death
Despite his successes Hatton died with large debts, a few years after his Holdenby mansion was completed in 1583. Hatton claimed to refuse to sleep there until
Hatton's health declined in 1591. The Queen visited him on 11 November. Nine days later he died at Ely Place and was given a state funeral at St Paul's Cathedral on 16 December.[2] A grand monument to him stood at the high altar of Old St Paul's, "towering above it – an outrage to the susceptibilities of the devout but an object of marvel to London sightseers – until the Great Fire of 1666 dethroned and destroyed it."[28][29] Hatton is listed on a modern monument in the crypt as one of the important graves lost.
Although he seems to have had an illegitimate daughter, Hatton never married, and his large and valuable estates descended to his nephew, Sir William Newport (1560–1597), son of his sister Ursula Hatton, who took the surname Hatton.
Commemorations
Hatton Garden, heart of the UK's trade in cut diamonds, stands on the site of Hatton's London home and grounds. Sir Christopher Hatton Academy was founded in 1983 in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.
In popular culture
In the 2007 film Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Sir Christopher Hatton is portrayed by Laurence Fox
See also
Notes
- ^ The date of death of Hatton's mother is not known, nor whether she remarried after William Hatton's death.
- ^ a b Nicolas 1847, p. 2.
- ^ a b c MacCaffrey 2004.
- ^ a b Metcalfe 1887, p. 27.
- ^ Richardson I 2011, p. 402.
- ^ Agutter 2010, pp. 288–9.
- ^ Stopes 1907, pp. 127–132.
- ^ "FINCH HATTON (KIRBY)" – via National Archive of the UK.
- ^ Nicolas 1847, pp. 1–2.
- ^ Nicolas 1847, p. 3.
- ^ Nicolas 1847, p. 4.
- ^ "Sir Christopher Hatton". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 12 July 2019.
- ^ Rego Barry, Rebecca (11 June 2012). "Queen Elizabeth & The Dancing Chancellor". Fine Books Magazine. Retrieved 12 July 2019.
- ^ Nicolas 1847, pp. 4–5.
- ^ a b c d e f Chisholm 1911, p. 63.
- ^ Nicolas 1847, pp. 5–6, 13.
- ^ Nicolas 1847, pp. 38–39.
- ^ Nicolas 1847, pp. 36 and 39.
- ^ Nicolas 1847, pp. 7–9 and 13.
- ^ Nicolas 1847, p. 15.
- ^ Nicolas 1847, pp. 25–28.
- ^ Nicolas 1847, pp. 8, 13.
- ^ Salzman, L F. "Parishes: Wellingborough Pages 135-146 A History of the County of Northampton: Volume 4". www.british-history.ac.uk. Victoria County History, 1937. Retrieved 28 May 2023.
- ^ a b c d e f g Chisholm 1911, p. 64.
- ^ Francis Grose and Thomas Astle, The Antiquarian Reportary, vol. 3 (London, 1808), p. 386.
- ^ Paul E. J. Hammer, 'Letters from Cecil to Hatton', Religion, Politics and Society in Sixteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 2003), p. 238.
- ^ Francis Grose & Thomas Astle, The Antiquarian Reportary, vol. 3 (London, 1808), p. 386.
- ^ Holdenby Palace website Archived 1 August 2007 at the Wayback Machine
- Sinclair, W.p. 93: London; Chapman & Hall, Ltd; 1909.
- ^ Deacon 2008, p. 213.
References
- Agutter, Doreen (September 2010). "Edward Saunders of Harrington and Rothwell, Northamptonshire". Monumental Brass Society Bulletin. 115: 288–9. Archived from the original on 25 July 2013. Retrieved 26 August 2013.
- Deacon, Malcolm (2008). The Courtier and the Queen. Welstead Farm, ISBN 978-0-9523188-4-2.
- MacCaffrey, Wallace T. (2004). "Hatton, Sir Christopher (c. 1540-1591)". doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/12605. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- Metcalfe, Walter C., ed. (1887). The Visitations of Northamptonshire Made in 1564 and 1618–19. London: Mitchell and Hughes. p. 27. Retrieved 26 August 2013.
- Nicolas, Harris (1847). Memoirs of the Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton. London: Richard Bentley.
- Richardson, Douglas (2011). Everingham, Kimball G. (ed.). Plantagenet Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families. Vol. I (2nd ed.). Salt Lake City. ISBN 978-1-4499-6631-7.)
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - Stopes, Charlotte Carmichael (1907). Shakespeare's Warwickshire Contemporaries. Stratford upon Avon: Shakespeare Head Press. pp. 227–32. Retrieved 20 December 2013.
Attribution
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Hatton, Sir Christopher". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 63–64. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
Further reading
- Howard, Joseph Jackson, ed. (1868). Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica. Vol. I. London: Hamilton Adams. p. 159.
- Thompson, EM, ed. (1878). Correspondence of the Family of Hatton, being chiefly Letters addressed to Christopher, first Viscount Hutton, 1601–1704. London.
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External links
- Will of Dorothy Underhill, proved 28 January 1570, PROB 11/52/36, National Archives. Retrieved 20 December 2013