Daily entries from the 17th century London diary
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Wikipedia
Henry Jermyn, 1st Earl of Saint Albans KG (c. 1604-January 1684), was the third son of Sir Thomas Jermyn (1573-1645) of Rushbrooke, Suffolk. At an early age he won the favour of Henrietta Maria of France, Queen consort of Charles I of England whose vice-chamberlain he became in 1628, and Master of the Horse in 1639.
He was a consummate courtier, a man of dissolute morals, and much addicted to gambling. He was member for Bury St Edmunds in the Long Parliament and an active and reckless royalist. He took a prominent part in the army plot of 1641, and on its discovery fled to France. Returning to the Kingdom of England in 1643, he resumed his personal attendance on the queen, and after being raised to the peerage as Baron Jermyn of St Edmundsbury in that year, he accompanied Henrietta Maria in 1644 to France, where he continued to act as her secretary.
In the same year he was made governor of Jersey, whence he conducted the Prince of Wales to Paris. He conceived the idea of ceding the Channel Islands to France as the price of French aid to Charles against the parliament; and in other respects he meddled with foreign politics, his great influence with the queen being a continual embarrassment to royalist statesmen, especially after the execution of Charles I.
When Charles II went to Breda, Jermyn remained in Paris with Henrietta Maria, who persuaded her son to create him Earl of St Albans around 1660. Gossip which the historian Hallam accepted as authentic, but which is supported by no real evidence, asserted that Jermyn was secretly married to the widow of Charles I.
At the Restoration St Albans became Lord Chamberlain, and received other appointments. He supported the policy of friendship with France, and he contributed largely to the close secret understanding between Charles II and Louis XIV of France, being instrumental in arranging the preliminaries of the Treaty of Dover in 1669. In 1664 he obtained a grant of land in London near St James's Palace, where Jermyn Street preserves the memory of his name, and where he built the St Albans market on a site afterwards cleared for the construction of Regent Street and Waterloo Place.
The Earl, who was a friend and patron of Abraham Cowley, died in St James's Square, for the building of which he had provided the plan in January 1684. St Albans being unmarried, the earldom became extinct at his death, while the barony of Jermyn of St Edmundsbury passed by special remainder, together with his property, to his nephew Thomas Jermyn (1633-1703), and after the latter's death to Thomas's brother Henry Baron Dover.
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by The Earl of Manchester |
Lord Chamberlain 1671–1674 |
Succeeded by The Earl of Arlington |
| Peerage of England | ||
| Preceded by New (second) creation |
Earl of St Albans c. 1660–1684 |
Succeeded by Extinct |
| Preceded by New creation |
Baron Jermyn of St Edmundsbury 1643–1684 |
Succeeded by Thomas Jermyn |
[edit] References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
Annotations
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“…a man of dissolute morals, and much addicted to gambling….”
ST ALBANS, HENRY JERMYN, EARL OF (c. 1604-1684), was the third son of Sir Thomas Jermyn of Rushbroke, Suffolk. At an early age he won the favor of Queen Henrietta Maria, whose vice-chamberlain he became in 1628, and master of the horse in 1639. He was a consummate courtier, a man of dissolute morals, and much addicted to gambling. He was member for Bury St Edmunds in the Long Parliament and an active and reckless royalist. He took
http://30.1911encyclopedia.org/S/ST/ST_ALBANS_HENRY_JERMYN_EARL_OF.htm
DOVER, HENRY JERMYN, EARL OF (c. 1636-1708), was the second son of Sir Thomas Jermyn, of Rushbroke, Suffolk, elder brother of Henry Jermyn, earl of St Albans (q.v.). lover gambler etc.
http://43.1911encyclopedia.org/D/DO/DOVER_HENRY_JERMYN_EARL_OF.htm -
henry jermyn?? is jermyn st in st james, off regent st, in london named for him?? his family?? just curious..
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“one of the leading Catholics at court”
says a note in the L&M Volume 1 for 1 December 1660 (p 307)
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History of real estate developer St Albans:
In the 1660’s, Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans, persuaded the King to give him land to the north east of St. James’s Palace. On it he built St. James’s Square, King Street, Charles II Street, Duke of York Street, St. James’s Street, Haymarket and, of course, Jermyn Street. Many members of the aristocracy lived in this, then new area as it had very close proximity to the royal court. Jermyn Street was completed in the 1680’s.
http://www.22jermyn.com/location_about.html
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There is a rumour, gentlemen, that Henry, Lord Jermyn, secretly married the Queen Mother, and that might be the reason why Her Majesty told her son, Charles II, to make him an earl.
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from L&M Companion
(?1604-84) A countier and diplomat ‘of only middling accomplishments, who [rose] from nothing to a possession of considerable means which, by losing heavily at cards and keeping open house, he made to appear even greater than they actually were’ (Gramont). He was attached to the service of Queen Henrietta-Maria from 1628, and was rumoured (wrongly) to have secretly married her in her widowhood. Ambassador to France 1644, 1660, 1667-9; Lord Chamberlain 1671-4. -
From Grammont’s footnotes
Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Alban’s, and Baron of St. Edmund’s Bury. He was master of the horse to Queen Henrietta, and one of the privy-council to Charles II. In July 1660, he was sent ambassador to the court of France, and, in 1671, he was made lord-chamberlain of his majesty’s household. He died January 2, 1683. Sir John Reresby asserts, that Lord St. Alban’s was married to Queen Henrietta. “The abbess of an English college in Paris, whither the queen used to retire, would tell me,” says Sir John, “that Lord Jermyn, since St. Alban’s, had the queen greatly in awe of him; and indeed it was obvious that he had great interest with her concerns; but he was married to her, or had children by her, as some have reported, I did not then believe, though the thing was certainly so.” — Memoirs, p. 4. [Pepys says, in his Diary, Dec. 21st, 1660: — “I hear that the Princess Royal hath married herself to young Jermyn, which is worse than the Duke of York’s marrying the Chancellor’s daughter, which is now publicly owned.”] Madame Baviere, in her letters, says, “Charles the First’s widow made a clandestine marriage with her chevalier d’honneur, Lord St. Alban’s, who treated her extremely ill, so that, whilst she had not a faggot to warm herself, he had in his apartment a good fire and a sumptuous table. He never gave the queen a kind word and when she spoke to him he used to say, Que me veut cette femme?” Hamilton hints at his selfishness a little lower.
http://www.pseudopodium.org/repress/grammont/notes02.html see note 45 -
I am very glad to see that Henry Jermyn has aroused some people’s interest. He was an absolutely fascinating character, and has kept me interested for the last 16 years, during which I have researched his life and written his first ever biography. It is called “Full of Soup and Gold: the Life of Henry Jermyn” and is available from me at www.anthonyadolph.co.uk/jermyn.htm. I must stress in placing this notice here that, whilst I obviously want to sell copies of my book, my main motive is not commercial, but simply to cover costs and to make more people aware of Jermyn.