Henry Jermyn, 1st Earl of Saint Albans (1605 – January 1684) was an English politician, diplomat, and property developer, who was one of the most influential courtiers of the Carolean era.
Jermyn sat in the House of Commons of England at various times between 1625 and 1643 when he was raised to the English peerage as Baron Jermyn. Having formed an intimate friendship with Henrietta Maria of France in the 1630s, he constantly devised and promoted schemes to involve foreign powers in English political affairs, both before and after the execution of Charles I in 1649. A long-standing advocate of pro-French policies, he became one of the most influential courtiers of the Interregnum and reign of Charles II, serving as both ambassador to France and Lord Chamberlain. He remained the favourite of Henrietta Maria until her death in 1669, and was rumored to have secretly married her sometime after Charles I's death.
Today, Jermyn is known as the 'Founder of the West End' owing to his role in the development of St James's into a predominantly aristocratic residential area of London.
Early life Jermyn was the fourth but second surviving son of Sir Thomas Jermyn (1572–1645) of Rushbrooke, Suffolk, Vice-Chamberlain to Charles I, and his wife Catherine, daughter of Sir William Killigrew of Hanworth, Middlesex (a sister of Sir Robert Killigrew). He was baptised at St Margaret's Lothbury, London on 25 March 1605. He was brought up at Rushbrooke Hall and possibly attended Bury St Edmunds Grammar School.
In 1618 he undertook a tour of Europe for three years and in 1623 he became a member of the household of the Earl of Bristol in Madrid as a gentleman in attendance on the English embassy. While living in Spain he met the Duke of Buckingham and Jermyn "abounded in the expression of his joy for the honour and favours done him" by the duke. Jermyn's eldest brother, Robert Jermyn, died in December 1623. In February 1624, the young Jermyn was sent to Paris as a member of the embassy of Henry Rich, 1st Earl of Holland. There, Jermyn met Henrietta Maria for the first time and in May 1625 he was among those who accompanied the young princess to England for her marriage.
Politician and courtier In 1625, while still underage, Jermyn was elected Member of Parliament for Bodmin on the interest of his uncle Sir Robert Killigrew, and was re-elected MP for the seat in 1626. He made no contribution to parliamentary proceedings in either year. He continued to attract the attention of Henrietta Maria, now queen consort of Charles I of England, and in 1627 Jermyn was appointed a gentleman usher in her private household. In July 1627 he was sent to France by the queen to convey her condolences to Louis XIII on the death of the duchess of Orléans. He became Henrietta Maria's vice-chamberlain in 1628 and the same year he was elected as the MP for Liverpool on the nomination of Humphrey May. During the parliamentary recess, Jermyn was seconded to Jersey to train the island's militia.
Villiers affair In 1632 Jermyn was again sent to Paris, this time to congratulate the queen's mother, Marie de' Medici, on surviving a coach accident. In 1633 he jeopardised his position at court when Eleanor Villiers, one of the queen's ladies in waiting, became pregnant and claimed it was Jermyn's illegitimate child. Upon questioning by the king, Jermyn admitted the unlawful sexual relations, but refused to marry Villiers. This was depsite Villiers' aunt, Katherine Villiers, Duchess of Buckingham, offering Jermyn £8,000 as a dowry. On 4 June 1633, Eleanor's brother, Lord Grandison, challenged Jermyn to a duel. For their immoral behaviour and to prevent a duel from taking place, both Jermyn and Villiers were imprisoned in the Tower of London for several months. In September 1633, Charles I sent Jermyn an ultimatum – marry Eleanor Villiers or face exile. Jermyn chose exile, and was sent first to France and then to Jersey by Charles I, but he was allowed to return and resume his role at court in August 1634 after the queen lobbied for his cause. His favour with Henrietta Maria was undamaged and in 1639 his dominant position in her household was confirmed when he was appointed her Master of the Horse.
Civil War and exile
In April 1640, Jermyn was elected MP for Corfe Castle in the Short Parliament together with his brother Thomas. The brothers were both elected MPs for Bury St Edmunds in the Long Parliament in November 1640 in the face of opposition from their Roundhead relative, Sir William Spring. Within and outside Parliament, both Jermyn brothers were active and ardent Royalists. Jermyn took a prominent part in the failed First Army Plot of 1641, in which he had been tasked with securing the Tower of London and freeing the Royalist Earl of Strafford. On the plot's discovery, Jermyn fled first to Portsmouth and then to France after the king ordered George Goring, Lord Goring to ensure Jermyn's safe passage out of the country.
In August 1642, fighting began in the First English Civil War. That year, Jermyn joined Henrietta Maria in The Hague where he assisted her to raise loans, buy weapons and recruit troops for the Royalist cause. According to the antiquary William Dugdale, Jermyn "spared neither pains nor charge in obtaining arms and ammunition from foreign parts, besides the exposal of himself to no little hazard in attending on the royal person into England".
Returning to England with Henrietta Maria in February 1643, he resumed his personal attendance on the queen and was appointed colonel of the queen's regiment of horse, her personal bodyguard. He landed with the queen at Bridlington in Yorkshire, before escorting her through Parliamentarian territory to the king at Oxford. He was present at the Royalist victory at the Battle of Burton Bridge in July. On 8 September 1643 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Jermyn of St Edmundsbury, ostensibly so that, should he fall into Parliamentarian hands, he would be beheaded, and not hanged, drawn and quartered. Shortly afterwards, on 18 September 1643, he received a bullet wound while leading his regiment at the Battle of Aldbourne Chase. The same year he was made a colonel of horse in the king's army. His reputation as a soldier was mixed, in part owing to his reputation for profligacy: "He is a splendid, fortunate, liberal man... a man who has the favour of the courtiers but is not esteemed by the soldiers". In 1644 he became the queen's chamberlain. A few months later, with the Royalist war effort faltering, in July 1644 he accompanied Henrietta Maria back to France. There, he continued to act as her secretary and confidant, while also attempting to raise support for the Royalist war effort. On the death of his father in 1645, he became the owner of Cheveley Park.
In 1645, Jermyn was made Governor of Jersey in succession to his father. He came into conflict with Sir Edward Hyde when he brought the Prince of Wales from Jersey to Paris, against Hyde's advice. In 1647, Jermyn advised the king to promise a Presbyterian church in England in order to gain Scottish assistance against parliament. This led the king to remark that "the Lord Jermyn did not understand anything of the church". Charles I made Jermyn his ambassador to France and the Dutch Republic prior to his execution in 1649. In this capacity, Jermyn entered prolonged and ultimately fruitless negotiations to secure French or Dutch military support for the Royalists, including through proposing several royal marriages. Towards the end of the First English Civil War, a number of Jermyn's letters were captured and published by Parliament in order to expose the king's attempt to bring foreign powers into the conflict. Jermyn advocated for the Royalist alliance with Scotland which led to the Anglo-Scottish war of 1650 to 1652. In 1651 he was appointed to the Privy Council of England.
In France, Jermyn became the leading figure in the 'Louvre faction', a group of English royalists who had attached themselves to Henrietta Maria's court-in-exile, based initially out of the Louvre Palace. Following The Fronde, in 1653 the Queen Dowager swapped accommodation with Anne of Austria and her court relocated to the Palais-Royal. Other members of the faction included Henry Wilmot, Lord John Byron, Kenelm Digby, George Digby, Henry Percy, John Colepeper and Charles Gerard. The group was marked by their close adherence to Henrietta Maria, their pro-French outlook and their opposition to the influence of Hyde over Charles II. Jermyn proposed to Charles a plan to cede the Channel Islands to France in exchange for military aid. Jermyn succeeding in getting large grants from the king's allowance and was able to live in relative luxury, despite the court itself being impoverished. When Charles went to Breda, Jermyn initially remained in Paris with Henrietta Maria, but later traveled to join the king ahead of his return to England. The Queen Dowager persuaded her son to create Jermyn Earl of St Albans on 27 April 1660.
Restoration
At the Restoration in May 1660, Hyde ensured that Jermyn was kept out of government, although he was given other offices. St Albans was appointed Joint Registrar and Keeper of the Registry at the Court of Chancery and made a justice of the peace for Suffolk and Middlesex. On 24 April 1662, he was appointed Keeper of Greenwich House and Park, and Steward of East and West Greenwich. St Albans was also trustee of the English manors and lands of Queen Catherine of Braganza from 1662. In July 1663 he was present at the birth of James Stuart, Duke of Cambridge. On 27 December 1663, St Albans was elected Grand Master of the English grand lodge of Freemasons; he appointed Sir John Denham his deputy and Christopher Wren his warden.
He acted as Charles II's ambassador to France throughout the 1660s and was supportive of the policy of friendship towards Louis XIV of France. At the Palace of Versailles, St Albans maintained an almost regal ambassadorial establishment. In 1660, he led negotiations for the marriage of Henrietta of England to Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, which took place in March 1661. St Albans also attempted to secure the marriage of the English king to a French princess, but was unsuccessful. On 23 June 1661, he and Louis XIV signed a renewal of a treaty between England and France, and entered negotiations for a new treaty of mutual defence. In 1667, he signed a further treaty with France which promised that England would not make any alliance hostile to the interests of Louis XIV for a year. He contributed largely to the close secret understanding between Charles II and Louis XIV, arranging the preliminaries of the Secret Treaty of Dover in 1669.
St Albans' obvious affinity with France was controversial at court; the Italian diplomat Lorenzo Magalotti wrote that he was "a man who is wholly devoted to French interests and who acts with no other purpose than to promote the vast projects of that crown at whatever cost to England". St Alban's biographer, Charles Harding Firth, observed that "no man did more to further the close union between England and France, which made England the subservient tool of Louis XIV". Charles II commented that St Albans was "more a Frenchman than an Englishman".
Before and during the Restoration, St Albans was, alongside Charles Berkeley and Henrietta Maria, the leading member of a lobby which acted in the interests of Irish Catholics dispossessed by the Act for the Settlement of Ireland 1652. His efforts were not entirely altruistic; through the Act of Settlement 1662, St Albans gained substantial amounts of money and land in Ireland. It was reported that St Albans accepted a bond of £1,000 from Patrick Sarsfield to secure the return of Sarsfield's Irish land and property.