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HELTON - HYLTON - HILTON
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Henry Hylton b.1585
The "Mad?" Baron
It's amazing how history treats you when you're gone!
Probably the most maligned head of the the "Hyltons of Hylton Castle" family, must be Henry Hylton, the so called "Mad" Baron. He was anything but mad during one of most turbulent times in English history - the first half of the 17th century.
It was a time of tremendous social, religious and political change. A time when "Great Britain" was invented by King James I of England who was also King James VI of Scotland and a time when the English chopped his son's head off (King Charles I). It was the time of the "Gun powder Plot", when they tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament - The Earl of Northumberland, whose coat of arms are prominently displayed, carved in stone, on the front of Hylton Castle got himself "banged" up in the Tower of London for 17 years because of it. It was the time of the Bishops Wars and the time when the English Civil War also broke out
It was also a time when the Hyltons started to migrate to the Caribbean, Virginia, and New England. (only co-incidental of course !!!!?).
Henry Hylton, the so called "Mad" Baron, coped with it all surprisingly well in true Helton, Hylton, Hilton style.
Henry Hylton (Hilton), Esquire, was born on 28th June, 1599, the son of Thomas Hilton Esquire and Anne Bowes, daughter of Sir George Bowes of Streatlam Castle. It was Sir George Bowes who had carried out the Earl of Sussex's orders on behalf of Queen Elizabeth I and her advisors (noticeably Cecil, Secretary of State), to hang about 1 in every 5 of the rebels involved in the "Rising of the North" in 1569. Considering most of the villages in Durham were involved in the rebellion (which was to restore the catholic religion and put Mary Queen of Scots on the throne), a lot of people got hanged and this particular branch of the Hylton family were none too popular in the north at that time. Although the rebels had trashed the Bowes castle at Streatlam as they retreated, George Bowes still did what he could to save them from the gallows. Anyone who had been a landowner had their estate seized and sold to loyalists by Queen Elizabeth I.
Thomas Hylton, Esquire, never made it to become Baron of Hylton Castle - he died in his father's lifetime.
The Hilton title and estates passed from grandfather, Sir William Hilton to grandson, Henry Hilton, then only 13 years of age at the time
The Hylton Estates reverted to the crown until Henry Hilton became of age. Henry Hilton became a "ward" of Queen Elizabeth I.
"For centuries England's Kings or Queens had been able to claim as their ward, any heir who was still a minor when he succeeded to lands legally held by the Crown by "knight service" - a category that included every significant landowner in the country. As guardian, the queen could administer the ward's property, use the income (rents) as she saw fit, and marry her charge to a girl of her own choosing; or she could sell the wardship, an increasingly common practice. Under Elizabeth the Court of Wards had become a major source of royal income, and it's mastership a plum office . Robert Cecil, (the queen's secretary, and later secretary to King James I) is estimated to have derived from the position some £3000 anually (a lot of money at the time!) during his fourteen-year tenure from 1598 to 1612" - Source - Jacobean Gentleman, Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561-1629
By indenture between the Queen and Thomas Marbery, it was agreed that he should bring the boy to the to the Bishop of Carlisle, Henry Robinson, D.D., a citizen of Carlisle, in 1598, who was deemed an excellent disputant and preacher, and was, in 1581, elected provost of Queen's College, Oxford, and in 1599, was one of the queen's commissioners for ecclesiastical causes.Henry Hylton was to be reviewed and talked with "that his manners, education, and profiting in learning may be understood and perceived, upon payne and forfeiture of the said warde"
The religious conflicts of the time often split families setting fathers against sons and brothers against brothers .
In 1593 Henry's uncle Robert's wife was reported to the government for celebrating a catholic mass, presumably at Hylton Castle" - Historic Sites of County Durham - Glen Lyndon Dodds
Queen Elizabeth I was determined that the heir to the Hylton Estates would be brought up a protestant.
With the execution of the 7th Earl of Northumberland in 1572, after the Rising of the North, and the shooting of the 8th Earl of Northumberland in the Tower (supposedly suicide?) in 1585, and the fleeing abroad of the Earl of Westmoreland, the power of the Northern Earls had been quashed. This wardship of Henry Hilton, enabled Queen Elizabeth I and her advisors to quash the power of the Baron of Hylton in the even more powerful palatinate of Durham, ruled by the Prince Bishop.
On May 1 1602, a covenant was made between Talbot Bowes of Richmond, Yorkshire and Richard Wortley of Wortley, Yorkshire, that Richard Wortley "shall have entry into the manor house of Hylton, orchards, gardens and meadows and to other ground at Hilton used for pasture on March 1602 and hold them during the minority of Henry Hilton"
(This is the Manor House which was built behind Hylton Castle, traces of which were discovered during a recent excavation by TV's Time Team - it was burnt to the ground by the Scots during the first Civil War and no known pictures of it survive)
Young Henry Hylton was married off to Mary, daughter of Sir Richard Wortley, of Wortley, co York. This would have been an arranged marriage, when Henry was still a child. His father had died when he was eleven years old, and his grandfather, died, leaving him the Hylton estates, two years later. The marriage will almost certainly have been arranged by the Bowes family in consultation with the queen.
The marriage was probably never consummated, and we know that he was separated from his wife for nearly 30 years.
When Henry Hylton (Hilton) wrote his will, he stated;
"Yt If anie p’son shall p’tend to be a child of my body begotten, w’ch I hope noe body will be so impudent and shameless, I hearby, calling God and man to witness, yt I have no child living of my body begotten, and if any such person shall p’tend so to be, I hearby declare he or she so doing to be an imposture, and I hope noe body will undertake to doe such a shameless,dishonest and impudent act and he or she soe declaring to be my child, I doe hereby utterly rnounce and disclaim ym"
Henry was described as being of most melancoly habits,and lived much alone", first at Billinghurst in Kent.
Nathaniel Hilton, son of Henry Hilton, younger son of Sir William Hilton and Anne Yorke (grandparents of William of the "Fortune") was the Vicar at Billinghurst "at whose house Henry, Baron of Hilton lived many years" - Surtees, History of Durham.
Billinghurst was 10 miles from Petworth, the Sussex home of the Earls of Northumberland. The head of the Percy Family and the head of the Hilton family were now next door neighbours in the south of England.
Perhaps it was Henry Hilton, Baron of Hylton Castle who together with the 9th Earl of Northumberland (the Wizard Earl) who was imprisoned in the Tower with Sir Walter Raleigh and Thomas Harriot of Roanoke fame who directed operations of the Hiltons in the Carribean, Virginia and New England and Barbados in the first half of the 17th century.We know that William Hilton, member of the Fishmongers Guild of London settled at Plimoth in America in 1621 where his wife and children joined him
We also know that Anthony and John Hilton settled on Nevis in the Carribean in 1628.;
"In 1628, Mr Thomas Littleton, Merchant of London, fitted out a ship under Captain Anthony Hilton to settle Nevis where the party landed on 22nd July. John Hilton (his brother) in describing this first settlement says "there was a gentil' yt came over with us at the first settling named Jacob Lake, who had a brother a ministr who capme passenger in yt shipp" - Carribeana, being misc papers relating to the history, topography, and Antiquities of the British West Indies.
Anthony Hilton was recorded as Governor of Tortuga in 1633
Walter Warner, one of the Earl of Northumberland's three "Magi" (Elizabethan scientists) lived at Petworth, "next door" to where Henry Hylton, Baron of Hylton Castle lived at Billinghurst in Sussex. It seems more than a co-incidence that it was a Thomas Warner, and Anthony and John Hilton who settled on Nevis, St Kitts (St Christophers), and Tortuga islands in 1628
They were amongst the real "Pirates of the Carribean" and it's interesting to note that the pub, "The Shipwrights Arms" which is over 350 years old and was the local tavern on the river Wear near Hylton Castle is known as a "Pirates Pub" to this day!
The first son of the 9th Earl of Northumberland, born in 1602 was named Algernon, an old Percy family name. It's interesting that in 1609, the fort built at Old Point Comfort in Virginia was called "Algernon's Fort";
"On October 3rd 1609, Captain James Davis arrived from England with 16 men in the pinnace (a small vessel) "VIRGINIA" Under the guidance of Captain John Radcliffe, these men, aided from a detachment from Jamestown, (where George Percy, brother of the 9th Earl of Northumberland had arrived on the "DISCOVERY" in 1607) built a fort at Point Comfort. When the structure was finished it was named Fort "Algernourne/Algernons" - Defender of the Chesapeake: The Story of Fort Monroe - Colonel Robert Arthur
Back in England, Henry Hylton could not have lived all that "melancoly" a life - scandal affirmed that he lived in too close intimacy with Lady Shelley at Michell Grove, a splendid castle in Sussex, not far from Billinghurst and Petworth.
Henry Hylton made his will on the 26th February 1640-1, the year of the "Bishops War" when the Scots invaded and occupied Northumberland and Durham and presumably the Hylton Estates. It's said the locals invited them in!
Henry Hylton was determined, as he had no heir of his own,and not knowing how long the Scots would occupy the Hylton estates, to ensure that no one could claim the estate, so he devised the whole of his paternal estate for ninety-nine years, to the Lord Mayor and four senior Aldermen of the City of London, on trust to pay during the same term, £24 yearly to each of thirty eight several Parishes or townships in Durham, Newcastle upon Tyne, Surrey, Sussex and Middlesex; £28 per annum to the Mayor of Durham and £50 per annum to the Vicar of Monkwearmouth (near Hylton Castle): he then leaves an annuity of £100 to his next brother Robert Hylton and to his heirs; and £50 per annum to his brotherJohn Hilton which last sum is to cease, if he succeed to the larger annuity as heir of Robert. all the residue and increase of his rents he gives to the City of London, charging them to bind out yearly five children of his own kindred to some honest trade; and further he desires them to raise £4000 out of the rents, to remain in the City Chamber during ninety nine years, and the interest to be applied in binding out orphan children born in the manors of Ford, Biddick and Barmston. (Hylton Estates close to Hylton Castle). After the expiration of that term, he devises that the whole of his estates, with the encreased rents and also the same £4000 to his heir at law provided he be not such an one as shall claim to be the issue of the testator's own body. He then gives several legacies to his servants, and to the family of Shelley of Mitchell Grove; declares that he has £3000 on good bonds in London; appoints Ladt Shelley to be his executrix 1, and desires to be buried in St Paul's Cathedral, "under a faire tumbe like in fashion to the tumbe (tomb) of Dr Dunne for which purpose he leaves £1000 to his executrix, who never complied with the injunction.
He wasn't buried in St Pauls Cathedral
Henry Hilton left a widow (Mary Wortley? (not named in his will) who remarried Sir Thomas Smith (son of Thomas Smith of the Virginia Company?), said to have been an active and intriguing man during the Usurption.
Robert Hylton, the next brother to Henry survived him a only a few months, and he also left a widow whose second husband, Sir Thomas Hallyman, obtained in compensation of her d0ower a life-estate in the manor of Ford (across the river from Hylton Castle)
The will itself produced, as was most likely, litigations and chancery suits in abundance. Source; Surtees History of Durham.
To the end Henry Hylton lived up the the Hylton family's motto
"Tant que je puis"
- As much as I can.
Read the book;
The Hiltons of Hylton Castle
ORDER HERE
Copyright, All rights reserved Jan 2004