Edward Zouch

Sir Edward Zouch of Woking (d. 1634), Courtier to King James and King Charles I, masque actor, and Knight Marshall of the King's Household

This article is about the courtier and masque actor. For the contemporary diplomat, see Edward la Zouche, 11th Baron Zouche.

He was the son of Sir Willam Zouch or Zouche, his mother's name in not known.

Career

In 1612 he married Dorothea Silking or Dorothy Silken, a Danish gentlewoman in the bedchamber of Anne of Denmark from Güstrow.[1] The queen gave her and her sister Jyngell Silken gifts of clothes as a mark of favour.[2] In 1635 Reverend George Garrard, who had been at court in the household of Prince Henry, recalled that Silken was a "homely woman" and Zouch had married her for her money.[3] The jeweller George Heriot recorded in his accounts for 1613 that the "Lady Sutch" owed him £81 which "she affirmes her Majesty is pleased to paye".[4]

Glass making

From 1609 to 1618 Zouch was involved in glass-making, especially at Vauxhall glassworks. He built a glasshouse at Lambeth with Louis Thelwall, fuelled by Scottish coal, which was inspected by Sir George More and Sir Edmund Bowyer In July 1613.[5] The glass patents were discussed in the parliament of 1614.[6] He sold his interest to Sir Robert Mansell, whose wife Elizabeth Roper had also been in the household of Anne of Denmark.

John Aubrey recorded a story that Zouch had obtained the patent for glass-making at the expense of William Robson, by making the king laugh with this verse;

Severn, Humber, Trent, and Thames,
And thy great Ocean and her streames
Must putt downe Robson and his fires
Or downe goes Zouche and his desires.[7]

In 1613 Zouch sent the lawyer James Whitelocke a doe (female deer) from Woking as a Christmas present.[8] The King sent a present of silver plate worth £150 to the christening of his son James in 1615.[9]

A play at Theobalds

As a gentleman of the Privy Chamber, Zouch attended the king in his visit to Scotland in 1617.[10] and was made a burgess of the guild of Aberdeen.[11]

In January 1618 he acted with other courtiers at Theobalds led by Sir John Finet in an interlude featuring "Tom of Bedlam the Tinker" intended to amuse the king who was suffering from gout. The cast included: Thomas Dutton, Thomas Badger, George Goring, Thomas Tyringham, Robert Yaxley, William Uvedale, Arthur Lake, and George Garret. The King was displeased by the play, especially the lyrics sung by Finet, and John Chamberlain was surprised that "none had the judgement to see how unfit it was to bring such beastly gear in public before a prince."[12]

In October 1618 he bought the Knight Marshallship from Sir Thomas Vavasour for £3000 with the aid of a gift of £1500 from the king.[13]Anne Clifford noted that Zouch was responsible at the queen's funeral for the burial of Anne of Denmark in the Henry VII Chapel at Westminster Abbey at 7 o'clock at night on 13 May 1619.[14]

On 5 August Zouch acted in a comedy for the king at Salisbury in character as a "bearward" or keeper of bears, probably in "the house of Mr Sadler".[15] On 28 August 1620 Zouch wrote to his cousin Lord Zouch of Odiham that he intended to offer King James and Prince Charles more mirth in their forthcoming visit to Woking than the Bishop of Winchester would at Farnham, with masques every night.[16] This approach was a success for Zouch, and John Chamberlain reported "Yet hard as the world goes, Sir Edward Zouch, knight marshall, hath Oking with another lordship adjoining to it, in all better than £500 a year, lately given him in fee-farme for masking and fooling."[17] These theatricals were recorded in Anthony Weldon's satirical account of James's court; "Zouch his part to sing bawdy songs, and tell bawdy tales, Finet's to compose these songs.[18]

Woking

In 1620 he was appointed keeper of Woking Palace and subsequently built a house nearby called Hoe Bridge Place with a free-standing tower. In November 1620 Zouch was given the manors of Woking, Bagshot, and Chobham, with the proviso that he should return the service of carrying the first dish to the king's table and pay £100. He was also Forester of Woking.[19]

After an inventory of the late queen's silver plate at Denmark House was taken in 1621, the Zouches were asked to supply a shortfall worth £492-19s., including a gold casting bottle engraved with the queen's arms. Zouch successfully claimed that a warrant signed by Dorothea Silking was a forgery, because she could not write her name.[20] At least three examples of Dorothea's signature survive today. Zouch donated a panelled oak gallery to St Peter's Church in Old Woking in 1622, his name is painted across its architrave.

King James stayed at Woking with Zouch at the start of September 1624. He hunted towards Busbridge, and wrote to the Duke of Buckingham that he would stay longer, "so earnest I am to kill more of Zouch's great stags."[21]

In 1630 Zouch sued Sir William Bulstrode and his wife, the widow of the goldsmith and member of Parliament Henry Banister, for jewels which he had pawned in 1624, but it was discovered that Zouch had sold them to Banister in 1626.[22]

In 1625 he cousin Edward, Lord Zouche, bequeathed Bramshill House to him, "he being of my blood and the son of him I loved best in my life, except the Lord Gray of Wilton."[23]

He died on 7 June 1634. There is a Latin memorial inscription to Zouch placed by his wife in St Peters Church at Old Woking, noting his court position as "Marescalli Aulici", or "Marshall of the Household".

After his death an inventory was taken of Bramshill House, where the library contained 250 books and "certain mathematical instruments".[24] His son James sold Bramshill in 1637 and his furniture was valued at £2762-5s-3d.[25]

Family

Edward Zouch and Dorothea Silking had the following children;

James Zouch married Beatrice Annesley in 1637, and after his death she married Sir John Lloyd of Woking and Forest (d. 1664), while their son was still an infant, and she married for the third time, Sir Thomas Smith of Hill Hall, Essex (d. 1668), according to a law case heard before the Lord Chancellor in 1669. The mother and son in the case were noted to be related to Arthur Annesley, 1st Earl of Anglesey. The case was brought by a creditor of Sir Edward Zouch called Gilpen, against his grandson or heirs. The case papers contain a copy of Edward Zouch's will and the inventory of goods at Bramshill.[29]

References
  1. William Shaw, Letters of Denization and Naturalization, Huguenot Society, vol. 18 (Lymington, 1911), p. 16.
  2. Jemma Field, 'The Wardrobe Goods of Anna of Denmark', Costume 51:1 (2017), pp. 20-1.
  3. William Knowler, Strafford Letters, vol. 1 (London, 1739) p. 468.
  4. Archibald Constable, Memoirs of George Heriot (Edinburgh, 1822), p. 219.
  5. Alfred John Kempe, Loseley Manuscripts (London, 1836), pp. 493-4.
  6. William Shaw & G. Dyfnallt Owen, HMC 77 Viscount De L'Isle Penshurst, vol. 5 (London, 1961), p. 177.
  7. Richard Barber ed., Brief Lives (woodbridge, 1982), p. 332.
  8. John Bruce, Liber Famelicus of Sir James Whitelocke (Camden Society, London, 1858), p. 32.
  9. HMC 7th Report (St John Mildmay) (London, 1879), p. 594.
  10. HMC Downshire, vol. 6 (London, 1995), p. 139.
  11. John Nichols, The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities, of King James the First, vol. 3 (London, 1828), p. 330.
  12. John Nichols, Progresses of Jamrs the First, vol. 3 (London, 1828), p. 465.
  13. Norman Egbert McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1939), pp. 129, 173.
  14. Jessica L. Malay, Anne Clifford's Autobiographical Writing (Manchester, 2018), p. 85 & fn.489.
  15. James Knowles, 'Jonson in Scotland: Jonson's Mid-Jacobean Crisis', in Takashi Kozuka & J. R. Mulryne, Shakespeare, Marlowe, Jonson: New Directions in Biography (Routledge, Abingdon, 2006), p. 264-5.
  16. Mary Susan Steele, Plays and Masques at Court (Oxford, 1926), p. 209: "Bearwood" was the name of a wood in Windsor Park under Zouch's jurisdiction.
  17. John Nicholls, The Progresses, Processions, and Magnificent Festivities of King James the First, vol. 4 (London, 1828), pp. 617-8, 16 Sept. 1618: Norman Egbert McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1939), p. 348.
  18. Egerton Brydges, Memoirs of the Peers of England during the Reign of James the First, vol. 1 (London, 1802), pp. 71-2.
  19. Brayley & Britton, A Topographical History of Surrey, vol. 2 part 1 (Dorking & London, 1842), p. 8.
  20. A. J. Collins, Jewels and Plate of Queen Elizabeth (London, 1955), pp. 149, 306, Collins states that Silking was the successor of Margaret Hartsyde.
  21. John Nichols, Progresses of James the First, vol. 4 (London, 1828), pp. 1003-4.
  22. Andrew Thrush, 'BANISTER, Henry (c.1538-1628)', The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604-1629, ed. Andrew Thrush and John P. Ferris, 2010.
  23. 'Parishes: Eversley', in A History of the County of Hampshire, volume 4, ed. William Page (London, 1911), pp. 32-41. British History Online.
  24. John Trevor Cliffe, The World of the Country House in Seventeenth-century England (Yale, 1999), p. 163.
  25. John Trevor Cliffe, The World of the Country House in Seventeenth-century England (Yale, 1999), pp. 39, 104.
  26. Brayley & Britton, A Topographical History of Surrey, vol. 2 part 1 (Dorking & London, 1842), p. 9.
  27. Francis Annesley & Patrick Little, 'Providence and Posterity: A Letter from Lord Mountnorris to His Daughter, 1642', Irish Historical Studies, 32:128 (November 2001), pp. 556-7.
  28. HMC 6th Report (Earl of Denigh) (London, 1887), p. 278.
  29. Cases Argued and Decreed in the High Court of Chancery, 1660-1697 (New York, 1828), p. 80-1: Cases argued and decreed in the High Court of Chancery from the 12th year of King Charles II to the 31st (London, 1697), pp. 80-2, these notes have "Dame Dorothy" for "Beatrice": Francis Annesley and Patrick Little, 'Providence and Posterity: A Letter from Lord Mountnorris to His Daughter, 1642', Irish Historical Studies, 32:128 (November 2001), pp. 556-566: Papers relating to the case are held by TNA CS108/107.
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