Colonial America
1683 Sir Henry Guy Treasurer with Integral Transmittal Leaf in Payment "for His Majesty's Secret Service"
February 12, 1683-Dated, Manuscript Document Signed, "Hen: Guy" as Treasurer (1679-1688), British Order by Sir Henry Guy to Sir Robert Howard Auditor of the Exchaquer, with Integral Transmittal Leaf, Very Fine.
Treasury Chambers / 12th Febry 1683, measuring 7" x 11.25", 1 page, Treasury Chambers. In the Correspondence of Henry, Earl of Clarendon (ed. 1828) are particulars of sums paid to him for Secret Service money for one year, to March 7th, 1688. This item being an Order to sent to Sir Robert Howard, as Auditor of the Exchaquer "fifty pounds seven shillings and eleven pence", to return money for His Majesty's Secret Service. With a small Embossed Seal, written in bold brown on clean, evenly toned laid period paper. Docket on the reverse, along with Integral Transmittal Leaf "To the Honorable Sir Robert Howard...". An intriguing financial document regarding a British Royal Treasury confirmation of "his Maj(esty's) Secret Service" by this payment order in 1683.
Henry Guy (1631"1710). English politician. On 8 March 1670 Guy was elected Member of Parliament for Hedon, and continued to represent it until 1695. He again sat for it from 1702 till 1705, when his Parliamentary career ended. In 1693 he commissioned Hedon Town Hall and presented it to the local council.
In the House of Commons Henry Guy spoke for the party of the Earl of Sunderland. His first appointment about the court was to the post of cupbearer to the queen, but he was soon admitted among the boon companions of Charles II. On the resignation in 1675 of Colonel Silas Titus, he became Groom of the Bedchamber, but sold his office by November 1679 to Thomas Neale.
In March 1679 he was appointed Secretary to the Treasury, and the payments from the public funds passed through his hands until Christmas 1688. John Yonge Akerman edited, from a manuscript in the possession of William Selby Lowndes, for the Camden Society in 1851, as vol. lii. of their publications, details of secret service funds of Charles II and James II from 30 March 1679 to 25 December 1688; it was an account rendered by Guy some time after the accession of William III.
In the Correspondence of Henry, Earl of Clarendon (ed. 1828) are particulars of sums paid to him for secret service money for one year, to 7 March 1688.
On the death of Henrietta Maria in 1669 Guy obtained a grant of the manor of Great Tring, and on the estate he built, from the design of Sir Christopher Wren, a house and gardens. This property he sold in 1702. In 1680 he acquired from Catherine of Braganza a lease for thirty years of the manor of Hemel Hempstead, and in 1686 some lands in Ireland were ordered by the king's letter to be transferred to him. In 1686 he was also residuary legatee to Thomas Naylor, a man of much wealth, who was buried in Westminster Abbey on 12 Nov. 1686. William III dined with him at Tring in June 1690.
In March 1691 he was made a commissioner of customs, but in the following June returned to the secretaryship of the treasury. His displacement was talked of in February 1695, and when the charge of having accepted a bribe was brought home to him, he was forced to resign and was committed to the Tower (16 February). In 1696 he guaranteed, with many other members of his party, a loan from the Dutch government of 300,000.
Guy died on 23 February 1710 aged 78. He left 500 a year and 40,000 in cash to William Pulteney, who succeeded him as MP for Hedon.