The young widower had, however, consoled himself within two years by marrying again. This time it was Mrs. Blancke of the Grocers’ Company; through her right Hunnis became a member of the Grocers’ Company, being admitted as redempcioner on 11th November 1560. Having found from the Guildhall records that he was a “Citizen and Grocer” of London, I made application to the Grocers’ Company, and was allowed to search their books, where I found many details unknown before. The authority of Mr. Kingdon corroborated that evidence. On 9th May 1567, he was formally admitted to the “Livery and Clothing” of the company, the fourth among a list of eighteen citizens. He duly paid his brotherhood money, two shillings. In the year 1570 his name was entered among the group of those “dwelling at Westminster and extravagant”; and he paid four shillings for the brotherhood money for the last two years, and two shillings towards defraying the expenses of the election feast. His marriage would be all the more important to him financially as he had, with other of her subjects, to wait some time before any practical recognition of his services was rendered him by Queen Elizabeth, beyond those connected with his living. The first that I have found recorded is a patent in June, the fourth year of Elizabeth, to the office of supervisor and custodian of the orchards and gardens at Greenwich, called the “great gardyne” and the “new gardyne,” to hold during his life with a salary of 12d. a day and various perquisites.[45] One duty was to present the Queen with seven gallons of “sweet water” a year. I am aware that Cunningham, in his notes to his edition of the “Revels Book,” asserts that this is another William Hunnis; but he had not made a thorough search, or he would have found it expressly stated that the grant was to “William Hunnis of the Chapell.” This, therefore, connects him with various payments made “to the supervisor of the gardens” for “men gardeners and women weeders at Greenwich”; and also with the famous account for seventy-nine bushels of roses and many bushels of other flowers in June of the 14th Elizabeth, “in preparation of the Banketing Howse made at White Hall for the entertainment of the said Duke.” Not only were there to be wreaths and adornments of flowers, but the floor was to be strewn with “rose-leaves pickt, and sweetened with sweet waters,” under the supervision of Hunnis. One suggestive point in connection with this patent of supervisor I have not yet worked out; but I may mention that his predecessor in office was one Philip Innes, whom Edward VI, in the fourth year of his reign, appointed for life to this post.[46] But in 1562 the said Philip Innes appears before Elizabeth and “renders up his office in favour of one William Hunnys,” and his patent is then cancelled. The new patent is at the side named “the patent of Philip Innes alias Hunnys,” and this is scratched out, and below is written fair “the patent of William Hunnys.” Is it possible that this Innes was his father, and that he had been brought up as a “gardener’s son”? Had he improved his name into Hinnes, in which form it appears oftener than in any other? I cannot yet say more than that the point is worth noting. In the first year of Mary there was another of the name, a John Innes, of Westminster, appointed to receive the “first almsmans room in the cathedral church of Westminster.”
Elizabeth often liked to pay her debts at the expense of other people. It was through a second grant of hers that I discovered Hunnis as a “citizen and grocer of the city of London.” In relation to the entry in Guildhall, which states in the Records, 30th May 1570, that a “reversion of the office of collection of the cities rightes, duties, and profittes, cominge and growinge uppon London Bridge, for wheelage and passage” was granted “to William Hunnys, citizen and grocer, and also master of Hir grace’s children of hir Chappell Royal,” upon letters of her Majesty in his favour.[47]
Various difficulties had arisen from the fact that the acting collectors had been promised that they should retain the post, not only for the twenty-one years for which they held a patent, but for the term of their natural lives and the life of the survivor, so it was agreed that the bridge-master should pay to Mr. Hunnis, in gratification of the Queen’s letters, the sum of £40 for a lease in reversion of the wheelage and passage of London Bridge.
Whether this £40 was in lieu of the reversion, or only as a douceur for the time likely to elapse before the reversion should fall in, is not clear from the passage, and I have not yet been able to work it out. With his various expenses among the boys of the Chapel this £40 would not last long.
I do not now notice his poems, because I have only acquired any knowledge regarding them from printed material. But it is evident his poems read differently when connected with the events of his life. For instance, the opening device at the Kenilworth[48] festivities in 1575, when Sybilla prophesies good things to Elizabeth, comes gracefully from one who had conscientiously plotted to make her queen two years earlier than she became so—probably the only poet of that conspiracy then surviving. The rewards for his plays can be found among the declared accounts of the Treasurer of the Chamber, and his death is noted in 1597 in “the Cheque Book of the Chapel Royal.”
By the favour of Elizabeth, on the death of Richard Edwards, Master of the Children of the Chapel Royal, on the 31st of October 1566, William Hunnis was appointed in his place on the 15th of November. But Elizabeth proved in his case not a “liberall dame,” as his perquisites, or rather his provisions, were materially curtailed, at the same time that the prices of food had much increased. This he very clearly explains in an interesting petition presented to the Council in November 1583,[49] where he states that he had to keep not only an usher, but a man-servant, to wait on the boys, and a woman-servant to keep them clean, on an income of 6d. a day each for their food, and £40 a year for their apparel and all other expenses, nothing being allowed for travelling and lodging when the Court required him to carry the boys with him to various places. On an examination of his demands, they appear both just and moderate. We do not wonder that he left no will, unless the verses written on the fly-leaf of Sir Thomas More’s works really represented one:[50]
To God my soul I doe bequeathe, because it is his owen,
My body to be layd in grave, where to my friends best knowen,
Executors I wyll none make, thereby great stryffe may growe,
Because ye goods that I shall leave wyll not pay all I owe.