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HICKMAN, Henry (d.1618), of Northampton.
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Biography Detail
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Constituency
Dates
Family and Education
Yr. s. of Anthony Hickman, merchant, of London and Woodford, Essex by Rose, da. of Sir William Locke, mercer, of London. educ. ?St. Paul’s; St. John’s, Camb. 1565, BA 1569, fellow 1571, MA 1572, senior fellow 1581, LLD 1584; incorp. Oxf. 1572. adv. Doctors’ Commons 1595. m. 8 Apr. 1601, Anne, da. of Richard Wallop of Bugbrooke, Northants., wid. of one Eccleston, of Eccleston, Lancs., 1s. 2da.
Offices Held
Proctor, Camb. 1584; chancellor, diocese of Peterborough 1587; j.p.q. Northants. by 1592; freeman, Northampton 1601; master in Chancery 1602-16; commr. charitable uses, Northants. 1603.
Biography
Hickman’s parents were Marian exiles. His mother, in extreme old age, wrote her reminiscences of the persecution. Hickman himself, after a distinguished career at Cambridge, became a civil lawyer. While at St. John’s College in 1573, he and other fellows drew up a list of accusations against their master, and were successful in having him replaced. Hickman played the leading character in (indeed may have been the author of) the comedy Hymenaeus, acted there in 1579. In the following year the college put on Dr. Legge’s Latin play about Richard III, Hickman playing the part of Henry, Earl of Richmond. In 1601 Hickman requested the Northampton corporation to return him at the forthcoming election. The assembly noted that he was ‘well acquainted with the state of this town, and assert[s] the good thereof ... for all a long time having been an inhabitant’. He and his colleague were to defray their own charges. Hickman died 24 June 1618. In his will, dated 4 Feb. 1616, proved at Peterborough 4 Sept. 1618, he asked to be buried at Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, which his elder brother William had bought in 1595.
Lincs. Peds (Harl. Soc. li), 494; Cambridge Antiq. Soc. i. 351; Northampton Recs. ii. 495; Peterborough Local Administration, ii. (Northants. Rec. Soc. x), 207; A. Stark, Hist Gainsburgh, 447-58; Allen, Lincs. ii. 12; Strype, Annals, ii(1), p. 451; F. S. Boas, Univ. Drama in the Tudor Age, 135, 393, 397.
