cuting the office of earl marshal on a charge of having given to George Rotherham, esq., the arms of Lord Grey of Ruthyn. In 1596 he was sent with the Earl of Shrewsbury to present the Garter to Henry IV of France. When the Earl of Essex, in February 1600–1, entered London with the alleged intention of seizing the queen's person, Dethick accompanied Lord Burghley into the city to proclaim him a traitor. Essex at his trial exclaimed, ‘I saw no herald but that branded fellow, whom I took not for an herald.’ To this the answer was that ‘an herald, though a wicked man, is nevertheless an herald.’
James I knighted Dethick 13 May 1603 (Addit. MS. 32102, f. 149 b; Nichols, Progresses of James I, i. 120). He was present at the coronation, but became unpopular at court on account of a rumour that he had hinted something derogatory to the title of the Stuarts to the English crown. He was temporarily supplanted by Segar, Somerset herald, who by a bill passed under the signet was appointed Garter king-of-arms. But Dethick soon after this disseisin was reinstated, for in August 1603 the king despatched him to Peterborough to place a rich pall of velvet on the coffin of Mary Queen of Scots, and on the 8th of the following month he was joined in a commission, by his proper style, to invest the Duke of Würtemberg. The circumstances of this investiture led to fresh censures of his conduct. Upon his return home a warrant passed the signet office in May 1604 to pay yearly to William Segar, therein named Garter, the charges of the escutcheons for the knights companions. Dethick was forbidden to wear his tabard on Christmas day 1604, and in the court marshal held on 26 Jan. 1604–5 the lords commissioners declared his majesty's pleasure that Dethick, ‘upon some approved misdemeanours’ committed in the execution of his office of Garter, should be deprived of it. Dethick sought redress from parliament and from the court of common pleas, but finally, at the request of the king, he submitted and surrendered his office, having his annuity increased from 40l. to 200l. during his life, together with an exemption from all taxes. He died in 1612, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral, where a monument with a Latin epitaph was erected to his memory.
Dethick was a man of the most tyrannical disposition, and had an ungovernable temper. He drew on himself the paternal curse for striking his father with his fist, and he wounded his brother with a dagger in Windsor Castle. He charged some members of the College of Arms ‘with felony, some he beate, others he reviled, and all he wronged’ (Addit. MS. 25247, f. 293). At the funeral of Sir Henry Sidney at Penshurst he beat the minister in the church. In Westminster Abbey, at the funeral of the Countess of Sussex, he struck two persons with his dagger. For this offence he was indicted at Newgate, but got off through the favour of Fleetwood, the recorder. For calling a clergyman ‘a bald, rascally priest’ and striking him he was sentenced by the spiritual court to imprisonment and a fine of 100l. While acknowledging these faults, Anstis observes that ‘this Garter was very active and diligent in his imployment,’ and a man of good capacity and much knowledge.
He married Thomasine, only daughter of Robert Young, citizen and fishmonger of London, and had issue three sons.
His works are: 1. ‘A Brief Account of Germany, according to its several Divisions or Circles, with the Descents of its Chiefest Families,’ Harl. MS. 2287. 2. ‘Account of the Grisons and of their Government,’ Harl. MS. 2287. 3. ‘A Booke of the Armes of the Noblemen in Henry the Fifts tyme,’ Harl. MS. 1864; cf. Addit. MS. 6298. This splendidly written and illuminated volume was presented by Dethick to Queen Elizabeth on 1 Jan. 1588–9. 4. Account of his mission with the Earl of Shrewsbury to invest Henry IV of France, 1596, Addit. MS. 6298, f. 280. 5. A collection of papers formed by his father and himself, consisting of documents relating to the order of the Garter, the installation of knights, royal and other funerals, with many warrants and letters chiefly on heraldic subjects, Addit. MS. 10110. 6. Historical and heraldic collections, Harl. MS. 2227. 7. ‘On the Antiquity of Ceremonies used at Funeralls,’ 1599, in Hearne's ‘Curious Discourses,’ ed. 1771, i. 199. 8. ‘On the Antiquity of Epitaphs in England,’ in ‘Curious Discourses,’ i. 256. 9. ‘On the Antiquity of the Christian Religion in this Island,’ in ‘Curious Discourses,’ ii. 164.
[Addit. MSS. 5843, p. 180, 19816, ff. 80–99, 22591, f. 95, 23750, f. 43, 25247, ff. 291 b–96; Anstis's Order of the Garter, i. 386–99; Beltz's Memorial of the Order of the Garter, p. xcvi; Dugdale's St. Paul's, p. 51; Egerton MS. 2581; Gent. Mag. new. ser. ix. 31; Guillim's Heraldry (1724), 383; Harl. MSS. 304, art. 65, 1429, art. 23, 1438, art. 2, 1441, art. 37, 1453, art. 5, 6; Historical Manuscripts Commission, Rep. iii. 163, vi. 227, 244, vii. 139, 657, viii. Append. pt. iii. p. 35, x. 10; Lansd. MSS. 13 art. 62, 18 art. 5, 43 art. 27, 51 art. 30, 54 art. 83, 84, 77 art. 86, 80 art. 22, 25, 85 art. 62, 66, 67, 73, 74, 108 art. 97, 285 f. 216; Noble's College of Arms, pp. 168, 178, 184, 197; Notes and Queries, 1st ser. v. 366.]
