House of Commons dilated on ‘the horrible and wicked practices’ of ‘the Queen of Scots so called,’ concluding with the ominous words ‘Ne pereat Israel, pereat Absalom.’ The house adjourned, and next day voted for a petition to the queen for the execution of the sentence. After the presentation of the petition Hatton acquainted the house (14 Nov.) with the desire of Elizabeth that Mary might be spared if it could be done with safety, upon which the house voted in the negative. Together with William Davison (1541?–1608) [q. v.] he conducted (January 1586–7) the examination of Moody, a supposed agent of the French ambassador in a plot to assassinate the queen (Parl. Hist. i. 836, 843; Murdin, State Papers, pp. 578–83). In a long speech in the House of Commons on 22 Feb. 1586–7 Hatton explained the imminent peril of Spanish invasion, and extolled the courage of the queen. It was to Hatton, as most likely to know the queen's real mind, that Davison confided his doubts as to the propriety of despatching the warrant for the execution of the Queen of Scots. Hatton had no doubt on the matter, and took Davison to the council that his scruples might be removed, and the warrant was despatched accordingly. He afterwards interrogated Davison in the Tower (Parl. Hist. i. 847–50; Nicolas, pp. 96–7; Ellis, Letters, 2nd ser. iii. 111). The queen granted to Hatton in August 1582 the manor of Parva Weldon in Northamptonshire, and estates in other counties, in 1585 the keepership of the forest of Rockingham and the Isle of Purbeck, and in 1587 the demesne of Naseby in Northamptonshire. He also obtained, apparently about the same time, a grant of part of some estates which had belonged to Irish rebels in the county of Waterford (Nicolas, p. 459; Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. App. 49). Other grants to Hatton from the crown included the sites of four dissolved monasteries.
On 25 April 1587 the queen appointed Hatton lord chancellor, delivering the seal to him personally at the archiepiscopal palace at Croydon, and on 3 May he took the oaths of office, riding from Ely House to Westminster for that purpose in great state. He was preceded by forty of his retainers in blue livery wearing gold chains, part of the corps of gentlemen pensioners and other gentlemen of the court, and attended by the officers and clerks of the chancery. Burghley rode on his right hand, and Leicester on his left (Nicolas, p. 463; Goldsborough, Reports, ed. 1682, p. 46; Stow, Annals, ed. 1615, p. 741). His appointment occasioned much surprise and some indignation in the legal profession, as his knowledge of law was supposed to be slight, and some ‘sullen serjeants’ even refused to plead before him. His decrees have not been preserved. Camden, however, says that ‘quod ex juris scientia defuit æquitate supplere studuit.’ He was much assisted by his friend Sir Richard Swale, and had four masters in chancery to sit with him as assessors (Camden, Ann. ed. 1615, i. 475; Fuller, Worthies, ‘Northamptonshire;’ Egerton Papers, Camd. Soc., p. 125). A speech delivered by Hatton on occasion of the call of a certain barrister named Clerke to the degree of serjeant-at-law (1587) shows that if he had not had much experience as a practitioner, he could give good advice to those who had (Campbell, Chancellors, ii. 159). A specimen of his humour is given in Bacon's ‘Apophthegms,’ 74 (51). ‘In chancery one time, when the counsel of the parties set forth the boundaries of the land in question by the plot, and the counsel of one part said, “We lie on this side, my lord;” and the counsel of the other part said, “We lie on this side;” the Lord-chancellor Hatton stood up and said: “If you lie on both sides, whom will you have me to believe?”’ The only one of Hatton's judgments which is preserved is that in the Star-chamber case of Sir Richard Knightley, deputy-lieutenant for Northamptonshire, who was fined 2,000l. for permitting the printing of Brownist books (Cobbett, State Trials, i. 1263–71). On 24 April 1588 Hatton was invested with the order of the Garter; his installation followed on 23 May. It was largely through Hatton's influence that Elizabeth had abandoned her rash scheme of making Leicester lord-lieutenant of the realm in 1587. This, however, did not disturb his relations with Leicester, with whom he had long been on terms of close friendship, and who had made him one of the overseers of his will. On the death of Leicester (20 Sept. 1588) Hatton succeeded him as chancellor of the university of Oxford (Camden, Ann. ed. 1615, i. 496; Nicolas, Hist. of Knighthood, ii. Chron. List; Sydney Papers vol. i. pt. i. p. 74; Wood, Fasti Oxon. ed. Bliss, i. 241).
Hatton opened the proceedings in parliament in 1588–9 with a long speech, in which, after celebrating the destruction of the Armada, he asked for a liberal supply for the navy (Parl. Hist. i. 853). In the following June Hatton's nephew, Sir William Newport, son of his sister Dorothy, by her husband, John Newport, was married at Holdenby to Elizabeth, daughter of Francis Gawdy [q. v.], justice of the king's bench. At the festivities which followed Hatton gaily divested himself of his gown, and, placing it in his chair with ‘Lie thou there,
