was a notable surgeon, and wrote a ‘Treatise on Puerperal Fever,’ 1815. His son, also William Hey (1796–1875), was surgeon to the Leeds Infirmary from 1830 to 1851, and was one of the founders of the Leeds School of Medicine, in which he lectured on surgery from 1831 to 1857 (see Brit. Med. Journ. 1875, i. 763).
[Life of William Hey, 1822, by John Pearson, F.R.S., a most diffuse and tedious work; Life and Writings of William Hey, by Benjamin Bell in Edinb. Med. Journ. June 1867, xii. 1061–80.]
HEYDON, Sir CHRISTOPHER (d. 1623), writer on astrology, eldest son of Sir William Heydon, knt., of Baconsthorpe, Norfolk, and descended from Sir Henry Heydon [q. v.], was educated at Cambridge. In 1586 he was induced by the ‘immoderate brag’ of Thomas Farmor to oppose his candidature for the representation of Norfolk in parliament. The election, on account of the contested return, attracted some attention, but finally the House of Commons adjudged the seats to Farmor and Gresham. However, in the parliament of 1588 Heydon represented the county, but he soon afterwards travelled abroad, and in 1596 he was knighted at the sacking of Cadiz by the Earl of Essex. His younger brother John went with Essex to Ireland in 1599, and was knighted there. Both brothers were suspected of complicity in Essex's conspiracy, but received pardons (1601). Sir Christopher died in 1623, and was buried in the church at Baconsthorpe. He was twice married, first to Mirabel, daughter and coheiress of Sir Thomas Rivet, knt., a London merchant; secondly to Anne, daughter and coheiress of John Dodge, esq., widow of Sir John Potts of Mannington, Norfolk. The first wife, by whom he had several sons, including Sir John Heydon [q. v.], was buried in Saxlingham Church; the second, by whom he had four daughters and a son, died in 1642, aged 75, and was buried beside her husband.
In 1601 John Chamber (1564–1604) [q. v.] published ‘A Treatise against Judicial Astrologie,’ London, 4to. To this Heydon replied in ‘A Defence of Judiciall Astrologie. In Answer to a Treatise lately published by M. John Chamber.’ Heydon was answered by Chamber in a treatise never published, and by George Carleton (1559–1628) [q. v.] in ‘Astrologomania, the Madnesse of Astrologers,’ 1624. ‘An Astrological Discourse … in Justification of the validity of Astrology … with an astrological judgement upon the great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter,’ 1603, by Sir Christopher Heydon, was published in 1650. A pamphlet, called ‘A Recitall of the Caelestiall Apparititions of this present Trygon now in being,’ was written, but never published (Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. vii. 416). Many of Heydon's letters are preserved among the Gawdy MSS.
A curious account of a duel between Sir Christopher's brother John and Sir Robert Mansfield in 1599, in which Sir John lost his hand (still preserved in the Canterbury Museum), is given from original documents at Canterbury, transcribed by Mr. John Brent in the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ 1853, pt. i. pp. 481–8. Another account is in Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 27961.
[Blomefield's Topogr. Hist. of Norfolk, vi. 508–510; Ret. of Memb. of Parl. i. 424; Wood's Athenæ (Bliss), i. 745, ii. 347, 424; Gawdy MSS., Hist. MSS. Comm.; Brit. Mus. Add. MSS. 23006 ff. 29, 30, 23024 f. 173, 27447 ff. 115, 120, 27959 f. 7.]
HEYDON, Sir HENRY (d. 1503), country gentleman, belonged to an old family seated at Heydon in Norfolk. As early as the thirteenth century one of the family resided in Norfolk, and the principal branch of it remained for many years in that county, inheriting the estates at Heydon and Baconsthorpe. Sir Henry was son and heir of John Heydon of Baconsthorpe (d. 1479) (Paston Letters, iii. 196), an eminent lawyer, by Eleanor, daughter of Edmund Winter of Winter Berningham, Norfolk. He married Elizabeth or perhaps Anne (see ib. ii. 304), daughter of Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, knt., and aunt of Anne Boleyn.
Heydon was steward to the household of Cecilia, duchess of York, widow of Richard, duke of York. In 1485 he was knighted. He appears to have been a man of considerable public spirit, and of refined and devout sentiments. He built in the space of six years the manorhouse at Baconsthorpe, a sumptuous quadrangular pile, now ruinous, entirely from the ground, except the tower, which was built by his father. He also built West Wickham Court in Kent, and rebuilt the parish church of West Wickham, close by it. The church of Salthouse and the causeway between Thursford and Walsingham were erected at his expense. In 1443 the moieties of Hyde Manor in Pangbourne, Berkshire, of Nutfield, Surrey, and of Shipton Sollars Manor, Gloucestershire, were settled upon him and Elizabeth his wife as her inheritance. He died in 1503, and was buried beside his father in the Heydon Chapel at Norwich Cathedral. The chapel is now destroyed, and the monuments mentioned by Blomefield have disappeared. In one of the windows of West Wickham Church there is the representation in old stained glass of a
