19 Facts About Edward Nicholas

Sir Edward Nicholas was an English officeholder and politician who served as Secretary of State to Charles I and Charles II.

Edward Nicholas sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1621 and 1629.

Edward Nicholas served as secretary to Edward la Zouche and the Duke of Buckingham in the Admiralty and became a clerk of the Privy Council.

Edward Nicholas supported the Royalist cause in the English Civil War and accompanied the court into exile, before assuming the post of Secretary of State on the Restoration.

Edward Nicholas was re-elected as one of the Members for Winchelsea in 1624 for what became known as the Happy Parliament.

Edward Nicholas kept diaries of all the parliaments in which he sat.

In 1625 Edward Nicholas became the first holder of the office of Secretary to the Admiralty; shortly afterwards he was appointed an extra clerk of the privy council, with duties relating to Admiralty business.

From 1635 to 1641 Edward Nicholas was one of the clerks in ordinary to the council.

When Charles returned to London, Edward Nicholas was knighted and appointed a privy councillor and a Secretary of State, in which capacity he attended the king while the court was at Oxford and carried out the business of the Treaty of Uxbridge.

Edward Nicholas went to France, being recommended by the king to the confidence of the Prince of Wales.

In 1648 Edward Nicholas wrote a pamphlet, An Apology for the Honorable Nation of the Jews, which called for the readmission of the Jews to England.

Edward Nicholas lived at the Hague and elsewhere in a state of poverty which hampered his power to serve Charles, but which the latter did nothing to relieve.

Edward Nicholas returned to England at the Restoration and duly took office as Secretary of State along with William Morice, a former parliamentary supporter.

Edward Nicholas was retired, much against his own wishes, in favour of Charles's favourite Henry Bennet.

Edward Nicholas received a grant of money and the offer of a peerage, which he felt too poor to accept.

Edward Nicholas retired to a country seat in Surrey which he purchased from Carew Raleigh, son of Sir Walter Raleigh, and there he lived till his death in 1669.

Edward Nicholas married Jane Jay, a daughter of Henry Jay, an alderman of London and had several sons and daughters.

The collected correspondences of Edward Nicholas were published in three volumes by the Royal Historical Society in 1920.

The arms of Edward Nicholas's father were: Argent, a fess wavy between three ravens sable, a differencing of the arms of Edward Nicholas of Winterborne Earls, Wiltshire.