time (April to May 1704) he was declared the sole secretary, both home and foreign, until a successor was appointed to the Earl of Nottingham. During 1705 the whigs constantly endeavoured to eject him from office to make room for the Earl of Sunderland, and the queen at last submitted. The change was announced on 3 Dec. 1706, but it was stipulated that Hedges should be appointed to the judgeship of the prerogative court of Canterbury on its vacation by Sir Richard Raines, and in January 1711 he succeeded to that post. In November of the same year he was mentioned as the third plenipotentiary to negotiate the treaty of Utrecht, but it never passed beyond rumour. For some time his chief residence was at Richmond Green, in a house which afterwards passed to Sir Matthew Decker, but in 1700 he bought the estate of Compton Camberwell, in Compton Bassett, near Calne, and the family arms are still preserved around the parapet of the house. He owned much property in Wiltshire. Among the privately printed works of Sir Thomas Phillipps was one called ‘Land-holders of Wanborough; from a Map of Wanborough, the estate of the Right Hon. Sir Charles Hedges. Taken and drawn in 1709 by P. Assenton.’ Hedges died on 10 June 1714, and was buried at Wanborough on 15 June. His widow, Eleanor, daughter of George Smith, a proctor in London, died in 1733, and was also buried at Wanborough. They had issue one daughter and three sons, Henry, William, and Charles. William married as his first wife Elizabeth, sole heiress of the family of Gore, at Alderton in Wiltshire (cf. Gent. Mag. 1836, pt. i. p. 376, and Aubrey, Collections, ed. the Rev. J. E. Jackson, p. 46).
Hedges is said to have been the anonymous author of ‘Reasons for Setling [sic] Admiralty Jurisdiction and giving encouragement to Merchants, Owners, Masters of Ships, Material Men, and Marines,’ 1690, the main object of which was to improve the methods of pressing seamen. Henry Maundrell was his nephew, and the famous ‘Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem at Easter 1697’ is dedicated to him. Hearne records in his diary that Hedges gave this book to the university, but that the officials were guilty of some discourtesy which displeased the donor. At the sale of the library of the College of Advocates at Doctors' Commons there were purchased for the British Museum the Addit. MSS. 24102–07, all relating to Hedges. They contain notes of cases heard by him, accounts of his fees, with cases and precedents which he had collected. The most interesting is his letter-book (No. 24107), comprising copies of his letters, official and private, including many to Maundrell. Many other letters to and from him are at the British Museum and in the collections described in the Historical Manuscripts Commission. His grand-daughter was mother of Colonel Montagu, the ornithologist, after whose death upwards of three hundred letters written to Hedges by the first Duke of Marlborough, and three notes addressed to him by Queen Anne, were sold by auction in 1816 for 570 guineas. Some letters from Marlborough to him are printed in Murray's ‘Letters and Despatches of the Duke.’ Elkanah Settle issued in 1714 a funeral poem to the memory of Hedges.
[Luttrell's Hist. Relation, i. 557, iv. 608–12, 704–6, 710, v. 124, 151, 169, 207, 418, vi. 673; Coote's Civilians, p. 98; Aubrey's Collections, ed. Jackson, pp. 42–52; Le Neve's Knights (Harl. Soc. viii.), p. 415; Yule's Diary of W. Hedges (Hakluyt Soc.), ii. 32–6, 196–7; Wentworth Papers, p. 215; Nichols's Illustrations of Lit. vi. 718; Lysons's Environs of London, i. 453; Hearne's Collections, ed. Doble, iii. 117; Oldfield's Parl. Hist. iv. 563–4, v. 149–50, 169–170; Gent. Mag. 1816 pt. ii. pp. 23, 135, 231, 606, 1836 pt. i. pp. 376–7; Notes and Queries, 6th ser. vi. 476, vii. 278.]
HEDGES, Sir WILLIAM (1632–1701), governor of Bengal, born on 21 Oct. 1632 at Coole, co. Cork, was the eldest son of Robert Hedges of Youghal in the same county, and Kingsdown, in the parish of Stratton, Wiltshire, by his wife Catharine, daughter of Edward Wakeman of The Mythe, near Tewkesbury. He, as well as his father and grandfather, is formally styled ‘Lacy, alias Hedges;’ his great-grandfather was John Lacy of Wiltshire; Sir Charles Hedges [q. v.] was his second cousin. He commenced his career as a Turkey merchant, presumably in the service of the Levant Company at Constantinople. In his ‘Diary’ he refers to his colloquial knowledge of Arabic and Turkish. He was head of the factory at Constantinople, but finding the press of business too heavy for him and his partner Palmer, he invited Dudley North, who was then at Smyrna, to come and take a share. Leaving North to fill his place, Hedges returned to England about 1671–2. On 16 April 1681 he was elected one of the twenty-four ‘committees’ (directors) of the East India Company at a general court of the ‘adventurers’ (proprietors). On the following 3 Sept. he was chosen agent and governor of the company's affairs in the Bay of Bengal. He was instructed to put a stop to the growing exactions of the native rulers and their subordinates, to check the recently organised efforts of the ‘interlopers’
