William Herrick (MP)
English politician and jeweler (1562–1653)
Sir William Herrick or Hericke (1562 – 2 March 1653) was an English jeweller, courtier, diplomat and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1601 and 1622.
Life
Herrick was the son of John Heyrick of Leicester and was baptised on 9 December 1562. His father was an ironmonger at Leicester. He was sent to London in about 1574 to be apprenticed to his elder brother Nicholas Herrick, a goldsmith in Cheapside. After six years he set up a business on his own in Wood Street on premises leased from the Goldsmith's Company. Clients included the Kytson family.
Herrick was also a moneylender and in a few years he had made himself a fortune and was able to purchase Beau Manor Park from the Earl of Essex, and obtained a right to arms. He came to the notice of Queen Elizabeth, who sent him on a mission to the Ottoman Porte and on his return he was rewarded with a lucrative appointment in the Exchequer. He was made a freeman of Leicester in 1601 when he presented the corporation with a dozen silver spoons in lieu of a fee.
In 1601, Herrick was elected Member of Parliament for Leicester.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “William Herrick (MP)” is english politician and jeweler (1562–1653). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through William, Herrick and English, not as a finished interpretation.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 20, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q8012268. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1562, 1653, 1601 and 1622.
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This entry incorporates text from “William Herrick (MP)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.