Sir James Hayes, MP, of Bedgebury Park

Sir James Hayes (1637–1694) was secretary to Prince Rupert and first Deputy-Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company.

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hayes_(Prince_Rupert%27s_secret...

He was born the son of James Hayes in Beckington, Somerset. He was educated at St Paul's School (London) and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, where he matriculated in 1649. He was admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1649 and called to the Bar in 1656.

In 1659 he was elected MP for Marlborough (Jan-May 1659) and appointed Recorder of Marlborough. In May 1663 he was a founding Fellow of the Royal Society.[1]

He secured the post as Secretary to Prince Rupert at a time when England and France were vying for the natural riches of what is now Canada. Hayes was behind the 1668 expedition whereby two French fur-traders, Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers, were financially supported in an effort to set up a permanent British trading post on the shores of Hudson Bay. Under Hayes guidance this in May 1672 became the Hudson's Bay Company with the sole rights to trade in a huge area of North America. He became their first Deputy Governor under Prince Rupert, who was the first Governor.[2] He was knighted in 1670.

In 1682 he bought Bedgebury Manor in Gouldhurst, Kent from Thomas Culpeper and rebuilt Bedgebury House in a new location within the park.[3]

He died in 1694. He had married in 1664 Rachel, daughter of Anthony Hungerford and widow of Henry Cary, 4th Viscount Falkland. Their daughter Rachel married Lord David Hay, son of the Marquess of Tweeddale.

The Hayes River which flows into Hudson Bay was named after him in 1684.

notes

From http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1690-1715/member/ha...

Hayes’s father, originating from a minor gentry family of Beckington on the Somerset–Wiltshire border, was a man with an eye to the main chance and came to enjoy a semi-official prominence in the counsels of leading courtiers. After Oxford he had qualified as a barrister at Lincoln’s Inn, and, as recorder of Marlborough, was returned for that borough to Richard Cromwell’s Protectorate Parliament. In 1666 he became secretary to Prince Rupert, serving until at least 1672. He was knighted in 1670, and it was presumably through Court influence that he became a member of Lord Ranelagh’s (Richard Jones*) ‘undertaking’ established in the 1670s to manage the farm of the Irish revenue. He had married the widow of the 4th Lord Falkland, an opportune match by which he acquired manorial property at Great Tew in Oxfordshire. Later, his money-making activities enabled him to purchase Bedgebury in Kent with its associated manors, and he raised an entirely new mansion there in the years just prior to his death. But when Sir James died in February 1693 his brother John, whom he had appointed trustee and guardian of his son James, found the estates to be ‘somewhat encumbered’ by Sir James’s ‘new undertakings’. It is not clear whether John Hayes ever succeeded in clearing these burdens, but others were later incurred, including a £2,000 portion for Sir James’s daughter, which remained for the younger Hayes a source of trouble for much of his life.3