Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/397



very greedy and importunate' when he asked for himself. He seems to have acted on the same principle himself. On the death of Henrietta Maria in 1669 he obtained a grant of the manor of Great Tring, and on the estate he built, from the design of Sir Christopher Wren, an elegant house 'and adorned it with gardens of unusual form and beauty,’ the cost of which, according to popular rumour, was borne by his pickings from the treasury. This property he sold in 1702. In 1680 he acquired from Catherine of Braganza a lease for thirty years of the manor of Hemel Hempstead, and in 1686 some lands in Ireland were ordered by the king's letter to be transferred to him. In 1686 he was also residuary legatee to Thomas Naylor, a man of much wealth, who was buried in Westminster Abbey on 12 Nov. 1686. William III dined with him at Tring in June 1690. In March 1691 he was made a commissioner of customs, but in the following June returned to the secretary ship of the treasury. His displacement was talked of in February 1695, and when the charge of having accepted a bribe of two hundred guineas was brought home to him, he was forced to resign and was committed to the Tower (16 Feb.) In 1696 he guaranteed, with many other members of his party, a loan from the Dutch government of 300,000l. He was reckoned a high churchman, and he allowed 20l. a year to the curacy of Tring. He died on 23 Feb. 1710, and gossip assigned to William Pulteney, afterwards Earl of Bath, 'the greater part of his estate,' which was valued, in common belief, at 100,000l. He left 500l. a year and 40,000l. in cash to Pulteney, who also succeeded him in the good graces of the electors of Hedon. Henry Savile, writing to Lord Halifax in 1679, praises Guy's 'steady friendship,' with the warning that 'whatever disadvantages his exterior may show to so nice a man as you,' a fitter man for a friend could not be found in England. Halifax two years later acknowledges Guy's superiority in understanding 'the methods of the court.'

[Clutterbuck's Hertfordshire, i. 510; Cussans's Hertfordshire, iii.pt.i. 16, 23, 82, 152; Students of Inner Temple, p. 344; Luttrell's Relation of State Affairs, 1857, ii. 22, 52, 250-1, iii. 443, 458, iv. 92, 560, vi. 695; Hatton Corresp. (Camden Soc.), i. 183; Savile Corresp. (Camden Soc.), pp. 121, 129,261 ; Letters of H. Prideaux( Camden Soc.), p. 130; Swift's Works, ed. 1883, xvi. 374-5; Wood's Fasti (Bliss), ii. 272; Athenæ Oxon. iv. 627; Macaulay's History, ed. 1871, iv. 129; Poulson's Holderness,ii. 154, 174; Hasted's Kent, i. 174; Chester's Registers of Westminster Abbey, p. 217; Hist. MSS. Comm. Appendix to the 4th Rep. 298, App. to 7th Rep. 374, 794-7, App. to 8th Rep. 38]  GUY, JOHN (d. 1628?), governor of Newfoundland, a citizen and merchant venturer of Bristol, was admitted to the corporation of the city in 1603, and was sheriff in 1605-6. In 1608 he and others belonging to the society of merchant venturers took into consideration a letter received by the mayor from Chief-justice Popham touching the colonisation of Newfoundland. John Cabot's discovery, and other subsequent expeditions from Bristol, had given the merchants of the city a special interest in Newfoundland, of which possession was formally taken for Queen Elizabeth by Sir Humfrey Gilbert in 1583. They did not, however, follow up the fishery there with vigour, and no attempt had been made at colonisation. The merchants agreed not to embark on the scheme unless the king would co-operate with them. The king consented, and a list of contributions was made out, Guy and others subscribing twenty marks a year for five years. Guy in 1609 put forth a treatise, of which Purchas possessed a copy, 'to animate the English to plant [or colonise] in Newfoundland.' His idea was warmly taken up by his fellow-citizens and by some of the London merchants. On 27 April 1610 James I granted a charter to Henry, earl of Northampton, keeper of the privy seal, and others, among whom were John Guy and his brother Philip, incorporating them as the 'Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the Cities of London and Bristol,' for the purpose of colonising Newfoundland, and comprehending as their sphere of action' the southern and eastern parts of the new found land between 46° and 52° N. L.' Guy, who is described as a 'man very industrious and of great experience' , took out, probably in the following July, a colony of thirty-nine persons of both sexes, the men being 'all of civil life,' traders and workmen. He was accompanied by his family and his brother, and took with him grain for seed, and 'hens, ducks, pigeons, conies, goats, kine, and other live creatures,' for he wished to prove that the country would grow corn, and was good for farm stock. On 16 May 1611, when he had been there ten months, he wrote home an account of the climate and the fortunes of his colony, saying that in the summer he proposed to make a voyage 'between Cape Race, Placentia, and Bona Vista,' and that on his return home he would leave William Colston and his brother Philip to manage the colony (Purchas). He seems to have returned before the winter, for he was treasurer of the merchant venturers 1611-12. He then went back to Newfoundland, and in a letter written in October 1612 speaks of 