William Noy died in pain through kidney stones, on 9th August 1634 and was buried two days later, without a service, in the chancel of St Lawrence Church, Brentford. A brass plate with an inscription was placed over his tomb, but was soon defaced, he was reviled by the public.
He lived west of Brentford Bridge in Brentford End. There is a watercolour painting of the remains of William Noy's kitchen painted in 1800, when it was owned by a H. Ronalds, a nurseryman of Brentford.
So what caused all this enmity towards him?
William Noy (1577-1634), lawyer and MP, was Charles I's hated Attorney-General (1631-1634). He was associated with the various new forms of indirect taxation developed by Charles so as to raise money without calling a parliament. Noy was involved in the development of forest fines; in the ship money tax; and, in particular, in the widely disliked soap monopoly.
In the same year of his death, William Noy became the subject of a popular London stage farce called A Projector Lately Dead, which is referred to in Henry Burton's book, A Divine Tragedie Lately Acted (1636), a morality tale designed to demonstrate the wages of sin and the range of God's punishment for transgressors. Noy's early death was taken as a sign of divine retribution for his support of the Book of Sports, his toleration of sabbath breakers, and his general treatment of the godly.
"Being opened after his death, ther was not a drop of bloud found in his body, for he had voided al out before, his false malicious hard heart with inward fretting & vexing was so consumed & shrinked up, that it was like an old rotten leather purse or meere scurfe, the Physicians never seeing the like before, his flesh and kidnies were as black as an hat, his intrails (except his lungs onely) all putred; and his carkas a miserable spectacle, but no stone that could trouble him was found about him: his funerall according to his desire was so private, that there were hardly Gentlemen enough to carry him to his grave, but that some came in by accident. His clients the Players, for whom he had done knight-service, to requite his kindnes, the next Terme following make him the subject of a merry Comedy, stiled; A Projector lately dead; wherein they bring him in his Lawyers robes upon the Stage, and openly dissecting him, find 100. Proclamations in his head, a bundle of old motheaten records in his maw, halfe a barrell of new white sope in his belly, which made him to scoure so much, and yet, say they, he is still very black & foule within. And as if this voiding of all his owne blood, & publike disgrace on the Stage were not sufficient to expiate the wronged Gentlemans bloud & infamy: himselfe in his last will layes a brand on his owne son and heire... (Burton, A Divine Tragedy, 45-46.)"
On the Lost Plays Database website, William Noy is seen in this woodcut of a pamphlet,
'A Description of the passage of Thomas late Earle of Strafford over the river of Styx, with the conference betwixt him, Charon, and William Noy ([London]: n.p., 1642)',
talking to the Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford, newly arrived in hell, Noy still wearing the long robes of a lawyer, trying to establish the right to tax all those travelling over the River Styx.
He provided legal advice for Charles I's government, which misguidedly believed that the law could be used to pursue government policies without long-term political consequences. He exercised great zeal in prosecuting puritans and became known as an enemy of the godly. His infamy really derived from the role he played in creation of Charles I's so-called 'fiscal feudalism'—the attempt to revive ancient crown rights for financial exploitation.
After he died, Noy conveniently became the scapegoat for all of the grievances of the past decade and became a symbol of Stuart political opportunism.
William Noy was a very able and professional lawyer and MP, but it was his subsequent work as Attorney-General that placed complex demands on him as a career politician, in a period in England's history when there was deep hatred of the King's government. This lead to the civil war 8 years later and the Battle of Brentford that erupted just yards from his grave in St Lawrence Church.
His principal works are On the Grounds and Maxims of the Laws of this Kingdom (1641) and The Compleat Lawyer (1661).
See the 'Poor, Poor St Lawrence Church' article for the church's glorious history and its sad demise.
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