Sir Kenelm Digby (11 July 1603 – 11 June 1665) was an English courtier and diplomat. He was also a highly reputed natural philosopher, astrologer and known as a leading Roman Catholic intellectual and Blackloist. For his versatility, he is described in John Pointer's Oxoniensis Academia (1749) as the "Magazine of all Arts and Sciences, or (as one stiles him) the Ornament of this Nation".
Digby was born at Gayhurst, Buckinghamshire, England. He was of landed gentry stock, but his family's Roman Catholicism impeded his career. His father, Sir Everard, was executed in 1606 for his part in the Gunpowder Plot. Kenelm was sufficiently in favour with James I to be proposed as a member of Edmund Bolton's projected Royal Academy (with George Chapman, Michael Drayton, Ben Jonson, John Selden and Sir Henry Wotton). His mother was Mary, daughter of William Mushlo. His uncle, John Digby, was the first Earl of Bristol.
He went to Gloucester Hall, Oxford, in 1618, where he was taught by Thomas Allen, but left without taking a degree. In time Allen bequeathed to Digby his library, and the latter donated it to the Bodleian.
He spent three years on the Continent between 1620 and 1623, where Marie de Medici fell madly in love with him (as he later recounted). In 1623, in Madrid, Digby was appointed to the household of Prince Charles, who had just arrived there. Returning to England the same year, he was knighted by James I and appointed gentleman of the privy chamber to Charles. He was granted a Cambridge Master of Arts on the King's visit to the university in 1624.
Around 1625, he married Venetia Stanley, whose wooing he cryptically described in his memoirs. He had also become a member of the Privy Council of Charles I of England. As his Roman Catholicism hindered appointment to government office, he converted to Anglicanism.
Digby became a privateer in 1627. Sailing his flagship, the Eagle (later renamed Arabella), he arrived off Gibraltar on 18 January and captured several Spanish and Flemish vessels. From 15 February to 27 March he remained at anchor off Algiers due to illness of his men, and extracted a promise from authorities of better treatment of the English ships: he persuaded the city governors to free 50 English slaves. He seized a Dutch vessel near Mallorca, and after other adventures gained a victory over the French and Venetian ships in the harbour of Iskanderun on 11 June. His successes, however, brought upon the English merchants the risk of reprisals, and he was urged to depart. He returned to become a naval administrator and later Governor of Trinity House.
His wife Venetia, a noted beauty, died suddenly in 1633, prompting a famous deathbed portrait by Van Dyck and a eulogy by Ben Jonson. (Digby was later Jonson's literary executor. Jonson's poem about Venetia is now partially lost, because of the loss of the centre sheet of a leaf of papers which held the only copy.) Digby, stricken with grief and the object of enough suspicion for the Crown to order an autopsy (rare at the time) on Venetia's body, secluded himself in Gresham College and attempted to forget his personal woes through scientific experimentation and a return to Catholicism. At Gresham College he held an unofficial post, receiving no payment from the college. Digby, alongside Hungarian chemist Johannes Banfi Hunyades, constructed a laboratory under the lodgings of Gresham Professor of Divinity where the two conducted botanical experiments.
At that period, public servants were often rewarded with patents of monopoly; Digby received the regional monopoly of sealing wax in Wales and the Welsh Borders. This was a guaranteed income; more speculative were the monopolies of trade with the Gulf of Guinea and with Canada. These were doubtless more difficult to police.
Digby married Venetia Stanley in 1625.
Kenelm Jr. (1625–1648), killed at the Battle of St Neots, 10 July 1648.
John (1627–?), only son to survive Digby. He married and had two daughters.
Everard (1629–1629), died in infancy.
unnamed twins (1632), miscarriage.
George (c. 1633–1648), died of illness in school.
In addition, there was a daughter, Margery. Born c. 1625, who married Edward Dudley of Clopton and had at least one child. She is never mentioned by Digby in his writings. She may have been the daughter of Edward Sackville, 4th Earl of Dorset and Venetia Stanley prior to her marriage to Sir Kenelm. The Earl of Dorset settled an annuity on her. There is some controversy and confusion about whether or not Venetia had affairs with both the third and fourth Earls of Dorset and, consequently, which Earl was the father of Margery.
Digby became a Catholic once more in 1635. He went into voluntary exile in Paris, where he spent most of his time until 1660. There he met both Marin Mersenne and Thomas Hobbes.
Returning to support Charles I in his struggle to establish episcopacy in Scotland (the Bishops' Wars), he found himself increasingly unpopular with the growing Puritan party. In the time between 1639 and 1640, he supported Charles I's expedition against the Presbyterian Scots. He left England for France again in 1641. Following an incident in which he killed a French nobleman, Mont le Ros, in a duel, he returned to England via Flanders in 1642, and was jailed by the House of Commons. He was eventually released at the intervention of Anne of Austria, and went back again to France. He remained there during the remainder of the period of the English Civil War. Parliament declared his property in England forfeit.
Queen Henrietta Maria had fled England in 1644, and he became her Chancellor. He was then engaged in unsuccessful attempts to solicit support for the English monarchy from Pope Innocent X. His son, also called Kenelm, was killed at the Battle of St Neots, 1648. Following the establishment of the Protectorate under Oliver Cromwell, who believed in freedom of conscience, Digby was received by the government as a sort of unofficial representative of English Roman Catholics, and was sent in 1655 on a mission to the Papacy to try to reach an understanding. This again proved unsuccessful.