WYNDE, Sir Robert (c.1580-1652), of Ashill, Norf. and St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster

The Wynde became established in north Norfolk in the mid-sixteenth century. W. Rye, Norf. Fams. ii. 1011. Wynde inherited substantial property on his father’s death in 1603, when he was also knighted. F. Blomefield, Hist. Norf. ix. 199. The following year he obtained letters patent which confirmed him in possession of those lands held in capite. C66/1661. In 1608 he was licensed to travel abroad with Richard Betts, the rector of his parish of Ashill, Norfolk. SO3/4 unfol. (June); CSP Dom. 1603-10, p. 413; Al. Cant. (Betts). He had returned from Venice by 1611/12, and became friendly with Thomas Betts, who may have been related to Richard. Vis. Norf. (Harl. Soc. xxxii), 36. The two men played ‘at cards and other matches’, but their friendship ended acrimoniously in 1620, when Wynde accused Betts in Chancery of refusing to acknowledge past payment of debts and of deliberately losing receipts.C2/Jas.I/W2/20.

In 1614 Wynde was elected to Parliament for Castle Rising. He almost certainly owed his seat to one of the borough’s patrons, Henry Howard, earl of Northampton, for shortly beforehand he had sold some property adjacent to Castle Rising to Northampton. Norf. RO, Howard (Castle Rising) collection, 153. Wynde’s desire for a place in the Commons was probably related to the fact that he subsequently introduced legislation to enable him to recover debts that he was owed, in particular £1,000 lent by his father to one Richard Whalley in 1600. The bill, which also sought to establish his clear title to Whalley’s lands, received a first reading in the Commons on 1 June, but proceeded no further. HLRO, main pprs. 1 June 1614; Procs. 1614 (Commons), 400, 407. Wynde played no other recorded part in the Parliament, although along with Sir William Cooke, Sir Henry Bedingfield, and Sir Hamon L’Estrange, he was fined 12d. for attempting to leave the House before the Speaker at the end of the day’s proceedings on 28 May. Procs. 1614 (Commons), 376. The consequences of Wynde’s failure to secure a legislative solution to his financial difficulties became apparent seven years later, when he was prosecuted in Chancery by his brother for failing to pay £1,000 due to the latter on reaching his majority. Wynde claimed, with some justification, that he had experienced difficulty in recovering debts owed to their father. C2/Jas.I/W13/64.

Following the dissolution, Wynde became embroiled in a dispute over responsibility for repairing embankments in East and West Marshes, Terrington, Norfolk after a storm swept over the area. E134/11Jas.I/Mich.25. By 1621 he was a sewer in ordinary to James I, and later held office in the Caroline privy chamber, a position he exploited for financial gain. In 1633 he successfully petitioned Charles I for the arrearage of rents in Newtimber, Sussex, and in the prebend of Tymesbury, Hampshire. CSP Dom. 1633-4, p. 23. After Charles decamped to Oxford in late 1642, Wynde, who retained his Court office, enlisted in the king’s troop, but in 1646 he asked to compound for delinquency. CCC, 1475. In the following year a parliamentary committee demanded that he pay £500. CCAM, 794. By May 1650 Wynde’s lands had been sequestered, an action formalized by statute in 1652. CCC, 1475; A. and O. ii. 630, 637.

Wynde died intestate in late 1652 and was buried with his wife at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster. Surr. Arch. Colls. x. 292. His son, Henry, a former royalist lieutenant-colonel of foot, P.R. Newman, Roy. Officers in Eng. and Wales, 425. attempted to reclaim the family properties. CCC, 1475-6. None of Wynde’s descendants sat in Parliament.