WYKES, William (aft.1680-1742), of Haselbeach, Northants.

Wykes was the grandson of Randolph Wykes, grocer and citizen of London (d.1676), who acquired the manor of Haselbeach. His elder brother, Randolph, sheriff of the county 1702-3, died in 1706, aged 26.1Bridges, Northants. ii. 36-37, 45, 77. Returned as a Tory for Northampton in 1710 after a contest, and re-elected in 1713 and 1715 unopposed, he voted against the Government in every recorded division after George I’s accession. On 6 Aug. 1714 he proposed tacking to the bill for the new King’s civil list a clause limiting the number of placemen in the Commons, but nobody Seconded him. He also spoke against the land tax in January 17162A. Corbière to Horace Walpole, 27 Jan. 1716, Walpole, 27 Jan. 1716, Walpole (Wolterton) mss. and the septennial and peerage bills. In 1722 the local Tory leaders unsuccessfully attempted to compromise the Northampton election, at which he was easily defeated. He did not stand again but took part in subsequent Northamptonshire elections.3E.G. Forrester, Northants. County Elections 1695-1832, pp. 43, 49 n. 55. He died 5 May 1742. Having been granted by the Northampton corporation a monopoly for laying a piped water supply for the town, he appointed his ‘worthy and good friends’, George Compton and Sir Edmund Isham, as two of the trustees of his waterworks, to see that they be kept in good repair and to prevent their ever falling ‘into the hands of any person or persons of republican principles’.4PCC 262 Trenley.