WINCHCOMBE, Sir Henry, 2nd Bt. (1659-1703), of Bucklebury, Berks.

Winchcombe was a descendant of the celebrated clothier ‘Jack of Newbury’, whose son bought Bucklebury in 1540 and first sat in Parliament in 1545. The family took no part in the Civil War, for Winchcombe’s grandfather died in 1542, leaving his father too young to be involved. The baronetcy granted at the Restoration was the fruit of the connexion with the Howards. Although blind from his youth, Winchcombe became an active politician. He attended a Whig meeting at Reading together with John Lovelace after the Rye House Plot, and sat in the Convention as knight of the shire. On 4 June 1689 he seconded the motion of John Grobham Howe II for the removal from office of all of James II’s Privy Councillors. An inactive Member, he was named to only four committees, of which the most important was to restore corporations, and he supported the disabling clause. Re-elected as a Whig, he died on 5 Nov. 1703, the last of his family, and was buried at Bucklebury. His daughter brought the estate to her husband Lord Bolingbroke, the Tory statesman and philosopher.3Vis. Berks. (Harl. Soc. lvii), 233; VCH Berks. iii. 291, 292; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 441; July-Sept. 1683, p. 389; Humphreys, 320; Grey, ix. 281; CJ, xi. 145, 275.