WIGHTWICK, Samuel (c.1592-1662), of Marlston, Bucklebury, Berks. and the Inner Temple, London.

Wightwick’s family had been established at Wightwick, near Wolverhampton, in southern Staffordshire since at least the thirteenth century. Samuel’s grandfather, Humphrey, married a Shropshire heiress, and two of their younger sons, George and John, became lawyers of Clifford’s Inn.24Vis. Staffs. ed. Grazebrook, 313; Macleane, Pembroke Coll. 177-8; H. D. Wightwick, The Wightwicks: a Fam. History, unpag. George, in his will of 1611, made his eldest brother Francis (Samuel’s father) – who would be granted arms in 1612 – his executor and bequeathed £100 to Samuel, who was by that point also at Clifford’s Inn.25PROB11/119, f. 133v; Macleane, Pembroke Coll. 178. Samuel’s elder brother Alexander had entered the Inner Temple in 1609; but Samuel himself would not be admitted there until 1630, when his prospects had been transformed by the goodwill of his grandfather’s cousin, Richard Wightwick – a former chaplain to Francis, Lord Norreys – who had died a bachelor in 1630. Norreys had presented Richard to several Berkshire livings and had eventually sold him half of his Berkshire manor of Marlston. Richard had conveyed this moiety, and property in nearby parishes, to Samuel in several grants during the later 1620s, but had charged these estates with several one-off cash payments and an annual rent of £70 to Pembroke College, Oxford, of which he was co-founder.26Pembroke Coll. Oxf., PMB/G/4/1/1/2, 4-5; Humphreys, Bucklebury, 296, 345; Macleane, Pembroke Coll. 163-4, 169-71, 181, 193; VCH Berks. iii. 293. Samuel took up residence at Marlston and raised a large family there.

By the late 1620s, Wightwick appears to been serving as a clerk to one of the six clerks in chancery, Robert Henley. A few months after acquiring the highly lucrative office of chief clerkship of king’s bench (worth approximately £4,000 a year, net) in 1629, Henley, by his ‘only suit and procurement’, obtained a royal grant that vested it in himself and Wightwick for their lives and that of the longer lived of the two. Wightwick served as Henley’s deputy, keeping one twelfth of its profits for himself and remitting the rest to Henley.27C5/389/59; CSP Dom. 1629-31, p. 103; Coventry Docquets, 177; CCAM 271; CCC 927; Aylmer, King’s Servants, 135, 214, 306, 307. In October 1637, a special commission of six privy councillors was set up to investigate not only ‘what exactions, extortions or other unlawful acts’ had been committed by Henley and Wightwick as chief clerks, but also their attempt ‘to obtain a new grant and confirmation from the king of the said office, with a schedule of fees annexed to the same differing from [and presumably higher than] all former grants of the said office’. Fortunately for the two men, nothing seems to have come of this investigation.28Coventry Docquets, 47; CSP Dom. 1637, p. 497; Aylmer, King’s Servants, 214, 307. In 1638, Wightwick became an associate bencher of the Inner Temple – an office reserved predominantly for administrators rather than barristers.29CITR ii. 245; W.R. Prest, Inns of Court 1590-1640, p. 69

Whereas Henley joined the king at Oxford after the outbreak of civil war, Wightwick remained in London and took sole charge of the clerkship.30Oxford DNB, ‘Robert Henley’. As a one of Berkshire’s more wealthy parliamentarians, he was the victim of plunder and extortion by the royalists during the war.31CCAM 271. He was an active member of the committee for the associated counties of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire – to which he had been added by August 1645 – and, as such, rubbed shoulders at Westminster (where the committee sat) with Henry Marten*, Thomas Scot I*, Bulstrode Whitelocke* and other prominent parliamentarians.32SP28/251, pt. 1, unfol. In January 1646, he petitioned the Committee for Advance of Money*, pleading his loyalty to Parliament and requesting an increase in his one twelfth share of the clerkship if Henley should be adjudged incapable of holding office as a delinquent.33CCAM 271. Although Wightwick was being styled chief clerk (of the renamed upper bench) by the early 1650s, it is not clear that he enjoyed this office outright, or at least the profits accruing to it, until Henley’s death in 1656.34CJ iv. 480b; vi. 525a; C181/6, p. 11; Oxford DNB, ‘Robert Henley’.

Wightwick remained active in local government under the Rump, was a business associate and probable friend of the army’s principal clerk John Rushworth*, and purchased a forfeited estate in Berkshire from the treason trustees.35C5/11/50; CCC 601, 1626. In May 1656, the protectoral council appointed Wightwick, Whitelocke and several other lawyers to review the law surrounding the granting of new borough charters.36CSP Dom. 1655-6, pp. 340, 370. As a commissioner for ejecting scandalous ministers in Berkshire, he and Cornelius Holland* sponsored a petition to the protector in 1657, requesting relief for the widow of a godly parish incumbent.37CSP Dom. 1656-7, p. 299. Wightwick probably owed his return in 1659 for Brecon – where he enjoyed no known proprietorial interest – to Sir Henry Williams of Gwernyfed, who had married one of Wightwick’s daughters.38Supra, ‘Brecon’; Macleane, Pembroke Coll. 178. Wightwick made no recorded impression on this Parliament’s proceedings. He retained his clerkship at the Restoration, but was joined in office with Henley’s son Robert and resumed taking only a one-twelfth share of its profits.39PROB11/309, f. 36; CSP Dom. 1661-2, p. 345; HP Commons 1660-90, ‘Sir Robert Henley’.

Wightwick died on 24 August 1662 and was buried in Marlston chapel on 28 August.40Humphreys, Bucklebury, 194, 351. In his will, he charged his estate with annuities worth £190. He also referred to a debt of £1,000 owed him by Sir Edward Partheriche* and two of the latter’s Middle Temple friends – one of them, the radical parliamentarian Sir Cheney Culpeper.41PROB11/309, f. 36. Wightwick was the first and last of his line to sit in Parliament.