WISE, Edward (1632-75), of Sydenham, Marystow, Devon.

Following the death of his father in London during the early years of the Long Parliament, Edward Wise was a ward of Francis Buller I*, Thomas Wise’s ‘best friend’. In his will, the elder Wise invested his full confidence in Buller as Edward’s guardian, ‘not mixed with the least doubt’, and Buller in turn did his best to live up to his friend’s expectations of him.20PROB11/185/421. Francis Buller I was a parliamentarian during the civil war, but from Oxford the king granted the wardship to Edward’s mother, who had married the royalist John Harris II*.21Radford, ‘Wyses and Tremaynes’, 137-8. While Edward was still a minor, a petition around 1647 in his name was preferred to both Houses and the Committee for Revenue. It described how during the ‘unhappy distractions’ of the civil war, Wise’s houses near Plymouth had been burnt and demolished and timber worth £10,000 carted away. Wise’s estate was thus unable to meet the costs of a future marriage or meet the arrears of £700 due to the state from the wardship. Buller secured a certificate to the Committee for Revenue from (Sir) John Northcote, Edmund Fowell, Ellis Crymes, John Waddon and Christopher Martin, all members of the Long Parliament, to confirm the plight of both ward and guardian.22Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/26/18/28-9. The 15-year old Wise seemed oblivious to the problems, insistently asking Buller, towards whom he evidently felt much affection, for a watch, a suit and ‘a pair of gloves of the newest fashion’.23Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/26/18/30.

Wise went up to Cambridge, a family tradition, in November 1648, and by March 1649 was acknowledging Buller’s advice about ‘thrifty living’, while dismaying his guardian with tales of how ‘this stately college ... exhausts more money out of men’s pockets than addeth to some men’s ingenuity’.24Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/26/18/32. Wise evidently planned at that time either to change university or to travel, and by August was installed at Exeter College, Oxford, from where he sent Buller many letters. His tutor, John Hancock, warned Buller that Wise was associating with his cousin, Sir Chichester Wray, unsuitable company ‘unless his intentions be to be initiated in ways of profaneness’.25Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/26/18/41. Wray went on to become a leading Devon royalist plotter in the 1650s, but by November Hancock was reassuring Buller of Wise’s ‘happy change of ... inclinations, companions and actions’.26Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/26/18/48; S. K. Roberts, Recovery and Restoration in an English County: Devon Local Administration 1646-1670 (Exeter, 1985), 60, 61. An impressionable Edward provided his guardian with a breathless account of the Leveller revolt in Oxford in September 1649, assuring Buller that he liked ‘this place very well, but not half so well as London’.27Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/26/18/45. Once order had been restored, Wise knuckled down to spending ‘half the day in studying, seldom [going] abroad, never unseasonable’, according to his tutor.28Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/26/18/49.

It is impossible to discern anything of Wise’s political views, or indeed whether he had any, from his correspondence while he was a student. He reported to Buller on the visitation of Oxford University in December 1649 in neutral tones, and told him how the vice-chancellor, Edward Reynolds, had been given ten days by Parliament to choose between taking the Engagement or being expelled from office. In May 1650, Wise disputed Buller’s judgment that travel in the country was unsafe, proposing instead to press ahead with a visit to his family in Devon.29Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/26/18/53, 54. Once he came within a year or so of majority age, he pursued the matter of his wardship and his inheritance with determination. In June 1652 he told Buller of his intention to lobby the Rump Parliament, by delivering ‘petitions to so many Parliament-men as we can and get some interest in them and get one to deliver it [i.e. his petition] when he hath a convenient opportunity’.30Antony House, Carew-Pole BC/26/18/61. The list of advisers he had mustered was impressive, and included not only his kinsman Arthur Chichester, 2nd Viscount Chichester, but also John Maynard*, Sir John Glanville* and Matthew Hale*, some of the most important lawyers in the country and all from the west of England. He certainly needed help. Two months after his 21st birthday he signed a covenant with Buller to repay debts of £3,000 which his guardian had incurred on his behalf, all of them to lenders in Devon and Cornwall, among them John Elford*. Wise covenanted to meet his father’s debts, pay £1500 to his sister to fulfil a clause in Thomas Wise’s will, and to give his bond for the daunting sum of £9,000 in case of default.31Antony House, Carew-Pole BS/14/5. Nor was his mother silent, petitioning Parliament in her own right about the Wise property of Keame (Keyham), popularly known as Mount Boone.32Radford, ‘Wyses and Tremaynes’, 138.

Wise is not known to have involved himself in any political action on behalf of the exiled king during the 1650s, nor did he play a significant role in local government. After his marriage to Arabella St John in March 1652, he left the west country, to live at the St John property of Melchbourne, near Bedford. At the baptism of his first son, the witnesses included Elizabeth, widow of Oliver St John†, 1st earl of Bolingbroke and Edward Montagu†, 2nd earl of Manchester, who had withdrawn from public life. Wyse had evidently returned to Sydenham by May 1655, however, because from that date he built extensions to the house, and spent enthusiastically on workmen and materials.33Devon Household Accounts, 1627-59 Part 1 ed. T. Gray (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. n.s. xxxviii), 263-68; Radford, Wyses and Tremaynes’, 144. From 1657 he was named to the commissions of the peace and taxation, but seems only to have come to quarter sessions at Exeter once, in 1663. He was returned for Okehampton to Richard Cromwell’s* Parliament probably on his own interest. He sat on no committees and no speech of his was recorded. On 4 April he was a teller in a division on whether to allow the mayor of Taunton to present a petition to the House, his colleague for the yeas being the Member for the town, Sir William Wyndham.34CJ vii. 625a. No particular significance can be attached to Wise’s involvement, beyond its demonstrating that he was indeed present in the House during this Parliament.

On 13 January 1660, Wise joined his cousin, Robert Rolle*, and many other Devon gentry who had been active in politics during the 1640s and 50s in petitioning for the Members secluded in December 1648 to be recalled, an initiative following a similar move by the Cornish gentry a month earlier. 35Som. RO, DD Baker/9/3/3; A Letter from Exeter Advertizing the State of Affairs there (1660, 669.f.22.74); To the Right Worshipfull the High Sheriffs and Justices of the Peace for the County of Cornwall (1660, 669.f.22.53); To the Right Worshipful our Worthy Patriots of our County of Cornwall (1660, 669.f.23.13). His various appointments to local office after 1660, and his knighthood, doubtless accrued by virtue of his closeness to the Rolle family, and to his former roistering companion at Oxford, Sir Chichester Wray. In elections for the Convention, he stood again for Okehampton. He was seated after the House had ruled to allow him and Josias Calmady to sit, in an election contested by a candidate of the Mohun family which had plundered Wise’s property during the civil war.36CJ viii. 3a; HP Commons, 1660-90. He played little part in that Parliament, nor in a long career representing Okehampton in the Cavalier Parliament, being written off as a ‘poor, weak-witted gentleman’. His first son with Arabella St John had died in 1658; in 1667 another was born to the couple, but only lived until 1673. The godparents were members of the St John family joined by the Plymouth neutral, Jonathan Sparke, father of John Sparke†. The year of his second son’s birth was marked by Wise’s sale for £11,600 of Stoke Damerel, including Mount Boone, to William Morice*. Wise’s second marriage was ended after six months by his own demise, and his property passed to his daughter who brought it to the Tremayne family.37Radford, ‘Wyses and Tremaynes’, 145-8.