WINGFIELD, Augustine (c.1612-?64), of Ruislip, Mdx. and Angel Court, High Street, Westminster.

On the death of his father, Augustine Wingfield was adopted by his mother’s elder brother, John Briscoe, a bencher at Lincoln’s Inn, whom he followed into the legal profession, studying at the same inn and being called to the bar in May 1636.20L. Inn Admiss. i. 208; LI Black Bks. ii. 339. Wingfield supported Parliament during the first civil war, acting as a militia commissioner in Middlesex from October 1644 and as elder of the third Presbyterian classis in the same county by the end of 1648.21A. and O. On 29 April 1652 he presented a petition to the House on behalf of Middlesex calling for an alternative way of financing the ministry rather than the imposition of tithes.22CJ vii. 128b. He fully supported the dissolution of the Rump in the following year which he said, was done ‘upon sure grounds of piety, public freedom, right reason and honesty, and that not without the general consent of the major part either precedent or subsequent of the Supreme Authority, the People’.23Wingfield, Vindiciae Medio-Saxonicae, or Tithes Totally Routed (1653), 6.

While he was critical of tithes, Wingfield was not opposed to the state maintenance of the ministry, and when he was chosen to represent Middlesex in the Nominated Assembly, he was listed as a supporter of a godly ministry and the universities.24Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 187. In a pamphlet written by him in 1653 he argued against the claims that tithes were given as of right to the clergy in Magna Carta, but argued instead that that they were but voluntary contributions on behalf of the people.25Vindiciae Medio-Saxonicae, passim; Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 187. Wingfield was appointed to the important committee on tithes on 19 July, alongside some of the Assembly’s more radical Members, including Thomas Harrison I, Praise-God Barbon, Hugh Courtney, Arthur Squibb and William Spence.26CJ vii. 286a. Unusually for a practising lawyer, he also sided with the radicals on law reform. On 20 July he was named to committees on the law and prisons, on 25 July he was named with Andrew Broughton and Nathaniel Taylor to prepare a bill to appoint three judges of the admiralty, and on 19 August he was named to a committee concerning the bill for a new body of law, with Harrison I, Barbon and Spence.27CJ vii. 286b, 287b, 289a, 304b. During October he acted as a teller on a number of divisions concerning chancery reform. On 15 October he told with the minority against putting the question on the adjournment of chancery, and he was teller with Spence two days later on a vote concerning the wording of the adjournment bill.28CJ vii. 335a, 335b. On 22 October he reported from the committee for the law on a bill to appoint commissions to hear cases of equity still pending in chancery.29CJ vii. 338a. Wingfield was appointed on 26 October to draw up bills to prevent those who solicited for offices from obtaining them, and on the regulation of legal fees.30CJ vii. 340a. On the following day he was teller with Broughton in favour of recommitting the chancery bill, and on 29 October he introduced a bill on regulating legal fees to the House.31CJ vii. 340b, 342a. Aside from tithes and law reform, Wingfield was named to the committee for advancement of learning on 21 July, he acted as teller against amending a bill on recusants’ estates on 8 October, and on 24 November he was ordered to join Broughton and Henry Kinge in drawing up a declaration for the apprehension of a Portuguese national accused of murder.32CJ, vii. 287b, 332a, 355b.

Wingfield did not stand for Parliament during the protectorate, but he was an active supporter of the regime. He was named to the London oyer and terminer commission from January 1654, and from October of the same year he served as one of the auditors of the exchequer.33C181/6, pp. 2-353; CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 321. By January 1656 he was a commissioner for securing the peace of the commonwealth, working with the Middlesex major general, John Barkstead*.34TSP iv. 406, 771. Two further publications by Wingfield from the later 1650s, this time in Latin, leave no doubt as to his loyalty to the Cromwellian regime: Carmen Panegyricum, published in 1656, heaped praise on the protector, and Serenissimo Principi Richardo, of 1658, extolled the virtues of Richard Cromwell* and his late father, commending the decision to accompany his obsequies with all the trappings of royalty.35Woolrych, Commonwealth to Protectorate, 188. At the Restoration, writs threatening confiscation of Wingfield’s property had to be issued to retrieve exchequer papers still remaining in his hands.36Eg. 2979, f.11. The date of his death is unknown, but his will (drafted in 1643) was proved in 1664. Under its terms, Wingfield left property in Holborn to be divided among his five children, with provision for the support of their mother who received the remainder of his estate and was named sole executrix. He bequeathed 40 shillings to the poor of Ruislip.37PROB11/314/107.